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.

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.

Man-Gods.