Ghosts of the slain dreaded by the Toradjas of Central Celebes. The Bare’e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes are greatly concerned about the souls of men who have been slain in battle. They appear to think that men who have been killed in war instead of dying by disease have not exhausted their vital energy and that therefore their departed spirits are more powerful than the common ruck of ghosts; and as on account of the unnatural manner of their death they cannot be admitted into the land of souls they continue to prowl about the earth, furious with the foes who have cut them off untimely in the prime of manhood, and demanding of their friends that they shall wage war on the enemy and send forth an expedition every year to kill some of them. If the survivors pay no heed to this demand of the bloodthirsty ghosts, they themselves are exposed to the vengeance of these angry spirits, who pay out their undutiful friends and relatives by visiting them with sickness and death. Hence with the Toradjas war is a sacred duty in which every member of the community is bound to bear a part; even women and children, who cannot wage real war, must wage mimic warfare at home by hacking with bamboo swords at an old skull of the enemy, while with their shrill voices they utter the war-whoop.129.2 Thus among these people, as among many more tribes of savages, a belief in the immortality of the soul has been one of the most fruitful causes of bloodshed by keeping up a perpetual state of war between neighbouring communities, who dare not make peace with each other for fear of mortally offending the spirits of the dead.130.1
Ghosts of all who have died violent deaths are dangerous. How the Karens propitiate such ghosts. But, whether friends or foes, the ghosts of all who have died a violent death are in a sense a public danger; for their temper is naturally soured and they are apt to fall foul of the first person they meet without nicely discriminating between the innocent and the guilty. The Karens of Burma, for example, think that the spirits of all such persons go neither to the upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world of woe, but linger on earth and wander about invisible. They make men sick to death by stealing their souls. Accordingly these vampire-like beings are exceedingly dreaded by the people, who seek to appease their anger and repel their cruel assaults by propitiatory offerings and the most earnest prayers and supplications.130.2 They put red, yellow, and white rice in a basket and leave it in the forest, saying: “Ghosts of such as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of hunger or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger’s tooth or the serpent’s fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of such as died of small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, O ill-treat us not, seize not upon our persons, do us no harm. O stay here in this wood. We will bring hither red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for your subsistence.”130.3
The angry ghosts of the slain are sometimes forcibly driven away with noise and clamour. However, it is not always by fair words and propitiatory offerings that the community attempts to rid itself of these invisible but dangerous intruders. People sometimes resort to more forcible measures. “Once,” says a traveller among the Indians of North America, “on approaching in the night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in confusion: they were all busily engaged in raising noises of the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, I found that a battle had been lately fought between the Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants from entering the village.”131.1 Again, after the North American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to death, they used to run through the village, beating the walls, the furniture, and the roofs of the huts with sticks and yelling at the pitch of their voices to drive away the angry ghost of the victim, lest he should seek to avenge the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated body.131.2 Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, when a murder has been committed in the village, the inhabitants assemble for several evenings successively and shriek and shout to frighten away the ghost, in case he should attempt to come back.131.3 The Yabim, a tribe in German New Guinea, believe that “the dead can both help and harm, but the fear of their harmful influence is predominant. Especially the people are of opinion that the ghost of a slain man haunts his murderer and brings misfortune on him. Hence it is necessary to drive away the ghost with shrieks and the beating of drums. The model of a canoe laden with taro and tobacco is got ready to facilitate his departure.”131.4 So when the Bukaua of German New Guinea have won a victory over their foes and have returned home, they kindle a fire in the middle of the village and hurl blazing brands in the direction of the battle-field, while at the same time they make an ear-splitting din, to keep at bay the angry spirits of the slain.131.5 When the cannibal Melanesians of the Bismarck Archipelago have eaten a human body, they shout, blow horns, shake spears, and beat the bushes for the purpose of driving away the ghost of the man or woman whose flesh has just furnished the banquet.131.6 The Fijians used to bury the sick and aged alive, and having done so they always made a great uproar with bamboos, shell-trumpets, and so forth in order to scare away the spirits of the buried people and prevent them from returning to their homes; and by way of removing any temptation to hover about their former abodes they dismantled the houses of the dead and hung them with everything that in their eyes seemed most repulsive.132.1 Among the Angoni, a Zulu tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their bodies and faces with ashes, and hang garments of their victims on their persons. This costume they wear for three days after their return, and rising at break of day they run through the village uttering frightful yells to banish the ghosts of the slain, which otherwise might bring sickness and misfortune on the people.132.2
Precautions taken against the ghosts of executed criminals and other dangerous persons. In Travancore the spirits of men who have died a violent death by drowning, hanging, or other means are supposed to become demons, wandering about to inflict injury in various ways upon mankind. Especially the ghosts of murderers who have been hanged are believed to haunt the place of execution and its neighbourhood. To prevent this it used to be customary to cut off the criminal’s heels with a sword or to hamstring him as he was turned off.132.3 The intention of thus mutilating the body was no doubt to prevent the ghost from walking. How could he walk if he were hamstrung or had no heels? With precisely the same intention it has been customary with some peoples to maim in various ways the dead bodies not only of executed criminals but of other persons; for all ghosts are more or less dreaded. When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of Bering Strait used in the old days to cut the sinews of his arms and legs “in order to prevent the shade from returning to the body and causing it to walk at night as a ghoul.”132.4 The Omaha Indians said that when a man was killed by lightning he should be buried face downwards, and that the soles of his feet should be slit; for if this were not done, his ghost would walk.133.1 The Herero of South Africa think that the ghosts of bad people appear and are just as mischievous as in life; for they rob, steal, and seduce women and girls, sometimes getting them with child. To prevent the dead from playing these pranks the Herero used to cut through the backbone of the corpse, tie it up in a bunch, and sew it into an ox-hide.133.2 A simple way of disabling a dangerous ghost is to dig up his body and decapitate it. This is done by West African negroes and also by the Armenians; to make assurance doubly sure the Armenians not only cut off the head but smash it or stick a needle into it or into the dead man’s heart.133.3
