Section 3. The External Soul in Animals.
BUT in practice, as in folk-tales, it is not merely with inanimate objects and
plants that a person is occasionally believed to be united by a bond of
physical sympathy. The same bond, it is supposed, may exist between a
man and an animal, so that the welfare of the one depends on the welfare
of the other, and when the animal dies the man dies also. The analogy
between the custom and the tales is all the closer because in both of them
the power of thus removing the soul from the body and stowing it away in
an animal is often a special privilege of wizards and witches. Thus the
Yakuts of Siberia believe that every shaman or wizard keeps his soul, or
one of his souls, incarnate in an animal which is carefully concealed from
all the world. "Nobody can find my external soul," said one famous wizard,
"it lies hidden far away in the stony mountains of Edzhigansk." Only once
a year, when the last snows melt and the earth turns black, do these
external souls of wizards appear in the shape of animals among the
dwellings of men. They wander everywhere, yet none but wizards can see
them. The strong ones sweep roaring and noisily along, the weak steal
about quietly and furtively. Often they fight, and then the wizard whose
external soul is beaten, falls ill or dies. The weakest and most cowardly
wizards are they whose souls are incarnate in the shape of dogs, for the
dog gives his human double no peace, but gnaws his heart and tears his
body. The most powerful wizards are they whose external souls have the
shape of stallions, elks, black bears, eagles, or boars. Again, the
Samoyeds of the Turukhinsk region hold that every shaman has a familiar
spirit in the shape of a boar, which he leads about by a magic belt. On the
death of the boar the shaman himself dies; and stories are told of battles
between wizards, who send their spirits to fight before they encounter each
other in person. The Malays believe that "the soul of a person may pass
into another person or into an animal, or rather that such a mysterious
relation can arise between the two that the fate of the one is wholly
dependent on that of the other." 1
Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the
conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of daily life. In
the Mota language the word tamaniu signifies "something animate or
inanimate which a man has come to believe to have an existence
intimately connected with his own... . It was not every one in Mota who
had his tamaniu; only some men fancied that they had this relation to a
lizard, a snake, or it might be a stone; sometimes the thing was sought for
and found by drinking the infusion of certain leaves and heaping together
the dregs; then whatever living thing was first seen in or upon the heap
was the tamaniu. It was watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives
believed that it came at call, and that the life of the man was bound up with
the life of his tamaniu, if a living thing, or with its safety; should it die, or if
not living get broken or be lost, the man would die. Hence in case of
sickness they would send to see if the tamaniu was safe and well." 2
The theory of an external soul deposited in an animal appears to be very
prevalent in West Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the Cameroons, and the
Gaboon. Among the Fans of the Gaboon every wizard is believed at
initiation to unite his life with that of some particular wild animal by a rite of
blood-brotherhood; he draws blood from the ear of the animal and from his
own arm, and inoculates the animal with his own blood, and himself with
the blood of the beast. Henceforth such an intimate union is established
between the two that the death of the one entails the death of the other.
The alliance is thought to bring to the wizard or sorcerer a great accession
of power, which he can turn to his advantage in various ways. In the first
place, like the warlock in the fairy tales who has deposited his life outside
of himself in some safe place, the Fan wizard now deems himself
invulnerable. Moreover, the animal with which he has exchanged blood
has become his familiar, and will obey any orders he may choose to give
it; so he makes use of it to injure and kill his enemies. For that reason the
creature with whom he establishes the relation of blood-brotherhood is
never a tame or domestic animal, but always a ferocious and dangerous
wild beast, such as a leopard, a black serpent, a crocodile, a
hippopotamus, a wild boar, or a vulture. Of all these creatures the leopard
is by far the commonest familiar of Fan wizards, and next to it comes the
black serpent; the vulture is the rarest. Witches as well as wizards have
their familiars; but the animals with which the lives of women are thus
bound up generally differ from those to which men commit their external
souls. A witch never has a panther for her familiar, but often a venomous
species of serpent, sometimes a horned viper, sometimes a black serpent,
sometimes a green one that lives in banana-trees; or it may be a vulture,
an owl, or other bird of night. In every case the beast or bird with which
the witch or wizard has contracted this mystic alliance is an individual,
never a species; and when the individual animal dies the alliance is
naturally at an end, since the death of the animal is supposed to entail the
death of the man. 3
Similar beliefs are held by the natives of the Cross River valley within the
provinces of the Cameroons. Groups of people, generally the inhabitants
of a village, have chosen various animals, with which they believe
themselves to stand on a footing of intimate friendship or relationship.
