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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



forty millions of people, thus appears to 

 be only half what we owe to the English 

 author. The implication is, that his 

 right to force his foreign publisher 

 upon us is just as clear and strong as 

 his right of property in the book he 

 has produced. This absurd proposition 

 is of course assumed not argued. 



CURIOUS SURVIVALS OF SAVAOISM. 



Singularly enough, the time when 

 men know least of this world is the 

 time when they profess to know most 

 of the other. The primitive man is 

 first of all a believer in ghosts. While 

 so ignorant that he can not count ten, 

 he yet has a theory of a future life. 

 Strip the civilized man of his acquire- 

 ments and get down to the primal 

 core of savagery, and you find him a 

 spiritualist. At a time when all inter- 

 pretations of nature were illusive, and 

 in fact engendered by these illusions, 

 there arose the notion of a ghost realm, 

 occupied by phantoms of the departed 

 dead, who can still communicate with 

 living men and interfere in human af- 

 fairs. And, as these causes are com- 

 mon to the lowest tribes, so the super- 

 stitions are universal in the savage 

 state. 



And they were not mere idle spec- 

 ulations. The other world was held to 

 be of far greater moment to man than 

 this world, because of the power of its 

 spirits over the fate of mankind. But, 

 although potent and dangerous, the 

 ghosts of the dead were supposed to be 

 still accessible to human influence. It 

 was believed that they could be pro- 

 pitiated by supplications, offerings, and 

 sacrifices, which took endless forms as 

 religious rites among the lower races. 

 So completely, indeed, were men en- 

 slaved to their spiritualistic fancies 

 that life itself had not the slightest 

 value when there was supposed to be 

 some other-world inducement for de- 

 stroying it. Men were immolated with- 



out hesitation to please or appease the 

 ghosts of another sphere. This world 

 was ruled with the most savage ferocity 

 in the supposed interests of the next. 

 The amount of human sacrifice of de- 

 liberate butchery of human beings 

 that has been occasioned by gross spir- 

 itual delusions relating to another life 

 is appalling to think upon. Starting 

 with the idea of an imaginary sphere, 

 filled with grim shadows to be placated 

 or honored, men, women, and children 

 have been slaughtered by countless 

 thousands at religious altars, at funer- 

 als, and at tombs. Their souls were sent 

 to accompany dead chiefs, wives were 

 burned on funeral piles to accompany 

 their husbands, some were sent to carry 

 messages to the spirits, some to propi- 

 tiate ill-natured demons, and the whole 

 proceeding serves to demonstrate the 

 terrible intensity of the primitive belief 

 that the other world is everything and 

 this world nothing. 



These practices, originating in pri- 

 meval spiritualism, in the infantine 

 stages of society, are by no means con- 

 fined to those stages ; they continue on 

 as society advances. Among the Mexi- 

 cans, for example, after they had be- 

 come considerably civilized, such was 

 the bloody fervor of their spiritualism 

 that human sacrifices, on a great scale, 

 were part of their system of religious 

 rites. "We are told that " every great 

 man's chaplain was slain to perform for 

 him religious ceremonies in the next 

 life as in this " ; again, " The number of 

 victims was proportioned to the gran- 

 deur of the funeral, and amounted some- 

 times, as historians affirm, to two hun- 

 dred." Also, in Peru, " when an Inca 

 died, his attendants and favorite concu- 

 bines, amounting sometimes, it is said, 

 to a thousand, were immolated on his 

 tomb." 



These ideas and practices having 

 the most terrible sincerity and severity 

 where the darkness of human ignorance 

 is thickest, being most widespread and 

 deeply rooted in the lowest barbarism, 



