Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/702

682 eaten, and if we make this supposition I venture to think that we have a clew to the origin of fasting after a death. People in fact originally refrained from eating just in those circumstances in which they considered that they might possibly in eating have devoured a ghost. This supposition explains why, so long as the corpse is in the house, the mourners may eat outside of the house but not in it. Again, it explains why those who have been in contact with the dead and have not yet purified themselves (i. e., have not yet placed a barrier between themselves and the ghost) are not allowed to touch the food they eat; obviously the ghost might be clinging to them and might be transferred from their person to the food, and so eaten.

This theory further explains the German superstition mentioned above, that no one within hearing must eat while the passing-bell is tolling. For the passing-bell is rung when a soul is issuing for the last time from its mortal tabernacle, and, if any one in the neighborhood were at this moment to eat, who knows but that his teeth might close on the passing soul? This explanation is confirmed by the companion superstition that no one should sleep while the passing-bell is tolling, else will his sleep be the sleep of death. Put into primitive language, this means that, as the soul quits the body in sleep, if it chanced in this, its temporary absence, to fall in with a soul that was taking its eternal flight, it might, perhaps, be coaxed or bullied into accompanying it, and might thus convert what had been intended to be merely a ramble, into a journey to that bourn from which no traveler returns.

All this time, however, Plutarch has been waiting for his answer; but, perhaps, as he has already waited two thousand years, he will not object to be kept in suspense a very little longer. For the sake of brevity in what remains, I will omit all mention of the particular usages upon a comparison of which my answer is based, and will confine myself to stating in the briefest way their general result.

We have seen the various devices which the ingenuity of early man struck out for the purpose of giving an "iron welcome to the dead." In all of them, however, it was presupposed that the body was in the hands of the survivors, and had been by them securely buried; that was the first and most essential condition, and, if it was not fulfilled, no amount of secondary precautions would avail to bar the ghost.

But what happened when the body could not be found, as when the man died at sea or abroad? Here the all-important question was, What could be done to lay the wandering ghost? For wander he would, till his body was safe under the sod, and, by supposition, his body was not to be found. The case was a difficult one, but early man