CHAPTER XIII: THE IDEAS OF SOULS, GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS, ETC.

§ 91. The traveller Mungo Park, after narrating a sudden rencontre with two negro horsemen, who galloped off in terror, goes on to say:—“About a mile to the westward, they fell in with my attendants, to whom they related a frightful story: it seems their fears had dressed me in the flowing robes of a tremendous spirit; and one of them affirmed that when I made my appearance, a cold blast of wind came pouring down upon him from the sky, like so much cold water.”

I quote this passage to remind the reader how effectually fear, when joined with a pre-established belief, produces illusions supporting that belief; and how readily, therefore, the primitive man finds proof that the dead reappear.

Another preliminary:—A clergyman known to me, accepting in full the doctrine of the natural evolution of species, nevertheless professes to accept literally the statement that “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life:” an incongruity of beliefs which may pair off with that of Roman Catholics who, seeing, touching, and tasting the unchanged wafer, yet hold it to be flesh.

These acceptances of irreconcilable conceptions, even by cultivated members of civilized communities, I instance as suggesting how readily primitive men, low in intelligence and without knowledge, may entertain conceptions which Edition: current; Page: [172] are mutually destructive. It is difficult to picture them as thinking that the dead, though buried, come back in tangible shapes. And where they assert that the duplicate goes away, leaving the corpse behind, there seems no consistency in the accompanying supposition that it needs the food and drink they provide, or wants clothing and fire. For if they conceive it as aëriform or ethereal, then how can they suppose it to consume solid food, as in many cases they do; and if they regard it as substantial, then how do they conceive it to co-exist with the corpse, and to leave the grave without disturbing its covering?

But after reminding ourselves, as above, of the extremes of credulity and illogicality possible even in educated men of developed races, we shall infer that the primitive man’s ideas of the other-self, impossible though they look to us, can nevertheless be entertained.

§ 92. Typical as it is, I must set out with the often-cited notion of the Australians, so definitely expressed by the condemned criminal who said that after his execution he should jump up a white-fellow and have plenty of sixpences. Many have heard of the case of Sir George Grey, who was recognized and caressed by an Australian woman as her deceased son come back; and equally illustrative is the case of Mrs. Thomson, who, regarded as the returned other-self of a late member of the tribe, was sometimes spoken of by the Australians she lived with as “Poor thing! she is nothing—only a ghost!” Again, a settler with a bent arm, being identified as a lately-deceased native who had a bent arm, was saluted with—“O, my Balludery, you jump up white fellow!” And, giving other instances, Bonwick quotes Davis’s explanation of this Australian belief, as being that black men, when skinned before eating them, are seen to be white; and that therefore the whites are taken for their ghosts. But a like belief is elsewhere entertained without this hypothesis. The New Caledonians “think white men Edition: current; Page: [173] are the spirits of the dead, and bring sickness.” “At Darnley Island, the Prince of Wales’ Islands, and Cape York, the word used to signify a white man also means a ghost.” Krumen call Europeans “the ghost-tribe;” a people in Old Calabar call them “spirit-men;” and the Mpongwe of the Gaboon call them “ghosts.”

The implication, put by these many cases beyond doubt, that the duplicate is at first conceived as no less material than its original, is shown with equal clearness in other ways among other peoples. Thus the Karens say “the Là [spirit] sometimes appears after death, and cannot then be distinguished from the person himself.” The Araucanians think “the soul, when separated from the body, exercises in another life the same functions it performed in this, with no other difference except that they are unaccompanied with fatigue or satiety.” The inhabitants of Quimbaya “acknowledged that there was something immortal in man, but they did not distinguish the soul from the body.” The distinct statement of the ancient Peruvians was that “the souls must rise out of their tombs, with all that belonged to their bodies.” They joined with this the belief “that the souls of the dead wandered up and down and endure cold, thirst, hunger, and travell.” And along with the practice of lighting fires at chiefs’ graves, there went, in Samoa, the belief that the spirits of the unburied dead wandered about crying “Oh, how cold! oh! how cold!”

Besides being expressed, this belief is implied by acts. The practice of some Peruvians, who scattered “flour of maize, or quinua, about the dwelling, to see, as they say, by the footsteps whether the deceased has been moving about,” is paralleled elsewhere: even among the Jews, sifted ashes were used for tracing the footsteps of demons; and by some of them, demons were regarded as the spirits of the wicked dead. A like idea must exist among those Negroes mentioned by Bastian, who put thorns in the paths leading to their villages, to keep away demons. Elsewhere, the alleged Edition: current; Page: [174] demands for provisions by the dead have the same implication. “Give us some food, that we may eat and set out,” say certain Amazulu spirits, who represent themselves as going to fight the spirits of another place. Among the North-American Indians, the spirits are supposed to smoke; and in Fiji, it is said that the gods “eat the souls of those who are destroyed by men”—first roasting them. It is also a Fijian belief that some “souls are killed by men:” that is, the second self may have to be fought in battle like the first. So, too, by the Amazulu, “it is supposed that the Amatongo, or the dead, can die again. . . . We have allusions to their being killed in battle, and of their being carried away by the river.” This belief in the substantiality of the double, was shared by the ancient Hindus, by the Tatars, and by early Europeans.

