Already, in § 52, it has been pointed out that before analysis has progressed somewhat, the special power or peculiar property of an object, is supposed to be present in all its parts, and to be obtained by obtaining any of its parts.
This mode of thinking, we saw, led to actions which I must here re-illustrate. As further showing the idea that the qualities of any individual are appropriated by eating him, I may give the statement of Stanbridge, that when the Australians kill an infant, they feed a previonsly-bom child with it; believing '* that by its eating as much as possible of the roasted infant, it will possess the strength of both.'* And I may add testimonies to the still more remarkable &ct, that elsewhere, dead relatives are consumed in pursuance of an allied belief. Grarcilasso says of the Cucamas that ''as soon as a relation died, these people assembled and ate him roasted or boiled, according as he was thin or fat.^' Wallace tells us that certain adjacent races, the Tari^nas and Tuo&nos, who drink the ashes of their relatives, " believe that thus the virtues of the deceased will be transmitted to the drinkers;" and of another allied race, the Arawaks, we are told by Waitz that it was " the highest mark of honour they could pay to the dead, to drink their powdered bones mixed in water,^' Equally significant is a custom of the whale-fiishing Koniagas. ''When a whaler dies, the body is cut into small pieces and distributed among his fellow-craftsmen, each of whom, after rubbing the point of his lance upon it, dries and preserves hia piece as a sort of talisman. Or the body is placed in a tKSPIBATION, DIVINATION^ EXOBCISM^ AND SOBCEBT, 263 distant cave^ wliere^ before setting out upon a chase^ tlie whalers all congregate^ take it out, cany it to a stream, immerse it, and then drink of the water/' Moreover, the particular virtue possessed by an aggregate is not only supposed to inhere in all parts of it, but extends to whatever is associated with it. Even its appearance is regarded as a property which cannot exist apart from its other properties. Hence the dislike often shown by savages to having their portraits taken. Along with this lively representation they think there must go some part of the life. A belief like that of the Chinooks who, if photographed, '^ fancied that their spirit thus passed into the keeping of others, who could torment it at pleasure,^' or like that of the Mapuch^s, who hold that possession of a portrait gives fatal power over the person represented, will be fully exemplified hereafter, under another head. For the present, it suffices to name this belief, as further showing the ways in which unanalytical conceptions of things work out. One more way must be added. Not only with the portrait, but even with the name, there is this association. The belief betrayed by our own uncultured that some intrinsic connection exists between word and thing (a belief which even the cultured among the Greeks did not get rid of) is shown us still more distinctly by savages.
From all parts of the world we get illustrations of the desire to keep a name secret. Burton remarks of the North American Indian generally, that he dislikes to disclose his name; and of South Americans, Smith tells us that the Mapuchd shows this same repugnance, under the belief that knowledge of his name gives a fatal power over him. The motive for this secrecy was clearly expressed by the Chinook who thought Kane's desire to know his name proceeded from a wish to steal it. Indeed, as Bancroft puts it, " with them the name assumes a personality; it is the shadow or spirit, or other-self, of the flesh and blood person.'' A kindred interpretation is shown among the Land-Dyaks, who often change the names of their children^ especially if they are sickly: " there being an idea that they will deceire the inimical spirits by following this practice/' And in another direction this belief works out in the widely-prevalent repugnance td name the dead. That which Dove tells us of the Tasmanians, that they fear " pronouncing the name by which a deceased friend was knoWn, as if his shade might thus be offended/' is told us, with or without the assigned motive, by travellers from many regions.
