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32X

PRIMITIVE CULTURE.

RESE

PKIMITIVE OULTUEE

RESEARCHES INTO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MYTHOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY,

RELIGION, ART, AND CUSTOM.

EDWARD B. TYLOR,

AUTHOR OK "llKaEABCHEH INTO THE EARLY HIHTORV OF MANKIND," ilc.

" Ce n'ost pas dans les possibilitds. c'estdans I'honime n.Sme qu'il faut ^tudior I'boraine •
U no sagit paH annagmorce qu'il miroit pfl on dft fairo, mais do regardor ce qu'il fait."

qu'i
— De Brossks,

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 1.

LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

187L

(JUlMn oj Travflation and Reproduction rmn-ol.)

^0/x

LONDON :
BRADDURV, EVA.Nfe, AND CO., I'UINTERS, WII1TEFK1AE8.

PREFACE.

i
#

The present volumes, uniform with the previous
volume of "Researches into the Early History of
Mankind " (1st Ed. 1865; 2nd Ed. 1870), carry on
the investigation of Culture into other branches of
thought and belief, art and custom. During the past
six years, I have taken occasion to bring tentativel}'
before the puolic some of the principal points of
new evidence and argumenc here advanced. The doc-
trine of survival in culture;, the bearing of directly-
expressive language and the invention of numerals on
the problem of early civilization, the place of myth in
the primitive history of the human mind, the develop-
ment of the animistic philosophy of religion, and the
origin of rites and ceremonies, hnvo been discussed in
various papeis and lectures,* before being treated at
L.'.rge and with a fuller array of facts in this work.

The authorities for the facts stated in the text are

* Fortnightly Review : ' Origin of Language,' April 15, 1866 ; ' Boligion of
Savages,' August 15, 1866. Lectures at Royal Institution: 'Traces of the
Early Mental Condition of Mar,' March 15, 1867 ; ' Survival of Savage Thruglit
in Modern Civilization,' April 23, 1869. Lecture at University College, London :
• Spiritualistic Philosophy of the Lower Races of Mankind,' May 8, 1869. Paper
read at British Association, Nottingham, 1866 : ' Phenomena of Civilization
Traceable to a Rudimental Origin among Savage Tribes,' Paper read at Ethno-
logical Society of London, April 26, 1870 : ' Philosophy of Religion among the
Lower Race^ of Mankind,' etc. etc.

I'UKl'ACU.

fully spo(ifi(!(l ill the foot-iiotos, which must also sci've m^
my <,^('iu'ral {Kikuowlt'tlgmunt of obligution.s to writers on
etIiiiogrii[)hy and kindred sciiaices, ii.s well as to historians,
travellers, and missionaries. 1 will only mention apart
two treatises of which I have made especial use : the
' Menscli in del* Oeschichte,' by Professor Bastian of Berlin,
and the * Antliroi)ologic der Naturviilker,' by the late
Professor Widtz of Marbarg.

In discussing problems so complex as those of the
development of civilization, it is not enough to put for-
ward theories accompanied by a finv illustrative examples.
The statement of the facts must form the staple of the
argiunent, and the limit of needful dc^tail is only reached
when each group so displays its general law, that fresh
cases come to range themselves in their proper inches as
new instances of an already established rule. Should it
seem to any readers that my attempt to reach this limit
sometimes leads to the heaping up of too cumbrous detail,
I would point out that the theoretical novelty as well
as the practical importance of many of the issues raised,
make it most unadvisable to stint them of theii' full
evidence. In the course of ten years chiefly spent in
these researches, it has been my constant task to select
the most instructive ethnological facts from the vast
mass on record, and by lopping away unnecessary matter
to reduce the data on each problem to what is indis-
pensable for reasonable proof.

E. B. T.

March, 1871.

Iso sei've ua
) writers on
) liistorians,
htion apart
il use : the
in of Jicrlin,
l>y tlic late

lose of the

to 2)ut for-

3 examples.

a pie of the

ily readied

, that fresli

r niches as

I Shoukl it

this limit

■ous detail,

y as well

lies raised,

theii' full

spent in

to select

the vast

iry matter

is indis-

i B. T.

CONTENTS

THE FIRST VOLUMP:

<Julturc or Civil'
Motliod ol
Buccessivo ^liv'

CHAPTER I.

THE SCIENCK 0¥ CULTURE.

—Its iilicunmciia rulated nccorJing to deliuiti' Laws-
■iitiou Hud discussion of thu evidence — Connexion ol'
r culture by I'erniuncuce, Modiliciition, and Survival

I'AiiK

— Principal toi)ic8 exaudned in the present work

CHAPTER IL

THE DEVELOPMENT OP CULTUllE.

Stiiges of culture, industrial, intellectual, political, moral — Development of
culture in great measure corresponds with transition from savage
through barbaric to civilized life — Progression-theory — Degeneration-
theory — Development-theory includes both, the one as primary, the
other as secondary — Historical and traditional evidence not available
as to low stages of culture— Historical evidence as to principles of
Degeneration — Ethnological evidence as to rise and fall in culture, from
comparison of different levels of culture in branches of the same race —
Extent of historically recorded antiquity of civilization — Prehistoric
Archaiology extends the antiquity of man in low stages of civilization
— Traces of Stone Age, corroborated by megalithic structures, lake-
dwellings, shell-heaps, burial-places, etc., combine to jirovc original low
culture throughout the world — Stages of progressive Development in
industrial arts ...........

VIII

CONTKNTS.

CHArTER III.

HUItVIVAL IN CULTURE.

PAOK

Survival and Superstition — Children'H games — flomos of chance — Tradi-
tional Hayings — Nursery poeinH — Proverbs — HidiUcs- Sij^nificance ond
survival in Customs : siu'c/ing-forniula, rite of roundiition-sacriflco,
prcjudico ugtiinut saving a drowniug man 43

CHAPTER IV.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE {conlinucd).

Occult Sciences— Mogical powcra attributed by higher to lower races —
Magical procewHOH based o!i Association of Ideas— Omens— Augury,
etc. — Oneiroinancy — Haruspication, Scapulimancy, Chiromancy, etc.
— Cartomancy, etc. — Rhabdomamy, Dactyliomancy, CoscinomaiK^, etc.
— Astrology — Intellectual conditions accounting for the itcrsistenco of
Magic — Survival passes into Revival— Witchcraft, originating in savage
culture, continues in barbaric civilization ; its declino in early mcdi-
jcval Europe followed by icvival ; its practices and countcr-pracitices
belong to earlier culture — Spiritualism has its source in early stages
of culture, in close connexion with witchcraft — Spirit-rajiping and
Sj)irit-writing — Rising in the air — Performances of tied mediums-
Practical bearing of the study of Sui-vival

101

CHAPTER V.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

Element of directly expressive Sound in Language — Test by independent
correspondence in distinct languages — Constituent processes of Lan-
guage — Gesture — Expression of feature, etc. — Emotional Tone — Articu-
late sounds, vowels determined by musical quality and pitch, consonants
— Emphasis and Accent — Phrase-melody, Recitative— Sound-Words —
Interjections — Calls to Animals — Emotional Cries — Sense-Words
formed from Interjections— Afhrmativo and Negative particles, etc.

Hiv

CHAPTER VI.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE (continued).

Imitative Words — Human actions named from sound — Animals' names from
cries, etc. — Musical instruments— Sounds reproduced — Words modified
to adapt sound to sense— Reduplication — Graduation of vowels to
express distance and difference — Children's Language— Sound-words as
related to Sense-words— Language an original product of the lower
Culture .

181

CONTENTS.

CIIAPTEll VII.

TIIK A1!T OF COUNTINO.

Ideas of Number doriviid from ('X|«Mii'nci— Stato of nrithmctic nmong
uncivilized rncos — Smnll cxti-nt of Nuiiiprul-words aiuoufj low trihos —
Couutiiij? by fiiif^rrsniid toes— linnd-iimnr'rals show derivation of Verbal
roe.koniiig from Ocsture-eountiiig— Etymoloj^'y of Numerals— Quinary,
Decimal, and Vigesimal notations of ilic world derived from counting
on finj^ers and toes — Adoption of foreijjn Numeral-words — Evidonco
of development of Arithmetic from a low ori;;inal lovol of Culture

PAQI

218

chapti<:r VIII.

MYTHOLOGY.

Mythic fancy based, like other thoujjlit, on Experience — Mythology afTordn
evidence for study ing laws of Imagination — Change in public opinion
as to credibility of Myths— Myths rationalized into allegory and history
—Ethnological import and treatment of Myth — ^fyth to bo studied in
actual existence and growth among modern savages and barbarians —
Original sources of Myth — Early doctrine of general Animation of
Nature — Personification of Sun, Moon, and Stars ; "Water-spout, Sand-
pillar, IJainbow, Water-fall, Pestilenco— Analogy worked into Myth
and Metaphor — Myths of Hain, Thunder, etc. — Effect of Language in
formation of Myth— Material Persouilieation primary, Verbal personifi-
cation secondary— Grammatical Gender, male and female, animate and
inanimate, in relation to Myth — Proper names of Objects in relation
to Myth — Mental state proper to promote mythic imagination —
Doctrine of "Werewolves — Phantasy and Fancy

247

CHAPTER IX.

MYTHOLOGY {continmd).

Nature-myths, their origin, canon of interpretation, preservation of original
sense and significant names — Nature-myths of upper savage races
compared with related forms among barbaric and civilized nations —
Heaven and Earth as Universal Parents— Sun and Moon: Eclipse and
Sunset, as Hero or Ma'.den swallowed by Monster; Rising of Sun from
Sea and Descent to Under-world ; Jaws of Night and Death, Symple-
gados; Eye of Heaven, eye of Odin and the Graia;— Sun and Moon as
mythic civilizers— Moon, her inconstancy, periodical death and revival
— Stars, their generation — Constellulions, their place in Mythology and
Astronomy — "Wind and Tempest — Thunder — Earthquake .

28.';

jl!l'

; 41

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.

MYTHOLOGY {conlhimd).

PAGE

niiloHO|»liical Myths : inferences become pseudo-history — Geological Myths
— ^Effcet of doctrine of Miracles on Mythology — Magnetic Mountain —
Myths of relation of Apes to Men by development or degeneration —
Ethnological import of myths of Ape-men, Men with tails, Men of
tlie woods — Myths of Error, Pervei-sion, and Exaggeration : stories of
Giants, Dwarfs, and Monstrous Tribes of men — Fanciful explanatory
Myths — Myths attnehed to legendary or historical Personages — Etymo-
logical Myths on names of places and persons — Eponymic Myths on
names of tribes, nations, cotm tries, etc. ; their ethnological import
— Pragmatii! Mytlis by realization of metaphors and ideas — Allegory —
Beast-Fable — Conclusion 33i

CHAPTER Xr.

ANIMISM.

IJcligious idens generally appear among low races of Mankind — Negative
.statement" on this subject frequently misleading and mistaken: many
<ases uncertain — Minimum definition of Religion — Doctrine of Spiritual
Beings, here termed Animism — Animism treated as belonging to
Natural Religion — Animism divided into two sections, the ])hilosophj''
of Sculs, and of other Spirits — Doctrine of Souls, its prevalence and
definition among the lower races — Definition of Apparitional Soul or
(!ho.st-Soid — It is a theoretical conception of primitive Philosophy,
designed to account for phenomena now classed tinder Biologj', espe-
cially Life and Death, Ilealth and Disease, Sleep and Dreams, Trance
and Visions — Relation of Soul in name and nature to Shadow, Blood,
l)reath — Division or Plurality of Souls — Soul cause of Life ; its restora-
tion to body when supposed absent — Exit of Soul in Trances— Dreams
and Visions : theory of exit of dreamer's or seer's own soul ; theory of
visits received by them from other souls — Ghost-Soul seen in Appari-
tions — "Wraiths and Doubles- Soul hns form of Body; suffers muti-
lation with it — Voice of Ghost— Soul treated and defined as of Material
Substance ; this appears to be the original doctnne — Transmission of
Souls to service in future life by Funeral Sacrifice of wives, attendants,
etc. — Souls of Animals— Their transmission by Funeral Sacrifice — Souls
of Plants — Soids of Objects— Their transm.ission by Funeral Sacrifice
— Relation of savage doctrine of Object-Souls to Epicurean theory of
Ideas — Historical development of Doctrine of Souls, from the Ethereal
Soul of primitive Biology to the Immaterial Soul of modern Theology

PEIMITIVE CULTUEE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

Culture or Civilization — Its phenomena related according to definite Laws —
Method of classification and discussion of the evidence — Connexion of
successive stages of culture by rermanence, llodification, and Survival —
Principal topics examined in the present work.

Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic
sense, is that complex Avholo which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society. The condition of
culture among the various societies of mankind, in so far as it
is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a sub-
ject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action. On
the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civiliza-
tion may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action
of uniform causes ; while on the other hand its various grades
may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each'
the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part
in shaping the history of the future. To the investigation of
these two great principles in several departments of ethnography,
wich especial consideration of the civilization of the lower tribes
as related to the civilization of the higher nations, the present
volumes are devoted.

Our modern investigators in the sciences of inorganic nature
are foremost to recognise, both within and without their special

VOL. I. B

V'h

2 THE SCIICNCE 01'' CULTUHE.

fields of work, the unity of nature, the fixity of its laws, the
definite sequence of cause and effect through which every fact
depends on Avhat has gone before it, and acts upon what is to
come after it. Tl^ey grasp firmly the Pytliagorean doctrine of
pervading order in the universal Kosmos. They affirm, with
Aristotle, that nature is not full of incoherent episodes, like a
bad tragedy. They agree with Leibnitz in what he calls "my
axiom, that nature never acts i>y leaps (la nature n'agit jamais
par saut)," as well as in his " great principle, commonly little
employed, that nothing happens without its sufficient reason."
Nor, again, in studying the structure and habits of plants and
animals, or in investigating the lower functions even of man,
are these leading ideas unacknowledged. But when we come to
talk of the higher processes of human feeling and action, of
thought and language, knowledge and art, a change appears in
the prevalent tone of opinion. The world at large is scarcely
prepared to accept the general study of human life as a branch
of natural science, and to carry out, in a large sense, the poet's
injunction, to "Account for moral as for natural things." To
many educated minds there seems something presumptuous and
repulsive in the view that the history of mankind is part and
parcel of the history of nature, that our thoughts, wills, and
actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the
motion of waves, the combination of acids and bases, and the
growth of plants and animals.

The main reasons of this state of the popular judgment are
not far to seek. There are many who would willingly accept a
science of history if placed before them with substantial defi-
niteness of principle and evidence, but who not unreasonably
reject the systems offered to them, as falling too far short of a
scientific standard. Through resistance such as this, real know-
ledge always, sooner or later, makes its way, while the habit of
opposition to novelty does such excellent service against the
invasions of speculative dogmatism, that we may sometimes
even wish it were stronger than it is. But other obstacles to
the investigation of laws of human nature arise from consider-
ations of metaphysics and theology. The popular notion of free
human will involves not only freedom to act in accordance with

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

motive, but also a power of breaking loose from continuity and
acting without cause, — a combination which may be roughly
illustrated by the simile of a balance sometimes acting in the
usual way, but also possessed of the faculty of turning by itself
Avithout or against its weights. This view of an anomalous
action of the will, which it need hardly bo said is incompatible
Avith scientific argument, subsists as an opinion, patent or latent
in men's minds, and strongly affecting their theoretic views of
history, though it is not, as a rule, brought prominently forward
in systematic reasoning. Indeed the definition of human will,
as strictly according with motive, is the only possible scientific
basis in such enquiries. Happily, it is not needful to add here
yet another to the list of dissertations on supernatural inter-
vention and natural causation, on liberty, predestination, and
accountability. We may hasten to escape from the regions of
transcendental philosophy and theology, to start on a more
hopeful journey over more practicable gi-ound. None will deny
that, as each man knoAvs by the evidence of his OAvn conscious-
ness, definite and natural cause does, to a great extent, deter-
mine human action. Then, keeping aside from considerations
of extra-natural interference and causeless spontaneity, let us
take this admitted existence of natural cause and effect as our
standing-ground, and travel on it so far as it will bear us. It
is on this same basis that physical science pursues, Avith ever-
increasing success, its quest of laAvs of nature. Xor need this
restriction hamper the scientific study of human life, in which
the real difficulties are the practical ones of enormous com-
plexity of evidence, and imperfection of methods of obser-
vation.

NoAV it appears that this view of human Avill and conduct, as
subject to definite laAV, is indeed recognized and acted upon by
the very people Avho oppose it Avhen stated in the abstract as a
general principle, and who then complain that it annihilates
man's frc^-Avill, destroys his sense of personal responsibility, and
degrades him to a soulless machine. He who will say these
things Avill nevertheless pass much of his own life in studying
the motives which lead to human action, seeking to attain his
Avishes through them, framing in his mind theories of personal

1.1

1 1'

4 THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

character, reckoning wliat arc likely to be the effects of now
combinations, and giving to his reasoning the crowning ciiaracter
of true scientific inquiry, by taking it for granted that in so far
as his calculation turns out wrong, either his evidence must have
been false or incomplete, or his judgment upon it unsound.
Such a one will sum up the experience of years spent in com-
plex relations with society, by declaring his persuasion that there
is a reason for everything in life, and that where events look
unaccountable, the rule is to wait and watch in hope that the
key to the problem may some day be found. This man's observa-
tion may have been as narrow as his inferences are crude and
prejudiced, but nevertheless he has been an inductive philosopher
" more than forty years without knowing it." He has practically
acknowledged definite laws of human thought and action, and
has simply thrown out of account in his own studies of life the
whole fabric of motiveless will and uncaused spontaneity. It
is assumed here that they should be just so thrown out of
accoimt in wider studies, and that the true philosophy of history
lies in extending and improving the methods of the plain people
who form their judgments upon facts, and check them upon new
facts. Whether the doctrine be wholly or but partly true, it
accepts the very condition under which we search for new know-
ledge in the lessons of experience, and in a word the whole
course of our rational life is based upon it.

" One event is always the son of another, and we must never
forget the parentage," was a remark made by a Bechuana chief
to Casalis the African missionar}'. Thus at all times historians,
so far as tliey have aimed at being more than mere chroniclers,
have done their best to show not merely succession, but con-
nexion, among the events upon their record. Moreover, they have
striven to elicit general principles of human action, and by these
to explain particular events, stating expressly or taking tacitly
for granted the existence of a philosophy of history. Should
any one deny the possibility of thus establishing historical laws,
the answer is ready with which Boswell in such a case turned
on Johnson : " Then, sir, you would reduce all history to no
better than an almanack." That nevertheless the labours of so
many eminent thinkers should ha . e as yet brought history only

THE .SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

to the threshold of science, need cause no wonder in those who
Consider the bewildering complexity of the problems which
come before the general historian. The evidence from which
he is to draw his conclusions is at once so multifarious and so
doubtful, that a full and distinct view of its bearing on a par-
ticular question is hardly to be attained, and thus the tempta-
tion liecomes all but irresistible to garble it in support of some
rough and ready theory of the course of events. The philosophy
of history at large, explaining the past and predicting the future
phenomena of man's life in the world by reference to general
laws, is in fact a subject with which, in the present state of
knowledge, even genius aided by wide research seems but hardly
able to cope. Yet there are departments of it which, though
difficult enough, seem comparatively accessible. If the field of
inquiry be narrowed from History as a whole to that branch of
it which is here called Culture, the history, not of tribes or
nations, but of the condition of knowledge, religion, art, custom,
and the like among them, the task of investigation proves to
lie within far more moderate compass. We suffer still from the
same kind of difficulties which beset the wider argument, but
they are much diminished. The evidence is no longer so wildly
heterogeneous, but may be more simply classified and compared,
while the power of getting rid of extraneous matter, and treat-
ing each issue on its own proper set of facts, makes close reason-
ing on the whole more available than in general history. This
may appear from a brief preliminary examination of t' ^' problem,
liow the phenomena of Culture may be classified and arranged,
stage by stage, in a probable order of evolution.

Surveyed in a broad view, the character and habit of mankind
at once display that similarity and consistency of phenomena
which led the Italian proverb-maker to declare that " all the
world is one country," " tutto il mondo e paese." To general
likeness in human nature on the one hand, and to general
likeness in the circumstances of life on the other, this similarity
and consistency may no doubt be traced, and they may be
studied with especial fitness in comparing races near the same
grade of civilization. Little respect need be had in such
comparisons for date in history or for place on the map ; the

THE SCIFNCE OF CULTURE.

yi\

■Hi

II!

I!l:!

ancient Swiss lako-dwclicr n"»ay l)C set beside the mediaeval
Aztec, and the Ojibwa c: North America beside the Zulu of
South Africa, As Dr. Johnson contemptuously said when he
had read about Patagonians and South Sea Islanders in
Hawkesworth's Voyager, " one set of savages is like another."
How true a generalization chis really k, any Ethnological
Museum may show. Examine for Instance the edged and
pointed instruments in sucli a cJlection ; the inventory includes
hatchet, adze, chisel, knife, saw, scraper, awl, needle, spear and
arrow-head, and of these most or all belong Avith only differences
of detail to races the most various. So it is with savage
occupations; the wood-chopping, fishing with net and line,
shooting iiid spearing game, fire-making, cooking, twisting cord
and plaiting baskets, repeat themselves with wonderful uni-
formity in the museum shelves which illustrate the life of the
lower races from Kamchatka to Tierra del Fuego, and from
Dahome to Hawaii. Even when it comes to comparing
barbaroub hordes with civilized nations, the consideration thrusts
itself upon our minds, how far item after item of the life of the
lower races passes into analogous proceedings of the higher, in
forms not too far changed to be recognized, and sometimes hardly
changed at all. Look at the modern European peasant using
his hatchet and his hoe, see his food boilin»f or roastin": over the
log-fire, observe the exact place which beer holds in his calcula
tion of happiness, hear his tale of the ghost in the nearest
haunted house, and of the farmer's niece who was bewitched
with knots in her inside till she fell into fits and died. If we
choose out in this way things which have altered little in a long
course of centuries, we may draw a picture where there shall bo
scarce a hand's breadth difference between an English plough-
man and a negro of Central Africa. These pages will be so
crowded with evidence of such con'espondence among mankind,
that there is no need to dwell upon its details here, but it may
be used at once to override a problem which would compli "latc
the argument, namely, the question of race. For the present
purpose it appears both possible and desirable to eliminate
considerations of hereditary varieties or races of man, and to
treat mankind as homogeneous in nature, though placed in

Tin: sriKNCE of cui.tuuk.

different grados of civilization. The details of the enquiry will,
I think, prove that stages of culturp may be compared without
taking into account how far tribes who use the same implement,
follow the same custom, or believe the same myth, may differ
in their bodily configuration and the colour of their skin and
hair.

A first step in the study of civilization is to dissect it into
details, and to classify these in their proper groups. Thus, in
examining weapons, they are to bo classed under spear, club,
sling, bow and arrow, and so forth ; among textile arts are to
be ranged matting, netting, and several grades of making and
weaving threads ; myths are divided under such headings as
myths of sunrise and sunset, eclipse-myths, earthquake-myths,
local myths which account for the names of places by some
fanciful tale, eponymic myths which account for the parentage
of a tribe by turning its name into the name of an imaginary
ancestor ; under rites and ceremonies occur such practices as the
various kinds of sacrifice t j the ghosts of the dead and to other
spiritual beings, the turning to the east in worship, the purifica-
tion of ceremonial or moral unclcanness by means of water or fire.
Such are a few miscellaneous examples from a list of hundreds,
and the ethnograplicr's business is to classify such details with a
view to making out their distribution in geography and history,
and the relations Avhich exist among them. What this task is
like, may be almost perfectly illustrated by comparing these
details of culture with the species of plants and animals as
studied by the naturalist. To the ethnographer, the bow and
arrow is a species, the habit of flattening children's skulls is a
species, the pract'oo of reckoning numbers by tens is a species.
The geographical distribution of these things, and their trans-
mission from region to region, have to be studied as the
naturalist studies the geography of his botanical and zoological
species. Just as certain plants and animals are peculiar to
certain districts, so it is with such instruments as the Australian
boomerang, the Polynesian stick-and-groove for fire-making, the
tiny bow and arrow used as a lancet or phleme by tribes about
the Isthmus of Panama, and in like manner with many an art,
myth, or custom, found isolated in a particular field. Just as

T, ■!

ii:!

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

tlio catalogue of all the species of plants and animals of a
district represents its Flora and Fauna, so the list of aii the
items of tlie general life of a j)eople represent that whole which
we call its culture. And just as distant regions so often
produce vegetables and animals which arc analogous, though by
no means identical, so it is with the details of the civilization of
their inhabitants. How good a working analogy there really is
between the diffusion of plants and a.amals and the diffusion of
civilization, comes well into view when we notice how far the
same causes have produced both at once. In district after
district, the same causes which have introduced the cultivated
plants and domesticated animals of civilization, have brought
in with them a corresponding art and knowledge. The course
of events which carried horses and wheat to America carried
with them the use of the gun and the iron hatchet, while in
return the old world received not only maize, potatoes, and
turkeys, but the habit of sni ing and the sailor's hammock.

It is a matter worthy of cuusideration, that the accounts of
similar phenomena of culture, recurring in different parts of
the world, actually supply incidental proof of tlieir own authen-
ticity. Some years since, a question which brings out this
point was put to me by a great historian — " How can a state-
ment as to customs, myths, beliefs, &c., of a savage tribe be
treated as evidence where it depends on the testimony of some
traveller or missio; ary, who may be a superficial observer, more
or less ignorant of che native language, a careless retailer of
unsifted talk, a man prejudiced, or even wilfully deceitful ? "
This question is, indeed, one which every ethnographer ought
to keep clearly and constantly before his mind. Of course he
is bound to use his best judgment as to the trustworthiness of
all authors he quotes, and if possible to obtain several accounts
to certify each point in each locality. Bu(. it is over and above
these measures of precaution, that the test of recurrence comes
in. If two independent visitors to different countries, say a
mediaeval Mohammedan in Tartary and a modern Englishman
in Dahome, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil and a Wesleyan in
the Fiji Islands, agree in describing some analogous art or rite
or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

iiiimals of a
st of ail the
whole which
ns so often
s, though by
ivilization of
icre really is
! diffusion of
how far the
listrict after
e cultivated
ivc brought
Tiie course
rica carried
let, while in
)tatoes, and
imniock.
accounts of
it parts of
wn autheu-
s out this
1 a state-
e tribe be
ly of some
rver, more
retailer of
eceitful ? "
ler ought
course he
thiness of
1 accounts
and above
nee comes
ies, say a
iglishman
vsleyan in

or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or
wilful fraud, A story by a bushranger in Australia may, per-
haps, be objected to as a mistake or an invention, but did a
Methodist minister in Guinea conspire with him to cheat tho
public by telling the same story there ? The possibility of inten-
tional or unintentional mystification is often barred by such a
state of things as that a similar statement is made in two
remote lands, by two witnesses, of whom A lived a century
before B, and B appears never to have heard of A. How
distant are the countries, how wide apart the dates, how
<liffercnt the creeds and characters of the observers, in tho
catalogue of facts of civilization, needs no farther showing
to any one who will even glance at the foot-notes of the
present work. And the more odd the statement, the les.s
likely that several people in several places should have made
it wrongly. This being so, it seems reasonable to judge that
the statements are in the main truly given, and that their
close and regular coincidence is due to the cropping up of
similar facts in various districts of culture. Now the most im-
portant facts of ethnography are vouched for in this way. Ex-
perience leads the student after a while to expect and find that
the phenomena of culture, as resulting from widely-acting similar
causes, should recur again and again in the world. He even
mistrusts isolated statements to which he knows of no parallel
elsewhere, and waits for their genuineness to be shown by
corresponding accounts from the other side of the earth, or the
other end of history. So strong, indeed, is this means of au-
thentication, that the ethnographer in his library may some-
times presume to decide, not only whether a particular explorer
is a shrewd and honest observer, but also whether what he
reports is conformable to the general rules of civilization. Kon
qiiis, sed quid.

To turn from the distribution of culture in different countries,
to its diffusion within these countries. The quality of man-
kind which tends most to make the systematic study of civili-
zation possible, is that remarkable tacit consensus or agreement
which so far induces whole populations to unite in the use of the
same language, to follow the same religion and customary law,

TIIK SCIICN'CK OF CULTUIIK.

to scttlo clown to tlio sanio gcncnil level of art and kiiowled^^o.
It is this state of thin<^s wliicli makes it so far possible to
ignore exccptionnl facts and to describe nations by a sort of
: averaw. il, is tbis state of tidnffs wbieli makes it so
-ui [)()ssibk! to represent immense^ masses of details by a few
tyj)ical facts, while, these once settled, new cases recorded by
new observers simply fall into their places to prove the sonnd-
ness of the classification. There is fonnd to be such rejjularity
in the composition of societies of men, that we can drop indi-.
vidual differences out of sight, and thus can generalize on the
arts and opinions of wliole nations, just as, when looking down
upon an army from a hill, we forget the individual soldier,
whom, in fact, we can scarce distinguish in the mass, while wo
see each regiment as an organized body, spreading or concen-
trating, moving in advance or in retreat. In some branches
of the study of social laws it is now possible to call in the aid
of statistics, and to set apart special actions of large mixed
communities of men by means of taxgatherers' schedules, or
the table.! of the insurance-office. Among modern arguments
on the laws of human action, none have had a deeper effect
than generalizations such as those of M. Quetelet, on the regu-
laritv, not onlv of such matters as average stature and the
annual rates of birth and death, but of the recurrence, year
after year, of such obscure and seemingly incalculable products
of national life as the numbers of murders and suicides, and
the proportion of tbe very weapons of crime. Other striking
cases are the annual regularity of persons killed accidentally in
the London streets, and of undirected letters dropped into post-
office letter-boxes. But in examining the culture of the lower
races, far from having at command the mea.sured arithmetical
facts of modern statistics, we may have to judge of the condi-
tion of tribes from the imperfect accounts supplied by travellers
or missionaries, or even to reason upon relics of pre-historic races
of whose very names and languages we are hopelessly ignorant.
Now these may seem at the first glance sadly indefinite and
unpromising materials for a scientific enquiry. But in fact
they are neither indefinite nor unpromising, but give evidence
that is good and definite, so far as it goes. They are data

it!!';

TIIK HCIKN'CR OF CULTURK.

wliicli, for tlio distinct way in wliich tliey sovcrally doiioto the
condition of the tribe tluy bdonj^ to, will actually bear
comparison with the statistician's returns. The fact is that
a stone arrow-head, a carved club, an idol, a grave-mound
where slaves and property have been buried for the use of the
dead, an account of a sorcerer's rites in making rain, a table
of numerals, the conjugation of a verb, are things which each
express the state of a people as to one particular point of
culture, as truly as the tabulated nund)i'rs of deaths by poison,
and of chests of tea im[)orted, express in a different way other
partial results of the general life of a whole community.

That a ■wliolo nation should have a special dress, special t0(»ls
and weapons, special laws of marriage ami i)roperty, special
moral and religious doctrines, is a remarkable fact, which we
notice so little because we have lived all our lives in the midst
of it. It is "with such general (lualities of organized bodies of
men that ethnography has especially to deal. Yet, while
generalizing on the culture of a tribe or nation, and setting
aside the peculiarities of the individuals composing it as unim-
portant to the main result, we must be careful not to forget
what makes up this main result. There are people so intent on
the separate life of individuals, that they cannot grasp a notion
of the action of a community as a whole — such an observer, in-
capable of a wide view of societ}', is aptly described in the say-
ing that he " cannot see the forest for the trees." ]Uit, on the
other hand, the philosopher may be so intent upon his general
laws of society as to neglect the individual actors of Avhom that
society is made up, and of him it may be said that he cannot
see the trees for the forest. We know how arts, customs, and
ideas are shaped among ourselves by the combined actions of
many individuals, of which actions both motive and effect often
come quit'j distinctly within our view. The history of an inven-
tion, an opinion, a ceremony, is a history of suggestion and
modification, encouragement and opposition, personal gain and
party prejudice, and the individuals concerned act each accord-
ing to his own motives, as determined by his character and
circumstances. Thus sometimes we watch individuals acting
for their own ends with little thought of their effect on society

Tin: SCIKNtK OF CULTUUK.

I >

t ;

nt lar^o, and soinctiinos wo Imvo to stmly movcinciits of
iiutioiial lilb as a wliole, whoro tlu; ijidividtials co-opiTatiuj; in
tliciu aiu utterly beyond our oltsia'vation. IJut seeing that
collective Hoeial action is the mere resultant vi' many individual
notions, it is elear that these two nmthods of enciuiry, if riglitly
followed, nuist be absolutely consistent.

In studyinj,' botl; the recurrence of special habits or ideas in
several districts, and their prevalence within each district, thero
come before us ever-reiterateil ])roofs of regular causation pro-
<lucin<,' the })nenomena of hunnui life, and of laws of mainten-
ance and diffusion accordinjj; to which these phenomena s(?ttlo
into permanent standard conditions of society, of definite! staj,'es
of culture. But, while giving full importance to the eviilenco
bearing on these standard conditions of society, let us be careful
to avoid a pitfall which may entrap the unwary student. Oi'
course, the o{)inions and habits belonging in common to
masses of mankind are to a groat extent the results of sound
judgnu'ut and practical wisdom. But to a great extent it is not
so. That many numerous societies of men should have believed
in the infiuenco of the evil eye and the existence of a firma-
ment, should have sacrificed slaves and goods to the ghosts of
the departed, should have handed down traditions of giants
slaying monsters and men turning into beasts — all this is
ground for holding that such ideas were indeed produced in men's
minds by efticient causes, l)ut it is not ground for holding that
the rites in question are profitable, the beliefs sound, and the
liistory authentic. This may seem at the first glance a truism,
but, in fact, it is the deniid of a fallacy which deeply ati'octs the
minds of all but a small critical minority of mankind. Popularly,
what everybody says must be true, what everybody docs must be
right — " Quod ubicpie, (|Uod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum
est, hoc est vere proprieque Catholicum " — and so forth. There
arc various topics, especially in history, law, philosophy, and
theology, where even the educated people we live among can
hardly be brought to see that the cause why men do hold an
opinion, or practise a custom, is by no means necessarily a
reason why they ought to do so. Now collections of ethno-
graphic evidence, bringing so prominently into view the agree-

THK H(IKX( K fiK CfF/rrilK.

mt'iit of irjunctisc iiiultit/Klcs dt' uwu as to cortJiiu traditions,
luflicf's, and UHaf^cM, an* peculiarly lialdo to \hi thus inipn'pirly
used in dircft defence of these institutinns th(Mnselvi'S, oven old
hari)aric nations ludn^' poMed to maintain tlu'ir opjiions ai,'ainst
what are called modern ideas. As it has more than once hap-
pened to myself to find my collections of traditions and heliefs
thuH modo to prove their own objective truth, without proper
examination of the grounds on which they were actually re-
ceived, I take this occasion of remarking that the same line of
argument will serve e(pi.'dly well to demonstrate, hy the strong
and wide consent of nations, that the earth is flat, and night-
mare the visit of a demon.

It being shown that the details of Culture are capable of
being classified in a great nund)er of ethnographic groups of
arts, beliefs, customs, and the rest, the consideration comes
next how far the facts arranged in these groups are produced by
evolution from one another. It need hardly be pointed out
that the groups in (juestion, though held together each by a
common character, arc by no means accurately dcjfined. To
take lip again the natural history illustration, it may bo said
that they are species which tend to run widely into varieties.
And when it comes to the question what relations s(jme of these
groups bear to others, it is plain that the student of the habits
of mankind has a great advantage over the student of the species
of plants and animals. Among naturalists it is an open question
whether a theory of development from species to species is a
record of transitions which actually took place, or a mere ideal
scheme serviceable in the classification of species whoso origin
was really independent. But among ethn grapliers there is no
such question as to the possibility of species of implements or
habits or beliefs being developed one out of another, for develop-
ment in culture is recognized by our most familiar knowledge.
Mechanical invention supplies apt examples of the kind of de-
velopment which affects civilization at large. In the history of
fire-arms, the clumsy wheel-lock, in which a notched steel
wheel was turned by a handle against the flint till a spark
caught the priming, led to the invention of the more serviceable
flint-lock, of which a few still hang in the kitchens of our farm-

!l^

if !■

THE SCIENCE OF CULTUIIE.

' r f i

I::

houses, for the uoys to shoot small birds with at Christmas ; the
flint-lock in time passed by an obvious modification into the
percussion-lock, which is just now changing its old-fashioned
arrangement to be adapted from muzzle-loading to breech-
loading. The media3val astrolabe passed into the quadrant, now
discarded in its turn by the seaman, who uses the more delicate
sextant, and so on through the history of one art and instrument
after another. Such examples of progression are known to us
as direct history, but so thoroughly is this notion of develop-
ment at home in our minds, that by means of it we reconstruct
lost history without scruple, trusting to general knowledge of
the principles of human thought and action as a guide in putting
the facts in their proper order. Whether chronicle speaks or is
silent on the point, no one comparing a long-bow and a cross-
bow would doubt that the cross-bow was a development arising
from the simpler instrument. So among the savage fire-drills
for igniting by friction, it seems clear on the face of the matter
that the drill worked by a cord or bow is a later improvement
on the clumsier primitive instrument twirled between the
hands. That instructive class of specimens which antiquaries
sometimes discover, bronze celts modelled on the heavy type of
the stone hatchet, are scarcely explicable except as first steps in
the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, to be
followed soon by the next stage of progress, in which it is dis-
covered that the new material is suited to a handier and less
wasteful pattern. And thus, in the other branches of our
history, there will come again and again into view series of facts
which may be consistently arranged as having followed one
another in a particular order of development, but whidi will
hardly bear being turned round and made to follow in re^'ersed
order. Such for instance are the facts I have here brought
forward in a chapter on the Art of Counting, which tend to
prove that as to this point of culture at least, savage tribes
reached their position by learning and not by unlearning, by
elevation from a lower ra+her than by degradation from a higher
state.

Among evidence aiding us to trace the course which the civili-
zation of the world has actually followed, is that great class of

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

istmas ; the

an into the

d-fashioned

to breecli-

adraiit, now

ore delicate

instrument

:nown to us

of develop-

reconstruct

lowledge of

! in putting

■speaks or is

md a cross-

lent arising

;e tire-drilk

the matter

iprovement

jtween the

mtiquaries

ivy type of

■st steps in

A.ge, to be

h it is dis-

3r and less

i3s of our

es of facts

owed one

which will

re^■ersed

brought

1 tend to

ige tribes

irning, by

a higher

the civili-
it class of

facts to denote which I have found it convenient to introduce the
term " survivals." These are processes, customs, opinions, and so
forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new
state of society diftcrent from that in which they had their
original home, and tlvy thus remain as proofs and examples of
an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been
evolved. Tlius, I know an old Somersetshire woman whoso hand-
loom dates from the time before the introduction of the " Hying
.shuttle," which new-fangled appliance she has never even learnt
to use, and I have seen her throw her shuttle from hand to
hand in true classic fashion ; tins old woman is not a century
behind her times, but she is a case of survival. Such examples
often lead us back to the habits of hundreds and even thousands
of years ago. The ordeal of the Key and Bible, still in use, is
a survival ; the Midsummer bonfire is a survival ; the Breton
peasants' All Souls' supper for the sjjirits of the dead is a
survival. The simple keeping up of ancient habits is only one
part of the transition from old into new and changing times.
The serious business of ancient society may bo seen to sink into
the sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger
on in nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old-world
life may be modified into new-world forms still powerful for
good and evil. Sometimes old thoughts and practices will burst
out afresh, to the amazement of a world that thought them
long since dezA or dying ; here survival passes into revival, as
lias lately happened in so remarkable a way in the history of
modern spiritualism, a subject full of instruction from the
ethnographer's point of view. The study of the principles of
survival has, indeed, no small practical importance, for most of
what we call superstition is included within survival, and in this
way lies open to the attack of its deadliest enemy, a reasonable
explanation. Insignificant, moreover, as multitudes of the fticts
of survival are in themselves, their study is so effective for trac-
ing the course of the historical '^ velopment through which alone
it is possible to understand their meaning, that it becomes a
vital point of ethnographic research to gain the clearest possible
insight into their nature. This importance must justify the
detail here devoted to an examination of survival, on the

»:;;■

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

evidence of such games, popular sayings, customs, superstitions,
and the like, as may serve well to bring into view the manner
of its operation.

Progress, degradation, survival, revival, modijfication, are all
modes of the connexion that binds together the complex net-
work of civilization. It needs but a glance into the trivial
details of our own daily life to set us thinking how far we are
really its originators, and how far but the transmitters and modi-
fiers of the results of long past ages. Looking round the rooms
we live in, we may try here how far he who only knows his own
time can be capable of rightly comprehending even that. Here
is the honeysuckle of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, a
cornice with a Greek border runs round the ceiling, the style of
Louis XIV. and its parent the Renaissance share the looking-
glass between them. Transformed, shifted, or mutilated, such
elements of art still carry their history plainly stamped upon
them ; and if the history yet farther behind is less easy to read,
we are not to say that because we cannot clearly discern it
there is therefore no history there. It is thus even with the
fashion of the clothes men wear. Tiie ridiculous little tails of
the German postillion's coat show of themselves how they came
to dwindle to such absurd rudiments ; but the English clergy-
man's bands no longer so convey their history to the eye, and
look unaccountable enough till one has seen the intermediate
stages through which they came down from the more service-
able wide collars, such as Milton wears in his portrait, and
which gave their name to the "band-box" they used to be kept
in. In fact the books of costume, showing how one garment
grew or shrank by gradual siages and passed into another,
illustrate with much force and clearness the nature of the
change and growth, revival and decay, which go on from year
to year in more important matters of life. In books, again, we
see each writer not for and by himself, but occupying his proper
place in history ; we look through each philosopher, mathema-
tician, chemist, poet, into the background of his education, —
through Leibnitz into Descartes, through Dalton into Priestley,
through Milton into Homer. The study of language has, per-
haps, done more than any other in removing from our view of

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

human thought and action the ideas of chance and arbitrary
invention, and in substituting for them a theory of development
by the co-oi^eration of individual men, through processes ever
reasonable and intelligible where the facts are fully known.
Kudimentary as the science of culture still is, the symptoms are
becoming very strong that even what seem its most spontaneous
and motiveless phenomena will, nevertheless, be shown to come
within the range of distinct cause and effect as certainly as the
facts of mechanics. What would be popularly thought more
indefinite and uncontrolled than the products of the imagina-
tion in myths and fables ? Yet any systematic investigation of
mythology, on the basis of a wide collection of evidence, will
show plainly enough in such efforts of fancy at once a develop-
ment from stage to stage, and a production of uniformity of
result from uniformity of cause. Here, as elsewhere, causeless
spontaneity is seen to recede farther and farther into shelter
within the dark precincts of ignorance ; like chance, that still
holds its place among the vulgar as a real cause of events other-
wise unaccountable, while to educated men it has long con-
sciously meant nothing but this ignorance itself. It is only
when men fail to see the line of connexion in events, that they
are prone to fall upon the notions of arbitrary impulses, cause-
less freaks, chance and nonsense and indefinite unaccountability.
If childish games, purposeless customs, absurd superstitions are
set down as spontaneous because no one can say exactly how
they came to be, the as? rtion may remind us of the like effect
that the eccentric habits of the wild rice-plant h:id on the phi-
losophy of a Red Indian tribe, otherwise disposed to see in the
harmony of nature the effects of one controlling personal will.
The Great Spirit, said these Sioux theologians, made all things
except the wild rice ; but the wild rice came by chance.

" Man," said Wilhelm von Humboldt, " ever connects on from
what lies at hand (der Mensch kniipft immer an Vorhandenes
an)." The notion of the continuity of civilization contained in this
maxim is no barren philosophic principle, but is at once made
practical by the consideration that they who wish to understand
their own lives ought to know the stages through which their
opinions and habits have become what they are,

VOL. I.

Auguste

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

Comt9 scarcely overstated the necessity of this study of
development, when he declared at the beginning of his
'Positive Philosophy' that " no conception can be understood
except through its history," and his phrase will bear extension
to culture at large. To expect to look modern life in the face
and comprehend it by mere inspection, is a kind of philosophy
chat can easily be tested. Imagine any one explaining the
trivial saying, " a little bird told me," without knowing of the
old belief in the language of birds and beasts, to which Dr.
Dasent, in the introduction to the Norse Tales, so reasonably
traces its origin. To ingenious attempts at explaining by the
light of reason things which want the light of history to show
their meaning, much of the learned nonsense of the world has
indeed been due. Mr. Maine, in his 'Ancient Law,' gives a
perfect instance. In all the literature which enshrines the
pretended philosophy of law, he remarks, there is nothing more
curious than the pages of elaborate sophistry in which Black-
stone attempts to explain and justify that extraordinary rule of
English law, only recently repealed, which prohibited sons of
the same father b}' different mothers from succeeding to one
another's land. To Mr. Maine, knowing the facts of the case,
it was easy to explain its real origin from the "Customs of
Normandy," where according to the system of agnation, or
kinship on the male side, brothers by the same mother but by
different fathers were of course no relations at all to one
another. But when this rule "was transplanted to England,
the English judges, who had no clue to its principle, interpreted
it as a general prohibition against the succession of the half-
blood, and extended it to consanguineous brothers, that is to
sons of the same father by different wives." Then, ages after,
Blackstone sought in this blunder the perfection of reason, and
found it in the argument that kinship through both parents
ought to prevail over even a nearer degree of kinship through
but one parent ^. Such are the risks that philosophers run in

* Blackstone, 'Commentaries.' "As every man's own blood is compounded
of the bloods of his respective ancestors, he only is properly of the whole or
entire blood -with another, who hath (so for as the distance of degrees will permit),
all the same ingredients in the composition of his blood that the other hath," etc.

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

•^

detaching any phenomenon of civilization from its hold on past
events, and treating it as an isolated fact, to be simply disposed
of by a guess at some plausible explanation.

la carrying on the great task of rational ethnography, the
investigation of the causes which have produced the phenomena
of culture, and the laws to which they are subordinate, it is
desirable to work out as systematically as possible a scheme of
evolution of this culture along its many lines. In the following
chapter, on the Development of Culture, an attempt is made to
sketch a theoretical course of civilization among mankind, such
as appears on the whole most accordant with the evidence. By
comparing the various stages of civilization among races known
to history, with the aid of archaeological inference from the
remains of pre-historic tribes, it seems pc ible to judge in a
rough way of an early general condition of man, which from our
point of view is to be regarded as a primitive condition, what-
ever yet earlier state may in reality have lain behind it. This
hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a considerable
degree to that of modern savage tribes, who, in spite of their
difference and distance, have in common certain elements of
civilization, which seem remains of an early state of the human
race at large. If this hypothesis be true, then, notwithstanding
the continual interference of degeneration, the main tendency
of culture from primaeval up to modern times has been from
savagery towards civilization. On the problem of this relation
of savage to civilized life, almost every one of the thousands of
facts discussed in the succeeding chapters has its direct bearing.
Survival in Culture, placing all along the course of advancing
civilization way-marks full of meaning to those who can
decipher their signs, even now sets up in our midst primaeval
monuments of barbaric thous^ht and life. Its investigation tells
strongly in favour of the view that the European may find
among the Groenlanders or Maoris many a trait for reconstruct-
ing the picture of his own primitive ancestors. Next comes
the problem of the Origin of Language. Obscure as many parts
of this problem still remain, its clearer positions lie open to the
investigation, whether speech took its origin among mankind in
the savage state, and the result of the enquiry is that, consis-

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

tently with all known evidence, this may have been tlie case.
From the examination of the Art of Counting a far more definite
consequence is shown. It may be confidently asserted, that
not only is this important art found in a rudimentary state
among savage tribes, but that satisfactory evidence proves
numeration to have been developed by rational invention from
this low stage up to that in Avhich we ourselves possess it. The
examination of Mythology which concludes the first volume, is
for the most part made from a special point of view, on evidence
Qollected for a special purpose, that of tracing the relation
between the myths of savage tribes and their analogues among
more civilized nations. The issue of such enquiry goes far to
prove that the earliest myth-maker arose and flourished among
savage hordes, setting on foot an art which his more cultured
successors Avould carry on, till its results came to be fossilized in
superstition, mistaken for history, shaped and draped in poetry,
or cast aside as lying folly.

Nowhere, perha^Ds, are broad views of historical development
more needed than in the study of religion. Notwithstanding
all that has been written to make the world acquainted with
the lower theologies, the popular ideas of their place in history
and their relation to the faiths of higher nations are still of the
mediceval type. It is wonderful to contrast some missionary
journals with Max Miiller's Essays, and to set the unappreciating
hatred and ridicule that is lavished by narrow hostile zeal on
Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism, beside the catholic sym-
pathy with which deep and wide knowledge can survey those
ancient and noble phases of man's religious consciousness ;
nor, because the religions of savage tribes may be rude and
primitive, compared with the great Asiatic systems, do they
lie too low for interest and even for respect. The question
really lies between understanding and misunderstanding them.
Few who will give their minds to master the general principles
of savage religion will ever again think it ridiculous, or the
knowledge of it superfluous to the rest of mankind. Far from
its beliefs and practices being a rubbish-heap of miscellaneous
folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degi'ee as to
begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the prin-

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

ciples of their formation and development ; and these principles
prove to he essentially rational, though working iu a mental
condition of intense and inveterate ignorance. It is with a
sense of attempting an investigation which bears very closely on
the current theology of our own day, that I have set myself to
examine systematically, among the lower races, the develop-
ment of Animism ; that is to say, the doctrine of souls and
other spiritual beings in general. The second volume of this
work is in great part occupied with a mass of evidence from all
regions of the world, displaying the nature and meaning of
this great element of the Philosophy of Religion, and tracing .
its transmission, expansion, restriction, modification, along tho
course of history into the midst of our own modern thought.
Nor are the questions of small practical moment which have
to be raised in a similar attempt to trace the development of
certain prominent Rites and Ceremonies — customs so full of in-
struction as to the inmost powers of religion, Avhose outward
expression and practical result they are.

In these investigations, however, made rather from an ethno-
graphic than a theological point of view, there has seemed
little need of entering into direct controversial argument,
which indeed I have taken pains to avoid as far as possible.
The connexion which runs through religion, from its rudest
forms up to the status of an enlightened Christianity, may be
conveniently treated of with little recourse to dogmatic theo-
logy. The rites of sacrifice and purification may be studied in
their stages of development without entering into questions of
their authority and value, nor does an examination of the
successive phases of the world's belief in a future life d mand
a discussion of the arguments that may be adduced upon it for
our own conviction. Such ethnographic results may then be
left as materials for professed theologians, and it will not per-
haps be long before evidence so fraught with meaning shall
take its legitimate place. To ftill back once again on the
analogy of natural history, the time may soon come when it will
be thought as unreasonable for a scientific student of theology
not to have a competent acquaintance with the principles of the
religions of the lower races, as for a physiologist to look with

THE SCIENCE OF CULTURE.

the contempt of fifty years ago on evidence derived from the
lower forms of life, deeming the structure of mere invertebrate
Cieiitures matter unworthy of his philosophic study.

Not merely as a matter of curious research, but as an impor-
tant practical guide to the understanding of the present, and
the shaping of the future, the investigation into the origin and
early development of civilization must be pushed on zealously.
Every possible avenue of knowledge must be explored, every
door tried to see if it is open. No kind of evidence need be left
untouched on the score of remoteness or complexity, of minute-
ness or triviality. The tendency of modern enquiiy is more and
more toward the conclusion that if law is anywhere, it is every-
where. To despair of what a conscientious collection and study
of facts may lead to, and to declare liny problem insoluble,
because difficult and far off, is distinctly to be on the wrong-
side in science ; and he who will choose a hopeless task may set
himself to discover the limits of discovery. One remembers
Comte starting in his account of astronomy with a remark on
the necessary limitation of our knowledge of the stars : we
conceive, he tells us, the possibility of determining their
form, distance, size, and movement, whilst we should never by
any method be able to study their chemical composition, +heir
mineralogical structure, &c. Had the philosopher lived to see
the application of spectrum analysis to this very problem, his
proclamation of the dispiriting doctrine of necessary ignorance
would perhaps have been recanted in favour of a more hopeful
view. And it seems to be with the philosophy of remote
human life somewhat as with the study of the nature of the
celestial bodies. The processes to be made out in the early
stages of our mental evolution lie distant from us in time as the
stars lie distant from us in space, but the laws of the universe
are not limited with the direct observation of our senses. There
is vast material to be used in our enquiry ; many workers are
now busied in bringmg this material into shape, though little may
have yet been done in proportion to what remains to do ; and
already it seems not too much to say that the vague outlines of
a philosophy of primaeval history are beginning to come within
our view.

CHAPTER II.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

Stages of culture, industrial, intellectual, political, moral — Development of
culture in great measure corresponds with transition from savage through
barbaric to civilized life — Progression-theory — Degeneration-theory —
Development-theory includes both, the one as primary, the other as secon-
dary — Historical and traditional evidence not availalile as to low stages of
culture — Historical evidence as to principles of Degeneration — Ethnological
evidence as to rise and fall in culture, from comparison of different levels of
culture in branches of the same race — Extent of historically recorded anti-
quity of civilization — Prehistoric Archaeology extends the anticjuity of man in
low stages of civilization — Traces of Stone Age, corroborated by megalithic
structures, lake-dwellings, shell-heaps, burial-places, &c., combine to prove
original low culture throughout the world— Stages of progressive Develop-
ment in industrial arts.

In taking up the problem of tlie development of culture as a
branch of ethnological research, a first proceeding is to obtain a
means of measurement. Seeking something like a definite line
along which to reckon progression and retrogression in civiliza-
tion, we may apparently find it best in the classification of real
tribes and nations, past and present. Civilization actually exist-
ing among mankind in different grades, we are enabled to esti-
mate and compare it by positive examples. The educated world
of Europe and America practiv ally settles a standard by simply
placing its own nations at one end of tlie social series and
savage tribes at the other, arranging the rest of mankind
between these limits according as they correspond more closely
to savage or to cultured life. The principal criteria of classifica-
tion are the absence or presence, high or low development, of
the industrial arts, especially metal-working, manufacture of
implements and vessels, agriculture, architecture, &c., the extent
of scientific knowledge, the definiteness of moral principles, the

THE DEVELOFMENT OF CULTURi:.

condition of religious belief and ceremony, the degree of social
and political organization, and so forth. Thus, on the definite
basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at
least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the
following races are arranged rightly in order of culture : —
Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian. By treating
the development of civilization on this plain ethnographic
basis, many difficulties may be avoided which have embarrassed
its discussion. This may be seen by a glance at the relation
which theoretical principles of civilization boar to the transi-
tions to be observed as matter of fact between the extremes of
savage and cultured life.

From an ideal point of view, civilization may be looked upon
as the general improvement of mankind by higher organization
of the individual and of society, to the end of promoting at
once man's goodness, i)ower, and happiness. This theoretical
civilization does in no small measure correspond v/ith actual
civilization, as traced by comparing savagery with barbarism,
and barbarism with modern educated life. So far as we take
into account only material and intellectual culture, this is
especially true. Acquaintance with tiie physical laws of the
world, and the accompanying power of adapting nature to
man's own ends, are, on the whole, loAvest among savages, mean
among barbarians, and iiighest among modcri. educated nations.
Thus a transition from the savage state to our own would be,
practically, that very progress of art and knowledge which is
one main element in the development of culture.

But even those students who hold most strongly that the general
course of civilization, as measured along the scale of races from
savages to ourselves, is progress toward the benefit of mankind,
must admit many and manifold exceptions. Industrial and in-
tellectual culture by no means advances imiformly in all its
branches, and in fact excellence in various of its details is often
obtained under conditions Avhich keep back culture as a whole.
It is true that these exceptions seldom swamp the general rule ;
and the Englishman, admitting that he does not climb trees
like the wild Australian, nor track game like the savage of the
Brazilian forest, nor comjoete with the ancient Etruscan and the

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

modern Chinese in delicacy of goldsmith's -work and ivory
carving, nor reach the classic Greek level of oratory and sculp-
ture, may yet claim for himself a general condition above any
of these races. But there actually have to be taken into
account developments of science and art which tend directly
against culture. To have learnt to give poison secretly and
effectually, to have raised a corrupt literature to pestilent per-
fection, to have organized a successful scheme to arrest free
enquiry and proscribe free expression, are works of knowledge
and skill whose progress toward their goal has hardly conduced
to the general good. Thus, even in comparing mental and
artistic culture among several peoples, the balance of good and
ill is not quite easy to strike.

If not only knowledge and art, but at the same time moral
and political excellence, be taken into consideration, it becomes
yet harder to reckon on an ideal scale the advance or decline
from stage to stage of culture. In fact, a combined intellectual
and moral measure of human condition is an instrument which
no student has as yet learnt properly to handle. Even granting
that intellectual, moral, and political life may, on a broad view,
be seen to progress together, it is obvious that they are far from
advancing with e([\\a\ steps. It may be taken as man's rule of
duty in the world, that he shall strive to know as well as he can
find out, and to do as well as he knows how. But the parting
asunder of these two great princinlcs, that separation of intelli-
gence from virtue which accounts for so much of the wrong-
doing of mankind, is continually seen to happen in the great
movements of civilization. As one conspicuous instance of
what all history stands to prove, if we study the eaiiy ages of
Christianity, we may see men with minds pervaded by the new
religion of duty, holiness, and love, yet at the same time
actually falling away in intellectual life, thus at once vigor-
ously grasping one half of civilization, and contemptuously
casting ofi" the other. Whether in high ranges or in. low of
human life, it may be seen that advance of culture seldom
results at once in unmixed good. Courage, honesty, generosity,
xire virtues which may sufier, at least for a time, by the develop-
ment of a sense of value of life and property. The savage who

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

adopts something of foreign civilization too often loses his ruder
virtues without gaining an equivalent. The white invader or
colonist, though representing on the whole a higher moral
standard than tho savage ho improves or destroys, often repre-
sents his standard very ill, and at best can hardly claim to
substitute a life stronger, nobler, and purer at every j)oint than
that which ho supersedes*. Tho onward movement from bar-
barism has dropped behind morn than one (quality of barbaric
character, which cultured modern men look back on with regiet,
and will even strive to regain by futile attempts to stop the course
of history, and restore tho past in the midst of the present. So
it is with social institutions. The slavery recognized by savage
and barbarous races is preferable in kind to that which existed
for centuries in late European colonies. The relation of the
sexes among many savage tribes is more healthy than among
the richer classes of the Mohammedan world. As a supreme
authority of government, tho savage councils of chiefs and
ciders compare favourably with the unbridled despotism under
which so many cultured races have groaned. The Creek
Indians, asked concerning their religion, replied that where
agreement was not to be had, it was best to "let every man
paddle his canoe his own way :" and after long ages of theo-
logical strife and jjcrsecution, the modem world seems coming
to think those savages not far wrong.

Amon^ 'icounts of savage life, it is not, indeed, uncommon
to find details of admirable moral and social excellence. To
take one prominent instance, Lieut. Bruijn Kops and Mr.
Wallace have described, among the rude Papuans of the
Eastern Archipelago, a habitual truthfulness, rightfulness, and
kindliness which it would be hard to match in the general
moral life of Persia or India, to say nothing of many a civilized
European district.^ Such tribes may count as the " blameless
Ethiopians" of the modern world, and from them an impor-
tant lesson may be learnt. Ethnographers who seek in modem
savages types of the remotely ancient human race at large, are
bound by such examples to consider the rude life of primaeval
man under favourable conditions to have been, in its measure, a

» G. W, Earl, 'Papuans,' p. 79 ; A. R. "Wallace, 'Eastern Arcliipclago.'

THE DEVKLOPMENT OF CULTUIIE.

good and happy life. Novertheless, tlio pictures drawn by sonio
travcllors of savagery as a kind of paradisaical state are mostly
taken too exclusively from the bright side. It is remarked as to
theso very Papuans, that Eurojjoans whoso intercourso with
them has been hostile become so impressed with the wild-beast-
like cunning of their attacks, as hardly to believe in their having
feelings in common with civilized men. Our Polar explorern
may well speak in kindly terms of tho industry, the honesty,
the cheerful considerate politeness of the Esquimaux ; but it
must be remembered that these rude people are on their ])est
behaviour with foreigners, and that their character is apt to bo
foul and brutal where they have nothing to expect or fear. Tho
Caribs are described as a cheerfid, modest, courteous race, and
so honest among themselves that if they missed anything out
of a house they said quite naturally, "There has been a
Christian here." Yet tho malignant ferocity with which these
estimable people tortured their prisoners of war with knife and
firebrand and red pepper, and then cooked and ate them in
solemn debauch, gave fair reason for the name of Carib (Canni-
bal) to become the generic name of man-eaters in European
languages.^ So when we read descriptions of the hospitality,
tho gentleness, the bravery, the deep religious feeling of tho
North American Indians, we admit their claims to our sincere
admiration ; but we must not forget that they were hospitable
literally to a fault, that their gentleness would pass with a flash
of anger into frenzy, that their bravery was stained with cruel
and treacherous malignity, that their religion expressed itself in
absurd belief and useless ceremony. The ideal savage of tho
18th century might be held up as a living reproof to vicious and
frivolous London ; but in sober fact, a Londoner who should
attempt to lead the atrocious life which the real savage may
lead with impunity and even respect, would be a criminal only
allowed to follow his savacre models durini? his short intervals
out of gaol. Savage moral standards are real enough, but they
are far looser and weaker than ours. We may, I think, ajjply the
often-repeated comparison of savages to children as fairly to
their moral as to their intellectual condition.

The better savage

' Rocliefoi-t, * lies Antilles,' pp. 400—480.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

social life seems in but unstable equilibrium, liable to be easily
upset by a touch of distress, temptation, or violence, and then
it becomes the worse savage life, which we know by so many
dismal and hideous examples. Altogether, it may be admitted
that some rude tribes lead a life to be envied by some barbar-
ous races, and even by the outcasts of higher nations. But that
any known savage tribe would not be improved by judicious
civilization, is a proposition which no moralist would dare to
make ; while the general tenour of the evidence goes far to
justify the view that on the whole the civilized man is not only
wiser and more capable than the savage, but also better and
happier, and that the barbarian stands between.

It might, perhaps, seem practicable to compare the whole
average of the civilization of two peoples, or of the same people
in different ages, by reckoning each, item by item, to a sort of
sum-total, and striking a balance between them, much as an
appraiser compares the value of two stocks of merchandise,
diifer as they may both in quantity and quality. But the few
remarks here made will have shown how loose must be the
working-out of these rough-and-ready estimates of culture. In
fact, much of the labour spent in investigating the progress and
decline of civilization has been mis-spent, in premature at-
tempts to treat that as a whole which is as yet only susceptible
of divided study. The present comparatively narrow argument
on the development of culture at any rate avoids this greatest
perplexity. It takes cognizance principally of knowledge, art,
and custom, and indeed only very partial cognizance within
this field, the vast range of physical, political, social, and ethical
considerations being left all but untouched. Its standard of
reckoning progress and decline is not that of ideal good and
evil, but of movement along a measured line from grade to
grade of actual savagery, barbarism, and civilization. The thesis
which I venture to sustain, within limits, is simply this, that
the savage state in some measure represents an early condition
of mankind, out of which the higher culture has gradually
been developed or evolved, by processes still in regular opera-
tion as of old, the result showing that, on the whole, progress
has far prevailed over relapse.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

On this proposition, the main tendency of humon society
during its long term of existence has been to pass from a
savage to a civilized state. Now all must admit a great part of
this assertion to be not only truth, but truism. Referred to
direct history, a great section of it proves to belong not to the
domain of speculation, but to that of positive knowledge. It is
mere matter of chronicle that modern civilization is a develop-
ment of mediaeval civilization, which again is a development
from civilization of the order represented in Greece, Ass3a-ia, or
Egypt. Thus the higher culture being clearly traced back to
what may be called the middle culture, the question which
remains is, whether this middle culture may be traced back to
the lower culture, that is, to savagery. To affirm this, is merely
to assert that the same kind of development in culture which
has gone on inside our range of knowledge has also gone on
outside it, its course of proceeding being unaffected by our
having or not having reporters present. If any one holds that
human thought and action were worked out in primaeval times
according to laws essentially other than those of the modern
world, it is for him to prove by valid evidence this anomalous
state of things, otherwise the doctrine of permanent principle
will hold good, as in astronomy or geology. That the tendency
of culture has been similar throughout the existence of human
society, and that we may fairly judge from its known .historic
course what its pre-historic course may have been, is a theory
clearly entitled to precedence as a fundamental principle of
ethnographic research.

Gibbon, in his ' Roman Empire,' expresses in a few vigorous
sentences his theory of the course of culture, as from savagery
upward. Judged by the knowledge of nearly a century later,
his remarks cannot, indeed, pass unquestioned. Especially ho
seems to rely with misplaced confidence on traditions of archaic
rudeness, to exaggerate the lowness of savage life, to under-
estimate the liability to decay of the ruder arts, and in his view
of the effect of high on low ci''alization, to dwell too exclusively
on the brighter side. But, on the whole, the great historian's
judgment seems so substantially that of the unprejudiced
modern student of the progressionist school, that I gladly quote

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

the passage here at length, and take it as a text to represent
the development-theory of culture : — " The discoveries of
ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history, or
tradition, of the most enlightened nations, represent the
human savage naked both in mind and body, and destitute
of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language. From this
abject condition, perhaps the primitive and universal state of
man, he has gi*adually arisen to command the animals, to
fertilise the earth, to traverse the ocean, and to measure the
heavens. His progress in the improvement and exercise of his
mental and corporeal faculties has been irregular and various ;
infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing by degrees with
redoubled velocity : ages of laborious ascent have been followed
by a moment of rapid downfall ; and the several climates of the
globe have felt the vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the
experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes,
and diminish our apprehensions : we cannot determine to what
height the human species may aspire in their advances towards
perfection ; but it may safely be presumed that no people, un-
less the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their
original barbarism. The improvements of society may be
viewed under a threefold aspect. 1. The poet or philosopher
illustrates his age and country by the efforts of a single mind ;
but these superior powers of reason or fancy are rare and
spontaneous productions ; and the genius of Homer, or Cicero,
or Newton, would excite less admiration, if they could be
created by the will of a prince, or the lessons of a preceptor.
2. The benefits of law and policy, of trade and manufactures,
of arts and sciences, are more solid and permanent ; and many
individuals may be qualified, by education and discipline, to
promote, in their respective stations, the interest of the com-
munity. But this general order is the effect of skill and
labour ; and the complex machinery may be decayed by time,
or injured by violence. 3. Fortunately for mankind, the more
useful, or, at least, more necessary arts, can be performed with-
out superior talents, or national subordination ; without tlie
powers of one, or the union of many. Each village, each
family, each individual, must always possess both ability and

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

inclination to perpetuate the use of fire anc' of metals ; the
propagation and service of domestic animals ; the methods of
hunting and fishing ; the rudiments of navigation ; the im-
perfect cultivation of corn, or other nutritive grain ; and the
simple practice of the mechanic trades. Private genius and
public industry may be extirpated ; but these hardy plants
survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into the
most unfavourable soil. The splendid days of Augustus a.nd
Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance ; and the bar-
barians subverted the laws and palaces of Rome. But the
scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn, still continued
annually to mow the harvests of Italy ; and the human feasts
of the Lsestrigons have never been renewed on the coast of
Campania. Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce,
and religious zeal, have diffused, among the savages of the Old
and New "World, these inestimable gifts ; they have been suc-
cessively propagated ; they can never be lost. We may there-
fore acquiesco in the pleasing conclusion, that every age of the
world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the
happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human

race

This progression-theory of civilization may be contrasted with
its rival, the degeneration-theory, in the dashing invective of
Count Joseph de Maistre, written toward the beginning of this
century. " Nous partons toujours," he says, " de I'hypothfese
banale que I'homme s'est dleve graducllement de la barbarie k
la science et a la civilisation, C'est le reve favori, c'est I'erreur-
mk'e, et comme dit I'dcole, le proto-pseudes de notre si^cle.
Mais si les philosophes de ce malheureux sifecle, avec I'horrible
perversity que nous leur avons connue, et qui s'obstinent encore
malgrd les avertissements qu'ils ont re9us, avaient possddd de
plus quelques-unes de ces connaissances qui ont du ndcessaire-
ment appartenir aux premiers hommes, &c." ^ The degeneration-
theory, which this eloquent antagonist of "modern ideas"
indeed states in an extreme shape, has received the sanction
of men of great learning and ability. It has practically resolved

1 Gibbon, ' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' cli. xxxviii.
^ De Iilaistre, * Soirees de St. Petcrsbourg,' vol. ii. p. 150.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

itself into two assumptions, first, that the history of culture
began with the oppcarance on earth of a semi-civilized race of
men, and second, that from this stage culture has proceeded in
two ways, backward to produce savages, and forward to produce
civilized men. The idea of the original condition of man being
one of more or less high culture, must have a certain pro-
minence given to it on account of its considerable hold on
public opinion. As to definite evidence, however, it does not
seem to have any ethnological basis whatever. Indeed, I
scarcely think that a stronger counter-persuasion could be used
on an intelligent student inclined to the ordinary degeneration-
theory than to induce him to examine critically and impartially
the arguments of the advocates on his own side. It must be
borne in mind, however, that the grounds on which this theory
has been held have generally been rather theological than
ethnological. The strength of the position it has thus occupied
may be well instanced from the theories adopted by two
eminent French writers of the last century, which in a remark-
able way piece together a belief in degenei ation and an argu-
ment for progression. De Bro?!ses, whose whole intellectual
nature turned to the progression-theory, argued that by studying
what actually now happens " we may trace men upward from
the savage state to which the flood and dispersion had reduced
them."^ And Goguet, holding that the pre-existing arts
perished at the deluge, was thus loft free to Avork out on the
most thorough-going progressionist principles his theories of the
invention of firo, cooking, agriculture, law, and so forth, among
tribes thus reduced to a condition of low savagery.^ At the
present time it is not unusual for the origin of civilization to be
treated as matter of dogmatic theology. It has happened to
me more than once to be assured from the pulpit that the
theories of ethnologists who consider man to have risen from a
low original condition are delusive fancies, it being revealed
truth that man was originally in a high condition. Now as a
matter of Biblical criticism it must be remembered that a lar^e

^ Do Brosscs, 'Dieux Fetiches,' p. 15; 'Formation des Langues,' vol. i. p. 49;
vol. ii. p. 32.
2 Goguet, ' Origine des Lois, des Arts,' etc., vol. i. p. 88.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

proportion of modern theologians are far from accepting such a
dogma. But in investigating the problem of early civilization,
the claim to ground scientific opinion upon a basis of revelation
is in itself objectionable. It would be, I think, inexcusable
if students who have seen in Astronomy and Geology the un-
happy results of attempting to base science on religion, should
countenance a similar attempt in Ethnology.

By long experience of the course of human society, the prin-
ciple of development in culture has become so ingrained in our
philosophy that ethnologists, of whatever school, hardly doubt
but that, whether by progress or degradation, savagery and
civilization are connected as lower and higher stages of one
formation. As such, then, two principal theories claim to ac-
count for their relation. As to the first hypothesis, which takes
savage life as in some sort representing an early human state
whence higher states were, in time, developed, it has to be
noticed that advocates of this progression-theory are apt to look
back toward yet lower original conditions of mankind. It has
been truly remarked that the modern naturalist's doctrine of
progressive development has encouraged a train of thought
singularly accordant with the Epicurean theory of man's early
existence on earth, in a condition not far removed from that of
the lower animals. On such a view, savage life itself would be
a far advanced condition. If the advance of culture be regarded
as taking place along one general line, then existing savagery
stands directly intermediate between animal and civilized life ;
if along different lines, then savagery and civilization may be
considered as, at least, indirectly connected through their com-
mon origin. The method and evidence here employed are not,
however, suitable for the discussion of this remoter part of the
problem of civilization. Nor is it necessary to enquire how,
under this or any othor theory, the savage state first came to
be on earth. It is enough that, by some means or other, it has
actually come into existence ; and so far as it may serve as a
guide in inferring an early condition of the human race at
large, so far the argument cakes the very practicable shape of
a discussion turning rather on actual than imaginary states of
society. The second hypothesis, which regards higher culturx)

VOL. I. D

i !.

'! t

Mi'

Im!

' ' 1

i '':

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

as oiiginal, and the savage condition as produced from it by a
course of degeneration, at once cuts the hard knot of the origin
of culture. It takes for granted a supernatural interference, as
where Archbishop Whately simply refers to miraculous revela-
tion that condition above the level of barbarism which he con-
siders to have been man's original state.^ It may be incidentally
remarked, however, that the doctrine of original civilization
bestowed on man by divine intervention, by no means neces-
sarily involves the view that this original civilization was at a
liigh level. Its advocates are free to choose their starting-point
of culture above, at, or below the savage condition, as may on
the evidence seem to them most reasonable.

The two theories which thus account for the relation of
savage to cultured life may be contrasted according to their
main character, as the progression-theory and the degradation-
theory. Yet of course the progression-theory recognizes degra-
dation, and the degradation-theory recognizes progression, as
powerful influences in the course of culture. Under proper
limitations the principles of both theories are conformable to
liistorical knowledge, which shows us, on the one hand, that the
state of the higher nations was reached by progression from a
lower state, and, on the other hand, that culture gained by pro-
gression may be lost by degradation. If in this enquiry we
should be obl^''^ed to end in the dark, at any rate we need not
begin there. History, taken as our guide in explaining the
different stages of civilization, offers a theory based on actual
experience. This is a development-theory, in which both ad-
vance and relapse have their acknowledged places. But so far
as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and
degradation secondary; culture must be gained before it can
be lost. Moreover, in striking a balance between the effects of
forward and backward movement in civil: nation, it must be
borne in mind how powerfully the diffusion of culture acts in
preserving the results of progress from the attacks of degene-
ration. A progressive movement in culture spreads, and be-
comes independent of the fate of its originators. What is

* Whately, ' Essay on tho Origin of Civilization,' in Miscellaneous Lectures,
etc. See also W. Cooke Taylor, ' Natural History of Society.'

I4!li

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTUllE.

produced in some limited district is diffused over a wider and
wider area, where the process of effectual " stamping out " be-
comes more and more difficult. Thus it is even possible for
the habits and inventions of races long extinct to remain as the
common property of surviving nations ; and the destructive
actions which make such havo3 with the civilizations of par-
ticular districts fail to destroy the civilization of the world.

The enquiry as to the relation of savagery to barbarism and
semi-civilization lies almost entirely in pra)-historic or extra-
historic regions. This is of course an unfavourable condition,
and must be frankly accepted. Direct history hardly tells any-
thing of the changes of savage culture, except where in contact
with and under the dominant influence of foreign civilization, a
state of things which is little to our present purpose. Periodical
examinations of low races otherwise left isolated *o work out
their own destinies, would be interesting evidence to the student
of civilization if they could be made ; but unfortunately they
cannot. The lower races, wanting documentary memorials,
loose in preserving tradition, and ever ready to clothe myth in
its shape, can seldom be trusted in their stories of long-past
ages. History is oral or written record which can be satisfac-
torily traced into contact with the events it describes ; and
perhaps no account of the course of culture in its lower stages
can satisfy this stringent criterion. Traditions may be urged in
support either of the progression-theory or of the degradation-
theory. These traditions may be partly true, and must be
partly untrue ; but whatever truth or \mtruth they may con-
tain, there is such dirficulty in separating man's recollection of
what was from his speculation as to what might have been, that
ethnology seems not likely to gain much by attempts to judge
of early stages of civilization on a traditional basis. The pro-
blem is one which has occupied the philosophic mind even in
savage and barbaric life, and has been solved by speculations
asserted as facts, and by traditions which are, in great measure,
mere realized theories. The C'linese can show, with all due
gravity, the records of their ancient dynasties, and tell us how
in old times their ancestors dwelt in caves, clothed themselves
in leaves, and ate raw flesh, till, under such and such rulers,

D 2

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

tliey were taught to build huts, prepare skins for garments, and
make fire.^ Lucretius can describe to us, in his famous lines,
the large-boned, hardy, lawless, primeval race of man, living
the roving life of the wild beasts which he overcame with stones
and heavy clubs, devouring berries and acorns, ignorant as yet
of fire, and agiiculture, and the use of skins for clothing. From
this state the Epicurean poet traces up the development of
culture, beginning outsit! e but ending inside the range of human
memory.'^ To the same class belong those legends which, starting
from an ancient savage state, describe its elevation by divine
civilizers : this, which may be called the supernatural pro-
gression-theory, is exemplified in the familiar culture-traditions
of Peru and Italy.

But other minds, following a different ideal track from
the present to the past, have seen in a far diifercr>t shape
the early stages of human life. Those men whose eyes are
always turned to look back on the wisdom of the ancients,
those who by a common confusion of thought ascribe to men of
old the wisdom of old men, those who hold fast to some once-
lionoured scheme of life which new schemes are superseding
before their eyes, are apt to carry back their thought of present
degeneration into far-gone ages, till they reach a period of
primaeval glory. The Tarsi looks back to the happy rule of
King Yima, when men and cattle were immortal, when water
and trees never dried up and food was inexhaustible, when
there was no cold nor heat, no envy nor old age,^ The Bud-
dhist looks back to the age of glorious soaring beings who had
no sin, no sex, no want of food, till the unhappy hour when,
tasting a delicious scum that formed upon the surface of the
earth, they fell into evil, and in time became degraded to eat
rice, to bear children, to build houses, to divide property, and to
establish caste. In after ages, record preserves details of the
continuing course of degeneration. It was King Chetiya who
told the first lie, and the citizens who heard of it, not knowing
what a lie was, asked if it were white, black, or blue. Men's
lives grew shorter and shorter, and it was King Maha S^igara

' Goguet, vol. iii. p. 270. ' Lucret. v. 923, etc. ; sec Hor. Sat. i. 3.

3 ' Avesta,' trans. Spiegel & Bleeck, vol. ii. p. 60.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTUllE.

who, after a brief reign of 252,000 years, made the dismnl
discoveiy of the first grey hair.^

Admitting the imperfection of the historical record as regards
the lowest stages of culture, we must bear in mind that it tells
both ways. Niebuhr, attacking the progressionists of the 18th
century, remarks that they have overlooked the fact " that no
single example can be brought forward of an actually savage
people having independently become civilized."^ Whately
appropriated this remark, which indeed forms the kernel of his
well-known Lecture on the Origin of Civilization : " Facts
are stabborn things," he says, "and that no authenticated
instance can be produced of savages that ever did emerge,
unaided, from that state is no theory, but a statement, hitherto
never disproved, of a matter of fact." He uses this as an
argument in support of his general conclusion, that man
could not have risen independently from a savage to a
civilized state, and that savages are degenerate descendants
of civilized men.^ But he omits to ask the counter-question,
whether we find one recorded instance of a civilized people fall-
ing independently into a savage state ? Any such record, direct
and well vouched, would be cf high interest to ethnologists,
though, of course, it would not contradict the development-
theory, for proving loss is not disproving previous gain, But
where is such a record to be found '? The defect of historical
evidence as to the transition between savagery and higher
culture is a two-sided fact, only half taken into Archbishop
Whately's one-sided argument. Fortunately the defect is by
no means fatal. Though history may not account directly for
the existence and explain the position of savages, it at least
gives evidence which bears closely on the matter. Moreover,
we ai'e in various ways enabled to study the lower course of
culture on evidence which cannot have been tampered with to
support a theory. Old traditional lore, however untrustworthy
as direct record of events, contains most faithful incidental

* Hardy, ' Manual of Budhism, ' pp. 64, 123.

' Niebuhr, •Romischo Geschichte,' part i. p. 88 : "Nur das haben sie ivbcr-
seheiij dasz kein einziges Beyspiel von eineiu wirklich wilden Volk aufzuweisen
ist, welches froy zur Cultur ubergegangen ware."

» Whately, ' Essay on Origin of Civilization.'

THK DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

descriptions of manners and customs ; archaeology displays old
structures and buried relics of the remote past ; philology
brings out the undesigned history in language, which genera-
tion after generation have handed down without a thought of
its having such significance ; the ethnological survey of the
races of the world tells much ; the ethnographical comparison
of their condition tells more.

Arrest and decline in civilization are to be recognized as
among the more frequent and powerful operations of national
life. That knowledge, arts, r^d institutions should decay in
certain districts, that peoples once progressive should lag
behind and be passed by advancing neighbours, that some-
times even societies of men should recede into rudeness and
misery — all these are phenomena with which modern history is
familiar. In judging of the relation of the lower to the higher
stages of civilization, it is essential to gain some idea how far it
may have been affected by such degeneration. What kind of
evidence can direct observation and history give as to t\c
degradation of men from a civilized condition toward that of
savagery ? In our great citios, the so-called " dangerous classes"
are sunk in hideous misery and depravity. If we have to strike
a balance between the Papuans of New Caledonia and the
communities of European beggars and thieves, we may sadly
acknowledge that we have in our midst something worse than
savagery. But it is not savagery; it is broken-down civilization.
Negatively, the inmates of a Whitechapel casual ward and of a
Hottentot kraal agree in their want of the knowledge and
virtue of the higher culture. But positively, their mental and
moral characteristics are utterly different. Thus, the savage
life is essentially devoted to gaining subsistence from nature,
which is just what the proletarian life is not. Their relations
to civilized life — the one of independence, the other of de-
pendence — are absolutely opposite. To my mind the popular
phrases about " city savages " and " street Arabs " seem like
comparing a ruined house to a builder's yard. It is more to
the purpose to notice how war and misrule, famine and pesti-
lence, have again and again devastated countries, reduced their
population to miserable remnants, and lowered their level of

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

civilization, and how the isolated life of wild country districts
seems sometimes tending toward a state of savagery. So far as
wo know, however, none of these causes have ever really
reproduced a savage community. For an ancient account of
degeneration under adverse circumstances, Ovid's mention of
the unhappy colony of Tomi on the Black Sea is a case in
point, though perhaps not to be taken too literally. Among its
mixed Greek and barbaric population, harassed and carried off
into slavery by the Sirmatian horsemen, much as the Persians
of to-day are by the Turkomans, the poet describes the neglect
of the gardener's craft, the decay of textile arts, the barbaric
clothing of hides.

" Nee tamon htoc loca sunt ullo pretiosa motallo :

Hostia ab agricola vix sinit ilia fodi.
Purpura scepe tuos fulgens prostexit amictus.

Sed nou Sannatico tingitur ilia maii.
Vellera diu-a ferunt pecudes, et Palladis uti

Arte Tomitanae non didicere nurus.
Femina pro lana Cerialia munera frangit,

Suppositoque gravem vertioa portat aquam.
Non hie pampineis amicitur vitibus ulmus,

Nulla premunt ramos pondere porna suo.
Tristia deformes pariunt absinthia ctimpi,

Terraque de fructu quam sit amara, docet." '

Cases of exceptionally low civilization in Europe may perhaps
be sometimes accounted for by degeneration of this kind. But
they seem more often the relics of ancient unchanged bar-
barism. The evidence from wild parts of Ireland two or three
centuries ago is interesting from this point of view. Acts of
Parliament were passed against the inveterate habits of fasten-
ing ploughs to the horses' tails, and of burning oats from the
J xaw to save the trouble of threshing. In the 18th century
Ireland could still be thus described in satire : —

'* The Western isle renowned for bogs,
For ^-orieo and for great wolf-dogs,
Ff r drawing hobbies by the tails,
And. threshing corn with fiery flails." *

* Ovid. Ex Ponto, iii. 8 ; see Grote, * History of Greece,' toI. xU. p 641,
' W. C. Taylor, *Nat. Hist, of Society,' voL i p. 202.

THE DEVKLOPMKNT OF CULTURE.

Fyncs Moryson's (Inscription of tho wild or " mcero " Irish,
about 1(){)(), is uuiJizing. Tho very lords of them, ho says,
dwelt in poor clay houses, or cabins of boughs covered with turf.
In many parts men as well as women had in very winter time but
a linen rag about the loins and a woollen mantle on their bodies,
so that it would turn a man's .stomach to see an old woman in
the morning before breakfast. He notices their habit of burn-
ing oats from the straw, and making cakes thereof They had
no ta\)les, but set thoir meat on a bundle of gi'ass. They feasted
on fallen horses, and seethed pieces of beef and pork with tho
unwashed entrails of beasts in a hollow tree, lapped in a raw
cow's hide, and bo set over the fire, and they drank milk warmed
with a stone first ciust into the fire.^ Another district remarkable
for a barbaric simplicity of life is the Hebrides. In 18G8 Mr.
Walter Morrison there bought from an old woman at Stornoway
the service of earthenware slie was actually using, of which lie
gave me a crock. These earthen vessels, unglazed and made by
hand without tho potter's wheel, might pass in a museum as
inditferent specimens of savage manufacture. Such a modem
state of the potter's art in the Hebrides fits well with George
Buchanan's statement in the 16th century that the islanders
used to boil meat in the beast's own paunch or hide.* Early
in the 18th century Martin mentions as prevalent there the
ancient way of dressing corn by burning it dexterously from the
ear, Avhich he notices to be a very quick process, thence called
"graddan" (Gaelic, ^>'a(? = quick).' Thus we see that the habit
of burning out the grain, for which the " meere Irish " were
reproached, was really the keeping up of an old Keltic art, not
without its practical use. So the appearance in modern Keltic
districts of other widespread arts of the lower culture— hide-
boiling, like that of the Scythians in Herodotus, and stone-
boiling, like that of the Assinaboins of North America — seems

Fyno3 Moryson, ' Itinerary ;' London, 1617, part iii. p. 162, etc. ; Evans in
' Archseologia,' voL xli. See description of hide-boiling, etc., among the wild
Irish about 1550, in Andrew Boorde, 'Introduction of Knowledge,' ed. by F. J.
Furnivall, Early English Text Soc. 1870,

' Buchanan, ' Eerum Scoticarum Historia ; ' Edinburgh, 1528, p. 7. See
' Early History of Mankind,' 2nd ed. p. 272.

2 Martin, •Description of Western Islands,' in Piukerton, vol. iii. p. 639.

Tllli DKVKLOPMiiNT OF CULTUUK.

uru " Irish,
n, ho says,
d witli turf,
,er tiiuo but
huir bodies,

I woman in
it of burn-

Thcy hud
l)cy feasted
•k witli tho
id in a raw
ilk warmed
remarkable

II 18G8 Mr.
Stornoway
f which ho
d made by
nuscum as
I a modern
ith Georr^e
J islanders

* Early
there the

from the
nee called
the habit
sli " were
ic art, not
rn Keltic
re— hide-
id stoue-
a — seems

Evans in
■ng the wild
3d. by F. J,

7. See

. 63».

to fit not so well with degradation from a high as with survival
from a low civilization. Tho Irish and tho Hebrideans hud been
for ages under the influence of comparatively high civilization,
which nevertheless may have left unaltered much of tho older
and ruder habit of the people. '

Instances of civilized men taking to a wihl life in outlying
districts of the world, and ceasing to obtain or want tho ap-
pliances of civilization, give more distinct evidence of degrada-
tion. In connexion with this state of things takes place the
nearest known approach to an independent degeneration from a
civilized to a savage state. This happens in mixed races, whose
standard of civilization may be more or less below that of the
higher race. The mutineers of the Bounty, with their Poly-
nesian wives, founded a rude but not savage community on
Pitcairn's Island.^ The mixed Portuguese and native races of
the East Indies and Africa lead a life below the European
standard, but not a savage life.° Tho Oauchos of the South
American Pampas, a mixed European and Indian race of
equestrian herdsmen, are described as sitting about on ox-
skulls, making broth in horns with hot cinders heaped round,
living on meat without vegetables, and altogether leading a foul,
brutal, comfortless, degenerate, but not savage life.^ One step
beyond this brings us to the cases of individual civilized men
being absorbed in savage tribes and adopting the savage life, on
which they exercise little influence for improvement ; the
children of these men may come distinctly under the category
of savages. These cases of mixed breeds, however, do not show
a low culture actually produced as the result of degenera-
tion from a high one. Their theory is that, given a higher
and a lower civilization existing among two races, a mixed race
between the two may take to the lower or an intermediate
condition.

Degeneration probably operates even more actively in the

* * Mutiny of the Bounty,' etc.

* Wallace, 'Malay Archipelago,' vol. i. pp. 42, 471 ; vol. ii. pp. 11, 43, 48 ;
Latham, ' T :r. Eth.,' vol. ii. pp.492-5 ; D. & C. Livingstone, ' Exp. to Zambesi,'
p. 45,

' Southey, 'History of Braail,' vol. iii. p. 422.

•'Hi

THE DEVELOrMENT OF CULTURE.

m i ; i

lower than in the higher culture. Barbarous nations and savage
hordes, with their less knowledge and scantier appliances, would
seem peculiarly exposed to degrading influences. In Africa, for
instance, there seems to have been in modern centuries a
falling off in culture, probably due in a considerable degree to
foreign influence. Mr. J. L. Wilson, contrasting the 16th and
I7tli century accounts of powerful negro kingdoms in West
Africa with the present small communities, with little or no
tradition of their forefathers' more extended political organiza-
tion, looks especially to the slave-trade as the deteriorating
cause.^ In South-east Africa, also, a comparatively high barbaric
culture, wliich we especially associate with the old descriptions
of the kingdom of Monomotapa, seems to have fallen away, and
the remarkable ruins of buildings of hewn stone fitted without
mortar indicate a former civilization above that of the present
native population.*^ In North America, Father Charlevoix
remarks of the Iroquois of the last century, that in old times
they used to build their cabins better than other nations, and
better than they do themselves now ; they carved rude figures
in relief on them ; but since in various expeditions almost all
their villages have been burnt, they have not taken the trouble
to restore them in their old condition.^ The degradation of the
Cheyenne Indians is matter of history. Persecuted by their
enemies the Sioux, and dislodged at last even from their fortified
village, the heart of the tribe was broken. Their numbers were
thinned, they no longer dared to establish themselves in a
permanent abode, they gave up the cultivation of the soil, and
became a tribe of wandering hunters, with horses for their only
valuable possession, which every year they bartered for a supply
of corn, beans, pumpkins, and European merchandise, and then
returned into the heart of the prairies.* When in the Rocky
Mountains, Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle came upon an outly-
ing fragment of the Shushwap race, without horses or dogs,

» J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.,' p. 189.

' Waitz, 'Anthropologic,' vol. ii. p. 359, see 91 ; Du Chaillu, ' Asliango-land,'
p. 116.
' Charlevoix, 'Nouvellc France,' vol. vi. p. 51.
* Irving, 'Astoria,' vol. ii. ch. v.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

sheltering themselves under rude temporaiy slants of bark or
matting, falling year by year into lower misery, and rapidly
dying out ; this is another example of the degeneration which
no doubt has lowered or destroyed many a savage people.^
There are tribes who are the very outcasts of salvage life. There
is reason to look upon the miserable Digger Indians of North
America and the Bushmen of South Africa as the persecuted
i emnants of tribes who have seen happier days.*^ The traditions
of the lower races of their ancestors' better life may sometimes
be real recollections of a not far distant past. The Algonquin
Indians look back to old days as to a golden age when life was
better than now, when they had better laws and leaders, and
manners less rude.^ And indeed, knowing what we do of their
history, we may admit that they have cause to remember in
misery happiness gone by. Well, too, might the rude Kamchadal
declare that the wo "Id is growing worse and worse, that men
are becoming fewer and viler, and food scarcer, for the hunter,
and the bear, and the reindeer are hurrying away from here
to the happier life in the regions belov:.'* It would be a valu ^ble
contribution to the study of civilization to have the action of
decline and fall investigated on a wider and more exact basis of
evidence than has yet been attempted. The cases here stated
are probably but part of a long series which might be brought
forward to prove degeneration in culture to have been,byno means
indeed the primary cause of the existence of barbarism and
savagery in the world, but a secondary action largely and deeply
affecting the general development of civilization. It may per-
haps give no unfair idea to compare degeneration of culture,
bcth in its kind of operation and in its immense extent, to
denudation in the geological history of the earth.

In judging of the relations between savage and civilized life,
some!;hing may be learnt by glancing over the divisions of the
human race. For this end the classification by families of

'Ml'

' Milton and Cheadle, ' North West Passage by Lac^,' p. 241 ; "Waitz, vol. iii.
pp. 74-6.
' ' Early History of Manklid,' p. 187.
' Schoolcraft, 'Algic Res.,' vil. i. p. 50.
* Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 272.

i I

TH DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

languages may be conveniently used, if checked by the evidence
of bodily characteristics. No doubt speech by itself is an
insufficient guide in tracing national descent, as witness the
extreme cases of Jews in England, and three-parts negi-o races
in the West Indies, nevertheless speaking English as their
mothei'-tongue. Still, under ordinary circumstances, connexion
of speech does indicate more or less connexion of ancestral race.
As a guide in tracing the history of civilization, language gives
still better evidence, for common language to a great extent
involves common culture. The race dominant enough to main-
tain or impose its language, usually more or less maintains or
imposes its civilization also. Thus the common descent of the
languages of Hindus, Greeks, and Teutons is no doubt due in
gi'eat measure to common ancestry, but is still more closely bound
up with a common social and intellectual history, with what
Professor Max Miiller well calls their " spiritual relationship."
The wonderful perm?.ncnce of language often enables us to
detect among remotely ancient and distant tribes the traces of
connected civilization. How, on such grounds, do savage and
civilized tribes appear to stand related within the various
groups of mankind connected historically by the possession of
kindred languages ?

The Semitic family, which represents one of the oldest known
civilizations of the world, includes Arabs, Jews, PhcET'icians,
Syrians, etc., and may have an older as well as a newer con-
nexion in North Africa. This family takes in t, me rude tribes,
but none which would be classed as savages. The Aryan family
has existed in Asia and Europe certainly for several thousand
years, and there are well-known and well-marked traces of its
early barbaric condition, which has perhaps survived with
least change among secluded tribes in the valleys of the Hindu
Kush and Himalaya. There seems, again, no known case of
any full Aryan tribe having become savage. The Gypsies and
other outcasts are, no doubt, partly Aryan in blood, but their
degraded condition is not savagery. In India there are tribes
Aryan by language, but whose physique is rather of indigenous
type, and whose ancestry is mainly from indigenous stocks with
more or less mixture of the dominant Hindu. Some tribes

\\\

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

ish as their

coming under tliis category, as among the Bhils and Kulis of
the Bombay Presidency, speak dialects which are Hindi in
vocabulary at least, whether or not in grammatical stiiicture,
and yet the people themselves are lower in culture than some
Hinduized nations who have retained their original Dravidian
speech, the Tamils for instance. But these all appear to stand at
higher stages of civilization than such wild forest tribes of the
peninsula as can be reckoned even nearly savages, who are non-
Aryan both in blood and speech.^ In Ceylon, however, we seem
to have the remarkable phenomenon of a distinctly savage race
speaking an Aryan dialect. This is the wild part of the race of
Veddas or " hunters," of whom a remnant still inhabit the forest
land. These people are dark-skinned and flat-nosed, slight of
frame, and very small of skull, and five feet is a full average
man's height. They are a shy, harmless, simple people, living
principally by hunting ; they lime birds, take fish by poisoning
the water, and are skilful in getting wild honey ; they have
bows with iron-pointed arrows, which, with their hunting dogs,
are their most valuable possessions. They dwell in caves or
bark huts, and their very word for a house is Singhalese for a
hollow tree (rukula) ; a patch of bark was formerly their dress,
but now a bit of linen hangs to their waist-cords ; their planting
of patches of ground is said to be recent. They count on their
fingers, and produce fire with the simplest kind of fire-drill
twirled by hand. They are most truthful and honest. Their
monogamy and conjugal fidelity contrast strongly with the
opposite habits of the more civilized Singhalese. A remarkable
Vedda marriage custom sanctioned a man's taking his younger
(not elder) sister as his wife ; sister-marriage existing among
the Singhalese, but being confined to the royal family. Mis-
taken statements have been made as to the Veddas having no
religion, no personal names, no language. Their religion, in
fact, corresponds with the animism of the ruder tribes of India ;
some of their names are remarkable as being Hindu, but not in
use among the modern Singhalese ; their language is described as
a kind of Singhalese patois, peculiar in dialect and utterance.

' Sec G. Campbell, ' Ethnology of India,' in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1866,
part ii.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

til':

■ \

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1
i

( ' i

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Ill

There is no doubt attaching to the usual opinion that the Veddas
are in the main descended from the " yakkos " or demons ; i. e.,
from the indigenous tribes of the island. Legend and language
concur to make probable an admixture of Aryan blood accom-
panying the adoption of Aryan speech, but the evidence of
bodily characteristics shows the Vedda race to be principally of
indigenous prae- Aryan type.^

The Tatar fa. ily of Northern Asia and Europe (Turanian,
if the word be wn^d in a restricted sense), displays evidence of
quite a different kind. This wide-lying group of tribes and
nations has members nearly or quite touching the savage level
in anciont and even modern times, such as Ostyaks, Tunguz,
Samoyeds, Lapps, while more c less high ranges of culture are
represented by Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians. Here, how-
ever, it is unquestionable that the rude tribes represent the
earlier condition of the Tatar race at large, from which its
more mixed and civilized peoples, mostly by adopting the
foreign culture of Buddhist, Moslem, and Christian nations, and
partly by internal development, are well known to have risen.
The ethnology of South-Eastern Asia is somewhat obscure ; but
if we may classify under one heading the native races of Siam,
Birma, etc., the wilder tribes'may be considered as representmg
earlier conditions, for the higher culture of this region is ob-
viously foreign, especially of Buddhist origin. The Malay race
is also remarkable for the range of civilization represented by
tribes classed as belonging to it. If the wild tribes of the
Malayan peninsula and Borneo be compared with the semi-
civilized nations of Java and Sumatra, it appears that part of
the race survives to represent an early savage state, while part
is found in possession of a civilization which the first glance
shows to have been mostly borrowed from Hindu and Moslem
sources. Some forest tribes of the peninsula, seem to be repre-
sentatives of the Malay rice at a very low level of culture, how
far original and how far degraded it is not easy to say. Among
them the very rude Orang Sabimba, who have no agriculture

J J. Bailey, 'Veddahs,' in Tr. Eth. Soc, vol. ii. p. 278 ; see vol. iii. p. 70.
Compare Eobevt Knox, 'Historical Relation of Ceylon.' London, 1681, part iii.
chap. i. ; Sir J. E. Tcnnent, ' Ceylon,' etc.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

and no l>oats, give a remarkable account of themselves, that
they are descendants of shipwrecked Malays from the Bugis
country, but were so harassed by pirates that they gave up
civilization and cultivation, and vowed not to eat fowls, which
betrayed them by their crowing. So they plant nothing, but
eat wild fruit and vegetables, and all animals but the fowl.
This, if at all founded on fact, is an interesting case of degenera-
tion. But savages usually invent myths to account for peculiar
h-^its, as where, in the same district, the Biduanda Kallang
account for their not cultivating the ground by the story that
their ancestors vowed not to make plantations. Another rude
people of the Malay peninsula are the Jakuns, a simple, kindly
race, among whom some trace their pedigree to a pair of white
monkeys, while others declare that they are descendants of white
men ; and indeed there is some ground for supposing these latter
to be really of mixed race, for they use a few Portuguese words,
and a report exists of some refugees having settled up the
country.^ The Polynesians, Papuans, and Australians represent
gTades of savagery spread each over its own vast area in a com-
paratively homogeneous way. Lastly, the relations of savagery to
higher conditions are remarkable, but obscure, on the American
continents. There are several great linguistic families whose
members were discovered in a savage state throughout : such are
the Esquimaux, Algonquin, and Guarani groups. On the other
hand there were three apparently unconnected districts of semi-
civilization reaching a high barbaric level, viz., in Mexico and
Central America, Bogota, and Peru. Between these higher and
lower conditions were races at the level of the Natchez of
Louisiana and the Apalaches of Florida. Linguistic connexion
is not unknown between the more advanced peoples and the
lower races around them.- But definite evidence showing the

^ Journ. Ind. Archip,, vol. i. pp. 295-9 ; vol. ii, p 237.

^ For the connexion between the Azicc language and the Sonoran family ex-
tending N.W. toward the sources of the Missouri, see Buschmann, * Spuren der
Aztekischen Sprache im NOrdlichen Mexico,' etc., in Abh. der Akad. der
Wissensch. ^854; Berlin, 1859; also Tr, Eth. Soc, vol. ii. p. 130. For the
connexion between the Natchez and Maya languages, see Daniel G. Brinton, in
'American Historical Magazine,' 1867, vol. i. p. 16 ; and 'Myths of the New
World,' p. 28.

I ii

i:'

iSI:

I;M

'ii

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

higher culture to have arisen from the lower, or the lower to
have fallen from the higher, is scarcely forthcoming. Both ope-
rations may in degree have happened.

It is apparent, from such general inspection of this ethnological
problem, that it would repay a far closer study than it has as yet
received. As the evidence stands at present, it appears that
when in any race some branches much excel the rest in culture,
this more often happens by elevation than by subsidence. But
this elevation is much more apt to be produced by foreign than
by native action. Civilization is a plant much oftener propagated
than developed. As regards the lower races, this accords with
the results of European intercourse with savage tribes during
the last three or four centuries ; so far as these tribes have sur-
vived the process, they have assimilated more or less of Euro-
pean culture and risen towards the European level, as in Poly-
nesia, South Africa, South America. Another important point
becomes manifest from this ethnological survey. The fact that,
during so many thousand years of known existence, neither the
Aryan nor the Semitic stock appears to have thrown off any
direct savage offshoot recognizable by the age-enduring test of
language, tells, with some force, against the probability of de-
gradation to the savage level ever happening from high-level
civilization.

With regard to the opinions of older writers on early civiliza-
tion, whether progressionists or degenerationists, it must be
borne in mind that the evidence at their disposal fell far short
of even the miserably imperfect data now accessible. Criticizing
an 18th century ethnologist is like criticizing an 18th century
geologist. The older writer may have been far abler than his
modern critic, but he had not the same materials. Especially
he wanted the guidance of Prehistoric Archaeology, a depart-
ment of research only established on a scientific footing within
the last few years. It is essential to gain a clear view of the
bearing of this newer knowledge on the old problem.

Chronology, though regarding as more or less fictitious'the
immense dynastic schemes of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese,
passing as they do into mere ciphering-book sums with years for
units, nevertheless admits that existing monuments carry back

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

the traces of comparatively high civilization to a distance
of above five thousand years. By piecing together Eastern
and Western documentary evidence, it seems that the great
religious divisions of the Aryan race, to which modern Brah-
manism, Zarathustrism, and Buddhism are due, belong to a
period of remotely ancient history. Even if we are not quite
sure, with Professor Max Miiller, in the preface to his translation
of the " Rig Veda," that this collection of Aryan hymns " will
take and maintain for ever its position as the most ancient of
books in the library of mankind," and if we do not fully admit
the stringency of his reckonings of its date in centuries B. C,
yet we must grant that he shows cause to refer its composition
to a very ancient period, where it then proves that a com-
paratively high barbaric culture already existed. The linguistic
argument for the remotely ancient common origin of the Indo-
European nations, in a degree as to their bodily descent, and in
a greater degree as to their civilization, tends toward the same
result. So it is again with Egypt. Baron Bunsen's calculations
of Egyptian dynasties in thousands of years are indeed both
disputable and disputed, but they are based on facts which at
any rate authorize the reception of a long chronology. To go
no further than the identification of two or three Egyptian
names mentioned in Biblical and Classical history, we gain a
strong impression of remote antiquity. Such are the names of
Shishank ; of the Psammiticlios line, whose obelisks are to be
seen in Rome ; of Tirhakah, King of Ethiopia, whose nurse's
coffin is in the Florence Museum ; of the city of Rameses,
plainly connected with that great Raraesside line which Egypt-
ologists call the 19th Dynasty. Here, before classic culture
had arisen, the culture of Egypt culminated, and behind this
time lies the somewhat less advanced age of the Pyramid kings,
and behind this again the indefinite lapse of ages which such a
civiUzation required for its production. Again, though no part
of the Old Testament can satisfactorily prove for itself an
antiquity of composition approaching that of the earliest
Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, yet all critics must admit
that the older of the historical books give on the one hand con-
temporary documents showing considerable culture in the

.if;

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VOL. I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

:i !

Hi I

Semitic world at a date which in comparison with classic
history is ancient, while on the other hand they afford evidence
by way of chronicle, caiTying back ages farther the record of a
somewhat advanced barbaric civilization. Now if the develop-
ment-theoiy is to account for phenomena such as these, its
chronological demand must be no small one, and the more so
when it is admitted that in the lower ranges of culture progress
would be extremely slow in comparison with that which
experience shows among nations already far advanced. On these
conditions of the first appearance of the middle civilization being
thrown back to distant antiquity, and of .slow development
being required to perform its heavy task in ages still more
remDte, Prehistoric Archssology cheerfully takes up the problem.
And, indeed, far from being dismayed by the vastness of the
period required on the narrowest computation, the prehistoric
archaeologist shows even too much disposition to revel in calcu-
lations of thousands of years, as a financier does in reckonings
of thousands of pounds, in a liberal and maybe somewhat reck-
less way.

Prehistoric Archreology is fully alive to facts which may bear
on degeneration in culture. Such are the colossal human
figures of hewn stone in Easter Island, which may possibly
have been shaped by the ancestors of the existing islanders,
whose present resources, however, are quite unequal to the
execution of such gigantic works.^ A much more important
case is that of the former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley.
In districts where the native tribes known in modern times do
not rank high even as savages, there formerly dwelt a race whom
ethnologists call the Mound-Builders, from the amazing extent
of their mounds and enclosures, of which there is a single gi'oup
occupying an area of four square miles. To have constructed
such works the Mound-Builders must have been a numerous
population, mainly subsisting by agriculture, and indeed vestiges
of their ancient tillage are still to be found. The civilization
of these people has been, however, sometimes overrated. Their
earthworks did not require, as has been thought, standards of

1 J. H. Lampr y, in Trans, of Prehistoric Congress, Norwich, 1868, p. 60 ; J.
Lintou Pa^jner, in Joum. Eth. Soc, vol. i., 1869.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

raeas'jrement and means of determining angles, for a cord and
a bundle of stakes would be a sufficient set of instruments to
lay out any of them. Their use of native copper, hammered
into shape foi- cutting instruments, is similar to that of some of
the savage tribes farther north. On the whole, judging by
their earthworks, fields, pottery, stone implements, and other
remains, they seem to have belonged to those high savage or
barbaric tribes of the Southern States, of whom the Creeks and
Cherokees, as described by Bartram, may be taken as typical.^
If any of the wild roving hunting tribes now found living near
the huge earthworks of the Mound-Builders are the descendants
of this somewhat advanced race, then a very considerable de-
gradation has taken place. The questio^i is an open one. The
explanation of the traces of tillage may perhaps in this case be
like that of remains of old cultivation-terraces in Borneo, the
work of Chinese colonists whose descendants have mostly been
merged in the mass of the population and follow the native
habits.^ On the other hand, the evidence of locality may be
misleading as to race, A traveller in Greenland, coming on the
ruined stone buildings at Kakortok, would not argue justly that
the Esquimaux are degenerate descendants of ancestors capable
of such architecture, for in fact these are the remains of a
church and baptistery built by the ancient Scandinavian settlers.'^
On the whole it is remarkable how little of colourable evidence
of degeneration has been disclosed by archaeology. Its negative
evidence tells strongly the otlier way. As an instance may be
quoted Sir John Lubbock's argument against the idea that
tribes now ignorant of metallurgy and pottery formerly pos-
sessed but have since lost these arts, " We may also assert, on
a general proposition, that no weapons or instruments of metal
have ever been found in any country inhabited by savages
wholly ignorant of metallurgy, A still stronger case is afforded
by pottery. Pottery is not easily destroyed ; when known at

^ Sqwierand Davis, ' Mon, of Mississippi Valley,' etc., in Smithsonian Contr.,
vol. i. 1848. See Lubbock, ' Preliistoric Times,' chap. vii. ; "Waitz, 'Anthro-
pologic,' vol. iii, p. 72. Bartram, ' Creek and Cherokee Ind.,' in Tr. Amer.
Ethnol. Soc, vol. iii. part i.

' St, John, ' Life in Forests of Far East, ' vol. ii, p, 327.

' Kafn, 'Americas Arctiske Landes Gamie Geographic,' pi. vii., viii,

E 2

1:1

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

ii M

all it is always abundant, and it possesses two qualities, namely,
those of being easy to break, and yet difficult to destroy, which
render it very valuable in an archaeological point of view.
Moreover, it is in most cases associated with burials. It is,
therefore, a very significant fact, that no fragment of pottery
has ever been found in Australia, New Zealand, or the Poly-
nesian Islands." ^ How different a state of things the popular
degene' ation-theory would lead us to expect is pointedly siig-
gesto'l by Sir Charles Lyell's sarcastic sentences in his 'Anti-
quity of Man.' Had the original stock of mankind, he argues,
been really endowed with superior intellectual powers and
inspired knowledge, while possessing the same improvable
nature as their posterity, how extreme a point of advancement
would they have reached. "Instead of the rudest pottery or
Hint tools, so iiTCgular in form as to cause the unpractised eye
to doubt whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design,
we should now be finding sculptured forms surpassing in beauty
the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles ; lines of buried rail-
ways or electric telegi'aphs, from Avhich the best engineers of
our day might gain invaluable hints ; astronomical instruments
and microscopes of more advanced construction than any known
in Europe, and other indications of perfection in the arts and
sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not yet witnessed.
Still farther would the triumphs of inventive genius be found
to have been carried, when the later deposits, now assigned to
the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. Vainly should we be
straining our imaginations to guess the possible uses and mean-
ing of such relics — machines, perhaps, for navigating the air or
exploring the depths of the ocean, or for calculating arithmetical
problems beyond the wants or even the conception of living
mathematicians." ^

The master-key to the investigation of man's primasval con-
dition is held by Prehistoric Archaeology. This key is the
evidence of the Stone Age, proving that men of remotely
ancient ages were in the savage state. Ever since the long-
delayed recognition of M. Bjucher de Perthes' discoveries (1841

' Lubbock, in 'Eeport of British Association, Dundee, 18G7,' p. 121.
- Lyell, 'Antiquity of Man,' chap. xix.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTUKE.

and onward) of the flint implements in tlie Drift gravels of tlu;
Sommo Valley, evidence has been accumulating over a wide
European area to show that the ruder Stone Age, represented
by implements of the Pala3olithic or Drift type, prevailed
among savage tribes of the Quaternary period, the contempo-
raries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, in ages for
which Geology asserts an antiquity far more remote than
History can avail to substantiate for the human race. Mr.
John Frere had already written in 1797 respecting such flint
instruments discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk. " The situation in
which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them
to a very remote period indeed, even beyond that of the present
world." ^ The vast lapse of time through which the history of
London has represented the history of human civilization, is
to my mind one of the most suggestive facts disclosed by
archaeology. The antiquary, excavating but a few yards deep,
may descend from the debris representing our modern life, to
relics of the art and science of the Middle Ages, to signs of
Norman, Saxon, Romano-British times, to traces of the higher
Stone Age. And on his way from Temple Bar to the Great
Northern Station he passes near the spot (" opposite to black
Mary's, near Grayes inn lane ") where a drift implement of
black flint was found with the skeleton of an elephant by Mr.
Conyers, about a century and a half ago, the relics side by side
of the London mammoth and the London savage." In the
gravel-beds of Europe, the laterite of India, and other more
superficial localities, [where relics of the Palaeolithic Age arc
found, what principally testifies to man's condition is the
extreme rudeness of his stone implements, and the absence of
even edge-grinding. The natural inference that this indicates
a low savage state is confirmed in the caves of Central France.
There a race of men, who have left indeed really artistic por-
traits of themselves and the reindeer and mammoths they lived
among, seem, as may be judged from the remains of their
weapons, implements, etc., to have led a life somewhat of

...1°-* M

'•III

1 Frere, in * Archceologia,' 1800.

2 J. Evans, in ' Arclxa;ologia,' 1861; Lubbock, ' Prebistoric Times,' 2nd cd.,
p. 335.

TIIK DKVKLOPMENT OF CUI.TURK.

I'll

l!^'

Ks(iuimaux typo, but lower by the want of domesticated
uuiinals. The districts where impleinouts of the riulo primitive
Drift type are found are limitc<l in extent. It is to aijes later
in time and more advanced in development, that the Neolithic
or Polished Stone Period belonged, when the manufacture of
stone instruments was much improved, and grinding and
l)olishing were generally introduced. During the long period
<»f prevalence of this state of things, Man appears to have spread
almost over the whole habitable earth. The examination of
district after district of the world has now all but established a
universal rule that the Stone Age (bono or shell being the
occasional substitutes for stone) underlies the Metal Age every-
when;. Even the districts famed in liistory as seats of ancient
civilization show, like other regions, their traces of a yet more
archaic Stone Age. Asia Minor, Egypt, Palestine, India, China,
fiu'nish evidence from actual specimens, historical mentions,
and survivals, which demonstrate the former prevalence of con-
ditions of society which have their analogues among modern
savage tribes.^ The Duke of Argyll, in his 'Primeval Man/
while admitting the Drift implements as having been the ice
hatchets and rude knives of low tribes of men inhabiting
Europe toward the end of the Glacial Period, concludes thence
" that it would be about as safe to argue from these implements
as to the condition of Man at that time in the countries of his
Primeval Home, as it would be in our own day to argue from
the habits and arts of the Eskimo as to the state of civilization
in London or in Paris." - The progress of archaeology for years
past, however, has been continually cutting away the ground on
which such an argument as this can stand, till now it is all but
utterly driven off the field. Where now is the district of the
earth that can be pointed to as the " Primeval Home " of Man,
and that does not show by rude stone implements buried in its
soil the savage condition of its foi-mer inhabitants ? There is
scarcely a known province of the world of which we cannot say
certainly, savages once dwelt here, and if in such a case an
ethnologist asserts that these savages were the descendants or

* Seo ' Early History of Mankind,' chap. viii.
" Argyll, ' Primeval Man, ' p. 129.

iihi

Tin; DKVKI.OI'MKNT OF CU^TUUK.

ii,i

8UCC0S8OM of a civilized nation, the burden of proof lies on him.
Again, tho Bronzo Ago and tlio Iron Age belong in groat mea-
8uro to history, but their relation to tho Stono Ago proves tho
Hotmdness of tho judgment of Lucretius, when, attaching oxpo-
rienco of tho present to memory and inference from tho past,
lie propounded what is now a tenet of arclueology, the succession
of tho Stone, Bronze, and Iron Agos :

." Arma antiqua manus ungues dontosquo fuorunt,
Et lupitlos, ot item silvarum fragmina rami

Postorius forri vis ost -tTiMquo roperta,

Et prior coris orat (luam forri cognitus usus." '

Throughout tho various topics of Prehistoric Archroology, tho
force and convergence of its testimony npon the development of
culture are overpowering. The relics discovered in gravel-beds,
caves, shell-mounds, terramares, lake-dwellings, earthworks, tho
results of an exploration of the superficial soil in many countries,
the comparison of geological evidence, of historical documents,
of modern savage life, corroborate and explaiji one another.
Tho megalithic structures, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, and the
like, only known to England, France, Algeria, as the work of
races of the mysterious past, have boon kept up as matters of
modern construction and recognized purpose among the ruder
indiifonous tribes of India. The series of ancient lake-stttle-
ments "which must represent so many centuries of successive
population fringing the shores of the Swiss lakes, have their
surviving representatives among rude tribes of the East Indies,
Africa, and South America. Outlying savages are still heaping
up shell-mounds like those of far-past Scandinavian anticpiity.
The burial-mounds still to be seen in civilized countries have
served at once as museums of early culture and as proofs of its
savage or barbaric type. It is enough, "without entering farther
here into subjects fully discussed in modern special works, to
claim the general support given to the development-theory of
culture by Prehistoric Archaeology. It was "with a true appre-
ciation of the bearings of this science that one of its founders,

^ Lucret. De Kcrum Natura, v. 1281.

.ti

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

<iii'j'

the venerable Professor Sven Nilsson, declared in 1843 in the
Introduction to his ' Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' that
we are " unable properly to understand the significance of the
antiquities of any individual country without at the same time
clearly realizing the idea that they are the fragments of a pro-
gressive series of civilization, and that the human race has
always been, and still is, steadily advancing in civilization." ^

Enquiry into the origin and early development of the
material arts, as judged of by comparing the various stages
at which they are found existing, leads to a corresponding
result. Not to take this argument up in its full range, a few
typical details may serve to show its general character.
Amongst the various stages of the arts, it is only a minority
which show of themselves by mere inspection whether they
are in the line of progress or of decline. Most such facts may be
compared to an Indian's canoe, stem and stern alike, so that
one cannot tell by looking at it which way it is set to go. But
there are some which, like our own boats, distinctly point in the
direction of their actual course. Such facts are pointers in the
study of civilization, and in every branch of the enquiry should
be sought out. A good example of these pointer-facts is re-
corded by Mr. Wallace. In Celebes, where the bamboo houses
are apt to lean with the prevalent west wind, the natives have
found out that if they fix some crooked timbers in the sides of
the house, it will not fall. They choose such accordingly, the
crookedest they can find, but they do not know the rationale of
the contrivance, and have not hit on the idea that straight poles
fixed slanting would have the same effect in making the struc-
ture rigid.^ In fact, they have gone halfway toward inventing
what builders call a "strut," but have stopped short. Now the
mere sight of such a house would show that the plan is not a
remnant of higher architecture, but a half-made invention.

■'i:i

' See Lyell, ' Antiquity of Man,' 3rd ed. 1863; Lubbock, ' Pfehistoric Times,'
'Jnd ed. 1870 ; 'Trans, of Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology' (Norwich, 1868) ;
Stevens, 'Flint Chips, etc.,' 1870; Nilsson, 'Primitive Inhabitants of Scan-
tlinavia' (ed. by Lubbock, 1868); Falconer, ' Paleeontological Memoirs, etc.' ;
Lartet and Christy, ' Reliquise Aquitanica; ' (ed. by T. R. Jones) ; Ki.'ller, ' Lake
Dwellings' (Tr. and Ed. by J. E. Lee), etc., etc.

* Wallace, ' Indian Archipelago,' vol. i. p. 357.

■j ii 1
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ll:! ll

'■H

'i;iii,j'

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE,

This is a fact in the line of progress, but not of decline. I
have mentioned elsewhere a number of similar co os ; thus the
adaptation of a cord to the fire-drill is obviously an improve-
ment on the simpler instrument twirled by hand, and the use
of the spindle for making thread is an improvement on the
clumsier art of hand-twisting ;^ but to reverse this position, and
suppose the hand-drill to have come into use by leaving off the
use of the cord of the cord-drill, or that people who knew the
use of the spindle left it off and painfully twisted their thread
by hand, is absurd. Again, the appearance of an art in a
particular locality where it is hard to account for it as borrowed
from elsewhere, and especially if it concerns some special native
product, is evidence of its being a native invention. Thus,
what people can claim the invention of the hammock, or the
still more admirable discovery of the extraction of the whole-
some cassava from the poisonous manioc, but the natives of the
South American and West Indian districts to which these
things belong? As the isolated possession of an art goes to
prove its invention where it is found, so the absence of an art
goes to prove that it was never present. The onus proband! is
on the other side ; if any one thinks that the East Africans' an-
cestors had the lamp and the potter's wheel, and that the North
American Indians once possessed the art of making beer from
their maize like the Mexicans, but that these arts have been lost,
at any rate let him show cause for such an opinion. I need not,
perhaps, go so far as a facetious ethnological friend of mine, who
argues that the existence of savajje tribes who do not kiss their
women is a proof of primaeval barbarism, for, he says, if they
had ever known the practice they could not possibly have for-
gotten it. Lastly and principally, as experience shows us that
arts of civilized life are developed through successive stages of
improvement, we may as-sumc that the early development of
even savage arts came to pass in a similar way, and thus, find-
ing various stages of an art among the lower races, we may
arrange these stages in a series probably representing their
actual sequence in history. If any art can be traced back
among savage tribes to a rudimentary state in which its inven-

> ' Early History of Mankind,' pp. 192, 243, etc., etc.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

tion does not seem beyond their intellectual condition, and
especially if it may be produced by imitating nature or follow-
ing nature's direct suggestion, there is fair reason to suppose
the very origin of the art to 1. tve been reached.

Professor Nilsson, looking at the remarkable similarity of the
hunting and fishing instruments of the lower races of mankind,
considers them to have been contrived instinctively by a sort of
natural necessity. As an example he takes the bow and an-ow.^
The instance seems an unfortunate one, in the face of the fact
that the supposed bow-and-an-ow-making instinct fails among
the natives of Australia, to whom it would have been very use-
ful, while even among the Papuan natives of the New Hebrides
there is reason to think it not original, for the bow is called
there fana, 'pena, nfanga, &c., namas apparently taken from
the MsLlay panah, and indicating a Malay origin for the instru-
ment. It seems to me that Dr. Klemm, in his dissertation on Im-
plements and Weapons, and Colonel Lane Fox, in his lectures on
Primitive Warfare, take a more instructive line in tracing the
early development of arts, not to a blind instinct, but to a selec-
tion, imitation, and gradual adaptation and improvement of
objects and operations which Nature, the instructor of primaeval
man, sets before him. Thus Klemm traces the stages by which
])rogress appears to have been made from the rough stick to the
iinished spear or club, from the natural sharp-edged or rounded
stone to the artistically fashioned celt, spear-head, or hammer.^
Fox traces connexion through the various types of weapons,
pointing out how a form once arrived at is repeated in various
sizes, like the spear-head and arrow-point ; how in rude con-
ditions of the arts the same instrument serves different pur-
poses, as where the Fuegians used their arrow-heads also for
knives, and Kafirs carve with their assagais, till separate forms
are adopted for special purposes ; and how in the history of the
striking, cutting, and piercing instruments used by mankind, a
continuity may be traced, which indicates a gradual progressive
development from the rudest beginnings to the most advanced
improvements of modern skill. To show how far the early

* Nilsson, 'Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' p. 104.

