Chapter V: Animism (1)

§ 1. WHAT IS ANIMISM?

If, when the cohesion of the hunting-pack had weakened, belief in Magic by giving authority to elders became very influential and useful in primitive societies, still greater in subsequent evolution has been the power of Animism. For belief in ghosts led in time to the worship of ancestors, and then especially to the worship of the ancestors of chiefs or heroes, some of whom became gods; and the belief in gods strengthened the authority of chiefs and kings who were descended from them, and helped to maintain the unity of the tribe or nation from generation to generation and from age to age.

In anthropology, the term Animism is usually employed to denote the proneness of savages and barbarians, or people of unscientific culture, to explain natural occurrences, at least the more remarkable or interesting—the weather, the growth of crops, disease and death—as due to the action of spirits: (1) ghosts (that is, spirits that have formerly been incarnate); (2) dream-spirits, that have temporarily quitted some body during sleep or trance; (3) invisible, living, conscious beings that have never been incarnate. This may be called Hyperphysical Animism. Sometimes, however, “Animism” is used to denote a supposed attitude of savages and children toward all things, animate and inanimate, such that they spontaneously and necessarily attribute to everything a consciousness like our own, and regard all the actions and reactions of natural objects as voluntary and purposive. And this may be called Psychological Animism. These two meanings of “Animism” are entirely different: it is one thing to regard an object as moved by its own mind, another to attribute its movement or influence to a separable agent which for the time possesses it; it is one thing to regard an object as having an anthropomorphic consciousness, another to believe that that consciousness is a distinct power capable of quitting it and sometimes returning, or of surviving its destruction, or of existing independently. Even if the doctrine of Animism in the second sense were granted, it would remain to be shown how men came to conceive that the consciousness of a thing can be separated from it, and exist and act by itself, and even with greater powers than it had before—contrary to the opinion of Don Juan,

“that soul and body, on the whole,
Were odds against a disembodied soul.”

Savages do not always regard a separable spirit as necessarily belonging even to human nature. Dr. Seligman writes that, among the Veddas, a few old men “were by no means confident that all men on their death became _yaku_” (veridical ghosts). Influential men and mediums would do so; but for the rest, at Godatalawa it was determined by experiment. The ordinary man was invoked soon after death, and desired to give good success in hunting; and if much game was then obtained, he had become a _yaka_.[155] Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that, according to the Guanjis, a woman has no _moidna_ (spirit part).[156] Major C. H. Stigand says “the Masai have no belief in a future state for any but chiefs”; the common dead are not even buried, but merely thrown out into the bush.[157] Among the Omaha, though each person has a spirit that normally survives the body, still, a suicide ceases to exist.[158] In Tonga the souls of the lowest rank of the people (Tooas) died with their bodies.[159] The human spirit, then, is not necessarily believed to enter upon a life after death; still less is the spirit of an animal. On the other hand, it is held by many tribes that something inherent in weapons, utensils, food and other objects, a “soul” or soul-stuff, may be separable from them and go to Hades or serve as the food of spirits, although the things themselves are not regarded as having a spirit or intelligent life.

§ 2. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANIMISM

Andrew Lang described savages as existing in “a confused frame of mind to which all things, animate and inanimate, ... seem on the same level of life, passion and reason.”[160] Children and other immature people are often supposed to be in the same condition. As to children, it is pointed out how deeply concerned they are about dolls and rocking-horses, how passionately they turn to strike a table after knocking their heads against it. But probably it is now admitted that impulsive retaliation, on a table or bramble or shirt-stud (not unknown to civilised men), implies not any belief in the malignity or sensitiveness of those objects. Animals behave in the same way. Th. Roosevelt reports that an elephant was seen to destroy in rage a thorn tree that had pricked its trunk;[161] and that in America he himself saw a bear that was burying a carcass, and lost hold of it and rolled over, strike it a savage whack, like a pettish child.[162] Moreover, in children, such behaviour is in large measure due to suggestion; inasmuch as the setting of them to beat the table, or what not, is an easy way of diverting them from their own pain. And, of course, the dealing with dolls, or rocking-horses, or walking-sticks, as if alive, is play. Such play involves intense imaginative belief, which, at first, is not clearly differentiated from earnest. But this stage corresponds with the play of the young of the higher animals, whilst they are still physically incapable of completing the preluded actions; and the engrossing interest of their play expresses the biological necessity of it as a means of developing their mental and bodily faculties. By the time that children are at all comparable with savages, their play has become a temporary attitude, compatible with brusque transition to matter-of-fact, or even with actions which at the height of play show that the illusion is incomplete.

