SCORPION

Thus far the details of the lower animistic philosophy
are not very unfamiliar to modern students. The primitive
view of the souls of men and beasts, as asserted or acted on
in the lower and middle levelsrfculture, so far belongs to
current civilized thought, that those who hold the doctrine
to be false, and the practices based upon it futile, can
nevertheless understand and sympathise with the lower
nations to whom they are matters of the most sober and
serious conviction. Nor is even the notion of a separable
spirit or soul as the cause of life in plants too incongruous

1 Hardy, ' Manual of Budhism,' pp. 291, 443 ; Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol.
ii. p. 184 ; Marco Polo, book iii. ch. xxii. (compare various readings) ;
Meiners, vol. i. p. 215 ; vol. ii. p. 799.

2 Malay evidence has since been noticed by Wilken, ' Het Animisme bij
den Volken van den Indischen Archipel.' p. 104. [Note to 3rd edition.]



SOULS OF OBJECTS. 477

with ordinary ideas to be readily appreciable. But the
theory of souls in the lower culture stretches beyond this
limit, to take in a conception much stranger to modern
thought. Certain high savage races distinctly hold, and a
large proportion of other savage and barbarian races make
a more or less close approach to, a theory of separable and
surviving souls or spirits belonging to stocks and stones,
weapons, boats, food, clothes, ornaments, and other objects
which to us are not merely soulless but lifeless.

Yet, strange as such a notion may seem to us at first
sight, if we place ourselves by an effort in the intellectual
position of an uncultured tribe, arid examine the theory of
object-souls from their point of view, we shall hardly pro-
nounce it irrational. In discussing the origin of myth,
some account has been already given of the primitive stage
of thought in which personality and life are ascribed not to
men and beasts only, but to things. It has been shown how
what we call inanimate objects rivers, stones, trees,
weapons, and so forth are treated as living intelligent
beings, talked to, propitiated, punished for the harm they do.
Hume, whose ' Natural History of Religion ' is perhaps more
than any other work the source of modern opinions as to the
development of religion, comments on the influence of this
personifying stage of thought. ' There is an universal
tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like them-
selves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with
which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they

are intimately conscious The unknown causes,

which continually employ their thought, appearing always
in the same aspect, are all apprehended to be of the same
kind or species. Nor is it long before we ascribe to them
thought and reason, and passion, and sometimes even the
limbs and figures of men, in order to bring them nearer to a
resemblance with ourselves.' Auguste Comte has ventured
to bring such a state of thought under terms of strict defini-
tion in his conception of the primary mental condition of
mankind a state of ' pure fetishism, constantly character-



47$ ANIMISM.

ized by the free and direct exercise of our primitive tend-
ency to conceive all external bodies soever, natural or
artificial, as animated by a life essentially analogous to our
own, with mere differences of intensity.' 1 Our comprehen-
sion of the lower stages of mental culture depends much on
the thoroughness with which we can appreciate this primi-
tive, childlike conception, and in this our best guide may
be the memory of our own childish days. He who recol-
lects when there was still personality to him in posts and
sticks, chairs, and toys, may well understand how the infant
philosophy of mankind could extend the notion of vitality
to what modern science only recognises as lifeless things;
thus one main part of the lower animistic doctrine as to souls
of objects is accounted for. The doctrine requires for its full
conception of a soul not only life, but also a phantom or
apparitional spirit ; this development, however, follows
without difficulty, for the evidence of dreams and visions ap-
plies to the spirits of objects in much the same manner as to
human ghosts. Everyone who has seen visions while light-
headed in fever, everyone who has ever dreamt a dream, has
seen the phantoms of objects as well as of persons. How
then can we charge the savage with far-fetched absurdity for
taking into his philosophy and religion an opinion which
rests on the very evidence of his senses ? The notion is im-
plicitly recognized in his accounts of ghosts, which do not
come naked, but clothed, and even armed ; of course there
must be spirits of garments and weapons, seeing that the
spirits of men come bearing them. It will indeed place
savage philosophy in no unfavourable light, if we compare
this extreme animistic development of it with the popular
opinion still surviving in civilized countries, as to ghosts
and the nature of the human soul as connected with them.
When the ghost of Hamlet's father appeared armed cap-a-pe,

' Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated.'

1 Hume, * Nat. Hist, of Rel.' sec. ii. ; Comte, 'Philosophic Positive,' vol. v.
p. 30.



SOULS OF OBJECTS. 479

And thus it is a habitual feature of the ghost-stories of the
civilized, as of the savage world, that the ghost comes
dressed, and even dressed in well-known clothing worn in

I life. Hearing as well as sight testifies to the phantoms of
objects : the clanking of ghostly chains and the rustling of
ghostly dresses are described in the literature of appari-
tions. Now by the savage theory, according to which the

j ghost and his clothes are alike real and objective, and by
the modern scientific theory, according to which both ghost
and garment are alike imaginary and subjective, the facts of
apparitions are rationally met. But the modern vulgar who
ignore or repudiate the notion of ghosts of things, while
retaining the notion of ghosts of persons, have fallen into a
hybrid state of opinion which has neither the logic of the
savage nor of the civilized philosopher.

Among the lower races of mankind, three have been ob-
served to hold most explicitly and distinctly the doctrine of
object-souls. These are the Algonquin tribes, extending
over a great district of North America, the islanders
of the Fijian group, and the Karens of Burma. Among
the Indians of North America, Father Charlevoix wrote, souls
are, as it were, the shadows and the animated images of
the body, and it is by a consequence of this principle that
they believe everything to be animate in the universe. This
missionary was especially conversant with the Algonquins,
and it was among one of their tribes, the Ojibwas, that
Keating noticed the opinion that not only men and beasts
have souls, but inorganic things, such as kettles, &c., have
in them a similar essence. In the same district Father Le
Jeune had described, in the seventeenth century, the belief
that the souls, not only of men and animals, but of hatchets
and kettles, had to cross the water to the Great Village, out
where the sun sets. 1 In interesting correspondence with

1 Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 74; Keating, ' Long's Exp.' vol. ii. p. 154; Le
Jeune, ' Nouvelle France,' p. 59 ; also Waitz, vol. iii. p. 199 ; Gregg,
' Commerce of Prairies,' vol. ii. p. 244 ; see Addison's No. 56 of the
' Spectator.'



