belief in different grades of future happiness, especially in different
regions of the other world allotted to men according to their lives in
this. This doctrine of retribution is, as we have already seen, far from
universal among mankind, many races recognizing the idea of a spirit
outliving the body, without considering the fate of this spirit to
depend at all upon the conduct of the living man. The doctrine of
retribution indeed hardly seems an original part of the doctrine of the
future life. On the contrary, if we judge that men in a primitive state
of culture arrived at the notion of a surviving spirit, and that some
races, but by no means all, afterwards reached the further stage of
recognizing a retribution for deeds done in the body, this theory will
not, so far as I know, be discountenanced by facts.[196] Even among the
higher savages, however, a connexion between man’s life and his
happiness or misery after death is often held as a definite article of
theology, and thence it is to be traced onward through barbaric
religions, and into the very heart of Christianity. Yet the grounds of
good and evil in the future life are so far from uniform among the
religions of the world, that they may differ widely within what is
considered one and the same creed. The result is more definite than the
cause, the end than the means. Men who alike look forward to a region of
unearthly happiness beyond the grave, hope to reach that happy land by
roads so strangely different, that the path of life which leads one
nation to eternal bliss may seem to the next the very descent into the
pit. In noticing among savage and barbaric peoples the qualifications
which determine future happiness, we may with some distinctness define
these as being excellence, valour, social rank, religious ordinance. On
the whole, however, in the religions of the lower range of culture,
unless where they may have been affected by contact with higher
religions, the destiny of the man after death seems hardly to turn on
judicial reward or punishment for his moral conduct in life. Such
difference as is made between the future conditions of different classes
of souls, seems more often to belong to a remarkable intermediate
doctrine, standing between the earlier continuance-theory and the later
retribution-theory. The idea of the next life being similar to this
seems to have developed into the idea that what gives prosperity and
renown here will give it also there, so that earthly conditions carry on
their contrasts into the changed world after death. Thus a man’s
condition after death will be a result of, rather than a compensation or
retribution for, his condition during life. A comparison of doctrines
held at various stages of culture may justify a tentative speculation as
to their actual sequence in history, favouring the opinion that through
such an intermediate stage the doctrine of simple future existence was
actually developed into the doctrine of future reward and punishment, a
transition which for deep import to human life has scarcely its rival in
the history of religion.
The effect of earthly rank on the future life, as looked at by the lower
races, brings out this intermediate stage in bold relief. Mere transfer
from one life to another makes chiefs and slaves here chiefs and slaves
hereafter, and this natural doctrine is very usual. But there are cases
in which earthly caste is exaggerated into utter difference in the life
to come. The aerial paradise of Raiatea, with its fragrant ever-blooming
flowers, its throngs of youths and girls all perfection, its luxurious
feasts and merrymakings, were for the privileged orders of Areois and
chiefs who could pay the priests their heavy charges, but hardly for the
common populace. This idea reached its height in the Tonga islands,
where aristocratic souls would pass to take their earthly rank and
station in the island paradise of Bolotu, while plebeian souls, if
indeed they existed, would die with the plebeian bodies they dwelt
in.[197] In Vancouver’s Island, the Ahts fancied Quawteaht’s calm sunny
plenteous land in the sky as the resting-place of high chiefs, who live
in one great house as the Creator’s guests, while the slain in battle
have another to themselves. But otherwise all Indians of low degree go
deep down under the earth to the land of Chay-her, with its poor houses
and no salmon and small deer, and blankets so small and thin that when
the dead are buried the friends often bury blankets with them, to send
them to the world below with the departed soul.[198] The expectation of
royal dignity in the life after death, distinct from the fate of
ordinary mortals, comes well into view among the Natchez of Louisiana,
where the sun-descended royal family would in some way return to the
Sun; thus also in the mightier empire of Peru, where each sun-descended
Inca, feeling the approach of death, announced to his assembled vassals
that he was called to heaven to rest with his father the Sun.[199] But
in the higher religions, the change in this respect from the doctrine of
continuance to the doctrine of retribution is wonderful in its
completeness. The story of that great lady who strengthened her hopes of
future happiness by the assurance, ‘They will think twice before they
refuse a person of my condition,’ is a mere jest to modern ears. Yet,
like many other modern jest, it is only an archaism which in an older
stage of culture had in it nothing ridiculous.
To the happy land of Torngarsuk the Great Spirit, says Cranz, only such
Greenlanders came as have been valiant workers, for other ideas of
virtue they have none; such as have done great deeds, taken many whales
and seals, borne much hardship, been drowned at sea, or died in
childbirth.[200] Thus Charlevoix says of the Indians further south, that
their claim to hunt after death on the prairies of eternal spring is to
have been good hunters and warriors here. Lescarbot, speaking of the
belief among the Indians of Virginia that after death the good will be
at rest and the wicked in pain, remarks that their enemies are the
wicked and themselves the good, so that in their opinion they are after
death much at their ease, and principally when they have well defended
their country and slain their enemies.[201] So Jean de Lery said of the
rude Tubinambas of Brazil, that they think the souls of such as have
lived virtuously, that is to say, who have well avenged themselves and
eaten many of their enemies, will go behind the great mountains and
dance in beautiful gardens with the souls of their fathers, but the
souls of the effeminate and worthless, who have not striven to defend
their country, will go to Aygnan the Evil Spirit, to incessant
torments.[202] More characteristic and probably more genuinely native
than most of these expectations, is that of the Caribs, that the braves
of their nation should go after death to happy islands, where all good
fruits grow wild, there to spend their time in dancing and feasting, and
to have their enemies the Arawaks for slaves; but the cowards who feared
to go to war should go to serve the Arawaks, dwelling in their waste and
barren lands beyond the mountains.[203]
The fate of warriors slain in battle is the subject of two singularly
contrasted theories. We have elsewhere examined the deep-lying belief
that if a man’s body be wounded or mutilated, his soul will arrive in
the same state in the other world. Perhaps it is some such idea of the
soul being injured with the body by a violent death, that leads the
Mintira of the Malay Peninsula, though not believing in a future reward
and punishment, to exclude from the happy paradise of ‘Fruit Island’
(Pulo Bua) the souls of such as die a bloody death, condemning them to
dwell on ‘Red Land’ (Tana Mera), a desolate barren place, whence they
must even go to the fortunate island to fetch their food.[204] In North
America, the idea is mentioned among the Hurons that the souls of the
slain in war live in a band apart, neither they nor suicides being
admitted to the spirit-villages of their tribe. A belief ascribed to
certain Indians of California may be cited here, though less as a sample
of real native doctrine than to illustrate that borrowing of Christian
ideas which so often spoils such evidence for ethnological purposes.