In savages, likewise, much of the behaviour that is supposed to betray an illusionary animism, even in their simple apprehension of things, is really an acquired way of acting, in a temporary attitude, under the influence of imagination-belief, and is compatible with other actions that show how incomplete is the illusion. Andrew Lang, after the passage above quoted, appears to limit the scope of it by the words “when myth-making”: no doubt, when myth-making and in practising many rites, savages speak or act as if they believed in the full sense that the objects dealt with are sensitive intelligent beings; and yet their effective conduct toward them is entirely positive. They may, for example, feed the growing rice-plant with pap; in harvesting it, speak a secret language that the rice may not understand them and be alarmed, and proceed to cut it with knives concealed in their palms: but they do cut it. They carry it home and garner it with honour, and come from time to time to take a portion for food with solemn observances: but then they cook and eat it.[163] Their animistic attitude, therefore, is not primitive, spontaneous, necessary illusion, but an acquired, specialised way of imagining and dealing with certain things. Were it not possible to combine in this way the imaginative with the practical, all wizardry and priestcraft would be nothing but the sheer cheating which it often seems to be to superficial observers. Normally, imagination-beliefs that have only indirect biological utility (say, in maintaining customs in order to ensure the tribe’s welfare) are unable to overcome immediate biological needs (say, for food and shelter); but often they do so within certain limits, or in certain directions, as in innumerable taboos of food, customs of destroying a man’s property at his death, starving or maiming tribesmen on the war-path. A universal taboo on rice is not inconceivable. For these are social-pathological cases; like the self-destructive beliefs of individuals and sects amongst ourselves, such as the faith-healers, who in sickness call upon their god instead of a physician.

Children, savages and ourselves, in some degree, attribute spontaneously to _some_ inanimate things, in our mere apprehension of them (for this has nothing to do with the metaphysics of Pampsychism), something more than external existence: regarding them as force-things and, by empathy, as experiencing effort and quiescence, strain and relief, and sometimes emotion and pain. It is for this attitude toward nature that I adopt Mr. Marett’s term “animatism”: as not ascribing to inanimate things, or to plants, in general, anything like a human personal consciousness; but merely an obscure, fragmentary, partial consciousness, enough to correspond with our occasional experiences in dealing with them. Perhaps those observers who report in strong terms universal Animism as the tenet of a tribe, mean no more than this; for example, the author above quoted as writing in the _American Bureau of Ethnology_, who says (p. 433) that according to the Dakotas, everything—“the commonest sticks and clays”—has a spirit that may hurt or help and is, therefore, to be propitiated. It would be unjust to the adherents of psychological Animism to accuse them of believing that savages have universally made so much progress in “faculty Psychology” as to distinguish personality, will, passion and reason; especially as they add that savages project these powers into all natural objects through incapacity for discrimination and abstraction; and, at the same time, know very well that in some languages of the most animistic tribes (e. g. Algonquin and Naga) the distinction of animate and inanimate is the ground of grammatical gender.

We find, accordingly, that some explorers explicitly deny that, in their experience, savages regard all things as on the same level of life, passion and reason. Dr. Coddrington says that, in the Banks’ Islands, yams and such things are not believed to have any _tarunga_ (spirit)—“they do not live with any kind of intelligence”;[164] and that Melanesians do not fail to distinguish the animate and the inanimate. Messrs. Skeat and Blagden report that with the Semang of the Malay Peninsula there is very little trace of animistic beliefs; and they relate a folk-tale of how a male elephant tells a female that he has found a live stone (pangolin rolled into a ball): “Swine,” said the female, “stones are never alive.”[165] Messrs. Hose and McDougall tell us that the Kayans hang garments and weapons on a tomb, and seem to believe that shadowy duplicates of these things are at the service of the ghost, but that such duplicates are inert (relatively) and not to be confused with the principle of intelligence.[166] “Soul” does not imply personality.

To be clear about Animism, it is necessary to bear in mind several modes of belief: (1) Hyperphysical Animism, that certain things have, or are possessed by a conscious spirit, and that this spirit is a separable entity; (2) that things are themselves conscious (or semi-conscious), but their consciousness is not a separable entity; (3) that things are not conscious, but are informed by a separable essence, usually called soul (better, soul-stuff), which may be eaten by spirits, or may go to ghost-land with them; (4) the extension or limitation of these beliefs to more or fewer classes of things. Unless these distinctions are recognised, any report upon savage beliefs can hardly be clear and adequate; but generally we may take it that when a traveller tells us that such and such things are not believed to have souls, and says nothing of any belief as to their consciousness, he means (except with regard to animals) to deny that anything like human consciousness is attributed to them. And when Mr. Torday writes that, according to the Bahuana of the Upper Congo, there are two incorporeal parts—_doshi_, common to man, animals and fetiches, and _bun_, peculiar to man—he seems to leave it as a matter of course that plants and inanimate things have neither of these, and are not conscious beings; though probably some of them have soul-stuff, since clothes, weapons and food are buried with a corpse.[167] The Rev. J. H. Weeks says that the Bakongo of the Lower Congo attribute a spirit only to the _nkasa_ tree (from whose bark the ordeal poison is derived) amongst plants;[168] and, similarly, the Baloki, further up the river, attribute a spirit only to the _nka_ tree.[169] Since many things are buried by these people in a grave, or broken above it, the things may be supposed to have soul-stuff; but from the denying of spirits to plants, and from silence as to psychological Animism, it may be inferred that neither plants nor inanimate things are regarded as conscious beings. Sir E. F. im Thurn tells us that material things of all sorts are believed by the natives of Guiana to have each a body and a spirit—evidently a conscious and malicious spirit; “and that not all inanimate objects have this dual nature avowedly attributed to them, is probably only due to the chance that ... the spirit has not yet been noticed in some cases.”[170] Even with these Guiana Indians, then, whose Animism, in every sense, is unusually active and extensive, their attitude is an acquired, specialised way of imagining and dealing with things that draw their attention and excite their suspicions, not a primitive, necessary illusion; else there could be no exceptions.

