Primitive Culture/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
ANIMISM (continued).
Journey of the Soul to the Land of the Dead — Visits by the Living to the Regions of Departed Souls — Connexion of such legends with myths of Sunset: the Land of the Dead thus imagined as in the West — Realization of current religious ideas, whether of savage or civilized theology, in narratives of visits to the Regions of Souls — Localization of the Future Life — Distant earthly region: Earthly Paradise, Isles of the Blest — Subterranean Hades or Sheol — Sun, Moon, Stars — Heaven — Historical course of belief as to such localization — Nature of Future Life — Continuance-theory, apparently original, belongs especially to the lower races — Transitional theories — Retribution-theory, apparently derived, belongs especially to the higher races — Doctrine of Moral Retribution as developed in the higher culture — Survey of Doctrine of Future State, from savage to civilized stages — Its practical effect on the sentiment and conduct of Mankind.
The departure of the dead man's soul from the world of living men, its journey to the distant land of spirits, the life it will lead in its new home, are topics on which the lower races for the most part hold explicit doctrines. When these fall under the inspection of a modern ethnographer, he treats them as myths; often to a high degree intelligible and rational in their origin, consistent and regular in their structure, but not the less myths. Few subjects have aroused the savage poet's mind to such bold and vivid imagery as the thought of the hereafter. Yet also a survey of its details among mankind displays in the midst of variety a regular recurrence of episode which brings the ever-recurring question, how far is this correspondence due to transmission of the same thought from tribe to tribe, and how far to similar but independent development in distant lands?
From the savage state up into the midst of civilization, the comparison may be carried through. Low races and high, in region after region, can point out the very spot whence the flitting souls start to travel toward their new home. At the extreme western cape of Vanua Levu, a calm and solemn place of cliff and forest, the souls of the Fijian dead embark for the judgement-seat of Ndengei, and thither the living come in pilgrimage, thinking to see their ghosts and gods.[1] The Baperi of South Africa will venture to creep a little way into their cavern of Marimatlé, whence men and animals came forth into the world, and whither souls return at death.[2] In Mexico the cavern of Chalchatongo led to the plains of paradise, and the Aztec name of Mictlan, 'Land of the Dead,' now Mitla, keeps up the remembrance of another subterranean temple which opened the way to the sojourn of the blessed.[3] How naturally a dreary place, fit rather for the dead than the living, suggests the thought of an entrance to the land of the departed, is seen in the fictitious travels known under the name of Sir John Mandevill, where the description of the Vale Perilous, adapted from the terrible valley which Friar Odoric had seen full of corpses and heard resound with strange noise of drums, has this appropriate ending: 'This vale es full of deuilles and all way has bene; and men saise in that cuntree that thare es ane entree to hell.'[4] In more genuine folklore, North German peasants still remember on the banks of the swampy Drömling the place of access to the land of departed souls.[5] To us Englishmen the shores of lake Avernus, trodden daily by our tourists, are more familiar than the Irish analogue of the place, Lough Derg, with its cavern entrance of St. Patrick's Purgatory leading down to the awful world below. The mass of mystic details need not be repeated here of the soul's dread journey by caverns and rocky paths and weary plains, over steep and slippery mountains, by frail bark or giddy bridge across gulfs or rushing rivers, abiding the fierce onset of the soul-destroyer or the doom of the stern guardian of the other world. But before describing the spirit-world which is the end of the soul's journey, let us see what the proof is which sustains the belief in both. The lower races claim to hold their doctrines of the future life on strong tradition, direct revelation, and even personal experience. To them the land of souls is a discovered country, from whose bourne many a traveller returns.
Among the legendary visits to the world beyond the grave, there are some that seem pure myth, without a touch of real personal history. Ojibwa, the eponymic hero of his North American tribe, as one of his many exploits descended to the subterranean world of departed spirits, and came up again to earth.[6] When the Kamchadals were asked how they knew so well what happens to men after death, they could answer with their legend of Haetsh the first man. He died and went down into the world below, and a long while after came up again to his former dwelling, and there, standing above by the smoke-hole, he talked down to his kindred in the house and told them about the life to come; it was then that his two daughters whom he had left below followed him in anger and smote him so that he died a second time, and now he is chief in the lower world, and receives the Italmen when they die and rise anew.[7] Thus, again, in the great Finnish epic, the Kalewala, one great episode is Wainamoinen's visit to the land of the dead. Seeking the last charm-words to build his boat, the hero travelled with quick steps week after week through bush and wood till he came to the Tuonela river, and saw before him the island of Tuoni the god of death. Loudly he called to Tuoni's daughter to bring the ferry-boat across:—
'She, the virgin of Manala,
She, the washer of the clothing,
She, the wringer of the linen,
By the river of Tuonela,
In the under-world Manala,
Spake in words, and this their meaning,
This their answer to the hearer:—
"Forth the boat shall come from hither,
When the reason thou hast given
That hath brought thee to Manala,
Neither slain by any sickness,
Nor by Death dragged from the living,
Nor destroyed by other ending."'
Wainamoinen replies with lying reasons. Iron brought him, he says, but Tuoni's daughter answers that no blood drips from his garment; Fire brought him, he says, but she answers that his locks are unsinged, and at last he tells his real mission. Then she ferries him over, and Tuonetar the hostess brings him beer in the two-eared jug, but Wainamoinen can see the frogs and worms within and will not drink, for it was not to drain Manala's beer-jug he had come. He lay in the bed of Tuoni, and meanwhile they spread the hundred nets of iron and copper across the river that he might not escape; but he turned into a reed in the swamp, and as a snake crept through the meshes: —
'Tuoni's son with hooked fingers
Iron-pointed hooked fingers
Went to draw his nets at morning—
Salmon-trout he found a hundred,
Thousands of the little fishes,
But he found no Wainamoinen,
Not the old friend of the billows.
Then the ancient Wainamoinen,
Come from out of Tuoni's kingdom,
Spake in words, and this their meaning,
This their answer to the hearer:—
"Never mayst thou, God of goodness,
Never suffer such another
Who of self-will goes to Mana,
Thrusts his way to Tuoni's kingdom.
Many they who travel thither,
Few who thence have found the home-way,
From the houses of Tuoni
From the dwellings of Manala."'[8]
It is enough to name the familiar classic analogues of these mythic visits to Hades,—the descent of Dionysos to bring back Semele, of Orpheus to bring back his beloved Eurydike, of Herakles to fetch up the three-headed Kerberos at the command of his master Eurystheus; above all, the voyage of Odysseus to the ends of the deep-flowing Ocean, to the clouded city of Kimmerian men, where shining Helios looks not down with his rays, and deadly night stretches always over wretched mortals, — thence they passed along the banks to the entrance of the land where the shades of the departed, quickened for a while by the taste of sacrificial blood, talked with the hero and showed him the regions of their dismal home.[9]
The scene of the descent into Hades is in very deed enacted day by day before our eyes, as it was before the eyes of the ancient myth-maker, who watched the sun descend to the dark under-world, and return at dawn to the land of living men. These heroic legends lie in close-knit connexion with episodes of solar myth. It is by the simplest poetic adaptation of the Sun's daily life, typifying Man's life in dawning beauty, in mid-day glory, in evening death, that mythic fancy even fixed the belief in the religions of the world, that the Land of Departed Souls lies in the Far West or the World Below. How deeply the myth of the Sunset has entered into the doctrine of men concerning a Future State, how the West and the Under- World have become by mere imaginative analogy Regions of the Dead, how the quaint day-dreams of savage poets may pass into honoured dogmas of classic sages and modern divines, — all this the crowd of details here cited from the wide range of culture stand to prove.
Moreover, visits from or to the dead are matters of personal experience and personal testimony. When in dream or vision the seer beholds the spirits of the departed, they give him tidings from the other world, or he may even rise and travel thither himself, and return to tell the living what he has seen among the dead. It is sometimes as if the traveller's material body went to visit a distant land, and sometimes all we are told is that the man's self went, but whether in body or in spirit is a mere detail of which the story keeps no record. Mostly, however, it is the seer's soul which goes forth, leaving his body behind in ecstasy, sleep, coma, or death. Some of these stories, as we trace them on from savage into civilized times, are no doubt given in good faith by the visionary himself, while others are imitations of these genuine accounts.[10] Now such visions are naturally apt to reproduce the thoughts with which the seer's mind was already furnished. Every idea once lodged in the mind of a savage, a barbarian, or an enthusiast, is ready thus to be brought back to him from without. It is a vicious circle; what he believes he therefore sees, and what he sees he therefore believes. Beholding the reflexion of his own mind like a child looking at itself in a glass, he humbly receives the teaching of his second self. The Red Indian visits his happy hunting-grounds, the Tongan his shadowy island of Bolotu, the Greek enters Hades and looks on the Elysian Fields, the Christian beholds the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell.
Among the North American Indians, and especially the Algonquin tribes, accounts are not unusual of men whose spirits, travelling in dreams or in the hallucinations of extreme illness to the land of the dead, have returned to reanimate their bodies, and tell what they have seen. Their experiences have been in great measure what they were taught in early childhood to expect, the journey along the path of the dead, the monstrous strawberry at which the jebi-ug or ghosts refresh themselves, but which turns to red rock at the touch of their spoons, the bark offered them for dried meat and great puff-balls for squashes, the river of the dead with its snake-bridge or swinging log, the great dog standing on the other side, the villages of the dead beyond.[11] The Zulus of our own day tell of men who have gone down by holes in the ground into the under-world, where mountains and rivers and all things are as here above, and where a man may find his kindred, for the dead live in their villages, and may be seen milking their cattle, which are the cattle killed on earth and come to life anew. The Zulu Umpengula, who told one of these stories to Dr. Callaway, remembered when he was a boy seeing an ugly little hairy man called Uncama, who once, chasing a porcupine that ate his mealies, followed it down a hole in the ground into the land of the dead. When he came back to his home on earth he found that he had been given up for dead himself, his wife had duly burnt and buried his mats and blankets and vessels, and the wondering people at sight of him again shouted the funeral dirge. Of this Zulu Dante it used to be continually said, 'There is the man who went to the underground people.'[12] One of the most characteristic of these savage narratives is from New Zealand. This story, which has an especial interest from the reminiscence it contains of the gigantic extinct Moa, and which may be repeated at some length as an illustration of the minute detail and lifelike reality which such visionary legends assume in barbaric life, was told to Mr. Shortland by a servant of his named Te Wharewera. An aunt of this man died in a solitary hut near the banks of Lake Rotorua. Being a lady of rank she was left in her hut, the door and windows were made fast, and the dwelling was abandoned, as her death had made it tapu. But a day or two after, Te Wharewera with some others paddling in a canoe near the place at early morning saw a figure on the shore beckoning to them. It was the aunt come to life again, but weak and cold and famished. When sufficiently restored by their timely help, she told her story. Leaving her body, her spirit had taken flight toward the North Cape, and arrived at the entrance of Reigna. There, holding on by the stem of the creeping akeake-plant, she descended the precipice, and found herself on the sandy beach of a river. Looking round, she espied in the distance an enormous bird, taller than a man, coming towards her with rapid strides. This terrible object so frightened her, that her first thought was to try to return up the steep cliff; but seeing an old man paddling a small canoe towards her she ran to meet him, and so escaped the bird. When she had been safely ferried across she asked the old Charon, mentioning the name of her family, where the spirits of her kindred dwelt. Following the path the old man pointed out, she was surprised to find it just such a path as she had been used to on earth; the aspect of the country, the trees, shrubs, and plants were all familiar to her. She reached the village and among the crowd assembled there she found her father and many near relations; they saluted her, and welcomed her with the wailing chant which Maoris always address to people met after long absence. But when her father had asked about his living relatives, and especially about her own child, he told her she must go back to earth, for no one was left to take care of his grandchild. By his orders she refused to touch the food that the dead people offered her, and in spite of their efforts to detain her, her father got her safely into the canoe, crossed with her, and parting gave her from under his cloak two enormous sweet potatoes to plant at home for his grandchild's especial eating. But as she began to climb the precipice again, two pursuing infant spirits pulled her back, and she only escaped by flinging the roots at them, which they stopped to eat, while she scaled the rock by help of the akeake-stem, till she reached the earth and flew back to where she had left her body. On returning to life she found herself in darkness, and what had passed seemed as a dream, till she perceived that she was deserted and the door fast, and concluded that she had really died and come to life again. When morning dawned, a faint light entered by the crevices of the shut-up house, and she saw on the floor near her a calabash partly full of red ochre mixed with water; this she eagerly drained to the dregs, and then feeling a little stronger, succeeded in opening the door and crawling down to the beach, where her friends soon after found her. Those who listened to her tale firmly believed the reality of her adventures, but it was much regretted that she had not brought back at least one of the huge sweet-potatoes, as evidence of her visit to the land of spirits.[13] Races of North Asia[14] and West Africa[15] have in like manner their explorers of the world beyond the grave.
