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THE
BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
AND THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD

BY

J. G. FRAZER, D.C.L., LL.D., Litt.D.

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL.

VOL. I

THE GIFFORD LECTURES, ST. ANDREWS
1911-1912

Itaque unum illud erat insitum priscis illis, quos cascos
appellat Ennius, esse in morte sensum neque excessu vitae sic deleri
hominem, ut funditus interiret; idque cum multis aliis rebus; tum
e pontificio jure et e caerimoniis sepulchrorum intellegi licet, quas
maxumis ingeniis praediti nec tanta cura coluissent nec violatas
tam inexpiabili religione sanxissent, nisi haereret in corum mentibus
mortem non interitum esse omnia tollentem atque delentem,
sed quandam quasi migrationem commutationemque vitae.”

Cicero, Tuscul. Disput. i. 12.

PREFACE

The following lectures were delivered on Lord Gifford’s
Foundation before the University of St. Andrews in the
early winters of 1911 and 1912. They are printed nearly
as they were spoken, except that a few passages, omitted
for the sake of brevity in the oral delivery, have been here
restored and a few more added. Further, I have compressed
the two introductory lectures into one, striking out some
passages which on reflection I judged to be irrelevant or
superfluous. The volume incorporates twelve lectures on
“The Fear and Worship of the Dead” which I delivered in
the Lent and Easter terms of 1911 at Trinity College,
Cambridge, and repeated, with large additions, in my course
at St. Andrews.

The theme here broached is a vast one, and I hope to
pursue it hereafter by describing the belief in immortality
and the worship of the dead, as these have been found
among the other principal races of the world both in
ancient and modern times. Of all the many forms which
natural religion has assumed none probably has exerted so
deep and far-reaching an influence on human life as the
belief in immortality and the worship of the dead; hence an
historical survey of this most momentous creed and of the
practical consequences which have been deduced from it
can hardly fail to be at once instructive and impressive,
whether we regard the record with complacency as a noble
testimony to the aspiring genius of man, who claims to
outlive the sun and the stars, or whether we view it with
pity as a melancholy monument of fruitless labour and
barren ingenuity expended in prying into that great
mystery of which fools profess their knowledge and wise
men confess their ignorance.

J. G. FRAZER.
Cambridge,
9th February 1913.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Preface

Table of Contents

Lecture I.—Introduction

Natural theology, three modes of handling it, the dogmatic, the philosophical,
and the historical, pp. 1 sq.; the historical method followed in these
lectures, 2 sq.; questions of the truth and moral value of religious beliefs
irrelevant in an historical enquiry, 3 sq.; need of studying the religion of
primitive man and possibility of doing so by means of the comparative
method, 5 sq.; urgent need of investigating the native religion of savages
before it disappears, 6 sq.; a portion of savage religion the theme of
these lectures, 7 sq.; the question of a supernatural revelation dismissed,
8 sq.; theology and religion, their relations, 9; the term God defined,
9 sqq.; monotheism and polytheism, 11; a natural knowledge of God, if
it exists, only possible through experience, 11 sq.; the nature of experience,
12 sq.; two kinds of experience, an inward and an outward, 13 sq.; the
conception of God reached historically through both kinds of experience,
14; inward experience or inspiration, 14 sq.; deification of living men,
16 sq.; outward experience as a source of the idea of God, 17; the
tendency to seek for causes, 17 sq.; the meaning of cause, 18 sq.; the
savage explains natural processes by the hypothesis of spirits or gods,
19 sq.; natural processes afterwards explained by hypothetical forces
and atoms instead of by hypothetical spirits and gods, 20 sq.; nature in
general still commonly explained by the hypothesis of a deity, 21 sq.;
God an inferential or hypothetical cause, 22 sq.; the deification of dead
men, 23-25; such a deification presupposes the immortality of the human
soul or rather its survival for a longer or shorter time after death, 25 sq.;
the conception of human immortality suggested both by inward experience,
such as dreams, and by outward experience, such as the resemblances of
the living to the dead, 26-29; the lectures intended to collect evidence
as to the belief in immortality among certain savage races, 29 sq.; the
method to be descriptive rather than comparative or philosophical, 30.

Lecture II.—The Savage Conception of
Death

The subject of the lectures the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead
among certain of the lower races, p. 31; question of the nature and origin
of death, 31 sq.; universal interest of the question, 32 sq.; the belief in
immortality general among mankind, 33; belief of many savages that
death is not natural and that they would never die if their lives were not
cut prematurely short by sorcery, 33 sq.; examples of this belief among
the South American Indians, 34 sqq.; death sometimes attributed to
sorcery and sometimes to demons, practical consequence of this distinction,
37; belief in sorcery as the cause of death among the Indians of
Guiana, 38 sq., among the Tinneh Indians of North America, 39 sq.,
among the aborigines of Australia, 40-47, among the natives of the
Torres Straits Islands and New Guinea, 47, among the Melanesians, 48,
among the Malagasy, 48 sq., and among African tribes, 49-51; effect of
such beliefs in thinning the population by causing multitudes to die for
the imaginary crime of sorcery, 51-53; some savages attribute certain
deaths to other causes than sorcery, 53; corpse dissected to ascertain
cause of death, 53 sq.; the possibility of natural death admitted by the
Melanesians and the Caffres of South Africa, 54-56; the admission marks
an intellectual advance, 56 sq.; the recognition of ghosts or spirits, apart
from sorcery, as a cause of disease and death also marks a step in moral
and social progress, 57 sq.

Lecture III.—Myths of the Origin of
Death

Belief of savages in man’s natural immortality, p. 59; savage stories of the origin
of death, 59 sq.; four types of such stories:—

(1) The Story of the Two Messengers.—Zulu story of the chameleon
and the lizard, 60 sq.; Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush,
61 sq.; Togo story of the dog and the frog, 62 sq.; Ashantee story of
the goat and the sheep, 63 sq.

(2) The Story of the Waxing and Waning Moon.—Hottentot story of
the moon, the hare, and death, 65; Masai story of the moon and death,
65 sq.; Nandi story of the moon, the dog, and death, 66; Fijian story of
the moon, the rat, and death, 67; Caroline, Wotjobaluk, and Cham
stories of the moon, death, and resurrection, 67; death and resurrection
after three days suggested by the reappearance of the new moon after
three days, 67 sq.

(3) The Story of the Serpent and his Cast Skin.—New Britain and
Annamite story of immortality, the serpent, and death, 69 sq.; Vuatom
story of immortality, the lizard, the serpent, and death, 70; Nias story
of immortality, the crab, and death, 70; Arawak and Tamanchier stories
of immortality, the serpent, the lizard, the beetle, and death, 70 sq.;
Melanesian story of the old woman and her cast skin, 71 sq.; Samoan
story of the shellfish, two torches, and death, 72.

(4) The Story of the Banana.—Poso story of immortality, the stone,
the banana, and death, 72 sq.; Mentra story of immortality, the banana,
and death, 73.

Primitive philosophy in the stories of the origin of death, 73 sq.;
Bahnar story of immortality, the tree, and death, 74; rivalry for the boon
of immortality between men and animals that cast their skins, such as
serpents and lizards, 74 sq.; stories of the origin of death told by Chingpaws,
Australians, Fijians, and Admiralty Islanders, 75-77; African and
American stories of the fatal bundle or the fatal box, 77 sq.; Baganda
story how death originated through the imprudence of a woman, 78-81;
West African story of Death and the spider, 81-83; Melanesian story of
Death and the Fool, 83 sq.

Thus according to savages death is not a natural necessity, 84;
similar view held by some modern biologists, as A. Weismann and
A. R. Wallace, 84-86.

Lecture IV.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Aborigines of
Central Australia

In tracing the evolution of religious beliefs we must begin with those of the
lowest savages, p. 87; the aborigines of Australia the lowest savages
about whom we possess accurate information, 88; savagery a case of
retarded development, 88 sq.; causes which have retarded progress in
Australia, 89 sq.; the natives of Central Australia on the whole more
primitive than those of the coasts, 90 sq.; little that can be called religion
among them, 91 sq.; their theory that the souls of the dead survive and
are reborn in their descendants, 92 sq.; places where the souls of the
dead await rebirth, and the mode in which they enter into women, 93 sq.;
local totem centres, 94 sq.; totemism defined, 95; traditionary origin of
the local totem centres (oknanikilla) where the souls of the dead assemble,
96; sacred birth-stones or birth-sticks (churinga) which the souls of
ancestors are thought to have dropped at these places, 96-102; elements
of a worship of the dead, 102 sq.; marvellous powers attributed to the
remote ancestors of the alcheringa or dream times, 103 sq.; the Wollunqua,
a mythical water-snake, ancestor of a totemic clan of the Warramunga
tribe, 104-106; religious character of the belief in the Wollunqua, 106.

Lecture V.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Aborigines of
Central Australia (continued)

Beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines concerning the reincarnation of the
dead, p. 107; possibility of the development of ancestor worship, 107 sq.;
ceremonies performed by the Warramunga in honour of the Wollunqua,
the mythical ancestor of one of their totem clans, 108 sqq.; union of
magic and religion in these ceremonies, 111 sq.; ground drawings of the
Wollunqua, 112 sq.; importance of the Wollunqua in the evolution of
religion and art, 113 sq.; how totemism might develop into polytheism
through an intermediate stage of ancestor worship, 114 sq.; all the conspicuous
features of the country associated by the Central Australians
with the spirits of their ancestors, 115-118; dramatic ceremonies performed
by them to commemorate the deeds of their ancestors, 118 sq.;
examples of these ceremonies, 119-122; these ceremonies were probably
in origin not merely commemorative or historical but magical, being
intended to procure a supply of food and other necessaries, 122 sq.;
magical virtue actually attributed to these dramatic ceremonies by the
Warramunga, who think that by performing them they increase the food
supply of the tribe, 123 sq.; hence the great importance ascribed by these
savages to the due performance of the ancestral dramas, 124; general
attitude of the Central Australian aborigines to their dead, and the lines
on which, if left to themselves, they might have developed a regular
worship of the dead, 124-126.

Lecture VI.—The Belief in Immortality
among the other Aborigines
of Australia

Evidence for the belief in reincarnation among the natives of other parts of
Australia than the centre, p. 127; beliefs of the Queensland aborigines
concerning the nature of the soul and the state of the dead, 127-131;
belief of the Australian aborigines that their dead are sometimes reborn
in white people, 131-133; belief of the natives of South-Eastern Australia
that their dead are not born again but go away to the sky or some distant
country, 133 sq.; beliefs and customs of the Narrinyeri concerning the
dead, 134 sqq.; motives for the excessive grief which they display at the
death of their relatives, 135 sq.; their pretence of avenging the death of
their friends on the guilty sorcerer, 136 sq.; magical virtue ascribed to
the hair of the dead, 137 sq.; belief that the dead go to the sky, 138 sq.;
appearance of the dead to the living in dreams, 139; savage faith in
dreams, 139 sq.; association of the stars with the souls of the dead, 140;
creed of the South-Eastern Australians touching the dead, 141; difference
of this creed from that of the Central Australians, 141; this difference
probably due in the main to a general advance of culture brought about
by more favourable natural conditions in South-Eastern Australia, 141 sq.;
possible influence of European teaching on native beliefs, 142 sq.; vagueness
and inconsistency of native beliefs as to the state of the dead,
143; custom a good test of belief, 143 sq.; burial customs of the
Australian aborigines as evidence of their beliefs concerning the state of
the dead, 144; their practice of supplying the dead with food, water, fire,
weapons, and implements, 144-147; motives for the destruction of the
property of the dead, 147 sq.; great economic loss entailed by developed
systems of sacrificing to the dead, 149.

Lecture VII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Aborigines of
Australia (concluded)

Huts erected on graves for the use of the ghosts, pp. 150-152; the attentions
paid by the Australian aborigines to their dead probably spring from fear
rather than affection, 152; precautions taken by the living against the
dangerous ghosts of the dead, 152 sq.; cuttings and brandings of the flesh
of the living in honour of the dead, 154-158; the custom of allowing the
blood of mourners to drip on the corpse or into the grave may be intended
to strengthen the dead for a new birth, 158-162; different ways of disposing
of the dead according to the age, rank, manner of death, etc., of
the deceased, 162 sq.; some modes of burial are intended to prevent the
return of the spirit, others are designed to facilitate it, 163-165; final
departure of the ghost supposed to coincide with the disappearance of the
flesh from his bones, 165 sq.; hence a custom has arisen in many tribes
of giving the bones a second burial or otherwise disposing of them when
the flesh is quite decayed, 166; tree-burial followed by earth-burial in
some Australian tribes, 166-168; general conclusion as to the belief in
immortality and the worship of the dead among the Australian aborigines,
168 sq.

Lecture VIII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of the
Torres Straits Islands

Racial affinities of the Torres Straits Islanders, pp. 170 sq.; their material and
social culture, 171 sq.; no developed worship of the dead among them,
172 sq.; their fear of ghosts, 173-175; home of the dead a mythical
island in the west, 175 sq.; elaborate funeral ceremonies of the Torres
Straits Islanders characterised by dramatic representations of the dead and
by the preservation of their skulls, which were consulted as oracles, 176.

Funeral ceremonies of the Western Islanders, 177-180; part played
by the brothers-in-law of the deceased at these ceremonies, 177 sq.;
removal of the head and preparation of the skull for use in divination,
178 sq.; great death-dance performed by masked men who personated
the deceased, 179 sq.

Funeral ceremonies of the Eastern Islanders, 180-188; soul of the
dead carried away by a masked actor, 181 sq.; dramatic performance by
disguised men representing ghosts, 182 sq.; blood and hair of relatives
offered to the dead, 183 sq.; mummification of the corpse, 184;
costume of mourners, 184; cuttings for the dead, 184 sq.; death-dance
by men personating ghosts, 185-188; preservation of the mummy and
afterwards of the head or a wax model of it to be used in divination, 188.

Images of the gods perhaps developed out of mummies of the dead,
and a sacred or even secular drama developed out of funeral dances, 189.

Lecture IX.—The Belief in Immortality
Among the Natives Of
British New Guinea

The two races of New Guinea, the Papuan and the Melanesian, pp. 190 sq.;
beliefs and customs of the Motu concerning the dead, 192; the Koita
and their beliefs as to the human soul and the state of the dead, 193-195;
alleged communications with the dead by means of mediums, 195 sq.;
fear of the dead, especially of a dead wife, 196 sq.; beliefs of the Mafulu
concerning the dead, 198; their burial customs, 198 sq.; their use of the
skulls and bones of the dead at a great festival, 199-201; worship of the
dead among the natives of the Aroma district, 201 sq.; the Hood Peninsula,
202 sq.; beliefs and customs concerning the dead among the
natives of the Hood Peninsula, 203-206; seclusion of widows and
widowers, 203 sq.; the ghost-seer, 204 sq.; application of the juices of the
dead to the persons of the living, 205; precautions taken by manslayers
against the ghosts of their victims, 205 sq.; purification for homicide
originally a mode of averting the angry ghost of the slain, 206; beliefs
and customs concerning the dead among the Massim of south-eastern New
Guinea, 206-210; Hiyoyoa, the land of the dead, 207; purification of
mourners by bathing and shaving, 207 sq.; foods forbidden to mourners,
208 sq.; fires on the grave, 209; the land of the dead, 209 sq.; names
of the dead not mentioned, 210; beliefs and customs concerning the dead
among the Papuans of Kiwai, 211-214; Adiri, the land of the dead, 211-213;
appearance of the dead to the living in dreams, 213 sq.; offerings
to the dead, 214; dreams as a source of the belief in immortality, 214.

Lecture X.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
German New Guinea

Andrew Lang, pp. 216 sq.; review of preceding lectures, 217 sq.

The Papuans of Tumleo, their material culture, 218-220; their
temples, 220 sq.; their bachelors’ houses containing the skulls of the
dead, 221; spirits of the dead as the causes of sickness and disease,
222 sq.; burial and mourning customs, 223 sq.; fate of the human soul
after death, 224; monuments to the dead, 225; disinterment of the
bones, 225; propitiation of ghosts and spirits, 226; guardian-spirits in
the temples, 226 sq.

The Monumbo of Potsdam Harbour, 227 sq.; their beliefs concerning
the spirits of the dead, 228 sq.; their fear of ghosts, 229; their treatment
of manslayers, 229 sq.

The Tamos of Astrolabe Bay, 230; their ideas as to the souls of the
dead, 231 sq.; their fear of ghosts, 232 sqq.; their Secret Society and
rites of initiation, 233; their preservation of the jawbones of the dead,
234 sq.; their sham fights after a death, 235 sq.; these fights perhaps
intended to throw dust in the eyes of the ghost, 236 sq.

Lecture XI.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
German New Guinea (continued)

The Papuans of Cape King William, pp. 238 sq.; their ideas as to spirits and
the souls of the dead, 239 sq.; their belief in sorcery as a cause of death,
240 sq.; their funeral and mourning customs, 241 sq.; the fate of the
soul after death, 242.

The Yabim of Finsch Harbour, their material and artistic culture,
242 sq.; their clubhouses for men, 243; their beliefs as to the state of
the dead, 244 sq.; the ghostly ferry, 244 sq.; transmigration of human
souls into animals, 245; the return of the ghosts, 246; offerings to
ghosts, 246; ghosts provided with fire, 246 sq.; ghosts help in the cultivation
of land, 247 sq.; burial and mourning customs, 248 sq.; divination
to discover the sorcerer who has caused a death, 249 sq.; bull-roarers,
250; initiation of young men, 250 sqq.; the rite of circumcision, the
novices supposed to be swallowed by a monster, 251 sq.; the return of
the novices, 253; the essence of the initiatory rites seems to be a simulation
of death and resurrection, 253 sqq.; the new birth among the Akikuyu
of British East Africa, 254.

Lecture XII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
German New Guinea (continued)

The Bukaua of Huon Gulf, their means of subsistence and men’s clubhouses, pp.
256 sq.; their ideas as to the souls of the dead, 257; sickness and death
caused by ghosts and sorcerers, 257 sq.; fear of the ghosts of the slain,
258; prayers to ancestral spirits on behalf of the crops, 259; first-fruits
offered to the spirits of the dead, 259; burial and mourning customs,
259 sq.; initiation of young men, novices at circumcision supposed to be
swallowed and afterwards disgorged by a monster, 260 sq.

The Kai, a Papuan tribe of mountaineers inland from Finsch Harbour,
262; their country, mode of agriculture, and villages, 262 sq.; observations
of a German missionary on their animism, 263 sq.; the essential
rationality of the savage, 264-266; the Kai theory of the two sorts of
human souls, 267 sq.; death commonly thought to be caused by sorcery,
268 sq.; danger incurred by the sorcerer, 269; many hurts and maladies
attributed to the action of ghosts, 269 sq.; capturing lost souls, 270 sq.;
ghosts extracted from the body of a sick man or scraped from his person,
271; extravagant demonstrations of grief at the death of a sick man, 271-273;
hypocritical character of these demonstrations, which are intended
to deceive the ghost, 273; burial and mourning customs, preservation of
the lower jawbone and one of the lower arm bones, 274; mourning
costume, seclusion of widow or widower, 274 sq.; widows sometimes
strangled to accompany their dead husbands, 275; house or village
deserted after a death, 275.

Lecture XIII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
German New Guinea (continued)

The Kai (continued), their offerings to the dead, p. 276; divination by means of
ghosts to detect the sorcerer who has caused a death, 276-278; avenging
the death on the sorcerer and his people, 278 sq.; precautions against the
ghosts of the slain, 279 sq.; attempts to deceive the ghosts of the murdered,
280-282; pretence of avenging the ghost of a murdered man, 282;
fear of ghosts by night, 282 sq.; services rendered by the spirits of the
dead to farmers and hunters, 283-285; the journey of the soul to the spirit
land, 285 sq.; life of the dead in the other world, 286 sq.; ghosts die
the second death and turn into animals, 287; ghosts of famous people
invoked long after their death, 287-289; possible development of ghosts
into gods, 289 sq.; lads at circumcision supposed to be swallowed and
disgorged by a monster, 290 sq.

The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf, 291; their theory of a double
human soul, a long one and a short one, 291 sq.; departure of the short
soul for Lamboam, the nether world of the dead, 292; offerings to the
dead, 292; appeasing the ghost, 292 sq.; funeral and mourning customs,
dances in honour of the dead, offerings thrown into the fire, 293 sq.;
bones of the dead dug up and kept in the house for a time, 294 sq.

Lecture XIV.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
German and Dutch New Guinea

The Tami Islanders of Huon Gulf (continued), their doctrine of souls and gods,
pp. 296 sq.; dances of masked men representing spirits, 297; worship of
ancestral spirits and offerings to them, 297 sq.; life of the souls in Lamboam,
the nether world, 299 sq.; evocation of ghosts by the ghost-seer,
300; sickness caused by ghosts, 300 sq.; novices at circumcision supposed
to be swallowed and disgorged by a monster, 301 sq.; meaning of the
bodily mutilations inflicted on young men at puberty obscure, 302 sq.
The natives of Dutch New Guinea, 303-323; the Noofoors of Geelvink
Bay, their material culture and arts of life, 303-305; their fear and
worship of the dead, 305-307; wooden images (korwar) of the dead kept
in the houses and carried in canoes to be used as oracles, 307 sq.; the
images consulted in sickness and taken with the people to war, 308-310;
offerings to the images, 310 sq.; souls of those who have died away from
home recalled to animate the images, 311; skulls of the dead, especially
of firstborn children and of parents, inserted in the images, 312 sq.;
bodies of young children hung on trees, 312 sq.; mummies of dead relatives
kept in the houses, 313; seclusion of mourners and restrictions on
their diet, 313 sq.; tattooing in honour of the dead, 314; teeth and hair
of the dead worn by relatives, 314 sq.; rebirth of parents in their
children, 315.

The natives of islands off the west coast of New Guinea, their wooden
images of dead ancestors and shrines for the residence of the ancestral
spirits, 315 sq.; their festivals in honour of the dead, 316; souls of
ancestors supposed to reside in the images and to protect the house and
household, 317.

The natives of the Macluer Gulf, their images and bowls in honour of
the dead, 317 sq.

The natives of the Mimika district, their burial and mourning customs,
their preservation of the skulls of the dead, and their belief in ghosts,
318.

The natives of Windessi, their burial customs, 318 sq.; divination
after a death, 319; mourning customs, 319 sq.; festival of the dead, 320
sq.; wooden images of the dead, 321; doctrine of souls and of their fate
after death, 321 sq.; medicine-men inspired by the souls of the dead, 322
sq.; ghosts of slain enemies driven away, 323.

Lecture XV.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Southern Melanesia (New Caledonia)

The Melanesians in general, their material culture, p. 324; Southern Melanesia,
the New Caledonians, and Father Lambert’s account of them, 325; their
ideas as to the spirit land and the way thither, 325 sq.; burial customs,
326; cuttings and brandings for the dead, 326 sq.; property of the dead
destroyed, 327; seclusion of gravediggers and restrictions imposed on
them, 327; sham fight in honour of the dead, 327 sq.; skulls of the
dead preserved and worshipped on various occasions, such as sickness,
fishing, and famine, 328-330; caves used as charnel-houses and sanctuaries
of the dead in the Isle of Pines, 330-332; prayers and sacrifices to
the ancestral spirits, 332 sq.; prayer-posts, 333 sq.; sacred stones associated
with the dead and used to cause dearth or plenty, madness, a good
crop of bread-fruit or yams, drought, rain, a good catch of fish, and so on,
334-338; the religion of the New Caledonians mainly a worship of the
dead tinctured with magic, 338.

Evidence as to the natives of New Caledonia collected by Dr. George
Turner, 339-342; material culture of the New Caledonians, 339; their
burial customs, the skulls and nails of the dead preserved and used to
fertilise the yam plantations, 339 sq.; worship of ancestors and prayers to
the dead, 340; festivals in honour of the dead, 340 sq.; making rain by
means of the skeletons of the dead, 341; execution of sorcerers, 341 sq.;
white men identified with the spirits of the dead, 342.

Lecture XVI.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Central Melanesia

Central Melanesia divided into two archipelagoes, the religion of the Western
Islands (Solomon Islands) characterised by a worship of the dead, the
religion of the Eastern Islands (New Hebrides, Banks’ Islands, Torres
Islands, Santa Cruz Islands) characterised by a worship of non-human
spirits, pp. 343 sq.; Central Melanesian theory of the soul, 344 sq.; the
land of the dead either in certain islands or in a subterranean region called
Panoi, 345; ghosts of power and ghosts of no account, 345 sq.; supernatural
power (mana) acquired through ghosts, 346 sq.

Burial customs in the Western Islands (Solomon Islands), 347 sqq.;
land-burial and sea-burial, land-ghosts and sea-ghosts, 347 sq.; funeral
feasts and burnt-offerings to the dead, 348 sq.; the land of the dead and
the ghostly ferry, 350 sq.; ghosts die the second death and turn into the
nests of white ants, 350 sq.; preservation of the skull and jawbone in
order to ensure the protection of the ghost, 351 sq.; human heads sought
in order to add fresh spiritual power (mana) to the ghost of a dead
chief, 352.

Beliefs and customs concerning the dead in the Eastern Islands (New
Hebrides, Banks’ Islands, Torres Islands), 352 sqq.; Panoi, the subterranean
abode of the dead, 353 sq.; ghosts die the second death, 354;
different fates of the souls of the good and bad, 354 sq.; descent of the
living into the world of the dead, 355; burial customs of the Banks’
Islanders, 355 sqq.; dead sometimes temporarily buried in the house,
355; display of property beside the corpse and funeral oration, 355
sq.; sham burial of eminent men, 356; ghosts driven away from the
village, 356-358; deceiving the ghosts of women who have died in child-bed,
358; funeral feasts, 358 sq.; funeral customs in the New Hebrides,
359 sqq.; the aged buried alive, 359 sq.; seclusion of mourners and restrictions
on their diet, 360; sacrifice of pigs, 360 sq.; the journey of the
ghost to the spirit land, 361 sq.; provisions made by the living for the
welfare of the dead, 362.

Only ghosts of powerful men worshipped, 362 sq.; institution of the
worship of a martial ghost, 363 sq.; offerings of food and drink to the
dead, 364 sq.; sacrifice of pigs to ghosts in the Solomon Islands, 365 sq.

Lecture XVII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Central Melanesia (concluded)

Public sacrifices to ghosts in the Solomon Islands, pp. 367 sq.; offering of first-fruits
to ghosts, 368 sq.; private ghosts as distinguished from public
ghosts, 369 sq.; fighting ghosts kept as spiritual auxiliaries, 370; ghosts
employed to make the gardens grow, 370 sq.; human sacrifices to ghosts,
371 sq.; vicarious and other sacrifices to ghosts at Saa in Malanta,
372 sq.; offerings of first-fruits to ghosts at Saa, 373 sq.; vicarious sacrifices
offered for the sick to ghosts in Santa Cruz, 374; the dead represented
by stocks in the houses, 374; native account of sacrifices in Santa
Cruz, 374 sq.; prayers to the dead, 376 sq.; sanctuaries of ghosts in the
Solomon Islands, 377-379; ghosts lodged in animals, birds, and fish,
especially in sharks, 379 sq.

The belief in ghosts underlies the Melanesian conception of magic,
380 sq.; sickness commonly caused by ghosts and cured by ghost-seers,
381-384; contrast between Melanesian and European systems of medicine,
384; weather regulated by ghosts and spirits and by weather-doctors
who have the ear of ghosts and spirits, 384-386; witchcraft or
black magic wrought by means of ghosts, 386-388; prophets inspired by
ghosts, 388 sq.; divination operating through ghosts, 389 sq.; taboos
enforced by ghosts, 390 sq.; general influence which a belief in the
survival of the soul after death has exercised on Melanesian life, 391 sq.

Lecture XVIII.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Northern and Eastern Melanesia

The natives of Northern Melanesia or the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain,
New Ireland, etc.), their material culture, commercial habits, and want
of regular government, pp. 393-395; their theory of the soul, 395 sq.;
their fear of ghosts, 396; offerings to the dead, 396 sq.; burial customs,
397 sq.; preservation of the skulls, 398; customs and beliefs concerning
the dead among the Sulka of New Britain, 398-400, among the Moanus
of the Admiralty Islands, 400 sq. and among the natives of the Kaniet
Islands, 401 sq.; natural deaths commonly attributed to sorcery, 402;
divination to discover the sorcerer who caused the death, 402; death
customs in the Duke of York Island, cursing the sorcerer, skulls preserved,
feasts and dances, 403; prayers to the dead, 403 sq.; the land of
the dead and the fate of the departed souls, hard lot of impecunious ghosts,
404-406.

The natives of Eastern Melanesia (Fiji), their material culture and
political constitution, 406-408; means of subsistence, 408; moral
character, 408 sq.; scenery of the Fijian islands, 409 sq.; the Fijian
doctrine of souls, 410-412; souls of rascals caught in scarves, 412 sq.;
fear of sorcery and precautions against it, 413 sq.; beneficial effect of the
fear in enforcing habits of personal cleanliness, 414; fear of ghosts and
custom of driving them away, 414 sq.; killing a ghost, 415 sq.; outwitting
grandfather’s ghost, 416; special relation of grandfather to grandchild,
416; grandfather’s soul reborn in his grandchild, 417 sq.

Lecture XIX.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Eastern Melanesia (Fiji) (continued)

Indifference of the Fijians to death, p. 419; their custom of killing the sick and
aged with the consent of the victims, 419-424; their readiness to die
partly an effect of their belief in immortality, 422 sq.; wives strangled or
buried alive to accompany their husbands to the spirit land, 424-426;
servants and dependants killed to attend their dead lords, 426; sacrifices
of foreskins and fingers in honour of dead chiefs, 426 sq.; boys circumcised
in order to save the lives of their fathers or fathers’ brothers, 427;
saturnalia attending such rites of circumcision, 427 sq.; the Nanga,
or sacred enclosure of stones, dedicated to the worship of ancestors,
428 sq.; first-fruits of the yams offered to the ancestors in the Nanga,
429; initiation of young men in the Nanga, drama of death and resurrection,
sacrament of food and water, 429-432; the initiation followed by a
period of sexual licence, 433; the initiatory rites apparently intended to
introduce the novices to the ancestral spirits and endow them with the
powers of the dead, 434 sq.; the rites seem to have been imported into
Fiji by immigrants from the west, 435 sq.; the licence attending these
rites perhaps a reversion to primitive communism for the purpose of propitiating
the ancestral spirits, 436 sq.; description of the Nanga or sacred
enclosure of stones, 437 sq.; comparison with the cromlechs and other
megalithic monuments of Europe, 438.

Lecture XX.—The Belief in Immortality
among the Natives of
Eastern Melanesia (Fiji) (concluded)

Worship of parents and other dead relations in Fiji, pp. 439 sq.; Fijian notion
of divinity (kalou), 440; two classes of gods, namely, divine gods and
human gods or deified men, 440 sq.; temples (bures) 441 sq.; worship
at the temples, 443; priests (betes), their oracular inspiration by the gods,
443-446; human sacrifices on various occasions, such as building a house
or launching a new canoe, 446 sq.; high estimation in which manslaughter
was held by the Fijians, 447 sq.; consecration of manslayers and restrictions
laid on them, probably from fear of the ghosts of their victims,
448 sq.; certain funeral customs based apparently on the fear of ghosts,
450 sqq.; persons who have handled a corpse forbidden to touch food
with their hands, 450 sq.; seclusion of gravediggers, 451; mutilations,
brandings, and fasts in honour of the dead, 451 sq.; the dead carried out
of the house by a special opening to prevent the return of the ghost, 452-461;
the other world and the way thither, 462 sqq.; the ghostly ferry,
462 sq.; the ghost and the pandanus tree, 463 sq.; hard fate of the
unmarried dead, 464; the Killer of Souls, 464 sq.; ghosts precipitated
into a lake, 465 sq.; Murimuria, an inferior sort of heaven, 466; the
Fijian Elysium, 466 sq.; transmigration and annihilation, the few that
are saved, 467.

Concluding observations, 467-471; strength and universality of the
belief in immortality among savages, 468; the state of war among savage
and civilised peoples often a direct consequence of the belief in immortality,
468 sq.; economic loss involved in sacrifices to the dead, 469; how
does the savage belief in immortality bear on the truth or falsehood of that
belief in general? 469; the answer depends to some extent on the view
we take of human nature, 469-471; the conclusion left open, 471.

