Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/96

 “Living Confucius.” Another, devoting himself to the material welfare of the people, has left in his engineering feats for the irrigation of the Okayama provinces a monument to the zeal inspired by Oyomei; yet he had to suffer for heresy and died in exile and disgrace.

The Oyomian scholars of Japan went further than the Chinese in their dynamic conception of the cosmic force. Their predilection for Indian modes of thought, especially for that of the Zen sect of Buddhism, made them lay great stress on the idea of change, with the result that they came to conclusions curiously akin to many of those held by modern evolutionists. The Buddhas of the past were not the Buddhas of the future, for they must include the former and something more.