spirit of his dead wife, who might take a fancy to come and play him some mischievous prank; for the souls of the dead come back often and their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the spirits without exception are bad and have no pleasure but in harming the living. Happily people can keep them at bay by a stick, fire, an arrow, or a tomahawk. The condition of a widower, far from exciting pity or compassion, only serves to render him the object of horror and fear. Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being more or less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to give the lie to public opinion. They are forced to become idlers and thieves, since they are forbidden to work: no work, no gardens; no gardens, no food: steal then they must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied without some audacity and knavery at a pinch.”[148.1] [Sidenote: The widespread fear of ghosts among mankind has probably had the effect of making men less ready to take each other’s lives.] It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply evidence of the terror which a belief in ghosts has spread among mankind, and of the consequences, sometimes tragical, sometimes {149} ludicrous, which that belief has brought in its train.[149.1] The preceding instances may suffice for my purpose, which is merely to indicate the probability that this widespread superstition has served a useful purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human life. For it is reasonable to suppose that men are more loth to spill the blood of their fellows when they believe that by so doing they expose themselves to the vengeance of an angry and powerful spirit whom it is difficult either to evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we are not left wholly to conjecture. [Sidenote: In China the faith in the power of ghosts is universal.] In the vast empire of China, as we are assured by the best living authority on Chinese religion, the fear of ghosts has actually produced this salutary result. Amongst the Chinese the faith in the existence of the dead, in their power to reward kindness and avenge injury, is universal and inveterate; it has been handed down from an immemorial past, and it is nourished in the experience, or rather in the mind, of everybody by hundreds of ghost stories, all of which are accepted as authentic. Nobody doubts that ghosts may interfere at any moment for good or evil in the business of life, in the regulation of human destiny. To the Chinese their dead are not what our dead are to most of us, a dim sad memory, a shadowy congregation somewhere far away, to whom we may go in time, but who cannot come to us or exercise any influence on the land of the living. On the contrary, in the opinion of the Chinese the dead not only exist but keep up a most lively intercourse, an active interchange of good and evil, with the survivors. There is, indeed, even in China, a line of demarcation between men and spirits, between the living and the