Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/141

Rh exposure of his capabilities the poor man contracted a very bad cold, and was confined for a couple of weeks to his house.

He was, as the mention of his family showed, a married man. In this he made no exception to the rule. All lay brethren marry as a matter of course. Indeed, in Shintō proper, the priests wed like anybody else. Nor do such as follow the austerities commit themselves in the least to celibacy. For matrimony and self-consecration to the gods do not, it appears, conflict. In spite of the great advantage that accrues to piety from never looking upon a woman's face, mentioned above, mere matrimony would seem innocuous. Either femininity in repeated doses loses its intoxicating effect, or acquired sanctity renders the believer superior to it. Perhaps, as one of my married friends suggested to me, marriage is sufficient austerity itself.

However that may be, certain it is that nowadays even gyōja wed without detriment to their souls. I am by no means sure that they did not in the olden time, for so commonplace a detail of a far oriental's life as matrimony might well have escaped