etc., fulfilling generally, with worship of ancestors, State or official (Confucianism) and private or unofficial, and the observance of various annual festivals, such as ‘All Souls’ Day’ for wandering and hungry ghosts, the spiritual needs of the people as the ‘Three Religions’ (San Chiao).  The emperor, as high priest, took the responsibility for calamities, etc., making confession to Heaven and praying that as a punishment the evil be diverted from the people to his own person.  Statesmen, nobles, and officials discharged, as already noted, priestly functions in connexion with the State religion in addition to their ordinary duties.  As a rule, priests proper, frowned upon as non-producers, were recruited from the lower classes, were celibate, unintellectual, idle, and immoral.  There was nothing, even in the elaborate ceremonies on special occasions in the Buddhist temples, which could be likened to what is known as ‘public worship’ and ‘common prayer’ in the West.  Worship had for its sole object either the attainment of some good or the prevention of some evil.

Generally this represents the state of things under the Republican regime; the chief differences being greater neglect of ecclesiastical matters and the conversion of a large number of temples into schools.

Professional Institutions

We read of physicians, blind musicians, poets, teachers, prayer-makers, architects, scribes, painters, diviners, ceremonialists, orators, and others during the Feudal Period, These professions were of ecclesiastical origin, not yet completely differentiated from the ‘Church,’ and both in earlier and later times not always or often differentiated from each other.  Thus the historiographers combined the duties of statesmen, scholars, authors, and generals.  The professions of authors and teachers, musicians and poets, were united in one person.  And so it continued to the present day.  Priests discharge medical functions, poets still sing their verses.  But experienced medical specialists, though few, are to be found, as well as women doctors; there are veterinary surgeons, musicians (chiefly belonging to the poorest classes and often blind), actors, teachers, attorneys, diviners, artists, letter-writers, and many others, men of letters being perhaps the most prominent and most esteemed.

Accessory Institutions

A system of schools, academies, colleges, and universities obtained in villages, districts, departments, and principalities.  The instruction was divided into ‘Primary Learning’ and ‘Great Learning.’  There were special schools of dancing and music.  Libraries and almshouses for old men are mentioned.  Associations of scholars for literary purposes seem to have been numerous.