THE SOUL
+17+. The doctrine of the soul is so interwoven with the history of
religious beliefs that a brief statement of its early forms will be
appropriate before we enter on the consideration of religious
institutions and ideas.[18]
1. NATURE OF THE SOUL
+18+. The belief in an interior something in man, different from the
body, appears to be practically universal in early human history; the
ideas concerning the nature of the soul have changed from time to time,
but no tribe of men has yet been found in which it is certain that there
is no belief in its existence. The Central Australians, religiously one
of the least-developed communities known, believe in ghosts, and a ghost
presupposes some sort of substance different from the ordinary body. Of
some tribes, as the Pygmies of Central Africa and the Fuegians, we have
no exact information on this point. But in all cases in which there is
information traces of a belief in a soul are found. We are not concerned
here with philosophic views, like that of Buddhism and many modern
psychologists, that do not admit the existence of the soul as a separate
entity. The proofs of the universality of the belief in a soul are
scattered through all books that deal with man's religious constitution
and history.[19]
+19+. For the basis of a universal fact of human experience we naturally
seek a universal or essential element of human thought. In this case we
must assume a natural or instinctive conviction of the existence of an
internal life or being--a consciousness (at first doubtless dim and
vague) of something diverse and separate from the visible physical
being, a sense of mental activity in thought, feeling, and will.
+20+. It is not surprising that we do not meet with the expression of
such a consciousness among savages: partly, as is well known, they are
like children, intellectually incapable of formulating their instinctive
beliefs (and they have, consequently, no word to express such a
formulation); partly, they are not disposed to speak frankly on subjects
that they regard as sacred or mysterious. Attempts at formulation follow
the lines of culture, and it is not till a comparatively late stage that
they reach definite shape.
+21+. The interior being, whose existence was vaguely felt, was
recognized by early man in many common experiences. Certain phenomena
were observed that seemed to be universal accompaniments of life, and
these, by a strictly scientific method of procedure, were referred to an
inward living thing. It was hardly possible for early observers not to
notice that when the breath ceased the life ceased; hence many peoples
have regarded the breath as the life, and as the form of the interior
being, and in many languages the words for 'soul' and 'spirit' are
derived from the word for 'breath'.[20] The breath and therefore the
soul of a dying man might be received (inhaled) by any person present;
it was sometimes obligatory on a son to receive his father's last
breath--he thereby acquired the father's qualities.[21]
+22+. Another accompaniment of the body that attracted the attention of
early men was the shadow, for which the science of that day,
unacquainted with optical laws, could account only on the supposition
that it was a double of the man, another self, a something belonging in
the same general category with the breath-soul, though usually
distinguished from it.[22] The shadow was regarded as a sort of
independent objective being, which might be seized and destroyed, for
example, by a crocodile, as the man passed along a river bank; yet, as
it was the man, its destruction involved the man's death.[23] The soul,
regarded as a shadow, could not cast a shadow. Similarly one's
reflection in water was regarded as a double of him.[24]
+23+. Blood was known by observation in very early times to be
intimately connected with life, acquired the mystery and sacredness that
attached to life, and has played a great part in religious
ceremonies.[25] As soul is life, a close relation between blood and soul
appears in the thought of lower and higher peoples, though the relation
is not always the same as that described above. The blood is sometimes
said to be the soul,[26] sometimes the soul is supposed to be in the
blood as it is in the hair or any other part of the body. Blood could
not be regarded as the soul in the same sense in which the breath, for
example, was the soul--if the breath departed the man's life departed,
but one could lose much blood without injury to vital power. It is not
to be expected that the relation between the two should be precisely
defined in the early stages of society. If Homer at one time speaks of
the soul passing away through a wound and at another time of the blood
so passing (death being the result),[27] this variation must not be
pressed into a statement of the exact identity of blood and soul. By the
Californian Maidu the soul is spoken of as a 'heart', apparently by
reason of the connection of the heart with the blood and the life.[28]
There is to be recognized, then, a vague identification of 'soul' and
'blood'; but in common usage the two terms are somewhat differently
employed--'soul' is the vital entity, the man's personality, 'blood' is
the representative of life, especially on its social side (kinsmen are
of "one blood," but not of "one soul")[29] and in offerings to the
deity. Early man seems, in fact, to have distinguished between life and
soul.[30]
+24+. As the soul was conceived of as an independent being, it was
natural that it should be held to have a form like that of the external
body--it could not be thought of otherwise.[31] This opinion was
doubtless confirmed in the savage mind by such experiences as dreams,
visions, hallucinations, and illusions, and by such phenomena as shadows
and reflections. The dreamer believed that he had been far away during
the night, hunting or fighting, and yet the testimony of his comrades
convinced him that his body had not left its place; the logical
conclusion was that his inner self had been wandering, and this self, as
it seemed to him, had walked, eaten, hurled the spear, done all that the
ordinary corporeal man would do. In dreams he saw and conversed with his
friends or his enemies, all in corporeal form, yet all of them asleep in
their several places; their souls also, he concluded, were wandering.
Even in his waking hours, in the gloom of evening or on some wide
gleaming plain, he saw, as he thought, shadowy shapes of persons who
were dead or far away, and heard mysterious voices and other sounds,
which he would naturally refer to the inner self of the absent living or
the dead. Reproductions of himself and others appeared on land and in
water. All such experiences would go to convince him that there were
doubles of himself and of others, and that these were corporeal--only
dim, ethereal, with powers greater than those of the ordinary external
body.
+25+. While the soul of the living man was most commonly conceived of as
a sublimated replica of the ordinary body, it was also supposed in some
cases to take the form of some animal--an opinion that may have arisen
as regards any particular animal from its appearance at a time when the
soul was supposed to be absent from the body,[32] and is to be referred
ultimately to the belief in the identity of nature of animals and man.
