Myths and Myth-Makers VII. The Primeval Ghost-World
by John Fiske
No earnest student of human culture can as yet have forgotten
or wholly outlived the feeling of delight awakened by the
first perusal of Max Muller's brilliant "Essay on Comparative
Mythology,"--a work in which the scientific principles of
myth-interpretation, though not newly announced, were at least
brought home to the reader with such an amount of fresh and
striking concrete illustration as they had not before
received. Yet it must have occurred to more than one reader
that, while the analyses of myths contained in this noble
essay are in the main sound in principle and correct in
detail, nevertheless the author's theory of the genesis of
myth is expressed, and most likely conceived, in a way that is
very suggestive of carelessness and fallacy. There are obvious
reasons for doubting whether the existence of mythology can be
due to any "disease," abnormity, or hypertrophy of metaphor in
language; and the criticism at once arises, that with the
myth-makers it was not so much the character of the expression
which originated the thought, as it was the thought which gave
character to the expression. It is not that the early Aryans
were myth-makers because their language abounded in metaphor;
it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphor
because the men and women who spoke it were myth-makers. And
they were myth-makers because they had nothing but the
phenomena of human will and effort with which to compare
objective phenomena. Therefore it was that they spoke of the
sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer, and
classified inanimate no less than animate objects as masculine
and feminine. Max Muller's way of stating his theory, both in
this Essay and in his later Lectures, affords one among
several instances of the curious manner in which he combines a
marvellous penetration into the significance of details with a
certain looseness of general conception.[155] The principles
of philological interpretation are an indispensable aid to us
in detecting the hidden meaning of many a legend in which the
powers of nature are represented in the guise of living and
thinking persons; but before we can get at the secret of the
myth-making tendency itself, we must leave philology and enter
upon a psychological study. We must inquire into the
characteristics of that primitive style of thinking to which
it seemed quite natural that the sun should be an unerring
archer, and the thunder-cloud a black demon or gigantic robber
finding his richly merited doom at the hands of the indignant
Lord of Light.
[155] "The expression that the Erinys, Saranyu, the Dawn,
finds out the criminal, was originally quite free from
mythology; IT MEANT NO MORE THAN THAT CRIME WOULD BE BROUGHT
TO LIGHT SOME DAY OR OTHER. It became mythological, however,
as soon as the etymological meaning of Erinys was forgotten,
and as soon as the Dawn, a portion of time, assumed the rank
of a personal being."--Science of Language, 6th edition, II.
615. This paragraph, in which the italicizing is mine,
contains Max Muller's theory in a nutshell. It seems to me
wholly at variance with the facts of history. The facts
concerning primitive culture which are to be cited in this
paper will show that the case is just the other way. Instead
of the expression "Erinys finds the criminal" being originally
a metaphor, it was originally a literal statement of what was
believed to be fact. The Dawn (not "a portion of time,"(!) but
the rosy flush of the morning sky) was originally regarded as
a real person. Primitive men, strictly speaking, do not talk
in metaphors; they believe in the literal truth of their
similes and personifications, from which, by survival in
culture, our poetic metaphors are lineally descended. Homer's
allusion to a rolling stone as essumenos or "yearning" (to
keep on rolling), is to us a mere figurative expression; but
to the savage it is the description of a fact.
Among recent treatises which have dealt with this interesting
problem, we shall find it advantageous to give especial
attention to Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture,"[156] one of the
few erudite works which are at once truly great and thoroughly
entertaining. The learning displayed in it would do credit to
a German specialist, both for extent and for minuteness, while
the orderly arrangement of the arguments and the elegant
lucidity of the style are such as we are accustomed to expect
from French essay-writers. And what is still more admirable is
the way in which the enthusiasm characteristic of a genial and
original speculator is tempered by the patience and caution of
a cool-headed critic. Patience and caution are nowhere more
needed than in writers who deal with mythology and with
primitive religious ideas; but these qualities are too seldom
found in combination with the speculative boldness which is
required when fresh theories are to be framed or new paths of
investigation opened. The state of mind in which the
explaining powers of a favourite theory are fondly
contemplated is, to some extent, antagonistic to the state of
mind in which facts are seen, with the eye of impartial
criticism, in all their obstinate and uncompromising reality.
