Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/171

 tained by the work of a single life-span. He readily adjusted his feet to the first three steps of progress, — obedience to the precepts of morality, regulation of food and clothing, and the choice of a suitable house, — but when he came to the fourth, when he had to accept the necessity of turning his back on the busy world and harmonising his faculties to a meditative career, the demand overtaxed his dolicity. Besides, the "Lotus Law" dealt in mysteries beyond comprehension. Its teachings lapsed into a vagueness, its doctrines extended to a comprehensiveness, that bewildered common intelligence. Soon a new system was elaborated. The omnipresent spirit of truth became the centre of the "diamond world" of noumena and the source of organic life in the world of phenomena. To reach to the realisation of the truth two ladders were revealed, an intellectual and a moral, — two canons, each of ten precepts, easy to comprehend and not deterrently difficult to practise. At the head of all virtues stood a charity to which the Christian apostle's celebrated definition might aptly have been applied. The scope of this preeminent virtue was described with minutely practical accuracy. It included the digging of wells, the building of bridges, the making of roads, the maintenance of one's parents, the support of the church, the nursing of the sick, the succouring of the poor, and the duty of recommending these same acts to others. There were