[6] The thoughts of men were turned toward deep and acute inquiry
into the nature and use of things in general. This thinking resulted in
a literature which to-day is the basis of the opinions of the educated
men in all Chinese Asia. Instead of a sapling we now have a mighty tree.
The chief of the Chinese writers, the Calvin of Asiatic orthodoxy, who
may be said to have wrought Confucianism into a developed philosophy,
and who may be called the greatest teacher of the mind, of modern China,
Korea and Japan, is Chu Hi, who reverently adopted the criticisms on the
Chinese classics of the brothers Cheng.[7] It is evident that in Chu
Hi's system, we have a body of thought which may be called the result of
Chinese reflection during a millennium and a half. It is the ethics of
Confucius transfused with the mystical elements of Taoism and the
speculations of Buddhism. As the common people of China made an amalgam
of the three religions and consider them one, so the philosophers have
out of these three systems made one, calling that one Confucianism. The
dominant philosophy in Japan to-day is based upon the writings of Chu Hi
(in Japanese, Shu Shi) and called the system of Tei-Shu, which is the
Japanese pronunciation of the names of the Cheng brothers and of Chu
(Hi).
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