Precautions taken in India against the ghosts of women who die in pregnancy, childbed, or soon after it. The Hindoos of the Punjaub believe that if a mother dies within thirteen days of her delivery, she will return in the guise of a malignant spirit to torment her husband and family. To prevent this some people drive nails through her head and eyes, while others also knock nails on either side of the door of the house.133.4 A gentler way of attaining the same end is to put a nail or a piece of iron in the clothes of the poor dead mother,133.5 or to knock nails into the earth round the places where she died, and where her dead body was washed and cremated. Some people put pepper in the eyes of the corpse to prevent the ghost from seeing her way back to the house.133.6 In Bilaspore, if a mother dies leaving very young children, they tie her hands and feet before burial to prevent her from getting up by night and going to see her orphaned little ones.134.1 The Oraons of Bengal are firmly convinced that any woman who dies in pregnancy or childbirth becomes an evil and dangerous spirit (bhut), who, if steps are not taken to keep her off, will come back and tickle to death those whom she loved best in life. “To prevent her, therefore, from coming back, they carry her body as far away as they can, but no woman will accompany her to her last resting-place lest similar misfortune should happen to her. Arrived at the burial-place, they break the feet above the ankle, twist them round, bringing the heels in front, and then drive long thorns into them. They bury her very deep with her face downwards, and with her they bury the bones of a donkey, and pronounce the anathema, ‘If you come home may you turn into a donkey’; the roots of a palm-tree are also buried with her; and they say, ‘May you come home only when the leaves of the palm-tree wither,’ and when they retire they spread mustard seeds all along the road saying, ‘When you try to come home pick up all these.’ They then feel pretty safe at home from her nocturnal visits, but woe to the man who passes at night near the place where she has been buried. She will pounce upon him, twist his neck, and leave him senseless on the ground, until brought to by the incantations of a sorcerer.”134.2 Among the Lushais of Assam, when a woman died in childbed, the relatives offer a sacrifice to her departed soul, “but the rest of that village treat the day as a holiday and put a small green branch on the wall of each house on the outside near the doorpost to keep out the spirit of the dead woman.”134.3
Precautions taken in Burma against the ghosts of women who die in pregnancy or childbed. Among the Shans of Burma, when a woman dies with an unborn child, it is believed that her spirit turns into a malignant ghost, “who may return to haunt her husband’s home and torment him, unless precautions are taken to keep her away. To begin with, her unborn child is removed by an operation; then mother and child are wrapped in separate mats and buried without coffins. If this be not done, the same misfortune may occur again to the woman, in her future life, and the widower will suffer from the attacks of the ghost. When the bodies are being removed from the house, part of the mat wall in the side of the house is taken down, and the dead woman and her baby are lowered to the ground through the aperture. The hole through which the bodies have passed is immediately filled with new mats, so that the ghost may not know how to return.”135.1 The Kachins of Burma are so afraid of the ghosts of women dying in childbed that no sooner has such a death taken place than the husband, the children, and almost all the people in the house take to flight lest the ghost should bite them. They bandage the eyes of the dead woman with her own hair to prevent her from seeing anything; they wrap the corpse in a mat and carry it out of the house not by the ordinary door, but by an opening made for the purpose either in the wall or in the floor of the room where she breathed her last. Then they convey the body to a deep ravine where foot of man seldom penetrates, and there, having heaped her clothes, her jewellery, and all her belongings over her, they set fire to the pile and reduce the whole to ashes. “Thus they destroy all the property of the unfortunate woman in order that her soul may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and to bite the people in the attempt.” When this has been done, the officiating priest scatters some burnt grain of a climbing plant (shămien), inserts in the earth the pestle which the dead woman used to husk the rice, and winds up the exorcism by cursing and railing at her ghost, saying: “Wait to come back to us till this grain sprouts and this pestle blossoms, till the fern bears fruit, and the cocks lay eggs.” The house in which the woman died is generally pulled down, and the timber may only be used as firewood or to build small hovels in the fields. Till a new house can be built for them, the widower and the orphans receive the hospitality of their nearest relatives, a father or a brother; their other friends would not dare to receive them from fear of the ghost. Occasionally the dead mother’s jewels are spared from the fire and given away to some poor old crones, who do not trouble their heads about ghosts. If the medicine-man who attended the woman in life and officiated at the funeral is old, he may consent to accept the jewels as the fee for his services; but in that case no sooner has he got home than he puts the jewels in the henhouse. If the hens remain quiet, it is a good omen and he can keep the trinkets with an easy mind; but if the fowl flutter and cackle, it is a sign that the ghost is sticking to the jewels, and in a fright he restores them to the family. The old man or old woman into whose hands the trinkets of the dead woman thus sometimes fall cannot dispose of them to other members of the tribe; for nobody who knows where the things come from would be so rash as to buy them. However, they may find purchasers among the Shans or the Chinese, who do not fear Kachin ghosts.136.1
Precautions taken in the Indian Archipelago against the ghosts of women who die in childbed. The ghosts of women who die in childbed are much dreaded in the Indian Archipelago; it is supposed that they appear in the form of birds with long claws and are exceedingly dangerous to their husbands and also to pregnant women. A common way of guarding against them is to put an egg under each armpit of the corpse, to press the arms close against the body, and to stick needles in the palms of the hands. The people believe that the ghost of the dead woman will be unable to fly and attack people; for she will not spread out her arms for fear of letting the eggs fall, and she will not clutch anybody for fear of driving the needles deeper into her palms. Sometimes by way of additional precaution another egg is placed under her chin, thorns are thrust into the joints of her fingers and toes, her mouth is stopped with ashes, and her hands, feet, and hair are nailed to the coffin.136.2 Attempts to lame and otherwise disable ghosts. Some Sea Dyaks of Borneo sow the ground near cemeteries with bits of sticks to imitate caltrops, in order that the feet of any ghosts who walk over them may be lamed.137.1 The Besisi of the Malay Peninsula bury their dead in the ground and let fall knives on the grave to prevent the ghost from getting up out of it.137.2 The Tunguses of Turukhansk on the contrary put their dead up in trees, and then lop off all the branches to prevent the ghost from scrambling down and giving them chase.137.3 The Herbert River natives in Queensland used to cut holes in the stomach, shoulders, and lungs of their dead and fill the holes with stones, in order that, weighed down with this ballast, the ghost might not stray far afield; to limit his range still further they commonly broke his legs.137.4 Other Australian blacks put hot coals in the ears of their departed brother; this keeps the ghost in the body for a time, and allows the relations to get a good start away from him. Also they bark the trees in a circle round the spot, so that when the ghost does get out and makes after them, he wanders round and round in a circle, always returning to the place from which he started.137.5 The ancient Hindoos put fetters on the feet of their dead that they might not return to the land of the living.137.6 The Tinneh Indians of Alaska grease the hands of a corpse, so that when his ghost grabs at people’s souls to carry them off with him they slip through his greasy fingers and escape.138.1
