cruelty to animals, there can be no doubt that the laws against
it are chiefly due to a keener and more generally felt sympathy
with their sufferings. The actual feelings of men have commonly
been somewhat more tender than the theories of law, philosophy,
and religion. The anthropocentric exclusiveness of Christianity
was from ancient times to some extent counterbalanced by popular
sentiments and beliefs. In the folk-tales of Europe man is not
placed in an isolated and unique position in the universe. He
lives in intimate and friendly intercourse with the animals round
him, attributes to them human qualities, and regards them with
mercy.[135] Tender feelings towards the brute creation are also
displayed in many legends of saints.[136] St. Francis of Assisi
{511} talked with the birds and called them "brother birds" or
"little sister swallows," and was seen employed in removing worms
from the road that they might not be trampled by travellers.[137]
John Moschus speaks of a certain abbot who early in the morning
not only used to give food to all the dogs in the monastery, but
would bring corn to the ants and to the birds on the roof.[138]
In the 'Revelations of St. Bridget' we read, "Let a man fear,
above all, me, his God, and so much the gentler will he become
towards my creatures and animals, on whom, on account of me,
their Creator, he ought to have compassion."[139] Many kind words
about animals have come from poets and thinkers. Montaigne says
that he has never been able to see without affliction an innocent
beast, which is without defence and from which we receive no
offence, pursued and killed.[140] Shakespeare points out that
"the poor beetle that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds
a pang as great as when a giant dies."[141] Mandeville thinks
that if it was not for that tyranny which custom usurps over us,
no men of any tolerable good-nature could ever be reconciled to
the killing of so many animals for their daily food, as long as
the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them with varieties
of vegetable dainties.[142] Towards the end of the eighteenth
century Bentham wrote:--"Men must be permitted to kill animals;
but they should be forbidden to torment them. Artificial death
may be rendered less painful than natural death by simple
processes, well worth the trouble of being studied, and of
becoming an object of police. Why should the law refuse its
protection to any sensitive being? A time will come when humanity
will spread its mantle over everything that breathes. The lot of
slaves has begun to {512} excite pity; we shall end by softening
the lot of the animals which labour for us and supply our
wants."[143] Some years later Thomas Young pronounced hunting,
shooting, and fishing for sport to be "unlawful, cruel, and
sinful."[144] And in the course of the nineteenth century
humanity to animals, from being conspicuous in a few individuals
only, became the keynote of a movement gradually increasing in
strength. Humanitarians, says Mr. Salt, "insist that the
difference between human and non-human is one of degree only and
not of kind, and that we owe duties, the same in kind though not
in degree, to all our sentient fellow-beings."[145] Some people
maintain that it is wrong to kill animals for food or in sport;
but the most vigorous attacks concerning the treatment of the
brute creation are at present directed against the practice of
vivisection. The claim is made that this practice should be, not
merely restricted, but entirely prohibited by law. And while the
antivivisectionists generally endeavour to deny or minimise the
scientific importance of experiments on living animals, their cry
for the abolition of such experiments is mainly based on the
argument that humanity at large has no right to purchase relief
from its own suffering by torturing helpless brutes.
[Footnote 135: _Supra_, i. 259. Schwarz, _Prähistorisch-anthropologische
Studien_, p. 203.]
[Footnote 136: Lecky, _History of European Morals_, ii. 168
_sqq._ Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, ii. 517 _sq._]
[Footnote 137: Sabatier, _Life of St. Francis of Assisi_, p. 176
_sq._ Digby, _Mores Catholici_, ii. 291.]
[Footnote 138: Moschus, _Pratum spirituale_, 184 (Migne,
_Patrologiæ cursus_, Ser. Græca, lxxxvii. 3056).]
[Footnote 139: St. Bridget, quoted by Helps, _op. cit._ p. 124.]
[Footnote 140: Montaigne, _Essais_, ii. 11.]
[Footnote 141: Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_, iii. 1.]
[Footnote 142: Mandeville, _Fable of the Bees_, p. 187.]
[Footnote 143: Bentham, _Theory of Legislation_, p. 428 _sq._]
[Footnote 144: Young, _op. cit._ p. 75 _sq._]
[Footnote 145: Salt, _Animals' Rights_, p. v.]
This rapidly increasing sympathy with animal suffering is no
doubt to a considerable extent due to the decline of the
anthropocentric doctrine and the influence of another theory,
which regards man, not as an image of the deity separated from
the lower animals by a special act of creation, but as a being
generally akin to them, and only representing a higher stage in
the scale of mental evolution. Through this doctrine the orthodox
contempt for dumb creatures was succeeded by feelings of affinity
and kindly interest. But apart from any theory as regards human
origins, growing reflection has also taught men to be more
considerate in their treatment of animals by producing a more
vivid idea of their sufferings. Human thoughtlessness {513} has
been responsible for much needless pain to which they have been
made subject. In spite of some improvement it is so still;
whilst, at the same time, the movement advocating greater
humanity to animals is itself not altogether free from
inconsistencies and a certain lack of discrimination.
It has been observed that the Neapolitan would not act so cruelly
as he does to almost all animals except the cat if he could bring
himself to conceive their capacity for joy and pain.[146] So also
we ourselves should often behave differently if we realised the
tortures we thoughtlessly cause to creatures whose sufferings
escape our notice from want of obvious outward expression. While
the practice of whipping young pigs to death to make them tender,
which occurred in England not much more than a century ago,[147]
would nowadays be regarded with general horror, cruelties
inflicted for gastronomic purposes upon creatures of a lower type
are little thought of. Cray-fish, oysters, and fish in general,
as Mandeville observed, excite hardly any compassion at all,
because "they express themselves unintelligibly to us; they are
mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure,
vastly different from ours."[148] On the other hand, even
passionate sportsmen describe the hunting of monkeys as repulsive
on account of their resemblance to man; Rajah Brooke thought it
almost barbarous to kill an orang-utan, unless for the sake of
scientific research.[149] Buddhism itself declares that "he who
takes away the life of a large animal will have greater demerit
than he who takes away the life of a small one. . . . The crime
is not great when an ant is killed; its magnitude increases in
this progression--a lizard, a guana, a hare, a deer, a bull, a
horse, and an elephant."[150] How little the feelings which
underlie men's opinions concerning conduct {514} towards the
lower animals are influenced by reflection is also apparent in
the present crusade against vivisection, when compared with the
public indifference to the sufferings inflicted on wild animals
in sport. The vivisector who in cold blood torments his helpless
victim in the interest of science and for the benefit of mankind
is called a coward, and is a much more common object of hatred
than the sportsman who causes agonies to the creature he pursues
for sheer amusement. The pursued animal, it is argued, has "free
chances of escape."[151] This is an excellent argument--provided
we share the North American Indian's conviction that an animal
can never be killed without its own permission.
[Footnote 146: 'Cruelty to Animals in Naples,' in _Saturday
Review_, lix. 854.]
[Footnote 147: _The World_, 1756, nr. 190, p. 1142. Young, _op.
cit._ p. 129.]
[Footnote 148: Mandeville, _op. cit._ p. 187.]
[Footnote 149: Brooke, _Ten Years in Saráwak_, i. 100. _Cf._
Rengger, _Naturgeschichte in der Säugethiere von Paraguay_, p. 26.]
[Footnote 150: Hardy, _Manual of Budhism_, pp. 478, 480.]
[Footnote 151: Cobbe, _op. cit._ p. 10.]
At present there is among ourselves no topic of moral concern
which presents a greater variety of opinion than the question how
far the happiness of the lower animals may be justly sacrificed
for the benefit of man. The extreme views on this subject might,
no doubt, be somewhat modified, on the one hand by a more vivid
representation of animal suffering, on the other hand by the
recognition of certain facts, often overlooked, which make it
unreasonable to regard conduct towards dumb creatures in exactly
the same light as conduct towards men. It should especially be
remembered that the former have none of those long-protracted
anticipations of future misery or death which we have.[152] If
they are destined to serve as meat they are not aware of it;
whereas many domestic animals would never have come into
existence, and been able to enjoy what appears a very happy life,
but for the purpose of being used as food. But though greater
intellectual discrimination may somewhat lessen the divergencies
of moral opinion on the subject, nothing like unanimity can be
expected, for the simple reason that moral judgments are
ultimately based upon emotions, and sympathy with the animal
world is a feeling which varies extremely in different individuals.
[Footnote 152: _Cf._ Bentham, _Introduction to the Principles of
Morals and Legislation_, p. 311, n.]
CHAPTER XLV
REGARD FOR THE DEAD
MORALITY takes notice not only of men's conduct towards the
living but of their conduct towards the dead.
There is a general tendency in the human mind to assume that what
has existed still exists and will exist. When a person dies it is
difficult for those around him to conceive that he is really
dead, and when the cold motionless body bears sad testimony to
the change which has taken place, there is a natural inclination
to believe that the soul has only changed its abode. In the
savage the tendency to assume the continued existence of the soul
after death is strongly supported by dreams and visions of his
deceased friends. What else could these mean but visits of their
souls?
There are, it is true, some savages who are reported to believe
in the annihilation of the soul at the moment of death, or to
have no notion whatever of a future state.[1] But the accuracy of
these statements is hardly beyond suspicion. We sometimes hear
that the very people who are said to deny any belief in an
after-life are afraid of ghosts.[2] A native of Madagascar will
almost in the same {516} breath declare that when he dies he
ceases altogether to exist and yet confess the fact that he is in
the habit of praying to his dead ancestors.[3] Of the Masai in
Eastern Africa some writers state that they believe in
annihilation,[4] others that they attribute a future existence to
their chiefs, medicine men, or influential people.[5] The ideas
on this subject are often exceedingly vague, and inconsistencies
are only to be expected.
[Footnote 1: Powers, _Tribes of California_, p. 348 _sq._
(Miwok). Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, p. 233 _sq._ (some
Oregon Indians). Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 101 (natives of
the Herbert River, Northern Queensland). Martin, _Reisen in den
Molukken_, p. 155 (Alfura). Worcester, _Philippine Islands_, p.
412 (Mangyans). Colquhoun, _Amongst the Shans_, p. 76 (Lethtas).
Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 257 (Oráons). Petherick,
_Travels in Central Africa_, i. 321 (Nouaer tribes). Du Chaillu,
_Explorations in Equatorial Africa_, p. 385.]
[Footnote 2: New, _Life in Eastern Africa_, p. 105.]
[Footnote 3: Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, 393.]
[Footnote 4: Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, p. 259. Hinde, _The
Last of the Masai_, p. 99.]
[Footnote 5: Johnston, _Uganda_, ii. 832. Hollis, _Masai_, pp.
304, 305, 307. Eliot, _ibid._ p. xx.]
The disembodied soul is commonly supposed to have the shape of a
small unsubstantial human image, and to be in its nature a sort
of vapour, film, or shadow.[6] It is believed to have the same
bodily wants and to possess the same mental capacities as its
owner possessed during his lifetime. It is not regarded as
invulnerable or immortal--it may be hurt and killed. It feels
hunger and thirst, heat and cold. It can see and hear and think,
it has human passions and a human will, and it has the power to
influence the living for evil or for good. These notions as
regards the disembodied soul determine the relations between the
living and the dead.
[Footnote 6: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i. 429.]
The dead are supposed to have rights very similar to those they
had whilst alive. The soul must not be killed or injured. The
South Australian Dieyerie, for instance, show great reverence for
certain trees, which are believed to be their fathers
transformed; they will not cut them down and protest against the
settlers doing so.[7] So also some of the Philippine Islanders
maintain that the souls of their forefathers are in trees, which
they therefore spare.[8] The North American Powhatans refrained
from doing harm to some small wood-birds, which were supposed to
receive the souls of their chiefs.[9] In Lifu, {517} when a
father was about to die, surrounded by members of his family, he
might say what animal he would be, for instance a butterfly or
some kind of bird, and that creature would be sacred to his
family, who would neither injure nor kill it.[10] The Rejangs of
Sumatra imagine that tigers in general contain the spirits of
departed men, and "no consideration will prevail on a countryman
to catch or to wound one, but in self-defence, or immediately
after the act of destroying a friend or relation."[11] Among
other peoples monkeys, crocodiles, or snakes, being thought men
in metempsychosis, are held sacred and must not be hurt.[12] Some
Congo Negroes, again, abstain for a whole year after a death from
sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the delicate
substance of the ghost.[13] In China, for seven days after a
man's death his widow and children avoid the use of knives and
needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their
fingers, so as not to wound the ghost.[14] And to this day it
remains a German peasants' belief that it is wrong to slam a
door, lest one should pinch a soul in it.[15]
[Footnote 7: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods' _Native Tribes of
South Australia_, p. 280.]
[Footnote 8: Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des
Philippinen-Archipels,' in _Mittheil. d. kais. u. kön. Geograph.
Gesellsch. in Wien_, xxv. 164 _sqq._]
[Footnote 9: Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, p. 102.]
[Footnote 10: Codrington, quoted by Tylor, 'Remarks on Totemism,'
in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxviii. 147.]
[Footnote 11: Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, p. 292. The same
belief prevails among the natives of the Malay Peninsula
(Newbold, _British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca_, ii. 192).]
[Footnote 12: Meiners, _Geschichte der Religionen_, i. 212.
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 8.]
[Footnote 13: Bastian, _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_, ii. 323.]
[Footnote 14: Gray, _China_, i. 288.]
[Footnote 15: Wuttke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der
Gegenwart_, § 609, p. 396 _sq._]
But the survivors must not only avoid doing anything which might
hurt the soul, they must also positively contribute to its
comfort and subsistence. They often provide it with a dwelling,
either burying the deceased in his own house, or erecting a tent
or hut on his grave. Some Australian natives kindle a fire at a
few yards' distance from the tomb, and repeat this until the soul
is supposed to have gone somewhere else;[16] others, again, are
in the habit of wrapping the body up in a rug, professedly for
the purpose of keeping it warm.[17] In the Saxon district of
Voigtland people have been known to {518} put into the coffin an
umbrella and a pair of galoshes.[18] An extremely prevalent
custom is to place provisions in or upon the grave, and very
commonly feasts are given for the dead.[19] Weapons, implements,
and other movables are deposited in the tomb; domestic animals
are buried or slaughtered at the funeral;[20] and, as we have
seen before, even human beings are sacrificed to the dead to
serve them as companions or attendants, or to vivify their
spirits with their blood, or to gratify their craving for revenge.[21]
[Footnote 16: Roth, _North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_,
p. 165.]
[Footnote 17: Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 79 _sq._]
[Footnote 18: Kohler, _Volksbrauch im Voigtlande_, p. 441.]
[Footnote 19: See Tylor. _op. cit._ ch. xi. _sq._; Spencer,
_Principles of Sociology_, i. 155 _sqq._, 257 _sqq._; Frazer,
_Adonis Attis Osiris_, p. 242 _sqq._]
[Footnote 20: See Spencer, _op. cit._ i. 184 _sqq._]
[Footnote 21: _Supra_, i. 472 _sqq._]
The offerings made to the dead may be gifts presented to them by
the survivors, but the regular funeral sacrifice consists of the
deceased person's own individual property. Among savages the
whole, or a large part, of it is often consigned to the grave or
destroyed.[22] The right of ownership does not cease with death
where the belief prevails that the dead stand in need of earthly
chattels. The recognition of this right is also apparent in the
severe condemnation of robbery or violation committed at a tomb.