480 ANIMISM.

this quaint thought is Mariner's description of the Fiji doc-
trine ' If an animal or a plant die, its soul immediately
goes to Bolotoo ; if a stone or any other substance is
broken, immortality is equally its reward ; nay, artificial
bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams.
If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its
soul for the service of the gods. If a house is taken down
or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situation
on the plains of Bolotoo ; and, to confirm this doctrine,
the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural well, or deep
hole in the ground, at one of their islands, across the bottom
of which runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly
perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of
stocks and stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken
utensils of this frail world, swimming, or rather tumbling
along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of im-
mortality.' A full generation later the Rev. Thomas
Williams, while remarking that the escape of brutes and
lifeless substances to the spirit-land of Mbulu does not re-
ceive universal credit among the Fijians, nevertheless con-
firms the older account of it : ' Those who profess to have
seen the souls of canoes, houses, plants, pots, or any artifi-
cial bodies, swimming with other relics of this frail world
on the stream of the Kauvandra well, which bears them
into the regions of immortality, believe this doctrine as a
matter of course ; and so do those who have seen the foot-
marks left about the same well by the ghosts of dogs, pigs,
&C.' 1 The theory among the Karens is stated by the Rev.
E. B. Cross, as follows : ' Every object is supposed to
have its " kelah." Axes and knives, as well as trees and
plants, are supposed to have their separate " kelahs." ' ' The
Karen, with his axe and cleaver, may build his house, cut
his rice, and conduct his affairs, after death as before/ 2



1 Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 129; Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 242.
Similar ideas in Tahiti, Cook's 3rd Voy. vol. ii. p. 166.

8 Cross, I.e. pp. 309, 313 ; Mason, I.e. p. 202. Compare Meiners, vol. i.
p. 144 ; Castren, ' Finn. Myth.' pp. 161-3.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 481

As so many races perform funeral sacrifices of men and
animals, in order to dispatch their souls for the service of
the soul of the deceased, so tribes who hold this doctrine of
object-souls very rationally sacrifice objects, in order to
transmit these souls. Among the Algonquin tribes, the
sacrifice of objects for the dead was a habitual rite, as when
we read of a warrior's corpse being buried with musket and
war-club, calumet and war-paint, and a public address being
made to the body at burial concerning his future path ;
while in like manner a woman would be buried with her
paddle and kettle, and the carrying-strap for the everlasting
burden of her heavily-laden life. That the purpose of such
offerings is the transmission of the object's spirit or phantom
to the possession of the man's is explicitly stated as early
as 1623 by Father Lallemant ; when the Indians buried
kettles, furs, &c., with the dead, they said that the bodies
of the things remained, but their souls went to the dead who
used them. The whole idea is graphically illustrated in
the following Ojibwa tradition or myth. Gitchi Gauzini
was a chief who lived on the shores of Lake Superior, and
once, after a few days' illness, he seemed to die. He had
been a skilful hunter, and had desired that a fine gun which
he possessed should be buried with him when he died. But
some of his friends not thinking him really dead, his body
was not buried ; his widow watched him for four days, he
came back to life, and told his story. After death, he said,
his ghost travelled on the broad road of the dead toward
the happy land, passing over great plains of luxuriant
herbage, seeing beautiful groves, and hearing the songs of
innumerable birds, till at last, from the summit of a hill, he
caught sight of the distant city of the dead, far across an
intermediate space, partly veiled in mist, and spangled with
glittering lakes and streams. He came in view of herds of
stately deer arid moose, and other game, which with little
fear walked near his path. But he had no gun, and re-
membering how he had requested his friends to put his gun
in his grave, he turned back to go and fetch it. Then he



42 ' ANIMISM.

met face to face the train of men, women, and children who
were travelling toward the city of the dead. They were
heavily laden with guns, pipes, kettles, meats, and other
articles ; women were carrying basket-work and painted
paddles, and little boys had their ornamented clubs and
their bows and arrows, the presents of their friends. Re-
fusing a gun which an overburdened traveller offered him,
the ghost of Gitchi Gauzini travelled back in quest of his
own, and at last reached the place where he had died.
There he could see only a great fire before and around him,
and finding the flames barring his passage on every side, he
made a desperate leap through, and awoke from his trance.
Having concluded his story, he gave his auditors this
counsel, that they should no longer deposit so many
burdensome things with the dead, delaying them on their
journey to the place of repose, so that almost everyone he
met complained bitterly. It would be wiser, he said, only
to put such things in the grave as the deceased was par-
ticularly attached to, or made a formal request to have
deposited with him. 1

With purpose no less distinct, when a dead Fijian chief
is laid out oiled and painted and dressed as in life, a heavy
club is placed ready near his right hand, which holds one
or more of the much-prized carved ' whale's tooth ' orna-
ments. The club is to serve for defence against the
adversaries who await his soul on the road to Mbulu, seek-
ing to slay and eat him. We hear of a Fijian taking a
club from a companion's grave, and remarking in explana-
tion to a missionary who stood by, ' The ghost of the club
has gone with him.' The purpose of the whale's tooth is
this ; on the road to the land of the dead, near the solitary
hill of Takiveleyawa, there stands a ghostly pandanus-tree,
and the spirit of the dead man is to throw the spirit of the
whale's tooth at this tree, having struck which he is to
ascend the hill and await the coming of the spirits of his

1 Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' part ii. p. 68 ; ' Algec Res.' vol. ii. p. 128 ;
Lallemant in ' Rel. des Je"suites dans la Nouvelle France,' 1626, p. 3.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 483

strangled wives. 1 The funeral rites. of the Karens complete
the present group. They kept up what seems a clear sur-
vival from actual human and animal sacrifice, fastening up
near an important person's grave a slave and a pony ; these
invariably released themselves, and the slave became hence-
forth a free man. Moreover, the practice of placing food,
implements and utensils, and .valuables of gold and silver,
near the remains of the deceased, was general among them. 8
Now the sacrifice of property for the dead is one of the
great religious rites of the world ; are we then justified in
asserting that all men who abandon or destroy property as
a funeral ceremony believe the articles to have spirits, which
spirits are transmitted to the deceased ? Not so ; it is
notorious that there are people who recognize no such theory
but who nevertheless deposit offerings with the dead. Affec-
tionate fancy or symbolism, a horror of the association of
death leading the survivors to get rid of anything that even
suggests the dreadful thought, a desire to abandon the dead
man's property, an idea that the hovering ghost may take
pleasure in or make use of the gifts left for him, all these
are or may be efficient motives. 8 Yet, having made full



1 Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. pp. 188, 243, 246 ; Alger, p. 82 ; Seemann,
' Viti,' p. 229.

