contagion of death.1 Among the Bedouins of Morocco women at funerals not only scratch their faces, but also rub the wounds with cow-dung, and cow-dung is regarded as a means of purification. The mourning customs of painting the body and of assuming a special costume have been explained as attempts on the part of the survivors to disguise themselves; but the latter custom may also have originated in the idea that a mourner is more or less polluted for a certain period and that therefore a dress worn by him then, being a seat of contagion, could not be used afterwards. Egede writes of the Greenlanders, “If they have happened to touch a corpse, they immediately cast away the clothes they have then on; and for this reason they always put on their old clothes when they go to a burying, in which they agree with the Jews. There can, finally, be no doubt that the widespread prohibition of mentioning the name of a dead person does not in the first instance arise from respect for the departed, but from fear. To name him is to summon him; the Indians of Washington Territory even change their own names when a relative dies, because " 'they think the spirits of the dead will come back if they hear the same name called that they were accustomed to hear

1 Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 302. 2 Frazer, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 73. Idem, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 110.

Egede, op. cit. p. 197.

Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, p. 144. Nyrop, 'Navnets magt,' in Mindre afhandlinger udgivne af det philologiskhistoriske samfund, pp. 147-151, 190 $9.9 and passim. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 421 sqq. Clodd, Tom Tit Tot, p. 166 sqq. Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 230 sq. (Greenlanders). Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 84 (North American Indians). Bourke, Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 462. Batchelor, Ainu and their Folk-Lore, p. 242. Georgi, op. cit. iii. 27, 28, 262 sq. (Samoyedes and shamanistic

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peoples in Siberia). Jackson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 406 (Samoyedes). Rivers, Todas, p. 625 sqq. Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, i. II (Agariya, a Dravidian tribe). von Whislocki, Volksglaube der Zigeuner, p. 96 (Gypsies). Yseldijk, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, P. 42. (Kotting, in the island of Flores). Roth, North West - Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 164. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 498. Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 82. Thornton, in Hill and Thornton, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 7. Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 249 (Kurnai). Curr, Squatting in Victoria, p. 272 (Bangerang). Hinde, op. cit. p. 50 (Masai). Duveyrier, Exploration du Sahara, p. 415 (Touareg). Werner,

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before death." But apart from this, a dead man's name itself is probably felt to be defiling, or at all events produces an uncanny association of thought, which even among ourselves makes many people reluctant to mention it. And to do so may also be a wrong to other persons who would be endangered thereby. Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, to mention a dead man before his relatives is a dreadful offence, which is often punished even with death."

By all this I certainly do not mean to assert that the funeral and mourning customs to which I have just referred have exclusively or in every case originated in fear of the dead or of the pollution of death. Burial may also be genuinely intended to protect the body from beasts or birds; and the same may be the case with mounds, tombstones, and enclosures. Some savages are reported to burn the dead in order to prevent their bodies from falling into the hands of enemies," which might be bad both for the dead and for their friends, as charms might be made from the corpses. Moreover, cremation does away with the slow process of transformation to which a dead body is naturally subject, and this process is regarded not only as a danger to the living but also as painful to the deceased himself. The same object may be achieved by exposing the corpse to wild animals. And we should also remember that the putrefactive process

'Custom of "Hlonipa," in Jour. African Soc. 1905, April, p. 346 (Zulus).

1 Swan, Residence in Washington Territory, p. 189.

2 I had much difficulty in inducing my teacher in Shelḥa, a Berber from the Great Atlas Mountains, to tell me the equivalent for "illness" in his own language; and when he finally did so, he spat immediately afterwards. Among the Central Australian Arunta the older men will not look at the

photograph of a deceased person (Gillen, Aborigines of the McDonnell Ranges,' in Report of the Horn Exhedition, iv. Anthropology,' p. 168).

the

3 Simons, Exploration o Goajira Peninsula,' in Proceed. Roy. Geograph. Soc. N. S. vii. 791.

Cranz, op. cit.i. 217 (Greenlanders). Turner, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 192 (Hudson Bay Eskimo). Yarrow, ibid. i. 102 (Wichita Indians). Dunbar, in Magazine of American History, viii. 734 (Pawnee Indians). Curr, The Australian Race, i. 87.

