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ANIMISM 
 
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ANIMISM 
 
 OR 
 
 THOUGHT CURRENTS OF 
 PRIMITIVE PEOPLES 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM GILMORE 
 
 BOSTON 
 MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 MDCCCCXIX 
 
<^K' 
 
 COPYRIGHT* I9I9*BY 
 MARSHALL JONES COMPANY 
 
 THEPI.IHPT0N'P1ESS 
 N O K W O O D*M A S S'U'S*A 
 
 JUN 3U iyi9 
 ©CI.A530 50 
 
To my Son 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE result of recent historical studies, 
 whether on anthropological, sociological, 
 archeological, or religious lines, has brought 
 into ever clearer vision as the substratum of all 
 civiHzations that stage of culture from which 
 this book takes its title. One consequence 
 is: general recognition of animism as a life 
 fadlor, the power of which is not yet exhausted, 
 the study of which fascinates because of its 
 almost infinite variety and its persistent force. 
 The words ** animism," "animistic,'* have come 
 to fall ever so lightly from tongue and pen and 
 meet us at every turn. Yet what animism is 
 few who use the term adequately reaHze. 
 Though Sir E. B. Tylor in his imperishable 
 monograph on Primitive Culture exhibited 
 many of its phenomena and blocked out the 
 main lines of investigation over forty years ago, 
 comparatively few understand its significance 
 or are acquainted with its manifestations even 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 yet. Fewer still comprehend the doings and 
 beliefs as adual or realize the state of mind — 
 operations of perception and reason — of those 
 whose adls and beliefs we call animistic. 
 
 There seemed to be room, then, for a small 
 volume which should exhibit the phenomena 
 and the related and inferred behefs of this 
 complex stage in a simple manner, with suffi- 
 ciently numerous citations to illustrate clearly, 
 yet without the overlay of too abundant refer- 
 ences. The references here given have been 
 drawn almost entirely from very recent and 
 authoritative sources gathered in the writer's 
 own reading, easily accessible in the current of 
 books on travel now pouring from the press. 
 Most of the volumes to which reference has 
 been made in this discussion belong to the 
 twentieth century. Moreover these sources 
 are primary. Recourse has seldom been had 
 even to so valuable a colledtion of fadls as 
 Eraser's quite exhaustive Golden Bough in its 
 third edition. The fadls there adduced were 
 employed by the talented author for quite 
 another end than the present writer's, and this 
 might easily have led to confusion. 
 
 What value a knowledge of the features of 
 this agglomerate of ads and beliefs has be- 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 comes evident when it is remembered that over 
 half the population of the globe is animistic in 
 its main features of faith and adlion, that a 
 large part of humanity entertains beliefs only 
 one remove away from this and regards as 
 fundamental a philosophy of life grounded in 
 animistic thought, and that at least three basal 
 tenets of Christianity itself are common to 
 Christians and animists. Japanese, Koreans, 
 Chinese, the larger part of the population of 
 India, the North Asiatic tribes, Oceanicans, 
 Africans, and American Indians are, or were 
 recently, animists. No stage of culture, no 
 great religion, has ever been able to disown 
 some of the commonest heirlooms left by 
 primitive modes of thinking. From the stand- 
 points both of culture and of rehgion animism 
 may be described (not defined) as the taproot 
 which sinks deepest in racial human experience 
 and continues its cellular and fibrous strudlure 
 in the tree trunk of modern convidion. It is 
 not less important than the surface roots of 
 accrued beliefs that branch out on all sides, 
 drawing a wide-sourced sustenance, while the 
 taproot penetrates the subsoil of man's most 
 intimate soul-substance. 
 
 Hardly less interesting is the fad that in 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 some fundamentals — religious and social — 
 the advanced thought of the day is returning 
 to some convidlions essential to animistic 
 culture. One would not be drawing the long 
 bow were he to affirm that in that stage every 
 a6l in life had a religious aspedl. Nothing a 
 man could do but might be regarded as either 
 pleasing to spirits or the reverse. One might 
 say that animists went far beyond Matthew 
 Arnold's didlum that condudl is three-fourths of 
 life — for them it embraced the whole of life. 
 That is precisely what advanced thinkers are 
 maintaining today, and in that tenet is the 
 best promise for improvement in modern con- 
 ditions among all classes. 
 
 In another aspedl, too, the social, we are 
 returning to early conceptions. Under totem- 
 ism, the foundation of which is an animistic 
 view of things non-human, the individualism 
 that became so marked a feature in some 
 philosophies of the last centuries and gave 
 impetus even to revolutions was unknown. 
 The charadleristic of totemic and derived 
 society was much nearer that slogan which has 
 now advanced beyond the circle of purely 
 socialistic propaganda: "Each for all and all 
 for each." 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Theologically also we find ourselves return- 
 ing to old, old views of man's relation to the 
 supernatural. The comparatively recent doc- 
 trine of sin is being discarded. The implaca- 
 bility of Deity, the notion of that Deity's 
 infinity as the measure of offence, making of 
 sin an enormity that clouds eternally the face 
 of God and requires an infinite and exadlly 
 equivalent penalty, no longer holds the entire 
 field. On the other hand, the ad: itself, its 
 efFecfl on the doer and his kind, its indelibility 
 of effed: on the one side, and the propitiability 
 of the offended Spirit, his desire to have man 
 reinstate himself in divine favor — the willing- 
 ness to come more than half way (to state the 
 matter in the language of every-day life) — are 
 now standing out in relief. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to remark that, of 
 course, in all these cases the efFed is not that 
 of the return of a circle's circumference into 
 itself. There has been marked, if spiral, 
 progress, progress comparable to that of the 
 earth in the solar system toward its distant 
 goal in the constellation of Hercules. The one 
 encouraging result of this study is that from 
 the beginning the heart of man was essentially 
 sound, though his vagaries were many during 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 the centuries in which he was feeling his way. 
 To use a significant term, man has ever been 
 essentially theotropic, though he was not 
 always conscious of the diredlion of his tropism. 
 
 In studying this subjedl, then, we are engaged 
 in discovering the paths our own ancestors have 
 trodden, and our gratitude is due them for 
 leading us with increasing certitude to a nobler 
 way of thought, so that we see in the heavens 
 not deities, but the work of One; and in the 
 earth the efFedls of that same One's immanence, 
 his gift to his sons and daughters. 
 
 The author takes this opportunity to ac- 
 knowledge with gratitude the kindness of Mr. 
 Francis Medhurst who has read all the proofs 
 and offered many valuable suggestions. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Animistic Stage of Culture — 
 
 The Case Stated i 
 
 II. The Discovery of the Soul . . 17 
 
 III. The Soul's Nature 35 
 
 IV. The External or Separable Soul 49 
 V. Parity of Being 59 
 
 VI. Belief in "Free Spirits" • • • 95 
 VII. "Free Spirits" — Their Constitu- 
 tion AND Activities 103 
 
 VIII. Logical Consequences of Parity 
 
 of Being 117 
 
 IX. Death not Always Regarded as 
 
 Inevitable 133 
 
 X. The Continued Existence of the 
 
 Soul 145 
 
 XI. Modifications of the Idea of Con- 
 tinuance 153 
 
 XII. Condition of the Discarnate Soul 163 
 
 XIII. The Home of the Soul . . . . 181 
 
 XIV. Descensus Averni 195 
 
 XV. Worship 201 
 
 XVI. Residua of Animism 219 
 
 XVII. Literature to which Reference is 
 
 Made in this Volume .... 229 
 
 Index 243 
 
 xiii 
 
THE ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CUL- 
 TURE—THE CASE STATED 
 
ANIMISM 
 
 I 
 
 THE ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CUL- 
 TURE— THE CASE STATED 
 
 nr^HE following narrative, taken from The 
 -*• Japan Weekly for March i6, 1916, 
 recounts the story of an event occurring in 
 that land of "advanced civilization" in the 
 winter of 191 5-16, and some of the sequelae. 
 
 Death of the Suma Snake 
 
 "The huge snake that had been leading a 
 precarious existence at the Suma Garden 
 during the last three years — a captive in a 
 different clime from that in which it was born 
 — recently died, unable to bear the rigours of 
 the winter. Although the reptile was a mag- 
 nificent specimen of its species, as it measured 
 25 feet in length and 28 inches round the 
 thickest part, it never made itself unpleasantly 
 obtrusive and most of its time at Suma was 
 
 3 . -- 
 
4 ANIMISM, 
 
 spent in lethargic retirement. When the de- 
 mise of the snake was made known in the 
 neighbourhood much sympathy was mani- 
 fested among its many acquaintances, who 
 asked the management of the Garden to bury 
 the snake in the vicinity with due ceremony. 
 It was accordingly interred in the pine groves 
 at the rear of the Kagetsu restaurant. 
 
 '* Someone made the discovery on looking 
 at an almanac that the day on which the 
 reptile died was a Day of the Snake, and 
 remembered an old superstition that toothache 
 may be cured by worshipping a snake. The 
 grave of the Suma snake consequently began 
 to be visited by the superstitious, who pro- 
 claimed to the world the supernatural means 
 of healing toothache by worshipping there. 
 The report has since travelled far and wide, 
 and scores of people are visiting the grave 
 every day, bringing much gain to the Hyogo 
 tramway, who need no faith to be assured of 
 the benefits accruing from the virtues of the 
 departed snake. Some of the people whose 
 toothache has been cured by the spirit of the 
 snake have decided to build a shrine on the 
 ground where the reptile was buried. The 
 place has already been fenced in and a sign 
 
ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 5 
 
 erec5led preparatory to the commencement of 
 work." 
 
 The exhibit is therefore that of belief in 
 the continued existence and exercise of benevo- 
 lent adlivity on behalf of man of a snake 
 which had according to our notions passed 
 completely out of life and beyond any possible 
 potency to affedl human existence. It shows 
 one of the characteristic phenomena of the 
 stage of culture we are to examine, a stage 
 which, as we shall discover, is a present fadl 
 over a large part of the globe. 
 
 In Gen. 28: 10-22 occurs the interesting 
 account of a night in Jacob's life, his inter- 
 pretation of it, and the ensuing course of 
 adlion. The two noteworthy events, from 
 the present point of view, are (i) the dream, 
 with Jacob's conclusion that it revealed to 
 him the fadl that the place where he lay was 
 an abiding place of deity; (2) the deity was 
 evidently in the stone, or was the stone, as is 
 shown by the anointing of it. This story 
 could be paralleled in its essentials from many 
 sources. Again, in Josh. 24: 27, Joshua is 
 represented declaring of a certain stone: "it 
 hath heard all the words, ... it shall be 
 
6 ANIMISM 
 
 therefore a witness against you." And, once 
 more, Adls 19: 35 makes mention of an objedl 
 of worship which "fell from Jupiter," i.e., 
 evidently a meteorite. 
 
 These three fadls taken together, viz., the 
 importance of a dream and the performance 
 of worshipful adls upon or attribution of 
 sentience to a stone, bring into notice a cul- 
 tural condition, a method of thinking, which 
 is by common consent called animistic. Ani- 
 ^ mism is by many regarded as the earliest form 
 which religion took, and as the root from 
 which was derived all religious beliefs which 
 the world has known, and was also the 
 earliest basis of all that is dignified by the 
 _^ name of culture. Moreover, we may trace 
 *its efFedls and its adlion into the present.^ 
 Others, however, regard it as not the primary, 
 but as a secondary, stage in mental and reli- 
 gious development, seeking the primary in a 
 vaguer series of beliefs to which they give the 
 name "naturism" or "dynamism." ^ Our pres- 
 ent concern is with Animism. 
 
 * McDougall, Body and Mind. A History and Defence of 
 Animism. 
 
 2 Cf. Clodd, Animism; and Leuba, A Psychological Study of 
 Religion. 
 
ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 7 
 
 And what is this? Menzies defines it as 
 "the worship of spirits as opposed to that of 
 Gods." ^ To this E. B. Tylor, whose work ^ 
 is facile princeps among the expositions of 
 / animism, might objedt that it supposes a 
 \ sharp dividing Hne between spirits and gods 
 which has no existence in fadl and is therefore 
 arbitrarily drawn. It is, perhaps, impossible 
 ] to state where the worship of spirits stops 
 I and that of gods begins, to decide exadlly 
 where the spirit shades into the deity. Who 
 can say exadlly the moment when the con- 
 ception of a being which has been but one of 
 a host of spirits has passed into that of a 
 state of divinity? Such transitions have been 
 made. 5 Accordingly, Tylor would define an- 
 f imism as "the dodlrine of spirits or of spiritual 
 beings."^ He furthermore proposes as a min- 
 imum definition of religion "belief in spiritual 
 beings." ^ While one may criticize this last 
 as leaving out the objedlive result of "belief 
 in spiritual beings" in worship or cult, Tylor 
 
 ' History of Religion, p. 39. 
 * Primitive Culture, new ed., London, 1903. 
 ^ E.g., Enlil of Babylonia; cf. A. Sayce, Hibbert Ledures, 
 1887, p. 103. 
 
 ^ Primitive Culture, i. 425. 
 ' lb., i. 324. 
 
8 ANIMISM 
 
 is altogether right in asserting that, whatever 
 the original condition of mankind, such belief 
 is found among all races, even the lowest, 
 concerning whom exad: knowledge is possessed. 
 
 Just criticism may be passed, however, 
 upon Tylor's definition of animism as so vague 
 that it gives no grip upon the adlual conditions 
 which attend an animistic stage of thought or 
 upon that thought itself. It is necessary, 
 therefore, to point out that the word represents 
 a stage in the psychological development of 
 man, in his cultural unfolding, in which his 
 conceptions (i) of himself and (2) of the 
 world about him differ essentially from those 
 of "civilized" man. From the point of view 
 of modern psychology, he may be said to 
 possess as yet only an unintegrated con- 
 sciousness. He does not distinguish himself 
 in kind from objedls that are about him. 
 As one writer declares: 
 
 "A Central Australian pointing to a photo- 
 graph of himself will say, *That one is just 
 the same as me, so is a kangaroo (his totem).' 
 We say the Central Australian * belongs to 
 the kangaroo tribe'; he knows better, he is 
 kangaroo. Now it is this persistent affirma- 
 tion of primitive man in the totemistic stage 
 
ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 9 
 
 that he is an animal or a plant, that he is a 
 kangaroo or an opossum . . . that instantly 
 arrests our attention/' etc.^ 
 
 To man in the advanced stage of thinking 
 to which civilized peoples have attained such 
 a condition as this appears almost unbeliev- 
 able. And yet expert testimony to this efFedl 
 is abundantly available. Thus Professor Hob- 
 house says of the thinking of men in this stage: 
 
 "One conception melts readily into another, 
 just as in primitive fancy a sorcerer turns into 
 a dragon, a mouse, a stone, and a butterfly 
 without the smallest difficulty. Hence simil- 
 arity is treated as if it were physical identity. 
 The physical individuality of things is not 
 observed. The fadl that a thing was mine 
 makes it appear as though there were some- 
 thing of me in it, so that by burning it you 
 make me smart. The borders or limits of 
 things are not marked out, but their influence 
 and their capacity to be influenced extends, 
 as it were, in a misty halo over everything 
 connecfled with them in any fashion. If the 
 attributes of things are made too solid and 
 material in primitive thought, things them- 
 selves are too fluid and undefined, passing 
 8 Miss Harrison, Themis, p. 121. 
 
lo ANIMISM 
 
 into each other by loose and easy identifica- 
 tions which prevent all clear and crisp distinc- 
 tions of thought. In a word, primitive 
 thought has not yet evolved those distindlions 
 of substance and attribute, quality and rela- 
 tion, cause and efFed, identity and difference, 
 which are the common property of civilized 
 thought. These categories which among us 
 every child soon comes to distinguish in 
 pradlice are for primitive thought interwoven 
 in wild confusion, and this confusion is the 
 intelledlual basis of animism and of magic.'* ^ 
 The idea is expressed similarly by Aston: 
 "I would describe (primitive man's) mental 
 attitude as a piecemeal conception of the 
 universe as alive, just as he looks upon his 
 fellow man as alive without analyzing him into 
 the two distindl entities of body and soul."^° 
 The "piecemeal conception of the universe" 
 contains the idea that animistic man regards 
 other objedls in the world about him as being 
 on a parity of existence with himself in that 
 they are conceived as having sentient and 
 volitional life. He interprets all things in 
 terms of his own consciousness. On the 
 
 ' Hobhouse, Morals in Evolutiony ii. 20-21. 
 " ShintOy p. 26. 
 
ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE ii 
 
 other hand, pradically all the data in our 
 possession which bear upon the subjedl indi- 
 ^ cate that as far back as we can trace man, 
 he had already analyzed his kind into body 
 and soul. Even Neolithic man, and with 
 great probability also Palaeolithic man, had 
 the conception of a possessing or obsessing 
 spirit. The trepanning done by Neolithic 
 man during life is most easily explicable on 
 the theory that disease was caused by a spirit 
 which had obsessed the sick, and was to be 
 conjured forth only after an incision had been 
 made in the skull. The fad: that Kabyles 
 have been known within the memory of man 
 to perform this operation for this reason, and 
 that the modus operandi is in accord with 
 other methods among primitive races, can 
 lead at once to this conclusion. Up to 1888 
 there had been discovered in France in the 
 valley of the Torn over two hundred trepanned 
 skulls, in many cases among these the tre- 
 panning was ante mortem, with evident signs 
 of healing. And in the Wellcome Historical 
 Medical Museum in London there is a case 
 of flint instruments some of which almost 
 equal in sharpness of edge and point surgical 
 instruments of our own day, used, it is believed 
 
12 ANIMISM 
 
 for this purpose." We shall find other reasons 
 
 for believing in the early discovery by man of 
 
 his own soul. Meanwhile to prove that is 
 
 not our purpose here. What we are concerned 
 
 with is man's outlook on the universe, his 
 
 estimate of what we call nature. 
 
 "Man in that stage (i.e., the animistic) 
 
 may hold that a stone, a tree, a mountain, a 
 
 stream, a wild animal, a heavenly body, a 
 
 wind, an instrument of the hunt or of labor 
 
 or of domestic utility — indeed, any objedl 
 
 within the range of real or fancied existence 
 
 (and fancy looms large in this domain) — 
 
 possesses just such a soul as he conceives 
 
 himself to have, and that it is animated oy 
 
 desires, moved by emotions, and empowered 
 
 by abilities parallel to those he perceives in 
 himself." 12 
 
 Testimonies to this fad might be adduced 
 from many quarters and illustrated in many 
 ways. Thus: "The African does not believe 
 in anything soulless, he even regards matter 
 itself as a form of soul, low because not lively." ^^ 
 
 11 Cf. New Tark Medical Journal, Od. i6, 1909, p. 751; 
 British Congregationalism May 28, 1914; New Schaff-Herzog 
 Encyclopedia, iii. 193-194. 
 
 ^ New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, iii. 194; cf. Bros, La 
 Religion des peuples non-civilises, chap. II. 
 
 " Miss Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 199. 
 
r 
 
 ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 13 
 
 Pere Lejeune says that the savages of New 
 France "se persuadent que non seulement 
 les hommes et les autres animaux, mais que 
 les autres choses sont animees." ^^ E. S. 
 Hartland puts it this way: ** Starting from 
 his personal consciousness, the savage attrib- 
 utes the Hke consciousness to everything he 
 sees or feels around him."^^ And Reinach is 
 equally emphatic: 
 
 "Animism gives a soul and a will to moun- 
 tains, rivers, rocks, trees, stones, the heavenly 
 bodies, the earth and sky. A tree, a post, 
 a pillar, the hollow of a rock, are the seat or 
 throne of invisible spirits. These spirits are 
 conceived and figured at a later stage under 
 animal form, and then under human form. 
 A spring was . . . Pegasus, Apollo's horse. 
 . , . A river is a bull with a human face. . . . 
 The laurel was Daphne, whom Apollo had 
 pursued; the oak was Zeus himself, before 
 being the tree of Zeus, and Dionysos was 
 supposed to live in the tree, after he had 
 ceased to be himself the tree. The earth was 
 Gaea, emerging from the soil in the shape of a 
 woman who implores the sky to water her."^^ 
 
 " Relations de la Nouvelle France, p. 199. 
 
 15 Legend oj Perseus y ii. 441. " Orpheus, p. 79. 
 
'^ 
 
 14 ANIMISM 
 
 Thus, to give one final testimony, Im Thurn 
 says of the Indians of Guiana: 
 
 "It is absolutely necessary to premise here 
 that all tangible objecfls, animate . . . and 
 inanimate alike, consist each of two separable 
 parts — a body and a spirit; and that these 
 are not only always readily separable invol- 
 untarily, as in death, and daily in sleep, but 
 are also, in certain individuals, always volun- 
 tarily separable." ^^ 
 
 The preceding, then, affords a prima facie 
 basis for a tentative definition of animism, 
 the justification or demonstration of which 
 must wait for a later chapter. We assume 
 that "animism" stands for a stage of culture 
 in which man may regard any obje(fly real or 
 imaginary, as possessing emotional, volitional, 
 and adlional potency like that he himself pos- 
 sesses. Things, of whatsoever sort, he may 
 consider the subjecfls of feelings — likes and 
 dislikes, appetites or disinclinations, afFedlions 
 or antipathies, desires and longings; of will 
 — to help or injure, to ad: or refrain from 
 acfling; and of the power to adl according to 
 the promptings of these feelings and the 
 determinations of will. 
 
 ^' Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana^ p. 329. 
 
ANIMISTIC STAGE OF CULTURE 15 
 
 ' But — animism is thought. The enormous 
 significance of these three words must not be 
 overlooked. They mark the difference be- 
 tween man and the whole creation beneath 
 him. The whole chain of acfls implied in 
 the word under discussion involves mental 
 processes passing over into adlion with well 
 defined intention having their issue in the 
 future and being immeasurably removed from 
 instincfl. It is true that we shall find this 
 thought at times pitifully infantile, paralleled 
 by the conceptions in some cases of four-year- 
 olds of the present ;^^ but it is still thought. 
 And we shall show that reason is on the throne. 
 The outcome of this discussion will, it is be- 
 lieved, show the general logicality of primitive 
 man's mental processes, once the basis from 
 which he starts is granted. The beliefs in 
 ghosts, spirits, gods, in transmigration and 
 metempsychosis, are not the chance hit or miss 
 conclusions of early man, but flow rationally 
 from the premise we have assumed. That 
 
 ^ The Chicago Tribune reports that " during a sudden thunder- 
 storm a little four-year-old came running into the Kindergarten, 
 crying as if her heart would break. When the Kindergartner 
 asked the cause of her trouble, she said, 'O Miss E., the sky 
 barked at me.'" 
 
i6 ANIMISM 
 
 this reason is often aberrant in its premises, 
 that it is not seldom fitfully inconsequent, 
 may indeed appear. But what we find is 
 reason, thought at least of a kind, and in many 
 cases frightfully logical. 
 
II 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUL 
 
II 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUL 
 
 ON THE hypothesis that the method of 
 man's creation was evolution, that he is 
 the finest producfl of nature's forces working in 
 continuous upward striving, how are we to 
 explain man's arrival at the realization of soul 
 or spirit, of something which is intelligently 
 and not merely instind:ively directive of adlion ? 
 The possession of soul, in this sense, by even 
 the highest animals is disallowed by scientists ; 
 though recognition is growing that elements 
 that are acknowledged to belong to the in- 
 telledlual and even to the moral powers already 
 exist in brute psychology. Such elements are 
 shame or chagrin, and fear of what seems to 
 the animal what we might call the uncanny. 
 The writer remembers a scene in Meadville, Pa., 
 where as reminiscences of a former iron foundry 
 there exist in some of the dooryards castings of 
 dogs. One day notice was attracfled by a 
 street cur which had stopped a few feet distant 
 from one of these cast-iron dogs. The cur was 
 
 19 
 
20 ANIMISM 
 
 "pointing" at the image and wagging rapidly 
 his short tail in the manner of dogs intimating 
 friendly intentions towards another dog, and 
 desire for acquaintance with it. Seeing no 
 hostile demonstrations on the part of the ac- 
 quaintance-to-be, he went up to the iron 
 replica slowly, smelt of it, and at once dropped 
 his apology for a tail and made oflF with chagrin 
 plainly stamped in his entire demeanor. Mr. 
 Romanes tells of a trick on a pet dog that was 
 fond of playing with bones, which it would 
 worry and toss and growl at, evidently making 
 believe that they were alive. The owner tied 
 a thin but strong thread to the bone with which 
 it was one day playing, and after a little time, 
 when the dog had cast the bone some distance 
 away and was creeping up to it as to an objed: 
 of prey, he began gently to pull the string. 
 The manner of the dog changed at once, first 
 evidently in surprise; then it continued to 
 crawl up to investigate. But as the bone con- 
 tinued to retreat, the dog finally withdrew and 
 hid under the furniture. ^ The animal evidently 
 recognized (i) that the bone was lifeless, inert, 
 therefore (2) unendowed with power of motion. 
 But (3) this thing had moved, and fear (dread 
 
 * Cited by Clodd, in Animism, pp. 22-23. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 21 
 
 of the unknown) entered evidently as the 
 result of a sort of rational process. It will be 
 noted that this case is to be differentiated 
 from those where fear enters as the result of 
 punishment, in which case the "fear" may be 
 only the result of association of ideas and the 
 formation of "instindlive" habit. There was 
 manifestation of chagrin in the first case 
 cited, for such was the clear impression 
 furnished when the animal looked back at 
 the witnesses of the scene as they burst into 
 laughter; and of fear in the second case, 
 since the animal showed what in a human 
 being we should call superstitious apprehen- 
 sion. There is therefore no adequate reason 
 for denying to primeval man a large degree of 
 rationality, growing in extension and intension 
 with enlarging experience and exercise. He 
 was no longer sheer animal. Of course, it 
 was by achievement of rationality, in however 
 small degree, that he became man. He was 
 no longer a mere observer — animals are 
 observant — but a thinker, who reflected and 
 reasoned, however faultily, upon his observa- 
 tions. The salient mark of his differentiation 
 from the animal lies in his recognition of 
 possession of this quality. Before this, re- 
 
22 ANIMISM 
 
 lapse into sheer animality was perhaps possible; 
 after it, such relapse is inconceivable. How 
 then did this come about? 
 
 The answer most in favor with anthropolo- 
 gists is that it began (i) with the phenomena 
 of sleep — (a) the evident difference between 
 that state and waking life, combined with 
 (b) the occurrence of dreams which often so 
 closely mimic or deal with the adlive and 
 conscious existence of the individual ;2 and 
 (2) in the difference between the living and the 
 dead. It is to be recognized that (la) and 
 (2) are compared and combined in the logic 
 of the savage, and afford new ground for his 
 belief in something apart from and different 
 from the body which eventually becomes 
 known as soul. Through observation often 
 repeated, and through reasoning and reflection 
 upon the facfts thus presented, man arrived 
 at the conclusion that he is himself a dual 
 being, possessing body and (what was even- 
 tually recognized as) soul or spirit. Having 
 arrived at this conclusion, he deduced from 
 
 2 Cf. the dreams of Pharaoh's butler and of his baker, as 
 narrated in Gen. 39; each of the individuals dreams of matters 
 conneded with his specific duties. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 23 
 
 experience and observation, or else jumped 
 to the conclusion, that other objedls were 
 similarly constituted; he might attribute life, 
 soul, intention, and adlion to each and every 
 objedl, to any objedl, that came under his 
 observation, no matter what its constitution. 
 It may be remarked, en passant, that the 
 dream life of man is separated from that of 
 animals probably only by the charadler of 
 the content of his dream, as it reproduces or 
 recomposes experiences registered in the (con- 
 scious or unconscious, subliminal) memory. 
 It is well known that some animals dream. 
 The twitching of the muscles or the whining 
 or even barking of a dog in sleep has often 
 been noticed, and is explicable best on the 
 hypothesis of a dream. If animals dream 
 and exhibit elements of consciousness, there 
 is every reason to carry back to a very early 
 period in human history the beginning of 
 the chain of thinking that, on the hypothesis 
 here presented, led to the conception of spirit 
 or soul as animating physical objedls. 
 
 How this could come about is abundantly 
 illustrated from the interpretations of dream 
 phenomena by primitive peoples. The dream 
 life of a savage being is conditioned by his 
 
24 ANIMISM 
 
 waking existence, it mirrors more or less 
 perfectly the life he leads. It is very probable 
 that the dreams of savages mimic even more 
 closely the waking existence than those of 
 man in a more advanced stage of culture. 
 The reason for this is that the primitive mode 
 of existence is less complex. Fewer elements 
 of interest go to make up life, and the course 
 of events is more uniform. Mr. F. Granger 
 remarks: "If yesterday was like the day 
 before, and is going to be repeated in a thou- 
 sand tomorrows, the dreams which echo the 
 life of the past will presage, with fair accuracy, 
 the life of the days to come. Add to all this 
 that the primitive mind distinguishes with 
 difficulty []we should prefer to say, distin- 
 guishes not at alQ between what is real and 
 what is imagined p.e., to the savage the dream 
 and the vision of the night are equally real 
 with the sights and experiences of his waking 
 hours] and we can understand why the dream 
 existence is often placed on a level with that 
 of waking hours.^ Lying down to rest, the 
 savage dreams of the chase or of the search 
 for vegetable food. On awaking he tells his 
 
 ^ Worship of the Romansy pp. 28-29; cf. Fiske, Myths and 
 Myth-makers, p. 18. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 25 
 
 companions that he has been away on a hunt 
 or the Hke, and relates the adventures through 
 which he beHeves he has passed. But his 
 companions assure him that his body has 
 been with them all the time, and both he and 
 they naturally deduce a dual existence — an 
 invisible soul, usually inhabiting but on occa- 
 sion leaving a visible body.* Here then is 
 one almost certain source of the idea of soul. 
 How conclusive such reasoning is to the 
 primitive mind, how firmly the savage believes 
 in the dream as consisting of adlual experience, 
 may be seen in the comparatively exhaustive 
 colledlion of cases by Dr. J. G. Frazer.^ Thus 
 an Indian dreamed that at his master's orders 
 he had (during the night) hauled a canoe up 
 a series of rapids, and next morning reproached 
 the master for making him work so hard in 
 the hours appropriated to rest.^ To this 
 savage the dream was real and the toil ex- 
 hausting. Of the adluality of the belief in 
 the absence of the soul during sleep there is 
 abundant evidence. Numerous peoples in a 
 
 ^ Cf. Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 122, 
 135-136. Gomes, Seventeen Tears among the Sea Dyaks of 
 Borneo, p. 177. 
 
 5 Taboo, chap. V. 
 
 ^ lb., pp. 36, 37; cf. Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 161. 
 
