The Destiny of the Soul Part 8

CHAPTER I.

BARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE.

PROCEEDING now to give an account of the fancies and opinions in regard to a future life which have been prevalent, in different ages, in various nations of the earth, it will be best to begin by presenting, in a rapid series, some sketches of the conceits of those uncivilized tribes who did not so far as our knowledge reaches possess a doctrine sufficiently distinctive and full, or important enough in its historical relations, to warrant a detailed treatment in separate chapters.

We will glance first at the negroes. According to all accounts, while there are, among the numerous tribes, diversities and degrees of superst.i.tion, there is yet, throughout the native pagan population of Africa, a marked general agreement of belief in the survival of the soul, in spectres, divination, and witchcraft; and there is a general similarity of funeral usages. Early travellers tell us that the Bushmen conceived the soul to be immortal, and as impalpable as a shadow, and that they were much afraid of the return of deceased spirits to haunt them. They were accustomed to pray to their departed countrymen not to molest them, but to stay away in quiet. They also employed exorcisers to lay these ill omened ghosts. Meiners relates of some inhabitants of the Guinea coast that their fear of ghosts and their childish credulity reached such a pitch that they threw their dead into the ocean, in the expectation of thus drowning soul and body together.

Superst.i.tions as gross and lawless still have full sway. Wilson, whose travels and residence there for twenty years have enabled him to furnish the most reliable information, says, in his recent work,1 "A native African would as soon doubt his present as his future state of being." Every dream, every stray suggestion of the mind, is interpreted, with unquestioning credence, as a visit from the dead, a whisper from a departed soul. If a man wakes up with pains in his bones or muscles, it is because his spirit has wandered abroad in the night and been flogged by some other spirit. On certain occasions the whole community start up at midnight, with clubs, torches, and hideous yells, to drive the evil spirits out of the village. They seem to believe that the souls of dead men take rank with good or bad spirits, as they have themselves been good or bad in this life. They bury with the deceased clothing, ornaments, utensils,

1 Western Africa, ch. xii.

and statedly convey food to the grave for the use of the revisiting spirit. With the body of king Weir of the Cavalla towns, who was buried in December of 1854, in presence of several missionaries, was interred a quant.i.ty of rice, palm oil, beef, and rum: it was supposed the ghost of the sable monarch would come back and consume these articles. The African tribes, where their notions have not been modified by Christian or by Mohammedan teachings, appear to have no definite idea of a heaven or of a h.e.l.l; but future reward or punishment is considered under the general conception of an a.s.sociation, in the disembodied state, with the benignant or with the demoniacal powers.

The New Zealanders imagine that the souls of the dead go to a place beneath the earth, called Reinga. The path to this region is a precipice close to the sea sh.o.r.e at the North Cape. It is said that the natives who live in the neighborhood can at night hear sounds caused by the pa.s.sing of spirits thither through the air.

After a great battle they are thus warned of the event long before the news can arrive by natural means.2 It is a common superst.i.tion with them that the left eye of every chief, after his death, becomes a star. The Pleiades are seven New Zealand chiefs, brothers, who were slain together in battle and are now fixed in the sky, one eye of each, in the shape of a star, being the only part of them that is visible. It has been observed that the mythological doctrine of the glittering host of heaven being an a.s.semblage of the departed heroes of earth never received a more ingenious version.3 Certainly it is a magnificent piece of insular egotism. It is noticeable here that, in the Norse mythology, Thor, having slain Thia.s.se, the giant genius of winter, throws his eyes up to heaven, and they become stars. Shungie, a celebrated New Zealand king, said he had on one occasion eaten the left eye of a great chief whom he had killed in battle, for the purpose of thus increasing the glory of his own eye when it should be transferred to the firmament. Sometimes, apparently, it was thought that there was a separate immortality for each of the eyes of the dead, the left ascending to heaven as a star, the right, in the form of a spirit, taking flight for Reinga.

