bones from being stolen^ they were deposited on the tops of the most inaccessible mountains. Among the Kaffirs^ while the bodies of common people are exposed to be devoured by wolves, those of chiefs are buried in their cattle-pens; and Livingstone tells us that a Bechuana chief is buried " in his cattle-pen^ and all the cattle are driven for an hour or two around and over the grave, so that it may be quite obliterated." Still stranger was the pre- caution taken on behalf of the ruler of Bogota. In prepara- tion for the death of the cazique, certain special attendants, keeping secret the place of their operations, made a very secure resting-place. "They divert,'* says Simon, "the course of a river, and in its bed make the grave. * * * As soon as the cazique is buried, they let the stream return to its natural course.'* While in these cases the desire to hide the corpse and its belongings from enemies, brute and human, predominates; in other cases the desire to protect the corpse against imagined discomfort predominates. We have already noted the means sometimes used to facilitate its breathing, supposed to be still going on; and probably a kindred purpose originated the practice followed by many races of raising the corpse to a height above the ground. Sundry of the Polynesians place dead bodies on scaffolds. In Australia, too, and in the Andaman Islands, the corpse is occasionally thus disposed of. Among the Zulus, while some bury and some bum, others expose in trees; and Dyaks and Kyans have a similar custom. But it is in America, where the natives, as we see, betray in other ways the desire to shield the corpse from pressure, that exposure on raised stages is commonest. Burton tells us that the Dakotahs adopt this method; Morgan states that at one time it was the practice of the Iroquois; Cafclin, describing the Mandans as having scaffolds on which "their ' dead live,* as they term it," remarks that they are thus kept out of the way of wolves and dogs; and Schoolcraft asserts the THl IDEAS or DEATH AND RB8TTBBECTI0N. I77 same of the Cliippewas. Among South- American tribes, a like combination of ends was sought bj using chasms and cayems as places of sepulture. The Garibs did this. Humboldt tells us that the Guiana Indians bury their dead^ only in the absence of cavities amid the rocks. The Chibchas interred in a kind of '' bobedas '' or cavesj which had been made for the purpose. And the several modes of treating the dead adopted by the ancient Peruyians, all of them secured^ as far as might be^ both ends — protection, and absence of supposed inconvenience to the corpse. Where they had not natural clefts in the rocks, they made '^ great holes and excavations with closed doors before them; '' or else they kept the embalmed bodies in temples.
Leaving the New World, throughout which the primitive conception of death as a long-suspended animation seems to have been especially vivid, we find elsewhere less recog- nition of any sensitiveness in the dead to pressure or want of air: there is simply a recognition of the need for pre* venting destruction by animals, or injury by men and demons. This is the obvious motive for covering over the corpse; and, occasionally, the assigned motive. Earth is sometimes not enough; and then additional protection is given. Park says that, by the Mandingoes, '' prickly bushes are laid upon " the grave, " to prevent the wolves from digging up the body "; and the JolofPs, a tribe of Coast Negroes, use the same precaution. In other cases, stones are added. The Arabs keep out wild beasts in this way; and very generally we find either stones and earth, or stones alone, which are evidently the most efFectual. Crantz tells us that the Esquimaux protect the corpse by heavy stones. The Bodo and Dhimals pile stones '' upon the grave to pre- vent disturbance by jackals,^' etc. In Damara-land, a chief's tomb consists of a large heap of stones surrounded by ihom-bushes. And now observe a remarkable sequence. The kindred of the deceased, from real or pro- fessed affection, and others from fear of what he may do 178 TUB DATA OF BOCIOLOGY.
