Note 45 — Chapter III · TOTEMISM AND FETISHISM.
Reading edition
Why spirits should live in stones has been debated. Mr. Campbell perhaps presses the matter too far when he suggests that stones were by early man found to contain fire, and that heated stones being found useful in disease, cooking, and the like may have strengthened the idea. “The earliest theory was perhaps that as the life of the millet was in the millet seed and the life of the Mango tree was in the Mango stone, a human spirit could live in a rock or a pebble. The belief that the soul, or part of the soul of a man, lives in his bones, seems closely connected with the belief in the stone as a spirit house. Probably it was an early belief that the bones should be kept, so that if the spirit comes back and worries the survivors he may have a place to go to.”45