The reasonable view, therefore, is that savages distinguish between themselves and certain animals, on the one hand, and, on the other, the remaining animals, plants and inanimate things; and raise the second class to the rank of the first, as conscious agents, only when there are special incentives to do so. To find all the causes that excite the animistic attitude toward things would be a difficult task, but some of them may be indicated. Beginning from Animatism, which really is a primitive and necessary illusion, it is reasonable to expect:

(_a_) That any plant or inanimate thing adopted as a Totem should, by that very fact, be endowed with human consciousness; though the savage mind is too inconsistent for us to infer that this must always happen.

(_b_) That whatever seems to move or act spontaneously, like the winds and streams and echoes, the sun, moon, planets, and shooting stars, should be felt as a spiritual agency; especially if it cry out with empathetic reverberation, as winds and cataracts do, trees tormented by the storm, waves, fire, and the ice-floe when it breaks up in spring; or if it excite fear by being extraordinary and dangerous, as thunder and lightning are, whirlwinds and whirlpools, waterspouts and volcanoes. Dr. Speisser writes that at Ambrym, when the volcano is active, the natives climb to the top and bring sacrifices to appease it, throwing coco-nuts and yams into the crater.[171]

(_c_) That whatever has been regarded as having magical force should be treated—after the rise of the ghost-theory (supposing this to be of later origin) has given vogue to a new principle of explanation—as owing its virtue to a spirit, either by immanence or possession (two modes of actuation which may or may not be distinguished), and so become a fetich, instead of being merely an amulet or talisman.

(_d_) That whatever is much used in ritual, especially if often addressed in spells or incantations, should become an object of reverence, apt to be personified and raised to, or even above, the human level as a conscious agent: for example, padi and rice in Indonesia, the ordeal tree on the Congo, already mentioned. Fire-sticks used in the ritual of sacrifice are often deified. In India, the conch, having for ages been used in religious rites, “the people gradually came to revere the instrument itself and to adore and invoke it.”[172] “A strange religious feature [of the _Rigveda_] pointing to a remote antiquity is the occasional deification and worship even of objects fashioned by the hand of man, when regarded as useful to him. These are chiefly sacrificial implements.”[173] The practice now extends in India to nearly every tool and utensil. Amongst the very few inanimate gods of the Cherokees are the Stone, invoked by the Shaman when seeking lost goods by means of a pebble suspended by a string; and the Flint, invoked when about to scarify a patient with an arrow-head before rubbing in medicine.[174] By the Apache, heddontin (pollen of the cat-tail rush) is used as the sacrificial powder in nearly all rites, and is personified and prayed to.[175] When spells are addressed to any object, the analogy of address to human beings tends to cause that object to be thought of as humanly conscious.

(_e_) Stocks and stones have been worshipped, as the dwelling-place of spirits in many parts of the world; having superseded in the mind of their devotees the ghost of the men whose burial-place they formerly marked, but who themselves have been forgotten; and probably, on the analogy of these stones, others that no ghost ever haunted.

(_f_) Where Animism is active amongst a timid and suspicious people, whatever injures a man is believed to act of malice: as amongst the Indians of Guiana, who are so timid that rather than go hunting alone they will take a woman or a child along with them.[176]

Under such conditions as these a sort of acquired psychological Animism is very widely though very irregularly diffused; but were it universal and uniform, it could not of itself account for hyperphysical Animism—the doctrine that men (or some men), some animals, plants, things, places, are possessed or informed by spirits that are capable of separate existence.

§ 3. THE GHOST THEORY

Hyperphysical Animism may be easiest understood as having arisen with the belief in human ghosts. The causes of this belief have been fully set forth by Herbert Spencer[177] and Sir E. B. Tylor[178] in a way that to my mind is convincing. Amongst those causes dreams predominate; wherein the dead are met again as in the flesh. The living body having always been for the savage a conscious force-thing, at death the conscious force leaves the thing or corpse. This might be accepted by him as a fact of the same kind as the loss of its virtue by a talisman or amulet (which is known sometimes to happen), were it not for dreams in which the dead still live. That this conscious force that has left the body is not visible except in dreams need excite little wonder, since many forces natural and magical are invisible.