^hen his double returns^ join in augmeniiDg the protec- tive mass. Park tells as of the Inland Negroes^ that in some places large cairns are formed over graves^ by passing relatives who continually add stones to the heap; and of certain C<^ntral Americans Urrutia says^ it is a custom still preserved to throw a handful of earth, or a stone, upon the grave of the distinguished dead, as a tribute to their memory. Obviously, in proportion as the deceased is loved, reverenced, or dreaded, this process is carried further. Hence, the increasing of the heap for protective purposes, brings about an increasing of it as a mark of power or wealth. Thus, of the Central Americans, Ximenez tells us that they " raised mounds of earth corre- sponding in height with the importance of the deceased.^' Of the Chibchas, Cieza says — " they pile up such masses of earth in making their tombs, that they look like small hills ^'; and Acosta, describing certain other burial mounds in those parts as " heaped up during the mourning,'' adds — *' as that extended as long as drink was granted, the size of the tumulus shows the fortune of the deceased.'' UUoa makes a kindred remark respecting the monuments of the Peruvians.
So that, beginning with the small mound necessarily resulting fi*om the displacement of earth by the buried body, we come at length to such structures as the Egyptian pyramids: the whole series originating in the wish to preserve the body from injuries hindering resuscitation.
§ 88. Another group of customs, having the same purpose, must be named. I refer to the adoption of processes which arrest decay. Along with the belief that reanimation will be prevented if the returning other-self finds a mutilated corpse, or none at all; there goes the belief that to insuro reanimation, putrefaction must be stopped. Naturally there arises the inference that if destruction of the corpse by animals prevents revival, decomposition of it may prevent TtlE IDKAS or DCATH AND RESlTKRlCrTTOlf. 179 rtyvlvul. That this idea leaves no traces among men in very low states, is probably due to the fact that no methods of arresting decomposition have been discovered by them. But among more advanced races, we find proofs that the idea arises and that it leads to action.
Respecting the prompting motive, we have the statement of Herrera concerning certain of the Mexicans, who believed that " the dead were to rise again, and when their bones were dry, they laid them together in a basket, and hung them up to a bongh of a tree, that they might not have to look for them at the resurrection." Similarly, the Peru- vians, explaining their observances to Garcilasso, said — "We, therefore, in order that we may not have to search for our hair and nails at a time when there will be much hurry and confusion, place them in one place, that they may bo broaght together more conveniently, and, whenever it is possible, we are also careful to spit in one place."
With snch indications to guide us, we cannot doubt the meaning of the trouble taken to prevent decay. When we read that in Africa the Loango people smoke their corpses, and that in America some of the Chibchas " dried the bodies of their dead in barbacoas on a slow fire;" we must infer that the aim was to keep the flesh in a state of integrity against the time of resuscitation. And on finding that amon^ these same Chibchas, as also by some of the Mexicans, and by the Peruvians, the bodies of the kings and caziq^os were embalmed; we must conclude that em- balming was adopted simply as a more effectual method of achieving the same end: especially after noting that the pre- servation was great in proportion as the rank was high; as shown by Acosta's remark that "the bo^y [of Ynca rnpanqui] was so complete and well preserved, by means of a sort of bitumen, that it appeared to be alive.'' Evidence that like ideas suggested the like practices of - go Somo further funeral rites, indirectly implying 180 THE DATA Of SOCIOIiOGT.
the belief in resurrection^ must be named; partly because tliej lead to certain customs hereafter to be explained. I have in view the bodily mutilations, etc., which, in so many cases, are marks of mourning.
We read in the Iliail that at the funeral of Fatroclus, the Myrmidons ''covered all the dead body over with hair, which, cutting off, they threw upon it"; further, that Achilles placed his shom-off locks in the hands of the corpse; and that this act went along with the dedica- tion of himself to avenging Fatroclus, and with the promise to join him afterward. Hair is thus used as a gage: a por- tion of the body is given as symbolizing a gift of the whole. And this act of affection, or mode of propitiation, or both, prevails widely among uncivilized races.
