during sleep goes on expeditions of its own^ sees, hears, and talks /' and Bajah Brooke also says " the Dyaks believe that those things which have been brought viyidly before their minds in dreams haye acttudly taken place/' Among Hill-tribes of India, snch as the E^arens, the same doctrine is held: their statement, as given by Mason, being that '' ia sleep it [the lA, spirit or ghost] wanders away to the ends of the earth, and onr dreams are what the lA sees and experiences in his perambulations/' Even by the ancient Pemvians, developed as was the social state they had rsached, the same interpretation was put upon the facts. "Hiey held, says Grarcilasso, that " the soul leaves the body while it is sleeping. They asserted that th^ soul could not sleep, and that the things we dream are what the soul sees in the world while the body sleeps.''
Occurring rarely, it may be, somnambulism serves, when it does occur, to confirm this interpretation. For to the uncritical, a sleep-walker seems to be exemplifying that aetiviiy during sleep, which the primitive conception of dreams implies. Each phase of somnambulism furnishes its evidence. Frequently the sleeper gets up, performs various actions, and returns to rest without waking; and sometimes, recalling afterwards these actions, and regarding them as ordinary dream-fancies, is surprised when told by witnesses that he actually did the things he dreamt about doing. What construction must be put on such an experience by primitive men? It proves to the somnambulist that he may go away and lead an active life daring his sleep, and yet find himself afterwards in the place where he lay down* With equal conclusiveness it proves to those who saw him, that men actually go away during their sleep; that they do the things they dream of doing; and may even sometimes be visible. True, a careful examination of the &cts would show that in this case the man's body was absent from its place of rest. But savages do not carefully examine the facts. Again, in cases where the sleep-walker has no recollection of the things he did^ there is Btill the testimony of others to show him that he was not quiescent; and occasionally there is more. When, as sometimes happens, his night-ramble brings him in contact with an obstacle which wakes him, he has a demonstration of the alleged fact that he goes hither and thither during sleep. On retmning to his sleeping-place he does not, indeed, find a second self there; but this discoveiy, irreconcilable with the accepted notion, simply increases the confusion of his ideas about these matters. Unable to deny the eyidence that he wanders during sleep, he takes this in verification of the current belief, without dwelling much on the inconsistency.
When we consider what tradition, with its exaggerations, is likely to make of these abnormal phenomena, now and then occurring, we shall see that the primitive interpretation of dreams must receive from them strong support.
§ 71. Along with this belief there of course goes tho belief that persons dreamt of were really met. K the dreamer thinks his own actions real, he ascribes reality to whatever he saw — ^place, thing, or living being. Hence a group of facts similarly prevalent.
Morgan states that the Iroquois think dreams real, and obey their injunctions — do what they are told by those they see in dreams; and of the Chippewas, Keating asserts that they fast for the purpose of "producing dreams, which they value above all things." According to Drury, the Malagasy " have a religious regard to dreams, and think that the good doemon * * * comes, and tells them in their dreams when they ought to do a thing, or to warn them of some danger." Ellis tells us that the Sandwich Islanders think the departed member of a family " appears to the survivors sometimes in a dream, and watches over their destinies;" and, similarly, he tells us of the Tahitians that they thoufi^ht the spirit of the dead sometimes appeared to the sur- "TUB IBBAS OF SLEVP AND DREAMS. 153 viTors in dreams. In Africa it is the same. The Congo people, as described by Eeade, '' think that what thej see and bear in dreams come to them from spirits;" and, writing of the East Africans, Krapf says the '^ Wanika believe that the spirits of the dead appear to the living in dreams.'^ The Kaffirs, too. Shooter tells ns, " seem to ascribe dreams in general to the spirits." Abundant evidence is famished by the Rev. Dr. Callaway concerning the Zulus, whose ideas he has written do v. n from their own mouths. Comparatively intelligent as these people are, somewhat advanced in social state, and having language enabling them to distinguish between dreaming and waking perceptions, we nevertheless find among them (joined with an occasional scepticism) an habitual belief in the reality of the persons who appear in dreams. Out of many illustrations, here is one of a man who complains how he is plagued by the spirit of his brother. He tells his neighbours: — ** I have seen mj brother.** They ask what he said. He says, " I dreamed that he was beating me, and saying, ' How is it that yon do no longer know that I am?' I answered him, saying, ' When I do know yon, what can I do that yon may see I know you? I know that yon are my brother.' He answered me as soon as I said this, and asked, 'When yon sacrifice a bullock, why do you not call upon me?' I replied, * I do call on you, and laud you by your laud-giving names. Just tell me the bullock which I have killed without calling on yon. For I killed an ox, I called on you; I killed a barren cow, I called on yon.' He answered, saying, ' I wish for meat.' I refused him, saying, * No, my brother, I have no bullock; do you see any in the cattle-pen?' He replied, * Though there be but one, I demand it.' When I awoke, I had a pain in my side;" etc.
