require a clumsy and artificial system of ethical philosophy for the cultivation of their moral natures."
Motoöri's anti-foreign and patriotic prejudices go far to explain his antipathy for the Kangakusha with their extravagant admiration for everything Chinese. But there was a deeper cause for his dislike to their philosophy. As already stated, the Chinese nation has a strong bias against the conception of the power which rules the universe as a personal being. The Ten (Heaven) of Confucius and Mencius, and the Tao (Way) of Laotze,[1] not to speak of the Taikhi and other metaphysical conceptions of the Sung schoolmen, all fall short of this idea. The main bent of the Japanese mind is in the same direction. But there is evidence in both countries of a contrary current of thought. Here, too, there are men born with a craving which refuses to be satisfied with abstractions in the place of a personal God (or gods) to whom they can look up as the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and as exercising a providential care over mankind. Motoöri was one of these. He professed not even to understand what the Sung schoolmen meant by their Taikhi and their Yin and Yang, and stoutly maintained that these were mere fictions. But whatever may be the case with philosophical notions, no man can evolve a God from his own inner consciousness. He must accept the God or gods which he finds already acknowledged, whether by his own or by other people's fathers. Motoöri's intensely patriotic temper compelled him to seek at home for the satisfaction of his inborn religious instincts. He turned naturally to Shinto. But in his time Shinto had fallen on evil days. It had suffered
- ↑ The late General Alexander, in his work on Laotze, translates Tao by "God." He explains his reasons for doing so in the preface.