' Klemm, 'Allg. Culturwissenscliaft,' part ii., "Werkzcuge und Wafifen.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

development of warlike arts may have been due to man's
imitative faculty, he points out the analogies in methods of
warfare among animals and; men, classifying as defensive
appliances hides, solid plates, jointed plates, scales ; as offensive
weapons, the piercing, striking, serrated, poisoned kinds, &c. ;
and under the head of stratagems, flight, concealment, leaders,
outposts, war-cries, and so forth.^

The manufacture of stone implements is now almost perfectly
understood by archaeologists. The processes used by modern
savages have been observed and imitated. Mr. John Evans, for
instance, by blows with a pebble, pressure with a piece of stag's
horn, sawing with a flint-flake, boring with a stick and sand, and
grinding on a stone surface, succeeds in reproducing all but the
finest kinds of stone implements.^ On thorough knowledge we
are now able to refer in great measure the remarkable similarities
of the stone scrapers, flake-knives, hatchets, spear- and arrow-
heads, &c., as found in distant times and regions, to the similarity
of natural models, of materials, and of requirements which
belong to savage life. The history of the Stone Age is clearly
seen to be one of development. Beginning with the natural
sharp stone, the transition to the rudest artificially shaped stone
implement is imperceptibly gradual, and onward from this rude
stage much independent progress in different directions is to be
traced, and the manufacture at last arrives at admirable artistic
perfection, by the time that the introduction of metal is super-
seding it. So with other implements and fabrics, of which the
stages are known through their whole course of development
from the merest nature to the fullest art. The club is traced
from the rudest natural bludgeon up to the weapon of finished
shape and carving. Pebbles held in the hand to hammer with,
and cutting-instruments of stone shaped or left smooth at one
end to be held in the hand, may be seen in museums, hinting
that the important art of fixing instruments in handles was the
result of invention, not of instinct. The stone hatchet, used as

' Lane Fox, * Lectures on Primitive Warfare,' Journ. United Service Inst.,
ISO 7— 9.

- Evans in 'Trans, of Congress of Prehistoric Arc1ia2ology ' {Norwicli, 1868),
p. 191 ; Ran in ' Smithsonian Reports," 1868 ; Sir E. Pelcher in Tr. Eth. Soc.
vol. i. p. 129.

'-■k:

iji

lii

hill

ill

I!:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

a weapon, passes into the battle-axe. The spear, a pointed stick
or pole, has its point hardened in the fire, and a further im-
provement is to fix on a sharp point of horn, bone, or chipped
stone. Stones are flung by hand, and then by the sling, a con-
trivance widely but not universally known among savage tribes.
From first to last in the history of war the spear or lance is
grasped as a thrusting weapon. Its use as a missile no doubt
})egan as early, but it has hardlj^ survived so far in civilization.
Thus used, it is most often thrown by the unaided arm, but a
sling for the purpose is known to various savage tribes. The
short cord with an eye used in the New Hebrides, and called a
" becket " by Captain Cook, and a whip-like instrument noticed
in New Zealand, are used for spear-throwing. But the more
usual in&trument is a wooden handle, a foot or two long. This
spear-thrower is known across the high northern districts of
North America, ..mong some tribes of South America, and
among the Australians. These latter, it has been asserted, could
not have invented it in their present state of barbariom. But
the remarkable feature of the matter is that the spet . -thrower
belongs especially to savagery, and not to civilization. Among
the higher nations the nearest approach to it seems to have
been the classic amentum, apparently a thong atuached to the
middle of the javelin to throw it with. The highest people
known to have used the spear-thrower proper are the Aztecs.
Its existence among them is vouched for by representations in
the Mexican mythological pictures, by its name "atlatl," and by
a beautifully artistic specimen of the thing itself in the Christy
Museum. ; but we do not hear of it as in practical use at the
Conquest, when it had apparently fallen into survival. In fact
the history of thu instrument seems in absolute opposition to the
degradation-theory, representing as it does an invention belong-
ing to savage culture, and scarcely able to survive beyond.
Nearly the same may be said of the blow-tube, which as a
serious weapon scarcely ranges above rude tribes of the East
Indies and South America, though kept up in sport at higher
levels. The Australian boomerang has been claimed as derived
fr some hypothetical high culture, whereas the transition-
stages through which it is connected with the club are to be

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

obscn'od in its own country, while no civilized race possesses
the weapon.

The use of an elastic switch to fillip small missiles with, and
the remarkable elastic darts of the Pelew Islands, bent and
made to fly by their own spring, indicate inventions which may
have led to that of the bow, while the arrow is a miniature form
of the javelin. The practice of poisoning arrows, after the
manner of stings and serpents' fangs, is no civilized device, but
a characteristic of lower life, which is generally discarded even
at tlie barbaric stage. The art of narcotizing fish, remembered
but ''.'^t approved by high civilization, belongs to many savage
tribes, who might easily discover it in any forest pool where a
suitable plant had fallen in. The art of setting fences to catch
fish at the ebb of the tide, so common among the lower races,
is a simple device for assisting nature quite likely to occur to
the savage, in whom sharp hunger is no mean ally of dull wit.
Thus it is with other arts. Fire-making, cooking, pottery, the
textile arts, are to be traced along lines of gi*adual improve-
ment.^ Music begins with the rattle and the drum, which in
one way or another hold their places from end to end of civili-
zation, while pipes and stringed instruments represent an ad-
vanced musical art which is still developing. So with architec-
ture and agriculture. Complex, elaborate, and highly-reasoned
as are the upper stages of these arts, it is to be remembered
that their lower stages begin with mere direct imitation of
nature, copying the shelters which nature provides, and the
propagation of plants which nature jDcrforms. Without enu-
merating to the same purpose the remaining industries of
savage life, it may be said generally that their facts resist
rather than require a theory of degradation from higher
culture. They agree with, and often necessitate, the same view
of development which we know by experience to account for
the origin and progress of the arts among ourselves.

In the various branches of the problem which will hencefor-
ward occupy our attention, that of determining the relation of
the mental condition of savages to that of civilized men, it is
an excellent guide and safeguard to keep before cur minds the
* See details iu 'Early History of Mankind,' chap. vii. — ix.

{>,i<i

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.

theory of development in the material arts. Throughout all the
manifestations of the human intellect, facts will be found to fall
into their places on the same general lines of evolution. The
notion of the intellectual state of savages as resulting from
decay of previous high knowledge, seems to have as little evi-
dence in its favour as that stone celts are the degenerate suc-
cessors of Sheffield axes, or earthen grave-mounds degraded
copies of Egyptian pyramids. The study of savage and civiliztnl
life alike avail us to trace in the early history of the human
intellect, not gifts of transcendental wisdom, but rude shrewd
sense taking up the facts of common life and shaping from
them schemes of primitive philosophy. It will be seen again
and again, by examining such topics as language, mythology,
custom, religion, that savage opinion is in a more or less rudi-
mentary state, while the civilized mind still bears vestiges,
neither few nor slight, of a past condition from which savages
represent the least, and civilized men the greatest advance.
Throughout the whole vast range of the history of human
thought and habit, while civilization has to contend not only
with survival from lower levels, but also with degeneration
within its own borders, it yet proves capable of overcoming
both and taking its own course. History within its proper
field, and ethnography over a wider range, comume to show that
the institutions which can best hold their own in the world
gradually supersede the less fit ones, and that this incessant
conflict determines the general resultant course of culture. I
will venture to set forth in mythic fashion how progress, aberra-
tion, and retrogression in the general course of culture contrast
themselves in my own mind. We may fancy ourselvfes looking
on Civilization, as in personal figure she traverses the world ;
we see her lingering or resting by the way, and often deviating
into paths that bring her toiling back to where she had passed
by long ago ; but, direct or devious, her path lies forward, and
if now and then she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon
falls into a helpless stumbling. It is not according to her
nature, her feet were not made to plant uncertain steps behind
her, for both in her forward view and in her onward gait she is
of truly human type.

CHAPTER III.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

Survival and Superstition — Children's games' — Games of chance — Traditional
sayings — Nursery poems — Pr(>verbs — Riddles — Significance and sun'ival in
Customs: sneezing-formula, rite of foundation-sacrifice, prejudice against
saving a drowning man.

When a custom, an art, or an opinion is fairly started in the
world, disturbing influences may long affect it so slightly that
it may keep its course from generation to generation, as i
stream once settled in its bed will flow on for ages. This is
mere permanence of culture ; and the special wonder about
it is that the change and revolution of human affairs should
have left so many of its feeblest rivulets to run so long. On
the Tatar steppes, six hundred years ago, it was an offence to
tread on the threshold or touch the ropes in entering a tent,
and so it appears to be still,^ Eighteen centuries ago Ovid
mentions the vulgar Roman objection to marriages in May,
which he not unreasonably explains by the occurrence in that
month of the funeral rites of the Lemuralia : —

" Nee viduoo taidis eadem, nee virginis apta
Tempera. Qua; nupsit, non diuturna fuit.
Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbia tangunt,
Mense malas Maio nubere \olgus ait." -

The saying that marriages in May are unlucky survives to this
day in England, a striking example how an idea, the meaning

' Will, de Rubruquis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. pp. 46, C7, 132 ; Michie, 'Siberian
Overland Route,' p. 96.
» Ovid, ' Fast.' t. 487.

■.j:f'il

SURVIVAL IN CULTUUE.

li i

(i'i

of which has perished for ages, may continue to exist simply
hecausc it has existed.

Now there are thousands of cases of this kind which have
become, so to speak, landmarks in the course of culture. When
in the process of time there has come general change in the
condition of a people, it is usual, notwithstanding, to find much
that manifestly had not its origin in the new state of things,
but has simply lasted on into it. On the strength of these
survivals, it becomes possible to declare that the civilization
of the people they are observed among must have been
derived from an earlier state, in which the proper home and
meaning of these things are to bo found ; and thus collections
of such facts are to be worked as mines of historic knowledge.
In dealing with such materials, experienr;e of what actually
happens is the main guide, and direct history has to teach us,
first and foremost, how old habits hold their ground in the midst
of a new culture which certainly would never have brought
them in, but on the contrary presses hard to thrust them out.
What this direct information is like, a single example may
show. The Dayaks of Borneo were not accustomed to chop
wood, as we do, by notching out V-shaped cuts. Accordingly,
when the white man intruded among them with this among
other novelties, they marked their disgust at the innovation by
levying a fine on any of their own people who should be caught
chopping in the European fashion ; yet so well aware were the
native woodcutters that the white man's plan was an improve-
ment on their own, that they would use it surreptitiously when
they could trust one another not to tell.^ The account is
twenty years old, and very likely the foreign chop may have
ceased to be an offence against Dayak conservatism, but its
prohibition was a striking instance of survival by ancestral
authority in the very teeth of common sense. Such a pro-
ceeding as this would be usually, and not improperly, described
as a superstition ; and, indeed, this name would be given to a
large proportion of survivals generally. The very word " su-
perstition," in what is perhaps its original sense of a "standing
over " from old times, itself expresses the notion of survival

' 'Journ, lud. Archip.' (ed. by J. E. Logan), vol. ii. p. liv.

'■^"u,,..„

SURVIVAL IN CULTUHE.

But the term superstition now implies a reproach, and though
this reproach may be often cast deservedly on fragments of a
dead lower culture embedded in a living \\\ . er one, yet in
many cases it would be harsh, and even .; itrue. For the
ethnographer's purpose, at any rate, it is desirable to intro-
duce such a term as " survival," simply to denote the his-
torical fact which the word "superstition" is now spoiled for
expressing. Moreover, there have to be included as partial
survivals the mass of cases where enough of the old habit is
kept up for its origin to be recognizable, though in taking a
new form it has been so adapted to new circumstances as still
to hold its place on itt -w^^ merits.

Thus it would be seld a reasonable to call the children's
games of modern EUiupe superstitions, though many of them
are survivals, and indeed remarkable ones. If the games of
children and of grown-up people be examined with an eye to
ethnological lessor to be gained from them, one of the first
things that strikes us is how many of tliem are only sportive
imitations of the serious business of life. As children in modern
civilized times play at dining and driving horses and going to
church, so a main amusement of savage children is to imitate
the occupations which they Avill carry on in earnest a few years
later, and thus their games are in fact their lessons. The Es-
quimaux children's sports are shooting with a tiny bow and
an'ow at a mark, and building little snow-huts, which they
light up with scraps of lamp- wick begged from their mothers.^
Miniature boomerangs and spears are among the toys of Aus-
tralian children ; and even as the fathers keep up the extremely
primitive custom of getting themselves wives by carrying them
off by violence from other tribes, so playing at such " bride-lift-
ing" has been noticed as one of the regular games of the little
native boys and girls.^ Now it is quite a usual thing in the world
for a game to outlive the serious practice of which it is an imi-
tation. The bow and arrow is a conspicuous instance. Ancient
cind wide-spread in savage culture, we trace this instrument

^ Klemin, 'Cultur-Geschichte,' vol. ii. p. 209.
2 OHfield in ' Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. p. 266
r Astrolabe,' vol. i. p. 411.

VOL. I.

Duinont d'Urville, *Voy. dft

i"J^j1

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

I 1 '

lilii

p;!

through barbaric and classic life and onward to a high media3val
level. But now, when we look on at an archery meeting, or go
by country lanes at the season when toy bows and arrows are
" in " among the children, we see, reduced to a mere sportive
survival, the ancient weapon which among a few savage tribes
still keeps its deadly place in the hunt and the battle. The
cross-bow, a comparatively late and local improvement on the
long-bow, has disappeaied yet more utterly from practical use ;
but as a toy it is in full European service, and likely to remain
so. For antiquity and wide diffusion in the world, through
savage up to classic and mediaeval times, the sling ranks with
the bow and arrow. But in the middle ages it fell out of use
as a practical weapon, and it was all in vain that the loth
century poet commended the art of slinging among the exercises
of a good soldier :—

" Use eek the cast of stono, with slynge or hondo :
It falloth ofte, yf other shot there none is,

Men harneysod in steel may not withstonde.
The multitude and mighty cast of eto^ys ;

And stonys in effecte, are every where,

And slynges are not noyous for to beare." '

Perhaps as serious a use of the shng as can now be pointed
out within the limits of civilization is among the herdsmen of
Spanish America, who sling so cleverly that the saying is they
can hit a beast on either horn and turn him which way they
will. But the use of the rude old weapon is especially kept
up by boys at play, who are here again the representatives of
remotely ancient culture.

As games thus keep up the record of primitive warlike arts,
so they reproduce, in what are at once sports and little children's
lessons, early stages in the history of childlike tribes of man-
kind. English children delighting in the imitations of cries
of animals and so forth, and New Zealanders playing their
favourite game of imitating in chorus the saw hissing, the
adze chipping, the musket roaring, and the other instruments,
making' their proper noises, are alike showing at its source the

' Strutt, ' Sports and Pastimes,' book. ii. chap. ii.

-*L^.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

imitative clement so important in the formation of language.^
When we look into the early development of the art of count-
ing, and see the evidence of tribe after tribe having obtained
numerals through the primitive stage of counting on their
fingers, we find a certain ethnographic interest in the gauges
which teach this earliest numeration. The New Zealand game
of " ti " is described as played by counting on the fingers, a
number being called by one player, and he having instantly to
touch the proper finger ; while in the Samoan game one player
holds out so many fingers, and his opponent must do the same
instantly or lose a point." These may be native Polynesian
games, or they may be our own children's games borrov.'ed. In
the English imrsery the child learns to say how many fingers
the nurse shows, and the appointed formula of the game is
'' Biich, Buck, how many horns do I hold up?" The game of
one holding up fingers and the others holding up fingers to
match is mentioned in Strutt. We may see small schoolboys
in the lanes playing the guessing-game, where one gets on
another's back and holds up fingers, the other must guess how
many. It is interesting to notice the wide distribution and
long permanence of these trifles in liistory when we read
the following passage from Petronius Arbiter, written in the
time of Nero : — " Trimalchio, not to seem moved by the loss,
kissed the boy and bade him get up on his back. Without
<lelay the boy climbed on horseback on him, and slapped him
on the shoulders with his hand, laughing and calling out "hucca,
hucca, quot sunt hic?"^ The simple counting-games played with
the fingers must not be confounded with the addition-game,
where each player throws out a hand, and the sum of all the
fingers shown has to be called, the successful caller scoring a
point ; practically each calls the total before he sees his adver-
sary's hand, so that the skill lies especially in shrewd guessing.
This game affords endless amusement to China, where it is

* Polack, ' New Zcalanders,' vol. ii. p. 171.

" Polack, ibid.; Wilkes, 'U. S. Exp.' vol. i. p. 194. Sec the account of the game
of liagi in Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 339 ; and Yatc, 'New Zealand,' p. 113.

3 Petron. Arbitri Satiraj rec. Biichler, p. 6i (other readings are buccce or
hicco). ■ ■

F 2

SUUVIVAL IN CULTURE.

ijifi

called "tsooy-moey," nnd to Southern Europe, wliero it is known
in Italian as " morra," and in French aa " niourre." So peculiar
a game would hardly have been invented twice over in Europe
and Asia, but it is hard to guess whether the Chinese h.'arnt
it from the West, or whether it belongs to the remarkable
list of clever inventions which Europe has borrowed from China.
The ancient Egyptians, as their sculptures show, used to play
at some kind of finger-game, and the Romans had their fingei-
flashing, " micaro digitis," at which butchers used to gamble
with their customers for bits of meat. It is not clear whether
these were morra or some other games.^

When Scotch lads, playing at the game of " tappie-tousio,"
take one another by the forelock and say, " Will ye be my
man ? " - they know nothing of the old symbolic manner of
receiving a bondman which they are keeping up in survival.
The wooden drill for making fire by friction, which so many
rude or ancient races are known to have used as their com-
mon household instrument, and which lasts on among the
modern Hindoos as the time-honoured sacred means of light-
ing the pure sacrificial flame, has been found surviving in
Switzerland as a toy among the children, who made fire with
it in sport, much as Esquimaux would have done in earnest."^
In Gothland it is on record that the ancient sacrifice of the
wild boar has actually been carried on into modern times in
sportive imitation, by lads in mascpierading clothes with their
faceo blackened and painted, while the victim was personated
by a boy rolled up in furs and placed upon a seat, with a tuft
of pointed straws in his mouth to imitate the bristles of the
boar.* One innocent little clrld's sport of our own time ia
strangely mixed up wibh an ugly story of above a thou- nd
years ago. The game '.n question is thus played in France -. —
The children stand in a ring, one lights a spill of paper and
passes it on to the next, saying, " petit bonhomiiic^ vit encore,"
and so on round the ring, each saying the words and passing on

> Compare Davis, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 317; Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians,
vol. i. p. 188 ; Facciolati, Lexicon, s. v. 'niiciire'; etc.
"^ Jamieson, * Diet, of Scottish Lang.' s. v.

3 'Early History of Mankind,' p. 244, etc.; Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.', p. 573.
* Grimm, ibid., p. 1200.

BUHVIVAL IN CULTUUE.

tlio flame us (|uickly us may be, for the one in whose liantls the
Kpill gocH out has to pay a forfeit, and it is then proclaimed
that " petit bonlioinnie est mort." Crinim mentions a simihir
game in Clermany, played with a burning stick, and H alii well
gives the nursery rhyme which is said with it when it is played
in England : —

" Jack's iilivo and in very good health,
If ho dicH in your hand you muHt look to yourself."

Now, as all readers of Church liistory know, it used to be a
favourite engine of controversy for the adherents of an esta-
blished faith to accuse heretical sects of celebrating hideous
orgies as the mystej'ies of their religion. The Pagans told these
.stories of the Jews, the Jews told them of the Christians, and
Christians themselves reached a bad eminence in the art of
slandering religious opponents whose moral life often seems in
fact to have been exceptionally pure. The Manicha'ans were
an especial mark for such aspersions, which were passed on to a
sect considered as their successors — the Paulicians, whose name
reappears in the middle ages, in connexion with the Cathari.
To these latter, apparently from an expression in one of their
religious formulas, was given the name of Boni Homines, which
became a recognized term for the Albigenses, It is clear that
the early Paulicians excited the anger of the orthodox by object-
ing to sacred images, and calling those who venerated them idola-
ters ; and about A.D. 700, John of Osun, Patriarch of Armenia,
wrote a diatribe against the sect, lU'ging accusations of the
regular anti-Manicha3an type, but with a peculiar feature wliich
brings his statement into the present singular connexion. He
declares that they blasphemously call the orthodox " image-
worshippers " ; that they themselves worship the sun; that,
moreover, they mix wheaten flour with the blood of infants
and therewith celebrate their communion, and " when they
have slain by the worst of deaths a boy, the first-born of his
mother, thrown from hand to hand among them by turns, they
venerate him in whose hand the chih expires, as having at-
tained to the first dignity of the sect To explain the corre-
spondence of these atrocious details with the nursery sport.

'm
> HI

^l1
I

SURVIVAL IN CtLTUKE.

i^i

iiii

it is perhaps the most likely supposition, not that the game of
" Petit Bonhomme " keeps up a recollection of a legend of the
Boni Homines, but that the game was known to the children of
the eightti century much as it is now, and that the Armenian
Patriarch simply accused the Paulicians of playing at it with
live babes.^

It may be possible to trace another interesting group of
sports as survivals fiom a branch of savage philosophy, once
of high rank though now fallen into merited decay. Games
of chanc3 correspond so closely with arts of divination belong-
ing already to savage culture, that there is force in applying to
several such games the rule that the serious practice comes
first, and in time may dAvindle to the sportive survival. To a
modern educated man, drawing lots or tossing up a coin is an
appeal to chance, that is, to ignorance ; it is committing the
decision of a question to a mechanical jDrocess, itself in no way
unnatural or even extraordinary, but merely so difficult to
follow that no one can say beforehand wdiat will come of it.
But we also know that this scientific doctrine of chance is not
that of early civilization, which has little in common with tl-o
mathematician's theoi-y of probabilities, but much in common
with such sacred divination as the choice of Matthias by lot as
a twelfth apostle, or, in a later age, the Moravian Brethren's
rite of choosing wives for their young men by casting lots with

1 Halliwell, 'Popular Ilhymcs,' p. 112; Giiiiim, ' D. M.' p. 812. Bastian,
'Mcii,s(,'li,' vol. iii. p. 106. Johanuib riiilosoplii Oznieusis Opera (Auclier),
Venice, 1834, p. 78 — 89. "Infantium sanguiiii similam coinmiscentes illegiti-
iiiam conimunioiicm tk'glutiunt ; quo pacto porcorum suos fotiis inimaniter
vescentium exsupcraiit educitatem. (Juique illorum eadavera super tecti culinen
celantes, ac siirsum oculis in cocliuu dofixis respicieutes, jurant alieno verbo ac
sensu : AUissimus novit. Soleni vero dcprecari volentes, ajiint : Solicule, Lucicule;
atque aereos, vagosque da;mones rlaiii iuvocant, juxta Muuicliiuorum Simoiiisque
incantatoris errores. Similiter ct priniuin paricntis fcemiiiic pueruin de maiiu in
manum inter cos inviceni projectum, (pium pessima mortc occidcrint, ilium, in
cujusmanu exspiraverit puer, ad primani sootne dignitatem provectum veiicrantur ;
atque per utriusquc nomen audent insane jurare; Juro, dicunt, per unigcnitian
fiJiam : et iteruni : Tcstcm habco tibi (jloriavii ejus, in cujtis manum unigcnims
fiUus spiritum suiim tnulidit .... Contra lies [the orthodox] aiulacter cvomero
])ra3suniunt impietatis suaj bilem, atquo insaiiientes, ex niali spiritus hlasphemiii,
Scidpiicolas vocant."

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

prayer. It Avas to no blind cliance that the Maoris looked
when they divined by throwing up lots to find m thief among a
suspected company ;^ or the Guinea negroes when they went to
the fetish-priest, who shuffled his bundle of little strips of
leather and gave his sacred omen." The crowd with uplifted
hands pray to the gods, when the heroes cast lots in the cap of
Atrcides Agamemnon, to know who shall go forth to do battle
with Hektor and help the well-greaved Greeks.^ With prayer to
the gods, and looking up to heaven, the German priest or father,
as Tacitus relates, drew three lots from among the marked fruit-
tree twigs scattered on a pure white garment, and interpreted
the answer from their signs.* As in ancient Italy oracles gave
responses by graven lots,^ so the modern Hindus decide dis-
putes by casting lots in front of a temple, appealing to the gods
with cries of " Let justice be shown ! Show the innocent, ! "'^

The uncivilized man thinks that lots or dice are adjusted in
their fall with reference to the meaning he may choose to
attach to it, and especially he is apt to suppose spiritual beings
standing over the diviner or the gambler, shuffling the lots or
turning up the dice to make them give their answers. This
view held its place firmly in the middle ages, and later in
history we still find games of chance looked on as results of
supernatural operation. The general change from mediaeval to
modern notions in this respect is well shown in a remarkable
work published in 1G19, which seems to have done much toward
bringing the change about. Thomas Gataker, a Puritan
minister, in his treatise 'Of the Nature and Use of Lots,' states,
in order to combat them, the following among the current ob-
jections made against games of chance : — " Lots may not be
used but with great reverence, because the disposition of them
commctli immediately from God "...." the nature of a Lot,

( ^
I

t> '»]

^ Polack, vol. i. p. 270.

- ijOGiuaii, ' Guineso Kust,' letter x. ; Eiig. Trans, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi.
p. 399,
2 Homer. Iliad, vii. 171.

* Tacit. Oormania. 10.

* Smith's 'Die. of Gr. and Rom. Ant.,' arts, 'oraculum,' 'sortes.'
6 Roberts, ' Oriental Illusti-ations,' j). 163.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

which is affirmed to bee a worke of Gods speciall and imme-
diate providence, a sacred oracle, a divine judgement or sen-
tence : the light use of it therefore to be an abuse of Gods
name ; and so a sinne against the third Commandement."
Gataker, in opposition to this, argues that " to expect the issue
and event of it, as by ordinurie meanes from God, is common to
all actions : to expect it by an immediate and xtraordinarie
worke is no more lawfull here than elsewhere, yea is indeed
mere superstition."^ It took time, however, for this opinion to
become prevalent in the educated world. After a lapse of forty
years, Jeremy Taylor could still bring out a remnant of the
older notion, in the course of a generally reasonable argument
in favour of games of chance when played for refreshment and
not for money. " I have heard," he says, " from them that have
skill in such things, there are such strange chances, such pro-
moting of a hand by fancy and little arts of geomancy, such
constant winning on one side, such unreasonable losses on the
other, and these strange contingencies produce such horrible
effects, that it is not improbable that God hath permitted the
conduct of such games of chance to the devil, who will order
them so where he can do most mischief ; but, without the in-
strumentality of money, he could do nothing at all.'"" With
what vitality the notion of supernatural interference in games
of chance even now survives in Europe, is well shown by the
still flourishing arts of gamblers' magic. The folk-lore of our
own day continues to teach that a Good Friday's egg is to be
carried for luck in gaming, and that a turn of one's chair will
turn one's fortune ; the Tyrolese knows the charm for getting
from the devil the gift of winning at cards and ■^' there is
still a great sale on the continent for books which show how to
discover, from dreams, good numbers for the lottery ; and the
Lusatian peasant will even hide his lottery-tickets under the
altar-cloth that they may receive the blessing with the sacra- ^
ment, and so stand a better chance of winning.^
Arts of divinat'on and games of chance are so similar in

^ Gataker, p. 141, 91 ; see Lecky, 'History of liationalism,' vol. i. p. 307.
^ Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitaptiun., in 'Works,' vol. xiv. p. 337.
3 See Wiittke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 95, 115, 178.

* ,,

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

principle, that the very same instrument passes from one use to
the other. This appears in the accounts, very suggestive from
this point of view, of the Polynesian art of divination by spin-
ning the "niu" or cocoa-nut. In the Tongan Islandr, in Mariner's
time, the principal purpose for which this was solemnly per-
formed was to inquire if a sick person would recover ; prayer
was made aloud to the patron god of the family to direct the
nut; which Vt^as then spun, and its direction at rest indicated the
intention of the god. On other occasions, when the cocoa-nut
was merely spun for amusement, no prayer was made, and no
credit given to the result. Here tl e serious and the sportive
use of this rudimentary teetotum are found together. In the
Samoan Islands, however, at a later date, the Rev. G. Turner
finds the practice passed into a different stage. A party sit in
a circle, the cocoa-nut is spun in the middle, and the oracular
answer is according to the person towards vvhom the monkey-
face of the fruit is turned when it stops ; but whereas formerly
the Samoans used this as an art of divination to discover thieves,
now they only keep it up as a way of casting lots, and as a game
of forfeits.^ It is in favour of the view of serious divination
being the earlier use, to notice that the New Zealanders, though
they have no cocoa-nuts, keep up a ti -^e of the time when their
ancestors in the tropical islands had them and divined with
them ; for it is the well-known Polynesian word " niu," i. e.
cocoa-nut, which is still retained in use among the Maoris for
other kinds of divination, especially that performed with sticks.
Mr. Taylor, who points out this curiously neat piece of ethnolo-
gical evidence, records another case to the present purpose. A
method of divination was to clap the hands together while a
proper charm was repeated ; if the fingers went clear in, it was
favourable, but a check was an ill omen ; on the question of a
party crossing the country in war-time, the locking of all the
fingers, or the stoppage of some or all, were naturally inter-
preted to mean clear passage, meeting a travelling party, or being
stopped altogether. This quaint little symbolic art of divina-
tion seems now only to survive as a game ; it is called " puni-

' i.ariner, 'Tonga Islands,' vol. ii. p. 239 ; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 214;
■\Villianis, 'Fiji,' vol, i. ji. 228. Compare Cranz, 'Crunlaml,' p. 2:31.

C •;

•)

*'?

sur\jlV.'.l in CVI-TURE.

puni.'^ A similar ccimexiori betv, een divination and gambling
is shown by more familiar instruments. The hnckleboncs or
astragali were used in divination in aurient Rome, being con-
verted into rude dice by numberin_f^ the ibi r sides, and even
when the Roman gambler used the tali for gambling, he would
invoke a god or his mistress before he made his throw." Such
implements are now mostly used for play, but, nevertheless,
theii use for divination was by no means confined to the ancient
world, for hucklebones are mentioned in the 17tli century
among the fortune-telling instruments which young girls divined
for husbands with;'' and Negro sorcerers still throw dice as a means
of detecting thieves. "^ Lots serve the two purposes equally well.
The Chinese gamble by lots for cash and sweetmeats, whilst
they also seriously take omens by solemn appeals to the lots kept
ready for the purpose in the temples, and professional diviners
sit in the market-places, thus re open the future to their cus-
tomers.'' Playing-cards are still iii European use for divination.
That early sort known as " tra-ots" v-diich the French dealer's
license to sell " cartes et tarots " still keeps in mind, is said to
be preferred by fortune -tell '.n to the common kind ; for the
tarot-pack, with its more numerous and complex figures, lends
itself to a greater variety of omens. In these cases, direct
history fails to tell us whether the use of the instrument for
om. , ;"• play came first. In this respect, the history of the
Greoi^ Kottabos'' is instructive. This art of divination con-
sisted in flinging wine out of a cup into a metal basin some dis-
tance off without spilling any, the thrower saying or thinking
his mistress's name, and judging from the clear or dull splash
of the wine on the metal what his fortune in love would be ;
but in time the magic passed out of the process, and it became
a mere game of dexterity played for a prize.'* If this be a
typical case, and the rule be relied on that the serious use i)re-

1 E. Taylor, ' Xew Zealand,' pp. 206, 348, 387.

2 Smith's Die. art. 'talus.'

' Brand, ' Popular Antiquities,' vol. ii. p. 412.
* D. & C. Livingstone, 'Exp. to Zambesi,' p. 51.
5 Doolittle, • Cliinese,' vol. ii. p. 108, 28ij— 7
Asien,'vol. iii. pp. 76, 125.
^ Smith's Die. art. ' cottahos. '

see 384; Bastian, 'Ocstl.

•<mfM:

SUllVIV^AL m C'ULTURi.'.

gambling
bones or
eing con-
and even
he would
." Such
rtheless,
e ancient
century
.s divined
3 a meana
ally well.
ts, whilst
lots kept
diviners
leir cus-
vination.
dealer's
said to
for the
•es, lends
s, direct
3ient for
y of the
ion con-
ome dis-
ihinking
1.1 splash
Duld be ;
became
iis be a
use iDre-

cedes the play ml, then games oi chance may bo rrv;.. Ideretl sur-
vivals in principle or detail from correspoiidi ar, procs^ies of
magic — as divination in sport made gambling iii • iraes^^.

Seeking more examples of the lasting on "' fiyfd habits
among mankind, let us glance at a gioup of time-honoured
traditional sayings, old saws which have a special interest us
cases of survival. Even when the real signification of these
phrases has faded out of men's minds, and they have sunk
into sheer nonsense, or have been overlaid with some modern
superficial moaning, still the old formulas are handed on, often
gaining more in mystery than they lose in sense. We may hear
people talk of " buying a pig in a poke," whose acquaintance
with English does not extend to knowing what a poke is. And
certainly those who wish to say that they have a great mind to
something, and who express themselves by declaring that they
ho,ve " a month's mind " to it, can have no conception of the
hopeless nonsense they are making of the old term of the
"month's mind" which was really the monthly service for a
dead man's soul, whereby he was kept in mind or remembrance.
The proper sense of the phrase "sowing his wi!d oats" seems
generally lost in our modern use of it. No doubt it once implied
tiiat these ill weeds would spring up Jn later years, and how
hard it would be to root them oi.'. T.lko thu enem.y in the
parable, the Scandinavian Loki, tb i iisohiof-maker, is pro-
verbially said in Jutland to soav his oati (" nu saaer Lokkou sin
havre "), and the name of "Loki's oat.s " (Lokeshavre) is given
in Danish to the wild ats (avena fatufi\' Sayings which have
their source in some obsolete custom or lale, of course lie es-
pecially open to such ill-usage. It has become mere English to
talk of an "unlicked cub" who "wants licking into shape,"
while few remen-!l)er the explanation of these phrases from
Pliny's story that bears are born as eyeless, hairless, shapeless
lumps of v.-hite flesh, and have afterwards to be licked into
form.^

Again, in relics of old magic and religion, vve have -iometimes

«K

1, *Ocstl.

1 Gn.am, 'Deiitscho Mjtlu' p. 222.
" riin. viii. 54.

If.

t *J

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

■il

■u

*,i' i

to look for a deeper sense in conventional phrases than they
now cany on their face, or for a real meaning in what now
seems nonsense. How an ^ethnographical record may become
embodied in a popular saying, a Tamil proverb now current in
South India will show perfectly. On occasions when A hits B,
and C cries out at the blow, the bystanders will say, " 'Tis like
a Koravan eating asafcetida when his wife lies in !" Now a
Koravan belongs to a low race in Madras, and is defined as
"gypsy, wanderer, ass-driver, thief, eater of rats, dweller in mat
tents, fortune-teller, and suspected character;" and the explan-
ation of the proverb is, that whereas native women generally
eat asafcetida as strengthening medicine after childbirth, among
the Koravans it is the husband who eats it to fortify himself
on the occasion. This, in fact, is a variety of the world-wide
custom of the " couvade," where at childbirth the husband
undc'-goes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed
for days. It appears that the Koravans are among the races
practising this quaint custom, and that their more civilized
Tamil neighbours, struck by its oddity, but unconscious of its
now lorgotten meaning, have taken it up into a proverb.^ Let
ns now apply the same sort of ethnogi'aphieal key to dark
sayings in our own modern language. The maxim, " a hair of
the dog that bit you " was originally neither a metaphor nor a
joke, but a matter-of-fact recipe for curing the bite of a dog,
one of the many instances of the ancient homoeopathic doctrine,
that what hurts will also cure: it is mentioned in the Scandina-
vian Edda, " Dogs hair heals dog's bite." ^ The phrase " raising
the wind " now passes as humorous slang, but it once, in all
seriousness, described one of the most dreaded of the sorcerer's
arts, practised especially by the Finland wizards, of whose un-
canny power over the weather our sailors have not to this day
forgotten their old terror. The ancient ceremony or ordeal of
passing through a fire or leaping over btirning brands has been
kept up so vigorously in the British Isles, that Jamieson's de-
rivation of the phrase " to haul over the coals " from this rite

• rv!

' From a letter of Mr. IT. J. Stokes, Negapatam. General details of the
Couvade in 'Early Hist, of Mankind,' ]>. 203.
= IIAviinial, 138.

Sb'KVlVAL IN CULTURE.

appears in no way far-fetche(' It is not long since an
Iri.shwoman in New York was tried for killing her child ; she
had made it stand on burning coals to find out whether it was
really her own or a changeling^ The English nurse who says
to a fretful child, " You got out of bed wrong foot foremost this
morning," seldom or never knows the meaning of her saying ;
but this is still plain in the German folklore rule, that to get out
of bed left foot first will bring a bad day,^ one of the many
examples of that simple association of ideas which connects right
and left with good and bad respectively. "To be ready to jump
out of one's skin " is now a mere phrase expressing surprise or
delight, but in the old doctrine of Werewolves, not yet extinct
in Europe, men who are versiptllos or turnskins have the actual
faculty of jumping out of thei:* skins, to become for a time
wolves. To conclude, the phrase ''cheating the devil " seems
to belong to that familiar series of legends where a man makes
a compact wdth the fiend, but at the last moment gets off scot-
free by the interposition of a saint, or by some absurd evasion —
such as whistling the gospel he has bound himself not to say, or
refusing to complete his bargain • at the fall of the leaf, on the
plea that the sculptured leaves in the church are still on their
boughs. One form of the mediaeval compact was for the demon,
when he had taught his black art to a class of scholars, to seize
one of them for his professional fee, by letting them all run
for their lives and catching the last — a story obviously connected
with another popular saying : " devil take the hindmost."
But even at this game the stupid fiend may be cheated, as is
told in the folk-lore of Spain and Scotland. The apt scholar
only leaves the master his shadow to clutch as the hindmost
in the race, and with lliis unsubstantial payment he must needs
be satisfied, while the new-made magician goes forth free, but
ever after shadowless.''

It seems a fair inference to think folk-lore nearest to its

l-\

^ Jamieson, 'Scottish Dictionary,' s. v. 'coals;' R. Hunt, 'Popular Eo»
mances,' 1st ser. p. 83.

' Wuttke, • Volksaberglaube,' p. 131.

' Rochholz, 'Dcutscher Glaube und Brauch,' vol. i, p. 120 ; Grimm, pp. 969
976; Wuttke, p. 116.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

source where it has its highest place and moaning. Thus, if
some old rhyme or saying has in one place a solemn import in
philosophy or religion, while elsewhere it lies at the level of the
ntirsery, there is some ground for treating the serious version
as the more original, and the playful one as its mere lingering
survival. The argument is not safe, but yet is not to be quite
overlooked. For instance, there are two poems kept in remem-
brance among the modern Jews, and printed at the end of their
book of Passover services in Hebrew and English. One is that
known as S"'"T2 in (Chad gadya) : it begins, " A kid, a kid, my
father bought for two pieces of money ;" and it goes on to tell
how a cat came and ate the kid, and a dog came and bit tlie
cat, and so on to the end. — " Then came the Holy One, blessed
be He ! and slew the angel of death, who slew the butcher,
who killed the ox, that drank the water, that quenched the
fire, that burnt the stick, tht-t beat the dog, that bi!; the cat,
that ate the kid, that my father bought for two pieces of money,
a kid, a kid." This composition is in the 'Sepher Haggadah,'
and is looked on by some Jews as a parable concerning the past
and future of the Holy Land. According to one interpretation,
Palestine, the kid, is devoured by Babylon the cat ; Babylon is
overthrown by Persia, Persia by Greece, Greece by Rome, till
at last the Turks prevail in the land ; but the Edomites (i.e. the
nations of Europe) shall drive out the Turks, the angel of
death shall destroy the enemies of Israel, and his children
shall be restored under the rule of Messiah. Irrespectively of
any such particular interpretation, the solemnity of the ending
may incline us to think that we really have the composition here
in something like its first form, and that it was written to convey
a mystic meaning. If so, then it follows that our familiar
nursery tale of the old woman who couldn't get her kid (or pig)
over the stile, and wouldn't get home till midnight, must be con-
sidered a broken down adaptation of this old Jewish poem. The
other composition is a counting-poem, and begins thus : —

' " "VVlio knoweth. one ? I (saith Israel) know One :
One is God, who is over heaven and earth.
Who knoweth two ? I (saith Israel) know two :
Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the
heavens and the earth."

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE. 79

(And so forth, accumulating up to the last verse, which is — )

" Who knowoth thirteen ? I (saith Israel) know thirteen : Thirteen
divine attributes, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ton v- mmandmonts,
nine months preceding childbirth, eight days preceding circumcision,
seven days of the week, six books of the Miahnah, five books of the
Law, four matrons, three patriarchs, two tables of the covenant ;
but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth."

This is one of a family of counting-pooms, apparently held in
much favour in mediaeval Christian times ; for they are not yet
quite forgotten in country places. An old Latin version runs :
" Unus est Deus," etc., and one of the still-surviving English
forms begins, " One's One all alone, and ever more shall be so,"
and reckons on as far as " Twelve, the twelve apostles." Here
both the Jewish and Christian forms arc or have been serious,
so it is possible that the Jew may have imitated the Christian,
but the nobler form of the Hebrew poem here again gives it a
claim to be thought the earlier.^

The old proverbs brought down by long inheritance into our
modern talk are far from being insignificant in themselves, for
their wit is often as fresh, and their wisdom as pertinent as
it ever was. Beyond these practical qualities, proverbs are in-
structive for the place in ethnography which they occupy.
Their range in civilization is limited ; they seem scarcely to
belong to the lowest tribes, but appear first in a settled form
among some of the higher savages. The Fijians, who were
found a few years since living in what archseologists might call
the upper Stone Age, have some well-marked proverbs. They
lau^h at want of forethought by the saying that " The
Nakondo people cut the mast first" (i.e., before they had built
the canoe) ; and when a poor man looks wistfully at what he
cannot buy, they say, " Becalmed, and looking at the fish.''^
Among the list of the New Zealanders' " whakatauki," or pro-
verbs, one describes a lazy glutton : " Deep throat, but shallow

1 Mendes, 'Service for the First Nights of Passover,' London, 1862 (in the
Jewish interpretation, the word shunra,—'ca.\,' is compared with Shindr).
Halliwell, ' Nursery Rhymes', p. 288 ; ' Popuhir Rhymes,' p. G.

2 Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 110.

)\^]

V'\

(■,

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

,r '

sinews ;" another says tliat the lazy often profit by tlio work of
the industrious : " The large cliips made hy Hardwood fall to the
share of Sit-stdl ;" a third moralizes that " A crooked part of a
stem of toetoe can bo seen ; but a crooked part in the heart
cannot be seen,"^ Among the Basutos of South Africa, "Water
never gets tired of running," is a reproach to chatterers ;
" Lions gi'owl while they are eating," means tliat there are people
who never will enjoy anything; "The suwing-month is the
head-ache-month," describes those lazy folks who make excuses
when work is to be done ; " The thief eats iliunderbolts," means
that he Avill bring down vengeance from heaven on himself.^
West African nations are especially strong in proverbial philo-
sophy ; so much so that Captain Burton amused himself through
the rainy season at Fernando Po in compiling a volume of
native proverbs,^ among which there are hundreds at about as
high an intellectual level as those of Europe. " He fled from
the sword and hid in the scabbard," is as good as our " Out of
the frying-pan into the fire ;" and " He who has only his eye-
brow for a cross-bow can never kill an animal," is more
picturesque, if loss terse, than our "Hard words break no
bones." The old Buddhist aphorism, that " He who indulges in
enmity is like one Avho throws ashes to windward, which come
back to the same place and cover him all over," is put with less
prose and as much point in the negro saying, " Ashes fly back
in the face of hiin who throws them." When some one tries to
settle an affair in the absence of the people concerned, the negroes
will object that "You can't shave a man's head when he is
not there," while, to explain that the master is not to be judged
by the folly of his servant, they say, " The rider is not a fool
because the horse is." Ingratitude is alluded to in " The sword
knows not the head of the smith" (who made it), and yet more
forcibly elsewhere, " When the calabash had saved them (in the
famine), they said, let us cut it for a drinking-cup." The
popular contempt for poor men's wisdom is put very neatly in
the maxim, " When a poor man makes a proverb it does not

1 Shovtlantl, 'Traditions of K Z.' p. 196.
- Casalis, ' Etudes sur la langue Sechuana.'

■'' R. F. Burton, 'Wit and Wisdom from West Africa.' Sec also Waitz, vol. ii.
p. 245.

SURVIVAL IN CULTUIIK.

work of
ill to tho
)art of a
ic heart
"Water
itterers ;
re people
li is the
I excuses
," means
himself.^
il pLilo-
through
flume of
ibout as
led from
"Out of
his eye-
is more
reak no
lulges in
ch come
ivith less
fly back
! tries to
! negroes
m he is
3 judged
t a fool
he sword
let more
1 (in the
/' The
eatly in
loes not

itz, vol. ii.

spread," while the very mention of making a proverb as some-
thing likely to happen, shows a Innd where ]n-ovcrb-mnking is
still a living art. Transplanted to the West Indies, the African
keeps up this art, as witness these sayings : " Behind dog it is
dog, ])ut before dog it is Mr. Dog ; " and " Toutc cabinetto tini
maringouin " — " Every cabin has its mosquito."

The proverb lias not changed its character in the course of
history ; but has retained from first to last a precisely definite
type. The proverbial sayings recorded among the higher
nations of the world arc to be reckoned by tens of thousands,
and have a large and well-knoAvn literature of their own. But
though the range of existence of proverbs extends into the
highest levels of civilization, this is scarcely true of their develop-
ment. At the level of European culture in the middle ages,
they have indeed a vast importance in popular education, but
their period of actual growth seems already at an end. Cer-
vantes raised the proverb-monger's craft to a j^itcli it never sur-
passed ; but it must not be forgotten that the incomparable
Sanclio's wares were mostly heirlooms ; for proverbs were even
then sinking to remnants of an earlier condition of society. As
such they survive among ourselves, who go on using much the
same relics of ancestral wisdom as came out of the squire's in-
exhaustible budget, old saws not to 1)e lightly altered or made
anew in our changed modern times. We can collect and use
the old proverbs, but making new ones has become a feeble,
spiritless imitation, like our attempts to invent new myths or
new nursery rhymes.

Kiddles start near proverbs in the history of civilization,
and they travel on long together, though at last towards
different ends. By riddles are here meant the old-fashioned
problems with a real answer intended to be discovered, such as
the t^'pical enigma of the Sphinx, and not the modern verbal
conundrums set in the traditional form of question and answer,
as a way of bringing in a jest apropos of nothing. The original
kind, which ma}- be defined as " sense-riddles," are found at
home among the upper savages, and range on into the lower
and middle civilization ; and while their growth stops at this
level, many ancient specimens have lasted on in the modern

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SURVIVAL in CULTUKE.

nursery and by the cottage fireside. There is a plain reason
why riddles should belong to only the higher grades of savagery ;
their making requires a fair power of ideal comparison, and
knowledge must have made considerable advance before this
process could become so familiar as to fall from earnest into
sport. At last, in a far higher state of culture, riddles begin to
be looked on as trifling, their growth ceases, and they only sur-
vive in remnants for children's play. Some examples, chosen
among various races, from savagery upwards, will show more
exactly the place in mental history which the riddle occupies.

The following are specimens from a collection of Zulu
riddles, recorded with quaintly simple native comments on the
philosophy of the matter : — Q. " Guess ye some men who are
many and form a row ; they dance the wedding-dance, adorned
in white hip-dresses ?" A. " The teeth ; we call them men who
form a row, for tlie teeth stand Uke men who are made ready
for a wedding-dance, that they may dance well. When we say,
they are ' adorned with white hip-dresses,' we put that in, that
people may not at once think of teeth, but be drawn away from
them by thinking, ' It is men who put on white hip-dresses,'
and continually have their thoughts fixed on men," etc. Q.
" Guess ye a man who does not lie down at night : he lies down
in the morning until the sun sets ; he then awakes, and works
all night ; he does not wark by day ; he is not seen when he
works?" A. "The closing-poles of the cattle-pen." Q. "Guess
ye a man whom men do not like to laugh, for it is known that
his laughter is a very great cvi!, and is followed by lamenta-
tion, and an end of rejoicing. Men weep, and trees, and grass ;
and everything is heard weeping in the tribe where he laughs ;
and they say the man has laughed who does not usually laugh?"
A. " Fire. It is called a man that what is said may not be at
once evident, it being concealed by the word ' man.' Men say
many things, searching out the meaning in rivalry, and missing
the mark. A riddle is good when it is not discernible at once,"
etc.^ Among the .Ba'utos, riddles are a recognized part of
education, and are set like exercises to a whole company of

' Callaway, ' Nursery Tales, etc. of Zulus,' vol. i. p. 364, etc.

SUllVIVAL IN CULTURE.

;n say

puzzled children. Q. " Do you know what throws itself from
the mountain-top without being broken?" A. "A water-
fall." Q. " There's a thing that travels fast without legs or
wings, and no cliff, nor river, nor wall can stop it ?" A. " The
voice." Q. " Name the ten trees with ten flat stones on the top
of them." A. "The fingers." Q. "Who is the little im-
movable dumb boy who is dressed up warm in the day and left
naked at night?" A. "The bed-clothes' peg."i From East
Africa, this Swahili riddle is an example : Q. " My lien has laid
among thorns?" A. " A pineapple."^ From "West Africa, this
Yoniba one : " A long slender trading woman who never gets to
market?" A. "A canoe (it stops at the landing-place)."'' In
Poljrnesia, the Samoau islanders are given to riddles. Q. "There
are four brothers, who are always bearing about their father ? "
A. "The Samoan pillow," which is a yard of three-inch bamboo
resting on four leg's. Q. " A white-headed man stands above
the fence, and reache- to the heavens?" A. " The smoke of the
oven." Q. " A man who stands between two rav^ lous fish ?"
A. "The tongue.""* (There is a Zulu riddle like this, which
compares the tongue to a man living in the midst of enemies
fighting.) The following are old Mexican enigmas : Q. " What
are the ten stones one has at his sides ? " A. " The finger-
nails." Q. " What is it we get into by three parts and out
of by one ? " A. " A shirt." Q. " What goes through a valley
and drags its entrails after it ? " A. " A. needle."^

These riddles found among the Ic v^er races do not differ at all
in nature from those that have come down, sometimes modern-
ized in the setting, into the nursery lore of Europe. Thus
Spanish children still ask, " What is the dish of nuts that is
gathered by day, and scattered by night ? " (the stars.) Our
English riddle of the pair of tongs : " Long legs, crooked thighs,
little head, and no eyes," is primitive enough to have been

^ Casalis, ' Etudes sur la langiic Sethuana,' p. 91 ; * Basutos,' p. 337.

' Steere, ' Swahili Tales,' p. 418.

' Burton, 'Wit and "Wisdom from West Africa,' p. 212.

* Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 216. See Polaek, ' New Zealanders,' vol. ii. p. 171.

* Sahagun, ' Historia de Nueva Espaua,' in Kingsborough's ' Antiquities of
Mexico,' vol. vii. p. 178.

c 2

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

made by a South Sea Islander. The following is on the same
theme as one of the Zulu riddles : " A flock of white sheep, On
a red hill ; Here they go, there they go ; Now they stand still ? '*
Another is the very analogue of one of the Aztec specimens :
" Old Mother Twitchett had but one eye. And a long tail w^hich
she let fly ; And every time she went over a gap, She left a bit
of her tail in a trap ? "

So thoroughly does riddle-making belong to the mythologie
stage of thought, that any poet's simile, if not too far-fetched,^
needs only inversion to be made at once into an enigma. The
Hindu calls the Sun Saptasva, i. e., " seven-horsed," while, with
the same thought, the old German riddle asks, " What is the
chariot drawn by seven white and seven black horses ? " (the
year, drawn by the seven days and nights of the week.^) Such,
too, is the Greek riddle of the two sisters. Day and Night, who
give birth each to the other, to be born of her again :

EiVl KatriytnfjTou Sirral, oiv i) fxla r'lKTti

and the enigma of Kleoboulos, with its other like fragments of
rudimentary mythology :

Els 6 irari)p, na7S(s 8i SviiSeKa' tuiv Se 7' iKiSurrcp
Tlatifs Kaat Tpi^Kovr' ^cSix"' «?5oy «x<'*"''<*'*
'Hi (jifv \(vKal iaffiv iSety, y 8* o5re jue\a(cat'
'Adivaroi 8e t' iovarai airo^divovaiv airacTM.

" One is tho father, and twelve the children, and, born unto each one.
Maidens thirty, whose form in twain is parted asunder,
White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,
All immortal in being, yet doomed to dwindle and perish."*

Such questions as these may be fairly guessed now as in old
times, and must be distinguished from that scarcer class which
require the divination of some unlikely event to solve them.
Of such the typical example is Samson's riddle, and there is an
old Scandinavian one like it. The story is that Gestr found a

* Grimm, p.

' Diog. Laert. i. 91 ; Atlienagorns, x. 451.

SURVIVAL IN CULTUllE.

duck sitting on her nest in an ox's horned skull, and thereupon
propounded a riddle, describing with characteristic Northman's
metaphor the ox with its horns fancied as already made into
drinking-horns. The following translation does not exaggerate
the quaintness of the original : — " Joying in children, the bill-
goose grew, And her building-timbers together drew ; The biting
grass-shearer screened her bed, With the maddening drink-
stream overhead." ^ Many of the old oracular responses are
puzzles of precisely this kind. Such is the story of the Delphic
oracle, which ordered Temenos to find a man mtli three eyes to
guide the army, which injunction he fulfilled by meeting a one-
eyed man on horseback.- It is curious to find this idea r.gain
in Scandinavia, where Odin sets King Heidrek a riddle, '' Who
are they two that fare to the Thing with three eyes, ten feet,
and one tail ? " the answer being, the one-eyed Odin himself on
liis eight-footed horse Sleipnir.^

The close bearing of the doctrine of survival on the study of
manners and customs is constantly coming into view in ethno-
graphic research. It seems scarcely too rAuch to assert, once for
all, that meaningless customs must be survivals, that they had
n practical, or at least ceremonial, intention when and where
they first arose, but are now fallen into absurdity from having
been carried on into a new state of society, where their original
sense has been discarded. Of course, new customs introduced
in particular ages may be ridiculous or wicked, but as a rule
they have discernible motives. Explanations of this kind, by
recourse to some forgotten meaning, seem on the whole to
account best for obscure customs which some have set down to
mere outbreaks of spontaneous folly. A certain Zimmermann,
who published a heavy ' Geographical History of Mankind ' in

* Mannhardt's • Zeitschr. fiir Deutsche Mytliologie,' vol. iii. p. 2, etc. :

" Nog er forthun nosgfis vaxin,
Barngjoni su er bar bdtimbr saman ;
Hlifthu lieniii halms bitskdlmir,
Th(5 Id Jrykkjar drynhronn yfir."

•« See Grote, ' Hist, of Greece,' vol. ii. p. 5.

* Mannhai-dt's 'Zeitschr.' ]. 0.

SURVIVAL IX CULTURE.

.i: i'

the last century, remarks as follows on the prevalence of similar
nonsensical and stupid customs in distant countries : — " For if
two clever heads may, each for himself, hit upon a clever inven-
tion or discovery, then it ife- far likelier, considering the much
larger total of fools and blockheads, that like fooleries should bo
given to two far distant lands. If, then, the inventive fool be
likewise a man of importance and influence, as is, indeed, an
extremely frequent case, then both nations adopt a similar
folly, and then, centuries after, some historian goes through it
to extract his evidence for the derivation of these two nations
one from the other." ^

Strong views as to the folly of mankind seem to have been in
the air about the time of the French Revolution. Lord Chester-
field was no doubt an extremely different person from our
German philosopher, but they were quite at one as to the
absurdity of customs. Advising his son as to the etiquette
of courts, the Earl writes thus to him : — " For example, it is
respectful to bow to the King of England, it is disrespectful to
bow to the King of France ; it is the rule to courtesy to the
Emperor ; and the prostration of the whole body is required by
Eastern Monarchs. These are established ceremonies, and must
be complied with ; but why they were established, I defy sense
and reason to tell us. It is the same among all ranks, where
certain customs are received, and must necessarily be complied
with, though by no means the result of sense and reason. As
for instance, the very absurd, though almost universal custom
of drinking people's healths. Can there be anything in the
world less relative to any other man's health, than my drinking
a glass cf wine? Common sense, certainly, never pointed it
out, but yet common sense tells me I must conform to it." ^
Now, though it might be difficult enough to make sense of the
minor details of court etiquette, Lord Chesterfield's example from
it of the iiTationality of mankind is a singularly unlucky one.
Indeed, if any one were told to set forth in few words the rela-
tions of the people to their rulers in different states of society,

' E. A. W. Zimmermann, ' Geographische Geschichte des Menschen,' etc., 1778
-83, vol. iii. See Roll ■ itoa'a Inaugural Address, British Association, 1870.
2 Earl of Chesterfield, ♦ Letters to his Son,' vol. ii. No. Ixviii.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

he might answer that men grovel on their faces before the King
of Siam, kneel on one knee or uncover before a European
monarch, and shake the hand of the President of the United
States as though it were a pump-handle. These are ceremonies
at ouce intelligible and significant. Lord Chesterfield is more
fortunate in his second instance, for the custom of drinking
healths is really of obscure origin. Yet it is closely connected
with an ancient rite, practically absurd indeed, but done with a
conscious and serious intention which lands it quite outside the
region of nonsense. This is the custom of pouring out libations
and drinking at ceremonial banquets to gods and the dead.
Thus the old Scandinavians drank the " minni " of Thor, Odin,
and Freya, and of kings likewise at their funerals. The custom
did not die out with the conversion of the northern nations, who
changed the object of worship and drank the "minnc" of Christ,
of Mary, of Michael, and then, in later centuries, of St. John and
St. Gertrude, and so up to modem years, when it was reckoned a
curious relic of antiquity that the priest of Otbergen still once
a year blessed a goblet, and the people drank John's blessing
in it. The " minne " was at once love, memory, and the thought
of the absent, and it long survived in England in the " min-
nying " or " mynde " days, on which the memory of the dead
was celebrated by services or banquets. Such evidence as this
fairly justifies the writers, older and neAver, who have treated
these ceremonial drinking usages as in their nature sacrificial^
As for the practice of drinking the health of living men, its
ancient history reaches us from several districts inhabited by
Aryan nations. The Greeks in symposium drank to one an-
other, and the Romans adopted the habit (jtpo-niviw, propi-
nare, Graeco more bibere). The Goths cried " hails 1 " as they
pledged each other, as we have it in the curious first line of the
verses " De conviviis barbaris " in the Latin Anthology, which
sets down the shouts of a Gothic drinking-bout of the fifth
century or so, in words which still partly keep their sense to an
English ear : —

" Inter eila Goticum scapiamatziaia drincan
Non audet quisqram dignos educere versus."

' See Giimii ip. 59.-5, 1201 ; Brand, vol. ii. pp. 311, 325, etc.

SURVIVAL IN CULTUBK.

As for ourselves, though the old drinking salutation of " wa3S
heel I " is no longer vulgar English, the formula lomains with
us, stiffened into a noun. On the whole, the evidence of ancient
and wide prevalence of the custom of drinking to the living
seems not accompanied with a sufficient clue to its rational
origin, although, by comparison with the custom of drinking to
gods and the dead, we may take for granted that it had one.

Let us now put the theory of survival to a somewhat severe
test, by seeking from it some explanation of the existence, in
practice or memory, within the limits of modern civilized society,
of three remarkable groups of customs which civilized ideas
totally fail to account for. Though we may not succeed in
giving clear and absolute explanations of their motives, at any
rate it is a step in advance to be able to refer their origins to
savage or barbaric antiquity. Looking at these customs from
the modern practical point of view, one is ridiculous, the others
are atrocirus, and all are senseless. The iirst is the practice of
salutation on sneezing, the second the rite of laying the founda-
tions of a building on a human victim, the third the prejudice
against saving a drowning man.

In interpreting the customs connected with sneezing, it is
needful to recognize a prevalent doctrine of the lowc^ races, of
which a full account will be given in another chapter. As a
man's soul is considered to go in and out of his body, so it is
with other spirits, particularly such as enter into patients and
possess them or afflict them with disease. Amotg the less
cultured races, the connexion of this idea with sneezing is best
shown i>,mong the Zulus, a people firmly persuaded that kindly
or angry spirits of the dead hover about them, do them good or
harm, stand visibly before them in dreams, enter into them, and
cause diseases in them. The following particulars are abridged
from the native statements taken down by Dr. Callaway: —
When a Zulu sneezes, he will say, "I am now blessed. The
Idhlozi (ancestral spirit) is with me ; it has come to me. Let
me hasten and praise it, for it is it which causes me to
sneeze ! " So he praises the manes of the family, asking for
cattle, and Avives, and blessings. Sneezing is a sign that a sick
person will be restored to health ; he returns thanks after

SURVIV.^L IX CULTURE.

sneezing, saying, " Yo people of ours, I have gained that pros-
perity which I wanted. Continue to look on nio with favour ! "
Sneezing reminds a man that ho should name the Itongo
(ancestral spirit) of his people without delay, because it is the
Itongo which causes him to sneeze, that he may perceive by
.sneezing that the Itongo is with him. If a man is ill and does
not sneeze, those who come to him ask whether he has sneezed
or not ; if he has not sneezed, they murmur, raying, " The
disease is great ! " If a child sneezes, they say to it, " Grow ! "
it is a sign of health. So then, it is said, sneezing among black
men gives a man strength to remember that the Itongo has
entered into him and abides with him. The Zulu diviners or
sorcerers are very apt to sneeze, which they regard as an indica-
tion of the presence of the spirits, whom they adore hy saying
" Makosi ! " {I.e., lords or masters). It is a suggestive example
of the transition of such customs as the.se from one religion to
another, that the Amakosa, who used to call on their divine
ancestor Utixo when tlioy sneezed, since their conversion to
Christianity say, "Preserver, look upon me ! " or, "Creator of
heaven and earth ! " ^ Elsewhere in Africa, similar ideas are
mentioned. Sir Thomas Browne, in his ' Vulgar Errors,' made
well known the story that when the King of Monomotapa
sneezed, acclamations of blessing passed from mouth to mouth
through the city ; but he should have mentioned that Godigno,
from whom the original account is taken, said that this took
place when the king drank, or coughed, or sneezed.^ A later
account from the other side of the continent is more to the
purpose. In Guinea, in the last century, when a principal
persona^re .sneezed, all present fell on their knees, kissed the
earth, clapped thoir hands, and wished him all happiness and
prosperity.^ With a different idea, the negroes of Old Calabar,
when a child sneezes, will sometimes exclaim, " Far from you ! "
with an appropriate gesture as if throwing off some evil.*
Polj-nesia is another region vhere the sneezing salutation is

^ Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' pp. 64, 222—5, 263.

^ Godignus, 'Vita Tatris Gouzali SylveriiX}.' Col. Agripp. 1616 ; lib. ii. c. x.

■' Bosman, 'Guinea,' letter xviii. in Piiikerton, vol. xvi. p. 478.

^ Burton, ' Wit i).nd Wisdom from West Africa,' p. 373.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

well marked. In New Zealand, a charm was said to prevent
evil when a child sneezed ; ^ if a Samoan sneezed, the by-
standers said, " Life to you ! " ° wliile in the Tongan gi-oup a
sneeze on the starting of an expedition was a most evil pre-
sage.' A curious American instance dates from Hernando de
Soto's famous expedition into Florida, when Guachoya, a
native chief, came to pay him a visit. " While this was going
on, the cacique Guachoya gave a great sneeze ; the gentlemen
who had come with him and wore lining the walls of the hall
among the Spaniards there all at once bowing their heads,
opening their arms and closing them again, and making other
gestures of great veneration and respect, saluted him with
diflferent words, all directed to one end, saying, ' The Sun guard
thee, be with thee, enlighten thee, magnify thee, protect thee,
favour thee, defend thee, prosper thee, save thee,' and other
like phrases, as the words came, and for a good space there
lingered the murmur of these words among them, whereat the
governor wondering said to the gentlemen and captains with
him, ' Do you not see that all the world is one ? ' This matter
was well noted among the Spaniards, that among so barbarous
a people should be used the same ceremonies, or greater, than
among those who hold themselves to be very civilized. Whence
it may be believed that this manner of salutation is natural
among all nations, and not caused by a pestilence, as is vulgarly
said," etc.*

In Asia and Europe, the sneezing superstition extends through
a wide range of race, age, and country.^ Among the passages
relating to it in the classic ages of Greece and Rome, the follow-
ing are some of the most characteristic, — the lucky sneeze of

» Shortland, 'Trads. of New Zealand,' p. 131.

^ Turner, ' Polynesia,' p. 348 ; see also Williams, * Fiji,' vol i. p. 250.

■ Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. i, p. 456.

* Garcilaso de la Vega, ' His<;. do la Florida,' vol. iii. ch. xli.

' Among dissertations on the subject, see especially Sir Thos. Browne,
' Pseudodoxia Epideniica ' (Vulgar Errois), book iv. chap. ix. ; Brand, * Popular
Antiquities,' vol. iii. p. 119, etc. ; R. G. Haliburton, ' New Materials for the
History of Man.' Halifax, N. S. 1863 ;• Encyclopaedia Britannica,' art. 'snee-
zing ;' "Wemsdorf, ' De Ritu Sternutantibus bene precandi.' Leipzig, 1741 ; see
also Grimm, D. M. p. 1070, note.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

!)1

Telcmachos in tho Odysnoy ; ^ tho soltlicr's sneeze and the shout
of adoration to tlio god which rose along the ranks, and which
Xenophon appealed to as a favourable omen ; " Aristotle's
remark that pe(>j)le consider a sneeze as divine {tov iuv Trrapfiov
6thv I'lyovixfOa tlvai), but not a cough,'' etc, ; tho Greek epigratu
on the man with the long nose, who did not say Z«C (rwarov whvu
ho sneezed, for the noise was too far oflf for him to hear ; ' Petro-
nius Arbiter's mention of tho custom of saying " Salve ! " to one
who sneezed ; " and Pliny's question, " Cur sternutamcntis salu-
tamus?" apropos of which he remarks that even Tiberius
Ca3sar, that saddest of men, exacted this observance." Similar
rites of sneezin*; have long been observed in Eastern Asia."
When a Hindu Kucezos, bystanders say, " Live ! " and the
sneezer replies, " With you ! " It is an ill omen, to which
among c thers the Thugs paid great regard on starting on an
expedition, and which even compelled them to let tho travellers
with them escape.**

The Jewish sneezing formula is, "Tobim chayini ! " i.e.,
"Good life ! "» Th Moslem says, " Praise to Allah ! " when
he sneezes, and his I'rir ds compliment him with proper for-
mulas, a custom whi cms to be conveyed from race to race
wherever Islam extL.ul Lastly, the custom ranged through
mediseval into modern Europe. To cite old German examples,
" Die Heiden nicht endorften niesen, dS, man doch sprichet
* Nu helfiu Got ! '" " Wir sprechen, swer niuset, Got helfe dir." "
For a combined English and French example, the following

• Homer Odyss. xvii. 541.

* Xenophon Anabasis, iii. 2, 9.
' Ai'istot. Problem, xxxiii. 7.

* Anthologia Grteca, Brunck, vol. iii. p. 95.
» Petron. Arb. Sat. 98.

" Plin. xxviii. 5.

7 Noel, ' Die. dcs Origines ; ' Migne, 'Die. des Superstitions,' etc. Bastian,
* Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 129.

" "Ward, ' Hindoos,' voL i. p. 142 ; Dubois, • Peuples do I'lnde,' vol. i. p. 465 ;
Sleeman, ' Ramaseeana,' p. 120.

• Buxtorf, 'Lexicon Chaldaicum ;* Tendlau, ' Sprichworter, etc. Deutsch-
Jiidischer Vorzeit.' Frankf. a. M.; 1860, p. 142.

>" Lane, 'Modem Egyptians,' vol. i. p. 282. See Grant, in 'Tr. Etli. Soc'
vol. iii. p. 90.
" Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 1070, 1110.

NUItVIVAL IN CULTUIIK.

lincH (a.I). 1100) may serve, which Hhow our old formula "woes
luL'I ! " (" may you bo well ! " — " wassail ! ") used also to avert
being taken ill after a sneeze : —

" E pur lino foyzo OHtornuor
Tantot ([uidont mal trouor,
Si ucahdl no dio/ aproz . " '

In the 'Rules of Civility* (a.D. 1(585, translated from the
French) we read : — " If his lordship chances to sneeze, you are
not to bawl out, ' God bless you, sir,' but, pulling off youi hat,
bow to him handsomely, and make that obsecration to your-
self." ^ It is noticed that Anabaptists and Quakers rejected
these with other salutations, but they remained in the code of
English good manners among high and low till half a century
or so ago, and are so little forgotten now, that most people still
see the point of the story of the fiddler anil his wife, where his
sneeze and hnr hearty " God bless you ! " brought about the
removal of the fiddle case. " Gott hilf ! " may still be h&ard in
Germany, and " Feliciti^ ! " in Italy.

It is not strange that the existence of these absurd customs
should have been for ages a puzzle to curious inquireis. Espe-
cially the legend-mongers took the matter in hand, and their
attempts to devise historical explanations are on record in a
group of philosophic myths, — Greek, Jewish, Christian. Prome-
theus prays for the preservation of his artificial man, when it
gives the first sign of life by a sneeze ; Jacob prays that man's
soul may not, as heretofore, depart from his body when he
sneezes ; Pope Gregory prays to avert the pestilence, in those
days when the air was so deadly that he who sneezed died of
it; and from these imaginary events legend declares that the use
of the sneezing formulas was handed down. It is more to our
purpose to notice the existence of a corresponding set of ideas
and customs connected with gaping. Among the Zulus repeated
yawning and sneezing arc classed together as signs of approach-

* 'Manuel cles Pecclifis,' in Wedgwood, 'Die. English Etymology,' s. v.
* wassail. '
2 Brand, vol. iii. p. 126.

,! {

SURVIVAL IN CULTUUK.

8. V.

ing spiritual possession.^ Tho Hindu, wlicn lio gapes, must
snap his thumh and Hnger, and lopeat tho name of somo god,
as llama : to n(!glt'ct this is a sin as great as tho murder of a
Bralnnan.^ Tho Persians ascribe yawning, sneezing, etc., to
demoniacu! posscrisioii. Amung tho nio(h^rn Mosh'ms generally,
when a man yawiH, lie puts tiio back of liis left lumd ^o his
mouth, saying, " T seek refuge witli Alhdi from Satan tljo
accursed ! " but tlio act of yawning is to bo avoided, for tlio
Devil is in the habit of leaping into a gaping moutli.'' Tliis
may very likely bo tho meaning of the Jewish proverb, " Open
not thy mouth to Sr, an ! " The other half of this idea shows
itself clearly in Josephus' story of his having seen a certain
Jew, named Elcazar, euro demoniacs in Vespasian's time, by
drawing the demons out through their nostrils, by means of a
ring containing a root of mystic virtue mentioned by Solomon.*
Tho accounts of the sect of the Mcssalians, who used to spit
and blow their noses to expel the demons they might have
drawn in with their breath,'' the records of the medijeval exor-
cists driving out devils through tho patients' nostrils," and the
custom, still kept up in tho Tyrol, of crossing oneself when one
yawns, lest something evil should como into one's mouth,'''
involve similar ideas. In comparing the modern Kafir ideas
with those of other districts of the world, we find a distinct
notion of a sneeze being due to a spiritual presence. This,
which seems indeed the key to the whole matter, has been
well brought into view by Mr. Haliburton, as displayed in
Keltic folklore, in a group of stories turning on the super-
stition that any one who sneezes is liable to be carried off'
by the fairies, unless their po'ver be counteracted by an invo-
cation, as " God bless you ! " ** The corresponding idea as to

' Callaway, p. 2G3.
' Waul, 1. c.

* ' Pcnd-Nanieli,* tr. do Sacy, cli. Ixiii. ; Manrj', 'Magic,' etc., p. 302;
Lane, 1. c.

* G. IJrechcr, ' Daa Trauscendentale im Talmud,' p. 168 ; Joseph. Ant.
Jud. viii. 2, 5.

* Migne, ' Die. des Hdrdsies,' s. v.

^ Bastian, 'Mcnsch,' voL ii. pp. 115, 322.

7 Wiittke, 'Deutsclio Volksaberglaube,'p, 137.

* Haliburton, op. cit.

r ?■■

& '! i

Itf

1)4

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

ya\.ning is to be found in an Iceland folklore legend, where
the troll, who has transformed herself into the shape of the
beautiful queen, says, " When I yawn a little yawn, I am a
neat and tiny maiden ; when I yawn a half-yawn, then I am as
a half-troll ; when I yawn a whole yawn, then am I as a whole
troll," ' On the whole, though the sneezing superstition makes
no approach to universality among mankind, its wide distribu-
tion is highly remarkable, and it would be an interesting
problem to decide how far this wide distribution is due to
independent growth in several regions, how far to conveyance
from race to race, and how far to ancestral inheritance. Here
it ha,s only to be maintained that it was not originally an arbi-
trary and meaningless custom, but the working out of a prin-
ciple.^ The plain statement by the modern Zulus fits with the
hints to be gained from ihe superstition and folklore of other
races, to connect the no+ions and practices as to sneezing with
the ancient and savage doctrine of pervading and invading
spirits, considered as good or evil, and treated accordingly.
The lingering survivals of the quaint old formulas in modern
Europe seem an unconscious record of the time when the
explanation of sneezing had not yet been given over to physio-
logy, but was still in the " theological stage."

There is current in Scotland the belief that the Picts, to
Avhom local legend attributes buildings of prehistoric antiquity,
bathed their foundation-stones with human blood ; and legend
oven tells that St. Columba found it necessary to bury St. Oran
alive beneath the foundation of his monastery, in order to pro-
pitiate the spirits of the soil who demolished by night what
was built during the day. So late as 1843, in Germany, when
a new bridge was built at Halle, a notion was abroad among
the people that a child was wanted to be built into the founda-
tion. These ideas of church or wall or bridge wanting human
l)lood or an immured yictim to make the foundation steadfast,

' Powell and Magiiussen, ' Legends of Iceland,' 2nd ser. p. 448.

- The cases in which a sneeze is interpreted under special conditions, as with
reference to right and left, early riorning, etc. (see Plutarch. De Genio
Socratis, etc.), are not considered here, as they helong to ordinary omen-
divination.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

legend

as with
3 Genio
f omen-

are not only widespread in European folklore, but local chro-
nicle or adition asserts them as matter of historical fact in
district utter district. Thus, when the broken dam of the Nogat
had to be repaired in 1463, the peasants, ou the advice to throw
in a living man, are said to have made a beggar drunk and
buried him there. Thuringian legend declares that to make
the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was
oought for hard money of its mother and walled in. It was
eating a cake while the masons were at work, the story goes,
and it cried out, "Mother, I see thee still;" then later, "Mother,
I see thee a little still ; " and, as they put in the last stone,
" Mother, now I see thee no more." The wall of Copenhagen,
legend says, sank as fast as it was built ; so they took an in-
nocent little girl, set her on a chair at a table with toys and
eatables, and, as she played and ate, twelve master-masons
closed a vault over her; then, with clanging music, the wall
was raised, and stood firm ever after. Thus Italian legend tells
of the bridge of Arta, that fell in and fell in till they walled in
the master-builder's wife, and she spoke her dying curse that
the bridge should tremble like a flower-stalk henceforth. The
Slavonic chiefs founding Detinez, according to old heathen
custom, sent out men to take the first boy they met and bury
him in the foundation. Servian legend tells how three brothers
combined to build the fortress of Skadra (Scutari) ; but, year
after year, the demon (vila) razed by night Avhat the three
hundred masons built by day. The fiend must be appeased by
a human sacrifice, the first of the three wives who should come
bringing food to the workmen. All three brothers swore to
keep the dreadful secret from their wives ; but the two eldest
gave traitorous warning to theirs, and it was the youngest
brother's wife who came unsuspecting, and they built her in.
But she entreated that an opening should be left for her to
suckle her baby through, and for a twelvemonth it was brought.
To this day, Servian wives visit the tomb of the good mother, still
marked by a stream of water which trickles, milky with lime,
down the fortress wall. Lastly, there is our own legend of Vor-
tigem, who could not finish his tower till the foundation-stone
was wetted with the blood of a child born of a mother without

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

■i f

I- I

a father. As is usual in the history of sacrifice, "we hear of sub-
stitutes for such victims ; empty coffins walled up in Germany,
a lamb walled in under the altar in Denmark to make the
church stand fast, and the churchyard in like manner hand-
selled by burying a live horse first. In modern Greece an
evident relic of the idea survives in the superstition that the
first passer-by after a foundation-stone is Li id will die within
the year, wherefore the masons will compromise the debt by
killing a lamb or a black cock on the stone. With much the
same idea German legend tells of the bridge-building fiend
cheated of his promised fee, a soul, by the device of making a
cock run first across ; and thus German folklore says it is well,
before entering a new house, to let a cat or dog run in.^ From
all this it seems that, with due allowance for the idea having
passed into an often repeated and varied mythic theme, yet
written and unwritten tradition do preserve the memory of a
bloodthirsty barbaric rite, which not only really existed in
ancient times, but lingered long in European history. If now
we look to less cultured countries, we shall find the rite actually
known as matter of modern religion. The thing has been done
within modern years, and very likely will be done again.

In Africa, in Galam, a boy and girl used to be buried alive
before the great gate of the city to make it impregnable, a
practice once executed on a large scale by a Bambarra tyrant ;
while in Great Bassam and Yarriba such sacrifices were usual at
the foundation of a house or village." In Polynesia, Ellis heard
of the custom, instanced by the fact that the central pillar of one
of the temples at Maeva was planted upon the body of a human
victim.^ In Borneo, among the Milanau Dayaks, at the erection
of the largest house a deep hole was dug to receive the first
post, which was then suspended over it ; a slave girl was placed
in the excavation ; at a signal the lashings were cut, and the
enormous timber descended, crushing the girl to death, a sacri-

1 W. Scott, •Minstrelsy of Scottisli Border ; ' Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of
Scotland,' vol. 1. p. 149, 487; Grimm, 'Deutsche Mytliologic,' p. 972, 1095;
Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 92, 407, vol. iii. p. 105, 112; Jiowring, 'Servian
Popular Poetry,' p. 64.

2 Waitz, vol. ii. p. 197.

2 Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 346 ; Tyerman and Bennet, vol. ii. p. 39.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

fice to the spirits. St. John saw a milder form of the rlto
performed, when the chief of the Quop Dayaks set up a flag-
staff near his house, a chicken being thrown in to be crushed
by the descending pole.^ More cultured nations of Southern
Asia have carried on into modern ages the rite of the foundation-
sacrifice. A 17th century account of Japan mentions the belief
there that a wall laid on the body of a willin*^ human victim
would be secure from accident ; accordingly, when a great wall
was to be built, some wretched slave would offer himself as
foundation, lying down in the trench to be crushed by the
heavy stones lowered upon him.^ When the gate of the new
city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, was built, perhaps twenty years
ago, Mason was told by an eye-witness that a criminal was
put in each post-hole to become a protecting demon. Thus it
appears that such stories as that of the human victims buried
for spirit-watchers under the gates of Mandalay, of the queen
who was drowned in a Birmese reservoir to make the dyke safe,
of the hero whose divided body was buried under the fortress of
Thatung to make it impregnable, are the records, whether in
historical or mythical form, of the actual customs of the land.^
Within our own dominion, when Rajah Sala Byne was building
the fort of Sialkot in the Punjaub, the foundation of the south-
east bastion gave way so repeatedly that he had recourse to a
soothsayer, who assured him that it would never stand until
the blood of an only son was shed there, wherefore the only
son of a widow was sacrificed.'* It is thus plain that hideous
rites, of which Europe has scarcely kept up more than the dim
memoiy, have held fast their ancient practice and meaning in
Africa, Polynesia, and Asia, among races who represent in grade,
if not in chronology, earlier stages of civilization.

When Sir Walter Scott, in the 'Pirate,' tells of Bryce the pedlar
refusing to help Mordaunt to save the shipwrecked sailor from
drowning, and even remonstrating with him on the rashness of

' St. John, ' Far East,' vol. i. p. 46 ; see Bastian, vol. ii. p. 407.
' Caron, 'Japan,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 623.

• Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. pp. 193, 214 ; vol. ii. pp. 91, 270 ; vol. iii.
p. 16.

* Bastian, 'Menscli.' vol. iii. p. 107.

rah !• H

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

such a deed, he states aD old superstition of the Shetlanders.
"Are you mad ?" says the pedlar; "you that have lived sae lang
in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man ? Wot ye
not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you
some capital injury?" Were this inhuman thought noticed in
this one district alone, it might be fancied to have had its rise
in some local idea now no longer to be explained. But when
mentions of similar superstitions are collected among the St.
Kilda islanders and the boatmen of the Danube, among French
and English sailors, and even out of Europe and among less
civilized races, we cease to think of local fancies, but look for
some widely accepted belief of the lower culture to account for
such a state of things. The Hindu does not save a man from
drowning in the sacred Ganges, and the islanders of the Malay
archipelago share the cruel notion.^ Of all people the rude
Kamchadals have the prohibition in the most remarkable form.
They hold it a great fault, says Kracheninnikoff, to save a
drowning man ; he who delivers him will be drowned himself.^
Steller's account is more extraordinary, and probably applies
only to cases where the victim is actually dro^vning : he says
that if a man fell by chance into the water, it was a great sin
for him to get out, for as he had been destined to drown he did
wrong in not drowning, wherefore no one would let him into his
dwelling, nor speak to him, nor give him food or a wife, but he
was reckoned for dead ; and even when a man fell into the water
while others were standing by, far from helping him out they would
drown him by force. Now these savages, it appears, avoided
volcanoes because of the spirits who live there and cook their
food ; for a like reason they held it a sin to bathe in hot springs ;
and they believed with fear in a fish-like spirit of the sea, whom
they called Mitgk.^ This spiritualistic belief among the Kam-
chadals is, no doubt, the key to their superstition as to rescuing
drowning men. There is even to be found in modem European
superstition, not only the practice, but with it a lingering sur-
vival of its ancient spiritualistic significance. In Bohemia, a

' Bastian, 'Mensch.' vol. iii. p. 210 ; Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 318.
^ Krachcninnikow, 'Descr. du Kamchatka, Voy. en Sib6rie,' vol. iii. p. 72.
3 Steller, 'Kamtsclxatka,' pp. 265, 274.

i ^
\ 1

ii'

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

p. 72.

recent account (1864) says the fishermen do not venture to
snatch a drowning man from the waters. They fear that the
"Waterman" (i. e., water-demon) "would take away their luck
in fishing, and drown themselves at the first opportunity.^ This
explanation of the prejudice against saving the water-spirit's
victim may be confirmed by a mass of evidence from various
districts of the world. Thus, in discussing the doctrine of sacri-
fice, it will appear that the usual manner of making an otFering
to a well, river, lake, or sea, is simply to cast property, cattle,
or men into the water, which personally or by its in-dwelling
spirit takes possession of them.^ That the accidental drowning
of a man is held to be such a seizure, savage and civilized folk-
lore show by many examples. In New Zealand huge super-
natural reptile-monsters, called Taniwha, live iu river-bends,
and those who are dro^vned are said to be pulled under by
them f the Siamese fears the Pniik or water-spirit that seizes
bathers and drags them under to his dwelling;* in Slavonic
lands it is Topielec (the ducker) by whom men are always
drowned f when some one is drowned in Germany, people re-
collect the religion of their ancestors, and say, " The river-spirit
claims his yearly sacrifice," or, more'simply, " The nix has taken
him:"c_

" Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen,
Am Ende Fischer und Kahn ;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei gethan."

From this point of view it is obvious that to save a sinking man
is to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water-spirit,
a rash defiance of deity which would hardly pass unavenged.
In the civilized world the rude old theological conception of
drowning has long been superseded by physical explanation ;
and the prejudice against rescue from such a death may have

^ J. v. Grohmann, * Aborglaube und Gebriiuclio aus Bohmen,' p. 12.

» Chap. XVIII.

» R. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 48.

* Bastian, • Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 34.

' Hanusch, * Wissenschaft des Slawischen Mythus,' p. 299.

« GriTnm, « Deutsche Myth.' p. 462.

100

SURVIVAL IN CULTUliE.

now almost or altogether disappeared, hut archaic ideas,
diifted on into modern folklore and poetry, still bring to our
view an apparent connexion between the primitive doctrine and
the surviving custom.

As the social development of the world goos on, the weightiest
thoughts and actions may dwindle to mere survival. Original
meaning dies out gradually, each generation leaves fewer and
fewer t j bear it in mind, till it falls out of popular memory, and
in after days ethnography has to attempt, more or less success-
fully, to restore it by piecing together lines of isolated or for-
gotten facts. Children's sports, popular sayings, absurd customs
may be practically vnimportant, but are not philosophically
insignificant, bearing as they do on some of the most instructive
phases of early culture. Tjgly and cruel superstitions njay prove
to be relics of primitive barbarism, for in keeping up such Man
is like Shakespeare's fox,

" Who, no'er so tame, so cherish d, and lock'd up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors."

il'^

CHAPTER IV.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE (continued).

Occult Sciences — [Magical powers attributed by higher to lower races — Magical
processes based on Association of Ideas— Omens— Augury, etc. — Oneiro-
mancy — Hanispication, Scapulimancy, Chiromancy, etc. — Cartomancy, etc.
— Rhabdomancy, Dactyliomancy, Coscinomancy, etc. — Astrology — Intellec-
tual conditions accounting for the peraistence of Magic —Survival passes into
Revival — Witchcraft, originating in savage culture, continues in barbaric
civilization ; its decline in early mediaeval Europe followed by revival ; its
practices and counter-practices belong to earlier culture — Spiritualism has its
source in early stages of culture, in close connexion with witchcraft — Spirit-
rapi)ing and Spirit- writing— Rising in the air — Performances of tied mediums
— I'jactical bearing of the study of Survival.

In examining the survival of opinions in the midst of con-
ditions of society becoming gradually estranged from them, and
tending at last to suppress them altogether, much may be learnt
from the history of one of the most pernicious delusions that ever
vexed mankind, the belief in Magic. Looking at Occult Science
from this ethnographic point of view, I shall instance some of
its branches as illustrating the course of intellectual culture.
Its place in history is briefly this. ,It belongs in its main
principle to the lowest known stages of civilization, and the
lower races, who have not partaken largely of the education of
the world, still maintain it in vigour. From this level it may
be traced upward, much of the savage art holding its ^ilace sub-
stantially unchanged, and many new practices being in course
of time developed, while both the older and newer developments
have lasted on more or less among modern cultured nations.
But during the ages in which progi'essive races have been learn-
ing to submit their opinions to closer and closer experimental
tests, occult science has been breaking down into the condition

102

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

of a survival, in which state we mostly find it among our-
selves.

The modern educated world, rejecting occult science as a
contemptible superstition, has practically committed itself to
the opinion that magic belongs to a lower level of civilization.
It is very instructive to find the soundness of this judgment
undesignedly confirmed by nations whose education has not
advanced far enough to destroy their belief in the craft itself.
In some cases, indeed, the reputation of a race us sorcerers may
depend on their actually putting forward supernatural preten-
sions, or merely on their being isolated and mysterious people.
It is thus with the Lavas of Birma, supposed to be the broken-
down remains of an ancient cultured race, and dreaded as man-
tigers ^^ and with the Budas of Abyssinia, who are at once the
smiths and potters, sorcerers and werewolves of their district.^
But the usual and suggestive state of tl igs is that nations who
believe with the sincerest terror in the reality of the magic art-,
at the same time cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it
more essentially belongs +o, and is more thoroughly at home
among, races less civilized than themselves. The Malays of Ihe
Peninsula, who have adopted Mohammedan religion and civi-
lization, have this idea of the lower tribes of the land, tribes
more or less of their own race, but who have remained in their
early savage condition. The Malays have enchanters of their
own, but consider them infericx to the sorcerers or poyangs be-
longing to the rude Mintira ; to these they will resort for the
cure of diseases and the working of misfortune and death to
their enemies. It is, in fact, the best protection the Mintira
have against their stronger Malay neighbours, tliat these are
careful not to oflfend them for fear of their powers of magical
revenge. The Jakuns, again, are a rude and wild }'ace, whom
the Malays despise as infidels and little higher than animals,
but whom at the same time they fear extremely. To the Malay
the Jakun seems a supernatural being, skilled in divination,
sorcery, and fascination, able to do evil or good according to his
pleasure, whose blessing will be followed by the most fortunate

' Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 119.

» 'Life of Nath. Pearce,' ed. by J. J. Halls, vol. i. p. 2£6.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

103

success, and his curse by the most dreadful consequences ; he
can turn towards the house of an enemy, at whatever distance,
and beat two sticks together till that enemy will fall sick and
die ; he is skilled in herbal physic ; he has the power of charm-
ing the fiercest wild beasts. Thus it is that the Malays, though
they despise the Jakuns, refrain, in many circumstances, from
ill-treating thcm.^ In India, in long-past ages, the dominant
Aryans described the rude indigenes of the land by the epithets
t' "possessed of magical powers," "changing their shape at
wi" "^ To this day, Hindus settled in Chota-Nagpur and Sing-
bhum firmly believe that the Mundas have powers of witchcraft,
whereby they can transform themselves into tigers and other
beasts of prey to devour their enemies, and can witch away the
lives of man and beast ; it is to the wildest and most savage of
*.he tribe that such powers are generally ascribed.^ In Southern
India, again, we hear in past times of Hinduized Dravidians,
the Sudras of Canara, living in fear of the da^moniacal powers
of the slave-caste below them.* In our own day, among Dravi-
dian tribes of the Nilagiri district, the Todas and Badagas are
in mortal dread of the Kurumbas, despised and wretched forest
outcasts, but gifted, it is believed, with powers of destroying
men and animals and property by witchcraft.^ Northern Europe
brings the like contrast sharply into view. The Finns and
Lapps, whose low Tatar barbarism was characterized by sorcery
such as flourishes still among their Siberian kinsfolk, were
accordingly objects of superstitious fear to their Scandinavian
neighbours and oppressors. In the middle ages the name of
Finn was, as it still remains among seafaring men, equivalent
to that of sorcerer, while Lapland witches had a European
celebrity as practitioners of the black art. Ages after the Finns
had risen in the social scale, the Lapps retained much of their old
half-javage habit of life, and with it naturally their witchcraft,
so that even the magic-gifted Finns revered the occult powers

* ' Joum. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 328 ; vol. ii. p. 273; see vol. iv. p. 425.
' Muir, ' Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. p. 435.

3 Dalton, 'Kols,' iii 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. vi. p. 6 ; see p. 16.

* Jas. Gardner, * Faiths of the World,' s. v. 'Exorcism.'

* Shortt, 'Tribes of Neilgherries,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. vii. pp. 247, 277 ; Sir
W. Elliot in 'Trans. Congress of Prehistoric Archseology,' 1868, p. 253.

'I!

lot

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

Mf 2.

of a people more barbarous than themselves. Riihs writes thus
early in the present century : " There arc still sorcerers in Fin-
land, but tV' llest of them l)clievo that the Lapps far
excel them ; oi a, well-experienced magician they say ' That is
quite a Lapp,' and they journey to Lapland for such know-
ledge." ^ All this is of a piece with the survival of such ideas
among the ignorant elsewhere in the civi'ized world. Many a
white man in the West Indies and Africa dreads the incanta-
tions of the Obi-man, and Europe ascribes powers of sorcery to
despi'iod outcast "races maudites," Gypsies and Cagots. To turn
from nations to sects, the attitude of Protestants to Catholics
in this matter is instructive. It was remarked in Scotland :
"There is one opinion which many of them entertain, ....
that a popish priest can cast out devils and cure madness, and
that the Presbyterian clergy have no such power." So Bourne
says of the Church of England clergy, that the vulgar think
them no conjurors, and say none can lay spirits but popish
priests.'^ These aeco^mts are not recent, but in Germany the
same state of things appears to prevail still. Protestants get the
aid of Catholic priests and monks to help them against witch-
craft, to lay ghosts, consecrate horbs, and discover thieves ;^ thus
with unconscious irony judging the relation of Rome toward
modern civilization.

The principal key to the understanding of Occult Science is
to consider it as based on the Association of Ideas, a faculty
which lies at the very foundation of human reason, but in no
small degree of human unreason also. Man, as yet in a
low intellectual condition, having come to associate in thought
those things which he found by experience to be connected
in fact, proceeded erroneously to invert this action, and to
conclude that association in thought must involve similar
connexion in reality. He thus attempted to discover, to
foretell, and to cause events by means of processes which we
can now see to have only an ideal significance. By a vast
mass of evidence from savage, barbaric, and civilized life,

* F. Eiihs, 'Finland,' p. 296 ; Bastian, 'Menscli.' vol. iii. p. 202.
' Brand, • Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 81—3 ; see 313.

• Wuttke, 'Deutsche Yolksaberglaube,' p. 128 ; see 239.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

105

magic arts which have resulted from thus mistaking an ideal
for a real connexion, may bo clearly traced from the lower
culture which they are of, to the higher culture which they
are in.^ Such are the practices whereby a distant person is
to 1x5 affected by acting on something closely associated with
him — his property, clothes ho has worn, and above all, cuttings
of his hair and nails. Not only do savages high and low like the
Australians and Polynesians, and barbarians like the nations of
Guinea, live in deadly terror of this spiteful craft— not only have
the Parsis their sacred ritual prescribed for burying their cut
hair and nails, lest demons and sorcerers should do mischief with
them, but the fear of leaving such clippings and parings about
lest their former owner should be harmed through them, has
by no means died out of European folklore, and the German
peasant, during the days between his child's birth and baptism,
objects to lend anything out of the house, lost witchcraft should
be worked through it on the yet unconsecrated baby.^ As the
negro fetish-man, when his patient does not come in person,
can divine by means of his dirty cloth or cap instead,^ so the
modern clairvoyant professes to feel sympathetically the sensa-
tions of a distant person if communication be made through a
lock of his hair or any object that Iras been in contact with
him."* The simple idea of joining two objects with a cord,
taking for granted that this communication will establish con-
nexion or carry influence, has been worked out in various ways
in the world. In Australia, the native doctor fastens one end
of a string to the ailing part of the patient's body, and by
sucking at the other end pretends to draw out blood for his
relief.^ In Orissa, the Jeypore witch lets down a ball of thread

' For an examination of numerous magical arts, mostly coming under this
category, see 'Eajly History of Slankind,' chaps, vi. and x.

Stanbridge. 'Abor. of Victoria,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. i. p. 299; Ellis,
' Polyn. lies.' vol. i. p. 364 ; J. L. Wilson, ' W. Africa,' p. 215 ; Spiegel, 'Avesta,'
vol, i. p. 124 ; Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 195 ; general references
in ' Early History of Mankind,' p. 129.

» Burton, « W. and W. from West Africa,' p. 411.

* W. Gregory, 'Letters on Animal Magnetism,' p. 128.

« Eyre, 'Australia,' vol. ii. p. 361; Collins, 'New South Wales,' vol. i.
pp. 561, 694.

•'

106

HUItVlVAL IN CULTUllK.

through hiT enomy'H roof to rcacli his body, that by putting tho
other end in her own moutli she may suck his blood.' When a
reindeer is sacrificed at a sick Ostyak's tent-door, the patient
holds in his bund a cord attached to tho victim offered for his
benefit.^ Greek history shows a similar idea, wlicn the citizens
of Ephosus carried a ropo seven furlongs from their walls to
the temple of Artemis, thus to place themselves under her
safeguard against the^ attack of Crujsus ; and in the yet more
striking story of the Kylonians, who tied a cord to the statue
of the goddess when they quitted the asylum, and clung to it
for protection as they crossed v.nliallowed ground ; but by ill-
fate the cord of safety broke and they were mercilessly put to
death.' And in our own day, Buddhist priests in solemn cere-
mony put themselves in communicatioi) with a sacred relic, by
each taking hold of a long thread fastened near it and around
tho temple."*

Magical arts in which the connexion is that of mere analogy
or symbolism are endlessly numerous throughout the course of
civilization. Their common theory may be readily made out
from a few typical cases, and thence applied confidently to the
general mass. The Australian will observe the track of an
insect near a grave, to ascertain the direction where the sorcerer
is to be found, by whose craft the man died.^ The Zulu may
be seen chewing a bit of wood, in order, by this symbolic act, to
soften the heart of the man he wants to buy oxen from, or of
the woman lie wants for a wife.* The Obi-man of West Africa
makes his packet of grave-dust, blood, and bones, that this
suggestive representation of death may bring his enemy to the
grave.^ The Khond sets up the iron arrow of the War-god in a
basket of rice, and judges from its standing upright that war
must be kept up also, or from its falling that the quarrel may
be let fall too ; and when he tortures human victims sacrificed

» Shortt, in ' Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. vi. p. 278.

2 Bastian, 'Menseli.' vol. iii. p. 117.

' See Grote, vol. iii. pp. 113, 351.

* Hardj', 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 241.

6 Oldfield, in ' Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. p. 246.

« Grout, ' Zulu-land,' p. 134.

' See specimen and description in the Christy Museum.

SUUVIVAL IN CULTUUK.

107

to tho Earth-goddoss, ho rejoices to sco them shed j)leiitifiil
tears, wliich betoken copious showers to fall upon his liuid.^
Those are fair examples of the syinhoh'c magic of tlio lower
races, and they are fully rivalled in supers\itions which still
hold their ground in Europe. With (juaint simplicity, tho
German cottager declares that if a dog howls looking down-
ward, it portends a death ; but if upward, then a recovery from
sickness.^ Locks must be opened and bolts drawn in a <lying
man's liouso, that his soul may not be held ftust." The Hessian
lad thinks that he may escape tho conscription by carrying a
baby-girl's cap in his pocket — a symbolic way of repuiliating
manhood.^ Modern Servians, dancing and singing, lead about
a little girl dressed in leaves and flowers, and pour bowls of
water over lier to make the rain come.'' Sailors becalmed will
sometimes whistle for a wind ; but in other weather they hato
whistling at se.i, which raises a whistling gale." Fish, says tho
Cornishman, should be eaten from the tail towards tho head, to
bring the other fishes' heads towards the shore, for eating them
the wrong way turns them from] the coast.'' Ho who has cut
himself should rub the knife with fat, and as it dries, tho wound
will heal ; this is a lingering survival from days when recipes
for sympathetic ointment were to be found in the Pharma-
copoeia.^ Fanciful as these notions are, it should be borne in
mind that they come fairly under definite mental law, depend-
ing as they do on a principle of ideal association, of which wc
can quite understand the mental action, though we deny its
practical results. The clever Lord Chesterfield, too clever to
understand folly, may again be cited to prove tins. He relates
in one of his letters that the king had been ill, and that people
generally expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest

' Mncphersoii, ' India,' pp. 130, 363.
- Wuttke, • Volksabergiaubo,' p. 31.

» R. Hunt, • Pop. Rom. of W. of England,' 2nd ser. p. 165 ; Brand, ' Pop.
Ant.' vol. ii. p. 231.
•• Wuttke, p. 100.
« Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 660.
« Brand, vol. iii. p. 240.
? Hunt, ibid. p. 148.
* Wuttke, p. 165 ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 305.

108

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

lion in the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. "So
wild and capricious is the human mind," he exclaims, by way
of comment. But indeed the thought was neither wild nor
capricious, it was simply such an argument from analogy as the
educated world has at length painfully learnt to be worthless ;
but which, it is not too much to declare, would to this day
carry considerable weight to the minds of four-fifths of the
human race.

A glance at those magical arts which have been systematized
into pseudo-sciences, shows the same underlying principle. The
art of taking omens from seeing and meeting animals, which
includes augury, is familiar to such savages as the Tupis of
Brazil^ and the Dayaks of Borneo,^ and extends upward through
classic civilization. The Maoris may give a sample of the cha-
racter of its rules : they hold it unlucky if an owl hoots during
a consultation, but a council of war is encouraged by prospect
of victory when a hawk flies overhead ; a flight of birds to the
right of the war-sacrifice is propitious if the villages of the tribe
are in that quarter, but if the omen is in the enemy's direction,
the war will be given up.^ Compare these with the Tatar rules,
and it is obvious that similar thoughts lie at the source of both.
Here a certain little owl's cry is a sound of terror, although
there is a white owl which is lucky ; but of all birds the white
falcon is most prophetic, and the Kalmuk bows his thanks for
the good omen when one flies by on the right, but seeing one
on the left turns away his face and expects calamity.* So to
the negro of Old Calabar, the cry of the gi-eat kingfisher bodes
good or evil, according as it is heard on the right or left.^
Here we have the obvious symbolism of the right and left hand,
the foreboding of ill from the owl's doleful note, and the sug-
gestion of victory from the fierce swooping hawk, a thought
which in old Europe made the bird of prey the warrior's omen
of conquest. Meaning of the same kind appears in the

111:,

' Jlagallianes dc Gandavo, p. 125 ; D'Orbi^ny, vol. ii, p. 168.

3 St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 202 ; ' Jomn. Ind. Ardiip.' vol. ii. p. 357.

» Yate, ' New Zealand,' p. 90 ; Polack, vol. i. p. 248.

* Kleram, ' Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 202.

* Burton, 'Wit and "Wisdom from West Africa,' p. 381.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

109

* Angang,' the omens taken from meeting animals and people,
especially on first going out in the morning, as when the
ancient Slaves held meeting a sick man or an old woman to
bode ill-luck. Any one who takes the trouble to go into this
subject in detail, and to study the classic, mediaeval, and
oriental codes of rules, will find that the principle of direct
sjanboUsm still accounts for a fair proportion of them, though
the rest may have lost their early significance, or may have
been originally due to some other reason, or may have been
arbitrarily invented (as a considerable proportion of such devices
must necessarily be) to fill up the gaps in the system. It is still
plain to us why the omen of the crow should be different on the
right or left hand, why a vulture should mean rapacity, a stork
concord, a pelican piety, an ass labour, why tlie fierce conquering
wolf should be a good omen, and the timid hare a bad one, why
bees, types of an obedient nation, should be lucky to a king,
while flies, returning however often they are driven off, should be
signs of importunity and impudence.' And as to the general
principle that animals are ominous to those who meet them, the
German peasant who says a flock of sheep is lucky but a herd
of swine unlucky to meet, and the Cornish miner who turns
away in horror when he meets an old woman or a rabbit on his
way to the pit's mouth, are to this day keeping up relics of
early savagery as genuine as any flint implement dug out of a
tumulus.

The doctrine of dreams, attributed as they are by the lower
and middle races to spiritual intercourse, belongs in so far
rather to religion than to magic. But oneiromancy, the art of
taking omens from dreams by non-natural interpretation, has
its place here. Of the leading principle of such mystical expla-
nation, no better types could be chosen than the details and
interpretations of Joseph's dreams (Genesis xxxvii., xl, xli.),
of the sheaves and the sun and moon and eleven stars, of the
vine and the basket of meats, of thi^ lean and fat kine, and the
thin and full corn-ears. Oneiromancy, thus symbolically inter-

' See Cornelius Agrippa 'Do Occulta Philosophin,' i. 63 ; 'Do Vanitato Scieut.'
37 ; Grimm, « D. M.' p. 1073 ; Hanuscli, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 285 ; Brand, vol. iii.
pp. 184—227.

110

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

il:.

preting the things seen in dreams, is not unknown to the lower
races. A whole Australian tribe has been known to decamp
because one of their number dreamt of a certain kind of owl,
which dream the wise men declared to forebode an attack from
a certain other tribe.' The Kamchadals, people whose minds
ran much on dreams, had special interpretations of some ; thus
to dream of lice or dogs betokened a visit of Russian travellers,
&c." The Zulus, experience having taught them the fallacy
of expecting direct fulfilment of dreams, have in some cases
tried to mend matters by rushing to the other extreme. If
they dream of a sick man that he is dead, and they see the
earth poured into the grave, and hear the funeral lamentation,
and see all his things destroyed, then they say, " Because we
have dreamt of his death he will not die." But if they dream of
a wedding-dance, it is a sign of a funeral.' It is possible that the
Zulus may have adopted these well-known maxims from Euro-
peans. If not, they have worked out, by the same crooked logic
that guided our own ancestors, the axiom that " dreams go by
contraries." It could not be expected, in looking over the
long lists of precepts of classic, oriental, and modern popular
dream-interpretation, to detect the original sense of all their
readings. Many must turn on allusions intelligible at the
time, but now obscure. The Moslem dream-interpretation of
eggs as concerning women, because of a saying of Mohammed
about women being hke an egg hidden in a nest, is an example
which will serve as well as a score to show how dream-rules
may turn on far-fetched ideas, not to be recognized unless the
key happens to have been preserved. Many rules must have
been taken at random to fill up lists of omens, and of con-
tingencies to match them. Why should a dream of roasting
meat show the dreamer to be a backbiter, or laughter in sleep
presage difficult circumstances, or a dream of playing on the
clavicord the death of relatives ? But the other side of the
matter, the still apparent nonsensical rationality of so many
dream-omens, is much more remarkable. It can only be con-

> Oldfield, in ' Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. p. 241.

* Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 279.

' Callaway, 'Migion of Amazulu,' pp. 236, 241.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

Ill

: con-

sidered that the same symbolism that lay at the root of the
whole delusion, favoured the keeping up and new making of
such rules as carried obvious meaning. Take the Moslem ideas
that it is a good omen to dream of something white or green,
or of water, but bad to dream of black or red, or of fire ; that a
palm-tree indicates an Arab, and a peacock a king ; that he who
dreams of devouring the stars will live free at some gi'eat man's
table. Take the classic rules as in the ' Oneirocritica ' of Arte-
midorus, and pass on through the media3val treatises down to such
a dream-dictionary as servant-maids still buy in penny chap-books
at the fair, and it will be seen that the ancient rules still hold
their places to a remarkable extent, while half the mass of pre-
cepts still show their original mystic significance, mostly direct,
but occasionally according to the rule of contraries. An offen-
sive odour signifies annoyance ; to wash the hands denotes release
from anxieties ; to embrace one's best beloved is veiy fortunate ;
to have one's feet cut off prevents a journey ; to weep in sleep
is a sign of joy ; he who dreams he hath lost a tooth shall lose
a friend ; and he that dreams that a rib is taken out of his side
shall ere long see the death of his wife ; to follow bees, betokens
gain ; to be married signifies that some of your kinsfolk are
dead; if one sees many fowls together, that shall be jealousy
and chiding ; if a snake pursue him, let him be on his guard
against evil women ; to dream of death, denotes happiness and
long life ; to dream of swimming and wading in the water is
good, so that the head bb kept above water; to dream of
crossing a bridge, denotes you will leave a good situation to
seek a better ; to dream you see a dragon is a sign that you
shall see some great lord your master, or a magistrate.^

Haruspication belongs, among the lower races, especially to
the Malays and Polynesians,^ and to various Asiatic tribes.^ It

^ Artemidorus, 'Oneirocritica ;' Cockayne, 'Leechdoms.'etc, of Early England,'
vol. iii. ; Seafield, 'Literature, etc, of Dreams ;' Brand, vol, iii, ; Halliwell,
'Pop, Rhymes,' etc., p, 217, etc., etc.

= St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. pp, 74, 115; Ellis, 'Polyn. Res,' vol. iv, p.
160 ; Polack, ' New Zealanders,' vol. i, p, 255.

3 Georgi, ' Reise im Russ. Reich,' vol, i, p. 281 ; Hooker, ' Himalayan
Journals,' voL i. p, 135; 'As. Res,' vol. iii. p, 27; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.'
vol. i, p, 61.

112

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b '■ •

is mentioned as practised in Peru under the Incas.^ Captain
Burton's account from Central Africa perhaps fairly displays
its symbolic principle. He describes the mganga or sorcerer
taking an ordeal by killing and splitting a fowl and inspecting
its inside : if blackness or blemish appears about the wings, it
denotes the treachery of children and kinsmen ; the backbone
convicts the mother and grandmother ; the tail shows that the
criminal is the wife, &c.^ In ancient Rome, where the art held
so great a place in public affairs, the same sort of interpretation
was usual, as witness the omen of Augustus, where the livers of
the victims were found folded, and the diviners prophesied him
accordingly a doubled empire.^ Since then, haruspication has
died out more completely than almost any magical rite, yet even
now a characteristic relic of it may be noticed in Brandenburg ;
when a pig is killed and the spleen is found turned over,
there will be another overthrow, namely a death in the family
that year.'* With haruspication may be classed the art of
divining by bones, as where North American Indians would put
in the fire a certain flat bone of a porcupine, and judge from its
colour if the porcupine-hunt would be successful.^ The prin-
cipal art of this kind is divination by a shoulder-blade, techni-
cally called scapulimancy or omoplatoscopy. This is especially
found in vogue in Tartary, where it is ancient, and whence it
may have spread into all other countries where we hear of it.
Its simple symbolism is well shown in the elaborate account
with diagrams given by Pallas. The shoulder-blade is put on
the fire till it cracks in various directions, and then a long split
lengthways is reckoned as the " way of life," while cross-cracks
on the right and left stand for different kinds and degrees of
good and evil fortune ; or if the omen is only taken as to some
special event, then lengthwise splits mean going on well, but
crosswise ones stand for hindrance, white marks portend much
snow, black ones a mild winter, (fee." To find this quaint art

^ Ciezade Leon, p. 289 ; Rivero and Tsolmdi, 'Peru,' p. 183.

» Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol. ii. p. 32 ; Waitz, vol ii. pp. 417, 618.

' Plin. xi. 73. SeeCic. de Divinatione, ii. 12.

* Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 32.

' Le Jeune, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. i. p. 90.

• Klemm, ' Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. pp. 100, 199 ; vol. iv. p. 221 ; Eubruquis,

^ulwM!

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

113

lasting on into modern times in Europe, we can hardly go to a
better place than our own country; a proper English term
for it is " reading the speal-bone " {speal = espaule). In Ire-
land, Camden describes the looking through the blade-bone of
a sheep, to find a dark spot which foretells a death, and
Drayton thus commemorates the art in his Polyolbion : —

*' By th' shoulder of a ram from off the right side par'd,
Which usually they boile, the spade-bone being bard,
Which when the wizard takes, and gazing therupon
Things long to come foroshowes, as things done long agone." '

Chiromancy, or palmistry, seems much like this, though it is
also mixed up with astrology. It flourished in ancient Greece
and Italy as it still does in India, where to say, '' 1 is written
on the palms of my hands," is a usual way of expressing a
sense of inevitable fate. Chiromancy traces in the markings of
the palm a line of fortune and a line of life, finds proof of
melancholy in the intersections on the saturnine mount,
presages sorrow and death from black spots in the finger-
nails, and at last, having exhausted the powers of this childish
symbolism, it completes its system by details of which the
absurdity is no longer relieved by even an ideal sense. The
art has its modern votaries not merely among Gypsy fortune-
tellers, but in what is called " good society." ^

It may again and again thus be noticed in magic arts, that
the association of ideas is obvious up to a certain point. Thus,
when the New Zealand sorcerer took omens by the way his divin-
ing sticks (guided by spirits) fell, he quite naturally said it was a
good omen if the stick representing his own tribe fell on top of
that representing the enemy, and vice versa. Zulu diviners still
work a similar process with their magical pieces of stick, which
rise to say yes and fall to say no, jump upon the head or
stomach or other affected part of the patient's body to show

in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 65 ; Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 1067 ; E. F. Burton, 'Sindh,'
p. 189 ; M, A. Walker, 'Macedonia,' p. 169.

1 Brand, vol. ill. p. 339 ; Forbes Leslie, vol. ii. p. 491.

2 Maury, 'Magie, etc.,' p. 74; Brand, vol. iii. p. 348, etc. See figure in
Cornelius Agrippa, 'De Occult. Pliilosoph.' ii. 27.

VOL. I. I

114

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

where his complaint is, and lie pointing towards the house of
the doctor who can cure him. So likewise, where a similar
device was practised ages ago in the Old World, the responses
were taken from staves which (by the operation of daemons) fell
backward or forward, to the right or left.^ But when processes
of this kind are developed to complexity, the system has, of
course, to be completed by more arbitrary arrangements. This
is well shown in one of the divinatory arts mentioned in the
last chapter for their connexion with games of chance. In
cartomancy, the art of fortune-telling with packs of cards, there
is a sort of nonsensical cense in such rules as that two queens
mean friendship and four mean chattering, or that the knave
of hearts prophesies a brave young man who will come into the
family to be useful, unless his purpose be reversed by his card
being upside down. But of course the pack can only furnish a
limited number of such comparatively rational interpretations,
and the rest must be left to such arbitrary fancy as that the
seven of diamonds means a prize in the lotteiy, and the ten of
the same suit an unexpected journey.^

A remarkable group of divining instruments illustrates ano-
ther principle. In South-east Asia, the Sgau Karens, at funeral
feasts, hang a bangle or metal ring by a thread over a brass
basin, which the relatives of the dead approach in succession
and strike on the edge with a bit of bamboo ; when the one who
was most beloved touches the basin, the dead man's spirit re-
sponds by twisting and stretching the string till it breaks and
the ring falls into the cup, or at least till it rings against it.*
Nearer Central Asia, in the north-east corner of India,
among the Bodo and Dhimal, the professional exorcist has
to find out what deity has entered into a patient's body to
punish him for some impiety by an attack of illness ; this
he discovers by setting thirteen leaves round him on the

* R. Taylor, 'New Zealaiul,' p. 205 ; Shortland, p. 139 ; Callaway, 'Religion
ofAmazulu,' p. 330, etc. ; Theophylact. in Brand, vol. iii. p. 332. Compare
mentions of similnr devices; Herodot. iv. 67 (Scythia) ; Burton, 'Central
Africa,' vol. ii. p. 350.

2 Migne's ' Die. des So. Occ'

' Mason, 'Karens,' in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1865, part ii. p. 200; Bas-
tian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 146.

SUKV'J/AL IN CULTURE.

115

ground to represent the gods, and then holding a pendulum
attached to his thumb by a string, till the god in questicu is
persuaded by invocation to declare himself, making the pendu-
lum swing towards his representative leaf.^ These mystic arts
(not to go into the question how these tribes came to use them)
are rude forms of the classical dactyliomancy, of which so
curious an account is given in the trial of the conspirators
Patricius and Hilarius, who worked it to find out who was to
supplant the emperor Valens. A round table was marked at
the edge with the letters of the alphabet, and with prayers and
mystic ceremonies a ring was held suspended over it by a
thread, and by swinging or stopping towards certain letters
gave the responsive words of the oracle.^ Dactyliomancy has
dwindled in Europe to the art of finding out what o'clock it is
by holding a ring hanging inside a tumbler by a thread, till,
without conscious aid by the operator, it begins to swing and
strikes the hour. Father Schott, in his ' Physica Curiosa '
(1662), refrains with commendable caution from ascribing this
phenomenon universally to dtemoniac influence. It survives
among ourselves in child's play, and though we are " no con-
jurors," we may learn something from the little instrument,
which remarkably displays the effects of insensible movement.
The operator really gives slight impulses till they accumulate
to a considerable vibration, as in ringing a church-bell by very
gentle pulls exactly timed. That he does, though unconsciously,
cause and direct the swings, may be shown by an attempt to
work the instrument with the operator's eyes shut, which will
be found to fail, the directing power being lost. The action of
the famous divining-rod with its curiously versatile sensibility
to water, ore, treasure, and thieves, seems to belong partly to
trickery by professional Dousterswivels, and partly to more or
less conscious direction by honester operators. It is still in use
on the Continent, and in some places they are apt to hide it in
a baby's clothes, and so get it baptized for greater efficiency.*

* Hodgson, ' Abor. of India,' p. 170. See Macpherson, p. 106 (Khonds).
- Amraian. Marcellin. xxix. 1.

3 Chevreul, ' De la Baguette Divinatoire, du Pendule dit Explorateur, et de3

I 2

!: :♦ ii

116

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

To conclude this group of divinatory instruments, chance or the
operator's direction may determine the action of one of the
most familiar of classic and mediaeval ordeals, the so-called
coscinomancy, or, as it is described in Hudibras, " th' oracle of
sieve and shears, that turns as certain as the spheres." The
sieve was held hanging by a thread, or by the points of a pair
of shears stuck into its rim, and it would turn, or swing, or fall,
at the mention of a thief's name, and give similar signs for
other puiposes. Of this ancient rite, the Christian ordeal of
the Bible and key, still in frequent use, is a variation : the
proper way to detect a thief by this is to read the 50th Psalm
to the apparatus, and when it hears the verse, " When thou
sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him," it will turn
to the culprit.^

Count de Maistre, with his usual faculty of taking an argu-
ment up at the wrong end, tells us that judicial astrology no
doubt hangs to truths of the first order, which have been taken
from us as useless or dangerous, or which we cannot recognize
under their new forms.^ A sober examination of the subject
may rather justify the contrary opinion, that it is on an error
of the first order that astrology depends, the eiTor of mistaking
ideal analogy for real connexion. Astrology, in the immensity
of its delusive influence on mankind, and by the comparatively
modem period to which it remained an honoured branch of
philosophy, may claim the highest rank among the occult
sciences. It scarcely belongs to very low levels of civilization,
although one of its fundamental conceptions, that of the souls
or animating intelligences of the celestial bodies, is rooted in
the depths of savage life. Yet the following Maori specimen of
astrological reasoning is as real an argument as could be found
in Paracelsus or Agrippa, nor is there reason to doubt its being
home-made. When the siege of a New Zealand pa is going on,
if Venus is near the moor , the natives naturally imagine the

Tables Tournantes,' Paris, 1854 ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 332; Grimm. *D. M.' p.
926 ; Wuttke, ' Volksaberglaube,' p. 94.

* Cornelius Agrippa, * De Speciebus Magiae,' xxi. ; Brand, vol. iii. p. 351 ;
Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 1062.

* De Maistre, 'Soirees de St. Petersbourg,' vol. ii. p. 212.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

117

two as enemy and fortress ; if the planet is above, the foe will
have the upper hand ; but if below, tlien the men of the soil
will be able to defend themselves.^ Though the early history
of astrology is obscure, its great development and elaborate
systematization were undoubtedly the work of civilized nations
of the ancient and mediaeval world. As might be well sup-
posed, a great part of its precepts have lost their intelligible
sense, or never had any, but the origin of many others is still
evident. To a considerable extent they rest on direct sym-
bolism. Such are the rules which connect the sun with gold,
with the heliotrope and paeony, with the cock which heralds
day, with magnanimous animals, such as the lion and bull ; and
the moon with silver, and the changing chamasleon, and the
palm-tree, which was considered to send out a monthly shoot.
Direct symbolism is plain in that main principle of the calcula-
tion of nativities, the notion of the "ascendant" in the horo-
scope, which reckons the part of the heavens rising in the east at
the moment of a child's birth as being connected with the child
itself, and prophetic of its future life.^ It is an old story, that
when two brothers were once taken ill together, Hippokrates
the physician concluded from the coincidence that they were
twins, but Poseidonios the astrologer considered rather that
they were born under the same constellation : we may add, that
either argument would be thought reasonable by a savage. One
of the most instructive astrological doctrines which has kept its
place in modern popular philosophy, is that of the sympathy of
growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning
moon. Among classical precepts are these : to set eggs under
the hen at new moon, but to root up trees when the moon is on
the wane, and after midday. The Lithuanian precept to wean
boys on a waxing, but girls on a waning moon, no doubt to
make the boys sturdy and the girls slim and delicate, is a fair
match for the Orkney islanders' objection to marrying except
with a growing moon, while some even wish for a flowing tide.
The following lines, from Tusser's 'Five Hundred Points of

» Shortland, 'Tracts., etc. of New Zealand,' p. 138.
2 See Cicero De Div. i. ; Lucian. De Astrolog. ;
Occulta Philosophia;' Brand, vol. iii.

Cornelius ^Agrippa, *De

II!

118

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I' I

Husbandry,' show neatly in a single case the two contrary lunar
influences : —

" Sowo poason and beana in tho wane of tho moone
Who sowoth them soonor, ho sowoth too soone :
That thoy, with the planet, may rest and ririe,
And flourish with bearing, most plentiful wise." '

The notion that the weather changes with the moon's qiiarter-
ings is still held with great vigour in England. The meteoro-
logists, with all their eagerness to catch at any rule which at all
answers to facts, quite repudiate this one, which indeed appears
to be simply a maxim belonging to popular astrology. Just as
the growth and dwindling of plants became associated with the
moon's wax and wane, so changes of weather became associated
with changes of the moon, while, by astrologers' logic, it did
not matter whether the moon's change were real, at new and
full, or imaginary, at the intermediate quarters. That educated
people to whom exact weather records are accessible should still
find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an interesting case
of intellectual survival.

In such cases as these, the astrologer has .it any rate a real
analogy, deceptive though it be, to base his rule upon. But
most of his pseudo-science seems to rest on evei: weaker and
more arbitrary analogies, not of things, but of names. Names
of stars and constellations, of signs denoting regions of the sky
and periods of days and years, no matter how arbitrarily given,
are materials which the astrologer can work upon, and bring
into ideal connexion with mundane events. That astronomers
should have divided the sun's course into imaginary signs of the
zodiac, was enough to originate astrological rules that these
celestial signs have an actual effect on real earthly rams,
bulls, crabs, lions, virgins. A child bom under the sign of the
Lion will be courageous ; but one born under the Orab will
not go forward well in life ; one bom under the Waterman is
likely to be drowned, and so forth. Towards 1524, Europe was
awaiting in an agony of prayerful terror the second deluge,

1 Plin. xvi. 76; xviii. 75 ; Grimm, • D. M.' p. 676 ; Brand, vol. ii. p. 169 ;
vol. iii. p. Hi.

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prophesied for February in that year. As the fatal month
drew nigh, dwellers by the waterside moved in crowds to tho
hills, some provided boats to save them, and the President
Aurial, at Toulouse, built himself a Noah's Ark. It -waa tlio
\great astrologer Stoefler (the originator, it is said, of the
weather-prophecies in our almanacks), who foretold this cata-
clysm, and liis argument has the advantage of being still
perfectly intelligible — at the date in question, three planets
would be together in the aqueous sign of Pisces. Again,
simply because astronomers chose to distribute among the
planets the names of certain deities, the planets thereby ac-
tjuired the characters of their divine namesakes. Thus it was
that the planet Venus became connected with love, Mars with
war, Jupiter (whose i; in altered shape still heads our physi-
cians' prescriptions), with power and 'joviality.' Throughout
the East, astrology remains a science in full esteem. The
condition of mediaeval Europe may still be perfectly realized by
tlie traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for days outside
the walls of his capital till the constellations allow him to enter,
and where on the days appointed by the stars for letting blood,
it literally flows in streams from the barbers' sho^^s into the
street. Professor Wuttke declares, that there are many districts
in Germany where the child's horoscope is still regularly kept
with the baptismal certificate in the family chest. We scarcely
reach this pitch of conservatism in England, but I happen
myself to live within a mile of an astrologer, and I lately saw
a grave paper on nativities, offered in all good faith to the
Britisl: Association. The piles of ' Zadkiel's Almanack ' in the
booksellers' windows in country towns about Christmas, are a
symptom how much yet remains to be done in popular education.
As a specimen at once of the survival and of the meaning of
astrologic reasoning, I cannot do better than quote a passage
from a book published in London in 1861, and entitled, ' The
Hand-Book of Astrology, by Zadkiel Tao-Sze,' At page 72 of
his first volume, the astrologer relates as follows : " The Map of
the heavens given at page 45 was drawn on the occasion of a
young lady having been arrested on a charge of the murder of
her infant brother. Having read in a newspaper, at twenty-four

rv .

