The indescribable delights they so lately experienced are in this state all unknown. Death comes at last to their relief, and grim King Back-Chopper loses his prey. Spirits whom he has long tortured are hourly escaping him and passing to the Sixth and Last State, which is known in the old legends as “The-Place-of-Everlasting-Standing.”
Here, for ever, the spirits remain in a standing posture. They may never walk, sit, or lie down. It is the state of upright, motionless, absolute immortality, for every spirit that can bear it. But restless spirits who hate so monotonous and statue-like a life, are taken in hand by the King of the realm, and reduced to something akin to annihilation! Hence, perhaps, the opinion that chiefs alone are heirs of immortality; all others being unable to pass the trials which thicken around them, in the several states through which we have hastened our tour of inspection. If, however, they should succeed in outliving the dangers and deaths encountered there, they can surely never survive the last and greatest test of all, with which King Lothea never fails to try every spirit that comes within the circle of his jurisdiction. All who cannot stand, Fakir-like, for ever, and without any sign of unrest or discontent whatsoever, must at last submit to have their spiritual legs taken from under them. Every leg thus removed is forthwith converted into spiritual mould, for the spiritual taro-beds of the great Spirit-King. The annihilation here indicated is, to say the most, but very partial; for, if nothing but the extremities of human spirits are destroyed, we may safely infer that our cannibal philosopher’s doctrine of annihilation is one of milder form than that contended for by learned “destructionists” of other lands.
I have now gone the round of the “Circles,” having faithfully followed my native guides into the very heart of the land of shadows and out again. Nothing remains but to note two or three general characteristics of the cannibals’ future home, and then to take our leave of the Spirit-World—a world which, in whatever light we may view it, to the Fijian is a very matter-of-fact one after all.
Spirits dwell a long time in each state unless they fail of endurance, when they are at once removed by a process akin to, and in Cannibal-land called, another death. The doctrine therefore that a man can die but once, is not to be found in the cannibals’ creed. Transmigration is an article in it, but it is only a spiritual migration from place to place, not from one body to another, except in the case of high-class gods, who have the power of passing from body to body when necessary, in order to effect more readily and perfectly their deep designs, either for or against the cannibal portion of the human race. The popular notion in Cannibal-land and times about these future homes of departed spirits, was that on the whole more happiness could be found in them than in this, the first stage of man’s existence. The least pleasant thing connected with it was the difficulty of getting there in safety; and when there, in passing the several tests in such a manner as to be entitled to be let alone to a full enjoyment of whatever was enjoyable. All things considered, it is a fine country, where the spirits of chiefs live with chiefs, and those of common men with spirits of their own order. Youth is seldom or never renewed, for old folks are seen there in great numbers, trusting to their walking-sticks in all their feeble attempts to shamble along the public walks of the place. There is work to be done, but it is always pretty easy, special trials excepted. There is no lack of what the Fijian would call fine houses and good gardens. There is, moreover, no scarcity of food, for the spirits feast ad libitum on the fat of the land. And there will always be enough of sailing and fighting to satisfy the characteristic craving of cannibal-spirits for the “spice of life.”
The cannibal was taught not to dread the thought of going to this Spirit-World, but on the contrary to long rather for the change. It was such beliefs as are now before us, and such teaching of them, that doubtless nerved many a widow to follow her departed husband with cheerful obedience to the wishes of his friends, and kept her from shrinking at the sight of the rope which was to end her miseries in this life. Bodily life was valued at a low price,—at no price at all in fact, and nowhere, either in the philosophy or poetry of Cannibal-land, were the people taught to consider
“That the dread of something after death,—
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.”