Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/45

Rh more general, and especially of the more abstract, conceptions embodied in European languages, a circumstance which limits the scope of the personifying faculty, none too vigorous in itself. Supposing that we take the series of conceptions beginning with the concrete individual tree, and passing through evergreen oak, oak, tree, and vegetable, to the definitive generalization of the universe. The Japanese language has no word for vegetable except sōmoku, a recent compound of Chinese origin. The word for universe is Ame-tsuchi (Heaven + earth) which is almost certainly a translation of the Chinese ten-chi. The consequence is that neither the class of vegetables nor the universe is recognized in the Japanese scheme of nature-deities. Individual trees are deified, and there is a God of trees, but that is all. The neglect of grammatical number in the Japanese language often obscures the distinction between the Gods of individual objects and of classes. Ki no Kami means equally the God of the tree and the God of trees.

There is a marked poverty of abstract terms in the Japanese language, and the personification of abstract qualities is correspondingly restricted. There is scarcely anything in Shinto to compare with the numerous personified abstractions of Greek and Roman mythology. Izanagi and Izanami, embodiments of the creative or generative powers of nature, are probably not originally Japanese, but an echo of the Yin and Yang of Chinese philosophy. I have a suspicion that Musubi, the God of Growth, may yet be traced to a Chinese source.