Classic literature continues the series. Lucian's graphic tales represent the belief of their age, if not of their author. His Eukrates looks down the chasm into Hades, and sees the dead reclining on the asphodel in companies of kinsfolk and friends; among them he recognizes Sokrates with his bald head and pot-belly, and also his own father, dressed in the clothes he was buried in. Then Kleodemos caps this story with his own, how when he was sick, on the seventh day when his fever was burning like a furnace, every one left him, and the doors were shut. Then there stood before him an all-beauteous youth in a white garment, who led him through a chasm into Hades, as he knew by seeing Tantalos and Tityos and Sisyphos; and bringing him to the court of judgement, where were Aiakos and the Fates and the Erinyes, the youth set him before Pluto the King, who sat reading the names of those whose day of life was over. But Pluto was angry, and said to the guide, 'This one's thread is not run out, that he should depart, but bring me Demylos the coppersmith, for he is living beyond the spindle.' So Kleodemos came back to himself free from his fever and announced that Demylos, who was a sick neighbour, would die; and accordingly a little while after there was heard the cry of the mourners wailing for him.[16] Plutarch's stories, told more seriously, are yet one in type with the mocking Lucian's. The wicked, pleasure-seeking Thespesios lies three days as dead, and revives to tell his vision of the world below. One Antyllos was sick, and seemed to the doctors to retain no trace of life; till, waking without sign of insanity, he declared that he had been indeed dead, but was ordered back to life, those who brought him being severely chidden by their lord, and sent to fetch Nikander instead, a well-known currier, who was accordingly taken with a fever, and died on the third day.[17] Such stories, old and new, are current among the Hindus at this day. A certain man's soul, for instance, is carried to the realm of Yama by mistake for a namesake, and is sent back in haste to regain his body before it is burnt; but in the meanwhile he has a glimpse of the hideous punishments of the wicked, and of the glorious life of those who had mortified the flesh on earth, and of suttee-widows now sitting in happiness by their husbands.[18] Mutatis mutandis these tales reappear in Christian mythology, as when Gregory the Great records that a certain nobleman named Stephen died, who was taken to the region of Hades, and saw many things he had heard before but not believed; but when he was set before the ruler there presiding, he sent him back, saying that it was this Stephen's neighbour — Stephen the smith — whom he had commanded to be brought; and accordingly the one returned to life, and the other died.[19]
The thought of human visitors revealing the mysteries of the world beyond the grave, which indeed took no slight hold on Christian belief, attached itself in a remarkable way to the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades. This dogma had so strongly established itself by the end of the 4th century, that Augustine could ask, 'Quis nisi infidelis negaverit fuisse apud inferos Christum?'[20] A distinct statement of the dogma was afterwards introduced into the symbol commonly called the 'Apostles' Creed:' 'Descendit ad inferos,' 'Descendit ad inferna,' He descended into hell.'[21] The Descent into Hades, which had the theological use of providing a theory of salvation applicable to the saints of the old covenant, imprisoned in the limbo of the fathers, is narrated in full in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and is made there to rest upon a legend which belongs to the present group of human visits to the other world. It is related that two sons of Simeon, named Charinus and Leucius, rose from their tombs at the Resurrection, and went about silently and prayerfully among men, till Annas and Caiaphas brought them into the synagogue, and charged them to tell of their raising from the dead. Then, making the sign of the cross upon their tongues, the two asked for parchment and wrote their record. They had been set with all their fathers in the depths of Hades, when on a sudden there appeared the colour of the sun like gold, and a purple royal light shining on them; then the patriarchs and prophets, from Adam to Simeon and John the Baptist, rejoicing proclaimed the coming of the light and the fulfilment of the prophecies; Satan and Hades wrangled in strife together; in vain the brazen gates were shut with their iron bars, for the summons came to open the gates that the king of glory may come in, who hath broken the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron in sunder; then the mighty Lord broke the fetters and visited them who sat in darkness and the shadow of death; Adam and his righteous children were delivered from Hades, and led into the glorious grace of Paradise.[22]
Dante, elaborating in the 'Divina Commedia' the conceptions of paradise, purgatory, and hell familiar to the actual belief of his age, describes them once more in the guise of a living visitor to the land of the dead. Echoes in mediæval legend of such exploring expeditions to the world below still linger faintly in the popular belief of Europe. It has been thus with St. Patrick's Purgatory,[23] the cavern in the island of Lough Derg, in the county Donegal, which even in the seventeenth century O'Sullevan could describe first and foremost in his 'Catholic History' as 'the greatest of all memorable things of Ireland.' Mediæval visits to the other world were often made in the spirit. But like Ulysses, Wainamoinen, and Dante, men could here make the journey in body, as did Sir Owain and the monk Gilbert. When the pilgrim had spent fifteen days in prayer and fasting in the church, and had been led with litanies and sprinkling of holy water to the entrance of the purgatory, and the last warnings of the monks had failed to turn him from his venture, the door was closed upon him, and if found next morning, he could tell the events of his awful journey — how he crossed the narrow bridge that spans the river of death, how he saw the hideous torments of hell, and approached the joys of paradise. Sir Owain, one of King Stephen's knights, went thither in penance for his life of violence and rapine, and this was one of the scenes he beheld in purgatory: —
'There come develes other mony mo,
And badde the knygth with hem to go,
And ladde him into a fowle contreye,
Where ever was nygth and never day,
For hit was derke and wonther colde:
Yette was there never man so bolde,
Hadde he never so mony clothes on,
But he wolde be colde as ony stone.
Wynde herde he none blowe,
But faste hit frese bothe hye and lowe.
They browgte him to a felde full brode,
Overe suche another never he yode,
For of the lengthe none ende he knewe
Thereover algate he moste nowe.
As he wente he herde a crye,
He wondered what hit was, and why,
He syg ther men and wymmen also
That lowde cryed, for hem was woo.
They leyen thykke on every londe,
Faste nayled bothe fote and honde
With nayles glowyng alle of brasse:
They ete the erthe so wo hem was;
Here face was nayled to the grownde.
"Spare," they cryde, "a lytylle stounde."
The develes wolde hem not spare:
To hem peyne they thowgte yare.' When Owain had seen the other fields of punishment, with their fiery serpents and toads, and the fires where sinners were hung up by their offending members, and roasted on spits, and basted with molten metal, and turned about on a great wheel of fire, and when he had passed the Devil's Mouth over the awful bridge, he reached the fair white glassy wall of the Earthly Paradise, reaching upward and upward, and saw before him the beautiful gate, whence issued a ravishing perfume. Then he soon forgot his pains and sorrows.
'As he stode, and was so fayne, Hym thowgth ther come hym agayne A swyde fayr processyoun Of alle manere menne of relygyoun, Fayre vestementes they hadde on, So ryche syg he never none. Myche joye hym thowgte to se Bysshopes yn here dygnité; Ilkone wente other be and be, Every man yn his degré. He syg ther monkes and chanones, And freres with newe shavene crownes; Ermytes he saw there amonge, And nonnes with fulle mery songe; Persones, prestes, and vycaryes; They made fulle mery melodyes. He syg ther kynges and emperoures, And dukes that had casteles and toures, Erles and barones fele, That some tyme hadde the worldes wele. Other folke he syg also, Never so mony as he dede thoo. Wymmen he syg ther that tyde: Myche was the joye ther on every syde: For alle was joye that with hem ferde, And myche solempnyté he herde.'
The procession welcomed Owain, and led him about, showing him the beauties of that country: —
'Hyt was grene, and fulle of flowres
Of mony dy vers colowres; Hyt was grene on every syde,
As medewus are yn someres tyde.
Ther were trees growyng fulle grene
Fulle of fruyte ever more, y wene;
For ther was frwyte of mony a kynde,
Such yn the londe may no mon fynde.
Ther they have the tree of lyfe,
Theryn ys myrthe, and never stryfe;
Frwyte of wysdom also ther ys,
Of the whyche Adam and Eve dede amysse:
Other manere frwytes ther were fele,
And alle manere joye and wele.
Moche folke he syg ther dwelle,
There was no tongue that mygth hem telle;
Alle were they cloded yn ryche wede,
What cloth hit was he kowthe not rede.
There was no wronge, but ever rygth,
Ever day and nevere nygth.
They shone as brygth and more clere
Than ony gonne yn the day doth here.'
The poem, in fifteenth-century English, from which these passages are taken, is a version of the original legend of earlier date, and as such contrasts with a story really dating from early in the fifteenth century — William Staunton's descent into Purgatory, where the themes of the old sincerely-believed visionary lore are fading into moral allegory, and the traveller sees the gay gold and silver collars and girdles burning into the wearer's flesh, and the jags that men were clothed in now become adders and dragons, sucking and stinging them, and the fiends drawing down the skin of women's shoulders into pokes, and smiting into their heads with burning hammers their gay chaplets of gold and jewels turned to burning nails, and so forth. Late in this fifteenth century, St. Patrick's Purgatory fell into discredit, but even the destruction of the entrance-building, in 1479, by Papal order, did not destroy the ideal road. About 1693, an excavation on the spot brought to light a window with iron stanchions; there was a cry for holy water to keep the spirits from breaking out from prison, and the priest smelt brimstone from the dark cavity below, which, however, unfortunately turned out to be a cellar. In still later times, the yearly pilgrimage of tens of thousands of votaries to the holy place has kept up this interesting survival from the lower culture, whereby a communication may still be traced, if not from Earth to Hades, at least from the belief of the New Zealander to that of the Irish peasant.
To study and compare the ideal regions where man has placed the abodes of departed souls is not an unprofitable task. True, geography has now mapped out into mere earth and water the space that lay beyond the narrower sea and land known to the older nations, and astronomy no longer recognizes the flat earth trodden by men as being the roof of subterranean halls, nor the sky as being a solid firmament, shutting out men's gaze from strata or spheres of empyræan regions beyond. Yet if we carry our minds back to the state of knowledge among the lower races, we shall not find it hard to understand the early conceptions as to the locality of the regions beyond the grave. They are no secrets of high knowledge made known to sages of old; they are the natural fancies which childlike ignorance would frame in any age. The regularity with which such conceptions repeat themselves over the world bears testimony to the regularity of the processes by which opinion is formed among mankind. At the same time, the student who carefully compares them will find in them a perfect illustration of an important principle, widely applicable to the general theory of the formation of human opinion. When a problem has presented itself to mankind at large, susceptible of a number of solutions about equally plausible, the result is that the several opinions thus produced will be found lying scattered in country after country. The problem here is, given the existence of souls of the dead who from time to time visit the living, where is the home of these ghosts? Why men in one district should have preferred the earth, in another the under-world, in another the sky, as the abode of departed souls, is a question often difficult to answer. But we may at least see how again and again the question was taken in hand, and how out of the three or four available answers some peoples adopted one, some another, some several at once. Primitive theologians had all the world before them where to choose their place of rest for the departed, and they used to the full their speculative liberty.
Firstly, when the land of souls is located on the surface of the earth, there is choice of fit places among wild and cloudy precipices, in secluded valleys, in far-off plains and islands. In Borneo, Mr. St. John visited the heaven of the Idaan race, on the summit of Kina Balu, and the native guides, who feared to pass the night in this abode of spirits, showed the traveller the moss on which the souls of their ancestors fed, and the footprints of the ghostly buffaloes that followed them. On Gunung Danka, a mountain in West Java, there is such another 'Earthly Paradise.' The Sajira who dwell in the district indeed profess themselves Mohammedans, but they secretly maintain their old belief, and at death or funeral they enjoin the soul in solemn form to set aside the Moslem Allah, and to take the way to the dwelling-place of his own forefathers' souls:—
'Step up the bed of the river, and cross the neck of land,
Where the aren trees stand in a clump, and the pinangs in a row,
Thither direct thy steps, Laillah being set aside.'
