[34]. The first pair is thus accounted for in a simple and generally satisfactory manner. But the fact of the perpetuation of the tribe or the race appears to have offered serious difficulties to the savage mind. Some tribes are reported to be ignorant of the natural cause of birth. Some Melanesian women believe that the origin or beginning of a child is a plant (coconut or other), and that the child will be the nunu (something like an echo) of that thing or of a dead person (this is not the transition of a soul—the child takes the place of the dead person). In Mota there is a similar belief.[53] The Central Australians, it is said, think that the birth of a child is due to the entrance of a spirit into the body of a woman[54]—every child is thus the reincarnation of some ancient person (an "ancestor"), and the particular person is identified by the sacred object (stone or tree, or other object) near which the woman is when she first becomes aware of the child within her; every such object (and there are many of them near any village) represents some spirit whose name is known to the old men of the tribe, and this name is given the child.[55]
[35]. Similar theories of birth are found among the Eskimo[56] and the Khonds,[57] in Melanesia,[58] in West Africa,[59] and elsewhere.[60] Such views thus appear to have been widely diffused, and are in fact a natural product of early biological science. They embody the earliest known form of the doctrine of reincarnation, which is so important in the Buddhistic dogma.[61] With it must be connected the fact that among many peoples (savage, half-civilized, and civilized) birth was intimately connected with supernatural beings, whence the origin of numerous usages: the precautions taken to guard the woman before delivery, the lustrations after the birth, the couvade, the dread of menstrual and seminal discharges, and further, customs relating to the arrival of boys and girls at the age of puberty.
[36]. At a later stage of culture the creation of the soul was distinguished from that of the body, and was generally regarded as a special act of the deity: the Hebrews conceived that the body was fashioned out of dust, and that the breath of life was breathed into it by God, so that man became a "living soul"[62]; Plato at one time[63] thought that the soul of the world was created by God, out of certain elements, before the body, and was made prior to it in origin and excellence so that it should be its ruler, and that afterwards he placed separate souls in the various separate bodies; the immortal gods, says Cicero, have placed souls (animos) in human bodies, and the human soul has been plucked (decerptus) from the divine mind.[64]
[37]. In the early Christian centuries the question of how the soul came into the body was an intensely practical one—it was closely connected with the question of man's inherent sinfulness and his capacity for redemption. Tertullian's theory of the natural propagation of souls (traducianism), which involved the inheritance of a sinful nature, was succeeded on the one hand by the theory of preëxistence (adopted by Origen from Plato), and on the other hand by the view that every soul was an immediate creation of God (creationism, held by Jerome and others), these both assuming the natural goodness or untainted character of the soul at the birth of the human being.
[38]. The mysterious character of death, the final departure of the soul from the body, called forth in savage communities feelings of awe and dread. As death, in the savage view, was due to the intervention of a supernatural agency, the dead body and everything connected with it partook of the sacredness that attached to the supernatural.[65] Hence, probably, many of the customs relating to the treatment of corpses—taboos that survived into comparatively late times.[66] The Old Testament ritual term 'unclean' is used of corpses and other things that it was unlawful to touch, things taboo, and in this sense is equivalent to 'sacred.'[67]
3. Polypsychism
[39]. In the preceding section only the general fact of the existence of the soul is considered. We find, however, a widespread belief among savage and half-civilized peoples that every human body is inhabited by several souls (two or more).[68] Thus, the Fijians, the Algonkins, and the Karens recognize two souls; the Malagasy, the Dahomi, and the Ashanti three; the Congoans three or four, the Chinese three, the Dakotas four, the Malays (of the peninsula) seven; and this list is not exhaustive.[69] To these various souls different procedures and functions are assigned.
[40]. In general, as to place and function during the man's life, the following classes of souls are distinguished: the vital soul, or the principle of life, whose departure leaves the man insensible or dead (Malagasy aina, Karen kalah, Eẃe 'ghost-soul'); the dream-soul, which wanders while the man is asleep (probably a universal conception in early stages of culture); the shadow-soul, which accompanies him by day (also, probably, universal); the reflection-soul (similar to the preceding); the beast-soul, or bush-soul, incarnate in a beast (among the Congoans, the Eẃe, the Tshi, the Khonds), with which may be compared the Egyptian view that revenant souls and Underworld shadows may assume the form of animals, and the Hindu metempsychosis. A particular responsible moral soul is also reported (among the Karens),[70] but it is doubtful whether this is native; and still more doubtful are the Karen 'reason' (tsō) and the Khond beatified soul.[71]
[41]. In regard to procedure after the man's death, it is generally held in early stages of culture that one soul stays with the body, or at the tomb, or in the village, or becomes air, while another departs to the land of the dead (Fijians, Algonkins, and others), or is reborn (Khonds), and in some cases a soul is said to vanish.[72]
[42]. It is obvious that there was great flexibility and indefiniteness in early theories of the soul. The savage mind, feeling its way among its varied experiences, was disposed to imagine a separate interior substance to account for anything that seemed to be a separate and valuable manifestation of the man's personality. The number of souls varies with the number of phenomena that it was thought necessary to recognize as peculiar, and the lines of demarcation between different souls are not always strictly drawn. As to the manner of the souls' indwelling in the body, and as to their relations one to another, savages have nothing definite to say, or, at least, have said nothing. In general our information regarding savage psychical theories is meager; it is not unlikely that with fuller acquaintance the details given above would have to be modified, though the general fact of polypsychism would doubtless remain.