66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sions. There was some fear that, by calling his name, he might 

 come back. 



It would be wrong to accuse the Indians of want of feeling in- 

 dicated by their horror of the dead. In one of the most ancient 

 accounts that of Cabeza de Vaca it is declared that the parents 

 and other relatives of the sick show much sympathy while life re- 

 mains, but give none to the dead do not speak of them or weep 

 among themselves, or make any signs of grief or approach the body. 

 This domestic reticence is entirely different from, but not antago- 

 nistic to, the obligatory mortuary rites which were practiced. 



To secure the living from the presence of the spirits of the 

 dead was the first object, and the second was to assist those spirits 

 in the journey to their destination. These were the prevailing 

 ideas of all the mortuary customs of the Indians. It may be true 

 that there was in some cases (though missionary influence is to be 

 suspected) a belief that there were two different regions in which 

 the bad and the good would severally remain, but that was not of 

 general acceptance. There was but one future country, and the only 

 question was whether the spirits got there or not. There was no hell. 



The Israelites, in their sacred books, do not show the influence 

 of fears or hopes concerning a future state with reference to indi- 

 vidual morality. Among them death at any age was not an inevi- 

 table necessity, as they thought that life might be prolonged to an 

 indefinite extent, but it was inflicted as a punishment and their 

 signs of mourning were acts of penitence and contrition, with the 

 idea that the survivors might have been the cause of the death. 

 All deaths were classed with public calamities, such as pestilence, 

 famine, drought, or invasion, being the work of an enemy per- 

 haps a punishing god, perhaps a daimon or a witch. They re- 

 garded it so great an evil to die unlamented that it was one of the 

 four great judgments against which they prayed, and it was called 

 the burial of an ass. These are the inferences to be derived from 

 the books as we have them. It is, however, questionable whether 

 rites attending upon death were not with them similar in intent 

 to those of the Indians i. e., to provide, by means of those rites, 

 for the future welfare of the departed, rather than in accordance 

 with our modern sentiment, to show respect and personal sorrow. 

 Passages of the Old Testament may be noted e. g., the one tell- 

 ing how the bodies of Saul and his children were rescued from 

 Bethshan and taken to Jabesh, where they were burned and the 

 bones buried. The ceremony in this case and others seems to have 

 been the burning of the flesh and the burial of the bones, as was 

 frequently done by the Indians on occasions of haste, without 

 waiting as usual for the decay of the flesh, the later gathering of 

 the bones being at stated periods of years. 



There is no evidence that the Israelites feared the corpse and 



