ority states that
"the account given by Herodotus of the religion of the ancient Persians
shows that it consisted in much the same usages as those now found in
Chinese Imperial worship" (_op. cit._ pp. 6, 22, 18 and 30). In the
preceding pages it has been shown that the fundamental principles of the
primitive religions of China and America were identical, but that their
subsequent stages of development or evolution were strikingly divergent.
The following study of certain details connected with the "Imperial
worship" brings out a marked differentiation in the Chinese and Mexican
cult of heaven and earth.

The altar of Heaven at Peking consists of three circular marble terraces,
the uppermost of which is paved with eighty-one stones arranged in
circles. It is on a round stone in the centre of these circles that the
Emperor kneels and is considered to occupy the centre of the earth. In the
worship of Heaven, offerings are made to the heavenly bodies, the Sun,
Moon, the Pole-star, Great Bear, five planets and twenty-eight
constellations. The worship at the altar of Earth consists of offerings to
the mountains, rivers and seas.

This arrangement is strikingly unlike that of the ancient Mexicans, who
associated the sun only with the Above, the male principle and the blue
heaven, and worshipped the nocturnal heaven, the moon and stars, with the
earth, darkness and the female principle.

It is interesting to note the marked effect, produced by the two different
modes of classification, upon the subsequent development of the state
religions of China and Mexico. In the latter country where the contrast of
light and darkness and of the duality of nature seems to have been most
powerfully felt, the gradual institution, on a footing of equality of a
diurnal masculine and nocturnal feminine cult or of a separate sun and
moon worship, led to the formation of two equally powerful castes of
priest-astronomers who devised their respective calendars and cults and
ultimately stood in open rivalry and antagonism towards each other, as
children of heaven and light: sun worshippers; and children of earth and
darkness: moon worshippers. In China, as the cult of earth was subordinate
from the first and all heavenly bodies were included in the worship of
Heaven, there was no opportunity for any rivalry to develop in the
superior caste of astronomers who jointly ruled, instituted their calendar
and altered it under influences emanating from In