Burial on hills is practised by many people; and we have already seen that there are places^ as Borneo^ where along with the custom of depositing a chief's remains on some peak difficult of access^ there goes the belief that the spirits of the departed inhabit the mountain-tops. That the custom causes the belief ^ is in this case probable; though, as we shall presently see, an apparently-similar belief may in some cases have another origin. Here, however, it con- cerns us only to observe that " the highest mountain in sight " is regarded as a world peopled by the departed; and that in the undeveloped speech of savages, living on a peak up in the heavens is readily confounded with living in the heavens. Remembering that, originally, heaven is considered as a dome supported by these loftiest peaks, the conclusion that those who live on them have access to the upheld firmament, is a conclusion certain to be drawn. Once established, this admits of development. There may readily come the conception of heavens one outside another, inhabited by successively-higher fjprades.
But, as already hinted, besides the above origin, carrying with it the belief that the souls of deceased men live on the mountain-tops, or in the heavens, there is another pos- sible, and indeed probable, origin, not carrying such a conclusion; but, contrariwise, restricting this heavenly habitation to a different race of beings. Observe how this other belief is suggested. The choice of high places for purposes of defence, we may trace back through civilized times into barbarous times. What many of our own castles show us, what we are shown by modem and ancient fortresses on the Bhine, what we are shown by mediflBval towns and villages capping the hills in Italy, and Jyj the scattered fastnesses perched on scarcely accessible 280 THE DATA OF BOCIOLOOT.
poakB througliout the East^ we are shown whereyer primi- tive savagery has been outgrown in habitats a£Eording fit places. A fortress on an elevation in ancient Mexico^ is described by Gk)doi; the Chibchas made entrenchments on hills; and the Peruvians fortified the tops of mountains hj ranges of walled moats. Both invaded and invaders thus utilize commanding eminences. The remains of Boman en- oampments on our own hills^ remind us of this last use. Clearly then^ during the conflicts and subjugations that have been ever going on, the seizing of an elevated stronghold by a conquering race, has been a not unfrequent occurrence; and the dominance of this race has gone along with the continued habitation of this stronghold. An account which Bajah Brooke gives of his prolonged contest with a moun- tain-chief in Borneo, shows us what would be likely to happen when the stronghold was in possession of the superior raoe. His antagonist had fortified an almost inac- oessible crag on the top of Sadok— a mountain about 5,000 feet high, surrounded by lower mountains. Described by Bajah Brooke as "grim and grand,'' it figures in Dyak legends and songs as " the Grand Mount, towards which no enemy dare venture.'' The first attempt to take this fastness fidled utterly; the second, in which a small mortar was used, also failed } and only by the help of a howitzer, dragged up by the joint strength of a hundred yelling Dyaks, did the third attempt succeed. This chieftain, driven out only by the appliances of a civilized race, was naturally held in dread by surrounding tribes. '' Qrandfather Bentap," as he was commonly called, was dangerously violent; occasionally killed his own men; was regardless of established customs; and, among other feats, took a second wife from a people averse to the match, carried her off to his eyrie, and, discarding the old one, made the young one Banee of Sadok. With his followers and his subordinate chiefs, Layang, Nanang, and Loyioh, holding secondary forts serving as outposts, he was unconquerable by any of the THX IDEAS OF ANOTHKB WO£IJ>. 231 native powers. Already there were superstitions about him. " Snakes were supposed to possess some mysterious con- nection with Bentap's forefathers^ or the souls of the latter resided in these loathsome creatures.^' Now if^ instead of a native ruler thus living up in the clouds (which hindered the last attack), occasionally coming down to fulfil a threat of vengeance^ keeping the country around in fear^ and giving origin to stories already growing into supersti- tions^ we suppose a ruler belonging to an invading race^ which, bringing knowledge, skill, arts and implements, unknown to the natives, were regarded as beings of supe- rior kind, just as civilized men now are by savages; we shall see that there would inevitably arise legends concerning this superior race seated in the sky. Considering that among these very Dyaks, divine beings are conceived as differing BO little from men, that the supreme god and creator, Tapa, is supposed to dwell " in a house like that of a Malay, ♦ ♦ * himself being clothed like a Djak'" we shall see that the ascription of a divine character to a conqueror thus placed, would be certain. And if the country was one in which droughts had fostered the faith in rain-makers and "heaven-herds'' — if, as among the Zulus, there was a belief in weather-doctors able to " contend with the lightning and hail,'' and to ^' send the lightning to another doctor to try him;" this ruler, living on a peak round which the clouds formed and whence the storms came, would, without hesitation, be regarded as the causer of these changes — ea a thunderer holding the lightnings in his hand.« Joined with which ascribed powers, * A belief of the Ancient Mexicana iUustrates this notion that beings Uving where the donds gather, are the oanaen of them. " T2a^, otherwise TlatoeateuctU (Master of Paradise) was the god of water. They called him fertilizer of the earth, * * * he resided upon the highest monntains, where the clouds are generally formed. * * * The ancients also believed that in aU the high monntains there resided other gods, snbaltem to Tlaloc They * * * were revered not only as gods of water^ but also as the gods of moun tains." — Claoigero, bk. vi., ch. 4 and 5.