26 ANIMISM 
 
 lowly stage of culture use caution in awaking 
 a sleeper. It is held that his soul is away, 
 and that he must be aroused gradually so 
 that the soul may have time to return; the 
 same reasoning applies to infants.^ Melane- 
 sians explain the phenomena of a fainting fit 
 in the same way, holding that such cases 
 indicate premature death, but that the soul 
 was not yet wanted in the spirit world and 
 so was sent back to earth.^ 
 
 A different source of the idea of soul is 
 found in the phenomena of death, powerfully 
 reenforcing the dedudions made from sleep 
 and dreams. While in the one case there 
 was seen the inertness of the body, perhaps 
 with breathing hardly perceptible, which yet 
 was experiencing dreams that were interpreted 
 as the activity of the absent soul; in the 
 other there was noted the expiring breath and 
 the subsequent inertness of the body, only 
 more pronounced than in sleep, passing into 
 rigidity and finally into decay. Adlion had 
 ceased with that last exhalation. If in sleep 
 the dream was interpreted as absence of 
 
 ' Frazer, Tahoo, pp. 39-42; Roscoe, The Baganda, p. 
 Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 189 fF. 
 * Brown, Mdanesians, pp. 192 flF. 
 
 i8; 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 27 
 
 soul, much more applicable would that inter- 
 pretation seem when the bystanders had 
 noted the last breath and the (consequent) 
 absence of motion, adlion, speech, life. Some- 
 thing had gone away with the last sigh, 
 something unseen, the absence of which 
 brought about a great change. That man 
 lying there — companion, husband, father, 
 brother, friend — used to live and move and 
 talk and breathe. He was wont to respond 
 to call and to read: to the various stimuli 
 about him. Now calls were unheard, appeals 
 brought no reply, promptings met no response. 
 And the difference was brought about (so men 
 reasoned) by the absence of that which had 
 issued forth unseen, never to return, at least 
 to its former home, as survivors would observe. 
 
 But the full consequences of observance of 
 the phenomena of death in the diredion under 
 investigation are not seen till we take into 
 account certain other phases of human falli- 
 bihty. Particularly is it necessary to note 
 primitive man's relatively smaller experience 
 and confused perceptions, and the aberrant 
 conclusions often drawn from these.® 
 
 Most men are and always have been defi- 
 
 ' Granger, Worship of the Romansy pp. 28-29. 
 
28 ANIMISM 
 
 cient in power both of observation and of 
 f deduction, (i) They assume as real many 
 ; things that do not exist, events that do not 
 i occur, and relations that have no reality. 
 Illustrations are found in the belief in the 
 existence of a directive power in the objedl 
 picked up by the fetish worshiper, the super- 
 stition of the Celt that a fairy has left in the 
 place of his own baby a fairy changeling,^^ and 
 the belief in the descent of a human gens 
 from, e.g., eagle, fox, or snake, as in totemism. 
 Similarly boys of Mafulu, New Guinea, while 
 making a drum must drink only what is 
 found in axils of certain plants, else the 
 embers which are to hollow out their drums 
 will not burn — drinking any other water 
 will put it out, or certain other restridlions 
 are felt to be necessary." (2) They take 
 obvious fadls and interpret them wrongly. 
 Thus in the mediaeval ordeal of the sacrament 
 (a late example chosen only because of its 
 familiarity, but exemplifying perfectly earlier 
 conditions; the phenomena can be parallelled 
 in any quarter of the world and every grade 
 of culture) the sacramental wafer was employed 
 
 ^^ Rhys, Celtic Folk-lore, p. 102. 
 
 " Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 258-259. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 29 
 
 as a proof of innocence or guilt. Constridlion 
 of the throat and inability to swallow was 
 often the result of the administration of the 
 wafer. If it did not result, deity was held to 
 have shown the innocence of the accused; if it 
 did, guilt was declared manifest. How really 
 irrelative this test was to the fadls is shown by 
 the frequent experience of inability to swallow 
 a medicinal pill or tablet without the aid of a 
 liquid to **wash it down.'' Yet here is no 
 question of innocence or guilt. The explana- 
 tion is that attention to the ad: of swallowing 
 (which is usually effortless and automatic) 
 causes eflFort and so constricflion. Swallowing 
 in the ordeal was doubtless sometimes im- 
 possible just for the reason given here; but 
 deity did not intervene, guilt or innocence 
 was not necessarily revealed by this fad:, nor 
 did inability to swallow necessarily result 
 from guilt — the innocent might also find 
 the task difficult simply because of the atten- 
 tion direded to it. 
 
 On the difference in resped of observational 
 and reasoning power of savage and highly 
 civilized man let Grant Allen speak. 
 
 "To us the conception of human life as a 
 relatively short period, bounded by a known 
 
30 ANIMISM 
 
 duration, and naturally terminated at a fixed 
 end, is a common and familiar one. We 
 forget, however, that to the savage this is 
 quite otherwise. He lives in a small and 
 scattered community, where deaths are rare, 
 and where natural death is comparatively 
 infrequent. Most of his people are killed in 
 war, or devoured by wild beasts, or destroyed 
 by accident in the chase, or by thirst or 
 starvation. Some are drowned in rapid rivers; 
 some crushed by falling trees or stones; some 
 poisoned by deadly fruits, or bitten by veno- 
 mous snakes; some massacred by chiefs or 
 murdered in quarrels with their own tribesmen. 
 In a large majority of instances there is some 
 open and obvious cause of death, and this 
 cause is generally due either to the hand of 
 man or to some other animal; or failing that, 
 to some apparently adlive effort of external 
 nature, such as flood or lightning or forest 
 fires or landslip or earthquake." ^^ 
 
 Man recognized his own volitional agency 
 in causing death in the chase or in personal 
 conflids. So to each of the agencies which 
 had produced disaster he attributed powers 
 like his own — the volitional behind the 
 . ' 12 Evolution of the Idea of God, pp. 44-45. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 31 
 
 physical. He had, perhaps, himself narrowly 
 escaped the fate he had seen befall others and 
 ascribed his escape to his own cleverness. 
 But not all of his acquaintances had suflFered 
 what we should call a violent death. Some 
 had passed away in disease or even in old age. 
 Surely it was evident, one would say, that no 
 external cause was at work there. But that 
 was not his way of thinking. He knew of 
 unseen powers that send or are the wind, 
 the storm, the lightning.^^ And so the body 
 that was racked with pain and eventually 
 became inert in death was held to be tortured 
 by an invisible something. In many cases, 
 he knew, death resulted from external violence; 
 in all cases, he reasoned, the great change 
 was wrought by powers external to the victim, 
 which sometimes worked with invisible 
 weapons.^* 
 
 Bearing in mind, then, the faulty observation 
 and logic of primitives, and connecfling the 
 two sources of the idea of soul previously 
 discussed, viz. (i) sleep and dreams, and 
 (2) the phenomenon of death, together with 
 
 " The Ekoi of South Africa regard thunder as a giant who 
 strides across the heavens, while lightning is either his servant 
 or his enemy. Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 73. 
 
 " See chapter IX for cases of disbelief in natural death. 
 
32 ANIMISM 
 
 (3) the inference therefrom of a something 
 that leaves the body either temporarily in 
 sleep or permanently in death, we are brought 
 to notice next what apparently corroborated 
 the evidence (as it would seem) respecting 
 the existence of soul, that is, the appearance 
 in dreams of those who had died. This was 
 in all probability a more frequent occurrence 
 with early than with modern man, because 
 of the smaller content of his experience and 
 the consequent more frequent repetition of 
 its elements. We have already remarked 
 that the distinction between reality and fancy, 
 fac5l and the merely apparent, is often missed 
 in early cultural stages. It was quite in 
 accordance with natural logic to reason that 
 .the apparition in the dream was real. The 
 I dead, therefore, still lived, had been seen, 
 and had possibly engaged in conversation. 
 The wandering spirit of the dreamer had met 
 the disembodied spirit; or the latter had 
 visited his former friends while they slept. ^^ 
 The tremendous consequences flowing from 
 these beliefs will be developed a little later. 
 
 By these various experiences, dovetailing 
 and appearing to force a conclusion, man 
 
 *^ Lang, The Making of Religion, pp. 54 ff. 
 
DISCOVERT OF THE SOUL 33 
 
 certainly in a very primitive stage of culture 
 drew the inference that he was a duality — 
 the body which he could see and feel, and a 
 something of which in his conscious existence 
 he knew nothing except that it existed. More- 
 over, it is demonstrable that among many 
 primitive peoples the priority in importance 
 is assigned to the spirit. Thus of the New 
 Guineans it is affirmed: "These and other 
 things [^specified in the context] seem to show 
 that a sharp distinction is drawn between 
 body and spirit by the natives. Certainly 
 the body gains from long associations virtues 
 from the indwelling spirit; but it is ^he spirit 
 which is the real man, higher than, and 
 
 superior to, the body in which the spirit 
 dwells." 16 
 
 One can not go far astray if he maintain 
 that it was the discovery of the soul which 
 was the most momentous in the history of 
 the human race; to it must be traced all 
 man's uplift in the millenniums of his existence. 
 " Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 194. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOUL'S NATURE 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOUL'S NATURE 
 
 AN important inquiry meets us at this 
 point: How did man think of this 
 second something that usually inhabited his 
 body but sometimes left it for a time and at 
 death left it permanently? For it would 
 soon have been borne in upon him (even though 
 he did not consciously recognize the soul's 
 presence and operations) that the permanent 
 absence of soul meant death, and that there- 
 fore while he lived it was present. What did 
 he think concerning the nature of this all- 
 important part of him? It is very clear from 
 a number of circumstances that the notion of 
 the soul was governed by the phenomenon 
 of death. Decisive upon this point is the 
 wonderful accord of meaning in so many 
 languages of the word which expresses this 
 inner elusive reality. In the developed lan- 
 guages we may note the root idea of such 
 words as the Latin spiritus, anima, animus, 
 
 37 
 
38 ANIMISM 
 
 Irish anam, Sanskrit atman, Greek psyche^ 
 pneumay thumos, German Geisty Dutch geesty 
 EngHsh ghosty Hebrew nepheshy ruahy Sumerian 
 zidy Babylonian napishtUy Egyptian knephy 
 
 j all of which go back to the notion of breath, 
 or of a gentle movement of air or wind. One 
 may forage at large and observe the same 
 root notion and a similar usage in many other 
 different regions, discovering the Australian 
 wangy Mohawk atonritZy Californian-Oregonian 
 wkrishuy piutSy Dakotan niyay Javanese nazvay 
 Aztec ehecatly Nicaraguan julioy Gypsy duky 
 and Finnish far. This line of thought is 
 fortified by the conception of the insubstan- 
 
 ■ tiality of the soul, expressed in such words 
 as skidy umhray and "shade,'' used to denote 
 the disembodied spirit. Terms of similar 
 content were used not only by the cultured 
 Greeks and Romans, but are known to be 
 employed among North American Indians, 
 Zulus and Basutos in Africa, among the Cala- 
 bars, and elsewhere. One recalls the Hebrew 
 rephaim. The survival of the belief in the 
 insubstantiality of the disembodied spirit till 
 the Middle Ages is shown by Dante, for 
 according to him the souls in purgatory knew 
 that the poet had not passed through death 
 
THE sours NATURE 39 
 
 by the fadl that his figure cast a shadow. 
 Indeed, the idea of communication by a 
 disembodied spirit with the Hving in dreams 
 was entrenched by the refledlion that its very 
 immateriahty enabled it to hold communica- 
 tion with sleeping persons without arousing 
 them from sleep. 
 
 How early man came to realize that this 
 part which is designated by breath or pufF of 
 air is his real self is impossible to say. But 
 what is significant is that in many languages 
 the word meaning spirit, life, or breath has 
 also the connotation "self," as has, e.g., the 
 Hebrew nephesh. And how natural such a 
 signification is can be illustrated by the 
 concrete fadl that Laura Bridgman, the blind- 
 deaf-mute, is said to have expressed the 
 thought of death in a dream by the statement 
 that "God took away my breath to heaven." 
 Among the Ekoi of Nigeria ghost and soul and 
 breath are connected as phases of the same 
 thing or as equivalents. One must not forget 
 jthat the phenomenon of death which is most 
 obvious is the expiring sigh or last breath, 
 after the departure of which life ceases to 
 exist. What more natural than that the 
 breath thus finally exhaled should be associated 
 
40 ANIMISM 
 
 I with the soul or spirit, or, as in some cases, 
 be thought to carry the soul with it? Since 
 in dreams a person deceased has been seen 
 and addressed while the body was known to 
 have dissolved, the way is dired: and the step 
 short to the conclusion that the self, the real 
 person, is that same breath or soul.^ 
 
 But did primitive peoples endow the soul 
 with form? The testimony to this is abundant 
 and cogent.2 The most natural and perhaps 
 most common idea of the soul's shape is that 
 it is a miniature of the possessor's form. 
 Among those who have held this belief are 
 American Indians such as the Hurons, the 
 natives of British Columbia, Alaska, and the 
 Esquimaux of the distri(5ts adjacent to Behring 
 Straits, islanders such as the Niassians near 
 Sumatra and the Fijians, and continental 
 dwellers such as the Malays and West Africans. 
 To give a single example, Nigerian Etoi 
 believe that "when a man's body decays a 
 new form comes out of it, in every way like 
 the man himself when he was above ground." ^ 
 
 1 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 230. 
 
 2 It has been colleded not only by Tylor in his Primitive 
 Culture, but also by Frazer, Taboo, chap. II. 
 
 2 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 17, 230; cf. Frazer, 
 Tabooy p. 39. 
 
THE sours NATURE 41 
 
 For the Egyptians abundant testimony is 
 available as to the belief in the double, existing 
 indeed from birth/ There is a picture in the 
 Roman catacombs portraying the death of a 
 Christian, in which the soul is represented as 
 leaving the mouth of the dying in a cloud-like 
 shape that takes his own form. What is 
 pradically a replica of this is found on the 
 walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa; and in 
 the east transept of Salisbury Cathedral on 
 the sculptured monument over the tomb of 
 Bishop Giles de firidgport the soul appears 
 as a naked figure carried by an angel.^ The 
 usual notion is that the soul is invisible. But 
 as in other respecfls shamans or medicine men 
 are credited with extraordinary powers, so 
 they are supposed to be able to discern the 
 spirits or souls moving about or endeavoring 
 to escape from the body. Sometimes the 
 organ of detection is the ear, which can note 
 the motion of the soul's wings. Or, the soul 
 being of human shape, it leaves faint foot- 
 marks as indications of its presence, and light 
 
 ^ A notable case among many is the bas-relief in the temple 
 at Luxor, exhibiting the presentation at birth to Ra of the royal 
 child Amenhotep III and his double. Cf. Budge, Osirisy etc., 
 p. 119. 
 
 ^ Clodd, Animism^ p. 40. 
 
42 ANIMISM 
 
 ashes strewn on the ground may betray its 
 presence to the keen-sighted medicine man. 
 
 Mention has been made of the return of the 
 soul of one deceased to the haunts of the body 
 as evidenced by dreams. The form appearing 
 in the dream was recognized as that of a 
 friend, again testifying to the assumed fad: 
 that the soul has the shape of the body. 
 Further testimony to this belief is found in 
 the faith that the soul is held to suffer in 
 some degree the fate of the body. BraziHan 
 Indians, for example, believe that the soul 
 arrives in the other world hacked and torn, 
 or uninjured, exadlly as was the condition of 
 the body at death.^ Australians tie together 
 the toes and bind together the thumbs behind 
 the back, or mutilate the body and fill it with 
 stones, or, again, they lop off the thumb of a 
 slain enemy, that the ghost may not hurl 
 shadowy spear or pull the bowstring in the 
 land of spirits.^ Chinese and Africans abhor 
 mutilation, especially decapitation, as a punish- 
 ment, for the latter produces headless ghosts.^ 
 And Shakespeare makes Macbeth cry out: 
 
 " Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guianay passim. 
 ' Cases of the kind are cited in Frazer, The Dying God, 
 pp. lo-ii; and Howitt, Native Tribes^ pp. 449, 474. 
 * Cf. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 281-282. 
 
THE sours NATURE 43 
 
 ** Shake not thy gory locks at me." The 
 ghost retains the bloody form in which the 
 body was left at its departure. From classical 
 Greece and Rome the evidence for this same 
 idea of the soul's form is abundant and cogent; 
 and it would not be difficult to show, since 
 so much has been revealed in the frescoes and 
 vase paintings recovered in the Mediterranean 
 region, that this idea comes down from very 
 primitive times. In the paintings which repre- 
 sent Hermes Psychopompus direding the issue 
 and return of souls, the latter are figured as 
 winged mannikins, coming from or returning 
 to burial jars.^ The form of Patroklos* shade 
 was that of the living hero.^^ 
 
 A notion closely akin to the foregoing is 
 that which conneds the soul with the shadow. 
 While many curious ideas which gather around 
 the latter — such as the Brahman belief that 
 the shadow of a pariah falling on food defiles 
 it — do not involve the identity of the two, 
 in many cases there can be little doubt that 
 soul and shadow are not only closely related 
 but are regarded as identical. Some believe 
 that an assault upon the shadow may be fatal 
 
 ' Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 43, and Themis, p. 205. 
 1° Iliad, xxiii. 65 fF. 
 
44 ANIMISM 
 
 to its possessor, or at least extremely harmful. 
 The Indians of the lower Frazer River hold 
 that man has four souls, of which one is the 
 shadow. The Euahlayi of Australia believe 
 that man has a dream spirit, a shadow spirit, 
 perhaps an animal spirit, and one that leaves 
 only at death. ^^ Other Australians consider 
 that each individual has a choi, a sort of 
 disembodied soul, and a ngai, which lives in 
 the heart. The choi awaits reincarnation 
 after death, the ngai passes immediately after 
 death into the children of the deceased. It is 
 the latter that sometimes leaves a person 
 temporarily in his lifetime, e.g., when he 
 faints. The choi has some sort of vague 
 relationship with the shadow.^^ The Kai of 
 New Guinea also believe that man has two 
 souls,^^ as do some of the Fijians, one of these 
 being light (as a refledlion in the water), the 
 other dark, like the shadow.^^ Dyaks assert 
 the possession of three or even of seven, 
 souls; one may leave the body tempor- 
 arily, the man dies only when all leave.^^ 
 
 " Mrs. Parker, Euahlayi Tribe, p. 35. 
 ^ Frazer, Belief in Immortality , i. 129. 
 " Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 112. 
 " Williams, Fiji, i. 242. 
 
 ^^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 177; cf. Hastings, ERE, vi. 
 226. j 
 
THE sours NATURE 45 
 
 Gilyaks may have three souls. The Balong 
 of the Cameroon think that one may have 
 several souls, one in his own body and others 
 in different animals. The death of one of 
 these animals, say, at the hand of a hunter 
 causes the man's death. ^^ The equivalence of 
 the shadow to the man himself is proved by 
 its use (or that of its dimensions, in a later 
 stage of culture) in the same manner as the 
 body in foundation sacrifice — to give stability 
 to the strudlure. After an exacflly similar 
 manner of thought the refledlion of a body in 
 water or a mirror is regarded as the soul. 
 Injury to refledlion or shadow may result in 
 injury to the corresponding member of the 
 body. Among the Congo people shadow or 
 picture or refledlion is the equivalent of soul.^^ 
 This whole manner of thought explains why 
 in so many regions the natives do not willingly 
 submit to being photographed or represented 
 on canvas.^^ 
 
 While the usual mode of thought represents 
 
 " Globus, Ixix (1896), 277, cited In Hastings, EREy iv. 412- 
 
 413. 
 
 17 Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals, p. 162; cf. Talbot, In the 
 Shadow of the Bushy p. 230. 
 
 1* Cases cited in Frazer, Golden Bough, Part II; Taboo, ii. 
 77-100. 
 
46 ANIMISM 
 
 the human soul as a mannikin, other ideas 
 are found. Among the ancient Egyptians, 
 in Brazil, in Melanesia, in Bohemia, Malaysia, 
 Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and elsewhere the 
 shape of the spirit may be that of a bird;^® 
 in British Columbia the bird is enclosed in an 
 egg in the nape of the neck. Or the soul may 
 take the form of a mouse (Brunswick, Tran- 
 sylvania, Swabia, Saxony), which may diflPer 
 in color in different regions; or of a fly (Tran- 
 sylvania), a lizard (India), or an indistindt 
 cloudy form (Scotland )}^ Greeks and Serbs 
 thought of the soul also as a butterfly, and 
 the Greek name for one species of this insed 
 is Psyche. 
 
 As to the constitution of this part of 
 man's duality there is a wide consensus along 
 the lines already indicated. Primitive peoples 
 throughout the world describe it as a vapor, 
 a shadowy, filmy substance, related to the 
 body as the perfume to the flower. It is pale 
 and yielding to the touch, without flesh and 
 bone, thin, impalpable, discerned as the figure 
 in the human eye. Its movements may be 
 
 " Bros, La Religion des peuplfs non-civilises, p. 54. 
 
 2° Miller, My Schools and Schoolmasters, pp. 106-107, cited by 
 Frazer, Taboo, pp. 40-41; Brown, Melanesians, pp. 141 flp. — here 
 bird, rat, lizard, etc., are forms the soul takes. 
 
THE SOUL'S NATURE 47 
 
 as swift as the wind, and so it is sometimes 
 regarded as winged. Yet it has a certain 
 materiality, and consequently has necessities. 
 After death, for instance, it needs nourishment 
 and partakes of the spirit, the essential part, 
 of the material things sometimes provided 
 for it. Egyptians, carrying the idea still 
 further, provided picflures or models of food, 
 furniture, and the like, which in a similar way 
 became available to the spirit. The semi- 
 materiality of the soul is illustrated by the 
 fadl of the return to his temple being known 
 by marks alleged to be found in maize flour 
 strewed on the threshold of his temple- 
 pyramid.^^ 
 
 21 Spence, Civilization of Ancient Mexico^ p. 47. 
 
IV 
 
 THE EXTERNAL OR SEPARABLE 
 SOUL 
 
IV 
 
 THE EXTERNAL OR SEPARABLE 
 SOUL 
 
 IF what precedes be accepted, it can be 
 taken as established that primitive man, 
 or at least man in an early stage of culture, 
 determined himself to be a duality, soul and 
 body. But the two constituents did not 
 appear to be inseparably conneded. The 
 soul might leave the body, either temporarily 
 or permanently, and in the latter case the 
 body perished. The presence of the soul is 
 therefore essential to life. But incidentally 
 reference has been made to the absence of 
 the soul for periods usually brief. In fadl, 
 primitive races hold that the soul absents 
 itself voluntarily at times, goes on travels, 
 performs tasks, and the like; and also that 
 some have the power to send forth the soul — 
 their own or others' — for their own purposes. 
 It may even happen that the soul is either 
 lured forth or departs unwisely, and has to 
 return. In New Guinea when a person faints, 
 
 SI 
 
52 ANIMISM 
 
 he is said to be dead; and when he revives, 
 the explanation is that he "died green/* and 
 perhaps because the soul was not wanted in 
 the spirit land, it had to take up again its old 
 life with the body.^ For the wandering of 
 the soul in dreams there is abundant testi- 
 mony, — so abundant, in fadl, that we will 
 content ourselves with a single reference.^ 
 The Japanese are persuaded that this same 
 constituent of personality leaves the body 
 that it may sport itself untrammelled.^ The 
 satirist Lucian and the scientist Pliny relate 
 the story of the seer Hermotimus, who sent 
 forth his spirit to explore distant regions. 
 At last, during an unwontedly long absence, 
 his wife supposed him to be dead and burned 
 his body, so that on its return the spirit 
 found no dwelling for itself.^ A slightly 
 different case is that reported of the Scandina- 
 vian chief Ingimund, who shut up three Finns 
 that their spirits might visit Iceland, discover 
 the lie of the land where he proposed to settle, 
 and report to him on their return. An in- 
 
 * Newton, In Far New Guinea^ p. 220. 
 
 ^ Kingsley, West African Studies^ pp. 200 ff. 
 ' Griffis, Mikado's Empire y p. 472. 
 
 * Cited by Tylor, Primitive Culturey \. 439; cf. Jevons, Intror 
 dudion, pp. 44 fF., and the cases there cited. 
 
THE EXTERNAL SOUL 53 
 
 stance like that of Hermotimus is the case 
 of Epimenides, the Cretan prophet and magi- 
 cian, who was reputed to be able to dispatch 
 his spirit in quest of knowledge and recall it 
 at will.^ And Hermotimus had in recent 
 years an African disciple, whose exploits were 
 worthy, if reports are to be credited, of his 
 unknown master.^ 
 
 Since belief in the absence of the soul, at 
 least for a temporary period, could be held 
 over so wide an area and even among com- 
 paratively developed peoples, it is not sur- 
 prising that there should arise a belief in the 
 existence of the animating spirit seated not 
 in the body, but in some place where security 
 would be greater. The evidences are many 
 of a belief that the soul might reside either 
 from birth or from some later period in some 
 objedl other than its normal home. This is 
 the phenomenon known to anthropologists as 
 the "external" or "separable" soul. A dilu- 
 tion of this is the form which is christened "the 
 life token," in which the clouding of a liquid 
 or the tarnishing of a weapon is the sign 
 either of danger, sickness, or death of the 
 
 ^ Hesychius, Lexikon, under "Epimenides." 
 ^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 23 1. 
 
54 ANIMISM 
 
 person for whom the liquid or object stands. 
 It can be shown, however, in most cases, that 
 when the Ufe token is the center of the story, 
 it is the result of an advanced stage of culture, 
 if it is not diredlly stated that such objedl is 
 the residence of the soul. 
 
 The earliest example of this belief so far 
 known to literature occurs in the Egyptian 
 tale of **Anpu and Bata, or the Two 
 Brothers." ^ The younger brother commits 
 his soul apparently to the keeping successively 
 of acacia flowers, of a bull, and then of two 
 trees, while a chip from one of the latter 
 causes conception. Another view of the latter 
 experiences, however, is that they are cases 
 of transmigration. The case of the Balong of 
 the Cameroons who believe that a man may 
 have several souls, one in his own body and 
 others in different animals of the jungle, has 
 already been cited. It is quite usual for 
 them to account for a man's sudden death 
 by supposing that one of his soul-containing 
 animals has been killed by a hunter.^ Fre- 
 quent in folk-lore is the theme of the wicked 
 and oppressive ogre or giant or wizard who 
 
 ' Petrie, Egyptian Tales, id series, pp. 48 fF. 
 
 * Globus, 69 (1896), 277, cited in Hastings, ERE, 4, 412-413. 
 
THE EXTERNAL SOUL 55 
 
 holds in his power maiden or youth, and is 
 invincible to ordinary attack because his soul 
 is safe-guarded in an egg inside a duck that 
 swims on a pond in a distant island guarded 
 by a dragon within a walled and inaccessible 
 fortress. Not until the many obstacles have 
 been overcome and the egg obtained is the 
 luckless maiden or youth released by the 
 crushing of the egg and the consequent im- 
 mediate demise of ogre, giant, or wizard. 
 This theme of a receptacle strongly guarded 
 (though in this case it is not a soul, but the 
 "Book of Thoth," a book of magic) comes, 
 curiously enough, in its earliest form from 
 Egypt, and suggests that this idea of an 
 objedl, and perhaps the separable soul, secured 
 by many safeguards, may have been a particu- 
 larly widely diflFused idea. The "Book of 
 Thoth" was in an iron box, which enclosed 
 successively one of bronze, of kete-wood, of 
 ivory and ebony, of silver, and last of gold, 
 the entire nest being in the middle of the river, 
 surrounded by snakes, scorpions, and "all 
 manner of creeping things," and above all by 
 a snake that no man could kill — which how- 
 ever a man did kill. In this case, as in most 
 of those in folk-lore where the soul is sup- 
 
56 ANIMISM 
 
 posedly unassailable, the conquest is efFedled 
 through magic.^ 
 
 In many cases the story has to do with the 
 miraculous birth (not always virgin birth, 
 however) of twins or triplets, simultaneous 
 with which appears some plant or tree or 
 other objedl which is the repository of the 
 soul or is the ** life-token.'' The fading or 
 withering of bloom or plant here indicates 
 disaster. Sometimes, instead of the plants, 
 weapons (which undergo modernization in 
 successive generations of story-tellers) spring 
 up, or a spring wells forth, and in them reside 
 the souls of the children. Then if hilt falls 
 from sword or sheen tarnishes on blade, or if 
 lock looses from gun or the clear water of the 
 spring begins to run clouded, the event be- 
 tokens danger or catastrophe to the possessor 
 of the soul.^^ In the Ramayana, Garuda says 
 to Rama: "I am thy friend, thy life free- 
 
 ^ The story of the Book of Thoth is told in Petrie, Egyptian 
 Talesy ii. 89 fF.; Spiegelberg, Demotische Papyrus; and Murray, 
 Ancient Egyptian Legends^ pp. 3 1 fF. 
 
 ^•^ A number of interesting cases exhibiting these phenomena, 
 not usually cited in the books can be found in Parker, Village 
 Folk Tales of Ceylon (e.g., i. 164, 166-168, 190, et passim); Day, 
 Folk-Tales of Bengal, pp. 2, 6, 85-86, 189, 253, etc.; Indian 
 Antiquary, i. 86, 117, xvii. 54; Steel, Tales of the Punjab, pp. 52, 
 5S> 75, etc. 
 
THE EXTERNAL SOUL S7 
 
 ranging, external to thyself." " It may be 
 sufficient here, without going further into 
 details in this interesting subject, to note that 
 a considerable number of folk-tales of this 
 and kindred types have been brought together 
 and their points of similarity and difference 
 discussed in Hartland's fascinating volumes,^^ 
 a work which is urged upon all who wish to 
 note the salient characteristics of this fertile 
 field. It is interesting to remark that a new 
 area for the existence of this curious belief 
 Has recently been discovered in the far north, 
 since it is a part of the mental possessions of 
 the Tshimsheans of Alaska.^^ 
 
 If it be objedled that the principal evidence 
 for all this is found in the region of Mdrchen, 
 of folk-tale, and therefore purely imaginative, 
 the reply is: even were this all, it shows a 
 mode of thought and possibilities of concep- 
 tion, of psychological activity. But above all 
 this, we can adduce the fadl that transition to 
 adlual belief is furnished by the many cases 
 in which a tree is planted when a child is 
 born, and the life of tree and child are thought 
 
 " Nivedita, Myths of Hindus, p. 82. 
 
 ^2 The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols. 
 
 1^ Ardander, Apostle of Alaska, p. 93. 
 
58 ANIMISM 
 
 to be intimately connedled. The Maori bury 
 the navel cord or the placenta and plant a 
 tree over the spot, and the latter becomes 
 the life token.^^ Similarly, in Old Calibar the 
 burial of the placenta and planting of a tree 
 are conjoined.^^ In Pomerania a tree already 
 growing is employed. Similar beliefs may be 
 cited from Western Africa, Oceanica (e.g., 
 Banks Islands ^^), Madagascar, Russia, Ger- 
 many, Italy, Switzerland, and England, and 
 even in China traces of like customs are 
 found.^^ In these cases fate of tree and person 
 are so bound together that withering of or 
 damage to the tree results in or indicates 
 harm to the person. Thus certain Nigerian 
 tribes hold that a tree has the life or breath 
 of a person in it, and that harm to either may 
 mean death to the other.^* 
 
 ** Taylor, Te Ika a Maui^ p. 184. 
 
 ^^ Burton, Wit and Wisdom from West Africa^ p. 411. 
 
 ^^ Rivers, Melanesian Society, i. 155. 
 
 " Cases are colleded in Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 28 ff. 
 
