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CONTENTS

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PRIMITIVE CULTURE.

CHAPTER XII.

ANIMISM-continued.

Doctrine of Soul's Existence after Death; its main divisions, Transmigration and Future Life-Transmigration of Souls: re-birth in Human and Animal Bodies, transference to Plants and Objects-Resurrection of Body scarcely held in savage religion-Future Life: a general though not universal doctrine of low races-Continued existence, rather than Immortality; second death of Soul-Ghost of Dead remains on earth, especially if corpse unburied; its attachment to bodily remains - Feasts of the Dead.

HAVING thus traced upward from the lower levels of culture the opinions of mankind as to the souls, spirits, ghosts, or phantoms, considered to belong to men, to the lower animals, to plants, and to things, we are now prepared to investigate one of the great religious doctrines of mankind, the belief in the soul's continued existence in a Life after Death. Here let us once more call to mind the consideration which cannot be too strongly put forward, that the doctrine of a Future Life as held by the lower races is the all but necessary outcome of savage Animism. The evidence that the lower races believe the figures of the dead seen in dreams and visions to be their surviving souls, not only goes far to account for the comparative universality of their belief in the continued existence of the soul after the death of the body, but it gives the key to many of their speculations on the nature of this existence, speculations

VOL. II.

B

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