The souls of the dead also were sometimes supposed to take the shape of
animals, or to take up their abode in animals[33] or in trees (as in
Egypt): such animals (tigers, for example) were commonly dangerous, and
this theory of incarnation is an expression of the widely diffused
belief in the dangerous character of the souls of the dead. In later,
cultivated times the bird became a favorite symbol of the soul--perhaps
from its swift and easy flight through the air.[34]
+26+. Savage science, though it generally identified the soul with the
breath, and regarded it as a separate interior form, seems not to have
attempted to define its precise locus, posture, and extension within the
body--the early man was content to regard it as a vague homunculus. The
whole body was looked on as the seat of life, and was sometimes eaten in
order to acquire its qualities, especially the quality of courage.[35]
Life was supposed to reside in the bones as the solid part of the body,
and these were preserved as the basis of a future life.[36] But even in
early stages of culture we find a tendency to specialize--courage, for
example, was assigned particularly to the head and the heart, which were
accounted the most desirable parts of a dead enemy.[37] These organs
were selected probably on account of their prominence--the heart also
because it was the receptacle of the blood. The soul was located by the
Indians of Guiana in the pupil of the eye.[38]
+27+. Gradually a more precise localization of qualities was made by the
Semites, Greeks, Romans, and other peoples. These, for reasons not
clearly known to us, assigned the principal emotional faculties to the
most prominent organs of the trunk of the body. The Semites placed
thought and courage in the heart and the liver, anger in the liver (the
bile), love and grief in the bowels, voluntary power in the kidneys.[39]
The Greeks and Romans were less definite: to the heart, the diaphragm,
and the liver (the upper half of the trunk); the Greeks assigned
thought, courage, emotion;[40] the Romans placed thought and courage in
the heart, and the affections in the liver. Among these organs special
prominence came to be given to the heart and the liver as seats of
mental faculties.[41]
+28+. It is not clear how early the brain was supposed to be connected
with the mind. Alcmæon of Crotona (5th cent. B.C.), who, according to
Diogenes Laertius, wrote chiefly on medical subjects, is credited with
the view that the brain was the constructor of thought.[42] Plato
suggests that the brain may be the seat of perception and then of memory
and reflection, and calls the head the most divine part of man.[43]
Cicero reports that some persons looked on some part of the cerebrum as
the chief seat of the mind.[44] In the Semitic languages the first
occurrence of a term for 'brain' is in the Arabic.[45] Some American
tribes are said to regard the brain as the seat of the mind.[46] The
scientific Greek view appears to have been connected with medical
research, but the process by which it was reached has not been recorded.
The Arabic conception of the brain was probably borrowed from the
Greeks.
+29+. The soul as an independent personality was supposed to leave the
body at times, and its departure entailed various consequences--in
general the result was the withdrawal of the man's ordinary powers to a
greater or less extent, according to the duration of the soul's absence.
The consequences might be sleep, trance, swoon, coma, death; the precise
nature of the effect was determined by the man's subsequent
condition--he would wake from sleep, or return to his ordinary state
from a trance, or come to himself from a swoon, or lie permanently
motionless in death. When he seemed to be dead there was often doubt as
to his real condition--the escaped soul might seek its old abode (as in
the case of the vampire, for instance), and means were sometimes taken
to prevent its return.[47]
+30+. The obvious difference in serious results between sleep and other
cessations of the ordinary consciousness and activity led among some
tribes to the supposition of a special dream-soul that could leave the
body without injury to the man. It was believed by certain
Greenlanders[48] that a man going on a journey might leave his soul
behind. It was a not uncommon opinion that souls might be taken out for
a while, with friendly intent, to guard them during a period of danger
(so in Celebes when a family moves into a new house). In Greenland,
according to Cranz, a damaged soul might be repaired. Or the soul might
be removed with evil intent by magic art--the result would be sickness
or swoon; it was then incumbent on the sufferer or his friends to
discover the hostile magician and counteract his work by stronger magic,
or force him to restore the soul.[49] On the other hand, the soul of a
dead man might be so recalled that the man would live again, the usual
agency being a god, a magician, or a prophet.
+31+. It has been and is a widespread opinion in low tribes that the
life of a person is bound up with that of an animal or plant, or with
the preservation of something closely connected with the person. This
opinion springs from the conviction of the intimate vital relation
between men and their surroundings. From the combination of these
beliefs with the view referred to above[50] that a man's soul might
dwell in a beast or a plant, the idea of the hidden soul, common in
folk-lore, may have arisen[51]--the idea that one might conceal his soul
in some unsuspected place and then would be free from fear of death so
long as his soul remained undisturbed.[52] These folk-tales are products
of the popular imagination based on materials such as those described
above. From the early point of view there was no reason why the vital
soul, an independent entity, should not lead a locally separate life.
2. ORIGIN OF THE SOUL
+32+. Theories of a special origination of the soul belong only to the
more advanced cults. In early stages of culture the soul is taken as a
natural part of the human constitution, and though it is regarded as in
a sort an independent entity, the analysis of the man is not carried so
far as to raise the question of separate beginnings of the two
constituents of the personality, except as this is partially involved in
the hypothesis of reincarnation. The child is born into the world
equipped with all the capacities of man, and further investigation as to
how these capacities originally came is not made.
+33+. It was, however, thought necessary to account for the appearance
of man (a clan or tribe) on earth, and his creation was generally
ascribed to a supernatural being. Every tribe has its history of man's
creation--the variety in the anthropogonic myths is endless, the
diversities depending on the differences of general culture and of
surroundings; but the essential point is the same in all; some god or
other supernatural Power fashioned human creatures of different sex,
whether with well-considered aim or by caprice is not said.
+34+. The first pair is thus accounted for in a simple and generally
satisfactory manner. But the fact of the perpetuation of the tribe or
the race appears to have offered serious difficulties to the savage
mind. Some tribes are reported to be ignorant of the natural cause of
birth. Some Melanesian women believe that the origin or beginning of a
child is a plant (coconut or other), and that the child will be the
_nunu_ (something like an echo) of that thing or of a dead person (this
is not the transition of a soul--the child takes the place of the dead
person). In Mota there is a similar belief.[53] The Central Australians,
it is said, think that the birth of a child is due to the entrance of a
spirit into the body of a woman[54]--every child is thus the
reincarnation of some ancient person (an "ancestor"), and the particular
person is identified by the sacred object (stone or tree, or other
object) near which the woman is when she first becomes aware of the
child within her; every such object (and there are many of them near any
village) represents some spirit whose name is known to the old men of
the tribe, and this name is given the child.[55]
+35+. Similar theories of birth are found among the Eskimo[56] and the
Khonds,[57] in Melanesia,[58] in West Africa,[59] and elsewhere.[60]
Such views thus appear to have been widely diffused, and are in fact a
natural product of early biological science. They embody the earliest
known form of the doctrine of reincarnation, which is so important in
the Buddhistic dogma.[61] With it must be connected the fact that among
many peoples (savage, half-civilized, and civilized) birth was
intimately connected with supernatural beings, whence the origin of
numerous usages: the precautions taken to guard the woman before
delivery, the lustrations after the birth, the couvade, the dread of
menstrual and seminal discharges, and further, customs relating to the
arrival of boys and girls at the age of puberty.
+36+. At a later stage of culture the creation of the soul was
distinguished from that of the body, and was generally regarded as a
special act of the deity: the Hebrews conceived that the body was
fashioned out of dust, and that the breath of life was breathed into it
by God, so that man became a "living soul"[62]; Plato at one time[63]
thought that the soul of the world was created by God, out of certain
elements, before the body, and was made prior to it in origin and
excellence so that it should be its ruler, and that afterwards he placed
separate souls in the various separate bodies; the immortal gods, says
Cicero, have placed souls (_animos_) in human bodies, and the human soul
has been plucked (_decerptus_) from the divine mind.[64]
+37+. In the early Christian centuries the question of how the soul came
into the body was an intensely practical one--it was closely connected
with the question of man's inherent sinfulness and his capacity for
redemption. Tertullian's theory of the natural propagation of souls
(traducianism), which involved the inheritance of a sinful nature, was
succeeded on the one hand by the theory of preëxistence (adopted by
Origen from Plato), and on the other hand by the view that every soul
was an immediate creation of God (creationism, held by Jerome and
others), these both assuming the natural goodness or untainted character
of the soul at the birth of the human being.
