164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



occur in settled cattle-keeping or agricultural tribes, whose ancestors 

 passed through those stages between the wandering and the stationary, 

 during which militant activities were general, we may reasonably sus- 

 pect that these are surviving ceremonies that have lost their meanings : 

 the more so as, in the case named, there exists neither that social sub- 

 ordination nor that domestic subordination which they express. On 

 the other hand, in societies compounded and consolidated by militancy 

 which have acquired the militant type of structure, we find political and 

 social life conspicuously characterized by servile obeisances. If we ask 

 in what slightly-developed societies occur the groveling prostrations 

 and creepings and crawlings before superiors, the answer is clear. We 

 find them in warlike, cannibal Feejee, where the power of rulers over 

 subjects and their property is unlimited, and where, in some slave dis- 

 tricts, the people regard themselves as brought up to be eaten ; we find 

 them in Uganda, where war is chronic, where the revenue is derived 

 from plunder, both of neighboring tribes and of subjects, and where it 

 is said of the king out shooting that, " as his highness could not get 

 any game to shoot at, he shot down manj 1 - people ; " we find them in 

 sanguinary Dahomey, where adjacent societies are attacked to get more 

 heads for decorating the king's palace, and where everybody, up to the 

 chief minister, is the king's slave. Among states more advanced they 

 occur in Burmah and Siam, where the militant type, bequeathed from 

 the past, has left a monarchical power equally without restraint; in 

 Japan, where, with a despotism evolved and fixed during the wars of 

 early times, there have ever gone these groveling obeisances of each 

 rank to the rank above it ; and in China, where, with a kindred form 

 of government similarly derived, there still continue semi-prostrations 

 and knockings of the head upon the ground before the supreme ruler. 

 So is it again with kissing the feet as an obeisance. This was the 

 usage in ancient Peru, where the entire nation was under a regimental 

 organization and discipline. It prevails in Madagascar, where the mili- 

 tant structure and activity are decided. And among sundry Eastern 

 peoples, living still, as they have ever done, under autocratic rule, this 

 obeisance exists at present as it existed in the remote past. Nor is it 

 Otherwise with complete or partial removals of the dress. The extreme 

 forms of this we saw occurred in Feejee and in Uganda ; while the less 

 extreme form of baring the body down to the waist was exemplified 

 from Abyssinia and Tahiti, where the kingly power, though great, is 

 less recklessly exercised. So, likewise, with the baring of the feet. 

 This was an obeisance to the king in ancient Peru and ancient Mexico, 

 as it is now in Burmah and in Persia all of them having the despotic 

 governments evolved by militancy. And the like relation will be found 

 to hold with the other extreme obeisances : the putting dust on the 

 head, the assumption of mean clothing, the taking up of a burden to 

 carry, the binding of the hands. 



The same truth is shown us on comparing the usages of European 



