IDOL-WORSHIP AND FETICH-WORSHIP. 159 



was present in the mummy, or that the mummy was itself conscious. 

 Among the Egyptians, this was clearly implied by the practice of 

 sometimes placing their embalmed dead at table. The Peruvians, 

 v,'ho by a parallel custom betrayed a like belief, also betrayed it in 

 other ways. By some of them the dried corpse of a parent was car- 

 ried round the fields that he might see the state of the crops. How 

 the ancestor, thus recognized as present, was also recognized as exer- 

 cising authority, we see in this story given by Santa Cruz. When 

 his second sister refused to marry him, " Huayna Capac went with 

 .presents and oflierings to the body of his father, praying him to give 

 her for his wife, but the dead body gave no answer, while fearful signs 

 appeared in the heavens." 



The primitive idea that any property characterizing an aggregate 

 inheres in all parts of it, implies a corollary from this l)elief. The 

 soul, present in the body of the dead man preserved entire, is also 

 present in preserved j^arts of his body. Hence tiie faith in relics. 

 Ellis tells us that, in the Sandwich Islands, bones of the legs, arms, 

 and sometimes the skulls, of kings and principal chiefs, are carried 

 about by their descendants, under the belief that the spirits exercise 

 guardianship over them. The Crees carry bones and hair of dead 

 pei'sons about for three years. The Caribs, and several Guiana 

 tribes, have their cleaned bones " distributed among the relatives 

 after death." The Tasmanians show " anxiety to possess themselves 

 of a bone from the skull or the arms of their deceased relatives." The 

 Andamanese " widows may be seen with the skulls of their deceased 

 partners suspended from their necks." 



This belief in the power of relics leads in some cases to direct 

 worship of them. Erskine tells us that the natives of Lifu, Loyalty 

 Islands, who " invoked the spirits of their departed chiefs," also '' pre- 

 serve relics of their dead, such as a finger-nail, a tooth, a tuft of hair, 

 . . . and pay divine homage to it." Of the New Caledonians Turner 

 says : " In cases of sickness, and other calamities, they present oft'cr- 

 ings of food to the skulls of the departed." Moreover, we have the 

 evidence furnished by conversation with the relic. Lander says : 

 " In the private fetich-hut of the King Adolee, at Badagry, the skull 

 of that monarch's father is preserved in a clay vessel placed in the 

 earth." He " gently rebukes it if his success does not happen to 

 answer his expectations." Similarly, Catlin describes the Mandans 

 as placing the skulls of their dead in a circle. Each wife knows the 

 skull of her former husband or child 



" and there seldom passes a day tbat she does not visit it, with a dish of the 

 best-cooked food. . . . There is scarcely an hour in a pleasant day, but more or 

 less of these women may be seen sitting or lying by the skull of their cliild or 

 husband talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing language tliat they 

 can use (as they were wont to do in former days), and seemingly getting an 

 answer back." 



