The ideas fundamental to the cult of _human ancestors_, though also connected with soul-beliefs, are radically different from those that gave rise to the fetish. Whereas some mythologists have been inclined to regard fetishism as the primitive form of religion, others have made this claim for ancestor worship. The latter have believed that ancestor worship could be traced back to the very beginnings of culture, and that the god-ideas of the higher religions were a metamorphosis of ancestor ideas. This is corroborated, in their opinion, by the fact that in the age of natural religions the ruler or the aristocracy very generally claimed descent from the gods, and that the ruler and the hero were even worshipped as gods. The former is illustrated by the genealogy of Greek families; the latter, by the Roman worship of emperors, which itself but represented an imitation of an Oriental custom that was once very common. All these cases, however, are clearly secondary phenomena, transferences of previously existing god-ideas to men who were either living or had already died. But even apart from this, the hypothesis is rendered completely untenable by the facts with which the history of totemism and of the earlier, more primitive conditions has made us familiar. Not a trace of ancestor worship is to be found among really primitive men. We have clear proof of this in their manner of disposing of the dead. So far as possible, the dead are left lying where they happen to be, and no cult of any kind is connected with them. Totemism, moreover, gives evidence of the fact that the cult of animal ancestors long anteceded that of human ancestors. Thus, then, the theory that ancestor worship was the primitive religion belongs essentially to an age practically ignorant of totemism and its place in myth development, as well as of the culture of primitive man. This era of a purely _a priori_ psychology of religion still entertained the supposition, rooted in Biblical tradition, of an original state of pure monotheism. In so far as this view was rejected, fetishism and ancestor worship were generally rivals as regards the claim to priority in the succession of religious ideas. The only exception occurred when these practices were regarded as equally original, as they were, essentially, in the theories of Herbert Spencer, Julius Lippert, and others. In this event, the original form of the fetish was held to be an ancestral image which had become an object of cult.
True, along with the totemic ideas of animal ancestors we very early find indefinite and not infrequently grotesque ideas of human ancestors. In the 'Mura-mura' legends of southern Australia these ideas are so interwoven that they can scarcely be untangled. These Mura-mura are fanciful beings of an earlier age, who are represented as having transmitted magical implements to the generations of the present era and as having instructed the ancestors of the Australians in magical ceremonies. A few of the legends relate that the Mura-mura also created the totem animals, or transformed themselves into the latter. Here, then, we already find a mutual interplay between ideas of human and conceptions of animal ancestors. As yet, however, no clear-cut idea of a _human_ ancestor has been formed. This never occurs--a fact of prime importance as concerns its development--until the _totem ancestor_ has lost his significance, and the original tribal totemism has therefore become of subordinate importance, even though totemism itself has not as yet completely disappeared. Under such circumstances the totem animal becomes the protective animal of the _individual_; the animal ancestor is displaced by the demon which mysteriously watches over the individual's life. This transition has already been touched upon in connection with the development of totemic ideas. Coincident with it, there is an important change with respect to the character of the totem animal. The tribal totem is an animal species. The Australian, whose totem, let us say, is the kangaroo, regards all kangaroos which he meets as sacred animals; he may not kill them, nor, above all, eat of their flesh. In the above-mentioned development of totemism (which is at the same time a retrogression) the totem animal becomes individualized. The protective animal--or the animal of destiny, as we might refer to it, in view of its many changes in meaning--is but an individual animal. A person may possibly never have seen the animal that keeps guard over him; nevertheless, he believes that it is always near at hand. The unseen animal which thus accompanies him is therefore sometimes also called his 'bush soul'; it is hidden somewhere in the bushes as a sort of animal double. Whatever befalls the person likewise happens to it, and conversely. For this reason it is very commonly believed that, if this animal should be killed, the person also must die. This makes it clear why the North American Indian calls the animal, not his ancestor, but his 'elder brother.'
In South African districts, especially among the Bantus where the bush soul is common, and in North America, where the tribal totem has become a coat of arms, and fable and legend therefore continue all the more to emphasize the individual relation between a person and an animal, the idea of a _human_ ancestor receives prominence. The totemic tribal organization as a whole, together with the totemic nomenclature of the tribal divisions, may continue to exist, as occasionally happens among the Bantus and in North America, even though the tribal totems proper have disappeared and become mere names, and the animal itself possesses no live importance except as a personal protector. But since the totemic tribal organization perpetuates the idea of a succession of generations, the human ancestor necessarily comes to assume the place of the animal ancestor. This change is vividly represented by the totem poles of the Indians of northwestern America. These totem poles we have already described. The head of the animal whose representation has become the coat of arms here surmounts a series of faces of human ancestors. Such a monument tells us, more plainly than words possibly could: These are the ancestors whom I revere and who, so far as memory reaches back, have found the symbol of their tribal unity in the animal which stands at their head. But totem poles do more than merely to directly perpetuate this memory. Though probably without the conscious intention of the artists who fashioned them, they also suggest something else, lost to the memory of living men. In the belief of earlier ages, this human ancestor was preceded by an animal ancestor to whom the reverence which is now paid to the human ancestors was at one time given. Thus, the animal ancestor was not only prior to the human ancestor from an external point of view, but gave rise to him through a necessity immanent in the course of development itself.