They held, it is said, that Niparaya, the Great Spirit, hates war, and
will have no warriors in his paradise, but that his adversary Wac, shut
up for rebellion in a great cave, takes thither to himself the slain in
battle.[205] On the other hand, the thought which shows out in such bold
relief in the savage mind, that courage is virtue, and battle and
bloodshed the hero’s noblest pursuit, leads naturally to a hope of glory
for his soul when his body has been slain in fight. Such expectation was
not strange in North America, to that Indian tribe, for instance, who
talked of the Great Spirit walking in the moonlight on his island in
Lake Superior, whither slain warriors will go to him to take their
pleasure in the chace.[206] The Nicaraguans declared that men who died
in their houses went underground, but the slain in war went to serve the
gods in the east, where the sun comes from. This corresponds in part
with a remarkable threefold contrast of the future life among their
Aztec kinsfolk. Mictlan, the Hades of the general dead, and Tlalocan,
the Earthly Paradise, reached by certain special and acute ways of
death, have been mentioned here already. But the souls of warriors slain
in battle or sacrificed as captives, and of women who died in
child-birth, were transported to the heavenly plains; there the heroes,
peeping through the holes in their bucklers pierced by arrows in earthly
fight, watched the Sun arise and saluted him with shout and clash of
arms, and at noon the mothers received him with music and dance to
escort him on his western way.[207] In such wise, to the old Norseman,
to die the ‘straw-death’ of sickness or old age was to go down into the
dismal loathly house of Hela the Death-goddess; if the warrior’s fate on
the field of battle were denied him, and death came to fetch him from a
peaceful couch, yet at least he could have the scratch of the spear,
Odin’s mark, and so contrive to go with a blood-stained soul to the
glorious Walhalla. Surely then if ever, says a modern writer, the
kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent took it by
force.[208] Thence we follow the idea onward to the battle-fields of
holy war, where the soldier earned with his blood the unfading crown of
martyrdom, and Christian and Moslem were urged in mutual onset and
upheld in agony by the glimpse of paradise opening to receive the slayer
of the infidel.
Such ideas, current among the lower races as to the soul’s future
happiness or misery, do not seem, setting aside some exceptional points,
to be thoughts adopted or degraded from doctrines of cultured nations.
They rather belong to the intellectual stratum in which they are found.
If so, we must neither ignore nor exaggerate their standing in the lower
ethics. ‘The good are good warriors and hunters,’ said a Pawnee chief;
whereupon the author who mentions the saying remarks that this would
also be the opinion of a wolf, if he could express it.[209]
Nevertheless, if experience has led societies of savage men to fix on
certain qualities, such as courage, skill, and industry, as being
virtues, then many moralists will say that such a theory is not only
ethical, but lying at the very foundation of ethics. And if these savage
societies further conclude that such virtues obtain their reward in
another world as in this, then their theories of future happiness and
misery, destined for what they call good and bad men, may be looked on
in this sense as belonging to morality, though at no high stage of
development. But many or most writers, when they mention morality,
assume a narrower definition of it. This must be borne in mind in
appreciating what is meant by the statements of several well-qualified
ethnologists, who have, in more or less degree, denied a moral character
to the future retribution as conceived in savage religion. Mr. Ellis,
describing the Society Islanders, at least gives an explicit definition.
When he tried to ascertain whether they connected a person’s condition
in a future state with his disposition and conduct in this, he never
could learn that they expected in the world of spirits any difference in
the treatment of a kind, generous, peaceful man, and that of a cruel,
parsimonious, quarrelsome one.[210] This remark, it seems to me, applies
to savage religion far and wide. Dr. Brinton, commenting on the native
religions of America, draws his line in a somewhat different place.
Nowhere, he says, was any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was
judged and punished in the next world. No contrast is discoverable
between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a
negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard.[211]
Professor J. G. Müller, in his ‘American Religions,’ yet more pointedly
denies any ‘ethical meaning’ in the contrasts of the savage future life,
and looks upon what he well calls its ‘light-side’ and ‘shadow-side’ not
as recompensing earthly virtue and vice, but rather as carrying on
earthly conditions in a new existence.[212]
The idea that admission to the happier region depends on the performance
of religious rites and the giving of offerings, seems scarcely known to
the lowest savages. It is worth while, however, to notice some
statements which seem to mark its appearance at the level of high
savagery or low barbarism. Thus in the Society Islands, though the
destiny of man’s spirit to the region of night or to elysium was
irrespective of moral character, we hear of neglect of rites and
offerings as being visited by the displeasure of deities.[213] In
Florida, the belief of the Sun-worshipping people of Achalaque was thus
described: those who had lived well, and well served the Sun, and given
many gifts to the poor in his honour, would be happy after death and be
changed into stars, whereas the wicked would be carried to a destitute
and wretched existence among mountain precipices, where fierce wild
beasts have their dens.[214] According to Bosman, the souls of Guinea
negroes reaching the river of death must answer to the divine judge how
they have lived; have they religiously observed the holy days dedicated
to their god, have they abstained from all forbidden meats and kept
their vows inviolate, they are wafted across to paradise; but if they
have sinned against these laws they are plunged in the river and there
drowned for ever.[215] Such statements among peoples at these stages of
culture are not frequent, and perhaps not very valid as accounts of
original native doctrine. It is in the elaborate religious systems of
more organized nations, in modern Brahmanism and Buddhism, and degraded
forms of Christianity, that the special adaptation of the doctrine of
retribution to the purposes of priestcraft and ceremonialism has become
a commonplace of missionary reports.
It is well not to speak too positively on a subject so difficult and
doubtful as this of the history of the belief in future retribution.
