750 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



again, Schoolcraft, saying that &quot;the authority of their chiefs 

 is rather nominal than positive,&quot; also says &quot; I perceived no 

 order of priesthood ... if they recognise any ecclesiastical 

 authority whatever, it resides in their chiefs/ Evidently in 

 the absence of established political headship, there cannot 

 habitually arise recognition of a deceased political head ; and 

 there is consequently no place for an official propitiator. 



With the rise of the patriarchal type of organization, 

 both of these governmental agencies assume their initial 

 forms. If, as in early stages, the father of a family, while 

 domestic ruler, is also the one W 7 ho makes offerings to the 

 ancestral ghost if the head of the clan, or chief of the 

 village, while exercising political control also worships the 

 spirit of the dead chief on behalf of others, as well as on his 

 own behalf; it is clear that the ecclesiastical and political 

 structures begin as one and the same : the co- existing medicine^ 

 man being, as already shown, not a priest properly so-called. 

 When, for instance, we read of the Eastern Slavs that &quot; it 

 was customary among them for the head of the family or 

 the tribe to offer sacrifices on behalf of all beneath a sacred 

 tree,&quot; we see that the civil and religious functions and their 

 agents are at first undifferentiated. Even where something 

 like priests have arisen, yet if there is an undeveloped 

 ruling agency they are but little distinguished from others, 

 and they have no exclusive powers : instance the Bodo and 

 Dhimals, whose village heads have &quot; a general authority 

 of voluntary rather than coercive origin,&quot; and among whom 

 elders &quot; participate the functions of the priesthood.&quot; Nomadic 

 habits, while they hinder the development of a political 

 organization, also hinder the development of a priesthood; 

 even when priests are distinguishable as such. Tiele says of 

 the primitive Arabs that &quot; the sanctuaries of the various 

 spirits and fetishes had their own hereditary ministers, who, 

 however, formed no priestly caste.&quot; So, too, such physical 

 characters of a habitat, and such characters of its occupants 

 as impede the massing of small groups into large ones, 



