55 8* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



while the sculptor, in his primitive form, is one of the agents of 

 this worship. 



The tomb and the temple are, as is shown in 137,* developed 

 out of the shelter for the grave rude and transitory at first, but 

 eventually becoming refined and permanent; while the statue, 

 which is the nucleus of the temple, is an elaborated and finished 

 form of the original effigy placed on the grave. The implication 

 is that, as with the temple so with the statue, the priest, when not 

 himself the executant, as he is among savages, remains always the 

 director of the executant the man whose in junctions the sculptor 

 carries out. ' 



Of evidence to be set down in support of this general proposi- 

 tion we may begin with that, relatively small in amount, which is 

 furnished by existing uncivilized races. 



Concerning the Gold Coast Negroes, Bosman tells us that they 

 " generally build a small cottage or hut ... on the grave," and 

 also that in some parts " they place several earthen images on the 

 graves." Bastian, writing of the Coast Negroes, says clay figures 

 of departed chiefs with their families are placed in groups under 

 the village tree. Nothing is added about the makers of these clay 

 images ; but in another case we find evidence of priestly origin. 

 According to Tuckey, a certain fetich-rock on the Congo " is con- 

 sidered as the peculiar residence of Seembi, the spirit which pre- 

 sides over the river ; " that on some of the rocks " are a number of 

 raised figures," made of some composition which appears " like 

 stone sculptured in low relief" rude representations of men, 

 beasts,.ships, etc. : " they were said to be the work of a learned priest 

 of Nokki who taught the art to all those who chose to pay him." 



The Polynesian races yield some evidence : relevant facts are 

 narrated of the Sandwich Islanders by Cook and Ellis. The one 

 describes the burying places as containing many wooden images 

 representing their deities, some in huts, others not ; and the other 

 tells us that "each celebrated tii [spirit] was honored with an 

 image." That these celebrated spirits were originally the ghosts 

 of deceased chiefs, is implied by the account given of an allied 

 Polynesian race, the New Zealanders. Among these, according 

 to Thomson, the bodies of chiefs, in some cases " interred within 

 the houses where they died," where they were bewailed by rela- 

 tives for weeks [a rude temple and a rude worship], had "rude 

 human images, twenty or forty feet high," erected as monuments 

 to them. Though in neither of these cases are we told by whom 

 such images of deceased men were made, yet since of New Zea- 

 land artists the best are found among the priests, as asserted by 



* Principles of Sociology, vol. L 



