twenty, become one of the Samurai and take a hand in the universal
control."

"Provided he follows the Rule."

"Precisely--provided he follows the Rule."

"I have heard the phrase, 'voluntary nobility.'"

"That was the idea of our Founders. They made a noble and privileged
order--open to the whole world. No one could complain of an unjust
exclusion, for the only thing that could exclude them from the order was
unwillingness or inability to follow the Rule.

"The Rule aims to exclude the dull and base altogether, to discipline
the impulses and emotions, to develop a moral habit and sustain a man in
periods of stress, fatigue and temptation, to produce the maximum
co-operation of all men of good-intent, and in fact to keep all the
Samurai in a state of moral and bodily health and efficiency. It does as
much of this as well as it can, but of course, like all general
propositions, it does not do it in any case with absolute precision. AT
FIRST IN THE MILITANT DAYS, IT WAS A TRIFLE HARD AND UNCOMPROMISING; IT
HAD RATHER TOO STRONG AN APPEAL TO THE MORAL PRIG AND THE HARSHLY
RIGHTEOUS MAN, but it has undergone, and still undergoes, revision and
expansion, and every year it becomes a little better adapted to the need
of a general rule of life that all men may try to follow. We have now a
whole literature with many very fine things in it, written about the
Rule.

"The Rule consists of three parts; there is the list of things that