+54+. _Abode of the surviving soul._[106] Opinions regarding the destiny of the surviving soul have changed from time to time in accordance with topographical conditions and with changes in intellectual and moral culture. There is no place or thing on or under or above the ground that has not been regarded, at some time and by some communities, as its abode. The selection of the particular thing or place has been determined by local conditions--by what was supposed to be observation of facts, or by what was conceived to be appropriate. The obscurity of the subject has allowed free play to savage imagination. The paucity of data makes it impossible to give a complete statement of the views that have been held, or to arrange such as are known in accurate chronological order; but the principal opinions may be mentioned, following in a general way the order of refinement.[107]
+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.