Among various North American tribes such an act was regarded as
an offence of the first magnitude and provoked cruel revenge.[23]
Of the Chippewa Indians it is said that however bad a person may
be or however much inclined to steal, the things left at a grave,
valuable or not, are never touched, being sacred to the spirit of
the {519} dead.[24] Among the Maoris "the least violation of any
portion of the precincts of the dead is accounted the greatest
crime that a human being can commit, and is visited with the
direst revenge of a surviving tribe."[25] The laws of Athens[26]
and Rome[27] and the ancient Teutonic law-books[28] punished with
great severity the plunder of a corpse or a tomb. In Rome the
punishment was death if the offence was committed by force,
otherwise condemnation to the mines.
[Footnote 22: Boas, 'Central Eskimo,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._
vi. 580. Murdoch, 'Ethn. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,'
_ibid._ ix. 424 _sq._ (Point Barrow Eskimo). Powell, _ibid._ iii.
p. lvii. (North American Indians). Yarrow, 'Mortuary Customs of
the North American Indians,' _ibid._ i. 98 (Pimas), 100
(Comanches). McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' _ibid._ xv. 178. Roth, _op.
cit._ p. 164 (certain Queensland tribes). Colenso, _Maori Races
of New Zealand_, p. 57. Kolff, _Voyages of the Dourga_, p. 166
_sq._ (Arru Islanders). Kloss, _In the Andamans and Nicobars_,
p. 304 (Kar Nicobarese). Batchelor, _Ainu and their Folk-Lore_,
p. 560 _sq._ Georgi, _Russia_, iv. 152 (Burats). Caillié, _Travels
through Central Africa_, i. 164 (Bagos). Burrows, _Land of the
Pigmies_, p. 107 (Monbuttu). Decle, _Three Years in Savage
Africa_, p. 79 (Barotse). Strabo, xi. 4. 8 (Albanians of the
Eastern Caucasus). See also Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_,
i. 185 _sq._; Post, _Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts_,
p. 295 _sq._; _Idem_, _Grundriss der ethnologischen
Jurisprudenz_, ii. 173 _sq._; _infra_, p. 514 _sq._]
[Footnote 23: Sagard, _Voyage du Pays des Hurons_, p. 288. Gibbs,
'Tribes of Western Washington and North-western Oregon,' in
_Contributions to North American Ethnology_, i. 204.]
[Footnote 24: Reid, 'Religious Belief of the Ojibois,' in _Jour.
Anthr. Inst._ iii. 112.]
[Footnote 25: Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New
Zealanders_, i. 111 _sq._]
[Footnote 26: Cicero, _De legibus_, ii. 26. See also Schmidt,
_Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 105 _sq._]
[Footnote 27: _Digesta_, xlvii. 12, 'De sepulchro violato.']
[Footnote 28: Wilda, _Das Strafrecht der Germanen_, p. 975 _sqq._]
Like living men the dead are sensitive to insults and fond of
praise; hence respect must be shown for their honour and
self-regarding pride. _De mortuis nil nisi bonum;_ [Greek: ou)
ga\r e)sthla\ katthanou=si kertomei=n e)p' a)ndra/sin].[29] In
Greece custom required that at the funeral meal the virtues of
the deceased should be enumerated and extolled,[30] and calumny
against a dead person was punished by law.[31] The same was the
case in ancient Egypt.[32] In Greenland, after the interment, the
nearest male relative of the dead commemorated in a loud
plaintive voice all the excellent qualities of the departed.[33]
Among the Iroquois the near relatives and friends approached the
body in turn and addressed it in a laudatory speech.[34]
[Footnote 29: Archilochus, _Reliquiæ_, 40.]
[Footnote 30: Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 122 _sq._]
[Footnote 31: Rohde, _Psyche_, p. 224.]
[Footnote 32: Diodorus Siculus, i. 92. 5. Erman, _Life in Ancient
Egypt_, p. 322.]
[Footnote 33: Cranz, _History of Greenland_, i. 218.]
[Footnote 34: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 175, n. 2.]
The dead also demand obedience and are anxious that the rules
they laid down while alive should be followed by the survivors.
Hence the sacredness which is attached to a will;[35] hence also,
in a large measure, the rigidity of ancestral custom. The
greatest dread of the natives of South-Eastern Africa "is to
offend their ancestors and the only way to avoid this is to do
everything according to {520} traditional usage."[36] Among the
Basutos "the anger of the deified generations could not be more
directly provoked than by a departure from the precepts and
examples they have left behind them."[37] The E[(w]e-speaking
peoples of the Slave Coast have a proverb which runs:--"Follow
the customs of your father. What he did not do, avoid doing, or
you will harm yourself."[38] Among the Aleuts the old men always
impress upon the native youth the great importance of strictly
observing the customs of their forefathers in conducting the
chase and other matters, as any neglect in this respect would be
sure to bring upon them disaster and punishment.[39] The
Kamchadales, says Steller, consider it a sin to do anything which
is contrary to the precepts of their ancestors.[40] The Papuans
of the Motu district, in New Guinea, believe that when men and
women are bad--adulterers, thieves, quarrellers, and the
like--the spirits of the dead are angry with them.[41] One of the
most powerful sentiments in the mind of a Chinese is his
reverence for ancestral custom; and in a large sense Japan also
is still a country governed by the voices that are hushed.[42]
The life of the ancient Roman was beset with a society of
departed kinsmen whose displeasure he provoked if he varied from
the practice handed down from his fathers. The expression _mos
majorum_, "the custom of the elders," was used by him as a charm
against innovation.[43]
[Footnote 35: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, iii. 116
(Tahitians). Shortland, _Traditions and Superstitions of the New
Zealanders_, p. 257. Sarbah, _Fanti Customary Laws_, p. 82.
Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 124 _sq._]
[Footnote 36: Macdonald, _Light in Africa_, p. 192.]
[Footnote 37: Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 254.]
[Footnote 38: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast_, p. 263.]
[Footnote 39: Elliott, _Alaska and the Seal Islands_, p. 170.
Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, _Report on the Population, &c. of
Alaska_, p. 156.]
[Footnote 40: Steller, _Beschreibung von Kamtschatka_, p. 274.]
[Footnote 41: Chalmers, _Pioneering in New Guinea_, p. 169.]
[Footnote 42: Griffis, _Religions of Japan_, p. 308. Hozumi,
_Ancestor-Worship and Japanese Law_, p. 1, &c.]
[Footnote 43: Granger, 'Moral Life of the Early Romans,' in
_Internal. Jour. of Ethics_, vii. 287. _Idem_, _Worship of the
Romans_, pp. 65, 66, 138.]
Besides such duties to the dead as are similar in nature to those
which men owe to their living fellow men or superiors, there are
obligations of a different character arising from the fact of
death itself. The funeral, the rites connected with it, and the
mourning customs are largely regarded as duties to the dead.
{521} The grave is represented as a place where the deceased
finds his desired rest, and if denied proper burial he is
believed not only to walk but to suffer. The Iroquois considered
that unless the rites of burial were performed, the spirits of
the dead had to wander for a time upon the earth in a state of
great unhappiness; hence their extreme solicitude to recover the
bodies of their slain in battle.[44] The Abipones regard it as
the greatest misfortune for the dead to be left to rot in the
open air, and they therefore inter even the smallest bone of a
departed friend.[45] In Ashantee the spirits of those who for
some reason or other have been deprived of the customary funeral
rites are doomed, in the imagination of the people, to haunt the
gloom of the forest, stealing occasionally to their former abodes
in rare but lingering visits, troubling and bewitching their
neglectful relatives.[46] The Negroes of Accra believe that
happiness in a future life depends not only upon courage, power,
and wealth in this world, but also upon a proper burial.[47] In
some Australian tribes the souls of those whose bodies have been
left to lie unburied are supposed to have to prowl on the face of
the earth and about the place of death, with no gratification but
to harm the living;[48] or there is said to be no future
existence for them, as their bodies will be devoured by crows and
native dogs.[49] Among the Bataks of Sumatra nothing is
considered to be a greater disgrace to a person than to be denied
a grave; for by not being held worthy of burial he is declared to
be spiritually dead.[50] The Samoans believed that the souls of
unburied friends, for instance such as had been drowned or had
fallen in war, haunted them everywhere, crying out in a pitiful
tone, "Oh, how cold! Oh, how cold!"[51] According to Karen ideas
the {522} spirits of those who die a natural death and are
decently buried go to a beautiful country and renew their earthly
life, whereas the ghosts of persons who by accident are left
uninterred will wander about the earth, occasionally showing
themselves to mankind.[52] Confucius connected the disposal of
the dead immediately with the great virtue of submission and
devotion to superiors.[53] No act is in China recognised more
worthy a virtuous man than that of interring stray bones and
covering up exposed coffins,[54] and to bury a person who is
without friends is considered to be as great a merit as to save
life.[55] It is also held highly important to provide the proper
place for a grave; the Taouists maintain that "if a coffin be
interred in an improper spot, the spirit of the dead is made
unhappy, and avenges itself by causing sickness and other
calamities to the relatives who have not taken sufficient care
for its repose."[56] The ancient Chaldeans believed that the
spirits of the unburied dead, having neither place of repose nor
means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country,
occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing
the living.[57] In classical antiquity it was the most sacred of
duties to give the body its funeral rites,[58] and the Greeks
referred the right of sepulture to the gods as its authors.[59]
[Footnote 44: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 175.]
[Footnote 45: Dobrizhoffer, _Account of the Abipones_, ii. 284.]
[Footnote 46: Bowdich, _Mission to Ashantee_, p. 262 _sq._]
[Footnote 47: Monrad, _Skildring af Guinea-Kysten_, p. 4.]
[Footnote 48: Oldfield, 'Aborigines of Australia,' in _Trans.
Ethn. Soc._ N.S. iii. 228, 236 _sq._]
[Footnote 49: Chauncy, in Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_,
ii. 280.]
[Footnote 50: Buning, in _Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago_,
p. 75.]
[Footnote 51: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 233.
Hood, _Cruise in H.M.S. "Fawn" in the Western Pacific_, p. 142.]
[Footnote 52: Cross, quoted by Mac Mahon, _Far Cathay_, p. 202
_sq._ Mason, 'Religion, &c. among the Karens,' in _Jour. Asiatic
Soc. Bengal_, xxxiv. pt. ii. 203.]
[Footnote 53: de Groot, _Religious System of China_, (vol. ii.
book) i. 659.]
[Footnote 54: Giles, _Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_, ii.
147, n. 11.]
[Footnote 55: _Indo-Chinese Gleaner_, iii. 161.]
[Footnote 56: Legge, _Religions of China_, p. 200.]
[Footnote 57: Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 689. Jeremias,
_Die babylonisch-assyrischen Vorstellungen vom Leben nach dem
Tode_, p. 54 _sqq._ Halévy, _Mélanges de critique et d'histoire
relatifs aux peuples sémitiques_, p. 368.]
[Footnote 58: See Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 97
_sqq._; Granger, _Worship of the Romans_, p. 37 _sqq._; Aust,
_Die Religion der Römer_, p. 226 _sq._]
[Footnote 59: Sophocles, _Antigone_, 454 _sq._ Euripides,
_Supplices_, 563.]
So also among peoples who practise cremation the dead themselves
are considered to be benefited by being burned. The Nâyars of
Malabar are of opinion that no time should be lost in setting
about the funeral, as the disposal of a corpse either by
cremation or burial as soon {523} as possible after death is
conducive to the happiness of the spirit of the departed; they
say that "the collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the
dead gives peace to his spirit."[60] The Thlinkets maintain that
those whose bodies are burned will be warm and comfortable in the
other world, whereas others will have to suffer from cold. "Burn
my body! Burn me!" pleaded a dying Thlinket; "I fear the cold.
Why should I go shivering through all the ages and the distances
of the next world?"[61] The ancient Persians, on the other hand,
considered both cremation and burial to be sins for which there
was no atonement, and exposed their dead on the summits of
mountains, thinking it a great misfortune if neither birds nor
beasts devoured their carcases.[62] So also the Samoyedes and
Mongols held it to be good for the deceased if his corpse was
soon devoured by beasts,[63] and the Kamchadales regarded it as a
great blessing to be eaten by a beautiful dog.[64] The East
African Masai, who likewise, as a rule, expose their dead to the
wild beasts, say that if the corpse is eaten by the hyænas the
first night, the deceased must have been a good man, as the
hyænas are supposed to act by the command of 'Ng ais, or God.[65]
[Footnote 60: Fawcett, 'Nâyars of Malabar,' in the Madras
Government Museum's _Bulletin_, iii. 245, 251.]
[Footnote 61: Dall, _Alaska_, p. 423. Petroff, _op. cit._ p. 175.
McNair Wright, _Among the Alaskans_, p. 333.]
[Footnote 62: _Vendîdâd_, i. 13, 17; vi. 45 _sqq._; viii. 10.
Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. p. lxxv. _sqq._
Agathias, _Historiæ_, ii. 22 _sq._ (Migne, _Patrologiæ cursus_,
Ser. Graeca, lxxxviii. 1377). Herodotus, i. 140; iii.
16.]
[Footnote 63: Preuss, _Die Begräbnisarten der Amerikaner und
Nordostasiaten_, p. 272. _Cf._ Yarrow, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._
i. 103 (Caddoes or Timber Indians).]
[Footnote 64: Steller, _op. cit._ p. 273.]
[Footnote 65: Merker, _Die Masai_, p. 193.]
Certain ceremonies are professedly performed for the purpose of
preventing evil spirits from doing harm to the dead.[66] This is
sometimes the case with cremation; we are told that among some
Siberian peoples the dead are burned so as to be "effectually
removed from the machinations of spirits."[67] The Teleutes
believe that the {524} spirits of the earth do much mischief to
the departed; hence their shamans drive them off at the funeral
by striking the air several times with an axe.[68] In Christian
countries the passing-bell has likewise been supposed to repel
evil spirits.[69]
[Footnote 66: See Frazer, 'Certain Burial Customs as illustrative
of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv.
87 _sq._; Hertz, 'La représentation collective de la mort,' in
_L'année sociologique_, x., 1905-1906, p. 56 _sq._]
[Footnote 67: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 264.]
[Footnote 68: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 264.]
[Footnote 69: Frazer, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 87.]
