342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Quite early there thus begin those grades of supernatural beings which 

 eventually become so strongly marked. 



Habitual wars, which more than all other causes initiate these first 

 differentiations, go on to initiate further and more decided ones. For, 

 with those compoundings of small social aggregates into greater ones, 

 and recompounding of these into still greater, which war effects, there, 

 of course, with the multiplying gradations of power among living 

 men, arises the conception of multiplying gradations of power among 

 their ghosts. Thus in course of time are formed the conceptions of 

 the great ghosts or gods, the more numerous secondary ghosts, or 

 demi-gods, and so on downward — a pantheon : there being still, how- 

 ever, no essential distinction of kind ; as we see in the calling of or- 

 dinary ghosts manes-gods by the Romans and elohim by the Hebrews. 

 Moreover, repeating as the other life in the other world does, the life 

 in this world, in its needs, occupations, and social organization, there 

 arises not only a differentiation of grades among supernatural beings 

 in respect of their powers, but also in respect of their characters and 

 kinds of activity. There come to be local gods, and gods reigning 

 over this or that order of phenomena; there come to be good and 

 evil spirits of various qualities ; and where there has been by con- 

 quest a superposing of societies one upon another, each having its 

 own system of ghost-derived beliefs, there results an involved com- 

 bination of such beliefs, constituting a mythology. 



Of course, ghosts primarily being doubles like the originals in all 

 things, and gods (when, not the living members of a conquering race) 

 being doubles of the more powerful men, it results that they, too, 

 are originally no less human than ordinary ghosts in their physical 

 characters, their passions, and their intelligences. Like the doubles 

 of the ordinary dead, they are supposed to consume the flesh, blood, 

 bread, wine, given to them : at first literally, and later in a more 

 spiritual way by consuming the essences of them. They not only ap- 

 pear as visible and tangible persons, but they enter into conflicts with 

 men, are wounded, suffer pain : the sole distinction being that they 

 have miraculous powers of healing and consequent immortality. 

 Here, indeed, there needs a qualification ; for not only do various peo- 

 ples hold that the gods die a first death (as naturally happens where 

 they are the members of a conquering race, called gods because of 

 their superiority), but, as in the case of Pan, it is supposed, even 

 among the cultured, that there is a second and final death of a god, 

 like that second and final death of a ghost supposed among existing 

 savages. With advancing civilization the divergence of the supernat- 

 ural being from the natural being becomes more decided. There is 

 nothing to check the gradual dematerialization of the ghost and of 

 the god ; and this dematerialization is insensibly furthered in the ef- 

 fort to reach consistent ideas of supernatural action : the god ceases 

 to be tangible, and later he ceases to be visible or audible. Along 



