PRIMITIVE CONCEPTS REGARDING THE DEAD H 



faculties, to be either fat, thin, long, short, heavy or light. Lon- 

 gevity was associated with its size and children who died young 

 were thought to possess the tiniest of all. Such a one had little 

 staying power or energy, its delicate flame being extinguished early 

 in life. The exact location of the soul within an organism dif- 

 fered depending upon the tribe: it was variously placed in the 

 kidney, omental fat, heart, liver, gallbladder or in other struc- 

 tures, but not in the brain, as it often is today (Brown, '23). 



The primitive assigned great flexibility, traveling power, 

 transferability and even divisibility to his and other kindred 

 souls. He was convinced that it could wander away, leaving him 

 under manifold circumstances throughout life as well as at the 

 time of death: while sleeping, during sudden fright, when sneez- 

 ing or yawning, on the loss of his shadow, during an accident, 

 when in a trance or when ill. The entrance and exit for this sub- 

 stance was considered to be the openings of his corpus, more es- 

 pecially his mouth and nostrils. 



How did uncivilized man explain the etiology of death? His 

 ideas on this subject were original and definitely settled in his 

 elementary mind. It was not due to natural causes, but specifi- 

 cally to a mystic or supernatural force. He did not consider fail- 

 ure of bodily organs, senile deterioration or diminution of func- 

 tioning power. He could see decrepit old people alive, changed 

 to be sure, but still performing physiological activities. To him, 

 man was always ''doomed" to die by the malign influence of an 

 enemy, in either human or spirit shape. There was no other cause. 

 The guilty one might have been a wizard, manes (spirit of the 

 dead) or another supernatural agent, less definitely individual- 

 ized. Probably the cause was attributed most commonly to the 

 machinations of a living sorcerer; this was important because it 

 behooved the surviving relatives of a deceased person and other 

 tribal members to search for the murderer and apprehend him 

 as soon as possible so that he could do no further damage (Brin- 

 ton, 1899; Levy-Bruhl, '23). 



A sorcerer "doomed" an individual in one of the following 

 manners: he took possession of something which belonged to 

 him, such as hair, nail-parings, excreta, urine, footprints, shadow, 

 likeness or name, then subjected it to his own form of magic art. 



