Note 139 — Chapter IV · THE PROBLEM OF WORLD-HISTORY
Charles Francis Atkinson translation
The Chinese ancestor-worship honoured genealogical order with strict ceremonies. And whereas here ancestor-worship by degrees came to be the centre of all piety, in the Classical world it was driven entirely into the background by the cults of present gods; in Roman times it hardly existed at all.
(Note the elaborate precautions taken in the Athenian “Anthesteria” to keep the anonymous mass of ghosts at bay. This feast was anything but an All Souls’ Day of re-communion with the departed spirits.—Tr.)