Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/94

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THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN

The second school, which started at nearly the same time as the first, is called the School of Oyomei, from the Japanese pronunciation of Wangyangming, the name of its founder. This remarkable man was a great general as well as scholar who lived in China at the beginning of the sixteenth century, under the Ming dynasty. He never ceased to discourse even during the brilliant campaigns in which he was victorious over the rebels in Southern China. His philosophy was an advance on the Neo-Confucianism of Shiuki, whose doctrines, however, he accepted in the main. His principal contribution lay in his definition of knowledge. With him all knowledge was useless unless expressed in action. To know was to be. Virtue was real in so far only as it was manifested in

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