THE SUPERNATURAL:
ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION.
Ex Libris
C. K. OGDEN
THE SUPERNATURAL:
ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION.
BY
JOHN H. KING.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; AND
20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
LONDON :
G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAiNTA BARBARA
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ... 1
BOOK I. The Origin and Nature of Supernal Concepts.
CHAPTER I. The organic tendency to evolve Super-
natural Concepts .... 13
CHAPTER II. The Supernatural attributes in things
conceived as due to impersonal, powers 29
CHAPTER III. Supernal Concepts derived from natural
appearances ..... 45
CHAPTER IV. The Evolution of Supernal Concepts in
dreams ...... 51
CHAPTER V. The inter-relations of the Supernal powers 66
BOOK II. The Evolution of the Supernatural.
CHAPTER I. Animal Concepts of the Supernal . . 77
CHAPTER II. The Concept of the uncanny as forms of
luck .... 89
CHAPTER III. The Evolution of Charms and Spells in
the individual mind .... 103
CHAPTER IV. The Differentiation of the Medicine-man 132
CHAPTER V. The origin of Ghosts Human and
Animal ...... 165
CHAPTER VI. The Evolution of ancestral worship and
the sentiment of Supernal goodness . 208
CIIAPIKI, VII. The Evolution of Human Ghosts and
Nature Powers into Tutelar Deities . -'I
CHAPIKI: VIII. The DiH'erentiation of King-Gods in
Egypt . 270
CHAIIM IX. Tin- Involution of the Gods of Assyria
Western
THE SUPERNATURAL:
ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION.
INTRODUCTION.
As the great abstract principles that regulate the inter-
relations of the various modes of matter and the various
forms of life become more and more cognizant to human
thought, we become conscious not only of their affinities,
but of their representative characteristics. As it is with
the organic and the inorganic, so is it with the organic and
mental.
Thus in the whole range of organic evolution no essential
stage in organic life has ever been lost, special forms have
perished, but organisms presenting every important stage
in evolution continue still to exist with the same vital
attributes that the first beings of their kind, so far as we
can judge from paleontological evidence, possessed. Thus
wo now have representatives of the whole scheme of
phylogenic evolution from the incipient exposition of the
uncentralized plasraic group through all the ranges of
unicellular organisms to the highest organic evolvement
yet known man. And while all the classes and orders
of living beings still have their representatives, the one
continuous unity of all life is still expressed by every
organism in its ontological development, passing through
the same essential stages as in ages past marked the
evolution of its ancestors.
1
INTRODUCTION.
Formative laws of an equally persistent character have
in like manner regulated the output of the mental powers,
and no mental forms once manifested have ever passed
away, and not only does the ontogenic mind pass through
the stages of the phylogenic mind, but, as is the case with
men, living men may express any form of thought, any
habit of will, any diseased, aborted or undeveloped mental
status ever manifested by any human beings. Body and
soul may revert to any possible stage of living continuity.
Hence we have ever persistent in our midst men who
are actuated by every form of emotion that savage and
barbarous races present. Not only are the crimes they
commit of the same nature as those committed by the
lower races, but their sentiments regarding such are wholly
influenced by the same undeveloped attributes. As with
the moral attributes, so with the intellectual, and it is even
so with their supernal sentiments. We have, in our midst,
men brought up under the ordinary conditions of modern
civilization who are influenced by the same class of supernal
thoughts as are noted among the lowest races who fear ghosts,
have faith in evil spirits and witches, who believe in luck,
charms and spells, and expect immediate Divine assistance
by praying to saint or martyr. On this subject Leland, in
his Gipsy Sorcery, writes : " A habit-and-repute thief
has always in his pocket or somewhere about his person a
bit of coal or chalk, or a lucky stone, or an amulet of some
sort on which he relies for safety in his hour of peril.
Omens he firmly trusts in, divination is regular!} 7 practised
by him. The supposed power of witches and wizards makes
many of them live in terror, and pay black-mail. As for
the fear of the Evil-eye, it is affirmed that most of the foreign
thieves dread more being brought before a particular magis-
trate who has the reputation of being endowed with that
fatal gift than of being summarily sentenced by any other
whose judicial glare is less severe.
" Not only is Fetish or Shamanism the real religion of
INTRODUCTION. 6
criminals but of vast numbers who are not suspected of it.
There is not a town in England or in Europe in which
witchcraft is not extensively practised. The prehistoric
man exists, he is still to be found everywhere by millions,
he will cling to the old witchcraft of his ancestors. Until
you change his very nature, the only form in which he can
realize supernaturalism will be by means of superstition.
Research and reflection have taught us that this sorcery
is far more widely extended than any cultivated person
dreams. It would seem as if by some strange process white
advanced scientists are occupied in eliminating magic from
religion, the coarser mind is actually busy in reducing it to
religion only" (p. 13).
But this survival of early supernal sentiments is not only
the result of inheritance ; it arises de novo in the aborted
mind from failure in development. It is a well-known fact
that there are human organic faculties withheld at the
lower types that mark the standard of the quadrumana,
quadrupeds, even reptiles; so in like manner the intellectual
powers may be stayed, and the moral faculties held back.
The son of normal elevated parents may be an idiot ; the
daughter of those purely chaste and morally refined may be
sunk in lewdness, in bestiality; the offspring of the just and
pure in thought and action may be a brutal coward, who
lies from the very pleasure of lying. So it is with the
expression of supernal sentiments ; the worshippers of an
abstract God who recognize the power of law and goodness
in all mental and material manifestations may beget sons
or daughters who cling to the lowest fetish powers and
regulate their volitions by omens and charms, and suppose
they can control the action of the elements and the souls
of men by the most trivial spells worked with filth, rubbish,
and the fragments of dead animals and men. Man indivi-
dually may advance to the full standard of his race, or ho
may be held back at any ontological stage.
Moro, the advanced man may not always retain the
1 *
4 INTRODUCTION.
status to which his mental powers have once advanced him,
he may degenerate, any faculty of the mind may retrograde,
and without arriving at second childhood, he may descend
to worship imbecile charms and cling to spells to save him
from devils and witches.
Hence we ever have with us, and possibly ever shall, not
only the maimed and aborted physically, but the maimed
and aborted mentally, and among these arising from
natural causes a due series of the worshippers of every
form of the supernal. It is by a comparison of the
respective status of these representatives of the various
concepts of supernals that we are enabled not only to define
the stages in the development of supernal ideas, but in
many cases the feelings that led to the evolvement of such
sentiments. In some cases we can, as in the history of
magic, witchcraft, and ghost presentations, recognize certain
historical data, but the universality of the theory of
impersonal powers and the evidence thereof presented in
all ages, seem to intimate that they are so grounded in
human nature as almost to denote an organic origin, and
we in one chapter show that the concepts of luck and
ill-luck are presented in certain bodily states apparently
without any mental volition. It would seem, as many affirm
of the God-thought, that ideas of fate, luck and fortune,
are inherent instincts in the mind.
With these organic feelings as the basis on which to
form his concepts of knowledge and rules of conduct, man
has to associate the three classes of perceptive ideas he
conceives, the apparent, the seemingly apparent, and the
ideationally apparent, and it is from the last two classes
that all supernal concepts are derived. Primary man, like
the infant of to-day, found himself more or less powerless
in the presence of the natural forces, and he sought some
means of protection outside his own physical powers.
Then it was that the ethical organic impulses in his nature,
acting through his seeming and ideational perceptions,
INTRODUCTION. 5
taught him to realize the concepts of supernal protecting
powers; these at first were the mere expositions of luck
according as the objects or acts were associated with
corresponding results.
Thus a series of false sentiments arise in the human
mind induced by its special organic sympathies, the same as
another class of physical and mental attributes become
defined in special instincts. All human supernal concepts
have the same primary source in man's organic sympathies,
and the forms in which they find expression depend on his
status in evolution. The mental and organic depression
that ensues when men recognize their powerlessness in the
presence of the real or the seeming induces them to seek
in the unexplainable powers they affirm sources of pro-
tective influences. The first sentiment thus evolved in the
mind of man is that of luck, fear of uncanny evil or the
desire for canny good, and now the same class of sentiments
predominate, in the lowest evolved minds and mark their
appreciation of the supernal.
As with every other human faculty, so with man's concepts
of supernal influence, we trace a gradual advance in the
nature of his deduction, a fuller and more enlarged expres-
sion of power, and a greater capacity to work out details.
Thus from the mere protective influence of chance in all
presentations, man advanced to the recognition of supernal
powers or virtues of an impersonal character present in
objects and appearances, and thus he learnt, that by certain
combinations, or may be, certain actions or words, he could
at his will exercise maleficent or protective powers ; thus
arose the doctrine of spells and charms. The forms of
these may vary, and the power once affirmed of a lucky
stone or hazel twig may now be associated with the relics
of saint or martyr. This phase of early supernal develop-
ment takes form according to the bearings of local sentiments,
and even now it represents a vast mass of the supernal
concepts of men, not only rude barbarians, or rustic villagers,
6 INTRODUCTION.
but those who deem they hold position among the elitt
in society.
As in the growth of society men assume certain duties
or are set apart for certain functions, owing to their more
especial attainments, so was it with men supposed to mani-
fest special supernal attributes. There are men now, as
there were men in the olden time, who indiscriminately
practise and even invent spells and charms ; but as the
local groups formed clans, some more acute or neurotic men
assumed or were accredited with greater powers in working
the spells and charms, they became the medicine men of the
local groups ; and now, instead of each man working his
own spell, selecting his own charm, he looked for protection
in the occult skill of the shaman, the mystery possessed by
the medicine man.
As every form of supernal protection denotes a distinct
aspiration for the good and power to withstand evil, so
it implies a special element of faith. We have seen that
this at first was founded on chance-luck, then on the con-
trolling power that gave occult virtues to things. After
the working of these powers became the privilege of men
supernally endowed. "We have now to consider the
evolution of a new supernal form of power, derived from
the dream ghost and which in successive stages advanced
from the standard of the vulgar apparition to the ancestral
spirit, the chieftain, the tutelar god, until it culminated in
the highest concept of divinity man has yet evolved. But
whatever its anthropomorphic or spiritual status, it is
always present to men as a form of luck, either as a protec-
tive god or malignant demon. Every form of faith is the
worship of luck.
Each local group of men evolved their supernal ghost
powers from their own race and their own suroundings, and
the attributes they attached to these powers were in all
cases derived from the status in evolution of their own or
the neighbouring races. Men could only attach power to
INTBODUCTION. 7
ghosts or spirits in accord with those present in the natural
world, physical or vital ; hence as men advanced in mental,
moral and social aspirations, so did their gods, and in the
attributes attached to the gods, we have the marks of the
human social evolution. The transcendental attributes
attached to spiritual manifestations were in all cases
derived from ideal readings of natural perceptions.
The lowest doctrine of faith, the primary religion, is thus
that of luck ; the universality of its influence all will acknow-
ledge. Under its conception powers and objects with
sympathetic influences are present to the mind as denoting
either good or bad fortune, luck or ill-luck, in harmony with
the organic and mental status of the individual.
In the second phase of supernal concepts the religion of
charms and spells the human mind has defined the good
and evil presentiments it holds as classes of transcendental
influences of a curative, protective, prophetic, and death
or disease-producing character. Thus each individual
conceives he can produce whatever result he wills by the
uncanny resources he has learnt how to utilize; hence he
protects himself with amulets, or influences himself and
others by using spells and charms.
The third stage of supernal evolution is the religion of
the medicine man, or magic, in which the ordinary mind
conceives that some men possess greater occult powers than
their fellows, derived from various sources, and are thereby
capable of controlling for good or evil the mystic powers of
the supernal. Under the influence of the medicine man,
through acquired neurotic states and dreams, the ghost, and
hence the spirit concept was evolved. Primarily the ghost
power was only evil, and men had to buy off the spirit or
spell-evil by offerings to the medicine man. Hence the
faith in, or religion of evil spirit influence became a phase
in the development of the supernal.
The origin of spiritual goodness, and the religion of
ancestral worship, followed as a necessary deduction from
8 INTEODUCTION.
men conceiving that the ghosts of their warriors and
leaders after death manifested the same protective
attributes as when living ; more so when, through the social
development, ancestral spirits were evolved and conjointly
therewith the doctrine of totem descent which raised
animals, trees, and all physical manifestations into spirit
kin-protectors. These began their supernal expression in
the individual, then the family, and after into tribal pro-
tectors, ultimately evolving into the religion of tutelar
deities. The subsequent God-phases which have been
evolved, pass from confederations of associate tutelar
powers to the ascendency of a Regal deity, then to that of
a Supreme Autocratic deity, and lastly to that of the
Universal Abstract God.
We have to show that these various stages of supernal
evolution are co-ordinate with human development or are
due to the original mind-powers possessed by great thinkers.
In the latter case they are only individual expositions, in
the former they are tribal. But, as in the stratification on
the earth's surface, there are local gaps, the coal measures
being deficient in one tract, the cretaceous formation in
another, so there are races of men who have failed to
manifest the ancestral supernal stage, while with other
races it has been persistent even when they have developed
the higher tutelar and chieftain forms of divinity.
What we have undertaken to demonstrate is that the
impersonal forms of supernal faith have preceded the
personal, and that when the supernal personal powers were
evolved by any race, they commenced with the lowest class
of ghosts or spirits, and in advancing they proceeded in
accordance with their own social development, to scheme
the divine government on the standard of their own social
state. Thus for instance when the Australian aborigine
came to recognize headmen in his tribe, then he built up
the theory of spirit headmen in the sky. So, generally
among the lower races of men when chieftain rule was
INTRODUCTION. 9
established chieftain gods were created. In no case was
the concept of universal rule ascribed to a deity before the
people were elevated to that sentiment by the human rule
of a king of kings.
Our purpose is to show by the internal evidence contained
in the supernal concepts of all the great races of men that
they have graduated through the various stages of supernal
development, and carry in their lower concepts of the
supernal, the survival forms of the archaic impersonal
manifestations as well as the more advanced concepts of
evil and good ghost powers. Hence we considered that it
was judicious to take in review the evidences of supernal
progress that the great races of men have presented,
holding that it was only by so doing we could demonstrate
the universality of the laws we propound that denote
supernal evolution.
More, in special chapters we detail the rarer instances in
which certain races have evolved the concepts of Supreme
and Abstract Deities ; then one giving a general retrospect
of the various forms of the God-idea now held by the
highest as well as lowest minds among the various races of
men. In conclusion we show that there have been men of
original mental capacity in all times and countries, whose
mental concepts have passed out of the limited role of their
contemporaries and have advanced to the full appreciation
of the oneness in nature the united and universal Deity.
This we demonstrate by a series of literary and historical
records.
BOOK I.
THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SUPERNAL CONCEPTS.
CHAPTER I.
The organic tendency to evolve supernatural concepts.
THERE is a natural tendency in the human mind to evolve
supernal sentiments. Luck and ill-luck have no existence in
themselves ; they are but forms of thought, and their special
deductions are due to the physical condition of the organism.
Men when organically depressed cannot help assuming the
prevalence of untoward conditions, nor when healthily
excited can they forego anticipating favourable results.
Incongruous, unsympathetic objects or appearances which,
without implying any definite danger or an active offensive
attribute, excite in us feelings of revulsion or dread, vague
concepts that bode us no good, we cannot account for these
influences in any other way than as the result of certain
mental and physical conditions, and according to the strength
of the impression is our fetish concept of the ill-luck or
good-luck supervening.
The portents that start the emotion may be in our
feelings, in any sense-impression of our own bodies ; they
may glance to us from the sky, and any object in nature
may seem to present other than its natural attributes.
Mnro, as misfortunes and other deleterious influences are
often affecting us, and these may seemingly be connected
in our minds with certain natural phenomena of time or
place, wo are apt to connect the phenomena with such
ts and thereby create sentiments of good or ill-luck.
Thus, the fear of some pending evil may override the
14 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
mental will and evolve uncanny influences, as with a
shying horse creating the sense of dread ever presaging
ill-luck.
The nature of these indeterminate sentiments of good or
ill depend upon the previous impressions on the mind, and
the special results thereof entertained, which, as ID all
human volitions and thoughts, have a tendency to be repeated
on like lines until they become sentimental habits.
Of the tendency of affirmed emotions of good or ill to
become chronic, Dr. A. B. Granville in his Autobiography
avows himself not only as a believer in presentiments, but
in the vulgar accredited forms of luck. He says, " I am
alarmed at the spilling of a salt-cellar. I don't like to meet
a hearse while going out of the street-door. I would not
undertake a journey or anything important on a Friday ;
and the breaking of a looking-glass would throw me into
fits. One afternoon I became suddenly depressed in spirits,
and this endured till the succeeding day when the knife
and fork, laid before me cross ways, startled me." So he
describes their appearance at the two following courses;
then on looking at his calendar he found it was a Friday.
In this case we have the predisposing physical depression
the sentiment of ill-luck and the iteration of like deductions
from trivial incidents associated with the sentiment.
Each distinct physical state produces its own forms of
supernal conceptions, often widely different; imbecility,
senility, the various forms of idiocy, are each distinguished
by their supernal tendencies as well as the special loss of
normal tendencies. There are men unconscious of moral re-
sponsibility, who have lost all preservative instincts, have no
fear, no sense of time or distance, who cannot co-ordinate
their own muscular powers are incapable of education and
exhibit mental reversions to the instinctive states of the
lower animals; so in like manner some men are devoid of all
supernal concepts, they know nothing of ghost or other
forms of delusion; incapable of kindness, they could not
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 15
conceive of a protective power, and equally some repudiate all
forms of luck ; they know nothing of God or spirit, and are
never troubled by any of the feelings or sentiments those
ideas imply.
To others the supernal is an ever present reality; they
recognize its presence as distinctly as the natural world, and
they obey its behests with the same direct affirmations as
they accord to their relations with all things living.
We only know of the supernal through human thought. We
see it expressed by others, we feel its sentiments in our own
minds, and we may infer from their actions that like influ-
ences affect some animals. The bird, the dog, the elephant
and other animals dream, but of the nature of the sentiments
left in their sensoriums we are wholly in the dark. In the
waking state animals exhibit the same dread and doubt, if
not terror, as men. In the presence of anything strange,
mysterious or uncouth, they manifest the same mental
emotions as the savage.
The bases on which all supernal concepts are founded are
the sentiments of Wonder, Fear, Hope, and Love ; and these
severally, according as they are evolved, give character to
the supernal concepts to which they become attached.
Under the general aspects of things there is a quiet accord
between the mind of man and the phenomena of the universe,
but should the condition of things lose its accepted normal
character then influences of dread fill the mind, and, as in the
presence of the eclipse or the meteor, if the dread is more
than spasmodic, man doubts the stability of the universe. So
it is even with less variations from the normal. It may be a
feather, a leaf, a stone, or an animal which presents unknown
characteristics and excites first wonder, then dread, and on
his failure to recognize their status they become to him
uncanny they are not natural and excite sentiments of
erratic influence, of supernal action.
That mere novelty may excite supernal sentiments may be
seen in the following incidents. 0. C. Stone, in a few
16 THE OEGANIC TENDENCY
Months in New Guinea, writes : " A few years ago they
had no idea of any land existing but their own, and when at
rare intervals the sails of some distant ship were seen on
the horizon they believed them to be a spirit or vaoha float-
ing over the surface of the deep " (p. 86) . Again, Gill, in
Gems from Goral Islands, writes : " When Davida landed he
brought with him a pig. Having never before seen any
animal larger than a rat, the people looked on this pig with
emotions of awe; they believed it to be the representative of
some invisible power. The teacher did all he could to-
convince them that it was only an animal, but they were
determined to do it honour ; they clothed it in white bark
sacred cloth and took it in triumph to the principal temple,
where they fastened it to the pedestal of one of their gods.
For two months her degraded votaries brought her daily
offerings of the best fruits of the land and presented to her
the homage of worship " (p. 77).
A man may not be able to explain all the normal common
phenomena that his senses present to him, yet in ordinary
cases he feels assured that they accord with the nature of
things ; but when from organic defect, mental excitation,
or vague perception his imaginative powers endeavour to
correct the impressions presented to his sensorium, they
become modified to the prevailing sentiments in his mind,
and may assume any supernal characters that his memory
reactions may induce.
The primary abnormal presentation only suggests the idea
of the uncanny, and there is in the unsubstantiality of the
perception a doubt or a fear of the nature of the object
excited. This may be like an incoming presentation in a
dissolving view entirely diverse from the full reality. So
little are the new perceptions determinate in the mind, that
the figures first accepted are regularly cast aside. We
have this mental phase presented by Hamlet when Polonius
accepts the semblance of a cloud as being that of a camel
or weasel, " or very much like a whale."
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 17
But not only may the false reasoning result from the
vagueness of the impression on the sensorium; the very
presence of the object seen may be an unreality of the sense
and only due to a morbid mental impression ; a persistent
idea from the arcana of the memory may seem a physical
reality. Dr. Hammond, in his work on Nervous Derange-
ment, gives the following illustrative case : " A lady of a
highly nervous temperament, one day intently thinking on
her mother and picturing to herself her appearance as she
looked when dressed for church, happening to raise her eyes,
saw her mother standing before her clothed as she imagined.
In a few moments it disappeared, but she soon found that
she had the ability to recall it at will, and that the power
existed in regard to many other forms, even those of animals
and of inanimate objects. She could thus reproduce the
image of any person on whom she strongly concentrated
her thoughts. At last she lost the control of the operation
and was constantly subject to hallucinations of sight and
hearing " (p. 81). There are many ghost presentations that
these mental phenomena may cover.
We may even carry the influence of the deceptive but
accepted supernal power another stage, in which even
unconsciously the organic powers act under the influence
of the memory, not the judgment. In the Journal of
Mental Science we read of a boy at school who had shortly
before lost his brother, both belonging to a family in which
psychical concepts were dominant. One day he "found
his hand filling with some feeling before unknown, and
then it began to move involuntarily upon the paper and
to form words and sentences. Sometimes even when he
wished to write, his hand moved in drawing small flowers
such as exist not hero, and sometimes when he expected to
draw flowers, his hand moved into writing; these writings
being communications from his spirit-brother describing
his own happy state and the means by which the living-
brother could obtain like felicity. Tho mother tried if the
2
18 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
spirit would move her hand with a pencil in it, but days
and weeks passed without any result. At last her willing
but not self-moved hand wrote the initials of the boy's
name, then after a time a flower was drawn. Afterwards the
father had the power of involuntary writing." (IV. p. 369,
&c.) This, like the forms of supernal suggestion, shows
how the memory, or even the organic parts, may evolve
habits outside the influence of the sensorium, and which it
accepts as denoting supernal manifestations.
Some subjective sensations, and therefore deemed by
some persons of a supernal nature, are due to organic
changes, and the individual receives impressions to which
others are not amenable. Thus in epilepsy, before fits,
there are subjective sensations of smell, and a scent
resembling phosphorus precedes loss of smell, and injuries
to the head cause all substances to have a gaseous or
paraffin smell. (Gower, Dis. of Nerv. Sys., II. p. 132.)
Hallucinations deemed supernal may affect any one or
more of the senses and express any possible form of
deranged activity, they may be wholly imaginative or a
blending of the real and the ideal, and they pass from
objective realities to subjective concepts, from concrete
facts to supernal manifestations. Hammond describes a
case in transition. A gentleman all his life was affected by
the appearance of spectral figures. When he met a friend
in the street he could not be sure whether he saw a real
or an imaginary person. He had the power of calling up
spectral figures at will by directing his attention for some
time to the conceptions of his own mind, and these either
-consisted of a figure or a scene he had witnessed, or a
composition created by his own imagination. Though he
had the power of calling up an hallucination, he had no
power to lay it; the person or scene haunted him. All
these cases intimate that local powers may be mentally
suggestive without the cognizance of the central judgment,
and thus evolve ideas that of necessity seem supernal.
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 1 &
The effects of such supernal concepts are not limited to
the recipient of the abnormal sensations, but affect the
sentiment of the supernal in all who are cognizant of the
case. To the perceptive individual they may be simply
realities ; and, however absurd or incongruous, he accepts
them as perfectly natural, or he may recognize their
subjective nature and, according to their characteristics,
attach any supernatural qualities to their presentations.
Those observant of the expressed hallucinations and ignor-
ant of the causes that may induce such, ever recognize
in them the output of powers not belonging to the natural
world and are apt to accept any supernal explanation
thereof that may be present to their thoughts.
The standard of natural perception is formed in each
man's own mind, and consequently as these differ so does
the perception or conception of the uncanny; every sense-
power may be excited or depressed, may tally with the
ordinary human scale, be deficient or extend beyond the
usual range. Under various forms of physical disorgani-
zation and mental alienation the sense-powers are often
perverted and in most cases give origin to fetish concepts.
Things not in existence may affect any one or more senses,
caused sometimes by the misperception of real objects, at
others the forms and feelings induced are all subjective.
One may always smell turpentine, another the odour of
fresh blood. One may always see a black cat before him,
another be constantly conscious of a human phantom
accompanying him. Voices may be heard by the disturbed
mind-powers; they may speak in whispers, they may come
from above or below, out of the sky or from the depths of
the earth. Thus Lord Herbert heard a sound from
Heave 11.
That the physical state of the organism which presents
the capacity to exhibit any supernatural state or power
iiniy In- induced by various means, is a fact not only well
known to the scientific observer, but is familiar to tho
2 -
20 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
medicine man in all countries. The prophetic state may
be induced the capacity to see visions, the power to affirm
spells, even the belief in our holding transcendental
attributes.
Naturally in certain organic derangements men exhibit
mental and bodily phenomena which are conceived to
indicate supernal influences, as forms of somnambulism,
catalepsy, ecstatic states, and epileptic and convulsive
abnormal conditions. These various symptoms being
deemed of supernal origin, led to the inference that like
conditions which could be induced by personal excitation of
various kinds, and more so by toxic agents, were of the
same character; hence it was the object of the rude medicine
men who, in the early social state, took charge of such
phenomena, to simulate by any means in their power similar
abnormal states.
In the hunt for food substances men readily learnt to
distinguish the various vegetal productions of their native
districts, into those good for food, and those having
baneful or exciting qualities, and from the latter the
individuals naturally neurotic and therefore most strongly
affected by toxics selected suitable materials to induce such
states, when for various social purposes they required to
manifest those special powers. The Australian aborigine
found such a neurotic agent in the leaves of a native shrub,
and when he obtained tobacco from white men that was
chewed for the same purpose. The Thlinkeet medicine
man produces a supernal delusive state by the root of a
Panax and the Siberian Shaman by the infusion of a
mushroom. Mediaeval witches in like manner, for like
effects, used preparations of nightshade, henbane, and
opium. Boisment describes the old Italian sorcerers as
making a cheese containing a drug which changed their
nature. Greek inspiration was said to have been produced
by inhaling mephitic vapours and various fetish drinks.
That infusions containing certain vegetal principles will
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 21
produce mental and bodily phenomena of remarkable
potency is generally known, and herbs and berries having
those powers have in all countries been esteemed as
possessing supernal virtues. Among these aconite, datura,
belladonna, and opium have ever held the highest status.
Van Helmont, after tasting the root of Napellus, said he
felt as if the power was transferred to the pit of his
stomach. Dr. Laycock having once accidentally taken a
drop of tincture of aconite, described the sensations that
came to him as strains of grand aerial music in exquisite
harmony, and most have read of the vast poetical imaginings
that are induced by opium and hachsbesh.
The power of manifesting states of inspiration and
prophetic powers was greatly enhanced when men learnt
to make intoxicating beverages, and there are few races of
men but have attained this knowledge. The mental
phenomena presented under the effect of stimulants may
be excited ideality, inspiration, the desire to prophecy,
or to manifest any extraordinary gift; and under these
conditions the wondering savage looks on and marvels,
deeming the herb or fruit capable of inducing such' effects
of divine origin and those special manifestations the evidence
of a supernal state.
Nor are the concepts of supernal action in man limited
to attributes derived from infusions of leaves and berries.
Like sentiments of the uncanny arise in various actions
which simulate corresponding states in epilepsy and mania
when men in dancing, leaping, rotating, and simulating
various animal activities, continue their unnatural actions
as if they would never cease, and seem to the onlookers
endowed with more than human powers of endurance.
That men under these induced states should claim the
possession of various transcendental powers as invisibility,
that of transformation, the conquest of time and space, and
special prophetic knowledge, is duo to the mental presenta-
22
THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
tions they have under such conditions, and as to the
onlookers so much that is wonderful is present to them they
are in the due mental state to readily accept such assumptions.
Hence the wide belief in mystic principles and powers, in
ghosts and spirits, in transformation, in the conquest of
death and disease, in the assumptions of controlling the
rain, the thunder, and modifying natural appearances.
Hence the belief in dreams, and in reading dreams in
charms and spells, and all the spiritual phenomena of the
later world.
The more extended knowledge of the properties of drugs
has demonstrated that there exist natural associations and
reactions between such principles and the various parts of
the human organization. When we read that Podophyllum
acts specially on the intestines, that Aconite diminishes
sensibility and Chloral withholds it, that Digitalis influences
the heart's action, Conium that of the nerves, that
Belladonna arrests the secretions and Cantharides stimulates
the sexual parts, we trace a method in the medicine man's
mode of proceeding.
These various facts real and assumed intimate that the
human organism has a natural tendency to evolve supernal
powers and principles, and that men duly constituted, either
naturally or by drugs, can no more withhold expressing
supernal beliefs than they can the use of their limbs for
walking. Men take faith as they take disease, by internal
change, by inoculation ; and as forms of growth, we may
even predicate the evolution of supernal symptoms by the
phenomena of the heavens. That there is a oneness in
the universal exposition of the supernal in fetish ideas,
ghosts, magic and classes of Divine beings only, ex-
presses the fact that all normal men hold the same organic
and mental powers, and are amenable to the same external
influences. A man can no more help believing in supernal
manifestations when his system is in accord with such forms
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 23-
of belief than he can resist the influence of sense-perceptions
on his mind ; they may be real or illusory, but he must
receive them and find their due place in his sensorium.
That there are great organic differences in individual
men we all know. It is patent to us all that we have our
own individual special affections, that we are variously
affected by things. This is well shown in Reynolds' s System
of Medicine. He writes : " Six people take an indigestible
meal and one of them suffers nothing, a second is troubled
with dyspepsia, a third with asthma, a fourth has an
epileptic fit, a fifth an attack of gout, and the sixth is
disturbed with diarrhoea." (I. p. 7.) So it is with a mental
presentation ; with one it is a normal object, another rejects
it as spurious, a third looks at it with wonder, a fourth with
doubt, a fifth detects in it a special emotion, while the sixth
is excited to rapture.
Nor is the influence once excited in the mind alike a
continuous form of expression, it changes as the individual
grows and is altered, and not only is the influence of normal
things modified in the development of the being, but the
spiritual sentiments, however attained, are liable to like
variations, even though the habit of life renders their
uniform concept the desire of the soul. Men fight against
the rising sense of change, they redouble their devotions,
they attempt to coerce the mind by bodily austerities,
but nothing avails, and they become heretics, even self-
excommunicated, and are cast off by self, earth, and
heaven, unless, by a great effort of will, they can accept
the new mental dispensation, and mould their lives to its
dictates.
The distinguishing attribute of man is to attach abstract
conceptions of relations to the objects that are perceived by
t-nses; hence, he readily draws not only general prin-
ciples out of extraneous presentations, but he attaches to
them special affinities and special powers, not intrinsic in
the object, but resulting from his own mental assumptions.
24 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
These assumptions may be founded on the actual indices
presented by the objects, and lead to the evolution of the
natural laws regarding the nature and actions of objects, or
they may be founded on imperfect concepts in things, or
false interpretations of phenomena by imperfect perception,
or they may be wholly ideal, and have no existence outside
the conceptive mind.
To the last class, we hold, belong all the many sentiments
which have built up the world of supernaturalism that
not only in a great measure engrosses human thought, but
tends so materially to excite, both mentally and socially,
organic states exhibiting the greatest amount of both good
and ill.
Sentiments of such importance, and so universal among
men, cannot be due to accident or chance ; there must be
some inciting cause in the human mind or its physical
organism to create such a wide range of assumptions,
and produce the mental state that was enabled to evolve
them. As an example of the organic tendency to form
supernal concepts, we take the case of Madame Hauffe, the
ghost-seer of Prevost, who at a vei*y early age manifested
a tendency to conceive transcendental presentations. When
almost a child she had premonitory and prophetic visions.
Blamed by her father for the loss of an article of value, she
dreamt upon it till the place appeared to her in a vision,
much in the same manner as Dr. Callaway describes the
Zulu boys divining the whereabouts of stray cattle, and,
equally with them, cases of unconscious cerebration. She
showed great uneasiness in passing by churchyards and in
old castles, and once saw a tall, dark apparition in her god-
father's house. At one time she was confined by a remark-
able sensibility in the nerves of her eyes, which induced in
her the capacity to see things invisible to ordinary eyes.
She was, after, subject to frightful dreams. After her
confinement for a long time she could not endure the light.
Then gradually her gift of ghost-seeing was developed ;
TO EVOLVE SUPEENAL CONCEPTION. 25
she had prophetic visions, divinations, and saw objects and
motions in glass, and spectral figures were commonly about
her. Their presence, she said, was confirmed by the opening
of doors, and no one present to do so, kuockings on the
walls, the ringing of glasses, and their moving, even in a
strong light. Amongst her spectral visitors was a knight,
whose coming was announced by loud noises and the candle-
sticks voluntarily moving. This spectre rehearsed one of
the old ghost tales of murder, contrition, and the gallows
moral, of conversion in the presence of death. Another
spectre was a short figure in a dark cowl, also a murderer,
and his discourses with her, or rather hers to him, in both
characters, were heard by the residents in the house ; and
he, like the other spectre, became femininely religious, and
desired to be present if we may use the phrase in his
invisible state at the baptism of her child. We are not
told whether he became godfather to it.
Later on she had visits by a tall female with a child.
These were announced by a sharp metallic sound. This
spectre was intensely religious ; and when Madame Hauffe
had taught her how to pray, the spectre appeared to her in
a white robe, claiming to be one of the redeemed. Others,
under her strong affirmation, declared they saw the same
spectres visiting her, with the usual accompaniments of
ghost tales, antique dresses, spots of blood, veils and babies.
Later on her multiplied experiences, after a tendency for
somnambulism set in, were most remarkable. Crystal put
in her hand awakened her, sand or glass on the pit of her
stomach produced a cataleptic state, the hoof of an elephant
touching her educed an epileptic paroxysm, diamonds caused
dilations of the pupils, sunlight induced headache, moon-
light melancholy, whilst music made her speak in rhythm.
On looking into tho right eye of a person she saw behind
her own reflected image that of the individual's inner self ;
on looking into tho left eye she saw the diseased organ
pictured forth, and was enabled to prescribe for it. Like
SO THE ORGANIC TENDENCY
those of the old medicine men, her prescriptions were mostly
amulets, though occasionally homoeopathic or old-wife herb
remedies. She claimed to read with the pit of her stomach,
but her reading only implied the conception of lucky or
unlucky; so, if it was good news, she expressed its inter-
pretation by laughing, if bad, by sadness. Her death
dreams were of coffins and children, but they might not be
realized for months. She affirmed that her spirit was in the
habit of leaving her body and passing into space, like as
with other mystics even the Australian wizard. She was
a strange blending of primary supernal concepts, with
modern spiritual innovations.
Nor is it only our waking sensations and mental exposi-
tions that are influenced by our organic condition. It is
the same with our perceptions and deductions in dreams.
We dream most of what the mind is most interested in, or
the state of the body most prominently presents to it.
Hence, as Macnish judiciously observes, " The miser dreams
of wealth, the lover of his mistress, the musician of melody,
the philosopher of science, the merchant of trade. So in
like manner the choleric man is passionate in his sleep,
a virtuous man with deeds of benevolence, that of a
humourist with ludicrous ideas." Deranged bodily in-
fluences in like manner give their special impressions in
dream forms ; " the dropsical subject has the idea of foun-
tains and rivers and seas in his sleep, jaundice tinges the
objects beheld with its own yellow, sickly hue, hunger
induces dreams of eating agreeable food, an attack of
inflammation disposes us to see all things of the colour of
blood, and thirst presents us with visions of parched oceans,
burning sands, and unmitigable heat."
Even self-willed thought to the ecstatic may not only
present ideal concepts as realities ; they may so affect the
sensations as to organically affect the organism, and induce
reaction by the special faculty. Thus Balzac alleged when
he wrote the story of the poisoning of one of his characters
TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTION. 27
in a novel, he had so distinct a taste of arsenic in his
mouth afterwards, that he vomited his dinner. (Taine,
Intelligence.)
So self-willing in certain neurotic states not only
conceives of prescient power, but itself affirms its own
wishes and deductions as prophetic declarations. Dr.
Hammond describes the case of a lady who thus would
promptly affirm as facts, not only the far distant as present
to her, as the affirmations in second sight, but that of the
future. (Mental Derangement, p. 14.) Du Prel cites cases
of organic monitions in dreams, as Galen's case of a man's
leg being turned in stone, and in a few days it was
paralyzed. Macario dreamt of an acute pain in his neck,
yet found himself quite well on awaking; but a few
hours after he had a violent inflammation of the tonsils. So
many other cases of premonitory signs felt in the deranged
part, and not in the sensorium. There are many local
premonitory indications which by unconscious cerebration
reach the consciousness and seem to it prophetic.
CHAPTER II.
The supernal attributes in things conceived as due to
impersonal powers, or spirit action.
MEN almost universally recognize the existence of supernal
objects and powers, as well as material objects and powers.
As a general rule the objects and the powers of the
material world convey like ideas of form, colour, and
action to the minds of all men, however much they may
differ in regard to their causation or origin ; but while the
general supernal concepts are not only varied and diverse,
there are men who deny in toto the presence or powers of
supernal agents, yet no one disputes the existence of his
own personality, nor the presence of other things, or the
forces present in wind, fire, and water. The facts in the
material world depend upon the amount of knowledge an
individual man possesses ; the disputed concepts of supernals
rather express the absence of knowledge, and that its
duties are supplemented by mystic idealizations, and these
take the special characters of the race and the time.
If we endeavour to follow the evolution of the various
forms of supernal concepts, we find we are thwarted in the
first place by the absence of all evidence of the original
state of man and the rise of each subsequent supernal
sentiment. In this direction we have no records. Neither
is there at present in existence any tribes of men whose
mental character expresses the primary type. But though
we are thus devoid of historical data, we have other
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 29"
resources that will enable us to classify and explain the
stages in the evolution of supernal ideas.
The scientific naturalist has been long familiar with the
fact that the ontology of the individual expresses the types
in the phylogeny of the race, and that if the mind or
faculties of an individual are from any malcause restrained
in development, the mind or body exhibits the reversionary
types of those stages. As supernal sentiments are one of
the forms of mental evolution it necessarily follows that
living individuals may at all times express the immature
stages of the supernal phenomena. Hence to become
cognizant of the origin and progress of supernal senti-
ments, it is only necessary that we duly classify the
supernal ideas expressed by individual men. To do this
we must be able to mentally form a scheme of supernal
evolution as a basis for our deductions.
There was a time, and that not long distant, in which it
was taken for granted that the assumed presentations of
supernal forms and volitions were considered as real as
those of the material world, and in which the differences
between the highest and lowest supernal natures but
marked the special standards of evolution; not essential
typical differences. The old writers classified the supernal
beings and supernal states according to the standards of
supernal powers they were presumed to hold, and without
explaining the difference defined all supernal manifestation*
as being due to ghosts or spirits or to the occult powers of
magic.
No doubt the old mystics confused and blended the
phenomena of magic with spirit manifestations, though
they often distinctly expressed the one as the inherent
virtue in things and ascribed the other class to the-
willing volitions of spirits; but modern writers on the
nature of supernals, with the ghost theory prominently in
their minds, deduce all supernal manifestations as the
varied modes of action of ghosts and spirits. With them.
30 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
the beginning and end of all forms of supernalism are
deduced from, at first, the concept of the human ghost
through dreams, and the after evolvement of spirits in all
material things and forms of material power.
Dr. Tylor, in his Primitive Culture, has collected a vast
mass of local conceptions of spirits and their ghostly con-
nection with humanity. These which represent the various
stages of the passage of the ghost into the higher spiritual
personality are, however, unfortunately mixed up with some
lew of the many expressions of supernal power that have
nothing ghostly in their attributes. It is strange how
commonly the facts which present the influence of occult
virtue or power as an inherent quality in things, are mixed
up with the more advanced idea which conceives the power
to express a willing and selective mind. We recognize a
wide difference between the natural chemic powers in
objects and even their physical manifestations to those
presented by mental thought and will, and we never apply
the concept of self-willed thought or judgment to the
action of medicaments or the virtues in mystic stones.
No one prays to an amulet, no one treats the lucky stone
as having a will, no one supposes that the curative
material, whether a medicine or a charm, has any choice
in the matter. Yet all these impersonal powers or attri-
butes are classed by Dr. Tylor with, and as, ghost manifes-
tations. We know there are many objects in which we
perceive the active powers of selective animals some in
which, according to vulgar conception, certain so-called
ghost or spirit-attributes are generally recognized; but
there are also various objects, the action of which on other
materials and the attributes they present to the human
mind, imply the presence of an impersonal passive power,
good or evil only to the one possessing it. More, the
same object may to one man convey the idea that it repre-
sents an impersonal attribute, while another man may
conceive that it expresses ghost or spirit-power. If the
A3 DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 31
force were its natural attribute it would express that
character to all men, but when it is only supposititious it
mere.y expresses the tone of mind of the beholder.
Among the incidents quoted by Dr. Tylor to affirm the
general spirit is one from Homer in which a negress pro-
poses to effect a cure by tho suppliant killing a white
cock, and then after tying it up place it at a four-cross-
way, or he was simply to drive a dozen wooden pegs into
the ground and thereby bury the disease. Both these
magic formulae have no ghost or spirit-will, they merely
present an impersonal charm-power. So the virtue in the
Australian's bit of quartz has no necessary connection
with ghost-action, though according to their advanced
theory a spirit might use it; the actual boylya is in the
mineral itself, and the same impersonal power may be used,
as in the case he quotes, to conquer a spirit's evil influence.
That similar boylya powers were once common among the
Caribs and at the Antilles only implies that the impersonal
occult charm-power preceded the concept of a fetish ghost-
power, not that they are the same thing. "We infer that
the supposition of spirit or ghost making use of the
charm-stone was long subsequent to the original rnagic use
of it by men, and that by an after-thought when ghosts
were conceived they repeated as in so many other things
their actions when men, but in no case even now among
races like the Australian aborigines have men worked out
the concept of ghost or spirit-created evil, they only make
use of the same impersonal powers as men. The Malagassy
are in au intermediate state between the man who only
knows a charm-evil, and the one who ascribes tho evil to
the personal action of a ghost or spirit. Thus we are told
that they ascribe all diseases to evil spirits, but the diviner
docs not expel the spirit-caused disease by the will of a
more powerful spirit, but calls to his aid impersonal charms,
from which wo infer that they were originally caused by
chasms for which afterwards ghosts were substituted, but
32 Till] SUPEENAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
like the higher races of men they had not evolved the higher
god concept of exorcism ; so impersonal charms in the form
of a faditir were employed to conquer the disease. No
doubt originally the Carib and the Malagassy saw the
origin of the disease as an evil spell and cured it by a good
spell, but as with so many other races of men they had
evolved the Bhute or evil spirit but not the good or guar-
dian spirit. So in the case of the Dyaks of Borneo, it is
not the evil spirit that has caused the injury either by its
active personal interposition or by the higher form of
possession, it is the impersonal fetish stones and splinters,
which through the magic of the spell have entered his body
and which the medicine man affirms by his greater boylya
he is able to extract.
Even the case of Dr. Callaway's Zulu widow, who affirms-
she is troubled by her late husband's ghost haunting her,
not in her, and which the medicine man lays by certain
charm objects, not conquering it with a greater spirit
power, exhibits the same stage of evil-spirit injury and charm
cure. In like manner the Mandan widow talking to her
husband's skull held that his spirit was present; the same
with the Guinea negro and the bones of his parents which
he prayed to ; but in these cases we are presented with a,
higher stage of supernal development, the power of good as
well as evil spirits. The same sentiment is manifest in the-
very idea of penates, household gods, and tutelar deities.
In the instance of finding a thief quoted by Dr. Tylor
from Rowley's Universities' Mission, we have the contest of
the two principles impersonal fetish and ghost evidence.
The medicine man affirmed the woman selected as guilty
by the spirit was indeed guilty, but the charm ordeal, wiser
than the spirit, absolved her and she was acquitted.
We now have more immediately to do with those
influences whether pro or con that express luck, curing
or protecting the wearer and presaging good or evil to him.
In no case do objects holding these virtues necessarily
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 83
express this power by ghostly or spiritual influence. Ghosts
may in some cases be affirmed as the inducing causes, but
we hold when such is the case that originally the sentiment
was impersonal, and that the attribute, when the ghost
became a power, was transferred to it. But not only among
savage races, but among all classes of men who hold the
doctrine of luck and the other impersonal attributes, we
look in vain for any evidence that they hold the inter-
mediate agent as a ghost or spirit, and we therefore demur
to the tone in which amulets are mentioned in connection
with the exposition of ghost sentiments. Neither the igno-
rant and superstitious, nor those more enlightened who con-
sider their mysterious virtues as quaint survivals from the
past, ascribe those virtues to an indwelling ghost or spirit,
or even assert a personality in the object. They never
affirm that the power is expressed by will in the form of
choice or selection, but that the unconscious virtue serves
its possessor the same as any other substance, and like a
piece of coal it might lie inert in the earth to no end of time
and only exhibit its active or presumed virtue when man
utilized it. But amulets become idols when the man who
possesses them esteems that they hold angels or demons, as
in the case of the Dacotah who painted his boulder and
called it grandfather and prayed to it ; but we ought always
clearly distinguish such personified idols from impersonal
mystic objects. In the one series the power is ascribed to a
mental activity, in the other to a mere passive, insensate
agent.
Surely there is no difficulty in a man recognizing one
form of power in a boiling crater, others in the lightning
flash, the bursting of a torpedo, even in the ascent of warm
vapour, the flowing of a stream or the inrolling of the sea.
So in like manner flame has its own special virtue of burn-
ing, water of cleansing, stone of hardness, nml these virtues
act on diverse things in different ways. Besides, the stone
or other object may have many like passive powers. So
3
34 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
with the Indian imbued with, fetish sentiments there was
nothing extravagant in attributing to stones luck for crops,
for women in labour, and for bringing sunshine or rain.
We know these powers never were in the stones any more
than the often iterated power of luck, or of curing disease
or protecting from ills. These were all mental occult
powers and only existed in connection with the stone in the
mind of man, and men could only ascribe powers to objects
which they did not naturally express by already having
formed these concepts in their minds, consequently the
power affirmed can only exhibit the same status as the mind
of its exponent.
Dr. Tylor quotes several instances of charms which have
no ghost or spirit attribute, as Pliny's statement of the ail-
ment in a patient's body being transferred to a puppy or
duck. This form of charming is common in fetish leechdom.
So the Hindu's third wife having her husband first married
to a tree was only a charm to keep away from her what she
esteemed a fetish influence, and the father's trousers being
turned inside out in China to save the babe from uncanny
influences. These and many other presumed evil influences
may and have been evolved into forms of ghost and spirit-
evil, but in the stage in which Dr. Tylor puts them they
only express impersonal occult evil influences, not spirit
manifestations. They are like all the folk-lore spells and
charms, simply prestiges of uncanny influences. He admits
that modern folk-lore still cherishes such ideas, and he
quotes instances yet does not appear to note that these
admissions nullify his own theory that such evils and
diseases are supposed to arise only from ghost and spirit
powers.
In like manner with Dr. Tylor, Herbert Spencer ignores
all the assumed powers of charms and spells, and from his
statement of first principles we should not be led to infer
that such concepts even now guide and influence the minds
of the greater part of human beings. In his observations
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OK SPIRIT ACTION. 35
on fetish he sees the power, not as an attribute of the object,
but resulting from the mental action of the spirit controlling'
it. He appears to know nothing of the assumed impersonal
powers in precious and other stones, and in all fetish objects,
but conceives that these things represent the higher attri-
butes of ghost or spirit-powers. All the primitive magic
supernal powers denoting luck and ill-luck, curative, protec-
tive, and presaging powers, are by him passed over without
comment; he ignores the whole philosophy of the impersonal,
it does not appear in his scheme of evolution.
Sir J. Lubbock, in tracing his concept of the evolution
of religion, similarly ignores all the primary ideas on which
the more developed faiths were built. The beginning of
religion with him is the birth of the ghost. It is true he
illustrates natural magic, and quotes a few cases of imper-
sonal divination, but he fails to perceive that they point to
other than ghost power. The needles which floating
designate living men, and the one sinking the dead man,
and the mats of the Zulus which cease to cast the shadow,
are considered as marks of ghostly intervention, not as
presaging impersonal monitions. So the sticks which
indicate the living by standing when planted but falling
when the personality they represent is dead, with him
present not self-contained occult powers, but the direct,
action of ghosts. The same ghost personality is attached
to Father Merolla's experience of witchcraft.
Our inquiry into the nature and attributes of supernal
powers intimates that they are all deductions from the
forms of power in the natural world, the ghost is the type
of mental power, human or animal. But the forms of
power in the natural world are not all mental: we have
power as expressed by mat i rial physical force; we have
r as presented by the chemical interchange of atoms ;
we have power as manifest in the action of the celestial
bodies, the change of day and night, summer and win
we have special powers as denoting the attributes of like
3 *
36 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
objects of the most varied character. Now all these forms
of power have their supernatural as well as their natural
deductions in the minds of men. It is from the supernal
concepts of human and animal activities men have deduced
the whole series of ghost and spirit manifestations. So in
like manner from the physical forces the chemical trans-
formations the influence of the sun, moon, and stars, and
the general phenomena of the elementary bodies men
have evolved all the lower phenomena of supernal powers.
We thus have two great series of supernatural forces : the
impersonal derived from the attributes of things, the
personal whose origin is seen in mental action human or
animal. These two series of forces are absolutely distinct
in the natural world, but it is a common thing to blend
their powers in human supernal concepts. Hence, while in
the living material world we never lose the actual dis-
tinctions of the mental and the material, we are in supernal
relations always confusing and blending these distinct
powers. Hence, a stone may not only have its own natural
attributes as a mineral substance, but it may have mental
characteristics, it may have volition, it may hear, talk,
manifest selective attributes and emotions, at one and the
same time being both personal and impersonal. Hence we
can understand how it happened that impersonal attributes
were denned as ghostly manifestations, and the common
tendency to read material transcendental qualities as
spiritual manifestations. We have already shown in con-
sidering Dr. Tylor's ghostly supernalisms how the two
powers are blended in the same series of supernal relations.
Many impersonal attributes, because they are attached to-
objects that formed parts of organic personalities, are
supposed to be under ghostly influence, and their canny or
uncanny expressions are inferred to be due to the ghost
once connected with them. That this is a false deduction
we infer in the case of parts of animals esteemed as amulets,
whether curative, protective, or denoting luck. It is not
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 37
that the mind of the animal dwells in the bone, or claw, or
hair, or feathers ; it is the special fetish power that the
claw or feather exhibited, and which was a power beyond
its own mental to the animal itself, and which continues
still in the bone or claw now that the animal ghost-
mind has gone out of it. The impersonal power was in the
claw or nail when it formed part of the animal and at the
service of the animal ; and the same impersonal power is
devoted to its new possessor whoever he may be.
We are not aware that this aspect of the supernal
question has ever been propounded, or that those who
trace a ghost connection in the assumed supernal power
continuous in the claw or bone, ever realize that men at
one time affirmed special occult powers to the various parts
of organisms individually distinct and separate from the
mental powers that govern the general organism. It was
so with feathers and bills of birds, teeth and claws of
carnivorous animals, and generally expressive of the heart,
liver, and other internal parts. It was manifest in phallic
worship. We recognize its influence in the cannibal
custom of eating the heart of a brave enemy. In all these
instances a special power distinct from the ghost, soul, or
spirit manifestation is affirmed of an impersonal nature.
More, there are occult powers supposed to be widely
diffused, that by no question of gender, no characteristic
of origin, is it possible to affirm or denote a ghostly
nature. These mystic impersonal powers active for
good or evil, curative or destructive exist in days and
hours, in the position of the heavenly bodies, in forms, in
words, even in the direction in which objects are placed ;
any of these characteristics may override not only the will
of an individual but that of thousands, as in war, or at
birth, or in connection with any individual or multiple of
individuals performing certain volitions. None of tlu>r
forms of occult power are duo to the soul of any individual
or the person they affect. It may bo due to the accident
38 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
of the hour of birth, it may result from neglecting to make
chalk marks on the wall of the room, as with the Jews in
which the child-bed woman lies ; or the neglecting to affix
the sign of the bloody hand, as is customary with
Eastern races. These customs, or charms, belong to the
ante-ghost age, and their place was supplied at the
evolution of the ghost by the mental action of guardian
angels and evil demons.
It thus appears that there exist, or are presumed to
exist, many forms of supernal power ; and our purpose is to
trace their origin and status, and as we have no historical
data to aid us, we are thrown upon the internal evidence of
such facts that they present; and it is from the examination
and classification of the various characteristics and their
special relations to men that we have deduced our scheme
of the development of supernal ideas.
There is one important deduction we would point out
that is, all the impersonal forms of power may be accounted
for by natural deductions from physical states and symptoms,
while the supernal attributes of ghosts are either deductions
from the impersonal attributes, or have no explainable
origin. Thus the prophetic character which would seem
essentially a ghostly attribute, is simply an attribute that
arises as we have seen from the state of the organic
capacity; there are certain medicaments that produce it.
Colquhoun, in his History of Magic, also writes : " The
delirium which accompanies certain inflammatory disorders,
especially of the brain, frequently assumes a prophetic
character. De Seze holds it to be undisputed, that especially
in inflammation of the brain and in apoplexy ecstatic states
occur in which not only ideas are acquired, but also
extraordinary powers are displayed of penetrating into the
secrets of futurity.'" (I. p. 61.)
In the impersonal state all forms of curing are the result
of the inherent virtues that are affirmed as existing in
things or actions. In the intermediate state this is pre-
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 3&
sented as due to certain actions in connection with the will
of the agent after it is simply effected by the power of will,
be it by a man, a ghost, or a spirit.
The various mental states, modes of sympathy and
affinity, have their impersonal as well as personal attributes;
the impersonal would be affirmed long before the personal
were known. This is exemplified in the special action of
toxics, various infusions of material substances producing
special bodily and mental states; thus alcohol from wine
induced gay drunkenness, while that from grain induces
furious intoxication. The taking absinthe results in paralysis
of the legs. Cherry-laurel water taken by a woman pro-
duces a religious ecstatic state the eyes are turned up, the
arms slowly raised, the hands being extended to heaven;
other symptoms are, falling on the knees, weeping in a
state of prostration, and having religious transcendental
visions. These characteristics that are ascribed to spiritual
possession in toxic states are due to special material sub-
stances, and the various transcendental expositions has each
its own material origin. Thus the cherry-laurel water holds
in it two toxic principles prussic acid, and the volatile oil
of laurel. The convulsions in the ecstatic state are due to the
prussic acid, and hallucinatory visions to the volatile oil.
Thus the compound ecstatic state results from taking the
two in connection, or either of its special manifestations
may be induced by taking the special agent. Other toxic
agents are nitro-benzol, which produces convulsive shocks
and visions, and Valerian induces violent excitement.
(Journal of Sconce, VII. p. 780.)
Not only real but presumed mental states are affirmed
to arise from impersonal attributes, as in all cases of assumed
sympathetic relations. Bacon, in his Sylva Sylvarum,
writes: "To superinduce any virtue or disposition in :i
person, choose the living creature wherein that virtue is
most eminent, and at the time when that virtue is most
exercised, and then apply it to tho part of a man wherein
40 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
the same virtue chiefly exists. Thus to superinduce courage,
take a lion or cock and choose the heart, tooth, or paw of
the lion and take them immediately after he has been in
fight, so with a cock, and let them be worn on a man's
heart or wrist."
All the transcendental qualities ascribed to ghost and
spirit interposition equally exist in the impersonal attributes
in things, and from which we esteem they were primarily
educed. Of these we may specify the power in impersonals
to give diseases to cure diseases, to rack and torture the
body or the mind, to render men impotent, women un-
fruitful, to cause injuries and death. So the power of
transformation of permeating solids annihilating space and
time are common attributes without the intervention of
ghost. We doubt whether any first principle of a supernal
nature has ever evolved from ghostly influences. All the
characteristic actions of fetish, of magic, of devilry and
spiritualism, are presented in impersonal attributes.
As the Australian aborigines are the lowest race of which
we have anything like a full exposition of their supernal
concepts, we will endeavour to find what of them are primary
derivations from impersonal sources, and what are due to
after-ghost theories. The fullest exposition of these senti-
ments are those given by Mr. Howitt in his essay on the
attributes of the medicine man in the Journal of the
Anthropological Institute. The supernal power exists in
the wizard himself, it is not derived, as we shall show,
from any ghost or spirit, but evolves in his own nature by
induced bodily conditions resulting from fasting, toxics,
solitude, sleeplessness, and acquiring by fetish actions
boylya from other men. In using this personal power he
does not appeal to ghosts or spirits, but to the fetish
attributes and powers in things. Thus, he by his magic
propels the mystic quartz-stone into his victim as any
other man by his physical power might do ; it is the occult
virtue in the stone itself that then works evil in the mind
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 41
of the man, or rather we should affirm, that all is semblance;
and the mind of the man, itself susceptible of occult
inGuence, accepts the theory that the stone is in his body,
and fetish fear brings about the presumed result. It is the
same impersonal power which induces action when the
quartz crystal is placed in the victim's footsteps, or when
the Casuarina cone exhibits its affirmed mystic power. In
the mixing the flesh of a dead man with tobacco, and the
roasting of something fetish once part of a man, or that has
simply touched him, the fetish is neither in the fetish
object or in the dead man's part thus utilized, it requires
the two or more objects to be united, and the uncanny
influence of the dead man's ghost has no part in the affair
any more than the ghost of the fetish animal gives power
to the nail or claw charm. The spell, as we have said, is in
the purport of the object and had the same consistency
when it formed part of the animal as when it affected
the man's supernal concepts by possessing it.
In like manner the abstraction of the omentum fat was a
mystic not ghostly rite, or a cannibal act under the sup-
position of presumed sympathetic relations. So with the
medicine man's transcendental claims they are not due to
ghostly or spirit interposition ; but powers, he presumes, he
acquired through the boylya in him, that a supposititious
impersonal qualification. Such is his assumed invisibility,
his power of ascending into the sky, of transforming himself
into a kangaroo or even the stump of a decayed tree, and
the clairvoyant power of telling who caused his death which
ho simply derives from knowing whose quartz crystal he
takes out of his own or the victim's body, the same as men
tell the nationality of a shot, a lance, or arrow-head by its
make.
So the wizard's magic tool, the bone Yulo. Its virtue has
no connection with a ghost, but to its being a fetish com-
bination of the fibula of a kangaroo with cords formed of
: -s of human skin or human sinews. Rain-making and
42 THE SUPERNAL ATTEIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED
weatlier-making are simply magic done by magic songs or
spells. The power in the throw-stick pointing to the
sleepers, which falls when the fascination is completed, is
equally impersonal as a spell as is the sucking to draw out
the evil object in sickness; they never exorcise a spirit, but
by fetish actions presume to withdraw the fetish cause of
ill, they also cured diseases by charm songs and various
manipulations.
