The Future of Bushido（3）（2/2）
《武士道》作者：（日）新渡户稻造 2017-04-14 12:42
ons, there we see the immortal discipline of Zeno at work.
Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from afar-off unseen hill,“the wayside gaze beyond”;—then in the beautiful language of the Quaker poet,
“The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near， he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.”
[Footnote 35: Norman Conquest, Vol. V, p. 482.]
Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from afar-off unseen hill,“the wayside gaze beyond”;—then in the beautiful language of the Quaker poet,
“The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near， he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.”
[Footnote 35: Norman Conquest, Vol. V, p. 482.]