(EorupU lluturrstly Utbrary BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF .THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND rHE GIFT OF 18^1 ?\3c-4 Q306 tj;^-**"---*'^"^*^*^ " ^^6X^-7 I35*X (S^^|fc;;;.„|.„^5^ Cornell University Library BL290 .C91 Idea of the soul 3 1924: 029 075 055 cqi ■^CMij. THE IDEA OF THE SOUL AGENTS America . . The Macmillan Company 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York Australasia The Oxford University Press 205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Canada . . The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd. 27 Richmond Street West, Toronto India , . . Macmillan & Company, Ltd. Macmillan Building, Bombay 309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta THE IDEA OF THE SOUL BY A. E. CRAWLEY, M.A. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE AUTHOR OF *THE MYSTIC ROSE: A STUDY OF PRIMITIVE MARRIAGE.' AND 'the TREE OF LIFE: A STUDY OF RELIGION* LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1909 Xv ^S^ ^/^ -M^ /\.^o4-i4-5' Animula, vagula, blandula, hospes comesque corporis ! quae nunc abibis in loca, pallidula, rigida, nudula ? nee, ut soles, dabis iocos. s< TO FRANCIS GALTON Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029075055 CONTENTS CHAP, I. Psychology and Primitive Culture . . . . i Nature of the Investigation — Tylor's Theory — Supple- mentary Theories — Criticism of Supplementary Theories — Criticism of Tylor's Theory — Essentials of Method. II. Elements of Language ...... 28 Connection of Language with the General Subject — The Holophrase — Personalisation — Repetition and Varia- tion — The Name. III. Elements of Thought ...... 56 Description of the Soul — The Primitive Mind — Per- ception — Ideation — Origin of the Idea of the Soul. IV. Pre-scientific Psychologies ..... 79 General Character of the Ethnological Evidence — Australian Psychology — Polynesian and Melanesian Psychologies — Papuan and Malayan Psychologies — Indian Psychologies — Asiatic Psychologies — American Psychologies — Chinese Psychology — African Psychologies — Egyptian Psychology — Semitic Psychology — European Psychology. V. The Nature of the Soul. . . . , .189 Conditions of its Development — Analysis of the Idea of the Soul — Visual Analogies — The Soul as a Miniature — Other Attributes of the Soul — The Theory of Embodi- ment — The Plurality of Souls. viii THE IDEA OF THE SOUL CHAP. PAGE VI. The Soul in Being 250 The Soul and the Self — The Soul as Guardian — Inani- mate Objects — The World of Spirits — The Ideal Theory in Practice — Ethical Applications — Ideas in relation to the Will — Conclusion. INDEX 299 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL CHAPTER I PSYCHOLOGY AND PRIMITIVE CULTURE § I. Nature of the Investigation, Few conceptions can show the universality and permanence, the creative power and morphological influence which have characterised throughout history the Idea of the Soul. To it we owe the conception of an order of spiritual beings, and of a spiritual world existing now and hereafter. At some relatively late stage of culture it became absolute in the idea of God. It is thus the basis of all religion. One typical case may be cited. The highest authority on the religions of China concludes that " the human soul is the original form of all beings of a higher order. Its worship is the basis of religion in that country. . . . Taoism was originally a compendium of customs and practices framed upon the prevailing ideas concerning the human soul. . . . It cast these into a system of philosophy, alchemy, and religion."^ But neither its origin nor its influence is confined to the religious sphere. Just as the soul itself is concerned with every mode of apprehending its total environment, so the idea of ^ J. J. M. De Groot, 'The Religious System of China (1891), I. xiil. i. I I 2 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the soul is bound up with the evolution of mind in general. We may go farther and assert that not only have its results upon the mind, and the difficulties which its comprehension has produced, assisted mental development, or rather have been inevitable conditions of it, but its origin and development also are identical with the earliest steps in mental evolution. Both in the r?ce and in the individual we shall find it to be the first purely intellectual result of human reaction to environment. It is thus our first effort towards an explanation of things, our first act of thought. In the early stages of culture the idea provides a form for consciousness, and in all stages its development involves the search for reality. This search is one aspect of that desire for knowledge, that instinct of curiosity, which is the mainspring of science. It is not too much to say that from the earliest culture known or inferable, up to the triumph of experimental science to-day, the idea has been the inspiration of all intellectual speculation — theological, metaphysical, and scientific. We may, therefore, employ another metaphor and describe it as the original cell out of which all thought and consequently all knowledge have been evolved. To trace its origin and development is thus in great measure to trace the origin and development of the soul itself, and the history of man's efforts to understand both himself and his world. This evolution has not been adequately expounded, and the reason is obvious. The anthropology of culture possesses an abundant material, but, as is often urged against it, its results are untrustworthy because its methods are inexact. The fact is that its methods are merely those of unaided common sense. Primitive psychology has yet to be written, but it cannot be PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 3 written by methods like these. Their inefFectiveness is well illustrated by the present problem. This, the most important and far-reaching of all sociological questions, the genesis of that great conception which divides man into body and soul, and the universe into matter and spirit, still, after years of study, remains unanswered. The statement which to-day passes for a solution is little more advanced than that of Hobbes, two hundred and fifty years ago, or even than those of Aristotle and the still earlier Greek thinkers whom Lucretius followed. For all practical purposes we are no nearer a solution than were the thinkers of more than two thousand years ago. Yet this problem is the simplest, as it is the first, of all the problems presented by mental evolution in man. When once anthropology employs the verified experimental results of psychology the solution is obvious. The origin not only of the idea of the soul itself, but of the idea of a spiritual or supernatural world, is then automatically explained. § 2. Tylors Theory. The only classical work on the subject has been done by Tylor, who colligated the facts of savage and barbarous culture by the principle of animism, " the doctrine of souls." ^ His study illustrated the influence of the idea in the evolution of culture. But he was more concerned with its influence than with its origin. In his explanation of the latter there is no psychological precision — the fact being that his explanation was 1 E. B. Tylor, "The Religion of Savages" in The Fortnightly Re^vienv, August 1866 ; "The Philosophy of Religion among the Lower Races of Mankind," Journal of the Ethnological Society, 1870 ; Primitive Culture — first edition 1871, second 1873, third 1891, fourth 1903. His Gifford Lectures on the subject have not yet been published. 4 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL completed before the development of experimental psychology. Nevertheless, its main features have not been materially altered ; all other work on the subject has been mainly descriptive. Tylor's explanation, therefore, must be a starting-point for further inquiry. We shall give an abstract of his account of animism and of his explanation of its origin, and shall then discuss some attempts at improving the explanation, and finally the explanation itself. Tylor described animism as " a belief in the anima- tion of all nature, rising at its highest pitch to personification." This belief is " bound up with that primitive mental state where man recognises in every detail of his world the operation of personal life and will," and is, in short, a conception of " pervading life and will in nature." Animism is divided into " two great dogmas, forming part of one consistent doctrine." The first concerns the souls of individual creatures ; the second concerns other spirits up to the rank of powerful deities. He speaks of the whole as " an ancient and world-wide philosophy, of which belief is the theory and worship is the practice," and gives as "a minimum definition " of religion " the belief in spiritual beings." ^ For an explanation of the origin of the idea of souls in natural objects he relies on the presupposed belief in the animation of all nature. The idea of the soul of man he explains thus : the earliest men were confronted with two intellectual problems, (i) What makes the difference between a living body and a dead ? What causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death.'* (2) What are those human shapes which appear in dreams and visions ? 1 E. B. Tylor, Primiti've Culture'^y I 285, 287; ^i. 424, 426. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 5 The solution was that man possessed a "life " and a " phantom " ; these were separable, but could be, and, in the end, were combined as a dual manifestation of one and the same " soul." ^ This explanation was partially anticipated by Hobbes. " For the matter or substance of the Invisible Agents so fancyed, they could not by naturall cogitation fall upon any other concept, but that it was the same as that of the Soule of man, and that the Soule of man was of the same substance with that which appeareth in a Dreame to one that sleepeth ; or in a Looking-glasse to one that Is awake ; which, men not knowing that such apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the Fancy, think to be reall and external Substances/' " From this ignorance of how to distinguish Dreams and other strong fancies from Vision and Sense did arise the greater part of the religion of the Gentiles in , times past that worshipped Satyres, Faunes, Nymphs, and the like ; and nowadays the opinion that rude people have of Fayries, Ghosts, and Goblins, and of the power of Witches." ^ § 3. Supplementary Theories, Little has been taken from or added to the Tylorlan theory of the origin of animism. On it have been based many important descriptive studies of the development of cultural and social institutions. Some students assume that hallucination, such as is found to-day in persons who see ghosts, was a more or less normal characteristic of primitive man. ^ E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture^, i. 428, 429. We shall preserve, as far as possible, the useful distinction between "soul," as connected with " corporeal realities,*' and " spirit," as incorporeal. 2 T. Hobbes, Lenjtatkan (1651), chapters ii. and xii. 6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Others emphasise the beHef in a " life '* or '' vital principle " animating all nature. This belief has been distinguished by the term animatism. The theory is half of the Tylorian, and complementary to the other half expounded by Hobbes. Others point to facts which, as they urge, are with difficulty brought into the category of animism, such as those "supreme beings" occasionally found in the lower culture. These are not " spirits," but complete material personalities, magnified men- Others, again, cite various phenomena which may indicate an age before spirits, a pre-animistic period, and infer that the mysterious, the awful, or the unusual became the "supernatural," and in particular led men to conceive a material "force" or objectified "will," existing in such objects as produced the feelings of awe and mystery, and manifesting itself after the fashion of electric energy. This force would develop into "personified" beings. The first half of this view is as old as Hobbes and the Greek and Latin thinkers. It is elaborated by Westermarck. "It is not," he says, " correct to say that ' as the objects of the visible world are conceived as animated, volitional, and emotional, they may be deemed the originators of those misfortunes of which the true cause Is unknown.' " Man's belief in supernatural agents "is an attempt to explain strange and mysterious phenomena which suggest a volitional cause. The assumed cause is the will of a supernatural being. ... If an object of nature is looked upon as a supernatural agent, mentality and life are at the same time attributed to it as a matter of course. Inanimate things are conceived as volitional, emotional, and animate, because they are deemed the PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 7 originators of startling events."^ This he conceives to be the true origin of animism. Frazer has analysed funeral and mourning customs in connection with the emotion of fear. He has also developed the idea of the external soul, and has empha- sised the frequent belief that the soul is a miniature duplicate of the thing.^ Kruijt, confining his conclusions to the East Indian Islanders, holds that they distinguish sharply between the soul of a living and of a dead man. The former is part of the pantheistic life which fills all Nature ; the latter alone is individual. It does not come into being until a man is dead. These two *' souls " are never combined ; the soul of a man in life is an absolutely diiFerent thing from his soul after death.^ Wundt has applied psychology to the development of rehgion, ritual, and myth, but has not given a new explanation of the origin of animism.* § 4. Criticism of Supplementary Theories, These further views require some brief discussion. Hallucination is no more frequent in the lower culture than in civilisation. The biological probability is that its frequency, never considerable, decreases the nearer man is to the animals. By hypothesis, animism was a very early step in progress. Hallucination, moreover, is abnormal, but, in order to explain a ^ E. Westermarck, The Origin and De'velopment of the Moral Ideas (1908), ii. 395 f, quoting Peschel, Races of Man, 245. 2 J. G. Frazer, " On certain Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xv. 64 ff. ; The Golden Bough (1890). 3 A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel (1906). ^ W. Wundt, VUkerpsychologie : Mythus und Religion {1908-9). 8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL universal phenomenon, such as the belief in the soul, normal and universal, not abnormal and occasional causes must be assigned. There is a further point : hallucinational apparitions are as real as the real objects.^ They might thus, in the case of a subject, who by hypothesis has not yet acquired the idea of the soul, produce a belief in duplicate reality or bilocation, namely, that a person or thing can be in two places at once. They could not produce, even for their occasional percipients, a belief in an entity like the soul, less real and less material than the body. The " supreme beings," not to be confused with "heroes," like those of the Torres Islanders,^ or with " ancestral spirits," like those of the Kafirs,^ or with the " first men," so generally assumed by the early biologist,* are frequent in the higher barbarism ; in the lowest savagery, as among the Australians, their occurrence is not established.^ If they did exist here they would be explainable as premature sports of the mythologising imagination. Their presence or absence, however, has nothing to do with the origin of the idea of the soul, but only concerns the origin of the idea of a God. If this did not originate in the same way as the idea of the soul, it must have originated from notions of causality. These, however, are not early, 1 For convenience we shall employ the terms "real" and "reality "in opposition to "ideal" and "ideality," to express the "thing" or "object," as the phenomenal in space in opposition to the mental reality. 2 A. C. Haddon, Report of the Cambridge Expedition to 'Torres Strait, v. 256^ 367* 377- 3 See below, ch. iv. * J. Perham, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1881), No. viii. 144. ^ Wundt decides, on psychological grounds, against the existence of a primitive Monotheism or Cryptomonotheism, V'olkerpsychologie (1909), ii. iii. ; 395, 404 ff. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 9 and the notion of " cause *' cannot originate a personal entity. The phenomena supposed to result in '* pre-animistic " ideas of an objectified " will " are the unusual, practically the abnormal experiences of life. Notions like the mana of the Melanesians, the orenda ^ of the Hurons, the wakan of the Dacotas, expressing mysterious power, such as is exercised by the professional seer, shaman, or medicine-man, and by impressive natural "forces" or objects, as, for instance, electricity or curious rocks, or by anything unusual, are psychologically late developments. They are also merely different in degree from other ideas of activity. Again, though awe and wonder, terror and admiration, have had their share in the making of religion, the point here is the origin of the soul. Now, emotions cannot be separated from the sensations which institute them, and an emotion comes at the end, not at the beginning of a psychic process. Thus, we feel terror because we run away or want to run away ; we do not actually run away because we feel terror. This order is still constant when the sensation does not end in action. Again, an emotion, as such, cannot originate a sensible form. A personal concrete entity like the soul can only be developed from sensations, chiefly visual. Lastly, the assumption that early man conceived the idea of an impersonal, abstract "power," and subsequently, whether from this or otherwise, evolved the idea of a personal concrete soul, is an argument from the abstract to the concrete. The psychological order is always the other way, from the concrete to the abstract. Westermarck corrects this view by taking the 1 Hewitt, the authority for orenda, denies that it ever is personified ; Codrington, the authority for mana, says the same. lo THE IDEA OF THE SOUL psychological order. He also corrects the theory of the animation and personification of Nature as pre- ceding the development of the soul. But his argument does not give us the origin of animism, that is, of the idea of the soul. If the object is regarded as a supernatural being first, and later credited, as a matter of course, with a soul, we have two fallacies. First, an object is supernatural because it is extraordinary, it therefore becomes animised. But why ? Because it behaves like an extraordinary person. But this need not involve the idea that the extraordinary is the supernatural or spiritual. We must have the idea of the spiritual first. In any case also there is here the analogy, which is always late, from subject to object. Lastly, this view assigns a universal result to exceptional and sporadic causes. An argument may here be noticed as a curiosity of science, and a reduction to absurdity of the theory that emotions can produce the idea of a supernatural or spiritual world. It is to the effect that the higher animals possess the germ of animism, whatever that may be. This is supposed to be proved by familiar facts like these : — Romanes frightened a dog by tying a thread to a bone, and drawing the bone away from the animal. Most animals are alarmed by any unusual noise or appearance.^ The theory might derive support from the well-known beliefs that pigs can see wind, and that dogs can see spirits. The Euahlayi people in Austraha hold the latter opinion. In Mary- land there is a belief that horses can see ghosts. Irish peasants suppose that when a horse becomes frightened suddenly, and the driver can see nothing to account 1 G. J. Romanes, Animal IntelligencCj 455 ff. ; Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, 339. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE ii for it, the horse is in visual communion with the spirit- world.^ Kruijt's observation that the "life-soul" and the "after-death-soul" are never combined is an important contribution to the subject. He may be said to have completely established his view. His opinion, however, that the "life-soul" is impersonal is modified by himself He also ignores the possibility, which his facts suggest, of a personal soul, not merely a "life- soul," being developed during life. That the "life- soul" is merely a part of a pantheistic "life-force" pervading nature is an argument differing only in words from the Tylorian animation and personification of all nature, and suffers from the same defects. The inferences made in anthropology from savagery to primitive life are too often based neither on psychology, linguistics, nor biology. Phenomena from widely separated stages of evolution are too often classed together. There is a good deal of the un- scientific process from the abstract to the concrete. The anthropologist is perpetually guilty of the psychologist's fallacy ; he is always putting his own problems and ideas into the mind of primitive man. As a matter of fact the ordinary savage is not, and primitive man is still less likely to have been, confronted by any problems at all. If he had been they would not have taken the shape given to them by modern speculation. Man, of course, has always been trying to understand and to control his environ- ment, but in the early stages this process was un- conscious. The matters which are problems for us existed latent in the primitive brain ; there, undefined, ^ K. Langloh Parker, l^he Euahlayi Tribe (1905), 46; Journal of American Folklore, viii. 25, xi. 11. 12 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL lay both problem and answer ; through many ages ot savagery, first one and then another partial answer emerged into consciousness ; at the end of the series, hardly completed to-day, there will be a new synthesis in which riddle and answer are one. The theory of animatism will be discussed later. § 5. Criticism of Tylors Theory, Tylor explained animism before psychology could assist the explanation. The sole object of the present inquiry is to apply what psychology gives us to the problem of the origin of the idea of the soul. We have no desire to demolish any theory, still less to attempt to discredit any work of permanent value. But that anthropology is in need of some exactness of method is obvious from the chaos that still exists ; that such a state of things is mischievous is well shown by the following case : " A recent admirable manual of a Semitic language, by way of explaining objective gender, informs the pupil that ' to primitive man all nature seemed endowed with life ; he, therefore, ascribed the distinction of sex to every existing thing.' Rarely," adds Payne, " has more error been got into two lines. The writer has been misled by * animism.' "^ We shall frequently have occasion to refer to similar misconceptions arising from similar causes. Tylor himself over-estimated the importance of certain pathological or abnormal states as direct or indirect sources of animism. The ** trance," for instance, is pathological, that is to say, in the sense of the term established by Virchow, biologically abnormal, if we may apply this term to a psychological pheno- 1 E. J. Payne, History of the Neiv World called America (1899), ii. 264. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 13 menon. "Vision," in Tylor's use, is identical with hallucination of sight, an abnormal process. As we have already observed, it is illegitimate to base a universal phenomenon on abnormal facts. Yet he places " vision " and " trance " on a causational equality with dreams. " What causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death ? Nothing but dreams and visions could have ever put into men's minds such an idea as that of souls being ethereal images of bodies." ^ Hallucinations we have already discussed, and con- cluded that they would perhaps produce the ideas of bilocation and of duplication of objects. The incidental influence of epilepsy, hysteria, delirium, and mania, upon the ideas of inspiration and incarnation, has nothing to do with the actual origin of animism. Rare disturbances like these might corroborate an already existing idea of a separable or unattached " spirit." Dreams themselves are psychologically abnormal. Dreaming, in Wundt's phrase, is a normal temporary insanity. For practical purposes, however, dreams are normal enough, and, as the dream-theory of the origin of animism has been established for two thousand years or more, we have to reckon with it. Here, as always, we must assume a tabula rasa^ the naive mind of a child or primitive person, who has not even dreamt of such a thing as the soul. Are then the inferences from and about dreams sufficient to originate the idea of the soul ? Children, innocent of spiritualistic doctrine, regard dreaming as a matter of course, a process as natural and non- mysterious as ordinary sensation. Yet they realise a difference between the experiences of dreams and of 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture^ i. 450. 14 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL waking,-^ But there is no case on record of such a child inferring from dreams the existence of a soul, or of a reality different from the phenomenal. The Port Darwin Australians are described as having been unable to distinguish between body and soul. This as it may be, whatever it means. We are also told that they could give no explanation of dreams, though they believed in their reality.^ A Kafir, describing a dream, said that the dead man of whom he dreamed " came not as a snake or shade, but in very presence," and that he did not think it was the dead man until he awoke.^ This, of course, is the universal experience during the process of dreaming, but it is the inference made on waking that is the point. A difference is then, as a rule, inferred. Savages who have the idea of the soul say that the soul leaves the body and sees persons or things, or, more rarely, that the souls of persons and things visit the sleeper. But it is psychologically impossible for the idea of the soul, as we actually find it, to be originated by the inferences from dreams. In the first place, there is frequently at some point during the dream a semi-conscious realisation of self, that is to say, of the self as viewing things and persons in the dreams. In the next place, dream-figures are no less intense, generally more intense, and therefore more real, sometimes even larger, than what is seen when awake. It is quite erroneous to speak of dream-figures as "phantoms." It is in accordance with this super-reality that the naive consciousness speaks of seeing " him " or "her," or 'Mt " in a dream, not their souls. Can such an intensely real sight produce the idea of " souls 1 Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood (1906), 105. 2 P. Foelsche in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. 198. 3 R. Callaway, ^e Religious System of the Amazulu^, 231. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 15 being ethereal images of bodies," or the idea of a still more ethereal " phantom " ? ^ The " realities " of dreams might, equally with those of hallucinations, have produced the idea of bilocation, of duplicate "real" bodies; they might also have produced at a later stage, and probably have assisted in producing, the idea that the visual energy of the brain can leave the body during sleep ; but they could not have produced the idea of an ethereal, rarefied, and often miniature entity, much less the idea of a ghostly phantom. The chief characteristic of the soul in all its stages is this inferiority to the body in the qualities of solidity and extension. As we shall find, there is a simple process by which this ethereal body is produced. When produced, of course, dreams and other phenomena may corroborate it, or rather, may be explained by it, in spite of their greater " reality," but that they should have originally produced it is psychologically impossible. Equally important is the fact that, in spite of their intense reality, dream - figures are soon forgotten when the subject wakes ; as a rule they are not remembered at all. They have none of the persistence, except in their occasional momentary continuance on waking, of other impressions. In an earlier work Tylor had spoken of the life of primitive man as resembling " a long dream." ^ The description seems intended to suggest a habit of brooding over cosmic problems. Such did not exist. The phrase also gives an erroneous picture of a quick, alert, and hardy animal, whose senses were sharpened ^ Codrington concludes from the Melanesian evidence, that the phenomena of dreams did not produce the idea of the soul. See below, p. 1 01. ^ "E. B. Tylor, T/ie Early History of Mankind^ 137. 1 6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL by hunger and experienced in the continual search for food and in the avoidance of danger. In animals and children philosophical rumination and introspection do not occur ; they are rare in the lowest and highest savages alike. Their place is pre-empted by another habit which we shall discuss at a later stage.^ If, however, as is perhaps more probable, a sort of hallucinational confusion between subjective and objective reality is implied by the " long dream," this is equally false.^ Man's very existence depended on a rapid and precise distinction between subjective impressions and objective facts. Such a state of mind as this confusion involves would lead. If the subject of it survived, to a mystical monism, hardly to a dualism between body and soul. Next comes the question, What causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death ? Of these we need discuss two only, sleep and death. Now It must be admitted that savage accounts of the soul, when viewed together without distinction of peoples or stages of development, are roughly divisible, to all appearance, into what we may call in our phraseology a "life " and a "form." It is this which has caused misconception. We may observe at once that the former Is abstract, the latter concrete ; they are for this and for other reasons not contemporaneous. As in the case of dreams, the naive mind, observing a sleeper, regards the difference from the waking state as a matter ot course. Some other fact of consciousness Is required to institute thought on the subject. And when thought begins, will the first inference be that the soul or the "life" or anything Is absent ? Assuredly not, for the mind cannot conceive the absence of anything until 1 See below, ch. vi. 2 gee below, ch. v. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 17 it has acquired the idea of that thing, and the notion of " life " as a thing is a late abstraction. Similar objections lie against the answer to the questions — ^What causes death? and What makes the difference between a living body and a dead ? As we have already implied, the inference of " life " from the contrast of life and death is a case of proceeding from the abstract to the concrete. It is also a case of recognising a thing first in its absence. Primitive perception involved a difference between the sight of a living body and a dead, but made no analysis or conscious inference, any more than the savage mourner does when she treats her dead, for a time, as being still alive, though "different," or than the civilised mourner does, who, for a time, refuses against fact to believe that her loved one is dead. Feeling and mental habit are paramount. Inference, when it comes, wiU not result primarily in the conception of a vital principle, thus emphasised by contrast. Concepts like ''life," "force," "energy," are not and cannot be abstracted from the things in which they inhere, whether they are present or absent from them, either by early language or by early thought, just as they are not in scientific thought except artificially for analytical convenience. " Living-man," " dead-man," and the like, are ideas and expressions which precede by long ages the conceptions of "life" and "death," and when formed are not formed by any " combination " of the concepts "life" and "man," "death" and "man." Others have assumed an " awfulness felt to attach to the dead human body in itself," and combine this, emotion with the experiences of "trance and dream," the result being " the mysterious potency of the dead " 1 8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL developing into manes-worship.^ The origin of the worship of the dead presents no difficulty, and can be explained without the aid of potency, mysterious or otherwise ; ^ certainly it does not need the artificial aid of the awfulness of the corpse. This last notion requires confirmation. Savages are not normally afraid of dead bodies. They often eat them. In some cases they fear the infection of death ; ^ but what they generally fear is the ghost. The reasons for this fear will concern us later on. The view is mentioned, not as being directly connected with the origin of animism, but as illus- trating the tendency to explain normal results by abnormal emotions. Another illustration may be taken from the theories about blood. In a good deal of early thought the blood is connected with or identified with the " soul." In anthropological works there is a current notion that ' primitive man experienced awe at the sight of blood. The "mysterious potency" of blood in certain savage customs and beliefs has been attributed to this assumed emotion.* A child is distressed, perhaps, or somewhat alarmed at the first sight of blood, but adult primitive man, though childlike, was not a child. Certain animals show excitement, a very different emotion from awe, at the sight, or rather at the smell of blood. Cows, foi* instance, are much excited in the presence of blood.^ Carnivores, for obvious reasons, are greatly excited by it. Now cannibalism must have been fairly frequent among the earliest men. At any rate 1 R. R. Marett, "The nreshold of Religion (1909), 26 ft. 2 See below, ch. v. 3 A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose (1902), 95 fF. ; E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1908), ii. 303 ff. * Marett, 29. ^ F. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty^ (1908), 41, PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 19 blood is still among the lowest savages a valued food and drink, conveniently obtained from human beings. Among the Australians, for example, a man will readily open a vein for a thirsty friend ; the drinking of human blood is a regular custom.^ There is no reason why blood should originally have inspired awe, or have been regarded as mysterious, any more than other secretions, such as milk, itself merely blood filtered through a gland. We have next to consider the " belief in the animation of all nature . . . rising at its highest pitch to personification." This statement implies that every- thing is alive, as an animal is alive, and that at a late stage of evolution everything was also conceived as a "person," presumably a human person. The latter process is anthropomorphism, and may be illustrated by such gods as those of India, Greece, and Italy. Thus the sky, already alive, became a personally human god with human form and attributes — Zeus, represented in mythology and art as a glorified man. Anthropo- morphism, however, is late, and is chiefly confined to the greater forms of natural energy. Other students go so far as to assign this late development of anthropomorphic personification to primitive man. As to this, it has been observed by Hdffding, that the personification theory " seems to impute to primitive man a creative imagination which is possible only at a higher stage of development. And were the theory correct, it would necessarily be expected that language would denote material things by terms originally applied to mental things, whereas in reality it denotes mental things by terms originally material."^ ^ See Spencer and Gillen, The Natinje Tribes of Central Australia, 461, 475. 2 H. HofFding, Outlines of Psychology (1896), 7. 20 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL This observation applies, as will be noticed, to the analogy from the subject to the object. Tylor himself speaks of '* that primitive mental state where man recognises in every detail of his world the operation of personal life and will." This looks like the analogy from the subject to the object in a form which shows a process from the abstract, "life" and "will," to the concrete. Otherwise we have person ificational anthropomorphism, not at a late but at a primitive stage. If, however, the statement means neither of these, it is hard to see what it does mean that is at all different from animatism, " Personalisation," perhaps. We shall find that this is an early habit of language, but it is a very different thing from personification or animatism. We may note at once that it actually precedes in order of time the ascription of " life." With regard to this ascription, it is not likely that, at one stage, man regarded everything as alive, and, at a later stage, gradually discriminated between animate and inanimate. The fact is, that he began by regarding everything as neutral, merely as given. Yet, though he never thought about the matter at all, in his acts, reflex as they were, he distinguished as well as we do between animate and inanimate. " Whatever power and importance he may have ascribed to inanimate objects, he drew the strongest of lines between such objects and what was endowed with life."^ Even animals do so ; their survival depends upon it. One of the best observers of savage life, who has lived with Kafirs, remarks as to the notion that they "imagine everything in nature to be alive," that they very rarely think of the matter at all. When questioned, however, on the subject of the animation of stones, they 1 E. J. Payne, History of the Nenxj World called America (1899), ii. 265. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 21 laughed, and said, " it would never enter a Kafir's head to think stones felt in that sort of way." ^ The whole theory of animation and personification is probably largely, if not entirely, due to the misunder- standing of two characteristics of the early mind, shown, as we shall see, in language, imagination, and action.^ Lastly, with regard to the combination of " life " and " phantom " into one soul, we may first observe that this process seems to be confined by Tylor to the human soul. Yet lifeless objects have " phantoms," as is shown by their appearance in dreams ; they are also, by hypothesis, already animated and in possession of personal life and will. Let us take the case of modern popular notions of the ghost or "wraith," which are quoted by Tylor as exemplifying the combination of life and phantom. The ghost, as an hallucinational sight, has as much " Hfe " as the man himself ; it is a percept, and the percept is the man. The "wraith" seems to denote those illusions by which an association calls up a sight of the thing ; these are momentary and very evanescent, but in themselves are equivalent to a percept. If the " wraith " appears as lifeless no more need be said ; if the " ghost " is full of life, it is the " man " ; in neither case is there any " combination." Tylor wished to explain the facts that many savages speak of parts of the living body as the "soul," and that a dead man may be dreamed of as a living person ; also that in late language all aspects of the soul are combined in one verbal concept. Kruijt has shown that the " soul " as life and the soul as " form " are not combined. The " phantom " is, we shall see, itself a psychological phantom. The 1 DuJIey Kidd, Salvage Childhood^ 145, 146. 2 Sje below, pp. 41 ff. ; ch, vi. 22 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL combination of various "souls" in one verbal concept is a late result, and even when effected the mind does not realise the combination except in the memory-image of the word itself. § 6. Essentials of Method, In order to trace with any approach to accuracy the origin and growth of such an idea as that of the soul, it is essential to employ exact psychological principles. The material available for the study of early thought is actually more considerable than that available for the study of civilised thought, except as regards experiment, but it is not likely to yield further results by the application of unaided intelligence. Psychology supplies an infallible test ; it proves what can exist, and what can not exist in the brain, and at what stage of evolution a phenomenon can appear. In the next place it is essential to confine the inquiry within the limits of normal mental experience. To ex- plain a universal phenomenon, universal, or, at least, normal and regular experience must be applied. The use of abnormal experience is only legitimate when a clue is needed to the normal phenomenon. Another test remains to be applied. The importance of language as a clue to savage thought has lately been overlooked. Max Muller, the chief exponent of the method, unfortunately regarded an advanced culture as typical of primitive thought, and applied the test to a mythological stage of consciousness. The results were not satisfactory as explanations of primitive religion, culture, or mental processes generally. If there has been a reaction it is not surprising, but the reaction has gone too far. . PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 23 All our evidence from the culture of savages Is, in the end, what they tell us of what and of how they think. Now, language is embodied thought. It is, metaphysically, a physical reality ; psychologically, it is an objectification of mental processes. The latter can only be studied in one or other of their expressions, and of these language possesses the highest degree of im- mediacy. It is a sort of replica of psychosis. Civilised thought itself has been described as " a process of speech imperceptibly carried on in the central parts," and standing in the same relation to actual speaking as the will to actual movement.-^ Words, on the other hand, are for us ''the common denominator of all ideas or perceptions. Every adult mind is made up to a con- siderable extent of word-ideas." ^ As compared with other constituents of the con- ceptual store of the mind, the idea of the soul is an intellectual product, especially in Its early forms — a result of cognition rather than of feeling or of will. It is, therefore, more fruitfully studied In the light of the most Intellectual of all physical expressions of mental action, language, than In that of expressions like worship and ritual, which are chiefly conditioned by emotion and volition. Language and thought, moreover, throw light upon each other, especially in their early stages, owing to the fact that they have, to a great extent, grown up together. The margin of error to be allowed for in ethnological evidence generally is considerable. It is Increased, by the nature of the case, when the facts concerned are facts of consciousness. It is difficult enough to decide ^ L. Geiger, Ursprung und Entvjickelung der menscklichen Sprache und Vernunft, i. 58. He notes cases where Intense thought has produced hoarseness. ^ E. B. Titchener, Primer of Psychology (1898), 126. 24 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL with precision what any man, let alone the savage, is or does ; but the difficulty is greatly increased when the observer has to describe what he thinks and how he thinks. Language, however, though it may be used by the subject of observation to conceal his thoughts and mislead observation, is in itself a witness to the character of his thought. The words of the savage telling us, falsely perhaps, what he thinks, or rather what he believes we wish to be told, are an absolute proof of how he thinks. The psychological test can be profitably applied to the words of the observer himself.^ It is easy for those who have seen and lived with savages to deride the arm-chair critic. Neither is a reliable authority on the facts without the help of linguistic and psychological principles. When both have this essential equipment there is no need for mutual recrimination, and there is a certainty of reach- ing the truth. A recently developed side of psychological inquiry, the study of the mind of the child, is peculiarly well adapted to the solution of primitive mental problems. It is not to be assumed, as it often is, that the savage and his primitive predecessor are overgrown children. Nor again is it likely that the unscientific doctrine that the child in his individual development passes through all the stages of the mental evolution of the race, will survive any addition to our psychological and biological knowledge. But the permanent value of the study of the consciousness of children rests on the fact that in them we can observe the soul at liberty. It is as yet free, spontaneous, and unspotted from the world. 1 See A. Binet, " La Science du t^moignage '* in V Annie psychologique, (1905), 128 fF. PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 25 The chief expression of the spontaneous free activity of the child, known as " play," gives the clue to the solution of many problems, and illuminates the whole subject of primitive psychology. Here we meet with an early form of volition. The savage is bound in the chains of custom, but these chains are lighter than those of civilisation, and his soul is relatively childlike and free. Hitherto the phenomenon of play, perhaps the most valuable and the most full of promise of all human tendencies, has been ignored in the study of primitive animism and religion.^ By its light whole areas of early thought and practice, as yet misunder- stood, are obviously explained. Mental evolution in the race and the individual proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, from synthesis to analysis, from the whole to the parts. Yet the whole evolution is a series of syntheses, continuously developing around the analysis. Hence the facts that the original synthesis is so often forgotten, and that much misconception arises from the clash of competing syntheses. We shall find that the idea of the soul is an automatic result of elementary mental processes. These will also explain a number of so-called savage "peculiarities," They will throw light on the original meaning of worship and ritual, omen and myth, magic and religion. Our analysis will proceed in the same way from the concrete to the abstract. It will be assumed that there are four main stages in mental evolution. The first is the primitive ; this we must infer. The second is the lower culture, roughly corresponding ^ See A. E. Crawley, " The Social Dynamics of Religion," in Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (Oxford, 1908), ii. 447. 26 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL to " savagery " ; the third is the middle culture, corresponding to the higher "savagery," barbarism," and the lower strata of civilised intelligence. The fourth stage is the higher culture, the epoch of critical empiricism. These stages necessarily overlap. In the second there will be the beginning of the third ; in the third there will be a good deal of the second ; and in all the primitive stage remains as a foundation. The evidence of actual beliefs is necessarily taken from the lower and the middle cultures alone. From these and from the tests supplied by the science of the fourth stage we shall infer the first stage, that of primitive man. In the first stage the original form of the idea of the soul was developed ; in the second, various parts of the original whole were separated and developed singly ; in the third, abstract conceptions were formed by the help of language. For the first and most important stage it is necessary to assume a tabula rasa^ a mind for which things are simply what they seem, namely, "things," objects for consciousness ; not merely " bodies," since this term is too narrow and also implies a " soul," but complete totalities produced by sensations. In other words, we shall discuss the most elementary form of perception. Since, however, all examples from early thought are necessarily stratified combinations of various dates, it will be difficult to find the original form in complete isolation. We must effect this isolation ourselves by psychological tests applied to concrete examples taken from various peoples, in some of which there will be growths from two stages, in others from three. It will be necessary, therefore, in th^ explanatory criticism PSYCHOLOGY & PRIMITIVE CULTURE 27 to anticipate at one point, at another to defer. Explanation may be repeated, but examples will not be multiplied beyond what is necessary for supplying a material, general or typical enough for psychological analysis. CHAPTER II ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE § I. Connection of Language with the General Subject. It will be convenient to discuss the character of the earliest forms of language before we discuss that of mental processes. Several misconceptions may be cleared away by taking this order, and our view of early psychology will thus be more distinct. It is in the languages of the second stage of mental evolution, in some cases entering upon the third, that the answers are given by savages and barbarians to the ethnological inquirer. The questions are asked in languages of the third stage, highly developed. These answers constitute our chief direct evidence for the psychology of the lower culture. Confusion and misunderstanding are inevitable. The lower languages have, practically, no general or abstract terms ; the higher are well supplied with them, and employ them freely in scientific inquiry. But even the popular culture of the third stage employs abstract terms with facility. Accordingly, one student may draw up a list of savage languages in which, as it appears, the term for soul means "breath," another does the same with terms meaning " shadow " ; and another with terms meaning "life." Again, the 28 ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 29 ordinary traveller or missionary, accustomed to use the term "soul," without any psychological analysis of its connotation or denotation, employs it freely as a convenient category under which to frame his questions. The native answers will obviously not be direct answers at all ; they will consist of confusions between wholes and parts, general and individual, concrete and abstract notions. As far as primitive man, the representative of the first stage of mental evolution, is concerned, language has nothing to do with his idea of the soul. But a brief description of the principles of the earliest languages known will throw light on the mental habits both of the lower culture generally and, by inference, of the primitive also. We are, moreover, concerned with the terms employed in various stages for the various conceptions of the soul, and with the influence they have exerted on those conceptions. For these, and for other reasons mentioned in the first chapter, language must be considered in connection with thought. Our brief sketch will show a close parallelism between early thought and early language. All the processes of mind can be carried on to some extent without language, even, as in infants and animals, simple free thought ; sensation and perception, of course, can make little use of words. But the con- venience of general and abstract word-ideas for the classification, storing, and recognition of knowledge is obvious, however true it is that "it makes little or no difference in what sort of mind-stuff, in what quality of imagery, our thinking goes on." ^ Language originated in feeling, but was developed ^ W. James, Textbook of Psychology, 169. 30 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL under the influence of attention directed to the external world.* In perception the mental vision is outwards ; speech is an attempt to exteriorise the effect of sensa- tions on the self, just as all forms of motor activity are such attempts. § 2. The Holophrase. Primitive man had a circumscribed outlook on the world, a fact which facilitates investigation into his mode of expression. His was " the standpoint of the small food-group ; and the language of the small food- group gives the clue to his mental condition." ^ His mental condition in turn will test his speech. We shall find that primitive perception is com- prehensive and simultaneous in a high degree. The mode of expression corresponding to this mode of ideation is known as holophrasis,^ and is the chief characteristic of early language. In its translation of the percept, language here seems, as it were, to be trying to reproduce in sound coexistence instead of succession. It lumps the whole impression together in one phrase, which is actually one word. The process has been thus described : " Primitive language was a machine working by ' starts,' each start completing a definite quantity of work, and so con- trived that nothing less than a whole start or quantity of work could be executed by it ; it expressed a whole conception or nothing. Hence it has been described as 'holophrastic,' or 'whole-phrasing'; each of its phrases and even most of its complete sentences had 1 H. HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology, 2. 2 E. J. Payne, History of the Nenv World called America^ ii. 327, 3 The term was invented by Lieber. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 31 the general character of a single long and irregular word." ^ An example may be supplied from Zulu : the word Kwa'mamengalahlw means "there where one shouts out, 'Oh, mother, I am lost'"; it is used to express the idea of " far away." ^ " Essentially the integral embodiment of an integral idea^ the holophrase, whether monosyllabic or poly- syllabic, is essentially irreducible into significant parts ; it can represent nothing except when heard In Its entirety. Grammatical language . . . has been pro- duced by the expansion and disruption of the holophrase, which has been loaded, so to speak, with more and more meaning, until it has burst its material envelop- ment, producing by its disintegration the various parts of speech." ^ The analogy between the holophrase and the primitive percept and concept is close. In both we start with masses, which are gradually divided, in the one case by perception becoming analytical, in the other by an attempt on the part of the articulating muscles to keep pace with this mental analysis. At first the percept also would be meaningless except In its entirety. Savage languages have " names " or nouns, but rarely general names. We have to deal with a still earlier stage, when names even for Individual things were yet in the making. Both of these were latent in the Interjectional holo- phrase, which is the first step In language after the mere " cry," and expressed feeling plus some relation. As to the " cry," the " danger-note " used by gregarious ^ Payne, History of the Ne^w PForld called America^ ii. 1 1 5. 2 Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood, 74. 3 Payne, op. cit. ii. 11 5-6. r 32 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL animals is a familiar example which shows the expression of feeling by sound and its easy recognition. It is a vocal gesture. Let us take an illustration of the way in which the vocal gesture grows into the interjectional holophrase. In a simple action, such as a beating, there is *' first, the action itself, then the agent or person who beats, then the person or thing which suffers or is beaten, and, lastly, the manner of beating, whether quickly or slowly, gently or severely. The action and all these circumstances exist together in nature " along with other adjuncts, such as time and the feelings of agent and patient. "The savage, therefore, considers them ail in the lump, as it were, without discrimination, and so forms his idea of the action, and according to this idea expresses it in words." ^ Let us suppose a percipient of the scene, and eliminate from his consciousness both familiarity and contempt so as to ensure a scientific attitude. His prolonged " Oh ! " or its equivalent, a guttural cry, as used by the anthropoids,^ is the vocal reaction to the aggregate of stimuli. He is, by hypothesis, trying to express in sound a situation to which he cannot do justice. His exclamation is the undeveloped germ of a complete articulate description ; it contains all the elements of language, in time to be differentiated and set free, — but as yet indeterminate. The primitive speaker, as we shall see, has a comprehensive perception. Is he then attempting to express the totality ? In one sense, yes, in another, no. Economy begins at once. Linguistic science tells us that language is not primarily concerned with the 1 Lord Monboddo, Origin and Progress of Language, iii. ch. 7. 2 The cry ofthe gorilla is ^>^-(?/r/ kh-ahl prolonged; thatofthe Siamang gibbon, Gtek gtek ha ha, each part being repeated. — Huxley, Collected Essays vii. 54. fF. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 33 designation of objects,^ as the mind is with the ideation of objects ; therefore in this early stage all that it attempts is to express the relations between the objects presented to consciousness. There is obviously no necessity for expressing orally the objects which are still present to the senses. They go without saying. With regard to relations, some further explanation is appropriate. "If there be such things as feelings at all, then, so surely as relations between objects exist in rerum natura^ so surely and more surely do feelings exist to which these relations are known. There is not a conjunction or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase, syntactic form, or inflection of voice in human speech, that does not express some shading or other of relation which we at some moment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought."^ Now these relations are felt, but cannot be remembered, certainly not visualised, without the objects which are related. Speech undertakes to express these relations, and this is one case where speech has rendered service y to the mind. '* Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations'* ;^ every "thing" in consciousness is surrounded by a "fringe" or "halo of relations."^ In the stream of thought the only images intrinsically important are the halting - places, the substantive conclusions. " Throughout all the rest of the stream the feelings of relation are everything, and the terms related naught." ^ When therefore a halting-place is reached, the brain innervates the vocal organs, and gives expression to the transitive part, or, so to say, solidifies the previous stream. In the first stages of ^ E. J. Payne, History of the Nenv World called America, ii. 115. ^ W. James, Textbook of Psychology, 162. 3 Id. 167. 4 Id. 166. s Id. 169. 3 34 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL language, however, speech omits the terms, because they are obvious. When it is applied to absent things the case is difFerent, for the speaker soon realises that the listener has nothing to inform him what objects he has in mind. This is well illustrated in the case of explanations given by uneducated persons to-day. They generally assume that the listener knows the thing they are talking about, and practically express its relations alone. This priority of relation in the evolution of speech may be shown by a Fuegian holophrase. In Fuegian mamthlapinatapai signifies " looking at each other, hoping that either will oiFer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do." ^ It is clear that the relation — one extremely typical of human amenities — and nothing else is here expressed. A holophrase like this will apply to any persons ; it will apply to animals. It contains no names or nouns — they are unnecessary. In the earliest speech all holophrases are without meaning when divided. Even in the most highly developed savage languages this is the case with many. At this early stage, then, articulate sounds are merely contrivances for expressing the relations between things. It is obvious that here we have a form of generalisation of extraordinary usefulness, but without symbols for things it does not advance knowledge. This characteristic helps us to appreciate the well- known fact that the savage uses as many as twenty different words for one action or thing, but has no general word. For instance, the action of cutting is not expressed by one word applied to different ways of 1 F. B. in Buenos Ayres Standard, nth Sept. 1886, quoted by Payne, History of the Neiv World called America, ii. 228. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 35 cutting or things cut, but there is one word for cutting wood, another for cutting meat, and others according to the instrument employed. In these words there is no common element expressive of cutting. In the same way he has a name for every bird and animal, but no general name for either. We need a unifying principle to start the process of solidifying this flux of particulars. § 3. Personalisation. Putting it logically in reference to names, we may say, *' Let it be supposed that each individual thing actually has some distinct name conferred on it. What distinctive attribute would these names express ^ All attributes that could be possessed in common with any other thing having been eliminated by hypothesis, each name could only express or aim at expressing a single distinctive attribute^the separate individuality or personality of the thing to which it is attached. Personality is a hidden attribute involved in all general terms ; we shall identify the effort to express it as the hidden germ of language itself, the essential characteristic of its earliest stage, and the formative principle of the grammatical system which it ultimately creates." ^ The case in which this distinctive attribute first emerged was, of course, that of the speaker himself, '' One great splitting of the whole universe into two halves is made by each of us. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human mind feels in those parts of creation which it can call me or mine may be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact."^ Personality is thus the primal unifying factor ^ E. J. Payne, History of the Ne^w World called America, ii. 104-5, 2 W. JameSj 'Textbook of Psychology, 174. 36 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL in both thought and language. In the latter it would be expressed by the interjectional cry, meaningless except as an expression of personal feeling and interest, but involving, in germ, not only relation between the self and the object, but inverted relation, relations between the object and other objects, just as in the infant's ejaculation on its first feeling of some massive sensation there is identity of the self and the thing perceived. The earliest holophrases would thus be — "/+-vV' " /+J^" " /+2%" according to the different relations between the speaker and the object. How is the next step taken, that is, the transference of personality to other things than the speaker ? The answer is worth while tracing in detail. The lesson, like other early lessons, was learnt in the primitive food-group, as it seems best to describe the social unit of primitive humanity.^ The necessary conditions are the mental impact and resistance of two personalities, the speaker and the listener. Each recognises in the other *' through the medium of certain oral signs facts which are similar to but substantially diiferent from other facts belonging to his own consciousness.