The facts thus grouped make sufficiently clear the genesis of the sorcerer's beliefs and practices. Everywhere he proceeds by obtaining a part of his victim's body or something closely associated with his body, or else by making some representation of him; and then Jie does to this part, or this representation, something which he thinks is thereby done to his victim. The conception ascribed by Fitzroy to the Patagonians, who think that possession of a man's hair or nails enables the ntiagician to work evil on him, is the general conception. New Zealanders ** all dread cutting their nails " for this reason. Canon Callaway specifically states of the Amazulu, that ^'sorcerers are supposed to destroy their victims by taking some portion of their bodies, as hair or nails; or something that has been worn next their person, as a piece of old garment, and adding to it certain medicines, which is then buried in some secret place." Ancient Peruvian sorcerers destroyed their victims by acting on blood taken from them. Among the New Caledonians, this fatal power over any one is exercised by operating on the remnants of his meals. Probably the idea is that these remnants continue to be connected with the portions he has eaten, and that have become part of him. They believe that — " men can create disease and death hj burning what is called Nahak, Nahak means rubbish, but principallj refuse of food. Everything of the kind they bury or throw into the sea, lest the disease-makers should get hold of it. * * * The belief in the system of Nahak-buming was as firm in the craft as oat of it If a disease-maker was HI himself, he felt eure that some one must be burning his Nahak.'^ Spells which originate in the belief that a representation is physically connected with the thing represented, might be exemplified from societies in all grades. Keating tells ns of the Chippewas, that a sorcerer transfers a disease by making a '^ wooden image of his patient^s enemy,'* piercing it to the heart, and introducing powders; and the identity of this method with methods indicated in tales of Eoropean witchcraft, needs no proof.
Turning from this simpler form of magic to the form in which supernatural agents are employed, there come the interesting questions — What connection is there between the two? And does not the second grow out of the first? Reasons exist for thinking that it does. On remembering how small a difference the primitive man recognizes between the living and the dead, we may suspect that he thinks the two may be similarly acted upon. If possessing a portion of a living man gives power o^er him, will not possessing a portion of a dead man give power over him too? That by some peoples the deceased is supposed to have need of all lus parts, has already been shown. We saw, in § 88, that the Mexicans took care to leave his bones where he could easily find them at the resurrection; and that with the same notion a dead Peruvian's hair and nails were preserved for him in one place. According to Bastian, the like recurs, with the like assigned reason, among the Inland Negroes in Ardrah. Is there not, then, the implication that one who gets possession of such relics thereby gets power over the dead owner, as he would have done over the owner if living? Accept this implication, and the meaning of enchantments becomes clear. Habitually fire is used; and habitually the things burned or boiled are fragments of dead things, brute or human, but especially human. Speaking of Ancient Peruvians, Arriaga says that by "a, certain powder ground from the bones of the dead,^^ a sorcerer ''stupefies all in the house." In early times it was thought dangerous "to leave corpses unguarded, lest they should be mangled by the witches, who took from them the most choice ingredients composing their charms/' Portions of the dead man having been the elements originally used, and such portions having repulsiveness as their most conspicuous trait, repulsive things in general naturally suggested themselves as things likely to strengthen the '' hell-broth/' Setting out with coercion of the dead man by the help of something belonging to him, we may see that along with the differentiation of ghosts into orders of spirits and demons, there would be certain to go differentiation of the spells and incantations. Especially if animal-souls, or the souls of metamorphosed human beings, were to be conjured, there might be looked for those strange mixtures of " eye of newt, and toe of frog,'* etc., which the witch-cauldron contains.* That some such relationship exists between the arts of the necromancer and these ideas of the savage, we find further reason to suspect in the supposed * While the above passage if standing in tj^, there comes to me a striking verification of the inference drawn in it. In a letter of thanks to Mr. Bancroft^ for the first volume of his Native Raoea of the Padfie 8t(xtet, having implied that I greatly valued, for my own purposes, his laborious compilation, Mr. Bancroft was so obliging as to send me forthwith the pi^oofs of large parts of the remaining volumes. In those of Vol. III., a paragraph on p. 147 describes the initiation of a shamin among the Thlinkeets. Going to the woods, and feeding for some weeks " only on the roots of the patMx-karridmn," he waits till " the chief of the spirits " [who is an ancestral sham&n] sends him " a riverotter, in the tongue of which animal is supposed to be hid the whole power and secret of shamdnism." • • • « If, however, the spirits wiU not visit the wouldbe shamin, nor give him any opportunity to get the otter-tongue as described above, the neophyte visits the tomb of a dead shamAn and keeps an awful vigil over night, holding in his living mouth a finger of the dead man or one of his teeth; this constrains the spirits veiy powerfully to send the necessary otter."