The transition from animal to human ancestors, furthermore, is closely bound up with coincident transformations in tribal organization. Wherever a powerful chieftainship arises, and an individual, overtowering personality obtains supremacy over a tribe or clan--such supremacy as readily tends to pass down to his descendants--it is particularly likely that a cult will be developed in his honour, and, upon his death, to his memory. Since the memory of this personality outlasts that of ordinary men, the individual himself is held to live on after death, even in regions where there is no belief in a universal immortality. Hence, according to a belief prevalent particularly among the negro peoples, the ordinary man perishes with death; the chieftain, however, or a feared medicine-man, continues to live at least until all memory of him has vanished. In some parts of Africa and Oceania, moreover, the cult of the living chieftains not only involves manifestations of a servile subjection but, more characteristically still, causes even his name to be tabooed. No one is allowed to speak it, and whoever bears the same name must lay it aside when the chieftain assumes control.
As a result of the change in totemic tribal organization induced by the growing significance of chieftainship, the cult of _living_ ancestors, as we may conclude from these phenomena, takes precedence over that of the just deceased, and still more over that of the long departed. In comparison with the importance which the man of nature attributes to living persons, that attaching to the dead is but slight, and diminishes rapidly as the individuals fade from memory. Individual rulers, whose deeds are remembered longer than those of ordinary men, may lay the foundations for an historical tradition. Nevertheless, the present long continues to assert a preponderating claim in belief as well as in cult. So long as man himself lives only for the present, having little regard for the future and scarcely any at all for the past, his gods also--in so far as we may apply this name to the supersensuous powers that shape his life--are _gods of the present_. True, the totem animal is secondarily also an animal ancestor. And yet it is only the living totem animal that is the object of cult and is believed to possess protective or destructive powers; compared with it, the ancestor idea fades into nebulous outlines, gaining a more definite significance only in so far as it is an expression of the tribal feeling which binds the members of the community to one another.
A further important factor enters into this development. This is the cult ceremony connected with the _disposition of the dead_. In this case, the departed one to whom the ceremony is dedicated is still directly present to memory. He holds, as it were, an intermediate position between the realm of the living and that of the dead. The memorial ceremony held in his honour also restores to memory older generations of the departed, even though this may cause their specific features to fade into indefiniteness and to assume outlines whose vagueness renders them similar. The American totem poles furnish a concrete portrayal of such a series of ancestors in which individual characteristics are totally lacking. Nevertheless, even under very diverse circumstances, we find that the ceremony in honour of one who has just died comes to develop into a general festival of the dead, and thus to include more remote generations. The circle of those who are honoured is likewise extended; the cult comes to be one that commemorates not merely chieftains but all tribesmen. As the wider tribal bonds dissolve, the clan, and then later the family, pay their homage to the departed on the occasion of his funeral, and to earlier generations of the dead on specific days dedicated to such memories. This is the course of development in which the ancestor festivals of the Chinese and Japanese have their origin, as well as the cults of the Roman _dii manes_; it has introduced elements, at least, of ancestor worship into the beginnings of all religions, even though this cult but rarely attained the pre-eminent importance which it possessed among the cultural peoples of the Orient.
But whatever may have been the character of this earlier strain of ancestor worship in religious development, the beginning of a true ancestor cult is closely bound up with the universalization due to its having become the cult of the hearth and the family. As it is the human ancestor who displaces the animal ancestor in this cult, so the transition by which the _family_ comes to be the central factor in social organization is an external indication of the dissolution of totemic culture and the dawning of a new era. In view of the predominant mythological and religious creations of this period, it might be called the age of heroes and gods. Ancestor worship itself is at the turning-point of the transition to the new era. In origin, it belongs to totemic culture: in its later development, it is one of the most significant indications of the dissolution of totemism, preparing the way for a new age in which it continues to hold an important place. At the same time, ancestor worship, no less than its rival, fetishism, constitutes but one factor among others in the development of mythological thought as a whole. In certain localities, as in the civilizations of eastern Asia, it may become sufficiently prominent to be one of the principal elements of religious cult. But even in such cases, ancestor worship is never able entirely to suppress the remaining forms of cult; still less can it be regarded as having given rise to the other fundamental phases of religious development--these rest on essentially different motives. Moreover, in connection with the relation of totemism to the ancestor worship which is rooted in the former and at the same time displaces it in one line of development, it is important to notice that in a certain sense the two follow opposite paths. As we have seen, the original totem--that is, the tribal totem--is the animal species in general; the last form of totem is the protective animal, which is an individual animal. Ancestor worship, on the other hand, begins with the adoration of humanly conceived benefactors and prominent tribesmen. It ends with a worship in which the individual ancestor gives way to the general idea of ancestor, in whom the family sees only a reflection of its own unity and an object in terms of which reverence is paid to past generations. The fact that ancestor cult centres about impersonal beings betrays a religious defect. Herein also is evidenced the continuing influence of the totemic age, for it was in this period that ancestor worship had its rise. The defect just mentioned was first overcome with the origin of _god-ideas_. One of the essential characteristics of gods is precisely the fact that they are _personal_ beings; each of them is a more or less sharply defined individuality. This of itself clearly indicates that ancestor worship is at most a relatively unimportant factor in the origin of gods.