As further showing what the rite means, I may begin with the statement of Bonwick, that, by Tasmanian women, " the hair, cut off in grief, was thrown upon the mound;" and may add the fact furnished by Winterbottom, who, respect- ing the Soosoos, says that one grave was seen — ^that of a woman — with her eldest daughter's hair placed upon it. Where we do not leam what becomes of the hair, we yet in numerous cases leam that it is cut off. Among the Coast Negroes a dead man's wives shave their heads; and some Damaras, on the death of a valued friend, do the like. Similarly with the Mpongwe, the Kaffirs, and the Hotten- tots. In Hawaii and Samoa the hair is cut or torn; the Tongans shave the head; the New Zealanders, in some cases, clip half the head-hair short; among the Tannese '' cutting off the hair is a sign of mourning;" and on the death of the late Queen of Madagascar, '' all the people, with the excep- tion of about twenty of the highest officers, had to cut off their hair." In America it is the same. A Greenlander's widow sacrifices her tresses; the near relatives of a dead Chinook cut their hair off; and we find that the Chippe- wayans, the Comanches, the Dakotahs, the Mandans, the Tupis, do the like. The significance of this rite THE IDIAS Of DEATH AND BESURSECTION. 181 as a mark of sabordination, and as a propitiation of the presently-reviving dead^ is shown by sundry facts. Thus, Shortt tells us that among the Todas, there is a cut- ting ofE of the hair at a death, but only " by the younger members to denote their respect for their seniors ''; and Burckhardt says of the Arabs that, ''on the death of a father, the children of both sexes cut oS their * * * tresses of hair in testimony of grief." By South Americans, both political and domestic subordination are thus marked. We learn from DobrizhofEer that among the Abipones, " on the death of a cacique, all the men under his authority shave their long hair as a sign of grief." So of the Peruvians, Gieza tells us that " the Indians of Llacta-cunya made great lamentations over their dead, and the women who are not killed, with all the servants, are shorn of their hair." That is to say, those wives who did not give themselves wholly to go with the dead^ gave their hair as a pledge.
Like in their meanings are the accompanying seU-bleedings and mutilations. At funerals, the Tasmanians "lacerated their bodies with sharp shells and stones." The Australians cat themselves; and Cook says the same of the Tahitians and the New Zealanders. Mariner ascribes this custom to the Tongans. We read that among the Greenlanders the men " sometimes gash their bodies;" and that the Chinooks "disfigure their bodies." Schoolcraft testifies that the widows of the Comanches "cut their arms, legs, and hodies in gashes, until they are exhausted by the loss of blood, and frequently commit suicide;" and Burton says the Dakotahs " not unfrequently gash themselves and am- putate one or more fingers." In this last instance we are introduced to the fact that not blood only, but some- times a portion of the body, is given, where the expression of reverence or obedience is intended to be great. Thus Cook tells us that in Tonga, on the death of a high priest, the first joint on the little finger is amputated; and we learu 182 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
from Ellis tliat^ wben a king or cldef in tlie Sandwich Islands died^ the mutilations undergone by his subjects were— tatooing a spot on the tongue, cutting the ears, or knocking out one of the front teeth. On remembering that blood, and portions of the body, are offered in religious sacrifice; on reading that the Dahomans sprinkle human blood on the tombs of their old kings, to get the aid of their ghosts in war; on finding that the Mexi- cans gaye their idols their blood to drink, that some priests bled themselves daily, and that even male infants were bled; on being told that the like was done in Yucatan, and Guate- mala, and San Salvador, and that the coast-people of Peru offered blood alike to idols and on sepulchres; we cannot doubt that propitiation is the original purpose of these funeral rites. It is one of the indirect results of the belief in approaching resuscitation, where it is joined with canni- balism, still practised or previously practised.
