In common with most human beings the Japanese consider the serpent an object of mystery and awe, but most of them go further and pay the ophidian a reverence and awe which is worship.  Their oldest literature shows how large a part the serpent played in the so-called divine age, how it acted as progenitress of the Mikado’s ancestry, and how it afforded means of incarnation for the kami or gods.  Ten species of ophidia are known in the Japanese islands, but in the larger number of more or less imaginary varieties which figure in the ancient books we shall find plenty of material for fetich-worship.  In perusing the “Kojiki” one scarcely knows, when he begins a story, whether the character which to all appearance is a man or woman is to end as a snake, or whether the mother after delivering her child will or will not glide into the marsh or slide away into the sea, leaving behind a trail of slime.  A dragon is three-fourths serpent, and both the dragon and the serpent are prominent figures, perhaps the most prominent of the kami or gods in human or animal form in the “Kojiki” and other early legends of the gods, though the crocodile, crow, deer, dog, and other animals are kami.[24] It is therefore no wonder that serpents have been and are still worshipped by the people, that some of their gods and goddesses are liable at any time to slip away in scaly form, that famous temples are built on sites noted as being the abode or visible place of the actual water or land snake of natural history, and that the spot where a serpent is seen to-day is usually marked with a sacred emblem or a shrine.[25] We shall see how this snake-worship became not only a part of Shint[=o] but even a notable feature in corrupt Buddhism.

Pantheism’s Destruction of Boundaries.[26]

In its rudest forms, this pantheism branches out into animism or shamanism, fetichism and phallicism.  In its higher forms, it becomes polytheism, idolatry and defective philosophy.  Having centuries ago corrupted Buddhism it is the malaria which, unseen and unfelt, is ready to poison and corrupt Christianity.  Indeed, it has already given over to disease and spiritual death more than one once hopeful Christian believer, teacher and preacher in the Japan of our decade.

To assault and remove the incubus, to replace and refill the mind, to lift up and enlighten the Japanese peasant, science as already known and faith in one God, Creator and Father of all things, must go hand in hand.  Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant inaka or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying thought to him who looks into creation.

Keep the boundary line clear between God and his world and all is order and discrimination.  Obliterate that boundary and all is pathless morass, black chaos and on the mind the phantasms which belong to the victim of delirium tremens.