But we need not pursue further this seemingly "endless genealogy" of the deities. We are told in section xxx that in a divine assembly of eight hundred myriad deities it was decided to send one of their number to govern "the Central Land of Reed-Plains," and subdue the "savage Earthly Deities." Various deities were sent, and at length a grandchild of the Sun-Goddess[11] became the Ruler of the Empire, and bears the composite name of _Kamu-yamato-ihare-biko_, but is commonly called by his "canonical name," _Jimmu_, a title given him long after his decease. From such heavenly origin sprang all the Emperors of Japan, and the present Mikado, like all his predecessors, is thus conceived as an offspring of Heaven, a direct descendant of the ancient heavenly deities. The significance of this fact will appear conspicuously when we come to notice more particularly the essential elements in the Shinto cult. On this remarkable cosmogony and mythology we do well at this point to offer the following observations: (1) These accounts of the origin of the Japanese Archipelago and its rulers are regarded as _genuine traditions handed down from former ages_. One part of the tradition is that the Emperor, who took pains to have the old records carefully looked after, employed a person living in his household, who was gifted with marvelous memory; "he could repeat without mistake the contents of any document he had ever seen, and never forgot anything that he had heard;" and from the lips of this man of prodigious memory the scribe Yasumaro wrote down the contents of the _Ko-ji-ki_.[12] (2) Notice, in the next place, that the island world of _Japan is all the world_ which these records know anything about. The universe of this cosmogony consists of "the islands of the Central-Land of the Reed-Plains," with their inland and surrounding seas, and "the Plain of High Heaven," which, however, was not conceived as very far away above them. (3) The entire description of the beginnings of heaven, and earth, and gods, and men accords with the idea of a continuous process of evolution. The first three heavenly deities "were born alone, and hid their persons," or disappeared. All the other deities are spoken of as begotten, or born, and the deities give birth to the different islands of the earth.[13]