ANNL'AL ADDRESS. 



17 



nostrils. The Chinese make a hole in the roof of the house 

 where a person lies dying to let out his soul. The custom of 

 opening a door or a window for the departing soul when it quits 

 the body is not yet wholly abandoned among the common 

 people in France or Germany or England.* To quote the opinion 

 of a careful observert : " It is, or rather was, believed in nearly 

 every part of the West of England that death is retarded, and 

 the dying kept in a state of suffering, by having any lock closed, 

 or any bolt shot in the dwelling of the dying person." 



What became of the spirit after its severance from the body 

 was in early times, as it has ever been, a matter of difference, if 

 not of dispute. But it was natural to suppose that the disembodied 

 spirit would linger, at least for a while, in the neighbourhood of 

 the dead body which it had left. x4.ccordingly, the Iroquois 

 Indians were, or perhaps are, wont to bore holes in the coffin or 

 to leave an opening in the grave that the spirit or soul might 

 revisit the body. It is the same idea, half unconsciously 

 entertained, which has at all times marked out church- 

 yards as the natural lurking places of departed spirits or 

 ghosts. 



But not to multiply quotations or references, which are 

 easily accessible, it seems that the first step which primitive man 

 took or could well take tow*ards the origination of an elementary 

 religion, faith and practice, lay in the apprehension, however 

 dim and faint it midit be, of his own dualism. He realised 

 that there were two constituent parts of his nature, body and 

 spirit, and that the spirit could live and act without the body, 

 whereas the body without the spirit was dead. He inferred 

 therefore the superiority of the spirit to the body, and as he 

 surveyed the face of Nature, he was prepared and inclined to 

 discern everywhere traces of the same spiritual energy as he was 

 conscious of in himself. Let me try to follow the process of 

 his reasoning. 



The spirit is the source of life in man. Theoretically it was 

 localised by primitive thought in various parts of the 



* Tylor, Pnmitive Culture^ vol. i, p. 454. 



t Hart, Popular Romances of the West o f England, p. 379. 



