opment of this
nature worship or has another origin. In Japanese religion the
monotheistic tendency is markedly absent. The sun-goddess is the
principal deity but remains simply _prima inter pares_. But in the
ancient religion of China, T'ien or Heaven, also called Shang-ti, the
supreme ruler, though somewhat shadowy and impersonal, does become an
omnipotent Providence without even approximate rivals. Other superhuman
beings are in comparison with him merely angels. Unfortunately the early
history of Chinese religion is obscure and the documents scanty. In
India however the evolution of pantheism or theism (though usually with
a pantheistic tinge) out of the worship of nature forces seems clear.
These gods or forces are seen to melt into one another and to be aspects
of one another, until the mind naturally passes on to the idea that they
are all manifestations of one force finding expression in human
consciousness as well as in physical phenomena. The animist and
pantheist represent different stages but not different methods of
thought. For the former, every natural object which impresses him is
alive; the latter concurs in this view, only he thinks the universe is
instinct with one and the same life displaying itself in infinite
variety.

One difficulty incidental to the treatment of Asiatic religions in
European languages is the necessity, or at any rate the ineradicable
habit, of using well-known words like God and soul as the equivalents of
Asiatic terms which have not precisely the same content and which often
imply a different point of view. For practical life it is wise and
charitable to minimize religious differences and emphasize points of
agreement. But this willingness to believe that others think as we do
becomes a veritable vice if we are attempting an impartial exposition of
their ideas. If the English word God means the deity of ordinary
Christianity, who is much the same as Allah or Jehovah--that is to say
the creator of the world and enforcer of the moral law--then it would be
better never to use this word in writing of the religions of India and
Eastern Asia, for the concept is almost entirely foreign to them. The
nature spirits of which we have been speaking are clearly not God: when
an Indian peasant brings offerings to the tomb of a deceased brigand or
the Emperor of China promotes some departed worthy to be a deity of a
certain class, we call the ceremony deification, but there is not the
smalles