As regards their religious nature and devel opment the Japanese do not differ essentially from other peoples of the same grade of race culture ; while their more or less important characteristics of religious belief, sentiment and practice correspond well to the national type of character. Religious superstitions of all the various kinds have flourished among the ignorant, here as elsewhere; although those of the more dark and cruel kind, such as char acterized the Aztecs and much of northern Europe, and are to-day prevalent in Africa and some of the South Sea Islands, do not appear ever to have taken a similar hold upon the Japanese. The physical horrors of the popular Buddhistic hell have been relatively impotent in Japan. either as inspiration or as restraint. Myth-making and miracle-mongering, such as result from the application of a lively imagina tion to religious and semi-religious conceptions, are nowhere more abundant. Invisible, divine spirits of all sorts, both good and evil (but chiefly kindly), dwell near to man and are ever ready to enter into personal relations with him. The religion of nature-worship in all its mani fold forms and manifestations is inseparably connected with the testhetical sympathy and artistic appreciation of natural objects and phe nomena. While ancestor-worship and hero worship both spring from and contribute to those sentiments of loyalty and devotion which are the spiritual impulse and moral principle of what has been noblest in the past life of the nation.
When religious belief develops into a mono theistic faith, the conception of God is apt to be clouded by an imperfect apprehension of the nature of Personality and an inadequate esti mate of personal values. Thus a tendency to a mystical and vague, rather than a logical or scientific pantheism, controls the thinking and shapes the conclusions of the philosophy of religion, or theology, among the Japanese; and agnosticism or atheism in religion is rather the result of indifference, or of intellectual weariness, or of the affectation of independent and modern views, than of scientific deductions or systematic reflection. When, however, the
Being of the World is clearly apprehended as the Ideal of perfect Ethical Spirit, and man's relations to this Being are regarded as best symbolized under such terms, of a personal sig nificance and value, as Lord, Father and Re deemer, the characteristic temperament of this race quite naturally and spontaneously, as it were, produces examples of religious devotion, self-sacrifice and heroism, which have rarely been equaled, and have never been excelled, in the religious history of the race.
The question arises, whether these so-called racial characteristics of the Japanese are not rapidly changing under the greatly changed con ditions of the modern life — whether, indeed, they have not already changed essentially, and are destined to still greater changes in the future. How, then, can they properly be re garded as racial at all? Modern science, mod ern business, enlarged ambitions and opportuni ties for foreign intercourse, but especially what we may call the of the people (a process going on over all the world), are undoubtedly working marvelous alterations in the mind and conduct of the nation at large. We believe, however, as yet that these altera tions are not inconsistent with the appraisal of the racial characteristics, in respect of their elements both of strength and of weakness, as it has already been somewhat minutely made. It is a notable source of our confidence in the future development of Japan that, under enor mous difficulties in the past, and frequent ap parent crises in its more recent period, the Japanese government and people have shown themselves equal to trying emergencies.