*' ^ The symbolisation of the elementary feelings would be readily understood from the first. Such feelings would, of course, have been first realised under the form of personality, personal experience, long before language commenced. Each would use much the same sound to express the self- 1 The earliest social unit for Aristotle was the "family." Modern anthropology has substituted, according to its changing preconceptions, the " horde," the unit of a promiscuous herd — the " tribe," the unit of a political society — the "clan," the unit of blood-relationship, all without success. The ultimate factor in sociology is economic ; the complement of the food-quest is not relationship of status or of kin, but is sexual. 2 Payne, op, cit. ii. 107. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 37 feeling "I-hungry," in relation to food; each would recognise the reference in the other's voice.^ " Just as the subject was himself disposed to have recourse with the same idea to the same sound-symbol of it, so too the sound became familiar to others by being repeated. Thus the means of sharing and understanding the idea was formed." ^ We have here the way prepared for a term for food and a term for hunger, both fused with the speaker's personality. So far *' things " may be described as mere " appendages of personality." How, then, was personality " shifted " ? The answer goes to the roots of epistemology and aesthetics. The typical form of a child's *' play " is a motor- expression of identity of self with thing. He carries on a living dialogue, in which the speakers are the "things," he taking each part in turn, and using the pronoun "I" for each character. This, in the mind of the dramatist, is the essence of drama. The child and the dramatist each shifts his own personality to the character speaking, one *' I " serves for all. Savage speech illustrates this process. A New Caledonian expressing the fact that some fruit was not high enough for the native palate, said not "it-not-yet-eatable," but " w^-not-yet-eatable." ^ It is worth while pointing out the bearing of personality and of the identification of subject and object upon science. In epistemology "the object of knowledge must be the object plus self. Self is an integral and essential part of every object of cognition." ^ ^ The Fueglan Tammerschooner, familiar to readers of Darwin's narrative, is Tanamashaguna, " we are hungry." 2 J. N. Madvig, Om Sprogets FUseUy Ud'vikltng og Li'u, 9. 3 Foley in Bulletin de la socUti a anthropologie, 6th Nov. 1879. ** Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysics, Prop, ii 38 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL In logic, in the act of judgment "I-go" or " my- going,'* the ideas of self and of action are not of independent origin, any more than they are in language ; *' their association in one conception is the earlier, their separation the later form." ^ Once realised in language, " the conception of personality must gradually cover the whole field of consciousness, bringing whatever men can feel, think, will, or do, within the range of objective speech. The recognition of the facts of consciousness through the medium of personality thus Imprints upon the mind in the very inception of language a habit of contemplating them in at least three different ways — of considering them as connected either (i) with the speaker, or with some body of persons in whose name he speaks, (2) with the person or persons addressed, or (3) with persons and things outside the play of the two primary personalities." ^ The question whether this shifting of personality produced a kind of plurality in the personalising prefix, or the personalising prefix was itself originally dual or plural, hardly concerns us here, but we may follow out the probable process of isolating " thou-" and '* he-" personality. It is to be noted that in thought there is no " thou " ; the second person is for the mind the same as the third. But it is latent in " we " and " I." Their liberation may be illustrated by the distinction in early languages between the exclusive and inclusive plural. Thus, in Apache, shee means "I" or "me," but sheedah means " I-myself " ; dee means '* thou " or "thee," but deedah " thou -thyself," that is to say, "especially," without reference to any other person. Among the Haidahs and Thlinkits, to such a question 1 W. Wundt, Logikj i. 135-40. 2 payne, op. cit. ii. 107. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 39 as "Who will help?'* the answer would generally be the collective "I," but "Who is the mother of the child ? '* would receive a selective answer meaning " I " absolutely.^ Similarly other savage peoples, like the Australians, distinguish between " wife " collective and *' own-wife," " brother " and " own-brother," the former indicating, according to the current anthropo- logical doctrine, " tribal " or " classificatory " relation- ship. Dobrizhoffer gives a luminous instance of the difference in practice of collective and exclusive plurals. If the missionary, in a prayer addressed to God, were to use the collective plural in the formula " we have sinned," the congregation would understand the Almighty to be included among sinners ; while in a sermon the inclusive form would be necessary for the same statement "we have sinned," otherwise the congregation would be excluded from the category, which would be occupied by the preacher alone* ^ It may therefore be inferred that a process of variation combined with selection, and aided originally by gesture and change of tone, produced the liberation of the second, as also of the third person, from the first, the original form. Variation, aided by repetition, yet to be discussed, would assist in stereotyping a difference between the three persons. As language progresses, the first and second are employed to cover persons and things absent in time, the third deals with what is absent in space. The conquest of the external world belongs to the third person, 1 H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States^ iii. 597 ; F. Boas, Fifth Report of the British Association on the 'North-Western Tribes of Canada, 62, 74. The " we " of the author, taking the reader with him, so to speak, is a modern instance. 2 Dobrizhoffer, Historia de Abiponibus, quoted by Payne, History of the Neixj World called America, ii. 186. 40 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL From the personal nouns developing thus, the solidification of personal-general terms comes easily. From "he-tiger" is developed "a-tiger/* or, to quote Payne's example, if we suppose primitive man beholding, like Crusoe, a footprint in the sand, "his-foot" naturally expands into "somebody's," " anybody's," " a man's foot." ^ Such a process automatically produces dispersonalisation. The process can be traced in every language, and the result is general nouns and general terms. As an example of the way in which general nouns are developed from personal, the following Otomi words may be cited. The plural personal particle ya- represents indifferently "our," "your," " their." ^ All Otomi general nouns retain the personal particle, the great majority taking that of the third. " Even proper names, those of persons and towns, invariably take the personal particle," the latter especially the first person. Similarly Iroquoian forms general nouns by the prefix of the third person masculine. In Mexican the general particle -itl or -tit in several words retains i- the particle of the third person, as in ttitl " stomach " ; kxitl^ "foot" ; yollotl^ "heart." ^'My-nose" is noyacauh ; " a-nose," jiSi:^// ; "my-knife" is notec'pa\ "a-knife,'* tecpatl? English after the phrase "a man says'* may revert to " he." But we have still to illustrate personalisation generally. The first classification of things, both in mind and in language, is a possessive or personal one. This result is assisted by early conditions. To early man nature presents far less complexity, far less objectivity, than it does to us. " Regarding it mainly as a repertory of ^ Payne, op. cit. ii. 236. 2 /^_^ q^ ^,7 jj 236. 3 Id. ii. 236-9. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 41 things capable in some way of ministering to his daily necessities, he brings to its exploration the dominating conception of personality, the fruitful stimulant of thought."^ Everything is a *' person," grammatically, and, originally, psychologically ; even as for science there is no distinction between '^persons" and "things," all alike are ^^ objects'' Among the Waicuri of California beddri^diS "my-father"; ediri, '' thy-father," and so on ; but are^ the common element, was unintelligible. It did not mean "father," for which there was no general term.^ In fact, they were unable to express the ideas of " father," " mother," and the like, without a personal relation. We read of a Kurd as being unable " to conceive a hand or a father, except as related to his own or some other personality — ' my- hand,' *his-hand,' 'my-father,' ' his-father.' " ^ The personalising prefix from its commencement with the speaker, to its shifting among external things, was always, it must be understood, an ejaculation introducing and vibrating, as it were, through the holophrase. When the third person was developed, " he-tiger " was the type, there being, as must also be understood, no need for gender, the " thing " designated being a "person" in just the same grammatical and scientific way as a " person " was, and now is, for science, a "thing." It is probable that a good deal of misconception on the subject of animism, or rather animatism, and " personification," anthropomorphism, and the like, in primitive culture, has been due to a misunderstanding of the principle of personalisation in early language. ^ Payne, ii. 146. 2 Bagert, Nachrichten 'von Californien, 181. 3 Latham, quoted by St. G. Mivart, Origin of Human Reason, 275. 42 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Let us introduce this subject with another misconception on the question of primitive marriage. Among the Basutos a man addressing a person older than himself says " my-father," " my - mother " ; a person equal in age, *' my-brother " ; juniors and in- feriors, "my-children.'*^ "In Hawaii 'father' and other kinsmen of the same generation are called makua kana ; mother, mother's sisters, father's sisters, etc., makua waheena. ... A son is called kaikee kana^ a daughter kaikee waheena.'*"^ It is illegitimate to infer from such cases of a linguistic principle any survival or tradition of promiscuous marriage and kinship. The Central Australians, as was noticed, and many other peoples, have actually developed a selective prefix, thus " wife " and *' own-wife " ; but we cannot infer that the selective process applies to a change in marriage-law, much less that the original marriage-law was promiscuity. To show that misconceptions arising from language may have serious results, we may instance a notorious case. The Veddahs of Ceylon had for long been supposed to regard the marriage of a man with his younger sister as being not only lawful, but incumbent. The latest evidence, however, proves that this is a gross mistake, and that the Veddahs do not practise and never have practised this custom. It also shows that the mistake, from which the Veddahs have suffered a stigma in the out- side world for generations, arose from a misunderstanding of the Veddah language. In Veddah the mother's brother's daughter, or the father's sister's daughter, is the usual bride, according to the well-known system of cross-cousin-marriage.^ The name for this woman is 1 E. Casalis, "The Basutos, 207. 2 E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriag^, 90, quoting L. H. Morgan, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity. 3 A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 470 ; the term is due to Tylor, who ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 43 naga^ which is also the Sinhalese for " younger sister." Sinhalese interpreters are responsible for the mistake/ With regard to the current ascription of " animation " to the external world, "personification" of inanimate objects, and similar theories, the case is perfectly clear. Primitive man " finds personality everywhere, in all the forms of animal life, in whatever yields the sensation of sound, in whatever has perceptible motion ; even in- animate objects, not excluding instruments made by hands, are capable of producing personal impressions. Whatever fills a certain space in the consciousness tends to become personalised . . . whatever speaks to his ear is a person." ^ But all this personalising is grammatical or scientific. It is associated with the play-instinct of identification and shifted personality, but with nothing else. The savage answers external stimuli as a child answers, or as an angry civilised man answers an in- animate object which has startled or hurt him, as if it was a person. Primitive man has only one mode of thought, one mode of expression, one part of speech, the personal. Conversely, as we have seen, he is not fully conscious of personality, even his own ; things and persons are objects, and he speaks originally of their relations only. We have no right to say, therefore, that he infers objects to have a personal life and will, because he has ; he does not know he has, and he gets to know that he has from external persons. The current theory is, in fact, from every scientific point of view a gross error. When once we grasp the import of the personalising tendency in language, and remember that in consciousness there is no respect of first noted the facts of this kind of marriage, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xviii. 267. ' Nevill, in Japrobanian, i. 178. 2 Payne, op. cit. ii. 146. 44 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL persons and things, each ideated thing being a " that " — a host of so-called " peculiarities " of the savage mind are explained, and a great deal of false animism is cleared off the road of science. When the savage speaks of " he-tiger," he does not believe that the tiger is a human person, or anything but a grammatical and scientific "person," any more than he means to imply that the specimen is not a female. He speaks of " he-rock," not because by some animistic process he imagines the rock to be a human being in disguise, but simply because this is his way, the earliest way, of symbolising a fact of consciousness. And his behaviour to these " persons " is one of the earliest, and it may be the highest, forms of behaviour, — "person-play" ; but he does not believe the thing or animal to be a human being, any more than the child believes his toys to be human. When we read that in Manchu wood when cut utters a " voice," and in the Hebrew Scriptures (full of personalisation), "To corruption [masculine] I have said. Thou art my father," and so on, we need not increase the stock of animism. The former of these is not, the latter is tend- ing to be, a development of " person-play," which does not concern us here, namely, artistic anthropomorphism and the " pathetic fallacy." The artist instinctively goes back to the ancient mould and fills it with indis- criminate life. But this is not the same thing as the method of primitive man. In reference to a manual of Semitic grammar, which asserts that "to primitive man all nature seemed endowed with Jife ; he therefore ascribed the distinction of sex to every existing thing," Payne remarks, '* Rarely has more error been got into two lines. The writer has been misled by * animism.' Language proves that primitive man, whatever power ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 45 and importance he may have ascribed to inanimate objects, drew the strongest of lines between such objects and what was endowed with life." ^ We might as legiti- mately infer from a study of the German language that the modern Teuton ascribes sex and human personality to turnips while denying them to young ladies.^ The question of how many '' animated " objects owe their "life" to the savage imagination, in its artistic moments, developing by association the grammatical personality into artistic creations, must be reserved. It applies only to the higher savagery. There is still work for the theory, regarded as obsolete, that mythology is a disease of language. Certainly animatism is a disease of the language of modern anthropology. Before taking leave of personalisation, some interest- ing varieties of this far-reaching principle may be adduced. Choctaw has a different set of particles to denote personality conceived as *' relative." Many languages distinguish personality according to blood- relationship and status.^ Gender is a late development. A curious form is the distinction between the language used by males and females.* Two primary classifica- tions are (i) of things animated or inanimate, (2) ot things as rational or irrational.^ In Japanese and other languages there is a distinction between *' reverential '* and "contemptuous" forms of verbs and pronouns, A frequent distinction is drawn between transferable and non-transferable personality ; the latter includes parts of the body, blood-relations, and the like ; the former includes things which can be transferred to ^ Payne, op. cit. ii. 264. 2 See Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad^ Appendix D. 3 Payne, op. cit. ii. 192. * Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 46, 47. ^ Payne, op. cit. ii. 198. 46 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL others. Many languages have forms distinguishing substantiality and non-substantiality. § 4. Repetition and Variation. A subsidiary source of names may be noticed in passing. Imitation of sounds expressive of feeling, and their recognition, has been described. But the kling-klang or "bow-wow'* theory of language is a different matter. The results of this kind of imitation are sporadic, and mostly late. There is an interesting exception which has had some influence : the use of the earliest sounds produced by infants as terms for "mother" and "father." Preyer notes that ^^papa^ mama^ tata^ apa^ amUy ata^ are automatically produced by the lips (/>, m\ or by the tongue {dy /)." ^ But examples are rare outside the Indo-European pa- and ma^. The Tupi paia^ father, ma'ia^ mother, are examples. Most " imitative " sounds are curiosities of language. As a theory of language, imitation has no more reality than the "root," the monosyllabic, or the gesture theories. Gesture, of course, was early used to help out imperfect significance, for instance, to bridge the gulf between "I" and "thou," "I" and "he." The next processes of language which influence its early stages and illustrate early thought are repetition and variation. In perception, the first shock of a stimulus is kept up by a sort of cinematographic vibration. This can be illustrated by experiment. " Illuminate a drawing by electric sparks separated by considerable intervals, and after the first, and often after the second and * W. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, 321. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 47 third spark, hardly anything will be recognised. But the confused image is held fast in memory ; each successive illumination completes it, and so at last we attain to a clearer perception."^ The same repetition takes place in memory. *' Being altogether conditioned on brain-paths, its excellence in a given individual will depend partly on the number and partly on the persistence of these paths." ^ It is interesting to see how both in mind and in language evolution passes from an undifferentiated whole, by a partial analysis, to a fully discriminated synthesis. Repetition and variation are the chief factors, then, in this analysis and recombination, but here language comes in to influence thought, just as thought has influenced language previously. The final result is a classificatory system in ,which general terms are the labels, and all the processes of thought the storers and classifiers, provers and developers of the contents. But we must return to repetition in primitive language. Corresponding to repetition of stimulus there is in the holophrase a polysyllabic tendency. "The simple closure of the lips, or the elevation of the tip of the tongue to the forepalate or teeth, in the course of vocalisation, followed by a relaxation of the muscles employed, at once produces a dissyllabic sound, divided by one of the anterior explodents. These movements, repeated one or more times — and there would be a natural tendency to repeat them indefinitely — would produce words of three or more syllables, capable of infinite variety, when the various kinds of vowel sounds are used, and the diff^erent ^ Wundt, quoted by W. James, Textbook of Psychology, 233. 2 V\^. James, op. cit. 292. 48 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL methods of relaxing and modifying the explodents are applied/'^ A Mexican example of variation is the holophrase for letter-postage, amatlacutlolitquitcatlaxtlahutllu mean- ing *' the payment received for carrying a paper on which something is written." One from Cherokee is winitawtigeginaliskawlungtanawnelitisesti^ meaning "they will by that time have nearly finished granting favours from a distance to thee and me." In this stage of language, " conceptions which may be described in the words of Hamilton as 'Wague and confused," found expression in a semi-voluntary vocalisation, exhibiting what Caspar! has called an "indeterminate linguistic condition." Speech, in other words, was formed by the gradual rationalisation and solidification of a polysyllabic flux, slowly passing from an in- voluntary to a voluntary stage, and comparable to, though in its material aspect doubtless widely dissimilar from the song of birds or the chatter of monkeys.^ Repetition is the life of the intellect and the basis of order in speech and thought. In speech, its possibility depends upon a set of organs not originally adapted for the purpose. The "play" use of these is responsible ultimately for their adaptability to articula- tion. It is of great biological interest to trace the mechanical dependence of evolution in speech and thought upon the alimentary necessities of the organism. In the first place, it is hardly possible to overrate the prominence of food among early ideas. Savage thought and talk constantly turn upon food, the search for food, the character of food-stuffs, the satisfaction of 1 Payne, History of the Ne^w U^orld called America, ii. 127-8. 2 Id., op. cit. ii. 129, quoting Caspari, Die Urgeschichte der Menschheit, I 143. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 49 hunger. The same is true of children. The earliest social unit was undoubtedly a small group united ultimately by the complementary demands of sex and alimentation, " Whether man is savage or civilised, food is his prime necessity. Food, we may be sure, during thousands of years occupied the largest space in man's mental area of vision. The necessity of providing food led primitive man to invent his first weapons and implements ; to unite in aggregates more or less large for the purpose of discovering and securing it ; to penetrate solitude and to navigate waters previously unknown to him in search of it, until at a very early period in his history he had reached every part of the four continents which was capable of yielding it, and strained his mental and physical powers to their uttermost in the effort of winning it." ^ In the evolution of language an early step is marked by the development of adjectives signifying "good" and "evil" from the attributes of food, just as the African guide " divides all plants into ' bush ' and ' good for nyam^ the latter in- cluding the eatable ones, the former the residue. The Tupi can only count up to three, but Von Martius gives 1224 Tupi words for animals and their parts." 2 Biology proves that the oral cavity was originally adapted to alimentary functions alone. The further adaptation of tongue, lips, teeth, and palates to their secondary and acquired use in speech, depending as it did on the upright position of the body, and on the exercise afforded by the ''play" of the muscles, is one of the most remarkable transitions in organic ^ Payne, History of the Neiv World called America, i. 278-80. 2 Id., loc, cit. 4 50 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL evolution. The capacity of man for plastic modula- tion of sound is the result of exercise of the oral muscles in the satisfaction of hunger and in the enjoyment of " play." The cry was gradually moulded into articulate form by the muscular contacts associated with eating. The repetitive power of the organs of speech, exemplified in the holophrase, where the preliminary guttural is carried forward through the mouth in a diminishing scale, was developed by the mobility of tongue, lips, and teeth acquired in mastication. The exercise of the oral muscles in eating had a still earlier and equally emphatic reaction upon the development of the mind. It is an ascertained fact that strength of character is intimately connected with strength of jaw. Further, our conceptions of things are largely composed of remembered sensations of resistance and yielding, pressure and release, contact and severance, roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, largeness and smallness, and the like, all derived in the most personal way from the pheno- mena accompanying mastication.-^ Touch is the original sense from which all others have been developed. It is the ultimate test of substantiality ; its relations are far more subjective, through its nearer connection with the vital feeling, than those of sight or sound ; and its results in conception are consequently more real, in the sense of being more intimately reaHsed, than those of the higher senses. Ideation of these processes has, as we shall see, not failed to condition and develop the idea of the soul. From this point of view we may compare the fact that in the rudimentary religion of the Central Australians ritual is primarily 1 Payne, op. cit. ii. 144. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 51 concerned with the securing of the food-supply.'^ Such facts, taken in connection with the psychological evidence, show that sacred meals and eucharistic ritual are modes of consecrating not only food but the alimentary act also. The connection of the development of the brain and of the vocal organs and its relation to speech is an interesting subject, in particular the connection between pre-perception and innervation, and of both with ideation ; that between speech and right-handed- ness, and so on, but we cannot pursue the subject here. As machinery for expressing tactile relations, the tongue, teeth, and lips could hardly be improved ; for ex- pressing changes of emotion the voice is unsurpassed. We speak because we eat, just as we sing because we breathe. As simple examples of repetition in language two cases may suffice. In many languages a plural noun is formed by repeating the singular, for example, in Quichua, llama^ singular, llamallama^ plural. In Polynesian dialects mana expresses personal influence ; manamana is used for superhuman power. Thus language expresses by repetition what the mind expresses by repetition ; the idea of the soul is a double, both in language and in thought. Reproduction of sensations is never identical ; repetition itself involves variation, both in nerve- vibrations, language, and the germ-plasm. Any change, moreover, in the environment of an object, however familiar, is marked by a corresponding variation in ideation, and consequently in its vocalised representa- tion. Change along habitual paths is the life-story of ^ Spencer and Gillen, The Nati've T^ribes of Central Australia^ s.v. intichiuma. To the Hindu dinner is still a religious act. 52 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL language as of protoplasm. Recombination, again, may change any idea of any individual object or mass of objects, some special features being obliterated and others introduced. To such an extent does variation influence early speech that most savage languages are entirely changed in two generations.^ The Paraguay language gives us a good example of the application of variation : a male present is eneha^ a female, anaha ; if he or she be sitting, the forms are hiniha and haniha ; if walking and in sight, ehaha and ahaha ; if walking and out of sight, ekaha and akaha? § 5. The Name. The process of interaction between speech and psychosis which produced, by a sort of tacit arrange- ment after a combined effort, the power of symbolising "things" as well as their relations, cannot of course be exactly described. It may be realised by analogy — " the force which underlies the motion of the mind undergoes a change. To borrow an illustration from physics, it loses the character of a ' finite * force — one which requires a definite time to generate a definite amount of motion, like the force arising from the gravitation of bodies — and acquires that of an ' im- pulsive ' force, which generates a definite amount of motion in an indefinitely short time."^ The effort required to symbolise the absent, the unseen, and the imaginary, is connected with this development into an impulsive force ; repetition and variation are the mechanical means of transition. In thought, the influence of external stimuli being absent, attention to 1 See, e.g., N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia (1906), 28. 2 Payne, History of the Ne^w World called America^ ii. 192. 3 Id.j op. cit, ii. 201. ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 53 the "thing" is easier. Thought is also experienced in the use of association. Thus the Indian calls iron "black stone" and copper "red stone." Language and thought alike are experienced in relations, and their expression was the earliest achievement of language. Given, then, " I-hungry," solidifying with variation into terms for a particular meal, and for a particular "hunger," how do we get a general idea and a general term ? Provisionally, we may say — by repetition, but so large an epistemological question is a subject in itself. We have seen several tendencies towards the general idea and the general term ; we shall later meet with the standardisation of the idea, and its occasional composite nature ; in language we have repetition. Thus a little girl, "after getting pain from certain bumps on the head, got to calling all bodily pain 'bump bump.'"^ The "general" has been noted as being rather an attitude, an expectation, a motor tendency, than an absolute form.^ "We come," finally, "to have universals and abstracts for our objects. We also come to think of objects which are only problematic," as inventions, artistic creations, and the various curious enlia rationis,^ For these thought requires language, for ease of reference and for accuracy in recognition. When the idea of the soul gets a general name, it is subject to the defects as well as the qualities of both speech and thought. But, more than most concepts, it tends to revert to its psychological origin. To anticipate, we may say that the first result of the general term is to fuse artificially all the manifestations 1 Baldwin, Mental Denjelopment in the Race and the Child, 325. 2 /i., he. cit. 3 James, Textbook of Psychologjf, 241 54 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL of the idea into one whole, a new synthesis with fully distinguished parts, developed step by step from a long analysis of the original comprehensive totality. The curious thing is that the general term rarely in its etymology expresses anything of the kind ; it is almost always a part of the whole. Thus the general terms of language have to be helped out by the mind. Abstraction, again, and the " imagination " of problematic realities play their part under the aegis of the general term. Summing up a few characteristics of early language which have especial reference to the connection between early thought and early ideas of the soul, we infer a tendency to express totalities, and more than this, whole scenes, the expressions for these varying accord- ing to difference of circumstances. " I " or " he- doing-so-and-so " is the type. This corresponds to the widest view of personality. The abstraction of parts gradually gains ground ; but the connection of personality with its adjuncts persists. " His-body," ** his-head," are types, varying with circumstances ; but general terms for "body" and "head" do not arise till the third stage of mental evolution. This is also the case with abstract notions like '4ife" and " soul." Until language helps to isolate them we have as types " man-living," " man-soul." Language finally does what thought can never do ; it isolates these abstractions. Early man, curiously enough, agrees with the modern in not separating matter and energy ; he disagrees in keeping them still combined in language. Such an abstraction is the soul ; in its early forms, however, it is concrete. In the third and fourth stages it is reduced to an abstraction, under the combined influence of science and language, but even then in the ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE 55 end it shows a tendency to revert to the primitive concrete form. With regard to terms for psychical reality generally, they arose before abstraction had created an opposed reality which differs from the material as abstract from concrete. They arose in a stage when psychical reality was regarded as correlative, not opposed to material. It is not correct to say that the earliest terms for mental facts are terms used for material facts — they are neutral, just as all facts were neutral for the naive consciousness, even when it had conceived a duplicate correlative reality. Finally, with regard to names generally, the important result for the early stages of evolution is the name of the personality or thing, the name In its individual and particular reference. It is this that, in the sphere of vocal reality, is to the personality what the soul is in the sphere of psychical reality. The name is a sign, symbol, or signal, which, when uttered, calls up in mind the totality of the object. It has thus some claim to be regarded, as it frequently is in the lower culture, as being itself a soul. CHAPTER III ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT § I. Description of the Soul. In order to visualise the problem of the origin of the idea of the soul, a general view of the idea, as it has been described for the lower races, may be taken at once. The conception of the soul among savage and barbarous peoples is thus described by Tylor : — It is " a thin, unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow ; the cause of life and thought in the individual it animates ; independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present ; capable of leaving the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place ; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to men waking or asleep, as a phantasm separate from the body of which it bears the likeness ; continuing to exist and appear to men after the death of that body ; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even of things." It is "an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual, personal existence.*'^ Frazer describes it thus : — "As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or 1 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture^y i. 429, 501. 56 ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 57 behind the phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside which moves it. If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And, as the activity of an animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is explained by its absence ; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul." Again, the savage often " regards his shadow or reflection as his soul, or at all events as a vital part of himself" ; "as some peoples believe a man's soul to be in his shadow, so other (or the same) peoples believe it to be in his reflection in water or a mirror." ^ These accounts are here given without prejudice to any conclusion we may reach concerning the nature of the soul in primitive or in barbarous thought. In these summaries, we must remember, there is no distinction of peoples or of stages of evolution. It is necessary to add two common identifications, those of the soul or life with the breath and the blood.^ As to the idea generally, we may note that not until civilisation has made some progress does the soul acquire an immaterial substantiality.^ § 2. The Primitive Mind, Ideas can arise in the mind alone, and we now proceed to examine, in the first of our four psychological stages, ^ J. G. Frazer, ^he Golden Bough^ (1900), i. 247, 285, 292. 2 Tylor, Primiti've Culture^, i. 432 j A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 103 ; Payne, History of the Nenv H^orld called Americuy i. 393. 3 Payne, op. cit. i. 391 ; Crawley, The Tree of Life (1905), 242. 58 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the material out of which the idea of the soul arose, the reaction of the primitive mind to certain stimuli ; and the factors which determined its morphology, the cognitive methods of the primitive brain. This primitive type must necessarily be reached by inference from material which is composed of several strata. We shall isolate the simplest undifferentiated form which can arise direct from mental reflex action. For the sake of clearness, terms like mind and psychosis will be substituted for " consciousness," owing to its ambiguity. " Conscious " and " consciousness " will be used in reference to reflection and mental realisation as opposed to *' unconscious " and '* unconsciousness," the unreflecting, unrealised perception of phenomena. Only in the case of dreams will they bear the further meaning of "wideawake " and " insensible." When we consider the idea of the soul, as described above, with impartial attention, it is an extraordinary phenomenon. Yet the mode of Its origin may be simple enough. It Is, of course, one result of the never completed attempt to understand the world, in particular that most complex of created things, a human being. This attempt we must make our- selves. The difficulties which attend the study of all personality are Increased when Its object represents a low culture ; they are multiplied when he also belongs to a remote epoch, and has to be interviewed by inference. A shrewd observer, speaking of the hopelessness so generally experienced in attempting to elicit the real beliefs of the savage, remarks of the Kafirs, that they " have not yet arrived in the course of evolution at that stage in which they can safely make any critical examination of the content of their ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 59 own consciousness. Their self-realisation has hitherto been sought solely along the line of their animal nature. They cannot tell you what they believe, for the very good reason that they hardly know this themselves. . . . They are but dimly conscious of large tracts of their own individuality, which lie below the level of full consciousness. . . . The subliminal self is enormously greater than that portion of it which rises to full self- consciousness. In a word, though they believe a very great deal, they do not quite know what they actually believe, for they never sit down and reflect on their beliefs. And the moment you try to find out what the Kafir believes, your very questions, unless carefully thought out beforehand, are sure to suggest to them ideas which they can easily fit in with their other ideas. Your very question will cause the development and | crystallisation of their ideas." ^ i It is therefore idle to assume that the mind of the savage contains " some inexplicable mystery," or that " the mirror of his intellect is of abnormal focus, or throws off distorted reflexions." As Payne remarks, "platitudes such as these could only result from superficial or prejudiced observation. Mind is essentially the same in all varieties of man ; the lowest American Indian thinks and reasons like ourselves."^ There is little qualitative diff^erence between savage and civilised mental capacity ; the most important discoveries and inventions — those, that is, which have led to all others — were made in the period of savagery. The apparent diff^erence is due to two facts. Firstly, civilised man has had for many ages the use of an analytical language, the value of which in the acquisition and storing of 1 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (1904), 71. 2 Payne, History of the Nenv World called America^ ii. 246. 6o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL knowledge cannot be over-estimated ; secondly, the savage, "like the lower animals, lives mainly in the real and present ; his mental action, insuifficiently stimulated by mere thought, requires sensible things for its support." ^ There is no reason for supposing that the savage mind is animal, or infantile, rudimentary, or in a state of dream. It is merely undifferentiated. It does not seem to have occurred to those theorists who compare civilised and uncivilised man to the disadvantage of the latter, that they are applying a different standard to each case. Early men have no literature in which to record the thought of their best specimens. The average mental processes and capacity of civilised men are not to be judged by the psychology of scientific and artistic literature which shows merely the results of the best specimens of mind. That is a false common- place which assumes a wider gulf between the brains of a Newton and an Australian black than between the latter and a chimpanzee. The last has no language ; the black has a language of an early type ; the scientist has a language which is analytical and fully equipped with general and abstract terms. Handicapped thus, the savage, as we read of the Brazilian Indian, never troubles about anything that does not concern his daily wants, ^ There is no need for him to analyse his thoughts ; perception and a ruminative memory are good enough for him. He Uves the more or less comfortable life of a natural tramp, and never thinks of the problems invented for him by the interviewer. Except in the act of perception, we may regard the mind of the savage and of his predecessors as being in 1 Payne, History of the Neiv JVorld called America, ii. 246, 2 Bates, 'T^e Naturalist on the Amazon, ii. 163. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 6i a more or less fluid state. Free thought was necessarily a stream of images, having no generalised terms or symbols for abstractions. With "sensible supports" alone thought is more like a panorama than a pro- position ; classification is difficult ; abstract notions can hardly exist. The mind passes from one memory- image to another, and each of these is a particular. During this ruminative thinking between perceptive acts the threshold of consciousness was high. Mental action was discontinuous, working, so to speak, in starts, and from beginning to end it was imaged. In these starts, namely, single acts of perception, it is probable that cognition was not so much distinct from feehng, nor feeling from will, as is the case with civilised psychosis.^ But the senses were finely developed, and concentrated attention had been well exercised. There is every reason for supposing that primitive man, like an animal, had a very keen perceptive and inferential power for what he needed, such as food, for what he feared, and generally for what he knew. His preperceptive faculty would be well developed. His mind, of course, possessed all the qualities of human mind ; it was well trained in the use of the fundamental powers of comparison and recognition, and it worked, as all mind works, by means of memory and association. It was merely innocent of analysis. § 3. Perception. Perception, which is a synthesis of sensations, begins. In all cases, not with minima, but with masses.^ The trained analytical mind proceeds to divide the whole 1 HofFding, Outlines of Psychology, 93. 2 W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics, i. 243, ii. 327. 62 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL impression, more or less rapidly, into its elements. But the untrained mind keeps the mass in a more or less undivided condition, unless, that is, there is a particular reason for selective perception of some one part or aspect of the impression. In this comprehensive stage of perception there is more simultaneity than succession. But there is no confusion or chaos ; no constituent of the whole is lost. On the contrary, observers have remarked the photographic power possessed by the savage of preserv- ing detail.^ In civilised perception, on the other hand, the habit of analysis and the influence of names actually erase from the synthesis many important details, while adding others that are pure abstractions, the results of conceptual analysis. Primitive perception was a com- prehensive ideated synthesis. We may therefore characterise primitive perception as being concerned primarily with totalities, not with parts, with the concrete, not with abstractions from it. It is, in a word, synthetic, and for this type of mental action the term holopsyckosis^ or whole-thinking, may perhaps be suggested. Having arrived at this general character of early mental processes, an indeterminate stream broken by vivid and comprehensive percepts of the ideational sort, we may for clearness' sake sketch some of the elements of perception, in order to obtain a better view of their combination and its results. Whether a man has just emerged from the anthropoid stage, and is ignorant of the soul and of many other things, or is the heir of a thousand ages and the legatee of a hundred aspects and applications of the idea, he has for the foundation of all his thinking nothing but 1 'Dud\tyK\d&,The Essential Kajivy 280, 282 ; Gallon, Inquiries^ etc., 272. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 63 sensation. Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu. The principle is well illustrated by the idea of the soul. All concepts depend ultimately on the sensations produced in the brain, but, whereas most concepts are soon influenced and often transformed by the abstrac- tions of language, the concept of the soul has a tendency to preserve the ideational form. Perception is a cerebro-sensory phenomenon pro- duced by an action on the senses and a reaction of the brain. " It may be compared to a reflex, the centrifugal period of which, instead of manifesting itself externally in movements, would be expended internally in awakening ' associations of ideas.' The discharge follows a mental instead of a motor channel." ^ Sensations are *' first things in the way of consciousness." ^ We are not concerned with immediate sensations ; nor with pure or single sensa- tions ; for practical purposes these do not exist. " From the moment of its first coming into being, the existence and properties of a sensation are determined by its relation to other sensations."^ "Anything which affects our sense-organs . . . arouses processes in the hemispheres which are partly due to the organisation of that organ by past experiences, and the results ot which In consciousness are described as ideas which the sensation suggests. The first of these ideas is that of the thing to which the sensible quality belongs. The consciousness of particular material things present to sense is perception." ^ " No state once gone can recur and be identical with what it was before,"^ nor 1 A. Binet, Psychology of Reasoning (1899), 5. 2 W. James, Textbook of Psychology (1892), 12. 3 H. HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology^ 114. * W. James, Textbook of Psychology^ 312. 6 Id, 154. 64 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL can the same object be perceived again absolutely, but the vibration of the same nerve-centres practically produces an identity of sensation and of thing perceived. Lasdy, perception contains all the elements of " thought,'* — of imagination, conception, reasoning. Remembered images or ideas, and new percepts, which will reinforce or alter the old images or add new ones, " constitute the materials of all intellectual operations ; memory, reasoning, imagination, are acts which consist, in ultimate analysis, of grouping and co-ordinating images, in apprehending the relations already formed between them, and in reuniting them into new relations." ^ When general and abstract terms are brought to the assistance of the mind, thought is still imagination, with names instead of images ; yet even then the mind employs memory-images, which are images of those names. In primitive man, as in all who are not thinking of their mental processes, the image formed by per- ception, though it is the essence of thought, is, during the act of formation, unconsciously reahsed. All we are conscious of in perception is the thing, identical with the " sight " of the thing, and its relations. This is another way of describing the exteriority of sensa- tions ; every thing or quality felt is felt in outer space. The law of association, again, brings us back to the comprehensiveness already claimed as a characteristic of primitive perception. '' When two processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them on recurring tends to propagate its excitement into the other." ^ But "all brain-processes are such as give rise to what we may call figured consciousness. 1 Binet, Psychology of Reasoning, lo. 2 James, Textbook of Psychology, 256. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT Ss If paths are shot-through at all, they are shot-through in consistent systems, and occasion thoughts of definite objects, not mere hodge-podges of elements." ^ In perception, again, the sensations are held fast by their stimuli ; ^ selective attention may therefore be difficult. In free thought, free combination or succession of images in memory, it is easier. In the next place, the qualities of volume and intensity inhere in all sensations. All sensations also involve extensity, out of which, discrimination, associa- tion, and selection have produced all exact knowledge of space.^ Again, all psychosis is motor. " The muscular sense has much to do with defining the order of position of things seen, felt, or heard, no less than with suggesting volume and extensity. When we think of a ball, the idea comprises the optical impressions of the eye, impressions of touch, of muscular adjustments of the eye, of movements of the fingers, and of the muscular sensations which result therefrom."* In perception, to sum up, we have the "thing," an imaged totality built up in a moment from the stimuli affecting particular sense-organs and from the reactions, involving all mental processes, of exercised centres. What combination of sensations gives us the " thing " most completely ? In order to answer this question we must briefly compare some characteristics of the senses. Touch, the m'other of the senses, is the most 1 Id. 316. 2 E. B. Titchener, Primer of Psychology, 97. 3 James, op. cit. 335, 337. James, Textbook of Psychology, 370, 341 ; id. 'The Feeling of Effort (1880) ; Binet, Psychology of Reasoning, 24. s 66 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL emotional and the least intellectual.^ Yet touch-ideas condition all our estimates of size, shape, and distance. The space-element is strong in the skin. Smell, a kind of chemical sense, gives the least precise and the most sensitive impressions. In man it has become almost rudimentary, but savages have still a keen olfactory sense as compared with civilised races. Salutation by smelling is a frequent custom. Many savage peoples say, "Smell me!" instead of " How do you do ? " ^ The Nicobarese are able to distinguish by smell members of each of their six tribes.^ Taste is hardly to be reckoned as a separate sense. Smell and touch enter into all taste-sensations. The ear gives sensations of greater vastness than the skin, but is less able to subdivide them. Loud sounds produce a feeling of enormousness.^ Nietzsche was of opinion that deUcacy of hearing could only have been produced under conditions where vision was unnecessary. " The ear, the organ of fear, could only have developed in the night and in the twilight of dark woods and caves. . . . In the brightness the ear is less necessary." ^ Voice is one of the best unaided means of recognition, but hearing, like touch, smell, and taste, merely infers a thing. For all practical purposes, to perceive is to see. The space-element is most active in the sensation of sight. " Not only does the maximal vastness yielded by the retina surpass that yielded by any other organ, but the intricacy with which our attention can subdivide 1 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Iv. 3, 6. 2 H. Ling Roth, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. 165 fF. 3 E. H. Man, ibid. 391. 4 W. James, 'Textbook of Psychology, 336, 5 F. Nietzsche, Morgenrothe, 230. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 67 this vastness, and perceive it to be composed of lesser portions simultaneously coexisting alongside of each other is without a parallel elsewhere/' ^ As compared with vision, the other senses, with the exception of hearing, have but little practical result. That is to say, in the conscious perception of the thing and in the memory-image, it is the sight of the thing that gives its totality and character. " Sight is the supreme and dominant sense in man. It is the main channel by which he receives his impressions. To a large extent it has slowly superseded all the other senses. Its range is practically infinite ; it brings before us remote worlds ; it enables us to understand the minute details of our structure." ^ Through it we obtain our inferences of reality, extension, and substance ; our impressions of life, action, and causation ; our recognition of beauty. Even when language has invaded much of the original domain of vision, more than half the mind is built up of visual images. Though to us the first impression produced by an object is generally a word-idea, yet even this is frequently a visual image ; and we absorb our general and abstract knowledge from the sight of the printed page. Binet speaks, in no mere metaphor, of "logical vision.'* "To know, to understand, to explain, to know the why and the how of things, all this culminates in an act of vision. The highest science is epitomised in these simple words — to see." ^ A curious instance of the way in which the mind may turn round upon itself is to be seen in the word "idea." Its original meaning was the "sight" of a thing, the impression of its visible form upon the brain. ^ James, op. cit.. I.e. 2 H. Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, iv. 135, 136. 3 'Bin^ty Psychology of Reasoning, 172. 68 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL But it came to mean what in a good deal of civilised thought is the opposite of this, — the inward "spirit" of a thing. The word is a microcosm of the history of thought, and in particular of the history of the idea of the soul. We see, then, that a thing is most completely perceived by vision. Visual perception involves various motor sensations ; it may also be assisted by auditory, tactual, and olfactory sensations, but the totality of the thing is complete without these latter aids. The sight of a man is thus for the percipient his total personality, including his body and its parts, shape, stature, and colour, his quality as a living, moving, and breathing totality, and, by association, the quality of his acts, emotions, and volitions. The thing envisaged in perception is a complete reality ; it is the thing as an object of all thought and all science. Now a living coloured voluminous photograph like this, stamped upon the brain by a cinematographic reverberation, leaves an impression, the importance of which cannot be over-estimated. This visual image, identical with the thing itself, is repeated in every perception of the thing. It is also repeated in memory, where it stands for and represents the thing ; it is employed in every process of thought. It may recur involuntarily, or it may be voluntarily called up. Imagination is a synthesis of such images ; reasoning is a form of this. The primitive percipient has no other content of consciousness ; nor have we, — the difference is that, while in his case the images were entirely of objects, with us, through the influence of language and other aids to civilisation, the images are to some extent auditory and visual images of words, not of things alone. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 69 That this is the character of perception and of thought unassisted by analytical language is beyond question. That it is the fundamental character of these processes in all stages of evolution is insisted upon by psychology to-day. Even the psychology of feeling has to reckon with ideas. § 4. Ideation, In order to present the main features of our ex- planation as clearly as possible, it will be well to give some sketch of ideation from the point of view we have taken. Modern psychology may be said to date from the researches of Taine and Galton on the subject of mental imagery.^ Its fundamental importance had been observed by Aristotle, who stated the fact that it is impossible to think without a " sensible image,'* but the shadows of abstraction obscured the idea for more than two thousand years. In 1865 it was still possible for eminent psychologists to hold that " an impassable chasm separates the conception of an object which is absent or imaginary — otherwise called an image — and the actual sensation produced by a present object ; that the two phenomena diifer not only in degree but in kind, and that they resemble each other no more than the body and the shadow." The story of the idea of the soul illustrates the story of the soul itself, and this idea of 1865 is a curious coincidence. Galton asked, in a questionnaire, " whether one was able to represent absent objects mentally by a kind of internal vision, — he took a thoroughly English example, ^ H. Taine, De Vintelligence (1870) ; F. Galton, Inquiries into Human faculty (1883). 70 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the appearance of breakfast when served, — and if this entirely subjective representation had common char- acteristics with the external vision."^ His inquiry was confined to vision. The different kinds of images are, of course, " as numerous as the different kinds of sensations. Each sense has its images, these being, therefore, visual, auditory, tactile, motor, etc. We are able, when we exercise our memory on an object, to cumulatively employ every kind of image, or to have recourse to only a single kind. Every person has his own habits depending on the nature of his organism. We must, therefore, distinguish several varieties of individuals, several types." A common type is the indifferent type. The indifferent, when recalling a person, sees in his mind the form and colour of his figure as clearly as he hears the sound of his voice. The audiles conceive all their recollections in sound ; in order to recall a passage they impress upon their minds the sound of the words. " When I write a scene," said Legouv6 to Scribe, " I hear ; you see ; at each phrase which I write, the voice of the person who is speaking strikes my ear. You, who are the theatre itself, your actors walk, act before your eyes ; I am the listener and you the spectator." Those of the motor type employ images derived from movements. "When I form," says Strieker, "the image of the letter P, the same sensation is produced in my lips as if I were really about to articulate it."^ The most common — except for words — is the visual type. Visuals, when thinking of a friend, see his figure, 1 Binet, Psychology of Reasoning, 1 1 . We may suggest a connection between a loss of visualising power and a strengthening of the auditory- image, due to language and reading, and the predominance of music in the aesthetic life of the modern world. 2 Id. 13, 14, 25, 27. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 71 but do not hear his voice ; when they recall an air, they see the notes of the score. But it is not only their memory which is visual : when they reason, or when they exercise their imagination, they employ visual images alone.^ Binet's account ignores the motor-elements in vision, and the frequent combination of the audile and visual types. We quote it for its clearness. With regard to the memory-image itself, the description already given of the *' thing" in perception will serve as a general example of what it becomes on reproduction in the mind.^ Some points concerning the visual type of image deserve notice. Galton remarks that "a visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relation of objects in space are concerned." The best workmen are those who visualise the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands.^ We have mentioned the quality ot volume ; Galton notes that vision, being binocular, has a stereoscopic quality, especially in children, who can focus very near objects. " I find," he says, " that a few persons can by what they often describe as a kind of touch-sight visualise at the same moment all round the image of a solid body. An eminent mineralogist assures me that he is able to imagine simultaneously all the sides of a crystal with which he is familiar. I may be allowed to quote a curious faculty of my own in respect to this. It is exercised only occasionally and in dreams, or rather in nightmares, but under those circumstances I am perfectly conscious of embracing an entire sphere in a single perception. It appears to lie within my mental eyeball, ^ Binet, Psychology of Reasonings 15. 2 See above, p. 68. ^ Galton, Inquiries^ 78. 72 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL and to be viewed centripetally." ^ This last-mentioned faculty is perhaps not uncommon ; the present writer, when awake, with eyes open or closed, can embrace in one view the whole of a human figure. The word "embrace" gives exactly the sensation experienced. Let us now consider the power of visualisation in early man. We have already credited him with keen and trained senses. It is significant that, while the civilised greeting is " How is your health ? " the Kafir is, "I see you!"^ Galton found that the visualising faculty is very marked in such low races as the Bushman and the Eskimo, who draw unerring pictures without correcting a line. The method adopted is remarkable : they copy on the slate the visual image which they have in their mind ; as a preliminary a few dots, without any apparent connection, are made, round which the outline is drawn. A young Indian was seen tracing the out- line of a print with the point of his knife ; he explained that "he would remember better how to carve it when he returned home." Galton observes on the first of these two cases, that of the Bushman, " It is impossible, I think, for a drawing to be made on this method unless the artist had a clear image in his mind's eye of what he was about to draw, and was able, in some degree, to project it on the paper or slate." ^ The projection of an after-image is a well-known "illusion" of sight; the projection of memory-images must be classed as abnormal, though it is by them that ghosts, if not souls, are seen. As draughtsmen the palaeolithic men of Europe were superior even to Bushmen and Eskimo. 1 Id. 68. 2 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, 37. 