The custom, common in Africa and in New Zealand, of slaying the slaves or the wives of an important person at his death and burying them with him, prevails also among the inhabitants of the Feejee Islands. A chief's wives are sometimes strangled on these occasions, sometimes buried alive. One cried to her brother, "I wish to die, that I may accompany my husband to the land where he has gone. Love me, and make haste to strangle me, that I may overtake him."4 Departing souls go to the tribunal of Ndengei, who either receives them into bliss, or sends them back, as ghosts, to haunt the scenes of their former existence, or distributes them as food to devils, or imprisons them for a period and then dooms them to annihilation. The Feejees are also very much afraid of Samiulo, ruler of a subterranean world, who sits at the brink of a huge fiery cavern, into which he hurls the souls he dislikes. In the road to Ndengei stands an enormous giant, armed with an axe, who tries to maim and murder the pa.s.sing souls. A powerful chief, whose gun was interred with him, loaded it, and, when

2 Shortland, Traditions of the New Zealanders, ch. vii.

3 Library of Ent. Knowl.: The New Zealanders, pp. 223-237.

4 Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, vol. iii.

ch. 3.

he came near the giant, shot at him, and ran by while the monster was dodging the bullet.

The people of the Sandwich Islands held a confused medley of notions as to another life. In different persons among them were found, in regard to this subject, superst.i.tious terror, blank indifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that the souls of the chiefs were led, by a G.o.d whose name denotes the "eyeball of the sun," to a life in the heavens, while plebeian souls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Some thought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others, that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others still, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards and b.u.t.terflies.5 What a piteous life they must have led here whose imaginations could only soar to a future so unattractive as this!

The Kamtschadales send all the dead alike to a subterranean elysium, where they shall find again their wives, clothes, tools, huts, and where they shall fish and hunt. All is there as here, except that there are no fire spouting mountains, no bogs, streams, inundations, and impa.s.sable snows; and neither hunting nor fis.h.i.+ng is ever pursued in vain there. This lower paradise is but a beautified Kamtschatka, freed from discommoding hards.h.i.+ps and cleansed of tormenting Cossacks and Russians. They have no h.e.l.l for the rectification of the present wrong relations of virtue and misery, vice and happiness. The only distinction they appear to make is that all who in Kamtschatka are poor, and have few small and weak dogs, shall there be rich and be furnished with strong and fat dogs. The power of imagination is very remarkable in this raw people, bringing the future life so near, and awakening such an impatient longing for it and for their former companions that they often, the sooner to secure a habitation there, antic.i.p.ate the natural time of their death by suicide.6

The Esquimaux betray the influence of their clime and habits, in the formation of their ideas of the life to come, as plainly as the Kamtschadales do. The employments and enjoyments of their future state are rude and earthy. They say the soul descends through successive places of habitation, the first of which is full of pains and horrors. The good, that is, the courageous and skilful, those who have endured severe hards.h.i.+ps and mastered many seals, pa.s.sing through this first residence, find that the other mansions regularly improve. They finally reach an abode of perfect satisfaction, far beneath the storms of the sea, where the sun is never obscured by night, and where reindeer wander in great droves beside waters that never congeal, and wherein the whale, the walrus, and the best sea fowls always abound.7 h.e.l.l is deep, but heaven deeper still. h.e.l.l, they think, is among the roots, rocks, monsters, and cold of the frozen or vexed and suffering waters; but

"Beneath tempestuous seas and fields of ice Their creed has placed a lowlier paradise."

The Greenlanders, too, located their elysium beneath the abysses of the ocean, where the good Spirit Torngarsuk held his reign in a happy and eternal summer. The wizards, who pretended to visit this region at will, described the disembodied souls as pallid, and, if one

5 Jarves, Hist. of the Sandwich Islands, p. 42.

6 Christoph Meiners, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften, 169-173.

7 Prichard, Physical Hist. of Mankind, vol. i. ch. 2.

sought to seize them, unsubstantial.8 Some of these people, however, fixed the site of paradise in the sky, and regarded the aurora borealis as the playing of happy souls. So Coleridge pictures the Laplander

"Marking the streamy banners of the North, And thinking he those spirits soon should join Who there, in floating robes of rosy light, Dance sportively."

