OEIGIN OF CEREMONIAL ATTITUDES. 81 



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 

 first a submission to gods and kings, has become in 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 *' the house 

 of God," 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- 

 j^lies, and used at courtsasaformof 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 presm'ibes 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 we 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, 

 Siigno)\ Seigneur^ Se?inor, Sire, Sieiir, 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, are 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 if, 

 then, we remember that among divine titles are " Ancient 

 of Days," and " Father of Gods and men ; " — we see how 

 4* 



