Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/750

722 them. In Dahomey, where the militant type is so far developed that women are warriors, men are almost daily sacrificed by the monarch to please his dead father; and the ghosts of old kings are invoked for aid in war by blood sprinkled on their tombs. The war-god of the Mexicans (originally a conqueror), the most revered of their gods, had his idol fed with human flesh; wars being undertaken to supply him with victims. And similarly in Peru, where there were habitual human sacrifices, men taken captive were immolated to the father of the Incas, the sun. How militant societies of old in the East similarly evolved deities, who were similarly propitiated by bloody rites, needs merely indicating. Habitually their mythologies represent gods as conquerors; habitually their gods are named "the strong one," "the destroyer," "the avenger," "god of battles," "lord of hosts," "man of war," and so forth. As we read in Assyrian inscriptions, wars were commenced by their alleged will; and, as we read elsewhere, peoples were massacred wholesale in professed obedience to them. How its theological government, like its political government, is essentially military, we see even in late and qualified forms of the predatory type; for, down to the present time, absolute subordination, like that of soldier to commander, is the supreme virtue, and disobedience the crime for which eternal torture is threatened.

Similarly with the accompanying ecclesiastical organization. Very generally, where the militant type is highly developed, the political head and ecclesiastical head are identical—the king, chief descendant of his ancestor, who has become a god, is also chief propitiator of him. It was so in ancient Peru; and in Tezcuco and Tlacopan (Mexico) the high-priest was the king's second son. The Egyptian wall-paintings show us kings performing sacrifices; as do also the Assyrian. Babylonian records harmonize with Hebrew traditions in telling us of priest-kings. In Lydia it was the same; Crœsus was king and priest. In Sparta, too, the kings, while military chiefs, were also high-priests; and a trace of the like original relation existed in Rome. A system of subordination, essentially akin to the military, has habitually characterized the accompanying priesthoods. The Feejeeans have an hereditary priesthood, forming a hierarchy. In Tahiti, where the high-priest was royal, there were grades of hereditary priests belonging to each social rank. In ancient Mexico the priesthoods of different gods had different ranks, and there were three ranks within each priesthood; and in ancient Peru, besides the royal chief priest, there were priests of the conquering race set over various classes of inferior priests. A like type of structure, with subjection of rank to rank, has characterized priesthoods in the ancient and modern belligerent societies of the Old World. The like mode of government is traceable throughout the sustaining organization also, so long as the social type remains predominantly militant. Beginning with simple societies, in which the slave-class furnishes the warrior-class