development what spontaneous variation is to organic development.[1]
In Stages I. and II. of the evolution of nature-deities, it is the nature power or object itself which is the deity. Stage II. (Anthropomorphism), so long as it is not meant literally, is not inconsistent with a direct worship of natural objects and phenomena. But the vulgar are always prone to mistake metaphor for reality. When they are told that the Sun is a goddess, who walks, weaves, wears armour, sows rice, and so on, they take these statements literally, combining an implicit belief in them with the worship of the Sun itself. Even Motoöri says that it is the actual Sun in Heaven which we worship as Amaterasu no Oho-Kami (the Heaven-shining-great Deity), while he believes at the same time that the Sun-myth of the Kojiki is real history. A time comes when it is objected that the Sun has no arms or legs necessary for the performance of the actions attributed to her. It is pointed out that the wind has no bodily form at all. Instead of going back to the true explanation—that these things are only metaphorical, the literal-minded man prefers to accept the suggestion (which brings us to Stage III.) that the deity is not the actual sun, or wind, or sea, or mountain, but a powerful being who rules it. Such beings, however, are not at first conceived of as in any way incorporeal.
- ↑ "Mr. Tylor has justly observed that the true lesson of the new science of Comparative Mythology is the barrenness in primitive times of the faculty which we most associate with mental fertility, the imagination...... Among these multitudes (the millions of men who fill what we vaguely call the East) Literature, Religion, and Art—or what correspond to them—move always within a distinctly drawn circle of unchanging notions...... This condition of thought is rather the infancy of the human mind prolonged than a different maturity from that most familiar to us."—Maine, 'Early History of Institutions,' pp. 225-6. This characteristic of the mental development of the races of the Far East is discussed in 'A Comparative Study of the Japanese and Korean Languages,' by W. G. Aston, in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, August, 1879, and more fully by Mr. Percival Lowell, in his 'Soul of the Far East,' 1888. See also Mr. B. H. Chamberlain's 'Kojiki,' Introd., lxvi.
