The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 1 (of 3)
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Title: The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 1 (of 3)
Author: James George Frazer
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Language: English
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THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AND THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD
by
J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Liverpool.
VOL. I
The Belief Among the Aborigines of Australia, the Torres Straits
Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia
The Gifford Lectures, St. Andrews 1911-1912
MacMillan and Co., Limited
St. Martin's Street, London
1913
_Itaque unum illud erat insitum priscis illis, quos cascos
appellat Ennius, esse in morte sensum neque excessu vitae sic
deleri hominem, ut funditus interiret; idque cum multis aliis
rebus; tum e pontificio jure et e caerimoniis sepulchrorum
intellegi licet, quas maxumis ingeniis praediti nec tanta cura
coluissent nec violatas tam inexpiabili religione sanxissent,
nisi haereret in corum mentibus mortem non interitum esse omnia
tollentem atque delentem, sed quandam quasi migrationem
commutationemque vitae._
Cicero, _Tuscul. Disput._ i. 12.
TO
MY OLD FRIEND
JOHN SUTHERLAND BLACK, LL.D.
I DEDICATE AFFECTIONATELY
A WORK
WHICH OWES MUCH TO HIS ENCOURAGEMENT
PREFACE
The following lectures were delivered on Lord Gifford's Foundation
before the University of St. Andrews in the early winters of 1911 and
1912. They are printed nearly as they were spoken, except that a few
passages, omitted for the sake of brevity in the oral delivery, have
been here restored and a few more added. Further, I have compressed the
two introductory lectures into one, striking out some passages which on
reflection I judged to be irrelevant or superfluous. The volume
incorporates twelve lectures on "The Fear and Worship of the Dead" which
I delivered in the Lent and Easter terms of 1911 at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and repeated, with large additions, in my course at St.
Andrews.
The theme here broached is a vast one, and I hope to pursue it hereafter
by describing the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead, as
these have been found among the other principal races of the world both
in ancient and modern times. Of all the many forms which natural
religion has assumed none probably has exerted so deep and far-reaching
an influence on human life as the belief in immortality and the worship
of the dead; hence an historical survey of this most momentous creed and
of the practical consequences which have been deduced from it can hardly
fail to be at once instructive and impressive, whether we regard the
record with complacency as a noble testimony to the aspiring genius of
man, who claims to outlive the sun and the stars, or whether we view it
with pity as a melancholy monument of fruitless labour and barren
ingenuity expended in prying into that great mystery of which fools
profess their knowledge and wise men confess their ignorance.
J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge,
_9th February 1913._
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Table of Contents
Lecture I.--Introduction
Natural theology, three modes of handling it, the dogmatic, the
philosophical, and the historical, pp. 1 _sq._; the historical method
followed in these lectures, 2 _sq._; questions of the truth and moral
value of religious beliefs irrelevant in an historical enquiry, 3 _sq._;
need of studying the religion of primitive man and possibility of doing
so by means of the comparative method, 5 _sq._; urgent need of
investigating the native religion of savages before it disappears, 6
_sq._; a portion of savage religion the theme of these lectures, 7
_sq._; the question of a supernatural revelation dismissed, 8 _sq._;
theology and religion, their relations, 9; the term God defined, 9
_sqq._; monotheism and polytheism, 11; a natural knowledge of God, if it
exists, only possible through experience, 11 _sq._; the nature of
experience, 12 _sq._; two kinds of experience, an inward and an outward,
13 _sq._; the conception of God reached historically through both kinds
of experience, 14; inward experience or inspiration, 14 _sq._;
deification of living men, 16 _sq._; outward experience as a source of
the idea of God, 17; the tendency to seek for causes, 17 _sq._; the
meaning of cause, 18 _sq._; the savage explains natural processes by the
hypothesis of spirits or gods, 19 _sq._; natural processes afterwards
explained by hypothetical forces and atoms instead of by hypothetical
spirits and gods, 20 _sq._; nature in general still commonly explained
by the hypothesis of a deity, 21 _sq._; God an inferential or
hypothetical cause, 22 _sq._; the deification of dead men, 23-25; such a
deification presupposes the immortality of the human soul or rather its
survival for a longer or shorter time after death, 25 _sq._; the
conception of human immortality suggested both by inward experience,
such as dreams, and by outward experience, such as the resemblances of
the living to the dead, 26-29; the lectures intended to collect evidence
as to the belief in immortality among certain savage races, 29 _sq._;
the method to be descriptive rather than comparative or philosophical,
30.
Lecture II.--The Savage Conception of Death
The subject of the lectures the belief in immortality and the worship of
the dead among certain of the lower races, p. 31; question of the nature
and origin of death, 31 _sq._; universal interest of the question, 32
_sq._; the belief in immortality general among mankind, 33; belief of
many savages that death is not natural and that they would never die if
their lives were not cut prematurely short by sorcery, 33 _sq._;
examples of this belief among the South American Indians, 34 _sqq._;
death sometimes attributed to sorcery and sometimes to demons, practical
consequence of this distinction, 37; belief in sorcery as the cause of
death among the Indians of Guiana, 38 _sq._, among the Tinneh Indians of
North America, 39 _sq._, among the aborigines of Australia, 40-47, among
the natives of the Torres Straits Islands and New Guinea, 47, among the
Melanesians, 48, among the Malagasy, 48 _sq._, and among African tribes,
49-51; effect of such beliefs in thinning the population by causing
multitudes to die for the imaginary crime of sorcery, 51-53; some
savages attribute certain deaths to other causes than sorcery, 53;
corpse dissected to ascertain cause of death, 53 _sq._; the possibility
of natural death admitted by the Melanesians and the Caffres of South
Africa, 54-56; the admission marks an intellectual advance, 56 _sq._;
the recognition of ghosts or spirits, apart from sorcery, as a cause of
disease and death also marks a step in moral and social progress, 57
_sq._
Lecture III.--Myths of the Origin of Death
Belief of savages in man's natural immortality, p. 59; savage stories of
the origin of death, 59 _sq._; four types of such stories:--
(1) _The Story of the Two Messengers_.--Zulu story of the chameleon and
the lizard, 60 _sq._; Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush, 61
_sq._; Togo story of the dog and the frog, 62 _sq._; Ashantee story of
the goat and the sheep, 63 _sq._
(2) _The Story of the Waxing and Waning Moon_.--Hottentot story of the
moon, the hare, and death, 65; Masai story of the moon and death, 65
_sq._; Nandi story of the moon, the dog, and death, 66; Fijian story of
the moon, the rat, and death, 67; Caroline, Wotjobaluk, and Cham stories
of the moon, death, and resurrection, 67; death and resurrection after
three days suggested by the reappearance of the new moon after three
days, 67 _sq._
(3) _The Story of the Serpent and his Cast Skin_.--New Britain and
Annamite story of immortality, the serpent, and death, 69 _sq._; Vuatom
story of immortality, the lizard, the serpent, and death, 70; Nias story
of immortality, the crab, and death, 70; Arawak and Tamanchier stories
of immortality, the serpent, the lizard, the beetle, and death, 70
_sq._; Melanesian story of the old woman and her cast skin, 71 _sq._;
Samoan story of the shellfish, two torches, and death, 72.
(4) _The Story of the Banana_.--Poso story of immortality, the stone,
the banana, and death, 72 _sq._; Mentra story of immortality, the
banana, and death, 73.
Primitive philosophy in the stories of the origin of death, 73 _sq._;
Bahnar story of immortality, the tree, and death, 74; rivalry for the
boon of immortality between men and animals that cast their skins, such
as serpents and lizards, 74 _sq._; stories of the origin of death told
by Chingpaws, Australians, Fijians, and Admiralty Islanders, 75-77;
African and American stories of the fatal bundle or the fatal box, 77
_sq._; Baganda story how death originated through the imprudence of a
woman, 78-81; West African story of Death and the spider, 81-83;
Melanesian story of Death and the Fool, 83 _sq._
Thus according to savages death is not a natural necessity, 84; similar
view held by some modern biologists, as A. Weismann and A. R. Wallace,
84-86.
Lecture IV.--The Belief in Immortality among the Aborigines of Central
Australia
In tracing the evolution of religious beliefs we must begin with those
of the lowest savages, p. 87; the aborigines of Australia the lowest
savages about whom we possess accurate information, 88; savagery a case
of retarded development, 88 _sq._; causes which have retarded progress
in Australia, 89 _sq._; the natives of Central Australia on the whole
more primitive than those of the coasts, 90 _sq._; little that can be
called religion among them, 91 _sq._; their theory that the souls of the
dead survive and are reborn in their descendants, 92 _sq._; places where
the souls of the dead await rebirth, and the mode in which they enter
into women, 93 _sq._; local totem centres, 94 _sq._; totemism defined,
95; traditionary origin of the local totem centres (_oknanikilla_) where
the souls of the dead assemble, 96; sacred birth-stones or birth-sticks
(_churinga_) which the souls of ancestors are thought to have dropped at
these places, 96-102; elements of a worship of the dead, 102 _sq._;
marvellous powers attributed to the remote ancestors of the _alcheringa_
or dream times, 103 _sq._; the Wollunqua, a mythical water-snake,
ancestor of a totemic clan of the Warramunga tribe, 104-106; religious
character of the belief in the Wollunqua, 106.
Lecture V.--The Belief in Immortality among the Aborigines of Central
Australia (_continued_)
Beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines concerning the
reincarnation of the dead, p. 107; possibility of the development of
ancestor worship, 107 _sq._; ceremonies performed by the Warramunga in
honour of the Wollunqua, the mythical ancestor of one of their totem
clans, 108 _sqq._; union of magic and religion in these ceremonies, 111
_sq._; ground drawings of the Wollunqua, 112 _sq._; importance of the
Wollunqua in the evolution of religion and art, 113 _sq._; how totemism
might develop into polytheism through an intermediate stage of ancestor
worship, 114 _sq._; all the conspicuous features of the country
associated by the Central Australians with the spirits of their
ancestors, 115-118; dramatic ceremonies performed by them to commemorate
the deeds of their ancestors, 118 _sq._; examples of these ceremonies,
119-122; these ceremonies were probably in origin not merely
commemorative or historical but magical, being intended to procure a
supply of food and other necessaries, 122 _sq._; magical virtue actually
attributed to these dramatic ceremonies by the Warramunga, who think
that by performing them they increase the food supply of the tribe, 123
_sq._; hence the great importance ascribed by these savages to the due
performance of the ancestral dramas, 124; general attitude of the
Central Australian aborigines to their dead, and the lines on which, if
left to themselves, they might have developed a regular worship of the
dead, 124-126.
Lecture VI.--The Belief in Immortality among the other Aborigines of
Australia
Evidence for the belief in reincarnation among the natives of other
parts of Australia than the centre, p. 127; beliefs of the Queensland
aborigines concerning the nature of the soul and the state of the dead,
127-131; belief of the Australian aborigines that their dead are
sometimes reborn in white people, 131-133; belief of the natives of
South-Eastern Australia that their dead are not born again but go away
to the sky or some distant country, 133 _sq._; beliefs and customs of
the Narrinyeri concerning the dead, 134 _sqq._; motives for the
excessive grief which they display at the death of their relatives, 135
_sq._; their pretence of avenging the death of their friends on the
guilty sorcerer, 136 _sq._; magical virtue ascribed to the hair of the
dead, 137 _sq._; belief that the dead go to the sky, 138 _sq._;
appearance of the dead to the living in dreams, 139; savage faith in
dreams, 139 _sq._; association of the stars with the souls of the dead,
140; creed of the South-Eastern Australians touching the dead, 141;
difference of this creed from that of the Central Australians, 141; this
difference probably due in the main to a general advance of culture
brought about by more favourable natural conditions in South-Eastern
Australia, 141 _sq._; possible influence of European teaching on native
beliefs, 142 _sq._; vagueness and inconsistency of native beliefs as to
the state of the dead, 143; custom a good test of belief, 143 _sq._;
burial customs of the Australian aborigines as evidence of their beliefs
concerning the state of the dead, 144; their practice of supplying the
dead with food, water, fire, weapons, and implements, 144-147; motives
for the destruction of the property of the dead, 147 _sq._; great
economic loss entailed by developed systems of sacrificing to the dead,
149.
Lecture VII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Aborigines of
Australia (_concluded_)
Huts erected on graves for the use of the ghosts, pp. 150-152; the
attentions paid by the Australian aborigines to their dead probably
spring from fear rather than affection, 152; precautions taken by the
living against the dangerous ghosts of the dead, 152 _sq._; cuttings and
brandings of the flesh of the living in honour of the dead, 154-158; the
custom of allowing the blood of mourners to drip on the corpse or into
the grave may be intended to strengthen the dead for a new birth,
158-162; different ways of disposing of the dead according to the age,
rank, manner of death, etc., of the deceased, 162 _sq._; some modes of
burial are intended to prevent the return of the spirit, others are
designed to facilitate it, 163-165; final departure of the ghost
supposed to coincide with the disappearance of the flesh from his bones,
165 _sq._; hence a custom has arisen in many tribes of giving the bones
a second burial or otherwise disposing of them when the flesh is quite
decayed, 166; tree-burial followed by earth-burial in some Australian
tribes, 166-168; general conclusion as to the belief in immortality and
the worship of the dead among the Australian aborigines, 168 _sq._
Lecture VIII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of the Torres
Straits Islands
Racial affinities of the Torres Straits Islanders, pp. 170 _sq._; their
material and social culture, 171 _sq._; no developed worship of the dead
among them, 172 _sq._; their fear of ghosts, 173-175; home of the dead a
mythical island in the west, 175 _sq._; elaborate funeral ceremonies of
the Torres Straits Islanders characterised by dramatic representations
of the dead and by the preservation of their skulls, which were
consulted as oracles, 176.
Funeral ceremonies of the Western Islanders, 177-180; part played by the
brothers-in-law of the deceased at these ceremonies, 177 _sq._; removal
of the head and preparation of the skull for use in divination, 178
_sq._; great death-dance performed by masked men who personated the
deceased, 179 _sq._
Funeral ceremonies of the Eastern Islanders, 180-188; soul of the dead
carried away by a masked actor, 181 _sq._; dramatic performance by
disguised men representing ghosts, 182 _sq._; blood and hair of
relatives offered to the dead, 183 _sq._; mummification of the corpse,
184; costume of mourners, 184; cuttings for the dead, 184 _sq._;
death-dance by men personating ghosts, 185-188; preservation of the
mummy and afterwards of the head or a wax model of it to be used in
divination, 188.
Images of the gods perhaps developed out of mummies of the dead, and a
sacred or even secular drama developed out of funeral dances, 189.
Lecture IX.--The Belief in Immortality Among the Natives Of British New
Guinea
The two races of New Guinea, the Papuan and the Melanesian, pp. 190
_sq._; beliefs and customs of the Motu concerning the dead, 192; the
Koita and their beliefs as to the human soul and the state of the dead,
193-195; alleged communications with the dead by means of mediums, 195
_sq._; fear of the dead, especially of a dead wife, 196 _sq._; beliefs
of the Mafulu concerning the dead, 198; their burial customs, 198 _sq._;
their use of the skulls and bones of the dead at a great festival,
199-201; worship of the dead among the natives of the Aroma district,
201 _sq._; the Hood Peninsula, 202 _sq._; beliefs and customs concerning
the dead among the natives of the Hood Peninsula, 203-206; seclusion of
widows and widowers, 203 _sq._; the ghost-seer, 204 _sq._; application
of the juices of the dead to the persons of the living, 205; precautions
taken by manslayers against the ghosts of their victims, 205 _sq._;
purification for homicide originally a mode of averting the angry ghost
of the slain, 206; beliefs and customs concerning the dead among the
Massim of south-eastern New Guinea, 206-210; Hiyoyoa, the land of the
dead, 207; purification of mourners by bathing and shaving, 207 _sq._;
foods forbidden to mourners, 208 _sq._; fires on the grave, 209; the
land of the dead, 209 _sq._; names of the dead not mentioned, 210;
beliefs and customs concerning the dead among the Papuans of Kiwai,
211-214; Adiri, the land of the dead, 211-213; appearance of the dead to
the living in dreams, 213 _sq._; offerings to the dead, 214; dreams as a
source of the belief in immortality, 214.
Lecture X.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German New
Guinea
Andrew Lang, pp. 216 _sq._; review of preceding lectures, 217 _sq._
The Papuans of Tumleo, their material culture, 218-220; their temples,
220 _sq._; their bachelors' houses containing the skulls of the dead,
221; spirits of the dead as the causes of sickness and disease, 222
_sq._; burial and mourning customs, 223 _sq._; fate of the human soul
after death, 224; monuments to the dead, 225; disinterment of the bones,
225; propitiation of ghosts and spirits, 226; guardian-spirits in the
temples, 226 _sq._
The Monumbo of Potsdam Harbour, 227 _sq._; their beliefs concerning the
spirits of the dead, 228 _sq._; their fear of ghosts, 229; their
treatment of manslayers, 229 _sq._
The Tamos of Astrolabe Bay, 230; their ideas as to the souls of the
dead, 231 _sq._; their fear of ghosts, 232 _sqq._; their Secret Society
and rites of initiation, 233; their preservation of the jawbones of the
dead, 234 _sq._; their sham fights after a death, 235 _sq._; these
fights perhaps intended to throw dust in the eyes of the ghost, 236
_sq._
Lecture XI.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German New
Guinea (_continued_)
The Papuans of Cape King William, pp. 238 _sq._; their ideas as to
spirits and the souls of the dead, 239 _sq._; their belief in sorcery as
a cause of death, 240 _sq._; their funeral and mourning customs, 241
_sq._; the fate of the soul after death, 242.
The Yabim of Finsch Harbour, their material and artistic culture, 242
_sq._; their clubhouses for men, 243; their beliefs as to the state of
the dead, 244 _sq._; the ghostly ferry, 244 _sq._; transmigration of
human souls into animals, 245; the return of the ghosts, 246; offerings
to ghosts, 246; ghosts provided with fire, 246 _sq._; ghosts help in the
cultivation of land, 247 _sq._; burial and mourning customs, 248 _sq._;
divination to discover the sorcerer who has caused a death, 249 _sq._;
bull-roarers, 250; initiation of young men, 250 _sqq._; the rite of
circumcision, the novices supposed to be swallowed by a monster, 251
_sq._; the return of the novices, 253; the essence of the initiatory
rites seems to be a simulation of death and resurrection, 253 _sqq._;
the new birth among the Akikuyu of British East Africa, 254.
Lecture XII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German New
Guinea (_continued_)
The Bukaua of Huon Gulf, their means of subsistence and men's
clubhouses, pp. 256 _sq._; their ideas as to the souls of the dead, 257;
sickness and death caused by ghosts and sorcerers, 257 _sq._; fear of
the ghosts of the slain, 258; prayers to ancestral spirits on behalf of
the crops, 259; first-fruits offered to the spirits of the dead, 259;
burial and mourning customs, 259 _sq._; initiation of young men, novices
at circumcision supposed to be swallowed and afterwards disgorged by a
monster, 260 _sq._
The Kai, a Papuan tribe of mountaineers inland from Finsch Harbour, 262;
their country, mode of agriculture, and villages, 262 _sq._;
observations of a German missionary on their animism, 263 _sq._; the
essential rationality of the savage, 264-266; the Kai theory of the two
sorts of human souls, 267 _sq._; death commonly thought to be caused by
sorcery, 268 _sq._; danger incurred by the sorcerer, 269; many hurts and
maladies attributed to the action of ghosts, 269 _sq._; capturing lost
souls, 270 _sq._; ghosts extracted from the body of a sick man or
scraped from his person, 271; extravagant demonstrations of grief at the
death of a sick man, 271-273; hypocritical character of these
demonstrations, which are intended to deceive the ghost, 273; burial and
mourning customs, preservation of the lower jawbone and one of the lower
arm bones, 274; mourning costume, seclusion of widow or widower, 274
_sq._; widows sometimes strangled to accompany their dead husbands, 275;
house or village deserted after a death, 275.