8 ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' new series, vol. ii. p. 421.

8 For some cases in which horror or abnegation are assigned as motives for
abandonment of the dead man's property, see Humboldt and Bonpland,
vol. v. p. 626 ; Dalton in ' Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1866, part ii. p. 191, &c. ;
Earl, ' Papuans,' p. 108 ; Callaway, ' Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 13 ; Egede, 4 Green-
land,' p. 151 ; Cranz, p. 301 ; Loskiel, * Ind. N. A.' part i. p. 64, but see
p. 76. The destruction or abandonment of the whole property of the dead
may plausibly, whether justly or not, be explained by horror or abnegation ;
but these motives do not generally apply to cases where only part of the
property is sacrificed, or new objects are provided expressly, and here the
service of the dead seems the reasonable motive. Thus, at the funeral of
aGaro girl, earthen vessels were broken as they were thrown in above the
buried ashes. ' They said, the spirit of the girl would not benefit by them
if they were given unbroken, but for her the fragments would unite again.'
(Palton, ' Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal,' p. 67.) The mere fact of break-
ing or destruction of objects at funerals does not carry its own explanation,
for it is equally applicable to sentimental abandonment and to practical
transmission of the spirit of the object, as a man is killed to liberate his soul.



484 ANIMISM.

allowance for all this, we shall find good reason to judge
that many other peoples, though they may never have stated
the theory of object-souls in the same explicit way as the
Algonquins, Fijians, and Karens, have recognized it with
more or less distinctness. It has given me the more con-
fidence in this opinion to find it held, under proper reserva-
tion, by Mr. W. R. Alger, an American investigator, who
in a treatise entitled ' A Critical History of the Doctrine of
a Future Life' has discussed the ethnography of his sub-
ject with remarkable learning and sagacity. ' The barbarian
brain/ he writes, ' seems to have been generally impreg-
nated with the feeling that everything else has a ghost as
well as man. . . . The custom of burning or burying things
with the dead probably arose, in some cases at least, from
the supposition that every object, has its manes.' 1 It will
be desirable briefly to examine further the subject of funeral
offerings, as bearing on this interesting question of early
psychology.

A wide survey of funeral sacrifices over the world will
plainly show one of their most usual motives to be a more

For good cases of the breaking of vessels and utensils given to the dead, see
4 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 325 (Mintira) ; Grey, ' Australia,' vol i.
p. 322 ; G. F. Moore, 4 Vocab. W. Australia,' p. 13 (Australians) ; Markham
in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 188 (Ticunas) ; St John, vol. i. p. 68 (Dayaks) ;
Ellis, ' Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 254 ; Schoolcraft, * Indian Tribes,' part i.
p. 84 (Appalachicola) ; D. Wilson, ' Prehistoric Man,' vol. ii. p. 196 (N. A. I.
and ancient graves in England). Cases of formal sacrifice where objects
are offered to the dead and taken away again, are generally doubtful as to
motive ; see Spix and Martius, vol. i. p. 383 ; Martius, vol. i. p. 485 (Brazilian
Tribes) ; Moffat, ' S. Africa,' p. 308 (Bechuanas) ; ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol.
iii. p. 149 (Kayans).

1 Alger, ' Future Life,' p. 81. He treats, however (p. 76), as intentionally
symbolic the rite of the Winnebagos, who light fires on the grave to pro-
vide night after night camp-fires for the soul on its far journey (Schoolcraft,
4 Ind. Tr.' vol. iv. p. 55 ; the idea is introduced in Longfellow's ' Hiawatha,'
xix.). I agree with Dr. Brinton (' Myths of New World,' p. 241) that to
look for recondite symbolic meaning in these simple childish rites is un-
reasonable. There was a similar Aztec rite (Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 94). The
Mintira light fires on the grave for the spirit to warm itself at (' Journ. Ind.
Archip.' vol. i. p. 325*, see p. 271, and compare Martius, vol. i. p. 491). So
Australians will light a fire near their camp at night for the ghost of some
lately dead relative to sit by (Millett, 4 Australian Parsonage,' p. 76.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 485

or less defined notion of benefiting the deceased, whether
out of kindness to him or from fear of his displeasure. How
such an intention may have taken this practical shape we can
perhaps vaguely guess, familiar as we are with a state of mind
out of which funeral sacrifices could naturally have sprung.
The man is dead, but it is still possible to fancy him alive,
to take his cold hand, to speak to him, to place his chair at
the table, to bury suggestive mementoes in his coffin, to
throw flowers into his grave, to hang wreaths of everlastings
on his tomb. The Cid may be set on Babieca with his
sword Tizona in his hand, and carried out to do battle as of
old against the unbeliever ; the dead king's meal may be
carried in to him in state, although the chamberlain must
announce that the king does not dine to-day. Such child-
like ignoring of death, such childlike make-believe that the
dead can still do as heretofore, may well have led the savage
to bury with his kinsman the weapons, clothes, and orna-
ments that he used in life, to try to feed the corpse, to put
a cigar in the mouth of the skull before* its final burial, to
lay playthings in the infant's grave. But one thought be-
yond would carry this dim blind fancy into the range of
logical reasoning. Granted that the man is dead and his
soul gone out of him, then the way to provide that departed
soul with food or clothes or weapons is to bury or burn them
with the body, for whatever happens to the man may be
taken to happen to the objects that lie beside him and share
his fate, while the precise way in which the transmission
takes place may be left undecided. It is possible that the
funeral sacrifice customary among mankind may have
rested at first, and may to some extent still rest, on vague
thoughts and imaginations like these, as yet fitted into no
more definite and elaborate philosophic theory.

