Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/251

 unquestionable that Confucianism is largely responsible for the growth and persistence of such an irrational mood. So much time and study did the Chinese Sage devote to the Book of Changes (Yih-King) that the leather thongs holding its leaves together were worn out thrice during his lifetime. The result of his labours, as has been well said, was "to add some inexplicable chapters to an incomprehensible book." Commenced by Fuh-hsi, thirty centuries before Christ, carried far towards completion by Wan Wang, eighteen centuries later, and enlarged by Confucius, the Yih-King has long been the chief vehicle for divination in the Far East. The Japanese call it Ye-Ki, and to the method of divination derived from it give the name boku-zei, or boku-zeichiku; boku signifying divination, and zei and chiku, respectively, Lespedeza sericea and bamboo, of which woods the divining sticks are made. Much of the book's supposed value lies in the mystery that enshrouds it. Starting from the fundamental idea that the universe had its origin in the union of the male and female principles, the yin and the yang, it undertakes to elaborate a theory of all physical phenomena and of all moral and political doctrines by means of eight trigrams and sixty-four diagrams. To attempt any full explanation of it would be to supplement vagueness by bewilderment, Chinese literati and foreign students alike having failed to understand it. One point only may be noted, that as