The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Part 34

And in Mota, when an oven is opened, they throw in a leaf of cooked mallow for a ghost, saying to him, "This is a lucky bit for your eating; they who have charmed your food or clubbed you (as the case may be), take hold of their hands, drag them away to h.e.l.l, let them be dead." So when they pour water on the oven, they pray to the ghost, saying, "Pour it on the head of him down there who has laid plots against me, has clubbed me, has shot me, has stolen things of mine (as the case may be), he shall die." Again, when they make a libation before drinking, they pray, saying, "Grandfather! this is your lucky drop of kava; let boars come in to me; the money I have spent, let it come back to me; the food that is gone, let it come back hither to the house of you and me." And on starting for a voyage they will say, "Uncle! father! plenty of boars for you, plenty of money; kava for your drinking, lucky food for your eating in the canoe. I pray you with this, look down upon me, let me go on a safe sea." Or when the canoe labours with a heavy freight, they will pray, "Take off your burden from us, that we may speed on a safe sea."[606]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Florida.]

In the island of Florida, the sanctuary of a powerful ghost is called a _vunuhu_. Sometimes it is in the village, sometimes in the garden-ground, sometimes in the forest. If it is in the village, it is fenced about, lest the foot of any rash intruder should infringe its sanct.i.ty. Sometimes the sanctuary is the place where the dead man is buried; sometimes it merely contains his relics, which have been translated thither. In some sanctuaries there is a shrine and in some an image. Generally, if not always, stones may be seen lying in such a holy place. The sight of one of them has probably struck the fancy of the man who founded the wors.h.i.+p; he thought it a likely place for the ghost to haunt, and other smaller stones and sh.e.l.ls have been subsequently added.

Once a sanctuary has been established, everything within it becomes sacred (_tambu_) and belongs to the ghost. Were a tree growing within it to fall across the path, n.o.body would step over it. When a sacrifice is to be offered to the ghost on the holy ground, the man who knows the ghost, and whose duty it is to perform the sacrifice, enters first and all who attend him follow, treading in his footsteps. In going out no one will look back, lest his soul should stay behind. No one would pa.s.s such a sanctuary when the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it; for if he did the ghost would seize his shadow and so drag the man himself into his den. If there were a shrine in the sanctuary, n.o.body but the sacrificer might enter it. Such a shrine contained the weapons and other properties which belonged in his lifetime to the man whose ghost was wors.h.i.+pped on the spot.[607]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries of ghosts in Malanta.]

At Saa in Malanta, another of the Solomon Islands, all burial-grounds where common people are interred are so far sacred that no one will go there without due cause; but places where the remains of n.o.bles repose, and where sacrifices are offered to their ghosts, are regarded with very great respect, they may indeed be called family sanctuaries. Some of them are very old, the powerful ghosts who are wors.h.i.+pped in them being remote ancestors. It sometimes happens that the man who used to sacrifice in such a place dies without having instructed his son in the proper chant of invocation with which the wors.h.i.+pful ghost should be approached. In such a case the young man who succeeds him may fear to go to the old sanctuary, lest he should commit a mistake and offend the ghost; so he will take some ashes from the old sacrificial fire-place and found a new sanctuary. It is not common in that part of Malanta to build shrines for the relics of the dead, but it is sometimes done. Such shrines, on the other hand, are common in the villages of San Cristoval and in the sacred places of that island where great men lie buried. To trespa.s.s on them would be likely to rouse the anger of the ghosts, some of whom are known to be of a malignant disposition.[608]

[Sidenote: Sanctuaries which are not burial-grounds.]

But burial-grounds are not the only sanctuaries in the Solomon Islands.

There are some where no dead man is known to be interred, though in Dr.

