124 
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
Englishman not understanding that these people hold early animistic 
ideas, believing the soul to be away from the sleeper’s body in a dream, 
so that it might not find its way back if he were disturbed. As scientific 
ideas of the nature of life and dreams are rapidly destroying these primi¬ 
tive conceptions, it is desirable to collect all information about them for 
its important bearing on the history of philosophy and religion. The 
same may be said as to the ancient theory of diseases as caused by 
demons, and the expulsion and exorcism of them as a means of cure, 
which may still be studied everywhere outside the scientific nations. In¬ 
formation as to religious rites is of course valuable, even when the foreign 
observer does not understand them, but if possible their exact meaning 
should be made out by some one acquainted with the language, otherwise 
acts may be confused which have really different senses, as where a morsel 
of food offered as a pious offering to an ancestral ghost may be taken for a 
sacrifice to appease an angry wood-demon. A people’s idea as to the mean¬ 
ing of their own rites may often be very wrong, but it is always worth while 
to hear what they think of the purpose of their prayers, sacrifices, purifica¬ 
tions, fasts, feasts, and other religious ordinances, which even among 
savage tribes have been long since stereotyped into traditional systems. 
Mythology is intimately mixed up with religion, which not only ascribes 
the events of the world to the action of spirits, demons, or gods, but 
everywhere individualises many of these beings under personal names, 
and receives as sacred tradition wonder-tales about them. Thus, to 
understand the religion of some tribes, we have not only to consider the 
rude philosophy under which such objects as heaven and earth or sun and 
moon are regarded as personal beings, whose souls (so to speak) are the 
heaven-god and earth-god, the sun-god and moon-god; but we have to go 
on further and collect the religious myths which have grown on to these 
superhuman beings. The tales which such a people tell of their origin 
and past history may to some extent include traditions of real events, 
but mostly they consist of myths, which are also worth collecting, as they 
often on examination disclose their origin, or part of it. This is seen, for 
instance, in the South Sea Island tale of the god Maui, whose death, when 
he plunged into the body of his great ancestress the Night, is an obvious 
myth of the sunset. The best advice as to native mythology is to write 
down all promising native stories, leaving it to future examination to 
decide which are worth publishing. The native names of personages 
