er that
form may have been, in which men dwell together for their common
purposes. It is the fact that its members have common purposes and
common interests which constitute them a community; and amongst the
common interests without which there could be no community is that of
common worship: knowledge of the sacra, being confined to the members
of the community, is the test by which members are known, outsiders
excluded, and the existence of the community as a community secured.
At this stage, in a large number of societies--negro,
Malayo-Polynesian, North American Indians, Eskimo, Australians--the
belief in reincarnation takes a form in which the presence of souls of
the departed is recognised as necessary to the very conception of the
community. Thus in Alaska, among the Unalits of St. Michael's {60}
Bay, a festival of the dead is observed, the equivalent of which
appears to be found amongst all the Eskimo. M. Mauss (_L'Annee
Sociologique_, IX, 99) thus describes it: "It comprises two essential
parts. It begins with praying the souls of the dead graciously to
consent to reincarnate themselves for the moment in the namesake which
each deceased person has; for the custom is that in each station the
child last born always takes the name of the last person who has died.
Then these living representatives of the deceased receive presents, and
having received them the souls are dismissed from the abodes of the
living to return to the land of the dead. Thus at this festival not
only does the group regain its unity, but the rite reconstitutes the
ideal group which consists of all the generations which have succeeded
one another from the earliest times. Mythical and historic ancestors
as well as later ones thus mingle with the living, and communion
between them is conducted by means of the exchange of presents."
Amongst people other than the Eskimo, a new-born child not only takes
the name of the last member of the family or clan who has died, but is
regarded as the reincarnation of the deceased. "Thus the number of
individuals, {61} of names, of souls, of social functions in the clan
is limited; and the life of the clan consists in the death and rebirth
of individuals who are always identically the same" (_l.c._ 267).

The line of evolution thus followed by the belief in reincarnation
results in the total separation of the belief from morality and from
religion, and results in rendering it infertile alike for morality,