he list of assassinations
beginning with the murder in Ki[=o]to of Yokoi Heishiro, who was slain
for recommending the toleration of Christianity, down to the last
cabinet minister who has been knifed or dynamited. Yet in every case the
murderers considered themselves consecrated men and ministers of
Heaven's righteous vengeance.[10] For centuries, and until
constitutional times, the government of Japan was "despotism tempered by
assassination." The old-fashioned way of moving a vote of censure upon
the king's ministers was to take off their heads. Now, however, election
by ballot has been substituted for this, and two million swords have
become bric-a-brac.

A thousand years of training in the ethics of Confucius--which always
admirably lends itself to the possessors of absolute power, whether
emperors, feudal lords, masters, fathers, or older brothers--have so
tinged and colored every conception of the Japanese mind, so dominated
their avenues of understanding and shaped their modes of thought, that
to-day, notwithstanding the recent marvellous development of their
language, which within the last two decades has made it almost a new
tongue,[11] it is impossible with perfect accuracy to translate into
English the ordinary Japanese terms which are congregated under the
general idea of Kun-shin.

Herein may be seen the great benefit of carefully studying the minds of
those whom we seek to convert. The Christian preacher in Japan who uses
our terms "heaven," "home," "mother," "father," "family," "wife,"
"people," "love," "reverence," "virtue," "chastity," etc., will find
that his hearers may indeed receive them, but not at all with the same
mental images and associations, nor with the same proportion and depth,
that these words command in western thought and hearing. One must be
exceedingly careful, not only in translating terms which have been used
by Confucius in the Chinese texts, but also in selecting and rendering
the current expressions of the Japanese teachers and philosophers. In
order to understand each other, Orientals and Occidentals need a great
deal of mutual intellectual drilling, without which there will be waste
of money, of time, of brains and of life.

The Five Relations.

Let us now glance at the fundamentals of the Confucian ethics--the Five
Relations--as they were taught in the comparatively simple system which
prevailed before the new orthodoxy was proclaimed by Sung schoolmen.

First. Altho