Lecture XIII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German New
Guinea (_continued_)
The Kai (continued), their offerings to the dead, p. 276; divination by
means of ghosts to detect the sorcerer who has caused a death, 276-278;
avenging the death on the sorcerer and his people, 278 _sq._;
precautions against the ghosts of the slain, 279 _sq._; attempts to
deceive the ghosts of the murdered, 280-282; pretence of avenging the
ghost of a murdered man, 282; fear of ghosts by night, 282 _sq._;
services rendered by the spirits of the dead to farmers and hunters,
283-285; the journey of the soul to the spirit land, 285 _sq._; life of
the dead in the other world, 286 _sq._; ghosts die the second death and
turn into animals, 287; ghosts of famous people invoked long after their
death, 287-289; possible development of ghosts into gods, 289 _sq._;
lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed and disgorged by a
monster, 290 _sq._
The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf, 291; their theory of a double human
soul, a long one and a short one, 291 _sq._; departure of the short soul
for Lamboam, the nether world of the dead, 292; offerings to the dead,
292; appeasing the ghost, 292 _sq._; funeral and mourning customs,
dances in honour of the dead, offerings thrown into the fire, 293 _sq._;
bones of the dead dug up and kept in the house for a time, 294 _sq._
Lecture XIV.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of German and
Dutch New Guinea
The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf (continued), their doctrine of souls and
gods, pp. 296 _sq._; dances of masked men representing spirits, 297;
worship of ancestral spirits and offerings to them, 297 _sq._; life of
the souls in Lamboam, the nether world, 299 _sq._; evocation of ghosts
by the ghost-seer, 300; sickness caused by ghosts, 300 _sq._; novices at
circumcision supposed to be swallowed and disgorged by a monster, 301
_sq._; meaning of the bodily mutilations inflicted on young men at
puberty obscure, 302 _sq._ The natives of Dutch New Guinea, 303-323; the
Noofoors of Geelvink Bay, their material culture and arts of life,
303-305; their fear and worship of the dead, 305-307; wooden images
(_korwar_) of the dead kept in the houses and carried in canoes to be
used as oracles, 307 _sq._; the images consulted in sickness and taken
with the people to war, 308-310; offerings to the images, 310 _sq._;
souls of those who have died away from home recalled to animate the
images, 311; skulls of the dead, especially of firstborn children and of
parents, inserted in the images, 312 _sq._; bodies of young children
hung on trees, 312 _sq._; mummies of dead relatives kept in the houses,
313; seclusion of mourners and restrictions on their diet, 313 _sq._;
tattooing in honour of the dead, 314; teeth and hair of the dead worn by
relatives, 314 _sq._; rebirth of parents in their children, 315.
The natives of islands off the west coast of New Guinea, their wooden
images of dead ancestors and shrines for the residence of the ancestral
spirits, 315 _sq._; their festivals in honour of the dead, 316; souls of
ancestors supposed to reside in the images and to protect the house and
household, 317.
The natives of the Macluer Gulf, their images and bowls in honour of the
dead, 317 _sq._
The natives of the Mimika district, their burial and mourning customs,
their preservation of the skulls of the dead, and their belief in
ghosts, 318.
The natives of Windessi, their burial customs, 318 _sq._; divination
after a death, 319; mourning customs, 319 _sq._; festival of the dead,
320 _sq._; wooden images of the dead, 321; doctrine of souls and of
their fate after death, 321 _sq._; medicine-men inspired by the souls of
the dead, 322 _sq._; ghosts of slain enemies driven away, 323.
Lecture XV.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Southern
Melanesia (New Caledonia)
The Melanesians in general, their material culture, p. 324; Southern
Melanesia, the New Caledonians, and Father Lambert's account of them,
325; their ideas as to the spirit land and the way thither, 325 _sq._;
burial customs, 326; cuttings and brandings for the dead, 326 _sq._;
property of the dead destroyed, 327; seclusion of gravediggers and
restrictions imposed on them, 327; sham fight in honour of the dead, 327
_sq._; skulls of the dead preserved and worshipped on various occasions,
such as sickness, fishing, and famine, 328-330; caves used as
charnel-houses and sanctuaries of the dead in the Isle of Pines,
330-332; prayers and sacrifices to the ancestral spirits, 332 _sq._;
prayer-posts, 333 _sq._; sacred stones associated with the dead and used
to cause dearth or plenty, madness, a good crop of bread-fruit or yams,
drought, rain, a good catch of fish, and so on, 334-338; the religion of
the New Caledonians mainly a worship of the dead tinctured with magic,
338.
Evidence as to the natives of New Caledonia collected by Dr. George
Turner, 339-342; material culture of the New Caledonians, 339; their
burial customs, the skulls and nails of the dead preserved and used to
fertilise the yam plantations, 339 _sq._; worship of ancestors and
prayers to the dead, 340; festivals in honour of the dead, 340 _sq._;
making rain by means of the skeletons of the dead, 341; execution of
sorcerers, 341 _sq._; white men identified with the spirits of the dead,
342.
Lecture XVI.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Central
Melanesia
Central Melanesia divided into two archipelagoes, the religion of the
Western Islands (Solomon Islands) characterised by a worship of the
dead, the religion of the Eastern Islands (New Hebrides, Banks' Islands,
Torres Islands, Santa Cruz Islands) characterised by a worship of
non-human spirits, pp. 343 _sq._; Central Melanesian theory of the soul,
344 _sq._; the land of the dead either in certain islands or in a
subterranean region called Panoi, 345; ghosts of power and ghosts of no
account, 345 _sq._; supernatural power (_mana_) acquired through ghosts,
346 _sq._
Burial customs in the Western Islands (Solomon Islands), 347 _sqq._;
land-burial and sea-burial, land-ghosts and sea-ghosts, 347 _sq._;
funeral feasts and burnt-offerings to the dead, 348 _sq._; the land of
the dead and the ghostly ferry, 350 _sq._; ghosts die the second death
and turn into the nests of white ants, 350 _sq._; preservation of the
skull and jawbone in order to ensure the protection of the ghost, 351
_sq._; human heads sought in order to add fresh spiritual power (_mana_)
to the ghost of a dead chief, 352.
Beliefs and customs concerning the dead in the Eastern Islands (New
Hebrides, Banks' Islands, Torres Islands), 352 _sqq._; Panoi, the
subterranean abode of the dead, 353 _sq._; ghosts die the second death,
354; different fates of the souls of the good and bad, 354 _sq._;
descent of the living into the world of the dead, 355; burial customs of
the Banks' Islanders, 355 _sqq._; dead sometimes temporarily buried in
the house, 355; display of property beside the corpse and funeral
oration, 355 _sq._; sham burial of eminent men, 356; ghosts driven away
from the village, 356-358; deceiving the ghosts of women who have died
in child-bed, 358; funeral feasts, 358 _sq._; funeral customs in the
New Hebrides, 359 _sqq._; the aged buried alive, 359 _sq._; seclusion of
mourners and restrictions on their diet, 360; sacrifice of pigs, 360
_sq._; the journey of the ghost to the spirit land, 361 _sq._;
provisions made by the living for the welfare of the dead, 362.
Only ghosts of powerful men worshipped, 362 _sq._; institution of the
worship of a martial ghost, 363 _sq._; offerings of food and drink to
the dead, 364 _sq._; sacrifice of pigs to ghosts in the Solomon Islands,
365 _sq._
Lecture XVII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Central
Melanesia (_concluded_)
Public sacrifices to ghosts in the Solomon Islands, pp. 367 _sq._;
offering of first-fruits to ghosts, 368 _sq._; private ghosts as
distinguished from public ghosts, 369 _sq._; fighting ghosts kept as
spiritual auxiliaries, 370; ghosts employed to make the gardens grow,
370 _sq._; human sacrifices to ghosts, 371 _sq._; vicarious and other
sacrifices to ghosts at Saa in Malanta, 372 _sq._; offerings of
first-fruits to ghosts at Saa, 373 _sq._; vicarious sacrifices offered
for the sick to ghosts in Santa Cruz, 374; the dead represented by
stocks in the houses, 374; native account of sacrifices in Santa Cruz,
374 _sq._; prayers to the dead, 376 _sq._; sanctuaries of ghosts in the
Solomon Islands, 377-379; ghosts lodged in animals, birds, and fish,
especially in sharks, 379 _sq._
The belief in ghosts underlies the Melanesian conception of magic, 380
_sq._; sickness commonly caused by ghosts and cured by ghost-seers,
381-384; contrast between Melanesian and European systems of medicine,
384; weather regulated by ghosts and spirits and by weather-doctors who
have the ear of ghosts and spirits, 384-386; witchcraft or black magic
wrought by means of ghosts, 386-388; prophets inspired by ghosts, 388
_sq._; divination operating through ghosts, 389 _sq._; taboos enforced
by ghosts, 390 _sq._; general influence which a belief in the survival
of the soul after death has exercised on Melanesian life, 391 _sq._
Lecture XVIII.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Northern
and Eastern Melanesia
The natives of Northern Melanesia or the Bismarck Archipelago (New
Britain, New Ireland, etc.), their material culture, commercial habits,
and want of regular government, pp. 393-395; their theory of the soul,
395 _sq._; their fear of ghosts, 396; offerings to the dead, 396 _sq._;
burial customs, 397 _sq._; preservation of the skulls, 398; customs and
beliefs concerning the dead among the Sulka of New Britain, 398-400,
among the Moanus of the Admiralty Islands, 400 _sq._ and among the
natives of the Kaniet Islands, 401 _sq._; natural deaths commonly
attributed to sorcery, 402; divination to discover the sorcerer who
caused the death, 402; death customs in the Duke of York Island, cursing
the sorcerer, skulls preserved, feasts and dances, 403; prayers to the
dead, 403 _sq._; the land of the dead and the fate of the departed
souls, hard lot of impecunious ghosts, 404-406.
The natives of Eastern Melanesia (Fiji), their material culture and
political constitution, 406-408; means of subsistence, 408; moral
character, 408 _sq._; scenery of the Fijian islands, 409 _sq._; the
Fijian doctrine of souls, 410-412; souls of rascals caught in scarves,
412 _sq._; fear of sorcery and precautions against it, 413 _sq._;
beneficial effect of the fear in enforcing habits of personal
cleanliness, 414; fear of ghosts and custom of driving them away, 414
_sq._; killing a ghost, 415 _sq._; outwitting grandfather's ghost, 416;
special relation of grandfather to grandchild, 416; grandfather's soul
reborn in his grandchild, 417 _sq._
Lecture XIX.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Eastern
Melanesia (Fiji) (_continued_)
Indifference of the Fijians to death, p. 419; their custom of killing
the sick and aged with the consent of the victims, 419-424; their
readiness to die partly an effect of their belief in immortality, 422
_sq._; wives strangled or buried alive to accompany their husbands to
the spirit land, 424-426; servants and dependants killed to attend their
dead lords, 426; sacrifices of foreskins and fingers in honour of dead
chiefs, 426 _sq._; boys circumcised in order to save the lives of their
fathers or fathers' brothers, 427; saturnalia attending such rites of
circumcision, 427 _sq._; the _Nanga_, or sacred enclosure of stones,
dedicated to the worship of ancestors, 428 _sq._; first-fruits of the
yams offered to the ancestors in the _Nanga_, 429; initiation of young
men in the _Nanga_, drama of death and resurrection, sacrament of food
and water, 429-432; the initiation followed by a period of sexual
licence, 433; the initiatory rites apparently intended to introduce the
novices to the ancestral spirits and endow them with the powers of the
dead, 434 _sq._; the rites seem to have been imported into Fiji by
immigrants from the west, 435 _sq._; the licence attending these rites
perhaps a reversion to primitive communism for the purpose of
propitiating the ancestral spirits, 436 _sq._; description of the
_Nanga_ or sacred enclosure of stones, 437 _sq._; comparison with the
cromlechs and other megalithic monuments of Europe, 438.
Lecture XX.--The Belief in Immortality among the Natives of Eastern
Melanesia (Fiji) (_concluded_)
Worship of parents and other dead relations in Fiji, pp. 439 _sq._;
Fijian notion of divinity (_kalou_), 440; two classes of gods, namely,
divine gods and human gods or deified men, 440 _sq._; temples (_bures_)
441 _sq._; worship at the temples, 443; priests (_betes_), their
oracular inspiration by the gods, 443-446; human sacrifices on various
occasions, such as building a house or launching a new canoe, 446 _sq._;
high estimation in which manslaughter was held by the Fijians, 447
_sq._; consecration of manslayers and restrictions laid on them,
probably from fear of the ghosts of their victims, 448 _sq._; certain
funeral customs based apparently on the fear of ghosts, 450 _sqq._;
persons who have handled a corpse forbidden to touch food with their
hands, 450 _sq._; seclusion of gravediggers, 451; mutilations,
brandings, and fasts in honour of the dead, 451 _sq._; the dead carried
out of the house by a special opening to prevent the return of the
ghost, 452-461; the other world and the way thither, 462 _sqq._; the
ghostly ferry, 462 _sq._; the ghost and the pandanus tree, 463 _sq._;
hard fate of the unmarried dead, 464; the Killer of Souls, 464 _sq._;
ghosts precipitated into a lake, 465 _sq._; Murimuria, an inferior sort
of heaven, 466; the Fijian Elysium, 466 _sq._; transmigration and
annihilation, the few that are saved, 467.
Concluding observations, 467-471; strength and universality of the
belief in immortality among savages, 468; the state of war among savage
and civilised peoples often a direct consequence of the belief in
immortality, 468 _sq._; economic loss involved in sacrifices to the
dead, 469; how does the savage belief in immortality bear on the truth
or falsehood of that belief in general? 469; the answer depends to some
extent on the view we take of human nature, 469-471; the conclusion left
open, 471.
Note.--Myth of the Continuance of Death
Index
LECTURE I
INTRODUCTION
[Sidenote: Natural theology, and the three modes of handling it, the
dogmatic, the philosophical, and the historical.]
The subject of these lectures is a branch of natural theology. By
natural theology I understand that reasoned knowledge of a God or gods
which man may be supposed, whether rightly or wrongly, capable of
attaining to by the exercise of his natural faculties alone. Thus
defined, the subject may be treated in at least three different ways,
namely, dogmatically, philosophically, and historically. We may simply
state the dogmas of natural theology which appear to us to be true: that
is the dogmatic method. Or, secondly, we may examine the validity of the
grounds on which these dogmas have been or may be maintained: that is
the philosophic method. Or, thirdly, we may content ourselves with
describing the various views which have been held on the subject and
tracing their origin and evolution in history: that is the historical
method. The first of these three methods assumes the truth of natural
theology, the second discusses it, and the third neither assumes nor
discusses but simply ignores it: the historian as such is not concerned
with the truth or falsehood of the beliefs he describes, his business is
merely to record them and to track them as far as possible to their
sources. Now that the subject of natural theology is ripe for a purely
dogmatic treatment will hardly, I think, be maintained by any one, to
whatever school of thought he may belong; accordingly that method of
treatment need not occupy us further. Far otherwise is it with the
philosophic method which undertakes to enquire into the truth or
falsehood of the belief in a God: no method could be more appropriate at
a time like the present, when the opinions of educated and thoughtful
men on that profound topic are so unsettled, diverse, and conflicting. A
philosophical treatment of the subject might comprise a discussion of
such questions as whether a natural knowledge of God is possible to man,
and, if possible, by what means and through what faculties it is
attainable; what are the grounds for believing in the existence of a
God; and, if this belief is justified, what may be supposed to be his
essential nature and attributes, and what his relations to the world in
general and to man in particular. Now I desire to confess at once that
an adequate discussion of these and kindred questions would far exceed
both my capacity and my knowledge; for he who would do justice to so
arduous an enquiry should not only be endowed with a comprehensive and
penetrating genius, but should possess a wide and accurate acquaintance
with the best accredited results of philosophic speculation and
scientific research. To such qualifications I can lay no claim, and
accordingly I must regard myself as unfitted for a purely philosophic
treatment of natural theology. To speak plainly, the question of the
existence of a God is too deep for me. I dare neither affirm nor deny
it. I can only humbly confess my ignorance. Accordingly, if Lord Gifford
had required of his lecturers either a dogmatic or a philosophical
treatment of natural theology, I could not have undertaken to deliver
the lectures.
[Sidenote: The method followed in these lectures is the historical.]
But in his deed of foundation, as I understand it, Lord Gifford left his
lecturers free to follow the historical rather than the dogmatic or the
philosophical method of treatment. He says: "The lecturers shall be
under no restraint whatever in their treatment of their theme: for
example, they may freely discuss (and it may be well to do so) all
questions about man's conceptions of God or the Infinite, their origin,
nature, and truth." In making this provision the founder appears to have
allowed and indeed encouraged the lecturers not only to discuss, if they
chose to do so, the philosophical basis of a belief in God, but also to
set forth the various conceptions of the divine nature which have been
held by men in all ages and to trace them to their origin: in short, he
permitted and encouraged the lecturers to compose a history of natural
theology or of some part of it. Even when it is thus limited to its
historical aspect the theme is too vast to be mastered completely by any
one man: the most that a single enquirer can do is to take a general but
necessarily superficial survey of the whole and to devote himself
especially to the investigation of some particular branch or aspect of
the subject. This I have done more or less for many years, and
accordingly I think that without being presumptuous I may attempt, in
compliance with Lord Gifford's wishes and directions, to lay before my
hearers a portion of the history of religion to which I have paid
particular attention. That the historical study of religious beliefs,
quite apart from the question of their truth or falsehood, is both
interesting and instructive will hardly be disputed by any intelligent
and thoughtful enquirer. Whether they have been well or ill founded,
these beliefs have deeply influenced the conduct of human affairs; they
have furnished some of the most powerful, persistent, and far-reaching
motives of action; they have transformed nations and altered the face of
the globe. No one who would understand the general history of mankind
can afford to ignore the annals of religion. If he does so, he will
inevitably fall into the most serious misconceptions even in studying
branches of human activity which might seem, on a superficial view, to
be quite unaffected by religious considerations.
[Sidenote: An historical enquiry into the evolution of religion
prejudices neither the question of the ethical value of religious
practice nor the question of the truth or falsehood of religious
belief.]
Therefore to trace theological and in general religious ideas to their
sources and to follow them through all the manifold influences which
they have exerted on the destinies of our race must always be an object
of prime importance to the historian, whatever view he may take of their
speculative truth or ethical value. Clearly we cannot estimate their
ethical value until we have learned the modes in which they have
actually determined human conduct for good or evil: in other words, we
cannot judge of the morality of religious beliefs until we have
ascertained their history: the facts must be known before judgment can
be passed on them: the work of the historian must precede the work of
the moralist. Even the question of the validity or truth of religious
creeds cannot, perhaps, be wholly dissociated from the question of their
origin. If, for example, we discover that doctrines which we had
accepted with implicit faith from tradition have their close analogies
in the barbarous superstitions of ignorant savages, we can hardly help
suspecting that our own cherished doctrines may have originated in the
similar superstitions of our rude forefathers; and the suspicion
inevitably shakes the confidence with which we had hitherto regarded
these articles of our faith. The doubt thus cast on our old creed is
perhaps illogical, since even if we should discover that the creed did
originate in mere superstition, in other words, that the grounds on
which it was first adopted were false and absurd, this discovery would
not really disprove the beliefs themselves, for it is perfectly possible
that a belief may be true, though the reasons alleged in favour of it
are false and absurd: indeed we may affirm with great probability that a
multitude of human beliefs, true in themselves, have been accepted and
defended by millions of people on grounds which cannot bear exact
investigation for a moment. For example, if the facts of savage life
which it will be my duty to submit to you should have the effect of
making the belief in immortality look exceedingly foolish, those of my
hearers who cherish the belief may console themselves by reflecting
that, as I have just pointed out, a creed is not necessarily false
because some of the reasons adduced in its favour are invalid, because
it has sometimes been supported by the despicable tricks of vulgar
imposture, and because the practices to which it has given rise have
often been in the highest degree not only absurd but pernicious.
[Sidenote: Yet such an enquiry may shake the confidence with which
traditional beliefs have been held.]
