Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/507

 CHAPTER XXX EFORE beginning the discussion of Korea's religions we must define the term. This will seem strange to a Western reader, who knows well enough what a religion is; but with these Eastern people it is extremely difficult to tell where religion leaves off and mere superstition begins. I think it will be better to take the word in its broadest sense, and consider religion to include every relation which men hold, or fancy that they hold, to superhuman, infrahuman or, more broadly still, extra-human phenomena. And we must even supplement this by saying that in the category of extra-human we include the spirits of human beings that have died. Thus defined, we shall see that the religions of Korea form a very intricate study. In no department of Korean life is the antiquity of their civilisation so clearly demonstrated as in the mosaic of religious beliefs that are held, not only by different individuals but by any single individual. We have no choice but to deal with these separately, but the reader must ever bear in mind that in every Korean mind there is a jumble of the whole; that there is no antagonism between the different cults, however they may logically refute each other, but that they have all been shaken down together through the centuries until they form a sort of religious composite, from which each man selects his favourite ingredients without ever ignoring the rest. Nor need any man hold exclusively to any one phase of this composite religion. In one frame of mind he may lean toward the Buddhistic element and at another time he may revert to his ancestral fetichism. As a general thing, we may say that the all-round Korean will be a Confucianist when in