§ 93. The transition from this original conception, to the less crude conceptions which come later, cannot be clearly traced; but there are signs of a progressive modification.

While the Tahitians hold that most spirits of the dead are “eaten by the gods,” not at once, but by degrees (implying separability of the parts); they hold that others are not eaten, and sometimes appear to the survivors in dreams: this re-appearance being probably the ground for the inference that they are not eaten. Again, a substantiality that is partial is not complete, is implied by the ascription to ghosts of organs of sense. The Yakuts leave conspicuous marks to show the spirits where the offerings are left; and the Indians of Yucatan think “that the soul of the deceased returns to the world, and in order that on leaving the tomb it may not lose the way to the domestic hearth, they mark the path from the hut to the tomb with chalk.” The materiality implied by physical vision, is similarly ascribed by the Nicobar people, who think that the “malignant spirits [of the dead] are effectually prevented from taking their abode again in the village, by a screen made of pieces of cloth, which Edition: current; Page: [175] keeps out of their baneful sight the place where the houses stand.”

The elaborated doctrine of the Egyptians regarded each person as made up of several separate entities—soul, spirit, ghost, &c. The primary one was a partially-material duplicate of the body. M. Maspero writes:—“Le ka, qui j’appellerai le Double, etait comme un second exemplaire du corps en une matière moins dense que la matière corporelle, une projection colorée mais aérienne de l’individu, le reproduisant trait pour trait, . . . le tombeau entier, s’appelait la maison du Double.”

The Greek conception of ghosts was of allied kind. “It is only,” says Thirlwall, “after their strength has been repaired by the blood of a slaughtered victim, that they recover reason and memory for a time, can recognize their living friends, and feel anxiety for those they have left on earth.” That these dwellers in Hades have some substantiality, is implied both by the fact that they come trooping to drink the sacrificial blood, and by the fact that Ulysses keeps them back with his sword. Moreover, in this world of the dead he beholds Tityus having his liver torn by vultures; speaks of Agamemnon’s soul as “shedding the warm tear;” and describes the ghost of Sisyphus as sweating from his efforts in thrusting up the still-gravitating stone. And here let me quote a passage from the Illiad, showing how the primitive notion becomes modified. On awaking after dreaming of, and vainly trying to embrace, Patroclus, Achilles says:—“Ay me, there remaineth then even in the house of Hades, a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life be not anywise therein.” Yet, being described as speaking and lamenting, the ghost of Patroclus is conceived as having the materiality implied by such acts. Thus, in the mind of the Homeric age, the dream, while continuing to furnish proof of an after-existence, furnished experiences which, when reasoned upon, necessitated an alteration in the idea of the other-self: complete substantiality was negatived.

Nor do the conceptions which prevailed among the Hebrews appear to have been different. We find ascribed, now substantiality, now insubstantiality, and now something between the two. The resuscitated Christ was described as having wounds that admitted of tactual examination; and yet as passing unimpeded through a closed door or through walls. And their supernatural beings generally, whether revived dead or not, were similarly conceived. Here angels dining with Abraham, or pulling Lot into the house, apparently possess complete corporeity; there both angels and demons are spoken of as swarming invisibly in the surrounding air, thus being incorporeal; while elsewhere they are said to have wings, implying locomotion by mechanical action, and are represented as rubbing against, and wearing out, the dresses of Rabbins in the synagogue.

Manifestly the stories about ghosts universally accepted among ourselves in past times, involved the same thought. The ability to open doors, to clank chains and make other noises, implies considerable coherence of the ghost’s substance; and this coherence must have been assumed, however little the assumption was avowed. Moreover, the still extant belief in the torture of souls by fire similarly presupposes some kind of materiality.

§ 94. As implied above, we find, mingled with these ideas of semi-substantial duplicates, and inconsistently held along with them, the ideas of aëriform and shadowy duplicates. The contrast between the dying man and the man just dead, has naturally led to a conception of the departed in terms of the difference: each marked difference generating a correlative conception.