A dream not being common to two men at the same time, the things that are seen in it cannot be pointed out, nor therefore directly named (in this resembling subjective experiences). It was for ages impossible to narrate a dream as a dream: there was no way of distinguishing it from external events, either for the dreamer himself or (were that possible) in reporting it to another. He was far away and met his father, yet had lain by the fire all night! Hence to find names with which to describe such things men turned to other ways in which they seemed to have a double existence, to shadows and reflections: which in their sudden appearance and disappearance, and sometimes faint, sometimes distorted outlines, bear some resemblance to dream-images; and probably it is felt to be significant that shadows and reflections disappear at night, just when dreams occur. Shadows and reflections are not necessarily identified with the ghost derived from the dream-image, because their names are given to it; but sometimes they certainly are; so that a man who, on looking into water, happens not to see his reflection may believe that his spirit has gone away, and that he himself must be ill, and accordingly he becomes ill; or if at noon near the equator he notices that he has no shadow, he may think his soul is gone, and run to a medicine-man to get it back; and dead bodies may be believed to have no shadows.[179] Inasmuch as a body even lying on the ground casts a shadow, except at tropical noon, the belief that it does not do so at any time implies an acquired inability to see what is before one’s eyes; as sometimes happens in hypnosis and other conditions of negative hallucination.

The idea of a separable conscious personal force, or spirit, that leaves the body at death, serves also, as it gathers strength, to explain sleep, fainting, epilepsy; and sometimes every sickness is attributed to the partial detachment or desertion of the spirit; which, therefore, it is the doctor’s business to plug in, or to catch and restore; or (if I rightly remember a report of Miss Kingsley’s) he may even supply another one from a basketful of souls kept at hand for such exigencies.

That the ghost theory arises not only from dreams, but is also suggested by hallucinations and hypnagogic visions is very probable. In various parts of the world savages have been described as having visions of remarkably coherent and convincing vividness that seem not to have been dreams.[180] But such experiences, even when artificially induced by fasting or drugs (as happens among many tribes), are rare in comparison with dreams; and to the influence of dreams upon these savage beliefs there is abundant testimony. With some tribes dreams are treated as part of their objective experience; so that to be injured by your neighbour in a dream is just ground for avenging yourself as soon as you wake; and to see a dead man in a dream is, therefore, clear proof of his continued existence, and that either he has come to the dreamer or the dreamer has gone to visit him.

Thus Sir Everard im Thurn says of the native of Guiana, his dreams are as real as any events of his waking life; his dream-actions are done by his spirit: in dreams he continues to see the dead—that is, their spirits.[181] Similarly, the Lengua Indians (W. of R. Paragua) have great faith in dreams; wherein the spirit is believed to leave the body and to do in fact what is dreamed.[182] According to the Cherokees, to dream of being bitten by a snake requires the same treatment as actual snake-bite; else (perhaps years later) the same inflammation will appear in the wounded spot, with the same consequences.[183] The Motu hold that _sua_ (ghosts or spirits) are seen in dreams, and that when a man sleeps his own _sua_ leaves his body.[184] “The Lifuans believe in the reality of what is seen in a dream, and are influenced by it. Their dead ancestors appeared in dreams.”[185] And the Polynesians of Manatuki thought that “dreams were occasioned by the spirit going to the places seen in them.”[186] Many more of such witnesses might be cited.

It is recognised by psychologists that dreams, as immediate experience, have more the character of perception than of imagination. Children are apt to confuse dreams with reality. It can only have been gradually, with the growing knowledge of continuity and coherence in the course of events, and therewith the demand for corroboration of testimony, that dreams were distinguished from the waking life. When no longer supposed to be all of them real, some are still so regarded: the Dieri, amongst lower savages, distinguish between visions, as revelations made by Kutchi (an evil Spirit), and ordinary dreams, as mere fancies.[187] But so impressive are dreams to many people, in their eagerness to know more than sense and philosophy can tell them, that they persist in hoping, and therefore believing, that dreams, if they give no knowledge of this world, may still be revelations of another, perhaps more real; or if not revelations, adumbrations by way of allegory, which some learned or inspired Daniel may interpret; or, at least, omens of good or evil, which the ancient science of Oneiromancy undertakes to explain. There is now a new and more promising Oneiromancy that interprets dreams as indicating not the future, but one’s own past, chiefly a forgotten past, and teaches to know oneself: more promising; for what but experience can possibly be the source of dreams—at least, of dream-elements? Some of the new principles of interpretation, however, may compare for obscurity with the ancient.

That the dead are seen alive in dreams is, then, for the savage a fact of observation; and, therefore, the continued existence of the dead is, for him, not in the first place supernatural; although it may be called hyperphysical, because it is experienced only in dreams and not by daylight, and is exempt from ordinary conditions of time and place. But it gradually becomes supernatural, as the capricious incidents of dream-life are felt to be “uncanny,” as that which occurs only at night is involved in the fears of the night, and as a great cloud of imaginations accumulates about the dead and obscures the simple facts of dream-perception in which the belief originated. This cloud of imaginations, by its mysterious character and by various alliances with Magic, spreads and deepens until it overshadows the whole of human life; is generally, indeed, dispersed here and there by the forces of biological necessity, often by subterfuges laughable enough; which have, however, the merit of saving mankind from destruction: but sometimes it extinguishes the last ray of common sense, impoverishes the believer, enfeebles him, fills his days and nights with terror, gives him over to practices the most cruel or the most disgusting, leads him to slay his own tribesmen, his own children, his own parents, and to offer up himself in the sure hope of resurrection.

