Creed and Deed: A Series of DiscoursesAdler, Felix
Religion
Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses
Adler, Felix
Ethical culture movement; Ethics; Religion
It is here proper to remark that the savage tribes who believe in an
after existence, do not in many instances claim this privilege for
themselves alone, but share it willingly with the lower animals and even
with inanimate objects. Weapons, utensils, and even victuals--have their
ghostly representatives like men. When a great chief dies, his widow is
often forced by public opinion to follow him to the grave, in order that
the departed brave may not be wifeless in the hereafter. But besides the
widow, his horse, his war-club, his girdle, his favorite trinkets are
buried or burned with him to serve his use or vanity in spectre-land.
From what has preceded, it must be clear that the savage's conception of
a ghost bears but a faint and distant resemblance to the idea of soul,
as it became current in the schools of philosophy; nor can the latter
derive support from the ignorant reasonings, the hasty inductions of
primitive man. On the lower levels of culture the idea of immortality
indeed is quite unknown. If the ghost continues its shadowy existence
after death, it is none the less liable to come to an abrupt end, and
then nothing whatever of its former substance remains; it is a pale,
filmy thing, exposed to the inroads of the hostile elements, surrounded
by numerous dangers, to which it may at any moment succumb. In the Tonga
Islands only the souls of the well-born are supposed to survive at all.
The common people have no souls worth speaking of, and when they die,
are completely extinguished. The ghosts of Guinea negroes are compelled
to approach the bank of the terrible river of death. Some of them are
thereupon wafted across to lead pleasant lives on the opposite side,
others are drowned in the stream, or beaten to atoms with a club. With
the Fijians it is always a matter of doubt whether a soul will succeed
at all in maintaining its feeble existence after it has left its
protecting house of sinew and bone. But they open a peculiarly dismal
prospect to wifeless souls. Nanananga, a fierce demoniac being, watches
for them on the shore as they approach, and dashes them to pieces upon
the rocks. The Greenlanders affirm that after death the soul enters
upon a long, lone journey over a mountain full of precipitous descents,
covered with ice and snow. The storms howl about its path, and every
step is fraught with pain and danger. If any harm happens to the poor
wanderer here, then it dies "the other death" from which there is no
re-awakening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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