To be able to preserve the balance between the two opposing
tendencies is to give evidence of the most consummate
scientific training. It is from the want of such a balance
that the recent great work of Mr. Cox is at times so
unsatisfactory. It may, I fear, seem ill-natured to say so,
but the eagerness with which Mr. Cox waylays every available
illustration of the physical theory of the origin of myths has
now and then the curious effect of weakening the reader's
conviction of the soundness of the theory. For my own part,
though by no means inclined to waver in adherence to a
doctrine once adopted on good grounds, I never felt so much
like rebelling against the mythologic supremacy of the Sun and
the Dawn as when reading Mr. Cox's volumes. That Mr. Tylor,
while defending the same fundamental theory, awakens no such
rebellious feelings, is due to his clear perception and
realization of the fact that it is impossible to generalize in
a single formula such many-sided correspondences as those
which primitive poetry end philosophy have discerned between
the life of man and the life of outward nature. Whoso goes
roaming up and down the elf-land of popular fancies, with sole
intent to resolve each episode of myth into some answering
physical event, his only criterion being outward resemblance,
cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns
for evidence he is sure to find something that can be made to
serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or
nursery rhyme is safe from his hermeneutics. "Should he, for
instance, demand as his property the nursery 'Song of
Sixpence,' his claim would be easily established,--obviously
the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the four-and-twenty hours,
and the pie that holds them is the underlying earth covered
with the overarching sky,--how true a touch of nature it is
that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the
birds begin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out
his money is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of
Danae; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the
moonlight; the Maid is the 'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises
before the Sun, her master, and hangs out the clouds, his
clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird, who so
tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour
of sunrise." In all this interpretation there is no a priori
improbability, save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and
completeness. That some points, at least, of the story are
thus derived from antique interpretations of physical events,
is in harmony with all that we know concerning nursery rhymes.
In short, "the time-honoured rhyme really wants but one thing
to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof by some
argument more valid than analogy." The character of the
argument which is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to
the rhyme about Jack and Jill, explained some time since in
the paper on "The Origins of FolkLore." If the argument be
thought valid which shows these ill-fated children to be the
spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists, not in
the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but
in the fact that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish
peasants of our own day, the story of Jack and Jill is
actually given as an explanation of the moon-spots. To the
neglect of this distinction between what is plausible and what
is supported by direct evidence, is due much of the crude
speculation which encumbers the study of myths.
[156] Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of
Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B.
Tylor. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1871.
It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the
wider inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of
thinking in which myths originated, that we can best
appreciate the practical value of that union of speculative
boldness and critical sobriety which everywhere distinguishes
him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer who can treat of
primitive religious ideas without losing his head over
allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a
savage is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a
Rosicrucian, but a plain man who draws conclusions like
ourselves, though with feeble intelligence and scanty
knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such modern writers
as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is no part
of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of
a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which
we shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their
primitive constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs
which, in an advanced stage of culture, seem meaningless save
when characterized by some quaintly wrought device of symbolic
explanation, did not seem meaningless in the lower culture
which gave birth to them. Myths, like words, survive their
primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is part and
parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation
which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one
which would most readily occur to any one thinking on the
theme with which the myth is concerned. But by and by the mode
of philosophizing has changed; explanations which formerly
seemed quite obvious no longer occur to any one, but the myth
has acquired an independent substantive existence, and
continues to be handed down from parents to children as
something true, though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly,
the myth itself gradually fades from remembrance, often
leaving behind it some utterly unintelligible custom or
seemingly absurd superstitious notion. For example,--to recur
to an illustration already cited in a previous paper,--it is
still believed here and there by some venerable granny that it
is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the
belief to the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient
existence, would be making one of the blunders which are
always committed by those who reason a priori about historical
matters without following the historical method. At an earlier
date the superstition existed in the shape of a belief that
the killing of a robin portends some calamity; in a still
earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again,
still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward
reveals that the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the
fact that he is the bird of Thor, the lightning god; and
finally we reach that primitive stage of philosophizing in
which the lightning is explained as a red bird dropping from
its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the belief
that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of a
drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case
of survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition
it is held that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned
himself; and thus we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of
drowning as the seizing of the unfortunate person by the
water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry at being deprived
of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against
the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him.
The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of
drowning as the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are
parts of that primitive philosophy of nature in which all
forces objectively existing are conceived as identical with
the force subjectively known as volition. It is this
philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr.
Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism,"
which we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous
exemplifications. When we have properly characterized some of
the processes which the untrained mind habitually goes
through, we shall have incidentally arrived at a fair solution
of the genesis of mythology.
Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or
uncultivated mind reaches all manner of apparently fanciful
conclusions through reckless reasoning from analogy. It is
through the operation of certain laws of ideal association
that all human thinking, that of the highest as well as that
of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law
of gravitation, as well as the invention of such a
superstition as the Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of
association of ideas. The difference between the scientific
and the mythologic inference consists solely in the number of
checks which in the former case combine to prevent any other
than the true conclusion from being framed into a proposition
to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences
have taught the modern that there are many associations of
ideas which do not correspond to any actual connection of
cause and effect in the world of phenomena; and he has learned
accordingly to apply to his newly framed notions the rigid
test of verification. Besides which the same accumulation of
experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal
associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed
notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the
modern savage who is to some extent his counterpart, must
reason without the aid of these multifarious checks. That
immense mass of associations which answer to what are called
physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized modern
have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind
of the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of
experimentally testing any of his newly framed notions, save
perhaps a few of the commonest. Consequently there is nothing
but superficial analogy to guide the course of his thought
hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he arrives
will be determined by associations of ideas occurring
apparently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies
with which European and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the
framing of which the myth-maker was but reasoning according to
the best methods at his command. To this simplest class, in
which the association of ideas is determined by mere analogy,
belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of
wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is
about to trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may
escape the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his
pocket,--a symbolic way of repudiating manhood."[157] A
similar style of thinking underlies the mediaeval
necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his enemy
and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the
enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in
a previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be
administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old
coat which is imagined to cover him. The principle involved
here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and
is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates
in his doughty general who struts through a field of cabbages
or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed
a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies
that the breaking of a mirror heralds a death in the family,--
probably because of the destruction of the reflected human
image; that the "hair of the dog that bit you" will prevent
hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that the tears shed by
human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring down
showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's
remark, "that the king had been ill, and that people generally
expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest lion in
the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. 'So wild and
capricious is the human mind,' " observes the elegant
letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the
thought was neither wild nor capricious; it was simply such an
argument from analogy as the educated world has at length
painfully learned to be worthless, but which, it is not too
much to declare, would to this day carry considerable weight
to the minds of four fifths of the human race." Upon such
symbolism are based most of the practices of divination and
the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story,
that when two brothers were once taken ill together,
Hippokrates, the physician, concluded from the coincidence
that they were twins, but Poseidonios, the astrologer,
considered rather that they were born under the same
constellation; we may add that either argument would be
thought reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is
attacked, the besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is
near the moon. The moon represents the fortress; and if it
appears below the companion planet, the besiegers will carry
the day, otherwise they will be repulsed. Equally primitive
and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the memorable
day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as to
the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by
throwing a stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss,
sign of damnation!" The tree being a large one and very near
at hand, the result of the experiment was reassuring, and the
young philosopher walked away without further misgivings
concerning this momentous question.[158]
[157] Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.
[158] Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration,
see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures,"
supra, p. 55.
When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result
only in speculations of this childlike character, is
confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see
what he will make of them. His practical knowledge of
psychology is too limited to admit of his distinguishing
between the solidity of waking experience and what we may call
the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have
learned that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the
truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse
triumph of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors
in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has
not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard
the utterances of the dream as being purely subjective
phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the
visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much
objective reality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours.
When the savage relates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain
dogs, dead warriors, or demons last night, the implication
being that the things seen were objects external to himself.
As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language fails to state the
difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and
dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it
not only results that he cannot truly represent this
difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent
it to himself. Hence in the absence of an alternative
interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells
his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has been away and came
back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among
various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the
traditions of the early civilized races."[159]
[159] Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36,
"The Origin of Animal Worship."
Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER
SELF, for upon this is based the great mass of crude inference
which constitutes the primitive man's philosophy of nature.
The hypothesis of the OTHER SELF, which serves to account for
the savage's wanderings during sleep in strange lands and
among strange people, serves also to account for the presence
in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be
dead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and
converses with the other selves of his dead brethren, joins
with them in the hunt, or sits down with them to the wild
cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an ever-present
world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire experience
of uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. The
existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute
of religious belief has often been hastily asserted and as
often called in question. But there is no question that, while
many savages are unable to frame a conception so general as
that of godhood, on the other hand no tribe has ever been
found so low in the scale of intelligence as not to have
framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities,
capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with.
Indeed it is not improbable a priori that the original
inference involved in the notion of the other self may be
sufficiently simple and obvious to fall within the capacity of
animals even less intelligent than uncivilized man. An
authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being
accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his
haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball
placed on the chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump
down and play with him.[160] Such a fact as this is quite in
harmony with Auguste Comte's suggestion that such intelligent
animals as dogs, apes, and elephants may be capable of forming
a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of the terrier here
rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the same
sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which
implies, not that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a
soul, but that in his mind the distinction between life and
inanimate existence has never been thoroughly established.
Just this confusion between things living and things not
living is present throughout the whole philosophy of
fetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things
dreamed, which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to
this same twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man
has not yet clearly demonstrated his immeasurable superiority
to the brutes.[161]
[160] See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The
circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition
that the sitting up is intended to attract the master's
attention. The dog has frequently been seen trying to soften
the heart of the ball, while observed unawares by his master.
[161] "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr.
Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a special
providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day
life than is the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain
correspondent of Nature, to whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The
terrier is held to have had 'a few fetichistic notions,'
because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of
a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with which
he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which,
says the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come
down and play with him. We consider it more reasonable to
suppose that a dog who had been drilled into a belief that
standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing to his master,
and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on his
hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of
getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for
him, may have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather
from force of habit and eagerness of desire than because he
had any fetichistic notions, or expected the india-rubber ball
to listen to his supplications. We admit, however, to avoid
polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the dog is
capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1,
1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on
in the dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I
will only add another fact of similar import. "The tendency in
savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are
animated by spiritual or living essences is perhaps
illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a
full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight
breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have
been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it.
