the dead; and such were the ideas of the old Japanese.

Although the religion of ghosts was once the religion of our own
forefathers--whether of Northern or Southern Europe,--and although
practices derived from it, such as the custom of decorating graves
with flowers, persist to-day among our most advanced
communities,--our modes of thought have so changed under the
influences of modern civilization that it is difficult for us to
imagine how people could ever have supposed that the happiness of the
dead depended upon material food. But it [30] is probable that the
real belief in ancient European societies was much like the belief as
it exists in modern Japan. The dead are not supposed to consume the
substance of the food, but only to absorb the invisible essence of
it. In the early period of ancestor-worship the food-offerings were
large; later on they were made smaller and smaller as the idea grew
up that the spirits required but little sustenance of even the most
vapoury kind. But, however small the offerings, it was essential that
they should be made regularly. Upon these shadowy repasts depended
the well-being of the dead; and upon the well-being of the dead
depended the fortunes of the living. Neither could dispense with the
help of the other. the visible and the invisible worlds were forever
united by bonds innumerable of mutual necessity; and no single
relation of that union could be broken without the direst
consequences.

The history of all religious sacrifices can be traced back to this
ancient custom of offerings made to ghosts; and the whole Indo-Aryan
race had at one time no other religion than this religion of spirits.
In fact, every advanced human society has, at some period of its
history, passed through the stage of ancestor-worship; but it is to