+38+. The mysterious character of death, the final departure of the soul
from the body, called forth in savage communities feelings of awe and
dread. As death, in the savage view, was due to the intervention of a
supernatural agency, the dead body and everything connected with it
partook of the sacredness that attached to the supernatural.[65] Hence,
probably, many of the customs relating to the treatment of
corpses--taboos that survived into comparatively late times.[66] The Old
Testament ritual term 'unclean' is used of corpses and other things that
it was unlawful to touch, things taboo, and in this sense is equivalent
to 'sacred.'[67]
3. POLYPSYCHISM
+39+. In the preceding section only the general fact of the existence of
the soul is considered. We find, however, a widespread belief among
savage and half-civilized peoples that every human body is inhabited by
several souls (two or more).[68] Thus, the Fijians, the Algonkins, and
the Karens recognize two souls; the Malagasy, the Dahomi, and the
Ashanti three; the Congoans three or four, the Chinese three, the
Dakotas four, the Malays (of the peninsula) seven; and this list is not
exhaustive.[69] To these various souls different procedures and
functions are assigned.
+40+. In general, as to place and function during the man's life, the
following classes of souls are distinguished: the vital soul, or the
principle of life, whose departure leaves the man insensible or dead
(Malagasy _aina_, Karen _kalah_, E[´w]e 'ghost-soul'); the dream-soul,
which wanders while the man is asleep (probably a universal conception
in early stages of culture); the shadow-soul, which accompanies him by
day (also, probably, universal); the reflection-soul (similar to the
preceding); the beast-soul, or bush-soul, incarnate in a beast (among
the Congoans, the E[´w]e, the Tshi, the Khonds), with which may be
compared the Egyptian view that revenant souls and Underworld shadows
may assume the form of animals, and the Hindu metempsychosis. A
particular responsible moral soul is also reported (among the
Karens),[70] but it is doubtful whether this is native; and still more
doubtful are the Karen 'reason' (_ts[=o]_) and the Khond beatified
soul.[71]
+41+. In regard to procedure after the man's death, it is generally held
in early stages of culture that one soul stays with the body, or at the
tomb, or in the village, or becomes air, while another departs to the
land of the dead (Fijians, Algonkins, and others), or is reborn
(Khonds), and in some cases a soul is said to vanish.[72]
+42+. It is obvious that there was great flexibility and indefiniteness
in early theories of the soul. The savage mind, feeling its way among
its varied experiences, was disposed to imagine a separate interior
substance to account for anything that seemed to be a separate and
valuable manifestation of the man's personality. The number of souls
varies with the number of phenomena that it was thought necessary to
recognize as peculiar, and the lines of demarcation between different
souls are not always strictly drawn. As to the manner of the souls'
indwelling in the body, and as to their relations one to another,
savages have nothing definite to say, or, at least, have said nothing.
In general our information regarding savage psychical theories is
meager; it is not unlikely that with fuller acquaintance the details
given above would have to be modified, though the general fact of
polypsychism would doubtless remain.
+43+. In the higher ancient religions there are only more or less
obscure indications of an earlier polypsychic system. The Egyptian
distinction between soul (_bai_), shadow (_haibet_), and double (_ka_)
appears to involve such a system; but the Egyptologists of the present
day are not agreed as to the precise interpretation of these terms.[73]
The Semitic terms _nafs_ and _ru[h.]_ (commonly rendered 'soul' and
'spirit' respectively) are of similar origin, both meaning 'wind,'
'breath'; in the literature they are sometimes used in the same sense,
sometimes differentiated. The 'soul' is the seat of life, appetite,
feeling, thought--when it leaves the body the man swoons or dies; it
alone is used as a synonym of personality (a 'soul' often means simply a
'person'). 'Spirit,' while it sometimes signifies the whole nature, is
also employed (like English 'spirit') to express the tone of mind,
especially courage, vigor. But, so far as the conception of an interior
being is concerned, the two terms are substantially identical in the
Semitic languages as known to us.[74] And though, as is noted above,
'spirit' is not used for the human personality, it alone is the term in
Hebrew for a class of subordinate supernatural beings standing in close
relations with the deity.[75] Greek literature seems to know only one
personal soul (_psyche_, with which _pneuma_ is often identical in
meaning); a quality of nature (as in Semitic _ru[h.]_) is sometimes
expressed by _pneuma_ ('spirit').[76] The _thymos_ appears in Homer to
be merely a function of the _psyche_,[77] in any case it does not
represent a separate personality alongside of the _psyche_, and the same
thing is true of the _daimon_. Similarly, in Latin, _animus_ and
_anima_ are substantially synonyms[78]--_animus_ sometimes expressing
tone of mind--and _spiritus_ is equivalent to _ru[h.]_ and _pneuma_; the
individual _genius_, with its feminine representative the _juno_, is a
complicated and obscure figure, but it cannot be regarded as a separate
soul.[79]
+44+. This variety of terms in the more advanced religions may point to
an early polypsychic conception. The tendency was, with the progress of
culture, to modify or efface this sort of conception.[80] From a belief
in a number of entities in the human interior being men passed to a
recognition of different sides or aspects of the inward life, and
finally to the distinct conception of the oneness of the soul. The
movement toward psychic unity may be compared with the movement toward
monotheism by the unification of the phenomena of the external world.
4. FUTURE OF THE SOUL
+45+. Savage philosophy, recognizing the dual nature of man, regarded
death as due to the departure of the soul from the body. The cessation
of breathing at death was matter of common observation, and the obvious
inference was that the breath, the vital soul, had left the body.
Reflection on this fact naturally led to the question, Whither has the
soul gone?
+46+. _Death of the soul._ The general belief has always been that the
soul survived the man's death.[81] There are, however, exceptions; the
continued existence of the soul was not an absolutely established
article in the savage creed. According to the reports of travelers, it
would seem that among some tribes there was disbelief or doubt on this
point. A West African native expressed his belief in the form of the
general proposition, "The dead must die"; that is, apparently, the dead
man must submit to the universal law to which the living are
subject.[82] In another African community some held and others denied
that a spirit could be killed, and one man was certain that spirits
lived long, but was not certain whether they ever died.[83] Differences
of opinion in regard to the fact of immortality are said to exist in
Banks Islands.[84] The Eskimos are reported as holding that the soul may
be destroyed, and then, however, repaired.[85]
+47+. It thus appears that even among low tribes there is speculation on
the question of the continuance of existence after earthly death; there
is admission of ignorance. We have, however, examples of a definite
belief in annihilation. In some cases, when the theory of several souls
is held,[86] one of these souls is supposed to become extinct at death:
this is the case with the Malagasy _saina_, and the 'beast-soul' among
the E[´w]e, Tshi, and Congoans; but such a soul represents only a part
of the man, and its disappearance does not signify the extinction of the
man's personality.
