The Literature, History, and Civilization of the Japanese [pp. 306-329]

1872.] OF THE JAPANESE. 317
Among the members of the recent embassy from the Tycoon, there were men who would be called in Europe freethinkers, and even atheists. By a strange but not inexplicable
self-conliadiction, they profess, in spite of their independent
ideas, a profound respect for the worship of their fathers,
and refuse to ci4ticise in any way their national reh.gion.
"The worship of the Kami," one of them said to me, "is
above all religion; it is the love of our country: it is the
most indestructible faith in the sanctity of its origin, and the
grandeur of its future destinies." Then another added:
"We have, in Japan, a religion like what you practise in
Europe; it is full of absurdities, and every day clothes it
with new, ridiculous practices. Every one is free to embrace
it and believe in it. But no one can dispense with, and no
one in our whole empire does dispense with, a veneration for
the teachings of our national religion of the Kamis. " *
V.
In studying this curious doctrine of political piety, we must
therefore separate the superior sentiment, which insures it
perpetuity, from the singular legends which embellish its
cradle. Still these legends are worthy of our attention, as
well for il~e pleasant way in whidi they are told by il~e n&')~tive
writers, as by their origin Aity, which contrasts them with
the cosmogonic legends of other nations. In accordance
with the most remarkable works of modern geology, they attribute the most remote antiquity to the earth. Nothing
seems to il~em to give a more proper idea of this incalculable
antiquity than to Say, like the Indians, that it reaches back
to hundreds of thousands of millions of years. Chaos, according to the native writers, had the form of an egg, in
which were enclosed the germs of all beiugs.t At tlie moment
of creation the subtile matter freed itself and formed the
heaven; the heavier matter sank and formed the earth. The
waters then spread themselves in all directions, and in the
* There is no need of~our protesting against the summary judgment of this
~pinted Japanese. lie had read neither our ereed nor our eateehisrn. A. B.
~ See the texts upon ehaos in Greek and Latin authors, in the Ann ales do
PAiio8opkte, t. i, p. 231 (6th series).
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