PRESENTS. 95 



statement concerning the Greeks &quot; Gifts, as an old prov 

 erb says, determine the acts of gods and kings; &quot; and it is 

 equally well shown by a verse in the Psalms (Ixxvi. 11) 

 &quot; Vow, and pay nnto the Lord your God: let all that be 

 round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be 

 feared.&quot; Observe the parallelism in detail. 



Food and drink, which constitute the earliest kind of 

 propitiatory gift to a living person, and also the earliest 

 kind of propitiatory gift to a ghost, remain everywhere the 

 essential components of an oblation to a deity. As, where 

 political power is evolving, the presents sent to the chief 

 at first consist mainly of sustenance; so, where ancestor- 

 worship, developing, has expanded a ghost into a god, the 

 offerings have as elements common to them in all places 

 and times, things serving for nutrition. That this is so in 

 low societies no proof is needed; and that it is so in higher 

 societies is also a conspicuous fact; though a fact ignored 

 where its significance is most worthy to be remarked. If a 

 Zulu slays an ox to secure the goodwill of his dead relative s 

 ghost, who complains to him in a dream that lie has not 

 been fed if among the Zulus this private act develops into 

 a public act when a bullock is periodically killed as &quot; a pro 

 pitiatory Offering to the Spirit of the King s immediate 

 Ancestor; &quot; we may, without impropriety, ask whether 

 there do not thus arise such acts as those of an Egyptian 

 king, who by hecatombs of oxen hopes to please the ghost of 

 his deified father; but it is not supposable that there w 7 as 

 any kindred origin for the sacrifices of cattle to Jahveh, con 

 cerning which such elaborate directions are given in Leviti 

 cus. AVhen we read that among the Greeks &quot; it was cus 

 tomary to pay the same offices to the gods which men stand 

 in need of: the temples were their houses, sacrifices their 

 food, altars their tables; &quot; it is permissible to observe the 

 analogy between these presents of eatables made to gods, 

 and. the presents of eatables made at graves to the dead, 

 as being both derived from similar presents made to the 