 18 Thomas, Anthropological Report, pp. 29, 31, et passim. 
 
V 
 PARITY OF BEING 
 
V 
 PARITY OF BEING 
 
 ^ I "^HIS opens the way to the next branch 
 -■- of the subjedl. If the human soul could 
 ! reside in objects, why should not these objedls 
 themselves possess spirits? The evident con- 
 vicflion of early and primitive races as to the 
 existence, form, and substance of the human 
 soul has, it is believed, been adequately 
 presented in the foregoing. But is the posses- 
 sion of soul limited by these races to humanity? 
 Do primitive peoples regard other beings as 
 also so endowed? The definition of animism 
 already furnished involves an affirmative an- 
 swer, but we must look a little further into 
 this phase of the subjedl. There is an "epi- 
 gram of Christian pantheism" which declares 
 that "God sleeps in the stone, dreams in the 
 plant, awakens in the animal, and is self- 
 conscious in man." ^ This expresses in some 
 
 ^ Basil Wilberforce, Steps in Spiritual Growth, d. 50. 
 61 
 
62 ANIMISM 
 
 degree what primitive man thought of things 
 about him, except that he would have de- 
 murred at the idea of mere sleep or dream of 
 the sentient in the world of the non-human. 
 He doubtless from the beginning made himself 
 the measure of things. And so, as was briefly 
 shown at the beginning of this discussion,^ 
 any objeA in nature might be conceived by 
 primitive or savage as a duality, like himself, 
 the body of which was visible and tangible, 
 and the soul, like his own, invisible except to 
 the soul itself or to the skilled shaman. With 
 the untutored, nothing exists in nature but 
 may give occasion to this conception of 
 possession of soul. Omaha Indians represent 
 this by the statement that all forms mark 
 where Wakonda has stopped and brought 
 them into existence. "Man . . . becomes lit- 
 erally a part of nature, connedled with it 
 physically and related to it psychically." So 
 endowments of animals may be transferred to 
 man, and Wakonda helps in answer to prayer 
 by sending the animal which has the endow- 
 ment proper to the end desired. This explains 
 in part the "animal totem," found in almost 
 exadlly parallel form among the Tamaniu of 
 2 Pp. lo fF., above. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 63 
 
 the Banks Islands.^ Another statement of the 
 fadl is the following: 
 
 "The quality of savage mind which perhaps 
 most profoundly illuminates our subjedl is its 
 hazy sense of personality, the difficulty it ex- 
 periences in marking off its 'self from other 
 selves; in other words, the absence of sharp 
 dualisms. This is revealed in creation myths, 
 in primitive notions of kinship and relation- 
 ship, in the almost universal savage belief in 
 metamorphosis, in the savage's identification 
 of 'self with the name, shadow, dream-self, 
 likeness, clothing and other property. . . . And 
 the wide-spread belief in 'possession' by good 
 or evil spirits further confirms the principle."* 
 
 More advanced peoples may own to a com- 
 plete animism. Examples are found in the 
 advanced philosophies and religions of India. 
 **Only last summer in a conversation with an 
 orthodox Brahman in Kashmir I discovered 
 that he regarded everything in nature, down 
 to separate stick and stone and blade of 
 
 ^ A. C. Fletcher and F. La Flesche, in Twenty-seventh Annual 
 Report of the Bureau of American Ethnologyy p. 600; Rivers, 
 Melanesian Societyy i. 154. 
 
 * Todd, The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, 
 pp. 9-10. 
 
64 ANIMISM 
 
 grass, as possessed by its own spirit." ^ It is 
 not wonderful that man should endow with 
 life, soul, and power the great objedls of nature, 
 the heavenly bodies, for instance. Nor can 
 we wonder that such objedls as a volcano with 
 its manifestation of mysterious force, a moun- 
 tain range which seems to clothe itself in 
 clouds and to launch forth the avalanche, the 
 sea, with its varied moods and mystery, that 
 appals even the modern experienced traveler, 
 the river with its ceaseless flow and its occa- 
 sional devastations, the forest with its reaches 
 of silence or its monotone under the soughing 
 of the wind, call up convidlions of dread 
 personality. These things alone suffice to 
 suggest that primitive man felt himself ever 
 in the presence of mystery. Few objecfls 
 there were but seemed to possess each its own 
 basis for arousing admiration or fear. 
 
 It is necessary here to inquire somewhat 
 more minutely into the drift of the thoughts 
 of primitive man concerning the things he 
 saw or felt or imagined. And in doing this 
 we are to recall that three avenues are open 
 along which to advance in this inquiry. First 
 
 ^ Professor Hervey D. Griswold, in The Biblical Worldt 
 Sept. 1912, p. 165. 
 
PARirr OF BEING 65 
 
 there is the avenue of cult, where definite 
 adls of devotion or gift (sacrifice) unfailingly 
 indicate belief in the sentient and potent 
 capabilities of the objedl addressed. It is 
 obvious that even the most naive of savages 
 pay no attention of this sort to objedls which 
 they conceive to be without the qualities of 
 life, sensation, emotion, and power. The 
 second avenue is that of folk-lore and myth- 
 ology. To some this may appear trivial and 
 unworthy of serious attention. Yet these 
 are "the sedimentary deposits of the traditions 
 of remotely distant epochs." ^ Just as chil- 
 dren's games and festivals in May or in 
 harvest season recall and are founded on 
 pradlices that once obtained in real earnest, 
 so folk-tales encyst, like a fly in the amber 
 or a fossil in the rock, the indications of Hfe 
 in some cases long past. In other instances 
 not a few they represent thought that still 
 lingers, if we but knew where to look for it. 
 Stories of men and women transformed into 
 beasts, either voluntarily or involuntarily, 
 of cats or hares which prove to be the forms 
 witches assume for mischievous ends, seem 
 to us fooUsh; the tales of were-wolves, told in 
 ® Cox, Introduction to Folk-lore, pp. 3-4. 
 
66 ANIMISM 
 
 earnest even yet in parts of Europe, seem to 
 the educated impossible and merely laughable. 
 Yet we shall see that the modern African 
 believes them, and at times looks askance at 
 his neighbor who has the reputation of being 
 an ''elephant-man" or a "leopard-man." The 
 [ third avenue is that of beliefs still or recently 
 current among savages comparatively or com- 
 pletely unafFedled by the higher civilizations. 
 Even in India, which has so long been in 
 contadl with the culture of the West, old 
 beliefs linger, often in passive but efFedlive 
 resistance to more enlightened ideas, while 
 in Africa and among the indigenes of the 
 Americas and of Australia and Oceanica native 
 forms of thought continue, sometimes but 
 little adulterated, as where relationship is 
 claimed by a clan or tribe with this or that 
 genus of plant or animal life. 
 
 I. INANIMATE OBJECTS IN NATURE 
 POSSESS SOUL 
 
 It seems superfluous here to cite cases of 
 the belief which has existed so nearly uni- 
 versally that the sun, the planets, and the 
 stars are living objedls possessed of soul. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 67 
 
 The stage in which a deity is supposed to 
 inhabit or to rule or to have as his special 
 sphere of control one of these heavenly objecfls 
 registers, of course, an advanced culture, 
 when pure animism has given way to a higher 
 mode of thought and a truer perception of 
 fadls/ But that once these objecfls were 
 regarded as sentient is clear from poetry, 
 myth, and remainder in folk-lore and song. 
 Among Oceanicans the sun is in form like a 
 man, but possessed of fearful energy. He 
 has many legs, and various other members in 
 excess.^ Worthy of special notice in this 
 connedlion is the conception of the earth as 
 the great mother, a belief that was historical 
 in Babylonia, Asia Minor particularly, and in 
 Greece, where it influenced in especial manner 
 pradlice and ritual. Speaking of the Su- 
 merians Langdon says: 
 
 "The nourishing life of earth, warmed by 
 the sunshine, refreshed by the rains, furnished 
 
 ' On Zeus as an example of this, see Cook's Zeusy p. 3, note 2. 
 
 ^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 50, 52. For a colledion 
 of indications of worship of the sun (itself proof of the way in 
 which this luminary was regarded), see the author's article in 
 The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 
 xi. 137-145; for star-worship, ib.y xi. 68-69; ^^d for worship of 
 the moon among the Hebrews, ib., vii. 492-494. 
 
68 ANIMISM 
 
 the prehistoric Sumerians . . . with their first 
 god. And this deity who fostered all life 
 was conceived of as a mother, unbegotten, 
 genderless, producing animal and vegetable 
 life as a virgin. But primitive peoples do not 
 think in abstradl terms, nor do they produce 
 ideas as abstradl principles. They conceived 
 the earth goddess under that form of life with 
 which they were most familiar. In the case 
 of this people the grape vine appears to have 
 been the plant which appealed to them as 
 most efficiently manifesting the power of the 
 great mother. Hence they called this goddess 
 * Mother Vine-Stalk,' or simply 'Goddess Vine- 
 Stalk.'"^ 
 
 In Nigeria the ground is an objedt which 
 underlies many taboos, and to it sacrifices are 
 offered of many kinds.^° The feeling among 
 the Ibo-speaking peoples seems much like 
 that, if not the same, which governed in 
 Greece and Asia Minor before the person- 
 alizing of the Great Mother.^^ At the other 
 extreme the sky is regarded as father, though 
 in the Egyptian myth, which speaks of the 
 
 ® Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtaty p. 43. 
 *° Thomas, Anthropological Reporty i. 11, et passim. 
 "■ Cf., for instance, Harrison, Prolegomena, pp. 260-271. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 69 
 
 separation of earth and heaven (a myth that 
 is charadlerized by its diffusion or else is 
 indigenous in many regions), curiously enough 
 in a way adumbrating the theory of the 
 evolutionary origin of the worlds and appear- 
 ing in Gen. i, the respedive genders of earth 
 and sky are reversed. ^^ 
 
 But such faith is not confined to celestial 
 objedls and the earth. Things terrestrial, 
 tangible or intangible, had each its own 
 spirit and life. Thus, to group a number of 
 these, winds, lightning, mountains, and forests 
 are sentient beings. Thus of some Africans 
 it is said that they hold that: "The wind 
 1 talks to the forest and the forest to the wind. 
 The tornado is often nothing more than a 
 quarrel between mountain and forest, lightning 
 and wind [^which latter is a servant of some- 
 thing else]; and we ourselves [[the Africans] 
 may get hit with the bits.'*^^ Pima Indians 
 think of Wind and Storm-cloud (Rain-man) 
 as supernatural persons who once did menial 
 
 ^ For a descriptive picture of this separation, cf. Brugsch, 
 Religion und Mythologie der Aegyptety p. 210, reproduced in 
 Homiletic Review, Oct., 1912, p. 275. For a crude form of this 
 myth of the separation of heaven and earth, see Westervelt, 
 Legends of Maui, pp. 31 fF. 
 
 " Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africa^ p. 215. 
 
70 ANIMISM 
 
 service for mortals, while Thunder also pos- 
 sesses personality, owns fire, and detedls the 
 thief of fire (the essentials of the story of 
 Prometheus are here);^^ and the notions of 
 the Omahas are quite similar. The Uriankhai 
 of Mongolia deify mountains, rivers, and the 
 wind.^^ The Zulus regard their rainmakers as 
 operating upon clouds as the Greeks thought 
 of Zeus the Cloud-gatherer, and to them 
 cloud and lightning are still sentient beings, 
 alive and full of power, though controlled by 
 the medicine men.^^ 
 
 The sea is regarded in the same way. Hart- 
 land cites the case of the ancient Celts reported 
 by ^lian, supported in substance by native evi- 
 dence from Celtic tradition, who used to meet 
 the overflowing sea with drawn swords and 
 menacing spears, employing the same meth- 
 ods as those used towards human enemies.^^ 
 Mr. Hartland refers also to the same notion 
 as exhibited by the Malays and reported by 
 Skeat. It would be easy to adduce testimony 
 to this same efFedl from Africa, where the 
 
 " Fewkes, lUh Annual Report of Bureau of Am. Ethnology, 
 pp. 43, 47; Fletcher and La Flesche, 22d Report, passim. 
 ^^ Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 
 ^^ Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, \. 109. 
 " Hartland, Ritual and Belief, pp. 161 fF. 
 
PARirr OF BEING 71 
 
 natives of the West shore offer sacrifice to 
 the sea in order to induce it to grant an easy 
 landing. In folk-lore this idea is transformed 
 later in culture-history into the kelpies and 
 what-not that inhabit the waters; but students 
 of folk tales have no doubt that in the original 
 form the sea was regarded as possessing full 
 personality with all that is involved. 
 
 It seems superfluous almost to cite cases of 
 rivers which have personality, since classic 
 stories abound which bear out the claim. Yet 
 it is useful to show that such ideas are not 
 confined to the literature of Greece.^^ For 
 instance, a traveler who was being conveyed 
 by canoe and paddle up a river was persuaded 
 by the Africans to turn back because a cloud 
 appeared over the stream, and they supposed 
 that it was caused by the river in displeasure 
 at the profanation of its waters by a stranger. 
 In other cases the river is simply possessed by 
 a spirit, to which oflFerings should be made in 
 
 " For citations of rivers regarded as divinities by Greeks the 
 reader may consult Halliday, Greek Divination, pp. 116-117. 
 He will find there that springs also come under the same category. 
 Thus the spring at Kolophon rendered inspired the priest who 
 drank it (Tacitus, Annals, ii. 54; Pliny, ii. 103, 232). One 
 recalls inevitably the many sacred springs throughout the world, 
 the sandity being but the attenuated form in which the old 
 belief has come down to us. 
 
72 ANIMISM 
 
 order that no calamity may be suffered in the 
 crossing.^^ The survival in poetry of the 
 thought of a river as a person may be illus- 
 trated from the Ramayana, where a river 
 becomes the wife of a king (xv. 20: 13), or 
 falls in love and bears a son (xiii. 2: 18). 
 The Ganges is a daughter and a goddess, 
 becomes a spouse and bears a son. In the 
 days of wife-capture, primitives would see in 
 a torrent into which a maiden had fallen a 
 male capturing his wife; or, in case of a man 
 falling in, they might think of a fierce female 
 seizing a husband. It will be recalled that 
 the Egyptians thought of the Nile as a short 
 ugly male with huge woman's breasts, sym- 
 bolizing the fertility which the river brought 
 to the land. In New Guinea the rivers are 
 besought as persons to make gifts of fish to 
 the Mafulu.2o In MongoUa they are deified.^^* 
 The views of fire as a person, having attri- 
 butes that correspond, might be easily 
 supported by reference to the Vedic and 
 Brahmanic teaching respedling Agni, whose 
 name reappears in the Latin as ignis^ fire. 
 
 " Roscoe, Baganddy pp. 318-319. 
 
 ^^ Williamson, South Sea Savage^ p. 231. 
 
 2°* Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 
 
PARirr OF BEING 73 
 
 The Kai of German New Guinea assert de- 
 liberately that fire has soul.^^ One might with 
 profit investigate the background of the Zoro- 
 astrian notion of the extreme sandlity of 
 fire, and the Aryo-Indian conceptions already 
 noted would be found lurking therein. Simi- 
 larly Malabars hold that a flame has life and 
 spirit, and fear the ghost of a flame that has 
 suddenly been quenched.^^ 
 
 The evidence of belief in the life and power, 
 even of the divinity, of rocks and stones is 
 too abundant to be cited at any length. In 
 the Semitic sphere William Robertson Smith 
 has offered irrefutable evidence of worship of 
 such objedls — worship, it will be seen at 
 once, being evidence of belief in possession of 
 attributes equivalent to soul and spirit by 
 the objedl of devotion.^^ It is among the 
 curiosities of history that the stones of Carnac 
 in France and of Rollright in England are 
 said to leave their positions and to go down 
 to the sea, or to a spring to drink.^^ Africans 
 report that a large stone near a village patrols 
 
 2* Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 143-144. 
 ^ Folk-lore, v. 297 ff. 
 
 2^ Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, and Religion of the 
 Semites. 
 
 24 Folk-lore, v. 297 flf. 
 
74 ANIMISM 
 
 the outskirts of that village during danger.^^ 
 A great rock in the African region inhabited 
 by the Baganda is deemed sacred and is an 
 objedl of worship and propitiation, and the 
 same is true of a meteorite. ^^ The stone of 
 Nimm, an Etoi goddess, is now an altar, and 
 this is doubtless but a development from the 
 conception of it as endowed with life, as 
 might be abundantly illustrated from other 
 sources.^^ In Mongolia stones are among the 
 objedls of worship.^^ In Melanesia stones and 
 rocks of many sorts receive oflFerings, and are 
 regarded either as the homes of spirits or as 
 being the possessors of these — the two are 
 not so far apart; also in the Solomon Islands 
 spirit is associated with stone. In the New 
 Hebrides large rocks are especially sacred. 
 Banks Islanders regard certain long stones 
 as so much alive that they can draw out a 
 man's soul if his shadow fall on them. In 
 Florida Island any peculiarly shaped stone 
 may have Hfe and soul attributed to it.^^ 
 
 26 D'Alviella, Hibbert Le^ureSy p. 54. 
 
 28 Roscoe, The Baganddy pp. 271-272, 290. 
 
 2' Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 171-172. 
 ^ Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 56 ff. 
 
 29 Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 119, 140, 143, 169, <r/ passim} 
 Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 178. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 75 
 
 In many cases of this sort the attitude toward 
 them seems to imply in them a kind of sandity, 
 which is however but a more developed way of 
 thinking and is evidential of an earlier and 
 cruder mode of thought. A survival of this 
 charadler is in evidence near Laguna, New 
 Mexico, where seven jagged rocks are the 
 prisons of seven spirits.^° The stone of the 
 Omaha sweat lodge was regarded anthropo- 
 pathically.^^ The case of the Baganda meteor- 
 ite cited above is but one of many instances 
 of the kind in which veneration has been paid. 
 The two stones of the Kaaba at once occur to 
 the mind.^^ Adls 19: 35 furnishes a notable 
 instance. One may recall the very numerous 
 cases from ancient Greece — the sacred stone 
 at Delphi, that at Hyettos, the thirty wor- 
 shipped by the Pharaeans, the many Hermae 
 along the Greek roads referred to so often by 
 the classical writers.^^ These were worshipped 
 and anointed with oil — compare the treat- 
 ment accorded Jacob's pillar (above, p. 5). 
 
 ^ Quoted by Wallis in JRPy July 191 2, from Southern Work- 
 many Nov. 1910. 
 
 31 Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth ReporU etc., pp. 575-578. 
 
 32 JV^a; Schaff'Herzog Encyclopedia^ vi. 289. 
 
 ^ Theophrastus, Charaderes ethicit xvi.; Pausanias, ed. 
 Frazer, VIII. xxxiv. 3; X. xxiv. 6, etc. 
 
76 ANIMISM 
 
 At Aneiteum in Melanesia stones thought to 
 resemble objedls of desire or striving received 
 worship from various classes of people. Thus 
 one that was fish-shaped was venerated by 
 fishermen.^* 
 
 To catalogue here the various objedls in 
 nature which have had life attributed to them 
 would require much space. Mention will be 
 made of only the following in addition to those 
 already adduced. The rainbow is a thing 
 of life in Australia, inhabiting deep water- 
 holes in the mountains; it is seen only when it 
 is passing from one of these to another. 
 Approximately the same notion obtains in 
 Africa.^^ Among the Baganda of Africa, rain- 
 water is a totem (i.e., it is either an ancestor 
 or an ally).^^ By Arabs the resin or gum from 
 which the frankincense of commerce is derived 
 is regarded as the blood of a tree, the soul of 
 which is a divinity, and the gathering of the 
 gum is attended by special ceremonies.^^ The 
 Tshemsheans of Alaska find their devotional 
 spirit awakened, as in the presence of a 
 
 ^ Turner, SamoUy p. 327. 
 
 25 Mathew, Eagle-hawk and Crowy p. 146; Missions Catholiques, 
 no. 239, p. 592. 
 
 2^ Roscoe, The Baganda^ p. 140. 
 
 '^ Zehnpfund, in New Schaff-Herzog Encydopediat iv. 372. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 77 
 
 supernatural being, by precipices, tidal waves, 
 or indeed almost any objed or phenomenon 
 that is strange to them.^^ 
 
 2. SOUL IN THINGS ARTIFICIAL 
 
 A rather noted controversy over theories of 
 language, and incidentally of myth and reli- 
 gion, once took place between Professors Max 
 Miiller and Whitney, in which, a little after 
 the event, the late Andrew Lang took a hand. 
 The Oxford scholar saw in myth "a disease of 
 language," and Mr. Lang replied that what 
 the data showed was a disease of thought. 
 By this Mr. Lang intended to convey the idea 
 that man was astray either in his observations 
 or in the dedudlions he made from them. 
 How far astray from the truth man often was 
 we have already seen. But notions even 
 more strange are yet to be cited. One of the 
 earliest literary testimonies to the class of 
 ideas to be noted in this sedlion is found in 
 one of the minor prophets, who declares: 
 
 "They (men) sacrifice unto their net, and 
 burn incense unto their drags; because by 
 them their portion is fat, and their meat 
 
 ^ Ardander, Apostle of Alaska, pp. lOO ff. 
 
78 ANIMISM 
 
 plenteous. ^^ " Here we have a fadl stated, as 
 well as the reason for the fad which can be 
 duplicated from many diflFerent quarters evei;i 
 in our own day. Objedls which were the 
 produdl of man's own handicraft, the genesis 
 of which and whole produdlion and mode of 
 use he knew, received his homage. Hunting 
 implements and those used in agriculture are 
 by man endowed with life and power before 
 which he bows in reverence. In India there 
 is a festival lasting three days, observed in 
 Odlober by Hindoos of all castes, including 
 the Brahmins, which has to do with the 
 worship of all sorts of tools and implements. 
 In many cases it is doubtless but the survival 
 of a custom; in very many others, however, 
 the original element of ascription of life or 
 divinity still inheres.'*^ It is not so very 
 difficult to see the reason for the primitive 
 mind's being afFedled in this way. Why should 
 the mere scratching of the earth with a rude 
 hoe and the deposition of a seed produce so 
 bountiful and, to it, strange results? What 
 did early man know of the chemistry of 
 nature? Was it not the spirit in the hoe 
 
 39 Habakkuki: i6. 
 
 ** Cf. Thurston, Omens and Superstitions, pp. 174-175. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 79 
 
 that made the gift of the harvest? If we 
 were to study fetishism, we should discover 
 that man beheves that he can bring together 
 **odds and ends" in a bundle or bag, and that 
 a spirit will take up its abode there. Why 
 should not with easy plausibility the hoe or 
 net or drag equally be or become animate? 
 It is perhaps not at all wonderful that in 
 India particularly, perhaps elsewhere, the 
 fire-drill was an objedl of devotion and con- 
 ceived to be divine. When we recall the 
 fadl, now so familiar to us, but remaining to 
 the Hindoos for millenniums one of the 
 arcana of nature, viz., that from a place where 
 apparently there was no fire, fire may be 
 evoked, literally called into being, we can 
 begin to appreciate in some small degree 
 man's awe before such phenomena. We can 
 find the same awe existing in Fiji, where, 
 besides stones, houses, and canoes, tools of 
 various sorts are credited with souls and 
 believed to be immortal.^^ In the same region 
 so isolated and insignificant a thing as a 
 whale's tooth is credited with life and immor- 
 tality; so the Fijian ghost in the spirit land 
 on occasion throws at a pandanus tree the 
 
 ^ Williams, Fijiy i. 241. 
 
8o ANIMISM 
 
 ghost of the whale's tooth that was buried 
 with his body.^2 
 
 Not less curious than the foregoing is the 
 fadl that food and the like have been and 
 still are regarded as animate and possessed of 
 spirit. The ancient Egyptians provided for 
 the ka, soul or double of the deceased, articles 
 of food, drink, or clothing, so that it need 
 not suffer hunger, thirst, or cold. But the 
 ka, being ethereal, did not use the things 
 themselves, but only the parts of them that 
 stood in the same relation to the things as 
 the ka did to the deceased, i.e., their souls or 
 doubles. So that there a conception won- 
 drously like that of spirit or soul is attributed 
 to articles of food, drink, and clothing. In 
 the earlier stages of Egyptian civilization, the 
 things devoted to the deceased were purposely 
 mutilated; and it requires no stretch of the 
 imagination, had we no contemporaneous 
 testimony to the fadl, to see in this mutilation 
 of the offerings the same process as we are 
 famiHar with in another connection, viz., the 
 killing of the offerings.^^ Just as slaves and 
 wives were sent through the gates of death 
 
 *2 Williams, Fiji, i. 243 ff. 
 
 *3 Ancient Egypt, ii (1914), 123. 
 
PARirr OF BEING 8i 
 
 to serve their dead lord, so were implements, 
 weapons, ornaments and food. In Nigeria 
 around funeral shrines are fragments of house- 
 hold belongings, which have been broken so 
 that their astral forms may be set free to be 
 carried by the owner's shade to its spirit 
 home.^^ In perfedl agreement with this trend 
 of thought, the Dyaks of Borneo bury with 
 the body various utensils, and hold that 
 these have spirits which the deceased takes 
 along with him to his new home and puts to 
 good use.^^ In Central Africa baskets, hoe- 
 handles, pots that have been perforated, 
 broken cups and the Hke are placed at graves, 
 having been killed by breaking that their 
 spirits may go to the spirit land there to do 
 service.^^ In like fashion the Bakongos endow 
 bottles, cloths, umbrellas and similar articles 
 with spirit. ^^ Talbot learned in Africa that to 
 a cloth can be imparted personal qualities, so 
 that it breaks out into speech.^^ Even orna- 
 ments may have soul, according to the Melane- 
 
 ** Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurredion, ii. 1 19-120; 
 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 6 fF. 
 *^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo^ pp. 138, 142. 
 ^ Werner, Native Races, pp. 155, 159. 
 *7 Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, pp. 269, 272. 
 * Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy p. 226. 
 
82 ANIMISM 
 
 sians of New Guinea, and their souls, evapo- 
 rated by fire, are offered to disease demons 
 which have operated by extradting a human 
 soul from its abode.^^ The Kai of German 
 New Guinea offer food and viands to the 
 ghosts of their dead, which considerately eat 
 only the soul thereof and leave the substance 
 to those who offer it.^° It would seem from 
 certain passages in the Old Testament that 
 the conception once existed that even a part 
 of the body might have individual life and 
 power. Witness the expression, "El (God) 
 of my hand" (Gen. 31:29; Deut. 28:32; 
 Micah 2:1; Prov. 3:27; Neh. 5:5).^^ Even 
 so abstradl a conception as the year receives 
 homage as a personality among the Ibo- 
 speaking peoples, who, by the way, place 
 rivers among the great powers which they 
 name Alose.^^ 
 
 *' Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 189 fF. 
 ^ Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guineay iii. 145 fF., 489 fF., 513 fF. 
 [" B. D. Eerdmans, in Expositor y Nov. 191 3, p. 386. 
 ^ Thomas, Anthropological Report^ pp. 27 ff. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 83 
 
 3. SOUL OR SPIRIT IN THE VEGETABLE 
 WORLD 
 
 If things so obviously inanimate as those 
 we have just noticed could be regarded as 
 possessing the attributes of life and soul, it is 
 no wonder that the vegetable world was 
 thought to exhibit the same qualities. The 
 plant has the power of producing pregnancy 
 in the human species, since leaf and flower 
 from certain specified kinds of plants, falling 
 on a woman, get her with child. ^^ In Melanesia 
 the Cycas and the Casuarina are sacred, and 
 in folk-lore the Cycas becomes a maiden. 
 Children also are believed to have sprung 
 from trees, fruits, and other vegetable growths.^^ 
 In Australia the cones of the Casuarina are 
 supposed to have eidola which, when released 
 by burning, attack the eyes of bystanders 
 and cause bHndness — in all probability the 
 stinging charadler of the smoke is thus ex- 
 plained.^^ Trees have souls, feel pain, and 
 even hold conversation, and this is not con- 
 
 ^2 Roscoe, The Baganduy p. 48. 
 
 " Codrington, Melanesiansy p. 187; cf. Talbot, In the Shadow 
 of the Bushy pp. 133-135. 
 
 " Howitt, Native Tribes of South-east Australia, pp. 363, 
 366, 376-377> 453- 
 
84 ANIMISM 
 
 fined to the larger growths, being extended 
 to plants or shrubs, and some skilled humans 
 have had the knowledge of plant language.^® 
 The fertilization of trees may be regarded as 
 the result of desire and voluntative adlion. 
 Malays believe implicitly in the souls of trees 
 and consider it appropriate to make offerings 
 to them.^^ The tree as oracle in Ancient 
 Greece and elsewhere is a well known fadl — 
 cf. the sacred oak at Dodona, whose character 
 is standing evidence of belief in its divinity, 
 and this in ancient times included the idea of 
 intelligent life and soul. One might produce 
 abundance of evidence of ascription of these 
 possessions to plants from the phenomena of 
 totemism, the idea here being either descent 
 from or alliance with some particular species 
 of plant, treatment of which was always 
 respedlful and like that accorded to members 
 of the human tribe or clan. Thus, to cite but 
 a single instance out of the many available, 
 such plants as the bean, mushroom, and yam 
 
 ^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 30-36, 177-178, 181, 
 287, 299-300; D'Alviella, Hibbert Leduresy pp. 53 fF. In the tale 
 of Anpu and Bata (Petrle, Egyptian Tales, 2d series, pp. 48 fF.) 
 the tree has power of speech. 
 
 " Skeat, Malay Magicy pp. 194; Homiletic Review, July, 1912, 
 pp. 14-15; Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 441. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 85 
 
 occur as totems among the Baganda.^^ Among 
 the Ibo-speaking peoples trees known as 
 Ojuku and Ngu belong to the powers known 
 as Alose, and so akin to man are certain trees 
 that in the process of reincarnation their 
 souls may animate human bodies.^^ The wor- 
 ship of the tree has received attention so 
 frequent and elaborate as here not to call for 
 extended treatment. From the British Isles 
 across Europe and Asia evidence of this cult 
 is abundant, and has been increased in the 
 excavations which have brought to light the 
 ancient Mycenaean and Mediterranean civili- 
 zations. How widespread this worship has 
 been in India may be seen from the sculpture 
 still in existence, some of which has been 
 illustrated and studied by Fergusson.^^ 
 
 Among the Mafulu of New Guinea the yam 
 is regarded as having personality, and possess- 
 ing a sweetheart plant.^^ One of the most 
 remarkable testimonies to the feeling of primi- 
 tive man in reference to the forest is the 
 following from Lange; speaking of an Indian 
 alone in the bush: 
 
 ^ J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 138-140. 
 ^ N. W. Thomas, Anthropological Report, i. 27, 28, 3 1, et passim. 
 ^ Tree and Serpent Worship; cf. Homiletic Review y July, 19 12. 
 *^ Williamson, South Sea Savage y pp. 233 flF. 
 
86 ANIMISM 
 
 "It appears to the Indian that he is beside 
 himself; he feels strange exterior influences 
 of an almost overwhelming characfler, foreign 
 to men who are only used to a civilized life 
 and whose path is far away from the wilder- 
 ness. It appears to him now that an invisible 
 and almost irresistible force is trying to at- 
 tradl him, and to lead him deeper and deeper 
 into the forest, perhaps there to perish. He 
 feels the sense of fear; he argues with him- 
 self: 'The forest wants to destroy me, to kill 
 me, to absorb me.' After he returns to his 
 hut, he says: *I was hunting, the forest 
 wanted to kill me, and got me almost into its 
 
 power, but I escaped and I have returned 
 safely.'" «2 
 
 4. SOUL OR SPIRIT IN ANIMALS 
 
 If the principle of "parity of being" involves 
 the conception of life and soul in inanimate 
 objedls and in the plant world, a fortiori we 
 should expedl that animals would be endowed, 
 in the mind of primitives, with the same 
 qualities. Here again no exhaustive examina- 
 tion and colledlion of cases can be presented, 
 
 ^2 Lange, The Lower Amazon, p. 424. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 87 
 
 so extensive is the evidence. What will be 
 offered will show simply the range of the idea 
 and the completeness with which it is carried 
 out. 
 