Thus an historical enquiry into the origin of religious creeds cannot,
strictly speaking, invalidate, still less refute, the creeds themselves,
though it may, and doubtless often does weaken the confidence with which
they are held. This weakening of religious faith as a consequence of a
closer scrutiny of religious origins is unquestionably a matter of great
importance to the community; for society has been built and cemented to
a great extent on a foundation of religion, and it is impossible to
loosen the cement and shake the foundation without endangering the
superstructure. The candid historian of religion will not dissemble the
danger incidental to his enquiries, but nevertheless it is his duty to
prosecute them unflinchingly. Come what may, he must ascertain the facts
so far as it is possible to do so; having done that, he may leave to
others the onerous and delicate task of adjusting the new knowledge to
the practical needs of mankind. The narrow way of truth may often look
dark and threatening, and the wayfarer may often be weary; yet even at
the darkest and the weariest he will go forward in the trust, if not in
the knowledge, that the way will lead at last to light and to rest; in
plain words, that there is no ultimate incompatibility between the good
and the true.
[Sidenote: To discover the origin of the idea of God we must study the
beliefs of primitive man.]
Now if we are indeed to discover the origin of man's conception of God,
it is not sufficient to analyse the ideas which the educated and
enlightened portion of mankind entertain on the subject at the present
day; for in great measure these ideas are traditional, they have been
handed down with little or no independent reflection or enquiry from
generation to generation; hence in order to detect them in their
inception it becomes necessary to push our analysis far back into the
past. Large materials for such an historical enquiry are provided for us
in the literature of ancient nations which, though often sadly mutilated
and imperfect, has survived to modern times and throws much precious
light on the religious beliefs and practices of the peoples who created
it. But the ancients themselves inherited a great part of their religion
from their prehistoric ancestors, and accordingly it becomes desirable
to investigate the religious notions of these remote forefathers of
mankind, since in them we may hope at last to arrive at the ultimate
source, the historical origin, of the whole long development.
[Sidenote: The beliefs of primitive man can only be understood through a
comparative study of the various races in the lower stages of culture.]
But how can this be done? how can we investigate the ideas of peoples
who, ignorant of writing, had no means of permanently recording their
beliefs? At first sight the thing seems impossible; the thread of
enquiry is broken off short; it has landed us on the brink of a gulf
which looks impassable. But the case is not so hopeless as it appears.
True, we cannot investigate the beliefs of prehistoric ages directly,
but the comparative method of research may furnish us with the means of
studying them indirectly; it may hold up to us a mirror in which, if we
do not see the originals, we may perhaps contemplate their reflections.
For a comparative study of the various races of mankind demonstrates, or
at least renders it highly probable, that humanity has everywhere
started at an exceedingly low level of culture, a level far beneath that
of the lowest existing savages, and that from this humble beginning all
the various races of men have gradually progressed upward at different
rates, some faster and some slower, till they have attained the
particular stage which each of them occupies at the present time.
[Sidenote: Hence the need of studying the beliefs and customs of
savages, if we are to understand the evolution of culture in general.]
If this conclusion is correct, the various stages of savagery and
barbarism on which many tribes and peoples now stand represent, broadly
speaking, so many degrees of retarded social and intellectual
development, they correspond to similar stages which the ancestors of
the civilised races may be supposed to have passed through at more or
less remote periods of their history. Thus when we arrange all the known
peoples of the world according to the degree of their savagery or
civilisation in a graduated scale of culture, we obtain not merely a
comparative view of their relative positions in the scale, but also in
some measure an historical record of the genetic development of culture
from a very early time down to the present day. Hence a study of the
savage and barbarous races of mankind is of the greatest importance for
a full understanding of the beliefs and practices, whether religious,
social, moral, or political, of the most civilised races, including our
own, since it is practically certain that a large part of these beliefs
and practices originated with our savage ancestors, and has been
inherited by us from them, with more or less of modification, through a
long line of intermediate generations.
[Sidenote: The need is all the more urgent because savages are rapidly
disappearing or being transformed.]
That is why the study of existing savages at the present day engrosses
so much of the attention of civilised peoples. We see that if we are to
comprehend not only our past history but our present condition, with all
its many intricate and perplexing problems, we must begin at the
beginning by attempting to discover the mental state of our savage
forefathers, who bequeathed to us so much of the faiths, the laws, and
the institutions which we still cherish; and more and more men are
coming to perceive that the only way open to us of doing this
effectually is to study the mental state of savages who to this day
occupy a state of culture analogous to that of our rude progenitors.
Through contact with civilisation these savages are now rapidly
disappearing, or at least losing the old habits and ideas which render
them a document of priceless historical value for us. Hence we have
every motive for prosecuting the study of savagery with ardour and
diligence before it is too late, before the record is gone for ever. We
are like an heir whose title-deeds must be scrutinised before he can
take possession of the inheritance, but who finds the handwriting of the
deeds so fading and evanescent that it threatens to disappear entirely
before he can read the document to the end. With what keen attention,
what eager haste, would he not scan the fast-vanishing characters? With
the like attention and the like haste civilised men are now applying
themselves to the investigation of the fast-vanishing savages.
[Sidenote: Savage religion is to be the subject of these lectures.]
Thus if we are to trace historically man's conception of God to its
origin, it is desirable, or rather essential, that we should begin by
studying the most primitive ideas on the subject which are accessible to
us, and the most primitive ideas are unquestionably those of the lowest
savages. Accordingly in these lectures I propose to deal with a
particular side or aspect of savage religion. I shall not trench on the
sphere of the higher religions, not only because my knowledge of them is
for the most part very slight, but also because I believe that a
searching study of the higher and more complex religions should be
postponed till we have acquired an accurate knowledge of the lower and
simpler. For a similar reason the study of inorganic chemistry naturally
precedes the study of organic chemistry, because inorganic compounds are
much simpler and therefore more easily analysed and investigated than
organic compounds. So with the chemistry of the mind; we should analyse
the comparatively simple phenomena of savage thought into its
constituent elements before we attempt to perform a similar operation on
the vastly more complex phenomena of civilised beliefs.
[Sidenote: But only a part of savage religion will be dealt with.]
But while I shall confine myself rigidly to the field of savage
religion, I shall not attempt to present you with a complete survey even
of that restricted area, and that for more reasons than one. In the
first place the theme, even with this great limitation, is far too large
to be adequately set forth in the time at my disposal; the sketch--for
it could be no more than a sketch--would be necessarily superficial and
probably misleading. In the second place, even a sketch of primitive
religion in general ought to presuppose in the sketcher a fairly
complete knowledge of the whole subject, so that all the parts may
appear, not indeed in detail, but in their proper relative proportions.
Now though I have given altogether a good deal of time to the study of
primitive religion, I am far from having studied it in all its branches,
and I could not trust myself to give an accurate general account of it
even in outline; were I to attempt such a thing I should almost
certainly fall, through sheer ignorance or inadvertence, into the
mistake of exaggerating some features, unduly diminishing others, and
omitting certain essential features altogether. Hence it seems to me
better not to commit myself to so ambitious an enterprise but to confine
myself in my lectures, as I have always done in my writings, to a
comparatively minute investigation of certain special aspects or forms
of primitive religion rather than attempt to embrace in a general view
the whole of that large subject. Such a relatively detailed study of a
single compartment may be less attractive and more tedious than a
bird's-eye view of a wider area; but in the end it may perhaps prove a
more solid contribution to knowledge.
[Sidenote: Introductory observations. The question of a supernatural
revelation excluded.]
But before I come to details I wish to make a few general introductory
remarks, and in particular to define some of the terms which I shall
have occasion to use in the lectures. I have defined natural theology as
that reasoned knowledge of a God or gods which man may be supposed,
whether rightly or wrongly, capable of attaining to by the exercise of
his natural faculties alone. Whether there ever has been or can be a
special miraculous revelation of God to man through channels different
from those through which all other human knowledge is derived, is a
question which does not concern us in these lectures; indeed it is
expressly excluded from their scope by the will of the founder, who
directed the lecturers to treat the subject "as a strictly natural
science," "without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special
exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation." Accordingly, in
compliance with these directions, I dismiss at the outset the question
of a revelation, and shall limit myself strictly to natural theology in
the sense in which I have defined it.
[Sidenote: Theology and religion, how related to each other.]
I have called natural theology a reasoned knowledge of a God or gods to
distinguish it from that simple and comparatively, though I believe
never absolutely, unreasoning faith in God which suffices for the
practice of religion. For theology is at once more and less than
religion: if on the one hand it includes a more complete acquaintance
with the grounds of religious belief than is essential to religion, on
the other hand it excludes the observance of those practical duties
which are indispensable to any religion worthy of the name. In short,
whereas theology is purely theoretical, religion is both theoretical and
practical, though the theoretical part of it need not be so highly
developed as in theology. But while the subject of the lectures is,
strictly speaking, natural theology rather than natural religion, I
think it would be not only difficult but undesirable to confine our
attention to the purely theological or theoretical part of natural
religion: in all religions, and not least in the undeveloped savage
religions with which we shall deal, theory and practice fuse with and
interact on each other too closely to be forcibly disjoined and handled
apart. Hence throughout the lectures I shall not scruple to refer
constantly to religious practice as well as to religious theory, without
feeling that thereby I am transgressing the proper limits of my subject.
[Sidenote: The term God defined.]
As theology is not only by definition but by etymology a reasoned
knowledge or theory of a God or gods, it becomes desirable, before we
proceed further, to define the sense in which I understand and shall
employ the word God. That sense is neither novel nor abstruse; it is
simply the sense which I believe the generality of mankind attach to the
term. By a God I understand a superhuman and supernatural being, of a
spiritual and personal nature, who controls the world or some part of it
on the whole for good, and who is endowed with intellectual faculties,
moral feelings, and active powers, which we can only conceive on the
analogy of human faculties, feelings, and activities, though we are
bound to suppose that in the divine nature they exist in higher degrees,
perhaps in infinitely higher degrees, than the corresponding faculties,
feelings, and activities of man. In short, by a God I mean a beneficent
supernatural spirit, the ruler of the world or of some part of it, who
resembles man in nature though he excels him in knowledge, goodness, and
power. This is, I think, the sense in which the ordinary man speaks of a
God, and I believe that he is right in so doing. I am aware that it has
been not unusual, especially perhaps of late years, to apply the name of
God to very different conceptions, to empty it of all implication of
personality, and to reduce it to signifying something very large and
very vague, such as the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard
words may signify), the great First Cause, the Universal Substance, "the
stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil the law of their
being,"[1] and so forth. Now without expressing any opinion as to the
truth or falsehood of the views implied by such applications of the name
of God, I cannot but regard them all as illegitimate extensions of the
term, in short as an abuse of language, and I venture to protest against
it in the interest not only of verbal accuracy but of clear thinking,
because it is apt to conceal from ourselves and others a real and very
important change of thought: in particular it may lead many to imagine
that the persons who use the name of God in one or other of these
extended senses retain certain theological opinions which they may in
fact have long abandoned. Thus the misuse of the name of God may
resemble the stratagem in war of putting up dummies to make an enemy
imagine that a fort is still held after it has been evacuated by the
garrison. I am far from alleging or insinuating that the illegitimate
extension of the divine name is deliberately employed by theologians or
others for the purpose of masking a change of front; but that it may
have that effect seems at least possible. And as we cannot use words in
wrong senses without running a serious risk of deceiving ourselves as
well as others, it appears better on all accounts to adhere strictly to
the common meaning of the name of God as signifying a powerful
supernatural and on the whole beneficent spirit, akin in nature to man;
and if any of us have ceased to believe in such a being we should
refrain from applying the old word to the new faith, and should find
some other and more appropriate term to express our meaning. At all
events, speaking for myself, I intend to use the name of God
consistently in the familiar sense, and I would beg my hearers to bear
this steadily in mind.
[Sidenote: Monotheism and polytheism.]
You will have observed that I have spoken of natural theology as a
reasoned knowledge of a God or gods. There is indeed nothing in the
definition of God which I have adopted to imply that he is unique, in
other words, that there is only one God rather than several or many
gods. It is true that modern European thinkers, bred in a monotheistic
religion, commonly overlook polytheism as a crude theory unworthy the
serious attention of philosophers; in short, the champions and the
assailants of religion in Europe alike for the most part tacitly assume
that there is either one God or none. Yet some highly civilised nations
of antiquity and of modern times, such as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks,
and Romans, and the modern Chinese and Hindoos, have accepted the
polytheistic explanation of the world, and as no reasonable man will
deny the philosophical subtlety of the Greeks and the Hindoos, to say
nothing of the rest, a theory of the universe which has commended itself
to them deserves perhaps more consideration than it has commonly
received from Western philosophers; certainly it cannot be ignored in an
historical enquiry into the origin of religion.
[Sidenote: A natural knowledge of God can only be acquired by
experience.]
If there is such a thing as natural theology, that is, a knowledge of a
God or gods acquired by our natural faculties alone without the aid of a
special revelation, it follows that it must be obtained by one or other
of the methods by which all our natural knowledge is conveyed to us.
Roughly speaking, these methods are two in number, namely, intuition and
experience. Now if we ask ourselves, Do we know God intuitively in the
same sense in which we know intuitively our own sensations and the
simplest truths of mathematics, I think most men will acknowledge that
they do not. It is true that according to Berkeley the world exists only
as it is perceived, and that our perceptions of it are produced by the
immediate action of God on our minds, so that everything we perceive
might be described, if not as an idea in the mind of the deity, at least
as a direct emanation from him. On this theory we might in a sense be
said to have an immediate knowledge of God. But Berkeley's theory has
found little acceptance, so far as I know, even among philosophers; and
even if we regarded it as true, we should still have to admit that the
knowledge of God implied by it is inferential rather than intuitive in
the strict sense of the word: we infer God to be the cause of our
perceptions rather than identify him with the perceptions themselves. On
the whole, then, I conclude that man, or at all events the ordinary man,
has, properly speaking, no immediate or intuitive knowledge of God, and
that, if he obtains, without the aid of revelation, any knowledge of him
at all, it can only be through the other natural channel of knowledge,
that is, through experience.
[Sidenote: The nature of experience.]
In experience, as distinct from intuition, we reach our conclusions not
directly through simple contemplation of the particular sensations,
emotions, or ideas of which we are at the moment conscious, but
indirectly by calling up before the imagination and comparing with each
other our memories of a variety of sensations, emotions, or ideas of
which we have been conscious in the past, and by selecting or
abstracting from the mental images so compared the points in which they
resemble each other. The points of resemblance thus selected or
abstracted from a number of particulars compose what we call an abstract
or general idea, and from a comparison of such abstract or general ideas
with each other we arrive at general conclusions, which define the
relations of the ideas to each other. Experience in general consists in
the whole body of conclusions thus deduced from a comparison of all the
particular sensations, emotions, and ideas which make up the conscious
life of the individual. Hence in order to constitute experience the mind
has to perform a more or less complex series of operations, which are
commonly referred to certain mental faculties, such as memory,
imagination, and judgment. This analysis of experience does not pretend
to be philosophically complete or exact; but perhaps it is sufficiently
accurate for the purpose of these lectures, the scope of which is not
philosophical but historical.
[Sidenote: Two kinds of experience, the experience of our own mind and
the experience of an external world.]
Now experience in the widest sense of the word may be conveniently
distinguished into two sorts, the experience of our own mind and the
experience of an external world. The distinction is indeed, like the
others with which I am dealing at present, rather practically useful
than theoretically sound; certainly it would not be granted by all
philosophers, for many of them have held that we neither have nor with
our present faculties can possibly attain to any immediate knowledge or
perception of an external world, we merely infer its existence from our
own sensations, which are as strictly a part of our mind as the ideas
and emotions of our waking life or the visions of sleep. According to
them, the existence of matter or of an external world is, so far as we
are concerned, merely an hypothesis devised to explain the order of our
sensations; it never has been perceived by any man, woman, or child who
ever lived on earth; we have and can have no immediate knowledge or
perception of anything but the states and operations of our own mind. On
this theory what we call the world, with all its supposed infinitudes of
space and time, its systems of suns and planets, its seemingly endless
forms of inorganic matter and organic life, shrivels up, on a close
inspection, into a fleeting, a momentary figment of thought. It is like
one of those glass baubles, iridescent with a thousand varied and
delicate hues, which a single touch suffices to shatter into dust. The
philosopher, like the sorcerer, has but to wave his magic wand,
"And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
[Sidenote: The distinction rather popular and convenient than
philosophically strict.]
It would be beyond my province, even if it were within my power, to
discuss these airy speculations, and thereby to descend into the arena
where for ages subtle dialecticians have battled with each other over
the reality or unreality of an external world. For my purpose it
suffices to adopt the popular and convenient distinction of mind and
matter and hence to divide experience into two sorts, an inward
experience of the acts and states of our own minds, and an outward
experience of the acts and states of that physical universe by which we
seem to be surrounded.
[Sidenote: The knowledge or conception of God has been attained both by
inward and by outward experience.]
Now if a natural knowledge of God is only possible by means of
experience, in other words, by a process of reasoning based on
observation, it will follow that such a knowledge may conceivably be
acquired either by the way of inward or of outward experience; in other
words, it may be attained either by reflecting on the processes of our
own minds or by observing the processes of external nature. In point of
fact, if we survey the history of thought, mankind appears to have
arrived at a knowledge, or at all events at a conception, of deity by
both these roads. Let me say a few words as to the two roads which lead,
or seem to lead, man to God.
[Sidenote: The conception of God is attained by inward experience, that
is, by the observation of certain remarkable thoughts and feelings which
are attributed to the inspiration of a deity. Practical dangers of the
theory of inspiration.]
In the first place, then, men in many lands and many ages have
experienced certain extraordinary emotions and entertained certain
extraordinary ideas, which, unable to account for them by reference to
the ordinary forms of experience, they have set down to the direct
action of a powerful spirit or deity working on their minds and even
entering into and taking possession of their bodies; and in this excited
state--for violent excitement is characteristic of these
manifestations--the patient believes himself to be possessed of
supernatural knowledge and supernatural power. This real or supposed
mode of apprehending a divine spirit and entering into communion with
it, is commonly and appropriately called inspiration. The phenomenon is
familiar to us from the example of the Hebrew nation, who believed that
their prophets were thus inspired by the deity, and that their sacred
books were regularly composed under the divine afflatus. The belief is
by no means singular, indeed it appears to be world-wide; for it would
be hard to point to any race of men among whom instances of such
inspiration have not been reported; and the more ignorant and savage the
race the more numerous, to judge by the reports, are the cases of
inspiration. Volumes might be filled with examples, but through the
spread of information as to the lower races in recent years the topic
has become so familiar that I need not stop to illustrate it by
instances. I will merely say that among savages the theory of
inspiration or possession is commonly invoked to explain all abnormal
mental states, particularly insanity or conditions of mind bordering on
it, so that persons more or less crazed in their wits, and particularly
hysterical or epileptic patients, are for that very reason thought to be
peculiarly favoured by the spirits and are therefore consulted as
oracles, their wild and whirling words passing for the revelations of a
higher power, whether a god or a ghost, who considerately screens his
too dazzling light under a thick veil of dark sayings and mysterious
ejaculations.[2] I need hardly point out the very serious dangers which
menace any society where such theories are commonly held and acted upon.
If the decisions of a whole community in matters of the gravest
importance are left to turn on the wayward fancies, the whims and
vagaries of the insane or the semi-insane, what are likely to be the
consequences to the commonwealth? What, for example, can be expected to
result from a war entered upon at such dictation and waged under such
auspices? Are cattle-breeding, agriculture, commerce, all the arts of
life on which a people depend for their subsistence, likely to thrive
when they are directed by the ravings of epilepsy or the drivellings of
hysteria? Defeat in battle, conquest by enemies, death by famine and
widespread disease, these and a thousand other lesser evils threaten the
blind people who commit themselves to such blind guides. The history of
savage and barbarous tribes, could we follow it throughout, might
furnish us with a thousand warning instances of the fatal effects of
carrying out this crude theory of inspiration to its logical
conclusions; and if we hear less than might be expected of such
instances, it is probably because the tribes who consistently acted up
to their beliefs have thereby wiped themselves out of existence: they
have perished the victims of their folly and left no record behind. I
believe that historians have not yet reckoned sufficiently with the
disastrous influence which this worship of insanity,--for it is often
nothing less--has exercised on the fortunes of peoples and on the
development or decay of their institutions.