The way home barricaded against ghosts. Some peoples bar the road from the grave to prevent the ghost from following them. The Tunguses make the barrier of snow or trees.138.2 Amongst the Mangars, one of the fighting tribes of Nepal, “when the mourners return home, one of their party goes ahead and makes a barricade of thorn bushes across the road midway between the grave and the house of the deceased. On the top of the thorns he puts a big stone on which he takes his stand, holding a pot of burning incense in his left hand and some woollen thread in his right. One by one the mourners step on the stone and pass through the smoke of the incense to the other side of the thorny barrier. As they pass, each takes a piece of thread from the man who holds the incense and ties it round his neck. The object of this curious ceremony is to prevent the spirit of the dead man from coming home with the mourners and establishing itself in its old haunts. Conceived of as a miniature man, it is believed to be unable to make its way on foot through the thorns, while the smell of the incense, to which all spirits are highly sensitive, prevents it from surmounting this obstacle on the shoulders of one of the mourners.”138.3 The Chins of Burma burn their dead and collect the bones in an earthen pot. Afterwards, at a convenient season, the pot containing the bones is carried away to the ancestral burial-place, which is generally situated in the depth of the jungle. “When the people convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with them some cotton-yarn, and whenever they come to any stream or other water, they stretch a thread across, whereby the spirit of the deceased, who accompanies them, may get across it too. When they have duly deposited the bones and food for the spirit in the cemetery they return home, after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to follow them back to the village. At the same time they block the way by which they return by putting a bamboo across the path.”139.1 Thus the mourners make the way to the grave as easy as possible for the ghost, but obstruct the way by which he might return from it.
Devices of the North American Indians to keep ghosts at bay. The Algonquin Indians, not content with beating the walls of their huts to drive away the ghost, stretched nets round them in order to catch the spirit in the meshes, if he attempted to enter the house. Others made stinks to keep him off.139.2 The Ojebways also resorted to a number of devices for warding off the spirits of the dead. These have been described as follows by a writer who was himself an Ojebway: “If the deceased was a husband, it is often the custom for the widow, after the burial is over, to spring or leap over the grave, and then run zigzag behind the trees, as if she were fleeing from some one. This is called running away from the spirit of her husband, that it may not haunt her. In the evening of the day on which the burial has taken place, when it begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns through the hole left at the top of the wigwam. As soon as this firing ceases, the old women commence knocking and making such a rattling at the door as would frighten away any spirit that would dare to hover near. The next ceremony is, to cut into narrow strips, like ribbon, thin birch bark. These they fold into shapes, and hang round inside the wigwam, so that the least puff of wind will move them. With such scarecrows as these, what spirit would venture to disturb their slumbers? Lest this should not prove effectual, they will also frequently take a deer’s tail, and after burning or singeing off all the hair, will rub the necks or faces of the children before they lie down to sleep, thinking that the offensive smell will be another preventive to the spirit’s entrance. I well remember when I used to be daubed over with this disagreeable fumigation, and had great faith in it all. Thinking that the soul lingers about the body a long time before it takes its final departure, they use these means to hasten it away.”140.1
Spirits of the dead greatly feared by the Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco. The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco in South America live in great fear of the spirits of their dead. They imagine that any one of these disembodied spirits can become incarnate again and take a new lease of life on earth, if only it can contrive to get possession of a living man’s body during the temporary absence of his soul. For like many other savages they imagine that the soul absents itself from the body during sleep to wander far away in the land of dreams. So when night falls, the ghosts of the dead come crowding to the villages and lurk about, hoping to find vacant bodies into which they can enter. Such are to the thinking of the Lengua Indian the perils and dangers of the night. When he awakes in the morning from a dream in which he seemed to be hunting or fishing far away, he concludes that his soul cannot yet have returned from such a far journey, and that the spirit within him must therefore be some ghost or demon, who has taken possession of his corporeal tenement in the absence of its proper owner. And if these Indians dread the spirits of the departed at all times, they dread them doubly at the moment when they have just shuffled off the mortal coil. No sooner has a person died than the whole village is deserted. Even if the death takes place shortly before sunset the place must at all costs be immediately abandoned, lest with the shades of night the ghost should return and do a mischief to the villagers. Not only is the village deserted, but every hut is burned down and the property of the dead man destroyed. For these Indians believe that, however good and kind a man may have been in his lifetime, his ghost is always a source of danger to the peace and prosperity of the living. The night after his death his disembodied spirit comes back to the village, and chilled by the cool night air looks about for a fire at which to warm himself. He rakes in the ashes to find at least a hot coal which he may blow up into a flame. But if they are all cold and dead, he flings a handful of them in the air and departs in dudgeon. Any Indian who treads on such ashes will have ill-luck, if not death, following at his heels. To prevent such mishaps the villagers take the greatest pains to collect and bury all the ash-heaps before they abandon the village. What the fate of a hamlet would be in which the returning ghost found the inhabitants still among their houses, no Indian dares to imagine. Hence it happens that many a village which was full of life at noon is a smoking desert at sunset. And as the Lenguas ascribe all sickness to the machinations of evil spirits and sorcerers, they mutilate the persons of their dying or dead in order to counteract and punish the authors of the disease. For this purpose they cut off the portion of the body in which the evil spirit is supposed to have ensconced himself. A common operation performed on the dying or dead man is this. A gash is made with a knife in his side, the edges of the wound are drawn apart with the fingers, and in the wound are deposited a dog’s bone, a stone, and the claw of an armadillo. It is believed that at the departure of the soul from the body the stone will rise up to the Milky Way and will stay there till the author of the death has been discovered. Then the stone will come shooting down in the shape of a meteor and kill, or at least stun, the guilty party. That is why these Indians stand in terror of falling stars. The claw of the armadillo serves to grub up the earth and, in conjunction with the meteor, to ensure the destruction of the evil spirit or the sorcerer. What the virtue of the dog’s bone is supposed to be has not yet been ascertained by the missionaries.141.1
A scapegoat for ghosts. The Bhotias, who inhabit the Himalayan district of British India, perform an elaborate ceremony for transferring the spirit of a deceased person to an animal, which is finally beaten by all the villagers and driven away, that it may not come back. Having thus expelled the ghost the people return joyfully to the village with songs and dances. In some places the animal which thus serves as a scapegoat is a yak, the forehead, back, and tail of which must be white. But elsewhere, under the influence of Hindooism, sheep and goats have been substituted for yaks.142.1