+48+. Complete extinction of the soul and the personality, in the case
of certain persons, is found among the Fijians: in the long and
difficult way to the Underworld, bachelors (as a rule), untattooed
women, false boasters, and those men who failed to overcome in combat
the "slayer of souls" (the god Sama) are killed and eaten.[87] Something
like this is reported of the Hervey Islands,[88] New Zealand,[89] the
Hawaiians,[90] and other tribes. Among the wild tribes of India, the
Khonds and the Oraons, or Dhangars, hold to annihilation of the soul in
certain cases.[91] Miss Kingsley reports a specially interesting view in
Congo to the effect that souls die when the family dies out.[92] The
ground of this sense of the solidarity of the living and the dead is
not clear; the most obvious explanation is that the latter get their
sustenance from the offerings of the former, and perhaps from their
prayers; such prayers, according to W. Ellis,[93] are made in Polynesia.
This belief appears also in some advanced peoples: so the Egyptians,[94]
and apparently the Hindus.[95]
+49+. In these cases no explanation is offered of how a soul can die.
Earthly death is the separation of the soul from the body, and by
analogy the death of a soul should involve a disruption of constituents,
but the savage imagination appears to have passed lightly over this
point: when a soul is eaten, it is destroyed as the human body is
destroyed when it is eaten; if it is drowned or clubbed, it dies as a
man does under similar treatment. The soul is conceived of as an
independent personality, with a corporeal form and mental powers; the
psychic body, it would seem, is endowed with power of thought.[96]
+50+. This vagueness of conception enables us to understand how savage
logic reaches the conclusion that the soul may be mortal: all the
possibilities of the earthly person are transferred to it. In regard to
the occasion of its death, it is sometimes represented as punishment for
violation of tribal customs (as in Fiji), sometimes as the natural fate
of inferior classes of persons (as among the Tongans, who are said to
believe that only chiefs live after death),[97] sometimes as a simple
destruction by human agency.
+51+. In the popular faith of the Semitic, Egyptian, Chinese, and
Indo-European peoples there is no sign of an extinction of the
personality after earthly death. The Babylonian dead all go to the vast
and gloomy Underworld (Aralu), where their food is dust, and whence
there is no return.[98] The Old-Hebrew 'soul' (_nephesh_) continues to
exist in Sheol. True, its life is a colorless one, without achievement,
without hope, and without religious worship; yet it has the marks of
personality.[99] The fortunes of the spirit (_ru[h.]_), when it denotes
not merely a quality of character but an entity, are identical with
those of the 'soul.'[100] In India, belief in life after death has
always been held by the masses, and philosophic systems conceive of
absorption, not of extinction proper. Zoroastrianism had, and has, a
well-developed doctrine of immortality, and the Egyptian conception of
the future was equally elaborate. In China the cult of ancestors does
not admit belief in annihilation.[101] No theory of annihilation is
found in connection with the Greek and Latin 'soul' and 'spirit'
(_psyche, pneuma; animus, anima, spiritus_); the _thymos_ is not a
separate entity, but only an expression of the 'soul';[102] and the
Greek _daimon_ and the Latin _genius_ are too vague to come into
consideration in this connection.[103]
+52+. Omitting the purely philosophical views of the nature and destiny
of the soul (absorption into the Supreme God, or the Universal Force, is
to be distinguished from annihilation), and the belief of certain
Christian sects in the future annihilation of the wicked (based probably
on a misunderstanding of certain Biblical passages[104]), it may be said
that the rôle of the theory of extinction of the soul in the general
development of religion has been an insignificant one. Beginning among
the lowest tribes as an expression of belief in the universality of
mortality, it assumed a punitive character in the higher savage creed,
and was gradually abandoned by the religions of civilized peoples.
+53+. The belief in the continued existence of the soul, on the other
hand, has maintained itself from the earliest known times to the
present. The inquiry into the grounds of this survival belongs to the
history of the doctrine of immortality, and will not be pursued here in
detail.[105] Doubtless it has been the increasing sense of the dignity
of human nature, the conviction of the close connection of human life
with the divine, and the demand for a compensation for the sufferings of
the present (together with the instinctive desire for continued
existence) that has led men to retain faith in the continued life of the
soul. Modern beliefs in ghosts and in spiritualistic phenomena testify
to the persistence of this article of faith.
+54+. _Abode of the surviving soul._[106] Opinions regarding the destiny
of the surviving soul have changed from time to time in accordance with
topographical conditions and with changes in intellectual and moral
culture. There is no place or thing on or under or above the ground that
has not been regarded, at some time and by some communities, as its
abode. The selection of the particular thing or place has been
determined by local conditions--by what was supposed to be observation
of facts, or by what was conceived to be appropriate. The obscurity of
the subject has allowed free play to savage imagination. The paucity of
data makes it impossible to give a complete statement of the views that
have been held, or to arrange such as are known in accurate
chronological order; but the principal opinions may be mentioned,
following in a general way the order of refinement.[107]
+55+. 1. One of the earliest (and also one of the most persistent) views
of the future of souls is that they are reborn or reincarnated as human
beings, or as beasts or plants or inanimate things. It was not unnatural
that, when a new human being came into the world, it should be regarded
as the reproduction of a former human being, especially if the
physiological conditions of birth were not understood;[108] the basis of
the belief may have been the general similarity between human forms,
and, in some cases, the special similarity between the infant or the
adult and some deceased person. An extension of the sphere of
reincarnation would also naturally arise from the recognized kinship
between man and other things, animate or inanimate.
+56+. Examples of these views are found in many parts of the world.
Tylor[109] and Marillier[110] have collected instances of such beliefs
among savage tribes in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well
as in higher religions (Brahmanism, Buddhism, Plato, Mani, the Jewish
Kabbala, Swedenborg).[111] Other instances of belief in rebirth in human
beings or in animals are found among the ancient Germans,[112] the
people of Calabar,[113] the Torres Straits islanders,[114] the Central
Australians,[115] and the Yorubans.[116]
+57+. There is an obvious relation between the belief in reincarnation
in animal form and the worship of animals;[117] both rest on the
assumption of substantial identity of nature between man and other
beings, an assumption which seems to be universal in early stages of
culture, and is not without support in modern philosophic thought.[118]
Ancient belief included gods in this circle of kinship--a view that
appears in Brahmanism and the later Buddhism.
+58+. The higher forms of the theory introduced a moral element into the
process of reincarnation--the soul ascends or descends in the scale of
being according to the moral character or illumination of its life on
earth.[119] Thus it is given a practical bearing on everyday life--a
result that is in accordance with all religious history, in which we
find that religious faith always appropriates and utilizes the ethical
ideas of its time.
+59+. At the present day the interest in the hypothesis of reincarnation
springs from its supposed connection with the doctrine of immortality.
Brahmanists and Buddhists maintain that it is the only sure basis for
this doctrine; but this view appears not to have met with wide
acceptance.
