CHAPTER V

ANIMISM

§ 1. WHAT IS ANIMISM?

If, when the cohesion of the hunting-pack had weakened, belief in Magic

by giving authority to elders became very influential and useful in

primitive societies, still greater in subsequent evolution has been

the power of Animism. For belief in ghosts led in time to the worship

of ancestors, and then especially to the worship of the ancestors of

chiefs or heroes, some of whom became gods; and the belief in gods

strengthened the authority of chiefs and kings who were descended from

them, and helped to maintain the unity of the tribe or nation from

generation to generation and from age to age.

In anthropology, the term Animism is usually employed to denote the

proneness of savages and barbarians, or people of unscientific culture,

to explain natural occurrences, at least the more remarkable or

interesting—the weather, the growth of crops, disease and death—as

due to the action of spirits: (1) ghosts (that is, spirits that have

formerly been incarnate); (2) dream-spirits, that have temporarily

quitted some body during sleep or trance; (3) invisible, living,

conscious beings that have never been incarnate. This may be called

Hyperphysical Animism. Sometimes, however, “Animism” is used to denote

a supposed attitude of savages and children toward all things, animate

and inanimate, such that they spontaneously and necessarily attribute

to everything a consciousness like our own, and regard all the actions

and reactions of natural objects as voluntary and purposive. And this

may be called Psychological Animism. These two meanings of “Animism”

are entirely different: it is one thing to regard an object as moved

by its own mind, another to attribute its movement or influence to a

separable agent which for the time possesses it; it is one thing to

regard an object as having an anthropomorphic consciousness, another

to believe that that consciousness is a distinct power capable of

quitting it and sometimes returning, or of surviving its destruction,

or of existing independently. Even if the doctrine of Animism in the

second sense were granted, it would remain to be shown how men came to

conceive that the consciousness of a thing can be separated from it,

and exist and act by itself, and even with greater powers than it had

before—contrary to the opinion of Don Juan,

“that soul and body, on the whole,

Were odds against a disembodied soul.”

Savages do not always regard a separable spirit as necessarily

belonging even to human nature. Dr. Seligman writes that, among the

Veddas, a few old men “were by no means confident that all men on their

death became _yaku_” (veridical ghosts). Influential men and mediums

would do so; but for the rest, at Godatalawa it was determined by

experiment. The ordinary man was invoked soon after death, and desired

to give good success in hunting; and if much game was then obtained,

he had become a _yaka_.[155] Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that,

according to the Guanjis, a woman has no _moidna_ (spirit part).[156]

Major C. H. Stigand says “the Masai have no belief in a future state

for any but chiefs”; the common dead are not even buried, but merely

thrown out into the bush.[157] Among the Omaha, though each person has

a spirit that normally survives the body, still, a suicide ceases to

exist.[158] In Tonga the souls of the lowest rank of the people (Tooas)

died with their bodies.[159] The human spirit, then, is not necessarily

believed to enter upon a life after death; still less is the spirit of

an animal. On the other hand, it is held by many tribes that something

inherent in weapons, utensils, food and other objects, a “soul” or

soul-stuff, may be separable from them and go to Hades or serve as the

food of spirits, although the things themselves are not regarded as

having a spirit or intelligent life.

§ 2. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANIMISM

Andrew Lang described savages as existing in “a confused frame of

mind to which all things, animate and inanimate, ... seem on the

same level of life, passion and reason.”[160] Children and other

immature people are often supposed to be in the same condition. As

to children, it is pointed out how deeply concerned they are about

dolls and rocking-horses, how passionately they turn to strike a table

after knocking their heads against it. But probably it is now admitted

that impulsive retaliation, on a table or bramble or shirt-stud (not

unknown to civilised men), implies not any belief in the malignity

or sensitiveness of those objects. Animals behave in the same way.

Th. Roosevelt reports that an elephant was seen to destroy in rage a

thorn tree that had pricked its trunk;[161] and that in America he

himself saw a bear that was burying a carcass, and lost hold of it

and rolled over, strike it a savage whack, like a pettish child.[162]

Moreover, in children, such behaviour is in large measure due to

suggestion; inasmuch as the setting of them to beat the table, or what

not, is an easy way of diverting them from their own pain. And, of

course, the dealing with dolls, or rocking-horses, or walking-sticks,

as if alive, is play. Such play involves intense imaginative belief,

which, at first, is not clearly differentiated from earnest. But this

stage corresponds with the play of the young of the higher animals,

whilst they are still physically incapable of completing the preluded

actions; and the engrossing interest of their play expresses the

biological necessity of it as a means of developing their mental and

bodily faculties. By the time that children are at all comparable with

savages, their play has become a temporary attitude, compatible with

brusque transition to matter-of-fact, or even with actions which at

the height of play show that the illusion is incomplete.

In savages, likewise, much of the behaviour that is supposed to betray

an illusionary animism, even in their simple apprehension of things,

is really an acquired way of acting, in a temporary attitude, under

the influence of imagination-belief, and is compatible with other

actions that show how incomplete is the illusion. Andrew Lang, after

the passage above quoted, appears to limit the scope of it by the words

“when myth-making”: no doubt, when myth-making and in practising many

rites, savages speak or act as if they believed in the full sense that

the objects dealt with are sensitive intelligent beings; and yet their

effective conduct toward them is entirely positive. They may, for

example, feed the growing rice-plant with pap; in harvesting it, speak

a secret language that the rice may not understand them and be alarmed,

and proceed to cut it with knives concealed in their palms: but they

do cut it. They carry it home and garner it with honour, and come from

time to time to take a portion for food with solemn observances: but

then they cook and eat it.[163] Their animistic attitude, therefore,

is not primitive, spontaneous, necessary illusion, but an acquired,

specialised way of imagining and dealing with certain things. Were

it not possible to combine in this way the imaginative with the

practical, all wizardry and priestcraft would be nothing but the sheer

cheating which it often seems to be to superficial observers. Normally,

imagination-beliefs that have only indirect biological utility (say, in

maintaining customs in order to ensure the tribe’s welfare) are unable

to overcome immediate biological needs (say, for food and shelter); but

often they do so within certain limits, or in certain directions, as in

innumerable taboos of food, customs of destroying a man’s property at

his death, starving or maiming tribesmen on the war-path. A universal

taboo on rice is not inconceivable. For these are social-pathological

cases; like the self-destructive beliefs of individuals and sects

amongst ourselves, such as the faith-healers, who in sickness call upon

their god instead of a physician.

Children, savages and ourselves, in some degree, attribute

spontaneously to _some_ inanimate things, in our mere apprehension of

them (for this has nothing to do with the metaphysics of Pampsychism),

something more than external existence: regarding them as force-things

and, by empathy, as experiencing effort and quiescence, strain and

relief, and sometimes emotion and pain. It is for this attitude toward

nature that I adopt Mr. Marett’s term “animatism”: as not ascribing

to inanimate things, or to plants, in general, anything like a human

personal consciousness; but merely an obscure, fragmentary, partial

consciousness, enough to correspond with our occasional experiences

in dealing with them. Perhaps those observers who report in strong

terms universal Animism as the tenet of a tribe, mean no more than

this; for example, the author above quoted as writing in the _American

Bureau of Ethnology_, who says (p. 433) that according to the Dakotas,

everything—“the commonest sticks and clays”—has a spirit that may

hurt or help and is, therefore, to be propitiated. It would be unjust

to the adherents of psychological Animism to accuse them of believing

that savages have universally made so much progress in “faculty

Psychology” as to distinguish personality, will, passion and reason;

especially as they add that savages project these powers into all

natural objects through incapacity for discrimination and abstraction;

and, at the same time, know very well that in some languages of the

most animistic tribes (e. g. Algonquin and Naga) the distinction of

animate and inanimate is the ground of grammatical gender.

We find, accordingly, that some explorers explicitly deny that, in

their experience, savages regard all things as on the same level of

life, passion and reason. Dr. Coddrington says that, in the Banks’

Islands, yams and such things are not believed to have any _tarunga_

(spirit)—“they do not live with any kind of intelligence”;[164]

and that Melanesians do not fail to distinguish the animate and the

inanimate. Messrs. Skeat and Blagden report that with the Semang of the

Malay Peninsula there is very little trace of animistic beliefs; and

they relate a folk-tale of how a male elephant tells a female that he

has found a live stone (pangolin rolled into a ball): “Swine,” said

the female, “stones are never alive.”[165] Messrs. Hose and McDougall

tell us that the Kayans hang garments and weapons on a tomb, and seem

to believe that shadowy duplicates of these things are at the service

of the ghost, but that such duplicates are inert (relatively) and not

to be confused with the principle of intelligence.[166] “Soul” does not

imply personality.

To be clear about Animism, it is necessary to bear in mind several

modes of belief: (1) Hyperphysical Animism, that certain things

have, or are possessed by a conscious spirit, and that this spirit

is a separable entity; (2) that things are themselves conscious (or

semi-conscious), but their consciousness is not a separable entity;

(3) that things are not conscious, but are informed by a separable

essence, usually called soul (better, soul-stuff), which may be eaten

by spirits, or may go to ghost-land with them; (4) the extension or

limitation of these beliefs to more or fewer classes of things. Unless

these distinctions are recognised, any report upon savage beliefs can

hardly be clear and adequate; but generally we may take it that when

a traveller tells us that such and such things are not believed to

have souls, and says nothing of any belief as to their consciousness,

he means (except with regard to animals) to deny that anything like

human consciousness is attributed to them. And when Mr. Torday writes

that, according to the Bahuana of the Upper Congo, there are two

incorporeal parts—_doshi_, common to man, animals and fetiches, and

_bun_, peculiar to man—he seems to leave it as a matter of course

that plants and inanimate things have neither of these, and are not

conscious beings; though probably some of them have soul-stuff, since

clothes, weapons and food are buried with a corpse.[167] The Rev.

