Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/87

 instincts, dogmatized the instructions of Shiuki, and wasted their energy on his abstract rules of morality and terminology,—an example followed by the Japanese academicians. Confucianism was thus deprived of its very essence—practical ethics. "As foolish as a scholar," was a common witticism of Tokugawa days. Two schools of heresy tried to stem the tide and infuse vitality into the Confucian doctrines, but they commanded an insignificant minority, for the Tokugawa censorship was rigorous in suppressing all schools of thought that dared to differ from the orthodox teaching of its own academy.

Thus the knowledge that Iyeyasu imparted to the nation was, after all, of a kind that gave no great stimulus to social activity. His system of