(M155) Among the Melanesians of Mota, one of the New Hebrides islands, the conception of an external soul is carried out in the practice of daily life. The Mota word for soul is _atai_. “The use of the word _atai_ in Mota seems properly and originally to have been to signify something peculiarly and intimately connected with a person and sacred to him, something that he has set his fancy upon when he has seen it in what has seemed to him a wonderful manner, or some one has shewn it to him as such. Whatever the thing might be the man believed it to be the reflection of his own personality; he and his _atai_ flourished, suffered, lived, and died together. But the word must not be supposed to have been borrowed from this use and applied secondarily to describe the soul; the word carries a sense with it which is applicable alike to that second self, the visible object so mysteriously connected with the man, and to this invisible second self which we call the soul. There is another Mota word, _tamaniu_, which has almost if not quite the same meaning as _atai_ has when it describes something animate or inanimate which a man has come to believe to have an existence intimately connected with his own. The word _tamaniu_ may be taken to be properly ‘likeness,’ and the noun form of the adverb _tama_, as, like. It was not every one in Mota who had his _tamaniu_; only some men fancied that they had this relation to a lizard, a snake, or it might be a stone; sometimes the thing was sought for and found by drinking the infusion of certain leaves and heaping together the dregs; then whatever living thing was first seen in or upon the heap was the _tamaniu_. It was watched but not fed or worshipped; the natives believed that it came at call, and that the life of the man was bound up with the life of his _tamaniu_, if a living thing, or with its safety; should it die, or if not living get broken or be lost, the man would die. Hence in case of sickness they would send to see if the _tamaniu_ was safe and well. This word has never been used apparently for the soul in Mota; but in Aurora in the New Hebrides it is the accepted equivalent. It is well worth observing that both the _atai_ and the _tamaniu_, and it may be added the Motlav _talegi_, is something which has a substantial existence of its own, as when a snake or stone is a man’s _atai_ or _tamaniu_; a soul then when called by these names is conceived of as something in a way substantial.”(545)