Note (return) — Chapter III · - "THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS

There are no codes of morals inculcated in the god-way, for even its modern revivalists and exponents consider that morals are the invention of wicked people like the Chinese; while the ancient Japanese were pure in thought and act. They revered the gods and obeyed the Mikado, and that was the chief end of man, in those ancient times when Japan was the world and Heaven was just above the earth. Not exactly on Paul's principle of "where there is no law there is no transgression," but utterly scouting the idea that formulated ethics were necessary for these pure-minded people, the modern revivalists of Shintō teach that all that is "of faith" now is to revere the gods, keep the heart pure, and follow its dictates.17 The naïveté of the representatives of Shintō at Chicago in A.D. 1893, was almost as great as that of the revivalists who wrote when Japan was a hermit nation.