We should then conclude, with the Shogun, that common sense aids in the
production of noble aspirations, and is not concerned only with that
which relates to materiality, as so many people would have us understand.
The Nippon philosopher teaches us also the part which he assigns to the
habitual practise of goodness.
"We are too easily persuaded," he says, "that goodness, like beauty, is a
gift of birth.
"It is time to destroy an error rooted in our minds for too many
centuries.
"Goodness is acquired by reasoning and logic, as are so many other
qualities, and it is common sense which governs its formation.
"Have we ever reflected over the sum total of annoyances that people, who
are essentially wicked, add every day to those imposed upon them by
circumstances?
"Are we capable of appreciating the joys of life when impatience makes
the nerves vibrate or when anger brandishes its torch in the bends and
turns of the brain?
"People who lack goodness are the first to be punished for their defect.
Serenity is unknown to them and they live in perpetual agitation, caused
by the irritation which they experience on the slightest provocation."
Common sense indicates then in an irrefutable way that there is every
advantage in being good.
And Yoritomo proves it to us, by using his favorite syllogism:
"Happiness," he says, "is above all a combination of harmony and absence
of sorrow.
"Wickedness, by inspiring us with discontent and anger, disturbs
this harmony.
"We must, therefore, banish wickedness, that we may cultivate goodness,
which is the creator of harmony."
Continuing still further the same argument, he adds:
"Common sense would have the tendency even to make us promise to be good,
so as to satisfy our own egotism.
"Goodness creates smiles; to sow happiness around one, is a way of having
neither eyes nor heart offended by the sight of people in tears; it is
the eliciting of an agreeable joy, whose rays will shed a golden light
over our life; is it not more pleasing to hear the ring of laughter than
to listen to painful sobs?"
So, we should never lose an opportunity of being good and that without
mental reservation.
Gratitude is not the possession of every soul and he who does good may
expect to receive ingratitude.
He will not suffer from it, if he has done good, not in the way a
creditor does who intends to come on the very day appointed to claim his
debt, but as a giver who fulfils his mission from which he is expecting
a personal satisfaction, without thinking of any acknowledgment for what
he has done.
If the debtor is filled with gratitude, the joy of being good is that
much increased.
There is a species of common sense of a particularly noble quality that
is called moral sense and which the Shogun defines thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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