Note 136 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

e.g. Is. 2, 47: βοηθήσατε καὶ ἡμῖν καὶ ἐκείνῳ τῷ ἐν Ἅιδου ὄντι. Strictly speaking no one can βοηθεῖν the departed in Hades. Few nations have entirely escaped such contradictions between a cult of the dead in the house or at a grave and the conception of the relegation of the soul to an inaccessible other world. They arise from two simultaneously existing mental attitudes (representing also different stages of culture) towards these obscure subjects. The naive theology of the common people reconciles such discrepancies by attributing two souls to men, one of which goes down to Hades while the other remains beside the still-animated body and receives the offerings of the family: e.g. North American Indians: Müller, Ges. d. Amer. Urrel. 66; cf. Tylor, i, 434. These two souls are in reality the creation of two mutually incompatible modes of thought.