range of sight, can bestow upon the man who has this bird as his guardian the gift of foretelling the future. Thunder gives the ability to control the elements, and the authority to conduct certain religious rites. Among the Omahas, no one can choose his personal totem, but it is the general belief of the people that the powerful animals and agencies are apt to be drawn toward those who possess natural gifts of mind and strength of will.

There is some question regarding the worship of the totem. This feeling may be entirely absent and replaced by respect and regard as for a brother. This is a sort of "imaginary brotherhood" set up between an individual and some object of his environment.

We often find a stratification of society along lines of the guardian spirits. It is not unnatural for those who have had the same vision to regard themselves as related. This is one cause, but only one, for the formation of the secret society, which will be discussed later. There is no doubt that these puberty rites furnish a very real social bond among those who are initiated at the same time, or have the same personal totem. There is almost a "caste feeling" developed as the result of these ceremonies. When it is remembered that in some cases the entire religious life of a tribe centers in these observances at puberty, one realizes the important part they play. They are often the occasion for great assemblies of people from far and near, who come together perhaps only once during the year, and solely for the purpose of witnessing these rites.

The ceremonies at adolescence in primitive society have analogies among more developed peoples. The Eleusinian mysteries of the Greeks present some strik

ing parallels. The training of the Spartan youth might also be considered. In the Catholic Church, confirmation is preceded by a "retreat," confession, self-sacrifice, and fasting, and the ceremony itself is full of pomp. Synods have declared it must "be celebrated with all possible solemnity." The sensitiveness of the children at this time is great. The veils, candles, and the splendor of the altar and the vestments, together with the music, make a most impressive setting for the rite itself. Souvenirs and symbolic presents follow. Psychologically, at least, the puberty rites and confirmation belong in somewhat the same category.

Several have pointed out the connection that seems to exist between adolescence and conversion in the Puritanical sense,-a change of life and a new birth. The average age of "getting religion" and of sexual maturity seem to coincide.

Marriage will be passed over as a crisis in life, as this will be taken up in the next chapter.

DEATH

The final crisis is death. The savage often has myths accounting for this very real enemy. It may be said in general that death is usually something introduced into a world of happiness by some act of man or of beast,— an opening of Pandora's box, as it were.

Among the Melanesians of the New Hebrides, it was believed that at first men never died, but when they were old they cast their skins like snakes and came out with youth revived. Once a woman, growing old, went to a stream to change her skin. She threw her old skin into the water; as it floated down, it caught against a stick. Then she went home, where she had left her child.

The child refused to recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman, not like this young stranger, and to pacify the child she went after her old skin, put it on, and from that day onward mankind ceased to cast their skins and died.117

There are often important differences between physiological facts and sociological theories. A child, as we have already seen, may not be considered sociologically born until he has been introduced as a member of his tribe; he may not be sociologically adolescent until he has passed through certain rites; sociological fatherhood may differ from actual fatherhood; or a mere boy may be sociologically married to a very young girl, as in India, whereas physiological marriage is long delayed. In the same way, death sociologically considered and physical death may not coincide. Among the Melanesians, the term mate is used for a dead person, but also for the aged and for one seriously ill and likely to die. Rivers points out that in the olden times there is little doubt that the seriously ill and the aged were actually put to death. At the present time the aged and those very sick are dead for all social purposes. There is a confusion of categories from our point of view, but this is not so from the primitive standpoint.12

Savages without exception believe in a human soul that leaves the body temporarily in sleep and more or less permanently at death. This idea is closely associated with the belief that there are souls or spirits in trees and animals, as well as in inanimate objects. Man's attempt to establish communication with these different kinds of souls or spirits is summed up in the word worship:-prayer, divination, and sacrifice. His explanations regarding these spirits are to be found in his myth

ology. Religion illustrates better than any other phase of life the continuity of ideas existing between the savage and civilized man.

This belief in a soul does not necessarily mean a belief in immortality. The idea of life after death is universal as I have said, but this soul may be injured and even die if care is not taken to protect it.

"The first idea of Religion," wrote Hume, "arose not from a contemplation of the works of Nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind." Now the most important event in primitive life is death. [Death, except possibly upon the field of battle, Sue Radin is never thought to be a natural phenomenon. A tree falls and kills a man, lightning strikes and works destruction, a canoe is upset in the surf and its occupants drown; all these events prove the existence of evil spirits. Man sees death all around him,-in plants, in animals, as well as among his fellows, and it is assumed almost without exception that it is the result of a successful battle waged on the living by the malignant spirits of destruction. It has often been noted that fear is probably the basis of religion. Some of the precautions taken to protect the individual at birth have already been recorded, and these efforts are redoubled at the time of illness and death. The terror aroused by sickness and death is one of the greatest stimuli for religious action.

The belief in a soul in man is easily proved to his own satisfaction by the phenomena of sleep and dreaming, swooning, hallucinations, intoxication, and others. A spirit leaves his body during these states and carries on an individual existence. Another takes possession of his body and brings him new sensations. The belief is

reasonable. What are the human shapes appearing in his dreams and visions if they are not spirits? The dream is something very real to the savage. Some peoples fail entirely to discriminate between their experiences in real life and what they dream. Sir Everard im Thurn, in an account of the Indians of Guiana, writes, "One morning when it was important to me to get away from camp on the Essequibo River, at which I had been detained for some days by the illness of some of my Indian companions, I found that one of the invalids, a young Macusi, though better in health, was so enraged against me that he refused to stir, for he declared that, with great want of consideration for his weak health, I had taken him out during the night and had made him haul the canoes up a series of difficult cataracts. Nothing could persuade him that this was but a dream . . . More than once the men declared in the morning that some absent man, whom they named, had come during the night, and had beaten or otherwise maltreated them; and they insisted on much rubbing of the bruised parts of their bodies"-all a dream.13

The concept of the soul is seen in the term "the breath of life." In very many different languages the same word is used to mean either breath or life. The soul may also be seen in the reflection in the water or in a mirror. The fear of breaking a mirror and the custom of turning a mirror face to the wall on a death in the family may both go back to this concept of the soul as a reflection. The spirit may also be manifested in the pulse, the echo, and the name. The shadow may be the soul. It is considered a very bad practice to bury the dead at noonday, when the shadow is shortest. A sick man may even be thought to lose a part of his shadow.