+60+. 2. An all but universal belief among lower tribes is that departed
souls remain near their earthly abodes, haunting the neighborhood of the
body or the grave or the village.[120] It is apparently assumed that a
soul is more at home in places which it knew in its previous life, and
this assumption is confirmed by sights and sounds, chiefly during the
night, that are interpreted as the forms and utterances of wandering
souls.
+61+. Generally no occupation is assigned to these ghosts, except that
it is sometimes supposed that they seek food and warmth:[121] scraps of
food are left on the ground for them, and persons sitting around a fire
at night are afraid to venture into the dark places beyond lest they
meet them.[122] For it is a common belief that such souls are dangerous,
having both the power and the will to inflict injury.[123] It is easy to
see why they should be supposed to possess extraordinary powers.[124]
The belief in their maliciousness may have come naturally from the
social conditions of the place and time: in savage communities a man who
is stronger than his fellows is likely to treat them as his savage
instincts prompt, to seize their property or kill them; and departed
souls would naturally be credited with similar dispositions.
+62+. It is also true that the mysterious is often dreadful; even now in
civilized lands there is a general fear of a 'ghost.' Precautions are
taken by savages to drive or keep the soul away: the doors of houses
are closed, and noises are made. On the other hand, ghosts, as members
of the family or the clan, are often regarded as friendly.[125] Even
during a man's lifetime his soul may be a sort of guide and
protector--may attain, in fact, the rank of a deity;[126] and after
death it may become, as ancestor, the object of a regular cult.
+63+. Fear of ghosts has, perhaps, suggested certain methods of
disposing of the dead body, as by interring or exposing it at a distance
from the village, or burning it or throwing it into the water; other
considerations, however, as is suggested above,[127] may determine, in
whole or in part, these methods of dealing with the body.
+64+. 3. It may be considered an advance in the organization of the
future life when the soul is supposed to go to some distant place on the
earth or in the sea or in the sky.[128] This is an attempt to separate
the spheres of the living and the dead, and thus at once to define the
functions of the dead and relieve the living from the fear of them. The
land of the dead is sometimes vaguely spoken of as lying on earth, far
off in some direction not precisely defined--east, west, north, or
south--in accordance with traditions whose origin is lost in the
obscurity of the past.
+65+. Possibly in some cases it is the traditional original home of the
tribe;[129] more often, it would seem, some local or astronomical fact
has given the suggestion of the place; one Egyptian view was that the
western desert (a wide mysterious region) was the abode of the departed;
it was a widespread belief that the dead went to where the sun
disappeared beneath the horizon.[130] Tribes living near the sea or a
river often place the other world beyond the sea or the river,[131] and
a ferryman is sometimes imagined who sets souls over the water.[132]
Mountains also are regarded as abodes of the dead.[133] It is not
unnatural that the abodes of departed souls should be placed in the sky,
whose height and brightness, with its crowd of luminous bodies, made it
an object of wonder and awe, and caused it to be regarded as the
dwelling place of the happy gods, with whom deserving men would
naturally be. Sometimes the expanse of the upper air was regarded as the
home of souls (as in Samoa), sometimes a heavenly body--the sun (in
India), or the moon (in the Bowditch Islands), or the stars.[134] The
schemes being vague, several of these conceptions may exist side by side
at the same place and time.
+66+. The occupations of the dead in these regions are held usually to
be the same as those of the living; no other view is possible in early
stages of social life. Generally all the apparatus of earthly life
(food, utensils, weapons) is placed on the grave or with the body, and
wives and slaves are slain to be the companions of the deceased.
+67+. 4. A more decided separation between the living and the dead is
made in the conception of the underground world as the abode of the
latter. It was, however, only at a late period that this conception was
carried far enough to make the separation effective. Among the Central
Australians there were folk-stories of early men who traveled under the
ground, but this is represented as merely an extraordinary way of
getting from one place to another on the surface of the earth. Some
North American tribes tell of an underground world inhabited by the ants
and by beings similar to man, but those who live up on the earth are
seen there only by accident, as when some hero dares the descent.[135]
The conception of a real subterranean or submarine hades is found,
however, among many savage and barbarous peoples, as the Samoans, the
inhabitants of New Guinea, the Zulus, the Navahos, the Eskimo, the
Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, and others.[136]
+68+. These pictures of the future world are crude, and usually stand
side by side with others; they are experiments in eschatology. But the
constructive imagination moved more and more toward an organized
underground hades as the sole abode of the dead--the place to which all
the dead go. Such a hades is found among the civilized peoples of
antiquity, Egyptians, Semites, Hindus, Greeks, and Romans, and, in more
recent times, among the Teutons (Scandinavians). The suggestion for this
position may have come from the grave (though it does not appear that
the grave was regarded as the permanent abode of the dead), and from
caverns that seemed to lead down into the bowels of the earth. The
descent of souls into a subterranean world offered no difficulties to
early imagination: ghosts, like the Australian ancestors, could move
freely where living men could not go; where there was no cavern like
that by which Æneas passed below,[137] they could pass through the
ground.
+69+. A lower region offered a wide land for the departed, with the
possibility of organization of its denizens. Ghosts gradually lost their
importance as a factor in everyday life; sights and sounds that had been
referred to wandering souls came to be explained by natural laws. Wider
geographical knowledge made it difficult to assign the ghosts a mundane
home, and led to their relegation to the sub-mundane region. Further,
the establishment of great nations familiarized men with the idea that
every large community should have its own domain. The gods were
gradually massed, first in the sky, the ocean, and hades, and then in
heaven. For the dead the first organization (if that term may be
allowed) was in hades; the separation into heaven and hell came later. A
specific divine head of the Underworld is found in Egypt, Babylonia and
Assyria, India, Greece, Rome, but not in Israel. Such a definite system
of government could exist only when something approaching a pantheon had
been established; the Babylonians, for example, whose pantheon was
vague, had also a vague god of hades.
+70+. Theories of the occupations of the dead varied in the early
civilized stage, before the rise of the idea of ethical retribution in
the other life. In the absence of earthly relations, imagination could
conceive of nothing for them to do, and hence an ardent desire for the
continuance of earthly life.[138] For the Hebrews the Underworld was
without pursuits; the shades sat motionless, in the dress and according
to the rank of the upper world, without emotions or aims (except a
sparkle of malicious satisfaction when some great man came down from
earth), and without religious worship.[139] A similar view was held by
the Greeks and the Romans. Certain Egyptian documents speak of mundane
occupations for the dead, but these documents belong to a comparatively
late stage of culture, and what the earlier view was we do not
know.[140] Of Hindu ideas, also, on this point we have only relatively
late notices.