The first intimation we have of personal supernal power
being claimed by the Australian wizard is that of the
ghost or soul of the living, not of the dead, going at night
to look at his victim in the grave. Other imitations of a
ghostly nature arise in the abnormal wizard initiations, as-
when the novice sees in the tiger-snake his Bunjan, and
when in his dreams he is present at a corrobery of
kangaroos. When there is so little of the presence of
ghostly influence in the whole range of the Australian's
supernal concepts, we conceive it intimates either the very
modern evolvement of the ghost theory in his sentiments,
or may be its acquisition from without. Essentially his
supernal concepts are limited to the religion of charms and
spells, the ghost and evil spirit being forms of supernal
power that are only now acquiring influence in his
sentiments.
There are various instances given in which the mode of
causing injuries or disease are defined as being personally
done, not by a ghost, but by a living medicine man, whose
possession of the enchanting power, or boylya, enabled him
to fly through the air and, invisible, work his spells! A
native in Sir Gr. Grey's Journals of Discovery, describes the
nature of this power as possessed by living men. " The
boylyas eat up a great many natives, they eat them up as
fire would. They move stealthily, they steal on you, they
come moving along in the sky, the natives cannot see them,
they do not bite, they feed stealthily, they do not eat the
bones, but consume the flesh" (II. p. 339) . As an illustration
AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 43.
Sir George 'quotes the case of a native who injured his
spine by falling from a tree; paralysis of the lower parts of
the body ensued, and as so commonly occurs under such
conditions, the man wasted away and died. The natives,
however, holding their special concepts of the wizard's
power, read the progress of the disease in the lines that
theory presented. They affirmed that the wizard had
obtained fetish power over the man by having obtained
possession of his cloak used it as the means to work his
supernal spell, first he broke his back by causing him to
fall from the tree, then disguised he attended him, and in
his invisible state applied fire (inflammation) to the injured
part to increase the potency of the charm ; the wasting
away of the body was due to the unfriendly wizard coming
in the night and feasting on his flesh (II. p. 323).
That many writers ascribe to the Australian aborigines
the full development of the theory of ghosts and spirits, we
are aware. Oldfield speaks of the wizards working their
evil designs by the aid of malevolent Ingnas, the same as
the devil-workers of the Middle Ages, and of these ghost
spirits haunting all sorts of places; but the deeper researches
of such men as Howitt explain them as acting under a much
lower class of influences. The white man commonly looks
for a God, and devils; he anticipates the presence of ghosts,
and every supi-mal exposition of savages, however low and
incoherent, he refers to one or other of those supernal
sentiments. If the statements of Mr. Howitt and many
others are to bo relied upon, the Australian native mind
uninfluenced by white men has only the most meagre
concept of a ghost or spirit, the idea special to the race is
the acquisition of the power of enchanting through the
boylya influence and working that power in the person
<>f tho boylya man by means of spells and charms which,,
though of the sarno character as among other barbarous
races, are of local origin.
We may note in another race how the white man's
44 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED.
sentiment of the nature of supernal evil is suggested to
people who know nothing of devils. Darwin in his Journal
refers twice to the fact that the simple Fuegian who had
been staying some time on the vessel and had thereby
become inoculated with the devil sentiment, repudiated
it as a belief of his people, and though he abused other
tribes he did not conceive that their dead men became evil
spirits. There was no devil in his land. All he appeared
to dread was the fetish influence of the elements, and the
mystic powers of the bad wild men.
The two chief charms that the Australians make use of,
are simply impersonal spells ; and these as the charm objects
of other races are either drawn from animals, or vegetables,
or stones, but in all cases their virtues are not due to
ghostly influence, but to their own intrinsic powers. That
so many materials used in spells are supplied by animals to
produce spells, may be accounted for by their having
presented vital powers of action; but we have no evidence
that these powers were continued to be influenced by the
ghost of the animal that once owned them ; rather, as we
have seen, these special powers are always esteemed to be
at the service of the present owner of the fetish object.
The Australian Yountoo is a charm to produce sickness.
It is a small bone from the leg of one man wrapped in a
piece of flesh cut from another man and tied with a string
made from the hair of a third. This charm taken to the hut
of the man to be enchanted, is placed before the fire
pointing to him, then a small piece of the bone is broken
off, cast on the victim, and afterwards burnt. The Molee
is a piece of white quartz with a string of opossum fur
gummed to one end ; this also is pointed at the intended
victim and then burnt. In either case to cure or destroy
the spell, the wizard has to suck out the charmed bone or
stone. (Jour. Anthrop. Inst., XIII. p. 130.)
CHAPTER III.
Supernal concepts derived from natural appearances.
MANY phenomena read as supernal are the natural in
unusual conditions. Such was the colossal figure of an
angel seen in the heavens at Florence, due to the special
form of a cloud and the position of the sun, in relation to
the image of the gilded angel on the top of the Duomo, and
as the cloud slowly moved the reflection seemed hovering
over the city. Ships have thus been seen, with their
canvas and colours abroad, floating in the sky. Of a liko
origin is the " Spectre of the Brocken " and the " Fata
Morgana." In the moving lights, as sometimes observed
in the Aurora Borealis, the Icelander beheld the spirits of
his ancestors, and many have discovered armies and
torrents of blood in the lambent meteors of a wintry sky.
It needs but colour and faint gleams of light for the mind
to conjure up definite idealisms.
A gentleman travelling in Scotland put up at a small
inn. He found on retiring to bed that a pedlar had died
in the room, and that from superstitious motives the people
had declined to take the corpse through the doorway, but
had removed the small window, breaking away part of the-
wall. The window had been replaced, but the irregular
gap left. Full of this incident, he had a dream of a fright-
ful apparition before him, and in his half-wakeful state the
appearance still was before him, and he saw a corpse
dressed in a shroud reared erect against the wall by tho
46 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DERIVED
window. After a few minutes lie passed one hand over it,
but felt nothing, and staggered back. When he renewed
his investigation the mental image was laid, and he found
the object of his terror was produced by the moonbeams
coming through the gap in the broken wall. (Ferriar on
Apparitions, p. 27.)
In the ordinary inexpressive nature of things, there is no
supernal all are passive, inert, and excite no special emo-
tion ; it is only when there is a movement, be it in waves of
light or colour, or sound, or in a pressure felt, the cause of
which is unseen, that the sentiment of the uncanny arises.
Smyth, in his Aborigines of Victoria, gives an illustration of
this mental origin of the supernal. " In Victoria, where
hot winds and other electrical disturbances of the atmo-
sphere are common, the natives used to think that the
ground was haunted, and that the swirls of dust so often
seen in the summer-time were caused by demons passing
along in the ground/'
A remarkable illustration of vague optical perceptions
becoming spiritualized, is seen in the following statement
-of Big Plume, a Blackf oot Indian. He said : " The souls of the
Indians go to the sandhills east of the Blackfeet territory.
At a distance we can see them hunting the buffalo, and we
can hear them talking and praying, and inviting one
another to their feasts. In the summer we often go there
and see the trails of the spirits and the places where they
have been camping. I have been there myself and have
seen them and heard them beating their drums. We can
see them in the distance, but when we get near they vanish.
I believe they will live for ever. There will still be fighting
between the Crows and the Blackfeet in the spiritual
world." (Reports, Brit. Asso., 1887, p. 387.)
The natural world is always the source of the supernatural,
consequently a man's spiritual deductions harmonize with
the phenomena of his geographical position. Does not the
of Zerdusht in the opening chapters of the Avesta,
FROM NATURAL APPEARANCES. 47
dwelling on the double character of the surrounding scenery,
with its arid deserts and richly-teeming fertile vales, find
the same contrast of good and ill in the human soul as in
his natural world ? Heaven ever accommodates its attri-
butes to the living conditions of its human creators. We
know that the islands of the blessed could only have been
conceived by those who in life had dwelt in an island world.
The Polynesian, used to distant voyages, must needs cross
the vast ocean to his soul land, but the inland red man saw
in the misty shades of the far distant hills, with their many
play of colours, the home of his spirit-fathers. The nature
of this life ever proclaims the future aspirations of the
living; he would ouly eliminate the physical evils he has
learnt to dread out of his ideal paradise.
All the varying terrific or mysterious phenomena in the
natural world have induced supernal deductions dependent
for their forms of expression on the amount of information
in the mind of the beholder. It is so all the world over
In connection with comets, eclipses, meteors, thunder, the
Maelstrom, and all unusual sights in the sky. These are
ever portents dire and terrible, produced by fetish power or
malign spirits, and they foretell war, pestilence, or famine.
When an eclipse takes place, the Moslems in Syria, like the
Chinese and the Red Indian, crowd together with gongs,
rattles, drums, every noisy instrument they possess, to drive
away by the hideous sounds they produce the evil monster
who is devouring the sun or the moon. The Red Indian,
in the black cloud out of which the thunderbolt is launched,
beholds the dreaded thunder bird, and the Karen regards
the thunderbolt as a living thing it tears up the trees in
the form of a hog with bat-like wings ; when it utters its
voice it thunders, when it flaps its wings fire is produced.
(Aei. Soc. Beng. Jour. XXXIV., p. 217.)
Dorm-ui reports in his Pri/nifiue Superstitions that the
Indians hold that all sounds issuing from CM \vnis wrn>
thought to bo produced by their spiritual inhabitants. The
48 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DERIVED
Sonora Indians say the departed souls dwell among the
caves and nooks of their cliffs, and that the echoes are-
their voices. When explosions, caused by the bursting of
sulphurous gases, are heard, the superstitious Indians
attribute them to the breathing of the manitous. Dead
Mountain, at the head of the Mojave valley, is regarded
with reverence by the Indians, who believed it the abode of
departed spirits. "When its hoary crest is draped in a light
floating haze and misty wreaths are winding like phantoms
among its peaks, they see the spirits of the departed
hovering above their legendary dwelling (p. 302). The
Chinooks thought the milky-way was produced by a turtle
swimming along the bottom of the sky and disturbing
the mud. The red clouds of the rising and setting sun
were thought to be coloured by the blood of men slain in
battle. (Ibid. p. 346.)
The man who has been under the influence of a toxic, or
noted others in that state, ascribes the weird influence,
whether produced by alcohol, so ma, kava or pulque, to the
action of a supernal principle contained in the drink, and
all the betimes pleasing mental excitements they induced
are attached to a weird cause. So when a man observes a
companion attacked by epilepsy or some form of neurosis,
or expressing strange mental hallucinations, he can only
account for the change by inferring that the spirit of some
man or animal has entered his body or he has been
enchanted by a spell, and that the strange actions, the
discordant sounds, the unnatural movements, are due to the
supernal influence.
As illustrating the failure of the judgment in the presence
of something not fully comprehended, we quote the follow-
ing : " A maid-servant in the Rue St. Victor, who had gone
down into the cellar, came back very much frightened,
saying she had seen a spectre standing upright between two
barrels. Some persons went down and saw the same. It
was a dead body which had fallen from a cart coming from
FROM NATURAL APPEARANCES. 49
the Hotel Dieu. It had slid down the cellar window or
grating, and had remained standing between two casks."
(Calmet, Phantom World, I. p. 252.)
Sounds heard at night high up in the air were formerly,
and now are by some, ascribed to Gabriel's hounds, they
were supposed to be the cries of spirits in the air, and
were considered the foretellers of bad luck, or death, to
those who heard them. They are now known to be caused
by batches of widgeons or teals, and which usually migrate
in the night. (Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. II. p. 206.)
Betimes certain natural phenomena resulting from various
special combinations of the elements, inasmuch as they
occur only at long intervals, are esteemed to be due to
supernal action, and often a legend or myth is invented to
account for the phenomena. In Jones's Credulities we have
two such instances recorded. At Saltburne Mouth there is
a small creek which empties into the sea under a high
bank; sometimes the incoming tide produces a horrible
groaning, and the people say it is the cry of a sea-monster
hungering for men's carcases (p. 64). Again on the west
coast of Scotland certain conjunctions of the wind and tide
produce what is called a " bore ; " this became evolved into
a fetish personification as the " avenging wave," and was
accounted for by a fisherman having there killed a
mermaid (p. 25). In another instance in Canada, at
Manitobah Island, in a lake of the same name, there is a
singular sound produced by the action of the waves on a
peculiar pebble shingle which rub together with an intoning
voice. This occurs only when the gale blows from the
north, and the Ojibbeway Indians say it is the voice of
the speaking God (p. 101).
1 1 uraboldt has shown how much the ordinary expressions
of nature build up the supernal concepts of the various races
of men, and create tones of feeling that become embodied
in the social institutions. We will quoto a case in point
as illustrating the influence of nature on tho Upper Indus
4
50 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DEEIVED.
in the development of the local supernatural. " The howling
waste behind, invisible from the village and rising into still
higher masses, affords a fitting scene for all the super-
natural doings of the mountain spirits. The scenery which
inspires awe has made its mark upon the inhabitants.
These lofty solitudes are from their earliest years connected
with ideas of dread which shape themselves into myths.
The priest affirms that sometimes in the early dawn, while
performing worship, he perceived a white indistinct shape
hovering over the cairn, and this he said was the goddess
of the spot revealing herself to her worshippers. The
people believe that this demon keeps a special watch over
all their actions, and in a country where frequent accidents
by flood and field are almost inevitable, and where a false
step or a falling rock may cause death at any time, they put
down such disasters to the vengeance of the goddess for
the neglect of some of their peculiar customs." (Asiat Soc.
Beng. Jour., XL VII. p. 28.) Such are some of the false
concepts of the supernal which have their origin in mis-
conceptions of perceptive appearances.
CHAPTER IV.
The evolution of supernal concepts in dreams.
No subject connected with the supernatural has more
engrossed the minds of men in all ages than those
connected with mental presentations in sleep. These
generally arise when some of the mental faculties are in
abeyance while others are active; they may and do
occasionally occur when the dreamer is almost in a waking
state; then the impressions active in the memory take a
perceptive form and appeal specially to the senses. By
far the greater number of premonitory apparitions occur
at this awaking state, their power enhanced by the
dominant figure remaining as in Newton's spectrum after
the inciting cause has been withdrawn.
Diverse circumstances induce dreams; some arise from
special mental excitation through the memory of previous
impressions, they are also induced by states of the organic
functions, as by special foods or drinks and forms of disease,
also by special sensations. A writer in the Journal of
Psy dialog ical Medicine writes: "A man after eating a
supper of halibut had a dream of sliding down a cliff on the
shore and being saved by holding his niece's hand; another
after a hearty fish supper dreamed of poisonous serpents ; a
third, after partaking freely of cold roast beef and pickled
onions, dreamed of being forced to oat of what ho loathed.
A lady having a slight cough put a piece of barley sugar in
her mouth and fell asleep whilo sucking it. She dreamt
4 *
52 THE EVOLUTION OF
she was a little girl at an evening party, happy and enjoying
herself; she enjoyed all kinds of childish sports, and after
a long period had elapsed she awoke with a smile to find
the cause of the dream still in her mouth, and that only a
few minutes had elapsed, her daughter who gave her the
barley sugar not yet having left the bedside (XI. p. 579).
The cause of a dream delusion may be due to altered
sense-perception. A gentleman had fallen asleep with
weary feelings, arising from indigestion, when there arose
an apprehension in his mind that the phantom of a dead
man held the sleeper by the wrist. He awoke in horror,
and found that his own left hand, in a state of numbness,
had accidentally encircled his right arm. (Scott, Demonology,
p. 45.) Deceptive spectral concepts, even in the conscious
state, are often due to false mental deductions, and man,
under such conditions, is apt to mould the seeming form to
some subjective memory impression. Mr. Taylor was staying
at a large old-fashioned country mansion, and from his
room was a secret door leading to a private staircase. This
was both locked inside and out, yet its presence evidently
tended to suggest supernatural phenomena, even though
he had no faith in them. One moonlight night in June he
awoke about 1 o'clock, and discovered by the moonlight
a tall figure in white, with arms extended, at the foot of
the bed. Fear and astonishment for a time overcame him ;
then he thought that it might possibly be a trick ; so,
mustering resolution, he jumped out of bed, and grasped it
round, only to find it was nothing more than a large new
flannel dressing-gown which had been sent him in the
course of the day, and which had been hung on some pegs
against the wainscot at the foot of the bed. (Apparitions,
by J. Taylor, VI.)
Sometimes the presumed ghost is real flesh and blood,
its supernatural character a mere inference in the mind.
A lady, when on a visit to a Scotch friend, waking up in the
night, beheld a hideous, almost shapeless, figure sitting on
SUPERNAL CONCEITS IN DREAMS. 53
a chair between her and the fire. After lying in great fear
for a time, believing it was a spectre, she stealthily crept
from the bed, and hid herself behind the window-curtains ;
then she saw the wretched ghost throw itself on her bed,
and in that way the two passed the night. In the morning
the lady motioned to a labourer in the garden to come up,
when they found that the supposed wandering ghost was a
simple lunatic, who in some way had got into the house
when passing across the country. (E. P. Hood, Dreamland,
p. 70.) The mental deception suggesting the supernatural may
be a sound. A low muffled wail heard on the sea by a lady
was taken by her for a telepathic indication of her son's
death. It was afterwards found that the so-called monition
was produced by an amateur ventriloquist for his own
amusement. (Pliant, of Living, I. p. 125.)
Simple errors of judgment and instances of false reasoning
account for many ghost narratives, but there are others
which the inquiring percipient cannot thus resolve, and
which not only leave their supernal influence on the mind of
the beholder but convey like impressions to others. To test
such presentations all are not equally mentally prepared,
yet there are a few test qualities that any may apply. But,
first, we have to note the various conditions under which
such apparitional appearances occur. A large number arise
in dreams some are continuous from the dream to the
semi-waking state and the presence of the mystic figure
as a continuous image is affirmed to the waking senses. In
some cases there is no memory of a dream-phase, the figure
is simply present to the half-waking consciousness, which,
when fully aroused, may still behold the object. From tho
continuity of optical impressions, under certain conditions,
we know that it is possible an optical impression may con-
tinue after the object is removed from the sight. Now it
so happens that by far the greater number of presumed
apparitional appearances are seen in these conditions of
the organic being; they are seen in the dream or the half-
54 THE EVOLUTIONS OF
wakeful state. It is quite certain that the visionary not
other people is most competent to test the nature of the ap-
pearance. If the illusion or vision occurs when wide awake,
men of the calibre of Nicolai, of Berlin, may be certain of
the subjective nature of the impression, note its origin, and
even optically prove that it exists only inside their own
sensoriums. But both judgment and the powers of observa-
tion are only vaguely exercised in the half-waking state,
and the imagination most probably in an excited state from
previous dreaming is apt to jump to hasty conclusions, and
when subsequently the visionary describes the impression,
it may consist only of vague generalities. However, if the
seer has so far mastered the details of the vision as to be
able to define specially, not generally, its characteristics, he
or she may be able to affirm its subjective nature.
In the old ghost tales the presumed supernal being came
in its shroud, or, according to the associate circumstances,
was accredited to come covered with wounds or blood, or if
drowned as naked and dripping wet. Usually in such cases
no clothes are noted, only the wounded or wet body ; now,
as neither in a fight or at a shipwreck is it customary for
the body to be stripped, the subject-nature of the impression
ought to be at once apparent. One class of subjective
impressions is thus built up of some memory impressions,
modified by the imagination ; others wholly arise from the
reawakeningof past impressions. Now, usually these memory
impressions of an individual are of varying character. A
mother may dream of her son as a stalwart young man,
the same as when she last saw him, or she may dream of
him in his boyhood or as babe. Usually in such cases
there is an endless series of types in the mind. So with
an ordinary acquaintance, we may call him to mind as when
we first knew him or when we last beheld him. More,
there are not only the differences of age and features to
consider, but the clothing and ornaments, and other dis-
tinguishing attributes attached to the person. Of course,
SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DBEAMS. 55
if the visionary detects no special details, neither dis-
tinguishing features, age or dress, and recognizes nothing
but a vague impression, which it designates as a certain
individual, we have no test appliances, and can only esteem
the presentation as vague and unsatisfactory. But if the
assumed apparition conies before the visionary clearly
defined in features and wearing some special costume, we
know these attributes denote a special individual at a special
time. Consequently, when a lady beholds, as she thinks, the
spectre of a gentleman, clothed as she had once seen him as a
character in the Corsican Brothers, we are assured that it was
no ghost, however ominous might be the words it said or
its movements, but only a reawakened impression in her
memory. So in the case of the apparition of Mrs. Matthews
by Mr. Charles Matthews, the ghost came in her habit, as
when alive. We know nothing of spirit fashions of dress
in the other world, but we can scarcely suppose they wear
crinolines, or have high-shoulder dresses. Hence, it could
not have been her spirit he beheld, but a renewal of a past
endearing impression.
Few persons are as capable of demonstrating the unreality
of an illusion as the captain whose case is quoted in Sir
W. Scott's Demonology. When in a depressed state, and
therefore most susceptible of being affected by supernal
ideas, ho went to see his confessor, and was in great distress
and apprehension of his death. The same evening, when
retiring to bed, ho saw in the room the figure of the con-
fessor sitting on a chair, probably as he commonly saw him
in life. Being of a strong mind, and self-assured of its
subjective nature, he sat down on the same chair as the
figure was on. He owned after that had his friend died
about the .same time ho would not have known what name
to give his vision, but ho recovered, and henco ho knew
that it was both physically and psychically an illusion of his
own mind (p. 37).
In all the cases of haunted houses in Mrs. Crowe's Night
56 THE EVOLUTION OP
Side of Nature we have not one that even bears the
affirmation of having been definitely seen by two individuals
who noted the dress and features of the presumed supernal
visitant. All is vague, indefinite, and uncertain. In one
case there are two ladies in bed. The one, only a child, fancies
she sees an old man in a Kilmarnock nightcap. She was not
the least frightened, and probably the indistinct appearance
of drapery or clothing was in the half-light personified by
her imagination into a grotesque figure. The various white
lady ghosts are as vague as vague can be, not a detail but
that of colour is given.
The most apparently definite case is said to have occurred
at Sarratt, in Hertfordshire, where one individual of whom
we have no credentials, and who is even nameless, is said
to have seen the figure of a well-dressed man having on a
blue coat with bright gilt buttons ; his own clothes had
partly fallen on the floor and he saw no head, the half-
drawn curtain hiding that portion of the figure. We should
say he saw only his own clothes as they had partly fallen
from the chair, and as from the context we read that the
house was said to be haunted by a headless gentleman in a
blue coat with gilt buttons, we need not look far for the
illusion.
In another case we are first prepared for the due feeling
of dread and mystery by the narrative of an iron cage with
an iron ring to which an old rusty chain is attached having
a collar at the end of the same material. Necessarily after
going to bed with such a preparation for a ghost strange
noises are heard, then the girls say they saw a figure or
something and hid themselves in the clothes. Later on
this figure is more defined, it was thin with hair flowing
down its back and draped in a loose powdering gown.
How much they saw of it in reality, if they beheld anything
but their own fears, may be noted from the circumstance
that at first both the girls thought it was their sister
Hannah; consequently the powdered gown was only in the
SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 57
imagination, and it was only when their mother told them
it could not have been Hannah trying to frighten them that
they considered his ghostship had appeared to them. We
cannot feel surprised that after talking over these incidents
brother Harry by the light of the moon should have seen a
fellow in a loose gown at the bottom of the stairs. Once
again one of the ladies after being very tired by a long ride
on afterwards awakening by the light of a night-light saw
again the mysterious figure in the powdery coat ; she more
noticed the thin pale face with its melancholy expression.
But in this, the most circumstantial case, we not only have
no names of persons, no references, we even do not know in
what town it occurred, though one of the many publishers
who have rehearsed the narrative thinks it comes from
Lille.
Though the various ill-conceived and undefined narratives
in Mrs. Crowe's collection are unworthy of being assumed
as representing supernal incidents, surely we ought to place
-cine confidence in the carefully considered and select cases
to which the credentials of Messrs. Gurney and Myers are
attached, recorded in the Nineteenth Century (XVI. p. 69).
In the first case presented a Mr. Rawlinson had heard
two months before that an intimate friend was ill with
cancer. How many times during the two months the image
of his friend may have been present in his thoughts
associated with his dangerous complaint we have no means
of judging, and it is such thoughts that are apt to become
vague monitions or subjective hallucinations. Yet because
a vague presentiment of the appearance arose in his mind
presumed to be connected with the possible time of the
friend's death, but of this no proof is given, we arc asked to
accept it as a supernal telepathic manifestation.
The second case is equally devoid of consistency. A
slight accident occurs to an individual on a Saturday in
London. The mother admits writing an account of the
affair on the Sunday, and on the Monday night the aunt in
58 THE EVOLUTION OP
Ireland dreams she sees a confusion of cabs and hears
" Maurice is hurt." Our version of the spectral intimation
is that the letter was possibly written on the day of the
accident, or the aunt informed thereof by another relative,
or possibly the aunt's illusion occurred on Thursday not
Monday night. It certainly was no visual perception but
only the concept of something that might have reached the
aunt in a letter as the dream as stated occurred two days
after the accident.
The same comments apply to the case of the Duke of
Orleans, and it did not take place at the time of the
impression, and the narrator of the trivial accident writes,
ci I am not sure of the day of the week," yet on these im-
perfect and desultory impressions we are required to accept
implied supernal incidents.
The incident described by Lady Chatterton is explainable
in the aptitude for a dream to be fashioned from external
impressions. In the half-waking state so favourable for
the reception of such impressions Lady Chatterton saw the
figure of her mother, the face deadly pale and blood flow-
ing over the bed-clothes, she then rushed into her mother's
room and saw her as in the dream. The incident had
occurred hours before and could not have been a present
apparition as two doctors who had to be fetched had not
only arrived, but they must have been there some time as
one observed that all danger was now over. Such a vision
might have come in her reverie not suggested by her
mothers spirit or any telepathic impression, but by the
talk of the servants or the conversation of the doctors.
There was only a long passage between the rooms, and the
echo of the voices as they passed to the stair-head may
have easily reached her ear and conveyed all the images
presented in the illusion.
We might pause to describe the loose character of the
other narratives, but we will conclude this part of supernal
cases with that referred to a Miss Manningham. First we
SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 59
may note that this illusion is said to have occurred at an
entertainment ; the place in one statement is described as
the Argyll, in the other as the Hanover Eooms. There
were also two diverse accounts of the apparition in one the
features were hid by a cloth, in the other the face was
turned from her ; both agreed in its being a naked corpse.
As the death occurred through the upsetting of a boat we
fail to realize the origin of the naked presentation even if
we admit that without being able to see the features it was
possible for her to recognize her naked grandfather, and it
is the first time in the natural history of ghosts in which the
ghost of the clothes refused to accompany the ghost of the
body. As we read the narrative we would observe that
even at concerts, as well as when at church, people betimes
are apt to doze and may dream dreams, and that in her case
she had only heard her grandfather was drowned, and the
naked corpse was her own inference that it happened when
he was bathing, when there can be no doubt he must at the
time have been fully clothed.
When in the ghost tale the particulars of dress features
and externals are specified we can often detect in the
narrative itself, the proofs that it is the revival of an old-
memory impression. We will quote a few of such self-
indications from Mr. Gurney*s Phantasms of the Living.
S. and L. are both in one office in the city. S. is aroused
one night by tho 1 apparition of L. coming towards him as
was his wont of a morning, wearing a hat with black hat-
band, tho overcoat unbuttoned, no doubt ready for its
customary removal, and having a stick in his hand. But
the ghost of L. who died at 9 P.M. and came after S. had
gone to bed was nob likely to bo walking about with his
coat unbuttoned and a walking-stick in his hand. S. might
or might not have heard of the death of L. before ho retired
for the night; the figure was certainly a memory reminiscence,
and his absence through illness might well suggest the
possibility of his death (I. p. 210).
60 THE EVOLUTION OP
A lady in case 168, describing an appearance that was
presented to her, infers that it could not have been a
subjective impression, but a real apparition, forgets the
fact that our mental presentations are made up, not only
of what we see, but what we hear or read. There are few
especially ladies who hearing or reading of 'the altered
appearance of any dear friend by years or illness, do not
visualize the change. More particularly when he was an
old sweetheart, and she knew sixteen years had passed,
and that the face had become modified by the growth of a
beard and whiskers, as she writes to his mother. From
this we may well infer she was in regular communication
with his family, and as she refers to the change, what more
likely than his changed appearance had been familiarly
dwelt upon : hence it would not be his old but his altered
physiognomy that she might recall (I. p. 426).
In several cases the ghost appears not as he would have
been, wasted away and in his bed-clothes, but dressed in
his old costume and hale and hearty. Again, there are
cases in which we are told the dead man is seen the instant
of death laying in his coffin, as if that indispensable adjunct
had been ordered before-hand and the body put in it
before the spirit had quitted its mortal tenement. Some
of the apparitions are pleasing reminiscences of many like
impressions. Thus, 195 is the case of a lady who sees
the phantasms of her grandmother in the plaid cloak she
usually wore, leaning on the arm of the lady's mother. She
is presumed to have died at the time of the vision, when
the old lady would have presented a very different appear-
ance. The group as seen had, no doubt, often been pictured
in her memory from a child. Case 202 is that of a lady
who died after a short illness ; yet at the time of her death
she is seen by the percipient riding in her own victoria.
She recognizes the bonnet and the sealskin jacket as those
she generally wore in winter ; but it was in August she
died, therefore it must have been a subjective impression.
SDPEENAL CONCEPTS IX DREAMS. 61
As for the idea of her death, the lady knew she was ill
(I. p. 544).
One of the most remarkable cases supposed to prove the
presence of a ghost, actually, by investigation, proves the
truth of its being a subjective hallucination. In case 213,
an old woman is seen wearing a special duster-pattern
check shawl. There was no monition in this case, for the
old lady is not supposed to die it was merely an halluci-
nation of a familiar figure. The percipient, however, felt
assured of its ghostly character, so he visits the house and
inquires specially about this shawl. He receives for answer,
' \Ve haven't such a thing in the house;" but sure of the
truth of his mental impression, they hunt behind a box
near the bed's head, when the identical ghost-shawl is
found. From her family forgetting the article, it is evident
that special shawl had not been lately worn, and the ghost
of a few days past could not have appeared wearing it.
Mr. Gurney writes the shawl is an important detail ; so it
is, for it proves that the percipient's impression must have
been subjective.
The ordinary perceptive and imaginative mental states
so blend into each other, that we cannot draw an absolute
line between the ordinary perceptive, imaginative, halluci-
imtive and dreaming states. Perception passes into memory,
and memory grows into the excitations of the imagination,
recalling past impressions, and gradually presenting them
with ever-increasing intensity at first, mere acts of the
will, gradually advancing until they are self-projected into
the consciousness, in the one direction passing through
reverie into dreams, in the other, from mere illunvr
deceptions, to accredited perceptions, whether idealisms,
dn -iinis, or hallucinations, and they may appeal to the ego
through any one or more of the senses.
Under healthy stimuli these presentations are more or
less under the control of the will arising either from
normal conscious activity or normally unconscious cere-
62 THE EVOLUTION OP
bration. These thought aiid self-presentations normally
are more vague than the real perceptions out of which they
were evolved, not so when due to the stimulus of abnormal
causes; then they are after projected with a brightness,
intensity, or power proportionate to the nature of the
exalting force. Of the impressions thus observed, we have
several cases in the Phantasms of the Living. Thus Mrs.
Willert has vivid representations; they corne with her eyes
open, but more brilliant when they are shut. She sees all
kinds of things in quick succession; never blending into-
one another, she could never recall the same picture.
" Mrs. Macdonald is accustomed to see multitudes of faces
as she is lying awake. They seem to come out of the
darkness and develop into sharp delineation and outline
they fade and give place to others rapidly and in enormous
numbers. Formerly they were ugly human but resembling
animal monsters, latterly they have been beautiful "
(I. p. 474).
In general the dream or the hallucination is but
momentary, but like some ghosts they become persistent for a
long time, or after intervals, reappearing again and again, in
bad neurotic states. They are always present, day and night,
ever urging their victim to some special act or influencing
him by denoting some special fear. There are cases in which
such hallucinatory objects or persons are only seen under
certain conditions, or are attached to certain forms of
thought. Thus the Rev. P. H. Newman " saw figures
whom he recognized in church, though they were not there,
and they seemed to occupy the same place during the
service." (Ibid. I. p .475.)
Expectancy, self-suggestion, or suggestion by others, are
prolific sources of apparitional presentations. For a
gentleman to see the figure of his future wife draped in
white, is a by no means uncommon appearance to an
expectant bridegroom, occasionally by an exalted percep-
tion defined as an appearance to the half -waking vision;
SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 63
in some cases the dream-image remains, like Newton's
spectrum, for a time on the retina.
A very general form in which self-suggestion conceives of
distinct and definite appearances, and moulds any object
into the expected semblance, occurs in several cases. A
Mr. Jevons sees, as he thinks, a friend walking among the
trees opposite his house. Ho says, "I waved my hand to him
to go up the road where wo had frequently walked." (Ibid.
II. p. 528.) So in case 203. A lady who knew her mother
was ill, when seated in the schoolroom reading, sees the
figure of her mother, wasted by disease, reclining as in bed
in her nightdress.
Often the presence of appearances are suggested by
others. A word, a name, an incident, appeals not only to the
consciousness, but even to the more or less unconscious
faculties which passively build up appropriate scenes and
semblances. In case 408, a mother and daughter in India
are infected by snake-fears, a not uncommon form of
suggestion in tropical countries. The daughter, while
undressing, fancied there was a snake in her room, probably
by the rustling of her drapery ; the sound of her and the
servants' talk on the subject reached the lady in her
bedchamber, who after dreamed her daughter was bitten
by a snake.
Betimes we are told of two persons seeing the same
apparition or dreaming the same dream ; but these when
analyzed may generally bo traced to impressions being
transferred from one to the other, verbally or otherwise.
That such is the origin of duplicate dreams may bo
discovered by their want of identity. Thus in case 127 a
lady and her friend, asleep probably in the same room,
have dreams on the same subject, but these are not
identical. In tho ono the corpse of Mrs. A. is laid out
in tho bod ; in the other that lady's daughter is seen
running along the shore crying, "Don't stop me! my
mother is dying." Tho ono dream might have been duo to
64 THE EVOLUTION OF
verbal suggestion by the other in her dream state, or both
due to the intimation they had previously received of
the lady's dangerous illness. In case 299, a man, dying of
typhus fever in his sleep, when in port is attended by a
stoker belonging to the same vessel. In. his delirium he
had most probably been raving about his wife and children,
a not unusual thing in such a state. The stoker was
personally acquainted with his family, and under those
exciting conditions he affirmed that he saw the wife,
mother, and two children on the other side of the bunk in
which the man was dying.
One of the most singular cases of a ghost suggestion, is
case 331. It begins with two ladies probably by the
preliminary suggestion of one of them seeing the figure of
a Captain Towns in a gray flannel jacket such as they had
been accustomed to recognize him by. Then a young sister,
most likely aroused by the exclamations of the percipients,
sees the same. Even the servant, roused by the excitement,
notes "the master;" then the butler and the captain's
body servant are both sent for, and they also declared they
saw the figure ; and lastly the nurse is fetched, but she,
more sceptical than the others, advanced as if to touch it,
when the ghost, probably by the shifting of the curtains or
apparel, vanishes, and after all it was found to be no
apparition, though seen by so many, but a reflection on the
polished wardrobe, a sort of medallion portrait. In another
like case a girl was sent home from school unwell. The same
night one of her companions was put in the vacant bed. In
the dim light in the night the spirit of the absent girl is
seen by the half-waking dreamer. She arouses the other
school-girls asleep in the same room, and they also see the
appearance, yet it is admitted that a bed-hanging, a curtain,
suggested the image. (Ibid. II. p. 186.)
Particulars, both personal and general, may be conveyed
to other minds in sleep by means of words, and these may, as
in the cases quoted, become attached to either the conscious
SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 65
or unconscious memory. Thus two ladies sleeping together
had the same experience of the presence of an old and
valued friend of the one, even to the special onyx studs he
habitually wore. This, a dream from experience in the one
person, became by verbal suggestion a fancy image in the
other's mind. Things mysteriously known to another may
be transferred from mind to mind in the dream state, and
that not by thought-reading, but by unconscious talking.
Thus a lady, through her husband talking in his sleep and
thus rehearsing an incident of his early days, became
conscious of his once having had a sweetheart of whose
existence, in his waking state, he had never informed
her. (Phantasms, I. p. 31 7.) There are many cases in which,
consciously or unconsciously, indications are transferred
from one sleeper to another, not only when in the same
room, but when they are in separate rooms, as in cases 89
and 90.
CHAPTER V.
The inter-relations of the supernal powers.
THE first result of the failure of the perceptive and reflective
powers is to present to the mind the many objects and move-
ments it cannot comprehend as a new class of presentations
diverse from any present in the natural world.
One of the first supernal concepts is that the moving
force in the organism is distinct from its substance, that
it induces all the volitional actions of the organism, and
that it is capable of existing outside the object it controls.
This in man is his ghost. In the ordinary state this ghost
is the life of the man : it is his mind, his spirit, his soul,
and the body and limbs are but the inert material which,
the ghost utilizes for its many purposes. Out of the man
the ghost may act the same as it did when in the body,
save that as its nature is distinct so are its attributes.
Eude men cannot separate the spiritual from the material;
hence the ghost is a shadow, a vapour, an attenuated
entity, possessing in a low degree the same characteristics
as mark the perfect man. It eats and drinks and sleeps,
is amenable to injuries, susceptible to the effects of the
temperature and local conditions. The sentiment of the
extent of these relations may vary with different men, but
we find them always present among savage races.
The ghost as a separate existence is not deemed wholly
amenable to the same conditions as when it formed part of
the man. Then it partook of the destiny of the body in
THE INTER-RELATIONS OP THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 67
which it resided, and might be appropriated by the spirit
in the man or animal which devoured it. As an indepen-
dent being it avoided these unpleasant consequences, and
more, through the nature of its special supernal attributes
it was endowed with new sources of power. Thus the
wandering free ghost was not amenable to many material
influences that affected it when forming part of a man. Its
attenuated nature enabled it to insinuate itself in any hole
or cranny, it could penetrate the solid earth and ascend
into the sky, as well as manifest many other transcendental
powers. The man was ever a match for his fellow-man,
but the ghost to the man was ever an object of unspeakable
dread. If that of a friend he may have been neglectful of
certain rites that it expected to receive, and the man knows
it has power to command other ghosts to control the ele-
ments to pour on his head disease and death. He knows it
can enter his body through any pore.
What was possible in his own nature, man also esteemed
as possible in the nature of other beings, other objects.
What more certain cause could he conceive as marking the
active life of all things than this ghost existence ? But we
should err, if in the lowest races we looked for the general
expression of this element of supernal power in all things.
The savage is too little of a philosopher to go beyond the
objects that immediately interest him to search for general
causes. He accepts the appearance of each individual per-
ception on its own merits. Hence the lowest savage races
only affirm the presence of the ghost-power in human and
local animal natures, and in some few fetish objects that
have excited their animistic sentiments. Men are much
more considerably advanced when they reason out that
there is a soul in everything, even in the objects tlu-ir
own hands have manipulated.
Undeveloped man, ignorant of the chemical and physical
powers induced by the altered relations of material things,
and only conversant with force as resulting from the voli-
5 *
68 THE INTER-EELATIONS OF
tional movements of men and animals, conceives that all its
manifestations in nature are due to the action of like forces
in rock, water, sky, and earth. Thus the earthquake is
caused by the ghosts underground, or the huge earth sup-
porting whale, elephant or tortoise, changes its position.
So, in volcanic action, they perceive the might of an ingna
or the dread Pele, and her myrmidons in their sports are
casting up fire. The water-spout is caused by a spirit
dragon, and eclipses by dogs hunting the moon through the
sky. The eddying pool was the writhing of a great snake.
All motion was life, and every living force was possessed
by its embodied ghost.
Each race of men create their own explanatory idealisms.
With the Andaman islanders shooting stars and meteors
viewed with apprehension are believed to be lighted faggots
hurled in the air by Erenchawgala. An eclipse is caused
by the sun spirit being offended. Storms are regarded as
indications of Pullunga's wrath ; winds are his breath ;
when it thunders he is growling, and lightning is a burning
log thrown in his wrath. In all this we have embodied a
savage man's fury as he quarrels round the camp-fire.
(Jour. Anthrop. Inst. XII. p. 152.)
There is not a presentation of power in the natural world
but the savage accounts for by this ever-capable ghost-
principle. We may not infer that the vast mythological
systems invented to explain the many natural phenomena
at once sprang into being. It is much more reasonable to
infer that the primary savage, like most rude men, idiots,
and animals, only took notice of those forces that imme-
diately affected their own volitions. Some men have only
seen great spirits in the sky-powers, others refer their
primary concepts of great forces to the snowy mountain
peaks or the great sea, and it is only among matured races
of men we find general expositions of all the varied natural
forces.
It would seem that the capacity to appear in dreams is
THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 69
the source of the supernatural attribute in the inanimate
as well as the animate. It is the ghost of the mountain,
the waterfall, the rock, and the sea that the dreamer
beholds. So the weapon has a soul the dreamer saw the
lance in the hand of the foeman, he even felt it penetrate
his arm, yet when he attempted to seize it, it was gone,
because it was a spirit.
This sentiment of the spiritual nature of the secondary
accompaniments in a dream is far more general than is
usually conceived. Mr. Gurney shows that not only are
dream-objects accompanied with all the subsidiary attri-
butes of things, but that even the phantasm of the waking
vision carries with it all the necessary supernal appearances
of the secondary objects that constitute the idealism. The
waking eyes not only behold the human spirit but the spirits
of animals, trees, land, and water, the spirits of clothes,
carriages, weapons, and all kinds of diverse things. Even
now, without reasoning on it, the spiritually disposed
accept as facts, not only that the ghost of one drowned in
India an hour before its appearance in England should be
able to traverse the intervening space, but that the ghosts
of its garments, of the drops of water, and other material
substances could, at the same time, accompany it. If
developed man in the nineteenth century can passively
accept such sentiments, need we be surprised that the
untutored savage mind accepts the incidences which occur
in his dreams as actual facts. A young Macusi Indian
declared to Im Thurn that he had been taken out in the
night and made to drag the canoe up a series of difficult
cataracts. Nothing would persuade him of the fact that
this was but a dream. (Tour. Anthrop. Int. XII. p. 304.)
We have seen that to the man-ghost through the senti-
ments of wonder and fear are attached mystic concepts of
powers which endow it with a weird nature, so according to
the natural aptitudes of animals arc they endowed with
fetish powers, and this too with and without the ghost*
70 THE INTEK-BELATIONS OP
concept. A snake seen has not only the ordinary powers
of a snake, but as men may die of fear without having been
touched by it, it can kill with a look. So the Australian
aborigine, knowing the timorous nature of the kangaroo,
when he observes a group coming towards him driven by
an advancing body of enemies, ascribes to them the
possession of weird knowledge and friendly intents ; they
are coming to warn him of the advancing foes, and to
affirm the spiritual association thus induced they have
established the kangaroo kobong.
One of the most general deductions drawn by the savage
who has worked out the problem of the dual nature in
animals is to affirm from the actions of the powerful local
animals that they are possessed by men-ghosts. We find
that the range of this concept obtains so extensively, that
it seems to be almost a natural deduction from the
similarity of the mental characteristics in the man and the
animal. Thus the Thlinkeets hold that the ghost of a man
enters a bear. Miss Bird describes the Ainos as crying
out : <( We kill you, bear ; come back soon as an Aino."
(Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, II. 98.) Of the various man
and animal associations this sentiment has evoked we may
refer to the Tiger-man of the Khonds, the Lion-man of the
Zulus, the Jaguar-sorcerer of the Mexicans, the Hyaena-man
of Abyssinia, the Negro, Leopard, and Alligator-men ; and
in Europe to the many expositions of wolf-men and dog-
men.
The fetish concept of the animal's nature arises in the-
present day as in the past. The man riding on horseback
evolved the centuar among the old Pelasgians, and the-
South American Indians in the days of Columbus, and but
as yesterday it was a mighty fetish animal to the Anda-
inanese. "Da Costa brought a donkey into the Zanzibar
country ; the people had never before seen it, therefore they
were much disturbed lest they should incur its displeasure,,
to such an extent that they brought it corn in abundance,
THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 71
and asked all sorts of questions with regard to the animal's
powers." M. Williams, in his Religious Thought in India,
writes : " A man bought a piece of ground and sat down
to contemplate it under a tree. Suddenly he heard a
hissing sound of a snake in the branches above. Panic-
struck he ran off, but never dared show his face on the
ground again, being firmly convinced that the serpent was
the indignant spirit of its late owner " (p. 326).
The ghost sentiment alone does not explain all the early
concepts of savage man that intimate phenomena beyond
the ordinary natural expression of things. The manifesta-
tion may be that of a personality, but now as ever there are
concepts of vague influences that the utmost ingenuity of
the mind fails to make out as being personal. Such are
most fetish objects, many omens, and all simply fetish
appearances of things which are often attached to ghosts,
or which in themselves do not intimate a personal appear-
ance. The vulgar notions of luck are of the same nature :
they may apply to an object, as a horseshoe, a day of the
week, an appearance, a position, even the relation of words
with thoughts.
We infer that the concept of the uncanny preceded that
of the ghost : it is certainly the first sentiment of the
supernal in the mind of the child. Hence the first result
of the sentiment of the uncomprehended is that of the
uncanny; it may express doubt, ill-luck, fear; there is in the
sensation received a something seen, felt, or heard that
implies the inexplainable, the inconceivable. It may be
due to the association of two or more objects, neither of
which alone had any mysterious significance, but which, in
combination, raise the sentiment of dread ; or mystic words
and actions, presented at the time the objects are combined,
may stimulate the sentiment of dread. So, though there bo
nothing weird in the articles or words or actions in them-
selves, the combination of them gives origin to a new
principle that excites fear.
72 THE INTER-RELATIONS OP
The two principles at first affirmed by the mind are to
classify such impressions as good or evil, lucky or unlucky,
and the response is the corresponding desire or dread. As
all that are good are accepted by the child and the savage
as mere matters of course, and excite no sentiment of per-
sonal gratitude or feeling of interest other than to self, but
those implying evil according to their vastness or vague-
ness excite corresponding sentiments of dread. Presenting
no personality to the mind it cannot be appealed to, cannot
be resisted, and the soul crouches before the impersonal
evil, be it ill-luck, disease, or some nameless dread.
Among the large class of fetish principles and uncom-
prehended impersonal powers affirmed generally by men
we may specify all charms and talismans, all the fetish
principles of sorcery, the power to transfer fever, ague,
worts, to cure through some supernal virtue in things; to
make rain, thunder, work miracles, the influence of rites on
material objects, as the laying on of hands, incantations,
and ordeals, chance, fate, destiny as impersonal controlling
principles ; fasting, drugs as supernal powers, positions,
and so forth.
These may be affirmed as virtues in the objects them-
selves, or they may be mere signs or tokens set up to
represent ideal deductions ; they may be symbolic working
by the imagined conveyance of special influences, as in the
cases Dr. Tylor quotes of wearing iron rings to give mental
firmness, or a kite's foot to endow with swiftness o'f
motion.
A fetish power may be in a thing and it be accidentally
discovered, or it may be associated with some manifestation
of feeling, or some action occurring in connection with its
presentation. Thus a fetish man, going on important
business, as he crossed the threshold of his door stumbled
over a pebble which hurt him. He inferred that the stone
was a stone of power, so he cherished it, and ascribed his
after good luck to its possession. So, in like manner, the
THE SUPERNAL POWERS.
73
fetish object causes rain, brings the salmon to the landing
stage, strengthens its owner's heart, and confounds his
enemies.
A stone, or other fetish object, is usually credited with
only one special virtue : one may ensure luck, another cause
rain, a third be good for the headache, a fourth to keep
money in the pocket, bring kangaroos, or turn aside an
assegai; others may be good for women at childbirth,
youths at initiation, men going a journey by land or by
water, or any special circumstance or state.
Often the fetish attribute is induced by the action of
men, and results from no ghost-power, but a special
mechanical combination of things. Thus, in Melanesia,
stones could be caused to make rain or sunshine, and
produce abundant crops of yams or bread-fruit. To make
sunshine, if a very round stone was found, it was wound
round with red braid and stuck with owl's feathers to
represent rays, and then hung upon some high tree.
(Jour. Anthrop. Inst. X. p. 278.)
The essential element in all supernal manifestations is
faith. It was so in all the lower impersonal attributes in
all forms of healing, be they by old rags, holy water, the
laying on of royal hands, or as Plutarch informs us, the
passing the royal great toe over the parts affected. Talis-
mans were objects possessing fetish power, and there can
be little doubt that faith in their virtues upheld many a
warrior in the deadly struggle. Faith in the higher spirit
manifestations is the necessary law of their cognizance.
BOOK II.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUPERNATUKAL
CHAPTER I.
Animal concepts of the supernal.
IT would appear that the concept of the uncanny, that is
the capacity to distinguish in the mind the natural from
what is conceived as supernatural, is the common attribute
of all sensible vitality. As a necessary result of having
perceptive powers organisms distinguish, and therefore
classify, objects present to the senses into three classes.
There are, first, those that imply luck and excite desire
whether for food or association ; secondly, those objects
which imply ill-luck, danger, enmity; betimes objects of a
third character are present to the animal's senses ; there
are things that neither appear as desirable or absolutely
dangerous, but those that present characteristics that the
judgment of the animal cannot resolve. Of course to all
forms of life there is a large class of objects regarding the
appearance of which the animal is absolutely indifferent.
According to the average nature of an animal's class of
perceptions are the emotions evolved ; curiosity will desire
to investigate all, caution will regulate the nature of the
advance made, and if doubt supervene from a consciousness
of possible danger, then fear is excited of a more or less
: ing character. But when the perceptive presentation
is read as neither exciting indifference, desire, or simple
fear, but from its strangeness, want of harmony with pre-
vious perceptions, or holding to the animal incomprehensible
78 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP
attributes, then it is uncanny, the degree of disquietude
excited depending on the extent of the concept of the
unnatural.
The permanent effect of the uncanny depends upon the
influence of the perception on the mind of the animal. If
the uneasy excitement only advances to dread, curiosity
may induce special investigation and result in the nature ot
the object being attached to its natural class as being
indifferent, desirable, or dangerous. If the investigation
is unsatisfactory, or dread has given place to horror, the
animal may become fascinated or excited to mad undistin-
guishing fury. What, then, may be the nature of the
impression on the animal's sensorium we have yet to
discover; it may represent the discordinate condition of
madness, or it may attach supernal sentiments to the
unexplainable mental presentations.
That animal perceptions of the uncanny may by experi-
ence be resolved into normal perceptions most used to
animals must have become conscious. Dogs, cats, horses,
cattle and other domestic animals often have objects or
conditions presented to them which their reflective powers
cannot resolve, they become uneasy, and by their looks
and cries intimate the unsatisfactory state of their per-
ceptions. If they can, they often by moving round the
object determine its innocuousness. C. L. Morgan, in his
Animal Life, writes : ' ' A strange noise or appearance will
make a dog uneasy until he has by examination satisfied
himself of the nature of that which produces it. My cat
was asleep on a chair and my little son was blowing a toy
horn. The cat without moving mewed uneasily, and as he
continued blowing the cat grew more uneasy and at last
got up and stretched herself and turned towards the source
of discomfort. She stood looking at the boy as he blew,
then curling herself up she went to sleep again, no amount
of blowing disturbing her further. Similarly Mr. Romane's
dog was cowed by the sound of apples being shot on the
THE SUPERNAL. 79
floor of a loft above the stable, but when lie was taken to
the place and saw what gave rise to the sound he ceased to
be disquieted by it " (p. 339).
Mr. Vignoli describes the case of a horse that was at first
scared by a white handkerchief being waved before its
eyes ; this after a little time he became accustomed to, but
when it was afterwards taken out and the same hand-
kerchief waved before its eyes from a stick but the man
waving it hid behind a fence the horse was scared and
shied violently, and afterwards even in the stable it could
not see the handkerchief without trembling, and it was
difficult to reconcile him to the sight of it; he evidently
regarded it as fetish. (Myth and Science, p. 59.)
That the same mental sentiments mark the psychic life of
the lower animal organisms has been noted by various
investigators. M. Binet, in his Psychic Life of Micro-
Organismx, says : " There is not a single inf usory that can-
not be frightened and that does not manifest fear by a
rapid flight through the liquid of the preparation, fleeing in
all directions like a flock of sheep."
The effect of artificial light in producing the sentiment of
the uncanny in fish has been noticed by Mr. Bateson. He
writes : " Soles and rockling stop swimming if a light is
shown, and the former bury themselves almost at once.
Bass, pollock, mullet and bream generally get quickly
away at first, but if they can be induced to look steadily at
the light with both eyes they gradually sink to the bottom
of the tank, and on touching the bottom commonly swim
away. In the case of mullet effects apparently of a
mesmeric character sometimes occur, for a mullet which
has sunk to the bottom as described will sometimes lie
there quite still for a considerable time. At other times it
will slowly rise in the water until it floats with its dorsal fin
out of the water as though paralyzed. I once saw one
which remained in this odd position for some minutes after
the light had been turned off it. Turbot are greatly affected
80 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP
by the light of a lantern, they seemed to be seized with an
irresistible impulse like that of a moth to a candle, and
throw itself open-mouthed at the lamp. On one occasion a
turbot continued to dash itself with such violence at the
lamp that it wore the skin of its chin through till it bled.'*
(Jour. Marine Biol. As. I. p. 216.)
All the higher class animals are in like manner affected
by the perception of something out of the ordinary nature
of things. Captain Gillmore, in the Daily Graphic (October
21st, 1891) writes of the lion : " This grand animal is in
character the most wonderful combination of timidity
and courage. Thus an unexpected noise, or sight of an
unfamiliar object, will scare him; while, on the other hand,
regardless of consequences he will charge home into a
crowded camp and carry off his prey in the teeth of all
opposition. A horse the lion's favourite prey I have
known to wander for days in the vicinity of a troop of
these beasts unmolested simply because it was blanketed
and knee-haltered; while, on the other hand, the same
family rushed right up to my companion's waggons, and
in spite of guns, shouts, and fires, pulled down the same
nag."
Thompson, in his Passions of Animals, quotes a similar
instance in a beast of prey being withheld by like fetish
influence from attacking what it would have esteemed
desirable food. In South America a native was out shoot-
ing wild ducks; he had put the corner of his poncho over
his head, and was crawling along the ground upon his
hands and knees, the poncho not only covering his body,
but trailing on the ground behind him. As he was thus
creeping he heard a sudden noise and felt something heavy
strike his feet. Instantly jumping up, he saw a large puma
standing on his poncho. The man remained motionless. At
last the creature turned away its head, and walking very
slowly away about ten yards, stopped and turned again ;
the man still maintained his ground, on which, probably
THE SUPERNAL. 81
deeming the object something uncanny, the beast made
off (p. 120).
The uncanny may be something very small. Captain
Basil Hall describes the terror of a tiger into whose cage a
mouse had been inserted tied by a string to a stick. The
royal beast jammed himself into a corner and stood
trembling and roaring in an ecstacy of fear. (Ibid. p. 122.)
Fascination may be due to hopeless despair, but in many
instances it appears as the effect of fetish paralysis.
Vaillant saw a species of shrike trembling as if in convul-
sions on the branch of a tree ; below was a large snake with
outstretched neck and fiery eyes gazing steadily at the
bird, the agony of the bird being so great as to prevent it
having the power to move away.
The concept induced by the presence of something
strange may produce various emotions. At first caution,
then doubt, fear of something strange, then dread of an
unknown power, may be ending in fetish horror of the
uncomprehended object. Thompson says : " Cranes in their
migrations have been seen to be attracted by a fire and to
hover round it with loud screams. Dogs are astonished at
any change in the outward appearance of those they are
familiar with, and at any strange object, encompassing it
repeatedly and smelling at it to discover its nature. They
cannot recognize their master in the water, but swim round
him, astonished at hearing his voice without identifying
him. A dog chasing a raven fled with astonishment as
the bird faced it and uttered the words it had been
taught" (p. 124).
As illustrating the effect of strange appearances on
animals, Mr. Vignoli writes : " I have suddenly inserted an
unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have kept
birds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight tho
animal is always surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious,
and often retreats from it. By degrees his confide mv
returns, and after keeping out of tho way for some time ho
6
82 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP
becomes accustomed to it." (Myth. p. 58.) Of course different
species of animals are variously affected by the presence of
the unknown and therefore mysterious, and even indi-
viduals of the same species are differently affected, as is
also the case with human beings. Mr. Romanes had " a
Scotch terrier that had a curious hatred or horror of any-
thing abnormal. For instance, it was long before she could
tolerate the striking of a spring bell which was a new
experience to her. She expressed her dislike and seeming
fear by a series of growls and barks accompanied by setting
her hair on end. She used from time to time to go through
the same performance after gazing fixedly on what seemed
vacancy, seeming to see some enemy or portent unseen by
me, as if the victim of optical illusion. I could produce
the same effect by doing some unexpected and irrational
thing until she had become accustomed to it, yet the seeing
of some form of phantom remained unabated." (Mental
Evol. in Ani. p. 150.) That animals can see phantoms and
exhibit the common mental illusions the same as human
beings, and like aberrations of mania and melancholia, there
are many indications. The rabies in the dog runs the same
course as in the man, the horse and the bull exhibit the
same wild and incoherent mania as the madman, and like
causes produce corresponding effects on both. " Pierquin
describes a female ape which had had sunstroke and after-
wards used to become terror-struck by delusions of some
kind ; she used to snap at imaginary objects, and acted as
if she had been watching and catching at insects on the
wing/' (Mental Evol. in Animals, p. 150.)
That most animals have the power to reproduce subjec-
tive impressions in their minds the many evidences of
animals dreaming confirms. Thompson describes the-
stork, canary, eagle and parrot as dreamers among birds,
and the elephant, horse and dog among mammals. The
hound betrays his dream by a hoarse suppressed bark and
by a convulsive movement of the limbs. Dogs are prone
THE SUPERNAL. 83
to dream, and then they may be observed to move their
feet ; they make efforts to bark, agitate themselves as if
hunting, or become excited till the hair rises on their
flanks and the skin becomes clammy. Birds, as ducks,
move their legs in their sleep as if in the act of swimming.
(Pas. of Ani. p. 61.)
We can only judge of the waking concepts of the subjec-
tive in the animal mind by its actions, as in the case of the
ape just quoted and Mr. Romanes' Scotch terrier. Lindsay,
in ^[i^l<l in the Lower Animals, writes: "Delusions may
be studied in the horse. Those of sight in animals occa-
sionally take the form, as in man, of phantoms, images of
ghosts, or apparitions of imaginary persons, animals, or
things" (II. p. 103).
" Spectral delusions/' the same writer observes, " occur
in several forms of insanity among the lower animals, as in
the rabies in the dog, the sturdy in the sheep, and the sun-
stroke in the ape." Fleming writes of a rabid dog : " It
appeared as if haunted by some horrid phantom. At times
it would seem to be watching the movements of something
on the floor, and would dart suddenly forth and bite at the
vacant air as if pursuing something against which it had an
enmity. In another case the dog would throw itself against
the wall yelling furiously as if there were a noise on tho
other side." (Ibid. II. p. 104.) Many nervous animals,
especially horses, are frightened simply by darkness, which
imagination apparently peoples with some kind of goblins.