§ 4. EXTENSION OF THE GHOST THEORY TO ANIMALS

Spirits, having once been conceived of as explaining the actions of men and surviving their bodily death, may by analogy be conceived to explain the action of any other things in circumstances that suggest a motive for the action, and therefore to possess or inhabit such things, and to be capable of separating from them, like ghosts. Other things are already, by Magic and Animatism, force-things, in some degree conscious, whose forces may be capable of acting invisibly at a distance; and at the death of a man it is his conscious force that leaves the body and becomes a ghost. Since, then, there is hardly any natural object whose action may not in some circumstances seem to be interpretable by motives, especially amongst a timid and suspicious people, how can we assign any necessary limits to the spread of Animism? Moreover, the causes most influential in establishing the ghost theory for man directly require its extension to other things. For not human beings only are seen in dreams, but also their clothes, weapons and utensils, and also animals, plants, localities. If, then, the dead, because they are seen in dreams, are inferred still to live under conditions in which they are not visible by daylight to ordinary men, how can the inference be avoided that all sorts of things, artefacts, animals, plants, localities, share in that mode of existence—that all have their doubles? And “Why not?” the savage might ask, since it is literally true of all things, without exception, that they are sometimes visible, sometimes invisible.[188] Similar inferences seem to be justifiable from the alliance of ghosts with shadows and reflections, and the fact that not man only but everything else has a shadow and a reflection, and that their shadows and reflections disappear at night, just when the things themselves sometimes appear in dreams. Moreover, so far as the breath, the pulse, the shining of the eye, which cease in the human corpse, are sometimes identified with the departed spirit, the same processes likewise cease at the death of animals; though, it is true, there is here no analogy with inanimate things, and the breathing and circulation of plants are beyond the savage’s observation. Therefore, although Animism is an inferential construction, were the construction entirely due to the logic of analogy, there would be nothing surprising in the discovery that the belief “that everything has a ghost” is just as universal and uniform in the human race as if it had been an innate or primitive belief. That, on the contrary, Animism prevails very irregularly amongst the tribes of men; that, in all directions, inferences that are analogically specious fail to be drawn; that instead of a general system of Animism every tribe has its own Animism; this is surprising and needs to be explained. The extension of the theory is easier to understand than its irregular limitation.

Bearing in mind that we are at present considering Animism as a belief in ghosts, not in spirits generally (to which we shall come in Sec. 6), I venture to think that, although dreams, shadows and reflections certainly suggest a double existence of everything, yet savages never assign a true ghost to anything inanimate, nor to plants, nor even to animals, unless there is a special reason for doing so; because only in the case of human beings is the suggestion interesting enough to take hold of the social imagination. Hence, even though other things appear in the ghost-world, they have no significance there, except in relation to human ghosts (or ghostlike spirits) on whom they attend. Accordingly, human ghosts have a place in the beliefs of every tribe, because human beings excite affection, admiration and fear, have well-marked individuality; are therefore remembered and have stories told of them; and if they are seen after death, it is, of course, reported. The evidence makes it only too plain that the paralysis of attention by fear is the chief (though not the only) emotional factor of belief in ghosts; and what other thing in all nature is to be feared in comparison with one’s fellow-man?

The belief in ghosts, escaped and roaming independent of any normally visible body, as a social belief, is involved in the practice of reporting and discussing dreams, which becomes the same thing as telling ghost-stories—the first and most persistent motive of literature. Stories can only be told effectively of things generally interesting; and, at first, such things must have been recognisable by the hearers and must have had some individuality. Hence—

(_a_) Animals that attain to such individuality may have ghosts: (i) An animal that occasions widespread fear, such as a man-eating tiger. We must distinguish from such cases the frequent beliefs that tigers, wolves, sharks, snakes, etc., are, or are possessed by, the spirits or ghosts of men. (ii) An animal that comes to be upon terms of special intimacy with men; such as the very tame dogs and pigs that come when they are called among the Bakongo;[189] or hunting dogs that have been specially doctored among the Baloki.[190]

(_b_) Animals slain at funeral feasts to accompany the dead have ghosts so far as necessary for that purpose; but, wanting individuality and personal interest, they make no further figure in ghost-lore; they do not “walk” or revisit the glimpses of the moon. Thus the Tanghouls say that ghosts, on reaching Kazairam (their Hades), find the gates barred against them by the deity Kokto; so at the burial feast of a rich man a buffalo is killed, that his mighty ghost may burst open the massive gates of that abode. Poor ghosts must wait about outside, till a rich one comes up with his buffalo; when they all rush in behind him.[191] But we hear nothing further of the buffalo. In the Banks’ Islands, pigs killed at a funeral feast have no true ghosts to follow the dead to Panoi, but only a sort of wraith; because they only go for show, that their master may be well received there.[192]

(_c_) Animals that are important prey to a hunting tribe are often believed to have ghosts that may be hunted by dead tribesmen; or that must be propitiated when one of them is slain: the ghosts, for example, of seals and bears are bribed by the Esquimo to entice other seals and bears to come and be killed. A seal desires above everything, they say, a drink of fresh water; so as soon as one is brought ashore a dipperful is poured into his mouth; else the other seals will not allow themselves to be caught. The polar bear (male) desires crooked knives and bow-drills, or (female) women’s knives and needle-cases. Hence, when a bear is killed, its ghost accompanies its skin into the hunter’s hut; and the skin is hung up with the appropriate tools for four or five days. Then the bear-ghost is driven out by a magic formula, takes with it the souls of the tools, and reports well of the hunter in bear-soul land. Whilst in the hut, as an honoured guest, nothing is done that it dislikes in human customs.[193]

(_d_) In the development of mythology, animals and monsters of various kinds may be found inhabiting shadow-land; but these are not true ghosts of any particular things that once died in this world.

