CHAPTER XX: ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN GENERAL.

§ 146. From various parts of the world, witnesses of different nations and divergent beliefs bring evidence that there exist men who are either wholly without ideas of supernatural beings, or whose ideas of them are extremely vague. “When Father Junípero Serra established the Mission of Dolores in 1776, the shores of San Francisco Bay were thickly populated by the Ahwashtees, Ohlones, Altahmos, Romanons, Tuolomos, and other tribes. The good Father found the field unoccupied, for, in the vocabulary of these people, there is found no word for god, angel, or devil; they held no theory of origin or destiny.” This testimony, which Bancroft cites respecting the Indians of California, corresponds with the testimonies of old Spanish writers respecting some South American peoples. Garcilasso says that “the Chirihuanas and the natives of the Cape de Pasau . . . had no inclination to worship anything high or low, neither from interested motives nor from fear;” Balboa mentions tribes without any religion as having been met with by Ynca Yupangui; and Avendaño asserts that in his time the Antis had no worship whatever. Many kindred instances are given by Sir John Lubbock, and further ones will be found in Mr. Tylor’s Primitive Culture. But I agree with Mr. Tylor that the evidence habitually implies some notion, however wavering and inconsistent, of a reviving other-self. Where this has not become a definite belief, the Edition: current; Page: [286] substance of a belief is shown by the funeral rites and by the fear of the dead.

Leaving unsettled the question whether there are men in whom dreams have not generated the notion of a double, and the sequent notion that at death the double has gone away, we may hold it as settled that the first traceable conception of a supernatural being is the conception of a ghost. This exists where no other idea of the same order exists; and this exists where multitudinous other ideas of the same order exist.

That belief in a surviving duplicate is produced among the savage, and is perpetually reproduced among the civilized, is a fact of great significance. Whatever is common to men’s minds in all stages, must be deeper down in thought than whatever is peculiar to men’s minds in higher stages; and if the later product admits of being reached by modification and expansion of the earlier product, the implication is that it has been so reached. Recognizing this implication, we shall see how fully the facts now to be contemplated justify acceptance of it.

§ 147. As the notion of a ghost grows from that first vagueness and variableness indicated above, into a definite and avowed idea, there naturally arise the desire and the endeavour to propitiate the ghost. Hence, almost as widely spread as the belief in ghosts, may be looked for a more or less developed ancestor-worship. This we find. To the indirect evidence already given I must now add, in brief form, the direct evidence.

Where the levels of mental nature and social progress are lowest, we usually find, along with an absence of religious ideas generally, an absence of, or very slight development of, ancestor-worship. A typical case is that of the Juángs, a wild tribe of Bengal, who, described as having no word for god, no idea of a future state, no religious ceremonies, are also said to “have no notion of the worship of Edition: current; Page: [287] ancestors.” Cook, telling us what the Fuegians were before contact with Europeans had introduced foreign ideas, said there were no appearances of religion among them; and we are not told by him or others that they were ancestor-worshippers. So far as the scanty evidence may be trusted, the like seems to be the case with the Andamanese. And though believing in ghosts, the Australians and Tasmanians show us but little persistence in ghost-propitiation. Among the Veddahs, indeed, though extremely low, an active if simple ancestor-worship prevails; but here, contact with the more advanced Cingalese has probably been a factor.

