Apparently the savage conceives life as an indestructible form of energy. Analogy of the conception to the modern scientific conception of the conservation of energy.
Accordingly we are driven to cast about for some more adequate explanation of this prevalent and deeply rooted persuasion. In search of such an explanation perhaps we need go no further than the sense of life which every man feels in his own breast.[755] We have seen that to the savage death presents itself not as a natural necessity but as a lamentable accident or crime that cuts short an existence which, but for it, might have lasted for ever.[756] Thus arguing apparently from his own sensations he conceives of life as an indestructible [pg 262] kind of energy, which when it disappears in one form must necessarily reappear in another, though in the new form it need not be immediately perceptible by us; in other words, he infers that death does not destroy the vital principle nor even the conscious personality, but that it merely transforms both of them into other shapes, which are not the less real because they commonly elude the evidence of our senses. If I am right in thus interpreting the thought of primitive man, the savage view of the nature of life singularly resembles the modern scientific doctrine of the conservation of energy. According to that doctrine, no material energy ever perishes or is even diminished; when it seems to suffer diminution or extinction, all that happens is that a portion or the whole of it has been transmuted into other shapes which, though qualitatively different from, are quantitatively equivalent to, the energy in its original form. In short, if we listen to science, nothing in the physical world is ever lost, but all things are perpetually changing: the sum of energy in the universe is constant and invariable, though it undergoes ceaseless transformations.[757] A similar theory of the indestructibility of energy is implicitly applied by the savage to explain the phenomena of life and death, and logically enough he does not limit the application to human beings but extends it to the lower animals. Therein he shews himself a better reasoner than his civilised brother, who commonly embraces with avidity the doctrine of human immortality but rejects with scorn, as derogatory to human dignity, the idea that animals have immortal souls. And when he attempts to confirm his own cherished belief in a life after death by appealing to similar beliefs among savages and inferring from them a natural instinct of immortality, it is well to [pg 263] remind him that, if he stands by that appeal, he must, like the savage, consistently extend the privilege of immortality to the despised lower animals; for surely it is improper for him to pick and choose his evidence so as to suit his prepossessions, accepting those parts of the savage creed which tally with his own and rejecting those which do not. On logical and scientific grounds he seems bound to believe either more or less: he must hold that men and animals are alike immortal or that neither of them is so.
The resurrection of the body in tales and legends.
We have seen that many savages look forward to a joyful resurrection of men and beasts, if only a proper care is taken of their skeletons; the same old bones, they imagine, will do duty over again in the next life, when they have been decently clad in a new garment of flesh. This quaint fancy is reflected in many popular tales; not uncommonly the animal or man in the story comes to life lame of a limb, because one of his bones has been eaten, broken, or lost.[758] In a Magyar tale, the hero is cut in pieces, but the serpent-king lays the bones together in their proper order, and washes them with water, whereupon the hero revives. His shoulder-blade, however, has been lost, so the serpent-king supplies its place with one of gold and ivory.[759] Such stories, as Mannhardt has seen, explain why Pythagoras, who claimed to have lived many lives, one after the other, was said to have exhibited his golden leg as a proof of his supernatural pretensions.[760] Doubtless he explained that at one of his resurrections a leg had been broken or mislaid, and that he had replaced it, like Miss Kilmansegg, with one of gold. Similarly, when the murdered Pelops was restored to life, the shoulder which Demeter had eaten was made good with one of ivory,[761] which was publicly exhibited [pg 264] at Elis down to historical times.[762] The story that one of the members of the mangled Osiris was eaten by fish, and that, when Isis collected his scattered limbs, she replaced the missing member with one of wood,[763] may perhaps belong to the same circle of beliefs.
The sinew of the thigh regularly cut out and thrown away by some American Indians.
There is a certain rule observed by savage hunters and fishers which, enigmatical at first sight, may possibly be explained by this savage belief in resurrection. A traveller in America in the early part of the nineteenth century was told by a half-breed Choctaw that the Indians “had an obscure story, somewhat resembling that of Jacob wrestling with an angel; and that the full-blooded Indians always separate the sinew which shrank, and that it is never seen in the venison exposed for sale; he did not know what they did with it. His elder brother, whom I afterwards met, told me that they eat it as a rarity; but I have also heard, though on less respectable authority, that they refrain from it, like the ancient Jews. A gentleman, who had lived on the Indian frontier, or in the nation, for ten or fifteen years, told me that he had often been surprised that the Indians always detached this sinew; but it had never occurred to him to inquire the reason.”[764] James Adair, who knew the Indians of the South-Eastern States intimately, and whose absurd theories appear not to have distorted his view of the facts, observes that “when in the woods, the Indians cut a small piece out of the lower part of the thighs of the deer they kill, lengthways and pretty deep. Among the great number of venison-hams they bring to our trading-houses, I do not remember to have observed one without it.... And I have been assured by a gentleman of character, who is now an inhabitant of South Carolina, and well acquainted with the customs of the northern Indians, that they also cut a piece out of the thigh of every deer they kill, and throw it away; and reckon it such a dangerous pollution to eat it as to occasion sickness and other misfortunes of sundry kinds, especially by spoiling their guns from shooting with proper force and direction.”[765]
Story told by the Indians to explain the custom.
In more recent times the statement of Adair's informant has been confirmed by a French missionary, who has also published the “obscure story” to which the English traveller Hodgson refers. The Loucheux and Hare-skin Indians who roam the bleak steppes and forests that stretch from Hudson's Bay to the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the frozen sea, are forbidden by custom to eat the sinew of the legs of animals. To explain this custom they tell the following “sacred story.” Once upon a time a man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down into it after the porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant called “He who sees before and behind” released him by cleaving open the earth. So the man, whose name was “Fireless and Homeless,” lived with the kind giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him about in the sheath of his flint knife. “But know, my son,” said the giant, “that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me, and has sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my blood; they will be red with it, probably.” Then he gave the man an axe made of the tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his foe. But from under the ice the man heard a dull muffled sound. It was a whale which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, the kind giant's enemy. The two struggled together for a long time, till the kind giant cried, “Oh, my son! cut, cut the sinew of the leg.” The man cut the sinew, and the wicked giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly flushed a fiery red, so Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was no more, and he wept.[766]
The custom of cutting out the sinew of the thigh in animals seems to be based on the principle of sympathetic magic.