If we seek the recondite meaning hidden behind the two words which throughout Polynesia expressed in its most general sense the concept of the Divine, _io_, and _atua_, we discover that it is in both “the central cause or essentiality of Life.”[62] So among the Indians of Michoacan the epithet of the chief goddess of their cult was, “The Sustainer of Life”; the highest divinity of the Aztecs was Tonacatecutli, “God of Our Life”; and in the Muskoghean tribes His name was “The Master of Life.”
So full, I say, was the mind of primitive man with the vision of universal and immortal life, that to him there was no such thing as death. The fact, indeed, remained. The tree was shrivelled by the lightning, the brute fell by the arrow, man himself gasped his last breath and lay an inert mass. The loved child, the warrior hero, passed out of sight to the unseen beyond.
But not forever! No! They hovered around the familiar spot, they visited the living in dreams, their voices were heard in the rustling leaves and the falling waters. Not only men, but all things lived again. In the mythology of the Vitians there is a heaven even for cocoanuts! To the Kamschatkans the smallest flies have souls which are immortal.[63]
This is the doctrine of souls, the source of those innumerable beliefs and rites which are centred around the sepulchre, so solemn, so profoundly significant, that many writers have maintained that “religion began, when the living thought seriously of the dead”; that “all religions have crystallised around the tomb”; and that in the propitiation of departed souls, in the worship of the spirits of ancestors, and in the preparation in this life for another beyond the grave, the whole aim and essence of religion are embraced.[64]
I have already said that this is a hasty assertion, for there are religions which recognise a soul scarcely or at all; but they are not of a primitive character.[65] In the latter, some such belief is universally shown either by the treatment of the corpse, or the modes of mourning for the dead, or by myths concerning the life and actions of the departed.
It is generally held that the soul is multiple, two, three, or four being assigned to a person. One or more of these may perish with the body, or shortly afterwards; but one at least survives indefinitely, and concerns itself with the doings of those it has left behind in life. Its powers for good and evil are increased by its translation to another sphere of existence; and to secure its assistance, or at least its neutrality, is the aim of that cult of the departed souls and of the spirits of ancestors which is so widely defined in primitive conditions.