In examining Far Eastern religion, therefore, for personality, or the reverse, we may dismiss Shintoism as having no particular bearing upon the subject.

The only effect it has is indirect in furthering the natural propensity of these people to an adoration of nature.
In Korea and in China, again, Confucianism is the great moral law, as by reflection it is to a certain extent in Japan.

But that in its turn may be omitted in the present argument; inasmuch as Confucius taught confessedly and designedly only a system of morals, and religiously abstained from pronouncing any opinion whatever upon the character or the career of the human soul.
Taouism, the third great religion of China, resembles Shintoism to this extent, that it is a body of superstition, and not a form of philosophy.
It undertakes to provide nostrums for spiritual ills, but is dumb as to the constitution of the soul for which it professes to prescribe.
Its pills are to be swallowed unquestioningly by the patient, and are warranted to cure; and owing to the two great human frailties, fear and credulity, its practice is very large.

Possessing, however, no philosophic diploma, it is without the pale of the present discussion.
The demon-worship of Korea is a mild form of the same thing with the hierarchy left out, every man there being his own spiritual adviser.
An ordinary Korean is born with an innate belief in malevolent spirits, whom he accordingly propitiates from time to time.

One of nobler birth propitiates only the spirits of his own ancestors.
We come, then, by a process of elimination to a consideration of Buddhism, the great philosophic faith of the whole Far East.
Not uncommonly in the courtyard of a Japanese temple, in the solemn half-light of the sombre firs, there stands a large stone basin, cut from a single block, and filled to the brim with water.