GHOST BELIEF. 



345 



burying slaves with the deceased, of carrying provisions 

 to graves, and of lighting fires on cold nights near the 

 last resting-places of the departed, a continuation of 

 relations between the quick and the dead which points 

 to a belief in a future state of existence. The wish is 

 father to that thought: the doctrine of the soul, of 

 immortality, belongs to a superior order of mind, to a 

 more advanced stage of society. The belief, as its 

 operations show, is in presentity, materialism, not in 

 futurity, spiritualism. According to the ancients, man 

 is a fourfold being : — 



" Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra : 



Quatuor hsec loci bis duo suscipiunt 

 Terra tegit carnem, turaulum circumvolitat umbra, 



Manes Orcus habet, spiritus astra petit." 



Take away the Manes and the astral Spirit, and remain s 

 the African belief in the elftwXov or Umbra, spiritus, or 

 ghost. When the savage and the barbarian are asked 

 what has become of the " old people" (their ancestors), 

 over whose dust and ashes they perform obsequies, these 

 veritable secularists only smile and reply Wame-kwisha, 

 " they are ended." It proves the inferior organisation 

 of the race. Even the North American aborigines, 

 a race which Nature apparently disdains to preserve, 

 decided that man hath a future, since even Indian corn 

 is vivified and rises again. The East African has 

 created of his fears a ghost which never attains the 

 perfect form of a soul. This inferior development has 

 prevented his rising to the social status of the Hindu, 

 and other anciently civilised races, whom a life wholly 

 wanting in purpose and occupation drove from the 

 excitement necessary to stimulate the mind towards 

 a hidden or mysterious future. These wild races seek 



