Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/277

Rh with so brief a span of existence, never forgets itself for a moment or is envious of others. Morning after morning the flowers unfold, enchantingly beautiful; and having exhausted that natural virtue which has been allotted to them, they wither. Herein they show their faithfulness to duty. Why should it be regarded as vain and unprofitable? The fir does just the same, but the morning-glory, being short-lived, illustrates this principle in a more striking manner. Not that in the mind of the fir-tree there is any idea of a thousand years, or in that of the morning-glory the thought of a single day. Each simply fulfils its allotted nature. The view of the thousand years of the fir-tree as robust vigour, and of the one day of the morning-glory as vain and transitory, belongs simply to the man who looks on them from without. It is absurd to suppose that in the mind of the fir-tree or convolvulus there is any such thought.

"All things without sense are the same. But man, endowed with feeling, and described as the soul of the universe, becomes entangled by his own craftiness, and so long as he does not learn the Way, falls short of this perfection. This is why it is necessary for him to learn the Way. To learn the Way must not be taken to be anything of a special kind, such as the spiritual vision of the Buddhists or the like. The Way is the original right principle of things. It is something which vulgar men and women know and practise as well as others. But as they do not truly know it, they do not thoroughly practise it. They learn it, but do not fully comprehend it; they practise it, but not with conspicuous success. They may go on striving to the end of their days, but they will never enter into its full meaning. Now to learn the Way is nothing more than to acquire a