PRIMITIVE MAN. 385 



its long isolated and widely separated tribes, many of 

 them in a state of lowest barbarism, and without any 

 external ritual of religious worship, believed in happy 

 hunting-grounds in the spirit-land beyond the grave, 

 and the dead warrior was buried with his most useful 

 weapons and precious ornaments. 



" Bring here the last gifts ; and with them 



The last lament be said. 

 Let all that pleased and yet may please, 

 Be buried with the dead " 



was no unmeaning funeral song, but involved the 

 sacrifice of the most precious and prized objects, that 

 the loved one might enter the new and untried state 

 provided for its needs. Even the babe, whose life is 

 usually accounted of so small value by savage tribes, 

 was buried by the careful mother with precious 

 strings of wampum, that had cost more months of 

 patient labour than the days of its short life, that it 

 might purchase the fostering care of the inhabitants 

 of that unknown yet surely believed-in region of 

 immortality. This 



" wish that of the living whole 



No life may fail beyond the grave, 

 Derives it not from what we have 

 The likest God within the soul P " 



Is it likely to have germinated in the brain of an 

 ape ? and if so, of what possible use would it be in 

 the struggle of a merely physical existence ? Is it 

 not rather the remnant of a better spiritual life a 

 remembrance of the tree of life that grew in the 



