rrelated fault was excessive reverence for rank and rigid
exclusiveness of class. There was practically no ladder for the
commoner,--the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant--to ascend into
the circle of the samurai. It resulted that, in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, gifted men of the despised grades sought in the
cloister an arena for the exercise of their talents, and thus, while
the bushi received no recruits, the commoners lost their better
elements, and Buddhism became a stage for secular ambition. It can
not be doubted that by closing the door of rank in the face of merit,
bushido checked the development of the nation. Another defect in the
bushido was indifference to intellectual investigation. The schoolmen
of Kyoto, who alone received honour for their moral attainments, were
not investigators but imitators, not scientists but classicists. Had
not Chinese conservatism been imported into Japan and had it not
received the homage of the bushi, independent development of original
Japanese thought and of intellectual investigation might have
distinguished the Yamato race. By a learned Japanese philosopher (Dr.
Inouye Tetsujiro) the ethics of the bushi are charged with
inculcating the principles of private morality only and ignoring
those of public morality.

MILITARY FAMILES AND THEIR RETAINERS

It has been noticed that the disposition of the Central Government
was to leave the provincial nobles severely alone, treating their
feuds and conflicts as wholly private affairs. Thus, these nobles
being cast upon their own resources for the protection of their lives
and properties, retained the services of bushi, arming them well and
drilling them assiduously, to serve as guards in time of peace and as
soldiers in war. One result of this demand for military material was
that the helots of former days were relieved from the badge of
slavery and became hereditary retainers of provincial nobles, nothing
of their old bondage remaining except that their lives were at the
mercy of their masters.

FIEFS AND TERRITORIAL NAMES

As the provincial families grew in numbers and influence they
naturally extended their estates, so that the landed property of a
great sept sometimes stretched over parts, or even the whole, of
several provinces. In these circumstances it became convenient to
distinguish branches of a sept by the names of their respective
localities and thus, in addition to the sept name (uji or sei), there