PRIMITIVE KELIGIOUS IDEAS. C7 



dead Incas presided, when, as Prescott says, they paid atten 

 tion &quot; to these insensible remains as if they were instinct with 

 life ; &quot; that among the Fejccs it is believed that every enemy 

 has to be killed twice ; that the Eastern Pagans give exten 

 sion and figure to the soul, and attribute to it all the same sub 

 stances, both solid and liquid, of which our bodies are compos 

 ed ; and that it is the custom among most barbarous races to 

 bury food, weapons, and trinkets along with the dead body, 

 under the manifest belief that it will presently need them. 



Lastly, let them remember that the other world, as ori 

 ginally conceived, is simply some distant part of this world 

 some Elysian fields, some happy hunting-ground, accessi 

 ble even to the living, and to which, after death, men 

 travel in anticipation of a life analogous in general charac 

 ter to that which they led before. Then, co-ordinating these 

 general facts the ascription of unknown powers to chiefs 

 and medicine men ; the belief in deities having human 

 forms, passions, and behaviour ; the imperfect comprehen 

 sion of death as distinguished from life ; and the proximity 

 of the future abode to the present, both in position and 

 character let them reflect whether they do not almost un 

 avoidably suggest the conclusion that the aboriginal god 

 is the dead chief: the chief not dead in our sense, but 

 gone away carrying with him food and weapons to some 

 rumoured region of plenty, some promised land, whither he 

 had long intended to lead his followers, and whence he will 

 presently return to fetch them. 



This hypothesis once entertained, is seen to harmonize 

 with all primitive ideas and practices. The sons of the dei 

 fied chief reigning after him, it necessarily happens that ali 

 early kings are held descendants of the gods ; and the fact 

 that alike in Assyria, Egypt, among the Jews, Phoenicians, 

 and ancient Britons, kings names w T ere formed out of the 

 names of the gods, is fully explained. The genesis of Poly 

 theism out of Fetishism, by the successive migrations of 



