EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 165 



peoples in early ages, when war was the business of life, with the 

 usages which obtain now that war has ceased to be the business of life. 

 In feudal days homage was shown by kissing the feet, by going on the 

 knees, by joining the hands, by laying aside sundry parts of the dress ; 

 but in our days the more humble of these obeisances have, some quite 

 and others almost, disappeared : leaving only the bow, the courtesy, and 

 the raising of the hat, as their representatives. Moreover, it is observ- 

 able that, between the more militant nations of Europe and the less 

 militant, kindred diiferences are traceable : on the Continent obeisances 

 are fuller, and more studiously attended to, than they are here. Even 

 from within our own society evidence is forthcoming ; for by the upper 

 classes, forming that regulative part of the social structure which here, 

 as everywhere, has been developed by militancy, there is not only at 

 court, but in private intercourse, greater attention paid to these forms 

 than by the classes forming the industrial structures, among the mem- 

 bers of which little more than the bow and the nod are now to be seen. 

 And I may add the significant fact that, in the distinctively militant 

 parts of our society the army and navy not only is there a more 

 regular and peremptory performance of prescribed obeisances than in 

 any other of its parts, but, further, that in one of them, the navy, 

 specially characterized by the absolutism of its chief officers, there sur- 

 vives a usage analogous to usages in barbarous societies : in Burmah, 

 it is requisite to make "prostrations in advancing to the palace;" the 

 Dahomans prostrate themselves in front of the palace-gate ; in Feejee, 

 stooping is enjoined as "a mark of respect to .a chief or his premises, 

 or a chief's settlement ; " and, on going on board an English man-of-war, 

 it is the custom to take off the hat to the quarter-deck. 



Nor are we without evidence of kindred contrasts among the obei- 

 sances made to the supernatural being, whether spirit or deity. The 

 wearing sackcloth to propitiate the ghost, as now in China, and as of 

 old among the Hebrews, the partial baring of the body and putting 

 dust on the head, still occuring in the East as funeral-rites, are not 

 found in advanced societies having types of structure more profoundly 

 modified by industrialism. Among ourselves, most characterized by 

 the degree of this change, obeisances to the dead have wholly disap- 

 peared, save in the uncovering at the grave. Similarly with the obei- 

 sances used in worship. The baring of the feet when approaching a 

 temple, as in ancient Peru, and the taking off the shoes on entering it, 

 as in the East, are acts finding no parallels here on any occasion, or on 

 the Continent, save on occasion of penance. Neither the prostrations 

 and repeated knockings of the head upon the ground by the Chinese 

 worshiper, nor the kindred attitude of the Mohammedan at prayers, 

 occurs where freer forms of social institutions, proper to the industrial 

 type, have much qualified the militant type. Even going on the knees 

 as a form of religious homage has, among ourselves, fallen greatly into 

 disuse ; and the most unmilitant of our sects, the Quakers, make no 

 religious obeisances whatever. 



