The primary cause of their present marvellous success must unquestionably be sought in this faculty of assimilation and in the power of discipline--in the wonderful ease wherewith they appropriate all the acquisitions of the West--the way in which they carry them out. The second cause of their success is their old military system of government, which has produced the present-day soldiers. But in order to grasp thoroughly the situation it is necessary to cast a cursory glance on the past history of Japan. In doing so we should remember in the first place that ancient Nippon was built upon the system of vassalage. The land was divided into principalities of various sizes, at the head of each of which was a _Daimio_, or vassal chieftain, just as the empires of the West were formerly protected and ruled over by baronial chiefs. Feudalism in Europe led to perpetual frontier quarrels and wars, and this was the case also in Japan. The Daimios were always at enmity with one another, and their government was a period of petty warfare. The military element, therefore, naturally occupied a prominent position, and just as in Europe the knight became the founder of _Chivalry_, so in Japan the _Samurais_ established the _Bushido_. And as the German knight of Chivalry created a legal system called _Club-law_, for the protection of his own interests, so the soldiers of Japan had their own military code. The military thus became the privileged class of society. This caste, with its rigorous rules and external organization, had a perfectly developed existence, a special moral standard, and to a certain extent a religion of its own. As the age of Chivalry was created by the knights of old, so "Bushido," the ethics of the Samurais, originated in the Land of the Rising Sun. To give an exact definition of the word "Bushido" is impossible, because the conception of it is unknown to us. There are no analogous circumstances necessitating its existence with us. The idea of chivalry is the nearest approach to an interpretation of the word, although literally "Bushido" means "Military manner"--the manner and the way in which it is the duty of the armed nobility to fight, to live, and to die. We notice that according to this definition the word includes more than a mere title; it expresses a whole social system, and regulates the views and appreciations of life of all its members.