As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog
growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned
to himself, in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement
without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some
strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his
territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without
insisting upon all the details of this explanation, one may
readily grant, I think, that in the dog, as in the savage,
there is an undisturbed association between motion and a
living motor agency; and that out of a multitude of just such
associations common to both, the savage, with his greater
generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.
The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away
from the body and returning to it, receives decisive
confirmation from the phenomena of fainting, trance,
catalepsy, and ecstasy,[162] which occur less rarely among
savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than among
civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer,
"is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered;
for how else does it happen that the other self on returning
denies all knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this
supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' by some other
being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and
insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we
recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to have
their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves should get
carried off and be exposed to foul play,[163] we must readily
admit that the weird reflection of the person and imitation of
the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools will go far to
intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but
uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe
within two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the
voices of mocking fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage
might well regard as the utterances of his other self.
[162] Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of
these Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body
by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy,
ekstasis, a displacement or removal of the soul from the body,
into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing,
crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the literal
belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such words
as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or
transported."
[163] Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation
of pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been
asked by my three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain
picture would bite him if he were to go near it; and I can
remember that, in my own childhood, when reading a book about
insects, which had the formidable likeness of a spider stamped
on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest my finger
should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held the
book.
With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken,
lest it fall into the hands of some enemy who may injure him
by conjuring with it, may be compared the reluctance which he
often shows toward telling his name, or mentioning the name of
his friend, or king, or tutelar ghost-deity. In fetichistic
thought, the name is an entity mysteriously associated with
its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its getting
into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly
originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may
resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter
reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the small pox, but
will call it "the chief" or "jungle-leaves"; the Laplander
speaks of the bear as the "old man with the fur coat"; in
Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord"; while in
more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talk
of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also
compare such expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for
the Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil
mortuis nisi bonum had most likely at one time a fetichistic
flavour.
In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above
specified, the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously
"tabu," that common words and even syllables resembling that
name in sound must be omitted from the language. In New
Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or "knife," it became
necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, "star,"
had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became
tiai, etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are
played with the languages of these islands by this
ever-recurring necessity. Among the Kafirs the women have come
to speak a different dialect from the men, because words
resembling the names of their lords or male relatives are in
like manner "tabu." The student of human culture will trace
among such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's
unwillingness to pronounce the name of Jehovah; and hence we
may perhaps have before us the ultimate source of the horror
with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards such forms of light
swearing--"Mon Dieu," etc.--as are still tolerated on the
continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in
Puritanic England and America. The reader interested in this
group of ideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of
Mankind, pp. 142, 363; Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th
edition, Vol. II. p. 37; Mackay, Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146.
Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a
widely diffused family of legends, which show that a man's
shadow has been generally regarded not only as an entity, but
as a sort of spiritual attendant of the body, which under
certain circumstances it may permanently forsake. It is in
strict accordance with this idea that not only in the classic
languages, but in various barbaric tongues, the word for
"shadow" expresses also the soul or other self. Tasmanians,
Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus
are cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the
identity of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in
dreams; the Basutos going so far as to think "that if a man
walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in
the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person
is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily
detached from his body, and the convalescent is at times
"reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was safely
settled down in him." If the sick man has been plunged into
stupor, it is because his other self has travelled away as far
as the brink of the river of death, but not being allowed to
cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon a
similar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and
raise a hue and cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus,
continues Mr. Tylor, "in various countries the bringing back
of lost souls becomes a regular part of the sorcerer's or
priest's profession."[164] On Aryan soil we find the notion of
a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date in
the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath
while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The
primeval conception reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm,
in Dante's reference to his living contemporaries whose souls
he met with in the vaults of hell, while their bodies were
still walking about on the earth, inhabited by devils.
[164] Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a
dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance
departed from it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions,
Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, p. 123.
The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and
supposes the shadow to depart with the sickness and death of
the body, would seem liable to be attended with some
difficulties in the way of verification, even to the dim
intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of identifying
soul and breath is borne out by all primeval experience. The
breath, which really quits the body at its decease, has
furnished the chief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew,
the Sanskrit, and the classic tongues; not only to German and
English, where geist, and ghost, according to Max Muller, have
the meaning of "breath," and are akin to such words as gas,
gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbaric languages.
Among the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in
West Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze
which passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and
the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two separate
souls, the breath and the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of
Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was held
over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire
strength and knowledge for its future use..... Their state of
mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can
still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death
like a little white cloud."[165] It is kept up, too, in
Lancashire, where a well-known witch died a few years since;
"but before she could 'shuffle off this mortal coil' she must
needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to some trusty successor.
