Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/132



HE growth of worlds in space, the separation of seas and lands by word of command, the creation of light and the genesis of all things, as recounted by Moses, make no smaller demand upon human credulity than do the cosmographical legends of primeval Japan. Yet to the former centuries of thought and cycles of discussion are devoted, while the latter are dismissed with a note of exclamation.

The sequence of ideas that presided at the elaboration of the Japanese cosmogony is at once logical and illogical. Sometimes it shocks the most lenient intelligence; sometimes it surprises the most skeptical scrutiny. In the beginning of all sentient things two supreme beings are placed,—Izanagi and Izanami,—themselves the outcome of a series of semi-mystical, semi-realistic processes of evolution. Matter already exists. With its origin the Japanese cosmographist does not attempt to deal. Ex nihilo nihil fit seems to him an undeniable proposition, as it seemed to Moses also. But it is matter almost completely lacking consistency, an indescribable, nebulous,