[Sidenote: The belief in inspiration leads to the worship of living men
as gods. Outward experience as a source of the idea of God.]
To a certain extent, however, the evil has provided its own remedy. For
men of strong heads and ambitious temper, perceiving the exorbitant
power which a belief in inspiration places in the hands of the
feeble-minded, have often feigned to be similarly afflicted, and trading
on their reputation for imbecility, or rather inspiration, have acquired
an authority over their fellows which, though they have often abused it
for vulgar ends, they have sometimes exerted for good, as for example by
giving sound advice in matters of public concern, applying salutary
remedies to the sick, and detecting and punishing crime, whereby they
have helped to preserve the commonwealth, to alleviate suffering, and to
cement that respect for law and order which is essential to the
stability of society, and without which any community must fall to
pieces like a house of cards. These great services have been rendered to
the cause of civilisation and progress by the class of men who in
primitive society are variously known as medicine-men, magicians,
sorcerers, diviners, soothsayers, and so forth. Sometimes the respect
which they have gained by the exercise of their profession has won for
them political as well as spiritual or ghostly authority; in short, from
being simple medicine-men or sorcerers they have grown into chiefs and
kings. When such men, seated on the throne of state, retain their old
reputation for being the vehicles of a divine spirit, they may be
worshipped in the character of gods as well as revered in the capacity
of kings; and thus exerting a two-fold sway over the minds of men they
possess a most potent instrument for elevating or depressing the
fortunes of their worshippers and subjects. In this way the old savage
notion of inspiration or possession gradually develops into the doctrine
of the divinity of kings, which after a long period of florescence
dwindles away into the modest theory that kings reign by divine right, a
theory familiar to our ancestors not long ago, and perhaps not wholly
obsolete among us even now. However, inspired men need not always
blossom out into divine kings; they may, and often do, remain in the
chrysalis state of simple deities revered by their simple worshippers,
their brows encircled indeed with a halo of divinity but not weighted
with the more solid substance of a kingly crown. Thus certain
extraordinary mental states, which those who experience and those who
witness them cannot account for in any other way, are often explained by
the supposed interposition of a spirit or deity. This, therefore, is one
of the two forms of experience by which men attain, or imagine that they
attain, to a knowledge of God and a communion with him. It is what I
have called the road of inward experience. Let us now glance at the
other form of experience which leads, or seems to lead, to the same
goal. It is what I have called the road of outward experience.
[Sidenote: Tendency of the mind to search for causes, and the necessity
for their discovery.]
When we contemplate the seemingly infinite variety, the endless
succession, of events that pass under our observation in what we call
the external world, we are led by an irresistible tendency to trace what
we call a causal connexion between them. The tendency to discover the
causes of things appears indeed to be innate in the constitution of our
minds and indispensable to our continued existence. It is the link that
arrests and colligates into convenient bundles the mass of particulars
drifting pell-mell past on the stream of sensation; it is the cement
that binds into an edifice seemingly of adamant the loose sand of
isolated perceptions. Deprived of the knowledge which this tendency
procures for us we should be powerless to foresee the succession of
phenomena and so to adapt ourselves to it. We should be bewildered by
the apparent disorder and confusion of everything, we should toss on a
sea without a rudder, we should wander in an endless maze without a
clue, and finding no way out of it, or, in plain words, unable to avoid
a single one of the dangers which menace us at every turn, we should
inevitably perish. Accordingly the propensity to search for causes is
characteristic of man in all ages and at all levels of culture, though
without doubt it is far more highly developed in civilised than in
savage communities. Among savages it is more or less unconscious and
instinctive; among civilised men it is deliberately cultivated and
rewarded at least by the applause of their fellows, by the dignity, if
not by the more solid recompenses, of learning. Indeed as civilisation
progresses the enquiry into causes tends to absorb more and more of the
highest intellectual energies of a people; and an ever greater number of
men, renouncing the bustle, the pleasures, and the ambitions of an
active life, devote themselves exclusively to the pursuit of abstract
truth; they set themselves to discover the causes of things, to trace
the regularity and order that may be supposed to underlie the seemingly
irregular, confused, and arbitrary sequence of phenomena. Unquestionably
the progress of civilisation owes much to the sustained efforts of such
men, and if of late years and within our own memory the pace of progress
has sensibly quickened, we shall perhaps not err in supposing that some
part at least of the acceleration may be accounted for by an increase in
the number of lifelong students.
[Sidenote: The idea of cause is simply that of invariable sequence
suggested by the observation of many particular cases of sequence.]
Now when we analyse the conception of a cause to the bottom, we find as
the last residuum in our crucible nothing but what Hume found there long
ago, and that is simply the idea of invariable sequence. Whenever we say
that something is the cause of something else, all that we really mean
is that the latter is invariably preceded by the former, so that
whenever we find the second, which we call the effect, we may infer that
the first, which we call the cause, has gone before it. All such
inferences from effects to causes are based on experience; having
observed a certain sequence of events a certain number of times, we
conclude that the events are so conjoined that the latter cannot occur
without the previous occurrence of the former. A single case of two
events following each other could not of itself suggest that the one
event is the cause of the other, since there is no necessary link
between them in the mind; the sequence has to be repeated more or less
frequently before we infer a causal connexion between the two; and this
inference rests simply on that association of ideas which is established
in our mind by the reiterated observation of the things. Once the ideas
are by dint of repetition firmly welded together, the one by sheer force
of habit calls up the other, and we say that the two things which are
represented by those ideas stand to each other in the relation of cause
and effect. The notion of causality is in short only one particular case
of the association of ideas. Thus all reasoning as to causes implies
previous observation: we reason from the observed to the unobserved,
from the known to the unknown; and the wider the range of our
observation and knowledge, the greater the probability that our
reasoning will be correct.
[Sidenote: The savage draws his ideas of natural causation from
observation of himself. Hence he explains the phenomena of nature by
supposing that they are produced by beings like himself. These beings
may be called spirits or gods of nature to distinguish them from living
human gods.]
All this is as true of the savage as of the civilised man. He too
argues, and indeed can only argue on the basis of experience from the
known to the unknown, from the observed to the hypothetical. But the
range of his experience is comparatively narrow, and accordingly his
inferences from it often appear to civilised men, with their wider
knowledge, to be palpably false and absurd. This holds good most
obviously in regard to his observation of external nature. While he
often knows a good deal about the natural objects, whether animals,
plants, or inanimate things, on which he is immediately dependent for
his subsistence, the extent of country with which he is acquainted is
commonly but small, and he has little or no opportunity of correcting
the conclusions which he bases on his observation of it by a comparison
with other parts of the world. But if he knows little of the outer
world, he is necessarily somewhat better acquainted with his own inner
life, with his sensations and ideas, his emotions, appetites, and
desires. Accordingly it is natural enough that when he seeks to discover
the causes of events in the external world, he should, arguing from
experience, imagine that they are produced by the actions of invisible
beings like himself, who behind the veil of nature pull the strings that
set the vast machinery in motion. For example, he knows by experience
that he can make sparks fly by knocking two flints against each other;
what more natural, therefore, than that he should imagine the great
sparks which we call lightning to be made in the same way by somebody up
aloft, and that when he finds chipped flints on the ground he should
take them for thunder-stones dropped by the maker of thunder and
lightning from the clouds?[3] Thus arguing from his limited experience
primitive man creates a multitude of spirits or gods in his own likeness
to explain the succession of phenomena in nature of whose true causes he
is ignorant; in short he personifies the phenomena as powerful
anthropomorphic spirits, and believing himself to be more or less
dependent on their good will he woos their favour by prayer and
sacrifice. This personification of the various aspects of external
nature is one of the most fruitful sources of polytheism. The spirits
and gods created by this train of thought may be called spirits and gods
of nature to distinguish them from the human gods, by which I mean the
living men and women who are believed by their worshippers to be
inspired or possessed by a divine spirit.
[Sidenote: In time men reject polytheism as an explanation of natural
processes and substitute certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so on.]
But as time goes on and men learn more about nature, they commonly
become dissatisfied with polytheism as an explanation of the world and
gradually discard it. From one department of nature after another the
gods are reluctantly or contemptuously dismissed and their provinces
committed to the care of certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so forth, which, though just as imperceptible to human
senses as their divine predecessors, are judged by prevailing opinion to
discharge their duties with greater regularity and despatch, and are
accordingly firmly installed on the vacant thrones amid the general
applause of the more enlightened portion of mankind. Thus instead of
being peopled with a noisy bustling crowd of full-blooded and
picturesque deities, clothed in the graceful form and animated with the
warm passions of humanity, the universe outside the narrow circle of our
consciousness is now conceived as absolutely silent, colourless, and
deserted. The cheerful sounds which we hear, the bright hues which we
see, have no existence, we are told, in the external world: the voices
of friends, the harmonies of music, the chime of falling waters, the
solemn roll of ocean, the silver splendour of the moon, the golden
glories of sunset, the verdure of summer woods, and the hectic tints of
autumn--all these subsist only in our own minds, and if we imagine them
to have any reality elsewhere, we deceive ourselves. In fact the whole
external world as perceived by us is one great illusion: if we gave the
reins to fancy we might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured
up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder poor ignorant
humanity. Outside of ourselves there stretches away on every side an
infinitude of space without sound, without light, without colour, a
solitude traversed only in every direction by an inconceivably complex
web of silent and impersonal forces. That, if I understand it aright, is
the general conception of the world which modern science has substituted
for polytheism.
[Sidenote: But while they commonly discard the hypothesis of a deity as
an explanation of all the particular processes of nature, they retain it
as an explanation of nature in general.]
When philosophy and science by their combined efforts have ejected gods
and goddesses from all the subordinate posts of nature, it might perhaps
be expected that they would have no further occasion for the services of
a deity, and that having relieved him of all his particular functions
they would have arranged for the creation and general maintenance of the
universe without him by handing over these important offices to an
efficient staff of those ethers, atoms, corpuscles, and so forth, which
had already proved themselves so punctual in the discharge of the minor
duties entrusted to them. Nor, indeed, is this expectation altogether
disappointed. A number of atheistical philosophers have courageously
come forward and assured us that the hypothesis of a deity as the
creator and preserver of the universe is quite superfluous, and that all
things came into being or have existed from eternity without the help of
any divine spirit, and that they will continue to exist without it to
the end, if end indeed there is to be. But on the whole these daring
speculators appear to be in a minority. The general opinion of educated
people at the present day, could we ascertain it, would probably be
found to incline to the conclusion that, though every department of
nature is now worked by impersonal material forces alone, the universe
as a whole was created and is still maintained by a great supernatural
spirit whom we call God. Thus in Europe and in the countries which have
borrowed their civilisation, their philosophy, and their religion from
it, the central problem of natural theology has narrowed itself down to
the question, Is there one God or none? It is a profound question, and I
for one profess myself unable to answer it.
[Sidenote: Whether attained by inward or outward experience, the idea of
God is regularly that of a cause inferred, not perceived.]
If this brief sketch of the history of natural theology is correct, man
has by the exercise of his natural faculties alone, without the help of
revelation, attained to a knowledge or at least to a conception of God
in one of two ways, either by meditating on the operations of his own
mind, or by observing the processes of external nature: inward
experience and outward experience have conducted him by different roads
to the same goal. By whichever of them the conception has been reached,
it is regularly employed to explain the causal connexion of things,
whether the things to be explained are the ideas and emotions of man
himself or the changes in the physical world outside of him. In short, a
God is always brought in to play the part of a cause; it is the
imperious need of tracing the causes of events which has driven man to
discover or invent a deity. Now causes may be arranged in two classes
according as they are perceived or unperceived by the senses. For
example, when we see the impact of a billiard cue on a billiard ball
followed immediately by the motion of the ball, we say that the impact
is the cause of the motion. In this case we perceive the cause as well
as the effect. But, when we see an apple fall from a tree to the ground,
we say that the cause of the fall is the force of gravitation exercised
by the superior mass of the earth on the inferior mass of the apple. In
this case, though we perceive the effect, we do not perceive the cause,
we only infer it by a process of reasoning from experience. Causes of
the latter sort may be called inferential or hypothetical causes to
distinguish them from those which are perceived. Of the two classes of
causes a deity belongs in general, if not universally, to the second,
that is, to the inferential or hypothetical causes; for as a rule at all
events his existence is not perceived by our senses but inferred by our
reason. To say that he has never appeared in visible and tangible form
to men would be to beg the question; it would be to make an assertion
which is incapable of proof and which is contradicted by a multitude of
contrary affirmations recorded in the traditions or the sacred books of
many races; but without being rash we may perhaps say that such
appearances, if they ever took place, belong to a past order of events
and need hardly be reckoned with at the present time. For all practical
purposes, therefore, God is now a purely inferential or hypothetical
cause; he may be invoked to explain either our own thoughts and
feelings, our impulses and emotions, or the manifold states and
processes of external nature; he may be viewed either as the inspirer of
the one or the creator and preserver of the other; and according as he
is mainly regarded from the one point of view or the other, the
conception of the divine nature tends to beget one of two very different
types of piety. To the man who traces the finger of God in the workings
of his own mind, the deity appears to be far closer than he seems to the
man who only infers the divine existence from the marvellous order,
harmony, and beauty of the external world; and we need not wonder that
the faith of the former is of a more fervent temper and supplies him
with more powerful incentives to a life of active devotion than the calm
and rational faith of the latter. We may conjecture that the piety of
most great religious reformers has belonged to the former rather than to
the latter type; in other words, that they have believed in God because
they felt, or imagined that they felt, him stirring in their own hearts
rather than because they discerned the handiwork of a divine artificer
in the wonderful mechanism of nature.
[Sidenote: Besides the two sorts of gods already distinguished, namely
natural gods and living human gods, there is a third sort which has
played an important part in history, namely, the spirits of deified dead
men. Euhemerism.]
Thus far I have distinguished two sorts of gods whom man discovers or
creates for himself by the exercise of his unaided faculties, to wit
natural gods, whom he infers from his observation of external nature,
and human gods or inspired men, whom he recognises by virtue of certain
extraordinary mental manifestations in himself or in others. But there
is another class of human gods which I have not yet mentioned and which
has played a very important part in the evolution of theology. I mean
the deified spirits of dead men. To judge by the accounts we possess not
only of savage and barbarous tribes but of some highly civilised
peoples, the worship of the human dead has been one of the commonest and
most influential forms of natural religion, perhaps indeed the commonest
and most influential of all. Obviously it rests on the supposition that
the human personality in some form, whether we call it a soul, a spirit,
a ghost, or what not, can survive death and thereafter continue for a
longer or shorter time to exercise great power for good or evil over the
destinies of the living, who are therefore compelled to propitiate the
shades of the dead out of a regard for their own safety and well-being.
This belief in the survival of the human spirit after death is
world-wide; it is found among men in all stages of culture from the
lowest to the highest; we need not wonder therefore that the custom of
propitiating the ghosts or souls of the departed should be world-wide
also. No doubt the degree of attention paid to ghosts is not the same in
all cases; it varies with the particular degree of power attributed to
each of them; the spirits of men who for any reason were much feared in
their lifetime, such as mighty warriors, chiefs, and kings, are more
revered and receive far more marks of homage than the spirits of common
men; and it is only when this reverence and homage are carried to a very
high pitch that they can properly be described as a deification of the
dead. But that dead men have thus been raised to the rank of deities in
many lands, there is abundant evidence to prove. And quite apart from
the worship paid to those spirits which are admitted by their
worshippers to have once animated the bodies of living men, there is
good reason to suspect that many gods, who rank as purely mythical
beings, were once men of flesh and blood, though their true history has
passed out of memory or rather been transformed by legend into a myth,
which veils more or less completely the real character of the imaginary
deity. The theory that most or all gods originated after this fashion,
in other words, that the worship of the gods is little or nothing but
the worship of dead men, is known as Euhemerism from Euhemerus, the
ancient Greek writer who propounded it. Regarded as a universal
explanation of the belief in gods it is certainly false; regarded as a
partial explanation of the belief it is unquestionably true; and perhaps
we may even go further and say, that the more we penetrate into the
inner history of natural religion, the larger is seen to be the element
of truth contained in Euhemerism. For the more closely we look at many
deities of natural religion, the more distinctly do we seem to perceive,
under the quaint or splendid pall which the mythical fancy has wrapt
round their stately figures, the familiar features of real men, who once
shared the common joys and the common sorrows of humanity, who trod
life's common road to the common end.
[Sidenote: The deification of dead men presupposes the immortality of
the human soul, or rather its survival for a longer or shorter time
after death.]
When we ask how it comes about that dead men have so often been raised
to the rank of divinities, the first thing to be observed is that all
such deifications must, if our theory is correct, be inferences drawn
from experience of some sort; they must be hypotheses devised to explain
the unperceived causes of certain phenomena, whether of the human mind
or of external nature. All of them imply, as I have said, a belief that
the conscious human personality, call it the soul, the spirit, or what
you please, can survive the body and continue to exist in a disembodied
state with unabated or even greatly increased powers for good or evil.
This faith in the survival of personality after death may for the sake
of brevity be called a faith in immortality, though the term immortality
is not strictly correct, since it seems to imply eternal duration,
whereas the idea of eternity is hardly intelligible to many primitive
peoples, who nevertheless firmly believe in the continued existence, for
a longer or shorter time, of the human spirit after the dissolution of
the body. Now the faith in the immortality of the soul or, to speak more
correctly, in the continued existence of conscious human personality
after death, is, as I remarked before, exceedingly common among men at
all levels of intellectual evolution from the lowest upwards; certainly
it is not peculiar to adherents of the higher religions, but is held as
an unquestionable truth by at least the great majority of savage and
barbarous peoples as to whose ideas we possess accurate information;
indeed it might be hard to point to any single tribe of men, however
savage, of whom we could say with certainty that the faith is totally
wanting among them.
[Sidenote: The question of immortality is a fundamental problem of
natural theology in the wider sense.]
Hence if we are to explain the deification of dead men, we must first
explain the widespread belief in immortality; we must answer the
question, how does it happen that men in all countries and at all stages
of ignorance or knowledge so commonly suppose that when they die their
consciousness will still persist for an indefinite time after the decay
of the body? To answer that question is one of the fundamental problems
of natural theology, not indeed in the full sense of the word theology,
if we confine the term strictly to a reasoned knowledge of a God; for
the example of Buddhism proves that a belief in the existence of the
human soul after death is quite compatible with disbelief in a deity.
But if we may use, as I think we may, the phrase natural theology in an
extended sense to cover theories which, though they do not in themselves
affirm the existence of a God, nevertheless appear to be one of the
deepest and most fruitful sources of the belief in his reality, then we
may legitimately say that the doctrine of human immortality does fall
within the scope of natural theology. What then is its origin? How is it
that men so commonly believe themselves to be immortal?
[Sidenote: If there is any natural knowledge of immortality, it must be
acquired either by intuition or experience; it is apparently not given
by intuition; hence it must be acquired, if at all, by experience.]
If there is any natural knowledge of human immortality, it must be
acquired either by intuition or by experience; there is no other way.
Now whether other men from a simple contemplation of their own nature,
quite apart from reasoning, know or believe themselves intuitively to be
immortal, I cannot say; but I can say with some confidence that for
myself I have no such intuition whatever of my own immortality, and that
if I am left to the resources of my natural faculties alone, I can as
little affirm the certain or probable existence of my personality after
death as I can affirm the certain or probable existence of a personal
God. And I am bold enough to suspect that if men could analyse their own
ideas, they would generally find themselves to be in a similar
predicament as to both these profound topics. Hence I incline to lay it
down as a probable proposition that men as a rule have no intuitive
knowledge of their own immortality, and that if there is any natural
knowledge of such a thing it can only be acquired by a process of
reasoning from experience.[4]
[Sidenote: The idea of immortality seems to have been suggested to man
both by his inward and his outward experience, notably by dreams, which
are a case of inward experience.]
