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Thereafter, Buddhism became the national religion, which position it held until the days of the Tokugawa shoguns, when it was supplanted among educated Japanese by the moral philosophy of Confucius, as interpreted by Chutsz, Wang Yang-ming, and others.
In these circumstances the educational chief in Yedo lost control of the situation. Even among his own students there were some who rejected the teachings of Chutsz, and Confucianism threatened to become a stumbling-block rather than an aid to ethics.
" Chutsz taught that the primary principle, Ri, and the mind of man were quite separate, and that the latter was attached to the Ki. Wang held that the mind of man and the principle of the universe were one and the same, and argued that no study of external nature was required in order to find out nature's laws. To discover these, man had only to look within his own heart.
He that understands his own heart understands nature, says Wang. " Chutsz's system makes experience necessary in order to understand the laws of the universe, but Wang's idealism dispenses with it altogether as a teacher. " Chutsz taught that knowledge must come first and right conduct after. Wang contended that knowledge and conduct cannot be separated. One is part of the other.
It was in this reign that there appeared an eminent scholar, Yamazaki Ansai, who, with his scarcely less famous pupil, Takenouchi Shikibu, expounded the Chinese classics according to the interpretation of Chutsz.
We need not go beyond the schools of Chutsz and Wang Yang-ming, for the third, or "ancient," school adopted the teachings of Confucius and Mencius in their purity, rejecting all subsequent deductions from the actual words used by these sages. These two schools have been well distinguished as follows by a modern philosopher, Dr.
Soko rejected the Chutsz interpretation, then in vogue, of the Chinese classics, and insisted on the pure doctrine of the ancient sages, so that he found himself out of touch with the educational spirit of the time.
Wang's doctrines, on the other hand, while they cannot escape the charge of shallowness on all occasions, serve the moral purpose for which they were propagated better than those of the rival school. Though in the ranks of the Japanese followers of Chutsz there were numbers of insignificant, bigoted traditionalists, the same cannot be said of those who adopted Wang's views.
Chutsz may be said to exalt learned theories and principles, and Wang to extol practice. "The moral results of the systems briefly stated were as follows: Chutsz 'a teaching produced many learned men in this country, but not infrequently these men were inferior, being narrow-minded, prejudiced, and behind the age.
" The cosmogony of Chutsz was dualistic. All nature owed its existence to the Ri and Ki, the determining principle and the vital force of primordial aura that produces and modifies motion. Wang held that these two were inseparable. His teaching was therefore monistic.
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