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.