There are, it is true, some savages who are reported to believe in the annihilation of the soul at the moment of death, or to have no notion whatever of a future state.[1] But the accuracy of these statements is hardly beyond suspicion. We sometimes hear that the very people who are said to deny any belief in an after-life are afraid of ghosts.[2] A native of Madagascar will almost in the same breath declare that when he dies he ceases altogether to exist and yet confess the fact that he is in the habit of praying to his dead ancestors.[3] Of the Masai in Eastern Africa some writers state that they believe in annihilation,[4] others that they attribute a future existence to their chiefs, medicine men, or influential people.[5] The ideas on this subject are often exceedingly vague, and inconsistencies are only to be expected.
[1] Powers, Tribes of California, p. 348 sq. (Miwok). Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 233 sq. (some Oregon Indians). Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 101 (natives of the Herbert River, Northern Queensland). Martin, Reisen in den Molukken, p. 155 (Alfura). Worcester, Philippine Islands, p. 412 (Mangyans). Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 76 (Lethtas). Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 257 (Oráons). Petherick, Travels in Central Africa, i. 321 (Nouaer tribes). Du Chaillu, Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 385.
[2] New, Life in Eastern Africa, p. 105.
[3] Ellis, History of Madagascar, 393.
[4] Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 259. Hinde, The Last of the Masai, p. 99.
[5] Johnston, Uganda, ii. 832. Hollis, Masai, pp. 304, 305, 307. Eliot, ibid. p. xx.
The disembodied soul is commonly supposed to have the shape of a small unsubstantial human image, and to be in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow.[6] It is believed to have the same bodily wants and to possess the same mental capacities as its owner possessed during his lifetime. It is not regarded as invulnerable or immortal—it may be hurt and killed. It feels hunger and thirst, heat and cold. It can see and hear and think, it has human passions and a human will, and it has the power to influence the living for evil or for good. These notions as regards the disembodied soul determine the relations between the living and the dead.
[6] Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 429.
The dead are supposed to have rights very similar to those they had whilst alive. The soul must not be killed or injured. The South Australian Dieyerie, for instance, show great reverence for certain trees, which are believed to be their fathers transformed; they will not cut them down and protest against the settlers doing so.[7] So also some of the Philippine Islanders maintain that the souls of their forefathers are in trees, which they therefore spare.[8] The North American Powhatans refrained from doing harm to some small wood-birds, which were supposed to receive the souls of their chiefs.[9] In Lifu, when a father was about to die, surrounded by members of his family, he might say what animal he would be, for instance a butterfly or some kind of bird, and that creature would be sacred to his family, who would neither injure nor kill it.[10] The Rejangs of Sumatra imagine that tigers in general contain the spirits of departed men, and “no consideration will prevail on a countryman to catch or to wound one, but in self-defence, or immediately after the act of destroying a friend or relation.”[11] Among other peoples monkeys, crocodiles, or snakes, being thought men in metempsychosis, are held sacred and must not be hurt.[12] Some Congo Negroes, again, abstain for a whole year after a death from sweeping the house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost.[13] In China, for seven days after a man’s death his widow and children avoid the use of knives and needles, and even of chopsticks, eating their food with their fingers, so as not to wound the ghost.[14] And to this day it remains a German peasants’ belief that it is wrong to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it.[15]
[7] Gason, ‘Dieyerie Tribe,’ in Woods’ Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 280.