J. H. Weeks says that the Bakongo of the Lower Congo attribute a

spirit only to the _nkasa_ tree (from whose bark the ordeal poison is

derived) amongst plants;[168] and, similarly, the Baloki, further up

the river, attribute a spirit only to the _nka_ tree.[169] Since many

things are buried by these people in a grave, or broken above it, the

things may be supposed to have soul-stuff; but from the denying of

spirits to plants, and from silence as to psychological Animism, it

may be inferred that neither plants nor inanimate things are regarded

as conscious beings. Sir E. F. im Thurn tells us that material things

of all sorts are believed by the natives of Guiana to have each a body

and a spirit—evidently a conscious and malicious spirit; “and that

not all inanimate objects have this dual nature avowedly attributed to

them, is probably only due to the chance that ... the spirit has not

yet been noticed in some cases.”[170] Even with these Guiana Indians,

then, whose Animism, in every sense, is unusually active and extensive,

their attitude is an acquired, specialised way of imagining and dealing

with things that draw their attention and excite their suspicions, not

a primitive, necessary illusion; else there could be no exceptions.

The reasonable view, therefore, is that savages distinguish between

themselves and certain animals, on the one hand, and, on the other, the

remaining animals, plants and inanimate things; and raise the second

class to the rank of the first, as conscious agents, only when there

are special incentives to do so. To find all the causes that excite the

animistic attitude toward things would be a difficult task, but some

of them may be indicated. Beginning from Animatism, which really is a

primitive and necessary illusion, it is reasonable to expect:

(_a_) That any plant or inanimate thing adopted as a Totem should, by

that very fact, be endowed with human consciousness; though the savage

mind is too inconsistent for us to infer that this must always happen.

(_b_) That whatever seems to move or act spontaneously, like the winds

and streams and echoes, the sun, moon, planets, and shooting stars,

should be felt as a spiritual agency; especially if it cry out with

empathetic reverberation, as winds and cataracts do, trees tormented

by the storm, waves, fire, and the ice-floe when it breaks up in

spring; or if it excite fear by being extraordinary and dangerous, as

thunder and lightning are, whirlwinds and whirlpools, waterspouts and

volcanoes. Dr. Speisser writes that at Ambrym, when the volcano is

active, the natives climb to the top and bring sacrifices to appease

it, throwing coco-nuts and yams into the crater.[171]

(_c_) That whatever has been regarded as having magical force should

be treated—after the rise of the ghost-theory (supposing this to be

of later origin) has given vogue to a new principle of explanation—as

owing its virtue to a spirit, either by immanence or possession (two

modes of actuation which may or may not be distinguished), and so

become a fetich, instead of being merely an amulet or talisman.

(_d_) That whatever is much used in ritual, especially if often

addressed in spells or incantations, should become an object of

reverence, apt to be personified and raised to, or even above, the

human level as a conscious agent: for example, padi and rice in

Indonesia, the ordeal tree on the Congo, already mentioned. Fire-sticks

used in the ritual of sacrifice are often deified. In India, the conch,

having for ages been used in religious rites, “the people gradually

came to revere the instrument itself and to adore and invoke it.”[172]

“A strange religious feature [of the _Rigveda_] pointing to a remote

antiquity is the occasional deification and worship even of objects

fashioned by the hand of man, when regarded as useful to him. These

are chiefly sacrificial implements.”[173] The practice now extends in

India to nearly every tool and utensil. Amongst the very few inanimate

gods of the Cherokees are the Stone, invoked by the Shaman when seeking

lost goods by means of a pebble suspended by a string; and the Flint,

invoked when about to scarify a patient with an arrow-head before

rubbing in medicine.[174] By the Apache, heddontin (pollen of the

cat-tail rush) is used as the sacrificial powder in nearly all rites,

and is personified and prayed to.[175] When spells are addressed to

any object, the analogy of address to human beings tends to cause that

object to be thought of as humanly conscious.

(_e_) Stocks and stones have been worshipped, as the dwelling-place of

spirits in many parts of the world; having superseded in the mind of

their devotees the ghost of the men whose burial-place they formerly

marked, but who themselves have been forgotten; and probably, on the

analogy of these stones, others that no ghost ever haunted.

(_f_) Where Animism is active amongst a timid and suspicious people,

whatever injures a man is believed to act of malice: as amongst the

Indians of Guiana, who are so timid that rather than go hunting alone

they will take a woman or a child along with them.[176]

Under such conditions as these a sort of acquired psychological

Animism is very widely though very irregularly diffused; but were it

universal and uniform, it could not of itself account for hyperphysical

Animism—the doctrine that men (or some men), some animals, plants,

things, places, are possessed or informed by spirits that are capable

of separate existence.

§ 3. THE GHOST THEORY

Hyperphysical Animism may be easiest understood as having arisen with

the belief in human ghosts. The causes of this belief have been fully

set forth by Herbert Spencer[177] and Sir E. B. Tylor[178] in a way

that to my mind is convincing. Amongst those causes dreams predominate;

wherein the dead are met again as in the flesh. The living body having

always been for the savage a conscious force-thing, at death the

conscious force leaves the thing or corpse. This might be accepted by

him as a fact of the same kind as the loss of its virtue by a talisman

or amulet (which is known sometimes to happen), were it not for dreams

in which the dead still live. That this conscious force that has left

the body is not visible except in dreams need excite little wonder,

since many forces natural and magical are invisible.

A dream not being common to two men at the same time, the things that

are seen in it cannot be pointed out, nor therefore directly named (in

this resembling subjective experiences). It was for ages impossible to

narrate a dream as a dream: there was no way of distinguishing it from

external events, either for the dreamer himself or (were that possible)

in reporting it to another. He was far away and met his father, yet had

lain by the fire all night! Hence to find names with which to describe

such things men turned to other ways in which they seemed to have a

double existence, to shadows and reflections: which in their sudden

appearance and disappearance, and sometimes faint, sometimes distorted

outlines, bear some resemblance to dream-images; and probably it is

felt to be significant that shadows and reflections disappear at night,

just when dreams occur. Shadows and reflections are not necessarily

identified with the ghost derived from the dream-image, because their

names are given to it; but sometimes they certainly are; so that a

man who, on looking into water, happens not to see his reflection may

believe that his spirit has gone away, and that he himself must be

ill, and accordingly he becomes ill; or if at noon near the equator he

notices that he has no shadow, he may think his soul is gone, and run

to a medicine-man to get it back; and dead bodies may be believed to

have no shadows.[179] Inasmuch as a body even lying on the ground casts

a shadow, except at tropical noon, the belief that it does not do so

at any time implies an acquired inability to see what is before one’s

eyes; as sometimes happens in hypnosis and other conditions of negative

hallucination.

The idea of a separable conscious personal force, or spirit, that

leaves the body at death, serves also, as it gathers strength, to

explain sleep, fainting, epilepsy; and sometimes every sickness is

attributed to the partial detachment or desertion of the spirit; which,

therefore, it is the doctor’s business to plug in, or to catch and

restore; or (if I rightly remember a report of Miss Kingsley’s) he may

even supply another one from a basketful of souls kept at hand for such

exigencies.

That the ghost theory arises not only from dreams, but is also

suggested by hallucinations and hypnagogic visions is very probable.

In various parts of the world savages have been described as having

visions of remarkably coherent and convincing vividness that seem not

to have been dreams.[180] But such experiences, even when artificially

induced by fasting or drugs (as happens among many tribes), are rare

in comparison with dreams; and to the influence of dreams upon these

savage beliefs there is abundant testimony. With some tribes dreams are

treated as part of their objective experience; so that to be injured

by your neighbour in a dream is just ground for avenging yourself as

soon as you wake; and to see a dead man in a dream is, therefore, clear

proof of his continued existence, and that either he has come to the

dreamer or the dreamer has gone to visit him.

Thus Sir Everard im Thurn says of the native of Guiana, his dreams are

as real as any events of his waking life; his dream-actions are done

by his spirit: in dreams he continues to see the dead—that is, their

spirits.[181] Similarly, the Lengua Indians (W. of R. Paragua) have

great faith in dreams; wherein the spirit is believed to leave the body

and to do in fact what is dreamed.[182] According to the Cherokees, to

dream of being bitten by a snake requires the same treatment as actual

snake-bite; else (perhaps years later) the same inflammation will

appear in the wounded spot, with the same consequences.[183] The Motu

hold that _sua_ (ghosts or spirits) are seen in dreams, and that when

a man sleeps his own _sua_ leaves his body.[184] “The Lifuans believe

in the reality of what is seen in a dream, and are influenced by it.

Their dead ancestors appeared in dreams.”[185] And the Polynesians of

Manatuki thought that “dreams were occasioned by the spirit going to

the places seen in them.”[186] Many more of such witnesses might be

cited.

It is recognised by psychologists that dreams, as immediate experience,

have more the character of perception than of imagination. Children are

apt to confuse dreams with reality. It can only have been gradually,

with the growing knowledge of continuity and coherence in the course

of events, and therewith the demand for corroboration of testimony,

that dreams were distinguished from the waking life. When no longer

supposed to be all of them real, some are still so regarded: the Dieri,

amongst lower savages, distinguish between visions, as revelations made

by Kutchi (an evil Spirit), and ordinary dreams, as mere fancies.[187]

But so impressive are dreams to many people, in their eagerness to know

more than sense and philosophy can tell them, that they persist in

hoping, and therefore believing, that dreams, if they give no knowledge

of this world, may still be revelations of another, perhaps more

real; or if not revelations, adumbrations by way of allegory, which

some learned or inspired Daniel may interpret; or, at least, omens

of good or evil, which the ancient science of Oneiromancy undertakes

to explain. There is now a new and more promising Oneiromancy that

interprets dreams as indicating not the future, but one’s own past,

chiefly a forgotten past, and teaches to know oneself: more promising;

for what but experience can possibly be the source of dreams—at least,

of dream-elements? Some of the new principles of interpretation,

however, may compare for obscurity with the ancient.

