CEREMONY IN GENERAL. 25 



case they originate by evolution. This belief we shall here 

 after find abundantly justified. 



347. A chief reason why little attention has been paid 

 to phenomena of this class, all-pervading and conspicuous 

 though they are, is that while to most social functions there 

 correspond structures too large to be overlooked, functions 

 which make up ceremonial control have correlative struc 

 tures so small as to seem of no significance. That the gov 

 ernment of observances has its organization, just as the po 

 litical and ecclesiastical governments have, is a fact habitu 

 ally passed over, because, while the last two organizations 

 have developed the first has dwindled: in those societies, 

 at least, which have reached the stage at which social 

 phenomena become subjects of speculation. Originally, 

 however, the officials who direct the rites expressing politi 

 cal subordination have an importance second only to that 

 of the officials who direct religious rites; and the two 

 officialisms are homologous. To whichever class belong 

 ing, these functionaries conduct propitiatory acts: the visi 

 ble ruler being the propitiated person in the one case, and 

 the ruler no longer visible being the propitiated person in 

 the other case. Both are performers and regulators of wor 

 ship worship of the living king and worship of the dead 

 king. In our advanced stage the differentiation of the 

 divine from the human has become so great that this propo 

 sition looks scarcely credible. But on going back through 

 stages in which the attributes of the conceived deity are less 

 and less unlike those of the visible man, and eventually 

 reaching the early stage in which the other-self of the dead 

 man, considered indiscriminately as ghost and god, is not 

 to be distinguished, when he appears, from the living man; 

 we cannot fail to see the alliance in nature between the 

 functions of those who minister to the ruler who has gone 

 away and those who minister to the ruler who has taken his 

 place. What remaining strangeness there may seem in 



