Section 1. The Soul as a Mannikin.
THE FOREGOING examples have taught us that the office of a sacred king
or priest is often hedged in by a series of burdensome restrictions or
taboos, of which a principal purpose appears to be to preserve the life of
the divine man for the good of his people. But if the object of the taboos is
to save his life, the question arises, How is their observance supposed to
effect this end? To understand this we must know the nature of the danger
which threatens the king's life, and which it is the intention of these curious
restrictions to guard against. We must, therefore, ask: What does early man
understand by death? To what causes does he attribute it? And how does
he think it may be guarded against? 1
As the savage commonly explains the processes of inanimate nature by
supposing that they are produced by living beings working in or behind the
phenomena, so he explains the phenomena of life itself. If an animal lives
and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside
which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a
little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the
man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is
explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is
explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being
the permanent absence of the soul. Hence if death be the permanent
absence of the soul, the way to guard against it is either to prevent the soul
from leaving the body, or, if it does depart, to ensure that it shall return. The
precautions adopted by savages to secure one or other of these ends take
the form of certain prohibitions or taboos, which are nothing but rules
intended to ensure either the continued presence or the return of the soul.
In short, they are life-preservers or life-guards. These general statements
will now be illustrated by examples. 2
Addressing some Australian blacks, a European missionary said, "I am
not one, as you think, but two." Upon this they laughed. "You may laugh as
much as you like," continued the missionary, "I tell you that I am two in
one; this great body that you see is one; within that there is another little
one which is not visible. The great body dies, and is buried, but the little
body flies away when the great one dies." To this some of the blacks
replied, "Yes, yes. We also are two, we also have a little body within the
breast." On being asked where the little body went after death, some said it
went behind the bush, others said it went into the sea, and some said they
did not know. The Hurons thought that the soul had a head and body, arms
and legs; in short, that it was a complete little model of the man himself. The
Esquimaux believe that "the soul exhibits the same shape as the body it
belongs to, but is of a more subtle and ethereal nature." According to the
Nootkas the soul has the shape of a tiny man; its seat is the crown of the
head. So long as it stands erect, its owner is hale and hearty; but when
from any cause it loses its upright position, he loses his senses. Among the
Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River, man is held to have four souls, of
which the principal one has the form of a mannikin, while the other three
are shadows of it. The Malays conceive the human soul as a little man,
mostly invisible and of the bigness of a thumb, who corresponds exactly in
shape, proportion, and even in complexion to the man in whose body he
resides. This mannikin is of a thin, unsubstantial nature, though not so
impalpable but that it may cause displacement on entering a physical
object, and it can flit quickly from place to place; it is temporarily absent
from the body in sleep, trance, and disease, and permanently absent after
death. 3
So exact is the resemblance of the mannikin to the man, in other words, of
the soul to the body, that, as there are fat bodies and thin bodies, so there
are fat souls and thin souls; as there are heavy bodies and light bodies,
long bodies and short bodies, so there are heavy souls and light souls,
long souls and short souls. The people of Nias think that every man, before
he is born, is asked how long or how heavy a soul he would like, and a
soul of the desired weight or length is measured out to him. The heaviest
soul ever given out weighs about ten grammes. The length of a man's life is
proportioned to the length of his soul; children who die young had short
souls. The Fijian conception of the soul as a tiny human being comes
clearly out in the customs observed at the death of a chief among the
Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men, who are the hereditary
undertakers, call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats,
saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come over
the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the ghostly
ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they thus
attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close to the
ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a missionary,
"His soul is only a little child." People in the Punjaub who tattoo themselves
believe that at death the soul, "the little entire man or woman" inside the
mortal frame, will go to heaven blazoned with the same tattoo patterns
which adorned the body in life. Sometimes, however, as we shall see, the
human soul is conceived not in human but in animal form. 4