Animals exhibit the presence of fetish concepts through
certain colours, as that of red to an infuriated bull.
Lindsay writes : " As instances of insurmountable anti-
pathies to certain marked colours, Pierquin cites tho case
of a horse and some birds in regard to black. Baker
remarks on the obnoxiousness of white or grey colours to
the elephant and the rhinoceros. Rats are terrified or
scared by scarlet." (.<'/</ in Ani. II. p. 222.) In like man-
ner certain sounds are canny or uncanny to special animals.
6 *
ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP
Notes and tones cause the dog to howl in distress. Some,
as Darwin said, tremble at music. Rossiter tells of a pet
rabbit which, when a harmonium was played upon by a lady,
flew frantically at the instrument and scratched the legs,
but if she went to the piano bunny was as frantic with
delight. Sir Everard Home found that bass notes in the
lion excited a dangerous ferocity. Again, there are most
clearly proved instances in which enraged snakes have been
lulled to quiet by the music of the snake-charmers. (Ibid.
II. p. 226.) A pet dog was so nervous and sensitive as
regards sudden noises that a clap of thunder, the report of
a gun, or even a loud sneeze, made her tremble for hours.
(Ibid. II. p. 227.)
Of the true nature and the extent of the supernatural
inferences in the minds of animals it is difficult to arrive at
any satisfactory intimation; we can only note that they are
of the same nature as similar human presentations by their
being educed from like incidents by the fact that the animal
mind is organized on the same basis as the human mind,
and from the evidence it exhibits of being amenable to the
same aberrations as the human mind. "We have spoken
of animals dreaming. Lindsay on that subject writes :
" During sleep the dog exhibits movements of the tail and
paws, and sniffing, growling, barking occur. During sleep
the sporting dog has an imaginary pursuit of imaginary
game, this gives rise to actual physical and mental excite-
ment as to cause the animal to awake and be bewildered to
find its actual position so different from that of the morbid
fancy, but it speedily realizes its error and becomes aware
that it was dreaming." (Ibid. II. p. 94.) Somnambulism
also occurs in certain animals. (Ibid. II. p. 97.)
The mental aberrations that occur in animals are those
common to man, as apoplexy, paralysis, the delirium of
fevers, delusional mania, and hysteria. Madness, apparently
of the character of human insanity, has been described in
the chimpanzee, the horse, the elephant, dog, cat, cow, and
THE SUPERNAL. 85
bull, sheep, hen, and the ant and the bee. Rogue elephants
and beavers, known as idlers, are probably insane animals
driven from the herd or community. The gnu is said to be
subject to madness in South Africa. Pierquin describes an
instance of acute dementia in a parrot as the result of fright
during a naval action ; it showed terror by cowering, and
became stupid. Puerperal mania occurs after parturition in
animals as with women. Lastly, natural idiocy occurs in
animals as with children. Houzeau tells the story of an
idiot dog pup whose mother had denoted its mental
inferiority to its brother pups, especially in its incapacity,
as with some human idiots, to supply itself with food.
(Lindsay, Mind in Animals, II. p. 29.)
Other instances of real objects exciting supernal concepts
as in the case Darwin gives of the parasol on the lawn being
blown by the wind, and Thompson's instance of a party in
India being saved from a tiger by a lady opening her
umbrella in its face as she saw it about to spring, are of
this nature. Mr. Romanes* terrier was capable of conceiv-
ing the presence of a power which men deem supernal.
Thus "the terrier was in the habit of playing with dry
bones, throwing them to a distance. On one occasion
Mr. Romanes tied a long and firm thread to a bone and gave
it him to play with. After a time, when it was at a distance
from the dog, he drew it away by means of the long invisible
thread. Instantly its whole demeanour changed, and it
approached the bone with caution, but as it continued to
recede his astonishment developed into dread, and he ran
to conceal himself under some articles of furniture, there to
behold at a distance the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone
coming to life" (p. 156).
In another experiment the same dog was taken into a
carpeted room where Mr. Romanes blew a soap bubble,
and by means of a fitful draught made it intermittently
glide along the floor. It became interested but unable to
decide if this fitful object was alive, cautiously following it
86 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP
at a distance. Being encouraged, it approached the bubble
with ears erect and tail down, but the moment it happened
to move again it retreated. After a time the dog regained
more courage, and approaching one of the bubbles nervously
touched it with its paw. The bubble burst, and astonish-
ment was strongly depicted in the dog. On blowing another
bubble he approached and touched it with the same result as
before, yet, though encouraged by Mr. Romanes, could not
be induced to approach another bubble, and on pressing ran
out of the room, and no coaxing would induce him to re-
enter. (Mental Evo. in Ani. p. 157.)
Our illustrations as yet have all been expressive of the
fetish as uncanny, yet it may be recognized under the canny
aspect, as in the instance the Abbe Hue narrates. A Mongol
herdsman had a calf die soon after birth, and to excite the
flow of milk in the cow the calf was skinned, stuffed with
hay, and placed before the cow. It was evident that the
cow saw something not exactly normal in the aspect of
the calf, as it at first opened enormous eyes, then smelt at it,
sneezing three times, then licking it with tenderness. The
parody was continued until, by dint of caressing and licking
the calf, the cow ripped it open and the hay issued forth.
The cow's sense of the canny had been satisfied, and it
exhibited no agitation or surprise, but proceeded tranquilly
to devour the unexpected provender, even though it
demolished its own calf; possibly it had accepted the
spiritual theory of incarnation.
An interesting problem that still requires solution is the
effect of these various mental states on the reasoning power
in the animal. Beyond the emotion, can any animal in the
first place form a definite idea that the object it believes it
saw was something out of the natural course of things, and
did it categorize the appearance as one of a distinct class of
presentations; in fact, had it evolved the concept of the
natural as distinct from the supernatural? If the dog, as
in the case quoted, on awaking and beginning to think
THE SUPERNAL. 87
settles in his own mind that his dream chase was an illusion
and unworthy of further consideration, then the general
principle is solved, and the dog as we imagined has the
abstract concept of objects as natural and outrd. It is
altogether another question to infer that recognizing the
supernatural it can draw the same mental deduction after it
has recognized its character as he is in the habit of drawing
from the presence of natural objects.
Every animal attaches the sentiment denoted as luck to
its acquisition of any article suitable for food, and that
would even be the case in the dream so long as it was a
dream, but when it recognized the nature of the delusion
would the objects seen have any abstract effect, or only
excite desire ? We are all aware that human beings attach
the sentiment of luck, good and bad, to dream-objects ; but
from the emotions exhibited by animals subject to dream we
cannot infer that like sentiments of luck are ever realized in
their minds, either in regard to natural or dream-acquisitions.
Naturally the food instinct is satisfied, but we want higher
confirmatory evidence than we yet know of to realize in
their mental expressions the concept of an abstract supernal
attribute.
More, it has been affirmed that "the dog engages
occasionally in rites similar to those of negro fetishism and
of the dancing and howling dervish. The object of
worship is apparently selected because of its oddness and
unfamiliarity." (Mind in Ani. I. p. 222.) As no examples
are quoted, we may take the case of the dog playing with
the dry bone given by Mr. Romanes as belonging to this
class. We, however, infer that the same as the kitten with a
ball of worsted and many like incidents, it only implied
sportiveness, the presence of objects only considered natural,
and which by easily being volitional give play to the
normally excited spirits of the young animals. Not so,
however, when an unknown to the animal, a seeming living
power is attached to the bone; then the object passes out of
88 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OF THE SUPERNAL.
the range of the animal's powers of thought, as when
Mr. Romanes attached a thread to the bone when the animal
admitted the presence of something it deemed, as we may
infer, supernatural, and whose unreadable attribute caused
it to fly and hide itself; it could not accept the presentation
as denoting either good or ill-luck.
We cannot resolve that in any case of delusion the animal
mind expresses any other emotion than that of fear. Lindsay,
who has most entered into this question, remarks that " the
dog exhibits practically a belief in the supernatural. It
expresses alarm at apparitions. It has been described as
regarding the owl as a ghost, and the same kind of ghosts
that are occasionally made use of in practical joking produce
the same effect on the dog. A fertile imagination frequently
leads the horse as well as the dog to be terrified at the
sight of perfectly harmless objects animate or inanimate,
especially when seen in a state of motion and in comparative
darkness. Bartlett speaks of a sense of mystery in certain
animals in the Zoological Gardens. In many animals awe
or dread of the unknown readily gives birth to not only a
feeling of mystery, but delusion/' (Ibid. I. p. 223.)
The first effect of the concept of luck in an object on the
savage mind is the desire to possess it and thus retain its
good quality in himself, this independent of any idea of
ghost presentation, but all know that this mental concept
has left no practical result in the animal mind; no animal
ever wears an amulet, and as far as we can judge no animal
entertains any concept of luck as an abstract quality, and
luck, as we shall show, is the first concept of the supernal in
the developing human mind.
CHAPTER II.
The concept of the uncanny as forms of luck.
MEX, like animals, are conscious of the uncanny; but,
unlike, as with tke latter, the sentiment educed is not
restricted to forms of doubt or fear. In the presence of
the uncomprehended, through their higher organic and
mental powers, men are able to carry the inference of
the possible out of the natural into the supernatural.
The first element of thought to the animal, as well as the
man, in the presence of the uucomprehended, is to see if it
can derive any material advantage from the presentation.
If the reply continues to be dubious and fear is excited,
tin- animal flies from the object; if not of sufficient force
to excite any consciousness of dread it is treated with
indifference. Not so with men when the attributes of an
object are unexplainable ; as natural signs he attaches to
the in some mysterious signification, and the mental powers
cuter into a new field of inquiry. The status of man's
thoughts is not limited to a present advantage ; he can realize
in objects the capacity to bo serviceable at some future
time, and, more, he can see in their appearances those
mental associations we term supernal.
As far as we can judge no animal has any idea of luck,
or ill-luck, as abstract conceptions ; certainly, no animal
utilizes amulets, and whatever objects they may attach to
themselves or their movements other than as food, certainly
< arry no mysterious attributes. It is only as something to
90 THE CONCEPT OF THE
play with, to work out its redundant muscular activity, that
the dog bites and throws about the stone, the stick, or the
bone ; so with the kitten and the ball, and even the bower
bird and its shell and stick objects of interest, we know,
that ordinarily no supernal attributes are attached to them ;
but, as in the case of Mr. Romanes tying a thread to a
bone, such objects may be made to induce an unexplainable
sentiment of the uncanny in the mind of the animal, which
has no result but to excite dread.
We have seen how fully the human organism is sur-
charged with natural influences that ever question the
meaning of things, that no object is ever presented to it
which it does not question on more points than its imme-
diate influence. Man not only conceives the idea of its
future relation to him, but more in the hopes and fears so
strongly present in his nature, he attaches to things various
sentiments of mysterious relation, and he conceives the
possibility and the presence of occult virtues for good
or ill.
These crude abstract conceptions seem as natural to the
man as the perceptive relations his senses express, and
they influence him in a corresponding manner. In the
fact that like classes of occult presentations are common
to all men, we must look to the inherent character of the
human organism for their origin. A man, as ordinarily
formulated, can no more withhold the sentiment of luck
from an object than he can the image of its visual pre-
sentation.
That the power that educes supernal sentiments is an
inherent organic, or if we will mental attribute, may be
noted in the range of its presentation. The concept of
luck is not limited to objects of perception; it equally
applies to modes of thought and sensation, to abstract
qualities, B.S numbers, days, and hours, and any combina-
tion of objects each normal in its nature, but which by com-
bination obtain occult attributes, and these attributes may
UNCANNY AS FORMS OP LUCK. 91
be enhanced by forms of words. In other terms, not only
objects, but all forms of thought have the power to express
occult attributes.
As with all other human characteristics, the capacity to
evolve supernal sentiments is progressive; it is phylogenetic,
it is ontogenetic ; and we may classify its presentations in
a definite scheme applicable to men in every period of
growth in all countries and in all ages.
The lowest phase of the supernal, that which, passing by
immediate use, would find an occult virtue of consequent
advantage, a power that passes even from mere natural
presentation to self-induced association that is luck. It
may be good, it may mean bad; we may court it by a
movement, by possessing an object, by altering the place
of things, by muttering a word, by spitting, by any volition
the human organism is capable of manifesting. Under
these infinite modes of operating it is evident the caus-
ative power is in the organism which presents the thought,
not in the object that primarily induces it, and, conse-
quently, it may be attached to any form of thought the
individual mind is capable of evolving.
Forms of luck, therefore, are the earliest germs of
religion; they are the basis of all religions; the human
mind can only extend, vary, and multiply the modes in
which it conceives of possible good and evil, and as the
field of thought is enlarged so are the indices of luck
brought into more exalted relations. Here, it simply
responds to a bodily sensation; there, its inciting motive is
a visual perception ; to another it is due to an ebullition of
thought ; in a third it may be incited by words spoken, or
be the result of a long series of presentations, material or
mental. There is not a movement of man, accidental or
intentional or organic, but may evolve the sentiment of
luck or ill-luck, and be ominous of good or evil; so with all
natural appearances, all the phenomena of the heavens,
light and shade, day and night, the forms and movements
92
THE CONCEPT OF THE
of the elements, life in its many presentations animal and
vegetal, all modes of thought and feeling, states of sickness,
death and dead objects, in short, every phase of things or
mind that thought can dwell upon.
How small a basis of induction may control the will we
have exemplified in the common forms of luck accepted by
not only savages but men in advanced communities, yet
even these, according to their mode of origin, represent
grades of mental powers. There are those who can never
originate a single form of thought, they can only rehearse
derived forms of thought ; others are for ever seeking new-
outputs of the supernal, they would trace the sentiment of
luck in every position and relation of things, with them the
supernal overpowers the natural.
Of this class of people James Greenwood writes " How
many men are there who carry in their purse, for luck, a
shilling with a hole it, or a crooked sixpence, which they
would not part with for ten times its intrinsic value !
There are men, and women too, whose turned-out pockets
would reveal a tooth, an odd-looking bead, a cramp -bone,
or some similar rubbish, turned to a state of high polish by
constant carriage. Rough men playing cards or dominoes
at a table will gravely turn the peak of their cap to the
back of their head, or even in extreme cases turn the cap
inside out and wear it so to woo a change of luck. They
will, though they can ill afford to waste it, throw away the
broken crust of a loaf that would bring them bad luck if
they ate it. They believe in a lucky look from a person
who squints. At Billingsgate Market, and at Farringdon
Market, may be found any morning a silly boy who picks
up many a halfpenny by diffusing lucky looks. Among
the stall-keepers it is reckoned to be nothing less than
ruinous to them to turn away the first bid for an article.
It brings bad luck on the day's sellings, so it is better to
get the hansel over, even at a loss. When he has taken
the hansel money he would as soon think of throwing it
UNCANNY AS FORMS OF LUCK. 93
into the road as putting it into his pocket without first
spitting upon it." (Graphic, June 14th, 1879.)
In taking a general survey of the concepts of forms of
luck prevailing among men, we may trace some that seem
universal. These are of organic origin, and therefore
common to all men, as when luck or ill-luck sentiments are
deduced from their own bodily conditions and the effect of
meteorological phenomena on them. We may trace the
origin of others equally general, as the appearance of
animals and birds and their various cries as denoting luck
and ill-luck, from the influence of such cries and appear-
ances to men as hunters, and the effect of such cries and
movements as presenting indications of the presence or
absence of game, of the vicinity of foes as in the case of
the kangaroos coming towards them indicating the vicinity
of foes to the Australian aborigine. The mental condition
at special times gives a distinguishing character to the
sentiments then expressed; thus, being unwell not only
influences the thoughts of good or evil in the mind of the
sick person, but it predisposes those about him to manifest
corresponding deductions, hence so many omens of sickness
and the still greater number of death premonitions and
signs. So darkness, and any alteration in the ordinary
course of things in nature, universally induce concepts of
evil, as eclipses, meteors, abnormal darkness, and various
electrical phenomena.
While so many forms of luck are universal there are
others that are specially local and even individual, for as
any man may select his own fetish so he may evolve
his individual sentiment of luck and new conditions,
new ideas of nature and the supernal always tend to
cause new forms of luck to be conceived, and those
men who are most exposed to new influences and various
conditions and risks are most prone, like soldiers and
sailors, to conceive of various forms of luck. Besides any
new associations, altered conditions, modes of life and
94 THE CONCEPT OP THE
thought by presenting new appearances, new lines of mental
influence predispose and build up new ideas of luck.
Hence, as Greenwood shows, there arise gamblers' forms of
luck and costers' forms of luck; so we have thieves' forms of
luck; even the professional Thug had his murder luck.
Naturally the prevailing form of the religious sentiment
among a people in all times and countries has widely
influenced the local forms of luck. We might in confirma-
tion refer to any race or faith, but from our known
familiarity with the subject we will be content to refer to
the fetish forms of luck attached to Christianity. No doubt
many of these have been transferred from old pagan forms
from Semitic, Hellenic, and Norse mystic associations, but
even when borrowed they have been adapted to local
sentiments. Thus sentiments of luck are attached to every-
thing connected with the church, its structure, the graveyard,
the bell, the various relations, ministrations, christening,
marriage, churching, burials, to communion, attendance, the
Bible, even to modes of action of the clergyman, and any
special incidents occurring during the religious services.
New modifications of old ideas of luck may arise any-
where. Thus, in the United States at the present day, the
inquiries into the forms of folklore have detected new forms
of luck and new variations of old forms. The hand of a
man dead or symbolic has ever been a sign of luck, the
luck is in the hand itself, it is its special virtue and has
nothing to do with his ghost or spirit. So like forms of
luck are attached to the paws of animals, the claws of birds.
In India the lions and tigers' claws express luck, in Northern
Asia the bear's paw, in this country it was noted as the
special virtue of a hare's foot, in America this power is a
potent talisman more particularly in the rabbit, especially
in one caught in a graveyard. Circumstances may attach
special significance in an individual's mind to one taken
under fetish or assumed fetish conditions. Thus, at an
execution in America as the body was cast off a rabbit was
UNCANNY AS FORMS OP LUCK. 95
roused from a hedge, then a chase of all present ensued
until the animal was caught, when Judge Wiiin offered five
dollars for one of the feet to keep it as a talisman of luck.
(Jour. ofAmer. Folklore, II. p. 100.)
The transferring of any complaint or disease has been, as
a form of throwing off ill-luck, practised in many countries.
Modes of operation for that purpose were familiar to the
old Greeks. We read of them on Chaldean bricks ; our
ancestors evoked them from Norse customs and attached
Christian symbols to them ; so some of the descendants of
the pilgrim fathers have acquired the art of working them
through modern inventions. A gentleman walking down a
street in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, noticed a clean white
envelope lying on the pavement ; it was sealed, but had
neither address or stamp upon it. On his opening it there
was a sheet of note paper with a penny folded in it ; on the
centre of the sheet of paper were three red spots in the
form of a triangle, and below the ominous inscription
"Wart blood." (Jour, of Amer. Folklore, III. p. 238.)
Another equally important conception of a new luck-form
dates from San Francisco. There the girls as well as the
boys as they pass home from school take pencil and paper
and addressing each passenger say, " Please give me a bow/'
which done the youngster marks it down and addresses in
like manner others, and when he has obtained one hundred
marks he buries the paper when no one can see him, at the
same time making a wish. At the end of four days under
like conditions ho unearths the paper, and then they say
they always get their wish.
Ideas of luck are due to attraction ; they arc founded in
sympathy, they are seen in symbols, they are recognized by
similitudes. These may be in form, in name, through sounds
r words, by affinity, by tho accident of time or placr, in
iln;ira8, or by chance. Hence they are allied with looks,
touching, making passes, with movements, with every form
of sympathy, every symbolic appearance, every sign of
96 THE CONCEPT OP THE
similitude of shape, as with stones, knobs, rocks, roots, and
so forth. A name may be lucky or unlucky, words are
significant of good or evil, even the most strained affinity
may mean luck or ill-luck. The accidental association of
incidents or times or seasons, even the chance arrangement
or misplacement of articles may imply luck or loss, as in
shifting the cuff of the cap, putting on stockings or boots,
going up or down stairs, opening an umbrella inadvertently,
and innumerable other variations of usual habits.
Now it is an important question to resolve what is the
nature of this mental concept, and what is the range of its
application. We have been referred to the ghost theory
for its inception, but though the conception may be attached
to the ghost apparition, its expression has no more connec-
tion with a ghost than any other object or appearance.
Every thing, form of thought, appearance, sound or
attribute, real or imaginary, are equally amenable to
express luck, be it conscious or unconscious, organic ov
inorganic, material or mental, sentiments of good or ill.
The bird that warns of danger, the animal whose presence
signifies luck, the meteor or eclipse that threatens unknown
horrors are indifferent and ignorant of the thought or the
power, they work out their special attributes in accordance
with the powers they possess, of all ulterior effects or
influences they are unconscious. There are attributes and
assumed attributes ; the attributes are qualities in the thing
itself, and present to every consensuous power capable of
regarding them, but the assumed attributes have no
relations in the things or concepts themselves, they are
only mental phenomena in the mind which educes them.
So it is with the sentiment of luck ; each mind creates its
own forms of good or ill, and applies them in accordance
with the nature of its susceptibilities, and these as we have
seen arise from the character of its organic tendencies. The
differences affirmed that constitute luck are only concepts of
attributes, but all actual presentations, even though by
UNCANNY AS FORMS OP LUCK. 97
ghosts express will. The attribute denoting a virtue or
principle is always the same ; the ghost presentation varies
with the mental attributes of the mind that conceives it
and manifests choice. The concept of luck might have
existed had no ghost presentation ever occurred, no spirit
sentiment been ever evolved, or the capacity to conceive
the ghost theory been ever dormant in the human mind.
Luck is a form of thought as distinct in its nature as the
concept of a ghost. It was the earliest form of presumed
outrd manifestation, and is the individual's response,
mentally, to its own organic impulses. Luck never needs
the help of medicine-man or priest, it is only a self-
influence; it was so when the savage had no spiritual
concepts ; it is so now. The man who turns the peak of
his cap, changes his seat, or calls for a new pack of cards,
expecting thereby to change his luck, is his own high
priest in the oldest faith in the world. Such men rarely
conceive of ghosts, never see apparitions, and have no
knowledge of the interposition of Providence. They
conceive there is more virtue in a holy stone, a bent coin,
the tie of a garter, even a chance fly in a glass, than in a
fetish object, an incantation, a ghost presentment or a
seraphic dream. The capacity to conceive the attribute of
luck represents a distinct mental state ; it has its own code
of laws, its special phases of presentation and inciting
causes. It is the only form of faith that is essentially
individual; it knows no church or priest, its only temple
the mind of its presenter to which all things and all
thoughts may be ministering powers.
How vast the influence of lucks, presentments, on men's
actions and thoughts may bo gleaned from the follow-
ing records of its powers over human sentiments and
human actions. Jones in his Credulities writes that St.
Chrysostomn said : "This or that man was the first to meet
mo when I walked out, consequently innumerable ills will
certainly befal me; that confounded servant of mine in
7
98
THE CONCEPT OF THE
giving me my shoes handed me the left shoe first ; this
indicates dire calamity and insults. As I stepped out, I
started with the left foot foremost ; this, too, was a sign of
misfortune ; my right eye twitched upwards as I went out,
this portends tears." Addison said, "I have known a
shooting star spoil a night's rest, and have seen a man in
love grow pale and lose his appetite upon the plucking of
a merry thought. A screech-owl, at midnight, has charmed
a family more than a band of robbers ; nay, the voice of a
cricket has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.
To one filled with omens and prognostics, a rusty nail or
Crooked pin shoot up into prodigies/'
The same writer says, " I have seen a Minister of State
turn his chair round at a whist table in order to avert ill-
luck. I have seen a warrior, to whom the safety of an
army has been confided, lodge an ivory fish upon a candle-
stick to procure its good graces. I have seen the most
prudent of attorneys call for fresh cards, and pay for them,
in the full confidence that he would be gratified by that
extravagant proceeding. I have known a venerable
divine lay his finger with indecent haste upon the two of
clubs, because, as he said, whoever first touches the two of
clubs secures a good hand." (Qreduli, p. 475.)
Equally pregnant sentiments of luck influence all savage
people. Dorman in his Primitive Superstitions writes :
" Among hunting tribes, the cawing of a crow at night
would cause a large party of warriors to run for home and
give up an expedition. The Coraanches said the wolf
warned them of danger : if one sprang up before them in
their journeys and barked or howled, they would turn aside
and travel no more in that direction that day. The
Ojibways believed much in omens. The barking of dogs
and wolves, the bleating of deer, the screeching of owls,
the flight of uncommon kinds of birds, the moaning of
a partridge were ominous of ill. The two last were certain
ones of death. The sailing of an eagle to and fro, and the
UNCANNY AS FORMS OP LUCK. 99
noise of a raven, were omens of good. When the Mankawis,
a species of quail, perched at night upon a cabin belonging
to a Seminole, the inhabitants of that cabin prepared for
death. If a white bird sports aloof in the air, this indicates
a storm. If it flies in the evening before a traveller, it
forebodes danger. Among the northern tribes the march
is regulated by a sorcerer, according to good or bad omens.
If he has seen a spider on a willow-leaf, the army must
turn back. If they hear the howling of a large wolf when
travelling, sadness is at once visible in their countenances ;
it is the medicine-wolf, and forebodes some calamity "
(p. 224).
The capacity to manifest the sentiment of luck denotes a
special phase of mental development, that in which the
powers of ratiocination were at a low ebb, and idealization
almost dormant ; the perception of the immediate present
only admitting of crude, often unconnective, ideas of
association. This mental state is a common phase now of
the human mind, and the vague indeterminate sentiment
of luck, the natural output of the supernal in the greater
portion of human minds. Baal had his thousands, and
Yahveh his ten thousands, but luck reigns triumphant in
the souls of myriads. It was so in the past, it is so in the
present, it is denoted in the attire, it is indirectly indicated
in trifles, in amulets, in objects for seeming use, but really
retained as bringing good luck. The Moslem has his several
formal daily prayers, the Buddhist announces unceasingly
his chant of praise, but the worshipper of luck at morning,
noon, and night, offers his devotions to the boundless,
endless principle of power he adores. On getting up in
the morning, ho is most careful to put his right leg out of
tin- bed first, in due order to select and put on his garments,
never crossing them, never showing inattention by putting
on his stocking inside out, or putting the left slipper on
before the right. Not an article that ho uses in his toilet
but may be injudiciously applied or made to indicate ill-
7 *
100 THE CONCEPT OP THE
luck by being misplaced. So at breakfast, at noon, at
every meal, his sense of luck orders all that he handles, he
touches, or beholds, and woe be to him if he unduly crosses
his knife, upsets the salt, or in a way puts himself under
the power of an omen of misfortune. He anxiously watches
the door for luck in the hope that his first visitor will be a
man or woman, young or old, dark or fair, according to
the semblance that his own mental idiosyncrasy denotes
as fortunate. Ever he is on the watch as to how he
sneezes to right or left, how he stumbles, how he spits.
He may save the mischance of having gone under a ladder,
by returning and spitting through the runnels, but he is
ever most wary to leave a room by the same door as he
entered it, otherwise he would leave all his luck for the
day in the room, and he had far better go home and to
bed than risk his fortune on any transaction under such
baneful auspices. We may not we need not recapitulate
the multitude of misgivings of misfortune that accompany
every action, movement, and word of the worshipper of
luck till sleep once more withholds the power of thought.
The most earnest devotee of a supernal ghost-power,
never adores it so continuously as the worshipper of luck
beseeches the impersonal principle on which his faith
depends.
You may read a man's totem guardian by the tattoo
lines on his face, or its insignia on his wrapper, or his
wigwam; so you may detect a man's devotion to his luck-
charm by the movements of his hands to it, whether a jewel,
a stone, or claw, suspended from the neck or watch-chain,
or fumbled with in the pocket. It is ever bright from
handling, and exacts more of his attention than he likes to
manifest; hence he mostly reads his luck in secret and
alone.
The early output of the concept of things, and the
condition of things governing and defining human destiny,
is what wo have now to define. There is a material
UNCANNY AS FORMS OP LUCK. 101
difference in the thought that leads to a definite exposition
of the occult results induced by the impersonal powers
it conceives, and the mere excitement of wonder by the
presence of a power invisible and incomprehensible, and it
is that mental state which is indicated when man only
recognizes influences of a mysterious and indefinable
character. These indications of uncanny influences he
attaches to vague indeterminate feelings in his own person,
to strange mental manifestations that seem to counteract
his own will in the outer world he attaches an uncanny
significance to all uncommon appearances in nature and
abrupt presentations of life. His own actions, or the
actions of his fellows outside normal habits, intimate the
presence of a power not in their own natures, and, there-
fore, mysterious. In all these cases, man fails to define
the influence, fails to control the principle, and, like the
dog frightened at the presence of the uncanny, he either
hides or stands paralyzed in amazed tribulation.
Personally, such sentiments may arise from sneezing,
ringing in the ear, the twitching of muscles, a strange
o of weight on the chest, the fluttering of the heart,
forms of pain of a new character, an uncontrollable
impulse to sigh, to weep, or to act abnormally, as putting
left foot forward first, or stumbling. All startling phe-
nomena of the external world may raise ideas of the
uncanny not yet reduced to cause and effect as strange
appearances in the heavens, the unnormal or unexpected
movements and cries of animals and birds and things
singular in form, condition, or motion.
As illustrations of the organic and mental origin of
forms of luck and other supemal semblances, Sir Humphry
Davy in his Salmonia writes : " Omens of death-watches,
dreams, &c., aro for the most part founded on some
accidental coincidence ; but spilling salt on an uncommon
occasion may arise from a disposition to apoplexy, shown
by an incipient numbness in the hand, and may be a fatal
UBEAR1
. 11 t ir^l l \ < H I VI III III
102 THE CONCEPT OP THE UNCANNY AS FORMS OF LUCK.
symptom, and persons dispirited by bad omens prepare
the way for evil fortune. The dream of Brutus before the
battle of Pharsalia, probably produced a species of irreso-
lution ; so an illustrious sportsman always shot ill after a
dispiriting omen/ 3 A writer in Notes and Queries, Second
Series, remarking on the same subject writes : " The want
of nerve or temper is frequently betrayed by some little
incident, and luck depends upon personal self-possession
and conduct. Thus, spilling the salt is unlucky; it is the
act of a nervous, hasty person, and, therefore, one not
likely to prosper. So breaking a looking-glass denotes
carelessness, or being clumsy, and is equally ominous.
Unlucky for a bride ready for church to look in the glass ;
this implies an excess of personal vanity, and not likely to
be followed by success. One who makes a patch-work
quilt will never be married, the occupation unsocial, and,
therefore, denoting one not apt for courtship. That the
bridesmaid who catches the thrown silver is likely to be
first married, may be fairly reasoned by the greater energy
she has manifested for that result. Stirring the Christmas
pudding by all in the house introduces male and female
sociality, and thus aids in the customary fulfilment so
eating mince pies in different houses. Lucky to be
followed by a strange dog infers a genial disposition, which
brings luck. So cutting the top of the loaf means
prudence, one name for luck. To tumble upstairs lucky,
but unlucky downstairs, because in the first case it implies
determination, which results in only trifling injury, but the
other careless haste, and a possible catastrophe " (XII.
p. 490).
CHAPTER III.
The evolution of Charms and Spells in the individual mind.
WE have seen that man organically evolves impulses
which formulate in his mind concepts of the presence of
supernal powers in objects and states of being and
the conditions that environ them ; that at first these forms
of power are indeterminate, and man like a straw in
troubled waters is the mere child of this chance luck,
having no control over his destiny. We have now to
consider the relations of man with nature and the super-
natural, when through the development of his mental
powers he is able to read a purpose in such presentations,
and realizes the will to control and classify them, and
thereby from forms of thought convert them into principles
of action. In doing so we recognize the presence of mind,
powers we could not in the earlier evolvernent perceive, for
man has entered into a new mental phase and the supernal
has been endowed with moral characteristics and seeming
rational affirmations. 1 As yet there is no concept of will
or mental power, save in the application of the forces
recognized in the human; the evolving sources of the
supernal are more impersonal attributes.
To recognize a purpose however illogical, to assign a
cause however outre, to every phenomena he observes, is
the charsirtrn-tic of man; in this state the seeming to him
is as important as the real. More, it is only a fonn of tin-
real, and consensus in time with him implies affinity in
104 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
action. The associations, therefore, that he conceives,
and the forces he affirms, are to him as material as the
substances they affect; he has not yet learnt to separate the
supernal from the natural ; they all belong to the same
category, only varying in their modes of expression. Thus
having faith in his sentiments of the characteristics that
denote and modify things, he evolves the belief of his
power by simulating the associative influences he re-
cognizes, to be able to control the occult virtues in things,
and the occult powers he recognizes by certain substances,
actions, and cries. Hence he becomes conscious of a power
in signs, a power in times, a power in words and forms,
and these he applies to all the modes, actions, and purposes
in life.
Next to his own personal actions and the actions of his
fellows, the phenomena of disease and death claim his
application of the occult influences he has recognized.
The man who in many fights had withstood the club
or assegai of his foeman when pierced by a weapon,
transfers to it the power that injures him; it possessed a
virtue or charm. So with disease, it was the occult power
in something he had eaten, something he had touched that
had entered him. Every change in his own body caused
by growth or evolvement had a more or less sinister
influence, those of women commanded forms of dire
misfortune. So general are these mystic significances that
there are no undeveloped races but ascribe occult dangers
to the presence of women in their courses, or at childbirth
even among the Chinese a woman for a month after
childbirth may not cross another person's threshold or she
would cast ill-luck on the occupants.
The actions of men and women that may convey mystic
powers, both of good and evil, are most varied. Thus,
trimming a house on Sunday, brings grief before Saturday.
If you sell medicine bottles you will require them to be
refilled. If you sing before breakfast you will cry before
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 105
night. If you rock an empty cradle you will have more
children. Unlucky to kill a cricket or take a swallow's
nest. Clothes mended on the back bring want ; and so on
with innumerable other human actions, each of which
carries in its performance some often most heterogeneous
occult power.
Many of these actions, which carry a baneful charm, may
have that charm controlled or altered by after presenting
a counter charm. Thus you may avert the ill omen of
putting on a stocking inside out by not changing it ; by
spitting through the rowels of a ladder avert the ill-luck of
going under it; so the threatened mishaps of salt being
upset are cast aside by throwing a pinch of it over the left
shoulder. Again, should you meet a funeral the omen of
ill-luck may be averted by politely taking your hat off to
the defunct. The evil threatened in seeing one magpie
may be controlled by crossing two straws ; and that from
meeting a squinting woman by the courtesy of talking to
her. More according to the Chinese the evil inoculated
into a house by a man having hung himself there may be
averted by cutting the beam down and burning it and
carrying away and casting into the river the earth or ashes
underneath.
When one reads of the many ill omens that denote a
death wo are almost tempted to ask how it is then that so
many people are still alive. Thus a corpse in the house
over Sunday will cause another death within a week ; and
under similar conditions if you fail to cover the mirror you
will die within the year; so if a grave is left open over
Sunday there will be another death within the week ; still
more should the rain fall in the open grave, there will bo
another death within three days; and if the hearse is drawn
by white horses another death in the neighbourhood in the
month. White animals are death-warnings in Bohemia ;
death is said to be a woman in white, and for the sick man
to dream of white clothes is ominous of death. Again, if
106 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
anyone comes to a funeral after the procession has
started another death in the house will follow. Whoever
counts the carriages at a funeral will die the same year ;
and should a party of onlookers enter the church before
the mourners, one will die the same year. The person on
whom the eye of a dying person last looks, or the person
bearing the last name uttered by the departing, will be
first to die.
If three persons look into a mirror at the same time,
one will die within the year; so breaking a looking-glass
is a death-sign. Many careless or thoughtless acts are
death-omens, as hanging a cloth on a door-knob; scissors
in falling having their points stick in the floor; or
carrying a hoe into the house. It is a death-sign to
try on another's mourning, and there are omens of death
in countless little contingencies. If you shiver some one
is walking over your grave; if you have a ringing in the
ears that is a death-omen. A clock stopping and
commencing again forbodes a death, so does the ticking
of the death watch, or live sparks in the ashes of a fire
on the following morning. The coals may not fly out of
the fire, the candle burn blue, or the flames be dim, but
death is threatened; even a lady's hair-pin falling from her
head is a death-sign. Anything out of season is a death-
omen, as apples in flower and fruit at the same time, or
a flower opening at an unusual time. Death occurs in
couples, one death follows another in the same house,
night brings death, so does ebb-tide. (Jour. American
Folklore, II. p. 18.)
Nor is it only in family associations and home indications
we take cognizance of death-warnings. It may be indicated
by a rattling at the church-door, by the heavy sound of its
bell, by the corpse not stiffening, by the thrice-repeated caw
of the carrion crow, or it may enter the house with a broom
in May ; a snowdrop or flowering twig of blackthorn bring
death in a house; so the flame of the ignis fatuus denotes a
SPELLS IX THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 107
death, the screech of the owl, the croak of the raven,
meeting a hare, a dog howling, and the fire burning black.
It were a more pleasing task to point out the omens of
marriage, which are almost as varied as those of death, and
certainly of a more pleasing character, but as these are so
well known, ;uid more as they often consist of long rhymes
such as old John Gay once loved to rehearse, and dear
Keats embalmed in an ideal myth, we will pass on to other
forewarnings of occult recognitions. In most cases the
omen is outside the human will and comes like destiny,
unsought, but often it depends on the human will and the
human choice, and the far-away mystic force responds to our
appeal. We may court fortune by casting an old shoe over the
threshold, by spitting on money, by whistling for the wind.
The Finlander obtains a favourable wind by untying the
charmed knots in a cord accompanied with a song or incan-
tation. The Persian husbandman invokes a winnowing
wind by scattering saffron in the air. Not a few ladies
shut their eyes till they get in the open before they look at
the new moon, and where is the farmer who has not nailed
a horse-shoe over his barn-door. Some of these time
monitions are favourable to early rising, as bathing tho
face in May dew, and being the first to open the house on
Christmas day ; so ho who kills the first snake in the year
will gain power over his enemies.
In the various occult powers man has discovered in
things, times, and movements, and the means by which lie
has obtained control over the various mysterious powers
in the world, we may trace their antiquity and discover
the mental state of man at the time they were announced.
Some carry us back to the early forms of thought; they are
rude crude p f relations or indeterminate presenta-
tions without definite concept, and which only vaguely
denote forms of luck. Some denote a more concentrated
outlook; a deeper investigation of cause, and tho concept of
higher powers; but all imply that beyond the world of tho
108 THE EVOLUTION OP CHAEMS AND
seen, the felt, the known, there are innumerable powers and
controlling forces to which there is neither time nor space,
neither substance nor let ; without sense, without thought,
passionless and personless, knowing nothing of spirit or
will, allwhere and everywhere, at all times under suitable
conditions as soulless destinies they work their unchanging,
unswerving potencies without power to heed, comprehend,
or avert the influences they bear. Like the lightning's
potency, like the glory of the sun, as the energy of the sea,
they may kill or cure, protect or ravage. Like the great
imponderables they overpower the ponderables; and prayer
or praise, hate and curses pass them by scatheless, as is
the granite mountain by the breeze.
Thus man evolved the religion of charms and spells that
is the capacity in things to manifest hidden powers, and
the capacity in man to apply those powers intensified by
his act of associating them together, or increasing their
energy under the influence of special times, conditions, or
formulated words. Such powers may be good or bad
according to their associations ; they may be curative or
destructive, protective or avenging, denoting the past or
prescient of the future. They may claim any personal
transcendental attribute as if a living power, and all such
attributes afterwards applied to ghosts have their origin
in the virtues attached to the most incongruous objects.
The charmed quartz-stone laid in a man's footstep is able
of itself to penetrate his body, a root of garlic may defy
the disease power to enter, and a model hand withstand all
that is evil. A stone may render one invisible, a herb
transform one ; a man may be possessed by many natural
objects. The life of a man may be attached to any natural
thing, organic or inorganic. One drives a peg in the ground;
when it rots, the man dies. Another burns a stick, in whose
existence is the life of a man. A vessel of water leaks, and
with it being spent is the individual's existence. Affinities
of actions are boundless. Killing a toad causes cows to give
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 109
bloody milk. A weed makes a man invulnerable, another
taken in the body wards off the shot of the enemy. Killing
a ladybird causes a storm. A curse lights on the ground
on which human blood has been spilt; so a red campion
brought into the house means that a death will come
quickly.
The association of occult powers between man and
animals or vegetals, are almost innumerable. The toad
cures scrofula, a frog the thrush; passing under a donkey
cures whooping-cough, and a wood-louse fits. A hedge-
hog is good for epilepsy, a mole for the ague, also a spider;
even viper's fat cures its bite; and a slice of the liver of
a dog that has caused hydrophobia cures it. So the
mysterious powers denoted by the presence of local
animals and birds are most voluminous, so is the mystic
significance of their cries. The presence of a hare has
stopped an army, and the cry of a bird has sent a stalwart
man to bed shivering with fear.
Early man looked out for a power to protect him from
the many mystic and natural dangers which surrounded
him. At first, any strange, uncouth, uncanny object, more
especially if first seen under seeming protective conditions,
denoted a power to ward off danger, and was secured as a
precious charm. In a higher state he depended upon the
boylya of the medicine man; after, on the influence of
ancestor spirits, angels, and saints; and later on, upon
tutelar deities and supreme gods. In a like course he
evolved curative and prescient powers, and all the mystic
spiritual forces, and not least the power to control man,
beast, and all things, by making use of the natural occult
powers in days, words, and things.
There are no objects or modes of arranging objects that
one seeking an occult protector may not, by him, be
rn<lo\\v<l with that power. Anything of a strange shape,
anything rare, whatever excites curiosity or appeals to
the sense of the mysterious, anything from the living,
110 THE EVOLUTION OP CHARMS AND
anything associated with death, hint at special powers and
dormant attributes. One finds in a stone or root, the claw
of a beast or bird, the bone of the dead man or the dead
animal, the protecting agent his dubious mind seeks ; here
it is sought in a herb, a leaf, a fragment of wood, or an
object denoting human skill or human intelligence. "Gold,"
as Jones (Credulities, p. 154) writes, "was a powerful
amulet; infants and wounds were touched with it to
prevent any evil spells affecting them. Both Greeks and
Romans employed coral necklaces beads and figures of
divinities ; they were worn on the person, and hung on the
jambs of doors, so that in opening they made the phallus
move and ring the bells attached to it." One who had
slain a relation, cut off the finger or toe as a protective
charm.
Stones at all times and in all places were deemed to
hold protective virtues. In this country we read of flints
with holes, elf-stones, adder-stones, toad-stones, mole-
stones, snail-stones. The toad-stone was preserved to
prevent the burning of a house and the sinking of a boat.
A commander who had one of them about him will win the
day, or all his men will fairly die on the spot. The raven-
tree was good for both man and beast. The sea-nut rendered
the owner fortunate and secure, and the possession of some
indefinite root promised the attainment of the owner's
wishes. Laurel was a preservative from epilepsy, and the
sea-nut blackened if evil were meditated against the
wearer. (Dalyell, p. 139.)
Leland writes : " We find in many forms spread far and
wide the belief that garlic possesses the magic power of
protection from poison and sorcery. This comes, according
to Pliny, from the fact that when it is hung up in the open
air for a time it turns black, when it is supposed to attract
evil into itself and, consequently, withdraw it from the
wearer. The ancients believed that the herb Mercury gave
to Ulysses to protect him from the enchantments of Circe
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. Ill
was the alium nigrum or garlic. Among the modern
Greeks and Turks garlic is regarded as the most powerful
hann against evil spirits, magic, and misfortune/' (Gipsy
Sorcery, p. 52.) The rowan-tree was in like manner
esteemed to hold a great protective influence, and in the
olden times twigs of it were laid about the house till they
fell down, to protect the inmates from evil. Twigs of rowan
were placed about the byre to keep off murrain and all
evil. A piece of the Beltaine cake, supposed to hold great
-virtue, was, as Pennant tells us, thrown to horses and sheep
to preserve them from disease and death. Even wassail
drinking and may-pole raising were esteemed as protective
agencies.
The worship of the hand amulet as a protector reaches
from Dongola to Ireland, and that of the paw or foot of
animal, bird, or the dead human in one form or other
seems universal. Here it is the bear's paw, there the foot
of a wild bird, hare, or rabbit; even the claw or nail, or
merely the shoe that has been attached to a horse's hoof,
has in consequence of such association attained mystic
protective powers. Of the hand amulet we read it may be
made of gilded terra-cotta of carved bone, coral, or stone.
Some of the old Egyptian protective hands were clenched,
some open ; some had the arm, whilst others had only the
first and second digits defined ; many were only of glass.
They are met with in the viscera of mummies. Some pose
as the fingers of Greek and Latin priests giving the bene-
diction. Later on, some were made of bronze. It was
adopted by the Moslems, and hands of blue glass were
suspended about their dwellings, and attached to the
person. Some have a single finger cut from a corpse to
protect from ague. The virtue is greatly enhanced if the
finger I'M that of a Jew or Christian. The hand entire,
particularly if severed from the body on the gallows, was a
potent talisman. Such a hand made to hold a taper
rendered the light invisible to all but the burglar carrying
112 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
it, while it struck powerless any others to whom ifc was
presented. The Etruscans used to carve in bone a right
hand, the thumb thrust between the two first fingers, the
wrist ending in a phallus. Hands with a crescent moon on
the palm protected from the evil-eye. (Jour. Arch. Assoc.
XXII. p. 294.)
Of the general use of protective charms, we will quote a
few descriptions. Hesse- Wartegg writes : " Every Bedouin,
man, woman, and child, wears either round the neck or
arms, a number of charms, as a porcupine's hand-shaped
paw. Even horses and geese have charms hung round the
neck attached with cords. Their great fear is the evil-eye,
and having tattooed a pretty design, they at once add to it
two tiny squares, with a cross above them as a spell to
prevent the design from disappearing." (Tunis, p. 253.)
The same writer adds that " in all the houses there was
the impression of an open bleeding hand on every wall of
each floor. A Jewess never goes out here without taking
with her a hand carved in coral or ivory ; she thinks it a
talisman against the evil-eye." (Ibid. p. 127.)
The old Egyptians had protective talismans, not only for
use in this world, but after death. Lenormant writes :
" Some of the most important chapters of the Ritual of the
Dead, when written upon certain objects placed on the
mummy, converted them into talismans, which protected
the deceased with a sovereign efficacy, during the perils
which awaited him in the other world." (Ghaldean Magic,
p. 91.)
The North American Indian's token was but an animal
protective charm. Dorman writes: "The medicine-bags
were constructed of the skins of animals, ornamented as
suited the taste of each person ; to it he paid the greatest
homage, and to it he looked for safety and protection
through life." It was a supernatural guardian on which he
depended for the preservation of his life. At his death it
was buried with him. That it did not depend on a will in
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 113
the medicine is seen in the fact, that if a man lost his
medicine-bag, he could replace it by capturing one in
battle from the enemy ; it was simply a protective charm
an amulet.
Schoolcraft, speaking of the American Indians generally,
remarks : " Charms for preventing or curing disease, or
for protection from necromancy, were the common resort
of the Indians. These charms were of various kinds,
generally from the animal or mineral kingdom, as bone,
horns, claws, skulls, steatites, and other stones. They
believed that the possession of certain articles about the
person would render the body invulnerable, or that the
power to prevail over an enemy was thus secured. A charmed
weapon could not be turned aside. The possession of
certain articles in the medicine-sack armed the individual
with a new power, greatest when the possession of the
articles was a secret. Charms might be thrown at a person
the mere gesticulation of the medicine-sack was sufficient."
(Ind. Tribes, I. p. 86.)
Dorman describes the Eskimo as loading themselves
with amulets dangling about their necks and arms. These
were bones, bills, and claws of birds, which had a wonderful
virtue to protect those who wore them from disease [and
misfortune. They were very anxious to get a rag or shoe
of an European to hang about their children's necks, that
they might acquire European skill and ability. For this
purpose they requested Europeans to blow upon them.
The kayak was often adorned with a dead sparrow or
snipe, or the feathers or hair of an animal, to ward off
danger. (Primit. Super, p. 157.) He also writes: "The
natives of Yukon wear bears' claws and teeth, sables' tails,
wolves' ears, porcupine quills, ermine skins, beavers' teeth,
and the bright green scalps of the mallard as amulets. The
Haidahs used small owls and squirrels as amulets. Amu-
lets, made of the tusks of some animal akin to the mastodon,
were found in graves in Tennessee. The New Mexicans
8
114 THE EVOLUTION OP CHARMS AND
wore feathers of birds, antelopes' toes, and cranes' bills as
charms. The Abipones wore crocodiles' teeth, and believed
they would protect them from the bites of serpents."
(Ibid. p. 158.) The Mexicans thought themselves perfectly
safe when their bodies were anointed with an unction
composed of scorpions and spiders. (Ibid. p. 156.) With
the Peruvians, " If a person found anything that was of
peculiar colour or figure, it was a canopa ; and the bezoar
stones were popular'canopas they decended from father to
son. Each Peruvian might have as many fetishes as he
pleased; they were images of llamas, vicunas, alpacas,
huanacas, deer, monkeys, parrots, lizards, &c." (Ibid.p.161.}
Sir George Grey describing the Australian aborigines,
writes : " They use the Murramai, a round ball, as a
talisman against sickness, and it is sent from tribe to tribe
hundreds of miles. It is a quartz substance wrapped up
in opossum fur and woollen cord. They swallow small
crystalline particles which crumble off, as a preventative of
sickness. Another stone appeared to be an agate, a third
was a species of cornelian wrapped up with a fragment of
chalcedony, and a fragment of crystal of white quartz."
(Jour, of Discov. II. p. 342.) Of other protective charms
used by the aborigines Smyth, in his Aborigines of Victoria,
writes : " They seem to have had a belief in the efficacy of
charms. One anxiety with them was to possess a bone
from the skull or arms of their deceased relatives, which,
sewed up in a piece of skin, they wear round their necks
confessedly as a charm against sickness and premature
death. The bones were worn by people in health, and they
lent them to others of their own tribe when ill, who wear
them as charms round the neck/' (II. p. 398.)
There are many charms used to protect animals. Thus,
to protect a horse put nine-fold grass and hairs from his
mane and tail into a hole in the tent with earth scraped
from his left fore-foot ; in another, a hog-stone with a hole in
it tied to tjie key of stable-door to protect the horses therein.
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 115
Again, a cow's abortion buried in the gateway of a close
that other cows passing over may not cast their calves.
Anything may become a charm and be used as an
amulet. Leland says : " All through many lauds even in the
heart of Africa the Maria Theresa silver dollar is held in
high estimation for magical purposes. From one to
another the notion has been transferred." (Gipsy Sorcery,
p. 233.)
The Moslems have amulets to protect horses and mules,
fruit-trees from being blighted, plagues of flies, the
croaking of frogs, many of which are verses from the
Koran. In Russia, eikons of saints are protective; in Spain,
relics, medals of the Virgin, the cross of Caravaca, the holy
countenance, and rosaries. For the same purpose the
Chinese have various mystic charms with words and
figures ; and the Siamese depend on the supernal attributes
ascribed to gold and silver beads and cords blessed by the
bonzes. Amulets of various kinds are esteemed as
protective by the Japanese, as inscriptions and figures,
impressions of a black hand, sacred spoons, garlic and
herbs.
Primitive man not only needed supernal protection ; ho
wa- t-\ji -.-d to so many diseases and accidents, whoso
origin ho could not account for, many of which seemed
dm- to the niv.-tic powers ho recogni/.ed in things, that ho
readily ascribed to counter forces supernal powers of
healing, or that which caused the- ill in like manner by
some mystic change became the niini.-trr to health. Thus
tertian fever was relieved by a root of nettle, the head or
heart of a viper, a burn by exposure to firo ; hydro-
phobia was cured by a slice of the liver of the dog by
which the per.-on was bitten. The skin of a snak
portion of a viper, or the rattlo of. the rattle-snake, were
! their respective bii
111 a largo numlier of cases the cur< U-d to some
sympathetic action attached to the ivinedv. It may be
S*
116 THE EVOLUTION OP CHARMS AND
colour, as when wine is used to cure jaundice; or its form as
a mandrake, a remedy for a man. It may be due to local
association, as an otter's bladder a cure for gravel ; and in
the United States snake-root was a remedy for the bite of
a rattlesnake. Heart-disease was to be cured by a piece
of lead in the shape of a heart ; erysipelas by a piece of
scarlet cloth, or the herb Robert. Some remedies were
crudely symbolic, others due to suppositions, animal
affinities, assumed powers in words and actions, or some
natural preservative virtue in the object, as in arsenic, salt,
in wells, in wheat, &c. ; but by far the most numerous were
those to which, by fetish combination or the adscription of
fetish powers, curative virtues were affirmed.
Mystic curative powers were attached to animals and
parts of animals, these from the constant observation of
by savage men, and the using of them for food, would
easily suggest associative influences. Our own folklore
shows how much power of various curative kinds were
attached to moles, mice, otters, bears' grease, goose grease,
fish brine, fur and hair of rabbits, hares, cats and dogs,
feet of moles, mice and hares, soup of dried snakes, a
live frog in a chimney corner, swallowing preparations of
moles and mice, spiders, and wood-lice. So in like manner
various other animal cures were presumed to be effective.
In one a snake was drawn along a swollen neck, then
bottled and buried, and as the snake died so it was
presumed the swelling would perish. There were many
often very disgusting cures to be effected by worms, toads,
and spiders ; and beetles and hairy caterpillars were worn
as charms. The fathers of the old races of men found
virtues in anything that was once animate gall and blood,
urine, spittle, the ordure of animals, or any part like the
feet, claws, teeth, and paws, that had been most expressive
of their passions ; even the brains of a rabbit cured a
fractious child, and spiders put in nuts, then wrapped in
silk, were supposed to cure the ague. Good old Elias
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 117
Aslimole said he took a dose of elixir and hung three
spiders about his neck " which, by the grace of God, drove
my ague away " but whether the holy exorcizing virtue was
the elixir or the spiders, or the fetish combination of both,
he fails to expound. Still more difficult would it be to
unravel the true anodyne Pope Adrian wore, which we
are told by Smedley consisted of a sun-baked toad, arsenic,
tormentil, pearl, coral, hyacinth, smaragd, and tragacanth.
(Occult Sci. p. 347.)
As with animal, so with the mystic virtues in herbs,
many of these may have had their virtues discovered by
preglacial man, and our rustics have inherited them through
untold ages. To this class belong the curative powers
in the rowan-tree, the aspen, the elder, and mistletoe ;
not a wild herb the eating of which had mysteriously
excited or affected him, but contained some fetish power.
Virtues of this character were ascribed to the poppy,
the monkshood, the marigold, wormswood, sage, mint,
galbanum, and so forth. Of the special powers thus
esteemed to be present in animal or vegetal substances,
Cockayne, in his Leechdoms, gives us many an insight.
Thus paeony was more marvellous in its many virtues
than Holloway's pills. It not only cured most diseases,
blear eyes, spasms, rheumatism, and sterility, but it laid
ghosts and nightmares, cured family discord and
indifference t wives, barking of dogs, hydrophobia, and
effeminacy ; all that was required to obtain these many
virtiK < \\a< to pluck it when the moon was in Gemini.
Special virtues were held in special parts. One swallowing
a mole's heart, fresh and palpitating, would become an
expert in divination. A crazy fellow would recover his
senses if spiinklcd with a mole's blood. Democritus
described .a root which, wrought into pills and swallowed
in win* 1 , \\iaildmako the guilty confess; but we have never
heard of this being applied under the eye of judge and
jury. Curing tertian fever with the root of a nettle seems
H8 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
to anticipate the great law of Homoeopathy, and there is a
touch of cannibalism in some, as Xenocrates wrote of the
good effects obtained by eating human brains, flesh or
blood, or drink infused with burnt or unburnt human bones
and blood. Surely the old Pelasgians were antediluvian
New Zealanders. The amulets recommended by Alexander
of Tralles, carry us back to the great stone age, and
European man a wild savage among savage animals. One
of his remedies consists of the dung of a wolf and bits of
bone, another is the sinews from a vulture's leg, another was
the astragali of a hare taken off the living animal and
only of virtue if the animal lives, another was the bone
cut from the heart of a living stag. These old medicine-
men must have been experimental vivisectionists, for
Marcellus, as late as A.D. 380, recommends as a cure for
eye disease, catch a fox alive cut his tongue out, let him go,
dry the tongue, tie it up in red rag, and hang it round the
sick man's neck.
Of most of our old folklore charms, owing to their
universal character and common-place asseverations, it
would be difficult to trace the origin ; many indicate
neither time nor place, and are as new and efficient in our
modern civilization as in the old savagedom ; others on the
contrary have the imprint of their status and local origin
in the material or the philosophy of the charm. Cockayne
affirms, " Some of the prevailing superstitions must have
come from the Magi, for we find them ordering the modern
feverfew (pyrethrum parthenium] to be pulled from the
ground with the left hand, and the herbalist must not look
behind him. Pliny says the Magi had many foolish tales
about the sea-holly, and they ordered the pseudo anchusa
to be gathered with the left hand, the name of the one who
was to profit by it being uttered. They were the authors
of the search for red and white stones in the brood
nestlings of swallows." We may affirm somewhat the age
of some charms by the materials used iu them or the modes
I
SPELLS IX THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 119
in which they are applied. When we are told to stop
inflammation by a clean sheet of paper having a written
charm on it, we know that this must date after the
invention of paper. So when we are bid to write or mark
a figure on a thin plate of gold with a needle of copper, we
may presume the charm dates after the arts of working in
copper and gold were known and before the metallurgy of
iron and steel. So the use of unwrought flax refers to the
period when it was, at least, used for thread, if not for
linen.
We have seen that some spells must date from the period
when men were cannibals and criticized the choice parts of
the " human pig." Most probably of the wild-animal
charms date from the time when man was a hunter and
had to prey on all kinds of animal produce. Among the
remedies recorded by Sextus Placitus we have boar's
bladder and brains, wolf's back, the right eye of a wolf,
its head, its flesh, its spoor, its marrow, and milk. So of
hounds we have as cure-charms its milt, suet, milk, tongue,
shank, and dung. Of harts, the marrow, horn, shank,
cheek and shorn j and of bulls, the horns, blood, gall,
marrow, and dung. The last might refer to wild cattle or
tame, but when we read of barleycorns and ears of wheat
as charms we know that when they were enounced man had
become a cultivator of the earth. One charm carries us
back to the time when, like the Bushman and the
Eskimo, the prehistoric man tore open his victim, and
plunging his head in the still palpitating carcase, gluttonised
on the ebbing blood. " If a man drink a creeping thing
in water, let him cut instantly into a sheep and drink the
sheep's blood hot." (Leechdom, II. p. 115.)
The old nature-worship still lingers in innumerable
forms of charms and ceremonies attached to animal and
herb spells, or mystic customs. There it is a well endowed
with an occult virtue to cure a special complaint only, it
may bo insanity, skin disease, ague, or the complaints of
women ; it may be something taken in the moon's increase
120 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
or waning, or the full moon, or kneeling with the bare
knees on an earthfast stone. A very early form of water-
worship may be recognized in the charm for a woman who
cannot rear her child : she was to take milk from a cow of
one colour in her hand, sup it in her mouth, then go to a
running stream, spew the milk therein, and after this
offering, with the same hand she was to ladle up a mouthful
of water, saying a word-charm. (Ibid. III. p. 69.)