Mr. Jonathan Rigg had lived ten years among these people, and knew them well, yet had never found out that their paradise was on this mountain. When at last he heard of it, he made the ascent, finding on the top only a few river-stones, forming one of the balai, or sacred cairns, common in the district. But the popular belief, that a tiger would devour the chiefs who permitted a violation of the sacred place, soon received the sort of confirmation which such beliefs receive everywhere, for a tiger killed two children a few days later, and the disaster was of course ascribed to Mr. Rigg's profanation.[24] The Chilians said that the soul goes westward over the sea to Gulcheman, the dwelling-place of the dead beyond the mountains; life, some said, was all pleasure there, but others thought that part would be happy and part miserable.[25] Hidden among the mountains of Mexico lay the joyous garden-land of Tlalocan, where maize, and pumpkins, and chilis, and tomatos never failed, and where abode the souls of children sacrificed to Tlaloc, its god, and the souls of such as died by drowning or thunderstroke, or by leprosy or dropsy, or other acute disease.[26] A survival of such thought may be traced into mediæval civilization, in the legends of the Earthly Paradise, the fire-girt abode of saints not yet raised to highest bliss, localized in the utmost East of Asia, where earth stretches up towards heaven.[27] When Columbus sailed westward across the Atlantic to seek 'the new heaven and the new earth' he had read of in Isaiah, he found them, though not as he sought. It is a quaint coincidence that he found there also, though not as he sought it, the Earthly Paradise which was another main object of his venturous quest. The Haitians described to the white men their Coaibai, the paradise of the dead, in the lovely Western valleys of their island, where the souls hidden by day among the cliffs came down at night to feed on the delicious fruit of the mamey-trees, of which the living ate but sparingly, lest the souls of their friends should want.[28]
Secondly, there are Australians who think that the spirit of the dead hovers awhile on earth and goes at last toward the setting sun, or westward over the sea to the island of souls, the home of his fathers. Thus these rudest savages have developed two thoughts which we meet with again and again far onward in the course of culture — the thought of an island of the dead, and the thought that the world of departed souls is in the West, whither the Sun descends at evening to his daily death.[29] Among the North American Indians, when once upon a time an Algonquin hunter left his body behind and visited the land of souls in the sunny south, he saw before him beautiful trees and plants, but found he could walk right through them. Then he paddled in the canoe of white shining stone across the lake where wicked souls perish in the storm, till he reached the beautiful and happy island where there is no cold, no war, no bloodshed, but the creatures run happily about, nourished by the air they breathe.[30] Tongan legend says that, long ago, a canoe returning from Fiji was driven by stress of weather to Bolotu, the island of gods and souls lying in the ocean north-west of Tonga. That island is larger than all theirs together, full of all finest fruits and loveliest flowers, that fill the air with fragrance, and come anew the moment they are plucked; birds of beauteous plumage are there, and hogs in plenty, all immortal save when killed for the gods to eat, and then new living ones appear immediately to fill their places. But when the hungry crew of the canoe landed, they tried in vain to pluck the shadowy bread-fruit, they walked through unresisting trees and houses, even as the souls of chiefs who met them walked unchecked through their solid bodies. Counselled to hasten home from this land of no earthly food, the men sailed to Tonga, but the deadly air of Bolotu had infected them, and they soon all died.[31]
Such ideas took strong hold on classic thought, in the belief in a paradise in the Fortunate Islands of the far Western Ocean. Hesiod in the 'Works and Days' tells of the half-gods of the Fourth Age, between the Age of Bronze and the Age of Iron. When death closed on this heroic race, Zeus granted them at the ends of Earth a life and home, apart from man and far from the immortals. There Kronos reigns over them, and they dwell careless in the Islands of the Happy, beside deep-eddying Ocean—blest heroes, for whom the grain-giving field bears, thrice blooming yearly, the honey-sweet fruit:—
‘Ἔνθ’ ἤτοι τοὺς μὲν θανάτου τέλος ἀμφεκάλυψε·
Τοῖς δὲ δίχ’ ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἠθἐ ὀπάσσας
Ζεὺς κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐς πείρατα γαίης,
Τηλοῦ ἀπ’ ἀθανάτων· τοῖσιν Κρόνος ἐμβασιλεύει·
Καὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες
Ἐν μακάρων νήσοισον παρ’ Ὠκεανὸν βαθυδίνην,
Ὄλβιοι ἥρωες, τοῖσιν μελιηδέα καρπὸν
Τρὶς ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα.’[32]
These Islands of the Blest, assigned as the abode of blessed spirits of the dead, came indeed to be identified with the Elysian Fields. Thus Pindar sings of steadfast souls, who through three lives on either side have endured free from injustice; then they pass by the road of Zeus to the tower of Kronos, where the ocean breezes blow round the islands of the happy, blazing with golden flowers of land and water. Thus, also, in the famous hymn of Kallistratos in honour of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchos:—
‘Φίλταθ’ Ἁρμόδἰ, οὔ τι πω τέθνηκας
Νήσοις δ’ ἐν μακάρων σε φασὶν εἶναι,
Ἵνα περ ποδώκης ’Αχιλλεύς,
Τυδείδην τε φασὶ τὸν ἐσθλὸν Διομήδεα.’[32]
This group of legends has especial interest to us Englishmen, who ourselves dwell, it seems, on such an island of the dead. It is not that we or our country are of a more ghostly nature than others, but the idea is geographical we are dwellers in the region of the setting sun, the land of death. The elaborate account by Procopius, the historian of the Gothic War, dates from the 6th century. The island of Brittia, according to him, lies opposite the mouths of the Rhine, some 200 stadia off, between Britannia and Thule, and on it dwell three populous nations, the Angles, Frisians, and Britons. (By Brittia, it appears, he means our Great Britain, his Britannia being the coast-land from modern Brittany to Holland, and his Thule being Scandinavia.) In the course of his history it seems to him needful to record a story, mythic and dreamlike as he thinks, yet which numberless men vouch for as having been themselves witnesses by eye and ear to its facts. This story is that the souls of the departed are conveyed across the sea to the island of Brittia. Along the mainland coast are many villages, inhabited by fishermen and tillers of the soil and traders to this island in their vessels. They are subject to the Franks, but pay no tribute, having from of old had to do by turns the burdensome service of transporting the souls. Those on duty for each night stay at home till they hear a knocking at the doors, and a voice of one unseen calling them to their work. Then without delay rising from their beds, compelled by some unknown power they go down to the beach, and there they see boats, not their own but others, lying ready but empty of men. Going on board and taking the oars, they find that by the burden of the multitude of souls embarked, the vessel lies low in the water, gunwale under within a finger's breadth. In an hour they are at the opposite shore, though in their own boats they would hardly make the voyage in a night and day. When they reach the island, the vessel becomes empty, till it is so light that only the keel touches the waves. They see no man on the voyage, no man at the landing, but a voice is heard that proclaims the name and rank and parentage of each newly arrived passenger, or if women, those of their husbands. Traces of this remarkable legend seem to have survived, thirteen centuries later, in that endmost district of the Britannia of Procopius which still keeps the name of Bretagne. Near Raz, where the narrow promontory stretches westward into the ocean, is the 'Bay of Souls' (boé ann anavo); in the commune of Plouguel the corpse is taken to the churchyard, not by the shorter road by land, but in a boat by the 'Passage de l'Enfer,' across a little arm of the sea; and Breton folk-lore holds fast to the legend of the Curé de Braspar, whose dog leads over to Great Britain the souls of the departed, when the wheels of the soul-car are heard creaking in the air. These are but mutilated fragments, but they seem to piece together with another Keltic myth, told by Macpherson in the last century, the voyage of the boat of heroes to Flath-Innis, Noble Island, the green island home of the departed, which lies calm amid the storms far in the Western Ocean. With full reason, also, Mr. Wright traces to the situation of Ireland in the extreme West its especial association with legends of descents to the land of shades. Claudian placed at the extremity of Gaul the entrance where Ulysses found a way to Hades—
'Est locus extremum qua pandit Gallia litus,
Oceani prætentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulysses,' &c.
No wonder that this spot should have been since identified with St. Patrick's Purgatory, and that some ingenious etymologist should have found in the name of 'Ulster' a corruption of 'Ulyssisterra,' and a commemoration of the hero's visit.[33]
Thirdly, the belief in a subterranean Hades peopled by the ghosts of the dead is quite common among the lower races. The earth is flat, say the Italmen of Kamchatka, for if it were round, people would fall off; it is the wrong side of another heaven, which covers another earth below, whither the dead will go down to their new life, and so, as Steller says, their mundane system is like a tub with three bottoms.[34] In North America, the Tacullis held that the soul goes after death into the bowels of the earth, whence it can come back in human shape to visit friends.[35] In South America, Brazilian souls travel down to the world below in the West, and Patagonian souls will depart to enjoy eternal drunkenness in the caves of their ancestral deities.[36] The New Zealander who says 'The sun has returned to Hades' (kua hoki mai te Ra ki te Rua), simply means that it has set. When a Samoan Islander dies, the host of spirits that surround the house, waiting to convey his soul away, set out with him crossing the land and swimming the sea, to the entrance of the spirit-world. This is at the westernmost point of the westernmost island, Savaii, and there one may see the two circular holes or basins where souls descend, chiefs by the bigger and plebeians by the smaller, into the regions of the underworld. There below is a heaven, earth, and sea, and people with real bodies, planting, fishing, cooking, as in the present life; but at night their bodies become like a confused collection of fiery sparks, and in this state during the hours of darkness they come up to revisit their former abodes, retiring at dawn to the bush or to the lower regions.[37] For the state of thought on this subject among rude African tribes, it is enough to cite the Zulus, who at death will descend to live in Hades among their ancestors, the 'Abapansi,' the 'people underground.'[38] Among rude Asiatic tribes, such an example may be taken from the Karens. They are not quite agreed where Plu, the land of the dead, is situate; it may be above the earth or beyond the horizon. But the dominant and seemingly indigenous opinion is that it is below the earth. When the sun sets on earth, it rises in the Karen Hades, and when it sets in Hades it rises in this world. Here, again, the familiar belief of the European peasant is found; the spirits of the dead may come up from the land of shades by night, but at daybreak must return.[39]
Such ideas, developed by uncultured races, may be followed up in various detail, through the stage of religion represented by the Mexican and Peruvian nations,[40] into higher ranges of culture. The Roman Orcus was in the bowels of the earth, and when the 'lapis manalis,' the stone that closed the mouth of the world below, was moved away on certain solemn days, the ghosts of the dead came up to the world above, and partook of the offerings of their friends.[41] Among the Greeks, the Land of Hades was in the world below, nor was the thought unknown that it was the sunset realm of the Western god ((Greek characters)). What Hades seemed like to the popular mind, Lucian thus describes: — 'The great crowd, indeed, whom the wise call "idiots," believing Homer and Hesiod, and the other myth-makers about these things, and setting up their poetry as a law, have supposed a certain deep place under the earth, Hades, and that it is vast, and roomy, and gloomy, and sunless, and how thought to be lighted up so as to behold every one within, I know not.'[42] In the ancient Egyptian doctrine of the future life, modelled on solar myth, the region of the departed combines the under-world and the west, Amenti; the dead passes the gate of the setting sun to traverse the roads of darkness, and behold his father Osiris; and with this solar thought the Egyptian priests, representing in symbolic ceremony the scenes of the other world, carried the corpse in the sacred boat across to the burial-place, on the western side of the sacred lake.[43] So, too, the cavernous Sheol of the Israelites, the shadowy region of departed souls, lay deep below the earth. Through the great Aryan religious systems, Brahmanism, Zarathustrism, Buddhism, and onward into the range of Islam and of Christianity, subterranean hells of purgatory or punishment make the doleful contrast to heavens of light and glory.
It is, however, a point worthy of special notice that the conception of hell as a fiery abyss, so familiar to the religions of the higher civilization, is all but unknown to savage thought, so much so that if met with, its genuineness is doubtful. Captain John Smith's 'History of Virginia,' published in 1624, contains two different accounts of the Indians' doctrine of a future life. Smith's own description is of a land beyond the mountains, toward sunset, where chiefs and medicine-men in paint and feathers shall smoke, and sing, and dance with their forefathers, while the common people have no life after death, but rot in their graves. Heriot's description is of tabernacles of the gods to which the good are taken up to perpetual happiness, while the wicked are carried to 'Popogusso,' a great pit which they think to be at the furthest parts of the world where the sun sets, and there burn continually.[44] Now knowing so much as we do of the religion of the Algonquins, to whom these Virginians belonged, we may judge that while the first account is genuinely native, though perhaps not quite correctly understood, the second was borrowed by the Indians from the white men themselves. Yet even here the touch of solar myth is manifest, and the description of the fiery abyss in the region of sunset may be compared with one from our own country, in the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of Saturn and Solomon. 'Saga me forhwan byth seo sunne read on æfen? Ic the secge, forthon heo locath on helle. — Tell me, why is the sun red at even? I tell thee, because she looketh on hell.'[45] To the same belief belongs another striking mythic feature. The idea of volcanos being mouths of the under-world seems not unexampled among the lower races, for we hear of certain New Zealanders casting their dead down into a crater.[46] But in connexion with the thought of a gehenna of fire and brimstone, Vesuvius, Etna, and Hecla had spiritual as well as material terrors to the mind of Christendom, for they were believed to be places of purgatory or the very mouths of the pit where the souls of the damned were cast down.[47] The Indians of Nicaragua used in old times to offer human sacrifices to their volcano Masaya, flinging the corpses into the crater, and in later years, after the conversion of the country, we hear of Christian confessors sending their penitents to climb the mountain, and (as a glimpse of hell) to look down upon the molten lava.[48]
Fourthly, in old times and new, it has come into men's minds to fix upon the sun and moon as abodes of departed souls. When we have learnt from the rude Natchez of the Mississippi and the Apalaches of Florida that the sun is the bright dwelling of departed chiefs and braves, and have traced like thoughts on into the theologies of Mexico and Peru, then we may compare these savage doctrines with Isaac Taylor's ingenious supposition in his 'Physical Theory of Another Life,' — the sun of each planetary system is the house of the higher and ultimate spiritual corporeity, and the centre of assembly to those who have passed on the planets their preliminary era of corruptible organization. Or perhaps some may prefer the Rev. Tobias Swinden's book, published in the last century, and translated into French and German, which proved the sun to be hell, and its dark spots gatherings of damned souls.[49] And when in South America the Saliva Indians have pointed out the moon, their paradise where no mosquitos are, and the Guaycurus have shown it as the home of chiefs and medicine-men deceased, and the Polynesians of Tokelau in like manner have claimed it as the abode of departed kings and chiefs, then these pleasant fancies may be compared with Plutarch's description of the virtuous souls who after purification in the middle space gain their footing on the moon, and there are crowned as victors.[50] The converse notion of the moon as the seat of hell, has been elaborated in profoundest bathos by Mr. M. F. Tupper:
'I know thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, Sad Satellite, thou giant ash of death, Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr'd prison-house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon punishment. Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls Through the broad world, thou, watching sinners well, Glarest o'er all, the wakeful eye of — Hell!'
Skin for skin, the brown savage is not ill matched in such speculative lore with the white philosopher.
Fifthly, as Paradise on the face of the earth, and Hades beneath it where the sun goes down, are regions whose existence is asserted or not denied by savage and barbaric science, so it is with Heaven. Among the examples which display for us the real course of knowledge among mankind, and the real relation which primitive bears to later culture, the belief in the existence of a firmament is one of the most
1 J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' p. 138, see also 220 (Caribs), 402 (Peru), 505, 660 (Mexico); Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 233; Taylor, 'Physical Theory,' ch. xvi.; Alger, 'Future Life,' p. 590; see also above, p. 16, note.
