ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



over the East, but its justification in Japan is the necessity 

 of keeping up the ancestral sacrifices.&quot; Accounts of Greeks 

 and Romans show us that a kindred custom had among them 

 a kindred motive. Though, as indicated in 319 and 452, 

 the practice of adoption had, among these people, survived 

 from the times when its chief purpose was that of strengthen 

 ing the patriarchal group ; yet it is clear that the more 

 special form of adoption which grew up had another purpose. 

 Such a ceremony as that of a mock birth, whereby a fictitious 

 son was made to simulate as nearly as might be a real son, 

 could not have had a political origin, but must have had a 

 domestic origin ; and this origin was the one above indicated. 

 As is pointed out by Prof. Hunter, Gaius speaks of &quot; the 

 great desire of the ancients to have vacant inheritances filled 

 up, in order that there might be some one to perform the 

 sacred rites, which were specially called for at the time of 

 death.&quot; And since the context shows that this was the 

 dominant reason for easy legalization of inheritance, it be 

 comes clear that it was not primarily in the interest of the 

 son, or the fictitious son, or the adopted son, that heirship 

 was soon settled ; but in the interest of the departed person. 

 Just as, in ancient Egypt, men made bequests and endowed 

 priests for the purpose of carrying on sacrifices in the private 

 shrines erected to them; so did Roman fathers secure to 

 themselves dutiful heirs, artificial when not natural, to 

 minister to their ghosts out of the transmitted property. 



Further significant evidence is supplied by the fact that 

 heirship involved sacrifice. It was thus with the Eastern 

 Aryans. Sir Henry Maine, speaking of the &quot;elaborate 

 liturgy and ritual &quot; for ancestor- worship among the Hindus, 

 says &quot; In the eye of the ancient Hindu sacerdotal lawyer, 

 the whole law of Inheritance is dependent on its accurate 

 observance.&quot; Or as Prof. Hunter remarks of these people 

 &quot; The earliest notions of succession to deceased persons are 

 connected with duties lather than with rights, with sacrifices 

 rather than with property.&quot; And it was so with the Western 



