CHAPTER XIV: THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER LIFE.

§ 99. Belief in re-animation implies belief in a subsequent life. The primitive man, incapable of deliberate thought, and without language fit for deliberate thinking, has to conceive this as best he may. Hence a chaos of ideas concerning the after-state of the dead. Among tribes who say that death is annihilation, we yet commonly find such inconsequent beliefs as those of some Africans visited by Schweinfurth, who shunned certain caves from dread of the evil spirits of fugitives who had died in them.

Incoherent as the notions of a future life are at first, we have to note their leading traits, and the stages of their development into greater coherence. The belief is originally qualified and partial. In the last chapter we saw that some think resuscitation depends on the treatment of the corpse—that destruction of it causes annihilation. Moreover, the second life may be brought to a violent end: the dead man’s double may be killed afresh in battle; or may be destroyed on its way to the land of the dead; or may be devoured by the gods. Further, there is in some cases a caste-limitation: in Tonga it is supposed that only the chiefs have souls. Elsewhere, resuscitation is said to depend on conduct and its incidental results. Some races think another life is earned by bravery; as do the Comanches, who anticipate it for good men—those who are daring in taking scalps and stealing horses. Conversely, “a mild and unwarlike tribe of Guatemala Edition: current; Page: [185] . . . were persuaded that to die by any other than a natural death, was to forfeit all hope of life hereafter, and therefore left the bodies of the slain to the beasts and vultures.” Or, again, revival is contingent on the pleasure of the gods; as among the ancient Aryans, who prayed for another life and made sacrifices to obtain it. And there is in many cases a tacit supposition that the second life is ended by a second and final death.

Before otherwise considering the primitive conception of a future life, we will glance at this last trait—its duration.

§ 100. One of the experiences suggesting another life, is also one of the experiences suggesting a limit to it; namely, the appearance of the dead in dreams. Sir John Lubbock has been, I believe, the first to point out this. Manifestly the dead persons recognized in dreams, must be persons who were known to the dreamers; and consequently, the long dead, ceasing to be dreamt of, cease to be thought of as still existing. Savages who, like the Manganjas, “expressly ground their belief in a future life on the fact that their friends visit them in their sleep;” naturally draw the inference that when their friends cease to visit them in their sleep, they have ceased to be. Hence the contrast which Sir John Lubbock quotes from Du Chaillu. Ask a negro “where is the spirit of his great-grandfather, he says he does not know; it is done. Ask him about the spirit of his father or brother who died yesterday, then he is full of fear and terror.” And as we shall hereafter see, when dealing with another question, the evidence furnished by dreams establishes in the minds of the Amazulu, a like marked distinction between the souls of the lately dead and the souls of the long dead; which they think have died utterly.

How the notion of a temporary after-life grows into the notion of an enduring after-life, we must leave unconsidered. For present purposes it suffices to point out that the notion of an enduring after-life is reached through stages.

§ 101. What is the character of this after-life: here believed in vaguely and in a variable way; here believed in as lasting for a time; here believed in as permanent?

Sundry of the funeral rites described in a foregoing chapter, imply that the life which goes on after death is supposed to differ in nothing from this life. The Chinooks assert that at night the dead “awake and get up to search for food.” No doubt it is with a like belief in the necessity for satisfying their material wants, that the Comanches think the dead “are permitted to visit the earth at night, but must return at daylight”—a superstition reminding us of one still current in Europe. Among South American tribes, too, the second life is conceived as an unvaried continuation of the first: death-being, as the Yucatan Indians say, “merely one of the accidents of life.” The Tupis buried the dead body in the house “in a sitting posture with food before it; for there were some who believed that the spirit went to sport among the mountains, and returned there to eat and to take rest.”

Where the future life is thought of as divided from the present by a more decided break, we still find it otherwise contrasted in little or nothing. What is said of the Fijians may be said of others. After death they “plant, live in families, fight, and in short do much as people in this world.” Let us note the general agreement on this point.

§ 102. The provisions they count upon, differ from the provisions they have been accustomed to, only in being better and more abundant. The Innuits expect to feast on reindeer-meat; after death the Creek goes where “game is plenty and goods very cheap, where corn grows all the year round and the springs of pure water are never dried up;” the Comanches look forward to hunting buffaloes which are “abundant and fat;” while the Patagonians hope “to enjoy the happiness of being eternally drunk.” The conception differs elsewhere only as the food, etc., differs. The Edition: current; Page: [187] people of the New Hebrides believe that in the next life “the cocoa-nuts and the bread-fruit are finer in quality, and so abundant in quantity as never to be exhausted.” Arriaga says that the Peruvians “do not know, either in this life or in the other, any greater happiness than to have a good farm wherefrom to eat and to drink.” And pastoral peoples show a kindred adjustment of belief: the Todas think that after death their buffaloes join them, to supply milk as before.

