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This element of the work owes much to the continental scholars Réville, Goblet D'Alviella, and Pfleiderer. The subject is treated from a positive, not from a negative or agnostic standpoint, Religion being regarded as a normal function, not a disease, of humanity. It also comprises an outline theory of the origin and earlier stages of the development of religion, prepared with special reference to the Shinto evidence. It is intended, primarily and chiefly, as a repertory of the more significant facts of Shinto for the use of scientific students of religion.

It is not among such surroundings that we can expect to find a primitive form of religion. They had a settled government, and possessed the arts of brewing, making pottery, building ships and bridges, and working in metals. They were already an agricultural nation, a circumstance by which Shinto has been deeply influenced. The general civilization of the Japanese when Shinto assumed the form in which we know it had left the primitive stage far behind. It had an organized priesthood and an elaborate ritual. Its polytheism, the want of a Supreme Deity, the comparative absence of images and of a moral code, its feeble personifications and hesitating grasp of the conception of spirit, the practical non-recognition of a future state, and the general absence of a deep, earnest faith-all stamp it as perhaps the least developed of religions which have an adequate literary record. 31, add to first note, "The Romans had an evil counterpart of Jupiter, viz., Vediovis or Vejovis."Īs compared with the great religions of the world, Shinto, the old Kami cult of Japan, is decidedly rudimentary in its character. 41, line 25, after "deities" insert "a phrase which closely resembles the 'Zembla Bogh' used of the Czar by Russians." Augustine says, in his 'Civitas Dei,' that funeral observances are rather solace to the living than help to the dead." T.A.S.J.-Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.įor "Welhausen," note to p. Nihongi.-Translation of the Nihongi by W. The one on the right is the ordinary form, The Sun-Goddess issuing from the Rock-Cave of Heaven AUTHOR OF'A GRAMMAR OF THE JAPANESE SPOKEN LANGUAGE,' 'A GRAMMAR OF THEJAPANESE WRITTEN LANGUAGE,' 'THE NIHONGI' (TRANSLATION),'A HISTORY OF JAPANESE LITERATURE,' &C.