In some cases we have strange mixtures of the old forms
and customs of Paganism and Christian rites and usances.
The moon-worship blended with that of the Virgin, Pagan
charms drunk out of a church-bell, and masses sang over a
wort concocted of a solution of herbs, animal ordure, or
brains. Eunes were crossed with Alpha and Omega, or T
for Trinity made doubly potent a Norse-word charm.
Many of the rites and ceremonies are mimicked in charm
forms. We read of holy water being sprinkled to cure a
sick pig ; a young man being cured of fits by being taken
to church at midnight, when he was to take a handful of
earth from the newest grave. With some, if a man, to be
effective it must come off a woman's grave, and if a
woman, from a man's grave. Confirmation is with some
esteemed a cure for rheumatism, and some have sought the
remedy a second time from the bishop's hands for after
complaints. So rings consecrated on Good Friday cured
cramp, and fretfulness in children was cured by baptism,
and there were many forms of cure by making crosses or
repeating incantations to Christ, the Virgin, or the Trinity,
and there were curative virtues in repeating Ave Marias,
Paternosters, and the Creed. We might quote the cases
of occult virtue in sacramental money or bread or wine.
As associated with the church, we may note the many
charms that are made from skull, bones, or grass from a
churchyard, and to get a dead hand from a grave one
possesses a most potent charm. We read in the Journal
of American Folklore : " In Washington, the graves of
paupers are not infrequently violated for the purpose of
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 121
obtaining a hand or arm. Detached portions of the dead
hand are quite commonly used for some lucky influence they
bring" (I. p. 83).
In the evolution of charms into principles of supernal
power omens served as the stepping-stones to prophecies.
To see a sign readily led to affirming as a fact the advent
of the change. This occurs every day now, not only in
weather-lore, but in forms of sickness. In fact, the
impression, the portent, the monition, the omen, and the
prophecy, glide imperceptibly into each other. Often what
we wish wo affirm that we see, and the man or beast fore-
spoken is already foredoomed. We have seen that the
tendency to prophesy may be organic naturally with regard
to the weather and general appearances; it is instinctive,
assuming the character of our feelings and impulses, more
especially under certain mental states or influences. Hence
the inspirations of ecstatics, the weird prophecies induced
by toxics, and the mental conversion of occult dreams into
the present realizations of the mysteries of the future.
All and every form in which the future is rehearsed in
the present, perceptibly or mentally, is by men accepted as
a supernal intimation, and which may not only come as
an occult intimation from the object itself, but may bo
divined through the occult powers possessed by men. Thus
divination in its many forms are parts of the same chain
of causes and effects we have recognized in premonitions and
prophecies, and alike imply the vast influence that supernal
.sentiments have evolved in the human mind.
Many assumed forms of prophecy only intimate the
M-initific explanation of the necessary associations and
timal changes in things, whether denoting atmosplu nV
influences, the motions of the heavenly bodies, the course
of disease, or alterations by growth. The distinction in
this respect between the philosopher and the savage, is one
of education rather than principle : the one sees objects and
:.ta present to his perceptive powers through the
122 THE EVOLUTION OP CHARMS AND
medium of his emotions, feelings, and previous imaginings ;
the other tests such presentations by the known laws of
their formation, and the connection therewith deduced by
his judgment ; hence the change which the one affirms
as the natural sequence of organic relations the other re-
cognizes as a manifestation of occult power, and the range
of these deductions marks the progress of man, and the
decline of the belief in supernals whether in the form of
divination or prophecy.
There is much in weather prognostics as true to the
savage as to the scientific man. Like conditions always
resolve into like results. Hence, the halo round the moon
indicated coming rain to the savage in the past and present
as well as to the observant farmer. Both might equally
note the toad coming out to look for the rain, and the bees
going home to avoid it ; but their deductions from these
special habits differed essentially. What one recognized
as instinct, may-be acquired knowledge, was seen by the
other to present the influence of an occult power working
on the toad and the bee. That the presence of such
powers should endow rooks and various beasts and birds
with prophetic powers or the capacity to divine the future,
and present such an interpretation as an omen to men
readily occurred to the one, while the other only read theii
various volitions as their natural movements under certain
atmospheric conditions. There were many natural appear-
ances incipient science could not explain. Need we wonder,
then, that savage man when he had evolved the ghost-
spirit saw in the supernal personalities, thereby educed, a
ready explanation of cloud-forms, eclipses, and thunder-
forces ? Nothing was more easy than for the spirit-power
which rode on the dust-column, hurled the lightning, or
vainly devoured the moon, to intimate the courses it in-
tended to manifest in the clouds or through the monitions
of birds and beasts.
Of prescient powers in or possesssd by animals we have
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 123
many intimations. Some, no doubt, are spirit manifestations,
or deemed such, as when dogs are said to see ghosts, and
cocks to see evil spirits; even the pig to see the wind;
but the crowing of a hen or the howling of a dog before
a death, no more indicates spirit influence than does the
production of hens if the eggs are set when the tide was
ebbing, or cocks at a rising tide. "We are all familiar with
the knowingness of a dog, but we can scarcely admit that
he eats grass to tell us that it is going to rain. Still less
can we ascribe to a ghost the assumed power in an egg if
broken on the edge of a glass, holding a little water to
indicate by the flowing of the albumen the prognostics of
the diviner's future life. We can conceive of such invisible
ghost-forms as Juno and Minerva in the Iliad warding off
the weapons of assailants from their mortal friends, but we
cannot see a present spirit-power in the position the point
of the sickle takes when the reaper divines by it after
throwing it over his left shoulder. Surely we need not
ascribe to a spirit the prophecy that a child born feet first
would live to be hanged, or that a ghost has anything to
do with divination by cups drawing lots the direction a
crumb of bread falls, or that in which a thrown staff lies.
The occult sentiment present in any of these contingencies
exists only in the operator's mind. What has a ghost to
do with the protective or prescient powers in garlic, in
stones, in an iron nail or horse-shoe ; where is the ghost
presence in a sign, a mark, a look, in the blood from the
tail of a black cat, or in the charm concocted of many
ingredients ?
We may trace in some cases the history of the evolution
of charms ; and from these we feel assured that the oldest,
the most numerous, and those asserted over the largest
area are wholly impersonal objects, times, or seasons which
appealed to the occult sentiment of tho canny or uncanny
in the human mind. The child sees the canny and tho
uncanny long before it personifies objects, and speaks to
124 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
the sun and animals and toys as if they were endowed
with the same faculties as itself ; so it is with the savage ;
and there is no concept of ghost present to his mind when
he endows the sun, moon, and stars, the dog, cat, bird, and
plant, with the same powers that he recognizes in himself
and fellows. The folklore animal, or sun, river, or moun-
tain-fable, long antedate any mystic tale that assigns to
them spirit attributes. Here is one illustration of the
evolution of the ghost theory from the nature personality.
Pettigrew in his Medical Superstitions writes : " Melton
says the saints of the Romanists have usurped the place of
the zodiacal constellations in the governance of the parts of
a man's body. Thus, St. Ohlia keeps the head instead of
Aries; St. Blasius governs the neck instead of Taurus;
St. Lawrence keeps the back and shoulders instead of
Gemini, Cancer, and Leo. St. Erasmus rules the belly
in place of Libra and Scorpius " (p. 36). In like manner
every known disease controlled by a spell or nature-power
was taken under the curative charge of some saint, and the
virtues once possessed by a holystone, a topaz, or heliotrope,
a snake, or toad-stone, were dispensed by a saint. The
spirit may even take the form of the snake, toad, or other
animal that personified the healing-well or stone of power.
Thus at the holy well near Carrick-on-Suir, the trout no
doubt were the original potent agents, as only when they
were present did the waters hold the healing virtue ; now
it is the holy saints Quan and Brogwan who become little
fishes to give the waters their virtue. (Ibid. p. 40.)
In tracing the output of charms and spells we note that
they are universal among men in the present as in the past,
and that faith in their protective agencies preceded the
differentiation of spirit sentiments ; we are assured all the
old great religions of the world are founded on spells and
charms, and cognate supernal ideas. We can trace these
curative, protective, and prescient powers as well as all the
supersensuous powers as applied at first as impersonal
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 125
influences, and subsequently associated with the after
evolved ghosts, spirits, and gods. We detect in all the
fetish nature rites and ceremonies, in the sacrifices, in
the forms of adoration, in the customary dances, tabus of
food and concepts of pollution and purification, the pres-
ence of the early sentiments regarding charms and spells.
The conception of supernal impersonal induced disease is
present in the earliest and lowest human associations, and
as impersonal powers to injure they are blended in all the
old faiths with the spirit-induced disease, and that even
may be cast off by impersonal spells. All phallic worship
in its incidence represents charms and spells; so with the
customary relations of the sexes, and the organic changes
they present.
The sacred books of Iran, the sacred books of India,
teem with evidences that tell us they were preceded by a
religion of charms, spells, and impersonal fetish concepts.
The powers exhibited by the earliest priests and Brahmans
all affect the low supernal attributes of the modern medicine-
man in his lowest fetish character. Fear of the uncanny,
dread of pollution of a material nature, the enforcement of
charm purifications, and bodily and food tabus are general
as now with savage races. In the Gatha's, the Zendavesta,
and the Bundahis, we have many direct and more indirect
affirmations of their conceptions of mysterious powers and
principles; even in the modern customs and mental ex-
pressions of the Parsees we have as it were the fossilized
records of primary thoughts, the then highest supernal
aspirations of the Iranian soul.
Before the spirit sentiment was evolved, the various
impersonal powers and fetish concepts were evolved the
doctrines of spells, charms, and divination. These must
have become of a very defined nature or wo should not
li;ive had them combined with the after evolved spirit-idea,
and these impersonal sentiments prominently characterize
modern Parseo faith. The rolls of baresma rods used in
126 THE EVOLUTION OP CHARMS AND
their rites and ceremonies, and formerly invoked in their
wars with the Turanian savage Danus, were not spirit-
powers, but impersonal spell-powers, so were all the fetish
concepts of pollution from women, from dead bodies and
dead dogs. The powers of purification presented are
charms, not spiritual cleansings. As spell-compounds the
Visparad refers to the preparation of sacred waters, the
consecration of certain offerings by fetish spells as the
sacred bread, the branches of homa, the branch of the
pomegranate endowed with mystic powers, the Parahoma r
fruits, butter, hair, fresh milk, and flesh, which by being^
carried round the fire as a spell become endowed with
supernal attributes. The fetish sacred ferment Homa, long
before it became a god spirit, was only a mystic impersonal
spell. At first it was repudiated by the semi-moral Zer-
dushta, as we read in the Gathas, the fathers of the
families could not but repudiate the excesses it produced ;
but when the spirit Homa appeared to Zerdushta in a
dream, he accepted it as a source of material as well as
supernal influence. Then he praised it in its branches,
its juice, the clouds and rain that made it grow, the
mountain which formed its body, and the earth that bore
it. Fire, too, before it became a god, was an impersonal
fetish power. It had five spell-attributes : one, that of
burning; another as the good diffuser, which enters into
men and aids digestion ; that of the Aurvazist, which gives
growth and special power to plants ; and that of the
Vazist, which produces motion and form in the clouds. It
was by a mighty spell that the primary Medicine Archangel
Amerodad produced the many species of plants. He
pounded the small plants then on the earth together in a
mortar, mixed them with water, after which Tistar, the great
star, poured them as rain on the earth, on which plants
sprang up as thick as the hair on a man's head. One of
the most singular fetish spell-powers described in the
Yendidad is that affirmed to be contained in the parings of
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 127
the nails of the fingers and the toes, the hairs that cling in
the comb or in the lather after shaving, to allow them to
come within twenty paces of a fire, thirty of water, or fifty
from consecrated bundles of baresma, was a grievous
charm. " Look here, Ashozusta bird, here are the nails
for thee ; may they be for thee so many spears, knives,
bones, falcon-winged arrows and sling-stones against the
Mazainya Daevas." (Sac. Books East, IV. p. 188.)
There are contained in the Vendidad and in several of
the yasts many references to the primary faith in charms
and spells. It would appear that in Iran all evil influences
on the output of the spirit-sentiment were gradually trans-
ferred to the then conceived evil spirit, the fiend Drugs.
Yet not only are there texts, which are spells to coerce
these spirit-powers, but wo also have spell-forms of the
most primitive type, both curative and protective, in which
no concept of spirit-influence is presented, and others in
which the power of the medicine-man is presented to work
the charm and the counter-charm through the attainment
of supernal power of an advanced character, acquired by
unremitting fetish austerities. The whole of the sacred
writings of Iran are permeated by the fear of uncanny
impersonal dreads, and the appeal to spells to withstand
them. Disease, death, and pollution are always treated as
spells ; they are counteracted, influenced, or expelled by
charms. In some instances wo have spells enacted as crude
as any now presented by savage races, and mystic fetish
impersonal objects are as powerful as the after developed
spirits and gods. In the Bahran Yast wo read, " If I
have a curse thrown upon me, a spell told upon me, by the
many men who hate mo, what is the remedy for it ? "
Ahura Mazda answered, " Take thou a feather of that bird
with feathers, the Varengana (raven). With that feather
thou shalt rub thy own body ; with that feather thou shalt
curse back thine enemies. If a man holds a bone of that
strong bird, or a feather of that strong bird, no one can
128 THE EVOLUTION OF CHARMS AND
smite or turn to flight that fortunate man. The feather
of that bird of flight brings him help." (Sac. Books of the
East, XXIII. p. 241.) James Darmesteter shows, in the
accompanying note, that a similar spell is recorded in the
Shah Namah. When Rudabah's flank was opened to bring
forth Rustem, her wound was healed by rubbing it with a
Simurgh's feather. Rustem, also wounded to death, is
cured by the same charm feather.
Among all savage and semi-savage races all the changes
in a woman's secretions, all the incidences of childbirth,
are esteemed as denoting the power of spells ; she and the
child are ever considered as under the influence of fetish
impersonal spells which have to be counteracted by purifying
charms. Spells and charms for this purpose are so highly
esteemed in the Zendavesta that we find them repeated
twice in the Yendidad (Ibid. IV. pp. 226 and 227), and in the
Vistasp Yast (Ibid. XXIII. p. 341) . "Thou shalt keep away
the evil by this holy spell. Of thee, O child, I will cleanse
the birth and growth ; of thee, O woman, I will make the
body and strength pure. I make thee a woman rich in
children and rich in milk, a woman rich in seed, in
milk, and in offspring. For thee I shall make springs run
and flow towards the pastures that will give food to the
child." The commentator, James Dermesteter, writes that
the spell refers to the cleansing and generative powers
of the waters. The spell was probably pronounced to
facilitate childbirth. Of another spell it is said, <f Let
not that spell be shown to anyone except by the father to his
son, or by the brother to his brother from the same womb, or
by Athravan to his pupil in black hair/' (Ibid. XXIII. p. 51 .)
The Ardibehist Yast terms the invocation or prayer to
Airayman as, " It is the greatest of spells, it is the best of
spells, the fairest of spells, the fearful one amongst spells,
the firmest of spells, the victorious amongst spells, the
best healing of all spells." (Ibid. XXI1L p. 44.) Another
general reference to spells : "Ahura Mazda answered, It is
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 129
when a man pronouncing my spell, either reading or reciting
it by heart, draws the furrows and hides there himself."
(Ibid. XXIII. p. 50.) There are various other references
to the power of spells in the Zendavesta.
There are many illustrations of spell sentiments in the
Laws of Manu. Burnt oblations during the mother's
pregnancy, the ceremony after birth, the tonsure, and the
tying of the sacred girdle of munga grass, are all forms of
spells. (Sac. Books of the East, XXV. p. 34.) So also is
the naming of the child on a lucky lunar day, in a lucky
muhurta, under an auspicious constellation. (Ibid. XXV. p.
35.) Another form of spell is, "having taken a staff, having
worshipped the sun and walked round the fire turning his
right hand towards it." (Ibid. XXV. p. 38.) Again, " his
meal will procure long life if he eats facing the east, fame if
he eats facing the south, prosperity if he turns to the west,
truthfulness if he faces the north." The following are
charm forms : " Let a Brahman always sip water out of
the part of the hand sacred to Brahman, or out of that
sacred to Ka, or out of that sacred to the gods, never out
of that sacred to the manes." (Ibid. XXV. p. 40.) And
in "seated on Kusawith their points to the east, purified by
blades of grass, and sanctified by three suppressions of the
breath, he is worthy to pronounce the syllable Om." (Ibid.
XXV. p. 44.) The syllable Om itself is a spell, so is the
daily reading of the Veda according to rule, which, among
other charm-powers, will " ever cause sweet and sour milk,
clarified butter, and honey to flow." (Ibid. XXV. p. 49.)
All the early religious ordinances were spell forms. Thus
"an oblation duly thrown into the fire reaches the sun,
from the sun comes rain, from rain food." (XXV. p. 89.)
In this there is no expression of a personality. In the
following we have offerings to the early ghosts as well as
to impersonal*. "Let him throw Bali offerings in all
directions of the compass, proceeding from the east to the
south, saying adoration to the Maruts, adoration to the
130 THE EVOLUTION OP CHAEMS AND
waters, adoration to the trees. At the head of the bed he
shall offer to fortune (luck), at the foot to Bhadrakali, then
he is to throw up into the air a Bali for all the gods and
goblins ; all that remains is to be thrown to the cranes."
(XXV. p. 91 .) Diseases are the result of fetish evil, so the
stealer of a lamp will become blind, the stealer of clothes
will have white leprosy, a horse-stealer become lame, and
an informer will have a foul-smelling nose. (Ibid. XXV. p.
440.) Here is a spell that might be matched in any rustic
village. " A student who has broken his vow shall offer at
night, at a cross-way, to Nirriti a one-eyed ass." (Ibid.
;XXV.p.454.) In another he is to go begging to seven houses,
.dressed in the hide of a sacrificed ass. (XXV. p. 455.) Even
at that early period cross-ways were places for powerful
spells to be performed, and the fetish virtue is enhanced if
the material of the spell is obtained from many sources. As
a sample of the many modes by means of which fetish
pollutions may be removed, we quote the following: "By
muttering with a consecrated mind the Savitri three
thousand times, dwelling for a month in a cow-house, and
subsisting on milk, a man is freed from the guilt of accept-
ing presents from a wicked man." (Ibid. XXV. p. 470.)
We may note that sacred stones were common in Upper
Assyria and in India, but none are specified in the
Vendidad ; so, in like manner, animal totems are not
commonly referred to. The early division of the animal
world into pure and impure, clean and unclean, are indica-
tions of totemism. So the ten incarnations of Verethraghna
in the Bahrain Yast are totem incarnations.
We have seen that man, under the inspiration of the
doctrine of charms, had evolved and defined a vast series
of virtues, in things curative, protective, and prescient;
more, all that we know or conceive of the transcendental
had their origin in this stage. Nothing is more common in
the principle of charms than to transfer an attribute, a
power or principle, good or bad, through some form or
SPELLS IN THE INDIVIDUAL MIND. 131
virtue ; in stone, or leaf, or combination of objects, the pre-
sent state of the attribute is withdrawn, and it is cast
definitely on some other person, animal, or thing, or left,
in the chance medley of the earth's waste products to be
consciously or unconsciously appropriated by some other
object. Out of this capacity of transference was evolved
the doctrine of transformation if ono attribute could
be cast off and assumed by other than its original
possessor so could all attributes. Hence the doctrine
of transformation became a power, and all kinds of
charms had power to transform sun, moon and stars
into men or animals and birds, and other animals into other
animal forms, stones, stumps, waters, anything and every-
thing. In all these animal transformations so prevalent in
myth and fable, there is no presence of a ghost, no spirit is
yet eliminated. It is only in the after tales conceived
under a new inspiration that men portray the ghostly
powers of change. The real old-world literature knows
no ghost.
We have defined the transcendental powers as the
elimitation of time and space, the capacity to become invul-
nerable and invisible, the permeability of substance, super-
sensuous powers that of thought transmission, and these
more or less combined under ecstatic forms. All these
states of being are induced by charms; many we have
already expressed, and the reader will recognize most of
them in common charms. These make invulnerable and
invisible like the quartz stone j they can permeate the
body of the Australian aborigine, and, in the form of
toxics, induce supersensuous states and powers.
9*
CHAPTER IV.
The Differentiation of the Medicine-man.
IT seems a necessary consequence of the diverse range of
the individual faculties in men that they should differentiate
in diverse directions, and as their various powers became
more fully evolved and their results accumulated, each
successive series of manifestations became specialized. It
was so when individuals first came to recognize the
uncanny ; it was so when the individual reduced them to
special forms of manifestation; and it is so in the stage
we have now to consider, in which, owing to the many
supernal presentations and the wide results deduced from
their influences, general man remits to a special class of
visionaries the consideration of the forms and control of
the various supernal manifestations. First, we were aware
of faith in the unknown, then of faith in the seeming;
now we have the birth of faith in men devoted to occult
ideas and sentiments. These men very early stand out in
every community among every isolated group, and they all
affirm that not only are there supernal virtues in things,,
but that they, as men, are endowed with supernal attributes.
Ordinary men look with awe on the medicine-man, the
shaman, the wizard, the priest ; they are not as other men ;
they may not, like the Pope, hold the keys of heaven, but
they hold the keys of the human soul and thereby lead
them as they list.
THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE MEDICINE-MAN. 133
Before describing the modes by which such power is
manifest, we have to consider its nature and origin and
enunciate the forms it assumes among various races of
men. We are not aware that the subject in its fulness of
character has ever been considered; local and isolated
magical and spiritual claims have been described and
explained, but the common nature of the supernal influence
or accepted influence has never been presented. Yet it
follows, as we have seen, that powers one man affirms
others may affirm, and the supernal presentations one
now recognizes may, under other forms, be the common
attribute of a like class of men in far distant communities.
That some men claim the possession of supernal powers
that other men know nothing of, is a common assertion.
We have it in various forms in every advanced community,
and there are few but come across individuals who assert
such pretensions. Among some races these mental cha-
racteristics are accounted for by the presence of a distinct
supernal power a personal virtue may-be that enters and
influences the minds of those who have in various occult
ways been prepared for such presentations. Even with
so low a race of men as the Australian aborigines, the
medicine-men have generally ascribed to them the pos-
session of a special power to read, manifest and control all
occult things and occult influences. This power is known
as boylya, and a man may become possessed of it by means
of the many ascetic observances that in other countries
produce like neurotic conditions, and the sentiments thus
induced in all cases raise in the mind pretensions of magic
powers and the capacity to influence whatever supernal
conditions that have been evolved amongst them. Among
the Australians some believed that a man became a wizard
by meeting with Ngetje, who put quartz crystals in him ;
since then such an one can pull things out of himself and
others. Some were instructed by the ghosts which took
them up into the sky. One said, " My father is Yibai
134 THE DIFFEEENTIAT10N OF
the Iguana. When I was quite a small boy he took me
from the camp into the bush to train me. He placed two
large quartz crystals on my breast, and they vanished into
me. I felt them going through me like water. After that
I used to see things mother could not see : these were
ghosts. After the initiation rite when the tooth was out,
my father said, 'Come with me,' and I followed him into a
hole leading into a grave where there were some dead
men, who rubbed me over to make me clever and gave me
crystals. Then when I came out a tiger-snake was pointed
out as my Budjan. Then my father as well as myself
got astride two threads and went through the clouds."
Another said, " I had some dreams of my father. He and
the other men with him made me a cord of sinews, swung
me about on it, and carried me over the sea. Then my
father tied something over my eyes and led me into the
rock, and I was in a place bright as day. After I was
taught to make things go into my legs and pull them out,
and to throw them at people." One man became a biraak
by having dreamed three times he was a kangaroo ; after
that he heard the ghosts speaking. The wizards were
supposed to have the power of throwing men into a mag-
ical state by pointing at them with the yertung. They are
believed to walk invisible, to turn themselves at will into
animals, stumps or logs of trees, or go into the ground
out of sight. They could draw the victims to them by the
magic of their enchantments. They could make rain, raise
storms, by squirting water out of the mouth in the direction
the rain comes and shouting. They could heal by sucking
the stone out of the patient's body, and by charms.
They claimed the power of being carried up into the sky.
All these capacities arose from the mystic boylya power
that they had obtained. (Jour. Anth. Inst. XVI. pp. 30-51.)
This same mysterious power, though with them nameless,
is claimed by the Andaman Okopaids, and the Peaimen of
Guiana. In Melanesia, where the claim to it as an acquired
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 135
occult power is general, it is known as Mana. This super-
natural power exists in stones ; snakes and owls possess it,
and men acquire it ; and they can even transmit the power
from one stone to many. If a man dives to the bottom of
a pool and sees nothing strange ; to sit for an instant at
the bottom will give him mana supernatural power.
(Jour. Anth. Inst. X. p. 277.) This supernatural power
may be manifested through the Tamatetiqa ghost shooter.
This was a bit of hollow bamboo in which a bone, leaves
with whatever else would have mana for such a purpose
was enclosed. Fasting on the part of the person using
these charms added much to their efficacy ; when he lifted
his thumb the magic power shot out and whoever it
hit would die. Cannibalism imparted mana. (Ibid. X.
p. 284.) In order to obtain mana, boys and young men
will spend months in some canoe-house, separate, where
they sacrifice, or some one who has mana does so for them.
This mana is neither a person or thing, but a power which
may be in a person or thing ; in the islands further west
the Florida people suppose a stronger mana to prevail than
among themselves. Heads are preserved in chiefs' houses
as they give mana to it, even reflecting mana on the dead
chief in whose honour they were obtained. They also
give mana to his successor by his holding possession of
them. A new war canoe is not invested with duo mana
until some man has been killed by those on board her.
(Ibid. X. pp. 303-314.)
This mana was imparted by the medicine-man to the
charms he made use of, and like the old sympathetic inaiia
that Sir Kenelm Digby loved to discourse upon, it caused
a mystic influence to exist between a weapon and the
wound it had caused. Thus, when a man was shot by a
poisoned arrow the possession of the arrow-head went far
to influence the result. If the shooter regained it he put
it in the fire ; if the wounded man retained it he put it in
136 THE DIFFERENTIATION OP
water, and the inflammation was violent or slight accord-
ingly. (JUd. X. p. 314.)
The North American Indians recognize this mysterious
power, this boylya or mana, in the word wakan. School-
craft says, " This word signifies things generally which a
Dakotah Indian cannot understand ; whatever is wonderful,
superhuman, or supernatural, is wakan. Of their gods,
some are wakan to a greater, others to a less degree; some
for one purpose, some for another; but wakan expresses
the chief quality of them all. Medicine-men pass through
a succession of inspirations till they are fully wakanized ;
they are invested with the invisible wakan powers of the
gods their knowledge and cunning, their influence over
mind, instinct, and passion, to inflict and heal diseases,
discover concealed causes, and impart the power of the
gods." (Indian Tribes, IV. p. 646.)
To explain the origin of this mysterious wakan power,
Schoolcraft writes : " The blind savage finds himself in a
world of mysteries oppressed with a consciousness that he
comprehends nothing. The earth on which he treads teems
with life incomprehensible. It is without doubt wakan.
In the springs which never cease to flow, and yet are
always full, he recognizes the breathing places of the gods.
When he raises his eyes to the heavens he is overwhelmed
with mysteries, for the sun, moon, and star are so many
gods and goddesses gazing upon him. The beast which he
pursues to-day shuns him. with the ability of an intelligent
being, and to-morrow seems to be deprived of all power to
escape from him. He beholds one man seized with a
violent disease and in a few hours expire in agony, while
another almost imperceptibly wastes away through long-
years and then dies. He finds himself a creature of a
thousand wants which he knows not how to supply, and
exposed to innumerable evils which he cannot avoid ; all
these, and a thousand of other things like these, to the
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 137
Indian are tangible facts, and under their influence his
character is formed. He hails with joy one who claims to
comprehend these mysteries. The wakan men and women
to establish their claims cunningly lay hold of all that is
strange, and turn to their own advantage every mysterious
occurrence. At times they appear to raise the storm or
command the tempest."
A power more or less akin to the boylya or wakan,
though often nameless, is recognized by all races of men.
Here it is obtained by charms and spells, there by many
ritual observances; now it comes by the laying on of
hands, breathing over the face, or by mesmeric passes.
Some obtain it by spells that command spirit appearances,
others by fetish ceremonies, magic, and incantations. It
is often earnestly sought as the reward of great austerities ;
penance can command it, or as a divine influx it comes in
inspiration. It may come in cloven tongues of flame, ov
descend like a dove on the devotee. We have no name
for this mystery of mysteries fuller than that of glamour,
which rather expresses the effect on the mind of the trans-
cendentalist than the nature of the power he is supposed
to obtain. But ever the man so recognized is in his own
and others' estimation separated from his fellows, capable
of knowing and doing all things, not only of controlling
the nature and virtues in things, but the relations of all
living things. The qualities they are assumed to hold
they can endow others with, and they ever maintain
intimate and special relations with ghosts and spirits and
all the exuberant creations in spiritual idealisms. All
the transcendental powers attached to material forms and
principles they transfer to the ghosts and spirits they
embody, and as they advance in the conscious knowledge
of nature and in higher human relations, they endow tlich
mystic mind-creations with corresponding attributes until
the poor abused ghost advances to be the master spirit in
heaven.
138 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
The many phases in which this \vakan power is present
among- the various races of men we will now illustrate.
Of the Shamans of the Salish we are told that they " are
able to see ghosts, their touch causes sickness, they make
violators of the tabu mad their touch paralyzes men.
They know who is going to die, and approach the villages
in the evening to take the souls of the dying away. They
drive away the ghosts by making a noise and burning the
incense herb. They have a spell language handed down
from one to another ; they used it to endow men or parts
of the body or weapons with special power. He becomes
a shaman by intercourse with supernal powers, sleeping in
the woods until he dreams of his guardian spirit who
bestows supernal power upon him. He cures the sick,
blowing water over him, and applying his mouth sucks the
diseased place, then produces a piece of deer-skin or the
like sucked from the body, the cause of the illness. He
causes sickness by throwing a piece of deer-skin or the
loop of a thong, or he obtains the man's saliva or hair and
causes sickness ; he can harm one by looking at him."
(Report Brit. Assoc. 1890, p. 582.)
We recognize the assumption of this wakan power
among the Kaffirs, not only in the smelling out of a witch
causing and controlling disease, making rain, and in
various ways defining the action of the nature forces, but
in that subtle prescient power of intimation described by
Dr. Callaway, " When a thing is lost which is valuable,
they begin to search for it by an inner power of divining.
Each begins to practise this inner divination and tries to
feel where the thing is, and not being able to see he feels
internally a pointing which says if he goes down to such a
place he will find it. A.t length he feels sure he shall find
it, then he sees it and himself approaching it. If it is a
hidden place he throws himself into it as though he was
impelled by something. Some boys have the power more
than others ; some never have it at all. Some have it so
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 139
strong that they are looked up to by their fellows." (Jour.
Anth. Inst. I. p. 176.)
We might pause to describe the manifestations of
supernal power, more or less of a like character, by
medicine-men, magi, and priests, but we will be content to
show some of the dogmatic claims that have been asserted
in old world faiths and in modern spiritualism. All are
familiar with the many pretensions made by priests and
rishis of the power of exorcizing and anathematizing of
capacity to redeem souls from hell and purgatory or to
consign them to perdition ; of communing with saints
and gods, summoning angels and spirits, healing the sick,
raising the dead, punishing the sinner both in heaven and
on earth. The penances of a Brahmin can command even
Mahadeva, and, as Elkins says of the Chinese Buddhists,
they claim that the prayers of the Hoshang have the power
to break open the caverns of hell. Nor are the pretensions
of the occultist as to the power he has obtained by initiation
less than those of the medicine-man and the priest. The
power ascribed to the Akas and the Mahatmas is a form of
mana unproven and unprovable ; by it they claim to have
power to transport objects to a distance, disintegrate them,
convey their particles through solids, and reintegrate them.
The adept in occultism can summon spirits and present
them in materialized forms. Ho can consciously see
the minds of others ; he can by his soul force his wakan
power, act on external spirits; he can accelerate the growth
of plants, alter the natural action or quench fire; he can
subdue wild beasts ; he can send his soul to a distance and
there not only read the thoughts of others but speak to
and touch them, exhibiting to them his spiritual body in
the likeness of that of the flesh. More, he can from the
surrounding atmosphere create the likeness of physical
objects.
Nor is the existence of this complex supernal power
alone an attribute of man and spirit. Long before men
140 THE DIFFERENTIATION OP
had acquired the art of using it, or the ghost was elevated
to a spirit-power, this mana was an integral attribute of
things. Luck, fate, and destiny are but forms of mana.
Mana is the presiding power, the ever present actuating
force in things. By it they prognosticate the future, they
command the present, they inform us of the past; by it
they manifest every transcendental attribute cure, protect
and divine. It exists unconsciously in the animal, and the
relic of a saint, the stone in the brook, possesses it; it
is present in the herb and sea. The stars above, the
mountains and the rivers, pour it out upon mortals. They
even manufacture this power, endowing weapons and
utensils with it, the water of baptism, the wine and bread
of the 'sacrament. Nor is this a mere modern symbol.
The old Chaldean ascribed the same power the Catholic-
recognizes in the host, to the unknown mamii of his
devotions, the treasure which presented to the sick healed
them, the treasure which never departeth, the one God
who never fails. The old Peruvians had a divine food of
the nature of the host in the sancu, that cleansed away all
sins.
The earliest form of mana presents it as an attribute in
things or appearances, denoting an oinen or a curative or
protective virtue. It may only signify luck. Then when
men come to test these powers and to manufacture them
they advance into abstract powers the result of the com-
bination of several objects or of influences created in
them by times, conditions, or words. Then it is that
transcendental attributes or abstract qualities pass from
the observer or the spell and influence, other personali-
ties, other powers. We have many expressions of this
secondary power influencing others than the immediate
agents, and this leads to the evolution of it as a distinct
supernal principle, and the after conversion of those
devoted to supernal studies into medicine-men.
Of the working of this abstract power through animals
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 141
and material objects we may find examples in the folklore
of most people. Of simple forms in which this mana is
presented in things, we may note the luck induced in a
new boat by launching it with a flowing tide. Wild
animals must not touch milking vessels or the cow's udder
would fester. All forms of transferring diseases implies
the passing of evil mana from one to another. A form
of abstract mana passes into the dog who shuns people
ubout to die, or into the mole whose burrowing at a house
intimates a death therein. So the bridal bed made by
a woman giving suck, or there would ensue no family.
The Salish say if a beaver's bones are not thrown into
the river the beavers will no more go into the traps. It
is singular that the same people ascribe the same form of
mana in the structure of a beaver that is so often ascribed
by many races of men to a human structure, that is, that
to give stability to a building it must be founded on a
corpse. Most people are familiar with many home legends
of incidents by which this supernal power was obtained.
So the Salish say, when the beaver is constructing its dam
it kills one of its young and buries it under the dam that
it may become firmer and not give way to floods. (Rep.
r.r'it. Assoc. 1890, p. 644.)
All the forms of tabu are upheld by the supposition that
the power in the mana is made to have an evil influence
"ii the violator of its ordinances. So, in like manner, all
the supernal sentiments expressed through the fetish
ras of initiation, male and female, at puberty, those
regarding a woman's courses, childbirth and death, also
those of the couvado and a widow's practices, are the
:il> tract workings of the mana. Among the innumerable
illustrations of this working of the mana, one instance will
suffice. With one of the Northern Indian tribes in British
Columbia, the father and mother after a birth are not
allowed to go near the river for a year or else the salmon
would take offence. (Rep. Brit. Aasoc. 1 889, p. 837.)
142 THE DIFFEKENTIATON OF
Among the same people the girl at puberty must not
only fast, remaining alone and unseen, for a fortnight, but
as the mana is working in her then she must not chew her
own food, for, if she desires afterwards to hare boys, men
must chew it for her if girls, women. (Ibid. 1889, p. 836.)
The Salish also ascribe a special supernal mana as
influencing twins. The mother of twins must build a hut
on the slope of the mountains, and live there with them
until they begin to walk ; if she went to the village with
them her other children would die. The mana in twins
is affirmed to be so great that they can produce rain by
allowing water to percolate through a basket; they can
make clear weather by throwing a flat piece of wood
attached to a string in the air. They can produce storms
by strewing the ends of spruce branches, and their mother
can tell by their play when children if her husband, though
distant, is successful in his hunting. (Ibid. 1890, p. 644.)
The principle of sympathetic influence in persons and
things is but one of the many forms in which mana is
supposed to be presented. In Lord Bacon's description
the power is supposed to be worked into a science. He
writes : To superinduce any virtue or disposition in a
person, choose the living creature wherein that virtue
is evident, of this creature take the parts wherein the
same virtue chiefly exists. Thus to superinduce courage
take a lion or a cock and choose the heart, tooth, or paw
of the lion, and take these immediately after he has been
in fight, so with a cock, and let them be worn on a man's
heart or wrist. With this special mana power Sir Kenelm
Digby is said to have cured a wound by applying a garter
having blood from the wound upon it, to the weapon that
caused the injury. In another case, the axe which caused
the cut was dressed with a salve, wrapped up warmly and
hung in a closet. The injured carpenter is said to have
been at once relieved, and all went well for a time, when
suddenly the wound again became painful, and, on
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 143
examining the closet, it was found the axe had fallen
from the nail, and, of course, when placed secure the man
was soon sound. (Pettigrew Medical Superstit. p. 160.)
We have seen that in one case it was customary so to treat
the arrow-head, and of the same mana influence we read
that only weapons that have taken a life are fit for the
warrior's use. So Roderick Dhu affirmed the influence
of a supernal mana power when he said, " Who takes the
foremost foeman's life, that cause shall conquer in the
strife." The Salish say that "an arrow, or any other
weapon which has wounded a man, must be hidden, and
care taken that it is not brought near the fire until the
wound is healed. If a knife or arrow still covered with
blood is thrown into the fire the wounded man will become
very ill. (Rep. Brit. Assoc. 1890, p. 577.)
Mystic mana powers were not only present in things
generally on the earth, they were also present in the
heavens. The sun and moon and stars, through the mana
in them, influenced men and women, animals, and all things
on the earth. In general, through the great development
in later times of spirit influence it has been assumed that
men have always conceived the supernal powers in the
heavenly bodies as due to the action of spirits, but we feel
assured that the primary concept regarding them was as
with children, mere wonder at their brightness, and in the
case of the sun its heat-producing power. Long before
it even became a person it was a power, and the suporn:il
influence of it as expressing mana only exist, to this day,
in many spoils and charms. Besides this stage in sun and
moon lore, we recognize another, in which, as with children,
they are personified, they are beings like men and women
in tln-ir material aspect; no sentiment of their being
controlled by a self-contained ghost or spirit-power is
entertained. In many representations of the sun as a
personality, its material nature is expressed by a disc with
human features, its power by lines as rays. In other
144 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
cases, as with the races of Northern Europe, it was a
wheel, and its power represented by its revolving. This
wheel form, or disc face, it was that held the mana men
recognized in the sun, moon and stars. It was no angel or
demon, no Prometheus, who then brought fire from heaven ;
there is no supposition of spirit influence. When the
material fire was needed it was kindled in the same way
as the presumed wheel-power of the sun produced it. The
fire was kindled by the friction of a wooden axle in the
nave of a waggon wheel by a rope pulled to and fro with
great speed. The revolving of the wheel, whether in
Carinthia or Scotland, drew down mana from the sun, and
the need fire thus evolved cured men and cattle by passing
over or through it. Kelly, in his Curiosities of Indo-
European Tradition writes: "In 1767, in the Island
of Mull, in consequence of a disease among the cattle, they
carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles
of oak wood. They then extinguished every fire within
sight of the hill. The wheel was turned from east to west
to produce fire by friction. They then sacrificed a heifer.
Words of incantation were repeated by an old man from
Morven, who continued speaking all the time the fire was
being raised " (p. 52).
Though somewhat differing in arrangement, the same
mode of obtaining mana from the sun was induced by a
like instrumentality of fire in Carinthia. " Each house
delivers a sheaf of straw on the top of the Stromberg, a
huge wheel is then bound with the straw in such a manner
that not a particle of the wood remains visible. A stout
pole is passed through the wheel. At a signal the wheel
is kindled with a torch and set rapidly in motion; the
wheel is then rolled down the hill to the Moselle." (Ibid.
p. 59.)
In some places the old prehistoric flint and steel were
used in place of the discarded wheel to draw down fire
from heaven, and with the mana of the sun both for
THE MEDICINE-MAX. 145
healing and protecting. The writer we last quoted says,
" At Lechrain, in Bavaria, the Easter Saturday fire is
lighted with flint and steel in the churchyard. Every
household brings to it a walnut branch, which, after being
partially burned, is carried home to be laid on the hearth
fire during tempests, as a protection against lightning"
(p. 48).
Appeals to the mana present in the material sun
meet us in many old customs and old spells. " The
inhabitants of Colonsay, before any enterprise passed
sunways round the church, and rowed their boats about
sunways, as is still done in the Orkney Islands, nor do
the Shetland fishermen consider it safe to turn their boats
unless with the sun, as is marked of the Icelanders. A
procession in this direction attended the baptism and
marriage in the county of Elgin, thus was the bride of
a Highlander led to her future spouse, and the waters
of a consecrated fountain approached, in observance of
the sun's diurnal course. The herdsmen danced three
times round the fire, in Beltane, and in this direction did
the bearers at Dipple churchyard encircle the walls of
a chapel with a corpse." (Dalyell, Dark Supersti. p. 456.)
Sunway observances are known in many places. With
the Salish, women, when drinking for the first time after
being married, must turn their cups four times in the
direction of the sun. Even a well may have mana rela-
tions with the sun. The well of Shadar, Isle of Lewis,
foretells if sick will die : a wooden trencher floated on
the water turns sunway if the patient will recover, the
reverse direction if he will die. Lochsiant well, Skye,
cares many complaints; the patient for that purpose goes
thrice round the well, sunways, drinking the water. (Brand,
Popular Antiq. III. p. 13.)
The moon's mana is supposed to influence men in almost
innumerable modes; in most cases it acts simply as a
material object having a healing, protective, or prescient
10
146 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
virtue; it has'scarcely advanced to a personality, much less
a spiritual manifestation. In most cases its various phases
expressed diverse mana powers, and the influence depended
not on any personality or presence of a spiritual character,
but on the quarter it was in, whether it had horns or was
full, and whether it was ascending or descending. Cockayne
writes: "When the moon is one day old, go to the king ;
ask what you will ; he shall give it ; go in at the third
hour of the day or at high water. It is good to buy land
when the moon is two days old, or to take a wife. A new
moon on a Sunday betokens in that month rain and wind
and mildness, on a Monday diseases, on a Tuesday joy, on
a Wednesday friendship, on a Friday good hunting, on
Saturday fighting." (Leechdoms, p. 181.) So, every day of
the moon's age had a different power. The new May moon
cured scrofula. One attacked by sickness when the moon
was one day old was in peril, at two days old he would
soon recover, and so a different influence for every day.
Pettigrew writes: "The Druids had many superstitions
connected with the moon. Animals were killed, seeds
were sown, plants were gathered, timber was felled,
voyages were undertaken, new garments were worn, and
the hair was cut only at particular periods of the moon. It
was good to purge with electuaries the moon in Cancer,
with pills the moon being in Pisces, with potions when the
moon was in "Virgo," and so on. (Medical Supersti. p. 20.)
Through the layer of faith in spirits that now overlays
the primary faiths of mankind we may still detect the old
impersonal ministrants of the oldest supernal manifesta-
tions. Ralston, in his Songs of the Russian People
clearly presents to us the three stages of supernal
development we have been pointing out. He writes :
" The oldest zagadki seem to have referred to the elements
and the heavenly bodies, finding likenesses of them in
various material shapes, as the sun a dish of butter, for
the world the crescent moon, a crust of bread ; the moon,
THE MEDICINE-MAX. 147
a golden ship crumbling into stars. In some the sun, the
moon, the thunder, the stone, are likened to human beings ;
the dawn, Zarya, is a fair maid, the moon a shepherd,
and the stars his sheep. Fire eats and is never full, water
drinks and is never satisfied, the earth plays and is never
tired out." Even in the blending of spirit mana with the
primitive material possessing mana virtue, we have survivals
of the old-spell faith. Thus, "to this day the Russian
peasant, when he sees the new moon, will say, 'Young
Moon, God give thee strong horns, and me good health.' '
The addresses to the elements, the celestial luminaries, and
the various forces of nature, which were of old the prayers
with which the heathen Slavonian worshipped his ele-
mentary gods, and which were spoken on the house-top,
are now whispered as spells. The peasant of to-day says,
"Dost thou hear, sky; dost thou see, sky ? O ye bright
stars, descend into the marriage cup. O thou free sun, dawn
on my homestead. Mother Zarya, as ye quietly fade away
and disappear, so may both sickness and sorrows in me
fade away. I take a bee, I place it in the hive ; but it is
not I who place theo there; the white stars place theo
there, the horned moon places thee there, and the red
sun" (pp. 360-364).
In some of the Raskolniks the new and old faiths are
blended as, " Forgive me, O Lord. Forgive me, O holy
mother of God. Forgive me, O ye angels, archangels,
cherubim and seraphim, and all yo heavenly host. Forgive,
O sky. Forgive, O damp mother earth. Forgive, O sun.
Forgive, O moon. Forgive, yo stars. Forgive, yo lakes, ye
rivers and hills. Forgive, all yo heavenly and earthly
elements." (Ibid. p. 365.)
A like conversion of a mere material personality into a
spiritual being is seen in the old transfer of the mana onco
affirmed as manifested by tho constellations to the saints.
In Medical Superstitions wo read : " Melton says tho saints
of the Romanists have usurped the place of tho zodiacal
10 *
148 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
constellations in their governance of the parts of the
human body. Thus Saint Olilia keeps the head instead of
Aries; St. Blasius governs the neck instead of Taurus; St.
Lawrence keepeth back and shoulders instead of Gemini,
Cancer and Leo ; St. Erasmus rules the belly in place of
Libra and Scorpius ; and St. Burgarde, Rochus, Quirinus
and St. John govern the thighs, feet, shin, and knees"
(p. 36).
At the present day we have the blending of the two
distinct conceptions, material more or less anthropo-
morphic representations of the heavenly bodies as per-
sonalities, and their being possessed by a 3 spirit power.
Dorman writes: "In early philosophy throughout the world
the sun and moon are alive and, as it were, human in their
nature though they differ in the sex assigned to them.
Among the Mbocobis of South America the moon is a
man, the sun his wife. Among others the moon is wife of
the sun. Among the pre-Incarial tribes the primitive
conception of the sun being animated prevailed. The
Haidahs think the sun is a shining man walking round the
fixed earth, wearing a radiated crown. The Olchones of
California worshipped the sun, but considered him the big
man who made the earth. Many of the natives of Guiana
thought the sun and moon were living beings. The
Kioways pointed out the Pleiades as having the outline of
a man, and said it was the great Kioway who was their
ancestor and creator. The Guaycurus thought that the
sun, moon and stars were men and women that went
into the sea every night and swam out by the way of the
east." (Primitive Supersti. p. 326, &c.)
In these several instances we can trace the development
of the supernal mana in the higher concepts entertained of
the heavenly bodies. At first like the stone, the sun, moon and
stars only express the possession of a supernal virtue, and
this only varies in the different appearances that at times
they present; some are curative, others protective, others
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 149
prescient. Afterwards, through these supernal presenti-
ments, they advance to personalities and are endowed with
human attributes; then when heroes, chiefs and ancestors
came to be set out as having possessed supernal mana more
than the average of their fellows, they conceived their
ghost-spirits to have a future destiny far beyond the ghosts
of ordinary men. These might waste away in the grave, or
wander in the woods, but they conceived of their great
ones a higher destiny they became the mana powers in
the heavens and on the earth. Thus, as Dorman informs
us, " The first mother of the Potawatomies was translated
into a star, the male ancestor of the Ottawas became the
sun, their mother the moon. The Honatonic Indians
believe the seven stars were translated to heaven. The
morning star with the Cherokees was once a sorcerer.
One of the guiding spirits of the Zunis became a star,
being shot into the skies. The Algonkins say the evening
star was formerly a woman ; and the fox, lynx, hare, robin
and eagle had a place in their astronomy; even a mouse by
them was seen creeping up the rainbow. The Green-
landers held the sun and moon to be man and woman, and
the stars were Greenlanders or animals." (Primitive
Supersti. p. 329.)
It is questionable whether there are any people who have
not passed through the three grades of evolution we have
designated. Their folklore always has evidence of the
material mana only. Then in their folk rhymes and legends,
their tales of animal, sun and star being animated, talking
and thinking as men and animals, wo have the exposition
of them as being living personalities. Lastly, even in the
barbaric human phase they recognize that every great
natural presentation and force, in addition to presenting a
physical aspect, are moved by the mana in its ghost-spirit,
the same as are men and animals. Thus the Indian
said the "sun was the wigwam of a great spirit." (Dorman,
p. 347.)
150 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
The whole concept of a spirit-world and the diverse
forms of mana that animated spirits could manifest arose
everywhere from the differentiation of the medicine-man.
So long as men only recognized mana as an individual
supernal attribute in things, so long no one object
possessed all kinds of supernal virtues. But when men
gradually took up the roll of the wizard and severally in
their supernal claims assumed all the prerogatives hereto-
fore affirmed only of different things, then they attained
the capacity to assert the possession of powers till then
unknown both of good and evil. Thus the clerical and the
laical elements were differentiated.
The medicine-man or priest who depends upon the ghost
he can call up, the spirit whom he can evoke to do his
bidding, is a being entirely distinct from his fellow who
affirms he works his will on his victim with the yulo the
throw-stick, a bit of quartz, or a combination of weird
objects in which some portion of what once belonged to the
man was attached. A spirit-will acting for evil or good
is absolutely of another order from the charm ingredients
concocted by a revengeful man or a crafty and cunning
priest. As an exposition of thought from its association
and continuity we feel assured that the ghost is not merely
the revival of a mental image, but the evolution of a
distinct state of the mind. The child, so untaught, fails to
conceive a ghost. It is an acquired faculty whose origin
we will endeavour to trace.
Among the various characteristics of the human mind
one of the now most influential is the power of symbolizing.
This is a developed faculty to the young child all is real;
there are no symbols and the lower intellects in all com-
munities take little or no account of types or symbols; they
fail to generalize and judge of each object or event by its
own apparent merits. The history of the human intellect
is a history of the development of this capacity to
symbolize and typify, and its after reduction to law. All
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 151
institutions, all customs, all supernal ideas, the language of
gesture and the language of words, all are founded and
dependent on the use of symbols; so is all registered
knowledge, all recognized thought. Luck itself was a
symbol, and all charms and spells are but symbols that the
crude mind accepts as facts. All forms and all the scenes
in the memory are symbols, so the ghost and the after-
spirit presentation was but the symbol of the man. And
what was that ? Look at the rude representations of him
by the savage and thereby gain some insight into the
nature of the presentation of the man his mind symbolized.
Do not from the enlarged and defined image in the culti-
vated brain picture its semblance in the mind of the savage
or child. With both, the instant the reality is removed
from perception, it ceases to exist in the mind, or it is of
the lowest vague character according as the retentive
power is developed. Hence we can suppose a time when
it was never continuous in the mind, then that it existed
rather as a name than a figure, and that consequently it
was a long time, or ever the perceptive impression of a man
remained as a recognizable symbol in a human sensorium.
Hence there could have been races of men who never knew
a ghost, who had no idea, sentiment or feeling that
expressed spirit-beings.
We may in the sayings of children and the narratives of
savages, in cases like that of Caspar Hauser and Lnuni
Bridgman, and wild children, easily perceive that it is
possible for human beings to develop without having any
ghost sentiment. The researches of Francis Galton and
others have shown us how far the visual faculty can bo
cultivated; but oven their investigations fail to carry us
back to the time or state in which the power to recall
mental impressions of a perceptive nature exhibit the
incipient characteristics of the child and savage. Yet in
such mental states the ghost perception of a man was born ;
it was at beat a vague symbol of the warrior he saw but
152 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
yesterday. Such symbols in the prepared sensorium may
be the expositions of thought, itself a variously developed
faculty, or they may come in dreams, and these as they
have been presented to us are often of the most vague and
incipient character. With one they may be absolutely
distinct presentations, to another they are only the vaguest
symbols of the objects he conceives them to represent.
The Psychical Society have enabled us to realize even in
cultivated minds how diverse are these presentations : one
person not only distinguishes the features, the colour, the
contour of the hair and other personal attributes, but tells
us the colour of the various articles of dress, the specialities
of the costume and every little adjunct to the picture of the
ghost; but with another all is simply a lady in white; may-
be brass buttons are noted or the peculiar movement of
a limb; with others, the figure has no parts, no accompani-
ments, there is but the vague impression of a shadowy
form which is assumed to have represented a special
individual. These, whether real ghosts or images revived
in the memory, matters not to us now; we have to accept
them as the highest symbols of certain forms the individual
minds could present.
Now it is notable that all the savage and crude presenta-
tions of ghosts come to us as the vaguest concepts of men
and women. They are shades, mere reflections, shadows;
they are expressed as symbols by the terms, mist, air,
smoke; they manifest no substance, and the forms are of ten
so vague they may be taken for drapery, for men, for
animals, for mere glints of light. All the explanations
collected by Dr. Tylor, of the ghost, demonstrate that they
are the first vague growths of the human symbol in the
human mind.
The ghost as yet holds a very limited and uncertain
status in the mind of the Australian aborigine and it is very
questionable if the incidents in which the ghost or spirit is
affirmed have not been derived from the whites. It is
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 153
probable that having familiar domestic animals was an
intermediate stage in the evolution of the ghost theory all
savages accept the possibility of men becoming animals,
and that these animals associate with men and women and
become their familiars or instruments of evil. The witches,
cat, owl, snake, monkey and so forth are the means of
vengeance that succeed the charm spell, and the familiar
animal gives place to the familiar spirit. How these ideas
arise we know by many cases in our witchcraft annals in
\vhich old women living solitary have made companions of
their cats until the weird supposition through some trifling
incidents arises that the cat is something more than a cat.
Here are two incidents of the origin of the same supernal
concept in the minds of the Australian aborigines. "One
of the Bratana clan had a tame lizard in his camp,
and his wife and children lived in another camp close by.
The lizard accompanied him wherever he went, settling
in his shoulders, and people believed that it informed him
of danger, assisted him in tracking his enemies, and was
his friend and protector. They also believed he could
send his familiar lizard at night to injure people in their
camps while they slept." In all this we have no ghost-
power expressed. In another case an old Bidweli woman
was much feared because she had a tame native cat
which she carried about with her, and which was believed
to injure people in sleep at her wish. (Jour. Anth. Inst.
XVI. p. 34.)
It is by the use of charms that the Australian wizard
expresses his power, by charms he brings diseases and
injuries, by charms he makes ill ; the only means he uses
to control the nature powers is by the use of spells and
charms. Ho calls on no spirit, he invokes no ghost. If
he would bring rain he squirts water out of his mouth
in the direction it usually comes, chanting a spell. In
a similar wny he throws a stone into his cm-my's body
154 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
and draws it out chanting a spell, and by like means he
changes himelf into a kangaroo or the stump of a tree,
or becomes invisible. By the same means he becomes
transcendental, goes up into the sky ; and he uses the yulo
and the throw-stick, as well as lizards, brown snakes, and
iguanas to work his charms. In his system the ghost is
a modern invention ; it can do nothing ; and where it is
mentioned we often read it only in the white man's inter-
pretation, calling the ancestral totem animal a ghost. They
ascribed transcendental powers to animals ; so no wonder,
when one dreamed he was a kangaroo that he heard
their ghosts speaking. When the old wizard at the
initiation ceremony told his son the tiger-snake was his
budjan, ever after that would become a mystic power to
him. But the magical powers have nothing to do with
the ghosts of men nor the crow, or night jar omens, or
the crackling sounds probably caused in the earth by the
fire upon it, and supposed to be the ground giving warning.
The Shamans among the north-western tribes in America
like the Australian wizards, can bewitch their enemy by
throwing the magic cause of disease, a feather or thong,
at him, or by putting magic herbs in his drink. Ground
human bones mixed with food make the hair fall off the
person who eats it, and sympathetic charms may be fatal.
Thus, part of a person's clothing placed in contact with
a corpse will kill the owner. (Reports Brit. Assoc. 1390,
p. 647.) We meet with the same concept of the ghost or
soul of a living person going outside the body and performing
various actions independent of the body, among the Salish,
as among the Australian wizards; the living spirit of one of
the last was supposed to go in the night and see his victim
in the grave ; so the Shaman sends his soul out to discover
game, and then informs the hunters the way they should
go. (Reports Brit. Assoc. 1890, p. 646.)
It is notable how similar are the modes of producing
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 155
mana, whether for good or evil, in all parts of the world.
We have shown the charm forms in use among the
Australian aborigines and the American tribes, and in
the following it will be seen that similar customs prevail
in Melanesia. Thus " the Garata was charming by means
of fragments of food, bits of hair, or nails, or anything
closely connected with the person to be injured. The
Talamati was a charm composed of bone, a bit of stone
with certain leaves tied up together, with incantations and
prayers to a Tamate. This set in a path, the first who
stepped over it was smitten with some disease. The
Tamatetiqa (ghost-shooter) as we have said was a bit of
hollow bamboo, in which a bone, leaves, or whatever else
would have mana for such a purpose, was enclosed."
(Jour. Anth. Inst. X. p. 284.)
The modes in which medicine-men express the power
of the mana in them differs according to their stage of
evolution, and that of their instruments. The early charm
and spell medicine-man depends upon spells and charms
to work his evil as well as good manifestations, the herbs
containing special virtues he knows little of, and he is far
from having conceived the possibility of calling to his aid
any ghost or spirit. Between the spell-using medicine-
man and the medicine-man who depends upon his power
of controlling ghosts and spirits there intervenes a class
of doctors, wizards, or priests, who, more or less, depend
on all these various modes of inducing good or evil. They
have not yet foregone the old occult charms and spells,
and the spirit-power with them is yet in embryo; they may
conceive of ghosts and spirits, but they have not yet
endowed them with their higher semblances and modes of
action.
In reviewing the general status of the wizard doctor
or medicine-man among all the more developed races of
men wo should greatly err if we were to take the highest
15(3 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
type of doctor or priest as representative of the class. He
may have the highest concepts of spirit-nature and the
relations of men with the Divine beings his mind conceives,
but throughout every civilized community we have not
only a low class of priests whose souls dwell only on the
respective powers of good and evil spirits, but those who
only appeal to the evil powers mny be through charms and
forms, or, at best, hope to buy off their malignity by
reverence, words, and offerings. Yet lower than these,
lower even than those lower medicine-men who appeal to the
presence of the nature powers when they collect their
charm herbs, are those wise men and wise women who
only appeal to the lowest fetish charm-objects and have
no concept of higher powers.
The vulgar witch or wise woman of to-day appeals not
to a ghost nor summons a spirit ; her power is the primi-
tive fetish spell. In the Folklore Record we read :
" Numbers believe in the might of magic spell and in the
power of witches and wizards to work them ill. There
lived till lately a woman in a village near Chichester who
was never spoken of but as the witch. All appeared to
dread her power, and every sudden misfortune was ascribed
to her. A groom assured his master that if she willed
that he should sit across the roof of the stable all night
' she'd have me there in an instant, and nothing could bring
me down till she gave me leave to come down/ ' (I.
p. 23.)