Codrington's opinion there are probably none which do not derive their sanct.i.ty from the presence of a ghost. In the island of Florida the appearance of something wonderful will cause any place to become a sanctuary, the wonder being accepted as proof of a ghostly presence. For example, in the forest near Olevuga a man planted some coco-nut and almond trees and died not long afterwards. Then there appeared among the trees a great rarity in the shape of a white cuscus. The people took it for granted that the animal was the dead man's ghost, and therefore they called it by his name. The place became a sanctuary; no one would gather the coco-nuts and almonds that grew there, till two Christian converts set the ghost at defiance and appropriated his garden, with the coco-nuts and almonds. Through the same part of the forest ran a stream full of eels, one of which was so big that the people were quite sure it must be a ghost; so n.o.body would bathe in that stream or drink from it, except at one pool, which for the sake of convenience was considered not to be sacred. Again, in Bugotu, a district of Ysabel, which is another of the Solomon Islands, there is a pool known to be the haunt of a very old ghost. When a man has an enemy whom he wishes to harm he will obtain some sc.r.a.ps of his food and throw them into the water. If the food is at once devoured by the fish, which swarm in the pool, the man will die, but otherwise his life may be saved by the intervention of a man who knows the habits of the ghost and how to propitiate him. In these sacred places there are stones, on which people place food in order to obtain good crops, while for success in fis.h.i.+ng they deposit morsels of cooked fish. Such stones are treated with reverence and seem to be in a fair way to develop into altars. However, when the old ghost is superseded, as he often is, by younger rivals, the development of an altar out of the stones is arrested.[609]

[Sidenote: Ghosts in animals, such as sharks, alligators, snakes, bonitos, and frigate-birds.]

From some of these instances we learn that Melanesian ghosts can sometimes take up their abode in animals, such as cuscuses, eels, and fish. The creatures which are oftenest used as vehicles by the spirits of the dead are sharks, alligators, snakes, bonitos, and frigate-birds.

Snakes which haunt a sacred place are themselves sacred, because they belong to or actually embody the ghost. Sharks, again, in all these islands are very often thought to be the abode of ghosts; for men before their death will announce that they will appear as sharks, and afterwards any shark remarkable for size or colour which haunts a certain sh.o.r.e or coast is taken to be somebody's ghost and receives the name of the deceased. At Saa certain food, such as coco-nuts from particular trees, is reserved to feed such a ghost-shark; and men of whom it is known for certain that they will be sharks after their death are allowed to antic.i.p.ate the posthumous honours which await them by devouring such food in the sacred place, just as if they were real sharks. Sharks are very commonly believed to be the abode of ghosts in Florida and Ysabel, and in Savo, where they are particularly numerous; hence, though all sharks are not venerated, there is no living creature so commonly held sacred by the Central Melanesians as a shark; and shark-ghosts seem even to form a cla.s.s of powerful supernatural beings.

Again, when a lizard was seen frequenting a house after a death, it would be taken for the ghost returning to its old home; and many ghosts, powerful to aid the mariner at sea, take up their quarters in frigate-birds.[610]

[Sidenote: The belief in ghosts underlies the Melanesian conception of magic.]

Again, a belief in powerful ghosts underlies to a great extent the Melanesian conception of magic, as that conception is expounded by Dr.

Codrington. "That invisible power," he tells us, "which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend their conception of the regular course of nature, and to reside in spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts of the dead, being imparted by them to their names and to various things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of all sorts, is that generally known as _mana_. Without some understanding of this it is impossible to understand the religious beliefs and practices of the Melanesians; and this again is the active force in all they do and believe to be done in magic, white or black. By means of this men are able to control or direct the forces of nature, to make rain or suns.h.i.+ne, wind or calm, to cause sickness or remove it, to know what is far off in time and s.p.a.ce, to bring good luck and prosperity, or to blast and curse. No man, however, has this power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits."[611]

[Sidenote: Illness generally thought to be caused by ghosts.]

Thus, to begin with the medical profession, which is a branch of magic long before it becomes a department of science, every serious sickness is believed to be brought about by ghosts or spirits, but generally it is to the ghosts of the dead that illness is ascribed both by the Eastern and by the Western islanders. Hence recourse is had to ghosts for aid both in causing and in curing sickness. They are thought to inflict disease, not only because some offence, such as trespa.s.s, has been committed against them, or because one who knows their ways has instigated them thereto by sacrifice and spells, but because there is a certain malignity in the feeling of all ghosts towards the living, who offend them simply by being alive. All human faculties, apart from the mere bodily functions, are supposed to be enhanced by death; hence the ghost of a powerful and ill-natured man is only too ready to take advantage of his increased powers for mischief.[612] Thus in the island of Florida illness is regularly laid at the door of a ghost; the only question that can arise is which particular ghost is doing the mischief.