Though this perfectly-definite conception of a dead brother as a living person who demands meat, and inflicts bodily pain for non-compliance, is so remote from our own beliefs as to seem scarcely possible; yet we shall see its possibility on remembering how little it differs from the beliefs of early civilized races. At the opening of the second book of the Iliad, we find the dream sent by Jove to mislead the Greeks, described as a real person receiving Jove's 154 THB DATA 0? SOCIOLOaT.
directions wliat he is to saj to the sleeping Agamemnon* In like manner^ the sool of Patroclos appeared to the sleeping Achilles, " in all things like himself," saying, " Bury me soon that I may pass the gates of Hades," and, when grasped at, " like smoke yanished with a shriek:" the appearance being accepted by Achilles as a reality, and its injunction as imperative. Hebrew writings show us the like. When we read that 'Hhe word of the Lord came unto Abraham in a vision," that ^' God came to Abimelech in a dream by night," that ''the liord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel;" we see shown an equally unhesitating belief in an equally objective reality. During civilization this faith has been but slowly losing ground, and even still survives; as we are shown by the stories from time to time told of people who when just dead appeared to distant relations, and as we are shown by the superstitions of the '' spiritualists."
Indeed, after recalling these last, we have but to imagine ourselves de-civilized — ^to suppose faculty decreased, knowledge lost, language vague, criticism and scepticism absent, to understand how inevitably the primitive man conceives as real the dream-personages we know to be ideal.
§ 72. A reflex action on other beliefs is exercised by these beliefs oonceming dreams. Besides fostering a ^stem of erroneous ideas, this fundamental misconception discredits the true ideas which accumulated experiences of things are ever tending to establish.
For while the events dreamed are accepted as events that have actually occurred — ^while the order of phenomena they exhibit is taken to be an actual order; what must be thought about the order of phenomena observed while awake f Such uniformities in it as daily repetition makes conspicuous, cannot produce that sense of certainty they might produce if taken by themselves; for in dreams these uniformities are not maintained. Though trees and stones seen when I THK IDKAS OP SLjeXF AMD DAEAMB. 155 awake, do not pve place to other things which panoramically change, yet, when the eyes are closed at night, they do. Wliile looking at him in broad daylight, a man does not transform himself; bnt daring slomber, something jnst now recognized as a companion, tnms into a forions beast, threatening destruction; or what was a moment since a pleasant Idee, has become a swarm of crocodiles and snake?. Thongh, when awake, the ability to leare the eartVs surface is limited to a leap of a few feet; yet, when asleep, there occasionally comes a consciousness of flying with ease oyer yast regions. Thus, the experiences in dreams continually oonfaradict the experiences receiyed during the day; and go far towards cancelling the conclusions drawn from day-experiences. Or rather, we may say that they tend to confirm the erroneous conclusions suggested by day-experiences, instead of the correct conclusions. For do not these sudden appearances and disappearances in dreams, proye, like many facts obseryed when awake, that things can pass imaccountably from yisible to inyisible states, and vice versa? And do not these dream-transformations thoroughly accord with those other transformations, some real and some apparent, which make the primitiye man belieye in an unlimited possibility of metamorphosis f When something which in his dream he picked up as a stone, becomes aliye, does not the fact seem to harmonize with his discoyeries of fossils haying the hardness of stones with the shapes of liying things f And is not the sudden abandonment of a tiger-shape for the shape of a mau, which his dream shows him, akin to that of the insect* matamorphoses he has noticed, and to the seeming transformations of leayes into walking creatures f Clearly, then, the acceptance of dream-actiyities as real actiyities, besides the fundamental misconception it generates, strengthens misconceptions of the same kind otherwise generated. It strengthens them both negatiyely and positiyely. It discredits those waking-experiences from which right beliefs are to be drawn; and it yields support to those waking experiences which suggest wrong beliefs.
