I will not go on to point out in detail at the present stage of our argument how Professor Sayce similarly finds ancestor-worship and Shamanism (a low form of ghost-propitiation) at the root of the religion of the ancient Ac-cadians; how other observers have performed the same task for the Egyptians and Japanese; and how like customs have been traced among Greeks and Amazulu, among Hebrews and Nicaraguans, among early English and Digger Indians, among our Aryan ancestors themselves and Andaman Islanders. Every recent narrative of travel abounds with examples. Of Netherland Island I read, “The skulls of their ancestors were treasured for gods of the New Hebrides, “The people worshipped the spirits of their ancestors. They prayed to them, over the kava-bowl, for health and prosperity.” In New Caledonia, “Their gods were their ancestors, whose relics they kept up and idolised.” At Tana, “The general name for gods seemed to be _aremha_; that means a _dead man_, and hints,” {034}says the Rev. George Turner, with pleasing frankness, “alike at the origin and nature of their religious worship.” When the chief prayed, he offered up yam and fruits, saying, “Compassionate father, here is some food for you; eat it. Be kind to us on account of it.” Those who wish to see the whole of the evidence on this matter marshalled in battle array have only to turn to the first volume of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_, where they will find abundant examples from all times and places gathered together in a vast and overwhelming phalanx. What concerns us in this chapter a little more is to call attention by anticipation to the fact that even in Christianity itself the same primitive element survives as the centre of all that is most distinctively religious, as opposed to theological, in the Christian religion. And I make these remarks provisionally here in order that the reader may the better understand to what ultimate goal our investigation will lead him. It is the universal Catholic custom to place the relics of saints or martyrs under the altars in churches. Thus the body of St. Mark the Evangelist lies under the high altar of St. Mark’s, at Venice; and in every other Italian cathedral, or chapel, a reliquary is deposited within the altar itself. So well understood is this principle in the Latin Church, that it has hardened into the saying, “No relic, no altar.” The sacrifice of the mass takes place at such an altar, and is performed by a priest in sacrificial robes. The entire Roman Catholic ritual is a ritual derived from the earlier sacerdotal ideas of ministry at an altar, and its connection with the primitive form is still kept up by the necessary presence of human remains in its holy places.