it is singular that his special seat is a portable litter-like
shrine, termed the Mikosi, in some sort analogous to the
Israelitic ark. In China, the emperor is the representative of
the primitive ancestors, and stands, as it were, between them
and the supreme cosmic deities--Heaven and Earth--who are
superadded to them, and who answer to the Tangaloa and the Maui
of the Polynesians.

Sciotheism, under the form of the deification of ancestral
ghosts, in its most pronounced form, is therefore the chief
element in the theology of a great moiety, possibly of more than
half, of the human race. I think this must be taken to be a
matter of fact--though various opinions may be held as to how
this ancestor-worship came about. But on the other hand, it is
no less a matter of fact that there are very few people without
additional gods, who cannot, with certainty, be accounted for as
deified ancestors.

With all respect for the distinguished authorities on the other
side, I cannot find good reasons for accepting the theory that
the cosmic deities--who are superadded to deified ancestors even
in China; who are found all over Polynesia, in Tangaloa and
Maui, and in old Peru, in the Sun--are the product either of the
"search after the infinite," or of mistakes arising out of the
confusion of a great chief's name with the thing signified by
the name. But, however this may be, I think it is again merely
matter of fact that, among a large portion of mankind, ancestor-
worship is more or less thrown into the background either by
such cosmic deities, or by tribal gods of uncertain origin, who
have been raised to eminence by the superiority in warfare, or