Note.—Myth of the Continuance of Death

Index

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTION

Natural theology, and the three modes of handling it, the
dogmatic, the philosophical, and the historical.

The subject of these lectures is a branch of natural theology.
By natural theology I understand that reasoned knowledge of
a God or gods which man may be supposed, whether rightly
or wrongly, capable of attaining to by the exercise of his
natural faculties alone. Thus defined, the subject may be
treated in at least three different ways, namely, dogmatically,
philosophically, and historically. We may simply state the
dogmas of natural theology which appear to us to be true:
that is the dogmatic method. Or, secondly, we may
examine the validity of the grounds on which these dogmas
have been or may be maintained: that is the philosophic
method. Or, thirdly, we may content ourselves with
describing the various views which have been held on the
subject and tracing their origin and evolution in history:
that is the historical method. The first of these three
methods assumes the truth of natural theology, the second
discusses it, and the third neither assumes nor discusses
but simply ignores it: the historian as such is not concerned
with the truth or falsehood of the beliefs he describes, his
business is merely to record them and to track them as far
as possible to their sources. Now that the subject of natural
theology is ripe for a purely dogmatic treatment will hardly,
I think, be maintained by any one, to whatever school of
thought he may belong; accordingly that method of treatment
need not occupy us further. Far otherwise is it with
the philosophic method which undertakes to enquire into the
truth or falsehood of the belief in a God: no method could
be more appropriate at a time like the present, when the
[pg 2]
opinions of educated and thoughtful men on that profound
topic are so unsettled, diverse, and conflicting. A philosophical
treatment of the subject might comprise a discussion
of such questions as whether a natural knowledge of God is
possible to man, and, if possible, by what means and through
what faculties it is attainable; what are the grounds for
believing in the existence of a God; and, if this belief is
justified, what may be supposed to be his essential nature
and attributes, and what his relations to the world in general
and to man in particular. Now I desire to confess at once
that an adequate discussion of these and kindred questions
would far exceed both my capacity and my knowledge; for
he who would do justice to so arduous an enquiry should
not only be endowed with a comprehensive and penetrating
genius, but should possess a wide and accurate acquaintance
with the best accredited results of philosophic speculation
and scientific research. To such qualifications I can lay no
claim, and accordingly I must regard myself as unfitted for
a purely philosophic treatment of natural theology. To speak
plainly, the question of the existence of a God is too deep for
me. I dare neither affirm nor deny it. I can only humbly
confess my ignorance. Accordingly, if Lord Gifford had
required of his lecturers either a dogmatic or a philosophical
treatment of natural theology, I could not have undertaken
to deliver the lectures.

The method followed in these lectures is the historical.

But in his deed of foundation, as I understand it, Lord
Gifford left his lecturers free to follow the historical rather than
the dogmatic or the philosophical method of treatment. He
says: “The lecturers shall be under no restraint whatever in
their treatment of their theme: for example, they may freely
discuss (and it may be well to do so) all questions about
man’s conceptions of God or the Infinite, their origin, nature,
and truth.” In making this provision the founder appears
to have allowed and indeed encouraged the lecturers not
only to discuss, if they chose to do so, the philosophical
basis of a belief in God, but also to set forth the various
conceptions of the divine nature which have been held by
men in all ages and to trace them to their origin: in short,
he permitted and encouraged the lecturers to compose a
history of natural theology or of some part of it. Even
[pg 3]
when it is thus limited to its historical aspect the theme is
too vast to be mastered completely by any one man: the
most that a single enquirer can do is to take a general but
necessarily superficial survey of the whole and to devote
himself especially to the investigation of some particular
branch or aspect of the subject. This I have done more or
less for many years, and accordingly I think that without
being presumptuous I may attempt, in compliance with Lord
Gifford’s wishes and directions, to lay before my hearers a portion
of the history of religion to which I have paid particular
attention. That the historical study of religious beliefs,
quite apart from the question of their truth or falsehood, is
both interesting and instructive will hardly be disputed by
any intelligent and thoughtful enquirer. Whether they have
been well or ill founded, these beliefs have deeply influenced
the conduct of human affairs; they have furnished some of
the most powerful, persistent, and far-reaching motives of
action; they have transformed nations and altered the face
of the globe. No one who would understand the general
history of mankind can afford to ignore the annals of
religion. If he does so, he will inevitably fall into the most
serious misconceptions even in studying branches of human
activity which might seem, on a superficial view, to be quite
unaffected by religious considerations.

An historical enquiry into the evolution of religion
prejudices neither the question of the ethical value of religious
practice nor the question of the truth or falsehood of religious
belief.

Therefore to trace theological and in general religious
ideas to their sources and to follow them through all the
manifold influences which they have exerted on the destinies
of our race must always be an object of prime importance
to the historian, whatever view he may take of their speculative
truth or ethical value. Clearly we cannot estimate
their ethical value until we have learned the modes in which
they have actually determined human conduct for good or
evil: in other words, we cannot judge of the morality of
religious beliefs until we have ascertained their history:
the facts must be known before judgment can be passed on
them: the work of the historian must precede the work of
the moralist. Even the question of the validity or truth of
religious creeds cannot, perhaps, be wholly dissociated from
the question of their origin. If, for example, we discover
that doctrines which we had accepted with implicit faith
[pg 4]
from tradition have their close analogies in the barbarous
superstitions of ignorant savages, we can hardly help suspecting
that our own cherished doctrines may have originated
in the similar superstitions of our rude forefathers; and the
suspicion inevitably shakes the confidence with which we
had hitherto regarded these articles of our faith. The doubt
thus cast on our old creed is perhaps illogical, since even if
we should discover that the creed did originate in mere
superstition, in other words, that the grounds on which it was
first adopted were false and absurd, this discovery would not
really disprove the beliefs themselves, for it is perfectly
possible that a belief may be true, though the reasons alleged
in favour of it are false and absurd: indeed we may affirm
with great probability that a multitude of human beliefs, true
in themselves, have been accepted and defended by millions
of people on grounds which cannot bear exact investigation
for a moment. For example, if the facts of savage life
which it will be my duty to submit to you should have the
effect of making the belief in immortality look exceedingly
foolish, those of my hearers who cherish the belief may console
themselves by reflecting that, as I have just pointed out,
a creed is not necessarily false because some of the reasons
adduced in its favour are invalid, because it has sometimes
been supported by the despicable tricks of vulgar imposture,
and because the practices to which it has given rise
have often been in the highest degree not only absurd but
pernicious.

Yet such an enquiry may shake the confidence with which
traditional beliefs have been held.

Thus an historical enquiry into the origin of religious
creeds cannot, strictly speaking, invalidate, still less refute,
the creeds themselves, though it may, and doubtless often
does weaken the confidence with which they are held. This
weakening of religious faith as a consequence of a closer
scrutiny of religious origins is unquestionably a matter of
great importance to the community; for society has been
built and cemented to a great extent on a foundation of
religion, and it is impossible to loosen the cement and
shake the foundation without endangering the superstructure.
The candid historian of religion will not dissemble the
danger incidental to his enquiries, but nevertheless it is his
duty to prosecute them unflinchingly. Come what may, he
[pg 5]
must ascertain the facts so far as it is possible to do so;
having done that, he may leave to others the onerous and
delicate task of adjusting the new knowledge to the practical
needs of mankind. The narrow way of truth may often look
dark and threatening, and the wayfarer may often be weary;
yet even at the darkest and the weariest he will go forward
in the trust, if not in the knowledge, that the way will lead
at last to light and to rest; in plain words, that there is no
ultimate incompatibility between the good and the true.

To discover the origin of the idea of God we must study the
beliefs of primitive man.

Now if we are indeed to discover the origin of man’s
conception of God, it is not sufficient to analyse the ideas
which the educated and enlightened portion of mankind
entertain on the subject at the present day; for in great
measure these ideas are traditional, they have been handed
down with little or no independent reflection or enquiry
from generation to generation; hence in order to detect them
in their inception it becomes necessary to push our analysis
far back into the past. Large materials for such an historical
enquiry are provided for us in the literature of ancient
nations which, though often sadly mutilated and imperfect,
has survived to modern times and throws much precious
light on the religious beliefs and practices of the peoples
who created it. But the ancients themselves inherited a
great part of their religion from their prehistoric ancestors,
and accordingly it becomes desirable to investigate the
religious notions of these remote forefathers of mankind,
since in them we may hope at last to arrive at the ultimate
source, the historical origin, of the whole long development.

The beliefs of primitive man can only be understood through a
comparative study of the various races in the lower stages of culture.

But how can this be done? how can we investigate the
ideas of peoples who, ignorant of writing, had no means of
permanently recording their beliefs? At first sight the thing
seems impossible; the thread of enquiry is broken off short;
it has landed us on the brink of a gulf which looks impassable.
But the case is not so hopeless as it appears. True,
we cannot investigate the beliefs of prehistoric ages directly,
but the comparative method of research may furnish us
with the means of studying them indirectly; it may hold
up to us a mirror in which, if we do not see the originals,
we may perhaps contemplate their reflections. For a comparative
study of the various races of mankind demonstrates,
[pg 6]
or at least renders it highly probable, that humanity has
everywhere started at an exceedingly low level of culture,
a level far beneath that of the lowest existing savages, and
that from this humble beginning all the various races of
men have gradually progressed upward at different rates,
some faster and some slower, till they have attained the
particular stage which each of them occupies at the present
time.

Hence the need of studying the beliefs and customs of
savages, if we are to understand the evolution of culture in general.

If this conclusion is correct, the various stages of
savagery and barbarism on which many tribes and peoples
now stand represent, broadly speaking, so many degrees of
retarded social and intellectual development, they correspond
to similar stages which the ancestors of the civilised races may
be supposed to have passed through at more or less remote
periods of their history. Thus when we arrange all the
known peoples of the world according to the degree of their
savagery or civilisation in a graduated scale of culture, we
obtain not merely a comparative view of their relative positions
in the scale, but also in some measure an historical
record of the genetic development of culture from a very
early time down to the present day. Hence a study of the
savage and barbarous races of mankind is of the greatest
importance for a full understanding of the beliefs and
practices, whether religious, social, moral, or political, of the
most civilised races, including our own, since it is practically
certain that a large part of these beliefs and practices
originated with our savage ancestors, and has been inherited
by us from them, with more or less of modification, through
a long line of intermediate generations.

The need is all the more urgent because savages are rapidly
disappearing or being transformed.

That is why the study of existing savages at the present
day engrosses so much of the attention of civilised peoples.
We see that if we are to comprehend not only our past
history but our present condition, with all its many intricate
and perplexing problems, we must begin at the beginning by
attempting to discover the mental state of our savage forefathers,
who bequeathed to us so much of the faiths, the laws,
and the institutions which we still cherish; and more and more
men are coming to perceive that the only way open to us of
doing this effectually is to study the mental state of savages
who to this day occupy a state of culture analogous to that
[pg 7]
of our rude progenitors. Through contact with civilisation
these savages are now rapidly disappearing, or at least losing
the old habits and ideas which render them a document of
priceless historical value for us. Hence we have every
motive for prosecuting the study of savagery with ardour
and diligence before it is too late, before the record is gone
for ever. We are like an heir whose title-deeds must be
scrutinised before he can take possession of the inheritance,
but who finds the handwriting of the deeds so fading and
evanescent that it threatens to disappear entirely before he
can read the document to the end. With what keen attention,
what eager haste, would he not scan the fast-vanishing
characters? With the like attention and the like haste
civilised men are now applying themselves to the investigation
of the fast-vanishing savages.

Savage religion is to be the subject of these lectures.

Thus if we are to trace historically man’s conception of
God to its origin, it is desirable, or rather essential, that we
should begin by studying the most primitive ideas on the
subject which are accessible to us, and the most primitive
ideas are unquestionably those of the lowest savages.
Accordingly in these lectures I propose to deal with a
particular side or aspect of savage religion. I shall not
trench on the sphere of the higher religions, not only
because my knowledge of them is for the most part very
slight, but also because I believe that a searching study of
the higher and more complex religions should be postponed
till we have acquired an accurate knowledge of the lower and
simpler. For a similar reason the study of inorganic chemistry
naturally precedes the study of organic chemistry, because
inorganic compounds are much simpler and therefore more
easily analysed and investigated than organic compounds.
So with the chemistry of the mind; we should analyse the
comparatively simple phenomena of savage thought into its
constituent elements before we attempt to perform a similar
operation on the vastly more complex phenomena of civilised
beliefs.

But only a part of savage religion will be dealt with.

But while I shall confine myself rigidly to the field of
savage religion, I shall not attempt to present you with a
complete survey even of that restricted area, and that for
more reasons than one. In the first place the theme, even
[pg 8]
with this great limitation, is far too large to be adequately
set forth in the time at my disposal; the sketch—for it
could be no more than a sketch—would be necessarily
superficial and probably misleading. In the second place,
even a sketch of primitive religion in general ought to presuppose
in the sketcher a fairly complete knowledge of the
whole subject, so that all the parts may appear, not indeed
in detail, but in their proper relative proportions. Now
though I have given altogether a good deal of time to the
study of primitive religion, I am far from having studied it
in all its branches, and I could not trust myself to give an
accurate general account of it even in outline; were I to
attempt such a thing I should almost certainly fall, through
sheer ignorance or inadvertence, into the mistake of exaggerating
some features, unduly diminishing others, and omitting
certain essential features altogether. Hence it seems to me
better not to commit myself to so ambitious an enterprise
but to confine myself in my lectures, as I have always done
in my writings, to a comparatively minute investigation of
certain special aspects or forms of primitive religion rather
than attempt to embrace in a general view the whole of
that large subject. Such a relatively detailed study of a
single compartment may be less attractive and more tedious
than a bird’s-eye view of a wider area; but in the end it
may perhaps prove a more solid contribution to knowledge.

Introductory observations. The question of a supernatural
revelation excluded.

But before I come to details I wish to make a few general
introductory remarks, and in particular to define some of
the terms which I shall have occasion to use in the lectures.
I have defined natural theology as that reasoned knowledge
of a God or gods which man may be supposed,
whether rightly or wrongly, capable of attaining to by the
exercise of his natural faculties alone. Whether there ever
has been or can be a special miraculous revelation of God to
man through channels different from those through which all
other human knowledge is derived, is a question which does
not concern us in these lectures; indeed it is expressly
excluded from their scope by the will of the founder, who
directed the lecturers to treat the subject “as a strictly
natural science,” “without reference to or reliance upon any
supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.”
[pg 9]
Accordingly, in compliance with these directions, I
dismiss at the outset the question of a revelation, and shall
limit myself strictly to natural theology in the sense in
which I have defined it.

Theology and religion, how related to each other.

I have called natural theology a reasoned knowledge of
a God or gods to distinguish it from that simple and comparatively,
though I believe never absolutely, unreasoning
faith in God which suffices for the practice of religion. For
theology is at once more and less than religion: if on the
one hand it includes a more complete acquaintance with the
grounds of religious belief than is essential to religion, on the
other hand it excludes the observance of those practical
duties which are indispensable to any religion worthy of the
name. In short, whereas theology is purely theoretical,
religion is both theoretical and practical, though the
theoretical part of it need not be so highly developed as in
theology. But while the subject of the lectures is, strictly
speaking, natural theology rather than natural religion, I
think it would be not only difficult but undesirable to confine
our attention to the purely theological or theoretical part
of natural religion: in all religions, and not least in the
undeveloped savage religions with which we shall deal,
theory and practice fuse with and interact on each other too
closely to be forcibly disjoined and handled apart. Hence
throughout the lectures I shall not scruple to refer constantly
to religious practice as well as to religious theory, without
feeling that thereby I am transgressing the proper limits of
my subject.

The term God defined.

As theology is not only by definition but by etymology
a reasoned knowledge or theory of a God or gods, it becomes
desirable, before we proceed further, to define the sense in
which I understand and shall employ the word God. That
sense is neither novel nor abstruse; it is simply the sense
which I believe the generality of mankind attach to the term.
By a God I understand a superhuman and supernatural
being, of a spiritual and personal nature, who controls the
world or some part of it on the whole for good, and who is
endowed with intellectual faculties, moral feelings, and active
powers, which we can only conceive on the analogy of human
faculties, feelings, and activities, though we are bound to suppose
[pg 10]
that in the divine nature they exist in higher degrees, perhaps
in infinitely higher degrees, than the corresponding faculties,
feelings, and activities of man. In short, by a God I mean a
beneficent supernatural spirit, the ruler of the world or of
some part of it, who resembles man in nature though he
excels him in knowledge, goodness, and power. This is, I
think, the sense in which the ordinary man speaks of a God,
and I believe that he is right in so doing. I am aware that
it has been not unusual, especially perhaps of late years, to
apply the name of God to very different conceptions, to
empty it of all implication of personality, and to reduce it
to signifying something very large and very vague, such as
the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard words
may signify), the great First Cause, the Universal Substance,
“the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil
the law of their being,”¹ and so forth. Now without
expressing any opinion as to the truth or falsehood of the
views implied by such applications of the name of God, I
cannot but regard them all as illegitimate extensions of the
term, in short as an abuse of language, and I venture to
protest against it in the interest not only of verbal accuracy
but of clear thinking, because it is apt to conceal from ourselves
and others a real and very important change of
thought: in particular it may lead many to imagine that
the persons who use the name of God in one or other of these
extended senses retain certain theological opinions which they
may in fact have long abandoned. Thus the misuse of the
name of God may resemble the stratagem in war of putting
up dummies to make an enemy imagine that a fort is still
held after it has been evacuated by the garrison. I am far
from alleging or insinuating that the illegitimate extension of
the divine name is deliberately employed by theologians or
others for the purpose of masking a change of front; but
that it may have that effect seems at least possible. And
as we cannot use words in wrong senses without running a
serious risk of deceiving ourselves as well as others, it appears
better on all accounts to adhere strictly to the common
meaning of the name of God as signifying a powerful supernatural
[pg 11]
and on the whole beneficent spirit, akin in nature to
man; and if any of us have ceased to believe in such a being
we should refrain from applying the old word to the new faith,
and should find some other and more appropriate term to
express our meaning. At all events, speaking for myself, I
intend to use the name of God consistently in the familiar
sense, and I would beg my hearers to bear this steadily in
mind.

Monotheism
and polytheism.

You will have observed that I have spoken of natural
theology as a reasoned knowledge of a God or gods. There
is indeed nothing in the definition of God which I have
adopted to imply that he is unique, in other words, that there
is only one God rather than several or many gods. It is
true that modern European thinkers, bred in a monotheistic
religion, commonly overlook polytheism as a crude theory
unworthy the serious attention of philosophers; in short, the
champions and the assailants of religion in Europe alike for
the most part tacitly assume that there is either one God or
none. Yet some highly civilised nations of antiquity and of
modern times, such as the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, and the modern Chinese and Hindoos, have
accepted the polytheistic explanation of the world, and as
no reasonable man will deny the philosophical subtlety of
the Greeks and the Hindoos, to say nothing of the rest, a
theory of the universe which has commended itself to them
deserves perhaps more consideration than it has commonly
received from Western philosophers; certainly it cannot be
ignored in an historical enquiry into the origin of religion.

A natural knowledge of God can only be acquired by
experience.

If there is such a thing as natural theology, that is, a
knowledge of a God or gods acquired by our natural faculties
alone without the aid of a special revelation, it follows that it
must be obtained by one or other of the methods by which all
our natural knowledge is conveyed to us. Roughly speaking,
these methods are two in number, namely, intuition and experience.
Now if we ask ourselves, Do we know God intuitively
in the same sense in which we know intuitively our own
sensations and the simplest truths of mathematics, I think
most men will acknowledge that they do not. It is true
that according to Berkeley the world exists only as it is
perceived, and that our perceptions of it are produced by the
[pg 12]
immediate action of God on our minds, so that everything
we perceive might be described, if not as an idea in
the mind of the deity, at least as a direct emanation from
him. On this theory we might in a sense be said to have
an immediate knowledge of God. But Berkeley’s theory
has found little acceptance, so far as I know, even among
philosophers; and even if we regarded it as true, we should
still have to admit that the knowledge of God implied by it
is inferential rather than intuitive in the strict sense of the
word: we infer God to be the cause of our perceptions
rather than identify him with the perceptions themselves.
On the whole, then, I conclude that man, or at all events the
ordinary man, has, properly speaking, no immediate or
intuitive knowledge of God, and that, if he obtains, without
the aid of revelation, any knowledge of him at all, it can
only be through the other natural channel of knowledge,
that is, through experience.

The
nature of
experience.

In experience, as distinct from intuition, we reach our
conclusions not directly through simple contemplation of the
particular sensations, emotions, or ideas of which we are at
the moment conscious, but indirectly by calling up before
the imagination and comparing with each other our
memories of a variety of sensations, emotions, or ideas of
which we have been conscious in the past, and by selecting
or abstracting from the mental images so compared the
points in which they resemble each other. The points of
resemblance thus selected or abstracted from a number of
particulars compose what we call an abstract or general
idea, and from a comparison of such abstract or general
ideas with each other we arrive at general conclusions, which
define the relations of the ideas to each other. Experience
in general consists in the whole body of conclusions thus
deduced from a comparison of all the particular sensations,
emotions, and ideas which make up the conscious life of the
individual. Hence in order to constitute experience the
mind has to perform a more or less complex series of
operations, which are commonly referred to certain mental
faculties, such as memory, imagination, and judgment.
This analysis of experience does not pretend to be philosophically
complete or exact; but perhaps it is sufficiently
[pg 13]
accurate for the purpose of these lectures, the scope of which
is not philosophical but historical.

Two kinds of experience, the experience of our own mind and
the experience of an external world.

Now experience in the widest sense of the word may
be conveniently distinguished into two sorts, the experience
of our own mind and the experience of an external world.
The distinction is indeed, like the others with which I am
dealing at present, rather practically useful than theoretically
sound; certainly it would not be granted by all philosophers,
for many of them have held that we neither have nor with
our present faculties can possibly attain to any immediate
knowledge or perception of an external world, we merely
infer its existence from our own sensations, which are as
strictly a part of our mind as the ideas and emotions of
our waking life or the visions of sleep. According to them,
the existence of matter or of an external world is, so far as
we are concerned, merely an hypothesis devised to explain
the order of our sensations; it never has been perceived by
any man, woman, or child who ever lived on earth; we have
and can have no immediate knowledge or perception of anything
but the states and operations of our own mind. On this
theory what we call the world, with all its supposed infinitudes
of space and time, its systems of suns and planets,
its seemingly endless forms of inorganic matter and organic
life, shrivels up, on a close inspection, into a fleeting, a
momentary figment of thought. It is like one of those
glass baubles, iridescent with a thousand varied and delicate
hues, which a single touch suffices to shatter into dust. The
philosopher, like the sorcerer, has but to wave his magic
wand,

The distinction rather popular and convenient than
philosophically strict.

It would be beyond my province, even if it were within
my power, to discuss these airy speculations, and thereby to
descend into the arena where for ages subtle dialecticians
have battled with each other over the reality or unreality of
[pg 14]
an external world. For my purpose it suffices to adopt the
popular and convenient distinction of mind and matter and
hence to divide experience into two sorts, an inward experience
of the acts and states of our own minds, and an outward
experience of the acts and states of that physical universe
by which we seem to be surrounded.

The knowledge or conception of God has been attained both by
inward and by outward experience.

Now if a natural knowledge of God is only possible
by means of experience, in other words, by a process of
reasoning based on observation, it will follow that such a
knowledge may conceivably be acquired either by the way
of inward or of outward experience; in other words, it may
be attained either by reflecting on the processes of our own
minds or by observing the processes of external nature.
In point of fact, if we survey the history of thought, mankind
appears to have arrived at a knowledge, or at all events at
a conception, of deity by both these roads. Let me say a
few words as to the two roads which lead, or seem to lead,
man to God.

The conception of God is attained by inward experience, that
is, by the observation of certain remarkable thoughts and feelings which
are attributed to the inspiration of a deity. Practical dangers of the
theory of inspiration.

In the first place, then, men in many lands and many
ages have experienced certain extraordinary emotions and
entertained certain extraordinary ideas, which, unable to
account for them by reference to the ordinary forms of
experience, they have set down to the direct action of a
powerful spirit or deity working on their minds and even
entering into and taking possession of their bodies; and in
this excited state—for violent excitement is characteristic
of these manifestations—the patient believes himself to
be possessed of supernatural knowledge and supernatural
power. This real or supposed mode of apprehending a
divine spirit and entering into communion with it, is
commonly and appropriately called inspiration. The phenomenon
is familiar to us from the example of the Hebrew
nation, who believed that their prophets were thus inspired
by the deity, and that their sacred books were regularly
composed under the divine afflatus. The belief is by no
means singular, indeed it appears to be world-wide; for it
would be hard to point to any race of men among whom
instances of such inspiration have not been reported; and
the more ignorant and savage the race the more numerous,
to judge by the reports, are the cases of inspiration. Volumes
[pg 15]
might be filled with examples, but through the spread
of information as to the lower races in recent years the
topic has become so familiar that I need not stop to
illustrate it by instances. I will merely say that among
savages the theory of inspiration or possession is commonly
invoked to explain all abnormal mental states, particularly
insanity or conditions of mind bordering on it, so that
persons more or less crazed in their wits, and particularly
hysterical or epileptic patients, are for that very reason
thought to be peculiarly favoured by the spirits and are
therefore consulted as oracles, their wild and whirling words
passing for the revelations of a higher power, whether a
god or a ghost, who considerately screens his too dazzling
light under a thick veil of dark sayings and mysterious
ejaculations.² I need hardly point out the very serious
dangers which menace any society where such theories
are commonly held and acted upon. If the decisions
of a whole community in matters of the gravest importance
are left to turn on the wayward fancies, the whims and
vagaries of the insane or the semi-insane, what are likely
to be the consequences to the commonwealth? What, for
example, can be expected to result from a war entered upon
at such dictation and waged under such auspices? Are cattle-breeding,
agriculture, commerce, all the arts of life on which a
people depend for their subsistence, likely to thrive when they
are directed by the ravings of epilepsy or the drivellings of
hysteria? Defeat in battle, conquest by enemies, death by
famine and widespread disease, these and a thousand other
lesser evils threaten the blind people who commit themselves
to such blind guides. The history of savage and barbarous
tribes, could we follow it throughout, might furnish us with
a thousand warning instances of the fatal effects of carrying
out this crude theory of inspiration to its logical conclusions;
and if we hear less than might be expected of such instances,
it is probably because the tribes who consistently acted up
to their beliefs have thereby wiped themselves out of existence:
[pg 16]
they have perished the victims of their folly and left
no record behind. I believe that historians have not yet
reckoned sufficiently with the disastrous influence which this
worship of insanity,—for it is often nothing less—has exercised
on the fortunes of peoples and on the development or
decay of their institutions.

The belief in inspiration leads to the worship of living men
as gods. Outward experience as a source of the idea of God.

To a certain extent, however, the evil has provided its
own remedy. For men of strong heads and ambitious
temper, perceiving the exorbitant power which a belief in
inspiration places in the hands of the feeble-minded, have
often feigned to be similarly afflicted, and trading on their
reputation for imbecility, or rather inspiration, have acquired
an authority over their fellows which, though they have often
abused it for vulgar ends, they have sometimes exerted for
good, as for example by giving sound advice in matters of
public concern, applying salutary remedies to the sick, and
detecting and punishing crime, whereby they have helped to
preserve the commonwealth, to alleviate suffering, and to
cement that respect for law and order which is essential to
the stability of society, and without which any community
must fall to pieces like a house of cards. These great
services have been rendered to the cause of civilisation and
progress by the class of men who in primitive society are
variously known as medicine-men, magicians, sorcerers,
diviners, soothsayers, and so forth. Sometimes the respect
which they have gained by the exercise of their profession
has won for them political as well as spiritual or ghostly
authority; in short, from being simple medicine-men
or sorcerers they have grown into chiefs and kings.
When such men, seated on the throne of state, retain their
old reputation for being the vehicles of a divine spirit, they
may be worshipped in the character of gods as well as
revered in the capacity of kings; and thus exerting a two-fold
sway over the minds of men they possess a most potent
instrument for elevating or depressing the fortunes of their
worshippers and subjects. In this way the old savage notion
of inspiration or possession gradually develops into the
doctrine of the divinity of kings, which after a long period of
florescence dwindles away into the modest theory that kings
reign by divine right, a theory familiar to our ancestors not
[pg 17]
long ago, and perhaps not wholly obsolete among us even
now. However, inspired men need not always blossom out
into divine kings; they may, and often do, remain in the
chrysalis state of simple deities revered by their simple
worshippers, their brows encircled indeed with a halo of
divinity but not weighted with the more solid substance
of a kingly crown. Thus certain extraordinary mental
states, which those who experience and those who witness
them cannot account for in any other way, are often
explained by the supposed interposition of a spirit or deity.
This, therefore, is one of the two forms of experience by
which men attain, or imagine that they attain, to a knowledge
of God and a communion with him. It is what I
have called the road of inward experience. Let us now
glance at the other form of experience which leads, or
seems to lead, to the same goal. It is what I have called
the road of outward experience.

Tendency of the mind to search for causes, and the necessity
for their discovery.

When we contemplate the seemingly infinite variety,
the endless succession, of events that pass under our observation
in what we call the external world, we are led by an
irresistible tendency to trace what we call a causal connexion
between them. The tendency to discover the causes of
things appears indeed to be innate in the constitution of
our minds and indispensable to our continued existence.
It is the link that arrests and colligates into convenient
bundles the mass of particulars drifting pell-mell past on the
stream of sensation; it is the cement that binds into an
edifice seemingly of adamant the loose sand of isolated
perceptions. Deprived of the knowledge which this tendency
procures for us we should be powerless to foresee the succession
of phenomena and so to adapt ourselves to it. We should be
bewildered by the apparent disorder and confusion of everything,
we should toss on a sea without a rudder, we should
wander in an endless maze without a clue, and finding no
way out of it, or, in plain words, unable to avoid a single
one of the dangers which menace us at every turn, we should
inevitably perish. Accordingly the propensity to search for
causes is characteristic of man in all ages and at all levels of
culture, though without doubt it is far more highly developed
in civilised than in savage communities. Among savages
[pg 18]
it is more or less unconscious and instinctive; among
civilised men it is deliberately cultivated and rewarded
at least by the applause of their fellows, by the
dignity, if not by the more solid recompenses, of learning.
Indeed as civilisation progresses the enquiry into causes
tends to absorb more and more of the highest intellectual
energies of a people; and an ever greater number of men,
renouncing the bustle, the pleasures, and the ambitions of an
active life, devote themselves exclusively to the pursuit of
abstract truth; they set themselves to discover the causes of
things, to trace the regularity and order that may be supposed
to underlie the seemingly irregular, confused, and arbitrary
sequence of phenomena. Unquestionably the progress of
civilisation owes much to the sustained efforts of such men, and
if of late years and within our own memory the pace of
progress has sensibly quickened, we shall perhaps not err in
supposing that some part at least of the acceleration may be
accounted for by an increase in the number of lifelong students.

The idea of cause is simply that of invariable sequence
suggested by the observation of many particular cases of sequence.

Now when we analyse the conception of a cause to the
bottom, we find as the last residuum in our crucible nothing
but what Hume found there long ago, and that is simply the
idea of invariable sequence. Whenever we say that something
is the cause of something else, all that we really mean
is that the latter is invariably preceded by the former, so
that whenever we find the second, which we call the effect,
we may infer that the first, which we call the cause, has gone
before it. All such inferences from effects to causes are
based on experience; having observed a certain sequence of
events a certain number of times, we conclude that the events
are so conjoined that the latter cannot occur without the
previous occurrence of the former. A single case of two
events following each other could not of itself suggest that
the one event is the cause of the other, since there is no
necessary link between them in the mind; the sequence has
to be repeated more or less frequently before we infer a
causal connexion between the two; and this inference rests
simply on that association of ideas which is established in
our mind by the reiterated observation of the things. Once
the ideas are by dint of repetition firmly welded together,
the one by sheer force of habit calls up the other, and we say
[pg 19]
that the two things which are represented by those ideas
stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect. The
notion of causality is in short only one particular case of the
association of ideas. Thus all reasoning as to causes implies
previous observation: we reason from the observed to the
unobserved, from the known to the unknown; and the wider
the range of our observation and knowledge, the greater the
probability that our reasoning will be correct.

