[315] Evidence of these things may be found passim in such journals as China's Millions. Some typical cases are mentioned by Arthur Davenport in his interesting work China from Within. He also quotes in full the case referred to on p. [332] (footnote 3).
[316] The processes of beatification and canonisation in Rome and China are in many respects similar. Some years ago the Archbishop of Rouen and other prelates addressed a letter to the Pope with regard to Joan of Arc, begging the Holy See to declare that "this admirable girl practised heroically the Christian virtues ... and that she is consequently worthy of being inscribed among the Blessed and of being publicly invoked by all Christian people." After the lapse of some years Pope Pius IX. duly "proclaimed the heroic quality of Joan of Arc's virtues, and the authenticity of the miracles associated with her name"; and since then, as is well known, the French heroine has gone through the process of beatification. (See Times of April 13, 1909.) In China a man or woman who was distinguished during life for some heroic action or for pre-eminent virtue may—in suitable circumstances—be recommended by the local officials for canonisation, and if the Emperor wills it to be so he issues a decree whereby that person becomes a saint or a god (whichever term we prefer) and is officially entitled to be the recipient of public worship. The memorial in which the magistrates set forth the virtues of the dead man—and the miracles performed at his tomb if there happen to have been any—might be translated almost word for word from similar memorials sent to Rome by orthodox Christian prelates; and the Chinese Emperor gives his decision in the matter in very much the same terms as are adopted by the Pope. Cf. Farnell's Evolution of Religion, p. 77.
[317] Asiatic Studies (Second Series), 1906 ed., p. 155.
[319] This word "worship" is not a strictly correct translation of the Chinese pai. "To visit or salute ceremoniously" would, as a rule, be a fairer rendering.
[320] Lun Yü, ii. 24 (Legge's translation).
[321] Sir Charles Eliot, in The Quarterly Review, October 1907, p. 362.
[322] Ancestor-worship and Japanese Law by Nobushige Hozumi (Tokyo, 1901), pp. 4 seq. For a similar view see Tylor's Primitive Culture (4th ed.), vol. ii. p. 113.
[324] In case the reader should be misled into the belief that this opinion is shared by all foreigners in China, I quote some words recently published by the Rev. J. Macgowan in his work Sidelights on Chinese Life (pp. 75-6). The root of ancestor-worship, he says, "lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home." This view is not, I think, a fair one.