Nor do the conceptions which prevailed among tho Hebrews appear to have been different. We find ascribed 190 THl DATA OV SOCBOIOOT.
now substantiality, now insubstantiality, and now some- thing between the two. The resuscitated Christ is at the same time represented as having wounds that admit of tac- tual examination; and nevertheless as passing unimpeded through a closed door or through walls. And their super- natural beings generally, whether good or bad, and whether revived dead or not, were similarly conceived. Here angels dining with Abraham, or pulling Lot into the house, are described as having complete corporeity; there both angels and demons are spoken of as swarming invisibly in the sur- rounding air, thus being incorporeal; ^ elsewhere they are said to have wings, implying locomotion by mechanical action, and are represented as rubbing against, and wear- ing out, the dresses of Babbins in the synagogue.
Manifestly the stories about ghosts universally accepted among ourselves in past times, involved the same thought. The ability to open doors, to clank chains and make othei* noises, implies a considerable coherence of substance; and this coherence must have been assumed, however little the assumption was avowed.
For many further illustrations of this belief in semi- substantiality, I may refer the reader to Mr. Tyler's Primi- tive Culture, Vol, I. pp. 455 — 6 (2nd Ed.)
§ 94. As implied above, we find, mingled with these ideas of semi-substantial duplicates, and inconsistently held along with them, the ideas of aeriform and shadowy duplicates. The contrast between the dying man and the man just dead, has naturally led to a conception of the departed in terms of the difference: each marked differ- ence generating a correlative conception.
The heart ceases to beat. Is then the heart the other- self that goes away? Some races think it is; as shown by Bobadilla's cross-examination of the Indians of Nicaragua. He asks of one — " Do those who go upwards, live there as they do Jhiere, with the same body and head and the rest?"
THE IDIAS OF SOUTiS^ GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS^ ETC. 191 To which the reply is — " Only the heart goes there/' And further questioning brings out a confused idea that there are two hearts, and that ^^ that heart which goes is what nakes them live/' So, too, among the Chancas of ancient Peru, Cieza says, soul '^ they called Sonccon, a word which also means heart/' More conspicuous as the cessation of breathing is than the cessation of the heart's action, it leads to the more prevalent identification of the de- parted other-self with the departed breath. Among these same Central Americans, this identification co-existed with the last. To one of BobadilWs questions an Indian replied — " When they are dying, something like a person called yulio, goes off their mouth, and goes there, where that man and woman stay, and there it stays like a person and does not die, and the body remains here.'' That the same idea has been generally held by higher races is too well known to need proof. I will name only the graphic presentation of it in illustrated ecclesiastical works of past times; as in the MortUogus, etc., of the Prior Conrad Eeitter, published in 1508, which contains woodcuts of dying men out of whose months smaller figures of themselves are escaping, and being received, in one case by an angel, and in another by a devil. Of direct identifications of the soul with the shadow, there are many illustrations; such as that of the Greenlanders, who, Crantz tells us, " believe in two souls — ^viz., the shadow and the breath." It will suffice, in farther support of ancient examples, to cite the modem example of the Amazulu, as given by Dr. Callaway. Looking at the facts from the missionary point of view, and so invert- ing the order of genesis, he says — '^ Scarcely anything can more clearly prove the degradation which has fallen on the natives than their not understanding that isitunzi meant the spirit, and not merely the shadow cast by the body; for there now exists among them the strange belief that the dead body casts no shadow." The conceptions of the other-self thus resulting, tending 192 THB DATA OF 800IOLOQT.
to supplant tlie conceptions of it as qnite substantial^ or lialf substantial^ because less conspicuously at variance with the evidence^ lead to observances implying the belief that ghosts need spaces to pass through^ though not large ones. Thus the Iroquois leave " a slight opening in the grave for it [the soul] to re-enter;'^ and in other cases^ with the same motive, holes are bored in coffins. Of the Ansayrii, Wal- pole says — " In rooms dedicated to hospitality, several square holes are left, so that each spirit may come or depart without meeting another.^' And many facts of like mean- ing are elsewhere met with.
§ 95. Were there no direct evidence that conceptions of the other-self are thus derived, the indirect evidence fur- nished by language would suffice. This comes to us from all parts of the world, from peoples in all stages.