With like food and drink there go like occupations. The Tasmanians expected “to pursue the chase with unwearied ardour and unfailing success.” Besides killing unlimited game in their heaven, the Dakotahs look forward to “war with their former enemies.” And, reminded as we thus are of the daily fighting and feasting anticipated by the Scandinavians, we are shown the prevalence of such ideas among peoples remote in habitat and race. To see how vivid these ideas are, we must recall the observances they entail.

§ 103. Books of travel have familiarized most readers with the custom of burying a dead man’s movables with him. This custom elaborates as social development goes through its earlier stages. Here are a few illustrations, joined with the constructions we must put upon them.

The dead savage, having to hunt and to fight, must be armed. Hence the deposit of weapons and implements with the corpse. The Tongous races have these, with other belongings, “placed on their grave, to be ready for service the moment they awake from what they consider to be their temporary repose.” And a like course is followed by the Kalmucks, the Esquimaux, the Iroquois, the Araucanians, the Inland Negroes, the Nagas, and by tribes, savage and semi-civilized, too numerous to mention: some of whom, too, recognizing the kindred needs of women and children, bury with women their domestic appliances and with children their toys.

The departed other-self will need clothes. Hence the Abipones “hang a garment from a tree near the place of interment, for him [the dead man] to put on if he chooses to come out of the grave;” and hence the Dahomans, along with other property, bury with the deceased “a piece of cloth as a change of raiment when arriving in dead-land.” This providing of wearing apparel (sometimes their “best robes” in which they are wrapped at burial, sometimes an annual supply of fresh clothes placed on their skeletons, as among the Patagonians) goes along with the depositing of jewels and other valued things. Often interment of the deceased’s “goods” with him is specified generally; as in the case of the Samoyeds, the Western Australians, the Damaras, the Inland Negroes, the New Zealanders. With the dead Patagonian were left whatever “the deceased had while alive;” with the Naga, “any article to which he or she may have been particularly attached during life;” with the Guiana people, “the chief treasures which they possessed in life;” with the Papuan of New Guinea, his “arms and ornaments;” with a Peruvian Ynca, “his plate and jewels;” with the Ancient Mexican, “his garments, precious stones,” etc.; with the Chibcha, his gold, emeralds, and other treasures. With the body of the late Queen of Madagascar were placed “an immense number of silk dresses, native silk cloths, ornaments, glasses, a table and chairs, a box containing 11,000 dollars . . . and many other things.” By the Mishmis, all the things necessary for a person whilst living are placed in a house built over the grave. And in Old Calabar, a house is built on the beach to contain the deceased’s possessions, “together with a bed, that the ghost may not sleep upon the floor.” To such an extent is this provision for the future life of the deceased carried, as, in many cases, to entail great evil on the survivors. Among the Fantees “a funeral is usually absolute ruin to a poor family.” The Dyaks, besides the deceased’s property, bury with him sometimes large sums of money, and other valuables; so that Edition: current; Page: [189] “it frequently happens that a father unfortunate in his family, is by the death of his children reduced to poverty.” And in some extinct societies of America, nothing but the deceased’s land, which they were unable to put into his grave, remained for his widow and children.

Carrying out consistently this conception of the second life, uncivilized peoples infer that, not only his inanimate possessions, but also his animate possessions, will be needed by the deceased. Hence the slaughter of his live stock. With the Kirghiz chief are deposited “his favourite horses,” as also with the Yakut, the Comanche, the Patagonian; with the Borghoo, his horse and dog; with the Bedouin, his camel; with the Damara, his cattle; with the Toda, in former times, “his entire herd;” and the Vatean, when about to die, has his pigs first tied to his wrist by a cord and then killed. Where the life led, instead of having being predatory or pastoral, has been agricultural, the same idea prompts a kindred practice. Among the Indians of Peru, writes Tschudi, “a small bag with cocoa, maize, quinua, etc., is laid beside the dead, that they might have wherewithal to sow the fields in the other world.”

§ 104. Logically developed, the primitive belief implies something more—it implies that the deceased will need not only his weapons and implements, his clothing, ornaments, and other movables, together with his domestic animals; but also that he will want human companionship and services. The attendance he had before death must be renewed after death.

