ho dictated the
conditions on which they were willing to take the Japanese to be their
people, and fixed the terms of the covenant. So too in the account
given in the sixth chapter of Exodus, it was Jehovah himself who
dictated to Moses the terms of the covenant which he was willing to
make with the children of Israel: 'I will take you to me for a people,
and I will be to you a God.' In Japan it was to the Emperor, as high
priest, that the terms of the covenant were dictated, in consequence
of which the temple was built and the worship instituted.

The train of thought is quite clear and logically consistent. If the
gods of the Winds were to be trusted--as they were unquestionably
trusted--it must be because they had made a covenant with the people,
and would be faithful to it, if the people were. The direct statement,
in plain, intelligible words, in the fourth ritual, that a covenant of
this kind had actually been entered into, was but a statement of what
is implied by the very idea, and in the very act, of offering
sacrifices. And sacrifices had of course been offered in Japan long
before the tenth century: they were offered, and long had been offered
annually to the gods of the Harvest. Probably they had been offered to
the gods of the Storms long before they were offered to the gods of
the Winds; and the procedure narrated in the fourth ritual records the
transformation of the occasional and irregular sacrifices, made to the
winds when they threatened the harvest with damage, into annual
sacrifices, made every year as a matter of course. Thus, we have an
example of the way in which the older sacrifices, made originally only
in times of disaster, come to be assimilated to the more recent
sacrifices, which from their nature and origin, are offered regularly
every year. Not only is there a natural tendency in man to assimilate
things which admit of assimilation and can be brought under one rule;
but also it is advisable to avert calamity rather than to wait for it,
and, when it has happened, to do something. It would therefore be
desirable from this point of view to render regular worship to deities
who can send disaster; and thus to induce them to abstain from sending
it.

In the fourth Shinto ritual the gods of the Winds are represented as
initiating the contract and prescribing its terms. But in the first
ritual, which is concerned with the worship of the gods of the
Harvest, it is the community which is represen