396 ON TRACES OF THE EARLY MENTAL CONDITION OF MAN. 



embarrassed witli the difficulty that by so doing he is setting free a hostile ghost 

 to vex his own people, and therefore he resorts to the device of cutting oti' the 

 dead man's right thumb, so that the ghost can no longer throw his spear, and 

 may be safely left to wander as an evil spirit, malignant, but harmless. The 

 histor}^ of the very funeral offerings just spoken of shows in the most interesting 

 way the progress of a ceremony from its source in a crude and savage philosophy 

 to its gradual breaking down into mere formality and symbolism. To the Aryan 

 of the Vedas it was quite reasonable to burn the priestly sacrificial implements 

 with the dead man's body for his use in the next world ; but the modern Hindu 

 lays one thread of woollen yarn on the funeral cake of his father, saying, "May 

 this apparel, made of woollen vara, be acceptable to thee !" We may learn 

 from Ovid how the oflerings of food to the dead, in ruder times a thorough prac- 

 tical savage proceeding, had in his time dwindled to a mere affectionate, senti- 

 mental ceremon3\ Garlands, he says, and some scattered corn and grains of 

 salt, and bread steeped in wine, and violets laid about : with these the shade 

 may be appeased. ''Little the manes ask, the pious thought stands instead of 

 the rich gift, for Styx holds no greedy gods." 



" Pai~va petunt manes — pietas pro divite grata est 

 Munere. Non avidos Styx babet ima deos." 



We may see how the early Christians kept up the heathen custom of burying 

 oiTiaments with the dead, of putting playthings in a child's grave, doing just 

 what a red Indian squaw will do, but doing it with how changed a purpose. 

 The Chinese keeps up the time-honored custom of providing the dead with clothes 

 and money ; but the money that he will palm off on his dead father is a pasteboard 

 coin, stamped like a Spanish dollar, and covered with silver-leaf; this he will 

 burn, and his father will have the spirit of it to spend in the next world. Tlie 

 same Chinese will yearW spread a feast for the souls of his dead ancestors ; he 

 and his I'riends will wait a decent while for the ghosts to eat the spirits of tlie 

 food, and then they will fall to themselves. To see the same thing done nearer 

 home, you have only to travel into Brittany, wdiere on the night of the Fete 

 des Morts you will find the fire made up and the hearth swept, and the supper 

 left on the table for the souls of the dead to come and take their part. And 

 when we see a WTcath of everlastings laid upon a tomb, or a nosegay of fresh 

 flowers thrown into an open grave, a full knowledge of the history of funeral 

 offerings seems to justify us in believing what we should hardly have guessed 

 without it, that even here we see a relic of the thoughts of the rudest savages 

 who claim a common humanity with us, a funeral offering vastly changed in 

 signification, but nowhere broken in historic sequence. 



Lastlij. Another subject may V)e found to throw light upon an early condition 

 of men's minds. We are all agreed that there is a certain mental process called 

 the associaiion of ideas. That we are in the habit of connecting in our minds 

 different things which have, in actual fact, no material connection, we all admit 

 as a matter belonging to this association of thoughts or of ideas. Now we have 

 been taught to keep an eye on the action of the association of thoughts, to 

 recognize it as a fallacious process apt to lead us into all manner of unreasonable 

 opinions. But if we descend to a lower range of civilization, we shall find that 

 the mental association which we tolerate as a sort of amiable weakness, and 

 against which we are at any i^ate forewarned and forearmed, is the very philos- 

 ophy of the savage. There is one particularly excellent way of studying the 

 effects of the association of thought. It began to produce, in a time associated 

 with a very low human condition, a set of opinions and practices known as the 

 occult sciences, witchcraft, divination, astrology, and the like. The germs of 

 these imaginary sciences are to be found still lively among the lower races. 

 Their development into elaljorate pseudo-scientific systems belongs to a period 

 now beginning to pass away ; and we can still study them in their last stage 

 of existence, that in which theii' remnants have lingered on into a period of 



