_Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift_, xi. (1884) p. 451; E. Modigliani, _Un
Viaggio a Nías_ (Milan, 1890), p. 295.]
[Footnote 84: R. Schomburgk, _Reisen in Britisch-Guiana_ (Leipsig,
1847-1848), ii. 319.]
[Footnote 85: R. Schomburgk, _op. cit._ ii. 320.]
[Footnote 86: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), p.
265; W. Gray, "Some Notes on the Tannese," _Internationales Archiv für
Ethnographie_, vii. (1894) p. 232.]
[Footnote 87: C. Ribbe, _Zwei Jahre unter den Kannibalen der
Salomo-Inseln_ (Dresden-Blasowitz, 1903), p. 148.]
[Footnote 88: Ch. Keysser, "Aus dem Leben der Kaileute," in R.
Neuhauss's _Deutsch Neu-Guinea_ (Berlin, 1911), iii. 161 _sq._]
[Footnote 89: Josef Meier, "Mythen und Sagen der Admiralitätsinsulaner,"
_Anthropos_, iii. (1908) p. 193.]
[Footnote 90: George Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London,
1910), p. 365; George Turner, LL.D., _Samoa_ (London, 1884), pp. 8
_sq._]
[Footnote 91: See above, p. 70.]
[Footnote 92: A. C. Kruijt, "De legenden der Poso-Alfoeren aangaande de
erste menschen," _Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap_, xxxviii. (1894) p. 340.]
[Footnote 93: D. F. A. Hervey, "The Mêntra Traditions," _Journal of the
Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, No. 10 (December 1882), p.
190; W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_
(London, 1906), ii. 337 _sq._]
[Footnote 94: Guerlach, "Moeurs et Superstitions des sauvages Ba-hnars,"
_Missions Catholiques_, xix. (1887) p. 479.]
[Footnote 95: (Sir) J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, _Gazetteer of Upper
Burma and the Shan States_, Part i. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1900) pp. 408
_sq._]
[Footnote 96: R. Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_ (Melbourne
and London, 1878), i. 428. On this narrative the author remarks: "This
story appears to bear too close a resemblance to the Biblical account of
the Fall. Is it genuine or not? Mr. Bulmer admits that it may have been
invented by the aborigines after they had heard something of Scripture
history."]
[Footnote 97: Th. Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, Second Edition
(London, 1860), i. 204 _sq._ For another Fijian story of the origin of
death, see above, p. 67.]
[Footnote 98: Josef Meier, "Mythen und Sagen der Admiralitätsinsulaner,"
_Anthropos_, iii. (1908) p. 194.]
[Footnote 99: Josef Meier, _op. cit._ pp. 194 _sq._]
[Footnote 100: C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, _The Great Plateau of
Northern Rhodesia_ (London, 1911), pp. 80 _sq._ A like tale is told by
the Balolo of the Upper Congo. See _Folk-lore_, xii. (1901) p. 461; and
below, p. 472.]
[Footnote 101: J. Mooney, "Myths of the Cherokee," _Nineteenth Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_, Part i. (Washington, 1900)
p. 436, quoting "the Payne manuscript, of date about 1835." Compare
_id._, pp. 252-254, 436 _sq._]
[Footnote 102: _Relations des Jésuites_, 1634, p. 13 (Canadian reprint,
Quebec, 1858).]
[Footnote 103: Sir Harry Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_ (London,
1904), ii. 700-705 (the story was taken down by Mr. J. F. Cunningham);
Rev. J. Roscoe, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp. 460-464. The story is
briefly told by Mr. L. Decle, _Three Years in Savage Africa_ (London,
1898), pp. 439 _sq._]
[Footnote 104: J. Spieth, _Die Ewe-Stämme_ (Berlin, 1906), pp. 590-593.]
[Footnote 105: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp.
265 _sq._]
[Footnote 106: A. Weissmann, _Essays upon Heredity and Kindred
Biological Problems_, vol. i. (Oxford, 1891) pp. 25 _sq._]
[Footnote 107: A. R. Wallace, quoted in A. Weissmann's _Essays upon
Heredity_, i. (Oxford, 1891) p. 24 note.]