That the dead are seen alive in dreams is, then, for the savage a fact

of observation; and, therefore, the continued existence of the dead

is, for him, not in the first place supernatural; although it may be

called hyperphysical, because it is experienced only in dreams and not

by daylight, and is exempt from ordinary conditions of time and place.

But it gradually becomes supernatural, as the capricious incidents

of dream-life are felt to be “uncanny,” as that which occurs only at

night is involved in the fears of the night, and as a great cloud of

imaginations accumulates about the dead and obscures the simple facts

of dream-perception in which the belief originated. This cloud of

imaginations, by its mysterious character and by various alliances

with Magic, spreads and deepens until it overshadows the whole of

human life; is generally, indeed, dispersed here and there by the

forces of biological necessity, often by subterfuges laughable enough;

which have, however, the merit of saving mankind from destruction: but

sometimes it extinguishes the last ray of common sense, impoverishes

the believer, enfeebles him, fills his days and nights with terror,

gives him over to practices the most cruel or the most disgusting,

leads him to slay his own tribesmen, his own children, his own parents,

and to offer up himself in the sure hope of resurrection.

§ 4. EXTENSION OF THE GHOST THEORY TO ANIMALS

Spirits, having once been conceived of as explaining the actions of

men and surviving their bodily death, may by analogy be conceived to

explain the action of any other things in circumstances that suggest

a motive for the action, and therefore to possess or inhabit such

things, and to be capable of separating from them, like ghosts. Other

things are already, by Magic and Animatism, force-things, in some

degree conscious, whose forces may be capable of acting invisibly at

a distance; and at the death of a man it is his conscious force that

leaves the body and becomes a ghost. Since, then, there is hardly any

natural object whose action may not in some circumstances seem to be

interpretable by motives, especially amongst a timid and suspicious

people, how can we assign any necessary limits to the spread of

Animism? Moreover, the causes most influential in establishing the

ghost theory for man directly require its extension to other things.

For not human beings only are seen in dreams, but also their clothes,

weapons and utensils, and also animals, plants, localities. If,

then, the dead, because they are seen in dreams, are inferred still

to live under conditions in which they are not visible by daylight

to ordinary men, how can the inference be avoided that all sorts

of things, artefacts, animals, plants, localities, share in that

mode of existence—that all have their doubles? And “Why not?” the

savage might ask, since it is literally true of all things, without

exception, that they are sometimes visible, sometimes invisible.[188]

Similar inferences seem to be justifiable from the alliance of ghosts

with shadows and reflections, and the fact that not man only but

everything else has a shadow and a reflection, and that their shadows

and reflections disappear at night, just when the things themselves

sometimes appear in dreams. Moreover, so far as the breath, the pulse,

the shining of the eye, which cease in the human corpse, are sometimes

identified with the departed spirit, the same processes likewise cease

at the death of animals; though, it is true, there is here no analogy

with inanimate things, and the breathing and circulation of plants are

beyond the savage’s observation. Therefore, although Animism is an

inferential construction, were the construction entirely due to the

logic of analogy, there would be nothing surprising in the discovery

that the belief “that everything has a ghost” is just as universal and

uniform in the human race as if it had been an innate or primitive

belief. That, on the contrary, Animism prevails very irregularly

amongst the tribes of men; that, in all directions, inferences that

are analogically specious fail to be drawn; that instead of a general

system of Animism every tribe has its own Animism; this is surprising

and needs to be explained. The extension of the theory is easier to

understand than its irregular limitation.

Bearing in mind that we are at present considering Animism as a belief

in ghosts, not in spirits generally (to which we shall come in Sec.

6), I venture to think that, although dreams, shadows and reflections

certainly suggest a double existence of everything, yet savages never

assign a true ghost to anything inanimate, nor to plants, nor even to

animals, unless there is a special reason for doing so; because only

in the case of human beings is the suggestion interesting enough to

take hold of the social imagination. Hence, even though other things

appear in the ghost-world, they have no significance there, except in

relation to human ghosts (or ghostlike spirits) on whom they attend.

Accordingly, human ghosts have a place in the beliefs of every tribe,

because human beings excite affection, admiration and fear, have

well-marked individuality; are therefore remembered and have stories

told of them; and if they are seen after death, it is, of course,

reported. The evidence makes it only too plain that the paralysis of

attention by fear is the chief (though not the only) emotional factor

of belief in ghosts; and what other thing in all nature is to be feared

in comparison with one’s fellow-man?

The belief in ghosts, escaped and roaming independent of any normally

visible body, as a social belief, is involved in the practice of

reporting and discussing dreams, which becomes the same thing as

telling ghost-stories—the first and most persistent motive of

literature. Stories can only be told effectively of things generally

interesting; and, at first, such things must have been recognisable by

the hearers and must have had some individuality. Hence—

(_a_) Animals that attain to such individuality may have ghosts: (i)

An animal that occasions widespread fear, such as a man-eating tiger.

We must distinguish from such cases the frequent beliefs that tigers,

wolves, sharks, snakes, etc., are, or are possessed by, the spirits or

ghosts of men. (ii) An animal that comes to be upon terms of special

intimacy with men; such as the very tame dogs and pigs that come when

they are called among the Bakongo;[189] or hunting dogs that have been

specially doctored among the Baloki.[190]

(_b_) Animals slain at funeral feasts to accompany the dead have ghosts

so far as necessary for that purpose; but, wanting individuality and

personal interest, they make no further figure in ghost-lore; they do

not “walk” or revisit the glimpses of the moon. Thus the Tanghouls say

that ghosts, on reaching Kazairam (their Hades), find the gates barred

against them by the deity Kokto; so at the burial feast of a rich man

a buffalo is killed, that his mighty ghost may burst open the massive

gates of that abode. Poor ghosts must wait about outside, till a rich

one comes up with his buffalo; when they all rush in behind him.[191]

But we hear nothing further of the buffalo. In the Banks’ Islands, pigs

killed at a funeral feast have no true ghosts to follow the dead to

Panoi, but only a sort of wraith; because they only go for show, that

their master may be well received there.[192]

(_c_) Animals that are important prey to a hunting tribe are often

believed to have ghosts that may be hunted by dead tribesmen; or that

must be propitiated when one of them is slain: the ghosts, for example,

of seals and bears are bribed by the Esquimo to entice other seals and

bears to come and be killed. A seal desires above everything, they

say, a drink of fresh water; so as soon as one is brought ashore a

dipperful is poured into his mouth; else the other seals will not allow

themselves to be caught. The polar bear (male) desires crooked knives

and bow-drills, or (female) women’s knives and needle-cases. Hence,

when a bear is killed, its ghost accompanies its skin into the hunter’s

hut; and the skin is hung up with the appropriate tools for four or

five days. Then the bear-ghost is driven out by a magic formula, takes

with it the souls of the tools, and reports well of the hunter in

bear-soul land. Whilst in the hut, as an honoured guest, nothing is

done that it dislikes in human customs.[193]

(_d_) In the development of mythology, animals and monsters of various

kinds may be found inhabiting shadow-land; but these are not true

ghosts of any particular things that once died in this world.

This list of the ways in which animals may come to have ghosts is not

offered as exhausting all the cases.

§ 5. GHOSTS AND SOUL-STUFF

A ghost is a disembodied soul, having a consciousness and power at, or

generally (because it is feared) above, the human level; but there may

be disembodied souls, or souls capable of disembodiment, that have no

consciousness, or none above the level of Animatism. Even if a living

thing have a consciousness, its post-mortem apparition may not; like

the Banks’ Islanders’ pig, which, though “a distinguished animal and

acknowledged to be intelligent,” has no true ghost. Among nearly all

tribes, whatever is offered in sacrifice to gods or left in, or at,

the tombs of men deceased, is believed to have some sort of soul;

because, plainly, spirits do not eat or consume the visible food or

utensils; yet it is necessary to the success of the rites to suppose

that the spirits are satisfied; they must, therefore, take the souls of

the offerings. And what can be more plausible reasoning than to argue

that, as solid men eat solid food, ghosts eat ghostly food? “Soul” thus

appears as a sort of ghost-substance, or ghost-body. For, in dreams,

the departed are seen as if in the flesh; and moreover analogy requires

that the ghost consciousness and ghost-force shall have a body of some

sort, and, of course, one that will maintain in ghost-land the same

relations to other things that the mortal body did in this world. In

ghost-land, or shadow-land, or dream-land, the substance of all things

is this soul-stuff. Sometimes the force of analogy requires a tribe to

believe that, in order that the souls of things (such as earthen pots

or weapons) may be released to accompany a ghost to the underworld,

the things themselves must be “killed,” that is to say, broken; but

other tribes are not such consistent logicians; and in some cases where

things left exposed at a grave (not buried) are broken, it may be to

prevent their being stolen.