Here, more fitly than elsewhere, I may point out that we thus get an explanation of amulets. Portions of dead men and dead animals, though not exclusively the things used as charms, are the usual things. In pursuance of the notion above described, they are supposed to give the possessor some powev potency of names. The primitiye notion that a name has intrinsic yirtue^ and the derivative notion that calling the dead by their names affects them^ and may offend them^ originate the necromancer's notion of invocation. Everywhere, be it in the Hebrew legend of Samnel, whose ghost asks why he has been disquieted, or in an Icelandic saga, which describes ghosts severally summoned by name as answering to the summons, we get evidence that possession of the name is supposed to give over the dead an influence like that which it is supposed to give over the living. The power acquired by knowledge of the name is again impUed by such stories as the '' open Sesame '' of the Arabian Nights; and the alleged effect of calling the name we see in the still-extant, though now jocose, saying— '' Talk of the devil and he is sure to appear/' Special interpretations aside, however, the general interpretation is sufficiently manifest. The primitive ghostthat belonged to the dead being, or some power over it» or both. That which the sorcerer employs as an instrument of coercion, is, when a talisman, held as securing the good offices of the ghost, or as a protection against it. The custom, common to many savage races, of wearing about them bones of dead relatives, has probably this meaning; which, us we saw, was the avowed meaning of the Koniaga- whalers in keeping as charms bits of the flesh of a dead companion. This notion is clearly implied in the fadt told us by Beecham, that " an Ashantee sovereign carried the head of his predecessor with him to battle as a charm; " and the New Caledonians, who " preserve the nails and teeth of the dead aa charms," show us the same notion. Races who are in danger from ferocious animals frequently use as amulets the preservable parts of such animals. Of the Damaras, Anderson says **that their amulets are generally" the teeth of lions and hyenas, entrails of animals, etc., etc.; and elsewhere he describes the Namaqua-amulets as consisting " as usual of the teeth and claws of lions, hyienas, and other wild boasts; pieces of wood, bone, dried flesh and fat, roots of plants, etc" Similarly Boyle gives as follows the charms belonging to a Dyak medicine-man: — Some teeth of alligators and honey bears, several boar's tusks, chips of deer horn, tangles of coloured thread, daws of some animals, and odds and ends of European articles. Evidently the preservable parts of animals take the leading place. Elsewhere the motive is specified. Enumerating tho amulets of the Brazilian Indian, Spix and Martins name the "eye-teeth of ounces and monkeys;" and they say the Indian thinks hb amulets, among other benefits, " will protect him against the attacks of wild beasts."
268 THE DATA OF SOCIOLOGYtheory, implying but little difference between dead and living, fosters the notion that the dead can be acted upon by arts like those which act on the living; and hence results that species of magic which, in its earlier form, is a summoning of the dead to get from them information, as the witch of Endor summons the spirit of Samuel, and in its later form is a raising of demons to help in mischief.
§ 134. Exorcism and sorcery pass insensibly into miracle. What difference exists refers less to the natures of the effects worked than to the characters of the agents working them. If the marvellous results are ascribed to a supernatural being at enmity with the observers, the art is sorcery; but if ascribed to a friendly supernatural being, the marvellous results are classed as miracles.
That this is the relation between the two, is shown in the contest between the Hebrew priests and the magicians of Egypt. From PharaoVs point of view, Aaron was an enchanter working by the help of a spirit antagonistic to himself; while his own priests worked by the help of his favouring gods. Contrariwise, from the point of view of the Israelites, the achievements of their own leaders were divine, and those of their Antagonists diabolical. But there was agreement in the beliefs that supernatural agency was employed, and that the more powerful supernatural agent had to be yielded to.