232 THE DATA 07 SOCIOLOQT.
there woald nevertlieless be stories of his descents irom this place up in the heavens, appearances among men^ and amours with their daughters. Grant but a little time for such legends and interpretations to be exaggerated and idealized — ^let the facts be magnified as was the feat of Samson with the ass's jawbone^ or the prowess of Achilles making "the earth flow with blood,'' or the triumphant achievement of Bameses II. in slaying 100,000 foes single- handed; and we reach the idea that heaven is the abode of superhuman beings commanding the powers of nature and punishing men.* I am aware that this interpretation will be called Euhemeristic; and that having so called it, the mythologists whose views are now in fashion will consider it disposed of. Only incidentally implied as this view here is, I must leave it for the present unsupported. By-and-by, after showing that it is congruous with all the direct evidence we have re- specting primitive modes of thought, I hope further to show that the multitudinous facts which existing uncivilized and semi-civilized races furnish, yield no support to the current theories of mythologists, and that these theories are equally at variance with the laws of mental evolution.
§ 115. The general conclusion to which we are led is, that the ideas of another world pass through stages of development. The habitat of the dead, originally conceived as coinciding with that of the living, gradually diverges — here to the adjacent forest, there to the remoter forest, and elsewhere to distant hills and mountains. The belief that the dead rejoin their ancestors, leads to further divergences * It may be added that Buch a conception, once erolred, need not be re* abicted to the original locality. Storms bursting in the sky £ur fh>m this mountun stronghold, wonld be taken as evidence that the thnnderer had access to other parts of the heavens; and hence when the race migrated, this heaven-god, proved by the occnrrence of storms to have accompanied them, would be e^Antnally localixed on other monntians whence the storms com« monly came THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER WOBLD. 238 wUcli raiy according to the traditions.. Stationary de- scendants of troglodytes think they i*etnm to a subterranean other- world, whence they emerged j while immigrant races have for their other-worlds the abodes of their fathers, to which they journey after death: orer land, down a river, or across the sea, as the case may be. Societies con- sisting of conquerors and conquered, having separate tradi- tions of origin, have separate other-worlds; which differentiate into superior and inferior places, in correspondence with the respective positions of the two races. Conquests of these mixed peoples by more powerful immigrants, bring further complications — additional other- worlds, more or less unlike iu their characters. Finally, where the places for the departed, or for superior classes of beings, are mountain-tops, there is a transition to an abode in the heavens; which, at first near and definite, passes into the remote and indefinite. So that the supposed residence for the dead, coinciding at first with the residence of the living, is little by little removed in thought: distance and direction grow increasingly vague, and finally the localization disappears in space.
All these conceptions, then, which have their root in the primitive idea of death, simultaneously undergo like pro- gressive modifications. Besurrection, once looked for as immediate, is postponed indefinitely; the ghost, originally conceived as quite substantial, fades into ethereality; the other-life, which at first repeated this exactly, becomes more and more unlike it; and its place, from a completely- known adjacent spot, passes to a somewhere unknown and nnimagined.
CHAPTER XVT.
THE IDKA8 OF SUPBRNATUBAL AGENTS.
§ 116. Specialized as they are in correspondence with our thoughts, our words do not represent truly the thoughts of the savage; and often entirely misrepresent them. The word supernatural has meaning only by antithesis with natural, and until there has been reached that idea of orderly causation which we call natural, there can exist no such idea as we imply by supernatural. I am obliged to use the word, however, in default of a better; but the reader must be cautioned against ascribing to the primitive man a conception like that which the word gives to us.
This premised, let us, so far as we can, picture the imaginary environment the primitive man produces for himself, by the interpretations described in the Icust four chapters. Inconsistent in detail aa are the notions he forms concerning surrounding actions, they are^ in their ensemble, consistent with the notions that have been set forth as necessarily generated in him.
