Classification of Deities.--Both Nature-Gods and Man-Gods may be deities of individuals, of classes, or of abstract qualities. We have, therefore, six classes of Gods, as follows:--
Nature-Gods.
Individuals, as the Sun. Classes, as the God of Trees. Properties, as the God of Growth.
Man-Gods.
Individuals, as Temmangu. Classes, as Koyane. Properties, as Ta-jikara no wo (Hand-strength-male).
This is the logical sequence; but it by no means follows that all Gods of individuals precede all Gods of classes, or that there were no deities of abstractions before some of the later individual or class deities were evolved.
The distinction between individual objects deified and deities of classes is not always well maintained in Shinto. It is doubtful, for example, whether Kamado no Kami is the God of all cooking furnaces, or whether there is a separate God for each. Different worshippers might give different answers. The habitual neglect by the Japanese nation of the grammatical distinction between singular and plural is a potent obstacle to clearness in such matters.
Phases of Conception.--The conception of individual parts of the universe as deities passes through the phases represented in the following formulas:--
I. The Sun (Moon, Wind, Sea, &c.) is alive.
II. The Sun is a man, a father, a chief or a king--first rhetorically, and then literally.