Let it not be understood for a moment, that we advise any one to act contrary to the impulses of justice.

But cleverness is a part of common sense in business, and assimilation is essential to success.

It is not necessary to abandon one’s convictions in order to reflect principles which, without contradicting them, give them a favorable color.

Common sense can remain intact and be differently colored, according as it is applied to the arts, politics, or science.

It would not deserve its name if it did not know how to yield to circumstances, in order to adorn the momentary caprice with flowers of reason.

In the primitive ages, common sense consisted in keeping oneself in a perpetual state of defense; attack was also at times prescribed, by virtue of the principle that it is pernicious to allow one’s rights to be imperiled.

Attack was also at times a form of repression.

It was also a lesson in obedience and a reminder not to misunderstand individual rights.

In later times, common sense served to make the advantages of harmony appreciated.

It directed the descendants of peoples exclusively warlike toward the secret place where science unfolds itself to the gaze of the vulgar; then it taught them to provide for their existence by working.

It has demonstrated to them the necessity of reflection, by inciting them to model their present course of life on the lessons which come from the past.

It has given them the means to evoke it easily and effectively.

It has injected into their veins the calmness which permits them to draw just conclusions and to adopt toward preceding reasonings the attitude of absolute neutrality, without which all former presentiments are marred by error.

Each epoch was, for common sense, an opportunity to manifest itself differently.

At the moment when poetry was highly honored, it would have been unreasonable to have ignored it, for the bards excited great enthusiasm by their songs which gave birth to heroes.

And now, imbued with the principles which in his day might be taken to represent what we to-day call advanced ideas, Yoritomo continues: 

“Common sense can, then, without renouncing its devotion to truth, take various forms or shades, for the truth of yesterday is not always the truth of to-day.

“The gods of the past are considered simply as idols in our day and the virtues of the distant past would be, at present, moral defects which would prevent men from winning the battle of life, whose ideal is The Best for which all the faculties should strive.”

The Shogun also touches lightly on a subject which, already discust in his time, has become, in our day, a burning truth; it is a question of a fault, which in the world of practical life and in that of business can cause considerable injury to him who allows it to be implanted in him.