OBIGIX OF CEREMONIAL ATTITUDES. 8.1 



shines, you must keep your head bare while speaking to the 

 monarch ; and on no plea may you remain covered in a 

 place of worship. As usual, however, this ceremony, at 

 lirst a submission to gods and kings, has become iu process 

 of time a common civility. Once an acknowledgment of 

 another s unlimited supremacy, the removal of the hat is 

 now a salute accorded to very ordinary persons, and that 

 uncovering, originally reserved for entrance into &quot; the house 

 of God,&quot; good manners now dictates on entrance into the 

 house of a common labourer. 



Standing, too, as a mark of respect, has undergone like 

 extensions in its application. Shown, by the practice in 

 our churches, to be intermediate between the humiliation 

 signified by kneeling and the self-respect which sitting im 

 plies, and used at courts as afonn of homage when more active 

 demonstrations of it have been made, this posture is now em 

 ployed in daily life to show consideration ; as seen alike in 

 the attitude ot a servant before a master, and in that rising 

 which politeness prescribes on the entrance of a visitor. 



Many other threads of evidence might have been woven 

 into our argument. As, for example, the significant fact, 

 that if wo trace back our still existing law of primogeni 

 ture if we consider it as displayed by Scottish clans, in 

 which not only ownership but government devolved from 

 the beginning on the eldest son of the eldest if we look 

 further back, and observe that the old titles of lordship, 

 Signer, Seigneur, Sennor, Sire, Sieur, all originally mean, 

 senior, or elder if we go Eastward, and find that Sheick 

 has alike derivation, and that the Oriental names for priests, 

 as Pir, for instance, aro literally interpreted old man if 

 we note in Hebrew records how primeval is the ascribed 

 superiority of the first-born, how great the authority of 

 elders, and how sacred the memory of patriarchs and \i\ 

 then, we remember that among divine titles are &quot; Ancient 

 of Days, * and u Father of Gods and men ; &quot; we see how 