+71+. 5. A radical transformation in the conception of the state of the
dead was effected by the introduction of the idea of moral retribution
into the life of the Underworld.[141] The basis of the movement was the
natural conception of life as determined by ethical considerations, but
the process of transformation has extended over thousands of years and
has hardly yet reached its completion. In the lowest eschatological
systems known to us there is no marked difference in the status of
departed souls; so among the Central Australians, the tribes of New
Guinea and the Torres Straits islands, the Zulus, the Malagasy, the West
African peoples, and some North American tribes.[142]
+72+. The earliest grounds of distinction are ritualistic and social;
these occur among the higher savages and survive in some civilized
peoples. The Fijians assign punishment in the other world to bachelors,
men unaccompanied by their wives and children, cowards, and untattooed
women.[143] Where circumcision was a tribal mark, the uncircumcised, as
having no social status, were consigned to inferior places in hades: so
among the Hebrews.[144] The omission of proper funeral ceremonies was
held in like manner to entail deprivation of privilege in hades: the
shade had an undesirable place below, as among the Babylonians and the
Hebrews,[145] or was unable to enter the abode of the dead, and wandered
forlorn on the earth or on the border of the Underworld, as was the
Greek belief.[146] Exposure of the corpse to beasts and birds, making
funeral ceremonies impossible, was regarded as a terrible misfortune for
the dead.[147]
+73+. Such of these beliefs as relate to violations of ritual appear to
spring from the view that the tribal customs are sacred, and from the
consequent distinction between tribesmen and foreigners. All persons
without the tribal mark were shut out from the privileges of the tribe,
were outlaws in this world and the next; and those whose bodies were not
properly disposed of lost the support of the tribal deities or of the
subterranean Powers.[148] It was also held that the body retained the
form in which it went down to hades;[149] hence the widespread dread of
mutilation, as among the Chinese still. On the other hand the brave were
rewarded.[150]
+74+. Sometimes earthly rank determines future conditions--a natural
corollary to what is stated above (§72 f.). A distinction is made
between nobles and common people in the Bowditch Islands.[151] The
members of the Fijian Areoi Society are held to enjoy special privileges
in the other world.[152] The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that the
sky is for high gods and nobles.[153] According to John Smith, in
savage Virginia only nobles and priests were supposed to survive after
death.[154] The North American Mandans (of Dakota), according to one
view, assign to the brave in the hereafter the delightful villages of
the gods.[155] When souls are supposed to enter into animals different
animals are assigned to nobles and common men.[156] Kings and nobles
retain their superiority of position and are sometimes attended by their
slaves and officers.[157]
+75+. The manner of death is sometimes significant. The Karens hold that
persons killed by elephants, famine, or sword, do not enter the abode of
the dead, but wander on the earth and take possession of the souls of
men.[158] In Borneo it is supposed that those who are killed in war
become specters.[159] The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that
warriors dying in battle, women dying in childbirth, and suicides go up
to the sky.[160] In regard to certain modes of death opposite opinions
are held in the Ladrone (Marianne) Islands and the Hervey group: in the
former those who die by violence are supposed to be tortured by demons,
those who die a natural death are believed to be happy; according to the
view in the latter group these last are devoured by the goddess of
death, and the others are happy. In the one case violent death, it would
seem, is supposed to be due to the anger of the gods, and to be a sign
of something bad in the man; in the other case happiness is compensation
for the misfortune of a violent death, and natural death, being the fate
of ordinary people, leaves one at the mercy of the mistress of the other
world.
+76+. The advance to the conception of moral retribution hereafter could
take place only in communities in which earthly life was organized on a
moral basis. The beginning of the movement is seen in certain savage
tribes. Savages have their codes, which generally recognize some ethical
virtues among the tribal obligations. Stealing, lying, failure in
hospitality, cowardice, violation of marital rights--in general, all the
acts that affect injuriously the communal life--are, as a rule,
condemned by the common sense of the lowest peoples, and the moral
character of the gods reflects that of their worshipers. By reason of
the sense of solidarity the faults of individuals affect not only
themselves but also their communities, and the gods care for communities
as well as for individuals. Whenever, then, there is an inquest in the
other world, these faults, it is likely, will be punished. On account of
the paucity of our information, it is not possible to make a general
statement on this point, but examples of future moral control occur in
many savage creeds.[161] In such systems the nature of the life beyond
the grave is variously conceived: sometimes as cheerless and gloomy (as
in Finland), sometimes as pleasant (as in Samoa, New Guinea, New
Caledonia, Bowditch Islands, some North American tribes, Brazil).[162]
+77+. In tracing the growth of the conception of distinctions in the
other world,[163] we find first a vague opinion that those who do badly
in this life are left to shift for themselves hereafter;[164] that is,
there is no authority controlling the lives of men below. In the
majority of cases, however, distinctions are made, but these, as is
remarked above, are based on various nonmoral considerations, and have
small cultural value.[165]
+78+. In the published reports of savage beliefs there is not always
mention of a formal examination of the character of the dead, and
probably nothing of the sort was imagined by the lowest tribes. It
appears, however, in such relatively advanced peoples as the
Fijians[166] and the Khonds.[167]
+79+. Moral retribution proper is found only in great civilized nations
and not in all of them; the early Semites appear to have retained the
old conception of punishment for ritual faults or failures, and for
offenses against the national welfare. For the Hebrews the proof is
found in the Old Testament passim; in the Babylonian and Assyrian
literature, as far as published, there is one sign of departure from the
scheme sketched in the _Descent of Ishtar_: Hammurabi (ca. 2000 B.C.)
invokes the curses of the gods on any one who shall destroy the tablet
of his penal code, and wishes that such a one may be deprived of pure
water after death. In regard to the South Arabians, the pre-Mohammedan
North Arabians, and the Aramæans, we have no information; and for the
Phoenicians there is only the suggestion involved in the curse invoked
on those who violate a tomb, and in the funeral ceremonies.[168] But the
same general religious ideas prevailed throughout the ancient Semitic
area, and we may probably assume that the Hebrew conception was the
universal one.
+80+. In Egypt, India, China, Persia, Greece, Rome, however, and among
the Jews in the Greek period,[169] higher ethical conceptions were
carried over to the Underworld; judgment, it was held, was pronounced on
the dead, and rewards and punishments dealt out to them according to
their moral character. The Jews and the Persians went a step further,
and conceived of a final general judgment, a final winding-up of human
history, and a permanent reconstruction of the world on a basis largely
moral, though tinged with local religious elements--a grandiose idea
that has maintained itself up to the present time, embodying the
conviction that the outcome of life depends on character, and that
ethical retribution is the essence of the world.
+81+. This ethical constitution of the life hereafter led to the local
separation of the good from the bad. Such a separation was imagined by
comparatively undeveloped peoples whose ethical principle was chiefly
ritualistic, as, for example, the Fijians, the American Indians, and by
civilized peoples in their early stages, the Vedic Hindus[170] (Yama's
abode in the sky, and a pit) and the Greeks (the Homeric Elysian Fields,
and Tartarus).[171]
+82+. In fact, a recognition of a place of happiness and a place of
punishment in the other life accompanies sooner or later a certain stage
of ethical culture in all communities. In India it appears in the late
Vedic and post-Vedic periods, together with the ethical doctrine of
metempsychosis, and though, as is natural in such a stage of
development, various ideas are held respecting the destinies of the good
and the bad, the ethical distinction between these classes of persons,
with a systematic awarding of rewards and punishments, becomes firmly
established: Yama becomes an ethical judge. In the Brahmanas, Manu, and
the Mahabharata, we find a sort of heaven for the virtuous and a hell
for the vicious. While the academic thought of Brahmanism and the
altruistic systems of Jainism and Buddhism looked to the absorption of
the departed into the All, the popular Hindu faith held fast to the
scheme of happiness and wretchedness in the future.[172] As in Dante's
_Divina Commedia_, the heaven was somewhat colorless, the hell more
distinct and picturesque; pain is acute and varied, happiness is calm
and uniform.
