Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/103

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THE VOICE FROM WITHIN

well seen where, in an interesting philosophical work, he says: “Strike like the lightning, be terrible like the thunder, but remember that the sky itself is always clear above.”

Neither the heresy of the Classic School nor the virility of the Oyomei School would in themselves have evolved the political conception that led to the Restoration. They were, after all, but differentiations in Confucianism, and Confucianism ordained obedience to existing authority provided that the moral life of the community was not thereby destroyed. Hence it was that the Ming scholars offered no resistance to the Manchu rule. It was for this same reason that the Tokugawa Confucians, whatever their school, never dreamed of instituting a change in our political system. Oyomei taught to act,

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