Hence the immolations which have prevailed, and still prevail, so widely. The custom of sacrificing wives, and slaves, and friends, develops as society advances through its earlier stages, and the theory of another life becomes more definite. Among the Fuegians, the Andamanese, the Australians, the Tasmanians, with their rudimentary social organizations, wives are not killed to accompany dead Edition: current; Page: [190] husbands; or if they are, the practice is not general enough to be specified in the accounts given of them. But it is a practice shown us by more advanced peoples: in Polynesia, by the New Caledonians, by the Fijians, and occasionally by the less barbarous Tongans—in America, by the Chinooks, the Caribs, the Dakotahs—in Africa, by the Congo people, the Inland Negroes, the Coast Negroes, and most extensively by the Dahomans. To attend the dead in the other world, captives taken in war are sacrificed by the Caribs, the Dakotahs, the Chinooks; and without enumerating the savage and semi-savage peoples who do the like, I will only further instance the survival of the usage among the Homeric Greeks, when slaying (though with another assigned motive) twelve Trojans at the funeral pyre of Patroclus. Similarly with domestics: a dead man’s slaves are slain by the Kyans and the Milanaus of Borneo; the Zulus kill a king’s valets; the Inland Negroes kill his eunuchs to accompany his wives; the Coast Negroes poison or decapitate his confidential servants. Further, there is in some cases an immolation of friends. In Fiji, a leading man’s chief friend is sacrificed to accompany him; and among the sanguinary peoples of tropical Africa, a like custom exists.

It was, however, in the considerably-advanced societies of ancient America that such arrangements for the future convenience of the dead were carried out with the greatest care. In Mexico, every great man’s chaplain was slain, that he might perform for him the religious ceremonies in the next life as in this. Among the Indians of Vera Paz, “when a lord was dying, they immediately killed as many slaves as he had, that they might precede him and prepare the house for their master.” Besides other attendants, the Mexicans “sacrified some of the irregularly-formed men, whom the king had collected in his palaces for his entertainment, in order that they might give him the same pleasure in the other world.” Of course, such elaborate precautions that Edition: current; Page: [191] the deceased should not lack hereafter any advantages he had enjoyed here, entailed enormous bloodshed. By the Mexicans “the number of the victims was proportioned to the grandeur of the funeral, and amounted sometimes, as several historians affirm, to 200.” In Peru, when an Ynca died, “his attendants and favourite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is said, to a thousand, were immolated on his tomb.” And until the reign of Soui-Zin, when a Japanese emperor died “on enterrait avec lui tous ceux qui, de son vivant, approchaient sa personne.”

The intensity of the faith prompting such customs, we shall the better conceive on learning that the victims are often willing, and occasionally anxious, to die. Among the Guaranis in old times, some faithful followers “sacrificed themselves at the grave of a chief.” A dead Ynca’s wives “volunteered to be killed, and their number was often such that the officers were obliged to interfere, saying that enough had gone at present;” and “some of the women, in order that their faithful service might be held in more esteem, finding that there was delay in completing the tomb, would hang themselves up by their own hair, and so kill themselves.” Similarly of the Chibchas, Simon says that with a corpse “they interred the wives and slaves who most wished it.” Of Tonquin in past times Tavernier wrote—“Many Lords and Ladies of the Court will needs be buried alive with him [the dead king] for to serve him in the places where he is to go.” In Africa it is the same even now. Among the Yorubans, at the funeral of a great man, “many of his friends swallow poison,” and are entombed with him. Formerly in Congo, “when the king was buried a dozen young maids leapt into the grave . . . and were buried alive to serve him in the other world. These maids were then so eager for this service to their deceased prince, that, in striving who should be first, they killed one another.” And in Dahomey, immediately the king dies, his wives begin to destroy all his furniture and things of value, as Edition: current; Page: [192] well as their own; and to murder one another. On one occasion 285 of the women were thus killed before the new king could stop it.*

These immolations sometimes follow the deaths of the young. Kane says a Chinook chief wished to kill his wife, that she might accompany his dead son to the other world; and in Aneiteum, on the death of a beloved child, the mother, aunt, or grandmother, is strangled that she may accompany it to the world of spirits.

As further qualifying the interpretation to be put on sanguinary customs of this kind, we must bear in mind that not only are inferiors and dependents sacrificed at a funeral, with or without their assent, but that the superiors themselves in some cases decide to die. Fiji is not the only place where people advancing in years are buried alive by their dutiful children. The like practice holds in Vate, where an old chief requests his sons to destroy him in this way.