2 Humboldt and Bonpland, 'Voy.' vol. v. p. 90; Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 233; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 531; Plutarch. De Facie in Orbe Lunæ; Bastian, 'Psychologie,' pp. 80, 89 (souls in stars). instructive. It arises naturally in the minds of children still, and in accordance with the simplest childlike thought, the cosmologies of the North American Indians[51] and the South Sea Islanders[52] describe their flat earth arched over by the solid vault of heaven. Like thoughts are to be traced on through such details as the Zulu idea that the blue heaven is a rock encircling the earth, inside which are the sun, moon, and stars, and outside which dwell the people of heaven; the modern negro's belief that there is a firmament stretched above like a cloth or web; the Finnish poem which tells how Ilmarinen forged the firmament of finest steel, and set in it the moon and stars.[53] The New Zealander, with his notion of a solid firmament, through which the waters can be let down on earth through a crack or hole from the reservoir of rain above, could well explain the passage in Herodotus concerning that place in North Africa where, as the Libyans said, the sky is pierced, as well as the ancient Jewish conception of a firmament of heaven, 'strong as a molten mirror,' with its windows through which the rain pours down in deluge from the reservoirs above, windows which late Rabbinical literature tells us were made by taking out two stars.[54] In nations where the theory of the firmament prevails, accounts of bodily journeys or spiritual ascents to heaven are in general meant not as figure, but as fact. Among the lower races, the tendency to localize the region of departed souls above the sky seems less strong than that which leads them to place their world of the dead on or below the earth's surface. Yet some well-marked descriptions of a savage Heaven are on record, the following, and others to be cited presently. Even some Australians seem to think of going up to the clouds at death, to eat and drink, and hunt and fish as here.[55] In North America, the Winnebagos placed their paradise in the sky, where souls travel along that 'Path of the Dead' which we call the Milky Way; and working out the ever-recurring solar idea, the modern Iroquois speak of the soul going upward and westward, till it comes out on the beauteous plains of heaven, with people and trees and things as on earth.[56] In South America the Guarayos, representatives in some sort of the past condition of the Guarani race, worship Tamoi the Grandfather, the Ancient of Heaven; he was their first ancestor, who lived among them in old days and taught them to till the ground; then rising to heaven in the East he disappeared, having promised to be the helper of his people on earth, and to transport them, when they died, from the top of a sacred tree into another life, where they shall find their kindred and have hunting in plenty, and possess all that they possessed on earth; therefore it is that the Guarayos adorn their dead, and burn their weapons for them, and bury them with their faces to the East, whither they are to go.[57] Among American peoples whose culture rose to a higher level than that of these savage tribes, we hear of the Peruvian Heaven, the glorious 'Upper World,' and of the temporary abode of Aztec warriors on heavenly wooded plains, where the sun shines when it is night on earth, wherefore it was a Mexican saying that the sun goes at evening to lighten the dead.[58] What thoughts of heaven were in the minds of the old Aryan poets, this hymn from the Rig-Veda may show: — 'Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal imperishable world place me, O Soma!
Where king Vaivasvata reigns, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal!
Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal!
Where wishes and desires are, where the place of the bright sun is, where there is freedom and delight, there make me immortal!
Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal!'[59]
In such bright vague thoughts from the poet's religion of nature, or in cosmic schemes of ancient astronomy, with their artificial glories of barbaric architecture exaggerated in the skies, or in the raptures of mystic vision, or in the calmer teaching of the theologic doctrine of a future life, descriptions of realms of blessed souls in heaven are to be followed through the religions of the Brahman, the Buddhist, the Parsi, the later Jew, the Moslem, and the Christian.
For the object, not of writing a handbook of religions, but of tracing the relation which the religion of savages bears to the religion of cultured nations, these details are enough to show the general line of human thought regarding the local habitations of departed souls. It seems plain from the most cursory inspection of these various localizations, however much we may consider them as inherited or transmitted from people to people in the complex movements of theological history, that they are at any rate not derived from any single religion accepted among ancient or primæval men. They bear evident traces of independent working out in the varied definition of the region of souls, as on earth among men, on earth in some distant country, below the earth, above or beyond the sky. Similar ideas of this kind are found in different lands, but this
1 Max Müller, 'Chips,' vol. i. p. 46; Roth in 'Zeitschr. d. Deutsch. Morgenl. Ges.' vol. iv. p. 427. similarity seems in large measure due to independent recurrence of thoughts so obvious. Not less is independent fancy compatible with the ever-recurring solar myth in such ideas, placing the land of Death in the land of Evening or of Night, and its entrance at the gates of Sunset. Barbaric poets of many a distant land must have gazed into the West to read the tale of Life and Death, and tell it of Man. If, however, we look more closely into the stages of intellectual history to which these theories of the Future World belong, it will appear that the assignment of the realm of departed souls to the three great regions, Earth, Hades, Heaven, has not been uniform. Firstly, the doctrine of a land of souls on Earth belongs widely and deeply to savage culture, but dwindles in the barbaric stage, and survives but feebly into the mediaeval. Secondly, the doctrine of a subterranean Hades holds as large a place as this in savage belief , and has held it firmly along the course of higher religions, where, however, this under- world is looked on less and less as the proper abode of the dead, but rather as the dismal place of purgatory and hell. Lastly, the doctrine of a Heaven, floored upon a firmament, or placed in the upper air, seems in early savage belief less common than the other two, but yields to neither of them in its vigorous retention by the thought of modern nations. These local theories appear to be taken, firstly and mostly, in the most absolute literal sense, and although, under the influence of physical science, much that was once distinctly-meant philosophy has now passed among theologians into imagery and metaphor, yet at low levels of knowledge the new canons of interpretation find little acceptance, and even in modern Europe the rude cosmology of the lower races in no small measure retains its place.
Turning now to consider the state of the departed in these their new homes, we have to examine the definitions of the Future Life which prevail through the religions of mankind. In these doctrines there is much similarity caused by the spreading of established beliefs into new countries, and also much similarity that is beyond what such transmission can account for. So there is much variety due to local colour and circumstance, and also much variety beyond the reach of such explanation. The main causes of both similarity and variety seem to lie far deeper, in the very origin and inmost meaning of the doctrines. The details of the future life, among the lower races and upwards, are no heterogeneous mass of arbitrary fancies. Classified, they range themselves naturally round central ideas, in groups whose correspondence seems to indicate the special course of their development. Amongst the pictures into which this world has shaped its expectations of the next, two great conceptions are especially to be discerned. The one is that the future life is, as it were, a reflexion of this; in a new world, perhaps of dreamy beauty, perhaps of ghostly gloom, men are to retain their earthly forms and their earthly conditions, to have around them their earthly friends, to possess their earthly property, to carry on their earthly occupations. The other is that the future life is a compensation for this, where men's conditions are re-allotted as the consequence, and especially as the reward or punishment, of their earthly life. The first of these two ideas we may call (with Captain Burton) the 'continuance-theory,' contrasting with it the second as the 'retribution-theory.' Separately or combined, these two doctrines are the keys of the subject, and by grouping typical examples under their two headings, it will be possible to survey systematically man's most characteristic schemes of his life beyond the grave.
To the doctrine of Continuance belongs especially the savage view of the spirit-land, that it is as the dream-land where the souls of the living so often go to visit the souls of the dead. There the soul of the dead Karen, with the souls of his axe and cleaver, builds his house and cuts his rice; the shade of the Algonquin hunter hunts souls of beaver and elk, walking on the souls of his snow-shoes over the soul of the snow; the fur-wrapped Kamchadal drives his dog-sledge; the Zulu milks his cows and drives his cattle to kraal; South American tribes live on, whole or mutilated, healthy or sick, as they left this world, leading their old lives, and having their wives with them again, though indeed, as the Araucanians said, they "have no more children, for they are but souls.[60] Soul-land is dream-land in its shadowy unreal pictures, for which, nevertheless, material reality so plainly furnished the models, and it is dream-land also in its vivid idealization of the soberer thoughts and feelings of waking life,
'There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparel'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.'
Well might the Mohawk Indian describe the good land of paradise, as he had seen it in a dream. The shade of the Ojibwa follows a wide and beaten path that leads toward the West, he crosses a deep and rapid water, and reaching a country full of game and all things the Indian covets, he joins his kindred in their long lodge.[61] So, on the southern continent, the Bolivian Yuracarés will go, all of them, to a future life where there will be plenty of hunting, and Brazilian forest-tribes will find a pleasant forest full of calabash-trees and game, where the souls of the dead will live happily in company.[62] The Greenlanders hoped that their souls pale, soft, disembodied forms which the living could not grasp would lead a life better than that of earth, and never ceasing. It might be in heaven, reached by the rainbow, where the souls pitch their tents round the great lake rich in fish and fowl, the lake whose waters above the firmament overflowing make rain on earth, and if its banks broke, there would be another deluge. But gaining the most and best of their living from the depths of the sea, they were also apt to think the land of Torngarsuk to be below the sea or earth, and to be entered by the deep holes in the rocks. Perpetual summer is there, ever beauteous sunshine, and no night, good water and superfluity of birds and fish, seals and reindeer to be caught without difficulty, or found alive seething in a great kettle.[63] In the Kimbunda country of South-West Africa, souls live on in 'Kalunga,' the world where it is day when it is night here; and with plenty of food and drink, and women to serve them, and hunting and dancing for pastime, they lead a life which seems a corrected edition of this.[64] On comparison of these pictures of the future life with such as have expressed the longings of more cultured nations, there appear indeed different details, but the principle is ever the same — the idealization of earthly good. The Norseman's ideal is sketched in the few broad touches which show him in Walhalla, where he and the other warriors without number ride forth arrayed each morning and hew each other on Odin's plain, till the slain have been 'chosen' as in earthly battle, and meal-tide comes, and slayers and slain mount and ride home to feast on the everlasting boar, and drink mead and ale with the Æsir.[65] To understand the Moslem's mind, we must read the two chapters of the Koran where the Prophet describes the faithful in the garden of delights, reclining on their couches of gold and gems, served by children ever young, with bowls of liquor whose fumes will not rise into the drinkers' heads, living among the thorn-less lotus-trees and date-palms loaded to the ground, feasting on the fruits they love and the meat of the rarest birds, with the houris near them with beautiful black eyes, like pearls in the shell, where no idle or wicked speech is heard, but only the words ' Peace, Peace.'
'They who fear the judgment of God shall have two gardens.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
Adorned with groves.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
In each of them shall spring two fountains.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
In each of them shall grow two kinds of fruits.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
They shall lie on carpets brocaded with silk and embroidered with gold; the fruits of the two gardens shall be near, easy to pluck.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
There shall be young virgins with modest looks, unprofaned by man or jinn.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
They are like jacinth and coral.
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?
What is the recompence of good, if not good?
Which of the benefits of God will ye deny?' &c.[66]
With these descriptions of Paradise idealized on secular life, it is interesting to compare others which bear the impress of a priestly caste, devising a heaven after their manner. We can almost see the faces of the Jewish rabbis settling their opinions about the high schools in the firmament of heaven, where Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai and the great Rabbi Eliezer teach Law and Talmud as they taught when they were here below, and masters and learners go prosing on with the weary old disputations of cross question and crooked answer that pleased their souls on earth.[67] Nor less suggestively do the Buddhist heavens reflect the minds of the ascetics who devised them. As in their thoughts sensual pleasure seemed poor and despicable in comparison with mystic inward joy, rising and rising till consciousness fades in trance, so, above their heavens of millions of years of mere divine happiness, they raised other ranges of heavens where sensual pain and pleasure cease, and enjoyment becomes intellectual, till at a higher grade even bodily form is gone, and after the last heaven of 'Neither-consciousness-nor-unconsciousness' there follows Nirwâna, as ecstasy passes into swoon.[68]
But the doctrine of the continuance of the soul's life has another and a gloomier side. There are conceptions of an abode of the dead characterized not so much by dreaminess as by ghostliness. The realm of shades, especially if it be a cavern underground, has seemed a dim and melancholy place to the dwellers in this 'white world,' as the Russian calls the land of the living. One description of the Hurons tells how the other world, with its hunting and fishing, its much-prized hatchets and robes and necklaces, is like this world, yet day and night the souls groan and lament.[69] Thus the region of Mictlan, the subterranean land of Hades whither the general mass of the Mexican nation, high and low, expected to descend from the natural death-bed, was an abode looked forward to with resignation, but scarcely with cheerfulness. At the funeral the survivors were bidden not to mourn too much, the dead was reminded that he had passed and suffered the labours of this life, transitory as when one warms himself in the sun, and he was bidden to have no care or anxiety to return to his kinsfolk now that he has departed for ever and aye, for his consolation must be that they too will end their labours, and go whither he has gone before.[70] Among the Basutos, where the belief in a future life in Hades is general, some imagine in this under-world valleys ever green, and herds of hornless speckled cattle owned by the dead; but it seems more generally thought that the shades wander about in silent calm, experiencing neither joy nor sorrow. Moral retribution there is none.[71] The Hades of the West African seems no ecstatic paradise, to judge by Captain Burton's description: 'It was said of the old Egyptians that they lived rather in Hades than upon the banks of the Nile. The Dahomans declare that this world is man's plantation, the next is his home, — a home which, however, no one visits of his own accord. They of course own no future state of rewards and punishment: there the King will be a King, and the slave a slave for ever. Ku-to-men, or Deadman's land, the Dahoman's other but not better world, is a country of ghosts, of umbræ, who, like the spirits of the nineteenth century in Europe, lead a quiet life, except when by means of mediums they are drawn into the drawing-rooms of the living.' With some such hopeless expectation the neighbours of the Dahomans, the Yorubas, judge the life to come in their simple proverb that 'A corner in this world is better than a corner in the world of spirits.'[72] The Finns, who feared the ghosts of the departed as unkind, harmful beings, fancied them dwelling with their bodies in the grave, or else, with what Castrén thinks a later philosophy, assigned them their dwelling in the subterranean Tuonela. Tuonela was like this upper earth, the sun shone there, there was no lack of land and water, wood and field, tilth and meadow, there were bears and wolves, snakes and pike, but all things were of a hurtful, dismal kind, the woods dark and swarming with wild beasts, the water black, the cornfields bearing seed of snakes' teeth, and there stern pitiless old Tuoni, and his grim wife and son with the hooked fingers with iron points, kept watch and ward over the dead lest they should escape.[73] Scarce less dismal was the classic ideal of the dark realm below, whither the shades of the dead must go to join the many gone before ((Greek characters); penetrare ad plures; andare tra i più). The Roman Orcus holds the pallid souls, rapacious Orcus, sparing neither good nor bad. Gloomy is the Greek land of Hades, dark dwelling of the images of departed mortals, where the shades carry at once their living features and their dying wounds, and glide and cluster and whisper, and lead the shadow of a life. Like the savage hunter on his ghostly prairie, the great Orion still bears his brazen mace, still chases over the meadows of asphodel the flying beasts he slew of yore in the lonely mountains. Like the rude African of to-day, the swift-footed Achilles scorns such poor, thin, shadowy life; rather would he serve a mean man upon earth than be lord of all the dead.
