duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.' It is said that in our own time the Taepings have made a step beyond Confucius; they have forbidden the sacrifices to the spirits of the dead, yet keep up the rite of visiting their tombs on the customary day, for prayer and the renewal of vows.[1] How funeral offerings may pass into commemorative banquets and feasts to the poor, has been shown already. If we seek in England for vestiges of the old rite of funeral sacrifice, we may find a lingering survival into modern centuries, doles of bread and drink given to the poor at funerals, and 'soul-mass cakes' which peasant girls perhaps to this day beg for at farmhouses with the traditional formula,
'Soul, soul, for a soul cake,
Pray you, mistress, a soul cake.'[2]
Were it not for our knowledge of the intermediate stages through which these fragments of old custom have come down, it would seem far-fetched indeed to trace their origin back to the savage and barbaric times of the institution of feasts of departed souls.
