Note 284 — Chapter XIII · CONFUCIANISM—I

Ancestor-worship has been called "the foundation and chief characteristic of Shinto" (D. Goh in Religious Systems of the World, 8th ed., p. 99); but though this is the statement of a scholarly native of Japan, it is as well to observe that Dr. Aston, one of the best European authorities on the subject, holds a somewhat different view as to the connection between Shinto (in its earliest form) and the cult of ancestors. "All the great deities of the older Shinto," he says, "are not Man but Nature gods." (Shinto, p. 9.)