Anything, then, may have “soul” after its kind: relatively inert

things have relatively inert souls, but never true ghosts; some

animals may have ghosts, especially if they have attained to a certain

individuality, but generally only in so far as they are imagined to

attend upon human ghosts or spirits. Inasmuch as the word “soul”

is often used as equivalent to “ghost,” it would be convenient

always to speak of the soul which is ghost-food, or ghost-body, “as

soul-stuff.”[194] Soul-stuff is conceived of as material, though subtle

and normally invisible. A man’s soul-stuff may be regarded not only

as permeating his body, but also as infecting everything he possesses

or touches: no doubt by analogy with his odour; for a man’s odour is

a personal quality, distinguishable by dogs and (I believe) by some

savages and hypnotic subjects; and the stench of his putrefying corpse

may be supposed to convey his courage and skill to those who inhale

it.[195] And the savour of a burnt-offering is food for gods. Indeed,

Ellis says explicitly that, in Tahiti, food was put to the mouth of a

chieftain’s corpse; because, they said, there was a spiritual as well

as a material part of food, a part which they could smell.[196]

Savage ideas are generally so little thought out, and are so

irregularly thought out by different tribes, that the relation of

a thing to its soul-stuff varies widely from one tribe to another.

In many cases the extraction by ghost or god of the soul-stuff from

an offering may affect it so little, that the devotee or the priest

proceeds to feast upon it; and I have nowhere met with the notion

(which logic requires) that such metaphysically eviscerated food can

only nourish a man’s body and not his soul. However, since the eating

of the sacrifice may be an act of communion with the ghost, he then

naturally extracts the goodness only from his own share. In other

cases, the breaking of weapons and utensils buried with a corpse

implies an intimate unity between the wholeness of an object and its

soul-stuff; and the Rev. J. H. Weeks says of the considerable wealth

put into a grave by the Bakongo, that only the shell or semblance of

anything is supposed to remain there.[197]

This conception of soul-stuff may have been an important contribution

to metaphysics. The doctrine of material substance is reached by

abstracting all the qualities of things; but then there would be

nothing left, were it not for this venerable idea of something

invisible and intangible in things in which qualities may “inhere,”

or which may serve as a “support” to them; so that, when it is taken

away there is only a shell or semblance of anything left. But such a

tenet is uncommon. Along another line of speculation this soul-stuff

may become the Soul of the World. When by philosophers spirits are

no longer conceived to have bodies, but to be the very opposite of

bodies, a spiritual substance must be invented to support their

qualities, in order to put them upon an equal footing of reality with

corporeal things; but as there is no spirit-stuff ready made by the

wisdom of our forefathers, this concept remains uncomfortably empty.

To appear as ghosts and to have mechanical energy, spirits may be

invested with “soul-stuff” as a spiritual body; but this is only subtle

matter. Their own substance must be correlative with their proper

attributes as pure conscious beings, the very opposite of bodies; and,

therefore, immaterial, unextended, simple, self-identical, according

to the “paralogisms of Rational Psychology.” But such speculations

are confined to philosophers and theologians: some of whom, however,

maintain (as if reverting to the original savage idea) that spirit is

the true substance of material things, at least that material things

depend upon a spirit, or spirits, for their existence. Monists, again,

say there is one substance of both matter and mind, which is not either

of these any more than it is the other. Locke very honestly calls it “a

supposed I know not what.”

In writing of Magic, I have indicated the origin of the notion of

force; and if my view is justifiable, it appears that those celebrated

abstractions “force” and “matter,” form and substance, spirit and body,

may be traced to the savage mind. That savages are incapable of general

and abstract ideas we have seen to be an illusion. They are necessary

to economy in the organisation of the mind. When a tribe bases its

grammatical gender on the distinction of Animate and Inanimate, has

it in no sense corresponding ideas? But an abstract idea results from

a long process of dissociative growth from its concrete sources, and

must exist in some manner at all stages of that growth, before its

distinctness is completed by an appropriate name; and it is reasonable

to suppose that at every stage of growth it functions and influences

the course of thought. Accordingly, it is plain that from very early

times thought has been greatly influenced by ideas of force, form,

spirit and the rest of them.

§ 6. GHOSTS AND SPIRITS

Whilst of some tribes (for example the Indians of Guiana) it is said

that there is nothing to indicate that they “know of any spirits,

except such as are, or once were, situated in material bodies,”[198]

amongst others we are often told that not only ghosts are known but

also spirits that are declared never to have been incarnate. An extreme

form of the ghost-theory maintains that all spirits were once ghosts

whose incarnation has been forgotten; but this is needless, and seems

not to be true. It is enough that probably the original inhabitants of

the spirit-world were ghosts; that some of those now believed not to

have been ghosts were once really so; and that those spirits that were

never ghosts are later immigrants, who have obtained domicile by having

been imagined in analogy with ghosts. The following list indicates more

or less probable reasons why (_A_) ghosts have sometimes come to be

regarded as non-human spirits, and (_B_) why certain non-human things

have come to be regarded as spirits, or as possessed by spirits, more

or less resembling the human.

_A._ Spirits that were formerly ghosts, but are now declared not to

have been:

(_a_) Ghosts whose former life has been forgotten by mere lapse of

time. The memory of the dead amongst many tribes does not extend

beyond three or four generations. If then the ghost of some unusually

impressive personality happens to be remembered, when all his relatives

and contemporaries have been forgotten, he seems to be separated

from the human race. And if his name was that of some natural object,

his ghost, according to Spencer’s hypothesis, may now be regarded as

the spirit of that phenomenon. But as to Spencer’s hypothesis,[199]

although it gives such a plausible explanation of much nature-worship

by real facts as to the working of savage language and thought that it

seems to me unreasonable to doubt that it has had some of the effects

he traces to it, yet it presses upon me more and more that most cases

of nature-worship are to be explained by more particular causes.

(_b_) To dissociate a ghost from mankind is especially easy if his

tomb has been forgotten, or if he has no tomb. As the drowned have no

tombs, they easily become water-demons. Tombs must often be forgotten

in consequence of migrations. In Central Melanesia both ghosts and

spirits are recognised; but in the west worship is directed chiefly

to ghosts, in the east chiefly to spirits. As migration has been from

west to east, the tombs of ancestors can no longer be pointed out by

the eastern islanders, and so their ghosts may have become spirits.

In Tumloo (northern New Guinea) there are temples of spirits (all

female) distinct from ancestral ghosts, and on the banisters of ladders

leading up to these temples there are ornamental figures of ape-like

animals; the architecture of the temples points to a former superior

culture.[200] As there are no apes in New Guinea, these figures and

temples may indicate a former residence under better conditions in

Java or Borneo; and the spirits with which they are associated may

be ancestral ghosts whose tombs and other earthly vestiges have been

forgotten in the migration.

(_c_) We may see another way in which a ghost may become a pure spirit,

if we suppose that as a ghost he had attained to some measure of

worship, but that with the rise of new gods (by conquest, or by the

reputation of being more helpful), or by his being himself too good

to be worth worshipping, his rites have been neglected and his legend

forgotten. Then he is no longer remembered as a ghost, or ancestor.

(_d_) It may be thought honourable to a god to deny that he was ever a

man.

(_e_) The construction of a world-myth makes it necessary to begin

somewhere with some one; and whoever becomes the first being, it

is necessary to deny that he was ever begotten. But there may be

inconsistent stories: the supreme being of the central Esquimo is

a woman, Sedna, who created all things that have life; but other

traditions give her a human origin.[201] Similarly, in drawing up the

genealogy of ancestral gods, we come at last to one who was never

begotten. Such is Unkulunkulu of the Zulus, generally said to have

sprung from a bed of reeds.[202]

_B._ Spirits that were never incarnate, but have been imagined by

analogy with ghosts already propitiated:

(_f_) A Totem may become a spirit; whilst, having himself no human

antecedents, he can hardly be a ghost as of an ordinary mortal. Nothing

can be more irregular than the life of Totemism: with some tribes it

seems to die out early, or leaves few and doubtful vestiges; with

others traces of it seem to remain even amidst conditions of high

culture. Apparently, where it survives, the Totem tends gradually to

lose his bestial or vegetal properties, or most of them, and to become

an anthropomorphic spirit with his myths, in analogy with heroic or

patriarchal ancestors. He has attained to a considerable degree of

individuality; yet, by association and tradition, may still confer more

or less sacredness upon his animal kindred (cf. chap. ix. § 8).

(_g_) To address any object with a spell, as a man is addressed

in summons or command, is (as said above) an approach toward its

personification. Hence corn, rice, padi, nkasa, or whatever has been

the object of tribal rites and spells—the sun and moon, the earth,

fire, wind, clouds and rain—having perhaps long been influenced and

reinforced by Magic—are apt, when Animism has gained control of man’s

imagination, to become first the embodiment and then the possession

of spirits; the spells become prayers, and the rites religious

ceremonies or mysteries. Such spirits, at first locally honoured, may

with the evolution of the tribe or nation, the increasing intercourse

of its villages, and the centralisation of its culture in some city,

be released from local conditions and generalised into transcendent

gods, either each of its own kind—corn or wine—or of still wider

sway over agriculture or the weather. The meteorological gods are not

impaired in strength by even wide migrations; for they are found to

rule everywhere; and this may be a reason of their predominance in the

higher religions. Plants from which intoxicants are obtained, such

as soma or the vine, bringing men to a condition resembling insanity

or the ravings of a sorcerer who is supposed to be possessed, are

especially easy to understand as sources of inspiration. A belief in

vegetation spirits, having originated in any way, may be extended

according to the circumstances and mentality of a tribe, until every

wood is populous with dryads.

