SPIRITUAL EXISTENCES 3 



numberless similar situations a man's movements 

 may be guided by his observation of omens ; but 

 if, after obtaining good omens, he has success in 

 trapping, he does not attribute the successful opera- 

 tion of the trap to any activity other than its purely 

 mechanical movements ; though it may be, and 

 probably in some such cases is, true that the 

 Kayan believes the omen bird to have somehow 

 intervened to direct the animal towards the trap, 

 or to prevent the animal being warned against it. 

 The Kayan hangs upon the tomb the garments and 

 weapons and other material possessions of the 

 dead man ; ^ and it would seem that he believes 

 that some shadowy duplicate of each such object is 

 thereby placed at the service of the ghost of the 

 dead man. This, it might be argued, shows that 

 he attributes to each such inert material object a 

 soul, whose relation to the object is analogous to 

 that of the human soul to the body. But such an 

 inference, we think, would not be justified. As 

 with the Homeric Greeks, the principle of in- 

 telligence and life is not to be altogether identified 

 with the ghost, or shade, or shadowy duplicate of 

 the human form that is conceived to travel to the 

 Kayan Hades. The soul seems to be rather an 

 inextended invisible principle ; for, as the procedure 

 of the soul-catcher ^ shows, it is regarded as capable 

 of being contained within, or attached to, almost 

 any small object, living or inert. It would seem, 

 then, that after death the visible ghost or shade of 

 a man incorporates and is animated by the soul ; 

 and that the visible shade of inert objects is, 

 like themselves, inert and inanimate. 



There is, then, no good reason to suppose that 

 the Kayans attribute life, soul, or animation to 



^ If the dead man possessed no sufficiently presentable garments, these may 

 be supplied by friends. This last act of respect and friendship has not 

 infrequently been permitted to one of us. 



^ See vol. ii. p. 29. 