3 Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 70 fF. The method is note- worthy in connection with the zodiacal drawings, the figures traced round the stars of each constellation. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 73 Their drawings of reindeer and mammoths are works of visual genius. Generally the lower races are dis- tinguished for wonderful memory and reproductive power. Kafirs copy well and " faithfully reproduce every detail." They have "the most marvellous memories for facts that interest them. Having no written language they have to rely on a memory which is not burdened in childhood by the discipline of board- schools.*' ^ We may conclude that the visualising powers of primitive man were above the average in their normal state.^ The abnormal supplies corrobora- tion. Like most animals, early men were habituated to fasting. The food-quest consisted of long periods of hunger broken by spells of repletion. It is known that fasting is productive of visual hallucinations, that is, abnormal projections of visual images ; in any case it sharpens the visualising power. The "seer," again, is frequent in savage society, and there are many cases which indicate a trained visualising faculty, such as is exhibited by crystal-gazers. The Central Australians say of a man who can see spirits that he "has his eyes open."^ § 5' Origin of the Idea of the SouL Primitive perception was likely to make the most of its visual images of men and things. Besides keenness and intensity it possessed comprehensiveness, a grasp of totality. Primitive memory was well stocked — there was nothing else — ^with well-developed images of persons and things, always being renewed in perception by 1 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, 280 ff. 2 See R. Brudenell Carter in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XV. 121. 3 Spencer and Gillen, The Nati've Tribes of Central Australia, 515. 74 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL contact with the real presence. Now the stream of consciousness (excluding perception, for the moment) consists of alternations of movement and rest. " The resting-places are occupied by sensorial imaginations that can be held before the mind for an indefinite time and contemplated without changing ; the intervals are filled with thoughts and relations that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest. The latter may be called sub- stantive, and the former the transitive parts of the stream of thought. The only images intrinsically important are the halting-places, the substantive con- clusions" of the thought.^ In our primitive subject these substantive conclusions are memory-images, chiefly visual. They are the stored results of his acts of perception, of the camera and phonograph of his brain. Let us compare him, when turning these over in his mind, to a man turning over an album of photographs, and being interrupted, from time to time, by the sight of the originals. The comparison is, of course, not fair to the memory-Image, which is far more like reality than is a photograph. Nevertheless, let us consider what difference the fingerer of the mental album, who, by hypothesis, is unsophisti- cated, will feel between the originals and their copies. The photograph is the person over again, but there is a twofold difference : the observer can refer to the likeness when he pleases ; it is in his power ; but he cannot always see the original. In the next place, the copy is much less real, less complete. The facsimile, then, both is and is not the man. Make the copy more real ; give it the colour, volume, and movement possessed by the memory-image, * W. James, Textbook of Piyckologyy i6o. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 75 and it is practically the original himself. But it is not confused with him for the reasons mentioned before. It is less real still, less complete, less intensely human ; it is not external or tangible, but it is in the brain of the observer, where it can be actually felt, especially on closing the eyes. Let our observer now see the original person, and then, without leaving his presence, close his eyes and call him up in mind. What is it that he sees? It is worth while pausing here and attempting to put ourselves in the place of a naive person who has never yet seen or realised a memory-image. To such a one the sight of a man in the act of perception is simply taken as a matter of course ; it is no more thought about than is the act of breathing. If this naive person possesses language, this very fact may delay his discovery of a new world of mental objects. For this is what his discovery amounts to — a new world. This discovery, doubdess one of the earliest, was more pregnant with possibility than any discovery since made by man, inasmuch as it was his first acquaintance with the soul and with the world of spirits, in other words, with mental existences, and therefore a world for his own soul to explore and to plant therein the colonies of science. If our explanation is correct, what a simple thing was this achievement, and how inevitable ! In the one case, then, perception, our subject has the person or object, the thing ; in the other, memory or thought, he has the soul of the thing. The idea of ] the soul is thus an automatic result of the reaction to perception ; it is a mental repetition of sensation. For ; illustration we may compare a quasi-normal example, the illusions known as after-images. After looking at the sun one can see its image mentally for some time. 76 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL When primitive man first saw an object in memory, he saw the soul for the first time ; he was then conscious of something besides the thing, — the mental replica, the thought of the thing. It differed in two respects, as we have noted ; the real presence was external, tangible, and intense ; the imaged presence was felt in the brain, or the eye, or ear, and was seen as less intense, less complete, intangible, and internal,^ Our world is divided into two halves, outer and inner, which correspond to peripheral and central nervous reaction, to outer and inner consciousness. Sensation is the outer, memory the inner half. The inner half is a duplicate or repetition of the outer ; the brain repeats what the senses give it. The real and the ideal interact harmoniously, but the normal consciousness recognises the distinction. We say consciousness — because, as will be noticed, it is precisely in the memory-image, when realised, that the mind for the first time becomes really conscious. In perception unconsciousness may be indefinitely maintained. Thus the soul itself has, in perception and in memory, a real and an ideal duality, which it repeats in the duality of the thing and its soul. This, then, we may regard as the primal form of the idea — the sensory, chiefly visual image, in memory, oi the whole personality or totality of the person or object, being the result of a primitively keen and comprehensive act of perception. It is, in a word, the " idea " of the thing. Though apparently seen in dreams and the projected sights of hallucination, it is not seen there first ; ir fact it is never seen there at all. Now that we have 1 On the incompleteness of the memory-image, see Wundt, Outlines ^ Psychology, 246, 247. ELEMENTS OF THOUGHT 77 discussed perception, we may submit a final disproof of the "dream-theory" of the soul. The essence of the realisation of a new entity is precisely the state of being conscious of it, and of its individual character. Now in dreams the mind is not conscious, much less is it conscious that what it sees are not the things themselves. In the next place, the dream-sight is identical, both practically and psychologically, with an act of percep- tion ; in ordinary primitive perception there is no consciousness, much less is there any in a dream. Lastly, how does primitive man, or any man, come to any conclusion whatever about the nature of his dreams? By remembering them, by calling the dream-image up in memory, after he wakes. This being so (to exclude as irrelevant the occasional persistence of dream-images) we have, even on the dream-theory, simply the memory-image of the dream- percept ; we never get the dream itself. The primal idea, then, is essentially different from real "sights." It is not exteriorised. If it had been it would never have been marked off from reality ; there would never have arisen a dualism between matter and spirit, person and soul. The essence of it is that it is mental, actually felt in the brain, never ^ confused with the reality in normal consciousness. When the idea is deliberately compared with the reality we have interesting results which will be discussed in their place. Thus the soul is neither a phantom or skeleton \ outline, nor a second self or double. The origin of j these two extremes of which the soul is the mean will ^ concern us later on. The soul, again, is not an illusion — it is not mistaken for the reality ; it is not the shadow, — it has three - dimensional volume, form, 78 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL feature, colour ; it is not a ghost or wraith. When inanimate objects are in question their souls are not animated. It is not a part of or secretion from the organism, such as breath or blood. Lastly, it is not an abstract "force" or "principle/' such as "life" or " breath of life " ; nor a concept, such as " reason " or "conscience." It is the ideal totality Including more or less of the attributes of the reality. Spiritual existence is mental existence ; the world of spirits Is the mental world. Everything that can through perception lay the foundation of a memory-Image can claim the possession of a soul, an existence in the spiritual world here and hereafter. And this world Is, in the incomplete and long-suffering term, the super- natural. CHAPTER IV PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES § I . General Character of the Ethnological Evidence, We have described the primitive, and, as far as pre-scientific culture is concerned, the only complete form of the idea of the soul. It has the advantage that it is necessarily universal, and can be presupposed in every case. It is no abstraction ; if, therefore, " primitiveness " in man is an abstraction, the primitive idea of the soul still remains as a working hypothesis for the study of " primitive man." Before comparing the idea with the ethnological evidence, it may be well to repeat that it comprises practically everything — personality, body, life, breath, movement, and the various attributes of the object as seen in the percept. We shall not abstract details from the psychology of each people, such as may bear out our view ; as far as is possible, and as far as space permits, the doctrine of the soul in more or less typical completeness will in each case be presented, and the individual peculiarities will receive due emphasis. This is the only scientific method. The principles already discussed will enable us to discern the original idea below later deposits. Critical remarks, when they occur, are those of the original observers, or based upon them. 79 8o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Few of these psychologies preserve the original idea in isolation. Those which represent the second stage of mental evolution, corresponding to savagery, some- times overlap into the third ; this, corresponding to barbarism and pre-scientific culture, supplies examples which have three strata — their own, the savage, and the primitive. Each may be tested by the means already explained ; thus, behind most cases of the " double," or the " ghost," we may legitimately infer the original idea, and our inference will be justified when we actually meet with the original idea itself. In most of the examples we have instances of a process of abstraction, in one sense of this term, namely, the taking of concrete parts for the whole. This process characterises the second psychological stage. It is complicated by association. Special cases of it will be dealt with later, but we may note the simple reasons for the process. The mind in all stages of evolution finds it difficult to form a generalised conception, including every phase of experience which concerns the particular object of the generalisation. The mind also is prone to economy ; that is to say, it prefers the simple method of the label, symbol, or tag, to the effort of grasping the idea of the total personality. Such economy is actually essential for the development of knowledge, and in the second stage we see the method at work. Lastly, the memory- image is continually being modified by hgw percepts of the original object ; the soul is accordingly varied as circumstance directs. Thus the soul of a living healthy man is in the memory of the observer correspondingly living and healthy ; while the soul of a man just dead is curiously tossed about between the memory-image of him when alive and the memory-image of his corpse. There are other interesting developments oi PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 8i this principle. The stages assumed (first, the primitive totality ; second, the substitution of parts or tags, and the indefinite alteration of the memory-image ; third, the beginning of abstract concepts) follow the order of psychological predicates. With regard to terms for the soul, these illustrate the psychological principles. They are of no value whatever for inference as to the original idea of the people in question or of mankind at large. By way of illustrating the above remarks, and the difficulty of reaching the actual belief of savages, for whom the original idea is only half-conscious, and who cling to the easy way of the parts, we may cite the following observations of two experienced workers in the ethnological field. Dennett remarks, in connection with West African ideas, " When I read that, according to the observation of Mr. So-and-so, the same word is used among a certain people for breath, shadow, ghost, and soul, I do not conclude that the observation in question is wrong. Neither, however, am I led to suppose that these four distinct ideas are one in the mind of that people." ^ In connection with South African ideas, Macdonald observes,^ *' Of all the subjects connected with savage and semi-savage life in Africa, the doctrine of souls is that which it is most difficult to understand fully and state clearly. After years of residence, and daily intercourse with the people, new phases of that mysterious region, the spirit-world, present themselves, and the corrections of one's early and crude conclusions have to be re-corrected, and often new conclusions formed. Facts regarded as fixed and permanent, and accepted as such by one 1 R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Black Mans Mind (1906), 79. 2 J. E. Macdonald, " Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes," inyournal of the Anthropological Institute, yis.. 11^, 120. 6 82 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL writer after another, have to be discarded as merely local or tribal, or even sub-tribal. From magician: belonging to the same tribe statements are hearc diiFering so widely, that it is impossible to reconcile them, and often difficult to trace them to a commor origin." As the last observation suggests, we have also to deal with individual additions. We have noticed the fluidity characteristic of the early mind^ and have discussed the same characteristic in early language ; ^ what has often been noted in the latter is probable enough in the case of early psychology ; it is probable, that is to say, that the doctrine of the soul obtaining among a particular people is itself in a state of flux, and may be completely changed in a few generations. We may finally remind ourselves that each idea, though it may be a part, or a tag, or an association only, is psychologically a whole ; that there is no fusion of incompatible ideas, or ideas not synchronous ; that, lastly, the creation of abstract concepts, such as " life," only begins to appear in the third stage, and is then, as always, entirely a matter of language, not of thought. § 2. Australian Psychology, The Australians of Port Darwin, we are told, " cannot distinguish between body and soul." ^ In South-Eastern Australia there is an idea that the soul does not finally escape from the body until decomposition sets it free.^ " The Kurnai believe that each human individual has within him a spirit which they call Tambo. This YambOy it was supposed, could during sleep leave the ' See above, p. 52. 2 P. Foelsche, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. 198. 3 L. Fison, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, a. 141. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 83 body ; could confer with other disembodied spirits ; could even wend its way to the celestial vault, beyond which lies * ghost-land.' . , . With the Woi-worung this human spirit was called Mump. It was supposed that the Murup could leave the body during sleep, and the exact period of departure was said to be during the snoring of the sleeper. It was also believed that the Murup of an individual could be sent from him by magic, as, for instance, when a hunter incautiously went to sleep when out hunting, or at a distance from his camp. The Murup being thus temporarily banished, and the wakening of the victim prevented, his enemy was supposed to abstract his kidney-fat, and thereby cause his ultimate death. . . . The Murup of the living was supposed to be able to communicate with other Murups^ either of sleepers or of those who were dead. . . . The human spirit became after death what we may call a ' ghost.' With the Kurnai it was a Mrart ; but I am inclined to think that the Tamho was also generally supposed to exist for some little time after death as Yambo^ and before it became Mrart ; for 1 1 have heard the ghost of the dead spoken of as Tambo^ or sometimes as Turdi-Kurnai^ that is, ' dead man.' ! With the Ngarego and Wolgal, the dead man's ghost was Bulahong ; with the coast Murring, Tulugal^ that is, 'belonging to the dead.'". . . The Kurnai "ghosts" " were believed to live upon plants ; they could revisit the earth at will, to communicate with the wizards, or on being summoned by them. The Woi-worung believed that the ghost wandered, at least for a time, in the hunting-grounds it had used when embodied, but this must, I think, have been after ascending to the sky. I learn that it was thought that, at the very first of the final separation of the Murup from the body, it proceeded 84 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL to the west, and there falling over the edge of the earth went into the receptacle of the sun — the Ngamai thence ascending in the bright tints of sunset to thi sky. I have an account how a celebrated wizarc pursued the escaping spirit, and returned successful saying that he had overtaken it just as it was falling over into Ngamat, and that he had seized it by tb middle, and brought it back captive under his possun rug. Being thus restored to the still breathing body the sick man recovered consciousness and revived." " The ghost was supposed to return at times to th< grave and contemplate its mortal remains. Willian Beiruk, in speaking to me of this, put it in this way ' Sometimes the Murup comes back and looks down int< the grave, and it may say, " Hallo, there is my olc possum rug ; there are my old bones." ' The ghos was supposed to kill game with magically deadly spears It was even believed that when fires were left burning in the bush where hunters had cooked part of thei game, the ghosts would come after they had gone, anc warm themselves, and consume the fragments. Finally the ghosts were believed to inhabit the ' gum-tre country ' beyond the sky, or perhaps, to speak mor correctly, the country which was the other side of th vault. . . . The Ngarego and Wolgal also though that the ghost for a time haunted the neighbourhood c the grave, and that it could kill game, light fires, am make camps for itself. In the case of the intermeni not many years ago, of a man at the Snowy River, th survivors were much alarmed, during the night followin the burial, by what they supposed to be the ghost c the dead man prowling round the camp, and as one c them said, ' coming after his wife.' " " These beliefs as to the human spirit in and aft€ PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 85 life I find to be widespread ; and they are important in their bearing. The Tambo, the Murup^ the Bulahongy or whatever name we choose to take, clearly represents during life the self-consciousness of the | individual. The apparent power of this self-conscious- I ness to desert the body during sleep for a time leads naturally up to the further belief that death is merely its permanent separation from the body. Moreover, as during dreams the ' ghosts ' of others who were dead were apparently perceived, the belief is natural that the individual still existed after death, although generally invisible to the living. This was brought out very clearly to me by the argument of one of the Kurnai, whom I asked whether he really thought his Tamho could ' go out ' during sleep. He said, ' It must be so, for when I sleep I go to distant places ; I see distant people ; I even see and speak with those that are dead.' ... In all these cases we find the tightly cording of the dead man, and the belief that his ghost still lingered near or revisited the spot. It seems to me not only that these aborigines believed that the ghost could follow the survivors, but also that the dead man himself, unless tightly bound and buried under tightly-rammed logs and earth, might likewise follow them in the body. Bearing in mind the belief in the existence of the human individual independendy of the body, in the power of this ' spirit ' to wander invisible during the sleep of the body, in the in- dividuality as a ghost after death, present with the survivors, yet invisible, it is easy to arrive at some of the motives which render these savages so averse to speak of the dead. In one instance, when one of the Kurnai was spoken to about a dead friend, soon after the decease, he said, looking round uneasily, ' Do not 86 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL do that ; he might hear you and kill me ! ' It i: also evident that while any one might be able t( communicate with the 'ghosts' during sleep, it wai only the wizards who were able to do so in waking hours." ^ " In all cases the wizard is credited witt the power of seeing man in an incorporeal state, eithei temporarily or permanently separated from the body as a ghost which is invisible to other eyes." ^ According to Moorhouse, the natives near Adelaide believed that the soul was of the size " of a boy eighi years old." It lived after death. These people alsc spoke of the shadow as being the soul.^ In the Euahlayi tribe each individual is supposed to posses; three or four souls ; the yowee^ " soul-equivalent " ; the doowee^ "dream -spirit" ; the mulloowily "shadow-spirit": and th.eyunbeai. The last is the individual totem, oi " animal familiar " ; it is " a sort of alter ego ; a man's spirit is in his yunheai^ and his yunbeat s spirit is ir him." A wirreenun^ or medicine-man, can take the shape oi\i\% yunbeat^ and he has the power "to conjure up a vision of it." The yowee never leaves the bod]^ of the living man ; it grows as he grows, and decay* as he decays. Spirits are visible to dogs. The sou! enters the body before birth ; it is not a reincarnation but a new spiritual creation. The yunbeat is also ne\^ for each individual. It is a sort of external soul identified with some animal chosen in various ways. "Addressing some Australian blacks a Europear ^ A. W. Howitt, "On some Australian Beliefs," in Journal of th Anthropological Institute, xiii. 186-191. 2 A. W. Howitt, " On Australian Medicine Men," in Journal of th Anthropological Institute^ xvi. 52. 3 Moorhouse, in E. J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery int Central Australia (1845), ii. 356. ** K. Langloh Parker, T'he Euahlayi Tribe (1905), 21, 30, 35, 46, 50. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 87 missionary said, '1 am not one, as you think, but two/ Upon this they laughed. ' You may laugh as much as you like,* continued the missionary, ' I tell you that I am two in one ; this great body that you see is one ; within that there is another little one which is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but the little body flies away when the great one dies.' To this some of the blacks replied, 'Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body within the breast.' On being asked where the little body went after death, some said it went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and some said they did not know," ^ According to the Central Australians the individual is a reincarnation of a '* spirit-individual," whose origin dates from the Alcheringa time, the period of "the ancestors." These left their ** spirit-parts " here and there at spots called nanja. The mai-urli^ or " spirit- parts," were producible by a sort of budding ; an Alcheringa man would shake himself, and spirit- children would then drop from his muscles. A story is told of an ancestor who suddenly found a duplicate of himself appearing at his side ; he exclaimed, " Hallo ! that is me ! " They are also described as emanations from the body, and as being en rapport with the sacred bull-roarers, churinga. The "spirit-individual" enters the woman's body by the navel, when she happens to be near a nanja. The touch of a churinga can also cause conception. " When a ' spirit-individual' goes into a woman there still remains the Arumburtnga^ which may be regarded as its double." This is also described as the double of the man himself, and as his guardian spirit. It is "changeless and lives for ever." * Mimotres hutortques sur V Australiey 162, quoted by Frazer, The Golden Bought i. 248. 88 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The " spirit-part " also of the Alcheringa individual " lives for ever, but undergoes reincarnation.'* Strehlow modifies this account as far as it concerns the Arunta theory of conception. "Birth," he says, "is an incarnation of invisible individuals, not merely spirits, which live in trees and other objects, in a human or animal form." The soul after death wanders for a while and then suffers annihilation. The churinga is not the abode of the soul ; the soul dwells for a time in the body of the dead person. The Warramunga tribe imagine that the " spirit " is very minute, about the size of a small grain of sand. Others speak of "spirit-children" travelling in whirlwinds; others of the churinga being made by the whirlwind. Grains of sand are a common object in Australian sand-storms. The minute size of the soul is in connection with its entrance into the bodies of women. Lastly, these "spirits" wander about in dreams.^ In South-Eastern Australia the son is recognised " as the actual re- incarnation of the father. ' Here I am, and there you stand with my body ! ' cried an old blackfellow to his disobedient son. ^ There you stand with my body, and yet you won't do what I tell you ! ' " The Wotjobaluk tribe of South-Eastern Australia believed " that ' the life of Ngunungunut (the Bat) is the life of a man, and the life of Yartatgurk (the Nightjar) is the life of a woman,' and that when either of these creatures is killed the life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case every man or every woman in the camp feared that * B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), 124 ff., 138, 514, 515 ; id. The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), 145, 146, 157* i58» i63j 279) 373» 45°* ^°S i Strehlow in Folk-Lore, xvi. 430, 431. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 89 he or she might be the victim, and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe drubbing with their yamsticks, while often women were injured or killed by spears," ^ Throughout this part of the continent the belief was very real ; the men protected their life-animal " even to the half-killing of their wives for its sake," while the women's animal was "jealously protected by them. If a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their children, and will strike him with their long poles." ^ A point to be observed is that it is no individual animal, but the species that is identified here with a soul. White men when first seen by the Australians were thought to be dead blackfellows returned to life ; '* tumble down blackfellow, jump up whitefellow," has become classical. The white man everywhere was first regarded as a ghost.^ The reason for this is curious ; the natives burned their dead and removed the epidermis ; this process left the corpse for some time with a whitish colour.* The fact that native babies are at first white may also be suggested as a reason. The Tasmanians held that the warrawahy or shadow, was the ghost, and that it cured disease by expelling the disease-spirit. They wore the bones of dead friends " to secure the protection of their spirits, who ^ A. W. Howitt in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiv. 145, xvili. 58. ^ J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines, 52. ^ Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 248 ; Journal of the Anthro- pological Institute, xxiv, 190. * A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), 442. 90 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL were the manes-deities to whom they looked for guidance and help in trouble. The native belief in a future state involved life in some distant region, and especially the foreigners were as elsewhere identified with dead Tasmanians returned from the spirit-land." Their name for echo was kukanna wurrawinay that is, talking shadow.^ § 3. Polynesian and Melanesian Psychologies. Among the Maoris of New Zealand the word ata, "reflected light," was sometimes used of the soul, but wairua, the etymology of which is unknown, was the commoner term. " It seems to have signified a shadowy form," but there is " a discrepancy in the ideas." It resided in the head. The soul of food was absorbed by the gods in sacrifice. When the fairies accepted a present of jewels, they took only the " souls " or " similitudes " of the ornaments. Weapons were not exactly supposed to have souls, but those which had been used in war possessed mana^ " power, prestige, holiness, intellect, influence." The ghost was not feared unless the funeral ceremonies were neglected. In this case he might become a kahukahuy the germ, that is, of an infant contained in the catamenia. Such spirit-germs were feared on account of their powers of mischief.^ According to another account the atua was the spirit of a dead chief. A living chief himself was an atua. Any one eating in the chief's house ran the risk of swallowing an atua^ which would make him ill, because the chief was * E. B. Tylor, " On the Tasmanians as Representatives of Palaeolithic Man," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ xxiii. 151. 2 E. Tregear, "The Maoris," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. 9S, loi, 105, n8, 119, 120. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 91 always entertaining the atuas of his predecessors. A Maori warrior would gouge out and swallow the eyes of a chief whom he had slain in battle, hoping thus to appropriate his atua^ which, we are told, resided in the eyes. Hence we may identify the aSua with the soul of man.^ In the world after death souls ate the souls of kumara and taro. Seed-taros, for instance, were placed in the hands of the corpse. The natives explained that in case the body took the soul under- ground, the taro-seeds would grow and produce taros for its consumption. They were not sure about the soul going up, but the body certainly went down. In order to catch the soul of a distinguished man for installation in the Wahi Tapu^ the Westminster Abbey of the Maoris, it was enticed by a bit of its body or a piece of its clothes. When a chief was killed in battle he was cooked and eaten. It was believed that his soul entered the stones of the oven in which he was cooked, and that these retained it so long as they retained any heat. KarakiaSy or charms, were intoned to assist the soul in its ascent to heaven.^ The soul, according to the Tahitians, resembled in shape the human body, and in this form it '* sometimes appeared in dreams to the survivors." Everything had a soul. *'They were accustomed to consider them- selves surrounded by invisible intelligences, and recognised in the rising sun, the mild and silver moon, the shooting stars, the meteor's transient flame, the ocean's roar, the tempest's blast, or the evening breeze, the movements of mighty spirits." This is Ellis's poetical way of stating the fact of animism. When * R. Taylor, Te ika « Maui (1885), 352; R. Polack, Manners and Customs of the Ne^w Zealanders, i. 51. 2 R. Taylor, Te ika a Maui^ 100, roi, 104. 92 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL speaking of psychological facts they used a term equivalent to "inner parts of the body," thus, *' my inside thinks," "my inside wishes." The act of death was compared to the drawing of a sword out of the scabbard ; it was termed unuhi te varua e te atua, '* the voice (or spirit) drawn out by the god," unuhi meaning '*to draw something out of its case." "The unus are curiously carved pieces of wood, marking the sacred places of interment, and emblematical of tiis^ tikiSy or spirits " ; ^ or rather, " the unu was the symbol of a man whose spirit had been drawn out of his body, and the holes at the top of it probably represent the openings through which this abstraction was made." ^ When drawn out of the head the soul was carried off by the oromatuas. These "were con- sidered the most malignant of beings " ; they were recognised by the whistle of the wind through the skulls in the marae^ or sepulchral enclosure; "they were not confined to the skulls of departed warriors, or to the images made for them, but occasionally resorted to sea-shells, and the murmur perceived on applying the valve to the ear was imagined to proceed from the demon."® The oromatuas took the soul to the gods, who ate it. If it was eaten three times it became deified and invisible, and could return to earth to incarnate itself in men. The place to which departed spirits repaired was generally called the po^ *' state of night," which was also the abode of the gods. Tiis or tikis are ancestral spirits.^ ^ W. Ellis, Polynesian ResearcheSy i. 331, 361, 397 ; ii. 214, 422, 423. 2 H. C. March, " Polynesian Ornament a Mythography," in Journal of the Anthropological Institutey xxii. 309. 3 Ellis, op. at. i. 363. * W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches^, i, 396, 334. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 93 In the Marianne Islands a man's soul was according to his character, powerful or feeble. The souls of women were of less importance than those of men.^ Throughout Polynesian belief there are indications of the idea that the '* inner man " resides in the belly.^ According to the Hervey islanders fat men have fat souls, thin men thin souls. The sorcerers used to snare souls as part of their business. Loops of cinet were used ; large loops for the fat, small loops for the thin souls. If a man whom a sorcerer hated fell ill, these snares would be set up near his house. The souls were generally caught in the form of a bird or an insect. The soul is an airy but visible copy of the man. Sometimes the spirit of a sick man is conceived as an insect or bird. '* The visible world itself is but a gross copy of what exists in spirit- land. If fire burns, it is because latent flame was hidden in the wood. If the axe cleaves, it is because the fairy of the axe is invisibly present.'* The seat of the emotions and the intellect is in the " inward parts " of the body. A mother says to a child, " My inside loves you." Similarly the belly, liver, and heart are used as subjects for psychological predicates. In connection with cosmogony Gill states that " the primary conception of these islanders as to spiritual existence is a point." In the scheme drawn by him from their descriptions the world-root tapers down- wards to a point, at which the Worm, the spirit of creation, the " root of all existence," supports the ^ Dumont d'tJrville, Voyage pittoreique autour du monde, ii. 495. 2 Davies, Dictionary of the Takitian Dialect (1857), s.^ij. mananja, and o/>M ; W. Williams, Dictionary of the Ne^w Zealand Language (1852), s.^. mananja ; H. C. March in Journal of the Anthropological Institutiy xxii. 308. 94 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL universe. The spirits of warriors "ascend to the blue sky, where you see them floating as specks." ^ The soul in Samoa is anganga^ " that which goes or comes," the reduplication expressing the fact that it is distinct from the body. The Samoans expressed emotions by using the belly as subject ; thus, " my belly is alarmed." The soul is said to be "the daughter of Taufanuu^ ' vapour of lands,* which forms clouds ; as the dark cloudy covering of night comes on, man feels sleepy, because his soul wishes to go and visit its mother." In Tracey Island there is a story that man was originally formed from vapour. Elsewhere we find that he was formed from a, worm. In another story the soul of a dying chief is handed about wrapped up in a leaf. When a man had been drowned, or killed in battle, the relatives spread a cloth near the place, and offered prayer. The first thing that settled on the cloth — grasshopper, butterfly, or whatever it might be — was supposed to contain the dead man's soul, and was therefore caught and duly buried. After death the skull was kept as a receptacle for the soul, which would come to it when called. The souls of the dead hovered round the living. At death they went to the Hadean regions under the ocean, which were known as Pulotu? The soul according to the Tongans was described a century ago by Mariner. " The human soul is the finer or more aeriform part of the body, and which leaves it suddenly at death. It stands in the same relation to the body as the perfume and more essential 1 W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, i, ^, 20, 154, 171, 199, 206 ; id. Life in the Southern hies, 32, 181 fF. ; id. in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vi. 4. 2 G. Turner, Samoa (1884), 8, 16, 17, 56, 142, 150, 282, 283, 288, 301, 314- PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 95 qualities of a flower do to the more solid substance which constitutes the vegetable fibre." There is no proper term for it. The word loto may be used, but 1 this " rather means a man's disposition, inclination, | passion, or sentiment. The soul is rather supposed to exist throughout the whole extension of the body, but particularly in the heart, the pulsation of which is the strength and power of the soul or mind. They have no clear distinction between the life and the soul, but they will tell you that the fotomanava^ the right auricle of the heart, is the seat of life." During life the soul is not "a distinct essence from the body, but only the more ethereal part of it, and which exists in Bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body the moment after death.*' Bolotoo {Pulotu) is the island of the blessed, the abode of spirits. A story of a visit includes an attempt to pluck the bread-fruit growing there, but the human hand "could not lay hold of it any more than a shadow." In Bolotoo everything lasts for all time. After death the soul becomes a hotooa (^atua\ god or spirit, and can return, if it will, to Tonga. It exists in the shape of the original individual and can appear to living men. Its voice is thin and small. '' If an animal or plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo ; if a stone or any other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward ; nay, artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams. If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service of the gods. If a house is taken down or any way destroyed, its immortal part will find a situa- tion on the plains of Bolotoo ; and to confirm this doctrine the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural 1 See above, pp. 9, 93. 96 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL well, or deep hole in the ground, at one of their islands, across the bottom of which runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail world, swimming or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell into the regions of immortality/' ^ In Fiji, as it has been phrased, "there is a heaven even for coco-nuts/' ^ Returning to the soul of man, we gather from Williams that each individual possessed two souls. "His shadow is called 'the dark spirit,' which they say goes to Hades. The other is his likeness reflected in water or a looking-glass, and is supposed to stay near the place in which a man dies." The gods eat the souls of men who are eaten by men.^ In sleep, faints, and other seizures, the soul is supposed to have left the body. It may be brought back by calling after it. " Occasionally the ludicrous scene is witnessed of a stout man lying at full length and bawling out lustily for the return of his own soul." To prevent the departed soul from walking by night, and injuring the living, the body is doubled together till the knees touch the chin, and securely bound.* Fison throws doubt on the two shadows spoken of by Williams : " I inquired into it on the island where he was, and found that there was no such belief. He took the word for shadow, which is a reduplication of 1 W. Mariner, "The "Tonga Islands^ (1818), ii. 99, 102, 127, 129, 130. Mariner's account is as distinctive as his idiom "and which" (unless this is due to his editor Martin). 2 H. Hale, Ethnographical Report of the United States Exploring Expedition^ 3 T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians (1858), i. 34.1, 242, 24.7, 248. * L. Fison, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ x. 145, 147. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 97 the word for soul, as meaning the dark soul. yaloyalo does not mean the soul at all. It is not of a man as his soul is. This is made certain by fact that it does not take the possessive suffix : 'na = ^ his soul/ but nona-yaloyalo = his shadow. settles the question beyond dispute. If yaloyalo any kind of soul, the possessive form would be alonay ^ We shall later meet with ideas resembling double '* reflection." Thomson thus remarks on juestion, ** It is difficult to say precisely what the ns believe to be the essence of the immortal part an. The word yalo has the following meanings : with pronoun suffixed = mind, as yalo-ngu ; yalo^ possessive pronoun separated = shade or spirit ; 'alo = shadow. From the possessive pronoun being ted, we may gather that the mind was regarded eing as intimately connected with a man's body lis arm, but that the spirit could be detached . it. Navosavakadua told his followers that he left his soul in Tonga, and that his body only was :e them. The Fijians seem to have recognised ; connection between the shadow and the spirit. IS an insult to tread on a man's shadow, and to at it with a spear was to compass his death by gering sickness. The question of the material of jhost was as much vexed as it is in English ghost £S. Sometimes the ghost is invisible, sometimes ^s and drinks, and gives hard and very substantial ks. A man in Vatulele once played a trick upon .. He smeared over his body with putrid fish, stood on the bank of the River of Shades, calling ^eba to bring the hard-wood end of his canoe. .. Fison, in letter to Dr. J. G. Frazer, 26th Aug. 1898, quoted in olden Bough \ i. 292, note. 7 98 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Ceba knew by the smell of putrefaction that he was a shade, and obeyed ; but as soon as the canoe drew near, the trickster threw a great stone he had hidden behind his back, smashed the canoe, and seriously upset thereby the designs of the Universe. Not till then did Ceba know him for a mortal, and pronounce his punishment, which was to refuse him and his descendants for two generations passage over the silent water. So you see the shade bears the human shape and is subject to decomposition like the human body. It can also eat fruit, drink kava, throw stones, weep, laugh, compose poetry, and dance." ^ Ceba is the Fijian Charon, who ferries souls across " the Water of Solace," the Fijian Lethe. A further distinction is introduced by Fison. " The Fijian conception of the soul as a tiny human being comes clearly out in the customs observed at the death of a chief in the Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men, who are the hereditary undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats, saying, '* Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come over the land." Then they conduct him to the river-side, where the ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they thus attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary, " His soul is only a little child." ^ Fison's earlier account should be compared : "Three elders of a clan called Vunikalou^ ' source of the gods,' come with fans 1 Basil H. Thomson, "The Kalou-Vu (ancestor-gods) of the Fijians," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1895), xxiv. 354. 2 L. Fison in letter to Dr. J. G. Frazer, 3rd Nov. 1898, quoted by him in The Golden Bough^, i. 250. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 99 eir hands. , . . One flourishes the fan over the of the corpse, and calls him. The soul of the chief rises at his call. Holding the fan horizontally rt distance from the floor, and walking backwards, nducts the spirit from the house. The other two him at the doorway, holding their fans in the way, two feet from the ground, as a shelter for ;pirit who is supposed to be of short stature." procession is followed by a large crowd, no woman ; allowed to be present, to the river-side. After g for the ferryman they wait until a wave rolls hich is a sign that he is come. "A blast of wind ipanies it. At this they avert their faces, point fans suddenly to the river, and cry aloud, ' Go )ard, sir,' and forthwith run for their lives, for no )f living man may look upon the embarkation, is the spirit conducted away from his realm ; and the body is disposed of. It is laid in the grave to face with a strangled wife, or his mother, if ; at the time of his death, or better still, his Smother. An old coco-nut is broken with a stone, held so that the milk runs down on his head, ■neat of the nut is then eaten by the Vunikalou^ and rave filled in,"^ the Marquesas the nose and mouth of the dying are both held by the nearest relative in order to nt the escape of the soul.^ Melanesia the soul is atai^ the " reflection " of a He and his atai live and flourish, suffer and die ler. The atai^ Codrington says, refers both to Fison, *' Notes on Fijian Burial Customs," in Journal of the ological Institute (1881), x. 147, 148. aitz, Anthropologte der Natur^olker, vi. 397. loo THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the " invisible second self which we call the soul/' and also to the visible tamaniu. This latter term means "likeness," and at Aurora is used for the atai^ the soul. It is some animal, as a lizard, or a snake, or a stone, "which they imagine to have a certain very close natural relation to themselves." " Some fancy dictates the choice of a tamaniu ; or it may be found by drinking the infusion of certain herbs and heaping together the dregs. Whatever living thing is first seen in or upon the heap is the tamaniu^ This is a case of association repeated in English folklore to-day, in the practice of telling fortunes by inspecting the tea- leaves left at the bottom of the cup. The tamaniu " is watched, but not fed or worshipped. The natives believe that it comes at call. The life of the man is bound up with the life of his tamaniu ; if it dies, gets broken, or lost, the man will die. In sickness they send to see' how the tamaniu is, and judge the issue accordingly." In Maewo tamaniu is used for the ordinary soul, instead of atai. In Pentecost Island the soul is nunuai. Nunuai is " the recurrence of an impression long after it was made ; for instance, a man hears a scream, and hears it again ringing in his ears." Some hold that the food offered to the dead also has a nunuai^ which is absorbed by the human nunuai of the dead man. In Mota, where atai^ not nunuai^ is the soul, nunuai is thus described : a man fishing for flying-fish paddles all day alone in his canoe with a long light line fastened round his neck. He lies down tired at night, and feels the line still pulling — this is the nunuai of the line. It is described as " real." Pigs, ornaments, and the like, have a nunuai^ but " not really an atai^ Yet pigs have souls. A shrewd business man selling a pig keeps back its tarunga^ which he deposits in a safe PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES loi ;. Thus he does not lose more than the fleshly ents of the pig ; the tarunga remains, waiting to ate some new pig when born. In Aurora a child be the nunu {nunuat) or "reflection " of a man ; generally, the souls of the dead are reincarnated lildren. Lckness is due to the absence of the soul. Applica- is made by a friend of the patient to the owner of red place. He calls aloud the name of the sick , and listens for an answering sound, the cry of a fisher or of some other bird. " If he hears a d he calls ' Come back ! ' to the soul of the sick ; then he runs to the house where he lies, and ' He will live ! ' meaning that he brings back life. If it happens that a lizard runs up upon it is enough ; he has the life and goes back with .t death the soul separates itself from the body. in be condensed and grasped in the hand. In Banks Islands the ghost of the dead becomes a te^ an incorporeal spirit. The dead are buried, burned. The ghosts of those who have died nt deaths keep together — those who have been with the arrow sticking in the body, those have been clubbed, with the club fixed in the anoi, the world of the dead, is underground, vegetation is red. In the New Hebrides the ;e of Panoi is red ; it is an "unsubstantial" sort lace. Below it is another, in which those who ;nd turn into burning embers. In the Banks ds' Hades the ghosts do nothing; when they ir to men it is as fire. New Hebridean ghosts ed when seen by men, but actually they are black. •> I02 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL In the Solomons they look like persons lately dead, and their voice is " a hollow whisper." Fairies exist ; they are very small. A story is told of a woman who caught a moth at the moment when a friend was dying. She put the insect in the mouth of the dying person, but without success. With regard to mana^ the power of which all men possess some, a man must have had it when alive in order to have it when dead. The more he had in life, the more he has after death. While living he gets mana from the dead who have gone before, but may also get it, by contact, from other men. A kind man will give some to a boy, to help him on in the world, by "laying his hands on him.*' Not every ghost Is an object of worship. He who is, is " the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had mana in him ; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts, nobodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death, with increased vigour and more ease of movement. After his death, therefore, it is expected that he should begin to work." A test is applied, and " if his power should show itself, his position is assured as one worthy to be invoked and to receive offerings " and to dwell in a shrine. In the Banks Islands man is also credited with a property called uqa. For instance, if a stranger sleeps in another man's sleeping-place, and subsequently falls ilJ, he knows that he has been *' struck" by the man's uqa. Codrington concludes that " it does not appear that the belief in the soul comes from dreams, or that belief in corporeal spirits (Fuis)y generally connected with stones and the like, comes from any appearance of life PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 103 motion in inanimate things"; nor, lastly, is there idea that the shadow is the soul,^ [n Malekula of the New Hebrides the soul has to three times in the other world, " each time getting •e ethereal, and finally fading out altogether. In first state, that is, immediately after earth-life, it ibits a region thirty miles below the surface of the und, where it still bears a semi-corporeal existence, to which region the sacred men have often been on :sit, and consequently know all about it. Here the d order the affairs of earth, and punish with death se who transgress — especially in the matter of ping them provided with pigs, etc. (whose ghosts y nourish themselves on), which are consequently ■ificed to them from time to time by their descendants. 2 souls enjoy this existence for thirty years, and ti comes the second death, and so on as mentioned ve. The soul in this condition is known under the le of temate {tamate)^'* and its " official hieroglyphic conventional face." In Efate the soul had to pass Dugh six stages of existence, after which it died >gether.^ In the Bismarck Archipelago the soul of the dead is )wn as sasik. It is invisible and unsubstantial, but -esent." Yet we are told that the souls of the dead feared at night, when they appear in the form of rks or little flames, but not in the daytime because ti they are invisible, A spirit named Kot abstracts R. H. Codrington in Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1881), x. 267, 270, 280, 281, 282, 290, 292, 293, 300 ; id. in Transactions of the I Society of Fictoriay xvi, 136 ; td. The Melanesians^ their Anthropology Folklore^ 121, 146, 147, 153, 222, 250, 251, 287. B. T. Somerville, " Notes on some Islands of the New Hebrides," in 'nal of the Anthropological Institute^ xxiii. 10. I04 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL a man's soul when he is ill ; by exercising the fancy, one can see the Kot at night, " surrounded by the fire- light." After death the soul is driven away to the sound of music.^ § 4. Papuan and Malayan Psychologies. The Papuans of Geelvinks Bay make an image of the dead man. This is of wood, about a foot long, and is called a korwar. The priest, whose business this is, forces the soul to enter the korwar by dint of ear- splitting shouts and noises, often continued for several nights. When it has entered, the korwar is used as a medium of communication with the spirit-world ; it also serves to enable the soul of the dead man to take an interest in his friends, to share their life. The doll is handled, fed, and spoken to. The mists round tree-tops are believed to enclose a spirit called Narbrooi^ who abstracts the souls of men. When a man is sick, a friend calls at one of the mist- crowned trees, and pleads with the spirit for the return of the soul. If successful, he takes it home in a bag. Arrived, he empties the bag on the patient's head, rubs his hands with ginger, and ties a cord round his wrists to prevent the soul escaping once more. Generally the head is regarded as the seat of the soul, and blood and soul are identified.^ Of the Sea Dayaks of Sarawak, St. John reported : "It is very satisfactory to be able to state that the Sea 1 R. Parkinson, Dreiss'tg Jahrein der Sudsee (1907), 159, 185, 187, 308, 2 A. B. Meyer in J ahresbertcht des P^'ereins fUr Erdkunde (1875), xii. 26 ; A. L. van Hasselt, Volksbeschrij'ving ^van Midden- Sumatra (1882), 28 j Bijdragen tot de 'Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde ^an Nederlandsck Indi^' (li $^), 375» 37^ j Goudswaard, De Papoe^wa^s 'van de Geel^inksbaai, 77. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 105 7aks have a clear idea of one Omnipotent Being who ited and now rules over the world. They call him ^^r^." ^ This statement is a good example of a very imon misconception. Perham shows that Petara is a ective phrase, meaning the aggregate of "spirits." lay be compared to the Elohim of the Old Testament, he says, a superficial acquaintance leads to the idea t Petara is equivalent to Allah. "What the Malays Allah Taala we call Petara," is a common saying )ng the Dayaks themselves, who show the same conception as their first reporter. " It is true," s Perham, "in so far as both mean * deity,' but re is an immense difference." Petara is simply the itual aspect of every object in nature ; thus the soil, hills, and the trees have their Petaras, through ch they produce their fruits. The sun, the moon, stars, and the clouds have theirs. The latter possess 1 invisible belonging," a Petara, The Dayak "has rounded himself with thousands of spirits. Any Lsual noise or motion in the jungle, anything which gests to the Dayak mind an invisible operation," is ught to be the presence of a spirit. " No inanimate sets, not even the sun, are supposed to be divinities ; s an underlying spirit in them which is adored." has, of necessity, to invoke the Petara of everything nected with his life and sustenance. He is always ious to know the future. Yet this is no worship. act of worship is a mere opus operatum^ to obtain imunion with a Petara. It is an external act, and no connection with morality ; it is a piece of magic ch effects its object irrespective of the condition of id or habits of life of the " worshipper." The /ak has no necessity for or idea of veneration, ' Spenser St, John, Life in the Forests of the Far East (1862), i. 59. io6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Petara is derived from the Hindu avatara. As regards men, "there are as many Petaras as men. Each man has his own peculiar Petara, his own tutelary deity. One man has one Petara, another man another. ' A wretched man, a wretched Petara,' is a common expression, which professes to give the reason why any particular Dayak is poor and miserable.^ He is a miserable man because his Petara is miserable. The rich and poor are credited with rich and poor Petaras respectively, hence the state of Dayak gods may be inferred from the varying outward circumstances of men below." There is no idea of the unity of deity. There was one Petara to begin with, just as there was a first man. When a person is born on earth a flower grows up in the soil of spirit-land.^ Sorcerers are provided with finger-hooks for the purpose of catching souls, their business being the recovery and restoration of souls to sick persons.^ Notched stick-ladders are set upside down in the path near the cemetery "to stop any departed spirit who may be starting on questionable wanderings ; others plant bits of stick to imitate bamboo caltrops to lame their feet should they venture in pursuit."^ The Bahau-Dayaks of Central Borneo believe that men and their domestic animals, and a few wild species, have two souls ; other animals, plants, and inanimate objects have only one. All trouble and sickness is ascribed to the absence of a part of the personality ; in this aspect the soul is bruwa^ a word connected with 1 J. Perham, "Petara, or Sea Dayak Gods," in Journal of the Straits Branch of the Rojial Asiatic Society, No. Z (1881), 133 ff., 144 fF. ; No. 10 (1882), 214, 225, 227, 241, 242. 3 Perham, in Ling Roth, The Nati'ves of Saranvak, i. 278. 3 Ling Roth in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxi. 115. * Perham, in Ling Roth, The Nati'ves of Saranxjak, i. 291, 292. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 107 two." The other aspect of the personality is ton iwa. This does not appear till after death, when it overs round the grave until it becomes a harmful }irit*^ Dayaks are very careful and jealous of their children. - is with the utmost difficulty that a stranger is allowed > come near them. The parents believe that the :range sight may frighten the child, and so cause its )ul to fly away.^ They are afraid of photographers, le soul is taken away in the picture.^ When a child named, a tree is planted ; as it thrives, the child irives ; if it withers, the child suffers.* "The Land Dayaks of Sarawak say they have only tie soul ; the Sibuyaus talk of several." ^ " The Dayak lea of life is this, that in mankind there is a living rinciple called semangat or semungi ; that sickness is lused by the temporary absence, and death by the )tal departure, of this principle from the body. Hence le object of their ceremonies is to bring back the 2parted souls." The priest carefully wraps up a small ip in a white cloth, and places it among the offerings. Then with a torch in one hand and a circlet of beads id tinkling hawk-bells in the other he stalks about, laking his charms. After a little time he orders one F the admiring spectators to look in the cup previously rapped up in the white cloth, and sure enough there le soul always is, in the form of a bunch of hair to jlgar eyes, but to the initiated in shape and appearance ^ A. W. Nieuwenhuis, ^er durch Borneo (i904)j i. 103 fF. 2 Id. i. 73, 74. 3 Id. "La Recente ExpMItion scientifique dans Tile de Borneo," in idschr'ift 'van het Bata'viansch Genootsckap, xl., quoted by A. C. Kruijt» 't Animisme in den Indischen Archipel (1906), 79. * F. Grabowsky in Internationales Archin) fur Ethnographies v. 133. s St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 179, 180. io8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL like a miniature human being. This is supposed to be thrust into a hole in the top of the patient's head, invisible to all but the learned man. He has thus recovered the man's soul, or, as it may be called, the principle of life that had departed from him."^ Some of the Dayaks think that the soul resembles a cotton- seed.^ Souls die seven times after the death of the body. "After having become degenerated by these successive dyings, they become practically annihilated by absorption into air and fog, or by a final dissolution into various jungle plants." ^ " When a Dayak hears a good bird on his way to see a sick friend, he will sit down and chew some betel-nut, sirih leaf, lime, tobacco, and gambier, for his own refreshment, and then chew a little more and wrap it in a leaf and take it to his friend, and if the sick man can only eat, it will materially help the cure ; for does it not contain the voice of the bird, a mystic elixir of life from the unseen world? "^ At a funeral feast " each bit a piece of iron and drank a mouthful of arack to strengthen her (the widow) against the AntusT^ "They have very little respect for the bodies of the departed, though they have an intense fear of their ghosts."^ The Kajans of Borneo hold that at death both souls leave the body : the mata kanan goes to the realm of souls ; the mata kiba remains on earth, and apparently is embodied in some animal. Snakes are sometimes regarded as the souls of the dead.'^ The Mualang Dayaks believe that a departed soul lives the time of an earthly life, then dies and descends as dew on the ' Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East\ i. 177, 178, 179. 2 Id. i. 183. ^ Perham in Ling Roth, The Natives of Saranvak, i. 213. ^ H. Ling Roth, The Natives ofSaravoak (1896), i. 195. 5 Id. i. 258. c id.l 137. 7 A. W. Nieuwenhuis, In Centraal Borneo (1900), i.14.8. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 109 ce. The more souls thus descend the richer the rice irvest.^ The OIo Dusun Dayaks of South Borneo have the ord amirua for the living soul. This may be connected ith may " two," and may therefore point to the idea ^ a " duplicate." Another soul appears after death, le andiau. They tie cords round a sick man's wrists ) prevent the soul escaping. When a child is ill a ece of iron is placed on its head, with a prayer that may strengthen the child's soul. Fireflies are the >uls of animals. Butterflies are the souls of dead :latives.