This list of the ways in which animals may come to have ghosts is not offered as exhausting all the cases.

§ 5. GHOSTS AND SOUL-STUFF

A ghost is a disembodied soul, having a consciousness and power at, or generally (because it is feared) above, the human level; but there may be disembodied souls, or souls capable of disembodiment, that have no consciousness, or none above the level of Animatism. Even if a living thing have a consciousness, its post-mortem apparition may not; like the Banks’ Islanders’ pig, which, though “a distinguished animal and acknowledged to be intelligent,” has no true ghost. Among nearly all tribes, whatever is offered in sacrifice to gods or left in, or at, the tombs of men deceased, is believed to have some sort of soul; because, plainly, spirits do not eat or consume the visible food or utensils; yet it is necessary to the success of the rites to suppose that the spirits are satisfied; they must, therefore, take the souls of the offerings. And what can be more plausible reasoning than to argue that, as solid men eat solid food, ghosts eat ghostly food? “Soul” thus appears as a sort of ghost-substance, or ghost-body. For, in dreams, the departed are seen as if in the flesh; and moreover analogy requires that the ghost consciousness and ghost-force shall have a body of some sort, and, of course, one that will maintain in ghost-land the same relations to other things that the mortal body did in this world. In ghost-land, or shadow-land, or dream-land, the substance of all things is this soul-stuff. Sometimes the force of analogy requires a tribe to believe that, in order that the souls of things (such as earthen pots or weapons) may be released to accompany a ghost to the underworld, the things themselves must be “killed,” that is to say, broken; but other tribes are not such consistent logicians; and in some cases where things left exposed at a grave (not buried) are broken, it may be to prevent their being stolen.

Anything, then, may have “soul” after its kind: relatively inert things have relatively inert souls, but never true ghosts; some animals may have ghosts, especially if they have attained to a certain individuality, but generally only in so far as they are imagined to attend upon human ghosts or spirits. Inasmuch as the word “soul” is often used as equivalent to “ghost,” it would be convenient always to speak of the soul which is ghost-food, or ghost-body, “as soul-stuff.”[194] Soul-stuff is conceived of as material, though subtle and normally invisible. A man’s soul-stuff may be regarded not only as permeating his body, but also as infecting everything he possesses or touches: no doubt by analogy with his odour; for a man’s odour is a personal quality, distinguishable by dogs and (I believe) by some savages and hypnotic subjects; and the stench of his putrefying corpse may be supposed to convey his courage and skill to those who inhale it.[195] And the savour of a burnt-offering is food for gods. Indeed, Ellis says explicitly that, in Tahiti, food was put to the mouth of a chieftain’s corpse; because, they said, there was a spiritual as well as a material part of food, a part which they could smell.[196]

Savage ideas are generally so little thought out, and are so irregularly thought out by different tribes, that the relation of a thing to its soul-stuff varies widely from one tribe to another. In many cases the extraction by ghost or god of the soul-stuff from an offering may affect it so little, that the devotee or the priest proceeds to feast upon it; and I have nowhere met with the notion (which logic requires) that such metaphysically eviscerated food can only nourish a man’s body and not his soul. However, since the eating of the sacrifice may be an act of communion with the ghost, he then naturally extracts the goodness only from his own share. In other cases, the breaking of weapons and utensils buried with a corpse implies an intimate unity between the wholeness of an object and its soul-stuff; and the Rev. J. H. Weeks says of the considerable wealth put into a grave by the Bakongo, that only the shell or semblance of anything is supposed to remain there.[197]

This conception of soul-stuff may have been an important contribution to metaphysics. The doctrine of material substance is reached by abstracting all the qualities of things; but then there would be nothing left, were it not for this venerable idea of something invisible and intangible in things in which qualities may “inhere,” or which may serve as a “support” to them; so that, when it is taken away there is only a shell or semblance of anything left. But such a tenet is uncommon. Along another line of speculation this soul-stuff may become the Soul of the World. When by philosophers spirits are no longer conceived to have bodies, but to be the very opposite of bodies, a spiritual substance must be invented to support their qualities, in order to put them upon an equal footing of reality with corporeal things; but as there is no spirit-stuff ready made by the wisdom of our forefathers, this concept remains uncomfortably empty. To appear as ghosts and to have mechanical energy, spirits may be invested with “soul-stuff” as a spiritual body; but this is only subtle matter. Their own substance must be correlative with their proper attributes as pure conscious beings, the very opposite of bodies; and, therefore, immaterial, unextended, simple, self-identical, according to the “paralogisms of Rational Psychology.” But such speculations are confined to philosophers and theologians: some of whom, however, maintain (as if reverting to the original savage idea) that spirit is the true substance of material things, at least that material things depend upon a spirit, or spirits, for their existence. Monists, again, say there is one substance of both matter and mind, which is not either of these any more than it is the other. Locke very honestly calls it “a supposed I know not what.”

