d habits of
the barbarous shepherd-huntsman, who is now seen to be the typical
figure of common Aryanism, we need not seek long before we find
something that was common to all the Aryan faiths. The patriarchal
household has a religion which belongs to itself, and which is the
working bond of union of its members. The hearth is its altar,
because the forefathers of the house lie buried under it, or for
another reason. These forefathers certainly are its gods. This
hearth-cult has for its priest the father of the family; he in his
turn will be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son to do
the last rites for him. No one but members of the family can partake
in the domestic worship, all unconnected with the family by blood
must be kept at a distance from these rites. This is not a religion
in which the individual counts anything for his own sake, any more
than totemistic religion is; in both it is the community alone that
serves the deity, in the one case, those acknowledging the same
totem, in the second, those united by blood in the same family. In
totemism the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe; here he is
nothing apart from his family. Aryan piety is family religion pure
and simple. It fosters sentiments which have been the strength of
Aryan society in all lands. It makes family life a sacred thing,
lends to all domestic ties the highest sanction, and causes the mere
mention of "hearth and home" to be the strongest incentive to valour
and self-denial. Even in the wild-beast ferocity with which early
men defend their homes against the intrusion of strangers, the
germs of lofty domestic and patriotic virtues may be seen. Thus
ancestor-worship, which is a part of the very beginnings of human
religion, is a more effective force among the Aryans than anywhere
else. In Egypt and China that worship is a highly artificial thing,
and has lost much of its original force. In Egypt it is the fortunes
of the dead that are most thought of; in China the cult has been
smoothed down and deprived, according to the character of the people,
of its intenser motives. Among the Aryans it combines actively with
strong family feeling, causing them to cling with an extreme tenacity
to their own gods and their own worship.[7]

[Footnote 6: The principal are the following:--

1. Dyaus, god of the sky, see above.

2. Sans. Ushas, goddess of dawn; Gr. [Greek: heos]; Lat. aurora;
Lith. auszra; A.-S. eostra.

3. Sans.