26 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



this assertion of limnology disappears on remembering that 

 in sundry ancient societies living kings were literally wor 

 shipped as dead kings were. 



Social organisms that are but little differentiated clearly 

 show us several aspects of this kinship. The savage chief 

 proclaims his own great deeds and the achievements of his 

 ancestors; and that in some cases this habit of self-praise 

 long persists, Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions prove. 

 Among the Patagonians we see a transition beginning. A 

 ruler haranguing his subjects, &quot; always extols his own prow 

 ess and personal merit. When he is eloquent, he is greatly 

 esteemed; and when a cacique is not endowed with that 

 accomplishment, ho generally has an orator, who supplies 

 his place.&quot; Permanent advance from the stage at which 

 the head man lauds himself, to the stage at which laudation 

 of him is done by deputy, is well typified in the contrast 

 between the recent usage in Madagascar, where the king in 

 public assembly was in the habit of relating &quot; his origin, 

 his descent from the line of former sovereigns, and his in 

 contestable right to the kingdom,&quot; and the- usage that ex 

 isted in past times among ourselves, when the like distinc 

 tions and claims of the king were publicly asserted for him 

 by an appointed officer. As the ruler, extending his domin 

 ions and growing in power, gathers round him more numer 

 ous agents, the utterance of propitiatory praises, at first by 

 all of these, becomes eventually distinctive of certain among 

 them: there arise official glorifiers. &quot; In Samoa, a chief 

 in travelling is attended by his principal orator.&quot; In 

 Fiji each tribe has its &quot; orator, to make orations on occasions 

 of ceremony.&quot; The attendants of the chiefs in Ashantee 

 eagerly vociferate the &quot; strong names&quot; of their masters; 

 and a recent writer describes certain of the king s attendants 

 whose duty it is to &quot; give him names &quot; cry out his titles and 

 high qualities. In kindred fashion a Yoruba king, when he 

 goes abroad, is accompanied by his wives, who sing his 

 praises. Xow when we meet with facts of this kind when 