 "In all African fables the various animals 
 are but thinly disguised human beings." ^^ 
 Even the lower forms of animal life, such as 
 the starfish, indeed totally mythical examples 
 of this species, have been regarded as possessed 
 of or as being spirit. Thus in the Murray 
 River region of Australia a huge starfish is 
 supposed to be a spirit and to inhabit a deep 
 water hole.^^ Animals like lions, leopards, 
 crocodiles, sheep, reptiles, and others have 
 ghosts that are dangerous after death and 
 must be placated or guarded against.^^ Ainus 
 treat as a god a captive bear, and when it is 
 killed for food, some of its own flesh is offered 
 to it as a sacrifice. ^^ Many other peoples in 
 different quarters of the world — American 
 Indians, Malays, and so on — treat with 
 pretended or real honor the game animal 
 they slay, or attempt to cajole it or deceive it, 
 
 »2 Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africuy p. 215. 
 
 " Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 138. 
 
 ^ Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 288-289. 
 
 ^ Batchelor, Ainus and their Folk-lorey pp. 486-496. 
 
88 ANIMISM 
 
 just as they would attempt to cajole or deceive 
 one of their own species if success seemed 
 likely, in order that its spirit or its blood kin 
 may not avenge its slaughter. Malays will 
 cry out to a tiger which they have trapped 
 that "Mohammed set the trap," so as to 
 send its spirit on a false scent when it starts 
 out for revenge.^^ Among the Dyaks the 
 crocodile when caught "is addressed in eulo- 
 gistic language and beguiled, so the people 
 say, into offering no resistance. He is called 
 a rajah among animals, and is told that he has 
 come on a friendly visit and must behave 
 accordingly. . . . Though the animal is spoken 
 to in such flattering terms before he is secured, 
 the moment ... he is powerless for evil, 
 they deride him for his stupidity.'' ^^ Their 
 treatment of bears and tigers is quite similar. 
 Few fadls could more emphatically demon- 
 strate the complete parity of animals with 
 man, as conceived by various races, than the 
 remarkable one that animals have been 
 credited with organization into kinships, 
 families, societies, and governments, and 
 
 " Skeat, Malay Magicy p. 167; cf. Charlevoix, Journal d'un 
 voyage dans VAmerique septentrionale, v. 173. 
 •* Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, pp. 59-60. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 89 
 
 that they are held to perform even worship.^^ 
 The extreme example of what Andrew Lang 
 called "disease of thought" in this diredlion 
 has already been noted, in the cases where 
 man regards himself indifferently as a casso- 
 wary or some other totem gens, or on the other 
 hand considers the animal species as the same 
 as himselfJ^ This curious operation of the 
 mind may be further illustrated by two other 
 examples. The islanders of Mabuiag say of 
 the cassowary that "he all same as relation, 
 he belong same family," and Alaskans took 
 the first Russians whom they saw for cuttle 
 fish because of the buttons on their clothesJ^ 
 It is, after this, no subjedl for wonder if a 
 Zuni Indian see in a turtle or rabbit or hedge- 
 hog the embodiment of one of his ancestors, 
 or that a totem clan can trace origins back 
 to planet or sun, to bird, beast, or reptileJ^ 
 The complete parity of different states of 
 existence is here in evidence; and implicit 
 
 *' Illustrations of monkeys performing the ads of worship 
 are abundantly found in the sculptures of India; cf. worship of 
 the sacred tree in Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, and 
 Homiletic Review, July, 191 2. 
 
 '0 See p. 8. 
 
 '1 Frazer, Golden Bough \ ii. 388 ff. 
 
 ^* F. Gushing, in Century Magazine, May, 1883; and Zuni 
 Tales, passim. 
 
90 ANIMISM 
 
 always, explicit most of the time, is the idea 
 of possession of spirit or soul, though the 
 conception is necessarily vague. 
 
 Further testimony is furnished by the 
 peoples who hold that animals, birds, and the 
 like understand human speech, have languages 
 of their own, talk, perform the operations of 
 reason, engage in trade, are subjedl to passions, 
 yield to coaxing, blandishment or deception, 
 play tricks on each other and on humans, 
 scheme for each other's hurt or death, and 
 perform many humanlike actionsJ^ The Mel- 
 anesians attribute to the snake the power of 
 articulate speech; and the dog is equally well 
 endowed, if we may listen to the Blacks of 
 AustraliaJ^ Africans of the Niger region are 
 not alone in giving speech and reason to the 
 parrot, and they know that a hawk takes a 
 tree as a wifeJ^ These cases are curiously 
 duplicated among the Pima Indians, where 
 the dog used to have the power to speak, and 
 
 '3 Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 467-483; cf. the collection of cases 
 in Frazer, Taboo, ii. 169-273, 398-404, of incidents showing 
 treatment of animals as though possessed of the sentimentalities, 
 etc., of human beings; note the speech of cattle, etc., in the 
 "Tale of Anpu and Bata," Petrie, Egyptian Tales, ii. 48 fF. 
 
 ^* Codrington, Melanesians, p. 151; Fison and Howitt, Kam- 
 ilaroi and Kurnai, p. 218. 
 
 '6 Talbot, In the Shadow oj the Bush^ pp. 252, 253, 299-300. 
 
PARITY OF BEING 91 
 
 an eagle took the form of an old woman and 
 seized and carried ofF a girl as a wife. A 
 legendary personage also becomes a snake, 
 and another named Tonto drinks "medicine" 
 and becomes an eagleJ^ The folk-lore of 
 India is rich in this sort of tale. Animals, 
 led by the crafty jackal (which takes the place 
 of the fox in the Occident), not only talk and 
 lay deep plots, but ad in all ways Hke humans. 
 And the same is true of the feathered tribes. 
 It is of course not strange that the parrot 
 should talk, but other birds are as well en- 
 dowed, so the report goes, and, besides, know 
 how to cure diseases. Wild elephants are 
 worshipped by the Kadirs of India. The 
 dogs, pigs, and other domestic animals of the 
 dead at Tubetube, British New Guiana, have 
 spirits which find their owners in the spirit 
 land.^ 
 
 A reader who knew nothing of the inter- 
 pretation of the serpent in Gen. 3 which has 
 been current in Jewish and Christian circles 
 
 '® Fewkes, 2%th Report, etc., pp. 44, 45, 48, 52. 
 
 " Cf. Day, Folk-Tales of Bengal, p. 134; Steel and Temple, 
 Wide-awake Stories, pp. 6&-67; Thurston, Omens and Super- 
 stitions, p. 83; Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, pp. 113 fF. 
 112 S., 209 fF., 213 ff., et passim; Brown, Melanesians and Poly- 
 nesians, pp. 443 fF.; Williamson, South Sea Savages, p. 65. 
 
92 ANIMISM 
 
 would see in that deceiver an animal cast in 
 the form of primitive behef, endowed with 
 cunning and with power of speech — an 
 animal, and nothing more. The reading which 
 makes of it a form assumed by the devil for 
 purposes of guile belongs to a much later age 
 than the story itself. In many lands one may 
 find stories parallel to this one regarded as an 
 animistic "left-over." The early Egyptians 
 could tell of a serpent tribe that had reason, 
 speech, organized society, government, and 
 manners that some modern nations might 
 copy to their own credit and the comfort of 
 their neighbours. They had stories that dealt 
 with walking and winged serpents, such as 
 Eve's beast apparently was before the curse. 
 And in our own day the Ekoi of West Africa 
 know of reptiles that once had hands and 
 feet and led a family Hfe.^^ In Melanesia the 
 snake is (or is associated with) spirit.^^ On 
 the worship of the serpent much has been 
 colledled, and more is continually coming to 
 light.^^ The complete parity of this animal 
 
 " Petrle, Egyptian Talesy i. 8i flp.; Talbot, In the Shadow of the 
 Bush, pp. 374-377. 
 
 '' Codrington, Melanesians, p. 189. 
 
 ^ Cf. the article "Serpent" etc. in The New Schaff-Herzog 
 Encyclopedia, x. 363-370; Schlegel, Schltissel zur Ewe-Sprache, 
 
PARITY OF BEING 93 
 
 with man in these respedls is illustrated farther 
 by the fadl that the snake may wed with 
 mortals.^^ 
 
 p. 14; Milligan, Fetish Folk of West Africdy pp. 233-234; and 
 the two notable volumes of Miss Harrison, Prolegomena^ and 
 Themisy where the dominance of the serpent idea and its con- 
 tinuance are none the less markedly exhibited in that this par- 
 ticular phase is not at all the main thesis of her works, and is 
 therefore incidental and the more striking. 
 8^ Thurston, Omens and Superstitions ^ p. 91 
 
VI 
 BELIEF IN "FREE SPIRITS 
 
VI 
 
 BELIEF IN "FREE SPIRITS" 
 
 TT is not to be supposed that life, soul, 
 ^ spirit, possessing emotional, volitional, and 
 fadlual potency, was limited in savage man's 
 conception to the tangible and visible. If the 
 soul of man was itself invisible, and if soul 
 were a possession of plants, animals, and 
 other natural objedls, yet perceived only by 
 its operations, why should there not be other 
 souls "loose in the universe," unseen and 
 unfelt except as they revealed themselves by 
 their acflivities or manifestations to the world 
 of sense? So man seems to have reasoned, 
 and this belief abides today in the minds of 
 the mass of mankind, even in Christendom. 
 Spirits, unfixed so to speak, having form and 
 substance, indeed, but not body, roamed free 
 and unfettered in air, on land, in the waters. 
 They lurked in nook and cranny, behind bush 
 and tree and rock; they came in storm and 
 wind; they inhabited the woods, floated in 
 the atmosphere, swam in the sea and in lake 
 
 97 
 
98 ANIMISM 
 
 and stream, parched in the desert, hid in cave 
 or roamed on mountain top. Wherever mys- 
 tery is possible, there man imagines non-human 
 spirits to exist. A suggestion of the enormity 
 of the numbers of spirits whose existence is 
 conceived is given by the following from the 
 strongly animistic Shinto faith of Japan in 
 comparatively modern times. 
 
 "Reverently adoring the great god of the 
 two palaces of Ise (the sun-goddess) in the 
 first place, the 800 myriads of celestial kami, 
 the 800 myriads of ancestral kanli, all the 
 1,500 myriads to whom are consecrated the 
 great and small temples in all provinces, all 
 islands and all places in the great land of 
 eight islands, the 1,500 myriads of kami 
 whom they cause to serve them. ... I pray 
 with awe that they will deign to corred: the 
 unwitting faults which, heard and seen by 
 them, I have committed, and, blessing and 
 favouring me according to the powers which 
 they severally wield, cause me to follow the 
 divine example, and to perform good works 
 in the way." ^ 
 
 Examples at almost any length might be 
 
 * Quoted by Carpenter, Comparative Religion^ p. 93, from a 
 morning prayer by Hirata, a Japanese (1776- 1843). 
 
BELIEF IN ''FREE SPIRITS" 99 
 
 cited from modern works of contemporaries. 
 Only a few instances will be given here simply 
 to illustrate the principle. Central Aus- 
 tralians believe in the existence of Wullunqua, 
 a dread spirit which inhabits a deep water 
 hole.2 And other tribes of that continent 
 have similar traditions, such as the Narrinyeri, 
 who know of a like spirit, the Mulgewauke.* 
 By the inhabitants of New Guinea spirits, 
 non-human, are supposed to inhabit any place 
 with unusual physical characfleristics — water- 
 fall, pool, queer-shaped rock, or the like.* 
 Of the Guiana native Im Thurn says: 
 
 "His whole world swarms with beings. He 
 is surrounded by a host of them, possibly 
 harmful. It is therefore not wonderful that 
 the Indian fears to be without his fellow, 
 fears even to move beyond the light of his 
 camp-fire, and when obliged to do so, carries 
 a fire-brand with him, that he may have a 
 chance of seeing the beings among whom he 
 moves.** ^ 
 
 Truly the angelology and demonology of 
 advanced faiths have a long ancestry. 
 
 ' Spencer and GlUen, Native Tribes^ etc., passim. 
 ' Taplin, Narrinyeriy pp. 48, 91. 
 
 * Williamson, Ways of South Sea Savage, p. 283. 
 
 * Among the Indians of Guiana. 
 
loo ANIMISM 
 
 As already suggested, the groundwork for 
 I such a faith was already laid in the observa- 
 1 tions and deductions regarding man's soul. 
 If in sleep his spirit could go forth unseen by 
 companions who were near, in order that it 
 might perform the deeds of the dreani state 
 so real to the savage; if it were true that a 
 faint were caused by the temporary desertion 
 of its home by the soul; if at death it could 
 depart without detection by those intent in 
 their watch over the ailing, and reveal its 
 invisibility by going forth unseen to a dis- 
 embodied existence, why should there not be 
 numerous other spirits — either temporarily 
 or permanently and by nature bodiless — 
 abroad in the universe ? This would be normal 
 reasoning, and was ad:ual. The belief is so 
 well known, evidences of it are so easily 
 accessible, that diredl demonstration here is 
 hardly obHgatory. As a matter of fadl, in 
 parts of our discussion yet to come, the proof 
 will appear incidentally, so that to give it 
 here would be but to duplicate what is both 
 implicit and explicit in testimony on another 
 but related line of investigation. 
 
 In a recent paragraph the words "angel- 
 ology" and "demonology" were employed, 
 
BELIEF IN ''FREE SPIRITS'' loi 
 
 and in their use there is implicit a fundamental 
 philosophy which has swayed the conceptions, 
 awakened the hopes and aroused the fears, 
 helped to form the cults, and controlled the 
 adlions of men in all ages and climes for 
 which direcfl testimony is adducible. The 
 dualism of substance, body and spirit, inherent 
 in the notions of animism is paralleled by a 
 coincident dualism of charadler. There were 
 good spirits and bad, white spirits and black. 
 And this charadler was determined by their 
 supposed favor or disfavor toward man. 
 There were also good spirits which by reason 
 of their emotional natures were capable of 
 showing inimical traits, while the bad might 
 be pacified, rendered innocuous or even 
 friendly, by the appropriate treatment. 
 
 This is, of course, but the refledlion of men's 
 interpretation of their own nature and ex- 
 periences, the result of their reasoning about 
 that nature and those experiences. Some- 
 times enterprises went awry without any 
 cause to them discoverable; again, good 
 fortune attended their ventures, and this in 
 spite of what seemed to them legitimate fears 
 and untoward beginnings. But on the hypo- 
 thesis of hosts of invisible beings all about 
 
102 ANIMISM 
 
 them, good or ill fortune was fully accounted 
 for by the diredtion or interference of these 
 spirits in man's favor or against him. To 
 any event or happening otherwise unaccount- 
 able a cause was assigned in the adlion of 
 spirits which worked when, where, and how 
 they pleased. And as the human being was 
 amenable to gift or praise or request, so 
 would the spirits yield to similar courses of 
 treatment. As he was vexed or angered by 
 opposition to his will or by adlual harm, so, 
 he reasoned, the spirits could be enraged by 
 human doings contrary to their desires. Once 
 more, just as he might, when angered, be 
 placated by use of the proper means, so would 
 the spirits be soothed and rendered benign 
 were they properly approached. As he suc- 
 cumbed or gave way before force greater than 
 his own or was overcome by craft and cunning, 
 the spirits too must yield {{force majeure could 
 be brought to bear on them or if they could 
 be outwitted. 
 
VII 
 
 FREE SPIRITS"— THEIR CONSTI- 
 TUTION AND ACTIVITIES 
 
VII 
 
 "FREE SPIRITS" — THEIR CONSTI- 
 TUTION AND ACTIVITIES 
 
 ' I ^HE existence and great numbers of 
 ■^ spirits which are, so to speak, "free** in 
 the universe have just been shown and dis- 
 cussed.^ We have noted, too, how readily 
 enters here all that we are accustomed to call 
 j miraculous. Only we have constantly to 
 remember that what we call by that name is 
 to primitive people in full accordance with 
 nature as they understand it. The very 
 conception of miracle implies arrival at the 
 thought of a certain uniformity of nature, 
 invariability of cause and efFedl outside of 
 which the unexpedled may happen — and 
 does. It now remains to consider the con- 
 stitution and activities of the "free'* spirits 
 referred to above. A poetical description, 
 having its origin in Babylonia, may here be 
 quoted and serve as a starting point. 
 
 ' Above, pp. 97 ff. 
 los 
 
io6 ANIMISM 
 
 Great storms sent from heaven, are they, 
 
 The owl that hoots in the city, are they, 
 
 Of Ann's creation,'^ children horn of earth, are 
 
 they, 
 The highest walls, the broadest walls, like a flood, 
 
 they pass. 
 From house to house they break through. 
 No door can shut them out, 
 No bolt can turn them back. 
 Through the door like a snake, they glide. 
 Through the hinge like a wind, they blow.^^ 
 
 Indeed their substance is even more subtle 
 than this account indicates. They can invade 
 a body already possessed by its own spirit 
 and dominate that body for good or evil, or 
 even drive out the native spirit and auto- 
 cratically rule the captured body. The cap- 
 ture may be temporary or permanent. The 
 words "demoniac" in English, evOcos and 
 vvij46\yiirTo%^ in Greek, express the two facfls 
 of "possession'* for evil or for good. Simi- 
 
 2 Assyr. lit. "outpouring," i.e., oi semen. 
 
 2* From cuneiform tablet V, lines 18-35, i" the Utukki Limnuti 
 series {Cuneiform Texts XVI. plate 2); translation kindly fur- 
 nished by the Rev. Professor Robert W. Rogers, D.D., LL.D., of 
 Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J. 
 
 ^ Plato, Phadrusy 238, 241. 
 
''FREE SPIRITS" 107 
 
 larly the word ** ecstasy" (Greek e/co-rao-ts)^ 
 sets forth the belief in the temporary departure 
 from the body of its own spirit, sometimes for 
 communion apart from the body with other 
 spirits; and another Greek word, evdvaLaanos, 
 denotes the entrance into the human organism 
 of a superhuman spirit and the consequent 
 elevation of feeling and surge of emotion. 
 Though the examples thus far cited register 
 the conceptions of peoples advanced in culture, 
 like Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, they 
 are not the possession exclusively of such; 
 indeed they are survivals from a cruder age. 
 Primitive peoples low in the scale of culture 
 entertain them. Such folk think of the spirits 
 as pervasive and subtle, to whom no doors 
 are closed; as entering with equal facility 
 portals barred with the grosser materials — 
 wood, iron, or stone — or with the living 
 flesh.^ 
 
 While thus in a manner insubstantial and 
 ethereal in constitution, like discarnated hu- 
 man spirits, they have needs, wants, and 
 preferences to which the material may minister. 
 If the gods in the Babylonian epic of the 
 
 * New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia^ iv. 71-72. 
 ^ Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends, pp. 11 fF. 
 
io8 ANIMISM 
 
 deluge could smell the savor of the post- 
 diluvian offering and "hover like flies over 
 the sacrifice/' ® not less susceptible to appeals 
 offered by material substance are the spirits 
 now under consideration. They have the 
 enjoyments and repulsions of the senses — 
 smell, taste, even grosser physical passions,^ 
 and so are propitiable or susceptible of anger. 
 While free to roam, they have chosen homes 
 and haunts all their own,^ though they may 
 become localized in objedls of nature, as in 
 India,^ where so often a stone is the seat of 
 deity, and among the Fang and Mpongwe, 
 so that it seems as if nature is lawless and 
 hostile.^^ 
 
 As for disposition, since primitive man 
 \ measures all things by himself, only intensify- 
 1 ing the idea of power — through the use of 
 i his imagination, where the element of mystery 
 I enters — it would be expedled that spirits 
 I would be good, evil, or neutral except when 
 
 ^ Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, p. 98. 
 
 ^ Frazer, Scapegoat, pp. 112-113; Gen. 6: 1-4; Tobit 8: 
 1-3; Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 213; Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, 
 pp. 194-204; Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 127. 
 
 ' Keller, Madagascar, p. 98. 
 
 ' Methodist Recorder (London), July 10, 1913. 
 
 *° Milligan, Fetish Folk, p. 279. 
 
"FREE SPIRITS'' 109 
 
 conciliated or offended; " that good spirits 
 could be aroused to wrath by negled: or 
 affront, while evil spirits could be appeased, 
 mollified, or at least rendered harmless by 
 right measures. Some of these spirits are 
 portrayed as jealous and envious, particularly 
 hostile to strangers, and disliking to hear 
 praise of those mortals or their progeny who 
 inhabit the land where these spirits live.^^ 
 New Guineans, however proud of wife, chil- 
 dren, or possessions, never praise them but 
 always speak in deprecatory terms. They 
 also dislike to go into the region of another 
 tribe, even for medical treatment, lest the 
 spirits there resident be offended and work 
 them harm.^^ It will be seen at once how 
 these beliefs affe(fl habits of travel and social 
 intercourse. 
 
 The varied names of different kinds of 
 spirits are probably a legacy from very early 
 times. We may gather something from our 
 own folk-lore, which mentions fairies and 
 pixies, gnomes, trolls, fauns, satyrs, and dwarfs, 
 elves, vampires, and goblins, sirens, mermaids, 
 
 " Cox, Folk-lore, chap. III. 
 
 ^ Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, i. i6, et passim. 
 
 ^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, pp. 86, 120. 
 
no ANIMISM 
 
 and kelpies, nymphs, dryads, and naiads, and 
 all their ilk, whose existence and habits are 
 better known to nurses and nursery children 
 than to the unimaginative scientist. While 
 these creatures are not indeed the free spirits 
 of whom we are speaking, they illustrate the 
 belief in such spirits. For these familiars of 
 childhood are no modern creation, they are 
 survivals of pre-Christian faith, and like the 
 free spirits have all the variety that wild 
 imagination could conjure. ^^ 
 
 It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the 
 same fate may overtake them as could threaten 
 gods themselves in ancient Egypt — they 
 were not above the hap of death. In Ceylon 
 the Yaka (a sort of evil spirit) is mortal.^^ It 
 may be that out of this thought grew some of 
 the notions respecfling the mentality of spirits. 
 We have seen that they are placable and 
 conciliable; they are also compellable and 
 beguilable — by bluff, magic, or threat or 
 use of means produdtive of results pleasant or 
 repugnant to them.^^ 
 
 " Thomas, Anthropological Report^ p. 27. 
 
 15 Parker, Village Folk Tales, pp. 143, 265, 274. 
 
 i« Tobit,8: 1-3; D'AWielh, Hibbert Ledures, pp. 87 fF.; Batche- 
 lor, Jinu, pp. 42-43; Furness, Head-hunters, pp. 16-17; Weeks, 
 Congo Cannibals, pp. 267 fF.; Kloss, In the Andamans, pp. 230 ff. 
 
''FREE SPIRITS" in 
 
 It will at once appear how fruitful this idea 
 is in connection with shamanism. Sometimes 
 the only control of spirits and salvation of 
 the people is through shamans. ^^ The Wol- 
 lunqua of Central Australia, a snake spirit, 
 can be either pacified or coerced by magical 
 ceremonies into doing no harm to celebrants 
 of certain rites. ^^ The Narrinyeri often have 
 a mock fight in pretense of avenging a death 
 accredited to sorcery. ^^ Some Australians are 
 particularly assured that these spirits may be 
 outwitted.^^ The Ceylonese are convinced that 
 a Yaka (the man-eating demon referred to 
 above) may be bluffed into good behavior.^^ 
 The Ainu of Japan also regard spirits as 
 beguilable.^2 
 
 If spirits are compellable, submissive to 
 control by mortals such as medicine men and 
 the like, the way is open for a whole series of 
 attacks in which not only the wills of the 
 spirits but those of mortals, friends, and 
 
 " Carruthers, Unknown Mongoliay i. 150 fF. 
 ** Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes^ p. 238. 
 1^ Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 21. 
 
 ^ Curr, Australian Race, i. 87; Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 463, 
 473»48i. 
 
 21 Parker, Village Folk Tales, p. 149. 
 
 22 Batchelor, Ainu, pp. 42-43. 
 
112 ANIMISM 
 
 enemies combine to the resultant weal or woe 
 of human beings. Wizardry and sorcery, 
 with their awful fears and dread results, enter 
 by this as by other doors. And this is by no 
 means always sheer imposture, as the following 
 shows. 
 
 "The sorcerer believes in his own power, 
 and the people believe in it too. Certainly 
 the New Guinea philosophy of life is that 
 nothing happens to man without some cause; 
 no man dies a natural death, all suffering and 
 sickness is due to evil spirits which people 
 this world, and as, like many of his white 
 brethren, he is quite prepared to take the 
 good things of life unquestioning, and only to 
 look for causes when evil comes, there is no 
 place in his philosophy for good spirits; the 
 good is but the normal state undisturbed by 
 the machinations of evil spirits, and the evil 
 spirits are usually set to work by some human 
 agent. Though it seems that while the sor- 
 cerer may use charms, working through the 
 hair that has been mislaid when the head was 
 shaven, or through the footprints, he is power- 
 ful enough to work at times more direcflly. 
 He is probably a man of stronger charadler 
 than his fellows — like other trades, it runs in 
 
''FREE SPIRITS'* 113 
 
 certain families — and the very fadl that he 
 believes in his power, and others believe in it, 
 tends to make him independent and strong 
 in charadler. He thrives on his reputation, 
 and levies blackmail on all and sundry till 
 some evil day when patience has been ex- 
 hausted, and an opportunity offers to put 
 him out of the way. Ordinarily he is safe, 
 for no one will touch him or interfere with 
 him unless he can be taken by surprise, and 
 there are always sufferers ready to take the 
 first chance of doing that. How they used to 
 terrorize the neighborhood and take toll! 
 One old ruffian, whose reputation had spread 
 far and wide, could go to villages far from 
 home, and walk off with anything he fancied, 
 the people sitting mum not daring to say a 
 word, or hiding and skulking away as he 
 passed through the village. One of the strong- 
 est characters in a village miles away from 
 where this villain lived said, 'Give me a 
 guaranty that I shall not be called to account, 
 and a gun so that I can shoot him when he 
 \s not looking, and I will get rid of him, but 
 I dare not touch him if his eyes are on me.'"^^ 
 But apart from adion by these beings 
 
 ^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 78. 
 
114 ANIMISM 
 
 which is determined by human will, desire, 
 vengeance, and other passions, man is an 
 objed of interest to the spirits themselves, 
 and they show adlivity in one way or another, 
 for good or for ill efFedt upon his fortunes and 
 his person. It is, however, for ill that their 
 principal adlivity is diredled, as estimated by 
 primitives. They work mainly against man 
 and his welfare. In Ceylon, for instance, 
 where innumerable evil spirits are to be found, 
 they are charged with every untoward happen- 
 ing, either as themselves purposing it or as 
 controlled or instigated by inimical magicians, 
 or even because opportunity offers and their 
 essential nature prompts to its seizure.^^ They 
 interpenetrate the bodies of living men and 
 cause illness; they may be expelled by divine 
 power, and still, notwithstanding that they 
 have done assault and damage, may demand 
 and be accorded offerings, sacrifices, and 
 libations. ^^ In facfl, among rude peoples, dis- 
 eases are nearly universally attributed to evil 
 spirits through the medium of possession.^^ 
 Not seldom control is by a witch, in whose 
 
 2* Parker, Village Folk TaUSf p. i6; cf. Gomes, Sea Dyaks of 
 BorneOy pp. 194 fF. 
 
 ^^ Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends^ pp. I iff. 
 ^^ Batchelor, Ainuj pp. 42-43. 
 
''FREE SPIRITS'' 115 
 
 body the spirit of mischief takes up its resi- 
 dence. Thence she sends it forth on its 
 mission of evil, and thither it returns when 
 its work is done. As she can thus by proxy 
 efFedl evil, so can she cause it to cease.^^ Nat- 
 urally this notion Hngers on into advanced 
 stages of culture, as is witnessed by the 
 frequent mention of demoniacs in the New 
 Testament, to say nothing of the witchcraft 
 delusion which came on down through the 
 Middle Ages into comparatively modern times.^^ 
 In these advanced stages it is not unusual for 
 these demons to specialize, so to speak, in 
 diseases; so that in China, India, and else- 
 where there may be a cholera devil, a dog-god 
 who sends whooping cough, etc.^^ Infants are 
 particularly liable to attack.^° The normal 
 result is that in some regions drugs and 
 simples are little resorted to in sickness, 
 medicine men and wizards are the main 
 reliance or the only recourse.^^ These spirits 
 
 *^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 83. 
 
 28 Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, pp. 164 fF.; Thurston, Ow^wj 
 and Superstitions, pp. 176, 196; Williamson, South Sea Savage, 
 p. 286. 
 
 "^ Cf. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, iii. 148 ff., 1181. 
 
 2° Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 71. 
 
 " Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 183; lAE, vi. 85 ff. 
 
ii6 ANIMISM 
 
 sometimes work in a way different from 
 possession; for example, causing fever by 
 enticing the soul from the body.^^ We may 
 not forget that the madness of frenzy, whether 
 as insanity or as prophetic mania, is regarded, 
 as we have already had occasion to notice, 
 as the result of possession.^^ 
 
 The damaging activities of these spirits may 
 be directed not only against the persons, but 
 against the possessions and all the various 
 operations and pursuits of humans.^^ And 
 such evils may at times be prevented or 
 remedied by means as weird as the alleged or 
 supposed disease or hurt. For example, 
 damage by spirits to a plot of agricultural 
 ground may be prevented by killing, boiling, 
 and burying a black cat by night under a 
 tree in the field.^^ All along the line of these 
 conceptions, the promptings to magical opera- 
 tions are the nearly universal accompaniment. 
 
 *" Seligmann, Melanesiansy pp. 185 ff. 
 
 " Additional cases are cited in Thurston, Omens and Supef 
 stitionSf pp. 254, 278, 279, 285. 
 
 •* Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 245. 
 »* Jahn, Opfergebrduchct p. 267. 
 
VIII 
 
 LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF 
 PARITY OF BEING 
 
VIII 
 
 LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF 
 PARITY OF BEING 
 
 MANY and wide-branched are the results 
 that flow from the anthropomorphizing 
 by man of other objedls in nature, from the 
 transference to them, in thought, of person- 
 ahty with all its qualities, and from the con- 
 ception that unseen and intangible, yet in 
 eflFedl substantial, beings exist "free'* in the 
 universe. Among the most interesting results 
 are those that issue as almost a necessary 
 consequence of this estimate of things — 
 interchange of form and mode of being. 
 Indeed, this lies on the very surface of the 
 conception, although its logical relationship 
 does not seem to have been pointed out. 
 
 If man, stones, trees, plants, animals, spirits, 
 and gods are all in the same scale of existence, 
 why should they not exchange forms, undergo 
 metamorphosis? Why should not the soul of 
 a man enter the body of a being in what we 
 regard as a different scale of existence and 
 
 119 
 
120 ANIMISM 
 
 animate it either in play or in earnest, volun- 
 tarily or under stress of superior power exerted 
 by some other superior in the necessary 
 amount or quality of force, and do this either 
 temporarily or permanently? What is to 
 hinder, for example, man's becoming an animal, 
 especially if he does not distinguish between 
 his own being and that of an animal ? ^ Or, 
 on the contrary, why should not animals 
 become men? And why should not countless 
 changes take place among other grades of 
 existence? In fadl, according to savage man's 
 account of things, all this does occur. Body 
 and soul, we have seen, constitute a duality, 
 in which, in the stage of thought we are 
 examining, the soul is, so to speak, a free 
 partner, able to take its flight and often to 
 return and resume its normal activities in its 
 own abode. It is the "separable" fadlor, 
 with a life all its own, the seat of impulse, will, 
 passion, and desire. We have, therefore, now 
 to develop the fadt of the easy passage from 
 what modern man would regard as one grade 
 of existence to another, either lower or higher, 
 
 * See above, p. 8, and cf. Rivers, Melanesian Society ^ i. 151 fF., 
 where persons in Banks Islands are believed to be plants, animals, 
 etc., with appropriate taboos. 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 121 
 
 or the possession of qualities by one class of 
 beings which in a more sophisticated stage 
 of culture is considered the exclusive possession 
 of a different class. 
 