Sometimes the patient imagines that he has offended his dead father, uncle, or brother, who accordingly takes his revenge by stretching him on a bed of sickness. In that case no special intercessor is required; the patient himself or one of his kinsfolk will sacrifice and beg the ghost to take the sickness away; it is purely a family affair. Sometimes the sick man thinks that it is his own private or tame ghost who is afflicting him; so he will leave the house in order to escape his tormentor. But if the cause of sickness remains obscure, a professional doctor or medicine-man will be consulted. He always knows, or at least can ascertain, the ghost who is causing all the trouble, and he takes his measures accordingly. Thus he will bind on the sick man the kind of leaves that the ghost loves; he will chew ginger and blow it into the patient's ears and on that part of the skull which is soft in infants; he will call on the name of the ghost and entreat him to remove the sickness. Should all these remedies prove vain, the doctor is by no means at the end of his resources. He may shrewdly suspect that somebody, who has an ill-will at the patient, has set his private ghost to maul the sick man and do him a grievous bodily injury. If his suspicions are confirmed and he discovers the malicious man who is egging on the mischievous ghost, he will bribe him to call off his ghost; and if the man refuses, the doctor will hire another ghost to a.s.sault and batter the original a.s.sailant. At w.a.n.go in San Cristoval regular battles used to be fought by the invisible champions above the sickbed of the sufferer, whose life or death depended on the issue of the combat. Their weapons were spears, and sometimes more than one ghost would be engaged on either side.[613]

[Sidenote: Diagnosis of ghosts who have caused illness.]

In Ysabel the doctor employs an ingenious apparatus for discovering the cause of sickness and ascertaining its cure. He suspends a stone at one end of a string while he holds the other end in his hand. Then he recites the names of all the people who died lately, and when the stone swings at anybody's name, he knows that the ghost of that man has caused the illness. It remains to find out what the ghost will take to relax his clutch on the sick man, it may be a mash of yams, a fish, a pig, or perhaps a human subst.i.tute. The question is put and answered as before; and whatever the oracle declares to be requisite is offered on the dead man's grave. Thus the ghost is appeased and the sufferer is made whole.[614] In these islands a common cause of illness is believed to be an unwarrantable intrusion on premises occupied by a ghost, who punishes the trespa.s.ser by afflicting him with bodily pains and ailments, or it may be by carrying off his soul. At Maewo in Aurora, one of the New Hebrides, when there is reason to think that a sickness is due to ghostly agency, the friends of the sick man send for a professional dreamer, whose business it is to ascertain what particular ghost has been offended and to make it up with him. So the dreamer falls asleep and in his sleep he dreams a dream. He seems to himself to be in the place where the patient was working before his illness; and there he spies a queer little old man, who is really no other than the ghost. The dreamer falls into conversation with him, learns his name, and winning his confidence extracts from him a true account of the whole affair. The fact is that in working at his garden the man encroached, whether wittingly or not is no matter, on land which the ghost regards as his private preserve; and to punish the intrusion the ghost carried off the intruder's soul and impounded it in a magic fence in his garden, where it still languishes in durance vile. The dreamer at once tenders a frank and manly apology on behalf of his client; he a.s.sures the ghost that the trespa.s.s was purely inadvertent, that no personal disrespect whatever was intended, and he concludes by requesting the ghost to overlook the offence for this time and to release the imprisoned soul. This appeal to the better feelings of the ghost has its effect; he pulls up the fence and lets the soul out of the pound; it flies back to the sick man, who thereupon recovers. Sometimes an orphan child is made sick by its dead mother, whose ghost draws away the soul of the infant to keep her company in the spirit land. In such a case, again, a dreamer is employed to bring back the lost soul from the far country; and if he can persuade the mother's ghost to relinquish the tiny soul of her baby, the child will be made whole.[615] Once more certain long stones in the Banks'

