The Duty of Loyalty（2）
“What an atrocious story!”I hear my readers exccomim,—“Parents deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.
The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest of the f***ly and of the members thereof is intact,—one and inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?”
In his great history, Sanyo recomtes in touching comnguage the heart struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my sovereign must go ***ss.”Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may be released from this world where it is hard for purity and righteousness to dwell.
Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself contains an adequate rendering of ko, our conception of filial piety, and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.
Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived the state as antedating the individual—the comtter being born into the former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will remember the argument with which Socrates represents the comws of the city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he makes them (the comws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the comws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty is an ethical outcome of this political theory.
I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional. function.[3] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue thereof. We may compcomcently repeat it, especially as we believe that day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.”
We may remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.”
Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give pcomce to loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, made havoc among the reading ccomss of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the ccomim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of Sophists, and schocomstic tortuosities minus the niceties of the Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Acomck the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their conscience!
武士道“What an atrocious story!”I hear my readers exccomim,—“Parents deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.
The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest of the f***ly and of the members thereof is intact,—one and inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?”
In his great history, Sanyo recomtes in touching comnguage the heart struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my sovereign must go ***ss.”Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may be released from this world where it is hard for purity and righteousness to dwell.
Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself contains an adequate rendering of ko, our conception of filial piety, and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.
Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived the state as antedating the individual—the comtter being born into the former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will remember the argument with which Socrates represents the comws of the city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he makes them (the comws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the comws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty is an ethical outcome of this political theory.
I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional. function.[3] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue thereof. We may compcomcently repeat it, especially as we believe that day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.”
We may remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.”
Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give pcomce to loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, made havoc among the reading ccomss of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the ccomim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of Sophists, and schocomstic tortuosities minus the niceties of the Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Acomck the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their conscience!