Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/147

 assumed, man becomes inferior to the animals, all of which have a guiding instinct. To have acquired the conviction that there is no ethical system to be learned and practised, is to have acquired the method of acting as the gods act. For the rest, precept is far inferior to example. The former suggests itself only when the latter is absent. Show a man a record of noble deeds actually performed, and he will burn with a desire to emulate them, whereas a statement of the principles of courage and loyalty will leave him comparatively unmoved. The gods are not to be importuned with prolix prayers, or asked to condone crimes knowingly committed. The petitions of humanity are wafted by the wind to the plain of high heaven: "I say, with awe, deign to bless me by correcting the unwilling faults which, seen and heard by you, I have committed; by blowing off and clearing away the calamities which evil gods might inflict; by causing me to live long like the hard and lasting rock, and by repeating to the gods of heavenly origin and to the gods of earthly origin the petitions which I present every day, along with your breath, that they may hear with the sharp-earedness of the forth-galloping colt." Such was the morning prayer to the Spirit of the Wind. Apart from the satisfaction of well-doing, uniform obedience to the dictates of conscience brought its reward. It is true that the rule did not always