The savage draws his ideas of natural causation from
observation of himself. Hence he explains the phenomena of nature by
supposing that they are produced by beings like himself. These beings
may be called spirits or gods of nature to distinguish them from living
human gods.

All this is as true of the savage as of the civilised man.
He too argues, and indeed can only argue on the basis of
experience from the known to the unknown, from the
observed to the hypothetical. But the range of his experience
is comparatively narrow, and accordingly his inferences
from it often appear to civilised men, with their wider knowledge,
to be palpably false and absurd. This holds good
most obviously in regard to his observation of external nature.
While he often knows a good deal about the natural objects,
whether animals, plants, or inanimate things, on which he is
immediately dependent for his subsistence, the extent of
country with which he is acquainted is commonly but small,
and he has little or no opportunity of correcting the conclusions
which he bases on his observation of it by a comparison
with other parts of the world. But if he knows little of
the outer world, he is necessarily somewhat better acquainted
with his own inner life, with his sensations and ideas, his
emotions, appetites, and desires. Accordingly it is natural
enough that when he seeks to discover the causes of events
in the external world, he should, arguing from experience,
imagine that they are produced by the actions of invisible
beings like himself, who behind the veil of nature pull the
strings that set the vast machinery in motion. For example,
he knows by experience that he can make sparks fly by
knocking two flints against each other; what more natural,
therefore, than that he should imagine the great sparks which
we call lightning to be made in the same way by somebody
up aloft, and that when he finds chipped flints on the ground
he should take them for thunder-stones dropped by the
maker of thunder and lightning from the clouds?³ Thus
[pg 20]
arguing from his limited experience primitive man creates a
multitude of spirits or gods in his own likeness to explain
the succession of phenomena in nature of whose true causes
he is ignorant; in short he personifies the phenomena as
powerful anthropomorphic spirits, and believing himself to
be more or less dependent on their good will he woos their
favour by prayer and sacrifice. This personification of the
various aspects of external nature is one of the most fruitful
sources of polytheism. The spirits and gods created by
this train of thought may be called spirits and gods of
nature to distinguish them from the human gods, by which
I mean the living men and women who are believed by
their worshippers to be inspired or possessed by a divine
spirit.

In time men reject polytheism as an explanation of natural
processes and substitute certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so on.

But as time goes on and men learn more about nature,
they commonly become dissatisfied with polytheism as an
explanation of the world and gradually discard it. From one
department of nature after another the gods are reluctantly
or contemptuously dismissed and their provinces committed
to the care of certain abstract ideas of ethers, atoms,
molecules, and so forth, which, though just as imperceptible
to human senses as their divine predecessors, are judged by
prevailing opinion to discharge their duties with greater
regularity and despatch, and are accordingly firmly installed
on the vacant thrones amid the general applause of the more
enlightened portion of mankind. Thus instead of being
peopled with a noisy bustling crowd of full-blooded and
picturesque deities, clothed in the graceful form and animated
with the warm passions of humanity, the universe outside
the narrow circle of our consciousness is now conceived as
absolutely silent, colourless, and deserted. The cheerful
sounds which we hear, the bright hues which we see, have
no existence, we are told, in the external world: the
voices of friends, the harmonies of music, the chime of
falling waters, the solemn roll of ocean, the silver splendour
of the moon, the golden glories of sunset, the verdure
[pg 21]
of summer woods, and the hectic tints of autumn—all
these subsist only in our own minds, and if we imagine
them to have any reality elsewhere, we deceive ourselves.
In fact the whole external world as perceived by us is
one great illusion: if we gave the reins to fancy we
might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured
up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder
poor ignorant humanity. Outside of ourselves there
stretches away on every side an infinitude of space without
sound, without light, without colour, a solitude traversed only
in every direction by an inconceivably complex web of
silent and impersonal forces. That, if I understand it
aright, is the general conception of the world which modern
science has substituted for polytheism.

But while they commonly discard the hypothesis of a deity as
an explanation of all the particular processes of nature, they retain it
as an explanation of nature in general.

When philosophy and science by their combined efforts
have ejected gods and goddesses from all the subordinate
posts of nature, it might perhaps be expected that they
would have no further occasion for the services of a deity,
and that having relieved him of all his particular functions
they would have arranged for the creation and general
maintenance of the universe without him by handing over
these important offices to an efficient staff of those ethers,
atoms, corpuscles, and so forth, which had already proved
themselves so punctual in the discharge of the minor
duties entrusted to them. Nor, indeed, is this expectation
altogether disappointed. A number of atheistical philosophers
have courageously come forward and assured us that
the hypothesis of a deity as the creator and preserver of the
universe is quite superfluous, and that all things came into
being or have existed from eternity without the help of any
divine spirit, and that they will continue to exist without it
to the end, if end indeed there is to be. But on the whole
these daring speculators appear to be in a minority. The
general opinion of educated people at the present day, could
we ascertain it, would probably be found to incline to the
conclusion that, though every department of nature is now
worked by impersonal material forces alone, the universe as
a whole was created and is still maintained by a great supernatural
spirit whom we call God. Thus in Europe and in
the countries which have borrowed their civilisation, their
[pg 22]
philosophy, and their religion from it, the central problem of
natural theology has narrowed itself down to the question, Is
there one God or none? It is a profound question, and I
for one profess myself unable to answer it.

Whether attained by inward or outward experience, the idea of
God is regularly that of a cause inferred, not perceived.

If this brief sketch of the history of natural theology is
correct, man has by the exercise of his natural faculties alone,
without the help of revelation, attained to a knowledge or at
least to a conception of God in one of two ways, either
by meditating on the operations of his own mind, or by
observing the processes of external nature: inward experience
and outward experience have conducted him by
different roads to the same goal. By whichever of them
the conception has been reached, it is regularly employed to
explain the causal connexion of things, whether the things
to be explained are the ideas and emotions of man himself
or the changes in the physical world outside of him. In
short, a God is always brought in to play the part of
a cause; it is the imperious need of tracing the causes
of events which has driven man to discover or invent a
deity. Now causes may be arranged in two classes according
as they are perceived or unperceived by the senses. For
example, when we see the impact of a billiard cue on a
billiard ball followed immediately by the motion of the ball,
we say that the impact is the cause of the motion. In this
case we perceive the cause as well as the effect. But, when
we see an apple fall from a tree to the ground, we say that
the cause of the fall is the force of gravitation exercised
by the superior mass of the earth on the inferior mass of the
apple. In this case, though we perceive the effect, we
do not perceive the cause, we only infer it by a process
of reasoning from experience. Causes of the latter sort may
be called inferential or hypothetical causes to distinguish
them from those which are perceived. Of the two classes of
causes a deity belongs in general, if not universally, to the
second, that is, to the inferential or hypothetical causes; for
as a rule at all events his existence is not perceived by our
senses but inferred by our reason. To say that he has
never appeared in visible and tangible form to men would be
to beg the question; it would be to make an assertion which
is incapable of proof and which is contradicted by a multitude
[pg 23]
of contrary affirmations recorded in the traditions or the
sacred books of many races; but without being rash we may
perhaps say that such appearances, if they ever took place,
belong to a past order of events and need hardly be reckoned
with at the present time. For all practical purposes, therefore,
God is now a purely inferential or hypothetical cause;
he may be invoked to explain either our own thoughts and
feelings, our impulses and emotions, or the manifold states
and processes of external nature; he may be viewed either
as the inspirer of the one or the creator and preserver of the
other; and according as he is mainly regarded from the one
point of view or the other, the conception of the divine
nature tends to beget one of two very different types of
piety. To the man who traces the finger of God in the
workings of his own mind, the deity appears to be far closer
than he seems to the man who only infers the divine
existence from the marvellous order, harmony, and beauty
of the external world; and we need not wonder that the
faith of the former is of a more fervent temper and supplies
him with more powerful incentives to a life of active devotion
than the calm and rational faith of the latter. We may
conjecture that the piety of most great religious reformers
has belonged to the former rather than to the latter type; in
other words, that they have believed in God because they
felt, or imagined that they felt, him stirring in their own
hearts rather than because they discerned the handiwork of
a divine artificer in the wonderful mechanism of nature.

Besides the two sorts of gods already distinguished, namely
natural gods and living human gods, there is a third sort which has
played an important part in history, namely, the spirits of deified dead
men. Euhemerism.

Thus far I have distinguished two sorts of gods whom
man discovers or creates for himself by the exercise of his
unaided faculties, to wit natural gods, whom he infers from
his observation of external nature, and human gods or
inspired men, whom he recognises by virtue of certain extraordinary
mental manifestations in himself or in others. But
there is another class of human gods which I have not yet
mentioned and which has played a very important part in
the evolution of theology. I mean the deified spirits of dead
men. To judge by the accounts we possess not only of
savage and barbarous tribes but of some highly civilised
peoples, the worship of the human dead has been one of the
commonest and most influential forms of natural religion,
[pg 24]
perhaps indeed the commonest and most influential of all.
Obviously it rests on the supposition that the human
personality in some form, whether we call it a soul, a spirit,
a ghost, or what not, can survive death and thereafter continue
for a longer or shorter time to exercise great power
for good or evil over the destinies of the living, who are
therefore compelled to propitiate the shades of the dead out
of a regard for their own safety and well-being. This
belief in the survival of the human spirit after death is
world-wide; it is found among men in all stages of culture
from the lowest to the highest; we need not wonder therefore
that the custom of propitiating the ghosts or souls
of the departed should be world-wide also. No doubt
the degree of attention paid to ghosts is not the same
in all cases; it varies with the particular degree of power
attributed to each of them; the spirits of men who for
any reason were much feared in their lifetime, such as
mighty warriors, chiefs, and kings, are more revered and
receive far more marks of homage than the spirits of
common men; and it is only when this reverence and
homage are carried to a very high pitch that they can
properly be described as a deification of the dead. But
that dead men have thus been raised to the rank of deities
in many lands, there is abundant evidence to prove. And
quite apart from the worship paid to those spirits which are
admitted by their worshippers to have once animated the
bodies of living men, there is good reason to suspect that
many gods, who rank as purely mythical beings, were once
men of flesh and blood, though their true history has passed
out of memory or rather been transformed by legend into a
myth, which veils more or less completely the real character
of the imaginary deity. The theory that most or all gods
originated after this fashion, in other words, that the worship
of the gods is little or nothing but the worship of dead men, is
known as Euhemerism from Euhemerus, the ancient Greek
writer who propounded it. Regarded as a universal explanation
of the belief in gods it is certainly false; regarded as a
partial explanation of the belief it is unquestionably true;
and perhaps we may even go further and say, that the more
we penetrate into the inner history of natural religion,
[pg 25]
the larger is seen to be the element of truth contained in
Euhemerism. For the more closely we look at many deities
of natural religion, the more distinctly do we seem to
perceive, under the quaint or splendid pall which the
mythical fancy has wrapt round their stately figures, the
familiar features of real men, who once shared the common
joys and the common sorrows of humanity, who trod life’s
common road to the common end.

The deification of dead men presupposes the immortality of
the human soul, or rather its survival for a longer or shorter time
after death.

When we ask how it comes about that dead men have
so often been raised to the rank of divinities, the first thing
to be observed is that all such deifications must, if our theory
is correct, be inferences drawn from experience of some sort;
they must be hypotheses devised to explain the unperceived
causes of certain phenomena, whether of the human mind
or of external nature. All of them imply, as I have said, a
belief that the conscious human personality, call it the soul,
the spirit, or what you please, can survive the body and
continue to exist in a disembodied state with unabated or
even greatly increased powers for good or evil. This faith
in the survival of personality after death may for the sake of
brevity be called a faith in immortality, though the term
immortality is not strictly correct, since it seems to imply
eternal duration, whereas the idea of eternity is hardly
intelligible to many primitive peoples, who nevertheless
firmly believe in the continued existence, for a longer or
shorter time, of the human spirit after the dissolution of the
body. Now the faith in the immortality of the soul or, to
speak more correctly, in the continued existence of conscious
human personality after death, is, as I remarked before, exceedingly
common among men at all levels of intellectual
evolution from the lowest upwards; certainly it is not
peculiar to adherents of the higher religions, but is held as
an unquestionable truth by at least the great majority of
savage and barbarous peoples as to whose ideas we possess
accurate information; indeed it might be hard to point to
any single tribe of men, however savage, of whom we could
say with certainty that the faith is totally wanting among
them.

The question of immortality is a fundamental problem of
natural theology in the wider sense.

Hence if we are to explain the deification of dead men,
we must first explain the widespread belief in immortality;
[pg 26]
we must answer the question, how does it happen that men
in all countries and at all stages of ignorance or knowledge
so commonly suppose that when they die their consciousness
will still persist for an indefinite time after the decay of the
body? To answer that question is one of the fundamental
problems of natural theology, not indeed in the full sense
of the word theology, if we confine the term strictly to a
reasoned knowledge of a God; for the example of Buddhism
proves that a belief in the existence of the human soul after
death is quite compatible with disbelief in a deity. But if
we may use, as I think we may, the phrase natural theology
in an extended sense to cover theories which, though they
do not in themselves affirm the existence of a God, nevertheless
appear to be one of the deepest and most fruitful
sources of the belief in his reality, then we may legitimately
say that the doctrine of human immortality does fall within
the scope of natural theology. What then is its origin?
How is it that men so commonly believe themselves to be
immortal?

If there is any natural knowledge of immortality, it must be
acquired either by intuition or experience; it is apparently not given
by intuition; hence it must be acquired, if at all, by experience.

If there is any natural knowledge of human immortality, it must be
acquired either by intuition or by experience; there is no other way.
Now whether other men from a simple contemplation of their own nature,
quite apart from reasoning, know or believe themselves intuitively to be
immortal, I cannot say; but I can say with some confidence that for
myself I have no such intuition whatever of my own immortality, and that
if I am left to the resources of my natural faculties alone, I can as
little affirm the certain or probable existence of my personality after
death as I can affirm the certain or probable existence of a personal
God. And I am bold enough to suspect that if men could analyse their own
ideas, they would generally find themselves to be in a similar
predicament as to both these profound topics. Hence I incline to lay it
down as a probable proposition that men as a rule have no intuitive
knowledge of their own immortality, and that if there is any natural
knowledge of such a thing it can only be acquired by a process of
reasoning from experience.⁴

The idea of immortality seems to have been suggested to man
both by his inward and his outward experience, notably by dreams, which
are a case of inward experience.

What then is the kind of experience from which the
theory of human immortality is deduced? Is it our experience
of the operations of our own minds? or is it our
experience of external nature? As a matter of historical
fact—and you will remember that I am treating the question
purely from the historical standpoint—men seem to have
inferred the persistence of their personality after death both
from the one kind of experience and from the other, that is,
both from the phenomena of their inner life and from the
phenomena of what we call the external world. Thus the
savage, with whose beliefs we are chiefly concerned in these
lectures, finds a very strong argument for immortality in the
phenomena of dreams, which are strictly a part of his inner
life, though in his ignorance he commonly fails to discriminate
them from what we popularly call waking realities. Hence
when the images of persons whom he knows to be dead
appear to him in a dream, he naturally infers that these
persons still exist somewhere and somehow apart from their
bodies, of the decay or destruction of which he may have
had ocular demonstration. How could he see dead people,
he asks, if they did not exist? To argue that they have
perished like their bodies is to contradict the plain evidence
of his senses; for to the savage still more than to the civilised
man seeing is believing; that he sees the dead only
in dreams does not shake his belief, since he thinks the
appearances of dreams just as real as the appearances of
his waking hours. And once he has in this way gained a
conviction that the dead survive and can help or harm him,
as they seem to do in dreams, it is natural or necessary
for him to extend the theory to the occurrences of daily
life, which, as I have said, he does not sharply distinguish
from the visions of slumber. He now explains many of
these occurrences and many of the processes of nature by
the direct interposition of the spirits of the departed; he
traces their invisible hand in many of the misfortunes and
[pg 28]
in some of the blessings which befall him; for it is a common
feature of the faith in ghosts, at least among savages, that
they are usually spiteful and mischievous, or at least testy and
petulant, more apt to injure than to benefit the survivors.
In that they resemble the personified spirits of nature,
which in the opinion of most savages appear to be generally
tricky and malignant beings, whose anger is dangerous and
whose favour is courted with fear and trembling. Thus even
without the additional assurance afforded by tales of apparitions
and spectres, primitive man may come in time to imagine
the world around him to be more or less thickly peopled,
influenced, and even dominated by a countless multitude of
spirits, among whom the shades of past generations of men
and women hold a very prominent, often apparently the
leading place. These spirits, powerful to help or harm, he
seeks either simply to avert, when he deems them purely
mischievous, or to appease and conciliate, when he supposes
them sufficiently good-natured to respond to his advances.
In some such way as this, arguing from the real but, as we
think, misinterpreted phenomena of dreams, the savage may
arrive at a doctrine of human immortality and from that at
a worship of the dead.

It has also been suggested by the resemblance of the living
to the dead, which is a case of outward experience.

This explanation of the savage faith in immortality is
neither novel nor original: on the contrary it is perhaps the
commonest and most familiar that has yet been propounded.
If it does not account for all the facts, it probably accounts
for many of them. At the same time I do not doubt that
many other inferences drawn from experiences of different
kinds have confirmed, even if they did not originally suggest,
man’s confident belief in his own immortality. To take
a single example of outward experience, the resemblances
which children often bear to deceased kinsfolk appear to
have prompted in the minds of many savages the notion
that the souls of these dead kinsfolk have been born again
in their descendants.⁵ From a few cases of resemblances so
[pg 29]
explained it would be easy to arrive at a general theory
that all living persons are animated by the souls of the dead;
in other words, that the human spirit survives death for an
indefinite period, if not for eternity, during which it undergoes
a series of rebirths or reincarnations. However it has been
arrived at, this doctrine of the transmigration or reincarnation
of the soul is found among many tribes of savages; and from
what we know on the subject we seem to be justified in conjecturing
that at certain stages of mental and social evolution
the belief in metempsychosis has been far commoner and
has exercised a far deeper influence on the life and institutions
of primitive man than the actual evidence before us
at present allows us positively to affirm.

The aim of these lectures is to collect a number of facts
illustrative of the belief in immortality and of the customs based on it
among some of the lower races.

Be that as it may—and I have no wish to dogmatise on
so obscure a topic—it is certain that a belief in the survival
of the human personality after death and the practice of a
propitiation or worship of the dead have prevailed very
widely among mankind and have played a very important
part in the development of natural religion. While many
writers have duly recognised the high importance both of the
belief and of the worship, no one, so far as I know, has
attempted systematically to collect and arrange the facts
which illustrate the prevalence of this particular type of
religion among the various races of mankind. A large body
of evidence lies to hand in the voluminous and rapidly
increasing literature of ethnology; but it is dispersed over
an enormous number of printed books and papers, to say
nothing of the materials which still remain buried either in
manuscript or in the minds of men who possess the requisite
knowledge but have not yet committed it to writing. To
draw all those stores of information together and digest them
into a single treatise would be a herculean labour, from which
even the most industrious researcher into the dusty annals
of the human past might shrink dismayed. Certainly I
shall make no attempt to perform such a feat within the
narrow compass of these lectures. But it seems to me that
I may make a useful, if a humble, contribution to the history
[pg 30]
of religion by selecting a portion of the evidence and submitting
it to my hearers. For that purpose, instead of
accumulating a mass of facts from all the various races of
mankind and then comparing them together, I prefer to limit
myself to a few races and to deal with each of them
separately, beginning with the lowest savages, about whom
we possess accurate information, and gradually ascending to
peoples who stand higher in the scale of culture. In short
the method of treatment which I shall adopt will be the
descriptive rather than the comparative. I shall not
absolutely refrain from instituting comparisons between the
customs and beliefs of different races, but for the most part
I shall content myself with describing the customs and
beliefs of each race separately without reference to those of
others. Each of the two methods, the comparative and the
descriptive, has its peculiar advantages and disadvantages,
and in my published writings I have followed now the one
method and now the other. The comparative method is
unquestionably the more attractive and stimulating, but it
cannot be adopted without a good deal of more or less
conscious theorising, since every comparison implicitly
involves a theory. If we desire to exclude theories and
merely accumulate facts for the use of science, the descriptive
method is undoubtedly the better adapted for the
arrangement of our materials: it may not stimulate enquiry
so powerfully, but it lays a more solid foundation on which
future enquirers may build. It is as a collection of facts
illustrative of the belief in immortality and of all the
momentous consequences which have flowed from that belief,
that I desire the following lectures to be regarded. They
are intended to serve simply as a document of religious
history; they make no pretence to discuss philosophically
the truth of the beliefs and the morality of the practices
which will be passed under review. If any inferences can
indeed be drawn from the facts to the truth or falsehood of
the beliefs and to the moral worth or worthlessness of the
practices, I prefer to leave it to others more competent than
myself to draw them. My sight is not keen enough, my
hand is not steady enough to load the scales and hold the
balance in so difficult and delicate an enquiry.

Footnote 1: (return)

Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, ch. i., p. 31 (Popular Edition,
London, 1893).

Footnote 2: (return)

For a single instance see L. Sternberg, “Die Religion der
Giljaken,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, viii. (1905) pp. 462
sqq., where the writer tells us that the Gilyaks have boundless
faith in the supernatural power of their shamans, and that the shamans
are nearly always persons who suffer from hysteria in one form or
another.

Footnote 3: (return)

As to the widespread belief that flint weapons are
thunderbolts see Sir E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History
of Mankind, Third Edition (London, 1878), pp. 223-227; Chr.
Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore
(Cambridge, 1911); W. W. Skeat “Snakestones and Thunderbolts,”
Folk-lore, xxiii. (1912) pp. 60 sqq.; and the references
in The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 374.

Footnote 4: (return)

Wordsworth, who argues strongly, almost passionately, for
“the consciousness of a principle of Immortality in the human soul,”
admits that “the sense of Immortality, if not a coexistent and twin
birth with Reason, is among the earliest of her offspring.” See his
Essay upon Epitaphs, appended to The Excursion
(Poetical Works, London, 1832, vol. iv. pp. 336, 338). This
somewhat hesitating admission of the inferential nature of the belief in
immortality carries all the more weight because it is made by so warm an
advocate of human immortality.

Footnote 5: (return)

For instance, the Kagoro of Northern Nigeria believe that
“a spirit may transmigrate into the body of a descendant born
afterwards, male or female; in fact, this is common, as is proved by the
likeness of children to their parents or grand-parents, and it is lucky,
for the ghost has returned, and has no longer any power to frighten the
relatives until the new body dies, and it is free again” (Major A. J. N.
Tremearne, “Notes on some Nigerian Head-hunters,” Journal of the R.
Anthropological Institute, xlii. (1912) p. 159). Compare Taboo
and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 88 sq.; The Dying God,
p. 287 (p. 288, Second Impression).

LECTURE II

THE SAVAGE CONCEPTION OF DEATH

The subject of these lectures is the belief in immortality
and the worship of the dead.

Last day I explained the subject of which I propose to
treat and the method which I intend to follow in these
lectures. I shall describe the belief in immortality, or rather
in the continued existence of the human soul after death, as
that belief is found among certain of the lower races, and I
shall give some account of the religion which has been
based upon it. That religion is in brief a propitiation or
worship of the human dead, who according to the degree of
power ascribed to them by the living are supposed to vary
in dignity from the humble rank of a mere common ghost
up to the proud position of deity. The elements of such a
worship appear to exist among all races of men, though in
some they have been much more highly developed than
in others.

Preliminary account of savage beliefs concerning the nature
and origin of death.

But before I address myself to the description of particular
races, I wish in this and the following lecture to give you
some general account of the beliefs of savages concerning
the nature and origin of death. The problem of death has
very naturally exercised the minds of men in all ages.
Unlike so many problems which interest only a few solitary
thinkers this one concerns us all alike, since simpletons as
well as sages must die, and even the most heedless and
feather-brained can hardly help sometimes asking themselves
what comes after death. The question is therefore
thrust in a practical, indeed importunate form on our attention;
and we need not wonder that in the long history of
human speculation some of the highest intellects should have
occupied themselves with it and sought to find an answer
[pg 32]
to the riddle. Some of their solutions of the problem,
though dressed out in all the beauty of exquisite language
and poetic imagery, singularly resemble the rude guesses of
savages. So little, it would seem, do the natural powers
even of the greatest minds avail to pierce the thick veil that
hides the end of life.

The problem of death is one of universal interest.

In saying that the problem is thrust home upon us
all, I do not mean to imply that all men are constantly
or even often engaged in meditating on the nature and origin
of death. Far from it. Few people trouble themselves about
that or any other purely abstract question: the common man
would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he
wants to know, what we all want to know, is whether death
is the end of all things for the individual, whether our conscious
personality perishes with the body or survives it for a
time or for eternity. That is the enigma propounded to
every human being who has been born into the world: that
is the door at which so many enquirers have knocked in
vain. Stated in this limited form the problem has indeed
been of universal interest: there is no race of men known
to us which has not pondered the mystery and arrived at
some conclusions to which it more or less confidently
adheres. Not that all races have paid an equal attention
to it. On some it has weighed much more heavily than on
others. While some races, like some individuals, take death
almost lightly, and are too busy with the certainties of the
present world to pay much heed to the uncertainties of a
world to come, the minds of others have dwelt on the
prospect of a life beyond the grave till the thought of it
has risen with them to a passion, almost to an obsession,
and has begotten a contempt for the fleeting joys of this
ephemeral existence by comparison with the hoped-for bliss
of an eternal existence hereafter. To the sceptic, examining
the evidence for immortality by the cold light of reason, such
peoples and such individuals may seem to sacrifice the substance
for the shadow: to adopt a homely comparison, they
are like the dog in the fable who dropped the real leg of
mutton, from his mouth in order to snap at its reflection in
the water. Be that as it may, where such beliefs and hopes
are entertained in full force, the whole activity of the mind
[pg 33]
and the whole energy of the body are apt to be devoted to
a preparation for a blissful or at all events an untroubled
eternity, and life becomes, in the language of Plato, a meditation
or practising of death. This excessive preoccupation
with a problematic future has been a fruitful source of the
most fatal aberrations both for nations and individuals. In
pursuit of these visionary aims the few short years of life
have been frittered away: wealth has been squandered:
blood has been poured out in torrents: the natural affections
have been stifled; and the cheerful serenity of reason
has been exchanged for the melancholy gloom of madness.

The belief in immortality general among mankind.

The question whether our conscious personality survives
after death has been answered by almost all races of men in
the affirmative. On this point sceptical or agnostic peoples
are nearly, if not wholly, unknown. Accordingly if abstract
truth could be determined, like the gravest issues of national
policy, by a show of hands or a counting of heads, the
doctrine of human immortality, or at least of a life after
death, would deserve to rank among the most firmly
established of truths; for were the question put to the vote
of the whole of mankind, there can be no doubt that
the ayes would have it by an overwhelming majority.
The few dissenters would be overborne; their voices would
be drowned in the general roar. For dissenters there have
been even among savages. The Tongans, for example,
thought that only the souls of noblemen are saved, the rest
perish with their bodies.⁶ However, this aristocratic view
has never been popular, and is not likely to find favour in
our democratic age.

Belief of many savages that they would never die if their
lives were not cut short by sorcery. Belief of the Abipones.

But many savage races not only believe in a life after
death; they are even of opinion that they would never
die at all if it were not for the maleficent arts of sorcerers
who cut the vital thread prematurely short. In other
[pg 34]
words, they disbelieve in what we call a natural death; they
think that all men are naturally immortal in this life, and
that every death which takes place is in fact a violent
death inflicted by the hand of a human enemy, though in
many cases the foe is invisible and works his fell purpose not
by a sword or a spear but by magic. Thus the Abipones,
a now extinct tribe of horse Indians in Paraguay, used
to allege that they would be immortal and that none
of them would ever die if only the Spaniards and the
sorcerers could be banished from America; for they were
in the habit of attributing every death, whatever its
cause, either to the baleful arts of sorcerers or to the
firearms of the Spaniards. Even if a man died riddled
with wounds, with his bones smashed, or through the
exhaustion of old age, these Indians would all deny that
the wounds or old age was the cause of his death; they
firmly believed that the death was brought about by magic,
and they would make careful enquiries to discover the sorcerer
who had cast the fatal spell on their comrade. The relations
of the deceased would move every stone to detect and punish
the culprit; and they imagined that they could do this by
cutting out the heart and tongue of the dead man and
throwing them to a dog to be devoured. They thought that
this in some way killed the wicked magician who had killed
their friend. For example, it happened that in a squabble
between two men about a horse a third man who tried to
make peace between the disputants was mortally wounded
by their spears and died in a few days. To us it might
seem obvious that the peacemaker was killed by the spear-wounds
which he had received, but none of the Abipones
would admit such a thing for a moment. They stoutly
affirmed that their comrade had been done to death by the
magical arts of some person unknown, and their suspicions
fell on a certain old woman, known to be a witch, to whom
the deceased had lately refused to give a water-melon, and
who out of spite had killed him by her spells, though he appeared
to the European eye to have died of a spear-wound.⁷

Belief of the Araucanians.

Similarly the warlike Araucanians of Chili are said to
disbelieve in natural death. Even if a man dies peaceably
at the age of a hundred, they still think that he has been
bewitched by an enemy. A diviner or medicine-man is
consulted in order to discover the culprit. Some of these
wizards enjoy a great reputation and the Indians will send
a hundred miles or more to get the opinion of an eminent
member of the profession. In such cases they submit to him
some of the remains of the dead man, for example, his eyebrows,
his nails, his tongue, or the soles of his feet, and from
an examination of these relics the man of skill pronounces
on the author of the death. The person whom he accuses
is hunted down and killed, sometimes by fire, amid the yells
of an enraged crowd.⁸

Belief of the Bakaïri.

When the eminent German anthropologist was questioning
a Bakaïri Indian of Brazil as to the language of his
tribe, he gave the sentence, “Every man must die” to be
translated into the Bakaïri language. To his astonishment,
the Indian remained long silent. The same long pause
always occurred when an abstract proposition, with which
he was unfamiliar, was put before the Indian for translation
into his native tongue. On the present occasion the
enquirer learned that the Indian has no idea of necessity in
the abstract, and in particular he has no conception at all
of the necessity of death. The cause of death, in his opinion,
is invariably an ill turn done by somebody to the deceased.
If there were only good men in the world, he thinks that
there would be neither sickness nor death. He knows
nothing about a natural end of the vital process; he believes
that all sickness and disease are the effects of witchcraft.⁹

Belief of the Indians of Guiana in sorcery as the cause of
sickness and death.

Speaking of the Indians of Guiana, an English missionary,
who knew them well, says that the worst
feature in their character is their proneness to blood
revenge, “by which a succession of retaliatory murders may
be kept up for a long time. It is closely connected with
[pg 36]
their system of sorcery, which we shall presently consider.
A person dies,—and it is supposed that an enemy has
secured the agency of an evil spirit to compass his death.
Some sorcerer, employed by the friends of the deceased for
that purpose, pretends by his incantations to discover the
guilty individual or family, or at any rate to indicate the
quarter where they dwell. A near relative of the deceased
is then charged with the work of vengeance. He becomes
a kanaima, or is supposed to be possessed by the destroying
spirit so called, and has to live apart, according to strict
rule, and submit to many privations, until the deed of blood
be accomplished. If the supposed offender cannot be slain,
some innocent member of his family—man, woman, or little
child—must suffer instead.”¹⁰ The same writer tells us
that these Indians of Guiana attribute sickness and death
directly to the agency of certain evil spirits called yauhahu,
who delight in inflicting miseries upon mankind. Pain, in
the language of the Arawaks (one of the best-known tribes
of Guiana), is called yauhahu simaira or “the evil spirit’s
arrow.”¹¹ It is these evil spirits whom wicked sorcerers
employ to accomplish their fell purpose. Thus while the
demon is the direct cause of sickness and death, the sorcerer
who uses him as his tool is the indirect cause. The demon
is thought to do his work by inserting some alien substance
into the body of the sufferer, and a medicine-man is
employed to extract it by chanting an invocation to the
maleficent spirit, shaking his rattle, and sucking the part of
the patient’s frame in which the cause of the malady is
imagined to reside. “After many ceremonies he will produce
from his mouth some strange substance, such as a
thorn or gravel-stone, a fish-bone or bird’s claw, a snake’s
tooth, or a piece of wire, which some malicious yauhahu is
supposed to have inserted in the affected part. As soon as
the patient fancies himself rid of this cause of his illness his
recovery is generally rapid, and the fame of the sorcerer
greatly increased. Should death, however, ensue, the blame
is laid upon the evil spirit whose power and malignity have
prevailed over the counteracting charms. Some rival sorcerer
[pg 37]
will at times come in for a share of the blame, whom the
sufferer has unhappily made his enemy, and who is supposed
to have employed the yauhahu in destroying him. The
sorcerers being supposed to have the power of causing, as
well as of curing diseases, are much dreaded by the common
people, who never wilfully offend them. So deeply rooted
in the Indian’s bosom is this belief concerning the origin of
diseases, that they have little idea of sickness arising from
other causes. Death may arise from a wound or a contusion,
or be brought on by want of food, but in other cases it
is the work of the yauhahu“¹² or evil spirit.