The heart ceases to beat. Is then the heart the other-self which goes away? Some races think it is. Bobadilla asked the Indians of Nicaragua—“Do those who go upwards, live there as they do here, with the same body and head and the rest?” To which the reply was—“Only the Edition: current; Page: [177] heart goes there.” And further inquiry brought out a confused idea that there are two hearts, and that “that heart which goes is what makes them live.” So, too, among the Chancas of ancient Peru, Cieza says, soul “they called Sonccon, a word which also means heart.” More conspicuous as the cessation of breathing is than the cessation of the heart’s action, it leads to the more prevalent identification of the departed other-self with the departed breath. Among the Central Americans this identification co-existed with the last. To one of Bobadilla’s questions an Indian replied—“When they are dying, something like a person called yulio, goes off their mouth, and goes there, where that man and woman stay, and there it stays like a person and does not die, and the body remains here.” That the same belief has been generally held by higher races is too well known to need proof. I will name only the graphic presentation of it in illustrated ecclesiastical works of past times; as in the Mortilogus, of the Prior Conrad Reitter, printed in 1508, which contains woodcuts of dying men out of whose mouths smaller figures of themselves are escaping, and being received, in one case by an angel, and in another by a devil. Of direct identifications of the soul with the shadow, there are many examples; such as that of the Greenlanders, who “believe in two souls, namely, the shadow and the breath.” It will suffice, in further support of ancient examples, to cite the modern example of the Amazulu, as given by Bp. Callaway. Looking at the facts from the missionary point of view, and thus inverting the order of genesis, he says—“Scarcely anything can more clearly prove the degradation which has fallen on the natives than their not understanding that isitunzi meant the spirit, and not merely the shadow cast by the body; for there now exists among them the strange belief that the dead body casts no shadow.”

The conceptions of the other-self thus resulting, tending to supplant the conceptions of it as quite substantial, or half Edition: current; Page: [178] substantial, because less conspicuously at variance with the evidence, lead to observances implying the belief that ghosts need spaces to pass through, though not large ones. The Iroquois leave “a slight opening in the grave for it” [the soul] to re-enter; “in Fraser Island (Great Sandy Island), Queensland . . . they place a sheet of bark over the corpse, near the surface, to leave room, as they say, for the spirit or ghost to move about and come up;” and in other cases, with the same motive, holes are bored in coffins. Of the Ansayrii, Walpole says—“In rooms dedicated to hospitality, several square holes are left, so that each spirit may come or depart without meeting another.”

§ 95. Were there no direct evidence that conceptions of the other-self are thus derived, the indirect evidence furnished by language would suffice. This comes to us from all parts of the world, from peoples in all stages.

Describing the Tasmanians, Milligan says—“To these guardian spirits they give the generic name ‘Warrawah,’ an aboriginal term, . . . signifying shade, shadow, ghost, or apparition.” In the Aztec language, ehecatl means both air, life, and soul. The New England tribes called the soul chemung, the shadow. In Quiché, natub, and in Esquimaux, tarnak, severally express both these ideas. And in the Mohawk dialect, atouritz, the soul, is from atourion, to breathe. Like equivalences have been pointed out in the vocabularies of the Algonquins, the Arawâks, the Abipones, the Basutos. That the speech of the civilized by certain of its words identifies soul with shade, and by others identifies soul with breath, is a familiar fact. I need not here repeat the evidence detailed by Mr. Tylor, proving that both the Semitic and the Aryan languages show the like original conceptions.

§ 96. And now we come to certain derivative conceptions of great significance. Let us take first, the most obvious.

Quadrupeds and birds are observed to breathe, as men breathe. If, then, a man’s breath is that other-self which goes away at death, the animal’s breath, which also goes away at death, must be its other-self: the animal has a ghost. Even the primitive man, who reasons but a step beyond the facts directly thrust on his attention, cannot avoid drawing this conclusion. And similarly where there exists the belief that men’s shadows are their souls, it is inferred the shadows of animals, which follow them and mimic them in like ways, must be the souls of the animals.

The savage in a low stage, stops here; but along with advance in reasoning power there is revealed a further implication. Though unlike men and familiar animals in not having any perceptible breath (unless, indeed, perfume is regarded as breath), plants are like men and animals in so far that they grow and reproduce: they flourish, decay, and die, after leaving offspring. But plants cast shadows; and as their branches sway in the gale, their shadows exhibit corresponding agitations. Hence, consistency demands an extension of the belief in duality: plants, too, have souls. This inference, drawn by somewhat advanced races, as the Dyaks, the Karens, and some Polynesians, leads among them to propitiate plant-spirits. And it persists in well-known forms through succeeding stages of social evolution.

