breath declare that when he dies he ceases altogether to exist and yet confess the fact that he is in the habit of praying to his dead ancestors.1 Of the Masai in Eastern Africa some writers state that they believe in annihilation," others that they attribute a future existence to their chiefs, medicine-men, or influential people. The ideas on this subject are often exceedingly vague, and inconsistencies are only to be expected.

4

The disembodied soul is commonly supposed to have the shape of a small unsubstantial human image, and to be in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow. It is believed to have the same bodily wants and to possess the same mental capacities as its owner possessed during his lifetime. It is not regarded as invulnerable or immortal-it may be hurt and killed. It feels hunger and thirst, heat and cold. It can see and hear and think, it has human passions and a human will, and it has the power to influence the living for evil or for good. These notions as regards

the disembodied soul determine the relations between the living and the dead.

The dead are supposed to have rights very similar to those they had whilst alive. The soul must not be killed or injured. The South Australian Dieyerie, for instance, show great reverence for certain trees, which are believed to be their fathers transformed; they will not cut them down and protest against the settlers doing so." So also some of the Philippine Islanders maintain that the souls of their forefathers are in trees, which they therefore spare. The North American Powhatans refrained from doing harm to some small wood-birds, which were supposed to receive the souls of their chiefs." In Lifu,

1 Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 393.

Thomson, Through Masai Land,
Hinde, The Last of the Masai,

p. 259. p. 99.

3 Johnston, Uganda, ii. 832. Hollis, Masai, pp. 304, 305, 307. Eliot, ibid. P. xx. "Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 429.

5 Gason, Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 280.

6 Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,' in Mittheil. d. kais. u. kon. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxv. 164 sqq.

7 Brinton, Myths of the New World,

P. 102.

when a father was about to die, surrounded by members of his family, he might say what animal he would be, for instance a butterfly or some kind of bird, and that creature would be sacred to his family, who would neither injure nor kill it.' The Rejangs of Sumatra imagine that tigers in general contain the spirits of departed men, and no consideration will prevail on a countryman to catch or to wound one, but in self-defence, or immediately after the act of destroying a friend or relation." Among other peoples monkeys, crocodiles, or snakes, being thought men in metempsychosis, are held sacred and must not be hurt. Some Congo Negroes, again, abstain for a whole year after a death from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost.* In China, for seven days after a man's death his widow and children avoid the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers, so as not to wound the ghost. And to this day it remains a German peasants' belief that it is wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it.

But the survivors must not only avoid doing anything which might hurt the soul, they must also positively contribute to its comfort and subsistence. They often provide it with a dwelling, either burying the deceased in his own house, or erecting a tent or hut on his grave. Some Australian natives kindle a fire at a few yards' distance from the tomb, and repeat this until the soul is supposed to have gone somewhere else; others, again, are in the habit of wrapping the body up in a rug, professedly for the purpose of keeping it warm. In the Saxon district of Voigtland people have been known to

1 Codrington, quoted by Tylor, Remarks on Totemism,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxviii. 147.

2 Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 292. The same belief prevails among the natives of the Malay Peninsula (Newbold, British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, ii. 192).

3 Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 212. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 8.

4 Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 323.

5

Gray, China, i. 288.

6 Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, § 609, p. 396 sq. 7 Roth, North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 165.

* Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 79 sq.

put into the coffin an umbrella and a pair of galoshes.1 An extremely prevalent custom is to place provisions in or upon the grave, and very commonly feasts are given for the dead. Weapons, implements, and other movables are deposited in the tomb ; domestic animals are buried or slaughtered at the funeral; and, as we have seen before, even human beings are sacrificed to the dead to serve them as companions or attendants, or to vivify their spirits with their blood, or to gratify their craving for revenge.*

3

The offerings made to the dead may be gifts presented to them by the survivors, but the regular funeral sacrifice consists of the deceased person's own individual property. Among savages the whole, or a large part, of it is often consigned to the grave or destroyed. The right of ownership does not cease with death where the belief prevails that the dead stand in need of earthly chattels. The recognition of this right is also apparent in the severe condemnation of robbery or violation committed at a tomb. Among various North American tribes such an act was regarded as an offence of the first magnitude and provoked cruel revenge. Of the Chippewa Indians it is said that however bad a person may be or however much inclined to steal, the things left at a grave, valuable or not, are never touched, being sacred to the spirit of the

1 Köhler, Volksbrauch im Voigtlande, p. 441.

2 See Tylor, op. cit. ch. xi. sq.; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 155 sqq., 257 sqq.; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, p. 242 sqq.

