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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1880 Excerpt:... COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. Sepulchral Rites. A Belief in the persistence of life after death, and the observation of religious practices founded upon this belief, may be discovered in every part of the world, in every age, and among men representing every degree and variety of culture. Classical scholars are familiar with the terms of Inferiae and Parentalia, names given by the Eomans to the propitiatory offerings which they presented to the manes of their departed ancestors. The Greeks had their evayCa-iiara. The worship of the Fravashis by the Iranians, and that of the Pitris by the Hindu, are evidences of the antiquity in the Indo-European family of this form of religion, many traces of which remain to this day in the practices of European nations. And the celebration of rites in The habits of savages without a history are not. in themselves evidence which can in any way be depended upon. To take for granted that what the savages now are, perhaps after millenniums of degradation, all other people must have been, and that modes of thought through which they are now passing have been passed through by others, is a most unscientific assumption, and you will seldom meet with it in any essay or book without also finding proof that the writer did not know how to deal with historical evidence. Authorities are sure to be quoted which the historian knows to be worthless, and evidence in itself irreproachable will be completely misunderstood. The universality of a belief or practice, even among savages, would of course, if proved, be a very weighty fact, tending to prove that the belief or practice in question had its origin either in reason or in tradition. It is, however, impossible to exaggerate the value of Sir Henry Maine's protest against "the very sli...