Shinto

Strictly speaking, the first of these processes is the only legitimate one. The second involves the assumption that man may be or may become God. But without questioning the reality of an intimate union of the human with the divine, both in this world and the next, it is better to maintain a clear distinction between these two terms. Ultimately, after the errors of anthropomorphism, polytheism, and spiritism have been eliminated, the two methods of arriving at the idea of God yield the substantially identical formulas: -

A. God = infinite power + absolute humanity.

B. God = absolute humanity + infinite power.

But in the stage of religious progress represented by Shinto, we are far indeed from such a result.

The priority of the second of these two processes has been assumed or contended for by many writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Others argue that there can be no deification until the idea of deity has somehow been arrived at previously, as for example, by the personification of natural powers. It appears to me impossible to say which of the two comes first in order of time. The germs of both may be observed at a stage of intellectual development prior to all religion. Children, as we have all observed, sometimes personify inanimate objects. I have known a boy of three years of age complain that, "Bad mustard did bite my tongue." The baby who cries for the moon credits his nurse-ignorantly, of course-with powers far transcending those of humanity. The argument that there can be no deification without a previous acquaintance with the idea of deity loses sight of the circumstance that deity is a compound conception, which combines the ideas of great power and sense. Of these two a man has sense already. To make him a God all that is necessary is to ascribe to him transcendent power. Deification, therefore, does not necessarily imply a previous knowledge of the conception of deity. In practice, however, men are usually deified by being raised to the level of already known deities.[5 - M. Goblet d'Alviella says: "I maintain that neither of these two forms of worship necessarily presupposes the other; but that man having been led by different roads to personify the souls of the dead on the one hand and natural objects and phenomena on the other, subsequently attributed to both alike the character of mysterious superhuman beings. Let us add that this must have taken place everywhere, for there is not a people on earth in which we do not come upon these forms of belief side by side and intermingled." Dr. Pfleiderer's view is substantially identical.]

Each of these two processes rests on a basis of truth. The personification of natural objects and powers springs from some glimmering notion that the so-called inanimate world is really alive. Everything physical has its metaphysical counterpart. There is no motion without something akin to sensation, and no sensation without motion. As all our sensations, emotions, and thoughts are accompanied by corresponding disturbances of the molecules of our brain and nervous system, so all natural phenomena have associated with them something varying in quality and intensity, for which our human language has no better word than sensation, while along with the sum of the infinitely interwoven physical energies of the universe there goes what we, in our imperfect speech, must call emotion, purpose, thought.

Ordinarily the lower animal, the child, the savage, and the primitive man do not realize this truth. Under the pressure of imperious practical necessities they recognize with sufficient accuracy the difference between the animate and the inanimate. They do not take the further step of seeing that there is animation in the so-called inanimate. Sense and volition are not habitually attributed by them to inanimate objects. Much less do they assume, as we are sometimes told, the presence in them of a conscious agent not visible to the senses. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Some of these are simple mistakes. I have known a dog take a doll for a living person, and only discover his error after close examination and long consideration. A large stone-ware image of the Buddhist Saint Daruma, of stern aspect, which stood in my garden in Tōkiō, caused unmistakable alarm to stray dogs who unexpectedly found themselves face to face with it. Children sometimes beat inanimate objects by which they have been hurt, and savages have been known to regard a watch as a living being.

A second exception is the case of conscious make-believe, of which we may observe instances in the play of children, and even of the lower animals. Errors and fancies of this kind do not constitute religion, though they may prepare the way for it. A time comes, however, when some savage or primitive man, gifted beyond his fellows, arrives at a partial and hesitating recognition of the truth that with the energies of nature there really goes something of the same kind that he is conscious of in himself, and has learned to recognize in his fellow beings-namely, sense and will. He sees the sun move across the heavens, diffusing light and warmth, and says to himself, "He is alive." With the intellectual perception there is associated emotion. He feels that the sun is kind to him, and bows his head as he would to his chief, partly to express his thanks and partly in order that others may share his thoughts and feelings. This is religion. It comprises the three elements of thought, emotion, and action. Religion is at first exceptional. Every primitive man is not a seer or maker of religious myth. His ordinary attitude towards the powers of nature is that of the Chinaman, who thought that the moon was "all the same lamp pigeon." He is an unconscious Agnostic, and knows nothing of volition in the inanimate world.