Careful criticism of the evidence is above all necessary. For instance,
we have to deal with several statements recorded among low races,
explicitly assigning reward or punishment to men after death, according
as they were good or bad in life. Here the first thing to be done is to
clear up, if possible, the question whether the doctrine of retribution
may have been borrowed from some more cultured neighbouring religion, as
the very details often show to have been the case. Examples of direct
adoption of foreign dogmas on this subject are not uncommon in the
world. When among the Dayaks of Borneo it is said that a dead man
becomes a spirit and lives in the jungle, or haunts the place of burial
or burning, or when some distant mountain-top is pointed to as the abode
of spirits of departed friends, it is hardly needful to question the
originality of ideas so characteristically savage. But one of these
Dayak tribes, burning the dead, says that ‘as the smoke of the funeral
pile of a good man rises, the soul ascends with it to the sky, and that
the smoke from the pile of a wicked man descends, and his soul with it
is borne down to the earth, and through it to the regions below.’[216]
Did not this exceptional idea come into the Dayak’s mind by contact with
Hinduism? In Orissa, again, Khond souls have to leap across the black
unfathomable river to gain a footing on the slippery Leaping Rock, where
Dinga Pennu, the judge of the dead, sits writing his register of all
men’s daily lives and actions, sending virtuous souls to become blessed
spirits, keeping back wicked ones and sending them to suffer their
penalties in new births on earth.[217] Here the striking myth of the
leaping rock is perfectly savage, but the ideas of a judgment, moral
retribution, and transmigration, may have come from the Hindus of the
plains, as the accompanying notion of the written book unquestionably
did. Dr. Mason is no doubt right in taking as the indigenous doctrine of
the Karens their notion of an under-world where the ghosts of the dead
live on as here, while he sets down to Hindu influence the idea of
Tha-ma, the judge of the dead (the Hindu Yama), as allotting their fate
according to their lives, sending those who have done deeds of merit to
heaven, those who have done wickedness to hell, and keeping in Hades the
neither good nor bad.[218] How the theory of moral retribution may be
superposed on more primitive doctrines of the future life, comes
remarkably into view in Turanian religion. Among the Lapps, Jabme-Aimo,
the subterranean ‘home of the dead’ below the earth, where the departed
have their cattle and follow their livelihood like Lapps above, though
they are richer, wiser, stronger folk, and also Saivo-Aimo, a yet
happier ‘home of the gods,’ are conceptions thoroughly in the spirit of
the lower culture. But in one account the subterranean abode becomes a
place of transition, where the dead stay awhile, and then with bodies
renewed are taken up to the Heaven-god, or if misdoers, are flung into
the abyss. Castrén is evidently right in rejecting this doctrine as not
native, but due to Catholic influence. So, at the end of the 16th Rune
of the Finnish Kalewala, which tells of Wainamoinen’s visit to the
dismal land of the dead, there is put into the hero’s mouth a second
speech, warning the children of men to harm not the innocent, for sad
payment is in Tuoni’s dwelling—the bed of evil-doers is there, with its
glowing red-hot stones below and its canopy of snakes above. But the
same critic condemns this moral ‘tag,’ as a later addition to the
genuine heathen picture of Manala, the under-world of the dead.[219] Nor
did Christianity scorn to borrow details from the religions it
abolished. The narrative of a mediæval visit to the other world would be
incomplete without its description of the awful Bridge of Death; Acheron
and Charon’s bark were restored to their places in Tartarus by the
visionary and the poet; the wailing of sinful souls might be heard as
they were hammered white-hot in Vulcan’s smithies; and the weighing of
good and wicked souls, as we may see it figured on every Egyptian
mummy-case, now passed into the charge of St. Paul and the Devil.[220]
The foregoing considerations having been duly weighed, it remains to
call attention to the final problem, at what state of religious history
the full theological doctrine of judicial retribution and moral
compensation in a future life may have arisen. It is hard, however, to
define where this development takes place even at a barbaric stage of
culture. Thus among the barbaric nations of West Africa, there appear
such beliefs as that in Nuffi, that criminals who escape their
punishment here will receive it in the other world; the division of the
Yoruba under-world into an upper and a lower region for the righteous
and wicked; the Kru doctrine that only the good will rejoin their
ancestors in heaven; the Oji doctrine that only the good will dwell
after death in the heavenly house or city of the Deity whom they call
the ‘Highest.’[221] How far is all this to be taken as native
conception, and how far as due to ages of Christian and Moslem
intercourse, to which at any rate few will scruple to refer the last
case?
In the lower ranges of civilization, some of the most remarkable
doctrines of this class are recorded in North America. Thus they appear
in connexion with the fancy of a river or gulf to be passed by the
departing soul on its way to the land of the dead, one of the most
remarkable traits of the mythology of the world. This seems in its
origin a nature-myth, connected probably with the Sun’s passage across
the sea into Hades, and in many of its versions it appears as a mere
episode of the soul’s journey without any moral sense attached to it.
Brebeuf, the same early Jesuit missionary who says explicitly of the
Hurons that there is no difference in their future life between the fate
of the virtuous and the vicious, mentions also among them the tree-trunk
that bridges the river of death; here the dead must cross, the dog that
guards it attacks some souls, and they fall. Yet in other versions this
myth has a moral sense attached to it, and the passage of the
heaven-gulf becomes an ordeal to separate good and wicked. To take but
one instance, there is Catlin’s account of the Choctaw souls journeying
far westward, to whom the long slippery barkless pine-log, stretching
from hill to hill, bridges over the deep and dreadful river; the good
pass safely to a beauteous Indian paradise, the wicked fall into the
abyss of waters, and go the dark hungry wretched land where they are
henceforth to dwell.[222] This and many similar beliefs current in the
religions of the world, which need not be particularised here, seem best
explained as originally nature-myths, afterwards adapted to a religious
purpose. A different conception was recorded so early as 1623, by
Captain John Smith among the Massachusetts, whose name is still borne by
the New England district they once inhabited: They say, at first there
was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the heavens,
whither all good men go when they die, and have plenty of all things.
The bad men go thither also and knock at the door, but he bids them go
wander in endless want and misery, for they shall not stay there.[223]
Lastly, the Salish Indians of Oregon say that the good go to a happy
hunting-ground of endless game, while the bad go to a place where there
is eternal snow, hunger, and thirst, and are tantalised by the sight of
game they cannot kill, and water they cannot drink.[224] If, now, in
looking at these records, the doubts which beset them can be put aside,
and the accounts of the different fates assigned to the good and wicked
can be accepted as belonging to genuine native American religion and if,
moreover, it be considered that the goodness and wickedness for which
men are to be thus rewarded and punished are moral qualities, however
undeveloped in definition, this will amount to an admission that the
doctrine of moral retribution at any rate appears within the range of
savage theology. Such a view, however, by no means invalidates the view
here put forward as to the historical development of the doctrine, but
only goes to prove at how early a stage it may have begun to take place.
The general mass of evidence still remains to show the savage doctrine
of the future state, as originally involving no moral retribution, or
arriving at this through transitional and rudimentary stages.
In strong contrast with the schemes of savage future existence, I need
but set before the reader’s mind a salient point here and there in the
doctrine of distinct and unquestionable moral retribution, as held in
religions of the higher culture. The inner mystic doctrines of ancient
Egypt may perhaps never be extracted now from the pictures and
hieroglyphic formulas of the ‘Book of the Dead.’ But the ethnographer
may satisfy himself of two important points as to the place which the
Egyptian view of the future life occupies in the history of religion. On
the one hand, the soul’s quitting and revisiting the corpse, the placing
of the image in the tomb, the offering of meat and drink, the fearful
journey to the regions of the departed, the renewed life like that on
earth, with its houses to dwell in and fields to cultivate—all these are
conceptions which connect the Egyptian religion with the religions of
the ruder races of mankind. But on the other hand, the mixed ethical and
ceremonial standard by which the dead are to be judged adapts these
primitive and even savage thoughts to a higher social development, such
as may be shown by fragments from that remarkable ‘negative confession’
which the dead must make before Osiris and the forty-two judges in
Amenti. ‘O ye Lords of Truth! let me know you!... Rub ye away my faults.
I have not privily done evil against mankind.... I have not told
falsehoods in the tribunal of Truth.... I have not done any wicked
thing. I have not made the labouring man do more than his task daily....
I have not calumniated the slave to his master.... I have not
murdered.... I have not done fraud to men. I have not changed measures
of the country. I have not injured the images of the gods. I have not
taken scraps of the bandages of the dead. I have not committed adultery.