An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring township was
consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was
immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed
between them has never fully transpired, but it is confidently
affirmed that at the close of the interview this associate
RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTO HER MOUTH AND WITH IT
HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thus ceased to exist,
but her powers for good or evil were transferred to her
companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to
Blackburn we can point out a farmhouse at no great distance
with whose thrifty matron no neighbouring farmer will yet dare
to quarrel."[166]
[165] Tylor, op. cit. I. 391.
[166] Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867, p.
210.
Of the theory of embodiment there will be occasion to speak
further on. At present let us not pass over the fact that the
other self is not only conceived as shadow or breath, which
can at times quit the body during life, but is also supposed
to become temporarily embodied in the visible form of some
bird or beast. In discussing elsewhere the myth of Bishop
Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the
form of a rat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we
noticed the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne
along in the night-wind, have taken on the semblance of
howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these quaint ideas
are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock
(live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant
place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing
spirit which has already left his body and so conveying it
back."[167] In Castren's great work on Finnish mythology, we
find the story of the giant who could not be killed because he
kept his soul hidden in a twelve-headed snake which he carried
in a bag as he rode on horseback; only when the secret was
discovered and the snake carefully killed, did the giant yield
up his life. In this Finnish legend we have one of the
thousand phases of the story of the "Giant who had no Heart in
his Body," but whose heart was concealed, for safe keeping, in
a duck's egg, or in a pigeon, carefully disposed in some
belfry at the world's end a million miles away, or encased in
a wellnigh infinite series of Chinese boxes.[168] Since, in
spite of all these precautions, the poor giant's heart
invariably came to grief, we need not wonder at the Karen
superstition that the soul is in danger when it quits the body
on its excursions, as exemplified in countless Indo-European
stories of the accidental killing of the weird mouse or pigeon
which embodies the wandering spirit. Conversely it is held
that the detachment of the other self is fraught with danger
to the self which remains. In the philosophy of "wraiths" and
"fetches," the appearance of a double, like that which
troubled Mistress Affery in her waking dreams of Mr.
Flintwinch, has been from time out of mind a signal of alarm.
"In New Zealand it is ominous to see the figure of an absent
person, for if it be shadowy and the face not visible, his
death may erelong be expected, but if the face be seen he is
dead already. A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story)
were seated round a fire in the open air, when there appeared,
seen only by two of them, the figure of a relative, left ill
at home; they exclaimed, the figure vanished, and on the
return of the party it appeared that the sick man had died
about the time of the vision."[169] The belief in wraiths has
survived into modern times, and now and then appears in the
records of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as
"spiritualism," as, for example, in the case of the lady who
"thought she saw her own father look in at the church-window
at the moment he was dying in his own house."
[167] Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
[168] In Russia the souls of the dead are supposed to be
embodied in pigeons or crows. "Thus when the Deacon Theodore
and his three schismatic brethren were burnt in 1681, the
souls of the martyrs, as the 'Old Believers' affirm, appeared
in the air as pigeons. In Volhynia dead children are supposed
to come back in the spring to their native village under the
semblance of swallows and other small birds, and to seek by
soft twittering or song to console their sorrowing parents."
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 118.
[169] Tylor, op. cit. I. 404.
The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine which
identifies soul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in
barbaric thought the other self is supposed to resemble the
material self with which it has customarily been associated.
In various savage superstitions the minute resemblance of soul
to body is forcibly stated. The Australian, for instance, not
content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb of
the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated
from throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer
crucifixion to decapitation, that their souls may not wander
headless about the spirit-world.[170] Thus we see how far
removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval
theory of the soul or other self that figures in dreamland. So
grossly materialistic is the primitive conception that the
savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the coffin of his
dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if it
likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in
some parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter,
rides by attended by his furious host, the windows in every
sick-room are opened, in order that the soul, if it chooses to
depart, may not be hindered from joining in the headlong
chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after the Indians of North
America had spent a riotous night in singeing an unfortunate
captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like the
fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive
away the distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier
feeling, the Congo negroes abstained for a whole year after a
death from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the
delicate substance of the ghost"; and even now, "it remains a
German peasant saying that it is wrong to slam a door, lest
one should pinch a soul in it."[172] Dante's experience with
the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished at his
weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied
by the sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back
in the night to suckle the baby she has left on earth may be
known by the hollow pressed down in the bed where she lay."
Almost universally ghosts, however impervious to thrust of
sword or shot of pistol, can eat and drink like Squire
Westerns. And lastly, we have the grotesque conception of
souls sufficiently material to be killed over again, as in the
case of the negro widows who, wishing to marry a second time,
will go and duck themselves in the pond, in order to drown the
souls of their departed husbands, which are supposed to cling
about their necks; while, according to the Fiji theory, the
ghost of every dead warrior must go through a terrible fight
with Samu and his brethren, in which, if he succeeds, he will
enter Paradise, but if he fails he will be killed over again
and finally eaten by the dreaded Samu and his unearthly
company.
[171] Tylor, op. cit. I. 407.