What was this wise woman and the mana she was
supposed to possess ? Harsnet described the witch as an
old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and knees
meeting from age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff,
hollow-eyed, untoothed, furrowed in the face, her lips
trembling with the palsy, and mumbling through the
street, one that has forgotten her paternoster yet hath
a shrewish tongue, and can say pax, max, fax for a spell.
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 157
If any of your neighbours have a sheep sick of the
giddies, or a hog of the mumps, or a horse of the staggers,
or a knavish boy or an idle girl, or a young lamb in the
sullens, teach them to roll their eyes, wry the mouth, gnash
the teeth, startle in the body with hands still, and if old
Mother Nobs has, by chance, called her idle, or bid the
devil scratch her, then, no doubt, Mother Nobs is a witch,
and the girl is owl-blasted.
Reginald Scot recognized divers powers in the witches.
He writes : " One sort can hurt and not help, the second
can help and not hurt, the third can both help and hurt.
Among the hurtful witches there is one which usually
devour and eat young children. They raise hail tempests
and hurtful blasts, they procure barrenness in man, woman
and beast, they can throw children in the waters as they
walk with their mothers, and not be seen, they can make
horses kick till they cast their riders, they can pass in the
air invisible. They can bring trembling in the hands and
strike terror. They can manifest things hidden and lost,
and foreshow things to come. They can kill whom they
list, can take away a man's courage and power of generation,
make a woman miscarry, even with their looks kill men
and beasts, &c." Among these heterogeneous powers which
are the general types of a modern witch, Reginald says
they can bring to pass that churn as you will no butter
will come ; then gravely adds, " that may happen if the
maids have eaten np the cream, or no butter will come if
a little soap or sugar were added to the cream, so the
witch-finder would have no difficulty to bring that result
about if he so willed."
Whether we go among the Australian aborigines, the
American red men, in Melanesia or Polynesia, the same
class, whether men or women, have the power to project
stone, bono, earth, or wood, or skin missiles into the bodies
of those they would injure, or by concocting a charm of
something once belonging to the individual and fetish
158 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
ingredients, they can waste away by fire and water or
other baneful means the assumed representative object,
and with its decay the life of the victim will pass away.
These are the great universal spells which bring disease
and kill, whether they arose in the pre-glacial period, and
since, as folk-charms descended to all men, or whether
they have sprung as corresponding malignant wishes
among the various races of men, we have no means of
judging. Even in a new race of isolated men it is probable
like sentiments would necessarily arise as the exposition of
their malignant wills.
Van Helmont describes the mediasval witches as injecting
into the bodies of their victims darts, thorns, pins, pricks,
chaff, hairs, sawdust, small stones, egg-shells, pieces of
pots, hulls and husks, insects, pieces of linen, and so forth,,
all of which are ejected with direful pains. In one case,
a piece of ox -hide had been injected as large as the ball
of a man's hand, in another an artificial toy, a young girl
vomited a mass of pins, with hairs and filth, another had
shavings and chips of wood, others a woman's coif, pieces
of glass, three pieces of a dog's tail, a tobacco pipe, and
stones. No wonder, to preserve themselves from such
unpleasant guests the good folk hung pentaphyllon in
the house entry, valerian vervain, palm, frankincense,
branches of the rowan, and ash-trees, nor that a wolf's
head, or horse-shoe, was nailed at the door. Even an
ointment of potent virtue, made of the gall of a black
dog and his blood, was smeared over the door-posts like
that of the sacrificed sheep by the Jews, as a protective
agent.
Such sentiments still linger in the old world, and they
travelled into the new world with the Spanish knights and
the pilgrim fathers, and even now bear the same malignant
fruit. In Florida Breezes we read that Delia, a young
country girl, when about eighteen, began to droop and
grew most heartrending in her depression of spirits and
THE MEDICINE-MAX. 159
enfeeblement of body, and finally, -without giving a sign,
died. After death the nurse brought to her mother a
packet of dingy cloth, in which was wrapped two or three
rusty nails, a dog's tooth, a little lamb's wool and a ball
of clay. Trembling with awe, she said, " This is what
killed Miss Delia. I know as how she was conjured." Oh
inquiry it was found she was a cause of jealousy to a
companion, who had made threats to her. All knew the
power that was at work upon her, but dared not break the
spell (1883, p. 181).
Sometimes the assumed death agent is, as in the case of
Sir George Maxwell and others, images made of wax or
clay, and the semblance tortured by pins inserted in it,
or burned at the fire. In the case of Erephan M'Calzeane
the accusation was that she had formed a waxen picture of
the King of Scotland, and had raised storms at sea to
hinder his return from Denmark. Another witch was
charged with preventing George San die's boat from
catching fish, a third took the disease from her husband
smd transferred it to his nephew, and to perform this feat
she buried a white ox and a cat alive, throwing in with
them a quantity of salt.
In all the cases wo have given, and in all wo shall now
refer to, the primitive wise woman or wise man only ob-
tiiins 111:111:1 by spells and charms, and when in addition to
using these means they refer to ghosts or spirits in a loose
ami indeterminate manner as with some Australian wi/anls
we may bo suro the sentiment that influences them has
hi -en newly acquired and it will be noted that practically
they depend on tho strength of tho charms they use and
their own mana power to concoct them. Tho materials
used for tho purpose may vary in different countries, but
the fetish power relied upon in the material is tho same in
all countries.
We will quote a few cases illustrating tho charms \\
by witches. Chalmers describes the magic treasures of a
100 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
sorcercess at New Guinea as some seeds, a crystal stone,
small shells, bamboos, black basalt stones inserted in the cup
like spongiole of a pandanus root, other stones and a piece of
quartz. Some were for incantations, some brought children,
some caused death; and these objects were esteemed as
male and female and used accordingly. (Pioneering in New
Guinea, p. 316.) Dorman describes a medicine-woman as
concocting a medicine to cure internal wounds caused by
a grizzly bear, consisting of a collection of miscellaneous
weeds, chewing tobacco, the heads of four rattlesnakes,
worn-out mocassins, sea-weed, petroleum and red
pepper, and the patient was directed to take a
pint of the mixture every half -hour. (Primitive Supersti.
p. 359.) In the Bahamas the wise woman or man ascribes
some ailments to a beetle or spider in one of the limbs.
This, like the quartz stone or a chip of wood is extracted
by sucking the part, and producing the offensive article
from the mouth of the sucker. Obeah charms are used to
protect stores in vessels from depredations. This is
usually a ball containing rusty nails, pieces of rushes, &c.,
which is laid on the door-step, a carved head on a tree
guards the fruit grove or a horn with a cork in it full of
pins.
In Western Africa, according to Rowley in the Re-
ligions of Africa, men and women encumber themselves
with fetishes; some are for the head, others for the neck,
others for the heart, the arms, the stomach and back, and
every part of the body has its appropriate fetish or charm.
These fetishes are generally simple things, the reeds of
certain plants, the roots of certain trees, the horns of
diminutive deer, the claws and teeth of lions and leopards,
slips of wood fantastically notched, knuckle bones, beads,
and a kind of white stone. To detect a witch, a charm is
used; a cock's feather is thrust into the tongue of the
accused, or a red-hot wire is drawn through it, or the juice
of acrid plants is squirted into the eyes, or certain ordeal
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 1 6t
tests have to be endured (p. 161-166). In Western Africa
though mainly dependent on charms both to kill and cure
in a less degree the appeal to spirits is known. They have
charms for every kind of fear, as of ghosts, of an enemy,
of thunder, snake-bite charms, sickness charms, love
charms, all of which whatever their name are merely pro-
tective spells.
Im Thurn shows how much, while a Guiana Peaiman
acknowledges the presence of spirits, he is under the
domination of spells and charms. To gain mana he has
to endure long fasts, wander alone in the forest, houseless,
and unarmed, and only living on such food as he can gather,
at the same time he has to drink large quantities of tobacco
water. He has to train a command over his voice for all
sounds, and acquire the capacity of working himself into
a frenzy of convulsions. He has to learn the legends of
his tribe and gain an acquaintance with the medicinal and
poison plants. (Ind. of Guian, p. 334.) He describes the
modern Indian as blowing away the evil spirit from the
sick man. From Roth's description of the sick man and
the doctors among the old Hispaniolans, the custom
would appear to have been to blow away the disease, not
a spirit; this appears to have been the initiary stage of the
disease spirit, the following description shows it to have
been material. The medicine-man first gives his patient a
vomit as if to dislodge the disease, then rubs the man down,
drawing down to his feet as if he would pull something
off, then goes to the door and shuts it, saying, "Begone to
the mountain or tlu> sea, or whither thou wilt at the same
time giving a blast as if he blowed something away, and
thru <li;i\vs in his blast and sucks the man's neck, stomach,
jaws and breast. This done, he coughs and makes faces
as if ho had eaten something bitter, at the same time
pulling out of his mouth stone, flesh or bone, saying, " See
ln)\v I have taken it out of your body for your Cemi has
put it in you because you did not pray to him."
11
162 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
(Abor. Hispan, p. 10.) The ceremony in this is the same as
is the common fetish charm of sucking out a disease. It is
caused by a spirit, but is removed by a spell.
As in the last case the disease spell was a stone, a piece
of bone or flesh, so among the Onondaga Indians in North
America the victim has been killed by the presence of a
foreign substance that has been introduced into his body,
and the cure is wrought by removing the missile or charm.
At times the afflicted part is bandaged and on the removal
of the bandage the witch doctor finds a few gray hairs, a
bit of shawl fringe or a small piece of coal neatly sharpened
at both ends. (Jour. Amer. Folklore, II. p. 277.) In
another mode a slight incision is made, the place is sucked
with a horn having a hole at the end and the doctor pro-
duces a whitish stone and some yarn thus drawn from the
patient's body.
Turner in his Nineteen years in Polynesia, writes : "The
real gods at Tanna may be said to be the disease-makers.
There are rain-makers, and thunder-makers and fly and mos-
quito-makers and a host of other sacred men, but the disease-
makers are most dreaded. It is believed that these men
.create disease by burning nahak or the refuse of food. If
the disease-maker sees the skin of a banana, he wraps it in a
leaf and wears it round his neck. People stare and say he
has got something. In the evening he scrapes some bark,
mixes it in the leaf in the form of a cigar and puts it close
to the fire to singe. Presently he hears a shell blowing.
He says to his friends that is the man whose rubbish I am
burning, he is ill. The horn blowing means to implore the
person burning the sick man's nahak to cease. Then a
present is arranged, pigs, mats, beads or whales teeth. If
the man the next night has another attack another present
must be sent, if not, the rubbish burns out and fear finishes
the man" (p. 90).
Hardwick says : " Healing witches are more prominent
nowadays than baneful ones. Margaret Gordon was
THE MEDICINE-MAN. 163
a Scotch witch of this class. She firmly believed to her
dying day that she possessed power to remove or avert the
ills and ailments of both man and beast by means of
various incantations, ceremonies, and appliances as cuttings
of the rowan tree, some of which she always carried about
her. She would carefully place so many of these before
and so many behind the beast she meant to benefit.
Another of her charms was holy water from a holy well,
this she sprinkled in the path-way of those she designed to
bless. She would go round the dwellings of those she
wished to serve, carrying a long rowan rod at an early hour
in the morning. She also believed she was transmutable
and was changed by evil wishers into a pony or hare, and
was hunted by dogs. (Traditions, &c., p. 275.)
In the transition to the ghost supernal manifestation
we have spoken of the passage from the fetish foot or claw
to the totem animal, we have seen that it may be the link
that attaches the fetish sentiment through the guardian
animal to the guardian penates or ghost. So, in like
manner, the votive offering to a god of a hand or foot
curing the sick may have arisen from the custom Lansdell
now ascribes to the Gilyaks of wearing amulets in the
shape of the diseased part as a wooden arm or hand.
Possibly they considered the disease might bo transferred
to the wood model.
In concluding this part of our investigation we may note
that not only may a man become possessed of mana by
rites and ceremonies intentionally observed for that pur-
pose, but he may manifest it through neurotic development .
Thus, on the Congo, the power of the Ndochi is supposed
to bo inborn, it may exist without the knowledge of the
possessor and even produce its effects without his know-
ledge. To detect if a man is a ndochi, the bark of a
leguminous tree called ukasa, is ground to powder and a
dose administered to the sn>peeteil prr.-oii; like many other
toxic principles, it acts variously, as an emetic purge or a
11 *
164 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE MEDICINE-MAN.
toxic, in the last causing death by coma. (Jour.Anth. Ins.
XVII. p. 222.)
Tylor tells us that among the Patagonians, patients
seized with falling sickness or St. Vitus's dance were at once
selected for magicians as chosen by the demons themselves,
who possessed, distorted, and convulsed them. Among
Siberian tribes the Shamans select children liable to con-
vulsions as suitable to be brought up to the profession,
which is apt to become hereditary with the epileptic
tendencies it belongs to. (Primitive Cult. II. p. 121.)
CHAPTER V.
The origin of Ghosts Human and Animal.
IN passing from impersonal supernal assumptions to the
assumptions of ghosts and spirits we enter upon a field
of enquiry, vast in its dimensions and one that has
engrossed the higher faculties in men to describe and
account for. The ghost whether of the man or the animal
has ever been esteemed as another self, capable of residing
in the organic body which represents it or of holding an
independent existence and in that state may be able to
enter the body of another man or animal when its own
ghost is absent, or when present coercing it by the greater
mana power it is possessed of. Separate from its ghost
the body perishes, but the ghost lives with some, perhaps,
for only a short period, with others it is immortal. In the
latter condition it becomes a spirit having no mortal attach-
ment.
All spirits however are not esteemed as having been
originally ghosts possessing a dual nature, there are spirits
single, either per se representative or generated, without
having been enclosed in a mortal husk. More, there are
natural objects which are held to be personalities without
possessing a dual ghost nature, and this we hold to have
been the intermediate concept that anticipated the birth
of the ghost theory. Children and savages now methodi-
cally personify any object that to them seems to possess
life, without endowing it with an indwelling spirit. With
166 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
the savage in his lowest state, the partially imbecile, and
the child, every object as well as person is an independant
actor, what it does or is done through it are questions of
conduct, it has responsibility and is subject to penalties.
The deodand was demanded of the stone on which a man
fell and was killed, of the tree whose branch self-breaking
caused his death. The savage and child immediately
execute judgment on the unconscious floor on the fetish
that fails to protect. They suppose that the powers they
are conscious of in themselves are common to all things,
with them nothing dies and any fragment contains the
whole. Hence the broken horse, the headless doll are
cherished, the child sees no incongruity in talking to a
battered and misshapen figure or in putting the rag doll
without head senses or parts comfortably to bed. Every
attribute of the personal object to the savage as well as the
child expresses the absolute nature of it. In the lowest
mental states the thing is a personal self-existent being,
its living powers are its common nature, and there exists
no concept of a will separate from the object itself.
The child's imagination scarcely reaches to the fetish
concept of the advanced savage, who, without having
worked out a dual ghost power, conceives the mana, it
recognises in' the uncanny object as something distinct
from the object itself. Hence, there is no hitch or failure
in belief, no conception of incongruous power or association.
The child accepts any quality its toys seem to possess
and any tale that is told to it. So the savage accepts
at once his medicine-man's assertion he had climbed into
the sky; the same as the child gives full credence to the
adventures of Jack up the beanstalk, neither the one nor
the other noting the physical impossibilities of the feats.
Herbert Spencer says of primitive man he accepts what he
sees as animals do ; and so it is with the child whatever
it sees has every attribute it seems to possess. The doll
lives and has the same living nature as itself, it can do
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 167
wrong and the doll can equally do wrong. The child
knows nothing of the distinction between the spiritual
and the material, to it all things and powers are material.
What its doll and other toys were to the child the tree,
the sun and stars, animals, rocks, rivers, and mountains
were to the primary savage. He did not distinguish
them as self-existent generated or transposed. One and
all were self-contained personalities, the will being con-
sonant with the structure. The river, the rock, the sun,
the moon are the same living entities as are the bear, the
tiger, the snake, they may be transformed men, they may
be men who have gone up into the sky, and who, as with
the Australian aborigines, are the sun, moon, and stars
themselves not their indwelling spirits. In all low mind
presentations whether animal or inorganic they are simple
personalities, as we have seen all objects are to young
children.
The dream origin of the human ghost has often been
affirmed, but as the evidence on this subject is now more
complete than formerly, and, as we observe the phenomena
from a new standpoint, believing the concept to have been
proceeded by a long period in which much lower supernal
ideas prepared the way for its assumption, we will again
consider the dream origin of ghosts. We have recognised
a power in the higher animals to dream, but that by no
means implies ghost presentation, only the concept of the
uncanny. Besides wo have to observe that other than
actual sense perceptions, as concepts of time, relations,
influences and powers are presented to the mind in dreams
of various kinds, in allusions produced by intense attention,
in illusive states resulting from organic or mental dis
in suggestive illusions of thought induced by others or
produced in the mind by special external conditions,
internally by the food eaten or the medicaments taken into
the stomach.
We will first pass in review the gem-nil expression of
168 THE OEIGIN OF GHOSTS,
dreams, as the various origins of the personal presentation
are by no means explained in many of the incidents we
shall quote. The Andamanese held the concept of the
dual nature of man, and they conceived that the soul takes
its departure through the nostrils and then appears to
the sleeper, this is to them the ghost form seen in dreams.
(Jour. Anth. Ins, XII. p. 162.) Among the Australian
aborigines the Kurnai believe that each human individual
has within him a spirit called Tambo, during sleep it
could leave the body and confer with other disembodied
spirits. These spirits of the living are supposed to be
able to communicate with other spirits, either those of other
sleepers or of the dead. Thus the spirit of one dead
appeared to his comrade in sleep and took him up a rope
into the sky. Their dreams Mr. Howitt writes, are to
them as much realities as are the actual events of their
waking lives. (Ibid. XII. p. 186.) One of the Kurnai
asked if he really thought his Yambo could go out during
sleep said, " it must be so for when I sleep I go to distant
places, I even see and speak with those that are dead."
(Ibid. XII. p. 189.)
Even among so undeveloped a race as the Kurnai, the
fetish personality thus evolved in dreams presents the
same supernal characteristics as those of much more
developed people. Thus, the existence of the ghost once
enunciated, all the varied powers possessed by the medicine-
man arise as a matter of course from the cuter mental
attributes that are always present in some men, as the
origin of his boylya power, and the special capacity not
only to work spells but to call up ghosts in waking-
visions and even foretell the future by them. These
attributes will be noted in the following observations,
" Sometimes a man dreams that someone has got some
of his hair, or a piece of his food, or of his opossum
rug. If he dreams this several times he feels sure of
it, and calls his friends together and tells them. (Ibid.
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 169
XVI. p. 29.) Anyone could communicate with ghosts
in sleep, bat only wizards during waking hours. (Ibid.
XII. p. 191.)
The boylya powers that obtain among all wizards are
not identical in mode of action although in principle.
Thus at the Nicobar Islands the people have the idea
that " some wizards have the power to cause a person's
death by merely thinking of it, and should a villager
dream so, there is no means of escape for him but by
going immediately to another island. The greater part
of the persons seen in the islands where they were not
born have been compelled to leave their own on this
account. If the dreamer mentions his dream to no one
but the heads of the village, the sentence is passed and
the eaters of men are taken and fastened to a tree close
to the village and left to perish, no relative would give
them anything to eat." (Jour. Asia. Soc. Beng. XV. p. 352.)
Im Thurn speaking of the Indians of Guiana writes :
" the dreams which come to him in sleep are to him as
real as any of the events of his waking life. He regards
his dream acts and his waking acts as differing only in
one respect, that the former are done only by the spirit,
and the latter by the spirit in the body. When the
Indian just awake tells the things which he did whilst
asleep his fellows reconcile each statement by the thought
that the spirit of the sleeper left him and went out on
its adventures." Not only in death and in dreams but
yet in a third way the Indians see the spirit separate from
the body. Visions are to him when awake what dreams
are to him when asleep, and the creatures of his visi>n>
seem no way different from those of his dreams. Innum-
erable instances of natural visions are recorded. Artificial
visions are produced. When the medicine-man prep:in->
himself for his office by fasting, solitude, the use of
stimulants and narcotics, his object is to separate his own
spirit from its body.
170 THE OEIGIN OP GHOSTS,
The Indians of Labrador place implicit faith in dreams,
and visions of the night as Hind informs us, and these
often lead them to commit shocking crimes. They follow
their dreams with the utmost precision. Speaking of
the Ahts, Sproat writes : " they imagine the soul may
wander forth from the body and return at pleasure, it
may pass from one man into another and enter a brute.
Dreams are regarded as the movements of those vagrant
souls; they often dream they are visited by ghosts."
(Savage Life, p. 174.) In like manner Reade in his
Savage Africa describes the Negroes as saying the words
they hear and the sights they see in dreams come to
them from spirits (p. 248). The New Zealanders held
that during sleep the soul left the body, and that dreams
are the objects seen during its wanderings.
Speaking of the natives of Natal, Callaway observes
that they believe in the real objective presence of the
person of whom they dream. Many imagine the spii'its
of their ancestors come to express their displeasure. The
same writer gives the case of an illusionist, after an
illness, passing in his dreams from place to place seeing
elephants and hyaenas, lions and leopards. Not a day
passing but he saw such forms when he slept, at the same
time he heard internal voices calling to him at night.
We know such perceptions are common in fevers and
mental disorders, but the inference the Zulus deduced
from these phenomena was that the power of divination
which they attach to their medicine-men was being
developed in him; thus, as in other instances, affirming the
fetish association of dreams, ghosts, and the mana powers
of the medicine-man. (Jour. Anth. Inst. I. pp. 165-174.)
The dreamer is not amenable to any of the ordinary
restrainingpowersthatinfluence the sensitive organism ^time,
space, size, and quality are nothing to him, he can waft
himself from Indus to the Pole, or sail away on a summer's sea
to the Islands of the Blessed. Though old he may become
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 171
young again, live once more in the lost presences of
departed friends ; faded and worn out with the burthen
of the day, he may become fresh as the lark; or, his enthu-
siastic aspirations may not only blend his soul with the
past and the far distant present but reveal the unborn
results of actions not yet in the womb of time.
Need we then wonder that men in all ages have from
like concepts developed other existences than those of the
substantive world about them, that they should have
realized a state and condition of being other than those
of the living world of nature. What other doctrine could
the rude savage entertain than that in the dream hunt
when he and his fellows chased and fought with the
kangaroo, the jaguar, or the lion, that a something, an
actuality, had gone out from them and achieved the
midnight adventure ? So, when in a dream the savage
saw bodily before him the form of a friend whose body
he had himself helped to bury, or may be that he had seen
apparently annihilated on the funeral pile, he could not
but have realized the idea that his friend had a dual
existence, have been both a substance and a ghost. And
the idea of the still living ghost would become thoroughly
impressed on his mind; in as much as his fellows would
in may instances have seen the same form, and many
circumstances in the life of the savage conduce to bring
about a suitable bodily condition suggestive of that evolved
in dreams, more especially after a death. The funeral is
always followed by a feast in which animal food, often
only half-cooked, forms the substance, and this eaten to
repletion brings on a plethora of dreams. But in some
cases, as if this is not sufficient to recall the image of one
over whose fate they may have been brooding for days,
they seek by mental pressure to evolve the dream illusion.
Thus some wear as personal ornaments bones of the dead,
some widows have to carry their dead husband's remains
about with them, and sleep upon them, and these objects
172 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
would be present in the lurid light of the camp fire at
night as they fell asleep. In other instances we read
of the living sleeping on the graves of their dead relations
for the very purpose that they may hold converse with
them in dreams. So strong in time becomes this belief
in the life of ghosts that a man whispered in his dead
wife's ear, among the Motus, not to be angry with them
because they could not give her a share of their feasts, and
when they should go inland hunting, or to sea fishing,
that she should watch and protect them. (Jour. Anth.
Inst. VIII. p. 371.)
Necessarily, as so much of the life of the savage is spent
about hunting wild animals, and as their images under
various emotions would equally appear to him in dreams
as those of his fellow men, it readily followed that he
attached ghost relations to animals, and in dreams confused
the two impressions until he realized the ideas of possession
and transformation.
Dreams do not only present to the sleeping mind
the actual images of absent or dead friends and of animal
forms, but they present incoherent monstrous or aberrent
images. The medicine-man or mystic priestess who after
a long process of wild howlings, chantings, incantations,
dances, and extreme physical rites, imbibes some strong
organic principle, some tobacco, coco, kava, or decoctions of
berries bark and leaves, and thus produces a wild feverish
and ultimately an exhausted state in which the whole
nervous as well as blood systems are highly excited, while
the physical stamina demands sleep. These, then, in their
agitated and incoherent dreams or visions, blend, and
confuse the multiform images in the memory until they
evolve inchoate idealisms, monstrous multiples of diverse
real existences, gorgons and hydras and chimaeras dire.
Thus the supernatural , world became inhabited, not only
by human and animal ghosts and feverish monstrous forms,
but spirits in the similitude of every organic and inorganic
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 173
entity; and, more a series of higher beings evolved from the
practical workings of social institutions, and the inner
idealities of the higher mind forces into spirits, demons,
genii, angels, and gods. Nor is it only the incipient
human mind that cannot separate the apparent from the
real in dreams, the more highly gifted build up spiritual
systems from the rhapsodies of dreams and neurotic
hallucinations. In all ages the piously inclined accept
these experiences as the interpositions of their gods. So
Job in his controversy with the Deity cried out, " Thou
scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions."
The origin of dreams has often been treated upon. Dr.
Cappie defines sleep as caused by the pressure of venous
blood on the brain, and dreams come when the pressure is
lessened. He writes, " the special molecular agitation
which conditions consciousness is not entirely suspended,
but the lines of vibration are contracted. The sphere of
activity is localized, and the mental correlation is cor-
respondingly narrow. The long past becomes mixed up
with the present, and locality and objects and actions change
without any respect for the claims of physical possibility.
Consciousness is helplessly passive." (Causation of Sleep,
j). 126.) Of the physiological causes of dreams Dendy
gives several references ; thus, if cramp has attacked any
of the limbs, or the head has been long confined back, the
dreamer may be enlivened by some analogous tortures.
Hypochondriacs express themselves convinced of having
frogs, serpents, a concourse of persons, or demons pent up
within them arising from flatulence, dyspepsia, or spasms.
Again persons affected by nostalgia are frequently pre-
sented with visions of home in their slumbers.
Dreams of a special character, and often manifesting
-upcrnal attributes, may be induced by the nature, quantity,
or time before sleep when the dreamer partook of certain
foods. A writer in the Journal of I'-tychological Medi-
cine gives the case of a man who, after eating a supper
174 THE OEIGIN OP GHOSTS,
of halibut, had a dream of sliding down a cliff on the sea
shore, and being saved by holding his niece's hand.
Another after a hearty fish supper dreamed of poisonous
serpents. Even food retained in the mouth may give a
character to the ensuing dream. A lady having a slight
cough put a piece of barley sugar in her mouth and fell
asleep whilst sucking it. She then dream that she was a
little girl at a party, happy and enjoying herself, with all
kinds of childish sports. After a long period had seemed
to elapse she awoke with a smile to find the dream cause
still in her mouth, and that only a few minutes had elapsed.
(XL p. 579.)
There are various self-induced causes of dreams with a
special tendency of development. We have referred to
the custom of the Australian aborigines sleeping on the
new-made grave that they may dream of the presence of
the dead and hold converse with him. So G-aule in
Visions and Apparitions shows other cases of like
dream presences being induced. He writes that it was a
common practice after expiation and sacrifice to lie down
in the temple at Pasiphae that they might have prophetic
dreams, also others in the Temple of Esculapius who was
noted for sending true dreams. The Calabrians consulting
Podalyrius slept near his sepulchre in lamb skins (p. 248).
Dr. Maury had a series of experiments made on himself
in sleep to test how far dreams were induced by the
influence of present external perceptions on the all but
quiescent senses. In this state he dreamed of suffering a
horrible punishment while a person tickled his lips and
the point of his nose with a feather. From the striking
of a pair of shut scissors with a small forceps at some
distance from his ear he dreamed of a bell sounding,
so Cologne water induced at first the dream of a perfumer's
shop, and this after changed to scenes in the East.
In both visions and dreams which may thus be read
as subjective the excited imagination when pre-disposed
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 175
to accept the supernal holds the appearance as a reality,
with the same full confidence as we have seen was
customary with the most undeveloped savage. Phantasms
utterly meaningless appear every day to numbers of
individuals, not only when in a morbid state and under
conditions specially apt to induce them, but even to the
normal mind strongly affected by some person or incident,
or by the attention being continuously directed to the same
object.
Mr. Rushton Dorman found that the doctrine of spirits
had its origin in the primitive conception of human ghosts,
souls seen in dreams and visions. A Winnebago Indian
thus saw a phantom woman who beckoned him to come
and be her husband, and he pined away in the sure belief
of meeting her in the spirit world. Hence the phenomena
of apparitions. These are presumed to appear for the
most varied purposes now appalling the criminal by the
direct action of " God's revenge against murder," now as
warning of coming danger, sometimes in the form of
guardian angels, at others as threatening demons. Some
in allegorical or mystic puzzles evince future events, others
occur for very secondary purposes to renew friendships,
explain mistakes, discover hidden treasures, wills, or even
to show the whereabouts of lost sheep, a runaway daughter,
or a mislaid book. Often there is no practical purpose
derived from the dream.
Boismont shows that some presentiments are only the
result of more than ordinary acute sensitive powers.
Thus a girl had the capacity to hear a storm long before
it came, and in the open country detected the tread of
a horse hours before the traveller arrived. He remarks
that facts demonstrate there are natures so impressible that
they discern long before others changes about to take
place in the air, and these, according to Maury *s experiments,
might come in dreams and denote supernal manifestations.
Boismont suggests a simple explanation of some supernal
170 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
illusions. Thus a man in a dream saw the figure of a
relative many years dead, who in the usual way announced
that he would die the same day. He was a man of strong 1
mind and he told his dream, saying, if it were to be so, no
matter; but, doubting that it was only an illusion induced
by the way he had lain, he followed his ordinary occupations,
of course, without any unpleasant catastrophe, but, as he said
in so many cases of others, if he had been weak enough to
believe the dream, and give way to the emotion, he would
really have died as the men recorded by Procopius. In
another case, a lady dreamed that her mother appeared to
her in a dying state, the next morning she told her dream,
and her uncle, in whose house she was staying, said it was
true her mother was dead. Afterwards she found a letter
thrust into a corner which contained all the special incidents
of her dream. The inference was that she had seen the
letter which her uncle the evening before had put out of
sight, being unwilling then to disturb her with tlie
mournful news, and, that in the strong emotions on awaking
from her sleep, she had forgotten the exciting cause.
(Rational Hist, of Hallucinations, p. 196.)
All we have yet described have been simple natural
dreams, however supernal may have been the deductions
from them, but there are other classes of dreams arising
from physical disorder, mental aberration, and the action
of toxics. The ghosts presented to the mind under
these organic states are of the most varied character and
endowed with most extraordinary attributes. Hachshish
and opium, the delirium of fever, mania in its many forms,
and religious ecstasy, realize the most extreme character-
istics of spirit agency. The ghost advanced to a spirit
at first is always evil. The ghosts recognized by the
medicine-men in all the lower races of men is by nature evil,
even though the individual's ghost responds to the wishes
of his tribesmen. Essentially among them the spirit natures
are pre-eminently malignant; whether they are the spirits of
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 177
enemies or their own discontented ghosts or the like
spirit natures they recognize in animals and natural
forces.
Evil as we have seen was at first due to the uncanny
impersonal power in things ; it was only ill-luck as distinct
from good luck ; but when the human mind had realized
the power of ghost possession and spirit presentation,
then the evil attributes of things were transferred to the
evil actions of ghosts and spirits. Men in that social phase
accepted whatever came as good to denote only luck, while
all that was evil were ascribed to spirits. In the early
state of all people we only read of wicked spirits, disease
spirits, the ghosts of enemies, and the ghosts of their own
neglected dead as causing all the direct evils that happen
to them. These evil ghosts whose advent we have depicted
are at first general sources of ill, causing disease, killing,
obstructing the men in hunting or fishing, and in various
ways putting obstacles in their way. Afterwards they are
distinguished as manifesting special powers of evil.
Thus the home legends and folklore of every people
abound with tales of the misdeeds of ghosts, and everywhere
they are described as evincing malicious characteristics.
In India they are known as Bhutas, devils, ghosts ; they are
of human origin, malignant, discontented, or savage beings ;
some the ghosts of enemies or of men in other districts or
villages, many originating from the souls of those who in
life were either at war with their fellows or who deemed
they were aborted or degraded or injured by their kin.
Some originated from the souls of those who had died an
untimely death by neglect or accident, by being hung or
beheaded, or who had been born deformed, were idiotic
or insane, subject to the falling sickness or the many
hereditary maladies men inherit. The Preeta was the
ghost of a child dying in infancy or of one born imperfectly
developed or monstrous, and it became a misshapen
distorted-goblin which cursed and injured well-formed
12
178 THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
mortals on whom ifc looked with an envious eye. The
Pisacha was the ghost of a madman ; he was treacherous and
violent tempered. The Bhutas were the spirits of those
dying in an unusual way by violence, accident, or suicide ;
they haunted the living at home or abroad, made pitfalls so
that they might fall, caused them to fall from trees or
drowned them when fording a stream. They sometimes
came in the form of snakes and stung them, or of savage
beasts and tore them to pieces. The death of an exception-
ally bad character was always followed by the presence of
a Bhute or demon who afflicted human beings by entering
their bodies and feeding on the excreta, or they possessed
the living soul and caused family dissensions and hatred.
We find cannibal ogres, evil spirits, devils, and demons
of various kinds either as living ghosts or folklore evil
spirits in the domestic legends of all people. The Mkua
of East Africa believe in the existence of harmful spirits
who rove about among the living, and they attribute to
them all evils such as sickness, drought, and death. The
Bechuanas people the invisible world with ghost and
goblin demons, and evestrums like the Rakshasas of the
Hindoo, and Banshees, Phookas, ghouls, and Afreets of
other races. At the Solomon Islands if a person is sick in
any way, that shows it has been done by a ghost belonging
to some unfriendly tribe; they therefore call upon some
powerful ghost on their side by the medium of his mana or
spells to attack the other who has done the mischief. The
two ghosts are supposed to fight, but mortals only know
the result as one of the adversaries' clients becomes sick or
dies. (Jour. Anth. Inst. X. p. 300.) This may be accepted
as one of the first attempts to conceive of a good spirit.
As a rule, as we have seen, spells were the only available
means to expel the intruding ghost.
The Motu of New Guinea are described as living a
slavish life of fear of the evil spirits. At the death of a
friend they will sit up all night and keep striking the
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 179
drums to drive away the spirits. The coast tribes most
fear the inland tribes. All calamities are attributed to the
power and malice of the evil spirits. Drought and famine,
storms and floods, disease and death, are all supposed to
be brought by Vata and his hosts. (Proc. Roy. Geo. Soc.
II. p. 615.) Most of the malign spirits or Ingnas of the
Australian aborigines are the souls of departed black men
who from some cause have not received the rites of
sepulture and in consequence are constrained to wander
about the place of their death. Such as are slain in fight,
and their bodies left to rot in the sun or to be devoured by
the wild dogs, are immediately transformed into Ingnas;
while as a natural consequence the spirits of all men not
of their own tribe are enrolled in this ghastly army. A
number of these Ingnas haunt all graves. (Trans. Eth. Soc.
III. p. 237.) These ghost spirits kill their victims in a
variety of ways. Thus the Beechairah is killed by an
invisible spear, the point of which is nearly cut through.
It is thrown without being felt or making any wound ; then
the point breaks off, but, ignorant of the injury he has
received, the man goes on hunting ; but at night when he
has returned to the camp the evil develops, he becomes
delirious, and dies. (Jour. Anth. Inst. XIII. p. 293.)
Sometimes these mysterious causes of death are explainable
from natural causes. The Australian savage is as com-
monly exposed to ruptures by any violent action as is the
white man ; he might in a similar way feel the snapping of
the inner membrane like a cord, but ignorant of the nature
of his own organization he formulates the theory that ono
of the invisible spirits of evil had entered his body, tied up
his intestines, and that the snapping he felt was the
breaking of the confining cord. This is described as
occurring when following an opossum from tree to tree ;
he jumps down to catch it, and then when suddenly
alighting on the ground, or during the violent exercise, ho
feels the string break in his inside. "Hallo!" he says,
12 *
180 THE OEIG1N OF GHOSTS,
"some one has tied me up." He goes home to the camp;
the usual result of a rapture follows, but with his supernal
theory of evil he loses all hope and dies. (Jour. Anth. Inst.
XIII. p. 293.)
The Fijians believed that the spirits of the dead appeared
frequently and afflicted mankind, especially when asleep.
The spirits of slain men, unchaste women, and women who
had died in childbirth, they held most in dread. They
have been known to hide themselves for days until they
supposed the spirit of the dead was at rest. (T. Williams,
Fiji, I. p. 241.) The Fijian peoples with invisible beings
every remarkable spot the lonely dell, the gloomy cave,
the desolate rock, the deep forest. Many of these unseen
spirits are on the alert to do him harm. In passing he casts
a few leaves to propitiate the demon of the place. These
are demons, ghosts ; the spirits of witches and wizards and
evil-eyes all alike possessing supernatural powers. (Ibid.)
All through the Polynesian Islands the same sentiment of
evil-disposed ghosts prevails ; the spirits of the unburied
dead, as in classical times, haunt the survivors of his family ;
without a home, without hope, they utter the mournful
wail "I am cold ! I am cold." (Pritchard, Samoa, p. 151.)
Im Thurm describing the Indians of Guiana says : "There
are, the Indians think, harmless spirits and harmful. It
may be said that all the good that befalls him the Indian
accepts either without inquiry as to its cause or as the
results of his own exertions ; but on the other hand all the
evils that befall him he regards as inflicted by malignant
spirits. He has no inducement to attract the goodwill of
spirits, but he acts so as to avoid the evil will of others."
(Ind. ofGui. p. 368.) According to Sproat (Scenes of Savage
Life, p. 174), the Vancouver Indians hold that when the
natural soul goes out of the body in dreams, when asleep,
that an evil-disposed ghost enters during its absence and
vexes and torments the man ; and as owing to the quantity of
indigestible food that they eat, they are always dreaming
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 181
that ghosts continually visit them in sleep, and they live in
constant danger from the unseen world.
Looking back through the aeons of time to that primitive
epoch, when incipient man was crudely welding the inchoate
elements of thought, action, languages, and institutions, the
concepts of nature, the vague perceptions of his own inner
being and all that now constitute the great civilization with
which we are endowed we cannot forbear pausing for
a moment to note the vast mental schemes that have
resulted from his first supernal concept of luck and his
after elimination of the dream ghost. In these original
conceptions lay hid all the possibilities of the spiritual
world fate, destiny, the spirits, the godheads, heaven
and hell, all the religious of the past, all supernal schemes
lor the future, every test power to divine the unknown,
every evil influence that crushes humanity, every transcen-
dental power, a lost world, and a saved humanity. So
august, so grand a conclusion from such small premises
may well cause us to be cautious of the inferences we draw
from slight causes, and may make us doubt whether we
have yet reached the ultima thule of the geography of the
soul powers and passively await the evocation of other
forms of supernal personalities, other mystic worlds.
Of the great Egyptian faith, how small now seems the
heritage of humanity, and the thunders of Jove and
the cognate Olympian deities exist as mere school-boy
rhapsodies. So all the great mental forces that have
been expressed in dynasties, empires, faiths, now remain as
more blotches on the escutcheon of time. There has been
nothing eternal in human thought save the early fetish
deductions man made from his supernal concept of
luck and the presence of the dream ghost. These early
deductions of the mystic are ever living, men conceive and
re-conceive them, and to most men they have the same
nature and express the same sentiments as when the pre-
glacial man bowed in ;i\\e In-foiv the silent concepts of his
182 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
own soul. From their long persistent immortality we are
bound to expect they will outlast all the divine schemes
that now encumber the human soul.
Yet among a limited class we know that fate and luck
are mere words, and faith in the personality of a dream,
trust in ghostly visitors and ghostly possessions, are only
known as the aberrations of disordered or undeveloped
minds, and between these two classes of mind-powers we
read ten thousand supernal concepts ever rising higher and
more varied in their expression and leading men to more
universal concepts of being, higher expectations of the
illimitable, until each supernal fiction emerges into radiant
law. It is this vast series of expositions deduced from the
primary human ghost that we have now to follow and show
how, step by step, every supernal entity, every doctrine of
every faith has been worked out of the successive evolu-
tion of new forms of social relation among men and the
customs and sentiments that from them have arisen.
It is not in the nature of the human intellect to rest
satisfied with its first essays in thought or action. If it
was possible for a ghost spirit to exist of man, why not
ghost spirits of animals, and ghost spirits in every important
object in nature ? Who could limit the capacity of ghost ?
That which could enter other men might enter animals,
dwell in trees and plants, and make a home in a river or
rock, exist in cloud and star, in short in everything. Such
sentiments were slowly evolved. There are only a few
objects to the Australian that have souls or spirits. We find
more among the Red Indians; while with the Fijian and
the Hill-man in India all things have their presiding
spirits.
Many of the North American Indians, as the Nasquapees
of Labrador, believe in the future shadowy existence of every
material thing. (Hinds' Labrador, II. p. 103.) So the
Indians of Guiana, according to Im Thurn, hold that not
only many rocks, but also waterfalls, streams, and natural
HUMAN AND ANIMAL 183
objects of every sort are supposed to consist of a body and
a spirit. (Ind. of GUI. p. 355.) The ancient Peruvians, as
Markham informs us, held that every created thing had
its mana or spiritual essence. (Guzco, p. 129.) And in
Mariner's Tonga Islands we have the doctrine fully
enunciated as prevailing among the Fijians, who held not
only that the souls of men, women, beasts, plants, stocks,
canoes, houses, but all the broken utensils of this frail
world, tumble along over one another into the regions of
immortality. (II. p. 122.) The same conception of the
double nature of all substances was entertained, according
to Captain Cook, in Tahiti. In the early barbaric times of
the Finns the same doctrine prevailed ; all nature was
regarded as animated the sun, the moon, the earth, the sea
each was a living thing. More, we have the same senti-
ment expressed by the ghost-seer in all countries. The
ghost comes with every necessary accompaniment of ghost
clothes, ghost weapons, and betimes ghost furniture, boats
and so forth. Again, the universal expression of the same
sentiment is to be inferred from the custom of burying or
burning all kinds of objects with the dead for his use in
the after-world, and it culminates in the Chinese faith
that even the paper semblances of money, furniture, houses,
and horses, in the new life, will be transformed into their
realities.
The natural effect of working out the common duality
of all objects was to make it possible that the spirits of the
diflorent existences might interchange their relations with
material things; thus the spirit of an animal might enter
the body of a man, more especially if it found that the
proper ghost thereof was absent, or being more powerful
it might cither oust the native ghost altogether or only
take up ;i residence with it in the same body. It is evident
that when this new psychological system was created, a
new world of phenomena were rendered probable. This
was the first stage in the evolution of a god power, and
184 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
introduced all possible combinations of the human and the
animal. To it we owe all the animal myths, the fable
seances, and the entire basis of customory folklore.
Not the least remarkable result of this belief was the
creation of a certain class of affinities between animals and
men which led to the evolution of the totem system. This,
which Mr. Spencer only conceived to have arisen from the
misinterpretation of nicknames derived from animals, and
which Sir John Lubbock derived from that custom, has a
far wider significance. We have only to take cognizance
of its influence on the life of man and the origin of
institutions to be assured that it never could have been
derived from mere accident, but expresses the natural
yearning of the human soul for some unexpressed want.
We showed that the first dependence of man his first
deduction of help, the very birth of faith was due to his
recognizing in the uncanny, protective agencies. The
doctrine of luck defined a new power in things to help and
protect man. Charms and spells told him how to induce
these powers, and all after forms of faith are but the
expressions of higher protective powers whether present in
the totem animal, the ancestral ghost, a tutelar deity, or
a supreme godhead. Man at first sought help in the
hidden mysteries in things, then he sought to secure help
by interchange of relations with his fellow-man, and the
human brotherhood was established by the fetish charm
of sucking or imbibing each other's blood. But man not
only stood in immediate relations with his fellows ; he not
only required to establish amicable associations with some
men to secure himself from others; he also required the
aid of some animals to secure himself from others. We
see in the domestication of animals one of the modes in
which this law as food protective worked, but its far more
individual application was the taming of familiar animals.
These are common all over the world, more especially
among savage races, but in , the highest civilization we
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 185
observe the same law at work, and, however strange it may
sound, we hold there is a blending of the mana of the
man with that of the animal. There is here no need
of any blood ceremony, the soul in each works out the
result.
The doctrine of the totem recognizes the presence of the
spirit in the animal. It has all the fetish attributes for
protection that we once noted in things. It is a general
power whose concept is gradually evolved as a social
institution, and, when higher sentiments of supernal pro-
tection are induced, it gradually decays. In its full
expression it enters as a guiding principle in all social
institutions, it regulates the status of the tribe, the clan,
the family, the individual, the sex. It affects birth and
puberty, marriage and death. Its origin is seen at the
present day in the relations that ever subsist between the
pet and its owner, and the birth of the individual totem,
before it has become a social custom, may be seen in the
instances we quoted of the Australian lace lizard and
native cat and in many instances of snake charmers, sacred
reptiles, and witches and wizards having familiar animals
of various kinds.
To develope different totems implies distinct likings of
animals among men. It is so in the selection of pets,
nowadays they are as various as the varieties of animals
attainable by men. In the savage state they are restricted
to native birds and beasts, and when men are more
developed, and new clan groups arc formed, other natural
objects than animals become totems, the grass, the tree,
the rock, the sun; but when these are selected we may be
assured that men held that these objects possessed a dual
nature, these in their lower manifestations were only the
primary charm-objects endowed with the now common
spiritual nature.
It would lead us too far to enter into the consideration
of the various development s tint followed the introduction
186 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
of the individual totem and its growth into the family and
clan totems. These are fully described in Frazer's
Totemism, a work which generalizes all the known aspects
of totemism. But we may note that the individual
totem like the ghost is usually acquired in sleep, and, of
course, the objects that a man dreams of are those he is
apt to think of, and in which he feels most interest. The
Australian usually gets his individual totem in a dream ; it
was so with the American Indian, the animal came to the
initiating lad in a dream and he went out and killed one
of the same species, and made his medicine bag of its skin.
In some cases the totem was selected by a process of
divination, as at Samoa, and by the Indians of the Panama
Isthmus.
In the early ghost state we question if any kind of worship
obtained, like the Australian aborigines, men feared the
ghosts of their living fellows, and avoided all contact with
them. They were rather passive than active agents of evil ;
but, as soon as it was possible for a man to take an animal form
or an animal spirit enter a man's body, the spirit-power became
vastly extended. The tiger possessed by a man's soul with
a man's knowledge of his fellows and their habits and re-
sources, was a much more formidable opponent than the mere
maneater who depended alone on his savage animal instincts.
The northern nations worshipped the bear, before they
killed it, in some measure to appease it, and thus prevent its
spirit subsequently injuring them. Among the Florida
Islanders snakes that haunt some place sacred to a tindalo
are themselves sacred as being his property. There is one
at Savo which causes the death of every one who happens
to see it. Alligators are also sometimes supposed to be
tindalos ; a man will fancy one is possessed by the ghost of
some friend, and will feed it or even sacrifice to it. Such
an alligator will become an object of general reverence and
even become tame. (Jour. Antli. List. X. p. 306.) Monkeys
on the Gold Coast found near graves are supposed to be
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 187
animated by the spirits of the dead. The crocodile is sawed
at several places ; snakes at Benin ; sharks at Bonny. The
spirits of the dead, the Indians of Guiana hold, may pass
from the bodies of their owners into those of any animals
or even inanimate objects ; and so prevalent is this opinion
that they are careful not to look at certain rocks or uncanny
objects. They avoid the flesh of certain animals because
they might contain malignant spirits, and in passing by
sculptured rocks, striking monuments, or shooting a cataract,
the Indians to avert the presumed ill-will of the local
spirits rub pepper in their eyes not to see them. (Ira
Thurm, p. 368.)
As showing that token worship once existed in White
Russia, the Domovy is called a Snake, and this House Snake
brings all sorts of good things to the master who treats it
well. And, at the present day, the snake-totem compact is
not extinct, the peasants consider it a happy omen if a
snake takes up its quarters in the house : thus the totem
sentiment, after having arisen from mere luck to a spirit of
goodness, returns again to the pristine omen of luck.
(Ralston Songs, p. 124.)
Totem worship is thus described in South Africa by
Arbousset. The phrase, " those of the Porcupine is applied
to the Baperis. When they see anyone maltreat that
animal they afflict themselves, grieve, collect with religious
the quills if it has been killed, and rub their eyebrows
with them saying, ' They have slain our brother, our master,
one of- ours, him of whom we sing.' Other Baperis
worship a species of monkey, others swear by the baboon.
At the new moon they stop at home, acting in this respect
like those who sing the sun. Those of the Sun, when the star
of day rises in a cloudy sky, say, it afflicts their heart. Like
all the other natives of this country the Mah-kutus venerate
their ancestors almost to adoration." (Tour in the Cape,
p. 176.)
The totem relation of the man and the animal having
188 THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
arisen from that of the familiar animal was after evolved
into the form of ancestral and spiritual guardianship and
the assumed tutelar compact between man and his god.
We may read the evidence of the totem compact in the
principles which influenced the man's mind in relation to
his totem. First, the man reverenced and honoured his
totem. He might not kill it, or he could only kill it under
exceptionable circumstances, and then he might eat his
god-guardian. Often he asked its pardon for killing it, and
then treated some portion of its remains with honourable
distinction. The worship of the animal in some cases was
so far advanced that sacrifices were offered to them, and
various spell rites and incantations made to them.
To work out the system of intercommunion so necessary
between the totem and its worshippers, and all beings in
the same brotherhood, a telepathic power was conceived that
linked all the members of each group and enabled them
individually to communicate with, their fellows. We have
already seen that transcendental powers were claimed for
the spell and charm ; therefore, the savage saw no incon-
gruity in the escaped fish warning its fellows all through,
the sea, of human wiles, or even the skin of the slaughtered
totem informing its kin that certain tribesmen had broken
the implied compact, or, that before setting out on a hunting
expedition, permission should be invoked from the assembly
of bear or elks souls to kill them by their worshippers. It
has been assumed that the telepathic intercommunion of
souls was a new spiritual manifestation when it is in its
nature identical with the sympathetic virtues present in
charms and spells, which bring into the desired affinity
objects or persons however distant. This is the universal
mana power that encompasses all things and all personali-
ties in the universe.
Of its special actions in the relations of the totem and its
worshipper, we will now speak our illustrations thereof we
have chiefly drawn from the mass of descriptive facts
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 189
presented in Frazer's store-house of supernal information
the Golden Bough.
The semblances of the spell-powers were affirmed in the
evolution of all the nature personalities, and the relations
of man with the totem. The characteristics which express
each animated power are evolved from the charm signifi-
cance, whether as fire and energy in the sun, brightness
and fickleness in the moon, procreative nature passing
from the phallus to animate Adonis, or the symbols of
Nature's changes as ever depicted and rendered continuous
year by year in the symbols of the Corn Spirit, the Corn
Maid, the Harvest Mother, the Mother of Maize, the
Mother of Cotton ; even in the symbol of the Carrying out
Death, and the spring festivals of the Renewing of Life.
So the institution of the totem was a spell a spell affecting
all that might be eaten, and its removal was an appeasing
spell out of which grew the purification of the sacrament,
the eating the flesh of the totem animal, and after, of the
sacrificed god.
Necessarily from the character of the assumed totem
relationship was educed the honour and respect offered to
the animal in the hunt and after at the sacrifice. Primarily
it was the totem animal that was sacrificed, and to the
universal spell and mana power the totem animal was
offered. It was so with the old Aryan races ; with them it
ever was the goat, the sheep, and the ox. It was the same
with the Semites, and now the same doctrine is affirmed
by sacrificing tribes. The Zuni offers the turtle to the
general Turtle mana, the Aino, the Yakut, and the Gilyak
the bear to the common Bear mana. In Africa, from t lu-
cid Egyptian to the modern Kaffir and Malagassy, the
crocodile was offered to the Crocodile god. Everywhere
we meet with the evidence of honour and sacrifice sacri-
fice in the hunt or on the altar.
Reverence to the wild beast itself, or the semblance of a
spell to appease the mana of its totem race, are general.
190 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
The Aino and the Shaman honour the bear in the hunt.
The Dyaks will not kill a crocodile until he has killed a
man and broken thereby the implied compact. It is so
with the hill tribes in India, only the man-eating tiger
may be slain. The Malagassy tribesmen make a yearly
proclamation to the crocodiles, announcing that they will
revenge the death of their friends by killing an equal
number of crocodiles. Though associated in the totem
compact, the spirits of the animals are treated as a tribe
distinct from their fellows, and the same law of a life for a
life is exacted from the spirit tribesmen as the human
tribesmen. The same feeling influences the American
Indians : they spare the rattlesnake, because they say its
ghost would excite its kinsmen to take vengeance on any
redman.
Even when necessity causes the slaughter of the totem
animal, it, and its fellow ghosts ill-will, must be turned
aside, or honours must be accepted as compensation for
death. Thus the Kamschatkan will apologise to the bear
and seal he has killed, and excuse his act in various ways,
offering to him nuts to forego future vengeance. The
bear's head is honoured, after they have feasted on his flesh,
with presents, so as to make it gratified by the notice it
receives ; for, like some Chinese heroes and heroines, it is
more honoured in death than life. When the Ostiaks have
killed a bear, they cut off its head and hang it upon a tree,
with mystic honours, ascribing its death not to their own
hands but to the Russian axe, and the skinning of it to the
Russian knife. Then they honour the skin as a guardian
god.
When the Koriaks have killed a bear or wolf they
dress a man in its skin and dance round him saying it was
the Russians who killed him. When they kill a fox they
wrap it up in grass, and bid it go to its companions and
tell them how hospitably it has been entertained, and that
it has got a new cloak for its old one. The Lapps went a
ROMAN AND ANIMAL. 191
step further, and thanked the bear for not injuring them
or breaking their weapons. (The Golden Sough, II. p. 112.)
Before setting out upon a bear expedition the North
American Indians offered expiatory sacrifices to the souls
of bears slain in previous hunts, and besought them to
be favourable to the hunters, and assume the character of
the decoy elephant to their wild living fellows. When they
had killed a bear they begged its ghost not to be angry,
and to gratify it they put a lighted tobacco pipe into its
mouth, and blew in the bowl to regale the ghost of the
dead animal with the smoke. The Otawas told the bear's
ghost it was glorious to be eaten by the children of a chief,
and probably a like sentiment explains the many instances
of family cannibalism in which the kin more or less
partook of the bodies of their own dead friends. The
Nootka Indians put a chief's bonnet on the slain bear and
powdered its fur with down, even provisions were set before
it and it was invited to eat. After being thus honoured,
surely no reasonable ghost could bear malice against those
who thus served it. (Ibid. II. p. 113.)
When the Kaffir hunters were in the act of showering
spears on an elephant, they call out " Great Captain, don't
kill us, don't tread upon us, mighty chief ;" and when it is
dead, they make excuses to it, pretending it was an
accident and to gratify its ghost they bury the trunk with
much ceremony, crying, " The elephant is a great lord, and
the trunk is its hand." As treating the living animals and
tin spirits of their dead as being in associate confraternity
with men in West Africa, they try the tiger who has killed
a man, so the negro who has killed a leopard is bound to a
; he is then tried by the chiefs for having killed one of
their peers, but he defends himself on the plea that ho was
a stranger ; then tho dead leopard is set up in the village
and honoured by nightly dances. (Ibid. II. p. 114.) In the
many cases on record of the exorcisings as well as trials of
various animals for offences committed on human beings,
192 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
we may see the survival notions of the primary compact
with the totem animal.
The telepathic spiritual power is always at work, and
not only may the living animal communicate with the
ghosts of its fellows, but the same virtue remains as in
charms in every fragment of its body. When the Guiana
Indians have killed a tapir and roasted its flesh on a
babracot, they take good care to destroy the fireplace, or
they say the friends of the tapir, if they came that way,
and saw what they had done, would follow them to their
sleeping-place and serve them the same. The savage
Stiens in Cambodia beg an animals pardon after they have
killed it, lest its soul torment them. (Ibid. II. p. 1 14.) Small
animals, unless totems, are treated with contempt when
killed. A certain amount of reverence is shown to sables
and beavers. Alaskan hunters are careful that the bones
of both are kept from the reach of dogs ; so with the
Canadian Indians, sables have been supposed to take it as
an insult that live sables have been taken to Moscow. All
through the animal world a sympathetic telepathy is
assumed to be disseminated, it passes through the clouds,
it penetrates the earth, it is diffused through the sea, and
outwits the telephone and the telegraph in its universal
presentation, not only through the spirits of the dead
and the living, but in the charm activities present in all
things.
The remains of deer and elks were treated by the North
American Indians with the same punctilious respect : their
bones might not be given to the dogs or thrown into the
fire, because the souls of the dead animals were supposed
to see what was done to their bodies and to tell it to other
beasts, and as a result they would not allow their kin to be
taken either in this world or the next. A sick man would
be asked by the medicine-man if he had thrown away some
flesh of deer or turtle, and if he had the reply was that the
soul of the deer or turtle had entered the sick man and
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 193
was killing him. The telepathic sympathy was universal :
the Canadian Indian would not eat the embryo of the elk,
less the mother elks should hear of it and refuse to be
caught.
The Indians of Peru adored the fish they caught. The
Ottawa Indians believed that the souls of dead fish passed
into other fish, and they never burnt fish bones for fear of
displeasing the souls of the fish, and they would no longer
come into their nets. The disappearance of the herring
from the sea about Heligoland was ascribed by the fisher-
men to two boys after ill-using a herring casting it into the
sea, when it informed its fellows and they avoided that
coast. The Thlinket of Alaska call the first halibut of a
season chief, and give a festival to its honour. There are
many evidences of the honours bestowed upon the heads of
deer, wolves, lions, bears, foxes, and so forth ; may not the
honouring of the Yule boar's head and decorating it with
fruits and spices be the remnant of honouring the soul of
the dead boar, and the cherishing and displaying of the
fox's tail a sacrifice to the spirit of its ghost, after trans-
ferred to its captor or the one first in at the hunt ?
Among the vagaries of human belief arose the supposi-
tion that the spirit might locate itself in any special part of
a human being in the head, the bowels, the limbs ; he might
produce pains in those parts only. A singular modification
of this belief prevailed among the Samoans : they inferred
that at the instant of birth as well as its own, the spirit of
its tutelar deity, or of some animal, found an entry. Some-
times one took up its abode in the left wing of a pigeon ;
another in the tail of a dog, the right leg of a pig, a shark,
a cocoanut, a banana, bonita, or an eel. Each of these
objects then became sacred to the individual whose god or
totem it embraced.
