IDOL-WORSHIP AND FETICH-WORSHIP. 163 



the Malagasy, Ellis testifies that friends of the prince, on seeing a 

 photograph of him, took off their hats to it and verbally saluted it. 



That which holds of a pictorial representation holds of a carved or 

 sculptured one holds even more naturally; since the carved repre- 

 sentation, being solid, approaches closer to the reality. Where the 

 image is painted and has eyes inserted, this notion of participation in 

 the vitality of the person imitated becomes, in the uncritical mind of 

 the savage, very strong. Any one who remembers the horror a child 

 shows on seeing an adult put on an ugly mask, even when the mask 

 has been previously shown to it, may conceive the awe which a rude 

 effigy excites in the primitive mind. The sculptured figure of the 

 dead man arouses the thought of the actiial dead man, which passes 

 into a conviction that he is present. 



And why should it not ? If the other-self can leave the living 

 body and reenter it ; if the ghost can come back and animate afresh 

 the dead body ; if the embalmed Peruvian, presently to be resuscitated 

 by his wandering double, was then to need his carefully-preserved 

 hair and nails ; if the soul of the Egyptian, after its transmigrations, 

 occupying some thousands of years, was expected to infuse itself once 

 more into his mummy why should not a spirit go into an image ? A 

 living body differs more from a mummy in texture than a mummy 

 does from wood. 



That a savage does think an eftigy is inhabited we have abundant 

 proofs. Lander, describing the Yorubans, says a mother carries for 

 some time a wooden figure of her lost child, and, when she eats, puts 

 part of her food to its lips. The Samoiedes, according to Bastian, 

 " feed the wooden images of the dead." The relatives of an Ostyak 



" make a rude wooden image, representing, and in honor of, the deceased, which 

 is set up in the yurt, and receives divine honors for a greater or less time, as the 

 priest directs. ... At every meal they set an ofiering of food before the image ; 

 and, should this represent a deceased husband, the widow embraces it from time 

 to time. . . . This kind of worship of the dead lasts about three years, at the 

 end of which time the image is buried." 



Erman, who states this, adds the significant fact that the descend- 

 ants of deceased priests preserve the images of their ancestors from 

 generation to generation 



*' and, by well-contrived oracles and other arts, they manage to procure offer- 

 ings for these their family penates, as abundant as those laid on the altars of the 

 universally-acknowledged gods. But that these latter also have an historical 

 origin, that they were originally monuments of distinguished men, to wliich pre- 

 scription and the interests of the Shamans gave by degrees an arbitrary meaning 

 and importance, seems to me not liable to doubt." 



These Ostyaks, indeed, show us unmistakably how worship of the 

 dead man's effigy passes into worship of the divine idol ; for the two 

 are identical. At each meal, placing the dishes before the household 