Alleged ancient miracles of another order are paralleled in their meanings by alleged miracles now wrought every day in South Africa. By the Bechuanas, missionaries are taken for another sort of rain-makers; and among the Torubans, " an old farmer, seeing a cloud, will say to a missionary, ' please let it rain for us.' " Rain being thus, in these arid regions, synonymous with blessing, we find contests between rain-doctors, or '^ heaven-herds,^' like that between Elijah and the priests of Baal. There are similar trials of strength, and kindred penalties for failure. At a INSPIRATION, DlVmATION, EXOECISM, AND SORCERY. 269 time when ''the heaven was hot and dry a rain-doctor, XJmkqaekana, says — ' let the people look at the heaven at such a time; it will rain/ * * * And when it rained, the people said — ' truly, he is a doctor/ * * * After that year the heaven was hard, and it did not rain. The people persecuted him exceedingly. * * * It is said they poisoned him.'^ Habitually we find this same conception of the weather-doctor, as, in the words of Canon Callaway, '' a priest to whom is entrusted the power of prevailing mediation''; and habitually we find both his mediatory power and the power of the supernatural agent with whom he has influence, tested by the result. Thus in the account of his captivity among the Brazilian Indians, the old voyager, Hans Stade, saying, "God did a wonder through me," narrates how, at the request of two savages, he stopped by prayer a coming storm which threatened to hinder their fishing; and that " the savage Parwaa said — ' Now I see that thou hafit spoken with thy god:''' pagan and Christian being thus perfectly at one in their interpretation.
The only difference of moment is the extent to which the supernatural agent who produces the miraculous effect at the instigation of the medicine-man, rain-maker, prophet, or priest, has diverged in ascribed nature from the primitive ancestral ghost.
§ 135. And now we approach another order of phenomena which has been evolving simultaneously with the orders described in this chapter and the one preceding it.
The primitive belief is that the ghosts of the dead, entering the bodies of the living, produce convulsive actions, insanity, disease, and death; and as this belief develops, these original supernatural agents conceived as causing such evils, differentiate into supernatural agents of various kinds and powers. Above, we have contemplated certain sequences of this theory of possession. Along with a belief in maleficent possession there goes a belief in beneficent posses- 270 THB DATA OP fiOCIOLOGV.
sion; which is prayed for under the forms of supernatural strength^ inspiration, or knowledge. Further, from the notion that if maleficent demons can enter they can be driyen out, there results exorcism. And then, following the idea that demons may be expelled there comes the idea that they may be otherwise controlled — ^may be called to aid: whence enchantments and miracles.
But if ghosts of the dead, or derived supernatural agents otherwise classed, can thus inflict evils on men when at enmity with them, or, when amicable, can give them help and protection, will it not be wise so to behave as to gain their good-will? Several poUcies suggest themselves. Supposed as these souls or spirits originally are, to be like living men in their perceptions and intelligence, they may be evaded and deceived. Or, aa in the procedures above described, they may be treated antagonistically— driven away and defied. Or, contrariwise, there may be adopted the course of pacifying them if angry, and pleasing them if friendly.
This last course, which originates religious observances in general, we have now to consider. We shall find that the entire aggregate of ideas and practices constituting a cult, has the same root with the aggregates of ideas and practices already described, and gradually diverges from them.
CHAPTER XIX.
SAORSB PLACES; TEMPLES, AND ALTARS; SAORIFICE, PASTING, AND PROPITIATION; PRAISE, PRATER, ETC.
§ 136. On grave-stones, inscriptions often begin with the words — " Sacred to the memory of/' The sacredness thus ascribed to the tomb, extends to whatever is, or has been, closely associated with the dead. The bedroom containing the corpse is entered with the least possible noise; words are uttered in low tones; and by the subdued manner is shown a feeling which, however variable in other elements, always includes the element of awe.
This sentiment excited in us by the dead, by the place of the dead, and by the immediate belongings of the dead, while doubtless partly unlike that of the primitive man, is in essence like it. When we read of savages in general, as of the Dakotahs, that '^ they stand in great awe of tho spirits of the dead,'' and that thinking men's ghosts haunt the places of death, many tribes, like the Hottentots, '^ leave the huts they died in standing," with all their contents untouched; we are sufficiently shown that fear is a chief component of the sentiment. Shrinking from the chamber of death, often shown among ourselves, like aversion to going through a churchyard at night, arises partly from a vague dread. Common to uncivilized and civilized, this feeling colours all the ideas which the dead arouse.
