The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul Part 23

The Patagonians bury all the possessions of the deceased with the body.

With the Hottentots, widows lose one joint of a finger as an offering to the deceased husband every time they re-marry.

With the Kaffirs, the hut and utensils of the deceased are burnt. The East Africans offer prayer to the dead.

The Congo people bury ornaments, utensils, arms, etc., and embalm the body after one or two years. The body of the chief must be carried in a straight line from the hut to place of burial, and if trees or huts impede the pa.s.sage, they are cut down.

The Coast Negroes bury property with the body and have a ceremony like an Irish wake, as do also the Abyssinians.

With the Ashantis, gold dust and utensils are buried and human sacrifices occur.

The wives of the Fijians are strangled that they may attend their lords in the new country.

The people of Malagasy bury in vaults 1012, and 7 feet high, and put in a large quant.i.ty of property.

With the ancient Mexicans, wives, slaves, concubines, and chaplains were slaughtered to attend the deceased.

The Arabs fasten the camels to the grave of their master.

The Todas cremate the dead and slaughter the whole herd of buffalo belonging to him, in order to secure them to him in the after life.

I have by no means given a complete category of the primitive and barbarous peoples who believe in a separate soul, and who believe in a future state much like the present and in conformity with that belief bury arms, ornaments, and utensils with the dead or place them on the grave, and who slaughter horses, camels, wives, slaves, etc., in order that the deceased may retain his possessions. How far these customs extend in case of the death of woman I do not know, but as with most of these people the women are regarded as chattels of the males, the case is doubtless very different.

Now as to the origin of these beliefs and customs, their causes naturally fall into two categories, the physical and the metaphysical. Modern biological science regards the whole question from the physical side almost exclusively, and facts and experiences that belong largely or exclusively to the metaphysical realm are warped out of their natural order to fit the theory of interpretation.

Every savage observes not only that he casts a shadow, but that shadows attend all inanimate objects that stand so as to intercept the light, and as shadows move as do objects that gives rise to the idea of animation.

Hence we have genii, dryads, naiads, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. To fortify this belief we have echoes, which give voice to animate and inanimate objects. Movement and voice are the universal accompaniment of animation.

The part played by the breath, and its sudden cessation at death, are believed to contribute to the belief in invisible existences.

The beating of the heart, and its cessation at death, adds another link to the chain of phenomena, going to show that _something_ leaves the body at death. This may be the origin of the sacrifice of the hearts of captives to the G.o.ds, or to a deceased warrior or chief as with the ancient Mexicans, with the belief that the heart is the seat of the soul, and the soul of the captive or victim shall attend the departed chief in the other world.

But the most important place should doubtless be a.s.signed to dreams as giving rise to belief in the world of spirits. Dreams are universal amongst men, and animals like the dog also dream.

Most if not all primitive people are also aware that fasting promotes dreaming, and while many of them practice long fasting, partly, no doubt, to increase fort.i.tude and bodily endurance, in very many cases it is known to be practiced for the purpose of promoting dreams. Beyond this voluntary fasting there is the enforced fast due to famine or the scarcity of food.

It will be noticed in many of the cases cited how much stress is laid on the phenomena of dreams and how literally they are interpreted.

Among civilized races and those wise in philosophy dreams play a very important part, and are cla.s.sified as monitorial, prophetic, etc., etc.

The habit in modern times of regarding dreams as altogether fantastic and unreal, is unscientific. In the mingling of the real and the apparently unreal, in the dream state, while the experience itself is always real to the dreamer, lies undoubtedly the source of many beliefs that influence the lives of men.

Dreaming must be regarded as one of the states of consciousness, and hence, of whatsoever stuff dreams are made, they represent an actual experience of the individual. No greater mistake can be made than the belief that no experience is real save that which brings us in contact with gross matter through the agency of the five senses. The world of ideas and the creations of the imagination are in fact no more evanescent than matter itself. Here impermanency differs only in time. All in time pa.s.s away.

I hold that dreams, in general, show more clearly the nature of the soul, and the experiences of the waking state show the office of the bodily organism, and that each _on its own plane_ is as valid as the other.

In other words, "the soul is such stuff as dreams are made of." It does not hold true, nor need it, that the experiences in dreams shall be true and valid on the physical plane, though this is often the case, or that the experiences of the physical plane shall be literally repeated in dreams, which, nevertheless, frequently happens.

It is an undeniable fact that the experiences of the conscious ego in man compa.s.s the subjective no less than the objective planes of being. That the subjective avenues should be closed when the ego is functioning on the physical plane through the bodily organs by aid of the senses, is quite as remarkable as that the physical avenues should be closed when in dreams, or trance, or syncope, or under anaesthetics, the ego functions on the subjective planes.

I hold, therefore, that here, more than anywhere else, is the source of not only belief in the existence of the soul, but of the relatively uniform conceptions everywhere attained. The common experience of man on the one plane is as easily accounted for as on the other, and individual experience differs no more widely in the one case than in the other. So also is the persistence of the human type, or the _genus_, involved in the one case no less than in the other.

