philosopher observes, “It certainly is strange to see the Tokugawa rule much shaken, if not actually overthrown, by that doctrine which generations of able Sh[=o]guns and their ministers had earnestly encouraged and protected.  It is perhaps still more remarkable to see the Mito clan, under many able and active chiefs, become the centre of the Kinno[14] movement, which was to result in the overthrow of the Tokugawa family, of which it was itself a branch.”

A Medley of Pantheism.

The philosophy of modern Confucianism is wholly pantheistic.  There is in it no such thing or being as God.  The orthodox pantheism of Old Japan means that everything in general is god, but nothing in particular is God; that All is god, but not that God is all.  It is a “pantheistic medley."[15]

Chu Hi and his Japanese successors, especially Ky[=u]-so, argue finely and discourse volubly about Ki[16] or spirit; but it is not Spirit, or spiritual in the sense of Him who taught even a woman at the well-curb at Sychar.  It is in the air.  It is in the earth, the trees, the flowers.  It comes to consciousness in man.  His Ri is the Tao of Lao Tsze, the Way, Reason, Law.  It is formless, invisible.

“Ri is not separate from Ki, for then it were an empty abstract thing.  It is joined to Ki, and may be called, by nature, one decreed, changeless Norm.  It is the rule of Ki, the very centre, the reason why Ki is Ki.”

Ten or Heaven is not God or the abode of God, but an abstraction, a sort of Unknowable, or Primordial Necessity.

“The doctrine of the Sages knows and worships Heaven, and without faith in it there is no truth.  For men and things, the universe, are born and nourished by Heaven, and the ‘Way,’ the ‘ri,’ that is in all, is the ‘Way,’ the ‘ri’ of Heaven.  Distinguishing root and branch, the heart is the root of Heaven and the appearance, the revolution of the sun and moon, the order of the stars, is the branch.  The books of the sages teach us to conform to the heart of Heaven and deal not with appearances.”

“The teaching of the sages is the original truth and, given to men, it forms both their nature and their relationships.  With it complete, naught else is needed for the perfect following of the ‘Way.’  Let then the child make its parents Heaven, the retainer, his Lord, the wife her husband, and let each give up life for righteousness.  Thus will each serve for Heaven.  But if we exalt Heaven above parent or Lord, we shall come to think we can serve it though they be disobeyed and like tiger or wolf shall rejoice to kill them.  To such fearful end does the Western learning lead....  Let each one die for duty, there is naught else we can do.”

Thus wrote Ohashi Junzo, as late as 1857 A.D., the same year in which Townsend Harris entered Yedo to teach the practical philosophy of Christendom, and the brotherhood of man as expressed in diplomacy.