^ The Olo Ngadju Dayaks of South-East Borneo in tne of war strew rice in the direction from which the lemy are expected, calling out their name, in the Dpe of enticing their souls and getting them in their Dwer. The soul leaves the body in sleep ; its iventures are dreams. It also leaves the body as the suit of fright and of illness. When a man is sick, doll is made of paste, about a span long. This is irown away as a substitute for the man ; the evil >irits are supposed to mistake it for his soul, atterflies are regarded as the souls of dead relatives. They assign a soul to everything in nature. In an there is a distinction between a material life-soul, hich is impersonal, and one expressing the in- viduality of the man. This latter is separated from e body at death. During life they are combined ider the name hambaruan. That which is separated death is the liau ; the hambaruan then remains iconscious in the corpse, and is called karahang. he meaning of hambaruan seems to be "duplicate." ^ Kruijt, Het Animtsme in den Indischen Archipely 179, 383. 2 Id. 12, 76, 120, 175, 156. no THE IDEA OF THE SOUL In the case of plants, houses, and inanimate objects generally, the term for soul is gana. At death the Uau goes to the spirit-land. At the funeral the good spirits are prayed to take the karahang where the Uau has gone. The idea is that the Uau remains in a *'dead" condition until the hambaruam^ the soul which the man possessed when living, is brought to it, and thus gives it life and embodiment. A female spirit is supposed to collect from every place where the man has been in life, all the scattered parts of his personality, nail-parings, hair, and the like, and everything that ever belonged to him ; these she then joins to the Uau, A dead man can also be re-embodied in a child. He is represented as being anxious to live again, and for him this is the only way.-^ The Kindjin Dayaks believe that the soul, urip-ok, which literally signifies " fine ethereal life," comes back to the house after the funeral, and awaits an opportunity of entering the body of a child. Male souls confine their attention to male children, female to female ; the intention of the soul, here, is to fill the children with sound principles, and to make them good citizens.^ The Bataks identify emotions with the movements of the soul inside the body. The belly is the centre of the soul ; liver and soul are also used synonymously.^ The Karo-Bataks think of the breath, a manifestation of the soul, as resident in the belly.* The Bataks of 1 Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 8 1, 166, 169, 175 ; A. Hardeland, Dajaksck-Deutsches fVGrterbuch, i. v. hambaruan, gana 5 G. A. Wilken, Het Animisme bij de Volken 9- ^ Id. i. 32, 33. * A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indiscken Archipel^ 97, 98. ^ C. Snouck Hurgronje, Het Gajo-land en zijne Beivoners (1903), 310. 5 Id. 311. ^ W. Marsden, History of Sumatra, 386. 112 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL black.'^ The Toba Batalcs consider that the individual lives again or continues his existence in his sons. Daughters are of no account.^ The Karo-Bataks of Sumatra hold that man has a tendi^ a begUy and a body. The first disappears at death ; the body perishes ; the begu survives. Tendi and "self" are the same; a Karo, instead of saying " I will," says "my tendi will." The tendi can leave the body, and then the latter suffers or dies. Its place is in the body, and it is "the copy of the owner, his 'other self,'" It departs at death through the suture of the bones of the skull. Another account speaks of the tendi as being outside the body ; yet on its position and welfare the safety of the man depends. A man has also two guardian spirits, kaka and agi — one being the seed by which he was begotten, the other the after-birth ; a man calls these his elder and his younger brother. The Bataks generally, in some accounts, ascribe seven souls to man ; others explain these as functions and movements of one soul. The first and second are in the pulses ; the third and fourth in the upper arms ; the fifth in the fontanel ; the sixth in the heart ; and the seventh in the neck. These are the places where the pulsation of the blood is observable ; in the fontanel it is, of course, only observed in infants before the bones have met. Neumann concludes that the soul is in the blood as its essence. Another account says that one of the souls is in heaven, the rest are in close connection with the man. One of the seven souls of the Toba-Bataks is buried with the after-birth. It 1 Kruijt, op. cit 240. 2 J. Warneck, "Der batak*sche Ahnen- und Geisterkult," in Allgemetne Missionszeitschrifty xxx'u 68. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 113 called " the younger brother of the soul " ; the after- th is called "the younger brother of the child." agen states that some Bataks speak of three souls tondis : two are in the body, the third is outside, t in very intimate connection. Van der Tuuk says it most Bataks speak of one soul only, generally pposed to have its seat in the head. The practice enticing the souls of the enemy out of their bodies followed by the Bataks as by other Indonesians.^ Among the natives of Minangkabau in Sumatra 2 sumange is held to be the cause of the impression man makes on others ; it produces in them fear, ipect, or wonder ; it gives strength, splendour, and :ality to a man's appearance ; it is expressed in his Dk and his carriage. A man whose external appear- ce is weak or sickly, or who has little expression in > face, is said to have a feeble soul. Besides this soul ere is the njao^ a term equivalent to breath. This is lite impersonal ; a man's njao cannot appear to others :er his death in the form of a soul. According some the sumange resides in the heart ; others say at it resides in the whole body. It is quite separable )m the body ; it possesses consciousness, will, thought, d feeling, and gives strength and vitality to the rson. To prevent it from leaving the body during e pain of childbirth cords are tied round the wrists d loins. Dogs have sumange. The sumange leaves ^ J. H. Neumann in Mededeelingen 'van ivege het Nederlandsch ideling Genootschap, xlvi. 127 ff.; xlviii (1904), 104 ff.; C. J. Westenberg Bijdragen tot de 'Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 'van Nederlandsch Indie, 228 fF.; G. A. Wilken, Het Animisme bij de Volken njan den Indischen hipel, i. 6 ; A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archifel, 7, 8, 81 ; J. Warneck in Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, xxxi. 10 flf.; von nner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, 239 ; Hagen in Tijdschrift r Indische Taal-^ Land- en Volkenkunde, xxviii. 514; Van der Tuuk, 'aksch Woordenboek, i. v. tondi. 8 114 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL and returns to the body of its own free will ; but it may also be coerced. Sorcerers when manipulating it profess to be able to see it in the form of a miniature human being. To the layman It nowadays appears shapeless.^ In Buru, Ambon, and other of the Moluccas, the soul is sumangan, or esmangen. That which lives after death is the nitu. The latter often appears near the grave as a fire-fly. In Ceram the knees of the corpse are tighdy bound to the body. In Babar the corpse is bound with fishing-lines. In Watubela if a man sees a spirit he is sure to die very soon. In the islands of Saparua, Haruku, and Nusalaut, the sumangan is detained by evil spirits when its owner is ill. An image of the patient is dressed up and offered to the spirits in exchange for his soul.^ The Uliasers make an image of the sick man like a doll ; this is offered to the evil spirit which is destroying him, as a substitute.^ In the islands of Kei and Kisar the spirits of the dead lure and keep the souls of those who go near the graves.* In the former island the placenta is placed in the branches of a tree. If the child is a boy, it is his brother ; if a girl, her sister. In Leti a soul is ascribed to the rice, to all plants, and all things created or manufactured.^ 1 J. L. Van der Toorn, " Het Animisme bij den Minangkabauer," in Bijdragen tot de Taal-y Land- en Volkenkunde njan Nederlandsck Indie\ serie 5, v. 4.8, 49, 56, 58, 61. 2 A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel^ 7 j J- G. F. Riedel, De Sluik en kroeshartge Rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (1886), 27, i4i» 359> 397. 3 V^. J. Van Schmid, in Tijdschrift njoor Nederlandsck Indii' (1843), ii. 510. 4 J. G. F. Riedel, De Sluik en kroesharige Rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, 221, 414. ^ Neurdenburg, in Mededeelingen 'van ivege het Nederlandsck Zendeling Genootschap, xxviii. 189, 190. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 1 1 5 A remarkable belief in these islands between Celebes [ New Guinea is to the efFect that evil spirits, )anggi^ are in the habit of appearing in the form of 1-known persons. Women in the forest frequently =t such and mistake them for their husbands.^ The people of Timor imagine man to have seven Is. If one of these departs the owner falls ill : sn all seven have departed he is dead. Of these, r are good and three are bad ; the good souls go at .th to heaven, the bad souls remain on earth and ome black. The latter may change into animals. A n once shot a pig that had some rags of a burial-mat its back. It was supposed to be a metamorphosed n wearing the remnants of the native shroud.^ The Tontemboan of Minahassa in Celebes have term katotouan for soul, which means "little man." e soul that lives after death is nimukur^ the " soul or ividuality of a man ahve or dead." The latter m seems to mean " that which is separated '* from body. The katotouan has also a name which ans companion, mate.^ Kruijt compares the umbulu rengarengan^ equivalent to " companion," I the Sangir kakeduang^ " duplicate." * In Minahassa the first man fed on dew ; in dew ; souls of the dead are finally merged.^ Illness is ribed to the absence of the soul. It may be lured :k and caught in a cloth which is put on the sick n's head. When a family moves to a new house Riedel, of. cit. 57, 58, 252, 340. H. J. Grijzen, in Verkandeling 'van het Bata-viansck Genootschap, liv. 904), 85, 86. J. A. T. Schwarz, in Mededeelingen "van nvege het Nederlandsch deling Genootsckap, xlvii. (1903), 104. A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 13. Id. 47. ii6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the priest takes charge of the soul of each member, keeping them in a bag. They are restored by placing the bag over the head of the head of the family. When a priest brings back the soul of a sick man, he is often attended by a girl with an umbrella, and is followed by a man with a drawn sword, to prevent the evil spirits from recapturing the soul. The practice of substituting a small doll for one who is in danger is here followed. Before the funeral commences, the corpse is run three times round the house, presumably to prevent him from finding the way back. The soul after leaving the body is supposed to undergo nine deaths. The identification of butterflies with the souls of the dead is found in Minahassa,^ In Bolaang Mongondu the soul of a sick man is brought back thus : the officiating priestess, with much ceremonial, entices the soul into a doll, with which she angles for it at the end of a spear ; when caught it is quickly wrapped in a cloth, and restored to the patient by the method of wrapping his head in the cloth containing the soul.^ In Central Celebes iron-working is a considerable industry. The metal has a soul. Every smith keeps a bundle of lamoa near the anvil ; these are the souls of the pieces of iron manipulated by the smith. Lamoa is a general term for *'gods.'* "If," they say, "we did not hang the lamoa over the anvil the iron would flow away and be unworkable." ^ 1 N. Graafland, De Minakassa (1867), i. 248, 24.9, 326, 327, 331 j. J, G. F. Riedel, "De Minahassa in 1825," in Tijdschrift ^oor Ind'iscke Taal-y Land- en Volkenkunde, xviii. 523. 2 N. P. Wilken and J. A. T. Schwarz, "Allerlei over Land en Volk van Bolaang Mongondou," in Mededeelingen van 'wege het Nederlandsck Zendeling Genootschap, xi. 263, 264. 3 A. C. K-ruijt, ibid, xxxix. 23 fF. ; xl. 10 fF. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 117 The Toradjas of Central Celebes speak of the soul a living man as tanoana^ a word derived from toana^ lan," with the diminutive infix an. Thus the term ans the miniature image of man, homunculus. The il that lives after death is the angga^ or ghost. le natives tie cords or withes round the wrists and des to prevent the soul leaving a sick person after las been restored to him. Butterflies are the souls dead friends. So also are snakes. When a Toradja ;ezes immediately on waking from sleep, he believes Lt his soul, which in sleep leaves his body, has urned. Sneezing is also a sign that a sick person's d has returned, and that he therefore is getting :ter. The souls of men who have had their heads cut off in the same headless condition in the spirit-world, le soul after death is of a black colour. "Black as pirit" is a proverb. The soul is supposed not to :er the state of death so long as the body gives out J fetor and the flesh still remains. While this is case, as Kruijt puts it, the soul is still " man,*' and inot be admitted to the realm of spirits until it is oily soul.^ The Toradja departed spirit dies eight nine times ; then it changes into water, and dis- 5ears in mist. The Hill Toradjas say it dies seven les and then becomes a pig or a cloud. The belief is very strong that if a man sees the soul a dead man he is sure to die soon. The conviction, s Kruijt from personal experience, is so rooted that has a profound influence on the health of the ives, and often leads to death. Animals, for .mple a dog when he howls for no apparent reason, A. C. Kruijt, Het Animis?ne in den Indiscken Archipel^ 12, 76, 92, 175, 235> 248, 328, 329. ii8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL are supposed to be able to see spirits. When a child is born, a palm is planted as the external soul ; it is called the child's " birthmate." Annually a feast is held in the smithy of the village. The object of the feast is to strengthen the souls of the villagers with the iron in the blacksmith's stock.^ In South Celebes rice is strewn on the head of any one undergoing any important crisis, such as marriage ; this is to keep his soul from flying away. To prevent the soul of a woman leaving her during childbirth her body is tightly bound. The doctor keeps her external soul in the shape of an object of iron until she is out of danger. Fish-hooks are fastened to the nose, navel, and feet of a sick man, to catch his soul in case it should try to escape from the body.^ The Makassars and Buginese of Celebes distinguish the sumangat and the njawa. The latter signifies soul as life-principle, life, breath ; the former, besides the signification of life, has that of "understanding" and "consciousness."^ Wilken concludes that the njawa is rather the anima^ the physiological soul, the principle of the animal organism ; the sumangat is the animus^ the psychological soul, the principle of man's spiritual nature ; the former corresponding to the vegetativa^ the latter to the sensitivaJ^ The soul can leave the body and enter another man's body or the body of an animal. The result is an intimate vital connection between the two " persons." The hero of a well- ^ Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel^ 163, 383, 397. 2 B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie 'van Zuid-Celebes, 33, 54, 59, id. Onjer de Bissoes ofheidensche Priesters en PrieUeressen der Boeginezen^ 24. 3 B, F. Matthes, Makassaarsch IVoordenboek, i.iJ. sumanga ; id. Boegineesch Woordenboek, i.'u. sumanga. ^ G. A. Wilken, Het Animisme bij de Volken 'van den Indischen Archipel, 1. 7, 8, 10. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 119 lown poem has his soul in a gold-fish. Not only death, but in sickness, fainting, or fright, the soul ives the body. When a child is sick the soul is lied back. There are songs specially used for the irpose.-^ The Makassars bury a child that has not :t been named, without any ceremonial ; it is not " a Tson/' Inferring from the pulsations of the fontanel fiere the bones of an infant's skull are separated, at here the soul has its entrance and exit, they place wad of leaves on this spot to keep the soul in. When man is ill a small doll is used as his substitute, ire-flies are regarded as the eyes of dead children, iuebottles are incarnations of the souls of relatives, lakes also are so regarded. The spirits of the dead e black in colour.^ There is an idea that the soul isides in or at least issues from the middle finger, he priest rubs it as a man is dying.^ The Gorontalese of Celebes credit man with four »uls, — one in the brain, another in the heart, another the brightness of the breath," also in the heart ; the (urth is " the soul of the body," which is housed in the hole extension of the organism. When a child leezes, the mother says, ylmo wajo^ " Come here, )ul ! " Wajo means literally " image," " reflection," id is used for " soul" like the Toradja tanoana^ In Atjeh the dead body is wrapped up tightly ; the irs, mouth, nostrils, and eyes are plugged.^ The Madurese ascribe all manifestations of life and ml to the sokma. At death the body goes to earth, * 'M.aX.t)\&Sy Boegineesche Chrestomathie, iii. i6o, i6i. 2 A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 72, 76, 95, 172, '4, 238. 3 A. Bastian, Der Mensck in der Geschickte, ii. 322. '^ A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 13. ^ A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 253. I20 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the warmth to the sun, the cold to the water, the sokma is merged in the air, and perhaps may later embody itself in another man. Every man has also a mala ekaty or " angel," ^ In Mindanao sneezing is a sign that the soul has been away and is just returned.^ The Mentawei people say that pain is due to the absence of the regat from the part of the body in question.^ They practically identify the soul with the inner parts of the body.* Everything in creation has its own soul. The house has a soul ; every boat has a soul. If the soul of the boat leaves it, the wood becomes rotten, or the boat sinks. Wood that soon rots has no soul, or a bad one.^ According to the psychology of the natives of Nias, man has a threefold soul, identified with the breath, the heart, and the shadow. The first, called nosoy comes from the wind, and returns to it at death. It has no individual existence. There is an exception in the case of chiefs. Their nosos exist after death, that is to say, the heir of a chief receives his noso in his mouth as he dies. The shadow-soul can only be seen in the sun or fire-light, though the priests can see it at any time. It leaves the body at death and becomes a spirit, bechu zi- matCy which then goes to the underworld. The third soul Is in the heart, with which it is identified, as noso- dodoy " the soul of the heart.'* It is the most important of the three. According to the Niassers there is nothing in a man that does not originate from the heart. ^ A. C. Kruljt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, ii. ^ De Indische Gids (1890), 2321. 3 A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 16. * Barmer Missionsblatt (it)02)j n- ^ Berickte rheinischer Missions ~ Gesellschaft, (1 904), 382, quoted by Kruijt, 136. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 121 ne feels with it, thinks with it, and understands with ; it is the heart that is glad or angry. After death e no so 'dodo exists in the form of a spider, moko- okoy and is, as such, an object of veneration. The ouse is sometimes identified with the soul ; so so is the snake.^ The soul is sometimes identified ith the butterfly, as the soul of a dead friend or lative. The spirits of the dead in their human form are ack, others say they are white. Before removing the ;ad body the mourners tie its toes tightly together, to ■event the dead man from coming to take the survivors vay. The nose is plugged to prevent the soul entering .e body. Another account represents this as being )ne to keep the soul inside the body. For every dead an an image of wood is made to serve as a medium r his soul through which the survivors can com- unicate with him. To identify it with the soul, they arch for the soul of his heart, a spider with four legs, /"hen found on the grave it is bottled and brought )me. When a man is ill, an image is made of the me height as the man. The priest puts this in front ' the patient and then sets it against the window, ying, " Here is the ransom ! " Another method of ire is to catch a fire-fly and put it on the sick man's rehead, shoulder, or breast. The bechu after death is changed into a great moth, a man dies in childhood, he becomes a slow-worm. 1 L. N. H. Chatelin, " Godsdienst en Bijgeloof der Niasers," in Tijdschrift or Induche Taal-^ Land- en Volkenkunde, xxvi. 142 ff., 146 fF. ; G. A. liken, Ret Animisme bij de P^olken 'van den Indischen Archipel (1884), i. 5 ; in Rosenberg, in Verhandelmg njan het Bata-viansch Genootschap ^an •nsten en Wetensc happen, xxx. 85; H. Sundermann, "Die Psychologic i Niasers," in Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, xiv. 292 ; A. C. Kruijt, Het imisme in den Indischen Archipel, 177, 179. 122 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL In South NIas the soul dies nine times after the death of the body ; the souls of slaves become slow-worms or earthworms ; those of priests, fire-flies ; those of chiefs live near the moon.^ Souls are weighed out for persons about to be born, by Baliu, the son of the god Lowalangi. The heaviest portion ever allotted is ten grammes. Each child in his mother's womb is asked by Baliu whether he prefers a heavy or a light soul, that is, a long or short life ; also whether he prefers to be rich or poor ; to die a violent or a natural death. His choice once made can never be altered.^ The Halmahera natives say, that the gurumi leaves the body in fainting-fits and at death. When Kruijt asked a man if a dead child had a personal soul, he replied, " Certainly ; when you held it near the lamp you could see the soul." This was the shadow. The shadow is called the " unreal soul.*' Men boil iron in water, and drink the infusion to make themselves strong. The same medicine is taken by sick people. The Tobelorese of Halmahera, when a man dies away from home, entice his soul into a doll.^ The Sundanese word lelembutan means *' life," literally " refined." This part of the soul is affected when one is alarmed ; the juni is will, character, sympathy, dis- position, and the like ; sukma is that which thinks and knows. Man consists of the three principles, lelembutan ^ A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipely 175, 239, 254., 432, 440 ; F. Kramer, " Der GStzendienst der Niaser," In Tijdschrift'van het Bata'viansch Genootschapy xxxiii. 483. L. N. H. A. Chatelin, "Godsdienst en Bijgeloof der Niasers," ibid, xxvi. 139, 144. E. Modigliani, Un Viaggio a NiaSj 283 ; Von Rosenberg, Der Malayiscke Archipely 174. 2 H. Sundermann, "Die Psychologie des Niasers," in Allgemeine Missionszeitsckriftj xiv. 291. 3 A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel^ 14, 69, 70, 163, 436- PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 123 )r atji^ juni, and sukma. The cricket is sometimes •egarded as the soul of man.^ In Java the idea of the soul is explained by the )hrase "fine or refined body.'' ^ If you bury a man's lame written on a piece of paper, the man will die.^ rhey have the distinction of two souls, sumangat or emangat and njawa. Everything has a sumangat, vlany ceremonies are performed in connection with • the soul of the rice." * The fire-fly is regarded as he njawa of a man. If one flies in your ear you will lie ; for it is a visit and a summons from a dead man's oul. Bluebottles also are souls of the dead.^ After solemn declaration has been made by a man, or an ath taken, *' a mysterious sound " is heard, which is egarded as "a higher confirmation " of what has been flirmed or sworn.^ Among the wild races of the Malay Peninsula the elief is that man has a jiwa^ " spirit of life," and a emangat^ a " shape." The Eastern Semang suppose that le latter is exactly like the man himself, but red like lood, and no bigger than a grain of maize. It is assed on to the child by its mother. Others hold the elief in soul-birds. Souls grow on trees in the other orld, and are brought thence by birds, which are illed and eaten by expectant mothers. The souls of limals and of fish are obtained by the mother-animal r fish in a similar way, but not from birds. They 1 K. F. Holle, in 'Tijdschrift njoor Indische Taal-, Land- en Folkenkunde, 'ii. S^Sy S^^' ^ A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipely lo. 3 H. A. Van Hien, De Janjaansche Geesten'wereld (1896), quoted by ruijt, op. cit. 71. * G. A. Wilken, Het Animisme bij de Volken n)an den Indischen Archipely 7. 38, 39- 5 Kruijt, 0/.. cit. 173, 174. ^ C. F. Winter, in Ttjdschrift njoor Neerland^s Indit\ v. i. 27. 124 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL get the souls for their offspring by eating fungi and grasses. Creatures hostile to man obtain souls for the new generation from phosphorescent fungi.-^ The Pataui Malays are said to believe in a nyawa^ or "life breath " ; a semangat^ which is not the vital principle, and which is possessed by every object in the universe ; the ru^ which "is confused with" the nyawa and semangat^ is peculiar to man, and goes out of the body during sleep ; and the badi^ which is the wickedness or devilry in man. Some speak of a spirit as existing in the blood.^ The Malays have been influenced by Hinduism and Islam for many centuries. Their psychology has there- fore foreign elements, but it retains its individuality. Beginning with cosmogony, we read in Skeat's account taken from a native informant, that Heaven and Earth were created from chaos or haze, " Earth of the width of a tray. Heaven of the width of an umbrella." Analogy suggests that these phrases " may be intended to represent respectively the ' souls,' semangaty of heaven and earth, in which case they would bear the same relation to the material heaven and earth as the man-shaped human soul does to the body of a man." ^ Man is made of four elements, air, fire, earth, and water. "With these elements are connected four essences — the soul or spirit with air, love with fire, concupiscence with earth, and wisdom with water." ^ The first creation of man failed because the spirit was too strong for the body. The fragments which resulted are the spirits of » W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, ne Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (1^06) J ii. i, 4, 5, 194, 195. 2 N. Annandale in Man (1903), No. 12. 3 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, an Introduction to the Folklore and Popular Religion of the Malay Peninsula (1900), i. ■* C. Newbold, British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, ii. 352. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 125 :arth and sea and air. The Creator then wrought iron nto the clay ; this body could withstand the spiritual train.^ Sanctity attaches to the body generally, even or ordinary persons, and especially to the head, the lair, the teeth, the ears, and the nails.^ The Malay conception of the human soul {semangai) s described by Skeat according to the terms of Tylor's lefinition "in so far as they were applicable.'*^ It is . species of " thumbling," '* a thin, unsubstantial human mage," or mannikin, which is temporarily absent from he body in sleep, trance, disease, and permanently .bsent after death. This mannikin, which is usually invisible, but is apposed to be about as big as the thumb, corresponds exactly in shape, proportion, and even in complexion, o its embodiment or casing {sarong)^ i,e, the body in vhich it has its residence. It is of a " vapoury, shadowy, )r filmy essence, though not so impalpable but that t may cause displacement on entering a physical object, Lnd, as it can * fly ' or ' flash ' quickly from place o place, it is often, perhaps metaphorically, addressed .s if it were a bird. In calling the soul, a clucking ound, represented in Malay by the word kur or kerr^ )y which fowls are called, is almost always used ; in 'act, kur semangat (cluck ! cluck ! soul !) is such a :ommon expression of astonishment among the Malays hat its force is little more than ' good gracious me ! ' " The soul sometimes is in the form of a lizard. The loul of a lycanthrope has been seen as such issuing from he man's nose. The meaning of the word semangat :overs both "soul" and "life" (i.e. not the state of )eing alive, but the cause thereof, or vital principle). ^ F. A. Swettenham, Malay Sketches, 199. 2 Skeat, op, cit. 43 ff. 3 j^ ^^ 126 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL " As this mannikin is the exact reproduction in every way of its bodily counterpart, and Is ' the cause of hfe and thought in the individual it animates,' it may readily be endowed with quasi-human feelings, and independently possesses the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner." Thus it can be addressed as a separate person. " It is an easy stretch of the imagination to provide it with a house, which is generally in practice identified with the body of its owner, but may also be identified with any one of its temporary dom iciles. ' * Many charms show in a complete form " this figurative identification of the soul's ' house ' with its owner's body, and of the soul's ' sheath ' or casing with both. The state of disrepair into which the ' house' may fall is sickness." The soul appears to men " as a phantom separate from the body," " manifests physical power," and walks, sits, and sleeps. " From the above ideas it follows that if you call a soul in the right way it will hear and obey you, and you will thus be able either to recall to its owner's body a soul which is escaping {riang semangat\ or to abduct the soul of a person whom you may wish to get into your power {mengamhil semangat orang)^ and induce it to take up . its residence in a specially prepared receptacle, such as (^) a lump of earth which has been sympathetically connected by direct contact with the body of the soul's owner, or (^) a wax mannikin so connected by indirect means, or even {c) a cloth which has had no such connection whatever. And when you have succeeded in getting it into your power, the abducted and now imprisoned soul will naturally enjoy any latitude allowed to (and suffer from any mutilation of) its temporary domicile or embodiment." "Every man is supposed (it would appear from PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 127 lalay charms) to possess seven souls in all, or ;rhaps, I should more accurately say, a sevenfold lul , . . At the present day the ordinary Malay Iks usually of only a single soul, although he still ieps up the old phraseology in his charms and charm- 3oks." With regard to animal, mineral, and vegetable souls, ceat says, " speaking generally, I believe the soul to i, within certain limits, conceived as a diminutive, at exact counterpart of its own embodiment, so that 1 animal-soul would be like an animal, a bird-soul Ice a bird ; however, lower in the scale of creation it ould appear that the tree or ore-souls, for instance, •e supposed, occasionally at least, to assume the shape F some animal or bird." The Malay would consider 3 Europeans " illogical and inconsistent were he told lat we allowed the possession of souls to one-half F the creation and denied it to the other." ^ In offerings the deity is " not supposed to touch le solid or material part of the offering, but only le essential part, whether it be ' life, savour, essence, uality,' or even ' soul.' " ^ Apparently dead and ;asoned wood retains the soul which animated it hen a living tree. The excrescences or knobs of •ees are evidences of the indwelling spirit. Toddy- Dllectors, before tapping the coco-nut palm, go through 1 elaborate ceremonial containing this charm : — Come hither, Little One, come hither. Come hither. Tiny One, come hither, Come hither, Bird, come hither. Come hither, Filmy One, come hither. 1 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53 j F. A. Swettenham, talay Sketches, 199. 2 Skeat, 73. 128 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Thus I bend your neck, Thus I roll up your hair, And here is an ivory Toddy-knife to help the washing of your face .... Here is an ivory Toddy-knife to cut you short. And here is an Ivory Cup to hold under you ; And there is an Ivory Bath that waits below for you. Clap your hands and splash in the Ivory Bath, For it is called the " Sovereign Changing Clothes." ^ The **Soul of the Rice" is also the Rice-child or Rice-baby ; it is taken from the sheaf called the Rice- mother, with elaborate prayers and ceremonies, con- stituting one of the most voluminous series of folklore in existence.^ Mining-wizards take the place of mining-engineers and assayers. The tin-ore itself is regarded "as endued not only with vitality, but also with the power of growth, ore of indifferent quality being regarded as too young, but as likely to improve with age." ^ It is believed to possess the power of reproduction, and to have " special likes — or perhaps affinities — for certain people and things, and vice versa. Hence it is advisable to treat tin-ore with a certain amount of respect, to consult its convenience, and, what is, perhaps, more curious, to conduct the business of mining in such a way that the tin-ore may, as it were, be obtained without its own knowledge."* On rare occasions it " announces its presence by a peculiar noise heard in the stillness of night." ^ '* Sometimes each 1 Id. 194, 195, 216, 217. — "Changing Clothes" refers to the chemical change undergone by the coco-nut juice when turned into sugar. 2 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, 218-49. 3 Id. 250. * A. Hale, in Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society y 16(1885), 319- ^ Pasqual in Selangor Journal, iv. No. 2, p. 26, quoted by Skeat, op. cit. 263. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 129 *ain of ore appears to be considered as endowed with separate entity or individuality."^ The Polong is a bottle-imp or familiar spirit, ;sembling " an exceedingly diminutive female figure • mannikin," It is bred out of the blood of a lurdered man, which is placed in a bottle and treated ith prayers.^ Malay doctors use the spirits of various things to Feet cures, or recall the soul of the sick man, or ropitiate or expel the spirit of sickness. Badi is the evil principle which, according to the view of lalay medicine-men, attends (like an evil angel), /erything that has life " or is inanimate.^ Skeat concludes that the conception of the soul is the central feature of the whole system of Malay lagic and folklore." This possession is common to Mature and Man, and therefore the control of nature insists in methods " by which this Soul, whether in ods, men, animals, vegetables, minerals, or what not, lay be influenced, captured, subdued, or in some ay made subject to the will of the magician." Side y side with this principle are the ideas of luck and l-luck ; and, from Mohammedanism, the pre-ordained )urse of events, resignation to which is "Islam." * Some generalised results of Dutch research among ie Malayo-Polynesian races of the East Indian Islands Lay be conveniently put together here. They are le summarised conclusions chiefly of Wilken, which ave been developed by Kruijt.^ ' Skeat, op. at 265, 266. ^ /^_ ^29, 330. 3 Id. 411 iF., 427 fF. 4 /^_ ^yg^ ^gQ_ 5 G. A. Wilken, Het Animisme bij de Volken H)an den Induchen Archipely 884) ; A, C. Kruijt, Het Animume in den Indischen Archipel (1906). 9 I30 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Wilken remarks that, as a rule, it is the more highly developed peoples, as the Malays, Javanese, Makassars, and Buginese, who have the dualism of semangat and njawa. The lower strata of the island populations speak chiefly of the semangat} Kruijt finds that a permanent distinction is drawn between the soul of a living man and the soul of a dead man. The former dies, more or less, with the man at death. As far as the man is concerned, this soul is then annihilated. During life it is as a rule quite impersonal ; as the individual develops out of the communal stage of society it tends to become personal. The other soul does not appear till after death. This is personal ; it is, so to speak, a continua- tion of the individual after his earthly life ; it com- prises all his personal peculiarities, and is, as it were, an "extract" of him. He calls the former by de la Saussaye's term, "soul-substance"; the latter he calls "soul." We shall here use his terms without prejudice. The soul-substance is a fine, ethereal matter. It has various seats in the body where its action is most conspicuous. This fact has led to the idea that man has several "souls." The soul-substance is generally regarded as a miniature replica of the man. The whole body of the man and all his discarded pieces of personality are filled with soul-substance. When a part is taken away, pain is felt or sickness results. The eye, not the man, sees ; the ear, not the man, hears ; the belly, not the man, feels hunger. The soul-substance of the head and inner organs is more important and "stronger" than that of the arms, the bones, or the relics of a man. ^ Wilken, op. cit. i. 7. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 131 The veneration of skulls and the practice of head- Lunting are thus explained. The belief that the liver 5 a special seat of soul-substance is general. Especially iill of soul-substance are the parts where the blood )ulsates. Eating and drinking are methods by which man estores lost soul-substance. Of especial value, on this )rinciple, is the flesh of men. The soul-substance, later made personal in the form )f the owner, though reduced to a miniature, gives lim life ; by its means the man thinks and acts. It s very loosely joined to the body ; in some cases it is egarded as a quite separate entity. It leaves the )ody in sleep, or rather, according to the East Indian dea, a man sleeps because his soul-substance has left lim. What it sees and experiences while absent are ireams. Especially is it apt to leave the body through fright. ' Also when a man desires some thing or person, the joul- substance leaves his body and goes where his :houghts have gone." Again, if a man is discontented ibout something, the soul-substance feels uncomfort- ible and therefore departs. Poverty and disagreeable surroundings may cause its departure. The natives ire therefore very unwilling to refuse a request, especially in the case of children, for fear the soul- iubstance may be made unhappy and thus be driven iway. On this idea is based the general practice of lever punishing children, which, in Kruijt's opinion, is I great hindrance to education. When a child has ?^orried its parents beyond endurance, and receives a smacking, its screams cause an immediate revulsion of "eeling. It is no longer the child that is blameworthy ; t is the parents. They feel that its soul-substance 132 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL may go away, and that they can never forgive them- selves. The soul-substance leaves the body by the various apertures, such as the nose, ears, and mouth, also at the joints ; but especially through the top of the skull, at the suture of the bones, the fontanel. Any one seeing the pulsation of the blood which is so conspicuous here in an infant, would infer that this is a seat and exit for the soul-substance. Men, spirits of the dead, and other spirits, can abstract and detain a man's soul-substance. The use of small dolls or puppets as substitutes, and the practice of strewing rice to entice or detain the soul, are general in the islands. Soul-substance is assigned to trees, plants, and inanimate things, chiefly to those which concern or interest man, such as rice and iron, palm-wine trees, and bezoar-stones. The soul-substance being impersonal, unconscious, undefined, is often represented as something fluttering,, as a bird, a butterfly, or a fly. After a man's death first appears the soul proper, the spiritualisation of the material man, or the material- isation of the soul-substance. This is personal, but as the natives cannot represent the soul apart from the material body, it is like him in every respect, with all his qualities and defects ; it is a copy, or abstract. It is generally black. It may, however, appear in the form of some insect or animal. It is always material. Very characteristic is the fear of the souls of the dead. If they cannot always be seen, they can be heard. All kinds of melancholy noises are ascribed to them. They are not worshipped ; they desire to share PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 133 n the life of their survivors, and the latter desire to lave their knowledge. Hence the use of images as nedia.^ In Madagascar the term for god is bound up with )ther ideas ; thus a rich man has a rich god, a blind nan has a blind god, to whom he owes his blindness. Velvet is a "son of god" ; taratasy^ or book, is called jod, from Its wonderful capacity of speaking by merely ooking at it. " The saina^ or mind, vanishes at death, :he aina^ or life, becomes mere air, but the matoatoa^ or jhost, hovers round the tomb " ; the last is the " ghost- nan " ; the ambiroa^ or "apparition," is an omen of ipproaching death ; when a man sees his ambiroa he cnows he will soon die. Th^fanahy^ or moral quality, jurvives in the memory of others as " a mere idea, md so far as a man's character may survive in the nemory of others his fanahy survives." This Is the :hief soul. The ghost of the dead, matoatoa^ is also railed "the vimXh^'' fahasivy^ or fahasivin ny maty^ "the linth of the dead." This curious term is probably lerived from the position of the soul in the sikidy^ the Malagasy system of divination by counters ; thus ' enemy " occupies position eight. " The ninth " )ften appears in dreams. Ambiroa^ or ameroy^ is also ased of the soul of the living, for instance, if a man s thin and does not thrive well on his food. " The linth," however, is the soul of the dead only. In jome tribes the term for soul is loloy butterfly. The )wl Is a spirit-bird. The Sihanaka tribe say that at jeath the soul " goes any^'' any being " an indefinite md imaginary place to which no name is attached." * A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipely i ff., 6, i6 ff., 13, 50, 56, 66, 75 fF., 81 ff., 145 ff., 166, 235 ff., 399 ff., 431. 134 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The soul is given by " god," and is therefore, like him, partly good and partly evil ; accordingly a man is not to be blamed for anything evil that he does, nor, it follows, praised for anything good. This is the principle of Sakalava ethics. The Sihanaka hold that the mirage is the soul, angatra^ of the water. The Hova soul turns into a beautiful serpent some time after death. In connection with this is a remarkable belief and custom held chiefly by the Betsileo and other tribes of the south. The corpse remains unburied, sometimes for two or three months. It is so placed that the hquids of decomposition drip into several pots. This goes on until a worm appears in one of the pots. This worm has been anxiously expected ; it is the soul of the dead man, fanany^ or fananim-pitoloha^ " the fanany with seven heads." The fanany is encouraged to grow, and when it has attained a considerable size the corpse is buried. A man asked if he has buried his wife yet, will reply, "She has not yet appeared in the earthen pot, and so I cannot bury her body." The earthen pot containing the fanany is placed in the grave, but in it is also fixed a long bamboo rod reaching up to the outer air through an opening in the soil. After six or eight months t\\.Q fanany^ now grown larger, and sometimes described as a lizard or serpent, climbs up the bamboo out of the grave and enters the village. The relatives greet it with much ceremonial, and ask it solemnly, " Art thou so and so ? " If it lifts its head the gesture is interpreted in the affirmative. But to make doubly sure, they get the plate last used by the dead person, and fill it with blood, taken from the ear of an ox, and rum, which they offer to th.^ fanany. If xht fanany drinks the libation there is no more doubt PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 135 bout its identity. A clean cloth is spread for it to ie upon, and it is carried in procession with great ejoicings. Finally, it is carried back to the grave, inhere it is supposed to remain and become the ;uardian deity of the people near. It is sometimes upposed to grow to an enormous size, and sometimes o develop seven heads. The custom and belief apply :hiefly to persons of noble blood.^ The natives of the Andaman Islands " do not regard heir shadows, but their reflections (in any mirror) as heir souls." The soul leaves the body through the lostrils, and its departure is indicated by snoring. There is a distinction between the soul and the spirit. Ne are not told which is which, but we may infer that he '*soul" is the duplicate of the living, the spirit is he duplicate of the dead man. Thus the soul is red, he spirit is black. Both " partake of the form of the )erson to whom they belong." Evil comes from the oul, and good from the spirit.^ § 5. Indian Psychologies. The Laos think the body is the seat of thirty spirits, ;rhich reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the yes, and so on.^ In Tonquin it was once the custom to catch the oul of the dying by putting a handkerchief over the > W. Ellis, History of Madagascar (1838), i. 392, 393 ; J. Sibree, The ■reat African Island (1880), 274, 276, 312 ; J. Richardson in Antananarivo 'nnual, i. 76, 225 ; ii. 99 ; T. Lord, ibid. ii. 276 ; G. A. Shaw, ibid. i. II ; iv. (1878) 3, 10; A. W^alen, ibid. vi. (1882) 15, 16; J. Pearse, nd. vi. 64. 2 E. H. Man, The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands^ 94. 3 A. Bastian, Die Vdlker des ostltchen Asien^ iii. 248, quoted by Frazer, 'he Golden Bought iii. 419. 136 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL face. Nowadays a film of cotton is hung in front of the nostrils/ The Burmese commonly conceive the soul as having the shape and appearance of a butterfly. It is the leyp-bya. In some way it is " the soul of the blood '* ; if the blood is " restless/' this means that the soul is ill at ease. The leyp-bya leaves the body during sleep, and permanently at death. The aperture used for exit is the mouth.^ The " butterfly " of a baby whose mother has just died is thus prevented from following the mother's soul : a wise woman " places a mirror over the corpse, and on the mirror a piece of feathery cotton down. Holding a cloth in her open hands at the foot of the mirror, she with wild words entreats the mother not to take with her the ' butterfly ' or soul of her child, but to send it back. As the gossamer- down slips from the face of the mirror she catches it in the cloth and tenderly places it on the baby's breast." ^ The Karens have an interesting psychology. The word kelah^ we are told, means "pure, unmixed, clear, or transparent." "Every object is supposed to have its kelah. Axes and knives, as well as trees and plants, are supposed to have their separate kelahs. When the rice-field presents an unpromising appearance, it is supposed that the rict-kelah is detained in some way from the rice, on account of which it languishes. . . . All the inferior animals are supposed to have their kelahs^ which are also liable to wander from the individual 1 Richard, History oflonquin (Pinkerton*s Foyages and T'ra^els), ix. 730 ; J. G. Scott, France and Tongking, 96. 2 J, G. Scott [Shway Yoe], "The Burman, his Life and Notions, ii. 99, 100. 3 Forbes, British Burma, 99 ff. j Scott, op. cit. ii. 102 ; Bastian, Die F'dlker des 'dstlichen Asien, ii. 389, quoted by J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough^j i. 264. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 137 d thus to be interfered with in their absence. When e kelah is interfered with by an enemy of any kind, :ath ensues to the individual animal to which it longs. The kelah is not regarded as the responsible ;ent in human action." A native explained, " When t sin, it is the thah, or ' soul,' which sins.'* " By some e kelah is represented as the inner man, and with hers the inner man is the thah. When the eyes are ut and in sleep the reflective organs are awake and tive. This is sometimes attributed to the kelah. 'ence the kelah is the author of dreams." . . . ''The ea in all these cases is that the kelah is not the soul, id yet that it is distinct from the body, and that its isence from the body is death. It is considered as the dividuality, or general idea, ot an inanimate object, is also the individuality of the animated being. It fact personates the varied phenomena of life." is further supposed to have seven "existences," each ' which seeks the destruction of the person to whom ey belong. Yet they are seven in one. They seek make the person commit mad, or reckless, or ameless, or angry deeds. But on the upper part " the head sits the tso^ and while the tso is firmly fixed e kelah can do no harm. The word tso seems to ean '' power," and to refer to reason. Wizards catch uls when they leave the body in sleep. Such can be ansferred to a dead man, who thus comes to life ;ain. But the friends of the robbed man get another ul from another sleeper, and so on.^ In another account the kelah appears as the Ik. The la exists before man, and lives after him. It is :ither good nor bad, but merely gives life. It some- ^ E. B. Cross, " On the Karens," in Journal of the American Oriental :iety (1854), iv. 309-12. 138 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL times appears after death, and then cannot be distinguished from the person himself. The body and the Ih are represented as matter and spirit, yet materiality belongs to the Ih'' What is seen in dreams is what the Ih sees in its wanderings. It is also described as a guardian- spirit ; " each man has his guardian-spirit walking by his side or wandering away in search of dreamy adventures. If it is absent too long, it must be called back with offerings." '* When the la is absent in our waking hours we become weak, or fearful, or sick, and if the absence be protracted death ensues. Hence it is a matter of the deepest interest with a Karen to keep his la with him. He is ever and anon making offerings of food to it, beating a bamboo to gain its attention, calling it back, and tying his wrist with a bit of thread, which is supposed to have the power to retain it." It sometimes takes the form of or inhabits insects. Thus, when insects fly round a lamp at night the people will say that those that are singed are evil, those that escape are good spirits. Mason asserts that the idea of seven las trying to devise a man's injury or death is not extensive. Every living thing has its la^ and every inanimate thing likewise. If a man drops his axe while up a tree, he looks down and calls out, " Lh of the axe, come, come ! " Every organ of the body has its la. An evil spirit is supposed to devour the Ih of the eye ; the result is that the man becomes blind. The world is more thickly peopled with spirits than with men. The future world is a counterpart of this ; when the sun sets on earth it rises in Hades. The external soul is known to the Karens : the knife with which the navel-string is cut is "carefully preserved for the child. The life of the child is supposed to be in some way connected PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 139 h it, for if lost or destroyed it is said the child will ; be long-lived." ^ In Hinduism, ancient and modern, it is believed that ;ry object in nature, animate and inanimate, " is •vaded by a spirit." Metempsychosis here plays its t : " The spirit of the man in whom the dark quality, laSy predominates is liable to pass into inert, motionless tter, and to occupy a rock, a stone, a post, or any lilar material form. Even the divine Spirit may use itself into images and objects of stone, metal, i wood, into idols, into symbols, or into pebbles." L particular holy days " the merchant worships his 3ks, the writer his inkstand, the husbandman his 'Ugh, the weaver his loom, the carpenter his axe, sel, and tools, and the fisherman his net. Every iect that benefits its possessor and helps to provide n with a livelihood becomes for the time being his ish." But it is by no means the case that all natural artificial objects are " worshipped " or become Lshes, though credited with souls. In the days of Sankara there was among the sects of iras, or sun-worshippers, one sect which was composed members who worshipped " an image of the sun med in the mind. These spent all their time in ditating on the sun. They were in the habit ot mding circular representations of his disk on their ehead, arms, and breasts." Another sect worshipped : sun " as a material being in the form of a man :h a golden beard and golden hair." ^ " Different gods are supposed to reside in different *ts of the body, the Supreme Being occupying the F. Mason, in Journal of the Royal Astatic Society of Bengal, xxxiv. -202. M. Monier-Williams, Braktnanism and Hinduism^ (1891), 339-42. I40 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL top of the head. Thus, the tip of the thumb is held to be occupied by Govinda, the forefinger by Mahidhara, the middle finger by Hrishikesa, the next finger (called the nameless finger) by Tri-vikrama, the little finger by Vishnu, the palm of the hand by Madhava — all being different forms of the same god Vishnu." "The act of placing the fingers or hand reverentially on the several organs is supposed to gratify and do honour to the deities whose essences pervade these organs, and to be completely efficacious in removing sin." ^ To balance the Hindu Pantheon of three hundred and thirty million gods, there is an equally vast host of spirits, and the souls of the dead swell the grand total. When a vicious man dies, each of his vices becomes a demon. Crimes also and sins live after a man in the shape of spirits. " Hence have arisen any number of murder-devils, theft-devils, perjury-devils, adultery- devils, blasphemy-devils, who are always on the look- out for weak-minded victims, and ever instigating them to the commission of similar crimes." All diseases and ills are spirits. Most of the spirits prefer blood as their nutriment. They enter bodies through the open mouth. " Thus, if a man in an unguarded moment yawns or gapes without holding his hand or snapping his fingers before his face, they may promptly dart in and take up their abode in his interior."^ Though called spirits, their frames have for their essential elements gross material particles. Even the gods have forms, composed of material atoms requiring the support of daily food. So all beings are subject 1 M. Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism^ (1891), 405. 2 Monjer-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism^ 234, 240-42. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 141 this kind of limitation until they are finally absorbed ;o the one universal and sole eternal Essence. The ds have bodies very similar to those of men. rhey differ only in the power of walking above the rface of the ground, in being shadowless, in being ;e from perspiration, in having eyes that never wink, d flowery ornaments that never wither " ^ " Spirits," general, are dwarfish and shorter than men.^ In Bengal the soul of man is associated with the idow and the reflection.^ In Hinduism proper, the ing personal " spirit," ^2*^-^, is ultimately identical th Atman or Brahman, the sole and eternal essence the universe. It is, practically, a point of insertion ' all consciousness, percepts, and ideas. Mind is :rely an internal organ of the body. Th^jiva, plus i body, attains consciousness through the power ot yay " illusion," which comes into play when the a is surrounded by corporeal envelopes. Of these ;re are two : (i) the subtle body, linga, or sukshma- "ira^ or ativahika^ which encloses a portion of the iversal spirit in three sheaths, kosha^ cognitional, isorial, and aerial, — constituting it a living, individual, -sonal spirit, and carrying it through all its corporeal grations, till, in its reunion with its source, even its )tle body becomes extinct. This linga is described of the size of a thumb ; (2) the gross or material iy, which surrounds the subtle vehicle. It should noted that the linga^ though ethereal, is still .terial. The spirit on leaving the dead body is by some scribed as of the size of a thumb. Yama draws the VIonier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism, 235, quoting Nala, v. 24. 2 Monier- Williams, op. cit. 236. 3 W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folklore of Bengal j 146 142 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL soul out of the body in the shape of a mannikin. It needs an "intermediate body" after the burning of the gross body, and before the assumption, in metem- psychosis, of another gross body. Again, there are three primordial essences — Purity, Passion, and Darkness {tamas) — which appear as "qualities" in the embodied human soul. Mind is not eternal, as Spirit is, Prakriti^ the Creative Force, or Female principle, unites with the other eternally existing principle, Purusha^ the Self, or Spirit, or Male principle, to form a human person ; the union being bound by the three qualities above mentioned, the Gunas, "in order that this Spirit may reflect the evolved world as a clear river reflects dark trees, while they darken the river, or as a bright crystal vase illumines a flower, while the flower colours the crystal." The jiva is the human Self, the Atman of the man.^ In one of the Upanishads the sage Pragapati says to his disciples, "The person that is seen in the eye, that is the Self. This is Brahman." The disciples take this to mean the reflection of a person in the eye of another, and go on to inquire who it is that is seen in a mirror or in water. Thus he leads them step by step to the real Ego.^ In Manu we read that the soul is of the size of an atom, and enters the seed of animals and plants. It is purusha^ male.^ It descends to earth in the form of rain, and thus enters food and the bodies of men, whence it issues as the germ.* The soul leaves the ^ Monier-Williams, Brahmanwn and Hinduism^ 26-2S, 30-35, 291 ; A. Holtzmann, Indische Sagen, i. 65. 2 F. Max Miiller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion (1895), 252, quoting the Khandogya Upanishad. 3 La^s of Manu (G. Bahler), 6, 21 1. ■* Max Miiller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, 154. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 143 iy at death through the suture of the skull.^ Its jarture is marked by the bursting of the skull in the nes of the funeral pyre. The chief mourner, Karta^ then shaved, and bathes. Unorthodox Hindu tes who bury their dead are said to break the skull :h a coco-nut, so as to allow the soul to escape. " I assured, however,'* says Padfield, " by those who ry, that this is not the case, it being only a bit of nder on the part of their adversaries. In the case Sanyasis (ascetics) it seems, however, that this is ually done, why in this case only it is not easy to ike out." A man at Lahore made a business of lecting unbroken skulls which contained the souls the dead. After the funeral the Nitya karma rite celebrated in the dark. The Karta receives from I Purohitay the family priest, ''a small round stone l^d preta shila^ which, upon the consecration ceremony ing performed with reference to it, pratishta, is pposed to become the personification of the preta^ disembodied spirit of the deceased. This stone the irta ties up in a strip of cloth previously torn from I winding sheet." The Nitya karma ceremonies titinue for ten days, during which the stone is noured and " treated as though it were really the irit of the dead.'* Food is offered to it. Mantras I repeated, as appeals to the disembodied spirit to me in the shape of the different kinds of birds and rtake of the food. Kites and crows dispose of the Dd thus offered. On the last day the preta shila is rown into water, as done with. "The object of the Nitya karma ceremonies is to ovide the departed spirit with an intermediate body. ^ M. Monier- Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India, 291, 297, 144 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The spirit at death leaves its former dwelling-place in an amorphous, invisible form, about the size of one's thumb, angushtha matra. This is called a preta'' Were it not for the ceremonies it would wander about as an "impure ghost or goblin." On the twelfth day the Sapindi Karanam^ " mixing of the lumps," takes place. The Karta rolls some boiled rice into a cylindrical shape ; this is divided into three, and each is mixed with a lump of rice, representing the three immediate ancestors, the cylinder representing the preta. By this act the preta becomes a pita^ that is, invested with an ethereal body and admitted to the company of the ancestors.-^ The Zoroastrian religion divided "the spiritual activity of man" into conscience, vital force, moral character, intelligence, and fravashi. The last is the personality after death ; it is the divine part which exists before birth. Vital force perishes with the body ; but intelligence and character unite with xho. fravashi at death. The fravashi is also the tutelary spirit that watches over the man.^ § 6. Asiatic Psychologies. The Chukchi of Eastern Asia credit man with five or six or even more souls. They are very small, not larger than a gnat. A man may lose one or two without sustaining very serious injury, but if he loses too many, illness and perhaps death is the result. Evil spirits, kelat^ issue from the ground to devour human souls. The shaman is the healer of the souls of men ; 1 J. E. Padfield, "the Hindu at Home {1896), 235, 236, 238, 249, 253 255- 2 W, Geiger, The Eastern Iranians (1885), i. 113, 124.. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 145 can replace any one or more from the store of kelat his employ.^ The Samoyedes "do not separate the spirit from I matter, but worship the object as such," without y idea of the spirit being connected with or attached the object, which is composed of a soul and of Ltter. But the shaman can take an outer shape over J soul.^ According to the Kamchadales even the tallest flies have souls, which survive the death of the dy.^ The Buryats tell a story showing that the soul 1 be corked up in a bottle like the Djinn of the 'abian Nights : " The first shaman had unlimited wer, and God, desiring to prove him, took the soul a certain rich maiden, and she fell ill. The shaman w through the sky on his tambourine, seeking the Lil, and saw it in a bottle on God's table. To keep £ soul from flying out, God corked up the bottle th one of the fingers of his right hand. The cunning iman changed himself into a yellow spider, and bit 3d on the right cheek, so that, irritated by the pain, clapped his right hand to his face, and let the soul t of the bottle. Enraged at this God limited the aman's power, and thenceforth shamans have been tting worse and worse." ^ According to the Altaians I soul is in the back.^ The Kalmucks make an :ision in the skin immediately after death, in order allow the soul to escape.