i64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



god, they wait (i. Q.,fast) till "the idol, who eats invisibly, has had 

 enough." Moreover, we are told by Bastian, that when a Samoiede 

 goes on a journey, "his reLitives direct the idol toward the place to 

 which he has gone, in order that it may look after him." How among 

 the more advanced peoples of these regions there persists the idea 

 that the idol of the god, developed, as we have seen, from the effigy 

 of the dead man, is the residence of a conscious being, is implied 

 by the following statement of Erman respecting the Russians of 

 Irkutsk : 



" Whatever familiarities may be permitted between the sexes, the only scru- 

 ple by which the young women are infallibly controlled is a superstitious dread 

 of being alone with their lovers in the presence of the holy images. Conscien- 

 tious difficulties of this kind, however, are frequently obviated by putting these 

 witnesses behind a curtain." 



Like beliefs are displayed by other races wholly unallied. Of the 

 Sandwich-Islanders, Ellis tells us that, after a death in the family, the 

 survivors worship " an image with w^hich they imagine the spirit is in 

 some way connected ; " and also that " Oro, the great national idol, 

 was generally supposed to give the responses to the priests." Con- 

 cerning the Yucatanese, Fancourt, quoting Cogolludo, says that 

 " when the Itzaex performed any feat of valor, their idols, whom they 

 consulted, were wont to make a reply to them;" and, quoting Villa- 

 gutierre, he describes the beating of an idol said to have predicted 

 the arrival of the Spaniards, but who had deceived them respecting 

 the result. Even more strikingly shown is this implication in the 

 Quiche legend. Here is an extract from Bancroft : 



"And they worshiped the gods that had become stone Tohil, Avihx, and 

 Hacavitz ; and they offered them the blood of beasts, and of birds, and pierced 

 their own ears and shoulders iu honor of these gods, and collected the blood 

 with a sponge, and pressed it out into a cup before them. . . . And these three 

 gods, petrified, as we have told, could nevertheless resume a movable shape 

 when they pleased ; which, indeed, they often did." 



Nor is it among inferior races only that conceptions of this kind 

 are found. In his " Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne," Dozy, de- 

 scribing the ideas and practices of the idolatrous Arabians, says : 



" When Amrolcais set out to revenge the death of his father on the Beni- 

 Asad, he stopped at the temple of the idol Dhou-'l Kholosa to make a consulta- 

 tion by means of the three arrows called command, prohibition, expectation. 

 Having drawn prohibition, he recommenced drawing. But three times he drew 

 prohibition. Thereupon he broke the arrows, and, throwing them into the idol's 

 face, he shouted, ' Wretch, if the killed man had been thy father, thou wouldst 

 not forbid revenging him !' " 



