238 Evolution of Theoloyy. 



which leaves the body and returns to it at pleasure, is inten- 

 sified by the phenomena of swooning, of apoplexy, catalepsy 

 and other conditions of complete or partial insensibility. 

 All bodily action is suspended until the return to conscious 

 life. What more rational, for him, than to class these facts, 

 observed in others, with those observed in himself, in the 

 case of sleeping and dreaming ? In these instances also, 

 the double of the waking self has been absent and has re- 

 turned ; and when, after repeated efforts to recall life to the 

 motionless body, it never again gives evidence of vitality, 

 it must be, he thinks, that the other self has departed to 

 some other region. 



Upon these experiences, argues Mr. Spencer, arises the 

 idea of existence elsewhere. These other-world spirits, 

 swarming everywhere, become invested, to the mind of the 

 savage, with exceptional powers over himself for good or evil, 

 mostly the latter. They may possess and control the bodies 

 of the living. Worship for the sake of the propitiation of 

 the ghost is a necessary sequence. Out of the many and 

 varied observances therefrom resulting, come all forms of 

 worship. Adopting mostly Mr. Spencer's words, awe of 

 the ghost makes sacred the sheltering structure of the tomb. 

 This expands into the temple. The tomb itself becomes the 

 altar. The other-world spirit must be fed and supplied with 

 articles for use and service as when here. Hence the uni- 

 versal custom of oblations and offerings to the dead, growing 

 eventually into a formal religious service and ceremonial 

 at the grave of the departed. Abstinence from food in order 

 that he may be sufficiently provided, develops into fasting 

 as a pious practice. Journeys to the tomb with gifts become 

 pilgrimages to the shrine. Praises of the dead and prayers 

 to them become in time embodied in the later elaborate 

 ritual and ceremonial of the temple-service. In proportion 

 to the rank and power of the deceased in his life here, are 

 the degrees of supernatural power and faculty ascribed to 

 him. The ghost becomes a god. The greatest ancestor 

 becomes the god-in-chief. Hence arise all forms and phases 

 of early theistic belief, distinctly originating in ancestor- 

 worship. These ideas are not, primarily, projections of the 

 imagination of early man by contact with Nature, but they 

 develop from the conception of the other self, and, when 

 once so acquired, lead to subsequent personifications of 

 natural phenomena. 



