Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/252

242 and abstinence from impiety and blasphemy to the third. There is, however, a tendency for these motives to encroach on each other's provinces without relinquishing their own. Acts which belong at first to one category end by receiving the sanction of the other motives. Drunkenness, at first thought harmless, is soon recognized as folly, though harming nobody but the drunkard himself. It is eventually seen to be also a crime against the community, and last of all a sin in the eyes of God. Criminal Law is a systematic enforcement of the rights of others by adding prudential motives for respecting them. It also punishes blasphemy and heresy, no doubt for the protection of the interests of the community against the curse which such offences bring down. With ourselves religion condemns not only direct offences against the Deity as in the first three commandments, but selfish folly, and throws its ægis over the rights of our neighbour, by prohibiting theft, murder, adultery, lying, disrespect to parents, &c. Can it be doubted that these were already offences before the ten commandments were delivered from Mount Sinai?

There is no stronger proof of the rudimentary character of Shinto than the exceedingly casual and imperfect sanction which it extends to altruistic morality. It has scarcely anything in the nature of a code of ethics. Zeus had not yet wedded Themis. There is no direct moral teaching in its sacred books. A schedule of offences against the Gods, to absolve which the ceremony of Great Purification was performed twice a year, contains no one of the sins or the Decalogue. Incest, bestiality, wounding, witchcraft, and