Amongst such animals are hippopotamuses, elephants, leopards,
crocodiles, gorillas, fish, and serpents, all of them creatures which are
either very strong or can easily hide themselves in the water or a thicket.
This power of concealing themselves is said to be an indispensable
condition of the choice of animal familiars, since the animal friend or helper
is expected to injure his owner's enemy by stealth; for example, if he is a
hippopotamus, he will bob up suddenly out of the water and capsize the
enemy's canoe. Between the animals and their human friends or kinsfolk
such a sympathetic relation is supposed to exist that the moment the animal
dies the man dies also, and similarly the instant the man perishes so does
the beast. From this it follows that the animal kinsfolk may never be shot at
or molested for fear of injuring or killing the persons whose lives are knit up
with the lives of the brutes. This does not, however, prevent the people of
a village, who have elephants for their animal friends, from hunting
elephants. For they do not respect the whole species but merely certain
individuals of it, which stand in an intimate relation to certain individual
men and women; and they imagine that they can always distinguish these
brother elephants from the common herd of elephants which are mere
elephants and nothing more. The recognition indeed is said to be mutual.
When a hunter, who has an elephant for his friend, meets a human
elephant, as we may call it, the noble animal lifts up a paw and holds it
before his face, as much as to say, "Don't shoot." Were the hunter so
inhuman as to fire on and wound such an elephant, the person whose life
was bound up with the elephant would fall ill. 4
The Balong of the Cameroons think that every man has several souls, of
which one is in his body and another in an animal, such as an elephant, a
wild pig, a leopard, and so forth. When a man comes home, feeling ill, and
says, "I shall soon die," and dies accordingly, the people aver that one of
his souls has been killed in a wild pig or a leopard and that the death of
the external soul has caused the death of the soul in his body. A similar
belief in the external souls of living people is entertained by the Ibos, an
important tribe of the Niger delta. They think that a man's spirit can quit his
body for a time during life and take up its abode in an animal. A man who
wishes to acquire this power procures a certain drug from a wise man and
mixes it with his food. After that his soul goes out and enters into an animal.
If it should happen that the animal is killed while the man's soul is lodged
in it, the man dies; and if the animal be wounded, the man's body will
presently be covered with boils. This belief instigates to many deeds of
darkness; for a sly rogue will sometimes surreptitiously administer the
magical drug to his enemy in his food, and having thus smuggled the
other's soul into an animal will destroy the creature, and with it the man
whose soul is lodged in it. 5
The negroes of Calabar, at the mouth of the Niger, believe that every
person has four souls, one of which always lives outside of his or her
body in the form of a wild beast in the forest. This external soul, or bush
soul, as Miss Kingsley calls it, may be almost any animal, for example, a
leopard, a fish, or a tortoise; but it is never a domestic animal and never a
plant. Unless he is gifted with second sight, a man cannot see his own
bush soul, but a diviner will often tell him what sort of creature his bush
soul is, and after that the man will be careful not to kill any animal of that
species, and will strongly object to any one else doing so. A man and his
sons have usually the same sort of animals for their bush souls, and so
with a mother and her daughters. But sometimes all the children of a family
take after the bush soul of their father; for example, if his external soul is a
leopard, all his sons and daughters will have leopards for their external
souls. And on the other hand, sometimes they all take after their mother; for
instance, if her external soul is a tortoise, all the external souls of her sons
and daughters will be tortoises too. So intimately bound up is the life of the
man with that of the animal which he regards as his external or bush soul,
that the death or injury of the animal necessarily entails the death or injury
of the man. And, conversely, when the man dies, his bush soul can no
longer find a place of rest, but goes mad and rushes into the fire or
charges people and is knocked on the head, and that is an end of it. 6
Near Eket in North Calabar there is a sacred lake, the fish of which are
carefully preserved because the people believe that their own souls are
lodged in the fish, and that with every fish killed a human life would be
simultaneously extinguished. In the Calabar River not very many years ago
there used to be a huge old crocodile, popularly supposed to contain the
external soul of a chief who resided in the flesh at Duke Town. Sporting
vice-consuls used from time to time to hunt the animal, and once an officer
contrived to hit it. Forthwith the chief was laid up with a wound in his leg.
