3*8 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Sept. 21, i i 



all on board were drowned except a Scotch woman, 

 named Thomson. She was kindly received by the 

 natives, being taken for the ghost of a woman named 

 Giom, who had recently died ; and when she was teased 

 by the children, the men would often say, " Let her 

 alone, poor thing ; she is nothing, only a ghost." This, 

 however, did not prevent their marrying her to a man 

 named Boroto. We must remember that ideas of spirits 

 entertained by savages are very different from ours. 

 They regard them as different indeed from, but scarcely 

 more powerful or wiser than they are themselves. For 

 instance, the nations of the Nicobar Islands used to put up 

 scarecrows to frighten the spirits away from their crops. 

 Even among a race comparatively so far advanced as the 

 Greeks, the deities were regarded as liable to be 

 wounded or even defeated by man. Mars himself, the 

 very god of war, is described by Homer as being 

 wounded by Diomede. 



Various theories have been suggested to account for 

 the deification of animals. I have ventured to suggest 

 that it may be traced to the system of family names. 

 We have seen that families are often called after animals, 

 the bear, the bull, and so on. This leads to the idea — or 

 at any rate various races have the idea, in a more or less 

 definite form, that they are related to, or descended from 

 the animal after which they are named. In many cases 

 they will not injure or eat their namesake. They treat 

 it with respect, which would gradually develop into 

 reverence and worship. 



The worship of inanimate objects is more difficult to 

 account for. But, in fact, many savages regard every- 

 thing as having life ; and just as when a man died he 

 went to the other world, so if a thing were destroyed, its 

 spirit set out on the same long journey. Chapman 

 mentions that the bushmen thought his waggon was the 

 mother of his cart, and Hearne tells us that in his day 

 the North Americans never hung up nets together for 

 fear they should be jealous of one another. 



Lord Iddesleigh, in a recent address, observed that as 

 he stood by one of the mighty rivers of Canada, he 

 almost felt as if the rushing waves were alive ; and in 

 fact rivers and seas are so active, and as we should 

 say even now metaphorically, show so much life that we 

 cannot wonder at the very general belief in a spirit of 

 the waters, which we find prevalent in the most distant 

 parts of the world. Among the Greeks if Neptune 

 represented perhaps a deity ruling over the seas, Okeanos 

 at any rate was the ocean itself. The Hindoos worship 

 the Ganges ; in North America the Mohawks believed 

 that the spirit of Saratoga lake infallibly drowned any one 

 who spoke while boating on it. The wife of a missionary 

 once wishing to destroy this superstition got an Indian 

 chief to row her across, and when they were in the 

 middle, to his great alarm, began talking loudly. How- 

 ever, they got across, and when they were safe on the 

 other side she laughed at him, but he was quite unshaken 

 in his belief, and indeed I think had the best of it after 

 all, for he replied gravely, " Madam, the Great Spirit is 

 merciful, and knows that a white woman cannot hold her 

 tongue." A belief in water spirits still lingers on in 

 parts even of our own islands. 



The heavenly bodies have long excited the wonder and 

 admiration of mankind. Still, the worship of the sun, 

 moon, and stars does not seem to prevail among the 

 lower races of savages — such, for instance, as the Austra- 

 lians — and it was again abandoned among thoughtful 

 races, perhaps on account of the regularity of their 



movements. We are expressly told in the case of Peru 

 that the Inca Huayna Capa questioned the divine nature 

 of the sun, because it did exactly the same thing every 

 day. Now, he ingeniously argued, " If the sun were 

 supreme lord he would occasionally go aside from his 

 course, or rest for his pleasure, even though he might 

 have no necessity for doing so." 



The vestal virgins have made us all familiar with the 

 worship of fire. Their duty was to keep the same fire 

 perpetually burning. On the other side of the Atlantic, 

 again, we find very similar institutions. In Peru " the 

 sacred flame was entrusted to the virgins of the sun, and 

 if by any neglect it was suffered to go out, the event was 

 regarded as a calamity that boded some strange disaster 

 to the monarchy." Very similar customs indeed pre- 

 vailed among many races. The name vesta is merely a 

 form of hestia, which in Greek meant a hearth ; and 

 vesta was the personification of- the domestic hearth. 

 We must remember that among savages it is a work of 

 much difficulty to light a fire. Lucifer matches and 

 other appliances make it now so very easy that we are 

 apt to forget this. But with savages, and even until 

 quite recently, it was very different. The commonest 

 mode of obtaining fire was by rubbing one stick against 

 another, and if any of you would endeavour to strike a 

 light in this way, you would appreciate the labour it 

 involves. Hence the fire, once obtained, was most care- 

 fully cherished. Indeed, it is said that some of the 

 Australian tribes, though they had fire, did not know 

 how to procure it, and, if theirs went out, were compelled 

 to borrow a light from a neighbouring tribe. Hence, 

 naturally, under such circumstances, it was jealously 

 guarded, then reverenced, and at last worshipped. 



We know that among many races, when a man died, 

 his wives and slaves, sometimes, also, his horse and dog, 

 were killed and buried with him, in order that their 

 spirits might accompany him to the other world. But 

 the preparation for eternity did not end here. Just as 

 the survivors killed the wife and slaves, so they also 

 "killed" his arms and implements, his clothes and 

 ornaments, so that their spirits also might go with their 

 master, and he might enter the other world as a great 

 chief should. The Red Indian, Mr. Sproat tells us, 

 quite understands that the things themselves remain in 

 the grave, but believes that the phantoms of the things 

 accompany the spirit of the dead. Even among the 

 Greeks we know that a coin was put in the mouth of the 

 dead, in order that he might have the wherewithal to 

 pay the ferryman Charon; and the Chinese are said to 

 burn paper-money with the dead — a process much to be 

 commended from a banking point of view. 



The language of poetry is another source of Divine 

 origin. Thus the classical gods appear in the Vedic 

 poems as mere names of natural objects. Jupiter is 

 Zeuspater — the father Zeus ; and Zeus is the Sanscrit 

 word, Dyans — the Sleig or Heavens. When the original 

 Indo-European said that " Dyans thundered," he meant 

 no more than we do when we say that the heavens thun- 

 dered. But gradually the word Dyans became more and 

 more personified, until at last, under the Greeks and 

 Romans, Zeus became a living deity, the lord of 

 Heaven, the god of Thunder, and thus an extensive 

 mythology gradually grew out of what were at first but 

 poetical expressions. So far I agree with my friend 

 Professor Max Miiller, but I am only disposed to do so 

 within comparatively narrow limits; and while admitting 

 the explanation as applicable to certain cases, cannot 