When, however, instead of wandering groups who continually leave far behind the places where their members lie buried, we come to settled groups whose burial-places are in their midst, and among whom development of funeral rites is thus made possible, we find that continued propitiation of dead relatives becomes an established practice. All varieties of men show us this. Taking first the Negrito races, we read that “with the Fijians, as soon as beloved parents expire, they take their place amongst the family gods. Bures, or temples, are erected to their memory.” Of the Tannese, we learn that “their general name for gods seems to be aremha; that means a dead man.” And the like is told us of other New Caledonian peoples. With the Malayo-Polynesians it is the same; save that with simple ancestor-worship there usually coexists a more developed worship of remoter ancestors, who have become deities. Sacrificing to their gods, the Tahitians also sacrifice to the spirits of departed chiefs and kindred. Similar statements are made respecting the Sandwich Islanders, the Samoans, the Malagasy, and the Sumatrans; of which last people Marsden says, that though “they neither worship god, devil, nor idol,” yet they “venerate, almost to the point of worshipping, the tombs and manes of their deceased ancestors.” The like holds in Africa. The people of Edition: current; Page: [288] Angola “are constantly deprecating the wrath of departed souls;” and the Bambiri “pray to departed chiefs and relatives.” So by the Kaffirs the spirits of the dead “are elevated in fact to the rank of deities.” And parallel accounts are given of the Balonda, the Wanika, the Congoese. Quite different though they are in type, the lower Asiatic races yield us allied illustrations. Of the Bhils, of the Bghais, of the Karens, of the Khonds, we find ancestor-worship alleged. The Santals’ religion “is based upon the family,” and “in addition to the family-god, each household worships the ghosts of its ancestors.” And were there any doubt about the origin of the family-god, it would be removed by Macpherson’s statement respecting the Khonds—“The more distinguished fathers of the tribe, of its branches, or of its sub-divisions, are all remembered by the priests, their sanctity growing with the remoteness of the period of their deaths.” Of Northern Asiatics, the Kirghiz and the Ostyaks yield further examples; and the Turkomans were lately instanced as showing how this worship of the dead survives along with a nominal monotheism. Then, crossing over into America, the like phenomena are found from the extreme North to the uttermost South—from the Esquimaux to the Patagonians: reaching, as we have seen, very elaborate developments among the ancient civilized races.

How ancestor-worship prevailed, and was greatly elaborated, among the people who, in the Nile valley, first carried civilization to a high stage, has been already shown. How in the far East, another vast society which had reached considerable heights of culture while Europe was covered by barbarians, has practised, and still practises, ancestor-worship, scarcely needs saying. And that it has all along characterized the Hindu civilization is also a fact, though a fact less familiar. With the highly-developed religious systems of India, there coexists a daily re-genesis of deities from dead men. Sir A. C. Lyall says:—

And now having observed the natural genesis of ancestor-worship, its wide diffusion over the world, and its persistence among advanced races side by side with more developed forms of worship, let us turn from its external aspect to its internal aspect. Let us, so far as we can, contemplate it from the stand-point of those who practise it. Fortunately, two examples, one of its less-developed form and one of its more-developed form, are exhibited to us in the words of ancestor-worshippers themselves.

§ 148. Our old acquaintances the Amazulu, whose ideas have been taken down from their own lips, supply the first. Here are the slightly-varying, but similar, statements of different witnesses:—

After noting that here, and in other passages not quoted, there are inconsistencies (as that sometimes a reed and sometimes a bed of reeds is said to be the origin of Unkulunkulu); and after noting that variations of this primitive creed have arisen since European immigration, as is shown by one of the statements that “there were at first two women in a bed of reeds; one gave birth to a white man, and one to a black man;” let us go on to note the meaning of Unkulunkulu. This, Bp. Callaway tells us, “expresses antiquity, age, literally the old-old one, as we use great, in great-great-grandfather.” So that, briefly stated, the belief is that from a reed or bed of reeds, came the remotest ancestor, who originated all other things. By the Amazulu, however, this remotest ancestor is but nominally recognized. Propitiation is limited to their nearer ancestors who are secondary Unkulunkulus, called, in some cases, Onkulunkulus. The ideas concerning, and the behaviour towards, the remoter and nearer ancestors, may be gathered from the following extracts:—

Here, then, we see ancestor-worship in but a slightly-developed form—an unhistoric ancestor-worship. There have arisen no personages dominant enough to retain their distinct individualities through many generations, and to subordinate the minor traditional individualities.

§ 149. Peoples who are more settled and further advanced show us a progress. Along with worship of recent and local ancestors, there goes worship of ancestors who died at earlier dates, and who, remembered by their power, have acquired in the general mind a supremacy. This truth ought to need but little illustration, for the habits of ancient races make it familiar. As Mr. Grote says—

This stage of development in which, along with worship of ancestry traced back a certain number of generations, there went a more widely-diffused worship of some to whom the relationships were lost in the far past, we find paralleled in other places; as, for example, in Peru. Sun-worship and Ynca-worship were there associated with an active worship of forefathers. Avendaño, repeating the affirmative answers to his questions, says:—

