environment and fitted to it. And then, again,
it may be that our judgments are not correct. Let the heart be right and
all is well. Let man be obedient and his outward circumstance is
nothing, having no relation to his joy or happiness. Even when as to his
earthly body man passes away, he is not destroyed; the drop again
becomes part of the sea, the spark re-enters the flame, and his life
continues, though it be not a conscious life. In this way man is in
harmony with the original principle of all things. He outlasts the
universe itself.

Hence to a conscientious Samurai there is nothing in this world better
than obedience, in the ideal of a true man. What he fears most and hates
most is that his memory may perish, that he shall have no seed, that he
shall be forgotten or die under a cloud and be thought treacherous or
cowardly or base, when in reality his life was pure and his motives
high. "Better," sang Yoshida Shoin, the dying martyr for his principles,
"to be a crystal and to be broken, than to be a tile upon the housetop
and remain."

So, indeed, on a hundred curtained execution grounds, with the dirk of
the suicide firmly grasped and about to shed their own life-blood, have
sung the martyrs who died willingly for their faith in their idea of
Yamato Damashii.[19] In untold instances in the national history, men
have died willingly and cheerfully, and women also by thousands, as
brave, as unflinching as the men, so that the story of Japanese chivalry
is almost incredible in its awful suicides. History reveals a state of
society in which cool determination, desperate courage and fearlessness
of death in the face of duty were quite unique, and which must have had
their base in some powerful though abnormal code of ethics.

This leads us to consider again the things emphasized by Japanese as
distinct from Chinese and Korean[20] Confucianism, and to call attention
to its fruits, while at the same time we note its defects, and show
wherein it failed. We shall then show how this old system has already
waxed old and is passing away. Christ has come to Japan, and behold a
new heaven and a new earth!

New Japan Makes Revision.

First. For sovereign and minister, there are coming into vogue new
interpretations. This relation, if it is to remain as the first, will
become that of the ruler and the ruled. Constitutional government has
begun; and codes of law have been framed which are recognizing the
rights of the in