events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan,
like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new
ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress.
Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must
not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is
not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from
other birds. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It does not come
rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing
across the seas, however broad. “God has granted,” says the Koran, “to
every people a prophet in its own tongue.” The seeds of the Kingdom, as
vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido.
Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we
turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of
strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to
take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and
Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The
only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with
Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with
which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like “a dimly burning wick”
which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame.
Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos
and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of
rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ,
which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers,
will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its
capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering,
self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in
some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing
phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion,
the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.
Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the
future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and
Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals
will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which
side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it
can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is
willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total
extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It
is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and
vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy
of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world.
Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his
spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal
discipline of Zeno at work.
Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will
not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor
may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their
ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it
will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich
life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its
very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a
far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful
language of the Quaker poet,
“The traveler owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.”
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英文武士道
正價金壹圓
著作權登錄濟
著作者 新渡戶稻造
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