CEREMONY IN GENERAL. 15 



to objects and acts, until, under stress of the need for express 

 ing proper names, some of them were used phonetically, and 

 signs of sounds came into existence. But, in our days, there 

 has been reached a stage at which, as shorthand shows us, 

 special marks are consciously selected to signify special 

 sounds. The lesson taught is obvious. As it 



would be an error to conclude that because we knowingly 

 choose sounds to symbolize ideas, and marks to symbolize 

 sounds, the like was originally done by savages and by 

 barbarians ; so it is an error to conclude that because among 

 the civilized certain ceremonies (say those of freemasons) 

 are arbitrarily fixed upon, so ceremonies were arbitra 

 rily fixed upon by the uncivilized. Already, in in 

 dicating the primitiveness of ceremonial control, I have 

 named some modes of behaviour expressing subordination 

 which have a natural genesis; and here the inference to be 

 drawn is, that until we have found a natural genesis for a 

 ceremony, we have not discovered its origin. The truth of 

 this inference will seem less improbable on observing sundry 

 ways in which spontaneous manifestations of emotion initi 

 ate formal observances. 



The ewe bleating after her lamb that has strayed, and 

 smelling now one and now another of the larnbs near her, 

 but at length, by its odour, identifying as her own one that 

 comes running up, doubtless, thereupon, experiences a wave 

 of gratified maternal feeling; and by repetition there is es 

 tablished between this odour and this pleasure, such an asso 

 ciation that the first habitually produces the last: the smell 

 becomes, on all occasions, agreeable by serving to bring into 

 consciousness more or less of the philoprogenitive emotion. 

 That among some races of men individuals are similarly 

 identified, the Bible yields proofs. Though Isaac, with 

 senses dulled by age, fails thus to distinguish his sons from 

 one another, yet the fact that, unable to see Jacob, and puz 

 zled by the conflicting evidence his voice and his hands fur 

 nished, &quot; he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed 



