the
Mikado first a King (Tenn[=o]) or Son of Heaven (Ten-Shi), and then a
monk (H[=o]-[=o]), and after his death a Hotoke or Buddhist deity, it
caused him early to abdicate from actual life. Buddhism is thus directly
responsible for the habitual Japanese resignation from active life
almost as soon as it is entered, by men in all classes. Buddhism started
all along and down through the lines of Japanese society the idea of
early retirement from duty; so that men were considered old at forty,
and _hors concours_ before forty-five.[37] Life was condemned as vanity
of vanities before it was mature, and old age a friend that nobody
wished to meet,[38] although Japanese old age is but European prime. In
a measure, Buddhism is thus responsible for the paralysis of Japanese
civilization, which, like oft-tapped maple-trees, began to die at the
top. This was in accordance with its theories and its literature. In the
Bible there is, possibly, one book which is pessimistic in tone,
Ecclesiastes. In the bulky and dropsical canon of Buddhism there is a
whole library of despondency and despair.

Nevertheless, the ethical element held its own in the Japanese mind; and
against the pessimism and puerility of Buddhism and the religious
emptiness of Shint[=o], the bond of Japanese society was sought in the
idea of loyalty. While then, as we repeat, everything that comes to the
Japanese mind suffers as it were "a sea change, into something new and
strange," is it not fair to say that the change made by K[=o]b[=o] was
at the expense of Buddhism as a system, and that the thing that suffered
reversion was the exotic rather than the native plant? For, in the
emergence of this new idea of loyalty as supreme, Shint[=o] and not
Buddhism was the dictator.

Even more after K[=o]b[=o]'s death than during his life, Japan improved
upon her imported faith, and rapidly developed new sects of all degrees
of reputableness and disreputableness. Had K[=o]b[=o] lived on through
the centuries, as the boors still believe;[39] he could not have
stopped, had he so desired, the workings of the leaven he had brought
from China. From the sixth to the twelfth century, was the missionary
age of Japanese Buddhism. Then followed two centuries of amazing
development of doctrine. Novelties in religion blossomed, fruited and
became monuments as permanent as the age-enduring forests Hakone, or
Nikk[=o]. Gautama himself, were he to return to "red earth" again, could
not re