Permanent transition, new birth, or re-incarnation of human souls in other human bodies, is especially considered to take place by the soul of a deceased person animating the body of an infant. North American Indians of the Algonquin districts, when little children died, would bury them by the wayside, that their souls might pass into mothers passing by, and so be born again. In North-West America, among the Tacullis, we hear of direct transfusion of soul by the medicine-man, who, putting his hands on the breast of the dying or dead, then holds them over the head of a relative and blows through them; the next child born to this recipient of the departed soul is animated by it, and takes the rank and name of the deceased.2 The Nutka Indians not without ingenuity accounted for the existence of a distant tribe speaking the same language as themselves, by declaring them to be the spirits of their dead. In Greenland,

where the wretched custom of abandoning and even plundering widows and orphans was tending to bring the whole race to extinction, a helpless widow would seek to persuade some father that the soul of a dead child of his had passed into a living child of hers, or vice versa, thus gaining for herself a new relative and protector. It is mostly ancestral or kindred souls that are thought to enter into children, and this kind of transmigration is therefore from the savage point of view a highly philosophical theory, accounting as it does so well for the general resemblance between parents and children, and even for the more special phenomena of atavism. In North-West America, among the Koloshes, the mother sees in a dream the deceased relative whose transmitted soul will give his likeness to the child; 5 and in Vancouver's Island in 1860 a lad was much regarded by the Indians because he had a mark like the scar of a gunshot wound on his hip, it being believed that a chief dead some four generations before, who had such a mark, had re

1 Brebeuf in 'Rel. des Jes. dans la Nouvelle France,' 1635, p. 130; Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 75. See Brinton, p. 253.

2 Waitz, vol. iii. p. 195, see pp. 198, 213.

4 Cranz, Grönland,' pp. 248, 258, see p. 212. See also Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 353; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 793.

turned.1 In Old Calabar, if a mother loses a child and another is born soon after, she thinks the departed one to have come back. The Wanika consider that the soul of a dead ancestor animates a child, and this is why it resembles its father or mother.3 In Guinea a child bearing a strong resemblance, physical or mental, to a dead relative, is supposed to have inherited his soul; and the Yorubas, greeting a new-born infant with the salutation, "Thou art come!" look for signs to show what ancestral soul has returned among them. Among the Khonds of Orissa, births are celebrated by a feast on the seventh day, and the priest, divining by dropping rice-grains in a cup of water, and judging from observations made on the person of the infant, determines which of his progenitors has reappeared, and the child generally at least among the northern tribes receives the name of that ancestor. The naming of children, with reference to the belief in return of ancestral souls, appears in Dahome. The renewal of old family names by giving them to new-born children, a practice not unknown among savages, may always be suspected of involving some such thought; as when the New Zealand. priest would repeat to the infant a long list of names of its ancestors, fixing upon that name which the child, by sneezing or crying when it was uttered, was considered to select for itself;8 or when some North American Indians were observed to set the child in place of the last owner of its name, so that a man would treat as his grandfather a child who might have been his grandson."

The belief in the new human birth of the departed soul,

1 Bastian, Zur vergl. Psychologie,' in Lazarus and Steinthal's Zeitschrift,’ vol. v. p. 160, etc., also Papuas and other races.

2 Burton, W. & W. fr. W. Afr.' p. 376.

3 Krapf, E. Afr.' p. 201.

4 J. L. Wilson, W. Afr.' p. 210; see also R. Clarke, 'Sierra Leone,' p. 159. 5 Bastian, 1. c.

6 Macpherson, p. 72; also Tickell in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,' vol. ix. pp. 793, etc.; Dalton in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 22 (similar rite of Mundas and Oraons).

7 Burton, 'Dahome,' vol. ii. p. 158.

8 A. S. Thomson, New Zealand,' i. 118; see Shortland, Traditions,' p. 145; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 353.

Charlevoix, Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 426. See also Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,' p. 353; Kracheninnikow, p. 117; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 276 (Samoieds).

which has even led West African negroes to commit suicide when in distant slavery, that they may revive in their own land in fact amounts among several of the lower races to a distinct doctrine of an earthly resurrection. One of the most remarkable forms which this belief assumes is when dark-skinned races, wanting some reasonable theory to account for the appearance among them of human creatures of a new strange sort, the white men, and struck with their pallid ghostly hue combined with powers that seem those of superhuman spiritual beings, have determined that the manes of their dead must have come back in this wondrous shape. The aborigines of Australia have expressed this theory in the simple formula, " Blackfellow tumble down, jump up Whitefellow." Thus a native who was hanged years ago at Melbourne expressed in his last moments the hopeful belief that he would jump up Whitefellow, and have lots of sixpences. The doctrine has been current among them since early days of European intercourse, and in accordance with it they habitually regarded the Englishmen as their own deceased kindred, come back to their country from an attachment to it in a former life. Real or imagined likeness completed the delusion, as when Sir George Grey was hugged and wept over by an old woman who found in him a son she had lost, or when a convict, recognized as a deceased relative, was endowed anew with the land he had possessed during his former life. A similar theory may be traced northward by the Torres Islands to New Caledonia, where the natives thought the white men to be the spirits of the dead who bring sickness, and assigned this as their reason for wishing to kill white men. In Africa, again, the belief is found among the Western negroes that they will rise again white, and the Bari of the White Nile, believing in the resurrection of the dead on earth, considered the first white people they saw as departed spirits thus come back.2

The lower psychology, drawing no definite line of demarcation between souls of men and of beasts, can at least admit without.