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minutes past noon on the 23rJ July, 18G0, that Mias C. K. Imcl
boon arrested on a charge of the murder of her young brother,
the author felt desirous to ascertain whether she were guilty or
not, and drew the map accordingly. Finding the moon in the
twelfth house, she clearly signifies the prisoner. The moon is
in a moveable sign, and moves in the twenty-four hours,
14° 17'. She is, therefore, swift in motion. These things in-
dicated that the prisoner would be very speedily released.
Then we find a moveable sign in the cusp of the twelfth, and its
ruler, $ , in a moveable sign, a further indication of speedy
release. Hence it was judged and declared to many friends
that the prisoner would be immediately released, which was the
fact. Wo looked to see whether the prisoner were guilty of
the deed or not, and finding the Moon in Libra, a humane
sign, and having just past the ^ aspect of the Sun and 11, both
being on the M. C. we felt assured that she was a humane, feel-
ing, and honourable girl, and that it was quite impossible she
could be guilty of any such atrocity We declared her to be
perfectly innocent, and as the Moon was so well aspected from
the tenth house, we declared that her honour would be very
soon perfectly established." Had the astrologer waited a few
months longer, to have read the confession of the miserable
Constance Kent, he would perhaps have put a different
sense on his luoveable signs, just balances, and sunny and
jovial aspects. Nor would this be a difficult task, for these
fancies lend themselves to endless variety of new interpretation.
And on such fancies and such interpretations, the great science
of the stars has from first to last been based.

Looking at the details here selected as fair samples of sym-
bolic magic, we may well ask the question, is there in the whole
monstrous farrago no truth or value whatever ? It appears
that there is practically none, and that the world has been en-
thralled for ages by a blind belief in processes wholly irrelevant
to their supposed results, and which might as well have been
taken just the opposite way. Pliny justly saw in magic a study
worthy of his especial attention, " for the very reason that, being
the most fraudulent of arts, it had prevailed throughout the
world and through so many ages" (eo ipso quod fraudulentissima

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()

artium pluriuiiim in toto tcrrnrum orlto pIuriinis<|no secnilis
valuit). It" it 1)0 nskod how huoIi a system could have held its
ground, not merely in inilopendcncc hut in defiance of its own
facts, a fair answer docs not seem liard to give. In the first
place, it must be bonic in mind that occult Hcienco lias not
existed entirely in its own strength. Futile as its arts may be,
they arc associated in practice ^vith other proceedings by n
means futile. What are passed off' as sacred omens, are often
really the cunning man's shrewd guesses at the past and fut)ire.
Divination serves to the sorcerer as a mask for real inquest, as
when the ortleal gives him invaluable opportunity of examining
the guilty, whoso trembling hands and e(iuivocating speech
betray at once their secret and their utter belief in Ids power
of discerning it. Prophecy tends to fulfil itself, as where the
magician, by putting into a victim's mind the belief that fatal
arts have been practised against liim, can slay him with this
idea as with a material weapon. Often priest as well as magi-
cian, he has the whole power of religion at his back ; often a
man in power, always an unscrupulous intriguer, he can work
witchcraft and statecraft together, and make his left hand help
his right. Often a doctor, he can aid his omens of life or death
with remedy or poison, while what we still call " conjuror's
tricks" of sleight of hand, have done much to keep up his super-
natural prestige. From the earliest known stages of civilization,
professional magicians have existed, who live by their craft, and
keep it alive. It has been said, that if somebody had endowed
lecturers to teach that two sides of a triangle are together
equal to the third, the doctrine would have a respectable follow-
ing among ourselves. At any rate, magic, with an influential
profession interested in keeping it in credit and power, did not
depend for its existence on mere evidence.

And in the second place, as to this evidence. Magic has not
its origin in fraud, and seems seldom practised as an utter
imposture. The sorcerer generally learns his time-honoured
profession in good faith, and retains his belief in it more or less
from first to last ; at once dupe and cheat, he combines the
energy of a believer with the cunning of a hypocrite. Had occult
science been simply framed for purposes of deception, mere

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iiii

it' j:>

■:.ii

nonseuso would have answered the purpose, whereas, what we
find is an elaborate and systematic pseudo-science. It is, in
fact, a sincere but fallacious system of philosophy, evolved by
the human intellect by processes still in great measure intel-
ligible to our own minds, and it had thus an original standing-
ground in the world. And though the evidence of fact was
dead against it, it was but lately and gradually that this
evidence was brought fatally to bear. A general survey of the
practical working of the system may be made somoAvhat thus.
A large proportion of successful cases belong to natural means
disguised as magic. Also, a certain proportion of cases must
succeed by mere chance. By far the larger proportion, how-
e\ er, are what we should call failures ; but it is a part of the
magician's profession to keep these from counting, and this he
does with extraordinary resource of rhetorical shift and brazen
impudence. He deals in ambiguous phrases, which give him
three or four chances for one. He knows perfectly how to im-
pose difficult conditions, and to lay the blame of failure on their
neglect. If you wish to make gold, the alchemist in Central
Asia has a recipe at your service, only, to use it, you must
abstain three days from thinking of apes ; just as our English
folk lore says, that if one of your eyelashes comes out, and you
put it on your thumb, you will get anything you wish for, if
you can only avoid thinking of foxes' tails at the fatal moment.
Again, if the wrong thing happens, the wizard has at least a
reason why. Has a daughter been born when he promised a
son, then it is some hostile practitioner who has turned the boy
into a girl; does a tempest come just when he is making fine
weather, then he calmly demands a larger fee for stronger
ceremonies, assuring his clients that they may thank him as it is,
for how much worse it would have been had he not done what
he did. And even setting aside all this accessory trickery, if
we look at honest but unscientific people practising occult
science in good faith, and face to face with facts, we shall see
that the failures which condemn it in our eyes carry com-
jjaratively little weight in theirs. Part escape under the
elastic pretext of a " little more or less," as the loser in the
lottery consoles himself that his lucky number came within two

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of & prize, or the moon-observer points out triumphantly that
a change of weather has come within two or three days before
or after a quarter ; so that his definition of near a moon's
quarter applies to four or six days out of every seven. Part
escape through incapacity to appreciate negative evidence,
which allows one success to outweigh half-a-dozen failures.
How few there are even among the educated classes now, who
have taken in the drift of that memorable passage in the begin-
ning of the ' Novum Organum :' — "The humun understanding,
when any proposition has been once laid down (either from
general admission aod belief, or from the pleasure it affords),
forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation ;
and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to
the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or
gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent
and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of
its first conclusions. It was well answered by him who was
shown in a temple the votive tablets suspended by such as had
escaped the peril of shipwreck, and was pressed as to whether
he would then recognize the power of the gods, by an inquiry,
' But where are the portraits of those who have perished in
spite of their vows ?' "^

On the whole, the survival of symbolic magic through the
middle ages and into our own times is an unsatisfactory, but
not a mysterious fact. A once-estabhshed opinion, however
delusive, can hold its own from age to age, for belief can
propagate itself without reference to its reasonable origin, as
plants are propagated from slips without fresh raising from the
seed.

The history of survival, in cases like those of the folk lore
and occult aits which we have been considering, has for the
most part been a history of dwindling and decay. As men's
minds change in progressing culture, old customs and opinions
fade gradually in a new and uncongenial atmosphere, or pass
into states more congruous with the new life around them.

> Bacon, 'Novum Organum.' The original story id that of Diagoras, in
Cicero De Natura Deomm, iii. 37.

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But this is so far from being a law witliout exception, thai a
narrow view of history may often make it seem to be no law at
all. For the stream of civilization winds and turns upon itself,
and what seems the bright onward current of one age may in
the next spin round in a whirling eddy, or spread into a dull
and pestilential swamp. Studying Avith a wide view the course
of human opinion, we may now and then trace on from the very
turning-point the change from passive survival into active
revival. Some well-knoAvn belief or custom has for centuries
shown symptoms of decay, when we begin to see that the state
of society, instead of stunting it, is favouring its new growth,
and it bursts forth again with a vigour often as marvellous as it is
unhealthy. And though the revival be not destined to hold on
indefinitely, and though when opinion turns again its ruin may
be more merciless than before, yet it may last for ages, make its
way into the inmost constitution of society, and even become a
very mark and characteristic of its time.

Writers who desire to show that, with all our faults, we are
wiser and better than our ancestors, dwell willingly on the
history of witchcraft bet>veen the middle and modern ages.
They can quote Martin Luther, apropos of the witches who
spoil the farmers' butter and eggs, " I would have no pity on
these witches ; I would burn them all." They can show the
good Sir Matthew Hale hanging witches in Suffolk, on the
authority of scripture and the consenting wisdom of all nations ;
and King James presiding at the torture of Dr. Fian for
bringing a storm against the king's ship on its course from
Denmark, by the aid of a fleet of witches in sieves, who carried
out a christened cat to sea. In those dreadful days, to be a
blear-eyed wizened cripple was to be worth twenty shillings to
a witch-finder ; for a woman to have what this witch-finder was
pleased to call the devil's mark on her body was presumption
for judicial sentence of death ; and not to bleed or shed tears or
sink in a pond was torture first, and then the stake. Reform
of religion was no cure for the disease of men's minds, for in
such things the Puritan was no worse than the Inquisitor, and
no better. Papist and Protestant fought with one another, but
both turned against that enemy of the human race, the hag

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125

who had sold herself to Satan to ride upon a broomstick, and to
suck children's blood, and to be for life and death of all
creatures the most wretched. But with new enlightenment
there came in the very teeth of law and authority a change in
European opinion. Toward the end of the seventeenth century
the hideous superstition was breaking down among ourselves ;
Richard Baxter, of the ' Saint's Rest,' strove with fanatic zeal
to light again at home the Avitch-fires of New England, but he
strove in vain. Year by year the persecution of witches became
more hateful to the educated classes, and though it died hard,
it died at last down to a vestige. In our days, when we read
of a witch being burnt at Camargo in 1860, we point to Mexico
as a country miserably in the rear of civilization. And if in
England it still happens that village boors have to be tried ^t
quarter-sessions for ill-using some poor old woman, who they
fancy has dried a cow or spoiled a turnip crop, we comment on
the tenacity with which the nistic mind clings to exploded
follies, and cry out for more schoolmasters.

True as all this is, the ethnographer must go^ wider and
deeper in his enquiry, to do his subject justice. The prevailing
belief in witchcraft that sat like a nightmare on public opinion
from the 13th to the 17th centuries, far from being itself a
product of mediaevalism, was a revival from the remote days of
primseval history. The disease that broke out afresh in Europe
had been chronic among the lower races for how many ages we
cannot tell. Witchcraft is part and parcel of savage life. There
are rude races of Australia and South America whose intense
belief in it has led them to declare that if men were never
bewitched, and never killed by violence, they would not die at
all. Like the Australians, the Africans will enquire of their
dead what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts, and when
they have satisfied themselves of this, blood must atone for
blood. In West Africa, it has been boldly asserted that the
belief in witchcraft costs more lives than the slave trade ever
did. In East Africa, Captain Burton, a traveller apt to draw
his social sketches in a fev/ sharp lines, remarks that what with
slavery and what with black-magic, life is precarious among the
Wakhutu, and " no one, especially in old age, is safe from being

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burnt at a day's notice;" and, travelling in the country of the
Wazaranio, he tells us of meellng every few miles with heaps
of ashes and charcoal, now and then such as seemed to have
been a father and mother, with a little heap hard by that was a
child.^ Even in districts of British India a state of mind ready
to produce horrors like these is well known to exist, and to be
kept down less by persuasion than by main force. From the level
of savage life, we trace witchcraft suiviving throughout the
barbarian and early civilized world. It was existing in Europe
in the ^enturies preceding the 10th, but with no especial
prominence, while laws of Rothar and Charlemagne are actually
directed against such as should put men or women to death on
the charge of witchcraft. In the 11th century, ecclesiastical
influence was discouraging the superstitious belief in sorcery.
But now a period of reaction set in. The works of the monastic
legend and miracle-mongers more and more encouraged a
baneful credulity as to the supernatural. In the 13th century,
when the spirit of religious persecution had begun to possess
all Europe with a dark and cruel madness, the doctrine of
witchcraft revived with all its barbaric vigour.^ That the guilt
of thus bringing down Europe intellectually and morally to the
level of negro Africa lies in the main upon the Roman Church,
the bulls of Gregory IX. and Innocent VIII., and the records of
the Holy Inquisition, are conclusive evidence to prove. To us
here the main interest of mediaeval witchcraft lies in the extent
and accuracy with which the theory of survival explains it. In
the very details of the bald conventional accusations that were
sworn against the witches, there may be traced tradition often
hardly modified from barbarous and savage times. They
raised storms by magic rites, they had charms against the hurt
of weapons, they had their assemblies on wild heath and
mountain-top, they could ride through the air on beasts and
even turn into witch-cats and were-wolves themselves, they had
familiar spirits, they had intercourse with incubi and succubi.

* Du Chaillu, ' Ashango-land,' pp. 428, 435; Burton, 'Central Afr.,' vol. i.
pp. 67, 113, 121.

' See Lecky, • Hist, of Rationalism,' vol. i. chap. i. ; Horst, ' Zauber-Biblio-
thek ;' 'The Pope and the Council,' by 'Janus,' xvii.

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they conveyed thorns, pins, feathers, and such things into their
victims' bodies, they caused disease by demoniacal possession,
they could bewitch by spells and by the evil eye, by practising
on images and symbols, on food and propei ty. Now all this is
sheer survival from prse-Christian ages, " in errore paganomm
revolvitur," as Burchard of Worms said of the superstition of
his time.^ Two of the most familiar devices used against the
mediaeval witches may serve to show the place in civilization of
the whole craft. The Oriental jinn are in such deadly ten-or of
iron, that its very name is a charm against them ; and so in
European folk lore iron drives away fairies and elves, and
destroys their power. They are essentially, it seems, creatures
belonging to the ancient Stone Age, and the new metal is
hateful and hurtful to them. Now as to iron, witches are
brought under the same category as elves and nightmares.
Iron instruments keep them at bay, and especially iron horse-^
shoes have been chosen for this purpose, as half the stable doors
in England still show.^ Again, one of the best known of
English witch ordeals is the trial by " fleeting " or swimming.
Bound hand and foot, the accused was flung into deep water,
to sink if innocent, and swim if guilty, and in the latter case,
as Hudibras has it, to be hanged only for not being drowned.
King James, who seems to have had a notion of the real
primitive meaning of this rite, says in his Dsemonology, " It
appeares that God hath appointed for a supernatural signe of
the monstrous impietie of witches, that the water shall refuse
to receive them in her bosom that have shaken off them the
sacred water of baptism," &c. Now, in early German history
this same trial by water was well known, and its meaning
recognized to be that the conscious element rejects the guilty
(si aqua ilium velut innoxium receperit — innoxii submerguntur
aqua, culpabiles supernatant). Already in the 9th century the

* See also Grimm, ' D. M.' ; Dasent, * Iiitrod. to Norse Tales ; ' Maury,
•Magie, etc.,' ch. vii.

^ Lane, 'Thousand and One Nights,' vol. i. p. 30 ; Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 435,
465, 1066 ; Bastian, ' Mensch.' vol. ii, pp. 265, 287 ; vol. iii, p. 204 ; D. Wilson,
'Archoelog. of Scotland,' p. 439; Wuttke, • Volksaberglaube,' pp, 15, 20,
122, 220.

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laws were p^'ohibiting this practice as a relic of superstition.
Lastly, the same trial by water is recognized as one of the
regular judicial ordeals in the Hindu Cjde of Manu ; if the
water does not cause the accused to float when plunged into it,
his oath is true. As this ancient Indian body of laws was
itself no doubt compiled from materials of still earlier date, we
may venture to take the correspondence of the water-ordeal
among the European and Asiatic branches of the Aryan race
as carrying back its origin to a period of remote antiquity.^

Let us hope that if the belief in present witchcraft, and the
persecution necessarily ensuing upon such belief, once more
come into prominence in the civilized world, they may appear
in a milder shape than heretofore, and be kept down by
stronger humanity and tolerance. But any one who fancies
fro- their present disappearance that they have necessarily
disuppeared for ever, must have read history to little purpose,
and has yet to learn, that "revival in culture" is something
more than an empty pedantic phrase. Our own time has
revived a group of beliefs and practices which have their roots
deep in the very stratum of early philosophy where witchcraft
makes its first appearance. This group of beliefs and practices
constitutes what is now commonly known as Spiritualism.

Witchcraft and Spiritualism have existed for thousands of

years in a closeness of union not unfairly typified in this verse

from John Bale's 16th-century Interlude concerning Nature,

which brings under one head the arts of bewitching vegetables

and pdultry, and causing supernatural movement of stools and

crockery.

*' Theyr wells I can up drye,
Cause trees and herbes to dye,
And slee all pulterye.

Whereas men doth me move :
I 'can make stoles to daunce
And earthen pottes to praunce,
That none shall them enhaunce,
And do but cast my glove."

. ^ Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 1—43; Wuttke, * Volksaberglaube,' p. 50 ;
Grimm, 'Deutsche Rechtsalterthiimer,' p. 923 ; Pictei, 'Origines Indo-Europ.'
part ii. p. 459 ; Manu, viii., 114 — 5 ; see Pliu. vii. 2.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

129

Tho same intellectual movement led to the fleclino of both
witchcraft and spiritualism, till, early in the present century,
men thought that both were dying or all but dead together.
Now, however, not only are spiritualists to bo counted by tens
of thousands in America and England, but there are among
them several men of distinguished mental power. I am well
aware that the problem of the so-called " spirit-manifestations "
is one to be discussed on its merits, in order to arrive at a
distinct opinion how far it is concerned with facts insufficiently
appreciated and explained by science, and how far with super-
stition, delusion, and sheer knavery. Such investigation,
pursued by careful observation in a scientific spirit, would
seem apt to throw light on some most interesting psychological
questions. But though it lies beyond my scope to examine the
spiritualistic evidence for itself, the ethnographic view of the
matter has, nevertheless, its value. This shows ruodern
spiritualism to be in great measure a direct revival from the
regions of savage philosophy and peasant folklore. It is not a
simple question of the existence of certain phenomena of mind
and matter. It is that, in connexion with these phenomena,
a great philosophic-religious doctrine, flourishing in the lower
culture but dwindling in the higher, has re-established itself in
full vigour. The world is again swarming with intelligent and
powerful disembodied spiritual beings, whose direct action on
thought and matter is again confidently asserted as in those
times and countries where physical science had not as yet so far
succeeded in extruding these spirits and their influences from
the system of nature.

Apparitions have regained the place and meaning which they
held from the level of the lower races to that of mediaeval
Europe. The regular ghost-stories, in which spirits of the dead
walk visibly and have intercourse with corporeal men, are now
restored and Ited with new examples as "glimpses of the
night-side of nature," nor have these stories changed either
their strength to those who are disposed to believe them, or
their weakness to those who are not. As of old, men live now
in habitual intercourse with the spirits of the dead. Necro-
mancy is a religion, and the Chinese manes-worshipper may

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see the outer barbarians come baick, after a heretical interva' cf
a few centuries, into sympathy with his time-honoured creed.
As the sorcerers of barbarous tribes lie in bodily lethargy or
sleep while their souls depart on distant journeys, so it is not
uncommon in modern spiritualistic narratives for persons to be
in an insensible state when their apparitions visit distant
places, whence they bring back information, and where they
communicate with the living. Ihe spirits of the living as well
as of the dead, the souls of Strauss and Carl Vogt as well as of
Augustine and Jerome, are summoned by mediums to distant
spirit-circles. As Dr. Bastian remarks, if any celebrated man
in Europe feels himself at some moment in a melancholy mood,
he may console himself with the idea that his soul has been sent
for to America, to assist at the " rough fixings " of some back-
woodsman. Fifty years ago, Dr. Macculloch, in his * Description
of the Western Islands of Scotland,' wrote thus of the famous
Highland second-sight : " In fact it has undergone the fate of
witchcraft ; ceasing to be believed, it has ceased to exist." Yet
a generation later he would have found it reinstated in a far
larger range of society, and under far better circumstances of
learning and material prosperity. Among the influences which
have combined to bring about the spiritualistic renaissance, a
prominent place may, I think, be given to the eft'ect produced
on the religious mind of Europe and America by the intensely
animistic teachings of Emanuel S\n edenborg, in the last century.
The position of this remarkable vi'iionary as to some of the par-
ticular spiritualistic doctrines may be judged of by the following
statements from ' The True Christian Keligion.' A man's spirit
is his mind, which lives after death in complete human form,
and this spirit may be conveyed from place to place while the
body remains at rest, as on some occasions happened to Swe-
denborg himself. " I have conversed," he says, "with all my re-
lations and friends, likewise with ki^gs and princes, and men of
learning, after their departure out of this life, and this now for
twenty-seven years without interruption." And foreseeing that
many who read his ' Memorable Relations,' will believe them to
be fictions of imagination, he protests in truth they are not
fictions, but were really seen and heard ; not seen and heard

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

131

in any state of mind in sleep, but in a state of complete wake-
fulness.^

I shall have to speak elsewhere of some of the doctrines of
modern spiritualism, where they seem to fall into their places
in the study of Animism. Here, as a means of illustrating the
relation of the newer to the older spiritualistic ideas, I propose
to glance over the ethnography of two of the most popular
means of communicating with the spirit-world, by rapping and
writing, and two of the prominent spirit-manifestations, the
feat of rising iu the air, and the trick of the Davenport Brothers.
The elf who goes knocking and routing about the house at
night, and whose special German name is the " Poltergeist," is
an old and familiar personage in European folklore," From of
old, such unexplained noises have been ascribed to the agency
of personal spirits, who more often than not are considered
human souls. The modern Dayaks, Siamese, and Singhalese
agree with the Esths as to such routing and rapping being
caused by spirits.^ Knockings may be considered mysterious
but harmless, like those which in Swabia and Franconia are
expected during Advent on the Anklopf^rleins-Nachte, or " Little
Knockers' Nights." * Or they may be useful, as when the Welsli
miners think that the " knockers " they hear underground are
indicating the rich veins of lead and silver.'' Or they may be
simply annoying, as when, in the ninth centuiy, a malignant
spirit infested a parish by knocking at the walls as if with a
hammer, but being overcome with litanies {md holy water,
confessed itself to be the familiar of a certain wicked priest, and
to have been in hiding under his cloak. Thus, in the seven-
teenth century, the famous demon-drummer of Tedworth, com-
memorated by Glanvil in the ' Saducismus Triumphatus,'
thumped about the doors and the outside of the house, and
" for an hour together it would beat Roundheads and, Cuckolds,

1 Swedenborg, ' The True Christian lleligion.' London, 1855, Nos. 15G, 157,
281, 851.

* Grimm, * Deutsche Myth.' pp. 473, 481.

3 St. John, 'Far East," vol. i p. 82 ; Bastian, ' Psychologie,' p. Ill ; 'Oestl.
Asien,' vol. iii. pp. 232, 259, 288 ; Boeder, 'Ehsteu Aberglaube,' p. 147.
^ Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 74.

* Brand, vol. ii. p. 486.

K 2

132

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

♦ ,li t

i'!'

:i : i

ill

tho Tat-too, and sovcial other Points of Wa,, as well as any
Drummer." ^ But popular philosophy has mostly attached to
such mysterious noises a foreboding of death, the knock being
held as a signal or summons among spirits as among men.
The Romans considered that the genius of death thus announced
his coming. Modern folklore holds either that a knocking or
rumbling in the floor is an omen of a death about to hapi^en, or
that dying persons themselves announce their dissolution to
their friends in such strange sounds. The English rule takes
in both cases : " Tiirec loud and distinct knocks at the bed's
head of a sick person, or at the bed's head or door of any of his
relations, is an omen of his death." We happen to have a
good means of testing the amount of actual correspondence be-
tween omen and event necessary to establish these rules : the illo-
gical people who were (and still are) able to discover a connexion
between the ticking of the " death-watch " beetle and an en-
suing death in the house, no doubt found it equally easy to
give a prophetic interpretation to a':iy other mysterious knocks.-
There is a story, dated 1534, of a ghost that answered questions
by knocking in the Catholic Church of Orleans, and demanded
the removal of the provost's Lutheran wife, who had been
buried there ; but the affair proved to be a trick of a Franciscan
friar,^ The system of working an alphabet by counted raps is
a device familiar to prison-cells, where it has long been at once
the despair of gaolers and an evidence of the diffusion of educa-
tion even among the criminal classes. Thus when, in 1847, the
celebrated rappings began to trouble the township of Arcadia in
the State of New York, the Fox family of Rochester, founders,
of the modern spiritual movement, had on the one hand only
to revive the ancient prevalent belief in spirit-rappings, which
had almost fallen into the limbo of discredited superstitions,
while, on the other hand, the system of communication with the
spirits was ready made to their hand. The system of a rap-

' Glanvil, ' Saducismus Triumphatus, ' part ii.

» Brand, vol. iii. pp. 225, 233 ; Grimm, pp. 801, 1089, 1141 ; "Wuttke, pp. 38-
9, 208 ; Shortland, ' Trads. of New Zealand,' p. 137 (ominous ticking of insect,
doubtful whether idea native, or introduced by foreigners).

3 Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 393.

SURVIVAL IN CULTL'llK.

133

ping-alphabet romains in full use, and niunberlcss specimens of
messages thus received are in print, possibly the longest being
a novel, of which 1 can only give tiio title, ' Juanita, Nouvellc
par une Chaise. A rimprimeric du Gouvernement, Basse Terro
(Guadeloupe), 1853.' In the recorded communications, names,
dates, etc. are often alleged to have been stated under re-
markable circumstances, while the style of thought, language,
and spelling fits with the intellectual quality of the medium.
A large proportion of the cor imunications being obviously false
and silly, even when the " spirit " has announced itself in the
name of some great statesman, moralist, or philosopher of the
past, the theory has been adopted by spiritualists that foolish
or lying spirits are apt to personate those of higher degree, and
give messages in their names.

Spirit-writing is of two kinds, according as it is done with or
without a material instrument. The first kind is in full practice
in China, where, like other rites of divination, it is probably
ancient. It is called " descending of the pencil," and is espe-
cially used by the literary classes. When a Chinese wishes to
consult a god in this way, he sends for a professional medium.
Before the image of the god are set candles and incense, and an
offering of tea or mock money. In front of this, on another
table, is placed an oblong tray of dry sand. The writing instru-
ment is a V-shaped Avooden handle, two or three feet long, with
a wooden tooth fixed at its point. Two persons hold this instru-
ment, eacli grasping one leg of it, and the point resting in the
sand. Proper prayers and charms induce the god to manifest
his presence by a movement of the point in the sand, and thus
the response is written, and there only remains the somewhat
difficult and doubtful task of deciphering it. To what state of
opinion this rite belongs may be judged from this : when the
sacred apricot-tree is to be robbed of a branch to make the
spirit-pen, an apologetic iTi?criptiou iz scratched upon the trunk.^
Notwithstanding theriogical differences between China and
England, the art of spirit-writing is much the same in the two

^ Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. p. 112 ; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 252;
* Psychologie,' p. 169.

134

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

countries. A kiiul of " plaucliottc " soctns to have boon known
in Europe in tlio sovontccnth contury.^ Tho instrument, which
may now ho bought at tho toy-shops, is a licart-shupoJ board
some sovcn inches long, resting on tlireo supports, of whicli tho
two at tho wido end are castors, and tho third at tlie pointed
end a pencil thrust through a hole in the board. The instru-
ment is placed on a sheet of paper, and worked by two persona
laying their fingers lightly on it, and waiting till, without con-
scious effort of the operators, it moves and writes answers to
questions. It is not everybody who has tho faculty of spirit-
writing, but a powerful medium will write alone. Mediums
sometimes consider themselves acted on by some power separate
from themselves, in fact, possessed.

Ecclesiastical history commemorates a miracle at the close of
the Nicenc Council. Two bishops, Chrysanthus and Mysonius,
had died during its sitting, and the remaining crowd of Fathers
brought the acts, signed by themselves, to the tomb, addressed
the deceased bishops as if still alive, and left the document.
Next day, returning, they found the two signatures added, to
this effect : — " We, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, consenting with
all the Fathers in the holy first and oecumenical Nicene Synod,
although translated from the body, have also signed tho volume
with our own hands." ^ Such spirit-writing without material
instrument has lately been renewed by the Baron de Gulden-
stubbd This writer confirms by new evidence the truth of the
tradition of all peoples as to souls of the dead keeping up their
connexion with their mortal remains, and haunting the places
where they dwelt "during their terrestrial incarnation." Thus
Francis I. manifests himself principally at Fontainebleau, while
Louis XV. and Mario-Antoinette roam about the Trianous.
Moreover, if pieces of blank paper be set out in suitable places,
the spirits, enveloped in their ethereal bodies, will concentrate
by their force of will electric currents on the paper, and so
form written characters. The Baron publishes, in his ' Pneu-

* Toelila, ' Aurifontina Chymica,' cited by K. P. H. Mackenzie, in ' Spiritualist,'
Mar. 15, 1870.

- Nicephor. Callist. Ecclesiast. Hibt. viii. 23 ; Stanley, 'Eastern Churcli,'
r- 172.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

135

matologio Positive,' a innss of fac-.similos of spirit-writings thus
obtained. Julius and Augustus Caisar give their names near
their statues in the Louvre ; Juvenal produces a ludicrous
attempt at a copy of verses ; Heloise at Pere-la-Chaiso in-
forms tho world, in modern Frenoii, that Ahelard and she
are united and happy ; St. Paul writes himself (\Ci.(ttos airo-
(TToXov ; and Hippokrates tho physician (who spells himself
Hippokratgs) attended M. do Guldenstubbd at his lodgings in
Paris, and gave him a signature which of itself cured a sharp
attack of rheumatism in a few minutes.^

Tho miraclo of rising and floating in tho air is one fully
recognized in the literature of ancient India. Tho Buddhist
saint of high ascetic rank attains the power called "perfec-
tion " (irdhi), whereby he is able to rise in the air, as also
to overturn the earth and stop the sun. Having this power,
tho saint exercises it by tho mere determination of his will,
his body becoming imponderous, as when a man in the common
human state determines to leap, and leaps. Buddhist annals
relate the performance of the miraculous suspension by Gau-
tama himself, as well as by other saints, as, for example, his
ancestor Maha Sammata, who could thus seat himself in the
air without visible support. Even without this exalted faculty,
it is considered possible to rise and move in the air by an
effort of ecstatic joy (udwega priti). A remarkable mention
of this feat, as said to be performed by the Indian Brahmans,
occurs in the third-century biography of ApoUonius of Tyana ;
these Brahmans are described as going about in the air some
two cubits from the ground, not for the sake of miracle (such
ambition they despised), but for its being more suitable to solar
rites.^ Foreign conjurors were professing to exhibit this miracle
among the Greeks in the second century, as witness Lucian's

^ ' rncumatologic Positive et Experinietitnle ; La Rcalitd des Esprits et lo
Plidnonienc Merveilleux de leur Eeritui'o Direote denioutrees,' par le Baron L. de
Guldeiistubb^. Paris, 1857.

= Hardy, •Mamml of Pmdhism,' pp. 38, 12G, 150; ' Eastern Monachism,'
pp. 272, 285, 38'. . Kiippen, ' Keligion des Buddha,' vol. i. p. 412 ; Bastian,
'Ocstl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 390; Philostrati Vita Apollon. Tyan. iii. 15. Seo
the mention among the Saadhs of India (17tli century), in Trant, in ' JMissionary
Ki'gister,' July, 1820, pp. 294—6.

"> < T,

itA

'*f'

■ I'/

lilli

136

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

jocular account of the Hyperborean conjuror : — " Thou art
joking, said Kleodemos, but I was once more incredulous than
thou about such things, for I thought nothing could have per-
suaded me to believe them ; but when I first saw that foreign
barbarian flying — he was of the Hyperboreans, he said — I
believed, and was overcome in spite of my resistance. For
what was I to do, when I saw him carried through the air
in daylight, and walking on the water, and passing leisurely
and slowly through the fire ? What ! (said his interlocutor),
you saw the Hyperborean man flying, and walking on the
water? To be sure, said he, and he had on undressed leather
brogues as they generally Avear them ; but what's the use of
talking of such trifles, considering what other manifestations
he showed us, — sending loves, calling up daemons, raising the
dead, and bringing in Hekate herself visibly, and drawing down
the moon ? " Kleodemos then goes on to relate how the con-
juror first had his four minoe down for sacrificial expenses, and
then made a clay Cupid, and sent it flying through the air to
fetch the girl whom Glaukias had fallen in love with, and
presently, lo and behold, there she was knocking at the door ! "
rhe interlocutor, however, comments in a sceptical vein on the
narrative. It was scarce needful, he says, to have taken the
trouble to send for the girl Avitli clay, and a magician from
the Hyperboreans, and even the moon, considering that for
twenty drachmas she would have let herself be taken to the
Hyperboreans themselves ; and she seems, moreover, to have
been affected in quite an opposite way to spirits, for whereas
these beings take flight if they hear the noise of brass or iron,
Chrysis no sooner hears a chink of silver anywhere, but she
comes toward the sound.^ Another early instance of the belief
in miraculous suspension is in the life of lamblichus, the great
Neo-Platonist mystic. His disciples, says Eunapius, told him
they had heard a report from his servants, that while in prayer
to the gods he had been lifted more than ten cubits from the
ground, his body and clothes changing to a beautiful golden
colour, but after he ceased from prayer his body became as

' Lucian. Philopseudcs, 13.

I I

SURVIVAL IX CULTURE.

137

great

before, and then he came down to the gi-ound and returned to
the society of his followers. They entreated him therefore,
" Why, most divine teacher, why dost thou do such things
by thyself, and not let us partake of the more perfect wisdom ?"
Then lamblichus, though not given to laughter, laughed at
this story, and said to them, " It was no fool who tricked you
thus, but the thing is not true." ^

After a while, the prodigy which the Platonist disclaimed,
became a usual attribute of Christian saints. Thus St. Richard,
then chancellor to St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, one
day softly opening the chapel door, to see why the archbishop
did not come to dinner, saw him raised high in the air, with his
knees bent and his arms stretched out ; falling gently to the
ground, and seeing the chancellor, he complained that he had
hindered him of great spiritual delight and comfort. So
St. Philip Neri used to be sometimes seen raised several yards
from the ground during his raptarous devotions, with a bright
light shinning from his countenance. St. Ignatius Loyola is
declared to have been raised about two feet under the same
circumstances, and similar legends of devout ascetics being not
only metaphorically but materially " raised above the earth "
are told in the lives of St. Dominic, St. Dunstan, St. Theresa,
and other less known saints. In tlie last century, Dom Calmet
speaks of knowing a good monk who rises sometimes from the
ground and remains involuntarily suspended, especially on seeing
some devotional image or hearing some devout prayer, and also
a nun who has often seen herself raised in spite of herself to a
certain distance from the earth. Unfortunately the great com-
raenta'or does not specify any witnesses as having seen the monk
and nun rise in the air. If they only thought themselves thus
elevated, their stories can only rank with that of the young man
mentioned by De Maistre, who so often seemed to himself to
float in the air, that he came to suspect that gravitation might
not be natural to man.^ The hallucination of rising and floating

* Eunapius in Iambi.

' Alban Butler, 'Lives of the Sants,' vol. i. p. 674; Calmet, 'Diss, sur Ics
Apparitions, etc.,' cliap. xxi. ; De Muistre, ' Soir<5es de St. Petersbourg,' vol. ii.

IDtiSi

l4i'i;.i. ; >:

m'^'

138

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

in the air is extremely oommou, and ascetics of all religions are
especially liable to it.

Among modern accounts of diabolic possession, however, the
rising in the air is described as taking place not subjectively
but objectively. In 1657, P.ichard Jones, a sprightly lad of
twelve years old, living at Shepton Mallet, was bewitched by
one Jane Brooks ; he was seen to rise in the air and pass over
a garden wall some thirty yards, and at other times was found
in a room with his hands flat against a beam at the top of the
room, and his body two or three feet from the ground, nine
people at a time seeing him in this latter position. Jane Brooks
was accordingly condemned and executed at Chard Assizes in
March, 1658. Richard, the Surrey demoniac of 1689, was
hoisted up in the air and let down by Satan ; at the beginning
of his fits he was, as it were, blown or snatched or borne up
suddenly from his chair, as if ho would have flown away, but
that those who held him hung to his arms and legs and clung
about him. One account (not the official medical one) of the
demoniacal possessions at Morzine in Savoy, in 1864, relates
that a patient was held suspended in the air by an invisible
force during some seconds or minutes above the cemetery, in
the presence of the archbishop.^ Modern spiritualists claim
this power as possessed by certain distinguished living mediums,
who, indeed, profess to rival in sober fact the aerostatic miracles
of Buddhist and Catholic legend. The force emplo;} "d is of
course considered to be that of the spirits.

The performances of tied mediums have been specially repre-
sented in England by the Davenport Brothers, who "are gene-
rally recognized by Spiritualists as genuine media, and attribute
the reverse opinion so deeply rooted in the public mind, to the
untruthfulness of the London and many other newspapers," The
performers were bound fast and shut by themselves in a dark
cabinet, with musical instruments, whence not only musical
sounds proceeded, but the coats of the mediums Avere taken off
and replaced ; yet on inspection their bodies were discovered

pp. 158, 175. See also Bastian, 'Mcnsch,' vol. ii. p. 678; * Psychologic,*
p. 169.
* Glanvil, 'SaducismusTriumphatus,' part ii.; Bastian, ' Psychologie,' p. 161.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

131)

still bound. The spirits would also release the bound mediums
from their cords, however carefully tied about them.^ Now the
idea of supernatural unbinding is very ancient, vouched for as it
is by no less a personage than the crafty Odysseus himself, in
his adventure on board the ship of the Thesprotians :

" Me on the ■well-benclied vessel, strongly bound,
They leave, and snatch their meal upon the beach.
But to my help the gods themselves unwound
My cords with ease, though firmly twisted round."

In early English chronicle, we find it in a story told by the
Venerable Bede. A certain Imma was found all b-it dead on the
field of battle, and taken prisoner, but when he began to recover
and was put in bonds to prevent his escaping, no sooner did his
binders leave him but he Avas loose again. The earl who owned
him enquired whether he had about him such "loosening
letters" (literas solutorias) as tales were told of; the man
replied that he knew nought of such arts, yet when his owner
sold him to another master, there was still no binding him.
The received explanation of this strange power was emphati-
cally a spiritual one. His brother had sought for his dead
body, found one like him, buried it, and proceeded to say masses
for his brother's soul, by the celebration whereof it came to pass
that no one could fasten him, for he was out of bonds again
directly. So they sent him home to Kent, whence he duly re-
turned his ransom, and his story, it is related, stimulated many
to devotion, who understood by it how salutary are masses to
the redemption both of soul and body. Again, there prevailed
in Scotland up to the last century this notion : when the
lunatics who had been brought to St. Fillan's Pool to be
bathed, were laid bound in the neighbouring church next night,
if they were found loose in the morning, their recovery was
expected, but if at dawn they were still bound, their cure was
doubtful.

The untying trick performed among savages is so similar
to that of our mountebanks, that when we find the North

1 'Spiritualist,' Fob. 15, 1870. Orriu Abbott, ' The Davenport Brothers,' New
York, 1864.

140

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

American Indian jugglers doing both this and the familiar
trick of breathing fire, we are at a loss to judge whether they
inherited these two feats from their savage ancestors, or borrowed
them from the white men. The point is not, however, the mere
performance of the untying trick, but its being attributed to
the help of spiritual beings. This notion is thoroughly at
home in savage culture. It comes out well in the Esquimaux
accounts, which date fr.;: i early in the 18th century. Cranz
thus describes the Greenland angekok setting out on his mystic
journey to heaven and hell. When he has drummed awhile
and made all s rts of wondrous contortions, he is himself bound
with a thong by one of his pupils, his ' ead between his legs,
and his hands behind his back. All the lamps in the house are
put out, and the windows darkened, for no one must see him
hold intercourse with his spirit, no one must move or even
scratch his head, that the spirit nay not be interfered with — or
rather, says the missionary, that no one may catch hin at his
trickery, for there is no going up to heaven in broad daylight.
At last, after strange noises have been heard, and a visit has
been received or paid to the torngak or spirit, the magician re-
appears unbound, but pale and excited, and gives an account of
his adventures. Gastrin's account of the similar proceedings of
the Siberian shamans is as follows : " They are practised," he
says, " in all sorts of conjuring-tricks, by which they know how
to dazzle the simple crowd, and inspire greater trust in them-
selves. One of the most usual juggleries of the shamans in the
Government of Tomsk consist of the following hocus-pocus, a
wonder to the Russians as well as to the Samoieds. The shaman
sits down on the wrong side of a dry reindeer-hide spread in
the middle of the floor. There he lets himself be bound hand
and foot by the assistants. The shutters are closed, and the
shaman begins to invoke his ministering spirits. All at once
there arises a mysterious ghostlmess in the dark space. Voices
are heard from different parts, both within and without theyurt,
while on the dry reindeer-skin there is a rattling and drum-
ming in regular time. Bears growl, snakes hiss, and squirrels
leap about in the room. At last this uncanny work ceases, and
the audience impatiently await the result of the game. A few

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

141

moments pass in this expectation, and behold, the shaman
walks in free and unbound from outside. No one doubts that
it was the spirits who were drumming, growling, and hissing,
who released the shaman from his bonds, and who carried him
by secret ways out of the yurt." ^

On the whole, the ethnography of spiritualism bears on prac-
tical opinion somewhat in this manner. Beside the question of
the absolute truth or falsity of the alleged possessions, ma.nes-
oracles, doubles, brain-waves, furniture movings, and thw rest,
there remains the history of spiritualistic belief as a matter of
opinion. Hereby it appears that the received spiritualistic theory
of the alleged phenomena belongs to the philosophy of savages.
As to such matters as apparitions or possessions this is obvious,
and it holds in more extreme cases. Suppose a wild North
American Indian looking on at a spirit-sdance in London. As to
the presence of disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves by
raps, noises, voices, and other physical actions, the savage would
be perfectly at home in the proceedings, for such things are part
and parcel of his recognized system of nature. The part of the
affair really strange to him would be the introduction of such
arts as spelling and writing, which do belong to a different state
of civilization from his. The issue raised by the comparison
of savage, barbaric, and civilized spiritualism, is this: Do
the Red Indian medicine-man, the Tatar necromancer, the
Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the posses-
sion of belief and knowledge of the highest .truth and import,
which, nevertheless, the great intellectual movement of the last
two centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless ? Is what
we are habitually boasting of and calling new enlightenment,
then, in fact a decay of knowledge ? If so, this is a tmly re-
markable case of degeneration, and the savages whom some
ethnographers look on as degenerate from a higher civilization,
may turn on their accusers and charge then^ with having fallen
from the high level of savage knowledge.

^ Homer. Odyss. xiv. 346 ("Worslcy's Trans.) ; Beda, 'Historia Ecclesiastica,'
iv. 22 ; J. Y. Simpson' in 'Proc. Ant. Soc. Scotland.' vol. iv. ; Keating, ' Long'.s.
Exp. to St. Peter's River,' vol. ii. p. 159 ; Egede, * Greenland,' p. 189 ; Craiiz,
'Gronland,' p. 269; Gastrin, ' Reiseberichte,' 1845—9, p. 173.

11' i •

142

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

' ^1

I' i^

ilv.

Throughout the whole of this varied investigation, whether
of the dwindling survival of old culture, or of its bursting
forth afresh in active revival, it may perhaps be complained
that its illustrations should be so much among things worn
out, worthless, frivolous, or even bad with downright harmful
folly. It is in fact so, and I have taken up this course of argu-
ment with full knowledge and intent. For, indeed, we have in
such enquiries continual reason to be thankful for fools. It
is quite wonderful, even if we hardly go below the surface of
the subject, to see how large a share stupidity and unpractical
conservatism and dogged superstition have had in preserving
for us traces of the history of our race, which practical utilita-
rianism would have remorselessly swept away. The savage is
iirmly, obstinately conservative. No man appeals with more
unhesitating confidence to the great precedent-makers of the
past , the wisdom of his ancestors can control against the most
obvious evidence his own opinions and actions. We listen with
ipiiy to the rude Indian as he maintains against civilized science
and experience the authority of his rude forefathers. We smile
at the Chinese appealing against modern innovation tu the golden
precepts of Confucius, who in 1: is time looked back with the
same p "ostrate reverence to sages still more ancient, counselling
his disciples to follow the seasons of Hea, to ride in the carriage
of Yin, to wear the ceremonial cap of Chow.

The nobler tendency of advancing culture, and above all of
scientific culture, is to honour the dead without grovelling before
them, to profit by the past without sacrificing the present to it.
Yet even the modern civilized world has but half learnt this
lesson, and an unprejudiced survey may lead us to judge how
many of our ideas and customs exist rather by being old than
by being good. Now in dealing with hurtful superstitions, the
proof that they are things which it is the tendency of savagery
.to produce, and of higher culture to destroy, is accepted as a
fair controversial argument. The mere historical position of a
belief or custom may raise a presumption as to its origin which
becomes a presumption as to its authenticity. Dr. Middleton's
celebrated Letter from Rome shows cases in point. He men-
tions the image of Diana at Ephesus which fell from the sky.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

143

thereby damaging the pretensions of the Calabrian image of
St. Dominic, which, according to pious tradition, was likewise
brought down from heaven. He notices that as the blaod of
St. Januarius now melts miraculously without heat, so ages
ago the priests of Gnatia tried to persuade Horace, on his road
to Brundusium, that the frankincense in their temple had the
habit of melting in like manner :

"... dehinc Gnatia lymphis
Iratis exstructa dedit risusque jocosque ; *
Dum flamma sine thura liquescere limine sacro,
Persuadere cupit : credat Judceiis Apella ;
Nou ego." '

Thus ethnogi'aphers, not without a certain grim satisfaction,
may at times find means to make stupid and evil superstitions
bear witness against themselves.

Moreover, in working to gain an insight into the general laws
of intellectual movement, there is practical gain in being able to
study them rather among antiquarian relics of no intense modem
interest, than among those seething problems of the day on which
action has to be taken amid ferment and sharp strife. Should
some moralist or politician speak contemptuously of the vanity
of studying matters without practical moment, it will generally
be found that his own mode of treatment will consist in partizan
diatribes on the questions of the day, a proceeding practical
enough, especially in confirming such as agree with him already,
but the extreme opposite to the scientific way of eliciting truth.
The ethnographer's course, again, should be like that of the
anatomist who carries on his studies if possible rather on dead
than on living subjects ; vivisection is nervous work, and the
humane investigator hates inflicting needless pain. Thus when
the student of culture occupies himself in viewing the bearings
of exploded controversies, or in unravelling the history of long-
superseded inventions, he is gladly seeking his evidence rather
in such dead old history, than in the discussions where he and
those he lives among are alive with intense party feeling, and

1 Conyer'-, Mddleton, 'A Letter from Rome,' 1729 ; Hor. Sat. I. v. 98.

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SURVIVAL IN CULTURE.

itlUli:

■where his judgment is biassed by the pressure of personal sym-
pathy, and even it may be of personal gain or loss. So, from
things which perhaps never were of high importance, things
which have fallen out of popular significance, or even out of
popular memory, he tries to elicit general laws of culture, often
to be thus more easily and fully gained than in the arena of
modern philosophy and politics.

But the opinions drawn from old or worn-out culture are not to
be left lying where they were shaped. It is no more reasonable
to suppose the laws of mind differently constituted ir Austraha
and in England, in the time of the cave-dwellers and in the time
of the builders of sheet-iron houses, than to suppose that the
laws of chemical combination were of one sort in the time of
the coal-mea3ures, and are of another now. The thing that has
been will be ; and we are to study savages and old nations to
learn the laws that under new circumstances are working for
good or ill in our own development. If it is needful to give an
instance of the directness with which antiquity and savagery
bear upon our modern life, let it be taken in the facts just brought
forward on the relation of ancient sorcery to the belief in
witchcraft which was not long since one of the gravest facts of
European history, and of savage spiritualism to beliefs which so
deeply affect our civilization now. No one who can see in these
cases, and in many others to be brought before him in these
volumes, how direct and close the connexion may be between
modern culture and the condition of the rudest savage, will be
prone to accuse students who spend their labour on even the
lowest and most trifling facts of ethnography, of wasting their
hours in the satisfaction of a frivolous curiosity.

CHAPTER V.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

Element of directly expressive Sound in Language— Test by independent coiTe-
spondence in distinct languages — Constituent processes of Language — Gesture
— Expression of feature, etc. — Emotional Tone— Arti, .ate sounds, vowels
determined by musical quality and pitch, consonants — Emphasis and Accent
— Phrase-melody, Recitative — Sound- "Words — Interjections— Calls to Ani-
mals — Emotional Cries — Sense-Words formed from Interjections — Affirmative
and Negative particles, etc.

In carrying on the enquiry into the development of culture,
evidence of some weight is to be gained from an examination
of Language. Comparing the grammars and dictionaries of
races at various grades of civilization, it appears that, in the
great art of speech, the educated man at this day substantially
uses the method of the savage, only expanded and improved in
the working out of details. It is true that the languages of the
Tasmanian and the Chinese, of the Greenlander and the Greek,
differ variously in structure ; but this is a secondary difference,
underlaid by a primary similarity of method, the expression
of ideas by articulate sounds habitually allotted to them. Now
all languages are found on inspection to contain some articulate
sounds of a directly natural and directly intelligible kind.
These are sounds of interjectional or imitative character, which
have their meaning not by inheritance from parents or adoption
from foreigners, but by being taken up directly from the world
of sound into the world of sense. Like pantomimic gestures,
they are capable of conveying their meaning of themselves,
without reference to the particular language they are used in con-
nexion with. From the observation of these, there have arisen
speculations as to the origin of language, treating such expres-

VOL. I. T,

146

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

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sivc sounds as the fundamental constituents of language in
general, considering those of them which are still plainly recog-
nizable as having remained more or less in their original
state, long courses of adaptation and variation having produced
from such the great mass of words in all languages, in which
no connexion between idea and sound can any longer be cer-
tainly made out. Thus grew up doctrines of a " natural " origin
of language, w'lich, dating from classic times, were developed
in the eighteenth century into a system by that poAverful
thinker, the President Charles de Brosses, and in our own time
are being expanded and solidified by a school of philologcrs,
among whom Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood is the most promi-
nent.^ These theories have no doubt been incautiously and
fancifully worked. No wonder that students who found in
nature real and direct sources of articulate speech, in inter-
jectional sounds like ah ! ugh ! h'm ! sh ! and in imitative
sounds like purr, whiz, tomtoini, cuckoo, should have thought
that the whole secret of language lay within their gi'asp, and
that they had only to fit the keys thus found into one hole
after another to open eveiy lock. When a philosopher has a
truth iu his hands, he is apt to stretch it farther than it will
bear. The magic umbrella must spread and spread till it be-
comes a tent wide enough to shelter the king's army. But it
must be borne in mind that what criticism touches in these
opinions is their exaggeration, not their reality. That inter-
jections and imitative words are really taken up to some extent,
be it small or large, into the very body and structure of lan-
guage, no one denies. Such a denial, if any one offered it, the
advocates of the disputed theories might dispose of in the
single phrase, that they would neither be pooh-poohed nor
hooted down. It may be shown within the limits of the most
strict and sober argument, that the theory of the origin of lan-
guage in natural and directly expressive sounds does account
for a considerable fraction of the existing copia verborum.

^ C. lie Brosses, 'Traitdde la Formation M^canique des Langues,' etc. (1st ed.
1765); Wedgwood, 'Origin of Language (1866); 'Die. of Englisli Etymology "
(1859, etc.) ; Farrar, 'Chapters on Language' (1865).

Ill

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

147

while it raises a presumption that, couki wo trace tlie history
of words more fully, it would account for far more.
• In here examining interjectional and imitative sovmds with
their derivative words, as well as certain other parts of language
of a more or loss coronate character, I purpose to bring forward
as far as possible nc w evidence derived from the languages of
savage and barbaro is races. By so doing it becomes practicable
to use a check which in great measure stops the main source of
uncertainty and error in such enquiries, the habit of etjanolo-
gizing words off-hand from expressive sounds, by the miaided
and often flighty fancy of a philologer. By simply enlarging
the survey of language, the province of the imagination is
brought within narrower limits. If several languages, which
cannot be classed as distinctly of the same family, unite in ex-
pressing some notion by a pari ocular sound which may fairly
claim to be interjectional or imitative, their combined claim will
go far to prove the claim a just one. For if it be objected that
such words may have passed into the difterent languages from a
common source, of which the trace is for the most part lost, this
may be answered by the question. Why is there not a propor-
tionate agreement between the languages in question throughout
the far larger mass of words which cannot pretend to be direct
sound-words '{ If several languages have independently chosen
like words to express like meanings, then we may reasonably
suppose that we are not deluding ourselves in thinking such
v/ords highly appropriate to their purpose. They are words
which answer the conditions of original language, conforming
as they do to the saying of Thomas Aquinas, that the names
of things ought to agree with their natures, " nomina debent
naturis renim congruere." Applied in such comparison, the
languages of the lower races contribute evidence of excellent
quality to the problem. It will at the same time and by the
same proofs appear, that savages possess in a high degree the
faculty of uttering their minds directly in emotional tones and
interjections, of going straight to nature to furnish them^ielves
with imitative sounds, including reproductions of their own
direct emotional utterances, as means of expression of ideas,
and of introducing into their formal language words so pro-

£ 2

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EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LANUUAGK.

't M

(luccd. They have clearly thus far the means and power of
producing language. In so far as the theories under considera-
tion account for tlio original formation of language, they counte-
nance the view that tliis formation took place among mankind
in a savage state, and even, for anything appearing to the con-
trary, \n a still lower stago of culture than has survived to our

The first step in such investigation is to gain a clear idea of
the various elements of which spoken language is made up.
These may be enumerated as gesture, expression of feature,
emotional tone, emphasis, forcj, speed, etc. of utterance, musical
rliythm and intonation, and the formation of the vowels and
consonants which are the skeleton of articulate speech.

In the common intercourse of men, speech is habitually
accompanied by gesture, the hands, head, and body aiding and
illustrating the spoken phrase. So far as we can judge, the
visible gesture and the audible word have been thus used in
combination since times of most remote antiquity in the history
of our race. It seems, however, that in the daily intercourse of
the lower races, gesture holds a much more important place than
we are accustomed to see it fill, a position even encroaching on
that which articulate speech holds among ourselves. Mr. Bon-
wick confirms by his experience Dr. Milligan's account of the
Tasmanians as using " signs to eke out the meaning of mono-
syllabic expressions, and to give force, precision, and character
to vocal sounds." Captain Wilson remarks on the use of gesti-
culation in modifying Avords in the Chinook Jargon. There is
confirmation to Spix and Martius' description of low BraziUan
tribes completing by signs the meaning of their scanty sentences,

* Among the principal savage and barbaric languages lice used for evidenco,
are as follows :— Africa : Galla (Tutscliek, Gr. and Die), Yoruba (Bowen, Or.
and Die. ), Zulu (Diilinc, Die. ). Polj'nesia, etc. : Maori (Kendall, Vocab. , Williams,
Die.), Tonga (Mariner, Vocab.), Fiji (Hazlewood, Die), Melanesia (Gabelentz,
;Melau. Spr.). Australia (Grey, Moore, Schiirmann, 01dfield,Vocab3.) N.America :
riina, Yakama, Clallam, Lunimi, Cliinuk, !Moha\vk, Micmac (Smithson. Coutr.
vol. iii.), Chinook Jargon (Gibbs, Die), Quiche (Brasseur, Gr. and Die.).
S. America : Tupi (Diaz, Die), Carib (Rocliefort, Vocab.), Quichua (Markham,
Gr. and Die), Chilian (Febres, Die), Brazilian tribes (Martins, ' Glossaria
linguaruniBrasiliensium'). Many details in Pott, 'Doppelung,' etc.

EMOTIONAL AND iMITATIVK LANGUAGE.

140

thuH making the wurils " wood-go " sitvc to siiy " I will go into
tliu wood," by pointing tho month like a snont in tho direction
meant. Tho Kov. J. L. Wilson, describing the Grebo langnago
of West Africa, remarks that they have personal prononns, but
seldom use them in conversation, leaving it to gesture to deter-
mine whether a verb is to bo taken in the first or second per-
son ; thus tho words " ni ne " will mean " 1 do it," or " you do
it," according to tho significant gestures of the speaker.^ Beside
such instances, it will hereafter be noticed that the lower races,
in counting, habitually use gesture-langungo for a purpose to
which higher races apply word-language. To this prominent
condition of gesture as a means of expression among rude tribes,
and to the development of pantomime in public show and pri-
vate intercourse among such peoples as the Neapolitans of our
own day, the most extreme contrast may be found in England,
where, whether for good or ill, suggestive pantomime is now
reduced to so small a compass in social talk, and even in public
oratory.

Changes of the bodily attitude, corresponding in their fine
gradations with changes of the feelings, comprise conditions of
the surface of the body, postures of the limbs, and also especially
those expressive attitudes of the face to wl'ich our attention is
particularly directed when we notice one another. The visible
expression of the features is a symptom which displays the
speaker's state of mind, his feelings of pleasure or disgust, of
pride or humilit}^ of faith or doubt, and so forth. Not that
there is between the emotion and its bodily expression any
originally intentional connexion. It is merely that a certain
action of our physical machinery shows symptoms which we
have learnt by experience to refer to a mental cause, as we
judge by seeing a man sweat or limp that he is hot or foot-
sore. Blushing is caused by certain emotions, and among
Europeans it is a visible expression or symptom of them ; not
so among South American Indians, whose blushes, as Mr. David

* Bonwick, 'Daily Life of Tasmanians, ' p. 140; Capt. Wilson, in 'Tr. Eth.
See.,' vol. iv. p. 322, etc. ; J. L. Wilson, in ' Joura. Amer. Oriental Soc.,' vol. i.
1849, No. 4; also Cranz, 'Grouland,' p. 279 (cited below, p. 169). For other
accounts, seo 'Early Hist, of Mankind,' p. 77.

hfi-r '

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150

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

Forbes points out, may be detected by the hand or a thermo-
meter, buo being concealed by the dark skin cannot serve as
a visible sign of feeling.^ By turning these natural processes
to account, men contrive to a certain extent to put on particular
physical expressions, frowning or smiling for instance, in order
to simulate the emotions which would naturally produce such
expressions, or merely to convey the thought of such emotions
to others. Now it is well known to every one that physical ex-
pression by feature, etc., forming a part of the universal gesture-
language, thus serves as an important adjunct to spoken lan-
guage. It is not so obvious, but on examination will prove to
bo true, that such expression by feature itself acts as a forma-
tive power in vocal language. Expression of countenance has
an action beyond that of mere visible gesture. The bodily
attitude brought on by a particular state of mind affects the
position of the organs of speech, both the internal larynx, etc.,
and the external features whose change can be watched by the
mere looker-on. Even though the expression of the speaker's
face may not be seen by the hearer, the effect of the whole
bodily attitude of which it forms part is not thereby done away
with. For on the position thus taken by the various organs
concerned in speech, depends what I have here called "emo-
tional tone," whereby the voice carries direct expression of
the speaker's feeling.

The ascertaining of the precise physical mode in which cer-
tain attitudes of the internal and external face come to corre-
spond to certain moods of mind, is a physiological problem as
yet little understood ; but the fact that particular expressions of
face are accompanied by corresponding and dependent expres-
sions of emotional tone, only requires an observer or a looking-
glass to prove it. The laugh made with a solemn, conteniptuous
or sarcastic face, is quite different from ihat which comes from
a joyous one ; the ah ! oh ! ho ! hey ! and so on, change their
modulations to match the expression of countenance. The
effect of the emotional tone docs not even recjuire fitness in
the meaning of the spoken words, for nonsense or an unknown

' Forbes, 'Aymara Indians,' in Journ. Etli. Soc. 1870, vol. ii. i>. 208.

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EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

151

tongue may be made to convey, when spoken with expressive
intonation, the feelings which are displayed upon the peaker's
face. This expression may even be recognized in the dark by
noticing the tone it gives forth, while the forced character
given by the attempt to bring out a sound not matching even
the outward play of the features can hardly be hidden by the
most expert ventriloquist, and in such forcing, the sound per-
ceptibly drags the face into the attitude that fits with it. The
nature of communication by emotional tone seems to me to be
somewhat on this wise. It does not appear that particular
tones at all belong directly and of themselves to particular
emotions, but that their action depends on the vocal organs of
the speaker and hearer. Other animals, having vocal organs
different from man's, have accordingly, as we know, a different
code of emotional tones. An alteration in man's vocal organs
would bring a corresponding alteration in the effect of tone in
expressing feeling ; the tone which to us expresses surprise or
anger might come to express pleasure, and so forth. As it is,
children learn by early experience that such and such a tone
indicates such and such an emotion, and this they make out
partly by finding themselves uttering such tones when their
feelings have brought their faces to the appropriate attitudes,
and partly by observing the expression of voice in others. At
three or four years old they are to be seen in the act of acquire
ing this knowledge, turning round to look at the speaker's
face and gesture to make sure of the meaning of the tone.
But in later years this knowledge becomes so familiar that it is
supposed to have been intuitive. Then, when men talk together,
the hearer receives from such emotional tone an indication, a
signal, of the speaker's attitude of body, and through this of
his state of mind. These he can recognize, and even reproduce
in himself, as the operator at one end of a telegraphic wire can
follow, by noticing his needles, the action of his colleague at the
other. In watching the process which thus enables one man
to take a copy of another's emotions through their physical
effects on his vocal tone, we may admire the perfection with
winch a means so simple^answers an end so complex, and appa-
rently so remote.

1 1 '^T^ni

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EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

lUi

(IS) 1

By eliminating from speech all effects of gesture, of expres-
sion of face, and of emotional tone, we go far toward reducing
it to that system of conventional articulate sounds which the
grammarian and the comparative philologist habitually consider
as language. These articulate sounds are capable of being
roughly set down in signs standing for vowels and consonants,
with the aid of accents and other significant marks ; and they
may then again be read aloud from these written signs, by any
one who has learnt to give its proper sound to each letter.

What vowels are, is a matter which has been for some years
well understood.^ They are compound musical tones such as,
in the vox humana stop ^of the organ, are sounded by reeds
(vibrating tongues) fitted to organ-pipes of particular con-
struction. The manner of formation of vowels by the voice is
shortly this. There are situated in the larynx a pair of vibrat-
ing membranes called the vocal chords, which may be rudely
imitated by stretching a piece of sheet india-rubber over the
open end of a tube, so as to form two half-covers to it, " like
the parchment of a drum split across the middle ;" when the
tube is blown through, the india-rubber flaps will vibrate as
the vocal chords do in the larynx, and give out a sound. In
the human voice, the musical effect of the vibrating chords is
increased by the cavity of the mouth, which acts as a resonator
or sounding-box, and which also, by its shape at any moment,
modifies the musical " quality " of the sound produced.
Quality, which is independent of pilch, depends on the har-
monic overtones accompanying the fundamental tone which
alone musical notation takes account of : this quality makes the
difference between the same note on two instruments, flute and
piano for instance, while some instruments, as the violin, can
give to one note a wide variation of quality. To such quality
the formation of vowels is due. This is perfectly shown by the
common Jew's harp, which when struck can be made to utter
the vowels a, e, i, o, u, &c., by simply putting the mouth in
the proper position for speaking these vowels. In this experi-

] ti

* See Helmholtz, * Toiienipfindungen, ' 2iid eJ. p. 1G3 ; TynJall, 'Sound,'
lecture v. ; Max ^Miiller, ' Lectures, ' 2ud series, p. 95, etc.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

153

ment the player's voice emits no sound, but the vibrating tongue
of the Jew's harp placed in front of the mouth acts as a substi-
tute for the vocal chords, and the vowel-sounds are produced by
the various positions of the cavity of the mouth modifying the
quality of the note, by bringing out with different degrees of
strength the series of harmonic tones of which it is composed.
As to musical theory, emotional tone and vowel-tone are con-
nected. In fact, an emotional tone may be defined as a vowel,
whose particular musical quality is that produced by the human
vocal organs, when adjusted to a particular state of feeling.

Europeans, while using modulation of musical pitch as affect-
ing the force of words in a sentence, know nothing of making
it alter the dictionary -meaning of a word. But this device is
known elsewhere, especially in South-East Asia, where rises and
falls of tone, to some extent like those which serve us in con-
veying emphasis, question and answer, &c., actually give
different signification. Thus in Siamese, hd= to seek, /ia= pesti-
lence, /id = five. The consequence of this elaborate system of
tone-accentuation is the necessity of- an accumulation of exple-
tive particles, to supply the place of the oratorical or emphatic
intonation, which being thus given over to the dictionary is lost
for the grammar. Another consequence is, that the system of
setting poetry to music becomes radically different from ours ; to
sing a Siamese song to a European tune makes the meaning
of the syllables alter according to their rise and fall in pitch,
and turns their sense into the wildest nonsense.^ In West Africa,
again, the same device appears: Thus in Dahoman so = stick,
e(^= horse, so = thunder; Yoruba, &c6=with, hd =hend.^ For
practical purposes, this linguistic music is hardly to be com-
mended, but theoretically it is interesting, as showing that
man does not servilely follow an intuitive or inherited scheme
of language, but works out in various ways the resources of
sound as a means of expression.

The theory of consonants is much more obscure than that of

^ See Pallegoix, * Gramm. Ling. Thai.;' Bastian, in 'Monatsb. Berlin. Akad.'
June 6, 1867, and 'Koy. Asiatic Soc' June, 1867.

2 Burton, in 'Mem. Anthrop. Soc.,' vol. i. p. 313; Bowen, 'Yoruba Gr. and
Die.; p. 5 ; see J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.,' p. 461.

* !.,

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154

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

I ■

vowels. They are not musical vibrations as vowels arc, but
noises accompanying them. To the musician such noises as the
rushing of the wind from the organ-pipe, the scraping of the
violin, the sputtering of the flute, are simply troublesome as inter-
fering with his musical tones, and he takes pains to diminish them
as much as may be. But in the art of language noises of this
kind, far from being avoided, are turned to immense account
by being used as consonants, in combination with the musical
vowels. As to the positions and movements of the vocal organs
in producing consonants, an excellent account with anatomical
diagrams is given in Professor Max Mliller's second series of
Lectures. For the present purpose of passing in review the
various devices by which the language-maker has contrived to
make sound a means of expressing thought, perhaps no better
illustration of their nature can be mentioned than Sir Charles
Wheatstone's account of his speaking machine ;^ for one of the
best ways of studying difficult phenomena is to see them arti-
ficially imitated. The instrument in question pronounce \
Latin, French, and Italian words well : it could say, " Je vous
aime de tout mon coeur," " Leopoldus Secundus Romanorum
Imperator," and so forth, but it was not so successful with Cxer-
man. As to the vowels, they were of course simply sounded by
suitable reeds and pipes. To affect them with consonants, con-
trivances were arranged to act like the human organs. Thus p
was made by suddenly removing the operator's hand from the
mouth of the figure, and b in the same way, exec pt that the m^uth
was not quite covered, while an outlet like the nostrils was used
in forming m ; / and v were rendered by modifying the shape
of the mouth by a hand ; air was mad a to rush through small
tubes to produce the sibilants s and sh; and the liquids r and I
were sounded by the action of tremulous reeds. As Wheat-
stone remarks, the most important use of such ingenious
mechanical imitations of "peech may be to fix and preserve an
accurate register of the pronunciation of different languages.
A perfectly arn^nged speaking machine would in fact represent
for us thnt framework of language which consists of mere

^ C. W., ill ' London and Westminster Kevicw,' Oct. 1837.

V0\
adj

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

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00

vowels and consonants, though without most of those expressive
adjuncts Wiiich go to make up the conversation of speaking men.
Of voAvels and consonants capable of being employed in lan-
guage, man is able to pronounce and distinguish an enormous
variety. But this great stock of possible sounds is noAvhere
brought into use altogether. Each language or dialect of the
world is found in practice to select a limited series of definite
vowels and consonants, keeping with tolerable exactness to each,
and thus choosing what we may call its phonetic alphabet.
Neglecting such minor differences as occur in the speech of in-
dividuals or small communities, each dialect of the world may
be said lu have its own phonetic system, and these phonetic
systems vary widely. Our vowels, for instance, differ much
from those of French and Dutch. French knows nothing of
■either of the sounds which we write as th in thiu and that,
while the Castilian lisped c, the so-called ceceo, is a third con-
sonant which we must again make shift to write as tJi, though
it is quite distinct in sound from both our own. It is qiute a
usual thing for us to find foreign languages wanting letters
even near in sound to some of ours, while possessing others un-
famihar to ourselves. Among such cases are the Chinese diffi-
culty in pronouncing r, and the want of s and / in Australian
dialects. When foreigners tried to teach the Mohawks, who
have no labials in their language, to pronounce words with p
and h in them, they protested that it was too ridiculous to expect
people to shut their mouths to speak ; and the Portuguese dis-
coverers of Brazil, remarking that the natives had neither/, I,
nor r in their language, neatly described them as a people with
neither /^, ley, nor rey, neither faith, laAV, nor king. It may
happen, too, that sounds only used by some nations as interjec-
tional noises, unwritten and unwriteable, shall be turned to
account by others in their articulate language. Something of
this kind occurs with the noises called " clicks." Such sounds
are familiar to us as interjections ; thus the lateral click made
in the cheek (and usually in the left cheek) is continually used
in driving horses, while varieties of the dental and palatal click
made with the tongue against the teeth and the roof of the
mouth, are common in the nursery as expressions of surprise.

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EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

,1:. ;

reproof, or satisfaction. Thus, too, the natives of Tien-a del
Fuego express " no " by a peculiar cluck, as do also the Turks,
who accompany it with the gesture of throwing back the head;
and it appears from the accounts of travellers that the clicks of
surprise and admiration among the natives of Australia are
much like those we hear at home. But thoush here these
clicking noises are only used interjectionally, it is well known
that South African races have taken such sounds uj) into their
articulate speech and have made, as we may say, letters of
them. The very name of Hottentots, applied to the Namaquas
and other kindred tribes, appears to be not a native name (as
Peter Kolb thought) but a rude imitative word coined by the
Dutch to express the clicking " hot en tot" and the term Hot-
tentot ism has been thence adopted as a medical description of
one of the varieties of stammering. ISorth West America is
another district of the world distinguished for the production of
strange clucking, gurgling, and grunting letters, difficult or im-
possible to European voices. Moreover, there are many sounds
capable of being used in articulate speech, varieties of chirp-
ing, whistling, blowing, and sucking noises, of which some are
familiar to our own use as calls to animals, or interjectional
noises of contempt or surprise, but which no tribe is known to
have brought into their alphabet. With all the vast piw^etic
variety of known languages, the limits of possible utterance are
far from being reached.

Up to a certain point we can understand the reasons which
have guided the various tribes of mankind in the selection of
their various alphabets ; ease of utterance to the speaker, com-
bined with distinctness of effect to the hearer, have been un-
doubtedly among the principal of the selecting causes. We
may fairly connect with the close uniformity of men's organs of
speech all over the world, the general similarity which prevails
in the phonetic systems of the most different languages, and
which gives us the power of roughly writing down so large a
proportion of one language by means of an alphabet intended
for any other. But while we thus account by physical simila-
rity for the existence of a kind of natural alphabet common to
mankind, we must look to other causes to determine the selec-

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

157

tion of sounds used in different languages, and to account for
those remarkable courses of change which go on in languages of
a common stock, producing in Europe such variations of one
original word as pater, father, vater, or in the islands of Poly-
nesia offering us the numeral 5 under the strangely-varied
forms of lima, rima, dima, nima, and hima. Changes of this
sort have acted so widely and regularly, that since the enuncia-
tion of Grimm's law their study has become a main part of
philology. Though their causes are as yet so obscure, we may
at least argue that such wide and definite operations cannot be
due to chance or arbitrary fancy, but must be the result of laws
as wide and definite as themselves.

Let us now suppose a book to be written with a tolerably
correct alphabet, for instance, an ordinary Italian book, or an
English one in some good system of phonetic letters. To
suppose English written in the makeshift alphabet which we
still keep in use, would be of course to complicate the matter
in hand with a new and needless difficulty. If, then, the book
be written in a sufficient alphabet, and handed to a reader, his
office will by no means stop short at rendering back into
articulate sounds the vowels and consonants before him, as
though he were reading over proofs for the press. For the
emotional tone just spoken of has dropped out iu writing down
the words in letters, and it will be the reader's duty to guess
from the meaning of the words what this tone should be, and
to put it in again accordingly. He has moreover to introduce
emphasis, whether by accent or stress, on certain syllables or
words, thereby altering their effect in the sentence ; if he says,
for example, " I never sold you that horse," an emphasis on any
one of these six words will alter the import of the whole phrase.
Now, in emphatic pronunciation two distinct processes are to
be remarked. The effect produced by changes in loudness and
duration of words is directly imitative ; it is a mere gesture
made with the voice, as we may notice by the way in which any
one will speak of " a short sharp answer," "a long lueary year,"
" a loud hurst of music," " a gentle gliding motion," as com-
pared with the like manner in which the gesture-language
would adapt its force and speed to the kind of action to be

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PMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

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represented. Written language can hardly convey but by the
context the striking effects which our imitative faculty adds to
spoken language, in our continual endeavour to make the
sound of each word we speak a sort of echo to its sense. Wo
see this in the difference between writing and telUng the little
story of the man who was worried by being talked to about
"good books." "Do you mean," he asked, speaking shortly
with a face of strong firm approval, "good books ? " "or," with
--' drawl and a fatuous-benevolent simper, " rjoo-d books?"
i7u"ical accent (ciccentus,^ musical tone) is turned to account as
a i^.cans of emphasis, as when we give prominence to a par-
ticular syllable or word in a sentence by raising or depressing
it a semi-tone or more. The reader has to divide his sentences
with pauses, being guided in this to some extent by stops ; the
rhythmic measure in which he will utter prose as well as poetry
is not without its effect ; and he has again to introduce music
by speaking each sentence to a kind of imperfect melody.
Professor Helmholtz endeavours to write down in musical
notes how a German with a bass voice, speaking on B flat, might
say, " Ich bin spatzieren gegangen. — Bist du spatzieren gegan-
gen?" falling a fourth (to F) at the end of the affirmative
sentence, and rising a fifth (to f) in asking the question, thus
ranging through an octave.^ When an English speaker tries to
illustrate in his own language the rising and falling tones of
Siamese vowel?, he compares them with the English tones of
question and answer, as in "Will you go ? Yes.''^ The rules
of this imperfect musical intonation in ordinary conversation
have been as yet but little studied. But as a means of giving
solemnity and pathos to language, it has been more fully
developed and even systematized under exact rules of melody,
and we thus have on the one hand ecclesiastical intoning and the
less conventional half-singing so often to be heard in religious
meetings, and on the other the ancient and modern theatrical
recitative. By such intermediate stages we may cross the wide
interval from spoken prose, with the musical pitch of its vowels
so carelessly kept, and so obscured by consonants as to be diffi-

^ ' Accentus est etiam in dicendo cantus obscurior.' — Cic. de Orat.

2 Helmholtz, p. 364.

^ Caswell, in llastinn, 'Berlin. Akad.'l. c.

EMOTIO AL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

159

cult even to determine, to full song, in which the consonants
are as much as possible suppressed, that they may not interfere
with the precise and expressive music of the vowels.

Proceeding now to survey such parts of the vo;'.julary of
mankind as appear to have an intelligible origin in the direct
expression of sense by sound, let us first survey Interjections.
When Home Tooke spoke, in words often repeated since, of
"the brutish inarticulate Interjection," he certainly meant to
express his contempt for a mode of expression which lay outside
liis own too narrow view of language. But the epithets are in
themselves justifiable enough. Interjections are undoubtedly
to a certain extent " brutish in their analogy to the cries of
animals ; and the fact gives tiier %n especial interest to modern
observers, who are thus enabled to trace phenomena belonging
to the mental state of the lower animals up into the midst of
the most highly cultivated numan language. It is also true
that they are " inarticuL ^," so far at least that the systems of
consonants and vowels recognized by grammarians break down
more hopelessly than elsewhere in the attempt to write down
interjections. Alphabetic writing is far too incomplete and
clumsy an instrument to render their peculiar and variously-
modulated sounds, for which a few conv entionally-written words
do duty poorly enough. In reading aloud, and sometimes even
in the talk of those who have learnt rather from books than
from the living world, we may hear these awkward imitation;?,
ahem ! hein ! tush ! tut ! jpshaw ! now carrying the un-
questioned authority of words printed in a book, and reproduced
letter for letter, with a most amusing accuracy. But when
Home Tooke fastens upon an unfortunate Italian grammarian,
and describes him as " The industrious and exact Cinonio, who
does not appear ever to have had a single glimpse of reason," it
is not easy to see Avhat the pioneer of English philology could
find to object to in Cinonio's obviously true assertion, that a
single interjection, ah ! or ahi ! is capable of expressing more
than twenty different emotions or intentions, such as pain,
entreaty, threatening, sighing, disdain, according to the tone in
which it is uttered ^ The fact that interjections do thus utter

' Home Tooke, 'Diversions of Parley,' 2nd eJ. Loudou, 1798, pt. i. pp. 60 — 3.

' t' ,1

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160

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

feelings is quite be;yoii J dispute, and the philologist's concern
with them is on the one hand to study their action in ex-
pressing emotion, and on the other to trace their passage into
more fully-formed words, such as have their place in connected
syntax and form part of logical propositions.

In the first place, however, it is necessaiy to separate from
proper interjections the manj' sen e -words which, often kept up in
a mutilated or old-fashioned guise, come so close to them both in
appearance and in use. Among classic examples are (f)fp€, bevre,
age ! made ! Such a word is hail ! which, as the Gothic
Bible shows, was originally an adjective, "whole, hale, pros-
per ous," used vocatively, just as the Italians cry hravo ! brava !
hravi ! brave ! When the African negro cries out in fear or
wonder mdmd ! mdond ! ^ he might be thought to be uttering a
real interjection, "a word used to express some passion or
emotion of the mind," as Lindley Murray has it, but in fact he
is simply calling, grown-up baby as he is, for his mother ; and
the very same thing has been noticed among Indians of Upper
California, who as an expression of pain cry, a7id ! that is,
" mother." ^ Other exclamations consist of a pure interjection
combined with a pronoun, as oifxoi ! oimh ! ah me ! or with an
adjective, as alas ! helas ! (ah weary !) With what care inter-
jections should be sifted, to avoid the risk of treating as original
elementary sounds of language what are really nothing but
sense-words, we may judge from the way in which the common
English exclamation ^vell ! well ! approaches the genuine inter-
jectional sound in the Coptic expression " to make ouelouele'*
which signifies to wail, Latin ululare. Still better, we may
find a learned traveller in the last century quite seriously re-
marking, apropos of the old Greek battle-shout, aXaXd ! dAoAd !
that the Turks to this day call out Allah! Allah! Allah!
upon the like occasion.^

^ E. F. Burton, ' Lake Eegious of Central Africa,' vol. ii, p. 333 ; Living-
stone, 'Missionary Tr. in S. Africa,' p. 298; ' Gr. of Mpongwe lang.' (A. B. C.
r. Missions, Rev. J, L. Wilson), p. 27. See Callaway, 'Zidu Tales,' vol. i.
p. 69.

2 Arroyo de la Cuesta, *Gr. of Mutsun lang.,' p. 39, in ' Smithsonian Contr.,'
vol. iii.

3 Shaw, 'Travels in Barbary,' in Pinkerton, vol. xv. p. 669.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

161

The calls to animals customary in different countries^ are to
a great extent intcrjectional in their use, but to attempt to
explain them as a whole is to step upon as slippery ground
as lies within the range of philology. Sometimes they may he
in fact pure interjections, like the schil schil ! mentioned as
an old German cry to scare birds, as we should say ah sh ! or
the ad ! with which the Indians of Brazil call their dogs. Or
they may be set down as simple imitations of the animal's own
cries, as the cliich'my to call fowls in our own farm-yards, or the
Austrian calls of pi pi ! or tlet tiet ! to chickens, or the
Swabian Icauter kaut ! to turkeys, or the shepherd's baaing to
call sheep in India. In other cases, however, they may be
sense-words more or less broken down, as when the creature is
spoken to by a sound which seems merely taken from its own
common name. If an English countryman meets a stray
sheep-dog, he will simply call to him ship ! shij) ! So schdp
schdp ! is an Austrian call to sheep, and kuss kuhel kuaa ! to
cows. In German districts r/us gus ! giLsch gusch ! ffvs gas !
are set down as calls to geese ; and when we notice that the
Bohemian peasant calls husy ! to them, we remember that the
name for goose in his language is husa, a word familiar to
English ears in the name of John Huss. The Bohemian, again,
will call to his dog ps 2)s ! but then 25e.5 means " dog." Other
sense-words addressed to animals break down by long repeti-
tion into mutilated forms. When we are told that the to to !
with which a Portuguese calls a dog is short for tonut toma !
(i.e., " take take ! ") which tells him to come and take his food,
we admit the explanation as plausible ; and the coop coop !
which a cockney might so easily mistake for a pure interjection,
is only " Come up ! come up ! "

" Come uppo, Whitefoot, como uppe, Lightfoot,
Come uppe, Jetty, rise and follow.

Jetty, to the milking shed

But I cannot offer a plausible guess at the origin of such calls
as hilf hilf! to horses, hilhl hilhl ! to geese, deckel deckel ! to

^ Some of the examples here cited, will be found in Grimm, 'Deutsche Gr.'
vol. iii. p. 308; Pott, ' Doppelung.' p. 27; Wedgwood, * Origin of Language. '
vol.. I. M

1G2

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

sheep. It is fortunate for otymologlHts tlmt such trivial Uttlo
words liavo not an importance proportioned to the difficulty of
clearing up their origin. The word 2>us8 ! raises an interesting
philological problem. An English child calling p2t«« ^^wws.' is
very likely keeping uj) the trace of the old Keltic name for the cat,
Irish j)us, Erse ini8a(j, Gaelic inds. Similar calls are known else-
where in Europe (as in Saxony, j)i!i« fiJis !), and there is somo
reason to think that the cat, which came to us from the East,
Lrought with it one of its names, which is still current there,
Tamil 'piiaei ! Afghan ptisha, Persian pusliak, &c. Mr. Wedg-
wood finds an origin for the call in an imitation of the cat's
spitting, and remarks that the Servians cry ins ! to drive a cat
away, while the Albanians use a similar sound to call it. The
way in which the cry of puss ! has furnished a name for the cat
itself, comes out curiously in countries where the animal has
been lately introduced by Englishmen. Thus hooni is the
recognized word for cat in the Tonga Islands, no doubt from
Captain Cook's time. Among Indian tribes of North-west
America, pivsh, pwh-piah, appear in native languages with the
meaning of cat ; and not only is the European cat called a
puss puss in the Chinook jargon, but in the same curious
dialect the word is applied to a native beast, the cougar, now
called " hy as j)U8s-2)US8," i.e., "great cat."^

The derivation of names of animals in this manner from calls
to them, may perhaps not have been, unfrequent. It appears
that huss ! is a cry used in Switzerland to set dogs on to fight,
as 8 — 8 ! might be in England, and that the Swiss call a dog
huss or hau88, possibly from this. We know the cry of dill !
dilly ! as a recognised call to ducko in England, and it is
difficult to think it a corruptioE of any English word or phrase,
for the Bohemians also call Midli ! to their ducks. Now,
though dill or dilly may not l.'e found in our dictionaries as the

' See Pictet, 'Origin. Iiulo-Europ.' part i. p. 382; Caldwell, 'Gr. ofDravi-
dian Langs.' p. 465 ; Wedgwood, Die. s. v. 'puss,' etc. ; Mariner, 'Tonga Is.
Vocab.' ; Gibbs, ' Die. of Chinook Jargon,' Smithsonian Coll. No. 101 ; Pan-
dosy, 'Gr. and Die. of Yakama,' Smithson. Contr. vol. iii. ; compare J. L.
Wilson, 'Mpongwo Gr.' p. 57. The Hindu child's call to the cat munmun/
may be broken down from Iliudust. mdno— cat ; compare the German calls
minni! minzl and the French names, ininon, viincUe,

EMOTIONAL AMD IMITATIVK LANGUAGE.

1G3

name for a duck, yet the way in which Hood can use it as sucli
iu one of liis best known comic poems, shows perfectly the easy
and natural step by which sucli transitions can be made : —

" For Death among tbo wator-lilios,
Cried ' ])uc ad mo ' to all hor dillios."

In just tlie same way, because <jee ! is a usual call of the
English waggoner to his horses, the word gce-tjea has become a
familiar nursery noun meaning a horse. And neither in such
nursery words, nor in words coined in jest, is tiie evidence
bearing on the origin of language to be set aside as worthless ;
for it may be taken as a maxim of ethnology, that what is done
among civilized men in jest, or among civilized children in the
nurspry, is apt to find its analogue in the serious mental ettbrt
of savage, and therefore of primaeval tribes.

Drivers' calls to their beasts, such as this (jee ! rjee-ho ! to urge on
horses, and tveh ! wolt ! to stop them, form part of the vernacular
of particular districts. The f/eho ! perhaps, came to England in
the Norman-French, for it is known in France, and appears in
the Italian dictionary as glo ! The traveller who has been
hearing the drivers in the Grisons stop their horses with a long
hr-r-r ! may cross a pass and hear on the other side a liu-u-u !
instead. The ploughman's calls to turn the leaders of the team
to right and left have passed into proverb. In France they say
of a stupid clown " II n'entend ni a dia ! ni a harhaut ! " and
the corresponding Platt-Dyutsch phrase is " He weet nich Jtutt !
noch hoh ! " So there is a regular language to camels, as
Captain Burton remarks on his journey to Mekka : ikh ikJi !
makes them kneel, ydhli ydhlc ! urges them on, hai hal !
induces caution, and so forth. In the formation of these quaint
expressions, two causes have been at work. The sounds seem
sometimes thoroughly interjectional, as the Arab hal ! of
caution, or the French hue ! North German ^o .' Whatever their
origin, they may be made to carry their sense ■ / imitative tones
expressive to the ear of both horse and man, t any one will say
who hears the contrast between the short and sharp high-pitched
hilp ! which tells the Swiss horse to go faster, and the long-
it 2

1G4

KMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

drawn hu-u-u-il ! which brings him to a stand. Also, the way in
which common sense-words are taken up into calls like gee-up !
ivoh-hackf shows that we may expect to find various old
broken fragments of formal language in the list, and such on
inspection we find accordingly. The following lines are quoted
by Halliwell from the Micro-Cynicon (1599) : —

" A base Lorno issue of a baser syer,
Bred in a cottage, wandering in the myer,
With nailed shooes and whipstaffo in his hand,
Who with a hey and ree the boasts command."

The ree! is equivalent to "right" (riddle-me-ree— riddle me
right), and tells the leader of the team to bear to the right hand.
The hey ! may correspond with heit ! or camether ! which call
him to bear " hither," i.e., to the left. In Germany har ! hdr !
har-iih ! are likewise the same as "her," "hither, to the left."
So sivude ! scJavude ! ztvuder ! " to the left," are of course
simply " zuwider," " on the contrary way." Pairs of calls for
" right " and " left " in German-speaking countries are liot ! —
har ! and hott ! — luist ! This wid ! is an interesting example
of the keeping up of ancient words in such popular tradition.
It is evidently a mutilated form of an old German word for the
left hand, wlnistrd, Anglo-Saxon ivinstve, a name long since
forgotten by modern High German, as by our own modern
English.!

As quaint a mixture of words and interjectional cries as I
have met with, is in an old French Cyclopaedia,^ which gives a
minute description of the hunter's craft, and prescribes exactly
what is to be cried to the hounds under all possible contin-
gencies of the chase. If the creatures understood grammar and
syntax, the language could not be more accurately arranged
for their ears. Sometimes we have what seem pure inter-

' For lists of drivers' words, see Grirnm, 1. c. ; Pott, ' Ziililmethode,' p. 261 ;
Halliwell, 'Die. of Archaic and Provincial English,' s. v. ' ree ; ' Brand, vol ii.
p. 15 ; I'ictet, part ii. p. 489.

' 'Recucil de Planches sur les Sciences, Ics Arts, etc.,' Paris, 1763, art.
' Chasses.' The traditional cries are still more or less in use. Sec ' A Week in a
Prench Country-house.'

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

165

jectional cries. Thus, to encourage the liounds to work, the
huntsman is to call to them ha halle halle halle ! while to
bring them up before they are uncoupled it is prescribed that
he shall call hau haii ! or hau tahaut ! and when they are
uncoupled he is to change his cry to hau la y la la y la tayau !
a call which suggests the Norman original of the English
tally-ho ! With cries of this kind plain French words are
intermixed, ha bellement Id, ila, la ila, hau valet! — hau rami,
tau tau apves apres, d route a route ! and so on. And some-
times words have broken down into calls whose sense is not
quite gone, like the " voila ici " and the " voila ce Test,"
which are still to be distinguished in the shout which is to tell
the hunters that the stag they have been chasing has made a
return, vaitleci revaH vaulecelctz ! But the drollest thing in the
treatise is the grave set of English words (in very Gallic shape)
with which English dogs are to be spoken to, because, as the
author says, " there are many English hounds in France, and it
is difficult to get them to work when yon speak to them in an
unknown tongue, that is, in other terms than they have been
trained to." Therefore, to call them, tlie huntsman is to cry
Jiere do-do ho ho ! to get them back to the right track he is
to say houpe hoy, hoiipe hoy ! when there are several on ahead
of the rest of the pack, he is to ride up to them and cry safme
hoy, saf me hoy ! and lastly, if they are obstinate and will not
stop, he is to make them go back with a shout of cohat, cohat !

How far the lower animals may attach any inherent
meaning to interjectional sounds is a question not easy to
answer. But it is plain that in most of the cases mentioned
here they only understand them as recognized signals which
have a meaning by regular association, as when they remember
that they are fed with one noise and driven away with another,
a,nd they also pay attention to the gestures which accompany
the cries. Thus the well-known Spanish way of calling the cat
is miz ..tiz ! while zape zape ! is used to drive it away; and
the writer of an old dictionary maintains that there can be no
real difference between these words except by custom, for, he
declares, he has heard that in a certain monastery where they
kept very handsome cats, the brother in charge of the refectory

'$:'

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16G

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

hit upon the device of calling s'ape zape ! to them when he
gave them their food, and then he drove them away with a
stick, crying angrily miz miz ; and this of course prevented
any stranger from calling and stealing them, for only he and
the cats knew the secret ! ^ To philologists, the manner in
which such calls to animals become customary in particular
districts illustrates the consensus Ly which the use of w rds is
settled. Each case of the kind indicates that a word has
prevailed by selection among a certain society of men, anr" the
main reasons of words holding their ground within particular
limits, though it is so difficult to assign them exactly in each
case, are jDrobably inherent fitness in the first place, and
traditional inlicritance in the second.

When the ground has been cleared of obscure or mutilated
sense-words, there remains behind a residue of real sound-
words, or pure interjections. It has long and reasonably been
considered that the place in history of these expressions is a
very primitive one. Thus Do Brosses describes them as neces-
sary and natural words, common to all mankind, and produced
by the combination of man's conformation with the interior
affections of his mind. One of the best means of judging the
relation between interjectional utterances and the feelings they
express, is to compare the voices of the lower animals with our
own. To a considerable extent there is a similarity. As their
bodily and mental structure has an analogy with our own, so
they express their minds by sounds which have to our ears a
certain fitness for what they appear to mean. It is so with
the bark, the howl, and the whine of the dog, the hissing of
geese, the purring of cats, the crov;ing and clucking nf ^'^o]-^
and hens. But in other cases, as with the hooting of owis and
the shrieks of parrots and many other birds, wc cann ;t sup-
pose that these sounds are intended to utter anything like the
melancholy or pain which such cries from a human being
would be taken to convey. There are many animals that
never utter any cry but v^hat, according to our notions of the
meaning of sounds, would express rage or discomfort ; how far

* Aldrete, ' Lerigua Castellana,' Madrid, 1C73, s. vv. ham, exo.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

167

has

are the roars and howls of wild beasts to be thus interpreted ?
We might as well imagine the tuning violin to be in pain, or
the moaning wind to express sorrow. The connexion between
interjection and emotion depending on the physical structure
of the animal which utters or hears the sound, it follows that
the general similarity of interjectional utterance among all the
varieties of the human race is an important manifestation of
their close physical and intellectual unity.

Interjectional sounds uttered by man for the expression of
his own feelings serve also as signs indicating these feelings to
another. A long list of such interjectijns, common to races
speaking the most widely various languages, might be set down
in a rough way as representing the sighs, groans, moans, cries,
shrieks, and growls by which man gives utterance to various of
his feelings. Such, for instance, are some of ti:!e many sounds
for which ah ! oh ! ahi I aie ! are the inexpresbive written
representatives ; such is the sigh which is written down in the
Wolof language of Africa as hhihhe ! in English as heigho ! in
Greek and Latin as e e .' e e .' heu ! eheu I Thus the open-
mouthed wah ivah I of astonishment, so common in the East,
reappears in America in the hiuah ! hiva-iva ! of the Chinook
Jargon : and the kind of groan which is repi. jented in European
languages by vjeh ! ouais ! ovaC ! vae ! is given in. Coptic by
oiicm ! i.i Galla by ivayo ! in the Ossetic of the Caucasus by
voy ! among the Indians of British Columbia by ivo'i ! Where
the interjections taken down in the vocabularies of other lan-
guages differ from those recognized in our own, we at any rate
appreciate them and see how they carry their meaning. Thus
with the Malagasy il-u ! of pleasure, the North American
Indian's often described guttural ugh ! the lav'mh ! of con-
tempt in the Chinook Jargon, the Tunguz yo yo ! of pain, the
Irish ivb lub ! of distress, the native Brazilian's teh teh ! of
wonder and reverence, the hi-yah ! so well known in the
Pigeon-English of the Chinese ports, and even, to take an
extreme case, the interjections of surprise among the Algonquin
Indians, where men say tlau ! and women nyau ! It is much
the same ,/ith expressions which are not uttered for the
speaker's satisfaction, but are calls addressed to another. Thus

168

EMOTIONAL AND IMITAriVj!: La; OU AGE.

ifi

Ilii

si ' '

f 1 V, >

the Siamese call of he ! the Hebrew ufi ! Act / for " lo ! behold !"
the hdi ! of the Clallam Indians for " stop ! " the Lummi hdi !
for "hold, enough ! " — these and others like ther.i belong just as
much to English, Another class of interject' ons are iiach as any
one conversant with the gesture-signs of savages and deaf-mutes
would recognize as being themselves gesnire-signs, made with
vocal sound, in short, voice-gestures. I'he sound m'm, mJn,
made AvHh the lips closed, is the obvious expression of the man
who tries to speak, but cannot. Even the deaf-and-dumb
child, though he Ccinnot hear the sound of his voice, makes
this noise to show that he is dumb, that he is 7)iu niu, as the
Vei negroes of West Africa would saj^ To the speaking man,
the sound which we write as utitm .' says plainly enough " hold
your tongue!" "mum's the word !" and in accordance with
this meaning has served to form various imitative words, of
which a type is Tahitian mamu, to be silent. Often made
with a slight effort which aspirates it, and with more or less
continuance, this sound becomes what may be indicated as
'm, '71, /i'm, Ji/n, etc., interjections which arc conventionally
written down as words, hem ! <i ^ en i ! hein ! Their primary
sense seems in any case that of iiesitation to speak, of " hum-
ming and hawing," but this serves with a varied intonation to
express sti' •- hesitation or refraining from articulate words as
belongs iSh ■ to surprise, doubt or enquiry, approbation or
contempt, in the vocabulary of the Yorubas of West Africa,
the nasal interjection hun is rendered, just as it might be in
English, as " fudge ! " Rochefort describes the Caribs listening
in reverent silence to their chief's discourse, and testifying their
approval with a hun-hun! just as in his time (17th cent.) an
English congregation would have saluted a popular preacher.^
The gesture of blowing, again, is a familiar expression of contempt
and disgust, and when vocalized gives the labial interjections which

' "There prevailed in those days an indecent custom; when the preacher
touched any favourite topiclc in a manner that delighted his audience, their
a])probation was expressed hy a loud hum, continued in proportion to their
zeal or pleasure. When Burnet preached, part of his congregation liummed so
loudly and so long, that he sat down to enjoy it, and lubbed his face with his
handkerchief. "When Sprat jjreached, he likewise was honoured with the like
animating hum, but he stretched out his hand to the congregation, and cried,
'Peace, peace ; I pray you, peace.' " Johnson, 'Life of Sprat.'

'^'i^

EMOTIONAL AND I.MITATIVF LANGU.VOK

J 09

are written fait ! bah ! inKjh ! pooh ! in Welsh ^j?o / I , Low
Latin puppu^) ! and set down by travellers among t^e ^a\ ag ^h
in Australia as pooh ! These interjections corresp =:i'l wi^li
the mass of imitative words which express blowing ^n^^h as
Malay puput, to blow. The labial gestures of blowing pass
into those of spitting, of which one kind gives the dental inter-
jection V V f ! which is written in English or Dutch tut tut !
and that this is no mere fancy, a number of imitative verbs of
various countries will serve to show, Tahitian tutua, to spit,
being a typical instance.

The place of interjectional utterance in savage intercourse is
well shown in Cranz's description. The Greenlanders, he says,
especially the women, accompany many words with mien and
glances, and he who does not well apprehend this may easily
miss the s^nse. Thus when they affirm anything with pleasure
they suck down air by the throat with a certain sound, and
when the} deny anything with contempt or horror, they turn
up the nose and give a slight sound through it. And unless
these are got rid of, one must understand rriore from their
gestures than their words.^ Interjection and gesture ( ouibine Lo
form a tolerable practical means of intercourse, as where the
communication between French and English troc-js in the
Crimea is described as " consisting largel;, of - ich i-'icerjectional
utterances, reiterated with expressive emp^ : •'-: and considerable
gesticulation." - This description well brings before us in actual
life a system of effective human intercourse, 'n vhich there has
not yet arisen the use of hose articulate s(>undj carrying their
meaning by tradition, which are the inherited words of the
dictionary.

When, however, w(^ look closely into these inherited sense-
words themselves, we find that interjectional sounds have
actually had mere or less share in their formation. Not
stopping short at the function ascribed to them by gram-
marians, of standing here and there outside a logical sentenc-;,
the interjections have also served as radical sounds out of which
verbs, substantives, and other parts of speech have been shaped.

' Cranz, ' Gronlaiul,' p. 279.

= D. Wilson, ' rrehistoric Man,' p. tiS.

t'%

I'p:

f;;i

170

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

il *.c

In tracing the progress of interjections upward into fully Je-
velop(3d language, we begin with sounds merely expressing the
speaker's actual feelings. When, however, expressive sounds,
like ah ! ugh ! iiooh ! are uttered not to exhibit the speaker's
actual feelings at tlic moment, but only in order to suggest to
another the thought of admiration or disgust, then such inter-
jections have little or nothing to distinguish them from fully
formed words. The next step is to trace the taking up of such
sounds into the regular forms of ordinary grammar. Familiar
instances of such formations may be found among ourselves ia
nursery language, where to vjoh is found in use with the
meaning of to stop, or in that real though hardly acknowledged
T)art of the Endisli laniruage to which belong such verbs as to
hoo-hoo. Among the most obvious of such words are those
which denote the actual utterance of an interjection, or pass
thence into some closely allied meaning. Thus the Fijian
women's cry of lamentation oile ! becomes the verb oile "to
bewail," oile-taJca "to lament for" (the men cry ule!) ; now this
is in perfect ^nalogy with such words as ululare, to luail. With
different grammatical terminations, the same sound produces
the Zulu verb gigiteka and its English equivalent to giggle.
The Galla iya, "to cry, scream, give the battle-cry" has its
analogues in Greek id, i?/, "aery," ^/tos" wailing, mournful," etc.
Good cases maybe taken from a curious modern dialect with a
strong propensity to the use of obvious sound-words, the
Chinook Jargon of North- West America. Here we find adopted
from an Indian dialect the verb to kish-hish, that is, "to drive
cattle or horses " ; humm stands for the word " stink," verb or
noun ; and the laugh, heehee, becomes a recognized term
meaning fun or amusement, as in mamook heehee, " to amuse "
{i. e., "to make heehee'') and heehee house, "a tavern." In
Hawaii, aa is "to insult;" in the Tonga Islands, ui ! is at
once the exclamation " fie ! " and the verb " to cry out against."
In New Zealand, he ! is an interjection denoting surprise at a
mistake, M as a noun or verb meaning " error, mistake, to err,
to go astray." In the Quiche language of Guatemala, the
verbs ay, oy, hoy, express the idea of "to call" in diflferent
ways. In the Carajas language of Brazil, we may guess an

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

171

inter] ectional origin in the adjccuve el, "sorrowful" (compare
Coptic eidio, "to wear a sorrowful countenance"); while wo
can scarcely fail to see a derivation from expressive sound in
the verb hai-hai "to run away" (compare the word ale-ale,
used to mean "an omnibus" in modern French slang). The
Camacan Indians, when they wish to express the notion of
"much" or "many," hold out their fingers and say A/. As
this is an ordinary savage gesture expressing multitude, it
seems likely that the ]il is a mere interjection, requiring the
visible sign to convey the full meaning.^ In the Quichua
language of Peru, alalau ! is an interjection of complaint at
cold, whence the verb alalaiiuinl, "to complain of the cold." At
the end of each strophe of the Peruviaa hymns to the Sun was
sung the triumphant exclamation hayVi ! and with this sound
are connected the verbs hayllini "to cing," Juiylllcunl, " to
celebrate a victory." The Zulu lialala ! of exultation, which
becomes also a verb "to shout for joy," has its analogues in the
Tibetan alala ! of joy, and the Greek aAaAa, whicli is used as a
noun meaning the battle-cry and even the onset itself, aAaAa^co,
"to raise the war-cry," Hebrew hdlal, "to sing praise," whence
hallelujah ! a word which the believers in the theory that the
Red Indians were the Lost Tribes naturally recognized in the
native medicine-man's chant of hi-le-li-lah ! The Zulu makes
his panting ha I do duty as an expression of heat, when he
says that the hot weather "says ha ha" ; his way of pitching a
song by a ha ! ha ! is apparently represented in the verb hay a,
"to lead a song," hayo "a starting song, a fee given to the
singing-leader for the hay a "; and his interj ectional expression
ba ha! "as when one smacks his lips from a bitter taste,"
becomes a verb-root meaniiT^ " to be bitter or sharp to tiie
taste, to prick, to smart." The Galla language gives some good
examples of interjections passing into words, as where the
verbs birr-djeda (to say brr !) and birefada (to make brr !)
have the meaning " to be afraid." Thus o ! being the usual
answer to a call, and also a cry to drive cattle, there are formed

"i- ;

^ Compare, in the same district, Cam^ ii, Cotoxo hichic, euliidhid, multus,
•a, -um.

172

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

r- < .'

[9 1 .

'! ,

'.'•■ ,''
f) ■ ■■

••^1

from it by the addition of verbal terminations, the verbs oada,
"to answer," and of a, " to drive."

The capabilities of an interjection in modifying words, when
language chooses to avail itself thoroughly of them, may be
seen in the treatment of this same interjection o ! in the
Japanese grammar.^ It is used before substantives as a prefix
of honour; coitJi/', "country," thus becoming ocowm. When a
man is talking to his superiors, he puts o before the names of
all objects belonging to them, while these superiors drop the o
in speaking of anything of their own, or an inferior's ; among
the higher classes, persons of equal rank put o before the
names of each other's things, but not before their own ; it is
polite to say o before the names of all women, and well-bred
children are distinguished from little peasants by the way in
which they are careful to put it even before the nursery names
of father and mother, o toto, o caca, which correspond to the
pa2)a and mama of Europe. The o is also nsed to convey a
distinct notion of eminence, and even to distinguish the male
gender from the female ; as o rn'ma, a horse, from me m'ma, a
mare. A distinction is made in written language between o,
which is put to anything royal, and oo (pronounced o-o, not 4)
which means great, as may be instanced in the use of the
word iinets'M, or "spy," (literally "eye-fixer") ; o mets'k^ is a
princely or imperial spy, while oo mets'M is the spy in chief
This interject ional adjective oo, great, is usually prefixed to the
name of the capital city, which it is customary to call oo Yedo
in speaking to one of its inhabitants, or when officials talk of it
among themselves. And lastly, the o of honour is prefixed to
verbs in all their forms of conjugation, and it is polite to say
omvriahai matse, "please to see," instead of the mere plebeian
minahal matse. Now the slightest consideration shows that
an English child of six years old would at once understand
these formations ; and if we do not thus incorporate in our
txrammar the o .' of admiration and reverential embarrassment,
it is merely because we have not chosen to take advantage of
tliis rudimentary means of expression. Another closely allied

J. H. Doukcr Curtius, 'Essai de Grammaire Japonaise,' p. 34, etc. 1D9.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUA(3E.

173

IS a

exclamation, the cry of io ! has taken its place in etymology.
When added by the German to his cry of " Fire ! " " Murder ! "
Feuerio ! Mordio ! it remains indeed as mere an intorje "on as
the / in our street cries of " Pease-o / " " Dust-o ' " or the d ! in
old German ivafend ! " to arms ! " hilfd ! " help ! " But the
Iroquois of North America makes a fuller use of his materials,
and carries his !o ! of admiration into the very formation of
compound words, adding it to a noun to say that it is beautiful
or good : thus, in Mohawk, garonta means a tree, garontio a
beautiful tree ; in like manner, Oliio means " river-beautiful : "
and Ontario, " hill-rock-beautiful," is derived in the same way.
When, in the old times of the French .occupation of Canada,
there was sent over a Governor-General of New France, Mon-
sieur de Montmagny, the Iroquois rendered his name from their
word ononte, "mountain," translating him into Onontio, or
" Great Mountain," and thus it came to pass that the name of
Onontio was handed down long after, like that of Caesar, as the
title of each succeeding governor, while for the King of France
was reserved the yet higher style of "the great Onontio." ^

The quest of interjectional derivations for sense-words is apt
to lead the etymologist into very rash speculations. One of his
best safeguards is to test forms supposed to be interjectional,
by ascertaining whether anything fiimilar has come into use in
decidedly distinct languages. For instance, among the familiar
sounds which fall on the traveller's ear in Spain is the mule-
teer's cry to his beasts, arre ! aire ! From this interjection, a
family of Spanish words are reasonably supposed to be derived ;
the verb arvear, " to drive mules," arriero, the name for the
" muleteer " himself, and so forth.- Now is this arre ! itself a
genuine interjectional sound ? It seems likely to be so, for
Captain Wilson found it in use in the Pelew Islands, where the
paddlers in the canoes were kept up to their work by crying to
them arree ! arree ! Similar interjections are noticed elsewhere

^ Bruyas, 'Mohawk Lang.' p. 16, in Suuthson. Contr. vol. iii. Schoolcraft,
'Indian Tribes,' Part iii. p. 328, 502, 507. Charlevoix, 'Nouv. France,' vol. i.,
p. 350.

^ The arre/ may have been introduced into Europe by the Moors, as it is used
in Arabic, and its use in Europe corresponds nearly with the limits of the
iloorish conquest, in Spain arre ! in Provence arri/

lit'

i ''

«' sl

; ^1

I '.r

174

EJIOTIONAL AND TMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

I*'

Mj|:

tSm '

I^U '

Hi i 'i' \

with a sense of mere affirmation, as in an Australian dialect
■where a-rec ! is set down as meaning " indeed," and in the
Quichua language where an ! means " yes ! " whoDro the verb
ariJil, " to affirm." Two other cautions are desirable in such
enquiries. These are, not to travel too far from the absolute
meaning expressed by the interjection, unless there is strong
corroborative evidence, and not to override ordinary etymology
by treating derivative words as though they were radical.
Without these checks, even sound principle brc;;ks down in
application, as the following two exami)les may show. It is
quite true that Jtm ! is a common intorjectional call, and that
the Dutch have made a verb of it, hemmeii, " to hem after a
person." We may notice a similar call in West Africa, in the
mnui ! which is translated " hallo ! stop ! " in the language of
Fernando Po. But to apply this as a derivation for German
hcmmen, " to stop, check, restrain," to hem in, and even to the
hem of a garment, as Mr, Wedgwood does without even a per-
haps,^ is travelling too far beyond the record. Again, it is quite
true that sounds of clicking and smacking of the lips are com-
mon expressions of satisfaction all over the world, and words
may be derived from these sounds, as where a vocabulary of the
Chinook language of North-West America expresses " good " as
fh-toh-te, or e-tok-te, sounds which we cannot doubt to be
derived from such clicking noises, if the words are not in fact
attempts to write down the very clicks themselves. But it
does not fallow that we may take such words as deliclce, dell-
catus, out of a highly organized language like Latin, and refer
them, as the same etymologist does, to an intorjectional utter-
ance of satisfaction, dlick!~ To do this is to ignore altogether the
composition of words ; we might as well explain Latin dilectus
or English delight as direct formations from expressive sound.
In concluding the present topic, two or three groups of words
maybe brought forward as examples of the application of collected
evidence from a number of languages, mostly of the lower races.
The affirmative and negative particles, which bear in language
such meanings as " yes ! '' " indeed ! " and " no ! " " not," may have

^ AVedgwood, ' Origin of Language,' p. 92.
» Ibid., p. 72.

i'fi-^

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

175

their dorivations from many diffurcnt sources. It is thouglit that
the Australian dialects all belong to a single stock, but so unlike

f5"

are the sounds they use for " no ! " and " yes ! " that tribes are
actually named from these words as a convenient means of dis-
tinction. Thus the tribes known as Gureanr/, Kamilaroi,
Kogai, Wolaroi, Wallwan, Wlratkeroi, have their names from
the words they use for " no," these being (jure, himil, ho, ivol,
iLuil, ivira, respectively ; and on the other hand the Pllunnhul
are said to be so called from their word 'pika, " yes." The de-
vice of naming tribes, thus invented by the savages of Australia,
and which perhaps recurs in Brazil in the name of the Cuca-
tcqnujit tribe (coca " no," tcqniya " man ") is very curious in its
similarity to the mediaival division of Lawjuc d'oc and Lanrjue
doll, according to the words for "3'es!" which prevailed in
Southern and Northern France : oc ! is Latin hoc, as we might
say " that's it ! " while the longer form hoc illud was reduced to
oil ! and thence to oui ! Many other of che words for " yes ! "
and " no ! " may be sense-words, as, again, the French and Italian
60! is Latin sic. But on the other hand there is reason to
think that many of these particles in use in various languages
are not sense-words, but sound-words of a purely interjectional
kind ; or, what comes nearly to the same thing, a feeling of fit-
ness of the sound to the meaning may have affected the choice
and shaping of sense-words — a remark of large application in
sucli enquiries as the present. It is an old suggestion that the
primitive sound of such words as own is a nasal interjection of
doubt or dissent.^ It corresponds in sound with the visible
gesture of closing the lips, while a vowel-interjection, with or
without aspiration, belongs rather to open-mouthed utterance.
Whether from this or some other cause, there is a remarkable
tendency among most distant and various languages of the
world, on the one hand to use vowel-sounds, with soft or hard
breathing, to express " yes I " and on the other hand to use nasal
consonants to express " no !" The affirmative form is much the
commoner. The guttural t-l ! of the West Australian, the ee ! of
the Darien, the a-ah ! of tho Clallam, the e ! of the Yakama

IVi . !'

lA '>--'\

^ Do Brosses, vol. i. p. 203. See Wedgwood.

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176

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

Indians, the e ! of the Basuto, and the ai ! of the Kanuri, are
some examples of a wide group of forms, of which the following-
are only part of those noted down in Polynesian and South
American districts — ii! e! ia ! aio ! io! ya! ey ! etc., h' !
hell ! he-e ! hil ! hoehah ! ah-ha ! etc. The idea has most
weight where pairs of words for " yes ! " and " no ! " are found
both conforming. Thus in the very suggestive description by
I/obrizhoffer among the Abipones of South America, for " yes ! "
the men and youths say h^^! the women say hdd! and the old
men give a gi'unt ; while for " no " they all say yna ! and make
the loudness of the sound indicate the strength of the negation.
Dr. Martius's collection of vocabularies of Brazilian tribes, philo-
logically very distinct, contains several such pairs of affirmatives
and negatives, the equivalents of " yes ! " — "no!" being in Tupi
aye ! — aan ! aani ! ; in Guato ii ! — matt ! ; in Jumana aeae !
— mdiu!; in Miranha ha '0, ! — nani ! The Quichua of Peru
affirms by y! hu! and expresses "no," "not," "not at all," by ama!
manan ! etc., making from the latter the verb manamni, " to
deny." The Quichd of Guatemala has e or ve for the affirmative,
ma, man, mana, for the negative. In Africa, again, the Galla
language has ee ! for " yes ! " and hn, kin, hm, for " not ! " ; the
Femandian ee ! for " yes ! " and 'nt for " not ; " while the Coptic
dictionary gives the affirmative (Latin " sane ") as eie, ie, and the
negative by a long list of nasal sounds such as an, emmen, en,
mmn, etc. The Sanskrit particles hi ! " indeed, certainly," na,
" not," exemplify similar forms in Indo-European languages,
down to our aye ! and no ! ^ There must be some meaning in
all this, for otherwise I could hardly have noted down inci-
dentally, without making any attempt at a general search, so
many cases from such different languages, only finding a com-
paratively small number of coatradictory cases.^

De Brosses maintained that the Latin stare, to stand, might
be traced to an origin in expressive sound. He fancied he

' Also Oraon hac — anibo ; Itlicmac 6 — mw.

- A double contradiction in Curb anhan/="yeal" OTt«/="no!" Single
contradictions in Catoquina ha.tj / Tupi eim/ Botocudo JiemJiem/ Yoraba
en/ for "yes!" Culino aiy/ Australian yo/ for "no!" &c. How much
these sounds depend on peculiar intonation, we, who habitually use h'm I either
for " yes ! "or "no ! " can well understand.

tin, are
[lowing
South
:c, h'!
s most
Q found
tion by
" yes ! "
the old
d make
3gation.
5, philo-
matives
in Tupi
a, aeae !
of Peru
)y ama !
irti, " to
rmative,
e Galla
" ; the
Coptic
,nd the
en, en,
1y," na,
guages,
ning in
n inci-
rch, so
a com-

[, might
jied he

Single

Yoruba

t)W much

, / either

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

177

could hear in it an organic radical sign designating fixity, and
could thus explain why st ! should be used as a call, to make a
man stand still. Its connexion with these sounds is often
spoken of in more modern books, and one imaginative German
philologer describes their origin among primeval men as vividly
as though he had been there to see. A man stands beckoning
in vain to a companion who does not see him, till at last " his
effort relieves itself by the help of the vocal nerves, and in-
voluntarily there breaks from him the sound st ! Now the
other hears the sound, turns towards it, sees the beckoning
gesture, knows that he is called to stop ;" and when this haii
happened again and again, the action comes to be described in
common talk by uttering the now familiar at! and thus sta
becomes a root, the symbol of the abstract idea to stand ! ^ This
is a most ingenious conjecture, but unfortunately nothing more.
It would be at any rate strengthened, though not established, if
its supporters could pro^o that the st ! used to call people in
Germany, pst ! in Spain, is itself a pure interjectional sound.
Even this, however, has never been made out. The call has not
yet been shown to be in use outside our own Indo-European
family of languages ; and so long as it is only found in use
within these limits, an opponent might even plausibly claim it
as an abbreviation of the very sto .' ("stay! stop!") for which
the theory proposes it as an origin."

That it is not unfair to ask for fuller evidence of a sound
being purely interjectional than its appearance in a single
family of languages, may be shown by examining another group
of interjections, which are found among the remotest tribes, and

* (Charles de Brosses) ' Traits iie la Formation Mecani(]uo des Langues,' etc.
Paris. An ix., vol. i. p. 238 ; vol. ii. p. 313. Lazarus and Steinthal,
' Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsychologie, ' etc. , vol. i. p. 421. Heyse, ' System der
Sprachwissenschaft,' p. 73. Farrar, 'Chapters on Language,' p. 202.

* Similar sounds are used to command silence, to stop speaking as well as to
stop going. English Misht! whist! hist/ Welsh ust/ French chut/ Italian
zitto / Swedish ti st / Russian st' / and the Latin st / so well described in tha
curious old line quoted by Mr. Farrar, which compares it with the gesture of the
finger on the lips : —

" Isis, et Harpocrates digito qui significat st I "

This group of interjections, again, has not been proved to be in use outside
Aryan limits.

VOL. I. X

'.'■'%

Ill

178

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

thus have really considerable claims to rank among the primary
sounds of language. These are the simple sibilants, s / sh !
h'ah ! used especially to scare birds, and among men to express
aversion or call for silence. Catlin describes a party of Sioux
Indians, when they came to the portrait of a dead chief, each
putting his hand over his mouth with a hush-sh ! and when he
himself wished to approach the sacred " medicine " in a Mandan
lodge, he was called to refrain by the same hush-sh ! Among
ourselves the sibilant interjection passes into two exactly oppo-
site senses, according as it is meant to put the speaker himself to
silence, or to command silence for him to be heard ; and thus
we find the sibilant used elsewhere, sometimes in the one way
and sometimes in the other. Among the wild Veddahs of
Ceylon, iss ! is an exclamation of disapproval, as in ancient or
modern Europe ; and the verb shdrah, to hiss, is used in Hebrew
with a like sense, " they shall hiss him out of his place." But
in Japan reverence is expressed by a hiss, commanding silence.
Captain Cook remarked that the natives of the New Hebrides
expressed their admiration by hissing like geese. Casalis says
of the Basutos, " Hisses are the most unequivocal marks of
applause, and are as much courted in the African parliaments
as they are dreaded by our candidates for popular favour." ^
Among other sibilant interjections, are Turkish &Asd ! Ossetic
88! 80s! " silence!" Fernandian sia! "listen ! " "tush ! " Yoruba
816! "pshaw!" Thus it appears that these sounds, far from
being special to one linguistic family, are very wide-spread ele-
ments of human speech. Nor is there any question as to their
passage into fully-formed words, as in our verb to hush, which
has passed into the senses of " to quiet, put to sleep " (" as hush
as death"), metaphorically to hush up a matter, Greek aiC^a
"to hush, say hush ! command silence." Even Latin silere and
Gothic silan, " to be silent," may with some plausibility be ex-
plained as derived from the interjectioijal s! of silence.

* Catlin, 'North American Indians,' vol. i, pp. 221, 39, 151, 162. Bailey in
'Tr. Etli. Soc.,' vol. ii. p. 318. Job xxvii, 23. (The verh shdrak also signifies to
call by a hiss, " and he will hiss unto them from the end of the earth, and behold,
they shall come with speed," Is. v. 20 ; Jer. xix. 8.) Alcock, 'The Capital of
the Tycoon,' vol. i, p. 394. Cook, '2nd Voy.,' vol. ii. p. 36. Casalis, ' Basutos,'
p. 234.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

171)

Sanskrit dictionaries recognize several words whicli explicitly
state their own interjectional derivation : sucli are luXnhdrct
(M77i-making), " the utterance of the mystic religious exclama-
tion luArti ! " and ci(\\thda (f /f-sound), " a hiss." Beside these
obvious formations, the interjectional element is present to some
moi*e or less degree in the list of Sanskrit radicals, which repre-
sent probably better than tliose of any other language the verb-
roots of the ancient Aryan stock. In >'?r, "to roar, cry, wail," and
in hakh, " to laugh," we have the simpler kind of interjectional
derivation, that which merely describes a sound. As to the more
difficult kind, which cany the sense into a new stage, Mr. Wedg-
wood makes out a strong case for the connexion of interjections
of loathing and aversion, such as 2Woh ! fie! etc., with that large
group of words which are represented in English hy foul and
fi£nd, in Sanskrit by the verbs pii/y, " to become foul, to stink,"
andpiy, -ptij, "to revile, to hate." ^ Further evidence may be
here adduced in support of this theory. The languages of the
lower races use the sound pu to express an evil smell : the Zulu
remarks that "the meat says pu" (inyama iti p?^), meaning
that it stinks ; the Timorese has ^wop " putrid ; " the Quiche
language has pu/t, p)oh " coiTUjition, pus," puldr " to turn bad,
rot," puz "rottenness, what stinks;" the Tupi woid for nasty,
piixi, may be compared with the Latin putidus, and the Co-
lumbia River name for the " skunk," o-^nn^-pini, with similar
names of stinking animals, Sanskrit pMihd " civet-cat," and

' Wedgwood, 'Origin of Liingnagc,' p. 83, 'Dictionary,' Introd. p. xiii. and s. v.
" foul." Prof. Max ^liiller, ' Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 92, protests against the in-
discriminate derivation of words directly from sncli cries and interjections, without
the intervention of determinate roots. As to the present topic, he ^loints ont
that Latin ^J'w, jnUridm, Gothic /«Z.s, Englisli /<;(;/, follow Grimm's law as if words
derived from a .single root. Admitting this, howevi-r, the (pxestion has to be
raised, how far pure interjections and their direct derivatives, being self-expres-
.sive and so to speak living sounds, arc affected by phonetic changes such as that
of Grimm's law, which act on articulate sounds no longer fully expressive in
themselves, but handed down by mere tradition. Thus y» and / occur in one
and the same dialect in interjections of disgust and aversion, jnth ' and Jif
being used in Venice or Paris, just as similar sounds would be in London. In
tracing this group of words from early Aryan forms, it must .also be noticed that
Sanskrit is a very ini])erfect guide, for its alphabet has no /, and it can hardly
give the rule in this matter to languages possessing both 2> and/, and thus capable
of nicer appreciation of this class of interjections.

X 2

180

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LAXGl'AGE.

I -tJ

! i^'

French imtois "pole-cat,"' From the French interjection fi!
Avords liavo long been formed belonging to the language, if not
authenticated by the Academy ; in mediaeval French ' maistre
Ji-Ji,* was a recognized term for a scavenger, and ji-ji books
are not yet extinct.

There has been as yet, unfortunately, too much separation
between what may bo called generative philology, which ex-
amines into the ultimate origins of v ords, and historical phi-
lology, which traces their transmission and change. It will bo
a grest gain to the science of language to bring these two
branches of enquiry into closer union, even as the processes they
relate to have been going on together since the earliest days of
speech. At present the historical philologists of the school of
Grimm and Bopp, whose great work has been the tracing of
our Indo-European dialects to an early Aryan form of langi.iage,
have had much the advantage in fulness of evidence and strict-
ness of treatment. At the same time it is evident that the
views of the generative philologists, from De Brosses onward,
embody a sound principle, and that much of the evidence col-
lected as to emotional and other directly expressive words, is of
the highest value in the argument. But in working out the
details of such word-formation, it must be remembered that no
department of philology lies more open to Augustine's caustic
remark on the etymologists of his time, that like the interpre-
tation of dreams, the derivation of words is set down by each
man according to his own fancy. (Ut somniorum interpretatio
ita verboiiim origo pro cujusque iiigenio pra.^dicatur.)