Fasting after a death is regarded as a dutiful tribute to the
dead; the Chinese say that it is "a means of raising the mind up
to the soul, a means to enable the sacrificer to perform in a
more perfect way the acts of worship incumbent upon him, by
bringing about a closer contact between himself and the
soul."[70] The self-mutilations performed by the relatives of the
dead are supposed to be pleasing to him as tokens of
affliction;[71] and the same is of course the case with the
lamentations at funerals. In some Central Australian tribes the
custom of painting the body of a mourner is said to have as its
object "to render him or her more conspicuous, and so to allow
the spirit to see that it is being properly mourned for."[72] The
mourning dress is a sign of regard for the dead. Nay, even the
custom of not mentioning his name is looked upon in the same
light. Some peoples maintain that to name him would be to disturb
his rest,[73] or that he would take it as an indication that his
relatives are not properly mourning for him, and would feel it as
an insult.[74]
[Footnote 70: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. ii. book) i. 657.]
[Footnote 71: Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_, p. 216
_sqq._]
[Footnote 72: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 511.]
[Footnote 73: Nansen, _Eskimo Life_, p. 233 (Greenlanders). Tout,
'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,' in _Jour.
Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 138. Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 27 (Samoyedes).]
[Footnote 74: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 498.]
As the duties to the living, so the duties to the dead are
greatly influenced by the relationship between the parties.
Everywhere the obligation to satisfy the wants of the deceased is
incumbent upon those who were nearest to him whilst alive. In the
archaic State, as we have seen, it is considered the greatest
misfortune which can befall a person to die without descendants,
since in such a case there would be nobody to attend to his
soul.[75] Confucius {525} said, "For a man to sacrifice to a
spirit which does not belong to him is flattery."[76] The
distinction between a tribesman or fellow countryman and a
stranger also applies to the dead. In Greenland a stranger
without relatives or friends was generally suffered to lie
unburied.[77] Among North American Indians it is permitted to
scalp warriors of a hostile tribe, whereas "there is no example
of an Indian having taken the scalp of a man of his own tribe, or
of one belonging to a nation in alliance with his own, and whom
he may have killed in a quarrel or a fit of anger";[78] and an
Indian who would never think of desecrating the grave of a
tribesman may have "no such scruple in regard to the graves of
another tribe."[79] Yet already from early times we hear of the
recognition of certain duties even to strangers and enemies. The
Greeks of the post-Homeric age made it a rule to deliver up a
slain enemy so that he should receive the proper funeral
rites.[80] It was considered a disgraceful act of Lysander not to
accord burial to Philocles, the Athenian general at Aegospotami,
together with about four thousand prisoners whom he put to the
sword;[81] and the Athenians themselves boasted that their
ancestors had with their own hands buried the Persians who had
fallen in the battle of Marathon, holding it to be "a sacred and
imperative duty to cover with earth a human corpse."[82]
According to the Chinese penal code, "destroying, mutilating, or
throwing into the water the unenclosed and unburied corpse of a
stranger," though a much less serious crime than the same injury
inflicted upon the corpse of a relative, is yet an offence
punishable with 100 blows, and perpetual banishment to the
distance of 3,000 _lee_.[83]
[Footnote 75: _Supra_, ii. 400 _sqq._]
[Footnote 76: _Lun Yü_, ii. 24. 1.]
[Footnote 77: Cranz, _op. cit._ i. 218.]
[Footnote 78: Domenech, _Seven Years' Residence in the Great
Deserts of North America_, ii. 357.]
[Footnote 79: Dodge, _Our Wild Indians_, p. 162.]
[Footnote 80: Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 100
_sqq._ Rohde, _op. cit._ p. 200 _sq._]
[Footnote 81: Pausanias, ix. 32. 9.]
[Footnote 82: _Ibid._ i. 32. 5; ix. 32. 9.]
[Footnote 83: _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. cclxxvi. p. 295.]
The duties to the dead also vary according to the age, {526} sex,
and social position of the departed. Among the natives of
Australia children and women are interred with but scant
ceremony.[84] In the tribes of North-West-Central Queensland
nobody paints his body in mourning for a young child.[85] In
Eastern Central Africa the spirit of a child which dies when
about four or five days of age gets nothing of the attention
usually bestowed on the dead.[86] Among the Wadshagga married
persons are buried in their huts, whilst the bodies of unmarried
ones and especially children are put in some hidden place, where
they are left to rot or be devoured by beasts.[87] Some Siberian
tribes were formerly accustomed to inhume adults only, whereas
the corpses of children were exposed on trees.[88] The natives of
Port Jackson, in New South Wales, consigned their young people to
the grave, but burned those who had passed middle age.[89] The
Kondayamkottai Maravars, a Dravidian tribe of Tinnevelly in
Southern India, bury the corpses of unmarried persons, whilst
those of married ones are cremated.[90] In some other tribes in
India burial is practised in the case of young children only,[91]
and this has long been a rule of Brahmanism.[92] Among the
Andaman Islanders, again, infants are buried within the
encampment, whereas all other dead are carried to some distant
and secluded spot in the jungle.[93] We meet with a kindred
custom in the neighbourhood of Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa:
in Karagwe and Nkole "children are buried in the huts themselves,
grown-up people outside, generally in cultivated fields, or in
such as are going to be cultivated."[94] The bodies of women are
sometimes disposed of in a {527} different way from those of men.
Thus among the Blackfeet Indians the latter were fastened in the
branches of trees so high as to be beyond the reach of wolves,
and then left to waste in the dry winds; whilst the body of a
woman or child was thrown into the underbush or jungle, where it
soon became the prey of the wild animals.[95] Among the Tuski
(Chukchi), who cremate or rather boil the bodies of good men,
women are not usually burned, on account of the scarcity of wood.[96]
[Footnote 84: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 89.]
[Footnote 85: Roth, _op. cit._ p. 164.]
[Footnote 86: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 59.]
[Footnote 87: Volkens, _Der Kilimandscharo_, p. 253.]
[Footnote 88: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 31 (Koibales).]
[Footnote 89: Collins, _English Colony of New South Wales_, i. 601.]
[Footnote 90: Fawcett, 'Kondayamkottai Maravars,' in _Jour.
Anthr. Inst._ xxiii. 64.]
[Footnote 91: Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's
_Bulletin_, i. 198 (Kotas). Fawcett, 'Nâyars of Malabar,' _ibid._
iii. 245.]
[Footnote 92: Hopkins, _Religions of India_, p. 273.]
[Footnote 93: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman
Islands,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xii. 144.]
[Footnote 94: Kollmann, _Victoria Nyanza_, p. 63 _sq._]
[Footnote 95: Yarrow, _Introduction to the Study of Mortuary
Customs among the North American Indians_, p. 67.]
[Footnote 96: Dall, _op. cit._ p. 382.]
Class distinctions likewise influence the disposal of the dead.
In some American tribes cremation seems to be reserved for
persons of higher rank.[97] Among the pagans of Obubura Hill
district in Southern Nigeria "the bodies of ordinary people are
buried in the bush, sometimes being merely thrown on the ground,
but those of chiefs and important men and women are buried in
their huts or in the adjoining verandah."[98] The Masai throw
away the corpses of ordinary persons to be eaten by hyænas,
whereas medicine-men and influential people are buried.[99] The
Nandi do not bury their dead unless they have been very important
persons.[100] Among the Waganda, when a chief dies, he is buried
in a wooden coffin, whilst the bodies of slaves are thrown into
the jungle.[101] Some other African peoples throw the corpses of
slaves into a morass or the nearest pool of water.[102] The
Thlinkets committed them to the tender mercies of the sea.[103]
Among the Maoris a slave would not be greatly bewailed after
death, nor have his bones ceremonially scraped.[104] The Roman
'Law of the Twelve Tables' prohibited the bodies of slaves from
being embalmed.[105] Moral distinctions, also, are noticeable in
{528} the treatment of the dead. In some parts of Central America
the bodies of men of high standing who had committed a crime
were, like those of the common people, exposed to be devoured by
wild beasts.[106] Among the Tuski the corpses of bad men were
simply left to rot.[107] In Greenland the body of a dead
malefactor was dismembered, and the separate limbs were thrown
apart.[108] To the same class of facts belong the punishments
which were inflicted upon the corpses of criminals in classical
antiquity and formerly in Christian Europe.[109]
[Footnote 97: Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 301.]
[Footnote 98: Partridge, _Cross River Natives_, p. 237.]
[Footnote 99: Hollis, _op. cit._ pp. 304, 305, 307; Eliot,
_ibid._ p. xx.]
[Footnote 100: Johnston, _Uganda_, ii. 880.]
[Footnote 101: Wilson and Felkin, _Uganda_, i. 188.]
[Footnote 102: Denham and Clapperton, _Travels in Northern and
Central Africa_, ii. 64 (natives of Kano). Pogge, _Im Reiche des
Muata Jamwo_, p. 243 (Kalunda).]
[Footnote 103: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker
des russischen Amerika,' in _Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ_, iv. 323.
Dall, _op. cit._ pp. 417, 420.]
[Footnote 104: Colenso, _op. cit._ p. 30.]
[Footnote 105: _Lex Duodecim Tabularum_, x. 6.]
[Footnote 106: Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 301.]
[Footnote 107: Dall, _op. cit._ p. 382.]
[Footnote 108: Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 109: Ayrault, _Des procez faicts au cadaver_, p. 5
_sqq._ Trummer, _Vorträge über Tortur, &c._ i. 455 _sqq._
_Supra_, ii. 254.]
From this survey of facts we shall now pass to a consideration of
the causes from which the duties to the dead have sprung. In the
first place, there can be no doubt that these duties to a
considerable extent are based upon the feeling of sympathetic
resentment, in the same way as is the case with duties to living
persons. Death does not entirely extinguish the affection which
was felt for a person whilst he was alive. The rites and customs
connected with a death are very largely similar to or identical
with natural expressions of grief, and in spite of their
ceremonial character it is impossible to believe that they are
altogether counterfeit. We are told by trustworthy eye-witnesses
that, although the self-inflicted pain and the loud lamentations
which form part of a funeral among the Australian blacks are not
to be taken as a measure of the grief actually felt, this
expression of despair "is not all artificial or professional";[110]
and Mr. Man believes that among the Andaman Islanders "in the
majority of cases the display of grief is thoroughly
sincere."[111] But the dead also inspire other feelings than
sympathy and sorrow, and the duties towards them have
consequently a complex origin.
[Footnote 110: Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 44.
Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 510
_sq._]
[Footnote 111: Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xii. 145.]
The souls of the dead are not generally supposed to lead a merely
passive existence. They are conceived as {529} capable of acting
upon the living, of conferring upon them benefits, or at all
events of inflicting upon them harm. Death has in some respects
enhanced their powers. They know what is going on upon earth,
what those whom they have left behind are doing. Their power of
acting, also, is greater than that which they possessed when they
were tied to the flesh. They are raised to a higher sphere of
influence; magic properties are ascribed even to their corpses.
Their character may remain on the whole unchanged, and so, too,
their affection for their surviving friends. Hence they often
become guardians of their descendants. Among the Amazulu the head
of each house is worshipped by his children; remembering his
kindness to them while he was living, they say, "He will still
treat us in the same way now he is dead."[112] The Herero invoke
the blessings of their deceased friends or relatives, praying for
success against their enemies, an abundance of cattle, numerous
wives, and prosperity in their undertakings.[113] On the West
African Slave Coast the head of a family, after death, often
becomes its protector, and is sometimes regarded as the guardian
of a whole community or village.[114] The Mpongwe teach the child
"to look up to the parent not only as its earthly protector, but
as a friend in the spirit-land."[115] The Gournditch-mara in
Australia believed that "the spirit of the deceased father or
grandfather occasionally visited the male descendant in dreams,
and imparted to him charms (songs) against disease or against
witchcraft."[116] The Veddah of Ceylon invokes the spirits of his
departed relatives "as sympathetic and kindred, though higher
powers than man, to direct him to a life pleasing to the gods,
through which he may gain their protection or favour."[117] The
Nay[=a]dis of Malabar, on certain ceremonial occasions, offer
solemn prayers that the souls of the {530} departed may protect
them from the ravages of wild beasts and snakes.[118] The Vedic
people called upon the aid of their dead:--"O Fathers, may the
sky-people grant us life; may we follow the course of the
living."[119] So also the Zoroastrian Fravashis, who corresponded
to the Vedic "Fathers," helped their own kindred, borough, town,
or country.[120] Aeschylus, in his 'Eumenides,' represents
Orestes as saying, "My father will send me aid from the
tomb."[121] The Lar Familiaris, the spirit guardian of the Roman
family, was undoubtedly the spirit of a deceased ancestor.[122]
The old Slavonians believed that the souls of fathers watched
over their children and their children's children. In Galicia the
people still think that their hearths are haunted by the souls of
the dead, who make themselves useful to the family; and among the
Czechs, it is a common belief that departed ancestors look after
the fields and herds of their descendants and assist them in
hunting and fishing.[123]
[Footnote 112: Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_,
p. 144 _sq._]
[Footnote 113: Andersson, _Lake Ngami_, p. 222.]
[Footnote 114: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples_, p. 104. See also
_ibid._ p. 24 (Slave and Gold Coast natives).]
[Footnote 115: Wilson, _Western Africa_, p. 394.]
[Footnote 116: Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 278.]
[Footnote 117: Nevill, 'Vaeddas of Ceylon,' in _Taprobanian_, i. 194.]
[Footnote 118: Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,' in the Madras
Government Museum's _Bulletin_, iv. 72.]
[Footnote 119: _Rig-Veda_, x. 57. 5. _Cf._ Hopkins, _op. cit._
p. 143 _sq._]
[Footnote 120: _Yasts_, xiii. 66 _sqq._; &c.]
[Footnote 121: Aeschylus, _Eumenides_, 598.]
[Footnote 122: Jevons, in Plutarch's _Romane Questions_, p. xli.
Rohde, _op. cit._ p. 232.]
[Footnote 123: Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, pp. 119,
121. For other instances of a similar kind see Shooter, _Kafirs
of Natal_, p. 161; Arbousset and Daumas, _Tour to the North-East
of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope_, p. 340 (Bechuanas);
Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 248; Wilken, _Het animisme bij de volken
van den Indischen Archipel_, p. 194 _sqq._; Nansen, _Eskimo
Life_, p. 290 (Greenlanders); Jessen, _Afhandling over de Norske
Finners og Lappers Hedenske Religion_, p. 27; Friis, _Lappisk
Mythologi_, p. 115 _sq._; von Düben, _Lappland_, p. 249;
Abercromby, _Pre- and Proto-historic Finns_, i. 178 (Mordvins);
von Wlislocki, _Volksglaube der Zigeuner_, p. 43 _sqq._ (Gypsies).]
But the ancestral guardian spirit does not bestow his favours for
nothing. He must be properly attended to,[124] and if neglected
he easily becomes positively dangerous to his living relatives.
