Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/138

122 The aptitude of all these artifices to the end desired is more or less apparent: some tending to slow down the whole machine; or by weakening the body, or by tiring the mind, some to dull the sense perceptions by persistent attention to what is essentially incapable of holding it,—all to reduce the brain to an inactive state. The road is unnecessarily long because originally discovered by chance, and then blindly followed by succeeding ages without rational improvement. An immense amount of labor is thus in point of fact thrown away. How much quicker a like result can be obtained by the application of a little science, modern hypnotism shows.

Now there will have been noticed in the list of austerities a steady departure from primitive simplicity. This decrease in simplicity is strictly paralleled by the decrease in their respective use. Everybody washed, though comparatively few poised on their toes. The several vogue of the austerities is further paralleled by the position occupied by those who practiced them, in that long chain of mixed belief which, dependent from pure Shintō at the one end, is supported by