Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/243

Rh positive, productive, male principle of nature, while the Yin is regarded as passive or receptive, negative and female. By the mutual action of these two principles the Kosmos was formed out of chaos, the Yin manifesting itself in the settling down of the impure sediment as earth, while the lighter and purer part, representing the Yang, ascended and formed heaven. The Yin and Yang are also the source of the five elements, water, fire, earth, metal, and wood. Each of these has its proper function, on the right discharge of which depend the regular sequence of the four seasons and phenomena generally. These processes go on eternally. There is no such thing as a creation in this system. The energy which produces all these results is called in Chinese K'e, in Japanese Ki (Breath). It follows fixed laws called Li (Ri in Japanese). The precise nature of these two last conceptions has been elucidated (or obscured) by many volumes of dissertations both in China and Japan.

Chu-Hi says little of Ten (Heaven). In his philosophy its place is taken by the more impersonal Taikhi. But in Japan, as with Confucius and Mencius, Ten is all-important. It is the nearest approach to a deity which the essentially impersonal habit of mind of these nations permits. Ten or Tendō (the Way of Heaven) is said "to know," "to command," "to reward," "to punish," or "to be wroth," and is looked up to with reverence and grateful emotion. But the conception falls short of that of a personal deity as we understand the phrase. There are in Japan, at any rate, no temples to Ten, no litanies, and no formal acts of worship.

Ethics are in the Chu-Hi system a branch of natural philosophy. Corresponding to the regular changes of the seasons in nature is right action in man (who is the