LECTURE IV
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE ABORIGINES OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
[Sidenote: Proposed survey of the belief in immortality and the worship
of the dead, as these are found among the various races of men,
beginning with the lowest savages.]
In previous lectures we have considered the ideas which savages in
general entertain of death and its origin. To-day we begin our survey of
the beliefs and practices of particular races in regard to the dead. I
propose to deal separately with some of the principal races of men and
to shew in detail how the belief in human immortality and the worship of
the dead, to which that belief naturally gives rise, have formed a more
or less important element of their religion. And in order to trace as
far as possible the evolution of that worship in history I shall begin
with the lowest savages about whom we possess accurate information, and
shall pass from them to higher races until, if time permitted, we might
come to the civilised nations of antiquity and of modern times. In this
way, by comparing the ideas and practices of peoples on different planes
of culture we may be able approximately to reconstruct or represent to
ourselves with a fair degree of probability the various stages through
which this particular phase of religion may be supposed to have passed
in the great civilised races before the dawn of history. Of course all
such reconstructions must be more or less conjectural. In the absence of
historical documents that is inevitable; but our reconstruction will be
more or less probable according to the degree in which the corresponding
stages of evolution are found to resemble or differ from each other in
the various races of men. If we find that tribes at approximately the
same level of culture in different parts of the world have approximately
the same religion, we may fairly infer that religion is in a sense a
function of culture, and therefore that all races which have traversed
the same stages of culture in the past have traversed also the same
stages of religion; in short that, allowing for many minor variations,
which flow inevitably from varying circumstances such as climate, soil,
racial temperament, and so forth, the course of religious development
has on the whole been uniform among mankind. This enquiry may be called
the embryology of religion, in as much as it seeks to do for the
development of religion what embryology in the strict sense of the word
attempts to do for the development of life. And just as biology or the
science of life naturally begins with the study of the lowest sorts of
living beings, the humble protozoa, so we shall begin our enquiry with a
study of the lowest savages of whom we possess a comparatively full and
accurate record, namely, the aborigines of Australia.
[Sidenote: Savagery a case not of degeneracy but of arrested or rather
retarded development.]
At the outset I would ask you to bear in mind that, so far as evidence
allows us to judge, savagery in all its phases appears to be nothing but
a case of arrested or rather retarded development. The old view that
savages have degenerated from a higher level of culture, on which their
forefathers once stood, is destitute alike of evidence and of
probability. On the contrary, the information which we possess as to the
lower races, meagre and fragmentary as it unfortunately is, all seems to
point to the conclusion that on the whole even the most savage tribes
have reached their low level of culture from one still lower, and that
the upward movement, though so slow as to be almost imperceptible, has
yet been real and steady up to the point where savagery has come into
contact with civilisation. The moment of such contact is a critical one
for the savages. If the intellectual, moral, and social interval which
divides them from the civilised intruders exceeds a certain degree, then
it appears that sooner or later the savages must inevitably perish; the
shock of collision with a stronger race is too violent to be withstood,
the weaker goes to the wall and is shattered. But if on the other hand
the breach between the two conflicting races is not so wide as to be
impassable, there is a hope that the weaker may assimilate enough of the
higher culture of the other to survive. It was so, for example, with our
barbarous forefathers in contact with the ancient civilisations of
Greece and Rome; and it may be so in future with some, for example, of
the black races of the present day in contact with European
civilisation. Time will shew. But among the savages who cannot
permanently survive the shock of collision with Europe may certainly be
numbered the aborigines of Australia. They are rapidly dwindling and
wasting away, and before very many years have passed it is probable that
they will be extinct like the Tasmanians, who, so far as we can judge
from the miserably imperfect records of them which we possess, appear to
have been savages of an even lower type than the Australians, and
therefore to have been still less able to survive in the struggle for
existence with their vigorous European rivals.
[Sidenote: Physical causes which have retarded progress in Australia.]
The causes which have retarded progress in Australia and kept the
aboriginal population at the lowest level of savagery appear to be
mainly two; namely, first, the geographical isolation and comparatively
small area of the continent, and, second, the barren and indeed desert
nature of a great part of its surface; for the combined effect of these
causes has been, by excluding foreign competitors and seriously
restricting the number of competitors at home, to abate the rigour of
competition and thereby to restrain the action of one of the most
powerful influences which make for progress. In other words, elements of
weakness have been allowed to linger on, which under the sterner
conditions of life entailed by fierce competition would long ago have
been eliminated and have made way for elements better adapted to the
environment. What is true of the human inhabitants of Australia in this
respect is true also of its fauna and flora. It has long been recognised
that the animals and plants of Australia represent on the whole more
archaic types of life than the animals and plants of the larger
continents; and the reason why these antiquated creatures have survived
there rather than elsewhere is mainly that, the area of competition
being so much restricted through the causes I have mentioned, these
comparatively weak forms of animal and vegetable life have not been
killed off by stronger competitors. That this is the real cause appears
to be proved by the rapidity with which many animals and plants
introduced into Australia from Europe tend to overrun the country and to
oust the old native fauna and flora.[108]
[Sidenote: In the centre of Australia the natural conditions of life are
most unfavourable; hence the central aborigines have remained in a more
primitive state than those of the coasts, where food and water are more
plentiful.]
I have said that among the causes which have kept the aborigines of
Australia at a very low level of savagery must be reckoned the desert
nature of a great part of the country. Now it is the interior of the
continent which is the most arid, waste, and barren. The coasts are
comparatively fertile, for they are watered by showers condensed from an
atmosphere which is charged with moisture by the neighbouring sea; and
this condensation is greatly facilitated in the south-eastern and
eastern parts of the continent by a high range of mountains which here
skirts the coast for a long distance, attracting the moisture from the
ocean and precipitating it in the form of snow and rain. Thus the
vegetation and hence the supply of food both animal and vegetable in
these well-watered portions of the continent are varied and plentiful.
In striking contrast with the fertility and abundance of these favoured
regions are the stony plains and bare rocky ranges of the interior,
where water is scarce, vegetation scanty, and animal life at certain
seasons of the year can only with difficulty be maintained. It would be
no wonder if the natives of these arid sun-scorched wildernesses should
have lagged behind even their savage brethren of the coasts in respect
of material and social progress; and in fact there are many indications
that they have done so, in other words, that the aborigines of the more
fertile districts near the sea have made a greater advance towards
civilisation than the tribes of the desert interior. This is the view of
men who have studied the Australian savages most deeply at first hand,
and, so far as I can judge of the matter without any such first-hand
acquaintance, I entirely agree with their opinion. I have given my
reasons elsewhere and shall not repeat them here. All that I wish to
impress on you now is that in aboriginal Australia a movement of social
and intellectual progress, slow but perceptible, appears to have been
setting from the coast inwards, and that, so far as such things can be
referred to physical causes, this particular movement in Australia would
seem to have been initiated by the sea acting through an abundant
rainfall and a consequent abundant supply of food.[109]
[Sidenote: Backward state of the Central Australian aborigines. They
have no idea of a moral supreme being.]
Accordingly, in attempting to give you some account of the belief in
immortality and the worship of the dead among the various races of
mankind, I propose to begin with the natives of Central Australia,
first, because the Australian aborigines are the most primitive savages
about whom we have full and accurate information, and, second, because
among these primitive savages the inhabitants of the central deserts are
on the whole the most primitive. Like their brethren in the rest of the
continent they were in their native condition absolutely ignorant of
metals and of agriculture; they had no domestic animals except the dog,
and they subsisted wholly by the products of the chase and the natural
fruits, roots, and seeds, which the ground yielded without cultivation
of any sort. In regard to their intellectual outlook upon the world,
they were deeply imbued, as I shewed in a former lecture, with a belief
in magic, but it can hardly be said that they possessed any religion in
the strict sense of the word, by which I mean a propitiation of real or
imaginary powers regarded as personal beings superior to man: certainly
the Australian aborigines appear to have believed in no beings who
deserve to be called gods. On this subject Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,
our best authorities on these tribes, observe as follows: "The Central
Australian natives--and this is true of the tribes extending from Lake
Eyre in the south to the far north and eastwards across to the Gulf of
Carpentaria--have no idea whatever of the existence of any supreme being
who is pleased if they follow a certain line of what we call moral
conduct and displeased if they do not do so. They have not the vaguest
idea of a personal individual other than an actual living member of the
tribe who approves or disapproves of their conduct, so far as anything
like what we call morality is concerned. Any such idea as that of a
future life of happiness or the reverse, as a reward for meritorious or
as a punishment for blameworthy conduct, is quite foreign to them.... We
know of no tribe in which there is a belief of any kind in a supreme
being who rewards or punishes the individual according to his moral
behaviour, using the word moral in the native sense."[110]
[Sidenote: Central Australian theory that the souls of the dead survive
and are afterwards reborn as infants.]
But if the aborigines of Central Australia have no religion properly so
called, they entertain beliefs and they observe practices out of which
under favourable circumstances a religion might have been developed, if
its evolution had not been arrested by the advent of Europeans. Among
these elements of natural religion one of the most important is the
theory which these savages hold as to the existence and nature of the
dead. That theory is a very remarkable one. With a single exception,
which I shall mention presently, they unanimously believe that death is
not the end of all things for the individual, but that the human
personality survives, apparently with little change, in the form of a
spirit, which may afterwards be reborn as a child into the world. In
fact they think that every living person without exception is the
reincarnation of a dead person who lived on earth a longer or shorter
time ago. This belief is held universally by the tribes which occupy an
immense area of Australia from the centre northwards to the Gulf of
Carpentaria.[111] The single exception to which I have referred is
furnished by the Gnanji, a fierce and wild-looking tribe who eat their
dead enemies and perhaps also their dead friends.[112] These savages
deny that women have spirits which live after death; when a woman dies,
that, they say, is the end of her. On the other hand, the spirit of a
dead man, in their opinion, survives and goes to and fro on the earth
visiting the places where his forefathers camped in days of old and
destined to be born again of a woman at some future time, when the rains
have fallen and bleached his bones.[113] But why these primitive
philosophers should deny the privilege of immortality to women and
reserve it exclusively for men, is not manifest. All other Central
Australian tribes appear to admit the rights of women equally with the
rights of men in a life beyond the grave.
[Sidenote: Central Australian theory as to the state of the dead.
Certain conspicuous features of the landscape supposed to be tenanted by
the souls of the dead waiting to be born again.]
With regard to the state of the souls of the dead in the intervals
between their successive reincarnations, the opinions of the Central
Australian savages are clear and definite. Most civilised races who
believe in the immortality of the soul have found themselves compelled
to confess that, however immortal the spirits of the departed may be,
they do not present themselves commonly to our eyes or ears, nor meddle
much with the affairs of the living; hence the survivors have for the
most part inferred that the dead do not hover invisible in our midst,
but that they dwell somewhere, far away, in the height of heaven, or in
the depth of earth, or in Islands of the Blest beyond the sea where the
sun goes down. Not so with the simple aborigines of Australia. They
imagine that the spirits of the dead continue to haunt their native land
and especially certain striking natural features of the landscape, it
may be a pool of water in a deep gorge of the barren hills, or a
solitary tree in the sun-baked plains, or a great rock that affords a
welcome shade in the sultry noon. Such spots are thought to be tenanted
by the souls of the departed waiting to be born again. There they lurk,
constantly on the look-out for passing women into whom they may enter,
and from whom in due time they may be born as infants. It matters not
whether the woman be married or unmarried, a matron or a maid, a
blooming girl or a withered hag: any woman may conceive directly by the
entrance into her of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives
have shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference for
plump young women. Hence when such a damsel is passing near a plot of
haunted ground, if she does not wish to become a mother, she will
disguise herself as an aged crone and hobble past, saying in a thin
cracked voice, "Don't come to me. I am an old woman." Such spots are
often stones, which the natives call child-stones because the souls of
the dead are there lying in wait for women in order to be born as
children. One such stone, for example, may be seen in the land of the
Arunta tribe near Alice Springs. It projects to a height of three feet
from the ground among the mulga scrub, and there is a round hole in it
through which the souls of dead plum-tree people are constantly peeping,
ready to pounce out on a likely damsel. Again, in the territory of the
Warramunga tribe the ghosts of black-snake people are supposed to gather
in the rocks round certain pools or in the gum-trees which border the
generally dry bed of a water-course. No Warramunga woman would dare to
strike one of these trees with an axe, because she is firmly convinced
that in doing so she would set free one of the lurking black-snake
spirits, who would immediately dart into her body. They think that the
spirits are no larger than grains of sand and that they make their way
into women through the navel. Nor is it merely by direct contact with
one of these repositories of souls, nor yet by passing near it, that
women may be gotten with child against their wish. The Arunta believe
that any malicious man may by magic cause a woman or even a child to
become a mother: he has only to go to one of the child-stones and rub it
with his hands, muttering the words, "Plenty of young women. You look
and go quickly."[114]
[Sidenote: As a rule, only the souls of persons of one particular
totemic clan are thought to congregate in one place.]
A remarkable feature in these gathering-places of the dead remains to be
noticed. The society at each of them is very select. The ghosts are very
clannish; as a rule none but people of one particular totemic clan are
supposed to for-gather at any one place. For example, we have just seen
that in the Arunta tribe the souls of dead people of the plum-tree totem
congregate at a certain stone in the mulga scrub, and that in the
Warramunga tribe the spirits of deceased persons who had black snakes
for their totem haunt certain gum-trees. The same thing applies to most
of the other haunts of the dead in Central Australia. Whether the totem
was a kangaroo or an emu, a rat or a bat, a hawk or a cockatoo, a bee or
a fly, a yam or a grass seed, the sun or the moon, fire or water,
lightning or the wind, it matters not what the totem was, only the
ghosts of people of one totemic clan meet for the most part in one
place; thus one rock will be tenanted by the spirits of kangaroo folk
only, and another by spirits of emu folk only; one water-pool will be
the home of dead rat people alone, and another the haunt of none but
dead bat people; and so on with most of the other abodes of the souls.
However, in the Urabunna tribe the ghosts are not so exclusive; some of
them consent to share their abode with people of other totems. For
example, a certain pool of water is haunted by the spirits of folk who
in their lifetime had for their totems respectively the emu, rain, and a
certain grub. On the other hand a group of granite boulders is inhabited
only by the souls of persons of the pigeon totem.[115]
[Sidenote: Totemism defined.]
Perhaps for the sake of some of my hearers I should say a word as to the
meaning of totems and totemism. The subject is a large one and is still
under discussion. For our present purpose it is not necessary that I
should enter into details; I will therefore only say that a totem is
commonly a class of natural objects, usually a species of animals or
plants, with which a savage identifies himself in a curious way,
imagining that he himself and his kinsfolk are for all practical
purposes kangaroos or emus, rats or bats, hawks or cockatoos, yams or
grass-seed, and so on, according to the particular class of natural
objects which he claims as his totem. The origin of this remarkable
identification of men with animals, plants, or other things is still
much debated; my own view is that the key to the mystery is furnished by
the Australian beliefs as to birth and rebirth which I have just
described to you; but on that subject I will not now dwell.[116] All
that I ask you to remember is that in Central Australia there is no
general gathering-place for the spirits of the departed; the souls are
sorted out more or less strictly according to their totems and dwell
apart each in their own little preserve or preserves, on which ghosts of
other totems are supposed seldom or never to trespass. Thus the whole
country-side is dotted at intervals with these spiritual parks or
reservations, which are respected by the natives as the abodes of their
departed kinsfolk. In size they vary from a few square yards to many
square miles.[117]