developed out of funeral rites, according to that general law of
religious evolution traced so fully by Herbert Spencer. And there is
reason to believe that the early forms of Shinto public worship may have
been evolved out of a yet older family worship--much after the manner in
which M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his wonderful book, La Cite Antique,
has shown the religious public institutions among the Greeks and Romans
to have been developed from the religion of the hearth. Indeed, the word
ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity,
means 'family God,' and in its present form is a corruption or
contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the
god of the house.' Shinto expounders have, it is true, attempted to
interpret the term otherwise; and Hirata, as quoted by Mr. Ernest Satow,
declared the name should be applied only to the common ancestor, or
ancestors, or to one so entitled to the gratitude of a community as to
merit equal honours. Such, undoubtedly, was the just use of the term in
his time, and long before it; but the etymology of the word would
certainly seem to indicate its origin in family worship, and to confirm
modern scientific beliefs in regard to the evolution of religious
institutions.

Now just as among the Greeks and Latins the family cult always continued
to exist through all the development and expansion of the public
religion, so the Shinto family worship has continued concomitantly with
the communal worship at the countless ujigami, with popular worship at
the famed Ohoya-shiro of various provinces or districts, and with
national worship at the great shrines of Ise and Kitzuki. Many objects
connected with the family cult are certainly of alien or modern origin;
but its simple rites and its unconscious poetry retain their archaic
charm. And, to the student of Japanese life, by far the most interesting
aspect of Shinto is offered in this home worship, which, like the home