[172] Tylor, op. cit. I. 410. In the next stage of survival
this belief will take the shape that it is wrong to slam a
door, no reason being assigned; and in the succeeding stage,
when the child asks why it is naughty to slam a door, he will
be told, because it is an evidence of bad temper. Thus do
old-world fancies disappear before the inroads of the
practical sense.
From the conception of souls embodied in beast-forms, as above
illustrated, it is not a wide step to the conception of
beast-souls which, like human souls, survive the death of the
tangible body. The wide-spread superstitions concerning
werewolves and swan-maidens, and the hardly less general
belief in metempsychosis, show that primitive culture has not
arrived at the distinction attained by modern philosophy
between the immortal man and the soulless brute. Still more
direct evidence is furnished by sundry savage customs. The
Kafir who has killed an elephant will cry that he did n't mean
to do it, and, lest the elephant's soul should still seek
vengeance, he will cut off and bury the trunk, so that the
mighty beast may go crippled to the spirit-land. In like
manner, the Samoyeds, after shooting a bear, will gather about
the body offering excuses and laying the blame on the
Russians; and the American redskin will even put the pipe of
peace into the dead animal's mouth, and beseech him to forgive
the deed. In Assam it is believed that the ghosts of slain
animals will become in the next world the property of the
hunter who kills them; and the Kamtchadales expressly declare
that all animals, even flies and bugs, will live after
death,--a belief, which, in our own day, has been indorsed on
philosophical grounds by an eminent living naturalist.[173]
The Greenlanders, too, give evidence of the same belief by
supposing that when after an exhausting fever the patient
comes up in unprecedented health and vigour, it is because he
has lost his former soul and had it replaced by that of a
young child or a reindeer. In a recent work in which the
crudest fancies of primeval savagery are thinly disguised in a
jargon learned from the superficial reading of modern books of
science, M. Figuier maintains that human souls are for the
most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; in general,
the souls of precocious musical children like Mozart come from
nightingales, while the souls of great architects have passed
into them from beavers, etc., etc.[174]
[173] Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 97-99.
[174] Figuier, The To-morrow of Death, p. 247.
The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just
slain is in some parts of the world extended to the case of
plants. When the Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he
is about to cut down, it is obviously because he regards the
tree as endowed with a soul or ghost which in the next life
may need to be propitiated. And the doctrine of transmigration
distinctly includes plants along with animals among the future
existences into which the human soul may pass.
As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to
a much less conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible
that the savage should attribute souls to them. But the
primitive process of anthropomorphisation does not end here.
Not only the horse and dog, the bamboo, and the oak-tree, but
even lifeless objects, such as the hatchet, or bow and arrows,
or food and drink of the dead man, possess other selves which
pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other contemporary
savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this is their
belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away
flies its soul for the service of the gods." The Algonquins
told Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows,
no less than men and women, it follows, of course, that these
shadows (or souls) must pass along with human shadows (or
souls) into the spirit-land. In this we see how simple and
consistent is the logic which guides the savage, and how
inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our
minds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the
barbaric world. However absurd the belief that pots and
kettles have souls may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only
belief which can be held consistently by the savage to whom
pots and kettles, no less than human friends or enemies, may
appear in his dreams; who sees them followed by shadows as
they are moved about; who hears their voices, dull or ringing,
when they are struck; and who watches their doubles
fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across
the stream.[175] To minds, even in civilized countries, which
are unused to the severe training of science, no stronger
evidence can be alleged than what is called "the evidence of
the senses"; for it is only long familiarity with science
which teaches us that the evidence of the senses is
trustworthy only in so far as it is correctly interpreted by
reason. For the truth of his belief in the ghosts of men and
beasts, trees and axes, the savage has undeniably the evidence
of his senses which have so often seen, heard, and handled
these other selves.
[175] Here, as usually, the doctrine of metempsychosis comes
in to complete the proof. "Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in
Keeling Island, who had a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like
a doll; this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead
man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it
danced about convulsively like a table or a hat at a modern
spirit-seance." Tylor, op. cit. II. 139.
The funeral ceremonies of uncultured races freshly illustrate
this crude philosophy, and receive fresh illustration from it.
On the primitive belief in the ghostly survival of persons and
objects rests the almost universal custom of sacrificing the
wives, servants, horses, and dogs of the departed chief of the
tribe, as well as of presenting at his shrine sacred offerings
of food, ornaments, weapons, and money. Among the Kayans the
slaves who are killed at their master's tomb are enjoined to
take great care of their master's ghost, to wash and shampoo
it, and to nurse it when sick. Other savages think that "all
whom they kill in this world shall attend them as slaves after
death," and for this reason the thrifty Dayaks of Borneo until
lately would not allow their young men to marry until they had
acquired some post mortem property by procuring at least one
human head. It is hardly necessary to do more than allude to
the Fiji custom of strangling all the wives of the deceased at
his funeral, or to the equally well-known Hindu rite of
suttee. Though, as Wilson has shown, the latter rite is not
supported by any genuine Vedic authority, but only by a
shameless Brahmanic corruption of the sacred text, Mr. Tylor
is nevertheless quite right in arguing that unless the
horrible custom had received the sanction of a public opinion
bequeathed from pre-Vedic times, the Brahmans would have had
no motive for fraudulently reviving it; and this opinion is
virtually established by the fact of the prevalence of widow
sacrifice among Gauls, Scandinavians, Slaves, and other
European Aryans.[176] Though under English rule the rite has
been forcibly suppressed, yet the archaic sentiments which so
long maintained it are not yet extinct. Within the present
year there has appeared in the newspapers a not improbable
story of a beautiful and accomplished Hindu lady who, having
become the wife of a wealthy Englishman, and after living
several years in England amid the influences of modern
society, nevertheless went off and privately burned herself to
death soon after her husband's decease.