The same Africans who invoke the dead in adversity think them
"capable of wreaking their vengeance on those who do not
liberally minister to their wants and enjoyments."[125] The
Chaldeans believed that {531} the departed who otherwise
carefully watched over the welfare of his children, if abandoned
and forgotten, avenged himself for their neglect by returning to
torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack them, and
by ruining them with his imprecations.[126] The Vedic poet prays
to the Fathers, "May ye not injure us for whatever impiety we
have as men committed."[127] The Fravashis come to the help of
those only who treat them well, and are "dreadful unto those who
vex them."[128] In Rome, according to Ovid, once upon a time when
the great festival of the dead was not observed, and the manes
failed to receive the customary gifts, the injured spirits
revenged themselves on the living, and the city "became heated by
the suburban funeral pyres."[129] So also, according to Slavonic
beliefs, the dead "might be induced, if proper respect was not
paid to them, to revenge themselves on their forgetful survivors."[130]
[Footnote 124: Wilken, _op. cit._ p. 194 _sq._ (peoples in the
Malay Archipelago). Abercromby, _op. cit._ i. 178 (Mordvins).
Jessen, _op. cit._ p. 27; Friis, _op. cit._ p. 116 _sq._ (Laplanders).]
[Footnote 125: Rowley, _Religion of the Africans_, p. 90.]
[Footnote 126: Halevy, _op. cit._ p. 368.]
[Footnote 127: _Rig-Veda_, x. 15. 6.]
[Footnote 128: _Yasts_, xiii. 31, 42, 51, 70, &c.]
[Footnote 129: Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 549 _sqq._]
[Footnote 130: Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 335.]
Moreover, we must not conclude that wherever the spirits of
deceased ancestors are invoked as guardians they are necessarily
looked upon as essentially benevolent to their descendants.[131]
Concerning the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians Professor
Jastrow writes:--"In general the dead were not favorably disposed
towards the living, and they were inclined to use what power they
had to work evil rather than for good. In this respect they
resembled the demons, and it is noticeable that an important
class of demons was known by the name _ekimmu_, which is one of
the common terms for the shades of the dead."[132] The Greeks
were much afraid of their dead, and regarded their "heroes" as
extremely irritable, in later times as exclusively
malicious.[133] It appears from Ovid's 'Fasti' that fear was the
predominant feeling of the Romans with reference to the spirits
of the departed, who were supposed {532} to wander about by
night, causing men to pine away or bewitching them into
madness.[134] Even in China, where the souls of the dead are
supposed effectually to control the destiny of the living,[135]
malevolent rather than benevolent inclinations are ascribed to
them by the popular belief, as appears from the fact that the
words for "ghost" and "devil" are the same and form a portion of
the objectionable epithets applied to foreigners.[136] Generally
speaking, my collection of facts has led me to the conclusion
that the dead are more commonly regarded as enemies than
friends,[137] and that Professor Jevons[138] and Mr. Grant
Allen[139] are mistaken in their assertion that, according to
early beliefs, the malevolence of the dead is for the most part
directed against strangers only, whereas they exercise a fatherly
care over the lives and fortunes of their descendants and fellow
clansmen.
[Footnote 131: _Cf._ Karsten, _Origin of Worship_, p. 122 _sqq._]
[Footnote 132: Jastrow, _op. cit._ p. 581.]
[Footnote 133: Rohde, _op. cit._ pp. 177 _sqq._, 225 n. 4.
Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 130.]
[Footnote 134: Ovid, _Fasti_, v. 429 _sqq._ Granger, _Worship of
the Romans_, p. 67.]
[Footnote 135: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. v. book) ii. 464.]
[Footnote 136: Dennys, _Folk-Lore of China_, p. 73. See also
Legge, _Religions of China_, pp. 13, 201.]
[Footnote 137: Dr. Steinmetz (_Ethnol. Studien zur ersten
Entwicklung der Strafe_, i. 283) has arrived at the same
conclusion. See also Meiners, _Geschichte der Religionen_, i. 301
_sqq._; Karsten, _op. cit._ p. 115 _sqq._]
[Footnote 138: Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_,
p. 53 _sq._]
[Footnote 139: Grant Allen, _Evolution of the Idea of God_,
p. 347 _sq._]
Thus the Bondeis in East Africa apparently make little difference
between a devil and a departed ancestor.[140] Among the Fjort of
Loango the good people who have left this life "are generally
considered the enemies of mankind."[141] Other Africans maintain
that the spirits of the dead hover in the air, "watching the
destiny of friends, haunting houses, killing children, injuring
cattle, and causing disease and destruction," all being
malevolent to the living.[142] Of the Savage Islanders in
Polynesia we are told that "no effort of the missionary can avail
to break them of their belief in the malevolence of ghosts, even
of those who loved them best in life; the spirits of the dead
seem compelled to work ill to the living without their own
volition."[143] In Tahiti the spirits of parents and children,
sisters and brothers, "seemed to have been regarded as a sort of
{533} demons."[144] Among the Maoris "the nearest and most
beloved relatives were supposed to have their natures changed by
death, and to become malignant, even towards those they formerly
loved."[145] The natives of Erromanga, in the New Hebrides,
maintained that all the spirits of their departed ancestors were
evil, and roamed the earth doing harm to men.[146] In the tribes
inhabiting the mouth of the Wanigela River, in New Guinea, all
dead ancestors are supposed to be constantly on the watch to deal
out sickness or death to anyone who may displease them; hence the
natives are most particular to do nothing that should raise their
anger.[147] Australian natives believe that a deceased person is
malevolent for a long time after death, and the more nearly
related the more he is feared.[148] The _anitos_ or ghosts, of
the Tagales in the Philippine Islands are likewise perpetually
anxious to do harm to their descendants, trying to kill people,
especially shortly after death, and being the causes of nearly
all diseases.[149] The Saora of the Madras Presidency only know
the existence of the departed souls by the mischief they do, and
think that all ills are occasioned either by ancestral spirits or
gods.[150] In the North-Western Provinces of India the _díwárs_,
or _genii loci_, are oftentimes "the spirits of good men,
Brahmans, or village heroes, who manage, when they become objects
of worship, to be generally considered very malicious
devils";[151] and the ghosts of all low caste natives are
notoriously malignant.[152] The Tibetans are of opinion that a
ghost is always malicious, and that it returns and gives troubles
either on account of its malevolence or its desire to see how its
former property is being disposed of.[153] The Finns and other
peoples of the same stock believed that the souls of the dead
were generally intent to do harm to the living, their nearest
relatives included.[154] Thus, according to Votyak ideas, even a
mother may become {534} the enemy of her own child from the
moment of her death.[155] Among the Ainu of Japan, "if a man is
at a loss for the authorship of any particular calamity, which
has befallen him, he is very apt to refer it to the ghost of a
dead wife, mother, grandmother, or, still more certainly, to that
of a dead mother-in-law";[156] an Ainu who accompanied Mr.
Batchelor would on no account come within twenty-five or thirty
yards of the spot where his own mother was burned.[157] The
Koniagas believe that after death every man becomes a devil.[158]
According to ideas prevalent among the Central Eskimo, the dead
are at first malevolent spirits who frequently roam around the
villages, causing sickness and mischief and killing men by their
touch; but subsequently they are supposed to attain to rest and
are no longer feared.[159] The Tarahumares of Mexico are afraid
of their dead; a mother asks her deceased infant to go away and
not to come back, and the weeping widow implores her husband not
to carry off, or do harm to, his own sons or daughters.[160] Mr.
Bridges informs us that the Fuegian word for a ghost, _cúshpich_,
is also an adjective signifying "frightful, dreadful, awful."[161]
[Footnote 140: Dale, 'Natives inhabiting the Bondei Country,' in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxv. 233.]
[Footnote 141: Dennett, _Folklore of the Fjort_, p. 11 _sq._]
[Footnote 142: Burton, _Lake Regions of Central Africa_, ii. 344.]
[Footnote 143: Thomson, _Savage Island_, p. 94.]
[Footnote 144: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 334 _sq._]
[Footnote 145: Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 18. See also _ibid._
pp. 137, 221; Polack, _op. cit._ i. 242.]
[Footnote 146: Robertson, _Erromanga_, p. 389.]
[Footnote 147: Guise, 'Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the
Wanigela River,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxviii. 216.]
[Footnote 148: Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 80.
Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 87.]
[Footnote 149: Blumentritt, in _Mittheil. d. kais. u. kön.
Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien_, p. 166 _sqq._ de Mas, _Informe
sobre el estado de las Islas Filipinas en_ 1842, 'Orijen de los
habitantes de la Oceania,' p. 15; 'Poblacion,' p. 29. _Cf._
_ibid._ 'Poblacion,' p. 17; Blumentritt, p. 168 (Igorrotes).]
[Footnote 150: Fawcett, _Saoras_, pp. 43, 51.]
[Footnote 151: Elliot, _Races of the North Western Provinces of
India_, p. 243.]
[Footnote 152: Crooke, _Popular Religion of Northern India_, i. 269.]
[Footnote 153: Waddell, _Buddhism of Tibet_, p. 498.]
[Footnote 154: Castrén, _Nordiska resor och forskningar_, iii.
121 _sqq._ Waronen, _Vainajainpalvelus muinaisilla
Suomalaisilla_, p. 23.]
[Footnote 155: Buch, 'Die Wotjäken,' in _Acta Soc. Scient.
Fennicæ_, xii. 607.]
[Footnote 156: Howard, _Life with Trans-Siberian Savages_, p. 196.]
[Footnote 157: Batchelor, _Ainu of Japan_, p. 220 _sq._]
[Footnote 158: Holmberg, in _Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ_, iv. 402.]
[Footnote 159: Boas, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ vi. 591.]
[Footnote 160: Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, i. 380, 382.]
[Footnote 161: Bridges, 'Manners and Customs of the Firelanders,'
in _A Voice for South America_, xiii. 211.]
The belief in the irritable or malevolent character of the dead
is easily explained. As Bishop Butler observed, we presume that a
thing will remain as it is except when we have some reason to
think that it will be altered.[162] And in the case of the souls
of departed friends men may have reason to suppose that they
undergo a change. Death is commonly regarded as the gravest of
all misfortunes; hence the dead are believed to be exceedingly
dissatisfied with their fate. According to primitive ideas a
person only dies if he is killed--by magic if not by force,--and
such a death naturally tends to make the soul revengeful and
ill-tempered. It is envious of the living and is longing for the
company of its old friends; no wonder, then, that it sends them
diseases to cause their {535} death. The Basutos maintain that
their dead ancestors are continually endeavouring to draw them to
themselves, and therefore attribute to them every disease;[163]
and the Tarahumares in Mexico suppose that the dead make their
relatives ill from a feeling of loneliness, that they, too, may
die and join the departed.[164] But the notion that the
disembodied soul is on the whole a malicious being constantly
watching for an opportunity to do harm to the living is also, no
doubt, intimately connected with the instinctive fear of the
dead, which is in its turn the outcome of the fear of death.
[Footnote 162: Butler, _Analogy of Religion_, i. 1, p. 82.]
[Footnote 163: Casalis, _op. cit._ p. 249.]
[Footnote 164: Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, i. 380.]
We are told, it is true, that many savages meet death with much
indifference, or regard it as no great evil, but merely as a
change to a life very similar to this.[165] But it is a fact
often noticed among ourselves, that a person on the verge of
death may resign himself to his fate with the greatest calmness,
although he has been afraid to die throughout his life. Moreover,
the fear of death may be disguised by thoughtlessness, checked by
excitement, or mitigated by dying in company. There are peoples
who are conspicuous for their bravery, and yet have a great dread
of death.[166] Nobody is entirely free from this feeling, though
it varies greatly in strength among different races and in
different individuals. In many savages it is so strongly
developed, that they cannot bear to hear death mentioned.[167]
And inseparably mingled with {536} this fear of death is the fear
of the dead. The place in which a death occurs is abandoned,[168]
or the hut is destroyed,[169] or the corpse is carried out from
it as speedily as possible.[170] The survivors endeavour to
frighten away the ghost by firing off guns,[171] or shooting into
the grave,[172] or throwing sticks and stones behind themselves
after they have interred the corpse.[173] To prevent the return
of the ghost the body is buried face downwards,[174] or its limbs
are firmly tied,[175] or, in extreme cases, it is fixed in the
ground with a stake driven through it.[176] We may assume that
these and many other funeral ceremonies are very closely
connected with the fear of the pollution of death; for even when
their immediate object is to keep the ghost at {537} a distance,
it is likely that they are largely due to dread of its presence
for the reason that it is conceived as a seat of deadly
contagion.[177] It seems to me that certain anthropologists, in
their explanations of funeral ceremonies, have too much
accentuated the volitional activity of ghosts. To take an
instance. The common custom of carrying the dead body away
through some aperture other than the door,[178] has generally
been interpreted as a means of preventing the ghost from finding
its way back to the old home; but various facts indicate that it
also may have sprung from a desire to keep the ordinary exit free
from pollution. According to the Vendîdâd a spirit of death is
breathing all along the way which a corpse has passed; hence no
man, no flock, no being whatever that belongs to the world of
Ahura Mazda is allowed to go that way until the deadly breath has
been blown away to hell.[179] In the capital of Corea there is a
small gate in the city-wall known as the "Gate of the Dead,"
through which alone a dead body can be carried out, and no one is
ever allowed to enter through that passage-way.[180] In China
even a messenger who delivers tidings of death strictly abstains
from passing the threshold of the houses at which he knocks,
unless urgently requested by the inmates to walk in.[181] Among
the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia a mourner, who is
regarded as unclean, "must not use the house door, but a separate
door is cut for his use"; girls at puberty, whilst in a state of
uncleanness, may leave {538} and enter their room only through a
hole made in the floor;[182] and men who have polluted themselves
by partaking of human flesh are for four months allowed to go out
only by the secret door in the rear of the house.[183] Even the
water and fire ceremonies performed in connection with a death
have been represented as methods of preventing the ghost from
attacking the living by placing a physical barrier of water or
fire between them.[184] But I see no reason whatever to assume,
with Sir J. G. Frazer, that "the conceptions of pollution and
purification are merely the fictions of a later age, invented to
explain the purpose of a ceremony of which the original intention
was forgotten."[185]
[Footnote 165: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in
_Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo), 269 _sq._
(Hudson Bay Indians). de Brebeuf, 'Relation de ce qui s'est passé
dans le pays des Hurons,' in _Relations des Jésuites_, i. 1636,
p. 129. Roth, _North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 161.
Tregear, 'Niue,' in _Jour. Polynesian Soc._ ii. 14 (Savage
Islanders). Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 204 _sq._ Romilly,
_From my Verandah in New Guinea_, p. 45 (Solomon Islanders).
Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 266 (Siberian shamans). Monrad, _op.
cit._ p. 23 (Negroes of Accra). Brinton, _Religions of Primitive
Peoples_, p. 72.]
[Footnote 166: _E.g._, the Kalmucks (Bergmann, _Nomadische
Streifereien unter den Kalmüken_, ii. 318 _sqq._) and the ancient
Caribs (Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_,
p. 215).]
[Footnote 167: Dunbar, 'Pawnee Indians,' in _Magazine of American
History_, viii. 742. Batchelor, _Ainu of Japan_, p. 203.
