Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/142

 ances prescribed by the sacred canon, an analysis of the twenty-seven great rituals shows that the main purpose of worship was to secure the blessings of peace and plenty. The family on earth associated itself by offerings and orisons with the family in heaven. Among the whole twenty-seven rituals one only is designed to avert the influence of evil spirits. It does not appear to have entered largely into the theory of the creed that enmities formed on this side of the grave continued to be active in the region beyond. The disquieting contingency was there, indeed. The curse of a dying foe might be fulfilled by his spirit after death, and services of exorcism were prescribed to meet that emergency. But this tatari was confined to the generation responsible for its origin. The general conception was that of kindly spirits, from the all-father and the all-mother to the shades of departed parents and relatives, ready to extend useful tutelage to their mortal descendants. The capacity to work injury after death was explained by a theory corresponding with the Occidental idea of the duality of man's nature. Every human being possessed a rough spirit and a gentle spirit. The former, when stirred to intense activity by a sense of suffering or the passion of resentment, acquired the potentiality of a mischievous agent, acting independently of matter, and could even assume the shape of the sufferer or of the avenger for