jealousy, anger, revengefulness, all on the lower moral
grade of undeveloped life; they are, in many regards, not subject to the
ordinary limitations of the living--they are invisible, move swiftly
from place to place through obstacles impervious to the living, enter
their bodies, produce sickness and death, aid or destroy crops. On the
other hand, they need food and other necessities of ordinary life, and
for these things are dependent on the living. Hence the desirableness of
securing their good will by showing them respect and supplying their
needs, or else of somehow getting rid of them.
+362+. There are, then, two sorts of ghosts, or, more precisely, two
sorts of ghostly activity--the friendly and the unfriendly--and
corresponding to these are the emotions of love and fear which they call
forth. On account of paucity of data it is difficult to say which of
these emotions is the commoner among savages; probably the feeling is a
mixed one, compounded of fear and friendliness.[669] In general it is
evident that with the better organization of family life a gentler
feeling for the dead was called forth; but it is probable that in the
least-developed communities fear of the mysterious departed was the
prevailing emotion.
+363+. Though the accessible evidence does not enable us to determine
with certainty the motives of all savage customs connected with the
dead, there are some distinctions that may be made with fair
probability. To supply the dead with food and cooking-utensils may very
well be, as is remarked above, the impulse of affection, and even where
slaves and wives are slain that their ghosts may minister to the ghost
of the master and husband, this may not go beyond pious solicitude for
the comfort of the deceased. But the mourning-usages common with savages
are too violent to be merely the expression of love; the loud cries and
the wounding of the person are meant more probably to assure the
deceased of the high regard in which he is held;[670] in some cases, as
among the Central Australians, men gash themselves so severely as to
come near producing death.[671] These excessive demonstrations are
softened as general culture increases, and finally dwindle to an
apparatus of hired mourners. A similar explanation holds of the
restriction of food, the seclusion of the widow or the widower, and the
rule against mentioning the name of the deceased: abstinence and silence
are marks of respect.
+364+. Funeral fe
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