Bergmann, _op. cit._ ii. 318. Bosman, _Description of the Coast
of Guinea_, p. 327 (Negroes of Fida). Du Chaillu, _Explorations
in Equatorial Africa_, p. 338. Kropf, _Das Volk der
Xosa-Kaffern_, p. 155. For other instances of savages' great fear
of death, see Bridges, in _A Voice for South America_, xiii. 211
(Fuegians); Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_,
p. 215 (Caribs); Dunbar, in _Magazine of American History_, v.
334 (various North American tribes); Brinton, _Myths of the New
World_, p. 238; Georgi, _op. cit._ ii. 400 (Jakuts); Bosman, _op.
cit._ p. 130 (Gold Coast natives).]
[Footnote 168: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 22 (North American Indians).
von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens_,
p. 502 (Bororó). Hyades and Deniker, _Mission scientifique du Cap
Horn_, vii. 379 (Fuegians). Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 44.
Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 82. Spencer and
Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 498. Worcester,
_Philippine Islands_, p. 496 (Tagbanuas of Busuanga). Bailey,
'Veddahs of Ceylon,' in _Trans. Ethn. Soc._ N. S. ii. 296;
Deschamps, _Carnet d'un voyageur_, p. 383 (Veddahs). Decle, _op.
cit._ p. 79 (Barotse). von Düben, _Lappland_, pp. 241, 249.]
[Footnote 169: Hyades and Deniker, _op. cit._ vii. 379
(Fuegians). Batchelor, _Ainu of Japan_, p. 222 _sq._ Worcester,
_op. cit._ p. 108 _sq._ (Tagbanuas of Palawan). Butler, _Travels
in Assam_, p. 228. Fawcett, _Saoras_, p. 50 _sq._ Cunningham,
_Uganda_, p. 130 (Bavuma).]
[Footnote 170: Howard, _op. cit._ p. 197 (Ainu). Selenka,
_Sonnige Welten_, p. 89 (Dyaks). The rapid pace of the funeral
procession among the Bataks (von Brenner, _Besuch bei den
Kannibalen Sumatras_, p. 235) probably belongs to the same class
of facts.]
[Footnote 171: von Brenner, _op. cit._ p. 235 (Bataks). Fawcett,
_Saoras_, p. 46 _sq._]
[Footnote 172: von Brenner, _op. cit._ p. 235 (Bataks). von
Wlislocki, _Volksglaube der Magyaren_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 173: Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western
Provinces_, i. 45 (Aheriya, in Duâb), 287 (Bhangi, the sweeper
tribe of Hindustan). Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 320 (ancient
Bohemians).]
[Footnote 174: Dorsey, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 420
(Omahas). Crooke, _op. cit._ i. 44 (Aheriya, in Duâb).]
[Footnote 175: Zimmer, _Altindisches Leben_, p. 402 (Vedic
people). Turner, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 191 (Hudson Bay
Eskimo). Yarrow, _ibid._ i. 98 (Pimas of Arizona). Southey,
_History of Brazil_, i. 248 (Tupinambas). Of the trussing and
tying of the dead body which is practised in various Australian
tribes the blacks themselves say that it is done "to prevent the
spirit of the deceased from wandering in the night from its bed,
and disturbing the living and doing them harm" (Fraser,
_Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 79 _sq._; see also Curr, _The
Australian Race_, i. 44, 87).]
[Footnote 176: _Supra_, ii. 256. Hyltén-Cavallius, _Wärend och
Wirdarne_, i. 472 (Middle Ages).]
[Footnote 177: _Cf._ _supra_, ii. 303. For the contagion of death
see also Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 95 _sqq._]
[Footnote 178: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 26 _sq._ Frazer,
in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 69 _sq._ Trumbull, _Threshold
Covenant_, p. 23 _sqq._ Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_, pp. 372,
373, 414 _sq._ Lippert, _Christenthum, Volksglaube und
Volksbrauch_, p. 391 _sq._ Egede, _Description of Greenland_,
p. 152 _sq._; Nansen, _Eskimo Life_, p. 245 _sq._ (Greenlanders).
Turner, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 191 (Hudson Bay Eskimo).
McNair Wright, _Among the Alaskans_, p. 313. Jochelson, 'Koryak
Religion', in _Jesup North Pacific Expedition_, vi. 110 _sq._
Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 26 _sq._; Jackson, in _Jour. Anthr.
Inst._ xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Ramseyer and Kühne, _Four Years in
Ashantee_, p. 50. Kålund, 'Skandinavische Verhältnisse,' in Paul,
_Grundriss der germanischen Philologie_, ii. pt. ii. 227 (ancient
Scandinavians).]
[Footnote 179: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 14 _sqq._ Darmesteter, in
_Sacred Books of the East_, iv. p. lxxiv. _sq._]
[Footnote 180: Trumbull, _op. cit._ p. 24.]
[Footnote 181: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. ii. book) i. 644.]
[Footnote 182: Boas, in _Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes
of Canada_, p. 42 _sqq._]
[Footnote 183: _Idem_, quoted by Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 341
_sq._ Among the Bhuiyâr, a Dravidian tribe in South Mirzapur,
each house has two doors, one of which is only used by menstruous
women; and when such a woman has to quit the house "she is
obliged to creep out on her hands and knees so as to avoid
polluting the house thatch by her touch" (Crooke, _Tribes and
Castes of the North-Western Provinces_, ii. 87). Among the
Thompson River Indians of British Columbia meat was only taken
into the hunting lodge through a hole in the back of the
structure, because the common door was used by women and women
were regarded as unclean (Teit, 'Thompson Indians,' in _Memoirs
of the American Museum of Natural History_, 'Anthropology,' i.
347). In other instances ordinary people are prohibited from
using a door through which a sacred person has passed, obviously
because contact with his sanctity is looked upon as dangerous. In
some of the South Sea Islands, where the first-born, whether male
or female, was especially sacred, no one else was allowed to pass
by the door through which he or she entered the paternal dwelling
(Gill, _Life in the Southern Isles_, p. 46). "In some parts of
the Pacific, the door through which the king or queen passed in
opening a temple was shut up, and ever after made sacred"
(Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 328). Ezekiel (xliv. 2
_sq._) represents the Lord as saying:--"This gate shall be shut,
it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because
the Lord, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it
shall be shut. It is for the prince; . . . he shall enter by the
way of the porch of that gate, and shall go out by the way of the
same." Among the Arabs in olden days those who returned from a
pilgrimage to Mecca entered their houses not by the door but by a
hole made in the back wall (Palmer, in _Sacred Books of the
East_, vi. 27, n. 1). This practice was forbidden by Muhammed
(_Koran_, ii. 185).]
[Footnote 184: Frazer, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 76 _sqq._]
[Footnote 185: It should be added, however, that. Sir J. G.
Frazer's important essay on 'Burial Customs' was published many
years ago and therefore perhaps does not exactly represent the
author's present views on the subject.]
It is obvious that the beliefs held as regards the character,
activity, and polluting influence of the dead greatly affect the
conduct of the survivors. They are {539} naturally anxious to
gain the favour of the disembodied soul, to avert its ill-will,
to keep it at a distance, and to avoid the defilement of death.
Self-interest is often a conspicuous motive for acts and
omissions which are regarded as duties to the dead, and prudence
also has a very large share in their being enjoined as
obligatory. This is obviously true of the offerings made to the
dead. The Thompson River Indians of British Columbia threw some
food on the ground near the grave of the deceased, "that he might
not visit the house in search of food, causing sickness to the
people."[186] Among the Iroquois, "on the death of a nursing
child two pieces of cloth are saturated with the mother's milk
and placed in the hands of the dead child so that its spirit may
not return to haunt the bereaved mother."[187] The Negroes of
Accra, when asked why they slaughtered animals at the tombs of
their departed friends, answered that they did so in order to
prevent the ghosts from walking.[188] The Monbuttu place some oil
and other victuals in the little hut which is erected for the
dead in the forest, so that his spirit shall not return to his
old home in search of food.[189] For the same reason the Bataks
of Sumatra put various things into the graves of their deceased
friends, ask the dead to be quiet and not to long for the company
of the living, and finish their address with the words, "Here you
have still some _sirih_ and tobacco, and every year, at harvest
time, we shall give you some rice."[190] Among the Chuvashes the
son says to his departed father, "We remember you with a feast,
here are bread and different kinds of food for you, everything
you have before you, do not come to us."[191] It is considered
particularly dangerous to keep back and make use of articles
which belonged to the dead. The Gypsies burn on the grave all
those chattels which the deceased was in the habit of using
during his lifetime, "because his soul would otherwise {540}
return to torment his relatives and claim back his
property."[192] A Saora gave the following reason for the custom
of burning all the belongings of a dead person:--"If we do not
burn these things with the body, the Kulba (soul) will come and
ask us for them and trouble us."[193] The Kafirs believe that,
after his death, "a man's personality haunts his possessions."[194]
Among the Brazilian Tupinambas "whoever happened to have any
thing which had belonged to the dead produced it, that it might
be buried with him, lest he should come and claim it."[195] When
a Navaho Indian dies within a house the rafters are pulled down
over the remains and the place is usually set on fire; after that
nothing would induce a Navaho to touch a piece of the wood or
even approach the immediate vicinity of the place, the shades of
the dead being regarded "as inclined to resent any intrusion or
the taking of any liberties with them or their belongings."[196]
The Greenlanders, as soon as a man is dead, "throw out every
thing which has belonged to him; otherwise they would be
polluted, and their lives rendered unfortunate. The house is
cleared of all its movables till evening, when the smell of the
corpse has passed away."[197]
[Footnote 186: Teit, _loc. cit._ p. 329.]
[Footnote 187: Smith, _Myths of the Iroquois_, in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ ii. 69.]
[Footnote 188: Monrad, _op. cit._ p. 26.]
[Footnote 189: Burrows, _op. cit._ p. 103.]
[Footnote 190: von Brenner, _op. cit._ p. 234 _sqq._]
[Footnote 191: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 123 _sq._]
[Footnote 192: von Wlislocki, _Volksglaube der Zigeuner_, p. 100.]
[Footnote 193: Fawcett, _op. cit._ p. 47.]
[Footnote 194: Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 83.]
[Footnote 195: Southey, _op. cit._ i. 248. _Cf._ von den Steinen,
_Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens_, p. 502 (Bororó).]
[Footnote 196: Mindeleff, 'Navaho Houses,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ xvii. 487.]
[Footnote 197: Cranz, _op. cit._ i. 217.]
The fear of the dead has also taught men to abstain from robbing
or violating their tombs. The Omahas believe that, if anybody
touched an article of food exposed at a grave, "the ghost would
snatch away the food and paralyse the mouth of the thief, and
twist his face out of shape for the rest of his life; or else he
would be pursued by the ghost, and food would lose its taste, and
hunger ever after haunt the offender."[198] The Brazilian
Coroados "avoid disturbing the repository of the dead, for fear
they should appear to them and torment them."[199] {541} The
Maoris suppose that the violation of a burial place would bring
disease and death on the criminal.[200] The extreme dislike of
the Chinese to disturbing a grave is based on the supposition
that the spirit of the person buried will haunt and cause
ill-luck or death to the disturber.[201] According to the popular
beliefs of the Magyars, he who seizes upon anything belonging to
a tomb, even if it were only a flower, will be unhappy for the
rest of his life.[202] The Rumanians of Transylvania think that a
person who picks a flower which grows on a grave will die in
consequence, and that he who smells at such a flower will lose
his sense of smell.[203]
[Footnote 198: La Flesche, 'Death and Funeral Customs among the
Omahas,' in _Jour. American Folk-Lore_, ii. 11. _Cf._ Reid, in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ iii. 112 (Chippewas).]
[Footnote 199: von Spix and von Martius, _Travels in Brazil_,
ii. 251.]
[Footnote 200: Polack, _op. cit._ i. 112.]
[Footnote 201: Dennys, _op. cit._ p. 26. de Groot, _op. cit._
(vol. iv. book) ii. 446 _sq._]
[Footnote 202: von Wlislocki, _Volksglaube der Magyaren_, p. 135.
_Cf._ _Idem_, _Volksglaube der Zigeuner_, p. 96 _sq._]
[Footnote 203: Prexl, 'Geburts- und Todtengebräuche der Rumänen
in Siebenbürgen,' in _Globus_, lvii. 30.]
The transgression of ancestral custom, as we have already seen,
is supposed to be punished by the spirits of the dead; and the
sacredness of a will largely springs from superstitious fear. The
South Slavonian belief that, if a son does not fulfil the last
will of his father the soul of the father will curse him from the
grave,[204] has its counterpart in the denunciatory clause in
Anglo-Saxon landbooks, which usually curses all and singular who
attack the donee's title.[205]
[Footnote 204: _Supra_, i. 624.]
[Footnote 205: Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law
before the Time of Edward I._ ii. 251 _sq._]
The custom of praising the dead, again, is mainly flattery, and
the lamentations over them are not altogether sincere.[206] By
their excessive demonstrations of grief the Andaman Islanders
hope to conciliate the spirits of the departed, and to be
preserved from many misfortunes which might otherwise befall
them.[207] The Central Australian native fears "that, unless a
sufficient amount of grief be displayed, he will be harmed by the
offended _Ulthana_ or spirit of the dead man."[208] The
Angmagsaliks {542} on the East Coast of Greenland say that they
cry and groan and perform other mourning rites "in order to
prevent the dead from getting angry."[209] But the loud wailing
of mourners may also, like the shouting after a death,[210] be
intended to drive away the ghost, or perhaps death itself.
[Footnote 206: See Gibbs, _loc. cit._ p. 205 (tribes of Western
Washington and North-western Oregon); Wied-Neuwied, _Reise nach
Brasilien_, ii. 56 (Botocudos).]
[Footnote 207: Man, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xii. 145.]
[Footnote 208: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 510.]
[Footnote 209: Holm, 'Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,' in
_Meddelelser om Grønland_, x. 107.]
[Footnote 210: Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._ p. 506. _Cf._
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 432, n. 2.]
Fear is certainly a very common motive for funeral and mourning
rites which have been interpreted as duties to the dead. This is
the case with the various methods of disposing of the corpse.
Thus the custom of leaving it as food for beasts of prey[211] is,
in some instances at least, deliberately practised for the
purpose of preventing the ghost from walking. The Herero who
accompanied Chapman said of two of their sick comrades who formed
part of the company, "You must throw them away, and let the
wolves eat them; then they won't come and bother us."[212]
Cremation, also, has frequently been resorted to as a means of
protecting the living from unwelcome visits of the dead, or, as
the case may be, of effectually getting rid of the contagion of
death.[213] The Vedic people, while burning the corpses of their
dead, cried aloud, "Away, go away, O Death! injure not our sons
and our men."[214] In Northern India the corpses of all low caste
people are either cremated or buried face downwards, in order to
prevent the evil spirit from escaping and troubling its
neighbours.[215] The Nâyars of Malabar not only believe that the
collection and careful disposal of the ashes of the dead man
gives peace to his spirit, but, "what is more important, the
pacified spirit will not thereafter injure the living members of
the Taravâd (house or family), cause miscarriage {543} to the
women, possess the men, as with an evil spirit, and so on."[216]
In Tibet a ghost which makes its presence felt in dreams or by
causing deliriousness or temporary insanity is disposed of by
cremation.[217] In his description of the Savage Islanders, Mr.
