The polytheistic character of Shinto is intimately connected with the weakness of the Central Government of Japan during the period of its development. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that it is another manifestation of the same want of national cohesion.[42] The ancient Mikados were anything but autocrats. Their authority was almost always overshadowed by the influence of ministers who struggled among themselves for the direction of the power nominally vested in the sovereign. The Central Government had little effective jurisdiction beyond the capital and the five home provinces. No wonder that under these circumstances local deities retained their vitality and prestige. Monotheism was an impossibility in ancient Japan. But we may trace certain tendencies in this direction which are not without interest. A nation may pass from polytheism to monotheism in three ways: Firstly, by singling out one deity and causing him to absorb the functions and the worship of the rest; secondly, by a fresh deification of a wider conception of the universe; and thirdly, by the dethroning of the native deities in favour of a single God of foreign origin. It is this last, the most usual fate of polytheisms, which threatens the old Gods of Japan. Weakened by the encroachments of Buddhism and the paralyzing influence of Chinese sceptical philosophy, they already begin to feel The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky eyne. Our business, however, is with the past, not with the future. The first of the three paths which lead to monotheism is illustrated by the tendency to ascribe to several of the Shinto deities a certain superiority over the others. The Sun-Goddess, Kuni-toko-tachi, the first God in point of time according to the _Nihongi_, Ame no mi naka nushi, and in Idzumo, Ohonamochi have been in turn exalted to a unique position by their adherents. But, for reasons which will appear when we come to examine these deities more closely, none of them really deserves the title of Supreme Being. Max Müller's opinion that "the belief in a Supreme Being is inevitable" is not borne out by the facts of Shinto. The second path, which leads to monotheism through a more comprehensive conception of the universe, is exemplified by the Creator deities, Izanagi and Izanami, personifications of the male and female principles of Nature, and still more so by Musubi, the God of Growth, which might conceivably have developed into a Pantheistic Supreme Being. But philosophic abstractions of this kind are unfitted for human nature's daily food. Musubi never acquired much hold on the people, though at one time his worship held a very prominent place at the Court of the Mikados. He eventually split up, first into two, then into a group of deities, and finally became almost wholly neglected. The _Nihongi_, under the date A.D. 644, gives the following account of a blind and abortive movement towards a supreme monotheistic deity which claims from us a measure of sympathy:--