3 See Spencer, op. cit. i. 184 sqq. 4 Supra, i. 472 sqq.

Boas, Central Eskimo,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. vi. 580. Murdoch, Ethn. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' ibid. ix. 424 sq. (Point Barrow Eskimo). Powell, ibid. iii. p. Ivii. (North American Indians). Yarrow, 'Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians,' ibid. i. 98 (Pimas), 100 (Comanches). McGee, Siouan Indians,' ibid. xv. 178. Roth, op. cit. p. 164 (certain Queensland tribes). Colenso, Maori Races of New Zealand, p. 57. Kolff, Voyages of the Dourga,

p. 166 sq. (Arru Islanders). Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars, p. 304 (Kar Nicobarese). Batchelor, Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 560 sq. Georgi, Russia, iv. 152 (Burats). Caillié, Travels through Central Africa, i. 164 (Bagos). Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 107 (Monbuttu). Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 79 (Barotse). Strabo, xi. 4. 8 (Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus). See also Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 185 sq.; Post, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, p. 295 sq.; idem, Grundriss der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, ii. 173 sq.; infra, p. 514 sq.

Sagard, Voyage du Pays des Hurons, p. 288. Gibbs, Tribes of WestWashington and Northwestern Oregon,' in Contributions to North American Ethnology, i. 204.

ern

dead.1 Among the Maoris "the least violation of any portion of the precincts of the dead is accounted the greatest crime that a human being can commit, and is visited with the direst revenge of a surviving tribe.' The laws of Athens and Rome 4 and the ancient Teutonic law-books punished with great severity the plunder of a corpse or a tomb. In Rome the punishment was death if the offence was committed by force, otherwise condemnation to the mines.

Like living men the dead are sensitive to insults and fond of praise; hence respect must be shown for their honour and self-regarding pride. De mortuis nil nisi bonum; οὐ γὰρ ἐσθλὰ κατθανοῦσι κερτομεῖν ἐπ' ἀνδράσιν. In Greece custom required that at the funeral meal the virtues of the deceased should be enumerated and extolled,' and calumny against a dead person was punished by law. The same was the case in ancient Egypt." In Greenland, after the interment, the nearest male relative of the dead commemorated in a loud plaintive voice all the excellent qualities of the departed.10 Among the Iroquois the near relatives and friends approached the body in turn and addressed it in a laudatory speech."1

The dead also demand obedience and are anxious that the rules they laid down while alive should be followed by the survivors. Hence the sacredness which is attached to a will; 12 hence also, in a large measure, the rigidity of ancestral custom. The greatest dread of the natives of South-Eastern Africa "is to offend their ancestors and the only way to avoid this is to do everything according to

1 Reid, Religious Belief of the Ojibois,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. iii. 112. 2 Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, i. III sq.

Cicero, De legibus, ii. 26. See also Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 105 sq.

Digesta, xlvii. 12, 'De sepulchro violato.'

Wilda, Das Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 975 sqq.

6 Archilochus, Reliquiæ, 40.
7 Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten

traditional usage." Among the Basutos "the anger of the deified generations could not be more directly provoked than by a departure from the precepts and examples they have left behind them." The Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast have a proverb which runs :-" Follow the customs of your father. What he did not do, avoid doing, or you will harm yourself." Among the Aleuts the old men always impress upon the native youth the great importance of strictly observing the customs of their forefathers in conducting the chase and other matters, as any neglect in this respect would be sure to bring upon them disaster and punishment. The Kamchadales, says Steller, consider it a sin to do anything which is contrary to the precepts of their ancestors." The Papuans of the Motu district, in New Guinea, believe that when men and women. are bad―adulterers, thieves, quarrellers, and the like—the spirits of the dead are angry with them. One of the most powerful sentiments in the mind of a Chinese is his reverence for ancestral custom; and in a large sense Japan also is still a country governed by the voices that are hushed." The life of the ancient Roman was beset with a society of departed kinsmen whose displeasure he provoked if he varied from the practice handed down from his fathers. The expression mos majorum," the custom of the elders," was used by him as a charm against innovation.

Besides such duties to the dead as are similar in nature to those which men owe to their living fellow men or superiors, there are obligations of a different character arising from the fact of death itself. The funeral, the rites connected with it, and the mourning customs are largely regarded as duties to the dead.