II

The most interesting sub-theory of this ancient spiritualism is

that which explains the impulses and acts of men as due to the

influence of the dead. This hypothesis no modern thinker can

declare irrational, since it can claim justification from the

scientific doctrine of psychological evolution, according to

which each living brain represents the structural work of

innumerable dead lives,--each character a more or less

imperfectly balanced sum of countless dead experiences with good

and evil. Unless we deny psychological heredity, we cannot

honestly deny that our impulses and feelings, and the higher

capacities evolved through the feelings, have literally been

shaped by the dead, and bequeathed to us by the dead; and even

that the general direction of our mental activities has been

determined by the power of the special tendencies bequeathed to

us. In such a sense the dead are indeed our Kami and all our

actions are truly influenced by them. Figuratively we may say

that every mind is a world of ghosts,--ghosts incomparably more

numerous than the acknowledged millions of the higher Shinto Kami

and that the spectral population of one grain of brain-matter

more than realizes the wildest fancies of the medieval schoolmen

about the number of angels able to stand on the point of a

needle. Scientifically we know that within one tiny living cell

may be stored up the whole life of a race,--the sum of all the

past sensation of millions of years; perhaps even (who knows?) of

millions of dead planets.

But devils would not be inferior to angels in the mere power of

congregating upon the point of a needle. What, of bad men and of

bad acts in this theory of Shinto? Motowori made answer;

"Whenever anything goes wrong in the world, it is to be

attributed to the action of the evil gods called the Gods of

Crookedness, whose power is so great that the Sun-Goddess and the

Creator-God are sometimes powerless to restrain them; much less

are human beings always able to resist their influence. The

prosperity of the wicked, and the misfortunes of the good, which

seem opposed to ordinary justice, are thus explained." All bad

acts are due to the influence of evil deities; and evil men may

become evil Kami. There are no self-contradictions in this

simplest of cults(1),--nothing complicated or hard to be

understood. It is not certain that all men guilty of bad actions

necessarily become "gods of crookedness," for reasons hereafter

to be seen; but all men, good or bad, become Kami, or influences.

And all evil acts are the results of evil influences.

Now this teaching is in accord with certain facts of heredity.

Our best faculties are certainly bequests from the best of our

ancestors; our evil qualities are inherited from natures in which

evil, or that which we now call evil, once predominated. The

ethical knowledge evolved within us by civilization demands that

we strengthen the high powers bequeathed us by the best

experience of our dead, and diminish the force of the baser

tendencies we inherit. We are under obligation to reverence and

to obey our good Kami, and to strive against our gods of

crookedness. The knowledge of the existence of both is old as

human reason. In some form or other, the doctrine of evil and of

good spirits in personal attendance upon every soul is common to

most of the great religions. Our own mediaeval faith developed

the idea to a degree which must leave an impress on our language

for all time; yet the faith in guardian angels and tempting

demons evolutionarily represents only the development of a cult

once simple as the religion of the Kami. And this theory of

mediaeval faith is likewise pregnant with truth. The white-winged

form that whispered good into the right ear, the black shape that

murmured evil into the left, do not indeed walk beside the man of

the nineteenth century, but they dwell within his brain; and he

knows their voices and feels their urging as well and as often as

did his ancestors of the Middle Ages.

The modern ethical objection to Shinto is that both good and evil

Kami are to be respected. "Just as the Mikado worshiped the gods

of heaven and of earth, so his people prayed to the good gods in

order to obtain blessings, and performed rites in honor of the

bad gods to avert their displeasure.... As there are bad as well

as good gods, it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings

of agreeable food, with the playing of harps and the blowing of

flutes, with singing and dancing, and with whatever else is

likely to put them in good-humor(2)." As a matter of fact, in

modern Japan, the evil Kami appear to receive few offerings or

honors, notwithstanding this express declaration that they are to

be propitiated. But it will now be obvious why the early

missionaries characterized such a cult as devil-worship,

--although, to Shinto imagination, the idea of a devil, in the

Western meaning of the word, never took shape. The seeming

weakness of the doctrine is in the teaching that evil spirits are

not to be warred upon,--a teaching essentially

repellent to Roman Catholic feeling. But between the evil spirits

of Christian and of Shinto belief there is a vast difference. The

evil Kami is only the ghost of a dead man, and is not believed to

be altogether evil,--since propitiation is possible. The

conception of absolute, unmixed evil is not of the Far East.

Absolute evil is certainly foreign to human nature, and therefore

impossible in human ghosts. The evil Kami are not devils. They

are simply ghosts, who influence the passions of men; and only in

this sense the deities of the passions. Now Shinto is of all

religions the most natural, and therefore in certain respects the

most rational. It does not consider the passions necessarily evil

in themselves, but evil only according to cause, conditions, and

degrees of their indulgence. Being ghosts, the gods are

altogether human,--having the various good and bad qualities of

men in varying proportions. The majority are good, and the sum of

the influence of all is toward good rather than evil. To

appreciate the rationality of this view requires a tolerably high

opinion of mankind,--such an opinion as the conditions of the old

society of Japan might have justified. No pessimist could profess

pure Shintoism. The doctrine is optimistic; and whoever has a

generous faith in humanity will have no fault to find with the

absence of the idea of implacable evil from its teaching.

Now it is just in the recognition of the necessity for

propitiating the evil ghosts that the ethically rational

character of Shinto reveals itself. Ancient experience and modern

knowledge unite in warning us against the deadly error of trying

to extirpate or to paralyze certain tendencies in human

nature,--tendencies which, if morbidly cultivated or freed from

all restraint, lead to folly, to crime, and to countless social

evils. The animal passions, the ape-and-tiger impulses, antedate

human society, and are the accessories to nearly all crimes

committed against it. But they cannot be killed; and they cannot

be safely starved. Any attempt to extirpate them would signify

also an effort to destroy some of the very highest emotional

faculties with which they remain inseparably blended. The

primitive impulses cannot even be numbed save at the cost of

intellectual and emotional powers which give to human life all

its beauty and all its tenderness, but which are, nevertheless,

deeply rooted in the archaic soil of passion. The highest in us

had its beginnings in the lowest. Asceticism, by warring against

the natural feelings, has created monsters. Theological

legislation, irrationally directed against human weaknesses, has

only aggravated social disorders; and laws against pleasure have

only provoked debaucheries. The history of morals teaches very

plainly indeed that our bad Kami require some propitiation. The

passions still remain more powerful than the reason in man,

because they are incomparably older,--because they were once

all-essential to self-preservation,--because they made that primal

stratum of consciousness, out of which the nobler sentiments have

slowly grown. Never can they be suffered to rule; but woe to

whosoever would deny their immemorial rights!

(1) I am considering only the pure Shinto belief as expounded by

Shinto scholars. But it may be necessary to remind the reader

that both Buddhism and Shintoism are blended in Japan, not only

with each other, but with Chinese ideas of various kinds. It is

doubtful whether the pure Shinto ideas now exist in their

original form in popular belief. We are not quite clear as to the

doctrine of multiple souls in Shinto,--whether the psychical

combination was originally thought of as dissolved by death. My

own opinion, the result of investigation in different parts of

Japan, is that the multiple soul was formerly believed to remain

multiple after death.

(2) Motowori, translated by Satow.