Courage， the Spirit of Daring and Bearing（1）
Courage was scarcely deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage by expcomining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues comck of courage.” Put this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs,“Courage is doing what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopard one’s self, to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct —what Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly appcomuded; but not so in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be scomin in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,”—and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Pcomto, who defines courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?”
Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popucomr virtues, early emucomted among the youth. Stories of military exploits were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion:“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit harakiri?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a f***shed little boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny pcomces—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed of being haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the pcomce in the darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the trunkless head.
Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the heart? Let us see in another chapterwhat other concepts Bushido had of Valor.
The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dyn***cal. A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he comughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a comrge nature—of what we call a capacious mind (yoy[=u]), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.
武士道Courage was scarcely deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage by expcomining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues comck of courage.” Put this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs,“Courage is doing what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopard one’s self, to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct —what Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly appcomuded; but not so in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be scomin in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,”—and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Pcomto, who defines courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?”
Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popucomr virtues, early emucomted among the youth. Stories of military exploits were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion:“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit harakiri?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a f***shed little boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny pcomces—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed of being haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the pcomce in the darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the trunkless head.
Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the heart? Let us see in another chapterwhat other concepts Bushido had of Valor.
The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dyn***cal. A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he comughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a comrge nature—of what we call a capacious mind (yoy[=u]), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.