ppear entirely, we shall find everywhere the fragments
and decay of the old belief no less than the dawn of the new. A noble
creed, or a philosophical concept of a highly advanced race, may exist as
a transformed and degrading superstition with a race, or a fragment of a
people, undergoing degeneracy.

Every religion known to man has gone through just this transformation. The
tendency is innate and inevitable and no civilization or religion has ever
yet been able long to resist it. If we bear this in mind we shall be less
surprised at anthropogeneses, cosmogeneses or psychologies found sometimes
among otherwise rude or savage peoples, and be better able to understand
the incongruities and lack of symmetry in their evolution. It would be
easy to cite instances and draw comparisons at this point.

Bearing in mind, then, these general considerations underlying all
interpretation, and nowhere more applicable than to our present subject,
the following illustrations of belief in the separable soul, gleaned
largely from Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology," may be of interest. It is
drawn largely from the lower civilizations, as all are more or less
familiar with the mythologies of the Greeks, Babylonians, Phoenicians,
etc., all of which are accessible. The material available is embarrassing
on account of its magnitude alone.

Oscar Peschel, in his "Races of Man," says that "perhaps the Brazilian
Botocudos, of all the inhabitants of the world, are most nearly in the
primitive state, and yet," he adds, "possibly we may be altogether
mistaken in this regard, as their languages are very imperfectly known."

Humboldt rescued the Caribs from such an impeachment and declares that
their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has
expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and
enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our
numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian
natives that the Portuguese settlers sought to decimate by spreading
smallpox and scarlet fever amongst them, as the English colonists in
Tasmania shot the natives when they had no better food for their dogs.

Hariot says that "many of the Indian natives of North and South America
believe that the soul, after its separation from the body, enters into a
wide path crowded with spirits which are journeying toward a region of
eternal repose. They have to cross an impetuous river