There are, however, two great groups of cases of funeral

sacrifice, which so logically lead up to or involve the notion

;' of souls or spirits of objects, that the sacrificer himself

I could hardly answer otherwise a point-blank question as to

* their meaning. The first group is that in which those who



486 ANIMISM.

sacrifice men and beasts with the intention of conveying
their souls to the other world, also sacrifice lifeless things
indiscriminately with them. The second group is that in
which the phantoms of the objects sacrificed are traced dis-
tinctly into the possession of the human phantom.

The Caribs, holding that after decease man's soul found
its way to the land of the dead, sacrificed slaves on a chief's
grave to serve him in the new life, and for the same purpose
buried dogs with him, and also weapons. 1 The Guinea
negroes, at the funeral of a great man, killed several wives
and slaves to serve him in the other world, and put fine
clothes, gold fetishes, coral, beads, and other valuables, into
the coffin, to be used there too. 2 When the New Zealand
chief had slaves killed at his death for his service, and the
mourning family gave his chief widow a rope to hang her-
self with in the woods and so rejoin her husband, 3 it is not
easy to discern here a motive different from that which
induced them at the same time to provide the dead man also
with his weapons. Nor can an intellectual line well be
drawn between the intentions with which the Tunguz has
buried with him his horse, his bow and arrows, his smoking
apparatus and kettle. In the typical description which
Herodotus gives of the funeral of the ancient Scythian
chiefs, the miscellaneous contents of the burial-mound,
the strangled wife and household servants, the horses, the
choice articles of property, the golden vessels, fairly repre-
sent the indiscriminate purpose which actuated the barbaric
sacrifice of creatures and things. 4 So in old Europe, the
warrior with his sword and spear, the horse with his saddle,
the hunter's hound and hawk and his bow and arrow, the
wife with her gay clothes and jewels, lie together in the
burial-mound. Their common purpose has become one of
the most undisputed inferences of Archaeology.

1 J. G. Mailer, ' Amer. Urrelig.' p. 222, see 420.
1 Bosnian, ' Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 430.
Polack, ' M. of NewZealanders,' vol. ii. pp. 66, 78, 1 16, 127.
4 Georgi, * Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 266 ; Herodot. iv. 71, see note in Rawlin-
on's Tr. &c. fee.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 487

As for what becomes of the objects sacrificed for the dead
there are on record the most distinct statements taken from
the sacrificers themselves. Although the objects rot in the
grave or are consumed on the pile, they nevertheless come
in some way into the possession of the disembodied souls
they are intended for. Not the material things themselves,
but phantasmal shapes corresponding to them, are carried
by the souls of the dead on their far journey beyond the
grave, or are used in the world of spirits ; while sometimes
the phantoms of the dead appear to the living, bearing
property which they have received by sacrifice, or demand-
ing something that has been withheld. The Australian
will take his weapons with him to his paradise. 1 A Tas-
manian, asked the reason of a spear being deposited in a
native's grave, replied ' To fight with when he is alseep.' 8
Many Greenlanders thought that the kayak and arrows
and tools laid by a man's grave, the knife and sewing
implements laid by a woman's, would be used in the next
world. 3 The instruments buried with the Sioux are for
him to make a living with hereafter ; the paints provided
for the dead Iroquois were to enable him to appear decently
in the other world. 4 The Aztec's water-bottle was to serve
him on the journey to Mictlan, the land of the dead ; the
bonfire of garments and baskets and spoils of war was
intended to send them with him, and somehow to protect
him against the bitter wind ; the offerings to the warrior's
manes on earth would reach him on the heavenly plains. 5
Among the old Peruvians, a dead prince's wives would
hang themselves in order to continue in his service, and
many of his attendants would be buried in his fields or
places of favourite resort, in order that his soul, passing

1 Oldficld in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. pp. 228, 245.

1 Bonwick, ' Tasmanians,' p. 97.

8 Cranz, ' Gronland,' pp. 263, 301.

4 Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' part iv. pp. 55. 65 ; J. G. Muller, ' Amer.
Urrel.' pp. 88, 287.

' Sahagun, book iii. App. in Kingsborough, ' Antiquities of Mexico,' vol.
vii. j Clavigero, vol. U. p. 94 ; Brasseur, vol. iii. pp. 497, 569.



488 ANIMISM.

through those places, might take their souls along with
him for future service. In perfect consistency with these
strong animistic notions, the Peruvians declared that their
reason for sacrifice of property to the dead was that they
' have seen, or thought they saw, those who have long been
dead walking, adorned with the things that were buried
with them, and accompanied by their wives who had been
buried alive.' 1

As definite an implication of the spirit or phantom of an
object appears in a recent account from Madagascar, where
things are buried to become in some way useful to the dead.
When King Radama died, it was reported and firmly be-
lieved that his ghost was seen one night in the garden of
his country seat, dressed in one of the uniforms which had
been buried with him, and riding one of the best horses
killed opposite his tomb. 2 Turanian tribes of North Asia
avow that the motive of their funeral offerings of horses and
sledges, clothes and axes and kettles, flint and steel and
tinder, meat and butter, is to provide the dead for his
journey to the land of souls, and for his life there. 8 Among
the Esths of Northern Europe, the dead starts properly
equipped 'on his ghostly journey with needle and thread,
hairbrush and soap, bread and brandy and coin ; a toy, if it
is a child. And so full a consciousness of practical meaning
survived till lately, that now and then a soul would come
back at night to reproach its relations with not having pro-
vided properly for it, but left it in distress. 4 To turn from
these now Europeanized Tatars to a rude race of the Eastern
Archipelago, among the Orang Binua of Sambawa there
prevails this curious law of inheritance ; not only does each
surviving relative, father, mother, son, brother, and so forth,

1 Cieza de Leon, p. 161 ; Rivero and Tschudi, ' Peruvian Antiquities,'
pp. 1 86, 200.

8 Ellis, ' Hist, of Madagascar,' vol. i. pp. 254, 429 ; see Flacourt, p. 60.

8 Castre"n, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 1 18 ; J. Billings, ' Exp. to N. Russia,' p. 129 ;
see ' Samoiedia ' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 532, and Leems, ' Lapland;' ibid,
p. 484.

