Yet it must be admitted that there is a broad, though secondary and lower, current of opinion, which holds that the dead benefit in some more or less obscure physical sense by the offerings at their tombs. Hirata believed that food offered to the dead loses its savour more rapidly than other food. The ghosts summoned up by Ulysses from Erebus eagerly lapped up the blood offered them. This, although poetry, no doubt represents a real belief.
Mr. Andrew Lang mentions the case of an Irish peasant woman, who, when her husband died, killed his horse, and, to some one who reproached her for her folly, replied, "Would you have my man go about on foot in the next world?" But may we not suspect that the real motive of my countrywoman's action was to express dumbly to the world the love she bore her husband by sacrificing something which she valued highly, and that the answer quoted was nothing more than a consciously frivolous reason, invented for the benefit of an unsympathetic, dull-minded intruder?
Whether or not the dead, apart from any physical benefit from funeral offerings, are grateful for the affectionate remembrance which they symbolize, it may be doubted whether the recognition of such a feeling on their part enters very largely into our motives. Was it for the gratification of Nelson's spirit that the column was erected in Trafalgar Square? Or do those who annually deposit primroses before the statue of Lord Beaconsfield think that his spirit is sensible of this observance?
Funeral ceremonies were not recognized as having anything to do with the older Shinto. It avoided everything connected with death, which was regarded as a source of pollution. Not until the revolution of 1868 was there instituted an authorized form of Shinto burial.[1]
Deified Classes of Men.—In the older Shinto this category of deities had more importance than it has at
- ↑ See an article by Mr. W. H. Lay in T. A. S. J., 1891.