In writing of Magic, I have indicated the origin of the notion of force; and if my view is justifiable, it appears that those celebrated abstractions “force” and “matter,” form and substance, spirit and body, may be traced to the savage mind. That savages are incapable of general and abstract ideas we have seen to be an illusion. They are necessary to economy in the organisation of the mind. When a tribe bases its grammatical gender on the distinction of Animate and Inanimate, has it in no sense corresponding ideas? But an abstract idea results from a long process of dissociative growth from its concrete sources, and must exist in some manner at all stages of that growth, before its distinctness is completed by an appropriate name; and it is reasonable to suppose that at every stage of growth it functions and influences the course of thought. Accordingly, it is plain that from very early times thought has been greatly influenced by ideas of force, form, spirit and the rest of them.

§ 6. GHOSTS AND SPIRITS

Whilst of some tribes (for example the Indians of Guiana) it is said that there is nothing to indicate that they “know of any spirits, except such as are, or once were, situated in material bodies,”[198] amongst others we are often told that not only ghosts are known but also spirits that are declared never to have been incarnate. An extreme form of the ghost-theory maintains that all spirits were once ghosts whose incarnation has been forgotten; but this is needless, and seems not to be true. It is enough that probably the original inhabitants of the spirit-world were ghosts; that some of those now believed not to have been ghosts were once really so; and that those spirits that were never ghosts are later immigrants, who have obtained domicile by having been imagined in analogy with ghosts. The following list indicates more or less probable reasons why (_A_) ghosts have sometimes come to be regarded as non-human spirits, and (_B_) why certain non-human things have come to be regarded as spirits, or as possessed by spirits, more or less resembling the human.

_A._ Spirits that were formerly ghosts, but are now declared not to have been:

(_a_) Ghosts whose former life has been forgotten by mere lapse of time. The memory of the dead amongst many tribes does not extend beyond three or four generations. If then the ghost of some unusually impressive personality happens to be remembered, when all his relatives and contemporaries have been forgotten, he seems to be separated from the human race. And if his name was that of some natural object, his ghost, according to Spencer’s hypothesis, may now be regarded as the spirit of that phenomenon. But as to Spencer’s hypothesis,[199] although it gives such a plausible explanation of much nature-worship by real facts as to the working of savage language and thought that it seems to me unreasonable to doubt that it has had some of the effects he traces to it, yet it presses upon me more and more that most cases of nature-worship are to be explained by more particular causes.

(_b_) To dissociate a ghost from mankind is especially easy if his tomb has been forgotten, or if he has no tomb. As the drowned have no tombs, they easily become water-demons. Tombs must often be forgotten in consequence of migrations. In Central Melanesia both ghosts and spirits are recognised; but in the west worship is directed chiefly to ghosts, in the east chiefly to spirits. As migration has been from west to east, the tombs of ancestors can no longer be pointed out by the eastern islanders, and so their ghosts may have become spirits. In Tumloo (northern New Guinea) there are temples of spirits (all female) distinct from ancestral ghosts, and on the banisters of ladders leading up to these temples there are ornamental figures of ape-like animals; the architecture of the temples points to a former superior culture.[200] As there are no apes in New Guinea, these figures and temples may indicate a former residence under better conditions in Java or Borneo; and the spirits with which they are associated may be ancestral ghosts whose tombs and other earthly vestiges have been forgotten in the migration.

(_c_) We may see another way in which a ghost may become a pure spirit, if we suppose that as a ghost he had attained to some measure of worship, but that with the rise of new gods (by conquest, or by the reputation of being more helpful), or by his being himself too good to be worth worshipping, his rites have been neglected and his legend forgotten. Then he is no longer remembered as a ghost, or ancestor.

(_d_) It may be thought honourable to a god to deny that he was ever a man.

(_e_) The construction of a world-myth makes it necessary to begin somewhere with some one; and whoever becomes the first being, it is necessary to deny that he was ever begotten. But there may be inconsistent stories: the supreme being of the central Esquimo is a woman, Sedna, who created all things that have life; but other traditions give her a human origin.[201] Similarly, in drawing up the genealogy of ancestral gods, we come at last to one who was never begotten. Such is Unkulunkulu of the Zulus, generally said to have sprung from a bed of reeds.[202]

_B._ Spirits that were never incarnate, but have been imagined by analogy with ghosts already propitiated:

(_f_) A Totem may become a spirit; whilst, having himself no human antecedents, he can hardly be a ghost as of an ordinary mortal. Nothing can be more irregular than the life of Totemism: with some tribes it seems to die out early, or leaves few and doubtful vestiges; with others traces of it seem to remain even amidst conditions of high culture. Apparently, where it survives, the Totem tends gradually to lose his bestial or vegetal properties, or most of them, and to become an anthropomorphic spirit with his myths, in analogy with heroic or patriarchal ancestors. He has attained to a considerable degree of individuality; yet, by association and tradition, may still confer more or less sacredness upon his animal kindred (cf. chap. ix. § 8).

