184 



♦ KNOWLEDGE . 



[Sept. 21, 1883. 



sense of vague wonder in the presence of powers whose 

 force he cannot measure, and his expressions towards wliich 

 are manifold. There is underlying unity, but there are, to 

 quote St. Paul, " diversities of operation." There is just 

 that surface unlikeness which one might e.xpect from the 

 dill'erent physical conditions and their resulting variety of 

 subtle influences surrounding various races ; influences 

 shaping for them their gods, their upper and nether worlds ; 

 inlluences of climate and soil which made the hell of vol- 

 canic countries an abyss of sulphurous, stifling smoke and 

 everlasting fire, and the hell of cold climates a place 

 of deathly frost ; which gave to the giant-gods of 

 northern zones their rugged awfulness, and to the 

 goddesses of the sunny south their soft and stately 

 grace. The theory of ancestor-worship as the basis 

 of every form of religion does not allow sufiicient 

 play for tlie vagaries in which the same thing will 

 be dressed by the barbaric fear and fancy, nor for the 

 imagination as a creative force in the primitive mind even 

 at that lowest at which we know it. And, of course, 

 beyond that lowest lies a lower never to be fathomed. We 

 are apt to talk of primitive man as if liis representatives 

 were with us in the black fellows who are at the bottom of 

 the scale, forgetting that during unnumbered ages he was 

 a brute in everything but the capacity by which at last 

 the ape and tiger were subdued within him. Of the 

 beginnings of his thought we can know nothing, but the 

 fantastic forms in which it is first manifest compel us to 

 regard him as a being whose feelings were uncurbed by 

 reason. That ancestor-worship is one mode among others 

 of man's attitude towards the awe-begetting, mystery- 

 inspiring universe, none can deny. That his earliest 

 temples, as defined sacred spots, were tombs ; that he 

 prayed to his dead dear ones, or his dead feared ones, as 

 the case might be, is admitted. From its strong personal 

 character, ancestor-worship was, without doubt, one of the 

 earliest expressions of man's attitude before the world which 

 his fancy filled with spirits. It flourishes among barbarous 

 races to-day ; it was the prominent feature of the old 

 Aryan religion ; it has entered into Christian practice in 

 the worship of saints, and perhaps the only feature of 

 religion which the modern Frenchman has retained is the 

 culte des morts. That it was a part of the belief of the 

 Emperor Napoleon III. the following extract from his will 

 shows : — " We must rememlier that those we love look 

 down upon us from heaven and protect us. It is the soul 

 of my great Uncle which has always guided and supported 

 me. 'Thus will it be with my son also if he proves worthy 

 of his name." 



But the worship of ancestors is not primal. The re- 

 marks in my former paper on the late recognition of kin- 

 ship by savages, among whom some rude form of religion 

 existed, tell against it as the earliest mode of worship. 

 ^Moreover, nature is bigger than man, and this he was not 

 slow to feel. Even if it be conceded that sun-myth and 

 sun-worship once arose through the nick-naming of an 

 ancestor as the Sun, we must take into account the force 

 of that imagination which enabled the unconsciou.q myth- 

 maker, or creed-maker, to credit the moving orVis of heaven 

 with personal life and will. The faculty which could do 

 that might well express itself in awe-struck forms without 

 intruding the ancestral ghost Further, the records of the 

 classic religions, themselves preserving many traces of a 

 primitive nature-worship, point to an adoration of the 

 greatness and bounty, as well as to a sense of the malefi- 

 cent and fateftd, in earth and heaven wliich seem prior to 

 the more concrete worship of forefathers and chieftains. 



If for the worship of these last we substitute a general 

 worship of spirits, there seems little left on which to differ. 



As aid to the explanation of the belief in animal ancestors 

 and their suljsequent deification and worship, as of the 

 lion, the bull, the serpent, &c., we have always present in 

 the barbaric mind the tendency to credit living things, and 

 indeed lifeless, but moving ones, with a passion, a will, and 

 a power to help or harm immeasurably greater than man's. 

 This is part and parcel of that belief in spirits everywhere, 

 which is the key to savage philosophy, and the growth of 

 which is fostered by such secondary causes as the worship 

 of ancestors. 



SUX-YIEWS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



THE .-ispect of Great Britain, France, Denmaik, &c., as supposed 

 to be seen from tlie Eun at noon (Greenwich time), at this 

 season of the year is shown in Fig. 2, Pig. 1 showing the aspect 

 those regions had at noon in midsummer, an 1 Fig. 3 showing the- 

 aspect they will have at noon in midwinter. 



Fig. 3. At noon, Midwinter (Greenwich time). 



