One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift for itself.  The present elaborate military organization might take it under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little room for its continuous growth.  Shintoism, which fostered it in its infancy, is itself superannuated.  The hoary sages of ancient China are being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and Mill.  Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow journalism.

Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of Knighthood.  Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial code—­or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—­among the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate sensibilities.”  The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can tolerate no form or shape of trust—­and Bushido was a trust organized by those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing the grades and value of moral qualities—­is alone powerful enough to engulf the remnant of Bushido.  The present societary forces are antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely criticizes, a class spirit.  Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an exclusive class."[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—­then we can easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail.  The state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—­shall we call it the Ehrenstaat or, after the manner of Carlyle, the Heroarchy?—­is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war.  The words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.”

[Footnote 35:  Norman Conquest, Vol.  V, p. 482.]

Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride!  Morality ushered into the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away as “the captains and the kings depart.”