CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 391 



red ; forty days for him who contemptuously flings it into water ; twenty days 

 for him who brings it up through weakness of stomach ; but, if through illness, 

 ten days. He who neglects his Amen to the Benedicite, who speaks when eat- 

 ing, who forgets to make the sign of the cross on his spoon, or on a lantern 

 lighted by a younger brother, is to receive six or twelve stripes." 



That from the times when men condoned crimes by building chapels 

 and going on pilgrimages, down to present times, when barons no 

 longer invade one another's territories or torture Jews, there has 

 been a decrease of ceremony along with an increase of morality, is 

 clear ; though if we look at unadvanced parts of Europe, such as 

 Naples or Sicily, we see that even now observance of rites is in them 

 a much larger component of religion than obedience to moral rules. 

 And when we remember how modern is the rise of Protestantism, 

 which, less elaborate and imperative in its forms, does not habitually 

 compound for transgressions by performance of acts expressing sub- 

 ordination, and how very recent is the spread of dissenting Protes- 

 tantism, in which this change is carried further ; we are shown that the 

 subordination of ceremony to morality characterizes religion only in 

 its later stages. 



Mark, then, what follows. If the two kinds of control which 

 eventually grow into civil and religious governments, originally in- 

 clude scarcely anything beyond observance of ceremonies, the prece- 

 dence of ceremonial control over other controls is a corollary. 



Divergent products of evolution betray their kinship by severally 

 retaining certain traits which belonged to that from which they were 

 evolved ; and the implication is, that whatever traits they have in 

 common, arose earlier in time than did the traits which distinguish 

 them from one another. If fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, all 

 possess vertebral columns, it follows, on the evolution hypothesis, 

 that the vertebral column became a part of the organization at an 

 earlier period than did the four-chambered heart, the teeth in sockets, 

 and the mammas, which distinguish one of these groups, or than did 

 the toothless beak, the tri-locular heart, and the feathers, which dis- 

 tinguish another of these groups, and so on. Applying this principle 

 in the present case, it is inferable that if the controls classed as civil, 

 religious, and social, have certain common characters, these charac- 

 ters, older than are these now differentiated kinds of control, must 

 have belonged to the primitive control out of which they developed. 

 Ceremonial acts, then, have the highest antiquity ; for these differen- 

 tiated kinds of control all exhibit them. 



There is the making of presents : this is one of the acts showing 

 subordination to a ruler in early stages ; it is a religious rite, per- 

 formed originally at the grave and later on at the altar ; and from 

 the beginning it has been a means of showing consideration in so- 

 cial intercourse and securing good-will. There are the obeisances : 



