It is a creed which springs from the very instinct of life. Two pelicans
returning to their nest found their two young ones dead from sunstroke.
The careful observer who was watching them has recorded that they _did
not seem to recognise_ the inert, fluffy heap as what _was_ their
fledglings; they hunted for them for a long while, moving the twigs of
the nest, and at last threw one of the dead birds out of it. So the
primitive man in presence of the dead knows that this is not _he_ and he
begins to ask: where is he?
But if every race in turn has asked that question, it was asked with
more insistence by some peoples than by others, and above all, it was
answered by some with more assurance. The Neolithic Turanians had
nothing misty in their vision of another world. It was full of movement
and variety: the chase, the battle, the feast, sleep and awakening,
night and day—these were there as well as here. Animals were essential
to the picture, and it never struck the Neolithic man that there was any
more difficulty about their living again than about his living again. If
he philosophised at all, it was probably after the fashion of the Eskimo
who holds the soul to be the “owner” of the body: the body, the flesh,
dies and may be devoured, but he who kills the body does not kill its
“owner.”
Vast numbers of bones have been found near the dolmens in Southern
France. The steed of the dead man galloped with him into the Beyond. The
faithful dog trotted by the little child, comrade and guardian. In the
exquisite Hebrew idyll Tobias has his dog as well as the angel to
accompany him on his adventurous earthly journey. The little Neolithic
boy had only the dog and his journey was longer; but to some grieving
fathers would it not be a rare comfort to imagine their lost darlings
guarded by loving four-footed friends along the Path of Souls?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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