1 Grey, Australia,' vol. i. p. 301; Lang, 'Queensland,' pp. 34, 336; Bonwick,. Tasmanians,' p. 183; Scherzer, Voy. of Novara,' vol. iii. p. 34; Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 222, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. pp. 362-3, and in Lazarus and Steinthal's 'Zeitschrift,' 1. c.; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 424.

2 Römer, 'Guinea,' p. 85; Brun-Rollet, Nil Blanc,' etc. p. 234.

difficulty the transmission of human souls into the bodies of the lower animals. In North-West America we find some Indians believing the spirits of their dead to enter into bears, and travellers have heard of a tribe begging the life of a wrinklefaced old she grizzly bear as the recipient of the soul of some particular grandam, whom they fancied the creature to resemble.1 So, among the Esquimaux, a traveller noticed a widow who was living for conscience sake upon birds, and would not touch. walrus-meat, which the angekok had forbidden her for a time, because her late husband had entered into a walrus. Among the North American Indians, we hear of the Powhatans refraining from doing harm to certain small wood-birds which received the souls of their chiefs; of Huron souls turning into turtledoves after the burial of their bones at the Feast of the Dead;* of that pathetic funeral rite of the Iroquois, the setting free a bird on the evening of burial, to carry away the soul.5 In Mexico, the Tlascalans thought that after death the souls of nobles would animate beautiful singing birds, while plebeians passed into weasels and beetles and such like vile creatures." In Brazil, the Tecunas are said to have believed in transmigration after death into man or brute; the Içannas say that the souls of the brave will become beautiful birds feeding on pleasant fruits, but cowards will be turned into reptiles. A missionary heard a Chiriquane woman of Buenos Ayres say of a fox, "May not that be the spirit of my dead daughter?"8 Among the Abipones we hear of certain little ducks which fly in flocks at night, uttering a mournful hiss, and which fancy associates with the souls of the dead; while in Popayan it is said that doves were not killed, as inspired by departed souls.1 In Africa,

1 Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 113.

2 Hayes, Arctic Boat Journey,' p. 198.

Brinton,Myths of New World,' p. 102.

4 Brebeuf in Rel. des Jes.' 1636, p. 104.

Morgan, Iroquois,' p. 174.

Clavigero, Messico,' vol. ii. p. 5.

7 Martius, Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. pp. 446, 602; Markham in Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 195.

8 Brinton, p. 254.

Dobrizhoffer, Abipones,' vol. ii. pp. 74, 270.

10 Coreal in Brinton, L. c. See also J. G. Müller, p. 139 (Natchez), 223 (Caribs), 402 (Peru).

again, mention is made of the Maravi thinking that the souls of bad men become jackals, and good men snakes. The Zulus, while admitting that a man may turn into a wasp or lizard, work out in the fullest way the idea of the dead becoming snakes, a creature whose change of skin has so often been associated with the thought of resurrection and immortality. It is especially certain green or brown harmless snakes, which come gently and fearlessly into houses, which are considered to be "amatongo" or ancestors, and therefore are treated respectfully, and have offerings of food given them. In two ways, the dead man who has become a snake can still be recognized; if the creature is one-eyed, or has a scar or some other mark, it is recognized as the "itongo" of a man who was thus marked in life; but if he had no mark, the "itongo" appears in human shape in dreams, thus revealing the personality of the snake. In Guinea, monkeys found near a graveyard are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the dead, and in certain localities monkeys, crocodiles, and snakes, being thought men in metempsychosis, are held sacred. It is to be borne in mind that notions of this kind may form in barbaric psychology but a portion of the wide doctrine of the soul's future existence. For a conspicuous instance of this, let us take the system of the Gold-Coast negroes. They believe that the "kla" or "kra," the vital soul, becomes at death a "sisa" or ghost, which can remain in the house with the body, plague the living, and cause sickness, till it departs or is driven by the sorcerer to the bank of the River Wolta, where the ghosts build themselves houses and dwell. But they can and do come back from this Land of Souls. They can be born again as souls in new human bodies, and a soul who was poor before will now be rich. Many will not come back as men, but will become animals. To an African mother who has lost her child, it is a consolation to say, "He will come again." 4

In higher levels of culture, the theory of re-embodiment of

1 Waitz, vol. ii. p. 419 (Maravi).

Callaway, Rel. of Amazulu,' p. 196, etc.; Arbousset and Daumas, p. 277.

3 J. L. Wilson, W. Afr.' pp. 210, 218. See also Brun-Rollet, pp. 200, 234; Meiners, vol. i. p. 211.

Steinhauser in 'Mag. der Evang. Miss.' Basel, 1856, No. 2, p. 135.