The importance of the deification of human beings in Shinto has been grossly exaggerated both by European scholars and by modern Japanese writers. Grant Allen, for example, says, in his 'Evolution of the Idea of God': "We know that some whole great national creeds, like the Shinto of Japan, recognize no deities at all, save living kings and dead ancestral spirits." He was probably misled by the old writer Kaempfer, whose ignorance of the subject is stupendous. The truth is that Shinto is derived in a much less degree from the second of the two great currents of religious thought than from the first. It has comparatively little worship of human beings. In the _Kojiki_, _Nihongi_, and _Yengishiki_ we meet with hardly anything of this element. None of their great Gods are individual human beings, though at a later period a few deities of this class attained to considerable eminence and popularity. An analysis of a list of "Greater Shrines," prepared in the tenth century, yields the following results: Of the Gods comprised in it, seventeen are nature deities, one is a sword, which probably represented a nature deity, two are more or less legendary deceased Mikados, one is the deified type and supposed ancestor of a priestly corporation, one is the ancestor of an empress, and one a deceased statesman. =Deified Individual Men=.--Like Nature-Gods, Man-Gods may be divided into three classes--namely, deified individual men, deified classes of men, and deified human qualities. The first of these classes comprises the Mikados, living or dead, and numerous heroes, of whom Yamato-dake, the legendary conqueror of the eastern part of Japan, and Sugahara (Tenjin), the god of learning, may be quoted as examples. =Phases of Conception=.--They are variously conceived of, as follow:-- I. X, alive or dead, is a great man, worthy of our love, reverence, gratitude, or fear. II. X, sometimes when alive, more frequently when dead, is possessed of superhuman powers, usually borrowed from those of nature, such as the control of the weather and the seasons, and of diseases. III. X's powers reside not in his body but in a more or less spiritual emanation from it. In the first of these three phases, man-worship is not religion. So long as a man is honoured for those qualities only which he really possesses or possessed, he cannot be called a God. But although rational man-worship is not in itself religion, it is a necessary factor in its development. Our sentiments of gratitude and awe towards the great nature-powers spring up in hearts already prepared by the feelings which we entertain towards our parents, superiors, and other fellow-men. Whether individually or collectively, a man loves his parents before he loves God. The outward signs of divine worship are almost exclusively in the first place acts of reverence towards men. A man bows his head or makes presents to his superiors before he worships or sacrifices to a deity.