Along with this virtue, other forms of moral force, such as mercy, uprightness, courage, politeness, fidelity, and loyalty, have been duly considered and commended by the great teacher himself and his disciples. Among these, Mencius (373-289 B.C.) is most enterprising and attractive, digesting and systematising with a great deal of philosophic talent the rather fragmentary ideas of his great master. It is he who, among other things, informs us, on the assumed authority of a passage in the Shu-King, how the sage Shun made it a subject of his anxious solicitude to teach the five constituent relationships of society, viz., affection between father and son; relations of righteousness between ruler and subject; the assigning of their proper spheres to husband and wife; distinction of precedence between old and young; and fidelity between friend and friend--an idea which has played such an important part in the history of the development of the Oriental mind. Such were the main features of Confucianism when it first reached Japan, some centuries after the Christian era. But it was not until some time after the introduction of Buddhism from Corea during the reign of the Emperor Kimmei, in 552 A.D., that Confucianism and Chinese learning began to take firm root and make their influence felt among us. Paradoxical as it looks, it is Buddhism that so greatly helped the teaching of the Chinese sage to establish itself as a ruling factor in Japanese society. This curious state of things came about in this way. The gospel of Shâkya-muni has, ever since its introduction into our country, been made accessible only through the Chinese translation, which demanded a considerable knowledge of the written language of the Middle Kingdom. The keen and far-reaching spiritual interest aroused by Buddhism gave a fresh and vigorous impulse to the study of Chinese literature, already increasingly cultivated for some centuries. Now, the knowledge of Chinese in its written form has, until quite recently, always been imparted by a painful perusal of the Chinese classics and Chinese books deeply imbued with Confucianism. It was only after a considerable amount of knowledge of this difficult language had been obtained in this unnatural way, that one came in contact with the works of authors not strictly orthodox. This way of teaching Chinese through Confucian texts, which we adopted from China's faithful agent, Corea, necessarily led from the very beginning to an intimate acquaintance with the main aspects of the Confucian morals in our upper classes, among whom alone the study was at first pursued with any seriousness. Although skilled in warlike arts, gentle and loyal in domestic life, our forefathers were simple in manners and thought in those olden days when book-learned reasons of duty had not yet superseded the naïve observance of the dictates of the heart and of responsibility to the ancestral spirits. They possessed no letters of their own, and consequently no