At this early stage of psychological evolution wo may
not, wo must not infer that men had learnt to idealize a
>{>iritual immaterial soul, a something that could combine
13
101 THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
with matter, act on matter, and yet preserve its own series
of special attributes. Far from this, man was only
acquainted with matter in its several conditions and their
variations, he knew it as a solid, as a flexible substance, as
a fluid, and in the gaseous state. It was in the most
attenuated of these conditions, the one most likely to
manifest the various changes, that he noted the relations of
man's dual nature, that he inferred the nature of the two
principles in man. He had seen the steam rising from the
boiling geyser, the vapour rising from the waterfall; the
mist creeping along the hill-side may be ascending into the
heavens in clouds ; he had also seen the smoke of his own
fire, and of the sacrificial fire, even the greater portion of
the solid body of the victim, rising in long wreaths, and
gradually becoming more attenuated until it was lost in
the blue of the sky ; more, his own breath, in general
unobserved at times, passed out of his body in a distinctly
marked vapour. These states of matter were as present to
his perceptive powers as were the solids and fluids, and
uniformly the ghost was this same vapour; it might be
visible as the human breath, or it might be invisible as
betimes was the same. Such was the primary ghost, such
is the ghost or spirit of the lower races of men everywhere
in the world, and even such is the vulgar apparition among
the more advanced races ; like the human breath it may be
visible or invisible. There ultimately came a period when
this ghostly substance became more sublimated, and was
esteemed of a so-called spiritual nature, but so impossible
was it for the spiritual idealists to separate it from the
common attributes of matter that under the most transcen-
dental conditions it is described as glory, light, fire, or
flame equally material attributes.
While in the general ordinary course of material rela-
tions, man became cognizant of the physical and mental
differences in substances and of the varied relations he had
with the animal and vegetal world about him, he also
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 195
recognized relations in things of a more marked and
impressive character. He had seen the in general quiet
brooklet become a roaring raging flood, the usually narrow
river overflow its banks and lay regions of the neighbour-
ing country under water ; the sea usually only laving the
sands, changed into a vast onsweeping wave, or bursting
into perilous breakers ; so high overhead where the sun
coursed along his daily arch, black clouds rolled, the
thunder roared, and the lightning flashed. These and
many other forms of natural force must have been ever
present to his perceptive powers as denoting greater forces,
distinct modes of action having few or no affinities with his
ordinary sublunary conceptions of the relations of things
and beings.
Yet the one series of forces differed only as one man
differs from another ; one animal from another; an animal
from a plant or stone ; though the distinctions were vastly
greater. Ordinary earth and water he could associate with
the plant and the stone, but the mighty natural forms and
forces stood outside the ordinary habits of things ; he could
scarcely associate them with all that was common to him in
the ordinary course of things. He knew only of the two
great dualistic natures of beings, and these were all that he
could utilize in distinguishing the heavenly and earthly
bodies, and the great powers they evinced. He recognized
the same set of relations between the living and the sleeping
man, the raving and the quiet beast, as ho saw in the placid
river and the raging torrent, the serene sky and the wild
tornado. It was the ghost spirit in the man, in the animal,
even in tin- fetish stone that gave it all its active principles,
so he could not expect other than a like ghost-power in the
sun, the moon, the thunder, the wind; they possessed the
same dual natures, the same passions, the same wills as all
terrestrial beings. So as men fought with men, animals
with animals, and men with animals, over producing various
temporary supremacies, so was it in the great outer world
13 *
196 THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
of nature. In the sky he became conscious of the same
antagonisms as on the earth, ever he saw allwhere the
independent actions of many varied kinds of organisms,
each acting under its own temporary impulses, and all
discordant disintegration being replaced by a like varying
series of heterogeneous individual forces.
As it was customary for the rude savage to ally himself
under certain circumstances with the inhabitants of the
neighbouring caves or wigwams, to repel the assaults of
tigers, wolves, or bears, or to resist a like action by other
associated men, he acquired the capacity to conceive of
spirit or ghost help. So among the vast series of dual
existencies, men had to select those whom they could hold
communion with, and by some apposite circumstance those
who would enter into spiritual affinity with themselves. We
may in speaking of this relation use the word totem spirit
or god, but everywhere the association is of the same nature
a reciprocal interchange of obligations, the basis of all
forms of religion is the assumed necessity for supernal
help.
Hence when man passed from the consideration of, and
dependence on charm spells, his soul went out into the
Kosmos about him, and according to his local surroundings
were the nature of the powers on which he learnt to depend.
The individual selection of a protector would naturally
precede that of a group, and the supernal protector of the
man who became a tribal leader, or who was noted for his
mana, would be more apt to be selected by the young
during the initiation rites, and as the impersonal worshipper
selected various spells to strengthen his fetish aims, so the
spirit worshipper enlarged the circle of his protective
relations; thus we find many protective totems in the
medicine-bags of many Indians, and ever in the tribes when
one divine power fails to reply, another is appealed to. Thus
humanity passed from the concept of spirit-power as
indifferent, or only evil to the realization of beneficent
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 197
service and the evolvement of mutual good relations
between man and spirit, whether of human or nature
origin.
We have incidentally referred to the derivation of the
sentiment of the familiar animal as preceding that of the
familiar spirit out of which the sentiment of evil spirits
as the agents of human malignity has been evolved. In
treating on totems we showed how general has been the
concept of human derivation from animals and of animal
origin from men and women, and in this transfer of
attributes and the mystic nature of the changes induced we
detect the stepping-stones as it were of the development of
the familiar animal to a familiar spirit animal, and then
when the ghost sentiment was evolved, the concept of the
familiar ghost spirit. The witches' cat thus became a
mystic animal possessing supernal powers and able to aid
its mistress not only in her malignant devices but to
accompany her through the air in her transcendental
manifestations. In the old witchcraft of Europe such
fetish powers of help were ascribed to hares, dogs, owls,
and so forth, and when ghosts and imps were conceived
they might come in the forms of snakes, toads, rats, and
other animal shapes. Jenkinson describes similar ideas
as being expressed by the Zulus. " Dingaen said the
witches went out in the dead of the night carrying a cat;
they sent this cat into the house of the person whom they
meant to bewitch. The cat brought out a bit of hair or
something else which the witch deposited under the floor of
her house, and in consequence the object of her dislike soon
became sick. There were five animals they used the cat,
the wolf, the panther, the jackal, the owl." (Amazula,p. 116.)
Whether the cat familiar of the Zulus was of native
origin or derived from the Boers we cannot say, but the
sentiment of men ghosts entering and possessing animals
is common among them. Livingstone writes : " It is
believed that the souls of departed chiefs enter into lions
198 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
and render them sacred. A hungry lion came attracted by
meat, and Mokoro, imbued by the belief that it was a chief
in disguise, scolded him roundly. " You a chief, eh ? You
call yourself a chief, sneaking about in the dark trying to
steal our buffalo meat ! Are you not ashamed of yourself?
You are like a scavenger beetle ; you have not the heart of
a chief ! Why don't you kill your own beef? You must have
a stone in your chest and no heart at all." (Zambesi, p. 161.)
Jenkinson says the witches and wizards "go about at
night accompanied by familiar wild cats, leopards, and
baboons, and lay poisons in the path for people to step
over, and on the threshold and in the fields, to destroy the
crops." Like many other African races they saw a supernal
power in snakes, and if one is found in a hut the people
move out and wait patiently till it leaves. The owner will
say it is perhaps the spirit of one of his ancestors come to
visit him in this form. (Kaffir Folklore, p. 22.) We have
noted that the same idea of an ancestor coming in a snake
form was known in India and in the East. In New Zealand
it took the form of a lizard, in West Africa it comes in the
form of a snake or crocodile, and elsewhere in other animal
forms. Rowley writes of the Hottentots that they a had a
spirit who came in the form of a butterfly." In Scotch
witch trials we read of the witches' imps coming to them in
prison in the form of flies. The Hottentot insect spirit
was the Mantis fausta; they sang and danced while it
remained. If it entered a kraal the inhabitants were in a
transport of devotion. They threw to it the powder of the
herb buchu and offered a fat sheep as a thanksgiving.
They believed that it brought them favour and prosperity
and that all past offences were buried in oblivion. If it
alighted on a Hottentot he was a man without fault and
sacred, so if it alighted on a woman she was a sanctified
person. If one of these insects were killed their cattle
would perish by wild beasts and themselves die. (The
Religion of the Africans, p. 64.) In Africana we read of
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 199
the bewitcher becoming a leopard or carrion crow.
(I. p. 210.)
Possession among the North American Indians could not
have primarily been that of men ghosts, it was that of
animals. Schoolcraft describing the Dacotahs writes :
" Their idea of the pathology of diseases is that the spirit
of something, perhaps a bear, deer, turtle, fish, tree, stone,
worm, or of some deceased person, has entered into the sick
and caused his illness. The effort of the medicine-men is
to expel this spirit by incantations and ceremonies and the
aid of the spirit or spirits he worships, then by noises,
gestures, and sucking." (Jnd. Tribes, I. p. 250.) The same
writer in his Ilixtory of the Iroquois writes: " The witch had
power to turn into a fox or wolf, run swift, emit flashes of
light, or transform into turkey or owl. Onondaga said one
day he stepped out of his lodge and immediately sank
through the earth into a large lodge in which three hundred
witches and wizards were assembled" (pp. 139-141). We
know there were Walpurgis nights on the Brock en, in church-
yards among Scotch witches, and in India the rakchacas
and apsara bhutes assemble on a set day on the" mountain-
side; so it would seem the same worthy confederates
had their mystic assemblies underground in America.
In Copway's History of the OjiLircnjx we are informed
that the witches and wizards "are believed to fly invisibly
from place to place and to turn themselves into bears,
wolves, foxes, bats, and snakes ; they do so by putting on
the skins of those animals and imitating their cries"
(P- 1
In Europe we hear of demon cats, dogs, foxes, and cock-
liraded devils. The demon weasel is common in Japan, find
besides possessing men and women it maliciously injures
them l>y raiisinjr them to fall. Conway says "the devil-
worshippers of Travancore to this day see the evil power in
the form of a dog." With the Navajos Indians the coyote
is the possessing animal. With the Ainos and the north-
200 THE ORIGIN OF GHOSTS,
eastern Asiatics the bear was the mystic animal, and in
other places serpents are the possessing animals.
One series of depositions in the old witch trials of the
witches of Huntingdon will suffice to show the nature of
the supernal powers attached to animals. " Frances Moore
deposed that eight years since she received a little black
puppy from Margaret Simpson who had it in bed with her.
Margaret Simpson told her to keep the dog all her lifetime
and said if she cursed any cattle and set the dog upon them
they would die. Also one good wife, Weed, gave her a
white cat telling her if she denied God and pricked her
finger in affirmation thereof which she did, the cat licking
the blood that about six years since William Foster
would have hanged her children; on which she cursed
William Foster and set the white cat on him. He fell and
died. About five years since in a dispute about cows she
cursed Edward Hull's cow, which shortly swelled and died.
She said she killed the cat and dog a year since, but after a
like cat and dog haunted her and when she was appre-
hended they crept under her clothes and tortured her" (p. 6).
In the European Folklore we read of the souls of men
going into the owl, the cuckoo, the stork, robin, wood-
pecker, and swallow, as well as into the witch animal, and in
the various animal vampires. Among several races of men
we have statements of the souls of men after death entering
into birds, as those of North American chiefs into singing
birds. Tylor quotes several cases of the souls of the dead
warriors and chiefs becoming birds in Africa as we have
seen chiefs become lions, in some places snakes and
crocodiles, while cowards become lizards and frogs; but as
most of these peoples have, besides various abodes for souls,
some sort of shadowy Hades, we look on these animal and
bird presentations as poetical estimations of class and
character worth out of which the concept of successive
incarnations or re-births was formed. More, as these
sentiments imply that the attributes while living decide the
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 201
condition of the soul in a future state wizards become
powerful spirits, and murderers, suicides, lepers, abortions,
and women dying in child-bed malignant spirits.
Side by side with this concept of animal possession we
note the higher sentiment of ghost and spirit possession.
The invisible animal that entered the human body gave
place to the malignant ghost of a man or a nature spirit.
These possessing ghosts might be as vindictive and savage
as the demon animals whose places they supplied, or they
might represent the first exposition of supernal good,
as the African with the headache who considered his
departed father was in his head scolding him. (Livingstone,
p. 521.) These good spirit agents imply a higher stage of
development and will be considered in our next chapter.
Spencer writes that the Veddahs look to the shade of a
dead parent or child to give success in the chase; then they
have arrived at the worship of good ancestor spirits like the
East African.
The first concept of a ghost or spirit-power always
represents it as malicious or vindictive; it may injure
by charms only, it may act through animal forms, it may
come in its own ghost or spirit nature, but ever it essentially
represents an evil impulse or power. This primary ghost-
power at first is only to be restrained by the same spells
and charms that characterize the earliest supernal concepts.
Afterwards the evil action of one ghost is supposed to be
restrained by the intervention of another ghost or spirit
through the instrumentality of the medicine-man; it is then
ever evil warring with evil. As the primary savage only
at first endeavoured to change or coerce the presumed
supernal evil that affected him by amulets, mystic ceremonies,
and the virtues ho acknowledged in weird substances, so
when the medicine-man had presented his assumed power-
over ghosts and spirits, ho became the ready means to
overthrow at first the malignant spells of other ghosts or
their presumed possession. Ever at this stage as wo have
202
seen the good influence extracts the evil influence as a
material substance in the form of stone or organic waste ;
but when an ancestor ghost is evolved, we have the
commencement of the contest of spirit with spirit, ghost
with ghost, the ancestor spirit against the devil spirit,
whatever its nature.
If we endeavour to work out the primary evolution of
evil spirits, devils, we can always do so by recognizing it in
man, animal, or nature power which manifests vindictive
attributes. Hence we ever, according to locality, meet
with the wolf, the dog, the tiger, the bear, hyena, snake,
or crocodile devil. Hence the cognomen, devil, applied to
the ghosts of ancestors ; hence the devil in the tree that,
falling, killed the man ; in the eddy which capsized the
canoe, the blast that caused a death. To each other the
warring tribes of old Aryans were devils ; if one conquered
they became giant demons, ogres, or genii. The evil spirits
of the Australian aborigine were his dead enemies ; it
was so in the contests of Britons and Picts, Teutons and
Sclavonians. As Conway shows, the devil at Mozambique
is the wicked white man, Muzungu Maya, and we doubt if
a worse devil ever existed than the merciless Arab slave-
hunter. If the Yakuts say there is a devil in the body, they
mean an enemy.*
Of the supernatural beings acknowledged by the inhabi-
tants of Sindh Burton writes : " They believe in the Jinns or
genii, in Bhut ghosts, in disembodied spirits, in ghoul or
demons of the wilderness, in Peri, fairies in Dew Rakas and
Pap, powerful fiends. The Dakkan is the same as our witch ;
she has the power of turning men into beasts, killing
cattle, flying to any distance by reciting a magic formula,
and mounting a hyena. The Bauble are frightful beings,
* Dorman shows that the devils were educed from enemies. Thus Ercono
was the devil of the Moxos, their racial enemies the Conos tribe. The
devils of the Taos were Tupas, their enemies the Tupis. Chelul Patagonian
devil, their enemies the Cheloagos. (Prim. Super, p. 27.)
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 203
half-female, half-hellish. They live in the hills and jungles
where they frequently appear to travellers ; they are
covered with hair like bears, and have large pendant lips.
The Shir is a creature that partakes of the Satanic nature ;
he lives in the burial ground." (Sindh, p. 175.)
Of actual ghost possession wo have many records even
in our own witchcraft annals. In the palmy days of
witch power the possessing ghosts were as demonstrative
M spirits now are at stances. Holland in his Treatise
njninxt Witchcraft writes: "There was a poor woman in
my country named Jacoba, out of whose belly I myself
heard the voice of an unclean spirit. It was small indeed,
and yet as oft as it listed it was both a distinct voice and very
intelligible. Many others heard the same, and noble men,
affecting predictions, greatly desired to hear and behold this
pythoness whom, therefore, they sent for often and stripped
her of all her apparel that no secret fraud might be hidden.
If a man did ask him of the most secret things, past and
present, he answered ofttimes most strangely, but concern-
ing future events he alwayserred" (p. 12). No doubt the sly
Jacoba, or a confederate present, was a skilful ventriloquist.
Witch narratives are so common that we need not dwell on
iliis form of possession which is, with insignificant variations,
general among most races of men, with some it is an evil
spirit as with the Arab, the Negro, the Indian, who buried
his dead secretly that the Mulasha might not get them.
Throughout Asia, as well as formerly all over Europe,
possession by ghosts and evil spirits were supposed to bo
v day events, and such ideas are still maintained by
the rustics in various parts of Europe by the Dyaks and the
Hiil Tribes in India. Wherever we observe possession
: essed for good purposes, ns for prophecy, enunciation of
laws, and the declaration of rites, we may be assured a new
mental force is being created, and that the sentiment of
divine goodness is being evolved, and the spirit guardian-
ship developed. Yet, though the greater power of the
204 THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
doctor ultimately exorcises all that is evil, for a long time
the contest of the good medicine-man, the priest, is only
exercised in using more powerful charms to expel the evil
spirit of disease in its many forms.
The Malagassy holds that disease is caused by evil spirits,
and to get rid of them pieces of white wood are put on the
housetop pointed and painted, and 3 ft. from the door is
planted a forked branch like horns, and twice every day a
dance is performed by the household, and charms are
brought into the courtyard and placed on the rice mortar,
the sick man is dressed in a curious fashion, and drums and
bamboos are beaten and hands clapped to drive the spirit
away, this ceremony is repeated two or three times a day
until the patient dies or recovers. (Folklore Record, II. p. 46.)
Burton in his Zanzibar shows that, as with the Jews, the
spirits, not to be homeless, might be cast into unclean
swine ; so the African medicine-man, more sympathetic,
attached some article to the sick man's neck, a charm
object into which the expelled demon might find a home.
(II. p. 88.) Cockayne in his Leechdom shows the transition
stage to the powerful mana exorcism, when Alpha and
Omega were added to the old rure charm, with its powerful
medicaments, bramble, lupins, and pulegiuni put under the
altar, and nine masses said over them, then the ingredients
made into a drink to expel the disease fiend. No doubt the
old hedge priest was at home in these Druidical incantations.
(II. p. 155.)
The Melanesians held that " when a man went out of his
mind it was supposed that a ghost was possessing him, and
wonderful things were thought to be done by one in such
condition. To recover such a person if he could be caught,
a fire was made of strong smelling herbs, and the patient
held in the smoke. The names of the dead were called,
and when the right name was given, the possessed man
would confess it, and the power of the ghost would fail."
(Jour. Anth. List. X. p. 85.) According to Pocqueville
HUMAN AND ANIMAL. 205
the Moslems described the plague as an evil spirit. " It was
seen to glide along their roofs, a decrepit object covered
with funeral shreds, he called by their names those he
wished to cut off." (Pettigrew, p. 66.) More definite is the
action of the Hindoo Bhuta spirits, these " are believed to
afflict human beings by entering into and possessing
them. They seat themselves in the lower part of the
abdomen and feed on the excreta. They cause fits,
paralytic strokes, temporary aberrations, outbreaks of
madness, cramps, rheumatic pains." (Jour. Anih. Inst.
V. p. 410.)
The low class Brahmins who are medicine-men to the
village Hindoos, by various spells and mantras draw out
of the patient's body the possessing Bhute, and then to
prevent its return to the patient or its entering into another
member of the family they endeavour to buy its good will.
For this purpose in every house a cot is provided for the
Bhutes, they are not only fed with rice and sundry good
things, but flowers are laid on the cot, and perfume burnt
before it, and certain ceremonies are performed to make
the half-domestic spirit comfortable. It is almost advanced
to the status of the house god of the Russian peasant.
Captain Falconer of the Bombay Artillery was of a
different temperament to the Bhute worshipper. He had
a servant who appeared wasting away, for a long time he
would not tell his ailment, at last he said a Brahmin had
bewitched him with his revenge, and that he was now
eating up his liver. The Captain at once rode to the
Brahmin, and with his whip lashed him severely for
bewitching his servant, on which he roared he would
release him from the spell. On the Captain coming back
home, for no doubt the news had spread by the fellow
servants, he found the man much better. (Zoist, VII.
p. 5.)
Even many rudo tribes of man have adoptc'l UK-
Captain's mode of expelling the possessing spirits, or have
THE ORIGIN OP GHOSTS,
used equally as efficacious spells to remove the evil from
among them by exporting the devils and ghosts wholesale.
Bancroft tells us the Nicaraguans have a ceremony by
which they expel them from their dwellings. (Bancroft,
II. p. 785.) The Mayas of Yucatan had evil spirits driven
away by the sorcerers, they fled when the fetishes were
exposed. The Peruvians had a long religious rite in which
all the mana of the priests were combined, these in a band
advanced from north, east, south and west, driving, like
wild fowl, the evil spirits into the river, which were then
borne by its current into the ocean.
When the time arises for the annual expulsion of the
ghosts and demons from the Nicobar Islands the priests,
to produce sufficient mana, fast for a long time beforehand,
and by constant potations and mysterious ceremonies they
work themselves up to an excited pitch, and then commence
their conjurations. They are daubed over the face with
red paint and rubbed with oil over the body. In deep bass
voices they sing a dolefel dirge, and rush wildly about. On
the beach lies the small model of a boat for the spirits,
adorned with garlands of fresh leaves. The priests try to
catch hold of the spirits, and they coax, scold, and abuse,
and rush after their invisible antagonists, the women howling
all the time. After great trouble the Iwi are safely brought
on board and seated on the skiff. Young men in boats then
tow the craft so far out to sea that it will not be brought by
the wind and tide back to their village, it is then set adrift,
and the young men return to feast and rejoice. Even
should it be borne back a screen is erected between the
village and the sea, that the spirits may not see it.
(Calcutta Rev. LXII. p. 193.)
A somewhat similar precaution to get rid of the ghosts
of foemen is undertaken by one of the tribes at New Guinea.
" The Motuans had killed many Soloans at the entrance of
a channel, since which the Solo spirits have been trouble-
some there detaining the boats. To drive them away from
HUMAN AND ANIMAL.
the boats entering the sound, they were brought right up,
then the chief took his nephew by the hand, handed to him
two wisps of cassowary feathers, and he stood in front of
the vessel shaking them with a peculiar motion of the body,
then all shouted as if driving something before them, and
by this incantation the ghosts were driven away." (Chalmers
New Guinea, p. 29.)
CHAPTER VI.
The Evolution of Ancestral Worship and the sentiment of
Supernal Goodness.
As no step in progress is ever induced but by the manifesta-
tion of tentative stages, even as the leaper who makes a
backward movement so as to gain impetus, so we read the
evidence of rude preliminary anticipations of the principle
of goodness among some tribes who have only rude concepts
of the attributes of the spirit powers they would fain
appeal to.
In the primary mental stage man only recognizes luck,
the vague and uncertain conditions resulting from chance ;
there is neither the intelligent presence of good or evil, all
influences express unrestrainable impersonal fate. Then,
when man conceived of the powers in charms and spells, the
result depended on the power or mana in the charm or
spell, and it was good or bad only as it affected the inflictor
and the victim; it was equally impersonal and devoid of
principle, the same action expressing severally each senti-
ment. When the man possessing mana, and as a necessary
consequence the medicine-man was evolved, then the charm
power became more defined, and good and evil influences,
not mental selective attributes, were attached to the im-
personal objects depended upon in spells. These powers
were worked by the medicine-men, and through their con-
stant application schools of charm spells were generally
evolved. Both for good and evil purposes, besides rites
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 209
and ceremonies, they appealed to the natural virtues as well
as the presumed mystical virtues they recognized in objects.
Hence the first real concepts of good, as distinct from evil
were the attributes which affected humanity found in plants,
but also equally ascribed to other things.
When the dual nature of man and animal was evolved,
then the ghost in reality represented the medicine-man of
the day, and as his charms, whether to bring disease or
cast it off, represent ill to some one, so the primary spirit
always expresses evil.
The Australian aborigines have evolved many evil spirits,
not only the Ingnas, the same ghost-demons of evil men
that are recognized by all the lower human races, but other
nature evil spirits derived from rivers, hurricanes, beasts,
birds, and reptiles, as the Bunyipa, a monster that dwells
in the swamps and rivers and devours men. With some it
is a mystic emu, with others a giant kangaroo. The Myndic
is a great snake. Whirlwinds are caused by a giant magpie.
One, an animal near Western Port, resembles a human
being, but his body is as hard as stone. The river Murray
was made by a snake's spirit. Nargen is a ferocious
monster who dwells in a cave ; he is all stone, he seizes
black fellows and drags them into his cave ; some liken him
to a huge frog. Kootcher is an evil spirit who causes
death and disease, and to charm away his influence they
take red ochre, human bones, and clay. Some say he is a
black fellow, others a snake. (Abor. Viet. I. p. 457.)
The Okopaid of the Andamanese is described as com-
municating with the invisible powers; he ascribes epidemics
to evil spirits whom he attempts to control with a burning
brand, or by planting charm stakes. (Jour. Anth. Inst. XII.
p. 110.) He is in fear of the evil inBuence in the sun and
moon, he ceases his work when the moon is declining and
does not begin it again until it is once more enlarging ; so
he is afraid to work at sunrise lest he should offend the sun.
Storms denote the anger of the cloud spirits, earthquakes
14
210 'THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
are caused by ghosts. All the evil influences the Anda-
manese recognize due to ghosts and spirits, they appear to
have no concept of supernal goodness.
According to Sir John Lubbock there are many races of
men which only recognize spirits of evil, malignant beings
of the same nature as the Christian devils, the Moslem
Ginns, the Hindoo Bhutes and the Chaldean demons. Of
these he instances the Hottentots, the Bechuanas, the
Mosquito Indians, the Abipones, Coroados and other South
American tribes, the Bougoes in Africa, and generally the
North American Indians and Tartar hordes. We are afraid
that many of the peoples he refers to are wrongly estimated
by the travellers he mentions, and that in many cases the
more prominent fears of the vulgar (for there are vulgar
minds even among savages) have been accepted as denoting
the general concepts of the tribe. Only the other day we
read of the natives of New Guinea that they hold the spirits
are all malignant, and they do not seem to grasp the idea
of a beneficent spirit, and that they have to be overcome by
force of arms, blessings, or cursings, but are most effec-
tively dispelled by fire. (The Popular Science Monthly,
XXXVII. p. 859.) On the contrary Chalmers the Mission-
ary, reports that they recognize the ghosts of men as good
and bad, kind and vindictive ; they recognize spirits in pigs
and wallabies, in frozen fish, in most natural things ;
thunder is an angry spirit, and Koitapu sends death and
and sickness, and he is to be bought by offerings. All
objects possess spirits, they worship the sun, the moon,
stones, rocks, mountains, and dead warriors, and these
without having evolved an active spirit of good, imply the
grateful acceptance of the good in nature and the incipient
beginning of ancestor worship. (Pioneering in New Guinea,
p. 169, &c.)
Even the Veddahs, as described by Herbert Spencer, are
not wholly devil worshippers, however much they may
dread the spirit ministers of evil ; if they look to the shade
AND THE SENTIMENT OP SOPERXAL GOODNESS. 211
of a dead parent or child to give success in the chase, they
have arrived at the preliminary stage of ancestor worship.
The Araucanian saving fairy, also referred to by Spencer,
implies spirit-help ; and the mixed character of the spirits
for good and evil among the Ashantees, the Amazula, the
old Chaldeans, and all the Aryan races, imply the gradual
growth of the sentiment of goodness.
Essentially among all races of men in the past and in the
present, the most prominently expressed monition is that of
fear, and its effects last longest in the mind. The good in
nature, goodness in our kindred, are accepted without
thought ; we at first accept it, and after, if withheld, demand
it. Evil in every form always denotes an enemy, one to be
shunned, feared, and, at best, prevented injuring us by
submission, entreaty, and offerings. Goodness begins in
the most trivial recognitions of interest, service and duty.
All men cannot see all things under the same aspects ; to
the hunter there is little or no natural goodness, he is
indifferent to sunshine or rain, and the river which carries
his bark or skin canoe is no more thought of than the
i-:irth on which he walks ; but if in the eddies of the rapids
ho sees his fellow's frail bark upset and himself engulphed
in the waters, an evil spirit has seized him and carried him
down, probably ho had broken some tabu or failed to offer
some leaf, stick, or stone, and thus excited the malignity of
the usually placid spirit. To tho earth cultivator tho
universe bears another aspect, sunshine and rain are equally
necessary to him, and therefore ho learns to rocogni/o tho
nature-powers under their double aspects of good and evil
Mini thrreon builds up the lower forms of tho divine nature.
h' becomes more dependent on his fellows, and this
sentiment he carries into tho after-life, and thus natural
goodness and human goodness build up spirit goodness,
more especially when ho carries tho kin soul into bird and
beast, into sun wind and rock.
Tho origin of tho whole of the totem systems begin with
14 *
212 THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
the hunter. They are most evolved in that intermediate
state in which man is an incipient cultivator, and depends
chiefly on the wild products of nature. They gradually
cease or evolve into social institutions, affecting class
position and influence, when men settle in permanent com-
munities.
The mode of the totem evolution is everywhere similar,
though the mediums differ. When the kin ghost was
recognised, and the sentiment of goodness as an active
attribute was being evolved, men sought to associate them-
selves with some of the supernal forms denoting goodness
that they recognized. All natural physical existences, all
material forms of power, all kinds of animal life were
endowed with soul-spirits like men. They might differ in
nature, as one animal differs from another ; but as one man
now entered into blood-relations of brotherhood with another
man, so might the soul of man enter into a brotherhood of
mutual help and service with any of the like spirits it
recognized in its spiritual kosmos. It has to be remembered
that in all human associations men most desire to associate
with those of a different temperament, having another class
of emotions even of opposite characters. Hence, we can
understand how the Indian hunter esteemed the cunning of
the coyote, the subtlety of the snake, the strength of the
alligator and tiger. In like manner, the all-piercing eye of
the sun, the power of the storm and thunder appealed to
some men, while others sought association with the soul in
the corn, the winds and waters.
Because of the commonness of animal totems, the whole
totem system has been conceived to be that of animal
relationship. This is an error. Animal totems are most
common because animal objects are most common, and the
special animistic attributes of animals most appealed to the
instinctive nature of the hunter, or were specially attractive
to the individual. We have in this way seen how the
familiar animal became the familiar spirit, and so evolved
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPEBXAL GOODNESS. 213
into the totem. Of course, when it was supposed the
medicine-man went into the sky, it was possible for some
ancestral ghost to hare ascended into the sky, or some sun
star-spirit to have descended on the earth ; and thus the
ancestral spirit of goodness might have been evolved from
any material form or force, or from any animal association.
We may express this evolution of the spirit of goodness
as ancestral worship, we may describe it as totem worship ;
in all cases it implies the bond of a common brotherhood,
kinship and mutual service, whether manifested to men by
an animal totem, or sun, star, or other nature spirit. Animal
association or spirit association may arise in dreams, in
waking visions, in every abnormal state, toxic or otherwise,
in which mental aberrations may be excited. As proving
the protective association is mutual, the totem worshipper
affirms the totem will not injure him ; and if the snake or
lion kill him, or the lightning burns him up, his fellows cry
that he has been false to the assumed compact. Thus in
Senegambia lions and crocodiles discriminate their votaries,
scorpions in the East, snakes among the Moqui, the Jaguar,
the Peruvian Indian, even the cattle in Madagascar, the
child of their owner. So general was this idea that one
bitten by his totem animal in some instances has been
expelled from the tribe as disowned by his totem.
The nature of the totem to a certain extent implies the
social state in which it was accepted as the divine guardian.
Many animal totems express their origin as being in the
hunter state. Many as sun, moon, and star totems may
have been accepted at any time : scattered tribes, like the
Australian aborigines, conceive the moon and stars were
once men and women. Many totem relations are manifested
by spells, and probably had their origin in the spell era,
when the status of the medicine-man was established.
Thus the general small bird and reptile clans of the Omahas
express the era of corn cultivation, when men depended not
so much on one animal protector as on a class of pro-
214 THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP.
tectors. Frazer writes : " In harvest time, when the birds
eat the corn, the small bird clan of the Omahas take some
corn, which they chew and spit over the field. This is
thought to keep the birds from the crops. If worms infest
the corn, the reptile clan of the Omahas catch some of them
and pound them up with some grains of corn which have
been heated. They make a soup of the mixture, and
believe that the corn will not be infested again, at least for
that year. During a fog the men of the Turtle clan of the
Omahas used to draw the figure of a turtle on the ground
with its face to the south. On the head, tail, middle of the
back, and on each leg were placed small pieces of a red
breech cloth with some tobacco. This was thought to make
the fog disappear. Another Omaha clan, the Wind people,
flapped their blankets to start a breeze, which will " drive
away the mosquitoes/' (Totemism, p. 24.) In all these
instances the power of associative goodness is appealed to
through charms and spells.
We have ample evidence that the American totems repre-
sent ancestral forms, and we will again refer to the great
mass of evidence that Mr. Frazer has so industriously
collected.' " The Turtle clan of the Iroquois are descended
from a fat turtle, which gradually developed into a man.
The Bear and Wolf clans of the Iroquois are descended
from bears and wolves respectively. The Crayfish clan of
the Choctaws were originally cray-fish. The Carp clan of
the Ontaonaks are descended from the eggs of a carp
warmed by the sun. The Ojibways are descended from
a dog. The Crane clan of the Ojibways are descended
from a pair of cranes transformed into a man and woman.
The Buffalo clan of the Omahas were originally buffaloes.
The Osages are descended from a male snail and a female
beaver ; to do so, the snail burst its shell, developed arms,
feet and legs, and became a man, and the beaver became a
maid, then he married her. The Iroquois, in their respec-
tive clans, are descended from the eagle, pigeon, wolf, bear,
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 215
elk, beaver, buffalo and snake. The Moquis say the great
Mother brought from the west the clans, deer, sand, water,
bears, hares, tobacco plants, and reed grass, and turned
them into men. The Californian Indians are descended
from the coyote. The Lenape clans were descended from
the wolf, turtle and turkey. The Kutchin say once on a
time all beasts formed only one class, birds another, and all
fish a third. So the Arawak tribes came from an animal,
a bird, a plant. Some aboriginal tribes in Pern came from
eagles, others from condors." (Totemism, p. 3, &c.)
In like manner other totem races Mr. Frazer shows had
like origins. The West Australians are descended from
ducks, swans, and other wild fowl. The Santals have a
wild goose clan. In Senegambia there are hippopotamus,
crocodile, scorpion, and so forth clans. The people in
Ellice Island, in the South Pacific, say they are derived
from the porcupine fish, the Kalangs of Java from a trans-
formed dog. The clans of the Indian Archipelago from
trees, pigs, eels, crocodiles, sharks, serpents, dogs, &c.
The snake Moquis say a woman gave birth to snakes.
With the Bakalai of West Africa a woman is said to have
brought forth severally a calf, crocodile, hippopotamus,
monkey, and wild pig. The Aino ancestor was suckled by
a bear.
Though most numerous, animal totems are by no means
the only ones. The old Aryan races deduced men from
the gods through demigods, human ancestors. In Australia
we read of the Thunder, Rain, Star, Hot-wind, and Sun
clans, also of Honey, Clear-water, Flood-water, and
Lightning clans. So in America there are the Ice,
Thunder, Earth, Water, Wind, Salt, Sun, Snow, Bone,
Sand, and Rain clans. In Africa Sun and Rain, in
India a Constellation and the Foam of a river, in Samoa
the Rainbow, Shooting-star, Cloud, Moon, and Lightning
tribes. More, we have clans denoted by colours as the
216 THE EVOLUTION OF ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
Bed, Blue, and Verrnillion and by the soul in manufactured
articles as a Net and Tent. (Totemism, p. 25.)
We discover the presence of one influence in all these
human evolutions of the supernal ; these and all the forms
of supernal manifestation we have before treated upon, and
all we shall have yet to unfold in multiple supernal aspira-
tions have but one object, one purpose. Man conscious of
his own powerlessness in the presence of the vast living and
material forces in the universe, seeks as in human brother-
hoods for a supernal protector. We have seen that he essayed
to find this soul of goodness in the mystic power of luck, then
he sought for it in spells'and charms, and when the medicine-
man was evolved he hoped to paralyze all evil influences by
the might of his mana; he then sought help from a like mana
power which he recognized in all personalities, the sun, the
thunder, the tiger, the snake, until through various succes-
sive stages he created the spiritual world. Then the horizon
out of which the good his soul craved for became infinite,
the ghost became a spirit, the spirit a god, and all we have
now to show is the mode by which this mana power of the
primary ghost has been step by step amplified to a Supreme
Deity. This was brought about by the necessity of
evolving the spirit power in accordance with human
evolution. In all cases and allwhere this spirit of good-
ness is the embodiment of the stage of moral goodness
in human nature, and the divine institutions and powers
recognised are only the reflection of the social and political
conditions among men. As it was in the long past so is it
in the living present, the soul still craves for that mana of
unchanging goodness that all faiths have failed to supply
to their most ardent votaries.
We cannot conclude the subject of totemism without
referring to the important social results that accrued from
the recognition of human kinship with animals. Of these
one of the most notable was that of the domestication of
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 217
the local totetn in various countries and by many distinct
tribes of men. The evidence we have is by no means
complete, nor do we as yet infer that every totem tribe
domesticated their kin animals, but, we have so many
illustrations of [that being the case, that we may rest
assured that the nature of the animal or local circumstances
would have been very detergent to prevent such a consum-
mation. Of course, owing to the special characteristics of
each species of animals, the advantages derived from
domestication would vary, the Negroes of Senegambia who
may for many ages have tamed the crocodile and kept
numbers of them in their sacred pools, and the Moquis in
Xew Mexico who also have tamed snakes by hundreds so
that they can wind them round their arms and necks
unscathed, have not, and could not, have made any profitable
use 'of their animal totems. Not so, however, when the
selected animal possessed qualities that gave it an intrinsic
value, as the cow, sheep, goat, mare, and other milk-
producers or those whose hair and wool, as the camel and
.sheep, could be applied to many domestic purposes.
We infer that the totem selection of protective animals
took place when man was a low-class hunter, and lived on
tho smaller game and vegetable productions of his native
woods and plains, then any animnl that lie could kill was
suitable for food; but when, by the growth of supernal ideas,
he conceived that he was akin to his totem, the tabu of
its flesh was instituted. If there were several animals in a:
district, each of which was selected by some of the scattered
denizens, it would follow that those of the same ilk would
! drawn into association, and, as the primary sentiment of
:itta< liincut in each group was the totem, general customs
mid rites affecting it would bo introduced. Of course, the
histories of these supernal associations are lost in tho lapso
<>f time, and tho barbarism of the savages who instituted
them, but wo have one living example of a totem race
\\lirre the totem custom seems to have been continuous
218 THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
from primitive times, and, in which it is said even traditions
of its origin appear to linger. The Toda race in the
Neilgherries since attention has been called to their peculiar
institutions have ever been considered an interesting and
unique subject of study. We, in their sacred relations
with their herds, arejcarried back to the time of the calf,
Apis sacrifice at Thebes; that of a bull at Athens; a cow in
Cyprus; and a bull-calf at Tenedos. Egyptian paintings
and Egyptian sculptures as well as Assyrian cuneiform
inscriptions illustrate that as now among the Todas so then
through Greece, Asia Minor, Chaldea, and Egypt, herds
of the special totem animals were kept in the temple
precincts.
The one effect of this religious custom was to make them
well acquainted with the points in their own totem animal ;
if they detected none serviceable of course no further
development through them could ensue. We can well
understand that observation of the milk-bearing herbivorous
totem animals would make them, unless restrained by some
tabu prejudice, desirous of utilizing it as an article of food,
and those most productive would be most esteemed; no
doubt human selection was then at work, yet it probably
took ages to evolve constant milk-giving herbivora. We
have to remember that in those times no totems were kept
simply as food-giving animals, as a rule the totem was
never eaten but as a sacrifice and at a religious feast, both
as a brother and as representing the totem.
The Todas have a tradition that formerly they lived
exclusively on the milk of the buffalo with such herbs,
roots, and fruits as the forest produced, though they now
use wheat, barley, and other grains. (Trans. Eth. Soc.
VII. p. 242.) Then, when little better than the lowest
savages now are, their totem habit had brought them in
direct relations with their totem animal, and its value as a
milk-giver converted the religious habit into a pastoral
institution. Now, as then, the buffalo is not kept for its
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 219
flesh, the dairy itself is the temple and the milkman its
priest. A glamour is thrown over all the early institutions
in classic lands, but once their priests were herdsmen, the
oxen, sheep, and goats were sacred, and their flesh only
eaten as a sacrificial rite. Even now among the Todas the
flesh of the buffalo is only eaten, as we have said, as a
sacrifice, the herd is always sacred, and when the house
chief dies all his herd are slaughtered, not eaten, but
burnt in the dairy temple pyre that their ghosts may ascend
to their totem kindred in the sky. That such totem
customs were once general in India, the national abstinence
from the flesh and reverence for cattle, implies. We see in
other places horses, asses, and goats specially honoured
and specially kept for their milk, the same was the primitive
custom with the llama and vicuna in Peru. In all cases
it appears the flesh was only eaten at the festival sacrifice,
it is even now a religious rite to slaughter animals for food,
with the .Jews their conservative spirit still retains the
custom, but in classic lands, and the east generally, the lamb's
flesh might bo presented to a guest, or the kid seethed at
even the domestic festa, until the flesh of all herbivora
became esteemed as common food.
Professor Robertson Smith traces from totem relations
with herbivorus animals the output of the social customs of
fosterage and adoption. He writes : " It would appear
that the notion of kinship with milk-giving animals
through fosterage has been one of the most powerful
agencies in breaking up the old totem religions, just as a
systematic practice of adoption between men was a potent
agency in breaking up the old exclusive system of clans."
(The lu-liyian of the Semites, p. 330.)
We may note that primarily the totem relationship
is more than is expressed by mere kinship, it is supernal,
the totem is part of the man's self, it embraces, as it were,
in one entity not only all of the same totem on earth,
human and animal, but all in heaven that came of the
220 THE EVOLUTION OF ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
same stock, man or beast. This is seen in the following,
when a Colombia Indian has injured himself, that is not
only a loss to him, it is a loss to his clan, and he has to pay
blood-money to the clan, this goes to the mother's clan,
but the father's clan claim tear money, friends, sorrow
money ; with them association or being contributory alike
requires compensation. If a man is thrown by a borrowed
horse or mule then all relations ask compensation, not from
the rider, but the lender of the mule. The liability may
extend to everything sold, exchanged, or lent. (Pro. Roy.
Geog. Soc. VII. p. 790.)
Under the primary matriarchal association in which man
and woman only cohabited temporarily, when the home
was only the occasional lair of the woman and her child,
the association dissolved as soon as the semi-brute became
self-dependent, and so, in the heterogenous home of the
human horde, when sex was common, and man never knew
a father, there could have been no concept of ancestors,
mothers might be recognized, but father was an unknown
cognomen. So, in the mixed associations that afterwards
intervened, and irregular groups associated under every
possible marital arrangement, the definite common idea of
father was unknown. Under such suppositious conditions
every possible idea of animal or divine origin might well
have birth, and all the concepts after evolved of animal lore
and legends have origin.
Society must have been somewhat advanced when the
family group was evolved, and men and women recognized
that they had grandfathers and grandmothers, all beyond
them was lost in the unrealized memory of the past, and,
accepting the legends of transformation then common to
each group, they read in the unknown past a totem origin,
the descent from sun, moon, or stars, transformation from
trees or stones, or the output of humanity from holes in
the earth, the sea, or descent from the clouds. In the
family group, whatever its nature, if permanent from the
AND THE SENTIMENT OP SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 221
ghost concept the ancestral spirit was evolved, and to it,
whether sun or cloud, bird, beast, or man, the new power
of spiritual goodness was attached.
In principle there is no essential difference in the
supernal and human association affirmed in whatever
character the ancestral ghost is conceived. Ever it
represents mutual interest, mutual help, according to the
respective natures of the parties forming the compact ;
on the one side reverence, worship, offerings, and the
acknowledgment of dignity as chiefs, on the other, help
in difficulties and dangers, material and supernal, and help
in the hunt and against enemies, in all respects they
became partizans, looked for good for themselves and
cared not for anything beyond.
This aspiration for union with the supernal must have
began in the mind through the birth of new desires, the
craving for a good man failed to find in the life of nature.
How the primary search for happiness began we may
never know, but the autobiographies of many men and
women even now prove that the desire, the struggle, the
hope of supernal protection is still an unsatisfied aspiration
of the human soul. Faiths innumerable have endeavoured
to supply this want, but the many struggling consciences,
the secessions, the grasping at faiths, as drowning men
catch straws, intimate the never ending character of our
aspirations and the vanity of the supernal illusions.
Generation succeeds generation and race follows race, yet,
the mists and the shadows still build np illusions, still
delude the haman soul ; these may vary but their effects
are ever the same, the maya of delusion ever draws our
souls to the horizon of time, and still as ever unsatisfied wo
glide into eternity.
The Hidatsa Indian, the Australian abon'gine, go forth
into the world of nature, living and inorganic, and in the
solitude of the wilderness, the solitude of the night,
enduring the pangs of toil, hunger, and anxiety, present
222 THE EVOLUTION OF ANCESTRAL WOESHIP
their craving souls to the spiritual supernal influences they
recognize in the mystery of being. To them the tree, the-
stone, the mountain, the star, and the animal were not
such as we now hold them, but that each and all possessed
intelligences like their own, and that these powers and
presences might visit them in the visions of the day, or
command their souls in the nightly dream or that their
own souls could pass out in sleep and seek association with
other souls.
As it was in the ancient days, so is it now, like forms of
spirit association and spirit influences still retain their
prestige, and claim the reverence of like fears and like
superstitious rites. We may even follow the derivation of
races by these husks of old faith-forms, with a much
greater probability of success than in any laboured inter-
pretation of the affinities of words, the one code of records
is fragmentary and often evanescent, but the other has a
persistent vitality without break, often without change, for
thousands of years.
Thus it follows that in the highest civilizations however
lofty, and abstract may be the god conceptions of the most
intellectual minds, however great the attributes applied to
the god-power in common acceptance, practically each man
and woman by the tendency of their devotional acts testify
to the nature of the Supernal relations most in accordance
with their religious instincts. Some never advance above
fetish worship, they believe in the mystic power in the
amulet itself, in dog or crow, they feel the presence of a
self-contained supernal power, and, if from habit or
accustomed surroundings, in theory they acknowledge a
presiding deity, their souls ever cling to the concrete
spiritual goodness in fetish forms and fetish words.
During the primary evolution of the family when so
many spiritual natures were being conceived, it was possible
that the soul help, at first restricted to the medicine-man,
might be attached to any object the man supposed possessed
AND THE SENTIMENT OP SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 223
mana, and, therefore, capable of supporting or protecting
him; hence the diverse nature of the mana existences, the
fetish of one man might be an animal, of another a tree, of
a third a star or rock. At first we infer their spirit natures
only, supplied the place they held in the charm, and they
were worked as by the Australian aborigines, by the power
of spells, but the co-ordinate evolution of the family and
the ghosts led to the attachment of the individual concept
of supernal goodness to ancestors, and the consequent
sentiment of animal, sun, tree or star descent. The one
sentiment would naturally become prominent in the con-
tinuous presence of the father, the sense of their dependence
on the strength of his arm, and on the food he supplied.
While the goodness of the mother early ceased to influence
the child, and soon passed out of its memory, that of the
father, manifest at a more developed period, become con-
tinuous, and blended with, and become associated with, the
tribal protection. Under such conditions the family and
even tribal totems became continuous, but in addition every
individual had his own totem, even as previously he had his
own amulet. Usually the influence of the individual totem
ceased with the life of the individual, but the family totem
and when present tho tribal totems were continuous, the
son accepting it from his father or mother and carrying
it on from generation to generation.
In the usual course of savage life ancestral memory is
nly continuous for a few generations, at every step the
memory of tho progenitors become more and more
atrophied until it ceases altogether. It is then myth comes
in to supply tho place of memory, and, as the only con-
tinuous idea is that of the family or tribal totem, and the
universal power of transformation recognised by undeveloped
man, the primary ancestor was evolved from the totem
spirit, be it the sun, animal, bird, or rock,
At tho same time that tho family totem was being
evolved in one wigwam, other totem spirits were in like
224 THE EVOLUTION OF ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
manner being evolved among other groups, whether friends
or enemies, and myth in these instances stepped in to evolve
the status of the generally acknowledged ghosts as in the
family. Legends were evolved for tribal associations, and,
differences, and other legends, converted the spirits of their
dead enemies into evil and malignant beings. Out of these
and the malignant powers in nature came the great force of
evil spirits, but, usually in early society the most baneful
were the ghosts of their own tribe, men, women, and
children, by some fatal chance converted into enemies.
As illustrating the dependence for supernal goodness on
ancestors we quote the following : Macdonald in his
Africana writes : " The spirit of every deceased man and
woman becomes an object of religious homage. The gods
of the natives are nearly as numerous as their dead, they
cannot worship all, each turns to his immediate ancestors.
Thus, the village chief will not trouble himself about his
great-grandfather, he will present his offerings to his own
immediate predecessor and say, ' father I do not know
all your relations, you know them all, invite them to the
feast with you.' In giving an offering the man regards
himself as giving a present to a little village of the
departed which is headed by its chief ." (I. p. 68.) Of the
Sumatrans Marsden says, "They made Anitos of their
deceased ancestors, to which they made their first invoca-
tions in all difficulties and dangers. They still continue the
custom of asking permission of their dead ancestors when
they enter any wood, mountain, or cornfield for hunting or
sowing." (Sumatra, p. 256.)
Mr. Howitt writes that the Kurnai and other tribes of the
Australian aborigines believed that the spirit of the
deceased father or grandfather visited the male descendant
in dreams, and imparted to him charms against disease or
witchcraft. They also had men who professed to com-
municate with the spirits of the dead. (Kamilaroi, p. 278.)
In this case we have the preliminary concept of the dead
AND THE SENTIMENT OP SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 225
ancestor as supplying the place of the medicine-man, and it
was nearly the same among the Melanesians. Codrington
writes of prayers being addressed to the recently dead, but
to call this worship of ancestors is hardly correct, it may be
doubted whether any dead person is appealed to by one
who has not known him alive. More, they are not in-
voked simply as benevolent spirits. The help asked is very
often to do mischief. Of course we could expect no other in
this early state of ghost development; it is not endowed
with any moral principle only, like the inquirer, a mere
tribal partisan.
The totem worship and the worship of ancestors began
with the first offering of foftd and drink to the dead, and
the association of the first beast, bird, or insect seen at, or
on the grave, may be attracted by the exposed food with
the spirit of the departed. We know that the doctrine of
transformation must have long preceded that of spirit; it
was probably evolved in the era of spells, and certainly
fully developed in the era of the medicine-man, nor is it yet
still extinct in the souls of human beings, as witness the
white bird spirit assumed to have been seen by Lord
Lyttelton.
The spiritual association thus induced by the incidental
or occasional offering of food by a more than sympathetic
tribesman grew to be a general custom and at last a
religious rite. Of course it could not have been conceived
without the theory that the dead man had become a living
ghost, and in his new life needed the same sustenance that
ho had found necessary in this life. The dead, as the
Chinooks affirm, go out at night to search for food. What
more pious service could his children, or those of his own
household perform, than supplying this need? All human
institutions grow, so the supplying the ghost with food
ended in supplying it with clothes, arms, wives, animals
and attendant ghosts, all that it had been used to when
living. These were so universally buried or burnt with the
15
226 THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
dead body, that we may well spare the reader any illustra-
tive details.
Naturally, reciprocal benefits were expected in return,
and these were severally expressed in the divine help that
was accorded to the worshipper by the totem or other
ancestral spirit. We may even note, as Spencer shows,
that the term for god is, as with the Tanna, only that of
"dead man." That food was, and is, supplied to the
dead, we have almost universal evidence. We read of it
in Egyptian annals, it comes present before us in Lycian
tombs, on Spartan steles and Etruscan monuments. Not
an European race, whatever its origin, but has some sur-
vival form of the offering of food for souls; and the All
Souls' feast to the Dead is presented from the shores of
the Mediterranean to the coast of the Yellow Sea. We
only need peruse the works of any traveller among savage
or barbaric hordes to be equally sure it prevails generally
among the lower races of men.
That which had its origin in personal sympathy grew
into a habit, and from a habit into a law expanding at
every stage until with the advance in the spiritual nature
of the ghost it became converted into a sacrificial rite, and
the honours to the dead became ancestral worship. This
in various forms is manifested by the native tribes in
both the old world and the new; with many it is to the
immediate ancestors, with others it is restricted to the
higher ghost spirits of chiefs, heroes, and medicine-men.
Generally, the sacrifices in this stage of evolution are to
the family spirits, or may be to the village or clan chief's
ghost. In all cases, however exalted may be the after
gods evolved, the penates and household divinities are
educed from the family association continuing as a supernal
compact with the ghosts of its dead members.
Ancestral goodness was primarily represented by the
goodness men presumed they received from their dead
warriors, medicine-men, or successful leaders. Long before
AND THE SENTIMENT OP SUPEBNAL GOODNESS. 227
the ancestor spirit was recognized the groupal hero was
known, and the tie of blood brotherhood brought into
affinity the souls, whether living or dead, of those who, by
some spell rite, had been made spirit brothers. Hence in
various ways, and through diverse classes of ghosts, tribal
supernal goodness was established, and this, when' special
marriage rights were instituted, and the family relations of
the sexes defined, evolved into the worship of ancestral
ghosts and family penates.
As among the Australian aborigines so with most races
of men in the olden times, and now there are legends of
men being taken up into the sky, and becoming the sun,
moon, or stars, or a mountain or river. These natural
personifications or transformations give origin to hero pro-
tective spirits, and, ultimately, ancestral protective spirits ;
all is a process of growth or elimitation, and, according to
the differentiation of the social institutions, are the forms in
which it is presented.
The supernal relations thus induced are well affirmed
by Ralston in his Songs of the Russian people. There
can be no doubt about the belief of the old Slavonians that
the souls of fathers watched over their children and
their children's children, and that, therefore, departed
spirits, and especially those of ancestors, ought always
to be regarded with pious veneration and sometimes be
solaced or conciliated with prayer and sacrifice. The
cult us of the dead was connected with the fire on the
domestic hearth. This accounts for the stove of modern
Russia having been considered the special haunt of the
Domovoy or houso spirit, whoso position in the esteem of
tho people is looked upon as a trace of the ancestor wor-
ship of olden days" (p. 119). " In some districts tradi-
tion expressly refers to tho spirits of tho dead, tho functions
attributed now to the Domovoy, and they -n -npposed to
1).- careful in keeping watch over tho houso <f a descendant
who honours them and provides them with duo offerings.
15 *
228 THE EVOLUTION OF ANCESTRAL WORSHIP
So the non-Slavonic Mordoins, dead men's relations, offer
the corpse eggs, butter, and money, saying ' Here is some-
thing for you : Marfa has brought you this; watch over her
corn and cattle, and when I gather the harvest do thou feed
the chickens and look after the house/ " (Ibid. p. 121.)
In the earliest phase of ancestor worship the ghost of
the father lives in the memory of his immediate 'descend-
ants, and he becomes a house spirit to them or he reposes in
the family tomb and his own immediate wants are supplied
by his living kin who retain kindly remembrances of his
social virtues ; but when, after many generations of these
kindred associations, the early ancestor may be associated
with some mystic animal, itself becomes a myth, then by
slow stages the gift of food becomes converted into the
general sacrifice to ancestors, and the local animal, or the
animal symbol of the family, is the object sacrificed ; it may
begin in a convenient custom, become a habit, and end in
a permanent religious rite.
It is notable that ever in totem groups it is the sacred
totem animal that is sacrificed at the totem festa. Thus,
as Frazer shows with the Zunis in their respective clans,
it was the divine buzzard or turtle, with the Negroes of
Issapoo the sacred cobra, that, as they say, the children
may be initiated and introduced to their totem. For the
same purpose the Ainos and Gilyaks sacrifice the bear;
there is the sacrifice of <the lamb at Uganda, and by the
Semitic Arabs, with the Todas that of a calf, the Bhils
and other tribes, of a goat. Sometimes the custom degene-
rates into a symbolic sacrifice as in the dough image of
the Mexican god, and other cake and bread eating as
symbolic of the totem eating.
We must not infer that when the remote ancestor became
a totem and an object of sacrifice that the earlier worship
of the immediate ancestor ceased; far from it, the two
forms of association were continuous and food was put in
the tomb by the old Etruscans, by all the Aryan races ; at
AND THE SENTIMENT OF SUPERNAL GOODNESS. 229
the same time as the devoted animal was offered at the
family or communal altar. The offering of first-fruits of
anything choice at the feast, the pouring out of libations, is
general, as we have shown, not to the long past mythical
dead, but to the ancestors whose family protective acts are
held in grateful remembrance. It is so at Tanna now, it
was so in Polynesia, with the Zulus and many other
African races ; whether the totem progenitor was the sun,
a lion, or snake, ever with its worship we observe the more
humble family gifts of food for the dead, even to the living
mother dropping the milk from her breast on the grave of
her dead child.
Another result from the establishment of ancestral
worship was the special development of guardian angels
having special charge of their individual descendants. This
has been a general concept through the whole of the Aryan
world. Classic history is surcharged with incidents concern-
ing guardian spirits ; the introduction of Christianity con-
verted them to angels, but they still influence the supernal
concepts of many millions in India as the souls of the dead
kin looking after individual living descendants. Every
Karen still has his " guardian spirit" walking by his side,
whom he has to appease by unceasing offerings to preserve
bis life and health. These La come into the world with the
individual man and remain with him unto death. (Asi. Soc.
tteiig. Jour. XXIV. p. 297.) We read of these guardian
deities at New Caledonia and Tanna, at Tonga and New
X. aland, among the Malays and Malagassy, the Zulus and
various Negro tribes, in all classic writings, and from
Ceylon through China to Japan.
Another circumstance that marks the social nature of
the family and totem association both in this life and in
the ghost state are the incidents which mark the personal
introduction of each individual and rank him as either kin
or friend. At every burial the spirit of the newly deceased
among the Malagassy is introduced to his long departed
230 THE EVOLUTION OP ANCESTRAL WORSHIP.
relatives by name, and they are entreated to respect him as
a friend. (Ellis, Mad. I. p. 237.) Frazer in the Golden
Bough shows that in many cases it was even necessary
to introduce even a visitor to the house spirits before
according hospitality to him. Thus, at Laos, before a
stranger is admitted the master of the house has to offer a
sacrifice to the ancestral spirits or they would take offence
and send disease among the inmates (I. p. 151). So visitors
must in some cases obtain passive protection of the house
guardians by something symbolic of the family being offered
to him, and thereby linking him in communion with the
home spirit. Among the Malays this introduction may be
through the ornament taken from a child's hair being held
by him for a time, or, like Captain Moresby, they may be
inducted to the tribe by the waving of palm leaves over
the head by the medicine-man, or by a green twig being
put in the mouth; by these charm means the evil spirits of
enemies are kept out and the good know whom they may
trust. Uodge describes how the North American medicine-
men in like manner keep away the evil spirits of their
enemies when strangers visit them. According to Crevaux
a stinging ant served as the medium of introducing him
and his party to their ancestral spirits. With the Eskimo
the strange visitor becomes a friend by receiving and
giving a blow and then embracing. Ever ceremonies of
introduction are needed to make a man free of the house-
hold. So in returning after absence or a long journey a
man wants purifying to clear him from the spirits of
enemies which may linger on him. (Golden Sough, p. 152,
&c.) We might also refer to blood brotherhoods and the
totem habit of exchanging names as other supernal modes
of totem alliances.
CHAPTER VII.
The Evolution of Human Ghosts and Nature Powers into
Tutelar Deities.
