PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. G7 



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

 tion " to these insensible remains as if they were instinct with 

 life ; " that among the Fejees 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 compoa- 

 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 all 

 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 were formed out of the 

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

 theism out of Fetishism, by the successive migrations of 