; <;■■■■

ClIAPTEFt VI

col-

EMOTIOXAF. AND LMITATIVl': LANCUTAGE (contiaucd).

Imitntive Words— Human actions named from sound — Animals' names from
cries, etc. — Musical instruments — Hounds reproduced — Words modified to
ada\)t sound to sense — Reduplication— Gnuluation of vowels to express
distance and dilfeniuce — Children's Language — Sound-words as related to
Sense-words — Language an origiuid product of the lower Culture.

From the eaiiie.st times of lauguago to our own clay, it is
unlikely that men ever quite ceased to be conscious that some
of their words were derived from imitation of the common
sounds heard about them. In our ow^n inodern English, for
instance, results of such imitation are evident; flies buzz, bees
hu7)i, snakes hiss, a cracker or a bottle of ginger-beer ^>0j9S, a
cannon or a bittern booms. In the words for animals and for
musical instruments in the various languages of the world, the
imitation of their crie,5 and tones is often to be plainly heard,
as in the names of the hoopoe, the ai-al sloth, the JmJm parrot,
the Eastern tomtom, which is a drum, the African idide, which
is a flute, the Siamese khong-bong, which is a wooden liarmoni-
con, and so on through a host of other words. But these evi-
dent cases are far from representing the whole effects of imita-
tion on the growth of language. They form, indeed, the easy
entrance to a philological region, which becomes less penetrable
the farther it is explored.

The operations of which we see the results before us in the
actual languages of the world seem to have been somewhat as
follows. Men have imitated their own emotional utterances or
interjections, the cries of animals, the tones of musical instru-
ments, the sounds of shouting, howling, stamping, bieaking,
tearing, scraping and so forth, which are all day coming to their

'■ta

182

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LANOUACK.

oars, and out of tlicso imitntions many words of language indis-
putably liavo their source. But these Avords, as avo find them
ill use, differ often widely, often beyond all recognition, from
the original sounds they sprang from. In the first place, man's
voice can only make a very rude copy of most sounds his ear
receives ; his possible vowels are very limited in their range
compared with natural tones, and his possible consonants still
more heli)less as a means of imitating natural noises. More-
over, his voice is only allowed to use a part even of this imper-
fect imitative power, seeing that each language for its own con-
venience restricts it to a small number of set vowels and con-
sonants, to which the imitative sounds have to conform, thus
becoming conventionalized into articulate words with further
loss of imitative accuracy. No class of words have a more per-
fect imitative origin than those which simply profess to be vocal
imitations of sound. How ordinary alphabets to some extent
succeed and to some extent fail in writing down these sounds
may be judged from a few examples. Thus, the Australian
imitation of a spear or bullet striking is given as too}^ ; to the
Zulu, when a calabash is beaten, it says hoo ; the Karens hear the
flitting ghosts of the dead call in the wailing voice of the wind,
re re, ro ro ; the old traveller, Pietro della Valle, tells how the
Shah of Persia sneered at Timur and his Tatars, with their
arrows that went ier ier ; certain Buddhist heretics maintained
that water is alive, because when it boils it says chichitd,
chitichita, a symptom of vitality which occasioned much theo-
logical controversy as to drinking cold and warm water. Lastly,
sound-words tfiken up into the general inventory of a language
have to follow its organic changes, and in the course of phonetic
transition, combination, decay, and mutilation, to lose ever more
and more of their or';;^inal shape. To take a single example,
the French hutr "to shout" (Welsh Java) may be a perfect
imitative verb ; yet v/hen it passes into modern English hue and
cry, our changed pronunciation of the vowel destroys all imita-
tion of the call. Now to the language-makers all this was of
little account. They merely wc.nted recognized words to express
recognized thoughts, and no doubt arrived by repeated trials at
systems which were found practically to answer this purpose.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITA.TIVE LANOUAOK.

183

But to the modern philologist, who is attempting to work out
the converse of the problem, and to follow backward the course
of words to original imitative sound, the difficulty is most
embarrassing. It is not only that thousands of words really
derived from such imitation may now by successive chnngo
have lost all safe traces of their history ; such mere deficiency
of knov ledge is only a minor evil. What is far worse is that
the way is thrown open to an unlimited number of fr.: io solu-
tions, which yet look on the face of them fully as like truth as
others which we know hiitorically to be true. One thing is
clear, that it is of no use to resort to violent means, to rush in
among the words of language, explaining them away right find
left as derived each from some remote application of an imita-
tive noise. The advocate of the Imitative Theoiy who attempts
this, trusting in his own powers of discernment, has indeed
taken in hand a perilous task, for, in fact, of all judges of the
question at issue, he has nourished and trained himself up to
become the very worst. His imughiation is ever suggesting to
him what his judgment would like to find ti'ue ; like a witness
answering the questions of the counsel on his own side, he
answers in good faith, but with what bias we all know. It was
thus with De Brosses, to whom this department of philology
owes so much. It is nothing to say that he had a keen ear for
the voice of Nature ; she must have positively talked to him in
alphabetic language, for he could hear the sound of hoUowness
in the sk of o-Kd-rro) " to dig," of hardness in the cal of callosity
the noise of insertion of a body between two others in the tr of
trans, intra. In enquiries so liable to misleading fancy, no
pains should be spared in securing impartial testimony, and it
fortunately happens that there are available sources of such
evidence, which, when thoroughly worked, will give to the
theory of imitative words as near an approach to accuracy as
has been aJ:tained to in any other wide philological problem.
By comparing a number of languao-es, widely apart in their
general systems and materials, and whose agreement as to the
words in question can only be accounted for by similar forma-
tion of words from similar suggestion of sound, we obtain groups
of words whose Cmitative character is indisputable. The groups

184

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LAXtJUACiK.

here considorcd consist in general of imitative words of the
Kimplcr kind, those directly connected with the special sound
they are taken from, btit their examination to somo extent
admits of words being brought in, where the connexion of the
idea expressed with the sound imitated is more remote. This,
lastly, opeuH the far wider and more difficult problem, how far
imitation of sounds is tho primary cause of the great mass of
words in the vocabularies of the world, between whose sound and
sense no direct connexion exists.

Words which express human actions accompanied with sound
form a very large and intelligible class. In remote and most
diflferent languages, Ave find such forms as 'pii, j)nfy hit, buf, fu,
fuf, in use with the meaning of ^^Jt^n^r, fiij^iig, or blowing ;
Malay jiiiput ; 'J'ongan huhi; Maori pujmi; Australian ho-
hun, hiva-hun ; GaWa hiifa, of u fa ; Z\x\\x fiita, inimia, impuza
{fu, 2)ii, used as expressive particles) ; QmchiSpuba; Quichua^^w-
himi ; Tupi ypeu ; Finnish puhkia ; Hebrew puach ; Danish
piiste ; Lithuanian ^)2^c tit ; and in nimibers of other languages;^
here, grammatical adjuncts apart, the significant force lies in
the imitative syllable. Savages have named the European
musket when they saw it, by the sound ptu, describing not the
report but the iniff of smoke issuing from the muzzle. The
Society Islanders supposed at first that the white men blew
through the baiTel of the gun, and they called it accordingly
j)upuhi, from the verb pulii to blow, while the New Zealanders
more simply called it a j)u. So the Amaxosa of South Africa call
it umpu, from the imitative sound pit ! The Chinook Jargon of
North West America uses the phrase 'nuitiiook poo (make poo)
for a verb " to shoot," and a siix-chambered revolver is called
tohum poo, i. e., a " aix-poo." When a European uses the wora
piif to denote the discharge of a gun, he is merely using the
same imitative word for blowing which describes a puffoi wind,
or even a powder-j>?t^' or a puff-heXX ; and when a pistol is called
in colloquial German a puffer, the meaning of the word matches
that used for it in French Argot, a "souffiant." It has often been
supposed that the 2^^'ff imitates the actual sound, the hang of

' Mpongwe jmnjina ; Basuto fol-a ; Carib pJioubdc ; Arawac appiidiin (igneiu
sufilare). Other cases arc given liy Wedgwood, 'Or. of Lang.,' p. 83.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LAN(JUAOK.

iSo

the g\\u, and this lias been brought furwnnl to sliow hy wliat
extremely different words one and the same sound may be imi-
tated, but this is a mistaice.^ Tiiese derivations of the name
of tlie gun from the notion of blowing correspond with thosc^
which give names to the comparatively noiseless blow-tube of
the bird-hunter, called by the Indians of Yucatan a 2>"'', in
South America by the Chiquitos a pucund, by the Cocamas a
pu-na. Looking into vocabularies of languages which have
such verbs " to blow," it is usual to find with them other words
apparently related to them, and expressing more or less distant
ideas. Thus Australian poo-i/K, pnyn " smoke ; " Quichua
puhucunl "to light a fire," pimqiLinl "to swell," puyu,
puhiiyiL "a cloud ;" Maori pidu "to pant," ptiht " to swell ;"
Tupi pupu, pupuve " to boil ; " Galla huhe " wind," hubiza " to
cool by blo-'-ing;" Kanuri (root fa) fanc/in " to blow, swell,"
funidu "a stuffed pad or bolster," etc., htibute "bellows"
(huhute fuiKjhi "I blow the bellows"); Zulu (dropping the
prefixes) puku, pukupu " frothing, foam," whence jmkupuJcu
" an empty frothy fellow " inipuiim " to bubble, boil," fit " a
cloud," fumfiL " blown bout like high grass in the wind,"
whence famfata " to be used, thrown into disorder," futo

"bellows," fuha "the bri host," thence figuratively "bosom,

conscience."

The group of words belonging to the closed lips, of which
mum, mumming, mumble are among the many forms belong-
ing to European languages,^ are worked out in like manner
among the lower races — Vei mu mu "dumb"; Mpongwe imamu
"dumb" ; Zulu momata (from moma, "amotion with the mouth
as ia mumbling") "to move the mouth or lips," inumata "to close
the lips as with a mouthful of water," mumufaminnuza "to eat
mouthfuls of corn, etc., with the lips shut ;" Tahitian mamu
" to be silent," omwniii " to murmur ;" Fijian, nomo, nomo-
niomo "to be silent;" Chilian, ;ltom?t "to be silent ;" Quiche,
m,em "mute," whence memer "to become mute;" Quichua,
amu "dumb, silent," amullinl "to have something in the
mouth, amullayacuni simida "to mutter, grumble." The

* Sec Wetlgwood, Die, s. v. "mum," etc.

V I

186

KMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANOUAOK.

<fYo\\p represented by Sanskrit tltiXtlnl " tlio sotmd of spitting,"
Persian titii hcrdan (make tltv) " to spit," Greek rrvoi, may bo
compared with Chinook muDiOuk to/i, took (make toh, took) ;
Chilian tuvcutun (make tuv) ; Tuhitian tiitua; Galla iiuit;
Yoruba tu. Among the Sanskrit verb-roots, none carries its imita-
tive nature more phiinly tiian k.sliit " to sneeze;" tlie following
anabgous forms are from South America: — Chilian, ecldun;
Quichua, achhinl; and from various languages of Brazilian tribes,
iecJiii-id, Ua'dschu, (itckUm, natncliuii, ar'it'wchunc, etc. Another
imitative verb is well shown in the Negro-English dialect of
Surinam, iijam *' to eat " (pron. vyam), njam-vjam " food "
("en hem vjanjavi ben de sprinklian nanga bocsi-honi" —
" and his meat wius locusts and wild honey"). In Australia the
imitative verb "to eat" re-appears an r/' nam-aufj. In Africa, the
Susu language has nimnim, " to taste," and a similar formation
is observed in the Zulu namhita " to smack the lips after
eating or tasting, and thence to be tasteful, to be pleasant to
the mind." This is an excellent instance of the transition of
mere imitative sound to the expression of mental emotion, and
it corresponds with the imitative way in which the Yakama
language, in speaking of little children or pet animals, expresses
the verb "to love " as nem-no-shd (to make Qi'm-n'). In more
civilized countries these forms are mostly confined to baby-lan-
guage. The Chinese child's word for eating is nam, in English
nurseries nhn is noticed as answering the same purpose, and
the Swedish dictionary even recognizes namnam "a tid-bit."

As for imitative names of animals derived from their cries
or noises, they are to be met with in every language, from the
Australian tiuonk " frog," the Yakama rol-rol " lark," to the
Coptic eeiO " ass," the Chinese maou " cat," and the English
cuckoo and jieewit. Their general principle of formation being
acknowledged, their further philological interest turns mostly
on cases where corresponding words have thus been formed
independently in distant regions, and those where the imitative
name of the creature, or its habitual sound, passes to express
some new idea suggested by 'ts character. The Sanskrit name
of the Icdha crow re-appears in the name of a similar bird in
British Columbia, the kdh-hah ; a fly is called by the natives of

KMOTIONAL AM) IMIT.VTIVi: LAN(JUAGK.

Austmlia ft biimheron, liko Sanskrit lunnhliardl! "a Hy," (ircok
jioixftvKio'i, and our hiivMe-hcQ. Anuluj^ous to t!io nanio of tho
fne-t»(', the terror of African travellers, i.s titn'nitui, tlio word for
"a fly" among tlu; HaHutos, which also, hy a sim|»!«! metaphor,
serves to express the idea of " a parasite." Mr. H. W. Bates's
description seems to settle the dispute among naturalists,
whether the toucan had its name from its cry or not. Ho
speaks of its loud, shrill, yelping cries iiaving "a vagu<! rc-
send)lanco to the syllahk's tocdiic, tor, no, and hence the Indian
name of this genus of hirds." Grunting this, wc; can trace this
sound-word into a very new meaning ; for it appears that tho
bird's monstrous hill has suggested a name for a certain largo-
nosed tribe of Indians, who are accordingly called tho Tucnnos}
The cock, gallo quiquiriqiii, as the Spanish nursery-languago
calls him, has a long list of names from various lanjjua^es
whicli in various ways imitate his crowing ; in Yoruba ho is
called hohlo, in Ibo okoko, nkohi, in Zulu huku, in Finnish
I'uh'ko, in Sanskrit kukkuta, and so on. Ho is mentioned in
the Zend-Avesta in a very curious way, by a name which ela-
borately imitates his cry, but which the ancient Persians seem
to have held disrespectful to their holy bird, who rouses men
from sleep to good thought, word, and work : —

" The bird who bears the name of Pavudars, holy Zarathustra ;
Upon whom evil-speaking men impose tho name Ka/trkatw;" •

The crowing of the cock (Malay hlluvid', hul'uh) serves to
mark a point of time, cockcrow. Other words originally derived
from such imitation of crowing have passed into other curiously
transformed meanings: Old French cocart "vain;" modern
French coquet "strutting like a cock, coquettlnrj, a coxcomb;'*
cocanlc "a cochuW (from its likeness to a cock's comb); one of
the best instances is coquelicot, a name given for the sumo reason
to the wild poppy, and oven more distinctly in Languedoc,
where cacaracd means both the crowing and tho flower. Tho
hen in some languages has a name corresponding to that of the
cock, as in Kussa laihiiduiia "cock," Ixuhuhasl " \\Qn \" Ewe

' Bates, 'Naturalist on the Amazons,' 2nd cd., p. 404; Jilaikham in ' Tr.
Etli. See.,' vol. iii. p. 143.
' 'Avesta,' Favf,'. xviii. 31-/5.

::l

188

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

Jcoklo-tsu "cock," kuklo-no "hen;" and her cackle (whence
she has in Switzerland the name of [jugel, (jilggel) has passed
into language as a term for idle gossip and chatter of women,
caquet, caqueter, guckern, much as the noise of a very different
creature seems to have given rise not only to its name, Italian
cicala, but to a gi'oup of words represented by cicalar " to
chii-p, chatter, talk sillily." The pigeon is a good example of
this kind, both for sound and sense. It is Latin inpio, Italian
pil)2^ione, iiiccione, plgione, modern Greek umiviov, French
pipion (old), pigeon ; its derivation is from the young bird's
pteep, Latin pvpirr, Italian pjipiare, pigiolave, modern Greek
irtTTiytfw, to chirp ; by an easy metaphor, a pigeon comes to
mean "a silly young fellow easily caught," to pigeon "to
cheat," Italian inpione " a silly gull, one that is soon caught
and trepanned," yippionare " to pigeon, to gull one." In an
entirely differeni Family of laj^guages, Mr. Wedgwood points
out a curiously smiilar process of derivation ; Magyar piper/ ?i/,
piljelni " to peep or cheep ;" pipe, inpok " a chicken, gosling ;"
pipe-emher (chicken-man), " a silly young fellow, booby." ^ The
derivation of Greek /Sou?, Latin hos, Welsh hu, from the ox's
lowing, or booing as it is called in the north country, has been
much debated. With an excessive desire to make Sanskrit
answer as a general Indo-European type, Bopp connected Sans-
krit go, old German cltuo, English cow, with these words, on the
unusual and forced assumption of a change from guttural to
labial.- The direct dorivation from sound, however, is favoured
by other languages, Cochin-Chinese ho, Hottentot hou. The
beast may almost answer for himself in the words of that Spanish
proverb which remarks that people talk according to their
nature : "Hablo el huey, y dij6 hu!" "The ox spoke, and he
said hoo I "

Among musical instruments with imitative names are the
following : — the shee-shee-quoi, the mystic rattle of the Red
Indian medicine-man, an imitative word which re-appears in the
Darien Indian shak-shak, the shook-shook of the Arawaks, the

^ Wedgwood, Die, s. v. "pigeon ;" Diez, ' Etyni. Worterb.,' s. v. "piccionc."
- Bopp, T.loss. Sanscr.,' s. v. "go." See Pott, ' WiU'zel- Worterb. derludo-
(ifnii. Spr.,' s. v.'-gn," Zalilmeth., p. 22/.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

189

The

Chinook shiigh (whence sliurjli-opoots, rattle-tail, /. c, '' rattle-
snake;") — the (^ I m, called (janga in Haiissa, f/tin^aM in the
Yoruba country, gunrjuina by the Gallas, and having its ana-
logue in the Eastern gong ; — the bell, called in Yakama
(N. Araer.) kwa-lal-ltiva-lal, in Yalof (W. Afr) walwal, in
Russian holohol. The sound of the horn is imitated in English
nurseries as toot-toot, and this is transferred to express the
" omnibus " of which the bugle is the signal : with this nursery
word is to be classed the Peruvian name for the "shell-
trumpet," imtutii, and the Gothic thuthaurn {thut-horn), which
is even used in the Gothic Bible for the last trumpet of the day
of judgment, — "In spedistin tlmthatirna. thuthaurneith auk jah
dauthans ustandand " (1 Cor. xv. 52). How such imitative
words, when thoroughly taken up into langupge, suffer change
of pronunciation in which the original sound-meaning is lost,
may be seen in the English word taho7\ which we might not
recognize as a sound-word at all, did we not notice that it is
French tahour, a word which in the form tambour obviously
belongs to a group of words for drums, extending from the
small rattling Arabic tuhl to the Indian dundhuhi and the tombe,
the Moqui drum made of a hollowed log. The same group
shows the transfer of such imitative words to objects which
are like the instrument, but have nothing to do with its sound ;
few people who talk of tamhour-work, and fewer still who
speak of a footstool as a tabouret, associate these words with
the sound of a drum, yet the connexion is clear enough.
When these two processes go on together, and a sound-word
changes its original sound on the one hand, and transfers its
meaning to something else on the other, the result may soon
leave philological analysis quite helpless, unless by accident
historical evidence is forthcoming. Thus with the English
word 2>ipe. Putting aside the particular pronunciation which
we give the word, and referring it back to its French or medi-
aeval Latin sound in ^^^p^jjo/j^ct, we have before us an evident
imitative name of a musical instrument, derived from a familiar
sound used also to represent the chirping of chickens, Latin
pipire, English to peep, as in the translation of Isaiah viii.
19 : " Seek . . . unto wizards that 2^^W> ^^^ ^^^ mutter."

.-:

IwF|\

r-%

190

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

The Algonquin Indians appear to have formed from this sound
pib (with a gi-aramatical suffix) their name for the pib-e-r/ivun
or native flute. Now just as tuba, tubus, " a trumpet" (itseh very
likely an imitative word) has given a name for any kind ol"
tube, so the word iiipe has been transferred from the musical
instrument to which it first belonged, and is used to describe
tubes of various sorts, gas-pipes, water-pipes, and pipes in
general. There is nothing unusual in these transitions ol'
meaning, which are in fact rather the rule than the exception.
The chibouk was originally a herdsman's pipe or flute in Central
Asia. The calmnet, popularly ranked with the tomahawk and
the mocassin among characteristic Red Indian words, is only
the name for a shepherd's pipe (Latin calamus) in the dialect
of Normandy, corresponding with the chalwnieau of literary
French ; for when the early colonists in Canada saw the Indians
jDerforming the strange operation of smoking, "with a hollow
piece of stone or wood like a pipe," as Jacques Cartier has it,
they merely gave to the native tobacco-pipe the name of the
French musical instrument it resembled. Now changes of sound
and of sense like this of the English word pipe must have been
in continual operation in hundreds of languages where we have
no evidence to follow them by, and where we probably may
never obtain such evidence. But what little we do know must
compel us to do justice to the imitation of sound as a really
existing process, capable of furnishing an indefinitely large
supply of Avords for things and actions which have no neces-
sary connexion at all with that sound. Where the traces of
the transfer are lost, the result is a stock of words which are
the despair of philologists, but are perhaps none the less fitted
for the practical use of men who simply want recognized sym-
bols for recognized ideas.

The claim of the Eastern tomtom to have its name from a
mere imitation of its sound seems an indisputable one ; but
when we notice in what various languages the beating of a re-
sounding object is expressed by something like turn, tumb,
turn}}, tup, as in Javan tumbuk, Coptic tmno, "to pound in a
mortar, ' it becomes evident that the admission involves more
thar- at first sight appears. In Malay, timpa, tampa, is "to beat

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

191

out, hammer, forge ; " in the Chinook Jargon tiim-tuiii is " the
heart," and by combining the same sound with the English word
" water," a name is made for " waterfall," tuiii-ivdta. The
Gallas of East Africa declare that a box on the ear seems
to them to make a noise like tub, for they call its sound tuh-
djeda,thsit is, "to say <?t6." In the same language, tunia is
"to beat," whence tumtu, "a workman, especially one who beats,
a smith." With the aid of another imitative word, hufa " to
blow," the Gallas can construct this wholly imitative sentence,
tumtum hufa bufti, " the workman blows the bellows," as an
English child might say, " the tamtam 2nifs the puffer^ This
imitative sound seems to have obtained a footing among the
Aryan verb-roots, as in Sanskrit tup, tubh " to smite," while in
Greek, tuj), tump, has the meaning of " to beat, to thump'' pro-
ducing for instance rvixiiavov, tympanum, "a drum or tomtom.'"
Again, the verb to crach has become in modern English as tho-
rough a root-word as the language possesses. The mere imita-
tion of the sound of breaking has passed into a verb to break ;
we speak of a cracked cup or a cracked reputation without a
thought of imitation of sound ; but we cannot yet use the
German krachen or French craquer in this way, for thc} have
not developed in meaning as our word has, but remain in their
purely imitative stage. There are two corresponding Sanskrit
words for the saw, kra-kara, kra-kacha, that is to say, the
" kra-maker, kra-crier ; " and it is to be observed that all such
terms, which oxpressly state that they are imitations of sound,
are particularly valuable evidence in these enquiries, for what-
ever doubt there may be as to other words being really derived
from imitated sound, there can, of course, be none here. More-
over, there is evidence of the same sound having given rise to
imitative words in other families of lanouasre, Dahoman km-
kra, "a watchman's rattle;" Grebo grikd "a saw;" Aino
chacha "to saw;" Malay graji " a asiVf," karat " to gnufih the
teeth," karot "to make a grating noise;" Coptic khrlj "to
gnash the teeth," khrajrej " to grate." Another form of the
imitation is given in the descriptive Galla expression cacak-
djeda, i. e., " to say cacak," " to crack, krachen." With this
.sound corresponds a whole family of Peruvian words, of which

192

LMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

i'!

h *■

the root seems to bo the guttural cca, coming from far back in
the throat ; ccallani, " to break," ccatatani, " to gnash the
teeth," ccacniy, " thunder," and the expressive word for " a
thunderstorm," ccaccaccuhay, which carries the imitative pro-
cess so much farther than such European words as thunder-
clap, donner-klajif. In Maori, 2^cda is "to j)citter as water drop-
ping, drops of rain." The Manchu language describes the noise
of fruits falling from the trees as pata pata (so Hindustani
bhaclbhad) ; this is like our word p«f, and we should say in
the same manner that the fruit comes pattering down, while
French patatra is a recognized imitation of something falling.
Coptic 2^(>ipt i^ " to fall," and the Australian badhadin (or
patpatin) is translated into almost literal English as pitpat-
ting. On the strength of such non-Aryan languages, are we
to assign an imitative origin to the Sanskrit verb-root pat, " to
fall," and to Greek Trfcro) ?

Wishing rather to gain a clear survey of the principles of
language-making than to plunge into obscure problems, it is
not necessary for me to discuss here questions of intricate
detail. The point which continually arises is this, — granted
that a particular kind of transition from sound to sense is
possible in the abstract, may it be safely claimed in a parti-
cular case ? In looking through the vocabularies of the world,
it appears that most languages offer words which, by obvious
likeliness or by their con-espondence with similar forms else-
where, may put forward a tolerable claim to be considered
imitative. Some languages, as Aztec or Mohawk, offer singu-
larly few examples, while in others they are much more nu-
merous. Take Australian cases : ivalle, " to wail ; " bung-
bung-iveen, " thunder ;" wirriti, "to blow, as wind;" ^virrir-
^"iti, " to storm, rage, as in fight ; " wirri, bwlrri, " the native
throwing stick," seemingly so called from its ivldr through the
air ; hurarriti, "to hum, buzz ;" kiirrirrurriri, "round about,
unintelligible," etc. ; pitata, " to knock, pelt, as rain," pitapi-
tata, "to knock;" wiitl, "to laugh, rejoice" — ^just as in our
own " Turnament of Tottenham": —

" ' We te le!' quoth Tyb, and lugh,
* Yo er a dughty man ! ' "

t k

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

193

The so-called Chinook jargon of British Columbia is a Ian
guage crowded with imitative words, sometimes adopted from
the native Indian languages, sometimes made on the spot by
the combined efforts of the white man and the Indian to
make one another understand. Samples of its quality are
hdh-hoh, " to cough," kd-ko, " to knock," hwa-laV-hiva-lal, " to
gallop," much-a-'muck, " to eat," chak-chah, " the bald eagle "
(from its scream), tsish, " a grindstone," mamooh tsisk (make
tsish), "to sharpen." It has been remarked by Prof. Max
MuUer that the peculiar sound made in blowing out a candle
is not a favourite in civilized languages, but it seems to be
recognized here, for no doubt it is what the compiler of the
vocabulary is doing his best to write down when he gives
mamooh poh (make po/t) as the Chinook expression for " to
blow out or extinguish as a candle." This jargon is in great
measure of new growth within the last seventy or eighty years,
but its imitative words do not differ in nature from those of
the more ordinary and old-established languages of the world.
Thus among Brazilian tribes there appear Tupi coo'ordug, ctt-
omruc, " to snore " (compare Coptic kherkher, Quichua ccorcuni
{ccor) ), whence it appears that an imitation of a snore may
perhaps serve the Carajas Indians to express " to sleep " arou-
rou-cre, as well as the related idea of " night," roou. Again
Pimenteira ebaung, " to bruise, beat," compares with Yoruba
gha, " to slap," gbd (gbang) " to sound loudly, to hang,'" and so
forth. Among African languages, the Zulu seems particularly
rich in imitative words. Thus bibiza, " to dribble like
children, drivel in speaking " (compare English bib) ; babala,
"the larger bush-antelope" (from the baa (f the female);
hoba, " to babble, chatter, be noisy," bobi, " a babbler ; "
boboni, " a throstle " (cries bo ! bo ! compare American
bobolink) ; bomboloza, " to rumble in the bowels, to have
a bowel-complaint ;" ^ii6itZa, "to buzz like bees," bubulela,
"a swarm of bees, a buzzing crowd of people ;" bubuluza,
"to make a blustering noise, like frothing beer or boiling
fat." These examples, from among those given under one
initial letter in one dictionary of one barbaric language,
may give an idea of the amount of the evidence from

VOL. I.

194

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGES.

the languages of the lower races bearing on tl'e present
problem.

For the present purpose of giving a brief scries of ex-
amples of the sort of words in Avhich imitative sound seems
fairly traceable, the strongest and most manageable evidence
is of course found among such words as directly describe
sounds or what produces them, such as sounds of, and names
for animals, the terms for actions accompanied by sound, and
the materials and objects so acted upon. In further inves-
tigation it becomes more and more requisite to isolate the
sound-type or root from the modifications and additions to
which it has been subjected for grammatical and phonetical
adaptation. It will serve to give an idea of the extent and
intricacy of this problem, to glanco at a group of words in on '3
European language, and notice the etymological network which
spreads round the German word klapf, in Grimm's dictionary,
kUfppenyhllxipen, klopfen,kldJFen, klhnpern, klampem,klatereu,
kloteren, klitteren, klatzen, klo. "ken, and so forth, to be matched
with allied forms in other languages. Setting aside the con-
sideration of grammatical inflexion, it belongs to the present sub-
ject to notice that man's imitative faculty in language is by no
means limited to making direct copies of sounds and shaping
them into words. It seizes upon ready-made terms of whatever
origin, alters and adapts them to make their sound fitting to their
sense, and pours into the dictionaries a flood of adapted words of
which the most difficult to analyse are those which are neither
altogether etymological nor altogether imitative, but partly botli.
How words, while preserving, so to speak, the same skeleton,
may be made to follow the variation of sound, of force, of
duration, of size, an imitative group more or less connected
with the last will show — crick, creak, crack, crash, crush, crunch,
craunch, scrunch, scraunch. It does not at all follow that
because a word suffers such imitative and symbolic changes it
must be, like this, directly imitative in its origin. What, for
instance, could sound more imitative than the name of that
old-fashioned cannon for throwing grape-shot, the patterero ?
Yet the etymology of the word appears in the Spanish form
pedrero, French perrier ; it means simply an instrument for

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

195

that

throwing stones (piedra, pierre), and it was only when the
Spanish word was adopted in England that the imitative
faculty caught and transformed it into an apparent sound-
word, resembling the verb to ixitter. The propensity of lan-
guage to make sense of strange words by altering them into
something with an appropriate meaning (like beefeater from
buffetier) has been often dwelt upon by philologists, but the
properisity to alter words into something with an approj^riate
sound has produced results immensely more important. The
effects of symbolic change of sound acting upon verb-roots seem
almost boundless. The verb to rvaddle has a strongly imita-
tive appearance, and so in German we can hardly resist the
suggestion that imitative sound has to do with the difference
between ivandern and ivandeln ; but all these verbs belong
to a family represented by Sanskrit vdd, to go, Latin vado, and
to this root there seems no sufficient ground for assigning an
imitative origin, the traces of which it has at any rate lost if
it ever had them. Thus, again, to stamp with the foot, which
has been claimed as an imitation of sound, seems only a
*' coloured " word. The root sta, " to stand," Sanskrit sthd, forms
A causative stap ; Sanskrit stlidpay, " to make to stand," English
to stop, and a i^oot-step is when the foot comes to a stand, a
i'oot-stop. But we have Anglo-Saxon sta pan, stccpan, step-
pan, English to step, varying to express its meaning by sound
into staup, to stamp, to stump, and to stomp, contrasting in
their violence or clumsy weight with the foot on the Dorset
in Barnes's poem : —

cottage-sill

" Where love do seek the maiden's evonen vloor,
Wi' etip-step light, an tip-tap slight

Ageiia the door."

By expanding, modifying, or, so to speak, colouring, sound
is able to produce effects closely like those of gesture-language,
expressing length or shortness of time, strength or weakness
of action, then passing into a further stage to describe great-
ness or smallness of size or of distance, and thence making
its way into the widest fields of metaphor. And it does all
this with a force which is surprising when we consider liow

■m

VJii

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANOUAGK.

!■ I

childishly simple fire the means employed. Thus the Bachapin
of Africa call a man with the cry h<^la ! but according as he
is 'ar or farther off the sound of the heela ! he-e-la ! i»
lengthened our, Mr. Macgrcgor in his ' Rob Hoy on the
Jordan,' graphically describes this method of cxjjrcssion, " ' But
where is Zalmouda V ... Then with rough eagerness
tl>e strongest of the Dowana faction pushes his long fore-
finger forward, pointing straight enoagh — but whither ? and

with a vollcv of words ends, Ah-ah-a-a-a ii-a This

strange expression had long before puzzled me wheu first
heard from a shepherd in Bashan. . . . But the simple
meaning of this long string of ah's " ehortened, and quick-
ened, and lowered in tone to the end, is merely that the place
pointed to is a 'very great way off.'" The Chinook jargon,
as usual representing primitive developments of language, uses
a similar device in lengthening the sound of W' rds to indicate
distance. The Siamese can, by varying t; j tone-accent,
make the syllable non, " there," express a near, indefinite, or
far distance, and in like manner can modify the meaning of
such a word as ny, "little." In the Gaboon, the strength
with which such a word as mpohi, " gi-eat," is uttered serves
to show whether it is great, very great, or very very great, and
in this way, as Mr. Wilson remarks in his ' Mpongwe Grammar,'
" the comparative degrees of greatnes?, smallness, hardness,
rapidity, and strength, &c., may be coi./eyed with more accuracy
and precision than could readily be conceived." In Madagascar
ratchi means "bad," but rdtchi is "very bad." The natives of
Australia, according to Oldfield, show the use of this process in
combination with that of symbolic reduplication : among the
Watchandie tribe jir-rie signifies " already or past," jir-rie
jir-rie indicates "a long time ago," while jie-r-r'ie jlrHe (the
first syllable being dwelt on for some time) signifies " an im-
mense time ago." Again, hoo-rie is " small," hoo-vie-hoo-He
" very small," and h-o-rie hooHe " exceedingly small." Wilhelm
von Humboldt notices the habit of the southern Guarani dia-
lect of South America of dwelling more or less time on the
suffix of the perfect tense, yvuv, y — ma, to indicate the length
or shortness of the distance of time at which the action took

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LANGUAGE.

place ; and it is curious to observe that a similar contrivance is
made use of among the aboriginal tribes of India, where the
Ho language fonns a future tense by adding d to the root, and
prolonging its somul, kajee " to speak," Amg kajeed " I will
speak." As might be expected, the languages of very rude
tribes show extremely well how the results of such primitive
processes pass into the recognized stock of language. Nothing
could be better for this than the words by which one of the
rudest o^ living races, the Botocudos of Brazil, express tlie
sea. They have a word for a stream, ouatou, and an adjective
which means great, ijipaldjioii ; thence the two words " stream-
great," a little strengthened in the vowels, will give the term
for a nver, oiuitou-ijiipahiiijou, Oii it were " stream-grea-at,"
and this, to express the immensity of the ocean, is amplified
into ouatou-iijipakiijoii-ou-oit-ou-ou-ou. Another tribe of the
same family works out the same result more simply ; the Avord
oiuitou, " streum" becomes ouatou-ou-ou-ou, "the sea." The
Chavantes very naturally stretch the expresf.ion rom-o-icodi,
" I go a long way," into rom-o-o-o-o-iuodi, "I go a very long
way indeed," and when they are called upon to count beyond
five they say it is ka-o-o-o-Jd, by which they evidently mean
it is a very great many. The Cauixanas in one vocabulary are
described as saying laivauugahi for four, and drawling out the
same word for five, as if to say a " long four," in somewhat
•the same way as the Ap(inegicrans, whose word for six is ita-
ivumi, can expand this into a word for seven, itaiuuuna, ob-
viously thus meaning a " long six." In their earlier and simpler
stages nothing can be more easy to comprehend than these, so
to speak, pictorial modifications of words. It is true that
writing, even with the aid of italics and capitals, ignores much
of this symbolism in spoken language, but every child can see
its use and meaning, in spite of the efforts of book-learning
and school-teaching to set aside whatever cannot be expressed
by their imperfect symbols, nor controlled by their narrow
rules. But when we try to follow out to their full results these
methods, at first so easy to trace and appreciate, we soon find
them passing out of our grasp. The language of the Sahaptin
Indians shows us a process of modifying words which is far

1!)8

KMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANQUAOK.

IJi '

■.!»'

■J. I

from oleftf, and yet not utterly obscure. These Indians have a
Avay of making a kind of disrespectful diminutive by clianging
tlio n in a word f ' '»us tiuimut means " tailless," but to
indicate particular .s..i.....iess, or to express contempt, they make
this into twihvt, pronounced with an appropriate change of
tone ; and again, wana means " river," but this is made into a
diminutive wakt by "changing ii into I, giving the voice a
ditferent tone, putting the lips out in speaking, and keeping
them suspendeil around the jaw." Hero we are told enough
about the change of pronunciation to guess at least how it
could convey the notions of smallness and contempt. But it
is less easy to follow the process by wliich the Mpongwe lan-
guage turns an affirmative into a negative verb by " an intona-
tion upon, or prolongation of the radical vowel," ttlnda, to love,
tilmJa, not to love ; Wndo, to be loved, ti}ndo, not to be loved. So
Yoruba, bdha, "a great thing," hdlm, "a small thing," contrasted
in a proverb, " Baha bo, haha mollo " — " A great matter puts a
smaller out of sight." Language is, in fact, full of phonetic modi-
fications which justify a suspicion that symbolic sound had to do
with their production, though it may be hard to say exactly how.
Again, there is the familiar process of reduplication, simple
or modified, which produces such forais as miu'Diur, pitpat,
heltersJceltev. This action, though much restricted in literary
dialects, has such immense scope in the talk of children and
savages that Professor Pott's treatise on it ^ has become inci-
dentally one of the most valuable collections of facts ever
made with relation to early stages of language. Now up to a
certain point any child can see how and why such doubling is
done, and how it always adds something to the original idea.
It may make superlatives or otherwise intensify words, as in
Polynesia loa " long," lololoa, " very long " ; Mandingo ding
" a child," dingding " a very little child." It makes plurals,
as Malay raja-raja " princes," orang-oramg " people." It
adds numerals, as Mosquito ivahual " four " (two-two), or dis-
tributes them, as Coptic oual ouai " singly " (one-one). These

* Pott, ' Doppeliing (HeJuplication, Gemination) als eines der wiclitigsten
Kililungsmittcl cler Spraclic,' 1362. Frequent xise lias been here made of this,
work.

KMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGK.

199

have a

arc cases where the motive of douhling is comparatively ea.sy
to make out. As an example of cases much more difficult to
comprehend may be taken the familiar reduplication of the
perfect tense, Greek yiypaifta from ypd<t>o>, Latin momordl from
mort^o, Gothic hailuild from haldiin, "to hold." Reduplication
is habitually used in imitative words to intensify them, and still
more, to show that the sound is repeated or continuous. From
the immense mass of such words we may take as instances
the Botocudo hou-hou-hoii-gitcha " to suck " (compare Tongan
hdhiL "breast"), kidku-kdck-kdck "a butterfly"; Quichua
chiuiiiluinichi " wind whistling in the trees " ; Maori htwuiio
" noise of wind " ; hohoro " hurry " ; Dayak kaJcfdhdu " to go
on laughing loud " ; Aino ahiriuahinukanni " a rasp " ; Tamil
mw'umurK, " to muiinur " ; Akra nvieiuleiviewie " he spoke
repeatedly and continually" ; and so on, throughout the whole
range of the languages of the world.

The device of conveying different ideas of distance by the
use of a graduated scale of vowels seems to me one of great
philological interest, from the suggestive hint it gives of the
proceedings of the language-makers in most distant regions of
the world, working out in various ways a similar ingenious con-
trivance of expression by sound. A typical series is the Javan :
iki " this " (close by) ; ika " that " (at some distance) ; iku
"that" (farther off ). It is not likely that the following list
nearly exhausts the whole number of cases in the languages of
the world, for about half the number have been incidentally
noted down by myself without any especial search, but merely
in the course of looking over vocabularies of the lower races.^

Javan
Malagasy

iki, this ; ika, that (intermediate) ; iku, that.

ao, there (at a short distance) ; eo, there (at a

shorter distance) ; io, there, (close at hand).
atsy, there (not far off) ; etay, there (nearer) ; itsy,

this or these.

• For authorities sco especially Pott, 'Doppelung,' p. 30, 47-49; "W. v.
Humboldt, 'Kawi-Spr.,' vol. ii. p. 36 ; Max lluUerin Bunsen, 'Pliilos. of Univ.
Hist.,' vol i. p. 329; Latham, 'Comp. Phil.' p. 200; and the grammars and
dictionaries of the particular languages. The Guarani and Carib on authority of
D'Orbigny, 'L' Homme American,' vol ii. p. 268 ; Dhimal of Hodgson, 'Abor. of
India,' p. 69, 79, 115 ; Colville Ind. of Wilson in • Tr. Eth. Soc.,' vol. iv. p. 331 ;
Botocudo of Martius, 'Gloss. Brasil.'

200

KMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LANGUAUK.

Il.s

I mm

•r ,(

- !l

Japunoso

CanaroHO
Tamul .
Hjijmtthali
Dhimol .

Abcliasian
Ossotic .
Magj'ar
Zulu .

Yoniba .
Fornandian .
Tumalo .

Groonlandish .

Sujolpa (Colvillo, Tnd

Sahaptia

M Lsun.

Tarahuinara

Guarani

Botocudo

Carib

Chilian

h>, horo ; lea, thoro.

hirern, thoHo ; hircrn, thoy (thoHo).

ivijiti, this ; tivdnu, that(iiitoi'mudiato) ; avanu, that.

t, this ; d, that.

ill, thia ; (1h, that.

is/io, ild, horo ; uaho, uUi, thoro.

iti, idontj, this ; uti, mhmg, that [of things and

persons rospoctivoly].
uhri, this; nhri, that.
«/rt, hero; urn, thoro.
ez, this ; az, that.
(tpa, horo ; n/w, there,
/t's/, /fflo, leaiiid ; abn, ahu, ahuya ; &c. — > this, that,

that (in tho distancoj.
n«, this ; ni, that.
k/o, this ; oh, that,
re, this ; ri, that,
ny/, I ; wjo, thou ; nrju, he.
«f, horo, thoro (whore ono points to) ; iv, thoro,

uj) thoro [found in comp.].
),(iX^i, this; ix'> that.
kina, horo ; Icuna, there.
lie, horo ; nu, thoro.
the, here; ahe, there.
.ide, lie, thou; ndi, ni, he.
ati, I ; oti, thou, you, (prop.) to.
nv, thou ; ni, he.
<i;a, vachi, this ; ifyey, veychi, that.

It is obvious on inspection of this list of pronouns and abverbs,
that they have in some way come to have their vowels con-
trasted to match the constrast of here and there, this and that.
Accident may sometimes account for such cases. For instance,
it is Avell known to philologists that our own this and that are
pronouns partly distinct in their formation, thi'S being probably
two pronouns run together, but yet the Dutch neuters dit " this,"
and dat " that," have taken the appearance of a single form
with contrasted vowels.^ But accident cannot account for the
frequency of such words in pairs, and even in sets of three, in so
many different languages. There must have been some common
intention at work, and there is evidence that some of these

' Also Olil ni"h Gennan diz and daz.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVK LAXCJlJAGK.

201

laiiguajTos do resort to clmnj^o of sotmd us a iiiciins of expros.<-
ing cluingo of (listanco. TImih tlio Imiguagi! of Fernando l*o can
not only express " this " and " that " hy o/o, olc, hut it can even
make a cliange of the pronoimciation of tlio vowel distinguish,
between o hoclm, " tliis month," and oh hoche, " that month." In
the same way the Greho can make the difterenco between " I "
and " thou," "we '' and "you," " solely by the intonation of the
voice, which the final It of the second persons vulh and cth is
intended to express."

md (li, I oat; indli di, thou otttost;
tl (li, wo out; (ill di, yo cut.

The set of Zulu demonstratives which express the three
distances of near, farther, farthest, are very complex, but a
remark as to their use shows how thoroughly symbolic sound
enters into their nature. The Zidusnot only say nansi, "here
is," nanso, *' there is," nausiya, " there is in tlie distance," but
they even exp'^ess the greatness of this distance by the emphasis
and prolongation of the ya. If we could discern a simdar
gradation of the vowels to express a corresponding gradation of
distance throughout our list, the wliole matter would be easier
to explain ; but it is not so, the t-words, for instance, are some-
times nearer and sometimes farther off than the a-words. We
can only judge that, as any child can see that a scale of vowels
makes a most expressive scale of distances, many pronouns and
adverbs in use in the world have probably taken their shape
under the influence of this simple device, and thus there have
arisen sets of what we may call contrasted or "diffc'-ential "
words.

How the differencing of words by change of vowels may be
used to distinguish between the sexes, is well put in a
remark of Professor Max MuUer's : " The distinction of gender
... is sometimes expressed in such a manner that we can only
explain it by ascribing an expressive power to the more or less
obscure sound of vowels. Ukh), in I'innic, is an old man ; al'ha,
an old woman. ... In Mangu chaclia is mas. . . . cheche, femina.
Again, ama, in Mangu, is father ; emc, raotlier ; amclia, father-

:'im

5 ,1;!
m' .1

202

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

H 'iii

\ '■%

in-law, emchc, mother-in-law." ^ The Coretu language of Brazil
lias another curiously contrasted pair of words. tsdacJco, " father "
tsaacho, "mother," while the Carib has haha for father, and hihi
for mother, and the Ibu of Africa has nna for father and nne
for mother. This contrivance of distinguishing the male from
the female by a difference of vowels is however but a small
part of the process of formation which can be traced among
such words as those for father and mother. Their consideration
leads into a very interesting philological region, that of
" Children's Language."

If we set down a few of the pairs of words which stand for
" father " and " mother " in very different and distant languages
— papa and mama; Welsh, tad {dad) and mam; Hungarian,
atya and anya ; Mandingo, fa and ha; Lummi (N. America),
"tnan and tan : Catoquina (S, America) payd and nayu ;
Watchandie (Australia), amo and ago — their contrast seems to
lie in their consonants, while many other pairs differ totally, like
Hebrew, ah and im ; Kuki, 2^'ha and noo ; Kayan, amay and
itiei ; Tarahumara, iiono and jeje. Words of the class of
2)apa and mama, occurring in remote parts of the world,
were once freely used as evidence of a common origin of
the languages in which they were found alike. But Professor
Buschmann's paper on "Nature-Sound," published in 1853,^
effectually overthrew this argument, and settled the view that
such coincidences might arise again and again by independent
production. It was clearly of no use to argue that Carib and
English were allied because the word papa, " father," belongs to
both, or Hottentot and English because both use mama for
" mother," seeing that these childish articulations may be used
in just the opposite way, for the Chilian word for mother is
pa-pa, and the Tlatskanai for father is mama. Yet the choice
of easy little words for " father " and " mother " does not seem
to have been quite indiscriminate. The immense list of such
words collected by Buschmann shows that the types pa and ta,

* Max Miiller, 1. c.

"^ J. C. E. Buachniaiin, * Ueber dcii Naturlaut, ' Berlin, 1853; and in 'Abli.
dcr K. Akad. d. Wisseu.'ch,' 1852. An English trans, in * Proc. Philological
fc'ociety,* vol. vi. See De Brosses, 'Form, des L.,' vol. i. p. 211.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

203

with the similar forms ap and at, preponderate in the world as
names for "father," while met and na, am and an, preponderate
as names for " mother." His explanation of this state of things
as affected by direct symbolism choosing the hard sound for the
father, and the gentler for the mother, has very likely truth in
it, but it must not be pushed too far. It cannot be, for instance,
the same principle of symbolism which leads the Welshman to
say tad for " father" and inam for "mother " and the Indian of
British Columbia to say maan, "father," and taan, "mother,"
or the Georgian to say mama, " father " and derla, " mother."
Yet I have not succesded in finding anywhere our familiar
papa and mama revenged in one and the same language ; the
nearest approach to it that I can give is from the island of
Meang, where mama meant "father, man," and hahi, "mother,
woman." ^

Between the nursery words papa and mama and the more
formal /a^/ier and onother there is an obvious resemblance in
sound. What, then, is the origin of these words father and
'mother ? Up to a certain point their history is clear. They
belong to the same group of organised words with vater and
mutter, pater and mater, irarrip and iirir-qp, pitar and mdtar, and
other similar forms through the Indo-European family of
languages. There is no doubt that all these pairs of names
are derived from an ancient and common Aryan source, and
when they are traced back as far as possible towards that
source, they appear to have sprung from a pair of words which
maybe roughly called patar and matar, and which were formed
by adding tar, the suffix of the actor, to the verb-roots ^(t and
nna. There being two appropriate Sanskrit verbs pd and md,
it is possible to etymologize the two words as patar, " protector,"
and matar, "producer." Now this pair of Aryan words must
have been very ancient, lying back at the remote common
source from which forms parallel to our English father and
mother passed into Greek and Persian, Norse and Armenian,
thus holding fixed type through the eveuLt'ul course of Indo-
European history. Yet, ancient as these words are, they were

• One family of languages, the Athapascan, contains both appd and mama as
terms for "father," in the Tahkali and Tlatskauni.

204

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

'$ i

f'.i ■

no doubt preceded by simpler rudimentary words of the
children's language, for it is not likely that the primitive
Aryans did without baby-words for father and mother until they
had an organized system of adding suffixes to verb-roots to
express such notions as "protector " or "producer." Nor can it
be supposed that it was by mere accident that the root-words
thus chosen happened to be the very sounds pa aud ma, whose
types so often recur in the remotest parts of the world as names
for "father" and "mother," Prof. Adolphe Pictet makes shift
to account for the coincidence thus : he postulates first the
pair of forms jx^ and 7nd as Aryan verb-roots of unknown
origin, meaning " to protect " and " to create," next another
pair of forms ^xt and ma, children's words commonly used to
denote father and mother, and lastly he combines the two by
supposing that the root-verbs ^^a and md were chosen to form
the Indo-European words for parents, because of their resem-
blance to the familiar baby-words already in use. This cir-
cuitous process at any rate saves those sacred monosyllables,
the Sanskrit verb-roots, from tlie disgrace of an assignable
origin. Yet those who remember that these verb-roots are
only a set of crude forms in use in one particular language of
the world at one particular period of its development, may
account for the facts more simply and more thoroughly. It is a
fair guess that the ubiquitous ^9a and ma of the children's
language were the original forms ; that they were used in an
early period of Aryan speech as indiscriminately substantive and
verb, just as our modern English, which so often reproduces
the most rudimentary linguistic processes, can form from tiie
noun " father " a verb " to father " ; and that lastly they
became verb-roots, whence the words patar and matar were
formed by the addition of the suffix.^

The baby-names for parents must not be studied as though
they stood alone in language. They are only important mem-
bers of a great class of words, belonging to all times and
countries within our experience, and forming a children's

» See Pott, *Indo-Gor. Wurzelworterb.' s. v. "jia" ; Bolitlingk and Eotli,
' Sanski'it-Worterb.' s. v. vi(Ua7' ; Pictet, * Origines Iiulo-Europ.,' jiart ii. p. 349.
Max Jliillcr, ' Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 212.

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

20.>

language, whoso common character is due to its concerning
itself with the limited set of ideas in which little children aro
interested, and expressing these ideas by the limited set of
articulations suited to the child's first attempts to talk. This
peculiar language is marked quite characteristically among the
low savage tribes of Australia ; mamman " father," vgaiigan
" mother," and by metaphor " thumb," " great toe " (as is more
fuliy explained in jinnamam'nian " great toe," i.e. foot's
father), tammhi " grandfather or grandmother," hah-ha " bad,
foolish, childish," hte-hee, heep " breast," papi)^ " itnihev," pappa
" young one, pup, whelp," (whence is grammatically formed the
verb papi>avmti " to become a young one, to be born," Or if
we look for examples from India, it does not matter whether we
take them from non-Hindu or Hindu languages, for in baby-
language all races are on one footing. Thus Tamil aj^l^d "father,"
aiiimd " mother," Bodo cq^hd " father," dyd " mother ;" the
Kocch group ndnd and ndiiL "paternal grandfather and
grandmother," Tndmd " uncle," dddd " cousin," may be set
beside Sanskrit tata "fniherj'nand " mother," and the Hindus-
tani words of the same class, of which some are familiar to the
English ear by being naturalized in Anglo-Indian talk, hdhd
" father," hdhii "child, prince, Mr.," 6i6t " lady," dadd "nurse '
(^2/<^ " nurse " seems borrowed from Portuguese). Such words
are continually coming fresh into existence everywhere, and the
law of natural selection determines their fate. The great mass
of the liana's and dada's of the nur 3ry die out almost as soon
as made. Some few take more root and spread over large
districts as accepted nursery words, and now and then a curious
philologist makes a collection of them. Of such, many are
obvious mutilations of lafger words, as French faire dodo " to
sleep" (dormir), Brandenburg ^vkt'i, a common cradle lullaby
(wiegen). Others, whatever their origin, fall in consequence of
the small variety of articulations out of which they must be
chosen, into a curiously indiscriminate and unmeaning mass, as
Swiss hoho "a scratch;" hamham "all gone;" Italian hohb
" something to drink," gogo " little boy," far dede " to play."
These are words quoted by Pott, and for English examples
nana "nurse," tata! "good-bye!" may serve. But all 6a&?/-

■ftfi-J

206

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

words, as this very liame proves, do not stop short even at this
stage of publicity. A small proportion of them establish them-
selves in the ordinary talk of grown-up men and women, and
when they have once made good their place as constituents of
general language, they may pass on by inheritance from age to
age. Such examples as have been here quoted of nursery words
give a clue to the origin of a mass of names in the most diverse
languages, for father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast,
toy, doll, &c. The negi-o of Fernando Po who uses the word
bubhoh for " a little boy," is on equal terms with the German
who uses huhe; the Congo-man who uses tata for "father"
would understand how the same word could be used in classic
Latin for " father " and mediaeval Latin for " pedagogue ; " the
Carib and the Caroline Islander agree with the Englishman that
2M2)a is a suitable word to express " father," and then it only
remains to carry on the word, and make the baby-language
name the priests of the Eastern Church and the great Papa of
the Western. At the same time the evidence explains the
indifference with which, out of the small stock of available
materials, the same sound does duty for the most different
ideas ; why mama means here " mother," there " father," there
"uncle," Tiiaman here "mother," there "father-in-law," dada
here "father," there "nurse," there "breast," tata here "father,"
there " son." A single group of words may serve to show
this character of this peculiar region of language : Blackfoot
Indian ninnah " father ;" Greek vhvo^ " uncle," vivva " aunt ;"
Zulu nina, Sangir nina, Malagasy nini " mother ;" Javan nini
" grandfather or grandmother;" Vayu nini "paternal aunt;"
Darien Indian ninah "daughter;" Spanish m«o, nina "child;"
Italian ixinna "little girl;" Milanese ninin "bed;" Italian
ninnare " to rock the cradle."

In this way a dozen easy child's articulations, ha^s and nas,
ti's and de's, pa's and mas, serve almost as indiscriminately to
express a dozen child's ideas as though they had been shaken
in a bag and pulled out at random to express the notion that
came first, doll or uncle, nurse or grandfather. It is obvious
that among words cramped to such scanty choice of articulate
sounds, speculations as to derivation must be more than usually

A):h

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

207

unsafe. Looked at from this point of view, children's language
may give a valuable lesson to the philologist. He has before
him a kind of language, formed under peculiar conditions, and
showing the weak points of his method of philological research,
only exaggerated into extraordinary distinctness. In ordinary
language, the difficulty of connecting sound with sense lies in
great measure in the inability of a small and rigid set of articu-
lations to express an interminable variety of tones and noises.
In children's language, a still more scanty set of articulations
fails yet more to render these distinctly. The difficulty of
finding the derivation of words lies in great measure in the use
of more or less similar root-sounds for most heterogeneous pur-
poses. To assume that two words of different meanings, just
because they sound somewhat alike, must therefore have a
common origin, is even in ordinary language the great scarce of
bad etymology. But in children's language the theory of root-
sounds fairly breaks down. Few would venture to assert, for
instance, that papa and pap have a common derivation or a
common root. All that we can safely say of connexion between
them is that they are words related by common acceptance in
the nursery language. As such, they are well-marked in
ancient Rome as in modern England : papas " nutricius,
nutritor," pappus " senex ;" " cum cibum et potum huas ac
papas dicunt, et matrem mamnuim, patrem tatam (or
papam)" ^

From children's language, moreover, we have striking proof
of the power of consensus of society, in establishing words in
settled use without their carrying traces of inherent expressive-
ness. It is true that children are intimately acquainted with
the use of emotional and imitative sound, and their vocal inter-
course largely consists of such expression. The effects of this
are in some degree discernible in the class of words we are con-
sidering. But it is obvious that the leading principle of their
formation is not to adopt words distinguished by the expressive
character of their sound, but to choose somehow a fixed word to
answer a given purpose. To do this, different languages have
chosen similar articulations to express the most diverse and
* Facciokti, 'Lex.' Varro ap. Nonn., ii. 97.

208

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

I ^' ■

opposite ideas. Now in tlic languages of grown-up people, it is
clear that social consensus has worked in the same way. Even
if the extreme supposition be granted, that the ultimate origin
of every word of language lies in inherently expressive sound,
this only partly affects the case, for it would have to be admitted
that, in actual languages, most words have so far departed in
sound or sense from this originally expressive stage, that to all
intents and purposes they might at first have been arbitrarily
chosen. The main principle of language has been, not to
preserve traces of original sound-signification for the benefit of
future etymologists, but to fix elements of language to serve as
counters for practical reckoning of ideas. In this process much
original expressiveness has no doubt disappeared beyond all
hope of recovery.

Such are some of the ways in which vocal sounds seem to
have commended themselves to the mind of the word-maker as
fit to express his meaning, and to have been used accordingly.
I do not think that the evidence here adduced justifies the
setting-up of what is called the Interjectional and Imitative
Theory as a complete solution of the problem of original lan-
guage. Valid as this theory proves itself within limits, it would
be incautious to accept a hypothesis which can perhaps satis-
factorily account for a twentieth of the crude forms in any lan-
guage, as a certain and absolute explanation of the nineteen-
twentieths whose origin remains doubtful. A key must unlock
more doors than this, to be taken as the master-key. More-
over, some special points which have come under consideration
in these chapters tend to show the positive necessity of such
caution in theorising. Too narrow a theory of the application
of sound to sense may fail to include the varied devices which
the languages of different regions turn to account. It is thus
with the distinction in meaning of a word by its musical
accent, and the distinction of distance by gi'aduated vowels.
These are ingenious and intelligible contrivances, but they
hardly seem directly emotional or imitative in origin. A safer
way of putting the theory of a natural origin of language is to
postulate the original utterance of ideas in what may be called
self- expressive sounds, without defining closely whether their ex-

pie, it is
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EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

209

pression lay in emotional tone, imitative noise, contrast of accent
or vowel or consonant, or other phonetic quality. Even here, ex-
ception of unknown and perhaps enormous extent must be made
for sounds chosen by individuals to express some notion, from mo-
tives which even their own minds failed to discern, but which
sounds nevertheless made good their footing in the language
of the family, the tribe, and the nation. There may be many
modes even of recognizable phonetic expression, unknown to us
as yet. So far, however, as I have been able to trace them here,
such modes have in common a claim to belong not exclusively to
the scheme of this or that particular dialect, but to wide-ranging
principles of formation of language. Their examples are to
be drawn with equal cogency from Sanskrit or Hebrew, from
the nursery-language of Lombardy, or the half-Indian, half-
European jargon of Vancouver's Island ; and wherever they
are found, they help to furnish groups of sound- v/ords —words
which have not lost the traces of their first expressive origin,
but still carry their direct significance plainly stamped upon
them. In fact, the time has now come for a substantial basis
to be laid for Generative Pliilology. A classified collection of
words with any strong claim to be self-expressive should bo
brought together out of the thousand or so of recognized lan-
guages and dialects of the world. In such a Dictionary of
Sound- Words, half the cases cited might very likely be worth-
less; but the collection would afford the practical means of
expurgating itself; for it would show on a large scale what
particular sounds have manifested their fitness to convey parti-
cular ideas, by having been repeatedly chosen among different
races to convey them.

Attempts to explain as far as may be the primary formation
of speech, by tracing out in detail such processes as have been
here described, are likely to increase our knowledge by sure
and steady steps wherever imagination does not get the better
of sober comparison of facts. But there is one side of this
problem of the Origin of Language on which such studies have
by no means an encouraging etfect. Much of the popular
interest in such matters is centred in the question' whether
the known langu:\ges of the world have their source in one or

'l ?

VOL. I.

210

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANOUAOE.

"'.< i

i ■ !■ .-

many primaeval tongues. On this subject the opinions of the
philologists who hnve compared the greatest number of lan-
guages are utteiiy at variance, nor has anyone brought forward
a body of philological evidence strong and direct enough to make
anything beyond mere vague opinion justitiable. Now such
processes as the growth of imitative or symbolic words form a
part, be it small or large, of the Origin of Language, but thoy
are by no means restricted to any particular place or period,
nnd are indeed more or less in activity now. Their operation
on any two dialects of one language will be to introduce in each
a number of new and independent words, and words even sus-
pected of having been formed in this direct way become value-
less as proof of genealogical connexion between the languages
in which they are found. The test of such genealogical con-
nexion must, in fact, be generally narrowed to such words or
grammatical forms as have become so far conventional in sound
and sense, that we cannot suppose two tribes to have arrived at
them independently, and therefore consider that both, must
have inherited them from a common source. Thus the intro-
duction of new sound-words tends to make it practically of less
and less consequence to a language v/hat its original stock of
words at starting may have been ; and the philologist's exten-
sion of his knowledge of such direct formations must compel
him to strip off more and more of any language, as being
possibly of later growth, before he can set himself to argue upon
such a residuum as may have come by direct inheritance from
times of primaBval speech.

In concluding this survey, some general considerations sug-
gest themselves as to the nature and first beginnings of lan-
guage. In studying the means of expression among men in
stages of mental culture far below our own, one of our first
needs is to clear our minds of the kind of superstitious venera-
tion with whicli articulate speech has so commonly been treated,
as though it were not merely the principal but the sole means
of uttering thought. We must cease to measure the historical
importance of emotional exclamations, of gesture-signs, and of
picture-writing, by their comparative insignificance in modern
civilized life, but must bring ourselves to associate tlic articulate

il!

ICrrlOTIONAL AND IJUTATIVK LANGUAGE.

illl

Avonls of the dictionary in one group with cries and gestures
and pictures, as being all of them means of manifesting out-
Avardly the inward workings of the mind. Such an admission,
it must be observed, is far from being a mere detail of scientific
classification. It has really a most important bearing on the
problem of the Origin of Language. For as the reasons are
mostly dark to us, why particular words arc currently used to
express particular ideas, language has come to be looked upon
as a mystery, and either occult philosophical causes have been
called in to explain its phenomena, or else the endowment of
man with the faculties of thought and utterance has been
deemed insufficient, and a special revelation has been demanded
to put into his mouth the vocabulary of a particular language.
In the debate which has been carried on for ages over this
much-vexed problem, the saying in the ' Kratylos ' comes back
to our minds again and again, where Sokrates describes the
etymologists who release themselves from their difficulties as to
the origin of words by saying that the first words were divinely
made, and therefore right, just as the tragedians, when they are
in perplexity, fly to their machinery and bring in the gods.^
Now I think that those who Sijberly contemplate the operation
of jries, groans, laughs, and other emotional utterances, as to
which some considerations have been here brought forward, will
admit that, at least, our present crude understanding of this
kind of expression would lead us to class it among the natural
actions of man's body and mind. Certainly, no one who under-
stands anything of the gesture-language or of picture-writing,
would be justified in regarding either as due to occult causes, or
to any supernatural interference Avith the course of man's intel-
lectual development. Their cause evidently lies in natural
operations of the human mind, not such as verc effective in
some long past condition of humanity and have since disap-
peared, but in processes existing amongst us, which we can
understand and even practise for ourselves. When we study
the pictures and gestures with which savages and the deaf-and-
dumb express their minds, we can mostly see at a glance the
direct relation between the outward sign and the inward

1 Plato Cratylus. 90.

u r

>■.:¥']

I' 2

ii'f

212

emotioxal and imitativk language.

thought which it makes ! uinifcst. Wo may sec the idea of
"sleep" shown in gesture by the head with shut eyes, leant
heavily against the open hand ; or the idea of " running" by the
attitude of the runner, with clie.-t forward, mouth half open,
elbows and shoulders well ba k ; or "candle" by the straight
forefinger held up, and as it were blown out ; or " salt " by the
imitated act of sprinkling it with thumb and finger. The
figures of the child's picture-book, the sleeper and the runner,
the candle and the salt-cellar, show their purport by the same
sort of evident relation between thounht and sign. We so far
understand the nature of these modes of utterance, that we are
ready ourselves to express thought after thought by such means,
so that those who see our signs shall perceive our meaning.

When, however, encouraged by our ready siiccess in making
out the nature and action of these ruder methods, we turn to
the higher art of speech, and ask how such and such words have
come to express such and such thoughts, we find ourselves face
to face Avith an immense problem, as yet but in small part
solved. The success of investigation has> indeed been enough to
encourage us to push vigorously forward in the res',..irch, but
the present explorations have not extended beyond corrers and
patches of an elsewhere unknown field. Still the results go far
to wai'rant us in associating expression Dy gestures and pictures
with articulate language as to principles of original formation,
much as men associate them in actual life by using gesture
and word at once. Of course, articulate speech, in its far
more complex and elaborate development, has taken up devices
to which the more simple and rude means of communication
otfer nothing comparable. Still, language, so far as its constitu-
tion is understood, seems to have been developed hke writing or
music, like hiuiting or fire-making, by the exercise of purely
human faculties in purely human ways. This state of things,
by no means belongs exclusively to rudimentary philological
operations, such as the choosing expressive sounds to name cor-
responding ideas by. In the higher departments of speech,
where words already existing are turned to account to express
new meanings and shade off new distinctions, we find these
ends attained by contrivances ranging from extreme dexterity

i:mutional and imitative LAXCJUAOK.

213

<l()wn to utter clmnsiuess. For a single instance, one ^wni
moans offtivinj^ new meaning- to old sound is metajilior, which
transfers ideas from hearing to seeing, from touching to think-
ing, from the concrete of one kind to the abstract of anothei",
-and can thus make almost anything in the world help to
describe or suggest an3'thing else. What the German philo-
sopher described as the relation of a cow to a comet, that both
have tails, is enough and more than enough for the language-
maker. It struck the Australians, when they saw a Euro|)ean
book, that it opened and shut like a mussel-shell, and they
began accordingly to call books " mussels" {mvyCtm). The
flight of a steam engine may suggest a wliole group of such
transitions in our own language; the steam passes along " fifes"
•or "trumpets," that in, 2>i2^(^s or tubes, and enters by "folding-
doors" or valves, to push a " pestle" or instoii up and down in
ii " roller" or ctjUvder, while the light pours from the furnace
in " staves " or " poles," that is, in rays or beams. The dic-
tionaries are full of cases compared with which such as these
are plain and straightforward. Indeed, the processes by which
words have really come into existence may often enough remind
ns of the game of "What is my thought like?" When one
knows the answer, it is easy enough to see what junl-ettuicj and
cathedral canons have to do with reeds; Latin juncus "a
reed," Low Latin juncata, " cheese made in a reed-basket,"
Italian yhincata, " cream cheese in a rush frail," French
joncade and English junket, which are preparations of cream,
and lastly jimhcttiny parties where such delicacies are eaten ;
'Greek Kavr] " reed, cane,^^ KavOtv, " measure, rule," thence
canonicus, " a clerk under the ecclesiastical rule or canon."
But who could guess the history of these words, Avho did not
happen to know these intermediate links ?

Yet there is about this process of derivation a thoroughly
human artificial character. When we know the whole facts of
any case, we can generally understand it at once, and see that
we might have done the same ourselves had it come in our way.
And the same thing is true of the processes of making sound-
words detailed in these chapters. Such a view is, however, in
no way inconsistent v/ith the attempt to generalisf^ upon these

lE's

' ':*\

' ^

t. '. iM

^^^^'-^

211.

KMOTIONAL AN'I) l.MITATIVK LANOl'AOK.

i'^\

procesHcs, and to stnto tlu'in us phases of tlio devclopmoiit of
lnni;iiafjt> amon«f munkind. If I'crtain men under certain
ciivunistancos produce certain rcsidts, tlien we may at least
expect that other men mudi resend»lin<f these and phiced under
roMnhly similar circumstances will produce more or less like
results ; and this has been shown over and ov(>r again in these
pages to 1)0 what really happens. Now Wilhehn von Hum-
Ixddt's view that langiiage is an "organism" has been con-
sidered a great step in philological speculation ; and so far as it
has led students to turn their minds to the search after general
laws, no doubt it hns been so. But it has also caused an
increase of va^ue tliiidcinj; and talking, and thereby no small
darkening of counsel. Had it been meant to say that human
thought, language, and action generally, are organic in their
nature, and work under fixed laws, this would be a very
different matter; but this is distinctly not whnt is meant, and
the very object of calling language an organism is to keep it
apart from mere human arts and contrivances. It was a hate-
ful thing to Humboldt's mind to "bring down speech to a mere
operation of the understanding." "Man," he says, "does not
so much form lang\iage, as discern with a kind of joyous wonder
its developments, coming forth as of themselves." Yet, if the
practical shifts by which word." are shaped or applied to lit new
meanings are not devisee^ bv an operation of the understanding,
we ought consistently to carry the .stratagems of the soldier in
the field, or the contrivances of the workman at his bench, back
into the dark regions of instinct and involuntary action. That
the actions of individual men combine to produce results which
may be set down in those general statements of fact which we
call law.s, may be stated once again as one of the main proposi-
tions of the Science of Culture. But the nature of a fact is not
altered ])y its being classed in common with others of the same
kind, and a man is not the less the intelligent inventor of a new
word or a new metaphor, because twenty other intelligent
inventors elsewhere may have fallen on a similar expedient.

The theory that the original forms of language are to be
referred to a low or savage condition of culture among the
remotely ancient human race, .stands in general consistency with

EMOTIUNAL AND IMITATIVK l,AN(}L'A(Ji:.

215

till' known fiicts t»f philology. T\w niusos vliii-li have i)rotluoo<l
liuiguaj^c, HO far us they nro unilcr.stood, an,' notable for tliat
chililliko simplicity of operation whicii befits the infancy of
liurnun civilization. The ways in which sounds arc in the tirst
instance chosen and arranj^'ed to express idca.s, are practical
expedients at the level of nursery philosophy. A child of fivo
years old could catch the meaniny; of imitative sounds, inter-
jectional words, symbolism of sex or distance by contrast of
vowels. Just as no one is likely to enter into the real nature of
mythology who has not the keenest appreciation of nursery
tahjs, so the spirit in which we guess riildles and play at
children's games is needed to appreciate the lower ])ha8es of
hmguagc. Such a state of things agrees with the opinion that
such rudimentary speech had its origin among men while in a
childlike intellectual condition, and thus the self-expressive
branch of savage language affords valuable materials for the
l)roblem of })rimitive speech. If we look back in imagination
to an early period of human intercourse, where gesture and
self-expressive utterance may have had a far greatei* comparative
importance than among ourselves, such a conception introduces
no new element into the problem, for a state of things more or
less answering to this is Ueseribcd among certain low savage
tribes. If we turn from such self-cx])ressive utterance, to that
part of articulate language which carries its sense only by
traditional and seemingly arbitrary custom, we shall find no
contradiction to the hypothesis. Sound carrying direct meaning
may be taken up as an element of language, keeping its first
significance recognizable to nations yet unborn. But it may far
more probably become by wear of sound and shift of sense an
expressionless symbol, such as might have been chosen in
pure arbitrariness — a philological process to which the voca-
bularies of savage dialects bear full witness. In the course of
the development of language, such traditional words with
merely an inherited meaning, have in no small measure driven
into the background the self-expressive Avords, just as the
Eastern figures 2, 3, 4, whicli are not self-expressive, have
driven into the background the Roman numerals II., III., IIIL,
which are — this, again, is an operation which has its place in

216

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

savage as in cultivated speech. Moreover, to look closely at
language as a practical means of expressing thought, is to face
evidence of no slight bearing on the history of civilization. We
come back to the fact, so full of suggestion, that the languages
of the world represent substantially the same intellectual art,
the higher nations indeed gaining more expressive power than
the lowest tribes, yet doing this not by introducing new and more
effective central principles, but by mere addition and improve-
ment in detail. The two great methods of naming thoughts
and stating their relation to one another, metaphor and syntax,
belong to the infancy of human expression, and are as thoroughly
at home in the language of savages as of philosophers. If it be
argued that this similarity in principles of language is due to
savage tribes having descended from higher culture, carrying
down with them in their speech the relics of their former
excellence, the answer is that linguistic expedients are actually
worked out with as much originality, and more extensively if
not more profitably, among savages than among cultured men.
Take for example the Algonquin system of compounding words,
and the vast Esquimaux scheme of grammatical inflexion.
Language belongs in essential principle both to low grades and
high of civilization, to which should its origin be attributed ?
An answer may be had by comparing the methods of language
with the work it has to do. Take language all in all over the
world, it is obvious that the processes by which words are made
and adapted have far less to do with systematic arrangement and
scientific classification, than with mere rough and ready ingenuity
and the great rule of thumb. Let any one whose vocation it is to
realize philosophical or scientific conceptions and to express them
in words, ask himself whether ordinary language is an instru-
ment planned for such purposes. Of course it is not. It is hard
to say which is the more striking, the want of scientific system
in the expression of thought by words, or the infinite cleverness
of detail by which this imperfection is got over, so that he who
has an idea does somehow make shift to get it clearly in words
before his own and other minds. The language by which a
nation with highly developed art and knowledge and sentiment
must express its thoughts on these subjects, is no apt machine

t(
P

€
O

EMOTIONAL AND IMITATIVE LANGUAGE.

217

devised for such special work, but an old barbaric engine added
to and altered, patched and tinkered into some sort of capability.
Ethnography reasonably accounts at once for the immense
power and the manifest weakness of language as a means of
expressing modern educated thought, by treating it as an
original product of low culture, gradually adapted by ages of
evolution and selection, to answer more or less sufficiently the
requirements of modern civilization.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE AET Oi' COUNTING.

Ideas of Number cleiivcd from experience — State of arithmetic among uncivilized
races — Small extent of Numeral-woids among low tribes — Counting bj'
lingers and toes — Hand-numerals show derivation of Verbal reckoning from
Gesture-counting — Etymology of Numerals — Quinary, Decimal, and Vigesi-
mal notations of the world derived from counting on fingers and toes —
Adojitiri) of foreign Numeral- words — Evidence of development of Arithmetic
from a low original level of Culture.

Mr. J. S. Mill, in his ' System of Logic,' takes occasion to
examine the foundations of the art of arithmetic. Against
Dr. Whewell, who had maintained that such propositions as
that two and three make five are " necessary truths," containinf-
in them an element of certainty beyond that which mere expe-
rience can give, Mr. Mill asserts that " two and one are equal
to three" expresses merely "a truth known to us by early and
constant experience : an inductive truth ; and such truths are
the foundation of the science of Number. The fundamental
truths of that science all rest on the evidence of sense ; they
arc proved by showing to our eyes and our fingers that any
given number of objects, ten balls for example, may by separa-
tion and re-arrangement exhibit to our senses all the different
sets of numbers the sum of which is equal to ten. All the
improved methods of teaching arithmetic to children proceed
on a knowledge of this fact. All who wish to carry the child's
mioid along with ihem in learning arithmetic ; all who wish to
teach numbers, and not mere ciphers — now teach it through
the evidence of the senses, in the manner we have de-
scribed." Mr. Mill's argument is taken from the mental con-
ditions of people among whom there exists a highly advanced

L'ongli

THE ART OF COUNTING.

219

arithmetic. The subject is also one to he advantageously
studied from the ethnographer's point of view. The examina-
tion of the methods of numeration in use among the lower
races not only fully bears out Mr. Mill's view, that our know-
ledge of the relations of nunibers is based on actual experiment,
but it enables us to trace the art of counting to its source, and
to ascertain by what steps it arose in the world among parti-
cular races, and probably among all mankind.

In our advanced system of numeration, no limit is known
either to largeness or smallness. The philosopher cannot con-
ceive the formation of any quantity so large or of any atom so
small, but the arithmetician can keep j)ace with him, and can
define it in a simple combination of written signs. But as v»e
go downwards in the scale of culture, we find that even where
the current language has terms for hundreds and thousands,
there is less and less power of forming a distinct notion of large
numbers, the reckoner is sooner driven to his fingers, and there
increases among even tL3 most intelligent of a tribe that
numerical indefiniteness that we notice among children — if
there were not a thousand people in the street there were cer-
tainly a hundred, at any rate there were twenty. Strength in
arithmetic does not, it is true, vary regularly with the level of
general culture. Some savage or barbaric peoples are excep-
tionally skilled in numeration. The Tonga Islanders really
have native numerals up to 100,000. Not content even witli
this, the French explorer Labillardiere pressed them farther
and obtained numerals up to 1000 billions, which were duly
printed, but proved on later examination to be partly nonsense-
words and partly indelicate expressions,^ so that the supposed
series of high numerals forms at once a little vocabulary of
Tongan indecency, and a warning as to the probable results of
taking down unchecked answers from question-worried savages.
In West Africa, a lively and continual habit of bargaining has
develonod a great puwer of arithmetic, and little children
already do feats of computation with their heaps of cowries.
Among the Yorubas of Abeokuta, to say " you don't know nine
times nine " is actually an insulting way of saying " you are a

' Mnriuer, 'Tonga lalaiuls,' vol. ii. p. "'JO.

,^!

220

THE ART OF COUNTIKG.

tl i

dunce." ^ This is an extraordinary proverb, when we compare
it with the standard which our corresponding European sayings
set for the limits of stupidity : the German says, " he can scarce
count five " ; the Spaniard, " I will tell you how many make
five " (cuantos son cinco) ; and we l.»ave the same saw in

England

" . . .as sure as I 'm alive,
And knows how many beans make five."

A Siamese law-court will not take the evidence of a witness
v/ho cannot count or reckon figures up to ten ; a rule which
reminds us of ine ancient custom of Shrewsbury, where a
person was deemed of age when he knew how to count up to
twelve pence.*^

Among the lowest living men, the savages of the South
American forests and the deserts of Australia, 5 is actually
found to be a number which the languages of some tribes do
not know by a special word. Not only have travellers failed
to get from them names for numbers above 2, 3, or 4, but the
opinion that these are the real limits of their numeral series is
strengthened by their use of their highest known number as an
indefinite term for a great many. Spix and Martins say of the
low tribes of Brazil, " They count commonly by their finger-
joints, so up to three only. Any larger number they express
by the word ' many.' " ^ In a Puri vocabulary the numerals are
given as 1. omi ; 2.curlri; 3. p>7'ca, " many " : in a Botocudo
vocabulary, 1. onol'enam; 2. uruhu, " many." The numeration
of the Tasmanians is, according to Jorgenson, 1. itarmery ; 2.
ralahawa ; more than 2, cardia; as Backhouse puts it, they
count " one, two, plenty " ; but an observer who had specially
good opportunities. Dr. Milligan, gives a word found among
them for o, which we shall recur to.* Mr. Oldfield (writing

• Crowtlier, 'Yoniba Vocab.' ; Burton, 'W. & "W. from W. Africa,' p. 253.
*' daju danu, o ko mo essan messan. — You (may seem) very clever, (but) you
Oiui't tell 9x9."

^ Low in * Journ. InJ. Archip.,' vol, i. p. 408 ; Year-Books Edw. I. (xx.— i.)
cd. Honvood, p. 220.

•* Spix and Martins, 'Heise in Brazilian,' p. 387.

•• Bonwick, 'Tasmanians,' p. 143 ; Backhouse, ' Narr.' p. 104 ; Milligan in Papers,
etc. Koy. Soe. Tasmania, vol. iii. part ii. 1859.

compare
I sayings
Lu scarce
iiy make
saw in

, witness
e which
tvhere a
t up to

3 South
actually
dbes do
•s failed
but the
series is
3r as an
of the
finger-
express
rals are
3tocudo
leration
ery; 2.
:t, they
Decially
among
writing

,' p. 253.
but) you

(xx.-i.)

11 Papers,

THE ART OF COUNTING.

221

G-pecially of Western tribes) says, " The New Hollanders have
no names for numbers l)eyond fu'O. The Watchandie scale of
notation is co-ote-on (one), u-tnu-ra (two), hool-tha (many), and
hool-fha-hut (very many). If absolutely required to express the
numbers three or four, they say u-tar-ra coo-te-oo to indicate
the former number, and u-tar-ra u-tar-ra to denote the latter."
That is to say, their names for one, two, three, and four, are
equivalent to " one," "two," " two-one," "two-two." Dr. Lang's
numerals from Queensland are just the same in principle,
though the words are different : 1. (janar ; 2. hurla ; 3. hurkt-
ganar," two-one"', 4. hurla-hurla "two-two"; korumha, "more
than four, much, great." The Kamilaroi dialect, though with
the same 2 as the last, improves upon it by having an inde-
pendent 3, and with the aid of this it reckons as far as 6 : 1.
Trial; 2. hularr ; 3. guliba ; 4. hularrhularr, "two-two"; 5.
hulaguUha, "two-three"; 6. gullhaguliha, "three-three."
These Australian examples are at least evidence of a very
scanty as well as clumsy numeral system among certain tribes.^
Yet here again higher forms will have to be noticed, which in
one district at least carry the native numerals up to 15 or 20.

It is not to be supposed; because a savage tribe has no
current words for numbers above 3 or 5 or so, that therefore
they cannot count beyond this. It appears that they can and
do count considerably farther, but it is by falling back on a
lower and ruder method of expression than speech — the gesture-
language. The place in intellectual development held by the
art of counting on one's fingers, is well marked in the descrip-
tion which Massieu, the Abb^ Sicard's deaf-and-dumb pupil,
gives of his notion of numbers in his comparatively untaught
childhood : " I knew the numbers before my instruction, my
fingers had taught me them. I did not know the ciphers ; I
counted on my fingers, and when tlie number passed 10 I made
notches on a bit of wood." ^ It is thus that all savage tribes
have been taught arithmetic by their fingers. Mr. Oldfield,

> Oldfield in Tr. Eth. Soc. vol. iii. p. 291 ; ^.aii.LC, ' Queenslana,' p. 433 ;
Latham, ' Comp. Phil." p. 352. Other terms in Bonwick, 1. c.

' Sicard, 'Theorio des Signes pour I'Instruetiou dus Sourds-Muots, ' vol. ii. p.
634.

222

THK ART OF COUNTING.

fiftor giving the account just quoted of the capability of the
Watchandie language to reach 4 by numerals, goes on to de-
scribe the means by which the tribe contrive to deal with a
harder problem in numeration. " I once wished to ascertain
the exact number of natives who had been slain on a certain
occasion. The individual of whom I made the enquiry, began
to think over the names .... assigning one of his lingers to
each, and it was not until after many failures, and consequent
fresh starts, that he was able to express so high a number,
which he at length did by holding up his hand three times, thus
giving me to understand that fifteen was the answer to this
most difficult arithmetical question." Of the aborigines of
Victoria, Mr. Stanbridge says : " They have no name for
numerals tibove two, but by repetition they count to five ; they
also record t^ . days of the moon by means of the fingers, the
bones and joints of the arms and the head." ^ The Bororos of
Brazil reckon: 1. couai ; 2. macouai ; S. ouai ; and then go
on counting on their fingers, repeating this ouai? Of course
it no more follow i among savages than among ourselves that,
because a man counts on his fingers, his language must be
wanting in words to express the number he wishes to reckon.
For example, it was noticed that when natives of Kamchatka
were set to count, they would reckon all their fingers, and then
all their toes, so getting up to 20, and then would ask, " What
are we to do next ? " Yet it was found on examination that
numbers up to 100 existed in their language.^ Travellers no-
tice the use of finger-counting among tribes who can, if they
choose, speak the number, and who either silently count it upon
their fingers, or very usually accompany the word with the
action ; nor indeed are either of these modes at all unfamiliar
in modern Europe. Let Father Gumilla, one of the early Jesuit
missionaries in South America, describe for us the relation ci
gesture to speech in counting, and at the same time bring to
our minds very remarkable examples (t*^ be paralleled else-
where) of the action of consensus, Avhereby conventional rules

» Stanbriiige in 'Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. i. p. 304.

" Martins, 'Gloss. Brasil.' p. 15.

^ Kraclieninnikow, ' Kaintchatka,' p. 17.

THE ART OF COUNTING.

ti23

ty of the
u to tle-
l with a
fiscertain
certain
y, began
ngers to
isequent
number,
les, thus
to this
ines of
ime for
R ; thev
ers, the
•oros of
-hen go
course
5S that,
uist be
reckon,
ichatka
id then
'What
n that
jrs no-
f they
t upon
th the
.miliar
Jesuit
ion oi
ng to
else-
rules

become fixed among societies of men, even in so simple an art
as that of counting on one's fingers. " Nobody among ourselves,"
he remarks, " except incidentally, would say for instance ' one,'
'two,' etc, and give the number on his fingers as well, by
touching them with the other hand. Exactly the contrary hap-
pens among the Indians. They say, for instance, ' give me one
pair of scissors,' and forthwith they raise one finger ; ' give me
two,' and at once they raise two, and so on. They would never
say ' five ' without showing a hand, never ' ten ' without holding
out both, never ' twenty ' without adding up the fingers, placed
opposite to the toes. Moreover, the mode of showing the num-
bers with the fingers difliers in each nation. To avoid prolixity,
I give as an example the number ' three.' The Otomacs to
say 'three' unite the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger,
keeping the others down. The Tamanacs show the little finger,
the ring finger, and the middle finger, and close the other two.
The Maipures, lastly, raise the fore, middle, and ring finger,
keeping the other two hidden." ^ Throughout the world, the
general relation between finger-counting and word-counting
may be stated as follows. For readiness and for ease of appre-
hension of numbers, a palpable arithmetic, such as is worked on
finger-joints or fingers,^ or heaps of pebbles or beans, or the
more artificial contrivances of the rosary or the abacus, has so
great an advantajje over reckoning in words as almost neccs-
warily to precede it. Thus not only do we find finger-counting
among savages and uneducated men, carrying on a part of
their mental operations where language is only partly able to
follow it, but it also retains a piace and an undoubted use

Uumilla, 'Historia del Orenoco,' vol. iii. cli. xlv. ; Pott, ' Ziihlmethode,'
p. 16.

^ The Eastern brokers have used for ag<'s, and still use, the method of secretly
indicating numbers to one another in bargaining, by " .nipping fingers under a
cloth." "Every joynt and very finger hath his signification," as an old tra-
veller says, and the system seems a more or less artificial development of ordinary
finger-counting, the thumb and little finger stretched out, and the other fingers
cloced, standing for 6 or 60, the addition of the fourth finger marking 7 or 70, and
so on. It is said that between two brokers settling a price by thus snipping with
the fingers, cleverness in bargaining, ofieriiig a little more, hesitating, expressing
an obstinate refusal to go farther, and so forth, comes out just as in cliall'ering in
words.

ISJ

'' 't\\

' i

u <rn

224

THE ART OF COUNTING.

'i'fi

Mi'!. :

! ■■ i

*, i il

among ihe most cultured nations, as a preparation for and
means of acquiring higher arithmetical methods.

Now there exists valid evidence to prove that a child learning
to count upon its fingers does in a way reproduce a process of
the mental history of the human race ; that in fact men counted
upon their fingars before they found words for the number.-i
they thus expressed ; that in this department of culture, Word-
language not only followed Gesture-languKgc, but actually grew
out of it. The evidence in question is principally that of lan-
guage itself, which shows that, among many and distant tribes,
men wanting to express 5 in words called it simply by their
name for the hand which they held up to denote it, that in like
manner they said tivo hands or half a man to denote 10, that
the word foot carried on the reckoning up to 15, and to 20, which
they described in words as in gesture by the hands and feet
together, or as one man, and that lastly, by various expressions
referring directly to the gestures of counting on the fingers and
toes, they gave names to these and intermediate numerals. As
a definite term is wanted to describe significant numerals of
this class, it may be convenient to call them "hand-numerals "
or " digit-numerals." A selection of typical instances will serve
to make it probable that this ingenious device was not, at any
rate generally, copied from one tribe by another or inherited
from a common source, but that its working out with original
character and curiously varying detail displays the recurrence
of a similar but independent process of mental development
mong various races of man.

Father Gilij, describing the arithmetic of the Tamanacs on
the Orinoco, gives their numerals up to 4 : when they come
to o, the}' express it by the word amgnaitone, which being
translated means "a whole hand"; 6 is expressed by a term
which translates the proper gesture into words itaconb amgna-
pond tevinitpe " one of the other hand," and so on up to J).
Coming to 10, they give it in words as amgna acepondve " both
hands." To denote 11 they stretch out both the hands, and
adding the foot they say pu'itta-pond tevinitpe, " one to the
foot," and so on up to 15, which is iptaithne " a whole foot."
Next follows 16, "one to the other foot," and so on to 20,tevln

:\ II

THE ART OF COUNTING.

225

for and

learning
ocess of
counted
aumber.'i
!, Word-
ily grew
: of lan-
it tribes,
by their
t in like
10, that
:0, which
md feet
aressions
gers and
als. As
lerals of
morals "
dll serve
i, at any
nherited
original
currence
lopment

macs on
Bv come
h being
a term
amgna-
ip to 1).
re " both
ids, and
D to the
>le foot."
2(),tevui

itoto, " one Indian ;" 21, itacono itbto jamgndr bona tevlnitpe,
"one to the hands of the other Indian;" 40, acciachh itbto,
"two Indians," and so on for 00, 80, 100, "three, four, five
Indians," and beyond if needful. South America is remarkably
rich in such evidence of an early condition of finger-counting
recorded in spoken language. Among its many other languages
which have recognizable digit-numerals, the Cayriri, Tupi,
Abipone, and Carib rival the Tamanac in their systematic way
of working out "hand," " hands," " foot," "feet," etc. Others
show slighter traces of <-he same process, where, for instance, the
numerals 5 or 10 are found to be connected with words for
" hand," etc., as when the Omagua uses pitct, " hand," for 5, and
reduplicates this into iqmpua for 10. In some South American
languages a man is reckoned by fingers and toes up to 20,
while in contrast to this, there are two languages which dis-
play a miserably low mental state, the man. counting only one
hand, thus stopping short at 5 ; the Juri ghomeii apcc " one
man," stands for 5 ; the Cayriri ihicho is used to mean both
" person " and 5. Digit-numerals are not confined to tribes
standing, like these, low or high within the limits of savagery.
The Muyscas of Bogota were among the more civilized native
races of America, ranking with the Peruvians in their culture,
yet the same method of formation which appears in the lan-
guage of the rude Tamanacs is to be traced in that of the
Muyscas, Avho, when they come to 11, 12, 13, counted qvihicha
ata, hosa, mica, i.e., "foot one, two, three." ^ To turn to North
America, Cranz, the Moravian missionary, thus describes about
a century ago the numeration of the Greenlanders. " Their
numerals," he says, "go not far, and with them the proverb
holds that they can scarce count five, for they reckon by the
five fingers and then get the help of the toes on their feet, and
so with labour bring out twenty." The modern Greenland
grammar gives the numerals much as Cranz does, but more
fully. The word for 5 is tatdlimat, which there is some ground
tor supposing to have once meant " hand ;" 6 is arfinek-attausek,

^ Gilij ; ' Saggio di Stovia Americana,' vol. ii. p. 332 (Tamanac, Maypure).
Martins, 'Gloss. Brasil.' (Cayriri, Tupi, Carib, Omagua, Juri, Guachi, Coretu,
Cherentes, Maxumna, Caripuna, Cauixana, Carajas, Coroado, etc.) ; Dobriz-
hoffer, 'Abiponea,' vol. ii. p. 168 ; Humboldt, 'Mouumens,' pi. xliv. (Muysca).

VOL. I. Q

22G

THE AIIT OF COUNTING.

■:

! .

" on the otlicr hand one," or more shortly arfinigdllt, " thoso
which have on the other hand ; " 7 is arfnek-mardluJc, " on tlio
other hand two;" 13 is arkanelc-innrjasut, "on the first foot
three ;" 18 is arfei'sanek-pirifjasut, " on the other foot three ;'"
when they reach 20, they can say imUc ndvdlwjo, "a man
ended," or iwiip avat.al ndvdluglt " the man's outer members
ended;" and thus by counting several men they reach liigher
numbers, thus expressing, for example, 53 as iwdj^ inngajngs-
sdne arkanek-i)ingasut, " on the third man "^n the first foot
three." ^ If we pass from the rude Greenlanders to the com-
paratively civilized Aztecs, we shall find on the Northern as on
the Southern continent traces of early finger-numeration sur-
viving among higher races. The Mexican names for the first
four numerals are as obscure in etymology as our own. But
when we come to 5 we find this expressed by macuilli, and as
ma (ma-itl) means " hand," and cuiloa " to paint or depict," it
is likely that the word for 5 may have meant something like
"hand-depicting." In 10, matlactli, the word ma, "hand,"
appears again, and tlactli means half, and is represented in the
Mexican picture-writings by the figure of half a man from the
waist upward ; thus it appears that the Aztec 10 means the
"hand-half" of a man, just as among the Towka Indians of
South America 10 is expressed as " half a man," a whole man
being 20. When the Aztecs reach 20 they call it cempoalli,
" one counting," with evidently the same meaning as elsewhere,
one whole man, fingers and toes.

Among races of the lower culture elsewhere, similar facts are
to be observed. The Tasmanian language again shows the
man stopping short at the reckoning of himself when he has
held up one hand and counted its fingers ; for here, as in the
two South American tribes before mentioned, puggana, "man,"
stands for 5. Some of the West Australian tribes have done
much better than this, using their Avord for " hand," mavh-ra;
marh-jin-hang-ga, " half the hands," is 5 ; onarh-jln-hang-ga-
gudjir-gyn, "half the hands and one," is 6, and so on ; marh-
jin-helli-helli-gudjir-jlna-hang-ga, " the hand on either side

* Cranz, ' Gronland,' p. 286 ; ' Kleinsclimidt. Gr. der Grbnl. Si^r,
'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iv. p. 145.

Bae in

THE ART OF COUNTING.

007

It, "those
, " on tlio
first foot
i three ;'"
"a man
members
h higher
ngaJKffs-
first foot
the com-
rn as on
tion sur-
the first
ra. But
i, and as
epict," it
ling like
" hand,"
d in the
from the
3ans the
idians of
oIg man
mpoalli,
sewhere,

'acts are
ows the

he has
5 in the

" man,"
ve done
arh-ra;
ang-ga-
; marh-
ler side

; ' Eae in

and half the feet," is 15.^ As an example from the Melanesian
languages, the Marti will serve ; it reckons 10 as ome o'c rue
tuhenine apparently " tlie two sides" (i.e. both hands), 20 as .su
re oigome " one man," etc. ; thus in John v. 5 " which had an
infirmity thirty and eight years," the numeral 38 is expressed
b the phrase, " one man and both sides five and tliree."- In
the Malayo-Polynesian languages, the typical word for 5 is lima
or rima " hand," and the connexion it not lost by the phonetic
variations among different branches c/ this family of languages,
as in Malagasy d'lmy, Manjuesan fima, Tongan iilma, but
•while Ihna and its varieties mean .") in rimost all Malayo-
Polynesian dialects, its meaning of " hand" :^ confined to a
much narrower district, showing that the word became more
permanent by passing into the condition of a traditional
numeral. In languages of the Malayo-Polynesian family, it is
usually found that G etc., are carried on with words whoso
etymology is no longer obvious, but the forms Ihna-sa, lima-
zua, " hand-one," " hand-two," have been found doing duty for
C and 7.^ In West Africa, KoUe's account of the Vei language
gives a case in point. These negroes are so dependent on their
fingers that some can hardly count without, and their toes are
convenient as the calculator squats on the ground. The Vei
people and many other African tribes, when counting, first
count the fingers of their left hand, beginning, be it remembered,
from the little one, then in the same manner those of the
right hand, and afterwards the toes. The Vei numeral for 20
mo bdnde means obviously "a person (mo) is finished (bande),"
and so on with 40, 60, 80, etc. " two men, three men, four men,
etc., are finished." It is an interesting point that the negroes
who used these phrases had lost their original descriptive sense
— ^the words had become mere numerals to tliem.^ Lastly,
for bringing before our minds a picture of the man counting
upon his fingers, and being struck by the idea that if ho

* Milligan, 1. c. ; G. F. Moore, 'Tocab. W. Australia.' Compare a series ol"
quinary numerals to 9, from Sydney in Pott, ' Zalilmetliode,' p. 40.

^ Gabeleutz, 'Melauesiclie Sprachen,' p. 183.

^ "W. V. Humboldt, 'Kawi Spr.' vol. ii. p. 303 ; corroborated by 'As. Res.'
vol. vi. p. 90; 'Jourii. Ind. Arcliip.' vol. iii. p. 182, etc.

* Koelle, 'Gr. of Vei. Lang.' p. 27.

Q 2

•^i\

m.:

^ \

,''• i

n;<

';■ f '

['■

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1 I'

., /

'i *

■I 11

228

THE ART OF COUNTING.

'Icscribcs his cjcstiiro in -words, tlicso words may become nu
actual name for the number, perliaps no language of the world
.surpasses tlie Zulu. The Zulu counting on his fingers begins in
general with the little finger of his left hand. When he comes
to 5, this ho may call ede.sdiita " finish hand ;" then he goes on
to the thumb of the right hand, and so the word tatit^ltujMi
"taking the thumb" becomes a numeral for (5. Then the verb
komha " to point," indicating the foreUnger, or " pointer,"
makes the next numeral, 7. Thus, answering the question
"How much did your master give you ?" a Zulu would say "U
kombile " " He pointed with his forefinger," I.e., "He gave me
seven," and this curious way of using the numeral verb is shown
in such an example as "amahashi akoinhUe" "the horses have
pointed," i.e., " there were seven of them." In like manner,
Kijanr/alohlU "keep back two fingers," i.e., 8, and Kijangalo-
luvje " keep back one finger," i.e., 9, lead on to kumi, 10 ; at
the completion of each ten the two hands with open fingers are
clapped together. ^

The theory that man's primitive mode of counting was pal-
pable reckoning on his hands, and the proof that many numerals
in present use are actually derived from such a state of things,
is a great step towards discovering the origin of numerals in
general. Can we go farther, and state broadly the mental pro-
cess by which savage men, having no numeral as yet in their
language, came to invent them ? What was the origin of
numerals not named with reference to hands and feet, and
especially of the numerals below five, to which such a derivation
is hardly appropriate ? The subject is a peculiarly difficult one.
Yet as to principle it is not altogether obscure, for some
evidence is forthcoming as to the actual formation of new
numeral words, these being made by simply pressing into the
service names of objects or actions in some way appropriate to
the purpose.

People possessing full sets of inherited numerals in their own
languages have nevertheless sometimes found it convenient to
invent new ones. Thus the scholars of India, ages ago, selected

> Schreudcr, 'Gr. for Zulu Spro?;et,' p. 30; Dohue, 'Zulu Die.;' Grout, 'Zulu
Or.' See Hnlui, ' Gr. des Herero.'

THE ART OP COUNTINO.

*J2!)

a set of words for a ineinoria tocliuica in order to record dates and
ninnbcrs. Tlie.so words they cliose for reasons which are still iu
great measure evident ; tlms "moon " or "earth " expressed 1,
there hein^^ but one of each ; 2 niijijht be called " eye," " wing,"
"arm," "jaw," as going in pairs; f<;r 3 they said "llama,"
*' fire," or " ([uality," there l)eing considered to bo tiiree llamas,
three kinds of fire, three ipialities (guna) ; for 4 were used
" veda," "age," or " ocean," there being four of each recognized;
"season" for (i, because they reckoned six seasons; "sago" or
" vowel " for 7, from the seven sages and the seven vowels ; and
so on with higlua* numbers, " sun " for 12, because of his twelve
annual denominations, or " zodiac " from its twelve signs, and
" nail" for 20, a word incidentally bringing in a linger-notation.
As Sanskrit is very rich in synonyms, and as even the numerals
themselves miglit be used, it became very easy to draw up
phrases or nonsense-verses to record series of numbers by this
system of artificial memory. The following is a Hindu astro-
nomiciJ fornuda, a list of numbers referring to the stars of the
lunar constellations. Each word stands as the mnemonic equi-
valent of the number placed over it in the English translation.
The general principle on which the words are chosen to denote
the numbera is evident without further explanation : — •

" Vahni tri rtvishu gunondu kritagnibhuta
Brmasvinotra (;ara bhuku yugabdhi ramfih
Eudrabdhiramagunavedavata dviyiigma
Danti budhairabhihitilli krairia(;o bhataifih."

3 3 6 5 3 1 4

J. c, " Fire, throo, season, arrow, quality, moon, four-side of die,
3 5

fire, element,
5 2 2 5 114 4 3

Arrow, Asvin, eye, arrow, earth, earth, age, ocean, llamas,

11 4 *3 3 4 100 2 2

Eudra, ocean, Eama, quality, Veda, hundred, two, couple,

32
Teeth : by the wise have been set forth in order the mighty lords." '

^ Sir W. Jones in 'As. Res.' vol. ii. 1790, p. 29(1 ; E. Jacfiuet in 'Nouv. Join-n.
Asiat.' 1835 ; W. v. Humboldt *Ka\vi-Spr.' vol. i. ]>. 19. This system of re-
cording dates, etc., extendr . as far as Tibet and tlio Indian Arcliipclaf^o.
JIany important points of Oriental cbronology depend on such formulas. Un-
fortunately their evidence is more or less vitiated by inconsistencies in tlic use
of words for numbers.

,; : • . .:

4, I J

, '•-•i-„

230

THt^ AllT OF COUNTING.

I* ;

It occurred to Willielm von Humboldt, in studying this
curious system of numeration, that he had before his eyes the
evidence of a process very like that which actually produced the
regular numeral words one, hvo, three, and so forth, in the
various languages of the world. The following passage in
which, more than thirty years ago, he set forth this view, seems
to mo to contain a nearly perfect key to the theory of numeral
words. " If we take into consideration the origin of actual
numerals, the process of their formation appears evidently to
have been the same as that here described. The latter is
nothiii"' else than a Avider extension of the former. For when 5
's expressed, as in several languages of the Malay family, by
' hand ' (lima), this is precisely the same thing as when in the
description of numbers by words, 2 is denoted by ' wing.' In-
disputably there lie at the root of all numerals such metaphors as
these, though they cannot always be now traced. But people
seem early to have felt that the multiplicity of such signs tor
the same number was superfluous, too clumsy, and leading to
misunderstandings." Therefore, he goes on to argue, synonyras
of 'lumerals are very rare. And to nations with a deep sense of
languo; :,tlie feeling must soon have been present, though perhaps
w'ihout rising to distinct consciousness, that recollections of the
original etymology and descriptive meaning of numerals had
best be allowed to disappear, so as to leave the numerals them-
selves to become mere conventional terms.

Th.e most instructive evidence I have found bearing on the
formation of numerals, other than digit-numerals, among the
lower races, belongs to the great Malay-Polynesian- Australian
district. In Australia a very curious case occurs. With all tlie
poverty of the aboriginal languages in numerals, 3 being com-
monly used as meaning " several or many," the natives in the
Adelaide district have for a particular purpose gone far beyond
this narrow limit, and possess what is to all intents a special
numeral system, extending perhaps to 9. They give fixed
names to their children in order of age, wliich are set down as
follows by Mr. Eyre : 1. Kertameru ; 2. Warritya ; 3. Kud-
nutya ; 4. Monaitya ; 5. Milaitya ; G. Marrutya ; 7. Wangutya ;
8. Ngarlaitya ; 9. Pouarna. These are the male names, from

THE ART OF COUNTING.

231

^'ing

this
eyes the
luced the
1, in the

iLSsage

!\v, seems
numeral
)f actual
Jently to
latter is
ir wlien 5
imily, by
n in the
ng.' In-
aphors as
it people
signs lor
ading to
yuonyrris
) sense of
1 perhaps
ns of the
irals had
ds them-

the
long the
ustralian
li all tlie
ing com-
?s in the
.• beyond
a special
ve fixed
down as
8. Kud-
mgutya ;
.es, from

which the female differ in termination. They are given at
birth, more distinctive appellations being soon afterwards
chosen.^ It is interesting that a somewhat similar habit makes
its appearance among the Malays, who in some districts arc
reported to use a series of seven names in order of age, begin-
ning with 1. Sidung (" eldest ") ; 2. Avxmrj (" friend, compa-
nion "), and ending with Kechil, (" little one,") or Bongsu
("youngest"). These are for sons; daughters have Meh pre-
fixed, and nicknames have to be used for practical distinction."
In Madagascar, the Malay connexion manifests itself in the
appearance of a similar set of appellations given to children in
lieu of proper names, which are, however, often substituted in
after years. Males; Lahimatoa {" first male"), Lah-ivo ("in-
termediate male ") ; Ma-fara-lahy (" last born male "). Females;
Mamatoa (" eldest female "J, Ra-ivo {" intermediate "), Ba-
farOr-vavTj {" last born female ").^ As to numerals in the ordi-
'^ary sense, Polynesia shows remarkable causes of new formation.
Besides the well-known system of numeral words prevalent in
Polynesia, exceptional terms have from time to time grown up.
Thus the habit of altering words which sounded too nearly like
a king's name, has led the Tahitians on the accession of new
chiefs to make several new Avords for numbers. Thus, wanting
a new term for 2 instead of the ordinary rua, they for obvious
reasons took up the word piti, " together," and made it a
numeral, while to get a new word for 5 instead of rima,
" hand," which had to be discontinued, they substituted pae,
" part, division," meaning probably division of the two hands.
Such words as these, introduced in Polynesia for ceremonial
reasons, are expected to be dropped again and the old ones
replaced, when the reason for their temporary exclusion ceases,

* Eyre, 'Australia,' -ol. ii. p. 324 : Sliiinnaiin, 'Yocab. of Parnkalla Lang.'
gives forms partially corresponding.

- 'Jouni. Iml. Archip.' New Ser. vol. ii. 18i58, p. 118; [Sulong, Awang,
I tarn ('black'), Tuteli (' v.-liitc '), Allang, Pcndoh, Keeliil or Bongsu] ; Bastian,
' Ocstl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 494. Tho details aro imperfectly given, and seem not
all correct.

3 Ellis, ' Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 154. Also, Andrianipaivo, or Lalii-Zaudrina,
for last male ; Andrianivo for intermediate male. Malagasy lahij ' male ' = Malay
laki; Iilalagasy mi'!/, ' female '= Tongan /«/iHC, WUovi wahinr, 'woniau;' comp.
Slalay hUina, 'female.'

i < r'f' '1

I i

232

THE ART OF COUNTING,

1^1

yet the new 2 and 5,piti and 25ae, became co positively tho
proper numerals of the language, that they stand instead of nia
and riiiui in the Tahitian translation of the Gospel of St. John
made at the time. Again, various special habits of counting in
the South Sea Islands have had their effect on language. The
Marquesans, counting fish or fruit by one in each hand, have
come to use a system of counting by pairs instead of by units.
They start with tauna, "a pair," which thus becomes a numeral
equivalent to 2 ; then they count onward by pairs,, so that when
they talk of tahau or 10, they really mean 10 pair or 20. For
bread-fruit, as they are accustomed to tie them up in knots of
four, they begin with the word pona., " knot," which thus be-
comes a real numeral for 4, and here again they go on counting
by knots, so that when they say takau or 10, they mean 10
knots or 40. The philological mystification thus caused in
Polynesian vocabularies is extraordinary ; in Tahitian, etc., rail
and memo, properly meaning 100 and 1,000, have come to signify
200 and 2,000, while in Hawaii a second doubling in their sense
makes them equivalent to 400 and 4,000. Moreover, it seems
possible to trace the transfer of suitable names of objects still
farther in Polynesia in the Tongan and Maori word tekau, 10,
which seems to have been a word for " parcel " or " bunch,"
used in counting yams and fish, as also in tefuhi, 100, derived
from fiihi, " sheaf or bundle." ^

In Africa, also, special numeral formations are to be noticed.
In the Yoruba language, 40 is called ogodzi, " a string," because
cowries are strung by forties, and 200 is igba, " a heap," mean-
ing again a heap of cowries. Among the Dahomans in like
manner, 40 cowries make a kade or " string," 50 strings make
one afo or " head ; " these words becoming numerals for 40 and
2,000. When tlie king of Dahome attacked Abeokuta, it is on
record that he was repulsed with the heavy loss of " two heads,
twenty strings, and twenty cowries" of men, that is to say, 4,820."

Among cultured nations, whose languages are mcst tightly

' II. Hale, ' Ethnography and Philology,' vol. vi. of Wilkes, U. S. Exploring
Exp., Phil.idelphia, 184(J, pp. 172, 289. (N.B. The ordinary editions do not
contain this important volume. )

^ Bowcn, ' Gr. and Die. of Vornba.' Bnrton in ' Slem. Anthrop. Soc' vol. i.

p. oil.

'ii :i'

THE ART OF COUNTING.

233

bound to ib^o conventional and unintelligible numerals of their
ancestors, it is likewise usual to find otlier terms existing ■which
are practically numerals already, and might drop at once into the
recognized place of such, if by any chance a gap were made for
them in the traditional series. Had we room, for instance, for
a new word instead of tiuo, then either pair (Latin ^xtr, " equal ")
or couple (Latin copula, " bond or tie,") is ready to fill its place.
Instead of tiuenty, the good English word score, " notch," will
serve our turn, while, for the same purpose, German can use
stiege, possibly with the original sense of " a stall full of cattle, a
sty ; " Old Norse drott, " a company," Danish, snees. A list of
such words used, but not grammatically classed as numerals in
European languages, shows great variety : examples are. Old
Norse, flochr (flock), 5 ; sveit, G ; droit (party), 20 ; tJtiodh
(people), 30 ; folk (people), 40 ; old (people), 80 ; her (army),
100 ; Sleswig, schilh, 12 (as though we were to make a word
out of " shilling ") ; Mid High-German, rotte, 4 ; New High-
German, raandel, 15 ; sclioch (sheaf), 60. The Letts give a
curious parallel to Polynesian cases just cited. They throw
crabs and little fish three at a time in counting them, and
therefore the word mettens, " a throw," has come to mean 3 ;
while flounders being fastened in lots of thirty, the word kahlis,
" a cord," becomes a term to express this number. ^

In two other ways, the production of numerals from merely
descriptive words may be observed both among lower and
higher races. The Gallas have no numerical fractional terms,
but they make an equivalent set of terms from the divi-
sion of the cakes of salt which they use as money. Thus
tchabnana, " a broken piece " (from tchaha, " to break," as we
say "a fraction"), receives the meaning of one-half; a term
which we may compare with Latin dlmidium, French demi.
Ordinal numbers are generally derived from cardinal numbers,
as third, fourth, fifth, from three, four, five. But among the
very low ones there is to be seen evidence of independent
formation quite unconnected with a conventional system of
numerals already existing. Thus the Greenlander did not use

> SccTott, 'Zahlmctho(le,'pp. 78, 99, 124, ICl ; Grimm, ' Deutsche Eechts-
altcrthiimer,' ch. v.

Kii

iifiit

1M1

i.i4 i

2S-1

his

THE ART OF COUNTING.

one " to make " first," but calls it sujurjdleh, " foremost,"
nor "two" to make "second," which he calls aiinl, "his com-
panion ;" it is only at "third" that he takes to his cardinals,
and forms 'pingajuat in connexion with pingasut, 3. So, in
Indo-European languages, the ordinal praihamas, irpcoros,
25mm(S, j^rsi, has nothing to do with a numerical "one," but
with the preposition j99U, " before," as meaning simply " fore-
most ; " and although Greeks and Germans call the next ordinal
divrepoi, zweite, from bvo, zivei, we call it second, Latin secun-
dus, "the following" (sequi), which is again a descriptive
sense-word.

If we allow ourselves to mix for a moment wlrt is with what
might be, we can see how unlimited is the hold of possible
growth of numerals by mere adoption of the names of familiar
tilings. Following the example of the Sleswigers we might
make sJdlling a numeral for 12, and gn on to express 4 by
groat; weeh would provide us with a name for 7, and clover
for 3. But this simple method of description is not the only
available one for the purpose of making numerals. The mo-
ment any series of names is arranged in regular order in our
minds, it becomes a counting-machine, I have read of a little
girl who was set to count cards, and she counted them accord-
ingly, January, February, March, April. She might, of course,
have reckoned them as Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It is
interestino; to find a case cominsr under the same class in the
language of gTown people. We know that the numerical
value of the Hebrew letters is given with reference to their
place in the alphabet, which was arranged for reasons that can
hardly have had much to do with arithmetic. The Greek
alphabet is modified from a Semitic one, but instead of letting
the numeral value of their letters follow throughout their newly-
arranged alphabet, they reckon a, 3, y, S, f, properly as 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, then put in r for 6, and so maiiage to let i stand for
10, as "^ does in Hebrew, where it is really the 1 0th letter.
Now, having this conventional arrangement of letters made, it
is evident that a Greek who had to give up the regular 1, 2, 3
— ety, Ivo, Tpeis, could supply their places at once by adopting
the names of the letters which had been settled to stand for

THE ART OF COUNTING.

235

IfT

them, thus calling 1 a^pha, 2 beta, 3 fjamma, and so forth. The
thing has actually happened ; a remarkable slang dialect of
Albania, which is Greek in structure, though full of borrowed
and mystified words and metaphors and epithets understood
only by the initiated, has, as its equivalent for " four " and
" ten," the words liXra and icora. ^

While insisting on the value of such evidence as this in
making out the general principles of the formation of numerals,
I liave not four-l it profitable to undertake the task of etymolo-
gizing the actual numerals of the languages of the world,
outside the safe limits of the systems of digit-numerals among
the lower races, already discussed. There may be in the lan-
guages of the lower races other relics of the etymology of
numerals, giving the clue to the ideas according to which they
were selected for an arithmetical purpose, but such relics seem
scanty and indistinct.- There may even exist vestiges of a
growth of numerals from descriptive words in our Indo-European
languages, in Hebrew and Arabic, in Chinese. Such etymolo-
gies have been brought forward,^ and they are consistent with

^ Fraucisque-Miclicl, ' Argot,' p. 483.

- Of evidence of this class, tlio following deserves attention : — DobrizholTer
'.'Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 1C9, gives gajcukriatd, 'ostrich-toes,' as the numeral
for 4, their ostrich having ti'ree toes before find one behind, and mcnJialck, ' a
iive-coloured spotted hide,' as the numeral 5. D'Orbigny, 'L'Hommo Ameri-
cain,' vol. ii. p. 163, remarks :— " Los Chiquitos ne savent compter que jusqu'it
un (tama), n'ayant plus ensuite qiie des termes de comparaison." KiJlle, ' Gr. of
Vei Lang.,' notices that /era means both 'with ' and 2, and thinks the former
meaning original, (compare the Tah. p^i^■, 'together,' thence 2,^ Quichuti, cJmncu,
' heap,' chunca, 10, may bo connected. Aztec, cc, 1, ccn-tll, 'grain' maybe con-
nected. On possible derivations of 2 from hand, &c., especially Hottentot t'koam,
' hand, 2,' see Pott, ' Ziihlmethode,' p. 29.

3 See Farrar, * Cl.apters on Language,' p. 223. Benloew, * RecherclitJ sur
rOrigine des Noms de Nombre;' Pictet, ' Origines Lido-Europ.' part ii, ch.
ii. ; Pott, 'Ziihlmethode,' p. 128, etc. ; A. v. Humboldt's plausible comparison
between Skr. ^;fi?ic/wif, 5, and Purs, imijch, ' the palm of the hand with tho
fingers spread out ; the outspread foot of a bird,' as though 'o were ca'ted 2>a.ncha
fror->. being like a hand, is er.oncous. The Persian pcnjch is itself derived from the
numeral 6, as in Skr. tho hand is called inincha^dklia, 'the five-branched.'
The same formation is found in English ; skng describes a man's hand as his
' fives,' or 'bunch of fives,' ilience the name of the game of fives, played by
striking the ball with the open hand, a term which has made its way out of slang
into accepted language. Burton describes the polite Arab at a meal, calling his
companion's attention to a grain of rice fallen into his beard. "Tho gazelle is in

;-r«

rrn

236

THE ART OF COUNTING.

JSii t

what is known of the principles on Avhich numerals or quasi-
numerals are really formed. But so far as I have been able to
examine the evidence, the cases all seem so philologically
doubtful, that I cannot bring them forward in aid of the theory
before us, and, indeed, think that if they succeed in establishing
themselves, it will be by the theory supporting them, rather
than by their supporting the theory. This state of things,
indeed, fits perfectly with the view here adopted, that when a
word has once been taken up to serve as a numeral, and is
thenceforth wanted as a mere symbol, it becomes the interest
of language to allow it to break down into an apparent non-
sense-word, from which all traces of original etymology have
disappeared.

Etymological research into the derivation of numeral words
thus hardly goes with safety beyond showing in the languages
of the lower culture frequent instances of digit numerals, Avords
taken from direct description of the gestures of counting on
fingers and toes. Beyond this, another strong argument is avail-
able, which indeed covers almost the whole range of the problem.
The numerical systems of the world, by ':he actual schemes of
their arrangement, extend and confirm t le opinion that count-
ing on fingers tnd toes was man's original method of reckoning,
taken up and represented in language. To count the fingers of
one hand up to 5, and then to go on with a second five, is a no-
tation by fives, or as it is called, a quinary notation. To count
by the use of both hands to 10, and thence to reckon by tons,
is a decimal notation. To go on by hands and feet to 20, and
thence to reckon by twenties, is a vigesimal notation. Now
though in the larger proportion of known languages, no distinct
mention of fingers and toes, hands and feet, is observable in the
numerals themselves, yet the very schemes of quinary, decimal,
and vigesimal notation remain to vouch for such hand-and-
foot-counting having been the original method on which they
were founded. There seems no doubt that the number of the
fingers led to the adoption of the not especially suitable number
10 as a period in reckoning, so that decimal arithmetic is based

tlio garden," he says, with a smile. *' We will hunt her with the Jive," is the
reply.

THE ART OF COUNTING.

237

lave

on human ann+oray. This is so obvious, that it is curious to see
Ovid in his well-known lines putting the two facts close together,
without seeing that the second was the consequence of the
first :

•* Annus orat, decimum cum luna receperat orbem.

Ilic numerus magno tunc in honoro fuit.
Sen quia tot digiti, per quos numerare solemus :

Seu quia bis quino femina mense parit :
Seu quod adusquo decern numero crescente vonitur,

Principium spatiis sumitur inde novis." '

In surveying the languages of the world at large, it is found
that among tribes or nations far enough advanced in arithmetic
to count up to five in words, there prevails, with scarcely an
exception, a method founded on hand-counting, quinary, deci-
mal, vigesimal, or combined of these. For perfect examples of
the quinary method, we may take a Polynesian series which
runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5'1, 5'2, &c. ; or a Melanesian series which
may be rendered as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2nd 1, 2nd 2, &c. Quinary
leading into decimal is well shown in the Fellata scries 1 ... 5,
51 . . . 10, 101 . . . 10-5, 10-51 ... 20, ... 30, ... 40, etc. Pure
decimal may be instanced from Hebrew 1, 2 ... 10, 101 ... 20,
201 . . . &c. Pure vigesimal is not usual, for the obvious reason
that a set of independent numerals to 20 would be inconvenient,
but it takes on from quinary, as in Aztec, which may be ana-
lyzed as 1, 2 . . 5, 51 . . . 10, 101 . . . 105, 10-51 ... 20, 201
. . . 2010, 20101 ... 40, &c. ; or from decimal, as in Basque,
1 ... 10, 101 ... 20, 201 . . . 2010, -20101 . . . 40, etc.^ It
seems unnecessary to bring forward here the mass of linguistic
details required for any general demonstration of these prin-
ciples of numeration among the races of the world. Prof Pott, of
Halle, has treated the subject on elaborate philological evidence,
in a special monograph,^ which is incidentally the most exten-

' Ovid. Fast. iii. 121.

^ The actual word-numerals of tlie two quinary series arc given as examples.
Triton's Bay, 1, samosi ; 2, roeeti ; 3. touwroe ; 4, faat ; 5, rhni; 6, rim-samos ;
7, rim-roecti ; 8, rim-toun'roc ; 9, rivi-faat ; 10, voctsja. Lifu, 1, pacha; 2, lo ;
3, k'm; 4, ihack; 6, thahwnh ; 6, lo-acha ; 7, lo-a-lo ; 8, lo-kunn ; 9, lo-thack ;
10, te-bennete.

^ A. F. Pott, * Die c^uinlire und Vigesimale Ziihlmetliode bei Volkern aller

|i;i;<;-'

■ i'f'A'

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238

THE ART OF COUNTINa

sive collection of details relating to numerals, indispensable to
students occupied witli such enquiries. For the present pur-
pose the following rough generalization may suffice, that the
quinary system is frequent among the lower races, among whom
also the vigesimal system is considerably developed, but the
tendency of the higher nations has been to avoid the one as too
scanty, and the other as too cumbrous, and to use the inter-
mediate decimal system. These differences in the usage of
various tribes and nations do not interfere with, but rather
confirm, the general principle which is their common cause,
that man originally learnt to reckon from his fingers and toes,
and in various ways stereotyped in language the results of this
primitive method.

Some curious points as to the relation of these systems may
be noticed in Europe. It was observed of a certain deaf-and-
dumb boy, Oliver Caswell, that he learnt to count as high as 50
on his fingers, but always " fived," reckoning, for instance, 18
objects as " both hands, one hand, three fingers.^ The sugges-
tion has been made that the Greek use of 7re/x7raCetr, " to five,"
as an expression for counting, is a trace of rude old quinary
numeration, (compare Finnish lohhet " to count," from lohke
" ten.") Certainly, the Roman numerals I, II, ... V, VI .. .
X, XI ... XV, XVI, etc., form a remarkably well-defined
■written quinary system. Remains of vigesimal counting are still
more instructive. Counting by twenties is a strongly marked
Keltic characteristic. The cumbrous vigesimal notation could
hardly be brought more strongly into view in any savage race
than in such examples as Gaelic cion deng is da fhichead
"one, ten, and two twenties," i.e., 51 ; or Welsh unarbymtherf
ar ugain " one and fifteen over twenty," i. e., S6 ; or Breton
unneh ha tri-ugent " eleven and three twenties," i. e., 71. Now
French, being a Romance language, has a regular system of
Latin tens up to 100 ; cinquante, soixante, septante, huitante,
nonanie, which are to be found still in use in districts within
the limits of the French language, as in Belgium. Nevertheless,

WeiLtlieile,' Halle, 1847; supplemtnted in 'Fcstgate zur xxv. Versammlung
Deutsclier Pliilologen, etc., in Halle ' (1867).
1 'Account of Laura Bridgman,' London, 1845, p. 159.

t' J

THE ART OF COUNTING.

