820 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



progress of Ecclesiastical Institutions irregular. But amid all 

 the perturbations, a course essentially of the kind above 

 indicated may be traced. 



653. With structural differentiations must here bo 

 joined a functional differentiation of deep significance. Two 

 sacerdotal duties which were at first parts of the same, have 

 been slowly separating ; and the one which was originally 

 unobtrusive but is now conspicuous, has become in large 

 measure independent. The original duty is the carrying on of 

 worship ; the derived duty is the insistence on rules of conduct. 



Beginning as the entire series of phenomena does with 

 propitiation of the dead parent or dead chief, and dependent 

 as the propitiatory acts are on the desires of the ghost, which 

 are supposed to be like those of the man when alive ; worship 

 in its primitive form, aiming to obtain the goodwill of beings 

 in many cases atrocious, is often characterized by atrocious 

 observances. Originally, there is no moral element in it; 

 and hence the fact that extreme attention to religious rites 

 characterizes the lower types, rather than the higher types, 

 of men and of societies. Kenouf remarks that &quot; the Egyp 

 tians were among the most religious of the ancient nations. 

 Religion in some form or other was dominant in every rela 

 tion of their lives ; &quot; or, as M. Maury has it, &quot; 1 Egyptien ne 

 vivait en realite que pour pratiquer son culte.&quot; This last 

 statement reminds us of the ancient Peruvians. So onerous 

 were their sacrifices to ancestors, and deities derived from 

 ancestors, that it might truly be said of them that the living 

 were the slaves of the dead. So, too, of the sanguinary 

 Mexicans, whose civilization was, in a measure, founded on 

 cannibalism, it is remarked that &quot; of all nations which God 

 lias created, these people are the strictest observers of their 

 religion.&quot; Associated with their early stages and arrested 

 stages, we find the same trait in Aryan peoples. 



&quot; The Vedas represent the ancient Indo-Aryans to have been 

 eminently religious in all their actions. According to them, every ace 

 of life had to be accompanied by one or more mantras, and no one 



