"May your shadow never grow less" is a modern version of the same idea.

For safe-keeping a portion of the soul may be placed outside the body. Here we have the "life-token" theme in folk-lore; the actual life of a person being bound up in something hidden away or in a tree or some other living thing. The transmigration of souls is another common idea of primitive man. The belief that the body is "possessed" by an extraneous spirit is seen in the words catalepsy, a seizing of the body by some demon; ecstasy, a displacement of the original soul by another; and inspiration, a breathing into the body by a spirit. Dante speaks with the greatest sarcasm of the souls of his contemporaries which he meets in Hell, although their bodies, inhabited by devils, are still on earth. A god may even taken possession of the body, as seen in the word enthusiasm. The Thracian Dionysos brought the idea to Greece that a man through physical intoxication-later, through spiritual ecstasy-could pass from the human to the divine.

Sickness is seldom considered a natural phenomenon. It is always sent by an evil spirit. Mental diseases prove conclusively that the body is "possessed." There seems to be a disinclination even among some civilized peoples to regard sickness as natural. The witchcraft delusion in Europe and America illustrates this point. Early medicine was founded upon the fact that illness was caused by demons, and magic was called in to drive them out. This belief would come within the province of psychotherapy at the present time. Many savage practices form a "therapeutic armamentarium” against these evil spirits who scatter disease and death.

A line of reasoning similar to that of the savage is

seen in the belief that illness is sent by God as a punishment. Edmund Gosse, writing of his father in his book Father and Son, says: "He retained the singular superstition, amazing in a man of scientific knowledge and long human experience, that all pains and ailments were directly sent by the Lord in chastisement for some definite fault, and not in relation to any physical cause. The result was sometimes quite startling, and in particular I recollect that my step-mother and I exchanged impressions of astonishment at my Father's action when Mrs. Goodyer, who was one of the 'Saints' and the wife of a young journeyman cobbler, broke her leg. My Father, puzzled for an instant as to the meaning of this accident, since Mrs. Goodyer was the gentlest and most inoffensive of our church members, decided that it must be because she had made an idol of her husband, and he reduced the poor things to tears by standing at her bedside and imploring the Holy Spirit to bring this sin home to her conscience."

Death means a passage into the final stage of existence, just as the adolescent rites mark progress from childhood to manhood. The continuity of the souls of the living and of the dead is a very close one. The "presence" of the departed is a very real thing. Dreams, noises, and other strange happenings all prove it. "Laying the ghost" is always necessary. No obligation is more binding than that proper respect be paid to the dead.

This regard for the deceased is founded perhaps more on fear than on love, although both are usually present, and it is not always possible to distinguish between the two ideas. Let us consider, first, a few of the customs centering around fear of the dead kindred. Propitiation

is the keynote of all savage burial rites. However welldisposed a person may be in life, his presence is not desired after death. The souls of the dead cannot strictly be said at first to be "departed spirits," as they usually prefer to linger about the place of death until means are taken to dislodge them. It is not well to have them tarry near the habitation; so provision is often taken to have death occur away from the dwelling. People as far apart as the Eskimo and the Maori of New Zealand carry those whom they fear are to die away from the house, often to a special dwelling, so that there death may take place and the souls of the deceased will not injure those in the regular habitation. When this removal of the dying is not carried out, and the person passes away in his own house, the house may be deserted or even destroyed. When a great chief dies in Africa, sometimes a whole village is deserted. There is little doubt that the custom of closing the room in which death has occurred is to be associated with the same idea. The room is often thoroughly cleaned and renovated before it is again occupied.

Another set of practices attempts to hasten the departure of the soul to its last resting place. The Algonkian beat the walls of the death chamber; the Chinese knock the floor with a hammer; the German peasant waves towels about the room; and, in ancient Rome, the ghost was swept out of the house by the heir.14)

In the journey to the grave, care is taken to prevent the soul from returning, and the house is barricaded against its reappearance. A knife may be hung over the door or an axe laid on the threshold. The ghost can only return by the same route which has been taken; much ingenuity is therefore seen in preventing its second

appearance. The eyes may be closed or covered by a mask, burial may be by night, or the body may be carried out of the house through a hole in the roof or by the chimney. Frazer gives credit for this device to the Greenlanders, Hottentots, some American tribes, Hindus, Tibetans, Chinese, and the Fijians. The same idea may be shown in Rome where a dead Pope is carried out of St. Peter's through the central doorway, which is used only for this purpose. The soul may be prevented from returning from the burial place by barring it by fire or by water. Perhaps the mourners leap over a fire, or holy water may be sprinkled after the burial proces

sion.

Further precautions are often taken at the grave itself. The course of a river was temporarily changed so that Alaric, the King of the Goths, could be buried in the bed of the stream. A high fence is placed around the grave or stones are piled upon it. The body may be mutilated: the Australian cuts off the right thumb of a dead enemy so that his spirit cannot use a spear.

From the time of the Upper Palæolithic period onward a ceremonial disposal of the dead has been a universal custom. Inhumation is the most common practice. The souls of the unburied wander in everlasting torment. This belief was especially prominent in classical times. Pausanius speaks of the conduct of Lysander as reprehensible in not burying the bodies of Philocles and the four thousand slain by his armies, and adds that the Athenians did as much for the Medes after Marathon, and even Xerxes for the Lacedæmonians after Thermopylæ. Herodotus tells of the Egyptian law which permitted a man to give his father's body in pledge, with

the proviso that, if he failed to repay the loan, neither he nor any of his kin could be buried at all.15

.

The position of the body in the grave is of some concern. It may face the setting sun. Often the body is flexed, with the knees bent and touching the breast. A common explanation offered for this is that the dead go back to their mother-earth in the same position as that of the embryo in the human mother. Myths are often useful in explaining burial customs. Among the Hopi the hands of the dead clasp a stick which projects from the grave. By means of this the soul escapes to the land of the spirits just as the people originally ascended from beneath this earth to the present world by means of a ladder.

The bodies of the dead are often deposited temporarily or even exposed to the creatures of the field until all the flesh has disappeared, and then a permanent and ceremonial burial of the bones is made.

In case the body is not recovered on the field of battle or is lost at sea, burial by effigy is necessary. This custom is found in Greece, Italy, India, China, Samoa, and Mexico. Sometimes this burial is premature and the supposed dead returns. Sociologically he is dead, as his effigy has been buried; physiologically he is alive and well. Hence, the victim must be born again; he must enter the house in the same way as his effigy has left it; and, in some cases, he is considered a child and must go through the puberty rites in order to regain the status of manhood. Plutarch, in his Roman Questions, No. 5, describes much the same custom. A man reported drowned in a naval engagement, returned and found the door of his house shut, and he was unable to open it. He was thus forced to sleep before his house. During