[176] Tylor, op. cit. I. 414-422.
The reader who thinks it far-fetched to interpret funeral
offerings of food, weapons, ornaments, or money, on the theory
of object-souls, will probably suggest that such offerings may
be mere memorials of affection or esteem for the dead man.
Such, indeed, they have come to be in many countries after
surviving the phase of culture in which they originated; but
there is ample evidence to show that at the outset they were
presented in the belief that their ghosts would be eaten or
otherwise employed by the ghost of the dead man. The stout
club which is buried with the dead Fiji sends its soul along
with him that he may be able to defend himself against the
hostile ghosts which will lie in ambush for him on the road to
Mbulu, seeking to kill and eat him. Sometimes the club is
afterwards removed from the grave as of no further use, since
its ghost is all that the dead man needs. In like manner, "as
the Greeks gave the dead man the obolus for Charon's toll, and
the old Prussians furnished him with spending money, to buy
refreshment on his weary journey, so to this day German
peasants bury a corpse with money in his mouth or hand," and
this is also said to be one of the regular ceremonies of an
Irish wake. Of similar purport were the funeral feasts and
oblations of food in Greece and Italy, the "rice-cakes made
with ghee" destined for the Hindu sojourning in Yama's
kingdom, and the meat and gruel offered by the Chinaman to the
manes of his ancestors. "Many travellers have described the
imagination with which the Chinese make such offerings. It is
that the spirits of the dead consume the impalpable essence of
the food, leaving behind its coarse material substance,
wherefore the dutiful sacrificers, having set out sumptuous
feasts for ancestral souls, allow them a proper time to
satisfy their appetite, and then fall to themselves."[177] So
in the Homeric sacrifice to the gods, after the deity has
smelled the sweet savour and consumed the curling steam that
rises ghost-like from the roasting viands, the assembled
warriors devour the remains."[178]
[177] Tylor, op. cit. I. 435, 446; II. 30, 36.
[178] According to the Karens, blindness occurs when the SOUL
OF THE EYE is eaten by demons. Id., II. 353.
Thus far the course of fetichistic thought which we have
traced out, with Mr. Tylor's aid, is such as is not always
obvious to the modern inquirer without considerable concrete
illustration. The remainder of the process, resulting in that
systematic and complete anthropomorphisation of nature which
has given rise to mythology, may be more succinctly described.
Gathering together the conclusions already obtained, we find
that daily or frequent experience of the phenomena of shadows
and dreams has combined with less frequent experience of the
phenomena of trance, ecstasy, and insanity, to generate in the
mind of uncultured man the notion of a twofold existence
appertaining alike to all animate or inanimate objects: as
all alike possess material bodies, so all alike possess ghosts
or souls. Now when the theory of object-souls is expanded into
a general doctrine of spirits, the philosophic scheme of
animism is completed. Once habituated to the conception of
souls of knives and tobacco-pipes passing to the land of
ghosts, the savage cannot avoid carrying the interpretation
still further, so that wind and water, fire and storm, are
accredited with indwelling spirits akin by nature to the soul
which inhabits the human frame. That the mighty spirit or
demon by whose impelling will the trees are rooted up and tile
storm-clouds driven across the sky should resemble a freed
human soul, is a natural inference, since uncultured man has
not attained to the conception of physical force acting in
accordance with uniform methods, and hence all events are to
his mind the manifestations of capricious volition. If the
fire burns down his hut, it is because the fire is a person
with a soul, and is angry with him, and needs to be coaxed
into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or sacrifice. Thus the
savage has a priori no alternative but to regard fire-soul as
something akin to human-soul; and in point of fact we find
that savage philosophy makes no distinction between the human
ghost and the elemental demon or deity. This is sufficiently
proved by the universal prevalence of the worship of
ancestors. The essential principle of manes-worship is that
the tribal chief or patriarch, who has governed the community
during life, continues also to govern it after death,
assisting it in its warfare with hostile tribes, rewarding
brave warriors, and punishing traitors and cowards. Thus from
the conception of the living king we pass to the notion of
what Mr. Spencer calls "the god-king," and thence to the
rudimentary notion of deity. Among such higher savages as the
Zulus, the doctrine of divine ancestors has been developed to
the extent of recognizing a first ancestor, the Great Father,
Unkulunkulu, who made the world. But in the stratum of savage
thought in which barbaric or Aryan folk-lore is for the most
part based, we find no such exalted speculation. The ancestors
of the rude Veddas and of the Guinea negroes, the Hindu pitris
(patres, "fathers"), and the Roman manes have become elemental
deities which send rain or sunshine, health or sickness,
plenty or famine, arid to which their living offspring appeal
for guidance amid the vicissitudes of life.[179] The theory of
embodiment, already alluded to, shows how thoroughly the
demons which cause disease are identified with human and
object souls. In Australasia it is a dead man's ghost which
creeps up into the liver of the impious wretch who has
ventured to pronounce his name; while conversely in the
well-known European theory of demoniacal possession, it is a
fairy from elf-land, or an imp from hell, which has entered
the body of the sufferer. In the close kinship, moreover,
between disease-possession and oracle-possession, where the
body of tile Pythia, or the medicine-man, is placed under the
direct control of some great deity,[180] we may see how by
insensible transitions the conception of the human ghost
passes into the conception of the spiritual numen, or
divinity.
