far as it is
organized and has a mouth with which to speak, following the
abdicating proclivities of the ancient social order, excommunicated
itself from its religious heritage, aspiring to be nothing more than a
gate-keeper of cemeteries.

The sources of the power of the Shinto sanctions lies in the nature of
its conception of the universe. Although it attempted no
interpretation of the universe as a whole, it conceived of the origin
of the country and people of Japan as due to the direct creative
energy of the gods. Japan was accordingly conceived as a divine land
and the people a divine people. The Emperor was thought to have
descended in direct line from the gods and thus to be a visible
representative of the gods to the people, and to possess divine power
and authority with which to rule the people. Whenever Japanese came
into contact with foreign peoples, it was natural to consider them
outside of the divine providence, aliens, whose presence in the
divine land was more or less of a pollution. This world-view was well
calculated to develop a spirit of submissive obedience and loyal
adherence to the hereditary rulers of the land, and of fierce
antagonism to foreigners. This view constituted the moral foundation
for the social order, the intellectual framework within which the
state developed. Paternal feudalism was the natural, if not the
necessary, accompaniment of this world-view. Even to this day the
scholars of the land see no other ground on which to found Imperial
authority, no other basis for ethics and religion, than the divine
descent of the Emperor.[DE]

The Shinto world-view, conceiving of men as direct offspring of the
gods, has in it potentially the doctrine of the divine nature of all
men, and their consequent infinite worth. Shinto never developed this
truth, however. It did not discover the momentous implications of its
view. Failing to discover them, it failed to introduce into the social
order that moral inspiration, that social leaven which would have
gradually produced the individualistic social order.

No attempt has been made either in ancient or modern times to square
this Shinto world-view with advancing knowledge of the world,
particularly with the modern scientific conception of the universe.
Anthropology, ethnology, and the doctrine of evolution both cosmic and
human, are all destructive of the primitive Shinto world-view. It
would not be difficult to show, however, that in this world