He gave out that a dog had bitten him, but no doubt the wise shook their
heads and refused to be put off with so flimsy a pretext. Again, among
several tribes on the banks of the Niger between Lokoja and the delta
there prevails "a belief in the possibility of a man possessing an alter ego
in the form of some animal such as a crocodile or a hippopotamus. It is
believed that such a person's life is bound up with that of the animal to
such an extent that, whatever affects the one produces a corresponding
impression upon the other, and that if one dies the other must speedily do
so too. It happened not very long ago that an Englishman shot a
hippopotamus close to a native village; the friends of a woman who died
the same night in the village demanded and eventually obtained five
pounds as compensation for the murder of the woman." 7
Amongst the Zapotecs of Central America, when a woman was about to
be confined, her relations assembled in the hut, and began to draw on the
floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was
completed. This went on till the moment of birth, and the figure that then
remained sketched upon the ground was called the child's tona or second
self. "When the child grew old enough, he procured the animal that
represented him and took care of it, as it was believed that health and
existence were bound up with that of the animal's, in fact that the death of
both would occur simultaneously," or rather that when the animal died the
man would die too. Among the Indians of Guatemala and Honduras the
nagual or naual is "that animate or inanimate object, generally an animal,
which stands in a parallel relation to a particular man, so that the weal and
woe of the man depend on the fate of the nagual." According to an old
writer, many Indians of Guatemala "are deluded by the devil to believe that
their life dependeth upon the life of such and such a beast (which they
take unto them as their familiar spirit), and think that when that beast dieth
they must die; when he is chased, their hearts pant; when he is faint, they
are faint; nay, it happeneth that by the devil's delusion they appear in the
shape of that beast (which commonly by their choice is a buck, or doe, a
lion, or tigre, or dog, or eagle) and in that shape have been shot at and
wounded." The Indians were persuaded that the death of their nagual
would entail their own. Legend affirms that in the first battles with the
Spaniards on the plateau of Quetzaltenango the naguals of the Indian
chiefs fought in the form of serpents. The nagual of the highest chief was
especially conspicuous, because it had the form of a great bird,
resplendent in green plumage. The Spanish general Pedro de Alvarado
killed the bird with his lance, and at the same moment the Indian chief fell
dead to the ground. 8
In many tribes of South-Eastern Australia each sex used to regard a
particular species of animals in the same way that a Central American
Indian regarded his nagual, but with this difference, that whereas the
Indian apparently knew the individual animal with which his life was bound
up, the Australians only knew that each of their lives was bound up with
some one animal of the species, but they could not say with which. The
result naturally was that every man spared and protected all the animals of
the species with which the lives of the men were bound up; and every
woman spared and protected all the animals of the species with which the
lives of the women were bound up; because no one knew but that the
death of any animal of the respective species might entail his or her own;
just as the killing of the green bird was immediately followed by the death
of the Indian chief, and the killing of the parrot by the death of Punchkin in
the fairy tale. Thus, for example, the Wotjobaluk tribe of South-Eastern
Australia "held that `the life of Ngŭnŭngŭnŭt
(the Bat) is the life of a man, and the life of Yrtatgŭrk (the Nightjar)
is the life of a woman,' and that when either of these creatures is killed the
life of some man or of some woman is shortened. In such a case every
man or every woman in the camp feared that he or she might be the victim,
and from this cause great fights arose in this tribe. I learn that in these
fights, men on one side and women on the other, it was not at all certain
which would be victorious, for at times the women gave the men a severe
drubbing with their yamsticks, while often women were injured or killed by
spears." The Wotjobaluk said that the bat was the man's "brother" and that
the nightjar was his "wife." The particular species of animals with which the
lives of the sexes were believed to be respectively bound up varied
somewhat from tribe to tribe. Thus whereas among the Wotjobaluk the bat
was the animal of the men, at Gunbower Creek on the Lower Murray the
bat seems to have been the animal of the women, for the natives would not
kill it for the reason that "if it was killed, one of their lubras [women] would
be sure to die in consequence." But whatever the particular sorts of
creature with which the lives of men and women were believed to be
bound up, the belief itself and the fights to which it gave rise are known to
have prevailed over a large part of South-Eastern Australia, and probably
they extended much farther. The belief was a very serious one, and so
consequently were the fights which sprang from it. Thus among some tribes
of Victoria "the common bat belongs to the men, who protect it against
injury, even to the half-killing of their wives for its sake. The fern owl, or
large goatsucker, belongs to the women, and, although a bird of evil
omen, creating terror at night by its cry, it is jealously protected by them. If
a man kills one, they are as much enraged as if it was one of their
children, and will strike him with their long poles." 9
The jealous protection thus afforded by Australian men and women to
bats and owls respectively (for bats and owls seem to be the creatures
usually allotted to the two sexes) is not based upon purely selfish
considerations. For each man believes that not only his own life but the