§ 117. In every tribe, a death from time to time occur- ring, adds another ghost to the many ghosts of those who died before. We have seen that, originally, these ghosts are thought of as close at hand — ^haunting the old home, lingering near the place of burial, wandering about in the adjacent bush. Continually accumulating, they form a sur- THI mSAS 07 SUPERNATURAL AOENTB. 235 rounding population; nsnaUy invisible, but some of them occasionally seen. Here are a few illustrations.
By Australians the supernatural beings thus derived are supposed to be everywhere: the whole face of the country swarms with them — thickets, watering-places, rocks. The Yeddahs, who trust in '' the shades of their ancestors and their children/^ " believe that the air is peopled with spirits, that every rock and every tree, every forest and every hill, in short, every feature of nature, has its genius lod," The Tasmanians imagine ''a host of malevolent spirits and mischievous goblins '' in caverns, forests, clefts, mountain-tops.
Where burial within the house is practised, the ghosts of the dead are conceived to be at the elbows of the living; and where, as among the XJaup6s, '' some of the large houses have more than a hundred graves in them,'' they must be thought of as ever jostling their descendants. Even in the absence of house-burial this conception is offcen vivid; as, according to Mason, among the Karens. " To a Karen, the world is more thickly peopled with spirits than it is with men. ♦ ♦ * The spirits of the departed dead crowd around him.'' And similarly the Tahitians ''imagined they lived in a world of spirits, which surrounded them night and day, watching every action." Here regarded as friendly, and here as workers of mischief, the ancestral spirits are, in some cases, driven away. "We are told by Barbe of the Nicobar people, that — ** Once in the year, and sometimes when great sickness prevails, they [the Nicobarians] build a large canoe, and the Minloven, or priest, has Uie boat carried close to each house, and then, by his noise, he compels all the bad spirits to leave the dwelling, and to get into the canoe; men, women, and children assist him in his conjuration. The doors of the house are shut; the ladder is taken out [the houses are built on posts 8 or 9 feet high]; the boat is then dragged along to the sea- shore, where it is soon carried off by the waves with a full cargo of devils."
Bastian tells us that there is a like custom in the Mai- dive islands. And some of the Indians of California have 236 THB DATA OF SOOIOLOGT.
Bimilarly an annual expulsion of the ghosts wliich have accumulated during the year.
These multitudinous disembodied men are agents ever available^ as conceived antecedents to all surrounding actions wliich need e!S[planation. It is not requisite that their identification as ghosts should continue in a distinct form: many of them are sure to lose this character. The swarms of demons by whom the Jews thought themselves sarrounded^ while regarded by some as the spirits of the wicked dead^ readily came to be regarded by others as the offspring of the fallen angels and the daughters of men. When the genealogies of an accumulating host have been lost^ there remains nothing to resist any suggested theory respecting their origin. But though the Arab who thinks the desert is so thickly peopled with spirits that on throw- ing anything away he asks the forgiveness of those which may be struck, probably does not now regard them as the wandering doubles of the dead; it is clear that, given the wandering doubles of the dead, supposed by the primitive man to be everywhere around, and we have the potentiality of supernatural agencies unlimited in number and capable of indefinite variation.
§ 118. Hence the naturalness, and, indeed, the inevit- ableness, of those interpretations which the savage gives of surrounding phenomena. With the development of the doctrine of ghosts, there grows up an easy solution of all those changes which the heavens and earth are hourly ex- hibiting. Clouds that gather and presently vanish, shoot- ing stars that appear and disappear, sudden darkenings of the water^s surface by a breeze, animal-metamorphoses, transmutations of substance, storms, earthquakes, eruptions — all of them become explicable. These beings to whom is ascribed the power of making themselves now visible and now invisible, and to whose other powers no limits are known, are omnipresent. Accounting as they seem to do THE IDEAS OF 8UPEBNATUEAL AGENTS. 237 for all unexpected changes, their own existence bocouies farther verified. No other causes for such changes are known or can be conceived; therefore these souls of the dead must be the causes; therefore the survival of souls is manifest: a circular reasoning which suffices many besides savages.