I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings. I have not hunted
wild animals in the pasturages. I have not netted sacred birds.... I am
pure! I am pure! I am pure!’[225]
The Vedic hymns, again, tell of endless happiness for the good in heaven
with the gods, and speak also of the deep pit where the liars, the
lawless, they who give no sacrifice, will be cast.[226] The rival
theories of continuance and retribution are seen in instructive
coexistence in classic Greece and Rome. What seems the older belief
holds its ground in the realm of Hades; that dim region of bodiless,
smoke-like ghosts remains the home of the undistinguished crowd in the
μέσος βίος, the ‘middle life.’ Yet at the same time the judgment-seat of
Minos and Rhadamanthos, the joys of Elysium for the just and good, fiery
Tartarus echoing with the wail of the wicked, represent the newer
doctrine of a moral retribution. The idea of purgatorial suffering,
which hardly seems to have entered the minds of the lower races, expands
in immense vigour in the great Aryan religions of Asia. In Brahmanism
and Buddhism, the working out of good and evil actions into their
necessary consequence of happiness and misery is the very key to the
philosophy of life, whether life’s successive transmigrations be in
animal, or human, or demon births on earth, or in luxurious
heaven-palaces of gold and jewels, or in the agonizing hells where
Oriental fancy riots in the hideous inventory of torture—caldrons of
boiling oil and liquid fire; black dungeons and rivers of filth; vipers,
and vultures, and cannibals; thorns, and spears, and red-hot pincers,
and whips of flame. To the modern Hindu, it is true, ceremonial morality
seems to take the upper hand, and the question of happiness or misery
after death turns rather on ablutions and fasts, on sacrifices and gifts
to brahmans, than on purity and beneficence of life. Buddhism in South
East Asia, sadly degenerate from its once high estate, is apt to work
out the doctrine of merit and demerit into debtor and creditor accounts
kept in good and bad marks from day to day; to serve out so much tea in
hot weather counts 1 to the merit-side, and putting a stop to one’s
women scolding for a month counts 1 likewise, but this may be balanced
by the offence of letting them keep the bowls and plates dirty for a
day, which counts 1 the wrong way; and it appears that giving wood for
two coffins, which count 30 marks each, and burying four bones, at 10
marks a-piece, would just be balanced by murdering a child, which counts
100 to the bad.[227] It need hardly be said here that these two great
religions of Asia must be judged rather in their records of long past
ages, than in the lingering degeneration of their modern reality.
In the Khordah-Avesta, a document of the old Persian religion, the fate
of good and wicked souls at death is pictured in a dialogue between
Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and Ahura-Mazda and Anra-Mainyu (Ormuzd and
Ahriman). Zarathustra asks,’Ahura-Mazda, Heavenly, Holiest, Creator of
the corporeal world, Pure! When a pure man dies, where does his soul
dwell during this night?’ Then answers Ahura-Mazda: ‘Near his head it
sits down, reciting the Gâthâ Ustavaiti, praying happiness for itself;
“Happiness be to the man who conduces to the happiness of each. May
Ahura-Mazda create, ruling after his wish.”’ On this night the soul sees
as much joyfulness as the whole living world possesses; and so the
second and the third night. When the lapse of the third night turns
itself to light, then the soul of the pure man goes forward,
recollecting itself by the perfume of plants. A wind blows to meet it
from the mid-day regions, a sweet-scented one, more sweet-scented than
the other winds, and the soul of the pure man receives it—‘Whence blows
this wind, the sweetest-scented which I ever have smelt with the nose?’
Then comes to meet him his own law (his rule of life) in the figure of a
maiden beautiful, shining, with shining arms, powerful, well-grown,
slender, large-bosomed, with praiseworthy body, noble, with brilliant
face, one of fifteen years, as fair in her growth as the fairest
creatures. Then to her speaks the soul of the pure man, asking, ‘What
maiden art thou whom I have seen here as the fairest of maidens in
body?’ She answers, ‘I am, O youth, thy good thoughts, words, and works,
thy good law, the own law of thine own body. Thou hast made the pleasant
yet pleasanter to me, the fair yet fairer, the desirable yet more
desirable, the sitting in a high place sitting in a yet higher place.’
Then the soul of the pure man takes the first step and comes to the
first paradise, the second and third step to the second and third
paradise, the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. To the soul
speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it, ‘How art thou, O pure
deceased, come away from the fleshly dwellings, from the corporeal world
hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the
imperishable. Hail! has it happened to thee long?’ ‘Then speaks
Ahura-Mazda: “Ask not him whom thou askest, for he is come on the
fearful way of trembling, the separation of body and soul. Bring him
hither of the food, of the full fatness, that is the food for a youth
who thinks, speaks, and does good, who is devoted to the good law after
death—that is the food for a woman who especially thinks good, speaks
good, does good, the following, obedient, pure after death.”’ And now
Zarathustra asks, when a wicked one dies, where his soul dwells? He is
told how, running about near the head, it utters the prayer, Ke
maúm:—‘Which land shall I praise, whither shall I go praying, O
Ahura-Mazda?’ In this night it sees as much unjoyfulness as the whole
living world; and so the second and the third night, and it goes at dawn
to the impure place, recollecting itself by the stench. An evil-smelling
wind comes towards the dead from the north, and with it the ugly hateful
maiden who is his own wicked deeds, and the soul takes the fourth step
into the darkness without beginning, and a wicked soul asks how long—woe
to thee!—art thou come? and the mocking Anra-Mainyu, answering in words
like the words of Ahura-Mazda to the good, bids food to be
brought—poison, and mixed with poison, for them who think and speak and
do evil, and follow the wicked law. The Parsi of our own time, following
in obscure tradition the ancient Zoroastrian faith, before he prays for
forgiveness for all that he ought to have thought, and said, and done,
and has not, for all that he ought not to have thought, and said, and
done, and has, confesses thus his faith of the future life:—‘I am wholly
without doubt in the existence of the good Mazadayaçnian faith, in the
coming of the resurrection and the later body, in the stepping over the
bridge Chinvat, in an invariable recompense of good deeds and their
reward, and of bad deeds and their punishment.’[228]
In Jewish theology, the doctrine of future retribution appears after the
Babylonish captivity, not in ambiguous terms, but as the
strongly-expressed and intensely-felt religious conviction it has since
remained among the children of Israel. Not long afterward, it received
the sanction of Christianity.
A broad survey of the doctrine of the Future Life among the various
nations of the world shows at once how difficult and how important is a
systematic theory of its development. Looked at ethnographically, the
general relations of the lower to the higher culture as to the belief in
future existence may be defined somewhat as follows:—If we draw a line
dividing civilization at the junction of savagery and barbarism—about
where the Carib and New Zealander ends and the Aztec or Tatar begins, we
may see clearly the difference of prevalent doctrine on either side. On
the savage side, the theory of hovering ghosts is strong, rebirth in
human or animal bodies is often thought of, but above all there prevails
the expectation of a new life, most often located in some distant
earthly region, or less commonly in the under-world or on the sky. On
the cultured side, the theory of hovering ghosts continues, but tends to
subside from philosophy into folklore, the theory of re-birth is
elaborated into great philosophic systems, but eventually dies out under
the opposition of scientific biology, while the doctrine of a new life
after death maintains its place with immense power in the human mind,
although the dead have been ousted by geography from any earthly
district, and the regions of heaven and hell are more and more
spiritualized out of definite locality into vague expressions of future
happiness and misery. Again, on the savage side we find the dominant
idea to be a continuance of the soul in a new existence, like the
present life, or idealized and exaggerated on its model; while on the
cultured side the doctrine of judgment and moral retribution prevails
with paramount, though not indeed absolute sway. What, then, has been
the historical course of theological opinion, to have produced in
different stages of culture these contrasted phases of doctrine?