That such is the meaning is, indeed, in one case dis- tinctly asserted. Turner tells us that a Samoan ceremony on the occasion of a decease, was ^' beating the head with stones till the blood runs; and this they called 'an offering of blood* for the dead.** § 90. All these various observances, then, imply the con- viction that death is a long-suspended animation. The endeavours to revive the corpse by ill-usage; the calling it by name, and addressing \o it reproaches or inquiries; the endeavours to feed it, and the leaving with it food and drink j the measures taken to prevent its discomfort from pressure and impediments to breathing; the supplying of fire to cook by, or to keep off cold; the care taken to pre- vent injury by wild beasts, and to arrest decay; and even these various self -in juries symbolizing subordination; — all unite to show this belief. And this belief was avowed.
Thus in Africa, according to Bastian, the Ambamba people think that a man remains " in the state of the dead THE IDEAS OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 183 three days; some^ however^ are carried by the fetish into the bash, remaining dead for years: in both cases they are hronght to life again/' Lander, referring to a man dead a few days previonsly among the Inland Negroes, says '' there was a public declaration that his tutelary god had resus- citated him/' And Liyingstone was thought by a Zambesi chief, to be an Italian, '^ Siriatomba, risen from the dead/' Turning to Polynesia, we find, among the incongruous be- liefs of the Fijians, one showing a transition between the primitiye idea of a renewed ordinary life, and the idea of another life elsewhere: they think that death became uni- versal because the children of the first man did not dig him up again, as one of the gods commanded. Had they done so, the god said all men would have lived again after a few days' interment. And then, in Peru, where so much care was taken of the corpse, resuscitation was an article of futh. (jarcilasso says, '^ the Yncas believed in a univeraal resurrection — ^not for glory or punishment, but for a renewal of this temporal life/' Just noting past exhibitions of this belief among higher races — such as the fact that ^in Moslem law, prophets, martyrs, and saints are not supposed to be dead: their property, therefore, remains their own;" and such as the fact that in Christian Europe, distinguished men, from Charlemagne down to the first Napoleon, have been ex- pected to re-appear; let us note the still existing form of this belief. It differs from the primitive belief less than we suppose. I do not merely mean that in saying "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," the current creed implies that death is not a natural event; just as clearly as do the savage creeds which ascribe death to some difference of opinion among the gods, or disregard of their directions. Nor do I refer only to the further &cts that in our State Prayer-Book, bodily resurrection is un- hesitatingly asserted; and that poems of more modern date contain detailed descriptions of the dead rising again.
L, 184 THB DATA OF SOCIOLOQT.
I have in view facts showing that^ even stilly many avow this belief as clearly as it was lately avowed by a leading ecclesiastic. On Jnly 5th^ 1874^ the Bishop of Lincoln preached against cremation^ as tending to undermine the faith of mankind in a bodily resurrection. Not only^ in common with the primitive man^ does Dr. Wordsworth hold that the body of each buried person will be resus- citated; but he also holds^ in common with the primitive man^ that destruction of the body will prevent resuscita- tion.* And now observe^ finally^ the kind of modification through which the civilized belief in resurrection is made partially unlike the savage belief. There is no abandon- ment of it: the anticipated event is simply postponed. Supematuralism^ gradually discredited by science^ transfers its supernatural occurrences to remoter places in time or space. As believers in special creations suppose them to happen^ not where we are^ but in distant parts of the world; as miracles^ admitted not to take place now^ are said to have taken place during a past dispensation; so^ reanima- tion of the body^ no longer expected as immediate^ is ex- pected at an indefinitely far-off time. The idea of death differentiates slowly from the idea of temporary insensi- bility. At first reanimation is looked for in a few hours, or in a few days, or in a few years; and gradually, as death becomes more definitely conceived, reanimation is not looked for till the end of all things.
* Had he been similarly placed, the biBhop would doubUesa have taken the same coarse as the Ynca Atahuallpa, who turned Christian in order to be hanged instead of bumt> because (he said to his wives and to the Indians) if his body was not burnt, his father, the Sun, would raise him again.
CHAPTER Xm.
CHAPTER Xm.
THE IDBAS OF SOULS^ GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS, ETC.
