Recent statistics give the number of Shinto priests as 14,766. Their maximum salary is about £20 per month. FOOTNOTES: [174] For an account of similar priests or medicine men in many other countries, see 'The Golden Bough.' The Nazirite (Numbers vi.) is their Jewish counterpart. [175] See Hirata's _Koshiden_, xviii. 23. CHAPTER X. WORSHIP. Religious conduct includes worship, morality in so far as it has obtained the sanction of religion, and ceremonial purity. The term worship applies both to the forms of courtesy and respect towards human beings and of reverence for the Gods. Indeed the latter is not a separate kind of worship, but is composed almost exclusively of the same elements in a new application. Nearly everything in the worship of the Gods is borrowed from the forms of social respect. It is sometimes maintained that these forms, before they become a part of religious ritual, pass through an intermediate stage, namely, the worship of the dead, whether as ghosts or dead ancestors. This view is based on the hypothesis that Gods were originally deceased men. It cannot well apply to Shinto, where all the Great Gods are nature-deities. When a Japanese greets the rising Sun by bowing his head, he does so because that is already with him an habitual form of respect. No doubt he honours the dead in this way as well as the living. But the occasions for the worship of the living so far outnumber those of paying respect to the dead that the latter may be regarded as a negligible quantity in the formation of the habit. There is surely nothing to prevent a man who had never worshipped ghosts or ancestors from transferring direct to nature-deities forms of respect arising out of the relations of living men. Several practices of worship, such as clapping the hands for joy and the avoidance of contamination by touching a dead body, have no meaning in the case of the cult of the dead. Worship has a secondary but most important function. It is addressed not only to the Gods but to our fellow-men. It is a means of communicating religious thoughts and emotions from man to man and from one generation to another. =Obeisance=.--The simplest and most universal mode of showing reverence to the Gods is by bowing. In Shinto it is the custom to bow twice before and after praying or making an offering. The word _ogamu_, to pray or worship, means to bend. Kneeling is also practised--one of the _norito_ has the phrase "bending the knee like a deer"--but is less common. Squatting (_kashikomaru_) is another form of obeisance.