But others believed this state of restlessness in the clouds was the fate only of the worthless, who were there pinched with hunger and plied with torments. All agreed in looking for another state of existence, where, under diverse circ.u.mstances, happiness and misery should be awarded, in some degree at least, according to desert.9

The Peruvians taught that the reprobate were sentenced to a h.e.l.l situated in the centre of the earth, where they must endure centuries of toil and anguish. Their paradise was away in the blue dome of heaven. There the spirits of the worthy would lead a life of tranquil luxury. At the death of a Peruvian n.o.ble his wives and servants frequently were slain, to go with him and wait on him in that happy region.10 Many authors, including Prescott, yielding too easy credence to the very questionable a.s.sertions of the Spanish chroniclers, have attributed to the Peruvians a belief in the resurrection of the body. Various travellers and writers have also predicated this belief of savage nations in Central Africa, of certain South Sea islanders, and of several native tribes in North America. In all these cases the supposition is probably erroneous, as we think for the following reasons. In the first place, the idea of a resurrection of the body is either a late conception of the a.s.sociative imagination, or else a doctrine connected with a speculative theory of recurring epochs in the destiny of the world; and it is in both instances too subtle and elaborate for an uncultivated people. Secondly, in none of the cases referred to has any reliable evidence been given of the actual existence of the belief in question. It has merely been inferred, by persons to whose minds the doctrine was previously familiar, from phenomena by no means necessarily implying it. For example, a recent author ascribes to the Feejees the belief that there will be a resurrection of the body just as it was at the time of death. The only datum on which he founds this astounding a.s.sertion is that they often seem to prefer to die in the full vigor of manhood rather than in decrepit old age! 11 Thirdly, we know that the observation and statements of the Spanish monks and historians, in regard to the religion of the pagans of South America, were of the most imperfect and reckless character. They perpetrated gross frauds, such as planting in the face of high precipices white stones in the shape of the cross, and then pointing to them in proof of their a.s.sertion that, before the Christians came, the Devil had here parodied the rites and doctrines of the gospel. 12 They said the Mexican G.o.ddess, wife of the sun, was Eve, or

8 Egede, Greenland, ch. 18.

9 Dr. Karl Andree, Gronland.

10 Prescott, Conquest of Peru, vol. i. ch. 3.

11 Erskine, Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 248.

12 Schoolcraft, History, &c. of the Indian Tribes, part v. p. 93.

the Virgin Mary, and Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas! 13 Such affirmers are to be cautiously followed. Finally, it is a quite significant fact that while some point to the pains which the Peruvians took in embalming their dead as a proof that they looked for a resurrection of the body, Acosta expressly says that they did not believe in the resurrection, and that this unbelief was the cause of their embalming.14 Garcilaso de la Vega, in his "Royal Commentaries of the Peruvian Incas," says that when he asked some Peruvians why they took so great care to preserve in the cemeteries of the dead the nails and hair which had been cut off, they replied that in the day of resurrection the dead would come forth with whatever of their bodies was left, and there would be too great a press of business in that day for them to afford time to go hunting round after their hair and nails.15 The fancy of a Christian is too plain here. If the answer were really made by the natives, they were playing a joke on their credulous questioner, or seeking to please him with distorted echoes of his own faith.

The conceits as to a future life entertained by the Mexicans varied considerably from those of their neighbors of Peru. Souls neither good nor bad, or whose virtues and vices balanced each other, were to enter a medium state of idleness and empty content.