The interpretations of nature which precede scientiiic in- terpretations, are thus the best that can then be framed. If by the Karens '^unaccountable sounds and sights in the jungles " are, as Mason says, ascribed to the ghosts of the wicked, the Karens do but assume an origin which, in the absence of generalized knowledge, is the only imaginable origin* If, as Bastian tells us, the religion of the Nicobar people consists in attributing to evil spirits the unlucky events they are not able to explain by ordinary causes, they are simply falling back on such remaining causes as they can conceive. What alternative is there? Livingstone describes how certain rocks which, having been intensely heated by the sun, are suddenly cooled externally in the evening, break with loud reports; and these reports the natives set down to evil spirits. To what else should they set them down? Uncivilized men are far removed from the conception that a stone may break by unequal contraction; and in the absence of this conception, what assignable cause of breaking is there, but one of these mis- chievous demons everywhere at hand? In his account of the Dandkil, Major Harris tells us that '^ no whirlwind ever sweeps across thj path without being pursued by a dozen savages with drawn creeses, who stab into the centre of the dusty cjlumn in order to drive away the evil spirit that is believed to be riding on the blast.^' Ludicrous as this notion appears, we have but to ask what is the physical interpre- tation of a sand-whirlwind, to see that such an interpreta- tion cannot be framed by the savage; and that the only con- ceivable interpretation is that which he gives. Occasionally, too, his experiences suggest that such agencies are mnlti- 238 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGT.
tudinons, and everywhere present. Describing a tropical scene, Humboldt says — 'Hhe surface of these sands, heated by the rays of the sun, seems to be undulating like the surface of a liquid * * * the sun animates the landscape, and gives mobility to the sandy plain, to the trunks of trees, and to the rocks that project into the sea like promontories/' What shakes the tree-trunks and makes the rocks oscillate? There is no alternative but to assume innumerable invisible beings scattered about everywhere. That these appearances are illusions caused by refraction is unimaginable.
Some of the above examples yield direct evidence that among races in comparatively-early stages, the ghosts of the dead are the assigned agents for unusual phenomena; and there are other such examples. Thus, Thomson tells us that the Araucaniana think tempests are caused by the fights which the spirits of their countrymen have with their enemies. Such interpretations differ from the interpreta- tions of more advanced races, only by presenting the in- dividualities of dead friends and foes in their original forms: the eventual fading of these individualities, leaves notions of personal agencies less definite in kind. An eddy in the river, where floating sticks are whirled round and en- gulfed, is not far from the place where one of the tribe was drowned and never seen again. What more manifest, then, than that the double of this drowned man, malicious as the unburied ever are, dwells thereabouts, and pulls these things under the surface — ^nay, in revenge, seizes and drags down persons who venture near? When those who knew the drowned man are all dead — ^when, after generations, the details of the story, thrust aside by more recent stories, have been lost — and especially when there comes some con- quering tribe, in whose past history the local stories have no roots; there survives only the belief in a water-demon haunting the place. And so throughout. There is nothing to maintain in tradition the likenesses between the ghosts and the individuals they were derived from; and along with THIS EDSAS OF SUPERNATURAL AGENTS. 239 innnmerable divergences, there comes not only a fading of individual traits, bat also at length a fading of haman traits: varieties pass into species, and genera, and orders, of super- natural beings.
§ 119. Of coarse, if tlie ghosts of the dead, originally conceived in their individual forms, and as they accumu- late and differentiate, passing gradually into numerous less distinct but still personal forms, are thus the agents sup- posed to work all the notable effects in the surrounding world; they are also the agents supposed to work notable eff jcts in the affairs of men. Ever at hand and moved by feelings of amity or enmity, it is incredible that they should not interfere with human actions. Manifestly they continu- ally aid or hinder. The soul of a dead foe is on the watch to cause an accident; the soul of a late relative is ready to help and to guard if in good humour, or, if offended, to make something go wrong.
Hence explanations, universally applicable, of successes and failures. Through all races, from the lowest upwards, such explanations have prevailed: differing only in the extent to which the aiding or hindering spirit has lost the human character. Low down we have the Yeddah, who looks to the shade of his dead parent or child to give him success in the chase, and ascribes a bad shot to the lack of an invocation; we have the Australian who, '^ if a man tumbles out of a tree and breaks his neck,'' thinks that "his life has been charmed away by the boyala-men of another tribe ''; we have the Ashantees, who " believe that the spirits of their departed relatives exercise a guardian care over them,'' and that " the ghosts of departed enemiee are * * * bad spirits," who work mischief. Higher up we have, among the Homeric heroes, feats of arms set down to the assistance of the supematoral beings who join in the battle. With Hector ''one at least of the gods is ever present, who wards off death"; and ''Menelaas conquered 240 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGY.
by Minerva's aid/' Diomed is nnscathed because an im- mortal '' has turned into another course the swift shaft just about to hit him ''; Paris, dragged by the helmet, would have been lost had not Venus, ''who quickly perceived it, broke for him the thong''; a^d Idesus escaped only because "•Vulcan snatched him away." Be it the Arau- canian who ascribes success to the aid of his particular fairy; be it the African chief Livingstone names, who thought he had ensured the death of an elephant they were attacking, by emptying his snuff-box as an offering to the Barimo; be it the Greek whose spear is well fixed in a Trojan's side by the guiding hand of his favouring deity; be it the Jew's ministering angel or the Catholic's patron saint; there is identity in essentials, and only more or less of difference in form. The question is solely how far this evolution of the ghosts of the dead into super- natural agents, has gone.