lives of his father, brothers, sons, and so on are bound up with the lives of
particular bats, and that therefore in protecting the bat species he is
protecting the lives of all his male relations as well as his own. Similarly,
each woman believes that the lives of her mother, sisters, daughters, and
so forth, equally with her own, are bound up with the lives of particular
owls, and that in guarding the owl species she is guarding the lives of all
her female relations besides her own. Now, when men's lives are thus
supposed to be contained in certain animals, it is obvious that the animals
can hardly be distinguished from the men, or the men from the animals. If
my brother John's life is in a bat, then, on the one hand, the bat is my
brother as well as John; and, on the other hand, John is in a sense a bat,
since his life is in a bat. Similarly, if my sister Mary's life is in an owl, then
the owl is my sister and Mary is an owl. This is a natural enough
conclusion, and the Australians have not failed to draw it. When the bat is
the man's animal, it is called his brother; and when the owl is the woman's
animal, it is called her sister. And conversely a man addresses a woman
as an owl, and she addresses him as a bat. So with the other animals
allotted to the sexes respectively in other tribes. For example, among the
Kurnai all emu-wrens were "brothers" of the men, and all the men were
emu-wrens; all superb warblers were "sisters" of the women, and all the
women were superb warblers. 10
But when a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother,
and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem. Accordingly in the
tribes of South-Eastern Australia which we have been considering the bat
and the owl, the emu-wren and the superb warbler, may properly be
described as totems of the sexes. But the assignation of a totem to a sex is
comparatively rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in
Australia. Far more commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to
a clan, and is hereditary either in the male or female line. The relation of
an individual to the clan totem does not differ in kind from his relation to the
sex totem; he will not kill it, he speaks of it as his brother, and he calls
himself by its name. Now if the relations are similar, the explanation which
holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other. Therefore,
the reason why a clan revere a particular species of animals or plants (for
the clan totem may be a plant) and call themselves after it, would seem to
be a belief that the life of each individual of the clan is bound up with
some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death would
be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or destroying that
particular plant. This explanation of totemism squares very well with Sir
George Grey's definition of a totem or kobong in Western Australia. He
says: "A certain mysterious connexion exists between a family and its
kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the
species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he
always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to
escape. This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the
species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to
be carefully avoided. Similarly, a native who has a vegetable for his
kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular
period of the year." Here it will be observed that though each man spares
all the animals or plants of the species, they are not all equally precious to
him; far from it, out of the whole species there is only one which is
specially dear to him; but as he does not know which the dear one is, he
is obliged to spare them all from fear of injuring the one. Again, this
explanation of the clan totem harmonises with the supposed effect of killing
one of the totem species. "One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three
or four days afterwards a Boortwa (crow) [i.e. a man of the Crow clan]
named Larry died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his
wingong [totem] hastened his death." Here the killing of the crow caused
the death of a man of the Crow clan, exactly as, in the case of the
sex-totems, the killing of a bat causes the death of a Bat-man or the killing
of an owl causes the death of an Owl-woman. Similarly, the killing of his
nagual causes the death of a Central American Indian, the killing of his
bush soul causes the death of a Calabar negro, the killing of his tamaniu
causes the death of a Banks Islander, and the killing of the animal in which
his life is stowed away causes the death of the giant or warlock in the fairy
tale. 11
Thus it appears that the story of "The giant who had no heart in his body"
may perhaps furnish the key to the relation which is supposed to subsist
between a man and his totem. The totem, on this theory, is simply the
receptacle in which a man keeps his life, as Punchkin kept his life in a
parrot, and Bidasari kept her soul in a golden fish. It is no valid objection
to this view that when a savage has both a sex totem and a clan totem his
life must be bound up with two different animals, the death of either of
which would entail his own. If a man has more vital places than one in his
body, why, the savage may think, should he not have more vital places
than one outside it? Why, since he can put his life outside himself, should
he not transfer one portion of it to one animal and another to another? The
divisibility of life, or, to put it otherwise, the plurality of souls, is an idea
suggested by many familiar facts, and has commended itself to
philosophers like Plato, as well as to savages. It is only when the notion of
a soul, from being a quasi-scientific hypothesis, becomes a theological
dogma that its unity and indivisibility are insisted upon as essential. The
savage, unshackled by dogma, is free to explain the facts of life by the
assumption of as many souls as he thinks necessary. Hence, for example,
the Caribs supposed that there was one soul in the head, another in the
heart, and other souls at all the places where an artery is felt pulsating.
