reputation, the immortal part of one’s self, what remains being bestial—­assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (Ren-chi-shin) was one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education.  “You will be laughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent.  Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being closely bound up with strong family consciousness.  “In losing the solidarity of families,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental force which Montesquieu named Honor.”  Indeed, the sense of shame seems to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our race.  The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the awakening of the sense of shame.  Few incidents in history excel in pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her dejected husband plucked for her.  This first fruit of disobedience clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does.  All the sartorial ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will efficaciously hide our sense of shame.  That samurai was right who refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.”

Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—­namely, that “Shame is the soil of all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.”

The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai and often assumed a morbid character.  In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido.  At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary strife was raised and many an innocent life lost.  The story of a well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior with a beast—­I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe.  Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made of the samurai’s