LECTURE XVII
Reading edition
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF CENTRAL MELANESIA (concluded)
Public sacrifices to ghosts in the Solomon Islands.
First-fruits of the canarium nuts sacrificed to ghosts.
Sacrifice of first-fruits to ancestral spirits in Tanna.
Private ghosts. Fighting ghosts kept as auxiliaries.
Garden ghosts.
Human sacrifices to ghosts.
Sacrifices to ghosts in Saa.
Sacrifices of first-fruits to ghosts in Saa.
Vicarious sacrifices for the sick.
Sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz. The dead represented by a stock.
Native account of sacrifices to ghosts in Santa Cruz.
Combination of magic with religion.
Prayers to the dead.
Sanctuaries of ghosts in Florida.
Sanctuaries of ghosts in Malanta.
Sanctuaries which are not burial-grounds.
Ghosts in animals, such as sharks, alligators, snakes, bonitos, and frigate-birds.
The belief in ghosts underlies the Melanesian conception of magic.
Illness generally thought to be caused by ghosts.
Diagnosis of ghosts who have caused illness.
Contrast between Melanesian and European medicine.
Thus it appears that for a medical practitioner in Melanesia the first requisite is an intimate acquaintance, not with the anatomy of the human frame and the properties of drugs, but with ghosts, their personal peculiarities, habits, and haunts. Only by means of the influence which such a knowledge enables him to exert on these powerful and dangerous beings can the good physician mitigate and assuage the sufferings of poor humanity. His professional skill, while it certainly aims at the alleviation of physical evils, attains its object chiefly, if not exclusively, by a direct appeal to those higher, though invisible, powers which encompass the life of man, or at all events of the Melanesian. The firm faith in the spiritual and the unseen which these sable doctors display in their treatment of the sick presents a striking contrast to the procedure of their European colleagues, who trust exclusively to the use of mere physical remedies, such as drugs and lancets, now carving the body of the sufferer with knives, and now inserting substances, about which they know little, into places about which they know nothing. Has not science falsely so called still much to learn from savagery?
The weather believed to be regulated by ghosts and spirits. Weather-doctors.
Black magic working through personal refuse or rubbish of the victim.
Black magic working without any personal relic of the victim. The ghost-shooter.
Prophecy inspired by ghosts.
Divination by means of ghosts.
Taboo based on a fear of ghosts.
The life of the Central Melanesians deeply influenced by their belief in the survival of the human soul after death.
What I have said may suffice to impress you with a sense of the deep practical influence which a belief in the survival of the human soul after death exercises on the life and conduct of the Central Melanesian savage. To him the belief is no mere abstract theological dogma or speculative tenet, the occasional theme of edifying homilies and pious meditation; it is an inbred, unquestioning, omnipresent conviction which affects his thoughts and actions daily and at every turn; it guides his fortunes as an individual and controls his behaviour as a member of a community, by inculcating a respect for the rights of others and enforcing a submission to the public authorities. With him the fear of ghosts and spirits is a bulwark of morality and a bond of society; for he firmly believes in their unseen presence everywhere and in the punishments which they can inflict on wrongdoers. His whole theory of causation differs fundamentally from ours and necessarily begets a fundamental difference of practice. Where we see natural forces and material substances, the Melanesian sees ghosts and spirits. A great gulf divides his conception of the world from ours; and it may be doubted whether education will ever enable him to pass the gulf and to think and act like us. The products of an evolution which has extended over many ages cannot be forced like mushrooms in a summer day; it is vain to pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge before it is ripe.