THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN
ture was the most perfect horse existent. Thereupon the king sent vassals laden with treasures to bring the steed to his court. When, however, they came to the place described by Hakuraku they found not a bay mare, but a black stallion. This they brought back with them, and it was found to be the paragon of equine beauty and strength. To the true connoisseur of horses the real horse was visible in something beyond the secondary features of color and sex. Even thus it is with all true knowledge, said the Oyomians.
The orthodox academicians were doubly hostile to the Oyomei School as a perversion of their own Neo-Confucianism. The terror of their censorship lay not so much in open attacks on the doctrines themselves as in the treacherous and unexpected manner in which
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