Some deaths attributed to sorcery and others to evil spirits:
practical consequence of this distinction.

In this account it is to be observed that while all
natural deaths from sickness and disease are attributed to
the direct action of evil spirits, only some of them are
attributed to the indirect action of sorcerers. The practical
consequences of this theoretical distinction are very important.
For whereas death by sorcery must, in the
opinion of savages, be avenged by killing the supposed
sorcerer, death by the action of a demon cannot be
so avenged; for how are you to get at the demon?
Hence, while every death by sorcery involves, theoretically
at least, another death by violence, death by a
demon involves no such practical consequence. So far,
therefore, the faith in sorcery is far more murderous than
the faith in demons. This practical distinction is clearly
recognised by these Indians of Guiana; for another writer,
who laboured among them as a missionary, tells us
that when a person dies a natural death, the medicine-man
is called upon to decide whether he perished through
the agency of a demon or the agency of a sorcerer. If he
decides that the deceased died through the malice of an evil
spirit, the body is quietly buried, and no more is thought
of the matter. But if the wizard declares that the cause of
death was sorcery, the corpse is closely inspected, and if a
blue mark is discovered, it is pointed out as the spot where
the invisible poisoned arrow, discharged by the sorcerer,
entered the man. The next thing is to detect the culprit.
For this purpose a pot containing a decoction of leaves
is set to boil on a fire. When it begins to boil over, the
[pg 38]
side on which the scum first falls is the quarter in which
the supposed murderer is to be sought. A consultation
is then held: the guilt is laid on some individual, and
one of the nearest relations of the deceased is charged with
the duty of finding and killing him. If the imaginary
culprit cannot be found, any other member of his family
may be slain in his stead. “It is not difficult to conceive,”
adds the writer, “how, under such circumstances, no man’s
life is secure; whilst these by no means unfrequent murders
must greatly tend to diminish the number of the natives.”¹³

Among the Indians of Guiana death is oftener attributed to
sorcery than to demons.

However, it would seem that among the Indians of
Guiana sickness and death are oftener ascribed to the agency
of sorcerers than to the agency of demons acting alone. For
another high authority on these Indians, Sir Everard F. im
Thurn, tells us that “every death, every illness, is regarded
not as the result of natural law, but as the work of a kenaima”
or sorcerer. “Often indeed,” he adds, “the survivors or the
relatives of the invalid do not know to whom to attribute
the deed, which therefore perforce remains unpunished; but
often, again, there is real or fancied reason to fix on some
one as the kenaima, and then the nearest relative of the
injured individual devotes himself to retaliate. Strange
ceremonies are sometimes observed in order to discover the
secret kenaima. Richard Schomburgk describes a striking
instance of this. A Macusi boy had died a natural death,
and his relatives endeavoured to discover the quarter to
which the kenaima who was supposed to have slain him
belonged. Raising a terrible and monotonous dirge, they
carried the body to an open piece of ground, and there
formed a circle round it, while the father, cutting from the
corpse both the thumbs and little fingers, both the great and
the little toes, and a piece of each heel, threw these pieces into
a new pot, which had been filled with water. A fire was
kindled, and on this the pot was placed. When the water
began to boil, according to the side on which one of the
pieces was first thrown out from the pot by the bubbling of
the water, in that direction would the kenaima be. In thus
looking round to see who did the deed, the Indian thinks it
[pg 39]
by no means necessary to fix on anyone who has been with
or near the injured man. The kenaima is supposed to have
done the deed, not necessarily in person, but probably in
spirit.”¹⁴ For these Indians believe that each individual man
has a body and a spirit within it, and that sorcerers can
despatch their spirits out of their bodies to harm people at a
distance. It is not always in an invisible form that these spirits
of sorcerers are supposed to roam on their errands of mischief.
The wizard can put his spirit into the shape of an animal,
such as a jaguar, a serpent, a sting-ray, a bird, an insect,
or anything else he pleases. Hence when an Indian is
attacked by a wild beast, he thinks that his real foe is not
the animal, but the sorcerer who has transformed himself
into it. Curiously enough they look upon some small harmless
birds in the same light. One little bird, in particular,
which flits across the savannahs with a peculiar shrill whistle
at morning and evening, is regarded by the Indians with
especial fear as a transformed sorcerer. They think that
for every one of these birds that they shoot they have an
enemy the less, and they burn its little body, taking great
care that not even a single feather escapes to be blown about
by the wind. On a windy day a dozen men and women have
been seen chasing the floating feathers of these birds about
the savannah in order utterly to extinguish the imaginary
wizard. Even the foreign substance, the stick, bone, or
whatever it is, which the good medicine-man pretends to
suck from the body of the sufferer “is often, if not always,
regarded not simply as a natural body, but as the materialised
form of a hostile spirit.”¹⁵

Belief of the Tinneh Indians in sorcery as the cause of
death.

Beliefs and practices of the same general character are
reported to have formerly prevailed among the Tinneh or
Déné Indians of North-west America. When any beloved
or influential person died, nobody, we are told, would think
of attributing the death to natural causes; it was assumed
that the demise was an effect of sorcery, and the only difficulty
[pg 40]
was to ascertain the culprit. For that purpose the services
of a shaman were employed. Rigged out in all his finery
he would dance and sing, then suddenly fall down and feign
death or sleep. On awaking from the apparent trance he
would denounce the sorcerer who had killed the deceased by
his magic art, and the denunciation generally proved the
death-warrant of the accused.¹⁶

Belief of the Australian aborigines in sorcery as the cause
of death.

Again, similar beliefs and customs in regard to what we
should call natural death appear to have prevailed universally
amongst the aborigines of Australia, and to have contributed
very materially to thin the population. On this subject I
will quote the words of an observer. His remarks apply to
the Australian aborigines in general but to the tribes of
Victoria in particular. He says: “The natives are much
more numerous in some parts of Australia than they are in
others, but nowhere is the country thickly peopled; some
dire disease occasionally breaks out among the natives, and
carries off large numbers…. But there are two other
causes which, in my opinion, principally account for their
paucity of numbers. The first is that infanticide is universally
practised; the second, that a belief exists that no
one can die a natural death. Thus, if an individual of a
certain tribe dies, his relatives consider that his death has
been caused by sorcery on the part of another tribe. The
deceased’s sons, or nearest relatives, therefore start off on a
bucceening or murdering expedition. If the deceased is
buried, a fly or a beetle is put into the grave, and the
direction in which the insect wings its way when released is
the one the avengers take. If the body is burnt, the whereabouts
of the offending parties is indicated by the direction
of the smoke. The first unfortunates fallen in with are
generally watched until they encamp for the night; when
they are buried in sleep, the murderers steal quietly up until
they are within a yard or two of their victims, rush suddenly
upon and butcher them. On these occasions they always
abstract the kidney-fat, and also take off a piece of the skin
of the thigh. These are carried home as trophies, as the
American Indians take the scalp. The murderers anoint
[pg 41]
their bodies with the fat of their victims, thinking that by
that process the strength of the deceased enters into them.
Sometimes it happens that the bucceening party come suddenly
upon a man of a strange tribe in a tree hunting opossums;
he is immediately speared, and left weltering in his blood at
the foot of the tree. The relatives of the murdered man at
once proceed to retaliate; and thus a constant and never-ending
series of murders is always going on…. I do not
mean to assert that for every man that dies or is killed
another is murdered; for it often happens that the deceased
has no sons or relatives who care about avenging his death.
At other times a bucceening party will return without having
met with any one; then, again, they are sometimes repelled
by those they attack.”¹⁷

Belief of the natives of Western Australia in sorcery as a
cause of death. Beliefs of the tribes of Victoria and South Australia.

Again, speaking of the tribes of Western Australia,
Sir George Grey tells us that “the natives do not
allow that there is such a thing as a death from natural
causes; they believe, that were it not for murderers or
the malignity of sorcerers, they might live for ever; hence,
when a native dies from the effect of an accident, or
from some natural cause, they use a variety of superstitious
ceremonies, to ascertain in what direction the sorcerer
lives, whose evil practices have brought about the death
of their relative; this point being satisfactorily settled
by friendly sorcerers, they then attach the crime to some
individual, and the funeral obsequies are scarcely concluded,
ere they start to revenge their supposed wrongs.”¹⁸
Again, speaking of the Watch-an-die tribe of Western
Australia, another writer tells us that they “possess the
comfortable assurance that nearly all diseases, and consequently
deaths, are caused by the enchantments of hostile
tribes, and that were it not for the malevolence of their
enemies they would (with a few exceptions) live for ever.
Consequently, on the first approach of sickness their first
endeavour is to ascertain whether the boollia [magic] of their
own tribe is not sufficiently potent to counteract that of
[pg 42]
their foes. Should the patient recover, they are, of course,
proud of the superiority of their enchantment over that of
their enemies: but should the boollia [magical influence]
within the sick man prove stronger than their own, as there
is no help for it, he must die, the utmost they can do in
this case is to revenge his death.”¹⁹ But the same writer
qualifies this general statement as follows: “It is not
true,” he says, “that the New Hollanders impute all
natural deaths to the boollia [magic] of inimical tribes,
for in most cases of persons wasting visibly away before
death, they do not entertain the notion. It is chiefly in
cases of sudden death, or when the body of the deceased
is fat and in good condition, that this belief prevails, and it
is only in such contingencies that it becomes an imperative
duty to have revenge.”²⁰ Similarly, speaking of the tribes
of Victoria in the early days of European settlement among
them, the experienced observer Mr. James Dawson says that
“natural deaths are generally—but not always—attributed
to the malevolence and the spells of an enemy belonging to
another tribe.”²¹ Again, with regard to the Encounter Bay
tribe of South Australia we read that “there are but few
diseases which they regard as the consequences of natural
causes; in general they consider them the effects of enchantment,
and produced by sorcerers.”²² Similarly of the Port
Lincoln tribes in South Australia it is recorded that “in all
cases of death that do not arise from old age, wounds, or
other equally palpable causes, the natives suspect that unfair
means have been practised; and even where the cause
of death is sufficiently plain, they sometimes will not content
themselves with it, but have recourse to an imaginary
one, as the following case will prove:—A woman had
been bitten by a black snake, across the thumb, in clearing
out a well; she began to swell directly, and was a corpse
in twenty-four hours; yet, another woman who had been
[pg 43]
present when the accident occurred, stated that the deceased
had named a certain native as having caused her death.
Upon this statement, which was in their opinion corroborated
by the circumstance that the snake had drawn no blood
from the deceased, her husband and other friends had a fight
with the accused party and his friends; a reconciliation,
however, took place afterwards, and it was admitted on the
part of the aggressors that they had been in error with
regard to the guilty individual; but nowise more satisfied
as to the bite of the snake being the true cause of the
woman’s death, another party was now suddenly discovered
to be the real offender, and accordingly war was made upon
him and his partisans, till at last the matter was dropped
and forgotten. From this case, as well as from frequent
occurrences of a similar nature, it appears evident that thirst
for revenge has quite as great a share in these foul accusations
as superstition.”²³

Other testimonies as to the belief of the natives of South
Australia and Victoria.

However, other experienced observers of the Australian
aborigines admit no such limitations and exceptions
to the native theory that death is an effect of sorcery.
Thus in regard to the Narrinyeri tribe of South Australia
the Rev. George Taplin, who knew them intimately for
years, says that “no native regards death as natural, but
always as the result of sorcery.”²⁴ Again, to quote Mr. R.
Brough Smyth, who has collected much information on the
tribes of Victoria: “Mr. Daniel Bunce, an intelligent observer,
and a gentleman well acquainted with the habits of
the blacks, says that no tribe that he has ever met with
believes in the possibility of a man dying a natural death.
If a man is taken ill, it is at once assumed that some
member of a hostile tribe has stolen some of his hair. This
is quite enough to cause serious illness. If the man continues
sick and gets worse, it is assumed that the hair has been
burnt by his enemy. Such an act, they say, is sufficient to
imperil his life. If the man dies, it is assumed that the
thief has choked his victim and taken away his kidney-fat.
[pg 44]
When the grave is being dug, one or more of the older men—generally
doctors or conjurors (Buk-na-look)—stand by
and attentively watch the laborers; and if an insect is
thrown out of the ground, these old men observe the
direction which it takes, and having determined the line,
two of the young men, relations of the deceased, are despatched
in the path indicated, with instructions to kill the
first native they meet, who they are assured and believe is
the person directly chargeable with the crime of causing the
death of their relative. Mr. John Green says that the men
of the Yarra tribe firmly believe that no one ever dies a
natural death. A man or a woman dies because of the
wicked arts practised by some member of a hostile tribe;
and they discover the direction in which to search for the
slayer by the movements of a lizard which is seen immediately
after the corpse is interred.”²⁵ Again, speaking of the
aborigines of Victoria, another writer observes: “All deaths
from natural causes are attributed to the machinations of
enemies, who are supposed to have sought for and burned
the excrement of the intended victim, which, according to
the general belief, causes a gradual wasting away. The
relatives, therefore, watch the struggling feet of the dying
person, as they point in the direction whence the injury is
thought to come, and serve as a guide to the spot where it
should be avenged. This is the duty of the nearest male
relative; should he fail in its execution, it will ever be to
him a reproach, although other relatives may have avenged
the death. If the deceased were a chief, then the duty
devolves upon the tribe. Chosen men are sent in the
direction indicated, who kill the first persons they meet,
whether men, women, or children; and the more lives that
are sacrificed, the greater is the honour to the dead.”²⁶
Again, in his account of the Kurnai tribe of Victoria the
late Dr. A. W. Howitt remarks: “It is not difficult to see
how, among savages, who have no knowledge of the real
causes of diseases which are the common lot of humanity,
[pg 45]
the very suspicion even of such a thing as death from
disease should be unknown. Death by accident they can
imagine; death by violence they can imagine; but I
question if they can, in their savage condition, imagine
death by mere disease. Rheumatism is believed to be
produced by the machinations of some enemy. Seeing a
Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter?
He said, ‘Some fellow has put bottle in my foot.’ I asked
him to let me see it. I found he was probably suffering
from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy
must have found his foot track, and have buried in it a
piece of broken bottle. The magic influence, he believed,
caused it to enter his foot…. Phthisis, pneumonia, bowel
complaints, and insanity are supposed to be produced by an
evil spirit—Brewin—’who is like the wind,’ and who, entering
his victims, can only be expelled by suitable incantations…. Thus
the belief arises that death occurs only from
accident, open violence, or secret magic; and, naturally, that
the latter can only be met by counter-charms.”²⁷

Belief of the aborigines of New South Wales in sorcery as the
cause of sickness and death.

The beliefs and practices of the aborigines of New
South Wales in respect of death were similar. Thus we
are told by a well-informed writer that “the natives do not
believe in death from natural causes; therefore all sickness
is attributed to the agency of sorcery, and counter charms
are used to destroy its effect…. As a man’s death is
never supposed to have occurred naturally, except as the
result of accident, or from a wound in battle, the first thing
to be done when a death occurs is to endeavour to find out
the person whose spells have brought about the calamity.
In the Wathi-Wathi tribe the corpse is asked by each
relative in succession to signify by some sign the person
who has caused his death. Not receiving an answer, they
watch in which direction a bird flies, after having passed
over the deceased. This is considered an indication that
the sorcerer is to be found in that direction. Sometimes
the nearest relative sleeps with his head on the corpse, which
causes him, they think, to dream of the murderer. There is,
however, a good deal of uncertainty about the proceedings,
[pg 46]
which seldom result in more than a great display of wrath,
and of vowing of vengeance against some member of a
neighbouring tribe. Unfortunately this is not always the
case, the man who is supposed to have exercised the death-spell
being sometimes waylaid and murdered in a most cruel
manner.”²⁸ With regard to the great Kamilaroi tribe of
New South Wales we read that “in some parts of the
country a belief prevails that death, through disease, is, in
many, if not in all cases, the result of an enemy’s malice.
It is a common saying, when illness or death comes, that
some one has thrown his belt (boor) at the victim. There
are various modes of fixing upon the murderer. One is to
let an insect fly from the body of the deceased and see
towards whom it goes. The person thus singled out is
doomed.”²⁹

Belief of the aborigines of Central Australia in sorcery as
the cause of death.

Speaking of the tribes of Central Australia, Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen observe that “in the matter of morality
their code differs radically from ours, but it cannot be denied
that their conduct is governed by it, and that any known
breaches are dealt with both surely and severely. In very
many cases there takes place what the white man, not
seeing beneath the surface, not unnaturally describes as
secret murder, but, in reality, revolting though such slaughter
may be to our minds at the present day, it is simply exactly
on a par with the treatment accorded to witches not so very
long ago in European countries. Every case of such secret
murder, when one or more men stealthily stalk their prey
with the object of killing him, is in reality the exacting of
a life for a life, the accused person being indicated by the
so-called medicine-man as one who has brought about the
death of another man by magic, and whose life must therefore
be forfeited. It need hardly be pointed out what a
potent element this custom has been in keeping down the
numbers of the tribe; no such thing as natural death is
realised by the native; a man who dies has of necessity
been killed by some other man, or perhaps even by a
woman, and sooner or later that man or woman will be
[pg 47]
attacked. In the normal condition of the tribe every death
meant the killing of another individual.”³⁰

Belief of the natives of the Torres Straits Islands and New
Guinea in sorcery as the cause of death.

Passing from Australia to other savage lands we learn
that according to the belief of the Torres Straits Islanders
all sickness and death were due to sorcery.³¹ The natives of
Mowat or Mawatta in British New Guinea “do not believe
in a natural death, but attribute even the decease of an old
man to the agency of some enemy known or unknown.”³²
In the opinion of the tribes about Hood Peninsula in British
New Guinea no one dies a natural death. Every such death
is caused by the evil magic either of a living sorcerer or of a
dead relation.³³ Of the Roro-speaking tribes of British New
Guinea Dr. Seligmann writes that “except in the case of old
folk, death is not admitted to occur without some obvious
cause such as a spear-thrust. Therefore when vigorous and
active members of the community die, it becomes necessary
to explain their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed to
be produced by sorcery. Indeed, as far as I have been able to
ascertain, the Papuasian of this district regards the existence
of sorcery, not, as has been alleged, as a particularly terrifying
and horrible affair, but as a necessary and inevitable
condition of existence in the world as he knows it.”³⁴
Amongst the Yabim of German New Guinea “every case
of death, even though it should happen accidentally, as by
the fall of a tree or the bite of a shark, is laid at the door of
the sorcerers. They are blamed even for the death of a child.
If it is said that a little child never hurt anybody and therefore
cannot have an enemy, the reply is that the intention
was to injure the mother, and that the malady had been
transferred to the infant through its mother’s milk.”³⁵

Belief of the Melanesians in sorcery as the cause of sickness
and death.

Again, in the island of Malo, one of the New Hebrides,
a Catholic missionary reports that according to a belief
deeply implanted in the native mind every disease is the
effect of witchcraft, and that nobody dies a natural death
but only as a consequence of violence, poison, or sorcery.³⁶
Similarly in New Georgia, one of the Solomon Islands, when a
person is sick, the natives think that he must be bewitched by
a man or woman, for in their opinion nobody can be sick or
die unless he is bewitched; what we call natural sickness
and death are impossible. In case of illness suspicion falls
on some one who is supposed to have buried a charmed
object with intent to injure the sufferer.³⁷ Of the Melanesians
who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle Peninsula in New
Britain it is said that all deaths by sickness or disease are
attributed by them to the witchcraft of a sorcerer, and a
diviner is called in to ascertain the culprit who by his evil
magic has destroyed their friends.³⁸ “Amongst the Melanesians
few, if any, are believed to die from natural causes
only; if they are not killed in war, they are supposed to
die from the effects of witchcraft or magic. Whenever any
one was sick, his friends made anxious inquiries as to the
person who had bewitched (agara’d) him. Some one would
generally be found to admit that he had buried some portion
of food or something belonging to the sick man, which had
caused his illness. The friends would pay him to dig it up,
and after that the patient would generally get well. If,
however, he did not recover, it was assumed that some other
person had also agara’d him.”³⁹

The belief of the Malagasy in sorcery as a cause of death.

Speaking of the Malagasy a Catholic missionary tells us
that in Madagascar nobody dies a natural death. With the
[pg 49]
possible exception of centenarians everybody is supposed to
die the victim of the sorcerer’s diabolic art. If a relation of
yours dies, the people comfort you by saying, “Cursed be
the sorcerer who caused his death!” If your horse falls
down a precipice and breaks its back, the accident has
been caused by the malicious look of a sorcerer. If your
dog dies of hydrophobia or your horse of a carbuncle, the
cause is still the same. If you catch a fever in a district
where malaria abounds, the malady is still ascribed to the
art of the sorcerer, who has insinuated some deadly substances
into your body.⁴⁰ Again, speaking of the Sakalava,
a tribe in Madagascar, an eminent French authority on the
island observes: “They have such a faith in the power of
talismans that they even ascribe to them the power of killing
their enemies. When they speak of poisoning, they do not
allude, as many Europeans wrongly suppose, to death by
vegetable or mineral poisons; the reference is to charms or
spells. They often throw under the bed of an enemy an
ahouli [talisman], praying it to kill him, and they are persuaded
that sooner or later their wish will be accomplished.
I have often been present at bloody vendettas which had no
other origin but this. The Sakalava think that a great part
of the population dies of poison in this way. In their
opinion, only old people who have attained the extreme
limits of human longevity die a natural death.”⁴¹

Belief of African tribes in sorcery as the cause of sickness
and death.

In Africa similar beliefs are widely spread and lead,
as elsewhere, to fatal consequences. Thus the Kagoro
of Northern Nigeria refuse to believe in death from
natural causes; all illnesses and deaths, in their opinion,
are brought about by black magic, however old and
decrepit the deceased may have been. They explain sickness
by saying that a man’s soul wanders from his body
in sleep and may then be caught, detained, and even beaten
with a stick by some evil-wisher; whenever that happens,
the man naturally falls ill. Sometimes an enemy will
[pg 50]
abstract the patient’s liver by magic and carry it away to a
cave in a sacred grove, where he will devour it in company
with other wicked sorcerers. A witch-doctor is called in to
detect the culprit, and whomever he denounces is shut up in
a room, where a fire is kindled and pepper thrown into it;
and there he is kept in the fumes of the burning pepper till
he confesses his guilt and returns the stolen liver, upon
which of course the sick man recovers. But should the
patient die, the miscreant who did him to death by kidnapping
his soul or his liver will be sold as a slave or
choked.⁴² In like manner the Bakerewe, who inhabit the
largest island in the Victoria Nyanza lake, believe that all
deaths and all ailments, however trivial, are the effect of
witchcraft; and the person, generally an old woman, whom
the witch-doctor accuses of having cast the spell on the
patient is tied up, severely beaten, or stabbed to death
on the spot.⁴³ Again, we are told that “the peoples
of the Congo do not believe in a natural death, not
even when it happens through drowning or any other
accident. Whoever dies is the victim of witchcraft or of a
spell. His soul has been eaten. He must be avenged by
the punishment of the person who has committed the crime.”
Accordingly when a death has taken place, the medicine-man
is sent for to discover the criminal. He pretends to be
possessed by a spirit and in this state he names the wretch
who has caused the death by sorcery. The accused has to
submit to the poison ordeal by drinking a decoction of the
red bark of the Erythrophloeum guiniense. If he vomits up
the poison, he is innocent; but if he fails to do so, the
infuriated crowd rushes on him and despatches him with
knives and clubs. The family of the supposed culprit has
moreover to pay an indemnity to the family of the supposed
victim.⁴⁴ “Death, in the opinion of the natives, is never due
to a natural cause. It is always the result either of a crime
[pg 51]
or of sorcery, and is followed by the poison ordeal, which has
to be undergone by an innocent person whom the fetish-man
accuses from selfish motives.”⁴⁵

Effect of such beliefs in thinning the population by causing
multitudes to die for the imaginary crime of sorcery.

Evidence of the same sort could be multiplied for West
Africa, where the fear of sorcery is rampant.⁴⁶ But without
going into further details, I wish to point out the disastrous
effects which here, as elsewhere, this theory of death has
produced upon the population. For when a death from
natural causes takes place, the author of the death being
of course unknown, suspicion often falls on a number of
people, all of whom are obliged to submit to the poison
ordeal in order to prove their innocence, with the result
that some or possibly all of them perish. A very experienced
American missionary in West Africa, the Rev.
R. H. Nassau, the friend of the late Miss Mary H. Kingsley,
tells us that for every person who dies a natural death at
least one, and often ten or more have been executed on an
accusation of witchcraft.⁴⁷ Andrew Battel, a native of Essex,
who lived in Angola for many years at the end of the
sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, informs
us that “in this country none on any account dieth, but they
kill another for him: for they believe they die not their own
natural death, but that some other has bewitched them to
death. And all those are brought in by the friends of the
dead whom they suspect; so that there many times come
five hundred men and women to take the drink, made of the
foresaid root imbando. They are brought all to the high-street
[pg 52]
or market-place, and there the master of the imbando
sits with his water, and gives every one a cup of water by
one measure; and they are commanded to walk in a certain
place till they make water, and then they are free. But he
that cannot urine presently falls down, and all the people,
great and small, fall upon him with their knives, and beat
and cut him into pieces. But I think the witch that gives
the water is partial, and gives to him whose death is desired
the strongest water, but no man of the bye-standers can
perceive it. This is done in the town of Longo, almost every
week throughout the year.”⁴⁸ A French official tells us that
among the Neyaux of the Ivory Coast similar beliefs and
practices were visibly depopulating the country, every single
natural death causing the death of four or five persons by
the poison ordeal, which consisted in drinking the decoction
of a red bark called by the natives boduru. At the death of
a chief fifteen men and women perished in this way. The
French Government had great difficulty in suppressing the
ordeal; for the deluded natives firmly believed in the justice
of the test and therefore submitted to it willingly in the
full consciousness of their innocence.⁴⁹ In the neighbourhood
of Calabar the poison ordeal, which here consists
in drinking a decoction of a certain bean, the Physostigma
venenosum of botanists, has had similar disastrous results,
as we learn from the testimony of a missionary, the
Rev. Hugh Goldie. He tells us that the people have
firm faith in the ordeal and therefore not only accept
it readily but appeal to it, convinced that it will demonstrate
their innocence. A small tribe named Uwet in the hill-country
of Calabar almost swept itself off the face of the
earth by its constant use of the ordeal. On one occasion
the whole population drank the poison to prove themselves
pure, as they said; about half perished, “and the remnant,”
says Mr. Goldie, “still continuing their superstitious practice,
must soon become extinct”⁵⁰ These words were
[pg 53]
written a good many years ago, and it is probable that by this
time these poor fanatics have actually succeeded in exterminating
themselves. So fatal may be the practical consequences
of a purely speculative error; for it is to be
remembered that these disasters flow directly from a mistaken
theory of death.

General conclusion as to the belief in sorcery as the great
cause of death.

Much more evidence of the same kind could be adduced,
but without pursuing the theme further I think we may
lay it down as a general rule that at a certain stage
of social and intellectual evolution men have believed
themselves to be naturally immortal in this life and have
regarded death by disease or even by accident or violence
as an unnatural event which has been brought about
by sorcery and which must be avenged by the death of the
sorcerer. If that has been so, we seem bound to conclude
that a belief in magic or sorcery has had a most potent
influence in keeping down the numbers of savage tribes;
since as a rule every natural death has entailed at least one,
often several, sometimes many deaths by violence. This may
help us to understand what an immense power for evil the
world-wide faith in magic or sorcery has been among men.

But some savages have attributed death to other causes than
sorcery.

But even savages come in time to perceive that deaths
are sometimes brought about by other causes than sorcery.
We have seen that some of them admit extreme old age,
accidents, and violence as causes of death which are independent
of sorcery. The admission of these exceptions
to the general rule certainly marks a stage of intellectual
progress. I will give a few more instances of such admissions
before concluding this part of my subject.

Some savages dissect the corpse to ascertain whether death
was due to natural causes or to sorcery.

In the first place, certain savage tribes are reported to
dissect the bodies of their dead in order to ascertain from
an examination of the corpse whether the deceased died a
natural death or perished by magic. This is reported by Mr.
E. R. Smith concerning the Araucanians of Chili, who according
to other writers, as we saw,⁵¹ believe all deaths to be due
to sorcery. Mr. Smith tells us that after death the services
of the machi or medicine-man “are again required, especially
if the deceased be a person of distinction. The body
is dissected and examined. If the liver be found in a
[pg 54]
healthy state, the death is attributed to natural causes; but
if the liver prove to be inflamed, it is supposed to indicate
the machinations of some evil-intentioned persons, and it
rests with the medicine-man to discover the conspirator.
This is accomplished by much the same means that were
used to find out the nature of the disease. The gall is
extracted, put in the magic drum, and after various incantations
taken out and placed over the fire, in a pot carefully
covered; if, after subjecting the gall to a certain amount of
roasting, a stone is found in the bottom of the pot, it is
declared to be the means by which death was produced.
These stones, as well as the frogs, spiders, arrows, or whatever
else may be extracted from the sick man, are called
Huecuvu—the ‘Evil One.’ By aid of the Huecuvu the
machi [medicine-man] throws himself into a trance, in which
state he discovers and announces the person guilty of the
death, and describes the manner in which it was produced.”⁵²

Again, speaking of the Pahouins, a tribe of the Gaboon
region in French Congo, a Catholic missionary writes thus:
“It is so rare among the Pahouins that a death is considered
natural! Scarcely has the deceased given up the
ghost when the sorcerer appears on the scene. With three
cuts of the knife, one transverse and two lateral, he dissects
the breast of the corpse and turns down the skin on the
face. Then he grabbles in the breast, examines the bowels
attentively, marks the last muscular contractions, and thereupon
pronounces whether the death was natural or not.” If
he decides that the death was due to sorcery, the suspected
culprit has to submit to the poison ordeal in the usual
manner to determine his guilt or innocence.⁵³

The possibility of natural death admitted by the
Melanesians.

Another savage people who have come to admit the
possibility of merely natural death are the Melanesians of
the New Hebrides and other parts of Central Melanesia.
Amongst them “any sickness that is serious is believed to be
brought about by ghosts or spirits; common complaints such
as fever and ague are taken as coming in the course of nature.
[pg 55]
To say that savages are never ill without supposing a supernatural
cause is not true of Melanesians; they make up their
minds as the sickness comes whether it is natural or not, and
the more important the individual who is sick, the more likely
his sickness is to be ascribed to the anger of a ghost whom
he has offended, or to witchcraft. No great man would like
to be told that he was ill by natural weakness or decay. The
sickness is almost always believed to be caused by a ghost,
not by a spirit…. Generally it is to the ghosts of the
dead that sickness is ascribed in the eastern islands as well
as in the western; recourse is had to them for aid in causing
and removing sickness; and ghosts are believed to inflict
sickness not only because some offence, such as a trespass,
has been committed against them, or because one familiar
with them has sought their aid with sacrifice and spells, but
because there is a certain malignity in the feeling of all
ghosts towards the living, who offend them by being alive.”⁵⁴
From this account we learn, first, that the Melanesians admit
some deaths by common diseases, such as fever and ague,
to be natural; and, second, that they recognise ghosts and
spirits as well as sorcerers and witches, among the causes of
death; indeed they hold that ghosts are the commonest of
all causes of sickness and death.

The possibility of natural death admitted by the Caffres of
South Africa.