 Supernatural or semi-human beings are 
 conceived as having or assuming the form of 
 birds, animals, serpents, etc., in what we 
 might call their normal state, but by putting 
 off their covering of skin, feather, or scale may 
 assume the human form divine. Among illus- 
 trations of this occur with greatest frequency 
 the mouse, jackal, monkey, dove, and tortoise.^ 
 Obassi Osaw, one of the two great beings 
 worshipped by the Etoi of Africa, was origin- 
 ally a man and a chief.' In the Oceanican 
 mythology the firemaking gods appear to 
 have the form of birds.'* Maui, the Polynesian 
 hero, was able to assume the form of animal, 
 bird, or insect, and Rupe, another being in 
 the same cycle of stories, changes himself into 
 a bird.^ Among the Ainus a goddess may 
 
 * Parker, Fillagt Folk Talesy pp. 308 fF.; Frere, Old Deccan 
 Daysy pp. 183, 193; Stokes, Indian Fairy TaleSy pp. 41 fF.; Swyn- 
 nerton, Indian Nights Entertainmenty p. 344; Natesu Sestri, 
 Madana Kama Raja, pp. 56, 57. 
 
 * Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 183, 184. 
 
 * Westervelt, Legends of Mauiy passim. 
 ' lb., pp. 11, 20, 24, 38, 114, 125-126. 
 
122 ANIMISM 
 
 become a flower, a woman, or a frog.^ Refer- 
 ence may be made in passing to the gods of 
 Egypt, with their composite make-up of bird, 
 reptile, or beast and man. There seems to be 
 good reason for holding that this composite 
 form is not original, and that the partly 
 human form is the result of the refining 
 influence of culture. Originally, it seems, 
 the forms were those of birds, beasts, etc. 
 Certainly the explanation given that the gods 
 were once in human form and that, hard 
 pressed by their enemies, they took the form 
 of beasts in order to deceive or elude their 
 oppressors, is purely animistic and in accord 
 with the principle under exposition. 
 
 The cases where superhuman beings take 
 human form are innumerable, apart altogether 
 from the usual course of anthropomorphization 
 of the gods. In the Old Testament the 
 appearances to Adam, Abram, Lot, Gideon, 
 and Manoah occur to the mind at once.^ In 
 ''Hordedefs Tale" four female deities and 
 one male god assume human shape.^ 
 
 This being so, it is not at all wonderful 
 
 ^ Batchelor, AinUy pp. 26, 262-263. 
 
 ' Gen. 3:8; 18: 2ff.; 19: i ff.; Judges 6: 12; 13:3, 9, etc. 
 
 * Petrie, Egyptian Talesy i. 33 ff. 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 123 
 
 that mating takes place between these different 
 orders and that offspring partaking of the 
 quahties of both are produced.® Especially 
 do superhuman beings mate with humans, 
 earth- and heaven-born beings marry. Out- 
 side the mythology of classical Greece detailing 
 the amours of the Olympians of both sexes 
 from Zeus down, one may recall the union 
 of the ''sons of God" and the daughters of 
 men; the numerous cases in the poems of 
 Homer, Pindar, and Vergil where the heroes 
 boast a mingled ancestry partly divine; the 
 many tribes whose eponym is a being semi- 
 divine, such as the Koyis of India, who trace 
 their origin to the union of Bhima and a wild 
 woman; and the beautiful story of Ono 
 (which is typical of several cycles of tales), 
 who greatly longed for his ideal of feminine 
 beauty. She finally appeared and became his 
 wife. With the birth of their son there 
 appeared also in the neighborhood a dog 
 which became intensely hostile to Ono's wife. 
 One day the animal attacked her with unusual 
 fury; then in uncontrollable fear she resumed 
 her former shape as a fox, leaped the fence, 
 and disappeared. In this case the myth has 
 
 • Rivers, Melanesian Societyy \. 25-26. 
 
124 ANIMISM 
 
 a rather uncertain meaning: some construe 
 it as indicating that a fox had assumed the 
 form of a woman; another and more probable 
 reading is that we have to do here with a sort 
 of genie in animal shape; a third interpretation 
 is that the fox shape was assumed for escape. 
 The second rendering or the first accords with 
 the hostility of the dog, which recognized 
 his enemy though in another (human) form.^° 
 With the prevalence of such views as these 
 it is not strange that the origin of children is 
 often sought not in the sexual adl but in some 
 chance affair, and that "miraculous" con- 
 ception or even the virgin birth is no stranger 
 in popular beliefs. ^^ It must be remembered, 
 in considering this particularly errant idea, 
 that nine months elapse between conception 
 and birth, and a considerable number of weeks 
 between conception and the knowledge that 
 a new life has begun. The idea is therefore 
 not surprising to one who realizes how aberrant 
 is savage reasoning in tracing cause and 
 efFecfl. And when to this added the conserva- 
 
 1" Gen. 6: 1-4; Thurston, Omens and Superstitionsy p. 78; 
 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy p. 340; J. C. Berry, in Blakes- 
 lee, Japan and Japanese- American Relations^ p. 139. 
 
 ^1 Milloue, in Revue de Vhistoire de la religiony xlix (1904), 
 34-47. 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 125 
 
 tism of the primitive thinker, the tenacity with 
 which he holds to notions that have once 
 gained entrance, the fear of letting go of these 
 notions and of admitting that what has been 
 his faith is mistaken, we may begin to realize 
 how such beliefs, once entertained, persist. 
 Thus, in the New Hebrides "women sometimes 
 have a notion that the origin, the beginning, 
 of one of their children is a cocoanut, or a 
 breadfruit." ^^ Mr. Frazer points out what is 
 indicated above, that the connexion between 
 sexual intercourse and conception is unknown. ^^ 
 To the more sophisticated, indeed, this error 
 seems not only impossible but literally ridicu- 
 lous. Mr. Frazer goes on to show that at 
 the moment when life is first perceived the 
 mother may be intensely observant of some 
 natural objedl, and [^through the ideas of 
 interpenetration of spirit to be dealt with 
 later] she supposes being or power to have 
 passed from the objedl, entered her body, and 
 produced the efFedl she feels. Consequently 
 **she might imagine that the spirit of a 
 kangaroo, of grass-seed, of water, or of a 
 gum-tree (or of any other objecfl) had passed 
 into her, and accordingly that her child . . . 
 
 " Codrington, J J I, xviii. 310-311. ^^ fji^ Sept. 1905. 
 
126 ANIMISM 
 
 was really a kangaroo . . . though to the 
 bodily eye it presented the outward form of a 
 human being." Mr. Todd has also registered 
 the fad:^^ that conception is ascribed to various 
 objects, animate and inanimate. Among 
 American Indians rain falling on a maiden's 
 navel induces conception.^^ And among the 
 Nigerian peoples a child may come into being 
 through incarnation of a human spirit or by 
 the entrance into the mother of tree-spirits.^^ 
 
 If human beings can arise from sources 
 such as these, it will not come as a surprise if 
 we find that whole tribes trace descent from 
 animals or plants, or make alHances with 
 them. This, however, raises the large question 
 of totemism, which can not be treated here. 
 Mention is made of the subjecfl in order to 
 avoid the appearance of overlooking this very 
 important phase or consequence of animistic 
 thinking. The single example may be noted 
 here of the Etoi of Africa, who hold the crab 
 to have been grandfather to a tribe.^^ 
 
 One of the important results of this mode of 
 thought is the belief that men, either volun- 
 
 " Todd, Primitive Family y pp. 70 fF. 
 
 1^ Fewkes, American Ethnology y iSth Report, pp. 44, 48, 65, etc. 
 
 ^® Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 31. 
 
 " Talbot, In the Shadow oj the Bush, p. 196. 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 127 
 
 tarily or under force majeure exercised by 
 sorcerer or witch, pass from the human to 
 the brute form of Hfe. Among the con- 
 comitants of the belief in witches existent as 
 late as in the eighteenth century and so 
 balefully dominant during the Middle Ages, 
 in Europe, were the notion of were-wolves 
 and the idea that witches took the forms of 
 cats, hares, or bats. Many are the tales of 
 deadly destrudlion wrought by fiendish humans 
 who, to sate a gluttony for blood or for revenge, 
 transformed themselves into wolves and per- 
 formed wolfish deeds. Equally well-known 
 are the tales, not told as mere fidlion but held 
 as truth, of the conversion, as by Circe in the 
 Odyssey y of men into beasts, or, as in the 
 Arabian Nights, into stones or other forms of 
 non-human being. A few cases only will be 
 cited here of the persistence of such beliefs 
 among primitive races of the present. Par- 
 ticularly in Africa is this idea widely diffused. 
 The leopard-man is as real to the people of 
 West Africa as was the were-wolf to the 
 European peasant of the fifteenth century. 
 This leopard-man assumes at pleasure the 
 form of the animal from which he takes his 
 name, preying on strangers or on his own 
 
128 ANIMISM 
 
 people.^^ The Fangs hold that under the 
 magic of an enemy they may be changed into 
 monkeys.^^ In Oceanica Maui transforms an 
 enemy into a dog.^° Among the Dyaks a man 
 may be suspedled of changing himself into a 
 tiger, and is immune to ordinary methods of 
 punishment. Only strong medicine is equal 
 to the task of discipline.^^ In other parts of 
 Malaysia also men transform themselves into 
 tigers or into fishes, and a woman becomes an 
 ape.^^ In India it would seem as if there were 
 hardly any animal shape which may not be- 
 come the refuge of man or the means of his 
 working evil deeds.^^ In other words, as the 
 gods of Egypt were regarded as abandoning 
 in part their own shape and taking that of 
 animals, birds, or reptiles, so human beings 
 could put on the forms or grades of life of lower 
 animals (as we regard them and primitive 
 peoples did not).^^ 
 
 "^ Milligan, Fetish Folk, p. 33; Talbot, In the Shadow of the 
 Bushy pp. 71, 82, 191-195, 247-254, and chap. VII. 
 1^ Milligan, pp. 123-124. 
 ^ Westervelt, Legends of Mauiy p. 80. 
 
 21 Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneoy pp. 265-278. 
 
 22 Skeat, Malay Magic t p. 162; Cox, Folk-lore^ chap. II. 
 ^' Thurston, Omens and Superstitions^ p. 260, et passim. 
 
 ^ Interesting reading on this whole subjed of metamorphosis 
 will be found in Lang's Mythy Ritual and Religiony chap. IV. 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 129 
 
 One may go still farther and find humans 
 transforming themselves into inanimate 
 objeds. So the Basques have a story of a 
 witch who determined to drown the crew of a 
 fishing boat. The boat was to meet three 
 waves, the first and second of which the boat 
 might ride, but the third, which would be the 
 witch herself, would overwhelm the boat and 
 its crew. But the cabin boy overheard the 
 plot and the means of foiling it also came to 
 him, so he launched a harpoon into the heart 
 of the third wave, which divided and dashed 
 on the shore, a mass of bloody foam. On the 
 captain's return, he found his wife dying of 
 her wound.^^ 
 
 Sometimes, before power can be obtained 
 to efFedl these transformations, either on self 
 or on another, some magical rite or process 
 must be performed or undergone, or some 
 chance happening must have been encountered. 
 In the Far East a common belief is that an 
 animal that has drunk water which has lain 
 for twenty years in a human skull acquires 
 power to assume the human form at will.^^ 
 This is alleged to have been the case of a vixen 
 
 *^ Vinson, Le Folk-lore du Pays Basque, p. 20. 
 
 *« C. T. CoUyer, in Baltimore Christian Advocate, Odl. 23, 1913. 
 
130 ANIMISM 
 
 in China, who became a woman, the "Cleo- 
 patra of the East,'' and this transformation 
 led to the founding of the first kingdom in 
 Korea. 
 
 If the higher ranks of life might be changed 
 into lower grades, the reverse process was 
 equally possible. It is established that in 
 Egypt the pradlice was prevalent which until 
 recent times was current throughout Africa of 
 sacrificing attendants upon the death of a 
 chief that their souls might serve his in the 
 spirit world. But the softening efFed:s of 
 culture in the Nile land refined away in early 
 historic times this cruel custom. The problem 
 remained — how provide service for the dead 
 nobles and chiefs? The difficulty was sur- 
 mounted by magic. Images of clay and 
 pottery were created and placed in the tomb, 
 and these, by utterance of the magic formula, 
 were animated in the spirit world as attendants 
 of the deceased. These little figures, called 
 ushahtiuy are found literally by hundreds in 
 the tombs of Egypt. There is reason to 
 believe that the same principle was employed 
 in Korea, Japan, China, and Mongolia. There 
 at the tombs are often found, in clay, wood, 
 and stone, effigies of attendants and of various 
 
LOGICAL CONSEQUENCES 131 
 
 animals. The most reasonable explanation of 
 these, which is borne out by explanations 
 given to the writer by Koreans, is that these 
 were supposed to be animated in the spirit 
 world to do the will of the deceased nobles 
 or rulers at whose tombs they were placed. 
 Confirmation of this is found in the Nihongi 
 (one of the books of Japan coming nearest in 
 estimation to that we render to our Scrip- 
 tures), where the book professes to give an 
 account of events occurring 2 B.C.-3 a.d. 
 The story narrates the burial up to the neck 
 of the personal attendants of a deceased 
 brother of the mikado, this being the method 
 of execution in such cases. But the laments 
 of the victims so afFedled the mikado that when 
 the empress died, clay figures were substituted. 
 The dating of this event is probably wrong, 
 since at the funeral of an empress in 247 a.d., 
 sacrifice of attendants was still in vogue.^^ 
 
 2^ Aston, Shinto, pp. 56-58; Underwood, Religions of Eastern 
 Asia, pp. 89-90. 
 
IX 
 
 DEATH NOT ALWAYS REGARDED 
 AS INEVITABLE 
 
IX 
 
 DEATH NOT ALWAYS REGARDED 
 AS INEVITABLE 
 
 A FACT that has been before us inci- 
 dentally, though not the subjed of 
 specific remark, is the age-long behef in the 
 continued existence of the soul. We have 
 noted that the soul is "the separable fador'' 
 in man's duaHty, "with a Hfe all its own/* 
 It would be normal then next to examine this 
 continuance of life beyond death, to determine 
 its charadler. But before discussing primitive 
 conceptions concerning the dead, their state 
 and powers, it is important to note that there 
 are hints from widely separated regions which 
 suggest that once there was a belief nearly or 
 quite universal that death is not inevitable. 
 It is likely that in the youth of the race, death 
 was practically always the result of violence — 
 from man or beast — or of accident. And it 
 follows from what we have just noticed of the 
 parity of being and the attribution of life to 
 135 
 
136 ANIMISM 
 
 insensate objedls, that even accidents would not 
 be recognized as such but would be interpreted 
 as the result of purposive adtivities. Moreover, 
 evidence is abundant that, in a somewhat ad- 
 vanced stage of human history, man was a con- 
 temporary of huge and ferocious animals which 
 have become extindl. While cave deposits re- 
 veal that he knew how to master some of 
 these, on the other hand it must be conceded 
 that cave men must often have succumbed, if 
 all did not eventually lose their lives, to the 
 attacks or have come off second best in the 
 encounters which they themselves brought on. 
 The increase in the numbers of human beings 
 is always attended by the mastery and ex- 
 tinction of beasts of prey. In the days when 
 men were few and beasts were present in 
 numbers now hardly conceivable, the number 
 of casualties to men either in the hunt or 
 when themselves hunted must have been 
 great. We have to take into account also 
 feuds among men in the undisciplined state. 
 When the stage of culture was low, feuds between 
 tribes and clans, which, be it remembered, 
 were small in those days, were often waged to 
 extindlion. Within the memory of man the 
 sparseness of population in Australia has been 
 
DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 137 
 
 with high probability of corredlness ascribed 
 to the feuds which for a single reason raged 
 between different tribes. The mortality from 
 this cause must have been great. And how 
 complete may have been the slaughter in such 
 cases is seen when we remember that so late 
 as the time of Samuel a numerous people was 
 devoted to extindlion in the name of reHgion 
 — in this case religion being the mask for 
 human animosities.^ Under circumstances 
 perhaps more numerous than we can imagine, 
 men, women, and children were slaughtered 
 to the last individual. 
 
 From what has preceded in the way of 
 showing early man's conceptions of the potency 
 of things about him, what would now be 
 regarded as accident was by him regarded as 
 the result of purposive adlion by the objedls 
 which seemed to work disaster. If a limb 
 fell from a tree in a storm and killed a man, 
 the explanation was that the tree had cast its 
 weapon in anger, or the wind had, with intent, 
 flung this missile with deadly aim. Stories 
 have passed in recent times of African tribes 
 that hewed down and chopped to bits a tree, 
 a limb from which had caused the death of one 
 
 1 I Sam. 15. 
 
138 ANIMISM 
 
 of their number. Similarly, if a man were 
 drowned by river or ocean, it was the angry 
 flood or the offended sea which had removed 
 from this life the deceased human. 
 
 Recalling once more the steadfastness with 
 which man holds to convidlions once enter- 
 tained, remembering that the new has always 
 had to fight, and fight hard, for entrance into 
 his mind, we may regard the instances to be 
 adduced in which the belief that death is 
 always an ah extra event, to be accounted for 
 by causes other than "natural," as illustrative 
 of and probably presumptive of the existence 
 of the same belief in much wider circles than 
 those in which it now obtains. It is best 
 accounted for as a "superstition," i.e., as 
 "something left over from earlier times." To 
 be sure, in some cases, perhaps in all, the 
 belief has taken on the complexion of a more 
 advanced culture, it explains the death by 
 "spiritual" means instead of by mere brute 
 or physical force. This is a way that super- 
 stitions have. They fit themselves to the 
 environment, mental or physical, which has 
 wrapped itself about them. 
 
 From Australia quite concordant testimony 
 from competent observers is accessible. Thus 
 
DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 139 
 
 R. B. Smyth cites the statement of Mr. Daniel 
 Bunce (curator of the Botanical Gardens at 
 Geelong), a man well acquainted with the 
 blacks, to the efFedl that "no tribe he has ever 
 met with believe in the possibility of a man's 
 dying a natural death. If a man is taken ill, 
 it is at once assumed that some member of a 
 hostile tribe has stolen some of his hair. This 
 is quite enough to cause serious illness. If 
 the man continues sick and gets worse, it is 
 assumed that the hair has been burned by 
 his enemy. Such an adl, they say, is sufficient 
 to imperil his life. If the man dies, it is 
 assumed that the thief has choked his vidlim 
 and taken away his kidney fat." 
 
 Mr. Smyth continues: *'Mr. John Green 
 says that the men of the Yarrow tribe firmly 
 believe that no one ever dies a natural death. 
 A man or a woman dies because of the wicked 
 arts practised by some member of a hostile 
 tribe." 2 
 
 In Appendix 3 to the same work (ii. 289- 
 290) Albert A. C. Le Souef accounts for the 
 paucity of population in part by the fadl that 
 a death by disease involves the death of others, 
 because the first case was believed to be 
 
 2 Aborigines of Fidoria, i. no. 
 
I40 ANIMISM 
 
 caused by sorcery, and a murdering expedition 
 is at once carried out for vengeance. (This 
 in turn starts a blood feud, and so on.) 
 
 Taplin remarks of the Narrinyeri: "When 
 a man dies they conclude at once that sorcery 
 has been the cause of the mournful event, and 
 that either ngadhungi or millin [two methods 
 of sorcery] have been practised against him." ^ 
 
 Spencer and Gillen testify that "no such 
 thing as natural death is realized by the 
 native; a man who dies has of necessity been 
 killed by some other man, or perhaps even by 
 a woman." ^ 
 
 Dawson's affirmation is quite concordant: 
 "Natural deaths are generally — but not 
 always — attributed to the malevolence and 
 the spells of an enemy belonging to another 
 tribe." ' 
 
 In New Guinea the same belief holds, as 
 witnessed by Newton. 
 
 "About Wedau and Wamira the spirits of 
 the dead go eventually to some place to 
 the eastward of Cape Frere, in a valley in the 
 mountains called lola, the approach to the 
 
 ® Narrinygrii in Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 19. 
 * Native Tribes of Central Australiay p. 48. 
 ^ Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 63. 
 
DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 141 
 
 abode of the spirits being through a hole 
 in the ground. When the spirit arrives it 
 is questioned at once, * Where have you come 
 from?' 'What have you come for?' just as 
 every time you go into a village every one 
 who meets you asks you (these questions). 
 The newly arrived one says, *I have come 
 from Wedau' or 'Wamira,' as the case may 
 be, or the answer may state more explicitly 
 the sedlion of the village, and * Where else 
 should I go except to my own people?' Then 
 the question is asked, 'Who sent you?' and 
 for answer the name of some sorcerer or 
 witch is given, the one responsible for the 
 death." 6 
 
 Indirect testimony is furnished by Neuhass 
 to the same effedl for German New Guinea, 
 whose people separate souls with reference to 
 post mortem continuance according as they 
 died by the sword or by magic — the two 
 methods which they recognize of passing from 
 this life. The Mafulu of this island regard a 
 death otherwise unaccounted for as due to 
 spirits acfling under sorcerers. An exception 
 is conceived, however, in the case of very old 
 persons, which seems to show the transition 
 
 ^ In Far New Guineay p. 219. 
 
142 
 
 ANIMISM 
 
 to a more advanced knowledge."^ And in 
 Hood Peninsula, British New Guinea, death 
 is the result of the adivities of spirits or 
 magicians.^ Gomes asserts that in Borneo 
 all sickness (and therefore death not otherwise 
 accounted for) by external means is caused 
 by spirit possession.^ Among Melanesians: 
 "It must ... be remembered that . . . death 
 is not admitted to occur without some obvious 
 cause such as a spear thrust. Therefore when 
 vigorous and adlive members of the com- 
 munity die, it becomes necessary to explain 
 their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed 
 to be produced by sorcery.'' ^° In far away 
 Africa "nearly all diseases, bad luck, mis- 
 fortune, sorrow, and death are caused by 
 witchcraft, i.e., by some one using a fetish to 
 curse a person." ^^ 
 
 Among the Indians of Guiana, "Every 
 death, every illness, is regarded not as the 
 result of natural law, but as the work of a 
 kenaima (i.e., a man possessed by a spirit for 
 the purpose of blood revenge, and able to 
 
 ' Williamson, fFays of South Sea Savage, p. 286. 
 8 7^7, xxviii (1899), 216 fF. 
 ' Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 183. 
 ^^ Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 279. 
 " Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, p. 219. 
 
DEATH NOT INEVITABLE 143 
 
 send his spirit forth to inflidl evil). Such a 
 
 kenaima is . . . the real or supposed cause of 
 
 almost every evil, and especially of every 
 death." 12 
 
 Concordant testimony is given by Brett: ^^ 
 **A person dies — and it is supposed that an 
 enemy has secured the agency of an evil spirit 
 to compass his death." A sorcerer is em- 
 ployed to discover the guilty individual, and 
 a relative of the deceased is charged with the 
 work of vengeance. He is a kenaima, pos- 
 sessed by the spirit of destrucflion. 
 
 It is the "left-overs" that often reveal to 
 the discriminating observer the conditions 
 which are implied, which surrounded the full 
 bloom of what have become survivals. It is 
 not difficult to imagine, and it is in accord 
 with primitive psychology to presume, that 
 the few cases here brought together, which 
 might conceivably be much extended by 
 definite research, suppose a much larger area 
 over which such ideas were regnant. 
 
 ^ Im Thum, Among the Indians of Guianat p. 329. 
 ^ Indian Tribes of Guiana, pp. 357 ff. 
 
X 
 
 THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE 
 OF THE SOUL 
 
X 
 
 THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE 
 OF THE SOUL 
 
 T^T'HILE according to the fadls adduced 
 ^ ^ in the last chapter it is clear that a 
 belief has existed that man might, were it not 
 for accident or the like, continue to live on as 
 j a duality in this present life, the fadl of death 
 \ stared men in the face, and with equal in- 
 tensity the belief was held that in death man 
 did not cease to exist, but that the soul lived 
 ^ on. That the appearance of the deceased in 
 j dreams had no small part in the foundation of 
 [ this belief seems almost certain. We have 
 already seen ^ that dreams were regarded not 
 as phantasies but as realities, and so the dead 
 who were seen in the dream state were re- 
 garded as souls of the deceased appearing to 
 the living. And other lines of evidence no 
 doubt seemed to open to primitive man. At 
 any rate, the fadt of this belief, at least as far 
 back as neolithic times, is evinced by the 
 
 1 Above, pp. 23 fF. 
 147 
 
148 ANIMISM 
 
 burial with the dead of utensils evidently 
 meant for the service of the deceased in the 
 land where he found himself after death. 
 This faith is shown also by the adls of devotion 
 or worship to the departed spirit, and by 
 material provision of food and other comforts 
 for the soul either at the grave or elsewhere.^ 
 Similarly evidential are the means taken to 
 facilitate the soul's exit by door, window, or 
 roof, even through holes made in the wall of 
 house or tent; and the same value attaches 
 to the evident effort to prevent the soul's 
 return by carrying the corpse, to which it is 
 supposed fondly to cling, by devious ways to 
 its last resting place. Like conclusions are 
 forced by the feasts and celebrations on 
 anniversaries of death or burial, which attest 
 not only afFedtionate remembrance, but first 
 and principally belief in the soul's continuance. 
 This belief in the soul's continuance is perhaps 
 
 2 Graves of Greeks and Romans have been found where per- 
 manent conduits in the grave mounds permitted the passage of 
 liquids and viands to the corpse — cf. Frazer*s Pausaniasy X. 
 4: 7, and the editor's comment on the passage; and the same 
 is true of graves in Mongolia, though in this case the evident 
 purpose was not the entry of food but the exit of the ghost, as 
 the openings are at the side of the tomb — cf. Geographical 
 Magazine f May, 19 13, p. 651. 
 
EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL 149 
 
 the most momentous and the choicest, as well 
 as the oldest, that animistic races have left 
 to us. The clear beginning of the dodrine so 
 prized in all religions save Gautama's, viz., 
 that concerning the immortality of the soul, 
 is here in its embryonic stage. We have 
 already noted that one means, perhaps the 
 chief one, to the acquisition of this idea was 
 the appearance of the dead in dreams. The 
 deceased, so the conclusion ran, was not dead, 
 he still existed, and in his own form. It may 
 be remarked, en passant, that if religion 
 inheres at all in this belief, then religion is 
 everywhere existent; for no race has yet been 
 discovered which had not faith in the con- 
 tinuance of life beyond the grave. Once more, 
 if religion inheres not in belief but in the 
 practices to which belief gives rise, then in 
 the care for the well-being of the soul of one 
 that has passed, so widely prevalent, religion 
 is no less shown to be universal. 
 
 To suppose, however, that the content of 
 the primitive idea is that of full-fledged 
 immortality or unending existence would be 
 a serious misunderstanding. The conception 
 of deathlessness in its absolute sense is prob- 
 ably never present among savages. Primitive 
 
ISO ANIMISM 
 
 philosophy does not sound so profound depths. 
 Hence, because "immortaHty" says more 
 than is contained in the savage's concepts of 
 future Kfe, the word "continuance" has been 
 employed to express the notion found among 
 the uncivilized. On the other hand, one must 
 be on his guard when it is affirmed that 
 savages have no idea of immortality. In the 
 strid: sense this is true, but only in so far as 
 uncultured peoples have not reached any 
 conception which at all approaches that of 
 endlessness. They have no enduring records. 
 Oral tradition, which may easily become 
 confused and dim, carries them back only a 
 few generations — four or five, say. So the 
 notion of the soul life may be either indefinite 
 — or rather, undefined — or may be regarded 
 as limited to a certain number, greater or less, 
 of lives like that already passed. Indeed, the 
 life may have degrees, so to speak. Thus 
 the African Etoi and Bakongo believe that 
 *' though ghosts have died once, they can die 
 a second time, and so become more dead than 
 before."^ Among the Haida a war party is 
 always accompanied by a shaman, among 
 
 ^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 8, 24, etc.; Weeks, 
 Primitive Bakongo, pp. 223-224, 243-244. 
 
EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL 151 
 
 whose duties is to kill the souls of the enemy. ^ 
 In Fiji the natives believe that there is a 
 certain Samu Yalo ("killer of souls") who 
 haunts the path to the realm of the dead, and 
 when a ghost comes along rushes out to kill it 
 with an ax unless it succeeds in escaping. 
 Another Fijian monster lies in wait and kills 
 the souls of bachelors, so that they never 
 reach heaven. In the same islands a ghost 
 that is troublesome to the living may have 
 his case settled by his unconditional demise.^ 
 That mortals may die again seems reasonable 
 if only it be remembered that even gods grow 
 old and die, according to **the cultured 
 Egyptians." ''Very aged was Ra, and the 
 saliva ran down from his mouth and fell upon 
 the earth" — a perfed: pidlure of senility.^ 
 Heiti-eibib, a Hottentot hero-god, had the 
 habit of dying.^ In Polynesia Maui's wife 
 used also to kill the gods.^ 
 
 * Swanton, Jesup North Pacific Expedition, i. 40-51, cited by 
 Halliday, Greek Divination, p. 95. 
 
 ^ Williams, Fiji, i. 244 fF.; Wilkes, U. S. Exploring Expedition, 
 iii. 85. 
 
 •' ® M.urT2.y, Ancient Egyptian Legends, p. 81; cf. Wiedemann, 
 Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 54 fF. 
 
 ^ Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, pp. 56 fF. 
 
 ^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, p. 127. 
 
XI 
 
 MODIFICATIONS OF THE IDEA 
 OF CONTINUANCE 
 
XI 
 
 MODIFICATIONS OF THE IDEA 
 OF CONTINUANCE 
 
 ^ I ^HE continuance of the human soul's 
 -■- Hfe is conditioned in various ways in 
 different regions and stages of culture. Some 
 tribes assign to souls a definite number of 
 post-mortem lives, which number may, how- 
 ever, have stood for indefinite continuance, 
 being the tradition remaining from an earlier 
 stage when ability to count above a small 
 aggregate was uncommon. Thus Dyaks allot 
 to the soul seven lives, after which it is anni- 
 hilated.^ Or continuance may be not the 
 common fate, only that of a seledl few. The 
 basis of seledlion then naturally varies.^ It 
 may be that of descent or station in life. Thus 
 only chiefs survive in Fiji, and among the 
 Tongans of the South Sea Islands.^ Or the 
 
 ^ Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p, 208. 
 ^ Carpenter, Comparative Religion, p. 232. 
 ' Mariner, Natives of Tonga Islands, ii. 129 ff. 
 15s 
 
156 ANIMISM 
 
 mode of death may have something to do 
 with it, as when New Guineans separate 
 souls according as they died by sword or by 
 magic — the two causes of death allowed to 
 exist by this people.^ Or (and this state of 
 affairs exists, almost certainly, only in a 
 somewhat advanced stage of culture) ethical 
 standards may be established, and future 
 life may be conditioned on compliance with 
 such standards in this life. Such an idea may 
 be found in a comparatively small area, 
 neighboring regions showing no knowledge 
 of such a test.^ On the other hand, it has 
 happened that while such standards ostensibly 
 exist, magical practices in efFed: reduce the 
 test to its lowest terms or even to the vanish- 
 ing point. So with the "Negative Confession " 
 of Egypt. This is clear from its evident use 
 by pradlically every or any person, independent 
 of characfler, who was by the formula of the 
 Book of the Dead primed to override or evade 
 obstacles to the passing of the soul to the 
 happy abode.^ In parts of Melanesia the 
 ultimate death of the soul is maintained, its 
 
 * Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-GuineUi iii. 149 ff. 
 ^ Codrington, MelanesianSf pp. 274 ff. 
 6 HR, March, 1914. 
 