(_g_) To address any object with a spell, as a man is addressed in summons or command, is (as said above) an approach toward its personification. Hence corn, rice, padi, nkasa, or whatever has been the object of tribal rites and spells—the sun and moon, the earth, fire, wind, clouds and rain—having perhaps long been influenced and reinforced by Magic—are apt, when Animism has gained control of man’s imagination, to become first the embodiment and then the possession of spirits; the spells become prayers, and the rites religious ceremonies or mysteries. Such spirits, at first locally honoured, may with the evolution of the tribe or nation, the increasing intercourse of its villages, and the centralisation of its culture in some city, be released from local conditions and generalised into transcendent gods, either each of its own kind—corn or wine—or of still wider sway over agriculture or the weather. The meteorological gods are not impaired in strength by even wide migrations; for they are found to rule everywhere; and this may be a reason of their predominance in the higher religions. Plants from which intoxicants are obtained, such as soma or the vine, bringing men to a condition resembling insanity or the ravings of a sorcerer who is supposed to be possessed, are especially easy to understand as sources of inspiration. A belief in vegetation spirits, having originated in any way, may be extended according to the circumstances and mentality of a tribe, until every wood is populous with dryads.

(_h_) Natural objects that have, at first, been regarded with awe and therefore endowed with magical powers—mountain-tops, ravines, whirlpools, ancient trees—under Animism, become the abode of spirits; and these, again, may, by analogy with others, cease to be conceived as merely local. Among the Moors, “the _jnūn_, which form a special race of beings created before Adam, are generally supposed to be active on occasions or in places which give rise to superstitious fear, and in many cases they are personifications of some mysterious qualities in persons or lifeless objects.”[203]

In each of these cases, (_f_), (_g_), (_h_), however, an Euhemerist explanation may be offered. As to (_f_), Spencer, of course, argued that the Totem-ancestor is always a man, who bore the name of an animal, and was confounded with it after death; and Dr. Rivers has suggested that some gods who seem to have been derived from Totems may really represent heroes who had such Totems.[204] As to (_g_), Grant Allen suggested that the spirit of the corn or vine is always at first the spirit of the man upon whose grave the plant grew.[205] And as to (_h_), the spirit of a mountain may be the ghost of a man who was buried on the top of it; and the spirit of a whirlpool the ghost of a man who was drowned in it. Indeed some spirits may have originated in one of these ways, others in another way; and what happened in any particular case can only be determined, if at all, by examination of its particular circumstances.

(_i_) Abstract ideas may, at a very early stage of culture, be personified and treated as spirits. The Semang, according to Messrs. Skeat and Blagden, personify Death, Hunger, Disease;[206] and the Beloki, according to the Rev. J. H. Weeks, attribute all personal qualities to the aid of spirits; so that if one man wrestles better than another, it is because the spirit Embanda is in him.[207] The modern Greeks of Macedonia personify and propitiate Lady Small Pox.[208] In the tenth and latest book of the _Rigveda_, “the deification of purely abstract ideas, such as Wrath and Faith, appears for the first time.”[209] At a higher stage of culture we find Fides, Fortuna, Concordia and many others. Such things are conceived of as mysterious powers, and they have names; and so far they resemble demons. Why, then, should they not be personified and propitiated like demons?

(_j_) Various ways have been pointed out in which the grammatical structures of language, metaphors and other figures of speech may influence the growth of mythology.

(_k_) Animism having been generally adopted, spirits may be freely invented in explanatory myths. The Kalinis believe that thunder and lightning are the clang and flash of bracelets on the arms of Kidilumai, a girl who dances in heaven, as formerly on earth, for joy of the welcome rain.[210] It would be absurd to suppose that she must once have lived on earth. Some amongst the Ekoi say that Thunder is a giant marching across the sky; others that Thunder is the enemy of Lightning and, on seeing it, growls to drive it away.[211] If free invention may originate myths, it may modify old ones, with results that cannot always be interpreted upon general principles.

Finally, any spirits that have been anthropomorphised in analogy with ancestor-ghosts may be further disguised by giving them mythical family connections with the ancestors and with one another, as happened to Bacchus and Demeter.

§ 7. HOW GHOSTS AND SPIRITS ARE IMAGINED

Ghosts and spirits have the same qualities and characters, eat the same food, appear in dreams, possess men and animals, help sorcerers, give diseases, determine the success of hunting or agriculture. At first, they are solid things, not truly incorporeal, merely invisible to ordinary people by daylight; though dogs or pigs may see them even then. A ghost is so associated with its corpse, that it is not always clear which it is that escapes from the grave and walks; and one may judge whether a dead man has yet gone to Hades or still haunts the neighbourhood, by observing whether in the morning there are footprints around his grave; and to keep the ghost from walking, one may fill the belly of the corpse with stones, or break its limbs, or bury it deep and pile the earth upon it; or one may burn it. In South-East Australia, ghosts can be heard at night jumping down from the trees or from the sky.[212] They may be heard to speak or sing, usually with thin voices, like bats: as

“the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome.”