§ 73. That the primitive man's conception of dreaming is natural, and indeed necessary, will now be obvious. His notions seem strange because, in thinking about them, we inadvertently carry with us the theory of Mind which civilization has slowly established and embodied in language, and which, early in life, we unawares absorb so completely as to mistake it for an original possession. Mind, however, is neither disclosed by the senses, nor directly revealed as an internal entity: there is no state of consciousness in which it is presented. The fact that even now some metaphysicians hold that nothing beyond impressions and ideas can be known to exist, while others hold that impressions and ideas imply a something of which they are states, and by which they are held together as a continuous whole, shows clearly that Mind, as conceived by us, is not an intuition but an implication; and therefore cannot be conceived until re&soning has made some progress.
When, indeed, we look closely into the matter, we discover that there can be no conception of Mind, properly so called, until the difference between impressions and ideas is clearly recognized. Like every child, the primitive man passes through a phase of intelligence during which there has not yet arisen the power of introspection implied by saying — *' I think — I have ideas.^' For a long time the observations generalized are exclusively those concerning the natures and powers of objects, together with those concerning the active and re-active forces and feelings of the organism itself. While awake, the thoughts that perpetually accompany sensations and the perceptions framed of them, are so unobtrusive, and pass so rapidly, that they are not noticed: to notice them implies a self-criticism impossible at the outset. These faint states of consciousness which, during the day, are obscured by the vivid statos, become obtrusive only THB IDEAS OF 8LKEP AND DREAlfS. 157 at niglifcj when the ejes are shat and the other senses dollecl. Then^ onlj^ do the subjective activities clearlj reveal them« selves^ as the stars reveal themselves when the sun is absent. That is to saj, dream-experiences necessarily precede the conception of a mental self; and are the exfer!enee8 out of whiel^ the conception of a mental self eventually grows. Mark the order of dependence: — Dreams cannot be interpreted as we interpret them, in the absence of the hypothesis of mind as a distinct entity; the hy^ pothesis of mind as a distinct entity cannot exist before the experiences suggesting it; the experiences suggesting it are the dream-experiences, which seem to imply two entities f and in its primary form this supposition of two entities involves the notion that the second entity differs from the first simply in being absent and active at night while the other is at rest. Only as this supposed duplicate^ once thonght of as like the original in aU things, becomes gradually modified by the dropping of physical characters irreconcilable with the facts, does the hypothesis of a mental self, as we understand it, become established.
Here, then, is the germinal principle which sets up such organization as the primitive man's random observations of things can assume. This belief in another self belonging to him, harmonizes with all those illustrations of duality furnished by things around; and equally harmonizes with those multitudinous cases in which things pass from visible to invisible states and back again* Nay more, by comparison he discovers a kinship between his own double and the doubles of other objects. For have not these objects their shadows 7 Has not he too his shadow f Does not his shadow become invisible at night f Is it not obvious, then, that this shadow which in the day accompanies his body is that other self which at night wanders away and has adventures? Clearly, the Greenlanders who, as we have seen^ l)elieve this, have some justification for the belief.
CHAPTER XI.
TUB IDEAS OP SWOON, APOPLEXY, CATALEPSY, MSTASY, AND OTHER FORMS OV INSENSIBILITY.
§ 74. The quiescence of ordinary sleep is daily seen by tht? savage to be quickly exchanged for actiyiiy when the slumberer is forcibly disturbed: a noise or a shake causes him to open his eyes, to speak, to rise. Differences in the amounts of the required disturbances are, indeed, observable. Now the slightest sound or touch suffices; and now it needs a shout, or rough handling, or pinching. Still, his experience shows that when a man^s body lies motionless and insensible, a.mere calling of the name causes reanimation.