The wicked, or those dying in any of certain enumerated modes of death, went to Mictlan, a dismal h.e.l.l within the earth. The souls of those struck by lightning, or drowned, or dying by any of a given list of diseases, also the souls of children, were transferred to a remote elysium, Tlalocan. There was a place in the chief temple where, it was supposed, once a year the spirits of all the children who had been sacrificed to Tlaloc invisibly came and a.s.sisted in the ceremonies. The ultimate heaven was reserved for warriors who bravely fell in battle, for women who died in labor, for those offered up in the temples of the G.o.ds, and for a few others. These pa.s.sed immediately to the house of the sun, their chief G.o.d, whom they accompanied for a term of years, with songs, dances, and revelry, in his circuit around the sky.

Then, animating the forms of birds of gay plumage, they lived as beautiful songsters among the flowers, now on earth, now in heaven, at their pleasure.16 It was the Mexican custom to dress the dead man in the garb appropriated to the guardian deity of his craft or condition in life. They gave him a jug of water. They placed with him slips of paper to serve as pa.s.sports through guarded gates and perilous defiles in the other world. They made a fire of his clothes and utensils, to warm the s.h.i.+vering soul while traversing a region of cold winds beyond the grave.17 The following sentence occurs in a poem composed by one of the old Aztec monarchs: "Ill.u.s.trious n.o.bles, loyal subjects, let us aspire to that heaven where all is eternal and corruption cannot come.

The horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and the shadows of death are brilliant lights for the stars." 18

13 Squier, Serpent Symbol in America, p. 13.

14 Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, book v. ch. 7.

15 Book ii. ch. 7.

16 Clavigero, History of Mexico, book vi. sect. 1.

17 Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. i. ch. 6.

18 Ibid. sect. 39.

Amidst the ma.s.s of whimsical conceptions entering into the faith of the widely spread tribes of North America, we find a ruling agreement in the cardinal features of their thought concerning a future state of existence. In common with nearly all barbarous nations, they felt great fear of apparitions. The Sioux were in the habit of addressing the deceased at his burial, and imploring him to stay in his own place and not come to distress them. Their funeral customs, too, from one extremity of the continent to the other, were very much alike. Those who have reported their opinions to us, from the earliest Jesuit missionaries to the latest investigators of their mental characteristics, concur in ascribing to them a deep trust in a life to come, a cheerful view of its conditions, and a remarkable freedom from the dread of dying. Charlevoix says, "The best established opinion among the natives is the immortality of the soul." On the basis of an account written by William Penn, Pope composed the famous pa.s.sage in his "Essay on Man:"

Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees G.o.d in clouds and hears him in the wind.

His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way: Yet simple nature to his faith hath given, Behind the cloud topp'd hill, an humbler heaven, Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Or happier island in the watery waste.

To be, contents his natural desire: He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire, But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."

Their rude instinctive belief in the soul's survival, and surmises as to its destiny, are implied in their funeral rites, which, as already stated, were, with some exceptions, strikingly similar even in the remotest tribes.19

In the bark coffin, with a dead Indian the Onondagas buried a kettle of provisions, a pair of moccasins, a piece of deer skin and sinews of the deer to sew patches on the moccasins, which it was supposed the deceased would wear out on his journey. They also furnished him with a bow and arrows, a tomahawk and knife, to procure game with to live on while pursuing his way to the land of spirits, the blissful regions of Ha wah ne u.20 Several Indian nations, instead of burying the food, suspended it above the grave, and renewed it from time to time. Some writers have explained this custom by the hypothesis of an Indian belief in two souls, one of which departed to the realm of the dead, while the other tarried by the mound until the body was decayed, or until it had itself found a chance to be born in a new body.21 The supposition seems forced and extremely doubtful. The truth probably lies in a simpler explanation, which will be offered further on.

19 Baumgarten, Geschichte der Volker von America, xiii. haupts.: vom Tod, Vergribniss, und Trauer.

20 Clarke, Onondaga, vol. l. p. 51.