The deification of men, although involving a contradiction in terms, has yet a substantial and most important truth associated with it. Great captains, wise rulers, inspired poets, sages and seers, whether alive or dead, deserve honour to which it is not easy to place a limit. Napoleon said that one of his generals was worth an army division. Who shall estimate the value to their respective races, and, indeed, to humanity, of such men as Shakespeare, Confucius, Mahomet, or Buddha? Nor are they dead. They live in their works, and subjectively in the hearts and minds of their countrymen. And may we not go a step further? Our actions, even the most insignificant, do not remain locked up in ourselves. As by sensation the whole universe affects us, so does every impulse of our ego react upon the universe, leaving an impression which is indelible. The physical world is different for the most trifling act of the meanest human being that ever lived. All our emotions and thoughts have a counterpart in our physical constitution, which is resolvable into motion, and is therefore indestructible. The doctrine of the conservation of energy is the physical counterpart of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Each involves the other. Assuming, therefore, that all motion is accompanied by something akin to sensation, it will be seen that dead men may continue to have perhaps even a sentient existence equal to the sum of the reactions of their ego upon its environment, animate or inanimate, during life. It is the remembered total energies of the man which, I take it, form the object of honour and worship after he is dead, and not his corpse or ghost. The latter is a mere accident, of secondary origin, and is by no means universally recognized.

In justification of man-worship, it may also be pleaded that if the nature-deity is truer, the man-deity is nearer to us and more capable of vivid realization. And as it is from the sympathetic recognition of life in our fellow men that we proceed to the recognition of life in the so-called inanimate universe, so it is by the contemplation of the highest types of humanity that we are able to refine and exalt our conception of divinity.

The two great sources of religious thought, personification and deification, are constantly intermingling their streams and reacting upon each other. A deity who begins his career as a Nature-God often in course of time loses this quality, and becomes hardly distinguishable from a magnified man. The Zeus of Homer is an example. He is much more the Father of Gods and men than a Sky or Weather-God. In Japan it is only the scholar who recognizes in Susa no wo the deity of the Rain-storm. To the people even Tenshōdaijin (the Sun Goddess) is nothing more than the great providential deity who resides at Ise. Her solar quality is practically forgotten. Men, on the other hand, may be exalted to such a height by the ascription to them of nature-powers that their original humanity is much obscured.

It is sometimes difficult to determine to which of the two currents of religious thought a particular deity belongs. For example, we find a sword worshipped as a deity. Is it on account of its wonderful cutting property, or because it was once an offering to a nature or a man-deity, and had therefore at length absorbed to itself a portion of his divinity? Or is it the Excalibur of some forgotten deified chieftain? There is no general answer to such questions. They must be decided, if at all, by the evidence in each case. To call objects of this kind "fetishes" helps us nothing. In the Yengishiki we find mention of a shrine to Iha no hime (the lady of the rock). At first sight this looks like a Nature-God. But when we find that an Iha no hime was the mother of the Mikado Richiu (end of fourth century) it seems more probable that the Iha no hime of this shrine was a deified mortal.

In Shinto it is the first of the two great currents of religious thought with which we are chiefly concerned. It is based much more on the conception-fragmentary, shallow, and imperfect as it is-of the universe as sentient than on the recognition of pre-eminent qualities in human beings, alive or dead. It springs primarily from gratitude to-and, though in a less degree, fear of-the great natural powers on which our existence depends. The desire to commemorate the virtues and services of great men and to perpetuate a loving remembrance of departed parents and forefathers takes a secondary place.

Classification of Deities. – Both Nature-Gods and Man-Gods may be deities of individuals, of classes, or of abstract qualities. We have, therefore, six classes of Gods, as follows: -

Nature-Gods

Individuals, as the Sun.

Classes, as the God of Trees.

