Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/141

Rh by invisible spirits inflicting invisible wounds with invisible spears, or entering men's bodies and driving out their souls, or lodging in their hearts and making them raving mad. In the Indian Archipelago, the personal semi-human nature of the disease-spirits is clearly acknowledged by appeasing them with feasts and dances and offerings of food set out for them away in the woods, to induce them to quit their victims, or by sending tiny proas to sea with offerings, that spirits which have taken up their abode in sick men's bowels may embark and not come back. The animistic theory of disease is strongly marked in Polynesia, where every sickness is ascribed to spiritual action of deities, brought on by the offerings of enemies, or by the victim's violation of the laws of tapu. Thus in New Zealand each ailment is caused by a spirit, particularly an infant or undeveloped human spirit, which sent into the patient's body gnaws and. feeds inside; and the exorcist, finding the path by which such a disease-spirit came from below to feed on the vitals of a sick relative, will persuade it by a charm to get upon a flax-stalk and set off home. We hear, too, of an idea of the parts of the body — forehead, breast, stomach, feet, &c. — being apportioned each to a deity who inflicts aches and pains and ailments there. So in the Samoan group, when a man was near death, people were anxious to part on good terms with him, feeling assured that if he died with angry feelings towards any one, he would certainly return and bring calamity on that person or some one closely allied to him. This was considered a frequent source of disease and death, the spirit of a departed member of the family returning and taking up his abode in the head, chest, or stomach of a living man, and so causing sickness and death. If a man died suddenly, it was thought that he was