turally special and
sustained honours are reserved for the heads of families,[2] and for
such as have been distinguished for various qualities during life. In
this way ancestor worship becomes one of the most general forms of
religious observances, and the gradual development of the great man or
the deceased ancestor into a deity follows by easy stages. The
principles of ancestor worship, to again cite the indispensible Tylor,
are not difficult to understand:--

They plainly keep up the social relations of the living world. The
dead ancestor, now passed into a deity, simply goes on protecting:
his own family and receiving suit and service from them as of old;
the dead chief still watches over his own tribe, still holds his
authority by helping friends and harming enemies, still rewards the
right and sharply punishes the wrong.

That this deification of ancestors and of dead men actually takes place
is indisputable. The Mythologies of Greece and Rome offer numerous
examples, and the deification of the Roman Emperors became the regular
rule. Numerous examples to the same end are supplied from India by Mr.
W. Crookes and Sir A. C. Lyall. That this way of honouring the dead is
not limited to natives is shown by the famous case of General Nicholson,
who actually received the honour of deification during his lifetime.
Anyone who cares to consult those storehouses of information, Spencer's
"Principles of Sociology" (Vol. I.), Tylor's "Primitive Culture," and
Frazer's "Golden Bough" will find the whole god-making process set forth
with a wealth of illustration that can hardly fail to carry conviction.
Finally, in the case of Japan and China we have living examples of an
organised system of religion based upon the deification of ancestors.[3]

It will make it easier to understand the evolution of the god from the
ghost if we bear in mind that with primitive man the gods are conceived
neither as independent existences nor as creators. Even immortality is
not asserted of them. The modern notions of deity, largely due to the
attempt to accommodate the idea of god to certain metaphysical and
philosophical conceptions, are so intermingled with the primitive idea,
that there is always the danger of reading into the primitive
intelligence more than was ever there. The consequence is that by
confusing the two senses of the word many find it difficult to realise
how one has grown out of the other. Such