Properties, as the God of Growth.

Man-Gods

Individuals, as Temmangu.

Classes, as Koyane.

Properties, as Ta-jikara no wo (Hand-strength-male).

This is the logical sequence; but it by no means follows that all Gods of individuals precede all Gods of classes, or that there were no deities of abstractions before some of the later individual or class deities were evolved.

The distinction between individual objects deified and deities of classes is not always well maintained in Shinto. It is doubtful, for example, whether Kamado no Kami is the God of all cooking furnaces, or whether there is a separate God for each. Different worshippers might give different answers. The habitual neglect by the Japanese nation of the grammatical distinction between singular and plural is a potent obstacle to clearness in such matters.

Phases of Conception. – The conception of individual parts of the universe as deities passes through the phases represented in the following formulas: -

I. The Sun (Moon, Wind, Sea, &c.) is alive.

II. The Sun is a man, a father, a chief or a king-first rhetorically, and then literally.

III. The Sun is a material object, ruled by an unseen but not incorporeal being with human form and passions.

IV. The Sun is (a) a material object ruled by an anthropomorphic being which has a spiritual double, or (b)is animated by a spiritual being.

These formulas exhibit the logical sequence of development. In practice the various phases are found to overlap one another considerably. Even in the latest Shinto the direct conception of the natural object as alive is not forgotten.

The first stage,[6 - Max Müller speaks of "that ancient stratum of thought which postulated an agent in the sky, the sun, &c." This is really a secondary conception.] in which we have the religious conception before it is clothed in myth or metaphor, is abundantly exemplified in Shinto. A well, for example, is, like Horace's "Fons Bandusiæ," worshipped without name or myth attached to it, or anything to show whether it is regarded as male or female. The same is the case with sites, buildings, provinces, trees, all of which are deified and have religious rites in their honour without any very definite personality being attributed to them. They are simply thought of as in some sort of way living things. Mud and sand are dubbed Kami, and there the personification ends. There are a good many colourless deities of this kind in Shinto. Motoöri declares explicitly that when a sea or a mountain is called Kami, it is not the spirit of the sea or mountain which is meant, but the sea or mountain itself. A poet of the Manyoshiu says of Fujiyama: -

Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise,
It is the peace-giver, it is the God,
It is the treasure.

When a kitchen wench at the present day speaks of the Hettsui-sama-sama is a honorific and personifying word-she means the cooking-furnace itself regarded as a God, not a spirit inhabiting it. She will even speak of the plasterer making a Hettsui-sama.

The second or anthropomorphic stage of the development of the idea of God arises out of the rhetorical necessity of rendering more vivid, even at the expense of exact truth, the presentation of the conception of the powers of nature as living things. Finding that the bare assertion that they are alive produces little impression, the poet or seer goes a step further, and boldly ascribes to them human form, passions, actions, and character. Myth and metaphor are his instruments. The God has bodily parts, parents, sex, and children. He eats, drinks, is angry or alarmed, loves, fights, weaves, cultivates the ground, fishes, hunts, and dies. With the advance of social organization he is a chief or a king. Sometimes in these metaphors we can trace a special application to the deity's natural functions. Sometimes they are introduced merely for general effect. The results of this process for good and for evil are written large in the pages of human history. It is, on the one hand, the indispensable means by which the high intuitions of the seer are brought home, more or less imperfectly, to the multitude. On the other hand, the true original nature divinity is often lost sight of in a profusion of anthropomorphic fancies, and nothing is left but a magnified man, whose ultimate fate it is to be disavowed by advancing knowledge and enlightenment.

It has been said that the primitive man knows no distinction between fancy and reality. In truth, life would be impossible for such a simpleton. However primitive he may be, he cannot hold a fire in his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. The difference between a real dinner and an imaginary one is palpable even to his limited intelligence. The hunter who could not distinguish between the game of his imagination and the reality could never earn a living. He would be fit only for an imbecile asylum. The child is well aware that his mud pies are not fit to eat. The savage woman who pretends to herself that a stone is her lost baby, knows in her heart that this is nothing more than make-believe. Even a dog appreciates the distinction between a real rat and the object which it pleases him to fancy one, and worries accordingly. The seer is conscious that his anthropomorphic language is only metaphorical. Dante felt this when he said: -

Per questo la Scrittura condescende
A nostra facultate e piedi e mano
Attribuisce a Dio ed altro intende.