§ 105. Conceived as like the first in its needs and occupations and pleasures, the second life is conceived as like the first in its social arrangements. Subordination, both domestic and public, is expected to be the same hereafter as here. A few specific statements to this effect may be added to the foregoing implications.

Cook states that the Tahitians divided the departed into classes similar to those existing among themselves; or, as Ellis re-states it, “those who were kings or Areois in this world were the same there for ever.” The creed of the Tongans, too, represents deceased persons as organized after the system of ranks existing in Tonga. The like holds in Fiji; where it “is most repugnant to the native mind” Edition: current; Page: [193] that a chief should appear in the other world unattended. The Chibchas thought that in the future life, they would “be attended to by their servants, as in the present.” So, too, is it among the Hill-tribes of India: the heaven of the Karens “has its rulers and its subjects;” and in the Kookie heaven, the ghost of every enemy a man has slain becomes his slave. With African races the like holds. According to the creed of the Dahomans, classes are the same in the second life as in the first. By Kaffirs the political and social relations after death are supposed to remain as before. And a kindred conception is implied among the Akkra Negroes, by their assertion that in the rainy season, their guardian gods go on a visit to the supreme god.

That this analogy persists in the conceptions of higher races, scarcely needs saying. The legend of the descent of Ishtar, the Assyrian Venus, shows us that the residence of the Assyrian dead had, like Assyria, its despotic ruler, with officers levying tribute. So, too, in the underworld of the Greeks. We have the dread Aïdes, with his wife Persephone, as rulers; we have Minos “giving sentence from his throne to the dead, while they sat and stood around the prince, asking his dooms;” and Achilles, is thus addressed by Ulysses:—“For of old, in the days of thy life, we Argives gave thee one honour with the gods, and now thou art a great prince here among the dead.” And while departed men are thus under political and social relations like those of living men, so are the celestials. Zeus stands to the rest “exactly in the same relation that an absolute monarch does to the aristocracy of which he is the head.” Nor did Hebrew ideas of another life, when they arose, fail to yield like analogies. Originally meaning simply the grave, or, in a vague way, the place or state of the dead, Sheol, when acquiring the more definite meaning of a miserable place for the dead, a Hebrew Hades, and afterwards developing into a place of torture, Gehenna, introduces us to a form of diabolical government having Edition: current; Page: [194] gradations. And though, as the conception of life in the Hebrew heaven elaborated, the ascribed arrangements did not, like those of the Greeks, parallel terrestrial arrangements domestically, they did politically. As some commentators express it, there is implied a “court” of celestial beings. Sometimes, as in the case of Ahab, God is represented as taking council with his attendants and accepting a suggestion. There is a heavenly army, spoken of as divided into legions. There are archangels set over different elements and over different peoples: these deputy-gods being, in so far, analogous to the minor gods of the Greek Pantheon. The chief difference is that their powers are more distinctly deputed, and their subordination greater. Though here, too, the subordination is incomplete: we read of wars in heaven, and of rebellious angels cast down to Tartarus. That this parallelism continued down to late Christian times, is abundantly shown. In 1407, Petit, professor of theology in the University of Paris, represented God as a feudal sovereign, Heaven as a feudal kingdom, and Lucifer as a rebellious vassal. “He deceived numbers of angels, and brought them over to his party, so that they were to do him homage and obedience, as to their sovereign lord, and be no way subject to God; and Lucifer was to hold his government in like manner to God, and independent of all subjection to him. . . . St. Michael, on discovering his intentions, came to him, and said that he was acting very wrong.” “A battle ensued between them, and many of the angels took part on either side, but the greater number were for St. Michael.” That a kindred view was held by our protestant Milton, is obvious.

§ 106. Along with this parallelism between the social systems of the two lives, may fitly be named the closeness of communion between them. The second life is originally allied to the first by frequency and directness of intercourse. In Dahomey, many immolations are due to the alleged need Edition: current; Page: [195] for periodically supplying the departed monarch with fresh attendants in the shadowy world; and further, “whatever action, however trivial, is done by the King, . . . it must be dutifully reported by some male or female messenger to the paternal ghost.” Among the Kaffirs the system of appeal from subordinates to superiors, is extended so as to include those who have passed into the other-life: “the departed spirit of a chief being sometimes invoked to compel a man’s ancestors to bless him.” And with this may be named a still stranger instance—the extension of trading transactions from the one life into the other: money being borrowed “in this life, to be repaid with heavy interest in the next.”

