MAN. 27 



part of man, not the body ; and though the outward bodies of men 

 differ, the mind is the same in all, and in all capable of improve- 

 ment and cultivation. 



Those nations which have pre&drvet. traditions of past 

 events agree in many points in a very remarkable manner. All 

 have some traditions of a creation, not always of a world, but of 

 that particular part in which they reside.- The Fejee islanders be- 

 lieve that one of their gods fished up Fejee from the bottom of the 

 sea, by entangling his fish-hook in a rock, and that the island 

 would have been higher had not the line broken. The fish-hook 

 is still preserved as a proof, but they do not state where the god 

 stood while fishing. A traveller asked one of the priests why the 

 hook, an ordinary tortoise-shell one, did not break ? " Oh, it was 

 a god's hook, and could not break." But why then did the lin3 

 break ? was the traveller's very natural response. Whereupon 

 the man, according to the prevailing system of argument in. those 

 countries, and perhaps in a few others, threatened to knock him 

 down if he abused the gods any more. Most nations have dim 

 notions of a deluge which overwhelmed the whole world, and from 

 which only a few individuals escaped, by whom the earth was 

 repeopled. Nearly all believe in a good and an evil power contin- 

 ually at warfare, and that the good will finally subdue the evil. 

 Many savage nations, in consequence, seek to propitiate the evil 

 power with prayers and offerings, feeling sure that the good one 

 will not injure them. 



All nations (except one or two, such as the abject Bosjes- 

 man, who can form no idea of what he cannot see, and whose an- 

 swer, when told of a God, is, " Let me see him") believe in a future 

 state. Their belief is invariably modified according to their habits. 

 Some of the debased dark races believe that after death they be- 

 come white men and have plenty of money ; the Mohammedan con- 

 siders his paradise as an abode of everlasting sensual indulgence ; 

 the savage believes that when he leaves this world he will pass to 

 boundless hunting-fields, where shall be no want of game, and 

 where his arrows shall never miss their mark ; while the Christian 

 knows his heaven to be a place of unspeakable and everlasting hap- 

 pinesfS, where the power of sin shall have ceased for ever. 