Be this as it may, however, we have abundant proof that the place where the dead are, excites in savages an emotion 272 THE DATA OP SOCIOLOGY.
of fear; is approached with awe; and acquires tlie cliaracter of sacredness. Mariner tells us that in the Tonga Islands^ the cemeteries containing the great chiefs are considered sacred. We learn from Angas that when a New Zealand chief is buried in a village, the whole village becomes immediately tapu: no one, on pain of death, being permitted to approach it. The Tahitians, according to Cook, never repair or live in the house of one who is dead: that, and everything belonging to him, is tabooed. Food for the departed is left by New Zealanders in " sacred calabashes ''; in Aneiteum, where they " worship the spirits of their ancestors,*' the groves in which they leave offerings of food for them, are " sacred groves "; and by Ashantis, the town of Bantama '4s regarded as sacred because it contains the fetishhouse, which is the mausoleum of the kings of Ashanti.'* Here the fact to be noted is, that this awe excited by the dead grows into a sentiment like that excited by the places and things used for religious purposes. The kinship is forced on our attention when we read such statements as that of Cook concerning the Sandwich Islanders, that the moved seems to be their pantheon as well as their burialplace; and his kindred statement that the morais or buryinggrounds of the Tahitians are also places of worship. But we shall see this relationship most clearly on tracing the genesis of temples and altars.
§ 137. Concerning the cave-inhabiting Veddahs, Bailey tells us that until very recently the dead man was left where he died: the survivors sought some other cave, leaving that in which the death occurred to the spirit of the deceased. Schweinfurth gives evidence, already named in connection with another belief, that the Bongo people could not be got to enter a certain cave which they said was haunted by the spirits of fugitives who had died in it. And in another case, Livingstone tells us that "no one dared to enter the Lohaheng, or cave, for it was the common belief that it BACBED PIACIfiB^ TEMPLES^ AND ALTARS; STC. 278 ^as the habitation of the Deity/' On recalling the fact that primitiye men lived in caves at the same time that they interred their dead in them; on adding the fact that when they ceased to use caves as residences they continued to use them as cemeteries; and on rememberings further^ the general custom of carrying repeated offerings to the places where the departed lie; we see how there arises the sacred cave or cave-temple. That the cave-temples of Egypt thus originated^ is tolerably clear. In various parts of the world are found natural caverns with rude frescoes daubed on their sides: and. similarly, these artificial caverns in wluch some EgyptiLi ki;g8 were buried, had their long passages and sepulchral chambers covered with paintings. If we assume that to the preserved bodies of these kings, as to those of Egyptians generally, offerings were made; we must infer that the sacred burial-cave had become a cavetemple. And on learning that elsewhere in Egypt are found cave-temples of a more developed kind that were not sepulchral, we may properly regard these as derivative; for it is not to be supposed that men commenced cutting their places of worship out of the solid rock, without having a preceding habit to suggest it.
For another class of temples we have another origin caused by another mode of burial. Already reference has been made to the widely-prevalent custom of burying a dead man in his own house. The Arawaks, Schomburgh says, place the corpse in a ^' small corial (boat) and bury it in the hut.*' Humboldt tells us that by the Guiana tribes, ''a hole is dug in the hut and there the body is laid''; and among the Creeks, the habitation of a dead warrior becomes his place of interment. Similarly in Africa. By the Fantees " the dead person is buried in his own house"; the Dahomans bury in the deceased's '' own house or in the abode of certain ancestors"; and there is house-burial among the Fulahs, the Bagos, and the Gold Coast people. Whether the house thus used tends to become a temple, depends on 274 THB DATA OF SOCIOUMT.
whether it is or is not abandoned. In cases like those cited in § 117^ where the survivors continue to inhabit it after one or more interments^ the acquirement of the sacred character is prevented. When Landa tells us of the Central Americans of Yucatan^ that^ '^ as a rule^ they abandoned the house and left it uninhabited after the burial^ unless there were many people living in it who overcame the fear of death by company *'; we are shown the rise of the sentiment and what results from it if not checked. Hence^ on reading of the Caribs that^ ''burying the corpse in the centre of his own dwelling " [if the master of the house] the relations '' quitted the house altogether^ and erected another in a distant situation ^^; and on reading of the Brazilian Indians that a dead man '' is buried in the hut which^ if he was an adult^ is abandoned^ and another built in its stead '^; and on reading that '' the ancient Peruvians frequently buried their dead in their dwellings and then removed ''; the manifest implication is seen to be that the abandoned house^ thus left to the ghost of the deceased^ becomes a place regarded with awe. Moreover^ as repeated supplies of food are commonly taken to it; and as along with offerings there go other propitiatory acts; the original dwelling-house^ turned into a mortuary house^ acquires the attributes of a temple.
