Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/417

Rh 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 this assertion of homology disappears, on remembering that in sundry ancient societies living kings were literally worshiped as dead kings were, and that the adoration of the living king by priests was but a more extreme form of the adoration habitually paid by all who served him.

Social organizations that are but little differentiated clearly show us several aspects of this kinship. In common with those below him, 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. 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 "his origin, his descent from the line of former sovereigns, and his incontestable right to the kingdom," and the usage that existed in past times among ourselves, when the like distinctions and powers and claims of the king were publicly asserted for him by an appointed officer. As the ruler, extending his dominions and growing in power, gathers round him an increasing number of agents, the utterance of propitiatory praises, at first by all of these, becomes eventually distinctive of certain among them: there arise official glorifiers. "In Samoa, a chief in traveling is attended by his principal orator." In Feejee each tribe has its "orator, to make orations on occasions of ceremony." Dupuis tells us that the attendants of the chiefs of Ashantee eagerly vociferate the "strong names" of their masters; and a more recent writer describes certain of the king's attendants, whose duty it is to "give him names"—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 praise. Now, when we meet with facts of this kind—when we read that in Madagascar "the sovereign has a large band of female singers, who attend in the court-yard, and who accompany their monarch whenever he takes an excursion, either for a short airing or distant journey;" when we are told that in China "his imperial majesty was preceded by persons loudly proclaiming his virtues and his power;" when we learn that among the ancient Chibchas the hogotá was received with "songs in which they sung his deeds and victories"—we cannot deny that these assertors of greatness and singers of praises do for the living king exactly that which priests and