* 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.
THE IDBAS OF SOULS^ GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS, ETC.
§ 91. The trareller Park, after narrating a sndden rencontre 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, accepting in full the doctrine of the natural evolution of species, nevertheless professes to accept literally the statement that '' QoA formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ": an incongruity of beliefs which may almost pair off with that of the Catholics, who seeing, touching, and tasting the unchanged 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 intelligence and without knowledge, may entertain conceptions which are mutually destructivB. It seems difficult to picture 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 supposition 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 whitefellow 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 unaccompanied 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 belonged 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 substantiality 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 Agamemnon's soul as " shedding the warm tear/' and describes the ghost of Sisyphus as sweating from his efforts in thrusting.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.
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 something between the two. The resuscitated Christ is at the same time represented as having wounds that admit of tactual examination; and nevertheless as passing unimpeded through a closed door or through walls. And their supernatural 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 surrounding air, thus being incorporeal; ^ elsewhere they are said to have wings, implying locomotion by mechanical action, and are represented as rubbing against, and wearing 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 semisubstantiality, I may refer the reader to Mr. Tyler's Primitive 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 difference generating a correlative conception.
The heart ceases to beat. Is then the heart the otherself 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 departed 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 inverting 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, Walpole 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 meaning are elsewhere met with.
§ 95. Were there no direct evidence that conceptions of the other-self are thus derived, the indirect evidence furnished 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 familiar 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 otherself: 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 perceptible 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, recognized 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 progressing 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 instruments, 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. Williams, 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 possession 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 preestablished 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 intelligence 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, according 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 recognized 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 commonly interfering in human affairs.
§ 98. It remains only to note the progressive differentiation 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 insensibility 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 unsubstantial 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 otherself 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 materiality 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 ultimately change them. Consciousness of the incongruity, becoming clearer as thought becomes more deliberate, leads to successive compromises. The second self, originally conceived as equally substantial with the first, grows step by step less substantial: now it is semi-solid, now it is aeriform, now it is ethereal. And this stage finally reached, is one in which there cease to be ascribed any of the properties 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 conceive this as best he may. Hence a chaos of ideas concerning the after-state of the dead. Among tribes who say that death is annihilation, we yet commonly find such inconsequent 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. Elsewhere, 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 nnwarlike 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, '^ expressly 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 distinction 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.
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 believed 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 supposed 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 return 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.'^