PRIMITIVE RELIGION AND
MYTHOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
ARYANS AND POLYNESIANS.
Νόμιζε σαυτῷ τοῦς γονεῖς ἔιναι Θεούς.
The religious feeling may be traced to the natural veneration of the child for the parent, joined to an innate belief in the immortality of the soul. What we know of the primitive religion of Aryans and Polynesians points to this source. They both venerated the spirits of deceased ancestors, believing that these spirits took an interest in their living descendants: moreover, they feared them, and were careful to observe the precepts handed down by tradition, as having been delivered by them while alive.
The souls of men deified by death were by the Latins called "Lares" or "Mânes," by the Greeks "Demons" or "Heroes." Their tombs were the temples of these divinities, and bore the inscription "Dis manibus," "Θεοὶς χθόνιοις;" and before the tomb was an altar for sacrifice. The term used by the Greeks and Romans to signify the worship of the dead is significant. The former used the word