Chiefly, however, let us remark that these settled races of America exhibited in their professed creeds the transformation of their remotest progenitors into deities. By the Amazulu, the traditional old-old-one, though regarded as having given origin to them and all other things, is not worshipped: he is finally dead, and his sons, who once worshipped him, are finally dead; and the worship is monopolized by those later descendants who are remembered as founders of tribes. But among these more advanced peoples of America, the most ancient men, considered as still living elsewhere, had a worship which subordinated the worship of immediate ancestors. This is well brought out by Friar Bobadilla’s cross-examination of some Nicaraguans. Here are a few of the questions and answers:—

Here are passages from the examination of another witness—the cazique Avagoaltegoan:—

Another witness, Taçoteyda, a priest, apparently sixty years of age, who declined to become a Christian, gave a like account of these ancestor-gods, answering questions thus:—

From other like testimonies given by the thirteen caziques, and chiefs, and priests, I will add only the following:—

Pages might be filled by evidence of like meaning. What has been given shows, like the rest, that the remotest remembered ancestors have become divinities, remaining human in physical and mental attributes, and differing only Edition: current; Page: [294] in power; that being recognized in tradition as the begetters, or causers, of existing men, they, as the only known causers of anything, come to be tacitly regarded as the causers of other things;* and that they reside in the region whence the race came, which is the other world travelled to by the dead. The statements of these peoples directly imply that transformation of ancestors into deities, which we saw was directly implied by the growth of funeral rites into worship of the dead, and eventually into religious worship.

§ 150. It is said, however, that ancestor-worship is peculiar to the inferior races. I have seen implied, I have heard in conversation, and I have now before me in print, the statement that “no Indo-European or Semitic nation, so far as we know, seems to have made a religion of worship of the dead.” And the suggested conclusion is that these superior races, who in their earliest recorded times had higher forms of worship, were not even in their still earlier times, ancestor-worshippers.

That those who have another theory to uphold should thus interpret the evidence, is not unnatural. Every hypothesis tends to assimilate facts yielding it support and to reject adverse facts. But that adherents of the Evolution-doctrine should admit a distinction so profound between the minds of different human races, is surprising. Those who believe in creation by manufacture, may consistently Edition: current; Page: [295] hold that Aryans and Semites were supernaturally endowed with higher conceptions than Turanians. If species of animals were separately made with fundamental differences, varieties of men may have been so too. But to assert that the human type has been evolved from lower types, and then to deny that the superior human races have been evolved, mentally as well as physically, from the inferior, and must once have had those general conceptions which the inferior still have, is a marvellous inconsistency. Even in the absence of evidence it would be startling; and in the presence of contrary evidence it is extremely startling.

If in their more advanced stages the leading divisions of the Aryans habitually, while worshipping their greater deities, also worshipped ancestors, who, according to their remoteness, were regarded as divine, semi-divine, and human; must we really infer that in the course of their progress they adopted this ancestor-worship from inferior races? On finding that by the Greeks, heroes from whom the people of each locality traced their descent, were made objects of religious rites, just as by aboriginal Peruvians and others; shall we say that while becoming civilized they grafted on their higher creed this lower creed? When we recall the facts that besides sacrificing to the ghosts of their recent dead, the Romans sacrificed to the ghosts of their ancient dead, who were the founders of their families, just as the Amazulu do at the present time; are we to infer that while Asiatic nomads they had no such worship, but that, then worshipping only certain personalized powers of Nature, they adopted the religion of less cultured peoples as they themselves became more cultured? Such assumptions would be inadmissible, even had we no indications of the original Aryan beliefs; and are still more inadmissible now that we know what the original Aryan beliefs were. As expressed in their sacred writings, they were essentially the same as those of existing barbarians. “The heroic Indra, who delights in praise,” and to whom the hymn is “chaunted Edition: current; Page: [296] at the sacrifice,” hoping to impel “the well-accoutred, the loud-thundering, to succour us,” is but the ancestor considerably expanded; and from the mouth of the Zulu chief about to sacrifice, would equally well come the words of the Aryan rishi—“friends drive hither the milch cow with a new hymn.” If the human derivation of Indra needs further evidence, we have it in the statement concerning an intoxicating beverage made from the sacred plant—“the soma exhilarates not Indra unless it be poured out;” which is exactly the belief of an African respecting the libation of beer for an ancestral ghost. From the Rig-Veda we learn that men who by their virtues gained admission to heaven, attained an existence like that of deities; and these “ancient pious sages,” who “shared in the enjoyments of the gods,” were implored to be “propitious” and to protect. Still more specific are passages from the laws of Menu. We have the statement that the manes eat of the funeral meal; we have the direction to the head of the family to make a daily offering to get the good will of the manes, and also a monthly offering. And the ideas of savages, whose superior gods are the more powerful ghosts, are undeniably paralleled in a further injunction. That an oblation to the manes may be obtained by them, the master of the house must commence with an oblation to the gods, so that the gods may not appropriate what is intended for the manes!

