Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/45

Rh he is alive, and the like or greater laudations when he is dead. Dancing, at first a spontaneous expression of joy in his presence, becomes a ceremonial observance, and continues to be a ceremonial observance on occasions of worshiping his ghost. And of course it is the same with the accompanying music: instrumental or vocal, it is performed both before the natural ruler and the supernatural ruler.

Obviously, then, if any of these actions and agencies, common to political loyalty and divine worship, have characters akin to certain professional actions and agencies, these last must be considered as having double roots in the politico-ecclesiastical agency. It is also obvious that if, along with increasing differentiation of these twin agencies, the ecclesiastical develops more imposingly and widely, partly because the supposed superhuman being to which it ministers continually increases in ascribed power, and partly because worship of him, instead of being limited to one place, spreads to many places, these professional actions and agencies will develop more especially in connection with it.

Sundry of these actions and agencies included in both political and religious ministrations are of the kind indicated. While among propitiations of the visible king and the invisible deified king, some of course will have for their end the sustentation of life, others are certain to be for the increase of life by its exaltation: yielding to the propitiated being emotional gratifications by praises, by songs, and by various aids to aesthetic pleasures. And naturally the agencies of which laudatory orations, hymnal poetry, dramatized triumphs, as well as sculptured and painted representations in dedicated buildings, are products, will develop in connection chiefly with those who permanently minister to the apotheosized rulers—the priests.

A further reason why the professions thus implied, and others not included among them, such as those of the lawyer and the teacher, have an ecclesiastical origin, is that the priest-class comes of necessity to be distinguished above other classes by knowledge and intellectual capacity. His cunning, skill, and acquaintance with the natures of things, give the primitive priest or medicine-man influence over his fellows; and these traits continue to be distinctive of him when, in later stages, his priestly character becomes distinct. His power as priest is augmented by those feats and products which exceed the ability of the people to achieve or understand; and he is therefore under a constant stimulus to acquire the superior culture and the mental powers needed for those activities which we class as professional.

Once more there is the often-recognized fact, that the