Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/91

Rh have been unconscious. Though nobody at the present day supposes that the author or his readers take it for a narrative of actual events, cannot we fancy Macaulay's New Zealander, being told as a fact some traditional, time-worn, corrupt, and ill-interpreted version of it, and, especially if he is a literal-minded philosopher, wondering how it was possible for the English to believe in such a concatenation of anthropomorphic fancies?

The literal acceptation of myth or metaphor is not confined to the lower class of intellect. It was a "teacher of Israel" who could not see how "a man could enter into his mother's womb and be born again." Motoöri and Hirata, highly educated scholars, well versed in Chinese and Indian religious literature, received the stories of the Kojiki and Nihongi as genuine history.

Even Dante and Milton, men of profound spiritual insight, probably accepted in their most literal sense some of the imaginative figments of their predecessors.

There have always been literal-minded unbelievers, who reject the myth and its religious contents without discrimination, and simply value it, if at all, for its æsthetic merits. Of them, as of the literal-minded believer, "Si exempla requiris, circumspice."

The history of the religious myth may be summarized as follows: A, a man of genius, creates it, clearly distinguishing in his own mind between the kernel of religious truth and its imaginative embodiment. His disciples B and C understand him thoroughly. In this stage a myth is called a parable or allegory. Many myths proceed no further. D, F, H, * * * T and V, unable to discriminate the true element from the false, accept the whole confusedly as actual fact. E, G, * * S and U are dense to its religious significance, and think it idle nonsense, or at best, simply a good story. W and X have a glimmering notion that the imaginative part cannot be literally true, but do not dare to question it, lest they should sacrifice at the same