Everything like thinking and
study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established
order of things. The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or
wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup.
If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and
plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant
blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature
and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance,
of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the
vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo
authorities.
Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in
which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in
order to test vital potency. It recalls the pretty little story of
Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of
the bricks in a prison yard. Besides the potent bonds of the only
orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally
recognized religions, there was gradually formed a marvellous system of
legislation, that turned the whole nation into a secret society in which
spies and hypocrites flourished like fungus on a dead log.
Pages:
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453