Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/139

 whose chief and head it is. Its people are honest and upright of heart, not given to useless theorising and falsehoods like other nations. Thus it possesses correct and true information with regard to the origin of the universe, — information transmitted to us from the age of the gods, unaltered and unmixed, even in the slightest degree, with unsupported notions of individuals. This is the genuine and true tradition." Here again the reader, if he pleases, can find in the Occident parallel examples of defiant faith based on an equally small grain of mustard seed.

From what has thus far been written, it will be seen at once that ancestor-worship was the basis of Shintō. The divinities, whether celestial or terrestrial, were the progenitors of the nation, from the sovereign and the princes surrounding the Throne to the nobles who discharged the services of the State and the soldiers who fought its battles.

Worship of these gods seems to have been originally conducted in the open air. Shrines were not constructed until the first century before the Christian era. Very soon, however, the children of the deities found no lack of set places to pray, for from the naiku and geku of Ise, the Mecca of Japan, to the miniature miyas that dotted the rice plains, thousands of shrines might be counted throughout the realm, and every house had its Kami-dana, or "god shelf," before which morning and evening prayers were