d so forth, the transition
is to its unlimited absence at death; when after an interval of waiting
the expectation of immediate return is given up. Commonly the spirit is
supposed to linger near the body or to revisit it. Hence the
universality of ministrations to the double of the deceased habitually
made at funerals. The habitat of the other self is variously conceived;
though everywhere there is an approach to parallelism between the life
here and the imagined life hereafter. Along with the development of
grave-heaps into altars, grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food
for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise
and prayer. Turning to certain more indirect results of the ghost
theory, we find that, distinguishing but confusedly between semblance
and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing
partakes of the properties of a thing. Hence the effigy of a dead man
becomes a habitation for his ghost; and idols, because of the indwelling
doubles of the dead, are propitiated. Identification of the doubles of
the dead with animals--now with those which frequent houses or places
which the doubles are supposed to haunt and now with those which are
like certain of the dead in their malicious or benevolent natures--is in
other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names; this latter leading
to the identification of stars with persons and hence to star and sun
worship. In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods
arise by apotheosis. Originally the god is the superior living man whose
power is conceived as superhuman. As in primitive thought divinity is
synonymous with superiority, and as at first a god may be either a
powerful living person or a dead person who has acquired supernatural
power as a ghost, there come two origins for semi-divine beings--the one
by unions between a conquering god race and the conquered race
distinguished as men, and the other by supposed intercourse between
living persons and spirits. Where the evidence is examined comparative
sociology discloses a common origin for each leading element of
religious belief.

MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS

In the primitive belief that the doubles of the dead may be induced to
yield benefits or desist from inflicting evil by bribing or cajoling or
else by threatening or coercing, we see that the modes of dealing with
ghosts broadly contrasted as antagonistic and sympathetic, initiate the
distinction b