MODIFICATIONS 157 
 
 survival seeming to depend on survival in 
 the memory of posterity J 
 
 A different twist is given to the idea of 
 continuance when the notion takes either of 
 two somewhat closely related forms of expres- 
 sion, transformation or human reincarnation. 
 Transformation, or change of mode of ex- 
 istence on earth, we have seen to be a natural 
 consequence of that "parity of being" which 
 is the prime characteristic of the animistic 
 manner of thought. Is there any reason, 
 a priori, why this should not operate when 
 the soul is discarnate, unfleshed ? As a matter 
 of fadl, the continuance of the soul in other 
 forms of existence than the human is a widely 
 diffused notion. Transmigration is not limited 
 to philosophic developments like Buddhism, 
 with its Jataka Tales of the 500 births of the 
 Buddha. Indeed, it is pradlically certain that 
 the transmigration of philosophic India is one 
 of the noblest and most fruitful borrowings of 
 the Aryans from the Kolarian and Dravidian 
 aborigines. When these post-mortem trans- 
 formations take place, the continuance may 
 be indefinite or definitely limited. The Kai 
 of German New Guinea hold that ghosts are 
 
 ' Seligmann, Melanesiansy p. 192. 
 
158 ANIMISM 
 
 changed first into some sort of game animals, 
 then into insecfts, and then comes "the last 
 death." ^ This suggests the idea of a progres- 
 sive diminution of vitaHty or fading away 
 into nothingness, and may be a result of 
 observation of the fading memory of survivors. 
 In Melanesia, where ethical ideas condition 
 future life, after doing penance, the soul takes 
 the form of various animals, such as the 
 flying fox.® Transformation into an owl is a 
 frequent notion, as among the Arabs, and in 
 Madagascar among the Haida.^° One Cinga- 
 lese woman (who has been murdered) becomes 
 successively a turtle, a mango tree, a creeper, 
 and a blue lotus. Another changes into a 
 cobra. ^^ In the Solomon Islands ghosts are 
 incarnated in various animals, while among 
 the Melanesians men at death became sharks, 
 alligators, lizards, birds (the frigate bird par 
 excellence), snakes, and the like.^^ The rein- 
 carnation or appearance of the dead in the 
 
 8 Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, lii. 150 ff. 
 
 ^ Brown, Melanesians, pp. 192 fF. 
 
 ^° Doutte, L' Jfrique du Nord, p. 361; Folk-lore, ii. 341; Swan- 
 ton, North Pacific Expedition, p. 27. 
 
 ^^ Parker, Village Folk Tales oj Ceylon, pp. 113 ff., 132. 
 
 " Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 65; Codrington, Mela- 
 nesians, pp. 179 ff. 
 
MODIFICATIONS 159 
 
 form of snakes is both common and ancient; 
 it is, of course, easily accounted for by the 
 frequency of the animal among graves, the 
 looseness of the earth and the crevices therein 
 making easy the formation of their burrows. 
 The reader of Homer and Vergil will recall 
 the pertinent cases there narrated, while the 
 vases and other monuments of art abundantly 
 illustrate the belief — although sometimes the 
 idea is modified by regarding the reptile as 
 the "genius" of the departed. The natural- 
 ness of the idea is attested by its occurrence 
 in regions as widely separated as New Guinea 
 and Colombia.^^ Among the Mafulu of New 
 Guinea the ghost may be transformed into a 
 fungus living on the mountain.^* And among 
 the Narrinyeri of Australia rocks may be the 
 form taken by deceased ancestors. ^^ 
 
 Belief that the soul is reincarnated in 
 human posterity is so natural, once the idea 
 
 13 Miss Harrison, Prolegomena and Themis^ -passim; Neuhass, 
 Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 515 fF.; Joyce, South American Arche- 
 ology, p. II. 
 
 1^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 281. 
 
 15 Wood, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 202. Other 
 cases in other parts of the world may be found in Decle, Three 
 Tears in Africa, p. 74; Das, Journey to Lhasa, pp. 56, 13 iff., 
 138, etc.; YitWer, Madagascar, p. ^^-j Folk-lore, n. ^'^J; Arctander, 
 Apostle of Alaska, p. 105. 
 
i6o ANIMISM 
 
 of transmigration is entertained, that it can 
 not surprise us to find it widespread. When 
 we remember how feature and gesture of 
 infant or child may recall those of some 
 deceased member of the family, one fruitful 
 source of this idea may perhaps be disclosed. 
 For the notion is not the exclusive possession 
 of the philosophical, though we have stories 
 from Greece, where it was incorporated in 
 philosophical creeds, of men who recognized 
 votive offerings dedicated in a former exist- 
 ence, or find poets like Vergil recounting the 
 method of return and telling of the antecedent 
 draught from the waters of Lethe. So well 
 known is the belief that only a few typical 
 cases need be adduced from primitive examples. 
 Baganda women fear to pass places where 
 executions have taken place or spots alleged 
 to be haunted by dangerous ghosts, lest the 
 ghosts enter them to begin another earthly 
 life.^® Similarly the Bakongo of the Congo 
 region hold firmly to the reincarnation of the 
 human spirit in human form.^^ So usual a 
 happening is this among the Ibo of Nigeria 
 
 1® Roscoe, The Baganda^ pp. 20, 46, 124, et passim; cf. pp. 47, 
 289. 
 
 1^ Weeks, Primitive Bakongo^ p. 115. 
 
MODIFICATIONS i6i 
 
 that, when a birth takes place, the dodlor is 
 called in to decide which ancestor has come 
 back to earth. Indeed, an ancestor may 
 there scissate and become incarnate in more 
 than one descendant in any given generation. ^^ 
 The Kayans of Borneo also hold firmly to the 
 docflrine, as do various tribes of Australian 
 Bushmen. ^^ 
 
 The same principle of parity of being permits 
 interchange and transformation, to which we 
 have become now so accustomed, to take place 
 in another diredlion. The ghost may be 
 changed into an evil spirit or demon or equally 
 repulsive form. A Cingalese spirit which had 
 temporarily left its body returned to find that 
 body untenantable and addressed his wife in 
 a dream. She supposed that he had become 
 a Yaka (evil spirit) and was correspondingly 
 terrified. Of course the wife's explanation to 
 herself of the dream is excellent evidence of 
 belief in the possibiHty and aduality of such 
 transformations. ^° The Melanesian ghosts 
 may assume the form of compositely-shaped 
 
 *8 Thomas, Anthropological Report, pp. 30-31. 
 
 1^ Hose and McDougall, Pagan Tribes, ii. 47; Spencer and 
 Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 119 ff., 335 fF., and Northern Tribes, pp. 
 i45flF., 33ofF., 448ff. 
 
 20 Parker, Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, p. 170. 
 
i62 ANIMISM 
 
 demons. 2^ The souls of the dead may in some 
 cases become vampires and feed horribly on 
 the living — indeed this terrible habit may 
 have been formed before death. ^^ See also 
 below (Chap. XII) for other transformations. 
 
 21 Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 258 fF. 
 
 22 Talbot, In the Shadow 0} the Bush, pp. 192-193. 
 
XII 
 
 CONDITION OF THE DISCARNATE 
 SOUL 
 
XII 
 
 CONDITION OF THE DISCARNATE 
 SOUL 
 
 SINCE evidence of the existence of the 
 belief that the soul lives on is so indubit- 
 able, the question arises — what is its condi- 
 tion? In what state does the discarnate spirit 
 find itself after final separation from the body? 
 And first, as to what we may be allowed to 
 call, for want of a better term, its physical 
 condition. 
 
 We have already noted that soul is con- 
 ceived as having both form and substance, the 
 latter, so to speak, greatly rarefied. More- 
 over, it has been brought to our attention 
 that the most common idea concerning form 
 is that the soul is a replica of the body it 
 inhabited. Consistency in primitive thinking 
 is not to, be assumed, as we have seen, nor are 
 logical processes among primitives quite the 
 same as ours. Yet when a disembodied soul 
 took up its post-mortem residence in a serpent, 
 for example, we may not suppose that that 
 i6s. 
 
i66 ANIMISM 
 
 soul was still regarded as human in shape. 
 But so far as the author has discovered, no 
 decisive evidence exists on this point. The 
 probabilities favor greatly the supposition 
 that in such cases transformation of the soul 
 shape was supposed to have taken place. 
 Evidence of the common idea, retention by 
 the soul of its human shape, has been before 
 us. We have noted that some tribes mutilate 
 the body of the dead, thinking that by so doing 
 they inflidl like wounds upon the soul and 
 thus impose incapacity for harm upon the 
 ghost, the double of the body. The Omahas 
 slit the soles of a murdered man's feet that 
 his spirit may be unable to return and cause 
 damage to the people.^ Mangaeans prefer 
 death in battle — men are then in their full 
 strength; disease weakens them, and souls 
 have the nature of the body at death. 
 Barongo believe that souls are young or old, 
 according to the age at death, and so do the 
 Indians of Gran Chaco. Naga tribes of 
 Manipur think that ghosts bear whatever 
 tattoo marks, mutilations, or other blemishes 
 or embellishments occurred on the body. 
 Some people carry this idea so far as to prefer 
 
 * Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth Reporty etc., p. 215, 
 
IHE DISCARNATE SOUL 167 
 
 death before decay of natural powers sets in, 
 and so commit suicide or are buried alive, 
 that the soul may continue to exist in full 
 vigor.2 
 
 Having form and substance, the soul has 
 certain physical needs. It hungers, thirsts, 
 feels cold and heat. The degrees of grossness 
 of these wants vary greatly. Sometimes the 
 hunger, thirst, and wants and passions may be 
 appeased by the mere spirit or ghost of food, 
 drink, etc.; and the ghosts are served by the 
 spirits or (as our theosophical friends might 
 be imagined as saying) the astral bodies of 
 dishes, implements, or weapons which are 
 destroyed (i.e., killed) that their spirits may 
 accompany the ghost into the spirit land. 
 Indeed, this is by all odds the most prevalent 
 conception. Sometimes it is the more evanes- 
 cent or the more vital elements, such as the 
 blood, which are used by the ghost, as in the 
 celebrated case of Tiresias in the Odyssey.^ 
 The cases already cited of food, drink, weapons, 
 utensils, and the like possessing souls and 
 being offered or placed with the dead, often- 
 times being broken or mutilated so as to "kill" 
 
 2 Cases are cited in Frazer's Dying God, pp. 9-14. 
 . 3 Book XL 
 
i68 ANIMISM 
 
 them, furnish diredl testimony to the supposed 
 needs of the ghost. The hunger felt by the 
 disembodied soul Is vividly expressed by most 
 African tribes, whose belief is that ghosts can 
 and do eat even human bodies.^ Ghosts also 
 suffer from cold, hence New Guineans, and 
 others, make fires at the graves, and even 
 build huts, so that when the ghosts come up 
 from the body they may find comfort.^ 
 
 Ghosts have voices, too, but thin and 
 shadowy like themselves. They chirp like 
 crickets or utter their words in whistling tones. 
 So the wizards by ventriloquistic art impose 
 upon the credulous, and by wheezing utterance 
 produce the efFed: of communications from a 
 shadowy being or from the ground. Note 
 the indications of shamanistic pradlice in 
 the Prophet Isaiah (8: 19; 29: 4). 
 
 What we may regard as the disposition of 
 the ghost is by most peoples held to be fixed 
 by the charader of the person while on earth. 
 
 * Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 224-225, 232-233, 
 238, etc.; EREy vi. 65 fF. The testimony is being exhaustively 
 coUeded in Frazer, Belief in Immortality — see the Index, under 
 "Food." 
 
 ^ Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 442 ff.; Neuhass, 
 Deutsch Neu-Guineay iii. 518; Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 
 150-152. 
 
THE DISCARNATE SOUL 169 
 
 Was he cruel, warlike, passionate, generous, 
 revengeful in the body, so will he be as a 
 discarnate ghost. So, for instance, the New 
 Guineans hold.^ Only account must be taken 
 of a very common notion, that the ghost is 
 endowed with increased power.^ One might 
 find many reasons for this common idea. The 
 general fearsomeness of the unknown and 
 invisible, the fad that the ghost has joined 
 the terrible host of free spirits, its very remote- 
 ness, combine to add the idea of power. 
 That which is distant in space or time gains 
 enchantment and enlargement from the im- 
 agination, which is the faculty most employed 
 in this sphere. AustraHans credit to their 
 ancestors deeds to themselves impossible, 
 though they are themselves their ancestors 
 reincarnate.^ The greed and liking for pos- 
 sessions which existed on earth are attributed 
 in some parts to the spirit, and among the 
 Bakongo, for instance, this desire is satisfied 
 by placing all the deceased's wealth about 
 the grave.^ The soul's assumed mobility, 
 
 • Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iil. 142 ff. 
 ' Roscoe, Baganda^ pp. 282 fF. 
 
 * Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes^ pp. 489 S 
 ' Weeks, Primitive Bakongo^ p. 278. 
 
170 ANIMISM 
 
 such as was displayed in its power to leave 
 the body during life and to make investiga- 
 tions at even a considerable distance, is not 
 lost but rather enhanced. It has become a 
 free agent, no longer bound by the body's 
 necessities and limitations of locomotion, at 
 liberty to roam unfettered, to use in the wide 
 universe its powers — those that remain or 
 are acquired in its new condition. If it in 
 earthly life could leave the body temporarily 
 and like the lightning speed hither and thither, 
 now, disfleshed, its mobility has gained by 
 the change. 
 
 Especially is it believed that spirits acquire 
 a larger knowledge. Not only do they gain 
 a completer survey of the past and the present, 
 but a knowledge of the future becomes theirs. 
 According as their dispositions prompt, they 
 become helpers of their survivors or hostilely 
 adlive against them. 
 
 Particularly interesting in this connection 
 is the relationship of the ghost and other 
 beings to warning and predidlion. Among 
 the powers of the soul is that of return and 
 manifestation to survivors. Melanesian, 
 Andaman, and African ghosts, for instance, 
 reappear to and converse with their people 
 
THE DISCARNATE SOUL 171 
 
 and become a medium of information.^^ Par- 
 ticularly through dreams do they mediate — 
 a performance recorded in antiquity and 
 attested by present day belief over a large 
 area.^^ Indeed, it is through the dream that 
 approach to human comprehension is most 
 easily made by divine, superhuman, or dis- 
 carnate powers, the spirit in this condition 
 being loosed from fleshly trammels. The 
 human spirit in sleep is regarded as not 
 bound by quite the same inflexible laws to the 
 bodily limitations. The employment of the 
 dream as a means of information or warning 
 at once occurs to the reader — Jacob, Joseph, 
 Pharaoh, Nebuchadrezzar; classical cases will 
 be found in Pindar, Olympiacs, XIII, 105, 
 and Pausanias, X, xxxiii, 11. It will be 
 remembered that in an earlier section the 
 importance of the dream as an index to 
 animistic thought was dwelt upon at some 
 length. One specimen of developed classical 
 and philosophical thought on this has been 
 summarized from Jamblichus. 
 
 ^^ Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 190 ff.; Kloss, In the Jndamans, 
 p. 296; Weeks, Congo Cannibals, pp. 264-265. 
 
 11 Herodotus, IV, 172; Pomponius Mela, I. viii. 8; Mauss, 
 Origines des pouvoirs magiques, p. 15; Haddon, Anthropological 
 Essays, p. 179. 
 
172 ANIMISM 
 
 "There is nothing unworthy of belief in 
 what you have been told concerning sleep and 
 the meaning of dreams. I will explain it 
 thus. The soul has a twofold life, a lower 
 and a higher. In sleep the soul is released 
 from the constraint of the body, and enters 
 as one emancipated on its divine life of in- 
 telligence. Then as the noble faculty which 
 beholds the objedls that truly are, the objecfls 
 in the world of intelligence, stirs within and 
 awakens to its power, who can be surprised 
 that the mind, which contains within itself 
 the principles of all that happens, should in 
 this, the state of liberation, discern the future 
 in those antecedent principles which will 
 make that future what it is to be.? The 
 nobler part of the soul is thus united by 
 abstradlion to higher natures, and becomes a 
 participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge 
 of the gods. Recorded examples of this are 
 numerous and well authenticated; instances 
 too occur every day. Numbers of sick by 
 sleeping had their cure revealed to them in 
 dreams. Would not Alexander's army have 
 perished but for a dream in which Dionysius 
 pointed out the means of safety? Was not 
 the siege of Aphritis raised through a dream 
 
THE DISCARNATE SOUL 173 
 
 sent by Jupiter Ammon to Lysander? *The 
 
 night time of the body is the daytime of the 
 soul.'" ^2 
 
 The student of anthropology will at once 
 recognize here the advanced justification for 
 beliefs which go back very far for their origins. 
 But even in the advanced stage of thought 
 represented by Jamblichus there are present 
 elements that are duplicable today in the most 
 primitive regions. 
 
 Several doors open here to alluring bypaths 
 — to inspiration, predicflion, oracles, on the 
 one side, these presuming a favoring disposi- 
 tion on the part of the ghost; and, on the 
 other, to necromancy and the "black art" or 
 black magic, if the ghost or his control be evil. 
 Melanesians and Africans say that the soul 
 may return to seize and inspire the unconscious 
 shaman or prophet to pregnant utterance.^^ 
 We have said "unconscious" — for it seems 
 pradlically established that, in the earlier 
 stages of culture, predidlion and the delivery 
 of the oracle took place only when the medium 
 was in ecstasy. Vergil's description of the 
 
 ^2 Theurgia or the Egyptian Mysteries^ Part III, chap. vii. 
 " Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 218 ff.; Roscoe, Baganda, 
 p. 113- 
 
174 ANIMISM 
 
 raging sybil will recur to the classical student.^^ 
 Plato says that "inspired and true divination 
 is not attained to by anyone in his full senses, 
 but only when the power of thought is fettered 
 by sleep or disease, or some paroxysm of 
 frenzy. "^^ It is well known that the American 
 Indians regarded the simple or mentally 
 incompetent as peculiarly endowed and in 
 closer touch with the supernatural than those 
 possessed of all their mental powers. In the 
 Old Testament there is an unconscious testi- 
 mony to the veracity of many parts of the 
 narrative, guaranteed by psychological con- 
 clusions, in the fadl that the earlier phases of 
 prophecy and predidtion are described as 
 involving the ecstatic state or a condition of 
 unconsciousness. Such are the use of the 
 dream, the case of Balaam, the prophets 
 among whom Saul found himself, this form of 
 aflFedlion being communicable or "catching" 
 — compare the "dancing mania" of the 
 middle ages — and Elisha, for whom music 
 was in at least one case a prerequisite to the 
 delivery of the oracle — the "hand of the 
 Lord" (2 Kings 3:15) being the Old Testament 
 expression for the modern psychological term 
 
 " ^neid, VI, 45 flP., 77 fF. is Timaeus, 71. 
 
THE DISCJRNJTE SOUL iJS 
 
 "ecstasy" adopted from the Greek. So among 
 perhaps most primitive peoples, like the 
 Melanesians and Africans referred to above, 
 warnings from the supernatural and even 
 knowledge of other matters, as of charms, 
 are supposed to be received under such 
 conditions. ^^ 
 
 Ghosts do not figure merely as indicators of 
 coming events or as guardians against evil 
 fortune. Their larger capacity for adlion may 
 make them powerful intercessors with still 
 higher supernatural beings or spirits, through 
 shamans who control them or know them 
 intimately.^'' Or their own success in their 
 earthly vocation makes them interested in 
 survivors who follow their trade. In Africa 
 the spirit of a dead hunter is powerful to help 
 in the chase, and is propitiated to that end.^^ 
 In Melanesia the help of ghosts in securing 
 the right kind of weather, in performing feats 
 of healing, in success with the fishing net or 
 line, and in agriculture is obtained by sacrifices 
 
 *^ So the Australians: Howitt, Native Tribes^ pp. 435-437. 
 On the fads at large cf. Carpenter, Comparative Religioriy pp. 181- 
 182. 
 
 " Carruthers, Unknown Mongolia, i. 243. 
 
 ^ Weeks, Primitive Bakongo, pp. 181-183. 
 
176 ANIMISM 
 
 and offerings. ^^ Indeed, from the inhabitants 
 of Ghosttown may come some of the good 
 gifts, agricultural, for instance, which make 
 life worth living.^ The spirits of the dead may 
 keep a watchful eye upon survivors, preventing 
 or punishing infradions of tribal customs that 
 involve offence to themselves, and warning 
 against repetition by inflidling sickness or 
 failure in various enterprises.^^ Foundation 
 sacrifice had the purpose of procuring for the 
 structure the protection of the spirits of the 
 dead.22 
 
 On the other hand, ghosts may be among 
 the spirits whose malevolence needs to be 
 guarded against. In fadl, among the post 
 mortem transformations may be that into ill 
 disposed spirits. Usually, when this is con- 
 ceived to be the case, the cause is found in 
 some misfortune in life or death. Among 
 the Ibo, for instance, a childless woman, a 
 wifeless or moneyless man, or a suicide may 
 as ghosts attempt to increase the population 
 
 " Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 132 fF.; Lambert, Moeurs et 
 superstitions^ pp. 24, 26, 218, 224 fF., 293 ff.; Turner, Samoa, 
 
 PP- 345 ff- 
 
 ^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, pp. 238-239. 
 
 2^ Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 192, 310. 
 
 22 B. D. Eerdmans, in Expositor, Nov. 1913, p. 197. 
 
THE DISCARNATE SOUL 177 
 
 of the underworld by attacks upon those left 
 on earth.^^ Similarly in New Guinea those 
 who die in childbirth, suicides, and those who 
 have lost their heads become maleficent.^^ 
 The Omahas hold that ghosts of the murdered 
 return and inflict punishment by disease, or 
 by causing the wind to blow from hunter to 
 game and so to spoil his sport. ^^ Among 
 Congo cannibals the soul seen in dreams is a 
 wandering human spirit aiming at evil in its 
 travels, and the witch dodlor may be hired to 
 kill it. The nostrils of the dead are plugged 
 immediately after death to keep the spirit in 
 the body as long as possible.^^ If the ghost is 
 for any reason unwelcome in the nether world 
 and is driven out, it becomes malicious and 
 aims at mischief, either inflidling positive 
 ills by sending storms and like disasters or 
 preventing success in various pursuits. ^^ In 
 some cases ghosts are normally neutral, and 
 their disposition and consequent adlions de- 
 pend upon the treatment they receive from 
 
 2^ Thomas, Anthropological Report, p. 31. 
 
 2* Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 212. 
 
 " Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, p. 215. 
 
 26 Weeks, Congo Cannibals, p. 262. 
 
 " lb., pp. 263-264, 269. 
 
178 ANIMISM 
 
 the living.^^ So that the well-being of sur- 
 vivors depends on propitiation by gifts and 
 ceremonies or on manifestations of abiding 
 afFedlion.^^ The duties of classic Greeks and 
 Romans to their dead — careful and honorable 
 burial, celebration by games at the funeral 
 or on anniversaries — recur at once to the 
 mind: and in these and other matters these 
 peoples handed down in memory at least and 
 often in ritual the doings and beliefs of far 
 away ancestors. Close parallels to classic 
 customs have been observed among African, 
 Melanesian, and Polynesian peoples, where 
 not only is the funeral offering placed on the 
 ground, but dramatic performances in honor 
 of the dead take place.^° Among some races, 
 such as British New Guineans and the Mafulu, 
 ghosts are always malevolent.^^ 
 
 Among the exercises of the enlarged powers 
 
 28 Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 65, 68, 74, 75, 76, 81 flF.; 
 Roscoe, Baganda, pp. 116, 278, 286. 
 
 ^ Taplin, Narrinyeriy p. 19; Curr, Australian Race, i. 87; 
 Howitt, Native Tribes, pp. 461, 463, 473; Spencer and Gillen, 
 Northern Tribes, p. 507, and Native Tribes, p. 511. 
 
 ^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 18; Brown, Melane- 
 sians and Polynesians, pp. 214 ff.; Milligan, Fetish Folk, pp. 233- 
 236. 
 
 3^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 281 and Mafulu Mountain 
 People, pp. 243 fF., 266 fF., 297 fF.; JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 flP. 
 
THE DISCARNATE SOUL 179 
 
 attributed to ghosts by quite diverse peoples 
 is one which, as we shall see later, they possess 
 in common with non-human spirits. This is 
 the inflidlion of disease in an access of malig- 
 nancy. Such a belief is held by American 
 Indians, South Sea islanders, Hindus, New 
 Guineans, and many others. ^^ They may in- 
 flidl lockjaw by a blow, cause death, induce 
 phthisis, and bring pestilence.^^ Shamans and 
 medicine men may use them to secure revenge 
 or haunt the living; and this again calls up the 
 need for exorcism.^^ This gives rise to various 
 devices and taboos, aiming at propitiating or 
 deceiving the ghosts, such as change of names 
 assigned to things belonging to the dead, or 
 dropping out of the language words which 
 contained the name borne in life, this going 
 so far in some cases as to involve the destruc- 
 tion of huts, plantations, trees, and other 
 possessions.^^ It is quite in keeping with the 
 
 32 Folk-lore, ii. 420 ff., 431; Kloss, In the AndamanSy p. 305; 
 Decle, Three years in Savage Africa, pp. 236, 344. 
 
 ^3 Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 230; Weeks, Congo 
 Cannibals, p. 266; Roscoe, Baganda, p. 100; Williamson, South 
 Sea Savage, pp. 81 fF.; Crooke, Tribes and Castes, iii. 436. 
 
 ^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, pp. 81 fF.; Roscoe, Baganda, 
 p. 126. 
 
 35 Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 631 flF.; Cambridge Anthropologi- 
 cal Expedition, v. 250. 
 
i8o ANIMISM 
 
 whole conception of things that ghosts should 
 be especially dangerous at night. ^^ 
 
 From all this, to anticipate slightly what is 
 yet to come, fear of discarnate spirits may 
 lead to a cult, a worship, which is apotropaic, 
 deprecatory, or propitiatory in character. On 
 the other hand, the sense of favors received or 
 to come gives the rationale of a cultus which 
 embodies more of gratitude and pleasure than 
 of fear. With both these varieties of mental 
 qualities attributed to ghosts, shared by 
 them in common with non-human powers, it 
 seems to require somewhat of ingenuity and 
 a miscalculation or misappreciation of native 
 human traits to force one to derive all worship 
 from fear.^^ Timor fecit deos is now hardly 
 tenable in its original sense, in view of abun- 
 dance of ascertained fadls. Most of the ani- 
 mals, especially those domesticated, display 
 amiable traits, including gratitude. We can 
 hardly hold, therefore, that man, whether the 
 produd: of evolution or of special creation, 
 developed one of his noblest exercises, that 
 of worship, from a sense of fear alone. 
 
 ^ Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guinea, iii. 64, 147. 
 
 ^' Chalmers and Gill, Work and Adventure^ pp. 84 ff. 
 
XIII 
 THE HOME OF THE SOUL 
 
w 
 
 XIII 
 THE HOME OF THE SOUL 
 
 E have seen that to the discarnate 
 spirit is attributed much of fondness 
 for things to which it had become accustomed 
 in its earthly Hfe. The idea of preference or 
 liking comes out frequently in connection with 
 its post-mortem habitat. Of course, it is to be 
 remembered that the eschatology of primitive 
 peoples is vague and by no means consistent. 
 Indeed, when it is recalled that Christian 
 eschatology is still in a confused state, when 
 orthodox theologians are at odds as to the 
 location of the soul between death and the 
 judgment, even as to the time of the judgment, 
 whether immediately after death or at some 
 indefinitely distant time; when these dodlors 
 of the faith disagree as to the conscious 
 existence or the ** sleep" of the soul after 
 death, as to its removal to heaven or hell on 
 dissolution, and whether that heaven or hell 
 is final or only temporary — one can hardly 
 
 183 
 
i84 ANIMISM 
 
 expedl primitive peoples, whose memory for 
 history is short and their outlook and forecast 
 vague and brief, to have a consecutive and 
 sharply defined eschatology. Consequently 
 we find variations innumerable in the concep- 
 tions of the souFs location, and a sort of 
 warfare between the poor ghost's supposed 
 preference and the desires of survivors. 
 
 It is quite normal that the spirit is credited 
 with lingering afFedlion for the home and the 
 environment that so long harbored it, and 
 makes the grave, which is, of course, in the 
 immediate neighborhood, its favorite haunt 
 and the body in the grave still its home. 
 How persistent this primitive notion is may 
 be verified in almost any rural community, 
 where few indeed care to pass God's acre 
 after dark without company. The prehistoric 
 Mycenaeans left in graves a groove by which 
 evidently to pour the oflFerings to the ghosts; 
 Egyptian tombs had channels by which ka 
 or ha could have access to and egress from 
 the embalmed body. Even in Mongolia these 
 apertures are found in the graves, though 
 there they are placed at the sides, showing 
 that they were intended for the spirit's exit 
 and entrance and not to facilitate the placing 
 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 185 
 
 of provisions — food and drink.^ Many primi- 
 tive peoples entertain beliefs parallel to those 
 indicated by these customs. Such are African 
 tribes like the Baganda, certain Australians, 
 and many others.^ From this conception 
 may arise the thought that souls wander 
 around their old haunts and even make them 
 impossible for dwellings, at least for a time; 
 or they may frequent places having peculiar 
 topographical features, where their clans fore- 
 gather.^ Sometimes this return is only 
 temporary, limited to certain hours of the 
 night, as for example, the case of some African 
 ghosts, who are released between twelve and 
 three in the morning — remember the ghost 
 of Hamlet's father!^ In other cases there is 
 alleged to be a time when the ghosts must 
 quit finally their earthly haunts for a perma- 
 nent abode elsewhere. Thus in New Guinea 
 "it seems that the spirit does not find its way 
 at once to its home; but wanders for some 
 
 1 NGMy May 1913, p. 65. 
 
 2 Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 282 fF.; Howitt, Native Tribes 
 S. E. Australiaj pp. 434, 438-439, 455, 470; Talbot, In the 
 Shadow of the Bush, p. 232. 
 
 ' Taplin, Narrinyeri, pp. 181 fF.; Thomas, Report, p. 38; 
 Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 76; Spencer and Gillen, Native 
 Tribes, pp. 123, 126. 
 
 * Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, p. 232. 
 
i86 ANIMISM 
 
 time about the places it was familiar with 
 during the period it was connedled with the 
 body. It may be possible that the spirit does 
 not finally leave its own haunts until the 
 death feasts are finished, or at least that the 
 people beheve the spirit may be about, and 
 likely to injure them, until they think a 
 sufficient time has elapsed, and a sufficient 
 number of death feasts have been held, and 
 that then it is safe to close the series, to 
 remove the tabu, and to give over the mourn- 
 ing." ' 
 
 There is, however, in this conception left 
 open the possibility of securing a brief visit 
 from them for purposes that are supposed to 
 serve the living. How easily out of this could 
 develop the idea and practice of necromancy! 
 
