Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/263

 The reference just made to the ordeal of boiling water brings the student to the confines of a wide realm of superstitions based upon Shintō belief in the omnipresence of the tutelary spirits and translated into visible phenomena through the agency of hypnotism. The Japanese seem to have discovered, at a very early period, that an abnormal nervous condition can be produced by concentrated attention and abeyance of the will, and, like many other peoples to whom a scientific explanation of the fact had not presented itself, they interpreted the strange condition to mean spirit-possession. Prayer and incantation, preceded by purificatory rites and assisted by violent finger-twistings, were the means employed to produce this mesmeric state, and the person reduced to it became a spirit-medium, gifted with the power of performing miracles, of uttering predictions, and of curing diseases. The range of miracles was limited to three, — sprinkling boiling water over the body without feeling the heat, ascending on bare feet a ladder of razor-sharp sword-blades, and walking with naked soles over a bed of live coals, — all of which are constantly practised by Shintō priests and devotees to this day. It must be noted that these performances do not seem to have been degraded by charlatans in any era into mere money-making spectacles. Their object has always been to vivify religious faith. As for the faculty of vaticination supposed to be