4 Boeder, ' Ehaten Gebrauche,' p. 69.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 489

take his or her proper share, but the deceased inherits one
share from himself, which is devoted to his use by eating the
animals at the funeral feast, burning everything else that
will burn, and burying the remainder. 1 In Cochin China, the
common people object to celebrating their feast of the dead
on the same day with the upper classes, for this excellent
reason, that the aristocratic souls might make the ser-
vant souls carry home their presents for them. These
people employ all the resources of their civilization to per-
form with the more lavish extravagance the savage funeral
sacrifices. Here are details from an account published in
1849 of the funeral of a late king of Cochin China. ' When
the corpse of Thien Tri was deposited in the coffin, there
were also deposited in it many things for the use of the
deceased in the other world, such as his crown, turbans,
clothes of all descriptions, gold, silver, and other precious
articles, rice and other provisions.' Meals were set out near
the coffin, and there was a framed piece of damask with
woollen characters, the abode of one of the souls of the
defunct. In the tomb, an enclosed edifice of stone, the
childless wives of the deceased were to be perpetually shut
up to guard the sepulchre, * and prepare daily the food and
other things of which they think the deceased has need in
the other life.' At the time of the deposit of the coffin
in a cavern behind the tomb building, there were burnt
there great piles of boats, stages, and everything used in
the funeral, ' and moreover of all the objects which had
been in use by the king during his lifetime, of chessmen,
musical instruments, fans, boxes, parasols, mats, fillets,
carriages, &c., &c., and likewise a horse and an elephant of
wood and pasteboard.' ' Some months after the funeral, at
two different times, there were constructed in a forest near
a pagoda two magnificent palaces of wood with rich furnish-
ings, in all things similar to the palace which the defunct
monarch had inhabited. Each palace was composed of
twenty rooms, and the most scrupulous attention was given

1 ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii. p. 691 ; see vol. i. pp. 297, 349.



490 ANIMISM.

in order that nothing might be awanting necessary for a
palace, and these palaces were burned with great pomp, and
it is thus that immense riches have been given to the flames
from the foolish belief that it would serve the dead in the
other world.' 1

Though the custom is found among the Beduins of array-
ing the dead with turban, girdle, and sword, yet funeral
offerings for the service of the dead are by no means con-
spicuous among Semitic nations. The mention of the rite
by Ezekiel, while showing a full sense of its meaning,
characterizes it as not Israelite, but Gentile : ' The mighty
fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to Hades
with weapons of war, and they have laid their swords under
their heads.' 8 Among the Aryan nations, on the contrary,
such funeral offerings are known to have prevailed widely
and of old, while for picturesqueness of rite and definite-
ness of purpose they can scarcely be surpassed even among
savages. Why the Brahman's sacrificial instruments are
to be burnt with him on the funeral pile, appears from this
line of the Veda recited at the ceremony: ' Yada gachchatya-
sunitimetamatha devanam vasanirbhavati,' 'When he
cometh unto that life, faithfully will he do the service of
the gods.' 3 Lucian is sarcastic, but scarcely unfair, in
his comments on the Greek funeral rites, speaking of
those who slew horses and slave-girls and cupbearers, and
burned or buried clothes and ornaments, as for use and
service in the world below ; of the meat amd drink offerings
on the tombs which serve to feed the bodiless shades in
Hades ; of the splendid garments and the garlands of the
dead, that they might not suffer cold upon the road, nor
be seen naked by Kerberos. For Kerberos was intended
the honey-cake deposited with the dead ; and the obolus

1 Bastian, * Psychologic/ p. 89 ; 4 Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 337. For
other instances, see Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 332, &c. ; Alger, ' Future
Life,' part ii.

2 Klemm, ' C. G.' vol. iv. p. 159 ; Ezek. xxxii. 27.

3 Max Muller, ' Todtenbestattung der Brahmanen/ in D. M. Z. vol. ix.
pp. vii.-xiv.



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 49!

placed in the mouth was the toll for Charon, save at
Hermione in Argolis, where men thought there was a
short descent to Hades, and therefore provided the dead
with no coin for the grim ferryman. How such ideas could
be realized, may be seen in the story of Eukrates, whose
dead wife appeared to him to demand one of her golden
sandals, which had been dropped underneath the chest, and
so not burnt for her with the rest of her wardrobe ; or in
the story of Periander, whose dead wife Melissa refused to
give him an oracular response, for she was shivering and
naked, because the garments buried with her had not been
burnt, and so were of no use, wherefore Periander plundered
the Corinthian women of their best clothes, which he burned
in a great trench with prayer, and now obtained his answer. 1
The ancient Gauls were led, by their belief in another life,
to burn and bury with the dead things suited to the living ;
nor is the record improbable that they transferred to the
world below the repayment of loans, for even in modern
centuries the Japanese would borrow money in this life, to
be repaid with heavy interest in the next. 2 The souls of the
Norse dead took with them from their earthly home servants
and horses, boats and ferry-money, clothes and weapons.
Thus, in death as in life, they journeyed, following the long
dark 'hell-way' (helvegr). The ' hell-shoon ' (helsko)
were bound upon the dead man's feet for the toilsome
journey ; and when King Harald was slain in the battle of
Bravalla, they drove his war-chariot, with the corpse upon it
into the great burial-mound, and there they killed the horse,
and King Hring gave his own saddle beside, that the fallen
chief might ride or drive to Walhalla, as it pleased him. 8
Lastly, in the Lithuanian and old Prussian district, where
Aryan heathendom held its place in Europe so firmly and so

1 Lucian. De Luctu, 9, &c. ; Philopseudes, 27 ; Strabo, viii. 6, 12 ; Hero-
dot, v. 92 ; Smith's ' Die. Gr. and Rom. Ant.' art. ' funus.'

2 Valer. Max. ii. ; Mela, iii. 2. Froius (1565) in Maffei, ' Histor. In-
dicarum,' lib. iv.

Grimm, ' Verbrennen der Leichen,' pp. 232, &c., 247, &c> ; ' Deutsche
Myth.' pp. 795-800.