+83+. The later Egyptian eschatological development was not unlike the
later Hindu. The good were rewarded with delightful habitations in the
West or with the Sun; the bad were tortured in a gloomy place.[173]
+84+. As regards the early Greek eschatological scheme, it is suggested
by S. Reinach[174] that the descriptions of punishments in Tartarus (as
in the cases of Tantalus and others) arose from misunderstood
representations of the condition of the dead in the other world, they
being represented either as engaged in the occupations of this life, or
as they were at the moment of death. The great punishments, in fact, are
assigned only to heroic mythical offenders, but there seems to be no
reason why the idea of retribution should not be supposed to enter into
such descriptions. Separation of the good from the bad on ethical
grounds appears in Greece in the time of Plato. In various passages he
describes the savage places (Tartarus and others) to which criminals go
after death, and the happy abodes of the virtuous.[175] These abodes
were not with the gods; the occasional translations to heaven (Heracles,
Ganymede) are exceptional honors paid to heroes and favorites.
+85+. The Jewish conception of a punitive future belongs to the Greek
period of Jewish history, and was probably developed on Hebrew lines
under Greek and Egyptian influence. A combination of the Old Testament
view of future retribution on earth with the conception of torture in
the other world is given in Enoch.[176] In some circles Sheol was placed
in the West and divided into two regions, one of happiness, the other of
punishment,[177] or the good dwell with the angels in heaven, the bad in
hell.[178] By others the abodes of the dead were placed in the heavenly
regions: of the seven heavens, the second was assigned to the bad and
the third to the good.[179] With all the variation of locality, the
separation of the bad from the good is made permanent, and this
distinction is maintained in the New Testament, which throughout assigns
the wicked to hell (Gehenna or Tartarus), while the righteous dwell
sometimes on the renovated earth, sometimes in the heavenly
regions.[180]
+86+. The Jewish and Christian books mentioned above content themselves
with the general statement that the punishment of the wicked will be
torture by fire and cold. Succeeding Christian books elaborated the
picture of torture with great ingenuity; the _Apocalypse of Peter_,
following and expanding the description of Plato and Enoch, has an
elaborate barbarous apparatus of punishment, and this scheme, continued
through a series of works,[181] has its culmination in Dante's Inferno,
where, however, the ethical element is pronounced, though colored by the
poet's likes and dislikes.
+87+. _Purgatory._ The wicked dead were not always left hopeless in
their place of punishment. Kindly human feeling (shown in early stages
by pious care for the well-being of the dead) and the analogy of earthly
procedures, civil and religious, led to the view that, after the
expiation of faults by suffering, the evildoer might be freed from his
prison and gain a place of happiness. Pardon and purification were
effected on earth by punishments (scourging, imprisonment, etc.) or by
ritual processes (ablution, fastings, etc.)--why not in the other life?
In some systems of transmigration the man, forced after death to assume
a lower form, may rise by good conduct to a higher form. In Plato's
imaginative construction of the Underworld[182] those who have lived
neither well nor ill are purified in the Acherusian lake and then
receive rewards according to their deserts; and those who have committed
great but not unpardonable crimes may come to the lake (after having
suffered the pains of Tartarus) and be freed from trouble if they obtain
pardon from those they have wronged. But as here, so hereafter, certain
offenses were regarded as unpardonable. The purgatorial conception
passed into patristic and Roman and Eastern Christianity and Talmudic
and Medieval Judaism.[183]
+88+. _Resurrection._ The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead,
which has been fully developed only by the Persians and the Jews (and
from them taken by Christianity and Islam), appears to have grown from
simple beginnings. It is the expression of the conviction that the
perfect man is made up of soul and body, and its full form is found only
in periods of high ethical culture. But in very early times the belief
in the intimate connection between body and soul appears in the care
taken among certain peoples to preserve the bones or the whole body of
the deceased as a possible future abode for the soul;[184] and, on the
other hand, as the soul, it was held, might return to the body and be
dangerous to the living, means were sometimes employed to frighten it
off. It seems to have been believed in some cases that the destruction
of the body involved the destruction of the soul (New Zealand). An
actual entrance of a departed soul into a human body is involved in some
early forms of the doctrine of reincarnation,[185] but this is not the
restoration of the dead man's own body. It was held in Egypt (and not
improbably elsewhere) that the soul after death might desire to take
possession of its own body, and provision was made for such an
emergency; but this belief seems not to have had serious results for
religious life. A temporary reunion of soul and body appears in the
figure of the vampire, which, however, is a part of a popular belief and
religiously not important. But these passing beliefs indicate a general
tendency, and may have paved the way for the more definite conception of
bodily restoration.
+89+. The more developed Hindu doctrine (Brahmanic, Jainistic,
Buddhistic) recognized a great variety of possible forms of
reincarnation (human and nonhuman), and made a step forward by including
the continuity or reëstablishment of moral life and responsibility (the
doctrine of karma).[186] It, however, never reached the form of a
universal or partial resurrection.
+90+. The birthplace of this latter doctrine appears to have been the
region in which Mazdaism arose, the country south of the Caspian Sea.
Windischmann infers from Herodotus, iii, 62, that it appears as a
Mazdean belief as early as the sixth century B.C.[187] This is doubtful,
but it is reported as a current belief by Theopompus.[188] Its
starting-point was doubtless the theory of reincarnation, which, we may
suppose, the Iranian Aryans shared with their Indian brethren. Precisely
what determined the Iranian movement toward this specific form of
reincarnation we have no means of knowing. It may be due to the same
genius for simple organization that led the Zoroastrians to discard the
mass of the old gods and elevate Ahura Mazda to the chief place in the
pantheon; their genius for practical social religious organization may
have induced them to select human reincarnation as the most natural and
the most effective morally, and to discard other forms as unworthy.[189]
The dead man's own body would then be the natural dwelling place of his
soul; but a refined body (as in 1 Cor. xv) might be regarded as better
suited to the finer life of the future. Whatever the cause, they adopted
this conception, and probably through their influence it passed to, or
was formulated by, the Jews, among whom it appears in the second century
B.C. (in the Book of Daniel).[190] In Daniel and 2 Maccabees
resurrection is confined to the Jews; in Enoch it is sometimes similarly
confined, sometimes apparently universal.[191] In the New Testament also
the same diversity of statement appears; resurrection seems to be
confined to believers in some passages[192] and to be universal in
others.[193] In the former case it is regarded as a reward of piety and
as a consequence of the intimate relation between the man and God or
Christ; unbelievers then remain in hades, where they are punished. But
universal resurrection was probably thought of as involved in the
grandiose conceptions of a final judgment and a final moral
restoration.[194]
5. POWERS OF THE SOUL
+91+. Savage lore takes account of the powers of the separated soul
only; the qualities and functions of the earthly incorporate soul are
accepted as a part of the existing familiar order, and are not analyzed
or discussed. It was different with the departed soul, which, because of
its strangeness and mystery, was credited with extraordinary powers, and
this part of savage science was gradually developed, through observation
and inference, into an important system. In the search for causes, the
Shade, its independent existence once established, came to be regarded
as the agent in many procedures of which no probable account could
otherwise be given.