In some respects, theories deriving savage from more civilized ideas are
tenable. In certain cases, to consider a particular savage doctrine of
the future state as a fragmentary, or changed, or corrupted outcome of
the religion of higher races, seems as easy as to reverse this view by
taking savagery as representing the starting-point. It is open to anyone
to suppose that the doctrine of transmigration among American savages
and African barbarians may have been degraded from elaborate systems of
metempsychosis established among philosophic nations like the Hindus;
that the North American and South African doctrine of continued
existence in a subterranean world may be derived from similar beliefs
held by races at the level of the ancient Greeks; that when rude tribes
in the Old or New World assign among the dead a life of happiness to
some, and of misery to others, this idea may have been inherited or
adopted from cultured nations holding more strongly and systematically
the doctrine of retribution. In such cases the argument is to a great
extent the same, whether the lower race be considered degenerate
descendants of a higher nation, or whether the simpler supposition be
put forward that they have adopted the ideas of some more cultured
people. These views ought to have full attention, for degenerate and
borrowed beliefs form no small item in the opinions of uncivilized
races. Yet this kind of explanation is more adapted to meet special
cases than general conditions; it is rather suited to piecemeal
treatment, than to comprehensive study, of the religions of mankind.
Worked out on a large scale, it would endeavour to account for the
doctrines of the savage world, as being a patchwork of fragments from
various religions of high nations, transported by not easily-conceived
means from their distant homes and set down in remote regions of the
earth. It may be safely said that no hypothesis can account for the
varied doctrines current among the lower tribes, without the admission
that religious ideas have been in no small measure developed and
modified in the districts where they are current.
Now this theory of development, in its fullest scope, combined with an
accessory theory of degeneration and adoption, seems best to meet the
general facts of the case. A hypothesis which finds the origin of the
doctrine of the future life in the primitive animism of the lower
races, and thence traces it along the course of religious thought, in
varied developments fitted to exacter knowledge and forming part of
loftier creeds, may well be maintained as in reasonable accordance
with the evidence. Such a theory, as has been sufficiently shown in
the foregoing chapters, affords a satisfactory explanation of the
occurrence, in the midst of cultured religions, of intellectually low
superstitions, such as that of offerings to the dead, and various
others. These, which the development theory treats naturally as
survivals from a low stage of education lingering on in a higher, are
by no means so readily accounted for by the degeneration theory. There
are more special arguments which favour the priority of the savage to
the civilized phases of the doctrine of a future life. If savages did
in general receive their views of another existence from the religious
systems of cultured nations, these systems can hardly have been such
as recognize the dominant doctrines of heaven and hell. For, as to the
locality of the future world, savage races especially favour a view
little represented in civilized belief, namely, that the life to come
is in some distant earthly country. Moreover, the belief in a fiery
abyss or Gehenna, which excites so intensely and lays hold so firmly
of the imagination of the most ignorant men, would have been
especially adapted to the minds of savages, had it come down to them
by tradition from an ancestral faith. Yet, in fact, the lower races so
seldom recognize such an idea, that even the few cases in which it
occurs lie open to suspicion of not being purely native. The
proposition that the savage doctrines descend from the more civilized
seems thus to involve the improbable supposition, that tribes capable
of keeping up traditions of Paradise, Heaven, or Hades, should
nevertheless have forgotten or discarded a tradition of Hell. Still
more important is the contrast between the continuance-theory and the
retribution-theory of the future existence, in the sections of culture
where they respectively predominate. On the one hand, the
continuance-theory, with its ideas of a ghostly life like this, is
directly vouched for by the evidence of the senses in dreams and
visions of the dead, and may be claimed as part of the ‘Natural
Religion,’ properly so called, of the lower races. On the other hand,
the retribution-theory is a dogma which this evidence of apparitions
could hardly set on foot, though capable of afterwards supporting it.
Throughout the present study of animistic religion, it constantly
comes into view that doctrines which in the lower culture are
philosophical, tend in the higher to become ethical; that what among
savages is a science of nature, passes among civilized nations into a
moral engine. Herein lies the distinction of deepest import between
the two great theories of the soul’s existence after bodily death.
According to a development theory of culture, the savage, unethical
doctrine of continuance would be taken as the more primitive,
succeeded in higher civilization by the ethical doctrine of
retribution. Now this theory of the course of religion in the distant
and obscure past is conformable with experience of its actual history,
so far as this lies within our knowledge. Whether we compare the early
Greek with the later Greek, the early Jew with the later Jew, the
ruder races of the world in their older condition with the same races
as affected by the three missionary religions of Buddhism,
Mohammedanism, Christianity, the testimony of history vouches for the
like transition towards ethical dogma.
In conclusion, though theological argument on the actual validity of
doctrines relating to the future life can have no place here, it will be
well not to pass by without further remark one great practical question
which lies fairly within the province of Ethnography. How, in the
various stages of culture, has the character and conduct of the living
been affected by the thought of a life to come? If we take the savage
beliefs as a starting-point, it will appear that these belong rather to
speculative philosophy than to practical rule of life. The lower races
hold opinions as to a future state because they think them true, but it
is not surprising that men who take so little thought of a contingency
three days off, should receive little practical impulse from vague
anticipations of a life beyond the grave. Setting aside the
consideration of possible races devoid of all thought of a future
existence, there unquestionably has been and is a great mass of mankind
whose lives are scarcely affected by such expectations of another life
as they do hold. The doctrine of continuance, making death as it were a
mere journey into a new country, can have little direct action on men’s
conduct, though indirectly it has indeed an enormous and disastrous
influence on society, leading as it does to the slaughter of wives and
slaves, and the destruction of property, for the use of the dead in the
next world. If this world to come be thought a happier region, the
looking forward to it makes men more willing to risk their lives in
battle, promotes the habit of despatching the sick and aged into a
better life, and encourages suicide when life is very hateful here. When
the half-way house between continuance and retribution is reached, and
the idea prevails that the manly virtues which give rank and wealth and
honour here will lead hereafter to yet brighter glory, then this belief
must add new force to the earthly motives which make bold warriors and
mighty chiefs. But among men who expect to become hovering ghosts at
death, or to depart to some gloomy land of shades, such expectation
strengthens the natural horror and hatred of dissolution. They tend
toward the state of mind frequent among modern Africans, whose thought
of death is that he shall drink no more rum, wear no more fine clothes,
have no more wives. The negro of our own day would feel to the utmost
the sense of those lines in the beginning of the Iliad, which describe
the heroes’ ‘souls’ being cast down to Hades, but ‘themselves’ left a
prey to dogs and carrion birds.