Describing the Tasmanians, Milligan says — "To these guardian spirits they gave the generic name ' W-ari-awah,' an aboriginal term, * * * signifying shade, shadow, ghost, or apparition/^ In the Aztec and cognate languages, eheeatl means both wind, soul, and shadow. The New England tribes called the soul chemung, the shadow. In Quiche, natub, and in Esquimaux, tamahy express both these ideas. And in the Mohawk dialect, atouritz, the soul, is from atourionj to breathe. Like identities of words have been pointed out in the vocabularies of the Algonquins, the Arawaks, the Abipones, the Basutos. That the speech of the civilized by certain of its words identifies soul with shade, and by others identifies soul with breath, is a fami- liar fact. I need not here repeat the evidence detailed by Mr. Tylor, proving that both the Semitic and the Aryan languages show the like original conceptions.
§ 96. And now we come to certain derivative conceptions of great significance. Let us take first, the most obvious. Quadrupeds and birds are observed to breathe, as men breathe. They have shadows, too^ as men have; and these shadows appended to them, follow them and mimic them in like ways. If, then, a man's breath or his shadow is that other*self which goes away at death, the animal's shadow or breath, which also goes away at death, must be its other- self: the animal has a ghost. Even the primitive man, who reasons but a step beyond the facts directly thrust on his attention, cannot avoid drawing this conclusion. Hence we find it avowedly or tacitly embodied in primitive beliefs, and surviving in the beliefs of early civilized races.
The savage in his lowest and most thoughtless stage, stops here; but along with advance in reasoning power there comes perception of a further implication. Though unlike men and familiar animals in not having any per- ceptible breath (unless, indeed, perfume is regarded as breath), plants are like men and animals in so far that they grow and reproduce: they similarly flourish, decay, and die, after leaving offspring. But plants cast shadows; and as their leaves rustle in the breeze or their branches sway in the gale, their shadows exhibit corresponding agitations. Hence, consistency demands an extension of the belief in duality: plants, too, have souls. This implication, recog- nized by somewhat advanced races, as the Dyaks, the E^arens, and some Polynesians, leads among them to observances by which plant-spirits are propitiated. And it persists in well-known forms through succeeding stages of social evolution.
But this is not all. H!aving gone thus far, the progress- ing man, as he becomes more logical, has to go further. For shadows are possessed not by men, animals, and plants only: other things have them. Hence, if shadows are souls, these other things must have souls. And now mark that we do not read of this belief among the very lowest races. It does not exist among the Fuegians, the Austra* lians, the Tasmanians, the Andamanese, the Bushmen; or, if it does, it is not sufficiently pronounced to have drawn o 194 THE DATA OV 80CI0L00T.
the attention of travellers. Bat it is a belief that arises in the more intelligent races^ and develops. Mason says the B^arens think " every natural object has its lord or god, in the signification of its possessor or presiding spirit:'' even inanintiate things that are useful^ such as instru- ments, have each of them its L^ or spirit. Describing the notion of souls as existing among the Ghippewas, Keating writes: — ^they ^^ believe that animals have souls, and even that inorganic substances, such as kettles, etc., have in them a similar essence.^^ By the Fijians who, as we have seen (§41), are among the most rational of barbarians, this doctrine is fully elaborated. Seemann tells us that they ascribe souls ''not only to all mankind, but to animals, plants, and even houses, canoes, and all mechanical contrivances; '' and this ascription, named also by T. Wil- liams, is considered by him to have the origin here alleged: he says — " probably this doctrine of shadows has to do with the notion of inanimate objects having spirits.'^ Peoples in far more advanced states have drawn the same inference. The Mexicans, according to Peter of Ghent, " supposed that every object had a god;" and that its pos- session of a shadow was the basis for this supposition, we shall find good reason for thinking on observing tho like belief avowedly thus explained by a people adjacent to the Ghibchas. Concerning them, Piedrahita writes: — ** The Lcuihes worshipped every stone as a god, as they said that they had all been men, and that all men were converted into stones after death, and tliat a day was coming when all stones would be raised as men. They also worshipped their own shadow, so that they always had their god with them, and saw him when it was daylight And though they knew that the shadow was produced by the light and an interposed object, they replied that it was done by the Sun to give them gods. * * * And when the shadows of trees and stones were pointed out to them, it had no effect, as they considered the shadows of the trees to be gods of the trees, and the shadows of the stones the gods of the stones, and therefore the gods of their gods."