§ 120. Lastly, and chiefly, we have here to note the fact that this machinery of causation which the primitive man is inevitably led to frame for himself, fills his mind to the exclusion of any other machinery. Fully to under- stand the development of human thought under all its aspects, we must carefully observe the truth that this hypo- thesis of ghost-agency gains a settled occupation of the field, long before there is either the power or the oppor- tunity of gathering together and organizing the experiences which yield the hypothesis of physical causation. Even among ourselves, with our vast accumulations of definite knowledge and our facilities for diffusing it, the displacement of an old doctrine by a new one is difficult. Judge then its difficulty where the few facts known remain ungenerab'zed, unclassified, unmeasured; where the very notions of order, cause, law, are absent; whore criticism and scepticism are but incipient; and where there is not even the curiosity need- ful to prompt inquiry. If, parodying a common adage, we THE IDEAS OF 6UPEBNATURAL AGENTS. 241 may say that prepossession is nine points of belief — ^if ihis is 80 even in the relatiyely-plastic minds of the civilized; how many points of belief must it be in the relatively-rigid minds of the uncivilized?
Hence the surprise commonly expressed at these primi- tive interpretations is an unwarranted surprise — a surprise caused by overlooking the nature and conditions of primi- tive thought. If, as Mr. St. John tells us, the Dyaks never take the natural explanation of any phenomenon, such as an accident, but always '^ fly to their superstitions;'' they fiy to the only kind of explanation which yet exists for them. The absurdity is in supposing that the uncivilized man possesses at the outset, the idea of " natural explanation.'^ Only as societies grow, arts multiply, experiences accumu- late, and constant relations of phenomena become recog- nized, registered, and familiar, does the notion of natural explanation become possible. Only then can there arise even scepticism respecting these earliest conclusions. Only then can there begin the slow process of replacing them.
And now, recognizing this unshakable belief which the primitive man acquires in these agencies afterwards distin- guished as supernatural, but which are at first the only imaginable agencies, let us go on to contemplate another series of interpretations he makes. Having seen how he is led to think of the activities in his environment as controlled by the spii-its of the dead, let us observe how ho is similarly led to think of the spirits of the dead as controlling the activities within his body and tho bodies of other men.
CHAPTER XVII.
SUPBRNATURAL AGENTS AS CAUSING EPILEPSY AND OON-^ VULSIVE ACTIONS, DELIRIUM AND INSANITY, DISEASE AND DEATH.
§ 121. The phenomena exhibited during erolution, cannot be placed in serial order. Always there go on -divergences atid re-divergences. Setting ont with the primitive ideas of insensibility, of death, and of the ghost, we- have traced along certain lines the developing ideas of another life and another world; and along other lines we have traced the developing ideas of supernatural agents, as Existing on all sides. Beturning now to the insensible body as the starting point, we have to observe how a further class of ideas has been simultaneously developing, by the aid of those we have considered.
In sleep, in ffwoon, in trance, in apoplexy, there is almost complete quiescence; and at death the quiescence becomes absolute. Usually, then, during the supposed absence of the other-self, the body does nothing. But there sometimes occur cases in which the body, lying on the ground with eyes closed, struggles violently; and in which, after the ordinary state is resumed, the individual denies having struggled — says that he knows nothing about those actions of his body which the spectators saw. Obviously, then, his other-self has been away. But how came his body to behave so strangely during the interval?
8UF£BNATURAL AOBNTS AS CAUSINQ BPILSPSY^ ETC. 248 The answer given to this question is the most rational which the primitiye man can give.
§ 122. If^ during insensibilities of all kinds^ the soul wanders^ and, on returning, canses the body to resume its activity — ^if the soul can thus not only go out of the body but can go into it again; then may not the body be entered by some other soul? The savage thinks it may.
Hence the interpretation of epilepsy, Beade tells ns that the Congo people ascribe epilepsy to demoniac possession. Among the East Africans, falling sickness is peculiarly common, and, Burton says, has donbtless given rise to the prevalent notion of possession. Among Asiatic races may be named the Kalmucks, by whom, according to Pallas, epileptics are regarded as possessed. And Bastian remarks that the Arabic language has the same word for epilepsy and possession by devils. It is needless to illustrate the familiar truth that this explanation was current during the early stages of civilization, and that it persisted up to comparatively-recent times.