^ ^ W. Bogoras in The American Anthropologist (1901), iii. 98. ^ A. Gastrin, Vorlesungen uber die finnische Mythologie (1853), iii. 162, I, 192. * G. Klemm, Die Culturgeschichte^ ii. 315. ' Shashkov, quoted by V. M. Mikhailovskii, ** Shamanstvo," in Journal he Anthropological Institute, xxiv. 63, 64. > W, Radloff, Aus Sibirien, ii. 36. ' A. Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, ii. 342, 343. 10 146 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The Buryats believe *' that a man's soul may be frightened out of his body and flee away. The soul wanders round the spot where it left the body. Small children are especially liable to have their souls frightened away, and the signs of this misfortune are believed to be at once evident. The child becomes ill, raves in its sleep, cries out, remains in bed, weeps, and becomes pale and sleepy. If many days are allowed to pass after the soul's flight, it becomes wild and alien to the body, and flees far. Grown-up people who have lost their souls do not notice the fact at first, and gradually become sick. The kinsfolk apply to the shaman and learn that the patient has no soul in his body. Then they themselves try to bring back the soul. The patient makes a khurulkha^ i.e. he summons his soul. If no remedies suffice, the shaman is called in. After sprinkling and prayers he organises a khunkhe-khurulkha. In a pail he places an arrow and something the patient is fond of, e.g. beef or salamat. After this he sets out for the place where the soul separated from the body, and asks the soul to come and eat its favourite food and return to the body. When the soul enters the body, the man who had lost it feels a shiver down his back and is sure to weep ; his soul weeps for joy at finding its body. Sometimes the soul is so stubborn that the ceremony has to be repeated three times." ^ In another section of the Buryats, " the shaman, when called in to heal a sick person, makes a diagnosis ; he inquires into the cause of the illness, and decides what has happened to the patient's soul, whether it has lost itself, or has been stolen away, and is languishing in the prison of the 1 v. M. Mikhailovskii, "Shamanstvo," in Journal of ike Anthropological Institute, xxiv. 128. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 147 )my Eriikj ruler of the underground world. A iminary kamlanie decides this question. If the soul ear at hand, the shaman, by methods known to him le, replaces it in the body ; if the soul is far away, seeks it in every part of the world — in the deep )ds, on the steppes, at the bottom of the sea, and, :n he has found it, restores it to the body. The I frequently escapes from its pursuer ; it runs to a :e where sheep have walked, so that the shaman not discover its traces, which are mixed with the tprints of the sheep, or it flees to the south-western its, where it is safe from the wiles of the shaman, the soul is not to be found anywhere within the its of our world, the shaman must seek it in the m of Erlik, and perform the toilsome and expensive rney to the underground world, where heavy •ifices have to be made at the cost of the patient, letimes the shaman informs the patient that Erlik lands another soul in exchange for his, and asks 3 is his nearest friend. If the sick Buryat is not a magnanimous disposition, the shaman, with his sent, ensnares the soul of his friend when the latter sleep. The soul turns into a lark ; the shaman in kamlanie takes the form of a hawk, catches the soul, . hands it over to Erlik, who frees the soul of the : man. The friend of the Buryat, who recovers, 3 ill and dies. But Erlik has only given a certain Dite ; the patient's life is prolonged for three, seven, line years." ^ The Altaian kam summons spirits for his operations, each comes, he takes it into his tambourine, speaking it to show arrival, " Here am I also, kam ! " When a se is to be sacrificed to the celestial deity, Bai-Yulgen, ^ V. M. Mikhailovskii, Skamamt'vo, 69, 70. 148 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the kam extracts the soul of the horse previous to the sacrifice by waving a birch-twig over the animars back. He imitates the neighing and struggles of the horse, while himself on the back of a goose runs its soul, pura^ to the penfold where a birch-stick with a noose awaits it. The kam neighs, kicks, and makes a noise as if the noose were catching him by the throat.^ The tambourine is the chief instrument of the shaman throughout Siberia. Besides its use for gathering spirits, it has the miraculous power of carrying the shaman, who rides it, as a witch her broomstick, in his journeys to and from the spirit-world.^ Among the Buryats shamans are divided into black and white, according as they deal with evil or good spirits. Yakut shamans are divided into three classes according to the power of their emekhets. The emekhet is a guardian-spirit; the shaman has also a "bestial image," ie-kyla ; this incarnation of the shaman in the form of a beast is carefully concealed from all. " Nobody can find my ie-kyla^ it lies hidden far away in the stony mountains of Edzhigansk," said the famous shaman Tyusypyut. Only once a year, when the last snows melt and the earth becomes black, do the ie-kylas appear among the dwellings of men. The incarnate souls of shamans in animal form are visible only to the eyes of shamans, but they wander everywhere^ unseen by all others. The strong sweep along with noise and roaring, the weak steal about quietly and furtively. Often do they fight, and then the shaman^ whose ie-kyla is beaten, falls ill or dies. Sometimes shamans of the first class engage in a struggle ; they 1 v. M. Mikhailovskli, S hamanst-vo, 74, quoting RadlofF, Aus Sibirieny ii. 20-50. 2 W. Radloff, op. cit. ii. 18. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 149 locked in deadly embrace for months, and even Ts, powerless to overcome each other. The weakest 1 most cowardly shamans are those of the canine iety ; they are wretched in comparison with those have a wolf or bear as their animal form ; the dog es his human double no peace, but gnaws his heart 1 tears his body. The most powerful wizards are ise whose ie~kyla is a stallion, an elk, a black bear, an ;le, or the huge bull boar. The last two are called evil champions and warriors," and confer great lour upon their possessors." " The emekhet^ or special spirit, generally a dead ,man, occasionally a secondary deity, always stays ir the man it protects. It comes at his call, helps 1, defends him, and gives him advice. " A shaman s and hears only by means of his emekhet^^ declared : Yakut ayun Tyusypyut ; " I can see and hear over ee settlements, but there are some who can see and tr much farther," he added. The wizard has a host secondary spirits in his service. Among the Yurats 1 Ostyaks the medicine-men treat their spirits without emony, and even buy and sell them. When the er has received the price agreed upon, he plaits a ^ small braids of hair on his head, and appoints a LC when the spirits are to go to the purchaser. The »of of the fulfilment of the contract is that the spirits ;in to torment their new possessor ; if they do not, is a sign that the shaman who has purchased them ;s not suit them. In the same region, that of rukhinsk, the Samoyedes believe that every shaman his assistant spirit in the form of a boar. This ir is somewhat like a reindeer, and its lord leads it a magic belt, and gives it various orders. . , . lides their spirits the Samoyede shamans also possess I50 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL magic weapons with which they slay their enemies from a distance. It is by the blow of such an arrow, shot by another shaman, that a sudden fit of illness is ex- plained." ' The Samoyedes are " of opinion that internal diseases are frequently produced by the presence of a worm in the belly. In order to find the spot where the cause of illness lies hidden, they poke about the body with a sharp pointed knife until they find the diseased place. Then the shaman applies his lips and pretends to call the worm, sucks it out, and, taking it from his mouth, shows it to the patient. Lepekhin says that the tadibeis take out an external disease with their teeth, while an internal disease, ' like a worm having movement,' is taken out with the hands, after cutting the body with a knife." ^ The Chuwashes think that the soul makes its exit at death through the back of the head.^ The shamans are " the most intelligent and cunning of the whole race." A typical shaman is described by Tretyakov thus: "Gifted with a sensitive nature, he had an ardent imagination, a strong belief in the spirits and in his mysterious intercourse with them ; his philosophy was of an exclusive character, . . . Pale, languid, with sharp, piercing eyes, the man produced a strange impression." ^ Amongst the Slavs the shadow is a metaphor for the soul, and the butterfly is constantly its emblem, A moth fluttering round a candle is fancied to be a soul. Butterfly is dushichka^ a caressing diminutive of dusha^ soul. In Bulgarian folklore the soul is supposed to sit, in the form of a butterfly, on the nearest tree until the ^ Mikhailovskii, op. cit. 129, 133, 134. 2 Mikhailovskii, op. cit. 143. 3 A. Bastian, Der Memch in der Geschichte, ii. 322. ^ Mikhailovskii, op. cit. 139. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 151 neral is over ; it then goes to heaven. The Old avs believed that the soul had to climb out of the ave in order to get to the celestial regions, ccordingly miniature ladders were placed in the grave. L old traditions we hear of the soul as a spark ; and lasants still see ghostly flames appearing over graves, ther Slavonic variations are that the soul appears as a 1 or gnat, that a star is born at the birth of every :rson, and that dead children return to earth as ^allows.-^ § 7. American Psychologies. The Eskimo believe that the soul ''exhibits the me shape as the body it belongs to, but is of a more btle and ethereal nature." ^ Nelson says they speak three "shades" : one, invisible, has the shape of the ►dy ; it is sentient and lives after death ; the :ond is *'like the body," and is identical with the iife-warmth " ; the third is evil, and ends with the tdy. ^ The Greenlanders regard the soul as being ft, possessing neither bones nor sinews.^ It can be ken out of the body and replaced, divided into many rts, and lose a part of itself. It may even go astray :t of the body for a long time. It lives after death, widow can persuade any parent that the soul of her dead isband animates his child ; this may secure her kind ;atment. As soon as a person dies his soul animates lew-born infant, which receives his name and is adopted the surviving relatives. This is regarded as a re- imation of the defunct. Children are mostly named ^ W. Ralston, 'The Songs of the Russian People'^, no, 115, 116-18. ^ H. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo^ 36. ^ E. W. Nelson, in Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington) for (6-7. * H. Egede, A Description of Greenland (1818), 183. 152 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL after their deceased grandparents or near relatives. The departed souls loiter near the grave for five days, and then pursue the same course of life in another world which they pursued here. There is a doubt as to whether the body does not rise and go to the other world.^ Souls which take their departure in cold or stormy weather may easily perish. This is called the second death. The survivors, therefore, for five days after the death abstain from certain meats and from all severe work, in order that the soul may not be disturbed or lost on its dangerous journey. The angekoks^ or shamans, describe souls as being soft, yielding, and even intangible to those who attempt to seize them, having neither flesh, blood, nor sinews. This knowledge they gain from their visits to the spirit-world. It is their business to repair damaged souls, bring back strayed souls, and even change them when diseased past cure, for the sound and healthy souls of hares, reindeer, birds, or young children. Others say that man has two souls, shadow and breath. Their term for " god " is tomgarsuk ; when a new spring of water is found an old man is forced to drink first, *' to take away its tomgarsuk^ or the malignant quality of the water, which might make" those who drink sick, or cause their death.2 The Nootkas believe that the soul in dead-land has flesh and skin, but no bones. The soul has the shape of a tiny man. It dwells in or on the crown of the head. So long as it is upright its owner is well ; but when it loses this position he loses his senses.^ The 1 D. Crantz, 'The History of Greenland^ i. 184, 185, 189. 2 Crantz, The History of Greenland, i. 185, 186, 193 ; Egede, A Descrip- tion of Greenland, 185. ^ J. G. Swan in Smithsonian Contributions, xvi. 84 ; F. Boas, Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, 44. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 153 idians of the Lower Fraser hold that man has four luls. The chief of these has the form of a mannikin ; le other three are shadows of it.^ Among the Den6, inneh, or Navajo Indians, when disease or death ireatened a man, friends stuffed the patient's moccasins ith down and hung them up. If the down was warm ixt morning the lost soul had returned, and was united ith its body when the convalescent put the moccasins 1 his feet. The natural warmth of the body, ne%oel^ as the soul. It therefore died with the body. They so had " another self, or shade, netsin^ which was visible as long as a man enjoyed good health," but andered about when he was sick or dying. Morice .lis this soul a '* double," and there seems to be a mfusion between the nezcel and the netsin? Other spirits are numerous ; they have a sort of aerial body, not of the same matter as our own bodies. It, as it were, something intermediate between body id soul. These spirits are essentially malignant." he shaman can make people die by eating their souls. [e dies in the same way ; " a spirit is eating up his )ul." ^ The Chinooks hold that all things, even objects ade by man, possess souls. Each person has two, a rge and a small soul. In sickness the smaller soul aves the body. With some confusion of thought ley say that if a man's soul becomes too small for his )dy he will die. The doctor goes out to fetch back le sick man's soul ; when he catches it, it is large, but 10 often it grows small as he approaches the patient. ^ F. Boas, Ninth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada^ 461. 2 A. G. Morice, "The Western D^n^s," in Proceedings of the Canadian stitute (Toronto), vii. (1888-9), ^5^ ^• 3 J. Jett6 in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvii. 161, 176. 154 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The belongings of the dead man are supposed to decay after his death. The doctors or " conjurers " employ a mannikin image, by shaking which they are able to see '* the country of the ghosts." ^ The Haidas firmly believe in a soul separable from the body. After death the soul may return in the body of a new-born child. This may recur five times, after which the soul suffers annihilation. Before death the soul "loosens itself from the body." The medicine- men, ska-ga^ profess to be able to catch and restore the souls of dying men. They use hollow bones to enclose the soul, plugging the ends with shred cedar-bark. A Tshimsian ska-ga told a family he had seen the soul of their daughter while he was taking a walk. He caught it, and offered, for a consideration, to restore it, otherwise she would die.^ The Salish of British Columbia employ three terms for the souls of the dead : the spirit-people ; the de- parted ; and a word which means both corpse and ghost, or apparition of the dead ; in the last " they firmly believe." The sulia or "supernatural helper" is pos- sessed by most men. It is in the material form of an object generally edible. The real sulia is a "spirit," or " mystery being." The object itself is not the suUa^ only the form under which it manifests itself to its protege, " though the two are apparently always intimately and mysteriously connected in the mind of the Indian."^ The Ahts of Vancouver consider the soul to be "a being of human shape and of human mode of acting." It leaves the body in sleep and illness. Its ^ F. Boas in Journal of American Folklore, vi. 39, 40, 43. 2 G. M. Dawson, Haida Indians, 121, 122. ^ C. Hill Tout in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiv. 26, 321. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 155 .bode is the heart and the head. The medicine-man estores it to the patient, by throwing it in the form >f a piece of stick into his head.^ The Ungava Indians carry a guardian-spirit in the hape of a doll.^ The Chahtas are of opinion that he soul resides in the bones.^ The Hidatsa Indians xplain gradual death when the extremities appear lead first, by the theory that man has four souls, and hat they leave the body one after the other — death ►eing complete when all have gone. Idahi means a hade, shadow, or ghost ; idahihi^ a reflection. " Not nan alone, but the sun, the moon, the stars, all the Dwer animals, all trees and plants, rivers and lakes, aany boulders ... in short, everything not made ly human hands, which has an independent being, ir can be individualised, possesses a spirit, or, more troperly, a ' shade.' " ^ The Hurons conceived the oul as possessing a head and body and arms and legs ; t was a complete miniature model of the man. At unerals it walked in front of the body.^ The Iroquoian idea of the soul is thus described ly Hewitt, himself an Iroquois. It is *'an exceedingly ubtle and refined image," yet material, " possessing he form of the body, with a head, teeth, arms, legs, tc." The term for flesh means *' the substance of fie soul." The soul of a healthy man is healthy, that f a decrepit person is decrepit. The "spectre" is nimated by the soul. After the "dead-feast" it eparts, robed in a beautiful mantle, for the west. "o survivors it makes its wishes known in dreams. ^ G. M. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Sanjage Life, 173, 175, 213, 214. 2 EU'venth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology^ 194. 3 A. S. Gatschet, in Journal of American folklore^ i. 238. 4 Washington Matthews, T^he Hidatsa Indians^ 48, 50. ^ Relations des Jisuites, (1634) 17, (1636) 104, (1639) 43. 156 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Each man has an oiaron^ a tutelar spirit or fetish, selected from the animal world. Every species of animal and plant has in the spirit-world a type or model for that species, larger and more perfect than any single member. This is sometimes called "the ancient" or "the old one" of the race. "This prototype was the oiaron of the species." ^ The Delawares or Lenape, a part of the Algonquin group, used for soul a word indicating repetition, and equivalent to a double or counterpart.^ According to Tanner, in his account of his captivity among the Algonquin Sauks and Ojebways, the soul is the "shadow." When a man is very ill, it is supposed to be dead or gone ; he recovers if it returns. A man speaking is thought to touch a spirit when mentioning its name.^ The Ojebways or Chippewas spoke of the soul as an essence separable from the body, which it left at death. The Sauks regarded the soul, according to Long, as " vitality." Animals possessed souls. It existed after death. Each man had also a tutelar spirit, which was revealed to him in a dream.* The Sioux held that the father gave the soul to his child, the mother the body.^ The Dacotahs, one of the Sioux group, suppose that "there is no object, however trivial, which has not its spirit," which, by the way, may be potent for mischief. Man has four souls : one dies with the body ; another ^ J. N. B. Hewitt, " The Iroquoian Concept of the Soul," in Journal of American Folklore, \m. 107. 2 D. G. Brinton, The Lenapi and their Legends^ 69. 3 E. James, A Narrative of the Captinjtty and Adnjenturei of John Tanner (1830), 286, 291. * W. H. Keating, Narrative of Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's Ri^er, by Major Long, i. 229, 232 ; ii. 154. ^ J. Carver, Traijels through the Interior Parts of North America in the years 1766, 1767, 1768,3 (1781), 378. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 157 Iways remains with the body ; a third goes away t death and renders an account of the deeds of he body ; the fourth stays with the dead man's >undle of hair, which is kept by the relatives.^ The Muskogees, or Creeks, "have gone so far as o assert that a pattern or spiritual likeness of every- hing living, as well as inanimate, exists in another 7orld."^ The tribes of Oregon regarded the soul ,s a miniature resemblance of the man,^ and ascribed . soul to every member of the body.^ In the psychology of the Zuni the soul exists in he underworld before birth. It is a " haze-being," :nd in its evolution it passes from '' the raw or soft tate," through " the formative and variable," to " the ixed and done," and then to '* the finished or dead." The growth of corn from green to ripe serves as an [lustration. The so-called Sun god and Moon joddess are never personified.^ An old account of the naguals of the Indians of rlonduras describes them as '* keepers or guardians . . The Indian repaired to the river, wood, hill, )r most obscure place, where he called upon the devils )y such names as he thought fit, talked to the rivers, ocks, or woods, said he went to weep that he might lave the same his predecessors had, carrying a cock )r a dog to sacrifice. In that melancholy fit he fell Lsleep, and either in a dream or waking saw some )ne of the aforesaid birds or other creatures, whom 1 J. O. Dorsey, in EUijenth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 434, 484. 2 Bartram, quoted by Bastian, Die Seele und ihre Erscheinungsirit." They "point out that at death the small iman figure disappears from the pupil of a man's ^e," and say that "the spirit, the emmawarri, as they .11 it, has gone out of him. This alone is sufficient ^ H. H. Bancroft, The Nati've Races of the Pacific States^ i. 66i ; ii. 277. 2 Quoted by Bancroft, op. cit. iii. 44.9. 3 E. J. Payne, History of the Neiv World called America^ ii. 407, quoting itican Codex, No. 3773. i6o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL reason to the Indian for belief in the distinctness of body and spirit, as the two parts which separate at death." ^ When asked what he thought would become of us when we died, a Macusi replied, " he thought our bodies would remain in the earth and decay, but that the man in our eyes would not die, but wander about." ^ The Macusi considers dreams " 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, the latter are done by the spirit in its body." The peatman^ or medicine-man, priest, doctor, sorcerer, and prophet of Indian society, " prepares himself by a long course of fasting and solitude, of stimulants and narcotics, in order to acquire both power to raise himself into an ecstatic condition in which he is able to send his spirit where he wills, and power to separate the spirits of other men and other beings from their bodies." He has hallucinations, self-induced. The soul is very loosely connected with the body. The Kenaima^ or avenger of injury, is supposed to be able to put his soul into the body of a tiger, or even into a stick or stone, which may then pass into the body of his victim. The peatman extracts this. ''To the Indian all objects, animate and inanimate, seem of exactly the same nature, except that they differ in the accident of bodily form. Every object in the whole world is a being consisting of a body and a spirit." But *' no idea of that which we call the supernatural is known to him." His whole world swarms with beings, most of them possibly hurtful. " It is, therefore, not ^ E. F. im Thurn, " On the Animism of the Indians of British Guiana," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi. 363. 2 J. H. Bernau, British Guiana (1847), 134. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES i6i )nderful that the Indian fears to be without his fellow, irs even to move beyond the light from his camp-fire, d, when obliged to do so, carries a firebrand with n that he may have a chance of seeing the beings long whom he moves." " The spirit world Is ictly parallel to the material world." After death i spirit remains on earth. Sometimes it returns in a w-born child or an animal. The Indian does not worship, nor is there any ;rarchy of spirits. " All the good that befalls him 2 Indian accepts either without inquiry as to its ise or as the result of his own exertions ; and all the l1 that befalls him he regards as inflicted by malignant rits. Accordingly the Indian performs no acts to ract the good-will of spirits ; but he does constantly act, and so avoid actions, as to avert the ill-will of ler spirits." Thus, " before attempting to shoot a :aract for the first time, on first sight of any new Lce, every time a sculptured rock, or striking )untain, or stone is seen, the Indians avert the ill- il of the spirits of such places by rubbing red pepper ;h into his or her eyes." " For just as, according to t old story, the ostrich which has covered its own is thinks itself hidden from its pursuers, so the lian, having prevented himself from seeing a harmful ng, thinks that the latter does not see him. This bit of avoidance of dreaded beings forms the only emonial observance practised by the Indians." ^ The Bakairi of Brazil use terms equivalent to hade" and "breath" for the soul, but they have precise account to give of its nature. It is rather, 'S von den Steinen, "the whole actual personality." E. F. im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi. 363, . 365* 366, 368, 369, 372, 374, 376, 379, 380. 1 62 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The Bororos fancy that the soul leaves the body during sleep in the form of a bird.^ The idea of the soul among the Callagaes or Abipones of Paraguay was rendered by the words " echo" and "image." Dobrizhoifer gives their term for soul as loakal^ and it seems to express echo, image, shadow, and soul.^ The Caribs regarded the head as the seat of the soul. It was described as " a purified body." Accounts differ ; we read that one soul was in the head, another in the heart, and other souls at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating. Again we read that the heart is the chief soul, and that the pulse is caused by " spiritual beings." ^ § 8. Chinese Psychology, It has been stated that " the value of the soul as compared with the body is almost wholly ignored by the Chinese." ^ But the whole religion of this people is based on the attention and worship paid to the human soul. Another has said that "China is full of ghosts," which are often confused with real people.^ Nowhere are the worship of ancestors and filial piety and respect so important and engrossing a part of human life. " That which when it would be small becomes like a moth or grub ; when it would be large fills the 1 K. von den Steinen, Unter den Natur^dlkern Zentral-Brasiliens, 364, 2 Dobrizhoffer, Historia de AbiponibuSj ii. 194. 3 J. G. Mueller, Gesckichte der amerikaniscken Urreligionen, 207, 208 ; De la Borde, in Recueil de di'vers 'voyages, 1$ ; Rochefort, lies Antilles, 429, 516. 4 J. Doolittle, Social Life of ike Chinese (1867), ii. 401. 6 N. B. Dennys, Folklore of China (1871), 71. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 163 )rld ; when it would ascend mounts the cloudy ■ ; when it would descend enters the deep ; whose msformations are not limited by days, is called \enr'^ The term shen is applied to gods, spirits, mons, fairies, and the human soul. According to linese philosophy the universe consists of two great inciples, yang and ytn. The yang principle is mposed of infinite atoms oi shen? Shen^ or *' spirit," used of all invisible, evanescent, spiritual, operating iwer.^ Yang is the origin of life, light, warmth, and ppiness, and roughly belongs to " heaven." The I principle is composed of infinite atoms of kwei. wei, which means literally " returns," is of the rth, as is yin^ the idea being that the body -eturns " to the dust. Tin is the origin of evil, rkness, and death. Thus the universe is filled in its parts with shen and kwei^ the bases of yang and n. The latter are the " souls " of the universe, le idea that man is a microcosm is very pronounced Chinese thought. Thus a man's soul must follow e tao or "course" of the universe; that is the ison why the liver, lungs, and kidneys are respectively mtified with spring, autumn, and winter. As the iverse is made of yang and yin^ so is man. The ul of man is partly yang and partly yin^ partly shen d partly kwei^ being made of three parts of yang to 7tn parts of yin. The latter, the kwei soul, returns earth at death, and remains with the dead body, le shen soul lives on as a " refulgent spirit," ming. tal energy is tsing^ of which ling is the "effective ^ Knvan-tzu 14, quoted by Dennys, op. cit. 81. ^ J.J. M. De Groot, The Religious System of China, iv. (Book ii.) (1901) * J. Legge, 'The Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits (1852), 1 64 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL operation " ; accordingly lingy as " spirituousness," is often used of the soul. The operation of shen in the living body is as khi^ " breath," or hwun ; that of kwei is known as poh. A man sacrifices to either khi or poh. The shen soul is male, animus ; the kwei is female, anima. Shen is the source of intellect. Nutrition is animistic. Food sustains the blood and the breath, the two matters chiefly identified with the soul. The principle is that the soul-substance of the food enters the body and strengthens the soul, by virtue of its immaterial essence, its shen^ tsing^ or khi. Each of the viscera has its soul, in some fanciful shape ; for example, the soul of the heart is like a red bird. Some psychologists assign at least a hundred shen to the human organism. The head is the seat of the tsing- mingy in the brain. The pulse forms the tsing-khi, " The Chinese," says De Groot, " scarcely believe in the existence of any inanimate object." Plant-souls are not conceived as plant-shaped, nor supposed to have plant-characters. They are represented as a man or a woman, or a child or an animal, dwelling in or near the plant. A deformity of a root, a lump of resin, an excrescence of wood or bark, are "concentrations of the soul of the tree." Not ail inanimate matter is animated in an equal degree. Jade, gold, and pearls have most soul — '' they are the tsing of heaven and earth," runs the proverb, and they are used as valuable medicines. The shen of metals is in human form. " A conspicuous feature of the belief in changes of lifeless things into living beings, and conversely, is that they are suggested especially under the impression of some out- ward likeness between those things and those beings. When a Chinese sees a plant, for example, reminding him by its shape of a man or animal, he is influenced PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 165 imediately by the resemblance. This being becomes him the soul of the plant, anthropomorphous or imal-shaped. Thus, association of images with things tually becomes identification, both materially and ychically. An image, especially if pictorial or alptured, and thus approaching close to the reality, an alter ego of the living reality, an abode of its soul, y, it is that reality itself. This kind of association the backbone of Chinese religion." At the funeral a polychrome full-length picture of e dead parent is hung up near the coffin as an alter for the body. The likeness must be as perfect as >ssible. This tai-sin is " intended to enable the ceased to live on among his descendants." A iniature portrait, siao ing^ is also produced, but this is >t an artificial body for the soul, and only a memory the parent. Food is presented to the dead ; it is *ar that the soul must enjoy it, because no one ever w the body touch it. Life remains after the soul has t the body ; there is always a lingering hope that the ul may re-enter and cause resurrection. The ceremony of "calling back the soul" is very iportant. It is summoned into a temporary " soul- Dlet" and "soul-banner" of seven ribbons. The inciple is remarkable, namely, that the soul needs a idy to prevent it from suffering dissolution. There- re the "soul-tablet" and "soul-banner" containing e soul are placed with the corpse in the grave. " If body is properly circumvested by objects and wood ibued with yang matter, or in other words, with the Tie shen afflatus of which the soul is composed, it will a seat for the manes, a support to which they can ng, and prevent them from suffering annihilation." A man can live when part of his soul is gone. 1 66 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Doctors speak as if the soul was breakable into molecules. Dry bones retain animation. The souls of the dead at times change into birds. Fire, heat, and light are emanations of yang ; ignes fatut are the "blood-souls" of men killed by steel, and we also read of "soul-flames." The body, according to some, decays in the grave, because it is eaten by some animal. The planting of the soul takes place at the moment when the parents are united. There are stories of clay-images and painted portraits acting for their originals, and even producing children. The soul is weakened by separation from the body. Of a man in a fainting-fit one remarks, " His soul is not united with his body." The soul may exist outside the body. Imagination consists in sending it out. A man took his soul out of his body with the ingenious idea of rendering his body unaffected by chastisement and even by capital punishment. When the soul is outside the body it is " as a duplicate having the form of the body as well as its consistency." After death the soul retains the shape of the body ; this amounts, says De Groot, to a " conviction which calls up the body immediately before their eyes, whenever they think of the soul." " The world of souls and their life is precisely like those of the living."^ In the life after death wicked souls, in one account, have their bones beaten and their bodies scorched. This is the first stage. In the second their muscles are drawn out and 1 This account is compiled from the facts given in various parts of his uncompleted work by De Groot, and here put in some order ; J. J. M. De Groot, ne Religious System of China, vol. i. 22, 71, 94, 114, 241, 243, 246, 247, 349' 355' 360 ; vol. iv. (1901), 5, 6, 12, 13, 62, 72, 74, 77, 80, 81, 99, 105, 106, 108, 120, 207, 227, 273, 326, 327, 328, 332, 339, 340 ; vol. V. (1907), 802 fF. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 167 sir bones rapped ; in the third and last purgatory nr hearts and livers are eaten by ducks.^ § 9. African Psychologies. The Ovaherero break the backbone immediately :er death. In the spinal cord there lives a worm or iggot which becomes the ghost of the deceased. The ad live after death, and have much influence over s lives of the living. Only important men become mcestral spirits.*' Soul and personality are closely entified in the notion that the ghost of a dead man is le to, and frequently does marry a living woman, and e with her, without her being aware that he is not real man.^ Speaking generally of South Africa, acdonald observes that *' the soul is invisible, but is miniature an exact reproduction of the man. It is 5 shadow, reflection, what speaks in him." ^ The Bantu usually says when asked about his soul, [ am one ; my soul is also myself." ^ Of the Zulus he writes, '*A11 human beings have uls, and these are not supposed to be entirely confined his body. A man's soul may be spoken of as cupying the roof of his hut, and if he changes his sidence his soul does so at the same time. This is, iwever, but a loose and indefinite way of expressing e belief that a man's spirit may have influence at a stance from the place where he is himself at any ne. There is a medicine in use among magicians lich when taken enables a man to influence another at ^ J. Legge, 'The Religions of China (1880), 193. 2 South African Folklore Journal^ i. 54, 63, 66. 3 J. Macdonald, Religion and Myth (1893), 32. * A. Hetherwick, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. ff. 1 68 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL a distance by simply ' willing.' The whole spirit world is one of haze and uncertainty. No definite description of it can be got from any one. A common word in use to express their ideas of human spirits and the unseen world generally is izitunzela^ from izitunzi^ * shadows,' and this is the nearest description that can be obtained. A man is constantly attended by the * shadows ' or spirits of his ancestors as well as his own, but should a man die without speaking to his children shortly before his death, his spirit never visits his descendants except for purposes of evil. . . . The spirit leaves a man's body by the mouth and nostrils with his breath, and can never return ; ' He can never look upon the sun again.' Illness is a temporary departure of the soul. It is interesting to note that Afi"icans never speak of a man as dead. The phrase is * He is not here,' or, ' He will never look upon the sun again.' If in a dream a man sees a departed relative the magician says oracularly, ' He is hungry.' A beast is then killed. The blood is collected in a vessel which is placed in the hut." During the night the spirit is regaled and refreshed by the food thus provided, and eats or " withdraws " the "essence" that goes to feed and sustain spirits. After a specified time all may be eaten by the family except the portions the magician orders to be burned — generally bones and fat. The departed spirit ascends to heaven, and by so doing "goes home." Though there are superstitions about spirits inhabiting caverns, the roofs of houses, and other places or objects, the idea underlying It all is, that the spirit at death goes upward to the spirit- land. This is clearly shown by their usual form of prayer, which is, "Ye who are above, who have gone PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 169 5re, etc." These departed spirits revisit the world, , are interested in all the affairs of men. They ig prosperity or the reverse, according as they revered and obeyed or not ; and when there is departure from custom their displeasure is dreaded nen dread the plague. ... If a man has a narrow ipe from accident and death, he says, *' My ler's soul saved me," Spirits reside in inanimate objects, though these ave no souls." "Animals have no souls, but they e a language." A Hlubi chief had an external 1 in a pair of ox-horns. Zulu chiefs sometimes e a guardian spirit dwelling in a favourite ox.^ According to Callaway a man has two "shadows." £ long shadow goes away at death, but the short dow is buried with the body. The long shadow omes the itongOy the ancestral soul. Yet we are told t a man's shadow shortens as he approaches his end.^ Speaking of the remembrance of the departed as cerned with the development of ancestor-worship, .d remarks that " the memory of an old man's 3onality would pervade all associations of the kraal which he lived. It was only yesterday that they ied the old man, and to-day at every turn they half ect to find this old familiar face fronting them ; power of association would bring him to their ughts a thousand times a day, and the spot close to cattle kraal where they buried him would seem to the focus of their memories. The natives draw ms from every trifling incident of life, and would J. Macdonald, " Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of n African Tribes," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ xx. 120, 122 ; id. Religion and Mytk^ 190. R. Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, 126, 236. I70 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL connect the memory of the old man with all their fortunes. He would seem to them to be alive in some dim way. . . . Then the troublesome European comes along and wants everything defined in black and white. In what sense does the man survive death ? The natives do not naturally trouble their heads about this problem ; they feel dimly he is present, even as we feel the dead often to be near us . . . but if the European insists on knowing where the man lives, the natives naturally say that he lives below the ground near the catde kraal, at the distance from the surface that he was buried. . . . After this they hear that missionaries talk of heaven being above. They then add to their stock ideas, and say that heaven is just above the tree tops. . . . Use has been made of the phrase ' spirits of ancestors ' because it was inevitable. But how does a Kafir conceive of a spirit ?'' In con- nection with the dead and buried elder, Kidd notes that " the body and the spirit seem to them to be closely connected, if not identical." — "They have many ways of viewing the subject ; but all are delightfully vague and ill-defined. The nearest English word would possibly be personality, though that would be but an approximation. This word has a very vague connotation to those who have not studied psychology, and its vagueness makes it suitable in this connection. The Kafir idea of spirit is not at all the same as our religious conception of a soul or spirit. Some natives say a man's soul lives in the roof of his hut ; you can hardly keep a ' theological soul ' there. It would be nearer the mark to connect it with the body, though that would be incorrect. So vague is the word, that it (personality) is confused with a man's shadow, which is supposed to dwindle as he grows old. A man's PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 171 ow is supposed to vanish or grow very slight at ti ; most naturally so, for the dead body lies prone. i shadow, then, is connected with the man's Dnality and forms a basis for the ancestral spirit. may call it a ghost if you like, but must be careful train off most of our European ideas connected this word. The natives think that this shadow pirit can leave the body during sleep, and that it illy visits the places dreamt of ; and if a man ms that another person visited him — it may be a man who visits his dreams — he thinks that the *s shadow or spirit (or some emanation of his ^nality) has actually come to him during sleep and him things .... A man's personaHty haunts his sssions, and even in Europe we feel that there is i dim and lingering presence at a grave. A wife )s at the tomb of her husband, feeling that his ince is there. The Kafirs feel this sentiment ten s more strongly. ... A boy was asked about a re life. He pointed to his body and said, ' Me here,' and then pointing to his shadow said, ' Dat go dere,' pointing to the sky. In burial the body not seem to be destroyed ; and so a Bushman, was troubled with a quarrelsome wife, not only d her, but smashed up her head into a jelly to ent her troubling him after her death. He felt there was some connection between the body and woman's unpleasant personality, and wished to s an end of it." "The life after death is vaguely ndent on the memory of the living. When people it an ancestor he practically ceases to exist. The can exist and not exist at the same time. You no more take hold of a Kafir by logic than by :oat tails he has not got. The one thing that can 172 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL be said of these spirits is that they are intensely- human." " A native cannot always distinguish between a photograph of a man and the man himself ; the image seems to them a part of the man. They have often asked me why I want to get their image on to a piece of paper, and they say they do not like it, for I could easily bewitch them through this emanation from them- selves. Why do I want to have their image ? they ask. They fear that after their death I could still have a hold on them through this shadow, reflection, or likeness."^ The individual and personal spirit born with each man is the idhlozi^ it is wrapped up with the man's personality ... a man never loses his idhlozi any more than he loses his individuality. " It is thought that a sick man's shadow dwindles in intensity^ but not in length. . . . The Kafir considers his ' likeness,' as he calls a photograph, a part of his personality."^ "The Congo natives," says Ward, *'are entirely ignorant of the laws of Nature ; all sensations are ascribed to the influence of spirits. . . . There exists a universal belief in a future existence ; death is regarded in the light of a migration. Health is identified with the word moyo^ ' spirit,' and in cases of wasting sickness the moyo is supposed to have wandered away from the suff^erer. In these cases a search-party is sometimes led by a charm-doctor, and branches, land- shells, or stones are collected. The charm-doctor will then perform a series of passes between the sick man and the collected articles. This ceremony is called vutulanga moyo^ ' the returning of the spirit.' A 1 Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, iii. 2 Id. Saofage Childkood (1906), 14, 15, 68, 69, 71. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 173 non belief is to the eiFect that a man's moyo be stolen from his body and consumed by an ly. . . . They entertain no hope of a future life (vomen. Natives will frequently relate what they in 'sleep-land ' when recounting a dream. In the t, however, of a sick man dreaming twice of a cular individual a suspicion is aroused, and the ^idual who has figured in the ailing man's dreams ble to be accused of consuming his moyo,''^ Everything that the West African knows of " by IS of his senses he regards as a twofold entity, spirit, part not spirit, namely, matter." He is inually rubbing medicine into his hands to igthen their "spirit," and may be heard talking bem. A tree which has been struck by lightning had its spirit killed. When a pot is broken it its soul. A negro demonstrated the principle a broken stalk of maize, "like that is the soul , bewitched man."^ The Calabar negroes speak our souls : one which survives death ; secondly, shadow ; thirdly, the dream-soul ; and, fourthly, bush-soul. This last is an animal in the forest, lives outside the man's body. It may be any lal, but never is a plant or domestic animal. A cannot see it unless he possesses second-sight, a diviner will tell him what it is, and warn him r to kill any animal of that species. A man his sons generally have the same sort of animal their bush-souls, and so with a mother and daughters. Sometimes all the children take the I. Ward, " The Congo Tribes," in Journal of the Anthropological te, xxiv. 286, 287. vl. H. Kingsley, "The Fetish View of the Human Soul," in Folklore, 41-5. 174 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL bush-soul of their father — thus, if his external soul is a leopard, all his children have leopards ; sometimes all take after their mother — thus, we find all the children possessing tortoises for their bush-souls, the mother's being a tortoise. The life of the man is so intimately bound up with that of the animal which he regards as his external soul, that the death or injury of the animal necessarily entails the death or injury of the man. Conversely, it does not survive the death of its owner.-^ Spirits consume the essence or soul of food. The natives of Lower Guinea mark a pattern round their pots " to keep their souls in," that is, to prevent them from breaking. Fainting is the absence of the soul. The best remedy for witchcraft is to take an emetic. Men are reincarnations of the souls of dead people ; it is possible to inherit a disease from a previous incarnation of the souL^ Wizards set traps to catch souls as they wander in sleep from their bodies. When caught they tie them over the fire, and as they shrivel the owners sicken and die. This is done not out of spite, but merely in the ordinary course of business ; the wizard is always catching souls ; he does not care whose they are, and will restore them for his usual fee. Some sorcerers keep homes for lost or strayed souls, and restore them for a fee to the owners. A Kruman was once very anxious about his soul, because for several nights he had smelt in his dreams the savoury smell of smoked crayfish seasoned with red pepper. Some ill-wisher, he thought, had set a trap baited with this dainty for his dream- 1 M. H. Kingsley, 'Tranjels in West Africa^ 459-60 ; also in Frazer, Golden Bough'^, iii. 410- 2 Kingsley, op. cit. 66, 454, 461, 462. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 175 He took great precautions for several nights, he sweltering heat of the tropical night he lay- ting and snorting under a blanket, his nose and th tied up with a handkerchief to prevent the )e of his soul.^ )n the Gold Coast it was the custom with the ^ important natives to purchase a slave of one's sex and age. This slave, called a Crabbah^ " is le looked upon as the soul or spirit, or alter ego le master or mistress." ^ )n the Gold and Slave coast of West Africa the ry is that " all things living and inanimate have individualities — one tangible, the other intangible." latter is in two parts which are carefully dis- jished, an indwelling soul and an outward visible e. Everything among the Tshi peoples has its or indwelling soul. It protects a man and gives life. It acts as a guardian spirit, but leaves the 7 at death. It is then called sisa^ and can reappear hildren, a fact which is proved whenever a child nbles a dead relative. The kra leaves the body reams ; a man sacrifices to it on his birthday. The >le shape, " shadowy-man " or " ghost-man," is man. When seen lingering near the corpse, it iothed, as the corpse is, in a white cloth. This man goes at death to the next world, not the kra ; ither it is the man himself in a shadowy or ghostly 1 that continues his existence after death. The t-world is a counterpart of this world. Among Ewe peoples the shadowy-man is edsieto^ and the is luwo. This is born again in children. In some ^Cingsley, op. c'lt. 461, and Frazer, The Golden Bough^, i. 279. r. J. Hutchinson, Transactions of the Ethnological Society (1861), 176 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL tribes the word for the visible shape means '^the thinking-part," in others it means the shadow. The kra and the srahman^ however, are always kept absolutely distinct, though there is some confusion between them here and there. " We too," Ellis remarks, " have a very similar notion to this of the kra, and which is probably a survival of such a belief. A living man is believed to be tenanted by another individuality which is termed a soul, and which reasons with man through what is called conscience. When the man dies, however, we make the soul go to the next world, instead of the shadowy-man ; but a good deal of confusion exists in our ideas on this point, and the belief in ghosts, the shadowy outlines of former living men, seems to point to a time when each of the two original individualities was believed to pursue a separate existence after the death of the man." Among the Ewe peoples sexual desire is possession by the god Legba. Spirits innumerable surround mankind, mostly malignant. The Yoruba peoples think that when a child is ill a spirit is eating the food in the child's body. The Ewe peoples also regard blood as the vital principle. Among the Ga peoples each man has three indwelling spirits — one in the head, another in the stomach, and a third in the great toe. To the last he sacrifices when about to take a walk.^ The natives of Kavirondo think ghosts are larger than life-size ; this is in connection with survivors who are worried by dreaming of them.^ Among the 1 A. B. Ellis, 'The Tshi-speaking Peoples (1887), 15, 149, 153-7 ; id. The Enve-speaking Peoples {1890), loi, 106, 107 ; id. T*he Yoruba-speaking Peoples (1894.), 126, 127, 130. 2 R. H. Nassau, Fetishism in H^est Africa. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 177 )s the soul "is allied with the shadow, and would n to bear to the body the relation which a picture to the reality. The word for a shadow is chiwilili^ :ch means picture." In dreams the lisoka^ or soul, ;s out and visits persons and things, or is visited them. After death the lisoka becomes a mulungu. is word is used to express the aggregate of all spirits of the dead. But they do not conceive 3ne personal god.^ The Bavili, Dennett reports, credit each man with r souls: the "shadow," which enters and departs the mouth, and then is likened to the breath ; ximMndi, or revenant, ghost ; the xilunzi^ in- igence, which dies with a man ; and nkulu^ voice or soul of the dead. These bakulu are le guiding voices of the dead." They are the ces of dead people, living after them, and they refer to dwell in the heads of some of their near itions." ^ Among the Asaba people, Ibos, of the Niger the ory of the soul is this : " Every one is considered to created in duplicate, and the representative or, as svere, the reflection in the spirit-world of the body I of its possessions is the chi and its possessions. A n's chi marries the chi of the woman the man marries, 1 so on. In addition the Chi acts as a guardian rit, or mediator between the man and Chuku, or the rit acting in the place of Chuku. By representing man's needs and judiciously pleading his cause his thly possessions and his happiness are greatly increased. i i me jum^ ' My Chi has done badly,' is a not C. W. Hobley, in journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. 339. R. E. Dennett, in folklore, xvi. 371, 372, 373 ; id. At the Back of the tk Man's Mind {1906), 80, 81, 82. 12 178 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL uncommon expression." Chuku Is a creator-in-chief; the name is a contraction from chi uku, the great Chi or spirit. " The work of superintending the world is done, not by Chuku, who, I understand, takes but little part in its affairs, but by a second Chi." Each man is provided with two guardian-spirits, a Chi, '' who is the chief, and a subordinate spirit, Aka. Thus a man will say to an enemy running away whom he cannot catch, ' My Chi and my Aka will kill you.' " Parkinson notes *' in regard to this Chi it is difficult clearly to grasp the native idea." Besides the Chi and the Aka, each man has a spirit inhabiting himself, and " hence entirely distinct from his Chi," This is called Mon. Mon is a generic name for spirits ; for instance, speaking of a certain object, they would say, mon di ima^ " a spirit lives in it." " To be more specific, the spirit that lives in a man is termed unkpuru obi, literally, seed heart. In addition to his chi and his aka each individual possesses an ikenyUy or personal god of good luck," a wooden representation of which is kept in the house and sacrifices are offered to it. They believe in the re-embodiment through re-birth of a spirit once inhabiting an individual now deceased, and " also apparently of the chi of an individual. The prefix ' chi so and so * is given to a child when this incarnation is supposed to have taken place." ^ Certain tribes of the Niger believe that a man possesses " an alter ego in the form of some animal, such as a crocodile or hippopotamus. It is believed that such a person's life is bound up with that of the animal to such an extent, that whatever affects the one ^ J. Parkinson, " On the Asaba People of the Niger," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute y xxxvi. 312, 313, 314. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 179 duces a corresponding impression upon the other, I that if one dies the other must speedily do so I, It happened not very long ago that an English- n shot a hippopotamus close to a native village ; friends of a woman who died the same night the village demanded and eventually obtained ; pounds as compensation for the murder of the " 1 man. ^ The Madis call " the thinking part" of man isa ; it 'ishes with the body. Bodies are thought to turn o white ants, or to grow up as grass or mushrooms. •ometimes people imagine they hear their departed inds speaking to them, and that when they look to the familiar forms, nothing is visible but smoke." ^ nong the Fors " the power of the liver" corresponds our " soul." This is kilma. Liver, accordingly, is !^avourite food, which, however, is tabu to women, .0 possess no kilma. The ghosts of the dead appear )St frequently during the first few nights after decease, ley are clothed in the white shroud in which the lies are buried, and " appear much taller than when life."^ The Akikuyu of British East Africa " do not believe the soul of a man as distinct from his visible body." ley make small images of clay which represent men d women. " They are not idols, but seem more in ; nature of dolls. . . . These images seem to be part a kind of game concerning which the Akikuyu are willing to say much." They say that they sometimes : spirits at night. '* The man to whom the apparition ^ C. H. Robinson, Hausaland, 36 fF. ' R. W. Felkin in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1883-4), * R. W. Felkin in Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (i 884.-5), I, 219, 220. i8o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL appears gets a piece of fat with which he rubs his eye- lids." 1 § lo. Egyptian Psychology. In the psychology of the ancient Egyptians the human personality is divided into several entities. The khat or kha is the material body, the vehicle of the ka^ and inhabited by the khu. The khu is figured as a hoopoe, and seems to correspond to the intelligence or *' spirit." The ba is the soul apart from the body, and is figured as a human-headed bird. " The concept," Petrie suggests, " probably arose from the white owls, with round heads and very human expressions, which frequent the tombs, flying noiselessly to and fro. The ba required food and drink which were provided for it by the goddess of the cemetery." The sekhem is the "ruling power" of man. The ab is the will and intentions, symbolised by the heart. This, the hati, is also used metaphorically. The ran is the name, " which was essential to man, as also to inanimate things. With- out a name nothing really existed. The knowledge of the name gave power over its owner ; a great myth turns on Isis obtaining the name of Ra by stratagem, and thus getting the two eyes of Ra — the sun and moon — for her son Horus. ... It was usual for Egyptians to have a ' great name ' and a ' little name ' ; the great name is often compounded with that of a god or a king, and was very probably reserved for religious purposes." The khaib or khaibet^ is the shadow,, figured as a fan or sunshade. The sahu is the mummy, a mere hull. " The idea of thus preserving the body seems to look forward to some later revival of it on * H. R, Tate, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ xxxiv. 261, 262. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES i8r th, rather than to a personal life immediately after ith." The bay or bird-soul, is often represented as ting on the sahu^ or seeking to re-enter it ; it was )posed to make its exit from the body at death. Lastly, the ka. The ka has been described by •ious writers as the spirit, soul, emblem, type, genius, ■son, personality, essence, character, material substance, .terial individuality, shade, image, effigy, counterpart, lius, manes, double, and ghost. The last — ghost — in particular, condemned by Wiedemann as an Itogether misleading translation." The ka is figured two outstretched arms, conventionalised more or less :h a depression in the centre of the horizontal bar ich joins them, representing the place where the id had been. After a man's death his ka became personality proper ; it incorporated itself in the immy ; but both after death and during life it was epresentation or counterpart of his total and complete -sonality. It was immortal ; it could live without : body, but the body could not live without it. Yet : ka was material. In the tomb, " the everlasting Lise," it dwelt as long as the mummy was there. It ght go in and out of the tomb and refresh itself with at and drink, but it never failed to go back to the immy, " with the name of which it seems to have ;n closely connected." Wiedemann thus describes the ka. It was "the ine counterpart of the deceased, holding the same ition to him as a word to the conception which it cresses, or a statue to the living man. It was his ividuality as embodied in the man's name, the picture him which was or might have been called up in the nds of those who knew him, at the mention of that ne. . . . They endowed it with a material form 1 82 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL completely corresponding to that of the man, exactly- resembling him, his second self, his double, his Doppel- g^nger." The last is Maspero's phrase. The ka^ says Petrie, "is more frequently named than any other part, as all funeral-offerings were made for the ka'^ It includes " the activities of sense and perception," or. rather, " all that we might call conscious- ness. Perhaps we may grasp it best as the ' self,' with the same variety of meaning that we have in our own word. The ka was represented as a human being following after the man. ... It could act and visit other kas after death, but it could not resist the least touch of physical force. It was always represented by two upraised arms, the acting parts of the person. Beside the ka of man, all objects likewise had their kas^ which were comparable to the human kaSy and among these the ka lived. This view leads closely to the world of ideas permeating the material world in later philosophy." "We must not," he adds, "suppose by any means that all of these parts of the person were equally im- portant, or were believed in simultaneously." They form separate groups and probably arose at different times. Frazer gives the following description, based on Maspero and Wiedemann : — "Every man has a soul, ka^ which is his exact counterpart or double, with the same features, the same gait, and even the same dress, as the man himself. Many of the monuments dating from the eighteenth century onwards represent various kings appearing before divinities, while behind the king stands his soul or double portrayed as a little man with the king's features. Some of the reliefs in the temple at Luxor illustrate the birth of King Amenophis III. While the queen -mother is being tended by two PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 183 )ddesses acting as midwives, two other goddesses are inging away two figures of new-born children, only le of which is supposed to be a child of flesh and blood ; e inscriptions engraved above their heads show that, iiile the first is Amenophis, the second is his soul or )uble. And as with kings and queens, so it was with tmmon men and women. Whenever a child was born, ere was born with him a double which followed him rough the various stages of life ; young while he was )ung, it grew to maturity and declined along with him. nd not only human beings, but gods and animals, ones and trees, natural and artificial objects, every- )dy and everything had its own soul or double. The )ubles of oxen and sheep were the duplicates of the •iginal oxen or sheep ; the doubles of linen or beds, ' chairs or knives, had the same form as the real linen, :ds, chairs, and knives. So thin and subtle was the ufF, so fine and delicate the texture of these doubles, lat they made no impression on ordinary eyes. Only rtain classes of priests or seers were enabled by natural fts or special training to perceive the doubles of the )ds, and to win from them a knowledge of the past id the future. The doubles of men and things were dden from sight in the ordinary course of life ; still ,ey sometimes flew out of the body endowed with ►lour and voice, left it in a kind of trance, and departed • manifest themselves at a distance." The ka is frequently pictured as of about half the &e of the man ; sometimes, as at Soleb, of the original 1 E. A. W. Budge, ne Mummy (1893), 328 ; G. Maspero, itudes de 'thologie et archiologie igypttenne (1893), i. 388 fF. ; A. Wiedemann, The icient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul (1895), 10 ff. 13, 15, , 19, 20, 42, 44, 46, 47 ; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bought i. 249, 250 ,- . F. M. Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt (1906), 8 ff. 17 ^ 1 84 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL §11. Semitic Psychology. The old Arabs spoke of the breath and the blood as the soul. Also they regarded the head as the seat of the soul. At death it left the head as a bird.^ The Hebrews identified the soul with the breath and the blood. In a great part of the Bible the soul stands for '* life embodied in living creatures." It is the seat of emotions, appetites, and passions. It is sometimes seen as flame. In the Pauline psychology the soul or psychic part was set against the "pneumatic,** as the sensual opposed to the spiritual. Thus the soul, psyche, remained as the individual life, clustering round the ego; while the spirit, pneuma, was "life*' as connected with God, and standing for the highest aspect of the "self.**^ Generally men had doubles, as in the case of Peter, and guardian angels, as in all Semitic thought. In modern Upper Egypt every child born has a djinnee companion born with it. It is a guardian angel, but often hurts its prot6g6. It is an exact counterpart of the person himself, except that for males it is female, and for females male. It is called karina? With Hebrews and Arabs alike the soul left the body at death by the nostrils. The soul is sometimes a vapour, blue in colour.* The Rabbis describe the body as a scabbard, out of which the soul is drawn at Lanzone, Dizionario di mitologia egizia (1886), v. 1197 fF. For plates of the complete form of the ka see Lanzone, plates 387 ff., and Lepsius, Denkm&ler, iii. 21 ; for the outstretched arms in transition to hieroglyph, Lanzone, plates 390 ff. 1 Ma90udi, Les Prairies d'or, ii. 309 fF. ; Freytag, Einleitung in das Studium der arabischen Sprache^ 191, 369. 2 J. Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, s.^v. Soul. ^ Klunzlnger, Upper Egypt (1878), 383. '• A. Bastian, Der Mensch in derGeschichte, ii. 322. PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 185 :h.^ The soul comes from heaven, the body from h. The soul is in the embryo. As the world is filled 1 God, so is the body filled with the soul. The soul, r say, is the salt of the body. The father gives all is white — bones, veins, brain, and white of eyes ; mother all that is red — skin, flesh, hair, and the c part of the eyes ; God gives breath and siognomy, sight and intelligence. In sleep the . ascends to its heavenly abode ; this is proved by ims. In the Cabala we find that " at the moment n the union of the soul and the body is being :ted, the Holy One sends on earth an image raved with the divine seal. This image presides r the union of man and wife ; a clear-sighted eye may it standing at their heads. It bears a human face, this face will be borne by the man who is about ppear. It is this image which receives us on enter- the world, and which grows as we grow, and which :s the earth when we quit it." ^ The Hebrews sved that one heard at times a voice from Heaven, Bath Kol^ and the early Christians repeated the idea. § 1 2. European Psychology. European popular thought — ancient, medieval, and lern — is a congeries of debris from many broken or merate cultures. A few examples will suffice to V the continuity of its ideas of the soul with those iie rest of mankind. n Greek popular thought the soul was an eidolon^ breath, or a butterfly. In Homer the heroes when I remain " themselves "to be the prey of dogs and ures, but their eidola go to the underworld, where 1 'The Jewish Cyclopedia, s.^. U'wish Cyclopedia, s.^. ; P. I. Hershon, Talmudic Miscellany, 66, 67. 1 86 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL life is shadowy and dim. They can become vitalised by drinking the blood of sacrifices. Hence tubes for the conveyance of nourishment were placed in graves. The soul makes its exit through the mouth, or through the gaping wound. The eidolon is not a shadow, though it is a " shade " ; it reproduces the external aspect of the owner more or less reduced in size. On Greek vase-paintings it is represented as issuing from the mouth in the form of a miniature person. The modern Greeks believe that Charos, the Death-god, draws the soul out of the mouth. The *' ideas " of Plato are like the species-deities of the American Indians. The description of the miniature facsimile applies to the Roman and Teutonic beliefs. The Romans held that the soul issued from the mouth. The heir of the dying man took his soul into his mouth. Every man had a body, a manes, a shadow, and a spirit or breath. They made a division between life and intelligence, anima and animus^ which the Schoolmen worked up into a psychical combination of anima vegetativa^ sensitiva and rationalis. The European heathen imagined that each old Christian had a young Christian inside him, and that when he died angels extracted a baby from his mouth. In medieval Christian Art the soul leaves the mouth as a miniature replica of the dying man. Sometimes it Is sexless. A sweet odour Is perceived as the soul leaves the body. In language the Teutonic " soul " Is, accord- ing to Grimm, a " delicate feminine essence, a fluid force " (sea, Seek), as distinguished from the masculine breath, or spiritus. The departing soul sometimes breaks into a flower, or spreads wings as a bird. In Lithuania some one dies when a moth flutters round a candle. The soul leaves the body through the mouth PRE-SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGIES 1 8 7 death or during sleep ; sometimes in the form of )ird, or butterfly, a mouse, weasel, lizard, humble :, or some creature of that size, a snake, a spider, or ;tle, even as down or a blue mist. It is seen as a 3.11 flame. It is also the image in the pupil of the ; ; the disappearance of this " baby " portends death.^ European folklore has its external souls, in trees I elsewhere ; ^ its guardian angels ; its possession demons ; its fairies and its ghosts. The last are I to be seen ; one who sees the ghost of a man says has seen the man. Casdmon thought angels were all and beautiful. The Schoolmen speculated on the istion how many millions of angels could dance on point of a needle. Paracelsus merely followed the age " doctor *' in the material creation of the tunculus, Kepler thought that the lungs or gills ough which the Earth-spirit breathed might one 7 be discovered at the bottom of the sea. Descartes 1 " What the soul was I either did not stay to isider, or if I did, I imagined that it was something remely rare and subtle, like wind, or flame, or er spread through my grosser parts." ^ Swedenborg d that '* the spirit of man is a form." He believed t he had had the privilege of conversing " with lost all the dead whom he had known in the life the body."* Spiritualists to-day photograph souls, I estimate their average weight at from three to r ounces.^ A present-day race that is by no means A.^3iSX.\^n,All€rleiausMensch~undf^'6lkerkunde^ W. plates ; Homer, ///W, 1.09, xiv. 518, xvi. 505 ; B. Schmidt, Das P^olksleben der Neugriecken, ; J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology y 826 ff., 1546 fF. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough'^, i. 258 fF., iii. 393 ff. R. Descartes, Meditationes, ii. 10. Encyclopedia Britannica, ix. s.nj. E. Clodd, Animism (1905), 40. 1 88 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL degenerate, and that, besides possessing Greek blood, is in a less artificial environment than most Europeans, the peasants of Sicily, believe that "every material thing has an impalpable image or double, which can be detached and can penetrate other bodies." In this way they explain dreams.^ In folklore and " psychical experience " the spiritual double, Doppelgcinger^ is familiar. To meet this is an omen of death.^ Shelley declared, a few days before his death, that he had seen his double. A case is attested of a young Devon carpenter who was so firmly convinced that he had seen his double on St. Mark's Eve, the usual date for such appearances, that he shortly after took to his bed, without being really ill, and died of sheer fright.^ In a long interview with Mrs. , she declared that her rooms, situated in the Speaker's Court, " are haunted by a spiritual double of herself, which has been seen by many people when she was elsewhere, though she has never seen it herself, but has heard it."^ This belief has prompted many legends and many works of art ; for instance, Calderon based his drama, The Purgatory of St. Patrick^ on the medieval story of Oenus. There are de la Motte Fouqu6's Sintram^ Andersen's The Shadow^ Gautier's Le Chevalier double^ Poe's William Wilson^ and Elizabeth Browning's The Romaunt of Margaret. Further developments of European psychology, in connection with Plato's Ideas, the Rabbinical, Arabian, and Christian psychologies, lead directly to modern thought and science. ' Morrino in Macmillans Magazine {1897), 374. 2 Folklore {1890), 23. 3 S. Baring-Gould, in The Sunday Magazine (1895), 744. ^ The E'vening Ne'wSy 30th June 1899. CHAPTER V THE NATURE OF THE SOUL § I . Conditions of its Development, ESE examples of early ideas of the soul might be fved to speak for themselves, were there not a ^er of reading into them our own notions, derived 1 a long process of theological, metaphysical, and :hoIogical evolution. In order to catch the original ning of these ideas it Is necessary to strip from n all extraneous matter, such as the terms of uage in which they are presented to our view, to regard them as being merely psychical facts aental reactions. Even if we allow them to remain :lose connection with modern or early terms for ul," "spirit," and the like, they are still nothing psychical phenomena, the results of environment n the brain. In other words, primitive or early tries of the soul are merely early modes of describing ordinary operations of the mind. Each curious on about "soul** and "spirit" is an early attempt jalise some normal mental process. Popular views nodern culture concerning the *^ soul " are, no less . popular views concerning the " ghost," merely ivals, recurring under the influence of the original litions, of the primitive way of looking at what Dens in the brain of man. I90 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL This may be illustrated by some modifications of the idea of the soul which have been supplied by the examples given. When, for instance, the inquirer puts his questions in reference to the soul of a man just dead, the answers show the influence of the percept of the dead body. The memory-image is thus modified, and we have the origin of the conception of the " ghost." If, on the other hand, the man has been dead some time, the answers tend towards a generalised image of the man as he is remembered on a broad view of his life, the accidental circumstance of death having no longer any particular influence. If the questions refer to a living man in connection, for instance, with his *' vital force," the answers are influenced by the physiological aspects of personality, and such parts of the whole as the blood, the heart, or the breath are temporarily identified with the "soul." If the questions refer to a living man who is absent, the answers again tend to revert to the memory-image. In such cases the mind seems to be trying to realise the whole personality as it exists in consciousness ; where selective attention is possible, as in the percept, the idea is shifted from the general image to a part or a tag. The modifications of the idea which result from varieties of attention or change of aspect show several stages and involve certain laws. Dismissing altogether the idea of the soul, and also of any dualism between soul and body, we assume that the subject has, to begin with, merely the object as given. He has then no other means of obtaining knowledge or any idea of the object except by per- ception. His first acquisition is a percept. This automatic result becomes in thought a mental or THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 191 lory image, which practically is the object. It is merely the basis of all thought about the object ; thought. 'he next stage is analytical. When calling up mage of the whole, the mind of the subject modifies irough the influence of some particular aspect f seen or perceived. At other times some part he whole is accentuated, for instance, a man's I may at times predominate to the exclusion of r aspects of his personality. Association facilitates process, and mental economy makes free use of A part or a symbol is readily accepted by the 1 instead of the totality. When language provides IS the process is still easier, and the memory-image ore or less obscured. But any part, symbol, or I is capable of calling up an image of the whole, .anguage has further results. The parts of the e when supplied with names serve as subjects Dredication about the object. The mind is then to regard these or their names as real agents or ies. We thus get a number of artificial person- s which usurp the place of the original whole. *here is another form of analysis which works L the percept rather than upon the memory-image, \ the first stage of the scientific analysis of the :t. It works by comparison and inference, and e result of selective attention. By its means the •ver isolates the character and function of the parts the various activities of the whole. Thus the [1 Sea islanders speak of fire as being in wood ; agoras regarded the sound of a gong as its rit." A considerable portion of early spiritualistic ■ine is, therefore, not only a psychology, but a iology, physics, and metaphysics. In the early 192 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL stages of this analysis there is no separation of abstract notion and concrete form ; for instance, " life " is not separated from " living-body," nor " sight " from '^ seeing-eye." In the last stages language eifects this abstraction. The mind, however, is never able to realise such notions ; it merely realises their names. Lastly, there is the relation of the subject to his own consciousness. Self-feeling, the recognition of self and of self-identity, the notion of self as cause, as subject or object, create another' set of "souls" parallel to, but originally distinct from, the souls of objects. This process has yet to be considered.-^ Apart from some such sequence it is difficult to draw any absolute distinction of stages of development. The early psychologies are in a state of flux, yet the original idea of the soul as a mental reflex of the whole object continuously recurs. The evidence both of psychology, linguistics, and ethnology warrants us in concluding that this is the primal form of the idea, and that the latest form is the abstract notion, the artificial creation of language. It is interesting to observe the correspondence of the earliest stages with the attitude of critical empirical science. Both stages of thought have, of course, the same material ; but, whereas for many ages man has dogmatised in various directions of monism and dualism, the earliest men agree with the latest in refusing to do so. They simply take the object as given. Except under the influence of language the mind cannot in any stage act otherwise. Early language follows the mental law, and keeps every thing, function, or notion that is connected with a totality in a permanent union with it. 1 See below, Chap. vi. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 193 § 2. Analysis of the Idea of the Soul. he primal form of the idea of the soul may now msidered as it appears In the examples of early lologies. As compared with later forms, mainly al attempts at the reproduction of the whole, the of the soul as the mental duplicate of reality is i in every race of men at a very early stage, emerges again after being obscured by substitutes, s a mental duplicate it comprises every part, :t, function, and attribute of the whole — its life, Dn, action, emotion, intelligence, and will ; but ;mains a concrete entity — an incomplete, faded, small facsimile of the object. These are the icteristics of the memory-image as contrasted with )ercept, of which it is a repetition, et, though a duplicate, the soul is by no means louble" in the sense of the Doppelgdnger. The " is a percept of hallucination, which is psycho- ally identical with the object itself, 'he inconsistency of early thought, which apparently hold conflicting opinions at the same time, has dy been illustrated in passing. It is easily ex- led when we remember that the spiritual world is mental world under another name, and that the ;ncies of language give precedence now to one now to another part of the whole subject. "hat the soul represents the whole personality of object is shown by the semangat of the Malayo- nesians. It is in the form of the owner ; the -death soul is a " continuation " of the individual, 13 194 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL comprising all his personal characteristics.-^ These two souls are psychologically identical, though each is influenced by different circumstances. The Bakairi soul represents "the whole actual personality."^ In Chinese psychology the Universe has a soul, man has a soul, each part of man has a soul, and so on. The human soul is an alter ego, and may be "identified" with the family portrait of the owner. ^ The Kafir soul is " wrapped up " with the man's personality ; it can hardly be distinguished from it.^ The Dacotah theory of four souls has analytical interest. That which dies with the body, and that which always remains with the body, are the results of perception of the organism ; the soul which goes away at .death, and that which stays with the bundle of hair kept by the relatives, are respectively the "memory" and the memento (calling up the memory-image) of the man.^ The kelah of the Karens is " the individuality, the general idea," whether of an animate or of an inanimate object,^ The Egyptian ka is a noticeable example of a reproduction of the complete personality, A man's ka after death " became his personality proper." Both after death and during life it was a representation and counterpart of his total and complete personality.^ As compared with the real double due to hallucina- tion, the cases where the soul is the mental duplicate, that is, the memory-image of the object, show an overwhelming proportion. Every people supplies an example more or less clear. Wherever the soul, as a duplicate, possesses such attributes as those of 1 See above, p. 130. ^ See above, p. 161. ^ ggg above, p. 165. 1 See above, p. 172. ^ See above, p. 156. *> See above, p. 137. '^ See above, p. 181. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 195 sality, intangibility, thinness, faintness, incomplete- evanescence, rapidity of movement, smallness, ability, or existence after death, we can only int for it by the memory-image, xplicit indications of the memory-image are to *en in cases like the Egyptian ka. It has been ibed as " the picture of a man which was or might been called up in the minds of those who knew * ^ The chi of the Asaba is " a reflection in the ; world." ^ The Hervey islanders speak of the ;s of this world as a " gross copy of what exists irit-land," and of the soul as " an airy but visible of the man." Similar is the Tongan theory.^ Melanesian atai is an "invisible second self" reflection of a man." The nunuat is a memory- ;e of any sensation or feeling ; in particular it auditory memory-image. The atai may therefore dentified with the visual image.* In Hinduism ; is found the worship of " an image of the sun .ed in the mind." Pragapati's saying that "the )n that is seen in the eye " is the real Self refers out doubt to the personality realised visually in memory-image. The linga^ or "subtle body" of pva^ is " cognitional, sensorial, and aerial," and he size of a thumb.^ The petara of the Sea iks is " the spiritual aspect " of an object.® The awarri of the Macusis is the small human figure in the pupil."^ The Sundanese and Caribbean eption of the soul as a " refined " body is frequently ated.^ The chief soul, fanahy, of the Malagasy, id "to survive as an idea in memory."^ A good 1 See p. 181. 2 See p. 177. 3 ggg pp g^, 95. ■* See p. 100. 5 See pp. 139, 141 f. *> See p. 105. ' See p. 159. 8 See pp. 122, 162. ^ gee p. 133. 196 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL example of the auditory image is the Bakulu of the Bavili. These are **the voices of the dead,*' living after them, and dwelling in the heads of near relatives/ A recognition of the auditory image, more frequently exteriorised than the visual, is found among the Madis. who imagine they hear the voices of departed friends.^ In a large number of cases the soul is regarded as a duplicate of the body, but invisible ; this is a naive way of expressing the fact that the memory-image is not the percept, and, as such, it is placed in contrast. In these examples, with the exception of illustrations, such as the retinal image in the Macusi theory of the soul, we have descriptions by observers who have not grasped the fact of the memory-image. Their evidence has thus the value of undesigned coin- cidence. § 3. Visual Analogies. As we have seen, the mental image is mostly visual. The predominance of the sense of sight in the formation of ideas may be illustrated by several interesting facts, which indirectly enforce the view that the original idea of the soul is the visual image. Many students of man have seriously entertained the hypothesis that the idea of the soul originated from the shadow. Such a view is no longer tenable, any more than the view that it originated from reflections in water 01 from pictorial reproductions. The general inability to realise the existence of the memory-image is one reason for such identifications of the soul with the 1 See above, p. i77- ^ See above, p. 179. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 197 ow or reflection. Another reason is economy of aage. In many cases the word translated "shadow" IS rather "shade." The *' shades" of Homer's es are not " shadows " ; they are unsubstantial icates possessing colour and volume- The analogy een reflection, shadow, and memory-image is close igh to explain the fact that one word serves so 1 to cover them all. In a similar way the savage call copper "red stone" and iron "black stone." etimes the shadow proper is called the dark ide," the reflection of the body in water is called light " shade." ^ Even in cases where the shadow er is actually regarded as the soul it is probable it is employed merely as a convenient tag. The ge may at one time inform the observer that the ow is the soul, at another time that the breath e soul, and so on, according to his point of view, ^he analogical value of the shadow is considerable, i that of the reflection and of the portrait. Its itions in length and intensity have suggested many esting notions. Loss of intensity means illness eath ; noon-tide, when the shadow is shortest, is le of danger. Man's life waxes towards evening, wanes towards noon. It is probable that many ; cited ^ may change their meaning when analysed, as seen in the Fijian example where the evidence anguage proved that there was an analogy, but m identity, between the shadow and the soul.^ ^he reaction of the naive consciousness to the first : of a reflection in a mirror or of a portrait, is a of epoch in its evolution. This will be considered ee above, p. 96. 'ases have been collected by Tylor, Primiti've Culture^, i. 430 ff. razer, Tke Golden Bough ^^ i. 285. ^ See above, p. 97. 198 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL below.^ The Andamanese " do not regard their shadows, but their reflections (in any mirror) as their souls." 2 Many peoples have this notion, together with the inference that the mirror " draws out " the soul from the body. Sick persons, accordingly, are warned against looking into mirrors lest the soul should stay outside. The old Hindu recipe for longevity, namely, to gaze daily at one's face in a mirror, may be regarded as a way of laying hold of the soul by external realisation. The idea is parallel to the practice of embodying the soul in a doll, an image, or a portrait. On the other hand, the belief is sometimes found that disembodied souls, and spirits that are incorporeal, witches, and vampires, cast neither reflection nor shadow. Being already " reflections," it is natural that they should not. There are many stories of savage recalcitrancy under the camera or before the canvas. The photographic fiend carries the soul away in his "black box" ; the painter-fellow literally "draws" it out on the canvas.^ The story of Narcissus, which recurs hi Melanesia, whether a folk-tale or a prose-poem, or both, is developed on psychological lines.* The mirror has been described as " a sort of repeater ; it repeats the visual sensations which the object produces on us directly." ^ The notion that mirage is the soul of the water has been cited.^ Similar is the belief common in the East Indies that when the sun shines through rain, * See below, ch. vi. 2 E. H. Man, On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands^ 94. 3 J. Chalmers, Pioneering in Nenv Guinea, 170 ; A. Simson, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ix. 392 ; J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, %(> ; Frazer, The Golden Bough^, i. 293 ff. ■* Codrington, The Melanesians, 186 ^ Binet, The Psychology of Reasoning, 67. ^ See above, p. 134. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 199 ts are present.^ A still more remarkable proof ;he connection of sight with the notion of the tual is to be found in the belief of the Hervey iders that the souls of dead warriors can be seen pecks in the sky. The visual illusion by which ing black specks, or scintillating points are seen nst the blue sky is a familiar experience. The s islanders show, in their notion that spiritual tence is a point, an appreciation of the minimum nle? The belief of the Fijians who saw at the om of a stream the souls of men and women, ts and plants, stocks and stones, canoes and houses, of all the broken utensils of this world, tumbling over the other pell-mell into the regions of Lortality, is an interesting case of visualised imagina- ? The sight of broken crockery and utensils 'ing under water would impress the imagination, association would do the rest. fhere is an example of the objective recognition of self which few persons are without, in the sight of s self in the eye of another. The Macusis, for mce, regard this reflection as the soul. It is not -ly stated in these cases whether the retinal image is soul of the person reflected or of the owner of the la. Careful examination would prove it to be that he former. The Macusis, however, show, by the that they ascribe death to its disappearance, that ■ consider it to be the soul of the owner of the eye.'* en recognised as the soul of the man whose reflection , its position in another's eye might be compared . the position of the memory-image of a man in the 1, where it can be felt, of the subject who recalls it. ^ Kruijt, op. cit. 82. '^ See above, p. 93 f. ^ See above, p. 96. ■* See above, p. 159. 200 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The portrait is a close repetition of the visual percept. A striking case of its psychological influence is the Chinese belief which identifies the soul with the life- size polychrome portrait of the dead man,^ The analogy, as is shown by language, is very close and convenient ; for instance, when we think of the soul of a man, we call up a " mental picture " of the man himself, just as we do when we think of him or hear his name. We have quoted many cases where medicine-men, seers, and priests profess to be able to see the soul, whereas to ordinary persons it is invisible. Many men pass through life without realising the existence of the memory -images which form all their thought. In ordinary language, of course, the term invisible more often than not refers to the fact that the memory-image is not seen externally, is not the percept. As opposed to the visible percept it may well be termed invisible. But the cases referred to incontestably prove that in early culture the seers or shamans, the "doctors" or priests, who were the real thinkers of old time, practised mental visualisation, and also the projection of mental images. We read of them shutting their eyes in order to behold the world of spirits. In relatively high culture the projection of images in crystals or in mirror- like surfaces was practised by seers. We may, therefore, conclude that in the earlier stages of theology its pro- fessors had no small acquaintance with the experimental science of the soul. § 4, The Soul as a Miniature, First among the attributes of the soul in its primary form may be placed its size. ^ See above, p. 165. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 201 t is frequently regarded as life-size, very rarely as ir than life, occasionally as infinitesimal or atomic. in the great majority of cases it is a miniature ca of the person, described often as a mannikin, or unculus, of a few inches in height. There are various reasons, which will be discussed in • place, for the various sizes ascribed. Three may lismissed at once ; under the influence of a very ig impression, such as terror, it may assume colossal )ortions. This we have seen in one case of ghosts. soul when it is an eject and issues from the tures of the body, must necessarily be small enough the purpose. The same necessity applies to its ipulation by medicine-men and shamans. Again, re there is an identification of the soul with the image in the eye of another, its size is that of this retinal re. But if the soul is, as a general rule, a miniature . few inches in height, the question arises whether e is anything about the memory -image generally :h will account for this. So far as I know the ition is new. That the memory-image of the object should be of same size as the percept, that is, of the object itself, IS obvious at first. But even here there are com- itions produced by distance. The apparent size of 'bject alters in proportion to its distance from the The fact is interesting for early psychology, and rinciples may therefore be noted here. "The apparent of an object is determined by the magnitude of the yc formed on the retina. , . , The apparent size ny diameter of any given object is inversely propor- al to the distance. Thus the size of the image on retina of an object two inches long at a distance of foot is equal to the image of an object four inches 202 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL long at a distance of two feet. An object can be seen if the visual angle subtended by it is not less than sixty seconds. This is equivalent to an image on the fovea centralis of the retina about four y. across. . . . Estima- tion of distance depends partly on muscular sensations from the degree of accommodation and of convergence of the optic axes, partly on comparisons of the apparent size of the object with that of a neighbouring object, the real size of which is known, and partly on the amount of blurring of the outlines of the object due to the haziness of the atmosphere."^ Thus "the larger the visual angle, the larger the retinal image ; since the visual angle depends upon the distance of an object, the correct perception of size depends largely upon a correct perception of distance ; having formed a judg- ment, conscious or unconscious, as to that, we conclude as to size from the extent of the retinal region affected. Most people have been surprised now and then to find that what appeared a large bird in the clouds was only a small insect close to the eye, the large apparent size being due to the previous incorrect judgment as to the distance of the object." ^ Thus, apparent size depends very much on distance-judgment, and this is a result of tactile and muscular sensations. How, then, do we get the absolute sizes of objects ? They are early impressed on the brain. "With no sense is the invocation from memory of a thing and the consequent perception of the latter so immediate as with sight. The ' thing ' which we perceive always resembles another optical figure which in our mind has come to be a standard bit of reahty."^ This is the absolute size. 1 E. H. Starling, Elements of Human Physiology (1907), 578, 579, 2 Martin, The Human Body, 530. 3 W. James, 'Textbook of Psychology , 325. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 203 the case of a man leaving our presence, and walking ly, we may conceive him at 200 yards as large as was at 10. But we do not perceive him as large. Ve might, of course, at first suppose that the object :lf waxed and waned as it glided from one place to )ther," ^ and it is not impossible that at an early stage inference this was believed to be the case. But " the nciple of simplifying our world would soon drive us : of that assumption into the easier one that objects as ule keep their sizes," ^ We have next the relative size of each thing as it is perception. It is obtained in the following way : is easy to calculate the maximal and minimal sizes the retinal image, the first filling practically the whole d, and the second barely emerging from the centre. t the retinal image is not what we see. We always an enlargement, the size of which, in perception, ies as the distance of the object perceived. The )arent sizes of objects are practically the same for all ieties and ages of man, and they are estimated by tile and muscular judgments. In perception, in the open air, we see practically f the horizon, half the hemisphere of the sky. is in contrast to this that we estimate the sizes of ects. But even in perception there is a limitation of on. We cannot see the whole of the horizon ifortably, or clearly, of course ; we are conscious it as surrounding the particular object we focus, this connection it is interesting to note that the lays regard the semangat of heaven as of the size an umbrella, and that of earth as of the size of ray. We cannot see the whole even of a human 1 Id. 243. '-^ Id.^ he. cit. 204 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL figure in one view when he is very near. We have to move our eyes round his outline ; even at a distance of ten yards much of him is still in the field. It is stated of persons born blind, that on recovering their sight any object fills the whole field of vision. They have not been able to co-ordinate vision with muscular judgment, and they literally " see men as trees walking," The eye prefers a size which enables it to see the totality of the object in one view with as little muscular effort and accommodation as possible. What is the most convenient size for a complete view ? Let us turn for a moment to material images. Of what size does a person ignorant of drawing usually draw a human figure ? Obviously of such a size that his eyes can embrace it easily in one view — but at what distance is this ? At the distance his pencil is from the eye. This is the distance — the distance of the hand from the eye — at which we view illustrations and photographs. Now the size of an object at this distance between hand and eye is, I suppose, roughly from three to eight inches. This is about the most convenient size for seeing the whole of a thing held in the hand. " Out of all the visual magnitudes of each known object we have selected one as the "real" one to think of, and degraded all the others to serve as its signs. This ... is that which we get when the object is at the distance most propitious for exact visual discrimination of its details. This is the distance at which we hold anything we are examining. Farther than this we see it too small, nearer too large. And the larger and the smaller feelings vanish in the act of THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 205 gesting this one, their more important meaning." ^ this connection the dolls or puppets so often used medicine-men to represent the soul are significant, eir average size is that of a child's doll of the dlest variety ; it is obviously due to the necessity holding it in the hand, and of being able not only examine it easily, but also to conceal it from the s of the audience.^ We cannot hold a full-grown person in the hand, [ if we could, we should not be able to see the ole of him in one view. The brain, therefore ig its experience of size and distance, prefers to a man at such a distance that his size is equal to size of an object that can be fully seen in the id. This we may then suppose to be the standard ; of the memory-image of a man, though the ;stion, of course, requires adequate investigation. is worth remark that the result, if substantiated, iws a wonderful co-operation between hand and eye the evolution of the human organism. Some general considerations assist the suggestion. Iton found that the visualising faculty, "if free in action, has no difficulty in reducing images to the le scale, owing to constant practice in watching ects as they approach or recede, and consequently )w or diminish in apparent size." ^ He states that some of his cases, exteriorised memory-images med quite close, filling as it were the whole head, ile the ordinary memory-image seemed " farther ay in some far off recess of the mind." ^ An after- ^ W. James, Textbook oj Psychology, 344. 2 See above, pp. 107, 154. 3 Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty'^, 76. 4 Id. 119. 2o6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL image projected on a screen at the same distance as the object, is the same size, but it grows larger as the screen is moved away and smaller as it is moved nearer. This is the converse of what happens in real perception. Binet has proved a correspondence in the behaviour of the after-image and the memory-image to the effect that their size is constant, as the image on the retina is constant.^ We have ourselves arrived by experiment at the result, that dream-images remembered on waking are very small, a human figure being about the size of a miniature photograph ; that memory-images, where the attention is not concentrated, are very small, but do not lose detail and colour, and that the memory- image of a man at a distance of thirty yards is about the size of an object three inches high at a distance of eighteen inches, that is to say, the usual distance at which one holds an object for examination. Roughly speaking, this is the size of a carte-de-visite of the smaller sort, small enough to be grasped in the hand, as the medicine-man grasps the soul. The ancient Hindus and the modern Malays estimate the size of the soul as about the size of the thumb. This member averages about three inches. The thumb is frequently employed in early culture as a unit of measure, and actually supplies a name for mannikins — thumbling^ Tom Thumbs Hop o' my Thumb. The thumb and fingers are personalised in nursery lore. Swift represents the Lilliputian as of a convenient size for Gulliver to examine in his hand. The soul then, according to the standard of the memory-image, is about three inches high. This principle of economy and accommodation applies to other attributes. Our memory-image of 1 Binet, Psyckologj) of Reasoning, 49 fF, THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 207 ;rson, without reference to special circumstances, " him standing, in an ordinary easy position, exactly e would stand before that other maker of images, photographic artist. We may compare the Nootka on that the soul, a little man, stands upright in >wner's head, and only falls from its position when man dies. uch cases point to the possibility of generalisation Ived in mental imagery. Ve found that in Nias the heaviest soul weighs It ten grammes.^ Modern spiritualists estimate average weight of the soul at three or four ounces. A^ith regard to voice the miniature standard is employed. It is a well-attested fact that ghosts spirits have a thin, twittering, and small voice. Lge and civilised folklore is full of examples, but tly in connection with " ghostliness," the absence ife from the body. As Tylor puts it, ghosts have s ghost of a voice." Homer, I think, suggests rectly that the faintness of voice is of a piece with general faintness of the life of the disembodied But we are deaUng here with the ordinary :eption of the soul. In this the voice of the soul ormal, though small. In the Solomon Islands the e of the soul is compared to a whisper.^ In the ;h Sea Islands, as elsewhere, it is "small" and in." ^ Conscience is generally a still, small voice, put it shortly, just as we have the size of the standardised to a miniature photograph, so its e is that of its master's voice when heard through telephone. 1 See above, p. 122. '^ Codrington, Journal of f^e Anthropological Institute ^ x. 300. ^ See above, p. 95 ; Tylor, op. cit. i. 4.52. 2o8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL § 5. Other Attributes of the Soul. The soul is visible or invisible, generally the latter. As we have seen, it is invisible precisely because it is seen with the brain, not with the eye. In some cases we find that spirits are not feared in the day- time because they are then invisible, but they are feared at night. Night is the time when souls are seen ; they are not the " ghosts " of fancy, produced by the absence of light, nor are they the images of dreams. The uncultured mind generally does its thinking when day is over. As the savage sits by the camp-fire before going to sleep, the images of his experiences move quickly through his brain ; that is to say, he sees a panorama of souls of men and things. The visual illusions arising from the con- templation of fire-light doubtless give rise to the representation of the soul as a spark or a flame ; and the shapes seen in fire-light may at times be identified with souls.^ The substance of the soul is attenuated reality. The visual image, which is a replica of the percept, continu- ally takes on the characteristics of the object as they vary with circumstances. The Indians of Canada believe that souls bleed when stabbed with a knife.^ In the Middle Ages not only were bodies burned alive on earth, but souls were burned in hell. The Kafir gives his child an emetic to purge him of the Christianity he has learned at the Mission School.^ In China, Brazil, and Australia, mutilation of the body has a 1 See above, p. 103. ^ Tylor, Primitive Culture^, i. 451. 3 Dudley Kidd, T/ie Essential Kafir, 5. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 209 jponding effect on the soul.^ If therefore a dead is hamstrung or has his thumbs cut oJfF, his will be harmless. In savage thought acquired cteristics are inherited by the disembodied soul. , as in the Fiji story, are subject to decomposition.^ ughout history the idea of the soul has kept or less, even after language has made it an LCtion, to a material substantiality. The mind »t think a pure abstraction or an immaterial ince. le materiality of the soul, therefore, is not the of any materialistic doctrine, neither is its ;ality the result of idealism. Early men have letaphysical dogmas about matter and energy, r and spirit. To them all substance is the same, ^r material nor immaterial, but neutral. Their de is unconsciously scientific, le attenuated substantiality of the soul is of t due to the fact that it is a memory-image, possesses volume, yet in a less degree than the 3t. The filmy or vaporous quality of the soul Tefore due, not to its being the breath or the )ut to the fact that the memory-image is fainter ess solid than the object. To this should be . the chief characteristic of sight in contrast to , since the memory-image is mainly visual. The ) a great extent lacks the experience of resistance, e being nothing to constitute a resisting obstacle t rotation of the ball, except its own very small I. Hence the eye with all its wide range and searching capabilities cannot be said to contribute ; fundamental consciousness of the object universe, Tylor, Primiti've Culture^, i- 45i- ^ See above, p. 97. 2IO THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the feeling of resistance." ^ The same characteristic belongs to hearing. Which has the " higher " reality, the body or the soul ? Here again the savage does not dogmatise ; all experience is real, though it may differ in degree. Death proves that the soul is more real, since it still exists in the memory of others when the body has passed away. It is also more real, because it tends to be more constant than the percept. The real person is uncertain in his movements and unreliable in his acts ; but the memory-image of the person is always more or less generalised by repetition. Along this line are developed at a later stage the ideas of the formal cause of a thing and of the essence, or the thing in itself. It is of interest to note with reference to the repeating function of the brain, that repetition intensifies and confirms reality. On the other hand, the sense of touch turns the scale in favour of the body. For common sense the great test of reality is resistance ; touch is the final criterion of the real presence. " Handle me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." ^ We may here refer to the current doctrine that early man confused subjective and objective reality. Sensations are referred to an external object. When the object is absent, and the same nervous centre is stimulated, does the mind refer the stimulus to the object ? In the abnormal experiences of hallucination and the projection of after-images this is temporarily the case. The projection of memory-images is equally abnormal. Such experiences might produce the idea of the bilocation of objects, but not the idea of the ^ Bain, Mental and Moral Philosophy, 63. 2 Luke xxiv. 39. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 211 In any case, however, we must confine ourselves rmal experience. Is then the memory-image ense in the primitive mind as to be mistaken le percept ? This is extremely improbable, as man depended for his very existence on the of discriminating mental and objective reality. Dver, we continually find cases where, though rribes reality to mental experience and to dream s, yet the reality is particularly noted as different. boys and girls " distinguish their dreams from ivaking experiences, though they think the dreams real in a certain sense. ' ' ^ This distinction is ologically sound, her characteristics of the soul which are derived the characteristics of the memory - image are ty, evanescence, permanence leading to immortality, ;elessness, and separability. le soul is a light, fluttering, or gliding thing, quick me and quick to go, hard to catch and hard to I. Hence it is symbolised by means of birds, :flies, moths, flies, lizards, and snakes, light or ring or rapidly moving creatures. These character- are those of the image as it glides along the stream msciousness. Only concentrated attention can : its movement. tie soul of a man exists in a mental world, the 5 of other men, until and even after he dies. As ;ed to the changing movements of the owner, it is or less stationary and changeless. It is a standard ^erence. As has been suggested, it is automatically alised by repetition. he germ of its immortality is the fact that it exists e brains of others. A man dies, but his image 1 Kidd, Savage Childhood^ p. 105, 212 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL remains. The fact of death does not necessarily alter the character of the memory-image, though such altera- tion is found ; the permanence of the soul depends on the length of the memory of the survivors, on the affec- tion the dead man inspired, or the strength of his person- ality. Remarkable characters develop into "ancestors" and " heroes/' Their souls, regarded as connected with their remains, and then with their resting-places, receive artificial support in the way of food and drink, the soul of which they absorb, visible replicas and fetish-like symbols. In these methods of embodying a memory there is the beginning of a cult, of idols, shrines, and temples. The savage has no idea of absolute immortality. The soul itself dies ; its existence, that is, depends on the memory of others. But neither has he any idea of absolute death of the organism. He avoids reflection on so disagreeable a subject, and never realises the fact of his own annihilation. Death for him is rarely due to natural causes ; if it were not for magic, as producing disease and death, and for violence, man would live for an indefinite time. There is a flavour of scientific truth about this view. The soul is, by the very fact of its origin, separable from the personaHty. Its connection with the latter is likely to be mysterious for the naive consciousness. In the presence of the person it coalesces with him or disappears ; it reappears in his absence. Or when present, if the subject closes his eyes he sees the soul, if he opens them he sees the man. There are many results of this separability. The phenomena of sleep and dream, disease and death, constitute an Odyssey of the soul. This has often been described in its main features. Some less hackneyed THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 213 5 of adventure may here be noted in connection the psychology of the ideas of separation and ction. lese ideas are mainly derived from the relation memory-image to the percept. In the early stages aires some effort to keep the image separate from ality when the percept is available. Accordingly ;s like the Australians cannot " distinguish between and soul." ^ With the Kafirs body and soul are ^ connected, " if not identical." ^ The Bantu says body and soul are one ; my soul is myself." ^ 70 further points of view will be discussed below ; suit of analysis of the percept alone, and the con- n of the soul as self-consciousness, the soul as in bject not the object. rly thought, again, is more apt to connect than to Lte. In reference to the primitive fear of thought, •obabihty may be noted that the fact of the object in the brain of the subject is itself an uncanny ence. The mind is uneasy about such duality of nee. Conversely, when there is especial reason for g the object, the mind is afraid lest the image 1 become real, lest it should bring the object into or be visualised into reality, in other words, lest aid be exchanged for the percept, le theory of omens is connected with this principle. 1 a man has in his mind a picture of what he is to do, any appearance that bears an analogy to tended action is regarded as a possibility of realisa- If it is in harmony with the intention, it is a good , a help to satisfactory realisation ; if it is antagon- it is evil and may frustrate the contemplated issue, le tendency to connect is shown in language, in 2 above, p. 82. ^ See above, p. 170. ^ See above, p, 167. 214 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL thought, and in a multitude of early habits. Thus fragments of a man's personality, such as hair or nail- clippings, or clothes, retain a close connection, due originally not to any physical theory as might be inferred from sympathetic magic, nor to any notion of a " force " or ^* influence " pervading such parts of the whole, but simply to the comprehensiveness of the percept and the image. The mind is loath to divide either. Apparently, however, it is also prone to divide them. When analysis of the percept once begins, it goes far, and we have to deal with what amounts to a plurality of souls. The fact is that the original comprehensive totality, though desired by the mind, is more easily referred to by parts or symbols or tags. An instructive case ot misconception in such questions is to be found in what is reported of the Chinese. With this people, so profoundly religious, the value of the soul as compared with the body is said to be "almost entirely ignored." The explanation of this is that the Chinese mind identifies soul and personality, memory-image and percept, in a very practical and scientific way. To the Chinese the man is the soul, and the soul is the man. The conviction that the soul has the shape of the body is one which calls up the body immediately before their eyes when- ever they think of the soul.^ They will have no more dualism than the facts of nature demand. In discussing the circumstances in which the soul is inferred to leave the body, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that it cannot be separated until it is itself in existence. The observer cannot infer from the phenomena of death that the soul has departed unless he is already aware of the existence of the * De Groot, The Religious System of China, i. 355. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 215 Again, when the memory -image is realised icludes the living quality of the object. In the inal idea, therefore, there is no need to suppose ision of a visible shape and a vital force — the have never been separated. n this connection early psychology presents two rasted views. The first is that, as in the case :he ka^ the body cannot live without the soul, igh the soul can live without the body ; the nd is that the soul cannot live without the body. ii view has a psychological basis. The second ^s the dependence of the memory-image on the ept, which is its permanent reference, and in :h, when available, it always tends to be merged. Ke first we see a recognition of the memory-image existing apart from the percept, and the later *ence that it informs the percept and makes ,it To begin with, this inference is not so much scription of vitalising power as^a vague connection dea and object, which developed later into the ion that the idea is the formal cause, the visual apposed to the material essence of the thing. )oth views it is noteworthy that the behaviour of idea is exteriorised and applied to the percept, as all our notions of objects are modified by thought of them. The soul separates itself from the body in the ways :h have been illustrated in the examples. Of a man faint it is remarked that his soul is " loosely united lis body." So in death and other circumstances loosens itself from the body." ^ That is to say, :aves the material frame as a film or emanation. 1 See above, p. 154. 2i6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The image is a sort of "proof-sheet," leaving the *' type " like the printed page. Analysis of the percept tends to ignore the totality of the memory-image ; it applies the method of natural science, instead of that of psychology, regarding the object alone without reference to the knowing subject. Thus the soul readily becomes an eject, and, as such, issues from the apertures of the body. Here we have to deal with the question of its residence within the body as a connected yet separable entity. As a converse of this aspect we may compare the Gnostic fancy that the soul is a "robe." The opposite view is illustrated by the Malayan notion that the body is the garment {sarong) of the soul.'^ Bruno held that the body is in the soul, not the soul in the body. The soul is commonly supposed to leave the body in sleep. Its departure is sometimes signalised by snoring.2 The notion doubtless is that a snore, when followed by soundless sleep, is the last sound made by the retiring soul. We have here to do with a plurality. The body remains, with its breath and its warmth ; motion, sight, and hearing, however, have disappeared. The observer, already having knowledge of these functions, expresses the fact of their absence in the usual early style, by saying that one or more "souls" has departed- It is, probably, a late recon- structive eifort that describes the totality as having left the body, though it is seen in the memory of the observer, and may be compared by him, in its living and active quality, with the inert, passive, and image- like totality of the percept. The East Indian theory of sleep is significant. The 1 See above, p. 125. ^ See above, p. 135. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 217 l1 savage opinion is that a man's soul may leave body during sleep and visit distant scenes. But latter half of this is not so frequent as the opinion distant scenes, persons, and things come to a man e sleeping. The East Indians, however, hold a man sleeps because his soul has left his body, sleep is an automatic result of the departure of soul.'^ If we interpret this, as analogy permits to mean that one aspect, or part of the soul, or^ be natives might put it, one soul, has departed, the ion is scientifically accurate, as also is the opinion mentioned, that objects present themselves to a asleep in dreams. SlS to the relation between the soul and the fact leath, the naive mind finds it difficult to believe a man is really dead. Even the modern biologist 3 it difficult to say precisely when death is absolute, 'he early stages, when the abstract conception of s" had not been produced by language, there equally no abstract conception of "death.*' Even a they have been produced it is impossible for the 1 to realise them as such, and difficult for the i to realise that a living person can die. It is, efore, not surprising to find that the soul is not .ys supposed to leave the body immediately at h, for instance, when the heart ceases to beat :he lungs to breathe. The savage may say here a soul, such as breath, has departed ; he knows omy too well to say that the heart, also a soul, departed. At a certain stage he may locate the or a soul in the heart, and infer its departure n the heart no longer beats. A soul of some frequently stays until decomposition has begun. ^ ^ See above, p. 131. ^ See above, p. 82. 2i8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Frequently, however, the very fact of decomposition is regarded as a proof that the soul still remains ; its complete departure does not take place until all fetor is at an end.^ Even then it may reside in the bones, and in any fragments of the personality. Such analysis of the percept throws into relief the important fact that, apart from the soul as the memory- image which is automatically abstracted from the personality, there is no real division of personality and soul in the earliest thought. A man is not soul and body ; body is as much an abstraction as soul. In the concrete thought and language of early culture, man is a " soulful-personality " ; the adjective is not a derivative of the noun ''soul," this has not yet been abstracted or isolated from the '' living- man." The same principle applies, as we have seen, in the case of "life." It would involve much repetition and serve no purpose to go through in detail the facts concerning the loss of the soul in sickness, fainting, fright, and its abstraction and detention by magic. The theory of sleep applies to fainting and similar forms of unconsciousness. The savage would at once comprehend our explanation ; it is in fact the same as his, but in different words. We speak of a loss of consciousness ; he speaks of a loss of soul. Both terms are pure abstractions. At an earlier stage there is merely a recognition that the normal aspect or condition is altered, that there is "something wrong." Mid-way between these views comes in the plurality of souls ; and the explanation is that one or more souls has departed. Cases have been cited where a man may lose two or three without much injury, while the loss of many is as fatal as the loss of all. The relation between the memory-image and the * See above, p. 117. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 219 cept is one of constant separation and conjunction, is relation and the modification of the percept and of general idea of the object, in which percept and mory-image interact, by different circumstances, are ught out by such cases as the following : — The Australians have a notion that after a man is d, not only is there a ghost, but the man himself itinues his existence in the body.^ Thus we have the mory-image modified by the sight of the corpse ; i is the ghost ; and also a continued recognition of percept of the living man, or, it may be, of the man ast seen, of course dead. The confusion here is as lificant as the concomitant division. This psychical tude towards the dead may be regarded as typical of [y man, if we add to it the fact that, sooner or later, he dead man be memorable, the true memory-image, leralised from living percepts, tends to emerge again. A similar attitude is shown by the practice of maim- or binding the dead body. In psychological language, re is a fear that the imaged memory of the person may, Lt was in life, be at any time realised in perception. The East Indian islanders draw a rigid distinction ween the soul of a living and of a dead man, and the > are never fused.^ There is here a refutation of the ory that life and " phantom " are combined into one J. The distinction means that the mental image of iving man is different from the mental image of his pse. The latter becomes the "black ghost " of the tch possessions, but is sooner or later ousted by the mory-image proper. The English term " ghost," like all terms which ginally denoted mental as opposed to physical reality, I the vaguest meaning. It often refers to the halluci- 1 See above, p. 85. 2 g^g above, p. 7. 220 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL national double, often to the "wraith," or illusion pro- duced by a resemblance, as when a man mistakes a garment for a person. In Middle English it was used of the breath of life, and vaguely of the " soul." For practical purposes we may best employ it as connoting the mental image of a person as modified by the fact of death. It is thus one aspect only of the soul proper, of the complete totality generalised in the memory. In the examples we have quoted we can see how the changed appearance of the personality in death impresses itself on the brain as a change in the image. The dis- appearance of the dead man leads to a constant expecta- tion of his reappearance. This fact, together with the strength of the impression made by the sight of the corpse, explains the occasional circumstance of ghosts being larger than life, and has much to do with the general fear of ghosts. It is also a predisposing cause of the illusions popularly known as the " wraith " or the " phantom." The production of the latter may be illustrated by a personal experience of James : — *' I was lying in my berth in a steamer listening to the sailors at their devotions with the holy-stones outside ; when, on turning my eyes to the window, I perceived with perfect distinct- ness that the chief engineer of the vessel had entered my state-room, and was standing looking through the window at the men at work upon the guards. Surprised at his intrusion, and also at his intentness and immobility, I remained watching him and wondering how long he would stand thus. At last I spoke ; but getting no reply, sat up in my berth, and then saw that what I had taken for the engineer was my own cap and coat hanging on a peg beside the window. The illusion was complete ; the engineer was a peculiar-looking man, and I saw him THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 221 listakably, but after the illusion had vanished I found ard voluntarily to make the cap and coat look like at all." ^ In this experience there was no preper- ive excitement. Where there is, as in the naive d, after a death, illusions of this kind are still more iral. Similar deceptions occur with the other senses, the sense of sight is most liable to them. Yet it is ineous to ascribe the origin of the idea of the soul to .t is really abnormal and accidental experience. The ordinary '* phantom " is far less concrete than : just described. Hallucinational figures are still more ; ; they are, as we saw, projected memory-images. Returning to the ghost, we find that in our examples 3 variously described as red, white, or black. It is te because in some cases, as among the Australians, charred body, without its skin, is of a whitish )ur ; ^ in others, as among Europeans, the corpse was seen in a white shroud. Generally also the colour he dead is pale. The ghost may be black for various reasons. Black- 3 is a general result of decay. There is an analogy, ays recurring, between death and night, as between and day. Cremation when it results in black charred cs may have some influence upon the colour of the ist. The redness of the ghost is an interesting fact. In stralia it seems to be connected with the redness of set ; the soul, the natives say, may be seen departing :he spectral red of sunset, when the sun itself departs. ere is a frequent parallelism between the death of man [ the daily death of the sun. The influence of firelight is doubtless to be reckoned ^ W. James, 'Textbook of Psychology, 325. 