If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—­be it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—­can never make on earth a “continuing city.”  Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man.  Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love.  We have seen that Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to emphasize this fact.  Life has grown larger in these latter times.  Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day.  With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of Benevolence—­dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—­will expand into the Christian conception of Love.  Men have become more than subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens:  nay, they are more than citizens, being men.

Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the wings of the angel of peace can disperse them.  The history of the world confirms the prophecy the “the meek shall inherit the earth.”  A nation that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain indeed!

When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an honorable burial.  It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception.  Dr. Miller says that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of France was slain in a tournament.  With us, the edict formally abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of Bushido.  The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.”

It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths.  Does ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, without a master’s hand?  Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis Napoleon beat the Prussians with his Mitrailleuse, or the Spaniards with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the old-fashioned Remingtons?  Needless to repeat what has grown a trite saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the