It is not simply that the two contrive to live peaceably together; they are actually both of them implicitly believed by the same individual.

Millions of Japanese are good Buddhists and good Shintoists at the same time.

That such a combination should be possible is due to the essential difference in the character of the two beliefs.

The one is extrinsic, the other intrinsic, in its relations to the human soul.

Shintoism tells man but little about himself and his hereafter; Buddhism, little but about himself and what he may become.