+92+. The greatest activity of the departed soul is found in the
earliest known period of culture, when it was not yet relegated to hades
or to the sky, but dwelt on earth, either near its former habitation or
in a distant region from which it might return. Its powers of movement
and action are then held to be all that imagination can suggest. Such
souls move through the air or under the ground, enter houses through
obstacles impenetrable to the earthly man, pass into the human body,
assume such shapes as pleases them. Divested of gross earthly bodies,
they are regarded as raised above all ordinary limitations of humanity.
Of these conceptions, that of the ghost's superhuman power of movement
remains in the popular faith to the present day.
+93+. The practical question for the early man is the determination of
the relation of departed souls to earthly life. Among savage tribes
their attitude is sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly, more often
the latter.[195] To fear the unknown is a human instinct. Shades are
looked on as aliens, and aliens are generally enemies. In particular,
ghosts are conceived of as sometimes wandering about in search of food
or warmth, or as cherishing enmity toward persons who had wronged them
in their earthly life. They are supposed to be capable of inflicting
disease or pain, and precautions are taken against them. Cases are
reported of persons who killed themselves in order that, as ghosts, they
might wreak vengeance on enemies.[196] On the other hand, to the members
of its own family the departed soul is sometimes held to be friendly, or
not unfriendly, but among savages it is not thought of as a potent and
valuable friend.
+94+. In the more advanced cults the functions of the departed souls
become larger and more important. They are regarded as having the power
of foretelling the future, and are consulted.[197] They become guardian
spirits, and a cult of souls arises.[198] In some higher forms of
religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) they are regarded as mediators
between man and the deity, or as advocates for man in the heavenly
court.
+95+. _Prayer for the dead._ Before the ethical stage of religion the
moral condition and needs of the dead did not come into consideration;
their physical wants were met by performance of funeral rites and by
supplying them with food and other necessities of life,[199] and they
later came to be looked on as helpers rather than as needing help; but
when this old view passed away, and the conceptions of judgment and
ethical retribution after death were reached, the moral status of the
dead became a source of anxiety to the living. It was held that the
divine judge might be reached--by intercession or by petitions, or by
the performance of certain ceremonies--and his attitude toward the dead
modified.
+96+. A trace of such care for the deceased may be found in the
Brahmanic ceremonies intended to secure complete immortality to
fathers.[200] In Egypt, in the later times, there was an arrangement for
securing for the deceased immunity from punishment for moral offenses: a
sacred beetle of stone, inscribed with a charm beginning "O my heart,
rise not up against me as a witness," laid on the breast of the mummy,
silences the heart in the presence of Osiris, and the man, even though
guilty, goes free. Forms of charms were prepared by the priests, and the
name of any one who could pay was inserted in blanks left for this
purpose.[201] This sort of corrupting procedure was reproduced in some
periods of Christianity. In the early Church a custom existed of
receiving baptism on behalf of such as died unbaptized;[202] here,
apparently, a magical efficacy was ascribed to the act. The first
mention of prayer for the dead occurs in a history of the Maccabean
wars, where a sin-offering, accompanied by prayer, effects
reconciliation for certain soldiers who died in a state of sin (idol
symbols were found on their persons).[203] Prayer for the dead has been
largely developed in Christianity and Islam.[204]
6. GENESIS OF SPIRITS
+97+. As early science identified life with the soul, it logically
attributed a soul to everything that was regarded as living. This
category seems to have embraced all the objects of the world--human
beings, beasts, plants, weapons, rocks, waters, heavenly bodies. Savages
rarely formulate their ideas on such a subject, but the belief in the
future existence of nonhuman as well as human things is fairly
established by the widespread practice of slaying animals at the tomb
and burying with the dead the objects they are supposed to need in the
other world. This custom exists among many tribes at the present day,
and the contents of ancient tombs prove its existence in former times.
The dead are provided with clothing, implements of labor, weapons,
ornaments, food, and as these objects remain in their mundane form by or
in the grave, it is held that their souls pass with the souls of their
possessors into the world beyond. Further, the belief in transformation
from human to nonhuman forms and vice versa involves the supposition of
life in all such things. That the heavenly bodies, similarly, are
supposed to be animated by souls appears from the fact that they are
regarded as manlike in form, thought, and manner of life: the sun is
frequently represented as a venerable man who traverses the sky--the
moon being his wife, and the stars their children; and sun and moon
sometimes figure as totems. This general conception has been expanded
and modified in a great variety of ways among different peoples, but the
belief in the anthropomorphic nature of the astral bodies has been an
element of all religions except the highest.
+98+. The apparent incongruities in the savage theory--that all things
are endowed with life--need occasion us no difficulty. Complete
consistency and tenability in such theories is not to be expected. Early
men, like the lower animals, were doubtless capable of distinguishing
between things living and things dead: a dog quickly discovers whether a
moving object is alive. Man and beasts have in such questions canons of
criticism derived from long experience.[205]
+99+. But man differs from the beast in that he feels the necessity of
accounting for life by the hypothesis of a soul, and as he seems to
himself to find evidence of life in plants and minerals (movement,
growth, decay), he is justified in attributing souls to all things. He
is interested, however, only in movements that affect his welfare.
Whatever his general theory about rocks, a particular rock, as long as
it does not affect his life, is for him an inert and worthless mass,
practically dead; but if he discovers that it has power to harm him, it
becomes instinct with life, and is treated as a rational being. Man has
shown himself practical in all stages of religion; he is always the
center of his world, and treats objects and theories with sole regard to
his own well-being.
+100+. The world of the savage was thus peopled with souls, and these
came to have an independent existence. That this was the case with human
souls is pointed out above,[206] and by analogy the separateness was
extended to all souls. Thus there arose tree-spirits, river-spirits, and
other similar extrahuman beings. It is convenient to employ the term
'spirit' as the designation of the soul in a nonhuman object, isolated
and independent, and regarded as a Power to be treated with respect. The
term is sometimes used of a disembodied human soul, and sometimes of a
deity resident in an object of nature. It is better to distinguish, as
far as possible, between these different senses of the word. The
functions of a spirit are sometimes practically identical with those of
a god. The difference between these two classes of extrahuman agents is
one of general culture; it is especially determined in any community by
the extent of the organization of such agents that has been effected by
the community. The cult of spirits is considered below in connection
with the description of divine beings.[207]