210 KEY. CANON MACCULLOCH, D.J)., ON THE DESCENT 



The imiversality of these myths is connected with early 

 man's views regarding sleep and death. He believed that, in 

 dreams, in which he saw and spoke to dead relatives, they had 

 come to him or his soul had gone to them. Hence arose the 

 belief that the soul could leave the body in sleep or trance, go 

 to the Other-w^orld, and return to the body. Savage affection is 

 not so slight as is sometimes thought, and doubtless the intense 

 affection for dead friends or relatives prompted the dream fancy. 

 It was then an easy step to believe that what took place in 

 dream might take place in actual fact ; that the whole man, not 

 merely the soul, might visit the Other-world ! Always, from 

 possibility to lact, from the " might be " to the " had been," was 

 an easy step to the primitive mind. And as it is commonly 

 believed that there is little difference between life and death, 

 that the dead may revive, affection would easily suggest that 

 one could go to the Other-world to bring back a dead friend. 

 So arose stories of those who had gone, and these were all the 

 more credible because the way to the Other- world was generally 

 well-known. 



These visits to the Other-world were made for different 

 purposes. Meie curiosity, the desire to find out what the 

 unknown region is like, prompts some of these mythical visits. 

 In many others it is to obtain a boon by force or fraud or 

 through their goodwill from the rulers of Hades. But in by 

 far the largest number the object is to recover someone dead 

 from the clutches of Hades. In another group, mainly Hindu and 

 Buddhist, but including some later Jewish and Muhamniadan 

 examples it is to lessen the sufferings of the lost or to free 

 them altogether from hell. In another small group, in which 

 the descent is not to a region of the dead, but to the dark worlds 

 of demoniac beings, tbe object is to overcome them by force or 

 skill or stealth, and to rob them of their magic powers. AVe 

 shall confine ourselves to the three last groups. 



(1) Descent to rescue a dead person. — Of this group there are 

 innumerable savage variants, usually told of mortals, and they 

 occur most plentifully among the American Indians, Polynesians, 

 and Melanesians. In many of these, as in more civilised 

 versions, the quest is often unsuccessful, usually through the 

 breaking of a tain. From the higher religions there are Hindu, 

 Japanese, Chinese, Babylonian, Scandinavian, and many Greek 

 myths of this class, in which the descent is usually attributed 

 to a divinity. Many of them preserve a great similarity, but 

 this is not necessarily due to borrowing. The typical instance 

 is the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Haunted by the 