2 See above, p. 89. 222 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL with. The contemplation of the camp-fire has been referred to, with its results in faces and forms of fire/ In Melanesia the world of spirits has this colour ; its vegetation is red.- The fact may be explained by sunset or firelight. It would perhaps be fanciful to suggest a reason connected with mental vision, but the influence of optical processes is so far-reaching that it is difficult to say where it ends. It may, therefore, be mentioned, merely as a coincidence, that the spirit-world of the brain may have a red background ; for this reason, that when the eyes are closed in sunlight the brain has the sensation of red. When, as in late culture, the soul is conceived as a flame, we may ascribe this to physical notions about fire as an element, or may trace It back to cremation, in which process the soul may ascend to heaven in fire. But the soul of the living is in some cases, as among the Malays, regarded as red.^ This, however. Is the redness of blood, and Is a natural, though late, result of association between the living soul and the blood which is the life. In Malay folklore we read of imps manu- factured from blood.* Other cases of the influence exerted by the circum- stances of death upon the character of the soul might be cited from the evidence. Among these we may note the recognition of the characteristic odour of the corpse. This has resulted in the idea of *' the odour of sanctity." Passing to the consideration of the real presence, the percept of a living man, we find the idea of personality influenced by various circumstances. The souls of chiefs and great men are naturally 1 See above, p. 103. ^ See above, p. 10 1. 3 See above, p. 123. "* See above, p. 129. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 223 r than those of ordinary persons.^ In some cases portant persons and objects, not being worth serious ^ht, are not supposed to have souls at all. The iple may extend all round the circle of experience, s liable to be negated whenever the memory-image /■oluntarily realised. 'he soul of a living man is frequently regarded as T soft and moist, like fleshy substance. The differ- between the solidity of the percept and the slighter me of the image is sometimes expressed by the on that the soul has flesh and blood, but no bones. . Fijian speaks of the soul as drying up.^ Heraclitus everal epigrams about the wetness or dryness of the and its inherent desire to be wet. These are ited, with a difl^erent application, by Huysmans, bases his results on emotional experience, 'he soul is sometimes identified with the warmth of body, as the ghost may perhaps be identified with coldness of the corpse. It is possible that the tification may have had something to do with the notion of the soul as fire. The connection of life warmth and of both with the sun is not seldom d. The Tinneh Indian when ill regains his soul by ing on warm shoes.^ The soul of the dead Maori lined as heat in the stones on which his body was :ed.* Blood, again, is warm, and any part or organ is especially suffused with blood may be regarded seat of the soul. "he Tongans speak of the soul as being to the body he relation of the perfume to the flower.^ The ;tory sense, strong in early man, would connect ^ South African Folklore Journal^ ii. loo, loi. 2 Fison in Journal of the Anthropological Institute , xiv. 22. 3 See above, p. 153. ^ ggg above, p. 91. ^ See above, p. 94. 224 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL personality with anything impregnated by the bodily odours. Observers frequently express native ideas of the soul by " vitality." As has already been emphasised, " life," "vitality," and similar abstractions are not early. The soul as a mental duplicate of the "living" person is a very different thing. The soul is commonly connected with a healthy organism. This, however, is not an identification with "health." Abstract notions only appear in the third stage, when names, originally expressing concrete things, are, so to say, defecated into abstractions. Van der Toorn gives a good illustration of this connection. The soul "gives strength, splendour, and vitality to a man's appearance ; it is expressed in his look and carriage." A feeble or sickly man has a feeble or sickly soul, — a fact which negates any early identification of the soul with "health" or "vitality."^ Spirits that have become gods, as among the Hindus, are distinguished from changing and decaying mortals by being permanently in a state of perfection. Their bodies do not sweat, their eyes do not wink, their ornaments do not decay. Contrast this with the Irish superstition that a dead man's clothes wear out more quickly than those of a Hving man.^ The soul dies, being a replica of the living person. Yet it lasts longer, because his memory survives him. The death of this memory is the death of the soul. We have seen striking examples of a second death, and even further deaths of the soul. 1 See above, p. 113. 2 Journal of American Folklorey viii. no. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 225 § 6. The Theory of Embodiment, he questions which next concern us are connected the union and reunion of the soul and the person, embodiment and re-embodiment, the incarnation re-incarnation of the soul. Psychologically the :ss resolves itself into the meeting of memory-image percept. At a later stage it is an explanation :rtain phenomena by which the complete totality, le perfection of a thing, is reached, both for the -al idea and for the analysed percept. In and out of there is a varied play of thought and of action. 1 illustration of the latter we may cite the savage )r who replaces the recovered soul by applying 11, into which he has lured it, to the sick man's , or head. Folklore supplies examples of the ification of a dead person when a living man :hes himself upon the corpse. Similarly the ese place the soul-tablet on the dead man in the of reviving him. his is the method of superimposition, a translation action of what occurs when the memory-image erged in or placed upon the percept. The idea iie soul as an eject, which is replaced through tpertures of the body, comes from analysis of the :pt ; in this form it is not fused with the memory- e ; the latter, in fact, is temporarily ignored, he whole theory of embodiment is in one aspect issive of the distrust, if the phrase may be used, which early man regards the soul, that is, the jht of a thing. This is apparently inconsistent the opposite feeling, which is later, namely, the anent quality and invariability of the memory- is 226 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL image as opposed to the uncertainty of action and behaviour exhibited by the person himself. The inconsistency is only apparent, being due to comple- mentary points of view. The naive mind is, therefore, relieved by the appearance of the percept in which the image may be safely housed. It is less afraid of a soul which has an embodiment than of one which has not. Considering the 'disembodied soul, for instance after death, as a personal entity, the mind may conceive it 'to be then in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility. Accordingly the New Britain islanders imprison the soul of the dead man in a chalk figure. They state expUcitly that the intention is to keep him from wandering about and doing harm.-^ It is a common belief that the soul is restless, and wanders aimlessly about until the body is buried. This is the behaviour of the memory-image until it is safely embodied in the percept, or some symbol which takes its place. The principle is of the same nature as, though less crude than, that shown in the practice of crippHng the corpse. Another reason for embodiment is that, as the man needed food and substance, so does his continuation. Even the Hindu gods need food to keep them alive. The soul, say the Chinese, is weakened by being separated from the body, just as elsewhere it is said that the body is weakened by being separated from the souL^ The liau of the Dayaks cannot live again until it is united with the hamharuan? This is not a case of fusion of " life " and *' form " ; the hambaruan is the image identified with the percept of the living man, and the process is simply embodiment. 1 W. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country^ 249. 2 See above, p. 166. ^ See above, p. no. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 227 aturally enough the dead are often represented as r anxious to live again. They can only do so by ibodiment. In a remarkable set of beliefs, those the external soul," a man may embody his soul lother object, animal, or person. Duplication of inality brings safety. Of this the crahbah of West :a is a striking example.^ Similar is the custom le kings of Abyssinia, who had four officers called nankua. These men dressed exactly like the king rt^ere his "doubles." The post was once held by nglishman, a Mr. Bell.^ :ill another reason for embodiment is to be found le scientific attitude which is loath to separate inciple from a concrete form, or the image from »ercept. The memory-image, of course, in contrast .te abstractions, like " life " and " consciousness," ielf concrete and intrinsically separable, yet it is the less permanently capable of reunion with the ;pt. The memory-image is, so to say, always about ; embodied ; it is a permanent possibility of percep- Even abstract principles, when at last produced, to return to the material with which they are con- id, all the more rapidly because, unlike the memory- e, they cannot be mentally realised except in words. . remarkable aspect of embodiment is connected the size of the soul. The soul is generally a iture, a itw inches in height. Sometimes it is ize ; sometimes of the size of a child, roughly ting, half the size of a full-grown person ; it is found of the size of a point, a germ, a grain of , or a seed. ehind these estimates we can discern some early 5 on development, both physical and mechanical. ;e above, p. 175, ^ j_ l_ Krapf, Eastern Africa^ 454. 22 8 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Cases have been instanced where the soul seems to possess an expansive and contractile power, as if its substance were protoplasmic. As a rule this is only apparent ; what is really expressed is the development of image into percept, of the miniature into the life- size reality. But there is actually a doctrine of the soul based on visual development of the percept. Thus, in the half-light of morning, when the window slowly grows a glimmering square, or, to those who sleep in the open, the trees and other natural objects gradually pass from shapeless, hazy greyness to distinct colour and form, we have a perpetually recurring process, a universal visual experience, which has reacted on ideas of development, growth, and creation. As the shades of evening fall the converse occurs, colour and form revert to indistinctness and visual chaos. The latter process is illustrated by the Maori experience. The wairua is often mistaken for the man himself, until it melts into thin air.^ In Samoa the soul is called the daughter of Taufanuu, " the vapour of lands." As the dark cloudy covering of night comes on, man feels sleepy, because his soul wishes to go and visit its mother.' The Tracey islanders also say that man was first formed out of vapour.^ In New Guinea we find a spirit in the mist surrounding the tree-tops.* In Sarawak, the soul, after leaving the dead body, dies seven deaths, and then is absorbed into air and fog. It descends on the rice as dew.^ In Minahassa the soul at the death of the body is merged in dew.^ ^ Tregear in Journal of the Anthropolo^cal Institute, xix. ii8. 2 See above, p. 94. ^ See above, p. 94. * See above, p. 104. 5 See above, p. 108. ^ See above, p. 115. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 229 lbs and Europeans speak of the soul as a blue t.^ Ghosts often vanish in smoke. There is in such cases no influence of the idea of soul as breath. Incidentally they comprise the I of it as being moist and wet. But the main iciple is visual. The Zuni hold that the soul exists :he under-world before birth. It is there " a haze- ig." In its evolution it passes "from the raw or t state through the formative or variable to the :d and done, and, finally, to the finished or dead." e growth of corn from green to ripe is quoted by m in illustration.^ The Zuni theory has passed from optics to biology a very natural way. Very natural also is the [fusion between the soul and the object, or in this inection between the formal idea and the object, ese not being separated, the result is a progressive ion that the soul may be either the beginning of hing, minimum visibile^ or shapeless matter, or any omplete stage of a thing, no less than its formal fection. There is a natural tendency, based on )erience of growth, to connect form with hardness, pelessness with softness, and the second pair with eption, the first with completion. A simple example he contrast between the infant and the grown man. In such ideas as the above, the point-soul, embryo- il, and haze-soul, the soul is the individual in the -e of becoming, just as in the case of the ghost-soul, is the individual in the state of disruption or integration. The analogy of mechanical creation is often ployed, as in the familiar idea that man was created : of clay by the hand of the Potter. Across the e above, pp. 184, 187. ^ See above, p. 157. ^ See above, pp. 93, 157. 230 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL idea comes, with the usual inconsistency and the usual abstraction of a part instead of the formal or other idea, the notion that the soul was subsequently placed in the clay figure. According to the Malays it was at first too strong for its receptacle, and burst the frail tenement. Then the Creator placed iron in the substance of the body, which was thus able to resist the expansive energy of the soul.^ A good instance of the implicit connection of the idea of the soul with the formal cause is supplied by the West African potter. In order to keep the soul of the pot from leaving it, that is, from being broken, he draws a line round it.^ On a similar principle the East Indian doctor binds a cord round the pulse of a sick person in order to prevent the escape of the soul.^ This case tends to mere physical restraint ; the soul being in the pulse is tied in. Returning to the soul as a miniature we may notice once more the result of reunion of memory-image and percept. When merged in or exchanged for the man himself, the soul automatically becomes life-size. Later inference, assisted by the phenomena of growth, would express this by speaking of the soul as expanding to its complete development. In the earlier stages of psychology the soul is reunited with the person as an emanation or visible aura. When the percept is analysed there is a tendency to reject superimposition as a mode of reunion, and to regard the soul as an inner object. It is, on the formal principle, an inner shape or outline as opposed to the outer shape of the object. In sleep, for instance, the latter remains, but there may be a vague notion that the former has departed. Thus the Choctaws hold 1 See above, p. 124. ^ See above, p. 174. ^ gee above, p. 113. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 231 : man has two "shades," an inner and an outer; former leaves the body at death.^ The Kafir has shadows, a long and a short.^ The Chinooks say : when a man's soul becomes too small for his y he dies. They also, with natural inconsistency, ik of two souls, a large and a small ; the latter arts when a man is sick.^ This would also be inference about death and sleep. The idea of the soul as the perfection of a thing, dlel to the logical notion that the perfection of hing is its definition, is also found. It is natural : the inference should be made of the soul sup- ting and vivifying the person. The netsin of the 16s is invisible, that is, merged in the body, as long I man is well. It wanders away when he is sick dying.* The Minangkabauers regard the soul as mg to its possessor a look of strength and vitality.^ General analysis of the percept results in various itifications of the soul with interior function or stance. The soul is often regarded as existing )ughout the whole extension of the body. It is icially located where the blood pulsates. This, it >t be noted, is at first neither identification with blood, nor yet an abstraction such as '* life." The I at first is simply "there." A remarkable notion, id among both Malays and Chinese, illustrates the ansive and informing power of the soul. This ion is to the effect that knobs and excrescences tree trunks are due to the soul bulging out the 'ace of the tree. They are, so to say, spiritual tuberances.® )dd, Myths and Dreams^ 1S4. ''' See above, p. 169. ^ See above, p. 155. Morice in Proceedings of the Canadian Institute^ 1888-9, ^5^- See above, p. 113. ^ See above, pp. 127, 164. 232 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL For these and other reasons it is hardly legitimate to assume a general idea that the soul, as a miniature of the person, working inside the body, produces the phenomena of life and action, that, in Frazer's words, a man lives and moves, "because he has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul.'*^ The early view is too fluid for such a mechanical inference, it is also too scientific when impartially considered. As has been suggested, from the point of view of growth, the larger soul is the complete development of the person, the smaller is the person at an earlier stage, for instance, in childhood. The child is thus not the father, but the soul of the man. Biology, on the strength of its conclusion that the child is a higher type than the adult, may here assume a metaphysical dogma, to the effect that the soul, or the essential type of a species, is to be found in its children alone. The soul of the Fijian chief is " only a little child." ^ The Egyptian and the Australian souls are sometimes represented as of the size of a child.^ The European heathen believed that an old Christian had a young Christian inside him, leaving his body at death.* It is significant that in Christian belief death is a new birth, and that in the logia of Christ it is said, " Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." An Eskimo when sick has his soul replaced by the soul of a child.^ A biological immortality is involved in the idea that the child of a man is his soul. The early doctrine of ' Frazer, 'The Golden Bough ^, i. 247. 2 See above, p. 98. ^ See above, pp. 86, 183. * See above, p. 186. ^ See above, p. 152. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 233 sption and reproduction is full of such ideas. irding to Manu, in reproduction the father is con- d in the body of the mother by means of the i-plasm, and is thus reincarnated, reborn, in his 1 .n interesting aspect of the memory-image is seen irental experience. The mother generally retains idelible mental impression, memory-image, of her ■born babe. This persists through the series of ;es formed as the child grows to and passes maturity, rms a sort of mental standard of reference. The :iple is a psychical analogue of the biological ry of the germ-plasm. 'he dead may return to life by being reincarnated lildren. In the accounts given the method is often inexplained. Where no analysis has been made it be assumed that the soul is small enough for a Frequently, however, we find a scientific doc- of reproduction. ^hen a man is reincarnated in his own children doctrine involves the divisibility of the soul. In J cases, however, this conception is not applied, or not yet been reached, the result being that re- nation cannot take place until a man is dead and oul separated from his personality. Accordingly, ioul first reappears in his grandchildren. Hence )ractice of naming a child, not after his father, but his grandfather. he resemblance of children to their parents im- ed upon the mind the theory of reincarnation ; 'sis of the percept, as instanced in the growth of ;s, led to an inductive proof of it. The soul shows sion to type. * La^ws of Manu, 329. 234 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Bound up together in early philosophy are three cognate ideas, the foundation of physical, biological, and optical theory. In the last case we have seen that the minimum of existence is regarded as a point, the minimum visibile. For the first we may compare the Chinese view that the soul is divisible into molecules,^ and the Malay that each atom of metal has a soul.^ Here is the origin of the theory that each atom of a thing is a miniature duplicate of it, just as the soul is a miniature duplicate. This theory, known to the early Greek thinkers as homceomeria^ is the foundation of molecular physics. It is employed in biology, both by primitive thought and by modern theory on the germ-plasm. Science has merely proved a fact inferred by early man from the phenomena of growth, and expressed in his theory of the soul. Some general examples may illustrate various aspects of the theory of reproduction. The central Australians apply the process of reproduction by fission or budding to their mythical ancestors. They have also the idea of the evolution of man from lower forms. Their usual view of procreation is based on the entrance of the soul into the body of the mother. The process is only imagined in " play," it has not been proved by analysis of the percept. In fact there is considerable doubt whether they connect the male parent with the process at all. The soul, small as a grain of sand, is inde- structible like the germ-plasm. At death it leaves the body and enters the ground ; from thence it enters the body of the first woman who approaches the spot. Its point of entrance is the navel.^ The wild Malays 1 See above, p. i66. ^ See above, p. 129. ' See above, p. 87. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 235 in conception by supposing the mother to swallow 3ul of the child, brought from the spirit-world by a In the Upanishads the doctrine is that the soul nds to the earth in the form of rain, and thus 3 food, and the bodies of men, whence it issues ; germ-plasm.^ The Thlinkits believe that the soul s the body of the mother.^ The Dayaks suppose soul to be placed in the embryo.^ The Bataks d the spermatozoon as being one of the two lian spirits of a man.^ In Hindu physiology the s vci^Q^purusha,^ This view, and the corollary that ;r is female, are frequent. Swedenborg simply ts the savage opinion when he says " the soul, 1 is spiritual and is the real man, is from the father, : the body, which is natural, and as it were the ing of the soul, is from the mother." ® " Pattern," idea " of Plato, the formal cause, is from the father ; tter," the hyle^ the material cause, is from the er. The Sioux held that the father gives the soul, lother the body.*^ § 7. The Plurality of Souls. he causes which produce the so-called plurality >uls have already been referred to. Their appli- n characterises a long epoch, comprising the second ater stages of mental evolution. In this unconscious . Max Mdller, Psychological Religioity 154, [. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 517. .is, in Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde ." ^ The imagination always comes back to the smory-image ; this fact clinches the identification of ility with the soul as idea. This identification, again, always being reinforced in perception. We cannot t away from the "sight" of a thing. The facts of e pathology of fear and remorse bear this out ; e visual image of the enemy or the sin literally possesses " the brain, where it is seated like the gle on Prometheus' vitals. James adds : " There is no reason for supposing that is involves a " fusion " of separate sensations and eas. ... In this coalescence in a things one of the lalescing sensations is held to be the thing, the other nsations are taken for its more or less accidental ' W. James, Textbook of Psychology^ 312, 313. 248 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL properties or modes of appearance." ^ Now the various *' parts" of the soul, and some of its "tags," are automatically brought together in the "thing" during perception. This is what primitive man felt, but could not express. If we have read his mind aright, he is more scientific than we are, for, after all, what right have we to select any one sensation as more "real" than the rest? Why should "sight" give more of the essence than the "touch," or "touch" than "sight," or why should "reason" give more reality than " perception " .? When we classify we are simply expressing the ratio of sensations. " We do but obey that law of economy or simplifica- tion which dominates our whole psychic life, when we think exclusively of the reality, and ignore as much as our consciousness will let us, the * sign ' by which we came to apprehend it. The signs of each probable real thing being multiple, and the thing itself one and fixed, we gain the same mental relief by abandoning the former for the latter that we do when we abandon mental images, with all their fluctuating characters, for the definite and un- changeable names which they suggest. The selection of the several ' normal ' appearances from out of the jungle of our optical experiences to serve as the real sights of which we shall think, has thus some analogy to the habit of thinking in words, in that by both we substitute terms i^w and fixed for terms manifold and vague." ^ But the mind can never think these abstractions by themselves, apart from the whole in which they inhere. Thus there is never any necessity for fusion ; form and essence, substance and life, were > W^, James, Textbook of Psychology, 339. 2 Id, 346. THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 249 'er separated except by names. Names both separate [ fuse. It may be that the best minds think in images ; it Y be that the best think in words. Galton found that losophers and scientists were poor visualisers.^ This ;s not prove that they were originally poor. The age, however, does not possess the terms few and :d with which we facilitate our thought, and so ►Ive our hypotheses, whether of the idea of the .1 or of other cosmic problems. He therefore fails fix reality. The curious thing is that his method substitution and confusion is the essence of reason- Reasoning (which is fusion) and confusion are same. His method is not wrong ; it is, like ture's methods, lavish ; but it is roughly applied, consciously, however, he has got all the reality we e reached ourselves, in the memory-image, the plicate of sensation. Galton, Inquiries^, 76. Kelvin used to say that he was unable to ;rstand any thing or notion unless he could draw it and make a model CHAPTER VI THE SOUL IN BEING § I. The Soul mid the Self . Hitherto we have been chiefly concerned with the principles and results of cognition. Feeling and will remain to be discussed. The relations of subject and object now assume a wider aspect. For practical purposes cognition deals with the object alone ; the self or subject may be ignored. The evidence we have cited leads to the conclusion that man first realised the soul in the object, in his- neighbour, not in himself. By way of introducing self-consciousness and the recognition of the soul in the subject, some aspects of its development in children will be brought forward. We may first inquire to what extent a man has a memory-image of his own person. Perception of one's own person is, of course, incomplete, and what is observed, as a rule receives little attention. The memory-image of such partial percepts tends accord- ingly to be ignored. In thought the subject sees and hears himself as unconsciously as he does when waking ; consciousness is chiefly centred on the ideas presented^ and the feeling of self is bound up with their recog- nition. 250 THE SOUL IN BEING 251 For convenience we are drawing a distinction wetn the inner feeling, the feeling of self, the sciousness of self-identity, on the one hand, and consciousness of external objects, including one's 1 body, on the other. It is more in accordance with early modes of ught to regard one's own person as an object n to recognise the close union between all parts the organism generally, and in particular between organism and the feeling of self. Thus a Kafir convalescence remarks, as he puts on flesh, " I am inning to lay hold of my body." ^ The organism which the self is, so to say, attached, is simply among many objects of perception, though rarely iced or remembered. Thought and imagination, we have seen to be the rule in early culture, are arded as equally objective ; the thought of a thing he soul of it, a real concrete entity. Yet in the case of the object the opposite of this vails. The parts of the personality are so closely ind together that a Kafir can point to a wound on arm and say, " That is so and so." ^ The reason of this apparent inconsistency is clearly wn. when we remember that in the idea of a man, memory-image of him possessed by another man, re cannot be included the inner feeling of self. IS can only be inferred, and it is a long time before as any connection with the idea of the soul. Yet the subject, while maintaining a dualism between feeling of self and his organism as object, is scious from his earliest years that his organism is At times he will identify it with the self, that with his own personality generally. " The child 1 Dudley Kidd, Salvage Childhood, 66. ^ /^. 73- « 252 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL gradually discovers his own body. The hands are the first familiar part of his own organism ; they are examined especially by means of the lips and the tongue, the child sometimes putting his finger in his mouth and sucking it even on the first day. After- wards he learns to fix his gaze on the hands, and then a firm association of ideas is speedily formed between the muscular sensation accompanying their movement and the appearance which this movement presents- Later, again, the feet are discovered ; this can be done only when the child can sit up and see them, or when, lying on his back, he can stretch out his legs so as to look at and catch hold of them. The great interest which a child takes in his limbs and movements may be due to the wonderful circumstance that here is something which can be seen and grasped, and offers resistance, and yet shares In active move- ment. It is an object, which nevertheless pertains to the subject. The experience of the child is here the same as that of the dog running after its own tail. The fact that a child, even towards the end of his second year, will offer his foot a biscuit, shows that he still looks upon it as an independent being." ^ The recognition of one's own person in a mirror or reflecting surface, a picture or a photograph, is the nearest approach the subject can make to complete perception of himself. These reflections, as we found, are frequently called "souls." It is possible that the sight of one's own person in the eye of another may have led the subject to realise that as he sees another man in memory, so the other man may see him, for the image is there, in the man's eye. There seems, however, 1 HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology, 5, 6. THE SOUL IN BEING 253 be no direct proof of the identification in early chologies. A. curious parallel may be noted between the sight :he self in a mirror and the memory-image generally, s latter is incomplete, generalised, and faint, as corn- ed with the percept. When a man sees himself in a ror he sees himself static ; he does not see the real lamic self. Still less can a man hear the character his own voice, though to others it is the most )tional of sensations. Only by the phonograph, and smatographic photography, can a man realise himself le is, in motion and action. A.t any rate, the recognition of self in a mirror lid form an epoch in the life of the primitive, as of modern child. " A savage who had been made to c into a mirror exclaimed, ' I gaze into the world pirits ! ' One of Darwin's children, at nine months turned to the looking-glass on hearing his name 2d."i 5fet self-consciousness does not depend on such erience. " The recognition of the body is a process : regularly precedes that of the recognition of the ge in the mirror, but one is as little a criterion of beginning of self-consciousness as the other. They 1 presuppose the existence of some degree of self- Bciousness beforehand. Especially, strong feelings, 1 as pain, often mark in memory the first moment p^hich the continuity of self-consciousness reaches c. This moment generally comes in the fifth or h. year, but self-consciousness exists before." ^ The recognition of self and the realisation of self- Ltity are also developed by the facts of memory and ^ HofFding, Outlines of Psychology y 7. 2 Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, 288. 254 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL of action. A child learns to know himself by altering the position of objects, by experimenting with, defacing, and breaking his material environment. But the realisation depends chiefly on feeling. The contrast to which reference has been made, between the body and the feeling of self, is fundamental. The body " can be perceived by the senses, and can ofFer resistance. Thus it presents a contrast to the feelings of pleasure and pain, and to the inner stream of memories and ideas. That through which we feel pleasure and pain we may perhaps perceive by means of the senses, but not the feeling itself. . . . This contrast is so decisive that the idea of the body may be transferred to the objective pole, to the not-self, and then there remains to us only the idea of self as the subject of thought, feeling, and will. The contrast between the inner and the outer now becomes more acute, or rather, we retain the expression * inner ' as a figurative designation of the mental province in contrast with the material as ' outer.' " ^ But even here we have to deal with numerous aspects of one phenomenon. The vaguest vegetal feeling, the reactions to physiological processes, the sense of effort and of activity, the feelings of comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain, the sensations of touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight, the feeling of eifort in the brain (often connected with the memory-image), imagina- tion, and thought, the emotions and the will — all these results of neuro- muscular processes are attached to the consciousness of self. It is, so to say, a point of insertion for all experience ; its permanence is the life of the soul. We may conveniently describe it as the ultimate self. 1 HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology, 6. THE SOUL IN BEING 255 In the evolution of the idea of the soul it is the : type preceding that of the critical empiricism of dern science. We meet with it here and there in third stage of mental evolution — for instance, in the ndujivatmany the West African moHy the Egyptian '.} That it should be the last form assumed by soul is natural enough, as it is the minimum of isciousness. Psychology has recently shown that " and personality are distinct, A subject may take ;r a personality, to all appearance absolutely, and be conscious of self.^ In the first and second stages of mental development various inner experiences of the subject cannot be 1 to have been brought into connection with the a of the soul, which was then a concrete totality, or )art of such. But in the third stage they begin to titute a series of connections, and in some cases a ies of separate entities, which form a new order of lis, whose type is mental activity. Their development, being from the subject alone, quite distinct from, though parallel to, the souls ■ived from the memory-image and from the analysis the percept. They shade off into another, of course, but are never ed, except in language. Homer speaks of the souls heroes in words which suggest the memory-image ; ; heroes themselves are a prey for vultures. Aris- le applied the term " soul " to the principle of ;. Abstraction has here begun, Plato went further, 1 in the Phado speaks of the soul and the self as intical, the principle of mind, pure reason. Christian 7chology introduced an ultimate self of divine * See above, pp. 141, 178, 180. 2 Binet, The Fsychology of Reasoning, 181. 256 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL substance and of ethical quality. Descartes finally expelled animism from science. He retained the soul for man ; animals he regarded as mere machines. This " indicates a reform in the conception of nature. Instead of appealing to forces that work mysteriously, we can now, since ' soul ' has been severed from the material world, introduce a purely mechanical explana- tion of nature." ^ In psychology he rejected the terms anima and animus^ and substituted mens^ " consciousness." In psychology alone of the sciences is the ultimate self of consciousness taken together with the object. This science, therefore, is the only one which deals with immediate experience ; from the rest the subjective factor has been abstracted. It was natural, therefore, that a conflict should take place between two sections of those who wished to regard it as a science of mediate experience, between those, that is, who denied the absolute existence of " mind " or " consciousness " and those who asserted it. The spiritualists at first took a materialistic view of mind, as a substance as phenomenal as matter or energy. It was regarded as an independent, self-existent, individual being. The latest advocate of spiritualistic psychology, Lotze, attributes substantiality to the mind, but only as "an independent element in the world, as a centre of action and endurance, without asserting anything as to its absolute nature." ^ The critical school, whose results are based on experiment, has removed all the abstractions of metaphysics, en- shrined in language, from the science of the soul. "We directly know mental life only in ourselves, and discover it outside of us by way of analogy."^ This process is frequently ascribed to primitive man, 1 HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology, 10. ^ /^_ 13, 3 /^. g. THE SOUL IN BEING 257 and the ascription has much to do with the theory that in the earliest ages all nature was personified, or that the operations of nature were the work of inthropomorphic beings possessing personal life and will. Such a view is opposed to fact and probability alike. Primitive man, without doubt, applied simple inference to natural occurrences, the earliest form of the theory of cause and effect, but even in this process there is no need of analogy from the subject. It is rather the other way. The causal activity of the subject is unconscious ; he only notes the sequence in external agents ; and for results in nature he needed no analogy from human action even other than his own. Perception is itself a form of inference. With regard to the explanation of nature by the analogy of his own life and will, the subject is not conscious of either in the first stage of development, and hardly so in the second. He was quick to perceive and quicker to act, but his mind was not yet reflected upon itself enough to realise, as an objective fact or causal principle, the existence of its own activity. The early mind, in fact, tends to work in the opposite way, and to explain itself by analogy from the external world. For instance, the phenomena of growth are first learnt there, and from thence may be applied to the soulj as we have seen. Other reasons against the view have been noted previously. The dualism between the inner and outer worlds 3f experience, that is, between objects, or rather percepts, md their images in the mind, is now and then resolved, is when the image is merged in the percept. But :he mind is rarely conscious of this resolution, and For practical purposes the two worlds remain comple- 17 258 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL mentary, though the inner is, so to say, a permanent possibility of objectification. The dualism between self- consciousness, or the ultimate self, and all experience, whether inner or outer, is never, even apparendy, transcended. It persists even in abnormal states, such as hypnosis and dreams ; it is a permanent possibility of experience. Thus there is no fusion between the original concrete forms of the soul, nor between these and the later abstractions, whether from the idea or the percept or self-conscious experience. When, however, general terms like " soul '* are isolated, any current notions may be artificially placed under them ; it is a con- venient method of mental economy. Thus, at one stage *'soul" will include memory-image and ghost, at another the abstraction "life" and parts of the whole such as breath and blood ; at another, one or more of these will be dropped, and abstractions such as pure reason will take their place. The term is stereo- typed, but its content is fluid. Souls when discarded are subjected to closer perceptual analysis, and are either relegated to non- reality, or, interpreted as objects of mediate experience, become scientific conceptions. Such was the fate of the " vital principle." Surviving in the doctrine of vitalism, it was at length annihilated by organic chemistry. Yet the list of souls was hardly shortened during the third period of evolution ; in spite of the development of science, many survived. It was, perhaps, longest at the moment when the earlier conceptions were reinforced by those derived from self- feeling. Such a moment is, of course, an abstraction, but it serves to emphasise the extraordinary number of THE SOUL IN BEING 259 spiritual entities that man has during his history evolved. Two series, hitherto not particularised, may now be referred to, by way of giving some complete- ness to the list. The one is attached chiefly to self- consciousness, the other is a duplicate of the object- world. § 2. The Soul as Guardian, Frequent examples have been instanced of the idea of guardian-spirits. These are either a special aspect of the ordinary memory-image soul, or, more commonly, a development of the feeling of self. Midway between these forms is the objectification of auditory memory- images. For instance, the " daemon " of Socrates was a generalised auditory image ; in his brain he heard a voice restraining him from action. This he chose to speak of as a sort of guardian-spirit. The visualised memory-image of another person may at times be called a guardian, a natural extension of its attributes, just as at other times it may be called a god. Thus among the Sea Dayaks "the general belief" (in opposition to St. John's assertion that "they have a clear idea of one Omnipotent Being") "is that there are many petaras, in fact as many petaras as men. Each man, they say, has his own pecuHar petara^ his own tutelary deity. One man has one petara, another man another. ' A wretched man a wretched petara ' is a common expression, which professes to give the reason why any particular Dayak is poor and miserable. The rich and poor are credited with rich and poor petaras^ hence the state of Dayak gods may be inferred from the varying outward circumstances of men below." ^ ^ Perham in Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1881), 144 ; St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 59. 26o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL The petara is undoubtedly the ordinary mental duplicate, the primal form of the soul ; but under the influence of language and of analogy from another culture, one observer speaks of it as a god, or a tutelary deity, guardian-spirit ; another generalises the idea into mono- theism, either taking the petara spoken of by one man as implying the one and only Deity, or regarding the aggregate of petaras as a unity. Now each of these views is also held by various early races at various times. The Sea Dayak theology is thus an instructive example of the working of principles which we have discussed. Another form of guardian is the ** inner man," such as is found in West African belief. That which thinks and wills is naturally regarded as a guide, philosopher, and friend. § 3. Inanimate Objects. Another extension of the spiritual world is seen in the souls of inanimate objects. On the memory- image theory, every object of consciousness capable of producing an image in the brain of the subject is by the very fact in the possession of a soul. And in practice we find this to be the case. The majority of early peoples would regard modern popular thought illogical for denying a soul to one half the creation ^ and allowing it to the other. One or two typical cases may be referred to. The Asaba consider that everything in nature has a chi ; in and through the world of reality there is a chi world, a, mental sphere. The Egyptian theory of the ka^ the Karen theory of the kelah^ are the same. Every natural object, every manufactured object, tool, or utensil, has thus a soul. The Alfurs of Celebes ascribe a soul to iron, THE SOUL IN BEING 261 the Malays to tin. If the soul of the iron were not forcibly kept near the anvil when the smith is at work, the iron would flow away and be useless, because of the absence of its soul. In Tonga, Fiji, America, and the East Indies, there occur salient cases of the ascription of souls to inanimate objects.^ Heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars ; all animals and plants ; rivers and lakes, rocks and stones ; houses, boats, weapons and garments, crockery and chairs, have each a soul. The examples show that these are derived from the memory-image, as in the case of the Fijian crockery, and the Malay semangat of heaven and earth. Accordingly, when observers speak of a "patron deity," or "guardian spirit," or "god," or '' spirit " working behind such objects, we have a right to explain such descriptions on the principles we have applied elsewhere. In the case of animals and plants, analysis of the percept may have results influencing the idea, as in the case of men. We have also seen this applied to substances such as wood and stone. One interesting result of the theory of inanimate souls is that it supplies a refutation of the view that the abstraction " life " was an early form of the soul. The totality of a living creature differs from that of an inanimate object in the possession of life, and even primitive man drew a clear distinction between living and dead substance, animate and inanimate existence. But the early mind was incapable of realising an abstraction, just as all mind is ; it had no word for it either. Yet inanimate things possessed souls. 1 Tylor, Frimitinje Culture^, i. 477-9 ; G. A. Wilken, Het Animhme hij de Volken 'van den Indischen Archipel, i. 7, 31 ff. ; A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 156 ff. 262 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Even when language invents an abstraction by eliminating all concrete content from the term which it has reached by generalisation, for instance "sour* or "life," leaving a skeleton which serves to embody or fix any floating inference of function or observation of difference, still the term is merely a label, and when applied to an object is not actually fused with it. " Life " and image are not combined in thought, any more than are an inscription and a picture, a card and a man. Moreover, this label only connotes one attribute of the whole. Animatism has already been discussed.^ We may here consider two contrasted forms of the theory. The older theory of the personification and animation of all nature goes too far in one direction ; the theory of Kruijt that the soul of a living man is simply a share in the pantheistic life of nature goes too far in another. It does not explain the memory-image of inanimate things, which is found in the East Indies. In particular, it fails to account for the fact that we find the memory-image side by side with the soul as "life." Willcen has shown reason for supposing that the semangaty which is the memory-image soul, is earlier than the njawa. The latter is vague in its connotation, varying from life to consciousness. As we have already seen, the semangat includes the attributes of life and movement. The only real synthesis is what can occur in one percept or one mental representation. Late beliefs like that of Buddhism that everything has life are due to language. Ideas of " persons " working behind the veil are the results of the artistic imagination. 1 See above, pp. 20, 21, 43, 44. THE SOUL IN BEING 263 § 4. The World of Spirits. The spiritual world, that is, the mental world, of iarly man is therefore very populous. Besides the iouls of every person and thing, there are the souls of jvery part of each object, and the souls of dead persons and worn-out things. A statement such as that 3f Burgoa, ** every feature of the scenery, every want, /■irtue, vice, had one or more patron deities," ^ applies ^o a developed mythology like that of the Central Americans or Hindus, but not to the first two stages 3f culture. Ellis, speaking of the Tahitians, rhetorically isserts : " They were accustomed to consider themselves surrounded by invisible intelligences, and recognised in the rising sun, the mild and silver moon, the shooting stars, the meteor's transient flame, the ocean's roar, Lhe tempest's blast or the evening breeze, the movements of mighty spirits." ^ Here the observer has turned personalisation into personification, and mental re- presentation into perception. The *' mighty spirits " ire merely the memory-images, visual and auditory, oi natural phenomena. More in accordance with early thought is what Matthews says of the Hidatsa Indians, Sriffis of the Coreans, and im Thurn of the Guiana Indians. The first named says : " Not man alone, but the sun, the moon, the stars, all the lower animals, all trees and plants, rivers and lakes, many boulders, . . . in short, everything not made by human hands, which has an independent being or can be individualised, possesses a spirit, or more properly a shade." ^ Not all Df these are important, he adds, or receive much zonsideration. Griffis reports that *'to a Corean the ^ Quoted by Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 449. 2 W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 331. ^ W. Matthews, Ethnography of the Hidatsa Indians, 48. 264 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL air is far from empty. It is thickly inhabited with spirits and invisible creatures/'^ "To the Indian," says im Thurn, " all objects, animate and inanimate, seem of exactly the same nature, except that they differ in the accident of bodily form. Every object in the whole world is a being consisting of a body and a spirit." Again : *' It might be thought that this bodily motionlessness " (in rocks and stones) " would prevent any conception of the possession of spirits by such objects. . . . The activity of the rock is proved to his satisfaction in various practical ways. The Indian is occasionally hurt either by falling on a rock or by the rock falling on him, and in either case he attributes the blame to the rock. . . . No idea of what we call the supernatural is known to him. Thus his whole world swarms with beings. If by a mighty mental effort we could for a moment revert to a similar position, we should find ourselves everywhere surrounded by a host of beings, possibly hurtful, so many in number that to describe them as absolutely innumerable would fall ridiculously short of the truth." ^ So the West African regards everything "he knows of by means of his senses " as a twofold entity, part spirit, part not-spirit.^ To the Hervey islanders " the visible world itself is but a gross copy of what exists in spirit- land." * The Ungava Indians say that "all the affairs of life are under the control of spirits." The Dacotas believe that there is " no object, however trivial, which has not its spirit, which may do harm." ^ ^ Griffis, Corea, 327. 2 E. F. im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi. 369, 370, 371. ^ Kingsley, in Folklore, viii. 141. 4 W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, 154. 5 Dorsey, in Elenjenth Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), i93» 434- THE SOUL IN BEING 265 Allowing for the phraseology of the observers, and )plying the explanation of the idea of the soul which IS been advanced in the previous pages, we may arrive : some understanding of the meaning and origin of lat remarkable world, commonly known as the spiritual • supernatural, which permeates the life of the savage, id in which and through which he passes his existence itil he is absorbed into it himself. This world is what we know as the mental world, le world of thought. Without education, without tificial means of mental exercise, the natural man in le lower culture has little control, and no little distrust ' the images which are the basis of his mind. He is : their mercy ; he does not understand what they are. b reach this knowledge he has to pass through the illey of supernatural anxiety and terror. The origins of worship, of the conception of gods, ■e thus bound up with the origins of science. We .ay preface a discussion of some aspects of this old orld which is the new by considering two questions : Jhy is the spiritual world so feared ? and. What is the eaning of the control of the material world by the liritual ? Each of these questions has arisen again id again in our examples of early psychologies. Some reference has already been made to the fear of ought which characterises the naive consciousness. Tg found that the soul, potent for influence, if not for il, at all times, attains, when released from the body, position of greater freedom and less responsibility, he subject knows that the soul of the dead still lives, r he can see it in his brain. He remembers the )wer of the living man. When under the influence that power, the image of the man was vividly 266 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL present to his mind. Much more impressive is it when there is no material form in which it may be em- bodied. Why is this ? We may explain it by citing the Indian who from fear of spirits never leaves the camp-fire at night without a torch, " that he may have a chance of seeing the beings among whom he moves." ^ The soul is always about to be exteriorised, and the savage feels as does the Zulu in a thunderstorm, who is afraid because he does not know when and where the deadly energy will become visible and strike. So, as the image in the brain comes and goes, the percept is possibly at hand ; it may emerge here or there, the next moment or the next. As the Bismarck islanders say : it is invisible, but present.^ The souls of the dead that are most feared are those of men who were feared in their lifetime. There is also the fact that a dead man is resentful, because he has been ejected from life. Of no little influence also is the principle of luck. Like most men, the savage accepts good fortune as a matter of course or as the result of his own merit ; evil fortune he attributes to one thing or another, but in particular to some thing connected with it by mental association. The connec- tion is already spiritual, as being mental. Thus, if an Indian happens to see a curious object, and if evil happens to him, he connects the two as cause and effect.^ Generally, however, as the cause of the evil is unknown and invisible, he takes the easy way, being familiar with the spiritual world, of ascribing it thereto. Returning to the souls of the dead, we saw no need to bring in the emotion of fear of the corpse. What 1 Im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropolo^cal Institute, xi. 371. 2 See above, p. 103. ^ Im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi. 370. THE SOUL IN BEING 267 ay be introduced into the early consciousness is the ir of death, that is, of being ejected from life, and ndered helpless and motionless and decaying, as the :ad man has been. There is a very common belief what may be described as the infectiousness of :ath ^ ; and this fear is attached to that image of the :ad man which we know as the ghost. As for the naive distrust and fear of thought, it is own to be a characteristic of the unsophisticated ind in all stages by a thousand trivialities. In view ' the fact that the most powerful of all influences is at of ideas, as shown in the psychology of imitation, is attitude is a safeguard- For the way of ideas is e way of temptation. In the naive consciousness e tendency to realise an idea in action or embodi- ent is irresistible, except for the hesitancy of distrust, e inhibition of fear. Thus both temptation and its inquest proceed from the mental, the spiritual world. Surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, his own thoughts, rly man does not at first locate them absolutely in s own brain. Concentrated attention enables him feel the image, as he sees it, in the eye, or, as he :ars it, in the ear, but this is not the same thing as ferring it to an external object. As we found reason conclude, the consciousness in its normal state does >t objectify or exteriorise its thoughts ; it leaves their cation undecided, while distinguishing them sharply ise they would not be souls) from real objects in ace. This characteristic involves the common attribute souls, invisibility. They are here, there, and everywhere, or anywhere, heir place of location is as uncertain as their appear- lCC and disappearance. Yet again and again we come 1 See A. E. Crawley, the Mystic Rose, 95 fF. 268 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL across the belief that in order to see their world, it is merely necessary to close the eyes, or to send out one's soul, that is, to fix the imagination on the idea. Apart from the recurrence of this scientific tendency, we can distinguish some places of location for disembodied and incorporeal souls. Naturally, in view of the connection of percept and idea, a frequent location is the neighbourhood of the object. Closing the eyes after viewing an object, the memory-image is at first in the same direction. Analysis of the percept, and all analogy, tend to enforce this inference, which meets us often in the statement that the soul of an object hovers near it, or is on or about it, or within it, just as the ghost of a dead man haunts his grave. At other times we find little distinction of time or place ; the idea is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and unfettered by time. Linguistic and mental generalisation here applies ; thus the Malagasy phrase descriptive of the sphere to which the soul of the dead makes its way is any ; " It goes," they say, ^' any'' The word is a form of ''there/' developed by generalisation into "every- where," " anywhere." The spiritual world is thus a sort of fourth dimension of space, in and through phenomenal space, somewhat as the world described by Wells in The Plattner Story, The facts of burial, and of decay generally, tend to place the souls of the dead in an underground sphere ; inference from cremation assists the soul to find a way to heaven. The atmosphere, the upper air, the sky are the favourite abode of spirits. The relative emptiness of the air is one main reason for this. It is the great unallotted area of the world ; in it freedom of move- ment is unhampered ; the sensations produced by its THE SOUL IN BEING 269 Dvements, as of some invisible substance, tend to give a spiritual quality. ** Breezes," say the Coreans, ire the breath of spirits."^ Analysis of the percept Lches man that the soul as breath is of and is returned the air. The aina or "life" of the Malagasy comes air at death.^ The Acagchemems held that a man became decrepit his soul was absorbed in the iment which had originated it. In their words, it Ls lost in the air.^ The air, according to the Ainu, is opled with good and evil spirits.* The " buxom " • thus coincides with the yielding unsubstantial nature the soul which dwells in it. A contributory factor may perhaps be found in the 2Ct posture of man. His vision is directed above the ound, more or less regularly, and the facts of ideation sist in the inference that an idea may be located on e plane of its origin. Many peoples, from the early notion, due to unaided rception, that the earth is of the form of a tray (as . semangat is in Malaysia) or a flat disk, infer that at ' edges is another world. The souls of the dead metimes take their departure by dropping over the ge. For example, the Alsea Indians^ and the ustralians ® locate the entrance to their Hades :re. The Fijians have elaborated the notion into a rrible pilgrimage of the soul.*^ The geography of the other world, however, is )t part of our inquiry. It has been described with ^ Griffis, Corea^ 3Z7. 2 Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 393. 3 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States. * Batchelor, in Journal of American Folklore, vii. 24.. ^ Farraud, in 'The American Anthropologist, iii. 241. ^ See above, p. 83. ^ B. Thomson, The Fijians (1908), 122 fF. 270 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL some elaboration by Tylor. We are here only concerned with new details or with such as are bound up with the idea of the soul. With regard to the belief in the control of man and nature by spirits, we are only concerned with such facts as illustrate or are illustrated by our main inquiry. The evolution of worship or of monotheism is no part of our search. In the earlier stages the spirit-world is merely a replica of the material. Except for the occasional prominence of some strong character who becomes a powerful ancestral spirit, or of some peculiarly impressive natural phenomenon that influences the life of a particular people, there is nothing which corresponds to the conception of a god, much less is there one supreme Being. Nor do other theological concepts, familiar in the third stage, occur as yet. What is stated of the Indian of Guiana applies generally. " He has no idea of beings with the attributes of gods. The beings his universe is filled with work only according to natural laws, or rather according to what seem to the Indian natural laws, and are not, as are gods, capable of supernatural action. The Indian does not worship. He avoids certain dreaded beings, or strives to drive them away." He has no idea of a resurrection, but merely an occasional fancy that the soul returns to the body after it has left it. He has no idea of a creation, only the eternal change of bodily forms.