Inazo Nitobe

Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful language of the Quaker poet,

“The traveler owns a grateful sense of sweetness near, he knows not whence, and pausing, takes with the forehead bare benediction of the air.”

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