'Truly, oxen and goodly sheep may be taken for booty,
Tripods, too, may be bought, and the yellow beauty of horses;
But from the fence of the teeth when once the soul is departed,
Never cometh it back, regained by plunder or purchase.'[74]
Where and what was Sheol, the dwelling of the ancient Jewish dead? Of late years the Biblical critic has no longer to depend on passages of the Old Testament for realizing its conception, so plainly is it connected with the seven-circled Irkalla of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, the gloomy subterranean abode whence there is no return for man, though indeed the goddess Isthar passed through its seven gates, and came back to earth from her errand of saving all life from destruction. In the history of religions, few passages are more instructive than those in which the prophets of the Old Testament recognize the ancestral connexion of their own belief with the national religions of Babylon-Assyria, as united in the doctrine of a gloomy prison of ghosts, through whose gates Jew and Gentile alike must pass. Sheol (שאול from שאל) is, as its name implies, a cavernous recess, yet it is no mere surface-grave or tomb, but an under-world of awful depth: 'High as Heaven, what doest thou? deeper than Sheol, what knowest thou?' Asshur and all her company, Elam and all her multitude, the
1 Homer. Il. ix. 405; Odyss. xi. 218, 475; Virg. Æn. vi. 243, &c., &c. mighty fallen of the uncircumcised, lie there. The great king of Babylon must go down: —
'Sheol from beneath is moved because of thee, to meet thee at thy coming: He rouseth for thee the mighty dead, all the great chiefs of the earth; He maketh to rise up from their thrones, all the kings of the nations. All of them shall accost thee, and shall say unto thee: Art thou, even thou too, became weak as we? Art thou made like unto us?'
To the Greek Septuagint, Sheol was Hades, and for this the Coptic translators had their long-inherited Egyptian name of Amenti, while the Vulgate renders it as Infernus, the lower regions. The Gothic Ulfilas, translating the Hades of the New Testament, could use Halja in its old German sense of the dim shadowy home of the dead below the earth; and the corresponding word Hell, if this its earlier sense be borne in mind, fairly translates Sheol and Hades in the English version of the Old and New Testament, though the word has become misleading to uneducated ears by being used also in the sense of Gehenna, the place of torment. The early Hebrew historians and prophets, holding out neither the hope of everlasting glory nor the fear of everlasting agony as guiding motives for man's present life, lay down little direct doctrine of a future state, yet their incidental mentions justify the translators who regard Sheol as Hades. Sheol is a special locality where dead men go to their dead ancestors: 'And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people ... and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.' Abraham, though not even buried in the land of his forefathers, is thus 'gathered unto his people;' and Jacob has no thought of his body being laid with Joseph's body, torn by wild beasts in the wilderness, when he says, 'I shall go down to my son mourning to Sheol' ('(Greek characters)' in the LXX., 'èpesēt èàmenti' in the Coptic, 'in infernum' in the Vulgate). The rephaim, the 'shades' of the dead, who dwell in Sheol, love not to be disturbed from their rest by the necromancer; 'And Samuel said to Saul, why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?' Yet their quiet is contrasted in a tone of sadness with the life on earth; 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor widsom, in Sheol, whither thou goest.'[75] Such thoughts of the life of the shades below did not disappear when, in the later years of the Jewish nation, the great change in the doctrine of the future life passed in so large a measure over the Hebrew mind, their earlier thoughts of ghostly continuance giving place to the doctrines of resurrection and retribution. The ancient ideas have even held their place on into Christian thought, in pictures like that of the Limbus Patrum, the Hades where Christ descended to set free the patriarchs.
The Retribution-theory of the future life comprises in a general way the belief in different grades of future happiness, especially in different regions of the other world allotted to men according to their lives in this. This doctrine of retribution is, as we have already seen, far from universal among mankind, many races recognizing the idea of a spirit outliving the body, without considering the fate of this spirit to depend at all upon the conduct of the living man. The doctrine of retribution indeed hardly seems an original part of the doctrine of the future life. On the contrary, if we judge that men in a primitive state of culture arrived at the notion of a surviving spirit, and that some races, but by no means all, afterwards reached the further stage of recognizing a retribution for deeds done in the body, this theory will not, so far as I know, be discountenanced by facts.[76] Even among the higher savages, however, a
connexion between man's life and his happiness or misery after death is often held as a definite article of theology, and thence it is to be traced onward through barbaric religions, and into the very heart of Christianity. Yet the grounds of good and evil in the future life are so far from uniform among the religions of the world, that they may differ widely within what is considered one and the same creed. The result is more definite than the cause, the end than the means. Men who alike look forward to a region of unearthly happiness beyond the grave, hope to reach that happy land by roads so strangely different, that the path of life which leads one nation to eternal bliss may seem to the next the very descent into the pit. In noticing among savage and barbaric peoples the qualifications which determine future happiness, we may with some distinctness define these as being excellence, valour, social rank, religious ordinance. On the whole, however, in the religions of the lower range of culture, unless where they may have been affected by contact with higher religions, the destiny of the man after death seems hardly to turn on judicial reward or punishment for his moral conduct in life. Such difference as is made between the future conditions of different classes of souls, seems more often to belong to a remarkable intermediate doctrine, standing between the earlier continuance-theory and the later retribution-theory. The idea of the next life being similar to this seems to have developed into the idea that what gives prosperity and renown here will give it also there, so that earthly conditions carry on their contrasts into the changed world after death. Thus a man's condition after death will be a result of, rather than a compensation or retribution for, his condition during life. A comparison of doctrines held at various stages of culture may justify a tentative speculation as to their actual sequence in history, favouring the opinion that through such an intermediate stage the doctrine of simple future existence was actually developed into the doctrine of future reward and punishment, a transition which for deep import to human life has scarcely its rival in the history of religion.
The effect of earthly rank on the future life, as looked at by the lower races, brings out this intermediate stage in bold relief. Mere transfer from one life to another makes chiefs and slaves here chiefs and slaves hereafter, and this natural doctrine is very usual. But there are cases in which earthly caste is exaggerated into utter difference in the life to come. The aerial paradise of Raiatea, with its fragrant ever-blooming flowers, its throngs of youths and girls all perfection, its luxurious feasts and merrymakings, were for the privileged orders of Areois and chiefs who could pay the priests their heavy charges, but hardly for the common populace. This idea reached its height in the Tonga islands, where aristocratic souls would pass to take their earthly rank and station in the island paradise of Bolotu, while plebeian souls, if indeed they existed, would die with the plebeian bodies they dwelt in.[77] In Vancouver's Island, the Ahts fancied Quawteaht's calm sunny plenteous land in the sky as the resting-place of high chiefs, who live in one great house as the Creator's guests, while the slain in battle have another to themselves. But otherwise all Indians of low degree go deep down under the earth to the land of Chay-her, with its poor houses and no salmon and small deer, and blankets so small and thin that when the dead are buried the friends often bury blankets with them, to send them to the world below with the departed soul.[78] The expectation of royal dignity in the life after death, distinct from the fate of ordinary mortals, comes well into view among the Natchez of Louisiana, where the sun-descended royal family would in some way return to the Sun; thus also in the mightier empire of Peru, where each sun-descended Inca, feeling the approach of death, announced to his assembled vassals that he was called to heaven to rest with his father the Sun.[79] But in the higher religions, the change in this respect from the doctrine of continuance to the doctrine of retribution is wonderful in its completeness. The story of that great lady who strengthened her hopes of future happiness by the assurance, 'They will think twice before they refuse a person of my condition,' is a mere jest to modern ears. Yet, like many other modern jest, it is only an archaism which in an older stage of culture had in it nothing ridiculous.
To the happy land of Torngarsuk the Great Spirit, says Cranz, only such Greenlanders came as have been valiant workers, for other ideas of virtue they have none; such as have done great deeds, taken many whales and seals, borne much hardship, been drowned at sea, or died in childbirth.[80] Thus Charlevoix says of the Indians further south, that their claim to hunt after death on the prairies of eternal spring is to have been good hunters and warriors here. Lescarbot, speaking of the belief among the Indians of Virginia that after death the good will be at rest and the wicked in pain, remarks that their enemies are the wicked and themselves the good, so that in their opinion they are after death much at their ease, and principally when they have well defended their country and slain their enemies.[81] So Jean de Lery said of the rude Tubinambas of Brazil, they they think the souls of such as have lived virtuously, that is to say, who have well avenged themselves and eaten many of their enemies, will go behind the great mountains and dance in beautiful gardens with the souls of their fathers, but the souls of the effeminate and worthless, who have not striven to defend their country, will go to Aygnan the Evil Spirit, to incessant torments.[82] More characteristic and probably more genuinely native than most of these expectations, is that of the Caribs, that the braves of their nation should go after death to happy islands, where all good fruits grow wild, there to spend their time in dancing and feasting, and to have their enemies the Arawaks for slaves; but the cowards who feared to go to war should go to serve the Arawaks, dwelling in their waste and barren lands beyond the mountains.[83]
The fate of warriors slain in battle is the subject of two singularly contrasted theories. We have elsewhere examined the deep-lying belief that if a man's body be wounded or mutilated, his soul will arrive in the same state in the other world. Perhaps it is some such idea of the soul being injured with the body by a violent death, that leads the Mintira of the Malay Peninsula, though not believing in a future reward and punishment, to exclude from the happy paradise of 'Fruit Island' (Pulo Bua) the souls of such as die a bloody death, condemning them to dwell on 'Red Land' (Tana Mera), a desolate barren place, whence they must even go to the fortunate island to fetch their food.[84] In North America, the idea is mentioned among the Hurons that the souls of the slain in war live in a band apart, neither they nor suicides being admitted to the spirit-villages of their tribe. A belief ascribed to certain Indians of California may be cited here, though less as a sample of real native doctrine than to illustrate that borrowing of Christian ideas which so often spoils such evidence for ethnological purposes. They held, it is said, that Niparaya, the Great Spirit, hates war, and will have no warriors in his paradise, but that his adversary Wac, shut up for rebellion in a great cave, takes thither to himself the slain in battle.[85] On the other hand, the thought which shows out in such bold relief in the savage mind, that courage is virtue, and battle and bloodshed the hero's noblest pursuit, leads naturally to a hope of glory for his soul when his body has been slain in fight. Such expectation was not strange in North America, to that Indian tribe, for instance, who talked of the Great Spirit walking in the moonlight on his island in Lake Superior, whither slain warriors will go to him to take their pleasure in the chace.[86] The Nicaraguans declared that men who died in their houses went underground, but the slain in war went to serve the gods in the east, where the sun comes from. This corresponds in part with a remarkable threefold contrast of the future life among their Aztec kinsfolk. Mictlan, the Hades of the general dead, and Tlalocan, the Earthly Paradise, reached by certain special and acute ways of death, have been mentioned here already. But the souls of warriors slain in battle or sacrificed as captives, and of women who died in child-birth, were transported to the heavenly plains; there the heroes, peeping through the holes in their bucklers pierced by arrows in earthly fight, watched the Sun arise and saluted him with shout and clash of arms, and at noon the mothers received him with music and dance to escort him on his western way.[87] In such wise, to the old Norseman, to die the 'straw-death' of sickness or old age was to go down into the dismal loathly house of Hela the Death-goddess; if the warrior's fate on the field of battle were denied him, and death came to fetch him from a peaceful couch, yet at least he could have the scratch of the spear, Odin's mark, and so contrive to go with a blood-stained soul to the glorious Walhalla. Surely then if ever, says a modern writer, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and the violent took it by force.[88] Thence we follow the idea onward to the battle-fields of holy war, where the soldier earned with his blood the unfading crown of martyrdom, and Christian and Moslem were urged in mutual onset and upheld in agony by the glimpse of paradise opening to receive the slayer of the infidel.
