Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/216

204 had a similar experience. Aristophanes tells us that Pisander betook himself to a certain lake to see his own soul, which had deserted him, evoked by Socrates.

The belief of savages in the possibility of the soul leaving the body during life has been widely traced. In western Africa, when a man wakes up with a pain in his body or muscles, it is because his spirit has wandered abroad in the night and been flogged by some other spirit. The Feejeeans believe that the spirit of a man will leave the body to trouble other people when asleep, and, when any one faints or dies, his spirit can be brought back by calling after it. Du Bose tells us that in China often at night is heard the weird sound of a man calling back the body of a sick child. In the streets a cloth will be spread on the ground, with some beans thrown on it. An old woman stands by it, and calls the child by name: "Ah, do come back!" A voice up-stairs responds, "Ah!" Or the mother goes in front with a lighted lantern in hand, burning paper money at every corner. The father follows with the sick boy's clothing in his hat, crying, "My son, come back, come back!" An insect on the roof is caught, folded nicely in paper, and put beside the sick boy's pillow, and thus the lost soul is found. Sickness comes from losing his soul, and recovery follows its return home. Le Clerc recounts a story, current among the Algonquins, of an old Indian chief, whose favorite son having died, journeyed to the land of souls for his recovery. When once there, he begged so hard for his son's soul that the Indian Pluto finally gave it to him in the form and size of a nut, which, by pressing between his hands, he forced into a small leathern bag. Instructed to place the soul in the body of his son, who thereupon would come to life, the happy father hastened back, where he was greeted with dancing and rejoicing. Wishing to take part in these festivities, he handed the boy's soul for safe-keeping into the hands of a squaw. Tempted by a curiosity which has proved so fatal in all religious cults, the woman opened the bag to peep into it, when the soul escaped and returned to the land of the dead. Turner tells us that the soul of the chief Puepuemai was wrapped up and carried around in a leaf. The Ojibways describe how one of their chiefs died, but, while they were watching the body on the third night, his shadow came back into it, and he sat up and told them how he had traveled to the river of Death, but had been stopped there and sent back to his people. The Malays do not like to wake a sleeper, lest they should hurt him by disturbing his body when his soul is out.