It is significant that prehistoric remains show no traces of cremation prior to the beginning of the bronze age--a period in which man was capable of utilizing the high degrees of heat necessary to melt metals. The tremendous heat required for the melting of bronze might well have suggested the idea of also melting man, as it were, in the fire. Nevertheless, external circumstances such as these played but a secondary rôle. They leave unanswered the decisive question regarding the motives that led to the substitution of cremation for interment. This, then, remains our unsolved problem, inasmuch as the economic motives at the basis of the present endeavour to reintroduce cremation were certainly not operative at the time of its origin. With reference to the origin of cremation, only psychological probabilities are possible to us. These are suggested particularly by the ceremonies which accompany cremation in India--the country where this custom has continued to preserve an important cult significance down to the very present. Indeed, even in our own day it has hardly been possible to eradicate from India the custom of burning the widow of the deceased. In particular, two different motives to the custom suggest themselves. In the first place, as we shall presently see, sacrificial usages, and especially the more advanced forms of the sacrifice to the deceased, are closely connected with the taboo and purification customs. Purification from a taboo violation, however, was attained primarily by two means, water and fire. The latter of these means was employed even in very primitive times. Now, the corpse, above all else, was regarded as taboo; contact with it was thought to bring contamination and to demand the rites of lustration. The one who touched a corpse was likewise held to be taboo, and as a result he himself might not be touched before having undergone lustration. By one of those associative reversals which are common in the field of mythology, this then reacted upon the corpse itself. The corpse also must be subjected to a lustration by which it is purified. Such a purification from all earthly dross is mediated, according to the ideas of India, by fire. When the body is burned, the soul becomes pure. But connected with this belief, as we may conjecture, is still a second idea. The soul or psyche departs in the smoke which ascends from the body as this is burned. The body remains below in the ashes, while the soul soars aloft to heaven in the smoke. In this way, the burning of the corpse is closely connected with celestial mythology, which, indeed, was likewise developed relatively early among the Indo-Germanic peoples, with whom cremation had its centre. The customs of the Semitic peoples were different. They adopted the idea of a celestial migration of the soul only at a late period, probably under Indo-Aryan influences; but even then they continued to practise the ancient custom of burial. Amid these differences, however,