THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR
close to the Throne. Further, a samurai's official rank, being prefixed to his name, constituted a species of title which he valued as much as the right of carrying a sword. For these various reasons, but chiefly because bread-winning was originally the business of those not physically qualified to be soldiers, the bushi regarded money with indifference and even contempt. To be swayed in the smallest degree by mercenary motives was despicable in his eyes.
The bushi was essentially a stoic. He made self-control the ideal of his existence, and practised the courageous endurance of suffering so thoroughly that he could without hesitation inflict on his own body pain of the severest description.
The power of surrendering life with heroic calmness has been developed by men in all ages, and is regarded by philosophers as an elementary form of human virtue, practised with most success in an uncivilised state of society before the finer appreciations of the imaginative and intellectual faculties have been developed by education. But the courage of the bushi cannot justly be ascribed to bluntness of moral sensibility resulting from semi-savage conditions of life. It has been shown in these pages that the current of existence in Japan from the Nara epoch onward set with general steadiness in the direction of artistic refinement and voluptuous luxury, amid which men could scarcely fail to acquire habits and
183