What then is the kind of experience from which the theory of human
immortality is deduced? Is it our experience of the operations of our
own minds? or is it our experience of external nature? As a matter of
historical fact--and you will remember that I am treating the question
purely from the historical standpoint--men seem to have inferred the
persistence of their personality after death both from the one kind of
experience and from the other, that is, both from the phenomena of their
inner life and from the phenomena of what we call the external world.
Thus the savage, with whose beliefs we are chiefly concerned in these
lectures, finds a very strong argument for immortality in the phenomena
of dreams, which are strictly a part of his inner life, though in his
ignorance he commonly fails to discriminate them from what we popularly
call waking realities. Hence when the images of persons whom he knows to
be dead appear to him in a dream, he naturally infers that these persons
still exist somewhere and somehow apart from their bodies, of the decay
or destruction of which he may have had ocular demonstration. How could
he see dead people, he asks, if they did not exist? To argue that they
have perished like their bodies is to contradict the plain evidence of
his senses; for to the savage still more than to the civilised man
seeing is believing; that he sees the dead only in dreams does not shake
his belief, since he thinks the appearances of dreams just as real as
the appearances of his waking hours. And once he has in this way gained
a conviction that the dead survive and can help or harm him, as they
seem to do in dreams, it is natural or necessary for him to extend the
theory to the occurrences of daily life, which, as I have said, he does
not sharply distinguish from the visions of slumber. He now explains
many of these occurrences and many of the processes of nature by the
direct interposition of the spirits of the departed; he traces their
invisible hand in many of the misfortunes and in some of the blessings
which befall him; for it is a common feature of the faith in ghosts, at
least among savages, that they are usually spiteful and mischievous, or
at least testy and petulant, more apt to injure than to benefit the
survivors. In that they resemble the personified spirits of nature,
which in the opinion of most savages appear to be generally tricky and
malignant beings, whose anger is dangerous and whose favour is courted
with fear and trembling. Thus even without the additional assurance
afforded by tales of apparitions and spectres, primitive man may come in
time to imagine the world around him to be more or less thickly peopled,
influenced, and even dominated by a countless multitude of spirits,
among whom the shades of past generations of men and women hold a very
prominent, often apparently the leading place. These spirits, powerful
to help or harm, he seeks either simply to avert, when he deems them
purely mischievous, or to appease and conciliate, when he supposes them
sufficiently good-natured to respond to his advances. In some such way
as this, arguing from the real but, as we think, misinterpreted
phenomena of dreams, the savage may arrive at a doctrine of human
immortality and from that at a worship of the dead.
[Sidenote: It has also been suggested by the resemblance of the living
to the dead, which is a case of outward experience.]
This explanation of the savage faith in immortality is neither novel nor
original: on the contrary it is perhaps the commonest and most familiar
that has yet been propounded. If it does not account for all the facts,
it probably accounts for many of them. At the same time I do not doubt
that many other inferences drawn from experiences of different kinds
have confirmed, even if they did not originally suggest, man's confident
belief in his own immortality. To take a single example of outward
experience, the resemblances which children often bear to deceased
kinsfolk appear to have prompted in the minds of many savages the notion
that the souls of these dead kinsfolk have been born again in their
descendants.[5] From a few cases of resemblances so explained it would
be easy to arrive at a general theory that all living persons are
animated by the souls of the dead; in other words, that the human spirit
survives death for an indefinite period, if not for eternity, during
which it undergoes a series of rebirths or reincarnations. However it
has been arrived at, this doctrine of the transmigration or
reincarnation of the soul is found among many tribes of savages; and
from what we know on the subject we seem to be justified in conjecturing
that at certain stages of mental and social evolution the belief in
metempsychosis has been far commoner and has exercised a far deeper
influence on the life and institutions of primitive man than the actual
evidence before us at present allows us positively to affirm.
[Sidenote: The aim of these lectures is to collect a number of facts
illustrative of the belief in immortality and of the customs based on it
among some of the lower races.]
Be that as it may--and I have no wish to dogmatise on so obscure a
topic--it is certain that a belief in the survival of the human
personality after death and the practice of a propitiation or worship of
the dead have prevailed very widely among mankind and have played a very
important part in the development of natural religion. While many
writers have duly recognised the high importance both of the belief and
of the worship, no one, so far as I know, has attempted systematically
to collect and arrange the facts which illustrate the prevalence of this
particular type of religion among the various races of mankind. A large
body of evidence lies to hand in the voluminous and rapidly increasing
literature of ethnology; but it is dispersed over an enormous number of
printed books and papers, to say nothing of the materials which still
remain buried either in manuscript or in the minds of men who possess
the requisite knowledge but have not yet committed it to writing. To
draw all those stores of information together and digest them into a
single treatise would be a herculean labour, from which even the most
industrious researcher into the dusty annals of the human past might
shrink dismayed. Certainly I shall make no attempt to perform such a
feat within the narrow compass of these lectures. But it seems to me
that I may make a useful, if a humble, contribution to the history of
religion by selecting a portion of the evidence and submitting it to my
hearers. For that purpose, instead of accumulating a mass of facts from
all the various races of mankind and then comparing them together, I
prefer to limit myself to a few races and to deal with each of them
separately, beginning with the lowest savages, about whom we possess
accurate information, and gradually ascending to peoples who stand
higher in the scale of culture. In short the method of treatment which I
shall adopt will be the descriptive rather than the comparative. I shall
not absolutely refrain from instituting comparisons between the customs
and beliefs of different races, but for the most part I shall content
myself with describing the customs and beliefs of each race separately
without reference to those of others. Each of the two methods, the
comparative and the descriptive, has its peculiar advantages and
disadvantages, and in my published writings I have followed now the one
method and now the other. The comparative method is unquestionably the
more attractive and stimulating, but it cannot be adopted without a good
deal of more or less conscious theorising, since every comparison
implicitly involves a theory. If we desire to exclude theories and
merely accumulate facts for the use of science, the descriptive method
is undoubtedly the better adapted for the arrangement of our materials:
it may not stimulate enquiry so powerfully, but it lays a more solid
foundation on which future enquirers may build. It is as a collection of
facts illustrative of the belief in immortality and of all the momentous
consequences which have flowed from that belief, that I desire the
following lectures to be regarded. They are intended to serve simply as
a document of religious history; they make no pretence to discuss
philosophically the truth of the beliefs and the morality of the
practices which will be passed under review. If any inferences can
indeed be drawn from the facts to the truth or falsehood of the beliefs
and to the moral worth or worthlessness of the practices, I prefer to
leave it to others more competent than myself to draw them. My sight is
not keen enough, my hand is not steady enough to load the scales and
hold the balance in so difficult and delicate an enquiry.
[Footnote 1: Matthew Arnold, _Literature and Dogma_, ch. i., p. 31
(Popular Edition, London, 1893).]
[Footnote 2: For a single instance see L. Sternberg, "Die Religion der
Giljaken," _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, viii. (1905) pp. 462
_sqq._, where the writer tells us that the Gilyaks have boundless faith
in the supernatural power of their shamans, and that the shamans are
nearly always persons who suffer from hysteria in one form or another.]
[Footnote 3: As to the widespread belief that flint weapons are
thunderbolts see Sir E. B. Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of
Mankind_, Third Edition (London, 1878), pp. 223-227; Chr. Blinkenberg,
_The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore_ (Cambridge, 1911); W. W.
Skeat "Snakestones and Thunderbolts," _Folk-lore_, xxiii. (1912) pp. 60
_sqq._; and the references in _The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings_, ii. 374.]
[Footnote 4: Wordsworth, who argues strongly, almost passionately, for
"the consciousness of a principle of Immortality in the human soul,"
admits that "the sense of Immortality, if not a coexistent and twin
birth with Reason, is among the earliest of her offspring." See his
_Essay upon Epitaphs_, appended to _The Excursion_ (_Poetical Works_,
London, 1832, vol. iv. pp. 336, 338). This somewhat hesitating admission
of the inferential nature of the belief in immortality carries all the
more weight because it is made by so warm an advocate of human
immortality.]
[Footnote 5: For instance, the Kagoro of Northern Nigeria believe that
"a spirit may transmigrate into the body of a descendant born
afterwards, male or female; in fact, this is common, as is proved by the
likeness of children to their parents or grand-parents, and it is lucky,
for the ghost has returned, and has no longer any power to frighten the
relatives until the new body dies, and it is free again" (Major A. J. N.
Tremearne, "Notes on some Nigerian Head-hunters," _Journal of the R.
Anthropological Institute_, xlii. (1912) p. 159). Compare _Taboo and the
Perils of the Soul_, pp. 88 _sq._; _The Dying God_, p. 287 (p. 288,
Second Impression).]
LECTURE II
THE SAVAGE CONCEPTION OF DEATH
[Sidenote: The subject of these lectures is the belief in immortality
and the worship of the dead.]
Last day I explained the subject of which I propose to treat and the
method which I intend to follow in these lectures. I shall describe the
belief in immortality, or rather in the continued existence of the human
soul after death, as that belief is found among certain of the lower
races, and I shall give some account of the religion which has been
based upon it. That religion is in brief a propitiation or worship of
the human dead, who according to the degree of power ascribed to them by
the living are supposed to vary in dignity from the humble rank of a
mere common ghost up to the proud position of deity. The elements of
such a worship appear to exist among all races of men, though in some
they have been much more highly developed than in others.
[Sidenote: Preliminary account of savage beliefs concerning the nature
and origin of death.]
But before I address myself to the description of particular races, I
wish in this and the following lecture to give you some general account
of the beliefs of savages concerning the nature and origin of death. The
problem of death has very naturally exercised the minds of men in all
ages. Unlike so many problems which interest only a few solitary
thinkers this one concerns us all alike, since simpletons as well as
sages must die, and even the most heedless and feather-brained can
hardly help sometimes asking themselves what comes after death. The
question is therefore thrust in a practical, indeed importunate form on
our attention; and we need not wonder that in the long history of human
speculation some of the highest intellects should have occupied
themselves with it and sought to find an answer to the riddle. Some of
their solutions of the problem, though dressed out in all the beauty of
exquisite language and poetic imagery, singularly resemble the rude
guesses of savages. So little, it would seem, do the natural powers even
of the greatest minds avail to pierce the thick veil that hides the end
of life.
[Sidenote: The problem of death is one of universal interest.]
In saying that the problem is thrust home upon us all, I do not mean to
imply that all men are constantly or even often engaged in meditating on
the nature and origin of death. Far from it. Few people trouble
themselves about that or any other purely abstract question: the common
man would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he wants
to know, what we all want to know, is whether death is the end of all
things for the individual, whether our conscious personality perishes
with the body or survives it for a time or for eternity. That is the
enigma propounded to every human being who has been born into the world:
that is the door at which so many enquirers have knocked in vain. Stated
in this limited form the problem has indeed been of universal interest:
there is no race of men known to us which has not pondered the mystery
and arrived at some conclusions to which it more or less confidently
adheres. Not that all races have paid an equal attention to it. On some
it has weighed much more heavily than on others. While some races, like
some individuals, take death almost lightly, and are too busy with the
certainties of the present world to pay much heed to the uncertainties
of a world to come, the minds of others have dwelt on the prospect of a
life beyond the grave till the thought of it has risen with them to a
passion, almost to an obsession, and has begotten a contempt for the
fleeting joys of this ephemeral existence by comparison with the
hoped-for bliss of an eternal existence hereafter. To the sceptic,
examining the evidence for immortality by the cold light of reason, such
peoples and such individuals may seem to sacrifice the substance for the
shadow: to adopt a homely comparison, they are like the dog in the fable
who dropped the real leg of mutton, from his mouth in order to snap at
its reflection in the water. Be that as it may, where such beliefs and
hopes are entertained in full force, the whole activity of the mind and
the whole energy of the body are apt to be devoted to a preparation for
a blissful or at all events an untroubled eternity, and life becomes, in
the language of Plato, a meditation or practising of death. This
excessive preoccupation with a problematic future has been a fruitful
source of the most fatal aberrations both for nations and individuals.
In pursuit of these visionary aims the few short years of life have been
frittered away: wealth has been squandered: blood has been poured out in
torrents: the natural affections have been stifled; and the cheerful
serenity of reason has been exchanged for the melancholy gloom of
madness.
"Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--_This_ Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies."
[Sidenote: The belief in immortality general among mankind.]
The question whether our conscious personality survives after death has
been answered by almost all races of men in the affirmative. On this
point sceptical or agnostic peoples are nearly, if not wholly, unknown.
Accordingly if abstract truth could be determined, like the gravest
issues of national policy, by a show of hands or a counting of heads,
the doctrine of human immortality, or at least of a life after death,
would deserve to rank among the most firmly established of truths; for
were the question put to the vote of the whole of mankind, there can be
no doubt that the ayes would have it by an overwhelming majority. The
few dissenters would be overborne; their voices would be drowned in the
general roar. For dissenters there have been even among savages. The
Tongans, for example, thought that only the souls of noblemen are saved,
the rest perish with their bodies.[6] However, this aristocratic view
has never been popular, and is not likely to find favour in our
democratic age.
[Sidenote: Belief of many savages that they would never die if their
lives were not cut short by sorcery. Belief of the Abipones.]
But many savage races not only believe in a life after death; they are
even of opinion that they would never die at all if it were not for the
maleficent arts of sorcerers who cut the vital thread prematurely short.
In other words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they
think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and that every
death which takes place is in fact a violent death inflicted by the hand
of a human enemy, though in many cases the foe is invisible and works
his fell purpose not by a sword or a spear but by magic. Thus the
Abipones, a now extinct tribe of horse Indians in Paraguay, used to
allege that they would be immortal and that none of them would ever die
if only the Spaniards and the sorcerers could be banished from America;
for they were in the habit of attributing every death, whatever its
cause, either to the baleful arts of sorcerers or to the firearms of the
Spaniards. Even if a man died riddled with wounds, with his bones
smashed, or through the exhaustion of old age, these Indians would all
deny that the wounds or old age was the cause of his death; they firmly
believed that the death was brought about by magic, and they would make
careful enquiries to discover the sorcerer who had cast the fatal spell
on their comrade. The relations of the deceased would move every stone
to detect and punish the culprit; and they imagined that they could do
this by cutting out the heart and tongue of the dead man and throwing
them to a dog to be devoured. They thought that this in some way killed
the wicked magician who had killed their friend. For example, it
happened that in a squabble between two men about a horse a third man
who tried to make peace between the disputants was mortally wounded by
their spears and died in a few days. To us it might seem obvious that
the peacemaker was killed by the spear-wounds which he had received, but
none of the Abipones would admit such a thing for a moment. They stoutly
affirmed that their comrade had been done to death by the magical arts
of some person unknown, and their suspicions fell on a certain old
woman, known to be a witch, to whom the deceased had lately refused to
give a water-melon, and who out of spite had killed him by her spells,
though he appeared to the European eye to have died of a spear-wound.[7]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Araucanians.]
Similarly the warlike Araucanians of Chili are said to disbelieve in
natural death. Even if a man dies peaceably at the age of a hundred,
they still think that he has been bewitched by an enemy. A diviner or
medicine-man is consulted in order to discover the culprit. Some of
these wizards enjoy a great reputation and the Indians will send a
hundred miles or more to get the opinion of an eminent member of the
profession. In such cases they submit to him some of the remains of the
dead man, for example, his eyebrows, his nails, his tongue, or the soles
of his feet, and from an examination of these relics the man of skill
pronounces on the author of the death. The person whom he accuses is
hunted down and killed, sometimes by fire, amid the yells of an enraged
crowd.[8]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Bakaïri.]
When the eminent German anthropologist was questioning a Bakaïri Indian
of Brazil as to the language of his tribe, he gave the sentence, "Every
man must die" to be translated into the Bakaïri language. To his
astonishment, the Indian remained long silent. The same long pause
always occurred when an abstract proposition, with which he was
unfamiliar, was put before the Indian for translation into his native
tongue. On the present occasion the enquirer learned that the Indian has
no idea of necessity in the abstract, and in particular he has no
conception at all of the necessity of death. The cause of death, in his
opinion, is invariably an ill turn done by somebody to the deceased. If
there were only good men in the world, he thinks that there would be
neither sickness nor death. He knows nothing about a natural end of the
vital process; he believes that all sickness and disease are the effects
of witchcraft.[9]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Indians of Guiana in sorcery as the cause of
sickness and death.]
Speaking of the Indians of Guiana, an English missionary, who knew them
well, says that the worst feature in their character is their proneness
to blood revenge, "by which a succession of retaliatory murders may be
kept up for a long time. It is closely connected with their system of
sorcery, which we shall presently consider. A person dies,--and it is
supposed that an enemy has secured the agency of an evil spirit to
compass his death. Some sorcerer, employed by the friends of the
deceased for that purpose, pretends by his incantations to discover the
guilty individual or family, or at any rate to indicate the quarter
where they dwell. A near relative of the deceased is then charged with
the work of vengeance. He becomes a _kanaima_, or is supposed to be
possessed by the destroying spirit so called, and has to live apart,
according to strict rule, and submit to many privations, until the deed
of blood be accomplished. If the supposed offender cannot be slain, some
innocent member of his family--man, woman, or little child--must suffer
instead."[10] The same writer tells us that these Indians of Guiana
attribute sickness and death directly to the agency of certain evil
spirits called _yauhahu_, who delight in inflicting miseries upon
mankind. Pain, in the language of the Arawaks (one of the best-known
tribes of Guiana), is called _yauhahu simaira_ or "the evil spirit's
arrow."[11] It is these evil spirits whom wicked sorcerers employ to
accomplish their fell purpose. Thus while the demon is the direct cause
of sickness and death, the sorcerer who uses him as his tool is the
indirect cause. The demon is thought to do his work by inserting some
alien substance into the body of the sufferer, and a medicine-man is
employed to extract it by chanting an invocation to the maleficent
spirit, shaking his rattle, and sucking the part of the patient's frame
in which the cause of the malady is imagined to reside. "After many
ceremonies he will produce from his mouth some strange substance, such
as a thorn or gravel-stone, a fish-bone or bird's claw, a snake's tooth,
or a piece of wire, which some malicious _yauhahu_ is supposed to have
inserted in the affected part. As soon as the patient fancies himself
rid of this cause of his illness his recovery is generally rapid, and
the fame of the sorcerer greatly increased. Should death, however,
ensue, the blame is laid upon the evil spirit whose power and malignity
have prevailed over the counteracting charms. Some rival sorcerer will
at times come in for a share of the blame, whom the sufferer has
unhappily made his enemy, and who is supposed to have employed the
_yauhahu_ in destroying him. The sorcerers being supposed to have the
power of causing, as well as of curing diseases, are much dreaded by the
common people, who never wilfully offend them. So deeply rooted in the
Indian's bosom is this belief concerning the origin of diseases, that
they have little idea of sickness arising from other causes. Death may
arise from a wound or a contusion, or be brought on by want of food, but
in other cases it is the work of the _yauhahu_"[12] or evil spirit.
[Sidenote: Some deaths attributed to sorcery and others to evil spirits:
practical consequence of this distinction.]
In this account it is to be observed that while all natural deaths from
sickness and disease are attributed to the direct action of evil
spirits, only some of them are attributed to the indirect action of
sorcerers. The practical consequences of this theoretical distinction
are very important. For whereas death by sorcery must, in the opinion of
savages, be avenged by killing the supposed sorcerer, death by the
action of a demon cannot be so avenged; for how are you to get at the
demon? Hence, while every death by sorcery involves, theoretically at
least, another death by violence, death by a demon involves no such
practical consequence. So far, therefore, the faith in sorcery is far
more murderous than the faith in demons. This practical distinction is
clearly recognised by these Indians of Guiana; for another writer, who
laboured among them as a missionary, tells us that when a person dies a
natural death, the medicine-man is called upon to decide whether he
perished through the agency of a demon or the agency of a sorcerer. If
he decides that the deceased died through the malice of an evil spirit,
the body is quietly buried, and no more is thought of the matter. But if
the wizard declares that the cause of death was sorcery, the corpse is
closely inspected, and if a blue mark is discovered, it is pointed out
as the spot where the invisible poisoned arrow, discharged by the
sorcerer, entered the man. The next thing is to detect the culprit. For
this purpose a pot containing a decoction of leaves is set to boil on a
fire. When it begins to boil over, the side on which the scum first
falls is the quarter in which the supposed murderer is to be sought. A
consultation is then held: the guilt is laid on some individual, and one
of the nearest relations of the deceased is charged with the duty of
finding and killing him. If the imaginary culprit cannot be found, any
other member of his family may be slain in his stead. "It is not
difficult to conceive," adds the writer, "how, under such circumstances,
no man's life is secure; whilst these by no means unfrequent murders
must greatly tend to diminish the number of the natives."[13]
[Sidenote: Among the Indians of Guiana death is oftener attributed to
sorcery than to demons.]
