In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue.  Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the Treue he boasts of was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people where feudalism has lasted longest.  In America where “everybody is as good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed “excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among us.  Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary beyond which French justice finds no accord.  Similarly, Loyalty as we conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we carry it to a degree not reached in any other country.  Griffis[17] was quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was given to Loyalty.  At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.”

[Footnote 16:  Philosophy of History (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt.  IV, Sec.  II, Ch.  I.]

[Footnote 17:  Religions of Japan.]

The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizane, who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the capital.  Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent upon the extinction of his family.  Strict search for his son—­not yet grown—­reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizane.  When orders are dispatched to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it.  He ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protege.  His despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is announced—­a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by a mother of noble mien.  No less conscious of the resemblance between infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself.  In the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his life,—­the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world.  Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom comes the suggestion.