[179] The following citation is interesting as an illustration
of the directness of descent from heathen manes-worship to
Christian saint-worship: "It is well known that Romulus,
mindful of his own adventurous infancy, became after death a
Roman deity, propitious to the health and safety of young
children, so that nurses and mothers would carry sickly
infants to present them in his little round temple at the foot
of the Palatine. In after ages the temple was replaced by the
church of St. Theodorus, and there Dr. Conyers Middleton, who
drew public attention to its curious history, used to look in
and see ten or a dozen women, each with a sick child in her
lap, sitting in silent reverence before the altar of the
saint. The ceremony of blessing children, especially after
vaccination, may still be seen there on Thursday mornings."
Op. cit. II. 111.
[180] Want of space prevents me from remarking at length upon
Mr. Tylor's admirable treatment of the phenomena of oracular
inspiration. Attention should be called, however, to the
brilliant explanation of the importance accorded by all
religions to the rite of fasting. Prolonged abstinence from
food tends to bring on a mental state which is favourable to
visions. The savage priest or medicine-man qualifies himself
for the performance of his duties by fasting, and where this
is not sufficient, often uses intoxicating drugs; whence the
sacredness of the hasheesh, as also of the Vedic soma-juice.
The practice of fasting among civilized peoples is an instance
of survival.
To pursue this line of inquiry through the countless nymphs
and dryads and nixies of the higher nature-worship up to the
Olympian divinities of classic polytheism, would be to enter
upon the history of religious belief, and in so doing to lose
sight of our present purpose, which has merely been to show by
what mental process the myth-maker can speak of natural
objects in language which implies that they are animated
persons. Brief as our account of this process has been, I
believe that enough has been said, not only to reveal the
inadequacy of purely philological solutions (like those
contained in Max Muller's famous Essay) to explain the growth
of myths, but also to exhibit the vast importance for this
purpose of the kind of psychological inquiry into the mental
habits of savages which Mr. Tylor has so ably conducted.
Indeed, however lacking we may still be in points of detail, I
think we have already reached a very satisfactory explanation
of the genesis of mythology. Since the essential
characteristic of a myth is that it is an attempt to explain
some natural phenomenon by endowing with human feelings and
capacities the senseless factors in the phenomenon, and since
it has here been shown how uncultured man, by the best use he
can make of his rude common sense, must inevitably come, and
has invariably come, to regard all objects as endowed with
souls, and all nature as peopled with supra-human entities
shaped after the general pattern of the human soul, I am
inclined to suspect that we have got very near to the root of
the whole matter. We can certainly find no difficulty in
seeing why a water-spout should be described in the "Arabian
Nights" as a living demon: "The sea became troubled before
them, and there arose from it a black pillar, ascending
towards the sky, and approaching the meadow,.... and behold it
was a Jinni, of gigantic stature." We can see why the Moslem
camel-driver should find it most natural to regard the
whirling simoom as a malignant Jinni; we may understand how it
is that the Persian sees in bodily shape the scarlet fever as
"a blushing maid with locks of flame and cheeks all rosy red";
and we need not consider it strange that the primeval Aryan
should have regarded the sun as a voyager, a climber, or an
archer, and the clouds as cows driven by the wind-god Hermes
to their milking. The identification of William Tell with the
sun becomes thoroughly intelligible; nor can we be longer
surprised at the conception of the howling night-wind as a
ravenous wolf. When pots and kettles are thought to have souls
that live hereafter, there is no difficulty in understanding
how the blue sky can have been regarded as the sire of gods
and men. And thus, as the elves and bogarts of popular lore
are in many cases descended from ancient divinities of Olympos
and Valhalla, so these in turn must acknowledge their
ancestors in the shadowy denizens of the primeval ghost-world.