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cannot be conveniently committed to writing, and it is probable that the ancient traditions, which were preserved by exercise of memory, have for this very reason come down to us in greater detail than if they had been recorded in documents. Besides, men must have had much stronger memories in the days before they acquired the habit of trusting to written characters for facts which they wished to remember, as is shown to the present day in the case of the illiterate, who have to depend on memory alone.
The facts that the sacred mirror bestowed by Amaterasu upon Ninigi no Mikoto is still preserved at the Naikû temple in Isé; that the sword “Grass-cutter” is to this day at the temple of Atsuta in Owari; that remains which date from the divine age are even now to be found in various provinces; that the sepulchres of the Mikados from Jimmu downwards exist in parts of the Kiuai; that numerous relics of the divine age remain in the possession of the Court, and that the Nakatomi, Imbe and Ohotomo families have transmitted the functions which they exercised in the age of the gods in unbroken succession to their descendants of later times, vindicate beyond the possibility of a doubt the truth of the old traditions.
In reply to the argument that if Amaterasu and the sun be identical, there must have been perpetual night before she was born, which is inconsistent with the fact of trees and plants being in existence before her birth; and that therefore the sun must have been hanging in the sky before she was born, he reiterates the statement that the goddess and the sun are one and the same. For although she will continue to shine as long as heaven and earth endure, she was born in Japan, and her descendants to this day rule over the empire. The difficulty of reconciling the statements that the world was plunged into darkness when she retired into the cavern, and that darkness did not exist before she was born is one that would strike even a child’s intelligence. The critic need not make so much fuss about this point, as if it were entirely a new discovery of his own. The very inconsistency is