These facts, and especially the last, go far to show that the belief in object-souls, is a belief reached at a certain THE IDEAS OF SOULS, GHOSTS^ SPIRITS, DEMONS, ETC. 195 stage of intellectual evolation, as a coroUary from a pre- established belief respecting thjB soals of men. Without waiting for the more special proofs to be hereafter given, the reader will see what was meant in § 65 by the denial that the primitive man conld have so retrograded to an in- telligence below that of brutes, as originally to confuse the arumate with the inanimate; and he will see some ground for the accompanying assertion that such confusion of them as his developing conceptions show, he is betrayed into by inference from a natural but erroneous belief previously arrived at.
§ 97. Returning from this parenthetical remark, it will be useful, before closing, to note the various classes of souls and spirits which this system of interpretation originates.
We have, first, the souls of deceased parents and relatives. These, taking in the minds of survivors vivid shapes, are thus distinguished from the soiils of ancestors; which, accord- ing to their remoteness, pass into vagueness: so giving ideas of souls individualized in different degrees.. We have, next, the wandering doubles of persons who are asleep, or more profoundly insensible. That these are duly recog- nized as a class, is shown by Schweinfurth's account of the Bongo; who think that old people " may apparently be lying calmly in their huts, whilst in reality they are taking counsel with the spirits of mischief " in the woods. Further, we have, in some cases, the souls of waking persons which We temporarily left them: instance the belief of the Karens, that '' every human being has his guardian spirit walking by his side, or wandering away in search of dreamy adventures; and if too long absent, he must be called back with offerings.^' The actual recognition of such distinctions is clearly shown us by the Malagasy, who have different names for the ghosts of a living and of a dead person.
Another classification of souls or spirits is to be noted: there are those of friends and those of enemies — ^those be- 196 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOaY.
longing to members of the tribe^ and those belonging to members of other tribes. Of coarse these gronps are not completely coincident; for there are the ghosts of bad men within the tribe^ as well as those of the implacable foes outside of it; and there are in some cases the malignant spirits of those who have remained unboried. But, speaking generally, the good and the bad spirits have these origins; and the amity or the enmity ascribed to them after death, is but a continuance of the amity or enmity shown by them during life.
We must add to these the souls of other things — ^beasts, plants, and inert objects. Clavigero tells us that the Mexicans ascribe the " blessing of immortality to the souls of brutes ''; and the Malagasy think the ghosts '' of both men and beasts reside in a great mountain in the south.'' But though animal-souls are not uncommonly recognized; and though Fijians and others believe that the souls of destroyed utensils go to the other world; we have not much evidence that souls of these classes are regarded as com- monly interfering in human affairs.
§ 98. It remains only to note the progressive differentia- tion of the conceptions of body and soul, which the facts show us. As, in the last chapter, we saw that, along with the growth of intelligence, the idea of that permanent insensi- bility we call death, is gradually differentiated from the ideas of those temporary insensibilities which simulate it, till at length it is marked off as radically unlike; so, here, we see that the ideas of a substantial self and an unsub- stantial self, acquire their strong contrast by degrees; and that increasing knowledge, joined with a growing critical factdty, determine the change.
Thus when the Basutos, led by their conception of the other- self as having substantiality, *' think that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw him in''; we may see that the irrecon- THB IDEAS OF SOUIS^ GHOSTS, SPIBTTS, DEMONS, ETC. 197 <nlability of their ideas is so great, that advancing physical knowledge most modify them — ^must cause the other-self to be conceived as less substantial. Or again, if, on the one band, the Fijian ascribes to the soul such materi- ality that, during its journey after death, it is liable to be seized by one of the gods and killed by smashing against a stone; and if, on the other hand, he holds that each man has two souls, his shadow and his reflection; it is manifest that bis beliefs are so incongruous that criticism must ulti- mately change them. Consciousness of the incongruity, be- coming clearer as thought becomes more deliberate, leads to successive compromises. The second self, originally con- ceived as equally substantial with the first, grows step by step less substantial: now it is semi-solid, now it is aeri- form, now it is ethereal. And this stage finally reached, is one in which there cease to be ascribed any of the proper- ties by which we know existence: there remains only the assertion of an existence that is wholly undefined.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER LIFE.
