Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/572

 558 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

denial, chastity and piety of the priest, human nature had to be overlaid with an artificial nature. As the task was difficult the means had to be powerful, and thus it is that these types have been worked out to a distinctness and backed up with an authority we find nowhere else. The most powerful known agencies - poetry, song, eloquence, applause are summoned to uphold and commend them. So forcibly in consequence is the type stamped on the individual, so deeply is it graven, that he retains an enduring impress of it in his thought and feeling. A certain arrest of development treads on the heels of this specialization. The thought of the soldier or the priest cannot wander much beyond the range marked out by his type. Either can do scientific detail work but very rarely does either do first-class thinking on social, religious or philosophical subjects those, namely, about which he has been trained to think and feel in a particular way.

Every religion, when it is an independent stream of influence sweeping in from without or springing up in the footsteps of some great teacher, must be recognized as making its own con- tribution to the general stock of ideals in society. Each apart from its supernatural sanctions or its teachings respecting the bonds between men offers its pattern lives, characters, qualities and virtues so set forth in narratives, examples, parables, legends, myths and sayings as to win and hold the love of generations of men. Indeed a religion like that of Confucius, almost devoid of supernaturalism or idealism, touches the feelings on behalf of society chiefly by the attractive power of its model characters and virtues. The Norse myths form the proper mold in which to shape the spirit of the warrior. Mazdeism was but a pedestal to lift purity into the upper heavens. "The spirit of Shinto," says Mr. Hearn, "is the spirit of filial piety, the zest of duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle without a thought of wherefore. It is the docility of the child; it is the sweetness of the Japanese woman." 1 Stoicism was in essence a wrought-out character-type fortified by philosophical doctrines and made

1 Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Vol. II, p. 388.