Such ideas, current among the lower races as to the soul's future happiness or misery, do not seem, setting aside some exceptional points, to be thoughts adopted or degraded from doctrines of cultured nations. They rather belong to the intellectual stratum in which they are found. If so, we must neither ignore nor exaggerate their standing in the lower ethics. 'The good are good warriors and hunters,' said a Pawnee chief; whereupon the author who mentions the saying remarks that this would also be the opinion of a wolf, if he could express it.[89] Nevertheless, if experience has led societies of savage men to fix on certain qualities, such as courage, skill, and industry, as being virtues, then many moralists will say that such a theory is not only ethical, but lying at the very foundation of ethics. And if these savage societies further conclude that such virtues obtain their reward in another world as in this, then their theories of future happiness and misery, destined for what they call good and bad men, may be looked on in this sense as belonging to morality, though at no high stage of development. But many or most writers, when they mention morality, assume a narrower definition of it. This must be borne in mind in appreciating what is meant by the statements of several well-qualified ethnologists, who have, in more or less degree, denied a moral character to the future retribution as conceived in savage religion. Mr. Ellis, describing the Society Islanders, at least gives an explicit definition.. When he tried to ascertain whether they connected a person's condition in a future state with his disposition and conduct in this, he never could learn that they expected in the world of spirits any difference in the treatment of a kind, gene- rous, peaceful man, and that of a cruel, parsimonious, quarrelsome one.[90] This remark, it seems to me, applies to savage religion far and wide. Dr. Brinton, commenting on the native religions of America, draws his line in a some- what different place. Nowhere, he says, was any well- defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard.[91] Professor J. G. Müller, in his 'American Religions,' yet more pointedly denies any 'ethical meaning' in the contrasts of the savage future life, and looks upon what he well calls its 'light-side' and 'shadow-side' not as recompensing earthly virtue and vice, but rather as carrying on earthly conditions in a new existence.[92]
The idea that admission to the happier region depends on the performance of religious rites and the giving of offerings, seems scarcely known to the lowest savages. It is worth while, however, to notice some statements which seem to mark its appearance at the level of high savagery or low barbarism. Thus in the Society Islands, though the destiny of man's spirit to the region of night or to elysium. was irrespective of moral character, we hear of neglect of rites and offerings as being visited by the dis- pleasure of deities.[93] In Florida, the belief of the Sun- worshipping people of Achalaque was thus described: those who had lived well, and well served the Sun, and given many gifts to the poor in his honour, would be happy after
1 Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 397; see also Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 243.
2 Brinton, p. 242, &c.
3 J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 87, 224. See also the opinions of Meiners, 'Gesch. der Religion,' vol. ii. p. 768; Wuttke, 'Gesch. des Heidenthums,' vol. i. p. 115.
4 Ellis, l. c.; Moerenhout, 'Voyage,' vol. i. p. 433. death and be changed into stars, whereas the wicked would be carried to a destitute and wretched existence among mountain precipices, where fierce wild beasts have their dens.[94] According to Bosman, the souls of Guinea negroes reaching the river of death must answer to the divine judge how they have lived; have they religiously observed the holy days dedicated to their god, have they abstained from all forbidden meats and kept their vows inviolate, they are wafted across to paradise; but if they have sinned against these laws they are plunged in the river and there drowned for ever.[95] Such statements among peoples at these stages of culture are not frequent, and perhaps not very valid as accounts of original native doctrine. It is in the elaborate religious systems of more organized nations, in modern Brahmanism and Buddhism, and degraded forms of Christianity, that the special adaptation of the doctrine of retribution to the purposes of priestcraft and ceremonialism has become a commonplace of missionary reports.
It is well not to speak too positively on a subject so difficult and doubtful as this of the history of the belief in future retribution. Careful criticism of the evidence is above all necessary. For instance, we have to deal with several statements recorded among low races, explicitly assigning reward or punishment to men after death, according as they were good or bad in life. Here the first thing to be done is to clear up, if possible, the question whether the doctrine of retribution may have been borrowed from some more cultured neighbouring religion, as the very details often show to have been the case. Examples of direct adoption of foreign dogmas on this subject are not uncommon in the world. When among the Dayaks of Borneo it is said that a dead man becomes a spirit and lives in the jungle, or haunts the place of burial or burning, or when some distant mountain-top is pointed to as the abode of spirits of departed friends, it is hardly needful to question the originality of ideas so characteristically savage. But one of these Dayak tribes, burning the dead, says that 'as the smoke of the funeral pile of a good man rises, the soul ascends with it to the sky, and that the smoke from the pile of a wicked man descends, and his soul with it is borne down to the earth, and through it to the regions below.'[96] Did not this exceptional idea come into the Dayak's mind by contact with Hinduism? In Orissa, again, Khond souls have to leap across the black unfathomable river to gain a footing on the slippery Leaping Rock, where Dinga Pennu, the judge of the dead, sits writing his register of all men's daily lives and actions, sending virtuous souls to become blessed spirits, keeping back wicked ones and sending them to suffer their penalties in new births on earth.[97] Here the striking myth of the leaping rock is perfectly savage, but the ideas of a judgment, moral retribution, and transmigration, may have come from the Hindus of the plains, as the accompanying notion of the written book unquestionably did. Dr. Mason is no doubt right in taking as the indigenous doctrine of the Karens their notion of an under-world where the ghosts of the dead live on as here, while he sets down to Hindu influence the idea of Tha-ma, the judge of the dead (the Hindu Yama), as allotting their fate according to their lives, sending those who have done deeds of merit to heaven, those who have done wickedness to hell, and keeping in Hades the neither good nor bad.[98] How the theory of moral retribution may be superposed on more primitive doctrines of the future life, comes remarkably into view in Turanian religion. Among the Lapps, Jabme-Aimo, the subterranean 'home of the dead' below the earth, where the departed have their cattle and follow their livelihood like Lapps above, though they are richer, wiser, stronger folk, and also Saivo-Aimo, a yet happier 'home of the gods,' are conceptions thoroughly in the spirit of the lower culture. But in one account the subterranean abode becomes a place of transition, where the dead stay awhile, and then with bodies renewed are taken up to the Heaven-god, or if misdoers, are flung into the abyss. Castrén is evidently right in rejecting this doctrine as not native, but due to Catholic influence. So, at the end of the 16th Rune of the Finnish Kalewala, which tells of Wainamoinen's visit to the dismal land of the dead, there is put into the hero's, mouth a second speech, warning the children of men to harm not the innocent, for sad payment is in Tuoni's dwelling — the bed of evil-doers is there, with its glowing red-hot stones below and its canopy of snakes above. But the same critic condemns this moral 'tag,' as a later addition to the genuine heathen picture of Manala, the under-world of the dead.[99] Nor did Christianity scorn to borrow details from the religions it abolished. The narrative of a mediæval visit to the other world would be incomplete without its description of the awful Bridge of Death; Acheron and Charon's bark were restored to their places in Tartarus by the visionary and the poet; the wailing of sinful souls might be heard as they were hammered white-hot in Vulcan's smithies; and the weighing of good and wicked souls, as we may see it figured on every Egyptian mummy-case, now passed into the charge of St. Paul and the Devil.[100]
The foregoing considerations having been duly weighed, it remains to call attention to the final problem, at what state of religious history the full theological doctrine of judicial retribution and moral compensation in a future life may have arisen. It is hard, however, to define where this development takes place even at a barbaric stage of culture. Thus among the barbaric nations of West Africa, there appear such beliefs as that in Nuffi, that criminals who escape their punishment here will receive it in the other world; the division of the Yoruba under-world into an upper and a lower region for the righteous and wicked; the Kru doctrine that only the good will rejoin their ancestors in heaven; the Oji doctrine that only the good will dwell after death in the heavenly house or city of the Deity whom they call the 'Highest.'[101] How far is all this to be taken as native conception, and how far as due to ages of Christian and Moslem intercourse, to which at any rate few will scruple to refer the last case?
In the lower ranges of civilization, some of the most remarkable doctrines of this class are recorded in North America. Thus they appear in connexion with the fancy of a river or gulf to be passed by the departing soul on its way to the land of the dead, one of the most remarkable traits of the mythology of the world. This seems in its origin a nature-myth, connected probably with the Sun's passage across the sea into Hades, and in many of its versions it appears as a mere episode of the soul's journey without any moral sense attached to it. Brebeuf, the same early Jesuit missionary who says explicitly of the Hurons that there is no difference in their future life between the fate of the virtuous and the vicious, mentions also among them the tree-trunk that bridges the river of death; here the dead must cross, the dog that guards it attacks some souls, and they fall. Yet in other versions this myth has a moral sense attached to it, and the passage of the heaven-gulf becomes an ordeal to separate good and wicked. To take but one instance, there is Catlin's account of the Choctaw souls journeying far westward, to whom the long slippery barkless pine-log, stretching from hill to hill, bridges over the deep and dreadful river; the good pass safely to a beauteous Indian paradise, the wicked fall into the abyss of waters, and go the dark hungry wretched land where they are henceforth to dwell.[102] This and many similar beliefs current in the religions of the world, which need not be particularised here, seem best explained as originally nature-myths, afterwards adapted to a religious purpose. A different conception was recorded so early as 1623, by Captain John Smith among the Massachusetts, whose name is still borne by the New England district they once inhabited: They say, at first there was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the heavens, whither all good men go when they die, and have plenty of all things. The bad men go thither also and knock at the door, but he bids them go wander in endless want and misery, for they shall not stay there.[103] Lastly, the Salish Indians of Oregon say that the good go to a happy hunting-ground of endless game, while the bad go to a place where there is eternal snow, hunger, and thirst, and are tantalised by the sight of game they cannot kill, and water they cannot drink.[104] If, now, in looking at these records, the doubts which beset them can be put aside, and the accounts of the different fates assigned to the good and wicked can be accepted as belonging to genuine native American religion and if, moreover, it be considered that the goodness and wickedness for which men are to be thus rewarded and punished are moral qualities, however undeveloped in definition, this will amount to an admission that the doctrine of moral retribution at any rate appears within the range of savage theology. Such a view, however, by no means invalidates the view here put forward as to the historical development of the doctrine, but only goes to prove at how early a stage it may have begun to take place. The general mass of evidence still remains to show the savage doctrine of the future state, as originally involving no moral retribution, or arriving at this through transitional and rudimentary stages.
In strong contrast with the schemes of savage future existence, I need but set before the reader's mind a salient point here and there in the doctrine of distinct and unquestionable moral retribution, as held in religions of the higher culture. The inner mystic doctrines of ancient Egypt may perhaps never be extracted now from the pictures and hieroglyphic formulas of the 'Book of the Dead.' But the ethnographer may satisfy himself of two important points as to the place which the Egyptian view of the future life occupies in the history of religion. On the one hand, the soul's quitting and revisiting the corpse, the placing of the image in the tomb, the offering of meat and drink, the fearful journey to the regions of the departed, the renewed life like that on earth, with its houses to dwell in and fields to cultivate — all these are conceptions which connect the Egyptian religion with the religions of the ruder races of mankind. But on the other hand, the mixed ethical and ceremonial standard by which the dead are to be judged adapts these primitive and even savage thoughts to a higher social development, such as may be shown by fragments from that remarkable 'negative confession' which the dead must make before Osiris and the forty-two judges in Amenti. 'O ye Lords of Truth! let me know you! ... Rub ye away my faults. I have not privily done evil against mankind. ... I have not told falsehoods in the tribunal of Truth. ... I have not done any wicked thing. I have not made the labouring man do more than his task daily. ... I have not calumniated the slave to his master. ... I have not murdered. ... I have not done fraud to men. I have not changed measures of the country. I have not injured the images of the gods. I have not taken scraps of the bandages of the dead. I have not committed adultery. I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings. I have not hunted wild animals in the pasturages. I have not netted sacred birds. ... I am pure! I am pure! I am pure!'[105]
The Vedic hymns, again, tell of endless happiness for the good in heaven with the gods, and speak also of the deep pit where the liars, the lawless, they who give no sacrifice, will be cast.[106] The rival theories of continuance and retribution are seen in instructive coexistence in classic Greece and Rome. What seems the older belief holds its ground in the realm of Hades; that dim region of bodiless, smoke-like ghosts remains the home of the undistinguished crowd in the μέσος βίος, the 'middle life.' Yet at the same time the judgment-seat of Minos and Rhadamanthos, the joys of Elysium for the just and good, fiery Tartarus echoing with the wail of the wicked, represent the newer doctrine of a moral retribution. The idea of purgatorial suffering, which hardly seems to have entered the minds of the lower races, expands in immense vigour in the great Aryan religions of Asia. In Brahmanism and Buddhism, the working out of good and evil actions into their necessary consequence of happiness and misery is the very key to the philosophy of life, whether life's successive transmigrations be in animal, or human, or demon births on earth, or in luxurious heaven-palaces of gold and jewels, or in the agonizing hells where Oriental fancy riots in the hideous inventory of torture — caldrons of boiling oil and liquid fire; black dungeons and rivers of filth; vipers, and vultures, and cannibals; thorns, and spears, and red-hot pincers, and whips of flame. To the modern Hindu, it is true, ceremonial morality seems to take the upper hand, and the question of happiness or misery after death turns rather on ablutions and fasts, on sacrifices and gifts to brahmans, than on purity and beneficence of life. Buddhism in South East Asia, sadly degenerate from its once high estate, is apt to work out the doctrine of merit and demerit into debtor and creditor accounts kept in good and bad marks from day to day; to serve out so much tea in hot weather counts 1 to the merit-side, and putting a stop to one's women scolding for a month counts 1 likewise, but this may be balanced by the offence of letting them keep the bowls and plates dirty for a day, which counts 1 the wrong way; and it appears that giving wood for two coffins, which count 30 marks each, and burying four bones, at 10 marks a-piece, would just be balanced by murdering a child, which counts 100 to the bad.[107] It need hardly be said here that these two great religions of Asia must be judged rather in their records of long past ages, than in the lingering degeneration of their modern reality.