Islands are inhabited by ghosts so active and robust that if a man's shadow so much as falls on one of them, the ghost in the stone will clutch the shadow and pull the soul clean out of the man, who dies accordingly. Such stones, dangerous as they unquestionably are to the chance pa.s.ser-by, nevertheless for that very reason possess a valuable property which can be turned to excellent account. A man, for example, will put one of these stones in his house to guard it like a watch-dog in his absence; and if he sends a friend to fetch something out of it which he has forgotten, the messenger, on approaching the house, will take good care to call out the owner's name, lest the ghost in the stone, mistaking him for a thief and a robber, should pounce out on him and do him a mischief before he had time to explain.[616]

[Sidenote: Contrast between Melanesian and European medicine.]

Thus it appears that for a medical pract.i.tioner in Melanesia the first requisite is an intimate acquaintance, not with the anatomy of the human frame and the properties of drugs, but with ghosts, their personal peculiarities, habits, and haunts. Only by means of the influence which such a knowledge enables him to exert on these powerful and dangerous beings can the good physician mitigate and a.s.suage the sufferings of poor humanity. His professional skill, while it certainly aims at the alleviation of physical evils, attains its object chiefly, if not exclusively, by a direct appeal to those higher, though invisible, powers which encompa.s.s the life of man, or at all events of the Melanesian. The firm faith in the spiritual and the unseen which these sable doctors display in their treatment of the sick presents a striking contrast to the procedure of their European colleagues, who trust exclusively to the use of mere physical remedies, such as drugs and lancets, now carving the body of the sufferer with knives, and now inserting substances, about which they know little, into places about which they know nothing. Has not science falsely so called still much to learn from savagery?

[Sidenote: The weather believed to be regulated by ghosts and spirits.

Weather-doctors.]

But it is not the departments of medicine and surgery alone, important as these are to human welfare, which in Melanesia are directed and controlled by spiritual forces. The weather in those regions is also regulated by ghosts and spirits. It is they who cause the wind to blow or to be still, the sun to s.h.i.+ne forth or to be overcast with clouds, the rain to descend or the earth to be parched with drought; hence fertility and abundance or dearth and famine prevail alternately at the will of these spiritual directors. From this it follows that men who stand on a footing of intimacy with ghosts and spirits can by judicious management induce them to adapt the weather to the varying needs of mankind. But it is to be observed that the supernatural beings, who are the real sources of atmospheric phenomena, have delegated or deputed a portion of their powers not merely to certain material objects, such as stones or leaves, but to certain set forms of words, which men call incantations or spells; and accordingly all such objects and formulas do, by virtue of this delegation, possess in themselves a real and we may almost say natural influence over the weather, which is often manifested in a striking congruity or harmony between the things themselves and the effects which they are calculated to produce. This adaptation of means to end in nature may perhaps be regarded as a beautiful proof of the existence of spirits and ghosts working their purposes unseen behind the gaily coloured screen or curtain of the physical universe. At all events men who are acquainted with the ghostly properties of material objects and words can turn them to account for the benefit of their friends and the confusion of their foes, and they do so very readily if only it is made worth their while. Hence it comes about that in these islands there are everywhere weather-doctors or weather-mongers, who through their familiarity with ghosts and spirits and their acquaintance with the ghostly or spiritual properties of things, are able to control the weather and to supply their customers with wind or calm, rain or suns.h.i.+ne, famine or abundance, at a reasonable rate and a moderate figure.[617] The advantages of such a system over our own blundering method of managing the weather, or rather of leaving it to its own devices, are too obvious to be insisted on. To take a few examples. In the island of Florida, when a calm is wanted, the weather-doctor takes a bunch of leaves, of the sort which the ghost loves, and hides the bunch in the hollow of a tree where there is water, at the same time invoking the ghost with the proper charm. This naturally produces rain and with the rain a calm. In the seafaring life of the Solomon Islanders the maker of calms is a really valuable citizen.[618] The Santa Cruz people are also great voyagers, and their wizards control the weather on their expeditions, taking with them the stock or log which represents their private or tame ghost and setting it up on a stage in the cabin. The presence of the familiar ghost being thus secured, the weather-doctor will undertake to provide wind or calm according to circ.u.mstances.[619] We have already seen how in these islands the wizard makes rain by pouring water on the wooden posts which represent the rain-ghosts.[620]

[Sidenote: Black magic working through personal refuse or rubbish of the victim.]

