The Kojiki reveals to us, likewise, the childlike religious ideas of the islanders. Heaven lay, not about but above them in their infancy, yet not far away. Although in the "Notices," it is "the high plain of heaven," yet it is just over their heads, and once a single pillar joined it and the earth. Later, the idea was, that it was held up by the pillar-gods of the wind, and to them norito were recited. "The great plain of the blue sea" and "the land of luxuriant reeds" form "the world"--which means Japan. The gods are only men of prowess or renown. A kami is anything wonderful--god or man, rock or stream, bird or snake, whatever is surprising, sensational, or phenomenal, as in the little child's world of to-day. There is no sharp line dividing gods from men, the natural from the supernatural, even as with the normal uneducated Japanese of to-day. As for the kami or gods, they have all sorts of characters; some of them being rude and ill-mannered, many of them beastly and filthy, while others are noble and benevolent. The attributes of moral purity, wisdom and holiness, cannot be, and in the original writings are not, ascribed to them; but they were strong and had power. In so far as they had power they were called kami or gods, whether celestial or terrestrial. Among the kami--the one term under which they are all included--there were heavenly bodies, mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and animals, because those also were supposed to possess force, or at least some kind of influence for good or evil. Even peaches, as we have seen, when transformed into rocks, became gods.[14] That there was worship with awe, reverence, and fear, and that the festivals and sacrifices had two purposes, one of propitiating the offended Kami and the other of purifying the worshipper, may be seen in the norito or liturgies, some of which are exceedingly beautiful.[15] In them the feelings of the gods are often referred to. Sometimes their characters are described. Yet one looks in vain in either the "Notices," poems, or liturgies for anything definite in regard to these deities, or concerning morals or doctrines to be held as dogmas. The first gods come into existence after evolution of the matter of which they are composed has taken place. The later gods are sometimes able to tell who are their progenitors, sometimes not. They live and fight, eat and drink, and give vent to their appetites and passions, and then they die; but exactly what becomes of them after they die, the record does not state. Some are in heaven, some on the earth, some in Hades. The underworld of the first cycle of tradition is by no means that of the second.[16] Some of the kami are in the water, or on the water, or in the air. As for man, there is no clear statement as to whether he is to have any future life or what is to become of him, though the custom or jun-shi, or dying with the master, points to a sort of immortality such as the early Greeks and the Iroquois believed in.