ion dear to
Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak
of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its
mountains."

To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazeliere
writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with

RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE,

the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more
loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The
conception of Rectitude may be erroneous--it may be narrow. A well-known
bushi defines it as a power of resolution;--"Rectitude is the power of
deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason,
without wavering;--to die when it is right to die, to strike when to
strike is right." Another speaks of it in the following terms:
"Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without
bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor
feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of
a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as
nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or
Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect
the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it
again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them
again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we
not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred years
later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the
Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray
from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and
narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise.

Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace
brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it
dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet
_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that
signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls--of whom
so much is made in our popular education--are known in common parlance
as the Forty-seven _Gishi_.

In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and
downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and
honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly
praised.