Thomson tells us of a mother who destroyed her own daughter's
grave by fire in order to burn the spirit which was afflicting
her.[218] Among the ancient Scandinavians the bodies of persons
who were believed to walk after death were dug up from their
graves and burned.[219] And exactly the same is done in Albania
to this day.[220]
[Footnote 211: For this custom see also Murdoch, in _Ann. Rep.
Bur. Ethn._ ix. 424 _sq._ (Point Barrow Eskimo); Nordenskiöld,
_Vegas färd kring Asien och Europa_, ii. 93 (Chukchi); Andersson,
_Notes on Travel in South Africa_, p. 234 (Ovambo).]
[Footnote 212: Chapman, _Travels in the Interior of South
Africa_, ii. 282.]
[Footnote 213: _Cf._ Rohde, _op. cit._ p. 28 _sqq._ (ancient
Greeks); Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 294.]
[Footnote 214: _Rig-Veda_, x. 18. 1.]
[Footnote 215: Crooke, _Popular Religion of Northern India_, i. 269.]
[Footnote 216: Fawcett, in the Madras Government Museum's _Bulletin_,
iii. 251. See also Iyer, 'Nay[=a]dis of Malabar,'_ibid._ iv. 71.]
[Footnote 217: Waddell, _op. cit._ p. 498.]
[Footnote 218: Thomson, _Savage Island_, p. 134.]
[Footnote 219: Kålund, _loc. cit._ p. 227.]
[Footnote 220: von Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, i. 163.]
Burial itself has served a similar purpose.[221] According to the
Danish traveller Monrad, the Negroes of Accra expressly believe
that by covering the body of a dead person with earth they keep
the ghost from walking and causing trouble to the survivors; and
he adds that exactly the same superstition prevails in Jutland in
Denmark.[222] This belief is also preserved in the Swedish word
for committing a corpse to the earth, _jordfästa_, which
literally means "to fasten to the earth." In Gothland, in Sweden,
there was an old tradition of a man called Takstein who in his
lifetime was overbearing and cruel and after his death haunted
the living, in consequence of which "a wizard finally
earth-fastened him in such a manner that he afterwards lay
quiet."[223] But burial has often been supplemented by other
precautions against the return of the ghost. Högström says that
the Laplanders carefully wrapped up their dead in cloth so as to
prevent the soul from slipping away.[224] The practice of placing
logs or stones immediately over the corpse may have a similar
origin; in some Queensland tribes, when an individual has been
killed by the whole tribe in punishment for some {544} serious
crime, boomerangs are substituted for the ordinary logs,
evidently for fear of the ghost.[225] The Chuvashes, again, put
two stakes across the coffin of a dead man for the purpose of
preventing him from lifting up the cover.[226] Graves are often
provided with mounds, tombstones, or enclosures in order to keep
the dead from walking.[227] The Omahas raise no mound over a man
who has been killed by lightning, but bury him face downwards and
with the soles of his feet split, in the belief that he will then
go to the spirit-land without giving further trouble to the
living.[228] The Savage Islanders pile heavy stones upon the
grave to keep the ghost down.[229] The Cheremises believe that
the ghosts cannot step over the fence-poles with which they
surround the graves.[230] When ceremonies like that of striking
the air at a funeral or the ringing of bells are represented as
means of keeping off evil spirits from the dead, we have reason
to suspect that their original object was to keep off the ghost
from the living. At Central Australian funerals women beat the
air with the palms of their hands for the express purpose of
driving the spirit away from the old camp which it is supposed to
haunt, and the men beat the air with their spear-throwers.[231]
The Bondeis of East Africa frighten the ghosts by beating
drums.[232] And at Port Moresby, in New Guinea, when the church
bell was first used, the natives thanked the missionaries for
having driven off numerous bands of ghosts.[233]
[Footnote 221: _Cf._ Frazer, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 64
_sq._; Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 292 _sq._]
[Footnote 222: Monrad, _op. cit._ p. 13.]
[Footnote 223: Läffler, _Den gottländska Taksteinar-sägnen_, p. 5.]
[Footnote 224: Högström, _Beskrifning öfver de til Sveriges Krona
lydande Lapmarker_, p. 207.]
[Footnote 225: Roth, _op. cit._ p. 165.]
[Footnote 226: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 121.]
[Footnote 227: _Cf._ Frazer, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xv. 65
_sq._; Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 293.]
[Footnote 228: Dorsey, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 420. La
Flesche, in _Jour. American Folk-Lore_, ii. 11.]
[Footnote 229: Thomson, _Savage Island_, p. 52.]
[Footnote 230: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 122.]
[Footnote 231: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 506.]
[Footnote 232: Dale, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxv. 238.]
[Footnote 233: Chalmers and Gill, _Work and Adventure in New
Guinea_, p. 260.]
That the mourning fast is essentially a precaution taken by the
survivors, and not a tribute to the dead, is obvious from what
has been said in a previous chapter.[234] When mourners mutilate,
cut, or beat themselves, the original object of their doing so
seems often to be to ward off the {545} contagion of death.[235]
Among the Bedouins of Morocco women at funerals not only scratch
their faces, but also rub the wounds with cow-dung, and cow-dung
is regarded as a means of purification. The mourning customs of
painting the body and of assuming a special costume have been
explained as attempts on the part of the survivors to disguise
themselves;[236] but the latter custom may also have originated
in the idea that a mourner is more or less polluted for a certain
period and that therefore a dress worn by him then, being a seat
of contagion, could not be used afterwards. Egede writes of the
Greenlanders, "If they have happened to touch a corpse, they
immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this
reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a
burying, in which they agree with the Jews."[237] There can,
finally, be no doubt that the widespread prohibition of
mentioning the name of a dead person[238] does not in the first
instance arise from respect for the departed, but from fear. To
name him is to summon him; the Indians of Washington Territory
even change their own names when a relative dies, because "they
think the spirits of the dead will come back if they hear the
same name called that they were accustomed to hear {546} before
death."[239] But apart from this, a dead man's name itself is
probably felt to be defiling, or at all events produces an
uncanny association of thought, which even among ourselves makes
many people reluctant to mention it.[240] And to do so may also
be a wrong to other persons who would be endangered thereby.
Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, to mention a dead man
before his relatives is a dreadful offence, which is often
punished even with death.[241]
[Footnote 234: _Supra_, ii. 302 _sqq._]
[Footnote 235: _Cf._ Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 302.]
[Footnote 236: Frazer, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ 73. _Idem_,
'Folk-Lore in the Old Testament,' in _Anthropological Essays
presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 110.]
[Footnote 237: Egede, _op. cit._ p. 197.]
[Footnote 238: Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of
Mankind_, p. 144. Nyrop, 'Navnets magt,' in _Mindre afhandlinger
udgivne af det philologisk-historiske samfund_, pp. 147-151, 190
_sq._ and _passim_. Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 421 _sqq._ Clodd,
_Tom Tit Tot_, p. 166 _sqq._ Nansen, _Eskimo Life_, p. 230 _sq._
(Greenlanders). Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen
Urreligionen_, p. 84 (North American Indians). Bourke,
'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 462.
Batchelor, _Ainu and their Folk-Lore_, p. 242. Georgi, _op. cit._
iii. 27, 28, 262 _sq._ (Samoyedes and shamanistic peoples in
Siberia). Jackson, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes).
Rivers, _Todas_, p. 625 _sqq._ Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the
North-Western Provinces_, i. 11 (Agariya, a Dravidian tribe), von
Wlislocki, _Volksglaube der Zigeuner_, p. 96 (Gypsies). Yseldijk,
in _Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago_, p. 42. (Kotting, in the
island of Flores). Roth, _North-West-Central Queensland
Aborigines_, p. 164. Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of
Central Australia_, p. 498. Fraser, _Aborigines of New South
Wales_, p. 82. Thornton, in Hill and Thornton, _Aborigines of New
South Wales_, p. 7. Fison and Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 249 (Kurnai).
Curr, _Squatting in Victoria_, p. 272 (Bangerang). Hinde, _op.
cit._ p. 50 (Masai). Duveyrier, _Exploration du Sahara_, p. 415
(Touareg). Werner, 'Custom of "Hlonipa,"' in _Jour. African
Soc._ 1905, April, p. 346 (Zulus).]
[Footnote 239: Swan, _Residence in Washington Territory_, p. 189.]
[Footnote 240: I had much difficulty in inducing my teacher in
Shel[h.]a, a Berber from the Great Atlas Mountains, to tell me
the equivalent for "illness" in his own language; and when he
finally did so, he spat immediately afterwards. Among the Central
Australian Arunta the older men will not look at the photograph
of a deceased person (Gillen, 'Aborigines of the McDonnell
Ranges,' in _Report of the Horn Expedition_, iv. 'Anthropology,'
p. 168).]
[Footnote 241: Simons, 'Exploration of the Goajira Peninsula,' in
_Proceed. Roy. Geograph. Soc._ N. S. vii. 791.]
By all this I certainly do not mean to assert that the funeral
and mourning customs to which I have just referred have
exclusively or in every case originated in fear of the dead or of
the pollution of death. Burial may also be genuinely intended to
protect the body from beasts or birds; and the same may be the
case with mounds, tombstones, and enclosures.[242] Some savages
are reported to burn the dead in order to prevent their bodies
from falling into the hands of enemies,[243] which might be bad
both for the dead and for their friends, as charms might be made
from the corpses.[244] Moreover, cremation does away with the
slow process of transformation to which a dead body is naturally
subject, and this process is regarded not only as a danger to the
living but also as painful to the deceased himself.[245] The same
object may be achieved by exposing the corpse to wild animals.
And we should also remember that the putrefactive process {547}
itself, whether accompanied by any superstitious ideas or not, is
a sufficient motive for disposing of the dead body in some way or
other--either by burial or cremation or exposure; and if one
method is held objectionable another will be resorted to. Among
the Masai the custom of throwing away corpses is said to spring
from the notion that to bury them would be to poison the
soil;[246] and the Zoroastrian law enjoining the exposure of the
dead was closely connected with the sacredness ascribed to fire
and earth and the consequent dread of polluting them.
[Footnote 242: Cranz, _op. cit._ i. 217 (Greenlanders). Turner,
in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow,
_ibid._ i. 102 (Wichita Indians). Dunbar, in _Magazine of
American History_, viii. 734 (Pawnee Indians). Curr, _The
Australian Race_, i. 87.]
[Footnote 243: Hyades and Deniker, _op. cit._ vii. 379
(Fuegians). Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 310 (Seminole Indians of
Florida).]
[Footnote 244: Ralph, quoted by Hartland, _Legend of Perseus_,
ii. 437 (Haidahs of British Columbia).]
[Footnote 245: See Hertz, _loc. cit._ p. 71.]
[Footnote 246: Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, p. 259.]
Again, as for the mutilations and self-inflicted wounds which
accompany funerals, I have suggested in a previous chapter that
they may be partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the
departed soul with human blood;[247] or, as Dr. Hirn observes,
they may be instinctive efforts to procure that relief from
overpowering feelings which is afforded by pain and the
subsequent exhaustion.[248] The reluctance to name the dead may,
in some measure, be traced to a natural unwillingness in his old
friends to revive past sorrows.[249] And with reference to the
mourning apparel, Dr. de Groot believes--if rightly or wrongly I
am not in a position to decide--that, so far as China is
concerned, it originated in the custom of sacrificing to the dead
the clothes on one's own back. He thinks that this explanation is
confirmed by the fact that in the age of Confucius it was
customary for the mourners to throw off their clothes as far as
decency allowed when the corpse was being dressed.[250]
[Footnote 247: _Supra_, i. 476.]
[Footnote 248: Hirn, _Origins of Art_, p. 66 _sq._]
[Footnote 249: Fison and Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 249 (Kurnai).
Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 422.]
[Footnote 250: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. ii. book) i. 475 _sq._]
There are several reasons why practices connected with death
which originally sprang from self-regarding motives have come to
be enjoined as duties. We have first to remember the various
factors mentioned above[251] which tend to make self-regarding
conduct a matter of moral concern. {548} But in this case the
transition from the prudential to the obligatory has been much
facilitated by the circumstance that all the acts which a
person's self-interest induces him to perform or to abstain from
have direct reference to another individual, and, indeed, to an
individual who is supposed to reward benefits bestowed upon him
or at all events to resent injuries and neglect. These
punishments and rewards sent by the departed soul are all the
more readily recognised to be well deserved, as the claims of the
dead are similar in nature to those of the living and are at the
same time in some degree supported by sympathetic feelings in the
survivors. Nor is it difficult to explain why even such practices
as are not originally supposed to comfort the dead have assumed
the character of duties towards them. The dead are not only
beings whom it is dangerous to offend and useful to please, but
they are also very easily duped. No wonder therefore that the
living are anxious to put the most amiable interpretation upon
their conduct, trying to persuade the ghost, as also one another,
that they do what they do for _his_ benefit, not for their own.
It is better for him to have rest in his grave than to wander
about on earth unhappy and homeless. It is better for him to
enjoy the heat of the flames than to suffer from the cold of an
arctic climate. It is better for him to be eaten by an
animal--say, a beautiful dog or a hyæna sent by God--than to lie
and rot in the open air. And all the mourning customs, what are
they if not tokens of grief? Moreover, if the corpse is not
properly disposed of or any funeral or mourning rite calculated
to keep off the ghost is not observed, the dead man will easily
do harm to the survivors. And does not this indicate that they
have been neglectful of their duties to him?
[Footnote 251: _Supra_, ii. 266 _sq._]
The mixture of sympathy and fear which is at the bottom of the
duties to the dead accounts for the fact that these duties are
rarely extended to strangers. A departed stranger is not
generally an object of either pity or fear. He expects attention
from his own people only, he haunts his own home. But he may of
course be dangerous to {549} anybody who directly offends him,
for instance by inflicting an injury upon his body, or to people
who live in the vicinity of his grave. We are told that the
Angami Nagas bestow as much care on the tombs of foes who have
fallen near their villages as on those of their own
warriors.[252] So also the differences in the treatment of the
dead which depend upon age, sex, and social position are no doubt
closely connected with variations in the feelings of sympathy,
respect, or fear,[253] although in many cases we are unable to
explain those differences in detail. Among the Australian natives
women and children are said to be interred with little ceremony
because they are held to be very inferior to men while alive and
consequently are not much feared after death;[254] and if in
Eastern Central Africa the attention usually bestowed upon the
dead is not extended to children which die when four or five days
old, the reason seems to be that such children are hardly
supposed to possess a soul.[255] We may assume that the special
treatment to which the bodies of criminals are subject is due not
only to indignation but, in some instances at least, to fear of
their ghosts. And we have noticed above that suicides, murdered
persons, and those struck with lightning are sometimes left
unburied because no one dares to interfere with their bodies, or
perhaps in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead.[256]
[Footnote 252: Prain, 'Angami Nagas,' in _Revue coloniale
internationale_, v. 493.]
