[250] de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 475 sq.
There are several reasons why practices connected with death which originally sprang from self-regarding motives have come to be enjoined as duties. We have first to remember the various factors mentioned above[251] which tend to make self-regarding conduct a matter of moral concern. But in this case the transition from the prudential to the obligatory has been much facilitated by the circumstance that all the acts which a person’s self-interest induces him to perform or to abstain from have direct reference to another individual, and, indeed, to an individual who is supposed to reward benefits bestowed upon him or at all events to resent injuries and neglect. These punishments and rewards sent by the departed soul are all the more readily recognised to be well deserved, as the claims of the dead are similar in nature to those of the living and are at the same time in some degree supported by sympathetic feelings in the survivors. Nor is it difficult to explain why even such practices as are not originally supposed to comfort the dead have assumed the character of duties towards them. The dead are not only beings whom it is dangerous to offend and useful to please, but they are also very easily duped. No wonder therefore that the living are anxious to put the most amiable interpretation upon their conduct, trying to persuade the ghost, as also one another, that they do what they do for his benefit, not for their own. It is better for him to have rest in his grave than to wander about on earth unhappy and homeless. It is better for him to enjoy the heat of the flames than to suffer from the cold of an arctic climate. It is better for him to be eaten by an animal—say, a beautiful dog or a hyæna sent by God—than to lie and rot in the open air. And all the mourning customs, what are they if not tokens of grief? Moreover, if the corpse is not properly disposed of or any funeral or mourning rite calculated to keep off the ghost is not observed, the dead man will easily do harm to the survivors. And does not this indicate that they have been neglectful of their duties to him?
[251] Supra, [ii. 266 sq.]
The mixture of sympathy and fear which is at the bottom of the duties to the dead accounts for the fact that these duties are rarely extended to strangers. A departed stranger is not generally an object of either pity or fear. He expects attention from his own people only, he haunts his own home. But he may of course be dangerous to anybody who directly offends him, for instance by inflicting an injury upon his body, or to people who live in the vicinity of his grave. We are told that the Angami Nagas bestow as much care on the tombs of foes who have fallen near their villages as on those of their own warriors.[252] So also the differences in the treatment of the dead which depend upon age, sex, and social position are no doubt closely connected with variations in the feelings of sympathy, respect, or fear,[253] although in many cases we are unable to explain those differences in detail. Among the Australian natives women and children are said to be interred with little ceremony because they are held to be very inferior to men while alive and consequently are not much feared after death;[254] and if in Eastern Central Africa the attention usually bestowed upon the dead is not extended to children which die when four or five days old, the reason seems to be that such children are hardly supposed to possess a soul.[255] We may assume that the special treatment to which the bodies of criminals are subject is due not only to indignation but, in some instances at least, to fear of their ghosts. And we have noticed above that suicides, murdered persons, and those struck with lightning are sometimes left unburied because no one dares to interfere with their bodies, or perhaps in order to prevent them from mixing with the other dead.[256]
[252] Prain, ‘Angami Nagas,’ in Revue coloniale internationale, v. 493.
[253] Cf. Hertz, loc. cit. pp. 122, 132 sqq.
[254] Curr, The Australian Race, i. 89.
[255] Macdonald, Africana, i. 68.
[256] Supra, [ii. 238 sq.]
It should finally be noticed that the duties to the departed become less stringent as time goes on. As Dr. Hertz has recently shown, the fear of the dead is greatest as long as the process of decomposition lasts and till the second funeral is performed, and this ceremony brings the period of mourning to an end.[257] Moreover, the dead are gradually less and less thought of, they appear less frequently in dreams and visions, the affection for them fades away, and, being forgotten, they are no longer feared. The Chinese say that ghosts are much more liable to appear very shortly after death, than at any other period.[258] The natives of Australia are only afraid of the spirits of men who have lately died.[259] In the course of time savages also become more willing to speak of their dead.[260] But whilst the large bulk of disembodied souls sooner or later lose their individuality and dwindle into insignificance or sink into the limbo of All Souls, it may be that some of them escape this fate, and, instead of being ignored, are raised to the rank of gods.