Occasionally, however, something quite different hanpens. Here is a companion exhibiting signs of extreme pain, who, all at once, sinks down into an inert state; and at another time, a feeble person making a violent effort, or one greatly terrified, undergoes a like change. In those who behave thus, the ordinary sensibility cannot be forthwith re-established. Though the Fijian, in such case, calls the patient by his name, and is led by the ultimate revival to believe that his other self may be brought back by calling, yet there is forced on him the &ct that the absence of the other self is unlike its ordinary absences. Evidently, the occurrence of this special insensibility, commonly lasting^ less than a minute but occasionally continuing for hours.
THB IDSAS OF SWOON, APOPLBZT, ETC. ]50 yields support to the primitiYe belief in a dnplicate that wanders awaj from the body and returns to it: the desertion of the body being now more determined than usual, and being followed by silence as to what has been done or seen in the interyal.
Our familiar speech shows the way in which syncope yields seeming verification of the primitiye notion of duality. We say of one who revives from a fainting fit, that she is '' coming back to herself — ''returning to herself.*' The expressions are significant. Though we no longer explain insensibility as due to an absence of the sentient entily from the body, yet our phrases bear witness to a time when insensibility was so explained.
§ 75. Apoplexy " is liable to be confounded with syncope or fainting, and with' natural sleep.'' And if the instructed medical man thus describes it, we may infer how little it can be discriminated by savages.
Suddenly falling, the apoplectic patient betrays a '' total loss of consciousness, of feeling, and of voluntary movement." The breathing is sometimes natural, as in quiet sleep; and sometimes the patient lies " snoring loudly aa in deep sleep." In either case, however, it presently turns out that the sleeper cannot be '' brought back to himself" as usual: shouts and shakes have no effects.
Recalling his dream-experiences, what must the savage tLink about a fellow-savage in this state; which continues perhaps foi^ a few hours but occasionally for several days? Clearly the belief in duality is strengthened. The second self has gone away for a time beyond recall; and when it eventually comes back, nothing can be learnt about its experiences while absent.
If, as commonly happens, after months or years there comes a like fall, a like prolonged insensibility, and a like return, there is again a silence about what has been done. And then, on a third occasion, the absence is longer than ICO THE DATA OF SOCIOUKif.
before — ^the relatiyes wait and wait^ and there is no coming back: the coming back seems postponed indefinitely.
§ 76. Similar in the suddenness with which it commences^ hut othewise dissimilar^ is the state of insensibility called catalepsy; which also lasts sometimes, several hours and sometimes seyoral days. Instantaneous loss of consciousness is followed by a state in which the patient ^' presents the air of a statue rather than that of an animated being/' The limbs^ placed in this or that position^ remain fixed: the agent which controlled them seems absent; and the body is passive in the hands of those around.
Resumption of the ordinary state is as instantaneous as was cessation of it. And^ as before^ '^ there is no recollection of anything which occurred during the fit." That is to say, interpreting the facts according to their primary meanings — ^the wandering other self will give no account of its adventures.
That this conception, carrying out their conception of dreams, is entertained by savages, we have direct testimony. In his account of the Chippewas, Keating says, concerning the joumeyings of souls, that some " are the souls of persons in a lethargy or trance. Being refused a passage, these souls return to their bodies and re-animate them.^' And that a kindred conception has been general, is inferable from the fact named by Mr. Fiske in his Myths and Myth-makers, that "in the Middle Ages the phenomena of trance and catalepsy were cited in proof of the theory that the soul can leave the body and afterwards return to it.'* § 77. Yet another, but closely related, form of insensibility has to be named, as yielding evidence similarly interpretable. I refer to ecstasy. While, by making no responses to ordinary stimuli, the ecstatic subject shows that he is " not himself," he seems to have vivid perceptions of things elsewhere.