However, it would seem that among the Indians of Guiana sickness and
death are oftener ascribed to the agency of sorcerers than to the agency
of demons acting alone. For another high authority on these Indians, Sir
Everard F. im Thurn, tells us that "every death, every illness, is
regarded not as the result of natural law, but as the work of a
_kenaima_" or sorcerer. "Often indeed," he adds, "the survivors or the
relatives of the invalid do not know to whom to attribute the deed,
which therefore perforce remains unpunished; but often, again, there is
real or fancied reason to fix on some one as the _kenaima_, and then the
nearest relative of the injured individual devotes himself to retaliate.
Strange ceremonies are sometimes observed in order to discover the
secret _kenaima_. Richard Schomburgk describes a striking instance of
this. A Macusi boy had died a natural death, and his relatives
endeavoured to discover the quarter to which the _kenaima_ who was
supposed to have slain him belonged. Raising a terrible and monotonous
dirge, they carried the body to an open piece of ground, and there
formed a circle round it, while the father, cutting from the corpse both
the thumbs and little fingers, both the great and the little toes, and a
piece of each heel, threw these pieces into a new pot, which had been
filled with water. A fire was kindled, and on this the pot was placed.
When the water began to boil, according to the side on which one of the
pieces was first thrown out from the pot by the bubbling of the water,
in that direction would the _kenaima_ be. In thus looking round to see
who did the deed, the Indian thinks it by no means necessary to fix on
anyone who has been with or near the injured man. The _kenaima_ is
supposed to have done the deed, not necessarily in person, but probably
in spirit."[14] For these Indians believe that each individual man has a
body and a spirit within it, and that sorcerers can despatch their
spirits out of their bodies to harm people at a distance. It is not
always in an invisible form that these spirits of sorcerers are supposed
to roam on their errands of mischief. The wizard can put his spirit into
the shape of an animal, such as a jaguar, a serpent, a sting-ray, a
bird, an insect, or anything else he pleases. Hence when an Indian is
attacked by a wild beast, he thinks that his real foe is not the animal,
but the sorcerer who has transformed himself into it. Curiously enough
they look upon some small harmless birds in the same light. One little
bird, in particular, which flits across the savannahs with a peculiar
shrill whistle at morning and evening, is regarded by the Indians with
especial fear as a transformed sorcerer. They think that for every one
of these birds that they shoot they have an enemy the less, and they
burn its little body, taking great care that not even a single feather
escapes to be blown about by the wind. On a windy day a dozen men and
women have been seen chasing the floating feathers of these birds about
the savannah in order utterly to extinguish the imaginary wizard. Even
the foreign substance, the stick, bone, or whatever it is, which the
good medicine-man pretends to suck from the body of the sufferer "is
often, if not always, regarded not simply as a natural body, but as the
materialised form of a hostile spirit."[15]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Tinneh Indians in sorcery as the cause of
death.]
Beliefs and practices of the same general character are reported to have
formerly prevailed among the Tinneh or Déné Indians of North-west
America. When any beloved or influential person died, nobody, we are
told, would think of attributing the death to natural causes; it was
assumed that the demise was an effect of sorcery, and the only
difficulty was to ascertain the culprit. For that purpose the services
of a shaman were employed. Rigged out in all his finery he would dance
and sing, then suddenly fall down and feign death or sleep. On awaking
from the apparent trance he would denounce the sorcerer who had killed
the deceased by his magic art, and the denunciation generally proved the
death-warrant of the accused.[16]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Australian aborigines in sorcery as the cause
of death.]
Again, similar beliefs and customs in regard to what we should call
natural death appear to have prevailed universally amongst the
aborigines of Australia, and to have contributed very materially to thin
the population. On this subject I will quote the words of an observer.
His remarks apply to the Australian aborigines in general but to the
tribes of Victoria in particular. He says: "The natives are much more
numerous in some parts of Australia than they are in others, but nowhere
is the country thickly peopled; some dire disease occasionally breaks
out among the natives, and carries off large numbers.... But there are
two other causes which, in my opinion, principally account for their
paucity of numbers. The first is that infanticide is universally
practised; the second, that a belief exists that no one can die a
natural death. Thus, if an individual of a certain tribe dies, his
relatives consider that his death has been caused by sorcery on the part
of another tribe. The deceased's sons, or nearest relatives, therefore
start off on a _bucceening_ or murdering expedition. If the deceased is
buried, a fly or a beetle is put into the grave, and the direction in
which the insect wings its way when released is the one the avengers
take. If the body is burnt, the whereabouts of the offending parties is
indicated by the direction of the smoke. The first unfortunates fallen
in with are generally watched until they encamp for the night; when they
are buried in sleep, the murderers steal quietly up until they are
within a yard or two of their victims, rush suddenly upon and butcher
them. On these occasions they always abstract the kidney-fat, and also
take off a piece of the skin of the thigh. These are carried home as
trophies, as the American Indians take the scalp. The murderers anoint
their bodies with the fat of their victims, thinking that by that
process the strength of the deceased enters into them. Sometimes it
happens that the _bucceening_ party come suddenly upon a man of a
strange tribe in a tree hunting opossums; he is immediately speared, and
left weltering in his blood at the foot of the tree. The relatives of
the murdered man at once proceed to retaliate; and thus a constant and
never-ending series of murders is always going on.... I do not mean to
assert that for every man that dies or is killed another is murdered;
for it often happens that the deceased has no sons or relatives who care
about avenging his death. At other times a _bucceening_ party will
return without having met with any one; then, again, they are sometimes
repelled by those they attack."[17]
[Sidenote: Belief of the natives of Western Australia in sorcery as a
cause of death. Beliefs of the tribes of Victoria and South Australia.]
Again, speaking of the tribes of Western Australia, Sir George Grey
tells us that "the natives do not allow that there is such a thing as a
death from natural causes; they believe, that were it not for murderers
or the malignity of sorcerers, they might live for ever; hence, when a
native dies from the effect of an accident, or from some natural cause,
they use a variety of superstitious ceremonies, to ascertain in what
direction the sorcerer lives, whose evil practices have brought about
the death of their relative; this point being satisfactorily settled by
friendly sorcerers, they then attach the crime to some individual, and
the funeral obsequies are scarcely concluded, ere they start to revenge
their supposed wrongs."[18] Again, speaking of the Watch-an-die tribe of
Western Australia, another writer tells us that they "possess the
comfortable assurance that nearly all diseases, and consequently deaths,
are caused by the enchantments of hostile tribes, and that were it not
for the malevolence of their enemies they would (with a few exceptions)
live for ever. Consequently, on the first approach of sickness their
first endeavour is to ascertain whether the _boollia_ [magic] of their
own tribe is not sufficiently potent to counteract that of their foes.
Should the patient recover, they are, of course, proud of the
superiority of their enchantment over that of their enemies: but should
the _boollia_ [magical influence] within the sick man prove stronger
than their own, as there is no help for it, he must die, the utmost they
can do in this case is to revenge his death."[19] But the same writer
qualifies this general statement as follows: "It is not true," he says,
"that the New Hollanders impute _all_ natural deaths to the _boollia_
[magic] of inimical tribes, for in most cases of persons wasting visibly
away before death, they do not entertain the notion. It is chiefly in
cases of sudden death, or when the body of the deceased is fat and in
good condition, that this belief prevails, and it is only in such
contingencies that it becomes an imperative duty to have revenge."[20]
Similarly, speaking of the tribes of Victoria in the early days of
European settlement among them, the experienced observer Mr. James
Dawson says that "natural deaths are generally--but not
always--attributed to the malevolence and the spells of an enemy
belonging to another tribe."[21] Again, with regard to the Encounter Bay
tribe of South Australia we read that "there are but few diseases which
they regard as the consequences of natural causes; in general they
consider them the effects of enchantment, and produced by
sorcerers."[22] Similarly of the Port Lincoln tribes in South Australia
it is recorded that "in all cases of death that do not arise from old
age, wounds, or other equally palpable causes, the natives suspect that
unfair means have been practised; and even where the cause of death is
sufficiently plain, they sometimes will not content themselves with it,
but have recourse to an imaginary one, as the following case will
prove:--A woman had been bitten by a black snake, across the thumb, in
clearing out a well; she began to swell directly, and was a corpse in
twenty-four hours; yet, another woman who had been present when the
accident occurred, stated that the deceased had named a certain native
as having caused her death. Upon this statement, which was in their
opinion corroborated by the circumstance that the snake had drawn no
blood from the deceased, her husband and other friends had a fight with
the accused party and his friends; a reconciliation, however, took place
afterwards, and it was admitted on the part of the aggressors that they
had been in error with regard to the guilty individual; but nowise more
satisfied as to the bite of the snake being the true cause of the
woman's death, another party was now suddenly discovered to be the real
offender, and accordingly war was made upon him and his partisans, till
at last the matter was dropped and forgotten. From this case, as well as
from frequent occurrences of a similar nature, it appears evident that
thirst for revenge has quite as great a share in these foul accusations
as superstition."[23]
[Sidenote: Other testimonies as to the belief of the natives of South
Australia and Victoria.]
However, other experienced observers of the Australian aborigines admit
no such limitations and exceptions to the native theory that death is an
effect of sorcery. Thus in regard to the Narrinyeri tribe of South
Australia the Rev. George Taplin, who knew them intimately for years,
says that "no native regards death as natural, but always as the result
of sorcery."[24] Again, to quote Mr. R. Brough Smyth, who has collected
much information on the tribes of Victoria: "Mr. Daniel Bunce, an
intelligent observer, and a gentleman well acquainted with the habits of
the blacks, says that no tribe that he has ever met with believes in the
possibility of a man 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
burnt by his enemy. Such an act, they say, is sufficient to imperil his
life. If the man dies, it is assumed that the thief has choked his
victim and taken away his kidney-fat. When the grave is being dug, one
or more of the older men--generally doctors or conjurors
(_Buk-na-look_)--stand by and attentively watch the laborers; and if an
insect is thrown out of the ground, these old men observe the direction
which it takes, and having determined the line, two of the young men,
relations of the deceased, are despatched in the path indicated, with
instructions to kill the first native they meet, who they are assured
and believe is the person directly chargeable with the crime of causing
the death of their relative. Mr. John Green says that the men of the
Yarra 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; and they discover the direction in which to search for
the slayer by the movements of a lizard which is seen immediately after
the corpse is interred."[25] Again, speaking of the aborigines of
Victoria, another writer observes: "All deaths from natural causes are
attributed to the machinations of enemies, who are supposed to have
sought for and burned the excrement of the intended victim, which,
according to the general belief, causes a gradual wasting away. The
relatives, therefore, watch the struggling feet of the dying person, as
they point in the direction whence the injury is thought to come, and
serve as a guide to the spot where it should be avenged. This is the
duty of the nearest male relative; should he fail in its execution, it
will ever be to him a reproach, although other relatives may have
avenged the death. If the deceased were a chief, then the duty devolves
upon the tribe. Chosen men are sent in the direction indicated, who kill
the first persons they meet, whether men, women, or children; and the
more lives that are sacrificed, the greater is the honour to the
dead."[26] Again, in his account of the Kurnai tribe of Victoria the
late Dr. A. W. Howitt remarks: "It is not difficult to see how, among
savages, who have no knowledge of the real causes of diseases which are
the common lot of humanity, the very suspicion even of such a thing as
death from disease should be unknown. Death by accident they can
imagine; death by violence they can imagine; but I question if they can,
in their savage condition, imagine death by mere disease. Rheumatism is
believed to be produced by the machinations of some enemy. Seeing a
Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter? He said, 'Some
fellow has put _bottle_ in my foot.' I asked him to let me see it. I
found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that
some enemy must have found his foot track, and have buried in it a piece
of broken bottle. The magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter
his foot.... Phthisis, pneumonia, bowel complaints, and insanity are
supposed to be produced by an evil spirit--Brewin--'who is like the
wind,' and who, entering his victims, can only be expelled by suitable
incantations.... Thus the belief arises that death occurs only from
accident, open violence, or secret magic; and, naturally, that the
latter can only be met by counter-charms."[27]
[Sidenote: Belief of the aborigines of New South Wales in sorcery as the
cause of sickness and death.]
The beliefs and practices of the aborigines of New South Wales in
respect of death were similar. Thus we are told by a well-informed
writer that "the natives do not believe in death from natural causes;
therefore all sickness is attributed to the agency of sorcery, and
counter charms are used to destroy its effect.... As a man's death is
never supposed to have occurred naturally, except as the result of
accident, or from a wound in battle, the first thing to be done when a
death occurs is to endeavour to find out the person whose spells have
brought about the calamity. In the Wathi-Wathi tribe the corpse is asked
by each relative in succession to signify by some sign the person who
has caused his death. Not receiving an answer, they watch in which
direction a bird flies, after having passed over the deceased. This is
considered an indication that the sorcerer is to be found in that
direction. Sometimes the nearest relative sleeps with his head on the
corpse, which causes him, they think, to dream of the murderer. There
is, however, a good deal of uncertainty about the proceedings, which
seldom result in more than a great display of wrath, and of vowing of
vengeance against some member of a neighbouring tribe. Unfortunately
this is not always the case, the man who is supposed to have exercised
the death-spell being sometimes waylaid and murdered in a most cruel
manner."[28] With regard to the great Kamilaroi tribe of New South Wales
we read that "in some parts of the country a belief prevails that death,
through disease, is, in many, if not in all cases, the result of an
enemy's malice. It is a common saying, when illness or death comes, that
some one has thrown his belt (_boor_) at the victim. There are various
modes of fixing upon the murderer. One is to let an insect fly from the
body of the deceased and see towards whom it goes. The person thus
singled out is doomed."[29]
[Sidenote: Belief of the aborigines of Central Australia in sorcery as
the cause of death.]
Speaking of the tribes of Central Australia, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
observe that "in the matter of morality their code differs radically
from ours, but it cannot be denied that their conduct is governed by it,
and that any known breaches are dealt with both surely and severely. In
very many cases there takes place what the white man, not seeing beneath
the surface, not unnaturally describes as secret murder, but, in
reality, revolting though such slaughter may be to our minds at the
present day, it is simply exactly on a par with the treatment accorded
to witches not so very long ago in European countries. Every case of
such secret murder, when one or more men stealthily stalk their prey
with the object of killing him, is in reality the exacting of a life for
a life, the accused person being indicated by the so-called medicine-man
as one who has brought about the death of another man by magic, and
whose life must therefore be forfeited. It need hardly be pointed out
what a potent element this custom has been in keeping down the numbers
of the tribe; no such thing as natural death is realised by the native;
a man who dies has of necessity been killed by some other man, or
perhaps even by a woman, and sooner or later that man or woman will be
attacked. In the normal condition of the tribe every death meant the
killing of another individual."[30]
[Sidenote: Belief of the natives of the Torres Straits Islands and New
Guinea in sorcery as the cause of death.]
Passing from Australia to other savage lands we learn that according to
the belief of the Torres Straits Islanders all sickness and death were
due to sorcery.[31] The natives of Mowat or Mawatta in British New
Guinea "do not believe in a natural death, but attribute even the
decease of an old man to the agency of some enemy known or unknown."[32]
In the opinion of the tribes about Hood Peninsula in British New Guinea
no one dies a natural death. Every such death is caused by the evil
magic either of a living sorcerer or of a dead relation.[33] Of the
Roro-speaking tribes of British New Guinea Dr. Seligmann writes that
"except in the case of old folk, death is not admitted to occur without
some obvious cause such as a spear-thrust. Therefore when vigorous and
active members of the community die, it becomes necessary to explain
their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed to be produced by
sorcery. Indeed, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the Papuasian
of this district regards the existence of sorcery, not, as has been
alleged, as a particularly terrifying and horrible affair, but as a
necessary and inevitable condition of existence in the world as he knows
it."[34] Amongst the Yabim of German New Guinea "every case of death,
even though it should happen accidentally, as by the fall of a tree or
the bite of a shark, is laid at the door of the sorcerers. They are
blamed even for the death of a child. If it is said that a little child
never hurt anybody and therefore cannot have an enemy, the reply is that
the intention was to injure the mother, and that the malady had been
transferred to the infant through its mother's milk."[35]
[Sidenote: Belief of the Melanesians in sorcery as the cause of sickness
and death.]
Again, in the island of Malo, one of the New Hebrides, a Catholic
missionary reports that according to a belief deeply implanted in the
native mind every disease is the effect of witchcraft, and that nobody
dies a natural death but only as a consequence of violence, poison, or
sorcery.[36] Similarly in New Georgia, one of the Solomon Islands, when
a person is sick, the natives think that he must be bewitched by a man
or woman, for in their opinion nobody can be sick or die unless he is
bewitched; what we call natural sickness and death are impossible. In
case of illness suspicion falls on some one who is supposed to have
buried a charmed object with intent to injure the sufferer.[37] Of the
Melanesians who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula in New
Britain it is said that all deaths by sickness or disease are attributed
by them to the witchcraft of a sorcerer, and a diviner is called in to
ascertain the culprit who by his evil magic has destroyed their
friends.[38] "Amongst the Melanesians few, if any, are believed to die
from natural causes only; if they are not killed in war, they are
supposed to die from the effects of witchcraft or magic. Whenever any
one was sick, his friends made anxious inquiries as to the person who
had bewitched (_agara'd_) him. Some one would generally be found to
admit that he had buried some portion of food or something belonging to
the sick man, which had caused his illness. The friends would pay him to
dig it up, and after that the patient would generally get well. If,
however, he did not recover, it was assumed that some other person had
also _agara'd_ him."[39]
[Sidenote: The belief of the Malagasy in sorcery as a cause of death.]
Speaking of the Malagasy a Catholic missionary tells us that in
Madagascar nobody dies a natural death. With the possible exception of
centenarians everybody is supposed to die the victim of the sorcerer's
diabolic art. If a relation of yours dies, the people comfort you by
saying, "Cursed be the sorcerer who caused his death!" If your horse
falls down a precipice and breaks its back, the accident has been caused
by the malicious look of a sorcerer. If your dog dies of hydrophobia or
your horse of a carbuncle, the cause is still the same. If you catch a
fever in a district where malaria abounds, the malady is still ascribed
to the art of the sorcerer, who has insinuated some deadly substances
into your body.[40] Again, speaking of the Sakalava, a tribe in
Madagascar, an eminent French authority on the island observes: "They
have such a faith in the power of talismans that they even ascribe to
them the power of killing their enemies. When they speak of poisoning,
they do not allude, as many Europeans wrongly suppose, to death by
vegetable or mineral poisons; the reference is to charms or spells. They
often throw under the bed of an enemy an _ahouli_ [talisman], praying it
to kill him, and they are persuaded that sooner or later their wish will
be accomplished. I have often been present at bloody vendettas which had
no other origin but this. The Sakalava think that a great part of the
population dies of poison in this way. In their opinion, only old people
who have attained the extreme limits of human longevity die a natural
death."[41]
[Sidenote: Belief of African tribes in sorcery as the cause of sickness
and death.]
