DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 289 



01' sitting position, and their situation with reference 

 to the four cardinal points. In America the cross 

 which was placed in very early times above the tombs 

 is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been a symbol 

 of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb 

 itself and to the human remains enclosed in it. 

 One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces 

 to the east ; the Fijians are buried with the head 

 and feet to the west, and many of the North American 

 Indians follow the same custom. Others in South 

 America double up the corpse, turning the face to 

 the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in 

 a sitting position, looking to the west ; the natives 

 of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern 

 Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the 

 west, because this is the attitude in which they place 

 their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. 

 Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civi- 

 lized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and 

 continue to have special customs in burying their dead. 

 All the primitive artistic representations of the 

 human form, the orientation of tombs and temples 

 and their peculiar form, were prompted by these 

 spiritualist and superstitious ideas ; they expressed a 

 symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the con- 

 stitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and 

 cosmic legends. This assertion might be verified by 

 all funereal, religious, and civil monuments among all 

 peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form 