Rising to the level of the higher races, we mark the thought of future
existence taking a larger and larger place in the convictions of
religion, the expectation of a judgment after death gaining in intensity
and becoming, what it scarcely seems to the savage, a real motive in
life. Yet this change is not to be measured as proceeding throughout in
any direct proportion with the development of culture. The doctrine of
the future life has hardly taken deeper and stronger root in the higher
than in the middle levels of civilization. In the language of ancient
Egypt, it is the dead who are emphatically called the ‘living,’ for
their life is everlasting, whether in the world of the departed, or
nearer home in the tomb, the ‘eternal dwelling.’ The Moslem says that
men sleep in life and wake in death; the Hindu likens the body which a
soul has quitted to the bed he rises from in the morning. The story of
the ancient Getæ, who wept at births and laughed at funerals, embodies
an idea of the relation of this life to the next which comes to the
surface again and again in the history of religion, nowhere perhaps
touched in with a lighter hand than in the Arabian Nights’ tale where
Abdallah of the Sea indignantly breaks off his friendship with Abdallah
of the Land, when he hears that the dwellers on the land do not feast
and sing when one of them dies, like the dwellers in the sea, but mourn
and weep and tear their garments. Such thoughts lead on into the morbid
asceticism that culminates in the life of the Buddhist saint, eating his
food with loathing from the alms-bowl that he carries as though it held
medicine, wrapping himself in grave-clothes from the cemetery, or
putting on his disfigured robe as though it were a bandage to cover a
sore, whose looking forward is to death for deliverance from the misery
of life, whose dreamiest hope is that after an inconceivable series of
successive existences he may find in utter dissolution and not-being a
refuge even from heaven.
The belief in future retribution has been indeed a powerful engine in
shaping the life of nations. Powerful both for good and evil, it has
been made the servant-of-all-work of many faiths. Priesthoods have used
it unscrupulously for their professional ends, to gain wealth and power
for their own caste, to stop intellectual and social progress beyond the
barriers of their consecrated systems. On the banks of the river of
death, a band of priests has stood for ages to bar the passage against
all poor souls who cannot satisfy their demands for ceremonies, and
formulas, and fees. This is the dark side of the picture. On the bright
side, as we study the moral standards of the higher nations, and see how
the hopes and fears of the life to come have been brought to enforce
their teachings, it is plain that through most widely differing
religions the doctrine of future judgment has been made to further
goodness and to check wickedness, according to the shifting rules by
which men have divided right from wrong. The philosophic schools which
from classic times onward have rejected the belief in a future
existence, appear to have come back by a new road to the very
starting-point which perhaps the rudest races of men never quitted. At
least this seems true as regards the doctrine of future retribution,
which is alike absent from the belief of classes of men at the two
extremes of culture. How far the moral standard of life may have been
adjusted throughout the higher races with reference to a life hereafter,
is a problem difficult of solution, so largely do unbelievers in this
second life share ethical principles which have been more or less shaped
under its influence. Men who live for one world or for two, have high
motives of virtue in common; the noble self-respect which impels them to
the life they feel worthy of them; the love of goodness for its own sake
and for its immediate results; and beyond this, the desire to do good
that shall survive the doer, who will not indeed be in the land of the
living to see his work, but who can yet discount his expectations into
some measure of present satisfaction. Yet he who believes that his
thread of life will be severed once and for ever by the fatal shears,
well knows that he wants a purpose and a joy in life, which belong to
him who looks for a life to come. Few men feel real contentment in the
expectation of vanishing out of conscious existence, henceforth, like
the great Buddha, to exist only in their works. To remain incarnate in
the memory of friends is something. A few great spirits may enjoy in the
reverence of future ages a thousand years or so of ‘subjective
immortality;’ though as for mankind at large, the individual’s personal
interest hardly extends beyond those who have lived in his time, while
his own memory scarce outlives the third and fourth generation. But over
and above these secular motives, the belief in immortality extends its
powerful influence through life, and culminates at the last hour, when,
setting aside the very evidence of their senses, the mourners smile
through their tears, and say it is not death but life.
Footnote 120:
Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 239; Seemann, ‘Viti,’ p. 398.
Footnote 121:
Arbousset and Daumas, p. 347; Casalis, p. 247.
Footnote 122:
Brasseur, ‘Mexique,’ vol. iii. p. 20, &c.
Footnote 123:
See ‘The Buke of John Mandeuill,’ 31, edited by Geo. F. Warner,
published by the Roxburghe Club, 1889; Yule, ‘Cathay,’ Hakluyt Soc.
(Note to 3rd ed.)
Footnote 124:
Wuttke, ‘Volksaberglaube,’ p. 215. Other cases in Bastian, ‘Mensch,’
vol. ii. pp. 58, 369, &c.
Footnote 125:
Schoolcraft, ‘Algic Res.’ vol. ii. pp. 32, 64, and see ante, vol. i.
p. 312.
Footnote 126:
Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ p. 271; Klemm, ‘C. G.’ vol. ii. p. 312.
Footnote 127:
Kalewala, Rune xvi.; see Schiefner’s German Translation, and Castrén,
‘Finn. Myth.’ pp. 128, 134. A Slavonic myth in Hanusch, p. 412.
Footnote 128:
Homer. Odyss. xi. On the vivification of ghosts by sacrifice of blood,
and on libations of milk and blood, see Meiners, vol. i. p. 315, vol.
ii. p. 89; J. G. Müller, p. 85; Rochholz, ‘Deutscher Glaube und
Brauch,’ vol. i. p. 1, &c.
Footnote 129:
See for example, various details in Bastian, ‘Mensch,’ vol. ii. pp.
369-75, &c.
Footnote 130:
See vol. i. p. 481; also below, p. 52, note. Tanner’s ‘Narr.’ p. 290;
Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part iii. p. 233; Keating, vol. ii. p.
154; Loskiel, part i. p. 35; Smith, ‘Virginia,’ in Pinkerton, vol.
xiii. p. 14. See Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 269.
Footnote 131:
Callaway, ‘Zulu Tales,’ vol. i. pp. 316-20.
Footnote 132:
Shortland, ‘Traditions of New Zealand,’ p. 150; R. Taylor, ‘New
Zealand,’ p. 423. The idea, of which the classic representative
belongs to the myth of Persephone, that the living who tastes the food
of the dead may not return, and which is so clearly stated in this
Maori story, appears again among the Sioux of North America. Ahak-tah
(‘Male Elk’) seems to die, but after two days comes down from the
funeral-scaffold where his body had been laid, and tells his tale. His
soul had travelled by the path of braves through the beautiful land of
great trees and gay loud-singing birds, till he reached the river, and
saw the homes of the spirits of his forefathers on the shore beyond.
Swimming across, he entered the nearest house, where he found his
uncle sitting in a corner. Very hungry, he noticed some wild rice in a
bark dish. ‘I asked my uncle for some rice to eat, but he did not give
it to me. Had I eaten of the food for spirits, I never should have
returned to earth.’ Eastman, ‘Dacotah,’ p. 177.
Footnote 133:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 139, &c.
Footnote 134:
Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ Letter 19, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 501; Burton,
‘Dahome,’ vol. ii. p. 158. For modern visits to hell and heaven by
Christianized negro visionaries in America, see Macrae, ‘Americans at
Home,’ vol. ii. p. 91.
Footnote 135:
Lucian. Philopseudes, c. 17-28.
Footnote 136:
Plutarch. De Sera Numinis Vindicta, xxii.; and in Euseb. Præp. Evang.
xi. 36.
Footnote 137:
Ward, ‘Hindoos,’ vol. ii. p. 63.
Footnote 138:
Gregor. Dial. iv. 36. See Calmet, vol. ii. ch. 49.
