Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/563

 REVIEWS 547

if he leave home, pays his respects to the god on leaving and return- ing:. Thus the social bond of each community was identical with the religious bond, and the cult of the ujigami embodied the moral expe- rience of the community. The individual of such a community enjoyed only a narrowly restricted liberty. Shintoism had no moral code, because at this ancestor stage of cult religion and ethics coincide.

(Chap. 7) The great gods of nature were developed from ancestor-worship, though their real history has been long forgotten. (Chap. 8) Rites of worship and of purification were many. (Chap. 9) The rule of the dead extended to moral conduct and even to sump- tuary matters, language, and amusements. (Chap. 10) Buddhism absorbed the native ancestor-cult, but prescribed that prayers be said for them, not to them. In accordance with its principle, " First observe the person, then preach the law " that is, accommodate instruction to the hearer's capacity Buddhism taught the masses metempsychosis instead of palingenesis, and the paradise of Amida instead of the nirvana of Buddha. Buddhism rendered its greatest service to Japan by education in the learning and arts of China. (Chap, n) The higher Buddhism is a kind of monism.

(Chap. 12) Japanese society was simply an amplification of the patriarchal family, and its clan-groups never united into a coherent body until 1871. At first the bulk of the people were slaves or serfs, but from the seventh century a large class of f reedmen farmers and artisans came into existence. The first period of Japanese social evolution was based on a national head, the mikado, and a national cult, Shintoism ; it began in this seventh century, but developed to the limit of its type only under the Tokugawa shoguns, in the seventeenth century.

Next to the priest-emperor at the head came the kuge, or ancient nobility, from whose ranks most of the later regents and shoguns were drawn. Next ranked the buke, or samurai, which was the pro- fessional military class, and was ruled by nearly three hundred daimyo, or feudal lords of varying importance. Next came the com- monalty, heimin, with three classes: farmers, artisans, and trades- men, the last being despised by the samurai, who also could cut down any disrespectful heimin with impunity. Lowest of all came the chori pariahs, who were not counted Japanese at all, but mono, "things." But even among them distinctions arose according to occupation. The close care taken of the native religion by the govern-