grievously from the encroachments of Buddhism. Buddhist priests had assumed the guardianship of the great majority of the shrines of the national cult, and had adulterated its ceremonies and doctrines with much that was alien. The native gods were not abolished—they had still some hold on the popular mind; but they were degraded to the position of temporary manifestations of Buddha. As one of Motoöri's pupils said, they were made domestics in the Buddhist household.
This state of things was a great grief to Motoöri. It drove him back from the present to the old unadulterated Shinto taught in the Kojiki, Nihongi, and Norito. Here he found the satisfaction to his mind and heart which he had failed to find elsewhere. Himself convinced of the excellence of the old national religion, he made it the business of his life to propagate it among his fellow-countrymen, and to denounce the abominable depravity of those who neglected it in favour of sophistical heresies imported from abroad.
Hence arose a controversy which is not without interest to ourselves as an episode in the unending conflict between science and religion. Both parties to the struggle fought under grievous difficulties. Not only could the Kangakusha offer nothing to satisfy the heart-need of a personal Deity, but they were sorely hampered by the imperfections of their philosophy, and by a belief in divination, ghosts, and spiritual beings, which they did not perceive to be inconsistent with it. Motoöri and his followers, on the other hand, were weighted by an antiquated mythology which presented many glaring absurdities even when viewed in the dim light of Chinese philosophy. The Wagakusha were also embarrassed by the absence from Shinto of anything like a code of
