272 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Oct. 3, 1884. 



DREAMS : 



THEIR PLACE IN THE GROWTH OF PRIMITIVE 

 BELIEFS. 



By Edward Clodd. 

 IX. 



MORE graceful is the conception which makes the soul 

 sjiring up as a iiower or cleave the air as a bird. 

 It is, of course, the purified survival of the primitive 

 thought which did not limit its belief in an indwelling 

 spirit to man, but extended it to brutes and plants, and 

 even to lifeless things. For the lower creatures manifested 

 the phenomena from which the belief in the spirits was 

 inferred. They moved and breathed, their life ceased with 

 their breath ; they cast shadows and reflections ; their 

 cries, which to the savages seemed so like human speech,* 

 awakened echoes ; and they appeared in dreams. Among 

 the western tribes of North America, the phantoms of 

 all animals are supposed to go to the happy beasts' grounds, 

 and in Assam the ghosts of those slain become the property 

 of the hunter who kills them ; whilst the custom of begging 

 pardon of the animal before or after despatching it, as 

 among the Red Indians, who even put the pipe of peace in 

 the dead creature's mouth, further evidences to barbarian 

 belief in beast-souls. Although such belief has now 

 no place in serious philosophy, the belief in the immor- 

 tality of brutes has been a favourite doctrine from 

 the Kamchadales, who believe in the after-life of fiies 

 and bugs, to the eminent naturalist Agassiz, who advocates 

 ihe doctrine in his " Essay on Classification ; " and in a 

 list of 4,977 books on the nature and future of the soul 

 given in Mr. Alger's elaborate critical history of the 

 subject, nearly 200 deal with the after life of animals. The 

 advocates have often felt the difficulty of granting this after 

 life to man and denying it to creatures to which he stands 

 so closely related in ultimate community of origin ; but 

 science, while it finds links of sympathy with the ideas of 

 rude races respecting the common life of all that moves, 

 and presents evidence in support of the common destiny, 

 lends no support to the doctrine of the immortality of 

 oysters. The custom of apologising to doomed brutes is 

 practised in regard to plants. If they exhibit the phe- 

 nomena of life in a lesser degree, enough are shown to 

 justify the accrediting of them with souls. Besides flinging 

 wavy shadows and reflections (and it cannot be too often 

 enforced that to the barbaric intelligence motion is a prime 

 sign of life), they are not voiceless. Murmurs are heard in 

 their leaves ; sounds echo from their hollow trunks, or 

 tremble, Eolian-like, through their branches ; and in their 

 juices are the sources of repose or frenzy. 



" The Ojibways believed that trees had souls, and in 

 pagan times they seldom cut down green or living trees, 

 for they thought it put them to pain. They pretended tii 

 hear the wailing of the trees when they sufiered in this 

 way. On account of these noises, real or imaginary, trees 

 have had spirits assigned them, and worship oflFered to 

 them. A mountain-ash, in the vicinity of South Ste. 

 Marie, which made a noise, had offerings piled up around 

 it If a tree should emit from its hollow trunk or branches 

 a sound during a calm state of the atmosphere, or should 

 any one fancy such sounds, the tree would be at once 

 reported, and soon come to be regarded as the residence of 

 some local god."t As expressed in Greek myth, purified 

 in this case from grosser elements, we have the Dryades, 



* " To the ear of the savage, animals certainly seem even to 

 talk. This fact is universally evident, and ought to be fully 

 realised."— Im Thum's " Guiana," p. 351. 



+ Dorman, pp. 287, 8. 



who were believed to die together with the trees in which 

 their life had begun to be, and in which they had dwelt. 

 As expressed in folk-lore and its poetic forms, it is in the 

 growth or blossoming of flowers, or the intertwining of 

 branches, that the idea survives. In the ballad of " Fair 

 Margaret and Sweet William " — 



Out of her brest there sprang a rose, 



And out of his a briar ; 



They grew till they grew unto the church-top, 



And there they tyed in a true lover's knot ;* 



in the story of " Tristram and Ysonde," " From his grave 

 there grew an eglantine which twined about the statue, a 

 marvel for all men to see ; and, though three times they 

 cut it down, it grew again, and ever wound its arms about 

 the image of the fair Ysonde ;"t while the conception often 

 lends itself to the poet's thoughts, from Laertes' words over 

 Ophelia : — 



Lay her i' the earth, 



And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 



May violets spring, 



to Tennyson's 



And from his ashes may be made 

 The violet of his native land. 



In Grimm's " Teutonic Mythology " a number of Ulastra- 

 tions are supplied of the vagaries of popular imagination, 

 which picture the soul as a bird flying out of a dead 

 person's mouth, and, as a cognate example from rude cul- 

 ture, we find a belief among the Powhatans that " a certain 

 small wood bird received the souls of their princes at 

 death, and they religiously refrained from doing it harm ; 

 while the Aztecs and various other nations thought that all 

 good people, as a reward of merit, were metamorphosed at 

 the close of life into feathered songsters of the grove, and 

 in this form passed a certain term in the umbrageous 

 bowers of Paradise." J But many chapters might be filled 

 with examples of varying conceptions of the soul, the 

 major number of which (for the idea of it as a mouse, 

 snake, Sic, must not be forgotten) have as their nucleus its 

 ethereal natui-e and freedom from the limitations of solid 

 earth, although round that nucleus gather some more 

 concrete ideas for the mind, desiring something more sub- 

 stantial than symbols, to grasp. The belief that inani- 

 mate things as well as animals and plants have a dual 

 being is not so obvious at first sight, and yet, given the 

 reasons for the latter, there are as good grounds, because 

 like in kind, for the former. The Algonquins told Father 

 Charlevoix that " since hatchets and kettles Lave shadows, 

 as well as men and women, it follows that these shadows 

 must pass along with human shadows into the spirit-land." 

 When the tools or weapons are injured or done with, their 

 souls must cross the water to the Great Village, where the 

 sun sets. Besides, spears and pots and pans, as well as 

 men and dogs, appear in dreams ; they throw shadows and 

 images in the water, they give forth a sound when struck, 

 and, as the Fijians also argue, " if an animal or plant die, 

 its soul goes to Bolotoo ; if a stone or anything else is 

 broken, it has its reward there ; nay, has equal good luck 

 with men and hogs and yams. If an axe or a chisel is 

 worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the service 

 of the gods." Logically, the savage who believes that in 

 the other world 



The hunter still the deer pursues. 



The hunter and the deer a shade, 



must put in the hands of the one a shadow spear. So when 

 an Ojibway chief, after a four days' trance, gave an account 



* Grimm's " T. M.," p. 827. 



t Cox and Jones, " Pop. Romances," p. 139. 



J Brinton, p. 107. 