The same causes of death are recognised also by the
Caffres of South Africa, as we learn from Mr. Dudley Kidd,
who tells us that according to the beliefs of the natives, “to
start with, there is sickness which is supposed to be caused
by the action of ancestral spirits or by fabulous monsters.
Secondly, there is sickness which is caused by the magical
practices of some evil person who is using witchcraft in secret.
Thirdly, there is sickness which comes from neither of these
causes, and remains unexplained. It is said to be ‘only
sickness, and nothing more.’ This third form of sickness is,
I think, the commonest. Yet most writers wholly ignore it,
or deny its existence. It may happen that an attack of
indigestion is one day attributed to the action of witch or
wizard; another day the trouble is put down to the account
of ancestral spirits; on a third occasion the people may be
at a loss to account for it, and so may dismiss the problem
[pg 56]
by saying that it is merely sickness. It is quite common
to hear natives say that they are at a loss to account for
some special case of illness. At first they thought it was
caused by an angry ancestral spirit; but a great doctor has
assured them that it is not the result of such a spirit.
They then suppose it to be due to the magical practices of
some enemy; but the doctor negatives that theory. The
people are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that the
trouble has no ascertainable cause. In some cases they do
not even trouble to consult a diviner; they speedily recognise
the sickness as due to natural causes. In such a
case it needs no explanation. If they think that some
friend of theirs knows of a remedy, they will try it on their
own initiative, or may even go off to a white man to ask
for some of his medicine. They would never dream of
doing this if they thought they were being influenced by
magic or by ancestral spirits. The Kafirs quite recognise
that there are types of disease which are inherited, and have
not been caused by magic or by ancestral spirits. They
admit that some accidents are due to nothing but the
patient’s carelessness or stupidity. If a native gets his leg
run over by a waggon, the people will often say that it is
all his own fault through being clumsy. In other cases,
with delightful inconsistency, they may say that some one
has been working magic to cause the accident. In short, it
is impossible to make out a theory of sickness which will
satisfy our European conception of consistency.”⁵⁵

The admission that death may be due to natural causes, marks
an intellectual advance. The recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause
of disease, apart from sorcery, also marks a step in intellectual,
moral, and social progress.

From the foregoing accounts we see that the Melanesians
and the Caffres, two widely different and widely separated
races, agree in recognising at least three distinct causes of
what we should call natural death. These three causes are,
first, sorcery or witchcraft; second, ghosts or spirits; and third,
disease.⁵⁶ That the recognition of disease in itself as a cause
of death, quite apart from sorcery, marks an intellectual
[pg 57]
advance, will not be disputed. It is not so clear, though
I believe it is equally true, that the recognition of ghosts or
spirits as a cause of disease, quite apart from witchcraft,
marks a real step in intellectual, moral, and social progress.
In the first place, it marks a step in intellectual and moral
progress; for it recognises that effects which before had been
ascribed to human agency spring from superhuman causes;
and this recognition of powers in the universe superior to man
is not only an intellectual gain but a moral discipline: it
teaches the important lesson of humility. In the second
place it marks a step in social progress because when the blame
of a death is laid upon a ghost or a spirit instead of on a
sorcerer, the death has not to be avenged by killing a human
being, the supposed author of the calamity. Thus the
recognition of ghosts or spirits as the sources of sickness and
death has as its immediate effect the sparing of an immense
number of lives of men and women, who on the theory of
death by sorcery would have perished by violence to expiate
their imaginary crime. That this is a great gain to society
is obvious: it adds immensely to the security of human life by
removing one of the most fruitful causes of its destruction.

It must be admitted, however, that the gain is not
always as great as might be expected; the social advantages
of a belief in ghosts and spirits are attended by many serious
drawbacks. For while ghosts or spirits are commonly,
though not always, supposed to be beyond the reach of
human vengeance, they are generally thought to be well
within the reach of human persuasion, flattery, and bribery;
in other words, men think that they can appease and
propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice; and while prayer
is always cheap, sacrifice may be very dear, since it can,
and often does, involve the destruction of an immense
deal of valuable property and of a vast number of human
lives. Yet if we could reckon up the myriads who have
been slain in sacrifice to ghosts and gods, it seems probable
[pg 58]
that they would fall far short of the untold multitudes
who have perished as sorcerers and witches. For while
human sacrifices in honour of deities or of the dead have
been for the most part exceptional rather than regular, only
the great gods and the illustrious dead being deemed worthy
of such costly offerings, the slaughter of witches and wizards,
theoretically at least, followed inevitably on every natural
death among people who attributed all such deaths to sorcery.
Hence if natural religion be defined roughly as a belief in
superhuman spiritual beings and an attempt to propitiate
them, we may perhaps say that, while natural religion has
slain its thousands, magic has slain its ten thousands. But
there are strong reasons for inferring that in the history of
society an Age of Magic preceded an Age of Religion. If
that was so, we may conclude that the advent of religion
marked a great social as well as intellectual advance upon
the preceding Age of Magic: it inaugurated an era of what
might be described as mercy by comparison with the relentless
severity of its predecessor.

Footnote 6: (return)

W. Martin, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second
Edition (London, 1818), ii. 99.

Footnote 7: (return)

M. Dobrizhoffer, Historia de Abiponibus
(Vienna, 1784), ii. 92 sq., 240
sqq. The author of this valuable
work lived as a Catholic missionary in
the tribe for eighteen years.

Footnote 8: (return)

C. Gay, “Fragment d’un Voyage dans le Chili et au Cusco,”
Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Deuxième Série,
xix. (1843) p. 25; H. Delaporte, “Une visite chez les Araucaniens,”
Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Quatrième Série, x.
(1855) p. 30.

Footnote 9: (return)

K. von den Steinen, Unter den
Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens
(Berlin, 1894), pp. 344, 348.

Footnote 10: (return)

Rev. W. H. Brett, The Indian
Tribes of Guiana (London, 1868), p.
357.

Footnote 11: (return)

W. H. Brett, op. cit. pp. 361 sq.

Footnote 12: (return)

Rev. W. H. Brett, op. cit. pp. 364 sq.

Footnote 13: (return)

Rev. J. H. Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana (London,
1847), pp. 56 sq., 58.

Footnote 14: (return)

(Sir) E. F. im Thurn, Among the
Indians of Guiana (London, 1883), pp.
330 sq. For the case described see R.
Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana,
i. (Leipsic, 1847) pp. 324 sq. The boy
died of dropsy. Perhaps the mode of
divination adopted, by boiling some
portions of him in water, had special
reference to the nature of the disease.

Footnote 15: (return)

(Sir) E. F. im Thurn, op. cit. pp.
332 sq.

Footnote 16: (return)

Father A. G. Morice, “The Canadian Dénés,” Annual
Archaeological Report, 1905 (Toronto, 1906), p. 207.

Footnote 17: (return)

Albert A. C. Le Souëf, “Notes on the Natives of
Australia,” in R. Brough Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria
(Melbourne and London, 1878), ii. 289 sq.

Footnote 18: (return)

(Sir) George Grey, Journals of two Expeditions of
Discovery in Northwest and Western Australia (London, 1841), ii.
238.

Footnote 19: (return)

A. Oldfield, “The Aborigines of Australia,”
Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. iii.
(1865) p. 236.

Footnote 20: (return)

A. Oldfield, op. cit. p. 245.

Footnote 21: (return)

J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines (Melbourne, Sydney
and Adelaide, 1881), p. 63.

Footnote 22: (return)

H. E. A. Meyer, “Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of
the Encounter Bay Tribe,” Native Tribes of South Australia
(Adelaide, 1879), p. 195.

Footnote 23: (return)

C. W. Schürmann, “The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln in
South Australia,” Native Tribes of South Australia, pp. 237
sq.

Footnote 24: (return)

Rev. G. Taplin, “The Narrinyeri,” Native Tribes of
South Australia (Adelaide, 1879), p. 25.

Footnote 25: (return)

R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria
(Melbourne and London, 1878) i. 110.

Footnote 26: (return)

W. E. Stanbridge, “Some Particulars of the General
Characteristics, Astronomy, and Mythology of the Tribes in the Central
Part of Victoria, Southern Australia,” Transactions of the
Ethnological Society of London, New Series, i. (1861) p. 299.

Footnote 27: (return)

Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and
Kurnai (Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane, 1880), pp. 250
sq.

Footnote 28: (return)

A. L. P. Cameron, “Notes on some Tribes of New South
Wales,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute xiv. (1885) pp.
361, 362 sq.

Footnote 29: (return)

Rev. W. Ridley, Kamilaroi, Second Edition (Sydney,
1875), p. 159.

Footnote 30: (return)

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of
Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 46-48.

Footnote 31: (return)

Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 248, 323.

Footnote 32: (return)

E. Beardmore, “The Natives of Mowat, British New Guinea,”
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) p. 461.

Footnote 33: (return)

R. E. Guise, “On the Tribes inhabiting the Mouth of the
Wanigela River, New Guinea,” Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, xxviii. (1899) p. 216.

Footnote 34: (return)

C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New
Guinea (Cambridge, 1910), p. 279.

Footnote 35: (return)

K. Vetter, Komm herüber und hilf uns! oder die Arbeit
der Neuen-Dettelsauer Mission, iii. (Barmen, 1898) pp. 10
sq.; id., in Nachrichten über Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land und
den Bismarck-Archipel, 1897, pp. 94, 98. Compare B. Hagen, Unter
den Papuas (Wiesbaden, 1899), p. 256; Verhandlungen der Berliner
Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte, 1900,
p. (415).

Footnote 36: (return)

Father A. Deniau, “Croyances religieuses et mœurs des
indigènes de l’Ile Malo,” Missions Catholiques, xxxiii. (1901)
pp. 315 sq.

Footnote 37: (return)

C. Ribbe, Zwei Jahre unter den Kannibalen der
Salomo-Inseln (Dresden-Blasewitz, 1903), p. 268.

Footnote 38: (return)

P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner der
Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.), p. 344. As to beliefs
of this sort among the Sulka of New Britain, see P. Rascher, “Die
Sulka,” Archiv für Anthropologie, xxix. (1904) pp. 221
sq.; R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee
(Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 199-201.

Footnote 39: (return)

G. Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians
(London, 1910), p. 176. Dr. Brown’s account, of the Melanesians applies
to the natives of New Britain and more particularly of the neighbouring
Duke of York islands.

Footnote 40: (return)

Father Abinal, “Astrologie Malgache,” Missions
Catholiques, xi. (1879) p. 506.

Footnote 41: (return)

A. Grandidier, “Madagascar,” Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie (Paris), Sixième Série, iii. (1872) pp. 399 sq.
The talismans (ahouli) in question consist of the horns of oxen
stuffed with a variety of odds and ends, such as sand, sticks, nails,
and so forth.

Footnote 42: (return)

Major A. J. N. Tremearne, The Tailed Head-hunters of
Nigeria (London, 1912), pp. 171 sq.; id., “Notes on
the Kagoro and other Headhunters,” Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, xlii. (1912) pp. 160, 161.

Footnote 43: (return)

E. Hurel, “Religion et vie domestique des Bakerewe,”
Anthropos, vi. (1912) pp. 85-87.

Footnote 44: (return)

Father Campana, “Congo Mission Catholique de Landana,”
Missions Catholiques, xxvii. (1895) pp. 102 sq.

Footnote 45: (return)

Th. Masui, Guide de la Section de l’État Indépendant du
Congo à l’Exposition de Bruxelles—Tervueren en 1874 (Brussels,
1897), p. 82.

Footnote 46: (return)

See for example O. Lenz, Skizzen aus Westafrika
(Berlin, 1878), pp. 184 sq.; C. Cuny, “De Libreville au
Cameroun,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Septième
Série, xvii. (1896) p. 341; Ch. Wunenberger, “La mission et le royaume
de Humbé, sur les bords du Cunène,” Missions Catholiques, xx.
(1888) p. 262; Lieut. Herold, “Bericht betreffend religiöse Anschauungen
und Gebräuche der deutschen Ewe-Neger,” Mittheilungen aus den
deutschen Schutzgebieten, v. (1892) p. 153; Dr. R. Plehn, “Beiträge
zur Völkerkunde des Togo-Gebietes,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für
Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, ii. Dritte Abtheilung (1899), p.
97; R. Fisch, “Die Dagbamba,” Baessler-Archiv, iii. (1912) p.
148. For evidence of similar beliefs and practices in other parts of
Africa, see Brard, “Der Victoria-Nyanza,” Petermann’s
Mittheilungen, xliii. (1897) pp. 79 sq.; Father Picarda,
“Autour du Mandéra,” Missions Catholiques, xviii. (1886) p. 342.

Footnote 47: (return)

Rev. R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (London,
1904), pp. 241 sq.

Footnote 48: (return)

“Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel,” in John Pinkerton’s
Voyages and Travels, xvi. (London, 1814) p. 334.

Footnote 49: (return)

Gouvernement Général de l’Afrique Occidentale
Française, Notices publiées par le Gouvernement Central à l’occasion de
l’Exposition Coloniale de Marseille, La Côte d’Ivoire (Corbeil,
1906), pp. 570-572.

Footnote 50: (return)

Hugh Goldie, Calabar and its Mission, New Edition
(Edinburgh and London, 1901), pp. 34 sq., 37 sq.

Footnote 51: (return)

Above, p. 35.

Footnote 52: (return)

E. R. Smith, The Araucanians
(London, 1855), pp. 236 sq.

Footnote 53: (return)

Father Trilles, “Milles lieues dans l’inconnu; à travers
le pays Fang, de la côte aux rives du Djah,” Missions
Catholiques, xxxv. (1903) pp. 466 sq., and as to the poison
ordeal, ib. pp. 472 sq.

Footnote 54: (return)

R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 194.

Footnote 55: (return)

Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir
(London, 1904), pp. 133 sq.

Footnote 56: (return)

In like manner the Baganda generally ascribed natural
deaths either to sorcery or to the action of a ghost; but when they
could not account for a person’s death in either of these ways they said
that Walumbe, the God of Death, had taken him. This last explanation
approaches to an admission of natural death, though it is still mythical
in form. The Baganda usually attributed any illness of the king to
ghosts, because no man would dare to practise magic on him. A
much-dreaded ghost was that of a man’s sister; she was thought to vent
her spite on his sons and daughters by visiting them with sickness. When
she proved implacable, a medicine-man was employed to catch her ghost in
a gourd or a pot and throw it away on waste land or drown it in a river.
See Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 98, 100, 101
sq., 286 sq., 315 sq.

LECTURE III

MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH

Belief of savages in man’s natural immortality.

In my last lecture I shewed that many savages do not
believe in what we call a natural death; they imagine that
all men are naturally immortal and would never die, if
their lives were not cut prematurely short by sorcery.
Further, I pointed out that this mistaken view of the nature
of death has exercised a disastrous influence on the tribes
who entertain it, since, attributing all natural deaths to
sorcery, they consider themselves bound to discover and
kill the wicked sorcerers whom they regard as responsible
for the death of their friends. Thus in primitive society as
a rule every natural death entails at least one and often
several deaths by violence; since the supposed culprit being
unknown suspicion may fall upon many persons, all of whom
may be killed either out of hand or as a consequence of
failing to demonstrate their innocence by means of an
ordeal.

Savage stories of the origin of death.

Yet even the savages who firmly believe in man’s
natural immortality are obliged sorrowfully to admit that,
as things are at the present day, men do frequently die,
whatever explanation we may give of so unexpected and
unnatural an occurrence. Accordingly they are hard put
to it to reconcile their theory of immortality with the
practice of mortality. They have meditated on the subject
and have given us the fruit of their meditation in a series of
myths which profess to explain the origin of death. For
the most part these myths are very crude and childish; yet
they have a value of their own as examples of man’s
early attempts to fathom one of the great mysteries which
[pg 60]
encompass his frail and transient existence on earth; and
accordingly I have here collected, in all their naked simplicity,
a few of these savage guesses at truth.

Four types of such stories.

Myths of the origin of death conform to several types,
among which we may distinguish, first, what I will call the
type of the Two Messengers; second, the type of the Waxing
and Waning Moon; third, the type of the Serpent and
his Cast Skin; and fourth, the type of the Banana-tree. I
will illustrate each type by examples, and will afterwards
cite some miscellaneous instances which do not fall under
any of these heads.

I. The tale of the Two Messengers. Zulu story of the
chameleon and the lizard. The same story among other Bantu tribes.

First, then, we begin with the type of the Two
Messengers. Stories of this pattern are widespread in
Africa, especially among tribes belonging to the great
Bantu family, which occupies roughly the southern half
of the continent. The best-known example of the tale
is the one told by the Zulus. They say that in the
beginning Unkulunkulu, that is, the Old Old One, sent
the chameleon to men with a message saying, “Go, chameleon,
go and say, Let not men die.” The chameleon
set out, but it crawled very slowly, and it loitered by the
way to eat the purple berries of the ubukwebezane tree, or
according to others it climbed up a tree to bask in the
sun, filled its belly with flies, and fell fast asleep. Meantime
the Old Old One had thought better of it and sent a
lizard posting after the chameleon with a very different
message to men, for he said to the animal, “Lizard, when
you have arrived, say, Let men die.” So the lizard went on
his way, passed the dawdling chameleon, and arriving first
among men delivered his message of death, saying, “Let
men die.” Then he turned on his heel and went back to
the Old Old One who had sent him. But after he was gone,
the chameleon at last arrived among men with his glad
tidings of immortality, and he shouted, saying, “It is said,
Let not men die!” But men answered, “O! we have heard
the word of the lizard; it has told us the word, ‘It is said,
Let men die.’ We cannot hear your word. Through the
word of the lizard, men will die.” And died they have ever
since from that day to this. That is why some of the Zulus
hate the lizard, saying, “Why did he run first and say, ‘Let
[pg 61]
people die?'” So they beat and kill the lizard and say,
“Why did it speak?” But others hate the chameleon and
hustle it, saying, “That is the little thing which delayed to
tell the people that they should not die. If he had only
brought his message in time we should not have died; our
ancestors also would have been still living; there would
have been no diseases here on the earth. It all comes from
the delay of the chameleon.”⁵⁷ The same story is told in
nearly the same form by other Bantu tribes, such as the
Bechuanas,⁵⁸ the Basutos,⁵⁹ the Baronga,⁶⁰ and the Ngoni.⁶¹
To this day the Baronga and the Ngoni owe the chameleon
a grudge for having brought death into the world, so when
children find a chameleon they will induce it to open its
mouth, then throw a pinch of tobacco on its tongue, and
watch with delight the creature writhing and changing
colour from orange to green, from green to black in the
agony of death; for thus they avenge the wrong which the
chameleon has done to mankind.⁶²

Akamba story of the chameleon and the thrush.

A story of the same type, but with some variations, is
told by the Akamba, a Bantu tribe of British East Africa;
but in their version the lizard has disappeared from the legend
and has been replaced by the itoroko, a small bird of the
thrush tribe, with a black head, a bluish-black back, and a
buff-coloured breast. The tale runs thus:—Once upon a
time God sent out the chameleon, the frog, and the thrush to
find people who died one day and came to life again the next.
[pg 62]
So off they set, the chameleon leading the way, for in those
days he was a very important personage. Presently they
came to some people lying like dead, so the chameleon went
up to them and said, Niwe, niwe, niwe. The thrush asked
him testily what he was making that noise for, to which the
chameleon replied mildly, “I am only calling the people
who go forward and then came back again,” and he
explained that the dead people would come to life again.
But the thrush, who was of a sceptical turn of mind, derided
the idea. Nevertheless, the chameleon persisted in calling
to the dead people, and sure enough they opened their
eyes and listened to him. But here the thrush broke in
and told them roughly that dead they were and dead
they must remain. With that away he flew, and though
the chameleon preached to the corpses, telling them
that he had come from God on purpose to bring them to
life again, and that they were not to believe the lies of that
shallow sceptic the thrush, they obstinately refused to pay
any heed to him; not one of those dead corpses would
budge. So the chameleon returned crestfallen to God and
reported to him how, when he preached the gospel of resurrection
to the corpses, the thrush had roared him down,
so that the corpses could not hear a word he said. God
thereupon cross-questioned the thrush, who stated that the
chameleon had so bungled his message that he, the thrush,
felt it his imperative duty to interrupt him. The simple
deity believed the thrush, and being very angry with the
chameleon he degraded him from his high position and
made him walk very slow, lurching this way and that, as he
does down to this very day. But the thrush he promoted
to the office of wakening men from their slumber every
morning, which he still does punctually at 2 A.M. before
the note of any other bird is heard in the tropical forest.⁶³

Togo story of the dog and the frog.

In this version, though the frog is sent out by God
with the other two messengers he plays no part in the
story; he is a mere dummy. But in another version of
the story, which is told by the negroes of Togoland
in German West Africa, the frog takes the place of the
[pg 63]
lizard and the thrush as the messenger of death. They
say that once upon a time men sent a dog to God to say
that when they died they would like to come to life again.
So off the dog trotted to deliver the message. But on the
way he felt hungry and turned into a house, where a man
was boiling magic herbs. So the dog sat down and thought
to himself, “He is cooking food.” Meantime the frog had
set off to tell God that when men died they would like not
to come to life again. Nobody had asked him to give that
message; it was a piece of pure officiousness and impertinence
on his part. However, away he tore. The dog, who still
sat watching the hell-broth brewing, saw him hurrying past
the door, but he thought to himself, “When I have had
something to eat, I will soon catch froggy up.” However,
froggy came in first and said to the deity, “When men die,
they would like not to come to life again.” After that, up
comes the dog, and says he, “When men die, they would
like to come to life again.” God was naturally puzzled and
said to the dog, “I really do not understand these two
messages. As I heard the frog’s request first, I will comply
with it. I will not do what you said.” That is the real
reason why men die and do not come to life again. If the
frog had only minded his own business instead of meddling
with other people’s, the dead would all have come to life
again to this day.⁶⁴ In this version of the story not only are
the persons of the two messengers different, the dog and the
frog having replaced the chameleon and the lizard of the
Bantu version, but the messengers are sent from men to God
instead of from God to men.

Ashantee story of the goat and the sheep.

In another version told by the Ashantees of West Africa
the persons of the messengers are again different, but as in
the Bantu version they are sent from God to men. The
Ashantees say that long ago men were happy, for God
dwelt among them and talked with them face to face. For
example, if a child was roasting yams at the fire and wanted
a relish to eat with the yams, he had nothing to do but to
[pg 64]
throw a stick in the air and say, “God give me fish,” and God
gave him fish at once. However, these happy days did not last
for ever. One unlucky day it happened that some women were
pounding a mash with pestles in a mortar, while God stood
by looking on. For some reason they were annoyed by the
presence of the deity and told him to be off; and as he did
not take himself off fast enough to please them, they beat
him with their pestles. In a great huff God retired
altogether from the world and left it to the direction of the
fetishes; and still to this day people say, “Ah, if it had not
been for that old woman, how happy we should be!”
However, after he had withdrawn to heaven, the long-suffering
deity sent a kind message by a goat to men upon earth
to say, “There is something which they call Death. He
will kill some of you. But even if you die, you will not
perish completely. You will come to me in heaven.” So
off the goat set with this cheering intelligence. But before
he came to the town he saw a tempting bush by the wayside
and stopped to browse on it. When God in heaven
saw the goat thus loitering by the way, he sent off a sheep
with the same message to carry the glad tidings to men
without delay. But the sheep did not give the message
aright. Far from it: he said, “God sends you word that
you will die and that will be an end of you.” Afterwards
the goat arrived on the scene and said, “God sends you
word that you will die, certainly, but that will not be the
end of you, for you will go to him.” But men said to the
goat, “No, goat, that is not what God said. We believe
that the message which the sheep brought us is the one
which God sent to us.” That was the beginning of death
among men.⁶⁵ However, in another Ashantee version of the
tale the parts played by the sheep and the goat are reversed.
It is the sheep who brings the tidings of immortality from
God to men, but the goat overruns him and offers them
death instead. Not knowing what death was, men accepted
the seeming boon with enthusiasm and have died ever since.⁶⁶

II. The story of the Waxing and Waning Moon. Hottentot story
of the Moon, the hare, and death.

So much for the tale of the Two Messengers. In the
last versions of it which I have quoted, a feature to be
[pg 65]
noticed is the perversion of the message by one of the
messengers, who brings tidings of death instead of life
eternal to men. The same perversion of the message reappears
in some examples of the next type of story which
I shall illustrate, namely the type of the Waxing and
Waning Moon. Thus the Namaquas or Hottentots say that
once the Moon charged the hare to go to men and say, “As
I die and rise to life again, so shall you die and rise to life
again.” So the hare went to men, but either out of forgetfulness
or malice he reversed the message and said, “As I
die and do not rise to life again, so you shall also die and
not rise to life again.” Then he went back to the Moon,
and she asked him what he had said. He told her, and
when she heard how he had given the wrong message, she
was so angry that she threw a stick at him and split his
lip, which is the reason why the hare’s lip is still split. So
the hare ran away and is still running to this day. Some
people, however, say that before he fled he clawed the
Moon’s face, which still bears the marks of the scratching,
as anybody may see for himself on a clear moonlight night.
So the Hottentots are still angry with the hare for bringing
death into the world, and they will not let initiated men
partake of its flesh.⁶⁷ There are traces of a similar story
among the Bushmen.⁶⁸ In another Hottentot version two
messengers appear, an insect and a hare; the insect is
charged by the Moon with a message of immortality or
rather of resurrection to men, but the hare persuades the
insect to let him bear the tidings, which he perverts into a
message of annihilation.⁶⁹ Thus in this particular version the
type of the Two Messengers coincides with the Moon type.

Masai story of the moon and death.

A story of the same type, though different in details, is
told by the Masai of East Africa. They say that in the
early days a certain god named Naiteru-kop told a man
named Le-eyo that if a child were to die he was to throw
[pg 66]
away the body and say, “Man, die, and come back again;
moon, die, and remain away.” Well, soon afterwards a child
died, but it was not one of the man’s own children, so when
he threw the body away he said, “Man, die, and remain
away; moon, die, and return.” Next one of his own
children died, and when he threw away the body he said,
“Man, die, and return; moon, die, and remain away.” But
the god said to him, “It is of no use now, for you
spoilt matters with the other child.” That is why down to
this day when a man dies he returns no more, but when the
moon dies she always comes to life again.⁷⁰

Nandi story of the moon, the dog, and death.

Another story of the origin of death which belongs to
this type is told by the Nandi of British East Africa. They
say that when the first people lived upon the earth a dog
came to them one day and said: “All people will die like the
moon, but unlike the moon you will not return to life again
unless you give me some milk to drink out of your gourd,
and beer to drink through your straw. If you do this, I
will arrange for you to go to the river when you die and to
come to life again on the third day.” But the people
laughed at the dog, and gave him some milk and beer to
drink off a stool. The dog was angry at not being served
in the same vessels as a human being, and though he put
his pride in his pocket and drank the milk and the beer
from the stool, he went away in high dudgeon, saying, “All
people will die, and the moon alone will return to life.”
That is the reason why, when people die, they stay away,
whereas when the moon goes away she comes back again
after three days’ absence.⁷¹ The Wa-Sania of British East
Africa believe that in days gone by people never died, till
one unlucky day a lizard came and said to them, “All of you
know that the moon dies and rises again, but human beings
will die and rise no more.” They say that from that day
people began to die and have persisted in dying ever since.⁷²

Fijian story of the moon, the rat, and death. Caroline
Islands story of the moon, death, and resurrection. Wotjobaluk story of
the moon, death, and resurrection. Cham story of the moon, death, and
resurrection.

With these African stories of the origin of death we may
compare one told by the Fijians on the other side of the
[pg 67]
world. They say that once upon a time the Moon contended
that men should be like himself (for the Fijian moon
seems to be a male); that is, he meant that just as he grows
old, disappears, and comes in sight again, so men grown old
should vanish for a while and then return to life. But the
rat, who is a Fijian god, would not hear of it. “No,” said
he, “let men die like rats.” And he had the best of it
in the dispute, for men die like rats to this day.⁷³ In the
Caroline Islands they say that long, long ago death was
unknown, or rather it was a short sleep, not a long, long
one, as it is now. Men died on the last day of the waning
moon and came to life again on the first appearance of the
new moon, just as if they had awakened from a refreshing
slumber. But an evil spirit somehow contrived that when
men slept the sleep of death they should wake no more.⁷⁴
The Wotjobaluk of south-eastern Australia relate that, when
all animals were men and women, some of them died and
the moon used to say, “You up-again,” whereupon they
came to life again. But once on a time an old man said,
“Let them remain dead”; and since then nobody has ever
come to life again except the moon, which still continues to
do so down to this very day.⁷⁵ The Chams of Annam and
Cambodia say that the goddess of good luck used to resuscitate
people as fast as they died, till the sky-god, tired of
her constant interference with the laws of nature, transferred
her to the moon, where it is no longer in her power to bring
the dead to life again.⁷⁶

Cycle of death and resurrection after three days, like the
monthly disappearance and reappearance of the moon.

These stories which associate human immortality with
the moon are products of a primitive philosophy which,
meditating on the visible changes, of the lunar orb, drew
from the observation of its waning and waxing a dim
notion that under a happier fate man might have been
immortal like the moon, or rather that like it he might have
undergone an endless cycle of death and resurrection, dying
then rising again from the dead after three days. The
[pg 68]
same curious notion of death and resurrection after three
days is entertained by the Unmatjera and Kaitish, two
savage tribes of Central Australia. They say that long ago
their dead used to be buried either in trees or underground,
and that after three days they regularly rose from the dead.
The Kaitish tell how this happy state of things came to an
end. It was all through a man of the Curlew totem, who
finding some men of the Little Wallaby totem burying a
Little Wallaby man, fell into a passion and kicked the body
into the sea. Of course after that the dead man could not
come to life again, and that is why nowadays nobody rises
from the dead after three days, as everybody used to do
long ago.⁷⁷ Although no mention is made of the moon in
this Australian story, we may conjecture that these savages,
like the Nandi of East Africa, fixed upon three days as the
normal interval between death and resurrection simply
because three days is the interval between the disappearance
of the old and the reappearance of the new moon. If that
is so, the aborigines of Central Australia may be added to the
many races of mankind who have seen in the waning and
waxing moon an emblem of human immortality. Nor does
this association of ideas end with a mere tradition that in some
former age men used to die with the old moon and come to
life again with the new moon. Many savages, on seeing the
new moon for the first time in the month, observe ceremonies
which seem to be intended to renew and increase their life
and strength with the renewal and the increase of the lunar
light. For example, on the day when the new moon first
appeared, the Indians of San Juan Capistrano in California
used to call together all the young men and make them run
about, while the old men danced in a circle, saying, “As the
moon dieth and cometh to life again, so we also having to
die will again live.”⁷⁸ Again, an old writer tells us that at
the appearance of every new moon the negroes of the Congo
clapped their hands and cried out, sometimes falling on their
knees, “So may I renew my life as thou art renewed.”⁷⁹

III. Story of the Serpent and his Cast Skin. New Britain
story of immortality, the serpent, and death. Annamite story of
immortality, the serpent, and death. Vuatom story of immortality, the
lizard, the serpent, and death.

Another type of stories told to explain the origin of
death is the one which I have called the type of the Serpent
and his Cast Skin. Some savages seem to think that serpents
and all other animals, such as lizards, which periodically shed
their skins, thereby renew their life and so never die. Hence
they imagine that if man also could only cast his old skin
and put on a new one, he too would be immortal like a
serpent. Thus the Melanesians, who inhabit the coast of
the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain, tell the following story
of the origin of death. They say that To Kambinana, the
Good Spirit, loved men and wished to make them immortal;
but he hated the serpents and wished to kill them. So he
called his brother To Korvuvu and said to him, “Go to men
and take them the secret of immortality. Tell them to cast
their skin every year. So will they be protected from death,
for their life will be constantly renewed. But tell the
serpents that they must thenceforth die.” But To Korvuvu
acquitted himself badly of his task; for he commanded
men to die and betrayed to the serpents the secret of
immortality. Since then all men have been mortal, but
the serpents cast their skins every year and are immortal.⁸⁰
In this story we meet again with the incident of the
reversed message; through a blunder or through the malice
of the messenger the glad tidings of immortality are perverted
into a melancholy message of death. A similar tale,
with a similar incident, is told in Annam. They say that
Ngoc hoang sent a messenger from heaven to men to say
that when they had reached old age they should change their
skins and live for ever, but that when serpents grew old they
must die. The messenger came down to earth and said,
rightly enough, “When man is old, he shall cast his skin;
but when serpents are old, they shall die and be laid in
coffins.” So far, so good. But unfortunately there happened
to be a brood of serpents within hearing, and when they
heard the doom pronounced on their kind they fell into a
fury and said to the messenger, “You must say it over again
and just the contrary, or we will bite you.” That frightened
the messenger and he repeated his message, changing the
[pg 70]
words thus: “When he is old, the serpent shall cast his
skin; but when he is old, man shall die and be laid in the
coffin.” That is why all creatures are now subject to death,
except the serpent, who, when he is old, casts his skin and
lives for ever.⁸¹ The natives of Vuatom, an island in the
Bismarck Archipelago, say that a certain To Konokonomiange
bade two lads fetch fire, promising that if they did
so they should never die, but that if they refused their
bodies would perish, though their shades or souls would
survive. They would not hearken to him, so he cursed
them, saying, “What! You would all have lived! Now
you shall die, though your soul shall live. But the iguana
(Goniocephalus) and the lizard (Varanus indicus) and the
snake (Enygrus), they shall live, they shall cast their skin and
they shall live for evermore.” When the lads heard that,
they wept, for bitterly they rued their folly in not going to
fetch the fire for To Konokonomiange.⁸²

Nias story of immortality, the crab, and death. Arawak and
Tamanachier stories of immortality, the serpent, the lizard, the beetle,
and death.