[Footnote 253: _Cf._ Hertz, _loc. cit._ pp. 122, 132 _sqq._]
[Footnote 254: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 89.]
[Footnote 255: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 68.]
[Footnote 256: _Supra_, ii. 238 _sq._]
It should finally be noticed that the duties to the departed
become less stringent as time goes on. As Dr. Hertz has recently
shown, the fear of the dead is greatest as long as the process of
decomposition lasts and till the second funeral is performed, and
this ceremony brings the period of mourning to an end.[257]
Moreover, the dead are gradually less and less thought of, they
appear less frequently in dreams and visions, the affection for
them fades away, and, being forgotten, they are no longer feared.
The Chinese say that ghosts are much more {550} liable to appear
very shortly after death, than at any other period.[258] The
natives of Australia are only afraid of the spirits of men who
have lately died.[259] In the course of time savages also become
more willing to speak of their dead.[260] But whilst the large
bulk of disembodied souls sooner or later lose their
individuality and dwindle into insignificance or sink into the
limbo of All Souls, it may be that some of them escape this fate,
and, instead of being ignored, are raised to the rank of gods.
[Footnote 257: Hertz, _loc. cit._ _passim_.]
[Footnote 258: Dennys, _op. cit._ p. 76.]
[Footnote 259: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 44, 87. Lumholtz,
_Among Cannibals_, p. 279 (Northern Queensland aborigines).]
[Footnote 260: Tout, 'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British
Columbia,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 138. Bourke,
'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 462.
Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 431 _sqq._]
* * * * *
Progress in intellectual culture has a tendency to affect the
notions of death. The change involved in it appears greater. The
soul, if still thought to survive the death of the body, is more
distinctly separated from it; it is rid of all sensuous desires,
as also of all earthly interests. Duties to the dead which arose
from the old ideas may still be maintained, but their meaning is
changed.
Thus the funeral sacrifice may be continued as a mark of respect
or affection. In Melanesia, for instance, at the death-meals
which follow upon funerals or begin before them, and which still
form one of the principal institutions of the natives, a piece of
food is put aside for the dead. "It is readily denied now," says
Dr. Codrington, "that the dead . . . are thought to come and eat
the food, which they say is given as a friendly remembrance only,
and in the way of associating together those whom death has
separated."[261] In many cases the offerings made to the dead
have become alms given to the poor, just as has been the case
with sacrifices offered to gods;[262] and this almsgiving is
undoubtedly looked upon as a duty to the dead. Among the Omahas
goods are collected from the kindred of the dead between the
death and the funeral, and when the body has been deposited in
the grave they {551} are brought forth and equally divided among
the poor who are assembled on the spot.[263] At a Hindu funeral
in Sindh, on the road to the burning place, the relatives of the
dead throw dry dates into the air over the corpse; these are
considered as a kind of alms and are left to the poor.[264] Among
some peoples of Malabar, at the _çráddha_, or yearly anniversary
of a death, not less than three Brahmins are well fed and
presented with money and cloth;[265] and according to Brahmanism
the _çráddha_ is "a debt which is transferred from one generation
to another, and on the payment of which depends the happiness of
the dead in the next life."[266] Among Muhammedans alms,
generally consisting of food, are distributed in connection with
a death in order to confer merits upon the deceased.[267] Thus in
Morocco bread or dried fruits are given to the poor who are
assembled at the grave-side on the day of the funeral, as also on
the third and sometimes on the fortieth day after it, on the
tenth day of Mu[h.]arram, and in many parts of the country on
other feast-days as well, when the graves are visited by
relatives of the dead. These alms are obviously survivals of
offerings to the dead themselves. While residing among the
Bedouins of Dukkâla, I was told that if the funeral meal were
omitted the dead man's mouth would be filled with earth; and it
is a common custom among the Moors that, if a dead person appears
in a dream complaining of hunger or thirst, food or drink is at
once given to some poor people. Among the Christians, in former
days, alms were distributed in the church when, soon after a
death or on the anniversary of a death, the sacrifice of the mass
was offered; and alms were also given at funerals and at graves,
in the hope that their merit might be of advantage to the
deceased.[268] At Mykonos, in the Cyclades, on some fixed days
after the {552} burial a dish consisting of boiled wheat adorned
with sugar plums or other delicacy is put on the tomb, and
finally distributed to the poor at the church door;[269] and in
some parts of Russia the people still believe that if the usual
alms are not given at a funeral the dead man's soul will reveal
itself to his relatives in the form of a moth flying about the
flame of a candle.[270] The supposed conferring of merits upon
the dead and the prayers on their behalf, so common both in
Christianity and Muhammedanism, are the last remains of a series
of customs by means of which the living have endeavoured to
benefit their departed friends.
[Footnote 261: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 271 _sq._ _Cf._
_ibid._ p. 128.]
[Footnote 262: _Supra_, i. 565 _sqq._]
[Footnote 263: La Flesche, in _Jour. American Folk-Lore_,
ii. 8 _sqq._]
[Footnote 264: Burton, _Sindh_, p. 350.]
[Footnote 265: Fawcett, 'Notes on some of the People of Malabar,'
in the Madras Government Museum's _Bulletin_, iii. 71.]
[Footnote 266: Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 52.]
[Footnote 267: Garnett, _Women of Turkey_, ii. 496. Lane, _Modern
Egyptians_, p. 530. Certeux and Carnoy, _L'Algérie
traditionelle_, p. 220.]
[Footnote 268: Uhlhorn, _Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit_,
i. 281.]
[Footnote 269: Bent, _Cyclades_, p. 221 _sq._]
[Footnote 270: Ralston, _op. cit._ p. 117.]
But even when the dead are no longer believed to be in need of
human care, nay, though death be thought to put an end to
existence, there are still duties, if not to the dead, at all
events to those who were once alive. A person may be wronged by
an act which he can no longer feel. There are rights that are in
force not only during his lifetime but after his death. A given
promise is not buried with him to whom it was made. A dead man's
will is binding. His memory is protected against calumny. These
rights have the same foundation as all other rights: the feelings
of the person himself and the claims of others that his feelings
shall be respected. We have wishes with regard to the future when
we live no more. We take an interest in persons and things that
survive us. We desire to leave behind a spotless name. And the
sympathy felt for us by our fellow men will last when we
ourselves are gone.
CHAPTER XLVI
CANNIBALISM
BEFORE we take leave of the dead we have still to consider the
practice of eating them.
Habitual cannibalism, permitted or in some cases enjoined by
custom, has been met with in a large number of savage tribes and,
as a religious or magical rite, among several peoples of culture.
It is, or has been, particularly prevalent in the South Sea
Islands, Australia, Central Africa, and South and Central
America. But it has also been found among various North American
Indians, in certain tribes of the Malay Archipelago, and among a
few peoples on the Asiatic continent. And it is proved to have
occurred in many parts of Europe.[1]
[Footnote 1: For the prevalence and extenson of cannibalism**,
see Andree, _Die Anthropophagie_, p. 1 _sqq._; Bergemann, _Die
Verbreitung der Anthropophagie_, p. 5 _sqq._; Steinmetz,
_Endokannibalismus_, p. 2 _sqq._; Schneider, _Die Naturvölker_,
i. 121 _sqq._; Letourneau, _L'évolution de la morale_, p. 82
_sqq._; Ritson, _Abstinence from Animal Food_, p. 125 _sqq._;
Hartland, _Legend of Perseus_, ii. 279 _sqq._; Schaafhausen, 'Die
Menschenfresserei und das Menschenopfer,' in _Archiv f.
Anthropologie_, iv. 248 _sqq._; Henkenius, 'Verbreitung der
Anthropophagie,' in _Deutsche Rundschau f. Geographie u.
Statistik_, xv. 348 _sqq._; de Nadaillac, 'L'Anthropophagie et
les sacrifices humains,' in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, lxvi. 406
_sqq._; _Idem_, in _Bulletins de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_,
1888, p. 27 _sqq._; Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_,
p. 145 _sqq._ (American aborigines); Koch, 'Die Anthropophagie
der südamerikanischen Indianer,' in _Internationales Archiv f.
Ethnographie_, xii. 84 _sqq._; Preuss, _Die Begräbnisarten der
Amerikaner und Nordostasiaten_, p. 217 _sqq._; Vos, 'Die
Verbreitung der Anthropophagie auf dem asiatischen Festlande,' in
_Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr._ iii. 69 _sqq._; de Groot, _Religious
System of China_, (vol. iv. book) ii. 363 _sqq._; Hübbe-Schleiden,
_Ethiopien_, p. 209 _sqq._; Matiegka, 'Anthropophagie in der
prähistorischen Ansiedlung bei Knovize und in der prähistorischen
Zeit überhaupt,' in _Mittheil. d. Anthrop. Gesellsch. in Wien_,
xxvi. 129 _sqq._; Wood-Martin, _Traces of the Elder Faiths of
Ireland_, ii. 286 _sqq._]
{554} Sometimes the whole body is eaten, with the exception of
the bones, sometimes only a part of it, as the liver or the
heart. Frequently the victim is an enemy or a member of a foreign
tribe, but he may also be a relative or fellow tribesman. Among
various savages exo- and endo-anthropophagy prevail
simultaneously; but many cannibals restrict themselves to eating
strangers, slain enemies, or captives taken in war, whereas
others eat their own people in preference to strangers, or are
exclusively endo-anthropophagous. Thus the Birhors of the Central
Provinces of India are said to eat their aged relatives, but to
abhor any other form of cannibalism;[2] and in certain Australian
tribes it is not the dead bodies of slain enemies that are eaten,
but the bodies of friends, the former being left where they
fell.[3] Sometimes people feed on the corpses of such kinsmen as
have happened to die, sometimes they kill and eat their old
folks, sometimes parents eat their children, sometimes criminals
are eaten by the other members of their own community. The
Australian Dieyerie have a fixed order in which they partake of
their dead relatives:--"The mother eats of her children. The
children eat of their mother. Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law
eat of each other. Uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grandchildren,
grandfathers, and grandmothers eat of each other. But the father
does not eat of his offspring, or the offspring of the sire."[4]
Among some peoples cannibalism is an exclusively masculine
custom, the women being forbidden to eat human flesh, except
perhaps in quite exceptional circumstances.[5]
[Footnote 2: Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 220 _sq._]
[Footnote 3: Palmer, 'Some Australian Tribes,' in _Jour. Anthr.
Inst._ xiii. 283; Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 56;
Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 753
(Queensland aborigines). Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 67
(tribes of Western Victoria).]
[Footnote 4: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of
South Australia_, p. 274.]
[Footnote 5: Coquilhat, _Sur le Haut-Congo_, p. 274 (Bangala).
Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Mbala,' in _Jour. Anthr.
Inst._ xxxv. 403 _sq._ _Iidem_, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Huana,'
_ibid._ xxxvi. 279. Reade, _Savage Africa_, p. 158 (West
Equatorial Africans). Thomson, _Story of New Zealand_, i. 145;
Best, 'Art of War, as conducted by the Maori,' in _Jour.
Polynesian Soc._ xi. 71 (some of the Maoris). von Langsdorf, _op.
cit._ i. 134 (Nukahivans). Erskine, _Cruise among the Islands of
Western Pacific_, p. 260 (Fijians). Spencer and Gillen, _Northern
Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 548. With reference to the
natives of Australia Mr. Curr says (_The Australian Race_, i. 77)
that "human flesh seems to have been entirely forbidden to
females"; but this certainly does not hold true of all the
Australian tribes.]
{555} The practice of cannibalism may be traced to many different
sources. **It often springs from scarcity or lack of animal
food.[6] In the South Sea Islands, according to Ellis, "the
cravings of nature, and the pangs of famine, often led to this
unnatural crime."[7] The Nukahivans, who were in the habit of
eating their enemies slain in battle, also killed and ate their
wives and children in times of scarcity, but not unless forced to
it by the utmost necessity.[8] Hunger has been represented as the
motive for cannibalism in some North and West Australian tribes,
parents sometimes consuming even their own children when food is
scarce.[9] The Indians north of Lake Superior often resorted to
the eating of human flesh when hard pressed by their enemies or
during a famine.[10] Among the Hudson Bay Eskimo "instances are
reported where, in times of great scarcity, families have been
driven to cannibalism after eating their dogs and the clothing
and other articles made of skins."[11]
[Footnote 6: Bergemann, _op. cit._ p. 48. de Nadaillac, in _Bull.
Soc. d'Anthr._ 1888, p. 27 _sqq._ _Idem_, in _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, lxvi. 428 _sq._ Steinmetz, _Endokannibalismus_, p. 25
_sqq._ Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_, ii. 281 _sqq._
Henkenius, _loc. cit._ p. 348 _sq._ Letourneau, _L'évolution de
la Morale_, p. 97. Matiegka, _loc. cit._ p. 136. Hübbe-Schleiden,
_Ethiopien_, p. 216 _sq._ Rochas, _La Nouvelle Calédonie_, p. 304
_sq._]
[Footnote 7: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 359.]
[Footnote 8: von Langsdorf, _op. cit._ i. 144.]
[Footnote 9: Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 134. Nisbet, _A
Colonial Tramp_, ii. 143. Oldfield, 'Aborigines of Australia,' in
_Trans. Ethn. Soc._ N.S. iii. 285. In hard summers the new-born
babies were all eaten by the Kaura tribe in the neighbourhood of
Adelaide (Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 749).]
[Footnote 10: Warren, in Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes of the
United States_, ii. 146.]
[Footnote 11: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in
_Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 187.]
But whilst among some peoples starvation is the only inducement
to cannibalism, there are others who can plead no such motive for
their anthropophagous habits. The Fijians, until lately some of
the greatest man-eaters on earth, inhabit a country where food of
every kind abounds.[12] The Brazilian cannibals generally have a
great {556} plenty of game or fish.[13] In Africa cannibalism
prevails in many countries which are well supplied with food.[14]
Thus the Bangala of the Upper Congo have been known to make frequent
warlike expeditions against adjoining tribes seemingly for the
sole object of obtaining human flesh to eat, although their land
is well provided with a variety of vegetable food and domestic
animals, to say nothing of the incredible abundance of fish in
its lakes and rivers.[15] Of the cave-cannibals in the
Trans-Gariep Country, in South Africa, a traveller remarks with
some surprise:--"They were inhabiting a fine agricultural tract
of country, which also abounded in game. Notwithstanding this,
they were not contented with hunting and feeding upon their
enemies, but preyed much upon each other also, for many of their
captures were made from amongst the people of their own
tribe."[16] Far from being an article of food resorted to in
emergency only, human flesh is not seldom sought for as a
delicacy.[17] The highest praise which the Fijians could bestow
on a dainty was to say that it was "tender as a dead man."[18] In
various other islands of the South Seas human flesh is spoken of
as a delicious food, far superior to pork.[19] The {557}
Australian Kurnai said that it tasted better than beef.[20] In
some tribes in Australia a plump child is considered "a sweet
mouthful, and, in the absence of the mother, clubs in the hands
of a few wilful men will soon lay it low."[21] Of certain natives
of Northern Queensland we are told that the greatest incentive to
taking life is their appetite for human flesh, as they know no
greater luxury than the flesh of a black man.[22]
[Footnote 12: Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 182. Erskine. _op.
cit._ p. 262.]