§ 91. The trareller Park, after narrating a sndden ren- contre with two negro horsemen, who galloped off in terror, goes on to say: — ''About a mile to the westward, they fell in with my attendants, to whom they related a frightful story: it seems their fears had dressed me in the flowing robes of a tremendous spirit; and one of them a£Bbrmed that when I made my appearance, a cold blast of wind came pouring down upon him from the sky, like so much cold water.''
I quote this passage to remind the reader how effectually fear, when joined with a pre-established belief, produces illusions supporting that belief; and how readily, therefore^ the primitive man finds proof that the dead reappear.
Another preliminary: — A clergyman known to me, ac- cepting in full the doctrine of the natural evolution of species, nevertheless professes to accept literally the state- ment that '' QoA formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ": an in- congruity of beliefs which may almost pair off with that of the Catholics, who seeing, touching, and tasting the un- changed wafer, nevertheless hold it to be flesh.
These acceptances of irreconcilable conceptions, even by cultivated members of civilized communities, I instance as suggesting how readily primitive men, low in intelli- gence and without knowledge, may entertain conceptions 186 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
which are mutually destructivB. It seems difficult to pic- ture them as really thinking that the dead^ though buried, come back in tangible shapes. And where they assert that the duplicate goes away, leaving the corpse behind, there appears no consistency in the accompanying supposi- tion that it needs the food and drink they provide, or wants clothing and fire. For if they conceive it as aeriform or ethereal, then how can they suppose it to consume solid food, as in many cases they do literally; and if they regard it as substantial, then how do they conceive it to co-exist with the corpse, and to leave the grave without disturbing its covering?
But after reminding ourselves, as above, of the extremes of credulity and illogicality possible even to educated men of developed races, we shall see reason for concluding that the primitive man's ideas of the other-self, impossible though they look to us, can nevertheless be entertained.
§ 92. Typical as it is, I must set out with the often-cited notion of the Australians, so definitely expressed by the condemned criminal who said he should jump up a white- fellow and have plenty of sixpences. Many have heard of the case of Sir George Grey, who was recognized and caressed by an Australian woman as her deceased son come back; and equally illustrative is the case of Mrs. Thomson, who, regarded as the returned other-self of a late member of the tribe, was sometimes spoken of by the Australians she lived with as *' Poor thing I she is nothing — only a ghost 1 ^' Bonwick states that a settler with a bent arm, being identified as a lately-deceased native who had a bent arm, was saluted with — "O, my Bulludee, you jump up white fellow I ^' And, giving other instances, Bonwick quotes Davis's explanation of this Australian belief, as being that black men, when skinned before eating them, are seen to be white; and that therefore the whites are taken for their ghosts. But a like belief is elsewhere entertained without this explanation. Tamer says the New Caledonians ''think white men are the spirits of the dead^ and bring sickness/' Agam^ " at Damley Island^ the Prince of Wales' Islands^ and Cape York^ the word used at each place to signify a white man also means a ghost/' We learn from Barton that Ejramen call Eoropeans ''the ghost-tribe"; a people in old Calabar call them " spirit-men "; and the Mpongwe of the Gaboon call them " ghosts/' The implication, pat by these many cases beyond donbt, that the duplicate is at first conceived as no less material than its original, is shown with equal clearness in other ways among other peoples. Thus the Karens say '' the \A [spirit] sometimes appears after death, and cannot then be distinguished from the person himself/' The Araucanians think " the soul, when separated from the body, exercises in another life the same functions it performed in this, with no other difference except that they are unaccom- panied with fatigue or satiety." "The inhabitants of Quimbaya," Piedrahita says, "acknowledged that there was something immortal in man, but they did not distinguish the soul from the body;" and Herrera asserts the like. The distinct statement of the ancient Peruyians was that " the souls must rise out of their tombs, with all that be- longed to their bodies." And, according to Acosta, they joined with this the belief "that the souls of the dead rove about, and feel cold and thirst, and hunger and toil/' Besides being expressed, this belief is implied by acts. The practice of some Peruvians, who scattered "flour of maize, or quinua, about the dwelling, to see, as they say, by the footsteps whether the deceased has been moving about," is paralleled elsewhere: even among the Jews, sifted ashes WBre used for tracing the footsteps of demons; and by some of them, though not by others, demons were regarded as the spirits of the wicked dead. And a like idea must exist among those Negroes mentioned by Bastian, who put thorns in the paths leading to their villages, to keep away rs^m 188 THE DATA 01? SOCIOLOGY.
