THE KELIGIOUS IDEA. 679 



to reach it; and others of seas: the Naowe (of AustralL) 

 think that their ghosts depart and people the islands in 

 Spencer s Gulf. With these materialistic con 



ceptions of the other-self and its place of abode, there go 

 similarly materialistic conceptions of its doings after death. 

 Schoolcraft, describing the hereafter of Indian belief, says the 

 ordinary avocations of life are carried on with less of vicissi 

 tude and hardship. The notion of the Chibchas was that &quot; in 

 the future state, each nation had its own particular location, 

 so that they could cultivate the ground.&quot; And everywhere 

 we find an approach to parallelism between the life here and 

 the imagined life hereafter. Moreover, the social 



relations in the other world, are supposed, even among com 

 paratively-advanced peoples, to repeat those of this world. 

 &quot;Some of them [Taouist temples] are called Kung, palace; 

 and the endeavour is made in these to represent the gods of 

 the religion in their celestial abodes, seated on their thrones 

 in their palaces, either administering justice or giving in 

 struction : &quot; recalling the Greek idea of Hades. That like ideas 

 prevailed among the early English, is curiously shown by a 

 passage Ivemble quotes from King Alfred, concerning the per 

 mission to compound for crimes by the bot in money, &quot; except 

 in cases of treason against a lord, to which they dared not 

 assign any mercy; because Almighty God adjudged none to 

 them that despised him, nor did Christ . . . adjudge any to 

 him that sold him unto death: and he commanded that a 

 lord should be loved like himself.&quot; 



Grave-heaps on which food is repeatedly placed, as by the 

 Woolwas of Central America, or heaps of stones such as the 

 &quot; obo &quot; described by Prejevalski, which &quot; a Mongol never 

 passes without adding a stone, rag, or tuft of camels hair, as 

 an offering,&quot; and which, as in Afghanistan, manifestly arise 

 as coverings over dead men, are by such observances made 

 into altars. In some cases they acquire this character quite 

 definitely. On the grave of a prince in Vera Paz, there was 

 &quot; a stone altar erected above all, upon which incense was 