In this respect, as in other respects, the conceptions of civilized races have but slowly diverged from those of savage races. On reading that when tribes of the Amazulu are hostile, the ancestral spirits of the one tribe go to fight those of the other, we are reminded of the supernatural beings who, siding some with Greeks and some with Trojans, joined in the combat; and we are also reminded that the Jews thought “the angels of the nations fought in heaven when their allotted peoples made war on earth.” Further, we are reminded that the creed of Christendom, under its predominant form, implies a considerable communion between those in the one life and those in the other. The living pray for the dead; and the canonized dead are asked to intercede on behalf of the living.

§ 107. The second life, being originally conceived as repeating the first in other respects, is originally conceived as repeating it in conduct, sentiments, and ethical code.

According to the Thibetan cosmogony, the gods fought among themselves. The Fijian gods “are proud and revengeful, and make war, and kill and eat each other, and are, in fact, savages like themselves.” Their names of honour are “the adulterer,” “the woman-stealer,” “the brain-eater,” “the murderer.” And the ghost of a Fijian chief, Edition: current; Page: [196] on arriving in the other world, recommends himself by the boast—“I have destroyed many towns, and slain many in war.” This parallelism between the standards of conduct in the two lives, typical as it is of parallelisms everywhere repeated in lower stages of progress, reminds us of like parallelisms between the standards of those early peoples whose literatures have come down to us.

Of the after-life of the departed Greeks, under its ethical aspect, the traits are but indistinct. Such as we may perceive, however, conform to those of Greek daily life. In Hades, Achilles thinks of vengeance, and rejoices in the account of his son’s success in battle; Ajax is still angry because Ulysses defeated him; and the image of Hercules goes about threateningly, frightening the ghosts around him. In the upper world it is the same: “the struggle on earth is only the counterpart of the struggle in heaven.” Mars is represented as honoured by the titles of “bane of mortals,” and “blood-stainer.” Jealousy and revenge are ruling motives. Tricking each other, the immortals also delude men by false appearances—even combine, as Zeus and Athene did, to prompt the breaking of treaties solemnly sworn to. Easily offended and implacable, they are feared just as his demons are feared by the primitive man. And the one act sure to be resented, is disregard of observances which express subordination. As among the Amazulu at the present time, the anger of ancestral spirits is to be dreaded only when they have not been duly lauded, or have been neglected when oxen were killed; as among the Tahitians “the only crimes that were visited by the displeasure of their deities were the neglect of some rite or ceremony, or the failing to furnish required offerings;” so the ascribed character of the Olympians is such that the one unforgiveable offence is neglect of propitiations. Nevertheless, we may note that the unredeemed brutality implied by the stories of the earlier gods, is, in the stories of the later, considerably mitigated; in correspondence with the mitigation Edition: current; Page: [197] of barbarism attending the progress of Greek civilization.

Nor in the ascribed moral standard of the Hebrew other-life, do we fail to see a kindred similarity, if a less complete one. Subordination is still the supreme virtue. If this is displayed, wrong acts are condoned, or are not supposed to be wrong. The obedient Abraham is applauded for his readiness to sacrifice Isaac: there is no sign of blame for so readily accepting the murderous suggestion of his dream as a dictate from heaven. The massacre of the Amalekites by divine command, is completed by the merciless Samuel without check; and there is tacit condemnation of the more merciful Saul. But though the God of the Hebrews is represented as hardening Pharaoh’s heart, and as sending a lying spirit to deceive Ahab through his prophets; it to be noted that the ethical codes of heaven and paradise, while reflecting the code of a people in some respects barbarous, reflect the code of a people in other respects morally superior. Justice and mercy enter into the moral standards of both lives (as expressed by the prophets, at least), in a degree not shown us in the moral standards of lower men.

§ 108. And here we are introduced to the fact remaining to be noted—the divergence of the civilized idea from the savage idea. Let us glance at the chief contrasts.

