“ Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. ”
Read Hearn, the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido.
~ Inazo Nitobe
A samurai was essentially a man of action.
We needed no Shakespeare to feel -- though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we needed him to express it.
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. Alack the day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the dictates of their consciences!
