Ecclesiastical Institutions Author:Herbert Spencer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL PIUESPLY DUTIES OF DESCENDANTS. § 594. As we have before seen (§ 87), it is in some cases the custom to destroy corpses for the purpose of prev... more »enting resurrection of them and consequent annoyance by them; and in other cases where no such measure of protection is taken, the dead are, without discrimination between relatives and others, dreaded as causers of misfortunes and diseases. Illustrations of this belief as existing among various savages were given in Part I, Chaps. XVI, XVII. Here is another from New Britain. The Matukanaputa natives "bury their dead underneath the hut which was lately inhabited by the deceased, after which the relatives go for a long canoe journey, staying away some months . . . they say . . . the spirit of the departed stays in his late residence for some time after his death, and eventually finding no one to torment goes away for good; the surviving relatives then return and remain there as formerly." Even where ghosts are regarded as generally looking on their descendants with goodwill, they are apt to take offence and to need propitiation. We read of the Santals that from the silent gloom of the adjacent grove— " the byegone generations watch their children and children's children playing their several parts in life, not altogether with an unfriendly eye. Nevertheless the ghostly inhabitants of the grove are sharp critics, and deal out crooked limbs, cramps and leprosy, unless duly appeased." But while recognizing the fact that gliosts in general arc usually held to be more or less malicious, we find, as mightbe expected, that the smallest amount of enmity and the greatest amount of amity are supposed to be felt by the ghosts of relatives. Indeed by some races such ghosts are considered purely beneficent; as by the Karens,...« less