[Footnote 13: von Martius, _Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's_,
i. 538. Koch, _loc. cit._ p. 87. de Nadaillac, in _Bull. Soc.
d'Anthr._ 1888, p. 30 _sq._]
[Footnote 14: Johnston, 'Ethics of Cannibalism,' in _Fortnightly
Review_, N.S. xlv. 20 _sqq._ Hübbe-Schleiden, _Ethiopien_, p. 212.
de Nadaillac, in _Bull. Soc. d'Anthr._ 1888, p. 32 _sq._]
[Footnote 15: Coquilhat, _op. cit._ pp. 271, 273. Johnston, in
_Fortnightly Review_, N.S. xlv. 20.]
[Footnote 16: Layland, quoted by Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla
Land_, i. 216.]
[Footnote 17: Bergemann, _op. cit._ p. 49 _sq._ von Langsdorf,
_op. cit._ i. 141. Hübbe-Schleiden, _Ethiopien_, p. 218.
Johnston, in _Fortnightly Review_, N.S. xlv. 20 _sqq._ (various
African peoples). Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 330
(Fans). Reade, _op. cit._ p. 158 (West Equatorial Africans).
Coquilhat, _op. cit._ p. 271 (Bangala). Torday and Joyce,
'Ba-Mbala,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 404. _Iidem_,
'Ba-Huana,' _ibid._ xxxvi. 279.]
[Footnote 18: Wilkes, _U. S. Exploring Expedition_, iii. 101.
_Cf._ Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._ pp. 175, 178, 195.]
[Footnote 19: Romilly, _Western Pacific_, p. 59 (New Irelanders).
_Idem_, _From my Verandah in New Guinea_, p. 65. Brenchley,
_Cruise of H.M.S. Curaçoa_, p. 209; Turner, _Samoa_, p. 313
(natives of Tana, in the New Hebrides). _Cf._ _ibid._ p. 344 (New
Caledonians); Hale, _U. S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI.
Ethnography and Philology_, p. 39 (Polynesians). The Bataks of
Sumatra likewise consider human flesh even better than pork
(Junghuhn, _Die Battaländer auf Sumatra_, ii. 160 _sq._). For the
high appreciation of its taste see also Marco Polo, _Book
concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East_, ii. 179 (hill
people in Fokien), 209 (Islanders in the Seas of China);
Schaafhausen, _loc. cit._ p. 247 _sq._; Matiegka, _loc. cit._
p. 136, n. 3.]
[Footnote 20: Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 752.]
[Footnote 21: Fraser, _Aborigines of New South Wales_, pp. 3, 57.]
[Footnote 22: Lumholtz, _op. cit._ pp. 101, 271.]
However, bodily appetites, whether hunger or _gourmandise_, are
by no means the sole motives for cannibalism. Very frequently it
is described as an act of revenge.[23] The Typees of the
Marquesas Islands, according to Melville, are cannibals only when
they seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their foes.[24]
The cannibalism of the Solomon Islanders seems mainly to have
been an expression of the deepest humiliation to which they could
make a person subject.[25] The Samoans affirmed that, when in
some of their wars a body was occasionally cooked, "it was always
some one of the enemy who had been notorious for provocation or
cruelty, and that eating a part of his body was considered the
climax of hatred and revenge, and was not occasioned by the mere
relish for human flesh." To speak of roasting {558} him is the
very worst language that can be addressed to a Samoan, and if
applied to a chief of importance, he may raise war to avenge the
insult.[26] Among the Maoris human flesh was frequently eaten
from motives of revenge and hatred, to cast disgrace on the
person eaten, and to strike terror. "It was such a disgrace for a
New Zealander to have his body eaten, that if crews of Englishmen
and New Zealanders, all friends, were dying of starvation in
separate ships, the English might resort to cannibalism, but the
New Zealanders never would."[27] Even in Fiji, where cannibalism
was largely indulged in for the mere pleasure of eating human
flesh as food, revenge is said to have been the chief motive for
it.[28] Thus, "in any transaction where the national honour had
to be avenged, it was incumbent upon the king and principal
chiefs--in fact, a duty they owed to their exalted station--to
avenge the insult offered to the country by eating the
perpetrators of it."[29]
[Footnote 23: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 310 (Tahitians).
von Langsdorf, _op. cit._ i. 149 (Nukahivans). Forster, _Voyage
round the World_, ii. 315 (natives of Tana and generally).
Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_, p. 248 (natives of New
Britain and New Ireland). Howitt, _Natives of South-East
Australia_, pp. 247, 751. Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, p. 391;
Buning, in _Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago_, p. 74 _sq._;
Junghuhn. _op. cit._ ii. 156, 160 (Bataks). de Groot, _op. cit._
(vol. iv. book) ii. 369 _sqq._ (ancient Chinese). Schneider, _Die
Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker_, p. 208 _sq._ (Negroes).
Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 216 (natives of Bonny and
New Calabar). Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen
Urreligionen_, p. 145 _sq._ Carver, _Travels through the Interior
Parts of North America_, p. 303 _sq._ (Naudowessies). Keating,
_Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River_, i. 104
(Potawatomis). Koch, _loc. cit._ pp. 87, 89 _sqq._ (South
American tribes). von Humboldt, _Travels to the Equinoctial
Regions of the New Continent_, v. 421 (Indians of Guyana).
Wied-Neuwied, _Reise nach Brasilien_, ii. 50 (Botocudos and some
other Brazilian tribes). Lomonaco, 'Sulle razze indigene del
Brasile,' in _Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia_, xix.
58 (Tupis). Andree, _op. cit._ p. 102 _sq._ and _passim_.]
[Footnote 24: Melville, _Typee_, p. 181.]
[Footnote 25: Parkinson, _Zur Ethnographie der nordwestlichen
Salomo Inseln_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 26: Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 194.
_Cf._ Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, p. 125 _sq._]
[Footnote 27: Thomson, _Story of New Zealand_, i. 141 _sqq._
Yate, _Account of New Zealand_, p. 129. Dieffenbach, _Travels in
New Zealand_, ii. 128. Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 353. Best, in
_Jour. Polynesian Soc._ xi. 71 _sq._]
[Footnote 28: Wilkes, _op. cit._ iii. 101. Williams and Calvert,
_op. cit._ p. 178.]
[Footnote 29: Seemann, _Viti_, p. 181.]
The practice of eating criminals, which is quite a common form of
cannibalism, seems to be largely due to revenge or
indignation.[30] In Lepers' Island, in the New Hebrides, the
victims of it were not generally enemies who had been killed in
fighting, but "it was a murderer or particularly detested enemy
who was eaten, in anger and to treat him ill."[31] Among the
Bataks of Sumatra offenders condemned for certain capital crimes,
such as atrocious murder, treason, and adultery, were usually
eaten by the injured persons and their friends with all the signs
of angry passion.[32] But this form of cannibalism may also have
another foundation.[33] If for any reason there is a desire to
eat human flesh, an unsympathetic being like a criminal is apt to
be chosen as a victim. {559} It is said that some of the Line
Islanders in the South Seas began their cannibalism by eating
thieves and slaves.[34] In Melanesia, where human sacrifices were
combined with the eating of bits of the victim, "advantage was
taken of a crime, or imputed crime, to take a life and offer the
man to some _tindalo_."[35]
[Footnote 30: _Cf._ Matiegka, _loc. cit._ p. 137.]
[Footnote 31: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 344.]
[Footnote 32: Marsden, _op. cit._ p. 391. Junghuhn, _op. cit._
ii. 156 _sq._]
[Footnote 33: See Steinmetz, _op. cit._ p. 55 _sq._]
[Footnote 34: Tutuila, 'Line Islanders,' in _Jour. Polynesian
Soc._ i. 270.]
[Footnote 35: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 135.]
It has been questioned whether cannibalism can be a direct
expression of hatred;[36] but for no good reason. To eat a person
is, according to primitive ideas, to annihilate him as an
individual,[37] and we can readily imagine the triumphant
feelings of a savage who has his enemy between his jaws. The
Fijian eats in revenge even the vermin which bite him, and when a
thorn pricks him he picks it out of his flesh and eats it.[38]
The Cochin-Chinese express their deepest hatred of a person by
saying, "I wish I could eat his liver or his flesh."[39] Other
people want to "drink the blood" of their enemies.
[Footnote 36: Steinmetz, _op. cit._ p. 33.]
[Footnote 37: Dieffenbach, _op. cit._ ii. 118 (Maoris). Johnston,
in _Fortnightly Review_, N. S. xlv. 27 (Negroes of the Niger
Delta). Koch, _loc. cit._ pp. 87, 109. Lippert, _Der Seelencult_,
p. 69. _Idem_, _Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_, ii. 282 _sq._]
[Footnote 38: Pritchard, _op. cit._ p. 371.]
[Footnote 39: von Langsdorf, _op. cit._ i. 148.]
The idea that a person is annihilated or loses his individuality
by being eaten has led to cannibalism not only in revenge but as
an act of protection, as a method of making a dangerous
individual harmless after death.[40] Among the Botocudos warriors
devoured the bodies of their fallen enemies in the belief that
they would thus be safe from the revengeful hatred of the
dead.[41] In Ashantee "several of the hearts of the enemy are cut
out by the fetish men who follow the army, and the blood and
small pieces being mixed (with much ceremony and incantation)
with various consecrated herbs, all those who have never killed
an enemy before eat a portion, for it is believed that if they
did not, their vigour and courage would be secretly wasted by the
haunting spirit of the {560} deceased."[42] In Greenland "a slain
man is said to have the power to avenge himself upon the murderer
by rushing into him, which can only be prevented by eating a
piece of his liver."[43] Many cannibals are in the habit of
consuming that part of a slain enemy which is supposed to contain
his soul or courage or strength, and one reason for this practice
may be the wish to render him incapable of doing further harm.
Queensland natives eat the kidneys of the persons whom they have
killed, believing that "the kidneys are the centre of life."[44]
Among the Maoris a chief was often satisfied with the left eye of
his enemy, which they considered to be the seat of the soul; or
they drank the blood from a corresponding belief;[45] or in the
case of a blood feud the heart of the enemy, representing the
vital essence of him, was eaten "to fix or make firm the victory
and the courage of the victor."[46] Other peoples likewise eat
the hearts or suck the brains of their foes.
[Footnote 40: _Cf._ Lippert, _Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_,
ii. 282; Koch, _loc. cit._ pp. 87, 109.]
[Footnote 41: Featherman, _Social History of Mankind_,
'Chiapo- and Guarano-Maranonians,' p. 355.]
[Footnote 42: Bowdich, _Mission to Ashantee_, p. 300.]
[Footnote 43: Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 45.]
[Footnote 44: Lumholtz, _op. cit._ p. 272.]
[Footnote 45: Dieffenbach, _op. cit._ ii. 128 _sq._]
[Footnote 46: Best, in _Jour. Polynesian Soc._ xii. 83, 147.]
Moreover, by eating the supposed seat of a certain quality in his
enemy the cannibal thinks not only that he deprives his victim of
that quality, but also that he incorporates it with his own
system.[47] In many cases this is the chief or the only reason
for the practice of cannibalism. The Shoshone Indians supposed
that they became animated by the heroic spirit of a fallen foe if
they partook of his flesh.[48] Among the Hurons, if an enemy had
shown courage, his heart, roasted and cut into small pieces,
{561} was given to the young men and boys to eat.[49] The
E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast used to eat the hearts
of foes remarkable for sagacity, holding that the heart is the
seat of the intellect as well as of courage.[50] Among the
Kimbunda of South-Western Africa, when a new king succeeds to the
throne, a brave prisoner of war is killed in order that the king
and nobles may eat his flesh, and so acquire his strength and
courage.[51] The idea of transference very largely underlies
Australian cannibalism.[52] In some tribes enemies are consumed
with a view to acquiring some part of their qualities and
courage.[53] The Dieyerie devour the fatty portions of their foes
because they think it will impart strength to them.[54] And
similar motives are often given for the practice of eating
relatives or friends. When a man is killed in one of the
ceremonial fights in the tribes about Maryborough, in Queensland,
his friends skin and eat him in the hope that his virtues as a
warrior may go into those who partake of him.[55] Among the
natives of the River Darling, in New South Wales, a piece of
flesh is cut from the dead body and taken to the camp, and after
being sun-dried is cut up into small pieces, which are
distributed among the relatives and friends of the deceased. Some
of them use the piece in making a charm, or throw it into the
river to bring a flood and fish, but others suck it to get
strength and courage.[56] In certain Central Australian tribes,
when a party starts on an avenging expedition, every man of it
drinks some blood and also has some spurted over his body, so as
to make him lithe and active; the elder men {562} indicate from
whom the blood is to be drawn, and the persons thus selected must
not decline.[57] In certain South Australian tribes cannibalism
is only practised by old men and women, who eat a baby in order
to get the youngster's strength.[58] Among other natives of the
same continent, as we have noticed above, a mother used to kill
and eat her first child, as this was believed to strengthen her
for later births.[59] And in various Australian tribes it is, or
has been, the custom when a child is weak or sickly to kill its
infant brother or sister and feed it with the flesh to make it
strong.[60] Many of the Brazilian Indians are in the habit of
burning the bones of their departed relatives, and mix the ashes
with a drink of which they partake for the purpose of absorbing
their spirits or virtues.[61] Dr. Couto de Magalhães was informed
that the savage Chavantes "eat their children who die, in the
hope of gathering again to their body the soul of the child."[62]
[Footnote 47: Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des
Philippinen-Archipels,' in _Mittheil. d. kais. u. könig.
Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien_, xxv. 154 (Italones). Lewin, _Wild
Races of South-Eastern India_, p. 269 (Kukis). de Groot, _op.
cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 373 _sqq._ (ancient Chinese).
Schneider, _Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker_, p. 209
_sq._ (Negroes). Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 145 _sq._ (North American
Indians). Keating, _op. cit._ i. 104 (Potawatomis). Koch, _loc.
cit._ pp. 87, 89 _sqq._, 109 (South American Indians). Andree,
_op. cit._ p. 101 _sq._ and _passim_. Lippert, _Der Seelencult_,
p. 70 _sqq._ _Idem_, _Kulturgeschichte_, ii. 282. Trumbull,
_Blood Covenant_, p. 128 _sqq._ Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 357
_sqq._ Gomme, _Ethnology in Folklore_, p. 151 _sqq._ Crawley,
_Mystic Rose_, p. 101 _sqq._]
[Footnote 48: Featherman, _op. cit._ 'Aoneo-Maranonians,' p. 206.]
[Footnote 49: Parkman, _Jesuits in North America_, p. xxxix.]
[Footnote 50: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast_, p. 100.]
[Footnote 51: Magyar, _Reisen in Süd-Afrika_, p. 273.]