Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/218



conduct includes worship, morality in so far as it has obtained the sanction of religion, and ceremonial purity.

The term worship applies both to the forms of courtesy and respect towards human beings and of reverence for the Gods. Indeed the latter is not a separate kind of worship, but is composed almost exclusively of the same elements in a new application. Nearly everything in the worship of the Gods is borrowed from the forms of social respect. It is sometimes maintained that these forms, before they become a part of religious ritual, pass through an intermediate stage, namely, the worship of the dead, whether as ghosts or dead ancestors. This view is based on the hypothesis that Gods were originally deceased men. It cannot well apply to Shinto, where all the Great Gods are nature-deities. When a Japanese greets the rising Sun by bowing his head, he does so because that is already with him an habitual form of respect. No doubt he honours the dead in this way as well as the living. But the occasions for the worship of the living so far outnumber those of paying respect to the dead that the latter may be regarded as a negligible quantity in the formation of the habit. There is surely nothing to prevent a man who had never worshipped ghosts or ancestors from transferring direct to nature-deities forms of respect arising out of the relations of living men.

Several practices of worship, such as clapping the hands for joy and the avoidance of contamination by touching a dead body, have no meaning in the case of the cult of the dead.