Do, then, the Semitic races furnish a solitary exception? Strong evidence must be assigned before it can be admitted that they do; and no such strong evidence is forthcoming. Contrariwise, what positive facts we gather have opposite implications. Remembering that nomadic habits are unfavourable to evolution of the ghost-theory, it is manifest that if the ancient Hebrews, like some existing peoples, had not reached the conception of a permanently-existing ghost, they would, of course, have no established ancestor-worship: not because it was beneath them, but because the conditions Edition: current; Page: [297] for display of it were not fulfilled. Further, we must note that the silence of their legends is but a negative fact, which may be as misleading as negative facts often are; and beyond the general reason we have special reasons for suspecting this illusiveness. For among other peoples we find traditions that give no accounts of practices which not only existed but were dominant: the cause being that extraordinary occurrences only are narrated, and not ordinary occurrences. Interesting personal adventures form their subject-matter and not social habits, which are at best traceable by implication, and in a condensed narrative may leave no traces at all. Thus, to take a case, the legends of the Polynesians say scarcely more than the Bible does about the worship of ancestors; and yet ancestor-worship was in full activity among them. Again, it should be remembered that the sacred books of a religion nominally professed, may give very untrue ideas concerning the actual beliefs of its professors. Two facts already named incidentally show this. The Turkomans are rigid Mahometans; and yet, making pilgrimages to the tombs of canonized robbers, they pray to their ghosts. Similarly, the acceptance of Mahometanism does not prevent the Bedouins from sacrificing at the graves of their forefathers. In both cases there is habitually done that which we should infer could not be done, if we drew our inferences from the Koran. When, thus warned, we turn to the denunciations of the Hebrew prophets, directed against forms of worship which the Hebrews had in common with other races, we are reminded that the religion embodied in the Bible differed greatly from the popular religion. Besides the idolatry persisted in notwithstanding reprobation, there was tree-worship; and the ceremonials, equally low with those of semi-civilized peoples in general, included prostitution in temples. Moreover, the association of mourning dresses with fasting, as well as the law against self-bleeding and cutting-off the hair for the dead, imply primitive funeral rites like those of Edition: current; Page: [298] ancestor-worshippers in general. Nor is this all. On making an offering of first-fruits to Jahveh, the sacrificer is required to say that he has not “given ought thereof for the dead.” Hence, the conclusion must be that ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it was repressed by a higher worship. But be there or be there not adequate reason for ascribing a partially-developed ancestor-worship to the Hebrews, there is evidence that it has existed, and continues to exist, among other Semitic peoples. In a paper entitled “Le culte des ancêtres divinisés dans l’Yémen,” contained in the Comptes rendus of the French Academy, M. Lenormant, after commenting on some inscriptions, says:—

Kindred evidence is furnished by the following passage from the Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes of M. Caussin de Perceval. Speaking of the time of Mahomet, he says the greatest part of the nation [i.e., all who were not either Jews or Christians] were pagans.

Several significant implications occur here. The fact last named reminds us of the ancient Hebrew belief, or no-belief. Further, this difference of opinion among Arabs, some of whom are stationary and some wandering, harmonizes Edition: current; Page: [299] with the suggestion above made, that nomadic habits are less favourable than the habits of settled life to a persistent ghost-propitiation with all its sequences. Respecting the idea of a supreme deity, accompanying ancestor-worship among them, it is manifest that wandering hordes, coming in frequent contact with relatively-civilized peoples, would inevitably acquire it from them; as, from their European visitors, it is now acquired by savages. But that the belief so acquired is vague and superficial, is shown us by the existing Bedouins; whose Mahometanism, according to Mr. Palgrave, is of the most shadowy kind, while the reality of their ancestor-worship is proved by the sacrifices they “devoutly” make at tombs. No more, then, of Semites than of Aryans can ancestor-worship be denied.

§ 151. Mythologists, however, say that these observances have a moral rather than a religious character. Let us contemplate this proposed distinction under its concrete aspects.