Some of the Hidatsa Indians explain the phenomena of gradual death,
when the extremities appear dead first, by supposing that man has four
souls, and that they quit the body, not simultaneously, but one after the
other, dissolution being only complete when all four have departed. Some
of the Dyaks of Borneo and the Malays of the Peninsula believe that every
man has seven souls. The Alfoors of Poso in Celebes are of opinion that
he has three. The natives of Laos suppose that the body is the seat of
thirty spirits, which reside in the hands, the feet, the mouth, the eyes, and
so on. Hence, from the primitive point of view, it is perfectly possible that a
savage should have one soul in his sex totem and another in his clan
totem. However, as I have observed, sex totems have been found nowhere
but in Australia; so that as a rule the savage who practises totemism need
not have more than one soul out of his body at a time. 12
If this explanation of the totem as a receptacle in which a man keeps his
soul or one of his souls is correct, we should expect to find some totemic
people of whom it is expressly said that every man amongst them is
believed to keep at least one soul permanently out of his body, and that
the destruction of this external soul is supposed to entail the death of its
owner. Such a people are the Bataks of Sumatra. The Bataks are divided
into exogamous clans (margas) with descent in the male line; and each
clan is forbidden to eat the flesh of a particular animal. One clan may not
eat the tiger, another the ape, another the crocodile, another the dog,
another the cat, another the dove, another the white buffalo, and another
the locust. The reason given by members of a clan for abstaining from the
flesh of the particular animal is either that they are descended from animals
of that species, and that their souls after death may transmigrate into the
animals, or that they or their forefathers have been under certain
obligations to the creatures. Sometimes, but not always, the clan bears the
name of the animal. Thus the Bataks have totemism in full. But, further,
each Batak believes that he has seven or, on a more moderate
computation, three souls. One of these souls is always outside the body,
but nevertheless whenever it dies, however far away it may be at the time,
that same moment the man dies also. The writer who mentions this belief
says nothing about the Batak totems; but on the analogy of the Australian,
Central American, and African evidence we may conjecture that the
external soul, whose death entails the death of the man, is housed in the
totemic animal or plant. 13
Against this view it can hardly be thought to militate that the Batak does
not in set terms affirm his external soul to be in his totem, but alleges other
grounds for respecting the sacred animal or plant of his clan. For if a
savage seriously believes that his life is bound up with an external object,
it is in the last degree unlikely that he will let any stranger into the secret.
In all that touches his inmost life and beliefs the savage is exceedingly
suspicious and reserved; Europeans have resided among savages for
years without discovering some of their capital articles of faith, and in the
end the discovery has often been the result of accident. Above all, the
savage lives in an intense and perpetual dread of assassination by
sorcery; the most trifling relics of his person-the clippings of his hair and
nails, his spittle, the remnants of his food, his very name-all these may, he
fancies, be turned by the sorcerer to his destruction, and he is therefore
anxiously careful to conceal or destroy them. But if in matters such as
these, which are but the outposts and outworks of his life, he is so shy and
secretive, how close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the
reserve in which he enshrouds the inner keep and citadel of his being!
When the princess in the fairy tale asks the giant where he keeps his soul,
he often gives false or evasive answers, and it is only after much coaxing
and wheedling that the secret is at last wrung from him. In his jealous
reticence the giant resembles the timid and furtive savage; but whereas the
exigencies of the story demand that the giant should at last reveal his
secret, no such obligation is laid on the savage; and no inducement that
can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its
hiding-place to a stranger. It is therefore no matter for surprise that the
central mystery of the savage's life should so long have remained a
secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints
and fragments and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy
tales. 14