Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/407

Rh red; forty days for him who contemptuously flings it into water; twenty days for him who brings it up through weakness of stomach; but, if through illness, ten days. He who neglects his Amen to the Benedicite, who speaks when eating, who forgets to make the sign of the cross on his spoon, or on a lantern lighted by a younger brother, is to receive six or twelve stripes."

That from the times when men condoned crimes by building chapels and going on pilgrimages, down to present times, when barons no longer invade one another's territories or torture Jews, there has been a decrease of ceremony along with an increase of morality, is clear; though if we look at unadvanced parts of Europe, such as Naples or Sicily, we see that even now observance of rites is in them a much larger component of religion than obedience to moral rules. And when we remember how modern is the rise of Protestantism, which, less elaborate and imperative in its forms, does not habitually compound for transgressions by performance of acts expressing subordination, and how very recent is the spread of dissenting Protestantism, in which this change is carried further; we are shown that the subordination of ceremony to morality characterizes religion only in its later stages.

Mark, then, what follows. If the two kinds of control which eventually grow into civil and religious governments, originally include scarcely anything beyond observance of ceremonies, the precedence of ceremonial control over other controls is a corollary.

Divergent products of evolution betray their kinship by severally retaining certain traits which belonged to that from which they were evolved; and the implication is, that whatever traits they have in common, arose earlier in time than did the traits which distinguish them from one another. If fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, all possess vertebral columns, it follows, on the evolution hypothesis, that the vertebral column became a part of the organization at an earlier period than did the four-chambered heart, the teeth in sockets, and the mammas, which distinguish one of these groups, or than did the toothless beak, the tri-locular heart, and the feathers, which distinguish another of these groups, and so on. Applying this principle in the present case, it is inferable that if the controls classed as civil, religious, and social, have certain common characters, these characters, older than are these now differentiated kinds of control, must have belonged to the primitive control out of which they developed. Ceremonial acts, then, have the highest antiquity; for these differentiated kinds of control all exhibit them.

There is the making of presents: this is one of the acts showing subordination to a ruler in early stages; it is a religious rite, performed originally at the grave and later on at the altar; and from the beginning it has been a means of showing consideration in social intercourse and securing good-will. There are the obeisances: