A belief in the transmigration of souls, from man to the lower animals,
and _vice versâ_, has been found among various peoples, in all the
historic ages. The origin of this belief has been a puzzling question
to rationalistic myth-students. Starting out, as do most of these
students, with the rigid theory that man worked himself slowly upward
from the lowest savagery, without any external revelation, they are
confronted with primitive customs on every side which go to show a
popular belief in soul-transmigration, and which they must try to
account for within the limits of their unproven theory. The result is,
that they first presuppose some conception in the primitive man’s mind
of spiritual things, and then they conveniently refer all confusing
facts to that presupposed conception. “Animism” is one of the pet
names for this resolvent of grave difficulties. And when “Animism”
is supplemented by “Fetishism,” “Zoolatry,” and “Totemism,” the
requisite number of changes is secured for the meeting of any number of
perplexing facts in the religious belief of primitive man everywhere.
As a matter of simple fact, man’s conception of spiritual existences
is not accounted for by the “scientists.” And the claim that such
a conception was innate in primitive man, or that it was a natural
growth in man’s unaided progress, is at the best but an unproved
theory. In the early part of this century, there were thousands of
deaf-mutes in the United States, who had never been educated by the
system which is now so effective for that class in the community. This
gave a rare opportunity of learning the normal spiritual attainments
of unsophisticated man; of man uninfluenced by external revelation or
traditions. Nor was this opportunity unimproved for a good purpose.
When the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (himself a philosophical scientist)
introduced the system of deaf-mute instruction into this country, he
made a careful examination into the intelligence of all the deaf mutes
brought under his care, on this point of spiritual conceptions. His
declaration was, that he never found a person who, prior to specific
instruction, had any conception of the nature or the existence of God.
A single illustration of Mr. Gallaudet’s experiences in this line will
suffice for the entire series of them. A young girl of sixteen years of
age, or so, who proved to be of far more than ordinary intelligence and
mental capacity, had been brought up in a New England Christian home.
She had been accustomed to bow her head when grace was said at the
daily meals, to kneel in family prayer, and to attend church regularly,
from early childhood; yet she had no idea of God, no thought of
spiritual existences of any sort whatsoever, until she was instructed
in those things, in the line of her new education.[702] A writer on
this subject, who differed with Mr. Gallaudet in his conclusions from
these facts, added: “This testimony is confirmed by that of all the
teachers of the deaf and dumb, and the fact must be admitted.”[703]
Until some human being can be found with a conception of spiritual
existences, without his having received instruction on that point from
those who went before him, the claim--in the face of such facts as
these--that primitive man ever obtained his spiritual knowledge or his
spiritual conceptions from within himself alone, or without an external
revelation to him, is an unscientific assumption, in the investigation
of the origin of religions in the world.
But, with man’s conception of spiritual things, already existing[704]
(however he came by it), and with the existing belief that the blood
is the life, or the soul, or the nature, of an organism, the idea of
the transmigration of souls as identical with the transference of
blood, is a very natural corollary. The blood being the life, or the
soul, of man and of beast, if the blood of man passes into the body
of a beast, or the blood of a beast passes into the body of a man, why
should it not be inferred that the soul of the man, or of the beast,
transmigrated accordingly? If the Hindoo, believing that the blood of
man is the soul of man, sees the blood of a man drunk up by a tiger,
is it strange that he should look upon that tiger as having within him
the soul of the Hindoo, which has been thus appropriated? If the South
African supposes that, by his drinking the blood or eating the heart of
a lion, he appropriates the lion’s courage,[705] is it to be wondered
at that when he sees a lion licking the blood and eating the heart of a
South African, he should infer that the lion is thereby the possessor
of whatever was distinctive in the Zulu, or the Hottentot, personality?
Indeed, as has been already stated, in the body of this work, there
is still a question among physiologists, how far the transference of
_blood_ from one organism to another carries a transmigration of _soul_
(of the _psyche_, not of the _pneuma_).[706] However this may be, the
popular belief in such transmigration is fully accounted for, by the
recognized conviction that the blood is the soul.
In this view of the case, there is an added force in the Mosaic
prohibition--repeated as it is in the Apostolic Encyclical--of the
eating, or drinking, of the blood of the lower animals; with the
possibility of thereby being made a partaker of the lower animal
nature. And what fresh potency is given to Elijah’s prophecy against
Ahab and Jezebel, by this conception of the transference of nature
by the transference of blood! “Thus saith the Lord [to Ahab] Hast
thou killed [Hast thou taken the blood of Naboth?], and also taken
possession [of Naboth’s vineyard]?... Thus saith the Lord, In the place
where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy blood, even
thine.... And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, saying, The dogs shall
eat Jezebel by the ramparts of Jezreel.” The blood, the life, the soul
of royalty, shall become a portion of the very life of the prowling
scavenger dogs of the royal city. And it came to pass accordingly, to
both Ahab and Jezebel.[707]