TRIBAL SOCIETY 267 



the corpse, to Ijecome an ancestral spirit." Tlie Caribs 

 connect the pulses with spiritual beings."'-^ 



Since there was a spirit separable from the body, 

 primitive man no longer thought of death as the end of 

 conscious life. The spirit might leave the bod}^, l)ut it 

 might return, or it might enter other bodies or objects 

 dwelling in tliem and animating them. In coma the body 

 might lie for days in a state indistinguishable from death. 

 In epilepsy and insanity the individual is obviously not 

 hhnself ; hence the savage regards his body as animated 

 liy some foreign or evil spirit. To this day the ignorant 

 l)elieve that an insane person is "possessed," and there 

 is current usage of the forms, "he is not in his right 

 mind," and "he is out of his head."^^ Thus, it has be- 

 come a rooted conviction among primitive peoples that 

 ghosts or surviving spirits of the dead sometiines 

 come back to their proper bodies, but oftener wander 

 th]-ougli the air, entering now into one person or object 

 and no^Y into another. The world is regarded as peopled 

 with ghosts. 



But primitive men attribute to all external objects, 

 whether animate or inanimate, the possession either of 

 "mana," or of an actuating spirit. The tree, the stone, 

 quite as much as the human being or the swift forest 

 animal, may have souls and are moved by feelings of 

 love, envy, appetite, curiosity, and desire. Hence all 

 Nature is animated by spirits. "Some of them are con- 

 temptible and man can abuse thorn or use them; but 

 others are terrible, swift, subtle, or mysterious in their 

 action and fill the wondering human soul with mingled 

 admiration and dread. The serpent that could run with- 

 out legs, the turtle that could breathe air or llyt^jn water, 



53 Tylor, op. cit. 34Ciidclings, op. cit., p. 249. 



