Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

Sermon I (The Sermons of Kiu-Ô, Vol. I)
Môshi 100 says, "Benevolence is the heart of man; righteousness is the path
of man. How lamentable a thing is it to leave the path and go astray, to
cast away the heart and not know where to seek for it!"
The text is taken from the first chapter of Kôshi (the commentator), on
Môshi.
Now this quality, which we call benevolence, has been the subject of
commentaries by many teachers; but as these commentaries have been
difficult of comprehension, they are too hard to enter the ears of women
and children. It is of this benevolence that, using examples and illustrations,
I propose to treat.
A long time ago, there lived at Kiôto a great physician, called Imaôji—I
forget his other name: he was a very famous man. Once upon a time, a
man from a place called Kuramaguchi advertised for sale a medicine
which he had compounded against the cholera, and got Imaôji to write a
puff for him. Imaôji, instead of calling the medicine in the puff a specific
against the cholera, misspelt the word cholera so as to make it simpler.
When the man who had employed him went and taxed him with this,
and asked him why he had done so, he answered, with a smile—
"As Kuramaguchi is an approach to the capital from the country, the
passers-by are but poor peasants and woodmen from the hills: if I had
written 'cholera' at length, they would have been puzzled by it; so I
wrote it in a simple way, that should pass current with every one. Truth
itself loses its value if people don't understand it. What does it signify
how I spelt the word cholera, so long as the efficacy of the medicine is
unimpaired?"
Now, was not that delightful? In the same way the doctrines of the
sages are mere gibberish to women and children who cannot understand
them. Now, my sermons are not written for the learned: I address myself
to farmers and tradesmen, who, hard pressed by their daily business,
have no time for study, with the wish to make known to them the teachings
of the sages; and, carrying out the ideas of my teacher, I will make
my meaning pretty plain, by bringing forward examples and quaint stories.
Thus, by blending together the doctrines of the Shintô, Buddhist, and
other schools, we shall arrive at something near the true principle of
things. Now, positively, you must not laugh if I introduce a light story
100.Môshi, the Japanese pronunciation of the name of the Chinese philosopher Mêng
Tse, whom Europeans call Mencius.
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