(_h_) Natural objects that have, at first, been regarded with awe

and therefore endowed with magical powers—mountain-tops, ravines,

whirlpools, ancient trees—under Animism, become the abode of spirits;

and these, again, may, by analogy with others, cease to be conceived as

merely local. Among the Moors, “the _jnūn_, which form a special race

of beings created before Adam, are generally supposed to be active on

occasions or in places which give rise to superstitious fear, and in

many cases they are personifications of some mysterious qualities in

persons or lifeless objects.”[203]

In each of these cases, (_f_), (_g_), (_h_), however, an Euhemerist

explanation may be offered. As to (_f_), Spencer, of course, argued

that the Totem-ancestor is always a man, who bore the name of an

animal, and was confounded with it after death; and Dr. Rivers has

suggested that some gods who seem to have been derived from Totems may

really represent heroes who had such Totems.[204] As to (_g_), Grant

Allen suggested that the spirit of the corn or vine is always at first

the spirit of the man upon whose grave the plant grew.[205] And as

to (_h_), the spirit of a mountain may be the ghost of a man who was

buried on the top of it; and the spirit of a whirlpool the ghost of

a man who was drowned in it. Indeed some spirits may have originated

in one of these ways, others in another way; and what happened in any

particular case can only be determined, if at all, by examination of

its particular circumstances.

(_i_) Abstract ideas may, at a very early stage of culture, be

personified and treated as spirits. The Semang, according to Messrs.

Skeat and Blagden, personify Death, Hunger, Disease;[206] and the

Beloki, according to the Rev. J. H. Weeks, attribute all personal

qualities to the aid of spirits; so that if one man wrestles better

than another, it is because the spirit Embanda is in him.[207] The

modern Greeks of Macedonia personify and propitiate Lady Small

Pox.[208] In the tenth and latest book of the _Rigveda_, “the

deification of purely abstract ideas, such as Wrath and Faith, appears

for the first time.”[209] At a higher stage of culture we find Fides,

Fortuna, Concordia and many others. Such things are conceived of as

mysterious powers, and they have names; and so far they resemble

demons. Why, then, should they not be personified and propitiated like

demons?

(_j_) Various ways have been pointed out in which the grammatical

structures of language, metaphors and other figures of speech may

influence the growth of mythology.

(_k_) Animism having been generally adopted, spirits may be freely

invented in explanatory myths. The Kalinis believe that thunder

and lightning are the clang and flash of bracelets on the arms of

Kidilumai, a girl who dances in heaven, as formerly on earth, for joy

of the welcome rain.[210] It would be absurd to suppose that she must

once have lived on earth. Some amongst the Ekoi say that Thunder is a

giant marching across the sky; others that Thunder is the enemy of

Lightning and, on seeing it, growls to drive it away.[211] If free

invention may originate myths, it may modify old ones, with results

that cannot always be interpreted upon general principles.

Finally, any spirits that have been anthropomorphised in analogy with

ancestor-ghosts may be further disguised by giving them mythical family

connections with the ancestors and with one another, as happened to

Bacchus and Demeter.

§ 7. HOW GHOSTS AND SPIRITS ARE IMAGINED

Ghosts and spirits have the same qualities and characters, eat the

same food, appear in dreams, possess men and animals, help sorcerers,

give diseases, determine the success of hunting or agriculture. At

first, they are solid things, not truly incorporeal, merely invisible

to ordinary people by daylight; though dogs or pigs may see them even

then. A ghost is so associated with its corpse, that it is not always

clear which it is that escapes from the grave and walks; and one may

judge whether a dead man has yet gone to Hades or still haunts the

neighbourhood, by observing whether in the morning there are footprints

around his grave; and to keep the ghost from walking, one may fill

the belly of the corpse with stones, or break its limbs, or bury it

deep and pile the earth upon it; or one may burn it. In South-East

Australia, ghosts can be heard at night jumping down from the trees or

from the sky.[212] They may be heard to speak or sing, usually with

thin voices, like bats: as

“the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome.”

Spirits may have all the appurtenances of an animal body; for two of

them waylaid an Australian, and made a wizard of him by taking out

his entrails and filling up the cavity with the entrails of one of

themselves.[213] They may marry mortals, as a devil begat Caliban upon

a witch; and not long ago the “incubus” was very troublesome throughout

Europe. In short, a ghost or spirit can act physically, just as a

man can, because he has the same organs; but with greater power,

because mysterious and more feared. And such beliefs persist amongst

people whose culture is much higher than the Australian, as in Jacob’s

wrestling with something at the ford Jabbok, and Grettir’s slaying of

the ghost of Glam at Thorhallstad;[214] and Euthymus, the boxer, having

put on his armour, defeated the ghost of Lycas at Temesa.[215] To this

day, in Macedonia, there are vampires, or animated corpses (chiefly

Turks), that walk, and throttle people and suck their blood.[216] “The

Moslem corpse,” says R. Burton, “is partly sentient in the tomb.”[217]

The Karok of California consider it the highest crime to utter the

name of the dead; for it makes the mouldering skeleton turn in its

grave and groan.[218] In fact, it is difficult to think of one’s own

future corpse as entirely inanimate, and this adds some discomfort

to one’s thoughts of death. According to Wundt, the Körperseele, as

eine Eigenschaft des lebenden Körpers, is a starting-point of Animism

independent of, and probably prior to, the breath and the dream, which

suggest the idea of a free separable soul.[219] This confusion of ideas

in popular Animism seems to me due to (1) the strong association of the

ghost with the corpse, and the performance of rites (which must take

place somewhere, if at all) naturally at the grave or in connection

with relics; (2) the manifestation of ghosts as visible, speaking,

tangible bodies in dreams; (3) the difficulty of imagining spirits

to live and act except in the likeness of the body (though non-human

forms—usually animal—are sometimes substituted); (4) the convenience

of such imaginations to the story-teller; (5) the convenience of

them to sorcerers and purveyors of mysteries, who rely upon such

imaginations in producing illusion by suggestion. For ages a confusion

of ghost with corpse may exist in the popular mind along with the

more refined notion of soul-stuff in which a ghost becomes manifest,

whilst there is no attempt to reconcile these imaginations; and it

is only by metaphysical subtilties about “mind” and “matter,” or by

mystical aversion to sensuosity, that the notion of pure incorporeal

spirit without even spatial limitations is at last freed from these

primitive associations, partially and amongst a few people. A tendency

to abstract conception of the spirit is set up, indeed, in the ordinary

way of “dissociation” by the belief in transmigration. For if a spirit

may “possess” all sorts of bodies—men, plants, animals, etc.—it is

independent of any particular body; though it may still be thought to

need _some_ body. Where the idea of pure spirit has been established

amongst educated people, it becomes necessary for those who believe

in ghosts and have forgotten their soul-stuff to explain how a spirit

can manifest itself to eye, ear, nose, hand, without a physical body,

by “materialising” itself, as invisible vapour (say one’s own breath

on a frosty morning) condenses into a cloud or into dew; for the power

of analogy as an aid to thought, or as a substitute for it, is not yet

exhausted.

The varieties of belief that occur here and there in the world cannot

be explained without a much fuller knowledge of local circumstances

than is usually available. The Semang say that souls are red, like

blood, and no bigger than a grain of maize;[220] the Malays that they

are vapoury, shadowy, filmy essences, about as big as one’s thumb;[221]

in both cases shaped like the owner. Elsewhere in the Indian

Archipelago, “the animating principle is conceived of, not as a tiny

being confined to a single part of the body, but as a sort of fluid or

ether diffused through every part.”[222] The less educated classes in

Japan consider the soul as a small, round, black thing that can leave

the body during sleep.[223] Amongst the Ekoi, the soul is a small thing

dwelling in the breast, whilst a man lives; but at death expands into

the body’s full stature.[224] The difficulty of finding the soul in the

body leads some thinkers to suppose it must be very small, others very

attenuated—thin as a shadow and as breath invisible.

Whilst many savages believe, like ourselves, that the body entertains

one soul and gives up one ghost, the Ekoi believe in two, one animating

a man’s body, the other possessing, or changing into, some animal in

the bush. Three souls, the vegetative, sensitive and rational, are

well known to European philosophy. The Mandans thought that a man has

one black, one brown, and one light-coloured soul; but that only the

last returned to the Lord of Life.[225] The observer who tells us

this also reports (p. 484) that some of the Dakotas assign to each

man four spirits: one that dies with the body; one that remains with,

or near, it; one that accounts for its deeds and at death goes to

the spirit-world; and one that lingers with the small bundle of the

deceased’s hair, which is kept by relatives until they can throw it

into an enemy’s country to become a roving, hostile demon. In West

Africa, too, Miss Kingsley found four souls: one that survives the

body; one that lives with some animal in the bush; one, the body’s

shadow, that lies down every night in the shadow of the great god,

and there recovers its strength; and, finally, the dream-soul. Some

natives hold that the three last are functions of the first or true

soul; but the witch-doctor treats all four separately.[226] The

shadow of a man, his reflection, his name, his totem, his breath, his

dream-wraith, his blood, his corpse, supply natural starting-points

for such speculations. Some Chinese philosophers held that “each of

the five viscera has its own separate male soul.”[227] I have found

no belief in six souls; but in Siberia the Altaians distinguish six

parts or (rather) conditions or stages of the soul; and this probably

is only another attempt to convey the same meaning.[228] Mr. Skeat

reports that, probably, in the old Animism of the Malays, each man

had seven souls; though now they talk of only one; except in using

spells, when the souls are addressed separately.[229] In the religion

of Osiris there seems to have been a still greater number of souls:

as of the name, the shape, the strength, the shadow, etc.: all

reuniting with the immortal counterpart of a man’s mummy, if justified

at the last judgment. Prof. Wiedemann suggests that these beliefs

may have been collected from different local sources, and preserved

for fear of losing anything that might be true.[230] Whereas, then,

the prescientific mind is often accused of confusing things that are

separate, we see here the opposite tendency to reify abstract aspects,

and to separate things that are in nature united; and one probable

cause of this is the practical interest of treating, and therefore of

attending to and addressing, separately, certain aspects of a man in

rites of exorcism, lustration, summoning, reinforcing, propitiation.

