=Immortality of the Soul.=—This doctrine is nowhere directly taught in the Shinto books. There is a land of Yomi to which we are told that some of the gods retired at death. It is represented as inhabited by various personifications of death and disease, but not by human beings or their ghosts, though the phrase ‘even pass of Yomi,’ like the _facilis descensus Averni_, seems intended to express the facility with which all we mortal men find our way thither. In one passage of the _Nihongi_, Yomi is clearly no more than a metaphor for the grave. A brother of Jimmu Tenno, the first Mikado, is said to have gone to the ‘Eternal Land’ at his death, and in a poem of the Manyōshiu, a deceased Mikado is said to have ascended into heaven. The prehistoric custom of sacrificing wives and attendants at the tombs of dead sovereigns may be thought to imply a belief in their continued existence. But there are other motives for this practice than the wish to gratify the deceased by providing him with companions in the other world. The _norito_ or rituals contain no reference to the immortality of the soul. =Shintai.=—The mitama is represented in the shrine by a concrete object termed the Shintai or ‘God-body.’ It may be a mirror, a sword, a tablet with the god’s name, a pillow, a spear, etc. A round stone, which is cheap and durable, is a very common Shintai. The god is sometimes represented as attaching himself to the Shintai, and may be even considered identical with it by the ignorant. The _mitama_ and _shintai_ are frequently confounded. The latter was in many cases originally an offering which, by long association, came ultimately to be looked upon as partaking in some measure of the divine nature. =Idols.=—With a few unimportant exceptions, Shinto has no idols. The Shintai is not in the least anthropomorphic. The pictures of the gods sold at shrines at the present day are due to Chinese or Buddhist influence.