When Nicaraguans are described as having adored the teotes, said by them to be the ancient men from whom they descended, we may accept the fact as it stands, for these people were of inferior race; but when, in the Institutes of Menu, we read that “the sons of Maríchi and of all the other Rĭshis [ancient sages], who were the offspring of Menu, son of Brahmá, are called the companies of Pitrĭs, or forefathers,” we must understand the fatherhood not literally but metaphorically: these people were Aryans. If one of the Amazulu, sacrificing a bullock, begins by inviting “the first Itongo who is known” (oldest ancestral ghost), or in other cases is careful to name first a ghost who is supposed to be angry because he has not been propitiated, the fact exhibits the crude ideas of a race incapable of high civilization. If, however, the Institutes of Menu say—“Let an offering to the gods be made at the beginning and end of the sráddha: it must not begin and end with an offering Edition: current; Page: [300] to ancestors; for he who begins and ends it with an oblation to the Pitrĭs, quickly perishes with his progeny;” we must, seeing the proved capacities of the Aryan mind, distinguish between the religious sentiment prompting one part of the sacrifice, and the moral sentiment prompting the other. Negroes who, when suffering, go to the woods and cry for help to the spirits of dead relatives, show by these acts the grovelling nature of their race; and we must not confound with their low conceptions those high conceptions of the Iranians implied in the Khorda Avesta, where the souls of forefathers are called upon in prayers: these express filial feeling only. Obviously, the frequent sacrifices by which the ancient Egyptians honoured their dead, namely, three “festivals of the seasons,” twelve “festivals of the month,” and twelve “festivals of the half-month,” formed part of their religion; for were they not Turanians and ancestor-worshippers? Quite otherwise, however, must we interpret the offerings made by the Romans to their Lares, on the calends, nones, and ides of every month; for these were merely marks of proper respect to forefathers. The act of a savage who at each meal throws aside some food and drink for the spirits of the dead, shows a wish to propitiate which was not felt by the Roman who offered a portion of each meal to his Lares. And if, on going abroad, the Roman prayed to his Lares for a happy return, he did not ascribe to them a power such as is ascribed to ghosts of relatives by the Indian or Veddah who asks their aid when he goes hunting. Still less must we suppose any similarity between the ideas of the sanguinary Mexicans, Peruvians, Chibchas, Dahomans, Ashantis, and others who immolate victims at funerals, and the ideas of those early Romans who offered up human sacrifices at tombs. Considering that the Romans belonged to one of the noble types of man, we must conclude that they adopted this habit from baser types around them.

What shall we say of such modes of interpretation? We Edition: current; Page: [301] may say at least this, that were he allowed equal licence in dealing with facts, the feeblest dialectician might safely undertake to establish any proposition that could be named.

§ 152. How unwarranted is the assertion that the superior races have not passed through this lower cult, will be again seen on remembering that down to the present time, ancestor-worship lingers among the most civilized of them. Throughout Europe it still shows itself, here feebly and there with some vigour, notwithstanding the repressive influence of Christianity.

Even Protestants yield undeniable traces of the aboriginal ideas and sentiments and acts. I do not refer merely to the decoration of graves with flowers, reminding us of the placings of flowers on graves by ancestor-worshipping peoples who also offered flowers to their deities; for this practice, spreading with the ritualistic reaction, may be considered as part of a revived Catholicism. I refer rather to certain less obtrusive facts. Dead parents are often thought of among us as approving or disapproving. They are figured in the minds of relatives as though they knew what was being done, and as likely to be hurt by disregard of their injunctions. Occasionally a portrait is imagined to look reproachfully on a descendant who is transgressing; and the anxiety not to disobey a dying wish certainly acts as a deterrent. So that, indefinite though their forms have become, the aboriginal notions of subordination and propitiation have not wholly disappeared.

It is, however, among Catholic peoples that this primitive religion most distinctly shows itself. The mortuary chapels in cemeteries on the Continent, are manifestly homologous with the elaborate tombs of the ancients. If erecting a chapel to the Virgin is an act of worship, then the sentiment of worship cannot be wholly absent if the erected chapel is over a dead parent. And though mostly the prayers in such chapels, or at graves, are only for the Edition: current; Page: [302] dead, I am told by two French Catholics that exceptionally, when a pious parent is supposed to be not in purgatory but in heaven, there are prayers to the dead for intercession. A French correspondent questions this; but he admits that men and women who have died in the odour of sanctity, are canonized by popular opinion and adored. “Ainsi, j’ai vu, en Bretagne, le tombeau d’un prêtre très pieux et très charitable: il était couvert de couronnes; on s’y rendait en foule le prier de procurer des guérisons, de veiller sur les enfants,” etc. Accepting only this last statement as trustworthy, it proves that the primitive religion lingers yet.