Other peoples tell somewhat different stories to explain
how men missed the boon of immortality and serpents
acquired it. Thus the natives of Nias, an island off the
coast of Sumatra, say that, when the earth was created,
a certain being was sent down by God from heaven to
put the last touches to the work of creation. He should
have fasted for a month, but unable to withstand the pangs
of hunger he ate some bananas. The choice of food was
most unlucky, for had he only eaten river-crabs instead of
bananas men would have cast their skins like crabs and
would never have died.⁸³ The Arawaks of British Guiana
relate that once upon a time the Creator came down to earth
to see how his creature man was getting on. But men were
so wicked that they tried to kill him so he deprived them
of eternal life and bestowed it on the animals which renew
their skin, such as serpents, lizards, and beetles.⁸⁴ A somewhat
different version of the story is told by the Tamanachiers,
[pg 71]
an Indian tribe of the Orinoco. They say that after residing
among them for some time the Creator took boat to cross
to the other side of the great salt water from which he had
come. Just as he was shoving off from the shore, he called
out to them in a changed voice, “You will change your
skins,” by which he meant to say, “You will renew your
youth like the serpents and the beetles.” But unfortunately
an old woman, hearing these words, cried out “Oh!” in
a tone of scepticism, if not of sarcasm, which so annoyed
the Creator that he changed his tune at once and said
testily, “Ye shall die.” That is why we are all mortal.⁸⁵

Melanesian story of the old woman who renewed her youth by
casting her skin.

The natives of the Banks’ Islands and the New Hebrides
believe that there was a time in the beginning of things
when men never died but cast their skins like snakes
and crabs and so renewed their youth. But the unhappy
change to mortality came about at last, as it so often does
in these stories, through an old woman. Having grown old,
this dame went to a stream to change her skin, and change
it she did, for she stripped off her wizened old hide, cast it
upon the waters, and watched it floating down stream till it
caught on a stick. Then she went home a buxom young
woman. But the child whom she had left at home did not
know her and set up such a prodigious squalling that to
quiet it the woman went straight back to the river, fished
out her cast-off old skin, and put it on again. From that
day to this people have ceased to cast their skins and to live
for ever.⁸⁶ The same legend of the origin of death has
been recorded in the Shortlands Islands⁸⁷ and among the
Kai of German New Guinea.⁸⁸ It is also told with some
variations by the natives of the Admiralty Islands. They
say that once on a time there was an old woman and she
was frail. She had two sons, and they went a-fishing, and
she herself went to bathe. She stripped off her wrinkled
old skin and came forth as young as she had been long ago.
[pg 72]
Her sons came home from the fishing, and very much
astonished were they to see her. The one said, “It is our
mother,” but the other said, “She may be your mother, but
she shall be my wife.” Their mother heard them and said,
“What were you two saying?” The two said, “Nothing!
We only said that you are our mother.” “You are liars,”
said she, “I heard you both. If I had had my way, we
should have grown to be old men and women, and then we
should have cast our skin and been young men and young
women. But you have had your way. We shall grow old
men and old women and then we shall die.” With that she
fetched her old skin, and put it on, and became an old
woman again. As for us, her descendants, we grow up and
we grow old. And if it had not been for those two young
men there would have been no end of our days, we should
have lived for ever and ever.⁸⁹

Samoan story of the shellfish, two torches, and death.

The Samoans tell how the gods held a council to decide what
was to be done with men. One of them said, “Bring men and
let them cast their skin; and when they die, let them be turned
to shellfish or to a coco-nut leaf torch, which when shaken
in the wind blazes out again.” But another god called
Palsy (Supa) rose up and said, “Bring men and let them be
like the candle-nut torch, which when it is once out cannot
be blown up again. Let the shellfish change their skin, but
let men die.” While they were debating, a heavy rain came
on and broke up the meeting. As the gods ran for shelter
to their houses, they cried, “Let it be according to the
counsel of Palsy! Let it be according to the counsel of
Palsy!” So men died, but shellfish cast their skins.⁹⁰

IV. The Banana Story. Poso story of immortality, the stone,
the banana, and death. Mentra story of immortality, the banana, and
death.

The last type of tales of the origin of death which I shall
notice is the one which I have called the Banana type. We
have already seen that according to the natives of Nias
human mortality is all due to eating bananas instead of crabs.⁹¹
A similar opinion is entertained by other people in that
region of the world. Thus the natives of Poso, a district of
Central Celebes, say that in the beginning the sky was very
[pg 73]
near the earth, and that the Creator, who lived in it, used to
let down his good gifts to men at the end of a rope. One
day he thus lowered a stone; but our first father and mother
would have none of it and they called out to their Maker,
“What have we to do with this stone? Give us something
else.” The Creator complied and hauled away at the rope;
the stone mounted up and up till it vanished from sight.
Presently the rope was seen coming down from heaven again,
and this time there was a banana at the end of it instead of
a stone. Our first parents ran at the banana and took it.
Then there came a voice from heaven, saying: “Because
ye have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life.
When the banana-tree has offspring, the parent stem dies;
so shall ye die and your children shall step into your place.
Had ye chosen the stone, your life would have been like the
life of the stone changeless and immortal.” The man and
his wife mourned over their fatal choice, but it was too late;
that is how through the eating of a banana death came into
the world.⁹² The Mentras or Mantras, a shy tribe of savages
in the jungles of the Malay Peninsula, allege that in the
early days of the world men did not die, but only grew thin
at the waning of the moon and then waxed fat again as she
waxed to the full. Thus there was no check whatever on
the population, which increased to a truly alarming extent.
So a son of the first man brought this state of things to his
father’s notice and asked him what was to be done. The
first man said, “Leave things as they are”; but his younger
brother, who took a more Malthusian view of the situation,
said, “No, let men die like the banana, leaving their offspring
behind.” The question was submitted to the Lord of the
Underworld, and he decided in favour of death. Ever since
then men have ceased to renew their youth like the moon
and have died like the banana.⁹³

Primitive philosophy in the stories of the origin of death.

Thus the three stories of the origin of death which
I have called the Moon type, the Serpent type, and the
[pg 74]
Banana type appear to be products of a primitive philosophy
which sees a cheerful emblem of immortality in
the waxing and waning moon and in the cast skins of
serpents, but a sad emblem of mortality in the banana-tree,
which perishes as soon as it has produced its fruit. But, as
I have already said, these types of stories do not exhaust
the theories or fancies of primitive man on the question how
death came into the world. I will conclude this part of my
subject with some myths which do not fall under any of the
preceding heads.

Bahnar story of immortality, the tree, and death. Rivalry for
the boon of immortality between men and animals that cast their skins,
such as serpents and lizards.

The Bahnars of eastern Cochinchina say that in the
beginning when people died they used to be buried at the
foot of a tree called Lông Blô, and that after a time they
always rose from the dead, not as infants but as full-grown
men and women. So the earth was peopled very fast, and
all the inhabitants formed but one great town under the
presidency of our first parents. In time men multiplied to
such an extent that a certain lizard could not take his walks
abroad without somebody treading on his tail. This vexed
him, and the wily creature gave an insidious hint to the
gravediggers. “Why bury the dead at the foot of the Lông
Blô tree?” said he; “bury them at the foot of Lông Khung,
and they will not come to life again. Let them die outright
and be done with it.” The hint was taken, and from that
day the dead have not come to life again.⁹⁴ In this story
there are several points to be noticed. In the first place the
tree Lông Blô would seem to have been a tree of life, since
all the dead who were buried at its foot came to life again.
In the second place the lizard is here, as in so many African
tales, the instrument of bringing death among men. Why
was that so? We may conjecture that the reason is that
the lizard like the serpent casts its skin periodically, from
which primitive man might infer, as he infers with regard to
serpents, that the creature renews its youth and lives for
ever. Thus all the myths which relate how a lizard or a
serpent became the maleficent agent of human mortality
may perhaps be referred to an old idea of a certain jealousy
and rivalry between men and all creatures which cast their
[pg 75]
skin, notably serpents and lizards; we may suppose that in
all such cases a story was told of a contest between man and
his animal rivals for the possession of immortality, a contest
in which, whether by mistake or by guile, the victory always
remained with the animals, who thus became immortal, while
mankind was doomed to mortality.

Chingpaw story of the origin of death. Australian story of
the tree, the bat, and death. Fijian story of the origin of death.

The Chingpaws of Upper Burma say that death
originated in a practical joke played by an old man who
pretended to be dead in the ancient days when nobody
really died. But the Lord of the Sun, who held the threads
of all human lives in his hand, detected the fraud and in
anger cut short the thread of life of the practical joker.
Since then everybody else has died; the door for death
to enter into the world was opened by the folly of that
silly, though humorous, old man.⁹⁵ The natives about the
Murray River in Australia used to relate how the first
man and woman were forbidden to go near a tree in
which a bat lived, lest they should disturb the creature.
One day, however, the woman was gathering firewood and
she went near the tree. The bat flew away, and after that
death came into the world.⁹⁶ Some of the Fijians accounted
for human mortality as follows. When the first man, the
father of the human race, was being buried, a god passed by
the grave and asked what it meant, for he had never seen a
grave before. On learning from the bystanders that they
had just buried their father, “Do not bury him,” said he,
“dig the body up again.” “No,” said they, “we cannot do
that. He has been dead four days and stinks.” “Not so,”
pleaded the god; “dig him up, and I promise you that he
will live again.” Heedless of the divine promise, these
primitive sextons persisted in leaving their dead father in
the grave. Then said the god to these wicked men, “By
disobeying me you have sealed your own fate. Had you
dug up your ancestor, you would have found him alive, and
[pg 76]
you yourselves, when you passed from this world, should have
been buried, as bananas are, for the space of four days, after
which you should have been dug up, not rotten, but ripe.
But now, as a punishment for your disobedience, you shall
die and rot.” And still, when they hear this sad tale told,
the Fijians say, “O that those children had dug up that
body!”⁹⁷

Admiralty Islanders’ stories of the origin of death.

The Admiralty Islanders tell various stories to explain
why man is mortal. One of them has already been related.
Here is another. A Souh man went once to catch fish.
A devil tried to devour him, but he fled into the forest
and took refuge in a tree. The tree kindly closed on him
so that the devil could not see him. When the devil was
gone, the tree opened up and the man clambered down
to the ground. Then said the tree to him, “Go to Souh
and bring me two white pigs.” He went and found two
pigs, one was white and one was black. He took chalk and
chalked the black pig so that it was white. Then he
brought them to the tree, but on the way the chalk fell off
the black pig. And when the tree saw the white pig and
the black pig, he chid the man and said, “You are thankless.
I was good to you. An evil will overtake you; you will
die. The devil will fall upon you, and you will die.” So it
has been with us as it was with the man of Souh. An evil
overtakes us or a spirit falls upon us, and we die. If it had
been as the tree said, we should not have died.⁹⁸ Another
story told by the Admiralty Islanders to account for the
melancholy truth of man’s mortality runs thus. Kosi, the
chief of Moakareng, was in his house. He was hungry. He
said to his two sons, “Go and climb the breadfruit trees and
bring the fruit, that we may eat them together and not die.”
But they would not. So he went himself and climbed the
breadfruit tree. But the north-west wind blew a storm, it
blew and threw him down. He fell and his body died, but
his ghost went home. He went and sat in his house. He
tied up his hair and he painted his face with red ochre.
[pg 77]
Now his wife and his two sons had gone after him into the
wood. They went to fetch home the breadfruits. They
came and saw Kosi, and he was dead. The three returned
home, and there they saw the ghost of Kosi sitting in his
house. They said, “You there! Who’s that dead at the
foot of the breadfruit tree? Kosi, he is dead at the foot
of the breadfruit tree.” Kosi, he said, “Here am I. I did
not fall. Perhaps somebody else fell down. I did not.
Here I am.” “You’re a liar,” said they. “I ain’t,” said he.
“Come,” said they, “we’ll go and see.” They went. Kosi, he
jumped into his body. He died. They buried him. If his
wife had behaved well, we should not die. Our body would
die, but our ghost would go about always in the old home.⁹⁹

Stories of the origin of death: the fatal bundle or the fatal
box.

The Wemba of Northern Rhodesia relate how God
in the beginning created a man and a woman and gave
them two bundles; in one of them was life and in the other
death. Most unfortunately the man chose “the little bundle
of death.”¹⁰⁰ The Cherokee Indians of North America say
that a number of beings were engaged in the work of
creation. The Sun was made first. Now the creators
intended that men should live for ever. But when the Sun
passed over them in the sky, he told the people that there
was not room enough for them all and that they had better
die. At last the Sun’s own daughter, who was with the
people on earth, was bitten by a snake and died. Then the
Sun repented him and said that men might live always; and
he bade them take a box and go fetch his daughter’s spirit in
the box and bring it to her body, that she might live. But
he charged them straitly not to open the box until they
arrived at the dead body. However, moved by curiosity,
they unhappily opened the box too soon; away flew the
spirit, and all men have died ever since.¹⁰¹ Some of the
North American Indians informed the early Jesuit missionaries
that a certain man had received the gift of immortality
[pg 78]
in a small packet from a famous magician named Messou,
who repaired the world after it had been seriously damaged
by a great flood. In bestowing on the man this valuable
gift the magician strictly enjoined him on no account to open
the packet. The man obeyed, and so long as the packet was
unopened he remained immortal. But his wife was both
curious and incredulous; she opened the packet to see what
was in it, the precious contents flew away, and mankind has
been subject to death ever since.¹⁰²

Baganda story how death came into the world through the
forgetfulness and imprudence of a woman.

As these American Indians tell how death came through
the curiosity and incredulity of one woman, the Baganda of
Central Africa relate how it came through the forgetfulness
and imprudence of another. According to the Baganda the
first man who came to earth in Uganda was named Kintu.
He brought with him one cow and lived on its milk, for he
had no other food. But in time a woman named Nambi, a
daughter of Gulu, the king of heaven, came down to earth
with her brother or sister, and seeing Kintu she fell in love
with him and wished to have him for her husband. But
her proud father doubted whether Kintu was worthy of his
daughter’s hand, and accordingly he insisted on testing his
future son-in-law before he would consent to the marriage. So
he carried off Kintu’s cow and put it among his own herds in
heaven. When Kintu found that the cow was stolen, he was
in a great rage, but hunger getting the better of anger, he
made shift to live by peeling the bark of trees and gathering
herbs and leaves, which he cooked and ate. In time his
future wife Nambi happened to spy the stolen cow among
her father’s herds and she told Kintu, who came to heaven
to seek and recover the lost animal. His future father-in-law
Gulu, Lord of Heaven, obliged him to submit to many tests
designed to prove his fitness for marriage with the daughter
of so exalted a being as the Lord of Heaven. All these
tests Kintu successfully passed through. At last Gulu was
satisfied, gave him his daughter Nambi to wife, and allowed
him to return to earth with her.

The coming of Death.

But Nambi had a brother and his name was Death
(Walumbe). So before the Lord of Heaven sent her
away with her husband he called them both to him
[pg 79]
and said, “You must hurry away before Death comes, or
he will wish to go with you. You must not let him
do so, for he would only cause you trouble and unhappiness.”
To this his daughter agreed, and she went to pack
up her things. She and her husband then took leave of the
Lord of Heaven, who gave them at parting a piece of advice.
“Be sure,” said he, “if you have forgotten anything, not to
come back for it; because, if you do, Death will wish to go
with you, and you must go without him.” So off they set,
the man and his wife, taking with them his cow and its
calves, also a sheep, a goat, a fowl, and a banana tree. But
on the way the woman remembered that she had forgotten
the grain to feed the fowl, so she said to her husband, “I
must go back for the grain to feed the fowl, or it will die.”
Her husband tried to dissuade her, but in vain. She said,
“I will hurry back and get it without any one seeing me.”
So back she went in an evil hour and said to her father the
Lord of Heaven, “I have forgotten the grain for the fowl
and I am come back to fetch it from the doorway where I
put it.” Her father said sadly, “Did I not tell you that
you were not to return if you had forgotten anything,
because your brother Death would wish to go with you?
Now he will accompany you.” The woman fled, but Death
saw her and followed hard after her. When she rejoined
her husband, he was angry, for he saw Death and said,
“Why have you brought your brother with you? Who can
live with him?”

The importunity of Death.

When they reached the earth, Nambi planted her
garden, and the bananas sprang up quickly and formed a
grove. They lived happily for a time till one day Death
came and asked for one of their daughters, that she might go
away with him and be his cook. But the father said, “If the
Lord of Heaven comes and asks me for one of my children,
what am I to say? Shall I tell him that I have given her to
you to be your cook?” Death was silent and went away.
But he came back another day and asked again for a child
to be his cook. When the father again refused, Death said,
“I will kill your children.” The father did not know what
that meant, so he asked Death, “What is that you will do?”
However, in a short time one of the children fell ill and
[pg 80]
died, and then another and another. So the man went to
the Lord of Heaven and complained that Death was
taking away his children one by one. The Lord of Heaven
said, “Did I not tell you, when you were going away, to go
at once with your wife and not to return if you had forgotten
anything, but you let your wife return to fetch the
grain? Now you have Death living with you. If you had
obeyed me, you would have been free from him and not lost
any of your children.”

The hunt
for Death.

However, the man pleaded with him, and the Lord
Heaven at last consented to send Death’s brother
Kaikuzi to help the woman and to prevent Death from
killing her children. So down came Kaikuzi to earth, and
when he met his brother Death they greeted each other
lovingly. Then Kaikuzi told Death that he had come to
fetch him away from earth to heaven. Death was willing
to go, but he said, “Let us take our sister too.” “Nay,” said
his brother, “that cannot be, for she is a wife and must
stay with her husband.” The dispute waxed warm, Death
insisting on carrying off his sister, and his brother refusing
to allow him to do so. At last the brother angrily ordered
Death to do as he was bid, and so saying he made as
though he would seize him. But Death slipped from
between his hands and fled into the earth. For a long
time after that there was enmity between the two brothers.
Kaikuzi tried in every way to catch Death, but Death always
escaped. At last Kaikuzi told the people that he would
have one final hunt for Death, and while the hunt was
going on they must all stay in their houses; not a man,
a woman, a child, nor even an animal was to be allowed
to pass the threshold; and if they saw Death passing
the window, they were not to utter a cry of terror but
to keep still. Well, for some days his orders were obeyed.
Not a living soul, not an animal, stirred abroad. All
without was solitude, all within was silence. Encouraged
by the universal stillness Death emerged from his lair, and his
brother was just about to catch him, when some children,
who had ventured out to herd their goats, saw Death and
cried out. Death’s good brother rushed to the spot and
asked them why they had cried out. They said, “Because
[pg 81]
we saw Death.” So his brother was angry because Death
had again made good his escape into the earth, and he went
to the first man and told him that he was weary of hunting
Death and wished to return home to heaven. The first man
thanked him kindly for all he had done, and said, “I fear
there is nothing more to be done. We must only hope that
Death will not kill all the people.” It was a vain hope.
Since then Death has lived on earth and killed everybody
who is born into the world; and always, after the deed
of murder is done, he escapes into the earth at Tanda in
Singo.¹⁰³

In the preceding story Death is distinctly personified. Death
personified in a West African story of the origin of death. Death and
the spider and the spider’s daughter.

If this curious tale of the origin of death reveals no very
deep philosophy, it is at least interesting for the distinctness
with which Death is conceived as a personal being, the son
of the Lord of Heaven, the brother of the first man’s wife.
In this personification of Death the story differs from all the
others which we have examined and marks an intellectual
advance upon them; since the power of picturing abstract
ideas to the mind with all the sharpness of outline and
vividness of colour which are implied by personification is a
faculty above the reach of very low intelligences. It is not
surprising that the Baganda should have attained to this
power, for they are probably the most highly cultured and
intellectual of all the many Bantu tribes of Africa. The
same conception of Death as a person occurs in a story of
the origin of death which is told by the Hos, a negro tribe
in Togoland, a district of West Africa. These Hos belong
to the Ewe-speaking family of the true negroes, who have
reached a comparatively high level of barbarism in the
notorious kingdom of Dahomey. The story which the Hos
tell as to the origin of death is as follows. Once upon a
time there was a great famine in which even the hunters
could find no flesh to eat. Then Death went and made
a road as broad as from here to Sokode, and there he set
many snares. Every animal that tried to pass that way
fell into a snare. So Death had much flesh to eat. One
[pg 82]
day the Spider came to Death and said to him, “You have
so much meat!” and she asked if she might have some to
take home with her. Death gave her leave. So the Spider
made a basket as long as from Ho to Akoviewe (a distance
of about five miles), crammed it full of meat, and dragged it
home. In return for this bounty the Spider gave Death her
daughter Yiyisa to wife. So when Death had her for his
wife, he gave her a hint. He said, “Don’t walk on the broad
road which I have made. Walk on the footpath which I
have not made. When you go to the water, be sure to
take none but the narrow way through the wood.” Well,
some time afterwards it had rained a little; the grass was
wet, and Yiyisa wished to go to the watering-place. When
she tried to walk on the narrow path through the forest, the
tall damp grass wet her through and through, so she thought
to herself, “In future I will only go on the broad road.” But
scarce had she set foot on the beautiful broad road when she
fell into a snare and died on the spot. When Death came
to the snare and saw his wife in it dead, he cut her up into
bits and toasted them on the fire. One day the Spider
paid a visit to her son-in-law Death, and he set a good meal
before her. When she had eaten and drunk her fill and
had got up to go home, she asked Death after her daughter.
“If you take that meat from the fire,” said Death, “you will
see her.” So the Spider took the flesh from the fire and
there, sure enough, she found her dead daughter. Then
she went home in great wrath and whetted her knife till it
was so sharp that a fly lighting on the edge was cut in two.
With that knife she came back to attack Death. But Death
shot an arrow at her. She dodged it, and the arrow whizzed
past her and set all the forest on fire. Then the Spider
flung her sharp knife at Death, but it missed him and only
sliced off the tops of the palms and all the other trees of
the wood. Seeing that her stroke had failed, the Spider
fled away home and shut herself up in her house. But
Death waited for her on the edge of the town to kill her
as soon as she ventured out. Next morning some women
came out of the town to draw water at the watering-place,
and as they went they talked with one another. But Death
shot an arrow among them and killed several. The rest
[pg 83]
ran away home and said, “So and so is dead.” Then
Death came and looked at the bodies and said, “That
is my game. I need go no more into the wood to hunt.”
That is how Death came into the world. If the Spider
had not done what she did, nobody would ever have
died.¹⁰⁴

Death personified in a Melanesian story of the origin of
death.

Again, the Melanesians of the Banks Islands tell a
story of the origin of Death, in which that grim power is
personified. They say that Death (Mate) used to live
underground in a shadowy realm called Panoi, while men
on earth changed their skins like serpents and so renewing
their youth lived for ever. But a practical inconvenience of
immortality was that property never changed hands; newcomers
had no chance, everything was monopolised by the
old, old stagers. To remedy this state of things and secure
a more equitable distribution of property Death was induced
to emerge from the lower world and to appear on earth
among men; he came relying on an assurance that no
harm would be done him. Well, when they had him, they
laid him out on a board, covered him with a pall as if he
were a corpse, and then proceeded with great gusto to
divide his property and eat the funeral feast. On the fifth
day they blew the conch shell to drive away the ghost, as
usual, and lifted the pall to see what had become of Death.
But there was no Death there; he had absconded leaving only
his skeleton behind. They naturally feared that he had made
off with an intention to return to his home underground,
which would have been a great calamity; for if there were no
Death on earth, how could men die and how could other
people inherit their property? The idea was intolerable;
so to cut off the retreat of the fugitive, the Fool was set
to do sentinel duty at the parting of the ways, where one
road leads down to the underworld, Death’s home, and the
other leads up to the upper world, the abode of the living.
Here accordingly the Fool was stationed with strict orders
to keep his eye on Death if he should attempt to sneak past
him and return to the nether world. However, the Fool,
like a fool as he was, sat watching the road to the upper
world, and Death slipped behind him and so made good his
[pg 84]
retreat. Since then all men have followed Death down that
fatal path.¹⁰⁵

Thus according to savages death is not a necessary part of
the order of nature. A similar view is held by some eminent modern
biologists.

So much for savage stories of the origin of death. They
all imply a belief that death is not a necessary part of the
order of nature, but that it originated in a pure mistake or
misdeed of some sort on somebody’s part, and that we should
all have lived happy and immortal if it had not been for that
disastrous blunder or crime. Thus the tales reflect the same
frame of mind which I illustrated in the last lecture, when I
shewed that many savages still to this day believe all men
to be naturally immortal and death to be nothing but an
effect of sorcery. In short, whether we regard the savage’s
attitude to death at the present day or his ideas as to its
origin in the remote past, we must conclude that primitive
man cannot reconcile himself to the notion of death as a
natural and necessary event; he persists in regarding it as
an accidental and unnecessary disturbance of the proper
order of nature. To a certain extent, perhaps, in these
crude speculations he has anticipated certain views of modern
biology. Thus it has been maintained by Professor August
Weissmann that death is not a natural necessity, that many
of the lowest species of living animals do in fact live for
ever; and that in the higher animals the custom of dying
has been introduced in the course of evolution for the
purpose of thinning the population and preventing the
degeneration of the species, which would otherwise follow
through the gradual and necessary deterioration of the
immortal individuals, who, though they could not die,
might yet sustain much bodily damage through hard
knocks in the hurly-burly of eternal existence on earth.

Weissmann’s view that death is not a natural necessity but an
adaptation acquired in the course of evolution for the advantage of the
race.

On this subject I will quote some sentences from Professor
Weissmann’s essay on the duration of life. He
says, “The necessity of death has been hitherto explained
as due to causes which are inherent in organic nature,
and not to the fact that it may be advantageous. I do
not however believe in the validity of this explanation;
I consider that death is not a primary necessity, but that it
has been secondarily acquired as an adaptation. I believe
that life is endowed with a fixed duration, not because it is
[pg 85]
contrary to its nature to be unlimited, but because the
unlimited existence of individuals would be a luxury without
any corresponding advantage. The above-mentioned hypothesis
upon the origin and necessity of death leads me to
believe that the organism did not finally cease to renew the
worn-out cell material because the nature of the cells did not
permit them to multiply indefinitely, but because the power
of multiplying indefinitely was lost when it ceased to be of
use…. John Hunter, supported by his experiments on
anabiosis, hoped to prolong the life of man indefinitely by
alternate freezing and thawing; and the Veronese Colonel
Aless. Guaguino made his contemporaries believe that a race
of men existed in Russia, of which the individuals died
regularly every year on the 27th of November, and returned
to life on the 24th of the following April. There cannot
however be the least doubt, that the higher organisms, as
they are now constructed, contain within themselves the
germs of death. The question however arises as to how
this has come to pass; and I reply that death is to be
looked upon as an occurrence which is advantageous to the
species as a concession to the outer conditions of life, and
not as an absolute necessity, essentially inherent in life itself.
Death, that is the end of life, is by no means, as is usually
assumed, an attribute of all organisms. An immense number
of low organisms do not die, although they are easily destroyed,
being killed by heat, poisons, etc. As long, however,
as those conditions which are necessary for their life
are fulfilled, they continue to live, and they thus carry the
potentiality of unending life in themselves. I am speaking
not only of the Amoebae and the low unicellular Algae, but
also of far more highly organized unicellular animals, such
as the Infusoria.”¹⁰⁶

Similar view expressed by Alfred Russel Wallace.

A similar suggestion that death is not a natural necessity
but an innovation introduced for the good of the breed, has
been made by our eminent English biologist, Mr. Alfred
Russel Wallace. He says: “If individuals did not die they
would soon multiply inordinately and would interfere with
each other’s healthy existence. Food would become scarce,
[pg 86]
and hence the larger individuals would probably decompose
or diminish in size. The deficiency of nourishment would
lead to parts of the organism not being renewed; they
would become fixed, and liable to more or less slow
decomposition as dead parts within a living body. The
smaller organisms would have a better chance of finding
food, the larger ones less chance. That one which gave
off several small portions to form each a new organism
would have a better chance of leaving descendants like
itself than one which divided equally or gave off a large
part of itself. Hence it would happen that those which
gave off very small portions would probably soon after
cease to maintain their own existence while they would
leave a numerous offspring. This state of things would be
in any case for the advantage of the race, and would therefore,
by natural selection, soon become established as the
regular course of things, and thus we have the origin of old
age, decay, and death; for it is evident that when one or more
individuals have provided a sufficient number of successors
they themselves, as consumers of nourishment in a constantly
increasing degree, are an injury to their successors. Natural
selection therefore weeds them out, and in many cases favours
such races as die almost immediately after they have left
successors. Many moths and other insects are in this
condition, living only to propagate their kind and then
immediately dying, some not even taking any food in the
perfect and reproductive state.”¹⁰⁷

Savages and some men of science agree that death is not a
natural necessity.

Thus it appears that two of the most eminent biologists
of our time agree with savages in thinking that death is by
no means a natural necessity for all living beings. They
only differ from savages in this, that whereas savages look
upon death as the result of a deplorable accident, our men
of science regard it as a beneficent reform instituted by
nature as a means of adjusting the numbers of living beings
to the quantity of the food supply, and so tending to the
improvement and therefore on the whole to the happiness
of the species.

Footnote 57: (return)

H. Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu,
Part i. pp. 1, 3 sq., Part ii. p. 138; Rev. L. Grout,
Zululand, or Life among the Zulu-Kafirs (Philadelphia,
N.D.), pp. 148 sq.; Dudley Kidd, The Essential
Kafir (London, 1904), pp. 76 sq. Compare A. F. Gardiner,
Narrative of a Journey to the Zoolu Country (London, 1836), pp.
178 sq., T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, Relation d’un voyage
d’Exploration au Nord-Est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance
(Paris, 1842), p. 472; Rev. J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the
Zulu Country (London, 1857), p. 159; W. H. I. Bleek, Reynard the
Fox in South Africa (London, 1864), p. 74; D. Leslie, Among the
Zulus and Amatongas, Second Edition (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 209; F.
Speckmann, Die Hermannsburger Mission in Afrika (Hermannsburg,
1876), p. 164.

Footnote 58: (return)

J. Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa
(London, 1868), i. 47.

Footnote 59: (return)

E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), p. 242; E.
Jacottet, The Treasury of Ba-suto Lore, i. (Morija, Basutoland,
1908), pp. 46 sqq.

Footnote 60: (return)

H. A. Junod, Les Ba-Ronga Neuchâtel (1898), pp. 401
sq.

Footnote 61: (return)

W. A. Elmslie, Among the Wild Ngoni (Edinburgh and
London, 1899), p. 70.

Footnote 62: (return)

H. A. Junod and W. A. Elmslie, ll.cc.

Footnote 63: (return)

C. W. Hobley, Ethnology of A-Kamba and other East African Tribes
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 107-109.

Footnote 64: (return)

Fr. Müller, “Die Religionen Togos in Einzeldarstellungen,”
Anthropos, ii. (1907) p. 203. In a version of the story reported
from Calabar a sheep appears as the messenger of mortality, while a dog
is the messenger of immortality or rather of resurrection. See “Calabar
Stories,” Journal of the African Society, No. 18 (January 1906),
p. 194.