Precautions taken by widows in Africa against their husbands’ ghosts. Widows and widowers are especially obnoxious to the ghosts of their deceased spouses, and accordingly they have to take special precautions against them. For example, among the Ewe negroes of Agome, in German Togoland, a widow is bound to remain for six weeks in the hut where her husband lies buried. She is naked, her hair is shaved off, and she is armed with a stick with which to repel the too pressing familiarities of her husband’s ghost; for were she to submit to them, she would die on the spot. At night she sleeps with the stick under her, lest the wily ghost should attempt to steal it from her in the hours of slumber. Before she eats or drinks she always puts some coals on the food or in the beverage, to prevent her dead husband from eating or drinking with her; for if he did so, she would die. If any one calls to her, she may not answer, for her dead husband would hear her, and she would die. She may not eat beans or flesh or fish, nor drink palm-wine or rum, but she is allowed to smoke tobacco. At night a fire is kept up in the hut, and the widow throws powdered peppermint leaves and red pepper on the flames to make a stink, which helps to keep the ghost from the house.142.2
Precautions taken by widows and widowers in British Columbia against the ghosts of their spouses. Among many tribes of British Columbia the conduct of a widow and a widower for a long time after the death of their spouse is regulated by a code of minute and burdensome restrictions, all of which appear to be based on the notion that these persons, being haunted by the ghost, are not only themselves in peril, but are also a source of danger to others. Thus among the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia widows and widowers fence their beds with thorn bushes to keep off the ghost of the deceased; indeed they lie on such bushes, in order that the ghost may be under little temptation to share their bed of thorns. They must build a sweat-house on a creek, sweat there all night, and bathe regularly in the creek, after which they must rub their bodies with spruce branches. These branches may be used only once for this purpose; afterwards they are stuck in the ground all round about the hut, probably to fence off the ghost. The mourners must also use cups and cooking vessels of their own, and they may not touch their own heads or bodies. Hunters may not go near them, and any person on whom their shadow were to fall would at once be ill.143.1 Again, among the Tsetsaut Indians, when a man dies his brother is bound to marry the widow, but he may not do so before the lapse of a certain time, because it is believed that the dead man’s ghost haunts his widow and would do a mischief to his living rival. During the time of her mourning the widow eats out of a stone dish, carries a pebble in her mouth, and a crab-apple stick up the back of her jacket. She sits upright day and night. Any person who crosses the hut in front of her is a dead man. The restrictions laid on a widower are similar.143.2 Among the Lkungen or Songish Indians, in Vancouver Island, widow and widower, after the death of husband or wife, are forbidden to cut their hair, as otherwise it is believed that they would gain too great power over the souls and welfare of others. They must remain alone at their fire for a long time and are forbidden to mingle with other people. When they eat, nobody may see them. They must keep their faces covered for ten days. For two days after the burial they fast and are not allowed to speak. After that they may speak a little, but before addressing any one they must go into the woods and clean themselves in ponds and with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they call out his name when they first break their fast, and they bite very hard in eating. That is believed to kill their enemy, probably (though this is not said) by directing the attention of the ghost to him. They may not go near the water nor eat fresh salmon, or the fish might be driven away. They may not eat warm food, else their teeth would fall out.144.1 Among the Bella Coola Indians the bed of a mourner is protected against the ghost of the deceased by thorn-bushes stuck into the ground at each corner. He rises early in the morning and goes out into the woods, where he makes a square with thorn-bushes, and inside of this square, where he is probably supposed to be safe from the intrusion of the ghost, he cleanses himself by rubbing his body with cedar-branches. He also swims in ponds, and after swimming he cleaves four small trees and creeps through the clefts, following the course of the sun. This he does on four subsequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day. We may surmise that the intention of creeping through the cleft trees is to give the slip to the ghost. The mourner also cuts his hair short, and the cut hair is burnt. If he did not observe these regulations, it is believed that he would dream of the deceased, which to the savage mind is another way of saying that he would be visited by his ghost. Amongst these Indians the rules of mourning for a widower or widow are especially strict. For four days he or she must fast and may not speak a word, else the dead wife or husband would come and lay a cold hand on the mouth of the offender, who would die. They may not go near water and are forbidden to catch or eat salmon for a whole year. During that time also they may not eat fresh herring or candle-fish (olachen). Their shadows are deemed unlucky and may not fall on any person.144.2
Precautions taken by widows and widowers among the Thompson Indians. Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia widows or widowers, on the death of their husbands or wives, went out at once and passed through a patch of rose-bushes four times. The intention of this ceremony is not reported, but we may conjecture that it was supposed to deter the ghost from following for fear of scratching himself or herself on the thorns. For four days after the death widows and widowers had to wander about at evening or break of day wiping their eyes with fir-twigs, which they hung up in the branches of trees, praying to the Dawn. They also rubbed their eyes with a small stone taken from under running water, then threw it away, while they prayed that they might not become blind. The first four days they might not touch their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks, and spat out the first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, into the fire. For a year they had to sleep on a bed made of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread at the foot, head, and middle. Many also wore a few small twigs of rose-bush on their persons. The use of the rose-bush was no doubt to keep off the ghost through fear of the prickles. They were forbidden to eat fresh fish and flesh of any kind for a year. A widower might not fish at another man’s fishing-place or with another man’s net. If he did, it would make the station and the net useless for the season. If a widower transplanted a trout into another lake, before releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chewing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease out on its head, so as to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let it go, bidding the fish farewell, and asking it to propagate its kind. Any grass or branches upon which a widow or widower sat or lay down withered up. If a widow were to break sticks or branches, her own hands or arms would break. She might not cook food nor fetch water for her children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she lie or sit where they slept. Some widows wore a breech-cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, lest the ghost of her dead husband should have connexion with her. A widower might not fish or hunt, because it was unlucky both for him and for other hunters. He did not allow his shadow to pass in front of another widower or of any person who was supposed to be gifted with more knowledge or magic than ordinary.145.1 Among the Lillooet Indians of British Columbia the rules enjoined on widows and widowers were somewhat similar. But a widower had to observe a singular custom in eating. He ate his food with the right hand passed underneath his right leg, the knee of which was raised.146.1 The motive for conveying food to his mouth in this roundabout fashion is not mentioned: we may conjecture that it was to baffle the hungry ghost, who might be supposed to watch every mouthful swallowed by the mourner, but who could hardly suspect that food passed under the knee was intended to reach the mouth.