Even clearer proof that it lingers is yielded by the still-extant customs of feeding the spirits, both annually and at other times. If we read of periodic feasts for the dead among extinct nations, or now among the existing Chinese, and regard such observances as parts of their ancestor-worship; and if we learn that the feast of All Souls and sundry kindred observances are continued yet in various parts of Europe, both by Teutons and Celts; can we deny that an original ancestor-worship is implied by them?*

§ 153. See, then, how fully induction justifies deduction; and verifies the inference suggested in the last chapter.

Taking the aggregate of human peoples—tribes, societies, nations—we find that nearly all of them, if not literally all, have a belief, vague or distinct, in a reviving other-self of the dead man. Within this class of peoples we find a class not quite so large, by the members of which the other-self of the dead man is supposed to exist for a time, or always, after death. Nearly as numerous is the class of peoples included in this, who show us ghost-propitiation at the funeral, and for a subsequent interval. Then comes the narrower class contained in the last—those more advanced peoples who, along with the belief in a ghost which permanently exists, show us a persistent ancestor-worship. Again, somewhat further restricted, though by no means small, we have a class of peoples whose worship of distinguished ancestors partially subordinates that of the undistinguished. And eventually, the subordination growing more decided, becomes marked where these distinguished ancestors were leaders of conquering races.

Even the words applied in more advanced societies to different orders of supernatural beings, indicate by their original community of meaning, that this has been the course of genesis. The fact cited above, that among the Tannese the word for a god means literally a dead man, is typical of facts everywhere found. Ghost, spirit, demon—names at first applied to the other-self without distinctions of character—come to be differently applied as ascribed differences of character arise: the shade of an enemy becomes a devil, and a friendly shade becomes a divinity. Where the conceptions have not developed far, there are no differentiated titles, and the distinctions made by us cannot be expressed. The early Spanish missionaries in America were inconvenienced by finding that the only native word they could use for God also meant devil. In Greek, δαίμων and θεός are interchangeable. By Æschylus, Agamemnon’s Edition: current; Page: [304] children are represented as appealing to their father’s ghost as to a god. So, too, with the Romans. Besides the unspecialized use of dæmon, which means an angel or genius, good or bad, we find the unspecialized use of deus for god and ghost. On tombs the manes were called gods; and a law directs that “the rights of the manes gods are to be kept sacred.” Similarly with the Hebrews. Isaiah, representing himself as commanded to reject it, quotes a current belief implying such identification:—“And when they say unto you, ‘Consult the ghost-seers and the wizards, that chirp and that mutter! Should not people consult their gods, even the dead on behalf of the living?’ ” When Saul goes to question the ghost of Samuel, the expression of the enchantress is—“I saw gods [elohim] ascending out of the earth:” god and ghost being thus used as equivalents.* Even in our own day the kinship is traceable. The statement that God is a spirit, shows the application of a term which, otherwise applied, signifies a human soul. Only by its qualifying epithet is the meaning of Holy Ghost distinguished from the meaning of ghost in general. A divine being is still denoted by words that originally meant the breath which, deserting a man’s body at death, was supposed to constitute the surviving part.

Do not these various evidences warrant the suspicion that from the ghost, once uniformly conceived, have arisen the variously-conceived supernatural beings? We may infer, a priori, that in conformity with the law of Evolution, Edition: current; Page: [305] there will develop many unlike conceptions out of conceptions originally alike. The spirits of the dead, forming, in a primitive tribe, an ideal group the members of which are but little distinguished from one another, will grow more and more distinguished. As societies advance, and as traditions, local and general, accumulate and complicate, these once-similar human souls, acquiring in the popular mind differences of character and importance, will diverge; until their original community of nature becomes scarcely recognizable.

Expecting, then, heterogeneous modifications of them, multiplying in thought as populations increase, ever spreading into more varied habitats, and tending continually to fill every place in Nature that can be occupied, let us now contemplate some of their most conspicuous types.