EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 23 



toval," " our great gods whom we call teotes^'' cross-examination 

 brought out the further answers — "Our fathers are these teotes ;''"' "all 

 men and women descend from them ; " " they are of flesh and are man 

 and woman ; " " they walked over the earth dressed, and ate what the 

 Indians ate." Gods and first parents being thus identified, fatherhood 

 and divinity become allied ideas. The remotest ancestor supposed to 

 be still existing in the other world to which he went, the creator of his 

 descendants, "the old, old one," or "ancient of days," becomes the 

 chief deity ; and so " father " is not, as we suppose, a metaphorical 

 equivalent for " god," but a literal equivalent. 



Therefore it happens that among all nations we find it an alternative 

 title. In the before-quoted prayer of the New-Caledonian to the ghost 

 of his ancestor — " Compassionate father, here is some food for you ; eat 

 it ; be kind to us on account of it " — we ai'e shown that original identi- 

 fication of fatherhood and godhood to which all mythologies and theolo- 

 gies carry us back. "We see the naturalness of the facts that the Peru- 

 vian Incas worshiped their father the Sun ; that Ptah, the first of the 

 dynasty of the gods who ruled Egypt, is called "the father of the 

 father of the gods ; " and that Zeus is " father of gods and men." 



After contemplating these early beliefs in which the divine and the 

 human are so little distinguished, or after studying the beliefs still ex- 

 tant in China and Japan, where the rulers, " sons of heaven," claim 

 descent from these most ancient fathers or gods, it is easy to see how 

 the name father, in its higher sense, comes to be applied to a living 

 potentate. His proximate and remote ancestors being all spoken of as 

 fathers, distinguished only by the prefixes grand, great-great, etc., it 

 results that the name father, given to every member of the series, comes 

 to be given to the last of the series still living. With this cause is 

 joined a further cause. Where establishment of descent in the male line 

 has initiated the patriarchal family, the name father, even in its original 

 meaning, comes to be associated with supreme authority, and to be there- 

 fore a name of honor. Indeed, in nations formed by the compounding 

 and recompounding of patriarchal groups, the two causes coalesce. The 

 remotest known ancestor of each compounding group, at once the most 

 ancient father and the god of the compound group, being continuously 

 represented in blood, as well as in power, by the eldest descendant of 

 the eldest, it happens that this patriarch, who is head not of his own 

 group only but also of the compound group, stands to both in a relation 

 analogous to that in which the apotheosized ancestor stands ; and so com- 

 bines in a measure the divine power, the paternal power, and the kingly 

 power. 



Hence the prevalence of this word as a royal title. It is used 

 equally by American Indians and by Nevv-Zealanders in addressing the 

 rulers of the civilized. We find it in Africa, Of the various names for 

 the king among the Zulus, the name father heads the list; and in Daho- 

 mey, when the king walked from the throne to the palace, " every in- 



