Enryō makes these historical distinctions and explains as follows. Mystery studies did not exist at the beginning of the human race. This is because in ancient times people did not know what matter and mind were. They did not know a reason for fearing things when they looked out at the world. It was a time of “no-thought.” In the first period, the age of the senses, human beings first be-came aware of mysteries. This was because people’s knowledge had finally advanced to the point where they knew the difference between mind and matter, between inside and outside. They began to look for causes by looking at results. They started to seek results through knowing their causes. It is from this that mystery studies began. To them, all phenomena were mysteries—the sun and the moon were mysteries, as were the other celestial bodies, the wind and rain, and mountains and rivers. For this reason they tried to work out causes and find explanations. When they couldn’t find explanations they be-gan to feel uneasy and thus the “study of all things” came about. This was a time when the explanations for all phenomena were based only on those tangible traits that could be perceived by the human senses of vision and hearing. However, from our modern standpoint the explanations given in that era were nothing more than misunderstandings and delusions. We can’t call these explanations “scholarly theories” but this was the origin of mystery studies. In the second period, the age of imagination, as human knowledge advanced, people began to realize there were things that could not be explained only in terms of tangible traits, and they naturally started to imagine such traits. As the imaginative process progressed the “silhouette” of tangible traits changed further and became closer 105
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