Precautions taken by widows and widowers among the Kwakiutl Indians. Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia we are told “the regulations referring to the mourning period are very severe. In case of the death of husband or wife, the survivor has to observe the following rules: for four days after the death the survivor must sit motionless, the knees drawn up toward the chin. On the third day all the inhabitants of the village, including children, must take a bath. On the fourth day some water is heated in a wooden kettle, and the widow or widower drips it upon his head. When he becomes tired of sitting motionless, and must move, he thinks of his enemy, stretches his legs slowly four times, and draws them up again. Then his enemy must die. During the following sixteen days he must remain on the same spot, but he may stretch out his legs. He is not allowed, however, to move his hands. Nobody must speak to him, and whosoever disobeys this command will be punished by the death of one of his relatives. Every fourth day he takes a bath. He is fed twice a day by an old woman at the time of low water, with salmon caught in the preceding year, and given to him in the dishes and spoons of the deceased. While sitting so his mind is wandering to and fro. He sees his house and his friends as though far, far away. If in his visions he sees a man near by, the latter is sure to die at no distant day; if he sees him very far away, he will continue to live long. After the sixteen days have passed, he may lie down, but not stretch out. He takes a bath every eighth day. At the end of the first month he takes off his clothing, and dresses the stump of a tree with it. After another month has passed he may sit in a corner of the house, but for four months he must not mingle with others. He must not use the house door, but a separate door is cut for his use. Before he leaves the house for the first time he must three times approach the door and return, then he may leave the house. After ten months his hair is cut short, and after a year the mourning is at an end.”147.1
Though the reasons for the elaborate restrictions thus imposed on widows and widowers by the Indians of British Columbia are not always stated, we may safely infer that one and all they are dictated by fear of the ghost, who, haunting the surviving spouse, surrounds him or her with a dangerous atmosphere, a contagion of death, which necessitates his seclusion both from the people themselves and from the principal sources of their food supply, especially from the fisheries, lest the infected person should poison them by his malignant presence. Social ostracism of widowers in New Guinea dictated by fear of the ghosts of their dead wives. We can, therefore, understand the extraordinary treatment of a widower by the Papuans of Issoudun in British New Guinea. His miseries begin with the moment of his wife’s death. He is immediately stripped of all his ornaments, abused and beaten by his wife’s relations, his house is pillaged, his gardens devastated, there is no one to cook for him. He sleeps on his wife’s grave till the end of his mourning. He may never marry again. By the death of his wife he loses all his rights. It is civil death for him. Old or young, chief or plebeian, he is no longer anybody, he does not count. He may not hunt or fish with the others; his presence would bring misfortune; the spirit of his dead wife would frighten the fish or the game. He is no longer heard in the discussions. He has no voice in the council of elders. He may not take part in a dance; he may not own a garden. If one of his children marries, he has no right to interfere in anything or receive any present. If he were dead, he could not be ignored more completely. He has become a nocturnal animal. He is forbidden to shew himself in public, to traverse the village, to walk in the roads and paths. Like a boar, he must go in the grass or the bushes. If he hears or sees any one, especially a woman, coming from afar, he must hide himself behind a tree or a thicket. If he wishes to go hunting or fishing by himself, he must go at night. If he has to consult any one, even the missionary, he does it in great secrecy and by night. He seems to have lost his voice, and only speaks in a whisper. He is painted black from head to foot. The hair of his head is shaved, except two tufts which flutter on his temples. He wears a skull-cap which covers his head completely to the ears; it ends in a point at the back of his neck. Round his waist he wears one, two, or three sashes of plaited grass; his arms and legs from the knees to the ankles are covered with armlets and leglets of the same sort; and round his neck he wears a similar ornament. His diet is strictly regulated, but he does not observe it more than he can help, eating in secret whatever is given him or he can lay his hands on. “His tomahawk accompanies him everywhere and always. He needs it to defend himself against the wild boars and also against the spirit of his dead wife, who might take a fancy to come and play him some mischievous prank; for the souls of the dead come back often and their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the spirits without exception are bad and have no pleasure but in harming the living. Happily people can keep them at bay by a stick, fire, an arrow, or a tomahawk. The condition of a widower, far from exciting pity or compassion, only serves to render him the object of horror and fear. Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being more or less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to give the lie to public opinion. They are forced to become idlers and thieves, since they are forbidden to work: no work, no gardens; no gardens, no food: steal then they must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied without some audacity and knavery at a pinch.”148.1
The widespread fear of ghosts among mankind has probably had the effect of making men less ready to take each other’s lives. It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply evidence of the terror which a belief in ghosts has spread among mankind, and of the consequences, sometimes tragical, sometimes ludicrous, which that belief has brought in its train.149.1 The preceding instances may suffice for my purpose, which is merely to indicate the probability that this widespread superstition has served a useful purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human life. For it is reasonable to suppose that men are more loth to spill the blood of their fellows when they believe that by so doing they expose themselves to the vengeance of an angry and powerful spirit whom it is difficult either to evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we are not left wholly to conjecture. In China the faith in the power of ghosts is universal. In the vast empire of China, as we are assured by the best living authority on Chinese religion, the fear of ghosts has actually produced this salutary result. Amongst the Chinese the faith in the existence of the dead, in their power to reward kindness and avenge injury, is universal and inveterate; it has been handed down from an immemorial past, and it is nourished in the experience, or rather in the mind, of everybody by hundreds of ghost stories, all of which are accepted as authentic. Nobody doubts that ghosts may interfere at any moment for good or evil in the business of life, in the regulation of human destiny. To the Chinese their dead are not what our dead are to most of us, a dim sad memory, a shadowy congregation somewhere far away, to whom we may go in time, but who cannot come to us or exercise any influence on the land of the living. On the contrary, in the opinion of the Chinese the dead not only exist but keep up a most lively intercourse, an active interchange of good and evil, with the survivors. There is, indeed, even in China, a line of demarcation between men and spirits, between the living and the dead, but it is said to be very faint, almost imperceptible. This perpetual commerce between the two worlds, the material and the spiritual, is a source both of bane and of blessing: the spirits of the departed rule human destiny with a rod of iron or of gold. From them man has everything to hope, but also much to fear. Hence as a natural consequence it is to the ghosts, to the souls of the dead, that the Chinaman pays his devotions; it is around their dear or dreadful figures as a centre that his religion revolves. To ensure their goodwill and help, to avert their wrath and fierce attacks, that is the first and the last object of his religious ceremonies.150.1