Footnote 65: (return)

E. Perregaux, Chez les Achanti
(Neuchâtel, 1906), pp. 198 sq.

Footnote 66: (return)

E. Perregaux, op. cit. p. 199.

Footnote 67: (return)

Sir J. E. Alexander, Expedition of Discovery into the
Interior of Africa (London, 1838), i. 169; C. J. Andersson, Lake
Ngami, Second Edition (London, 1856), pp. 328 sq.; W. H. I.
Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa (London, 1864), pp. 71-73;
Th. Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi
(London, 1881), p. 52.

Footnote 68: (return)

W. H. I. Bleek, A Brief Account of Bushman
Folk-lore (London, 1875), pp. 9 sq.

Footnote 69: (return)

W. H. I. Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa,
pp. 69 sq.

Footnote 70: (return)

A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford,
1905), pp. 271 sq.

Footnote 71: (return)

A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford,
1909), p. 98.

Footnote 72: (return)

Captain W. E. H. Barrett, “Notes
on the Customs and Beliefs of the Wa-Giriama,
etc., British East Africa,”
Journal of the R. Anthropological Institute,
xli. (1911) p. 37.

Footnote 73: (return)

Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians,
Second Edition (London, 1860), i.
205.

Footnote 74: (return)

Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses,
Nouvelle Édition, xv. (Paris, 1781)
pp. 305 sq.

Footnote 75: (return)

A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of
South-East Australia (London, 1904),
pp. 428 sq.

Footnote 76: (return)

Antoine Cabaton, Nouvelles Recherches
sur les Chams (Paris, 1901),
pp. 18 sq.

Footnote 77: (return)

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
Northern Tribes of Central Australia
(London, 1904), pp. 513 sq.

Footnote 78: (return)

Father G. Boscana, “Chinigchinich,”
in Life in California, by an
American [A. Robinson] (New York,
1846), pp. 298 sq.

Footnote 79: (return)

Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in
J. Pinkerton’s Voyages and Travels, xvi.
(London, 1814) p. 273.

Footnote 80: (return)

P. A. Kleintitschen, Die Küstenbewohner der
Gazellehalbinsel (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.), p. 334.

Footnote 81: (return)

A. Landes, “Contes et Légendes Annamites,” Cochinchine
française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 25 (Saigon, 1886), pp.
108 sq.

Footnote 82: (return)

Otto Meyer, “Mythen und Erzählungen von der Insel Vuatom
(Bismarck-Archipel, Südsee),” Anthropos, v. (1910) p. 724.

Footnote 83: (return)

H. Sundermann, “Die Insel Nias und die Mission daselbst,”
Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, xi. (1884) p. 451; E.
Modigliani, Un Viaggio a Nías (Milan, 1890), p. 295.

Footnote 84: (return)

R. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana (Leipsig,
1847-1848), ii. 319.

Footnote 85: (return)

R. Schomburgk, op. cit. ii. 320.

Footnote 86: (return)

R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891),
p. 265; W. Gray, “Some Notes on the Tannese,” Internationales Archiv
für Ethnographie, vii. (1894) p. 232.

Footnote 87: (return)

C. Ribbe, Zwei Jahre unter den Kannibalen der
Salomo-Inseln (Dresden-Blasowitz, 1903), p. 148.

Footnote 88: (return)

Ch. Keysser, “Aus dem Leben der Kaileute,” in R.
Neuhauss’s Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), iii. 161
sq.

Footnote 89: (return)

Josef Meier, “Mythen und Sagen der Admiralitätsinsulaner,”
Anthropos, iii. (1908) p. 193.

Footnote 90: (return)

George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians
(London, 1910), p. 365; George Turner, LL.D., Samoa (London,
1884), pp. 8 sq.

Footnote 91: (return)

See above, p. 70.

Footnote 92: (return)

A. C. Kruijt, “De legenden der Poso-Alfoeren aangaande de
erste menschen,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche
Zendelinggenootschap, xxxviii. (1894) p. 340.

Footnote 93: (return)

D. F. A. Hervey, “The Mêntra Traditions,” Journal of
the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 10 (December
1882), p. 190; W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the
Malay Peninsula (London, 1906), ii. 337 sq.

Footnote 94: (return)

Guerlach, “Mœurs et Superstitions des sauvages Ba-hnars,” Missions
Catholiques, xix. (1887) p. 479.

Footnote 95: (return)

(Sir) J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman, Gazetteer of
Upper Burma and the Shan States, Part i. vol. i. (Rangoon, 1900) pp.
408 sq.

Footnote 96: (return)

R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria
(Melbourne and London, 1878), i. 428. On this narrative the author
remarks: “This story appears to bear too close a resemblance to the
Biblical account of the Fall. Is it genuine or not? Mr. Bulmer admits
that it may have been invented by the aborigines after they had heard
something of Scripture history.”

Footnote 97: (return)

Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, Second Edition
(London, 1860), i. 204 sq. For another Fijian story of the origin
of death, see above, p. 67.

Footnote 98: (return)

Josef Meier, “Mythen und Sagen der Admiralitätsinsulaner,”
Anthropos, iii. (1908) p. 194.

Footnote 99: (return)

Josef Meier, op. cit. pp. 194 sq.

Footnote 100: (return)

C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of
Northern Rhodesia (London, 1911), pp. 80 sq. A like tale is
told by the Balolo of the Upper Congo. See Folk-lore, xii. (1901)
p. 461; and below, p. 472.

Footnote 101: (return)

J. Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,” Nineteenth Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Part i. (Washington,
1900) p. 436, quoting “the Payne manuscript, of date about 1835.”
Compare id., pp. 252-254, 436 sq.

Footnote 102: (return)

Relations des Jésuites, 1634, p. 13 (Canadian
reprint, Quebec, 1858).

Footnote 103: (return)

Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate
(London, 1904), ii. 700-705 (the story was taken down by Mr. J. F.
Cunningham); Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), pp.
460-464. The story is briefly told by Mr. L. Decle, Three Years in
Savage Africa (London, 1898), pp. 439 sq.

Footnote 104: (return)

J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), pp. 590-593.

Footnote 105: (return)

R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891),
pp. 265 sq.

Footnote 106: (return)

A. Weissmann, Essays upon Heredity and Kindred
Biological Problems, vol. i. (Oxford, 1891) pp. 25 sq.

Footnote 107: (return)

A. R. Wallace, quoted in A. Weissmann’s Essays upon
Heredity, i. (Oxford, 1891) p. 24 note.

LECTURE IV

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE
ABORIGINES OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA

Proposed survey of the belief in immortality and the worship
of the dead, as these are found among the various races of men,
beginning with the lowest savages.

In previous lectures we have considered the ideas which
savages in general entertain of death and its origin. To-day
we begin our survey of the beliefs and practices of particular
races in regard to the dead. I propose to deal separately
with some of the principal races of men and to shew in
detail how the belief in human immortality and the worship
of the dead, to which that belief naturally gives rise, have
formed a more or less important element of their religion.
And in order to trace as far as possible the evolution of that
worship in history I shall begin with the lowest savages
about whom we possess accurate information, and shall
pass from them to higher races until, if time permitted, we
might come to the civilised nations of antiquity and of
modern times. In this way, by comparing the ideas and
practices of peoples on different planes of culture we may
be able approximately to reconstruct or represent to ourselves
with a fair degree of probability the various stages
through which this particular phase of religion may
be supposed to have passed in the great civilised races
before the dawn of history. Of course all such reconstructions
must be more or less conjectural. In the
absence of historical documents that is inevitable; but our
reconstruction will be more or less probable according to the
degree in which the corresponding stages of evolution are
found to resemble or differ from each other in the various
races of men. If we find that tribes at approximately the
same level of culture in different parts of the world have
[pg 88]
approximately the same religion, we may fairly infer that
religion is in a sense a function of culture, and therefore that
all races which have traversed the same stages of culture in
the past have traversed also the same stages of religion; in
short that, allowing for many minor variations, which flow
inevitably from varying circumstances such as climate, soil,
racial temperament, and so forth, the course of religious
development has on the whole been uniform among mankind.
This enquiry may be called the embryology of
religion, in as much as it seeks to do for the development
of religion what embryology in the strict sense of the word
attempts to do for the development of life. And just as
biology or the science of life naturally begins with the study
of the lowest sorts of living beings, the humble protozoa, so
we shall begin our enquiry with a study of the lowest
savages of whom we possess a comparatively full and
accurate record, namely, the aborigines of Australia.

Savagery a case not of degeneracy but of arrested or rather
retarded development.

At the outset I would ask you to bear in mind that, so
far as evidence allows us to judge, savagery in all its
phases appears to be nothing but a case of arrested or rather
retarded development. The old view that savages have
degenerated from a higher level of culture, on which their
forefathers once stood, is destitute alike of evidence and of
probability. On the contrary, the information which we
possess as to the lower races, meagre and fragmentary as
it unfortunately is, all seems to point to the conclusion that
on the whole even the most savage tribes have reached their
low level of culture from one still lower, and that the upward
movement, though so slow as to be almost imperceptible, has
yet been real and steady up to the point where savagery has
come into contact with civilisation. The moment of such
contact is a critical one for the savages. If the intellectual,
moral, and social interval which divides them from the
civilised intruders exceeds a certain degree, then it appears
that sooner or later the savages must inevitably perish; the
shock of collision with a stronger race is too violent to be
withstood, the weaker goes to the wall and is shattered.
But if on the other hand the breach between the two
conflicting races is not so wide as to be impassable, there
is a hope that the weaker may assimilate enough of the
[pg 89]
higher culture of the other to survive. It was so, for
example, with our barbarous forefathers in contact with the
ancient civilisations of Greece and Rome; and it may be so
in future with some, for example, of the black races of the
present day in contact with European civilisation. Time
will shew. But among the savages who cannot permanently
survive the shock of collision with Europe may certainly be
numbered the aborigines of Australia. They are rapidly
dwindling and wasting away, and before very many years
have passed it is probable that they will be extinct like
the Tasmanians, who, so far as we can judge from the
miserably imperfect records of them which we possess,
appear to have been savages of an even lower type than
the Australians, and therefore to have been still less able
to survive in the struggle for existence with their vigorous
European rivals.

Physical causes which have retarded progress in Australia.

The causes which have retarded progress in Australia
and kept the aboriginal population at the lowest level of
savagery appear to be mainly two; namely, first, the geographical
isolation and comparatively small area of the
continent, and, second, the barren and indeed desert nature
of a great part of its surface; for the combined effect of
these causes has been, by excluding foreign competitors
and seriously restricting the number of competitors at home,
to abate the rigour of competition and thereby to restrain
the action of one of the most powerful influences which make
for progress. In other words, elements of weakness have
been allowed to linger on, which under the sterner conditions
of life entailed by fierce competition would long ago have
been eliminated and have made way for elements better
adapted to the environment. What is true of the human
inhabitants of Australia in this respect is true also of its
fauna and flora. It has long been recognised that the
animals and plants of Australia represent on the whole
more archaic types of life than the animals and plants of
the larger continents; and the reason why these antiquated
creatures have survived there rather than elsewhere is mainly
that, the area of competition being so much restricted through
the causes I have mentioned, these comparatively weak forms
of animal and vegetable life have not been killed off by
[pg 90]
stronger competitors. That this is the real cause appears to
be proved by the rapidity with which many animals and
plants introduced into Australia from Europe tend to overrun
the country and to oust the old native fauna and flora.¹⁰⁸

In the centre of Australia the natural conditions of life are
most unfavourable; hence the central aborigines have remained in a more
primitive state than those of the coasts, where food and water are more
plentiful.

I have said that among the causes which have kept the
aborigines of Australia at a very low level of savagery must
be reckoned the desert nature of a great part of the country.
Now it is the interior of the continent which is the most arid,
waste, and barren. The coasts are comparatively fertile, for
they are watered by showers condensed from an atmosphere
which is charged with moisture by the neighbouring sea; and
this condensation is greatly facilitated in the south-eastern
and eastern parts of the continent by a high range of
mountains which here skirts the coast for a long distance,
attracting the moisture from the ocean and precipitating it
in the form of snow and rain. Thus the vegetation and
hence the supply of food both animal and vegetable in
these well-watered portions of the continent are varied
and plentiful. In striking contrast with the fertility and
abundance of these favoured regions are the stony plains
and bare rocky ranges of the interior, where water is scarce,
vegetation scanty, and animal life at certain seasons of the
year can only with difficulty be maintained. It would be no
wonder if the natives of these arid sun-scorched wildernesses
should have lagged behind even their savage brethren of the
coasts in respect of material and social progress; and in fact
there are many indications that they have done so, in other
words, that the aborigines of the more fertile districts near
the sea have made a greater advance towards civilisation
than the tribes of the desert interior. This is the view of
men who have studied the Australian savages most deeply
at first hand, and, so far as I can judge of the matter without
any such first-hand acquaintance, I entirely agree with their
opinion. I have given my reasons elsewhere and shall not
repeat them here. All that I wish to impress on you now
[pg 91]
is that in aboriginal Australia a movement of social and
intellectual progress, slow but perceptible, appears to have
been setting from the coast inwards, and that, so far as
such things can be referred to physical causes, this particular
movement in Australia would seem to have been initiated
by the sea acting through an abundant rainfall and a consequent
abundant supply of food.¹⁰⁹

Backward state of the Central Australian aborigines. They
have no idea of a moral supreme being.

Accordingly, in attempting to give you some account
of the belief in immortality and the worship of the dead
among the various races of mankind, I propose to begin
with the natives of Central Australia, first, because the
Australian aborigines are the most primitive savages about
whom we have full and accurate information, and, second,
because among these primitive savages the inhabitants
of the central deserts are on the whole the most primitive.
Like their brethren in the rest of the continent
they were in their native condition absolutely ignorant of
metals and of agriculture; they had no domestic animals
except the dog, and they subsisted wholly by the products
of the chase and the natural fruits, roots, and seeds, which
the ground yielded without cultivation of any sort. In
regard to their intellectual outlook upon the world, they
were deeply imbued, as I shewed in a former lecture, with
a belief in magic, but it can hardly be said that they possessed
any religion in the strict sense of the word, by which
I mean a propitiation of real or imaginary powers regarded
as personal beings superior to man: certainly the
Australian aborigines appear to have believed in no beings
who deserve to be called gods. On this subject Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen, our best authorities on these tribes,
observe as follows: “The Central Australian natives—and
this is true of the tribes extending from Lake Eyre
in the south to the far north and eastwards across to
the Gulf of Carpentaria—have no idea whatever of the
existence of any supreme being who is pleased if they
follow a certain line of what we call moral conduct and
displeased if they do not do so. They have not the
vaguest idea of a personal individual other than an actual
living member of the tribe who approves or disapproves of
[pg 92]
their conduct, so far as anything like what we call morality
is concerned. Any such idea as that of a future life of
happiness or the reverse, as a reward for meritorious or as a
punishment for blameworthy conduct, is quite foreign to
them…. We know of no tribe in which there is a belief
of any kind in a supreme being who rewards or punishes
the individual according to his moral behaviour, using the
word moral in the native sense.”¹¹⁰

Central Australian theory that the souls of the dead survive
and are afterwards reborn as infants.

But if the aborigines of Central Australia have no
religion properly so called, they entertain beliefs and they
observe practices out of which under favourable circumstances
a religion might have been developed, if its evolution
had not been arrested by the advent of Europeans. Among
these elements of natural religion one of the most important
is the theory which these savages hold as to the existence
and nature of the dead. That theory is a very remarkable
one. With a single exception, which I shall
mention presently, they unanimously believe that death
is not the end of all things for the individual, but that
the human personality survives, apparently with little
change, in the form of a spirit, which may afterwards be
reborn as a child into the world. In fact they think that
every living person without exception is the reincarnation
of a dead person who lived on earth a longer or shorter
time ago. This belief is held universally by the tribes
which occupy an immense area of Australia from the centre
northwards to the Gulf of Carpentaria.¹¹¹ The single exception
to which I have referred is furnished by the Gnanji, a
fierce and wild-looking tribe who eat their dead enemies
and perhaps also their dead friends.¹¹² These savages deny
that women have spirits which live after death; when a
woman dies, that, they say, is the end of her. On the
other hand, the spirit of a dead man, in their opinion,
survives and goes to and fro on the earth visiting the places
where his forefathers camped in days of old and destined to
be born again of a woman at some future time, when the
rains have fallen and bleached his bones.¹¹³ But why these
[pg 93]
primitive philosophers should deny the privilege of immortality
to women and reserve it exclusively for men, is
not manifest. All other Central Australian tribes appear
to admit the rights of women equally with the rights of
men in a life beyond the grave.

Central Australian theory as to the state of the dead.
Certain conspicuous features of the landscape supposed to be tenanted by
the souls of the dead waiting to be born again.

With regard to the state of the souls of the dead in the
intervals between their successive reincarnations, the opinions
of the Central Australian savages are clear and definite.
Most civilised races who believe in the immortality of
the soul have found themselves compelled to confess
that, however immortal the spirits of the departed may
be, they do not present themselves commonly to our eyes
or ears, nor meddle much with the affairs of the living;
hence the survivors have for the most part inferred that the
dead do not hover invisible in our midst, but that they
dwell somewhere, far away, in the height of heaven, or in
the depth of earth, or in Islands of the Blest beyond the
sea where the sun goes down. Not so with the simple
aborigines of Australia. They imagine that the spirits of
the dead continue to haunt their native land and especially
certain striking natural features of the landscape, it may be
a pool of water in a deep gorge of the barren hills, or a
solitary tree in the sun-baked plains, or a great rock that
affords a welcome shade in the sultry noon. Such spots
are thought to be tenanted by the souls of the departed
waiting to be born again. There they lurk, constantly on
the look-out for passing women into whom they may enter,
and from whom in due time they may be born as infants.
It matters not whether the woman be married or unmarried,
a matron or a maid, a blooming girl or a withered hag:
any woman may conceive directly by the entrance into her
of one of these disembodied spirits; but the natives have
shrewdly observed that the spirits shew a decided preference
for plump young women. Hence when such a damsel is
passing near a plot of haunted ground, if she does not
wish to become a mother, she will disguise herself as an
aged crone and hobble past, saying in a thin cracked
voice, “Don’t come to me. I am an old woman.” Such
spots are often stones, which the natives call child-stones
because the souls of the dead are there lying in wait for
[pg 94]
women in order to be born as children. One such stone,
for example, may be seen in the land of the Arunta tribe
near Alice Springs. It projects to a height of three feet
from the ground among the mulga scrub, and there is a
round hole in it through which the souls of dead plum-tree
people are constantly peeping, ready to pounce out on a
likely damsel. Again, in the territory of the Warramunga
tribe the ghosts of black-snake people are supposed to
gather in the rocks round certain pools or in the gum-trees
which border the generally dry bed of a water-course. No
Warramunga woman would dare to strike one of these trees
with an axe, because she is firmly convinced that in doing
so she would set free one of the lurking black-snake spirits,
who would immediately dart into her body. They think
that the spirits are no larger than grains of sand and that
they make their way into women through the navel. Nor
is it merely by direct contact with one of these repositories
of souls, nor yet by passing near it, that women may be
gotten with child against their wish. The Arunta believe
that any malicious man may by magic cause a woman or
even a child to become a mother: he has only to go to one
of the child-stones and rub it with his hands, muttering the
words, “Plenty of young women. You look and go
quickly.”¹¹⁴

As a rule, only the souls of persons of one particular
totemic clan are thought to congregate in one place.

A remarkable feature in these gathering-places of the
dead remains to be noticed. The society at each of them
is very select. The ghosts are very clannish; as a rule none
but people of one particular totemic clan are supposed to for-gather
at any one place. For example, we have just seen that
in the Arunta tribe the souls of dead people of the plum-tree
totem congregate at a certain stone in the mulga scrub, and
that in the Warramunga tribe the spirits of deceased persons
who had black snakes for their totem haunt certain gum-trees.
The same thing applies to most of the other haunts
of the dead in Central Australia. Whether the totem was a
kangaroo or an emu, a rat or a bat, a hawk or a cockatoo,
[pg 95]
a bee or a fly, a yam or a grass seed, the sun or the moon,
fire or water, lightning or the wind, it matters not what the
totem was, only the ghosts of people of one totemic clan meet
for the most part in one place; thus one rock will be
tenanted by the spirits of kangaroo folk only, and another
by spirits of emu folk only; one water-pool will be the
home of dead rat people alone, and another the haunt of
none but dead bat people; and so on with most of the
other abodes of the souls. However, in the Urabunna tribe
the ghosts are not so exclusive; some of them consent to
share their abode with people of other totems. For example,
a certain pool of water is haunted by the spirits of folk who
in their lifetime had for their totems respectively the emu,
rain, and a certain grub. On the other hand a group of
granite boulders is inhabited only by the souls of persons
of the pigeon totem.¹¹⁵

Totemism defined.

Perhaps for the sake of some of my hearers I should
say a word as to the meaning of totems and totemism.
The subject is a large one and is still under discussion. For
our present purpose it is not necessary that I should enter
into details; I will therefore only say that a totem is
commonly a class of natural objects, usually a species of
animals or plants, with which a savage identifies himself
in a curious way, imagining that he himself and his kinsfolk
are for all practical purposes kangaroos or emus, rats or
bats, hawks or cockatoos, yams or grass-seed, and so on,
according to the particular class of natural objects which
he claims as his totem. The origin of this remarkable
identification of men with animals, plants, or other
things is still much debated; my own view is that
the key to the mystery is furnished by the Australian
beliefs as to birth and rebirth which I have just described
to you; but on that subject I will not now dwell.¹¹⁶ All that
I ask you to remember is that in Central Australia there
is no general gathering-place for the spirits of the departed;
the souls are sorted out more or less strictly according to
their totems and dwell apart each in their own little preserve
or preserves, on which ghosts of other totems are
[pg 96]
supposed seldom or never to trespass. Thus the whole
country-side is dotted at intervals with these spiritual parks
or reservations, which are respected by the natives as the
abodes of their departed kinsfolk. In size they vary from
a few square yards to many square miles.¹¹⁷

Traditionary origin of the local totem centres
(oknanikilla) where the souls of the dead are supposed to
assemble. The sacred sticks or stones (churinga) which the
totemic ancestors carried about with them.

The way in which these spiritual preserves originated is
supposed to be as follows. In the earliest days of which
the aborigines retain a tradition, and to which they give the
name of the alcheringa or dream times, their remote ancestors
roamed about the country in bands, each band composed of
people of the same totem. Thus one band would consist
of frog people only, another of witchetty grub people only,
another of Hakea flower people only, and so on. Now in
regard to the nature of these remote totemic ancestors of the
alcheringa or dream times, the ideas of the natives are very
hazy; they do not in fact clearly distinguish their human
from their totemic nature; in speaking, for example, of a
man of the kangaroo totem they seem unable to discriminate
sharply between the man and the animal: perhaps we may
say that what is before their mind is a blurred image, a sort
of composite photograph, of a man and a kangaroo in one:
the man is semi-bestial, the kangaroo is semi-human. And
similarly with their ancestors of all other totems: if the
particular ancestors, for example, had the bean-tree for their
totem, then their descendants in thinking of them might,
like the blind man in the Gospel, see in their mind’s eye
men walking like trees and trees perambulating like men.
Now each of these semi-human ancestors is thought to have
carried about with him on his peregrinations one or more
sacred sticks or stones of a peculiar pattern, to which the
Arunta give the name of churinga: they are for the most
part oval or elongated and flattened stones or slabs of wood,
varying in length from a few inches to over five feet, and
inscribed with a variety of patterns which represent or have
reference to the totems. But the patterns are purely conventional,
consisting of circles, curved lines, spirals, and dots
with no attempt to represent natural objects pictorially.
Each of these sacred stones or sticks was intimately
associated with the spirit part of the man or woman who
[pg 97]
carried it; for women as well as men had their churinga.
When these semi-human ancestors died, they went into the
ground, leaving their sacred stones or sticks behind them on
the spot, and in every case some natural feature arose to
mark the place, it might be a tree, a rock, a pool of water,
or what not. The memory of all such spots has been carefully
preserved and handed down from generation to
generation by the old men, and it is to these spots that
down to the present day the souls of all the dead regularly
repair in order to await reincarnation. The Arunta call the
places oknanikilla, and we may call them local totem centres,
because they are the centres where the spirits of the departed
assemble according to their totems.¹¹⁸

Every living person has also his or her sacred stick or stone
(churinga), with which his or her spirit is closely bound up.

But it is not merely the remote forefathers of the
Central Australian savages who are said to have been
possessed of these sacred sticks or stones: every man and
woman who is born into the world has one of them, with
which his or her spirit is believed to be closely bound up.
This is intelligible when we remember that every living
person is believed to be simply the reincarnation of an
ancestor; for that being so he naturally comes to life with
all the attributes which belonged to him in his previous
state of existence on earth. The notion of the natives is
that when a spirit child enters into a woman to be born, he
immediately drops his sacred stick or stone on the spot,
which is necessarily one of what we have called the local
totem centres, since in the opinion of the natives it is only
at or near them that a woman can conceive a child. Hence
when her child is born, the woman tells her husband the
place where she fancies that the infant entered into her, and
he goes with some old men to find the precious object, the
stick or stone dropped by the spirit of the infant when it
entered into the mother. If it cannot be found, the men
cut a wooden one from the nearest hard-wood tree, and
this becomes the sacred stick or churinga of the newborn
child. The exact spot, whether a tree or a stone or what
not, in which the child’s spirit is supposed to have tarried in
[pg 98]
the interval between its incarnations, is called its nanja tree
or stone or what not. A definite relation is supposed to
exist between each individual and his nanja tree or stone.
The tree or stone and any animal or bird that lights upon
it is sacred to him and may not be molested. A native has
been known earnestly to intercede with a white man to
spare a tree because it was his nanja or birth-tree, and he
feared that evil would befall him if it were cut down.¹¹⁹

Sanctity of the churinga.

Thus in these Central Australian tribes every man,
woman, and child has his or her sacred birth-stone or stick.
But though every woman, like every man, has her sacred
birth-stone or stick, she is never allowed to see it under pain
of death or of being blinded with a fire-stick. Indeed none
but old women are aware even of the existence of such
things. Uninitiated men are likewise forbidden under the
same severe penalties ever to look upon these most sacred
objects.¹²⁰ The sanctity ascribed to the sticks and stones is
intelligible when we remember that the spirits of all the
people both living and dead are believed to be intimately
associated with them. Each of them, we are told, is
supposed to be so closely bound up with a person’s spirit
that it may be regarded as his or her representative, and
those of dead people are believed to be endowed with the
attributes of their former owners and actually to impart
them to any one who happens to carry them about with
him. Hence these apparently insignificant sticks and stones
are, in the opinion of the natives, most potent instruments
for conveying to the living the virtues and powers of the
dead. For example, in a fight the possession of one of these
holy sticks or stones is thought to endow the possessor with
courage and accuracy of aim and also to deprive his
adversary of these qualities. So firmly is this belief held,
that if two men were fighting and one of them knew that
the other carried a sacred birth-stone or stick while he himself
did not, he would certainly lose heart and be beaten.
Again, when a man is sick, he will sometimes have one of
these sacred stones brought to him and will scrape a little
[pg 99]
dust off it, mix the dust with water, and drink it. This is
supposed to strengthen him. Clearly he imagines that with
the scrapings of the stone he absorbs the strength and other
qualities of the person to whom the stone belonged.¹²¹

Sacred store-houses (ertnatulunga) of the
churinga.

All the birth-stones or sticks (churinga) belonging to
any particular totemic group are kept together, hidden away
from the eyes of women and uninitiated men, in a sacred
store-house or ertnatulunga, as the Arunta and Unmatjera
call it. This store-house is always situated in one of the local
totem centres or oknanikilla, which, as we have seen, vary in
size from a few yards to many square miles. In itself the
sacred treasure-house is usually a small cave or crevice in
some lonely spot among the rugged hills. The entrance is
carefully blocked up with stones arranged so artfully as to
simulate nature and to awake no suspicion in the mind of
passing strangers that behind these tumbled blocks lie
concealed the most prized possessions of the tribe. The
immediate neighbourhood of any one of these sacred store-houses
is a kind of haven of refuge for wild animals, for
once they have run thither, they are safe; no hunter would
spear a kangaroo or opossum which cowered on the ground
at one of these hallowed spots. The very plants which
grow there are sacred and may not be plucked or broken or
interfered with in any way. Similarly, an enemy who
succeeds in taking refuge there, is safe from his pursuer, so
long as he keeps within the sacred boundaries: even the
avenger of blood, pursuing the murderer hot-foot, would not
dare to lift up his hand against him on the holy ground.
Thus, these places are sanctuaries in the strict sense of the
word; they are probably the most primitive examples of
their class and contain the germ out of which cities of refuge
for manslayers and others might be developed. It is
instructive, therefore, to observe that these rudimentary
sanctuaries in the heart of the Australian wilderness derive
their sacredness mainly, it would seem, from their association
with the spirits of the dead, whose repose must not be
disturbed by tumult, violence, and bloodshed. Even when
the sacred birth-stones and sticks have been removed from
the store-house in the secret recesses of the hills and have
[pg 100]
been brought into the camp for the performance of certain
solemn ceremonies, no fighting may take place, no weapons
may be brandished in their neighbourhood: if men will
quarrel and fight, they must take their weapons and go
elsewhere to do it.¹²² And when the men go to one of the
sacred store-houses to inspect the treasures which it contains,
they must each of them put his open hand solemnly
over the mouth of the rocky crevice and then retire, in
order to give the spirits due notice of the approach of
strangers; for if they were disturbed suddenly, they would
be angry.¹²³

Exhibition of the churinga to young men.

It is only after a young man has passed through the
severe ceremonies of initiation, which include most painful
bodily mutilations, that he is deemed worthy to be introduced
to the tribal arcana, the sacred sticks and stones, which
repose in their hallowed cave among the mountain solitudes.
Even when he has passed through all the ordeals, many
years may elapse before he is admitted to a knowledge of
these mysteries, if he shews himself to be of a light and
frivolous disposition. When at last by the gravity of his
demeanour he is judged to have proved himself indeed a
man, a day is fixed for revealing to him the great secret.
Then the headman of his local group, together with other
grave and reverend seniors, conducts him to the mouth of
the cave: the stones are rolled away from the entrance:
the spirits within are duly warned of the approach of
visitors; and then the sacred sticks and stones, tied up in
bundles, are brought forth. The bundles are undone, the
sticks and stones are taken out, one by one, reverently
scrutinised, and exhibited to the novice, while the old men
explain to him the meaning of the patterns incised on each
and reveal to him the persons, alive or dead, to whom they
belong. All the time the other men keep chanting in a
low voice the traditions of their remote ancestors in the
far-off dream times. At the close the novice is told the
secret and sacred name which he is thenceforth to bear, and
is warned never to allow it to pass his lips in the hearing
[pg 101]
of anybody except members of his own totemic group.¹²⁴
Sometimes this secret name is that of an ancestor of whom
the man or woman is supposed to be a reincarnation: for
women as well as men have their secret and sacred names.¹²⁵

Number of churinga in a store-house. Significance of
the churinga. Use of the churinga in magic.