^ From another point of view Matthews remarks of the Hidatsa Indians : " If we use the term worship in its most extended sense, it may be * Im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ xi. 362. THE SOUL IN BEING 271 id that they worship everything in nature." ^ The atement simply implies that every individuality in iture is, in so far as it possesses a soul (a duplicate the mind of the subject), in a spiritual relation to le subject. This is particularly evident in the inciples connected with luck. The savage is much )ncerned to know what is to happen. Thus the ayak finds it necessary to " invoke " the petaras of ^erything connected with his life and sustenance.^ I other words, his thoughts of such matters are of ipreme importance ; both in theory and practice Ley influence results. An act of worship is an nbodiment of such a thought; it is "a mere opus ^eratum^'' performed in order to obtain communion ith the object thought of ; it has no connection ith veneration, propitiation, or morality, and it effects 3 purpose " irrespective of the condition of mind or ibits of life of the worshipper." The Dayak, always ixious about the future, has recourse to his knowledge lat the soil, the hills, and the trees have each their Haras^ through which they produce their fruits.^ nother case which shows the relation of the thought > the object in such connections is that of the la of le Karens. A man who has dropped his axe calls >t to the axe, but to its la : " la of the axe, come, )me ! " * Having to think of the object before leaking or acting, the savage introduces the thought, le idea, the soul of the object, into his speech and :ts. Several cases have been cited where the aggregate 1 Matthews, Ethnography of the Hidatsa Indians^ 48. 2 Perham, in Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, ^ Id. X. 227, 241, 242 ; viii. 138. ^ Mason, in Journal of the Royal Astatic Society of Bengal^ xxxiv. 202. 272 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL of all souls is recognised in language and thought, for instance the Yao mulungu} The aggregate of ancestral spirits, so potent in their influence over the living, is another way of reaching a tribal god. Such a god may develop, like the tribal Tahweh of the Hebrews, into a monotheistic unity. The sense of solidarity is strong in tribal life. The Pawnees speak of a number of persons " thinking and uniting as one spirit." ^ The generalised type of the species, the oiaron of the American Indians,^ shows one way in which depart- mental deities may arise ; the idea of the wolf, or the tree, generalised, is merely the memory-image in another shape. Another way is selection of one prominent individual as the type of the species. A generalisation of man, worked upon by the artistic imagination, embodying it in a glorified form, seems to be the main line along which the idea of a supreme Deity is evolved. It would be influenced and modified by other associations and modes of thought. It is clear enough how man came to believe that his life and acts are in the control of spirits. The souls of dead men who in their lifetime had influence over men, and the souls of all things with which men have to do, are their thoughts of these. We have attempted some description of the primitive attitude to this strange function of thought, this internal experience of images. The ancient view that the image of a thing or an act controls it has no little psychological truth, for the image precedes and institutes all action and all relation ^ Hetherwick, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute^ xxxii. 94. 2 Alice Fletcher, Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1900-1), 290. ^ Hewitt, in Journal of American Folklore, viii. 115. THE SOUL IN BEING 273 o objects. It is stated of the Kafir that his superstition ' influences all his acts, and gives a tone of seriousness o his character."^ Human character and human hought have thus received in the ages preceding ivilisation a long training, the automatic result of heir own activity, which is the basis of all culture and cicncc. § 5. The Ideal Theory in Practice. Before volition and its relation to the soul is :onsidered, a subject best taken in connection with Lction, some aspects of the early attitude towards 3sychic facts, as modified by the presence, and later 3y the recognition of the presence, of the ultimate self, ;all for description. The mental life of the present-day savage, it must 3e remembered, is full of survivals, but in a less degree :;han is the popular thought of civilisation. While the jarly aspect of visualised thought emerges in modern folklore above the more or less scientific knowledge of nental life which has overlaid it, in the form of ghostly and other spiritual lore, the mind of the savage is just beginning to cover the spiritual aspect of :hought with a layer of psychological explanation. As we have seen, the analysis of the object when ^aken in conjunction with the phenomena of mental imagery makes of the early doctrine of the soul a sort 3f physiological psychology. We now take primarily the point of view of the subject : the feeling of self, as a point of insertion for 1 G. M*C. Theal, Kaffir Folklore (i88z), 20. 18 274 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL psychic experience, becomes the standard of reference. The analogy with scientific psychology is remarkable. When the savage speaks of himself as contemplating the souls or images of objects, or of images as causing emotions or acts, he is anticipating the modern view of the connection of the idea with neuro- muscular reaction. The main principle of sympathetic magic is that the idea by being rehearsed separately or in an embodiment produces the result which it imitates. In other words, when a soul is projected from the mind of the agent into an action or an object, and when this is brought into connection with the person or thing to be acted upon, the desired result is effected by the soul. The theory of nutrition and of medicine is animistic also. The soul of food is absorbed by the organism. This is, in metaphysical language, its essence. The Chinese hold that the " soul-substance " of things eaten enters and strengthens the body. Only the " immaterial essence" of food, its shen^ ^sing^ or khi^ remains in the organism. The stomach has a soul for the purpose. If a West African child does not thrive, it is because there is a spirit taking the food from its body,-^ Similarly, the theory of reproduction is based on the transmission of a soul which is to animate the new individual. When food is offered to the souls of the dead the very fact that it is not consumed proves that its soul has been absorbed. The conception that the souls of men may be devoured is frequent. The Maori is able to swallow an atua. In Melanesia a bird's voice is swallowed by a sick man as a medicine. The savage takes an emetic to rid himself of un- ^ Ellis, Toruba-speaking PeopleSy 113, 126. THE SOUL IN BEING 275 lesirable thoughts or to free himself from sorcery.-^ llness and pain are explained in three ways. They .re due either to the absence of the soul or of a part tf it from the body, or from the part of the body .ifected, or to the presence of a malignant soul, which nay have been projected by evil magic, or of some /orm-like or gnawing creature. The second of these oincides with the general theory that physiological and )sychological facts are due to the presence of images. The first is a later inference from the same theory in onnection with the soul as animating the body. The hird is the result of analogy and association, and is ►arallel to the conception of the soul as a bird or nimal. All the functions of the organism, physiological, euro-muscular, and mental, are explained, more or ;ss vaguely and unconsciously, by the principles we lave adduced. Bodily movement, the circulation of he blood, the nutritive processes, sensation, feeling, motion, thought, imagination, and reasoning are Tought under one or other aspect of the doctrine of fie soul. The subject expresses his earliest realisation f organic experience by a naive recognition of images r souls, as seen or felt in memory. In the next stage e is conscious of the self as seeing or feeling the nages. In the latest development of all, the self ecomes sophisticated by language and abstraction, and lay be identified with any of the numerous forms of ie soul of the object. Instinctive logic, however, ;nds to bring attention back to the self ; for instance, le self-soul as the feeling or thinking part, like the a of the Madis, is a more constant expression of le phenomena than is the self-soul as an image. As 1 M. H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 462. 276 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL savagery reaches its highest developments, the soul as the intelligence becomes more frequent.^ As we have seen, the latter phase is almost entirely confined to the object. The self-soul as pure reason, pure "spirit," "life," and so on, is an abstraction equally liable to be superseded by the older view, which simply takes the fact of self-consciousness as given, and no more attempts to explain it than does modern psychology. Side by side with this sequence is the explanation by analysis of the object. This leads to the view that the functional parts of the organism are self-subsisting and, so to say, conscious agents. The eye or the soul of the eye, originally not separated, sees, the ear hears, the breath and blood "live," the belly feels, just as the hands move and the feet walk. Again, the function becomes the soul of the organ : sight is the soul of the eye, hearing of the ear. In this analysis we sometimes detect the mind blindly groping for a centralising principle. Later we find the self seeing in or through the eye, hearing in or through the ear, occasionally with a recognition that the seat of sensation is in the central parts. We do not, however, find that motion and feeling are connected with the brain. The reason is clear ; sight, hearing, taste, and smell, having their organs in the head, would soon be recognised by the experience of memory-images as being connected with the brain. Other sensations and feelings do not possess this obvious connection. The connection of will and muscular reaction seems obvious, but it does not seem to have led to any inference until a late stage in the scientific period. It is chiefly in the object that the notion of the soul giving sight to the eye, or causing life and motion in ' Dennett, in Folklore^ xvi. 372 (the xilunzi of the Bavili). THE SOUL IN BEING 277 e organism generally, was applied. The notion talned great influence and vogue as soon as the soul, iveloped through its name into an abstraction, coin- ied with the inference from the object of an invisible rce or operation. It survived and still survives in the eudo-scientific doctrines of vitalism and spiritualism. Perception stands in a category of its own. From iginning to end perception is of reality. The percept • the object is taken as given ; it is the thing and quires no theory for its explanation. The very fact " this immediacy, when contrasted with thought and eling, is responsible for the dualism between soul and ling. That the percept, the object, is a psychological lenomenon was not dreamt of till a late stage of itical thought. Some typical forms of the application of these 'inciples may be adduced from the examples. The arens and Bataks ascribe emotions such as anger, the ndamanese ascribe pain, to the operation of "spirits." I Malaysia we find a " spirit " of stomach-ache, [unger is the gnawing of a spiritual creature inside the Ddy. A Dacota mother is in sympathetic rapport ith her absent children when she is conscious of a eling, that is, a memory-image, in her breasts. They, le says, are touching her ; she touches them.^ Similarly, popular Western thought, a man's ear is red when an )sent person is talking or thinking of him. The theory of vision held by the early Greek linkers illustrates the primitive inferences from ideation. was to the effect that objects throw off films of lemselves, skeleton outlines, that enter the eye and le brain by the " pores of sensation." The Hindu ^ Riggs, Grammar of the Dacotak Language, 211. 278 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL view was that the soul reflects the external world in the eye. In order to see the spiritual world, the savage either anoints his eyes to acquire an intension of sight, or " sends out his soul " to see it. The latter occurs as a theory of imagination.^ The ordinary view is that the images of things are in some sort of contact with the soul ; they enter the head of the thinker. The savage seer or medicine-man, by the control which he professes over the realm of spirits, shows that he was the thinker par excellence of the childhood of the world. He was the first to reach a position of confidence with regard to thought, and mental evolu- tion owes much to his combination of imposture and knowledge. The image not being distinctly located, there is room for the various views mentioned. The soul or self may deal with the souls of objects freely, both when they are felt to be in the eye or brain, in which case it has control over them just because they are internal, and also when it is projected outwards to reach them. In the latter case they are not necessarily exteriorised ; it is merely that their location is undefined. Thus the soul of the subject can act at a distance, and the fact is extremely significant for the development of knowledge. Inference, deduction, induction, and imagination take their rise here. An early theory of thought and imagination is curiously identical with the modern ; it is that the images of things arrange and sort themselves in the brain of the thinker, or are so arranged by his " think- ing part," his ultimate self. When names are used instead of complete images, the same principle holds. When a man mentions the name he is supposed to touch the thing which the name symbolises. This is an ^ De Groot, 'the Religious System ofChina^ iv. 105. THE SOUL IN BEING 279 :xtension of the earlier view, that all thought is of mages, and is spiritual contact. Again, the Karens speak of the la of the eye ; the Vlaoris of the atua which dwells in the eye. The brmer becomes the function of vision. A soul may inter the ear of the subject as a voice. The connection of the self with the various images eads to its being regarded as possessing sight, or ntelligence, or consciousness generally. This line of ievelopment is the opposite of that along which all magination and even all sensations are ascribed to ' spirits." There the images are regarded as self-acting intities. "When once the idea of the soul is arrived at, the )henomena of dreams are brought into connection with t. The soul or self sees images during sleep, which inter the head of the sleeper. It may also leave the )ody and make nocturnal journeys in the spirit-land, ust as it may do so, when awake, in the act of imagina- ion. The soul of a man may make its desires known o a sleeper,^ just as it may influence the soul of a man .wake by entering his head. The Mohave Indians of Ilalifornia have a well-developed doctrine of dreams.^ rhey hold that they cause all that happens. Good uck is "good dreaming." Power over a thing is »btained by dreaming of it. Here the dream is quivalent to the image in preperception and fore- hought. The view taken of forethought is illustrated, as 7e saw, by the theory of omens and the premonitions )f dreams. Preperception is a process depending on he presence of the image of the thing or act expected. * Hewitt, In 'Journal of American Folklorey viii. 112. 2 Kroeber, in American Anihropologiit, iv. 297 f 28o THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Forethought depends on the presence of the image of the act to be performed. We now arrive at the connection between volition and this system of ideas. The savage holds that when a man desires a thing his soul leaves his body and goes to it. The process is identical with imagination and with magic. The will acts at a distance. In all such phenomena it may be said that the thought is father to the wish, inasmuch as the image produces the desire or the volition. Unwittingly the savage has hit upon a psychological truth. The need of embodiment, which has been illustrated above, is felt throughout these processes. From some points of view, indeed, the soul is the promise or expectation of an object. Soul and thing test and corroborate each other. The savage would agree with Kelvin, who used to say that he could not understand a thing unless he could make a drawing or a model of it. Association is freely used. The savage ties a knot in order to retain a " soul " he has acquired by purchase ; the modern man knots his handkerchief to retain an idea. When analytical language has been developed the processes of thought and science are simplified. The name is easier to work with than the complete image. The name as a soul, a man's words as a projection of his soul, an expression of it, exercise much influence in the later stages of savage culture. To vitalise an image the Hindu utters a mantra^ or speaks its name. The Hopi Indians consecrate objects by prayer. This imparts to them " the magic or wish " of the operator.^ The Maori gives a soul to an image by repeating > Fewkes, in American Anthropolo^st, iv. 503. THE SOUL IN BEING 281 karakia. Without a name, a thing has no real sistencc. It is the same with action. Not only does the *hearsal of an act in thought give it a contingent ialisation, but the expression of it in words assures s embodiment. The interaction between the soul and s embodied result is curiously illustrated by many Lnguages in such words as "example," *'idea," and copy," which mean now the original, and now its ^petition. In thought, the name of a thing, whether uttered r felt, calls up the complete idea of it. The effort y which one names an absent thing is similar to that y which one calls up the idea. Its successful achieve- lent is one of the great services of language. From the self as will come such ideas as those of lana and orenda. The magician sends out his will, 3 he sends out his thinking faculty, to influence and 3 embody itself in an act or an object. § 6. Ethical Applications. The principle of the image brings action into Dnnection with ethics. By hypothesis, every act, ke everything seen, has a soul, its image in the brain, oth before and after its execution. Beforehand the nage is at a late stage explained by concepts such 5 will. Further, as a man and his soul are inter- tiangeable for thought, or rather are identical, so is with a man and his acts. He is his acts. From ne point of view they are his souls, or expressions f his personality ; from another they are self-subsisting 5uls. Thus every crime and sin, according to Hindu thics, becomes a demon, living after a man, and 282 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL causing other men to sin likewise. In the subject, according to circumstances, the image of his act after its commission is expressed as satisfaction or remorse. Its appearances are the voice or the presence of conscience. The criminal's brain is literally obsessed by the image of his crime. A man's curse obsesses his victim. It acts, as all ideas, like a spirit, flitting to and from consciousness, irresponsible and terrible. The Kafir view of conscience clearly shows the unconscious action of memory-images. The qualms of conscience "usually seem to him to come as un- reasoned checks almost ab extra. It is as if he suiFered from some alternation of personality, or as if some faculties of his soul had suddenly arisen out of the strange hidden depths of his own personality and made themselves felt." Frequently he hears a voice.^ Social solidarity has been influenced by such phenomena. An anti-social act aiFects all, because all are conscious of it. With logical appropriateness all may be punished, therefore, for the sin of one member. We find in savage political philosophy such ideas as " the soul of a city." Here is social responsibility. Again, as in sickness there is a departure from the normal, or the norm or image has left its embodiment, so is sin or crime a moral abnormality, an ethical sickness. The normal, as a generalised idea, or soul of moral action, has in history always tended to regulate the conduct of the majority of men. It is, of course, itself the conduct of the majority. Imitation is the result of the consciousness of ideas. In the earliest language and thought ideas such as " sin " are not material. They are, as always, of the neutral character we have described, and are still 1 Dudley Kidd, "The Essential Kafir, 284. THE SOUL IN BEING 283 combined with the act or the agent, just as *'life'* and object are combined. When the idea is at last Isolated, it is still neutral ; its reality is that of ideas generally ; it is real with a difference. Latest of all :omes the abstract concept. An interesting distinction is frequently drawn between the image-soul and the intelligent self, as in the moral theory of the Karens. The kelah^ the memory-image of the man, is inclined to evil ; it is not, however, regarded as morally responsible for the acts of the man. The intelligent soul, the thah^ s the moral consciousness, and is responsible. In :onnection with the thah is the tso^ reason enthroned n the head, which checks and defeats the earthly tendencies of the kelah. Later, such doctrine was emphasised in the dualism between body and soul, as n the Chinese theory of the earthly and the heavenly joul, the kwei and the shen. In moral conduct the lualism develops into the contrast between the ascetic md the sensual life. The Javanese hold that penance md bodily mortification make a man spiritual,^ and the ioctrine forms a considerable feature of the great ■eligions. § 7. Ideas in relation to the WilL The further consideration of volition in its relation o the system of ideas involves the whole circle of luman activity. The subject is best illustrated by the ;mployment of the category of '^play." In order to ntroduce this aspect of activity, we must make some ►reliminary observations. The stages of relation between the subject and his ' Winter, in Tijdschrift 'uoor Neerland's Indie, V. i. 2, 12, 80. 284 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL world are four. These are based on a study of the mind of the child. " Firsty persons are simply objectSy parts of the material going on to be presented, mainly sensations which stand out strong, etc. Second^ persons are very peculiar objects, very interesting, very active, very arbitrary, very portentous of pleasure or pain. If we consider these objects as fully presented, i.e. as in due relationship to one another in space, projected out, and thought of as external, and call such objects again projects^ then persons at this stage may be called personal, projects. They have certain peculiarities afterwards found by the child to be the attributes of personality. Thirdy his own actions issuing from himself, largely by imitation, as we shall see, in response to the requirements of this * projective ' environment, having his own organism as their centre and his own consciousness as their theatre, give him light on himself as subject ; and fourthy this light upon himself is reflected upon other persons to illuminate them as also subjects, and they to him then become ejects or social fellows." ^ We quote this account for its applicability to the process of perception, in which at its highest development all four stages are combined, and also to the con- templation of the result of perception, the memory- image. Our subject now enters a wider field, that of the whole activity of the organism. What has been said and repeated previously will enable us to take a short way through it. This wider field illustrates the supreme importance of the principle of the soul. Repetition is essential for the development of the organism in every aspect of its growth. The mechanics of development are the same as those of activity, with which and its results we have now to deal. The 1 J. M. 'QzXdvi'm, Mental De'velopment in the Child and the Race{i8^s)> *8- THE SOUL IN BEING 285 process, simply stated, is circular. Though the fact jf consciousness is unexplainable, it is doubtless bound jp with this circularity. A stimulus is applied, which levelops an image in the brain ; this releases neuro- nuscular energy, which is expressed in motor-activity, :o which the central organ again reacts, and so on •ound the circle. The main result is the explosion dF energy, produced by the "trigger-release" of the :entral organ, but the essential condition is the image} No image, no action. In every case there is an idea which calls the action out. Repetition produces physiological and psychological habit. Habit is readiness for function.^ It is influenced by variation. The breaking-up of habits to meet nzy^ conditions is known as accommodation. The habitual form of mental accommodation is attention, and the stimulus which claims attention is a memory-image.^ The supreme form of attention is volition, but the original end of volition is simply the image or picture which starts the imitative reaction.^ The image in the mind is the attention.^ The feeling of will supervenes at the end ; just as all emotions are results ; they follow^ instead of preceding or accompanying expression of the idea.^ Our object in this section is to illustrate the importance of the idea in general motor-expression and in imagination without motor external activity, where the circular process is confined more or less to the central system. We have to speak further, therefore, of habit and imitation in connection with the image. Imitation has been described as the bridge between 1 Baldwin, Mental De'velopment in the Child and the Race^zy^. The phrases Ausldsung, d/tente^ are used for this release. 2 Id. 292. ' Id. 234. 4 Id. 237. " W. James, Textbook of Psychology' ^ 235. 6 Baldwin, op. cit. 229. 286 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL the self and the external world ; ^ the description would apply better to the idea ; in imitating, the self is walking over the bridge. The memory-image is the mechanical imitative product of the sensory system, and the whole organic activity imitates this. The image is the copy set for reproduction both in perception and in action. There is always a slight change in repetition ; as we never experience the same sensation twice, so we never act the same twice.^ Repetition, or imitation, has made the brain a repeating organ. This centralisa- tion relieves the organism of the dependence upon direct sense-stimulation.^ Imitation of others is an extension of the principle, and explains social solidarity in general and the psychology of crowds in particular. All consciousness is motor ; it is *' in its very nature impulsive," * and always has motor results. The idea is the cue, but one idea may inhibit another. Play is a loose but descriptively useful term, to symbolise free activity, mental and physical, of which the characteristics are unconsciousness of everything except the activity and its immediate ends ; imitation ; discharge of superabundant vigour, otherwise the law of excess. In early stages its result is educational, in later relaxative. Its conditions are preperception and the innervation of already exercised organs. Its result is motor or mental action ; its sign of approval is the supervening feeling of pleasure. In its crudest form, examples are the movements of muscles in handling a walking-stick, smoking a pipe, and so on. In its most imaginative form it is the creative activity of the artist's brain. Between these we I Baldwin, op. cit. 281. 2 /^^ 226. 3 /^^ ^oi. * W. James, op. cit. 427. THE SOUL IN BEING 287 ave the play of children and of savages, and the play f organised sports and games. Man, it has been said, is man chiefly because he lays, and he is most completely man when he plays, ''oung animals of a purely instinctive species, most isects, never play, " Their lives are entirely business- ke. . . . The young of the higher animals, however, re full of play. The higher the animal, the more capable f making physical and mental acquirements, the more portive it is. Man, unlike most animals, loves sport ven in extreme old age, because even in old age he is omewhat capable of learning."^ "The very young hild is content with play that involves mere ' physical ' ctivity. When the baby moves his limbs aimlessly, he 3 learning to move them purposefully. When he crawls m hands and knees, or totters on uncertain feet, he is earning to co-ordinate his muscles ... he is supplying hem with the stimulus necessary for growth. The Lttle girl dandles her doll as later she will dandle ler baby. . . . The games of older children, especially hose of boys, almost always involve a contest. Not tnly do they tend to increase strength and activity, but he intellectual faculties are brought into play and leveloped." ^ This account emphasises the teleologi- al importance of the impulse, but its other aspects re of equal psychological possibilities, Man has tifinitely more " habit "-potentiality than any animal, lome have seen in the play-impulse the origin of all rt. There is little doubt that man owes a great deal o the thousands of years passed in freedom before ivilisation of the ancient type began. The ages, whose esults are for some a collection of curiosities of the 1 G. Archdall Reid, ^e Principles of Heredity^, 241, 2 G. A. Reid, op. cit. 242. 288 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL savage mind, were the play-time of the worlds in which man was educated for maturity- Adults, apart from physical play, carry on the mental play of children, with a difference. The man, it has been well said, is the child ^/«j mind, though we do not admit that the quality of the mind is superior even to the infant's, it is merely developed and experienced. It is certainly not superior, except in experience, to the mind of the child just before puberty. However that may be, the adult plays with his mind. We are to speak of his free use of the contents of his inner world, where at times we all have freedom, and these contents are images. Mental play is really the form of the child's chief activity. Its characteristic in the latter is exaltation ; its mode is identification of self with object, by shifting personality, a result of the early stage of perception, " The world of ideas has been strikingly compared to the blood. In the blood, which is formed out of nutritive matter derived from the external world, the organism has an internal world, milieu intirieur^ which makes it to some extent independent of the external world. Similarly consciousness has in its free ideas an internal medium, which is formed out of previous sensations, and which makes it capable of leading its own life, even when the supply of fresh sensations fails." ^ The lonely child and the solitary thinker have thus not invisible but mentally visible playmates and objects of play in their world of images. In dreaming we have an automatic form of play, from which volition is absent. The play leads us where and as it will. It is interesting to note that the * HOfFding, Outlines of Psychology, 127. THE SOUL IN BEING 289 loral judgment is absent in dreams.^ Dreams acquire mythological character. In language, the use and development of metaphors . an example of play. In mythology and artistic "eation, it is the motive principle, and makes full use f analogy and association. In the waking consciousness the world of souls or ideas applies to the self all forms of aesthetic and emotional :tivity. The sentimentalist calls up the images of his ast emotions ; the religious mind witnesses a drama of ood and evil, or the relations of himself and God. "he average imagination plays with the souls of its rdinary experiences, and even here tends to become lythological. The artist and the man of science differ in that the 3rmer has as his aim not the agreement with certain efinite percepts, but " the creation of a concrete and idividual form, quite apart from the question whether r no an absolutely similar form exists in reality." ^ "he desire for play of sensory images is at the back of lost of our free thought. No people has ever lacked rtificial means of enhancing the exaltation produced y such play in its more distinctive forms. The 'ance-like condition produced, for instance, in hearing lusic is not an absence of volition, any more than is le exaltation of the child when playing a part ; it is a )rm of it, namely, concentrated attention.^ Thus we ave in the exaltation produced by various stimulants id drugs a curious problem as to where volition iases. In the exercises of "pure reason" the same rinciples hold : man plays with the " fetishes of the itellect " as a child with her dolls. > Mitchell, Dreams, 45. 2 HOffding, op. cit. 180. 3 K. Groos, The Play of Man (E.T.) (1901), 26. 19 290 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Passing on to motor-activity, the law of dynamo- genesis is that, as biologically we have contractility, so psychologically every sensation tends to bring about action : the idea tends to be realised externally. In the child and the savage this tendency is extremely power- ful. This explains why in religion ritual preceded belief. It is a form of the remarkable spontaneity shown by the unsophisticated mind. As we have seen, all consciousness is motor.^ Action-play is the perfect type of the principle, but it involves thought-play ; the two are complementary and interact. Now, instead of philosophic brooding and introspec- tion, the savage and the child play, partly in imagination alone, but mostly in motor-action. The savage, when not disabled by hunger, fatigue, or danger, plays not only at warfare, but at anything that occurs to him. As this generalisation leads to important conclusions it will be well to define more precisely the character of play. It is a psychic make-believe or self-illusion, based on imitation of observed reality, that is, of things and memory-images. The illusion is un- consciously willed ; reality forms a background for the drama. The child takes the personality of every object that interests him ; he is, more or less, the object. This is the case with most visuals and with artists. The child shifts his personality to various objects, and often carries on a living dialogue, still conscious of self. This distinction between personality and self is of the highest importance. We may therefore repeat. Hypnotic experiments prove that the two are not the same.^ " When we transform the subject into a soldier, a dancer, a child, a bishop, ^ See above, p. 286. 2 See J. M. Baldwin, Thoughts and Things, i. no. THE SOUL IN BEING 291 Dr a goat, he adopts the language and the gestures )f these different r61es ; but he does not cease to say I ' in speaking of his sensations and of his acts, :o have a self — that is to say, a kind of point of nsertion for all the sensitive and motor impressions vhich take place within him," ^ The whole process, md the co-ordination or identity of will, feeling, and dea, are as well exemplified in children. Speaking of ;he motor-force of an idea, in which " all conven- :ionalities, proprieties, alternatives, hesitations, are swept away, and the developed mind reveals its skeleton structure, so to speak, its composition from •eactive elements," Baldwin remarks that " the patient observation of the movements of a child" would have 'put it among the safest generalisations of the science )f mind." ^ The shifting of personahty is automatic ; t follows the same steps as we have seen in language. Thus, besides the posing as a mother or an engine- iriver by the girl or boy in alternation with the -61es of the baby and the engine, either may deal mth the doll or toy-locomotive as the mother or iriver ; that is, the girl does not always trouble to nake the doll answer ; her own remarks and treatment ire enough. Again, though the child's imagination lesires a sensible support for its idea, it prefers a " tag " vhich has little reality. ''The less individuality a ioU has, the more it is appreciated by the child, who :an the better utilise it as a lay-figure in many different :haracters. . . . The doll serves as a kind of skeleton 'or the child to clothe with fantastic attributes." ^ It ^ Richet, "La Personnalit6 et la m^moire dans le somnambulisme," in le^ue phtlosopkique, March 1883. 2 J. M. Baldwin, Mental De^elopmenty 5. 3 Galton, Inquiries^ 75. 19 a 292 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL is not concerned with scientific concepts, but with images. Again, it is easy for the child to pose as an animal — even as inanimate objects ; I have known a child play at being a cake in the most realistic way. The points to be observed are that the child does not do this by way of mummery or amusement. It is a need of its life, and a condition of its mental development. As such, and in the child's conscious- ness, the proceeding is absolutely serious ; but the child does not believe in the reality of the illusion it creates. It does not either believe that the inanimate thing it addresses as a person is a person, or even alive, any more than it believes itself to be its mother when imitating her. Thus self-illusion, and the law of development by imitation, meet in play, and the bridge between them is the image in the mind. The earliest men got through life on mental habit, automatically imitating ideas in action. The principle of embodiment is another way of looking at the motor- force of the idea, which insists on being realised in action. Thus, for each idea a child needs a doll. So does the artist ; so did Kelvin ; and so did primitive man. It will be seen that this normal characteristic of the early stages of mental development explains a host of so-called peculiarities of the savage. His magical practices need not be thought unique, nor need it be said that they are altogether sober earnest. Fetishism, shamanism, mimetic and sympathetic magic, and the ritual of totemism, are early motor-expressions of the idea and its associations. The notions of exchange and transference of souls, of the acquisition of new souls, the ideas of incarnation and possession, the embodiment of the soul in animals and objects, THE SOUL IN BEING 293 the whole doctrine of the external soul, are no less examples of play than are ritual, and the mummeries of the shaman. The first attempt at realising an abstraction may be seen in the play of the child and the imposture of the shaman when pretending to abstract the essence or the soul. A further detail may be illustrated by the Egyptian belief in the ka. As the ka is immortal and eternal, it is necessary that its monument and the ritual connected with it should be eternal also.^ This is a curious tribute to " common sense reality," a sort of hedging against the chances of the soul. The principle goes round the whole of savage culture. When the Algonkins failed to find game, they had a " medicine-hunt." Little images (why little.'') of the desired animal were made, set up, stalked, and shot. The same process was followed by a man who wished to injure an enemy, according to the world-wide magic use of " images." ^ Sympathetic magic is itself " play," automatic, more than half believed in, for here the end is revenge or the making a profit out of nature. But in cases like the following, which might be multiplied indefinitely, we have pure play. When a Fijian of Yasawu asks permission of the tree before taking a coco-nut, " May I eat you, my chief," ^ he is seriously playing, but not in sober earnest. It has frequently been noted that even the savage sorcerer half believes and half disbelieves his magical power. When the Toradja, before he taps a tree for palm-wine, behaves as a wooer, talks to it, 1 W. M. Flinders Petrie, in Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (Oxford, 1908), i, 187. 2 J. Tanner, Narrati've, etc. 174. ^ Fison to J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bought i. 170. 294 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL and asks its hand in marriage, finally embracing it with ardour,^ we cannot say that this is sober earnest, nor yet that it is mummery : it is exactly what a child does ; it is real play. The observer may misunderstand the savage, just as an adult misunderstands a child. Again, in the custom of marrying trees, to argue that it is not merely a figurative or poetical sense of the word understates the case, or rather ignores the true principle, while to assert that the ceremony is performed because trees are believed to be actually animated^ is from all points of view a fallacy. A tree, like everything in nature, has a soul, but it does not follow that it has life. Of course the savage is aware of the obvious phenomena of plant-life, but he does not raise this to a human vitality. The savage, moreover, speaks to these objects as he speaks to everything, and as a child speaks, personally, according to the laws of primitive language.^ The remarkable religious ceremonies of the Central Australians have provided material for various inferences. To confine our attention to those which have no economic end, we read "it is astonishing how large a part of a native's life is occupied with the performance of these ceremonies, the enacting of which extends sometimes over the whole of two or three months, during which time one or more will be performed daily." ^ The dramatic character of the performances 1 J. Kreemer, in Mededeelingen 'van i/jege het Nederlandsck Zendeling Genootschap, xli. 123. 2 As Frazer asserts, The Golden Bougk\ i. 169. 3 See above, pp. 41-45. * spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Cent)- a I Australia (1904), T77 ff. THE SOUL IN BEING 295 is very elaborate ; the dresses are fantastic in material, being birds' down gummed with human blood ; the patterns are of the usual early savage style. The organisation and stage management are perfect. The accounts must be read in full to get an adequate picture. Solemn movement, and stately dances, very much like those of a Greek tragic chorus, combined with song and some dialogue — the whole performance being imitative of some natural process or social function, — the result is a marvellous concrete example of motor-activity in its highest form, that is, in which all the powers of the organism are employed together, much as in the opera. But this is on the face of it religious. Here we must distinguish. The observers carefully refuse to use the word " religious," but the performances are merely complete examples of " religious " ceremonies found elsewhere. There is little doubt that they are right in withholding the term ; but if so, it must be withheld from a good deal of savage ceremonial and belief. Of course religion has not yet been defined, and the further we go back into savage culture the more homogeneous it is. However that may be, we find that the Australian boy is free till the age of fourteen. After initiation his life is sharply divided into two parts : the ordinary business of the food- search and social duties and relaxations ; and, secondly, "what gradually becomes of greater and greater importance to him, and that is the portion of his life devoted to matters of a sacred or secret nature. As he grows older he takes an increasing share in these, until finally this side of his life occupies by far the greater part of his thoughts. The sacred ceremonies which appear very trivial matters to the white man are most serious matters to him," They are connected l^e THE IDEA OF THE SOUL vith the great ancestors, and he believes that his spirit- 3art will after death be in communion with them.^ If this is not religion it is play ; and even if it s religion it is play none the less. It does not seem to have ever been observed that n the natural state and when untouched by religious education, children have no religious ideas or impulses. Religion is an adult growth. Where the child plays, :he adult prays ; both actions are forms of one and :he same psychical necessity, which we know as play. And what is the world with which the religious nind is concerned? — the world of spirits, that is, :he world of souls, of memory-images of reality, the iuplicate of the outer universe, the world of thought. In all imagination, free play with images, we can ;ee the same process, varying according to the con- ditions. The external object produces in the mind of ;he subject a soul ; this the subject gives out as an eject ; n art and mechanical creation it is a new thing ; in general it is an act ; for early religion it is a fetish Dr a rite ; in metaphysical religion it is the Absolute ; n psychology it is, after all, but a form of Maya^ Illusion. § 8. Conclusion. We have attempted in our sketch of primitive Dsychology to trace the origin of the idea of the soul, ind have found the result to bear out our claim of :he importance of this idea. In the rehgious conscious- less of man, in his scientific analysis of the world, the idea has played a supreme part. In the former t has tended to survive ; one or other of its early ^ spencer and Gillen, op. cit. 33, 34. THE SOUL IN BEING 297 aspects retains a metaphysical reality. In the latter, after serving as a guide for critical thought, it is gradually abandoned when it has served its purpose. In popular thought and in artistic creation its action is always illustrative of its nature, though in these last two spheres the question of its ultimate truth is rarely a subject of serious consideration. It remains here, uncriticised, as a working principle of activity, a permanent possibility of reality. INDEX Native names and terms are printed in italics* Ah, 1 80 Abipones, 162 Abnormality, 6 f., 9 f., 12 f., 18, 282 Abstraction, 9, 11, 16 f., 26, 28 f., 53 f., 248, 293 Abyssinia, 227 Acagchemems, 269 Act, 281 f. Action, 9, 20, 32, 254, 264, 284, 290 f. Adelaide, 86 Africans, 49, 167-80 West, 81, 172-9, 227, 230, 238, 246, 255, 260, 264, 272, 274 South, 81, 167-72 East, 179 f., 275 After-image, 72 Agent, 257, 264, 276 Aggregate of souls, 272 Agi, 112 Ahts, 154 Aina, 133, 269 Ainu, 269 Aha, 178 Akikuyu, 179 f, Alcheringa^ 87 Algonquins, 156, 293 Alimentation, 48 fF, Allah, 105 Alsea, 269 Altaians, 145 Ambiroa, 133 Ambon, 114 Amenophis, 182 f. Americans, 151-62, 261, 269, 279 f. North, 151-7, 263 f., 270 f., 272, 277, 293 Central, 157-9, 263 South, 159-62, 263 f., 266, 270 Amerey, 133 Amirua, 109 Analogy, 10, 20, 243 ff., 256 f. Analysis, 17, 31, 61, 191 f., 236 ff., 258, 276 Ancestors, 8, 102, 167, 169 ff. Andamanese, 135, 198, 277 Andiauj 109 Anganga, 94 Angels, 187 Atigga, 117 Angushtha-matra, 144 Anima, 186, 256 Animals, 10, 20, 29 Animatism, 4, 6, 10 f., 19 ff., 41, 44 f., 257, 262 Animism, 3 ff., 7, 10, 12, 41, 44, 256 Animus, 186, 256 Anthropology, 2 f., 11 f., 36 Anthropomorphism, 19, 41, 257 Any, 133, 268 Apaches, 38 Arabs, 184, 229 Articulation, 31 Arumburinga, 87 Arunta, 87 f. Asaba, 177, 195, 260, 272 Asceticism, 283 Asiatics, 144-51 Association, 53, 64, 165, 243 ff. Ata, 90 Atai, 94 ff., 195 Ati'vahika, 141 Atjeh, 119 Atjiy 123 Atman, 141 Atmosphere, 264, 268 f. Atoms, 234 Attention, 236, 238 f., 285 Attributes, 35, 247 Atua, 90 f., 95, 274, 279 Auditory phenomena, 70, 92, 100 ff., 108, 123, 128, 162, 177, 185, 259, 282 Aurora, 100 299 300 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Australians, 8, lo, 14, 19, 39, 42, 50, 60, 82-9, 208, 213, 219, 221, 269 Central, 87 f., 294 fF. South, 82-7, 232, 234, 239 Awe, 6, 9, 17 Ba, 180 f. Babar, 1 14 Baby, 187 Badi, 124, 129 Bahau-Dayaks, 106 f, Bakairi, 162 f., 194 Bakulu, 177, 196 Banks' Islands, loi f. Bantu, 167, 213 Basis of religion, i Basutos, 42 Bataks, 110-3, 235, 277 Bathkol, 185 Bavili, 177, 196 Bechu, 120 fF. Begu^ 112 Bengal, 141 Bilocation, 8, 13 Biology, 7 f., 48, 232, 234 Birds, 243 f. Bismarck Archipelago, 103, 226, 266 Blood, 18 f., 237 ff. Body, 14, 180, 212 fF., 218, 235, 251 f. Bolaang Mongondu, n6 Borneo, 106 fF., 243 Bororo, 162 Brakmarij 141 f. Brain, 239 Brazil, 60, 208 Bruiva, 106 Buddhists, 262 Budding, 234 Bugis, 118 f. Bulabong, 83 Bulgarians, 150 Burma, 136 ff., 244 Buru, 114 Buryats, 145 f. Bushmans, 72 Butterfly, 244 Calabar, 173 f. California, 41 Callagaes, 162 Cannibalism, 18 Caribs, 162, 195, 236, 239 Carnivores, 18 Causation, 8 f., 241, 257 Ceba^ 97 f. Celebes, 11 5-9, 243, 260 Ceram, 114 Ceylon, 42 f. Chahtas, 155 Character, 273 Char OS, 186 Cherokees, 48 Chi, 177 f., 195, 260 Children, 13 f., 16, 24, 29, 43, 48, 107, 183, 227, 232, 252, 287, 289-92, 294 ff. Chinese, i, 162-7, I94j ^oOj 208, 214, 225 f., 234, 238, 240, 244, 274, 283 Chinooks, 153, 231 Chippewas, 156 Chizui/ili, 177 Choctaw, 45, 230 f. Christians, 185 ff., 216, 232, 242, 244, Chukchi, 144 f. Chuku, 177 f. Churinga, 87 Chuwashes, 150 Clan, 36 Classification, 40 Clay, 229 Cognition, 23, 250 Colour, loi f., 117, 121, 135, 221 f. Combination, 7, 17, 21, 214, 219, 226, 245 f., 258 Companion, 115 Conception, 233 ff. Concepts, 7, 17, 21 f. Concrete, 9, 16 Congo, 172 Conscience, 246, 282 Consciousness, 12, 58, 256 Control by spirits, 266-72 Copy, 281 Coreans, 263 f., 269 Crab bah, 175, 227 Creation, 229 f. Cry, 31, 50 Cryptomonotheism, 8 Daemon, 259 Dayaks, 104-10, 195, 226, 235, 240, 242,_259f., 271 Dead bodies, 4, 17 f. Dead, souls of, 7, 11, 14, 190, 212,217 ff. Death, 217 Death, 4, 16 f., 212, 217 ff., 224, 267 Decay, 224, 244 Definition, 231 Deities, I, 4, 8, 19, 177, 265, 270, 272 Delawares, 156 Delirium, 13 D^nis, 153, 223, 231 Desire, 280 Development, 227 ff., 232, 234 Disease, 4, 275 Dispersonalisation, 40 INDEX 301 Divisibility, 233 Djinnee, 184 Dolls, 104, 109, III ff., 114, 116, 155, 179, 287, 290 f., 293 Dooiueej 86 DoppelgSnger, 182, 188, 193 Double^ Jjj 193 Doubles, 188, 193 f., 227 Drama, 295 Drawing, 72, 249, 280 Dreams, 4 f., 13 fF., 16,21, 85, 211,279, 288 f. Dream-theory, 13 ff., 77, 102 Dualism, 251 f., 257, 277, 283 Dubbelganger^ 1 1 1 Duplication, 7 f., 13, 15, 177 f., 181 ff., 188, 193 Dusha, 150 Duskichka, 150 Dynamogenesis, 290 Earth-spirit, 187 East Indies, 7, 104-33, ^9^) ^'^ ^-i 2I9j 224, 230 f,, 239 f,, 243, 245, 261 f., 283 Echo, 90, 162 Economy, linguistic, 190 f., 197 mental, 80, 240, 258 Edge of world, 269 Edsieto, 175 Efate, 103 Egypt, ancient, 180-3, ^94 f-j ^55) ^6°» 293 modern, 184 Eidolon^ 185 f. Eject, 216, 284 Elohimy 105 Emanation, 230 Embodiment, 225-35, 280, 292 Embryo-soul, 229 Emekhet, 148 ff. Emmaivarriy 159 f., 195, 199 Emotion, 9, 94, 110, 277 Energy, 240 f. English, 40, 219 f. Epilepsy, 13 Erect posture, 269 Eskimo, 72, 151, 232, 239 Esmangetij 114 Essence, 242 Essence, 168, 174, 241 f., 274 Ethereality, 15 Ethics, 134, 140, 256, 281 Ethnology, 23, 28, 81 Euahlayi, 10, 86 Europeans, 72, 185-8, 208, 221, 229, 235» 243> ^77 Evil, 49, 266 f. Ewe-speakers, 175 f. Exaltation, 288 f. Example, 281 Excrescence, 231 Expansion, 228 ff., 231 Extension, 15 Exteriorisation, 30 External soul, 7, 178 f., 227 Extract, 239 Eye, 9i» 159 f-» 187, 199, 240, 279 Fainting, 215 Family, 36 FanaAy, 133, 195 Fanany, 1 34 f. Fancy, 5 Fat, 239 Father, 235 Fear, 18 of thought, 213, 225 f., 265 ff. Feeling, 17, 29, 33, 36, 253 f. Fetishism, 240, 292 F'JW 95-9» i97» i99» 209> "3> 232, 261, 269, 293 Fire, 222 First man, 8 Fission, 234 Flesh, 239 Fontanel, 239 Food, 48 f. Food-group, 30, 36 Force, 6 Forethought, 279 f. Form, 9, 16, 215, 230 f., 235, 241 Fors, 179 Fotomana-vaj 95 Fra'vashi^ 144 Fuegians, 34, 37 Function, 231, 237, 240, 275 f. Funeral, 7 Fusion, 226, 245 ff., 258 Games, 287 Gana, no Ga-speakers, 176, 238 Geelvinks Bay, 104 Gender, 12, 45 General terms, 28 f., 34 f., 40 f., 53. Generalisation, 34, 40, 53, 2H, 246 Germ-plasm, 233 ff. Germans, 45 Gesture, 32, 46 Ghost, 189 f., 219 f. Ghosts, 5, 10, 18, 21, 83, 190, 219 ff. colour of, 89, 221 f. God, 261 Gods, I, 4, 8, 19, 177, 265, 270, 272 Gold Coast, 175 302 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Good, 49 Gorilla, 32 Gorontaleae, 119 Grand-pareats, 233 Greeks, 19, 185 f., 188, 197, 234 f., 243 f-* 255*277 Greenland ers, 151, 223, 239 Growth, 228 f., 234 Guardians, 112, 120, 144, 155, 169, 178, 184, 259 f. Guiana, 159-61, 263 f., 266, 270 Guinea, 174 New, 104 Gurumiy 122 Gutturals, 32 Habit, 17, 285 Hades, 94 fF., loi f., 138, 269 f, Haidas, 38, 154 Hallucination, 5, 7 f., 16, 194, 221 Halmahera, 122 Hambaruan, 109 f., 226 Hardness, 229 Haruku, 114 Hatij 180 Hawaii, 42 Haze-soul, 228 f. Head, 239 Health, 224 Hearing, 66 Heaven, 84 Hebrews, 44, 1 84 f., 272 Heroes, 8 Hervey Islands, 93 f., 195, 199, 245, 264 Hidatsas, 155, 263, 270 f. Hill Toradjas, 117 Hindus, 51, 139-44, 195, 198, 206, 224, 226, 233, 235, 263, 277 f., 280 ff. Hlubis, 169 Holophrase, 30 fF., 47 f, Holopsychosis, 62, 241 Homceomeria, 234 Homunculus, 117, 187, 201 Honduras, 157 Hopis, 280 Horde, 36 Horses, 10 HoriiSf 180 Hurons, 9, 155 Htuuriy 164 Hyle, 235 Hyle, 235 Hypnosis, 258 Hysteria, 13 Ibos, 177, 195 Idahiy 155 Idea, i86, 188, 235, 281 Idea, the term, 67 Idea of soul, i, 75 fF., 193-6, 296 f. Ideal, 8 Ideas, 57 fF. Ideation, 69 fF. Idhlozi, 172, 245 le-kyla, 148 fF. Jkenya^ 178 Illusions, 220 f,, 290 Images, 13 fF., 64, 75 fF., 119, 139, 20( 249, 257 f., 266, 293 Imagination, 21, 278, 289, 296 Imitation, 46, 282, 285 f. Immortality, 211 f. Impersonality, 9, 1 1 Inanimation, 20 f., 109, 114, 120, 12! 137, 160, 164, 260 fF. Incarnation, 13, 225, 292 Incompleteness, 229 India, 19, 51, 135-44, 195, 198, 2o( 224, 226, 233, 235, 263, 277 f 280 fF. Individualisation, 7, 35, 240 Indo-Europeans, 46 Inference, 14, 16 f., 257, 278 Innervation, 33 Insanity, 13 Inspiration, 13 Institutions, i, 5 Intellect, ii, 23, 179 f., 276 Intensity, 14 Interjection, 31 f., 36 Invisible agents, 5 Inward parts, 92 f., 240 Irish, 10 Iron, 230 Iroquois, 40, 155 f., 239 Isa, 179, 275 Italy, 19 ItongOy 169, 245 f. Izitunze/aj 168 laitunzi, 168 Japanese, 45 Java, 123, 243, 283 Ji'ua, 141 f., 195, 255 yitva^ 123 fF. Jum, 122 Ka, 180-3, '94 f") 260, 293 Kafirs, 8, 14, 20 f., 59, 72 f., 167-73 194, 208, 211, 213, 231, 245 f 251, 266, 273, 282 Kahukahu^ 90 Kajans, 108 Kaka^ 112 Kakeduang, 115 Kalmucks, 145 Kam^ 147 INDEX 303 Kamchadales, 145 Kamianie, 147 Karahang, 109 Karakia^ 281 Karens, 136-9, 194, 240, 260, 271, 277, 279, 283 Karina^ 184 Karo Bataks, no, 112 Katotouatij 115 Kavirondo, 176 Kei, 114 Kelah^ 136-9, 194-260, 283 Kelat, 144 f. Kha, i8o Khaib, 1 80 Kkaibet, 180 Kkat^ 180 Khi^ 164, 274 Khuy 180, 255 Khunke-khwulkka, 146 Khurulkha^ 146 Kiima, 179 Kindjin Dayaks, no Kisar, 114 Knots, 280 Knowledge, 29, 33, 37 Korzuar, 104 Kot^ 103 f. ^ra, 175 f. Krumen, 174 Kukanna-'wurraivina, 90 Kurds, 41 Kurnai, 83 fF, Kiveiy 163 fF., 283 La, 136-9, 271, 279 Lamoa, 116 Land Dayaks, 107 Language, 17, 20 fF., 28 ff., 45, 191, 246, 280 origin of, 28-55 Laos, 135, 238 Lehmbutam, 122 Lenape, 156 Leti, 114 Leyp-bya^ 136 Liau, 109 f., 226 Life, 21, 192, 217, 238, 261 f. Life, 5 fF., 16 f., 20 f,, 45, 261 f., 276, 294 Lika mankua, 227 Ling, 163 f. Linga, 141, 195 Linguistics, 11, 32 Lisoka, 177 Lithuania, 186 Living bodies, 4, 7, 17 Living, souls of, 7, 11, 212, 217 fF. Loakalj 162 Location of souls, 267 fF. Logic, 38 Lolo, 133 Lower Fraser, 153 Luck, 271 Luivo, 175 Macusis, 159-61, 195 f., 199 Madagascar, 133-5, ^95» ^^^ ^■ Madis, 179, 196, 275 Madura, 119 Maewo, 100 Magic, 274, 292 f. Mai-urli, 87 Majority, 282 Makassar, 118 f. Mala-ekat, 120 Malagasy, 133-5, ^9S» 268 f. Malayo - Polynesians, 104-33, ^93 ^'t 230 f., 239, 261 f., 277 f. Malays, 123-9, ^°3) 206, 216, 222, 230 f., 235, 243, 261, 269, 277, 283 Malekula, 103 Man, 287 Mana, 9, 51, 90, 102, 242, 281 Manchus, 44 Manes, 186 Manes, 18 Mantra, 280 Maoris, 90 f., 223, 228, 239, 274, 279 f. Marianne Islands, 92 Marquesas, 99 Marriage, 42 Maryland, 10 Mata-kanan, 108 Mata-kiba, 109 Material, 235, 241 Materialism, 256 Materiality, 19 Matoatoa, 133 Matter, 235 Maya, 141, 296 Medicine, 274 Medicine-men, 9, 278 Melanesia, 9, 15, 96-104, 195, 198, 222, 242, 274 Memory, 47, 176 Memory - image, 64, 70 fF., 193 fF., 220 fF., 249, 260 ff., 266, 285 f. Mens, 256 Mental evolution, 2, 25 f., 50, 59, 80 f. Mentawei, 120 Method, 2, 12, 22 ff. Mexicans, 40, 48 Minahassa, 115 f., 228 Minangkabau, 113 f., 231 Mind, 256 304 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Mind, 23, 255, 288 Mindanao, 120 Ming^ 163 f. Miniature, 7, 201 fF., 230, 232 Mirage, 134, 198 Mirrors, 5, 198, 252 f. Mohave, 279 lidoko-moko, 121 Molecules, 234 Moluccas, 114 f, Afo«, 178, 255 Monotheism, 8 Mother, 235 Motion, 241 Motor-activity, 30 Motor-phenomena, 70 Mourning, 7, 17 Moyo, 172 f. Mrartj 83 Mulloo'wil, 86 MulungUj 177, 272 Mummy, 81 Murup^ 83 Muscular sense, 65 Music, 70 Muskogees, 157 Mystery, 6, 9, 17 Mythology, 7 ff., 45, 289 Naga, 43 Nagual, 157 Nalcelo, 98 Names, 28-55, 31, 55, 180, 191, 233, 243, 248, 278 ff., 281 Nanja, 87 Narbrooi, 104 Narcissus^ I98 Nature, 257 Navajo, 153, 223, 231 Netsin, 153, 231 New Britain, 103, 226 New Caledonia, 37 New Guinea, 104, 228 New Hebrides, 10 1 ff. New Zealand, 90 f., 223, 228, 239, 274, 279 f. Nezcel, 153 Ngamatj 81 Ngarego, 83 f. Ngunungunut^ 88 Nias, 120 ff., 207 Nicaragua, 158 Nicobars, 66 Niger, 177 ff. Nimukur, II5 Nitu, 114 T^itya-karma, 143^' Njao^ 1 1 3 Njaiva, 118, 123 ff., 130, 262 Nkulu^ 177 NootJcas, 152, 207 Normality, 5, 7, 22 Nosoy 120 NosQ-dodoy 120 f. Nouns, 31, 37 Nunu, 10 1 Nunuaiy 100 f., 195 Nusalaut, 114 Nutrition, 274 Oajaca, 159 Object, 8, 10, 20, 36, 41, 284 Observation, 24, 28, 236 Oiaron^ 156, 272 Ojebways, 156 Olfactory phenomena, 186, 222 ff. Olo-Du3un, 109 Olo-Ngadju, 109 f. Omens, 213 Optics, 234 Oregon, 157 Orenda^ 9, 281 Organs of speech, 48 Oromatuay 92 Otomi, 40 Ovaherero, 167 Pain, 275, 277 Panoi, 10 1 Pantheism, 7 Papuans, 104 f., 228 Paraguay, 51 Parsis, 144 Parts, 191 f., 237 f. Pathology, 12 Pattern, 235 Pattern, 235 Pawnees, 272 Penance, 283 Pentecost Island, 100 Percept, 21, 31, 64, 219, 228, 262 Perception, 26, 30, 32, 46, 61 ff., 257, 277, 284 Perfection, 229, 231 Perfume, 94, 242 Personalisation, 20, 35 ff., 40 ff., 45 ff., Personality, 9, 37, 43 f., 193 f., 255, 290 ff. grammatical, 38 f., 41, 43 f., 294 shifted, 37 f. Personification, 4, 9 f., 19 ff., 41, 43 f., 257, 262 Petaraj 105 f., 195, 259 f., 271 Phantom, 21 f., 77, 220 f. Phantom, 5, 14 f., 21, 220 f. Phonograph, 253 Physics, 234 Pictures, 177, 181, 197 f., 200, 252 f. INDEX 305 Pig3, 10 Pita, 144 Play, 25, 37, 44, 48 f., 234, 245, 283, 286-294 Plurality of souls, 177, 235-249 Plurals, 38 f. P " f-» ^2 f-» ^73 PulotUy 94 ff. Puppets, 104, 109, III fF., 114, 116, i55» 179*287 Pari?, 148 Purusha, 142, 235 ^uichua, 51 Ra, 1 80 Rain, 199, 235 Rau, 180 Reaction, 274, 284 ff. Realisation, 213, 246 Reality, 2, 8, 14 ff., 210 f., 236, 248 f. Reason, 249, 255, 276 Re-embodiment, 227 Reflection, 90, 96, 99 f., 119, 135, 142, 155. 197 f- Regat^ 120 Reincarnation, 88, loi, no, 161, 178, 233 ff* Relation, 33 f., 36 Relaxation, 47 Religion, i, 7, 289, 295 f. Rengarengan, 115 Repetition, 39, 46 ff., 51 f., 284 f. Reproduction, 87, 123, 185, 233 ff., 274 Restlessness, 226 Retinal image, 201 ff. Revivification, 225 Rhetoric, 263 Ritual, 7, 50 f., 290, 292 ff., 295 f. Romans, 186 Sacred meals, 51 Sahu, 180 f. Saitia, 133 Sakalava, 134 Salish, 154 Salutations, 66 Samoa, 94, 228 Samoyedes, 145 ff., 149 f. Sangir, 115 Santals, 243 Saparua, 1 14 Sarawak, 104 ff,, 228 Sarong, 125, 2i6 Sasik, 103 Sauks, 156 Saura, 139 Savages, 11, 15 f., 22 f., 25, 29, 37, 43 ^-> 292 ff. Schoolmen, 186 f. Science, 256 Sea Dayaks, 104 ff., 240, 259 f., 271 Seele, 186 Seers, 9, 183, 200, 278 Sekhentj 180 Self, 184, 192,253 f. Self, 37, 142, 192, 250-259, 273 ff. Self-consciousness, 250-259 Semangat, 107 f., 123 ff., 130, 193, 203, 261 f., 269 Semites, 44, 184 f. Semungi, 107 Sensation, 9, 30, 63 ff., 65 f,, 76, 242, 276 Sensuality, 283 Sentence, 30 Separability, 212 ff. Sex of soul, 186, 235 Sex-totem, 88 f. Shade^ 197 Shade, 151, 155, 186, 197, 231 Shadow, 86, 96 f., 122, 168 ff., 177, 180, 196 f., 231 Shamanism, 292 Shans, 244 Shapelessness, 229 Shen, 163 ff., 238, 274, 283 Siao-ing, 165 Sibuyaus, 107 Sicily, 188 Sickness, 4, 275 Sight, 10, 64, 66 ff., 201 ff., 243 f. Signs, 248 Sihanaka, 133 f. Sikidy, 133 Sin, 282 Sin, 282 Sinhalese, 42 f. Sioux, 156, 235 Sisa, 175 3o6 THE IDEA OF THE SOUL Size of image, 14, 202 fF, Slave Coast, 175 f. Slavs, 150 f. Sleep, 4, 15 f., 216 f., 230 Smell, 66 Sociology, 36, 282 Softness, 223, 229 Sokma, 119 Solidarity, 282, 286 Solidity, 15, 209 fF. Solomon Islands, 102, 207 Souly 5, 22, 29, 53 f., 81, 184, i86, 189 f., 192, 236 ff., 255, 268, 262 Soul, 4 f., 14, 18, 21, 54, 260 ff. descriptions of, 56 f., yy f. nature of, 130-133, 189-249 idea of, 58, 75 ff. size of, 86 f., 93, 98, 108, 114, 117, 125, 141, 152, 183, 186, 200 ff., 203 ff., 223, 227 f., 231 terms for, 55, 8 1 external, 7, 28 f. unreal, 122 Soul-banner, 165 f. Soul-tablet, 165 f. Sound, 243 Species, 272 Speck-soul, 94, 199 Spell, 280 Sperm-soul, 235 Spirit^ 5, 189, 261 Spirit, 13, 263 ff., 276 Spiritualism, 256 Spirituality, 10, 78, 283 Spiritus^ 186 Srahman, 17 $ i. Standardisation, 202 f. Stimulants, 289 Stones, 20 Subconsciousness, 59 Subject, 10, 20, 32, 36, 251-259, 284 Subjectivity, 16, 210 f., 256 f. Substantiality, 46, 208 f., 256 Sukmay 122 Sukshma-sarira^ 141 SuUa^ 154 Sumangarij 114 Sumangat, 118 f., 123 ff. Sumange, 113 Sumatra, 113 f., 231, 243 Sunda, 122, 195 Supernatural, 3, 6, 10, 78, 264 ff. Supreme beings, 6, 8 Survivals, 189, 273 Swwanggi, 115 Sympathy, 277 Synthesis, 246, 262 Tactile phenomena, 50, 65 f., 70, 100 Tags, 236, 240, 245 Tahiti, 91 f., 263 Tai-sin^ 165 TamaniUj 100 TamaSj 139, 142 Tamate^ 10 1 Tanoana, 117 Tflo, 163 Tartars, 145 Tarunga, loo f. Tasmanians, 89 f. Taste, 66 Taufanuu, 94, 228 Tendi, III ff. Terms, 248, 258 Teutons, 186 f, TAaA, 137, 283 Thing, 8, 26, 34, 41, 68, 231, 236, 247 f Thlinkits, 38, 235 Thought, 24, 29, 179, 213 Thumb, 206 Thumbling, 206 T/r", 92 Tikiy 92 Timor, 115 Tinneh, 153, 223, 231 Toana^ 11 j Toba Bataks, iii Tobelorese, 122 Toltecs, 158 Tona^ 157 f. Tondij n I ff. Tonga, 94 ff., 195, 223, 239, 242, 261 Ton'lwwa, 107 Tonquin, 135 f. Tontemboan, 115 Toradjas, 117, 293 f. Torngarsuk^ 152 Torres Straits, 8 Totality, 237 Toumbulu, 115 Tracey Island, 94, 228 Trance, 4, 12 f. Transylvania, 243 Tribe, 36 Tshimsians, 154 Tshi-speakers, 175 f. Tsitig, 163 f., 274 Tsing-khiy 164 Tsifig-mingy 164 Tso, 137, 283 Tulugal, 83 Tupis, 46, 48 Type, 232 f., 272 Uliase, X14 Ungava, 155, 264 Unkpuru-obi^ 178 Unu, 92 INDEX 307 Uqa^ 102 Urip-ok, no Vapour, 94, 104, 108, 115, 228 f. Variation, 39, 46 ff., 51 f. Vatulele, 97 Veddahs, 42 Visibility, 208 Vision, 10, 15, 64, 66 ff., 201 ff., 243, Visions, 4, 13 Visual phenomena, 9, 70, 104, 139, 142, 162, 166, 177, i8i f., 195 f., 198 ff., 228 f. Visualisation, 33, 70 f., 73, 86, 179 f., 183, 200, 249 Vitalism, 258, 276 f. Vitality, 224, 231 Vivification, 231, 276 f., 280 Vocalisation, 48 Voice, 243 Voice of soul, 207 Volition, 6, 9, 20, 180, 273-276, 280 f., 283-289 Vui^ 102 Vutulanga-tnoyo^ 172 Wahi-tapu^ 91 Waicuri, 41 Wairua^ 90, 228 Wajo^ 119 Wakan^ 9 Waking, 14 Warmth, 223 Warramunga, 87 TVarraivak, 89 Watubela, 114 Weight of soul, 122, 207 Wetar, 242 Wetness, 223, 229 Will, 6, 9, 20, 180, 273-276, 280 f., 283-289 Wizards, 86, 106 f,, 114, 154, 160, 174, .293 Woiworung, 83 Wolgal, 83 f. Word-ideas, 22 f., 29 Words, 20 ff., 23, 28 f. Worm-soul, 93 f., 134 f., 167, 244 f. Wonhtpy 271 Worship, 265, 270 f, Wotjobaluk, 88 Wraith^ 220 f. Wraith, 21, 220 JCiiunziy 177 Ximbindiy 177 Yahiuehy 272 Yakuts, 149 f. Talo, 97 Talo-ngUf 97 Yalo-yah^ 97 Yamhoy 82 Tang, 163-6 Yaos, 177, 272 Tartatgurk, 88 Yasawu, 293 Yin, 163 ff. ToUo, 158 Yoruba-apeakers, 176 Yoivee, 86 Tunbeai, 86 Zapotecs, 158 f. Zeusy 19 Zulus, 31, 167 ff., 245 f., 266 Zuni, 157, 229 THE END Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.