Northcote Whitridge Thomas

“ Although ancestor-worship, or, more broadly, the cult of the dead, has in many cases overshadowed other cults or even extinguished them, we have no warrant, even in these cases, for asserting its priority, but rather the reverse; not only so, but in the majority of cases the pantheon is made up by a multitude of spirits in human, sometimes in animal form, which bear no signs of ever having been incarnate; sun gods and moon goddesses, gods of fire, wind and water, gods of the sea, and above all gods of the sky, show no signs of having been ghost gods at any period in their history. ”

“ Personality.—As a rule the personality of the dreamer is unchanged; but it also happens that the confusion of identity observed with regard to other objects embraces the dreamer himself; he imagines himself to be some one else; he is alternately actor and observer; he may see himself playing a part or may divest himself of his body and wander incorporeally. Ordinary dreams, however, do not go beyond a splitting of personality; we hold conversations, and are intensely surprised at the utterances of a dream figure, which, however, is merely an alter ego. ”

“ They probably wandered about, as do the young males of some existing species, in droves of a dozen or more, and at certain seasons of the year, one or more of them would, as they felt their powers mature, engage the lord of their own or of another herd in single combat, until with the lapse of time the latter either succumbed or was driven from the herd to end his days in solitary ferocity, his hand against everyone, just as we see the rogue elephant wage war indiscriminately on all who approach him. ”

“ The so-called Spectre Huntsman of the Malay Peninsula is said to be a man who scours the firmament with his dogs, vainly seeking for what he could not find on earth—a buck mouse-deer pregnant with male offspring; but he seems to be a living man; there is no statement that he ever died, nor yet that he is a spirit. The incubus and succubus of the middle ages are sometimes regarded as spiritual beings; but they were held to give very real proof of their bodily existence. It should, however, be remembered that primitive peoples do not distinguish clearly between material and immaterial beings. ”

“ The simple offering of food or shedding of blood at the grave develops into an elaborate system of sacrifice; even where ancestor-worship is not found, the desire to provide the dead with comforts in the future life may lead to the sacrifice of wives, slaves, animals, &c., to the breaking or burning of objects at the grave or to the provision of the ferryman’s toll, a coin put in the mouth of the corpse to pay the travelling expenses of the soul. ”

“ Taboo and Moral Obligation.—In proportion as a taboo becomes a custom and its sanctions fall into the background and are forgotten, its obligations thus transformed are one source of the categorical imperative, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is non-rational and instinctive. We are ignorant of the origin of exogamy and the prohibition of incest, the sanctions of which in Australia and among other peoples of low culture seem to be purely' social, for as a rule irregular marriages seem to be regarded simply as offences against tribal morality ”

“ So too, many of the spirits especially concerned with the operations of nature are conceived as neutral or even benevolent; the European peasant fears the corn-spirit only when he irritates him by trenching on his domain and taking his property by cutting the corn; similarly, there is no reason why the more insignificant personages of the pantheon should be conceived as malevolent, and we find that the Petara of the Dyaks are far from indiscriminating and malignant, though disease and death are laid at their door. ”

“ Even if, therefore, we had reason to believe that all totem kins in a given tribe or group of tribes could make out a good case for their descent from single male or female ancestors, which is far from being the case, we should still have to recognise that kinship and not consanguinity is the proper term to apply to the relationship between members of the same group. For, as we have seen, it may be recruited from without in some cases, while in others, persons who are demonstrably not of the same blood, are regarded as totem-brethren by virtue of the common name. ”

“ Even where this idea of the magician-king or chief is not found, his position is an expression of the more powerful mana dwelling within him; consequently the king or chief may not come in contact with the common folk, for fear his touch should blast them, as lightning withers the life of the oak. We can usually see why a king or chief must hold aloof from those whom he might injure, but it is not always easy to see the basic idea of the taboos, if such they be, which aim at protecting the potentate, or ensuring his due regulation of the course of nature. Some African kings may not see the sea ”

“ But all is not finished with the passage of the soul to the land of the dead; the soul may return to avenge its death by helping to discover the murderer, or to wreak vengeance for itself; there is a widespread belief that those who die a violent death become malignant spirits and endanger the lives of those who come near the haunted spot; the woman who dies in child-birth becomes a pontianak, and threatens the life of human beings; and man resorts to magical or religious means of repelling his spiritual dangers. ”

“ The question why marriage within the generation—the rule of four-class and two-phratry tribes alike—should have come into existence is a complicated one and involves that of the origin of kinship terms. If we take a crucial case of kinship terminology, we find that a child applies the same term to its actual mother as to all the women whom its father might have married, to its potential mothers in fact. ”

“ The property of the dead man is commonly burnt or deposited with him in the grave, in part as a protective measure, in part under the influence of belief in the continuity of this and the future life, and the need of supplying him with necessaries. Burial grounds are avoided, animals or plants from the neighbourhood are not used as food. Finally the name of the dead is not used, partly for fear of summoning him by the power of the word, but partly also from a conviction that, like the name of a king or chief, it is too holy or too dangerous for common use. ”

“ Leopard.—The cult of the leopard is widely found in West Africa. Among the Ewe a man who kills one is liable to be put to death; no leopard skin may be exposed to view, but a stuffed leopard is worshipped. On the Gold Coast a leopard hunter who has killed his victim is carried round the town behind the body of the leopard; he may not speak, must besmear himself so as to look like a leopard and imitate its movements. In Loango a prince’s cap is put upon the head of a dead leopard, and dances are held in its honour. ”

“ It is true that a vast amount of authority for the belief in witchcraft may be quoted; but the testimony for the occurrence of marvels is small in quantity, if we except the valueless declaration of the victims of torture; testimony as to the pathological side of witchcraft is abundant, but affords no proof of the erroneous inferences drawn from the genuine phenomena. If this uncritical attitude is found in our own day, it is not surprising that the rationalistic spirit was long in making its appearance and slow in gaining the victory over superstition. ”

“ We have seen above that the Dieri rule is precisely parallel to that of the eight-class tribes in practice; it is however expressed, not by a class system, but by enacting that people standing in a certain degree of kinship or consanguinity shall marry. If Dr Durkheim's theory of the origin of the eight-class system is correct, it should also apply to the Dieri. Now the rule that a man must marry his maternal great-uncle's daughter clearly prevents intermarriage with one of the mother's totem; but this cannot be the object of the rule, for it is prevented already by the phratry system. ”

“ In Europe the corn spirit sometimes immanent in the crop, sometimes a presiding deity whose life does not depend on that of the growing corn, is conceived in some districts in the form of an ox, hare or cock, in others as an old man or woman; in the East Indies and America the rice or maize mother is a corresponding figure; in classical Europe and the East we have in Ceres and Demeter, Adonis and Dionysus, and other deities, vegetation gods whose origin we can readily trace back to the rustic corn spirit. Forest trees, no less than cereals, have their indwelling spirits ”