All the agencies recognized in modern evolution tend to elevation only through differentiation, and even the "eternal cell" of Weismann fails in explaining permanency of form through any physical transmission. When atavism and degeneracy are admitted as factors, as they certainly must be, the perpetuity of the human species fails from physical causes alone.

I hold the idea of a separable soul to be innate in the human consciousness, as a necessary deduction from the experience of the continuity of self-consciousness which compa.s.ses both the objective and subjective states. This deduction from experience occurs whenever the evolving ego has advanced sufficiently above the animal plane to reason on its own experience, and for this reason the belief in the separable soul is universal.

It is no more strange that the experience of the individual should be modified by traditions and the beliefs of others regarding, for example, the dream state, than that the experience of the individual should in like manner be modified or shaped by traditions and the ceremonies and usages of others on the physical plane. The bond of unity and that of diversity have one common root in humanity. What we need for larger knowledge is, I think, a recognition of the breadth and sweep of human experience. To stop either ignoring or quibbling over one-half of all our actual experience.

The inner world of thought and being is really the habitat of the soul, while the physical body, like the diving-bell, enables us to explore and gain experience on another plane which otherwise must remain to us forever unknown.

The limitations of s.p.a.ce and time are unknown to us in dreams. These are the limitations of the fleshly casket. The consciousness of freedom, the absence of pain and sorrow even under great trial, are often experienced in the dream state. The range and character of experience in the subjective state is modified, and held in check by that of the physical plane, and the correspondence of an emotion to an idea, or of an act to a thought, ought to give us the key to the two sets of experiences and reveal the underlying basis of equilibrium.

A universal fact and a common experience argue a universal nature. Like conditions everywhere come from like causes. These are neither accidental nor incidental, nor are they left to the caprice of savages, nor to that of the more advanced civilizations.

It is not at all strange that a common experience should result in a universal belief. The range of experience and varying vicissitudes of life on the outer physical plane differ as widely as do those of the dream plane, and the conscious ident.i.ty of the individual is equally preserved on both planes.

I hold that here lies the origin of belief in the existence of a soul in man, separable from the body, and the confines of matter, s.p.a.ce, and time, in an actual experience of every individual. The beating of the heart, the phenomena of respiration, the cessation of these at death, and the shadows cast by man and inanimate bodies serve as connecting links between the experiences of the individual on the subjective and objective planes of being.

The dream state and the experiences thence derived are subjects for psychological science to investigate. The experiences allotted by du Maurier to "Peter Ibbetson" are not altogether fantastic and unwarranted, as the records of somnambulism and hypnotism abundantly prove. When we remember that nothing deserving the name of Psychology or Psychic Science exists in the western world to-day, we need not wonder why men eminent for investigations in other departments prove themselves novices and dogmatists here.

The folklore, the traditions, and the mythology of dreams would form a very interesting subject for discussion. It is true that the literature of the subject is fantastic, mixed with fable and often altogether unreliable; but these difficulties offer no more formidable bar to scientific investigation than many another problem already cla.s.sified and formulated for systematic study.

I know a lady of very superior ability, the mother of a prominent jurist, who all her life has had distinct premonitions of many calamities and coming events, and there are those who dream true in every community.

Fantasies, nightmare, dreams from indigestion and delirium, form a separate cla.s.s where the dreamer is entangled in the meshes of the bodily functions.

Here fasting, either voluntary or enforced, comes in, and drugs known to the remotest times are found to promote and to determine the character of dreams. There are furthermore processes of mental gymnastics whereby the thinker withdraws himself from the bodily avenues of sense and functions at will on the subjective plane of being.

"When then," said Socrates, in the _Phaedo_, "does the soul light on the truth? for when it attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the body, it is plain that it is led astray by it."

"And surely," he continues, "the soul reasons best when none of these things disturb it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any kind, but it retires as much as possible _within itself_, _taking leave of the body_, and as far as it can, not communicating or being in contact with it, _it aims at the discovery of that which is_."

I hold that the most valuable triumphs of science in the future lie in the realm of psychology, and that by no means the least important contribution in this direction will come from the study of Folklore, of which belief in the separable soul, and the phenomena and universality of the dream state must form a very important part.

One final consideration is suggested not without some degree of hesitation and diffidence. If there be a soul in man destined to continued existence, and if in any case perfection is the goal of evolution as formulated by Herbert Spencer for a future residue of the human race, then this soul in its essential elements is without beginning in time.

Pre-existence and evolution necessitate repeated re-embodiment on the physical plane, and the continuity of self-consciousness in man I hold to be the proof of life without beginning or end.

Viewed in this light, dreams and all subjective experiences in man must mingle reminiscences of the soul with the experiences of the present life, and the theory of innate ideas a.s.sumes a purely scientific form. We hence arrive at the intuition of the soul to account for universal belief. The experience of Socrates and the Fiji Islander agree as to the subjective plane as perfectly as in regard to the beating of the heart. They differ only in degree of evolution.

CHAPTER XIV

FROM CONFUSION TO CONSTRUCTION

A concise and detailed review of the past, in the long journey of man toward civilization and independent self-knowledge, has not been herein attempted. Only hints, here and there, and the barest outline have been undertaken.