 On the other hand one may support with 
 abundant evidence the thesis that there is a 
 quite general consensus to the effed: that it is 
 unseemly for departed spirits to inhabit the 
 land where the living pass their earthly 
 existence. It is widely believed that ghosts 
 have their own land whither living mortals 
 may not go, whence, also, spirits may not 
 
 ^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 220; cf. Neuhass, Deutsch 
 Neu-Guinea, iii. 149 fF. 
 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 187 
 
 usually return, unless under highly exceptional 
 circumstances. Still it must not be forgotten 
 that a whole group of festivals and a host of 
 folk customs, centering in mid-winter for the 
 most part, have as their basis the idea that 
 ghosts return annually and must be treated 
 with resped, kindness, and hospitality. All 
 Souls' Day is the survival in Christian custom 
 of this belief.^ 
 
 To the questions where and what the region 
 of the dead is many tribes give various 
 answers. Naturally man's wildest flights of 
 imagination and fancy have played with this 
 theme. Of course, much depends, in the 
 answer that is given by any particular group 
 of peoples, upon the geography of the region 
 and the cosmography of the group. It is 
 most natural, from the usual custom of burial, 
 that a region beneath the earth should be in 
 the thoughts of very diverse tribes and nations. 
 There was placed the Babylonian "Land- 
 of-no-Return,'' for the most part the Egyptian 
 home of the dead, the Greek Hades, the 
 resting place of natives of Hood Peninsula 
 and other places in New Guinea, in Oceanica 
 
 ^ For convenient collections of cases, cf. Harrison, Prolegomena, 
 passim, and Miles, Christmas, pp. i6i ff. 
 
i88 ANIMISM 
 
 (Samoa) — to name only a few representative 
 peoples^ On the other hand, it frequently 
 happens that the place of souls is otherwise 
 located: on a distant mountain, as with some 
 natives of British New Guinea; ^ or where the 
 sun sets (compare Egyptian ideas); or on an 
 island far away;^ or under the sea;^° or in the 
 heavens, either in some definitely designated 
 luminary or in some indefinite locality (Omahas 
 regard the Milky Way as the path to this 
 home by which spirits pass in turn to and 
 through seven spirit worlds). ^^ At times the 
 information is quite definite, as for example in 
 parts of New Guinea. 
 
 "About Wedau and Wamira the spirits 
 of the dead go eventually to some place to 
 the eastward of Cape Frere, in a valley in 
 the mountains called lola, the approach to the 
 abode of the spirits being through a hole 
 in the ground. When the spirit arrives it 
 is questioned at once, 'Where have you come 
 
 ^ JAI, xxviii (1899), 216 ff.; Neuhass, Deutsch Neu-Guineat 
 Hi. 149 fF.; Westervelt, Legends of Maui, p. 129. 
 
 * Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 192. 
 
 ^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 129 ff.; Codrington, M^r/aw^ 
 sians, pp. 255 ff.; Frazer, Immortality, p. 192. 
 
 ^° Lambert, Mceurs et superstitions, pp. 13 ff.; Seligmann, 
 Melanesians, pp. 655 ff.; Turner, Samoa, pp. 257-258. 
 
 " Fletcher and La Flesche, lyth Report, etc., pp. 588-589. 
 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 189 
 
 from?' *What have you come for?' just as 
 every time you go into a village every one 
 you meet asks you, * Where are you going?' 
 'What are you after?' The newly arrived one 
 says, *I have come from Wedau' or *Wamira,' 
 as the case may be, or the answer may state 
 more explicitly the sedlion of the village, and 
 'Where else should I go except to my own 
 people?' Then the question is asked, *Who 
 sent you?' and for answer the name of some 
 sorcerer or witch is given, the one responsible 
 for the death. The spirit is admitted to its 
 new home, where it finds feasting and danc- 
 ing, plenty of food, and apparently also some 
 fighting, and should the spirit be killed, as 
 some seem to think possible, during such fight- 
 ing, then it is the end, there is no more life 
 of such." ^2 
 
 It would be expeded that ideas differ 
 greatly as to the character of the spirit world. 
 A wide group of unrelated peoples have looked 
 on the place of the soul as melancholy and 
 mournful, fitting the soul's unsubstantial char- 
 acter. The saying of Hezekiah, king of Israel, 
 after he had recovered from a dangerous 
 illness, here leaps into the mind: 
 
 *2 Newton, In Far New Guinea^ p. 219. 
 
I90 ANIMISM 
 
 ^^ For the grave cannot praise thee, death 
 
 cannot celebrate thee: 
 They that go down into the pit cannot hope for 
 
 thy truth. 
 The living, the living, he shall praise thee, 
 As I do this day. '"^^ 
 
 Such were the conceptions of Babylonians, 
 Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. A noted 
 Greek hero is made to declare that he would 
 rather be a lowly laborer on earth than have an 
 exalted station among the dead. Adversely 
 to this, not a few peoples patterned their 
 ideas of future life on the present world. 
 Such is the content of the notion in cases 
 already cited ^^ where primitive tribes mutilated 
 foes to prevent the shades frorh taking revenge 
 in the other world. And in many other 
 instances the imagination has compassed only 
 similar conceptions.^^ The Thay of Indo- 
 China look on the next life as the counterpart 
 of this.^^ The African Bakongo bury their 
 dead late in the day so that the spirits may 
 
 13 Isa. 38: 18-19. 
 " Above, pp. 166 fF. 
 
 1^ Lambert, Mceurs et superstitions, pp. 13 fF.; Seligmann, 
 Melanesians, pp. 655 ff.; Gomes, Sea Dyaks of Borneo, p. 208. 
 1^ Anthropos, n (1907), 619. 
 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 191 
 
 arrive when the ghosts who preceded the 
 present dead are home from their labor in 
 the fields and may welcome the newcomer.^"^ 
 Other Africans know of ghost towns where 
 the dead live and congregate as they did 
 while on earth. ^^ The Hausa ghosts have a 
 city of their own, which has at least once been 
 seen by a man who returned to tell the tale. 
 A traveler saw four caravans crossing the 
 desert in different directions, and followed 
 one which seemed to him best. Suddenly he 
 saw the ghost city in front of him, and in 
 some way became cognizant of its nature. 
 He hurriedly turned about and escaped. This 
 was almost miraculous, for the spirits summon 
 travelers from a caravan, and he who follows 
 them to the ghost city never returns. ^^ The 
 ancient Egyptians conceived the land of the 
 departed and their life as duplicating under 
 happier conditions life on the Nile; indeed 
 there was a celestial Nile land, where the 
 social conditions which environed life on earth 
 continued, even to the institution of slavery 
 and subjecftion of the peasant to the noble. 
 And exa(5lly on a par with this state of ex- 
 
 ^^ Weeks, Primitive BakongOy p. 270. 
 
 ^^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bush, passim. 
 
 ^^ Tremearne, Ban of the Bori^ pp. 155-156. 
 
192 ANIMISM 
 
 pedlation is the set of ideas regarding the 
 ** other side" entertained by South Sea people.^^ 
 The custom in old Egypt, Japan, and else- 
 where, and in modern Africa, of slaughtering 
 wives, servants, slaves, and cattle to provide 
 a retinue and a living for the dead in the spirit 
 world is too well known to need substantiation 
 here. We have already had before us^^ the 
 curious custom of providing Ushabtiu in 
 Egypt, and have seen the record of the institu- 
 tion of a similar custom in Japan, while the 
 explanation given in China and Korea of the 
 figures around the grave-mounds in those 
 countries has also been cited. We have to 
 remember in taking note of these customs in 
 the Far East that the pradlice of magic there 
 has for ages been almost as common and as 
 inveterate as in Egypt. 
 
 We may further note that in parts of Fiji 
 and New Guinea the souls of the departed 
 are supposed to dwell in a great community, 
 and the puberty ceremonies are by some 
 construed as having reference to introduction 
 to ancestral spirits in preparation for final 
 union with them.^^ 
 
 ^ Williamson, South Sea Savage, p. 75. 
 
 21 Above, pp. 130 fF. 
 
 22 Frazer, Belief in Immortality, i. 434. 
 
THE HOME OF THE SOUL 193 
 
 In some regions the golden age of man is 
 placed beyond the grave. Some British New 
 Guinea tribes think of the future Hfe as a 
 paradise, with no old age, sickness, crime, 
 fighting, death, or evil spirits; where first 
 marriages are reestablished and children are 
 born who reach maturity and maintain that 
 condition with unabated strength and virility; 
 and so it is with other South Sea islanders.^^ 
 
 The means of approach to this final abode 
 varies, of course, with the grade of civilization, 
 the location of the soul's home, and many 
 other circumstances usually dependent on 
 local conditions. If the home is on an island 
 or across a river, a ferry may be conceived — 
 thus Melanesians reproduce in part the ideas 
 of the Greeks with their Charon and the Styx.^^ 
 Others conceive the entrance to be through 
 well-known caves or holes, and exploration 
 of these by the reckless or foolhardy is dis- 
 couraged by the belief that attempts at 
 entrance will be punished by severe earth- 
 quakes.^^ Or a chasm is believed to separate 
 
 '^ Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians, pp. 443 fF.; Frazer, 
 Belief in Immortality, \. 192; Seligmann, Melanesians, p. 192. 
 
 ^ Codrington, Melanesians, pp. 255 fF. 
 
 ^ Newton, In Far New Guinea, p. 219; Turner, Samoa, 
 pp. 257-258. 
 
194 ANIMISM 
 
 the two worlds, spanned by a tree trunk, as 
 among American Indians or some Melanesians 
 (the latter must carry the figure of a frigate 
 bird to ensure safe passage),^^ or with a higher 
 development of culture the tree trunk becomes 
 a bridge, the chasm hell, and the passage the 
 trial of the soul. 
 
 While by far the preponderating beHef 
 among primitive peoples is that the dead, 
 especially their ghosts, are to be gotten out of 
 the way, and while the general feehng is one 
 of fear, in occasional situations an enduring 
 connection with them is desired, and especial 
 efforts are made to bring this about. Thus 
 some peoples in Africa, where nearly all 
 shades of primitive thought may be discovered, 
 are so anxious to secure this abiding presence 
 of their dead that they cut off the head of 
 the deceased and preserve it in the home. 
 This is thought to secure the continuance of 
 the presence of the favor of the dead patron, 
 as he now becomes by this means. ^^ 
 
 ^ Codrington, Melanesians, p. 257. 
 27 Frobenius, Voice of Africay p. 674. 
 
XIV 
 
 DESCENSUS AVERNI 
 
XIV 
 
 DESCENSUS AVERNI 
 
 ' I ^HE notion of the underworld as a prison 
 -■- place in which the dead are confined 
 has given rise in many different centers to the 
 thought of some daring mortal who breaks the 
 law separating the two worlds, and visits 
 the home of the dead, winning through by- 
 power of love, or sheer bravado and physical 
 might or challenge, or by favor of the gods. 
 The Descensus Averni is a widespread myth. 
 Its earliest literary form meets us in pre- 
 Semitic Babylonia in the story of Tammuz 
 and Ishtar — now so well known that no 
 extended narrative is here necessary.^ A fairly 
 close parallel to the Ishtar episode is found in 
 far-away Japan, where the goddess Izanami 
 died and her spouse Izanagi descended after 
 her, broke the taboo concerning preservation 
 of darkness (which is an element in so many 
 cycles of folklore unconnected with the Descen- 
 
 * For the story, see most conveniently Rogers, Cuneiform 
 Parallelsy pp. 121-131. 
 
 197 
 
198 ANIMISM 
 
 sus), and with difficulty escaped to the upper 
 air, pursued by the revengeful goddess and 
 her minions.2 The retirement of the love- 
 goddess Ishtar in Babylonia to the underworld 
 is also paralleled by that of the sun-goddess in 
 Japan, though it is "the rock-cave of heaven" 
 in which the latter hides herself, and so brings 
 darkness, as the absence of Ishtar brings lack 
 of desire, on earth.^ Hercules' famous exploit 
 of descending and haling Cerberus, the snake- 
 haired dog guardian of the shades who would 
 fain return, to the upper air is in keeping with 
 the hero's hardy and daring nature. The 
 Babylonians having conceived so early the 
 notion, it is not to be wondered at that the 
 Mandaeans, who took over so much of Baby- 
 lonian custom and mythology, should take 
 over in the descensus Averni the exploit of 
 Manda-da hayye.^ Of course the Vergilian 
 story of u^neas' descent at once recurs to the 
 mind, as well as that of Vergil's imitator and 
 disciple Dante. 
 
 But the idea is not confined to peoples so 
 far along in culture. Maui, the culture hero 
 of New Zealand and the South Sea, made the 
 dread journey to meet his great ancestress — 
 
 2 Aston, ShintOi p. 93. » Ib.y p. 100. * NSH.y vii. 147. 
 
DESCENSUS JFERNI 199 
 
 the lure here was merely material, a fish hook 
 and to get fire.^ The Etoi, a people of Africa, 
 know of the same venturous enterprise with 
 the taboo of eating ghost food, which connedls 
 the story in thought, though hardly in origin, 
 with the Greek myth of the ravished Per- 
 sephone, and with a story of quite different 
 purport in Babylonia.^ Among some New 
 Guinean peoples there are chosen mortals that 
 make the journey and return in safety^ 
 Omaha Indians regard it as possible for the 
 living, in a swoon, to visit the dread regions 
 of the dead and return unscathed.* But these 
 are the exceptions, and only heroes and gods, 
 and even they under specially favoring aus- 
 pices, like the command, behest, or permission 
 of the chief god, visit the dead and are able to 
 reascend from "The Land of No-Return." 
 
 ^ Westervelt, Legends of Maui, pp. 23, 48, 68 ff. 
 ^ Talbot, In the Shadow of the Bushy pp. 240, 336. 
 ' Seligmann, Melanesians, pp. 655 ff. 
 * Fletcher and La Flesche, 27th Report, etc., p. 589. 
 
XV 
 WORSHIP 
 
XV 
 
 WORSHIP 
 
 T TOWEVER worship be defined, little 
 ^ -*- reflection is needed to discern the basis 
 of its beginnings in what has preceded. Wor- 
 ship implies in the worshiper fear, reverence, 
 gratitude, veneration, homage, love, respedl, 
 admiration, or a complex of some or all of 
 these; and in the objedl worshiped power, 
 worth, or dignity, or a complex of them. 
 As we moderns know it, and as the world has 
 known it as far back as written traditions or 
 remains of various sorts permit investigation, 
 worship involves certain definite modes of 
 adlion by worshipers, diredled to or at the 
 objecfl of worship; and these modes of adion 
 tend to become stereotyped, or, to anticipate 
 a little, to crystallize into ritual. And many 
 reasons lead to the belief that this stereotyping 
 began very early. 
 
 Man's conception of things being anthropo- 
 pathic, he would regard them as he did men, 
 203 
 
204 ANIMISM 
 
 and in addition he would treat them, so far 
 as circumstances and the nature of the case 
 permitted, much as he did men. Since he 
 thought of them as having senses to be 
 tickled, appetites to be gratified, mentality to 
 be reckoned with, temper to be made or kept 
 placid and amicable, and power to be turned 
 to good account or at least to be prevented 
 from adling against him, he would deal with 
 them as his experience and observation had 
 taught him his own kind liked to be treated, 
 and thus secure his own well-being. It could 
 not have been long before the social element 
 entered, tradition as to methods of accom- 
 plishing ends soon becoming a determining 
 fad:or. Man had already discovered that 
 the individuals of his own species differed 
 greatly in qualities and power, and that 
 different modes of procedure were either 
 politic or necessary. Those weaker or less 
 cunning than himself he could either disregard 
 or render subservient. Those stronger and 
 more resourceful would evoke fear or win 
 respedl, and to them he would concede what 
 he must. The degree of respedl or fear, ex- 
 pressed in terms of tribute or homage, would 
 depend upon the conceived or adlual disparity 
 
WORSHIP 20S 
 
 between his powers and those of the others. 
 How short a distance separates respedl or 
 homage from worship becomes evident when 
 one considers the refinement in theology of 
 the distinction of dulia, hyperdulia, and latria 
 from each other, or when one notes the diffi- 
 culty of distinguishing the results in the 
 objedlive adlions attending "veneration," 
 "higher veneration," and "worship." ^ This 
 same standard of adlion would apply to what- 
 ever grade or order of beings man acflually 
 dealt with or conceived himself as dealing 
 with. As Professor King puts it: 
 
 "Granted that the idea of a superior per- 
 sonality once appears in the religious con- 
 sciousness, it is easy to see that the problem 
 of worship itself, and of different types of 
 worship, is quite a simple one. It seems 
 almost self-evident that the deity will be 
 approached and treated precisely along the 
 lines of intercourse within the group of wor- 
 shipers. He will be bargained with, or 
 treated with respedl, because he is recognized 
 as having the advantage in power. He will 
 be flattered, offered gifts, feasted, and treated 
 precisely as would occur in a human society 
 
 1 Cf.iVS^., article "Dulia." 
 
2o6 ANIMISM 
 
 if any member were felt to surpass the rest in 
 some important type of excellence. In general, 
 the modes of worship will be, first of all, 
 repetitions of the acfis called forth by the 
 objedl or situation which has aroused the 
 interest. In what better way could keepers 
 of flocks conceive of honoring their god and 
 keeping him interested in men than by the 
 ordinary communal feast, of recognized im- 
 portance in maintaining proper social relations 
 on the human side? The peoples with whom 
 witchcraft is of dominating importance will 
 necessarily treat their deities after the manner 
 of treating the human sorcerer.'* ^ 
 
 The expression of animistic thought in this 
 relation is that what is pleasing to the wor- 
 shiper will be regarded as pleasing to the 
 objedt of devotion; what would efFed the 
 purpose in mind if applied to the subjedt is 
 considered efFedlual applied to the objedt.' 
 
 Most likely the impression upon man most 
 nearly (if not quite) universal made by any 
 given objedl was that of relative power. 
 The question that would then arise would be: 
 Is this being favorable to me or adverse? 
 
 ^ King, Development of Religiofty p. 257. 
 
 * Cf, Carpenter, Comparative Religion^ p. 14. 
 
WORSHIP 207 
 
 Will it use its power to help or hinder or 
 injure? If the conception was that the objedl 
 was propitious, gratitude, warming in time 
 and with the supposed or real repetition of 
 favors (again real or supposed) into resped:, 
 love, and admiration, would evoke homage or 
 worship in its essential even though crude 
 elements. If the objed: was conceived to be 
 malign in disposition, the endeavor would 
 naturally follow either to overawe or to 
 propitiate. It would not take very long to 
 discern here how magic in some of its aspedls 
 could arise. Threat or magic would be em- 
 ployed, in course of time, to overawe; on the 
 other hand, blandishments of various sorts 
 would be used to conciliate; or apotropaic 
 performances might grow up to drive and 
 keep away the power conceived as hostile, to 
 prevent it from accomplishing ends unwelcome 
 to man. Variety in treatment must have 
 arisen from the supposition that there were 
 grades of being and differences of disposition 
 among these beings. Just as some men were 
 more powerful in physique or resourceful in 
 wiles, so with these other beings with whom 
 man supposed himself in contad. That differ- 
 ent kinds of power were conceived as existing 
 
2o8 ANIMISM 
 
 in the many spirits which man thought he 
 perceived in his world is in the very forefront 
 of the phenomena we have passed in review. 
 
 In what has preceded there is implicit an 
 assumption that is not difficult to establish. 
 This is that man's relation to beings other 
 than himself was to a large extent, if not 
 entirely, egoistic. He was concerned with 
 what contributed to his own well-being as he 
 understood it. Not overlooked here is the 
 later stage when gens and tribe have entered 
 with their idea of solidarity, in which the 
 individual was to a certain extent submerged 
 and so far extinguished. In this stage, indeed, 
 the acftions of the one, under penalty of his 
 clan's displeasure or worse, were made to 
 contribute to the weal of the whole, or, at 
 the very least, to be devoid of harm or danger 
 to it. Prior to this grade of culture — if 
 psychology tell true its tale — the needs of 
 self alone furnished the criterion of adlion, 
 self including doubtless also family. And 
 when the individual self was merged in the 
 clan self, when the good of one was the good 
 of all, and vice versa, the test of egoism, though 
 now a better and larger quantity, still ruled. 
 Dealings with not-man, as with man, con- 
 
WORSHIP 209 
 
 cerned the affairs of everyday life, were a 
 matter of barter and exchange between man 
 and the others. Two passages from the 
 Hebrew scriptures here leap into the mind. 
 Jacob (Gen. 28 : 20-22) promises devotion to 
 God on condition of receiving a certain con- 
 tinuing favor. The reverse of this picfture 
 appears in Deut. 28, where in return for 
 definite religious performance prosperity is 
 assured the people by their God. Philos- 
 tratus makes Apollonius of Tyana declare 
 that worship and sacrifice and the like are but 
 a quid pro quo, human in its formulation. 
 Indeed, Apollonius thought that large offerings 
 made before any benefit was received from 
 the god were suspicious, arguing guilt in the 
 sacrificer and an attempt at bribery of the 
 deity.^ Such a condition as the understanding 
 between mortal and deity, the driving of 
 bargain with the god, can be ascertained as 
 occurring all through history. Only late does 
 altruism appear and thenceforth struggle for 
 expression against odds. 
 
 Our chief concern here is to note the fad: 
 most pertinent to our line of investigation and 
 implicit in the foregoing — that worship as 
 * Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, i. x. 
 
210 ANIMISM 
 
 registered by history and observation is most 
 easily accounted for on an animistic basis. 
 Worship, if our hypothesis be true, is but the 
 sublimation (at first only slight) of sentiments 
 that are wholly native to man's nature from 
 the start. The difference in degree or intensity 
 corresponds to the conceived difference in 
 certain qualities found in the objedl. The 
 higher worthfulness or helpfulness or potency 
 found or conceived in an objedl commanded 
 that initial stage of tribute, higher than was 
 yielded to others, which developed in the course 
 of time — how limited or extended we cannot 
 tell — into what would now be conceded to be 
 essentially worship. 
 
 Incidentally in the preceding discussion the 
 fadl has come out that man worshiped what 
 we call inanimate objedls in nature (stones, 
 mountains, rivers, seas, the luminaries, the 
 sky, the earth, and the like); individuals in 
 the vegetable kingdom (the sacred tree, for 
 example, indigenous in nearly all lands but 
 necessarily varying in species with the latitude 
 and longitude); others from the animal king- 
 dom (snakes and monkeys and what not); 
 imaginary beings good and bad, maHgn and 
 benign; as well as living men and the souls of 
 
WORSHIP 111 
 
 the departed. We trace to animism the 
 varied cults that have engaged the soul and 
 spirit of man throughout time and all over 
 the world. Idolatry in all its varieties and 
 in the numerous connotations of the word 
 needs little other explanation of its origin. 
 Worship springs out of man's nature along 
 with his efforts to satisfy his varied appetites 
 of soul and body, and is formulated on the 
 basis of his real or supposed experiences. To 
 use a word that sums up luminously the 
 entire situation, man is incorrigibly theo- 
 tropic, his thoughts have ever turned God ward. 
 The element that was lacking was judgment 
 of the things he chose as objedls of service, 
 perception of what was worthy of adoration, 
 realization of a true standard of values. 
 
 It is not our purpose to trace in minutiae 
 the development of cult. We are concerned 
 here solely with the phenomenology and 
 implications of animism, not with the unfolding 
 of all that results. It would indeed be inter- 
 esting to follow out the complexity of cult, 
 to show how it came to cover so large a portion 
 of life, unfolding into exadling ritual, and 
 embracing alike the insignificant details and 
 the momentous crises of existence. We should 
 
212 ANIMISM 
 
 find fascinating the testimonies alike to com- 
 mon psychological trends — as in the almost 
 universal cult of the serpent, easily inter- 
 preted upon physical grounds — and to racial 
 peculiarities which led to specific contributions 
 which enriched later humanity, such as the 
 Greek devotion to the beautiful and the 
 Roman passion for legal formulation. But 
 this belongs to a different line of discussion. 
 
 We must, however, glance at two elements 
 in the case — conservatism and the social 
 fadlor. 
 
 By the first is meant that fear to change 
 methods and formulae (whether of words or of 
 adlion) which, however wrongly (because of 
 man's major fallacy, post hoc propter hoc), 
 were supposed to have efficacy. For the 
 existence of this there is abundant testimony. 
 From all quarters to observers of procedure 
 which to them, in their advanced stage of 
 culture, seems inherently irrational, who ask: 
 Why do you do this.? or. Why do you do it 
 this way ? the almost invariable answer comes. 
 Our fathers taught us to do it. Often there 
 is attached a further reason, clearly mytho- 
 logical or else supported by some supposedly 
 conclusive proof from experience, such as : If 
 
WORSHIP 213 
 
 we did not, this or that dreadful thing would 
 happen just as it did to so and so who did it 
 another way or did not do it at all. In Nias 
 (Malaysia) in case of epidemic the cause is 
 often found in a desertion of the old ways, 
 and a renewal of vows to return to the earlier 
 order of things is believed to remove the 
 trouble.^ Among the Pueblos the working 
 of this principle has been observed. 
 
 **'0f the two great forces which have lifted 
 humanity to the present plane of civilization 
 — imitation and invention — the latter has 
 been almost wholly suppressed by the 
 Pueblos.' ^ The result is exact reproduction 
 in both industry and religion." ^ 
 
 And Todd's testimony is given again as fol- 
 lows: "Oral traditions and the * customs that 
 are written within the book' . . . form the 
 social matrix and make up by far the larger 
 part of that social heredity which is the very 
 stuff of informal education, and the basis of 
 formal pedagogy." ^ From a different branch 
 of the American aborigines evidence of the ap- 
 
 ^ Frazer, Scapegoat, p. 115. 
 
 ^ Spencer, Education of the Pueblo Child. 
 
 "^ Todd, The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency, p. 
 
 183- 
 
 * Todd, Primitive Family, p. 17S. 
 
214 ANIMISM 
 
 plication of this principle to ritual is given as 
 follows: "Any mistake made in singing these 
 (ritual) songs or in reciting the ritual (of the 
 Omahas) resulted in the early death of the 
 offender." » 
 
 The continuity of this extreme conservatism 
 can be traced in the area of ritual down to our 
 own times. Indeed it has become an axiom 
 among investigators both of religion and of 
 anthropology and folk-lore that the oldest 
 living remains we have are to be found in 
 ritual, whether of worship, work, or, strange 
 to say, play. The Brahmins have enshrined 
 in their writings the necessity of adhering with 
 the utmost fidelity to the words and adls, and 
 the very sequence of the same, to the end that 
 the sacrifice may be efFedlual. It is a matter 
 of history that Sumerian rituals which began 
 to be formulated in Babylonia perhaps as 
 early as the sixth or fifth millennium before 
 Christ were employed for a thousand or more 
 years after the Sumerian language had ceased 
 to be spoken, and this in order to gain effec- 
 tual approach to the gods. Several branches 
 of the Christian Church still employ languages 
 long defundl and unintelHgible to the majority 
 
 • Fletcher and La Flesche, Anthropological ReporU etc., p. 575. 
 
WORSHIP 215 
 
 of the worshipers, and this is done for no 
 reason that is intelligible, or at least plausible, 
 to those not of the communions referred to. 
 Only a few years ago intense feeling was 
 caused in Greece over the proposed rendering 
 of the Greek of the New Testament into 
 modern Greek. In various other ways might 
 be demonstrated the tendency to a fixity in 
 ways of thinking about things, in modes of 
 adlion, and in methods of expression, and all 
 this as a charadleristic native to man in all 
 stages of civilization and in all spheres of 
 adlion. 
 
 The second element includes the complex 
 results of many minds working on the same 
 problem. An ever stronger emphasis upon 
 the formative influence of the social facflor in 
 the development of mankind is laid by modern 
 investigators in anthropology and religion. 
 One way in which communal life worked was 
 the observation of details, supposed to be of 
 significance, which might or did escape the 
 notice of individuals. A gesture in a dance, 
 a chance occurrence in a ceremony, mere 
 coincidence in some totally unrelated phe- 
 nomena such as the presence of a variegated 
 leaf or the simultaneous note of a bird or leap 
 
2i6 ANIMISM 
 
 of an insedl — any of these or a thousand 
 other details marked at the time might come 
 to be considered essential parts or accom- 
 paniments of the performance, whatever it 
 was, thereafter to be included or simulated 
 whenever the results were sought again, with 
 the assumption that omission imperilled those 
 results. Here is one partial explanation of 
 the growing complexity of ceremonial up to a 
 certain point. It can be seen at once how 
 conservatism steps in here to preserve the 
 method of procedure thus arrived at. 
 
 But this social fadlor undoubtedly operated 
 also in a different way. The ways of seeing 
 and interpreting things differ among observers. 
 Man is an argumentative animal. Opinions 
 pro and contra passed, and one consequence 
 must have been a series of compromises in 
 which weight of opinion or authority produced 
 finally the formulae and methods most accept- 
 able to the community. Here is one door by 
 which probably entered what we know as 
 progress. The interest of the community, 
 clan, or tribe, we have seen, operated to 
 restrid: and limit individual choice and initia- 
 tive. Society did at a certain stage, and 
 perhaps much earlier than any period of 
 
WORSHIP 217 
 
 which we have diredl evidence, regard itself 
 as open to readlions from benefit or injury 
 done to non-human beings through the agency 
 of any one of its members. This being so, 
 the individual must adl with reference to the 
 welfare of the whole. It is at this point per- 
 tinent therefore to point to the entrance of 
 the ethical as distindl from what has so long 
 been regarded as the religious. To examine 
 this, however, would take us away from our 
 theme, as it belongs in an entirely different 
 field from that we now cultivate. 
 
XVI 
 RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 
 
XVI 
 
 RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 
 
 TT^INALLY, we may register — no more 
 ^ than that — a few of the behefs and 
 pracflices which, enduring through ages, were 
 the diredl legacy or proximate produdl of the 
 animistic stage. 
 
 First, of course, is the precious discovery of 
 the existence of soul in man, an inheritance 
 whose value has been ever more clearly 
 recognized as the centuries rolled by, until the 
 supreme expression of that value was given 
 by Jesus of Nazareth: What shall it profit 
 a man if he gain the whole world and lose his 
 own soul? The growing perception of the 
 souFs worth is measured in part by the devel- 
 opment of the ideas of heaven and hell as that 
 soul's reward or punishment. Anticipated 
 bliss or sorrow was magnified in proportion to 
 the enlarging estimates of the souFs worth. 
 The Greek idea of a shadowy existence after 
 death in a featureless place that almost voids 
 the idea of locality could not abide with a 
 
 221 
 
222 ANIMISM 
 
 higher (Christian) estimate of soul values. 
 Even the Egyptians had a nobler realization 
 of those values, though it was nourished at 
 great loss — it cost them a really noble con- 
 ception of the being and nature of the gods. 
 