THE myths of the institution of human culture by a pre-
historic divine presentation have long delayed the inquiry
into the home evidence of the growth of local ideas on the
original relations of the fathers of the tribes with the spirit
powers their crude supernaturalisms had evolved. Every-
where men sought for a supreme God, and as to each man
and each tribe the one it reverenced was the Great One
they saw in individual fetishes and local tutelar spirit
powers the signs and semblances of the Great Unknown.
Men whoso cultural capacities had never passed beyond
the conception of a present and immediate force, a mere
local impulse, were supposed capable of comprehending an
abstract entity whose manifestations were concurrent in
every place, implying those lofty conceptions of deity
which are only the result of the highest culture in modern
times and were wholly unknown even to the fathers of the
Vedic hymns, the old Egyptian priests, and only vaguely
idealized by the loftiest thought powers of Greece and
Rome.
Another class of poetic dreamers read the myths of spirit
and God powers not as'evolutions from the conrivtr aspects
of nature but as the figurative idealisms of devotees and
bardhic rhymesters when social culture admitted of class
leisure and the amenities of a pastoral or simple agri-
cultural life, and thus spread the sentiments present in
232 THE EVOLUTION OP HUMAN GHOSTS AND
human manners over the physical attributes of nature.
These god-tales and spirit adventures, these solar and
lunar myths, varied by animal legends and quaint stories
supplied the place afterwards filled by the mystic histories
and romances of later times and the novels of the present
age. More, the ideal exponents of sky symbols and visionary
changes beheld the whole supernatural world through the
charm transcendental spectacles the same as the modern
spiritualist.
It is symptomatic of the changed direction of human
thoughts and the more careful investigations of modern
times that men unhesitatingly now deduce all arts and
social appliances and all the known expositions of nature
and thought from the happy primary concepts of original
thinkers, and the same doctrine is now being applied to all
human concepts of a spiritual world.
Among those who have expounded the natural evolutions
of supernal ideas we quote the following : Mr. Lang, in
Customs and Myths, says the experience of the savage
is limited to the narrow world of his tribe, and of the
beasts, birds, and fishes of his district. His philosophy,
therefore, accounts for all phenomena on the supposition
that the laws of the animate nature, he observes, are
working everywhere. But his observations, misguided by
his crude magical superstitions, have led him to believe in a
state of equality and kinship between men and animals and
even organic things. He often worships the very beasts
he slays; he addresses them as if they understood him; he
believes himself to be descended from the animals and of
their kindred. These confused ideas he applies to the
stars and recognizes in them men like himself or beasts like
those which he conceives himself to be in such close human
relations. There is scarcely a bird or beast but the Red
Indian or the Australian will explain its peculiarities by a
myth. It was once a man or a woman and has been
changed to bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men,
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 233
again, have originally been beasts in his philosophy, and
are descended from wolves, frogs, serpents or monkeys.
The heavenly bodies are traced to precisely the same
origin, and hence, we conclude, come their strange animal
names and the strange myths about them " (p. 138).
In searching for the origin of one of the higher forms
of faith, Mr. Rhys Davids comes to the same natural
evolution of supernal ideas. In his Lectures on the
Growth of Religion, he writes : " The beliefs of the
remote ancestors of the Buddhists may be summed up as
having resulted from that curious attitude of mind which
is now designated by the word ' Animism/ They had
come to believe, most probably through the influence of
dreams, in the existence of souls, or ghosts, or spirits
inside their own bodies, and they had not yet learned to
discriminate in this respect between themselves and the
other animals and objects around them which seemed to
be possessed of power and movement. The Vedas, though
they are our earliest records, show us only a very advanced
stage in the beliefs resulting from this simple faith, so
widely diffused among all races and ages of mankind.
The more powerful ghosts, supposed to dwell in various
external things, have already become in the Vedas objects
of greater fear than the rest; they are endowed with higher
attributes, are surrounded by deeper mystery, and have
been promoted to be kings as it were among the gods.
These were chiefly the spirits supposed to animate the sky
and the heavenly bodies, and the promotion of the spirits
had so dimned the comparative glory of the rest, that
the animism had become in the Vedas what wo call
Polytheism.
"But the newer stage of belief was no contradiction of
the older it was simply a further advance on the same
lines, and resting on the same foundations. The lesser
spirits, or at least most of them, survived as Naiads and
Dryads, spirits of the trees and the streams, demons,
234 THE EVOLUTION OP HUMAN GHOSTS AND
goblins, ogres, spirit messengers and fairies, good or "bad ;
and the old belief in magic, in sorcery, and in charms of
various kinds " (p. 14) .
The theory that Professor Max Miiller so fondly de-
veloped, of a pristine religion in which the bright powers
of morning and spring are opposed to all the dark powers
of the night and the winter, and out of which the conflicts
of good and evil were evolved, represent a form of gene-
ralization not pregnant in the soul of the rude savage. He
could not aggregate and compare a long series of diverse
ideas, and from them idealize an abstract conception, much
less evolve a graceful and poetic series of similitudes,
harmonizing and accounting for the seeming antagonisms
in nature. True to the primitive ideas resulting from his
individual relations with other individual men and the
individual forms about him animal, river, stone, sun and
storm, each was, like himself, a personal power he never
conceived of them as genera and races, but ever spoke of
them in their individual capacities. It is a well-known law
in the development of languages that the lower the race
the less use is made of abstract or even adjective terms, so
that where we meet with two or more terms from one root,
yet distinct in their expressive application, we may rest
assured that the form which implies a substantive existence
is the oldest and the parent of its after modification into
an attributive or abstract character.
Primarily men recognized their own individuality and
the individuality of all objects, and when they conceived
of ghost and spirit powers they were equally individual in
their attributes. All were isolated supernal forces, differ-
ing only in their natures, even as men and women differ.
But there came a time when the crude balance of these
heterogeneous forces was no longer to be retained; men
themselves could not always continue to act as individuals,
only they combined in temporary unions, they associated
as groups, they aggregated as families. So the animal and
NATURK POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 235
concrete natural affinities, which had been only manifested
in isolated acts, became associated in both individual and
tribal affinities between the souls of men and the spirit
forces they had conceived in the animal and physical
worlds. Then individual terms alone did not suffice to
express the altered character of Kosmic relations : generic
and distinguishing terms thus evolved a new philological
phase.
We can only conceive of the soul of humanity being
awakened into this new life by the outpouring of new
thoughts in the mind of an individual man. He desired
then a more entire intercommunion with his fellow-man.
He purposed to evolve new relations with the living or-
ganisms and the concrete nature about him, and this could
only take place through the medium of the ghost forms
he affirmed as common to all existences, and it could only
become a permanent institution by the souls of his fellows
having advanced to the capacity to entertain those relations
when he presented them for their approval. How many
such may have failed before any accepted scheme of human
and supernal relations became the characteristic of a social
group we may never know; untimely enthusiasts pass
away and leave no record, but the expression of a felt
want becomes an eternal word. So at last it came to pass
that men sought relations of a more intimate nature, not
only with their fellows, but with all the world-forces of
which they were cognisant.
In tracing this affinity of man with the supernal beings
human thought had evolved, we have to remember that the
undiscriminating mind of the rude savage saw not a tree, a
stone, a mountain, or star, or animal such as wo now con-
ceive it, but that each and all possessed like intelligences as
himself, that they had spirit forces like his own soul, which,
like his own soul in dreams, could wander forth. So there
were not only spirits in all objects, but that allwhere on
the land, in the water, among trees and hills, in clouds
236 THE EVOLUTION OP HUMAN GHOSTS AND
and throughout the air disembodied spirits moved and had
their being.
Man ever, as we have shown, yearning for supernal pro-
tection when he had learnt how he might come into affinity
with these many spirit-powers as he now had with his
fellows in brotherhoods, would cultivate the means of so
doing. Accordingly, we find allwhere this alliance of
human thought and spirit-power, and ever the various
germs of nations and races severally selected their own
classes of co-ordinate spirit influences, out of which they
subsequently evolved their local god-forms. These from
the beginning have been continuous, there is no crushing
out these primary concepts of spirit-powers any more than
it has been possible to cast off the concepts of charms and
spells ; like them they have, as it were, become part of the
nature of every human being once initiated into their
mysteries. They survive all the after evolved higher forms
of faith, and hold their place under every doctrine that has
usurped position in the world. In the local phases of every
Buddhist, every Moslem, every Christian belief, we find a
substratum of supernal ideas that carry us back to the
primary supernal instincts of the human soul. The old
lower pagan belief everywhere in classic lands underlies
the faith in Christ and the Madonna. So the might of the
midnight spectres reigns in the north. Even in the New
World, among the descendants of the Quichuas and Aztecs,
the old low spirit-powers still carry on the very old rites.
There is not a Polynesian isle blessed with the Christian
faith but preserves intact not the great gods of its chiefs
or its partially supreme after developments, but the primary
spirit forces its fathers endowed with vitality and brought
into unison with their own souls.
So it is in China, in Burmah, in Japan, among all the
distinct races, who, in their many millions, acknowledge
Buddha. The fetish still lives, and the Obi mysteries are
still rehearsed, though the black devotee raises his hands
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 237
in pious acknowledgment of the blessings lie receives
from Allah, or worships with the white man in the
Methodist communion. The same cry comes from the
missionary to the Zulu, from the remote shores of
Patagonia, from the humble teachers of the Eskimo in
Greenland or Labrador; even the attentive and pious
Australian aborigine maiden, scarce from her birth out
of the higher influence, flies from the greater civilization to
revel in the bora associations.
As it was in the ancient days so is it now ; like forms of
spirit influences still retain their prestige, the gods of the
vulgar never die, they still claim the reverence of like
fears, and like superstitious rites, as when they were the
only known local supernal powers. We may even follow
the derivation of races by these husks of old faiths with a
much greater probability of success than in any laboured
interpretation of the affinities of words.
As the associations of men became enlarged, and many
definite institutions were evolved, the inter-relations of
men became more extended and of a higher grade. Dis-
tinctions of rank and position created varied ideas of
worth, systems of personal relationship were introduced,
and custom defined the nature of law and the range of
rights. It could not be expected that these important
changes would take place among any community without
evolving corresponding reactions on the nature, relations,
and influences of the supernal powers. We have seen that,
at first, there were only men ghosts, spiteful and malicious,
individual in their actions, in fact the primary spirit world
was a mere chaos of ghostly individualities. As the wig-
wams became households, and a feeble exhibition of power
was maintained by the elders of the small group, the head-
man, or those who utilized the primary crude supernal
ideas, gradually evolved a class of more powerful ghost-
powers, the spirits of the heroes, medicine-men, and fathers
of the small community. As a necessary consequence of
238 THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN GHOSTS AND
these enlarged supernal ideas, sundry of the ghost spirits
entered into their system of myths, they from living men
became associated by tradition with the great phenomena
of the heavens, that men, heretofore, had only looked at
with wonder and dread. The early association of men with
the nature powers were grossly anthropological, they only
differed from their own savage fellows in the possession of
some few supernal attributes, and these were often ascribed
to their living medicine-men.
When men grew into clans, and from clans developed
into tribes ; when by the cessation of indiscriminate con-
verse with the women the family was evolved, and following
that patriarchal rights and property qualifications ; when,
therewith, Dependence was systematized, and not only
slave labour created, but the power of headmen and chiefs
extended ; and when, on seeking the presence of the leaders,
it became customary to present them with gifts ; then, at
the same time, the old relations of men with the supernal
powers were marked with the same characteristics. Then
sacrifices took the place of food offerings; and as there
were ruling chiefs, war leaders, and powerful necromancers
among men, so were there among the spirit-powers. In
supernal relations the family group was represented by the
ancestral family spirits, and men then took no note of the
possible, but accepted a fanciful attribute or supposed
influence as sufficient to account for any change. Thus
fetish powers, essentially personal and individual, became
in many cases associated with animal forms and other defi-
nite objects in the natural world, and from being the
accepted medicine of individuals they became the totems
of families, so that the sentiment expressed through the
fetish was in time transferred to all progenitors, and the
service offered and accepted from the family emblem
became the attribute of the group.
A large class of the spirit forces evolved in this dis-
criminating age are not only the family representative
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES.
dead ; there are the great spirit powers of heroes, of medi-
cine-men, of anyone who might become notable, not only
in the tribe, but whose worth had reached neighbouring
tribes, and with these were associated the great natural
forces in their spiritual aspects. Often the embodied
ghost-powers of a lower state were endowed with higher
attributes by the enlarged concepts of their descendants,
as the sun-god of the Peruvians, the heaven-god of the
Chinese, and several of the old Hindoo nature-gods, many
of which can be traced to a condition that implied no
higher attributes than men ascribed to their medicine-
priests.
With the differentiation of the power or influence of the
elders in governing the camp and restraining the relations,
food, and habits of the more youthful members the
conception of the nature of the spirit and ghost forces
were correspondingly modified. Like the actions of the
elders, so the ghost forces became aggressive ; they coerced
individuals, by force they entered men's bodies, torturing
and destroying them, and were only to be restrained by
submission and gifts, the universal modes of deprecation
to superior powers. Naturally the most vigorous of the
spirit forces in each class, either as representing strength,
immensity or subtlety, became the leading manifestations.
Thus the crocodile, the serpent, the lion, tiger, and bear
became the most prominent objects of supplication in the
animal world, and the sun, moon, thunder, and fire in the
world of the physical forces. Usually these great natural
powers became more immediately related to the tribe or
the chiefs, and the humbler members of the community
found their fetish or totem protective supernal powers in
birds and the lower animal and physical manifestations.
The more notable of these spirit forces, like the head-
man in the clan or tribe, becomes the chief, and ultimately
the tutelar deity of the tribe or locality ; but as the chief
spirits are generally the supernal property of associated
240 THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN GHOSTS AND
tribes, one spirit will be selected as tutelar guardian by
one group and another spirit by a neighbouring group. In
some cases the tendency was to select the clan or tribal
protecting totem or tutelar spirit from the great persona-
tions of the sun, the blue expanse of heaven, the" storm
cloud, the hoary mountain ; others again were content to
appeal to the gentler influences about them the tree or
waterfall, the river rolling on in its course, or the ever-
living sea bringing supplies of food to their shores. These
were all self-personal powers, the animal exhibiting animal
combined with human instincts, the physical manifesting
human attributes may be in some cases only animal powers.
Of the diverse supernal powers that may be accredited
by low-class neighbouring powers we will refer to the
evidence on the subject given to a Select Committee of
the Legislative Council of Victoria in 1858. They, in a
formal manner, took the evidence of many witnesses, many
of whom said the natives had no religious ideas, some that
they only believed in a spirit that thundered ; one spoke
of a good and evil spirit, another of evil spirits and the
offerings made to them; others recorded their beliefs in
water spirits and land spirits; some affirmed the sun and moon
were held by them to be spirits, and that the stars were once
black fellows, who were for good acts taken up into the
sky. (Abor. Vic. I. p. 423.) As illustrating the nature of
the aborigines' concepts of the supernal powers in the sky
and on the earth, Smyth writes : " The progenitors of the
existing tribes, whether birds or beasts or men, were set in
the sky and made to shine as stars if the deeds they had
done were such as to deserve commendation. The eagle is
Mars, the crow is a star and smaller ones his wives ; the
moon before he was set in the sky was very wicked,
according to some it was the native cat. The spirit or
power in Venus is a sister of the sun spirit. Nearly all
animals they suppose anciently to have been men, who
transformed themselves into different animals and stones "
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 241
(Ibid. I. p. 431.) " Thilkuma and Whaigugan, two of the
gods, appear to have been the leaders of two tribes who
fought about their respective boundaries. Saturn was a
bird, the Southern Cross a sfrrub with an emu ; other stars
were cockatoos, lizards, green parrots, kangaroos, and
night cuckoos ; the Hyades was a man, others were owls
and iguanas." (Ibid. II. p. 274.)
As all the ideas that men express regarding supernal
beings and states can only be derived from external
objects, their own feelings, and the narratives of [their
fellows, they can ascribe to them no other attributes than
those presented thus to their minds. It is impossible for
an Australian who never heard of or saw any other
structures but rude bark wigwams to conceive of palaces in
the clouds, or idealize a ghost-spirit other than a man or
animal form. He could not ascribe to these beings mental
conceptions or expressions more elevated than he heard
expressed by his mates and before society had established
practical realizations of the voluntary submission of men to
the authority of leaders and headmen ; he could have no
conception of divine government, nor until custom had
evolved law could it be possible for him to conceive of
moral obligation and social order. As the elements of
government differentiated among the tribes, so would the
conception of supernal government be evolved and the
morals of the spiritual groups would be in accord with
those of human groups. As far as supernal attributes were
concerned, his highest conception thereof would be simili-
tudes of the physical forces of their best warriors, and the
powers exercised or claimed by those select men of the
tribe who were set apart as medicine-men. The transcen-
dental assumptions, they affirmed, were only delusive
presentations or the adscription of the faculty in one
animal or object to something of a different nature, as
when their priests claimed the power of ascending into the
sky from observing the flight of birds.
We may fully realize the origin of an Australian aborigine's
16
242 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND .
supernal concepts in the narrative of the wizard who got
through the sky vault, and there saw the so-called god
Baiame as a great old black man with a long beard, sitting
with his legs under him in his camp, certainly a bark hut
like those of his fellows. On his shoulders extended two
great quartz crystals, the wizard's only idea of untold
wealth and power ; and about him were a number of his
boys and his people, their pet birds and beasts. (Anth. Inst.
Jour. XVI. p. 51.) This was the highest conception the
wizard could form of his god and ministering spirits. It
is nothing more than a native camp, its master lounging
idly at the entry, no doubt his ginn behind preparing his
food, while the young blacks sport about the clearing, or
amuse themselves with the dingoes, tame jays, crows, and
opossums this embodiment of exalted savagedom by their
aid has been enabled to associate with his household. If
he goes forth like the wizard, he may fly down to the
earth to attain any purpose, and like him may assume
the form of bird or beast, and he uses the same crystal
and fetish charms to attain his object as the medicine-
man.
The fact is, these so-called gods are but the ghosts of
men or animals in constitution ; none of them are advanced
to that state of animism in which the material ghost-nature
passes into that of the spiritual ; they but represent the
full development of the dream-image as controlled by the
will of the medicine-man. Many of them, like the wizards
of alien tribes, are evil ghosts, such as Neulam Kurrk, the
malignant spirit of Fiery Creek, who, in the form of an
old woman, steals children and eats them. Colbumatum
Kurrk comes in storms and kills people by throwing great
limbs of trees upon them. A demon, Winniung, resides in
winter time on a hill in the Darling range, but in summer
he dwells on the other side of the river, because he cannot
cross it when flooded. (Abor. Viet. II. p. 268.) Wangun
dwells in a large brown snake. The Sun Koen is an old
woman, because the women collect and carry the fire sticks.
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 24->
She traverses across the sky all day, carrying her fire-
stick, and at night goes down under the earth to gather
fresh fire-sticks for the next day. (Ibid. I. p. 424 ; and
Bonwick, Ta.smania.ns, p. 192.) Another of the sky-ghosts
is Os rnndoo, a big black fellow in the sky, whose two
wives were always quarrelling, so he drowned them in the
two lakes, Alexandrina and Albert. (Angas, Anstral. I.
p. 97.)
All nations have passed through the same primitive
supernal stages, and all have the prototypes of these
Australian god-powers. In our own legendary myths they
laid in wait for children, they killed wanderers, they acted
against men and women in various supernal ways; they
could pass over the land in their seven-leagued boots, they
could ascend to the upper sky by beanstalks, and by
trickery and horseplay they circumvent the giants, or in
animal shapes outwit the lubberly human-like monsters.
Not even with the Australians were the spirit powers all
evil. The totem system that prevails among them intimate
their aspirations for the same good influences of a supernal
nature that all men appeal to. The so-called native bear
of Australia, like the true bears from the Lapps to the
Ainos, and from the last to the North American Indians,
is an object of fetish reverence. It is " the sage counsellor
of the aborigines, and the men in expeditions seek help
from it ; it is revered, if not held sacred, and has an
influence over tho water supply." (Abor. Vic. I. p. 446.)
To account for tho human semblances that give a weird
character to many animals, tho natives say they were once
men ; bnt in the totem relation tho animal through its own
ghost comes into affinity with the tribe or clan. Of this
mutual relation Sir George Grey says: "A certain mysterious
.connection exists between tho family and its kobong, so
that a member of a family will never kill an animal of tho
species to which his kobong belongs." When a native
was asked how his kobong would protect him, he said:
16
244 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
" Were I going along and saw an old man-kangaroo
hopping straight towards me I should know he was giving
me notice of enemies about." In this case the kangaroo
was the man's kobong. (Jour. Anih. Inst. XVI. p. 45). We
may in this instance trace a connection between an omen
and the evolution of totemism.
The same crude similitude of spirit and human surround-
ings is expressed by the Andaman Islanders, as by the
Australian natives. With them Puluga lives in a large
stone house that is a rubble beehive, but such as they
sometimes make ; he has a large family, all but one girls; he
eats and drinks, passes much of his time in sleep ; he is the
source of animals, birds, and turtles, and when they anger
him he comes out of his house, growls, and hurls burning
faggots (lightning) at them ; during the rains he descends
to the earth to provide himself with certain kinds of food
like the natives. Like them, with opposing tribes he has
no authority over evil spirits. He is merely the repre-
sentative of a human tribe with the same rude impulses
as men ; in capacity he is no more elevated than their
own medicine-men, the Okopaids or dreamers. They
hold also that certain ancestor spirits vanished from the
earth in the forms of animals and fish. They have the
totem custom of abstaining from certain kinds of food,
either from the animal having manifested its power, or by
selection. (Anih. Inst. Jour. XII. p. 354.)
The believers in human ghost monsters only, and who
fail to form concepts of higher natures, are the lowest of
the low hunting tribes, those unfortunate beings who have
never aggregated into communities, but wander about the
lands they know so little how to use, and live indiscrimin-
ately on its wild produce, and the low animal life of the
locality which they have acquired skill to circumvent.
These are the small game, seed, and bulb eaters of Australia,
the Andaman Islanders, the Fuegians, and some small and
degraded or undeveloped inland groups as the Shoshones
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 245
of North America, the Kubus of Sumatra, and the lowest
of the scattered Bushmen tribes, and the wretched
fragments of small people dwelling here and there on the
waste lands of Africa, Asia, and the Indian isles; the
partial tendency of these to form small scattered groups
alone saving them from the lowest of all states of debase-
ment, that of solitary root-grubbers.
We have seen that among these lowly denizens of the
earth the search for goodness has passed beyond depen-
dence on fetish charms and dependence on the supernal
acquisitions of the medicine-man; they have evolved the
concept of ghosts, they have realized the presence of some
kinds of spirit natures in things, and they have in various
ways brought them in ghost and totem relations to express
forms of protection and other manifestations of supernal
goodness. But beyond those broken races of men we have
more defined groups associated in clan and tribal com-
munities, men whose main sources of subsistence are the
wild game of their districts, the fish that periodically
visit their shores and rivers, and in some cases a partial
rude cultivation of the soil. Most of these tribes of men
have formed more or less organized social groups. They
have learnt to acknowledge headmen and the patriarchal
ancestors of the groups. They have in some measure
exhibited submission to authority, and as they admit
distinctions of status in their tribesmen, so they recognize
distinct powers in the spirit and ghost conceptions of
supernals. Such are the higher class hunters in North and
South America, associated fishing clans as the Eskimo,
the Chinooks and the Innuits on the North American
Atlantic territories, rude tribes of low class herdsmen as the
Bechuanas and some of those scattered hillside tribes in
various parts of Asia and Africa, and who eke out the year's
subsistence by a rude system of cultivation. As these various
races differ much in their modes of life, the resulting concepts
they entertain of spirit natures consequently are most diverse.
246 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
The spiritual natures that these more developed races
took cognizance of, were the same physical and totem
ghosts we have described, but all their attributes were
considerably advanced and brought into parallel modes of
expression with their own human institutions. The idea of
sex is only as it were incidentally expressed by the lower
tribes in their ghostly spirits of evil, but now it is a
dominant sentiment, and what man now endows with spirit
or god-power, must either be male or female, and all their
developments must be the result of such unions. Thus it
happens that Sun and Moon became husband and wife,
though they may differ in their affirmation of which is
masculine, and their attributes are universally deduced from
the habits and modes of life of their creating worshippers.
With the Greek and Hindoo, the sun-god was a fiery
warrior driving his steeds through the sky; the Eskimo
sun-spirit is a young woman carrying, as is her wont, the
fiery moss for their lamps; the Australian sun-power is
a native ginn holding aloft her fire-stick as she lights the
way for the men in the great sky path. In like manner
among some of the South American tribes, the sun is
feminine ; it was also the inferior power among the Caribs,
Ahts, Hurons, and generally among the African tribes. The
Agachemen of California held that heaven and earth were
brother and sister; they had a numerous offspring, first
earth and sand, then rocks and stones, trees, grass ; these
were followed by animals ; at last Oniot, the great captain,
in some unknown way had children who became men.
(Bancroft, Pacif. States, TV. p. 162.) Out of like elements
the myths of the spirit races of all people were evolved.
One of the elements out of which a chieftain spirit may
be evolved, is the father of the family, but in most groups
of men this source of a presiding spirit is of a low type, and
the living father must have had more than home influence
for his prestige to continue beyond the next generation.
When the father of a family is a more notable character,
NATURE POWEBS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 247
his influence passes beyond the household, it encompasses
the clan or community, it extends to the limits of the tribe,
may be even continuing as a persistent expression of power
among other groups. When he dies the memories of his
deeds become more or less persistent, and his spirit is
correspondingly enhanced. This hero status may be
derived from the spirit of a ruling chief, a notable fetish
man, or a brave warrior ; it may be that of any man who
won position, influence, or power, and this does not cease
at death, for as long as the memory of their deeds remain,
their prestige is preserved, yet when this ceases, like all
other notables, their work is lost in the lethe of the
departed, and some more recent spirit hero succeeds to their
apotheosis.
Occasionally some more or less mythic hero becomes a
persistent groupal spirit, and this once accepted, he becomes
typified as the founder and father of the race, the spirit-
god, the tutelar genius of the tribe may be the being who
instructed them in the arts, gave them a faith, or blessed
them with their customary social rules and institutions.
Such were the Menes and Manco Capacs of the great races
of the earth, or the more modest spirit-powers of the hill-
tribes of India, as Mithn Bukia the ancestor god of the
Banjari, Madjhato of the Rewari, Alha and Wendul of the
Blundel, Rai Das of the Chamars, Lai Guru of the Bhangi,
and in modern times Nanak of the Sikhs. (Calcutta Review,
LXXVII. p. 379.)
The supposed gods of the Guiana Indians, Im Thurn
describes as really but the remembered dead of each tribe,
and where there is mention of one great spirit or god, it is
merely the chief traditional founder of the tribe. (Ind. Qui.
p. 3CG.) Among the rude aboriginal tribes of the Hima-
laya region, wo read of several mortals, whose history is
scarcely yet forgotten, being worshipped. Thus, Gogah,
a chief of the Chohan tribe, was killed when fighting
against the first Moslem invaders ; ho has his shrine and
248 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
his seer, and is worshipped with the same rites as the
Deotas. (Contemp. Rev. XXXII. p. 415.)
The only term applied to spirits by the Caribs and
Arawaks express one who lived a long time ago, and is now
in skyland, the maker of the Indians their father. (Im
Thurn, Ind. of GUI. p. 366.) Burton, in his Abbeokuta,
writes : " The Egba deities are palpably men of note in
their day" (I. p. 191). Hale describes the deities wor-
shipped in Southern Polynesia as only deified chiefs, the
memory of whose deeds were lost in the efflux of time. So,
referring to the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands, it is
said : " The Ataros of the previous generation are super-
seded by their successors. Men must remember the power
of the Ataros when they were alive j hence, as they die off,
and new Ataros are appointed, they take the place of the
forgotten spirits. Individuals, families, and sets of neigh-
bours will have some ghost of their own, to whom, as an
Ataro, they will apply." (Jour. Anth. Inst. X. p. 300.)
A few illustrative examples will best show how the local
chief, the great warrior, the mystic medicine-men were
advanced to tribal or tutelar deities. Mr. Macdonald, in
his Africana, gives us an exemplification of how the local
chief was associated with the locality in which he dwelt,
and ultimately became a tutelar deity. He writes : " Man
deifies the powers he sees around him ; he is ready to fall
down and worship the mountain whose lofty summit is
clothed with the rain-cloud, or the lightning that springs
from the cloud. He looks back to the days of his youth ;
he remembers a grandfather who told him how he fled from
the face of an oppressor, how he had built up his home far
up, near the mountain top, and there brought up his family
in safety. By-and-by, as danger passed away, this ancestor
moved further down the mountain, gradually he increased in
power, and in his old age found himself the chief of a clan ;
yet he never forgot the days of his adventure, and ever
pointed proudly to the spot where he had first found a
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 249
shelter ; and his children's children, as they listened to the
old man's tale, counted the ground holy. The days come
when they can see the old man's face no more. But does
he not still exist ? Yea ; did we not hear his voice, as we
listened to sounds that played about the mountain-side ?
Did we not see him, though but for a moment, sitting beside
his own home, as he used to sit long ago ? Did he not
appear to us in dreams ? Yes ; he is living on the old
mountain still, he is taking care of us ; he knows when we
need rain, and he sends it. We must give him something.
When we had no corn, he always gave us. We will give
him food, we will give him slaves, and he will not forget
us" (I. p. 73).
A hero-god may be evolved in various ways, according
as the local sentiments find something of a spiritual and
commanding nature in an individual that specially dis-
tinguishes him from his fellows and the usual capacities
that men exhibit. Lyall, in his Asiatic Studies, gives the
following cases : An Indian tribe, much addicted to high-
way robbery, who worship a famous bandit who probably
lived and died in some mysterious way. M. Raymond, the
French Commander, who died at Hyderabad, has been
canonized there, after a fashion ; and General Nicholson,
who died in the storming of Delhi in 1857, was adored as
a hero in his lifetime (p. 19). Yennac, the conqueror of
Siberia, was so highly exalted, even in the conceptions of
his enemies they could not but admire his prowess, his
consummate valour and magnanimity and when he perished
in the river Irtish, the Tartars proceeded to consecrate his
memory : they interred his body with all the rites of Pagan
superstition, and offered up sacrifices to his manes. (Dillon's
Oonquest of Siberia, p. 24.)
Describing the various human personalities whose dead
spirits have been apotheosized, Lyall writes : " We have
before us in Central India the worship of dead kinsfolk and
friends, and then the particular adoration of notables recently
250 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
departed, then of people divinely afflicted or divinely gifted,
of saints and heroes known to have been men. Next, the
worship of demi-gods ; and finally, that of powerful deities,
retaining nothing human but their names and their images.
It is suggested that all these are links along one chain of
the development of the same idea, and that out of the crowd
of departed spirits whom primitive folk adore, certain
individuals are elevated to a larger worship by notoriety in
life or death. The earliest start of a first-rate god may
have been exceedingly obscure; but if he or his shrine
make a few good cures at the outset his reputation goes
rolling up like a snowball. Of wonder-working saints,
hermits and martyrs, the name is legion. There are some
potent devotees still in the flesh who are great medicine-
men, others very recently dead who exhale power, and
others whose name and local fame have survived, but with
a supernatural tinge, rapidly coming out. Above these we
have obscure local deities, who have entirely shaken off
their mortal taint ; and beyond these again are great pro-
vincial gods." (Asiatic Studies, pp. 23-24.)
In vast countries, in which the races of men have become
more or less homogeneous and distinct, tutelar districts are
not specialized, the tutelar character of the deities fail to be
distinctly defined, and the worshippers of each canonized
god become scattered into small unaggregated groups. In
China these saintly deities are manufactured by the State.
One decree speaks of a deceased statesman's spirit which
has manifested itself effectively on several occasions, and
has more than once interposed when prayers have been
offered for rain. In another we have the intimation that
the Dragon Spirit of Han Fan Hien has from time to time
manifested itself in answer to prayer, and has been repeatedly
invested with titles of honour, in gratitude for the provinces
which, after prayers, have been visited with much rain.
(Ibid. pp. 137-139.)
On the evolution of the Hindu gods Lyall observes :
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 251
" At first we have the grave of one whose name, birthplace
and parentage are well known in the district. If he died
at home his family set up a shrine, instal themselves in
possession, and became hereditary keepers of the sanctuary.
If the man wandered abroad, settled near some village or
sacred spot, became renowned for his austerities, and then
died, in the course of a very few years, as the recollection
of the man's personality becomes misty, his origin grows
mysterious, his career takes a legendary hue his birth and
death were both supernatural. Four of the most popular
gods in Berar, whose images and temples are famous in the
Deccan, are Kandoba, Vittoba, Beiroba, and Belaji. These
are now grand incarnations of the Supreme Triad ; yet, by
examining the legends of their embodiment and appear-
ance upon earth, we obtain fair ground for surmising that
all of them must have been notable living men not long
ago." (Ibid. pp. 22, 23.)
Of the various modes by which the personified forces in
nature were advanced to local tutelar deities, we have
various modern examples. The power recognized, though
human in its character, is of the highest grade that rude
man can conceive; it is that of a chief, it is that of one
noted for his mana, and he represents the solar and lunar
forces the power in the thunder, the might of the wind.
Thus Shango, the Jupiter Tonans of the Yorubas, became
the stone caster, and the old stone hatchets picked up in
the fields are called his thunderbolts. Shango was a
mortal man born at Ifeh, he reigned at Ikoso, was trans-
lated to heaven and made immortal. (Bowen, Central
Africa, p. 31 7.) His younger brother is the River Ogun and
the symbol of war. We have seen that the name for a
ghost was that of a dead man ; so when on the Congo we
read that Erua, the term now applied as god, is also that of
the sun, wo cannot fail to notice its source. (Jour. Anth.
Inst. XV. p. 11.) More especially when we recognize the
same origin for other like terms. Thus among the
252 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
Kitaveita Zuwa signifies both sun and god, and among the
Gallas Waka means indifferently god and sky, with the
Masai Engai means both god, sky, and rain. (Ibid. XV.
p. 12.)
Mr. T. Hahn in his Tsuni Goam collects several of the
old reports on the Hottentot nature gods, more especially
of the sun, moon, and thunder. Kolb reports that they
believe in God a good man, who does them no harm, and
they dance to the new moon. Schmidt, more explicit, notes
that on the return of the Pleiades mothers lift their little
ones in their arms to show the friendly stars, and teach
them to stretch their little hands towards them singing,
" Tiqua, our Father above our heads, give us rain that the
fruits may grow, that we may have plenty of food." Hop
says their religion chiefly consists in the worship of the
new moon ; the women clasp their hands and sing that the
moon has protected them and their cattle. Moffat says
that their god, Tsuni Goam, was a notable warrior of great
physical strength, and in a desperate struggle with a neigh-
bouring chief he received a wound on the knee. Alexander
describes them as making offerings to snakes, to water
spirits, to the spirit of the fountain, saying, " great
Father, son of a Bushman, give us the flesh of the rhinoceros,
the gem-book, the zebra, or whatever we require/' Krapf
says they see the powers above as the shades of the dead.
These they say are at one time in the grave, then above the
earth or in thunder and lightning as they list. Bosnian
describes the natives of Guinea as worshipping snakes,
lofty trees, and the sea. (Pinkerton, XVI. p. 494.)
Much of the same character was the rude sun and moon
worship of the old Lapps as described by Scheffer, and
they, like the Negro tribes, were crudely developing from
the nature forces, as fetish conceptions of independent
supernal powers. The inhabitants of Aneitum island, one
of the New Hebrides, according to Mr. A. W. Murray, held
that the sun and moon originally dwelt upon the earth, that
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 253
the sun went up into the heavens and told the moon to
follow ; they had sacred dances to the moon singing songs
in her praise. (Mis. to W. Poly. p. 20.) At Aneitum,
Nugerain, the chieftain spirit, produces a host of minor
powers, gods of the sea and land, of the mountains and
valleys, gods of war and peace, of diseases and storms.
Direct sun and moon and star worship underlie all the
old-world faiths. Men, as with the Australian wizards,
crept up into the sky and came forth as sky-powers, and
when higher social affinities were evolved in the tribes,
then these ghost sun-and-moon men grew into spirits,
forces, and presided in the sky, as their chiefs presided on
the earth. The genius of one race gave lofty consideration
to its war-god, that of another to the storm-spirit, in some
cases the memory of a great chief or warrior overshadowed
the nature forces, but ever we may trace the survival form
or evidence of the earlier spirit forces and some relics of
the ghost gods, the nature gods, the earliest concepts of
mystic powers which still remain among all developed
races. Thus we know that sun-gods and storm-gods, spirits
of mountains, forests and rivers, as well as hero gods and
supernal attributes derived from animals, influenced the
tone of feeling and the every-day acknowledgments of
supernal action among the progenitors of the great Aryan
races. The classic Saturn and Jupiter were the modified
concepts of a much earlier and more human sky deities.
Underlying Brahminism, Buddhism, and even the relics of
the old Vedic faiths ; Dr. Stephenson, of Bombay, found
Diwars still cherished the remnants of the ante-Brahminical
religion, and Sir H. M. Elliott recognized in the south of
India traces of worship not of Hindu origin, and carrying
the mind back to a period when that great land was
parcelled out into mere village communes, temporary and
isolated, as is now the case over a greater portion of
Central and Eastern Africa and in New Guinea. (Hist, of
Races N.W. Provin. I. p. 243.)
Sproat found sun-worship and moon-worship still linger-
254 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
ing among the Ahts of Vancouver's Island, though, the
great Quawteaht is gaining a more spiritual ascendency
among them. We may note, where sun and sky worship
has never ceased among an advancing race, how gradually
the incense of the soul to these supernal forces has been
elevated in its spiritual attributes as in the sun-worship of
the old Peruvians and the supremacy of heaven with the
Chinese. All the nature gods and spirit forces of the
primitive races have but limited powers, and each only rules
in his own tribal district or forest lands. They vary in
power and in the nature and extent of their jurisdictions,
but all their arrangements are moulded on the system
evolved in their own social states, and they carry back the
memories of events for only a few generations ; all beyond
is the mystic long ago.
We have given one illustration of the similitude of the
Australian's heaven to his own camp. We will now quote
another of the Dyak's application of every-day earth-life
to his sky existences. The Rev. W. Lobscheid in his
Religion of the Dyaks describes the sky- world, where the
great spirits dwell, as being a region having all the charac~
teristics of the earth, with mountains, valleys, rivers, and
lakes, and like the earth as known to them in Borneo,
parcelled out into petty districts, each under the control of
the rajah or headman. So in the sky-world rivers form the
boundaries between the local jurisdictions ; they have not
yet evolved a head sultan, but each spirit is independent
of the other sky-spirits and governs his own district.
Nominally one takes the lead as in every like state on the
earth, and these spirit-powers associate in the same sexual
relations as the Dyaks. Their chief spirit has a wife, who,
like the wives of the earth chiefs, may be dismissed at
pleasure, and then he may select another. In these, as in
all other social groups, the Divine nature and the Divine
attributes are but the mystic representations of their
ordinary sentiments and actions. (Relig. of Dyaks, p. 2.}-
In tracing the progress of tutelar development, we must
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 255
not look upon it as simple growth in a homogeneous tribe ;
that probably seldom occurs. A family may grow into a
clan, and a clan possibly evolve into a tribe, and ultimately
expand into a nation ; but more commonly it aggregates
by outward adhesion or absorption. Sometimes the growth
may take place in many directions, or there may be
alternate disintegrations and aggregations. Increase may
arise from adoptions, through intermarriages, by voluntary
association, by submission and absorption. Now every
separate independent group, whether a clan or commune,
will have its set of gods, some family, some individual,
and one the special tutelar clan god. As a general rule
most of these gods would ba common in the same district
of a country, but any one of them, whatever its origin
from a dead man, an animal, or nature totem might be the
tutelar head of the group. If one group is conquered
by another group, they impose their tutelar god on the
dependent people, or they, from the result of the contest,
accept him as their communal tutelar deity and give their
own local god a secondary place. When, among many small
clans, diverse changes of the nature we have indicated take
place, then the same tutelar deity acquires many phases ;
for if three or four groups have taken the same god as
their tutelar deity, or if they are aggregated together
through any circumstances, they can only distinguish them-
selves by a secondary characteristic.
Probably in no part of the world did such interchange
and blending of the status of the gods take place as in
pre-Vedic and Vedic India; hence the many attributes and
natures of their gods. Thus the same god is broken up iu
regard to position and action; he is Agni, ho is Vayu,
Indra, or Surya; he is, moreover, multiplied through his
relations with tho Asvins, the Maruts, and others. So tho
same name may imply diverse powers. Thus Aditi is the
sky, Aditi is the earth ; it is tho firmament, it is the mother,
it is tho father. Or Varuna is Mitra, and Mitra Varuna.
256 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
With some Daksha sprang from Aditi, with others Aditi
sprang from Daksha. In other heaven systems, Light and
Darkness become broken up into many tutelar powers ;
they do not create other forms, but they express the same
power in many names. Thus arose the many Jupiters, the
many names of Zeus, the endless forms of the Osirian
myth. Thus the god-evolving Maoris, through their many
temporary aggregations, multiplied the nature powers of
Light and Darkness, and gave them the seeming con-
sistency of many forms, as Hanging Night, Drifting Night,
and Moaning Night, and from the light of day they gave
personality to the Morn, the Abiding Day, the Bright Day,
and the fair expanse of space.
In like manner Rhys, in his Celtic Heathendom,
shows that the Celtic Zeus was split up into several
characters ; may we not rather read it that the Celtic Zeus
blended in his nature the combined attributes of various
local deities of a similar type ? These sky-gods, like the
sky-gods of most races, were derived from men. Thus
Conchobar was the son of an Ulster chieftain ; Cormac was
the grandson of Conn the Hundred-fighter ; and Conaire
the Great appears to have been a local chief who first gave
his name to his tribe and then to the sun, and was after-
wards one only of the sun powers. Rhys notes that the
sun-god was partly of human descent "and this," he
writes, " carries us back to the pre- Celtic stage of culture
when the medicine-man of the tribe claimed the sun as his
offspring." In Ireland we find stories which mention
several births of the sun-god. Cian represents the light of
the sky-god. Lug, another sun-hero, was the son of Cian.
Lug, re-born, was known as Cuchulainn (possibly the new
year's sun). Kulhwch was another sun-god, and possibly
there were as many sun-gods among the various Celtic races
as there were Apollos among the Pelasgians.
That communal tutelar deities were common among the
Celts, as with all races in a like stage of progress, Rhys
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 257
writes : " Every Gaulish city and British too, probably,
had its eponymous divinity, under whose protection it was
supposed to be. Netnausus, Vesontio, and Yasio were
the tutelar divinities of Nimes, Besan9on, and Vaison
respectively." (Celtic Heathendom, p. 100.) Each tutelar
god had his wife; like mother deities were also general
among the Chaldean tutelar local gods and the many
Aryan tutelar deities, and universally we may say among
all the semi-barbaric races of men.
The range of special tutelar gods began in family and
tribal relations, as men specialized in their pursuits, their
customs, and affinities. Thus every acquired attribute,
every applied purpose had its special tutelar spirit. There
were gods of hunting, of war, of fishing. In some cases
there were dairy gods, and gods of riding, gods and
goddesses of grain, of agriculture, of rice, of the palm tree
and the palm wine, of cava, of soma, of pulque. Bacchus
belonged to the same agreeable fraternity ; even some went
so far as to deify drunkenness. There is not a vegetal
dedicated to the service of man, but has its tutelar protector.
Thus there came to be a god of yams, of the tara root,
iind of many medicinal plants. So it was with times and
seasons in Egypt: every month, every day, every hour,
had its presiding deity. In most instances these were
deified mortals specialized as limited supernal powers.
We need not dwell on these various manifestations of
special and limited supernal tutelar powers; they have
little or no connection with any of the forces out of which
the greater gods of humanity have been evoked. These,
in all cases, are found to have been local or tribal tutelar
gods, and the sense of the enlarged power is always
derived from the amalgamation of districts or tribes.
Among the various semi-barbaric races, whoso aggrega-
tions we can follow during historic times, one or other of
these modes of supernal agglutination may be perceived ;
o if we investigate the origins of any of the great races
17
258 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
of men on the earth, we ever trace the growth of their
national deities from district or tribal gods. Thus
Pritchard, writing of Samoa, notes that "the tutelar
district gods, who presided over the various political
divisions, were incarnate in birds and fishes, one in the
rainbow, another in a nation. There were, besides, the
lower class of tutelar gods, each having supremacy over
his special village or small township, and looked up to by
the local inhabitants as their special protectors, defenders,
and advocates, with the more exalted supernal powers
whose tutelar jurisdictions included many townships, an
ample extant of country or even whole islands." (Poly.
Remin. p. 111.)
Among the Maoris, whose supernal relations were not
connected with the land on which they settled, but with
the great chiefs who brought them there, and the special
tutelar attributes they themselves evolved, we accordingly
notice a corresponding evolution of tutelar powers. Natu-
rally the great natural features of the country, as Polack
informs us, had their Atuas and Mawi, and Toaki, the great
volcanic mountain upheavers, formed the land. Specialized
powers were common as Irawari, the god of animals;
Otuma, the god of the fern-root; Pain, the god of the
kumara ; Papa, god of earth and rivers ; Pape, the god of
butterflies and moths ; Potiki, of infants ; Rehua, of the
sick; Rongomai, of war, &c., &c. Po Rangi, Papa, and
Tiki were invoked by the whole Maori race ; they were
their common ancestor chiefs; at the same time every
Maori tribe and family invoked independently each its
own tribal and family ancestors. (Shortland, Maori Religion,
p. 8.)
Of the Fijian tutelar deities Erskine in his Islands of
the Northern Pacific writes : " They have superior and in-
ferior gods and goddesses, more or less general and local
deities ; some were always gods, others once were men.
Any great warrior is deified after death, their friends are
NATURE TOWERB INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 259
also sometimes deified and invoked. The different tribes
attribute their origin to different gods " (p. 246). Mariner
describes a like series of tutelar gods at Tonga as we have
seen evolved in other Polynesian races. There are the
original Atuas, then the various classes of tutelar gods
of the first division; we have the heaven god Tooi Fova;
Bolotoo, the chief of all Bolotoo; another who assumes the
title of chief of Bolotoo, probably a successful chief who
combined some of the districts, or clans. Then we have
the usual sea and wind gods of maritime people, the god
of artificers, of war, and probably a very modern creation,
the god of the iron axe. Some of the tutelar gods are
special to the different islands, others represent the chief-
tain families, and some of a lower rank were the tutelar
deities of the moas, or common people.
In Tahiti, as elsewhere, the various islands had their
tutelar gods as Tane of Huaheine, besides, every chief and
family of rank had its own tutelar deity. There were the
special tutelar spirit-powers of- physic, surgery, husban-
dry, and, so far was the system carried, that they had
gods of ghosts, and gods of thieves. (Ellis, Poly. Res.
p. 339.) We might illustrate the evolution and amalgama-
tion of the god-powers in other Polynesian groups, but they
are all based on the same elements, and more or less follow
the same progressive lines, starting from nature and
fetish-powers, then adding thereto hero-gods and gods
representative of new social differentiations, until, from an
extended group of heterogeneous individual powers, they
coalesce into local groups and simulate the improved
social arrangements among men.
The Madugascese are one of the most advanced of the
African races, they have been enabled to work out their
exposition of the supernal forces in their own way with
little or no influence from without. Their whole religious
system appears to be of native growth, for, whatever may
have been its basis, its present attributes enable it to stand
17 *
260 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
on the individuality of its founders. We cannot perceive
any absolute links assimilating it with the vast array of
fetish and nature-god communities in Central and Western
Africa, nor is it in affinity with the Amazulan or Hottentot
expositions of the supernal. Much has been written on
its lingual association with that of the Polynesian races,
but we meet with no more similitudes in supernal character
therewith than might naturally arise in the primary con-
ceptions of each race. They could not as men but begin
with ghost and spirit forces. They could not fail alike to
eliminate the mysterious powers of nature, and endow
them with self-evolved or human spirit forces ; but their god
system is of native origin, the very term for supernal
intelligence is known nowhere else. And, though fate or
destiny is universal, and men everywhere conceive of
impersonal powers, and the possibility of piercing the
mysteries of the unknown future, the Malagassy have solved
the problem in a manner unknown to other races of men;
even what they have of sacred mana influence is an original
manifestation.
The Malagassy have no ancient civilization, they have no
remnants, philological or traditionary, of an advanced past.
Their religious formulas carry us back to a still lower
phase than that now manifested. So recent is the growth
of sovereign power that they have not evolved its presumed
prototype, but deduced representatives in the heavens.
They know nothing of a sovereign god, they never had a
sky-chief, their nature gods rather express the lower
powers than aspire to the majesty of the greater powers in
the heavens. Hence, when they began to conceive of a
common supernal power, a mana that expressed the super-
nal element in ghost and spirit, and every occult attribute,
they could not give it a tangible name, they could only
express it by vague terms of excellence that equally applied
to the sun, the star, the sky, a chief, the principle affirmed
in their divinations and ordeals. We cannot conceive that
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 261
this multiple term expresses what is affirmed in the word
god, for then even silk, and rice, money and the reigning
sovereign would be gods. All the term implies is that the
objects to which it is attached hold some mysterious
principle of excellence and are endowed with a sacred
attribute and mana; tabu or fetish more express the many
meanings of Andria manitra than that of god. Mr. Ellis
truly says that the Malagassy have no knowledge of " Him
who created the heavens and the earth, and who clothes
Himself with honour and majesty." (Madag. I. p. 390.)
It does not appear to have been many generations since
the Malagassy were mere rude nature-worshippers, without
any defined system, and reverencing various mysterious
fetish powers and evil ghosts. Some few hero-gods with
limited local influences had been evolved with various
family penates, but the national gods had then no existence,
any more than the nation itself. We even seem to be pre-
sent at the birth of what, had their civilization been left to
home development, might have become the Jupiters and
Apollo's of a Southern Olympus.
Mr. Ellis writes : " The whole system of the national
idols appears to have sprung up in comparatively modern
times and long subsequently to the prevalence of the
worship of the household-gods. Imploina, the father of
Radama, did repeatedly convene the population to witness
the consecrating or setting apart of several of the present
national idols. Imploina is said to have acted thus solely
from political motives, having their foundation in the con-
viction that some kind of religious or superstitious influence
was useful in the government of a nation." (Hint. Madag.
I. p. 896.)
It is evident that, in Madagascar as elsewhere, the god-
powers aggregated as through various circumstances the
people aggregated, and that they grew from family-gods
to be clan-gods, then tribal and ultimately district-gods.
Mr. Ellis says there are in the immediate neighbourhood
262 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
of Tananarive twelve or fifteen principal idols, these belong-
respectively to different tribes or divisions of the natives,
and are supposed to be the guardians and benefactors of
these particular clans or tribes. Four of those are con-
sidered superior to all others, and are considered public and
national. There are throughout the country many others
belonging to the several clans or districts ; every province
and every clan has its idol. Every house also, and every
family its object of veneration and confidence. (Hist.
Madag. I. p. 395.) That some missionaries should, like many
writers in other countries, conceive that the occult maiia
formerly recognized as pervading all fetish objects implied
a mystic concept of a supreme deity as once recognized, but,
such a conception has always collapsed in the conscious-
ness that it ascribes to men in a low state of development
the capacity to generalize the highest class of abstractions.
Mr. Ellis gives us a more plausible tradition, that a king,
or rather chief, followed the custom of the people ; each
family had its own ancestral penates, and he, in like
manner, instituted tribal, or possibly district tutelar
gods. (Ibid. I. p. 397.) The dii penates were a very
ancient institution, of whose origin there is no tradition.
(Ibid. I. p. 400.) The references to the chief tutelar
deities imply from their fady or tabu attributes that
they express the combinations of several family or clan
totems in the aggregation of a tribe. Thus one of the
most powerful of the enlarged district gods is Rakelimalaza;
and pigs, onions, a shell-fish, a small animal, the goat,
horse, cat, and owl, are fady to him, and imply the
coalition of as many small clans of which they were the
totems. Another of the chief idols is Eamahavaly, and
besides certain domestic animals the serpent is fady to his
devotees^ serpents are also said to instinctively cling around
this idol's guardian and attendants, and also kill all who
break his fady. (I. p. 409.)
It is a singular fact that in Madagascar we have no
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 263
evidence of the development of a class of priests or even
medicine-men. This seems to have arisen from the power
to make charms never having left the fetish idols. Like
Micah's teraphim, whoever had possession of the idol held
all power over the charms it could express. This, as we
have shown, is the survival form of the old charm worship ;
for whoever held the mana, the fetish spell object
commanded all its supernal powers. All the idols are
representative of the powers in charms and spells through the
mediation of their guardians; but " Rapakila is the great
seller of charms ; " whether a charm against the fever, the
measles, the leprosy, the dropsy, or other diseases, whether
charms against crocodiles, scorpions, and venomous insects,
or charms to obtain their desires, Rakapila will supply.
(Ibid. I. p. 413.)
As explanatory of the late development of a central
authority in the country from which the idea of the higher
god-power would have been evolved, it was the father of
King Radama who reduced the fifty distinct tribes each
under its own presiding chieftain, and amalgamated them
into one state. (Ibid. I. p. 118.) At that period the
system of local tutelar gods was fully developed, and each
of the tribes was under the protection of its special
divinity. By the fusion of the tribes, the fifteen most
influential tutelar deities were formed into a sort of
Olympian conclave among which four, as dispensing the
greatest benefits and guarding the interests of the
sovereign and the kingdom at large, were considered public
and national. (Ibid. I. p. 395.) There was but one more
move necessary that of selecting the heavenly Radama.
In endeavouring to unravel the steps by which the great
supernal powers have been evolved, it is most important
that we have thus presented to our investigation the
evolution of a supernal system based on the same
general progressive laws as have marked the growth of
other Theogonies. What happened in Madagascar a
264 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
hundred or more years ago was but a repetition of the
process by which the gods of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, and
Rome had ages before come to the supernal front. The
tutelar gods of the tribes or districts became amalgamated,
the conquering line becoming the supreme head. The same
submission of the other local tutelar gods took place when
the victorious Cuzcoans conquered Pachacamac and the
lands he divinely governed ; so it was with the Aztecs, and
many of the neighbouring gods were held in honourable
captivity in the temples at Mexico.
In some cases the growth of a god's power had other
and more agreeable origins. Thus Apollo, as Mueller shows,
had his supremacy extended by a growing nation sending
forth colonies and establishing trading stations, and by the
virtue of its genius, may we say mana, influencing cognate
minds. Originally only a Greek god, unknown to the old
Romans, at Sparta, the national idol to whom its chief offered
sacrifice, his influence extending with his victories over
the earth ruling monsters; thus he gained Tempe, he
presided at Delphos ; thus he went with the Greek traders
and soldiers to Asia Minor, to Crete, and Thrace. When
the Dorians took possession of the temple at Olympia as
the patron and guardian deity, he acquired the title of
Thermius. This name, originally derived from that of an
old nature sun-god, was blended with the attributes of
other local sun-gods, as at Corinth, Rhodes, and Athens.
We have seen how general, throughout the vast regions
of Negro Africa, fetish charm worship abounded. That and
a low form of nature worship appears to have continued
through untold ages to distinguish the low class supernal
powers her sons evolved. "Witchcraft, charms, and the
indefinite dread of evil, are the prevailing sentiments. A
man may claim to be a living god, but his slight supernal
powers end with his life. There are few hero-gods, prophet-
gods, self-evolved tutelar deities known in negro lands. Poet
and artist are alike of no effect, and only vague, natural,
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 265
tutelar gods become differentiated. In the more advanced
groups a low brutal fetishism, rarely advancing to a local or
aggregate power, supervenes ; in which the family ancestral
system, appealing as it does to the social affections continued
in another life, is only here and there superseding, by their
guardian care, the dependence on mere fetish charms.
The African terms that have been assumed to embody
the idea of a godhead are most vague, and they in no
instance can be considered as other than representing low
spirit or human ghost-powers. Many are merely the native
terms for sky, sun, and rain ; some signify human ghosts ;
but none have any attributes assimilating them to the
higher god-powers, much less that of an abstract deity.
Duff Macdonald, in his Africana, forcibly illustrates the
process by which, under the dispensation of the mission-
aries, the change is brought about. He observes that in
translations they use the word Mulunga as synonymous
with God ; but this Mulunga, according to the natives, is the
spirit of a deceased man that is, a mere ghost yet it is
taken as signifying the God of the Christians. (I. p. 59.) In
the same way others have misapplied Erua the sun, Masai
Engai the sky, and Mtuoa the sun, and have used those
terms in Scripture history and doctrine as synonymous
with a supreme intelligence. Not only by such mis-
representations will the native mind be confused, but a
false presumption becomes affirmed of a highly evolved
god-power.
Even among the Ashantees, the chief god-powers are
nature forces, some of which are general, others are tutelar
to the rulers, the towns or districts, or the caboceers.
Thus the rivers Tando and Adirai are tutelar deities to tho
King of Ashantee, that of Sekim is tutelar to Akrah, and
the lake Echiu is the guardian deity of Coomassie. We
have previously spoken of the local tutelar influence of
certain totem animals at tho chief towns on the Gold Coast,
but nowhere is there any attempt to evolve a conclave of
national gods and found a new Olympus.
266 THE EVOLUTION OP GHOSTS AND
More advance has been made in the direction of family
ancestral worship. Chieftain worship has obtained in many
places ; thus we are told that among the Marutse "when a
member of the royal family was ill he was taken to the
grave of one of his ancestors, the king then knelt at
the grave and prayed to the deceased : ' You, my grand-
father, who are near to N'yambe, pray to N'yambe that
the disease may be taken from this man.' " (Pro. Roy. Geo.
Soc. II. p. 262.) Reade in his Savage Africa writes :
" In times of peril and distress they will assemble in clans
on the brink of some mountain brow or on the skirt of a
dense forest, and extending their arms to the sky, while
the women are wailing and the very children weep, they
will cry to the spirits of those who have passed away "
(p. 249). Of the passage of dead ancestors into tutelar
chiefs. Macdonald writes : " Some say that every one in the
village, whether a relative of the chief or not, must worship
his own forefathers, otherwise their spirits will bring
trouble upon him. To reconcile these 'authorities, we may
mention that nearly every one is related to the chief, or if
not in courtesy is considered so." (Africana, I. p. 65.) So
" a great chief who has been successful in his wars may
become the god of a mountain or lake, and may receive
homage as a local deity long before his own descendants
have been driven from the spot. When there is a supplica-
tion for rain, the inhabitamts of the country pray not so
much to their own forefathers as- to the god of the mountain
on whose shoulders the great rain clouds repose. The
god of Mount Sochi is Kangomba, an old chief, who when
defeated, instead of leaving the country, entered a cave on
a mountain, from which he never returned. The conquerors
honoured him as the god of the mountain, and betimes ask
the members of his tribe to aid them in their offerings and
supplications/* (Africana, I. p. 71.)