The number of sacred birth-stones and sticks kept
in any one store-house naturally varies from group to
group; but whatever their number, whether more or less,
in any one store-house they all normally belong to the
same totem, though a few belonging to other totems may
be borrowed and deposited for a time with them. For
example, a sacred store-house of the honey-ant totem
was found to contain sixty-eight birth-sticks of that totem
with a few of the lizard totem and two of the wild-cat
totem.¹²⁶ Any store-house will usually contain both sticks
and stones, but as a rule perhaps the sticks predominate
in number.¹²⁷ Time after time these tribal repositories
are visited by the men and their contents taken out and
examined. On each examination the sacred sticks and
stones are carefully rubbed over with dry and powdered
red ochre or charcoal, the sticks being rubbed with red
ochre only, but the stones either with red ochre or
charcoal.¹²⁸ Further, it is customary on these occasions
to press the sacred objects against the stomachs and thighs
of all the men present; this is supposed to untie their
bowels, which are thought to be tightened and knotted
by the emotion which the men feel at the sight of these
venerated sticks and stones. Indeed, the emotion is
sometimes very real: men have been seen to weep on
beholding these mystic objects for the first time after a
considerable interval.¹²⁹ Whenever the sacred store-house
is visited and its contents examined, the old men explain
to the younger men the marks incised on the sticks and
stones, and recite the traditions associated with the dead
men to whom they belonged;¹³⁰ so that these rude objects
[pg 102]
of wood and stone, with the lines and dots scratched on
them, serve the savages as memorials of the past; they
are in fact rudimentary archives as well as, we may almost
say, rudimentary idols; for a stone or stick which represents
a revered ancestor and is supposed to be endowed with
some portion of his spirit, is not far from being an idol.
No wonder, therefore, that they are guarded and treasured
by a tribe as its most precious possession. When a
group of natives have been robbed of them by thoughtless
white men and have found the sacred store-house empty,
they have tried to kill the traitor who betrayed the
hallowed spot to the strangers, and have remained in camp
for a fortnight weeping and wailing for the loss and
plastering themselves with pipeclay, which is their token
of mourning for the dead.¹³¹ Yet, as a great mark of
friendship, they will sometimes lend these sacred sticks
and stones to a neighbouring group; for believing that
the sticks and stones are associated with the spiritual parts
of their former and present owners, they naturally wish
to have as many of them as possible and regard their
possession as a treasure of great price, a sort of reservoir
of spiritual force,¹³² which can be turned to account not only
in battle by worsting the enemy, but in various other ways,
such as by magically increasing the food supply. For
instance, when a man of the grass-seed totem wishes to
increase the supply of grass-seed in order that it may be
eaten by people of other totems, he goes to the sacred
store-house, clears the ground all around it, takes out a few
of the holy sticks and stones, smears them with red ochre
and decorates them with birds’ down, chanting a spell all
the time. Then he rubs them together so that the down
flies off in all directions; this is supposed to carry with
it the magical virtue of the sticks or stones and so to
fertilise the grass-seed.¹³³

Elements of a worship of the dead. Marvellous powers
attributed by the Central Australians to their remote ancestors of the
alcheringa or dream time.

On the whole, when we survey these practices and beliefs
of the Central Australian aborigines, we may perhaps
conclude that, if they do not amount to a worship of the
[pg 103]
dead, they at least contain the elements out of which such a
worship might easily be developed. At first sight, no doubt,
their faith in the transmigration of souls seems and perhaps
really is a serious impediment to a worship of the dead in
the strict sense of the word. For if they themselves are the
dead come to life again, it is difficult to see how they can
worship the spirits of the dead without also worshipping each
other, since they are all by hypothesis simply these worshipful
spirits reincarnated. But though in theory every living
man and woman is merely an ancestor or ancestress born
again and therefore should be his or her equal, in practice
they appear to admit that their forefathers of the remote
alcheringa or dream time were endowed with many marvellous
powers which their modern reincarnations cannot lay
claim to, and that accordingly these ancestral spirits were
more to be reverenced, were in fact more worshipful, than
their living representatives. On this subject Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen observe: “The Central Australian native is firmly
convinced, as will be seen from the accounts relating to their
alcheringa ancestors, that the latter were endowed with
powers such as no living man now possesses. They could
travel underground or mount into the sky, and could make
creeks and water-courses, mountain-ranges, sand-hills, and
plains. In very many cases the actual names of these
natives are preserved in their traditions, but, so far as
we have been able to discover, there is no instance of any
one of them being regarded in the light of a ‘deity.’
Amongst the Central Australian natives there is never any
idea of appealing for assistance to any one of these Alcheringa
ancestors in any way, nor is there any attempt made in
the direction of propitiation, with one single exception in the
case of the mythic creature called Wollunqua, amongst the
Warramunga tribe, who, it may be remarked, is most
distinctly regarded as a snake and not as a human being.”¹³⁴
Thus far Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. From their testimony
it appears that with a single possible exception, to which I
will return immediately, the Central Australian aborigines
are not known to worship any of their dead ancestors;
they indeed believe their remote forefathers of the alcheringa
[pg 104]
age to have been endowed with marvellous powers which
they themselves do not possess; but they do not regard these
ancestral spirits as deities, nor do they pray and sacrifice to
them for help and protection. The single possible exception
to this general rule known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen is
the case of the mythical water-snake called Wollunqua, who
is in a sense revered and propitiated by the Warramunga
tribe. The case is interesting and instructive as indicative
of an advance from magic towards religion in the strict sense
of the word. Accordingly I propose to consider it somewhat
fully.

The Wollunqua, a mythical water-snake, one of the Warramunga
totems.

The Wollunqua is one of the many totems of the Warramunga
tribe. It is to be borne in mind that, though every
Australian tribe has many totems which are most commonly
animals or plants and more rarely other natural objects,
all the totems are not respected by all the members of the
tribe; each totem is respected only by a particular group
of men and women in the tribe, who believe themselves to
be descended from the same totemic ancestor. Thus the
whole tribe is broken up into many groups or bodies of
men and women, each group knit together by a belief in
a common descent from the totem, by a common respect for
the totemic species, whether it be a species of animals or
plants, or what not, and finally by the possession of a common
name derived from the totem. Thus, for example, we have
a group of men and women who believe themselves descended
from an ancestor who had the bandicoot for his totem; they
all respect bandicoots; and they are all called bandicoot
people. Similarly with all the other totemic groups within
the tribe. It is convenient to have a name for these totemic
groups or tribal subdivisions, and accordingly we may call
them clans, provided we remember that a totemic clan in
this sense is not an independent political community such
as the Scottish Highland clans used to be; it is merely a
subdivision of the tribe, and the members of it do not
usually keep to themselves but live more or less interfused
with members of all the other totemic clans which together
compose the tribe. Now amongst the Warramunga the
Wollunqua or mythical water-snake is the totem of such a
clan or tribal subdivision, the members of which believe
[pg 105]
themselves to be descended from the creature and call themselves
by its name. So far, therefore, the Wollunqua is
merely a totem of the ordinary sort, an object of respect
for a particular section of the tribe. Like other totemic
ancestors the Wollunqua is supposed to have wandered
about the country leaving supplies of spirit individuals at
various points, individuals who are constantly undergoing
reincarnation. But on the other hand the Wollunqua differs
from almost all other Australian totems in this, that whereas
they are real objects, such as animals, plants, water, wind,
the sun and moon, and so on, the Wollunqua is a purely
mythical creature, which exists only in the imagination of
the natives; for they believe it to be a water-snake so
huge that if it were to stand up on its tail, its head would
reach far up into the sky. It now lives in a large pool
called Thapauerlu, hidden away in a lonely valley of the
Murchison Range; but the Warramunga fear that it may at
any moment sally out and do some damage. They say that
it actually killed a number of them on one of its excursions,
though happily they at last succeeded in beating it off. So
afraid are they of the creature, that in speaking of it
amongst themselves they will not use its proper name of
Wollunqua but call it instead urkulu nappaurinnia, because,
as they told Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, if they were to
name it too often by its real name they would lose control
over the beast and it would rush forth and devour them.¹³⁵
Thus the natives do not distinguish the Wollunqua from
the rest of their actually existing totems, as we do: they
have never beheld him with their bodily eyes, yet to them he
is just as real as the kangaroos which they see hopping along
the sands, as the flies which buzz about their heads in the
sunshine, or as the cockatoos which flap screaming past in
the thickets. How real this belief in the mythical snake is
with these savages, was brought vividly home to Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen when they visited, in company with some
[pg 106]
natives, the deep and lonely pool among the rocky hills in
which the awful being is supposed to reside. Before they
approached the spot, the natives had been talking and
laughing freely, but when they drew near the water their
voices were hushed and their demeanour became solemn.
When all stood silent on the brink of the deep still pool,
enclosed by a sandy margin on one side and by a line
of red rocks on the other, two old men, the leaders of
the totemic group of the Wollunqua, went down to the
edge of the water and, with bowed heads, addressed the
Wollunqua in whispers, asking him to remain quiet and do
them no harm, for they were mates of his, and had brought
two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them
all about him. “We could plainly see,” add Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen, “that it was all very real to them, and that they
implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive
beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see
him.”¹³⁶

Religious character of the belief in the Wollunqua.

I need hardly point out what a near approach all
this is to religion in the proper sense of the word. Here
we have a firm belief in a purely imaginary being who is
necessarily visible to the eye of faith alone, since I think we
may safely assume that a water-snake, supposed to be many
miles long and capable of reaching up to the sky, has no
real existence either on the earth or in the waters under the
earth. Yet to these savages this invisible being is just as
real as the actually existing animals and men whom they
perceive with their bodily senses; they not only pray to him
but they propitiate him with a solemn ritual; and no doubt
they would spurn with scorn the feeble attempts of shallow
sceptics to question the reality of his existence or the literal
truth of the myths they tell about him. Certainly these
savages are far on the road to religion, if they have not
already passed the Rubicon which divides it from the
common workaday world. If an unhesitating faith in the
unseen is part of religion, the Warramunga people of the
Wollunqua totem are unquestionably religious.

Footnote 108: (return)

On the zoological peculiarities of Australia regarded as
effects of its geographical isolation, see Alfred Newton, Dictionary
of Birds (London, 1893-96), pp. 317-319. He observes (p. 318) that
“the isolation of Australia is probably the next oldest in the world to
that of New Zealand, having possibly existed since the time when no
mammals higher than marsupials had appeared on the face of the earth.”

Footnote 109: (return)

For details see Totemism and Exogamy, i. 314 sqq.

Footnote 110: (return)

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen,
Northern Tribes of Central Australia
(London, 1904), p. 491.

Footnote 111: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, p. xi.

Footnote 112: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p.
545.

Footnote 113: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 546.

Footnote 114: (return)

Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, Native Tribes of
Central Australia (London, 1899), pp. 119-127, 335-338, 552; id.,
Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 145-153, 162, 271, 330
sq., 448-451, 512-515. Compare Totemism and Exogamy, i.
188 sqq.

Footnote 115: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central
Australia, p. 147.

Footnote 116: (return)

See Totemism and Exogamy, i. 155 sqq., iv.
40 sqq.

Footnote 117: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 123, 126.

Footnote 118: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 119-127, 128 sqq., 513; id., Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 145 sqq., 257 sqq.

Footnote 119: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 132-135; id., Northern Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 258, 268 sqq.

Footnote 120: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
of Central Australia, pp. 128, 134.

Footnote 121: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 134 sq.

Footnote 122: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
of Central Australia, pp. 133, 135; id.,
Northern Tribes of Central Australia,
p. 269.

Footnote 123: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, p. 267.

Footnote 124: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes
of Central Australia, pp. 139 sq.

Footnote 125: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern
Tribes of Central Australia, p. 273.

Footnote 126: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central
Australia, p. 141.

Footnote 127: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 140

Footnote 128: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 144, 145.

Footnote 129: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 164,
sq.; id., Northern Tribes, pp. 261, 264.

Footnote 130: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, p. 145.

Footnote 131: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, p. 136.

Footnote 132: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, pp. 158
sq.

Footnote 133: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, pp. 271
sq.

Footnote 134: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 490 sq.

Footnote 135: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 226 sq. Another mythical being in which the
Warramunga believe is the pau-wa, a fabulous animal, half human
and somewhat resembling a dog. See Spencer and Gillen, op. cit.
pp. 195, 197, 201, 210 sq. But the creature seems not to be a
totem, for it is not included in the list of totems given by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen (op. cit. pp. 768-773).

Footnote 136: (return)

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central
Australia, pp. 252 sq.

LECTURE V

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE ABORIGINES
OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA (continued)

Beliefs of the Central Australian aborigines concerning the
reincarnation of the dead. The mythical water-snake Wollunqua.

In the last lecture we began our survey of the belief in
immortality and the practices to which it has given rise
among the aboriginal tribes of Central Australia. I shewed
that these primitive savages hold a very remarkable theory of
birth and death. They believe that the souls of the dead do not
perish but are reborn in human form after a longer or shorter
interval. During that interval the spirits of the departed
are supposed to congregate in certain parts of the country,
generally distinguished by some conspicuous natural feature,
which accordingly the natives account sacred, believing them
to be haunted by the souls of the dead. From time to time
one of these disembodied spirits enters into a passing woman
and is born as an infant into the world. Thus according to
the Central Australian theory every living person without
exception is the reincarnation of a dead man, woman, or
child. At first sight the theory seems to exclude the
possibility of any worship of the dead, since it appears
to put the living on a footing of perfect equality with the
dead by identifying the one with the other. But I pointed
out that as a matter of fact these savages do admit,
whether logically or not, the superiority of their remote
ancestors to themselves: they acknowledge that these old
forefathers of theirs did possess many marvellous powers to
which they themselves can lay no claim. In this acknowledgment,
accordingly, we may detect an opening or possibility
for the development of a real worship of ancestors.
Indeed, as I said at the close of last lecture, something
[pg 108]
closely approaching to ancestor worship has actually grown
up in regard to the mythical ancestor of the Wollunqua
clan in the Warramunga tribe. The Wollunqua is a
purely fabulous water-snake, of gigantic dimensions, which
is supposed to haunt the waters of a certain lonely pool
called Thapauerlu, in the Murchison Range of mountains.
Unlike the ancestors of the other totemic clans, this mythical
serpent is never reborn in human form; he always lives in
his solitary pool among the barren hills; but the natives
think that he has it in his power to come forth and do
them an injury, and accordingly they pray to him to remain
quiet and not to harm them. Indeed so afraid of him are
they that speaking of the creature among themselves they
avoid using his proper name of Wollunqua and call him by
a different name, lest hearing himself called by his true
name he should rush forth and devour them. More than that
they even endeavour to propitiate him by the performance
of certain rites, which, however childish and absurd they
may seem to us, are very solemn affairs for these simple folk.
The rites were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,
whose description I will summarise. It offers an interesting
and instructive example of a ritual observed by primitive
savages, who are clearly standing on, if they have not
already crossed, the threshold of religion.

Wanderings of the Wollunqua. Dramatic ceremonies in honour of
the Wollunqua.

Like all other totemic ancestors the Wollunqua is said
to have arisen at a particular spot, to have wandered about
the country, and finally to have gone down into the ground.
Starting from the deep rocky pool in the Murchison Range
he travelled at first underground, coming up, however, at
various points where he performed ceremonies and left
many spirit children, who issued from his body and
remained behind, forming local totemic centres when he
had passed on. It is these spirit children who have formed
the Wollunqua clan ever since, undergoing an endless
series of reincarnations. Now the ceremonies which the
clan perform in honour of their mythical ancestor the
Wollunqua all refer to his wanderings about the country.
Thus there is a particular water-hole called Pitingari where
the great old water-snake is said to have emerged from the
ground and looked about him. Here, accordingly, two
[pg 109]
men performed a ceremony. Each of them was decorated
with a broad band of red down, which curved round both
the front and the back of the performer and stood sharply
out from the mass of white down with which all the rest of
the upper part of his body was covered. These broad red
bands represented the Wollunqua. Each man also wore a
tall, conical helmet adorned with a curved band of red down,
which, no doubt, likewise symbolised the mythical serpent.
When the two actors in the little drama had been attired in
this quaint costume of red and white down, they retired
behind a bush, which served for the side scenes of a theatre.
Then, when the orchestra, composed of adult men, struck up
the music on the ceremonial ground by chanting and beating
boomerangs and sticks together, the performers ran in,
stopping every now and then to shake themselves in imitation
of the snake. Finally, they sat down close together
with their heads bowed down on a few green branches
of gum-trees. A man then stepped up to them, knocked
off their head-dresses, and the simple ceremony came to an
end.¹³⁷

Ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua.

The next ceremony was performed on the following day
at another place called Antipataringa, where the mythical
snake is said to have halted in his wanderings. The same
two men acted as before, but this time one of them carried
on his head a curious curved bundle shaped like an enormous
boomerang. It was made of grass-stalks bound together
with human hair-string and decorated with white down.
This sacred object represented the Wollunqua himself.¹³⁸ From
this spot the snake was believed to have travelled on to another
place called Tjunguniari, where he popped up his head
among the sand-hills, the greater part of his body remaining
underground. Indeed, of such an enormous length was the
serpent, that though his head had now travelled very many
miles his tail still remained at the starting-point and had not
yet begun to take part in the procession. Here accordingly
the third ceremony, perhaps we may say the third act in
the drama, was performed on the third day. In it one of
[pg 110]
the actors personated the snake himself, while the other
stood for a sand-hill.¹³⁹

Further ceremony in honour of the Wollunqua: the white mound
with the red wavy band to represent the mythical snake.

After an interval of three days a fourth ceremony was
performed of an entirely different kind. A keel-shaped
mound was made of wet sand, about fifteen feet long by
two feet high. The smooth surface of the mound was covered
with a mass of little dots of white down, except for a long
wavy band of red down which ran all along both sides of
the mound. This wavy red band represented the Wollunqua,
his head being indicated by a small round swelling at one
end and his tail by a short prolongation at the other. The
mound itself represented a sand-hill beside which the snake
is said to have stood up and looked about. The preparation
of this elaborate emblem of the Wollunqua occupied the
greater part of the day, and it was late in the afternoon
before it was completed. When darkness fell, fires were
lighted on the ceremonial ground, and as the night grew late
more fires were kindled, and all of the men sat round the
mound singing songs which referred to the mythical water-snake.
This went on for hours. At last, about three
o’clock in the morning, a ring of fires was lit all round the
ceremonial ground, in the light of which the white trunks of
the gum-trees and the surrounding scrub stood out weird and
ghastly against the blackness of darkness beyond. Amid
the wildest excitement the men of the Wollunqua totem now
ranged themselves in single file on their knees beside the
mound which bore the red image of their great mythical
forefather, and with their hands on their thighs surged round
and round it, every man bending in unison first to one side
and then to the other, each successive movement being accompanied
by a loud and simultaneous shout, or rather yell, while
the other men, who were not of the Wollunqua totem, stood
by, clanging their boomerangs excitedly, and one old man,
who acted as a sort of choregus, walked backwards at the
end of the kneeling procession of Wollunqua men, swaying
his body about and lifting high his knees at every step. In
this way, with shouts and clangour, the men of the totem
surged twice round the mound on their knees. After that,
as the fires died down, the men rose from their knees, and
[pg 111]
for another hour every one sat round the mound singing
incessantly. The last act in the drama was played at four
o’clock in the morning at the moment when the first faint
streaks of dawn glimmered in the east. At sight of them
every man jumped to his feet, the smouldering fires were
rekindled, and in their blaze the long white mound stood
out in strong relief. The men of the totem, armed with
spears, boomerangs, and clubs, ranged themselves round it,
and encouraged by the men of the other totems attacked it
fiercely with their weapons, until in a few minutes they had
hacked it to pieces, and nothing was left of it but a rough
heap of sandy earth. The fires again died down and for a
short time silence reigned. Then, just as the sun rose above
the eastern horizon, the painful ceremony of subincision was
performed on three youths, who had recently passed through
the earlier stages of initiation.¹⁴⁰

The rite aims both at pleasing and at coercing the mythical
snake.

This remarkable rite is supposed, we are informed, “in
some way to be associated with the idea of persuading, or
almost forcing, the Wollunqua to remain quietly in his home
under the water-hole at Thapauerlu, and to do no harm to
any of the natives. They say that when he sees the mound
with his representation drawn upon it he is gratified, and
wriggles about underneath with pleasure. The savage
attack upon the mound is associated with the idea of
driving him down, and, taken altogether, the ceremony
indicates their belief that, at one and the same time,
they can both please and coerce the mythic beast. It is
necessary to do things to please him, or else he might grow
sulky and come out and do them harm, but at the same
time they occasionally use force to make him do what
they want.”¹⁴¹ In fact the ritual of the mound with its
red image of the snake combines the principles of religion
and magic. So far as the rite is intended to please and
propitiate the mythical beast, it is religious; so far as
it is intended to constrain him, it is magical. The two
principles are contradictory and the attempt to combine
them is illogical; but the savage is heedless, or rather
[pg 112]
totally unaware, of the contradiction and illogicality: all
that concerns him is to accomplish his ends: he has neither
the wish nor the ability to analyse his motives. In this
respect he is in substantial agreement with the vast
majority of mankind. How many of us scrutinise the
reasons of our conduct with the view of detecting and
eliminating any latent inconsistencies in them? And how
many, or rather how few of us, on such a scrutiny would be
so fortunate as to discover that there were no such inconsistencies
to detect? The logical pedant who imagines
that men cannot possibly act on inconsistent and even contradictory
motives only betrays his ignorance of life. It is
not therefore for us to cast stones at the Warramunga men
of the Wollunqua totem for attempting to propitiate and
constrain their mythical serpent at the same time. Such
contradictions meet us again and again in the history of
religion: it is interesting but by no means surprising to find
them in one of its rudimentary stages.

Thunder the voice of the Wollunqua.

On the evening of the day which succeeded the construction
of the emblematic mound the old men who had
made the emblem said they had heard the Wollunqua talking,
and that he was pleased with what had been done and
was sending them rain. What they took for the voice of
the Wollunqua was thunder rumbling in the distance. No
rain fell, but a few days later thunder was again heard rolling
afar off and a heavy bank of clouds lay low on the
western horizon. The old men now said that the Wollunqua
was growling because the remains of the mound had
been left uncovered; so they hastily cut down branches and
covered up the ruins. After that the Wollunqua ceased to
growl: there was no more thunder.¹⁴²

Ground drawings of the Wollunqua.

On the four following days ceremonies of an entirely
different kind from all the preceding were performed in
honour of the Wollunqua. A space of sandy ground was
smoothed down, sprinkled with water, and rubbed so as to
form a compact surface. The smooth surface was then
overlaid with a coat of red or yellow ochre, and on this
coloured background a number of designs were traced, one
after the other, by a series of white dots, which together
[pg 113]
made up a pattern of curved lines and concentric circles.
These patterns represented the Wollunqua and some of his
traditionary adventures. The snake himself was portrayed
by a broad wavy band, but all the other designs were purely
conventional; for example, trees, ant-hills, and wells were
alike indicated by circles. Altogether there were eight such
drawings on the earth, some of them very elaborate and
entailing, each of them, not less than six or seven hours’
labour: one of them was ten feet long. Each drawing was
rubbed out before the next one was drawn. Moreover, the
drawings were accompanied by little dramas acted by
decorated men. In one of these dramas no fewer than
eight actors took part, some of whom wore head-dresses
adorned with a long wavy band to represent the Wollunqua.
The last drawing of all was supposed to portray the
mythical snake as he plunged into the earth and returned
to his home in the rocky pool called Thapauerlu among the
Murchison Ranges.¹⁴³

Religious importance of the Wollunqua.

I have dwelt at some length on these ceremonies of the
Wollunqua totem, because they furnish a remarkable and
perhaps unique instance in Australia of a totemic ancestor
in the act of developing into something like a god. In the
Warramunga tribe there are other snake totems besides the
Wollunqua; for example, there is the black snake totem
and the deaf adder totem. But this purely mythical water-snake,
the Wollunqua, is the most important of them all
and is regarded as the great father of all the snakes. “It
is not easy,” say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, “to express
in words what is in reality rather a vague feeling amongst
the natives, but after carefully watching the different series
of ceremonies we were impressed with the feeling that the
Wollunqua represented to the native mind the idea of a
dominant totem.”¹⁴⁴ Thus he is at once a fabulous animal
and the mythical ancestor of a human clan, but his animal
nature apparently predominates over his semi-human nature,
as shewn by the drawings and effigies of him, all of which
are in serpent form. The prayers offered to him at the pool
[pg 114]
which he is supposed to haunt, and the attempt to please
him by drawing his likeness can only be regarded as propitiatory
rites and therefore as rudimentary forms of worship.
And the idea that thunder is his voice, and that the rain is
a gift sent by him in return for the homage paid to him by
the people, appears to prove that in course of time, if left to
himself, he might easily have been elevated to the sky and
have ranked as a celestial deity, who dwells aloft and sends
down or withholds the refreshing showers at his good
pleasure. Thus the Wollunqua, a rude creation of the savage
Australian imagination, possesses a high interest for the
historian of religion, since he combines elements of ancestor
worship and totem worship with a germ of heaven worship;
while on the purely material side his representation, both in
plastic form by a curved bundle of grass-stalks and in
graphic form by broad wavy bands of red down, may be
said in a sense to stand at the starting-point of that long
development of religious art, which in so many countries
and so many ages has attempted to represent to the bodily
eye the mysteries of the unseen and invisible, and which,
whatever we may think of the success or failure of that
attempt, has given to the world some of the noblest works
of sculpture and painting.

Possible religious evolution of totemism.

I have already pointed out the difficulty of seeing how a
belief in the reincarnation of the dead, such as prevails
universally among the aborigines of Central Australia, could
ever be reconciled with or develop into a worship of the
dead; for by identifying the living with the dead, the theory
of reincarnation seems to abolish that distinction between
the worshipper and the worshipped which is essential to
the existence of worship. But, as I also indicated, what
seems a loophole or mode of escape from the dilemma may
be furnished by the belief of these savages, that though
they themselves are nothing but their ancestors come to
life again, nevertheless in their earliest incarnations of the
alcheringa or dream times their ancestors possessed miraculous
powers which they have admittedly lost in their later
reincarnations; for this suggests an incipient discrimination
or line of cleavage between the living and the dead; it hints
that perhaps after all the first ancestors, with their marvellous
[pg 115]
endowments, may have been entirely different persons
from their feebler descendants, and if this vague hint could
only grow into a firm conviction of the essential difference
between the two, then the course would be clear for the
development of ancestor worship: the dead forefathers,
viewed as beings perfectly distinct from and far superior to
the living, might easily come to receive from the latter the
homage of prayer and sacrifice, might be besought by their
descendants to protect them in danger and to succour them
in all the manifold ills of life, or at least to abstain from
injuring them. Now, this important step in religious evolution
appears to have been actually taken by the Wollunqua,
the mythical water-snake, who is the totem of one of the
Warramunga clans. Unlike all the other totems he is supposed
to exist only in his invisible and animal form and
never to be reincarnated in a man.¹⁴⁵ Hence, withdrawn as
he is from the real world of sense, the imagination is free to
play about him and to invest him more and more with those
supernatural attributes which men ascribe to their deities.
And what has actually happened to this particular totemic
ancestor might under favourable circumstances happen to
many others. Each of them might be gradually detached
from the line of his descendants, might cease to be reincarnated
in them, and might gradually attain to the lonely
pre-eminence of godhead. Thus a system of pure totemism,
such as prevails among the aborigines of Central Australia,
might develop through a phase of ancestor worship into a
pantheon of the ordinary type.

Conspicuous features of the landscape associated with
ancestral spirits.

Although none of the other totemic ancestors of the
Central Australian aborigines appears to have advanced so
far on the road to religion as the Wollunqua, yet they all
contain in germ the elements out of which a religion might
have been developed. It is difficult for us civilised men to
conceive the extent to which the thoughts and lives of these
savages are dominated by the memories and traditions of
the dead. Every conspicuous feature in the landscape is
[pg 116]
not only associated with the legendary doings of some
ancestors but is commonly said to have arisen as a direct
result of their actions. The mountains, the plains, the rivers,
the seas, the islands of ancient Greece itself were not more
thickly haunted by the phantoms of a fairy mythology than
are the barren sun-scorched steppes and stony hills of the
Australian wilderness; but great indeed is the gulf which
divides the beautiful creations of Greek fancy from the crude
imaginings of the Australian savage, whose legendary tales
are for the most part a mere tissue of trivial absurdities
unrelieved by a single touch of beauty or poetry.

A journey through the Warramunga country.

To illustrate at once the nature and the abundance of these
legends I will quote a passage in which Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen describe a journey they took in company with some
Warramunga natives over part of their country:—”For the
first two days our way lay across miserable plain country
covered with poor scrub, with here and there low ranges rising.
Every prominent feature of any kind was associated with
some tradition of their past. A range some five miles away
from Tennant Creek arose to mark the path traversed by
the great ancestor of the Pittongu (bat) totem. Several
miles further on a solitary upstanding column of rock represented
an opossum man who rested here, looked about the
country, and left spirit children behind him; a low range of
remarkably white quartzite hills indicated a large number of
white ant eggs thrown here in the wingara¹⁴⁶ by the Munga-munga
women as they passed across the country. A solitary
flat-topped hill arose to mark the spot where the Wongana
(crow) ancestor paused for some time to pierce his nose;
and on the second night we camped by the side of a waterhole
where the same crow lived for some time in the
wingara, and where now there are plenty of crow spirit
children. All the time, as we travelled along, the old men
were talking amongst themselves about the natural features
associated in tradition with these and other totemic ancestors
of the tribe, and pointing them out to us. On the third
day we travelled, at first for some hours, by the side of a
[pg 117]
river-bed,—perfectly dry of course,—and passed the spot
where two hawks first made fire by rubbing sticks together,
two fine gum-trees on the banks now representing the place
where they stood up. A few miles further on we came to a
water-hole by the side of which the moon-man met a bandicoot
woman, and while the two were talking together the
fire made by the hawks crept upon them and burnt the
woman, who was, however, restored to life again by the
moon-man, with whom she then went up into the sky. Late
in the afternoon we skirted the eastern base of the Murchison
Range, the rugged quartzite hills in this part being
associated partly with the crow ancestor and partly with
the bat. Following up a valley leading into the hills we
camped, just after sunset, by the side of a rather picturesque
water-pool amongst the ranges. A short distance before
reaching this the natives pointed out a curious red cliff,
standing out amongst the low hills which were elsewhere
covered with thin scrub. This, which is called Tjiti, represents
the spot where an old woman spent a long time
digging for yams, the latter being indicated by great heaps
of stones lying all around. On the opposite side of the
valley a column of stone marks the spot where the woman
went into the earth. The water-hole by which we were
camped was called Wiarminni. It was in reality a deep
pool in the bed of a creek coming down from the hills.
Behind it the rocks rose abruptly, and amongst them there
was, or rather would have been if a stream had been flowing,
a succession of cascades and rocky water-holes. Two of the
latter, just above Wiarminni, are connected with a fish totem,
and represent the spot where two fish men arose in the
alcheringa, fought one another, left spirit children behind, and
finally went down into the ground. We were now, so to
speak, in the very midst of mungai [i.e. of places associated
with the totems], for the old totemic ancestors of the tribe,
who showed a most commendable fondness for arising and
walking about in the few picturesque spots which their
country contained, had apparently selected these rocky
gorges as their central home. All around us the water-holes,
gorges, and rocky crags were peopled with spirit individuals
left behind by one or other of the following totemic
[pg 118]
ancestors:—Wollunqua, Pittongu (bat), Wongana (crow),
wild dog, emu, bandicoot, and fish, whose lines of travel in
the alcheringa formed a regular network over the whole
countryside.”¹⁴⁷

Dramatic ceremonies to commemorate the doings of ancestors.

Similar evidence could be multiplied, but this may suffice
to teach us how to the minds of these Central Australian
savages the whole country is haunted, in the literal sense, not
merely by the memories of their dead, but by the spirits
which they left behind them and which are constantly
undergoing reincarnation. And not only are the minds of
the aborigines preoccupied by the thought of their ancestors,
who are recalled to them by all the familiar features of the
landscape, but they spend a considerable part of their time
in dramatically representing the legendary doings of their rude
forefathers of the remote past. It is astonishing, we are
told, how large a part of a native’s life is occupied with the
performance of these dramatic ceremonies. The older he
grows, the greater is the share he takes in them, until at last
they actually absorb the greater part of his thoughts. The
rites which seem so trivial to us are most serious matters to
him. They are all connected with the great ancestors of
the tribe, and he is firmly convinced that when he dies his
spirit will rejoin theirs and live in communion with them
until the time comes for him to be born again into the
world. With such solemnity does he look on the celebration
of these commemorative services, as we may call them, that
none but initiated men are allowed to witness them; women
and children are strictly excluded from the spectacle. These
sacred dramas are often, though by no means always, associated
with the rites of initiation which young men have to
pass through before they are admitted to full membership of
the tribe and to participation in its deepest mysteries. The
rites of initiation are not all undergone by a youth at the
same time; they succeed each other at longer or shorter
intervals of time, and at each of them he is privileged to
witness some of the solemn ceremonies in which the traditions
of the tribal ancestors are dramatically set forth before him,
until, when he has passed through the last of the rites and
ordeals, he is free to behold and to take part in the whole
[pg 119]
series of mystery plays or professedly historical dramas.
Sometimes the performance of these dramas extends over
two or three months, during which one or more of them are
acted daily.¹⁴⁸ For the most part, they are very short and
simple, each of them generally lasting only a few minutes,
though the costumes of the actors are often elaborate and
may have taken hours to prepare. I will describe a few of
them as samples.