In China respect for human life is enforced by fear of ghosts. This faith of the Chinese in the existence and power of the dead, we are informed, “indubitably exercises a mighty and salutary influence upon morals. It enforces respect for human life and a charitable treatment of the infirm, the aged and the sick, especially if they stand on the brink of the grave. Benevolence and humanity, thus based on fears and selfishness, may have little ethical value in our eye; but for all that, their existence in a country where culture has not yet taught man to cultivate good for the sake of good alone, may be greeted as a blessing. Those virtues are even extended to animals, for, in fact, these too have souls which may work vengeance or bring reward. But the firm belief in ghosts and their retributive justice has still other effects. It deters from grievous and provoking injustice, because the wronged party, thoroughly sure of the avenging power of his own spirit when disembodied, will not always shrink from converting himself into a wrathful ghost by committing suicide,” in order to wreak in death that vengeance on his oppressor which he could not exact in life. Cases of suicide committed with this intention are said to be far from rare in China.150.2 “This simple complex of tenets,” says Professor de Groot, “lays disrespect for human lives under great restraint. In particular, the fear of ghosts acts as a check on the practice of infanticide. Most salutarily also they work upon female infanticide, a monstrous custom practised extensively among the poor in Amoy and the surrounding farming districts, as in many other parts of the Empire. The fear that the souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are unwilling to bring up, in the street for adoption into some family or into a foundling-hospital.” Humane and well-to-do people take advantage of these superstitious fears to inculcate a merciful treatment of female infants; for they print and circulate gratuitously tracts which set forth many gruesome examples of punishments inflicted upon unnatural fathers and mothers by the ghosts of their murdered daughters. These highly-coloured narratives, though they bear all the marks of a florid fancy, are said to answer their benevolent purpose perfectly; for they sink deep into the credulous minds to which they are addressed: they touch the seared conscience and the callous heart which no appeal to mere natural affection could move to pity.151.1
The fear of ghosts operates in a twofold way to enforce respect for human life: it furnishes the individual with a motive for abstaining from murder, and it furnishes the community with a motive for punishing the murderer. But while the fear of the ghost has thus operated directly to enhance the sanctity of human life by deterring the cruel, the passionate, and the malignant from the shedding of blood, it has operated also indirectly to bring about the same salutary result. For not only does the hag-ridden murderer himself dread his victim’s ghost, but the whole community, as we have seen, dreads it also and believes itself endangered by the murderer’s presence, since the wrathful spirit which pursues him may turn on other people and rend them. Hence society has a strong motive for secluding, banishing, or exterminating the culprit in order to free itself from what it believes to be an imminent danger, a perilous pollution, a contagion of death.151.2 To put it in another way, the community has an interest in punishing homicide. Not that the treatment of homicides by the tribe or state was originally conceived as a punishment inflicted on them: rather it was viewed as a measure of self-defence, a moral quarantine, a process of spiritual purification and disinfection, an exorcism. It was a mode of cleansing the people generally and sometimes the homicide himself from the ghostly infection, which to the primitive mind appears to be something material and tangible, something that can be literally washed or scoured away by water, pig’s blood, sheep’s blood, or other detergents. But when this purification took the form of laying the manslayer under restraint, banishing him from the country, or putting him to death in order to appease his victim’s ghost, it was for all practical purposes indistinguishable from punishment, and the fear of it would act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been designed to be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is about to be hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told that hanging is not a punishment but a purification. But the one conception slides easily and almost imperceptibly into the other; so that what was at first a religious rite, a solemn consecration or sacrifice, comes in course of time to be a purely civil function, the penalty which society exacts from those who have injured it: the sacrifice becomes an execution, the priest steps back and the hangman comes forward. Thus criminal justice was probably based in large measure on a crude form of superstition long before the subtle brains of jurists and philosophers deduced it logically, according to their various predilections, from a rigid theory of righteous retribution, a far-sighted policy of making the law a terror to evil-doers, or a benevolent desire to reform the criminal’s character and save his soul in another world by hanging or burning his body in this one. If these deductions only profess to justify theoretically the practice of punishment, they may be well or ill founded; but if they claim to explain it historically, they are certainly false. You cannot thus reconstruct the past by importing into one age the ideas of another, by interpreting the earliest in terms of the latest products of mental evolution. You may make revolutions in that way, but you cannot write history.
When the fear of ghosts has diminished, the fear of the law remains to protect the lives of peaceful citizens. If these views are correct, the dread of the ghost has operated in a twofold way to protect human life. On the one hand it has made every individual for his own sake more reluctant to slay his fellow, and on the other hand it has roused the whole community to punish the slayer. It has placed every man’s life within a double ring-fence of morality and law. The hot-headed and the cold-hearted have been furnished with a double motive for abstaining from the last fatal step: they have had to fear the spirit of their victim on the one side and the lash of the law on the other: they are in a strait between the devil and the deep sea, between the ghost and the gallows. And when with the progress of thought the shadow of the ghost passes away, the grim shadow of the gallows remains to protect society without the aid of superstitious terrors. It is thus that custom often outlives the motive which originated it. If only an institution is good in practice, it will stand firm after its old theoretical basis has been shattered: a new and more solid, because a truer, foundation will be discovered for it to rest upon. More and more, as time goes on, morality shifts its ground from the sands of superstition to the rock of reason, from the imaginary to the real, from the supernatural to the natural. In the present case the State has not ceased to protect the lives of its peaceful citizens because the faith in ghosts is shaken. It has found a better reason than old wives’ fables for guarding with the flaming sword of Justice the approach to the Tree of Life.