231)

the clumsy system of reckoning by twenties has broken out
through the decimal system in France. The septantc is to a
great extent suppressed, soixante-quatorze, for instance, standing
for *74! ; quatre-vinr/ts has fairly established itself for 80, and its
use continues into the nineties, as quatre-vinr/t-treize for 93 ;
in numbers above 100 we find six-vlngts, sept-vingts, huit-
vingts, for 120, 140, IGO, and a certain hospital has its name of
Les Quinze-vingts from its SOO inmates. It is, perhaps, the
most reasonable explanation of this curious phenomenon, to
suppose the earlier Keltic system of France to have held its
ground, modelling the later French into its own ruder shape. In
England, the Anglo-Saxon numeration is decimal, hund-seo-
fontig, 70 ; hund-eaJitatlg, 80; hund-nigontig, 90; hw^^^-teon-
tig, 100; hund-enlufontig, 110; hund-huelftlg, 120. It may
be here also by Keltic survival that the vigesimal reckoning by
the "score," threescore and ten, fourscore and thirteen, etc.,
gained a position in Englisl,\ which it has not yet totally lost.^

From some minor details in numeration, ethnological hints
may be gained. Among rude tribes with scanty series of nume-
rals, combination to make out new numbers is very soon resorted
to. Among Australian tribes addition makes " two-one," " two-
two," express 3 and 4 ; in Guachi " two-two " is 4 ; in San
Antonio " four and two-one " is 7. The plan of making nume-
rals by subtraction is known in North America, and is well
shown in the Aino language of Yesso, where the words for 8 and
9 obviously mean " two from ten," " one from ten." Multipli-
cation appears, as in San Antonio, " two-and-one-two," and in a
Tupi dialect "two-three," to express 6, Division seems not
known for such purposes among the lower races, and quite
exceptionally among the higher. Facts of this class show
variety in the inventive devices of mankind, and independence
in their formation of language. They are consistent at the
same time with the general principles of hand-counting. The
traces of what might be called binary, ternary, Cjuaternary,

^ Compare the Rajraahali tribes adopting Hindi numerals, yet reckoning by
twenties. Sliaw, 1. c. The use of a * score' as an indefinite number in England,
and similarly of 20 in France, of 40 in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the
Arabic of the Thousand and One Nights, may be among other traces of early
vigesimal reckoning.

■J n

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240

THE ART OF COUNTING.

]U<

senary reckoning, wliich turn on 2, 3, 4, G, arc mere varieties,
leading up to, or lapsing into, quinary and decimal methods.

The contrast is a striking one between the educated European,
with his easy use of his boundless nimieral series, and the
Tasmanian, who reckons 3, or anything beyond 2, as " many,"
and makes shift by his whole hand to reach the limit of " man,"
that is to say, 5. This contrast is due to arrest of development
in the savage, whose mind remains in the childish state whi<3h
one of our nursery :iumbcr-rhymes illustrates in a curiously
perfect way. It runs —

' ' One 's none,
Two 's some,
Thi'eo 's a many,
Four 's a penny,
Five 'a a little hundred."

To notice this state of things among savages and children
raises interesting points as to the early history of grammar. W,
von Humboldt suggested the analogy between the savage notion
of 3 as " many " and the grammatical use of 3 to form a kind of
superlative, in forms of which " trismegistus," " ter felix,"^
" thrice blest," are familiar instances. The relation of single,
dual, and plural is well shown pictorially in the Egyptian hiero-
glyphics, where the picture of an object, a horse for instance, is
marked by a single line ] if but one is meant, by two lines 1 1
if two are meant, by three lines 1 1 1 if three or an indefinite
plural number are meant. The scheme of grammatical number
in some of the most ancient and important languages of the
world is laid down on the same savage principle. Egyptian,
Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, Gothic, are examples of lan-
guages using singular, dual, and plural number ; but the ten-
dency of higher intellectual culture has been to discard the plan
as inconvenient and unprofitable, and only to distinguish sin-
gular and plural. No doubt the dual held its place by inherit-
ance from an early period of culture, and Dr. D. Wilson seems
justified in his opinion that it " preserves to us the memorial of
that stage of thought when all beyond two was an idea of
indefinite number."^

1 D. Wilson, ' rrehistoric Man,' p. 610.

THK ART OF COUNTINO.

241

•icties,
(Is.

opean,
id the
nany,"
■ man,"
ipment
whi«)h
riously

hildren
ir. W.

) notion

kind of
felix,'^
single,
hiero-

ance, is
ines 1 1
efinite

number
of the
yptian,
of lan-
le ten-
le plan
ish sin-
inherit-
a seems
orial of
idea of

Wlieu two races at different levels of culture como into con-
tact, the ruder peopio adopt new urt and knowledge, but ut the
same time their own special culture usually coines to a stand-
still, and even falls uff. It is thus with the art of counting.
We may be able to prove that the lower race had actually been
making great and independent progress in it, but when the
higher race comes with a con' enient and unlimited means of
not only naming all imagniable numbers, but of writing them
down and reckoning with them by means of a few simple
figures, what likelihood is there that the barbarian's clumsy
methods should be farther worked out ? As to the ways in
which the numerals of the superior race are grafted on the lan-
guage of the inferior, Captain Grant describes the native slave:-;
of Ecpiatorial Africa occupying their lounging hours in learning
the numerals of their Arab masters.^ Father Dobrizhoffer's
account of the arithmetical relations between the native Bra-
zilians and the Jesuits is a good description of the intellectual
contact between savages and missionaries. The Guaranis, it
appears, counted up to 4 with their native numerals, and when
they got beyond, they would say " innumerable." ' But as
counting is both of manifold use in common life, and in the
confessional absolutely indispensable in making a complete con-
fession, the Indians were daily taught at the public catechising
in the church to count in Spanish. On Sundays the whole
people used to count with a loud voice in Spanish, from 1 to
1,000." The missionary, it is true, did not find the natives use
the numbers thus learnt very accurately — " We were washing
at a blackamoor," he says.- If, however, we examine the
modern vocabularies of savage or low barbarian tribes, they will
be found to afford interesting evidence how really effective the
influence of hioher on lower civilization has been in this matter.
So far as the ruder system is complete and moderately con-
venient, it may stand, but Avhcre it ceases or grows cumbrous,
and sometimes at a lower limit than this, we can see the cleverer
foreigner taking it into his own hands, supplementing or sup-
planting the scanty numerals of the lower race by his own.

' Grant in ' Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. iii. p. 90.

^ Dobrizlioflcr, 'Gesch. der Abiponcr,' p. 205 ; Eng. Trans, vol. ii. p. 171.

VOL. I. 11

'I ;1

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242

THE Alir OF COUXTINO.

TIio higlicr race, tliou<(li adviincecl enoujLjh to net thus on tho
lower, need not lie itnelf at an extremely high level. Miirkham
observes that the Jivuras of the JMaranon, with native numerals
np to 5, a(k)pt for higlier niimberH those of the Quichua, tho
language of tho Peruvian Incas.^ Tho cases of the indigenes of
India are instructive. The Khonds reckon 1 and 2 in native
words, and thru take to borrowed Hindi numerals. The Oraon
tribes, while belonging to a race of the Dravidian stock, and
having had a series of native numerals accordingly, appear to
have given up their use beyond 4, or sometimes even 2, and
adopted Hindi numerals in their plac j.- Tho South American
Conibos were observed to count 1 and 2 Avith their own words,
and then to borrow Spanish numerals, much as a Brazilian
dialect of the Tupi family is noticed in the last century as
having lost tho native 5, and settled down into using the
old native numerals up to 3, and then continuing in Portu-
guese.^ In Melanesia, the Annatom language can only count
in its own numerals to 5, and then borroAvs English slks, seven,
eet, nain, etc. In some P(jlyncsian islands, tliough the native
numerals arc extensive enough, the confusion arising from
reckoning by pairs and fours as well as units, has induced the
natives to escape from perplexity by adopting huneri and
tausani} And though the Esquimaux counting by hands, feet,
and whole men, is capaljle of expressing high numbers, it be-
comes practically clumsy even when it gets among the scores,
and the Greenlandcr has done well to adopt untrite and tusinte
from his Danish teachers. Similarity of numerals in two lan-
guages is a point to which philologists attach great and deserved
importance in the question whether they are to be considered
as sprung from a common stock. But it is clear that so far as
one race may have borrowed numerals from another, this evidence
breaks down. The fact that this borrowius extends as low as

1 Markham in ' Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. iii. p. 166.

- Latham, ' Comp. Phil,' p. 186 ; Shaw in ' As. Ecs.' vol. iv, p. 96 ; ' Journ.
As. Soc. Bengal,' 1866, part ii. pp. 27, 204, 251.

^ St. Cricqiu ' Bulletin de la Soc. dc Gcog.' 1853, p. 286; Pott, * Ziililme-
thode,' p. 7.

•• Gabcler tz, p. 89 j Hale, 1. c.

Tin; AllT OF COUNTINd.

W.i

3, nnd may even go still faitlior for nil wo know, is a ivnson for
using tho arginnont from conncctcil ninnorals cautiously, as
tending rather tu prove intercourse than kinslii|).

At tho other end of the scale of civilization, the ndoptiou of
numerals from nation to nation still presents interesting jihilo-
logical points. Our own language gives ciwious instances, as
second and lalllion. Tho mamier in which English, in cointnou
with German, Dutch, Danish, and oven Russian, has ad()[)te(l
Mcdia)val Latin dozemi (from (luodcc'tm) shows how convenient
an arrangement it was found to huy and sell hy the dozen, and
liow necessary it was to have a special word for it. But the bor-
rowing process has gone farther than this. If it were asked how
many sets of mnnerals are in use among Knglish-speaking people
in England, tho prohahle re})ly would bo one set, the regular
one, two, three, etc. Thero exist, however, two borrowed sets as
well. One is the well-known dicing-set, ace, deuce, tniy, cater,
cinque, size ; thus .size-ace is " and 1," cluqites or s/?//>',
" double 5." These came to us from France, and correspond
with the common French numerals, except are, which is Latin
a», a word of great philological interest, meaning " one." The
other borrowed set is to be found in the Hlang Dictionary. It
ap^oa.rs that the English street-folk have adopted as a means
of secret comnnuiication a set of Italian numerals from the
organ-grinders and image-sellers, or by other ways through
which Italian or Lingua Franca is brought into the low neigh-
bourhoods of London. In so doing, they have performed a
philological operation not only curious, but instructive. By
copying such expressions as Italian due soldi, fre soldi, as
equivalent to "twopence," "threepence," the word saltee became
a recognized slang term for " penny ; " and pence are reckoned as
follows : —

Oney aaJtee ....... Id. uno soldo.

Dooe saltee 2d. duo soldi.

Trny saltee 3d. tro soldi.

Quarterer saUee ...... 4d. ([uattvo soldi.

Chinker saltee . ..... <jd. ciuqiio soldi.

Say saltee . . . . . . . Od. sei soldi.

Say oney saltee or setter saltee . . . . 7d. sette soldi.

Say (looe saltee ov otter saltc: . , . 8(1. otto soldi.

Sity tray saltee or nvhba saltee . . . . 'Jd. novo st)ldi.

\ \ \ \m

(!-. V

t':-.

^ i'l •■■

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THE ART OF COUNTIXG.

r ■,

Say fjumiercr saJfce or dachu saltcc . lOd. dieci soldi.
Sdij ch'iiihr saltce ov dacha oucij sultec . lid. undici soldi.
Oney hcomj . . . . .1?.

A heoiuj say salfcc . . . . . Is. 6d.
IJooe Ikoikj say saltee or madza caroon . 2s. (Jd. (talf crown, mezza

corona.) '

Ono of these series simply adopts Italian numerals decimally.
But the other, when it has reached 6, having had enough of
novelty, makes 7 by " six-one," and so forth. It is for no
abstract reason that G is thus made the turning-point, but
simply because the costermonger is addmg pence up to the
silver sixpence, and then adding pence again up to the shilling.
Thus our duodecimal coinage has led to the practice of counting'
by sixes, and prodi;ced a philological curiosity, a real senary
notation.

On evidence such as has been brought forward in this essay,
the apparent relations of savage to civilized culture, as regards
the Art of Counting, may now be briefly stated in conclusion.
The principal methods to wdiich the development of the higher
arithmetic are due, lie outside the problem. They are mostly
ingenious plans of ex^^ressing numerical relation?: by written
symbols. Among them are the Semitic scheme, and the Greek
derived from it, of using the alphabet as a series of numerical
symbols, a plan not (piite discarded by ourselves, at least for
ordinals, as in schedules A, B, &c. ; the use of initials of numeral
words as figures for the numbers themselves, as in Greek IT and
A for 5 and 10, Roman C and M for lOO and 1,000, and the
Indian numerals themselves, whose originals appear to be initials
of " eka," " dvi," " tri," &c. ; tl>o device of expressing fractions,
shown in a rudimentary stage in Greek y', b', for ^j, -\, y^ for ^ ;
the introduction of the cipher or zero, and the arrangement of
the Indian numerals in order, so that position distinguishes units,
tens, hundreds, vtc. ; and lastly, the modern notation of decimal
fractions by carrying down below the unit the proportional order
which for ages had been in use above it. The ancient Egyptian
and the still-used lioman and Chinese numeration are indeed
founded on savage picture-writing,- while the abacus and the

1 J. C. Ilotteii, ' Slang Dictionary,' p. 218.
- ' Early Uistory of jMniikiml,' \\ lOO.

THE ART OF COUNTING,

245

3. •
4 J

swnn-pan, the one still a valuable sclwol-instrnnient, and the
other in full practical use, have their germ in the sava;^ •
counting by groups of objects, as when South Sea Islanders
count with cocoa-nut stalks, putting a little one aside every
time they come to 10, and a large one when they come to 100,
or when African negros reckon with pebbles or nuts, and every
time they come to 5 put them aside in a little heap.^

We are here especially concerned with gesture-counting on the
fingers, as an absolutely savage art still in use among children
and peasants, and with the system of numeral words, kno\Yn to all
mankind, appearing scantily among the lowest tribes, and reach-
ing within savage limits to developments which the highest civi-
lization has only improved in detail. These two methods of
computation by gesture and word tell the story of primitive
arithmetic in a way that can be hardly perverted or misunder-
stood. We see the savage who can only count to 2 or 3 or 4
in Avords, but can go farther in dumb show. He has words for
hands and fingers, feet and toes, and the idea strikes him
that the words which describe the gesture will serve also to
express its meaning, and they become his numerals accordingly.
This did not happen only once, it happened among different
races in distant regions, for such terms as " hand " for 5, " hand-
one " for 6, " hands " for 10, " two on the foot " for 12, " hands
and feet " or " man " for 20, " two men " for 40, etc., show such
uniformity as is due to common principle, but also such variety
as is due to independent Avorking-out. These are " pointer-
facts " which have their place and explanation in a development-
theory of culture, while a degeneration-theory totally fails to
take them in. They are distinct records of development, and
of independent development, among savage tribes to whom
some writers on civilization have rashly denied the very faculty
of self-improvement. The original meaning of a great part of the
stock of numerals of the lower races, especially of those from 1
to 4, not suited to bo named as hand-numerals, is obscure.
They may have been named from comparison Avith objects, in a
way which is shown actually to happen in such forms as " to-
gether" for 2, "throw " for 3, "knot'' for 4 ; but any concrete

> i:ilis, Tolyn. lies.' vol. i. p. 91 ; Klomni, C. G. Vdl.iii. y. 0S3.

I H

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THE ART OF COUNTING.

iiii

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If''

meaning wo may guess them to have once had seems now by
modification and mutilation to have passed out of knowledge.

Rememhering how ordinary words change and lose their
traces of original meaning in the course of ages, and that in
numerals such breaking down of meaning is actually desirable,
to make them fit for pure arithmetical symbols, we cannot
wonder that so large a proportion of existing numerals should
have no discernible etymology. This is especially true of
the 1, 2, 3, 4, among low and high races alike, the earliest to
be made, and therefore the earliest to lose their primary signifi-
cance. Beyond these low numbers, the languages of the higher
and lower races show a remarkable difference. The hand-
and-foot numerals, so prevalent and unmistakeable in savage
tongues like Esquimaux and Zulu, are scarcely if at all trace-
able in the great languages of civilization, such as Sanskrit and
Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. This state of things is quite con-
formable to the development-theory of language. We may
argue that it was in comparatively recent times that savages
arrived at the invention of hand-numerals, and that therefore
the etymology of such numerals remains obvious. But it by no
means follows from the non-appearance of such primitive forms
in cultured Asia and Europe, that they did not exist there in
remote ages ; they may since have been rolled and battered
like pebbbs by the stream of time, till their original shapes can
no longer be made out. Lastly, ainong savage and civilized races
alike, the general framework of numeration stands throughout
the world as an abiding monument of primseval culture. This
framework, the all but universal scheme of reckoning by fives,
tens, and twenties, shows that the childish and savage practice
of counting on fingers and toes lies at the foundation of our
arithmetical science. Ten seems the most convenient arithmetical
basis offered by systems founded on hand-counting, but twelve
would have been better, and duodecimal arithmetic is in fact a
protest against the less convenient decimal arithmetic in
ordinary use. The case is the not uncommon one of high

civilization bearing evident traces of the rudeness of its origin
in ancient barbaric life.

CHAPTER Vlll.

MYTHOLOGY.

Mythic fancy based, like other thought, on Experience— Mythology affords evi-
dence for studying laws of Imagination — Change in public opinion as to cre-
dibility of Myths— Myths rationalized into allegory and history — Ethnologi-
cal import and treatment of Myth — Myth to be studied in actual existence
and growth among modern savages and barbarians — Original sources of Myth
— Early doctrine of general Animation of Nature — Personification of Sun,
Moon, and Stars ; Water-spout, Sand-pillar, Rainbow, Water-fall, Pesti-
lence — Analogy Avorked into Myth and lletaphor — Myths of Rain, Thunder,
&c. — Effect of Language in formation of Myth— Material Personification
primary. Verbal Personification secondary — Grammatical Gender, male and
female, animate and inanimate, in relation to Myth — Proper names of Objects
in relation to Myth — Mental state proper to promote mytliic imagination
— Doctrine of Werewolves— Phantasy and Fancy.

Among those opinions which are produced by a little know-
ledge, to be dispelled by a little more, is the belief in an almost
boundless creative power of the human imagination. The su-
perficial student, mazed in a crowd of seemingly wild and law-
less fancies, which he thinks to have no reason in nature nor
pattern in this material world, at first concludes them to be new
births from the imagination of the poet, the tale-teller, and the
seer. But little by little, in what seemed the most spontaneous
fiction, a more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry and
romance begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, an education
that has led up to each train of thought, a store of inherited
materials from out of which each province of the poet's land has
been shaped, and built over, and peopled. Backward from our
own times, the course of menial history may be traced through
the changes wrought by modern schools of thought and fancy,
upon an intellectual inheritance handed down to them from
earlier generations. And through remoter periods, as we recede

Ui \

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248

MYTHOLOGY.

i'! i

more nearly toward primitive conditions of our race, tiic threads
which connect new thought with old do not always vanish from
our sight. It is in large measure possible to follow them as
clues leading hack to that actual experience of nature and life,
which is the ultimate source of human fancy. What Matthew
Arnold has written of Man's thoughts as he floats along the
River of Time, is most true of his mythic imagination : —

" As is tlio world on the banks
So is the mind of the man.

Only the tract where ho sails

He wots of : only the thoughts,

Eaised by the objects he passes, are his."

Impressions thus received the mind will modify! and work
upon, transmitting the products to other minds in shapes that
often seem new, strange, and arbitrary, but which yet result
from processes familiar to our experience, and to be found at
work in our own individual consciousness. The office of our
thought is to develope, to combine, and to derive, rather than to
create ; and the consistent laws it works by are to be discerned
even in the unsubstantial structures of the imagination. Here,
as elsewhere in the universe, there is to be recognized a sequence
from cause to effect, a sequence intelligible, definite, and where
knowledge reaches the needful exactness, even calculable.

There is perhaps no better subject-matter through which to
study the processes of the imagination, than the weL-niarked
incidents of mythical story, ranging as they do through every
known period of civilization, and through all the physically
varied tribes of mankind. Here Maui, the New Zealand Sun-
god, fishing up the island with his enchanted hook from the
bottom of the sea, will take his place in company with the
Indian Vishnu, diving to the depths of the ocean in his avatar
of the Boar, to bring up the submerged earth on his monstrous
tusks ; and here Baianie the creator, whose voice the rude Aus-
tralians hear in the rolling thunder, will sit throned by the side
of Olympian Zcr himself. Starting with the bold rough
nature-myths into which the savage moulds the lessons he has
learnt from his childlike contemplation of the universe, the

I'lYTHOLOGY.

249

ethnographer Ccan follow these rude fictions up into times when
they were shaped and incorporated into complex mythologic
systems, gracefully artistic in Greece, stiff and monstrous in
Mexico, swelled into bombastic exaggeration in Buddhist Asia.
He can watch how the mythology of classic Europe, once so true
to nature and so quick with her ceaseless life, fell among the
commentators to be plastered with allegory or euhemerised into
dull sham history. At last, in the midst of modern civilization,
he finds the classic volumes studied rather for their manner than
for their matter, or mainly valued for their antiquarian evidence
of the thoughts of former times ; while relics of structures
reared with such siiill and strength by the myth-makers of the
past must now be sought in scraps of nursery folk-lore, in
vulgar superstitions and old dying legends, in thoughts and
allusions carried on from ancient days by the perennial stream
of poetry and romance, in fragments of old opinion which still
hold an inherited rank gained in past ages of intellectual
history. But this turning of mythology to account as a means
of tracing the history and laws of mind, is a branch of science
scarcely discovered till the present century. Before entering
here on some researches belonging to it, there will be advantage
in glancing at the views of older mythologists, to show through
what changes their study has at length reached a condition in
which it has a scientific value.

It is a momentous phase of the education of mankind, when
the regularity of nature has so imprinted itself upon men's
minds, that tliey begin to wonder how it is that the ancient
legends that they were brought up to hear vvith such reverent
delight, should describe a world so strangely different from their
own. Why, they ask, are the gods and giants and monsters
no longer seen to lead their prodigious lives on earth — is it
perchance that the course of things is changed since the old
days ? Thus it seemed to Pausanias the historian, that the
wide-grown wickedness of the world had brought it to pass
that times were no longer as of old, when Lykaon was turned
into a wolf, and Niobe into a stone, when men still sat as guests
at table with the gods, or were raised like jtlerakles to become
gods themselves. Up to modern times, the hypothesis of a

!
til

1 1

; if.- ->^' : i

Itv

250

MYTHOLOGY.

changed world has more or less availed to remove the difficulty
of belief in ancient wonder-tales. Yet though always holding
firmly a partial ground, its application was soon limited for these
obvious reasons, that it justified falsehood and truth alike with
even-handed favour, and utterly broke down that.barrier of pro-
bability which in some measure has always separated fact from
fancy. The Greek mind found other outlets to the problem.
In the words of Mr. Grote, the ancient legends were cast back
into an undefined past, to take rank among the hallowed tradi-
tions of divine or heroic antiquity, gratifying to extol by rhe-
toric, but repulsive to scrutinize in argument. Or they were
transformed into shapes more familiar to experience, as when
Plutarch, telling the tale of Theseus, begs for indulgent hearers,
to accept mildly the archaic story, and assures them that he
has set himself to purify it by reason, that it may receive the
aspect of history,^ This process of giving fable the aspect of
history, this profitless art of transforming untrue impossibilities
into untrue possibilities, has been carried on by the ancients,
and by the moderns after them, especially according to the twa
following methods.

Men have for ages been more or less conscious of that great
mental district lying between belief and disbelief, where room is
found for all mythic interpretation, good or bad. It being ad-
mitted that some legend is not the real narrative M'hicli it pur-
ports to be, they do not thereupon wipe it out from book and
memory as simply signifying nothing, but they ask what
original sense may be in it, out of what older story it may be a
second gi'owth, or what actual event or current notion may have
suggested its development into the state in which they find it ?
Such questions, however, prove almost as easy to answer plau-
sibly as to set ; and then, in the endeavour to obtain security
that these off-hand answers are the true ones, it becomes
evident that the problem admits of an indefinite number of
appai'ent solutions, not only different but incompatible. This
radical uncertainty in the speculative interpretation of myths is
forcibly stated by Lord Bacon, in the preface to his ' Wisdom of

• Grote, 'History of Greece,' vol. i. chaps, ix. xi. ; Pausanias viii. 2; Plu-
tai-cli. Theseus 1.

MYTHOLOGY.

251

the Ancients.' " Neither am I ignorant," he says, " how fickle
and inconstant a thing fiction is, as being subject to be drawn
and wrested any way, and how great the commodity of wit and
discourse is, that is able to apply things well, yet so as never
meant by the first authors." The need of such a caution may
be judged of from the very treatise to which Bacon prefaced it,
for there he is to be seen plunging headlong into th? very pit-
fall of which he had so discreetly warned his disciples. He un-
dertakes, after the manner of not a few philosophers before and
after him, to interpret the classic myths of Greece as moral
allegories. Thus the story of Memnon depicts the destinies of
rash young men of promise ; while Perseus symbolizes war,
and when of ■'he three Gorgons he attacks only the mortal one,
this means that only practicable wars are to be attempted. It
would not be easy to bring out into a stronger light the differ-
ence between a fanciful application of a myth, and its analysis
into its real elements. For here, where the interpreter be-
lieved himself to be reversing the process of myth-making, ho
was in fact only carrying it a stage farther in the old direction,
and out of the suggestion of one train of thought evolving
another connected with it by some more or less remote analogy.
Any of us may practise this simple art, each according to his
own fancy. If, for instance, political economy happens Tar the
moment to lie uppermost in our mind, we may with due gravity
expound the story of Perseus as an allegory of trade : Perseus
himself is Labour, and he finds Andromeda, who is Profit,
chained and ready to be devoured by the monster Capital ; he
rescues her, and carries her off in triumph. To know anything
of poetry or of mysticism is to know this reproductive growth of
fancy as an admitted and admired intellectual process. But
when it comes to sober investigation of the processes of mytho-
logy, the attempt to penetrate to the foundation of an old fancy
will scarcely be helped by burying it yet deeper underneath a
new one.

Nevertheless, allegory has had a sliare in the development of
myths which no interpreter must overlook. The fault of the
rationalizer lay in taking allegory beyond its proper action,
and applying it as a universal solvent to reduce dark stories to

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252

MYTHOLOQY.

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transparent sense. The same is true of the other great ration-
alizing process, founded also, to some extent, on fact. Nothing is
more certain than that real personages often have mythic incidents
tacked on to their history, and that they even figure in tales of
which the very suhstance is mythic. No one disbelieves in the
existence of Solomon because of his legendary adventure in the
Valley of Apes, nor of Attila because he figures in the Nibel-
nn-jen Lied. Sir Francis Drake is made not less but more real
' ■ 1.& ^v the cottage tales which tell how he still leads the Wild
; : int 3r Dartmoor, and still rises to his rovels when they beat
at Buckijr>fi Abbey the drum that he carried round the world.
The mixture of fact and fable in traditions of great men shows
that legends containing monstrous fancy may yet have a basis
in historic fact. But, on the strength of this, the mythol ogists
arranged systematic methods of reducing legend to history, and
thereby contrived at once to stultify the mythology they pro-
fessed to explain, and to ruin the history they professed to
develope. So far as the plan consisted in mere suppression of
the marvellous, a notion of its trustworthiness may be obtained,
as Mr. G. W. Cox well puts it, in rationalizing Jack the Giant-
Killer by leaving out the giants. So far as it treated legendary
wonders as being matter-of-fact disguised in metaphor, the
mere naked statement of the results of tlio method is to our
minds its most cruel criticism. Thus already in classic times
men were declaring that Atlas was a great astronomer who
taught the use of the sphere, and was therefore represented
with the world resting on his shoulders. To such a pass had
come the decay of myth into commonplace, that the great
Heaven-god of the Aryan race, the living personal Heaven him-
self, Zeus the Almighty, was held to have been a king of Krete,
and the Kretans could show to wondering strangers his se-
pulchre, with the very name of the gi-cat departed inscribed
upon it. The modern " euhemerists " (so called from Euhemeros
of Messenia, a great professor of the art in the time of Alex-
ander) in part adopted the old interpretations, and sometimes
fairly left their Greek and Roman teachers behind in the race
after prosaic possibility. They inform us that Jove smiting the
with his thunderbolts was a king repressing a sedition ;

,t ration-
otliing is
incidents
I tales of
es in the
L'e in the
e Nibel-
loro real
ihe Wild
bey beat
e world,
n shows
B a basis
boi jgists
orv, and
hey pro-
issed to
Bssion of
obtained,
e Giant-
gendary
lor, the
3 to our
ic times
ler who
resented
•ass had
e great
en him-
l Krete,
his se-
iiscribed
liemeros
f Alex-
iietimes
bhe race
bing the
xlition ;

MYTHOLOGY.

253

Danae's golden shower was the money witli which her guards
were bribed ; Prometlicus made clay images, whence it was
hyjjcrbolically said that he created man and woman out F
clay; and when Da?dalus was related to have made figr-cs
which walked, this meant that he improved the shapeless uid
statues, and separated their legs. Old men still remember as
the guides of educated opinion in their youth the learned books
in which these fancies are solemnly put forth ; some of our
school manuals still go on quoting them with respect, and a few
straggling writers carrv on a remnant of the once famous
system of which the Abbe Banier was so distinguished an ex-
ponent.^ But it has of late fallen on ,il days, and mythologists
in authority have treated it in so high anded a fashion as to
bring it into general contempt. So fiir nas the feeling against
the abuse of such argument gone, that it is now really desirable
to warn students that it has a reaso.iablo as well as an unrea-
sonable side, and to remind /t ^m that some Avild legends
undoubtedly do, and therefore that many others may, contain a
kernel of historic truth.

Learned and ingenious as the old systems of rationalizing
myth have been, there is no doubt that they are in great
measure destined to be thrown aside. It is not that their
interpretations are proved impossible, but that mere possibility
in mythological speculation is now seen to be such a Avorthless
commodity, that every investigator devoutly wishes there were
not such plenty of it. In assigning origins to myths, as in
every other scientific enquiry, the fact is, that increased infor-
mation, and the use of more stringent canons of evidence, have
raised far above the old level the standard of probability
required to produce conviction. There are many who describe
our own time as an unbelieving time, but it is by no means
sure that posterity will accept the verdict. No doubt it is a
sceptical and a critical time, but then scepticism and criticism
are the very conditions for the attainment of reasonable belief.
Thus, where the positive credence of ancient history has been
affected, it is not that the power of receiving evidence has

^ Sec Banier, ' La Mythologie ei les Fables expliqnues par I'Histoire,' Paris,
1738; Lernpriere, ' Classical Dictionary,' etc.

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dimiiiisliccl, but that the consciousness of ignorance has grown.
Wc are being trained to the focts of pliysical science, which wo
can test and test again, and we feel it a fall from this high level
of proof when we turn our minds to the old records which elude
such testing, and are even admitted on all hands to contain
statements not to be relied on. Historical criticism becomes
hard and exacting, even where the ch- oniclo records events not
improbable in themselves ; and the; moment that the story falls
out of our scheme of the world's habitual course, the ever
repeated question comes out to meet it — Which is the more
likely, that so unusual an event should have really happened,
or that the record should be misunderstood or false ? Thus wo
gladly seek for sources of history in anticpiarian relics, in unde-
signed and collateral proofs, in documents not Avritten to be
chronicles. But can any reader of geology say we are too
incredulous to believe wonders, if the evidence carry any fair
warnmt of their truth ? Was there ever a time when lost
history Avas being reconstructed, and existing history rectified,
more zealously than they are now by a whole army of traveD'^rs,
excavators, searchers of old charters, and explorers of forgotten
dialects ? The very myths that were discarded as lying fables,
prove to be sources of history in ways that their makers and
transmitters little dreamed of Their meaning has been mis-
understood, but they have a meaning. Every tale that was
ever told has a meaning for the times it belongs to ; even a lie,
as the Spanish proverb says, is a lady of birth (" la mentira es
hija de algo"). Thus, as evidence of the development of
thought, as records of long past belief and usage, even in some
measure as materials for the history of the nations owning them,
the old myths have fairly taken their place among historic
facts ; and with such the modern historian, so able and willing
to pull down, is also able and willing to rebuild.

Of all things, what m34liologic work needs is breadth of
knowledge and of handling. Interpretations made to suit a
narrow view reveal their weakness when exposed to a wide one.
See Herodotus rationalizing the story of the infant Cyrus,
exposed and suckled by a bitch ; he simply relates that the
child was brought up by a herdsman's wife named Spako (in

MYTHOLOGY.

2o')

s grown,
vliich wo
igh level
ch elude

contain
Lecomes
ents not
tory falls
:he ever
he more
ippened,
Thus wo
in unde-
m to bo

are too
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hen lost
rectified,
ravel! prs,
brgotten
g fables,
cers and

en mis-
hat was
en a lie,
ntira es
nent of
in some
g them,

historic

willing

idth of
suit a

ide one.
Cyrus,

hat the

)ak6 (in

Oreek Kyno), whence arose the fable tliat a real bitch rescued
and fed him. So far so good — for a single case. But does the
story of Romulus and Remus likewise record a real event,
mystified in the self-same manner by a pun on a nurse's name,
which happened to bo a she-beast's ? Did the Roman twins
also really happen to be exposed, and brought up by a foster-
mother who happened to be called Lupa ? Positively, the
' Lempriere's Dictionary ' of our youth (I cpiote the IGtli edition
of 1831) gravely gives this as the origin of the famous legend.
Yet, if we look properly into the matter, wo find that these two
stories are but specimens of a wide-spread mythic group, itself
only a section of that far larger body of traditions in which
exposed infants are saved to become national heroes. For
other examples, Slavonic folk-lore tells of the she-wolf and the
she-bear that suckled those superhuman twins, Waligora the
mountain-roller and Wyrwidab the oak-uprooter ; Germany
has its legend of Dieterich, called Wolfdieterich from his foster-
mother the she-wolf ; in India, the episode recurs in the tales
of Satavahana and the lioness, and Sing-Baba and the tigress ;
legend tells of Burta-Chino, the boy who was cast into a lake,
and preserved by a she-wolf to become founder of (lie Turkish
kingdom ; and even the savage Yuracares of Brazil tell of their
divine hero Tiri, who was suckled by a jaguar.^

Scientific myth-interpretation, on the contrary, is actually
strengthened by such comparison of similar cases. Where the
effect of new knowledge has been to construct rather than to
destroy, it is found that there ai-e groups of myth-interpretations
for which wider and deeper evidence makes a wider and deeper
foundation. The principles which underlie a solid system of
interpretation are really few and simple. The treatment of
similar myths from different regions, by arranging them in large
compared groups, makes it j)ossible to trace in mythology the
operation of imaginative processes recurring with the evident

> Hamiscli, 'Slav. Myth.* p. 323; Giiium, D. JI, p. 363; Latham, ' Descr,
Elh.' vol. ii, p, 4i8 ; L J. Scluuidt, Toi'Sv-^liungeii,' p. 13 ; J. G. AlLiUer, *Amer.
Uri'clig.' p. 2(58, See also Plutavch. Parallela xxxvi, ; Cainpliell, 'Plighland
Talcs,' vol, i. p. 278 ; Max Mullev, 'Chips,' vol, ii, p. IGD; Tylor, 'Wild Men
and Beast-children,' in Anthropological IJeview, May 18b'3,

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JIYTHOLOQV.

ivj^ularity of nieiitul law ; and tlius stories of wliicli a single
instance woukl liavo been a niuro isolated curiosity, take tlieir
plaor anionjf woll-niarkcd and consistent structures of the hunum
mind. Evidence like this will ayain and ayain drive us tt>
admit that even as " truth is stranger than fiction," so myth
may be more uniform than history.

There lies within our reach, moreover, the evidence of races
both ancient and modern, who so faitlifnlly represent the state
of thought to which myth-development belongs, as still to kee])
up both the consciousness of meaning in their old myths, and
the unstrained unaffected habit of creating new ones. Savages
have been for untold ages, and still are, living in the myth-
making stage of the human mind. It was through sheer igno-
rance and neglect of this direct knowledge how and by what
manner of men myths are really made, that their simpU; philo-
sophy has come to be buried under masses of comnieniaturs'
rubbish. Though never wholly lost, the secret of mythic inter-
pretation was all but forgotten. Its recovery has been mainly
due to modern students who have with vast labour and skill
searched the ancient language, poetry, and folk-lore of our own
race, from the cottage tales collected by the brothers Grimm to
the Rig-Veda edited by Max Muller. Aryan language antl
literature now opens out with wonderful range and clearness a
view of the early stages of mythology, displaying those primi-
tive germs of the poetry of nature, Avhich later ages swelled and
distorted till childlike fancy sank into superstitious mystery. It
is not proposed here to en(|uire specially into this Aryan mytho-
logy, of which so many eminent students have treated, hul to
coriijjare some of the most important developments of mytho-
logy among the various races of mankind, especially in order to
iletermine the general relation of the mjths of savage tribes to
the myths of civilized nations. The argument does not aim
at a general discussion of the mythology of the world, num-
bers of important topics being left \intouched which Avould have
to be considered in a general treatise. The topics chosen are
mostly such as are fitted, by the strictness of evidence and argu-
ment applying to them, to make a sound basis for the treatment
IS bearing on the treneral ethnological

'i Z

MYTHOLOQY.

237

development of civilization. The general tliesis maintained is
that Myth arcso in the savage condition prevalent in rcnioto
ages amcMg the whole human race, that it remains compara-
tively unchanged among the modern rudo tribes who have
departed least from these primitive conditions, while higher
and later grades of civilization, partly by retaining its actual
principles, and partly by carrying on it; inherited residts in the
form of ancestral tradition, continued it not merely in tolera-
tion but in honour.

To the human intellect in its early childlike state may bo
assigned the origin and first development of myth. It is true
that learned critics, taking up the study of mythology at tho
wrong end, have almost habitually failed to appreciate its child-
like ideas, conventionalized in poetry or disguised as chronicle.
Yet the more we compare the mythic fancies of different nations,
in order to discern the comrron thoughts which underlie their
resemblances, the more ready we shall bo to admit that in our
childhood we dwelt at tho very gates of the realm of myth. In
mythology, the child is, in a deeper sense than we are apt to
use the i)hrase in, father of the man. Thus, when in surveying
the quaint fancies and wild legends of tho lower tribes, we find
the mythology of the world at once in its most distinct and most
rudimentary form, we may here again claim the savage as a
representative of the childhood of the human race. Here Eth-
nology and Comparative Mythology go hand in hand, and tho
development of Myth forms a consistent part of the develop-
ment of Culture. If savage races, as the nearest modem repre-
sentatives of primoDval culture, show in the most distinct and
unchanged state the rudimentary mythic conceptions thence to
be traced onward in the course of civilization, then it is reason-
able for students to begin, so far as may be, at the beginning.
Savage mythology may be taken as a basis, and then the myths
of more civilized races may be displayed as compositions sprung
from like origin, though more advanced in art. This mode of
treatment proves satisfactory through almost all the b^- nches of
the enquiry, and eminently so in investigating those ■ st beau-
tiful of poetic fictions, to which may be given tho title of
Nature-^Myths.

VOL. I. S

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.p\^

258

MYTHOLOGY.

'1 "

'Nil'., i

First and foremost among the causes wliicli transfigure into
myth the facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation
^fali nature, rising at its high-sst pitch to personification. This,
no occasional or hypothetical action of the mind, is inextricably
bound in Avith that primitive mental state Avhere mpn recognizes
in jvery detail of his Avorld the operation of personal life and
will. This doctrine of Animism will be considered elsewhere as
aifecting philosophy and religion, but here we have only to do
with ils bearing on mythology. To the lower tribes of man, sun
and stars, tj'ees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal
animate creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal
analogies, and performing their special functions in the universe
with the aid of limbs like beasts, or of artificial instruments like
men ; or what men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be
used or the material to be shaped, while behind it there stands
some j)rodigion3 but yet half-human creature, who grasps it with
his hands or blows it with his breath. The basis on which such
ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed down to poetic
fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a broad phi-
losophy of nature, early and crude indeed, but thoughtful,
consistent, and quite really and seriously meant.

Let us put this doctrine of universal vitality to a test of direct
evidence, lest readers new to the subject should suppose it a
modern philosophical fiction, or think that if the lower races
really express such a notion, they may do so only as a poetical
way of talking. Even in civilized coantries, it makes its ap-
pearance as the child's early theory of the outer world, nor can
we fail to see how this comes to pass. The first beings that
children learn to understand something of are human beings,
and especially their own selves ; and the first explanation of all
events Avill be the human explanation, as though chairs and
sticks and wooden horses were actuated by the same sort of
personal will as nurses and children and kittens. Tlius infants
take tlieir first step in mythology by contriving, like Cosette
with her doll, " se figiirer que quelque chose est quelqu'un ;" and
the way in which this childlike theory has to be unlearnt in the
course of education shows hoAv primitive it is. Even among
full-grown civilizod E'-U-opeans, as Mr. Grote appositely remarks,

!ii

MYTHOLOGY.

2oi)

Ture into
liiimation
on. This,
jxtricably
ccognizes
1 life and
jwliore as
inly to do
man, sun
personal
31' animal
; universe
iicnts like
3nt to be
re stands
ps it with
hich such
to poetic
)road phi-
loughtful,

t of direct

ipose it a

wcr races

1 poetical

OS its ap-

, nor can

ings that

.n beings,

tion of all

hairs and

e sort of

us infants

e Cosette

un;" and

nt in the

!n among

remarks,

'' The force of momentary passion "will often suffice to supersede
the acquired habit, and even an intelligent man may be impil-
led in a moment of agonizing pain to kick or beat the lifeless
object from which he has suffered." In such matters the savage
mind well represents the childish stage. The wild native v(
Brazil would bite the stone he stumbled ovci', or the arrow that
had wounded him. Such a mental condition may bo traced
along the course of history, not merely in impulsive habitj but
in formally enacted law. The rude Kukis of Southern Asia
were very scrupulous in carrying out their simple law of ven-
geance, life for life ; if a tiger killed a Kuki, his family were in
disgrace till they had retaliated by killing and eating this tiger,
or another ; but further, if a man was killed l)y a fall from a
tree, his relatives would take their revenge by cutting the tree
down, and scattering it in chips.^ A modern king of Cochin-
China, when one of his ships sailed badly, used to put it in the
pillory as he would any other criminal.- In classical times, the
stories of Xerxes flogging the Hellespont and Cyrus draining
the Gyndcs occur as cases in j)oint, but one of the regular
Athenian legal proceedings is a yet more striking relic. A court
of justice was held at the Prytaneum, to try any inanimate object,
such as an axe or a piece of wood or stone, whicli had caused the
death of any one without proved human agency, and this wood
or stone, if condemned, was in solemn form cast beyond the
border.^ The spirit of this remarkable procedure reappears in
the old Englisli law (repealed in the present reign), whereby not
only a beast that kills a man, but a cart-wheel that runs over
him, or a tree thai falls on him and kills him, is deodand, or
given to God, i.e., forfeited and sold for the poor: as Bracton
says, " Omnia ([uoe movent ad mortem sunt Deodanda." Dr.
Reid comments on this huv, declaring that its intention was not
to punish the ox or the cart as criminal, but " to inspire the
people with a sacred regard to the life of man." But his argu-
ment rather serves to show the worthlessness of off-hand sj^ccu-

* Milcrao in 'As. Ees.' vol. vii. p. 189.
^ Bastian, 'Oestl, Asicii,' vol. i. p. 51.

3 (irote, vol. iii. p. 104 ; vol. v. p. 22 ; Herodot. i. 189 ; vii. 34 ; Poipliyr.
dc AbstiiK'utia ii. 30 ; PauBan. i. 28 ; Pollii.^:, 'Onomasticoii.'

s 2

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260

MYTHOLOGY.

lations on the origin of law, like his own in this matter, unaided
by the indispensable evidence of history an('. ethnography.^ An
example from modern folk-lore shows this primitive conception
still at its utmost stretch. The pathetic custom of " telling the
bees " Avhcn the master or mistress of a house dies, is not un-
known in our own country. But in Germany the idea is more
fully worked out ; and not only is the sad message given to
every bee-hive in the garden and every beast in the stall, but
every sack of corn must be touched and ever3rthing in the house
shaken, that they may know the master is gone.^

Animism takes in several doctrines which so forcibly conduce
to personification, that savages and barbarians, apparently with-
out an effort, can give consistent individual life to phenomena
that our utmost stretch of fancy only avails to personify in con-
scious metaphor. An idea of pervading life and will in nature
far outside modern limits, a belief in personal souls animating
even what wo call inanimate bodies, a theory of transmigration
of souls as well in life as after death, a sense of crowds of spiri-
tual beings, sometimes flitting through the air, but sometimes
also inhabiting trees and rocks and waterfalls, and so lending'
their own personality to such material objects — all tljese thoughts
work in mythology with such manifold coincidence, as to make
it hard indeed to unravel their separate action.

Such animistic origin of nature-myths shows out very clearly
in the great cosmic group of Sun, Moon, and Stars. In early
philosophy throiighout the world, the Sun and Mvion are alive
and as it Avere human in their nature. Usually contrasted as
male and female, they nevertheless differ in the sex assigned
to each, as well as in their relations to one another, Amoncr
the Mbocobis of South America, the Moon is a man and the
Sun his wife, and the story is told how she once fell down
and an Indian put her up again, but she fell a second
time and set the forest blazing in a deluge of fire.^ To
display the opposite of this idea, and at the same time to

^ Rcid, 'Essnys,' vol. iii. p. 113.
^ Wuttke, 'A^olksaberglaube,' p. 210,

3 D'Orbigii}', ' L'Hoiiime Aint'i'icain,' vol. ii. p. 10'2, Gee also Dc la Bortlc,.
' Caraibes,' p. 525.

MYTHOLOGY.

261

illustrate the vivid fancy with which savages can personify the
heaverxiy bodies, we may read the following discussion concern-
ing eclipses, between certain Algonquin Indians and one of the
early Jesuit missionaries to Canada in the 17th century.
Father Le Jeune : — " Je leur ay demande d'ou venoit I'Eclipse
de Lune et de Soleil ; ils m'ont respondu que la Lune s'^clip-
soit ou paroissoit noire, a cause qu'elle tenoit son fils entre ses
bras, qui empeschoit que Ton ne vist sa olarte. Si la Lune a un
fils, elle est mariee, ou I'a etd, leur dis-je. Oily dea, me dirent-
ils, le Soleil est son mary, qui marche tout le jour, et clle touie
la nuict; et s'il s'^clipse, ou s'il s'obscurcit, c'est qu'il prcnd
aussi par fois le fils qu'il a eu de la Lune entre ses bras. Oliy,
mais ny la Lune ny le Soleil n'ont poini de bras, leur disois-je.
Tu n'as point d'esprit : ils tienncnt tousiours leurs arcs bandts
deuant eux, voila pourquoy leurs bras ne paroissent poii:?t. Et
sur qui veulent-ils tirer ? Hd qu'en scauons nous ? "^ A mytho-
logically important legend of the same race, the Ottawa story of
Iosco, describes Sun and Moon as brother and sister. Two
Indians, it is said, sprang through a chasm in the sky, and found
themselves in a pleasant moonlit land ; there they saw the
Moon approaching as from behind a hill, they knew her at the
first sight, she was an aged woman with white face and pleasing
air ; speaking kindly to them, she led them to her brother the
Sun, and he carried them Avith hiui in his course and sent them
home with promises of happy life." As the Egyptian Osiris and
Isis were at once Sun and Moon, brother and sister, and husband
and wife, so it was with the Peruvian Sun and Moon, and thus
the sister-marriage of the Incas had in their religion at once a
meaning and a justification,^ The myths of other countries,
where such relations of sex may not appear, carry on the same
lifelike personification in telling the ever-reiterated, never tedious
tale of day and night. Thus to the Mexicans it was an ancient

Bonlc,.

^ Le Jeune in ' Relations des Jesuites clans la Nouvclle France,' 1634, p. 26.
See Charlevoix, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. ii. p. 170.

2 Sclioulcraft, ' Algic Researclies,' vol. ii. p. 54 ; com]iare ' Tanner's Narrative,'
p. 317 ; sec also 'Prose ^Ida,' i. 11; 'Early Hist, of M.' p. 327.

3 Prescott, ' Peru,' vol. i. p.
4.

S6 ; Garcilaso de la Vega, ' Comm. Real.' i.

1W-

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IMYTHOLOGY.

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liero who, when tlic old sun was burnt out uml luul loft the
world in darkness, sprang into a huge fire, descended into the
shades below, and arose deified and glorious in tlie east v:, Tona-
tiuhtliG Sun. After liim tiiere leapt in another hern, but new
the fire had -grown dim, and he arose only in milder radiance as
Metztli the Moon.^

If it be objected that all this may be mere expressive form
of speech, like r. modern poet's fanciful metaphor, there is
evidence which no such objection can stand against. When the
Aleutians thought that if any one gave offence to the moon, he
would fling down stones on the offender and kill him,- or when
tlie moon came down to an Indian squaw, appearing in the
form of a beautiful woman with a ciiikl in her arms, and
demanding an offering of tobacco and fur-robes;' what concep-
tions of personal life could be more distinct tl/a:\ these ? When
the Apache Indian pointed to the sky and askcu the vhito man,
" Do you not believe that God, this Sun (que Dios, este Sol) sees
what we do and punishes us when it is evil ? " it is impossible
to say that this savage was talking in rhetorical simile.' There
was something in the Homeric contempl ilju of the living
l)ersonal Helios, that was more and deeper than metaphor.
Even in far later ages, we may read of the outcry that arose
in Gref^ce against \\ astronomers, those blasphemous mate-
rialists wlio denied, '■■•• the divinity only, but the very person-
ality of the sun, and declared him a huge hot ball. Later
again, how vividly Tacitus brings to view the old personification
dying into simile among the Romans, in contrast with its still
enduring religious vigour among the German nations, in the
record of Boiocalcus [)lcadnig before the Roman legate that his
tribe should not be driven fi'om their lands. Lookiuij toward
the sun, and calling on the other heavenly bodies as though,,
says the historian, they had l)een there present, the German
chief demanded of them if it were their will to look down

' TorqMemada, ' !Monarqnia Imlinna,' vi. 42 ; C'lavigeni, vol. ii. p. 9 ; Sahagiin iit
Kiiigsbci.'ougli, ' Aiitii[uitios of Mexico.'
- Bastian, 'IMenscli,' vol. ii. p. .j9.

' !.'> Jcune, in ' Eelations dus Jcsuitcs dans la Nouvcllo Franco,' 1G39, p. 88,
* Froebol, 'Central America,' p. 490.

MYTHOLOGY.

i:(!3

upon a vacant soil? (Solcni dcindo respicicns, ot ca3!;cra sidera
vocans, quasi coram intcrrogabat, vcllcntno contucri. iirn.vo
solum 1 ) ^

So it is with the stars. Savage mythology contains man^ a
story of them, agreeing through all other ditTerence in attribut-
ing to them animate life. They are not merely talked of in
fimcied personality, but personal action is attributed to them,
or they are even declared once to have liv3d on earth. The
natives of Australia not only say the stars in Orion's belt and
scabbard are young men dancing a corroboree ; they declare that
Jupiter, whom they call " Foot of Day " (Ginabong-Beai'p), was
a chief among the Old Spirits, that ancient race who were
translated to heaven before man came on earth.^ The Esqui-
maux did not stop short at calling the stars of Orion's belt the
Lost Ones, and telling a tale of their being seal-hunters who
missed their way h 3me ; but they distinctly held that the stars
were in old times men and animals, before they went up into
the sky.^ So the North American Indians had more than
superficial meaning in calling the Pleiades the Dancers, and i he
morning-star the Day-bringer ; for among them stories are told
like that of the lowas, of the star that an Indian had long
gazed upon in childhood, and who came down and talked .. th
him when he was once out hunting, weary and luci- ■ ';^o, aun led
him to a jjlace where there was much game.'*^ 'lO Kasia of
Bengal declare that the stars were once men : thev .limbed to
the top of a tree (of course tb' great hca\cn-treo of the
mythology of so many lands), bu' others below cu: the trunk
and left tliem up there in the branches.^ With such savage
conceptions as guides, the original meaning in the familiar
classic personification of stars can scarcely be doubted. The
explicit d>ictrinc of the animation of stars is to be traced
through past centuries, and down to our own. Origen declares

' Tac. Ann. xiii. 55.

■ Stanbridgo, in 'Tr. Etii. Soc' vol, i. p. 301.
^ Cranz, 'Grijiilaiul,' p. 295 ; Hayes, ' 'Vrctic Boat Journpy,' p. 254.
'' Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' par*-, iii. ;- 276; sec also Do ia jjorde, 'Caraibcs,,
p. 525.

* Latham, ' Dcscr. Eth.' vol. i. p. 119.

I ■'■V

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MYTHOLOGY.

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II I'

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lli

that the stars arc animate and rational, moved with such order
and reason as it would be absurd to say irrational creatures
could fulfil. Pamphilius, in his apology for this Father, lays it
down that whereas some have held the luminaries of heaven to
be animate o,nd rational creatures, while others have held them
mere spiritless and senseless bodies, no one may call another
a heretic for holding cither view, for there is no open tradition
on the subject, and even ecclesiastics have thought diversely of
it.^ It is enough to mention here the well-known mediaeval
doctrine of star-souls and star-angels, so intimately mixed up
with the delusions of astrology. In our own time the theory of
the animating souls of stars finds still here and there an
advocate, and De Maistre, prince and leader of reactionary
philosophers, holds up against modern astronomers the doctrine
of personal will in astronomic motion, and the theory of
animated planets."

Poetry has so far kept alive ii] our minds the old animative
theory of nature, that it is no great effort to us to fancy the
waterspout a huge g- nt or sea-monster, and to depict in what
we call appropriate metaphor its march across the fields of
Ocean, But where such forms of speech are current among
less educated races, tliey are underlaid by a distinct prosaic
meaning of fact. Thus the waterspouts which the Japanese see
f.o often off their coasts are to them long-tailed dragons, " flying
up into the air with a swift and violent motion," wherefore they
call them " tatsmaki," " spouting dragons." ^ Waterspouts are
believed by some Chinese to be occasioned by the ascent and
descent of the dragon ; although never seen head and tail at
once for clouds, fishermen and sea-side folk catch occasional
glimpses of the monster ascending from the water and descend-
ing to it* In the mediaeval Chronicle of John of Bromton
there is mentioned a wonder which happens about once a month
in the Gulf of Satalia, on the Pamphylian coast. A great black

* Origcn. ('o Principiis, i. 7, 3 ; Pampliil. Apoloff, pro Origiuc, ix. 84.

* De Maistre, ' Soirees do Saint- Petcrsbourg,' vol. ii. p. 210, see 184.
3 Kaempfcr, 'Japan,' in Piukerton. •■ 'i, p. (584.

* Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. p. 20o ; jec "Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. i.
^Indra's elephants drinking).

140

MYTHOLOGY.

265

dragon seems to come in the clouds, letting down his head into
the waves, while his tail seems fixed to the sky, and this dragon
draws up the waves to him with such avidity that even a laden
ship would be taken up on high, so that to avoid this danger
the crews ought to shout and beat boards to drive the dragon off.
But, concludes the chronicler, some indeed say that this is not
a dragon, but the sun drawing up the water, which seems more
true.^ The Moslems still account for waterspouts as caused by
gigantic demons, such as that one described in the " Arabian
Nights : " — " The sea became troubled before them, and there
arose from it a black pillar, ascending towards the sky, and
approaching the meadow . . . and behold it was a Jinnee, of
gigantic stature."- The difficulty in interpreting language like
this is to know how far it is seriously and how far fancifully
meant. But this doubt in no way goes againct its original
animistic meaning, of which there can bo no question in the
following story of a " great sea-serpent " current among a
barbarous East African tribe. A chief of the Wanika told
Dr. Krapf of a great serpent which is sometimes seen out at
sea, reaching from the sea to the sky, and appearing especially
during heavy rain. " I told them," says the missionary, " that
this was no serpent, but a waterspout."'^ Out of the similar
phenomena on land there has arisen a similar group of myths.
The Moslem fancies the whirling sand-pillar of the desert to be
caused by the flight of an evil jinn, and the East African
simply calls it a demon (p'hepo). To traveller after traveller
who gazes on these monstrous shapes gliding majestically across
the desert, the thought occurs that the well-remembered
" Arabian Nights' " descriptions rest upon personifications of
the sand-pillars themselves, as the gigantic demons into which
fancy can even now so naturally shape them.*

Rude and distant tribes agree in the conception of the Rain-

' Chron. Joli. Bromton, in 'Hist. Angl. Scriptores,' x. Ric. I. p. 1216.

' Lane, ' Thousand and Quo N.' vol. i. p. 30, 7.

3 Krapf, ' Travels,' p. 198.

* Lane, ibid. pp. 30, 42 ; Burton, ' El Medinali and Meccali,' vol. ii. p. 09 ;
* Lake Regions,' vol. i. p. 297 ; J. D. Hooker, ' Himalayan Journals,' vol. i.
p. 79 ; Tylor, * Mexico,' p. 30 ; Tyernian and Bennct, vol. ii. p. 362.

«T*'

tfr-

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MYTHOLOGY.

, t

:, 1

bow ivi a living monster. New Zealand myth, describing tlic-
battle of the Tempest against ihe Forest, tells how the Rain-
bow arose and placed his month close to Tanc-mahutii, the
Father of Trees, and continued to assault him till his trunk was
snapt in two, and his broken branches strewed the ground.^ It
is not only in mere nature-inyth like this, but in actual awe-
struck belief and terror, that the idea of the live Rainbow is
worked out. The Karens of Birma say it is a spirit or demon.
"The Rainbow can devour men. . . . When it devours a person,
he dies a sudden or violent death. All persons that die badly,
by falls, by drowning, or by wild beasts, die because the Rain-
bow lias devoured their ka-la, or spirit. On devouring persons
it becomes thirsty, and comes down to drink, when it is seen in
the sky drinking water. Therefore when people see the Rain-
bow tliey say, ' The Rainbow has come to drink water. Look
out, some one or other will die violently by an evil death,' If
children are playing, their parents will say to them, ' The Rain-
bow has come down to drink. Play no more, lest some accident
should happen to you.' And after the Rainbow has been seen,
if any fatal accident happens to any one, it is said the Rainbow
has devoured him." - The Zulu ideas correspond in a curious
way with these. The Rainbow lives with a snake, that is, where
it is there is also a snake ; or it is like a sheep, and dwells in a
pool. When it touches the earth, it is drinking at a pool. Men
are afraid to wash in a large pool ; they say there is a Rainbow
in it, and if a man goes in, it catches and eats him. The Rain-
bow, coming out of a river or pool and resting on the ground,
poisons men whom it meets, affecting them with eruptions.
Men say, " The Rainbow is disease. If it rests on a man,
something will happen to hiin." ^ Lastly, in Dahome, Danh the
Heavenly Snake, which makes the Popo beads and confers
wealth on man, is the Rainbow. '^

To the theory of Animism belong those endless tales which
all nations tell of the presiding genii of nature, the spirits of

r.l «1

1 Tiiylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 121.

- JMasoii, ' Karens,' in ' Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' I860, part ii. p. 217.

3 Callaway, ' Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 294.

■* Burton, 'Daliome,' vol. ii. p. 148 ; see 242.

ift

JIYTHOLOGY.

267

cliffs, wells, waterfalls, volcanos, the elves and woodnymphs seen
at times hy human eyes when wandevuig by moonlight or
assemhled at their fiiiry festivals. Such beings may personify
the natural objects they belong to, as when, in a North
American talc, the guardiar spirit of waterfalls rushes tiirough
the lodge as a raging current, bearing rocks and trees along in
its tremendous course, and then the guardian spirit of the
islands of Lake Superior enters in the guise of rolling waves
covered with silver-sparkling foam. ^ Or they may be guiding
and power-giving spirits of nature, like the spirit Fugarau,
whose work is the cataract of the Nguyai, and who sti!I
wanders night and day artiund it, though the negroes who toll
of him can no longer see his bodily form.- The belief prc-
vailino- throuoh the lower culture that the diseases which vex
mankind are brought by individual personal spirits, is one
which has produced striking examples of mythic development.
Thus the savage Karen lives in terror of the mad " la," the
epileptic "la," and the rest of the seven evil demons who go
about seeking his life ; and it is with a fancy not many degrees
removed from this early stage of thought that the Persian sees
in bodily shape the apparition of Al, the scarlet fever : —

M-i4

" Would you know Al ? sho scorns a blushing maid,?
With locks of flamo and cheeks all rosy red."-*

It is with this deep old spiritualistic belief clearly in view
that the ghastly tales are to be read where pestilence and
death come on their errand in weird human shape. To the
mind of the Israelite, death and pestilence took the personal
form of the destroying angel who smote the doomed.'' When
the great plague raged in Justinian's time, men saw on the sea
brazen barks whose crews were black and headless men, and
where they landed, the pestilence broke out.^ When the plague

1 Sclioolcraft, ' Algic Res.' vol. ii. p. 148.

- Du Chailln, ' Ashaiigo-laml,' p. 106.

3 Jas. Atkinson, ' Cnstoms of the Women of Persia,' p. 49.

* 2 Siin.'. xxiv. 16 ; 2 Kings xix. 35.

" G. S. Asseraanni ' Bibliotlicea Orientalis,' ii. 86.

268

MyiHOLOGY.

fell on Rome in Gregory's time, tlie saint rising from prayer
saw Michael standing with his bloody sword on Hadrian's castle
— the archangel stands there yet in bronze, giving the old fort
its newer name of the Castle of St. Angelo. Among a whole
group of stories of the pestilence seen in personal shape
travelling to and fro in the land, perhaps there is none more
vivid than this Slavonic one. There sat a Russian un^h r a
larch-tree, and the sunshine glared like fire. He saw something
coming from afar ; he looked again — it was the Pest-maiden,
huge of stature, all shrouded in linen, striding toward liim. He
would have fled in terror, but the form grasped him Avith her
long outstretched hand. " Knowest thou the Pest ?" she said ;
" I am she. Take me on thy shoulders and carry me through
all Russia ; miss no village, no town, for I must visit all. But
fear not for thyself, thou shalt be safe amid the dying." Cling-
ing with her long hands, she clambered on the peasant's back ;
he stepped onward, saw the form above him as he went, but
felt no burden. First he bore her to the towns; they found
there joyous dance and song; but the form waved her linen
shroud, and joy and mirth Avcre gone. As the wretched man
looked round, he saw mourning, he heard the tolling of the
bells, there came funeral processions, the graves could not hold
the dead. He passed on, and coming near each village heard
the shriek of the dying, saw oil faces white in the desolate
houses. But high on the hill stands his own hamlet : his wife,
his little children are there, and the aged parents, and his
heart bleeds as he draws near. With strong gripe he holds the
maiden fast, and plunges with her beneath the waves. He
sank : she rose again, but she quailed before a heart so fearless,
and fled for away to the forest and the mountain."^

Yet, if mythology be surveyed in a more comprehensive
view, it is seen that its animistic development falls within a
broader generalization still. The explanation of the course and
change of nature, as caused by life such as the life of the
thinking man who gazes on it, is but a part of a far wider
mental process. It belongs to that great doctrine of analogy,

' HanusoJi, 'Slav. Mythus,' p. 322. Compare Torquemada, 'Monarquia
Indiana,' i. c. 14 (Mexico) ; Bastian, 'Psychologic,' p. 197.

MYTHOLOGY.

2G9

from which wc liavo gained so mucli of our apprehension of the
world around us. Distrusted as it now is by severer science for
its misleading results, analogy is still to us a chief means of
discovery and illustration, while in earlier grades of education
its influence was all but par.-imount. Analogies which are but
fancy to us were to men of past ages reality. They could sec
the flame licking its yet undevoured prey with tongues of fire,
or the serpent gliding along the waving sword from hilt to point ;
they could feel a live creature gnawing within their l)()dies in
the pangs of hunger ; tliey lieard the voices of the hill-dwarfs
answeriiiL;' in the echo, and the chariot of the Heaven-god
rattling in thunder over the solid firmament. Men to whom
these were living thoughts had no need of the school-
master and his rules of composition, his injunctions to use
metaphor cautiously, and to take continual care to make all
similes consistent. The similes of the old bards and orators
were consistent, because they seemed to see and hear and feel
them : what wc call poetry was to them real life, not as to the
modern versemaker a masquerade of gods and heroes, shep-
herds and shepherdesses, stage heroines and philosophic savages
in paint and feathers. It was with a far deeper consciousness
that the circumstance of nature was worked out in endless
imaginative detail in ancient days and among uncultured
races.

Upon the sky above the hill-country of Orissa, Pidzu Pennu,
the Rain-god of the Khonds, rests as he pours down the
showers through his sieve.^ Over Peru there stands a princess
with a vase of rain, and when her brother strikes the pitcher,
men hear the shock in thunder and see the flash in lightning.^
To the old Greeks the rainbow seemed stretched down by Jove
from heaven, a purple sign of war and tempest, or it was the
personal Iris, messenger between gods and men.^ To the South
Sea islander it was the heaven-ladder where heroes of old
climbed up and down ; ■* and so to the Scandinavian it was

* Macplierson, 'India,' p. 357.

' llarkham, ' Quicliua Gr, and Die' p. 9.

' Welcker, 'Giiech. Gotterl.' vol. i. p. 690.

•• Ellis, Tolyn. Kes.' vol. i. p. 231 ; Tolack,

' New. Z.' vol. i. p. 273.

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270

MYTHOLOGY.

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Bifrost, the trembling bridge, timbered of three hues and
stretched from sky to earth ; and in German folk-lore it is the
bridge where the souls of the just are led by their guardian
angels across to paradise.^ As the Israelite called it the bow
of Jehovah in the clouds, it is to the Hindu the bow of Kama,^
and to the Finn the bow of Tiermes the Thunderer, who slays
with it the sorcerers that hunt after men's lives ; ^ it is
imagined, moreover, as a gold-embioidered scarf, a head-dress of
feathers, St. Bernard's crown, or the sickle of an Esthonian
deity."* And yet through all such endless varieties of mythic
conception there runs one main principle, the evident sugges-
tion and analogy of nature. It has been said of the savages of
North America, that "there is always something actual and
physical to ground an Indian fancy on." ^ The saying goes too
far, but within limits it is emphatically true, not of North
American Indians alone, but of mankind.

Such resemblances as have just been displayed thrust them-
selves directly on the mind, without any necessary intervention
of words. Deep as language lies in our mental life, the direct
comparison of object with object, and action with action, lies
yet deeper. The myth-maker's mind shows forth even among
the deaf-and-dumb, who work out just such analogies of nature
in their wordless thought. Again and again they have been
found to suppose themselves taught by their guardians to wor-
ship and pray to sun, moon, and stars, as personal creatures.
Others have described their early thoughts of the heavenly
bodies as analogous to things within their reach, one fancying
the moon made like a dumpling and rolled over the tree-topS
like a marble across a table, and the stars cut out with great
scissors and stuck against the sky, while another supposed the
moon a furnace and the stars fire-grates, which the people above
the firmament light up as wc kindle fires.^ Now the mythology

' Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 694—6.

- Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol, i. p. 140.

•■• Castren, 'Finnische My tliolofiie, ' pp. 48, 49.

♦ Delbnick in Lazarus and Steiuthal's Zeitschrift, vol. iii. p. 269.
» Schoolcraft, i)art iii. p. 520.

* Sicard, 'Thuorio dcs Sigucs, etc' Paris, 1808, vol. ii. p,. 634; Tursonal

MYTHOLOGY.

271

of mankind at large is full of conceptions of nature like these,
and to assume for them no deeper original source tlian meta-
phorical phrases, v/ould be to ignore one of the great transitions
of our intellectual history.

Language, there is no doubt, has had a great share in the
formation of myth. The mere fact of its individualizing in
words such notions as winter and summer, cold and heat, war
and peace, vice and virtue, gives the myth-maker the means
of imagining these thoughts as personal beings. Language
not only acts in thorough unison with the imagination whose
products it expresses, but it goes on producing of itself, and
thus, by the side of the mythic conceptions in which language
has followed imagination, we have others in which language
has led, and imagination has followed in the track. These
two actions coincide too closely for their effects to be tho-
. roughly separated, but they should be distinguished as far as
possible. For myself, I am disposed to tliink (differing hero
in some measure from Professor Max ^liiUer's view of the sub-
ject) that the mythology of the lower races rests especially on
a basis of real and sensible analogy, and that the great expan-
sion of verbal metaphor into myth belongs to more advanced
periods of civilization. In a word, I take material myth to be
the primary, and verbal myth to be the secondary formation.
But whether this opinion be historically sound or not, the dif-
ference in nature between myth founded on fact and myth
founded on word is sufficiently manifest. The v/ant of reality
in verbal metaphor cannot be effectually hidden by the utmost
stretch of imagination. In spite of this essential weakness, how-
ever, the habit of realizing everything that words can describe is
one which has grown and flourished in the world. Descriptive
names become personal, the notion of personality stretches to
take in even the most abstract notions to which a narae may
be applied, and realized name, epithet, and metaphor pass into
interminable mythic grovths by the process which Max Mliller
has so aptly characterized as " a disease of language." It v/ould

miM

LTsonal

EccoUections,' by Clinrlotto Elizabeth, Loinloii 1841, p. 182; Dr. Orrcii, *Tlio
Contrast,' p. 25. Compare Meiuers, vol. i, p. 42.

272

MYTHOLOGY.

i f.

be difficult indeed to define the exact thought lying at the root of
every mythic conception, but in easy cases the course of forma-
tion can be quite well followed. North American tribes have
personified Nipiniikhe and Pipuniikhe, the beings who bring
the spring (nipin) and the winter (pipun) ; Nipiniikhe brings
the heat and birds and verdure, Pipiinukhe ravages with his
cold winds, his ice and snow ; one comes as the other goes, and
between them they divide the world.^ Just such personification
as this furnishes the staple of endless nature-metaphor in our
own European poetry. In the springtime it comes to be said that
May has conquered Winter, his gate is open, he has sent letters
before him to tell the fruit that he is coming, his tent is pitched,
he brings the woods their summer clothing. Thus, when Night
is personified, we see how it comes to pass that Day is her son,
and how each in a heavenly chariot drives round the world.
To minds in this mythologic stage, the Curse becomes a per-
sonal being, hovering in space till it can light upon its victim ;
Time and Nature arise as real entities; Fate and Fortune be-
come personal arbiters of our lives. But at last, as the change
of meaning goes on, thoughts that once had a more real sense
fade into mere poetic forms of speech. We have but to com-
pare the effect of ancient and modem personification on our own
minds, to understand something of what has happened in the
interval. Milton may be consistent, classical, majestic, when
he tells how Sin and Death sat within the gates of hell, and how
they built their bridge of length prodigious across the deep abyss
to earth. Yet such descriptions leave but scant sense of meaning
on modem minds, and we are apt to say, as we might of some
counterfeit bronze from Naples, "For a sham antique how cleverly
it is done." Entering into the mind of the old Norseman, we
guess how much morn of meaning than the cleverest modern
imitation can carry, lay in his pictures of Hel, the death-goddess,
stern and giim and livid, dwelling in her high and strong-
barred house, and keeping in her nine worlds the souls of the
departed ; Hunger is her dish. Famine is her knife. Care is
her bed, and Misery her curtain. When such old material

1 Le Jouno in ' Rcl. des Jes. dans la Nouvelle France,' 1634, p. 13.

V f

MYIHOLOGY.

273

descriptions arc transferred to modern times, in spite of all the
accuracy of reproduction their spirit is quite changed. The
story of the monk who displayed among his relics the garments
of St. Faith is to us only a jest ; and we call it quaint humour
when Charles Lamb, falling old and infirm, once wrote to a
friend, " My bed-fellows are Cough and Cramp ; we sleep three
in a bed." Perhaps we need not appreciate the drollery any
the less for seeing in it at once a consequence and a record of a
past intellectual life.

The distinction of grammatical gender is a process intimately
connected with the formation of myths. Grammatical gender
is of two kinds. What may be called sexual gender is familiar
to all classically-educated Englishmen, though their mother-
tongue has mostly lost its traces. Thus in Latin not only are
such words as homo and femlna classed naturally as mas-
culine and feminine, but such words as pes and gladius are
made masculine, and higa and navia feminine, and the same
distinction is actually drawn between such abstractions as
honos and Jides. That sexless objects and ideas should thus
be classed as male and female, in spite of a new gender — the
neuter or " neither " gender — having been defined, seems in part
explained by considering this latter to have been of later forma-
tion and the original Indo-European genders to have been
only masculine and feminine, as is actually the case in Hebrew.
Though the practice of attributing sex to objects that have
none is not easy to explain in detail, yet there seems nothing
mysterious in its principles, to judge from one at least of its
main ideas, which is still quite intelligible. Language makes
an admirably appropriate distinction between strong and weak,
stern and gentle, rough and delicate, when it contrasts them
as male and female. It is possible to understand even such
fancies as those which Pietro della Valle describes among the
mediseval Persians, distinguishing between male and female,
that is to say, practically between robust and tender, even in
such things as food and cloth, air and water, and prescribing
their proper use accordingly .^ And no phrase could be more

' Km

Pietro della Vallo,

•Viaggi,'

letter xvi.

VOL. I.

274

MYTHOLOGY.

plain and forcible than that of the Dayaks of Borneo, who say
of a heavy downpour of rain, " njatn arai, 'sa ! " — " a he rain,
this ! " ' Difficult as it may be to decide how far objects and
thoughts were classed in language as male and female because
they were personified, and how far thej were personified
because they were classed as male and female, it is evident at
any rate that these two processes fit together and promote
each other.*^

Moreover, in studying languages which lie beyond the range
of common European scholarship, it is found that the theory
of grammatical gender must be extended into a wider field.
The Dravidian languages of South India make the interesting
distinction between a " high-caste or major gender," which in-
cludes rational beings, i. e., deities and men, and a " caste-less
or minor gender," which includes irrational objects, whether
living animals or lifeless things.' The distinction between an
animate and an inanimate gender appears with especial import
in a family of North American Indian languages, the Algonquin.
Here not only do all animals belong to the animate gender, but
also the sun, moon, and stars, thunder and lightning, as being
personified creatures. The animate gender, moreover, includes
not only trees and fruits, but certain exceptional lifeless objects
which appear to owe this distinction to their special sanctity
or . power ; suoh are the stone which serves as the altar of sacri-
fice to the manitus, the bow, the eagle's feather, the kettle,
tobacco-pipe, drum, and wampum. Where the whole animal
is animute, parts of its body considered separately may be in-
animate — hand or foot, beak or wing. Yet even here, for
special reasons, special objects are treated as of animate gen-
der; such are the eagle's talons, the bear's claws, the beaver's
castor, the man's nails, and other objects for which there is
claimed a peculiar or mystic power.* If to any one it seems

* *Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii. p. xxvii.

* See remarks on the tendency of sex-denoting language to produce mj-th in
Africa, in W. H. Bleek, 'Reynard the Fox in S. Afr.' p. xx. ; ' Origin of Lang.'
p. xxiii.

' Caldwell, 'Comp. Gr. of Dravidian Langs' 7. 172.

* Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part ii. p. 36 ij. For other cases see especially

^ho say
he rain,
3ts and
because
sonified
ident at
promote

le range
theory
er field,
eresting
lich in-
iste-less
whether
fveen an
1 import
jonquin.
ider, but
IS being
includes
5 objects
sanctity
3f sacri-
kettle,
animal
be in-
ere, for
ite gen-
jeaver's
there is
seems

> f

MYTUOLOUV.

27o

surprising that savage thought should be steeped through and
through in mythology, let him consider the meaning that is
involved in a grammar of nature like this. Such a language
is the very reflexion of a mythic world.

There is yet another way in which language and mythology
can act and re-act on one another. Even we, with our blunted
mythologic sense, cannot give an individual name to a lifeless
object, such as a boat or a weapon, without in the very act
imagining for it something of a personal nature. Among nations
whose mythic conceptions have remained in full vigour, this
action may be yet more vivid. Perhaps very low savages may
not be apt to name their implements or their canoes as though
they were live people, but races a few stages above them show
the habit in perfection. Among the Zulus we hear of names
for clubs, Igumgehle or Glutton, U-nothlola-mazibuko or Hc-
who-watches-the-fords ; among names for assagais a.e Imbubuzi
or Groan-causer, U-silo-si-lambile or Hungry Leopard, and the
weapon being also used as an implement, a certain assagai
bears the peaceful name of U-simbela-banta-bami, He-digs-up-
for-my-children.^ A similar custom prevailed among the New
Zealanders. The traditions of their ancestral migrations tell
how Ngahue made from his jasper stone those two sharp axes
whose names were Tutauru and Hauhau-te-rangi ; how with
these axes were shaped the canoes Arawa and Tainui ; how the
two stone anchors of Te Arawa were called Toka-parore or Wry-
stone, and Tu-te-rangi-haruru or Like-to-the-roaring-sky. These
legends do not break off in a remote past, but carry on a chro-
nicle Avhich reaches into modern times. It is only lately, the
Maoris say, that the famous axe Tutauru was lo:-t, and as for
the ear-ornament named Kaukau-matua, which was made from
a chip of the same stone, they declare that it was not lost till
1846, when its owner, Te Heuheu, perished in a landslip.^ Up
from this savage level the same childlike habit of giving per-

mj-th ill
of Lang.'

especially

Pott in Erach and Gruber's ' Allg. Encyclop.' art. ' Gesclilecht ;' also D. Forbes,
♦Persian Or.' p. 26 ; Latham, ' Descr. Eth.' vol. ii. p. 60.

^ Callaway, ' Kelig. of Amazulu,' p. 166.

2 Grey, ' Polyn. Myth.' pp. 132, etc., 211; Shorthinti, 'Traditions of N. Z.'
p. 15.

T 2

v1i

l^i,

« •

A '•

19 '

!«-■

p ■

270

MYTHOLOGY.

sonal names to lifeless objects may be traced, as we read of
Tlior's hammer, Miblnir, whom the giants know as he comes
flying through the air, or of Arthur's brand, Hxcalibur, caught
by the arm clothed in white samite when Sir Bedivere flung
him back into the lake, or of the Cid's mighty sword Tizona,
the Firebrand, whom ho vowed to bury in his own breast were
she overcome through cowardice of his.

The teachings of a childlike primaeval philosophy ascribing
personal life to nature at large, and the early tyranny of speech
over the human mind, have thus been two great and, perhaps,
greatest agents in mythologic development. Other causes, too,
have been at work, which will be noticed in connexion Avitli
special legendary groups, and a full list, could it be drawn up,
might include as contributories many other intellectual actions.
It must be thoroughly understood, however, that svich investi-
gation of the processes of myth-formation demands a lively sense
of the state of men's mindi in the mythologic period. When
the Russians in Siberia listened to the talk of the rude Kirgis,
they stood amazed at the barbarians' ceaseless flow of poetic
improvisation, and exclaimed, " Whatever these peopl^ see gives
birth to fancies!" Just so the civilized European may contrast
his own stiff orderly prosaic thought with the wild shifting
poetry and legend of the old myth-maker, and may say of him
that everything he saw gave birth to fancy. Wanting the
power of transporting himself into this imaginative atmosphere,
the student occupied with the analysis of the mythic world,
may fail so pitiably in conceiving its depth and intensity of
meaning as to convert it into stupid fiction. Those can see
more justly who have the poet's gift of throwing their minds
back into the world's older life, like the actor who for a mo-
ment can forget himself and become wdiat he pretends to be.
Wordsworth, that "modern ancient," as Max Miiller has so well
called him, could write of Storm and Winter, or of the naked
Sun climbing the sky, as though be were some Vedic poet at
the head-spring of llie A.ryan race, " seeijig " with his mind's
eye a mythic hymn to Agni or Varuna. Fully to understand

/ an old-world myth needs not evideLiCe and argument alone, but

' deep poetic feeling.

-MYTllOLUCiY,

:i77

Yet such of us as share but very little in this rare jjift, may
make shift to let evidence in some measure stand in its stead. In
the poetic stage of thought we may see that ideal conceptions
once shaped m the mind must have assumed some such reality
to grown-up men and women as they still do to children.
I have never forgotten the vividness witii which, as a child, I
fancied I might look through a great telescope, and see the con-
stellations stand round the sky, red, green, and yellow, as I had
just been shown them on the celestial globe. The intensity of
mythic fancy may be brought even more nearly home to our
minds by comparing it with the morbid subjectivity of illness.
Among the lower races, and high above their level, morbid
ecstasy brought on by meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement,
or di'-pase, is a state' common and held in honour among the
very classes specially concerned with mythic idealism, and
under its influence the barriers between sensation and imagi-
nation break utterly away. A North American Indian pro-
phetess once related the story of her tirst vision : At her
solitary fast at womanhood she fell into an ecstasy, and at the
call of the spirits she went up to heaven by the path that leads
to the opening of the sky ; there she heard a voice, and,
standing still, saw the figure of a man standing near the path,
whose head was surrounded by a brilliant halo, and his breast
was covered with squares ; he said, " Look at me, my name is
Oshauwauegeeghick, the Bright Blue Sky ! " Recording her
experience afterwards in the rude picture-writing of her race,
she painted this glorious spirit with the hieroglyphic horas cf
power and the brilliant halo round his head. Wo know enough
of the Indian pictographs, to guess how a fancy with these
familiar details of the picture-language came into the poor ex-
cited creature's mind ; but how fiir is our cold analysis from her
utter belief that in vision she had really seen this ])right being,
this Red Indian Zeus.^ Far from being an isolated case, this is
scarcely more than a fair example of the lule ihat any idea
shaped and made current by mythic fancy, may at once acquire
all the definiteness of fact. Even if to the first shaper it be no

^ Pchoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' luut i. p. 391 and pL 55.

27S

MVTHOLO(JY.

I';

i:y

•5 1
f

-B I?

i j ,

more than lively imagination, yet, when it comes to bo em-
bodied in words and to pass from house to house, those "who
hear it become capable of the most intense belief that it may
be seen in material shape, that it has been seen, that they
themselves have seen it. The South African who believes in a
god with a crooked leg sees him with a crooked leg in dreams and
visions.^ In the time of Tacitus it was said, with a more poetic
imagination, that in the far north of Scandinavia men might see
the very forms of the gods and the rays streaming from their
heads." In the 6th century the famed Nile-god might still bo
seen, in gigantic human form, rising waist-high from the waters
of his river.'' Want of originality indeed seems one of the most
remarkable features in the visions of mystics. The stiff Ma-
donnas with their crowns and petticoats still transfer themselves
from the pictures on cottage walls to appear in spiritual per-
sonality to peasant visionaries, as the saints who stood in vision
before ecstatic monks of old were to be known by their conven-
tional pictorial attributes. When the devil with horns, hoofs, and
tail had once become a fixed image in the popular mind, of
coiirse men saw him in this conventional shape. So real had St.
Anthony's satyr-demon become to men's opinion, that there is a
grave 13th century account of the mummy of such a devil being
exhibited at Alexandria ; and it is not fifteen years back from the
present time that there was a story current at Teignmouth of a
devil walking up the walls of the hoi ses, and leaving his fiendish
backward footprints in the snow. Nor is it vision alone that is
concerned with the delusive realization of the ideal; there is,
as it were, a conspiracy of all the senses to give it proof. To
take a striking instance : there is an irritating herpetic disease
which gradually encircles the body as with a girdle, whence its
English name of the shiiKjles (Latin, cingulum). By an ima-
gination not difficult to understand, this disease is attributed to
a sort of coiling snake ; and I remember a case in Cornwall
where a girl's family waited in great fear to see if the creature
would stretch all round her, the belief being that if the snake's

* Livingstone, * S. Afr.' p, 124.

^ Tftc. Gcrinania, 45.

2 M'lury, 'Mngie, etc' p. 175.

MYTHOLOGY.

279

head and tail met, the patient would die. But a yet fuller
meaning of this fantastic notion is l)rought out in an account
by Dr. Bastian of a physician who suffered in a painful disease,
as though a snake were twined round him, and in whoso mind
tliis idea reached such reality tliat in moments of excessive pain
ho could see the snake and touch its rough scales with his
hand.

Tho relation of morbid imagination to myth is peculiarly
well instanced in the history of a widespread belief, extending
through savage, barbaric, classic, oriental, and media) val life,
and surviving to this day in European superstition. This belief,
which may be conveniently called tlio Doctrine of Werewolves,
is that certain men, by natural gift or magic art, can turn for a
time into ravening wild beasts. The origin of this idea is by
no means sufficiently exp.ained. What we are especially con-
cerned with is the fact of its prevalence in the world. It may
be noticed, however, that such a notion is quite consistent with
the animistic theory that a man's soul may go out of his body
and enter that of a beast or bird, id also with the opinion
that men may be transformed into anim.ds 1)oth these ideas hav-
ing an important place in the belief < ikind, from savagery
onward. The doctrine of werewolves i.- ibstantially that of
a temporary metempsychosis or metamorphosis. Now it really
occurs that, in various forms of mental disease, patients prowl
shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and even fancy them-
selves transformed into wild beasts. Belief in the possibility
of such transformation may have been the very suggesting
cause which led the patient to imagine it taking place in his
own person. Eat at any rate such insane delusions do occur,
and physicians apply to them the mythologic term of lycan-
thropy. The belief in men being werewolves, man-tigers, and
the like, may thus have the strong support of the very wit-
nesses who believe themselves to be such creatures. Through
the mass of ethnographic details relating to this subject, there
is manifest a remarkable uniformity of principle.

Among the non-Aryan indigenes of India, the tribes of the
Garrow Hills describe as " transformation into a tiger " a kind
of temporary madness, apparently of the nature of delirium

280

MYTHOLOOY.

ii ,'

"' '.

I'-

tremens, in which the putient walks Hko a tiger, shuiiiiiiig
society.^ The Ivhomls of Orissa say that Hoino among tiiom
have tlio art of " mloopji," and by tiio aid of n ^^od become
" ndeepa " tigers for the j)urposo of kiUing enemies, one of
tho man's four soids going out to animate the bestial form.
Natural tigers, say the Khonds, kill game to benefit men, who
find it half-devoured and share it, whereas man-killing tigers
arc either incarnations of tho wrathful Earth-goddess, or they
are transformed men.- Thus the notion of man-tigers serves,
as similar notions d(j elsewhere, to account for tho fact that
certain individual v/ild beasts show a peculiar hostility to man.
Among the Ho of Singbhoom it is related, as an example of
similar belief, that a man named Mora saw his wife killed by
a tiger, and followed the beast till it led him to the house
of a man named Poosa. Telling Pocsa's relatives of what had
occurred, they replied that they were aware that he had tho
power of becoming a tiger, and accordingly they brought him
out bound, and Mora doliberately killed him. Inquisition being
made by the authorities, the family deposed, in explanation of
their belief, that Poosa had one night devoured an entire goat,
i'oariug like a tiger whilst eating it, and that on another
occasion he told his friends he had a longing to eat a parti-
cular bullock, and that very night that very bullock was killed
and dc /oured by a tiger.'^ South-eastern Asia is not less
familiar with the idea of sorcerers turning into man-tigers and
wandering after prey ; thus the Jakuns of the Malay Penin-
sula believe that when a man becomes a tiger to revenge
himself on his enemies, the transformation happens just before
he springs, and has been seen to take place.*

How vividly the imagination of an excited tribe, once inocu-
lated with a belief like this, can realize it into an event, is
graphically told by Dobrizhoffer among the Abipones of South
America. When a sorcerer, to get the better of an enemy,

' Eliot in 'As. Ees.' vol. iii. p. 32.
2 Macplicrson, ' India,' pp. 92, 99, 108.

8 Dalton, *Kols of Cliota-Nagporo ' in ' Tr. Etn. See' vol. vi. p. 32.
* J. Cameron, * Malayan India,' ji. 393 ; Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 119,
vol. iii. pp. 2G1, 273 ; 'As. lies.' vol. vi. p. 173.

MYTllOLOUY.

281

' k*i

threatens to change himself into a tigov .'riiil to.ir his trihcs-
men to pieces, no sooner floes he begin to roar, than all the
neighbours fly to a distance ; but still they hear the feigned
sounds. "Alas!" they cry, " his whole botly is beginning to
1)0 covered with tiger-spots ! " " Look, his nails are growing,"
the fear-struck women exclaim, although they cannot si-e the
rogue, who is concealed within his tent, but distracted fear
presents things to their eyes which have no real cxistetico.
" You daily kill tigers in ihe plain without dread," said the
missionary ; " why then should you weakly fear a false ima-
ginary tiger in the town?" "You fathers don't understand
those matters," they reply with a smile. " Wo never fear, but
kill tigers in the plain, because we can see them. Artificial
tigers we do fear, because they can neither bo seen nor killed
by us." ^ Africa is especially rich in myths of man-lions, man-
leopards, man-hyamas. In the Kanuri language of Bornu, there
is grammatically formed from the word " bultu," a hya-na, the
verb " bultungin," meaning " I transform myself into a hya-na ;"
and the natives maintain that there is a town called Kabutiloa,
where every man possesses this faculty.- The tribe of Budas in
Abyssinia, iron- workers and potters, are believed to combine
with these civilized avocations the gift of the evil eye and the
power of turning into hyaenas, wherefore they are excluded from
society and from the Christian sacrament. In the ' Life of
Nathaniel Pearce,' the testimony of one Mr. Coffin is printed,
who almost saw the transformation happen on a young Buda,
his servant, the young man vanishing on an open plain, when a
large hya3na was seen running off. Coffin says, moreover, that
the Budas wear a peculiar gold ear-ring, and this he has fre-
quently seen in the ears of hyajnas &hot in traps, or speared by
himself and others ; the Budas are dreaded for their magical
arts, and the editor of the book suggests that they put ear-rings
in hyaenas' ears to encourage a profitable superstition.^ In
Ashango-land, M. Du Chaillu tells the following suggestive

^ Dobrizlioffer, ' Abiponcs,' vol. ii. p. 77. Sec J. G. iMiiller, *Amer. Unelij^.'
p. 63; Martius, * Ethn. Amer.' p. 652; Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' p. 229; riedni-
liita, ' Nnevo Eeyno de Granada,' part i. lib. i. c. 3.

- Koelle, 'Afr. Lit. and Kanuri Vocab.' p. 275.

^ 'Life and Adventures of Nathaniel Pearco ' (1810— 9), cd. by J. J. Halls,

11)

Ill

282

MYTHOLOGY,

story. He was informed that a leopard had killed two men,
and many palavei*s were held to settle the aftair ; bnt this was
no ordinary leopard, but a transformed man. Two of Akon-
dogo's men had disappeared, and only their blood was found, so
a gi'eat doctor was sent for, who said it was Akondogo's own
nephew and heir Akosho. The lad was sent for, and when
asked bv the chief, answered, that it was truly he who had
comniittcil the murders, thnt he coukl not help it, for ho had
turned into a leopard, and his heart longed for blood, and after
each ileed he had turned into a man again. Akondogo loved
the boy so much that he would liot believe his confession, till
Akosho took him to a pi;vce in the forest, where lay the mangled
bodies of the two mer;, whom he had really murdered under tho
influence of this inorbid imagination. He was slowly burnt to
death, all the people staaJing by,^

Brief mention is enough for tho comparatively well-known
European representatives of these beliefs. What wiiih the
mere continuance of old tradition, and what with cases of
patients under delusion believing themselves to have suffered
transformation, of which a number are on record, the European
series of details from ancient to modern ages is very complete.
Of the classic accounts, one of the most remarkable is Petronius
Arbiter's story of the transformation of a " versipellis " or
" turnskin ;" this contains the episode of the wolf being wounded
and the man who wore its shape found with a similar wound,
an idea not sufficiently proved to belong originally to the lower
races, but which becomes V; familiar feature in European stories
of werewolves and Avitch.s. In Augustine's time magicians
were persuading their dupes that by means of herbs they could
turn them to wolves, and tho use of salve for this purpose is
mentioned at a comparatively modern date. Old Scandinavian
sagas have their werewolf warriors, and " shape-changeis "
(hamrammr) raging in fits of furious madness. Tho Danes still

r: ^1

Loiulon, 1S31, vil, i. p. 286 ; also 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. vi. p. 2SS ; Wuitz, vol. ii.
1>. f)(i4.

' Du Chaillu, • Ashnii/^o-luml,' p. .'52. For other Afriran details, see "NVailz,
vol. ii. p. 343 ; J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' pp. 222, 2G3, 398 ; JUirton, ' E. Afr.*
p. 57; Liviiigstono, 'S. Afr.' pp. 615, 642 ; iMngyar, 'S. Air.' p. 136.

MYTHOLOGY.

283

two men,
this was
of Akoii-
found, so
go's oNvn
ik1 when
who had
■ ho had
md after
go loved
'Sion, till
mangled
ider the
)urnt to

I-known
iih the
jases of
suffered
iropean
mplete.
tronius
is" or
ounded
wound,
! lower
stories
gicians
could
)oso is
[lamn
igeis '*
3s still

vol. ii.
h Afr.'

know a man who is a werewolf by his eyebrows meeting, and
thus resembling a butterU- the familiar typo of the soul, ready
to Hy off and enter sonu other body. In the last year of the
Swedish war with Russia, the people of Kalmar said the wolves
which overran the land were transformed Sweilish prisoners.
From Herodotus' legend of the Neuri who turned every year
for a few days to wolves, we follow the idea on Slavonic ground
to where Livonian sorcerers bathe yearly in a river and turn for
twelve days to wolves; and widespread Slavonic superstition
still declares that the wolves that sometimes in bitter winters
dare to attack men, are then\selves " wilkolak," men bewitched
into wolf's shajie. The niodorn Greeks, instead of the classic
XvKdvdpoaiTOi, adopt the Slavonic term )3/)v»coAaKas (Bulgarian
" vrkolak ") ; it is a man who falls into a cataleptic state, wiiilo
his soul enters a wolf and jjoes ravening for blood. Modern
Germany, especially in the north, still keeps up the stories of
wolf-girdles, and in December you must not " talk of the wolf"
by name, lest the werewolves tear you. Our English word
"werewolf," that is "man-wolf" (the "verevulf" of Cnut's
Law.s). still reminds us of the old belief in our own country, and
if it has had for centuries but little place in English folklore,
this has been not so much for lack of superstition, as of wolves.
To instance the survival of the idea, transferred to another
animal, in the more modern witeh-persecution, the following
Scotch story may serve. Certain witches at Thurso for a long
time tormented an honest fellow under the usual form of cats,
till one night he put them to flight with his broadsword, and
cut off the leg of one less nimble than the rest ; taking it up, to
his amazement ho found it to be a woman's leg, and next
morning he discovered tlui old hag its owner with but one leg
left. In France the creature has what is historically the same
name as our "werewolf;" viz. in early forms "gerulphus,"
" garoul," and now pleonastically " loup-garou." The parliament
of Franche-Comtt^ mr.de a law in I.IT.'} to expel the werewolves ;
in loOS the werewolf of Angei*s gave evidence of his hands and
feet turning to wolf's claws ; in 1G03, in the case of Jean
Grenicr, the judge declared lycanthropy to bo an insane delu-
sion, not a crime. In l()o8, a French satirical description of a

■•i "

1';

284

MYTHOLOGY.

:-! i

magician could still give the following perfect account of the
witch-werewolf: "I teach the witches to take the form of
Avolves and eat children, and when any one has cut off one of
their legs (which proves to be a man's arm) I lorsake them
when they are discovered, and leave them in the power of
justice." Even in our own day the idea has by no means died
out of the French peasant's mind. Not ten years ago in
France, Mr. Baring-Gould found it impossible to get a guide
after dark across a wild place haunted by a loup-garou, an
incident which led him afterwards to write his " Book of Were-
wolves," a monograph of this remarkable combination of myth
and madness.^

If we judged the myths of early ages by the unaided power
of our modern fancy, we might be left unable to account for
their immense effect on the life and belief of mankind. But by
the study of such evidence as this, it becomes possible to realize
a usual state of the imagination among ancient and savage
peoples, intermediate between the conditions of a healthy
prosf.io modern citizen and of a raving fanatic or a patient in a
fever-ward. A poet of our own day has still much in common
with the minds of uncultured tribes in the mythologic stage
of thought. The rude man's imaginations may be narrow,
crude, and repulsive, while the poet's more conscious fictions
may be highly wrought into shapes of fresh artistic beauty, but
both share in that sense of the reality of ideas, which fortu-
nately or unfortunately modern education has proved so power-
ful to destroy. The change of meaning of a single word will
tell the history of this transition, ranging from primasval to
modern thought. From first to last, the processes of phantasy
have been at work ; but where the savage could see phantasms,
the civilized man has come to amuse himself with /awcies.

^ For collections of European evidence, see Baring-Gould, ' Book of Werewolves ;'
Grimm, ' D. il.' p. 1047 ; Dascnt, ' Norse Tales,' Introd. p. cxix. ; Eastian,
* Mensch,' vol. ii. pp. 32, 566 ; Brand, * Pop. Ant.' vol. i. p. 312, vol. iii. p. 32 ;
Lecky, 'Hist, of Rationalism,' vol. 1. p. 82. Particular details in Petron.
Arbiter, Satir. Ixil. ; Virgil. Eolog. viii. 97 ; Plin. viii. 34 ; Herodot. iv. 105 ;
Mela ii. 1 ; Augustin. De Civ. Dei, xviii. 17 ; Ilanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' pp. 286,
320 ; "NVuttke, ' Dcnitsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 113.

\ I

CHAPTER IX.

^lYTROLOGY—coniinued.

stagfe

Nature-myths, their origin, canon of interpretation, preservation of original
sense and significant names — Nature-myths of upper savage races compared
with related forms among barbaric and civilized nations— Heaven and Earth
as Universal Parents — Sun and Moon : Eclipse and Sunset, as Hero or Maiilen
swallowed by Monster ; Rising of Sun from Se.v and Descent to Under-world ;
Jaws of Night and Death, Symplegades ; Eye of Heaven, eye of Odin and
the Graite — Sun and !Moon as mythic civilizers — Moon, her inconstancy,
periodical death and revival— Stars, their generation — Constellations, their
place in Slythology and Astronomy — "Wind and Tem'pest— Thunder — Earth-
quake.

From laying down general principles of myth-development,
we may now proceed to survey the class of Nature-myths, such
especially as seem to have their earliest source and truest
meaning among the lower races of mankind.

Science, investigating nature, discusses its facts and announces
its laws in technical language which is clear and accurate to
trained students, but which falls only as a mystic jargon on the
ears of barbarians, or peasants, or children. It is to the com-
prehension of just these simple unschooled minds that the lan-
guage of poetic myth is spoken, so far at least as it is true
poetry, and not its quaint affected imitation. The poet con-
templates the same natural world as the man of science, but in
his so different craft strives to render difficult thought easy by
making it visible and tangible, above all by referring the being
and movement of the world to such personal life as his hearers
feel within themselves, and thus working out in far-stretched
fancy the maxim that " Man is the measure of all things." Lot
but the key be recovered to this mythic dialect, and its complex
and shifting terms will translate themselves into reality, and

2SG

MYTHOLOGY.

;]

show how far legend, in its sympathetic fictions of war, love,
crime, adventure, fate, is only telling the perennial story of the
world's daily life. The myths shaped out of those endkss
analogies between man and nature which are the soul of all
poetry, into those half-human stories still so full to us of
unfading life and beauty, are the masterpieces of an art belong-
ing rather to the past than to the present. The growth of myth
has been checked by science, it is dying of weights and measures,
of proportions and specimens — it is not only dying, but half
dead, and students are anatomising it. In this world one must
do what one can, and if the moderns cannot feel myth as their
forefathers did, at least they can analyse it. There is a kind of
intellectual frontier within which he must be who will sym-
pathise with myth, while he must be without who will inves-
tigate it, and it is on '• fortune that we live near this frontier-
line, and can go in and out. European scholars can still in a
measure understand the belief of Greeks or Aztecs or Maoris in
their native myths, and at the same time can compare and
interpret them without the scruples of men to whom such tales
are history, and even sacred history. Moreover, were the
whole human race at a uniform level of culture with ourselves,
it would be hard to bring our minds to conceive of tribes in the
mental state to which the early growth of nature-myth belongs,
even as it is now hard to picture to ourselves a condition of
mankind lower than any that has been actually found. But the
various grades of existing civilization preserve the landmarks of
a long course of history, and there survive by millions savages
and barbarians whose minds still produce, in rude archaic forais,
man's early mythic representations of nature.

Those who read for the first time the dissertations of the
modern school of mythologists, and sometimes even those who
have been familiar with them for years, are prone to ask, with
half-incredulous appreciation of the beauty and simplicity of
their interpretations, can they be really true ? Can so great a part
of the legendary lore of classic, barbarian, and mediaeval Europe
be taken up with the everlasting depiction of Sun and Sky,
Dawn and Gloaming, Day and Night, Summer and Winter, Cloud
and Tempest ; can so many of the personages of tradition, for all

MYTHOLOGY.

287

their heroic human aspect, have their real origin iu anthropo-
morphic myths of nature ? Without any attempt to discuss
these opinions at large, it will be seen that inspection of nature-
mythology from the present point of view tells in their favour,
at least as to principle. The general theory that such direct
conceptions of nature as are so naively and even baldly uttered
in the Veda, are among the primary sources of myth, is enforced
by evidence gained elsewhere in the world. Especially the
traditions of savage races display mythic conceptions of the
outer world, primitive like those of the ancient Aryans, agreeing
with them in their general character, and often remarkably
corresponding in their very episodes. At the same time it must be
clearly understood that the truth of such a general principle is
no warrant for all the particular interpretations which mytho-
logists claim to base upon it, for of these in fact many are wildly
speculative, and many hopelessly unsound. Nature-myth
demands indeed a recognition of its vast importance in the
legendary lore of mankind, but only so far as its" claim is backed
by strong and legitimate evidence.

The close and deep analogies between the life of nature and
the life of man have been for ages dwelt upon by poets and
philosophers, who in simile or in argument have told of light
and darkness, of calm and tempest, of birth, growth, change,
decay, dissolution, renewal. But no one-sided interpretation
can be permitted to absorb into a single theory such endless
many-sided correspondences as these. Rash inferences which
on the strength of mere resemblance derive episodes of myth
from episodes of nature must be regarded with utter mistrust,
for the student who has no more stringent criterion than this
for his myths of sun and sky and dawn, will find them wliere-
ever it pleases him to seek them. It may be judged by simple
trial what such a method may lead to ; no legend, no allegory,
no nursery rhyme, is safe from the hermeneutics of a thorough-
going mythologic theorist. Should he, for instance, demand as
his property the nursery "Song of Sixpence," his claim Avould
be easily established : obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds
are the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is
the underlying earth covered with the overarching sky; how

288

MYTHOLOGY.

) - -!

yiri.

>;.

true a touch of nature it is that wlicn the pie is opened, that ii^.
when day breaks, the birds begin to sing ; the King is the Sun,
and his counting out his money is pouring out the sunshine, the
golden shower of Danae ; the Queen is the Moon, and her trans-
parent honey the moonlight ; the Maid is the " rosy-fingered"
Dawn who rises before the Sun her master, and hang3 out the
clouds, his clothes, across the sky ; the particular blackbird who
so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour
of sunrise. The time-honoured rhyme really wants but one
thing to prove it a Sun-myth, tliat one thing being a proof by
some argument more valid than analogy. Or if historical cha-
racters be selected with any discretion, it is easy to point out
the solir episodes embodied in their lives. See Cortes landing
in Mcixico, and seeming to the Aztecs their very Sun-priest
Quetzalcoatl, come ])ack from the East to renew his reign of
light and glory ; mark him deserting the wife of his youth, even
as the Sun leaves the Dawn, and again in later life abandoning
Marina for a new bride ; watch his sun- 'ike career of brilliant
conquest, checkered Avitli intervals of storm, and declining to a
death clouded with sorrow and disgrace. The life of Julius
Caesar would fit as plausibly into a scheme of solar myth ; his
splendid course as in each new land he came, and saw, and
conquered ; his desertion of Cleopatra ; his ordinance of the solar
year for men ; his death at the hand of Brutus, like Sifrit's death
at the hand of Hagen in the Nibelungen Lied; his falling
pierced with many bleeding wounds, and shrouding himself in
his cloak to die in darkness. Of Caesar, better than of Cassius
his slayer, it might have been said in the language of sun-
myth :

" . . . O setting sun,
As in thy rod rays thou dost sink to-night,
So in his red blood Cassius' day is set ;
The sun of Eome is set I "

Thus, in interpreting heroic legend as based on nature-myth,
circumstantial analogy must be very cautiously appealed to, and
at any rate there is need of evidence more cogent than vague
likenesses between human and cosmic life. Now such evidence
is forthcoming at its strongest in a crowd of myths, whose open

1, that is;.
the Sun,
hine, tho
er trans-
ingered"

out the
bird who
the hour
but one
proof by
ical cha-
oint out

landing
in -priest

reign of
ith, even
indoning
brilliant
ling to a
f Julius
yth ; his
laAv, and
the solar
t's death
falling
nisolf in

Cassius

of sun-

I'e-myth,
I to, and
n vague
jvidence
)se open

MYTHOLOGY.

289

meaning it would be wanton incredulity to doubt, so little do
they disguise, in name or sense, the familiar aspects of nature
which they figure as scenes of personal life. Even where the
tellers of legend may have altered or forgotten its earlier mythic
meaning, there are often sufficient grounds for an attempt to
restore it. In spite of change and corruption, myths are slow to
lose all consciousness of their first origin ; as for instance, classi-
cal literature retained enough of meaning in the great Greek
sun-myth, to compel even Lerapriere of the Classical Dictionary
to admit that Apollo or Phcebus " is often confounded with the
sun." For another instance, the Greeks had still present to their
thoughts the meaning of Argos Panoptes, lo's hundred-eyed, all-
seeing guard who was slain by Hermes and changed into the
peacock, for Macrobius writes as recognizing in him the star-
eyed heaven itself ; ^ even as the Aryan Indra, the Sky, is the
"thousand-eyed" {sahasrdJcsha, sahasranayaiia). In modem
times the thought is found surviving or reviving in a strange
region of language : whoever it was that brought argo as a word
for "heaven" into the Lingua Furbesca or Robbers' Jargon of
Italy,^ must have been thinking of the starry sky watching him
like Argus with his hundred eyes. The etymology of names,
moreover, is at once the guide and safeguard of the mythologist.
The obvious meaning of words did much to preserve vestiges of
plain sense in classic legend, in spite of all the efforts of the
commentators. There was no disputing the obvious facts that
Helios was the Sun, and Selene the Moon ; and as for Jove, all
the nonsense of pseudo-history could not quite do away the idea
that he was really Heaven, for language continued to declare
this in such expressions as " sub Jove frigido." The explanation
of the rape of Persephone, as a nature-myth of summer and
winter, does not depend alone on analogy of incident, but has
the very names to prove its reality, Zens, Helios, Demeter —
Heaven, and Sun, and Mother Earth. Lastly, in stories of mythic
beingj who are the presiding genii of star or mountain, tree
or river, or heroes and heroines actually metamorphosed into such

1 Macrob. 'Saturn.' i. 19, 12. See Eurip. Phoen. 1116, etc. and Scliol.';
Welcker, vol. i. p. 336 ; Max Miilier, 'Lectures,' vol. ii. p. 380.
" Francisque-Michel, 'Argot,' p. 425.
VOL. I. t;

'i!
U

*.;,

4! ?

:: I

290

MYTHOLOGY.

objects, personification of nature is still plainly evident ; the
poet may still as of old see Atlas bear the heavens on his
mighty shouldois, and Alpheus in impetuous course pursue the
maiden Arethusa.

In a study of the nature-myths of the world, it is hardly
practicable to start from the conceptions of the very lowest
human triles, and to work upwards from thence to fictions of
higher growth ; partly because our information is but meagic as
to the beliefs of these shy and seldom quite intelligible folk,
and partly because the legends they possess have not reached
that artistic and systematic shape which they attain to among
races next higher in the scale. It therefore answers better to
take as a foundation the mythology of the North American
Indians, the South Sea islander's, and other high savage tribes
who best represent in modern times the early mythologic
period of human history. The survey may be fitly comi need
by a singularly perfect and purposeful cosmic myth fronj New
Zealand.

It seems long ago and often to have come iato men's mindj.^,
that the overarching Heaven and the all-producing Earth are, an
it were, a Father and a Mother of the world, whose otfspring
are the living creatures, men, and beasts, and plants. Nowhere,
in the telling of this oft-told tale, is present nature veiled in
more transparent personification, nowhere is he world's fami-
liar daily life repeated with more childlike simplicity as a story
of lorg past ages, than in the legend of * The Children of
Heaven and Earth,' written down by Sir George Grey among
the Maoris not twenty years ago. From Rangi, the Heaven,
and Papa, the Earth, it is said, sprang all men and things, but
sky and earth clave together, and darkness rested upon them
and the beings they had begotten, till at la.st their children
took counsel whether they should rend apart their parents, or
slay them. Then Tane-mahuta, father of forests, said to his
five great brethren, " It is better to rend them .apart, and to let
the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our feet.
Let the sky become as a strangcf to us, but the earth remain
close to us as our nursing mother." So Rongo-ma-tane, god
and father of the cultivated food of man, arose and strove to

MYTHOLOGY.

iiOl

snt ; the
i on ins
rsuo the

s hardly
f lowest
jtions of
leagrc as
bie folk,
reached
) amoii<^
)etter to
.mericau
je tribes
^thologic
11 need
on) New

s mindy,
li are, as
offspring
fowhere,
eiled in
's fanii-

a story
dren of
»• among
Heaven,
ngs, but
)n them
children
fents, or
1 to his
id to let
Dur feet.

remain
me, god
;rove to

«epr-ite the heaven and the eartli ; he struggled, but in vain,
and vain too were the efforts of Taugaroa, father of fish and
reptiles, and of Haumia-tikitiki, fatlior of wild-giowing food,
and of Tu-niatauenga, god and father of fierce men. Tiien slow
uprises Tane-mahuta, god and father of forests, and wrestles
with his parents, striving to part them with his liands and
arms. '' Lo, he pauses; his head is now firmly planted on iiis
mother the earth, his feet he raises up and rests against his
father the skies, .^) st»'ains his back and limbs with mighty
effort. Now are rent apart Rangi and Papn, and with cries
and groans of woe they shriek aloud .... But Tane-mahuta
pauses not ; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth ;
far, far above him he thrusts up the sky." But Tawhiri-ma-tea,
father of winds and storms, had never consented that his mother
should be torn from her lord, and now there arose in his breast
a fierce desire to war against his brethren. So the Storm-nod
rose and followed his father to the realms above, hurrying to
the sheltered hollows of the boundless .skies, to hide and cling
and nestle there. Then came forth his progeny, the mighty
winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds, dense, dark, fiery, wildly
drifting, wildly bursting ; and in their midst their father rushed
upon his foe. Tane-mahuta and his giant forests stood uncon-
scious and unsuspecting when the raging hurricane burst on
them, snapping the mighty trees across, leaving trunks and
branches rent and torn upon the ground for the insect and the
grub to prey on. Then the father of storms swooped down to
lash the waters into billows whose summits rose like cliffs, till
Tangaroa, god of ocean and father of all that dwell therein,
fled affrighted through his seas. His children, Ika-tcre, the
father of fish, and Tu-te-wehiwehi, the fxther of reptiles, sought
where they might escape for safety ; the father of fish cried,
" Ho, ho, let us all escape to the sea," but the father of reptiles
shouted in answer, " Nay, nay, let us rather fly inland," and so
these creatures separated, for while the fish fled into the sea,
the reptiles sought safety in the forests and scrubs. But the
sea-god Tangaroa, furious that his children the reptiles should
have deserted him, has ever since waged war on his brother

Tane who gave them shelter in his woods. Taiic attacks him

u 2

292

MYTIIOLUUV,

in return, supplying the offspring of his brother Tu-nmtauenga,
father of fierce men, witli canoo'* and spi.'ars and fish-hooks
made from his trees, and w .cs woven from his fibrous

plants, that they may destroy withal the fish, the Sea-god's
children ; and the Sea-god turns in wrath upon the Forest-god,
overwhelms his canoes with the surges of the sea, sweeps with
floods his trees and houses into the boundless ocean. Next the
god of storms pushed on to attack his brothers the gods and
progenitors of the tilled food and the wild, but Papa, the Earth,
caught them up and hid them, and so safely were these her
children concealed by their mother, that the Storm-god sought
for them in vain. So lie fell upon the last of his brothers, the
father of fierce men, but him he could not even shake, though
he put forth all his strength. What cared Tu-matauenga for
his brother's wrath ? He it was who had planned the destruction
of their parents, and had shown himself brave and fierce in war ;
his brethren had yielded before the tremendous onset of the
Storm-god and his progeny ; the Forest-god and his offspring had
been broken and tom in pieces ; the Sea-god and his children
had fled to the depths of the ocean or the recesses of the shore ;
the gods of food had been safe in hiding ; but Man still stood
erect and unshaken upon the bosom of his mother Earth, and
at last the hearts of the Heaven and the Storm became tran-
quil, and their passion was assuaged.

But now Tu-matauenga, father of fierce men, took thought
how he might be avenged upon his brethren who had left him
unaided to stand against the god of storms. He twisted nooses
of the leaves of the whanake tree, and the birds and beasts,
children of Tane the Forest-god, fell before him; he netted nets
from the flax-plant, and dragged ashore the fish, the children of
Tangaroa the Sea-god ; he found in their hiding-place under-
ground the children of Kongo-ma-tane, the sweet potato and
all cultivated food, and the children of Haumia-tikitiki, the
fern-root and all wild-growing food, he dug them up and let
them wither in the sun. Yet, though he overcame his four
brothers, and they became his food, over the fifth he could not
prevail, and Tawhiri-ma-tea, the Storm-god, still ever attacks
him in tempest and hurricane, striving to destroy him both by

MYTirOLOdV.

293

sea and land. It was the lmvstin<( forth of tlie Storm-god s
wrath against his brethren that caused the dry land to disappear
beneath the waters : the beings of ancient days who tiius sub-
merged the land were Terrible-rain, Long-continucd-rain,
Fierce-hailstorms ; and their progeny were Mist, and Heavy-
dew, and Light-dew, and thus but little of the dry land was
left standing above the sea. Then clear light increased in the
world, and the beings who had been hidden between Rangi and
Papa before they were parted, now multiplied upon the earth.
" Up to this time the vast Heaven has still ever remained
separated from his spijuse the Earth. Yet their mutual love
still continues ; the soft warm sighs of her loving bosom still
over rise up to him, ascending from the woody mountains and
valleys, and men call these mists ; and the vast Heaven, as he
mourns through the long nights his separation from his beloved,
drops frequent tears upon her bosom, and men seeing these
term them dew-drops." ^

The rending asunder of heaven and earth is a far-spread
Polynesian legend, well known in the island groups that lie
away to the north-east.^ Its elaboration, however, into the
myth here sketched out was probably native New Zealand
work. Nor need it be supposed that the particular form in
which the English governor took it down among the Maori
priests and tale-tellers, is of ancient date. The story carries in
itself evidence of an antiquity of character whicli does not
necessarily belong to mere lapse of centuries. Just as the
adzes of polished jade and the clonks of tied flax-fibre, which
thase New Zealanders were using but yesterday, are older in
their place in history than the bronze battle-axes and linen
mummy-cloths of ancient Egypt, so the Maori poet's shaping of
nature into nature-myth belongs to a stage of intellectual
histoiy which was passing away in Greece five-and-rtwenty cen-

* Sir G. Grey, 'Polynesian Mytholof^y,' p. i. etc., translated from the original
]\raori text pnblished by him imdcr the title ' Ko iiga Maliinga a nga Tupuna
Maori, etc' London 18.54. Compare with Shortland, ' Trads. of N. Z.'p. 55,
etc. ; R. Taylor, ' New Zealand,' p. 114, etc.

• Schirren, 'Waudersagen der Neuseeliinder, etc' p. 42; Ellis, ' Polyn. Res.'
vol. i. p. 116 ; Tyerman and Bennet, p. 526 ; Turner, ' Polynesia,' p. 245.

Tit

-Mi

' r

21)4

MYTlI()LO(iV.

turics ngo. Tlio mytli-niiikcr's fancy of Heaven and Earth as
fatlier and mother of all thinj^s naturally Hnggcsted tlie legend
that they in old days ahode t(»«^ether, but have since been torn
asunder. In China the sanu? idea of the universal parentage is
accompanied by a similar U-gend of the separation. Whether
or not there is historieal connexion here between cho mytho-
logy of Polynesia and China, 1 will not guess, but certainly the
ancient Chinese legend of the si'paration of heaven ami earth
in the primaeval days of Puang-Ku seeuis to have taken the
very shape of the Polynesian myth : " Some say a person
called Puang-Ku opened or separatetl the heavens and the
earth, they previously being pressed down close together." ^
As to the mythic details in the whole story of ' The Children
of Heaven and Earth,' there is scarcely a thought that is not
still transparent, scarcely even a word that has lost its meaning
to us. The broken and stit!ened traditions which our fathers
fancied relics of ancient history are, as has been truly said,
records of a past which was never present ; but the simple
nature-mytl., as we find it in its actual growth, or reconstruct
it from its legendary remnants, may be rather called the record
of a present which is never past. The battle of the storm
against the forest and the ocean is still waged before our
eyes ; we still look upon the victory of man over the creatures
of the land and sea ; the food-plants still hide in their mother
earth, and the fish and reptiles find shelter in the ocean and
the thicket ; but the mighty forest-trees stand with their roots
firm planted in the ground, while with their branches they
push up and up against the sky. And if we have learnt the
secret of man's thought in the childhood of his race, we may
still realize with the savage the personal being of the ancestral
Heaven and Earth.

The idea of the Earth as a mother is more simple and
obvious, and no doubt for that reason more common in the
world, than the idea of the Heaven as a father. Among the
native races of America the Earth-mother is one of the great

' Premare in PautliiLT, 'Livrcs Sacres cle rOricnt,' p. 19; Doolittlc, 'Cliiuese^'
vol. ii. p. 396.

MYTHOLOfJV.

2!).')

porsonagos of mytliology. Tlu' Ponivi.'ins worsliippoil lior as
Mania-Ppnclia or " Mothcr-Ejutli ;" tlu' CMrihM, when tlicro
was an earth([uako, saiil it was their mother Eartli dancing,
and signifying to tliera to dance and make merry likewise,
whicli accordingly they did. Among the North-American In-
dians tiie Comanchos call on th(5 Earth as tiieir mother, and
the (ireat Spirit as their father. A story told by Gregg shows
a soniewiiat diftV-i-ent thought of mythic parentage. General
Harrison once called the Shawnee chief Tecnmseh for a talk: —
" Come here, Tecumsch, and sit by your father ' " i»o said.
" You my father ! " replied the chief, with a stern air. " No !
yonder sun (pointing towards it) is my father, and the earth
is my mother, so I will rest on lier hosom," and ho sat down on
the ground. Like this \ as the Aztec fancy, as it seems from
this passage in a Mexican prayer to Tezcatlipoca, offered in
time of war : " Bo pleased, our Lord, that the nobles who
shall die in the war be peacefully and joyously received by tho
Sun and the Earth, who arc the loving father and mother of
all." ^ In the mythology of Finns, Lapps, and Esths, Eartli-
Mother is a divinely honoured personage." - Through the
mythology of our own country the same thought may bo traced,
from the days when the Anglo-Saxon called upon the Earth,
" Hal wes thu folde, fira modor," " Hail thou Earth, men's
mother," to the time when media3val Englishmen made a riddle
of her, asking " Who is Adam's mother ? " and poetry con-
tinued what mythology was letting fall, when Milton's arch-
angel promised Adam a life to last

**.... till, liko ripo fruit, tliou drop
Into thy mother's lap."^

Among the Aryan race, indeed, there stands, wide and firm, tho
double myth of the "two great parents," as tho Rig- Veda

1 J. G. Miillcr, ' Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 108, 110, 117, 221, 369, 494, 620 ; Kivcro
andTsohiuli, 'Ant. of Peru,' p. 161 ; Grcg<,', •Juiinml of a Santa Fo Trader,'
vol. ii. p. 237; Saliagun, * Retorica, etc., Jlexieana,' cap. 3, iii Kingsborough,
* Ant. of Mexico,' vol. v.

2 Costren, ' Finn. Myth.' p. 86.

a Grimm, ' D. M.' p. xi.K. 229-33, 608 ; Halliwell, ' Pop. Khymcs,' p. 153 ;
Milton, ' Paradise Lost,' ix. 273, xi. 535 ; sue Lucretius, i. 250.

ili^i

i It

J;l ■;

H '

29G

MYTHOLOGY.

calls them. They are Dyaushpita)', Zeus itaTrip, Jupiter, the
"Heaven-father,' and Prthivt r)idtar, the "Earth-mother;" and
their relation is still kept in mind in the ordinance of Brahman
marriage according to the Yajur-Veda, where the bridegroom
says to the bride, " I am the sky, thou art the earth, come let
us marry." When Greek poets called Ouranos and Gaia, or
Zeus and Demeter, husband and wife, what they meant was the
union of Heaven and Earth ; and when Plato said that the
earth brought forth men, but God was their shaper, the same
old mythic thought must have been present to his mind,^ It
re-appears in ancient Scythia ; ^ and again in China, where
Heaven and Earth are called in the Shu- King "Father and
Mother of all things." Chinese philosophy naturally worked
this idea into the scheme of the two great principles of nature,
the Yn and Yang, male and female, heavenly and earthly, and
from this disposition of nature they drew a practical moral
lesson : Heaven, said the philosophers of the Sung dynasty,
made man, and Earth made woman, and therefore woman is to
be subject to man as Earth to Heaven.^

Entering next upon the world-wide myths of Sun, Moon, and
Stars, the regularity and consistency of human imagination may
be first displayed in the beliefs connected with eclipses. It is
well known that these phenomena, to us now crucial instances
of the exactness of natural laws, are, throughout the lower
stages of civilization, the very embodiment of miraculous dis-
aster. Among the native races of America it is possible to
select a typical series of myths describing and explaining,
according to the rules of savage philosophy, these portents of
dismay. The Chiquitos of the southern continent thought the
Moc n was hunted across the sky by huge dogs, who caught and
tore her till her light was reddened and quenched by the blood
flowing from her wounds, and then the Indians, raising a fright-
ful howl and lamentation, would shoot across into the sky to

' Max Miiller, 'Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 459 ; Pictet, ' Origines Indo-Europ.'
part ii. pp. 663-7 ; Colcbrookc, ' Essays,' vol. i. p. 220.

