< Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu
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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

extent—an extent which would be scarcely credible, did not independent witnesses testify to it. Dickson says:

"The Japanese generally are imbued with the idea that their land is a real 'shin koku, a kami no kooni'—that is, the land of spiritual beings or kingdom of spirits. They are led to think that the emperor rules over all, and that, among other subordinate powers, he rules over the spirits of the country. He rules over men, and is to them the fountain of honor: and this is not confined to honors in this world, but is extended to the other, where they are advanced from rank to rank by the orders of the emperor."

Similarly we are told by Mitford that—

"In the days of Shogun's power the mikado remained the Fountain of Honor, and, as chief of the national religion and the direct descendant of the gods, dispensed divine honors. So recently as last year [1870] a decree of the Mikado appeared in the Government Gazette, conferring posthumous divine honors upon an ancestor of the Prince of Coshiu."

And then we read that under the Japanese cabinet, one of the eight administrative boards, the Ti bu shio, "deals with the forms of society, manners, etiquette, worship, ceremonies for the living and the dead," etc.: the propitiation of living persons and the propitiation of dead persons and deities have a supreme regulative centre in common.

Western peoples, among whom during the Christian era differentiation of the divine from the human has become very decided, show us in a less marked manner the homology between the ceremonial organization and the ecclesiastical organization. Still it is, or rather, was once, clearly traceable. In feudal days, beyond the lord-high chamberlains, grand-masters of ceremonies, ushers, and so forth, belonging to royal courts, and the kindred officers found in the households of subordinate rulers and nobles—officers who conducted propitiatory observances—there were the heralds. These formed a class of ceremonial functionaries, in various ways resembling a priesthood. Just noting as significant the remark of Scott that, "so intimate was the union betwixt chivalry and religion esteemed to be, that the several gradations of the former were seriously considered as parallel to those of the Church," I go on to point out that these officers, pertaining to the institutions of chivalry, formed a body which, where it was highly organized, as in France, had five ranks: chevaucheur, poursuivant d’armes, heraut d’armes, roi d’armes, and roi d’armes de France. Into these ranks its members were successively initiated by a species of baptism—wine being substituted for water. They held periodic chapters in the church of Saint-Antoine. When bearing mandates and messages they were similarly dressed with their masters, royal or noble, and were similarly honored by those to whom they were sent, having thus a deputed dignity akin to the deputed sacredness of priests. By the chief king-at-arms and five others, local visitations were made for inquiry and discipline, as ecclesiastical visita-

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