492 ANIMISM.

late, accounts of funeral sacrifice of men, and beasts, and
things, date on even beyond the middle ages. Even as they
thought that men would live again in the resurrection rich
or poor, noble or peasant, as on earth, so ' they believed
that the things burned would rise again with them, and serve
them as before.' Among these people lived the Kriwe Kri-
weito, the great priest, whose house was on the high steep
mountain Anafielas. All the souls of their dead must
clamber up this mountain, wherefore they burned with them
claws of bears and lynxes for their help. All the souls
must pass through the Kriwe 's house, and he could describe
to the surviving relatives of each the clothes, and horse, and
weapons he had seen him come with, and even show, for
greater certainty, some mark made with lance or other
instrument by the passing soul. 1 Such examples of funeral
rites show a common ceremony, and to a great degree a
common purpose, obtaining from savagery through bar-
barism, and even into the higher civilization. Now could
we have required from all these races a distinct answer to
the question, whether they believed in spirits of all things,
from men and beasts down to spears and cloaks, sticks
and stones, it is likely that we might have often received
the same acknowledgment of fully developed animism
which stands on record in North America, Polynesia, and
-Burma. Failing such direct testimony, it is at least justi-
fiable to say that the lower culture, by practically dealing
with object-souls, goes far towards acknowledging their
existence.

Before quitting the discussion of funeral offerings for
transmission to the dead, the custom must be traced to its
final decay. It is apt not to die out suddenly, but to leave
surviving remnants, more or less dwindled in form and
changed in meaning. The Kanowits of Borneo talk of

1 Dusburg, ' Chronicon Prussiae,' iii. c. v. ; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' pp.
898, 415 (Anafielas is the glass-mountain of Slavonic and German myth,
see Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 796). Compare statement in St. Clair and Brophy,
' Bulgaria,' p. 61 ; as to food transmitted to dead in other world, with more
probable explanation, p. 77.



>BJECT SACRIFICE. 493

setting a man's property adrift for use in the next world,
and even go so far as to lay out his valuables by the bier,
but in fact they only commit to the frail canoe a few old
things not worth plundering. 1 So in North America, the
funeral sacrifice of the Winnebagos has come down to
burying a pipe and tobacco with the dead, and sometimes a
club in a warrior's grave, while the goods brought and hung
up at the burial-place are no longer left there, but the sur-
vivors gamble for them. 2 The Santals of Bengal put two
vessels, one for rice and the other for water, on the dead
man's couch, with a few rupees, to enable him to appease
the demons on the threshold of the shadowy world, but
when the funeral pile is ready these things are removed. 8
The fanciful art of replacing costly offerings by worthless
imitations is at this day worked out into the quaintest
devices in China. As the men and horses dispatched by
fire for the service of the dead are but paper figures, so
offerings of clothes and money may be represented likewise.
The imitations of Spanish pillar-dollars in pasteboard
covered with tinfoil, the sheets of tinfoil-paper which stand
for silver money, and if coloured yellow for gold, are con-
sumed in such quantities that the sham becomes a serious
reality, for the manufacture of mock-money is the trade of
thousands of women and children in a Chinese city. In a
similar way trunks full of property are forwarded in the
care of the newly deceased, to friends who are gone before.
Pretty paper houses, ' Deplete with every luxury/ as our
auctioneers say, are burnt for the dead Chinaman to live in
hereafter, and the paper keys are burnt also, that he may
unfasten the paper locks of the paper chests that hold the
ingots of gold-paper and silver-paper, which are to be real-
ized as current gold and silver in the other world, an idea
which, however, does not prevent the careful survivors from

1 St. John, ' Far East,' vol. i. pp. 54, 68. Compare Bosman, 4 Guinea,' in
Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 430.

8 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iv. p. 54.
3 Hunter, ' Rural Bengal,' p. 210.



494 ANIMISM.

collecting the ashes to re-extract the tin from them in this. 1
Again, when the modern Hindu offers to his dead parent
funeral cakes with flowers and betel, he presents a woollen
yarn which he lays across the cake, and naming the deceased
says, ' May this apparel, made of woollen yarn, be accept-
able to thee.' 2 Such facts as these suggest a symbolic
meaning in the practically useless offerings which Sir John
Lubbock groups together the little models of kayaks and
spears in Esquimaux graves, the models of objects in
Egyptian tombs, and the flimsy unserviceable jewelry
buried with the Etruscan dead. 3

Just as people in Borneo, after they had become Moham-
medans, still kept up the rite of burying provisions for the
dead man's journey, as a mark of respect, 4 so the rite of
interring funeral offerings survived in Christian Europe.
The ancient Greek burial of the dead with the obolus in his
mouth for Charon's toll is represented in the modern Greek
world, where Charon and the funeral coin are both familiar.
As the old Prussians furnished the dead with spending-
money to buy refreshment on his weary journey, so to this
day German peasants bury a corpse with money in his mouth
or hand, a fourpenny-piece or so. Similar little funeral
offerings of coin are recorded in the folklore books else-
where in Europe. 6 Christian funeral offerings of this kind
are mostly trifling in value, and doubtful as to the meaning
with which they were kept up. The early Christians re-
tained the heathen custom of placing in the tomb such
things as articles of the toilette and children's playthings ;
modern Greeks would place oars on a shipman's grave, and

1 Davis, 4 Chinese,' vol. i. p. 276 ; Doolittle, vol. i. p. 193 ; vol. ii. p. 275 ;
Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 334 ; see Marco Polo, book ii. ch. Ixviii.

2 Colebrooke, ' Essays,' vol. i. pp. 161, 169.

8 Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times,' p. 142 ; Wilkinson, ' Ancient Eg.' vol. ii.

P-3'9-

4 Beeckmann, ' Voy. to Borneo,' in Pinkerton, vol. xi. p. 1 10.

5 Politis, 'Neohellen. Mythologia,' vol. i. part i. p. 266; Hartknoch, 'Alt.
und Neues Preussen,' part i. p. 181 ; Grimm, ' D. M.' pp. 791-5 ; Wuttke,
'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 212; Rochholz, 'Deutscher Glaube,' &c.
vol. i. p. 187, &c. ; Maury, ' Magie,' &c. p. 158 (France).



