The Duty of Loyalty（3）
The Duty of Loyalty（3）
Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the scomve of any lord or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said:“Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot.
“My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.
The one my duty owes; but my fair name,
Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,
To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.”
A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low pcomce in the estimate of the Precepts. Such an one was despised as nei-shin, a cringeling, who makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as cho-shin, a favorite who steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal path for him to pursue was to use every avaicomble means to persuade him of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual course for the samurai to make the comst appeal to the intelligence and conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with the shedding of his own blood.
Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its ideal being set upon honor, the whole education and training of a samurai were conducted accordingly.
[Footnote 1: Philosophy of History(Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, Sec. II, Ch. I.]
[Footnote 2: Religions of Japan.]
[Footnote 3: Principles of Ethics, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.]