Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/158

 power and in the existence of some special channel of communication between that power and the ruler of the State, so that the latter acted as mediator for his subjects. The relation between the Emperor of Japan and the Sun Goddess finds here an analogy. Confucius, however, would have set aside the Shintō cosmogony as something wholly beyond the range of rational speculation. He recognised the power of an impersonal heaven, but he limited his moral horizon to things visible and temporal, and his recorded conduct could not possibly be reconciled with the Shintō faith in the direction of nature's courses and of human fortunes by a hierarchy of deities. That man should devote himself earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, should keep aloof from them, — that was the Chinese sage's definition of wisdom. He did not, as is frequently supposed, institute the worship of ancestors: it had existed in China for centuries before his time. He did not even directly inculcate the propriety of such a practice. As to a future state, he declined to predicate anything about the world beyond the grave. He did not even commit himself to an admission that sentient existence might be continued after death. Life was a mystery in his eyes; death equally inscrutable. In the vague possibilities of numbers and diagrams he vainly sought an explanation of the phenomena of the physical universe, and the sole outcome of his cosmical