logical intellect on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic philosophy or a rational theology.  This religion—­or, is it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion expressed?—­thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and love of country.  These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its votaries scarcely any credenda, furnishing them at the same time with agenda of a straightforward and simple type.

[Footnote 6:  “Feudal and Modern Japan” Vol.  I, p. 183.]

As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the most prolific source of Bushido.  His enunciation of the five moral relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had recognized before his writings were introduced from China.  The calm, benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling class.  His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the requirements of these warrior statesmen.  Next to Confucius, Mencius exercised an immense authority over Bushido.  His forcible and often quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under censure.  Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment in the heart of the samurai.

The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old.  A mere acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in no high esteem.  A common proverb ridicules one who has only an intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant of Analects.  A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling sot.  Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be boiled and boiled before it is fit for use.  A man who has read a little smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more so; both are alike unpleasant.  The writer meant thereby that knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.  An intellectual specialist was considered a machine.  Intellect itself was considered subordinate to ethical emotion.  Man and the universe were conceived to be alike spiritual and ethical.  Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, that the cosmic process was unmoral.

Bushido made light of knowledge as such.  It was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom.  Hence, he who stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding.  Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, “To know and to act are one and the same.”