Chapter 12 The Danger of the Soul: The Soul Is the Ego in People and Animals

The preceding examples tell us that the office of the divine king or priest is often bound by a series of repulsive restrictions or taboos, the main purpose of which seems to be to protect the life of the god-man for the benefit of the people.But if the purpose of these taboos is to preserve his life, it is asked: what effect did their observance of them serve in this end?To understand this we must know the nature of the dangers which threatened the king's life, from which the strange restrictions were designed to protect him.Therefore, we must ask: What was the ancient people's understanding of death?What do you think was the cause of death?How can death be prevented?

Just as savages explain inanimate natural processes as living beings operating in or behind natural phenomena, so they understand living phenomena themselves.In his view, an animal lives and acts only because there is a small animal in its body that makes it move; if a person lives and acts, it is also because there is a small person or small animal in the human body that makes him act.The small animal in the animal body, the villain in the human body, is the soul.Just as the activities of animals or people are interpreted as the presence of the soul in the body, so sleep and death are interpreted as the departure of the soul from the body.Sleep or slumber is a temporary disembodied state of the soul, and death is a permanent disembodied state.If death is the eternal departure of the soul, then the way to prevent death is not to let the soul leave the body, and if it leaves, we must try to ensure its return.The precautions that savages take to this end are some forms of taboos, designed for nothing but to ensure that the soul remains in the body or returns after it has departed.In short, they are protectors or defenders of life.Below we will use examples to illustrate.

A European missionary said to some black Australians: "I am not just one person as you imagine, but two people." The black people laughed out loud.The missionary continued: "You can laugh as much as you like, but I tell you: I am two people combined into one person; you see that this body of mine is one me, and there is another ego inside this body. , that was invisible. The big body died and was buried, and when the big body died, the small body flew away." To this some blacks replied, "Yes, yes, we There are two of them, and we also have an ego in our chests.” When asked where the ego went after death, some said it went behind the bushes, while others said it went into the sea.Others said they didn't know.Hurons [members of a confederacy of Indian clans inhabiting Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. ] think that the soul has a head, a body and four limbs, in short, it is a complete small self of man himself.The Eskimos believe that the soul has the same form as the body to which it is attached, but of a more intelligent and subtle nature.According to the Lutka [a tribe of Indians], the form of the soul is a tiny little person who dwells in the center of the human head.As long as it stands upright, his owner is healthy and healthy.If for any reason he cannot remain upright, his owner is rendered unconscious.The Indian tribes of the Lower Fraser River [in western Canada] hold that man has four souls, of which the principal one is endowed with the body of a little man, and the other three are his shadow.The Malays imagine the soul as a very small person, about the size of a thumb, mostly invisible to the human eye, corresponding to the shape, size, proportions and even skin color of the human body in which it lives, although it is not intangible However, it is light and misty. If it enters a certain object, it can replace it. It can come and go quickly. When a person is asleep, comatose or sick, he will leave temporarily, and after death, he will leave forever.

This little person is completely similar to the human body it is attached to, in other words, soul and body.Just as the human body is fat or thin, heavy or light, tall or short, the soul is also fat or thin, heavy or light, tall or short.Nias Island [Located in the Indian Ocean, west of Sumatra. The natives on ] believe that before a person is born, he is asked how tall and heavy he wants a soul, and then he is given according to his wish.The heaviest soul given to people reaches about ten grams.A man's lifespan is in proportion to the length of his soul.Children die young because their souls are short, the Fijians [the inhabitants of the Fiji Islands in the Southwest Pacific, north of New Zealand. ] The notion that the soul is a small person is very evident in the Nakro tribe's custom of following the death of its chief.The custom is: after the death of the chief, his heirs put his body on the exquisite mattress, anoint and bathe him, and say: "Master chief, please get up, let's start together, this day has come to the island " Then guide the chief's body to the river, where there are people who specialize in ferrying ghosts to ferry the ghosts of the Nakro people across the river.When they thus escorted the chief on his last journey, they all covered him with a large fan in their hands, because "his soul was but a child" (as one of them explained to a missionary).Punjabi people are used to tattooing patterns on their bodies. They believe that when a person is dying, the soul of the person, that is, the little man or woman in the body, also ascends to heaven with the tattoos that decorated the body during his lifetime.Sometimes, however, the human soul is not considered to have a human form, but an animal form.