§ 99. Belief in reanimatioii implies belief in a subsequent life. The primitive man^ incapable of deliberate thought, and without language fit for deliberate thinking, has to con- ceive this as best he may. Hence a chaos of ideas concern- ing the after-state of the dead. Among tribes who say that death is annihilation, we yet commonly find such in- consequent beliefs as those of some Africans visited by Schweinf ui*th, who shunned certain caves from dread of the evil spirits of fugitives who had died in them.
Incoherent as the notions of a future life necessarily are at first, we have here to note their leading traits, and the stages of their development into greater coherence. The belief is originally qualified and partial. In the last chapter we saw that some hold resuscitation to be contingent on the treatment of the corpse > and that destruction of it causes annihilation. Moreover, the second life, if commenced, may be brought to a violent end: the dead man's double may be killed afresh in battle; or may be destroyed on its way to the land of the dead; or may be devoured by the gods. Further, there is in some cases a caste-limitation: in Tonga it is supposed that only the chiefs have souls. Else- where, resuscitation is said to depend on conduct and its incidental results. Some races think another life is earned by bravery; as do the Oomanches, who anticipate it for good THE IBXAS OF ANOTHER LIFE. 199 men — ^tHose who are daring in taking scalps and stealing horses. Conyerselj, according to Brinton, '^ a mild and nn- warlike tribe o£ Guatemala * * * were persnaded that to die by any other than a natural deaths was to forfeit all hope of life hereafter^ and therefore left the bodies of the slain to the beasts and vultures/^ Or^ again, it is contingent on the pleasure of the gods; as among the ancient Aryans, who prayed for another life and made sacrifices to obtain it. And there is in some cases a tacit supposition that the second life is, after a time, ended by a second and final death.
Before otherwise considering the primitive conception of a future life, we will glance at this last trait — its duration.
§ 100. One of the experiences suggesting another life, is also one of the experiences suggesting a limit to it; namely, the appearance of the dead in dreams. Sir John Lubbock has been, I believe, the first to point out this. Manifestly the dead persons recognized in dreams, must be persons who were known to the dreamers; and consequently, the long dead, ceasing to be dreamt of, cease to be thought of as still existing. Savages who, like the Manganjas, '^ ex- pressly ground their belief in a future life on the fact that their friends visit them in their sleep;*' naturally draw the inference that when their friends cease to visit them in their sleep, they have ceased to be. Hence the contrast which Sir John Lubbock quotes from Du Ghaillu. Ask a negro ^' where is the spirit of his great-grandfather, he says he does not know; it is done. Ask him about the spirit of his father or brother who died yesterday, then he is full of fear and terror.'^ And as we shall hereafter see, when dealing with another question, the evidence furnished by dreams establishes in the minds of the Amazulu, a like marked dis- tinction between the souls of the lately dead and the souls of the long dead; which they think have died utterly.
How the notion of a temporary after-life grows into the notion of an enduring after-life, we must leave unconsidered.
200 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGT.
For present purposes it suffices to point out that the notion of an enduring after-life is readied tlirough stages.
§ 101. What is the character of this after-life: here be- lieved in vaguely and in a variable way; here believed in as lasting for a time; here believed in as permanent?
As is implied by sundry of the funeral rites described in a foregoing chapter^ the life that goes on after death is sup- posed to differ in nothing from this life: the wants and pursuits remain as before. The Ghinooks assert that at night the dead ''awake and get up to search for food." And no doubt it is with a like belief in the necessity for satisfying their material wants, that the Comanches think the '' dead are permitted to visit the earth at night, but must re- turn at daylight " — a superstition reminding us of one once current in Europe. Among South American tribes, too, we find evidence that the second life is conceived as an unvaried continuation of the first: death being, as the Yucatan Indians say, ''merely one of the accidents of life." Thus we learn from Southey that the Tupis buried the dead person in the house "in a sitting posture with food before it; for there were some who believed that the spirit went to sport among the mountains, and returned there to eat and to take rest.'^ Where the future life is thought of as divided from the present by a more decided break, we still find it otherwise contrasted in little or nothing. What is said of the Fijians may be said of others. After death they "plant, live in families, fight, and in short do much as people in this world." Let us note the general agreement on this point.
