gdom of God is within you." It does not come
rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing
across the seas, however broad. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to
every people a prophet in its own tongue." The seeds of the Kingdom, as
vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido.
Now its days are closing--sad to say, before its full fruition--and we
turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of
strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to
take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and
Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The
only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with
Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with
which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick"
which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame.
Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets--notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos
and Habakkuk--Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of
rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ,
which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers,
will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its
capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering,
self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in
some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing
phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion,
the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.

Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)--or will the
future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and
Hellenism?--will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals
will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which
side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it
can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is
willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total
extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It
is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and
vitality are still felt through many channels of life--in the philosophy
of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world.
Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his