Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/359

Rh World" also called "the God of Gods," promising to those who did so long life and riches. He had many adherents who threw out their victuals and other property into the public roads, expecting to have "the new riches" given them in return. The craze spread to such an extent that the Government at length interfered and suppressed this movement by force. The God of the Everlasting World was a large caterpillar, a strange conjunction of the highest and the lowest in religion! Yet may we not extend some small measure of sympathy towards this blind and feeble aspiration after an Infinite, Supreme Being, crushed relentlessly at its very birth?

Of the later form of anthropomorphism in which the deities are regarded as distinct from the natural phenomena or objects which they rule, there is not much trace in the ancient authorities. Motoöri is true to the spirit of the old myths when he describes the Sun-Goddess as identical with the sun itself. But his most eminent pupil Hirata differs from him on this point and speaks of her as born on earth, and subsequently appointed to rule the sun. Hirata's view is an obvious step towards spiritism.

There are comparatively few traces of spiritism in Shinto. Although the creed of a tolerably cultured race, which had learned to attribute human qualities, physical and moral, to natural powers and objects, and to regard them with something of the affection, gratitude, and submissive awe inspired by their earthly fathers, chiefs, and sovereigns, it remains in all essential respects an anthropomorphic religion. Whatever Izanagi and Izanami were, their history, ending with their death, shows that they were as unspiritual beings as can well be imagined. The Sun-Goddess, who retires to a cave and leaves the world to darkness, is plainly the sun itself, and the Food-Goddess, who entertains her guests with dainties taken from various parts of her own person, is also an unmistakably material personage. Motoöri says in so many words that the Shinto deities had arms and legs, and