 Second, this conception of the soul thus 
 recognized involves another noteworthy be- 
 quest of animism, the notion of the continued 
 life of the soul beyond the grave. Primitive 
 races are quite logical in their deduction of 
 continued existence as an attribute or quality 
 of soul. It has incidentally been noted in the 
 preceding pages that whatever was conceived 
 as possessing soul was also believed to exist 
 beyond the grave. There the hunter, note, 
 was conceived to pursue shade of deer or 
 whatever animal had been the gain of his bow 
 or spear in this life. So that it was not man 
 in himself, apart from soul, that gained im- 
 mortality — or whatever proportion of immor- 
 tality the primitive had acquired the power to 
 conceive — immortality belonged to soul itself. 
 
 If pradical universaHty of belief and of 
 desire for the thing itself proves a dodlrine, 
 no tenet of our faith has surer basis than this 
 in existence after death. We have already 
 seen that the idea of continuance, which is 
 
RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 223 
 
 the seed out of which the idea of real im- 
 mortality germinated, is found among all 
 primitive peoples. Moreover, all great reli- 
 gions but one have taken the idea into their 
 bosoms and made it central. The exception 
 is classic Buddhism. And the vigor and 
 tenacity of the dodlrine of conscious life 
 beyond the grave has been too great for the 
 later followers of even the Buddha. For later 
 Buddhism too has its dodlrine of heaven and 
 hell in the forms of belief current for many 
 centuries. Not even the dodlrine of karma, 
 in its most absolute form, could withstand the 
 ardent longing of man and his invincible faith 
 that he is more than a bundle of conse- 
 quences to fall apart and cease to exist as an 
 entity when once he had persuaded himself 
 that such an efFedl was possible. Elsewhere 
 than in Buddhism only sporadic agnostics 
 have ventured a doubt or a denial of the 
 dodlrine. How insistent is the cry of humanity 
 for the boon of a continued conscious endurance 
 is evinced by this. In spite of the firm faith 
 of Christians in immortality, the assurance 
 of it (as it is sometimes expressed), this 
 longing and this faith compel even them to 
 look with desire upon results of investigations 
 
224 ANIMISM 
 
 like those of the Society for Psychical Re- 
 search, if perchance scientific demonstration 
 can be made to confirm what is now the 
 produc5l of belief. 
 
 The third legacy of animism is belief in 
 superhuman powers. Whether we regard this 
 from the standpoint of anthropology or culture, 
 or from that of ethics or of rehgion, it is 
 difficult to estimate, impossible to overesti- 
 mate, its importance. How vast a power of 
 restraint this belief has exerted as an inhibition 
 upon the lower passions of man, and how 
 great an impulse it has ever been to the growth 
 and unfolding of his higher nature! While it 
 is probably true that altruism has never in 
 the history of the race been absent in at least 
 germinal force — remember that it is not 
 absent in even brute creation — even yet its 
 greatest force as a determinative fadlor is 
 manifested only in the highly cultured. The 
 impression of the existence of higher powers, 
 of superhuman or supernal forces, was neces- 
 sary during the disciplinary or elementary 
 stages of culture to control and to diredl to 
 beneficent ends human thinking and adion. 
 Moreover, as has already been suggested, 
 angelology and demonology are traceable in 
 
RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 225 
 
 dired: line to the set of conceptions we have 
 been following in their manifestations in 
 thought and adlion. 
 
 For these three greatest conceptions enter- 
 tained by humanity the race has to thank 
 the stage of culture we have been studying. 
 
 Besides the currents represented by the 
 dominant ideas just particularized other 
 thought channels exist in which flow streams 
 so strong as to warrant the use of the term 
 "instindlive." "Fm afraid to go home in the 
 dark," for instance, is the voicing of a dread 
 from which few are free. Granted that in 
 many or most cases this fear is implanted in 
 the young by tales of bogies or spirits told by 
 injudicious parents or other associates, the 
 psychologist can but note how readily the 
 idea is assimilated and how difficult it is, even 
 for the mature scientist (if he be frank with 
 himself), to rise superior to the fear and to 
 banish it utterly. The reason is, probably, 
 that the mind is in this matter super-receptive. 
 The channel has been worn in the thinking or 
 emotions of hundreds of ancestors, and the 
 grooves are transmitted. Open the sluice 
 gates to the idea, and it flows a muddy stream 
 through life. 
 
226 ANIMISM 
 
 The savage of the stone age, cowering over 
 his campfire, casting fearful looks into the 
 jungle all about him, hearing in "the thousand 
 noises of the night the movements of myriads 
 of spirits whose existence is to him a reality," 
 transmitted a frightful heritage of terror to 
 his far-off descendants. Against the efFedls 
 of this heritage in the clear light of day and 
 the illumination of science and knowledge 
 men count themselves vicflors. But curiously 
 the shades of night banish self-acquired knowl- 
 edge, and the unknown and unseen open the 
 gates of emotion to unspoken and unconfessed 
 fears. In vain does the vidlim appeal to his 
 own "common sense." He knows the "super- 
 stition" is "foolish," "unscientific." But the 
 subconscious habit of thought, prenatally trans- 
 mitted, smothers his knowledge, and, given 
 the occasion and stimulus, dominates him in 
 spite of himself. 
 
 From the standpoint of pedagogics not yet 
 has sufficient allowance been made for this 
 heritage of fear. Parents, nurses, and com- 
 panions, mistakenly and often innocently, 
 sow and cultivate these weeds in a soil all too 
 well prepared by heritage. And the result is 
 that instead of a beautiful garden spot of 
 
RESIDUA OF ANIMISM 227 
 
 trust and confidence and belief in the good, a 
 jungle or morass of noxious fears and dreads 
 mars for many the beauty of life. 
 
 Other residua less worthy, for the most 
 part now happily matters of history, at least 
 in the civilized world, have been hinted at in 
 the preceding pages. Most of these may be 
 classed under the head of superstitions, though 
 we are to bear in mind that these too have, at 
 least some of them, contributed to the advance 
 of mankind.^ They include the development 
 and prad:ice of totemism and taboo, of magic 
 and divination with their nobler brother 
 prophecy, of mythology and witchcraft, and 
 of sacrifice in the ritual sense. When we have 
 shown the nature of animism, we have laid at 
 least one firm platform for the treatment of 
 these, so far at least as their objective side is 
 concerned. Then, too, the relative order or 
 the contemporaneity of magic and religion — 
 that vexed question — may receive illumina- 
 tion in pursuit of the consequences of the 
 facfts here exhibited. But to trace these 
 developments is another task. Whether such 
 phenomena as those of fetishism are primary 
 
 * Cf. Frazer, Psychis Task; and NSH., article "Supersti- 
 tion." 
 
228 ANIMISM 
 
 or secondary may also be possible of solution 
 in the light we have gained; and the varieties 
 of sacrifice fall easily into order as we start 
 from its foundation in animism as shown in 
 the fadls here passed in review. 
 
XVII 
 
 LITERATURE TO WHICH REFERENCE 
 IS MADE IN THIS VOLUME 
 
PERIODICALS AND ABBREVIA- 
 TIONS USED 
 
 BW = Biblical World, 
 
 FL = Folk-lore. 
 
 FR = Fortnightly Review, 
 
 Gl = Globus, 
 
 ERE = Hastings, Selbie, and Gray, Ency- 
 clopedia of Religion and Ethics, 
 
 HR = Homiletic Review, 
 
 I A = Indian Antiquary. 
 
 lAE = Internationales Archiv jur Ethno- 
 graphie. 
 
 JAI = Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 
 
 JRP = Journal of Religious Psychology, 
 
 NGM = National Geographic Magazine, 
 
 NSH = New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 
 
XVII 
 
 LITERATURE TO WHICH REFERENCE 
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 Anthropological Essays Presented to Sir E, B. 
 
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 Batchelor, J., The Ainu and their Folklore, 
 
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 231 
 
232 ANIMISM 
 
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LITERATURE CONSULTED 233 
 
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 Dawson, J., Australian Aborigines, Melbourne, 
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 Day, L. B., Folk Tales of Bengal, London and 
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 Decle, L., Three Tears in Savage Africa, 
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 \^ FisoN, L. and Howitt, A. W., Kamilaroi and 
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 Frazer, J. G., Golden Bough,^ London, 1900. 
 - Frazer, J. G., Golden Bough,^ London, 1905 fF. 
 
•^ 
 
 234 ANIMISM 
 
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 Dying God; Magic Art and Evolution of 
 
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 Attis and Osiris; The Scapegoat, and 
 
 Balder the Beautiful.) 
 Frazer, J. G., Belief in Immortality and the 
 
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 New York, 1913. 
 Frazer, J. G., Psyche's Task, London, 1909. 
 Frere, Mary, Old Deccan Days, London, 
 
 1868. 
 Frobenius, L., Voice of Africa, London, 1913. 
 FuRNESS, W. H., Home Life of Borneo Head 
 
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 Gomes, E. H., Seventeen Tears among the Sea 
 
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 Granger, F., Worship of the Romans, London, 
 
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 Griffis, W. E., Mikado's Empire, New York, 
 
 1903. 
 Grimm, J. L. R., Teutonic Mythology, 4 vols., 
 
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 H ADDON, A. C, Head Hunters, London, 1901. 
 Hahn, T., Tsuni'Goam, the Supreme Being 
 
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 Halliday, W. R., Greek Divination, London, 
 
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LITERATURE CONSULTED 235 
 
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 Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the 
 
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 1912. 
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 vHartland, E. S., Ritual and Belief, London 
 
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 v-HoBHOusE, L. T., Morals in Evolution, New 
 
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 Hose, C. and McDougall, W., The Pagan 
 
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 HowiTT, A. W., Native Tribes of South-East 
 
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 Jahn, U., Die deutschen Opfergebrduche bei 
 
 Ackerbau und Fiehsucht, Breslau, 1884. 
 Jamblichus, Theurgia. 
 Joyce, T. A., South American Archceology, 
 
 New York, 191 2. 
 Keller, C, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Other 
 
 African Islands, London, 1901. 
 KiDD, D., Savage Childhood, London, 1906. 
 
236 ANIMISM 
 
 >/ King, L, The Development of Religion, A 
 
 Study in Anthropology and Social Psy- 
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 KiNGSLEY, Miss Mary, West African Studies, 
 
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 Kloss, C, In the Andamans and Nicohars, 
 
 New York, 1903. 
 La Flesche, See "American Ethnology.'' 
 Lambert, Moeurs et superstitions des Neo- 
 
 Caledoniens, Noumea, 1900. 
 >^ Lang, A., Myth, Ritual, and Religion, London, 
 
 1899. 
 v Lang, A., Making of Religion, London, 1898. 
 Langdon, S., Tammuz and Ishtar, Oxford, 
 
 1914. 
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 1914. 
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 McDouGALL, W., Body and Mind, A Study 
 
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 Mariner, W., Account of the Natives of the 
 
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 Mathew, J., Eagle-Hawk and Crow, London, 
 
 1899. 
 
LITERATURE CONSULTED 237 
 
 Menzies, a., History of Religion, London, 
 
 1895. 
 
 Miles, C. A., Christmas in Ritual and Tradi- 
 tion, Christian and Pagan, London, 191 3. 
 
 Miller, H., My Schools and Schoolmasters, 
 Edinburgh, 1854. 
 ^ MiLLiGAN, R. H., Fetish Folk of West Africa, 
 New York, 191 2. 
 
 Murray, M. A., Ancient Egyptian Legends, 
 New York, 191 3. 
 
 Nates A Sastri, Story of Madana Kama Raja, 
 Folklore in Southern India, Bombay, 1884. 
 
 Neuhass, R., Deutsch Neu-Guinea, Berlin, 
 
 191 1. 
 
 Nezv Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, 13 vols., 
 
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 Newton, H., In Far New Guinea, London and 
 
 Philadelphia, 1914. 
 NivEDiTA (Margaret E. Noble) and Coom- 
 
 ARASWAMY, A. K., Myths of the Hindus 
 
 and Buddhists, New York, 1914. 
 Parker, H., Village Folk Tales of Ceylon, 
 
 London, 1910-14. 
 Parker, Mrs. K. L., Euahlayi Tribe, London, 
 
 1905. 
 ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece, ed. J. G. 
 
 Frazer, 6 vols., London, 1898. 
 
238 ANIMISM 
 
 Petrie, W. M. F., Egyptian Tales, 2 series. 
 
 New York, 1896. 
 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 
 
 LoeVs Classical Library , London, 191 2. 
 Plato, Timaeus. 
 
 Reinach, S., Orpheus, New York, 1909. 
 Rhys, J., Celtic Folk-lore, Oxford, 1901. 
 Rivers, W. H. R., History of Melanesian 
 
 Society, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1914. 
 Rogers, R. W., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old 
 
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 RoscoE, J., The Baganda, London and New 
 
 York, 191 1. 
 Salvado, R., Memoires historiques sur VAus- 
 
 tralie, Paris, 1854. 
 Sayce, H., Hihhert Le6lures, London, 1888. 
 ScHLEGEL, J. B., Schlussel zur Eve-Sprache, 
 
 Stuttgart, 1857. 
 Seligmann, C. G., Melanesians of British 
 
 New Guinea, Cambridge, 1910. 
 Skeat, W. W., Malay Magic, London, 1900. 
 Smith, W. R., Religion of the Semites, London, 
 
 1894. 
 Smith, W. R., Kinship and Marriage in Early 
 
 Arabia, London, 1903. 
 Smyth, R. B., Aborigines of Victoria, Mel- 
 bourne, 1878. 
 
LITERATURE CONSULTED 239 
 
 Spence, L., Civilization of Ancient Mexico^ 
 Cambridge and New York, 191 2. 
 
 Spencer, F. C, Education of the Pueblo Child, 
 New York, 1899. 
 
 Spencer, W. B. and Gillen, F. J., Native 
 Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1899. 
 
 Spencer, W. B. and Gillen, F. J., Northern 
 Tribes of Central Australia, London, 1904. 
 
 Spiegelberg, Demotische Papyri, Berlin, 1902. 
 
 Steel, F. A., Tales of the Punjab, London, 
 1894. 
 
 Steel, F. A. and Temple, R. C, Wide-Awake 
 Stories, Bombay, 1884. 
 
 Stokes, M. S. H., Indian Fairy Tales, Cal- 
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 SwANTON, J. R., Jesup North Pacific Ex- 
 pedition, 5 vols.. New York, 1900-12. 
 
 SwYNNERTON, C, Indian Nights Entertain- 
 ment, London, 1892. 
 
 Talbot, F. A., In the Shadow of the Bush, New 
 York, 191 2. 
 
 Taplin, G., The Narrinyeri, Native Tribes of 
 So. Australia, Adelaide, 1879. 
 
 Taylor, R., Te Ika a Maui, London, 1870. 
 
 Theophrastus, Chara^eres ethici, 
 
 Thomas, N. W., Anthropological Report on 
 the Ibo-Speaking Peoples, London, 191 3. 
 
240 ANIMISM 
 
 Thurston, E., Omens and Superstitions of 
 Southern India, New York, 191 2. 
 
 Todd, A. J., The Primitive Family as an 
 Educational Agency, New York, 191 3. 
 
 Tremearne, a. J. N., Tailed Head Hunters of 
 Nigeria, London, 191 2, and Ban of the 
 Bori, London, 1914. 
 
 Turner, G., Samoa a Hundred Tears Ago, 
 London, 1884. 
 
 Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 2 vols., new 
 ed., London, 1903. 
 
 Underwood, H. G., Religions of Eastern Asia, 
 New York, 1910. 
 
 Vinson, J., Le Folk-Lore du Pays Basque, 
 Paris, 1883. 
 
 Weeks, J. H., Among the Primitive Bakongo, 
 Philadelphia, 1914. 
 
 Weeks, J. H., Among Congo Cannibals, Phila- 
 delphia, 1913. 
 
 Werner, A., Native Races of British Central 
 Africa, London, 1906. 
 
 Westervelt, W. D., Legends of Maui, Lon- 
 don, 1913. 
 
 Wiedemann, A., Religion of the Ancient Egyp- 
 tians, New York, 1897. 
 
 WiLBERFORCE, B., Steps in Spiritual Growth, 
 London, 1912. 
 
LITERATURE CONSULTED 241 
 
 Wilkes, C, Narrative of the United States 
 
 Exploring Expedition, New York, 1851. 
 Williams, T., Fiji and the Fijians, London, 
 
 i860. 
 Williamson, R. W., Mafulu Mountain People 
 
 of British New Guinea, London, 191 2. 
 Williamson, R. W., The Ways of the South 
 
 Sea Savage . . . Solomon Islands and . . . 
 
 New Guinea, Philadelphia, 1914. 
 Wood, J. D., Manners and Customs of the 
 
 Native Tribes of South Australia, Adelaide, 
 
 1879. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absence of Soul from 
 
 Body, 26, 45, 51 ff., 100 
 Absentee soul, 51 fF. 
 "Accident" and the primitive, 
 
 30, 137 ff- 
 iEneas, descent of, 198 
 All Souls' Day, 187 
 Allen, Grant, 29 f. 
 Angelology, ancestry of, 99 
 Animals and dreams, 23 
 
 and soul, 19 fF., 86 fF. 
 
 as persons, 87 fF. 
 
 deceived by guile, 88 
 
 rationality of, 19 fF., 88 fF. 
 
 speech of, 90 fF. 
 Animism as thought, 15 
 
 definitions of, 7 ff., 14 
 
 residua of 220 ff. 
 Anpu and Bata, 54 
 ApoUonius of Tyana, 209 
 Approach to soul's home, 193 f. 
 Artifects, life in, ff ff. 
 Assumption of animal form, 
 
 121 ff. 
 Aston, W. G., 10 
 Australians and totems, 8 f. 
 
 Babylonia, Spirits in, 105 f. 
 Barter and exchange, 209 
 Birth, miraculous, 56, 124 
 
 virgin, 124 
 Body and spirit, 32 ff., 120 
 
 Bogies, fear of, 225 
 
 Book of Thoth, 55 
 
 Breath and the soul, 26, 37 ff. 
 
 Brett, W. H., 143 
 
 Bridgman, Laura, and the 
 
 soul, 39 
 Buddha, 500 births of, 157 
 Buddhism and future life, 223 
 Bunce, Daniel, 139 
 
 Carnac, Stone of, 73 
 Catacombs, picture of soul in, 
 
 41 
 Ceremonial, complexity of, 216 
 Character of Spirit, dualism 
 
 of, lOI 
 Christian eschatology, 183 
 Circe, 127 
 
 Clan feuds, results of, 136 f. 
 Clouds as persons, 69 f. 
 Communal factor in evolution, 
 
 215 
 Communities of souls, 191 ff. 
 Complexity of ceremonial, 216 
 Conception, means of, 124 ff. 
 Confusion of primitive thought, 
 
 8ff. 
 Conservatism and ritual, 214 
 evil of, 213 
 rationale of, 212 
 Continuance a universal belief, 
 
 222 f. 
 
 245 
 
246 
 
 INDEX 
 
 "Continuance" of Soul, 147 ff., 
 
 155 fF., 222 f. 
 Crocodile, object of deceit, 88 
 Cult, significance of, 65 
 
 Dante on the Soul, 38 
 
 Dawson, J., 140 
 
 Dead languages, ritual use of, 
 
 214 f. 
 Dead, presence of, desired, 194 
 
 retinue of, in spirit world, 
 192 
 Death, and the soul, 22 ff., 26 ff. 
 
 by violence normal, 135 f. 
 
 not inevitable, 135 ff. 
 
 not normal, 29 ff. 
 
 through sorcery, 140 ff., 
 184 f. 
 Definitions of animism, 7 ff., 14 
 Deity and the ordeal, 28 f. 
 Demoniacs, 106, 115 
 Demonology, ancestry of, 99 
 Descensus Averni, 197 ff. 
 Diminution of soul's vitality, 
 
 157 ff. 
 Discarnate soul, condition of, 
 
 165 ff. 
 Disease demons, 115 f. 
 of thought, 89 
 through ghosts, 179 
 through witchcraft, 142 
 Disposition of ghost, 168 f. 
 Double, soul as the, 41, 80 
 Dreams and the departed, 32, 
 42, 149 
 and the ghost, 171 
 and the soul, 22 ff., 32, 42, 
 149 
 
 Dreams, of savages, 24 ff., 100 
 
 souFs wandering in, 52, 100 
 
 Dualism of Spirit character, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Early Belief in Future 
 
 Life, 147 ff. 
 Earth as mother, 67 f. 
 Ecstasy, significance of, 107, 
 
 174 ff- 
 Eifigies at graves, 130 f., 192 
 Egoistic point of view, 208 
 Egyptian deities, transforma- 
 tions of, 122, 128 
 home of soul, 191 
 Enterprises, spirit influence on, 
 
 10 1 f. 
 Epimenides and wandering 
 
 soul, 53 
 Eschatology, Christian, 183 
 External souls, 45, 5 1 ff. 
 
 Fainting and Soul's Ab- 
 sence, 26, 51 f., TOO 
 
 Fear and worship, 204, 207 
 
 Fetishism, 79 
 
 Feuds, results of clan, 136 f. 
 
 Fire as person, 72 f. 
 
 Folk-lore, significance of, 57, 
 65 ff 
 
 Food, animate, 80 
 of souls, 167 
 
 Footmarks of soul, 41 
 
 Form of soul, 40 ff., 46, 165 ff. 
 
 Foundation sacrifice, 176 
 
 Frazer, J. G., 25 f., 125 
 
 "Free" spirits, 97 ff. 
 spirits, nature of, 102, 105 ff. 
 
INDEX 
 
 247 
 
 Future life a paradise, 193 
 animistic conception of, 222 
 early belief in, 147 fF. 
 
 Ghost and Prediction, 170 fF. 
 
 disposition of, 168 f., 176 fF. 
 
 greed of, 169 f. 
 
 in dreams, 171 
 
 knowledge of, 170 
 
 periodical return of, 187 
 
 powers of, 169 f. 
 
 wandering of, 185 
 Ghost's temporary release, 185 
 Ghosts and shamans, 175 
 
 as helpers, 175 f. 
 
 become demons, 161 
 
 become vampires, 162 
 
 death of, 150 f. 
 
 duties to, 178 
 
 inflict disease, 179 
 
 maleficent, 176 fF, 
 
 worship of, 180 
 Gods die, 151 
 
 Golden age beyond grave, 193 
 Gomes, E. H., 142 
 Granger, F., 24 
 Gratitude as source of worship, 
 
 207 
 Grave and the soul, 184 f. 
 Greed of ghost, 169 
 
 Harrison, J. E., 8 f. 
 Hartland, E. S., 13, 57, 70 
 Head of deceased preserved, 
 
 194 
 Heiti-eibib, 151 
 Hercules' descent, 198 
 Hermes Psychopompus, 43 
 
 Hermotimus and wandering 
 
 soul, 52 f. 
 Hezekiah and the soul, 189 f. 
 Hirata, prayer of, 98 
 Hobhouse, L. T., 9 f. 
 Home of soul, 183 fF. 
 
 soul variously placed, 187 ff. 
 Human form of soul, 40 fF. 
 
 soul in animals, 45, 54 
 
 soul in trees, 58 
 Humans, transformations of 
 
 126 fF. 
 Hunger of souls, 167 f. 
 
 Idolatry, 211 
 Illogicality, primitive, 28 fF. 
 Immortality, desire for, 223 f. 
 vs. continuance, 150 fF., 155 fF. 
 Implements, worship of, 77 fF. 
 Im Thurn, E. F., 14 
 Inanimate objects and soul, 
 
 12 fl^., 63 fF., 66 fF. 
 
 things as murderers, 137 
 Individuality vs. solidarity, 208 
 Ingimund and Finns' souls, 
 
 52 
 Invisible nature spirits, 41 f., 
 
 97 ff. 
 Ishtar, descent of, 197 f. 
 Izanagi, descent of, 197 
 
 Jacob, Dream of, 5 fF. 
 Jamblichus on dreams, 172 f. 
 Joshua and the witness stone, 
 
 Ka, the, 41, 80 
 
 Kaaba, sacred stones of, 75 
 
 Kabyles' trepanning, 11 
 
248 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kenaima, 142 f. 
 
 "Killing" of implements, 80 f, 
 
 167 
 King, I., 205 
 Kingsley, Miss, 12 
 Knowledge of ghost, 170 
 
 Lang, A., 89 
 Langdon, S., 6j f. 
 Lange, A., 85 f. 
 Lejeune, Pere, 13 
 Leopard-man, 127 
 Le Souef, A. A. C, 139 
 Life token, S3 fF. 
 Logicality of primitive thought, 
 15 
 
 Magic as Cause of Death, 
 140 fF. 
 
 in Far East, 192 
 
 in transformations, 129 ff. 
 
 vs. worship, 207 
 Maleficent ghosts, 176 fF. 
 Man a duality, 22 fF., 33, 120 
 
 as measure of things, 62 
 Materiality of soul, 46 f. 
 Mating of different orders of 
 
 being, 123 fF. 
 Maui, descent of, 198 
 
 transformation of, 121 
 Menzies, A., 7 
 Metamorphosis, 119 fF, 
 Meteorites, divine, 6, 74 f. 
 Miraculous birth, 56, 124 
 Mountains as persons, 69 f. 
 Mulgewauke, 99 
 Multiple souls, 44 f., 54 
 
 Murder by inanimates, 137 
 Mutilated souls, 42 f., 166 
 
 Negative Confession, magi- 
 cal use of, 156 
 
 Neohthic man, 11 
 
 Neuhass, R., 141 
 
 Newton, H., 140 
 
 Numbers of "free" spirits, 
 97 ff. 
 
 Oak at Dodona, 84 
 Obassi Osaw, 121 
 Objects of worship, 210 fF. 
 Ogre and separate soul, 54 
 Old Testament, verification of, 
 
 174 
 
 Olympians, amours of, 123 
 Ono and fox-wife, 123 
 Ordeals, 28 f. 
 
 Parity of Being, to, 12, 
 
 61 fF. 
 Paternity by lower orders, 
 
 125 fF. 
 "Possession" by souls, 173; by 
 
 spirits, 106, 114 f. 
 Power in relation to worship, 
 
 206 f. 
 Powers of ghost, 169 f. 
 Prediction and ghosts, 170 fF. 
 Presence of deceased desired, 
 
 194 
 Primitive consciousness un- 
 integrated, 8 fF. 
 fancy, 28 
 
 thought logical, 15 
 Progress from compromise, 216 
 
INDEX 
 
 249 
 
 Prophetic frenzy, 116 
 Puberty ceremonies, 192 
 
 Rainbow Alive, 76 
 Ramayana, 56 
 Reinach, S., 13 
 Reincarnation, 157 fF. 
 Residua of Animism, 220 flF. 
 Respect and worship, 204 
 Ritual and conservatism, 214 
 Rivers as persons, 71 f. 
 
 possess personality, 71 f. 
 Rock, see Stone 
 Rocks as deceased ancestors, 
 
 159 
 Rollright, stones of, 73 
 Romanes, J. G,, 20 fF. 
 Rupe, transformation of, 121 
 
 Sacrament as Ordeal, 28 f. 
 Sacred trees, 83 ff. 
 Samu Yalo, 151 
 Savages, dreams of, 24 ff. 
 Sea as person, 70 f. 
 Separable soul, 51 ff., 100 
 Serpent in Genesis, 91 f. 
 Serpent tribe, rationality of, 
 92 
 worship of, 92 
 Shadow and the soul, 43 ff. 
 Shamanism, III 
 Shamans and ghosts, 175 
 Skulls trepanned, 11 
 Sky as father, 68 f. 
 Sleep and the soul, 22 ff. 
 Smith, W. R., 73 
 Smyth, R. B., 139 
 Snake worshiped, 4 f. 
 Snakes as soul-bearers, 158 f. 
 
 Social factor in evolution, 215 
 
 relations with worshiped, 
 205 ff. 
 Solidarity vs. individuality, 208 
 Sorcery, ill ff. 
 Soul absent in sleep, 24 ff., 100 
 
 and mutilations, 42 f., 166 
 
 and "possession," 173 
 
 and shadow, 43 ff. 
 
 and the grave, 184 f. 
 
 and the self, 39 
 
 condition of, and bodily 
 condition, 166 f. 
 
 constitution of, 37 ff., 46 f. 
 
 discamate, condition of, 
 16s ff. 
 
 discovery of, 19 ff, 
 
 discovery of, important, 221 
 
 disposition of, 168 f. 
 
 form of, 40 ff., 46, 165 ff. 
 
 form, transformation of, 166 
 
 home of, 183 ff. 
 
 human, in animals, 45, 54 
 
 in things, 12 ff., 63 ff., 66 ff. 
 
 invisible, 41 
 
 mutilated like body, 42 f., 
 166 
 
 needs of, 167 ff. 
 
 non-human forms of, 46 
 
 several lives of, 150 f., 155 ff. 
 SouFs affection for home, 184 f. 
 
 footsteps traceable, 41 
 
 home duplicates earth, 190 ff. 
 
 life after death, 147 ff. 
 Souls, food of, 167 
 
 hunger of, 167 f. 
 
 mobility of, 26, 45, 51 ff., 
 100, 169 ff. 
 
250 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Souls, multiple, 44 f., 54 
 
 voices of, 168 
 Speech of animals, 90 ff. 
 Spencer and Gillen, 140 
 Spirit, also see Soul 
 Spirit interpenetration by, 106, 
 125 
 
 world, varied character of, 
 189 ff. 
 Spirits as fathers, 124 ff. 
 
 become gods, 7 
 
 dispositions of, 108 f., 1 14 ff. 
 
 kinds of, 109 f. 
 
 mortal, no 
 
 needs of, 107 ff. 
 
 possession by, 106 
 
 senses of, 108 
 
 vengeful, 116 
 Stone, divinity of, 5 ff., 73 ff. 
 
 sentience of, 5, 73 ff. 
 Subterranean home of soul, 
 
 187 ff. 
 Suma snake, 3 ff. 
 Sun, human in form, 67 
 Superhuman powers, behef in, 
 
 224 
 Superhumans and the human 
 
 form, 121 ff. 
 Superstition, 225 ff. 
 
 Tammuz and Ishtar, 197 
 Taplin, G., 140 
 Thoth, book of, 55 
 Thought, "disease" of, 89 
 Thunder a person, 70 
 Tiger, object of deceit, 88 
 Todd, A. J., 126, 213 
 Tools, worship of, 77 ff. 
 Toothache, cure of, 4 
 
 Totems, 62 f., 89, 126 
 Transformations, 91, 121 ff., 
 
 126 ff., 156 ff. 
 Transmigration, 157 ff. 
 Tree and human soul, 58 
 
 as oracle, 84 
 Tree planting at birth of 
 
 child, 57 f. 
 Trees punished for murder, 137 
 
 sacred, 83 ff. 
 
 souls of, 83 ff. 
 Trepanning, neoHthic, 11 
 Tylor, E. B., 7 f. 
 
 USHABTIU, 130, 192 
 
 Vampires, ghosts as, 162 
 Vegetable world, soul in, 83 ff. 
 Virgin birth, 124 
 Voices of souls, 168 
 
 Wakonda, 62 
 Were-wolves, 127 
 Wilberforce, Basil, 61 
 Wind as animate, 69 
 Witch as wave, 129 
 Witches, 114 f. 
 Wizardry, in f., 114 f. 
 Worship, 203 ff. 
 
 anthropopathic origin of, 
 203 ff. 
 
 a quid pro quo, 209 
 
 implications of, 203 
 
 not due to fear alone, 180 
 
 objects of, 180, 210 ff. 
 
 of ghosts, 180 
 
 of implements, 77 ff. 
 
 of stone, 5 f., 73 ff. 
 WuUunqua, 99, in 
 
 Yaka, no, 161