Such exercises of ghostly power for the healing of the sick and the improvement of the weather are, when well directed and efficacious, wholly beneficial. But ghostly power is a two-edged weapon which can work evil as well as good to mankind. In fact it can serve the purpose of witchcraft. The commonest application of this pernicious art is one which is very familiar to witches and sorcerers in many parts of the world. The first thing the wizard does is to obtain a fragment of food, a bit of hair, a nail-clipping, or indeed anything that has been closely connected with the person of his intended victim. This is the medium through which the power of the ghost or spirit is brought to bear; it is, so to say, the point of support on which the magician rests the whole weight of his infernal engine. In order to give effect to the charm it is very desirable, if not absolutely necessary, to possess some personal relic, such as a bone, of the dead man whose ghost is to set the machinery in motion. At all events the essential thing is to bring together the man who is to be injured and the ghost or spirit who is to injure him; and this can be done most readily by placing the personal relics or refuse of the two men, the living and the dead, in contact with each other; for thus the magic circuit, if we may say so, is complete, and the fatal current flows from the dead to the living. That is why it is most dangerous to leave any personal refuse or rubbish lying about; you never can tell but that some sorcerer may get hold of it and work your ruin by means of it. Hence the people are naturally most careful to hide or destroy all such refuse in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of witches and wizards; and this sage precaution has led to habits of cleanliness which the superficial European is apt to mistake for what he calls enlightened sanitation, but which a deeper knowledge of native thought would reveal to him in their true character as far-seeing measures designed to defeat the nefarious art of the sorcerer.[621]

[Sidenote: Black magic working without any personal relic of the victim.

The ghost-shooter.]

Unfortunately, however, an adept in the black art can work his fell purpose even without any personal relic of his victim. In the Banks'

Islands, for example, he need only procure a bit of human bone or a fragment of some lethal weapon, it may be a splinter of a club or a chip of an arrow, which has killed somebody. This he wraps up in the proper leaves, recites over it the appropriate charm, and plants it secretly in the path along which his intended victim is expected to pa.s.s. The ghost of the man who owned the bone in his life or perished by the club or the arrow, is now lurking like a lion in the path; and if the poor fellow strolls along it thinking no evil, the ghost will spring at him and strike him with disease. The charm is perfectly efficient if the man does come along the path, but clearly it misses fire if he does not. To remedy this defect in the apparatus a sorcerer sometimes has recourse to a portable instrument, a sort of pocket pistol, which in the Banks'

Islands is known as a ghost-shooter. It is a bamboo tube, loaded not with powder and shot, but with a dead man's bone and other magical ingredients, over which the necessary spell has been crooned. Armed with this deadly weapon the sorcerer has only to step up to his unsuspecting enemy, whip out the pocket pistol, uncork the muzzle by removing his thumb from the orifice, and present it at the victim; the fatal discharge follows in an instant and the man drops to the ground. The ghost in the pistol has done his work. Sometimes, however, an accident happens. The marksman misses his victim and hits somebody else. This occurred, for example, not very many years ago in the island of Mota. A man named Isvitag was waiting with his ghost-shooter to pop at his enemy, but in his nervous excitement he let fly too soon, just as a woman with a child on her hip stepped across the path. The shot, or rather the ghost, hit the child point-blank, and it was his sister's child, his own next of kin! You may imagine the distress of the affectionate uncle at this deplorable miscarriage. To prevent inflammation of the wound he, with great presence of mind, plunged his pocket pistol in water, and this timely remedy proved so efficacious that the child took no hurt.[622]

[Sidenote: Prophecy inspired by ghosts.]

Another department of Melanesian life in which ghosts figure very prominently is prophecy. The knowledge of future events is believed to be conveyed to the people by a ghost or spirit speaking with the voice of a man, who is himself unconscious while he speaks. The predictions which emanate from the prophet under these circ.u.mstances are in the strictest sense inspired. His human personality is for the time being in abeyance, and he is merely the mouthpiece of the powerful spirit which has temporarily taken possession of his body and speaks with his voice.

