Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/358

348 A note adds:—

"This is called Kugadachi. Sometimes mud was put into a caldron and made to boil up. Then the arms were bared and the boiling mud stirred with them. Sometimes an axe was heated red-hot and placed on the palm of the hand."

In a case which occurred in A.D. 530, it is stated that a judge, in order to save himself trouble, was too ready to resort to the boiling-water ordeal and that many persons were scalded to death in consequence.

At the present day plunging the hand into boiling water, walking barefoot over a bed of live coals and climbing a ladder formed of sword-blades set edge upwards are practised, not by way of ordeal, but to excite the awe and stimulate the piety of the ignorant spectators.

Inspiration.—Such knowledge as we possess of the divine will and nature comes in the first place to the nobler individuals of our race, men in whom high intellectual powers are harmoniously allied to keen and healthy emotional susceptibilities and ripened by long years of experience and reflection. They it is the seers, inspired prophets, men of genius, or by whatever name we may call them who furnish the material out of which religion is developed, not the vulgar, with their superstitions which are only a product of its decay.

Inspiration is not an isolated phenomenon. Like all our thoughts and doings, it is the resultant of three component factors—namely, our own ego and that of our fellow-men, and the all-pervading influence of that divine environment in which we live, and move, and have our being. Each of these may predominate according to circumstances. In what we call inspiration, the two former are, as far as may be, in abeyance, and the mind is left free to be acted on by such higher influences as it is capable of receiving.

In the case of Shinto, we have, unfortunately, no record