2 Herod, iv. 59.

^ Platli, ' Religion der alten Cliiiiesen,' part. i. p. 37 ; Davis, ' Chinese,'
vol. ii. p. 64 ; Legge, 'Confucius,' p. 106 ; Bastiau, 'iMenscli,' vol. ii. p. 437 ;
vol. iii. p. 302.

■^?*.>

MYTHOLOGY.

297

drive the monsters off. The Caribs, tliinking that the demon
Maboya, hater of all light, was seeking to devour the Sun and
Moon, would dance and howl in concert all night long to scare
him away. The Peruvians, imagining such an evil spirit in the
shape of a monstrous beast, raised the like frightful din when
the Moon was eclipsed, shouting, sounding musical instruments,
and beating the dogs to join their howls to the hideous chorus.
Nor are such ideas extinct in our own days. In the Tupi
language, the proper description of a solar eclipse is " oarasu
jaguarete vii," that is, " Jaguar has eaten Sun ; " and the full
meaning of this phrase is displayed by tribes who still shout
and let fly burning arrows to drivi3 the devouring beast from his
prey. On the northern continent, again, some savages believed
in a great sun-swallowing dog, while others would shoot up
arrows to defend their luminaries against the enemies they
fancied attacking them. By the side of these prevalent notions
there occur, however, various others ; thus the Caribs could
imagine the eclipsed Moon hungry, sick, or dying ; the Peru-
vians could fancy the Sun angry and hiding his face, and the
sick Moon likely to fall in total darkness, and bring on the end
of the world ; the Hurons thought the Moon sick, and explained
their customary charivari of shouting men and howling dogs as
performed to recover her from her complaint. Passing on from
these most primitive conceptions, it appears that natives of
both South and North America fell upon philosophic myths
somewhat nearer the real facts of the case, insomuch as they
admit that Sun and Moon cause eclipses of one another. In
Cumana, men thought that the wedded Sun and Moon quar-
relled, and that one of them was wounded ; and the Ojibwas
endeavoured by tumultuous noise to distract the two from such
a conflict. The course of progressive science went far beyond
this among the Aztecs, who, as part of their remarkable astro-
nomical knowledge, seem to have had an idea of the real cause
of eclipses, but wlio kept up a relic of the old belief by con-
tinuing to speak in mythologic phrase of the Sun and Moon,
being epten.^ Elsewhere in the lower culture, there prevailed

'*<

" '}*!id

f il

J. G. Muller, 'Amcr. Urrelig,' pp. .^3, 219, 231, 255, 395, 420; Martins,

298

MYTHOLOGY.

similar mythic conceptions. In the South Sea Islands, some sup-
posed the Sun and Moon to be swallowed by an offended deity,
•whom they therefore induced, by liberal offerings, to eject the
himinaries from his stomach.^ In Sumatra we have the com-
paratively scientific notion that an eclipse has to do with the
action of Sun and Moon on one another, and, accordingly, they
make a loud noise with sounding instruments to prevent the
one from devouring the other.^ So, in Africa, there may be
found both the rudest theory of the Eclipse-monster, and the
more advanced conception that a solar eclipse is " the Moon
catching the Sun." ^

It is no cause for wonder that an aspect of the heavens sa
awful as an eclipse should in times of astronomic ignorance
have filled men's minds with terror of a coming destruction of
the world. It may help us still to realize this thought if we
consider how, as Calmet pointed out many years ago, the
prophet Joel adopted the plainest words of description of the
solar and lunar eclipse, " The sun shall be turned into darkness,
and the moon into blood ; " nor could the thought of any
catastrophe of nature have brought his hearers face to face
with a more lurid and awful picture. But to our minds, now
that the eclipse has long passed from the realm of mythology
into the realm of science, such words can carry but a feeble
glimmer of their early meaning. The ancient doctrine of the
eclipse has not indeed lost its whole interest. To trace it up-
ward from its early savage stages to the period when astronomy
claimed it, and to follow the course of the ensuing conflict over
it between theology and science — ended among ourselves but
still being sluggishly fought out among less cultured nations —

til

'Etlmog. Amer.' vol i. pp. 329, 467, 585; vol. ii. p. 109; Soutlicy, 'Brazil,'
vol. i. p. 352 ; vol. ii. p. 371 ; Dc la BorJe, ' Caraibes,' p. 525 ; Dolmzlioffer,
'Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 84; Smith and Lowe, 'Journey from Lima to Para,'
p. 230 ; Schooleraft, 'Indian Tribes of N. A.' jiart i. p. 271 ; Charlevoix, 'Nouv.
P'rance,' vol. vi. p. 149 ; f'ranz, 'Gronland,' p. 295 ; Bastian, 'Mcnsch,' vol. iii.
p. 191 ; 'Early Hist, of Mankind,' p. 163.

> Ellis, 'Poiyn. Pes.' voh i. p. 331.

- Marsden, 'Sumatra,' p. 194.

3 Grant in ' Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. p. 90; Koelle, ' Kamiri Proverbs, etc.*
p. 207.

'-■ iJji '^ )*

MYTHOLOGY.

29!)

savens so

this is to lay open a chai:)ter of the history of opinion, from
which the student who looks forward as well as back may learn
grave lessons.

There is reasort to consider most or all civilized nations to
have started from the myth of the Eclipse-monster in forms as
savage as those of the New World. It prevails still among the
great Asiatic nations. The Hindus say that the demon Rahu
insinuated himself among the gods, and obtained a portion of
the amrita, the drink of immortality; Vishnu smote off the
now immortal head, vvhicli still pursues the Sun and Moon
whose watchful gaze detected his presence in the divine as-
sembly. Another version of the myth is that there are two
demons, Rahu and Ketu, who devour Sun and Moon respec-
tively, and who are described in conformity with the pheno-
mena of eclipses, Rahu being black, and Ketu red ; the usual
charivari is raised by the populace to drive them off, though
indeed, as their bodies have been cut off at the neck, their
prey must of natural course slip oat as soon as swallowed. Or
Rahu and Ketu are the head and body of the dissevered demon,
by which conception the Eclipse-monster is most ingeniously
adapted to advanced astronomy, the head and tail being iden-
tified with the ascending and descending node. The following
remarks on the eclipse-controversy, made by Mr. Samuel Davis
eighty years ago in the Asiatick Researches, are still full of
interest. " It is evident, from what has been explained, that
the Pundits, learned in the Jyotish shastrii, hav-^ truer notions
of the form of the earth and the economy of the universe than
are ascribed to the Hindoos in general : and that the}'' must
reject the ridiculous belief of the common Brahmiins, that
eclipses are occasioned by the intervention of the monster
Rahoo, with many other particulars equally unscientific and
absurd. But as this belief is founded on explicit and positive
declarations contained in the vediis and pooraniis, the divine
authority of which writings no devout Hindoo can dispute, the
astronomers have some of them cautiously explained such pas-
sages in those writings as disagree with the principles of their
own science : and where reconciliation was impossible, have
apologized, as well as they could, for propositions necessarily

t^ti

300

MYTHOLOGY.

'■if .

established in the practice of it, by observing, that certain
things, as stated in other shastriis, might have been so formerly,
and may be so still ; but for astronomical purposes, astronomical
rules must be followed."^ It is not easy to give a more salient
example than this of the consequence of investing philosophy
with the mantle of religion, and allowing priests and scribes to
convert the childlike science of an early age into the sacred
dogma of a late one. Asiatic peoples under Buddhist influence
show the eclipse-myth in its different stages. The rude Mon-
gols make a clamour of rough music to drive the attacking
Aracho (Rahu) from Sun or Moon. A Buddhist version men-
tioned by Dr. Bastian describes Indra the Heaven-god pursuing
Rahu with his thunderbolt, and ripping open his belly, so that
although he can swallow the heavenly bodies, he lets them slip
out again.^ The more civilized nations of South-East Asia,
accepting the eclipse-demons Rahu and Ketu, were not quite
staggered in their belief by the foreigners' power of foretelling
eclipses, nor even by learning roughly to do the same them-
selves. The Chinese have official announcement of an eclipse
duly made beforehand, and then proceed to encounter the
ominous monster, when he comes, with gongs and bells and the
regularly appointed prayers. Travellers of a century or two ago
relate curious details of such combined belief in the dragon and
the almanac, culminating in an ingenious argument to accoimt
for the accuracy of the Europeans' predictions. These clever
people, the Siamese said, know the monster's mealtimes, and
car tell how hungry he will be, that is, how large an eclipse will
be reciuired to satisfy him.^

In Europe popular mythology kept up ideas, either of «, fight
of sun or moon with celestial enemies, or of the moon's fainting
or sickness ; and especially remnants of such archaic belief

' H. H. "Wilson, ' Vislnuipurana,' pp. 78, 140 ; Skr. Die. s. v. nllm ; Sir W.
Jones in 'As. IJcs.' vol. ii. p. 290 ; S. Davis, ibid., p. 258 ; Pictet, ' Origines
ludo-Europ.' part. ii. p. 584; Eoberts, 'Oriental Illustrations,' p. 7; Hardy,
' Manual of Buddhism.'

- Castren, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 63; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 344.

•■• Klemni, ' C. G.' vol. vi. p. 449 ; Doolittle, ' Cliinese,' vol. i. p. 308 ; Turpin,
liichard, and Borri in Pinkerton, vol. iv. pp. 579, 725, 815; IJastian, 'Oestl.
Asien,' vol. ii. p. 109 ; vol. iii. p. 242. See Eiseiunenger, ' Eutdecktes Judenthum,'
vol. i. p. 398 (Talinudic myth).

at certain
formerly,
ronomical
)re salient
ihilosophy
scribes to
he sacred
influence
tide Mon-
attacking
don men-
pursuing
y, so that
them slip
last Asia,
not quite
"oretelling
me them-
m eclipse
anter the
s and the
r two ago
agon and
3 account
se clever
mes, and
lipse will

)f cu fight

fainting

ic belief

u ; Sir W.

' Origines

7 ; Hardy,

344.

8 ; Tiirpin,

in, 'Oestl.

ideutliiun,'

MYTHOLOGY.

301

are manifested in the tumultuous clamour raised in defence or
encouragement of the afflicted luminary. The Romans flung
firebrands into the air, and blew trumpets, and clanged brazen
pots and pans, " laboranti succurrere lunse." Tacitus, relating
the story of the conspirators against Tiberius, tells how their
plans were frustrated by the moon suddenly languishing in a
clear sky (luna claro repente coelo visa languescere) ; in vain by
clang of brass and blast of trumpet they strove to drive away
the darkness, for clouds came up and covered all, and the
plotters saw, lamenting, that the gods turned away from their
crime.^ In the period of the conversion of Europe, Christian
teachers began to attack the ^ pagan superstition, and to urge
that men should no longer clamour and cry " vince luna ! " to
aid the moon in her sore danger ; and at last there came a time
when the picture of the sun or moon in the dragon's mouth
became a mere old-fashioned symbol to represent eclipses
in the calendar, and the saying, "Dieu garde la lune des
loups " j)assed into a mocking proverb against fear of remote
danger. Yet the ceremonial charivari is mentioned in our
own country in the seventeenth century : " The Irish or Welsh
during eclipses run about beating kettles and pans, thinking
their clamour and vexations available to the assistance of the
higher orbes." In 1654, Nuremberg went wild with terror of
an impending solar eclipse ; the markets ceased, the churches
were crowded with penitents, and a record of the event re-
mains in the printed thanksgiving which was issued (Danck-
gebeth nach vergaiigener hochstbedrohlich und hochschadlicher
Sonnenfinsternuss), which gives thanks to the Almighty for
granting to poor terrified sinners the grace of covering the sky
with clouds, and sparing them the sight of the awful sign in
heaven. In our own time, a writer on French folklore was sur-
prised during a lunar eclipse to hear sighs and exclamations,
" Mon Dieu, qu'elle est souflrante ! " and found on inquiry that
the poor moon was believed to be the prey of some invisible
monster seeking to devour her.^ No doubt such late survivals

* Plutarch. Do Facie in Orbe Lunaj ; Juvenal, Sat. vi. 441 ; Plin. ii. 9 ; Tacit.
Aunal. i, 28.
- Grimm, 'D. M.,' 668-78, 224 ; Hanuscli, 'Slav. lilytli.'p. 268 ; Brand, 'Pop.

:*'

M-:

302

MYTHOLOGY.

I 1'

have belonged in great measure to the ignorant crowd, for the
educated classes of the West have never suffered in its ex-
treme the fatal Chinese union of scepticism and superstition.
Yet if it is our mood to bewail the slowness with which know-
ledge penetrates the mass of mankind, there stand dismal
proofs before us here. The eclipse remained an omen of fear
almost up to our own century, and could rout a horror-stricken
army, and fill Europe with dismay, a thousand years after Pliny
had written in memorable words his eulogy of the astronomers ;
those great men, he said, and above ordinary mortals, who, by
discovering the laws of the heavenly bodies, had freed the miser-
able mind of men from terror at the portents of eclipses.

Day is daily swallowed up by Night, to be set free again at
dawn, and from time to time suffers a like but shorter durance
in the maw of the Eclipse and the Storm-cloud ; Summer is over-
come and i^risoned by dark Winter, to be again set free. It is a
plausible opinion that such scenes from the great nature-drama
of the conflict of light and darkness are, generally speaking,
the simple facts, wliich in many lands and ages have been told
in mythic shape, as legends of a Hero or Maiden devoured by a
Monster, and hacked out again or disgorged. The myths just
displayed show with absolute distinctness, that myth can de-
scribe eclipse as the devouring and setting free of the personal
sun and moon by a monster. The following Maori legend will
supply proof as positive that the episode of the Sun's or the
Day's death in sunset may be dramatized into a tale of a per-
sonal solar hero plunging into the body of the personal Night.

Maui, the New Zealand cosmic hero, at the end of his glo-
rious career came back to his father's country, and was told
that here, perhaps, he might be overcome, for here dwelt his
mighty ancestress, Hine-nui-te-po, Great-Woman-Night, whom
" you may see flashing, and as it were opening and shutting
there, where the horizon meets the sky ; what you see yotider
shining so brightly-ied, are her eyes, and her teeth are as sharp

Ant.' vol. iii. p. 152; Horst, 'Zaiiber-lUbiiothek,' vol. iv. p. 350; D. Monnier,
' Traditions populaircs comparees,' p. 138 ; see iligne, ' Die. des Superstitions,'
art. 'Eclipse.;' Cornelius A<,'rippa, ' De Occulta riiilosopliia,* ii. c. 45, gives a
picture of the lunar celipsc-dragon.

JMYTHOLOGY.

30.3

\vd, for the
in its ex-
uperstition.
hich know-
mcl dismal
nen of fear
•or-stricken
after Pliny
tronomers ;
,1s, who, by
i the miser-
ises.

ie again at
ter durance
iier is over-
ree. It is a
iture-drama
y speaking,
e been told
soured by a
myths just
'th can de-
le personal
egend will
jn's or the
B of a per-
al Night,
of his glo-
was told
dwelt his
^ht, whom
shutting
see yonder
■e as sharp

D. Monnier,
uperstitions,'
3. 45, gives a

and hard as pieces of volcanic glass ; her body is like that of
a man ; and as for the pupils of her eyes, they are jasper ;
and her hair is like the tangles of long sea-weed, and her
mouth is like that of a barracouta." Maui boasted of his
former exploits, and said, " Let us fearlessly seek whether men
are to die or live for ever ; " but his father called to mind an
€vil omen, that when he was baptizing Maui he had left out
part of the fitting prayers, and therefore he knew that his son
must perish. Yet he said, " O, my last-born, and the strength
of my old age, ... be bold, go and visit your great ances-
tress, who flashes so fiercely there where the edge of the
horizon meets the sky." Then the birds came to Maui to be
his companions in the enterprise, and it was evening when
they went with him, and they came to the dwelling of Hine-
nui-te-po, and found her fast asleep. Maui charged the birds not
to laugh when they saw him creep into the old chieftainess, but
when he had got altogether inside her, and Avas coming out of her
mouth, then they might laugh long and loud. So Maui stripped
off his clothes, and the skin on his hips, tatooed by the chisel of
Uetonga, looked mottled and beautiful, like a mackerel's, as he
orept in. The birds kept silence, but when he was in up to
the waist, the little tiwakawaka could hold its laughter in no
longer, and burst out loud with its merry note ; then Maui's
ancestress aw^oke, closed on him and caught him tight, and he
was killed. Thus died Maui, and thus death came into the world,
for Hine-nui-te-po is the goddess both of night and death, and
had Maui entered into her body and passed safely through
her, men would have died no more. The New Zealandcrs
hold that the Sun descends at night into his cavern, bathes in
the Wai Ora Tane, the Water of Life, and returns at dawn
from the under-world ; hence we may interpret their thought
that if Man could likewise descend into Hades and return,
his race would be immortal.^ It is seldom that solar charac-

^ Grey, 'Polyn. Myth.' p. 54—58 ; in his editions of tlic Maori text, Ko iiga
Mahinga, pp. 28-30, Ko nga Mateatea, pp. xlviii-ix. I have to thank Sir G.
Grey for a more explicit and mythologically more consistent translation of the
stoiy of Maui's entrance into the womb of Hine-nui-te-po and her crushing him
to death betweeu her thighs, than is given in his English version. Compare
11. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 132 ; Scliirren, ' "Wandcrsagen der Ncuscel.' p. 33 ;

:iiW

.ym^i

It.

1 >

III

^t m

304

MYTHOLOGY.

teristics are more distinctly marked in tlio several details of a
myth than they arc here. Hine-niii-tc-po, Great-Woman-
Night, who dwells on thj hoiizon, is the New Zealand Hades,
or goddess of Hades. The birds are to keep silence as the
Sim enters the Night, but may sing when he comes fc.rth from
her mouth, the mouth of Hades. Lastly, I have been able to
use an unexceptionable means of testing whether the legend is
or is not a real sun-myth. If it is so, then the tiwalcaiuaka
(also called the lyhvahawaha) ought to be a bird that sings at
sunset. I have had inquiry made in New Zealand to ascertain
whether this is the case, and have received a perfect confir-
mation of the interpretation of the legend of the death of
Maui, as being a nature-myth of the setting sun ; the reply is
that the name " describes the cry of the bird, which is only
heard at sunset."

In the list of myths of engulphing monsters, there are some
which seem to display, with a clearness almost approaching
this, an origin suggested by the familiar spectacle of Day and
Night, or Light and Darkness. The simple story of the Day
may well be told in the Karen tale of Ta Ywa, who was born a
tiny child, and went to the Sun to make him grow ; the Sun
tried in vain to destroy him by rain and heat, and then blew
him up large till his head touched the sky ; then he went forth
and travelled from his home far over the earth ; and among the
adventures which befel him was this — a snake swallowed him,
but they ripped the creature up, and Ta Ywa came back to life,^
like the Sun from the ripped up serpent-demon in the Buddhist
eclipse-myth. In North American Indian mythology, a prin-
cipal personage is Manabozho, an Algonquin hero or deity
whose solar character is well brought into view in an Ottawa
myth which tells us that Manabozho (whom it calls Na-na-bou-
jou) is the elder brother of Ning-gah-be-ar-nong Manito,
the Spirit of the West, god of the country of the dead in
the region of the setting sun. Manabozho's solar nature is
again revealed in the story of his driving the West, his father,

Shortland, ' Trads. of N. Z.' p. 63 (a curious version of the myth of Maui's death);
see also pp. 171, ISO, and Baker in 'Tr. Eth. Sec' vol. i. p. 63.
^ Mason, Karens in ' Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1865, dart ii. p. 178, etc.

tails of a
■Woman-
d Hades,
;e as the
irth from
n able to
legend is
ulcavjaka
sings at
ascertain
et confir-
death of
) reply is
1 is only

are some
)roaching
Day and
the Day
,s born a
the Sun
len blew
ent forth
Qong the

ed him,
c to life,^
3uddhist

a prin-
or deity

Ottawa
-na-bou-

Manito,

dead in
lature is
father,

li's death);

etc.

MYTHOLOGY.

305

across mountain and lake to the brink of the worKl, thoucrh
he cannot kill him. Tliis sun-hero Manabozho, when ho
angled for the King of Fishes, was swallowed, canoe and all ;
then he smote the monster's heart with his war-club till he
would fain have cast him up into the lake again, but the
hero set his canoe fast across the fish's throat inside, and
finished slaying him ; when the dead monster drifted ashore,
the gulls pecked an opening for Manabozho to come out. This
is a story familiar to English readers from its introduction
into the poem of Hiawatha. In another version, the tale is told
of the Little Monedo of the Ojibwas, who also corresponds with
the New Zealand Maui in being the Sun-Catcher ; among his
various prodigies, he is swallowed by the great fish, and cut out
again by his sister.^ South Africa is a region where there pre-
vail myths which seem to tell the story of the world imprisoned
in the monster Night, and delivered by the dawning Sun. The
Basutos have their myth of the hero Litaolane ; he came to man's
stature and wisdom at his birth; all mankind save his mother and
he had been devoured by a monster ; he attacked the creature
and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all
the inhabitants of the world. The Zulus tell stories as pointedly
suggestive. A n'.other follows her children into the maw of the
great elephant, and finds forests and rivers and highlands, and
dogs and cattle, and people who had built their villages there j
a description which is simply that of the Zulu Hades. When
the Princess Untombinde was carried off by the Isikqukquma-
devu, the "bloated, squatting, bearded monster," the King
gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men,
and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior ; he slew the monster,
and there came out cattle, and horses, and men, and last of all
the princess herself. The stories of these monsters being cut
open imitate, in graphic savage fashion, the cries of the impri-
soned creatures as they come back from darkness into day-
light. " There came out first a fowl, it said, ' Kukuluku ! I see
the world ! ' For, for a long time it had been without seeing

1 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' partiii. p. 318 ; 'Algic Ees.'vol. i. p. 135, etc.,
144 ; John Tanner, •Narrative,' p. 357 ; see Brinton, 'Myths of New World,'
p. 166. For legends of Suu-Catcher, see 'Early History of Mankind,' ch. xii.

VOL. I. X

ill H
ill 1^

i 1

4il

■h-^-

!ii

»'.s

30G

MYTIIOLOOY.

it. After the fowl there came out a man, he said ' Hau ! I at
length see the world ! ' " and so <jn with the rcst.^

The well-known modern interpretation of the myth of Perseus
and Andromeda, or of Heraklcs and Hcsione, as a description
of the Sun slayinj^ the Darkness, has its connexion with this
group of legends. It is related in a remarkable version of this
story, that when the Trojan King Laomedon had bound his
daughter Hesione to the rock, a sacrifice to Poseidon's destroy-
ing sea-monster, Herakles delivered the maiden, springing full-
armed into the fish's gaping throat, and coming forth hairless
after three days hacking v/ithin. This singular story, probably
in part of Semitic origin, condjiiies the ordinary myth of
Hesione or Andromeda with the story of Jonah's fish, for which
indeed the Greek sculpture of Andromeda's monster served as
the model in early Christian art, while Joppa was the place
where vestiges of Andromeda's chains on a rock in front of the
town were exhibited in Pliny's time, and whence the bones of
a whale were carried to Rome as relics of Andromeda's monster.
To recognize the place which the nature-myth of the Man swal-
lowed by the Monster occupies in mythology, among remote and
savage races and onward among the higher nations, affects the
argument on a point of Biblical criticism. It strengthens the
position of the critics who, seeing that the Bo-^k of Jonah con-
sists of two wonder-episodes adapted to enforce two great reli-
gious lessons, no longer suppose intention of literal narrative in
what they may fairly consider as the most elaborate parable of
the Old Testament. Had the Book of Jonah happened to be
lost in old times, and only recently recovered, it is indeed hardly
likely that any other opinion of it than this would find accept-
ance among scholars."

1 Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 347 ; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. pp. 56, 69, 84,
334 (see also tlie story p. 241 of the frog who swallowed the princess and carried
her safe home). Sec Cranz, p. 271 (Greenland angekok swallowed by bear and
■walrus and thrown up again), and Bastian, *!JIensch,' vol. ii. pp. 506-7; J. M.
Harris in 'Mem. Anthop. Soc' vol. ii. p. 31 (similar notions in Africa and New
Guinea).

- Tzetzes ap. Lycophron. Cassandra, 33. As to connexion with Joppa and
Phcenicia, see Plin. v. 14 ; ix. 4 ; Mela, i. 11 ; Strabo, xvi. 2, 28 ; ^Movers,
Phiinizier, vol. i. pp. 422-3. The expression in Jonah ii. 2, " out of the belly of
Hades" (mibten sheol, f/c KoiKias o5ou) seems a relic of original meaning. .

MYTHOLOGY.

yoT

[ail ! I at

of Perseus
escriptioii
with tliis
311 of this
jouiul his
s destroy-
iffinj; full-
h liairless
, probably

myth of
for which
served as

the place
mt of the
! bones of
s monster.
Man swal-
3mote and
iffccts the
thens the
3nah con-
p*eat reli-
irrative in
^arable of
led to be

ed hardly
id accept-

56, 69, 84,

and carried

by bear and

06-7 ; J. M.

,ca and New

Joppa and
18 ; ilovers,

the belly of
ling. .

The conception of Hadi.'S as a monster swallowing men in
iloath, Avas actually familiar to Christian thought. Thus, to
take two instances from different periods, the account t)f the
Descent into Hades in the Apocry})hal Gospel of jNicoilenms
makes Hades .speak in his propter personality, complaining that
his belly is in pain, when the Saviour is to descend and set free
the saints prisoned in it from the beginning of the world ; and
in a mediaeval representation of this deliverance, Christ is de-
picted standing before a huge fish-like monster's open jaws,
whence Adam and Eve are coming forth first of mankind.^
With even more distinctness of mythical meaning, the man-
devouring monster is introduced in the Scandinavian Eireks-
Saga. Eirek, journeying toward Paradise, came to a stone
bridge guarded by a dragon, and entering into its maw, found
that he had arrived in the world of bliss.^ But in another
wonder-tale, belonging to that legendary growth which formed
round early Christian history, no such distinguishable remnant
of nature-myth survives. St. Margaret, daughter of a priest of
Antioch, had been cast into a dungeon, and there Satan came
upon her in the form of a dragon, and swallowed her aUve :

" Maiden Morgrote tho Loked lior beside,
And S003 a loathly dragon, Out of an hirn glide :
His oyon were full griesly, His month oi)eued wide.
And ^Margrete might no whero flee There she must abide,
Maiden Margrete Stood still as any stone,
And that loathly worm, To her-ward gan gone
Took her in his foul mouth, And swallowed her flesh and bone.
Anon ho brast — Damage hath she none !
Maiden Mergreto Upon the dragon stood ;
Blyth was her harte, And joyful was her mood." ^

Stories belonging to the same group are not unknown to
European folklore. One is the story of Little Red Riding
Hood, mutilated in the English nursery version, but known
more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the

^ 'Ajioc. Gosp.' Nicodeinu.s, ch. xx. ; Mrs. Jameson, 'History of our Lord in
Art,' vol. ii. p. 258.

- Eireks Saga, 3, 4, iu ' Flateyjarbok,' vol. i., Christiania, 1859; Baring-
Gould, ' Mythij of tho Middle Ages,' p. 238.

^ Mrs. Jameson, 'Sacred and Legendary Art,' vol. ii. p. 138.

X 2

■ £ 'I

•^

SOS

Mm 10 LOGY.

lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed
with hor gnmdnujthor hy the Wolf, till they both camo out
safe and sound when the hunter cut ope-n the sleeping heast.
Any one who can fancy with Prijiee Hal, " the blessed sun him-
self a fair hot wencJi in fhiine-eoloured taffeta," and can then
imagine her swallowed up by Skoll, the Sun-devouring Wolf of
Scandinavian mythology, may be inclined to class the tale of
Little Rod llidingiiood as a myth of sunset and sunrise. There
is indeed another story in Grimm's Miirchen, partly the same as
this one, which we can hardly doubt to have a (|uaint touch of
sun-myth in it. It is called the Wolf and Seven Kids, and tells
of the wolf swallowing the kids all but the youngest of the seven,
who was hidden in the clock-case. As in Little Red Ridinghood
they cut open the wolf and fill him with stones. This tale,
which took its present shape since the invention of clocks,
looks as though the tale-teller was thinking, not of real kids
and wolf, but of days of the week swallowed by night, f»r how
should he have hit upon such a fancy as that the wolf could
not get at the youngest of the seven kids, because it was hidden
(like to-day) in the clock-case ? ^

It may be worth while to raise the question apropos of this
nursery tale, does the peasant folklore of modern Europe really
still display episodes of nature-myth, not as mere broken-down
and senseless fragments, but in iuu shape and significance ? In
answer it will be enough to quote the story of Vasilissa the
Beautiful, brought forward by Mr. W. Ralston in a recent
lecture on Russian Folklore. Vasilissa's stepmother and two
sisters, plotting against her life, send her to get a light at the
house of Baba Yaga, the witch, and her journey contains the
following history of the Day, told rn truest mythic fashion.

* J. and W, Grimm, 'Kinder und Hnusmarelicn,' vol. i, pp. 26, 140 ; vol. iii.
p. 15. For mentions of the Avolf of darkness, sco ilax Miiller, 'Lectures,'
2nd scries, p. 506, see 379; Chips, etc., vol. ii. p. 103; Hanusch, p. 192;
Edila, Gylfaf,'inning, 12 ; Grimm, ' D. M.' pp. 224, CG8. With the episode of
the stones substituted, compare the myth of Zeus and Kronos. For various
other stories belonging to the group of the Man swallowed by the Monster, see
Hardy, ' Manual of Buddhism,' p. 501 ; Lane, ' Thousand and One Nights,' vol. iii.
p. 104; Halliwcll, 'Pop. Rhymes,' p. 98; 'Nursery llhymcs,'p. 48; 'Early Hist,
of Mankind,' p. 337.

.swallowed
camo out
\)'u\i^ beast.
1 Hun liim-
. can thou
iifj Wolf of
Llio tale of
so. Thoro
lie .same as
it touch of
i, and tells
the seven,
lidinghood
This tale,
of clocks,
f real kids
^ht, or how
v;olf could
,vas hidden

pes of this
rope really
)ken-down
ance ? In
silissa the
a recent
r and two
ght at the
ntains the
c fasliion.

40 ; vol. iii.
' Lectures,*
icli, p. 192 ;
10 episode of

For various
Monster, sec
^hts,'vol. iii.

• Early Hist.

MYTlloLfHjy.

Va.silissa goes and wajidcrs, wanders in the forest. Slio goes,
nnd shc! shudders. Suddenly before lier bounds a rider, ho
himself white, and clad in white, the horse under him white,
and the trappings white. And day began to dawn. Slu^ goes
farther, wheii a second rider bounds forth, himself red, clad in
rod, and on a red horse. The sun began to rise. She goi'S on
all day, and towards evening arrives at tho witch's hou.se.
Suddenly there comes again a rider, himself black, clad in
nil black, and on a black horse ; he bounded to the gates of tho
Bdba Y'agd, and disappeared as if ho had sunk through tho
earth. Night fell. After this, when Vasilissa asks the witch,
who was the white rider, she answered, " That is my clear Day ;"
who was the red rider, "That is my red Sun;" who was tho
black rider, "That is my bl.ack Night ; they are al! my trusty
friends." Now, considering that the story of Little Red lliding-
hood belongs to the same class of ^blklore tales as this story of
Vasilissa the Beautiful, we need not be afraid to seek in the ono
for traces of the same archaic typo of nature-myth which
tho other not only keeps up, but keeps up with tho fullest
consciousne.ss of meaning.

The development of nature-myth into heroic legend seems to
have taken place among tho savage tribes of the South Sea
Islands and North America much as it took jilaco among tho
ancestors of the classic nations of the Old World. We arc not
to expect accurate consistency or proper sequence of ejiisodes in
tho heroic cycles, but to judge trom the characteristics of the
episodes themselves as to the ideas which suggested them. As
regards the less cultured races, a glance at two legendary'
cycles, one from Polynesia and the other from North America,
will serve to give an idea of the varioties of treatment of phases
of sun-myth. The New Zealand myth of Maui, mixed as it may
be with other fancies, is in its most striking features the story
of Day and Night. The story of the Sun's birth from the ocean
is thus told. There wore five brothers, all called Maui, and it
was the youngest Maui who had been thrown into the sea by
Taranga his mother, and rescued by his ancestor Tama-nui-ki-
to-Rangi, Great-Man-in-Heaven, who took him to his house, and
hung him in the roof. Then is given in fanciful personality

V^'

I!!*!"

ill :l

•- s

■1

310

MYTHOLOGY.

the tale of the vanishing of Night at dawn. One night, when
Taranga came home, she found little Maui with his hrothers,
and when she knew her last born, the child of her old age, she
took him to sleep with her, as she had been used to take the
other IVIauis his brothers, before they were groAvn up. But the
little Maui grew vexed and suspicious, when he found that every
morning his mother rose at dawn and disappeared from the
house in a moment, not to return till nightfall. So one night
he crept out and stopped every crevice in the wooden window
and the doorway, that the day might not shine into the house ;
then broke the faint light of early dawn, and then the sun rose
and mounted into the heavens, but Taranga slept on, for she
knew not it was broad day outside. At last she sprang up,
pulled out the stopping of the chinks, and fled in dismay. Then
Maui saAV her plunge into a hole in the ground and disappear,
and thus he found tlie deep cavern by which his mother went
down below the earth as each night departed. After this,
follows the episode of Maui's visit to his ancestress Muri-ranga-
whenua, at that western Land's End where Maori souls descend
into the subterranean region of the dead. She sniffs as he
comes towards her, and distends herself to devour him, but
when she has sniffed round from south by east to north, she
smells his coming by the western breeze, and so knows that he
is a descendant of hers. He asks for her wondrous jawbone,
she gives it to him, and it is his weapon in his next exploit
when he catches the sun, Tama-nui-te-Ra, Great-Man-Sun, in
the noose, and wounds him and makes him go slowly. With a
fishhook pointed with the miraculous jawbone, and smeared
with his blood for bait, Maui next performs his most famous feat
of fishing up New Zealand, still called Te-Ika-a-Maui, the fish
of Maui. To understand this, Ave must compare the various
versions of the story in these and otlier Pacific Islands, which
show that it is a general myth of the raising of dry land from
benefvth the ocean. It is said elsewhere that it Avas Maui's
grandfather, Raugi-Wenua, Heaven-Earth, Avho gave the jaw-
bone. More distinctly, it is also said that Maui had two sons,
Avhom he slew Avhen young to take their jaAvbones ; noAv these
tAVO sons must be the Morning and Evening, for Maui made thi

MYTHOLOGY.

311

iglit, when
J brothers,
i age, she
) take the
But the
that every
from tho
one night
n window
he house ;
2 sun rose
n, for sho
prang up,
,y. Then
lisappear,
:her went
fter this,
iri-ranga-
ij descend
fifs as he
him, but
orth, she
s that he
jawbone,
t exploit
i-Sun, in

With a
smeared
lous feat

the fish

various
s, whicli
ad from

Maui's
he jaw-
rvo sons,
w these
ade thi

morning and evening stars from an eye of oacli ; and it was with
the jawbone of the eklest that he drew uj^ tho land from the
deep. Thus the bringing up of the land from the ocean by tho
blood-stained jawbone of the morning seems to be a myth of the
dawn. The metaphor of the jawbone of morning, somewhat far-
fetched as it may seem, re-appears in the Rig- Veda, if Professor
Max Miiller's interpretation of Sarameya as the Dawn will hold
good in this passage : " When thou, bright Sarameya, openest th)^
teetli, O red one, spears seem to glitter on thy jaws as thou
swallowest. Sleep, sleep." ^ Another Maori legend tells how
Maui takes fire in his hands, it l)urns him, and he springs with
it into the sea ; " When he sank in the waters, the sun for the
first time set, and darkness covered the earth. When he found
that all was night, he immediately pursued the sun, and brought
him back in the morning." When Maui carried or flung the
fire into the sea, he set a volcano burning. It is told, again,
that when Maui had put out all fires on earth, his mother sent
him to get new fire from her ancestress Mahulka. The Ton-
gans, in their version of the myth, relate how the youngest Maui
discovers the cavern that leads to Bulotu, the west-land of the
dead, and how his father, another Maui, sends him to the yet
older Maui who sits by his great tire ; the two wrestle, and Maui
brings away fire for men, leaving the old earthquake-god lying-
crippled below. The legendary group thus dramatizes the birth
of the sun from the ocean and the departure of the night, the
extinction of the light at sunset and its return at dawn, and the
descent of the sun to the western Hades, the under-world of night
and death, which is incidentally identified with the region of sub-
terranean fire and earthquake. Here, indeed, the characteristics
of true nature-myth are not indistinctly marked, and Maui's
death by his ancestress the Night fitly ends his solar career.^

' Rig- Veda, vii. 54 ; Max ^Mliller, ' Lectures,' 2n(l ser. p. 473.

2 Grey, 'Polyn. Myth.' p. IC, etc., see 144. Otlicr details iu Sclurreii,
' "Wandersageu der Ncuseeliindcr,' pp. 32-7, 143-51 ; H. Taylor, 'New Zealand,'
p. 124, etc.; coinparo IIG, 141, etc., and vdlcauo-niytli, p. 248; Yate, 'New
Zealand,' p. 142; Polack, «M. and C. of New. Z.' vol. i. p. 15 ; S. S. Farmer,
' Tonga Is.' p. 134. See also Turner, ' Polynesia,' pp. 252, 527 (Samoan version).
In comparing tlic group of Maui-legends it is to be observed that New Zealand
Mahuika and Maui-Tikitiki correspond to Tongan Mafuike and Kijikiji, Samoan
Mafuie and Tiitii.

S12

MYTUOLOGY.

{

It is a sunset-story, very differently conceived, that Logins the
beautifu] North American Indian myth of the Red Swan. The
story belongs to the Algonquin race. The hunter Ojibwa had
just killed a bear and begun to skin him, when suddenly some-
thing red tinged all the air around. Reaching the shore of a
lake, the Indian saw it was a beautiful red swan, whose
plumage glittered in the sun. In vain the hunter shot his
shafts, for the bird floated unharmed and unheeding, but at last
he remembered three magic arrows at home, which, had been
his father's. The flrst and second arrow flew near and nearer,
t*he third struck the swan, and flapping its wings, it flew off
slowly toward the sinking of the sun. With full sense of the
poetic solar meaning of this episode, Longfellow has adapted it
as a sunset picture, in one of his Indian poems :

" Can it be the sun descending
O'er the level plain of water ?
Or the Eed Swan floating, flying,
Wounded by the magic arrow,
Staining all the waves with crimson,
With the crimson of its life-blood,
Pilling all the air with splendoui',
With the splendour of its plumage ? "

The story goes on to tell how the hunter speeds westward in
pursuit of the Red Swan. At lodges where he rests, they tell
him she has often passed there, but those who followed her have
never returned. She is the daughter of an old magician who
has lost his scalp, which Ojibwa succeeds in recovering for him
and puts back on his head, and the old man rises from the
earth, no longer aged and deciepit, but splendid in youthful
glory. Ojibwa departs, and the magician calls forth the beauti-
ful maiden, now not his daughter but his sister, and gives her to
his victorious friend. It was in after days, when Ojibwa had
gone home with his bride, that he travelled forth, and coining
to an opening in the earth, descended and came to the abode of
departed spirits ; there he could behold the bright western
region of the good, and the dark cloud of wickedness. But the
spirits told him that his brethren at home were quarrelling for
the possession of his wife, and at last, after long wandering, this

begins the
van. The
'jibwa had
iuly some-
ihore of a
m, whose
■ shot his
)ut at last
had been
id nearer,
it flew off
ise of the
idapted it

tward in

they tell

her have

ian who

for him

rom the

youthful

beauti-

s her to

Dwa had

coming

ibode of

western

But the

hng for

mg, this

MYTHOLOGY.

813

Red Indian Odysseus returned to his mourning constant Pene-
lope, laid the magic arrows to his bow, and stretched the wicked
suitors dead at his feet. ^ Thus savage legends from Polynesia
and America may well support the theory that Odysseus
visiting the Elysian fields, or Orpheus descending to the land
of Hades to bring back the "wide-shining" Eurydike, are but
the Sun himself descending to, and ascending from, the world
below.

Where Night and Hades take personal shape in myth, we
may expect to find conceptions like that simply shown in a
Sanskrit word for evening, "rajanimukha," i. e., "mouth of
night." Thus the Scandinavians told of Hel the death-goddess,
with mouth gaping like the mouth of Fenrir her brother the
moon-devouring wolf ; and an old German poem describes Hell's
abyss yawning from heaven to earth :

** der was der Hollen gelich
diu daz abgrunde
begenit mit ir munue
unde den himel zuo der erden." "

The sculptures on cathedrals still display for the terror of the
wicked the awful jaws of Death, the mouth of Hell wide yawn-
ing to swallow its victims. Again, where barbaric cosmology
accepts the doctrine of a firmament arching above the earth,
and of an under world whither the sun descends when he sets
and man when he dies, here the conception of gates or portals,
whether really or metaphorically meant, has its place. Such is
the great gate which the Gold Coast negro describes the Heaven
as opening in the morning for the Sun ; such were the ancient
Greek's gates of Hades, and the ancient Jew's gates of Sheol.
There are three mythic descriptions connected with these ideas
found among the Karens, the Algoncpiins, and the Aztecs, which
are deserving of special notice. The Karens of Birma, a

* Schoolcraft, ' Algic Res.' vol. ii. pp. 1-33. The three arrows recur in Mana-
bozho's slaying the Shining Manitii, vol. i. p. 153. See the curiously correspond-
ing *:hree magic arrows in Orvar Odd's Saga ; Nilsson, 'Stone Age,' p. 197. The
Kod-Swan myth of sunset is introduced in George Eliot's 'Spanish Gypsy,' p. 63;
Longfellow, ' Hiawatha,' xii.

» Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 291, 767.

If!

■i

^'',':!i

;,fii!

' .1

314

MYTHOLOGY.

Wlr'

race among ■whose special ideas are curiously mixed thoughts
borrowed from the more cultured races they have been in con-
tact with, have iDrccedcnce here for the distinctness of their
statement. They say that in tlie west there are two massive
strata of rocks which are continually opening and shutting, and
between these strata the sun descends at sunset, but how the
upper stratum is supported, no one can describe. The idea
comes well into view in the description of a Bghai festival,
where sacrificed fowls are thus addressed, — " The seven heavens,
thou ascendest to the top ; the seven earths, thou descendest
to the bottom. Thou arrivest at Khu-thc ; thou goest unto
Tha-ma [i. e., Yama, the Judge of the Dead in Hades]. Thou
goest through the crevices of rocks, thou goest through the
crevices of precipices. At the opening and shutting of the
western gates of rock, thou goest in between ; thou goest below
the earth where the Sun travels. I employ thee, I exhort thee.
I make thee a messenger, I make thee an angel, etc." ^ Passing
from Birma to the region of the North American lakes, we find
a corresponding description in the Ottawa tale of Iosco, already
quoted here for its clearly marked personification of Sun and
Moon. This legend, though modern in some of its description
of the Europeans, their ships, and their far-off land across the
sea, is evidently founded on a myth of Day and Night. Iosco
seems to be loskeha, the White One, whose contest with his
brother "^I awiscara, the Dark One, is an early and most genuine
Huron nature-myth of Day and Night. Iosco and his friends
travel for years eastward and eastward to reach the sun, and come
at last to the dwelling of Manabozho near the edge of the world,
and then, a little beyond, to the chasm to be passed on the way
to the land of the Sun and Moon. They began to hear the sound
of the beating sky, and it seemed near at hand, but they had far
to travel before they reached the place. When the sky came
down, its pressure would force gusts of wind from the opening,
so strong that the travellers could hardly keep their feet, and
the sun passed but a short distance above their heads. The
sky would come down with violence, but it would rise slowly

' Mason, 'Karens' in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1865, part ii. pp. 233-4.

til oughts

1 in con-

of their

massive

iing, and

how the

rhe idea

festival,

heavens,

scendest

est unto

. Thou

ugh the

y of the

st below

ort thee.

Passing

, we find

already

5un and

cription

ross the

Iosco

svith his

genuine

friends
nd come
le world,
the way
le sound

had far
cy came
Dpening,
3et, and
s. The
slowly

3-4,

MYTHOLOGY.

315

and gradualV ■. Iosco and one of his friends stood near the edge,
and with a great effort leapt through and gained a foothold on
the other side ; but the other two were fearful and undecided,
and when their companions called to them through the dark-
ness, " Leap ! leap ! the sky is on its way down," they looked
up and saw it descending, but paralyzed by fear they sprang
so feebly that they only reached the other side with their
hands, and the ' ky at the same moment striking violently on
the earth with a terrible sound, forced them into the dreadful
black abyss.^ Lastly, in the funeral ritual of the Aztecs there
is found a like description of the first peril that the shade had
to encounter on the road leading to that subterranean Land
of the Dead, which the sun lights when it is night on earth.
Giving the corpse the first of the passports that were to carry
him safe to his journey's end, the survivors said to him, "With
these you will f)ass between the two mountains that smite one
against the other."" On the suggestion of this group of solar
conceptions and that of Maui's death, we may perhaps ex-
plain as derived from a broken-down fancy of solar-myth,
that famous episode of Greek legend, where the good ship
Argo passed between the Symplegades, those two huge cliffs
that opened and closed again with swift and violent collision.'^
Can any effort of baseless fancy have brought into the poet's
mind a thought so quaint in itself, yet so fitting with the Karen
and Aztec myths of the gates of Night and of Death ? With the
Maori legend, the Argonautic tale has a yet deeper coincidence.
In both the event is to determine the future ; but this thought
is worked out in Lwo converse ways. If Maui passed through
the entrance of Night and returned to Day, death should not
hold mankind ; if the Argo passed the Clashers, the way should

' Schoolcraft, 'Al^ic Researches,' vol. ii, p. 40, etc. ; Loskicl, ' Gcsch. der
Mission,' Barby, 1789, p. 47 (the English edition, part i. p. 35, is incorrect). Seo
also Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 63.

^ Torquemada, ' Monanpiia Indiana,' xiii, 47 ; " Con estos has de pasar per
medio de dos Sierras, (pie sc estan batiendo, y encontrando la una con la otra."
Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 94.

' ApoUodor. i. 9, 22; ApoUon. Ehod. Argonautioa, ii. 310-615; Pindar,
Pythia Carn\ iv. 370. See Kuhn, ' Herabkunft des Feuers,' p. 152 (mention of
Ilnitbjbrg).

i)i

II b

iti

\ • i

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'I;:J

i ,;, 1

1%'

31G

MYTHOLOGY.

lie open between them for ever. The Argo sped through in
safety, and the Symplegades can clash no longer on the passing
ship ; Maui was crushed, and man comes not forth again from
Hades.

There is another solar metaphor which describes the sun, not
as a personal creature, but as a member of a yet greater being.
He is called in Java and Sumatra " Mata-ari," in Madagascar
" Maso-andro," the " Eye of Day." If we look for translation
of this thought from metaphor into myth, we may find it in the
New Zealand stories of Maui setting his own eye up in heaven
as the Sun, and the eyes of his two children as the Morning
and the Evening Stars.^ The nature-myth thus implicitly and
explicitly stated is one widely developed on Aryan ground. It
forms part of that macrocosmic description of the universe well
known in Asiatic myt' and in Europe expressed in that pas-
sage of the Orphic poem which tells of Jove, at once the world's
ruler and the world itself : his glorious head irradiates the sky
where hangs his starry hair, the waters of the sounding ocean
are the belt that girds hi ; sacred body the earth omniparent,
his eyes are sun and moon, his mind, moving and ruling by
couL.sel all things, is the royal aether that no voice nor sound
escapes :

" Sunt oculi Phoebus, Phoeboque ad ersa recurrens
Cynthia. Mens verax nullique obnoxius aether
Eegius iuteritu', qui cuncta movetque regitque
Consilio. Vox nulla potest, sonitusve, nee uUus
Hancce Joyis sobolem strepitus, nee fama latere.
Sic animi sensum, et caput immortale beatua
Obtinet : illustre, immensum, immutabile pandens?,
Atque lacertorum valido stans robore certus." ^

Where the Aryan myth-maker takes no thought of the lesser
light, he can in various terms describe the sun as the eye of
heaven. In the Rig- Veda it is the " eye of Mitra, Varuna,
and Agni " — " chakshuh Mitrasya Varunasyah Agneh." ^ In

^ Polack, 'Manners of K Z.' vol. i. p. 16; 'New Zealand,' vol. i. p. 358;
Yatc, p. 142 ; Schirren, pp. 88, 165.
- Euseb. Piu'p. Evaug. iii. 9.
2 Eig-Veda, i. 115 ; liuhtlingk and Roth, s.v. 'mitra.'

rough in
B passing
:ain from

sun, not
er being,
idagascar
anslation
it in the
1 heaven
Morning
citly and
)und. It
erse well
hat pas-
e world's
; the sky
Dg ocean
aiparent,
uling by
)r sound

le lesser

e eye of

Varuna,

"3 In

. p. 358;

MYTHOLOGY.

317

the Zend-Avesta it is " the shining sun with the swift horses,
the eye of Ahura-Mazda and Mithra, the lord of the region." ^
To Hesiod it is the " all-seeing eye of Zeus " — " iravra ibijv
Aios 6(f)9a\iJi6s : " Macrobius speaks of antiquity calling the sun
the eye of Jove — " ri rj\ios ; ovpdvios 6(f)dakfx6s.^' ~ The old
Germans, in calling the sun "Wuotan's eye,"^ recognized
Wuotan, Woden, Odhin, as being himself the divine Heaven.
These mythic expressions are of the most unequivocal type.
By the hint they give, conjectural interpretations may be hero
not indeed asserted, but suggested, for two of the quaintest
episodes of ancient European myth. Odin, the All-father, say
the old scalds of Scandinavia, sits among his iEsir in the city
Asgard, on his high throne Hlidskialf, whence he can look
down over the whole world discerning all the deeds of men.
He is an old man wTapped in his wide cloak, and clouding hi'^
face with his wide hat, " os pileo ne cultu proderetur obnu)>ens,"
as Saxo Gramraaticus has it. Odin is one-eyed ; he desired to
drink from Mimir's well, but he had to leave there one of his
eyes in pledge, as it is said in the Voluspa :

"All know I, Odin!
Where thou hiddest thine eyo
In Mimir's famous well."

We need hardly seek this wonder in Mimir's well of wisdom,
for any other pool will show the lost eye of Odin to him
who gazes at the sun reflected in its waters, when the other eye
of heaven, the real sun, stands high at noon/^ Possibly, too,
some such solar fancy may explain part of the myth of Perseus.
There are th ee Scandinavian Norns, whose names are Urdhr,
Verdhandi, and Skuld — Was, and Is, and Shall-be — and these
three maidens are the " Weird sisters " Avho fix the lifetime of
all men. So the Fates, the Park ">, daughters of the ine\dtable
Anangke, divide among them tlie periods of time : Lachesis
sings the past, Klotho the present, Atropos tlie future. Now is

1 Avesta, tr. Spiegel and Blecck, Ya9na, i. 35 ; compare Burnouf, Ya9na.

2 Macrob. Saturnal. i. 21, 13. See Max Miiller, 'Chips,' vol. ii. p. 85.

3 Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 665. See also Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 213.
* Edda, 'Voluspa,' 22 ; 'Gylfaginniug,' 15. See Grimm, ' D. M.' p. 133.

ill

■ 1

318

MYTHOLOGY.

'.:.|

m-*

ill

it allowable to consider these fatal sisters as of common nature
■with two other mythic sister-triads — the Graia^ and their kins-
folk the Gorgons ? If it be so, it is easy to understand why
of the three Gorgons one alone was mortal, whose life her two
immortal sisters could not save, for the deathless past and
future cannot save the ever-dying present. Nor would the
riddle be hard to read ; what is the one eye that the Graia; had
between them, and passed from one to another ? — the eye of
day — the sun, that the past gives up to the present, and the
present to tlie future.^

Compared with the splendid Lord of Day, the pale Lady of
Night takes, in myth as in nature, a lower and lesser place.
Among the wide legendary group which associates together Sun
and Moon, two striking examples are to be seen in the traditions
by which half-civilized races of South America traced their rise
from the condition of the savage tribes around them. These
legends have been appealed to even by modern writers as grate-
fully-remembered records of real human benefactors, who carried
long ago to America the culture of the Old World. But hap-
pily for historic truth, mythic tradition tells its tales without
expurgating the episodes which betray its real character to
more critical observation. The Muyscas of the high plains of
Bogota were once, they said, savages without agriculture, reli-
gion or law : but there came to them from the East an old and

^ As to the iilentiiication of the liioms and the Fates, see Grimm, 'D. M.'
pp. 376-86; Max Miillcr, 'Chips,' vol. ii. p. 154. It is to be observed in con-
nexion witli 3 Perseus-myth, that another of its obscure episodes, the Gorgon's
liead turning those Avho look on it into stone, corresponds witli myths of the sun
itself. In Hispuniola, men came out of two caves (thus being born of their mother
luirtli) ; the giant who guarded these caves strayed one night, and the rising sun
turned him into a great rock called Kauta, just as the Gorgon's head turned Atlas
tlie Earth-bearer into the mountain that bears his name ; after this, others of the
early cave-men were surprised by the sunlight, and turned into .stones, trees, plants
or beasts (Friar Koman Pane in ' Life of Columbus ' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 80 ;
J. G. Mliller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 179). In Central America a Quich6 legend
relates how the ancient animals were petrified by the Sun (Brasseur, 'Popol Vuh,'
]). 245). Thus the Americans have the analogue of the Scandinavian myths of
giants and dwarfs surprised by daylight outside their hiding-places, and turned
to stones. Such fancies appear connected with the fancied human shapes of rocks
or "standing-stones" which peasants still account for as transformed creatures ;
this idea is brought also into the Perseus-myth, for the rocks abounding in
Scriphos are the islanders thus petrified by the Gorgon's head.

'D. M.'
L in con-

MYTHOLOGY.

319

iding in

bearded man, Bochica, the child of the Sun, and he taught them
to till the fields, to clothe themselves, to worship the gods, to
become a nation. But Bochica had a wicked, beautiful wife,
Huythaca, who loved to spite and spoil her husband's work ;
and she it was who made the river swell till the land was
covered by a flood, and but a few of mankind escaped upon
the mountain-tops. Then Bochica was wroth, and he drove
the wicked Huythaca from the earth, and made her the Moon,
for there had been no moon before ; and he cleft the rocks and
made the mighty cataract of I'equendaina, to let the deluge
flow away. Then, when the land was dry, he gave to the
remnant of mankind the year and its periodic sacrifices, and
the worship of the Sun. Now the people who told this myth
had not forgotten, what indeed we might guess without their
nelp, that Bochica was himself Zuhe, the Sun, and Huythaca,
the Sun's wife, the Moon.^

Like to this in meaning, though different in fancy, is the
civilization-myth of the Incas. Men, said this Qqichua legend,
were lawless naked savages, devouring what unaided nature
gave, adoring plants and beasts with rude fetish-worship. But
our father the Sun took pity on them, and sent two of his chil-
dren, Manco Ccapac and his sister-wife, Mama Oello : these
rose from the lake of Titicaca, and gave to the naked, uncul-
tured hordes law and government and moral order, tillage
and art and science. Thus was founded the great Peruvian
empire, where in after ages the Sun and Moon were still repre-
sented in rule and religion by the Inca and his sister-wife, con-
tinuing the mighty race of Manco Ccapac and Mama Oello.
But the two great ancestors returned when their eai'thly work
was done, to become, what we may see they had never ceased
to be, the sun and moon themselves.- Thus the nations of

' Piedraliita, ' Hist, Gen. dc las Conqiiistas del Nuca'o Pieyno de Granada,'
AntAverp, 1688, part 1. lib. i. c. 3; Humboldt, * Moimnuus,' pi. vi. ; J. G.
Muller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 423-30.

- Garcilaso de la "Vega, ' Conimcntarios Reales,' i. c. 15; Prcscott, 'Peru,'
vol. i. p. 7 ; J. G. Muller, pp. 303-8, 328-39. Other Peruvian versions show
the fundamental solar idea in different mythic shapes (Tr. of Cieza de Leon,
tr. and ed. by C. K. Markhani, Hakluyt. Soc. 18ti4, p. xlix. 29S, 316, 372).
W. B. Stevenson ('Residence in S. America,' vol. i. ]). 394) and Bastian ('Mcnscli,'

111 11

■ !

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■ m

%•' !/ i ^

^20

MYTHOLOGY.

lilt •

Bogota and Pom, rcmcinbci'ing their days of former savagery,
and the association of their culture with their national religion,
embodied their traditions in myths of an often-recurring typo,
ascribing to the gods themselves, in human shape, the establish-
ment of their own worsliip.

The " inconstant moon " figures in a group of characteristic
stories, Australian legend says that Mityan, the Moon, was a
native cat, who fell in love with some one else's wife, and was
driven away to wander ever since.' The Khasias of th Hima-
laya say that the Moon falls monthly in love with his mother-
in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.^ Slavonic
legend, following the same track, says that the Moon, King of
night and husband of the Sun, faithlessly loves the Morning
Star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we
see him in the sky.' By a different train of thought, the
Moon's periodic death and revival has suggested a painful con-
trast to the destiny of man, in one of the most often-repeated
and characteristic myths of South Africa, which is thus told
among the Namaqua. The Moon once sent the Hare to Men
to give this message, " Like as I die and rise to life again, so
you also shall die and rise to life again," but the Hare went to
.the Men and said, " Like as I die and do not rise again, so you
shall also die and not rise to life again." Then the Hare re-
turned and told the Moon what he had done, and the Moon
strvick at him with a hatchet and slit his lip, as it has remained
ever ?ince, and some say the Hare fled and is still fleeing, but
others say he clawed at the Moon's face and left the scars that
are still to be seen on it, and they say also that the reason why
the Namaqua object to eating the hare (a prejudice which in
fact they share with very different races) is because he brought
to men this evil message,* It is remarkable that a story so

;, i '):

vol. iii. p. 347) met with a curious perversion of the myth, in which Inca Manco
Ccajiac, corrupted into Ingasman Cocapac, gave rise to a story of an Englishman
figuring in the midst of Peruvian mythology.

1 Stanhridge, 'Ahor. of Australia' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. i. p. 301.

^ J. D. Hooker, ' Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 276.

3 Hanusch, ' Slaw. Myth.' p. iiCO.

* Blcek, 'Reynard in S. Africa,' pp. C9-74 ; C. J. Andersson, 'Lake Kgami,*
p. 328 ; see Grout, 'Zulu-land,' p. 148 ; Arbousset and Daunias, p. 471. As to

savagery,

religion,

ing type,

3stablish-

acteristic
»n, was a
and was
1 Himn-
i mother-
Slavonic
King of
Morning
nt, as we
Light, the
nful con-
-repeated
thds told
} to Men
again, so
went to
n, so you
lare re-
he Moon
emained
eing, but
cars that
ison why
which in
brought
story so

Tnca Manca
Englishman

71. As to

MYTHOLOGY.

321

closely resembling this, that it is difficult not to suppose both
to bo versions from a common original, is told in the distant
Fiji Islands. There was a dispute between two gods as to how
man should die : " Ra Vula (the Moon) contended that man
should bo like himself — disappear awhile and tiien live again.
Ra Kalavo '''■he Rat) would not listen *o this kind proposal,
but said, ' Let man die as a rat dies.' And he prevailed." The
dates of the versions seem to show that the iii\ sence of these
myths among the Hottentots and Fijians, at the two opposite
sides of the globe, is at any rate not due to transmission in
modern times.'

There is a very elaborate savage nature-myth of the g.'iera-
tion of tlie Stars, which may unquestionably serve as a clue
connecting the history of two distant tribes. The rude Mintira
of the Malayan Peninsula express in plain terms the belief in a
solid firmament, usual in the lower grades of civilization ; they
say th'i sky is a great pot held over the earth by a cord, and if
this cord broke, everything on earth Avould be crushed. The
Moon is a woman, and the Sun also : the Stars are the Moon's
children, and the Sun had in old times as many. Fearing,
however, that mankind could not bear so much brightness and
heat, they agreed each to devour her children ; but the Moon,
instead of eating up her Stars, hid them from the Sun's sight,
who, believing them all devoured, ate up her own ; no sooner
had she done it, than the Moon brought her family out of their
hiding-place. When the Sun saw them, filled with rage she
chased the Moon to kill her ; the chase has lasted ever since,
and sometimes the Sun even comes near enough to bite the
Moon, and that is an eclipse ; the Sun, as men may still see,
devours his Stars at dawn, but the Moon hides hers all day
while the Sun is near, and only brings them out at night when
her pursuer is far away. Now among a tribe of North East

connexion of the moon with the hare, cf. Skr. ";a<;anka;" and in Mexico,
Sahagun, book vii. c. 2, in Kingsborongh, vol. vii.

I Williams, * Fiji,' vol. i. p. 205. Compare the Caroline Island myth that in
the beginning men only quitted life on tlie last day of the waning moon, and
resuscitated as from a peaceful sleep when she reappear(;d ; but the evil spirit
Erigirers inflicted a death from which there is no revival : De Brosses, ' Hist, des
Navig. aux Terres Australes,' vol.-ii. p. 479.

VOL. I, Y

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322

MYTHOLOGY.

India, the Ho of Cliota-Nagpovc, tlio mytli reappears, obviously
from the same source, but witli a varied ending; the Sun ch'ft
the Moon in twain for her deceit, and thus cloven and growing
whole again she reniains, and her daughters with lier which aro
the Stars.'

From savagery tip to civilization, there may be traced in the
mythology of the Stars a course of thought, changed indeed in
application, yet never broken in its evident counexicn from first
to last. The savage sees individual stars as animate beings, or
combines star-grou])s into living celestial creatures, or limbs of
them, or objects connected ■with them ; while at the other
extremity of the scale of civilization, the modern astronomer
keeps up just such ancient fancies, turning them to account in
useful survival, as a means of mapping out the celestial globe.
The savage names and stories of stars and constellations may
seem at first but childish and purposeless fancies ; but it always
happens in the study of the lower races, that the more means
\vc have of understanding their thoughts, the more sense and
reason do we find in them. The aborigines of Australia say
that Yurreo and Wanjel, who are the stars we call Castor and
Pollux, pursue Purra the Kangaroo (our Capella), and kill him
at the beginning of the great heat, and the mirage is the smoko
of the fire they roast him by. They say also that Marpean-
Kurrk and Neilloan (Arcturus and Lyra) were the discoverers
of the ant-pupas and the cgga of the loan-bird, and taught the
aborigines to find them for food. Translated into the language
of fact, these simple myths record the summer place of the stars
in question, and the seasons of ant-pupas and loan-eggs, which
seasons are marked by the stars who are called their disco-
verers.^ Not less transparent is the meaning in the beautiful
Algonquin myth of the Summer-Maker. In old days eternal
winter reigned upon the earth, till the Fisher, helped by other
beasts his friends, broke an opening through the sky into the
lovely heaven-land beyond, let the warm winds pour forth and
the summer descend to earth, and opened the cages of the pri-

' Journ. Iiul. Archip. vol. i. p. 284; vol. iv. p. 333; Tickell in ' Journ. As.
Soc' vol. ix. part ii. p. 797 ; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. ii. p. 422.
^ Stanbridge in • Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. i. pp. 301-3.

"vt1 V

MYTIKJI.UIJV.

:\-i:i

[)bviously
'•^nu clof't
1 growing
vhicli aru

)d in tlio
lulced ill
from first
jc'ingH, or
limbs of
ho other
itronomer
2count ill
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ions may-
it always
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istor and
kill him
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Marpean-
scoverers
ught the
language
the stars
^s, which
ir disco-
jeautiful
s eternal
by other
into the
3rth and
the pri-

Journ. As.

sonod liirds; but when the dwellers in heaven saw their birds
let louse and their warm gales deseending, thoy started in ])ur-
suit, and .shooting their arrows at the Fisher, hit him at last in
his one vulnerablo sjxft at the ti]) of his tail ; thus he died for
the good of the inhabitants of earth, and became the constella-
tion that bears his name, so that still at the proper season men
see him lying as he fell toward the nortii on the plains of
heaven, with the fatal arrow still sticking in his tail.' Compare
these savage stories with Orion pursuing the Pleiad sisters who
take refuge from him in the sea, and the maidens who wept
themselves to death and became the starry cluster of the
Hyade.s, whose rising and setting betokened rain : such mythic
creatures might for simple significance have been invented by
savages, even as the savage constellation-myths might have
been made by ancient Greeks, When we consitler that the
Australians who can invent such mvths, and invent them with
such fulness of meaning, arc savages who put two and one to-
gether to make their numeral for three, wo may judge how
deep in the history of culture those conceptions lie, of which
the relics are still represented in our star-maps by Castor and
Pollux, Arcturus and Sirius, Bootes and Orion, the Argo and
the Charles's Wain, the Toucan and the Southern Cross.
Whether civihzed or .savage, whether ancient or new-made after
the ancient manner, such names are so like in character that
any tribe of men might adopt them from any other, as
American tribes are known to receive European names into
their own skies, and as our constellation of the Royal Oak
is said to have found its Avay in new copies of old Hindu
treatises, into the company of the Seven Sages and the other
ancient constellations of Brahmanic India.

Such fancies are so fanciful, that two peoples seldom fall on
the same name for a constellation, while, even within the limits
of the same race, terms may differ altogether. Thus the stars

* Schoolcraft, ' Algic lies.' vol. i. pp. 5"-'" The story of the hero or deity
invulnerable like Achilles save in one weak spot, recurs in tlio tales of the slaying
of the Shining Manitu, whoso scalp alone was vulnerable, and of tlie mighty
Kwasind, who could be killed oiily by the cone of the white pine wounding tlio
vulnerable place on the crown of his head (vol. i. p. 153 ; vol. ii. p. 163).

Y 2

111;:
111*'

324

MYTHOLOGY.

which Avc call Orion's Belt arc in New Zealand cither the
Elbow of Maui, or they form the stern of the Canoe of Tamare-
rote, whose anchor dropped from the prow is the Southern
Cross.^ The Great Bear is equally like a Wain, Orion's Belt
serves as well for Frigga's or Mary's Spindle, or Jacob's Staff.
Yet soraetinies natural correspondences occur. The seven sister
Pleiades seem to the Australians a group of girls playing to a
corruboree ; while the North American Indians call them the
Dancers, and the Lapps the Company of Virgins.- Still more
striking is the correspoi.dence between savages and cultured
nations in fancies of the bright starry band that lies like a road
across the rrky. The Basutos call it the " Way of the Gods ; "
the Ojis fjy it is the "Way of Spirits," which souls go up to
heave'i by.^ North American tribes know it as " the Path of
the Master of Life," the " Path of Spirits," " the Road of Souls,"
where they travel to the land beyond the grave, and where their
camp-fires may be seen blazing as brighter stars.* Such savage
imaginations of the Milky Way fit with the Lithuanian myth of
the " Road of the Birds," at whose end the souls of the good,
fancied iv fiittnig away at death like birds, dwell free and happy.^
That souls dwell i the Galaxy was a thought familiar to the
Pythagoreans, who gave it on their master's word that the souls
that crowd there descend, and appear to men as dreams,^ and
to the Manichseans whose fancy transferred pure souls to this
" column of light," Avhence they could come down to earth and
a,gain return.'' It is a fall from such ideas of the Galaxy to the

» Taylor, ' Xcw Zealand,' p. 363.

- StaubridL^', 1. o. ; Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 148 ; Lcems, Lapland, in Pinker-
ton, vol. i. p. 4n. The name of the Bear occurring in North America in con-
nexion with the stars of tiio Great and Little Bear (Charlevoix, 1. c. ; Cotton
ilather in Schoolcraft, ' Tribes,' vol. 1. p. 284) has long been remarked on
(Goguet, vol. i. p. 262 ; vol. ii. p. 360, but with reference to Greenland, see
('ranz, p. 294). Sec observations on the history of the Aryan name in Max
Miiller, ' Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 301.

» Casalis, p. 196; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191.

* Long's Exp. vol. i. p. 288 ; Schoolcraft, part. i. p. 272 ; Le Jeune in ' Eel.
des Jes. de la Nouvclle France,' 1034, p. 18; Loskiel, part L p. 35; J. G.
iliiUer, p. 63.

» Hanusch, pp. 272, 407, 415.

*"' Porphyr. de Antro Nynipharum, 28 ; Macrob. do Somn. Scip. i. 12.

" Beausobre, 'Hist, de Municlide,' vol. ii. p. 513.

MYTHOLOGY.

325

Siamese " Road .'»f the White Elephant," the Spaniards' " Road
of Santiago," or the Turkisli " Pilgrims' Road," and a still lower
fall to the "Straw Road" of the Syrian, the Persian, and the
Turk, vho thus compare it with their lanes littered with the
morsels of straw that fall from the nets they carry it in.^ But
of all the fancies wliich have attached themselves to the celestial
road, we at home have tlie quaintest. Passing along the short
and crooked Avay from St. Paul's to Cannon Street, one thinks
to how small a remnant has shrunk the nanif^ of the great street
of the Wastlingas, which in old days ran from Dover through
London into Wales. But there is a Watling Street in heaven
as well as on earth, once familiar to Englishmen, though now
perhaps forgotten even in local dialect. Chaucer thus speaks of
it in his ' House of Fame : ' —

w{\

" Lo thei'O (qiiod he) cast up thino cyo,
Se yondir, lo, the Galaxio,
The whicho men clepe The Milky "Way,
For it is white, and some parfay,
Ycallin it han Watlyngc strete." "

Turning from the mythology of the heavenly bodies, a glance
over other districts of nature-rnyth will afford fresh evidence
that such legend has its early home within the precincts of
savage culture. It is thus with the myths of the Winds. The
New Zealanders tell how Maui can ride upon the other Winds
or imprison them in tlieir caves, but he cannot catch the West
Wind nor find its cave to roll a stone against the mouth, and
therefore it jirevails, yet frcm time to time he all but overtakes
it, and hiding in its cave for shelter it dies away.^ Such is the
fancy in classic poetry of vEolus holding the prisoned winds in
his dungeon cave : —

'■ it:'

1 Bastian, 'Ocstl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 3il ; 'Chvoinii^uo dc Tabari,' tr.
])iibe\ix, p. 24 ; Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 330, etc.

- Chancer, 'House of Fame,' ii. 427. AVith reference to (piestions of Aryan
mythology illnstratcd by the savage galaxy-myths, see A'ictct, * Origiues,'
part ii. p. 582, etc.

3 Yate, 'New Zealand,' p. 14i, see Ellis, ' Polyu. IJes.' vol. ii. i. 417.

.;'i--ij

-IS:a

326

MYTHOLOGY,

Jliii:

\')i

I I

I 1;

lij!

" Hie vasto rex iEolus antro
Luctantca ventos, teinpestatesque sonoras
Iinperio promit, ac vinclis et carcere frconat." '

The myth of the Four AVinds is developed among the native
races of America with a range and vigour and beauty scarcely
rivalled elsewhere in the mythology of the world. Episodes
l)elonging to this branch of Red Indian folklore are collected in
Schoolcraft's 'Algic Researches,' and thence rendered with ad-
mirable taste and sympathy, though unfortunately not with
proper truth to the originals, in Longfellow's master-piece, the
' Song of Hiawatha.' The West Wind Mudjekeewis is Kabeyun,
Father of the Winds, Wabun is the East Wind, Sbawondasee
the South Wind, Kabibonokka the North Wind. But there is
another mighty wind not belonging to the mystic quaternion,
Manabozho the North-West Wind, therefore described with
mythic appropriateness as the unlawful child of Knbeyun. The
fierce North Wind, Kabibonokka, in vain strives to force
Shingebis, the lingering diver-bird, from his warm and happy
Avinter-lodge ; and the lazy South Wind, Sbawondasee, sighs for
the maiden of the prairie with her sunny hair, till it turns to
silvery white, and as he breathes upon her, the prairie dan-
delion has vanished." Man naturallv divides his horizon into
four quarters, before and behind, right and left, and thus
comes to fancy the world a square, and to refer the winds to its
four corners. Dr. Brinton, in his ' Myths of the New World,' has
well traced from these ideas the growth of legend after legend
among the native races of America, where four brother heroes,
or mythic ancestors or divine patrons of mankind, prove, on
closer view, to be in personal shape the Four Winds.^

The Vedic hymns to the Maruts, the Storm Winds, who
tear asunder the forest kings and make the rocks shiver,
and assume again, after their wont, the form of new-born
babes, the mythic feats of the child Hermes in the Homeric
hymn, the legendary birth of Boreas from Astraios and Eos,

1 Virg. iEiieiil. i. 56 ; Homer. Odys. x. 1.

' Schoolcraft, 'Algic Ees.' vol. i. p. 200; vol. ii. pp. 122,214 ; 'Iiuliau Tribes,*
part iii. p. 324.
^ Brinton, ' Itlytlis of the New "World,' ch. iii.

MYTHOLOGY.

327

3 native
scarcely
Episodes
ected in
vitli ad-
Lot with
icce, the
^abeyun,
^ondasee
there is
itcrnion,
ed with
[n. The
to force
d happy
sighs for
turns to
rie dan-
zoii into
1 thus
ds to its
rid,' has
legend
heroes,
ove, on

is, who
shiver,
ew-born
iomeric
lid Eos,

II Tribes,"

Starry Heaven and Dawn, work out, on Aryan gi'ound, mytliic
conceptions that Red Indian tale-tellers coidd understand and
rival,^ The peasant who keeps up in fireside talk the memory
of the Wild Huntsman, Wodejager, the Grand Veneur of
Fontainebleau, Heme the Hunter of Windsor Forest, has
almost lost the significance of this grand old storm-myth. By
mere force of tradition, the name of the " Wish " or " Wush "
hounds of the Wild Huntsman has been preserved through the
west of England ; the words must for ages past have lost their
meaning among the country folk, though we may plainly re-
cognize in them Woden's ancient well-known name, old German
" Wunsch." As of old, the Heaven-god drives the clouds before
him in raging tempest across the sky, while, safe within the
cottage walls, the tale-teller unwittingly describes, in personal
legendary shape, this same Wild Hunt of the Storm.-

It has many a time occurred to the savage poet or philosopher
to realize the thunder, or its cause,, in myths of a Thunder-Bird.
Of this v/ondrous creature North American legend has nmch to
tell. He is the bird of the great Mauitu, as the eagle is of
Zeus, or he is even the great Manitu himself incarnate. The
Assiniboins not only know of his existence, but have even seen
him ; in the far north the story is told how he created the
world ; in British Columbia the Indians offer the first-fruits of
their salmon and their venison to the Great Spirit, who, they
say, flies down to earth from his dwelling in the sun, and the
thunder and the lightning are the clapping of his wings and the
flashing of his eyes in anger. Of such myths, perhaps, that told
among the Dacotas is the quaintest : Thunder is a large bird,
they say; hence its velocity. The old bird begins the thunder;
its rumbling noise is caused by an immense quantity of young
birds, or thunders, who continue it, hence the long duration of
the peals. The Indian says it is the young birds, or thunders,
that do the mischief; they are like the young mischievous men

* 'Eig-Vcda,' tr. byMaxMiillor, vol. i. (Hymns to Mamts) ; 'WelckLT, 'Griecli.
Guttcrl.' vol. iii. p. 67 ; Cox, ' Mytholopjy of Aryan Nations,' vol. ii. ch. v.

2 Griniin, 'D. M.' pp. 12G, 599, 894; Hunt, 'Pop. Eom.' 1st ser. p. xi.v. ;
Baring- Gould, ' Book ot'Were wolves,' p. 101 ; sco 'Myths of the Middle Ages,'
]). 25; Wuttko, ' Deutsche Volksabcrglaube,' pp. 13, 230; Monnicr, 'Traditions,'
pp. 75, etc., 741, 747.

i ££

328

JIYTHOLOGY.

;

»!i1

^i I 'Iff

ill I

I, I ; -

IH'-

i'i'. >

who will not listen to good counsel. The old thunder or bird is
wise and good, and does not kill anybody, nor do any kind of
mischief. Descending southward to Central America, there is
found mention cf the bird Voc, the messenger of Hurakan, the
Tempest-god (whoso name has been adopted in European lan-
guages as huracano, ouragan, hurricane) of the Lightning and
of the Thunder, So .,mong Caribs, Brazili,"ns, Harvey Islanders
and Karens, Bechuanas and Basutos, we fi.i' legends of a flap-
ping or flashing Thunder-bird, which seem simply to translate
into myth the thought of thunder and lightning descending
from the upper regions of the a r, the home of the eagle and
the vulture.^

The Heaven-god dwells in the regions of the sky, and thus
what form could be fitter for him and for his messengers than
th<> likeness of a bird? But to cause the ground to quake
beneath our feet, a being of quite difterent natuie is needed,
and accordingly the office of supporting the solid earth is given
in various countries to various monstrous creatures, human or
animal in character, who make their office manifest from time
to time by a shake given in negligence or sport or anger to their
burden. Wherever earthquakes are felt, we are likely to find a
version of the great myth of the Earth-bearer. Thus in Poly-
nesia the Tongans say that Maui upholds the earth on his
prostrate body, and when he tries to turn over into an easier
posture there is an earthquake, and the people shout and beat
the ground with sticks to make him lie still. Another version
forms part of the interesting myth lately mentioned, which
connects the under-world whither the sun descends at night,
with the region of subterranean volcanic fire and of earthquake.
The old Maui lay by his fire in the dead-land of Bulotu, when
his grandson Maui came down by the cavern entrance; the

» Pr. Max. V. Wiod, 'IJeisc in N. A.' vol. i. p]i. 416, 455 ; vol. ii. pp. 152, 223 ;
Sir Alox. Mackenzie, 'Voyages,' p. cxvii. ; Irving, 'Astoria,' vol. ii. cli. xxii. ;
Le Jeunc, op. cit. 1634, p. 26 ; Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 233 ;
'Algic Kes.' vol. ii. pp. 114-6, 199; Catlin, vol. ii. p. 164; Brasseur, ' Popol
Vuh,' p. 71 Mid Index, 'Hurakan ; ' J. G. MiUler, ' Anier. Urrel.' pp. 222, 271 ;
Ellis, ' Polyn. Ees.' vol. ii. p. 417 ; Jno. Williams, 'Missionary Enterprise,'
p. 93 ; l\rason, I. c. p. 217 ; Moffat, 'South Africa,' p. 338 ; Casalis, 'Basutos,'
p. 266 ; Callaway, ' Keligiou of Aniazulu,' p. 119.

)r bird is
kind of
there is
ikan, the
lean lan-
ning and
Islanders
f a flap-
translate
iscending
sagle and

and thus

wrs than

;o quake

1 needed,

L is given

mm an or

mm time

: to their

to Und a

in Poly-

on his

m easier

:ind beat

version

1, which

it night,

h quake.

,11, when

ice ; the

152, 223 ;
cli. xxii. ;
i. p. 233 ;
r, ' Popol
222, 271 ;
nterprisc,'
' Basutos,'

MYTHOLOGV.

329

young Maui Carried off the fire, they wrestled, the old Maui was
overcome, and has lain there bruised and drowsy ever since,
underneath the earth, which quakes when he turns over in his
sleep.i In Celebes we hear of the world-supporting Hog, who rubs
himself against a tree, and then there is an earthquake.- Among
the Indians of North America, it is said that earthquakes come
of the movement of the great Avorld-bearing Tortoise. Now this
Tortoise seems but a mythic picture of the Earth itself, and thus
the story only expresses in mythic phrase the very fact that the
earth quakes ; the meaning is but one degree less distinct than
among the Caribs, who say when there is an earthquake that
their Mother Earth is dancing.-'^ Among the higher races of the
continent, such ideas remain little changed in nature ; the Tlas-
calans said that the tired world-supporting deities shifting their
burden to a new relay caused the earthquake ; ^ the Chibchas
said it was their god Chibchacum moving the earth from
shoulder to shoulder. ^ The myth ranges in Asia through as
wide a stretch of culture. The Kamchadals tell of Tuil the
Earthquake-god, who sledges below ground, and when his dog
shakes off fleas or snow there is an earthquake ; " Ta Ywa, the
solar hero of the Karens, set Shie-oo beneath the earth to carry
it, and there is an earthquake when he moves. ' The world-
bearing elephants of the Hindus, the world-supporting frog of
the Mongol Lamas, the world-bull of the Moslems, the gigantic
Omophore of the Manichasan cosmology, are all creatures who
carry the earth on their backs or heads, and shake it when tliey
stretch or shift. '^ Thus in European mythology the Scandi-
navian Loki, strapped down with thongs of iron in his subter-
ranean cavern, writhes when the overhanging serpent drops

1 MariiiLT, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 120 ; S. S. Faniior, 'Tonga,' p. 135 ; Sdiirren,
pp. 35-7.

- ' Journ. Ind. Arcliip.' vol. ii, p. 837.

3 J. G. Miillcr, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 61, 122.

* Brasseur, ' Mexjpie,' vol. iii. p. 482.

5 Pouclifit, ' riurality of Kaccs,' p. 2.

c Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 267.

' Mason, 'Karens,' 1. c. p. 182.

8 Bell, 'Tr. in Asia' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 3G0 ; Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,'
vol. 11. p. 168 ; Lane, ' Thousand and One Nights,' vol. i. p. 21 ; see Latham,
'Descr, Eth.' vol. ii. p. 171 ; Beausohre, 'Manichce,' vol. i. p. 243.

Si I

iv',

'S>

330

MYTHOLOGY.

I 1

U y

\:- i

■i

venom on him ; or Prometlions struggles beneath the earth to
break his bonds ; or the Lettish Drebkuls or Poseidon tho
Earth-shaker makes the ground rock beneath men's feet. ^
From thorough myths of imagination such as most of these, it
may be sometimes possible to distinguish philosophic myths
like them in form, but "which appear to be atteinpts at serious
explanation without even a metaphor. The Japanese think
that earthquakes are caused by huge whales creeping under-
ground, ha zing been probably led to this idea by finding the
fossil bones which seem the remains of such subterranean
monsters, just as Ave know that the Siberians who find in the
ground the mammoth-bones and tusks, account for them as
belonging to huge burrowing beasts, and by force of this belief,
have brought themselves to think they can sometimes see the
earth heave and sink as the monsters crawl below. Thus, in
investigating the eartlK^aake-myths of the world, it appears that
two processes, the translation into mythic language of the
phenomenon itself, and the crude scientific theory to account for
it by a real moving animal underground, may result in legends
of very striking similarity.^

In thus surveying the mythic wonders of heaven and earth,
sun, moon, and stars, wind, thunder, and earthquake, it is pos-
sible to set out in investigation under conditions of actual cer-
tainty. So long as such beings as Heaven or Sun are consciously
talked of in mythic language, the meaning of their legends is
open to no question, and the actions ascribed to them will as a
rule be natural and apposite. But when the phenomena of
nature take a more anthropomorphic form, and become identi-
fied with personal gods and heroes, and when in after times
these beings, losing their first consciousness of origin, become
centres round which floating fancies cluster, then their sense
becomes obscure and corrupt, and the consistency of their
eu.lier character must no longer be demanded. In fact, the
unreasonable expectation of such consistency in nature-myths,
after they have passed into what may be called their heroic

1 Edda, 'Gylfiiginiiing,' 50 ; Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 77?, etc.
• Kaempfer, 'Japan,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 6S4 ; see mammotli-mytlis in
• Early Hist, of Mankind,' p. 315.

earth to
Ion tli*^
s feet.i
tliGse, it
I myths
i serious
e think

under-
ling the
irranean
d in the
:,hem as
is belief,
; see the
Thus, in
5ars that

of the

jount for

legends

d earth,

t is pos-

ual cer-

iseiously

gends is

will as a

nena of

identi-

times

become

ir sense

:>{ their

act, the

myths,

r heroic

MYTHOLOGY.

331

stage, is one of the mythologlst's most damaging errors. The
present examination of nature-myths has mostly taken them in
their primitive and unmistakeable condition, and has only been
in some degree extended to include closely corresponding legends
in a less easily intcrpretable state. It has lain beyond my
scope to enter into any systematic discussion of the views of
Grimm, Grote, Max MUller, Kuhn, Scliirren, Cox, Breal, Dasent,
Kelly, and other mythologists. Even the outlines here sketched
out have been purposely left -without filling in surrounding
detail which might confuse their shape, although tins strictness
has caused the neglect of many a tempting hint to work out
episode after episode, by tracing their relation to the myths of
far-off times and lands. It has rather been my object to bring
prominently into view the nature-mythology of the lower races,
that their clear and fresh mythic conceptions may serve as a
basis in studying the nature-myths of the world at large. The
evidence and interpretation here brought forward, imperfect as
they are, seem to countenance a strong opinion as to the
historical development of legends which describe in personal
shape the life of nature. The state of mind to which such
imaginative fictions belong is found in full vigour in the savage
condition of mankind, its growth and inheritance continue into
the higher culture of barbarous or half-civilized nations, and at
last in the civilized world its effects pass more and more from
realized belief into fanciful, affected, and even artificial poetry.

■Hn

-myths in

CHAPTER X.

> i«

ai YTHOLOG Y {cbnlinucd. )

Philosf pliical Jlyths : inferences become pseudo-history — Geological JFytlis —
Efluct of doctrine of Miracles on Mythology— Magnetic. Momitnin — Myths of
relation of Apes to Men by development or degeneration — Ethnological im-
port of myths of Ape-men, Men with tails, Men of Die woods — ^lyths of
E.ror, Perversion, and Exaggeration : stories of Giants, Dwarfs, and Mon-
strous Tribes of men — Fanciful explanatory Myths — Myths attached to
legendary or historical Personages — Etymological Myths on names of places
and persons — Eponymic Myths on names of tribes, nations, countries, &e. ;
their ethnological import — Pragmatic Myths by realization of metaphors and
ideas — AUegoiy — Beast-Fable — Conclusion.

Although tlio attempt to reduce to rule and system tlie
whole domain of mythology would as yet be rash and premature,
yet the piecemeal invasion of one mythic province after another
proves feasible and profitable. Having discussed the theory of
nature-myths, it is worth Avhile to gain in other directions
glimpses of the crude and child-like thought of mankind, not
arranged in abstract doctrines, but embodied by mytliic fancy.
We shall find the result in masses of legends, full of interest as
bearing on the early history of opinion, and which may be
roughly classified under the following headings : myths philo-
sophical or explanatory, myths based on real descriptions mis-
understood, exaggerated, or perverted, myths attributing inferred
events to legendary or historical personages, myths based on
realization of fanciful metaphor, and myths made or adapted to
convey moral or social or political instruction.

Man's craving to know the causes at work in each event he
witnesses, the reasons why each state of things he surveys is
such as it is and no other, is no product of high civilization, but
a characteristic of his race down to its lowest stasjes. Amonc:

Si ;' lis

al Myths—
1 — Myths of
ohigiciil iiii-
;— Myths of
, and MoJi-
attached to
es of places
utries, &c. ;
taphors aiul

stein the
einature,
another
heory of
irections
cind, not
ic fancy,
terest as
may be
hs pliilo-
ions mis-
inferred
jascd on
apted to

event he
jrveys is
tion, but
Among

MYTHOLOGY.

333

rude savages it is already an intellectual appetite whose satis-
faction claims many of the moments not engrossed by war or
sport, food or sleep. Even to the Botocudo or Australian,
scientific speculation has its germ in actual experience : he has
learnt to do definite acts that definite results may follow, to see
other acts done and their results following in course, to make
inference from the result back to tlie previous action, and to
find his inference verified in fact. When one day he has seen
a deer or a krngaroo leave footprints in the soft ground, and the
next day he has found new footprints and inferred that such an
animal made them, and has followed up the track and killed
the game, then he knows that he has reconstructed a history of
past events by inference from their results. But in the early

stages

of knowledge the confusion is extreme between actual

tradition of events, and ideal reconstruction of them. To this
day there go about the Avorld endless stories told as matter of
known realitv, but which a critical examination sliows to be
mere inferences, often utterly illusory ones, from facts which
have stimulated the invention of some curious enquirer. Thus
a writ(3r in the Asiatick Researches of some eighty years ago
relates the following account of the Andaman islanders, as a
historical fact of which he had been informed : " Shortly after
the Portuguese had discovered the passage to India round the
Cape of Good Hojdo, one of their ships, on board of which were a
number of Mozambique negroes, was lost on the Andaman
islands, Avhick were till then uninhabited. The blacks remained
in the island and settled it : the Europeans made a small
shallop in which they sailed to Pegu." Many readers must
have had their interest excited l^y this curious story, but at the
first touch of fact it dissolves into a philosophic myth, made by
the easy transition from what might have been to what was.
So far from the islands having been uninhabited at the time of
Va^co de Gama's voyage, their population of naked blacks with
frizzled hair had been described six hundred years earlier, and
the story, which sounded reasonable to people puzzled by the
appearance of a black population in the Andaman islands, is of
course repudiated by ethnologists aware of the wide distribution
of the negroid Papuans, really so distinct from any race of

I'm

(F:

R:l

I ■ '

>S ! '

^^\->i

334

MYTHOLOQY,

African negroes.^ Not long since, I met with a very jierfcct
myth of this kind. In a brick field near London, there had
been found a number of fossil elephant bones, and soon after-
wards a story was in circulation in the neighbourhood somewhat
in this sliape: "A few years ago, one of Wombwell's caravans
was here, an elephant died, and tliey buried him in the field,
and now the scientific gentlemen have found his bones, and
think they have got a prsc- 'idamite elephant." It seemed
almost cruel to spoil this iri^cnious myth by pointing out that
such a prize as a living mammoth was beyond the resources
even of WomljweH's menagerie. But so exactly does such a
story explain the facts to minds not troubled with nice dis-
tinctions between existing and extinct species of elephants
that it was on another occasii)n invented elsewhere under
similar circumstances. This was at Oxford, where Mr. Buckland
found the story of the Wombwell's caravan and dead elephant
current to explain a similar find of fossil bones.^ Such explana-
tions of the finding of fossils are easily devised and used to
be freely made, as when fossil bones found in the Alps were
set down to Hannibal's elephants, or when a petrified oyster-
shell near the Mont Cenis sets Voltaire reflecting on the crowd
of pilgrims on their way to Rome, or when theologians supposed
such shells on mountains to have been left on their slopes and
summits by a rising deluge. Such tlieoretical explanations arc
unimpeachable in their philosophic spirit, until further observa-
tion may prove them to be unsound. Their disastrous effect on
tlie historic conscience of mankind only begins when the in-
ference is turned upside down, to be told as a I'ecorded fact.

In this connexion brief notice may be taken of the doctrine
of miracles in its special bearing on mythology. The mythic
wonder-episodes related by a savage tale-teller, the amazing
superhuman feats of his gods and heroes, are often to his mind
miracles in the original popular sense of the word, that is,
they are strange and marvellous events ; but they are not to his

1 Hamilton in 'As. Ecs.' vol. ii. p. 344; Colcbrookc, ibid. vol. iv. p. 385 ;
Earl in 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 682; vol. iv. p. 9. Sec llcnaudot,
* Travels oi'Two MahommcJans,' in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 183.

^ F. J5ucklaiul, ' Curiosities of Nat. Hist.' 3rd Series, vol. ii. p. 39.

;ry perfect
there had
0011 after-
some who t
s caravans
1 the field,
3ones, and
[t seemed
r out that
resources
)es such a
L nice dis-
elephants
ere under
, Buckland
d elephant
h explana-
id used to
Alps were
led oyster-
the crowd
s supposed
slopes and
lations arc
sr observa-
.s effect on
en the in-
d fact,
le doctrine
he mythic
amazing
his mind
d, that is,
not to his

iv. p. 385 ;
CO llcuaudot,

'lYTlluLOUV.

835

mind miracles in a frc(iueut modern sense of the word, that is,
they are not violations or sup'.'rscssiDiis of recognized laws of
nature. Exceptio probat rogulam ; to acknowledge anytliiiig
as an exception is to imply the rule it departs from ; but the
savage recognizes neither rule nor exception. Yet a European
liearer, brought up to use a different i anon of evidence, will
calmly reject this savage's most revered ancestral traditions,
simply on the ground that they relate events which arc impos-
sible. The ordinary standards of possibility, as applied to tlio
credibility of tradition, have indeed changed vastly in the
course of culture through its savage, barbaric, and civilized
stages. What concerns us here is that there is an important
department of legend which this change in public opinion,
generally so resistless, left to a great extent unaltered. In the
middle ages the long-accepted practice rose to its height, of
allowing the mere assertion of supernatural influence by angels
or devils, saints or sorcerers, to override the rules of evidence
and the results of experience. The consequence was that the
doctrine of miracles became as it were a bridge alonjf which
mythology travelled from the lower into the higher rulture.
Principles of myth-formation belonging properly to the mental
state of the savage, were by its aid continued in strong action
in the civilized world. Mythic episodes which Europeans would
have rejected contemptuously if told of savage deities or heroes,
only required to be adapted to appropriate local details, and to
be set forth as miracles in the life of some superhuman per-
sonage, to obtain as of old a place of credit and honour in
history.

From the enormous mass of available instances in proof of
this, let us take two cases belonging to the class of geological
myths. The first is the well-known legend of St. Patrick and
the serpents. It is thus given by Dr. Andvew Boorde in his
description of Ireland and the Irish in Henry VIII.'s time.
" Yet in lerland is stupendyous thyngcs ; for there is neyther
Pyes nor venymus wormes. Tiiere is no Adder, nor Snake, nor
Toode, nor Lyzerd, nor no Euyt, nor none such lyke. I haue
sene stones the whiche haue had the forme and shap of a snake
and other venimus wormes. And the people of the countre

I r

i-^'*'S' 'I

■V]'A

3.SG

MYTHOLOGY.

m ■

saytli thiit Hucliu stones wcro Avormes, ami tlicy wero turnod
into stones by the power of God and the j)rayors of saynt
Patryk. And Englysli niarcliauntes of England do fetch of the
orth of Irlondo to casto in their gardens, to kepo ont and to
kyll venimons wormes."^ In trenting this passage, the first
stop is to separate pieces of imported foreign myth, belonging
properly not to Irela'.id, but to inlands of the Mediterranean ;
the story of the earth of the island of Krete being fatal to
venomous sci*pcnts is to bo found in /Elian,- and St. Honoratu.s
clearing the snakes from his island (one of the Lerins opposite
Cannes) .seems to take precedence of the Irish .saint. What is
left after the.se deductions is a philosophic »nyth accounting
for the existence of fo.ssil ammonites as petrined snakes, to
which myth a historical position is given by chii'ming it as a
miracle, and ascribing it to St. Patrick. The second myth is
valuable for the historical evidence which it incidentally pre-
serves. At the celebrated ruins of the temple of Jupiter
Serapis at Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli, the marble columns,
encircled half-way up by borings of lithodomi, stand to prove
that the ground of the temple must have been formerly sub-
merged many feet below the sea, and afterwards upheaved
to become again dry land. History is remarkably silent as
to the events demonstrated by this remarkable geological evi-
dence ; between the recorded adornment of the temple by
Roman emperors from the second to the third century, and the
mention of its existence in ruins in the 16th century, no
documentary information was till lately recognized. It has
now been pointed out by Mr. Tuckett that a passage in the
Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, dating apparently more or
less before the end of the 9th century, mentions the subsidence
of the temple, ascribing it to a miracle of St. Paul. The legend is
as follows : "And when he (Paul) came out of Messina he sailed
to Didymus, and remained there one night. And having sailed
thence, he came to Pontiole (Puteoli) on the second day. And
Dioscorus the shipmaster, who brought him to Syracuse, sym-

' Andrew lloordo, ' Tiitroiluction of Knowledge,' cd. by F. J. Furnivall, Early
Eng. Text See. 1870, p. 133.
- iElian. De Nat. Ai)inial. v. 2, see 8.

turned
of sayiit
cli of tho
t and to
tho rtrst
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srrancan ;
; fatal to
lonoratus

opposite

What is

^counting

nakcs, to

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1 myth is
tally pro-
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columns,
to prove
lerly sub-
upheaved
silent as
ical evi-
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and the
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It has
re in the

more or
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ng sailed
ly. And
use, sym-

ivall, Early

MVTHOLOOV,

a;i7

p.'ithizing with Paul because lie had delivered his son from
death, having left his own ship in Syracuse, accompanii'd him
to Pontiole. And some of Peti'r's disci j)h'S having bciMi ft)iind
there, nMd having received Paul, cxhoitcd him to stay with
thotn. And he stayed a week in hiding, because of \hv com-
mand oi Ca'sar (that he should be put to death). And all the
toparchs were waiting to seize and kill him. Ihit Diosconis
the shii)master, being himsi-lf also bald, wearing his shi|)master's
dress, and speaking boldly, on the first day went out into the city
of Po!itiole. Thinking therefore that ho was Paul, they seized

him and beheaded him, and sent his head to Ctesar And

Paul, being in Pontiole, and having heard that Dioscorus had
been beheaded, being jjrieved with jn'eat i-rief, jjazinff into the
height of the heaven, said : ' O Lord Almighty in Heaven, who
hast appeared to me in every place whither I have gone <m
account of Thine only-begotten Word, our Lord Jesus Christ,
punish this city, and bring out all Avho have believed in CJod
and followed His word.' He said to them, therefore, 'Follow
me.' And going forth from Pontiole with those who had be-
lieved in the word of God, they came to a place called Baias
(Baia?), and looking up with their eyes, they all see that city
called Pontiol.- ounk into the sea-shore about one fathom ; and
there it is until this day, for a remembrance, under the sea.
. . . And those who had been saved out of the city of
Pontiole, that had been swallowed up, reported to Ca3sar in Rome
that Pontiole had been swallowed up with all its multitude."^

Episodes of popular myth, which are often items of the
serious belief of the times they belong to, may serve as im-
portant records of intellectual history. As an example belong-
ing to the class of philosophical or explanatory myths, let us
glance at an Arabian Nights' story, which at first sight may
seem an efibrt of the wildest imagination, but which is never-
theless traceable to a scientific origin ; this is the story of the
Magnetic Mountain. The Third Kalenter relates in his tale
how a contrary wind drove his ships into a strange sea, and

^ 'Acts of Peter and Paul' trans, by A. Walker, in Ante-Nicene Library,
vol. xvi. p. 257 ; F. F. Tuckcttin 'Nature,' Oct. 20, 1870. See Lyell, 'Principles
of Geology,' oh. xxx. ; Phillips, * Vesuvius,' p. 244.

VOL. I, z

:..^

■5: .

►4i

338

MYTHOLOGV.

:i;

there, by the attraction of their nails and other ironwork, they
Avere violently drawn towards a mountain of black loadstone,
till at last the iron flew out to the mountain, and tlie ships
w^ent to pieces in the surf. The episode is older than the date
wht .1 the ' Thousand and One Nights ' were edited. When, in
Henry of Vcldeck's 12th century poem, Duke Ernest and his
companions sail into the Klebermeer, they see the rock that is
called Magnes, and are themselves dragged in below it among
"many a work of keels," whose masts stand like a forest.^
Turning from tale-tellers to grave geographers and travellers
who talk of the loadstone mountain, we find El Kazwini, like
Serapion before him, believing such boats as may be still seen
in Ceylon, pegged and sewn without metal nails, to be so built
lest the magnetic rock should attract them from their course at
sea. This quaint notion is to be found in Sir John Mandeville :
" In an isle clept Crues, ben schippes withouten nayles of iren,
or bonds, for the rockes of the adamandes ; for they ben alle
fulle there aboute in that see, that it is marveyle to spaken of.
And gif a schipp passed by the marches, and hadde either iren
bailies or iron nayles, anon he sholde ben perishet. For the
adamande of this kinde draws the iron to him ; and so Avolde it
draw to him the schipp, because of the iren ; that he sholde
never departen fro it, ne never go thens."- Now it seems that
accounts of the magnetic mountain have been given not only
as belonging to the southern seas, but also to the north, and
that men have connected with such notions the pointing of the
magnetic needle, as Sir Thomas Browne says, "ascribing thereto
the oause of the needle's direction, and conceeving the effluxions
from these mountains and rocks invite the lilly toward the
north." '^ On this evidence we have, I think, fair ground for
supposing that hypotheses of polar magnetic mountains were first
devised to explain the action of the compass, and that these

* Lane, 'Tliousanil and One N.' vol. i. pp. 161, 217 ; vol. iii. p. 78; Hole,
'Remarks on the Ar. N.' p. lOi ; Hcinricli von Vcklock, ' Herzog Ernst's von
Ikj'ern Erliohung, etc' cJ. Itixner, Amberg 1830, p. 05; sue Liullo\,', Topular
Epics of Middle Ages,' p. 221.

'"' Sir John Maundevile, ' Voiage and Travaile.'

' Sir Thomas Browne, 'Vulgar Erronrs,' ii. 3.

MYTHOLOGY.

gave rise to stories of such mountains exerting what would be
considered their proper effect on tlie iron of passing ships. The
argument is clenched by the consideration that Europeans, who
colloquially say the needle points to the north, naturally re-
quired their loadstone mountain in high northern latitudes, while
on the other hand it was as natural that Orientals should place
this wondrous rock in the south, for they say it is to the
south that the needle points. The conception of magnetism
among peoples who had not reached the idea of double polarity
may be gathered from the following quaint remarks in the ITtli
century cyclopaedia of the Chinese emperor Kang-hi. " I now
hear the Europeans say it is towards ihv. North pole that the
compass turns ; the ancients said it was toward the South ;
which have judged most rightly? Since neither give any reason
w^hv, we come to no more with the one side than with the
other. But the ancients are the earlier in date, and the farther
I go the more I perceive that they understood the mechanism
of nature. All movement languishes and dies in proportion as
it approaches the north ; it is hard to believe it to be from
thence that the movement of the magnetic needle comes." ^

To suppose that theories of a relation between man and the
lower mammalia are only a product of advanced science, would
be an extreme mistake. Even at low levels of culture, men
addicted to speculative philosophy have been led to account for
the resemblance between apes and themselves by solutions
satisfactory to their own minds, but which we must class as
philosophic myths. Among these, stories which embody the
thought of an upward change from ape to man, more or less
approaching the last-century theory of development, are to be
found side by side witli others which in the converse way
account for apes as degenerate from a previous human state.

Central American mythology works out the idea that monkeys

V'-A

■ <«f li

'^ I

' * Menioires coiic. I'llist., etc., dcs Cliiiiois,' v(j1. iv. ]). 4ii7. C'ouipaiT tlie
story of the inagnctic(?) horseman in 'Tliousaiul and One N.' voL iii. p. 119, with
the old Chinese mention of magnetic cars witli a movcahle-anncd pointing ligurc,
A. V. Hnmholdt, ' Asic Contrale,' voL i. p. xl. ; Goguct, voh iii. p. 284. (T!io
loadstone mountain has its power from a horseman on tlie top with hraz'U
horse. )

! '/

;i?'

<
I t

340

JIYTHOLOGY.

were once a human racc.^ In South-East Africa, Fatlu;r Dos
Santos remarked long since that " they hold that the apes
were anciently men and women, and thus they call them in
their tongue the first people." The Zulus still tell the tale of
an Amafeme tribe who became baboons. They were an idle
race who did not like to dig, but wished to eat at other people's
houses, saying, " Wo shall live, although we do not dig, if avo
eat the food of those who cultivate the soil." So the chief of
that place, of the house of Tusi, assembled the tribe, and they
prepared food and went out into the wilderness. They fastened
on behind them the handles of their now useless digging j)icks,
these grew and became tails, hair made its appearance on their
bodies, their foreheads became overhanging, and so they became
baboons, who are still called " Tusi's men." ^ Mr, Kingsley's
story of the great and famous nation of the Doasyoulikes, who
degenerated by natural selection into gorillas, is the civilized
counterpart of this savage myth. Or monkeys may be trans-
formed aborigines, as the Mbocobis relate in South America :
in the great conflagration of their forests a man and woman
climbed a tree for refuge from the fiery deluge, but the flames
singed their faces and they became apes.'^ Among moi'e civi-
lized nations these fancies have grajshic representatives in
Moslem legends, of which one is as follows : — There was a
Jewish city Avhich stood by a river full of fish, but the cunning
creatures, noticing the habits of the citizens, ventured freely in
sight on the Sabbath, though they carefully kept away on work-
ing-days. At last the temptation was too strong for the Jewish
fishermen, but they paid dearly for a few days' fine sport by
being miraculously turned into apes as a punishment for
Sabbath-breaking. In after times, when Solomon passed
through the Valley of Apes, between Jerusalem and Mareb,

' Brasseiir, ' Popol Vuli,' pp. 23-31. Compare this Central American niytli
of tlie ancient scnselcHS mnnnikins who hccame monkeys, with a Pottowatonu
legend in Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 320.

• Dos Santos, * Etliiopia Orituital ; Evora 160P, part i. chap. ix. ; Callaway,
'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 177. See also Burton, 'Footsteps in E. Afr.' p. 274;
AVaitz, 'Anthropologic,' vol. ii. p. 178 (W. Afr.).

^ D'Orbigny, 'L'llonuue Anidricain,' vol. ii. p. 102.

MYTHOLOGY.

341

he received from their descendants, monkeys living in houses
and dressed like men, an account of their strange history.^ So,
in classic times, Jove had chastised the treacherous race of the
Cercopes ; he took from tliem the use of tongues, born but
to perjure, leaving them to bewail in hoarse cries their fate,
transformed into the hairy apes of the Pithecusa?, like and yet
unlike the men they had been : —

" In deformo viros animal mutavit, ut idem
Dissimiles homini possent similosquo videii." -

Turning from degeneration to development, it is f(jund that
legends of the descent of luiman tribes from apes are espe-
cially applied to races despised as low and beast-like by some
higher neighbouring people, and the low race may even ac-
knowledge the Jiumiliating explanation. Thus the aboriginal
features of the robber-caste of the Marawars of South India are
the justification for their alleged descent from Rama's monkeys,
as for the like genealogy of the Kathkuri, or catechu-gatherers,
which these small, dark, low-browed, curly-haired tribes ac-
tually themselves believe in. The Jaitwas of Rajputana, a tribe
reckoned politically as Rajputs, nevertheless trace their descent
from the monkey-god Hanuman, and confirm it by alleging
that their princes still bear its evidence in a tail-like prolonga-
tion of the spine ; a tradition which has probably a real ethno-
logical meaning, pointing out the Jaitwas as of non-Aryan
race.^ Wild tribes of the Malay peninsida, looked down on as
lower animals by the more warlike and civilized Malays, have
among them traditions of their own descent from a pair of
the " unka puteh," or " white monkeys," who reared their young
ones and sent them into the plains, and there they perfected so
well that they and their descendants became men, but those
who returned to the mountains still remained apes.*^ Thus

' "Weil, ' Bibl. Leg. der Musolnuiiuu'r,' p. 2(j7 ; Laiio, ' Tliousand and One X.'
vol. iii. p. 3o0 ; Bintoii, 'El Modinali, etc' vol. ii. p. 343.

■^ Ovid, 'Metauun.' xiv. 89-100 ; Welcker, ' Grieehisclie GOtterlclire,' vol, iii.
p. 108.

^ Cfimpbell in ' Jouni. As. Soo. Bengal,' 1806, part ii. p. 132 ; Latham, 'Descr.
Eth.' vol. ii. p. 45G ; Toil, 'Annals of Kajasthnii,' vol. i. p. 114.

* Bourien iu 'Tr. Eth. See.' vol. iii. p. 73 ; see 'Jor.ru. Ind. Areliip.' vol. ii.
p. 271.

: , '

; I'

'I 'I

, 1, SI

t jtfh

I-

,1.

t .fil'S!

in,?

I n

■5!

.342

MYTHOLOGY.

Buddhist legend relates the origin of tlie flat-nosed, uncouth
tribes of Tibet, offspring of two miraculous apes, transformed
to people the snow-kingdom. Taught to till the ground, when
they had grown corn and eaten it, their tails and hair gradually
disappeared, they began to speak, became men, and clothed
themselves with leaves. The population grew closer, the land
v/as more and more cultivated, and at last a prince of the race of
Sakya, driven from his home in India, united their isolated tribes
into a single kingdom.^ In these traditions the development
from ape to man is considered to have come in successive gene-
rations, but the negroes are said to attain the result in the
individual, by way of metempsychosis. Froebel speaks of negro
slaves in the United States believing that in the next world
the}' shall be white men and free, nor is there anything
strange in their cherishing a hope so prevalent among their
kindred in West Africa. But from this the traveller goes on to
quote another story, which, if not too good to be true, is a
theory of upw.a'd and downward development almost thorough
enough for a Buddhist philosopher. He says, " A German whom
I met here told me that the blacks believe the damned among
the negroes to become monkeys ; but if in this state they
behave well, they are advanced to the state of a negro again,
and bliss is eventually possil)le to them, consisting in their
turning white, becoming winged, and so on.""

To understand these stories (and they are worth some at-
tention for the ethnological hints they contain), it is necessar}
that we should discard the results of modern scientific zoology,
and bring our minds back to a ruder condition of knowledge.
The myths of human degeneration and developme?it have
much more in common with the speculations of Lord Mon-
boddo than with the anatomical arguments of Professor Hux-
ley. On the one hand, uncivilized men deliberately assign
to apes an amount of human quality whiih to modern natu-

' Bastian, ' Ocstl. Asieii,' vol, iii. p. 135; ' Meusoli,' vol. iii. pp. 347, 349,
387 ; Koeppen, vol. ii. p. 44 ; J. J. SchiiiiiU, ' Volkor Mittel-Asiens,' p. 210.

- Frooljel, 'Central America,' , ^10; see ]5osmaii, 'Guinea' in Pinkerton,
vol. xvi. p. 401. For other traditions of Iiunian descent from apes, see Farrar,
* Chapters on Language,' i>. 45.

MYTfTOLOGY.

343

in the

assign

ralists is simply ridiculous "Everyone has heard the story of
the negroes declaring that apes really can speak, but judiciously
hold their tongues lest they should be made to work ; but it is
not so generally known that this is found as serious matter
of belief in several distant regions — West Africa, Madagascar,
South America, &c. — where monkeys or apes are found. ^
With this goes another widely-spread anthropoid story, which
relates how great apes like the gorilla and the orang-utan carry
off women to their homes in the woods, much as the Apaches
and Comanches of our own time carry off to their prairies the
women of North Mexico- And on the other hand, popular
opinion has under-estimated the man as much as it has over-
estimated the monkey. We know how sailors and emigi'ants
can look on savages as senseless, ape-like brutes, and how some
writers on anthropology have contrived to make out of the
moderate intellectual difference between an Englishman and a
negro something equivalent to the immense interval between a
negro and a gorilla. Thus we can have no difficulty in under-
standing how savages may seem mere apes to the eyes of men
who hunt them like wild beasis in the forests, who can only
hear in their language a sort of irrational gurgling and barking,
and who fail totally to appreciate the real cultvu'e Avhicli better
acquaintance always shows among the riulest tribes of man.
It is well known that when Sanskrit legend tells of the apes
who fought in the army of King Hanuman, it really refers to
those aborigines of the land who were driven by the Aryan
invaders to the hills and jungles, and whose descendants are
known to us as Bhils, Kols, Sonthals, and the like, rude tribes
such as the Hindu still speaks of as " monkey-people." ^ One

1 Bosnian, 'Guinea,' p. 440; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 173; Caucho, ' llolation de
Madagascar,' p. 127; DobrizliolFev, 'Abipones,' vol. i. p. 288 ; Bastian, 'Menseh,'
vol. ii. p. 44 ; Poucliet, ' Plurality of Jlunian liuco,' p. 22.

- Monboddo, 'Origin and Progress of Lang.' 2iul ed. vol. i. p. 277 ; Uu Chaillu,
' Equatorial Africa,' p. 61 ; St. John, ' Forests of Par East,' vol. i. p. 17 ; vol. ii.
p. 239.

3 Ma Miiller in Bunscn, 'Phil. Uiiiv. Hist.' vol. i. p. 340; 'Journ. As. Soc.
Bengal,' vol. xxiv. p. 207. See Marsden in 'As. Pes.' vol iv. p. 226; Fitch in
Pinkerton, vol. ix. ]}. 415; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 465; vol. ii.
p. 201.

-l h

' ." '.I

•* ' ■' ■ 1

i,. -it:,.

I-'

■ , ' 'a !

if'

344

MYTHOLOGY

I''

ii ii

11''::

I r

of the most perfect identifications of the savage and the
moukey in Hindustan is the following description of the hun-
manus, or "man of the woods" (Sanskr. r(nK:t=vvood,
onanitsha=Ynan). " The bunmanun is an animal of the
monkey kind. His face has a near resemhlance to the
human ; he has no tail, and walks erect. The skin of his
body is black, and slightly covered Avith hair." That this
description really applies not to apes, but to the dark-skinned,
non-Aryan aborigines of the land, appears further in the enu-
meration of the local dialects of Hindustan, to which, it is said,
" may be added the jargon of the bunmanus, or wild men of
the woods." ^ In the islands of the Indian Archipelago, whose
trojDical forests swarm both with high apes and low savages, the
confusion between the two in the minds of the half-civilized
inhabitants becomes most inextricable. There is a well-knowii
Hindu fable in the Hitopadesa, which relates as a warning to
stupid imitators the fate of the ape who imitated the carpenter,
and was caught in the cleft when he pulled out the wedge ; this
fable has come to be told in Sumatra as a real story of one of the
indigenous savages of the island." It is to rude forest-men that
the Malays habitually give the name of oranr/-utan, i. e., " man of
the woods." But in Borneo this term is applied to the miyas ape,
whence we have learnt to call this creature the orang-utan, and
the Malays themselves are known to give the name in one and
the same district to both the savage and the ape. ^ This term
" man of the woods " extends far beyond Hindu and Malay
limits. The Siamese talk of the Khon pa, " men of the wood,"
meaning apes ; ^ the Brazilians of Ccmiari, or " wood-men,"
meaning a certain savage tribe.'' The name of the Bosjesman,
so amusingly mispronounced by Englishmen, as though it were

* Aj'een iVkliareo, tvaiis. l\y Gladwin ; ' Report of Ethnoloj^ical Committee
Jiibbulpore Exhibition, 186G-7,' part i. p. 3.

" Marsden, ' Sumatra,' p. 41.

^ Logan in 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 246; vol. iii. p. 490; Thomson,
ibid. vol. i. p. 350 ; Crawfurd, ibid, vol iv. p. lS(i.

* Bastian, ' Ocstl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 123; vol. iii. p. 43.'). See the mention of
ihcban-maniish in Kumaouand Nepal, Campbell; 'Ethnology of India,' in ' Journ.
As. Soc. Bengal,' 186C, part ii. p. 46.

■■ ilartius, 'Etlmog. Amer.' vol. i. pp. 425, 4?!.

MYTHOLOGr.

345

some outlandish native ■word, is merely tlic Dutch equivalent
for Bash-iiKUi, "man oC the v/oods or Lush." ^ In our own
language the " homo silvaticus " or " forest-man " has become
the " salvage man " or savage. European opinion of the native
tribes of the New World may be judged of by the fact that, in
1537, Pope Paul III. had to make express statement that these
Indians were really men (attendentes Indos ipsos utpote v..ros
homines).- Thus there is little cause to wonder at the circula-
tion of stories of ape-men in South America, and at there being
some indefiniteness in the local accounts of the selvage or
*' savage," that hairy wild man of the Avoods who, it is said,
lives in the trees, and sometimes carries off the native women.^
The most perfect of these mystifications is to be found in a
Portuguese manuscript quoted in the account of Castelnau's
expedition, and giving, in all seriousness, the following account
of the people called Caatas : " This populous nation dwells east
of the Juruena, in the neighbourhood of the rivers San Joao
and San Thome, advancing even to the confluence of the
Juruena and the iVrinos. It is a very remarkable fact that
the Indians composing it walk naturally like the quadrupeds,
with their hands on the ground ; they have the belly, breast,
arms, f.nd legs covered with hair, and are of small stature ; they
are fierce, and use their teeth as weapons ; they sleep on the
ground, or among the branches of trees ; they have no industry,
nor agriculture, and live only on fruits, wihl roots, and fish." •*
The writer of this record shows no symptom of being aware
that citata or coata is the name of the large black Simia Panis-
cus, and that he has been really describing, not a tribe of In-
diaLS, but a species of apes.

Various reasons may have led to the growth of another
(juaint group of legends, describing human tribes with tails

' Its analogue is loycshok, "bush-goat," tlio African antolopc. The ilovivation
of the BoHJcsman's name from his nest-like shelter in a bush, given by Kolbeu
and others since, is newer and far-fetched.

" Martins, vol. i. 50.

^ Humboldt and Bonpland, vol. v. p. 81 ; Southcy, 'Brazil,' vol. i. p. xxx. ;
Bates, ' Amazons,' vol, 1. p. 73 ; vol. ii. p. 204.

* Castelnau, 'Exp. dans TAmdr. du Sad,' vol. iii. p. 118. Sec Martins, vol.
i. pp. 218, 4U, 5G3, '133.

' ;»

346

MYTHOLOGY.

■, l!:

It. :'■

i I-

like Leasts, To people wiio at once believe monkeys a kind
of savages, and savages a kind of monkeys, men with tails are
creatures coming under both definitions. Thus the Homo cau-
datus, or satyr, often appears in po})ular belief as a half-human
creature, while even in old-fashioned works on natural history
he may be found depicted on the evident model of an anthro-
poid ape. In East Africa, the imagined tribe of long-tailed
men ai als'> ironkoy-faced,^ while in South America the coata
tapuya, 'Ui'-rdcey-men," are as naturally described as men
with tails Eun poan travellers have tried to rationalize the
stories of tailed ii. '.\ which they meet with in Africa and the
East. Thus Dr. Krapf points to a leather appendage worn
behind from the girdle by the Wakamba, and remarks, " It is no
wonder that people say there are men with tails in the interior
of Africa," and other writers have called attention to hanging
mats or waist-cloths, fly-flappers or artificial tails worn for orna-
ment, as having made their wearers liable to be mistaken at a
distance for tailed men.'' But these apparently silly myths
have often a real ethnological significance, deeper at any rate than
such a trivial blunder. When an ethnologist meets in any
district with the story of tailed men, he ought to look for a
despised tribe of aborigines, outcasts, or heretics, living near
or among a dominant population, who look upon them as
beasts, and furnish them with tails accordingly. Although the
aboriginal Miau-tsze, or " children of the soil," come down from
time to time into Canton to trade, the Chinese still firmly
believe them to have short tails like monkeys;* the half-
civilized Malays describe the ruder forest tribes as tailed men ; "'
the Moslem nations of Africa tell the same story of the Niam-
Nam of the interior." The outcast race of Cagots, about the

1 Petlierick, 'Egypt, etc' p. 3G7.

2 Soutliey, ' Brazil,' vol. i. p. 685 ; Martins, vol. i. pp. 425, 633.

» Krapf, p. 142 ; Baker, 'Albert Nyanza,' vol. i. p. 83 ; St. John, vol. i. pp. 51,
405 ; and others.

* Lockhart, ' Abor. of China,' in 'Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. i. p. 181.

^ 'Jonrn. Ind. Archip. ' vol. ii. p. 358 ; vol. iv. p. 374; Cameron, 'Malayan
India,' p. 120; Marsden, p. 7; Antonio Galvano, pp. 120, 218.

" Davis, 'Carthage,' p. 230 ; Bostock and Kiley's Pliny (Bohn's ed.), vol. ii.
p. 134, note.

mythologv.

S47

Pyrenees, were said to bo born with tails ; and in Spain the
mediaeval superstition still survives that the Jews have tails,
like the devil, as they say.^ In England the notion was turned
to theological profit by being claimed as a judgment on wretches
who insulted 8t, Augustine and St. Thomas of Canterbury.
Home Tooke quotes thus from that zealous and somewhat foul-
mouthed reformer, Bishop Bale : " Johan Capgrave and Alex-
ander of Essoby sayth, that for castynge of fyshe tayles at thys
Augustyne, Dorsett Shyre menne hadde tayles ever after. But
Polydorus applieth it unto Kentish men at Stroud by Rochester,
for cuttinge of Thomas Becket's horses tail Thus hath Eng-
land in all other land a perpetuall infamy .f vies by theyr
wrytten legendes of lyes, yet can they n<' wet" .ell, where to
bestowe them truely an Englyshman now can-
not travayle in an other land, by v/ay of m ''chandyso or any
other honest occupyinge, but it is most -^ontumeliously thrown
in his tethe, that al Enghshmen have \ des." ^ The story at
last sank into a commonplace of local slander between shire
and shire, and the Devonshire belief that Cornishmen had tails
lingered at least till a few years ago.^ Not less curious is the
tradition among savage tribes, that the tailed state was an early
or original condition of man. In the Fiji Islands there is a
legend of a tribe of men with tails like dogs, who perished in
the great deluge, while the Tasmanians declared that men
originally had tails and no knee-joints. Among the natives of
Brazil, it is related by a Portuguese writer of about 1600, after
a couple have been married, the father or father-in-law cuts a
wooden stick with a sharp flint, imagining that by this cere-
mony he cuts off the tails of any future grandchildren, so that
they will be born tailless.'' Tiiere seems no evidence to connect
the occasional occurrence of tail-like projections by malforma-
tion with the stories of tailed human tribes.^

■i .f*l

'Argot,' p. 349;

^ Francisqiio • Michel, 'Races Mamlites,' vol. i. p. 17
Fernan Caballero, ' La Gaviota,' vol. i. p. 59.

2 Home Tooke, ' Diver.sion.s of Purley,' vol. i. p. 397.

3 Baring-Gould, 'Myths,' p. 137.
•• "Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 252 ; Backlioiise, 'Austr.

vol. iv. p. 1290 ; De Laet, 'Novus Orbis,' p. 543.
* For various other stories of tailed men, see 'As. Res.' vol. iii. p. 149 ; 'Mem.

557;

Purehas,

,. *

■m

I'v

I'lv'

,1 ■

■,i'4 i

S48

MYTHOLOGY.