In the Khordah-Avesta, a document of the old Persian religion, the fate of good and wicked souls at death is pictured in a dialogue between Zarathustra (Zoroaster), and Ahura-Mazda and Anra-Mainyu (Ormuzd and Ahriman). Zarathustra asks, 'Ahura-Mazda, Heavenly, Holiest, Creator of the corporeal world, Pure! When a pure man dies, where does his soul dwell during this night?' Then answers Ahura-Mazda: 'Near his head it sits down, reciting the Gâthâ Ustavaiti, praying happiness for itself; "Happiness be to the man who conduces to the happiness of each. May Ahura-Mazda create, ruling after his wish."' On this night the soul sees as much joyfulness as the whole living world possesses; and so the second and the third night. When the lapse of the third night turns itself to light, then the soul of the pure man goes forward, recollecting itself by the perfume of plants. A wind blows to meet it from the mid-day regions, a sweet-scented one, more sweet-scented than the other winds, and the soul of the pure man receives it — 'Whence blows this wind, the sweetest-scented which I ever have smelt with the nose?' Then comes to meet him his own law, (his rule of life) in the figure of a maiden beautiful, shining, with shining arms, powerful, well-grown, slender, large-bosomed, with praiseworthy body, noble, with brilliant face, one of fifteen years, as fair in her growth as the fairest creatures. Then to her speaks the soul of the pure man, asking, 'What maiden art thou whom I have seen here as the fairest of maidens in body?' She answers, 'I am, O youth, thy good thoughts, words, and works, thy good law, the own law of thine own body. Thou hast made the pleasant yet pleasanter to me, the fair yet fairer, the desirable yet more desirable, the sitting in a high place sitting in a yet higher place.' Then the soul of the pure man takes the first step and comes to the first paradise, the second and third step to the second and third paradise, the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. To the souls speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it, 'How art thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshly dwellings, from the corporeal world hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the imperishable. Hail! has it happened to thee long?' 'Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: "Ask not him whom thou askest, for he is come on the fearful way of trembling, the separation of body and soul. Bring him hither of the food, of the full fatness, that is the food for a youth who thinks, speaks, and does good, who is devoted to the good law after death — that is the food for a woman who especially thinks good, speaks good, does good, the following, obedient, pure after death."' And now Zarathustra asks, when a wicked one dies, where his soul dwells? He is told how, running about near the head, it utters the prayer, Ke maúm: — 'Which land shall I praise, whither shall I go praying, O Ahura-Mazda?' In this night it sees as much unjoyfulness as the whole living world; and so the second and the third night, and it goes at dawn to the impure place, recollecting itself by the stench. An evil-smelling wind comes towards the dead from the north, and with it the ugly hateful maiden who is his own wicked deeds, and the soul takes the fourth step into the darkness without beginning, and a wicked soul asks how long — woe to thee! — art thou come? and the mocking Anra-Mainyu, answering in words like the words of Ahura-Mazda to the good, bids food to be brought — poison, and mixed with poison, for them who think and speak and do evil, and follow the wicked law. The Parsi of our own time, following in obscure tradition the ancient Zoroastrian faith, before he prays for forgiveness for all that he ought to have thought, and said, and done, and has not, for all that he ought not to have thought, and said, and done, and has, confesses thus his faith of the future life: — 'I am wholly without doubt in the existence of the good Mazada-yaçian faith, in the coming of the resurrection and the later body, in the stepping over the bridge Chinvat, in an invariable recompense of good deeds and their reward, and of bad deeds and their punishment.'[108]
In Jewish theology, the doctrine of future retribution appears after the Babylonish captivity, not in ambiguous terms, but as the strongly-expressed and intensely-felt religious conviction it has since remained among the children of Israel. Not long afterward, it received the sanction of Christianity.
A broad survey of the doctrine of the Future Life among the various nations of the world shows at once how difficult and how important is a systematic theory of its development. Looked at ethnographically, the general relations of the lower to the higher culture as to the belief in future existence may be defined somewhat as follows: — If we draw a line dividing civilization at the junction of savagery and barbarism — about where the Carib and New Zealander ends and the Aztec or Tatar begins, we may see clearly the difference of prevalent doctrine on either side. On the savage side, the theory of hovering ghosts is strong, rebirth in human or animal bodies is often thought of, but above all there prevails the expectation of a new life, most often located in some distant earthly region, or less commonly in the under-world or on the sky. On the cultured side, the theory of hovering ghosts continues, but tends to subside from philosophy into folklore, the theory of re-birth is elaborated into great philosophic systems, but eventually dies out under the opposition of scientific biology, while the doctrine of a new life after death maintains its place with immense power in the human mind, although the dead have been ousted by geography from any earthly district, and the regions of heaven and hell are more and more spiritualized out of definite locality into vague expressions of future happiness and misery. Again, on the savage side we find the dominant idea to be a continuance of the soul in a new existence, like the present life, or idealized and exaggerated on its model; while on the cultured side the doctrine of judgment and moral retribution prevails with paramount, though not indeed absolute sway. What, then, has been the historical course of theological opinion, to have produced in different stages of culture these contrasted phases of doctrine?
In some respects, theories deriving savage from more civilized ideas are tenable. In certain cases, to consider a particular savage doctrine of the future state as a fragmentary, or changed, or corrupted outcome of the religion of higher races, seems as easy as to reverse this view by taking savagery as representing the starting-point. It is open to anyone to suppose that the doctrine of transmigration among American savages and African barbarians may have been degraded from elaborate systems of metempsychosis established among philosophic nations like the Hindus; that the North American and South African doctrine of continued existence in a subterranean world may be derived from similar beliefs held by races at the level of the ancient Greeks; that when rude tribes in the Old or New World assign among the dead a life of happiness to some, and of misery to others, this idea may have been inherited or adopted from cultured nations holding more strongly and systematically the doctrine of retribution. In such cases the argument is to a great extent the same, whether the lower race be considered degenerate descendants of a higher nation, or whether the simpler supposition be put forward that they have adopted the ideas of some more cultured people. These views ought to have full attention, for degenerate and borrowed beliefs form no small item in the opinions of uncivilized races. Yet this kind of explanation is more adapted to meet special cases than general conditions; it is rather suited to piecemeal treatment, than to comprehensive study, of the religions of mankind. Worked out on a large scale, it would endeavour to account for the doctrines of the savage world, as being a patchwork of fragments from various religions of high nations, transported by not easily-conceived means from their distant homes and set down in remote regions of the earth. It may be safely said that no hypothesis can account for the varied doctrines current among the lower tribes, without the admission that religious ideas have been in no small measure developed and modified in the districts where they are current.
Now this theory of development, in its fullest scope, combined with an accessory theory of degeneration and adoption, seems best to meet the general facts of the case. A hypothesis which finds the origin of the doctrine of the future life in the primitive animism of the lower races, and thence traces it along the course of religious thought, in varied developments fitted to exacter knowledge and forming part of loftier creeds, may well be maintained as in reasonable accordance with the evidence. Such a theory, as has been sufficiently shown in the foregoing chapters, affords a satisfactory explanation of the occurrence, in the midst of cultured religions, of intellectually low superstitions, such as that of offerings to the dead, and various others. These, which the development theory treats naturally as survivals from a low stage of education Lingering on in a higher, are by no means so readily accounted for by the degeneration-theory. There are more special arguments which favour the priority of the savage to the civilized phases of the doctrine of a future life. If savages did in general receive their views of another existence from the religious systems of cultured nations, these systems can hardly have been such as recognize the dominant doctrines of heaven and hell. For, as to the locality of the future world, savage races especially favour a view little represented in civilized belief, namely, that the life to come is in some distant earthly country. Moreover, the belief in a fiery abyss or Gehenna, which excites so intensely and lays hold so firmly of the imagination of the most ignorant men, would have been especially adapted to the minds of savages, had it come down to them by tradition from an ancestral faith. Yet, in fact, the lower races so seldom recognize such an idea, that even the few cases in which it occurs lie open to suspicion of not being purely native. The proposition that the savage doctrines descend from the more civilized seems thus to involve the improbable supposition, that tribes capable of keeping up traditions of Paradise, Heaven, or Hades, should nevertheless have forgotten or discarded a tradition of Hell. Still more important is the contrast between the continuance-theory and the retribution-theory of the future existence, in the sections of culture where they respectively predominate. On the one hand, the continuance-theory, with its ideas of a ghostly life like this, is directly vouched for by the evidence of the. senses in dreams and visions of the dead, and may be claimed as part of the 'Natural Religion,' properly so called, of the lower races. On the other hand, the retribution-theory is a dogma which this evidence of apparitions could hardly set on foot, though capable of afterwards supporting it. Throughout the present study of animistic religion, it constantly comes into view that doctrines which in the lower culture are philosophical, tend in the higher to become ethical; that what among savages is a science of nature, passes among civilized nations into a moral engine. Herein lies the distinction of deepest import between the two great theories of the soul's existence after bodily death. According to a development theory of culture, the savage, unethical doctrine of continuance would be taken as the more primitive, succeeded in higher civilization by the ethical doctrine of retribution. Now this theory of the course of religion in the distant and obscure past is conformable with experience of its actual history, so far as this lies within our knowledge. Whether we compare the early Greek with the later Greek, the early Jew with the later Jew, the ruder races of the world in their older condition with the same races as affected by the three missionary religions of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, the testimony of history vouches for the like transition towards ethical dogma.
In conclusion, though theological argument on the actual validity of doctrines relating to the future life can have no place here, it will be well not to pass by without further remark one great practical question which lies fairly within the province of Ethnography. How, in the various stages of culture, has the character and conduct of the living been affected by the thought of a life to come? If we take the savage beliefs as a starting-point, it will appear that these belong rather to speculative philosophy than to practical rule of life. The lower races hold opinions as to a future state because they think them true, but it is not surprising that men who take so little thought of a contingency three days off, should receive little practical impulse from vague anticipations of a life beyond the grave. Setting aside the consideration of possible races devoid of all thought of a future existence, there unquestionably has been and is a great mass of mankind whose lives are scarcely affected by such expectations of another life as they do hold. The doctrine of continuance, making death as it were a mere journey into a new country, can have little direct action on men's conduct, though indirectly it has indeed an enormous and disastrous influence on society, leading as it does to the slaughter of wives and slaves, and the destruction of property, for the use of the dead in the next world. If this world to come be thought a happier region, the looking forward to it makes men more willing to risk their lives in battle, promotes the habit of despatching the sick and aged into a better life, and encourages suicide when life is very hateful here. When the half-way house between continuance and retribution is reached, and the idea prevails that the manly virtues which give rank and wealth and honour here will lead hereafter to yet brighter glory, then this belief must add new force to the earthly motives which make bold warriors and mighty chiefs. But among men who expect to become hovering ghosts at death, or to depart to some gloomy land of shades, such expectation strengthens the natural horror and hatred of dissolution. They tend toward the state of mind frequent among modern Africans, whose thought of death is that he shall drink no more rum, wear no more fine clothes, have no more wives. The negro of our own day would feel to the utmost the sense of those lines in the beginning of the Iliad, which describe the heroes' 'souls' being cast down to Hades, but 'themselves' left a prey to dogs and carrion birds.
Rising to the level of the higher races, we mark the thought of future existence taking a larger and larger place in the convictions of religion, the expectation of a judgment after death gaining in intensity and becoming, what it scarcely seems to the savage, a real motive in life. Yet this change is not to be measured as proceeding throughout in any direct proportion with the development of culture. The doctrine of the future life has hardly taken deeper and stronger root in the higher than in the middle levels of civilization. In the language of ancient Egypt, it is the dead who are emphatically called the 'living,' for their life is everlasting, whether in the world of the departed, or nearer home in the tomb, the 'eternal dwelling.' The Moslem says that men sleep in life and wake in death; the Hindu likens the body which a soul has quitted to the bed he rises from in the morning. The story of the ancient Getæ, who wept at births and laughed at funerals, embodies an idea of the relation of this life to the next which comes to the surface again and again in the history of religion, nowhere perhaps touched in with a lighter hand than in the Arabian Nights' tale where Abdallah of the Sea indignantly breaks off his friendship with Abdallah of the Land, when he hears that the dwellers on the land do not feast and sing when one of them dies, like the dwellers in the sea, but mourn and weep and tear their garments. Such thoughts lead on into the morbid asceticism that culminates in the life of the Buddhist saint, eating his food with loathing from the alms-bowl that he carries as though it held medicine, wrapping himself in grave-clothes from the cemetery, or putting on his disfigured robe as though it were a bandage to cover a sore, whose looking forward is to death for deliverance from the misery of life, whose dreamiest hope is that after an inconceivable series of successive existences he may find in utter dissolution and not-being a refuge even from heaven.
The belief in future retribution has been indeed a powerful engine in shaping the life of nations. Powerful both for good and evil, it has been made the servant-of-all-work of many faiths. Priesthoods have used it unscrupulously for their professional ends, to gain wealth and power for their own caste, to stop intellectual and social progress beyond the barriers of their consecrated systems. On the banks of the river of death, a band of priests has stood for ages to bar the passage against all poor souls who cannot satisfy their demands for ceremonies, and formulas, and fees. This is the dark side of the picture. On the bright side, as we study the moral standards of the higher nations, and see how the hopes and fears of the life to come have been brought to enforce their teachings, it is plain that through most widely differing religions the doctrine of future judgment has been made to further goodness and to check wickedness, according to the shifting rules by which men have divided right from wrong. The philosophic schools which from classic times onward have rejected the belief in a future existence, appear to have come back by a new road to the very starting-point which perhaps the rudest races of men never quitted. At least this seems true as regards the doctrine of future retribution, which is alike absent from the belief of classes of men at the two extremes of culture. How far the moral standard of life may have been adjusted throughout the higher races with reference to a life hereafter, is a problem difficult of solution, so largely do unbelievers in this second life share ethical principles which have been more or less shaped under its influence. Men who live for one world or for two, have high motives of virtue in common; the noble self-respect which impels them to the life they feel worthy of them; the love of goodness for its own sake and for its immediate results; and beyond this, the desire to do good that shall survive the doer, who will not indeed be in the land of the living to see his work, but who can yet discount his expectations into some measure of present satisfaction. Yet he who believes that his thread of life will be severed once and for ever by the fatal shears, well knows that he wants a purpose and a joy in life, which belong to him who looks for a life to come. Few men feel real contentment in the expectation of vanishing out of conscious existence, henceforth, like the great Buddha, to exist only in their works. To remain incarnate in the memory of friends is something. A few great spirits may enjoy in the reverence of future ages a thousand years or so of 'subjective immortality;' though as for mankind at large, the individual's personal interest hardly extends beyond those who have lived in his time, while his own memory scarce outlives the third and fourth generation. But over and above these secular motives, the belief in immortality extends its powerful influence through life, and culminates at the last hour, when, setting aside the very evidence of their senses, the mourners smile through their tears, and say it is not death but life.