VI.
CONCLUSION
Summary of results. To sum up this brief review of the influence which superstition has exercised on the growth of institutions, I think I have shewn, or at least made probable:—
I. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for government, especially monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil order:
II. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for private property and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment:
III. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both among the married and the unmarried:
IV. That among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment.
By strengthening the respect for government, private property, marriage, and human life superstition has rendered a great service to humanity. But government, private property, marriage, and respect for human life are the pillars on which rests the whole fabric of civil society. Shake them and you shake society to its foundations. Therefore if government, private property, marriage, and respect for human life are all good and essential to the very existence of civil society, then it follows that by strengthening every one of them superstition has rendered a great service to humanity. It has supplied multitudes with a motive, a wrong motive it is true, for right action; and surely it is better, far better for the world that men should do right from wrong motives than that they should do wrong with the best intentions. What concerns society is conduct, not opinion: if only our actions are just and good, it matters not a straw to others whether our opinions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and it is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong action; hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every effort should be made to correct it. But of the two evils wrong action is in itself infinitely worse than false opinion; and all systems of religion or philosophy which lay more stress on right opinion than on right action, which exalt orthodoxy above virtue, are so far immoral and prejudicial to the best interests of mankind: they invert the true relative importance, the real ethical value, of thought and action, for it is by what we do, not by what we think, that we are useful or useless, beneficent or maleficent to our fellows. As a body of false opinions, therefore, superstition is indeed a most dangerous guide in practice, and the evils which it has wrought are incalculable. But vast as are these evils, they ought not to blind us to the benefit which superstition has conferred on society by furnishing the ignorant, the weak, and the foolish with a motive, bad though it be, for good conduct. It is a reed, a broken reed, which has yet supported the steps of many a poor erring brother, who but for it might have stumbled and fallen. It is a light, a dim and wavering light, which, if it has lured many a mariner on the breakers, has yet guided some wanderers on life’s troubled sea into a haven of rest and peace. Once the harbour lights are passed and the ship is in port, it matters little whether the pilot steered by a Jack-o’-lantern or by the stars.
Superstition at the bar. Sentence of death. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my plea for Superstition. Perhaps it might be urged in mitigation of the sentence which will be passed on the hoary-headed offender when he stands at the judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not doubt it, is death. But it will not be executed in our time. There will be a long, long reprieve. It is as his advocate, not as his executioner, that I have appeared before you to-night. At Athens cases of murder were tried before the Areopagus by night,156.1 and it is by night that I have spoken in defence of this power of darkness. But it grows late, and with my sinister client I must vanish before the cocks crow and the morning breaks grey in the east.
THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
THE SCOPE OF
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
[A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th, 1908.]
Social Anthropology. The subject of the chair which I have the honour to hold is Social Anthropology. As the subject is still comparatively new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I shall devote my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking out roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for my province.
Anthropology a study of recent date. Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving family of the sciences, Anthropology, or the Science of Man, is the latest born. So young indeed is the study that three of its distinguished founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, Lord Avebury, and Mr. Francis Galton, are happily still with us. It is true that particular departments of man’s complex nature have long been the theme of special studies. Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has explored his mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encompassed on every hand. But it has been reserved for the present generation, or rather for the generation which is passing away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man as a whole, to enquire not merely into the physical and mental structure of the individual, but to compare the various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to discover the general laws to which the particular facts may be supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, because research in all departments has rendered it antecedently probable that everywhere law and order will be found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that accordingly the affairs of man, however complex and incalculable they may seem to be, are no exception to the uniformity of nature. Anthropology, therefore, in the widest sense of the word, aims at discovering the general laws which have regulated human history in the past, and which, if nature is really uniform, may be expected to regulate it in the future.
The scope of Social Anthropology more limited than that of Sociology; it includes only the rudimentary phases of human society. Hence the science of man coincides to a certain extent with what has long been known as the philosophy of history as well as with the study to which of late years the name of Sociology has been given. Indeed it might with some reason be held that Social Anthropology, or the study of man in society, is only another expression for Sociology. Yet I think that the two sciences may be conveniently distinguished, and that while the name of Sociology should be reserved for the study of human society in the most comprehensive sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology may with advantage be restricted to one particular department of that immense field of knowledge. At least I wish to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I for one do not pretend to treat of the whole of human society, past, present, and future. Whether any single man’s compass of mind and range of learning suffice for such a vast undertaking, I will not venture to say, but I do say without hesitation or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I can only speak of what I have studied, and my studies have been mostly confined to a small, a very small part of man’s social history. That part is the origin, or rather the rudimentary phases, the infancy and childhood, of human society, and to that part accordingly I propose to limit the scope of Social Anthropology, or at all events my treatment of it. My successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview beyond the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my knowledge imposes on me. They may survey the latest developments as well as the earliest beginnings of custom and law, of science and art, of morality and religion, and from that survey they may deduce the principles which should guide mankind in the future, so that those who come after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and our fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge is wisdom, and it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and wider acquaintance with the past history of mankind will in time enable our statesmen to mould the destiny of the race in fairer forms than we of this generation shall live to see.
“Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s desire!”
At least the present lecturer limits himself to these phases. But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you must not expect your professor of Social Anthropology to aid and abet you. He is no seer to discern, no prophet to foretell a coming heaven on earth, no mountebank with a sovran remedy for every ill, no Red Cross Knight to head a crusade against misery and want, against disease and death, against all the horrid spectres that war on poor humanity. It is for others with higher notes and nobler natures than his to sound the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He is only a student, a student of the past, who may perhaps tell you a little, a very little, of what has been, but who cannot, dare not tell you what ought to be. Yet even the little that he can contribute to the elucidation of the past may have its utility as well as its interest when it finally takes its place in that great temple of science to which it is the ambition of every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief that if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without any ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however insignificant and useless it may appear, will yet at last be found to work together with the whole accumulated store for the general good of mankind.