Anthropology, initil modern times, classilicd among its facts
the particulars of monstrous human tribes, gigantic or (Iwartish,
mouthless or headless, one-eyed or one-legg(!d, and so forth.
The works of ancient geograjdiers and naturalists abound in
descriptions of these strange creatures ; writers such as Isidore
of Seville and Roger Bacon collected them, and sent them into
fresh and wider circulation in the middle agc-s, . nd the popular
belief of uncivilized nations retains them still. It was not till
the real world had been so thoroughly exphn'ed as to leave
littlo room in it for the monsters, that about the beginning
of the present century science banished them to the ideal
world of mythology. Having had to ghuice here at two of the
principal species in tins amazing semi-human menagerie, it
may bo worth while to look among the rest for more hints as
to the sources of mythic fancy.^

That some of the mvths of giants and dwarfs are connected
with traditions of real indigenous or hostile tribes is settled
Leyond (piestion by the evidence brought forwnrd by Grimm,
Nilsson, and Hanusch. With all the difficulty of analysing
the mixed nature of the dwarfs of European folklore, and
judging how far they are elves, or gnomes, or such like nature-
spirits, and how far human beings in mythic aspect, it is im-
possible not to recognize this latter element in the kindly or
mischievous aborigines of the land, with their special language,
and religion, and costume. The giants appear in European
folklore as Stone-Age heathen, shy of the concjuering tribes of
men, loathing their agriculture and the sound of their church-
bells. The rude native's fear of the more civilized intruder
in his land is well depicted in the tale of the giant's daughter,
who found the boor ploughing his field and carried him home

Antlirop. Soc' vol. i. p. 454; ' Joum. Iinl. Arcliip.' vol. iii. p. 261, etc. (Xicobar
Islands); Klcmm, 'C. G.' vol. ii. pp. 246, 316 (Sarytsclicw Is.); 'Letters of
CohiniLiis,' Hakluyt Soc. p. 11 (Cuba), etc., etc.

' Details of monstrous tribes have been in past centuries specially collected iu
the following works : ' Autliroponiotaniorphosis : Man Transformed, or the Arti-
lieiall Changeling, etc.,' scripsit J. B. cognomento Chirosophus, Jl.!)., London,
1053; Culovias, ' De Thaumatantliropo!-gia, vera pariter atque iicta tractatus
historico-])hysicus,' Eostock, 1685 ; J. A. Fabrioius, ' Disscrtatio do hominibus
orbis nostri incolis, etc.,' Hamburg, 1721. Only a few principal rei'erences are
here given.

ii
if

■ its facta
:l\varfis]i,
so forth.
)oun(l ill
s Lsidorc
liom into
! popular
i not till
to leave
oginning
he ideal
^o of the
igerie, it
hints as

3nnccted
■» settled
Grimm,
nalysing
are, and
nature-
it is im-
indly or
.nguage,
uropean
ribes of
church-
ntrudcr
lughter,
n home

(Xicobar
jctters of

lected in
the Arti-
Londoii,
tractatus
loniinilms
dices aro

MVTUOLOUV.

ail)

in her apron fn- a plaything — plough, and oxen, and all ; but
her mother bade iier carry them back to where she found
them, for, said she, they are of a people that can do the Huns
much ill. The fact of the giant tribes bearin<; such historic
names as Hun or Chud is significant, and Slavonic men have,
perhaps, not yet forgotten that the dw.arfs talketl of in tlicir
legends were descended from the aborigines whom the Old-
Prussians found in the land. Beyond a doubt the old Scandina-
vians are describing the ancient and ill-used Lapp })()pulation,
once so widely spread over Northern Europe, when their saga.s
tell of the dwarfs, stunted and ugly, dressed in reindeer kirtle
and coloured cap, cunning and cowardl}^ shy of intercourse
even with friendly Norsemen, dwelling in caves or in the
mound-like Lapland "gamin," armed only Avith arrows tipped
with stone and bone, yet feared and hated by their conquerors
for thoir fancied powers of witchcraft.^ Moslem legend relates
that the race of Gog and Magog (Yajuj and Majuj) are of tiny
stature, but with ears like elephants ; they are a numerous
people, and ravaged the Avorld ; they dwell in the Ilast, sepa-
rated from Persia l)y a high mountain, with but one pass ; and
the nations their neighbours, when they heard of Alexander
the Groat (Dhu rKarneiii) traversing the world, paid tribute
to him, and he made them a wall of bronze and iron, to keep
in the nation of Gog and Magog." Who can fail to recognize
in this a mystified description of the Tatars of High Asia?
Professor Nilsson tries to account in a general way for the huge
or tiny stature of legendary tribes, as being mere exaggeration
of their actual largeness or smallness. We must admit that
this sometimes really happens. The accounts which European
eye-witnesses brought home of the colossal stature of the Pata-
gonians, to whose waists they said their own heads reached, are
enough to settle once for all the fact that myths of giants
may arise from the sight of really tall men ; ^ and it is so, too,

' Grimm, * D. JI.' cli. xvii. xviii. ; Nilsson, 'Primitive Inhabitants of Scan<li-
navia,' eh. vi. ; Hanuseh, 'Slav. Mytli.' pp. 230, 325-7 ; Wuttke, ' Volksabergl.'
p. 231.

2 'Clironique de Tabari,' tr. Dubenx, part i. cli. viii. Sec Koran, xviii. 92.

' Pigafetta in Pinkcrton, vol. xi. ]>. 314. See Blunienbach, ' De Generi.s

i. M

"•f"

! i ^:

■k

■ i

; »

Ml*

f M

■:

ij *•

350

MYTHOLOGY.

witli tli(! (Iwarf-lo^feiids ot" the saino region, fis wlior(> Kiiivot,
tlio old traveller, remarks (jf the little peoph; of llio do la
Plata, that they arc " not so very litthj as descrihed." *

Nevertheless, this same group of giant and dwarf myths
may servo as a warning not to stretch too widely a partial ex-
planation, however sound within its proper limits. There is
])l('nty of evidence that giant-legend:-' are sometimes philosophic
myths, to account for tlic finding of great fossil hones. To
give but a single instance of such connexion, certain huge jaws
and teeth, found iu excavating on the Hoe at Plymouth, were
recognized as belonging to the giant (logmagog, who in old
times fouj^ht his last fight there against Corineus, tiie eponymic
iiero of Cornwall.- As to the dwarfs, again, stories of them are
curiously associated with those long-enduring mommients of
departed races— their burial-cysts and dolmens. Thus, iu
the TTnited States, ranges of rude stone cysts, often only two
or three feet long, are connected with the idea of a pygmy
r'iCe buried in them, while in India it is a usual legend of
'die prehistoric dolmens, that they were dwarfs' houses —
the dwellings of the ancient pygmies, who here again appear
as representatives of prehistoric tribes.'' But a very different
meaning is obvious in a mediaeval traveller's account of the
hairy, man-like creatures of Cathay, one cubit high, and that
do not bend their knees as they walk, or in an Arab geogra-
pher's description of an island people in the Indian seas, four
spans higli, naked, with red downy hair on their faces, and
Avho climb up trees and shun mankind. If any one could pos-
sibly doubt the real nature of those dwarfs, his doubt may be
resolved by Marco Polo's statement that in his time Uicnkeys
were regularly embalmed in the East Indies, and sold i-i boxes

¥ \

Hunianre Varietate; ' Fitzvoy, ' Voy. of Adventure ami Beagle,' vol. i. ; Waitz,
' Antliropoloffie,' vol. iii. ji. 4S8.

' Kuivet ill rurcilias, vol. iv. p. 1231 ; compare Humboldt aud l>onpland,
vol. v. p. 5C4, with Martins, 'Ethnog. Amcr.' p. 424; see also Krajif, 'East
Africa,' p. 51; Du Cliaillu, ' Ashango-laiu'l,' p. 319.

- 'Early Hist, of Wankiml,' ch. xi. ; Hunt, ' Top. Horn.' 1st scries, pp. IS, 304.

^ Hquicr, ' Abor. Monuments of Is. Y.'p. (J8 ; Long's ' E.\p.' vol. i. ]ip. 62, 275;
Meadows Taylor in 'Journ. Eth. Soc.'vol. i. p. 157.

MYriI<)L(J(JY.

a.n

to bo exhibited ovor tlio world as pynfiidoH.^ Thus varioiia
(hfforcnt facts have givou rise to stories of giants and dwarfs,
more than one mythic ckinicnt ju'rliaps condtining to lorni a
single k'gend — a result perplexing in the extreme to the my-
thological interpreter.

Descriptions of strange tribes made in entire good faith may
come to bo understood in new extravagant senses, when carried
among [)eoi)le not aware of the original facts. Tho following
are some interpretations of this kind, among which some far-
fetched cases are given, to show tliat the method must not be
trusted too nnich. The term " noseless " is apt to be mis-
understood, yet it was fairly enough applied to flat-nosed
tribes, such as Turks of the steppes, whom Jlabbi Benjamin
of Tudela thus depicts in the twelfth century : — " They have
no noses, but draw breath through two small holes." - Again,
among the common ornamental mutilations of savages is that
of stretching the ears to an enormous size by weights or coils,
and it is thus verbally (pute true that there are men whose
oars hang down u])0u their shoulders. Yet without explanation
.such a phrase would be understood to describe, not the appear-
ance of a real savnge with his ear-lobes stretched into pendant
lleshy loops, but rather that of Pliny's Paiiotil, or of tho
Indian Karnaprdiurana, " whose ears serve them for cloaks,"
or of the African dwarfs, who use their ears one for mattress
and tho other for coverlet when they lie down. One of the
most extravagant of these stories is told by Fray Pedro Simon
in California, wiiere in fact tho territory of Oregon has its
name from the Spanish term of Oirjoiics, or "Big-Ears," given to
tho inhabitants from their practice of stretching their ears with
or.iaments.^ Even purely metaphorical descriptions, if taken

' Gill, do Eiibi'uquis in rinlvovton, vol. vii. p. 09; Lu-.ic, 'Thoii.saiul and One
X.' vol. iii. pp. 81, Dl, sou 24, 52, 97; Hole, p. 03; Miirco Polo, book iii.
(di. xii.

- Benjamin of Tudela, 'Itinerary,' ed. and tr. Ly Aslier, 83 ; Plin. vii. 2. Sec
llax Miiller in Bnnsen, vol. i. pp. ^4(5, 358.

3 Plin. iv. 27; Mela, iii. 6; Bastian, ' Oestl. Asian,' vol. i. p. 120; vol. i.
]>. 93; St. John, vol. ii. p. 117; Marsdcn, p. 53; Lane, 'Thousand and One X,'
vol. iii. pp. 92, 305; Pethcriek, 'Egypt, etc.' p. 367; Burton, 'Central Afr.*
vol. i. p. 235; Pedro Simon, ' Indias Occidcntales,' p. 7. A name similar to

Jli •> s

]' I

?*■'?■-

U- I

352

MYTHOLOGY.

in a literal sense, are capable of turning into catches, like the
story of the horse with its head where its tail should he. I
have h<^vA\ told hy a French Protestaat from the Nismes district
that the epithet of ^^orryt'o negro, or " black -throat," hy which
Catholics describe a Huguenot, is taken so literally that heretic
chikh'en are sometimes forced to open their mouths to satisfy
the orthodox of their being of the usual colour within. On
cxamiuing the descrijitions of savage tribes by higher races, it
appears that several of the epithets usually applied only need
literalizing to turn into the wildest of the legendary monster-
stories. Thus, the Birmese speak of the rude Karens as
" dog-men ; " ^ JVIarco Polo describes the Angaman (Andaman)
islanders as brutish and savage camiibals, Avith heads like
dogs.- yElian's account of the dog-headed people of India is
on the face of it an account of a savage race. The Kynokephali,
he says, are so called from their bodily appearance, but other-
wise they are human, and they go dressed in the skins of
beasts ; they are just, and harm not men ; they cannot speak,
but roar, yet they imderstand the langniage of the Indians ;
they live by hunting, being swift of foot, and they cook their
game not by fire, but by tearing it into fragments and drying
it in the sun ; they keep goats and sheep, and d'iidc the milk.
The naturalist concludes by saying that he mentions these fitly
among tl;e irrational animals, because they have not articulate,
distinct, and human language.'^ This last suggestive remark
well states the old prevalent notion that barbarians have no real
languiige, but are " speechless," " tongueless," or even month-
less.^ Another monstrous people of wide celebrity are Pliny's

Ovcgonts is PuUvjoncs, or ' IJig-foct,' which remains in Pa(ar/omn .- compare i.ith
tliis tlio stories of men witli feet so largo as to serve for parasols, the Skiapodes
or ' Shadowfect,' Plin. vii. 2 ; see llawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 50.

' ]5astian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 133.

- INIarco Polo, book iii. eh. xviii.

3 yl'ilian, iv. 4G ; I'lin. vi. ^5; vii. 2. See for other versions, Purchas, vol. iv.
p. 1191; vol. V. p. 901; Criinz, p. 2f)7 ; Lane, 'Thousand and One Nights,'
vol. iii. pp. S6, 94, 97, 3Uo ; Davis, 'Carthage,' p. 230; Latham, 'Descr. Eth.'
vol. ii. p. 83.

•' Plin. A'. 8; vi. 24, 35; vii. 2; I^lela, iii. 9; Herberstcin in Ilakhiyt, vol. i.
]). 593; Latham, 'Descr. Lth.' vol. i. ]i. 483; Davis, 1. c. ; sec 'Early Hist, of
Mankind,' p. 77.

, like tlUr
I be. I
:s district
by wbicli
it l)crctic
.0 satisfy
liin. On
races, it
Illy need
monster-
Karens as
Lndanian)
L'ads like
India is
okcphali,
lilt other-
skins of
3t speak,
Indians ;
3ok their
d drying-
he milk.
lese fitly
ticulate,
remark
e no real
n mouth-
e Pliny's

nipare .litli
Skiapodcs

as, vol. iv.
le Nights,'
)fS(;r. Etli.'

uyt, vol. i.
ly Hist, of

MYTHOLOGY.

3.53

Blemmya), said to be headless, and accordingly to have their
mouths and eyes in their breasts ; creatures over whom Prester
John reigned in Asia, "who dwelt far and wide in South Ameri-
can forests, and Avho to our mcdiajval ancestors were as real as
the cannibals with whom Othello couples thom.

" Tho Anthropophagi, and men whoso heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

If, however, we look in dictionaries for the Aceiihali, we may
find not actual headless monsters, but heretics so called because
their original head or founder v/as not known ; aiul when tho
kingless Turkoman hordes say of themselves " We are a people
without a head," tho metaphor is even more plain and natural.^
Again, Moslem legend tells of the Shikk and the Nesnas, crea-
tures like one half of a split man, with one arm, leg, and eye.
Possibly it was thence that the Zulus got their idea of a tribe
of half-men, who in one of their stories found a Zuiu maiden in
a cave and thought she was two people, but on closer inspection
of her admitted, " The thing is pretty ! But oh the two legs ! "
This odd fancy coincides with the simple metaphor which de-
scribes a savage as only " half a man," semihomo, as Virgil
calls the ferocious Cacus.^ Again, when the Chinese compared
themselves to the outer barbarians, they said " We see with two
eyes, the Latins with one, and all other nations are blind."
Such metaphors, proverbial among ourselves, verbally corre-
spond with legends of one-eyed tribes, such as the savage cave-
dwelling Kyklopes.^ Verbal coincidence of this kind, untrust-

* Plin. V. 8 ; Lane, vol. i. p. 33 ; vol. ii. p. 377 ; vol. iii. p. 81 ; Eiscnmonger,
voL ii. p. 559; Mandoville, p. 213; Raleigh in llakluyt, vol. iii. pp. 052, 065;
Humboldt and Honplaud, vol. v. p. 170; rureiias, vol. iv. p. 12S5 ; vol. v.
p. 901 ; Lsidor. Hispal. s. v. 'Acephali ;' Vaiiibciy, ]>. 310, see p. 436.

2 Lane, vol. i. p. 33 ; Callaway, 'Zulu Talcs,' vol. i. pp. lot), 202 ; Virg. JEn.
viii. 194. Compare the 'one-legged' tnl)es, i'liu. vii. 2; Schoolcrat't, 'Indian
Tribes,' part iii. p. 521 ; C'harlevoiv, vol. i. p. 25. The Australians use the nicta-
jihor ' of one leg ' (matta gyn) to deseribe tribes as of one stock, G. F. Moore,
' Yocab.' pp. 5, 71.

3 Haytou in Purchas, vol. iii. p. 108; see Klemm, 'C. G.' vol. vi. p. 129;
Vambdry, p. 49; Homer. Odyss. i.x. ; Strabo, i. 2, 12; .sen Schorzer, ' Voy. of
Novara,' vol. ii. p. 40 ; C. J. Andersson, ' Lake Ngami, etc. 'p. 453 ; Du Chaillu,
'Equatorial Africa,' p. 440; Sir J. Richardson, 'Polar Regions,' p. 300. Tor

VOL. I. A A

-jMi:

354

MYTHOLOGY.

-'!

\U'';

worthy enough in these latter instances, passes at last into the
vaguest fancy. The negroes call Europeans " long-headed,"
using the phrase in our familiar metaphorical sense ; but trans-
late it into Greek, and at once Hesiod's Mah'okephaloi come
into being.i And, to conclude the list, one of the commonest of
the monster-tribes of the Old and New World is that distin-
guished by having feet turned backward. Now there is really
a people, whose name, memorable in scientific controversy, de-
scribes them as " having feet the opposite Avay," and they still
retain that ancient name o? Antipodes."

Returning from this digression to the region of philosophic
myth, we may examine new groups of explanatory stories, pro-
duced from that craving to know causes and reasons which ever
besets mankind. When the attention of a man in the myth-
making stage of intellect is drawn to any phenomenon or
custom which has to him no obvious reason, he invents and
tells a story to account for it, and even if he does not persuade
himself that this is a real legend of his forefathers, the story-
teller who hears it from him and repeats it is troubled with no
such difficulty. Our task in dealing with such stories is made
easy Avhen the criterion of possibility can be brought to bear
upon them. It has become a mere certainty to moderns that
asbestos is not really salamander's wool ; that morbid hunger is
not really caused by a lizard or a bird in a man's stomach ; that
a Chinese philosopher cannot really have invented the fire-drill
by seeing a bird peck at the branches of a tree till spai'ks came.
The African Wakuafi account for their cattle-lifting proclivities
by the calm assertion that Engai, that is. Heaven, gave all
cattle to them, and so wherever there is any it is their call
to go and seize it.*^ So in South America the fierce Mbayas
declare they received from the Caracara a divine command to

tribes with more tlian tAvo eyes, see Pliny's metaphorically explained Nisacrethae
and Nisyti, Plin. vi. 35 ; also Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 414 ; ' Oestl. Asien,'
vol. i. pp. 25, 76; retherick, 1. c.; Bowon, ' Yoniba Gr.' p. sx. ; Schirren,
p. 19G,

1 Koelle, ' Vei Gr.' p. 229 ; Strabo, i. 2, 35.

' riiu. vii. 2 ; Humboldt and Eoui)laud, vol. v. p. 81.

3 Krapf, p. S59.

MYTHOLOGY.

355

make war on all other tribes, killing the men and adopting the
women and children.' But tiiongli it may be consistent with
the notions of these savages to relate .-uch explanatory legends,
it is not consistent with our notions to believe them. Fortu-
nately, too, the ex post facto legends are ai:)t to come into
collision with more authentic sources of information, or to en-
croach on the domain of valid history. It is of no use for the
Chinese to tell their stupid story of written characters having
been invented from the markings on a tortoise's shell, for the
early forms of such characters, plain and simple pictures of
objects, have been preserved 'n China to this day. Nor can we
]n"aise anything but ingenuity in the West Highland legend
that the Pope once laid an interdict on the land, but forgot to
curse the hills, so the people tilled them, this story being told
to account for those ancient traces of tillage still to be seen on
the wild hill-sides, the so-called " elf- furrows." - The most em-
barrassing cases of explanatory tradition are those which are
neither impossible enough to condemn, nor probable enough to
receive. Ethnographers who know how world-wide is tiie
practice of defacing the teeth among the lower races, and how
it only dies gradually out in higher civilization, naturally ascnbe
the habit to some general reason in human nature, at a parti-
cular stage of development. But the mutilating tribes them-
selves have local legends to account for local customs ; thus the
Penongs of Birmah and the Batoka of East Africa both break
their front teeth, br.t the one tribe says its reason is not to
look like apes, the other that it is to be like oxen and not like
zebras.'^ Of the legends of tattooing, one of the oddest is that
told to account for the fact that while the Fijians tattoo only
the women, their neighbours, the Tongans, tattoo only the men.
It is related that a Tongan, on his way from Fiji to report to
his countrymen the proper custom for them to observe, went on
his way repeating the rule he had carefully learnt }>y heart,
" Tattoo the women, but not the men," but unluckily he
tripped over a stump, got his lesson wrong, and reached Tonga

' Soutliey, ' Brazil,' vol. i)" p. 390.
' D. Wilson, 'Archeology, etc. of Scotl.ind,' p. 123.
^ Bastian, ' Ocstl. Asieii,' vol. i. p. 123 ; Livingstone, p. .^32.

A A 2

ai;

35o

3IYTIlOLO(iY.

■)■!

lit

:|j

ii^i

;'f' ■ t

repeating " Tattoo tlie men, hut not the wuiaeu," an or'l::.anco
which tiiey observed ever after. How reasouahle such an
explanation seemed to the Polynesian mind, may be judged
from the Samoans having a version with different details, and
applied to their own instead of the Tongan islands.^

All men feel how wanting in sense of reality is a stor} with
no personal name to hang it to. This want is thus graphically
expressed by Sprenger the historian in his life of Mohammed :
" It makes, on me at least, quite a different impression when it
is related that ' the Prophet said to Alkama,' even if I knew
nothing whatever else of this Alkama, than if it were merely
stated that ' he said to somebody.' " The feeling wiiich this
acute and learned critic thus candidly confesses, has from the
eai'liest times, and in the minds of men troubled with no such
nice historic conscience, germinated to tha production of much
mythic fruit. Thus it has come to pass that one of ihv, leading-
personages to be met with in the tradition of the world is ready
no more than — Somebody. There is nothing this wondrous
creature cannot achieve, no shape he cannot put on ; one only
restriction binds him at all, that the name he r sumes shall
have some sort of congruity with the office he undertakes, and
even from this he oftentimes breaks loose. So rife in our own
day is this manufacture of r '^'"^onal history, often fitted up with
details of place and dat- 't:to the very semblance of real
chronicle, that it may be guessed how vast its working must
have been in days of old. Thus the ruins of pncient buildings,
of whose real history and use no trustworthy tradition survives
in local memory, have been easily furnished by myth with a
builder and a purpose. In Mexico the great Somebody assumes
the name of Montezuma, and builds the aqueduct of Tezcuco ;
to the Persian any huge and antique ruin is the work of the
heroic Antar; in Russia, says Dr. Bastian, buildings of the
most various ages are set down to Peter the Great, as in Spairr
iO Boabdilor Charles V.; and European folklore may attribute

1 Villiams, 'r;ji,'p. 1(50 ; Scomanii, 'Viti/p. 113; Turner, 'rolynesin,' p. 182
(ii similar lej^cud told by tlie Sanioaus). Anotlior tattooing lof^t'iid in Latluun,
'Dcscv. Eth.' vol. i. p. 152; IJustiun, ' Ocstl. Asieu,' vol. i. p. 112.

^4*^'

MYTHOLOGY.

357

to tlie Devil any old building of unusual massiveness, and espe-
cially those stone structures which antiquaries now class as prse-
historic monuments. With a more graceful thought, the Indians
of Nortli America declare that the imitative tumuli of Ohio,
great mounds laid out in rude imitation of animals, were
shaped in old days by the great Manitu himself, in promise of
a plentiful supply of game in the Avorld of spirits. The New
Zealanders tell how the hero Kupe separated the North and
South Islands, and formed Cook's Straits. Greek myth placed
at the gate of the Mediterranean the twin pillars of Herakles ;
in more recent times the opening of the Straits of Gibraltar
became one of the many feats of Alexander of Macedon.^ Such
a group of stories as this is no unfair test of the value of mere
traditions of personal names whic'^ simply answer the questions
that mankind have been askinof for ages about the oriijin of
their rites, laws, customs, arts. Some such traditions are of
course genuine, and we may be able, especially in the more
modern cases, to separate the real from the imaginary. But it
must be distinctly laid down that, in t)ie absence of corrobora-
tive evidence, every tradition stands suspect of mythology, if it
can be made by the simple device of fitting some personal .f^me
to the purely theoretical assertion that somebcnly must h-i vo
introduced into the world fire-making, or weapons, or 'na-
ments, or games, or agriculture, or marriage, or any other .. ~ the
elements of civilization.

Among the various matters which have > xcited curiosity, and
led to its satisfaction by explanatory m} dis, are local nauies.
These, when the popular ear has lost their primitive significance,
become in barbaric times an apt subject for the myth-maker to
explain in his peculiar fashion. Thus the Tibetans declare that
their lake Clioinorirl was named fn ui a woman (cJiomo) who
was carried into it by the yak she was riding, and cried in
terror ri-)'l ! The Arabs say the founders of the city of Sennaar
saw on the river bank a beautiful woman with teeth glittering

1 Bastian, 'Men sell, 'vol. iii. pp. 1G7-8 ; Wilkinson in Eawliiison's 'Herodotus,'
vol. ii. p. 79; Orinini, ' D. M.' pp. S72-G ; W. I ralgvave, 'Arabia,' vol. i.
p. 251; Squier iiud Davis, ' Jlonuinents of ilississippi V.alley,'p. 131; Tayloi,
'New Zcalaii.l,' ].. 2.'58.

VV^l

358

MYTHOLOGY.

li!

like fire, ■svlicnce tlic}' called the iplace Sinndr, i.e., " tooili of
fire." The Arkadlans derived the name of their town TrapeziLS
from the table (trapeza), which Zeus overturned when the
wolfish Lykaon served a child on it for a banquet to him.^
Such crude fancies no way differ in nature from English local
legends current up to recent times, such as that which relates
how the Romans, coming in sight of where Exeter now stands,
exclaimed in delight, " Ecce terra! " and thus the city had its
name. Not long ago, a cuiious en(][uirer wished to know from
the inhabitants of FonUnghrldge, or as the country people call
it, Fardeiihridge, what the origin of this name might be, and
heard in reply that the bridge was thought to have been built
when wages were so cheap that masons worked for a "farden"
a day. The Falmouth folks' story of Squire Pendarvis and his
ale is well known, how his servant excused herself for selling it
to the sailors, because, as she said, " The iienny come so quick,''
v;hence the place came to be called Fennycomequick ; this
nonsense being invented to account for an ancient Cornish
name, probably Penycumgv: :, "head of the creek valley."
Mythic fancy had fallen to a low estate when it dwindled to
such remnants as this.

That personal names may pass into nouns, we, "who talk of
hroiighams and bluchers, cannot deny. But any such etymo-
logy ou<;ht to have contemporary document or some equally
forcible proof in its favour, for this is a form of exjilanation
taken by the most flagrant myths. David the painter, it is
related, had a promising pupil named Ckleque, the son of a
fruiterer ; the lad died at eighteen, but his master continued to
luud hii.i up to later students as a model of artistic cleverness,
aiid h'^i.cj arose the now familiar term of chic. Etymologists,
a race not ■-•anting in effrontery, have hardly ever surpassed
this circumstantial canard; the word chic dates at any rate from

* LatLara, 'Descr, Etb.' vol. i. p. 4-J ; Lcjcan in *Rev. iles Deux iroiulcs,'
15 Feb. !• '>2, p. 850; Apolloilor. iii. 8. Conipaiv llio derivntiou o^ Anqiiipdhy
the Peruvians from tlic Avonls aril qncpoy=* ycal roniaiii,' said to have been
addressed to the colonists by the Inca : Markhaiu, 'QuiclniaGr. and Die.;' also
the supposed etymology oi jldhomc, D((nh-ho-mcn=' on the bidly of Danh,' from
the story of King Dako building his palace on the body of the conquered King
Danh : EurtoD, in ' Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol, iii. p. 401.

MYTUOLOGY.

359

the seventeenth century.' Another word with wlilch similar
liberty has been taken, is cant Steele, in the ' Spectator,' says
that some people derive it from the name of one Aiulrew CanU
a Scotch minister, who had the gift of preaching in such a
dialect that he was understood by none but his own congrega-
tion, and not by all of them. This is, perhaps, not a very
accurate delineation of Andrew Cant, who is mentioned in
* Whitelock's Memorials,' and seems to have known how to
speak out in very plain terms indeed. But at any rate ho
flourished about 1050, whereas the verb to cant was then
already an old word. To cante, meaning to speak, is men-
tioned in Harman's ' List of Rogues' Words ' in 15tG, and in
1587 Harrison says of the beggars and gypsies that they have
devised a language among themselves, which they ni me cant-
ing, but others " Pedlars' Frenche." - Of all etymologies
ascribed to personal names, one of the most curious is that
of the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, so well known from
Holbein's pictures. Its supposed author is thus mentioned in
the 'Biographic Universelle :' " Macaber, potite allemand, serait
tout-a-fait inconnu sans I'ouvrage qu'on a sous son nom." This,
it may be added, is true enough, for there never was such a
person at all, the Danse Macabre being really Chorea Macha-
hceoritm, the Dance of the Maccabees, a kind of pious panto-
mime of death performed in churches in the lifteenth century.
Why the perfoi^mance received this name, is that the rite of
Mass for the Dead is distinguished by the reading of that
passage from the twelfth chapter of Book II. of the Maccabees,
which relates how the people betook themselves to prayer, and

^ Charnock, ' Verba Xominalin,' s. v. 'eliic ;' seo Fninoisque-Micliel, 'Argot,'
s. V.

- 'Spectator,' No. 147; Braiul, Top. Ant.' vol. iii. p. 93; Ilottoii, 'Slang Dic-
tionary,' p. 3; Charnock, s. v. 'cant.' As to the real ctyniulogy, that i'roni the beg-
gar's whining chaunt is defective, for the beggar drops this tone exactly •when ho
cants, i. c, talks jargon with his follows. If c<int is directly from Latin cantare, it
will correspond with Italian cantare and French clianter, buth used as slang words
for to speak (Francisque-Michel, 'Argot'). A Keltic origin is possible, Gaelic
and Irish cainnt, t';i/'ji< = talk, language, dialect; the Gaelic equivalents for pedlars'
French or tramps' slang, are 'Laidionn nan ceard,' ^cainnt eheard,' i.e., tinkers'
Latin or jargon, or exactly ' cairds' cant.' A deeper connexion between cainnt
and cantare does not affect this.

3G0

MYTHOLOGY.

m '

bcsoimlit tho Lord that tlio sin of those wlio had boon shiiii
among thcin mii^ht bo wliolly blotted mt ; for if Judas had not
expected tliat the shiin shoukl rise aj^ain, it had botin super-
fluous and vain to pray for the dead.^ Traced to its origin, it is
thus seen that the Danse Macuhrc is neither more nor less than
the Dance of the Dead.

It is not an unusual thing for tribes and nations to be known
by the name of their chief, as in books of African travel we
read of " Eyo's people," or " Kamrazi's people." Such terms
may become permanent, like the name of the Osmanli Turks
taken from the great Otltman, or Osman. The notions of kin-
ship an<l cliieftainship may easily be combined, as where some
individual Brian or Alpine may have given his name to a clan
of O'Briens or Mac Alpines. How far the tribal names of the
lower races may have been derived from individual names of
chiefs or forefathers, is a (juestion on which sound evidence is
difficult to obtain. The Zulus and Maoris were races who paid
great attention to the traditional genealogies of their clan-
ancestors, who were, indeed, not only their kinsfolk but their
gods ; and they distinctly recognize the possibility of tribes
being named from a deceased ancestor or chief. The Kafir
tribe of Ama-Xosa derives its name from a chief, ' U-Xosa ; "
and the Maori iv\hQ& ol N()ate-Wakaue and Xr/a-Puhi claim
descent from chiefs called WalMue and Puhi.^ Around this
nucleus of actuality, however, there gathers an enormous mass
of fiction simulating its effects. The myth-maker, curious to
know how any people or country gained its name, had only to
conclude that it came from a great ancestor or ruler, and then
the simple process of turning a national or local title into a
])ersonal name at once added a new genealogy to historical tra-
dition. The myth-maker has in some cases made the name of
the imagined ancestor such that the local or gentile name should
stand as grammatically derived from it, as usually happens in
real cases, like the derivation of Cwsarea from Cccsar, or of the

^ See also Fraucisqiie-Michel, 'Argot,' s. v. 'maccabe, niacchabdo ' = iioyd.
- Dolme, ' Zulu Die. ' p. 417; Arbousset aud Daumas, p. 2G9 ; Waitz, vol, ii.
pp. 349, 352.

3 Shortland, ' Trads. of N. Z. p. 224.

>IYTHOLOGY.

3(J1

BeneiViClhies from Benedict. But in the fictitious genealogy
or history of the myth-maker, the mere unaltered name of the
nation, tribe, country, or city often becomes without more ado
the name of the eponymic hero. It has to be remembered,
moreover, that countries and nations can be personified by an
imaginative process which has not quite lost its sense in
modern speech. France is talked of by politicians as an in-
dividual being, with particular opinions and habits, and may
oven be embodied as a stfitue or picture with suitable at-
tributes. And if one were to say that Britannia has two
daughters, Canada, and Audvalla, or that she has gone to
keep house for a decrepit old aunt called India, this would be
admitted as plain fact expressed in fantastic language. The
invention of ancestries from eponymic heroes or name-ancestors
has, however, often had a serious effect in corrupting historic
truth, by helping to fill ancient annals with swarms of fictitious
genealogies. Yet, when surveyed in a large view, the nature of
the eponymic fictions is patent and indisputable, and so regular
are their forms, that we could scarcely choose more telling ex-
amples of the consistent processes of imagination, as shown in
the development of myths.

The great number of the eponymic ancestors of ancient
Greek tribes and nations makes it easy to test them by com-
parison, and the test is a destructive one. Treat the heroic
genealogies they belong to as traditions founded on real history,
and they prove hopelessly independent and incor.ipatible ; but
consider them as mostly local and tribal myths, and such inde-
pendence and incompatibility become their proper features.
Mr. Grote, whose tendency is to treat all myths as fictions not
only unexplained but i nexplainable, liere makes an exception,
tracing the eponymic ancestors from whom Greek cities and
tribes derived their legendary parentage, to mere embodied
local and gentile names. Thus, of the fifty sons of Lykaon, a
whole large group consists of personified cities of Arkadia, such
as Mantinevbs, Fhigalos, Tegeates, who, according to the simply
inverting legend, are called founders of Mantinea, PJiigalia,
Tegea. The father of King u'Eakos was Zeus, his mother his
own personified land jEgina; the city of Mghemd had not only

,i'"

362

MYTIIOLOQY.

an ancestress Myhhui, \)\\t an cponyinic ancestor as well,
Mijkeneus. Long aftcrwanls, nioditL'val Europe, stimulated by
the splendid yenealoyies through which Homo liad attaclied
herself to Greece and the Greek gods and heroes, discovered
the secret of rivalling them in the chronicles of Gcol'fVy of
Monmouth and others, by claiming, as founders of Paris and
Tuum, the Trojans Farin and Tiirnus, and connecting France
and Britahh with the Trojan Avar through Fraiicus, son of
Hector, and /i;'i<^('§, great grandson of /Eneas. A remarkably
perfect eponymic historical myth accounting for the Gypsies or
Egyptians, may be found cited seriously in ' Blackstone's Com-
mentaries:' when Sultan Selim conquered Egypt in lol7,
several of the natives refused to submit to the Turkish yoke,
and revolted under one Zingdncus, whence the Turks called
them Zhiganees, but being at length surrounded and banished,
they agreed to disperse in small parties over the world, etc., etc.
It is curious to watch Milton's mind emerging, but not Avhollv
emerging, from the state of the mediaeval chronicler. He men-
tions in the beginning of his ' History of Britain,' the " out-
lantiish figment" of the four kings, Mi(<ju.s, Saroii, Drtiis, and
Bardus; he has no approval for the giant Albion, son of Nep-
tune, who subdued the island and called it after his own name ;
he scoffs at the four sous of Japhet, called Franciis, Romaiius,
Alemannus, and Bviito. But when he comes to Bvntus and the
Trojan legends of old English history, his s-^cptical courage fails
him : " those old and inborn names of successive kings, never
any to have bin real persons, or don in their lives at least som
part of what so long hath l)in remember'd, cannot be thought
without too strict an incredulity." ^

Among ruder races of the world, asserted genealogies of this
class may be instanced in South American tribes called the
Amoipira and Fotyuara," Khond clans called BcisJm and Jakso^

* On tlio adoption of imaginary ancestors as connected ^vitli the fiction of a
common descent, and the important political and religions effects of tliese pro-
ceedings, sec especially Grote, ' Hist, of Greece,' vol. i. ; McLennan, ' Primitivo
Marriage ; ' Elaine, 'Ancient Law.' Interesting details on eponymic ancestors in
Pott, ' Anti-Kaulen, oder j\Iythische Vorstellungen voni Ursprunge der Yolkcr und
Sprachen.'

- Martins, ' Ethnog. Anier. ' vol. i. p. 54 ; see 2S3.

3 Macpherson, 'India,' p. 78.

MYTlIOLOaV.

003

Turkoman hordes called Yomut, Tekke, and Ckamlor} all of
them professing to derive their designations from ancestors or
chiefs who Lore as individuals these very names. Where criti-
cism can be hronght to bear on these genealogies, its etVect is
often such as drove Brutus and his Trojans out of English
liistory. When there appear in the genealogy of llaussa, in
West Africa, })lain names of towns like Kano and Katsena,^ it
is natural to consider these towns to have been personified into
mythic ancestors. Mexican tradition assigns a whole set of
eponymic ancestors or chiefs to the various races of the land,
as Mexi the founder of Mexico, Chichimccatl the first king of
the Chichvinecs, and so forth, down to Otomitl the ancestor of
the Olomis, \/hose very name by its termination betrays its
Aztec inventio'i.-'^ The Brazilians account for the tlivision of
the Tiipis an("i Gudranis by the legend uf two ancestral
brothoi-s I'upi and Gtidranl, who (luarrelled and separated, each
with his followers ; but an eponymic origin of the story is made
likely by the word Giiaranl not being an old national name at all,
but merely the designation of " warri(jrs " given by the mission-
aries to certain tribes.'' And when such facts are considered as
that North American clans named after animals, Beaver, Cniy-
Jish, and the like, account for these names by simply claiming
the very creatures themselves as ancestors,^ the tendency of
general criticism will probably be not so much in favour of real
foi'cfathers and chieis who left their names to their tribes, as of
eponymic ancestors created by backwards imitation of such
inheritance.

The examination of eponymic legend, however, must by ?io
means stop short at the destructive stage. Tn fact, when it
has undergone the sharpest criticism, it only displays the more
clearly a real historic value, not less perhaps than if all the.
names it records were real names of ancient chiefs. With all

' Vambcry, 'Central Asia,' p. 32.'); sco also f.atliam, 'Dcsor. Etli.' vol. i.
p. 456 (Ostyaks) ; Goor<fi, ' Kifise im lluss. IJuiuli,' vc^ i. p. 242 (TuiigU/;).

- Earth, 'N. & Ccutr. Afr.' vol. ii. p. 71.

3 J. G. Muller, 'Amer. Urrclig.' p. 574.

* Martins, vol. i. pp. 180-4; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 41(5.

5 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 319, part iii. p. 2G8, sec part ii. p. 49;
Catlin, vol. ii. p. 128 ; J. G. Jliillor, ])p. 134, 327.

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MYTHOLOGY.

l^!v

their fancies, blunders, and shortcomings, the heroic genealogies
preserve early theories of nationality, traditions of migration,
invasion; connexion by kindred or intercourse. The ethnologists
of old days, borrowing the phraseology of myth, stated what
they looked on as the actual relations of races, in a personifying
language of which the meaning may still be readily interpreted.
The Greek legend of the twin brothers Danaoa and jE(jyptos,
founders of the nations of the Danaoi or Homeric Greeks and
of the ^(jyptians, represents a distinct though weak ethnolo-
gical theory. Their eponymic myth of Hellen, the personified
race of the Hellenes, is another and more reasonable ethnolo-
gical document stating kinship among four great branches of
ihe Greek race : the three sons of Hellen, it relates, were
Aioloii; Duros, and Xouthoa; the first two gave their names to
the jEolians and Dorians, the third had sons called Achaios and
Ion, whose names passed as a heritage to the Achaioi and
lonians. The belief of the Lydians, Mysians, and Karians,
as to their national kinship is well expressed in the genealogy
in Herodotus, Avhich traces their descent from the three brothers
Lydos, Mysos, and Kar} The Persian legend of Feridun (Thrae-
taona) and his three sons, Trej, Tur, and Selm, distinguishes the
two nationalities of Iranian and Turanian, i. e., Persian and
Tatar.* The national genealogy of the Afghans is worthy of remark.
It runs thus : Melik Talut (King Saul) had two sons, Berkia and
Irmia (Berekiah and Jeremiah), who served David ; the son of
Berkia was Afghan, and the son of Irmia was Usbeh. Thanks
to the aquiline noses of the Afghans, and to their use of Biblical
personal names derived from Biblical sources, the idea of their
being descendants of the lost tribes of Israel found great cre-
dence among European scholars up to the present centur3\'
Yet the pedigi'ee is ethnologically absurd, for the whole source
of the imagined cousinship of the Aryan Afghan and the Tura-
nian Usbeh, so distinct both in feature and in language, appears

^ Grotc, ' Hist, of Greoce ; ' Pfusiin. iii. 20 ; Diod. Sic. v. ; ApoUodor. BiU. i.
7, 3, vi. 1, 4 ; Hcrodot. i. 171.

'■' Max Mviller in Binisen, Vol. i. p. 338 ; Taljari, part i. cli. xlv. Ixix.

3 Sir W. Jones in 'As. Kes.' vol. ii. p. 24 ; Vansittart, ihid. p. 67 ; see Camp-
bell, in • Journ. As. Sec. Bengal,' 1860, part ii. p. 7. . .

31YTH0L0GY.

365

to be in their union by common Mohammeclanism, Avhile the
reckless jumble of sham history, which derives both from a
Semitic source, is only too characteristic of Moslem chronicle.
Among the Tatars is found a much more reasonable national
pedigree ; in the 13th century, William of Ruysbroek relates, as
sober circumstantial history, that they weie originally called
Turks from Turk the eldest son of Japhet, but one of their
princes left his dominions to his twin sons, Tatar and Mongol,
which gave rise to the distinction that has ever since prevailed
between these two nations.^ Historically absurd, this legend
states what appears the unimpeachable ethnological fact, that the
Turks, Mongols, and Tatars are closely-connected branches of
one national stock, and we can only dispute in it what seems an
exorbitant claim on the part of the Tivrlcs to rei^resent the head
of the family, the ancestor of the Mongol and the Tatar. Thus
these eponymic national genealogies, mythological in form but
ethnological in substance, embody opinions of which we may
admit or deny the truth or ^^^^Ie, but which we must recognize
as distinctly ethnological documents.-

It thus appears that early ethnology is liabitually expressed
in a metaphorical language, in which lands and nations are per-
sonified, and their relations indicated by i-orms of personal kin-
ship. This description applies to that important document of
ancient ethnology, the table of nations in the 10th chapter of
Genesis. In some cases, it is a problem of minute and difficult
criticism to distinguish among its ancestral names those which
are simply local or national designations in personal form. But
to critics conversant with the ethnic genealogies of other peoples,
such as have here been quoted, simple inspection of this national
list may suffice to show that part of its names are of such local
or national character. The city Zldon (]T*2) is brotlier to
Heth (nn) the father of the Hittites, and next follow in person
the Jebusite and the Amorite, Among plain names of countries,

5 S'l

•1

• Gill, de Rubniqnis in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 23 ; Gabelentz in • Zeitschr. fiir
tlio Kunde do8 Moryenlandes,' vol. ii. p. 73 ; Schmidt, ' Viilker Mittel-Asien,'
p. 6.

- Seo also Pott, ' Anti-Kaiilen.'qip. 19, 23 ;I{asscn, pp. 70, 153 ; and remarks
on colonization-myths in Max Miiller, ' Chips,' vol. ii. p. 68.

366

MYTHOLOGY.

i'r

- 1 :■-■' .

Cush or ^Ethiopia (l&ID) begets Nimrod, Aashur or Assyria
("ntt^N) builds Nineveh, and even the dual Mizraitn (D'*")!Ja),
the " two Egjrpts " (apparently meaning Upper and Lower
Egypt, the " two lands," as the Egyptians themselves wrote it in
their inscriptions), appears as a personal son and brother of
other countries, and ancestor of populations. The Aryan stock
is clearly recognized in personifications of at least two of
its members, Madai (^l?3) the Mede, and Javan (^v) the
Ionian. And as regards the ftimily to which the Israelites
themselves belong, if Canaan (13723), the father of Zidon
(]T!J), be transferred to it to represent the Phoenicians, by
the side of Asshur ("iirCN), Aram (D"iW), Mer ("1327), and the
other descendants of Shem, the result will be mainly to arrange
the Semitic stock according to the ordinary classification of
modern comparative philology.

Turning now from cases where mythologic phrase serves as a
medium for expressing philosophic opinion, let us quickly cross
the district where fancy assumes the semblance of explanatory
legend. The mediaeval schoolmen have been justly laughed at
for their habit of translating plain facts into the terms of meta-
physics, and then solemnly offering them in this scientific guise
as explanations of themselves — accounting for opium making
people sleep, by its possession of a dormitive virtue. The myth-
maker's proceedings may in one respect be illustrated by com-
paring them with this. Half mythology is occupied, as many a
legend cited in these chapters has shown, in shaping the fami-
liar facts of daily life into imaginary histories of their own cause
and origin, childlike answers to those world-old questions of
whence and why, which the savage asks as readily as the sage.
So familiar is the nature of such description in the dress of
history, that its easier examples translate off hand. When the
Samoans say that ever since the great battle among the plan-
tains and bananas, the vanquished have hung down their heads,
while the victor stands proudly erect,^ who can mistake the
simple metaphor which compares the upright and the drooping
plants to a conqueror standing among his beaten foes. In
simile just as obvious lies the origin of another Polynesian

1 Scemann, ' Viti,' p. oil ; Turner, ' PoljTiesia,' p. 2.12.

MYTHOLOGY.

367

•ves as a

legend, which relates the creatioa of the coco-nut from a man's
head, the chestnuts from his kidneys, and the yams from his
legs} To draw one more example from the mythology of
X)lants, how transparent is the Ojibwa fancy of that heavenly
youth with green robe and waving feathers, wliom for the good
of men the Indian overcame and buried, and who sprang again
from his grave as the Indian corn, Mondamin, the "Spirit's
grain."^ The New Forest peasant deems that the marl he digs
is still red with the blood of his ancient foes the Danes ; tlie
Maori sees on the red cliffs of Cook's Straits the blood stains
that Kupe made when, mourning for the death of his daughter,
he cut his forehead with pieces of obsidian ; in the spot where
Buddha offered his own body to feed the starved tigress's cubs,
his blood for ever reddened the soil and tlie trees and flowers.
The modern Albanian still sees the stain of slaughter in streams
running red with earth, as to the ancient Greek the river that
flowed by By bios bore dov. n in its summer floods the red blood
of Adonis. The Cornishman knows from the red filmy growth
on the brook pebbles that murder has been done there ; John
the Baptist's blood still grows in Germany on his day, and
peasants still go out to search for it ; the red meal-fungus is
blood drop})ed b^' the flying Huns when they hurt their feet
against the high tower-roofs. The traveller in India might see
on the ruined walls of Ganga Raja the traces of the blood of the
citizens spilt in the siege, and yet more marvellous to relate, at
St. Denis's church in Cornwall, the bloodstains on the stones fell
there when the saint's head was cut off somewhere else.^ Of
such translations of descriptive metaphor under thin pretence of
history, every collection of myth is crowded with examples, but
it strengthens our judgment of the combined consistency and

'••III

Mil

' Ellis, ' Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 69.

2 Schoolcraft, ' Algic Res.' vol. i. p. 122 ; 'Indian Tribes,* part i. p. 320, part
ii. p. 230.

=* J. R. Wise, 'The New Forest,* p. 160 ; Taylor, ' NeW Zealand,' p. 26S ; Max
aiiiller, 'Chips,' vol. i. p. 249; M. A, Walker, ' ]\[acedonia,' p. 192; Movers,
* Phonizier,' vol. i. p. 665 ; Lucian. de DeA Syria 8 ; Hunt, ' Pop. Rom.' 2nd
Series, p. 15; Wuttke, * Volksaberglaubc,' pp. 16, 94; IJastian, 'Mensch,'
vol. ii. p. 69, vol. iii. p. 185 ; Buchanan, * Mysore, etc' in Pinkerton, vol. viii.
p. 714.

3G8

MYTHOLOGY.

t '

variety of what may be called the mythic language, to extract
from its dictionary such a group as this, which in such variously
imaginative fashion describes the appearance of a blood-red
stain.

The merest shadowy fancy or broken-down metaphor, when,
once it gains a sense of reality, may begin to be spoken of as an
actual event. The Moslems have heard the very stones praise
Allah, not in simile only but in fact, and among them the say-
ing that a man's fate is written on his forehead has been mate-
rialised into a belief that it can be deciphered from the letter-
like markings of the sutures of his skull. One of the miracu-
lous passages in the life of Mohammed himself is traced plau-
sibly by Sprenger to such a pragmatized metaphor. The angel
Gabriel, legend declares, opened the Prophet's breast, and took
a black clot from his heart, which he washed with Zemzem
water and replaced ; details are given of the angel's dress and
golden basin, and Anas ibn Malik declared he had seen the very-
mark where the wound was sewn up. We may venture with
the historian to ascribe this marvellous incident to the familiar
metaphor that Mohammed's heart was divinely opened and
cleansed, and indeed he does say in the Koran that God opened
his heart.^ A single instance is enough to represent the same
habit in Christian legend. Marco Polo relates how in 1225 the
Kbalif of Bagdad commanded the Christians of his dominions,
ULder penalty of death or Islam, to justify their Scriptural
text by removing a certain mountain. Now there was among
them a shoemaker, who, having been tempted to excess of ad-
miration for a woman, had plucked out his offending eye. This
man commanded the mountain to remove, which it did to the
teiTor of the Khalif and all his people, and since then the anni-
versary of the miracle has been kept holy. The Venetian tra-
veller, after the manner of mediajval writers, records the story
without a symptom of suspicion f yet to our minds its whole
origin so obviously lies in three verses of St. Matthew's gospel,
that it is needless to quote them. To modern taste such wooden
fictions as these are far from attractive. In fact the pragma-

> Sprenger, ' Leben dos M'^mmad,' vol. i. pp. 78, 119, 162, 310.
2 Marco Polo, book i. cli. viii.

MYTHOLOGY.

3G!)

to extract
. variously
blood-red

ilior, when.

n of as an

ines praise

n the say-

een matc-

:he letter-

le miracu-

iced plau-

The anjrel

, and took

I Zemzem

dress and

Q the very

iture with

le familiar

ened and

od opened

the same

1225 the

ominions.

Scriptural

!a,s among

ess of ad-

lye. This

did to the

the anni-

etian tra-

the story

its whole

v's gospel,

:h wooden

pragma-

310.

tizer is a stupid creature, nothing is too beautiful or too sacred
to be made dull and vulgar by his touch, for it is through the
very incapacity of his mind to hold an abstract idea that he is
forced to embody it in a material incident. Yet wearisome as
he may be, it is none the less needful to understand him, to
acknowledge the vast influence he has had on the belief of man-
kind, and to appreciate him aa representing in its extreme abuse
that tendency to clothe every thought in a concrete shape,
which has in all ages been a mainsijring of mythology.

Though allegory cannot maintain the largo place often claimed
for it in mythology, it has yet had too much influence to be
passed over in this survey. It is true that the search for
allegorical explanation is a pursuit that has led many a zealous
explorer into the quagmires of mysticism. Yet there are cases
in which allegory is certainly used with historical intent, as for
instance in the apocryphal Book of Enoch, with its cows and
sheep which stand for Israelites, and asses and wolves for Midi-
anites and Egyptians, these creatures figuring in a pseudo-pro-
phelic sketch of Old Testament chronicles. As for moral allegory,
it is immensely plentiful in the world, although its limits are
narrower than raythologists of past centuries have supposed.
It is now reasonably thought preposterous to interpret the Greek
legends as moral apologues, after the manner of Herakleides the
philosopher, who could discern a parable of repentant prudence
in Athene seizing Achilles when just about to draw his sword
on Agamemnon.^ Still, such a mode of interpretation has thus
much, to justify it, that numbers of the fanciful myths of the
world are really allegories. There is allegory in the Hesiodic
myth of Pandora, whom Zeus sent down to men, decked with
golden band and garland of spring flowers, fit cause of longing
and the pangs of love, but using with a dog-like mind her gifts
of lies and treachery and pleasant speech. Heedless of his wiser
brother's words, the foolish Epimetheus took her ; she raised the
lid of the great cask and shook out the evils that wander among
mankind, and the diseases that by day and night come silently
bringing ill ; she set on the lid again and shut Hope in, that
evil might be ever hopeless to mankind. Shifted to fit a ditfe-

> Grote, vol. i. p. 347.

l:,1i

VOL. I.

B D

370

MYTHOLOQY.

rent moral, the allegory remained in the later version of the
tale, that the cask held not curses but blessings ; these were let
go and lost to men when the vessel was too curiously opened,
while Hope alone was left behind for comfort to the luckless
human race.^ Yet the primitive nature of such legends under-
lies the moral shape upon them. Zeus is no allegoric fiction,
and Prometheus, unless modern mythologists judge him very
wrongl}*, has a meaning far deeper than parable. Xenophon
tells (after Prodikos) the story of Herakles choosing between
the short and easy path of pleasure and the long and toilsome
path of virtue," but though the mythic hero may thus be made
to figure in a moral apologue, an imagination so little in keep-
ing with his unethic nature jars upon the reader's mind.

The general relation of allegory to pure myth can hardly be
brought more clearly into view than in a class of stories familiar
to every child, the Beast-fables. From the ordinary civilized
point of view thj allegory in such fictions seems fundamental, the
notion of a moral lesson seems bound up with their very nature,
yet a broader examination tenc's to prove the allegorical growth
as it were parasitic on an older trunk of myth without moral.
It is only by an effort of intellectual reaction that a modern
writer can imitate in parable the beast of the old Beast-fable.
No Avonder, for the creature has become to his mind a monster,
only conceivable as a caricature of man made to cany a moral
lesson or a satire. But among savages it is not so. To their
niinds the semi-human beast is no fictitious creature invented
10 preach or sneer, he is all but a reality. Beast-fables are not
nonsense to men who ascribe to the lower animals a power of
speech, and look on them as T)artaking of moral human nature ;
to men in whose eyes any wolf or hyaena may probably be a man-
hyaena or a werewolf; to men who so utterly believe " that the
soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird " that they will
really regulate their own diet so as to avoid eating an ancestor ;
to men an integral part of whose religion may actually be the
worship of beasts. Such beliefs belong even now to half man-
kind, and an^ong such the beast-stories had their first home.
Even the Australians tell their quaint beast-tales, of the Rat,

* Welcker, vol. i. p. 756. ' Xenopli. Memorabilia, ii. 1.

MYTHOLOGY.

371

on of the
ic were let
ly opened,
e luckless
ids under-
lie fiction,
him very
Xenophon
5 between
i toilsome
8 be made
3 in keep-
^nd.

L hardly be
es familiar
y civilized
nental, the
ery nature,
ical growth
out moral,
a modern
Jeast-fable.
a monster,
ry a moral
To their
invented
es are not
a, power of
an nature ;
be a man-
"that the
t they will
ancestor ;
illy be the
half man-
irst home,
f the Rat,

a, 11. 1.

the Owl, and the fat Blackfellow, or of Pussy-brother who singed
his friends' noses while they were asleep.i The Kamchatlals
have an elaborate myth of the adventures of their stupid deity
Kutka with the Mice who played tricks upon him, such as
painting his face like a woman's, so that when he looked in the
Avater he fell in love with himself.^ Beast-tales abound among
such racfts as the Polynesians and the North American Indians,
who value in them ingenuity of incident and neat adapi vtion of
the habits and characters of the creatures. Thus in a legend of
the Flathead Indians, the Tuittle Wolf found in cloudland his
grandsires the Spiders with their grizzled hair and long crooked
nails, and they spun balls of thread to let him down to earth ;
Avhen he came down and found his wife the Speckled Duck,
whom the Old Wolf had taken from him, she fled in confusion,
and that is why she lives and dives alorie to this very day.'' In
Guinea, where beast-fable is one of the great staples of native
conversation, the following story is told as a type of the tales
which in this way account for peculiarities of animals. The
great Engena-monkey offered his daughter to be the bride of
the champion who should perform the feat of drinking a whole
baiTcl of rum. The dignified Elephant, the graceful Leopard,
the surly Boar, tried the first mouthful of the fire-water, and
retreated. Then the tiny Telinga-monkey came, who had cun-
ningly hidden in tlie long grass thousands of his fellows ; he took
his first glass and went away, but instead of his coming back,
another just like him came for the second, and so on till the
barrel was emptied and Telinga walked off with the Monkey-
king's daughter. But in the nan*ow path the Elephant and
Leopard attack'-^d him and drove him off, and he took refuge in
the highest boughs of the trees, vowing never more to live on
the ground and suffer such violence and injustice. This is why
to this day the little telingas are only found in the highest tree-
tops.^ Such stories have been collected by scores from savage
tradition in their original state, while a,'' yet no moral lesson has

» Oldfield in * Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. p. 259.

2 Steller, ' Kamtscliatka,' j). 255.

3 Wilson in 'Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. iv. p. 306.
* J. L. "Wilson, 'W. AlV.'p. 3S2.

E n 2

372

MYTIIOLOOY.

entered into them. Yet the easy and natural transition from
the story into the parable w made among savages, perhaps with-
out lielp from higher races. In the Hottentot Tales, side by
side with the myths of the cunning Jackal tricking the Lion out
of the best of the carcase, and getting the black stripe burnt on
his own back by carrying off the Sun, there occurs the moral
apologue of the Lion who thought himself wiser than his Mother,
and peiisiied by the Hunter's spear, for want of heed to her
warning against the deadly creature whose head is in a line with
his breast and shoulders.^ So the Zulus have a thorough moral
apologue in the story of the hyvax, who did not go to fetch his
tail on the day when tails were given out, because he did not
like to bo out in the rain ; he only asked the other animals to
bring it for him, and so he never got it.- Among the North
American legends of Manabozho, there is a fable quite iEsopian
in its humour. Manabozho, transformed into a Wolf, killed a
fat moose, and being very hungry sat down to eat But he fell
into great doubts as to where to begin, for, said he., if I begin at
the head, people will laugh and say, he ate him backwards, but
if I begin at the side they will say, he ate him sideways. At
last he made up his mind, and was just putting a delicate piece
into his mouth, when a tree close by creaked. Stop, stop ! said
he to the tree, I cannot eat with such a noise, and in spite of
his hunger he left the meat and climbed up to quiet the creak-
ing, but was caught between two branches and held fast, and
presently he saw a pacK of wolves coming. Go that way ! Go
that way ! he cried out, whereupon the wolves said, he must
have something there, or he would not tell us to go anothei-
way. So they came on, and found the moose, and ate it to the
bones while Manabozho looked wistfully on. The next h-^avy
blast of wind opened the branches and let him out, and he went
home thinking to himself "See the effect of meddling with
frivolous things when I had certain good in my possession."^
In the Old World, the moral Beast-fable was of no mean

' Bleek, * Ecjrnard iu S. Afr.' pp. 5, 47, 67 (these arc not among the stories
Avhich seem recently borrowed from Europeans). See * Early History of Mankind, *
p. 10.

2 Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 355.

3 Schoolcraft,

Algic lies.' vol.

i. p. 160 ; see 43, 51.

tion from
laps with-
s, side by
1 Lion out
burnt on
:ho nioml
is Motlier,
ed to her
, line -with
vAi moral
fetch his
le did not
inin\als to
;he North
D iEsopian
F, killed a
3ut he fell
I begin at
wards, but
ways. At
[cate piece
stop! said
n spite of
the creak-
1 fast, and
way ! Go
, he must
o another
B it to the
lext h'^avy
id he went
iling with
ssion. •*
no mean

g tho storiea
of Mankind, '

MYTHOLOGY.

373

antiquity, but it did not at once supplant tho animal-myths
pure and simple. For ages tho European mind was capable at
once of receiving lessons of wisdom from the ililsopian crows and
foxes, and of enjoying artistic but by no means edifying beast-
stories of more primitive type. In fact tho Babrius and Phu'drus
collections were over a thousand years old, when the geimiuo
Beast-Epic reached its fullest growth in the incomparable
'Reynard the Fox;' traceable in Jacob Grimm's view to an
original Frankish composition of the 12th century, itself con-
taining materials of far earlier date.' Reynard is not a didactic
poem, at least if a moral hangs on to it here and there it is
oftenest a Macchiavellian one ; nor is it essentially a satire,
sharply as it lashes men in general and the clergy in particular.
Its creatures are iuoarnate (qualities, the Fox of cunning, the
Bear of strer'^th, the Ass of dull content, the Sheep of guileless-
iiess. The charm of the narrative, which every class in mediaeval
Europe delighted in, but which we have allowed to drop out of
all but scholars' knowledge, lies in great measure in the cleverly
sustained combination of t'lo beast's nature and the man's. How
great the influence of the leynard Epic was in the middle ages,
may be judged from Rey , Bndn, Chanticleer, being still
names familiar to people ave no idea of their having been

originally names of the characters in the great beast-fable. Even
more remarkable are its traces in modern French. The donkey has
its name of haudet from Bamloin, Baldwin the Ass. Common
French dictionaries do not even contain the word goupil {vulpes),
so effectually has the Latin name of the fox been driven out of
use by his Frankish title in the Beast-Epic, Maginhard the
Oou-iSellor, Reinhart, Reyiuird, Renart, renard. The instruc-
tive compositions which Grimm contemptuously calls " fables
thinned down to mere moral and allegory," "a fourth watering
of the old grapes into an insipid moral infusion," are low in
aesthetic quality as compared with the genuine beast-myths.
Mythological critics will be apt to judge them after the manner
of the child who said how convenient it was to have "Moral"
printed in .<:Esop's Fables, that everybody might know what to
skip.

* Jacob Grimm, 'Reinliart Fuchs,' Iiitrod.

374

MYTlIOLOaY.

The want of power of abstraction which luw ever had mch
(lisaHtrous et!'uct on tliu beliefs of mankiiul, confounding myth
and chronicle, and cru.shing the spirit of history under the rub-
bish of literalizcd tradition, conies very clearly into view in tho
study of parable. The state of mind of tho deaf, «hnnb, and
blind Laura Bridgman, so instructive in illustrating^ the mental
habits of uneducated though full-sensed men, displays in an
extreme form the difficulty such men have in comprehending
the unreality of any story. She could not bo made to seo that
arithmetical problems were anything but statements of concreto
fact, and when her teacher asked her, " If you can buy a baiTcl
of cider for four dollars, how miich can you buy for one dollar?"
she replied quite simply, " I cannot give much for cider, because
it is very sour." ^ It is a surprising instance of this tendency to
concrctism, that among people so civilized as the Buddhists, the
most obviously moral beast-fables have become literal incidents
of sacred history. Gautama, during his 550 jatakas or births,
took tho form of a frog, a fish, a crow, an ape, and various other
animals, and so far were tho legends of these transformations
from mere myth to his followers, that there have been pre-
served as relics in Buddhist temples the hair, feathers, and bones
of the creatures whose bodies the great teacher inhabited. Now
among the incidents which happened to Buddha during his
series of animal births, he appeared as an actor in the familiar
fable of the Fox and the Stork, and it was he who, when he was
a Squirrel, set an example of parental virtue by trying to dry
up the ocean with his tail, to save his young ones whose nest
had drifted out to sea, till his persevering courage was rewarded
by a miracle.^ To our modern minds, a moral which seems the
veiy purpose of a story is evidence unfavourable to its truth as fact.
But if even apologues of talking birds and beasts have not been
safe from literal belief, it is clear that the most evident moral
can have been but slight protection to parables told of possible
and life-like men. It was not a needless precaution to state ex-

' Account of Laura Bridgmau, p. 120.

' Bowring, ' Siam,' vol. i. p. al3 ; Hardy, ' Manual of Budliism,' p. 98. See
the fable of the ' Crow and Pitcher' in Plin. x. 60, and Bastian, • Mcnsch,' vol. i.
p. 76.

MYTIIOLOUY.

1 1 III I Kuoh
ill*,' myth
the rub-
)W ill tlio
mill), and
lO mental
ya in an
t'licuding
) SCO that
■ concrete
Y n band
dollar?"
r, because
iidency to
Ihists, the
incidents
or births,
ous other
ormations
[leen pre-
Mid bones
:ed. Now
uring his
D familiar
Ml he was
ig to dry
hose nest
rewarded
eems the
th as fact,
not been
3nt moral
possible
state ex-

p. 98. See
sell,' vol. i.

plicitly of the New Testament parables that they were parables,
and even this guard has not availed entirely. Mrs. Jameson
relates some curious oyp(;rience in the following passago : — " 1
know that I was not very young when I entertained no morw
doubt of the substantial existence of Lazarus and Dives than ol"
John the Baptist and Hen)d ; when the Good Samaritan was as
real a pcr-sonage as any of the Apostles ; when I was full of
sincere.st pity for those poor foolish Virgins >v ho had forgotten
to trim their lamps, and thought them — in my secret soul —
rather hardly treated. This impression of the literal actual
truth of the parables I have since met with in many children,
and in the uneducated but devout hearers and readers of the
Bible ; and I remember that when I once tried to explain to a
good old woman the proper meaning of the word parable, and
that the story of the Prodigal Son was not a fact, she was scan-
dalized — she was quite sure that Jesus would never have told
anything to his disciples that was not true. Thus she settled
the matter in her own mind, and I thought it best to leave it
there undisturbed."^ Nor, it may be added, has such mis-
conception been confined to the minds of the poor and ignorant.
St. Lazarus, patron saint of lepers and their hospitals, and from
whom the lazzarone and the lazzareito take their name, ob-
viously derives these qualities from the Lazarus of the parable.

The proof of the force and obstinacy of the mythic faculty,
thus given by the relapse of parable into pseudo-history, may
conclude this dissertation on mythology. In its course there
have been examined the processes of animating and personifying
nature, the formation of legend by exaggeration and perversion
of fact, the stiff'ening of metaphor by mistaken realization of words,
the conversion of speculative theories and still less substantial
fictions into pretended traditional events, the passage of myth
into miracle-legend, the definition by name and place given to any
floating imagination, the adaptation of mythic incident as moral
example, and the incessant crystfiUization of story into history.
The investigation of these intricate and devious operations has
brought ever more and more broadly into view two principles
of mythologic science. The finst is that legend, when classified on

1 Jameson, • History of Our Lord in Art,' vol. i. p. 375.

376

MYTHOLOGY.

a sufficienc scale, displays a regularity of development which the
notion of motiveless fancy quite fails to account for, and which
must be attributed to laws of formation whereby every story,
old and new, has arisen from its definite origin and sufficient
cause. So uniform indeed is such development, that it becomes
possible to treat myth as an organic product of mankind at
large, in which individual, national, and even racial distinctions
stand sulorJinate to universal qualities of the human mind.
The second principle concerns the relation of myth to history.
It is true that the sea'^ch for mutilated and mystified traditions
of real events, which formed so main a part of old mythological
researches, seems to grow more hopeless the farther the study
of legend extends. Even the frasjments of real chronicle found
embedded in the mythic structure are mostly in so corrupt a
state, that far from their elucidating history, they need history
to elucidate them. Yet unconsciously, Sbni\ as it were in spite
of thempelves, the shapers and transmitters of poetic legend
have preserved for us masses of sound historical evidence. They
moulded into mythic lives of gods and heroes their own an-
cestral heirlooms of thought and word, they displayed in the
structure of their legends the operations of their own minds,
they placed on record the arts and manners, the philosophy and
religion of their own times, times of which formal history has
often lost the very memory. Myth is the history of its authors,
not of its subjects ; it records the lives, not of superhuman
heroes, but of poetic nations.

if iH

which the
md which
ery story,
sufficient
t becomes
mkind at
stinctions
lan mind.
history,
traditions
thological
the study
icle found
corrupt a
ed history
3 in spite
tic legend
ce. They
own an-
3d in the
vn minds,
lophy and
istory has
;s authors,
perhuman

CHAPTER XL

ANIMISM.

Eeligious ideas genei-ally nppoar among low races of Mankiiul — Negative state-
ments on this subject frequcntlj' misleading and mistaken : many cases
uncertain — Jtlinimum definition of Religion — Doctrine of Spiritual Beings,
here termed Animism — Animism treated as belonging to Natural Religion
— Animism divided into two sections, the philosophy of Souls, and of other
Spirits — Doctrnc of Souls, its prevalence and delinition among the lower
races— Definition of Apparitional Soul or Ghost-Soul— It is a theoretical
conception of primitive Philosophy, designed to account for phenomena
now classed under Biology, especially Life and Death, Health and Disease,
Sleep and Dreams, Trance and Visions —Relation of Soul in name
and nature to Shadow, Blood, Breath — Division or Plurality of Souls —
Soul cause of Life ; its restoration to body when supposed absent — Exit of
Soul in Trances— Dreams and Visions : theory of exit of dreamer's or seer's
own soul ; theory of visits received by them from other souls— Ghost-Soul
seen in Apparitions — "Wraiths and Doubles — Soul has form of body ; suffers
mutilation with it — Voice of Ghost — Soul treated and defined as of Material
Substance ; this appears to be the original doctrine — Transmission of Souls
to service in fu'ure life b)'^ Funeral Sacrifice of wives, attendants, &c. — Souls
of Aniir'ils- I'heir transmission by Funeral Sacrifice— Souls of Plants — Souls
of Objects— Their transmission by Funeral Sacrifice — Relation of savage
doctrine of Object-Souls to Ejiicurean theory of Ideas — Historical development
of Doctrine of Sot's, from the Ethereal Soul of primitive Biology to the Im-
material Soul of moderu Theology.

Are there, or have there been, tribes of men so low in culture
as to have no religious conceptions whatever ? This is practi-
cally the question of the universality of religion, which for so
many centuries has been affirmed and denied, with a confidence
in striking contrast to the imperfect evidence on which both
affirmation and denial have been based. Ethnographers, if
looking to a theory of development to explain civilization, and
regarding its successive stages as arising one from another,
would receive with peculiar interest accounts of tribes devoid of

(!l

; f:

378

ANIMISM.

all religion. Here, thoy would naturally say, are men who have
no religion because their forefathers had none, men who repre-
sent a prjB-religious condition of the human race, out of which
in the course of time religious conditions have arisen. It does
not, however, seem advisable to start from this ground in an in-
vestigation of religious development. Tliough the theoretical
niche is ready and convenient, the actual statue to fill it is not
forthcoming. The case is in some degree similar to that of the
tribes asserted to exist without language or without the use of
fire ; nothing in the nature of things seems to forbid the possi-
bility of such existence, but as a matter of fact the tribes are
not found. Thus the assertion that rude non-religious tribes
have been known in actual existence, though in theory pos-
sible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that
sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are
entitled to demand.

It is not unusual for the very writer who declares in general
terms the absence of religious phenomena among some savage
people, himself to give evidence that shows his expressions to bo
misleading. Thus Dr. Lang not only declares that the abo-
rigines of Australia have no idea of a supreme divinity, creator,
and judge, no object of w^orship, no idol, temple, or sacrifice, but
that, " in short, they have nothing whatever of the character of
religion, or of religious observance, to distinguish them from the
beasts that perish." More than one writer has since made use
of this telling statement, but without referring to certain de-
tails which occur in the very same book. From these it appears
that a disease like small-pox, which sometimes attacks the
natives, is ascribed by them " to the influence of Budyah, an
evil spirit who delights in mischief;" that Avhen the natives
rob a wild bees' hive, they generally leave a little of the honey
forBuddai ; that at certainbiennial gatherings of the Queensland
tribes, young girls are slain in sacrifice to propitiate some evil
divinity ; and that lastly, according to the evidence of the Rev.
W. Ridley, " whenever he has conversed with the aborigines, he
found them to have definite traditions concerning supernaiural
beings, Baiame, whose voice they hear in thunder, and who
m;'s ie all things, Turramullun the chief of demons, who is the

ANIMISM.

S79

who have
ho repro-
of which
. It does
in an in-
heoretical
11 it is not
lat of the
the use of
the possi-
tribes are
ous tribes
eory pos-
st on that
gs, we arc

in general
ne savage
ions to bo
the abo-
y, creator,
rifice, but
aracter of
from the
made use
;rtain de-
it appears
tacks the
idyah, an
natives
;he honey
leensland
5ome evil
the Rev.
igines, he
lernaiural
and who
bo is the

author of disease, mischief, and wisdom, and appears in the form
of a serpent at their great assemblies, etc."^ By the concurring
testimony of a crowd of observers, it is known that the natives
of Australia were at their discovery, and have since remained, a
race with minds saturated with the most vivid belief in souls,
demons, and deities. In Africa, Mr. Moffat's declaration as to
the Bechuanas is scarcely less surprising — that "man's immor-
tality was never lieard of among that people," ho having re-
marked in the sentence next before, that the word for the shades
or manes of the dead is " liriti." - In South America, again,
Don Felix de Azara comments on the positive falsity of the
ecclesiastics' assertion that the native tribes have a religion.
He simply declares that they have none ; nevertheless in the
course of his work he mentions such facts as that the Payaguas
bury arms and clothing with their dead and have some notions of
a future life, and that the Guanas believe in a Being who re-
wards good and punishes evil. In fact, this author's reckless
denial of religion and law to the lower races of this region
justifies D'Orbigny's sharp criticism, that " this is indeed what he
says of all the nations he describes, while actually proving the
contrary of his thesis by the very facts he alleges in its support.'''^
Such cases show how deceptive are judgments to which
breadth and generality are given by the use of wide words in
naiTow senses. Lang, Moffat, and Azara are authors to whom
ethnography owes much valuable knowledge of the tribes they
visited, but thi y seem hardly to have recognized anything short
of the organized and established theology of the higher races as
being religion at all. They attribute irreligion to tribes whoso
doctrines are unlike theirs, in much the same manner as theolo-
gians have so often attributed atheism to those wliose deities
differed from their own, from the time when the ancient in-
vading Aryans described the aboriginal tribes of India as
adeva, i.e., " godless," and the Greeks fixed the corresponding

1 J. D. Lanft ' QueenslaiKl,' pp. 340, 374, 380, 388, 444 (BuiUai appears, p.
379, as causing a deluge ; lie is probably identical with Uudyah).

= Moffat, 'South Africa,' p. 261.

3 Azara, ' Voy. dans rAmerique M^ridionale,' \rol. ii. pp. 3, 14, 25, 51, GO, 91,
119, etc. ; D'Orbigny, 'L'Houimo Am6ricain,' vol. ii. p. 318.

380

ANIMISM.

f M

.».;-(

term of a^eoi on the early Christians as unbelievers in the
classic gods, to the comparatively modern ages when disbelievers
in witchcraft and apostolical succession were denounced as
atheists, and down to our own day, when controversialists are apt
to infer, as in past centuries, that naturalists who support a theory
of development of species therefore necessarily hold atheistic
opinions.^ These are in fact but examples of a general perver-
sion of fair and open judgment in theological matters, among
the results of which is a popular misconception of the religions
of the lower races, simply amazing to students who have
reached a higher point of view. Some missionaries, no doubt,
thoroughly understand the minds of the savages they have to
deal with, and indeed it is from men like Cranz, Dobrizhoffer,
Chaile'/cix, Ellis, Hardy, Callaway, J. R. Wilson, T. Williams,
that we have obtained our best knowledge of the lower phases
of religious belief. But for the most part the " religious world "
is so occupied in hating and despising the beliefs of the heathen
whose vast regions of the globe are painted black on the mis-
sionary maps, that they have little time or capacity left to
understand them. It cannot be so Vv'ith those who fairly seek
to comprehend the nature and meaning of the lower phases of
religion. These, while fully alive to the absurdities believed
and the horrors perpetrated in its name, will yet regard with
kindly interest all records of men's earnest seeking after truth
with such light as they could find. Such students will look for
meaning, however crude and childish, at the root of doctrines
often most dark to the believers who accept them most zealously;
they will search for the reasonable thought which once gave
life to observances now become in seeming or reality the most
abject and superstitious folly. The reward of these enquirers
will be a more rational comprehension of the faiths in whose
midst they dwell, for no more can he who understands but one
religion understand even that religion, than the man who
knows but one language can understand that language. The
basis of theological science must be historical as well as eviden-

* Muir, 'Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. p. 435 ; Euseb, 'Hist. Eccl.' iv. 15 ; Bing-
ham, book i. cli. ii. ; Vanini, ' De Admirandis Natnro! Arcanis,' 'Hal. 37 ; Lecky,
'Hist, of Nationalism,' vol. i. p. 126 ; Eucyclop. Brit. s. v. 'Superstition.'

ANIMISM.

381

vers in the
disbelievers
(lounccd as
lists are apt
ort a theory
id atheistic
iral perver-
;ers, among
le religions
who have
, no doubt,
ey have to
obrizhoffer,
'. Williams,
wer phases
ous world "
he heathen
11 the mis-
iity left to
fairly seek
: phases of
js believed
egard with
ifter truth
ill look for
i" doctrines
; zealously;
once gave
r the most

enquirers
s in whose
is but one

man who
age. The
as eviden-

V. 15 ; Eing-
. 37 ; Lecky,
itition.'

tial, its arguments must recognize the evolution of religious
doctrines, and by separating the effects of tradition from the
effects of direct conviction, leave free the discussion of objective
truth. No religion of mankind lies in utter isolation from the
rest, and the thoughts and principles of modern Christianity
are attached to intellectual clues which run back through far
prae-Christian ages to the very origin of human civilization,
perhaps even of human existence.

While observers who have had fair opportunities of studying
the religions of savages have thus sometimes done scant justice
to the facts before their eyes, the hasty denials of others who
have judged without even facts can carry no great weight. A
ICth-century traveller gave an account of the natives of Florida
which is typical of such : " Touching the religion of this people,
which wee have found, for Avant of their language wee could not
understand rieither by signs nor gesture that they had any reli-
gion or lawe at all We suppose that they have no reli-
gion at all, and that they live at their own libertie." ^ Better
knowledge of these Floridans nevertheless showed that they
had a religion, and better knowledge has reversed many another
hasty assertion to the same effect ; as when writers used to
declare that the natives of Madagascar had no idea of a future
state, and no word for soul or spirit ; ^ or when Dampier en-
quired after the religion of the natives of Timor, and was told
that they had none ; ^ or when Sir Thomas Roe landed in Sal-
danha Bay on his way to the court of the Great Mogul, and
remarked of the Hottentots that "they have left off their
custom of stealing, but know no God or religion." ■* Among the
numerous accounts collected by Sir John Lubbock as evidence
bearing on the absence or low development of religion among
low races, ^ some may be selected as lying open to criticism from
this point of view. Thus the statement that the Samoan

* J. de Verrazano in Haklnyt, vol. iii. p. 300.

^ See Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 429; Flacoui't, 'Hist, de Madagascar,'
p. 59.
3 Dampier, ' Voyages,' vol. ii. part ii. p. 76.

* Roe in I'inkerton, vol. viii. p. 2.

' Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' p. 564: see also 'Origin of Civilization,'
p. 138.

•

If,

•it

S82

ANIMISM.

Islanders had no religion cannot stand in face of Mio elaborate
description by the Kev. G. Turner of tlie Saraoan religion itself ;
and the assertion that the Tupinambas of Brazil had no religion
is one not to be received without some more positive proof, for the
religious doctrines and practices of the Tupi race have been
recorded by Lery, De Laet, and other writers. Even with much
time and care and knowledge of language, it is not al ,vays easy
to elicit from, savages the details of their theology. They rather
try to hide from the prying and contemptuous foreigner their
v;orship of gods who seem to shrink, like their worshippers,
before the white man and his mightier Deity. And thus, even
where no positive proof cf religious development among any
particular tribe has reached us, we should distrust its denial by
observers whose acquaintance Vvith the tribe in question has not
been intimate as well as kindly. Assertions of this sort are
made very carelessly. Thus it is said of the Andaman Islanders
that they have not the ruaest elements of a religious faith ; Dr.
Mouat states this explicitly,' yet it appears that the natives did
not even display to the foreigners the rude music which they
actually possessed, so that they could scarcely have been ex-
pected to be communicative as to their theology, if they had
any. In our time the most striking negation of the religion of
savage tribes is that published by Sir Samuel Baker, in a paper
read in 186G before the Ethnological Society of London, as fol-
lows : " The most northern tribes of the White Nile are the
Dinkas, Shillooks, Nuehr, Kytch, Bohr, Aliab, and Shir. A
general description will suffice for the whole, excepting the
Kytch. Without any exception, they are without a belief in a
Supreme Being, neither have they any form of worship or
idolatry; nor is the darkness of their minds enlightened by
oven a ray of superstition." Had this distinguished explorer
spoken only of the Latukas, or of other tribes hardly known to
ethnographers except through his own intercourse with them,
liis denial of any religious consciousness to them would have
been at least entitled to stand as the best procurable account,
until more intimate communication should prove or disprove it.
But in speaking thus of comparatively well known tribes such

> Mouat, 'Andnman Islanders,' p]). 2, 279, 303.

I'i \

elaborate
ion itself;
10 religion
>of, for the
lave been
vith muich
,vays easy
ley rather
^ner their
)rshippers,
thus, even
mong any
denial by
[)n has not
s sort are
I Islanders
faith ; Dr.
latives did
diich they
been ex-
' they had
religion of
in a paper
on, as fol-
e are the
Shir. A
pting the
jelief in a
orship or
itened by

explorer
known to
ith them,
3uld have

account,
isprove it.
ibes such

ANIMISM.

383

as the Dinkas, Shilluks, and Nuohr, Sir S. Baker ignores the
existence of published evidence, such as describes the sacrifices
of the Dinkas, their belief in good and evil spirits (adjok and
djj'^ok), their good deity and heaven-dwelling creator, Dendid,
as likewise Ndar the deity of the Nuehr, and the Shilluks'
creator, who is described as visiting, like other spirits, a sacred
wood or tree. Kaufmaini, Brun-Rollet, Lejean, and other
observers, had thus placed on record details of the religion of
these White Nile tribes, years before Sir S. Baker's rash denial
that they had any religion at all. ^

The first requisite in a systematic study of the religions of
the lower races, is to lay down a rudimentary definition of
religion. By requiring in this definition the belief in a
supreme deity or of judgment after death, the adoration of
idols or the practice of sacrifice, or other partially-diffused
doctrines or rites, no doubt many tribes may be excluded from
the category of religious. But such narrow definition has the
fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments
than with the deeper motive which underlies them. It seems
best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to
claim, as a minimum definition of Religion, the belief in
Spiritual Beings. If this standard be applied to the descrip-
tions of low races as to religion, the following results will
appear. It cannot be positively asserted that every existing
tribe recognizes the belief in spiritual beings, for the native
condition of a considerable number is obscure in this respect,
a,nd from the rapid change or extinction they are undergoing,
may ever remain so. It would be yet more unwarranted to set
down every tribe mentioned in history, or known to us by the
discovery of antiquarian relics, as necessarily having possessed

» Baker, ' Eaces of the Nile Basin,' in Tr. Eth. Soc. vol. v. p. 231 ; * The
Albert Nyanza,' vol. i. p. '246. Sec Kaufniann, ' Schilderungcn aiis Central-
afiika,' p. 123 ; Brun-Rollet, ' Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,' pp. 100, 222, also pp.
164, 200, 234 ; G. Lejean in ' Rev. des Deux M.' April 1, 1862, p. 760 ; Waitz,
' Anthropologic, ' vol. ii. p, 72-5; Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 208. Other
recorded cases of denial of religion of savage tribes on narrow definition or inade-
<iuate evidence may be found in Meiner's ' Gesch. der Rel.' vol. i, pp. 11-15
(Australians, and Californians^ ; "Waitz, 'Anthropologic,' vol. i. p. 323 (Aru Is-
landers, etc.); Farrar in 'Anthrop. Rev.' Aug. 1864, p. ccxvii. (Kafirs, etc.);
iMartius, ' Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 583 (Manaos).

1. ?^

384

ANIMISM.

the defined minimum of religion. Greater still would bo the un-
wisdom of declaring such a rudimentary belief natural or in-
'^tir-otive in all human tribes of all times ; for no evidence justifies
the opinion that man, known to bo capable of so vast an intel-
lectual development, cannot have emerged from a non-religious
condition, previous to that religious condition in ^^hich he hap-
pens at present to come with sufficient clearness within our
range of knowledge. It is desirable, however, to take our lasis
of enquiry in observation rather than from speculation. Here,
so far as I can judge from the immense mass of accessible evi-
dence, we have to admit that the belief in spiritual beings
appears among all low races with whom we have attained to
thoroughly intimate acquaintance, whereas the assertion of
absence of such belief must apply either to ancient tribes, or to
more or less imperfectly described modern ones. The exact
bearing of this state of things on the probk m of the origin of
religion may be thus briefly stated. Were ii distinctly proved
that non-religious savages exist or have existed, these might be
at least plausibly claimed as representatives of the; condition of
Man before he arrived at the religious stage of culture. It is
not desirable, however, that this argument should be put for-
ward, for the asserted existence of the non-religious tribes in
question rests, as we have seen, on evidence often mistaken and
never conclusive. The argument for the natural evolution of
religious ideas among mankind is I'ot invalidated by the rejec-
tion of an ally too weak at present to give etfectual help. Non-
religious tribes may not exist in our day, but the fact bears no
more decisively on the development of religion, than the impos-
sibility of finding a modern English village without scissors or
books or lucifer-matches bears on the fact that there was a time
when no such things existed in the land.

I purpose here, under the name of Animism, to im estigate
the deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies the
very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philo-
sophy. Animism is not a new technical term, though now
seldom used.^ From its special relation to the doctrine of the

* The term has been especially used to denote the doctrine of Stahl, the pro-
mulgator also of the plilogiston-theoiy. The Aniinism of Stahl is a revival and

ANIMISM.

385

bo the un-
iral or in-
ce justifies
t an intel-
n-religiou3
;h he hap-
ivithln our
3 our lasis
Dn. Here,
isisible evi-
lal beings
ittained to
isertion of
dbes, or to
The exact
3 origin of
itly proved
J might be
jndition of
ure. It is
)e put for-
3 tribes in
itaken and
solution of
the rejec-
ilp. Non-
it bears no
the impos-
soissors or
was a time

in^ estigate
ibodiss the
istic philo-
ough now
fine of the

abl, the pro-
V revival and

soul, it will be seen to have a peculiar 'appropriateness to the
view hero taken of the mode in which theological ideas have
been developed among mankind. The word Spiritualism,
though it may be, and sometimes is, used in a general sense,
has this obvious defect to us, that it has become the designation
of a particular modern sect, who indeed hold extreme spiritual-
istic views, but cannot bo taken as typical representatives of
these views in the world at largo. The sense of Spiritualism in
its wider acceptation, the general doctrine of spiritual beings, is
here giveu to ..Vnimism.

Animism characterizes tribes very low in the scale of hu-
manity, and thence ascends, deeply modified in its transmission,
but from first to last preserving an unbroken continuity, into
the midst of high modern culture. Where doctrines adverse to
it are held by individuals or schools, they are usually to bo
accounted for as due not to early lowness of civilization, but to
later changes in the intellectual course, to divergence from, or
rejection of, ancestral faiths, and such newer developments do
not affect the present enquiry as to a fundamental religious
condition of mankind. Animism is, in fact, the groundwork of
the Philosophy of Religion, from that of savages up to that of
civilized men. And although it may at first sight seem to afford
but a bare and meagre definition of a minimum of religion, it
will be found practically sufficient ; for, where the root is, the
branches will generally be produced. It is habitually found
that the theory of Animism divides into two great dogmas^
forming parts of one consistent doctrine ; first, concerning souls
of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the
death or destruction of the body ; second, concerning other
spirits, upward to the rank of powerful deities. Spiritual beings
are held to affect or control the events of the material world,
and man's life here and hereafter ; and it being considered that
they hold intercourse with m.en, and receive pleasure or dis-
pleasure from human actions, the belief in their existence leads
naturally, and it might almost be said inevitably, sooner or

development in modern scientific shape of the classic theory identifying vital princi-
ple and soul. See his • Theoria Medica Vera,' Halle, 1737 ; and the critical disser- '
tation on his views, Lemoine, ' Le Vitalisme et I'Animisme do Stahl,' Paris, 1864.
VOL. I. c c

SI''

38G

ANIMISM.

'i %

later to active reverence and propitiation. Tlius Animism, in
its full development, includes the belief in controlling deities
and subordinate " ' " in souls, and in a future state, these
doctrines practic....^ - osulting in some kind of active worshi}).
One great element of religion, that moral element which to us
forms its most vital part, is indeed little represented iu the reli-
gion of the lower races. It is not that these races have no moral
sense or no moral standard, for both are strongly marked among
them, if not in formal precept, at least in that traditional con-
sensus of society which we call public opinion, according to which
certain actions are held to be good or bad, right or wrong. It is
that the conjunction of ethics and Animistic philosophy, so inti-
mate and powerful in the higher culture, seems scarcely yet to
have begun in the lower. I propose here hardly to touch upon the
purely moral aspects of religion, but rather to study the animism
of the world so far as it constitutes, as unquestionably it does
constitute, an ancient and world-v.ide philosophy of which
belief is the theory and worship is the practice. Endeavouring
to shape the materials for an enquiry hitherto strangely under-
valued and neglected, it will now be my task to bring as clearly
as may be into view the fundamental animism of the lower
races, and in some slight and broken outline to trace its course
into higher regions of civilization. Here let me state once for
all two principal conditions under which the present research is
carried on. First, as to the religious doctrines and practices
examined, these are treated as belonging to theological systems
devised by human reason, without supernatural aid or revela-
tion ; in other words, as being developments of Natural Keli-
gion. Second, as to the connexion between similar ideas and
rites in the religions of the savage and the civilized world.
While dwelling at some length on doctrines and ceremonies of
the lower races, and sometimes particularizing for special
reasons the related doctrines and ceremonies of the higher
nations, it has not seemed my proper task to work out in detail
the problems thus suggested among the philosophies and creeds
of Christendom. Such applications, extending farthest from
the direct scope of a work on primitive culture, are briefly
stated in general terms, or touched in slight allusion, or taken

illfc

ANIMISM.

3S7

limism, in
ng deities
ate, these
e worship,
hich to U8
ill the reli-
no moral
cod among
;ional con-
ig to which
rong. It is
hy, so inti-
cely yet to
!h upon the
le animism
Ay it docs
of which
deavouring
^ely under-
T as clearly
the lower
e its course
te once for
research is
d practices
cal systems
or revela-
tural Keli-
• ideas and
izcd world,
emonies of
for special
the higher
at in detail
and creeds
•thest from
are briefly
■i, or taken

for granted without remark. Educated readers possess the infor-
mation required to work out their general bearing on theology,
while more technical discussion is left to professional theologians.
The first branch of the subject to bo considered is the
doctrine of human and other Souls, an examination of which
will occupy the rest of the present chapter. What the doctrine
of the soul is among the lower races, may be explained by a tiicory
of its development. It seems as though thinking men, as yet
at a low level of culture, were deeply impressed by two groups
of biological problems. In the first place, what is it that makes
the difference between a living body and a dead one ; what
causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, death ? In the second
place, what are those human shapes which appear in dreams
and visions ? Looking at these two groups of phenomena, the
ancient savage philosophers practically made each help to
account for the other, by combining both in a conception which
we may call an apparitional-soul, a ghost-soul. The conception
of a personal soul or spirit among the lower races may be
defined as follows : It is a thin unsubstantial human image,
in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow ; the cause of
life and thought in the individual it animates ; independently
possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its cor-
poreal owner, past or present ; capable of leaving the body far
behind to flash swiftly from place to place ; mostly impalpable
and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially
appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate
from the body of which it bears the likeness ; able to enter
into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals,
and even of things. Though this definition is by no means of
universal application, it has sufficient generality to be taken as
a standard, modified by more or less divergence among any
particular people. Far from these world-wide opinions being
arbitrary or conventional products, it is seldom even justifiable
to consider their uniformity among distant races as proving
communication of any sort. They are doctrines answering in the
most forcible way to the plain evidence of men's senses, as
interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philo-
sophy. So well, indeed, does the theory account for the facts,

c c 2

S88

ANIMISM.

'*>

that it lins hold its plncc into tlio higher levels of education.
Though classic and niodiaival philosophy modified it much, and
modern philosophy has handled it yet more unsparingly, it has
80 far retained the traces of its original character, that heir-
looms of primitive ages may he claimed in the existing psycho-
logy of the civilized world. Out of the vast mass of evidence,
collected among the most various and distant races of mankind,
typical details may ho selected to display the earlier theory of
the soul, the relation of the parts of this theory, and the
manner in which those parts have heon abandoned, modified, or
kept up, along the course of culture.

To understand the popular conceptions of the human soul or
spirit, it is instructive to notice the words which have been
found suitable to express it. The ghost or phantasm seen by
the dreamer or the visionary is like a shadow, and thus tho
familiar term of the fihade comes in to express tho soul. Thus
the Tasmanian word for the shadow is also that for the spirit ;^
the Algonquin Indians describe a man's soul as otahchuk,
" his shadow ;"^ the Quicht^ language uses natuh for " shadow,
soul;"*'' the Arawac ucja means "shadow, soul, image ;"'' the
Abipones made the one word lodkal servo for " shadow, soul,
echo, image." ^ The Zulus not only use the word tunzi for
" shadow, spirit, ghost," but they consider that at death tho
shadow of a man will in some way depart from the corpse, to
become an ancestral spirit.*' The Basutos not only call the spirit
remaining after death the aeriti or " shadow," but they think
that if a man walks on the river bank, a crocodile may seize
his shadow in the water and draw him in f while in Old Calabar
there is found the same identification of the spirit with the
uJcpon or " shadow," for a man to lose which is fatal.^ There

* Bonwick, ' Tasiiianians,' p. 182.

2 Tanner's 'Nurr.' ed. by James, p. 291.
' Brasseur, ' Langue Quichde,* s. v.

* Martins, ' Ethnog. Anier.' vol. i. p. 705 ; vol. ii. p. 310.

* Dobrizhoffer, * Abipones,* vol. ii. p. 1£'4.

' Dohne, ' Znlu Die' s. v. ' tunzi ; ' Callaway, ' Eel. of Amazulii,' pp. 91, 126 ;

• Zulu Tales,' vol. 1. p. .342,
7 Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 245 ; Arboussct and Daumas, ' Voyage,' p. 12,
» Burton, ' W. and W. fr. W. Afr.' p. 389 ; see Koellc, ' Air. Native Lit.' p.

324 (Kannii). Also ' Journ. Ind. Arcliip.' vol. v, p, 713 (Australian).

education,
niicli, and
gly, it has
that hcir-
g psycho-
evidence,
mankind,
theory of
, and tho
odified, or

an soul or
lave been
tn scon by

thus tho
ml. Thus
le spirit ; *

otahchuk,

" shadow,
ge;"'* the
idow, soul,

tunzi for
death the

corpse, to
1 the spirit

ley think

may seize
Id Calabar
b with the
1.8 There

pp. 91, 126 ;

p. 12.

ative Lit.' p.

ANI.MISM.

381)

are tlius found among tho lower races not only the types i>f
those familiar classic terms, the Hkla or uvihm, but also what
seems tho fundiuncntal thought of tho storioa of shadowless
men still current in tho folklore of Europe, and familiar to
modern readers in Chamisso's tale of Peter Schleraihl. From
various other vital operations, other attributes are taken into
tho notion of soul or spirit. Thus tho Caribs, connecting tho
pulses with spiritual beings, and especially considering that in
tho heart dwells man's chief soul, destined to a future heavenly
life, could reasonably use the one word iuiuoinl for "soul, life,
heart." ^ The Tongans supposed the soul to e.\ist throughout
tho whole e-Ktension of the body, but i)articularly in the heart.
On one occasion, the natives were declaring to a European that
a man buried months ago was nevertheless still alive. " And
one, endeavouring to make me understand what he meant, took
hold of my hand, and squeezing it, said, ' This will die, but the
life that is within you will never die ; ' with his other hand
pointing to my heart."" So the Basutos say of a dead man that
his heart is gone out, and of one recovering from sickness that
his heart is coming back."' This corresponds to the familiar Old
World view of the heart as the prime mover in life, thought,
and passion. The connexion of soul and blood, familiar to the
Karens and Papuas, appears prominently in Jewish and Arabic
philosophy."* To educated moderns the idea of the Macusi
Indians of Guiana may seem quaint, that although the body
will decay, " the man in our eyes " will not die, but wander
about." Yet the association of personal animation with tho
pupil of the eye is familiar to European folklore, which not un-
reasonably discerned a sign of bewitchment or approi. ohing
death in the disappearance of the image, pupil, or baby, from
the dim eyeballs of the sick man.''

The act of breathing, so characteristic of the higher animals
during life, and coinciding so closely with life in its departure,

> Rochefort, pp. 429, 516 ; J. G. MuUor, p. 207.

2 Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 136 ; S. S. Farmer, 'Tonga,' etc. p. 131.

' Casalis, 1. c. See also Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 135.

* Bastian, 'Paycliologie,' pp. 15-23.

6 J. H. Bernau, • Brit. Gniana,' p. 134.

6 Grimm, ' D. M.' pp. 1028, 1133. Anglo-Saxon man-Uca.

390

ANIMISM.

I Hi

has been repeatedly and naturally identified with the life or soul
itself. Laura Bridgman showed in her instructive way the
analogy between the effects of restricted sense and restricted
civilization, when one day she made the gesture of taking some-
thing away from her mouth : " I dreamed," she explained in
words, " that God took away my breath to heaven.^ It is thus
that West Australians used one word ivaug for " breath, spirit,
soul ; "2 that in the Netela language of California, jpiuts means
" life, breath, soul;"^ that certain Greenlanders reckoned two
souls to man, namely his shadow and his breath ;* that the
Malays say the soul of the dying man escapes through his
nostrils, and in Java use the same word fiaiva for " breath,
life, soul."^ How the notions of life, heart, breath, and phantom
unite in the one conception of a soul or spirit, and at the same
time how looso and vague such ideas are among the lower races,
is well brought into view in the answers to a religious inquest
held in 1528 among the natives of Nicaragua. "When they
die, there comes out of their mouth something that resembles
a person, and is called jidio [Aztec yull = to live]. This being
goes to the place where the man and woman are. It is like a
person, but does not die, and the body remains here." Question.
" Do those who go up on high keep the same body, the same
face, and the same limbs, as here below ? " Ansiuer. " No ;
there is only the heart." Question. " But since they tear out
their hearts [/. e., when a captive was sacrificed], what happens
then?" Aiisiuer. "It is not precisely the heart, but that in
them which makes them live, and that quits the body when
they die." Or, as stated in another interrogatory, " It is not
their heart that goes up above, but what makes them live, that
is to say, the breath that issues from their mouth and is called
Julio." ^ The conception of the soul as breath maybe followed
up through Semitic and Aryan etymology, and thus into the
main streams of the philosophy of the world. Hebrew shows

* Lieber, * Laura Bridi^man,' in Sinithsonian Coutrib. vol. ii. p. 8.
2 G. F. Moore, ' Vocab. of W. Australia,' p. 103.

^ Briiiton, p. 50, sco 235 ; Bastian, 'Psychologic,' p. 15.

* Cranz, ' Gronland," p. 257.

* Crawfurd, 'Malay Or. and Die' s. v. ; Marsden, 'Sumatra,' p. 33G.

* Oviedo, 'Hist, du Nicaragua,' pp. 21-51.

ANIMISM.

391

life or soul
3 way the

restricted
iing some-
plained in

It is thus
'ath, spirit,
iuts means
koned two
■* that the
irough his
r " breath,
d phantom
, the same
ower races,
)us inquest
Nhen they

resembles
This being
t is like a

Question.

the same
mr. " No ;
sy tear out
at happens
ut that in
3ody when
"It is not
1 live, that
id is called
3e followed
IS into the
jrew shows

oiephesh, " breath," passing into all the meanings of " life, soul,
mind, animal," Avhile ruach and neshamah make the like tran-
sition from " breath " to " spirit ; " and to these the Arabic
nefs and ruh correspond. The same is the history of Sanskrit
dtmcLii an<l prdna, of Greek psyche and pneuma, of Latin
animus, anima, spiritus. So Slavonic duck has developed the
meaning of " breath " into that of soul or spirit ; and the dialects
of the Gypsies have this word duk with the meanings of " breath,
spirit, ghost," whether these pariahs brought the word from India
as part of their inheritance of Aryan speech, or whether they
adopted it in their migration across Slavonic lands.^ German
geist and English ghost, too, may possibly have the same original
sense of breath. And if any should think such expre^>sions due to
mere metaphor, he may judge the strength of the implied con-
nexion between breath and spirit by cases of most unequivocal
significance. Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman
died in childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive
her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for
its future use. These Indians could have well understood why
at the death-bed of an ancient Roman, the nearest kinsman
leant over to inhale the last breath of the departing (et excipies
banc animam ore pio). Their state of mind is kept up to
this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good
man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like a little white
cloud."

It will be shown that men, in their composite and confused
notions of the soul, have brought into connexion a list of mani-
festations of life and thought even more multifarious than this.
But also, seeking to avoid such perplexity of combination, they
have sometimes endeavoured to define and classify more closely,
especially by the theory that man has a combination of several
kinds of spirit, soul, or image, to which different functions
Already among savage races such classification appears

belong.

3SG.

* Pott, ' Zigeimer, vol. ii. p. 306; 'Indo.Germ. Win l-\Vortcibuch,' vol. i.
p. 1073; Borrow, ' Lavengro,' vol. ii. cli. xxvi. "writo the lil of him whoso
dook gallops down that hill every night," see vol. iii. ch. iv.

^ Briuton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 253; Conim. in Virg. iEn. iv. 684;
Cic. Verr. v. 45 ; Wuttkc, ' Volksaberglaube,' p. 210 ; Rochholz, ' Deutscher
Glaube,' etc. vol. i. p. 111.

I':

III

*j'*a

I ,

J92

ANIMISM.

n '■>

n m-

in full vigour. Thus the Fijiaus distinguish between a man's
"dark spirit" or shadow, which goes to Hades, and his "light
spirit " or reflexion in water or a mirror, which stays near where
he dies.^ The Malagasy say that the saina or mind vanishes
at death, the aina or life becomes mere air, but the matoatoci
or ghost hovers round the tomb." In North America, the duality
of the soul is a strongly marked Algonquin belief; one soul goes
out and sees dreams while the other remains behind ; at death
one of the two abides with the body, and for this the survivors
leave offerings of food, while the other departs to the land of the
dead. A division into three souls is also known, and the Dakotas
say that man has four souls, one remaining with the corpse, one
staying in the village, one going in the air, and one to the land
of spirits.^ The Karens distinguish between the ' 1^ ' or ' kelah,*
which may be defined as the personal life-phantom, and the 'thah'
which is the responsible moral soul.'* The fourfold division among
the Khonds of Orissa is as follows : the first soul is that capable
of beatification or restoration to Boora the Good Deity ; the second
is attached to a Khond tribe on earth and is re-born generation
after generation, so that at the birth of each child the priest asks
which member of the tribe has returned ; the third goes out to
hold spiritual intercourse, leaving the body in a languid state,
and it is this soul which can migrate for a time into a tiger ; the
fourth dies on the dissolution of the body.^ Such classifications
resemble those of higher races, as for instance the three-fold
division of shade, manes, and spirit :

" Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra:
Quatuor hoec loci bis duo suscipiunt.
Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra,
Manes Orcusbabet, spiiitus astra petit."

Not attempting to follow up the details of such psychical

' Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 241.

2 Ellis, ' Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 393.

' Charlevoix, vol. vi. pp. 75-8 ; Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes,' fan i. pp. 33,
83, part iii. p. 229, part iv. p. 70 ; Wailz, vol. iii. p. 194 ; J. G. MUller, pp. 66,
207, 8.

* Cross in ' Journ. Amer. Oriental Soc' vol. iv. p. 310.]

» Macpherson, pp. 91, 2. See also Klemm, 'C. G.' vol. iii. p. 71 (Lapp.) ; St.
John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 189 (Dayaks).

'.M^

ANIMISM.

393

in a man s
his "light
aear where
d vanishes
matoatoa
the duality
e soul goes
; at death
B survivors
land of the
le Dakotas
corpse, one
:o the land
or ' kelah,'
the'thah'
sion among
lat capable
the second
generation
priest asks
foes out to
guid state,
tiger; the
ssifications
three-fold

psychical

XX i. pp. 33,
liller, pp. 66,

(Lapp.) ; St.

division into the elaborate systems of literary nations, I shall
not discuss the distinction which the ancient Egyptians seem to
have made in the Ritual of the Dead between the man's ha,
ahh, ka, khaba, translated by Mr. Birch as his " soul," " mind,"
"existence," "shade," or the Rabbinical division into what may be
roughly described as the bodily, spiritual, and celestial souls, or
the distinction between the emanative and genetic souls in
Kindu philosophy, or the distribution of life, apparition, ances-
tral spirit, among the three souls of the Chinese, or the demar-
cations of the nous, psyche, and pneuma, or of the anima and
animus, or the famous classic and mediaeval theories of the
vegetal, sensitive, and rational souls. Suffice it to point out
here that such speculation dates back to the savage condition
of our race, in a state fairly comparing as to scientific value with
much that has gained esteem v/ithin the precincts of higher
culture. It would be a difficult task to treat such classification
on a consistent logical basis. Terms corresponding with those of
life, mind, soul, spirit, ghost, and so forth, are not thought of as
describing really separate entities, so much as the several forms
/".nd functions of one individual being. Thus the confusion which
here prevails in our own thought and language, in a manner
typical of the thought and language of mankind in general, is
in fact due not merely to vagueness of terms, but to an ancient
theory of substantial unity which underlies them. Such ombi-
guity of language, however, will be found to interfere little with
the present enquiry, for the detaik given of the nature and
action of spirits, souls, or phantoms, will themselves define the
exact sense such words are to be taken in.

The early animistic theory of vitality, regarding the functions
of life as caused by the soul, offers an explanation of several
bodily and mental conditions by the theory of departure of the
soul or some of its constituent spirits. This theory holds a Avide
and strong position in savage biology. The South Australians
express it when they say of one insensible or unconscious, that
he is " wilyamarraba," i.e., "without soul."^ Among the Al-
gonquin Indians of North America, we hear of sicknass being
accounted for by the patient's "shadow" being unsettled or

* Shiirmann, ' Vocab. of Parukalla Lang.' s. v.

'^ 'I

394

ANIMISM.

detached from liis body, and of the convalescent being reproached
for exposing himself before his shadow was safely settled down
in him ; where we should say that a man was ill and recovered,
they would consider that he died, but came again. Another
account from among the same race explains the condition of
men lying in lethargy or trance ; their souls have travelled forth
to the banks of the River of Death, but have been driven back
and return to re-animate their bodies.^ Among the Fijians,
" when anyone faints or dies, their spirit, it is said, may some-
times be brought back by calling after it ; and occasionally the
ludicrous scene is witnessed of a stout man lying at full length,
and bawling out lustily for the return of his own soul."^ To
the negroes of North Guinea, derangement or dotage is caused
by the patient being prematurely deserted by his soul, sleep
being a more temporary withdrawal.^ Thus, in various coun-
tries, the bringing back of lost souls becomes a regular part of
the sorcerer's or priest's profession. The Salish Indians of
Oregon regard the spirit as distinct from the vital principle,
and capable of quitting the body for a short time without the
patient being conscious of its absence ; but to avoid fatal conse-
quences it must be restored as soon as possible, and accordingly
the medicine-man in solemn form replaces it down through the
patient's head,*^ The Turanian or Tatar races of Northern Asia
strongly hold the theory of the soul's departure in disease, and
among their Buddhist tribes the Lamas carry out the ceremony
of soul-restoration in most elaborate form. When a man has
been robbed by a demon of his ratfonal soul, and has only his
animal soul left, his sense and memory groAV weak and he falls
into a dismal state. Then the Lama undertakes to cure him,
and with quaint rites exorcises the evil demon. But if this
fails, tnen it is the patient's soul itself that cannot or will not
find its way back. So the sick man is laid out in his best attire
and surrounded with his most attractive possessions, the friends
and relatives go thrice round the dwelling, affectionately calling

* Tanner's 'Narr.' p. 291 ; Keating, 'Nan-, of Long's Exp.' vol. ii. p. 154.
- "Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 242.

3 J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.' p. 220.

* Bastian, ' Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 319.

1 :-|

■■i

^^k

|j?W'

preached
led down
ecovered,
Another
idition of
lied forth
Lven back
i Fijians,
lay some-
)nally the
dl length,
ul."2 To
is caused
oul, sleep
3US coun-
[ir part of
ndians of
principle,
thout the
ital conse-
xordingly
rough the
hern Asia
sease, and
ceremony
man has
only his
d he falls
cure him,
at if this
r will not
jcst attire
le friends
ily calling

). 154.

ANIMISM.

395

back the soul by name, while as a further inducement the Lama
reads from his book descriptions of the pains of hell, and the
dangers incurred by a soul which wilfully abandons its body,
and then at last the whole assembly declare with one voice that
the wandering spirit has returned and the patient will recover.^
The Karens of Birma will run about pretending to catch a sick
man's wandering soul, or as they say with the ancient Greeks,
his "butterfly" (leip-pya), and at last drop it down upon his
head. The Karen doctrine of the 1^ is indeed a perfect and
well-marked vitalistic system. This Ih, soul, ghost, or genius,
may be separated from the body it belongs to, and it is a matter
of the deepest interest to the Karen to keep his la with him, by
calling it, making offerings of food to it, and so forth. It is
especially when the body is asleep, that the soul goes or* tnd
wanders ; if it is detained beyond a certain time, disease ensues,
and if permanently, then its owner dies. When the "wee" or
spirit-doctor is employed to call back the departed shade or life
of a Karen, if he cannot recover it from the region of the dead,
he will sometimes take the shade of a living man and transfer
it to the dead, while its proper owner, whose soul has ventured
out in a dream, sickens and dies. Or when a Karen becomes
sick, languid and pining from his 1^ having left him, his friends
will perform a ceremony with a garment of the invalid's and a
fowl which is cooked and offered with rice, invoking the spirit
with formal prayers to come back to the patient." This cere-
mony is perhaps ethnologically connected, though it is not easy
to say by what manner of diffusion or when, with a rite still
practised in China. When a Chinese is at the point of death,
and his soul is supposed to be already out of his body, a relative
may be seen holding up the patient's coat on a long bamboo, to
which a white cock is often fastened, while a Tauist priest by
incantations brings the departed spirit into the coat, in order to
put it back into the sick man. If the bamboo after a time

' Bnstian, * Psychologic,' p. 34. Gmelin, ' Reisen (lurch Sibirien,' vol. ii. p.
359 (Yakuts) ; Ravenstein, 'Amur,' p. 351 (Tunguz).

* Bastien, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 143 ; vol. ii. pp. 388, 418 ; vol. iii. p. 236.
Mason, 'Karens,' 1. c. p. 196, etc. ; Cross, ' Karens,' in 'Jour. Amer. Oriental
Soc' vol. iv. 1854, p. 307. See also St. John, ' Far East,' 1. c. (Dayalcs).

I' I

396

ANIMISM.

■ji-ti' m

turns round slowly in the liolder's hands, this shows that the
spirit is inside the garment.^

Such temporary exit of the soul has a world-wide application
to the proceedings of the sorcerer, priest, or seer himself. He
professes to send forth his spirit on distant journeys, and pro-
bably often believes his soul released for a time from its bodily
prison, as in the case of that remarkable dreamer and visionary
Jerome Cardan, who describes himself as having the faculty of
passing out of his senses as into ecstasy whenever he will, feel-
ing when he goes into this state a sort of separation near the
heart as if his soul v.ere departing, this state beginning from
his brain and passing down his spine, and he then feeling only
that he is out of himself.^ Thus the Australian native doctor
is alleged to obtain his initiation by visiting the world of spirits
in a trance of two or three days' duration ; ^ the Khond priest
authenticates his claim to office by remaining from one to four-
teen days in a languid dreamy state, caused by one of his souls
being away in the divine presence ;* the Greenland angekok's
soul goes forth from his body to fetch his familiar demon ; ^ the
Turanian shaman lies in lethargy while his soul departs to
bring hidden wisdom from the land of spirits." The literature
of more progressive races supplies similar accounts. A charac-
teristic story from old Scandinavia is that of the Norse chief
Ingimund, who shut up three Finns in a hut for three nights,
that they might visit Iceland and inform him of the lie of the
country where he was to settle ; their bodies became rigid, they
sent their souls on the errand, and awakening after the three
days they gave a description of the Vatnsdsel.'' The typical
classic case is the story of Hermotimos, whose prophetic soul
went out from, time to time to visit distant regions, till at last
his wife burnt the lifeless body on the funeral pile, and when

' Doolittlc, ' Chinese,' vol. i. p. 1.^0.

" Cardan, ' De Varietate Eenmi,' Basil, 1556, cap. xliii.

3 Stanbridge, ' Abor. of Victoria,' in 'Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. i. p. 300.

* Macplierson, ' India,' p. 103.

* Cranz, ' Gronland, ' p. 269.

* Kuhs, ' Finland,' p. 303 ;,Castren, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 134 ; Bastian, 'Mensch,'
vol. ii. p. 319.

^ Vatnsdaela Saga ; Baring- Gould, * Wercwolvefe,' p. 29.

ANIMISM.

397

I that the

pplication
iself. Ho
and pro-
its bodily
. visionary-
faculty of
will, feel-
near the
ning from
eling only
ive doctor
I of spirits
)nd priest
le to four-
' his souls
angekok's
Qon ; ^ the
leparts to
literature
A charac-
orse chief
nights,
ie of the
igid, they
;he three
typical
letic soul
ill at last
and when

the poor soul came back, there was no longer a dwelling for it
to animate.^ A group of the legendary visits to the spirit- world,
which will be described in the next chapter, belong to this class.
Atypical spiritualistic instance maybe quoted from Jung-Stilling,
who says that examples have come to his knowledge of sick
persons who, longing to see absent friends, have fallen into a
swoon during which they have appeared to the distant objects
of their affection.^ As an illustration from cur own folklore,
the well-known superstition may serve, that fasting watchers on
St. John's Eve may see the apparitions of those doomed to die
during the year come with the clergyman to the church door
and knock ; these apparitions are spirits Avho come forth from
their bodies, for the minister has been noticed to bo much
troubled in his sleep while his phantom was thus engaged, and
when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound sleep and
could not be roused, the others saw his apparition knock at the
church door.^ Modern Europe has indeed kept closely enough
to the lines of early philosophy, for such ideas to have little
strangeness to our own time. Language preserves record of
them in such expressions as " out of oneself," " beside one-
self," " in an ecstasy," and he who says that his spirit goes
forth to meet a friend, can still realize in the phrase a meajiing
deeper than metaphor.

This same doctrine forms one side of the theory of dreams
prevalent among the lower laces. Certain of the Greenlanders,
Cranz remarks, consider that the soul quits the body in the
night and goes out hunting, dancing, and visiting ; their dreams,
which are frequent and lively, having brought them to this
opinion.* Among the Indians of North America, we hear of
the dreamer's soul leaving his body and wandering in quest of
things attractive to it. These things the waking man must
endeavour to obtain, lest his soul be troubled, and quit the body

i ♦''

' Menscli, '

* Plin. vii. 53 ; Lncian. Ilermotimus, Muse. Encom. 7.

» R. D. Owen, ' Footfalls on the Boundary of another World,' p. 259. See A.
R, Wallace, ' Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural,' p. 43.

' Brand, ' Pop. Ant.' vol. i. p. 331, vol. iii. p. 236. See Calmet, ' Diss, sur
lea Esprits ;' Maury, ' Magie,' part ii. ch. iv.

"• Cranz, ' Groulaud,' p. 257.

I fii

398

ANIMISM.

Jl ^^1

' / 1

■ ''■ i! i

■ !' 'i

|0 ;

altogether.! The New Zealanders considered the dreaming soul
to leave the body and return, even travelling to the region of
the dead +o hold converse with its friends.-^ The Tagals if
Luzon object to waking a sleeper, on account of the absence of
liis soul.^ The Karens, whose theory of the wandering soul has
just been noticed, explain dreams to be what this Itl sees and
experiences in its journeys when it has left the body asleep.
They even account with much acuteness for the fact that we are
apt to dream of people and places which we knew before ; the
leip-pya, they say, can only visit the legions where the body it
belongs to has been already.* Onward from the savage state,
the idea of the spirit's departure in sleep may be traced into
the speculative philosophy of higher nations, as in the Vedanta
system, and the Kabbala.^ St. Augustine tells one of the
double narratives which so well illustrate theories of this kind.
The man who tells Augustine the story relates that, at home one
night before going to sleep, he saw coming to him a certain
philosopher, most well known to him, who then expounded to him
certain Platonic passages, which when asked previously he had
refused to explain. And when he (afterwards) enquired of this
philosopher why he did at his house what he had refused to do
when asked at his own : " I did not do it," said the philosopher,
" but I dreamt I did." And thus, says Augustine, that was ex-
hibited to one by phantastic image while waking, which the
other saw in dream .^ European folklore, too, has preserved in-
teresting details of this primitive dream-theory, such as the
fear of turning a sleeper over lest the absent soul should miss
the way back. King Gunthram's legend is one of a group inter-
esting from the same point of view. The king lay in the wood
asleep with his head in his faithful henchman's lap ; the servant
saw as it were a snake issue from his lord's mouth and run to

^ Waitz, vol. iii. p. 195.

2 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 104, ISi, 333 ; Baker in 'Tr. Etli. Soc' vol. i.
p. 57.

^ Bastian, 'Menscli,' vol. ii. p. 319.

* Mason, 'Karens,' 1. c. p. 199 ; Cross, 1. c. ; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p,
144, vol. ii. p. 389, vol. iii. p. 266.

* Bastian, ' Psycholof^ie,' pp. 16-20 ; Eisenmenger, vol. i. p. 458, vol. ii. pji.
13, 20, 453 ; Franck, ' Kabbale,' p. 235.

* Auf'nstin. De Civ. Dei xviii. 18.

ANIMISM.

399

Lining soul
region of
Tagals c^
ibsence of
ig soul has
tL sees and
idy asleep,
hat we are
efore ; the
he body it
i^age state,
traced into
le Vedanta
ne of the
this kind,
t home one
1 a certain
ided to him
isly he had
red of this
ised to do
hilosopher,
lat was ex-
which the
iserved in-
ch as the
lould miss
roup inter-
the wood
le servant
,nd run to

Soc' vol. i.

en,' vol. i. p.
J, vol. ii. pp.

the brook, but it could not pass, so the servant laid his sword
across the water, and the creature ran along it and up into
a mountain ; after a while it came back and returned into
the mouth of the sleeping king, who waking told how he had
dreamt that he went over an iron bridge into a mountain full of
gold.^ This is one of those instructive legends which preserve
for us, as in a museum, relics of an early intellectual condition
of our Aryan race, in thoughts which to our modern minds have
fallen to the level of quaint fancy, but which .still remain sound
and reasonable philosophy to the savage. A Karen at this day
would appreciate every point of the story ; the familiar notion
of spirits not crossing water, which he exemplifies in his Bur-
mese forests by stretching threads across the brook for the
ghosts to pass along ; the idea of the soul going forth embodied
in an animal ; and the theory of the dream being a real journey
of the sleeper's soul. Finally, this old belief still finds, as such
beliefs so often do, a refuge in modern poetry :

" Yon child is dreaming far away,
And is not where he seems."

This opinion, however, only constitutes one of several parts of
the theory of dreams in savage psychology. Another part has
also a place here, the view that human souls come from without
to visit the sleeper, who sees them as dreams. These two views
are by no means incompatible. The North American Indians
allowed themselves the alternative of supposing a dream to be
a visit from the soul of the person or object dreamt of, or a sight
seen by the rational soul, gone out for an excursion while the
sensitive soul remains in the body.^ So the ZnUi may be visited
in a dream by the shade of an ancestor, the itongo, who comes
to warn him of danger, or he may himself be taken by the
itongo in a dream to visit his distant people, and see that they
are in trouble ; as for the man who is passing into the morbid
condition of the professional seer, phantoms are continually
coming to talk to him in his sleep, till he becomes, as the expres-

» Grimm, 'D. M.'p. 1036.

' Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 78. Ldkiel, part i. p. 76.

.t":J'

! i.

'■'■;■ 'J

I ■^:'*

'ii

400

ANIMISJI.

,i»f 'I

«: !

sivo native phrase is, "a house of dreams."^ In the lower
range of culture, it is perhaps most frequently taken for granted
that a man's apparition in a dream is a visit from his disem-
bodied spirit, Avhich the dreamer, to use an expressive Ojibwa
idiom, " sees when asleep," Such a thought comes out clearly
in the Fijian opinion that a living man's spirit may leave the
body, to trouble other people in their sleep ;^ or in a recent
account of an old Indian woman of British Columbia sending
for the medicine man to drive away the dead people who came
to her every night.^ A modern observer's description of the
state of mind of the negroes of South Guinea in this respect is
extremely characteristic and instructive. " All their dreams are
constnied into visits from the spirits of their deceased friends.
The cautions, hints, and warnings which come to them through
this source, are received with the most serious and deferential
attention, and are always acted upon in their waking hours.
The habit of relating their dreams, which is universal, greatly
promotes the habit of dreaming itself, and hence their sleeping
hours are characterized by almost as much intercourse with the
dead as their waking are with the living. This is, no doubt^
one of the reasons of their excessive superstition snc^ss. Their
imaginations become so lively that they can scarcely distinguish
between their dreams and their waking thoughts, between the
real and the ideal, and they consequently utter falsehood 'vith-
out intending, and profess to see things which never existed."*

To the Greek of old, the dream-soul was what to the modem
savage it still is. Sleep, loosing cares of mind, fell on Achilles as
he lay by the sounding sea, and there stood over him the soul
of Patroklos, like to him altogether in stature, and the beau-
teous eyes, and the voice, and the garments that wrapped his
skin ; he spake, and Achilles stretched out to grasp him with
loving hands, but caught him not, and like a smoke the soul

Hi '!

^ Callaway, ' Eelig. of Amazulu,' pp. 228, 260, 316. See also St. John, ' Far
East,' vol. i. p. 199 (Dayaks).

" Williams, ' Fiji,' vol. i. p. 242.

