stern
Islands an indication of anything approaching a worship of deceased
persons ancestral or otherwise, with the exception of the heroes shortly
to be mentioned; neither is there any suggestion that their own
ancestors have been in any way apotheosized."[279]

[Sidenote: Fear of the ghosts of the recently departed.]

But if these savages have not, with the possible exception of the cult
of certain heroes, any regular worship of the dead, they certainly have
the germ out of which such a worship might be developed, and that is a
firm belief in ghosts and in the mischief which they may do to the
living. The word for a ghost is _mari_ in the West and _mar_ in the
East: it means also a shadow or reflection,[280] which seems to shew
that these savages, like many others, have derived their notion of the
human soul from the observation of shadows and reflections cast by the
body on the earth or on water. Further, the Western Islanders appear to
distinguish the ghosts of the recently departed (_mari_) from the
spirits of those who have been longer dead, which they call
_markai_;[281] and if we accept this distinction "we may assert,"
according to Dr. Haddon, "that the Torres Straits Islanders feared the
ghosts but believed in the general friendly disposition of the spirits
of the departed."[282] Similarly we saw that the Australian aborigines
regard with fear the ghosts of those who have just died, while they are
either indifferent to the spirits of those who have died many years ago
or even look upon them as beings of higher powers than their
descendants, whom they can benefit in various ways. This sharp
distinction between the spirits of the dead, according to the date at
which they died, is widespread, perhaps universal among mankind. However
truly the dead were loved in their lifetime, however bitterly they were
mourned at their death, no sooner have they passed beyond our ken than
the thought of their ghosts seems to inspire the generality of mankind
with an instinctive fear and horror, as if the character of even the
best friends and nearest relations underwent a radical change for the
worse as soon as they had shuffled off the mortal coil. But among
savages this belief in the moral deterioration of ghosts is certainly
much more marked than among civilised races. Ghosts are dreaded both by
the Western and the Eastern tribes of Torres Straits. Thus in Mabuiag,
one of the Western Islands, the corpse was carried out of cam