I THS IDSAS or SWOON, AFOPLBXY^ ETC. 161 Sometimes ^'induced by deep and long-sustamed contemplation^^' ecstasy is characterized by " a higb degree of mental excitement, co-existing with a state of unconsciousness of all surrounding things/' While the muscles are ''rigid, the body erect and inflexible/' there is "a, total suspension of sensibility and yoluntary motion/' During this state, which in some cases recurs daily, '' visions of an extraordinary nature occasionally occur," and '' can be minutely detailed afterwards."
That witnessing such phenomena tends to make still stronger the primitiye belief that each man is double, and that one part can leave the other, is manifest; and that it does strengthen them we have facts to show. In Dr. Callaway's account of the Zulu's beliefs, TJndayeni is described as being able to see ''things which he would not see if he were not in a state of ecstasy: " a statement which, joined with their interpretation of dreams, makes it manifest that the visions of his ecstatic state were regarded by the Zulus as experiences of his wandering other self.
§ 77. I need not detail all the phases of coma, having the common trait of an unconsciousness more or less unlike that of sleep. They vary in degree from " a state of slight temporary drowsiness and torpor to one of profound and permanent stupor, with general paralysis of feeling and motion." Prom simple lethargy, contrasted with natural sleep "chiefly in being more prolonged" — ^from the temporary inanimateness of asphyxia and the stupor produced by narcotics, we pass to the extreme forms above instanced: aU of them being interpretable in the same primitive way.
But there is one other kind of insensibility, highly significant in its implications, which remains to be noticed — the insensibility which direct injury produces. This has two varieties: the one following loss of blood, and the other following concussion.
When treating of the familiar insensibility known as 162 THE DATA 07 SOCIOLOGT.
swoon, I purposely refraiiied from including loss of blood among the causes named: this origin not being yisiblj allied to its other origins. Leadings as he does, a life of violence, now in conflict with animals chased and now in conflict with enemies, brute or human, the primitive man often experiences, or witnesses, fainting from anaomia. Not that he connects cause and effect in this definite way. What he now and then sees is, that after a serious wound comes a sudden, collapse, with closed eyes, immobility, speechlessness. For awhile there is no response to a shake or a call. Presently his wounded fellow -warrior " returns to himself "—opens his eyes and speaks. Again the blood gushes from his wound, and after a time he is again absent. Perhaps there is a revival and no subsequent unconsciousness; or, perhaps, after the next revival, there comes a third quietude — a quietude so prolonged that hope of immediate return is given up.
Sometimes the insensibility has a somewhat different antecedent. In battle, a blow from a waddy lays low a companion, or a club brought down with force on the head of an enemy reduces him to a motionless mass. The one or the other may be only stunned; and after a brief interval, during which no response is made to words or shakes, there is a "re-animation." Or the stroke may have been violent enough to cause concussion of the brain, or fracture of the skull and consequent pressure on the brain. That is to say, there may result prolonged insensibility, followed by incoherent speech and feeble motion; after which may come a second lapse into unconsciousness — ^perhaps ending after another interval or perhaps indefinitely continued.
§ 79. Joined with the evidence which sleep and dreams furnish, this evidence furnished by abnormal states of insensibility, originates a group of notions conceming temporary absences of the other self. A swoon, interpreted aa above, is often preceded by feelings of weakness in the patient and signs of it to the spectators. Hence these rouse the suspicion that the other self is about to desert; and there comes anxiety to prevent its desertion. Beviyal of a fainting person has often taken place while he was being called to: seemingly in response to the call. Hence the question — ^will not calling bring back the other self about to desert f Some savages infer that it will. The Fijian, according to Williams, may sometimes be heard to bawl out lustily to his own soul to return to him. Among the Elarens, a man is constantly in fear lest his other self should leave him: sickness or languor being regarded as signs of its absence; and offerings and prayers being made to bring it back. Especially odd is the behaviour, described by Mason, which this belief causes at a funeral.