3 Mayne, ' Brit. Columbiii,' p. 261.

* J. L. Wilson, ' W. Africa,' p. 395, see 210. See also Ellis, 'Polyp. Res.'
vol. i. p. 396; J. G. Miiller, * Anier. Urrel.' p. 287; Buchanan, 'Mysore' in
Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 677 ; 'Early Hist, of Mankind/ p. 8.

ANIMISM.

4UI

the lower
)r granted
lis disem-
ve Ojibwa
)ut clearly
leave tlio
L a recent
ia sending
who came
ion of tho
1 respect is
Ireams are
ed friends,
n through
deferential
ing hours,
sal, greatly
ir sleeping
36 with the
no doubt,
^ss. Their
distinguish
itv/fc'^n the
hood 'vith-
3xisted." *
he modem
Achilles as
m the soul
the beau-
rapped his
him with
e the soul

t. John, ' Far

' Polyp. Res.'
'Mysore' in

sped twittering below the earth. Along the ages that separate
us from Homeric times, tho apparition in dreams of men living
or dead has been a subject of philosophic speculation anil of
superstitious fear.^ Both the phantom of tho living and the
ghost of the dead figure in Cicero's typical tale. Two Arcadians
came to Mcgara together, one lodged at a friend's house, tho
other at an inn. In the night this latter appeared to his fellow-
traveller, imploring his help, for the innkeeper was plotting
his death ; the sleeper sprang up in alarm, but thinking the
vision of no consequence went to sleep again. Then a second
time his companion appeared to him, to entreat that though he
had failed to help, he would at least avenge, for the innkeeper
had killed him and hidden his body in a dung-cart, wherefore
he charged his fellow-traveller to be early next morning at the
city-gate before the cart passed out. Struck with this second
dream, the traveller went as bidden, and there found the cart ;
the body of the murdered man was in it, and the innkeeper was
brought to justice. " Quid hoc somnio dici potest divinius? " -
Augustine discusses Avith reference to the nature of the soul
various dream-stories of his time, where the apparitions of men
dead or living are seen in dreams. In one of the latter he
himself figured, for when a disciple of his, Eulogius the rhetor of
Cai'thage, once could not get to sleep for thinking of an obscure
passage in Cicero's Khetoric, that night Angus uine came to him
in a dream and explained it. But Augustine's tendency was
toward the modern theory of dreams, and in this case he says
it was certainly his image that appeared, not himself, who was
far across the aea., neither knowing nor caring about the matter.*
As we survey the immense series of dream-stories of similar
types in patristic, media3val, and modern literature, we may find
it difficult enough to decide which are truth and which are fic-
tion. But along the course of these myriad narratives of human
phantoms appearing in dreams to cheer or torment, to warn or
inform, or to demand fulfilment of their own desires, the problem

' Homer. II. xxiii. 59. See also Oilyss. xi. 207, 222, Porphyr. Do Antro
Nympharum ; Virgil. JEn. ii. 794 ; Ovid. Fast. v. 475.
" Cicero Do Divinatione, i. 27.
' Augustin. Do Cura pro Mortuis, x.-xii. Epist. clviii.

VOL. r. D 1)

f 1

♦

402

ANIMISM.

of (Iicain-appjiritiuns may be traced in progress of griidiuil de-
termination, from tiio earlier conviction that a disembodied soul
really comes into the j)re.sence of the sleeper, toward the later
opinion that such a j)hantasm is produced in tlie dreamer's mind
without tho perception of any external objective figure.

The evidence of visions corrrsponds with tho evidence of
dreams in their bearing on primitive theories of tho soul, and
tho two classes of phenomena substantiate and sui)plement
one another. Even in healthy waking life, the savage or bar-
barian has never learnt to make that rigid distinction between
subjective and objective, between imagination and reality, to
enforce which is ono of tiie main results of scientific education.
Still less, when disordered in body and mind he sees around
liim phantom human forms, can he distrust tho evidence of his
very senses. Thus it comes to pass that throughout the lower
civilization men believe, with the most vivid and intense belief,
in the objective reality of the human spectres which they see
in sickness or exhaustion, mider tho influence of mental ex-
citement or of narcotic drugs. As will be hereafter noticed,
one main reason of the practices of fasting, penance, narcotizing,
and other means of bringing on morbid exaltation, is that the
patients may obtain the sight of spectral beings, from whom
they look to gain spiritual knowledge and even world!}- power.
Human ghosts are . "■ ong the principal of these pliautasmal
figures. There is );o doubt that honest visionaries describe
ghosts as they really appear to their perception, while even the
impostors who pretend to see them conform to the descriptions
thus establishetl ; thus, in West Africa, a man's Ida or soul, be-
coming at his death a slsa or ghost, can remain in the house
with the corpse, but is only visible to the wong-man, the spirit-
doctor.i Sometimes the phantom has the characteristic quality
of not being visible to all of an assembled company. Thus the
natives of the Antilles believed that the dead appeared on the
yoads when one went alone, but not when many went together ;"

* Steinliauser, ' IJeligiondcs Nepers,' in 'MagazindcrEvang. Missionen,' Basel,
1856, No. 2, p. 135. '

^ 'Historic dul S. D. F(*nando Colombo,' tr. Alfonso Ulloa, Venice, 1571, p.
127 ; Eng. Tr. in Tinkertoiif vol. xii. p. 80.

ANIMISM.

40:3

thus amon;? the Finns thcfjhosts of tho dead wore to be seen by
the Hhanuuis, hut not by men ^'eiuM'ally unles.s hi (hvunis.^ Such
is jK'ihaps tho nH'anin<( of tlie (h'Hcrij)tion of Samuel's ;jfh()st,
visible to tlie witch of Kndor, while Saul yet has to ask her what
it is she sees.'* Yet this test of the nature of an apparition is
one which easily breaks down. We know well how in civilized
countries a current rumour of some one having seen a phantom
is enoujjli to bring a sight of it to others whoso minds are in a
properly receptive state. The condition of the modern ghost-
Heer, whose imagination passes on such slight excitement into
positive hallucination, is rather the rule than the exception
among uncultured and intensely imaginative tribes, whose
minds may be thrown off their balance by a touch, a word, a
gesture, an unaccustomed noise. Among savage tribes, however,
as among civilized races who l)ave inherited remains of early
})hilosophy formed Uiider similar conditions, the doctrine of the
visibility or invisibility of pliantoms has been obviously shaped
with reference to actual experience. To declare that soids or
ghosts are necessarily either visible or invisible, would directly
contradict the evidence of men's senses. But to assert or imply
as the lower races do, thai they are visible sometimes and to
some persons, but not always or to every one, is to lay down an
•explanation of facts which is not indeed our usual modern ex-
planation, but which is a perfectly rational and intelligible pro-
duct of early science.

Without discussing on their merits the accounts of what is
called "second sight," it may be pointed out that they arc
related among savage tribes, as when Captain Jonathan Carver
obtained from a Cree medicine-man a true prophecy of the
arrival of a canoe witii news next day at noon, or when Mr. J.
Mason Brown, travelling with two voyageurs on the Coppermine
River, was met by Indians of the very band he was seeking,
these having been sent by their medicine-man, who, on enquir}-,
stated that " He saw them coming, and heard them talk on their
journey."^ These are analogous to accounts of the Highland

1 Castrdn, ' Finn. Jlytli.' p. 120.

2 I. Sam. xxviii. 12.

3 Brinton, ' Myths of New World,' p. 269.

« D 2

ill

404

ANIMISM.

"I •;

second-sight, as ■vvlien Pennant heard of a gentleman of the
Hebrides, said to have the convenient gift of foreseeing visitors
in time to get ready for them, or when Dr. Johnson was told
by another laird that a labouring man of his had predicted his
return to the island, and described the peculiar livery his servant
had been newly dressed in.^

As a general rule, people are apt to consider it impossible
for a man to be in two places at once, and indeed a saying to
that effect has become a popular saw. But the rule is so far
from being universally accepted, that the word " bilocation "
has been invented to express the miraculous faculty possessed
by certuin Saints of the Roman Church, of being in two places
at once ; like St. Alfonso di Liguori, who had the useful power
of preaching his sermon in church while he was confessing
penitents at home.- The reception and explanation of these
various classes of stories fits perfectly with the primitive anim-
istic theory of apparitions, and the same is true of the most
numerous class of the second-sight narratives.

Death is the event which, in all stages of culture, brings
thought to bear most intensely, though not always most
healthily, on the problems of psychology. The apparition of
the disembodied soul has in all ages been thought to bear
especial relation to its departure from its body at death. This
is Avell shown by the reception not only of a theory of ghosts,
but of a special doctrine of " wraiths " or " fetches." Thus the
Karens say that a man's spirit, appearing after death, may thus
announce it.^ In New Zealand it is ominous to see the figure of
an absent person, for if it be shadowy and the face not visible,
his death may ere long be expected, but if the face be seen he
is dead already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the
story) were seated round a fire in the open air, when there
appeared, seen only by two of them, the figure of a relative left
ill at home ; they exclaimed, the ^gure vanished, and on the
return of the party it appeared that the sick man had died

' rennant, '2ntl Tour in Scotland,' in Pinkerton, A'ol. iii. p. 315 ; Johnson,
'Journey to the Hebrides.'
'■^ J. Gardner, ' Faitlis of the "World," s. v. ' liilocation.'
' Jlason, ' Karens,' 1. c. p. 198.

ANIMISM.

405

lan of the
ns visitors
L was told
jdicted his
[lis servant

impossible
k saying to
B is so far
)ilocation "
f possessed
two places
eful power
confessing
Q of these
itive anim-
f the most

ure, brings

ways most

iparition of

ht to bear

iath. This

Y of ghosts.

Thus the

1, may thus

le figure of

not visible,

be seen he

m told the

when there

elative left

md on the

1 had died

U5 ; Johnson,

about the time of the vision.^ Examining the position of the
doctrine of wraiths among the higher races, we find it especially
prominent in three intellectual districts, Christian hagiology,
popular folk-lore, and modern spiritualism. St. Anthony saw
the soul of St. Ammonius carried to heaven in the midst of
choirs of angels, the same day that the holy hermit died five
days' journey off in the desert of Nitria ; when St. Ambrose
died on Easter Eve, several newly-baptized children saw the
holy bishop, and pointed him out to their parents, but these
with their less pure eyes could not behold him ; and so forth."
Folk-lore examples abound in Silesia and the Tyrol, where the
gift of wraith-seeing still flourishes, with the customary details
of funerals, churches, four-cross roads, and headless phantoms,
and an especial association with New Year's Eve. The accounts
of "second-sight" from North Britain mostly belong to a some-
what older date. Thus the St. Kilda people used to be haunted
by their own spectral doubles, forerunners of impending death,
and in 1799 a traveller writes of the peasants of Kircudbright-
shire, " It is common among them to fancy that they see the
wraiths of persons dying, which will be visible to one and
not to others present with him. Within these last twenty
years, it was hardly possible to meet with any person who had
not seen many wraiths and ghosts in the course of his expe-
rience." Those who discuss the authenticity of the second-sight
stories as actual evidence, must bear in mind that they vouch
not only for human apparitions, but for such phantoms as demon-
dogs, and for still more fanciful symbolic omens. Thus a phan-
tom shroud seen in spiritual vision on a living man predicts his
death, immediate if it is up to his head, less nearly approaching
if it is only up to his waist ; and to see in spiritual vision a
spark of fire fall upon a person's arm or breast, is a forerunner
of a dead child to be seen in his arms.^ As visionaries often see

» Shortland, ' Trads. of New Zealand,' p. 140; Polack, 'M. and C, of New
Zealauders,' vol. i. p. 268. See also Ellis, * Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 393 ; J. G.
Miiller, p. 261.

^ Calmet, ' Diss, sur les Espvits,' vol. i. cli. xl.

' Wuttke, ' Volksaberglaube, ' pp. 44, 56, 208 ; Brand, ' Popular Antiquities,'
vol. iii. pp. 155, 235 ; Johnson, 'Journey to the Hebrides ;' Martin, 'Western
Islands of Scotland,' in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 670.

■n fl

III

40(i

ANIMIS.M.

phantoms of living persons without any remarkable event coin-
ciding with their hallucinations, it is naturally admitted that a
man's phantom or " double " may be seen without portending
anything in particular. The spiritualistic theory specially in-
sists on cases of apparition where the person's death corre-
sponds more or less nearly with the time when some friend
perceives his phantom. ^ Narratives of this class are abundantly
in circulation. Thus, I have an account by a lady, who " saw,
as it were, the form of some one laid out," near the time when
a brother died at Melbourne, and who mentions another lady
known to her, who thought she saw her own father look in at
the church window at the moment he was dying in his own
house. Another account is sent me by a Shetland lady, who
relates that about twenty years ago she and a girl leading her
pony recognized the familiar figure of one Peter Sutherland,
whom they knoAV to be at the time in ill-health in Edinburgh ;
he turned a corner and they saw no more of him, but next
week came the news of his sudden death.

That the apparitional human soul bears the likeness of its
fleshly body, is the principle implicitly accepted by all who
believe it really and objectively present in dream or vision. It
is indeed habitually taken for granted in animistic philosophy,
savage or civilized, that souls set free from the earthly body are
recognized by a likeness to it which they still retain, whether
as ghostly wanderers on earth, or inhabitants of the world
beyond the grave. Man's spirit, says Swedenborg, is his mind,
which lives after death in complete human form, and this is the
poet's dictum in ' In Memoriam.'

" Eternal foiin shall still divido
The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet."

This world-wide thought, coming into view here in a multitude
of cases from all grades of culture, needs no collection of ordi-
nary instances to illustrate it.^ But a quaint and special group of

' See K. D. Owen, ' Footfalls on the Boundary of another "World' ; Mrs. Crowe,
* Night- Side of Nature ; ' Howitt's Tr. of Eunemoser's ' Magic,' etc.
- Tlie conception of the soul as a small human image is found in various-

ANlMISJr.

407

rent coin-
;ed that a
ortending
icially in-
th corre-
Qe friend
)undantly
I'lio " saw,
me when
ther ladv
look in at
L his own
lady, who
ading her
itherland,,
linburgh j
but next

less of its
all who
ision. It
lilosophy,
body are
whether
he world
his mind,
his is the

nultitude

a of ordi-

group of

\Irs, Crowe,

in various-

beliefs will serve to display the thoroughness with which the ?oul
is thus conceived as an image of the body. As a consistent corol-
lary to such an opinion, it is argued that the miitilation of the
body will have a corresponding effect upon the sord, and very low
savage races have philosophy enough to work out this idea.
Thus it was recorded of the Indians of Brazil by one of the
early European visitors, that they "believe that the dead arrive
in the other world wounded or hacked to pieces, in fact just as
they left this.^ Thus, too, the Australian who has slain his
enemy will cut off the right thumb of the corpse, so that
although the spirit will become a hostile ghost, it cannot throw
with its mutilated hand the shadowy spear, and may be safely
left to wander, malignant but harmless, ^ The negro fears long
sickness before death, such as will send him lean and feeble into
the next world. His theory of the mutilation of sonl with body
could not be brought more vividly into view than in that ugly
story of the West India planter, whose slaves began to seek in
suicide at once relief from present misery and restoration to
their native land ; but the white man was too cunning for them,
he cut off the heads and hands of the corpses, and the survivors
saw that not even death could save them from a master who
could maim their very souls in the next world. '^ The same
rude and primitive belief continues among nations risen far
higher in intellectual rank. The Chinese hold in especial horror
the punishment of decapitation, considering that he who quits
this Avorld lacking a member will so arrive in the next, and a
case is recorded lately of a criminal at Amoy who for this reason
begged to die instead by the cruel death of crucifixion, and was
crucified accordingly. ■* The series ends as usual in the folk-
lore of the civilized world. The phantom skeleton in chains

districts; sec Eyre, 'Australia,' vol. ii. p. 336; St. John, • Far East,' vol. i. p.
189 (Dayaks); Waitz, vol. iii. p. 194 (N. A. Ind.). Tlie idea of a soul as a sort of
"tliuuiMing" is familiar to the llimUis and to German folk-lore; compare tho
representations of tiny souls iu mcdiivval pictures.

^ Magalhanes de Gandavo, p. 110 ; Malfei, ' Indie Oricntali,' p. 107.

• Oldtield in ' Tr. Eth. Soc." vol. iii. p. 287.

3 Waitz, vol. ii. p. 194 ; Romer, ' Guinea,* p. 42.

* Ikleiners, vol. ii. p. 756, 763 ; Purchas, vol. iii. p. 495 ; J. Jones in ' Tr. Eth.
Soc.' vol. iii. ]■>. 138.

: :

■■•■• *l

•4' I

■A
■ ^ ■ !

40(S

ANIMISM.

: ii

J; ■ '

\ .

■ Ai

i ;

1 •

> »•

':■. i\

that haunted the house at Bologna, showed the way to the
garden where was buried the real chained fleshless skeleton it
belonged to, and came no more when the remains had been
duly buried. When the Earl of Cornwall met the fetch of his
friend William Rufus carried black and naked on a black goat
across the Bodmin moors, he saw that it was wounded through
the midst of the breast ; and afterwards he heard that at that
very hour the king had been slain in the New Forest by the
an*ow of Walter Tirell. ^

In studying the nature of the soul as conceived among the
lower races, and in tracing such conceptions onward among the
higher, circumstantial details are available. It is as widely
recognized among mankind that souls or ghosts have voices, as
that they have visible forms, and indeed the evidence for both
is of the same nature. Men who perceive evidently that souls
do talk when they present themselves in dream or vision,
naturally take for granted at once the objective reality of the
ghostly voice, and of the ghostly form from which it proceeds.
This is involved in the series of narratives of spiritual communi-
cations with living men, from savagery onward to civilization,
while the more modern doctrine of the subjectivity of such pheno-
mena recognizes the phenomena themselves, but offers a different
explanation of them. One special conception, however, requires
particular notice. This defines the spirit-voice as being a low
murmur, chirp, or whistle, as it were the ghost of a voice. The
Algonquin Indians of North America could hear the shadow-
souls of the dead chirp like crickets. " The New Zealand spirits
of the dead, coming to converse with the living, utter their
words in whistling tones, and such utterances by a squeaking
noise are mentioned elsewliere in Polynesia.^ The Zulu
diviner's familiar spirits are ancestral manes, who talk in a low
whistling tone short of a full whistle, whence they have their
name of " imilozi " or whistlers. * These ideas correspond with

* Calmet, vol. i. cli. xxxvi. ; Hunt, 'Pop. Eomanccs,' vol. ii. p. 156.

" Le Jeune in ' Rel. dcs Jesuites dans la Nouvelle France,' 1639, p. 43.
3 Shortland, 'Trads. of N. Z.' p. 92 ; Yate, p. 140 ; E. Taylor, p. 104 ; Ellis,
' Polyn. lies.' vol. i. p. 406.

* Callaway, ' Pel. of Amazulu,' p. 348.

ANIMISM.

409

classic descriptions of the ghostly voice, as a "twitter" or
" thill murmur :"

"nxtro rtrptyvia." '

" Umbra cruenta Remi visa est assistere lecto,
Atque ha3C exiguo murmuro verba loqiii." -

The beliefs that the attributes of the soul or ghost extend to
other spiritual beings, and that the utterances of such are to a
gi-eat extent given by the voice of mediums, may lead us to
connect these account?; with the practices of whispering or mur-
muring charms, the "susurrus necromanticus" of sorcerers, to
whom the already cited description of " wizards that peep (i. e.
chirp) and mutter" is widely applicable.^

The conception of dreams and visions as caused by pre-
sent objective figures, and the identification of such phantom
souls with the shadow and the breath, has led many a
people to treat souls as substantial material beings. Thus
it is a usual proceeding to make openings through solid
materials to allow souls to pass. The Iroquois in old times
used to leave an opening in the grave for the lingering soul to
visit its body, and some of them still bore holes in the coffin for
the same pui'pose. * The Malagasy sorcerer, for the cure of a
sick man who had lost his soul, would make a hole in the
burial-house to let out a spirit, which he would catch in his cap
and so convey to the patient's head. ^ The Chinese make a
hole in the roof to let out the soul at death. ^ And lastly, the
custom of opening a window or door for the departing soul when
it quits the body is to this clay a very familiar superstition in
France, Germany, and England. '' Again, the souls of the dead are
thought susceptible of being beaten, hurt, and driven like any

' Homer. II. xxiii. 100.
' Ovid. Fast. v. 457.
3 Isaiah, viii. 19 ; xxix. 4.
"• Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 176.

* Flacourt, 'Madagascar,' p. 101.

* Bastian, ' Psychologie,' p. 15.

7 Monnier, 'Traditions Populaires,' p. 142; "Wuttke, ' Volksaberglaube,' p.
209 ; Grimm, 'D. M,' p. 801 ; Kleiners, vol. ii. p. 7C1.

iL^

410

ANIMISM.

I *'

other living creatures. Thus the Queensland aborigines Avoultl
beat the air in an annual mock fight, held to scare away the
souls that death had let loose among the living since last year, i
Thus North American Indians, when they had tortured an
enemy to death, ran about crying and beating with sticks to
scare the ghost away ; they have been known to set nets round
their cabins to catch and keep out neighbours' departed souls ;
fancying the soul of a dying man to go out at the wigwam
roof, they would habitually beat the sides with sticks to drive it
forth ; we even hear of the widow going off from her husband's
funeral followed by a person flourishing a handful of twigs
about her head like a flyflapper, to drive off her husband's
ghost and leave her free to many again.^ With a kindlier
feeling, the Congo negi'oes abstained for a whole year after
a death fro* sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure
the delicate substance of the ghost ; ^ the Tonquinese avoided
house-cleaning during the festival when the souls of the dead
came back to their houses for the New Year's visit ; * and it
seems likely thr t the special profession of the Roman " everria-
tores" who swept the houses out after a funeral, was connected
with a similar idea.^ To this day, it remains a German peasant
saying that it is wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a
soul in it." The not uncommon practice of strewing ashes to
show the footprints of ghosts or demons takes for granted that
they are substantial bodies. In the literature of animism,
extreme tests of the weight of ghosts are now and then forth-
coming. They range from the declaration of a Basuto diviner
that the late queen had been bestriding his shoulders, and he
never felt such a weight in his life, to Glanvil's story of David
Hunter the neat-herd, who lifted up the old woman's ghost, and
she felt just like a bag of feathers in his arms, or the pathetic

* Lang, 'Queensland,' p. 441 ; P)onwkk, 'Tasmaniaus,' p. 187.

^ Charlevoix, * Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. pp. 76, 122 ; Lo Jeune in 'Eel. de
la Nonvelle France,' 1634, p. 23 ; 1639, p. 44 ; Tamer's 'Narr.' p. 292.
' Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 323.

* Meiners, vol. i. p. 318.

* Festus, s. v. ' everriatores ; ' see Bastian, 1. c, and compare Hartknocli, cited
below, vol. ii. p. 36,

8 Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaubc.'pp. 132, 216.

ANIMISM.

411

ncs "vvoulcl

away the

ast year, i

tured an

sticks to

ets round

ted souls ;

wigwam

drive it
husband's

of twigs
busband's

kindlier
ear after
dd injure
! avoided
the dead

^ and it
" everria-
ionnected

1 peasant
i pinch a

ashes to
ated that
animism,
en forth -
) diviner
3, and he
3f David
host, and
pathetic

Eel. de

nocli, cited

German superstition that the dead mother's coming back in the
night to suckle the baby she has left on earth, may be known
by the hollow pressed down in the bed where she lay, and at
last down to the alleged modern spiritualistic reckoning of the
weight of a human soul at from 3 to 4 ounces. ^

Explicit statements as to the substance of soul are to be found
both among low and high races, in an instructive series of defi-
nitions. The Tongans imagined the human soul to be the finer
or more aeriform part of the body, which leaves it suddenly at
the moment of death ; something comparable to the perfume
and essence of a flower as related to the more solid vegetable
fibre." The Greenland seers described the soul as they habitu-
ally perceived it in their visions ; it is pale and soft, they said,
and he who tries to seize it feels nothing, for it has no flesh
nor bone nor sinew.^ The Caribs did not think the soul so im-
material as to be invisible, but said it v/as subtle and thin lik*^
a purified body.'' Turning to higher races, we may take the
Siamese as an example of a people who conceive of souls as con-
sisting of subtle matter escaping sight and touch, or as united
to a swiftly moving aerial body.'' In the classic world, it is
recorded as an opinion of Epicurus that " they who say the soul
is incorporeal talk folly, for it could neither do nor suffer any-
thing were it such."*' Among the Fathers, Irenajus describes
souls as incorporeal in comparison with mortal bodies,''' and
Tertullian relates a vision or revelation of a certain Montanist
prophetess, of the soul seen by her corporeally, thin and lucid,
aerial in colour and human in form. ^ For an example of
mediaeval doctrine, may be citer^ a 14th century English poem,
the "Ayenbite of Inwyt " (i.e. "Remorse of Conscience")

' Casalis, 'Basiitos,' p. 28/5; Glanvil, 'StiducisnuisTruimpliatus,'part ii. p. 161;
Wuttke, p. 216 ; Basti..n, ' I'sychologie," p. 192.

- Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' ■•ol. ii. p. 135.

3 Cranz, ' Gronland,' p. 257.

•• Kochefort, ' lies Antilles,' p. 420.

* Lo'ibere, 'Siam,' vol. i. p. 458; Bastian, ' Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 250*
see 278.

» Diog. Laert. x. 67-8 ; see Serv. ad Mn. iv. 654.

^ Ireuffius contra Hfercs, v. 7, 1 ; see Origen. De Prlncip. ii. 3, 2.

8 Tertull. De Anima, 9.

- 'il

412

ANIMISM.

which points out how the soul, by reason of the thinness of its
substance, suffers all the more in purgatory :

" The soul is more tendro and nescho
Than the bodi that hath bones and floysche ;
Thanne the soul that is so tcndero of kindo,
Mote nedis hiu'e ponaunco hardoro y-findo,
Than eni bodi that evcro on live was." '

The doctrine of the ethereal soul passed on into more modern
philosophy, and the European peasant holds fast to it still ; as
Wuttke says, the ghosts of the dead have to him a misty and
evanescent materiality, for they have bodies as we have, though
of other kind : they can eat and drink, they can be wounded and
killed.^ Nor was the ancient doctrine ever more distinctly
stated than by a modern spiritualistic writer, who observes that
"a spirit is no immaterial substance; on the contrary, the
spiritual organization is composed of matter . . . . in a
very high state of refinement and attenuation."^

Among rude races, the original conception of the human soul
seems to have been that of ethereality, or vaporous materiality,
which has held so large a place in human thought ever since.
In fact, the later metaphysical notion of immateriality could
scarcely have conveyed any meaning to a savage. It is more-
over to be noticed that, as to the whole nature and action of
apparitional souls, the lower philosophy escapes various diffi-
culties which down to modern times have perplexed meta-
physicians and theologians of the civilized world. Considering
the thin ethereal body of the soul to be itself sufficient and
suitable for visibility, movement, and speech, the primitive ani-
mists had no need of additional hypotheses to account for these
manifestations, theological theories such as we may find detailed
by Calmet, as that immaterial souls have their own vaporous
bodies, or occasionally have such vaporous bodies provided for
them by supernatural means to enable them to appear as spectres,
or that they possess the power of condensing the circumambient

^ Haiiipole, * Ayenbitc of Inwyt.'

» Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' pp. 216, 226.

3 A. J. Davis, • Philosophy of Spiritual Intcrcoursn,' New York, 1851, p. 49.

liip

,it, , *

ANIMISM.

413

ness of its

re modern
t still; as
misty and
ve, though
Linded and
distinctly
lerves that
trary, the
. . in a

uman soul
lateriality,
ver since,
ility could
t is more-
action of
ious diffi-
ed meta-
)nsidering
cient and
itive ani-
for these
d detailed
vaporous
vided for
spectres,
nambient

air into phantom-like bodies to invest themselves in, or of form-
ing from it vocal instruments.^ It appears to have been within
systematic schools of civilized philosophy that the transcendental
definitions of the immaterial soul were obtained, by abstraction
from the primitive conception of the ethereal-material soul, so
as to reduce it from a physical to a metaphysical entity.

Departing from the body at the time of death, the soul or
spirit is considered set free to linger near the tomb, to wander
on earth or flit in the air, or to travel to the proper region of
spirits — the world beyond the grave. The principal concep-
tions of the lower psychology as to a Future Life will be con-
sidered in the following chapters, but for the present purpose of
investigating the theory of souls in general, it will be well to
enter here upon one department of the subject. Men do not
stop short at the persuasion that death releases the soul to a
free and active existence, but they quite logically proceed to
assist nature, by slaying men in order to liberate their souls
for ghostly uses. Thus there arises one of the most wide-
spread, distinct, and intelligible rites of animistic religion —
that of funeral human sacrifice for the service of the dead.
When a man of rank dies and his soul departs to its own place,
wherever and whatever that place may be, it is a rational in-
ference of early philosophy that the souls of attendants, slaves,
and wives, put to death at his funeral, will make the same
journey, and continue their service in the next life, and the
argument is frequently stretched further, to include the souls
of new victims sacrificed in order that they may venter upon
the saine ghostly servitude. It will appear from ti^e ethno-
graphy of this rite that it is not strongly marked in the
very lowest levels of culture, but that, arising in the higher
savagery, it developes itself in the barbaric stage, and thence-
forth continues or dwindles in survival.

Of the murderous practices to which this opinion leads, re-
markably distinct accounts may be cited from among tribes of
the Indian Archipelago. The following account is given of the
funerals of great men among the savage Kayans of Borneo : —

> 1,

i51, p. 49.

* Calmet, vol. i. cli. xli., etc.

414

ANI!.IISM.

! 1^

" Slaves are killed in order that they may follow the deceased
and attend upon him. Before they arc killed the relations
■who surround them enjoin them to take great cnre of their
master when they join him, to watch and shampoo him when
he is indisposed, to bo always near him, and to obey all his
behests. Tho female relatives of the deceased then take a
spear and slightly wound the victims, after which the males
spear them to death." Again, the opinion of the Idaan is " that
all whom they kill in this world shall at+'^nd them us slaves
after death. This notion of future interest in the destruction
of the human species is a great impediment to an intercourse
with them, as murder goes farther thon present advantage or
resentment. From the same principle they will purchase a
slave, guilty of any capital crime, at fourfold his value, that
they may be his executioners." With the same idea is con-
nected the ferocious custom of " head -hunting," so prevalent
among the Dayaks before Rajah Brooke's time. They con-
sidered that the owner of every human head they could pro-
cure would serve them in the next woild, where, indeed, a
man's rank would be according to his number of heads in
this. They would continue the mourning for a dead man till
a head was brought in, to provide him with a slave to accom-
pan3^ him to the " habitation of souls ; " a father who lost his
child would go out and kill the first man he met, as a funeral
ceremony; a young man might not marry till he had pro-
cured a head, and some tribes would bury with a dead man the
first head he had taken, together with spears, cloth, rice, and
betel. Waylaying and murdering men for their heads became,
in fact, the Dayaks' national sport, and they remarked " the
white men read books, we hunt for heads instead." ^ Of such
rites in the Pacific islands, the most hideously purposeful ac-
counts reach us from the Fiji group. Till lately, a main part
of the ceremony of a great man's funeral was the strangling
of wives, friends, and slaves, for the distinct purpose of attend-
ing him into the world of spirits. Ordinarily the first victim

' 'Journ. Iiul. Arcliip.' vol. ii. p. 359; vol. iii. pp. 104, S.'iG ; Earl, 'Eastern
Seas,' p. 266; St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. pp. 52,73, 79, 119 ; Mundy, 'Narr.
from Brooke's Journals,' p. 203. See Eliot in * As. Ees.' vol. iii. p. 28 (Garos).

ANIMISM.

4i;

was the wife of the deceased, and more than one if he had
several, and their corpses, oiled as for a feast, clothed with
new fringed girdles, with heads dressed and ornamented, and
vermilion and turmeric powder spread on their faces and
bosoms, were laid by the side of the dead warrior. Associates
and inferior attendants wore likewise slain, and these bodies
were spoken of as "grass lor bedding the grave." When Ra
Mbithi, the pride of Somosjomo, was lost at sea, seventeen of
his wives were killed ; and after die news of the massacre of
the Namcna people, in 1839, eighty women were strangled
to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands. Such
sacrifices took place under the same press'ire of public opinion
which kept up the widow-burning in modern India. The
Fijian widow was worked upon by her relatives with all the
pressure of persuasion and of menace ; she understood well that
life to her henceforth would mean a wretched existence of
neglect, disgrace, and destitution ; and tyrannous custom, as
hard to struggle against in the savage as in the civilized world,
drove hnr to. the grave. Thus, far from resisting, she became
importunate for death and the new life to come, and till public
opinion reached a more enlightened state, the missionaries
often used their influence in vain to save from the strangling-
cord some wife whom they could have rescued, but who herself
refused to live. So repugnant to the native mind was the idea
of a chieftain going unattended into the other world, that the
missionaries' prohibition of the cherishtd custom was one
reason of their dislike to Christianity. Many of the nominal
Ciiristians, when once a chief of theirs was shot from an am-
bush, esteemed it most fortunate that a stray shot at the same
time killed £ young man at a distance from him, and thus pro-
vided a companion for the spirit of the slain chiefs

In America, the funeral human sacrifice makes its charac-
teristic appearance. A gond cxauiiDie may b6 taken from
among the Osages, whose habit was sometimes to plant in the

> T. Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 188--204 ; iMariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol ii. p. 220;
For New Zealand accounts, sec K. Taj-lor, 'Xew Zealand,' pp. 218, 227 ; Polack,
'New Zealaudeis,' vol. i. pp. G6, 78, 110.

416

ANIMISM.

;i,

cairn raised over a corpse a pole with an enemy's scalp hanging*
to the top. Their notion was that by taking an enemy and
suspending his scalp over tho grave of a deceased friend tho
spirit of the victim became subjected to the spirit of the buried
warrior in the land of spirits. Hence the last and best service
that could be performed for a dcccfised relative was to take an
enemy's life, and thus transmit it by his scalp.^ Tho corre-
spondence of this idea with that just mentioned among the
Dayaks is very striking. With a similar intention, the Caribs
would slay on tho dead master's grave any of his slaves they
could lay hands on,- Among the native peoples risen to con-
siderably higher gi'ades of social and political life, these prac-
tices were not suppressed but exaggerated, in the ghastly
sacrifices of warriors, slaves, and wives, who departed to continue
their duteous offices at the funeral of the chief or monarch
in Central America ^ and Mexico,"* in Bogota ^ and Peru.*' It is
interesting to notice, in somewhat favourable contrast with
these customs of comparatively cultured Am.erican nations, tho
practice of certain rude tribes of the North- West. Tho Qua-
keolths, for instance, did not actually sacrifice the widow, but
they made her rest her head on her husband's corpse while it
was being burned, until at last she was dragged more dead
than alive from the flames ; if she recovered, she collected her
husband's ashes and carried them about with her for three
years, during which any levity or deficiency of grief would
render her an outcast. This looks like a mitigated survival
from an earlier custom of actual widow-burning.''

1 J. M'Coy, 'Hist, of Baptist Indinn Missions,' p. 360 ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 200.
See also Schoolcraft, ' Iiulinn Tribes,' jmrt ii. p. 133 (Comanches).

2 Kochofort, 'lies Antilles,' pp. 429, 512; sec also J. G. MUller, pp. 174,
222.

3 Oviedo, 'Relation do Cueba,' p. 140; Charlevoix, 'Nouv. Fr.' vol. vi.
p. 178 (Natchez) ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 219. See Briuton, 'Myths of New World,'
> 239.

'' Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. \). 573.

5 Piedrahita, ' Nuevo Eeyno de Granada,' part i. lib. i. c. 3.

8 Cieza do Leon, p. 161 ; Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peruv. Ant.' p. 200 ; Pres-
cott, ' Peru,' vol. 1. p. 29. See statements as to effigies, J. G. Miiller, p. 379.

7 Simpson, 'Journey,' vol. i. p. 190 ; similar practice among Takulli or Carrier
Ind., "Waitz, vol. iii. p. 200.

ANIMISM.

41"

,lp hanging'

}nomy and

friend tho

tlio buried

jest service

to take an
Tlio corre-
aniong tiic
the Caribs
slaves they
icn to con-
these prac-
ho ghastly
to continue
)r monarch
eru." It is
itrast with
[lations, the

Tho Qua-
widow, but
3se while it
more dead
dlected her
for three
jrief would
,ed survival

vol. iii. p. 200.

iller, pp. 174,

Fr.' vol. vi.
f New World,"

p. SiOO ; Pres-
ler, p. 379.
cuUi or Carrier

Of such funeral rites, carried out to the death, graphic and
horrid descriptions aro recorded in tho countries across Africa
— East, Central, and VV^cst. A headman of tho VVadoe is hurifd
sitting in a shallow pit, and with tho corpse a male and fenialo
slave alive, ho with a bill-hook in his hand to cut fuel for his
lord in the di!ath-world, she seated on a little stool with tho
dead chief's head in her lap. A chief of Unyamwczi is en-
tombed in a vaulted pit, sitting on a low stool with a bow in
l)is right hand, and provideil with a pot of native beer; with
him are shut in alive three women .slaves, and the ceremony is
concluded with a libation of beer on tho earth heaped up above
them all. Tho same idea which in Guinea makes it common
for the living to send messages by the dying to tho dead, is
developed in Ashanti and Dahome into a monstrous system of
massacre. The King of Dahome must enter Deadland with a
ghostly court of hundreds of wives, eunuciis, singers, drummers,
and soldiers. Nor is this all. Captain Burton thus describes
the yearly " Customs : " — "They periodically supply tiie ileparted
monarch with fresh attendants in the shadowy world. For un-
happily these murderous scenes are an expression, lamentably
mistaken but perfectly sincere, of the liveliest filial piety."
Even this annual slaughter must be supplemented by almost
daily murder : — " Whatever action, however trivial, is performed
by the King, it must dutifully be reported to his sire in the
shadowy realm. A victim, almost always a war-cfiptive, is
chosen ; the message is delivered to him, an intoxicating
draught of rum follows it, and he is dispatched to Hades
in the best of humours." ^ In southern districts of Africa,
accounts of the same class begin in Congo and Angola with
the recorded slaying of the dead man's favourite wives, to live
with him in the other world, a practice still in vogue among
the Chevas of the Zambesi district, and formerly known among
the Maravis, while the funeral sacrifice of attendants with a
chief is a thing of the past among the Barotse, as among the
Zulus, who have not forgotten the days when the chief's ser-

' Burton, 'Central Afr.' vol. i. p. 124 ; vol. ii. p. 25 ; 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 18,
etc. ; 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p.. 403 ; J. L. Wilson, ' W. Afr.' pp. 203, 219, 394.
See also H. Rowley, ' ^Mission to Central Africa,' p. 229.

VOL. I. E B

li'':"

m''

418

ANIMISM.

vants and attendant warriors were cast into the fire which had
consumed his body, that they might go with him, and prepare
things beforehand, and get food for him.i

If now we turn to the records of Asia and Europe, we shall
find the sacrifice of attendants for the dead widely prevalent in
both continents in old times, while in the east its course may
be traced continuing onward to our own day. The two Moham-
medans who travelled in Southern Asia in the ninth century
relate that on the accession of certain kings a quantity of rice
is prepared, which is eaten by some three or four hundred men,
who present themselves voluntarily to share it, thereby under-
taking to burn themselves at the monarch's death. With this
coiTcsponds Marco Pclo's thirteenth century account in Southern
India of the king of Maabar's guard of horsemen, who, when
he dies and his body is burnt, throw themselves into the fire
to do him service in the next world.^ In the seventeenth cen-
tury the practice is described as prevailing in Japan, where, on
the death of a nobleman, from ten to thirty of his servants put
themselves to death by the " hara kari," or ripping-up, having
Indeed engaged during his lifetime, by the solemn compact of
drin^'ing wine together, to give their bodies to their lord at his
deatii. The Japanese form of modern survival of such funeral
sacrifices i.< to substitute for real men and animals images of
stone, or clay, or wood, placed by the coi-p^e.^ Among the
Ossetes of the Caucasus, an interesting relic of widow-sacrifice is
still kept up : the dead man's widow and his saddle-horse are
led thrice round the grave, and no man may marry the widow
or mount the horse thus devoted,* In China, legend preserves
the memory of the ancient funeral human sacrifice. The
brother of Chin Yang, a disciple of Confucius, died, and his
widow and steward wished to bury some living persons with

* Cavazzi, 'lat. Descr. cie' tre Kegni Congo, Matamba, et Angola,' Bologna,
1687, lib. i. 264 ; Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 419 —21 ; Callaway, ' Religion of Amazulu, '
p. 212.

* Kenaudot, 'Ace. by two Mohammedan Travellers,' London 1733, p. 81 ; and
in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 215 ; Marco Polo, book iii. chap. xx. ; and in Pinkerton,
vol. vii. p. 162.

3 Caron, 'Japan,' ibid., p. 622; Siebold, 'Nippon,' v. p. 22.

* ' Journ. Ind. Archip.' new series, vol. ii. p. 374.

! which had
and prepare

>pe, we shall
prevalent in
course may
two Moham-
inth century
ntity of rice
indred men,
jreby under-
, With this
in Southern
,, who, when
nto the fire
nteenth cen-
n, where, on
servants put
^-up, having
I compact of
ir lord at his
such funeral
lis images of
Among the
w-sacrifice is
le-horse are
y the widow
id preserves
rifice. The
Led, and his
Dorsons with

gola,' Bologna,
)n of Amazulu, '

'33, p. 81 ; and
(1 in Pinkertou,

ANIMISM.

419

him, to serve him in the regions below. Thereupon the sage
suggested that the proper victims would be the widow and
steward themselves, but this not precisely meeting their views,
the matter dropped, and the deceased was interred without at-
tendants. This story at least shows the rite to have been not
only known but understood in China long ago. In modern
China, the suicide of widows to accompany their husbands is a
recognised practice, sometimes even performed in public. More-
over, the ceremony of providing sedan-bearers and an umbrella-
bearer for the dead, and sending mounted horsemen to announce
beforehand his arrival to the authorities of Hades, although
these bearers and messengers are only made of paper and
burnt, seem to represent survivals of a more murderous reality.^
The Aryan race gives striking examples of the rite of funeral
human sacrifice in its sternest shape, whether in history, or in
myth that records as truly as history the manners of old days. ^
The episodes of the Trojan captives laid with the horses and
hounds on the funeral pile of Patroklos, and of Evadne throwing
herself into the funeral pile of her husband, and Pausanias's
narrative of the suicide of the three Messenian widows, are
among its Greek representatives,^ In Scandinavian myth, Baldr
is burnt with his dwarf foot-page, his horse and saddle ; Biynhild
lies on the pile by her beloved Sigurd, and men and inaids
follov/ after them on the hell-way. '"' The Gauls in Caesar's time
burned at the dead man's sumptuous funeral whatever was
dear to him, animals also, and much-loved slaves and clients. "
Old mentions of Slavonic heathendom describe the burning of

1 Lcggc, 'Confuciis,' p. 119 ; Doolittle, 'Cliineso,' vo]. i. pp. lOS, 174, 192.
The practice of attacking or killing all persons met by a funeral procession is
perhaps generally connected ■with funeral human sacriiice ; any one met on the
road by the funeral of ii Mongol prince Avas slain and ordered to go as escort ; in
the Kinibunda country, any one wlio meets a royal funeral ])rocession is put to
death with the other victims at tlie gi-ave (Magyar, 'Siid. Afrika, p. 353); see
also Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. i. p. 403 ; Cook, ' First Voy.' vol. i. pp. 14C, 23i>
(Tahiti).

^ Jacob Grimm, 'Vcrbrcnnen der Lcichen,' contains an instructive collection of
references and citations.

3 Homer. II. xxiii. 175 ; Eurip. Suppl. ; Pausanias, iv. 2.

* Edda, 'Gylfaginning.' 49 ; * Brynliildarqvitla,' etc.

» Cfesar. Bell. Gall. vi. 19.

E E 2

'it

420

ANIMISM.

ft ;

the dead "with clothing and ■weapons, horses and hounds, with
faithful servants, and above all, with wives. Thus St. Boniface
says that " the Wends keep matrimonial love -with so great zeal,
that the Avife may refuse to survive her husband, and she is
held praiseworthy among women who slays herself with her
own hand, that she may be burnt on one pyre with her lord."i'
This Aryan rite of widow-sacrifice has not only an ethnographic
and antiquarian interest, but even a place in modern politics.
In Brahmanic India the widow of a Hindu of the Brahman or
the Kshatriya caste was burnt on the funeral pile with her hus-
band, as a sati or " good woman," which word has passed into
English as suitee. Mentioned in classic and media3val times,
the practice was in full vigour at the beginning of the present
century. ^ Often one dead husband took many wives with him.
Some went willingly and gaily to the new life, many were
driven by force cf custom, by fear of disgrace, by family per-
suasion, by priestly threats and promises, by sheer violence.
When the rite was svippressed under modern British rule, the
priesthood resisted to the uttermost, appealing to the Veda as
sanctioning the ordinance, and demanding that the foreign rulers
should respect it. Yet in fact, as Prof. H. H. Wilson proved,
the priests had actually falsified their sacred Veda in support of
a rite enjoined by long and inveterate prejudice, but not by the
traditional standards of Hindu faith. The ancient Brahmanic
funeral rites have been minutely detailed from the Sanski.'": au-
tliorities in an essay by Prof. Max Miiller. Their directions are
that the widow is to be set on the funeral pile with her husband's
corpse, and if he be a warrior his bow is to be placed there too.
But then a brother-in-laAV or adopted child or old servant is to
lead the widow down again at the summons, " Rise, woman,
come to the Avorld of life ; thou sleepest nigh unto him whose
life is gone. Come to us. Thou hast thus fulfilled thy duties
of a wife to the husband who once took thy hand, and made

» Hanusch, ' Sluw. Myth.' \\ 145.

' Stmbo, XV. 1, 62 ; Cic. Tiisc. Disp. v. 27, 78 ; Diod. Sic. xvii. 91; xix. 33,
etc. ; Grinmi, ' Verbrcniien,' p. 261; Ikcnauilot, 'Two liloliaiiirncilans,' p. 4;
uiiil in rinkoiton, vol. vii. p. 191. See Bucliiiiian, iliid. it)i. 675, 682 ; "\Vard,
' Hindoos,' vol. ii. pp. 298—312.

rl tKi

ANIMISM.

421

fl-:

lounds, with
St. Boniface

great zeal,
, and she is
.'If with her

1 her lortl."^
ithnographie
ern pohtics.
Brahman or
vith herhiis-
3 passed into
:lia?val times,
' the present
^es Avith him.

many were
r family per-
eer violence,
tish rule, the
the Veda as
foreign rulers
'^ilson proved,
in support of
lit not by the
t Brahmanic

Sansk/": au-
ilirections are
ler husband's
ced there too.

servant is to
Rise, Avoman,
to him whose
ed thy duties
nd, and made

xvii. 91 ; xix. 33,
nrneilnns,' p. 4 ;
>75, 682 ; "Ward,

thee a mother." The bow, however, is to be broken and thrown
back upon the pile, and the dead man's sacrificial instruments
are to be laid with him and really consumed. While admitting
with Prof. Miiller that the more modern ordinance of Suttee-
burning is a corrupt departure from the early Brahmanic ritual,
we may nevertheless find some reason to consider the practice
as not a new invention by the later Hindu priesthood, but as the
revival, under congenial influences, of an ancient Aryan rite
belonging originally to a period even earlier than the Veda. The
ancient authorised ceremony looks as though, in a still more
ancient form of tlie rite, tlie widow had been actually sent witl)
the dead, for which real sacrifice a more humane law substituted
a mere pretence. This view is supported by the existence of an
old and express prohibition of the wife being sacrificed, a prohi-
bition seemingly directed against a real custom, " to follow the
dead husband is prohibited, so says the law of the Brahmans.
With regard to the other castes this law for women may be or
may not be."^ To treat the Hindu widow-burning as a case of
survival and revival seems to me most in accordance with a gene-
ral ethnographic view of the subject. Widow-sacrifice is found
in various regions of the world under a low state of civilization,
and this fits with the hypothesis of its having belonged to the
Aiyan race while yet in an early and barbarous condition.
Thus the prevalence of a rite of suttee like that of modern
India among ancient Aryan nations settled in Europe, Greeks,
Scandinavians, Germans, Slaves, may be simply accounted for by
direct inlieritance from the remote common antiquity of them
all. If this theory be sound, it will follow that ancient as the
Vedic ordinances may be, they represent in this matter a reform
and a re-action against a yet more ancient savage rite of widow-
sacrifice, which they prohibited in fact, but yet kept up in
symbol. The history of religion displays but too plainly the
proneness of mankind to relapse, in spite of reformation, into
the lower and darker condition of the past. Stronger and more
tenacious than even Vedic authority, the hideous custom of the

' Max ^liiller, ' Todtciihestattiing bcidcn Bralimaiicii, in ZoitKclir. dor Dcutsoli.
Morgonl. (U's.' vol. ix. ; ' Chips,' vol. ii. \k 34; Pictut, 'Oiigines Iiulo-Europ.'
part ii. p. r>26.

'H »'»

422

ANIMISM.

suttee may have outlived an attempt to suppress it in early
Brahmanic times, and the English rulers, in abolishing it, may
have abolished a relic not merely of degenerate Hinduism, but
of the far more remotely ancient savagery out of which the
Aryan civilization had grown.

In now passing from the consideration of the souls of men to
that rS the souls of the lower animals, we have first to inform our-
selves as to the savage man',, idea, which is very different from
the civilized man'c, of the nature of these lower animals. A
remarkable group of observances customary among rude tribes
will bring this di tinction sharply into view. Savages talk
quite seriously to beasts alive or dead af they would to men
alive or dead, offer them homage, ask pardon when it is their
painfai duty to hunt and kill them. A North American Indian
will reason with a horse as if rational. Some will spare the
rattlesnake, fearing the vengeance o^ its spirit if slain ; others
will salute the creature reverently, bid it welcome as a f'^iend
from the land of spirits, sprinkle a pinch of tobacco on its head
for an offering, catch it by the tail and dispatch it Avith extreme
dexterity, and carry off its skin as a trophy. If an Indian is
attacked and torn by a bear, it is that the beast fell upon him
intentionally in anger, perhajDs to revenge the hurt done to
another bear. When a bear is killed, they will beg pardon of
him, or even make him condone the offence by smoking the
peace-pipe with his murderers, who put the pipe in his mouth
and blow down it, begging his spirit not to take revenge. ^ So
in Africa, the Kafirs will hunt the elephant, begging him not to
tread on them and kill them, and when he is dead they will
assure him that they did not kill him on purpose, and they will
bury his trunk, for the elephant is a mighty chief, and his trunk
is his hand that he may hurt withal. The Congo people will
even avenge such a murder by a pretended attack on the
hunters who did the deed. - Such customs are common among
the lower Asiatic tribes. The Stiens of Kambodia ask pardon
of the beast they have killed f the Ainos of Yesso kill the bear,

* Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes, ' part i. p. 543 ; part iii. pp. 229, 520 ; Waitz,
vol. iii. pp. 191-3.
- Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii, pp. 355, 364 ; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 178.
3 Mouhot, ' Indo-China,' vol. i. p. 252.

5 it in early
jhing it, may
induism, but
)f which the

lis of men to
o inform our-
ifferent from
animals. A
g rude tribes
Savages talk
i^oiild to men
en it is their
jrican Indian
ill spare the
slain ; others
e as a friend
on its head
with extreme
an Indian is
ell upon him
lurt done to
)eg pardon of
smoking the
in his mouth

enge. ^ So
Q- him not to
ead they will
md they will
xnd his trunk

people will
tack on the
nmon among

ask pardon
kill the bear,

29, 520 ; Waitz,
i. p. 178.

ANIMISM.

423

offer obeisance and salutation to him, and cut up his carcase. ^
The Koriaks, if they have slain a bear or wolf, will flay him,
dress one of their people in the skin, and dance round him,
chanting excuses that they did not do it, and especially laying
the blame on a Russian. But if it is a fox, they take his skin,
wrap his dead body in hay, and sneering tell him to go to his
own people and say what famous hospitality he has had, and
how they gave him a new coat instead of his old one. - The
Samoyeds exca-ie themselves to the slain bear, telling him it was
the Russians who did it, and that a Russian knife will cut him
up. ^ The Goldi will set up the slain bear, call him " my lord"
and do ironical homage to him, or taking him alive will fatten
him in a cage, call him "son" and "brother," and kill and eat
him as a sacrifice at a solemn festival. ■* In Borneo, the Dayaks,
when they have caught an alligator with a baited hook and
rope, address him with respect and soothing till they have his
legs fast, and then mocking call him "rajah" and "grand-
father." ^ Thus when the savage gets over his fears, he still
keeps up in ironical merriment the reverence which had its
origin in trembling sincerity. Even now the Norse hunter will
say with horror of a bear that will attack man, that he can be
"no Christian bear."

The sense of an cibsolute psychical distinction between man
and beast, so prevalent in the civilized world, is hardly to be
found among the lower races. Men to whom the cries of beasts
and birds seem like human language, and their actions guided
as it were by human thought, logically enough allow the
existence of souls to beasts, birds, and reptiles, as to men. The
lower psychology cannot but recognise in beasts thr* very
characteristics which it attributes to the human soul, namely,
the phenomena of life and death, will and judgment, and the
phantom seen in vision or in dream. As for believers, savage
or civilized, in the great c^octrine of metempsychosii , these not
only consider that an animal may have a soul, but that this

' Wood in 'Tr. Eth. Sec' vol. iv. p. 36.

- Bastian, ' lilensch,' vol. iii. p. 26.

' De Brosses, ' Dioux Fetiches,* p. 61.

'» Ravenstein, 'Amur,' p. 382 ; T. W. Atkinnon, p. 483.

5 St. John, ' Far East,' vol. ii. p. 253 (Dayaks).

> iii

4:^4

ANIMISM.

!,i : I

. 1

i
W

soul may have inhabited a human being, and thus the creature
may be in fact their own ancestor or once familiar friend. A Hne
of facts, arranged as waymarks along the course of civilization, will
serve to indicate the history of opinion from savagery onward,
as to the souls of animals during life and after death. Nortli
American Indians held every animal to have its spirit, and these
spirits their future life ; the soul of the Canadian dog went to
serve his master in the other world ; among the Sioux, the pre-
rogative of having four souls was not confined to man, but
belonged also to the bear, the most human of animals. ^ The
Greenlanders considered that a sick human soul might be re-
placed by the sorcerer with a fresh healthy soul of a hare, a
reindeer, or a young child. " Maori tale-tellers have heard of
the road by which the spirits of dogs descend to Reinga, the
Hades of +he departed ; the Hovas of Madagascar know that the
ghosts of beasts and men, dwelling in a great mountain in the
south called Ambondrombe, come out occasionally to walk
among the tombs or execution-places of criminals. ^ The Kam-
chadals held that every creature, oven the smallest fly, would
live again in the under world. '^ The Kukis of Assam think
that the ghost of every animal a Kuki kills in the chase or for
the feast will belong to him in the next life,. even as the enemy
he slays in the field will then become his slave. The Karens
apply the doctrine of the spirit or personal life-phantom, which
is apt to wander from the body and thus suffer injury, equally
to men and to animals. ^ The Zulus say the cattle they kill
eome to life again, and become the property of the dwellers in
the world beneath. " The Siamese butcher, when in defiance of
the very principles of his Buddhisni he slaughters an ox, before
he kills the creature has at least the grace to beseech its spirit to
seek a happier abode. '^ In connexion with such transmigration,

^ Charlevoix, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 78 ; Sagard, ' Hist, du Canada,' p.
497 ; Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part. iii. p. 229.
- Cranz, 'Grcinland,' i\ 257.
3 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 271 ; Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 429.

* Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 269.

* Stewart, • Kukis ; ' Cross, ' Karens,' 1. c. ; Mason, ' Karens,' 1. c.
6 Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 317.

" Low in.'Journ. Ind. Archip.! vol, i. p. 426. See Moincrs, vol. i. p. 220;
vol. ii. p. 791.

ho croaturo
nd. A line
ization, will

ry onward,
til. North
t, and these
log went to
Lix, the pre-
3 man, but
lals.! The
night be re-
of a hare, a
ve heard of
Reinga, the
low that the
iitain in the
Uy to walk

The Kam-
t fly, would
Lssam think
chase or for
s the enemy
The Karens
ntom, which
ury, equally
:le they kill
) dwellers in
1 defiance of
Lii ox, before
1 its spirit to
nsniigration,

clu Caiiatla,' p.

, 429.

. c.

, vol. i. p. 220 ;

ANIMISM.

425

Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy gives to the lower animals
undying souls, while other classic opinion may recognize in
beasts only an inferior order of soul, only the "anima" but not
the human "animus" besides. Thus Juvenal:

" rriiicipio indulsit communis conditor illis
Tantum animas ; nobis animum qiioquo. .

" 1

Through the middle ages, controversy as to the psychology of
brutes has lasted on into our own times, ranging between two
extremes : on the one the theory of Descartes whicii reduced
animals to mere machines, on the other what Mr. Alger defines
as "the faith that animals have immaterial and deathless souls."
Among modern speculations may be instanced that of Wesley,
who thought that in the next life animals will be raised even
above their bodily and mental state at the creation, " the
horridness of their appearance will be exchanged for their
primaeval beauty," and it even may be that they will be made
what men are now, creatures capable of religion. Adam Clarke's
argument for the future life of animals rests on abstract justice :
whereas they did not sin, but yet are involved in the sufferings
of sinful man, and cannot have in the present state the happiness
designed for them, it is reasonable that they must have it in
another.- Although, however, the primitive belief in the souls
of animals still survives to some extent in serious philosophy, it
is obvious that the tendency of educated opinion on the ques-
tion whether brutes have soul, as distinguished from life and
mind, has for ages been in a negative and sceptical direction.
The doctrine has fallen from its once hioli estate. It belonged
originally to real, though rude science. It has now sunk to
become a favourite topic in that mild speculative talk which
still does duty so largely as intellectual conversation, and even
then its propounders defend it with a lurking consciousness of
its being after all a piece of sentimental nonsense.

* Juvenal. Sat. xv. 148.

^ Alger, 'Future Life,' p. 632, and see ' Bibliography,' appendix ii.; Wesley,
' Sermon on Eom. viii. 19 — 22;' Adam Clarke, ' Commentary,' on same text. This,
by the way, is the converse view to BcUarmine's, who so ]iatiently let the fleas
bite him, saying, "We shall have heaven to reward us for our sufTi.'rings, but
these poor creuture.j have nothing but tiie enjoyment of the present life." — liayle.

426

ANLMISM.

\^U:

1^; ill!

Animals being thus considered in the primitive psychology
to have souls like human beings, it follows as the simplest
matter of course that tribes who kill wives and slaves, to
dispatch their souls on errands of duty with their departed
lords, may also kill animals in order that their spirits may do
such service as is proper to them. The Pawnee warrior's
horse is slain on his grave to be ready for him to mount again,
and the Comanche's best horses are buried with his favouritt,
weapons and his pipe, all alike to be used in the distant happy
hunting-grounds.^ In South America not only do such rites oc-
cur, but they reach a practically disastrous extreme. Patagonian
tribes, says D'Orbigny, believe in another life, where they are
to enjoy perfect ^lappiness, therefore they bury with the de-
ceased his arms and ornaments, and even kill on his tomb all
the animals which belonged to him, that he may find them in
the abode of bliss ; and this opposes an insurmountable barrier
to all civilization, by preventing them from accumulating pro-
perty and fixing their habitations.^ Not only do Pope's now
hackneyed lines express a real motive with which the Indian's
dog is buried with him, but on the North American continent
the spirit of the dog has another remarkable office to perform.
Certain Esquimaux, as Cranz relates, would lay a dog's head
in a child's grave, that the soul of the dog, who ever finds
his home, may guide the helpless infant to the land of souls.
In accordance with this, Captain Scoresby in Jameson's Land
found a dog's skull in a small grave, probably a child's. Again,
in the distant region of the Aztecs, one of the principal funeral
ceremonies was to slaughter a techichi, or native dog ; it was
burnt or buried with the corpse, with a cotton thread fastened
to its neck, and its office was to convey the deceased across the
deep waters of Chiuhnahuapan, on the way to the Land of the
Dead.^ The dead Burat's favourite horse, led saddled to the
grave, killed, and flung in, may serve for a Tatar example.*

' Schoolcraft, * Indian Tribes,' part i. pp. 237, 262 ; part ii. p. 63.

2 D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Araericain,' vol. i. p. 196; vol. ii. pp. 23, 78; Falkner,
• Patagonia,' p. 118.

3 Egede, 'Greenland,' p. 152; Cranz, p. 301; seeNilsson, p. 140. Torquemada,
'Munarquia Indiana,' xiii. eh. 47 ; Clavigoro, ' Messico, ' vol. ii. p. 94 — 6.

* Georgi, 'Keise im Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 312.

,ir Ai

ANIMISM.

427

psychology

simplest
slaves, to

[• departed
ts may do
> warrior's
amt again,

1 favouritb
ant happy
h rites oc-
*atagonian
! they are
h the de-
5 tomb all

them in
)le barrier
ating pro-
jpe's now
B Indian's
continent
) perform,
og's head

ver finds

of souls.
)n's Land
Again,
a,l funeral
: ; it was

fastened
cross the
id of the
ed to the

xample.*

8; Falkner,

jrquemada,
•6.

In Tonquin, even wild animals have been customarily drowned
at funeral ceremonies of princes, to be at the service of the de-
parted in the next worid.i Among Semitic tribes, an instance
of the custom may bo found in the Arab sacrifice of a camel on
the grave, for the dead man's spirit to ride upon.^ Among
the nations of the Aryan race in Europe, the prevalence of such
rites is deep, wide, and full of purpose. Thus, warriors were
provided in death with horses and housings, Avith hounds and
falcons. Customs thus described in chronicle and legend, are
vouched for in our own time by the opening of old barbaric
burial-places. How clear a relic of savage meaning lies hero
may be judged from a Livonian account as late as the four-
teenth century, which relates how men and women, slaves,
sheep, and oxen, with other things, were burnt wiih the dead,
who, it was believed, would reach some region of the living,
and find there, with the multitude of cattle and slaves, a
country of life and happiness.^ As usual, these rites may be
traced onv/ard in survival. The Mongols, who formerly slaugh-
tered camels and horses at their owner's burial, have been
induced to replace the actual sacrifice by a gift of the cattle to
the Lamas.* The Hindus offer a black cow to the Brahmans,
in order to secure their passage across the Vaitarani, the river
of death, and will often die grasping the cow's tail as if to
swim across in herdsman's fashion, holding on to a cov.'.^ It is
mentioned as a belief in Northern Europe that he who has
given a cow to the poor will find a cow to take him over the
bridge of the dead, and a custom of leading a cow in the
funeral procession is said to have been kept up to modern
times.'' All these rites probably belong together as connected

' Baron, 'Tonquin,' in Pinkeiton, vol. ix. p. 704.

2 W. G. Palgrave, ' Arabia,' vol. i. p. 10 ; Bastian, ' Menscli,' vol. ii. p. 3L4 ;
Waitz, vol. ii. p. 619 (Gallas).

^ Grimm, ' Verbrennen der Leiclien.' A curious correspondence in the practice
of cutting off a fowl's head as a funeral rite is to be noticed among the Yorubas of
W. Africa (Burton, 'W. and W.' p. 220), Chuwashes of Siberia (Castren, 'Finn,
^lyth.' p. 120), old Eussians (Grimm, 'Verbrennen,' p. 254).

■* Bastian, 'ilensch,' vol. ii. p. 335.

* Colebrooke, ' Essays,' vol. i. p. 177 ; "Ward, ' Hindoos,' vol. ii. pp. 62,
284, 331.

' Mannhardt, ' Gotterwelt der Dcutschcn, etc' vol. i. p. 319.

■I

'I 'u i

i »■ r;

'il'

428

ANIMISM.

with ancient funeral sncvifico, and tlic survival of the cus-
tom of sacrificing the warrior's horse at his tomb is yet more
striking. 8aint-Foix long ago put the French evidence very
forcibly. Mentioning the horse led at the funeral of Charles
VI., with tlie four valets-de-pied in black, and bareheaded,
liolding the corners of its caparison, he recals the horses and
servants killed and binied with prai-Christian kings. And that
his readers may not t'link this an extraordinary idea, he brings
forward the records jf property and horses being presented at
the offertory in Paris, in 132i), of Edward III. presenting horses
at King John's funeral in London, and of the funeral service
for Bcrtrand Duguesclin, at St. Denis, in 1389, when horses were
offered, the Bishop of Auxerre laid his hand on their heads, and
they were afterwards compounded for.^ Germany retained the
actual sacrifice within the memory of living men. A cavalry
general named Frederick Kasimir was buried at Treves in 1781
according to the forms of the Teutonic Order ; his horse was led
in the procession, and the coffin having been lowered into the
grave, the horse was killed and thrown in upon it.- This was,
perhaps, the last occasion when such a sacrifice was consummated
in solemn form in Europe. But that pathetic incident of a
soldier's funeral, the leading of the saddled and bridled charger
in the mournful procession, keeps up to this day a lingering
reminiscence of the grim religious rite now passed away.

Plants, partaking with animals the phenomena of life and
death, health and sickness, not unnaturally have some kind of
soul ascribed to them. In fact, the notion of a vegetable
soul, common to plants and to tlie higher organisms posses-
sing an animal soul in addition, was familiar to mediaeval
philosophy, and is not yet forgotten by naturalists. But in the
lower ranges of culture, at least within one wide district of
the world, the souls of plants are much more fully identified
with the souls of animals. The Society Islanders seem to
have attributed "vania," i. c, surviving soul or spirit, not to

' Saiut-Foix, 'Essais histoiiqncs sur Paris,' in 'a-'iivres Comp.' ;^^aestl•icllt,
177S, vol. iv. ]i. 150.
2 J. ]\I. Keniblc, ' Horae FuralcH,' p. G6.

-.., M.

ANIMISM.

421^

f the cus-
yet moro
luncc very
uf Charles
irclieiitletl,
lorscs and
And that
he bikings
3sented at
mg horses
•al service
orses were
leads, and
tained the
A cavahy
es in 1781
36 was led
I into the
This was,
mmmated
dent of a
!d charger
lingering

f life and
le kind of
vegetable
IS posses-
inedioeval
ut in the
listrict of
identified
seem to
it, not to

ilaestricht,

men only but to animals and plants.^ Tiic Dayaks (;f Bor-
neo not only consider men and animals to liave a spirit or
living principle, whose departure from the bodj^ canscs sickness
and eventually death, but they also give to the rice its "samangat
padi," or "spirit of the paddy," and they hold feasts to retain
this soul securely, lest the crop should decay." The Karens
say that plants as well as men and .aiimals have their "Icl"
(" kelali "), and the spirit of sickly rice is here also called back
like a human spirit considered to have left the body. Their
formulas for the purpose have even been written down, and
this is part of one : — " come, rice kelah, come. Come

to the field. Come to the rice Come from the

West, Come from the East. From the throat of the bird,
from the maw of the ape, from the throat of the elephant.
. . . . From all granaries come. rice kelah, come to
the rice."" There is reason to thmk that the doctrine of
the spirits of plants lay deep in the intellectual history of
South-East Asia, but was in great measure superseded under
Buddhist influence. The Buddhist books show that in the
early days of their religion, it was matter of controversy
whether trees had souls, and therefore whether they might
lawfully be injured. Orthodox Buddhism decided against the
tree-souls, and consequently against the scruple to harm them,
declaring trees to have no mind nor sentient principle, though
admitting that certain dewas or spirits do reside in the body
of trees, and speak from within them. Buddhists also relate
that a heterodox sect kept up the early doctrine of the actual
animate life of trees, in connexion with which mav be re-
membered Marco Polo's somewhat doubtful statement as to
certain austere Indians objecting to green herbs for such a
reason, and some other passages from later writers. Generally
speaking, the subject of the spirits of plants is an obscure
one, whether from the lower races not having definite opinions,

* Mocrenlioiit, ' Voy. aux lies du Grand Ocean,' vol. i. p. 430.

' St. John, ' Fai- East,' vol. i. p. 187.

"'' Masofi, 'Karens,' in ' Journ. As. See. Bengal,' 1865, part ii. p. 202; Cross iu
*Jonrn. Amcr. Oriental See' vol. iv. p. 309. See comparison of Siamese and
Malay ideas : Low in ' Jonrn. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 340.

430

ANIMISM.

;i!i!

or from our not finding it easy to trace tlicni.^ The evidence
from funeral sacrifices, so valuable as to most departments of
early psychology, fails us here, from plants not being thoiight
suitable to send for the service of the dead. Yet, as wo shall
see more fully elsewhere, there arc two topics which bear closely
on tho matter. On the one hand, the doctrine of transmigration
widely ana clearly recognises the idea of trees or smaller plants
being animated by human souls ; on tho other, the belief in
tree-spirits and the practice of tree-worship involve notions
more or less closely coinciding with that of tree-souls, as when
the classic hamadryad dies with her tree, or when tho Talein
of South-East Asia, considering every tree to have a demon or
spirit, offers prayers before he cuts one down.

Thus far the details of tho lower animistic philosophy are
not very unfamiliar to modern students. The primitive view
of the souls of men and beasts, as asserted or acted on in the
lower and middle levels of culture, so far belongs to current
civilized thought, that those who hold the doctrine to be false,
and the practices based upon it futile, can nevertheless imder-
stand and sympathise with the lower nations to whom they are
matters of the most sober and serious conviction. !Nor is
even the notion of a separable .spirit or soul as the cause of
life in plants too incongruous with ordinary ideas to be readily
appreciable. But the theory of souls in the lower culture
stretches beyond this limit, to take in a conception much
stranger to modern thought. Certain high savage races dis-
tinctly hold, and a large proportion of other savage and barba-
rian races make a more or less close approach to, a theory
of separable and surviving souls or spirits belonging to stocks
and stones, weapons, boats, food, clothes, ornaments, and other
objects which to us are not merely soulless but lifeless.

Yet, strange as such a notion may seem to us at first sight,
if we place ourselves by an eflfort in the intellectual position of
an uncultured tribe, and examine the theory of object-souls

' Hardy, 'Manual of Budhism,' pp. 201, 443 ; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii.
p. 184 ; Marco Polo, book iii. ch. xxii (compare various readings) ; Meiners, vol. i.
p. 215 ; vol. ii. p. 799.

ANIMISM.

431

3 ovidonco
itmciits of
L? thought
I wo whall
}ar closely
migration
Her plants
belief in
notions
i, as when
ho Talein
demon or

sophy are

itive view

on in the

current

be false,

ss under-

i they are

Nor is

cause of

36 readily

r culture

on much

aces dis-

nd barba-

a theory

to stocks

md other

irst sight,
osition of
ject-souls

icn,' vol. ii.
iners, vol. i.

from their point of view, wo shall hardly pronounce it irrational.
In discussing the origin of myth, some account has been already
given of the primitive stage of thought in which personality
and life are ascribed not to men and beasts only, but to things.
It has been shown how what wo call inanimate objects — rivers,
stones, trees, weapons, and so forth — are treated as living in-
telligent beings, talked to, propitiated, punished for the harm
they do. Augusto Comto has even ventured to bring such a
state of thought under terms of strict definition in his concep-
tion of the primary mental condition of mankind — a state of
"pure fetishism, constantly characteriz'^d by the free and direct
exercise of our primitive tendency to conceive all external
bodies soever, natural or artificial, as animated by a life essen-
tially analogous to our own, with mere differences of intensity." ^
Our comprehension of the lower stages of mental culture de-
pends much on the thoroughness with which we can appreciate
this primitive, childlike conception, and in this our best guide
may be the memory of our own childish days. He who recol-
lects when there was still personality to him in posts and sticks,
chairs and toys, may well understand how the infant phi-
losophy of mankind could extend the notion of vitality to
what modern science only recognises as lifeless things ; thus
one main part of the lower animistic doctrine as to souls of
objects is accounted for. The doctrine requires for its full
conception of a soul not only life, but also a phantom or appa-
ritional spirit ; this development, however, follows without
difficulty, for the evidence of dreams and visions applies to the
spirits of objects in much the same manner as to human
ghosts. Everyone who has seen visions while light-headed in
fever, everyone who has ever dreamt a dream, has seen the
phantoms of objects as well as of persons. How then can we
charge the savage with far-fetched absurdity for taking into his
philosophy and religion an opinion which rests on the very
evidence of his senses ? The notion is implicitly recognised in
his accounts of ghosts, which do not come naked, but clothed
and even armed ; of course there must be spirits of garments

' Comtc, * Philosophic Positive,' vol. v. p. 30.

432

ANIMISM.

M •

and weapons, seeing that the spirits of men come bearing them.
It will indeed place savage philosophy in no unfavourable light,
if we compare this extreme animistic development of it with
the popular opinion still surviving in civilized countries, as to
ghosts and the nature of the human soul as connected with
them. When the ghost of Hamlet's father appeared armed
cap-a-pc,

" Such, was the vcrj' armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated."

And thus it is a habitual feature of the ghost-stories of the
civilized, as of the savage world, that the ghost comes dressed,,
and even dressed in well-known clothing worn in life. Hearing
as well as sight testifies to the phantoms of objects : the clank-
ing of ghostly chains and the rustling of ghostly dresses are
described in the literature of apparitions. Now by the savage
theory, according to v.-hich the ghost and his clothes are alike
real and objective, and by the modern scientific theory, accord-
ing to which both ghost and garment are alike imaginary and
subjective, the facts of apparitions are rationally met. But the
modern vulgar who ignore or repudiate the notion of ghosts of
things, while retaining the notion of ghosts of persons, have
fallen into a hybrid state of opinion which has neither the
logic of the savage nor of the civilized philosopher.

Among the lower races of mankind, three have been observed
to hold most explicitly and distinctly the doctrine of object-souls.
These are the Algonquin tribes, extending over a great district
of North America, the islanders of the Fijian group, and the
Karens of Birmah. Among the Indians of North America,
Father Charlevoix ^vrote, souls are, as it were, the shadows
and animated images of the body, and it is by a consequence of
this principle that they believe everything to be animate in the
universe. This missionary was especially conversant with the
Algonquins, and it was among one of their tribes, the Ojibwas,
that Keating noticed the opinion that not only men and beasts
have souls, but inorganic things, such as kettles, &c., have in
them a similar essence. In the same district Father Le Jeune

varing tliem.
irable light,
b of it with
itries, as to
lected with
ared armed

)ries of the
nes dressed,.
!. Hearing
: the clank-
dresses are
' the savage
js are alike
ory, accord-
aginary and
t. But the
of ghosts of
rsons, have
aeither the

en observed
)bject-souls.
reat district
ip, and the
h America,
he shadows
sequence of
mate in the
it with the
he Ojibwas,
L and beasts
fee, have in
3r Le Jeune

ANIMISM.

433

had described, in the seventeenth century, the belief that the
souls, not only of men and animals, but of hatchets and kettl^^s,
had to cross the water to the Great Village, out where the sun
sets.^ In interesting correspondence with this quaint thought
is Mariner's description of the Fiji doctrine — " If an animal or
a plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo ; if a stone or
any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward ;
nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs,
and yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away
flies its soul for the service of the gods. If a house is taken
down or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situa-
tion on the plains of Bolotoo : and, to confirm this doctrine,
the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural well, or deep hole
in the ground, at one of their islands, across the bottom of which
runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly perceive the
souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and stones,
canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail
world, swimming, or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-
mell into the regions of immortality." A full generation later,
the Rev. Thomas Williams, while remarking that the escape of
brutes and lifeless substances to the spirit-land of Mbulu does
not receive universal credit among the Fijians, nevertheless
confirms the older account of it : — " Those who profess to have
seen the souls of canoes, houses, plants, pots, or any aiiificial
bodies, swimming with other relics of this frail world on the
stream of the Kauvandra well, which bears them into the
regions of immortality, believe this doctrine as a matter of
course ; and so do those who have seen the footmarks left
■about the same well by the ghosts of dogs, pigs, &c."^ The
theory among the Karens is stated by the Rev. E. B. Cross, as
follows : — " Every object is supposed to have its ' kelah.*
Axes and knives, as well as trees and plants, are supposed to
have their separate ' kelahs.' " " The Karen, with his axe and

• Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 74 ; Keating, * Long's Exp.' vol. ii. p. 154 ; Le Jeune,
' Noiivelle France,' p. 69 ; also Waitz, vol. iii. p. 199 ; Gregg, ' Commerco of
Prairies,' vol. ii. p. 244 ; see Addison's No. 5G of the 'Spectator.'

2 Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 129 ; Williams, *Fiji,' vol. i. p. 242. Similar
ideas in Tahiti, Cook's 3i'd Voy. vol. ii. p. 166.

Vnl.. I. F F

484

ANIMISM.

II 'I

cleaver, may build his house, cut his rice, and conduct his
affairs, after death as before." i

As so many races perfonn funeral sacrifices of men and
animals, in order to dispatch their soulb for the service of the
soul of the deceased, so tribes who hold this doctrine of object-
souls very rationally sacrifice objects, in order to transmit these
souls. Among tho Algonquin tribes, the sacrifice of objects for
the dead was a habitual rite, as when we read of a warrior's
corpse being buried with musket and war-club, calumet and
war-paint, a public address being made to the body at burial
concerning his future path, while in like manner a woman would
be buried with her paddle and kettle, and the carrying-strap for
the everlasting burden of her heavily-laden life. That the pur-
pose of such offerings is the transmission of the object's spirit
or phantom to the possession of the man's is explicitly stated
as early as 1623 by Father Lallemant ; when the Indians buried
kettles, furs, &c., with the dead, they said that the bodies of the
things remained, but their souls went to the dead who used
theTi. The whole idea is graphically illustrated in the follow-
ing Ojibwa tradition or myth. Gitchi Gauzini was a chief who
lived on the shores of Lake Superior, and once, after a few
days' illness, he seemed to die. He had been a skilful hunter^
and had desired that a fine gun which he possessed should be
buried with him when he died. But some of his friends not
thinking him really dead, his body was not buried ; his widow
watched him for four days, he came back to life, and told
his story. After death, he said, his ghost travelled on the
broad road of the dead toward the happy land, passing over
great plains of luxuriant herbage, seeing beautiful groves, and
hearing the songs of innumerable birds, till at last, from
the summit of a hill, he caught .sight of the distant city
of tho dead, far aci'oss an intermediate space, partly veiled in
mist, and spangled with glittering lakes and streams. He
came in view of herds of stately deer, and moose, and other
game, which with little fear walked near his path. But he

' Cross, 1. 0. p. SOO, 313; Mason, 1. c. \). 202. Compare Meiners, vol, i. p. 144 ;
Castrdn, 'Finn. Myth.' pp. 161-3.

ANIMISM.

435

mduct his

men and
^ice of the
! of object-
ismit these
objects for
a •warrior's
lumet and
y at burial
man would
g-strap for
it the pur-
Bct's spirit
;itly stated
ans buried
dies of the
who used
the follow-
chief who
Fter a few
ful hunter,
should be
riends not
his widow

and told
ed on the
ssing over
Toves, and
last, from
stant city

veiled in

Eims. He

and other

But he

had no gun, and remembering how he had requested his
friends to put his gun in his grave, he turned back to go and
fetch it. Then he met face to face the train of men, women,
and children who were travelling toward the city of the dead.
They were heavily laden with guns, pipes, kettles, meats, and
other articles ; women were carrying basket-work and painted
paddles, and little boys had their ornamented clubs and their
bows and aiTOWs, the presents of their friends. Refusing a
gun which an overburdened traveller offered him, the ghost of
Gitchi Gauzini travelled back in quest of his own, and at last
reached the place where he had died. Tliere he could see only
a great fire before and around him, and finding the flames
barring his passage on every side, he made a desperate leap
through, and awoke from his trance. Having concluded his
story, he gave his auditors this counsel, that they should no
longer deposit so many burdensome things with the dead, de-
laying them on their journey to the place of repose, so that
almost everyone he met complained bitterly. It would be
wiser, he said, only to put such things in the grave as the
deceased was particularly attached to, or made a formal request
to have deposited with him.^

With purpose no less distinct, when a dead Fijian chief is
laid out oiled and painted and dressed as in life, a heavy club is
placed ready near his right hand, which holds one or more of
the much prized carved " whale's tooth " ornaments. The club
is to serve for defence against the adversaries who await his
.soul on the road to Mbulu, seeking to slay and eat him. We
hear of a Fijian taking a club from a companion's grave, and
remarking in explanation to a missionary who stood by, " The
ghost of the club has gone with him." The purpose of the
whale's tooth is this ; on the road to the land of the dead, near
the solitary hill of Takiveleyawa, there stands a ghostly pan-
danus-tree, and the spirit of the dead man is to throw the spirit
of the whale's tooth at this tree, having struck which he is to
ascend the hill and await the coming of the spirits of his

ol. i. p. 144 ;

* Sclioolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' ]iart. ii. p. 68; 'Algic Res.' vol. ii. p. 12iS ;
Lallcraant in 'Itel. des Jcsuitcs dans la Nouvcllc France,' 162G, p. 3.

F F 2

436

ANIMISM.

strangled wives.^ The funeral rites of the Karens eomplcto
the present group. They kept up what seems a clear survival
from actual human and animal sacrifice, fastening up near an
important person's grave a slave and a pony ; these invariably
released themselves, and the slave became henceforth a free
man. Moreover, the practice of placing food, implements and
utensils, and valuables of gold and silver, near the remains of
the deceased, was general among them.^

Now the sacrifice of proj)erty for the dead is one of the great
religious rites of the world ; are we then justified in asserting
that all men who abandon or destroy property as a funeral
ceremony believe the articles to have spirits, which spirits are
transmitted to the deceased ? Not so ; it is notorious that there
are people who recognise no such theory, but who nevertheless
deposit offerings Avith the dead. Affectionate fancy or symbol-
ism, a hon'or of the association of death leading the survivors to
get rid of anything that even suggests the dreadful thought, a
desire to abandon the dead man's property, an idea that the
hovering ghost may take pleasure in or make use of the gifts
left for him, all these are or may be efficient motives.^ Yet,

IN,

Irl

'•i;

I "Williams, 'Fiji,' vol, i. pp. 188, 243, 246; Alger, p, 82; Secmann, 'Viti,
p. 229.

- 'Journ. Ind. Arcliip.' new series, vol. ii. p. 421,

' For some cases in -vvliich horror or abnegation are assigned as motives for
abandonment of the dead man's property, see Hnmboldt and Bonpland, vol. v.
p. 626; Dalton in 'Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' 1866, part ii. p 191, etc. ; Earl,
'Papuans,' p. 108; Callawoy, ' Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 13; Egede, 'Greenland,'
p. 151 ; Cranz, p. 301 ; Loskiel, ' Ind. N. A.' part i. p. 64, but see p. 76. The
destruction or abandonment of the whole property of the dead may plausibly,
whether justly or not, be explained by horror or abnegation; but these motive.s
do not generally apply to cases where only part of the property is sacrificed, or
new objects are provided expressly, and here the service of the dead seems the
reasonable motive. Breaking or destraction of the objects proves nothing, as it
is equally applicable to abandonment and to transferring the spirit of the object,
as a man is killed to liberate his soul. For good cases of the breaking of vessels
and utensils given to the dead, see ' ^ourn. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 325 (Miutira) ;
Grey, 'Australia,' vol. i. p. 322; G. F. Moore, ' Vocab. W. Australia,' p. 13
(Australians) ; Markha.n in 'Tr. Eth, Soc' vol. iii. p. 188 (Ticunas); St. John,
vol. i. p. 68 (Dayaks) ; Ellis, ' Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 254 ; Schoolcraft, ' Indian
Tribes, ' part i. ^ "4 (Appalachicola) ; D. Wilson, 'Prehistoric Man,' vol. ii. ]).
196 (N. A, I. and ancient graves in England), Cases of formal sacrifice whern
objects arc offered to the dead and taken away again, are generally doubtful as t*»

ANIMISM.

4:37

complete
ir survival
p near an
invariably
■th a free
nents and
•emains of

the great

asserting

a funeral

spirits are

hat there

vertheless

)r symbol-

irvivors to

bought, a

that the

the gifts

3S.3 Yet,

lann, 'Viti,

; motives for
land, vol. v.
etc. ; Ear),
'Greenland,'
p. 76. The
ly plausibly,
lese motives
sacrificed, or
i seems the
Dtliing, as it
■ the object,
ig of vessels
5 (Mintira) ;
ralia,' p. IS
); St. John,
aft, ' Indian
' vol. ii. ]).
crifice whern
tubtful as U>

having made full allowance for all this, we shall yet find reason
to judge that many other peoples, though they may never have
stated the theory of object-souls in the same explicit way as the
Algonquina, Fijians, and Karens, have recognised it with more
or less distinctness. It has given me the more confidence in
this opinion to find it held, under proper reservation, by Mr. W.
R Alger, an American investigator, who in a treatise entitled
■' A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life " has dis-
cussed the ethnography of his subject with remarkable learning
and sagacity. " The barbarian brain," he writes, " seems to have
been generally impregnated with the feeling that every thing

else has a ghoot as well as man The custom of

burning or burying things with the dead probably arose, in some
cases at least, from the- supposition that every object has its
manes." ^ It will be desirable briefly to examine further the
subject of funeral offerings, as bearing on this interesting ques-
tion of early psychology.

A wide survey of funeral sacrifices over the world will plainly
show one of th^ir most usual motives to be a more or less
defined notion of benefiting the deceased, whether out of kind-
ness to him dv from fear of his displeasure. How such an
intention may have taken this practical shape we can perhaps
vaguely gue^s, familiar as we are with a state of mind out of
which funeM sacrifices could naturally have sprung. The man
is dead, but it is still possible to fancy him alive, to take his
cold hand, to speak to him, to place his chair at the table, to
bury suggestive mementos in his cofiin, to throw flowers into
his grave, to hang wreaths of everlastings on his tomb. The

motive ; see Spix and luartius, vol. i. p. 383 ; ilartius, vol. i. p. 485 (Brazilian
Tribes); Moffat, 'S, Africa,' p. 308 (Bechuanas) ; 'Journ. Ind, Archip.' vol. iii.
1). 149 (Kayans).

' Alger, 'Future Life,' p. 81. He treats, however (p. 76), as intentionally symbolic
tlie rite of the Winncbagos, who light fires on the grave to provide night after
night camp-fires for the soul on its far journey (Schoolcraft, ' Ind. Tr.* vol. iv. p.
55 ; the idea is inti'oduced in Longfellow's ' Hiawatha,' xix.). I agree with Dr.
Brinton ('Myths of New World,' p. 241) that to look for recondite symbolic
meaning in these simple childish rites is unreasonable. There was a similar Aztec
rite (Olavigero, vol. ii. p. 94). The Mintira light fires on the grave for the spirit
to warm itself at ('Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 326*, see p. 271, and compare
Martins, vol. i. p. 491).

Ii'l

'Sill

438

ANIMI-M,

it;.

: 1'

jl 1 1 '

■n

Cid may be set on Babieca >Yitli his sword Tizona in his hand,
and carried out to do battle as of old against the unbeliever ;
the dead king's meal may be carried in to him in state, although
the chamberlain must announce that the king does not dine to-
day. Such childlike ignoring of death, such childlike make-
believe that rhe dead can still do as heretofore, may well have
led the savage to bury with his kinsman the weapons, clothes,
and ornaments that ho used in life, to try to feed the corpse, to
put a cigar in the mouth of the skull before its final burial, to
lay playthings in the infant's grave. But one thought beyond
would carry this dim blind fancy into the range of logical
reasoning. Granted that the man is dead and his soul gone out
of him, then the way to provide that departed soul with food or
clothes or Aveapons is to bury or burn them Avith the body, for
whatever happens to the man may be taken to happen to the
objects that lie beside him and share his fate, while the precise
way in which the transmission takes place may be loft un-
decided. It is possible that the funeral sacrifice customary
among mankind may have rested at first, and may to some
extent still rest, on vague thoughts and imaginations like these,
as yet fitted into no more definite and elaborate philosophic
theory.

There are, however, two great groups of cases of fu 1
sacrifice, which so logically lead up to or involve the notion of
souls or spirits of objects, that the sacrificer himself could hardly
answer otherwise a point-blank question as to their meaning.
The first group is that in which those who sacj'ifice men and
beasts with the intention of conveying their souls to the other
world, also sacrifice lifeless things indiscriminately with them.
The second group is that in which the phantoms of the objects
sacrificed are traced distinctly into the possession of the human
phantom.

The Caribs, holding that after decease man's soul found its
way to the land of the dead, sacrificed slaves on a chief's grave
to serve him in the new life, and for the same purpose buried
dogs with him, and also weapons.^ The Guinea negroes, at the

> J. G. Miillnr, 'Aincr. ITrrolig.' p. 222, see 420.

his hand,
inbclicver ;
although
ot dine to-
iko make-
well have
:is, clothes,
corpse, to
burial, to
^ht beyond
of logical
il gone out
ith food or
! body, foi"
pen to the
he precise
e left un-
customary
Y to some
like these,
(liilosophic

of fu 1
; notion of
uld hardly

meaning.
; men and

the other
i'ith them,
he objects
he human

found its
ef s grave
)se buried
es, at the

ANIMISM.

439

funeral of a great man, killed several wives and slaves to servo
him in the other world, and put fine clothes, gold fetishes, coral,
beads, and other valuables, into the coffin, to be used there too.^
When the New Zealand chief had slaves killed at his death for
his service, and the mourning family gave his chief widow a rope
to hang herself with in the Avoods and so rejoin her husband,"
it is not easy to discern here a motive different f»'om that which
induced them at the same time to provide the dead man also
with his weapons. Nor can an intellectual line well be drawn
between the intentions with which the Tunguz has buried with
him his horse, his bow and arrows, his smoking apparatus and
kettle. In the typical description which Herodotus gives of the
funeral of the ancient Scythian chiefs, the miscellaneous con-
tents of the burial mound, the strangled wife and household
servants, the horses, the choice articles of property, the golden
vessels, fairly represent the indiscriminate purpose which
actuated the barbaric sacrifice of creatures and things."'' So in
old Europe, the warrior with his sword and spear, the horse with
the saddle, the hunter's hound and hawk and his bow and
arrow, the wife with her gay clothes and jewels, lie together in
the burial-mound. Their common purpose has become one of
the most undisputed inferences of Archaeology.

As for what becomes of the objects sacrificed for the dead,
there are on record the most distinct statements taken from
the sacrificers themselves. Although the objects rot in the
grave or are consumed on the pile, they nevertheless come in
some way into the possession of the disembodied souls they are
intended for. Not the material things themselves, but phan-
tasmal shapes corresponding to them, are carried by the souls
of the dead on their far journey beyond the gi'ave, or are used
in the world of spirits, while sometimes the phantoms of the
dead appear to the living, bearing property which they have
received by sacrifice, or demanding something that has been
withheld. The Australian will take his weapons with him to

' Bosman, ' Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 430.
2 Polack, ' M. of New ZeaLanders,' vol. ii. pp. 66, 78, 116, 127.
2 Georgi, ' Russ. R.' vol. i. p. 26G ; Hcrodot. iv. 71, see note in Rawlin.son's
Tr.. etc., etc.

440

ANIMISM.

ji
i ■

V 'i

a ^

il ^.

his paradise. ' A Tasmanian, asked the reason of a spear being-
deposited in a native's grave, replied " To fight with when he is
asleep." - Many Greenlauders thought that the kayak and
arrows and tools laid by a man's grave, the knife and sewing
implements laid by a woman's, would be used in the next
world.^ The instruments buried with the Sioux are for him to
make a living with hereafter ; the paints provided for the dead,
i'-oquois were to enable him to appear decently in the other
vrorld.* The Aztec's water-bottle was to serve him on the journey
.0 Mictlan, the land of the dead ; the bonfire of garments and
bafc .'■.., and spoils of war was intended to send them with him,
and somehow to protect him against the bitter wind ; the offer-
ings to the warrior's manes on earth would reach him on the
heavenly plains.^ Among the old Peruvians, a de."d prince's
wives would hang themselves in order to continue in his service,
and many of his attendants would be buried in his fields or
places of favourite resort, in order that his soul passing through
those places might take then- souls along with him for future
service. In perfect consistency with these strong animistic
notions, the Peruvians declared that their reason for sacrifice of
property to the dead was that they "have seen, or thought
they saw, those who had long been dead walking, adorned with
the things that were buried with them, and accompanied by
their wives who had been buried alive.""

As definite an implication of the spirit or phantom of
an object appears in a recent account from Madagascar, where
things are buried to become in some way useful to the dead.
When King Radama died, it was reported and firmly believed
that his ghost was seen one night in the garden of his country
seat, dressed in one of the uniforms which had been buried with

» Oldfield in 'Tr. Eth. Soc' vol. iii. pp. 228, 245.

2 Bonwick, 'Tasnianians,' p. 97.

3 Cranz, ' Gronland,' pp. 263, 301.

■* Schoolcraft, ' Indian Tribes, ' pai't iv. pp. 55, 65 ; J. G. Miiller, ' Amcr.
Urrel.' pp. 88, 287.

* Sahagun, book iii. App. in Kingsborough, 'Antiquities of Mexico,' vol. vii. ;
Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 94 ; Brasseur, vol. iii. pp. 497, 569.

* Cieza do Leon, p. 161 ; Rivero and Tschudi, ' Penivian Antiquities,' pp.
186, 200.

spear being-
I when he is

kayak and
and sewing
In the next
c for him to
for the dead
Q the other

the journey
irments and
tn with him,
I ; the offer-
him on the
er.d prince's
1 his service,
lis fields or
ling through
1 for future
ig animistic
r sacrifice of

or thought
domed with
mpanied by

phantom of
ascar, where
to the dead,
ily beUeved
his country
buried with

ANIMISM.

441

liiller, 'Amer.
xico, ' vol. vii. ;
iitiquities,' pp.

him, and riding one of the best horses killed opposite his tomb.^
Turanian tribes of North Asia avow that the motive of their
funeral offerings of horses and sledges, clothes and a. • and
kettles, flint and steel and tinder, meat and butter, is to -j .ovidc
the dead for his journey to the land of souls, and for liis life
there.- Among the Esths of Northern Europe, the dead starts
pxoperly equipped on his ghostly journey with needle and
thread, hairbrush and soap, bread and brandy and coin ; a toy, if
it is a child. And so full a consciousness of practical meaning-
has survived till lately that now and then a soul comes back at
night to reproach its relations with not having provided properly
for it, but left it in distress.^ j +urn from these now Euro-
peanized Tatars to a rude race c the Eastern Archipelago,
among the Orang Binua of Sa.. tbawa there prevails this curious
law of inheritance ; not only does each surviving relative, father,
mother, son, brother, and so for^ii, take his or her proper share,
but the deceased inherits one share from himself, which is
devoted to his use by eating the animals at the funeral feast,
burning everything else that will burn, and burying the
remainder.'* In Cochin China, the common peojile object to
celebrating their feast of the dead on the same day with the
upper classes, for this excellent reason, that the aristocratic
souls might make the servant souls carry home their presents for
them. These people employ all the resources of their civiliza-
tion to perform with the more lavish extravagance the savage
funeral sacrifices. Here are details from an account published
in 1849 of the funeral of a late king of Cochin China. " When
the corpse of Thien Tri was deposited in the coffin, there were
also deposited in it many things for the use of the deceased in
the other world, such as his crown, turbans, clothes of all
descriptions, gold, silver, and other precious articles, rice and
other provisions." Meals were set out near the coffin, and there
was a framed piece of damask with woollen characters, the

^ Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. pp. 254, 429 ; sec Flacourt, p. 60.
- Castren, 'Firm. Myth.' p. 118: J. Billings, 'Exp. to N, Paissia,' p. 120; see
'Samoiedia' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 532.
3 Boeder, ' Ehsten Gebnuche,' p. (59.
•• 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii. p. 691; see vol. i. pp. 297, 349.

ii : ;■

!l: •'

442

ANIMISM.

"i I

al)odc of one of the souls of the defunct. In the tomb, an
enclosed edifice of stone, the childless wives of the deceased were
to be perpetually shut up to guard the sepulchre, "and pre-
pare daily the food and other things of which they think the
deceased has need in the other life." At the time of the deposit
of the coffin in a cavern behind the tomb building, there were
burnt there great piles of boats : *ages, and everything used in
the funeral, " and moreover of all the objects which had been in
use by the king during his lifetime, of chessmen, musical instru-
ments, fans, boxes, parasols, mats, fillets, carriages, &c. &c., and
likewise a horse and an elephant of wood and pasteboard."
" Some months after the funeral, at two different times, there were
constructed in a forest near a pagoda two magnificent palaces of
wood with rich furnishings, in all things similar to the palace
which the defunct monarch had inhabited. Each palace was
composed of twenty rooms, and the most scrupulous attention
was given in order that nothing might be awanting necessar}'
for a palace, and these palaces were burned with great pomp,
and it is thus that immense riches have been given to the
flames from the foolish belief that it would serve the dead in
the other world.^"

Though the custom is found among the Beduins, of arraying
the dead with turban, girdle, and sword, yet funeral offerings
for the service of the dead are by no means conspicuous among
Semitic nations. The mention of the rite by Ezekiel, while
showing a full sense of its meaning, characterizes it as not
Israelite, but Gentile : " The mighty fallen of the uncircum-
oised, which are gone down to Hades with weapons of war, and
they have laid their swords under their heads," ^ Among the
Aryan nations, on the contrary, such funeral offerings are known
to have prevailed widely and of old, while for picturesqueness
of rite and definiteness of purpose they can scarcely be sur-
passed even among savages. Why the Brahman's sacrificial
instruments are to be burnt with him on the funeral pile.

' Bastian, 'Psychologic,' p. 89; 'Journ. Ind. Arcliip. ' vol. iii. p. 337. For
other instances, sec Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 332, etc. ; Alger, 'Future
Life,' part ii.

* Klcmm, 'C. G.' vol. iv. p. 159 ; Ezek. xxxii. 27.

ANIMISM.

443

' tomb, an

cased were

"and pns

think the

the deposit

there were

ng used in

ad been in

ical instru-

ic. &c., and

asteboard."

there were

t palaces of

the palace

aalace was

s attention

necessar}'-

eat pomp,

i^en to the

le dead in

of arraying
1 offerings
ous among
kiel, while

it as not
imcircum-
f war, and
Lmong the
are known
resqueness
ly be sur-

sacrificial
leral pile,

p. 337. For
jer, • Future

appears from tiiis line of the Veda recited at the ceremony :
" YadA, gachchatyasimitimetamatha devanam vasanirbhavati,"
— " When he cometh unto that life, faithfully will he do tlio
service of the gods." ^ Lucian is sarcastic, but scarcely unfair
in his comments on the Greek funeral rites, speaking of those
who slew horses and slave-girls and cupbearers, and burned or
buried clothes and ornaments, as for use and service in the
world below ; of the meat and drink offerings on the tombs
which serve to feed the bodiless shades in Hades ; of the
•splendid garments and the garlands of the dead, that they
might not suffer cold upon the road, or be seen naked by
Kerberos. For Kerberos was intended the honey-cake depo-
sited with the dead ; and the obolus placed in the mouth was
the toll for Charon, save at Hermione in Argolis, where men
thought' there was a short descent to Hades, and therefore pro-
vided the dead with no coin for the grim ferryman. How
•such ideas could be realized, may be seen in the story of
Eukrates, whose dead wife appeared to him to demand one of
her golden sandals, which had been dropped underneath the
chest, and so not burnt for her with the rest of her wardrobe ;
or in the story of Periander, whose dead wife Melissa refused
to give him an oracular response, for she was shivering and
naked, because the garments buried with her had not been
burnt, and so were of no use, wherefore Periander plundered
the Corinthian women of their best clothes, burned them in a
great trench with prayer, and now obtained his answer.- The
ancient Gauls were led, by their belief in another life, to burn
and bury with the dead things suited to the living ; nor is the
record improbable that they transferred to the world below the
repayment of loans, for even in modern centuries the Japanese
would borrow money in this life, to be repaid with heavy
interest in the next.^ The souls of the Norse dead took with
them from their earthly home servants and horses, boats and

' Max Miiller, ' Todtenbestattung der Brahmancn,' in D. M. Z. vol. ix.
p. vii. — xiv.

2 Luciaij. De Luctu, 9, etc. ; Philopseudes, 27 ; Strubo, viii. 6, 12 ; Hevodot.
V. 92 ; Smith's 'Die. Gr. and Rom. Ant.' art. 'funus.'

^ Mela, iii. 2. Froius (1565) in Maffei, Histor. Iiidicaium, lib. iv.

444

ANIMISM.

fcrry-moncy, clothes and weapons. Thus, In death as in life,
thoy journeyed, follovvin<,' the long dark " hell-way " (helvegi*).
The " hell-shoon " (helsko) were hound upon the dead nuin'n
feet for the toilsome journey ; and when Kinj; Harald was slain
in thu battle of Bravalla, they drove his war-ciuuiot, witli the
corpse upon it, into the great Ijurial-mound, and there they
killed the horse, and King Hring gave his own saddle beside,
that the fallen chief might ride or drive to Walhalla, as it
pleased hira.^ Lastly, in the Lithuanian and Old Prussian
district, where Aryan Iieathendom held its place in Europe so
firmly and so late, accounts of funeral sacrifice of men, and
beasts, and things, date on even beyond the middle ages. Even
as they thought that men would live again in the resurrection
rich or poor, noble or peasant, as on earth, so " they believed
that the things burned would rise again with them, and serve
them as before." Among these people lived the Kriwe Kri-
weito, the great priest, whose house was on the high steep
mountain Anafiolas. All the souls of their dead must clamber
up this mountain, wherefore they burned with them claws of
bears and lynxes for their help. All the souls must pass through
the Kriwe's house, and he could describe to the surviving
relatives of each the clothes, and horse, and weapons, he had
seen him come with, and even show, for greater certainty, somci
mark made with lance or other instrument by the passing soul.-
Such examples of funeral rites show a common ceremony, and
to a great degree a common purpose, obtaining from savager}
through barbarism, and even into the higher civilization. Now
could we have required from all these races a distinct answer to
the question, whether they believed in spirits of all things, from
men and beasts down to spears and cloaks, sticks and stones, it
is likely that we might have often received the same acknow-

^r '

' Grimm, ' Verbrennen der Lcichcu,'i»p. 232, etc., 247, etc.; 'Deutsclio Myth."
pp. 79.'5-800.

* Dusburg, 'Chronicon Prussifc,' iii. c. v.; Hanusch, 'Slaw. lly;h,' jip. ;'9S,
414 (Auafielas is the gLass-mouutaiu of Sclavonic and Gorman myth, sec Griunu,
'D. M.' p. 796). Compare statement in St. Clair and Brophy, 'Bulgaria,' p. (31 ;
us to food transmitted to dead in other world, with more probable explanation,
p. 77.

ANIMISM.

44.1

I jis in life,
" (holvogv).
ilcad man'K
Id wjis Hlaiii
•t, with the

thero thoy
(kilo beside,
Ihalla, as it
Id Prussian
I Europe so
f men, and
ijjcs. Even
resurrection
ley believed
1, and serve
Kriwe h ri-

high steep
ust clamber
!m claws of
)ass through
Q surviving
ons, he hail
iainty, somi;
assing soul.-
emony, and
>m savagery
<tion. Now
^t answer to
things, from
id stones, it
tno acknow-

eutbclie Myth/

ly:h.' i-p. :ii)S,
th, sec Oriuiiii,
ulgarifi,' p. 01 ;
le explanation.

Icdytnont of fully developed animism which stands oti record
in North America, Polynesia, and Birmah. Failing such direct
testimony, it is at least justiriai)le to say that the lower culture,
by practically dealing with obj(^ct-souls,goe8 fur towards acknow-
lodging their existence.

Before quitting the discussions of funeral offerings for trans-
mission to the dead, the custom must bo traced to its final
decay. It is apt not to die out suddenly, but to leave sur-
viving remnants, more or less dwindled in form and changcjd
in moaning. The Kanowits of Bonu'o talk of setting a man's
property adrift for use; in the next world, and even go so far as
to lay out his valuables by the bier, but in fact thoy only
commit ^to the frail canoe a few old things not worth plun-
dering.^ So in North America, the funeral sacrifice of the
Winnebagos has come down to burying a pipe and tobacco
with the dead, and sometimes a club in a warrior's grave, while
the goods brought and hung up at the burial-place are no longei-
left there, but the survivors gamble for them.*^ The Santals of
Bengal put two vessels, one for rice and the other for water, on the
dead man's couch, with a few rupees, to enable him to appease
the demons on the threshold of the shadowy world, but when
the funeral pile is ready these things are removed.^ The fan-
ciful art of replacing costly offerings by worthless imitations is
<it this day worked out into the quaintest devices in China.
As the men and horses dispatched by fire for the service of the
dead are but paper figures, so offerings of clothes and money
may be represented likewise. The imitations of Spanish pillar-
dollars in pasteboard covered with tinfoil, the sheets of tinfoil-
paper which stand for silver money, and if coloured yellow for
gold, are consumed in such quantities that the sham becenies a
•serious reality, for the manufacture of mock-money is the trade
of thousands of women and children in a Chinese city. In a
similar way trunks full of property are forwarded in the care of
the newly deceased, to friends who are gone before. Pretty paper

* St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. pp. 53, 68. Compare Bosii i, * Guinea,' in
rinkerton, vol, xvi. p. 430,
'■^ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iv. p. {>4.
•■' Hnnter, * Rural Bengal,' p. 210.

44 ()

ANIMISM.

m\!'

houses, "replete with every luxury," as our auctioneers say, arc-
burnt for the dead Chinaman to live in hereafter, and the paper
keys are burnt also, that lie may unfasten the paper locks of the
paper chests that hold the ingots of gold-paper and silver-paper,
Avhich are to be realised as current gold and silver in the other
Avorld, an idea Avhich, however, does not prevent the careful
survivors from collecting the ashes to re-extract the tin from
them in this.^ Again, Avhen the modern Hindu offers to his dead
parent funeral cakes with flowers and betel, he presents a woollen
yarn which he lays across the cake, and naming the deceased
says, " May this apparel, made of AvooUen yarn, be acceptable to
thee." ~ Such facts as these suggest a symbolic meaning in the-
practically useless offerings Avhich Sir John Lubbock groups
together — the little models of kayaks and spears in Esquimaux
graves, the models of objects in Egyptian tombs, and the flims}-
unserviceable joAvellery buried with the Etruscan dead.^

Just as people in Borneo, after they had become Mohamme-
dans, still kept up the rite of burying provisions for the dead
man's journey, as a mark of respect,* so the rite of interring
objects with the dead survived in Christian Europe. As the
Greeks gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and the
old Prussians furnished him Avith sp^nding-money, to buy refresh-
ment on his weary journey, so to this day German peasants bury
a corpse with money in his mouth or hand, a fourpenny-piece-
or so, the placing of the coin in the dead man's hand is a regular
ceremony of an Irish Avake, and similar little funeral offerings of
coin are recorded in the folklore-books elsewhere in Europe.'^
Christian funeral offerings of this kind are mostly trifling in
value, and doubtful as to the meaning Avith Avhich they Avere

^ Davis, ' Chinese,' vol. i. p. 27G ; Doolittle, vol. i. )i. 19S ; vol. ii. p. 275 ;
Bastiaii, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 334; see Marco Polo, book. ii. ch. Ixviii.

" Colebrooke, 'Essays,' vol. i. pp. 161, 169.

^ Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times,' p. 142; "Wilkinson, 'Ancient Eg.' vol. ii.
p. 319.

* Beeckniann, ' Voy. to Borneo,' in Pinkerton, vol. xi. p. 110.

' Ilartknoch, 'Alt. imJ Neiies Preussen,' part i. p. 181 ; Grimm, 'D. M.' p]i.
791—5; AVuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaubc,' p. 212; Rochholz, 'Deutscher
Cilaubt',' etc. vol. i. p. 187, etc.; Maury, 'Magic,' etc. p. 158 (France) ; lirnnd,
' Pop. Ant.' vo]. ii. p. 285 (Ireland).

ANIMISM.

447

aeers say, are
Lnd the paper
!r locks of the
. silver-paper,^
• in the otlier
t the careful
the tin from
rs to his dead
snts a woolleii
the deceased
acceptable to.
eaning in the
jbock groups
n Esquimaux
nd the flimsy
ead.^

le Mohamme-

for the dead

; of interring

•ope. As the

toll, and the
buy refresh -
Deasants bury
irpenny-piece
d is a regular
al offerings of

in Europe.'''
ly trifling in
ch they were

; vol. ii. p. 275 ;
Ixviii.

ent Eg.' vol. ii.

iim, ']). M.' pip.
lolz, ' Deutsc.licr
Fiiiiice) ; Branil,

kept up. The early Christians retained the heathen custom of
placing in the tomb such things as articles of the toilette and
children's playthings; modern Greeks would place oars on a ship-
man's grave, and other such tokens for other crafts; the beautiful
classic rite of scattering flowers over the dead still holds its place
in Europe.^ Whatever may have been tlie thoughts which first
prompted these kindly ceremonies, they were thoughts be-
longing to far pra3-Christian ages. The change of sacrifice
from its early significance is shown among the Hindus, who
have turned it to account for purposes of priestcraft : lie who
gives water or shoes to a Brahman will find Avater to refresh
him, and shoes to wear, on the journey to the next world, while
the gift of a present house will secure him a future palace.^ In
interesting correspondence with this, is a transition from pagan
to Christian folklore in our own land. The Lyke-Wake Dirge,,
the ancient funeral chant of the North Country, tells, like some
savage or barbaric legend, of the passage over the Bridge of
Death and the dreadful journey to the other world. But though
the ghostly traveller's feet are still shod with the old Norseman's
hell-shoon, he gains them no longer by funeral offering, but by
his own charity in life : —

" This a nighte, this a nighte
Every night and alle ;
Fire and fleet and candle-light,
And Christe receive thy saule.

When thou from hence away arc paste

Every night and alle ;
To Whinny-moor thou comes at laste.

And Christe receive thy saulo.

If ever thou gave either hosen or shoon,

Every night and alle ;
Sit thee down and put them on,

And Christe receive thy saule.

' Maitknd, 'Church in the Catacombs,' p. l.'J7 ; Forbes Leslie, vol. ii. p. .502
Meiners, vol. ii. p. 750 ; Brand, 'Pop. Ant' vol. ii. p. 307.
=» Ward, ' Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 284.

liii

^l-^ ANIMISM.

F3ut if hosen nor shoon thou never gave nooan,

Every night and alle ;
The Whinues shall prick theo to the bare beoan,

And Christe receive thy saule.

I<''rom Whinny-moore when thou may passo,

Every night and alle ;
To Brig o' Dread thou comes at laste,

And Christe receive thy saule.

From Brig o' Dread when thou are paste,

Every night and alle ;
To Purgatory Fire thou comes at laste,

And Christe receive thy saule.

if ever thou gave either milke or drink,

Every night and alle ;
The fire shall never make theo shrinke,

And Christe receive thy saule.

But if milk nor drink thou never gave ueoau,

Every night and alle ;
'i'he fire shall burn thee to the bare beeun

And Christe receive thy saule." '

What reader, unacquainted with the old doctrine of offerings
for the dead, could realize the meaning of its remnants thas
lingering in peasants' minds ? The survivals from ancient
funeral ceremony may here again serve as warnings against
attempting to explain relics of intellectual antiquity by viewing
them from the changed level of modern opinion.

Having thus surveyed at large the theory of spirits or souls
of objects, it remains to point out what, to general students,
may seem the most important consideration belong? •^'^ -^ It,

' From the collated and annotated text in J. C. Atkinson, ' Glossary of Cleve-
land Dialect,' p. 595 (^a=one, n(!can=none, hecan-^bone). Other versions in
Scott, ' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Eo-dor,' vol. ii. p. 367; Kelly, 'Indo-European
Folklore,' p. 115 ; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. ii. p. 275. Two verses have perhaps
been lost between the fifth and sixth. J. C. A. reads 'meate' in vv. 7 and 8 ;
the usual reading ' niilke ' is retained here. The sense of these two versos may
bo that the liquor sacrificed in Tfe will quench the fire : an idea parallel to that
known to folklore, that he who gave bread in bis lifetime will find it after death
ready for him to cast into the helllioinid's jaws (Mannhardt, •' Giittorwtlt der
Dcutsrhcn und Xordisclicii Volker,' p. 319), a sop to ('orberr.s.

ANIMISM.

44f)

3 of offerings
mnants thus
rom ancient
ings against
Y by viewing

rits or souls
ral students,

^ "t

3ssary of Clcve-
her versions ii)
' Indo-European
!s liavo perhaps
iu vv. 7 and 8 ;
two %-cr.s('s may
parallel to that
1 it after death
Ootterwelt dcr

namely, its close rebtion to one of the most influential doctrines
of civilized philosophy. The savage thinker, though occupying
himself so much with the phenomena of life, sleep, disease, and
death, seems to have taken for granted, as a matter of course,
the ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly occurred co
him to think about the machinery of thinking. Metaphysics is
a study which first assumes clear sliape at a comparatively
high level of intellectual culture. The metaphysical philo-
sophy of thought taught in our modern European lecture-
rooms is historically traced back to the speculative psychology
of classic Greece. Now one doctrine which there comes into
view is especially associated with the name of Democritus, the
philosopher of Abdera, in the fifth century B.C. When Demo-
critus propounded the great problem of metaphysics, " How
do we perceive external things?" — thus making, as Leves
says, an era in the history of philosophy, — he put forth, in
answer to the question, a theory of thought. He explained
the fact of perception by declaring that things are always
throwing off images (dhuiXd) of themselves, which images,
assimilating to themselves the surrounding air, enter a recipient
soul, and are thus perceived. Now, supposing Democritus to
have been really the originator of this famed theory of ideas,
how far is he to be considered its inventor ? Writers on the
history of philosophy are accustomed to treat the doctrine as
actually miide by the philosophical school which taught it. Yet
the evidence here brought forward shows it to be really the
savage doctrine of object-souls, turned to a new pui"pose as
a method of explaining the phenomena of thought. Nor is the
oorrespondence a mere coincidence, for at this point of junction
between classic religion and classic philosophy the traces of
historical continuity may be still discerned. To say that
Democritus was an ancient Greek is to say that from his child-
hood he had looked on at the funeral ceremonies of his country,
beholding the funeral sacrifices of garments and jewels and
money and food and drink, rites which his mother and his nurse
could tell him were performed in order that the phantasmal
images of the." objects might pass into the possession of forms
shadowy like themselves, the souls of dead men. Thus Dcmo-

VOL. I.

G (;

iJlf;

IS It'

■i yii

"Mi

450

ANiMi;::.r

critus, seeking a solution of his great probK'im of the nature of
thought, found it by simply decanting into his metaphysics a
surviving doctrine of primitive savage animism. This thought
of the phantoms or souls of things, if simply modifiec to form a
philosophical theory of perception, would then and there become
his doctrine of Ideas, Nor does even this fully represent the
closeness of union which connects the savage doctrine of flitting
object-souls with the Epicurean philosophy. Lucretius actually
makes the theory of film-like images of things (simulacra,
niembrana)) account both for the apparitions which come to
men in dreams, and the images which impress their minds in
thinking. So unbroken is the continuity of philosophic specula-
tion from savage to cultured thought. Such are the debts
which civilized philosophy owes to primitive animism.

The doctrine of ideas, thus developed in the classic world,
has, indeed, by no means held its course thenceforth unchanged
through metaphysics, but has undei;^one transition somewhat
like that of the doctrine of the i-oul itself. Ideas, fined down
to the abstract forms or species of material objocts, and applied
to other than visible qualities, ha'' e at last oome merely to
denote subjects of thought. Yet to this day the old theory
has not utterly died out, and the retention of the significant
term " idea " (ibia, visible form) is accompanied by a similar
-■etention (-1 original meaning. It is still one of the tasks of
the metaphysician to display and refute the old notion of ideas
as being real images, and to replace it by more abstract con-
ceptions. It is a striking instance that Dugald Stewart can
cite from the works of Sir Isaac Newton the following distinct
recognition of " sensible species : " " Is not the sensorium of
animals, the place where the sentient substance is present; and to
which the sensible species of things are brought, through the
nerves and brain, that there they may be perceived by the mind
present in that place ? " Again, Dr. Reid states the original
theory of ideas, while declaring that he conceives it " to have no
solid foundation, though it has been adopted very generally by

philosophers Tliis notion of our perceiving external

objects, not immediately, but in certain images or species of
them conveyed by the senses, seems to be the most aiicient

.VNLMiSM.

the nature of
metaphysics a
This thought
ified to form a
there become
represent the
ine of flittiner
■c'tius actually
s (simulacra,
lich come to
leir minds in
aphic specula-
re the flebts
ism.

classic world,
•th unchanged
ion somewhat
s, fined down
s, and applied
me merely to
lie old theory
he significant
by a similar
' the tasks of
Dtion of ideas
abstract con-
Stewart can
•wing distinct
sensorium of
'esent; and to
through the
by the mind
the original
" to have no
general ly by
^ing external
3r species cf
nost ancient

philosophical hypothesis wo have on the subject of percep-
tion, and to have, with small variations, retained its author 'y
to this day." Granted that Dr. Reid exaggerated ine
extent to which metaphysicians have kept up the nc '^n
of ideas as real images of things, few will deny that it aoes
linger much in modern minds, and that people who talk of
ideas do often, in some hazy metaphorical way, think of sen-
sible images.^ One of the shrewdest things ever said about
either ideas or ghosts was Bishop Berkeley's retort upon Halley,
who bantered him about his idealism. The bishop claimed the
mathematician as an idealist also, his " ultimate ratios " being
ghosts of departed quantities, appearing wlien the terms that
produced them vanished.

It remains to sum up in few words the doctrine of souls, in
the various phases it has assumed from first to last among
mankind. In the attempt to trace its main course through
the successive grades of man's intellectual history, the evi-
dence seems to accord best with a theory of its development,
somewhat to the followinc: effect. At the lowest levels of cul-
ture of which we have clear knowledge, the notion of a gh -st-
soul animating man while in the body, ai:d appearing in dream
and vision out of the body, is found deeply ingr^.'^ed. TV jre
is no reason to think that this belief yras le rrnt. by sa'. age
tribes from contact with higher races, nor that i' " a reiic of
higher culture from which the savage tribes have degenerated ;
for what is here treated as the primitive animihh'} theoiy is
thoroughly at home among sava;.es, who appear to hi..'l it on
the very evidence of their senses, interpreted on tite biological
theory which seems to them most reasonable. We may now
and. then hear the savage doctrines and practices concerning
souls claimed as relics of a l)igh religious culture p'>rvading the
primaeval race of man, Tliey are said to be traces of remote
ancestral religion, kept up in scanty and perverted memory by
tribes degraded from a nobler state. It is easy to see that such

' Lewes, 'Biographical History of Philosophy, Domocvitiis' (and see his re-
marks on Keid) ; Lucretius, lib. iv. ; ' Early Hist, of Mankind,' |\ S; Stewart,
' Philosophy of Human Mind,' vol. i. c!..ip. i. sec 2 ; Eeid, ' Essays,' ii. chaj'S. iv.
xiv. ; see Tlios. Browne, ' Pliilosopliy of the Jlind,' Icct. 27,

452

ANIMISM.

an explanation of some few facts, sundered from their con-
nexion with the general array, may seem plausible to certain
minds. But a large view of the subject can hardly leave such
argument in possession. The animism of savages stands for
and by itself ; it explains its own origin. The animism of civi-
lized men, while more appropriate to advanced knowledge, is in
great measure only explicable as a developed product of the
older and ruder system. It is the doctrines and rites of the
lower races which are, according to their philosophy, results of
point-blank natural evidence and acts of straightforward prac-
tical purpose. It is the doctrines and rites of the higher races
which show survival of the old in the midst of the new, modi-
fication of the old to bring it into conformity with the new,
abandonment of the old, because it is no longer compatible
with the new. Let us see at a glance in what general relation
the doctrine of souls among savage tribes stands to the doctrine of
souls among barbaric and cultured nations. Among races within
the limits of savagery, the general doctrine of souls is found
worked out v'th remarkable breadth and consistency. The souls
of animals are recognized by a natural extension from the theory
of human souls ; the souls of trees and plants follow in some
vague partial way ; and the souls of inanimate objects expand
the general category to its extremest boundary. Thenceforth, as
we explore human thought onward from savage into barbarian
and civilized life, we find a state of theory more conformed to
positive science, but in itself less complete and consistent. Far
on into civilization, men still act as though in some half-meant
way they believed in souls or ghosts of objects, while nevertheless
their knowledge of physical science is beyond so crude a philo-
sophy. As to the doctrine of souls of plants, fragmentary evi-
dence of the history of its breaking down in Asia has reached
us. In our own day and country, the notion of souls of beasts
is to be seen dying out. Animism, indeed, seems to be drawing
in its outposts, and concentrating itself on its first and main
position, the doctrine of the human soul. This doctrine has
undergone extreme modification in the course of culture It has
outlived the almost total loss of one great argument attached to
it, — the objective reality of apparitional souls or ghosts seen in

ANIMISM.

453

their con-
e to certain
f leave such
; stands for
fiism of civi-
wledge, is in

duct of the

rites of the
y, results of
)rward prac-
ligher races

new, modi-
th the new,

compatible
jral relation
e doctrine of
races within
uls is found
y. The souls
tn the theory-
low in some
jects expand
3nceforth, as
:.o barbarian
informed to
istent. Far
! half-meant
aevertheless
ude a philo-
aentary evi-
has reached
Is of beasts
be drawing
st and main
loctrine has
bure It has
attached to
)sts seen in

dreams and visions. The soul has jiven up its ethereal sub-
stance, and become an immaterial entity, "the shadow of a
shade." Its theory is becoming separated from the investiga-
tions of biology and mental science, which now discuss the
phenomena of life and thought, the senses and the intellect,
the r;motions and the will, on a groundwork of pure experience.
There has arisen an intellectual product whose very existence
is of the deepest significance, a " psycliology " which has no
longer anything to do with " soul." The soul's place in modern
thought is in the metaphysics of religion, and its especial office
there is that of furnishing an intellectual side to the religious
doctrine of the future life. Such are the alterations which have
differenced the fundamental animistic belief in its course
through successive periods of the works's culture. Yet it is
evident that, notwithstanding all this profound change, the
conception of the human soul is, as to itb most essential
nature, continuous from the philosophy of the savage thinker
to that of the modern professor of theology. Its definition
has remained from the first that of an animating, separable,
surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence.
The theory of the soul is one principal part of a system of
religious philosophy, which unites, in an unbroken line of
mental connexion, the savage fetish-worshipper and the civi-
lized Christian. The divisions which have separated the great
religions of the world into intolerant and hostile sects are
for the most part superficial, in comparison with the deepest
of all religious schisms, that which divides Animism from
Materialism.

END OF VOL. I.

llUADBUKy, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, AVHITEFRIARS.