5 Hyades and Deniker, op. cit. vii. 379 (Fuegians). Preuss, op. cit. P. 310 (Seminole Indians of Florida).

6 Ralph, quoted by Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 437 (Haidahs of British Columbia).

7 See Hertz, loc. cit. p. 71.

itself, whether accompanied by any superstitious ideas or not, is a sufficient motive for disposing of the dead body in some way or other either by burial or cremation or exposure; and if one method is held objectionable another will be resorted to. Among the Masai the custom of throwing away corpses is said to spring from the notion that to bury them would be to poison the soil; and the Zoroastrian law enjoining the exposure of the dead was closely connected with the sacredness ascribed to fire and earth and the consequent dread of polluting them.

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Again, as for the mutilations and self-inflicted wounds which accompany funerals, I have suggested in a previous chapter that they may be partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul with human blood; 2 or, as Dr. Hirn observes, they may be instinctive efforts to procure that relief from overpowering feelings which is afforded by pain and the subsequent exhaustion. The reluctance to name the dead may, in some measure, be traced to a natural unwillingness in his old friends to revive past sorrows.* And with reference to the mourning apparel, Dr. de Groot believes-if rightly or wrongly I am not in a position to decide-that, so far as China is concerned, it originated in the custom of sacrificing to the dead the clothes on one's own back. He thinks that this explanation is confirmed by the fact that in the age of Confucius it was customary for the mourners to throw off their clothes as far as decency allowed when the corpse was being dressed."

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There are several reasons why practices connected with death which originally sprang from self-regarding motives have come to be enjoined as duties. We have first to remember the various factors mentioned above" which tend to make self-regarding conduct a matter of moral concern.

But in this case the transition from the prudential to the obligatory has been much facilitated by the circumstance that all the acts which a person's self-interest induces him to perform or to abstain from have direct reference to another individual, and, indeed, to an individual who is supposed to reward benefits bestowed upon him or at all events to resent injuries and neglect. These punishments and rewards sent by the departed soul are all the more readily recognised to be well deserved, as the claims of the dead are similar in nature to those of the living and are at the same time in some degree supported by sympathetic feelings in the survivors. Nor is it difficult to explain why even such practices as are not originally supposed to comfort the dead have assumed the character of duties towards them. The dead are not only beings whom it is dangerous to offend and useful to please, but they are also very easily duped. No wonder therefore that the living are anxious to put the most amiable interpretation upon their conduct, trying to persuade the ghost, as also one another, that they do what they do for his benefit, not for their own. It is better for him to have rest in his grave than to wander about on earth unhappy and homeless. It is better for him to enjoy the heat of the flames than to suffer from the cold of an arctic climate. It is better for him to be eaten by an animal—say, a beautiful dog or a hyæna sent by God -than to lie and rot in the open air. And all the mourning customs, what are they if not tokens of grief? Moreover, if the corpse is not properly disposed of or any funeral or mourning rite calculated to keep off the ghost is not observed, the dead man will easily do harm to the survivors. And does not this indicate that they have been neglectful of their duties to him?

The mixture of sympathy and fear which is at the bottom of the duties to the dead accounts for the fact that these duties are rarely extended to strangers. A departed stranger is not generally an object of either pity or fear. He expects attention from his own people only, he haunts his own home. But he may of course be dangerous to

anybody who directly offends him, for instance by inflicting an injury upon his body, or to people who live in the vicinity of his grave. We are told that the Angami Nagas bestow as much care on the tombs of foes who have fallen near their villages as on those of their own warriors.' So also the differences in the treatment of the dead which depend upon age, sex, and social position are no doubt closely connected with variations in the feelings of sympathy, respect, or fear, although in many cases we are unable to explain those differences in detail. Among the Australian natives women and children are said to be interred with little ceremony because they are held to be very inferior to men while alive and consequently are not much feared after death; and if in Eastern Central Africa the attention usually bestowed upon the dead is not extended to children which die when four or five days old, the reason seems to be that such children are hardly supposed to possess a soul. We may assume that the special treatment to which the bodies of criminals are subject is due not only to indignation but, in some instances at least, to fear of their ghosts. And we have noticed above that suicides, murdered persons, and those struck with lightning are sometimes left unburied because no one dares to interfere with their bodies, or perhaps in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead."

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It should finally be noticed that the duties to the departed become less stringent as time goes on. As Dr. Hertz has recently shown, the fear of the dead is greatest as long as the process of decomposition lasts and till the second funeral is performed, and this ceremony brings the period of mourning to an end. Moreover, the dead are gradually less and less thought of, they appear less frequently in dreams and visions, the affection for them. fades away, and, being forgotten, they are no longer feared. The Chinese say that ghosts are much more