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Not being an expert, he must take it as he finds it; and before he can take it, he must have been told stories about it in his childhood and had before him all his life an elaborate iconography of it produced by writers, painters, sculptors, temple architects, and artists of all the higher sorts.
Very rarely are images to be seen upon a kamidana: for primitive Shintoism excluded images rigidly as Jewish or Mohammedan law; and all Shinto iconography belongs to a comparatively modern era especially to the period of Ryobu-Shinto and must be considered of Buddhist origin.
They have long, narrow, sinister, glittering eyes; they seem to snarl; they are weird, very weird creatures, the servants of the Rice-God, retainers of Inari-Sama, and properly belong, not to Buddhist iconography, but the imagery of Shinto. No inscriptions upon these tombs corresponding to our epitaphs.
Indeed art has never been great when it was not providing an iconography for a live religion. And it has never been quite contemptible except when imitating the iconography after the religion had become a superstition. Italian painting from Giotto to Carpaccio is all religious painting; and it moves us deeply and has real greatness.
Even if, as sometimes happens, he is a bit of an amateur in metaphysics as well as a professional politician, he must still govern according to the popular iconography, and not according to his own personal interpretations if these happen to be heterodox. It will be seen then that the revival of religion on a scientific basis does not mean the death of art, but a glorious rebirth of it.
Christ's Resurrection is, to yet other writers, symbolized by the Phoenix and the cock, and His wrath and power by the rhinoceros and the buffalo. "The iconography of the Virgin is less puzzling; She may be symbolized by any chaste and gentle creature.
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