the dead are spoken of, at other times,
as if they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers,
sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, but whence no one
can escape who has tasted of the food of the ghosts.

4. In connection with spirits a far-reaching savage philosophy
prevails. It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects, animate or
inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is frequently regarded as
something separable, capable of being located in an external object,
or something with a definite locality in the body. A man's strength
and spirit may reside in his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his
hair, or may even be stored by him in some separate receptacle. Very
frequently a man is held capable of detaching his soul from his body,
and letting it roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a
bird or other animal.

5. Many minor savage beliefs might be named, such as the common faith in
friendly or protecting animals, and the notion that "natural deaths" (as
we call them) are always UNNATURAL, that death is always caused by some
hostile spirit or conjuror. From this opinion comes the myth that man is
naturally not subject to death: that death was somehow introduced into
the world by a mistake or misdeed is a corollary. (See "Myths of the
Origin of Death" in Modern Mythology.)

6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be
considered in this brief summary. The savage, like the civilised man, is
curious. The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit are at work
in his brain; he is anxious to give himself an account of the world
in which he finds himself. But he is not more curious than he is, on
occasion, credulous. His intellect is eager to ask questions, as is the
habit of children, but his intellect is also lazy, and he is content
with the first answer that comes to hand. "Ils s'arretent aux premieres
notions qu'ils en ont," says Pere Hierome Lalemant.(1) "Nothing," says
Schoolcraft, "is too capacious (sic) for Indian belief."(2) The replies
to his questions he receives from tradition or (when a new problem
arises) evolves an answer for himself in the shape of STORIES. Just as
Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in the
despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to almost
every question that he can ask himself. These stories are in a sense
scientific, because they attempt a solution of the riddl