“Obstinate people persist in coveting inaccessible places and spend strength without results, which they might have employed more judiciously.

“People of common sense are the only ones who experience no nervous tension because of this struggle.

“They calculate their chances, compute the time, do not disturb themselves uselessly, and never abandon their present position until they have a firm grasp on the following place.

“They do not seek to occupy a rank which their knowledge would not permit them to keep; they draw on that faculty with which they are gifted to learn the science of true proportion.

“They do not meddle in endeavors to reform laws; they submit to them, by learning how to adapt them to their needs, and respect them by seeking to subordinate their opinion to the principle on which they are based.

“Persons who have no common sense are the only ones to revolt against the laws of the country where they live.

“The wise man will recognize that they have been enacted to protect him and that to be opposed to their observance would be acting as an enemy to oneself.”

However, people will say, if laws are so impeccable in their right to authority, how is it that their interpretation leads so often to disputes?

It is easy to reply that lawsuits are rarely instituted by men of common sense; they leave this burden to people of evil intent, who imagine thus to make a doubtful cause triumph.

It must be conceded that this means succeeds at times with them, when they are dealing with timid or irresolute persons; but those who have contracted the habit of reasoning, and who never undertake anything without consulting common sense, will never allow themselves to be drawn into the by-paths of sophistry.

If they are forced to enter there temporarily, in order to pursue the adversary, who has hidden himself there, they will leave these paths as soon as necessity does not force them to remain there longer and with delight regain the broad road of rectitude.

A few pages further on we find a reflection which the Shogun, always faithful to his principles of high morality, specially addresses to those who make a profession of humility.

“Obedience,” he says, “ought to be considered as a means; but, for the one who wishes to succeed, in no sense can it be honored as a virtue.

“If it be a question of submission to law, that is nothing else but the performance of a strict duty; this is a kind of compact which the man of common sense concludes with society, to which he promises his support for the maintenance of a protection from which he will be the first to benefit.

“This obedience might be set down as selfishness were it not endorsed by common sense.

“There are people, it is true, who, even altho wishing to support their neighbor when called upon to do so by the law, seek to evade this duty if left to themselves.