FUNERAL OBJECT SACRIFICE. 495

other such tokens for other crafts ; the beautiful classic rite
of scattering flowers over the dead still holds its place in
Europe. 1 Whatever may have been the thoughts which
first prompted these kindly ceremonies, they were thoughts
belonging to far prae-Christian ages. The change of sacri-
fice from its early significance is shown among the Hindus,
who have turned it to account for purposes of priestcraft :
he who gives water or shoes to a Brahman will find water
to refresh him, and shoes to wear, on the journey to the
next world, while the gift of a present house will secure him
a future palace. 2 In interesting correspondence with this,
is a transition from pagan to Christian folklore in our own
land. The Lyke-Wake Dirge, the not yet forgotten funeral
chant of the North Country, tells, like some savage or
barbaric legend, of the passage over the Bridge of Death
and the dreadful journey to the other world. But though
the ghostly traveller's feet are still shod with the old Norse-
man's hell-shoon, he gains them no longer by funeral
offering, but by his own charity in life :

' This a nighte, this a nighte

Every night and alle ;
Fire and fleet and candle-light,

And Christe receive thy saule.

When them from hence away'are paste

Every night and alle ;
To Whinny-moor thou comes at laste,

And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gave either hosen or shoon,

Every night and alle ;
Sit thee down and put them on,

And Christe receive thy saule.

But if hosen nor shoon thou never gave neean,

Every night and alle ;
The Whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beean,

And Christe receive thy saule.

1 Maitland, ' Church in the Catacombs,' p. 137 ; Forbes Leslie, vol. ii.
p. 502 ; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 750 ; Brand, 4 Pop. Ant.', vol. ii. p. 307.
* Ward, ' Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 284.



ANIMISM.

From Whinny-moore when thou may passe,

Every night and alle ;
To Brig o' Dread thou comes at laste,

And Christe receive thy saule.

From Brig o' Dread when thou are paste,

Every night and alle ;
To Purgatory Fire thou comes at laste,

And Christe receive thy saule.

If ever thou gave either milke or drink,

Every night and alle ;
The fire shall never make thet shrinke,

And Christe receive thy saule.

But if milk nor drink thou never gave neean,

Every night and alle ;
The fire shall burn thee to the bare beean

And Christe receive thy saule.' l



What reader, unacquainted with the old doctrine of offer-
ings for the dead, could realize the meaning of its remnants
thus lingering in peasants' minds ? The survivals from
ancient funeral ceremony may here again serve as warnings
against attempting to explain relics of intellectual an-
tiquity by viewing them from the changed level of modern
opinion.

Having thus surveyed at large the theory of spirits or
souls of objects, it remains to point out what, to general
students, may seem the most important consideration be-
longing to it, namely, its close relation to one of the most



1 From the collated and annotated text in J. C. Atkinson, ' Glossary of
Cleveland Dialect/ p. 595 (a= one, neean = none, beean = bone). Other
versions in Scott, ' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. ii. p. 367 ; Kelly,
* Indo-European Folk-lore,' p. 115; Brand, ' Pop. Ant.' vol. ii. p. 275.
Two verses have perhaps been lost between the fifth and sixth. J. C. A.
reads ' meate ' in vv. 7 and 8 ; the usual reading ' milke ' is retained here.
The sense of these two verses may be that the liquor sacrificed in life will
quench the fire: an idea parallel to that known to folklore, that he who
gave bread in his lifetime will find it after death ready for him to cast
into the hellhound's jaws (Mannhardt, ' Gotterwelt der Deutschen and
Nordischen Volker,' p. 319), a sop to Cerberus.



DEVELOPMENT OF SOUL TO IDEA.



497



influential doctrines of civilized philosophy. The savage
thinker, though occupying himself so much with the pheno-
mena of life, sleep, disease, and death, seems to have taken
for granted, as a matter of course, the ordinary operations of
his own mind. It hardly occurred to him to think about the
machinery of thinking. Metaphysics is a study which first
assumes clear shape at a comparatively high level of intellec-
tual culture . The metaphysical philosophy of thought taught
in our modern European lecture-rooms is historically traced
back to the speculative psychology of classic Greece. Now
one doctrine which there comes into view is especially asso-
ciated with the name of Democritus, the philosopher of
Abdera, in the fifth century B.C. When Democritus pro-
pounded the great problem of metaphysics, ' How do we
perceive external things ? ' thus making, as Lewes says,
an era in the history of philosophy, he put forth, in
answer to the question, a theory of thought. He explained
the fact of perception by declaring that things are always
throwing off images (ctSwAa) of themselves, which images,
assimilating to themselves the surrounding air, enter a re-
cipient soul, and are thus perceived. Now, supposing Demo-
critus to have been really the originator of this famed theory
of ideas, how far is he to be considered its inventor ?
Writers on the history of philosophy are accustomed to
treat the doctrine as actually made by the philosophical
school which taught it. Yet the evidence here brought for-
ward shows it to be really the savage doctrine of object-
souls, turned to a new purpose as a method of explaining
the phenomena of thought. Nor is the correspondence a
mere coincidence, for at this point of junction between
classic religion and classic philosophy the traces of histo-
rical continuity may be still discerned. To say that De-
mocritus was an ancient Greek is to say that from his
childhood he had looked on at the funeral ceremonies of his
country, beholding the funeral sacrifices of garments and
jewels and money and food and drink, rites which his
mother and his nurse could tell him were performed in



498 ANIMISM.

order that the phantasmal images of these objects might
pass into the possession of forms shadowy like themselves,
the souls of dead men. Thus Democritus, seeking a solu-
tion of his great problem of the nature of thought, found
it by simply decanting into his metaphysics a surviving
doctrine of primitive savage animism. This thought of
the phantoms or souls of things, if simply modified to form
a philosophical theory of perception, would then and there
become his doctrine of Ideas. Nor does even this fully
represent the closeness of union which connects the savage
doctrine of flitting object-souls with the Epicurean philo-
sophy. Lucretius actually makes the theory of film-like
images of things (simulacra, membranae) account both for
the apparitions which come to men in dreams, and the
images which impress their minds in thinking. So un-
broken is the continuity of philosophic speculation from
savage to cultured thought. Such are the debts which civi-
lized philosophy owes to primitive animism.