The belief in an external soul that exists apart from oneself (though

identified with oneself for good or evil) in an animal, in the bush,

or where not, may have arisen from the connecting of the soul with the

shadow or reflection. The shadow is, indeed, attached to a man by the

feet (except when he leaps), if the whole is seen; but it goes away

at night: it stretches, as the sun declines, far across the plain,

and then disappears. The reflection is quite separate, and is seen

_within_ a pool (as in a mirror), not on the surface, approaching us

when we advance, and withdrawing when we retire: whence it is easy to

understand that to take a man’s photograph may be to take away his

soul. If this kind of soul may be some feet distant, why may it not

be much further off, if there be any motive (such as the desire of

secrecy) to wish or think it so? If it may reside within a pool, why

not within anything else? What, in fact, becomes of it when we turn

away? That it should be in an animal in the bush is reasonable enough,

if one’s Totem (even though imperfectly remembered as such) is an

animal in the bush, and if oneself is in some sort that animal.

§ 8. ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF SOULS

Beliefs as to the origin of souls sometimes bear the character of

fanciful explanation myths. The Semang say that souls grow upon a

soul-tree in the world of Kari (their chief god); whence they are

brought by birds, which are killed and eaten by an expectant mother:

souls of fishes and animals are also obtained by the mothers’ eating

certain fungi and grasses.[231] Here the analogy of the growth of

fruits is adopted: being so familiar as to need no further explanation.

Leibnitz’s suggestion that monads are _fulgurations continuelles de la

Divinité_,[232] is at about the same level of thought. In other cases,

we see the struggling to birth of ideas that still seem plausible:

such is the widespread tenet that every present human soul is the

reincarnation of an ancestor, which we find in Australia, Melanesia,

Borneo, Manipur, on the Congo, in North America and elsewhere. The

Bakongo seem to base their belief in reincarnation partly on personal

resemblance; upon which ground a child may be thought to have the

soul even of a living man; so that to point out such a resemblance is

displeasing, since it implies that, the child having his soul, he must

soon die.[233] Another reason they give for their belief is that the

child speaks early of things its mother has not taught it, and that

this must be due to an old soul talking in a new body. But Bakongo

albinos are incarnations of water-spirits, and greatly feared. Possibly

in some cases people began by naming children after their ancestors,

and later inferred that those who bore the same name must be the same

persons. Plato thought that, by a sort of law of psychic conservation,

there must always be the same number of souls in the world:[234] there

must, therefore, be reincarnation. That nothing absolutely begins to

be, or perishes, though first explicit in the Ionian philosophy, is

generally assumed in savage thinking; so why should it not be true of

souls?

As to the destiny of souls there seems to exist amongst the tribes

of men even greater variety of belief than as to their origin. They

may pass through more than one stage of development: as in the western

isles of Torres Straits one becomes at death, first a _mari_, and later

a _markai_ with a more definite status;[235] or as with the Veddas, one

is at first called, without much confidence, “the living one,” and only

a few days later becomes, after trial of one’s virtue, a _yaka_,[236]

or authentic ghost. Often the dead will be reincarnated, but the

interval between death and rebirth may be passed in an underworld, or

in a city in the forest, or indefinitely in a land of ancestors. They

may turn into plants; as among the Mafulu old people’s ghosts become

large funguses growing in the mountains:[237] but more frequently into

animals; perhaps their Totems, or (with seeming caprice) into such

things as termites or wild pigs; or (because wings seem to suit the

spirit) into a butterfly or bee; or into owls or bats that haunt the

night and dwell in caves that may be tombs; or into deer or bear-cats,

because these are seen in the clearings near tombs; or into snakes,

because these are seen to come out of tombs, and often come into huts

as if returning to their homes, and, moreover, cast their skins and so

typify the renewal of life. They may also become stars, or shooting

stars, or mere naked demons, or white men.

It is only after ages of thought concerning the fate of our souls that

there arises in any systematic form the doctrine of metempsychosis,

which now prevails over great part of southern and eastern Asia, and

was formerly known in Egypt and even in Greece. But in the widely

diffused doctrines of reincarnation in men or in animals, or even in

plants, and in the general belief that a soul may wander and possess

any kind of body, we see the sources from which this vast flood of

superstition collected its waters. The Buddhist belief that not the

soul wanders, but its _karma_ (or character) creates a new body, may be

considered as a retrogression from Animism to Magic; for what is it but

a law of the action of an occult force or virtue?

Though the ghost survive the body, and it may be said (as by the

Ekoi) that it cannot perish, and the reason may even be given (as in

the Bismarck Archipelago), that it is of different nature from the

body,[238] it is by no means always immortal. It may die, as it were a

natural death, by oblivion; or, the next world being just like this,

ghosts may fight together and kill one another;[239] according to the

Tongans a ghost may be killed with a club; amongst the Bakongo it may

be destroyed by burning its corpse.[240] It has been thought that

to suppress the ghost was the original motive of cremation; but the

western Tasmanians cremated their dead, and can hardly have done so to

be rid of such mild Animism as seems to have been entertained by the

eastern tribes, who buried their dead or abandoned them.[241] However,

they seem to have been rid of it; whereas, in general, ghosts survive

cremation, because this process cannot put an end to dreams; and it may

then come to be believed that burning is necessary in order to set the

soul free from its body; and, therefore, the wife of Periander, tyrant

of Corinth, complained to him of being cold in the ghost world, because

her clothes had been only buried in her tomb and not burnt.[242]

According to the Egyptians, the ghost participated in every mutilation

of the body, and perished with its dissolution. It may be held that

even the gods die if neglected, and depend for their immortality upon

the perpetuation of their rites and sacrifices.[243]

Whilst the ghost’s life endures, its dwelling may be in the earth

or sky, sea or forest, or in the land of the setting sun, or in the

land of ancestors whence the tribe remembers to have migrated. Before

departing to that undiscovered country, it may haunt the grave or the

old home, till burial, or till the flesh decays, or till the funeral

feast, or till death has been avenged; or it may roam the country, a

resentful demon, if its funeral rites be not duly celebrated. There

may be one place for all ghosts, or two, or more, according to their

age, or rank, or qualities (as sociable or unsociable), or whether

or not their noses were bored; or according to the manner of their

death, by violence, or suicide, or sorcery. It is late before our

posthumous destiny is thought to depend on moral character (as it does

in metempsychosis); and even then varies with the local conception

of the good man, as observing custom or religious rites or, finally,

the dictates of conscience.[244] I remember how puzzling it was in

childhood to make out from sermons how far “going to heaven” depended

on being good (conscientious) or on faith. Both seemed very desirable;

yet there was a shadow of opposition between them, and to be good was

a little dangerous. But faith was indispensable, and apparently the

more difficult of the two, needing more elucidation, exhortation and

reiteration.

The journey of ghosts to their own world may be short or long, an

unadorned migration or rich in details of adventure. They may begin

the new life exactly as they finished this one, or the old may be

rejuvenated. As to their manner of life there, oftenest it is a

repetition of their earthly state, perhaps better, or even much

better, perhaps worse. And this conception is historically of the

utmost importance: for (1) it seems to give the greatest confidence

in a hereafter. Hume ascribes what seemed to him the incredulity of

men with regard to a future life “to the faint idea we form of our

future condition, derived from its want of resemblance to the present

life.”[245] And (2) from this conception proceeds the development of

ghostly polities: presided over, according to tribes that have no

chiefs, by a headman, such as Damarulum, or by the greatest known

hunt-leader, like Kande Yaka of the Veddas; under advancing political

structures, by chieftains, amongst whom one may be paramount, and

so become a king or lord of all. These ghostly politics support the

earthly ones they imitate. It is everywhere an edifice built by hope

and fear, under the guidance of analogy, and sometimes decorated by

caprice, if this find acceptance with the tribe.

§ 9. THE TREATMENT OF GHOSTS

The behaviour of men toward the ghosts of their dead is chiefly

governed by fear. The human power that has left the corpse is now

invisible; that power, rarely quite trustworthy whilst in the body,

especially when unobserved, retains its desires, caprices and hatreds

that were partially controlled by social influences. What controls

them now that the man is exempt from observation? How shall one defend

oneself against him, or procure his neutrality, or even (as sometimes

in the flesh) his help? The fear of ghosts has peculiar qualities:

the invisibility of a spiritual enemy produces a general objectless

suspicion and a sense of helplessness; associations with the physical

conditions of the corpse and with darkness excite feelings very much

like those aroused by snakes and reptiles. This fear explains why

savages, such as the Australians, may believe in ghosts for ages

without ever venturing to pray even to father or mother deceased; for

to pray is to invoke, and they will come, and, on the whole, they are

not wanted. Fear may make the survivors quit the neighbourhood of the

dead; sometimes makes them adopt means to induce the ghost to leave,

and invent stories of how and whither he goes, which are believed by

biological necessity; because, unless they can be rid of the ghost and

the dread of him, or establish in some way the _pax deorum_, it is

impossible to go on living.

