Death thus, _his_ intrusion into the
world (for Death, of course, is thought to be a person) stands in great
need of explanation. That explanation, as usual, is given in myths.

Death, regarded as Unnatural

But before studying these widely different myths, let us first establish
the fact that death really is regarded as something non-natural and
intrusive. The modern savage readily believes in and accounts in a
scientific way for _violent_ deaths. The spear or club breaks or crushes
a hole in a man, and his soul flies out. But the deaths he disbelieves
in are _natural_ deaths. These he is obliged to explain as produced by
some supernatural cause, generally the action of malevolent spirits
impelled by witches. Thus the savage holds that, violence apart and the
action of witches apart, man would even now be immortal. 'There are rude
races of Australia and South America,' writes Dr. Tylor, {178} 'whose
intense belief in witchcraft has led them to declare that if men were
never bewitched, and never killed by violence, _they would never die at
all_. Like the Australians, the Africans will inquire of their dead
"what sorcerer slew them by his wicked arts."' 'The natives,' says Sir
George Grey, speaking of the Australians, 'do not believe that there is
such a thing as death from natural causes.' On the death of an
Australian native from disease, a kind of magical coroner's inquest is
held by the conjurers of the tribe, and the direction in which the wizard
lives who slew the dead man is ascertained by the movements of worms and
insects. The process is described at full length by Mr. Brough Smyth in
his Aborigines of Victoria (i. 98-102). Turning from Australia to
Hindustan, we find that the Puwarrees (according to Heber's narrative)
attribute all natural deaths to a supernatural cause--namely, witchcraft.
That is, the Puwarrees do not yet believe in the universality and
necessity of Death. He is an intruder brought by magic arts into our
living world. Again, in his Ethnology of Bengal (pp. 199, 200), Dalton
tells us that the Hos (an aboriginal non-Aryan race) are of the same
opinion as the Puwarrees. 'They hold that all disease in men or animals
is attributable to one of two causes: the wrath of some evil spirit or
the spell of some witch or sorcerer. These superstitions are common to
all classes of the population of this province.' In the New Hebrides
disease and death are caused, as Mr. Codrington fo