But these strange beliefs are swiftly passing away. Year by year more
shrines of Inari crumble down, never to be rebuilt. Year by year the
statuaries make fewer images of foxes. Year by year fewer victims of
fox-possession are taken to the hospitals to be treated according to
the best scientific methods by Japanese physicians who speak German.
The cause is not to be found in the decadence of the old faiths: a
superstition outlives a religion. Much less is it to be sought for in
the efforts of proselytising missionaries from the West--most of whom
profess an earnest belief in devils. It is purely educational. The
omnipotent enemy of superstition is the public school, where the
teaching of modern science is unclogged by sectarianism or prejudice;
where the children of the poorest may learn the wisdom of the Occident;
where there is not a boy or a girl of fourteen ignorant of the great
names of Tyndall, of Darwin, of Huxley, of Herbert Spencer. The little
hands that break the Fox-god's nose in mischievous play can also write
essays upon the evolution of plants and about the geology of Izumo.
There is no place for ghostly foxes in the beautiful nature-world
revealed by new studies to the new generation The omnipotent exorciser
and reformer is the Kodomo.