The Yerkla-mining never bury their dead, nor in any way dispose of

them. On seeing death approaching a tribesman, they make up a good fire

for him, and leave the neighbourhood, not to return for a considerable

time.[246] The Sakai, having buried the dead affectionately with

necklaces, wallets, etc., say to him: “Do not remember any more your

father, mother, or relations. Think only of your ancestors gone to

another place. Your living friends will find food.” They then burn his

house and desert the settlement, even abandoning standing crops.[247]

Among the Kikuyu, “if a person dies in a village, that village is

often burnt, and the people trek off and build elsewhere,” though much

labour may have been spent on the surrounding fields. Sick people are

often deserted.[248] Where land is closely settled such flight becomes

impossible, and in any case it is very inconvenient; so that if any one

can believe it possible to deceive the ghost, or to frighten him away

by shouting at him, beating the air with boughs or firebrands, letting

off arrows or guns, or to restrain him from walking by breaking the

corpse’s legs, or by placing loaded “ghost-shooters” (straws filled

with gunpowder) around the grave, so much the better. Many such plans

are adopted, and they _must_ be believed in.[249]

Affection, however, has its part in the treatment of the dead: it is

reasonable to attribute to affection the beginnings of the practices

of leaving food at the tomb, burying weapons or ornaments with the

corpse, celebrating funerary rites with lamentations; though in time

this motive may be mixed with, or superseded by, fear of the ghost,

or by fear of being suspected of having murdered the deceased by

sorcery, should rites be neglected or maimed. It is not uncommon to

carry about some bones of the departed, to hang round one’s neck the

skulls of infants untimely dead. The wild Veddas, though, having

covered a corpse with boughs, they avoid the place for a long time

for fear of being stoned, nevertheless have a strong feeling of good

fellowship for the spirits of their dead.[250] In the eastern isles

of Torres Straits, the Miriam perform an eschatological mystery, in

which the recently deceased reappear on their way to the other world.

The women and children take it for reality: their affections are said

to be gratified; and at the same time their fears are allayed by the

conviction that the ghosts, having been seen on their way to Hades,

will no longer haunt them.[251] The old Norsemen believed that the

dead were still united with the living by intense sympathy.[252] As

rites begun in affection may become propitiatory through fear, and

after prayer has been instituted may be further extended to obtain the

aid of spirits or gods in hunting, war, revenge, love, agriculture,

trade, or any undertaking for subsistence, riches or power, every

passion in turn seeks its gratification through Animism.

Extravagance in funerary rites, often ruinous to the family, may

sometimes be checked by considerations of economy or convenience.

Thus some tribes of South Australia may burn all the property of the

deceased except their stone axes, which are too valuable to be lost to

the survivors. The Nagas bury with the body the things most closely

associated with the dead; but things of small value, never the gun

or the cornelian necklace.[253] The Todas, who burn their dead, lay

the body on a bier with many valuable offerings and swing it three

times over the fire; they then remove the money and the more valuable

ornaments and burn the rest with the corpse. They say that the dead

still have the use of everything that was swung over the fire; and tell

a story to explain the ceremony; but Dr. Rivers observes that “this

symbolic burning has the great advantage that the objects of value

are not consumed, and are available for use another time.”[254] The

Araucanians buried many things with the dead, and at the grave of a

chief slew a horse. But for all valuables—silver spurs and bits and

steel lance-heads—they left wooden substitutes. As for the horse, the

mourners ate it, and the ghost got nothing but the skin and the soul

of it.[255] Economy may also induce the belief that ghosts are easily

deceived, or are unaccountably stupid in some special way: as in the

widespread practice of carrying a corpse out of its house through a

hole in the wall; trusting that, the hole having been immediately

repaired, the ghost can never find his way back; so soon does he

forget the familiar door. This is cheaper than to burn the house

down. Superstitious practices may be carried out with self-destructive

infatuation, or restricted at will: in Florida (Melanesia), in a

certain stream, a very large eel was taken for a ghost; no one might

bathe in, or drink at, the stream—“except at one pool, which for

convenience was considered not to be sacred.”[256] A conflicting desire

creates a limiting belief. Whilst often the most painful or disgusting

rites are endured for fear of ghosts, at other times they are assumed

to be so dull that we are tempted to say: “Whatever is convenient is

credible.”

If we desire to know the future, ghosts are so wise that we consult

their oracles and pay handsome fees to their inspired priests; but if

we dread their presence, it is easy to accept any suggestion that they

are obtuse or infatuated. They may (_e. g._) be afflicted with what

psychiatrists call “arithmomania.” Returning from a funeral, strew the

ground with millet-seed: then the ghost can never overtake you, for he

must stop to count them. Or hang a sieve outside your window: he cannot

enter until he has counted all the holes; moreover, his system of

numeration does not reach beyond “two.” You can always block his path

by drawing a line across it and pretending to jump over the line as if

it were a stream of water: of course, he cannot pass that. Or blaze

through the wood a circular trail, beginning at his grave and returning

to it: he must follow it around for ever, always ending at the same

cold grave. Alas, poor thin, shivering thing, that would go back to the

old hearth and sit close amongst the kinsmen by the fire, and laugh at

the old jokes and listen to the old stories—chiefly about ghosts—have

you forgotten all the tricks that can be played upon your kind? Such is

the homœopathy of superstition: imagination creates the fear of ghosts,

and imagination cures it.

Imagination-beliefs, being swayed by moods and passions, are

necessarily inconsistent. Natives of the Bismarck Archipelago are

cannibals and greatly fear the ghosts of those they devour. Whilst

feasting they hang up a slice for the ghost himself, and afterwards

make an uproar to scare him away. Nevertheless they keep his skull and

jawbone, which the ghost might be supposed especially to haunt; so

easily do other passions overcome fear. Of the fear of ghosts sometimes

seems true that which Bacon says of the fear of death, that there is

no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters it.

Sacrilegious miscreants have always robbed tombs, even the tombs of

Pharaohs who were gods; and timid lovers have kept tryst in graveyards.

The Sia Indians of North Mexico had a masterful way of dealing with

the ghost of a slain enemy: they annexed him together with his scalp;

for this having been brought to the village, a shaman offered a long

prayer, and thus addressed the ghost: “You are now no longer an enemy;

your scalp is here; you will no more destroy my people.”[257] To

capture and enslave the ghost of an enemy is said to have been the

chief motive of head-hunting in Malaya. Compare the conduct of the

Romans in carrying off Juno from Veii and establishing her at Rome.

The inconsistency (sometimes met with) of supposing a man’s personal

qualities to go with his ghost, and yet eating some part of his body to

obtain those qualities, may be due to the latter practice having been

magical, and having persisted after the rise of Animism. Some of the

Esquimo have such control over ghosts by Magic, that they fear them

very little. After a death, the ghost remains peaceably in the house

four days (if a man) or five (if a woman), and is then dismissed by

a ceremony to the grave, to wait there until a child is born in the

village, when it is recalled to be the child’s tutelary spirit.[258]

§ 10. EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION OF ANIMISM

Animism, originating in the belief in ghosts of men, tends to spread

as the explanation of whatever had formerly been attributed to Magic

(if we take this to have been earlier); although it is far from

occupying the whole region that thus lies open to it. We have seen

that the extent of its prevalence as an explanatory principle, and

consequently as the basis of cults, differs greatly amongst different

peoples. But more interesting than the spread of belief as to the

agency of spirits so as to include more and more objects, is the

gradual differentiation of some of them from common ghosts in power,

character and rank, and their integration into families and polities,

such as we see in the _Edda_ and the _Iliad_. A process, going on for

ages and varying with every people, cannot be briefly described: the

work of E. B. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, W. Wundt and others in this

department is well known. In general it may be said that, allowing for

the influences of geographical conditions and tradition and foreign

intercourse, the chief cause of the evolution of a spirit-world is

the political evolution of those who believe in it; so that the

patriarchies, aristocracies, monarchies and despotisms of this world

are reflected in heaven. Tribes of the lowest culture—some African

Pygmies, Fuegians, Mafulu, Semangs, Veddas—have the least Animism;

at successive grades—Australians, Melanesians, Congolese, Amerinds,

Polynesians—Animism increases and grows more systematic; and it

culminates in the barbaric civilisations of Egypt, Babylonia and India,

and of Mexico and Peru. But in civilisations of our modern type it

rapidly loses ground.

The cause of such differences in the extension and elaboration of the

animistic hypothesis cannot be that some tribes have had more time

than others to think it out; since they have all had an equally long

past. Animism is known to be very ancient, and there is no reason

to think that some races adopted it later than others. That, in the

lower grades of culture, men want brains to think it out, is not a

satisfactory explanation; because, on contact with superior races,

backward peoples show themselves capable of much more than could have

been inferred from their original state. Improvement in culture depends

upon much besides native brains, namely, opportunities afforded by the

resources of their habitat, and communication with other peoples. The

most backward peoples are the most isolated peoples. The development

of Animism is entirely a matter of operating with ideas; and it seems

to me that before men can build with ideas they must build with their

hands; there must be occupations that educate, and give advantage

to, constructive power, as in the making of boats and the building

of houses and temples; for to this day a nation’s material edifices

are always, in clearness of plan, coherence and serviceableness, much

in advance of their systems of theology and philosophy; because they

must “work,” as the Pragmatists say. If you have ever gone over a

battleship, compare her with the _Kritik d. r. Vernunft_. Secondly,

a suitable model for the edifice of ideas must be presented in the

world of fact; and this, as we have seen, is supplied by the tribe’s

social and political structure; which, again, is clearly correlated

with the improvement of architecture in building the houses of chiefs

and gods. Thirdly, a favourable condition of the working out of any

theory is to have the means of recording, either in oral literature or

(still better) in writing, the advances already made; and, fourthly—a

condition historically involved in the foregoing—the growth of a

class of men, generally a priestly caste or order, sometimes poets,

who have time to think, and the education and vocation to bring the

accumulating masses of animistic—now religious—ideas into greater

order and consistency. Hence there are two stages in the development

of Animism—of course, not sharply separated: first, a long period of

irregular growth in the tribal mind; and, secondly, a much shorter

period, in which the extension of animistic theory depends more or less

upon quasi-philosophical reflection.

