+55+. 1. One of the earliest (and also one of the most persistent) views of the future of souls is that they are reborn or reincarnated as human beings, or as beasts or plants or inanimate things. It was not unnatural that, when a new human being came into the world, it should be regarded as the reproduction of a former human being, especially if the physiological conditions of birth were not understood;[108] the basis of the belief may have been the general similarity between human forms, and, in some cases, the special similarity between the infant or the adult and some deceased person. An extension of the sphere of reincarnation would also naturally arise from the recognized kinship between man and other things, animate or inanimate. +56+. Examples of these views are found in many parts of the world. Tylor[109] and Marillier[110] have collected instances of such beliefs among savage tribes in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well as in higher religions (Brahmanism, Buddhism, Plato, Mani, the Jewish Kabbala, Swedenborg).[111] Other instances of belief in rebirth in human beings or in animals are found among the ancient Germans,[112] the people of Calabar,[113] the Torres Straits islanders,[114] the Central Australians,[115] and the Yorubans.[116] +57+. There is an obvious relation between the belief in reincarnation in animal form and the worship of animals;[117] both rest on the assumption of substantial identity of nature between man and other beings, an assumption which seems to be universal in early stages of culture, and is not without support in modern philosophic thought.[118] Ancient belief included gods in this circle of kinship--a view that appears in Brahmanism and the later Buddhism. +58+. The higher forms of the theory introduced a moral element into the process of reincarnation--the soul ascends or descends in the scale of being according to the moral character or illumination of its life on earth.[119] Thus it is given a practical bearing on everyday life--a result that is in accordance with all religious history, in which we find that religious faith always appropriates and utilizes the ethical ideas of its time. +59+. At the present day the interest in the hypothesis of reincarnation springs from its supposed connection with the doctrine of immortality. Brahmanists and Buddhists maintain that it is the only sure basis for this doctrine; but this view appears not to have met with wide acceptance. +60+. 2. An all but universal belief among lower tribes is that departed souls remain near their earthly abodes, haunting the neighborhood of the body or the grave or the village.[120] It is apparently assumed that a soul is more at home in places which it knew in its previous life, and this assumption is confirmed by sights and sounds, chiefly during the night, that are interpreted as the forms and utterances of wandering souls.