earliest sacred records do, indeed, make mention of an underworld,
where mysterious Thunder-gods and evil goblins dwelt in corruption;
but this vague world of the dead communicated with the world of the
living; [27] and the spirit there, though in some sort attached to
its decaying envelope, could still receive upon earth the homage and
the offerings of men. Before the advent of Buddhism, there was no
idea of a heaven or a hell. The ghosts of the departed were thought
of as constant presences, needing propitiation, and able in some way
to share the pleasures and the pains of the living. They required
food and drink and light; and in return for these; they could confer
benefits. Their bodies had melted into earth; but their spirit-power
still lingered in the upper world, thrilled its substance, moved in
its winds and waters. By death they had acquired mysterious
force;--they had become "superior ones," Kami, gods.

That is to say, gods in the oldest Greek and Roman sense. Be it
observed that there were no moral distinctions, East or West, in this
deification. "All the dead become gods," wrote the great Shinto
commentator, Hirata. So likewise, in the thought of the early Greeks
and even of the late Romans, all the dead became gods. M. de
Coulanges observes, in La Cite Antique: "This kind of apotheosis was
not the privilege of the great alone. no distinction was made .... It
was not even necessary to have been a virtuous man: the wicked man
became a god as well as the good man,--only that in this
after-existence, he retained the evil inclinations of his former
life." Such also [28] was the case in Shinto belief: the good man
became a beneficent divinity, the bad man an evil deity,--but all
alike became Kami. "And since there are bad as well as good gods,"
wrote Motowori, "it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings of
agreeable food, playing the harp, blowing the flute, singing and