Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/149

 ance with phenomena. Wang, on the other hand, maintained that man possesses intuitive perception of the moral law; that study of self is the highest learning; that to know one's own heart is to have an infallible guide in all moral emergencies. Chu's cosmogony was dualistic. Nature existed in his eyes by the action of a determining principle and a primordial aura, the one directing, the other producing and modifying. The determining principle, according to his view, was entirely independent of the mind of man, which belonged to the sphere of the primordial aura. Wang's theory was monistic. He regarded the determining principle and the primordial aura as merely two attributes of God, and he held that to discover the laws of nature a man need only look into his own heart. The heart, according to Wang's philosophy as expounded by Nakaye Tōju, is a mirror in which all phenomena are reflected. Like the face of a crystal lake, it holds no shapes nor is defiled by any impurity. But in it may be detected, by close scrutiny, the reflected images of all things. Chu held that a knowledge of the material world is the first desideratum, and that therein lie the texts from which the gospel of virtue may be constructed. Wang taught that man needs no knowledge other than knowledge of his own heart, and that to acquire the latter he must resort to introspection and meditation, abstracting himself from his surroundings and learning to count