THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



APRIL, 1878. 

 EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 



By HERBERT SPENCER. 

 III. MUTILATIONS. 



FACILITY of exposition will be gained by approaching indirectly 

 the facts and conclusions here to be set forth. 



As described by Burton, the ancient ceremony of infeftment in 

 Scotland was completed thus : " He [superior's attorney] would stoop 

 down, and, lifting a stone and a handful of earth, hand these over to 

 the new vassal's attorney, thereby conferring upon him ' real, actual, 

 and corporeal ' possession of the fief." Among a distant, slightly-civ- 

 ilized people, a parallel form occurs. On selling his cultivated plot, a 

 Khond, having invoked the village deity to bear witness to the sale, 

 " then delivers a handful of soil to the purchaser." From cases where 

 the transfer of lands for a consideration is thus expressed, we may 

 pass to cases where lands are by a similar form surrendered to show 

 political submission. When the Athenians applied to Persia for help 

 against the Spartans, after the attack of Cleomenes, a confession of 

 subordination was demanded in return for the protection asked; and 

 the confession was made by sending earth and water. A like act has 

 a like meaning in Feejee: "The soro with a basket of earth ... is 

 generally connected with war, and is presented by the weaker party, 

 indicating the yielding up of their land to the conquerors." And 

 similarly in India : When, some ten years ago, Tu-wen-hsin sent his 

 "Panthay" mission to England, " they carried with them pieces of 

 rock hewed from the four corners of the [Tali] mountain as the most 

 formal expression of his desire to become feudatory to the British 

 crown." 



This giving of a part instead of the whole, where the whole cannot 

 be mechanically handed over, may be called a symbolic ceremony; 



TOL. XII. 41 



