“To be a man is easy, but to act up to one’s responsibilities as such is hard.Yet to be a man once again is harder still.For those who would be born again in some happy state there is no great difficulty;It is only necessary to keep mouth and heart in harmony.”
“To be a man is easy, but to act up to one’s responsibilities as such is hard.Yet to be a man once again is harder still.For those who would be born again in some happy state there is no great difficulty;It is only necessary to keep mouth and heart in harmony.”
“To be a man is easy, but to act up to one’s responsibilities as such is hard.
Yet to be a man once again is harder still.
For those who would be born again in some happy state there is no great difficulty;
It is only necessary to keep mouth and heart in harmony.”
When the shades have read these words they try to jump on shore, but are beaten back into the water by two huge devils. One has on a black official hat and embroidered clothes; in his hand heholds a paper pencil, and over his shoulder he carries a sharp sword. Instruments of torture hang at his waist, fiercely he glares out of his large round eyes and laughs a horrid laugh. His name isShort Life. The other has a dirty face smeared with blood; he has on a white coat, an abacus in his hand and a rice sack over his shoulder. Round his neck hangs a string of paper money; his brow contracts hideously, and he utters long sighs. His name isThey have their reward, and his duty is to push the shades into the red water. The wicked and foolish rejoice at the prospect of being born once more as human beings; but the better shades weep and mourn that in life they did not lay up a store of virtuous acts, and thus pass away from the state of mortals for ever.[758]Yet they all rush on to birth like an infatuated or drunken crowd; and again, in their early childhood, hanker after the forbidden flavours.[759]Then, regardless of consequences, they begin to destroy life, and thus forfeit all claims to the mercy and compassion of God. They take no thought as to the end that must overtake them; and finally, they bring themselves once more to the same horrid plight.
“The rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors, who are supposed to be still existing, and to be capable of working good or evil to their descendants.”—Spencer’s Essays.Vol. iii.,p.102.—The Origin of Animal Worship.
“As a general rule, people are apt to consider it impossible for a man to be in two places at once, and indeed a saying to that effect has become a popular saw. But the rule is so far from being universally accepted, that the word ‘bilocation’ has been invented to express the miraculous faculty possessed by certain saints of the Roman Church, of being in two places at once; like St. Alfonso di Liguori, who had the useful power of preaching his sermon in church while he was confessing penitents at home.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. i.,p.447.
“Hence the various burial rites—the placing of weapons and valuables along with the body, the daily bringing of food to it,&c.I hope hereafter, to show that with such knowledge of facts as he has, this interpretation is the most reasonable the savage can arrive at.”—Spencer’s Essays.Vol. iii.,p.104.—The Origin of Animal Worship.
“The distinction so easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one which the savage recognises in but a vagueway; and he cannot express even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself.”—Spencer’s Essays.Vol. iii.,pp.103, 104.
“The ghost or phantasm seen by the dreamer or the visionary is an unsubstantial form, like a shadow, and thus the familiar term of theshadecomes in to express the soul. Thus the Tasmanian word for the shadow is also that for the spirit; the Algonquin Indians describe a man’s soul asotahchuk, ‘his shadow;’ the Quiché language usesnatubfor ‘shadow, soul;’ the Arawacuejameans ‘shadow, soul, image;’ the Abipones made the one wordloákalserve for ‘shadow, soul, echo, image.’”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. i.,p.430.
“Thus the dead in Purgatory knew that Dante was alive when they saw that, unlike theirs, his figure cast a shadow on the ground.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. i.,p.431.
“The savage, conceiving a corpse to be deserted by the active personality who dwelt in it, conceives this active personality to be still existing, and his feelings and ideas concerning it form the basis of his superstitions.”—Spencer’s Essays.Vol. iii.,p.103.—The Origin of Animal Worship.
“Whether the Buddhists receive the full Hindu doctrine of the migration of the individual soul from birth to birth, or whether they refine away into metaphysical subtleties the notion of continued personality, they do consistently and systematically hold that aman’s life in former existences is the cause of his now being what he is, while at this moment he is accumulating merit or demerit whose result will determine his fate in future lives.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. ii.,p.12.
“Memory, it is true, fails generally to recall these past births, but memory, as we know, stops short of the beginning even of this present life.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. ii.,p.12.
“As for believers, savage or civilised, in the great doctrine of metempsychosis, these not only consider that an animal may have a soul, but that this soul may have inhabited a human being, and thus the creature may be in fact their own ancestor or once familiar friend.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. i.,p.469.
“Orthodox Buddhism decided against the tree-souls, and consequently against the scruple to harm them, declaring trees to have no mind nor sentient principle, though admitting that certain dewas or spirits do reside in the body of trees, and speak from within them.”—Tylor’sPrimitive Culture.Vol. i.,p.475.
THOS.DE LA RUE AND CO., PRINTERS, BUNHILL ROW, LONDON.