§ 102. The provisions they count upon, differ from the provisions they have been accustomed to, only in being better and more abundant. The Innuits expect to feast on reindeer- meat; after death the Creek goes where " game is plenty and goods very cheap, where com grows all the year round and the springs of pure water are never dried up; " the THS IDKAS 09 ANOTHIB LirS. 201 Comanclies look forward to bnSaloes always abnndaiii and jEat; while the Patagonians hope ^' to enjoj the happiness of being eternally drunk/' The conception differs else- where only as the food, etc., differs. The people of the New Hebrides believe that in the next life " the cocoa-nuts and the bread-fruit are finer in quality, and so abundant in quantity as never to be exhausted.'^ Arriaga says that the Peruvians '^ do not know, either in this life or in the other, any greater happiness than to have a good farm where- from to eat and to drink.'^ And pastoral peoples show a kindred adjustment of belief: the Todas think that after death their buffaloes join them, to supply milk as before.
Of course, with like food and drink there go like oc- cupations. The Tasmanians expected '^ to pursue the chase with unwearied ardour and unfailing success.^' Such North American Indians as the Dakotahs, besides killing unlimited game in their " happy hunting-grounds,' ' antici- pate " war with their former enemies.'' And, reminded as we thus are of the daily fighting and feasting looked for- ward to in the future life of the Scandinavians, we are shown the prevalence of such ideas among peoples widely divergent in race and habitat. To see how vivid these ideas are, we must recall the observances they entail.
§ 103. Books of travel have familiarized every reader with the custom of burying a dead man's movables with him. This custom elaborates as social development goes through its earlier stages. Here are a few illustrations, joined with constructions we must put upon them.
The dead savage, having to hunt and to fight, must be armed. Hence the deposit of weapons and implements with the corpse. The Tongous races have these, with other be- longings, " placed on their grave, to be ready for service the moment they awake from what they consider to be their temporary repose." And with this expressed or unex- pressed reason, a like course is followed by the Kalmucks, 202 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGT.
the Esqnimanx^ tlie Lroquois^ the Araacanians, the Inland Negroes, the Nagas, and by tribes, savage and semi-civil- ized, too numerous to mention. Some of whom, too, recog- nizing the kindred needs of women and children, bmy with women their domestic appliances and with children their toys. The departed other-self will need clothes. Hence the Abipones '^ hang a garment from a tree near the place of interment, for him [the dead man] to put on if he chooses to come out of the grave;'' and hence theDahomans, along with other property, buiy with the deceased ''a change of raiment when arriving in dead-land.'' This providing of wearing apparel (sometimes in the shape of their ''best robes " in which they are wrapped at burial, sometimes in the shape of an annual supply of fresh clothes placed upon their skeletons, as among the Patagonians) goes along with the depositing of jewels and other valued things. Often the interment of the deceased's "property" with him is specified generaUy; as in the case of the Samoyeds, the Western Australians, the Damaras, the Inland Negroes, the New Zealanders. With the dead Patagonians are left '' all their property"; with the Nagas, "all the movable pro- perty"; with the G-uiana people, "the chief treasures which they possessed in life"; with the Papuan of New Guinea, his "arms and ornaments"; with a Peruvian Tnca, "his plate and jewels"; with the Ancient Mexican, "his garments, precious stones," etc.; with the Ghibcha, his gold, emeralds, and other treasures. The body of the late Queen of Madagascar "was swathed in nearly 500 silk lambas, in the folds of which twenty gold watches, 100 gold chains, rings, brooches, bracelets, and other jewellery, together with 500 gold coins, were rolled." By the Mishmis, all the things " necessary for a person whilst living are placed in a house built over the grave." And Burton says that in Old Calabar, a house is built on the beach to contain the deceased's property, " together with a bed, that the ghost may not sleep upon the floor," To such an extent is this THE IDEAS OF ANOTHSB LIFE. 203 provision for the future life of the deceased carried^ as^ in many cases^ to entail great evil on the survivors. Concern- ing some Gk)ld Coast tribes^ Beecham says^ '' a funeral is usually absolute ruin to a poor family.^^ Low states that the Dyaks, besides the deceased's property, '^ bury with him sometimes large sums of money, and other valuables; so that a father who has been unfortunate in the death of many of Ids family, is frequently reduced to poverty." And among some extinct societies of America, nothing but the deceased's land, which they were unable to put into his grave, re- mained for his widow and children.