- ↑ Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 239; Seemann, 'Viti,' p. 398.
- ↑ Arbousset and Daumas, p. 347; Casalis, p. 247.
- ↑ Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 20, &c.
- ↑ See 'The Buke of John Mandeuill,' 31, edited by Geo. F. Warner, published by the Roxburghe Club, 1889; Yule, 'Cathay,' Hakluyt Soc. [Note to 3rd ed.]
- ↑ Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 215. Other cases in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. pp. 58, 369, &c.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Algic Res.' vol. ii. pp. 32, 64, and see ante, vol. i. p. 312.
- ↑ Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 271; Klemm, 'C. G.' vol. ii. p. 312.
- ↑ Kalewala, Rune xvi.; see Schiefner's German Translation, and Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' pp. 128, 134. A Slavonic myth in Hanusch, p. 412.
- ↑ Homer. Odyss. xi. On the vivification of ghosts by sacrifice of blood, and on libations of milk and blood, see Meiners, vol. i. p. 315, vol. ii. p. 89; J. G Müller, p. 85; Rochholz, 'Deutscher Glaube und Brauch,' vol. i. p. 1, &c.
- ↑ See for example, various details in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. pp. 369-75, &c.
- ↑ See vol. i. p. 481; also below, p. 52, note. Tanner's 'Narr.' p. 290; Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 233; Keating, vol. ii. p. 154; Loskiel, part i. p. 35; Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 14. See Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 269.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. pp. 316-20.
- ↑ Shortland, 'Traditions of New Zealand,' p. 150; R. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 423. The idea, of which the classic representative belongs to the myth of Persephone, that the living who tastes the food of the dead may not return, and which is so clearly stated in this Maori story, appears again among the Sioux of North America. Ahak-tah ('Male Elk') seems to die, but after two days comes down from the funeral-scaffold where his body had been laid, and tells his tale. His soul had travelled by the path of braves through the beautiful land of great trees and gay loud-singing birds, till he reached the river, and saw the homes of the spirits of his forefathers on the shore beyond. Swimming across, he entered the nearest house, where he found his uncle sitting in a corner. Very hungry, he noticed some wild rice in a bark dish. 'I asked my uncle for some rice to eat, but he did not give it to me. Had I eaten of the food for spirits, I never should have returned to earth.' Eastman, 'Dacotah,' p. 177.
- ↑ Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 139, &c.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' Letter 19, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 501; Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 158. For modern visits to hell and heaven by Christianized negro visionaries in America, see Macrae, 'Americans at Home,' vol. ii. p. 91.
- ↑ Lucian. Philopseudes, c. 17-28.
- ↑ Plutarch. De Sera Numinis Vindicta, xxii.; and in Euseb. Præp. Evang. xi. 36.
- ↑ Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 63.
- ↑ Gregor. Dial. iv. 36. See Calmet, vol. ii. ch. 49.
- ↑ Augustin. Epist. clxiv. 2.
- ↑ See Pearson, 'Exposition of the Creed;' Bingham, 'Ant. Ch. Ch.' book x. ch. iii. Art. iii. of the Church of England was reduced to its present state by Archbp. Parker's revision.
- ↑ Codex Apocr. N. T. Evang. Nicod. ed. Giles. 'Apocryphal Gospels,' &c. tr. by A. Walker; 'Gospel of Nicodemus.' The Greek and Latin texts differ much.
- ↑ The following details mostly from T. Wright, 'St. Patrick's Purgatory' (an elaborate critical dissertation on the mediæval legends of visits to the other world).
- ↑ St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 278. Rigg, in 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iv. p. 119. See also Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 397; Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 83; Irving, 'Astoria,' p. 142.
- ↑ Molina, 'Chili,' vol. ii. p. 89.
- ↑ Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 496; Sahagun, iii. App. c. 2, x. c. 29; Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 5.
- ↑ See 'Wright, l.c. &c.; Alger, p. 391; &c.
- ↑ 'History of Colon,' ch. 61; Pet. Martyr. Dec. i. lib. ix.; Irving, 'Life of Columbus,' vol. ii. p. 121.
- ↑ Stanbridge in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 299; G. F. Moore, 'Vocab. W. Austr.' p. 83; Bonwick, 'Tasmanians,' p. 181.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 321; see part iii. p. 229.
- ↑ Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 107. See also Burton, 'W. and W. fr. W. Africa,' p. 154 (Gold Coast).
- ↑ 32.0 32.1 Hesiod. Opera et Dies, 165. Pindar, Olymp. ii. antistr. 4. Callistrat. Hymn. in Ilgen, Scolia Græca, 10. Strabo, iii. 2, 13; Plin. iv. 36.
- ↑ Procop. De Bello Goth. iv. 20; Plut. Fragm. Comm. in Hesiod. 2; Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 793; Hersart de Villemarqué, vol. i. p. 136; Souvestre, 'Derniers Bretons,' p. 37; Jas. Macpherson, 'Introd. to Hist, of Great Britain and Ireland,' 2nd ed. London, 1772, p. 180; Wright, 'St. Patrick's Purgatory,' pp. 64, 129.
- ↑ Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 269.
- ↑ Harmon, 'Journal,' p. 299; see Lewis and Clarke, p. 139 (Mandans).
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' pp. 140, 287; see Humboldt and Bonpland, 'Voy.' vol. iii. p. 132; Falkner, 'Patagonia,' p. 114.
- ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 232; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 235.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 317, &c.; Arbousset and Daumas, p. 474. See also Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 157.
- ↑ Mason, 'Karens,' l.c. p. 195; Cross, l.c. p. 313. Turanian examples in Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 119.
- ↑ See below, pp. 79, 85.
- ↑ Festus, s.v. 'manalis,' &c.
- ↑ Sophocl. Œdip. Tyrann. 178; Lucian. De Luctu, 2, See classic details in Pauly, 'Real-Encyclop.' art. 'inferi.'
- ↑ Birch in Bunsen's 'Egypt,' vol. v.; Wilkinson, 'Ancient Eg.' vol. ii. p. 368; Alger, p. 101.
- ↑ Smith, 'History of Virginia,' in 'Works' ed. by Arber; Pinkerton, vol. xiii. pp. 14, 41; vol. xii. p. 604; see below, p. 95.
- ↑ Thorpe, 'Analecta Anglo-Saxonica,' p. 115.
- ↑ Schirren, p. 151. See Taylor, 'N. Z.' p. 525.
- ↑ Meiners, vol. ii. p. 781; Maury, 'Magie,' &c. p. 170.
- ↑ Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' p. 160; Brinton, p. 288.
- ↑ 1
- ↑ 2
- ↑ See Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. pp. 269, 311; Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 54; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 223; Squier, 'Abor. Mon. of N. Y.' p. 156; Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 180.
- ↑ Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 134; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 103; Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 101, 114, 256.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 393; Burton, 'W. and W. fr. W. Afr.' p. 454; Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 295.
- ↑ Herodot, iv. 158, see 185, and Rawlinson's note. See Smith's 'Dic. of the Bible,' s.v. 'firmament.' Eisenmenger, part i. p. 408.
- ↑ Eyre, 'Australia,' vol. ii. p. 367.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iv. p. 240 (but compare part v. p. 403); Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 176; Sproat, 'Savage Life,' p. 209.
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. ii. pp. 319, 328; see Martius, vol. i. p. 485 (Jumanas).
- ↑ J. G. Müller, p. 403; Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 496; Kingsborough, 'Mexico,' Cod. Letellier, fol. 20.
- ↑ 1
- ↑ Cross, 'Karens,' l.c. pp. 309, 313; Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1634, p. 16; Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 272; Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 316; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. ii. pp. 310, 315; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrel.' pp. 139,286.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologic,' p. 224; Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part ii. p. 135.
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. i. p. 364; Spix and Martius, 'Brasilien,' vol. i. p. 383; De Laet, Novus Orbis, xv. 2.
- ↑ Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 258.
- ↑ Magyar, 'Süd-Afrika,' p. 336.
- ↑ Edda: 'Gylfaginning.'
- ↑ 'Koran,' ch. lv. lvi.
- ↑ Eisenmenger, 'Entdecktes Judenthum,' part i. p. 7.
- ↑ Hardy, 'Manual of Budhism,' pp. 5, 24; Köppen, 'Rel. des Buddha,' vol. i. p. 235, &c.
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1636, p. 105.
- ↑ Sahagun, 'Hist. de Nueva España,' book iii. appendix ch. i., in Kingsborough, vol. vii.; Brasseur, vol. iii. p. 571.
- ↑ Casalis, 'Basutos,' pp. 247, 254.
- ↑ Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 156; 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 403; 'Wit and Wisdom from W. Afr.' pp. 280, 449; see J. G. Müller, p. 140.
- ↑ Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 126, &c.; Kalewala, Rune xv. xvi. xlv. &c.; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 780.
- ↑ 1
- ↑ Gen. xxxv. 29; xxv. 8; xxxvii. 35; Job xi. 8; Amos ix. 2; Psalm lxxxix. 48; Ezek. xxxi., xxxii.; Isaiah xiv. 9, xxxviii. 10-18; 1 Sam., xxviii. 15; Eccles. ix. 10. 'Records of the Past,' vol. i. pp. 141-9; Sayce 'Lectures on Hist. of Rel.' part ii.; Alger, 'Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life,' ch. viii.
- ↑ The doctrine of reversal, as in Kamchatka, where rich and poor will change places in the other world (Steller, pp. 269-72), is too exceptional in the lower culture to be generalized. See Steinhauser, 'Rel. des Negers,' l. c., p. 135. A Wolof proverb is 'The more powerful one is in this world, the more servile one will be in the next.' (Burton, 'Wit and Wisdom,' p. 28.)
- ↑ Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. pp. 245, 397; see also Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 237 (Samoans); Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 105.
- ↑ Sproat, 'Savage Life,' p. 209.
- ↑ 'Rec. des Voy. au Nord,' vol. v. p. 23 (Natchez); Garcilaso de la Vega, 'Commentaries Reales,' lib. i. c. 23, tr. by C. R. Markham; Prescott, 'Peru,' vol. i. pp. 29, 83; J. G. Müller, p. 402, &c.
- ↑ Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 259.
- ↑ Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 77; Lescarbot, 'Hist. de la Nouvelle France,' Paris, 1619, p. 679.
- ↑ Lery, 'Hist. d'un Voy. en Brésil,' p. 234; Coreal, 'Voi. aux Indes Occ.' i. p. 224.
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 430.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 325.
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1636, p. 104; see also Meiners, vol. ii. p. 769; J. G. Müller, pp. 89, 139.
- ↑ Chateaubriand, 'Voy. en Amériquce' (Religion).
- ↑ Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' p. 22; Torquemada, 'Monarquia Indiana,' book xiii. c. 48; Sahagun, book iii. app. ch. i.-iii. in Kingsborough, vol. vii. Compare Anderson, 'Exp. to W. Yunnan,' p. 125. (Shans, good men and mothers dying in child-birth to heaven, bad men and those killed by the sword to hell.)
- ↑ Alger, 'Future Life,' p. 93.
- ↑ Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 300.
- ↑ 1
- ↑ 2
- ↑ 3
- ↑ 4
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 378.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' letter x.; in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 401.
- ↑ St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 181; see Mundy, 'Narrative,' vol. i. p. 332.
- ↑ Macpherson, p. 92. Compare Moerenhout, l. c. (Tahiti).
- ↑ Mason, l. c. p. 195. See also De Brasses, 'Nav. aux Terres Australes,' vol. ii. p. 482 (Caroline Is.).
- ↑ Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' pp. 136, 144. See Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. Reich,' vol. i. p. 278. Compare accounts of Purgatory among the North American Indians, apparently derived from missionaries, in Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 169; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 345.
- ↑ See T. Wright, 'St. Patrick's Purgatory.'
- ↑ Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 171, 191; Bowen, 'Yoruba Lang.' p. xvi. See J. L. Wilson, p. 210.
- ↑ Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1635, p. 35; 1636, p. 105. Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. ii. p. 127; Long's 'Exp.' vol. i. p. 180. See Brinton, p. 247; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191, vol. iii. p. 197; and the collection of myths of the Heaven-Bridge and Heaven-Gulf in 'Early History of Mankind,' chap. xii.
- ↑ Smith, 'New England,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 244.
- ↑ Wilson in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 303.
- ↑ Birch, Introduction to and translation of the 'Book of the Dead,' in Bunsen, vol. v.; Wilkinson, 'Ancient Eg.' vol. v.
- ↑ For references to Rig Veda see Muir, 'Sanskrit Texts,' sec. xviii.; Max Müller, Lecture on Vedas in 'Essays,' vol. ii.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' new ser. vol. ii. p. 210. See Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 387.
- ↑ Spiegel, 'Avesta,' ed. Bleek, vol. iii. pp. 136, 163; see vol. i. pp. xviii. 90, 141; vol. ii. p. 68.