ity and more rational sources for its own justification,
satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone,
without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal
of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with
concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with
spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a
perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several

SOURCES OF BUSHIDO,

of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust
in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in
sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with
death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil
master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must
give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the
Dhyana, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones
of thought beyond the range of verbal expression."[4] Its method is
contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be
convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can,
of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this
Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect,
and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself
above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth."

[Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving
men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a
worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the
_Crown of Wild Olive_, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I
mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and
faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very
dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in
brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength
of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace,
taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by
peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."]

[Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.]

What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such
loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such
filial piet