of savage beliefs and practices concerning the dead we now
pass from New Caledonia, the most southerly island of Melanesia, to the
groups of islands known as the New Hebrides, the Banks' Islands, the
Torres Islands, the Santa Cruz Islands, and the Solomon Islands, which
together constitute what we may call Central Melanesia. These groups of
islands may themselves be distinguished into two archipelagoes, a
western and an eastern, of which the Western comprises the Solomon
Islands and the Eastern includes all the rest. Corresponding to this
geographical distinction there is a religious distinction; for while the
religion of the Western islanders (the Solomon Islanders) consists
chiefly in a fear and worship of the ghosts of the dead, the religion of
the Eastern islanders is characterised mainly by the fear and worship of
spirits which are not supposed ever to have been incarnate in human
bodies. Both groups of islanders, the Western and the Eastern, recognise
indeed both classes of spirits, namely ghosts that once were men and
spirits who never were men; but the religious bias of the one group is
towards ghosts rather than towards pure spirits, and the religious bias
of the other group is towards pure spirits rather than towards ghosts.
It is not a little remarkable that the islanders whose bent is towards
ghosts have carried the system of sacrifice and the arts of life to a
higher level than the islanders whose bent is towards pure spirits; this
applies particularly to the sacrificial system, which is much more
developed in the west than in the east.[552] From this it would seem to
follow that if a faith in ghosts is more costly than a faith in pure
spirits, it is at the same time more favourable to the evolution of
culture.

[Sidenote: Dr. R. H. Codrington on the Melanesians.]

For the whole of this region we are fortunate in possessing the evidence
of the Rev. Dr. R. H. Codrington, one of the most sagacious, cautious,
and accurate of observers, who laboured as a missionary among the
natives for twenty-four years, from 1864 to 1887, and has given us a
most valuable account of their customs and beliefs in his book _The
Melanesians_, which must always remain an anthropological classic. In
describing the worship of the dead as it is carried on among these
islanders I shall draw chiefly on the copious evidence supplied by Dr.
Codrington; and I shall avail myself of his admirable researches to
enter into considerable detail