Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/355

Rh corporeal anthropomorphic deity is supposed to have a spiritual counterpart, and the other in which the deity is himself a spiritual being. Spiritism seems to be the result of endeavours to explain away the obvious difficulties which attend the cruder anthropomorphism.

These three stages of belief may be represented by the following formulæ:

I. The Sun is alive (Animism).

II. The Sun is (a) a man, a father, a chief, a king, or (b) is a material object ruled by an unseen, but not incorporeal being with human form and passions (Anthropomorphism).

III. The Sun is (a) a material object ruled by an anthropomorphic being which has a spiritual double, or (b) is animated by a spiritual being (Spiritism).

These stages do not succeed one another like geological strata, but overlap. Spiritism may and does appear at an early stage of anthropomorphic development, while on the other hand the most advanced religions find it hard to relinquish grosser conceptions which belong to an earlier stage of progress.

The most superficial examination of Shinto will satisfy us that it is substantially an anthropomorphic religion. Its deities are for the most part personified powers, elements and objects of nature. At their head stands the Sun-Goddess with her attendant courtiers. Then we have the Moon-God, the God of Growth, the Food-Goddess, Gods of Fire, Wind, Water, Earth, Seas, Mountains, Rivers, Thunder, Trees, and Islands. But, except in the case of a few principal deities, the process of personification has not gone far. Many so-called deities have hardly got beyond the first, or animist, stage of progress. When such objects as swords, stones, jewels, or mirrors have been dubbed Kami (gods) for their wonderful properties, real or imaginary, the impulse towards personification seems to have spent itself. And there are a good many others whose human quality is of the thinnest, there being frequently nothing even to show whether they