The complete substantiality of the second life as originally conceived, following necessarily from the conception of the other-self as quite substantial, the foregoing evidence clearly shows us. Somehow keeping himself out of sight, the deceased eats, drinks, hunts, and fights as before. How material his life is supposed to be, we see in such facts as that, among the Kaffirs, a deceased’s weapons are “broken or bent lest the ghost, during some midnight return to air, should do injury with them,” and that an Australian cuts off the right thumb of a slain enemy, that the ghost may be unable to throw a spear. Evidently, destruction of the Edition: current; Page: [198] body by burning or otherwise, tending to produce a qualified notion of the revived other-self, tends to produce a qualified notion of the other-life, physically considered. The rise of this qualified notion we may see in the practice of burning or breaking or cutting to pieces the things intended for the dead man’s use. We have already noted cases (§ 84) in which food placed with the corpse is burnt along with it; and elsewhere, in pursuance of the same idea, the property is burnt. In Africa this is common. Among the Koossas the widows of chiefs “burn all the household utensils;” the Bagos (Coast Negroes) do the like, and include all their stores of food: “even their rice is not saved from the flames.” It is a custom of the Comanches to burn the deceased’s weapons. Franklin says of the Chippewayans, “no article is spared by these unhappy men when a near relative dies; their clothes and tents are cut to pieces, their guns broken, and every other weapon rendered useless.” Obviously the implication is that the ghosts of these possessions go with the deceased; and the accompanying belief that the second life is physically unlike the first, is in some cases expressed: it is said that the essences of the offerings made are consumed by departed souls and not the substances of them. More decided still seems to be the conceived contrast indicated by destroying models of the deceased’s possessions. This practice, prevailing among the Chinese, was lately afresh witnessed by Mr. J. Thomson; who describes two lamenting widows of a dead mandarin whom he saw giving to the flames “huge paper-models of houses and furniture, boats and sedans, ladies-in-waiting and gentlemen-pages.” Clearly, another life in which the burnt semblances of things are useful, must be figured as if a very shadowy kind.

The activities and gratifications of the second life, originally conceived as identical with those of the first, come in course of time to be conceived as more or less unlike them. Besides seeing that at first the predatory races look forward Edition: current; Page: [199] to predatory occupations, and that races living by agriculture expect to plant and reap as before; we see that even where there is reached the advanced social state implied by the use of money, the burial of money with the body shows the belief that there will be buying and selling in the second life; and where sham coins made of tinsel are burnt, there remains the same implication. But parallelism passes into divergence. Without trying to trace the changes, it will suffice if we turn to the current description of a hereafter, in which the daily occupations and amusements find no place, and in which there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. Still, being conceived as a life in which all the days are Sundays, passed “where congregations ne’er break up,” it is conceived as akin to a part of the present life, though not to the average of it.

Again, the supposed form of social order becomes partially unlike the known form. Type of government, caste distinctions, servile institutions, are originally transferred from the experiences here to the imaginations of the hereafter. But though in the conceptions entertained by the most civilized, the analogy between the social orders of the first and the second lives does not wholly disappear, the second deviates a good deal from the first. Though the gradations implied by a hierarchy of archangels, angels, etc., bear some relation to the gradations seen around us; yet they are thought of as otherwise based: such inequalities as are imagined have a different origin.

Similarly respecting the ethical conceptions and the implied sentiments. Along with the emotional modifications that have taken place during civilization, there have gone modifications in the beliefs respecting the code of conduct and the measure of goodness in the life to come. The religion of enmity, which makes international revenge a duty and successful retaliation a glory, is to be wholly abandoned; and the religion of amity to be unqualified. Still, in certain respects the feelings and motives now dominant are to remain Edition: current; Page: [200] dominant. The desire for approbation, which is a ruling passion here, is represented as being a ruling passion hereafter. The giving of praise and receiving of approval are figured as the chief sources of happiness.

Lastly, we observe that the two lives become more widely disconnected. At first perpetual intercourse between those in the one and those in the other, is believed to be going on. The savage daily propitiates the dead; and the dead are supposed daily to aid or hinder the acts of the living. This close communion, persisting throughout the earlier stages of civilization, gradually becomes less close. Though by paying priests to say masses for departed souls, and by invocations of saints for help, this exchange of services has been, and still continues to be, generally shown; yet the cessation of such practices among the most advanced, implies a complete sundering of the two lives in their thoughts.

Thus, then, as the idea of death gets gradually marked off from the idea of suspended animation; and as the anticipated resurrection comes to be thought of as more and more remote; so the distinction between the second life and the first life, grows, little by little, decided. The second life diverges by becoming less material; by becoming more unlike in its occupations; by having another kind of social order; by presenting gratifications more remote from those of the senses; and by the higher standard of conduct it assumes. And while thus differentiating in nature, the second life separates more widely from the first. Communion decreases; and there is an increasing interval between the ending of the one and the beginning of the other.