Note (return) — LECTURE XVI

From this account of Dr. Codrington we see that it is only the ghosts of great and powerful people who are worshipped; the ghosts of ordinary people are indeed feared, but no worship is paid to them. Further, we are told that it is the ghosts of those who have lately died that are deemed to be most powerful and are therefore most regarded; as the dead are forgotten, their ghosts cease to be worshipped, their power fades away,557 and their place in the religion of the people is taken by the ghosts of the more recently departed. In fact here, as elsewhere, the existence of the dead seems to be dependent on the memory of the living; when they are forgotten they cease to exist. Further, it deserves to be noticed that in the Solomon Islands what we should call a man's natural powers and capacities are regarded as supernatural endowments acquired by communication with a mighty ghost. If a man is a great warrior, it is not because he is strong of arm, quick of eye, and brave of heart; it is because he is supported by the ghost of a dead warrior, whose power he has drawn to himself through an amulet of stone tied round his neck, or a tuft of leaves in his belt, or a tooth attached to one of his fingers, or a spell by the recitation of which he can enlist the aid of the ghost.558 And similarly with all other pre-eminent capacities and virtues; in the mind of the Solomon Islanders, they are all supernatural gifts and graces bestowed on men by ghosts. This all-pervading supernatural power the Central Melanesian calls mana.559 Thus for these savages the whole world teems with ghostly influences; their minds are filled, we may almost say, obsessed, with a sense of the unseen powers which encompass and determine even in its minute particulars the life of man on earth: in their view the visible world is, so to say, merely a puppet-show of which the strings are pulled and the puppets made to dance by hands invisible. Truly the attitude of these savages to the universe is deeply religious.