" On retoniing from the grave, each person provides himself with three little hooks made with branches of trees, and calling his spirit to follow him, at short intervals, as he retnms, he makes a motion as if hooking it, and then thrusts tlie hook into the ground. This is done to prevent the spirit of the living from staying behind with the spirit of the dead.** Similarly with the graver forms of insensibility. Mostly occurring, as apoplexy, trance, and ecstasy do, to persons otherwise unwell, these prolonged absences of the other self become mentally associated with its impending absences at other times; and hence an interpretation of ill-health or disease. Among some Northern Asiatic tribes disease is ascribed to the soul's departure. By the Algonquins, a sick man is regarded as a man whose " shadow '' is " unsettled, or detached from his body.'' And in some cases the Karens suppose one who is taken ill and dying to be one who has had his soul transferred to another by witchcraft.
Various beliefs naturally arise respecting the doings of the other self during these long absences. Among the Pyaks, ''elders and priestesses often assert that in their dreams they have visited the mansion of Tapa (the Supreme Ood), and seen the Creator dwelling in a house like that of A Malay, the interior of which was adorned with guns and l&i THE DATA OP SOCIOLOOT.
gongs and jars innumerable^ Himself being clotlied like a Dyak/' And Hind speaks of a Cree Indian who asserted that he had once been dead and visited the spirit-world: his alleged visits said by Hind to have been during a dream, being probably^ like the alleged visits of the Dyaks, a vision daring abnormal insensibility. For these persistent desertions by the other self are in various places explained as consequent on journeys to the world of spirits. Instances are given by Mr. Tylor of this interpretation among the Australians, the Elhonds, the Greenlanders, the Tatars; and he names Scandinavian and Greek legends implying the same notion.
I may add, as one of the strangest of these derivative beliefs, that of certain Greenlanders, who, according to Crantz, think that the soul can '' go astray out of the body for a considerable time. Some even pretend, that when going on a long journey they can leave their souls at home, and yet remain sound and healthy.^' Thus what have become with us figurative expressions, remain with men in lower states literal descriptions. The term applied by Southern Australians to one who is unconscious, means "without soul''; and we say that such an one is "inanimate.'' Similarly, though our thoughts respecting a debilitated person are no longer like those of the savage, yet the words we use to convey them have the same original implication: we speak of him as having "lost his spirit."
§ 80. The actual beliefs just instanced, like those instanced in foregoing chapters, carry us somewhat beyond the mark. Evolution has given to the superstitions we now meet with, more specific characters than had the primitive ideas out of which they grew. I must therefore, as before, ask the reader to ignore the specialities of these interpretations, and to recognise only the trait common to them. The fact to be observed is that the abnormal forms of insensibility now and then witnessed, are inevitably inter- THB n>SA8 OF SWOON^ APOPLEXY, BTC. 165 preted after the same maiiiier as is the normal form of insensibiHiy daily witnessed: the two interpretations sup* porting one another.
The primitive man sees very varions durations of the insensible state and very varions degrees of the insensibility. There is the doze in which the dropping of the head on the breast is followed by instant waking; there is the ordinary sleep^ ending in a few minutes or continuing many hours, and varying in profundity from a state broken by a quiet call of the name to a state not broken without shouts and shakes; there is lethargy in which slumber is still longer, and the waking short and imperfect; there is swoon, perhaps lasting a few seconds or perhaps lasting hours, from which the patient now seems brought back to himself by repeated calls, and now obstinately stays away; and there are apoplexy, catalepsy, ecstasy, and other kinds of coma, lasting for long periods and similar in the persistence of the insensibility, though dissimilar in the accounts the patient gives on returning to himself. Further, these various comatose states differ as ending, sometimes in revival, and sometimes in a quiescence which becomes complete and indefinitely continued: the other self remaining BO long away that the body goes cold.
Most significant of all, however, is the experience that states of insensibility follow deep wounds and violent blows. Though for other losses of consciousness the savage saw no antecedents, yet for each of these the obvious antecedent was the act of an enemy. And this act of an enemy produced variable results. Now, the injured man shortly ''returned to himself,^' and did not go away again; and now, returning to himself only after a long absence, he presently deserted his body for an indefinite time. Lastly, instead of these temporary returns followed by final absence, there now and then occurred cases in which a violent blow caused continuous absence from the first: the other self was not perceived to come b£kck at all.
