is, by means of which you can learn filial piety and fidelity so easily!  Still, suspicions are apt to arise in men’s minds about things that are seen to be acquired too cheaply; but here you can buy a good thing cheap, and spare yourselves the vexation of having paid an extravagant price for it.  I repeat, follow the impulses of your hearts with all your might.  In the Chin-yo, the second of the books of Confucius, it is certified beyond a doubt that the impulses of nature are the true path to follow; therefore you may set to work in this direction with your minds at ease.

[Footnote 88: 
  “The moon looks on many brooks;
    The brooks see but one moon.”—­T.  MOORE.]

Righteousness, then, is the true path, and righteousness is the avoidance of all that is imperfect.  If a man avoids that which is imperfect, there is no need to point out how dearly he will be beloved by all his fellows.  Hence it is that the ancients have defined righteousness as that which ought to be—­that which is fitting.  If a man be a retainer, it is good that he should perform his service to his lord with all his might.  If a woman be married, it is good that she should treat her parents-in-law with filial piety, and her husband with reverence.  For the rest, whatever is good, that is righteousness and the true path of man.

The duty of man has been compared by the wise men of old to a high road.  If you want to go to Yedo or to Nagasaki, if you want to go out to the front of the house or to the back of the house, if you wish to go into the next room or into some closet or other, there is a right road to each of these places:  if you do not follow the right road, scrambling over the roofs of houses and through ditches, crossing mountains and desert places, you will be utterly lost and bewildered.  In the same way, if a man does that which is not good, he is going astray from the high road.  Filial piety in children, virtue in wives, truth among friends—­but why enumerate all these things, which are patent?—­all these are the right road, and good; but to grieve parents, to anger husbands, to hate and to breed hatred in others, these are all bad things, these are all the wrong road.  To follow these is to plunge into rivers, to run on to thorns, to jump into ditches, and brings thousands upon ten thousands of disasters.  It is true that, if we do not pay great attention, we shall not be able to follow the right road.  Fortunately, we have heard by tradition the words of the learned Nakazawa Doni:  I will tell you about that, all in good time.

It happened that, once, the learned Nakazawa went to preach at Ikeda, in the province of Sesshiu, and lodged with a rich family of the lower class.  The master of the house, who was particularly fond of sermons, entertained the preacher hospitably, and summoned his daughter, a girl some fourteen or fifteen years old, to wait upon him at dinner.  This young lady was not only extremely pretty, but also had charming manners; so she arranged bouquets of flowers, and made tea, and played upon the harp, and laid herself out to please the learned man by singing songs.  The preacher thanked her parents for all this, and said—­