Footnote 139:
Augustin. Epist. clxiv. 2.
Footnote 140:
See Pearson, ‘Exposition of the Creed;’ Bingham, ‘Ant. Ch. Ch.’ book
x. ch. iii. Art. iii. of the Church of England was reduced to its
present state by Archbp. Parker’s revision.
Footnote 141:
Codex Apocr. N. T. Evang. Nicod. ed. Giles. ‘Apocryphal Gospels,’ &c.
tr. by A. Walker; ‘Gospel of Nicodemus.’ The Greek and Latin texts
differ much.
Footnote 142:
The following details mostly from T. Wright, ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory’
(an elaborate critical dissertation on the mediæval legends of visits
to the other world).
Footnote 143:
St. John, ‘Far East,’ vol. i. p. 278. Rigg. in ‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’
vol. iv. p. 119. See also Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 397;
Bastian, ‘Oestl. Asien,’ vol. i. p. 83; Irving, ‘Astoria,’ p. 142.
Footnote 144:
Molina, ‘Chili,’ vol. ii. p. 89.
Footnote 145:
Brasseur, ‘Mexique,’ vol. iii. p. 496; Sahagun, iii. App. c. 2, x. c.
29; Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 5.
Footnote 146:
See Wright, l.c. &c.; Alger, p. 391; &c.
Footnote 147:
‘History of Colon,’ ch. 61; Pet. Martyr. Dec. i. lib. ix.; Irving,
‘Life of Columbus,’ vol. ii. p. 121.
Footnote 148:
Stanbridge in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. i. p. 299; G. F. Moore, ‘Vocab. W.
Austr.’ p. 83; Bonwick, ‘Tasmanians,’ p. 181.
Footnote 149:
Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part i. p. 321; see part iii. p. 229.
Footnote 150:
Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 107. See also Burton, ‘W. and W. fr.
W. Africa,’ p. 154 (Gold Coast).
Footnote 151:
Hesiod. Opera et Dies, Pindar, Olymp. ii. antistr. 4. Callistrat.
Hymn. in Ilgen, Scolia Græca, 10. Strabo, iii. 2, 13; Plin. iv. 36.
Footnote 152:
Loc. cit.
Footnote 153:
Procop. De Bello Goth. iv. 20; Plut. Fragm. Comm. in Hesiod. 2; Grimm,
‘D. M.’ p. 793; Hersart de Villemarqué, vol. i. p. 136; Souvestre,
‘Derniers Bretons,’ p. 37; Jas. Macpherson, ‘Introd. to Hist. of Great
Britain and Ireland,’ 2nd ed. London, 1772, p. 180; Wright, ‘St.
Patrick’s Purgatory,’ pp. 64, 129.
Footnote 154:
Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ p. 269.
Footnote 155:
Harmon, ‘Journal,’ p. 299; see Lewis and Clarke, p. 139 (Mandans).
Footnote 156:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrelig.’ pp. 140, 287; see Humboldt and
Bonpland, ‘Voy.’ vol. iii. p. 132; Falkner, ‘Patagonia,’ p. 114.
Footnote 157:
Taylor, ‘New Zealand,’ p. 232; Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 235.
Footnote 158:
Callaway, ‘Zulu Tales,’ vol. i. p. 317, &c.; Arbousset and Daumas, p.
474. See also Burton, ‘Dahome,’ vol. ii. p. 157.
Footnote 159:
Mason, ‘Karens,’ l.c. p. 195; Cross, l.c. p. 313. Turanian examples in
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 119.
Footnote 160:
See below, pp. 79, 85.
Footnote 161:
Festus, s.v. ‘manalis,’ &c.
Footnote 162:
Sophocl. Œdip. Tyrann. 178; Lucian. De Luctu, 2. See classic details
in Pauly, ‘Real-Encyclop.’ art. ‘inferi.’
Footnote 163:
Birch in Bunsen’s ‘Egypt,’ vol. v.; Wilkinson, ‘Ancient Eg.’ vol. ii.
p. 368; Alger, p. 101.
Footnote 164:
Smith, ‘History of Virginia,’ in ‘Works’ ed. by Arber; Pinkerton, vol.
xiii. pp. 14, 41; vol. xii. p. 604; see below, p. 95.
Footnote 165:
Thorpe, ‘Analecta Anglo-Saxonica,’ p. 115.
Footnote 166:
Schirren, p. 151. See Taylor, ‘N. Z.’ p. 525.
Footnote 167:
Meiners, vol. ii. p. 781; Maury, ‘Magie,’ &c. p. 170.
Footnote 168:
Oviedo, ‘Nicaragua,’ p. 160; Brinton, p. 288.
Footnote 169:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ p. 138, see also 220 (Caribs), 402
(Peru), 505, 660 (Mexico); Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’ p. 233;
Taylor, ‘Physical Theory,’ ch. xvi.; Alger, ‘Future Life,’ p. 590; see
also above, p. 16, note.
Footnote 170:
Humboldt and Bonpland, ‘Voy.’ vol. v. p. 90; Martius, ‘Ethnog. Amer.’
vol. i. p. 233; Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 531; Plutarch. De Facie in
Orbe Lunæ; Bastian, ‘Psychologie,’ pp. 80, 89 (souls in stars).
Footnote 171:
See Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part i. pp. 269, 311; Smith,
‘Virginia,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 54; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 223;
Squier, ‘Abor. Mon. of N. Y.’ p. 156; Catlin, ‘N. A. Ind.’ vol. i. p.
180.
Footnote 172:
Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 134; Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 103;
Taylor, ‘New Zealand,’ pp. 101, 114, 256.
Footnote 173:
Callaway, ‘Rel. of Amazulu,’ p. 393; Burton, ‘W. and W. fr. W. Afr.’
p. 454; Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 295.
Footnote 174:
Herodot. iv. 158, see 185, and Rawlinson’s note. See Smith’s ‘Dic. of
the Bible,’ s.v. ‘firmament.’ Eisenmenger, part i. p. 408.
Footnote 175:
Eyre, ‘Australia,’ vol. ii. p. 367.
Footnote 176:
Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part iv. p. 240 (but compare part v. p.
403); Morgan, ‘Iroquois,’ p. 176; Sproat, ‘Savage Life,’ p. 209.
Footnote 177:
D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. ii. pp. 319, 328; see Martius,
vol. i. p. 485 (Jumanas).
Footnote 178:
J. G. Müller, p. 403; Brasseur, ‘Mexique,’ vol. iii. p. 496;
Kingsborough, ‘Mexico,’ Cod. Letellier, fol. 20.
Footnote 179:
Max Müller, ‘Chips,’ vol. i. p. 46; Roth in ‘Zeitschr. d. Deutsch.
Morgenl. Ges.’ vol. iv. p. 427.
Footnote 180:
Cross, ‘Karens,’ l.c. pp. 309, 313; Le Jeune in ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1634,
p. 16; Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ p. 272; Callaway, ‘Zulu Tales,’ vol. i.
p. 316; Klemm, ‘Cultur-Gesch.’ vol. ii. pp. 310, 315; J. G. Müller,
‘Amer. Urrel.’ pp. 139, 286.