In Africa similar beliefs are widely spread and lead, as elsewhere, to
fatal consequences. Thus the Kagoro of Northern Nigeria refuse to
believe in death from natural causes; all illnesses and deaths, in their
opinion, are brought about by black magic, however old and decrepit the
deceased may have been. They explain sickness by saying that a man's
soul wanders from his body in sleep and may then be caught, detained,
and even beaten with a stick by some evil-wisher; whenever that happens,
the man naturally falls ill. Sometimes an enemy will abstract the
patient's liver by magic and carry it away to a cave in a sacred grove,
where he will devour it in company with other wicked sorcerers. A
witch-doctor is called in to detect the culprit, and whomever he
denounces is shut up in a room, where a fire is kindled and pepper
thrown into it; and there he is kept in the fumes of the burning pepper
till he confesses his guilt and returns the stolen liver, upon which of
course the sick man recovers. But should the patient die, the miscreant
who did him to death by kidnapping his soul or his liver will be sold as
a slave or choked.[42] In like manner the Bakerewe, who inhabit the
largest island in the Victoria Nyanza lake, believe that all deaths and
all ailments, however trivial, are the effect of witchcraft; and the
person, generally an old woman, whom the witch-doctor accuses of having
cast the spell on the patient is tied up, severely beaten, or stabbed to
death on the spot.[43] Again, we are told that "the peoples of the Congo
do not believe in a natural death, not even when it happens through
drowning or any other accident. Whoever dies is the victim of witchcraft
or of a spell. His soul has been eaten. He must be avenged by the
punishment of the person who has committed the crime." Accordingly when
a death has taken place, the medicine-man is sent for to discover the
criminal. He pretends to be possessed by a spirit and in this state he
names the wretch who has caused the death by sorcery. The accused has to
submit to the poison ordeal by drinking a decoction of the red bark of
the _Erythrophloeum guiniense_. If he vomits up the poison, he is
innocent; but if he fails to do so, the infuriated crowd rushes on him
and despatches him with knives and clubs. The family of the supposed
culprit has moreover to pay an indemnity to the family of the supposed
victim.[44] "Death, in the opinion of the natives, is never due to a
natural cause. It is always the result either of a crime or of sorcery,
and is followed by the poison ordeal, which has to be undergone by an
innocent person whom the fetish-man accuses from selfish motives."[45]
[Sidenote: Effect of such beliefs in thinning the population by causing
multitudes to die for the imaginary crime of sorcery.]
Evidence of the same sort could be multiplied for West Africa, where the
fear of sorcery is rampant.[46] But without going into further details,
I wish to point out the disastrous effects which here, as elsewhere,
this theory of death has produced upon the population. For when a death
from natural causes takes place, the author of the death being of course
unknown, suspicion often falls on a number of people, all of whom are
obliged to submit to the poison ordeal in order to prove their
innocence, with the result that some or possibly all of them perish. A
very experienced American missionary in West Africa, the Rev. R. H.
Nassau, the friend of the late Miss Mary H. Kingsley, tells us that for
every person who dies a natural death at least one, and often ten or
more have been executed on an accusation of witchcraft.[47] Andrew
Battel, a native of Essex, who lived in Angola for many years at the end
of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, informs us
that "in this country none on any account dieth, but they kill another
for him: for they believe they die not their own natural death, but that
some other has bewitched them to death. And all those are brought in by
the friends of the dead whom they suspect; so that there many times come
five hundred men and women to take the drink, made of the foresaid root
_imbando_. They are brought all to the high-street or market-place, and
there the master of the _imbando_ sits with his water, and gives every
one a cup of water by one measure; and they are commanded to walk in a
certain place till they make water, and then they are free. But he that
cannot urine presently falls down, and all the people, great and small,
fall upon him with their knives, and beat and cut him into pieces. But I
think the witch that gives the water is partial, and gives to him whose
death is desired the strongest water, but no man of the bye-standers can
perceive it. This is done in the town of Longo, almost every week
throughout the year."[48] A French official tells us that among the
Neyaux of the Ivory Coast similar beliefs and practices were visibly
depopulating the country, every single natural death causing the death
of four or five persons by the poison ordeal, which consisted in
drinking the decoction of a red bark called by the natives _boduru_. At
the death of a chief fifteen men and women perished in this way. The
French Government had great difficulty in suppressing the ordeal; for
the deluded natives firmly believed in the justice of the test and
therefore submitted to it willingly in the full consciousness of their
innocence.[49] In the neighbourhood of Calabar the poison ordeal, which
here consists in drinking a decoction of a certain bean, the
_Physostigma venenosum_ of botanists, has had similar disastrous
results, as we learn from the testimony of a missionary, the Rev. Hugh
Goldie. He tells us that the people have firm faith in the ordeal and
therefore not only accept it readily but appeal to it, convinced that it
will demonstrate their innocence. A small tribe named Uwet in the
hill-country of Calabar almost swept itself off the face of the earth by
its constant use of the ordeal. On one occasion the whole population
drank the poison to prove themselves pure, as they said; about half
perished, "and the remnant," says Mr. Goldie, "still continuing their
superstitious practice, must soon become extinct"[50] These words were
written a good many years ago, and it is probable that by this time
these poor fanatics have actually succeeded in exterminating themselves.
So fatal may be the practical consequences of a purely speculative
error; for it is to be remembered that these disasters flow directly
from a mistaken theory of death.
[Sidenote: General conclusion as to the belief in sorcery as the great
cause of death.]
Much more evidence of the same kind could be adduced, but without
pursuing the theme further I think we may lay it down as a general rule
that at a certain stage of social and intellectual evolution men have
believed themselves to be naturally immortal in this life and have
regarded death by disease or even by accident or violence as an
unnatural event which has been brought about by sorcery and which must
be avenged by the death of the sorcerer. If that has been so, we seem
bound to conclude that a belief in magic or sorcery has had a most
potent influence in keeping down the numbers of savage tribes; since as
a rule every natural death has entailed at least one, often several,
sometimes many deaths by violence. This may help us to understand what
an immense power for evil the world-wide faith in magic or sorcery has
been among men.
[Sidenote: But some savages have attributed death to other causes than
sorcery.]
But even savages come in time to perceive that deaths are sometimes
brought about by other causes than sorcery. We have seen that some of
them admit extreme old age, accidents, and violence as causes of death
which are independent of sorcery. The admission of these exceptions to
the general rule certainly marks a stage of intellectual progress. I
will give a few more instances of such admissions before concluding this
part of my subject.
[Sidenote: Some savages dissect the corpse to ascertain whether death
was due to natural causes or to sorcery.]
In the first place, certain savage tribes are reported to dissect the
bodies of their dead in order to ascertain from an examination of the
corpse whether the deceased died a natural death or perished by magic.
This is reported by Mr. E. R. Smith concerning the Araucanians of Chili,
who according to other writers, as we saw,[51] believe all deaths to be
due to sorcery. Mr. Smith tells us that after death the services of the
_machi_ or medicine-man "are again required, especially if the deceased
be a person of distinction. The body is dissected and examined. If the
liver be found in a healthy state, the death is attributed to natural
causes; but if the liver prove to be inflamed, it is supposed to
indicate the machinations of some evil-intentioned persons, and it rests
with the medicine-man to discover the conspirator. This is accomplished
by much the same means that were used to find out the nature of the
disease. The gall is extracted, put in the magic drum, and after various
incantations taken out and placed over the fire, in a pot carefully
covered; if, after subjecting the gall to a certain amount of roasting,
a stone is found in the bottom of the pot, it is declared to be the
means by which death was produced. These stones, as well as the frogs,
spiders, arrows, or whatever else may be extracted from the sick man,
are called _Huecuvu_--the 'Evil One.' By aid of the _Huecuvu_ the
_machi_ [medicine-man] throws himself into a trance, in which state he
discovers and announces the person guilty of the death, and describes
the manner in which it was produced."[52]
Again, speaking of the Pahouins, a tribe of the Gaboon region in French
Congo, a Catholic missionary writes thus: "It is so rare among the
Pahouins that a death is considered natural! Scarcely has the deceased
given up the ghost when the sorcerer appears on the scene. With three
cuts of the knife, one transverse and two lateral, he dissects the
breast of the corpse and turns down the skin on the face. Then he
grabbles in the breast, examines the bowels attentively, marks the last
muscular contractions, and thereupon pronounces whether the death was
natural or not." If he decides that the death was due to sorcery, the
suspected culprit has to submit to the poison ordeal in the usual manner
to determine his guilt or innocence.[53]
[Sidenote: The possibility of natural death admitted by the
Melanesians.]
Another savage people who have come to admit the possibility of merely
natural death are the Melanesians of the New Hebrides and other parts of
Central Melanesia. Amongst them "any sickness that is serious is
believed to be brought about by ghosts or spirits; common complaints
such as fever and ague are taken as coming in the course of nature. To
say that savages are never ill without supposing a supernatural cause is
not true of Melanesians; they make up their minds as the sickness comes
whether it is natural or not, and the more important the individual who
is sick, the more likely his sickness is to be ascribed to the anger of
a ghost whom he has offended, or to witchcraft. No great man would like
to be told that he was ill by natural weakness or decay. The sickness is
almost always believed to be caused by a ghost, not by a spirit....
Generally it is to the ghosts of the dead that sickness is ascribed in
the eastern islands as well as in the western; recourse is had to them
for aid in causing and removing sickness; and ghosts are believed to
inflict sickness not only because some offence, such as a trespass, has
been committed against them, or because one familiar with them has
sought their aid with sacrifice and spells, but because there is a
certain malignity in the feeling of all ghosts towards the living, who
offend them by being alive."[54] From this account we learn, first, that
the Melanesians admit some deaths by common diseases, such as fever and
ague, to be natural; and, second, that they recognise ghosts and spirits
as well as sorcerers and witches, among the causes of death; indeed they
hold that ghosts are the commonest of all causes of sickness and death.
[Sidenote: The possibility of natural death admitted by the Caffres of
South Africa.]
The same causes of death are recognised also by the Caffres of South
Africa, as we learn from Mr. Dudley Kidd, who tells us that according to
the beliefs of the natives, "to start with, there is sickness which is
supposed to be caused by the action of ancestral spirits or by fabulous
monsters. Secondly, there is sickness which is caused by the magical
practices of some evil person who is using witchcraft in secret.
Thirdly, there is sickness which comes from neither of these causes, and
remains unexplained. It is said to be 'only sickness, and nothing more.'
This third form of sickness is, I think, the commonest. Yet most writers
wholly ignore it, or deny its existence. It may happen that an attack of
indigestion is one day attributed to the action of witch or wizard;
another day the trouble is put down to the account of ancestral spirits;
on a third occasion the people may be at a loss to account for it, and
so may dismiss the problem by saying that it is merely sickness. It is
quite common to hear natives say that they are at a loss to account for
some special case of illness. At first they thought it was caused by an
angry ancestral spirit; but a great doctor has assured them that it is
not the result of such a spirit. They then suppose it to be due to the
magical practices of some enemy; but the doctor negatives that theory.
The people are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that the trouble has
no ascertainable cause. In some cases they do not even trouble to
consult a diviner; they speedily recognise the sickness as due to
natural causes. In such a case it needs no explanation. If they think
that some friend of theirs knows of a remedy, they will try it on their
own initiative, or may even go off to a white man to ask for some of his
medicine. They would never dream of doing this if they thought they were
being influenced by magic or by ancestral spirits. The Kafirs quite
recognise that there are types of disease which are inherited, and have
not been caused by magic or by ancestral spirits. They admit that some
accidents are due to nothing but the patient's carelessness or
stupidity. If a native gets his leg run over by a waggon, the people
will often say that it is all his own fault through being clumsy. In
other cases, with delightful inconsistency, they may say that some one
has been working magic to cause the accident. In short, it is impossible
to make out a theory of sickness which will satisfy our European
conception of consistency."[55]
[Sidenote: The admission that death may be due to natural causes, marks
an intellectual advance. The recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause
of disease, apart from sorcery, also marks a step in intellectual,
moral, and social progress.]
From the foregoing accounts we see that the Melanesians and the Caffres,
two widely different and widely separated races, agree in recognising at
least three distinct causes of what we should call natural death. These
three causes are, first, sorcery or witchcraft; second, ghosts or
spirits; and third, disease.[56] That the recognition of disease in
itself as a cause of death, quite apart from sorcery, marks an
intellectual advance, will not be disputed. It is not so clear, though I
believe it is equally true, that the recognition of ghosts or spirits as
a cause of disease, quite apart from witchcraft, marks a real step in
intellectual, moral, and social progress. In the first place, it marks a
step in intellectual and moral progress; for it recognises that effects
which before had been ascribed to human agency spring from superhuman
causes; and this recognition of powers in the universe superior to man
is not only an intellectual gain but a moral discipline: it teaches the
important lesson of humility. In the second place it marks a step in
social progress because when the blame of a death is laid upon a ghost
or a spirit instead of on a sorcerer, the death has not to be avenged by
killing a human being, the supposed author of the calamity. Thus the
recognition of ghosts or spirits as the sources of sickness and death
has as its immediate effect the sparing of an immense number of lives of
men and women, who on the theory of death by sorcery would have perished
by violence to expiate their imaginary crime. That this is a great gain
to society is obvious: it adds immensely to the security of human life
by removing one of the most fruitful causes of its destruction.
It must be admitted, however, that the gain is not always as great as
might be expected; the social advantages of a belief in ghosts and
spirits are attended by many serious drawbacks. For while ghosts or
spirits are commonly, though not always, supposed to be beyond the reach
of human vengeance, they are generally thought to be well within the
reach of human persuasion, flattery, and bribery; in other words, men
think that they can appease and propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice;
and while prayer is always cheap, sacrifice may be very dear, since it
can, and often does, involve the destruction of an immense deal of
valuable property and of a vast number of human lives. Yet if we could
reckon up the myriads who have been slain in sacrifice to ghosts and
gods, it seems probable that they would fall far short of the untold
multitudes who have perished as sorcerers and witches. For while human
sacrifices in honour of deities or of the dead have been for the most
part exceptional rather than regular, only the great gods and the
illustrious dead being deemed worthy of such costly offerings, the
slaughter of witches and wizards, theoretically at least, followed
inevitably on every natural death among people who attributed all such
deaths to sorcery. Hence if natural religion be defined roughly as a
belief in superhuman spiritual beings and an attempt to propitiate them,
we may perhaps say that, while natural religion has slain its thousands,
magic has slain its ten thousands. But there are strong reasons for
inferring that in the history of society an Age of Magic preceded an Age
of Religion. If that was so, we may conclude that the advent of religion
marked a great social as well as intellectual advance upon the preceding
Age of Magic: it inaugurated an era of what might be described as mercy
by comparison with the relentless severity of its predecessor.
[Footnote 6: W. Martin, _An Account of the Natives of the Tonga
Islands_, Second Edition (London, 1818), ii. 99.]
[Footnote 7: M. Dobrizhoffer, _Historia de Abiponibus_ (Vienna, 1784),
ii. 92 _sq._, 240 _sqq._ The author of this valuable work lived as a
Catholic missionary in the tribe for eighteen years.]
[Footnote 8: C. Gay, "Fragment d'un Voyage dans le Chili et au Cusco,"
_Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_ (Paris), Deuxième Série, xix.
(1843) p. 25; H. Delaporte, "Une visite chez les Araucaniens," _Bulletin
de la Société de Géographie_ (Paris), Quatrième Série, x. (1855) p. 30.]
[Footnote 9: K. von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern
Zentral-Brasiliens_ (Berlin, 1894), pp. 344, 348.]
[Footnote 10: Rev. W. H. Brett, _The Indian Tribes of Guiana_ (London,
1868), p. 357.]
[Footnote 11: W. H. Brett, _op. cit._ pp. 361 _sq._]
[Footnote 12: Rev. W. H. Brett, _op. cit._ pp. 364 _sq._]
[Footnote 13: Rev. J. H. Bernau, _Missionary Labours in British Guiana_
(London, 1847), pp. 56 _sq._, 58.]
[Footnote 14: (Sir) E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_
(London, 1883), pp. 330 _sq._ For the case described see R. Schomburgk,
_Reisen in Britisch-Guiana_, i. (Leipsic, 1847) pp. 324 _sq._ The boy
died of dropsy. Perhaps the mode of divination adopted, by boiling some
portions of him in water, had special reference to the nature of the
disease.]
[Footnote 15: (Sir) E. F. im Thurn, _op. cit._ pp. 332 _sq._]
[Footnote 16: Father A. G. Morice, "The Canadian Dénés," _Annual
Archaeological Report, 1905_ (Toronto, 1906), p. 207.]
[Footnote 17: Albert A. C. Le Souëf, "Notes on the Natives of
Australia," in R. Brough Smyth's _Aborigines of Victoria_ (Melbourne and
London, 1878), ii. 289 _sq._]
[Footnote 18: (Sir) George Grey, _Journals of two Expeditions of
Discovery in Northwest and Western Australia_ (London, 1841), ii. 238.]
[Footnote 19: A. Oldfield, "The Aborigines of Australia," _Transactions
of the Ethnological Society of London_, N.S. iii. (1865) p. 236.]
[Footnote 20: A. Oldfield, _op. cit._ p. 245.]
[Footnote 21: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_ (Melbourne, Sydney and
Adelaide, 1881), p. 63.]
[Footnote 22: H. E. A. Meyer, "Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of
the Encounter Bay Tribe," _Native Tribes of South Australia_ (Adelaide,
1879), p. 195.]
[Footnote 23: C. W. Schürmann, "The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln in
South Australia," _Native Tribes of South Australia_, pp. 237 _sq._]
[Footnote 24: Rev. G. Taplin, "The Narrinyeri," _Native Tribes of South
Australia_ (Adelaide, 1879), p. 25.]
[Footnote 25: R. Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_ (Melbourne
and London, 1878) i. 110.]
[Footnote 26: W. E. Stanbridge, "Some Particulars of the General
Characteristics, Astronomy, and Mythology of the Tribes in the Central
Part of Victoria, Southern Australia," _Transactions of the Ethnological
Society of London_, New Series, i. (1861) p. 299.]
[Footnote 27: Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_
(Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane, 1880), pp. 250 _sq._]
[Footnote 28: A. L. P. Cameron, "Notes on some Tribes of New South
Wales," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_ xiv. (1885) pp. 361,
362 _sq._]
[Footnote 29: Rev. W. Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, Second Edition (Sydney,
1875), p. 159.]
[Footnote 30: Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Native Tribes of
Central Australia_ (London, 1899), pp. 46-48.]
[Footnote 31: _Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits_, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 248, 323.]
[Footnote 32: E. Beardmore, "The Natives of Mowat, British New Guinea,"
_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xix. (1890) p. 461.]
[Footnote 33: R. E. Guise, "On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the
Wanigela River, New Guinea," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xxviii. (1899) p. 216.]
[Footnote 34: C. G. Seligmann, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_
(Cambridge, 1910), p. 279.]
[Footnote 35: K. Vetter, _Komm herüber und hilf uns! oder die Arbeit der
Neuen-Dettelsauer Mission_, iii. (Barmen, 1898) pp. 10 _sq._; _id._, in
_Nachrichten über Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land und den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897_,
pp. 94, 98. Compare B. Hagen, _Unter den Papuas_ (Wiesbaden, 1899), p.
256; _Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie,
Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte, 1900_, p. (415).]
[Footnote 36: Father A. Deniau, "Croyances religieuses et moeurs des
indigènes de l'Ile Malo," _Missions Catholiques_, xxxiii. (1901) pp. 315
_sq._]
[Footnote 37: C. Ribbe, _Zwei Jahre unter den Kannibalen der
Salomo-Inseln_ (Dresden-Blasewitz, 1903), p. 268.]
[Footnote 38: P. A. Kleintitschen, _Die Küstenbewohner der
Gazellehalbinsel_ (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.), p. 344. As to beliefs of
this sort among the Sulka of New Britain, see _P._ Rascher, "Die Sulka,"
_Archiv für Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) pp. 221 _sq._; R. Parkinson,
_Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_ (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 199-201.]
[Footnote 39: G. Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London,
1910), p. 176. Dr. Brown's account, of the Melanesians applies to the
natives of New Britain and more particularly of the neighbouring Duke of
York islands.]
[Footnote 40: Father Abinal, "Astrologie Malgache," _Missions
Catholiques_, xi. (1879) p. 506.]