But this is not all. Having gone thus far, advancing intelligence has to go further. For shadows are possessed not by men, animals, and plants only: other things have them. Hence, if shadows are souls, these other things must have souls. And now mark that we do not read of this belief among the lowest races. It does not exist among the Fuegians, the Australians, the Tasmanians, the Andamanese, the Bushmen; or, if it does, it is not sufficiently pronounced to have drawn the attention of travellers. But it is a belief that arises in the more intelligent races, and develops. The Karens think “every natural object has its lord or god, in the signification of its possessor or presiding Edition: current; Page: [180] spirit:” even inanimate things that are useful, such as instruments, have each of them its Là or spirit. The Chippewas “believe that animals have souls, and even that inorganic substances, such as kettles, etc., have in them a similar essence.” By the Fijians who, as we have seen (§ 41), are among the most rational of barbarians, this doctrine is fully elaborated. They ascribe souls “not only to all mankind, but to animals, plants, and even houses, canoes, and all mechanical contrivances;” and this ascription is considered by T. Williams to have the origin here alleged. He says—“probably this doctrine of shadows has to do with the notion of inanimate objects having spirits.” Peoples in more advanced states have drawn the same conclusion. The Mexicans “supposed that every object had a god;” and that its possession of a shadow was the basis for this supposition, we may reasonably conclude on observing the like belief avowedly thus explained by a people adjacent to the Chibchas. Piedrahita writes:—

These facts, and especially the last, go far to show that the belief in object-souls, is a belief reached at a certain stage of intellectual evolution as a corollary from a pre-established belief respecting the souls of men. Without waiting for the more special proofs to be hereafter given, the reader will see what was meant in § 65, by denying that the primitive man could have so retrograded to an intelligence below that Edition: current; Page: [181] of brutes, as originally to confuse the animate with the inanimate; and he will see some ground for the accompanying assertion that such confusion of them as his developing conceptions show, he is betrayed into by inference from a natural but erroneous belief previously arrived at.

§ 97. Returning from this parenthetical remark, it will be useful, before closing, to note the various classes of souls and spirits which this system of interpretation originates.

We have, first, the souls of deceased parents and relatives. These, taking in the minds of survivors vivid shapes, are thus distinguished from the souls of ancestors; which, according to their remoteness, pass into vagueness: so implying ideas of souls individualized in different degrees. We have, next, the wandering doubles of persons who are asleep, or more profoundly insensible. That these are recognized as a class, is shown by Schweinfurth’s account of the Bongo; who think that old people “may apparently be lying calmly in their huts, whilst in reality they are taking counsel with the spirits of mischief” in the woods. Further, we have, in some cases, the souls of waking persons which have temporarily left them: instance the belief of the Karens, that “every human being has his guardian spirit walking by his side, or wandering away in search of dreamy adventures; and if too long absent, he must be called back with offerings.” The recognition of such distinctions is clearly shown us by the Malagasy, who have different names for the ghost of a living person and the ghost of a dead person.

Another classification of souls or spirits is to be noted. There are those of friends and those of enemies—those belonging to members of the tribe, and those belonging to members of other tribes. These groups are not completely coincident; for there are the ghosts of bad men within the tribe, as well as the ghosts of foes outside of it; and there are in some cases the malignant spirits of those who have Edition: current; Page: [182] remained unburied. But, speaking generally, the good and the bad spirits have these origins; and the amity or the enmity ascribed to them after death, is but a continuance of the amity or the enmity shown by them during life.

We must add to these the souls of other things—beasts, plants, and inert objects. The Mexicans ascribed the “blessing of immortality to the souls of brutes;” and the Malagasy think the ghosts “of both men and beasts reside in a great mountain in the south.” But though animal-souls are not uncommonly recognized; and though Fijians and others believe that the souls of destroyed utensils go to the other world; yet souls of these classes are not commonly regarded as interfering in human affairs.

§ 98. It remains only to note the progressive differentiation of the conceptions of body and soul, which the facts show us. As, in the last chapter, we saw that, along with the growth of intelligence, the idea of that permanent insensibility we call death is gradually differentiated from the ideas of those temporary insensibilities which simulate it, till at length it is marked off as radically unlike; so, here, we see that the ideas of a substantial self and an unsubstantial self, acquire their strong contrast by degrees; and that increasing knowledge, joined with a growing critical faculty, determine the change.

Thus when the Basutos, conceiving the other-self as quite substantial, think that if a man walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw him in; we may see that the irreconcilability of their ideas is so great, that advancing physical knowledge must modify them—must cause the other-self to be conceived as less substantial. Or again, if, on the one hand, the Fijian ascribes to the soul such materiality that, during its journey after death, it is liable to be seized by one of the gods and killed by smashing against a stone; and if, on the other hand, he holds that each man has two souls, his shadow and his reflection; Edition: current; Page: [183] it is manifest that his beliefs are so incongruous that criticism must ultimately change them. Consciousness of the incongruity, becoming clearer as thought becomes more deliberate, leads to successive compromises. The second self, originally conceived as equally substantial with the first, grows step by step less substantial: now it is semi-solid, now it is aeriform, now it is ethereal. And this stage finally reached, is one in which there cease to be ascribed any of the properties by which we know existence: there remains only the assertion of an existence that is wholly undefined.