The doctrine of ideas, thus developed in the classic world,
has, indeed, by no means held its course thenceforth un-
changed through metaphysics, but has undergone transition
somewhat like that of the doctrine of the soul itself. Ideas,
fined down to the abstract forms or species of material ob-
jects, and applied to other than visible qualities, have at
last come merely to denote subjects of thought. Yet to
this day the old theory has not utterly died out, and the
retention of the significant term ' idea ' d'Sea, visible
form) is accompanied by a similar retention of original
meaning. It is still one of the tasks of the metaphysician
to display and refute the old notion of ideas as being real
images, and to replace it by more abstract conceptions. It
is a striking instance that Dugald Stewart can cite from the
works of Sir Isaac Newton the following distinct recognition
of 'sensible species:' ' Is not the sensorium of animals,
the place where the sentient substance is present ; and to
which the sensible species of things are brought, thr ouh
the nerves and brain, that there they may be perceived by



DEVELOPMENT OF SOUL TO IDEA. 499

the mind present in that place ? ' Again, Dr. Reid states the
original theory of ideas, while declaring that he conceives
it ' to have no solid foundation, though it has been adopted
very generally by philosophers. . . . This notion of our
perceiving external objects, not immediately, but in certain
images or species of them conveyed by the senses, seems
to be the most ancient philosophical hypothesis we have 019
the subject of perception, and to have, with small varia-
tions, retained its authority to this day.' Granted that
Dr. Reid exaggerated the extent to which metaphysicians
have kept up the notion of ideas as real images of things,
few will deny that it does linger much in modern minds,
and that people who talk of ideas do often, in some hazy
metaphorical way, think of sensible images. 1 One of the
shrewdest things ever said about either ideas or ghosts was
Bishop Berkeley's retort upon Halley, who bantered him
about his idealism. The bishop claimed the mathematician
as an idealist also, his ' ultimate ratios ' being ghosts of
departed quantities, appearing when the terms that pro-
duced them vanished.

It remains to sum up in few words the doctrine of souls,
in the various phases it has assumed from first to last among
mankind. In the attempt to trace its main course through
the successive grades of man's intellectual history, the evi-
dence seems to accord best with a theory of its development,
somewhat to the following effect. At the lowest levels of
culture of which we have clear knowledge, the notion of a
ghost-soul animating man while in the body, and appearing
in dream and vision out of the body, is found deeply in-
grained. There is no reason to think that this belief was
learnt by savage tribes from contact with higher races, nor
that it is a relic of higher culture from which the savage
tribes have degenerated ; for what is here treated as the

1 Lewes, * Biographical History of Philosophy,' Democritus (and see his
remarks on Reid) ; Lucretius, lib. iv. ; ' Early Hist, of Mankind,' p. 8 ;
Stewart, ' Philosophy of Human Mind,' vol i. chap. i. sec. z ; Reid, ' Essays,'
ii. chaps, iv. xiv. ; see Thos. Browne, ' Philosophy of the Mind,' lect. 27.



500 ANIMISM.

primitive animistic doctrine is thoroughly at home among
savages, who appear to hold it on the very evidence of their
senses, interpreted on the biological principle which seems
to them most reasonable. We may now and then hear the
savage doctrines and practices concerning souls claimed as
relics of a high religious culture pervading the primaeval
*ace of man. They are said to be traces of remote ancestral
religion, kept up in scanty and perverted memory by tribes
degraded from a nobler state. It is easy to see that such
an explanation of some few facts, sundered from their con-
nexion with the general array, may seem plausible to certain
minds. But a large view of the subject can hardly leave
such argument in possession. The animism of savages
stands for and by itself ; it explains its own origin. The
animism of civilized men, while more appropriate to ad-
vanced knowledge, is in great measure only explicable as a
developed product of the older and ruder system. It is the
doctrines and rites of the lower races which are, according
to their philosophy, results of point-blank natural evidence
and acts of straightforward practical purpose. It is the
doctrines and rites of the higher races which show survival
of the old in the midst of the new, modification of the old
to bring it into conformity with the new, abandonment of
the old because it is no longer compatible with the new.
Let us see at a glance in what general relation the doctrine
of souls among savage tribes stands to the doctrine of souls
among barbaric and cultured nations. Among races within
the limits of savagery, the general doctrine of souls is found
worked out with remarkable breadth and consistency. The
souls of animals are recognized by a natural extension from
the theory of human souls ; the souls of trees and plants
follow in some vague partial way ; and the souls of inani-
mate objects expand the general category to its extremest
boundary. Thenceforth, as we explore human thought
onward from savage into barbarian and civilized life, we
find a state of theory more conformed to positive science,
but in itself less complete and consistent. Far on into



DOCTRINE OF SOUL. 501

civilization, men still act as though in some half-meant way
they believed in souls or ghosts of objects, while neverthe-
less their knowledge of physical science is beyond so crude
a philosophy. As to the doctrine of souls of plants, frag-
mentary evidence of the history of its breaking down in
Asia has reached us. In our own day and country, the
notion of souls of beasts is to be seen dying out. Animism,
indeed, seems to be drawing in its outposts, and concen-
trating itself on its first and main position, the doctrine of
the human soul. This doctrine has undergone extreme
modification in the course of culture. It has outlived the
almost total loss of one great argument attached to it, the
objective reality of apparitional souls or ghosts seen in
dreams and visions. The soul has given up its ethereal
substance, and become an immaterial entity, * the shadow
of a shade/ Its theory is becoming separated from the
investigations of biology and mental science, which now
discuss the phenomena of life and thought, the senses and
the intellect, the emotions and the will, on a ground-work of
pure experience. There has arisen an intellectual product
whose very existence is of the deepest significance, a
' psychology ' which has no longer anything to do with
' soul.' The soul's place in modern thought is in the
metaphysics of religion, and its especial office there is that
of furnishing an intellectual side to the religious doctrine
of the future life. Such are the alterations which have
differenced the fundamental animistic belief in its course
through successive periods of the world's culture. Yet it is
evident that, notwithstanding all this profound change, the
conception of the human soul is, as to its most essential
nature, continuous from the philosophy of the savage
thinker to that of the modern professor of theology. Its
definition has remained from the first that of an animating,
separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual per-
sonal existence. The theory of the soul is one principal
part of a system of religious philosophy which unites, in
an unbroken line of mental connexion, the savage fetish-

I. 2K



502 ' ANIMISM.

worshipper and the civilized Christian. The divisions which
have separated the great religions of the world into
intolerant and hostile sects are for the most part superficial
in comparison with the deepest of all religious schisms,
that which divides Animism from Materialism.



END OF VOL. I.



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