Is it any wonder that such teachings could in the long run satisfy
neither the trained intellects nor the unthinking common people of
Japan? Is it far from the truth to suspect that, even when accepted by
the Japanese courtiers and nobles, they were received, only too often,
in a Platonic, not to say a Pickwickian, sense? The Japanese is too
polite to say "no" if he can possibly say "yes," even when he does not
mean it; while the common people all over the world, as between
metaphysics and polytheism, choose the latter. Is it any wonder that,
along with this propagation of Nihilism as taught in the cloisters and
the court, history informs us of many scandals and much immorality
between the women of the court and the Buddhist monks?
Such dogmas were not able to live in organized forms, after the next
importations of Buddhism which came in, not partly but wholly, under the
name of the Mah[=a]yan[=a] or Great Vehicle, or Northern Buddhism. By
the new philosophy, more concrete and able to appeal more closely to the
average man, these five schools, which, in their discussions, dealt
almost wholly with _noumena_, were absorbed. As matter of fact, none of
them is now in existence, nor can we trace them, speaking broadly,
beyond the tenth century.
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