[Footnote 41: A. Grandidier, "Madagascar," _Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie_ (Paris), Sixième Série, iii. (1872) pp. 399 _sq._ The
talismans (_ahouli_) in question consist of the horns of oxen stuffed
with a variety of odds and ends, such as sand, sticks, nails, and so
forth.]
[Footnote 42: Major A. J. N. Tremearne, _The Tailed Head-hunters of
Nigeria_ (London, 1912), pp. 171 _sq._; _id._, "Notes on the Kagoro and
other Headhunters," _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
xlii. (1912) pp. 160, 161.]
[Footnote 43: E. Hurel, "Religion et vie domestique des Bakerewe,"
_Anthropos_, vi. (1912) pp. 85-87.]
[Footnote 44: Father Campana, "Congo Mission Catholique de Landana,"
_Missions Catholiques_, xxvii. (1895) pp. 102 _sq_.]
[Footnote 45: Th. Masui, _Guide de la Section de l'État Indépendant du
Congo à l'Exposition de Bruxelles--Tervueren en 1874_ (Brussels, 1897),
p. 82.]
[Footnote 46: See for example O. Lenz, _Skizzen aus Westafrika_ (Berlin,
1878), pp. 184 _sq._; C. Cuny, "De Libreville au Cameroun," _Bulletin de
la Société de Géographie_ (Paris), Septième Série, xvii. (1896) p. 341;
Ch. Wunenberger, "La mission et le royaume de Humbé, sur les bords du
Cunène," _Missions Catholiques_, xx. (1888) p. 262; Lieut. Herold,
"Bericht betreffend religiöse Anschauungen und Gebräuche der deutschen
Ewe-Neger," _Mittheilungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten_, v. (1892)
p. 153; Dr. R. Plehn, "Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes,"
_Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin_, ii.
Dritte Abtheilung (1899), p. 97; R. Fisch, "Die Dagbamba,"
_Baessler-Archiv_, iii. (1912) p. 148. For evidence of similar beliefs
and practices in other parts of Africa, see Brard, "Der
Victoria-Nyanza," _Petermann's Mittheilungen_, xliii. (1897) pp. 79
_sq._; Father Picarda, "Autour du Mandéra," _Missions Catholiques_,
xviii. (1886) p. 342.]
[Footnote 47: Rev. R. H. Nassau, _Fetichism in West Africa_ (London,
1904), pp. 241 _sq._]
[Footnote 48: "Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel," in John Pinkerton's
_Voyages and Travels_, xvi. (London, 1814) p. 334.]
[Footnote 49: _Gouvernement Général de l'Afrique Occidentale Française,
Notices publiées par le Gouvernement Central à l'occasion de
l'Exposition Coloniale de Marseille, La Côte d'Ivoire_ (Corbeil, 1906),
pp. 570-572.]
[Footnote 50: Hugh Goldie, _Calabar and its Mission_, New Edition
(Edinburgh and London, 1901), pp. 34 _sq._, 37 _sq._]
[Footnote 51: Above, p. 35.]
[Footnote 52: E. R. Smith, _The Araucanians_ (London, 1855), pp. 236
_sq._]
[Footnote 53: Father Trilles, "Milles lieues dans l'inconnu; à travers
le pays Fang, de la côte aux rives du Djah," _Missions Catholiques_,
xxxv. (1903) pp. 466 _sq._, and as to the poison ordeal, _ib._ pp. 472
_sq._]
[Footnote 54: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), p.
194.]
[Footnote 55: Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_ (London, 1904), pp. 133
_sq._]
[Footnote 56: In like manner the Baganda generally ascribed natural
deaths either to sorcery or to the action of a ghost; but when they
could not account for a person's death in either of these ways they said
that Walumbe, the God of Death, had taken him. This last explanation
approaches to an admission of natural death, though it is still mythical
in form. The Baganda usually attributed any illness of the king to
ghosts, because no man would dare to practise magic on him. A
much-dreaded ghost was that of a man's sister; she was thought to vent
her spite on his sons and daughters by visiting them with sickness. When
she proved implacable, a medicine-man was employed to catch her ghost in
a gourd or a pot and throw it away on waste land or drown it in a river.
See Rev. J. Roscoe, _The Baganda_ (London, 1911), pp. 98, 100, 101
_sq._, 286 _sq._, 315 _sq._]
LECTURE III
MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH
[Sidenote: Belief of savages in man's natural immortality.]
In my last lecture I shewed that many savages do not believe in what we
call a natural death; they imagine that all men are naturally immortal
and would never die, if their lives were not cut prematurely short by
sorcery. Further, I pointed out that this mistaken view of the nature of
death has exercised a disastrous influence on the tribes who entertain
it, since, attributing all natural deaths to sorcery, they consider
themselves bound to discover and kill the wicked sorcerers whom they
regard as responsible for the death of their friends. Thus in primitive
society as a rule every natural death entails at least one and often
several deaths by violence; since the supposed culprit being unknown
suspicion may fall upon many persons, all of whom may be killed either
out of hand or as a consequence of failing to demonstrate their
innocence by means of an ordeal.
[Sidenote: Savage stories of the origin of death.]
Yet even the savages who firmly believe in man's natural immortality are
obliged sorrowfully to admit that, as things are at the present day, men
do frequently die, whatever explanation we may give of so unexpected and
unnatural an occurrence. Accordingly they are hard put to it to
reconcile their theory of immortality with the practice of mortality.
They have meditated on the subject and have given us the fruit of their
meditation in a series of myths which profess to explain the origin of
death. For the most part these myths are very crude and childish; yet
they have a value of their own as examples of man's early attempts to
fathom one of the great mysteries which encompass his frail and
transient existence on earth; and accordingly I have here collected, in
all their naked simplicity, a few of these savage guesses at truth.
[Sidenote: Four types of such stories.]
Myths of the origin of death conform to several types, among which we
may distinguish, first, what I will call the type of the Two Messengers;
second, the type of the Waxing and Waning Moon; third, the type of the
Serpent and his Cast Skin; and fourth, the type of the Banana-tree. I
will illustrate each type by examples, and will afterwards cite some
miscellaneous instances which do not fall under any of these heads.
[Sidenote: I. The tale of the Two Messengers. Zulu story of the
chameleon and the lizard. The same story among other Bantu tribes.]
First, then, we begin with the type of the Two Messengers. Stories of
this pattern are widespread in Africa, especially among tribes belonging
to the great Bantu family, which occupies roughly the southern half of
the continent. The best-known example of the tale is the one told by the
Zulus. They say that in the beginning Unkulunkulu, that is, the Old Old
One, sent the chameleon to men with a message saying, "Go, chameleon, go
and say, Let not men die." The chameleon set out, but it crawled very
slowly, and it loitered by the way to eat the purple berries of the
_ubukwebezane_ tree, or according to others it climbed up a tree to bask
in the sun, filled its belly with flies, and fell fast asleep. Meantime
the Old Old One had thought better of it and sent a lizard posting after
the chameleon with a very different message to men, for he said to the
animal, "Lizard, when you have arrived, say, Let men die." So the lizard
went on his way, passed the dawdling chameleon, and arriving first among
men delivered his message of death, saying, "Let men die." Then he
turned on his heel and went back to the Old Old One who had sent him.
But after he was gone, the chameleon at last arrived among men with his
glad tidings of immortality, and he shouted, saying, "It is said, Let
not men die!" But men answered, "O! we have heard the word of the
lizard; it has told us the word, 'It is said, Let men die.' We cannot
hear your word. Through the word of the lizard, men will die." And died
they have ever since from that day to this. That is why some of the
Zulus hate the lizard, saying, "Why did he run first and say, 'Let
people die?'" So they beat and kill the lizard and say, "Why did it
speak?" But others hate the chameleon and hustle it, saying, "That is
the little thing which delayed to tell the people that they should not
die. If he had only brought his message in time we should not have died;
our ancestors also would have been still living; there would have been
no diseases here on the earth. It all comes from the delay of the
chameleon."[57] The same story is told in nearly the same form by other
Bantu tribes, such as the Bechuanas,[58] the Basutos,[59] the
Baronga,[60] and the Ngoni.[61] To this day the Baronga and the Ngoni
owe the chameleon a grudge for having brought death into the world, so
when children find a chameleon they will induce it to open its mouth,
then throw a pinch of tobacco on its tongue, and watch with delight the
creature writhing and changing colour from orange to green, from green
to black in the agony of death; for thus they avenge the wrong which the
chameleon has done to mankind.[62]
[Sidenote: Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush.]
A story of the same type, but with some variations, is told by the
Akamba, a Bantu tribe of British East Africa; but in their version the
lizard has disappeared from the legend and has been replaced by the
_itoroko_, a small bird of the thrush tribe, with a black head, a
bluish-black back, and a buff-coloured breast. The tale runs thus:--Once
upon a time God sent out the chameleon, the frog, and the thrush to find
people who died one day and came to life again the next. So off they
set, the chameleon leading the way, for in those days he was a very
important personage. Presently they came to some people lying like dead,
so the chameleon went up to them and said, _Niwe, niwe, niwe_. The
thrush asked him testily what he was making that noise for, to which the
chameleon replied mildly, "I am only calling the people who go forward
and then came back again," and he explained that the dead people would
come to life again. But the thrush, who was of a sceptical turn of mind,
derided the idea. Nevertheless, the chameleon persisted in calling to
the dead people, and sure enough they opened their eyes and listened to
him. But here the thrush broke in and told them roughly that dead they
were and dead they must remain. With that away he flew, and though the
chameleon preached to the corpses, telling them that he had come from
God on purpose to bring them to life again, and that they were not to
believe the lies of that shallow sceptic the thrush, they obstinately
refused to pay any heed to him; not one of those dead corpses would
budge. So the chameleon returned crestfallen to God and reported to him
how, when he preached the gospel of resurrection to the corpses, the
thrush had roared him down, so that the corpses could not hear a word he
said. God thereupon cross-questioned the thrush, who stated that the
chameleon had so bungled his message that he, the thrush, felt it his
imperative duty to interrupt him. The simple deity believed the thrush,
and being very angry with the chameleon he degraded him from his high
position and made him walk very slow, lurching this way and that, as he
does down to this very day. But the thrush he promoted to the office of
wakening men from their slumber every morning, which he still does
punctually at 2 A.M. before the note of any other bird is heard in the
tropical forest.[63]
[Sidenote: Togo story of the dog and the frog.]
In this version, though the frog is sent out by God with the other two
messengers he plays no part in the story; he is a mere dummy. But in
another version of the story, which is told by the negroes of Togoland
in German West Africa, the frog takes the place of the lizard and the
thrush as the messenger of death. They say that once upon a time men
sent a dog to God to say that when they died they would like to come to
life again. So off the dog trotted to deliver the message. But on the
way he felt hungry and turned into a house, where a man was boiling
magic herbs. So the dog sat down and thought to himself, "He is cooking
food." Meantime the frog had set off to tell God that when men died they
would like not to come to life again. Nobody had asked him to give that
message; it was a piece of pure officiousness and impertinence on his
part. However, away he tore. The dog, who still sat watching the
hell-broth brewing, saw him hurrying past the door, but he thought to
himself, "When I have had something to eat, I will soon catch froggy
up." However, froggy came in first and said to the deity, "When men die,
they would like not to come to life again." After that, up comes the
dog, and says he, "When men die, they would like to come to life again."
God was naturally puzzled and said to the dog, "I really do not
understand these two messages. As I heard the frog's request first, I
will comply with it. I will not do what you said." That is the real
reason why men die and do not come to life again. If the frog had only
minded his own business instead of meddling with other people's, the
dead would all have come to life again to this day.[64] In this version
of the story not only are the persons of the two messengers different,
the dog and the frog having replaced the chameleon and the lizard of the
Bantu version, but the messengers are sent from men to God instead of
from God to men.
[Sidenote: Ashantee story of the goat and the sheep.]
In another version told by the Ashantees of West Africa the persons of
the messengers are again different, but as in the Bantu version they are
sent from God to men. The Ashantees say that long ago men were happy,
for God dwelt among them and talked with them face to face. For example,
if a child was roasting yams at the fire and wanted a relish to eat with
the yams, he had nothing to do but to throw a stick in the air and say,
"God give me fish," and God gave him fish at once. However, these happy
days did not last for ever. One unlucky day it happened that some women
were pounding a mash with pestles in a mortar, while God stood by
looking on. For some reason they were annoyed by the presence of the
deity and told him to be off; and as he did not take himself off fast
enough to please them, they beat him with their pestles. In a great huff
God retired altogether from the world and left it to the direction of
the fetishes; and still to this day people say, "Ah, if it had not been
for that old woman, how happy we should be!" However, after he had
withdrawn to heaven, the long-suffering deity sent a kind message by a
goat to men upon earth to say, "There is something which they call
Death. He will kill some of you. But even if you die, you will not
perish completely. You will come to me in heaven." So off the goat set
with this cheering intelligence. But before he came to the town he saw a
tempting bush by the wayside and stopped to browse on it. When God in
heaven saw the goat thus loitering by the way, he sent off a sheep with
the same message to carry the glad tidings to men without delay. But the
sheep did not give the message aright. Far from it: he said, "God sends
you word that you will die and that will be an end of you." Afterwards
the goat arrived on the scene and said, "God sends you word that you
will die, certainly, but that will not be the end of you, for you will
go to him." But men said to the goat, "No, goat, that is not what God
said. We believe that the message which the sheep brought us is the one
which God sent to us." That was the beginning of death among men.[65]
However, in another Ashantee version of the tale the parts played by the
sheep and the goat are reversed. It is the sheep who brings the tidings
of immortality from God to men, but the goat overruns him and offers
them death instead. Not knowing what death was, men accepted the seeming
boon with enthusiasm and have died ever since.[66]
[Sidenote: II. The story of the Waxing and Waning Moon. Hottentot story
of the Moon, the hare, and death.]
So much for the tale of the Two Messengers. In the last versions of it
which I have quoted, a feature to be noticed is the perversion of the
message by one of the messengers, who brings tidings of death instead of
life eternal to men. The same perversion of the message reappears in
some examples of the next type of story which I shall illustrate, namely
the type of the Waxing and Waning Moon. Thus the Namaquas or Hottentots
say that once the Moon charged the hare to go to men and say, "As I die
and rise to life again, so shall you die and rise to life again." So the
hare went to men, but either out of forgetfulness or malice he reversed
the message and said, "As I die and do not rise to life again, so you
shall also die and not rise to life again." Then he went back to the
Moon, and she asked him what he had said. He told her, and when she
heard how he had given the wrong message, she was so angry that she
threw a stick at him and split his lip, which is the reason why the
hare's lip is still split. So the hare ran away and is still running to
this day. Some people, however, say that before he fled he clawed the
Moon's face, which still bears the marks of the scratching, as anybody
may see for himself on a clear moonlight night. So the Hottentots are
still angry with the hare for bringing death into the world, and they
will not let initiated men partake of its flesh.[67] There are traces of
a similar story among the Bushmen.[68] In another Hottentot version two
messengers appear, an insect and a hare; the insect is charged by the
Moon with a message of immortality or rather of resurrection to men, but
the hare persuades the insect to let him bear the tidings, which he
perverts into a message of annihilation.[69] Thus in this particular
version the type of the Two Messengers coincides with the Moon type.
[Sidenote: Masai story of the moon and death.]
A story of the same type, though different in details, is told by the
Masai of East Africa. They say that in the early days a certain god
named Naiteru-kop told a man named Le-eyo that if a child were to die he
was to throw away the body and say, "Man, die, and come back again;
moon, die, and remain away." Well, soon afterwards a child died, but it
was not one of the man's own children, so when he threw the body away he
said, "Man, die, and remain away; moon, die, and return." Next one of
his own children died, and when he threw away the body he said, "Man,
die, and return; moon, die, and remain away." But the god said to him,
"It is of no use now, for you spoilt matters with the other child." That
is why down to this day when a man dies he returns no more, but when the
moon dies she always comes to life again.[70]
[Sidenote: Nandi story of the moon, the dog, and death.]
Another story of the origin of death which belongs to this type is told
by the Nandi of British East Africa. They say that when the first people
lived upon the earth a dog came to them one day and said: "All people
will die like the moon, but unlike the moon you will not return to life
again unless you give me some milk to drink out of your gourd, and beer
to drink through your straw. If you do this, I will arrange for you to
go to the river when you die and to come to life again on the third
day." But the people laughed at the dog, and gave him some milk and beer
to drink off a stool. The dog was angry at not being served in the same
vessels as a human being, and though he put his pride in his pocket and
drank the milk and the beer from the stool, he went away in high
dudgeon, saying, "All people will die, and the moon alone will return to
life." That is the reason why, when people die, they stay away, whereas
when the moon goes away she comes back again after three days'
absence.[71] The Wa-Sania of British East Africa believe that in days
gone by people never died, till one unlucky day a lizard came and said
to them, "All of you know that the moon dies and rises again, but human
beings will die and rise no more." They say that from that day people
began to die and have persisted in dying ever since.[72]
[Sidenote: Fijian story of the moon, the rat, and death. Caroline
Islands story of the moon, death, and resurrection. Wotjobaluk story of
the moon, death, and resurrection. Cham story of the moon, death, and
resurrection.]
With these African stories of the origin of death we may compare one
told by the Fijians on the other side of the world. They say that once
upon a time the Moon contended that men should be like himself (for the
Fijian moon seems to be a male); that is, he meant that just as he grows
old, disappears, and comes in sight again, so men grown old should
vanish for a while and then return to life. But the rat, who is a Fijian
god, would not hear of it. "No," said he, "let men die like rats." And
he had the best of it in the dispute, for men die like rats to this
day.[73] In the Caroline Islands they say that long, long ago death was
unknown, or rather it was a short sleep, not a long, long one, as it is
now. Men died on the last day of the waning moon and came to life again
on the first appearance of the new moon, just as if they had awakened
from a refreshing slumber. But an evil spirit somehow contrived that
when men slept the sleep of death they should wake no more.[74] The
Wotjobaluk of south-eastern Australia relate that, when all animals were
men and women, some of them died and the moon used to say, "You
up-again," whereupon they came to life again. But once on a time an old
man said, "Let them remain dead"; and since then nobody has ever come to
life again except the moon, which still continues to do so down to this
very day.[75] The Chams of Annam and Cambodia say that the goddess of
good luck used to resuscitate people as fast as they died, till the
sky-god, tired of her constant interference with the laws of nature,
transferred her to the moon, where it is no longer in her power to bring
the dead to life again.[76]
[Sidenote: Cycle of death and resurrection after three days, like the
monthly disappearance and reappearance of the moon.]
These stories which associate human immortality with the moon are
products of a primitive philosophy which, meditating on the visible
changes, of the lunar orb, drew from the observation of its waning and
waxing a dim notion that under a happier fate man might have been
immortal like the moon, or rather that like it he might have undergone
an endless cycle of death and resurrection, dying then rising again from
the dead after three days. The same curious notion of death and
resurrection after three days is entertained by the Unmatjera and
Kaitish, two savage tribes of Central Australia. They say that long ago
their dead used to be buried either in trees or underground, and that
after three days they regularly rose from the dead. The Kaitish tell how
this happy state of things came to an end. It was all through a man of
the Curlew totem, who finding some men of the Little Wallaby totem
burying a Little Wallaby man, fell into a passion and kicked the body
into the sea. Of course after that the dead man could not come to life
again, and that is why nowadays nobody rises from the dead after three
days, as everybody used to do long ago.[77] Although no mention is made
of the moon in this Australian story, we may conjecture that these
savages, like the Nandi of East Africa, fixed upon three days as the
normal interval between death and resurrection simply because three days
is the interval between the disappearance of the old and the
reappearance of the new moon. If that is so, the aborigines of Central
Australia may be added to the many races of mankind who have seen in the
waning and waxing moon an emblem of human immortality. Nor does this
association of ideas end with a mere tradition that in some former age
men used to die with the old moon and come to life again with the new
moon. Many savages, on seeing the new moon for the first time in the
month, observe ceremonies which seem to be intended to renew and
increase their life and strength with the renewal and the increase of
the lunar light. For example, on the day when the new moon first
appeared, the Indians of San Juan Capistrano in California used to call
together all the young men and make them run about, while the old men
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