-view
exists a profound element of truth. The Shinto world-conception needs
to be expanded to take the universe and all races of men into its
view; and to see that Japan is not alone the object of divine
solicitude, but that all races likewise owe their origin to that same
divine power, and that even though the Emperor is not more directly
the offspring of the gods than are all men, yet in the providence of
Him who ruleth the affairs of men, the Emperor is in fact the visible
representative of authority and power for the people over whom he
reigns. With this expansion and the consequences that flow from it,
the world-view that has cradled Old Japan will come into accord with
the scientific Christian world-view, and become fitted to be the
foundation for the new and individualistic social order, now arising
in Japan, granting full liberty of thought and action, knowing that
only so can truth come out of error, and assured that truth is the
only ground of permanent welfare.

Throughout the centuries including the present era of Meiji, it is the
Shinto religion that has provided and that still provides religious
sanctions for the social order--even for the new social order that has
come in from the West. It is the belief of the people in the divine
descent of the Emperor, and his consequent divine right, that to-day
unifies the nation and causes it to accept so readily the new social
order; desired by him, they raise no questions, make no opposition,
even though in some respects it brings them trouble and anxiety.

Our study of Buddhism has brought to light its extremely
individualistic nature, and its lack of asocial ideal. Its world-view
we have sufficiently examined in the preceding chapter. We are told
that when Buddhism came to Japan it made little headway until it
adopted the Shinto deities into its theogony. What does this mean?
That only on condition of accepting the Shinto sanctions for the
communal order of society was it able to commend itself to the people
at large. And Buddhism had no difficulty in fulfilling this condition,
because it had no ideal order of society to present and no religious
sanctions for any kind of social order; in this respect Buddhism had
no ground for conflict with Shinto. Shinto had the field to itself;
and Buddhism was perfectly at liberty to adopt, or at least to allow,
any social order that might present itself. Furthermore, by its
doctrines of incarnation and transmigration, accor