Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/209

Rh and steel in rites, although the common people use matches. What the Indian medicine-man in Iowa and the Buddhist priest in Japan have done in the matter of fire-making, the priests of the Roman and Greek churches have done in the matter of dress. They have brought down the past into the present. The garments of the priesthood, of the acolytes and of the choir-boys in the cathedral, is the civil dress of ancient Rome—modified, it is true, and symbolical in its modification, but still recognizable. It is the old southern type of dress, preserved by the second great conservative element in society—the Church—just as it has been by that other conservator, woman.

In many parts of the world mendicants and fakirs are numerous. They are men who on account of their piety expect to be supported by their more industrious but less pious fellows. Such dress in a way to be readily recognized. In the garb they wear two ideas are embodied: (1) individualization; (2) extreme simplicity symbolical of the poverty of the mendicant.

Another sort of religious dress is that worn by the worshipers of some special divinity by members of religious orders and by participants in some religious service. These are too numerous and varied to be more than mentioned. In some of these cases the dress is symbolical; in many the symbolism has been lost. Monastic orders have their characteristic dress, distinguishing them alike from the world and from each other. Shakers, Quakers, and Dunkards all present examples of this kind of dress. The choir-boys in the cathedral and the acolytes might perhaps be better mentioned here than in the preceding group. Matthews, in his descriptions of Navajo ceremonies and dances, describes carefully the way in which the participants dress or are painted. Many of the masks from the South Sea Islands are used only in religious or society dances, and are properly a part of religious