Footnote 181:
Bastian, ‘Psychologie,’ p. 224; Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part ii.
p. 135.
Footnote 182:
D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. i. p. 364; Spix and Martius,
‘Brasilien,’ vol. i. p. 383; De Laet, Novus Orbis, xv. 2.
Footnote 183:
Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 258.
Footnote 184:
Magyar, ‘Süd-Afrika,’ p. 336.
Footnote 185:
Edda: ‘Gylfaginning.’
Footnote 186:
‘Koran,’ ch. lv. lvi.
Footnote 187:
Eisenmenger, ‘Entdecktes Judenthum,’ part i. p. 7.
Footnote 188:
Hardy, ‘Manual of Budhism,’ pp. 5, 24; Köppen, ‘Rel. des Buddha,’ vol.
i. p. 235, &c.
Footnote 189:
Brebeuf in ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1636, p. 105.
Footnote 190:
Sahagun, ‘Hist. de Nueva España,’ book iii. appendix ch. i., in
Kingsborough, vol. vii.; Brasseur, vol. iii. p. 571.
Footnote 191:
Casalis, ‘Basutos,’ pp. 247, 254.
Footnote 192:
Burton, ‘Dahome,’ vol. ii. p. 156; ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 403;
‘Wit and Wisdom from W. Afr.’ pp. 280, 449; see J. G. Müller, p. 140.
Footnote 193:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 126, &c.; Kalewala, Rune xv. xvi. xlv. &c.;
Meiners, vol. ii. p. 780.
Footnote 194:
Homer. Il. ix. 405; Odyss. xi. 218, 475; Virg. Æn. vi. 243, &c., &c.
Footnote 195:
Gen. xxxv. 29; xxv. 8; xxxvii. 35; Job xi. 8; Amos ix. 2; Psalm
lxxxix. 48; Ezek. xxxi., xxxii.; Isaiah xiv. 9, xxxviii. 10-18; 1
Sam., xxviii. 15; Eccles. ix. 10. ‘Records of the Past,’ vol. i. pp.
141-9; Sayce ‘Lectures on Hist. of Rel.’ part ii.; Alger, ‘Critical
History of the Doctrine of a Future Life,’ ch. viii.
Footnote 196:
The doctrine of reversal, as in Kamchatka, where rich and poor will
change places in the other world (Steller, pp. 269-72), is too
exceptional in the lower culture to be generalized. See Steinhauser,
‘Rel. des Negers,’ l. c., p. 135. A Wolof proverb is ‘The more
powerful one is in this world, the more servile one will be in the
next.’ (Burton, ‘Wit and Wisdom,’ p. 28.)
Footnote 197:
Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. pp. 245, 397; see also Turner,
‘Polynesia,’ p. 237 (Samoans); Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 105.
Footnote 198:
Sproat, ‘Savage Life,’ p. 209.
Footnote 199:
‘Rec. des Voy. au Nord,’ vol. v. p. 23 (Natchez); Garcilaso de la
Vega, ‘Commentarios Reales,’ lib. i. c. 23, tr. by C. R. Markham;
Prescott, ‘Peru,’ vol. i. pp. 29, 83; J. G. Müller, p. 402, &c.
Footnote 200:
Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 259.
Footnote 201:
Charlevoix, ‘Nouvelle France,’ vol. vi. p. 77; Lescarbot, ‘Hist. de la
Nouvelle France,’ Paris, 1619, p. 679.
Footnote 202:
Lery, ‘Hist. d’un Voy. en Brésil,’ p. 234; Coreal, ‘Voi. aux Indes
Occ.’ i. p. 224.
Footnote 203:
Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ p. 430.
Footnote 204:
‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ vol. i. p. 325.
Footnote 205:
Brebeuf in ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1636, p. 104; see also Meiners, vol. ii. p.
769; J. G. Müller, pp. 89, 139.
Footnote 206:
Chateaubriand, ‘Voy. en Amérique’ (Religion).
Footnote 207:
Oviedo, ‘Nicaragua,’ p. 22; Torquemada, ‘Monarquia Indiana,’ book
xiii. c. 48; Sahagun, book iii. app. ch. i.-iii. in Kingsborough, vol.
vii. Compare Anderson, ‘Exp. to W. Yunnan,’ p. 125. (Shans, good men
and mothers dying in child-birth to heaven, bad men and those killed
by the sword to hell.)
Footnote 208:
Alger, ‘Future Life,’ p. 93.
Footnote 209:
Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’ p. 300.
Footnote 210:
Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 397; see also Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol.
i. p. 243.
Footnote 211:
Brinton, p. 242, &c.
Footnote 212:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ pp. 87, 224. See also the opinions of
Meiners, ‘Gesch. der Religion,’ vol. ii. p. 768; Wuttke. ‘Gesch. des
Heidenthums,’ vol. i. p. 115.
Footnote 213:
Ellis, l. c.; Moerenhout, ‘Voyage,’ vol. i. p. 433.
Footnote 214:
Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ p. 378.
Footnote 215:
Bosman, ‘Guinea,’ letter x.; in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 401.
Footnote 216:
St. John, ‘Far East,’ vol. i. p. 181; see Mundy, ‘Narrative,’ vol. i.
p. 332.
Footnote 217:
Macpherson, p. 92. Compare Moerenhout, l. c. (Tahiti).
Footnote 218:
Mason, l. c. p. 195. See also De Brosses, ‘Nav. aux Terres Australes,’
vol. ii. p. 482 (Caroline Is.).
Footnote 219:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ pp. 136, 144. See Georgi, ‘Reise im Russ.
Reich,’ vol. i. p. 278. Compare accounts of Purgatory among the North
American Indians, apparently derived from missionaries, in Morgan,
‘Iroquois,’ p. 169; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 345.
Footnote 220:
See T. Wright, ‘St. Patrick’s Purgatory.’
Footnote 221:
Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 171, 191; Bowen, ‘Yoruba Lang.’ p. xvi. See J. L.
Wilson, p. 210.
Footnote 222:
Brebeuf in ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1635, p. 35; 1636, p. 105. Catlin, ‘N. A.
Ind.’ vol. ii. p. 127; Long’s ‘Exp.’ vol. i. p. 180. See Brinton, p.
247; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191, vol. iii. p. 197; and the collection of
myths of the Heaven-Bridge and Heaven-Gulf in ‘Early History of
Mankind,’ chap. xii.
Footnote 223:
Smith, ‘New England,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 244.
Footnote 224:
Wilson in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 303.
Footnote 225:
Birch, Introduction to and translation of the ‘Book of the Dead,’ in
Bunsen, vol. v.; Wilkinson, ‘Ancient Eg.’ vol. v.
Footnote 226:
For references to Rig Veda see Muir, ‘Sanskrit Texts,’ sec. xviii.;
Max Müller, Lecture on Vedas in ‘Essays,’ vol. ii.
Footnote 227:
‘Journ. Ind. Archip.’ new ser. vol. ii. p. 210. See Bastian, ‘Oestl.
Asien,’ vol. iii. p. 387.
Footnote 228:
Spiegel, ‘Avesta,’ ed. Bleek, vol. iii. pp. 136, 163; see vol. i. pp.
xviii. 90, 141; vol. ii. p. 68.