We have but a confused account of the original religious
notions of the inhabitants of the Philippines. That the
universal belief in the spirit forces presiding in natural
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 267
things prevailed we have ample evidence. Thevenot's
account, as given in Marsden's Sumatra, and which
appears to have been the basis of both Sir John Bowring's
and De Morga's narratives, speaks of both sun and moon
worship, of the spiritual attributes ascribed to the rainbow,
and the usual adoration of the supernal powers contained
in rocks and streams. That fetish, animal, and tree worship
abounded extensively all affirm. The creator god Bathala,
probably originally the spirit of an ancestral chieftain, was
worshipped in association with his totem, a blue bird ; the
crow was called the lord of the earth, and, as with the
tropical negroes the alligator was addressed as grandfather,
offerings were made to it, and they prayed that he would do
them no harm. That the usual rude tutelar deities were
evolved both special to occupations and tribes we note :
thus one was the god of harvest, another of fishermen, one
expedited the growing crops, another was the native
Esculapius. We also meet with the huntsman's god, the
god of eating, and sundry others with only local influence.
The wild Indians at the present day still worship the nature
forces, and the natives in their ceremonial rites still with
uplifted hands cry, " thou god, O thou beautiful moon,
thou star !" (Bowring, Phil. la. p. 177.) They also still
retain their local tribal tutelar gods, as Cubija of tin'
Altabans and Amanolay the special god of the Gaddens.
They have local gods of the mountains and plains and
cultivated lands, and without having evolved the family
ancestral system, they have both chieftain and ancestor
gods, these termed Anitos or Monos were worshipped both
in the field and the house. All these were crude individual
god-powers, without an Olympus ; and as they have very few
affinities with the gods of other races, such supernal ideas
as they entertained appear to have been of native origin.
Thevenot (Marsden's Sumatra, p. 256) says : " They made
Anitos of their deceased ancestors to which they made
invocations in all difficulties and dangers. They also
268 THE EVOLUTION OF GHOSTS AND
reckoned among these beings all those who were killed by
lightning or had violent deaths. They still continue the
custom of asking permission of their dead ancestors when
they enter any wood, mountain, or cornfield for hunting or
sowing."
Another race of men favourably disposed to evolve on
independent lines were the residents of the extreme south
of the American continent, who were little influenced by
foreign or adventitious modifications. It is true that the
equally self-contained god systems of Cuzco and Quito
might have influenced the Araucanians, but the antagonisms
of the races prevented the little intercommunications that
they held with one another having any special effect 011
the national sentiments ; on all sides the satisfaction with
their own supernal powers prevented any friendly amalga-
mation, and no conquest on either side supervened to bring
a forced association.
Of the early nature worship we still note some indications.
e ' They say the stars are old Indians, and that the milky
way is the field where the old Indians hunt ostriches, and
that the southern clouds are the feathers of the ostriches
they kill." (Falkner's Patagonia, p. 115.) "They have
a multiplicity of deities, each of whom they believe to
preside over one particular family of Indians, of which he
is supposed to be the creator, as the lion, tiger, guanaco,
ostrich, &c. They imagine that these deities have each
his separate habitation in vast caverns under the earth."
(Ibid. p. 114.) Of their more national god-powers, one
has a name signifying the governor of the people ; another
presides in the land of strong drink ; a third bears the
cognomen of the " Lord of the dead ;" another is " the
wanderer."
Since Falkner wrote his narrative the Araucanians,
probably profiting in some measure from information de-
rived through the modern Peruvians, from isolated tribes
mostly unsettled, have formed pastoral and agricultural
NATURE POWERS INTO TUTELAR DEITIES. 269
communes on an original system, that reminds us of the
process of national amalgamation now going on among
the Afghans. Naturally warlike, and confident that their
safety from aggression will be due to union, the country
has been divided into districts, each under what may be
termed its own feudal lord. But while each Toqui is
independent in his civil government, they are confederate
for the general good. In like manner they have evolved
a like chieftain, if not feudal, government in the heavens.
" The Supreme Being, whom they call Pillian, is at the
head of a universal government, which is the prototype of
their own. Pillian is the great invisible Toqui, and has
his Apoulmenes and Ullmens, to whom he assigns different
situations in the government. Meulen, the genius of good,
and Wencuba, that of evil and the enemy of man, are the
two principal subordinate deities." (Stevenson's S. Amer.
pp. 1-55.) According to the Journal of the Anthropological
Institute (I. p. 202) nature worship still prevails : they
salute tho new moon, the spirits of the rocks and rivers,
and their devotions are directed to propitiate the tutelar
powers presiding over them.
The full history of tho development of the tutelar from
the nature and ancestral gods, is worked out in connection
with the development of the supernal system in each great
race of men. In these several expositions of the develop-
ment of national and racial gods we describe, first, tho
earliest form of faith that we can discover they expressed,
and wo then trace the evidences their history, traditions
and other forms of survival convey of the stages of supernal
development that they passed through, up to tho highest
manifestation that each presented.
CHAPTER VIII.
The differentiation of King-Gods in Egypt.
THE social evolution of human races depends upon locality
and progress, and progress itself depends upon locality.
The configuration of a country influences the capacity of
its inhabitants to aggregate and the forms of aggregation
that may ensue. The inhabitants of icy regions are
absolutely precluded from forming confederacies that in
their various expositions tend to advance their members,
and corresponding deterring conditions permanently mark
the status of the denizens of rocky and desert lands.
Thus the Eskimo and the Fuegian make no advance; as
they were in the olden times so they continue now to
present mere isolated family groups ; they never group into
communities. In Australia sandy deserts and barren
lands resulting from long-continued droughts resulted in
producing somewhat like conditions, and kept the small
clans which simply represented great families from
aggregating into amalgamated tribes. So if we take note
of the Arabs, the Moors, and the Tartars of the desert
regions we may recognize that like detergent local con-
ditions ever restrain the capacity for men to aggregate. They
may betimes be inflenced by the neighbouring cognate
races, whose natural conditions are more favourable for
inducing the confederation and coalition of tribes, but when
this external influence is withdrawn they always break up
again into their simple integers.
THE DIFFERENTIATION OF KING-GODS IN EGYPT. 271
As the social state of men so are their supernal ideas,
and the Arab of to-day, though he may nominally assent to
the God of the Koran, knows Allah only as a man-spirit of
the same genre as the ghost of the wely or neby at whose
tomb he leaves his simple offering. Our presentation of
religious and social development among the Bedouins is
fully confirmed in the observations of Professor Robertson
Smith. He writes : " The progress of religion followed that
of society. In the case of that of the nomadic Arabs shut
up in the wilderness of rock and sand, nature herself barred
the way of progress. The life of the desert does not
furnish the material conditions for permanent advance
beyond the tribal system, and we find that the religious
development of the Arabs was proportionally retarded, so
that at the advent of Islam the ancient heathenism, like
the ancient tribal structure of society, had become effete,
without having ever become barbarous." (The Religion of
the Semites, p. 35.) What Allah is to the Bedouin has been
shown by Sir John Lubbock in the curse on him by the old
Arab woman suffering from the toothache, and Spencer, in
a quotation from Palgrave, shows that the only possible
concept the Bedouin could form of Allah was that of an
Arab Sheik presiding only in his encampment. On his
being questioned "What will you do coming into God's
presence after so graceless a life ? " " What will we do ?"
was his unhesitating answer, " Why, we will go up to God and
salute Him, and if He proves hospitable, gives us meat and
tobacco, we will stay with Him ; if otherwise we will mount
our horses and ride off." To the Arab, Islam is but a form
and a name, and for all practical purposes nature worship
and hero worship still prevail ; they comprehend local and
tribal supernal powers as they did in the days of Mohammed,
and continue now to make gods of the class we have s*
they esteem Allah, of every wely or neby who exhibits
mystic powers.
No man can ever conceive the nature of a god other than
272 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
by the symbols of power present to his soul in the world
about him, and in his own social institutions. The god of
nature represents at first not the real force and immensity
present to his perceptive powers, but the low class deduction
thereof he is able to conceive. As his concepts advance
so does the sentiment of the god he entertains. So it is
with the personal attributes of the Deity formed on the
human model ; he can only represent the highest standard
thereof present to his mind. He may, like the totem man,
idealize it from his favourite animal; he may, like the
Greek, conceive of it as a more powerful athlete j it may be
to him an ancestral ghost, the head of a family ; it may be a
village chief or the chief of a tribe : in more advanced
communities, the tutelar god of a community, a town, a
group of confederate or subdued tribes, or the sovereign of a
more or less extended state, built up of many aggregate
elements even up to the imperial suzerainty designated by
the epithets Lord of Lords, and King of Kings.
In all cases if we analyze the sentiments a man's god
expresses we may demonstrate the conditions which have
surrounded a man or which have formed the elements of
thought out of which he has embodied his divinity. We
have illustrated several such embodiments of a low class
character in which the divine nature is only that of his
human compeers as seen through the glamour of the
medicine-man's ideality. But while the individual's stan-
dard of deity is usually that of his tribe, it often happens
that his mental perceptions being of a low character only
advance to his tribe's lowest fetish or even charm concepts
of the supernal, for no man can conceive of supernals
beyond the organic evolution of his own mental powers.
So in like manner the man with great original thought-
power naturally takes a more august comprehension of the
relations of the nature forces, and he may even anticipate
the capacities of human society, though unable to integrate
them in the forms they afterwards assume.
KING-GODS IN EGYPT. 273
We have made these general observations preliminary
to our investigation of the development of the higher class
religions, as they account in some measure for the diver-
gences they present. In every upward manifestation of
the supernal the possibility of branching off on distinct
lines becomes apparent ; there could be only minor distinc-
tions in the character of charms, spells, and magic powers;
but when the ghost-spirit was invented the varieties thereof
became most numerous, but after conceived as confederacies
under leaders, like the tribes of men they become organized
on as many systems as are apparent in human societies.
In considering the development of each of these special
supernal systems we have first to show they had their
origin in the same elements as the lower class sentiments
of the supernal we have treated upon, and that their higher
manifestations were due to their surrounding conditions
and the racial aspects of their own mental powers. In all
cases we shall have to recognize special attributes and
special results though founded on the same intrinsic
principles of development.
From the days of the Father of History to those of
Rawlinson and Brugsch, tho ancient Egyptian race has
ever been held up as one of the most remarkable expositions
of natural religious sentiments uncontrolled by external
relations, uninfluenced by the enthusiasm of the ascetic,
ignorant of the wild supernaturalisms of the medicine-man,
nor urged to ferocious manifestations by the rhapsodies of
prophets and seers. Mildly contemplative, intensely devo-
tional, they recognized the spiritual attributes and supernal
influences present in all things not alone in the gr;md
phenomena of tho natural world, but in all the infinite*
forms of life, more especially in their fellow-men, in kings,
heroes, and priests. The world to them was overflowing
with the expression of supernal power; tho gods were
allwhere in the air, in the stars, in tho thunder and in tin-
cataract; they saw god in all life, in bird and Ix-ast ami
18
274 THE DIFFEEENTIATION OF
creeping thing; mortality to them was but a semblance
enwrapping the deity. Hence, they breathed and moved
and had their being, as it were, in a supernal world; when
they ate and drank, when they rose up or laid down, it
was in the presence of the gods, and this sentiment of
divinity moulded, as it were, their forms of thought and
their habits of life.
As Lenormant says, all Egypt bore the impress of
religion; its writing was full of sacred symbols and of
allusions to sacred myths, so that its use beyond the land
of Egypt became impossible. Literature and science were
but branches of theology. The fine arts were only em-
ployed with a view to religion and the glorification of the
gods or deified kings. Each province had its special gods,
its peculiar rites, its sacred animals. It seems that the
priestly element had presided even over the distribution of
the country into nomes and that these had been originally
ecclesiastical districts. (Ancient History oj the East,
p. 317.)
It is the origin of this faith and its progress among this
ancient people that we have now to consider. It was one
of the most autochthonous of religions ; its gods, its ghost-
powers, its rules of life and aspirations of the future were
self -created ; the Greek, the Eoman, the Hindu faiths,
might be traced to a far earlier cult in some unknown
region, and to this parent of religions even the rude
Slavonian and the primitive Celt may have been indebted
for the foundations of their faiths. So the Chinese, the
Japanese, even the Mexican gods, may have been first
present in the skies of Mongolia and in the bitter cold of
the far north; but the gods of Egypt had nothing in
common with the gods of other nations, save in the fact
that many of them were educed from the physical presenta-
tion of the same natural phenomena. In their essence, in
their characters, in their influence on men, they were a
special creation, and as they began so they ended, hey
KING-GODS DT EGYPT. 275
were never the cults of other races, they gave forth no
successive foreign dynasties of gods, but were content to
remain the sacred and inherent heritage of that great and
archaic nice who instituted that special form of worship on
the banks of the ever-mysterious Nile.
Nor was this singular faith only the work of yesterday
we have to unroll a vast cycle of ages to discover its birth.
When Greece was the home of the shaggy bear and the
wolf and the wild cave-dwelling savage, before the mud
huts of Erech and Bel sheltered the humblest of commu-
nities, the dwellers on the banks of the Nile had become
many states. Before Terah had honoured his racial gods,
or ever Jahveh had selected his chosen people, a series
of god dynasties had been evolved in the souls of the
Egyptians. The Greek had some faint inkling of bygone
dynasties in he heavens, some vague myths of the reigns
of Ouranos and Chronos in his Olympus, but the Egyptians
had known many successive epochs of sun-gods. In the
historical period wo only know of the evolution of the
worship of Serapis, as of Krishna in India and Apollo in
Greece; but before the advent of Serapis we have in Egypt
those of Horus, and Osiris, and Seb, and before them, in
a series of antecedent cycles, the long duration of the
heavenly sovereignties of Amun, Thoth, Ra and Ptah, the
mighty and venerable father of the gods. Yet before the
first of these great gods was conceived, the Egyptians had
built up the more primary faith the evidence of which
survives in the fetish records of animal supernal mani-
festations and the ghost forms of dead humanity, that gave
origin to tho f;iith in the after-world that had so prominent
and intimato relations with tho subsequent development of
the gods and their general unity of action.
We feel assured that the old Egyptian faith, like the
primary religions of other races, must have been preceded
by the usual archaic supernal ideas. Animal totem fetishes
were as reverently honoured and feared in Egypt as in
18 *
276 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
modern times in Western Africa. There are as many
totem gods recorded of the Egyptians as of the North
American Indians. These fetish animals were recognized
by special marks or signs of which the priests took cogniz-
ance. Hence, when one died, the cult was not complete till
his successor, like the Dalai Lama of Thibet, was found
with the emblems of his sacred character and high position.
The marks denoting the holy Apis were a triangular white
spot on the forehead, white spots on the back in the shape
of an eagle, and bicoloured hairs on the tail ; there was also
a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred
beetle of Ptah.
Instead of being a centralized state at this early period,
or even consisting of binary combinations in the local
worship of the totem animals, we recognize various distinct
tribes, each having its own local centre, both of worship
and influence, and in which it was the tutelar guardian.
Thus the cat-totem centre was Bubastis, that of the hawk
at Buto, the ibis at Hermopolis, the hippopotamus in the
Papremis nome, the crocodile at Thebes, the bull Mnevis at
Helioplis, and the bull Apis at Memphis.
In the magical texts published in the Records of the Past
may be detected, not only the actions and assumptions of
the medicine-man, but even that adscription of power to
many of the substances used in incantations that denote the
appeal for protection to spells and charms of the lowest
kind, the waste of animal and human bodies. Thus : " Shu
takes the shape of an eagle's wing ; he makes a lock or tress
of sheep's wool to go round this god's neck. He makes his
body protected, &c." Again : " Tefmit resists ; he pre-
vails against the wicked ones by the hair of a cow passing
yesterday ; carrying to-day the blood of the mystic eye, the
skin of the head of uraeus serpent, the eye of a dwarf."
Another : " A circle of a green herb, a drop of well water
with the following objects therein : The heart of a jackal,
the nostril of a pig, the urine of an ape, followed by a
KING-GODS IN EGYPT. 277
plate of beaten gold, wherein an eagle's wing is figured."
(Records of the Past, VI. p. 119.)
In the following we have spells which imply the age of
totem evolution and the medicine-man :
" May they cry out for me, Isis, my good mother,
Closing the mouths of the lions, of the hyena, the heads of all animals
Having long tails, who live upon flesh and drink blood.
To fascinate them, to snatch away their ears, to cause darkness,
To prevent light, to cause blindness, to prevent visibility
Every moment during night. Up, bad dog !
Come, I command what thou must do to-day.
Be thy face like the gaping sky ; the aspect of thy mane
Like that of metal rods. Do not set thy face against me.
Set thy face against the animals of the land ; repel thro' fascination."
(Ibid. X. p. 156.)
In the following incantation and case of possession we
are presented with the same low-class spirit manifestations
that BO generally prevailed in Europe during the Middle
Ages:
" Oh Spirit of the Heaven protect thou I
Oh Spirit of the Earth protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lord of Landa protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lady of Lands protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lord of the Stars protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lady of the Stars protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lord of Light and Life protect thou !
Oh Spirit of the Lady of Light and Life protect thou ! "
(Tram. Soc. Bib. Arch. VI. p. 539.)
Possession by evil spirits was an early doctrine in
Egypt. An inscription in the Bibliotheque Nationale at
Paris records the cnse of an Asiatic princess married to
one of the kings, who was supposed to have been troubled
by the intrusion of an evil spirit. The royal priest, unable
to cope with tin* spirit that troubled the princess, had the
image of the god Chonsu sent in his ark accompanied by
a talisman of the same god to exorcise the evil one. We
nro tol<l tlio spirit yielded to the superior supernal power of
278 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
the god, and retired from the body of the princess, a sacri-
fice at the same time being offered to propitiate the evil
genius, and thus prevent it inflicting further injury.
In the long history of the Egyptian dynasties we have
present to us the sovereignty of the local triads or the local
councils of the gods. At an early period the concept of
an evil principle and the doctrine of evil spirits feared and
worshipped by men, and which precedes the adoration of
benevolent and superintending deities, prevailed. We have
in the war between Osiris and Typhon the death of Osiris
and the victory of young Horus, a traditional myth of the
existence in Egypt of the worship of evil spirits. Therein
we have the same monstrous forms and characters as those
which gave origin to ogres and giants among most races
of men, as the monster Typhon, of Nubi of Taouris, the
feminine evil spirit of Bes, with a hideous cannibal aspect,
a match for the archaic Medusa of the Greeks. These
with Anubis, Amenti, Anset, Hapi, and many others evince
that a form of faith like the old Bhuta worship in India
prevailed in Egypt. An observation in Rawlinson's History
of Egypt infers at one period the supremacy of the general
worship of Bhutes in Egypt, and that inscriptions to Set
and his emblems were common on the earliest monuments
which were subsequently obliterated ; this according to
Bawlinson implied a serious change in religious opinion,
the after ascendency of moral deities. (Hist. Egypt, I.
p. 317.)
There can be little doubt but that nature-worship in
various forms existed long before the suppression of the
worship of evil spirits in Egypt. Indeed, it must have pro-
gressed through several stages, and been associated with
the worship of men-gods and presiding principles before
there could have been evolved the social institutions that
superseded the primitive barbarism. According to Duucker,
the day of Typhon became set apart as unlucky, and he
KING-GODS IN EGYPT. 279
himself was called the almighty destroyer; he filled the
whole earth and sea with evils, and in some measure
assumed the character of the Persian Ahrimanes.
That nature worship, more especially the worship of the
sun, had progressed through several stages, we may well
affirm. The boat of Osiris belongs to the same attempt of
men to associate the motions of the heavenly bodies with
human pursuits as the chariot of Phoebus and the carriage
of Surya, but the living disc of the sun, and of the Peru-
vian Incas, personified the sun as a self-existent being, like
the old Beltane wheel, having its own proper motion, and
not dependent on a presiding totem. Wo have even the
attempt to divest sun-worship of its anthropomorphic
character, and honour it as a self-existent principle. We
know nothing of the birth of Egyptian solar worship, yet in
some of the old sun-gods we have but personifications of its
aspects as expressed in the various local centres, the same
as we found has existed among many like confederated states.
Thus Kephro was sun-creative; Turn, sun-setting; Aten,
the sun's disc ; Shu, its light. Many of these occur as the
presiding sun-principle, as Ra, Kephro, Turn, Shu, Mentu,
Osiris, Horus, Harmaches, and Aten. So of the moon, wo
have Khons, Thoth, Seb, and Sabak.
The distinction between the two forms of sun-faith, the
worship of it personified as a man-god, and that of devo-
tion to it as a sublime spiritual principle, is manifest in the
diverse forms in which it is addressed, as recorded in the
inscriptions. Rameses II, speaking to his father, the
Osiris King Sati, says : "Awake, raise thy face to heaven,
behold the sun my father Mineptah, who art like to God.
Hero am I who make thy name to live. Thou restest in
the deep like Osiris, while I rule like Ra among men, and
possess the great throne of Turn, like Horus, the son of
Isis, the guardian of his father. Thou hast entered into
the realm of heaven, thou accompanist the sun-god Ra.
Thou art united with the sun and the moon. Thou restest
280 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
in the deep, like those who dwell in it with Umofer, the
eternal; thy hands move the god Turn in the heavens, and
on earth like the wandering stars and the fixed stars."
(Brugsch, Egy. II. p. 41.)
To Ahmenhotep IV, as to the Peruvian Incas, the sun
was not a man-god but a refulgent disc in its own special
form taking its course through the heavens. He discarded
its many personalities, its various aspects, its human
characteristics ; to him it was a disc of glory, the source of
life and being. " Beautiful in thy setting, thou sun's disc
of life, thou lord of lords and king of worlds ; when thou
unitest thyself with the heaven at thy setting mortals
rejoice before thy countenance, and give honour to him
who has created them, and pray before him who has formed
them, before the glance of thy son who loves thee, the King
Khunaten (Ahmenhotep IV). The whole land of Egypt,
and all peoples, repeat all thy names at thy rising to
magnify thy rising in like manner as thy setting. Thou,
God, who in truth art the living one, standest before the
two eyes. Thou art He which createst what never was,
which f ormest everything, which art in all things ; we have
also come into being through the word of thy mouth.
Thou disc of the sun, thou living God, there is none other
beside thee. Thou givest health to the eyes through thy
beams, Creator of all beings. Thou goest up on the
Eastern horizon of heaven to dispense life to all which
thou hast created, to man, to four-footed beasts, to birds
and all manner of creeping things on the earth where they
live. Thus they behold thee, and they go to sleep when
thou settest." (Brugsch, I. p. 450.)
Ahmenhotep was before his age, and it was not likely
that his attempt to cast out the surviving fetishism in
Egypt would succeed. The priests who essentially had
subsisted on the many god-affirmations were against him,
and the people were unable to sustain this phase of the
divine. On the death of the king his sun monotheism
KING-GODS IN EGYPT. . 281
collapsed, and after a troublous period, the holy father Ai
became king. He returned to the old forms of faith,
sacrificed to Ammon, restored the old capital, and called
himself Prince of Thebes.
That the highest nature-gods of Egypt possessed nothing
of the omniscience of a supreme being, is apparent in the
Stele of the Coronation (Records of the Past) . It may be
remembered that in the Iliad when Zeus makes a trip to
Ethiopia, he was ignorant of what then took place at Troy ;
the telegraph had no existence, and consequently telepathy
was not invented. It was not until he returned to Mount
Ida that he became acquainted with the modes in which
the other gods had subverted his decrees; so, in the
Egyptian inscription, Ra has gone out of heaven into the
land of Aukhet, his seat in heaven is empty, and the new
king, without his presence there, could not be consecrated
because Ra alone knew him. So they went down to Ra,
the god^of the kingdom of Kush, and presented the brothers
to him that he might announce the selected one. The god
was no more than a human sovereign, and if a State
document required his signature, the State council had to
post to the Balmoral of the god.
It is most probable that before the Egyptian State was
consolidated, the sun was a general object of adoration, and
was represented in the various local centres or cities, under
'livcrso names and attributes. Like as in Assyria, there
were the local supernal powers separate and distinct in
ucli community, but kept to represent the one series
by neighbourhood and the inter-marriages that thereby
accrued. How many such centres obtained in Egypt we
know not, but many retained their distinguishing god-
attributes far into the historic period. The sun-god of
Heliopolis was Ra, of Thebes, both Amon and Turn, of
Abydns Osiris. Other local centres had for their totems
"thcr gods, who, on the doctrine of each selecting its own
cjivine council of tutelar deities, became their locnl Olympic
282 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF
councils. The Zeus or president of the council of gods at
Memphis was Ptah, at Hermopolis Thoth, at Sais Neith, at
Coptus Chem, at Dendera Hathor, at Syene Chum, at
Elephantine Sati. While these specialities marked the
distinctive head-power in the communes, the basis of the
faith was the common divine character of all the gods in
the several groups of states. In each important centre the
local god was the ruling, the feudal chief, not a supreme
god ; there were the family deities as well as the several
clan deities, which constituted the distinct tribe. To this
tribal deity it was the fashion to attach a wife aiid^ son,
forming a family triad as at Memphis, Thebes and
Hermothis.
That Egypt had its hero-gods we may well affirm.
Menes, the tribal founder, was a man-god; so was Mentu
the war-god, Hapi the Nile-god, Aemhept the Egyptian
Esculapius, Chepera and Horus, as well as Omiris and Tini.
In later times, when the nomes were confederated into the
states of Upper and Lower Egypt, it became the fashion
to deify every king and sometimes the powerful priests.
At what time the worship of ancestors was introduced
we have no certain knowledge. In the ancient mode
of burial, as observed in the oldest graves opened by
Mr. Rhind, no indications of the adoration of the dead
were manifest. After sepulchral chambers were built
for special families, and in which oblations and libations
were presented, as well as flower decorations, protective
amulets, and other manifestations of reverence and
affection to satisfy the presumed wants of the dead,
and enable the new Osiris gods to compass the journey
to the after-world.
The last stage in the evolution of god-powers in ancient
Egypt was presented in the Horus myth ; it embodies the
concept of an universal nature and the sentiment of moral
mediation between humanity and the retired majesty of a
sovereign deity. Osiris represents the ruler of a great
KING-GODS IN EGYPT. 283
confederate state, formed from many principalities, whose
august sovereign is only known by his edicts. He is the
god of the two Egypts, whilst the sun in the name type of
Ka is the great feudal conqueror who unites in his godhead
the name types of the various nomes. We know there was
a time when neither Horus or Osiris were cognomens of
the sun, they never existed until there was an united Egypt.
Before that time each nome, each city had its own tutelar
sun deity. We suspect many of these were successful
chiefs deified by their prosperous followers.
That the sovereigns at least were worshipped as gods
after death we have evidence, and they had priests attached
to their worship. (Egypt from the Monuments, p. 83.)
Recorded instances are those of Amenophis I. and Aehmes.
Thoth, the inventor of speech and writing, the god of
wisdom, must be considered an abstract god ; probably he
was the deified introducer of the art of writing, and by the
results thereof became characterized as the god of wisdom.
We sometimes find the gods of two or more neighbouring
cities, like their rulers, associated together, but in all cases
the greatness or rank of a god depends upon the numerical
strength of his worshippers, and we may not infer, as did
Sir G. Wilkinson, that the minor deities were satisfied with
presiding over towns of minor importance, but we rather
hold that the size of the town itself and its population was
the source of the dignity of the god. Surely Minerva as a
village goddess and Diana as the tutelar deity of a small
hamlet would have been much less dignified than was
Pallas Athena) and tho great goddess Diana of Ephesus.
Hence Amon became a supreme god because he was the
chief of the gods at Thebes when it became a regal
sovereignty, and at first Ptah, and after Osiris, holding the
same position at Memphis, acquired a like ascendancy.
Among the philosophic priests of tho later period the
gods were comprised in two imperial dynasties or families,
284 THE DIFFERENTIATION OF KING- GODS IN EGYPT.
that of the sun-god Ka and his family, and that of Osiris
and his family. These became imperial sovereignties, and
all the other god-powers were arranged in graduated ranks
below them, most having their special allotted offices in
the kosmos. The idea of an Eternal Self-existent God was
never evolved in the soul of Egypt.
We might add that in a learned article in the Nineteenth
Century (XXXII. p. 39, &c.), J. Norman Lockyer not
only shows the derivation of the Egyptian nature-gods from
star and animal totems, but that the special position of the
heavenly bodies then implies that the myth must have
originated 5000 years B.C., otherwise the constellation
Hippopotamus could not have figured in it.
CHAPTER IX.
The Evolution of the Goda of Assyria and Western Asia.
THERE is no primary exposition of the supernal, in which
we are more personally interested, than that of the races
we have now to consider. The special nature and the
mythogonies of the god-powers in Greece and Rome are
perhaps more familiarly referred to, but to us they are
but cold poetic entities in whose being we feel no interest.
Not so the vague embodiments of supernal force that
succeeded the physical gods of Western Asia and the
neighbouring lands. Out of these were evolved the only
autocratic morally providential gods the wit of man has
invented, and the exposition of whose attributes now
engrosses the supernal impulses of the greater part of
humanity. The various races we refer to may have had
several origins, yet, at a very early period, they manifested
the same general social instincts, and naturally they passed
through the same successive stages in evolution as we have
noted is general.
Dynasties of gods and men remarkable for their heroic
characters are familiar to us, even among the rudest tribes,
that we need not be surprised to note that like reverential
records were either preserved or invented l.\ the tribes
who aggregated on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris,
286 THE EVOLUTION OF THE
or made their homes in the rocky valleys of Syria and the
fertile oases and border lands of Arabia. It is a pleasing-
conceit of the isolated clansman to call himself a man, and
limit the designation of this distinctive term to his few-
fellows, and to esteem their traditions of a few generations
as the great records of humanity. Our Scotch brothers
carry forward even the features of their mythic heroes and
enrol them in galleries of paintings.
Modern science, discarding these puerile conceits first
essayed by philological semblances to work out the
primary characteristics, subsequently it analyzed the tradi-
tions into the physical semblances of human actions to
unfathom the mystery of the social beginnings. These
modes of research have been applied to the peoples and
their racial aspects in the countries we are now considering-
with such important results, that we not only seem to
relive the life of past greatness and the social attributes
of the old empires, but, passing over the heraldic emblazon-
ments, penetrate into their primary struggles for position,
and even trace their very origins.
Among these special researches, we will refer first to the
Survey of Western Palestine, in which the investigators
stayed not their searching explorations to the exposition
of majestic temples or the ruins of palaces, which in
their day emulated the glories of a Sargon, the might
of a Eameses. Though they took record of great battle-
fields and traced out the lines of old city fortifications,
they failed not to note every rude wall, cairn, cave,
tomb, or other rubble work that denoted the early
structural constructions of men, with the result that we
now know the early arts and habits, and even supernal
concepts of the primary inhabitants of Syria and Phoenicia,
and from other like investigations we also glean that those
of Assyria were at least mere nomads wandering like
the father of the Hebrews from Chaldea to Egypt, and
GODS OF ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 287
pasturing their flocks by the wayside or in the unappro-
priated valleys, the great wealth of land as yet rendering
it an almost unmarketable commodity save where the
scattered hamlets had begun to aggregate.
We have ample evidence that savage man, not only in
Cappadocia, in Kurdestan, and in Armenia, once dwelt in
caves, but we know also that such must have been the
primary human status in Palestine, in Syria, and Phoenicia.
Beehive huts of rough rubble, just such as a man by
standing on tiptoe could raise with his hands only, the
earliest form of house where suitable materials abound are
common survivals, not only in the Shetlands and other parts
of the British Isles, but are to be seen at the present time
in Syria and Beloochistan. These, too, are accompanied
with flint flakes and flint arrow-heads implying that early
stage of human society when the use of metals was
unknown. Various survivals of this kind are described in
the Survey of Western Palestine.
Of the primary nomadic state of the Chaldeans, Sayce
writes that Aloros of Babylon, the first king, was called
the Shepherd, a title which we find assumed by the early
Chaldean princes and which proves the pastoral habits of
the people. He also notes "the evidence of language
shows that when the Semites first came in contact with
the civilization of Accad, they were mere desert nomads
dwelling in tents and wanting the first evidence of culture.
At the earliest historical period throughout the extensive
region we are now considering, the doctrine of local
tutelar gods prevailed, and as the country was parcelled
out into districts under definite tribal or communal
arrangements, so was it allotted to distinct god-powers,
each of whom, singly in small places, but in connection
with other like tribal gods in larger groups, presided over
all the communal supernal manifestations in their special
districts. In some cases this supernal authority went with
288 THE EVOLUTION OF THE
the land ; they were the inalienable gods of the country ;
in others it applied to the people. Possibly the first class
of gods were nature deities and the second tribal or hero
fathers. In some cases these distinctions might be
abrogated, as by conquest, and the carrying off the local
gods ; they were ousted from their jurisdictions ; the
conqueror may be attaching the people to his god.
Several instances of the conquest and removal of the local
gods are on record, in some cases their restoration and
consequent renewal of authority, as was the case with
the Hebrews on their restoration after the Babylonian
captivity. Thus, Esarhaddon, in the inscription recording
his conquests, records that Tabua, "a young woman
brought up in my palaces I appointed to be their queen,
and with her gods to her land restored." (Records of the
Past, III. p. 115.) Samsivul, King of Assyria, besieged
and took Meturnal and two hundred other cities, when
besides seizing the people and their goods he carried off
their gods into captivity. (Ibid. Y. p. 96.) In another
inscription Sargon restores the gods who are living there
to Kalus, Orchoe, Ur, Rata, Kullub, and Kisik. (Ibid. VII.
p. 25.) The same king is said to have taken from Musasir
the gods Haldia and Bagabartu, and also the gods from
Ashdod. (Ibid. VII. p. 40.) In another case, Yauteh, son
of Hazael, king of Kedar (Damascus), made submission to
Sargon for his gods which Sargon' s father had carried off.
" I made him swear by the great gods and then restored
them." (Ibid. IX. p. 61.) Merodach Baladan, King of
Babylon, fled in the night from the attack of Sargon to
the town of Ikbibel; he assembled together the towns
possessing oracles, and the gods living in these towns;
to save them he brought them to Dur Sakin, fortifying
its walls ; after the conquest he returned each god to
its town, restoring them to their sanctuaries. (Ibid. IX.
p. 15.) In some cases the gods, as a severe punishment,
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 289
were destroyed. Thus Sennacherib, when he took the city
of Niti, broke up the gods thereof. The most remarkable
case is that Maraduk nadin Ahi, King of Accad, carried
away Vul and Sala, the gods of Ekali ; these in the time
of Tugulti Palesir, King of Assyria, were carried off and
brought to Babylon, and after the long period of 418
years, according to the Bavian Inscription of Senna-
cherib, he caused them to come forth and. "to the temples
I restored." (Ibid. IX. p. 27.)
We have quoted these many instances of the restoration
of gods, because from them, and the still more extensive
series of instances in which not only were the gods but the
people also absorbed by the conqueror, we may form some
conception of the manner in which, under like conditions,
the series of local tutelar deities in any large homogeneous
country became blended and confederated.
The relation of the tutelar god and his worshippers was
that of an implied contract, and did not necessarily signify
more than a personal agreement which admitted of a new
selection. Thus, Bel from the beginning was the tutelar
god of Babylon, yet, for certain personal reasons, Nebu-
chadnezzar esteemed Merodach as its tutelar god. During
his sovereignty all his enterprises were undertaken in the
name of Merodach as the presiding deity in the Babylonian
supernal confederacy. Rawlinson (Five Great Monarchies,
III. p. 26) writes : " Nebuchadnezzar devoted himself in
an especial way to Merodach, and not only assigned him
titles of honour which implied his supremacy over all the
remaining gods, but even identified him with the great
Bel, the ancient tutelary god of the capital. Nabonidus
seems to have restored Bel to his old position, re-establishing
the distinction between him and Merodach, and preferring
to devote himself to the former." We have to remember
that each important personage, besides having his com-
munal gods, also had his special individual guardian deity.
10
290 THE EVOLUTION OP THE
It might be his totem, his natal selected name, or the
planetary power that presided at his birth that became
his individual guardian. In the case of Nebuchadnezzar,
at least two of these motives settled his supernal selection.
Merodach was only second in rank among the tutelar gods
of Babylon, and as the presiding star of his existence,
he says, " The god Merodach deposited the germ in my
mother's womb." (Records of the Past, V. p. 114.)
The apparent principle on which a local or an individual' g
god was selected was purely arbitrary. What the gods
of Terah, the father of Abraham, were we are not informed ;
but from Genesis we infer that his god was not Yahweh,
as Na-hor, Abraham's brother, worshipped other gods, and
as we read, these penates or totems were stolen by Jacob's
wife from her father. The first intimation of the tutelar
relationship of Yahweh and the father of the Hebrews,
was God appearing to Abraham probably in a dream, as
He afterwards did to Jacob.
We can follow the growth of supernal powers in the
relations of the various tutelar deities in a district to one
another, and when a people were enslaved and their god
carried away into captivity, the god of the conquerors takes
precedence over that of the captives, and, like the Hebrews
under the Philistines, Baal was worshipped by them in
conjunction with Yahweh. In a similar manner the various
groups of gods had their origin through the combination
of several local communes. That such was the case with
the Babylonian empire and the Council of Babylonian
gods will be readily perceived. Babylon, like Rome, was
constituted of two communities residing on the opposite
sides of the river, each of which had its original tribal
tutelar god. On the one side Bel was honoured, on the
other Merodach, and at an early period when the two
were combined in one state, Bel, as representing probably
the largest community, was accorded precedence. Other
OODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 291
communes along the river bank had also selected their
gods, as Nebo by Borsippa, Nergal by Cutha, the moon-
god by Ur, Bettis by Niffer, Hea by Hit, Ana by Erech,
the sun-god by Zipparah. As Rawlinson says : " Out of
his own city a god was not greatly respected unless by
those who regarded him as a special personal protector."
(Five Mon. III. p. 28.)
When by conquest, and probably in some instances by
voluntary amalgamation, the several cities we have named
became one political confederacy, then we find the local
tutelar gods were also brought together as a supernal
conclave. Thus, as a general rule, at Babylon Bel was the
chief of the gods, though often others are referred to as
chiefs of the gods. Probably, as a general rule, each god
was esteemed as chief in his own immediate jurisdiction,
and this may explain why we so often meet in inscriptions
with even secondary gods being named first and addressed
as great gods.
The same system of local tutelar deities prevailed in the
various communes that formed the Assyrian State, and they
differed both in the persons of the gods and in their reputed
rank in the supernal conclave at different periods. Assur
was the presiding deity of the city of Assur. Calah was,
during the continuance of the empire, the great god, the
father of the gods, the god who created himself. Nebo was
also a tutelar god in Calah, and Sin, the moon-god, at
Harran. Ishtar was tutelar at both Arbela and Nineveh.
Betimes, the tutelar god, like the offended ghosts of dead
kindred, becomes antagonistic to his kin or tho land and
people of his adoption, and, like Yahweh, delivers them over
as a spoil into the hands of their enemies, as tho Hebrews
to tho Philistines. The Moabite stone declares that
" Omri, king of Israel, oppressed Moab for Chemosh was
angry with his land, ' but like Yahweh, Chemosh relented '
and had mercy and said to me, Go, take Nebo against Israel,
19 *
292 THE EVOLUTION OP THE
and I went in the night and fought against it, and I took
it, and slew in all seven thousand men. The women and
maidens I devoted to Chemosh, and I took the vessels of
Jehovah and offered them before Chemosh." (Records of
the Past, XL p. 167.) It is singular that, like the medicine-
man, the tutelar god makes capital out of defeat or failure.
If the spell or charm fails it is due to some fault in the
worshipper; if the rain fails to come, some tabu has been
broken. So, when the people are defeated and their lands
harassed, it is due to the wrath of their tutelar god who
withholds his hand.
We have evidence through inscriptions on stone, coins,
cylinders, and bricks, that the same system of communal
tutelar deities prevailed from the shores of the Mediter-
ranean to the Persian Gulf, and from Armenia to the
Straits of Hercules. We have affirmed the tutelar deities
of the Phoenicians, the Moabites, the Hittites, the Hebrews,
the Arabs, and the various peoples of Upper Chaldea and
the modern Mesopotamia, and there is great probability
that in time, through the efficiency of the researches, that
complete records of the several tribes and nations will be
affirmed and classified with the names of their successive
sovereigns, their conquests and guardian tutelar deities.
As it is, we know that the same system of combining
the worship of amalgamated gods and peoples prevailed
generally as we have shown in reference to Assyria and
Babylon. Even distant Aden had its council of gods, as
Athor, Haubas, II Makah, Yatha, Dhat Hirna, and Dhat
Badan. (Trans. Soc. Bi. Arch. II. p. 336.) Of the
general worship of tutelary gods in Arabia, the same work
notes that the "word patron, or tutelary god, frequently
occurs in Himyaritic." (Ibid. II. p. 340.) Duncker
informs us that the Benu Bekr worshipped Audh the
burning one, the Kinnana and the Benu Gatafaur
worshipped the goddess Uzza, and the Kafit tribe the
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 293
goddess Allat. At Medinab the goddess Manat held sway,
and the associated Koresh swore by Allat, Uzza, and Manat.
Most of these are also referred to in the Koran.
Among the Canaanites and Phoenicians we meet with a
series of tutelar gods assimilating in some respects with
those of the Syrians, Accadians, and Chaldeans. El or II in
various modifications is observed in several god-conclaves,
also Itar or Astarte, and Artemis is familiarly known from
the river of Jordan to the Euphrates. Yav, so familiar as
the Hebrew Yahweh, was a Babylonian god in the days of
Nebuchadnezzar, and was the patron of agriculture at
Borsippa; he was associated with the moon-god, and in one
Assyrian inscription is described as the great ruler of
heaven and earth.
Urukh is the first, as yet recorded, early military feudal
king who brought several of the tribes and communes
under one royal jurisdiction. Rawlinson places this event
B.C. 2286. For such a coalition to have been workable, the
civilization of the associated communes must have been
of an elevated character, and we find that architecture
was considerably advanced, and that Urukh, probably in
connection with the priests, caused new temples or shrine
mounds to be erected in every city under his rule. They
not only knew how to make bricks, but had acquired the
art of burning them, and applied them in various ways to
buildings, drains, and walls. More, they had elaborated a
simple style of writing which they used in inscriptions on
bricks and on cylinders, with figures of men and gods.
We take it that the communes at Bel Nimrod, Mughoir,
Warka, Calnah, and Larsa, must have been a long time
in existence before they were combined to form the empire
I rukh, and that more primitive templo mounds must
have existed in all those places to their several tutelar
deities.
At the early period to which wo refer, the general
294 THE EVOLUTION OP THE
system of god-beads, of whose after existence we read so
much, had been evolved, their nature, character, and myth
settled, though they afterwards may have been more
amplified. Throughout Western Asia the communes had
accepted their tutelar gods, subject only to necessary
political changes. Yet a vast period of time must have
preceded this era, in which the whole series of hero-gods
had been evolved, in which the god-myths and nature-
myths were conceived, and the nature-gods themselves had
passed from physical entities to personal deities, ghost
spirits had run through the cycle of changes embodied
in evil spirits, fetish powers, and ancestral penates, the
surviving forms of which still exist in the same countries as
they did in the days when Assur and Nebo, Merodach, Bel,
El, Yav, and Melkarth expressed the highest evolution of
supernal powers.
That the old Assyrians believed in the universal appear-
ance of spirits or ghosts, and, as with the South Sea
Islanders and other races of men, held that men were of
a double nature, body and soul, so they held that all other
objects in nature possessed the same essential duality.
Professor Sayce writes : " The Accadians believed that
every object and phenomena in nature had its Zi or spirit,
some of these beneficent, others hostile to man, like the
objects and phenomena they represented. Naturally, how-
ever, there were more malevolent than beneficent spirits in
the universe, and there was scarcely an action which did
not risk demoniac possession. Diseases were due to the
malevolence of these spirits, and could be cured only by
the use of certain charms or exorcisms." (Assyria, its
Princes, p. 55.)
According to Lenormant, in the creed of the Chaldeans,
all diseases, as among savage races, were ascribed to the
malevolence of spirit demons. Diseases, death, anguish of
all kinds, are the direct actions of offended ghosts, either
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 295
those of relatives or enemies. The evil bewitchment, we
are told, may be the bewitchment of my father, or of the
seven branches of the house of my father, of my family, of
my slaves, of my free bondwomen and concubines, of the
living or the dead. Evil as the action of low-class spirits
is an early sentiment, but evil as moral punishment by the
deity for a crime or sin expresses a much higher state of
evolution. We have both phases expressed in the plastic
writings of the Chaldeans more, we have an intermediate
phase present to us in the dramatic romance of Job.
Therein the tutelar deity plays with his worshipper as a
child plays with its toys. Job is twitted by the evil one as
being good, simply because it pays, on which his tutelar
deity relegates him to the influence of his enemy; he is
tried and not found wanting. The dramatic form of the
contest works out the assumed cause of Job's misfortunes;
he must have been false to his God, and the ills he endured
were the Divine punishments therefore. Of the direct
actions of the gods in punishing men, whether by removing
their protective agencies, as in several instances in the
Iliad, or by the thunderbolts of Jove, the arrows of Apollo,
and other examples in Greek mythology, we need only
refer to.
In the Chaldean inscriptions evil is presented to us in its
several aspects now us the spirit of kin-revenge, then as
the spell of the medicine-man. An evil bhute may cause it,
or it may express the vengeance of the tutelar god, even
the punishment for moral sin. The primitive idea of
totem vengeance is affirmed by Lenormant of the Arabs^
when the soul, separating from the body, flies away in the
form of a bird, calling hama or sada and incessantly flying
around the tomb, or coming to the corpse and telling
the dead what his children are doing. If ho had been
murdered, the bird cried 'give me drink/ and continued
to repeat the words until relations had avenged him by
296 THE EVOLUTION OF THE
shedding the blood of the murderer." (Anc. Hist. East, II.
p. 253.)
Of low-class spirits as the cause of evils, we read :
" On high they bring trouble and below they bring confusion.
Falling in rain from the sky, issuing from the earth,
They penetrate the strong timbers, they pass from house to house.
Doors do not stop them, bolts do not stop them ; they glide
In at the doors like serpents, they enter the windows like the wind.
They hinder the wife conceiving by her husband,
They take the child from the knees of the man.
They make the free woman leave the house,
They are the voices which cry and pursue mankind.
They assail country after country ; they take the slave from his place r
They make a son quit his father's house." (Chal. Magic, p. 30.)
Of the higher class of demons which rule on the wastes
of the earth, and the beneficent guardian deities which are
becoming tutelar, we quote the following : " The wicked
god, the wicked demon ; the demon of the sea, the demon
of the marsh, the demon of the desert, the demon of the
mountain; the evil genius, the enormous uruku, the bad
wind. Spirit of the heavens conjure it, spirit of the earth
conjure it." (Ibid. p. 3.) Later on the demons had special
names and special powers. We read of the wicked Alat r
the wicked Gigim, the bad Telal, the wicked god, the
wicked Maskim. These were most probably the tutelar
gods of the enemies. Special diseases were caused by
special demons. " The execrable Idpa acts on the head of
man, the malevolent Mautar on the life of man ; Unq on
the forehead, Alal on the chest, Gigim on the bowels, and
Telal on the hands. Some evils are the effects of impreca-
tions. ' The malicious imprecation acts on the man like a
wicked demon/ The voice which curses has power over
him. The malicious imprecation is the spell which pro-
duces the disease of the head. The voice which curses
loads him like a veil."
GODS OF ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 297
The gods of Assyria, like the gods of Olympus, may strike
direct.
" May Ishtar strike him in the presence of the gods,
May Gala pour inside him a deadly poison,
May Rim inundate his fields, Sarakh destroy his harvests,
And Nebo hurry him into incurable despair." (Ibid. p. 69.)
So the tutelar gods may directly intervene to save their
-hippers. Thus "the god Ztak (the Tigris); may he
penetrate his head for the prolongation of his life. He
will never depart from him." Of evil ensuing as the
punishment for sin Lenormant quotes many illustrations :
in one like Job the man knows not in what he has offended.
He is ill, but he cannot fathom how he caused it.
" Sun-god ! thou that clothcth the dead with life,
Supreme in mercy for him that is troubled.
father supreme ! I am debased and walk to and fro.
In misery and in affliction I held myself.
My littleness I know not, the sin I have committed I know not.
1 am small and he is great. Sun-god ! stand still and hear me."
We have in these ancient Babylonian magic texts expo-
sitions of all the early concepts of the origin of evil, they
represent also, in a series of successional developments, the
history of the social and mental progress of the race. We
<-t that those expressing the most primitive ideas are
haic, and that any references to physical or
im'iital anguish being punishments for sins are the products
MI an julvanred civilization. It may happen that some
lying archaic forms of thought are of later date, mero
survival sentiments among the vulgar of exploded con-
i-cjiis, but we feel assured that none denoting moral sin
will ever be presented in an archaic type.
On the early >entinients entertained by the races we arc
now i-oii-idrrmir, Lenormant, who has fully perceived the
process of god-evolution in Babylonia, writes : " The system
was actually that of an adoration of the elementary spirits
298 THE EVOLUTION OP THE
as marked as among the Attai nations or in ancient
China. It was founded on the belief in innumerable per-
sonal spirits distributed in every part throughout nature,
sometimes blended with the objects they animated and
sometimes separate from them. Spirits everywhere dis-
persed produced all the phenomena of nature, and directed
and animated all created things. They caused evil and
good, guided the movements of the celestial bodies, brought
back the seasons in their order, made the winds to blow
and the rains to fall, and produced by their influence
atmospheric phenomena both beneficent and destructive;
they also rendered the earth fertile and caused plants to
germinate and to bear fruit, presided over the birth and
preserved the lives of living beings, and yet, at the same
time, sent death and diseases. There were spirits of this
kind everywhere in the starry heavens, on the earth, and
in the intermediate regions of the atmosphere; each element
was full of them, and nothing could exist without them.
A very distinct personality was ascribed to them, and we
see no trace of the idea of a supreme god, of a first prin-
ciple with which they were connected and from which they
derived their existence." (Chaldean Magic, p. 144.) They
were simply a heterogeneous chaos of forces not regulated
by a superior power, not impelled to action by fate, but,
like the interactions of a miscellaneous crowd, their move-
ments were balanced, though occasionally coming into
contact, by that indefinable rule of each for himself that
mortals call chance. This was the presiding principle in
nature : the eclipse, the storm, lightning and rain were
only occasional antagonisms in which the weaker force had
to give way, and the chaos of self-acting atoms proceeded
as before. Man held his position in this world of conflict
and individuality, not only by the prowess of his hand, the
strength of his limbs, but by his capacity to utilize all
other forces, and the physical substances, living beings,
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 299
and the supernal attributes were rendered subservient to
his good.
The magic texts of the Babylonians not only define
spirit action, but they convey to our minds the survival
forms of the primary adoration of charms and spells, and
that transitionary stage in which the indefinite spirit-
powers are still worked by spells, and the spirit taking the
place of the medicine-man gains his purpose, not by the
mana-power of spiritual control, but is content to appeal
to charms and invocations.
"We recognize the primitive sentiments in the worship of
holy fetish stones as the Caaba, of trees as the sacred trees
of the Assyrians and the Arabs, of animal forms of all
kinds, of fetish foods and the use of parts of animals, as
symbols possessing sacred powers. Rawlinson writes :
"Each god seems to have had one or more emblematic
signs by which he could be pictorically symbolized. The
cylinders are full of such forms which are often crowded
into every vacant space. Thus a circle, plain or crossed,
designated the sun-god; a six-rayed star, Gula; a double
or triple thunderbolt, Vul, the god of the atmosphere ; a
serpent, Hea ; a naked female, Ishtar ; a fish Ninip. Of many
others the significance is unknown; each of thc'in represents
a deity as well as the idol figure. The owner of the cylinder
1 the gods whoso signs were contained on his
cylinder, and one cylinder sometimes had eight or ten such
emblems/' (Five Great Monarchies, III. p. 32.) These AV. re
all fetishes as totems. Such was Kirub, a bull with a human
face ; Mergal, a lion with a man's head. Esarhaddon says :
" May the guardian bull, the guardian genius who protects
the strength of my throne, always preserve my name in joy
and honour." In the illness of Izdubar the fetish " Manu-
bain tree was angry." In the Fragments on the Seven
Kvil Spirits Merodach is ordered to fetch "the laurel, the
baleful tree that breaks in pieces tin- inculii." The seven
300 THE EVOLUTION OP
wicked spirits themselves are but fetishes : the first is a
scorpion, the second a thunderbolt, the third a leopard, the
fourth a serpent, the fifth a watch-dog, the sixth a raging
tempest, the seventh a messenger of an evil wind.
Like fetish forms were attached to the later talismans.
Some were demon images with the heads of rams, hyenas,
and other animals, hair, feathers, and other parts of animals,,
stones of various kinds, metal articles, anything strange
or mysterious. Some were sacred from their associations
and of immense power, like the host in the sentiment of
the Mediaeval Catholic, was the mamit of the Babylonians ;
others were sacred bands having texts and imprecations,
these were bound round the head, worn on the body and
in various ways attached to the person.
Dogs are fetishes in the omens of blue, white, spotted
and female dogs, also in the "hair of a cow passing yester-
day/ 3 the " blood of the mystic eye, the circle of grass
herbs, the heart of a jackal, the nostril of a pig, the eagle's
w r ing, and the bird's beak." Portents are presented in an
endless variety of unexpected or irregularly appearing
objects, in the sky, on the earth, in the air, and in the
house whose portentous influence passes from the family to
the planetary bodies.
On the evolution of the Assyrian gods Lenorrnant observes:
" Certain of gods who did not differ essentially in their
nature from the other spirits were known by the same
name Zi spirits. They possessed a distinct title only
because their power was thought to be greater and to have
a wider scope than the other spirits. As far as we can
see, the god differed from the simple spirit in that he was
less strictly localized and that he was regarded as animating
a great part of the world, many phenomena, and a class
of similar beings, each of which individually possessed a
spirit." (Chal. Mag. p. 148.) This simply describes them
as petty supernal kings, each having chiefs and headmen
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 301
under his jurisdiction. As yet there is no great king,
as afterwards occurs. In the process of development
M. Lenormant infers that the spirit of heaven and spirit
of earth of the old invocations were converted into the
ruling gods Ana and Hea.
Duncker (Hist. Ant. I. p. 355) shows that many of the
gods were hero-gods. Thus, "when the highest fell in
the conflict with wild beasts he was worshipped by his
children with libations and sacrifices." Ninip is called
the most powerful hero. Ur, the mythical King of Berosus,
was reverenced as a god. There can be little doubt but
that El, Bel, Dagon, said by Philo to have invented the
plough, Moloch, Melkarth, Izdubar, and several others were
men-gods. El is said to have built Byblus, in Phoenicia,
and when he died a star was named after him.
Though neighbouring on Egypt, it is remarkable that
family ancestral deities were never fully developed in
Western Asia ; this may in a great measure be accounted
for in the vague conceptions they evolved of a future life ;
indeed, it is doubtful if the after-world cult was not
derived from foreign sources, and though human spirits or
the ghosts of the dead were conceived, like as with the
Tonga islanders and some other people, these were only
those of chiefs, heroes, and priests.
Some of the gods, probably of human origin, represented
principles and attributes. Rimmon, the crowned hero, was
lord of fertility ; Dabara, the warrior, and Ninip, the son of
Bel, was the great warrior. Hea was god of wisdom, Serakh
the god of harvest, Manu the great Fate. Out of the
various deities common in a locality each family, commune,
or tribe selected, like Abraham, his own tuti-lar divinity.
Some appear to have appointed the founder of the com-
munity, or a notable warrior or discoverer, as their supernal
representative; others devoted themselves to the powers in
nature. Some, as cultivators, appealed to the sun-god or
302 THE EVOLUTION OP THE
the rain-god and the special spirit of the harvest. Others
appealed to the unknown mana in all things the vague,
the incomprehensible. They called it " the Strong One
the Existing One the Mighty One Tree the Above."
Some of these terms are generic, and were applied indis-
criminately to all conceptions having an exalted supernal
nature, mere chieftain gods. Such were Ul, El, Eloah, Al,
Allah in its various local expressions of a supernal power.
This was used in the most general way by the Assyrians
and the other races for any of the various god-powers and
fetish idols. As far as we can judge, there were ten or
more accepted gods in each local Divine conclave, but the
selected tutelar spirit of the place held the chief position
and presided in the assembly. M'Clintock (Cyclop, of
Sib. III. p. 901) writes that Jerome and the Eabbis
enumerate ten Hebrew words as meaning God; each of
these probably represented a different manifestation of
supernal attributes.
In the smaller communes the one god-power does every-
thing, but in the larger states each has his ascribed duties. .
Sargon assigns diverse forms of help to each of his gods.
Samas made his designs successful, Bin afforded him
abundance, Bel El laid the foundations of his city, Mylitta
grinds the painting stone in his bosom, Anu executes the
work of my hands, Ishtar excites the men, Hea arranges
the marriages. (Bull, Ins. Khorsabad.) So, according to
Gr. Smith, Eimmon had charge of the canals, Ninip
destroyed the wicked, Samas was judge of heaven and
earth, and Nergal illuminated the great city Hades.
Naturally the apportioning of the gods to diverse duties
led not only to their classification but to the supremacy of
the most exalted. As the chief god varied in different
places, nothing is more common in the inscriptions than to
find the same deity allocated to diverse positions in the
various lists. That it was a common thing to abandon or
GODS OP ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA. 303
change the tutelar gods we have many exemplifications.
" Thus the anger of the great gods whose worship he had
abandoned Ashur, the Moon, the Sun, Bel, and Nebo
laid great affliction on him, and in the land of Elam slev,
him with the sword." ](Rec. of Past, III. p. 105.) The gods
of Carthage were originally Baal, Hainon and Tauith,
Melkarth and Esmun; these, under subsequent Greek
influence, were abandoned, and a temple of Apollo was
erected in the market-place, and the worship of Ceres ami
Proserpine introduced. (Lenormant, Anc. Hist. Ea. II.
p. 279.)
We can best present the similitude of gods and men in
their attributes, actions and associations, by quoting the
" War of the Seven Evil Spirits/' which is simply an ideal
delineation of a war between Assur and Babylon. (( Against
high heaven, the dwelling-place of Anu the king, they
plotted evil. Bel heard the news, and took counsel with
Hea, the sage of the gods. They stationed the Moon, the
Sun and Ishtar, to keep guard over the approach to
heaven. These three gods watched night and day unceas-
ingly. Those -even evil spirits rushed, on the base of
ii, and close in front of the Moon with fiery weapons
advanrril. Then thu noble Sun and Im the warrior, side
liy side stood firm, but Ishtar with Anu entered the exalted
dwelling and hid themselves in the summit of heaven.
Bel saw the noble Moon in eclipse, and sent Peku, his mes-
senger, to the deep to Hea. Hea, in the deep, bit his lips
and tears bedewed his face, and sent for Nerduk to help him.
They are seven, those evil spirits, and death they fear not.
They are seven, those evil spirits, who rush like a hur-
ricane and fall like firebrands on the earth. In front of
the Moon with fiery weapons they draw." (Rec. of Past,
V. p. 1G5.) In all the particulars the conflict is essentially
that of human antagonists; heaven is besieged as a city is
besieged, and the defence is carried on by a similar distri-
1304 THE EVOLUTION OP THE GODS OF ASSYRIA AND WESTERN ASIA
bution of forces; external help is sought in the same
manner by an ambassador, and the assailers and assailed
exhibit the same courage and pusillanimity as human
combatants. -
The highest evolution of the gods in Chaldea partook of
the division into gods of Heaven, Earth and Hades, as
with the Greeks. The great source of associate power was
a council of the gods. These councils in Olympus are
several times referred to by Homer. So the gods in the
war of the seven took council. Assur is described as the
first of his peers, "king of all the assembly of the great
gods." (Bee. of Past, III. p. 83.)
END OF VOLUME I.
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