Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/149

 ment from the heavenly plains, would fain have gone to his mother beneath the earth. The efficacy of the "Sacred Jewel" consisted in holding back the believer from the road to the region of the dead. But this under-world was not connected with any idea of merciless tortures inflicted on the damned through endless ages. It was simply the place of darkness, — the moon, according to some; the depths of the ocean, according to others. The finite was not followed by an infinite aftermath of misery. The worship of the beloved and revered dead precluded all idea of their condemnation to everlasting torment, just as it necessarily included the conception of the soul's immortality. Rituals were not read nor offerings piled up to victims of annihilation. Those that passed the portals still lived, a large, a more potential, a deathless life, waiting to be joined by those they had preceded. Within every man was something of the god, and though, after death, one obtained higher place than an- other in the divine hierarchy, all were sure of apotheosis. The issue of human enterprises, the distribution of fortune's favours, were considered to be under the control of the tutelary deities, the ancestral spirits, but men were themselves endowed with capacity for distinguishing between good and evil, and with strength to follow their judgment so tenaciously as to qualify for fellowship with the denizens of high heaven. At the