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this kind, but when we find that the authors were themselves guilty of murdering their sovereigns and of treason, their words lose all their effect.
As has already been said, the veal principles of conduct are not to be taught by precept, and we must go to the books to find the facts from which the real ancient way is to be learnt. The most important of these is the Kojiki. Most Japanese, including those who profess to be students of the way of the gods, hold the Nihonshoki in great honour. Its first two books are printed separately under the title of Jindai no muki, and the common Shintôists have written various so-called commentaries thereon. They even assert that these books are the only authorities about the beginning of the world and the age of the gods. Motoöri in the first volume of the Kojiki-Den has pointed out the erroneousness of this opinion. Part of the cosmogony given in the Jindai no maki can be actually traced to ancient Chinese writings, from which it has been taken almost word for word. But on the other hand the Nihonshoki, or, as it should properly be called, the Nihongi, has great merits of its own, which ought not to be passed over. In addition to the main text of the first two hooks, it quotes a number of other parallel passages from documents then extant, which often throw much light on the received traditions of the divine age, and it gives much fuller details of the history of the Mikados from Jimmu Tennô downwards than the Kojiki does. When the ornamental Chinese phraseology has been eliminated there remains a great treasure of truth, and the Nihongi therefore does really deserve the first place among the sacred books.
It is most lamentable that so much ignorance should prevail as to the evidences of the two fundamental doctrines, that Japan is the country of the Gods and her inhabitants the descendants of the Gods. Between the Japanese people and the Chinese, Hindoos, Russians, Dutch, Siamese, Cambodians and other nations of the world there is a difference of kind, rather than of degree. It was not out of vain-glory that the inhabitants of this country called it the land of the gods (Shinkoku,
