The theology of the Utopian rulers will be saturated with that same
philosophy of uniqueness, that repudiation of anything beyond
similarities and practical parallelisms, that saturates all their
institutions. They will have analysed exhaustively those fallacies
and assumptions that arise between the One and the Many, that have
troubled philosophy since philosophy began. Just as they will have
escaped that delusive unification of every species under its
specific definition that has dominated earthly reasoning, so they
will have escaped the delusive simplification of God that vitiates
all terrestrial theology. They will hold God to be complex and of an
endless variety of aspects, to be expressed by no universal formula
nor approved in any uniform manner. Just as the language of Utopia
will be a synthesis, even so will its God be. The aspect of God is
different in the measure of every man's individuality, and the
intimate thing of religion must, therefore, exist in human solitude,
between man and God alone. Religion in its quintessence is a
relation between God and man; it is perversion to make it a relation
between man and man, and a man may no more reach God through a
priest than love his wife through a priest. But just as a man in
love may refine the interpretation of his feelings and borrow
expression from the poems and music of poietic men, so an individual
man may at his discretion read books of devotion and hear music that
is in harmony with his inchoate feelings. Many of the samurai,
therefore, will set themselves private regimens that will help their
secret religious life, will pray habitually, and read books of
devotion, but with these things the Rule of the order will have
nothing to do.
Clearly the God of the samurai is a transcendental and mystical God.
So far as the samurai have a purpose in common in maintaining the
State, and the order and progress of the world, so far, by their
discipline and denial, by their public work and effort, they worship
God together. But the fount of motives lies in the individual life,
it lies in silent and deliberate reflections, and at this, the most
striking of all the rules of the samurai aims. For seven consecutive
days in the year, at least, each man or woman under the Rule must go
right out of all the life of man into some wild and solitary place,
must speak to no man or woman, and have no sort of intercourse with
mankind. They must go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper,
or money. Provisions must be taken for the period of the journey, a
rug or sleeping sack--for they must sleep under the open sky--but
no means of making a fire. They may study maps beforehand to guide
them, showing any difficulties and dangers in the journey, but
they may not carry such helps. They must not go by beaten ways or
wherever there are inhabited houses, but into the bare, quiet places
of the globe--the regions set apart for them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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