[Footnote 22: "There remains something of the Shintō heart after twelve hundred years of foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they see."--Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by Dr. George Wm. Knox.] [Footnote 23: M.E., p. 474. Honda the Samurai, pp. 256-267.] [Footnote 24: Kojiki, pp. 127, 136, 213, 217.] [Footnote 25: See S. and H., pp. 39, 76. "The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a sure sign of the presence of divinity. Near the spot where I live in Ko-ishi-kawa, Tōkiō, is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field. The spot looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot of the old tree." ... "As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe, every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every part is in some measure the seat of the Deity."--Legendre's Progressive Japan, p. 258.] [Footnote 26: De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.] CHAPTER II SHINTŌ; MYTHS AND RITUAL [Footnote 1: The scholar who has made profound researches in all departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of Shintō, is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier. He received the degree of B.A. from the London University. After several years' study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese. To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the T.A.S.J., on The Shintō Shrines at Isé, the Revival of Pure Shintō, and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the original and later forms of Shintō.]