demons. Elsewhere^ the alleged demands for provisions by the dead have the same implication. " Give ns some f ood^ that we may eat and set out/' say certain Amazolu spirits^ who represent themselves as going to fight the spirits of another place. Among the North-American Indians^ the spirits are supposed to smoke; and in Fiji^ it is said that the gods " eat the souls of those who are destroyed by men '* — first roasting them. It is also a Fijian belief that some *' souls are killed by men:" the second self may have to be fought in battle like the first. So, too, by the Amazulu, '' it is supposed that the Amatongo, or the dead, can die again. ♦ * * We have allusions to their being killed in battle, and to their being carried away by the river.*' And this belief in the substantiality of the double, was shared by the ancient Hindus, the Tartars, and by Europeans in old times.
§ 93. The transitions between this original and most crude conception, and the less crude conceptions which come later, cannot be clearly traced; but there are indications of a progressive modification.
Something like a semi-substantiality is implied by the ideas of the Tahitians, described by!Eillis as ''vague and indefinite.'* For while they hold that most spirits of the dead are *' eaten by the gods,*' not at once, but by degrees, (implying separability of the parts); they hold that others are not eaten, and sometimes appear to the survivors in dreams: this re-appearance being probably the ground for the inference that they are not eaten. Again, a substan- tiality that is partial if not complete^ is implied by the ascription to ghosts of organs of sense, through which they have ordinary perceptions. The Yakuts leave conspicuous marks to show the spirits where the offerings are left; and, according to Orozco y Berra, the Indians of Yucatan hold '' that the soul of the deceased returns to the worlds and in order that on leaving the tomb it may not lose the way to the domestic hearth^ they mark the path from the hat to the tomb with chalk/^ The materiality implied by physical vision^ is similarly ascribed by the Nicobar people^ who think that the " malignant spirits [of the dead] are eftectnally prevented from taking their abode again in the village^ by a screen made of pieces of cloth, which keeps out of their baneful sights the place where the houses stand/' The Greek conception of ghosts seems to hare been of allied kind. "It is only/' says Thirlwall, ''after their strength has been repaired by the blood of a slaughtered victim, that they recover reason and memory for a time, can recognize their living friends, and feel anxiety for those they have left on earth/' That these dwellers in Hades have some kind of substantiality, is implied both by the fact that they come trooping to drink the sacrificial blood, and by the fact that Ulysses keeps them back with his sword. Moreover, in this world of the dead, he beholds Tityns having his liver torn by vultures; speaks of Aga- memnon's soul as " shedding the warm tear/' and describes the ghost of Sisyphus as sweating from his efforts in thrust- ing.up the still-gravitating stone. And here I may fitly refer to a passage in the Iliad, showing us, in a very clear way, how the primitive notion becomes modified. On awaking after dreaming of, and vainly trying to embrace, Patroclus, Achilles says — ''Alas, there is indeed then, even in the dwellings of Hades, a certain spirit and image, but there is no body in it at all." Yet, being described as speaking and lamenting, the ghost of Patroclus is conceived as having the materiality implied by such acts. Thus, in the mind of the Homeric age, the dream, while continuing to furnish proof of an after-existence, furnished experiences which, when reasoned upon, necessitated an alteration in the idea of the other-self: complete substantiality was negatived.