Oct. 3, 188i.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



273 



of his visit to that land of shadows, he told of the hosts 

 whom he had met travelling there laden with pipes, and 

 kettles, and weapons. These primitive ideas explain once 

 and for all matters which have too often been explained by 

 fanciful theories, or cited as evidences of the benighted con- 

 dition of those places which on missionary maps of the 

 world are painted black. Tliey disclose the reason why 

 food, and utensils, and weapons were broken and buried 

 with the dead ; why tires were lighted round the grave ; 

 why animals were slain on the death of a chief ; why the 

 Greenlanders, when a child dies, bury a dog with him, 

 because the dog, they say, is able to find his way any- 

 where ; why North American Indian mothers in pathetic 

 custom drop their milk on the lips of the dead child ; and 

 why, what seemed so inexplicable to the early missionaries 

 to the East, ignorant of tiie practice of widow-sacrifice 

 among the ancient peoples of the West, as the Gauls, 

 Teutons, and others, wives and slaves were burned on the 

 funeral pyre. Among the Mexicans sometimes a very rich 

 man would go as far as to have his chaplain slaughtered, 

 that he might not be deprived of his support in the other 

 world. 



In their initial stage all these gifts are made, all these 

 rites performed, for the supposed need of the dead. Every- 

 thing had its manes, which followed him into the next 

 world, and, lacking which, he would be as poor as if in 

 this world he had lacked it. The spiritual counterpart 

 of the offerings was consumed by his spirit, just as the old 

 deities were thought to enjoy the sweet-smelling savour of 

 the burnt sacrifices ; the tires were kindled that the soul 

 might not grope about in darkness. So the obolus was 

 put into the mouth of the dead, that its manes might be 

 payment to Charon for the ferry of the Styx, as money is 

 put in the corpse's hand or mouth among the German and 

 Irish peasants to this day ; so the warrior's horse was slain 

 at his tomb and the armour laid therein, that he might 

 enter Valhalla riding, and clothed with the tokens of his 

 right to enter the abode reserved for those who had fallen 

 in battle. 



Any explanation of customs like the foregoing, persistent 

 as they are in kind, however varying in expression, is 

 defective which does not take into account what large 

 parts the emotions play in all that is connected with death, 

 and how they infuse such practices with vitality. The 

 bereaved refuse to believe that those whom they have lost 

 have no more concern in the interests of life once common 

 and dear to both. As among the Dacotahs, when a mother 

 feels a pain at her breast, they say that her dead child is 

 thinking of her. The place where the body lies becomes 

 the connecting link between it and the soul which is still 

 the solicitude and care, or, it may be, the dread, of the 

 living; succouring and protecting, or, on the other hand, 

 avenging. 



The element of dread undoubtedly comes into play early. 

 The awe which we feel in the presence of death, or in 

 passing in the dark through a churchyard, takes in the 

 savage the form of terror. The behaviour of the ghost in 

 dreams, its ability to do what men still in the flesh cannot 

 do, quicken the belief in occult power, and the desire to pro- 

 pitiate it. The articles placed in the grave as gilts for the 

 dead become sacrifices laid on the altar to appease malig- 

 nant spirits ; the mound or tomb becomes a temple, and 

 awe passes by easy degrees into worship. The prevalence 

 in one form or another of ancestor-worship has led Mr. 

 Spencer to the conclusion that it is the rudimentary form 

 of all religions ; even sun, moon, volcano, river, &c., being 

 feared and adored because they were believed to be the 

 dwelling-places of ancestral ghosts. The facts are against 

 this theory. It is to the larger, the more impressive pheno- 



mena of the natural world, the sun in noontide strength 

 and splendour, the lightning and the thunder, that we 

 must look for the primary causes which awakened the 

 fear, the wonder and the adoration in which lie the germs 

 of the highest religions. Such causes are not only 

 sufficient, but more operative on the undeveloped intelli- 

 gence than the belief in ancestral spirits of the mountain 

 and the sea, which involves a more complex mental action.* 

 The one is contributory, but subordinate, to the other. It 

 is, as M. Reville remarks, " The phenomena of Nature 

 regarded as animated and conscious, that wake and stimu- 

 late the religious sentiments, and become the objects ot the 



adoration of man If Nature- worship, with 



the animism that it engenders, shapes the first law to 

 which nascent religion submits in the human race, anthro- 

 pomorphism furnishes the second, disengaging itself ever 

 more and more completely from the zoomorphism which 

 generally serves as an intermediary. This is so every- 

 v;here".+ 



THE PHILADELPHIA INTEENATIONAL 

 ELECTRICAL EXHIBITION. 



THIS Exhibition was opened by Prof. Eowland on the 

 2nd ult. Referring to it, the Scientific American 

 says : — Probably at no other exhibition held in this country 

 was foreign workmanship so readOy distinguished from 

 domestic. We are a practical people, and we are not always 

 disinclined to boast of this practicality, but as we look over 

 the European exhibits in this exposition, observe the nicety 

 of the philosophical apparatus and instruments of precision, 

 consider the carefully worked-out theories and laws upoE. 

 which they are constructed, and then turn to our own ex- 

 hibits, confined as they are almost exclusively to practical 

 applications for money-getting, it seems after all as though 

 we had been better off' were we not quite so practical, and 

 loitered a little more in the paths of pure science. 



The arc and incandescence lights of the various systems 

 which ornament the pillars and hang iu festoons from the 

 walls have resulted from the application of laws discovered 

 by Faraday and Oersted ; and while the inventors of these 

 applications have deservedly won no little fame and are 

 credited with making a deal of money, the men without 

 whose eff'orts such applications would have been impossible 

 gained little of the former and scarcely enough of the latter 

 to insure them a livelihood. 



The principal objects sought by that admirable society, 

 the Franklin Institute, under the auspices of which the 

 present exhibition is given, might, perhaps, be fairly laid 

 down as — 1. To give the American electrician the oppor- 

 tunity to compare his work not only with the latest 

 European models, but also with the handiwork of his 

 fellow on this side the water. 2. To exhibit the excellence 

 of American electrical applications. 



In regard to the first, it is well known that many 

 practical and ingenious workmen are in the habit of 

 keeping to themselves for fear their ideas should be taken 

 from them. That this is, in great part, a mistake is well 

 illustrated by the small number of really successful appli- 

 cations in electrical science compared with the number of 

 workmen that have struggled tirelessly over what has not 

 given, nor is likely in the future to give, much promise of 

 success. These men, or some of them, are searching for 

 that which is not, or for that which the interposition of a 



* Cf. Kxon-LEDGE, Sept. 21, 1883. 



t " Hibbert Lectures," 1884, pp. 39, 40. 



