44 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



extent an extent which would be scarcely credible, did not indepen- 

 dent witnesses testify to it. Dickson says : 



" The Japanese generally are imbued with the idea that their land is a real 

 ' shin koku, a kami no kooni ' that is, the land of spiritual beings or kingdom 

 of spirits. They are led to think that the emperor rules over all, and that, 

 among other subordinate powers, he rules over the spirits of the country. He 

 rules over men, and is to them the fountain of honor : and this is not confined 

 to honors in this world, but is extended to the other, where they are advanced 

 from rank to rank by the orders of the emperor." 



Similarly we are told by Mitford that 



" In the days of Shogun's power the mikado remained the Fountain of Honor, 

 and, as chief of the national religion and the direct descendant of the gods, dis- 

 pensed divine honors. So recently as last year [1870] a decree of the Mikado 

 appeared in the Government Gazette, conferring posthumous divine honors upon 

 an ancestor of the Prince of Coshiu." 



And then we read that under the Japanese cabinet, one of the eight 

 administrative boards, the Ti bu shio, "deals with the forms of so- 

 ciety, manners, etiquette, worship, ceremonies for the living and the 

 dead," etc. : the propitiation of living persons and the propitiation of 

 dead persons and deities have a supreme regulative centre in common. 

 Western peoples, among whom during the Christian era differen- 

 tiation of the divine from the human has become very decided, show 

 us in a less marked manner the homology between the ceremonial 

 organization and the ecclesiastical organization. Still it is, or rather, 

 was once, clearly traceable. In feudal days, beyond the lord-high 

 chamberlains, grand-masters of ceremonies, ushers, and so forth, be- 

 longing to royal courts, and the kindred officers found in the house- 

 holds of subordinate rulers and nobles officers who conducted pro- 

 pitiatory observances there were the heralds. These formed a class 

 of ceremonial functionaries, in various ways resembling a priesthood. 

 Just noting as significant the remark of Scott that, " so intimate was 

 the union betwixt chivalry and religion esteemed to be, that the sev- 

 eral gradations of the former were seriously considered as parallel to 

 those of the Chui-ch," I go on to point out that these officers, per- 

 taining to the institutions of chivalry, formed a body which, where it 

 was highly organized, as in France, had five ranks : chevaucheur, 

 poursuivant Cannes, heraut dParmes, roi cfarmes, and roi (Parmes de 

 France. Into these ranks its members were successively initiated by 

 a species of baptism wine being substituted for water. They held 

 periodic chapters in the church of Saint-Antoine. When bearing man- 

 dates and messages they were similarly dressed with their masters, 

 royal or noble, and were similarly honored by those to whom they 

 were sent, having thus a deputed dignity akin to the deputed sacred- 

 ness of priests. By the chief king-at-arms and five others, local visi- 

 tations were made for inquiry and discipline, as ecclesiastical visita- 



