and how obscure is our problem. The example of the Melanesians
enforces these lessons. It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any
theory. Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and
reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on
common subjects 'the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when
the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.'[12] The Banks
Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side,
and a Polynesian element on the other.

The Banks Islanders 'believe in two orders of intelligent beings different
from living men.' (1) Ghosts of the dead, (2) 'Beings who were not, and
never had been, human.' This, as we have shown, and will continue to show,
is the usual savage doctrine. On the one hand are separable souls of men,
surviving the death of the body. On the other are beings, creators,
who were before men were, and before death entered the world. It is
impossible, logically, to argue that these beings are only ghosts of real
remote ancestors, or of ideal ancestors. These higher beings are not
safely to be defined as 'spirits,' their essence is vague, and, we repeat,
the idea of their existence might have been evolved _before the ghost
theory was attained by men_. Dr. Codrington says, 'the conception can
hardly be that of a purely spiritual being, yet, by whatever name the
natives call them, they are such as in English must be called spirits.'

That is our point. 'God is a spirit,' these beings are Gods, therefore
'these are spirits.' But to their initial conception our idea of 'spirit'
is lacking. They are beings who existed before death, and still exist.

The beings which never were human, never died, are _Vui_, the ghosts are
_Tamate_. Dr. Codrington uses 'ghosts' for _Tamate_, 'spirits' for _Vui_.
But as to render _Vui_ 'spirits' is to yield the essential point, we shall
call _Vui_ 'beings,' or, simply, _Vui_. A Vui is not a spirit that has
been a ghost; the story may represent him as if a man, 'but the native
will always maintain that he was something different, and deny to him the
fleshly body of a man.'[13]

This distinction, ghost on one side--original being, not a man, not a
ghost of a man, on the other--is radical and nearly universal in savage
religion. Anthropology, neglecting the essential distinction insisted on,
in this case, by Dr. Codrington, confuses both kinds under the style of
'spirits,' and