902 General Notes. [December, 
into the regulative and the operative class may begin lower down 
in Mr. Morgan’s scale than we have thus far been aware of. If 
so, it is not impossible that the gentile system and communism 
may have been associated with as much caste as would divide 
the tribe into the governing and the governed? | Far be it from 
us to detract from the merit of our greatest generalizer in sociology ; 
but it cannot be denied that the argument for the, mere communal 
function of the earthwork and the Central American ruins is based 
upon analogy only. 
JAPANESE MytTuoLtocy.—We are indebted to Prof. E. S. Morse, 
for the following extract from the Tokio Times, of May 22, by J. 
W. McCarthy: 
“In few countries in the world can the adventurous wight who 
wishes to peer into the future have his desire so easily gratified, and 
in so many different ways, as in Japarf. While in western nations 
divination is merely a subject of research and speculation amongst 
scholars, or, at most, is found at intervals in rural districts, far 
from the busy haunts of men, startling the apostle of nineteenth 
century civilization with its twelfth century superstition, here in 
Japan it is a living force, exercising its influence on the trader, the 
farmer, pilgrim, and even on the course of love itself. Nor is it 
confined to the poor and lowly; members of the higher classes, 
and the wealthy, do not disdain to make use of the diviner—an 
he is equal to the task. For a ¢empo or even a mon, he will tell 
the poor maiden whether her love is faithful, or the coolie 
whether his pilgrimage will prosper; while for his noble patrons 
- he can perform an elaborate ceremony, in some cases possessing 
even religious sanctions of the most solemn kind, for which he 1s 
quite ready to accept a hundred, five hundred, or even a thousand 
en. 
“On this subject, a passage, almost as applicable to Japan as to 
China, may be quoted here from Dr. Dennys’s little work or the 
the most enthusiastic spiritualists at home. The coincidences of 
practice and belief are indeed so startling that many will doubtless 
see in them a sort of evidence either for their truthfulness, or for 
a common origin of evil.’ 
