2. The Spirits.--The worship "of the spirits" is a primary religious duty for the Chinaman. The spirits, however, are an ill-defined set of beings; they are generally spoken of in the plural number, and sacrifice was offered to them as a body, no particular spirits being named. The spirits are connected with natural objects, every part of nature has its spirit. The sun, the moon, the five planets, clouds, rain, wind, the five great mountains, but also every smaller mountain, the rivers, each district, and a thousand other things, all have their spirits.[3] The spirits are not flitting about capriciously, but have been collected together and organised in a hierarchy, and this has loosened their connection with natural objects. They are spoken of as a set of beings who may be addressed as a body. A prince alone may sacrifice to the spirit of the earth, and to those of the mountains and rivers of his territory. But to the spirits in general all may and should pray; they assist those who pay them reverence and sacrifice to them. It will be seen that the worship of heaven and that of the spirits are kept separate. The former is the imperial worship; the emperor alone is competent to attend to it. The latter is the official worship of minor states. Nor are the two sets of deities wrought into a homogeneous system; we hear that the spirits, while subordinate to Shang-ti, are not his messengers. The surmise is not to be avoided that these two worships came originally from different circles of ideas, and have not been perfectly blended. The worship of heaven belongs to the higher nature-worship, that of the spirits to the lower; the latter is animistic, it is a worship of detached spirits, while the former is a worship of the natural object itself. The spirits are all good; there are scarcely any bad spirits in Chinese belief. [Footnote 3: The Japanese official religion, "Shin-to" (=way of the gods, as distinguished from Butsudo, way of Buddha, _i.e._ Japanese Buddhism), an easy worship of numberless spirits, without sacrifices and without any moral doctrine, is allied to this branch of the religion of China; as also is the religion of Corea. Shin-to is not ancestral worship, and recognises no life after death.]