Social Anthropology embraces the study, first, of savagery, and, second, of folklore, that is, of the traces of savagery in civilization. Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I understand it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is limited to the crude beginnings, the rudimentary development of human society: it does not include the maturer phases of that complex growth, still less does it embrace the practical problems with which our modern statesmen and lawgivers are called upon to deal. The study might accordingly be described as the embryology of human thought and institutions, or, to be more precise, as that enquiry which seeks to ascertain, first, the beliefs and customs of savages, and, second, the relics of these beliefs and customs which have survived like fossils among peoples of higher culture. All civilization evolved from savagery. In this description of the sphere of Social Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors of the civilized nations were once savages, and that they have transmitted, or may have transmitted, to their more cultured descendants ideas and institutions which, however incongruous with their later surroundings, were perfectly in keeping with the modes of thought and action of the ruder society in which they originated. In short, the definition assumes that civilization has always and everywhere been evolved out of savagery. The mass of evidence on which this assumption rests is in my opinion so great as to render the induction incontrovertible. At least, if any one disputes it I do not think it worth while to argue with him. There are still, I believe, in civilized society people who hold that the earth is flat and that the sun goes round it; but no sensible man will waste time in the vain attempt to convince such persons of their error, even though these flatteners of the earth and circulators of the sun appeal with perfect justice to the evidence of their senses in support of their hallucination, which is more than the opponents of man’s primitive savagery are able to do.
Hence a study of savagery essential to an understanding of the evolution of humanity. Thus the study of savage life is a very important part of Social Anthropology. For by comparison with civilized man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded stage of social development, and an examination of his customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an examination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the human body. To put it otherwise, a savage is to a civilized man as a child is to an adult; and just as the gradual growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the species, so a study of savage society at various stages of evolution enables us to follow approximately, though of course not exactly, the road by which the ancestors of the higher races must have travelled in their progress upward through barbarism to civilization. In short, savagery is the primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand what primitive man was we must know what the savage now is.
Savages of the present day are primitive only in a relative sense, namely by comparison with civilized peoples; their customs and beliefs are in fact the product of a long course of evolution as to which we can know little or nothing. But here it is necessary to guard against a common misapprehension. The savages of to-day are primitive only in a relative, not in an absolute sense. They are primitive by comparison with us; but they are not primitive by comparison with truly primæval man, that is, with man as he was when he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of existence. Indeed, compared with man in his absolutely pristine state even the lowest savage of to-day is doubtless a highly developed and cultured being, since all evidence and all probability are in favour of the view that every existing race of men, the rudest as well as the most civilized, has reached its present level of culture, whether it be high or low, only after a slow and painful progress upwards, which must have extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Therefore when we speak of any known savages as primitive, which the usage of the English language permits us to do, it should always be remembered that we apply the term primitive to them in a relative, not in an absolute sense. What we mean is that their culture is rudimentary compared with that of the civilized nations, but not by any means that it is identical with that of primæval man. It is necessary to emphasize this relative use of the term primitive in its application to all known savages without exception, because the ambiguity arising from the double meaning of the word has been the source of much confusion and misunderstanding. Careless or unscrupulous writers have made great play with it for purposes of controversy, using the word now in the one sense and now in the other as it suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving, or at all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order to avoid these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear steadily in mind that while Social Anthropology has much to say of primitive man in the relative sense, it has nothing whatever to say about primitive man in the absolute sense, and that for the very simple reason that it knows nothing whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at present, is never likely to know anything. To construct a history of human society by starting from absolutely primordial man and working down through thousands or millions of years to the institutions of existing savages might possibly have merits as a flight of imagination, but it could have none as a work of science. To do this would be exactly to reverse the proper mode of scientific procedure. It would be to work a priori from the unknown to the known instead of a posteriori from the known to the unknown. For we do know a good deal about the social state of the savages of to-day and yesterday, but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, about absolutely primitive human society. Hence a sober enquirer who seeks to elucidate the social evolution of mankind in ages before the dawn of history must start, not from an unknown and purely hypothetical primæval man, but from the lowest savages whom we know or possess adequate records of; and from their customs, beliefs, and traditions as a solid basis of fact he may work back a little way hypothetically through the obscurity of the past; that is, he may form a reasonable theory of the way in which these actual customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown up and developed in a period more or less remote, but probably not very remote, from the one in which they have been observed and recorded. But if, as I assume, he is a sober enquirer, he will never expect to carry back this reconstruction of human history very far, still less will he dream of linking it up with the very beginning, because he is aware that we possess no evidence which would enable us to bridge even hypothetically the gulf of thousands or millions of years which divides the savage of to-day from primæval man.
For example, the marriage customs and systems of relationship prevalent among many savage tribes appear to have been evolved from a preceding, but not necessarily primitive, state of sexual promiscuity. It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an example. The matrimonial customs and modes of tracing relationships which prevail among some savage races, and even among peoples at a higher stage of culture, furnish very strong grounds for believing that the systems of marriage and consanguinity which are now in vogue among civilized peoples must have been immediately preceded at a more or less distant time by very different modes of counting kin and regulating marriage; in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden degrees of kinship have replaced an older system of much wider and looser sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such looser and wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely primitive condition of mankind; it is only to say that actually existing customs and traditions clearly indicate the extensive prevalence of such relations at some former time in the history of our race. How remote that time was, we cannot tell; but, estimated by the whole vast period of man’s existence on earth, it seems probable that the era of sexual communism to which the evidence points was comparatively recent; in other words, that for the civilized races the interval which divides that era from our own is to be reckoned by thousands rather than by hundreds of thousands of years, while for the lowest of existing savages, for example, the aborigines of Australia, it is possible or probable that the interval may not be greater than a few centuries. Be that as it may, even if on the strength of the evidence I have referred to we could demonstrate the former prevalence of a system of sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this would only carry us back a single step in the long history of our species; it would not justify us in concluding that such a system had been practised by truly primæval man, still less that it had prevailed among mankind from the beginning down to the comparatively recent period at which its existence may be inferred from the evidence at our disposal. About the social condition of primæval man, I repeat, we know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to speculate. Our first parents may have been as strict monogamists as Whiston or Dr. Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. We have no information on the subject, and are never likely to get any. In the countless ages which have elapsed since man and woman first roamed the happy garden hand in hand or jabbered like apes among the leafy boughs of the virgin forest, their relations to each other may have undergone innumerable changes. For human affairs, like the courses of the heaven, seem to run in cycles: the social pendulum swings to and fro from one extremity of the scale to the other: in the political sphere it has swung from democracy to despotism, and back again from despotism to democracy; and so in the domestic sphere it may have oscillated many a time between libertinism and monogamy.