CHAPTER XII THE IDEAS or DEATH AND RESURREOTIOK.
§ 81. Ws assume without hesitation that death is easily distingaished from life; and we assume without hesitation that the natural ending of life by deaths must hare been always known as it is now known. Each of the assumptions^ thus undoubtingly made^ is erroneous.
** Nothing is more certain than death; nothing is at times more uncertain than its reality: and nnmerous instances are recorded of persons prematurely buried, or actually at the verge of the grave, before it was discovered that life still remained; and even of some who weris resos-Gitated by the knife of the anatomist" This passage^ which I extract from Forbes and Tweedie^s Oyclopasdia of Practical Medicine, is followed by an examination of the tests commonly trusted: showing that they are all fallacious. If, then, haying the accumulated experiences bequeathed by ciyilization, joined to that acquaintance with natural death gained through direct observation in every family, we cannot be sure whether revival will or will not take place; what judgments are to be expected from the primitive man, who, lacking all this recorded knowledge, lacks also our many opportunities of seeing natural death f Until facts have proved it, he cannot know that this permanent quiescence is the necessary termination to the state of activity; and his wandering, predatory life keeps out of view most of the evidence which establishes this truth.
THB IDEAS or DEATH AND BBSUBBECTIOK. 167 So curcamstcmced^ then, wliat ideas does tlie primitive man form of death? Let ns observe the coarse of his thought, and the resulting oonduct.
§ 82. He witnesses insensibilities varions in their lengths and various in their degrees. After the immense majority of them there come reanimations — daily after sleep, frequently after swoon^ occasionally after coma, now and then after wounds or blows. What about this other form of insensibility f — ^will not reanimation follow this also f The inference that it will, is strengthened by the occasional experience that revival occurs after immediate expectation of it had ceased. One in course of being buried, or one about to be burned, suddenly comes back to himself. The savage does not, as we should, take this for a proof that the man supposed to be dead was not dead; bat it helps to convince him that the insensibility of death is like all the other insensibilities — only temporary. Even were he critical, instead of being incapable of criticism, the facts would go far to justify his belief that in these cases reanimation is only longer postponed.
That this confusion, naturally to be expected, actually exists, we have direct evidence. Arbousset and Daumas quote the proverb of the Bushmen — " Death is only a sleep.'' Concerning the Tasmanians, Bonwick writes: — ^' When I asked Mungo the reason of the spear being stuck in the tomb, he replied quietly, ^ To fight with when he is asleep.' " Even of so superior a race as the Dyaks, we are told by St. John that they have great difficulty in distinguishing sleep from death. Perceval says that when a Toda dies, the people ^^ entertain a lingering hope that till putrefaction commences, reanimation may possibly take place." More clearly still is this notion of rfwival implied in the reasons given for their practices by two tribes— one in the Old World and one in the New — ^who, in extreme degrees, unite brutality with stupidity. Galton says that the corpse of a 168 TH8 DATA OT SOOIOLOaT.
ff Damara, having been sewn-up sitting " in an old ox«lude; is buried in a hole^ and ''the spectators jump backwards and forwards over the grave to keep the deceased from rising out of it/' And we learn from Southey that, among the Tupis, " the corpse had all it^s limbs tied fast, that the dead man might not be able to get up, and infest his friends with his visits."
Apart from avowed convictions and assigned reasons, abundant proofs are furnished by the resulting behaviour; as in the inst&nces last given. Let us contemplate the various acts prompted by the belief that the dead return to life.
§ 83. First of all come attempts to revive the corpse — to bring back the other-self. These are sometimes very strenuous, and very horrible. Alexander tells us of the Arawaks, that a man who had lost his two brothers *' cut thorny twigs, and beat the bodies all over, uttering at the same time ' Heia I heia I' as if Ae felt the pain of the flagellation. * ♦ ♦ Seeing that it was impossible to reanimate the lifeless clay, he opened their eyes, and beat the thorns into the eyeballs, and all over the face.'' Similarly, we learn from Sparman that the Hottentots reprpach and ill-use the dying, and those just dead, for going away.