Metaphor is of the very essence of myth. But the literal-minded vulgar are at all times prone to confound the altro which is clothed in myth and metaphor with its outward husk, and the literal-minded scholar or scientific man is often little better. Hirata says that "what we call kami are all men. Even among men those who are excellent are called kami. The natural difference between men and Gods is that the Gods are high and men are low, owing to the greater care taken by the creator deities in producing the former." He thinks that the Shinto deities are about ten feet high.

The humanization of the nature deities is reflected in the vocabulary of Shinto. The term mioya, or "august parent," is frequently used of them. Tsuchi or tsutsu, old forms of chichi, father, occurs in the names of several. It is primarily by no means physical fatherhood which is meant in such cases, although there are no doubt vulgar minds who are unable to rise above this conception and have thereby done much to corrupt religion.

In Western religions a God must be either male or female. The grammatical structure of their languages compels Europeans to say either he or she in speaking of deities. In Japan this necessity does not exist. The forms of Japanese speech take little account of sex. Many Shinto deities have no sex at all. In others sex is indicated by the incidents of the myth or by the additions of such terminations as wo male, me female. There are several pairs of married deities. In art, sex is comparatively little distinguished in Japan.

The reason for attributing one sex to a deity rather than the other is not always evident. Provinces and mountains are sometimes male and sometimes female. The Food Goddess is naturally feminine, as representing the productive principle of nature, and perhaps also because cooking is the business of women. The male sex is more suitable to Susa no wo's violent character as the Rain-storm. Warlike gods like Hachiman are naturally masculine.

The "chieftain" conception of divinity is represented by the use of the word wo, male, i. e., virile or valiant one, in many of the names of deities, and by the ascription to some of warlike qualities. There is nothing to show that these are deified chieftains. On the contrary, the term wo is applied, like tsuchi, father, to what are unmistakably nature deities, such as the Sea-Gods Soko-tsutsu-wo (bottom-father-male) Naka-tsutsu-wo (middle-father-male), and Uwa-tsutsu-wo (upper-father-male), produced by the lustrations of Izanagi in the sea after his return from Yomi.

Tohe, another word for chieftain, occurs in the name of the Wind-God, Shina tsu tohe.

Nushi, master, is found in the names of several deities.

The application to the Shinto deities of words implying sovereignty is illustrated by sube or sume, which enters into a number of compounds relating to the Gods or Mikados. This word means "to collect together into one," and hence "to hold general rule over." Sumera or sumeragi no mikoto is the Mikado. Several deities enjoy the honorary epithet of Sume-gami, or Subera-gami.

Mi-koto, august thing, is also applied equally to Gods and Mikados, and in ancient times even to parents. It is nearly equivalent to our "majesty."

Wake, a branch, that is to say, a branch of the imperial family, a prince, is applied to deities.

Hiko and hime occur frequently in the names of gods. These words mean literally sun-child and sun-female, but in practice they are equivalent to prince and princess, or lord and lady. In the history of these words one may observe the operation of both of the great currents of deity-forming thought. Hi, sun, is used as an epithet for the glorification of human personages, and the compounds hiko and hime are in turn applied to nature powers as a personifying term. The Wind-God is a hiko.

The rhetorical impulse to realize in its various phases the human character of the nature deities of Shinto has produced a number of subsidiary personages, who are attached to them as wives, children, ministers, or attendants. Some of these are also nature deities. In others we find a union of the two deity-making tendencies. Thus Koyane, by the circumstance of his descent from Musubi, the God of Growth, and by his position of high-priest to the Sun-Goddess, belongs to the category of nature deities, while as an embodiment of the collective humanity of the Nakatomi sacerdotal corporation, whose ancestor he is feigned to be, he belongs to the class of deified human beings.