With the differentiation of superior beings—heroic, ancestral or

other gods—from common ghosts, Religion arises. As to the meaning of

the word “religion,” indeed, there is no agreement: some lay stress

upon the importance of beliefs concerning supernatural beings; others

upon prayer, sacrifice and other rites of worship; still others upon

the emotions of awe and mystery. To define “religion” (as a tribal

institution) by all three of these characters seems to me the most

convenient plan, and the most agreeable to common usage. That, on

the one hand, pure Buddhism (if it ever was a living faith outside

of a coterie of philosophers and saints), and, on the other hand,

the spiritual condition of a few savages, may be wanting in one or

other mark, is no serious objection. The former case is, in fact,

exceptional and aberrant, and the latter rudimentary; not to give them

the name of “religion” in a technical sense is no wrong to anybody.

Thus understood, then, Religion brings to the development and support

of Animism many social utilities and other influences; especially the

influence of dynasties supposed to have descended from the gods; and of

priesthoods, whose sustentation and authority depend upon the supposed

necessity of their intervention in worship. In their hands the free

popular development of animistic ideas comes to an end, and gives place

to the co-ordination of ideas by reflection, and to the dictation of

tenets and rites by policy. The simple motives of hope and fear that

actuated popular Animism are now supplemented by dynastic and priestly

interests and ambitions; beneath which lies, faintly recognised and ill

served, the interest of society in order.

This later sophisticated Animism, so far as it obtains a hold upon the

people, is imposed upon them by suggestion, authority and deception;

but being superimposed upon ancient popular traditions that are never

obliterated, it still appeals to the sentiments of awe, consolation,

hope and enthusiastic devotion. The part of deception in the history

of Animism, indeed, begins at the beginning, preceded, perhaps, and

prepared for by the devices of Magic-mongers. Amongst the Arunta,

women and children are taught that the noise of the bull-roarer during

initiation ceremonies is the voice of the spirit Twanyirika.[259] Near

Samoa Harbour, at harvest, they offer some of the firstfruits in a bowl

to the ghosts; and, whilst the family feasts on the remainder, “the

householder will surreptitiously stir the offerings in the bowl with

his finger, and then show it to the others in proof that the souls

of the dead have really partaken.”[260] So early is the end supposed

to justify the means. Animism, like Magic, strives to maintain its

imaginations by further stimulating the imagination; and, in both

cases, such practices are, with many men, compatible with firm belief

on the part of the practitioner; who is merely anxious to promote the

public good by confirming the weaker brethren: himself weak in the

perception of incongruities. But I am concerned chiefly with origins,

and will pursue this nauseous topic no further.

Parallel with the development of Religion, a change takes place in

the emotions connected with Animism. As the gods emerge from the

shadow of night and the grave, and are cleansed from the savour of

corruption, and withdraw to the summit of the world, they are no longer

regarded with the shuddering fear that ghosts excite; as they acquire

the rank of chiefs and kings, the sentiments of attachment, awe,

duty, dependence, loyalty, proper to the service of such superiors,

are directed to them; and since their power far exceeds that of

kings, and implies the total dependence of man and nature upon their

support and guidance, these sentiments—often amazingly strong toward

earthly rulers—may toward the gods attain to the intensest heat of

fanaticism. Extolled by priests and poets, the attributes of the gods

are exaggerated, until difficulties occur to a reflective mind as to

how any other powers can exist contrary to, or even apart from, them:

so that philosophical problems arise as to the existence of evil and

responsibility, and the doctors reason high—

“Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.”

This is one cause of the dissolution of Animism: the power that

comprehends all powers ceases to be an object, and becomes the

immanence of all things, good and evil. Another cause is the complexity

of theogonies, or of spiritual kingdoms with their orders and degrees:

found too fanciful, when hierarchic despotisms, that furnished the

analogues, give place to the simpler social structure of democracies;

or, to a certain type of democrat, even insulting, a provocative

disparagement of the sovereignty of the people. And Animism has other

enemies in the growth of Positivism, and sometimes in the resurgence of

Magic.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] _The Veddas_, pp. 126-7.

[156] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 170.

[157] _The Land of Zing_, p. 219.

[158] J. O. Dorsey, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 419.

[159] Mariner’s _Tonga_, p. 105.

[160] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, p. 48.

[161] _African Game Trails_, p. 333.

[162] _Outdoor Pastimes_, p. 77.

[163] Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[164] _The Melanesians_, pp. 249 and 356.

[165] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. p. 222.

[166] _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[167] _Camp and Tramp in African Wilds_, p. 174.

[168] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 283.

[169] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 275.

[170] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 355.

[171] _Two Years with the Natives of the West Pacific_, p. 199. As

to waterspouts and shooting stars, see the _Reports of the Cambridge

Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 252.

[172] J. Hernell in the _Quarterly Journal of the Mythical Society_

(Bangalore), IV. No. 4, p. 158.

[173] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 112.

[174] J. Mooney in _Reports of the American Bureau of Ethnology_,

1885-6, VII. p. 341.

[175] J. E. Bourke in the _Reports of the American Bureau of

Ethnology_, 1887-8, IX. pp. 499-507.

[176] E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 288, 354.

[177] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I. chs. viii.-xii.

[178] _Primitive Culture_, chs. xi., xii.

[179] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, pp. 262-3. My friend, Mr.

Torday, tells me this belief is very common in Africa.

[180] See, _e. g._, A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East

Australia_, p. 406; and P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, pp.

83-8.

[181] _Indians of Guiana_, p. 344.

[182] S. H. C. Hawtrey, “The Lengua Indians,” _J.A.I._, 1901.

[183] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” _Am. B. of Ethn._,

VII. p. 352.

[184] C. G. Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 190-91.

[185] S. H. Ray, “People and Language of Lifu,” _J.R.A.I._, LXVII. p.

296.

[186] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 277.

[187] A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 358.

[188] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, § 53.

[189] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 238.

[190] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 233.

[191] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 160.

[192] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 269.

[193] V. Stefànson, _My Life with the Eskimo_, p. 57.

[194] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[195] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 403.

[196] _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 523.

[197] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 371.

[198] E. im Thurn, _op. cit._, p. 363.

[199] _Principles of Sociology_, §§ 165-93.

[200] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 220.

[201] Franz Boas, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, VI. 1884-5, p. 583.

[202] Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_, pp. 1 and 40. Cf.

Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 150: Koevasi, a spirit, was never

human, yet in some way the originator of the human race.

[203] E. Westermarck, _Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco_, p. 343.

[204] _J.R.A.I._, 1909, p. 163.

[205] See his ingenious speculations in _The Evolution of the Idea of

God_, ch. xiii.

[206] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. iii. ch. vi.

[207] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 272.

[208] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 236.

[209] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 44.

[210] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 126.

[211] P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 73.

[212] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 437.

[213] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

483.

[214] _Grettir Saga_, ch. xxxv.

[215] _Pausanias_, VI. p. 6.

[216] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 217.

[217] _First Footsteps in East Africa_, p. 52 note.

[218] _American Bureau of Ethnology_, I. p. 200.

[219] _Mythus und Religion_, 2º ed., p. 78.

[220] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[221] _Malay Magic_, p. 47.

[222] _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[223] W. G. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 50.

[224] _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 230.

[225] J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults” in the _American Bureau of

Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 512.

[226] _West African Studies_, p. 200.

[227] J. G. Frazer, _Balder the Beautiful_, II. pp. 196-208; where are

reported other beliefs in a plurality of souls; in one case thirty, in

another thirty-six.

[228] M. A. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 282.

[229] _Malay Magic_, p. 48.

[230] _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, ch. ix.

[231] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[232] _Monadologie_, 47.

[233] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 115.

[234] _Republic_, 611_a_.

[235] Haddon, _Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits_, Vol. V. p.

355.

[236] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 133.

[237] R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu_, p. 266.

[238] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 396.

[239] C. G. Seligman, _The Melanesians_, p. 658.

[240] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 224.

[241] Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, pp. 57-61.

[242] Herodotus, V. p. 93.

[243] On the mortality of gods, see Frazer, _The Dying God_, ch. i.

[244] _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 75-96.

[245] _Treatise_, B. I., Part III. § 9.

[246] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 450.

[247] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II.

pp. 95-9. For similar formulæ of dismission (which, of course, are

constraining spells) see W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 522;

and J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults,” _American Bureau of Ethnology_, X. p.

420.

[248] Stigand, _The Land of Zing_, p. 250.

[249] For the practice of appointing certain seasons at which the whole

tribe or nation unites in driving out ghosts or demons by force of arms

(sometimes with the help of cannon and elephants), as obtaining at all

levels of culture, from Australian savagery to the enlightenment of

China and Peru, and with more decorum at Athens and Rome, see Frazer,

_The Scapegoat_, ch. iii. § 2.

[250] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 131.

[251] _Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 253.

[252] Vigfussen and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, I. p. 417. For

further examples of affectionate interest in ghosts, see _Primitive

Culture_, II. pp. 31-3.

[253] Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 100.

[254] _The Todas_, p. 363.

[255] E. R. Smith, _The Araucanians_, p. 172.

[256] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 177.

[257] Miss M. C. Stevenson, “The Sia” in _American Bureau of

Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 121.

[258] Stefànson, _My Life among the Eskimo_, p. 397.

[259] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

497.

[260] Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 259.