62 Rafael Karsten. [N:o 1 



to the mystery which is always connected with a maa wlio 

 has departed this life. Death itself is to the savage the great- 

 est of all m3^steries and is by him mostly ascribed to super- 

 natural causes. The fear in which he stånds of death and ot 

 the lifeless body, to which, in his eyes, a dangerous infection 

 is attached, is by a natural expansion of feelings and ideas 

 easily transmitted to the disembodied spirit itself. Hence the 

 common belief at the lower stages of culture that the departed 

 are able to cause sickness and death to the living. But they 

 also manifest their power in other ways. Delivered from the 

 bonds of the visible frame, the soul is supposed to lead a 

 freer and more active existence. The imagination being filled 

 with the idea that the dead like to re-visit their old dwellings 

 and continue to take an interest in their living relatives and 

 friends, the survivors are ready to see an indication of their pre- 

 sence in every remarkable incident which happens at the time 

 of the death, and in especial to ascribe every unexpected mis- 

 fortune to their mysterious action *). 



There is sufiicient evidence to show that according to 

 primitive Greek ideas the spirits of the dead, carried under- 

 ground with the body, often became actual hypochtonic deities 

 who had to be worshipped accordingly. Thus the valuable sacri- 

 fices which the Mycenaean Greeks used to make at the tombs 

 of the dead cannot be satisfactorily explained exceptas ofiferings 

 to supernatural beings whose favour was sought and whose dis- 

 pleasure was dreaded ^). Among the historic Greeks the same 

 ideas and practices appear with great definiteness. Whereas in 

 Homeric age the belief in hypochonic deities seems on the 

 whole to have played a less prominent part, we observe in 

 post-Homeric times the feeliug of the power of the dead crop- 

 ping up again in new vigour and maintaining itself in full 

 force even through the very ages of Hellenic bloom. From 

 the tragedians, and elsewhere, we learn to know what super- 

 natural powers were ascribed to the dead especially in cases 

 of persons who had been murdered or who had come to an 

 untimely and violent end, the spirits of whom wandered about 



^) Cf. my Origin of WorsMp pp. 106 — 7. 



*) Cf. Tsountas & Manatt, op. cM. pp. 312 — 14. 



