divined, they start to view, to remain ever after the most conspicuous things in the picture.
Thoroughly religious, the possessions are not in the least hierarchic. In theory esoteric enough, in practice they are, in the older sense of that word, profane. For godpossession is no perquisite of the priests. It is open to all the sufficiently pure. The reason for this lack of exclusiveness is to be sought in the essentially every-day family character of Shintō. Everybody is a descendant of the gods, and therefore intrinsically no less holy than his neighbor. Indeed, if ease of intercourse be any proof of kinship, the Japanese people certainly make good their claim to divine descent. For they pass in and out of the world beyond as if it were part of this world below.
Purity is the one prerequisite to divine possession, and though to acquire sufficient purity be an art, it is an art patent rather in the older unindividualized sense of the word. Any one who is pure may give lodgment to a god, just as any plutocrat may entertain modern royalty. The gods, like latter day princes, are no respecters of persons. They