The possession is indeed painfully manifest. His eyes glare, foam bursts from his mouth, his limbs writhe, his whole body is convulsed. These are the workings of the mighty spirit shaking and threatening to rend the frail tabernacle of flesh. This form of inspiration is not clearly distinguishable from what we call madness; indeed the natives do not attempt to distinguish between the two things; they regard the madman and the prophet as both alike inspired by a ghost or spirit, and a man will sometimes pretend to be mad in order that he may get the reputation of being a prophet. At Saa a man will speak with the voice of a powerful man deceased, while he twists and writhes under the influence of the ghost; he calls himself by the name of the deceased who speaks through him, and he is so addressed by others; he will eat fire, lift enormous weights, and foretells things to come. When the inspiration, or insanity, is particularly violent, and the Banks' Islanders think they have had quite enough of it, the friends of the prophet or of the madman will sometimes catch him and hold him struggling and roaring in the smoke of strong-smelling leaves, while they call out the names of the dead men whose ghosts are most likely to be abroad at the time, for as soon as the right name is mentioned the ghost departs from the man, who then returns to his sober senses. But this method of smoking out a ghost is not always successful.[623]

[Sidenote: Divination by means of ghosts.]

There are many methods by which ghosts and spirits are believed to make known to men who employ them the secret things which the una.s.sisted human intelligence could not discover; and some of them hardly perhaps need the intervention of a professional wizard. These methods of divination differ very little in the various islands. In the Solomon Islands, for instance, when an expedition has started in a fleet of canoes, there is sometimes a hesitation whether they shall proceed, or a doubt as to what direction they should take. Thereupon a diviner may declare that he has felt a ghost step on board; for did not the canoe tip over to the one side? Accordingly he asks the invisible pa.s.senger, "Shall we go on? Shall we go to such and such a place?" If the canoe rocks, the answer is yes; if it lies on an even keel, the answer is no.

Again, when a man is sick and his friends wish to know what ghost is vexing or, as they say, eating him, a diviner or wizard is sent for. He comes bringing an a.s.sistant, and the two sit down, the wizard in front and the a.s.sistant at his back, and they hold a stick or bamboo by the two ends. The wizard then begins to slap the end of the bamboo he holds, calling out one after another the names of men not very long deceased, and when he names the one who is afflicting the sick man the stick of itself becomes violently agitated.[624] We are not informed, but we may probably a.s.sume, that it is the ghost and not the man who really agitates the stick. A somewhat different mode of divination was occasionally employed at Motlav in the Banks' Islands in order to discover a thief or other criminal. After a burial they would take a bag, put some Tahitian chestnut and sc.r.a.ped banana into it, and tie it to the end of a hollow bamboo tube about ten feet long in such a way that the end of the tube was inserted in the mouth of the bag. Then the bag was laid on the dead man's grave, and the diviners grasped the other end of the bamboo. The names of the recently dead were then called over, and while this was being done the men felt the bamboo grow heavy in their hands, for a ghost was scrambling up from the bag into the hollow of the bamboo. Having thus secured him they carried the imprisoned ghost in the bamboo into the village, where the roll of the recent dead was again called over in order to learn whose ghost had been caught in the trap. When wrong names were mentioned, the free end of the bamboo moved from side to side, but at the mention of the right name it revolved briskly. Having thus ascertained whom they had to deal with, they questioned the entrapped ghost, "Who stole so and so? Who was guilty in such a case?" Thereupon the bamboo, moved no doubt by the ghost inside, pointed at the culprit, if he was present, or made signs as before when the names of the suspected evildoers were mentioned.[625]

[Sidenote: Taboo based on a fear of ghosts.]

Of the many departments of Central Melanesian life which are permeated by a belief in ghostly power the last which I shall mention is the inst.i.tution of taboo. In Melanesia, indeed, the inst.i.tution is not so conspicuous as it used to be in Polynesia; yet even there it has been a powerful instrument in the consolidation of the rights of private property, and as such it deserves the attention of historians who seek to trace the evolution of law and morality. As understood in the Banks'

Islands and the New Hebrides the word taboo (_tambu_ or _tapu_) signifies a sacred and unapproachable character which is imposed on certain things by the arbitrary will of a chief or other powerful man.

