em. These prepared
the way for the absorption of the indigenous into the foreign cultus
under the form called by an enthusiastic emperor, Riy[=o]bu Shint[=o],
or the "two-fold divine doctrine." Of this, we shall speak in another
lecture.

Suffice it here to say that by the scheme of syncretism propounded by
K[=o]b[=o] in the ninth century, Shint[=o] was practically overlaid by
the new faith from India, and largely forgotten as a distinct religion
by the Japanese people. As late as A.D. 927, there were three thousand
one hundred and thirty-two enumerated metropolitan and provincial
temples, besides many more unenumerated village and hamlet shrines of
Shint[=o]. These are referred to in the revised codes of ceremonial law
set forth by imperial authority early in the tenth century. Probably by
the twelfth century the pure rites of the god-way were celebrated, and
the unmixed traditions maintained, in families and temples, so few as to
be counted on the fingers. The ancient language in which the archaic
forms had been preserved was so nearly lost and buried, that out of the
ooze of centuries of oblivion, it had to be rescued by the skilled
divers of the seventeenth century. Mabuchi, Motoeri and the other
revivalists of pure Shint[=o], like the plungers after orient pearls,
persevered until they had first recovered much that had been supposed
irretrievably lost. These scholars deciphered and interpreted the
ancient scriptures, poetry, prose, history, law and ritual, and once
more set forth the ancient faith, as they believed, in its purity.

Whether, however, men can exactly reproduce and think for themselves the
thoughts of others who have been dead for a millennium, is an open
question. The new system is apt to be transparent. Just as it is nearly
impossible for us to restore the religious life, thoughts and orthodoxy
of the men who lived before the flood, so in the writings of the
revivalists of pure Shint[=o] we detect the thoughts of Dutchmen, of
Chinese, and of very modern Japanese. Unconsciously, those who would
breathe into the dry bones of dead Shint[=o] the breath of the
nineteenth century, find themselves compelled to use an oxygen and
nitrogen generator made in Holland and mounted with Chinese apparatus;
withal, lacquered and decorated with the art of to-day. To change from
metaphor to matter of fact, modern "pure Shint[=o]" is mainly a mass of
speculation and philosophy, with a tendency of which the ancient god