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Updated: April 30, 2025
Even in its modern external forms, Shinto is sufficiently complex to task the united powers of the historian, philologist, and anthropologist, merely to trace out the multitudinous lines of its evolution, and to determine the sources of its various elements: primeval polytheisms and fetishisms, traditions of dubious origin, philosophical concepts from China, Korea, and elsewhere all mingled with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.
The philosophy associated with the name of Lao Tzu, who lived nobody knows when, probably about B.C. 600 which is popularly known as Taoism, from Tao, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and unthinkable principle on which it is based, operated with Confucianism, though in an opposite direction, in dislimning the old faith while putting nothing satisfactory in its place.
A main idea of Taoism one with which the Confucius of orthodox Confucianism did not concern himself is the possibility of creating within one's outer and mortal an inner and immortal self; by subduing desire, by sublimating away all impurities, by concentration. The seed of that Immortality is hidden in us; the seed of mastery of the inner and outer worlds. Faith is the key.
Since the fall of the Mongols , the Government has uniformly favoured Confucianism as the teaching of the State; before that, there were struggles with Buddhism and Taoism, which were connected with magic, and appealed to superstitious Emperors, quite a number of whom died of drinking the Taoist elixir of life.
After Han Wuti's next successor, the best minds took to thinking Confucianly: which was decidedly a good thing for China during the troublous times before and after the fall of the Western Hans. Then when Buddhism came in, Taoism came to the fore again, spurred up to emulation by this new rival.
After this he wandered about, and finally joined a party of rebels commanded by one of his own uncles. In addition to his military genius, he showed almost equal skill in the administration of the empire, and also became a liberal patron of literature and education. Eunuchs were prohibited from holding official posts, and Buddhism and Taoism were both made state religions.
When Buddhism enters China, in the same century Taoism borrows from it the apparatus of religion, temples, monasteries, and liturgies, and sets out on its career as a church. It was not without reason that Buddhism was sent for, if we are truly informed, by the rulers of China, or that it spread over the country, in the first century of our era.
But for many centuries Far Eastern statesmen have rarely regarded Buddhism and Taoism as more than interesting and legitimate activities, to be encouraged and regulated like educational and scientific institutions. Public Worship and Ceremonial
Then from Japan we get Shinto; still less a system of metaphysics or dogma. The Shinto temple, empty but for air, is symbolic of the creed whose keynotes are purity and simplicity. Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto are the three great native creations, in religion, of what I shall call the Altaic mind.
Yet despite its allegorical character, a number of mythological and fairy-tale motives are incorporated in it. The ape himself suggests Hanumant, the companion of Rama. Yo Huang is the Lord of the Heavens. The stone ape is the stone heart of natural man. The Buddhas, blessed spirits and gods, represent the ideals of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.
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