But in the stage of religious progress represented by Shinto, we are far indeed from such a result.
The priority of the second of these two processes has been assumed or contended for by many writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Others argue that there can be no deification until the idea of deity has somehow been arrived at previously, as for example, by the personification of natural powers. It appears to me impossible to say which of the two comes first in order of time. The germs of both may be observed at a stage of intellectual development prior to all religion. Children, as we have all observed, sometimes personify inanimate objects. I have known a boy of three years of age complain that, "Bad mustard did bite my tongue." The baby who cries for the moon credits his nurse--ignorantly, of course--with powers far transcending those of humanity. The argument that there can be no deification without a previous acquaintance with the idea of deity loses sight of the circumstance that deity is a compound conception, which combines the ideas of great power and sense. Of these two a man has sense already. To make him a God all that is necessary is to ascribe to him transcendent power. Deification, therefore, does not necessarily imply a previous knowledge of the conception of deity. In practice, however, men are usually deified by being raised to the level of already known deities.[5]
Each of these two processes rests on a basis of truth. The personification of natural objects and powers springs from some glimmering notion that the so-called inanimate world is really alive. Everything physical has its metaphysical counterpart. There is no motion without something akin to sensation, and no sensation without motion. As all our sensations, emotions, and thoughts are accompanied by corresponding disturbances of the molecules of our brain and nervous system, so all natural phenomena have associated with them something varying in quality and intensity, for which our human language has no better word than sensation, while along with the sum of the infinitely interwoven physical energies of the universe there goes what we, in our imperfect speech, must call emotion, purpose, thought.
Ordinarily the lower animal, the child, the savage, and the primitive man do not realize this truth. Under the pressure of imperious practical necessities they recognize with sufficient accuracy the difference between the animate and the inanimate. They do not take the further step of seeing that there is animation in the so-called inanimate. Sense and volition are not habitually attributed by them to inanimate objects. Much less do they assume, as we are sometimes told, the presence in them of a conscious agent not visible to the senses. There are, however, exceptions to this rule. Some of these are simple mistakes. I have known a dog take a doll for a living person, and only discover his error after close examination and long consideration. A large stone-ware image of the Buddhist Saint Daruma, of stern aspect, which stood in my garden in Tōkiō, caused unmistakable alarm to stray dogs who unexpectedly found themselves face to face with it. Children sometimes beat inanimate objects by which they have been hurt, and savages have been known to regard a watch as a living being.
A second exception is the case of conscious make-believe, of which we may observe instances in the play of children, and even of the lower animals. Errors and fancies of this kind do not constitute religion, though they may prepare the way for it. A time comes, however, when some savage or primitive man, gifted beyond his fellows, arrives at a partial and hesitating recognition of the truth that with the energies of nature there really goes something of the same kind that he is conscious of in himself, and has learned to recognize in his fellow beings--namely, sense and will. He sees the sun move across the heavens, diffusing light and warmth, and says to himself, "He is alive." With the intellectual perception there is associated emotion. He feels that the sun is kind to him, and bows his head as he would to his chief, partly to express his thanks and partly in order that others may share his thoughts and feelings. This is religion. It comprises the three elements of thought, emotion, and action. Religion is at first exceptional. Every primitive man is not a seer or maker of religious myth. His ordinary attitude towards the powers of nature is that of the Chinaman, who thought that the moon was "all the same lamp pigeon." He is an unconscious Agnostic, and knows nothing of volition in the inanimate world.
The deification of men, although involving a contradiction in terms, has yet a substantial and most important truth associated with it. Great captains, wise rulers, inspired poets, sages and seers, whether alive or dead, deserve honour to which it is not easy to place a limit. Napoleon said that one of his generals was worth an army division. Who shall estimate the value to their respective races, and, indeed, to humanity, of such men as Shakespeare, Confucius, Mahomet, or Buddha? Nor are they dead. They live in their works, and subjectively in the hearts and minds of their countrymen. And may we not go a step further? Our actions, even the most insignificant, do not remain locked up in ourselves. As by sensation the whole universe affects us, so does every impulse of our ego react upon the universe, leaving an impression which is indelible. The physical world is different for the most trifling act of the meanest human being that ever lived. All our emotions and thoughts have a counterpart in our physical constitution, which is resolvable into motion, and is therefore indestructible. The doctrine of the conservation of energy is the physical counterpart of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Each involves the other. Assuming, therefore, that all motion is accompanied by something akin to sensation, it will be seen that dead men may continue to have perhaps even a sentient existence equal to the sum of the reactions of their ego upon its environment, animate or inanimate, during life. It is the remembered total energies of the man which, I take it, form the object of honour and worship after he is dead, and not his corpse or ghost. The latter is a mere accident, of secondary origin, and is by no means universally recognized.
In justification of man-worship, it may also be pleaded that if the nature-deity is truer, the man-deity is nearer to us and more capable of vivid realization. And as it is from the sympathetic recognition of life in our fellow men that we proceed to the recognition of life in the so-called inanimate universe, so it is by the contemplation of the highest types of humanity that we are able to refine and exalt our conception of divinity.
The two great sources of religious thought, personification and deification, are constantly intermingling their streams and reacting upon each other. A deity who begins his career as a Nature-God often in course of time loses this quality, and becomes hardly distinguishable from a magnified man. The Zeus of Homer is an example. He is much more the Father of Gods and men than a Sky or Weather-God. In Japan it is only the scholar who recognizes in Susa no wo the deity of the Rain-storm. To the people even Tenshōdaijin (the Sun Goddess) is nothing more than the great providential deity who resides at Ise. Her solar quality is practically forgotten. Men, on the other hand, may be exalted to such a height by the ascription to them of nature-powers that their original humanity is much obscured.
It is sometimes difficult to determine to which of the two currents of religious thought a particular deity belongs. For example, we find a sword worshipped as a deity. Is it on account of its wonderful cutting property, or because it was once an offering to a nature or a man-deity, and had therefore at length absorbed to itself a portion of his divinity? Or is it the Excalibur of some forgotten deified chieftain? There is no general answer to such questions. They must be decided, if at all, by the evidence in each case. To call objects of this kind "fetishes" helps us nothing. In the Yengishiki we find mention of a shrine to Iha no hime (the lady of the rock). At first sight this looks like a Nature-God. But when we find that an Iha no hime was the mother of the Mikado Richiu (end of fourth century) it seems more probable that the Iha no hime of this shrine was a deified mortal.
In Shinto it is the first of the two great currents of religious thought with which we are chiefly concerned. It is based much more on the conception--fragmentary, shallow, and imperfect as it is--of the universe as sentient than on the recognition of pre-eminent qualities in human beings, alive or dead. It springs primarily from gratitude to--and, though in a less degree, fear of--the great natural powers on which our existence depends. The desire to commemorate the virtues and services of great men and to perpetuate a loving remembrance of departed parents and forefathers takes a secondary place.