Word: cultus
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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...doctrine of the Ancient Greeks on immortality is that of collecting evidence. In the first place the Greeks had no distinctive national faith, and there was a tendency of the cults to split up, in the absence of any single sanctuary, or great priestly order. Then there was no cultus-literature, though materials out of which canonical collections might have grown were numerous. Lastly the Greek religion was composed of various elements, and by writers of that time the doctrine of immortality was ascribed to foreign influences...
...outset there were two incongruous conceptions about the state of the dead. One was that they were powerful. This belief brought with it a corresponding cultus of the dead. On the other hand was the conception of the dead as "the weak," or "languid." The idea of the tomb in which the members of a family were buried, grew to the larger idea of sheol or the underworld, a place of dark, gloomy depths. Several passages in the Bible indicate the belief that earthly distinctions were carried into the other world...
...attendant needs of food, fire, clothing and the like. Social relations were not thought to change in the spirit world and Job's conception of a place where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest" was by no means common among people of the lower cultus. A striking example of the idea of continuance was found in the Fiji Islands, where a son, through the highest motives of filial duty, put his own mother to death when her strength and vigor were yet unimpaired, in order that she might enter the spirit life in full possession...
...cultus of the dead comes from both fear and affection. In China it is the cultus which is universal, and it may be traced back 1900 years before our era. Tablets which record the death of parents always belong to the eldest son, by whom they are worshipped, and these tablets are preserved during four or five generations...
...cultus of the dead is thus the great bond of the family, and also that of the social order from emperor to peasant. Readers of the Chinese moralists are apt to think that there is nothing in the religion but ceremony. This ceremony, however, is the adequate expression and regulation of the feeling of the people...