Where house-burial is not practised, the sheltering structure raised above the grave or above the stage bearing the corpse, becomes the germ of the sacred building. Earl tolls us that by the New Guinea people there is " a roof of atass erected over '^ the burial-place. When found by him. Cook said the Tahitians placed the bodies of their dead upon a kind of bier supported by sticks and under a roof; and the use of such a protecting roof continued to the time when Ellis described them. So, too, in Sumatra, where " a shed is built over ' ' the grave; and so, too, in Tonga, where the burial-place includes the grave, the mound in which it is Bunk, and a sort of shed over it. Of course, this shed 8ACRSD PLACISy TKMPLIS^ AND ALTABS; ITO. 275 admits of enlargement and finish. Brooke tells us tliat the Djaks in some places build monuments for the dead like houses, 18 ft. high, ornamentally carved, hollow inside, containing the goods of the departed — sword, shield, paddle, etc. When, therefore, we read in the United States Exploring Expedition that the Fijians deposit the bodies of their chiefs and persons of note in small mbures or temples; we shall not err in concluding that these so-called temples are simply more-developed sheltering structures. The observances maintained in these buildings inclosing the dead, yield further proofs of their essential nature. Ellis, describing the funeral rites of a Tahitian chief, placed under a protective shed, says that the corpse was clothed, '^ and placed in a sitting posture; a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers, daily presented by the relatives, or the priest appointed to attend the body.^' Here the shed has become a place of worship.
Still more clearly are we shown that the structure erected over the dead body develops into a temple, by the practices of the Peruvians. Acosta tells us that " the treasures, estates, and revenues of each Ynca king remained his after death, to maintain the chapel where his body was placed, the large number of servants and all his family dedicated to his worship.''
Nor is it among these inferior races alone that we trace this genesis of the temple out of the specially-provided house for the dead. That which early Spanish travellers tell us about the Peruvians, ancient Greek travellers tell us about the Egyptians. Gieza expresses his astonishment "to see how little the CoUas cared for having large and handsome houses for the living, while they bestowed so much care on the tombs where the dead were interred"; and similarly, Diodorus, giving a reason for the meanness of the Egyptians' dwellings as contrasted with the splendour of their tombs, says — " they call the houses of the living inns, because they stay in them but a little while; but the Bepulclires of the dead they call eyerlasting habitations.^ As these Egyptian tombs, like their houses in type though so superior in quality^ were places in which offerings to the dead were made, they were essentially temples. Not unfrequently in the East, these mortuary structures united the characters of the cave-temple and the dwelling-house temple. As in parts of Eg3rpt, as at Petra, as at Cyrene, so in Etruria, the tombs were arranged along a cliff '' like houses in a street,'' and " were severally an imitation of a dwelling chamber." So, too, the tomb of Darius, cut in the rock, '^ is an exact reproduction'' of his palace on the same scale. Just noting this variation, I may end with the remark of Mr. Fergusson, who, writing of the Chaldean temples, and indicating the likendss of the tomb of Cyrus to a temple, says '' the most celebrated example of this form is as often called [by ancient writers] the tomb as the temple of Belus, and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be considered as one and the same thing."
In later times there have been manifest tendencies to such a genesis of the temple, de novo. In the oases of the Sahara, are chapels built over the remains of marabouts, or Mahometan saints; and to these chapels the pious make pilgrimages and take offerings. Obviously, too, a chapel covering the tomb of a saint within a Eoman Catholic cathedral, is a small temple within a large one. And every detached mausoleum containing the bones of a distinguished man, is visited with feelings akin to the religious, and is an incipient place of worship.
§ 138. When, from tracing the origin of the sacred chamber, be it cave, or deserted house, or special mortuary house, or temple, we proceed to trace the origin of the sacred structure within it — the altar — ^we come first to something intermediate. In India there are highly-developed sacred structures uniting the attributes of the two.
The grave-heap growing into the tumulus, which in- SACRED PLACBSj TKMPLES^ AND ALTARS; ETC. 277