Somebody whose authority with the people gives him confidence to make the announcement will declare that such and such an object may not be touched, that such and such a place may not be approached, and that such and such an action may not be performed under a certain penalty, which in the last resort will be inflicted by ghostly or spiritual agency. The object, place, or action in question becomes accordingly taboo or sacred. Hence in these islands taboo may be defined as a prohibition with a curse expressed or implied. The sanction or power at the back of the taboo is not that of the man who imposes it; rather it is that of the ghost or spirit in whose name or in reliance upon whom the taboo is imposed. Thus in Florida a chief will forbid something to be done or touched under a penalty; he may proclaim, for example, that any one who violates his prohibition must pay him a hundred strings of sh.e.l.l money.

To a European such a proclamation seems a proof of the chief's power; but to the native the chiefs power, in this and in everything, rests on the persuasion that the chief has his mighty ghost at his back. The sense of this in the particular case is indeed remote, the fear of the chiefs anger is present and effective, but the ultimate sanction is the power of the ghost. If a common man were to take upon himself to taboo anything he might do so; people would imagine that he would not dare to make such an announcement unless he knew he could enforce it; so they would watch, and if anybody violated the taboo and fell sick afterwards, they would conclude that the taboo was supported by a powerful ghost who punished infractions of it. Hence the reputation and authority of the man who imposed the taboo would rise accordingly; for it would be seen that he had a powerful ghost at his back. Every ghost has a particular kind of leaf for his badge; and in imposing his taboo a man will set the leaf of his private ghost as a mark to warn trespa.s.sers of the spiritual power with which they have to reckon; when people see a leaf stuck, it may be, on a tree, a house, or a canoe, they do not always know whose it is; but they do know that if they disregard the mark they have to deal with a ghost and not with a man,[626] and the knowledge is a more effectual check on thieving and other crimes than the dread of mere human justice. Many a rascal fears a ghost who does not fear the face of man.

[Sidenote: The life of the Central Melanesians deeply influenced by their belief in the survival of the human soul after death.]

What I have said may suffice to impress you with a sense of the deep practical influence which a belief in the survival of the human soul after death exercises on the life and conduct of the Central Melanesian savage. To him the belief is no mere abstract theological dogma or speculative tenet, the occasional theme of edifying homilies and pious meditation; it is an inbred, unquestioning, omnipresent conviction which affects his thoughts and actions daily and at every turn; it guides his fortunes as an individual and controls his behaviour as a member of a community, by inculcating a respect for the rights of others and enforcing a submission to the public authorities. With him the fear of ghosts and spirits is a bulwark of morality and a bond of society; for he firmly believes in their unseen presence everywhere and in the punishments which they can inflict on wrongdoers. His whole theory of causation differs fundamentally from ours and necessarily begets a fundamental difference of practice. Where we see natural forces and material substances, the Melanesian sees ghosts and spirits. A great gulf divides his conception of the world from ours; and it may be doubted whether education will ever enable him to pa.s.s the gulf and to think and act like us. The products of an evolution which has extended over many ages cannot be forced like mushrooms in a summer day; it is vain to pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge before it is ripe.

[Footnote 590: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 130-132.]

[Footnote 591: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 132 _sq._; C. M.

Woodford, _A Naturalist among the Head-hunters_ (London, 1890), pp.

26-28.]

[Footnote 592: G. Turner, LL.D., _Samoa a Hundred Years Ago and long before_ (London, 1884), pp. 318 _sq._ Yams are the princ.i.p.al fruits cultivated by the Tannese, who bestow a great deal of labour on the plantation and keep them in fine order. See G. Turner, _op. cit._ pp.

317 _sq._]

[Footnote 593: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 133 _sq._]

[Footnote 594: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 134.]

[Footnote 595: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 135 _sq._]

[Footnote 596: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 137 _sq._]

[Footnote 597: R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 138.]

[Footnote 598: R. H. Codrington, _op. cit._ pp. 138 _sq._]