in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and Master.  They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the Schoolmen.  Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”  Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State?  His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying.  Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their conscience!

Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord or king.  Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: 

    “Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. 
     My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. 
     The one my duty owes; but my fair name,
     Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,
     To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.”

A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the Precepts.  Such an one was despised as nei-shin, a cringeling, who makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as cho-shin, a favorite who steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago describes,—­the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart attending on himself.  When a subject differed from his master, the loyal path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him of his error, as Kent did to King Lear.  Failing in this, let the master deal with him as he wills.  In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with the shedding of his own blood.

Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its ideal being set upon honor, the whole

EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF A SAMURAI,

were conducted accordingly.

The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, intelligence and dialectics.  We have seen the important part aesthetic accomplishments played in his education.  Indispensable as they were to a man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai training.  Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the word