Borneo_
(London, 1912), ii. 47.]

[Footnote 677: Compare _Totemism and Exogamy_, iii. 297-299.]

LECTURE XIX

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE NATIVES OF EASTERN MELANESIA (FIJI)
(_continued_)

[Sidenote: Fijian indifference to death.]

At the close of last lecture I illustrated the unquestioning belief
which the Fijians entertain with regard to the survival of the human
soul after death. "The native superstitions with regard to a future
state," we are told, "go far to explain the apparent indifference of the
people about death; for, while believing in an eternal existence, they
shut out from it the idea of any moral retribution in the shape either
of reward or punishment. The first notion concerning death is that of
simple rest, and is thus contained in one of their rhymes:--

"Death is easy:
Of what use is life?
To die is rest."[678]

Again, another writer, speaking of the Fijians, says that "in general,
the passage from life to death is considered as one from pain to
happiness, and I was informed that nine out of ten look forward to it
with anxiety, in order to escape from the infirmities of old age, or the
sufferings of disease."[679]

[Sidenote: John Jackson's account of the burying alive of a young Fijian
man. Son buried alive by his father.]

The cool indifference with which the Fijians commonly regarded their own
death and that of other people might be illustrated by many examples. I
will give one in the words of an English eye-witness, who lived among
these savages for some time like one of themselves. At a place on the
coast of Viti Levu, the largest of the Fijian Islands, he says, "I
walked into a number of temples, which were very plentiful, and at last
into a _bure theravou_ (young man's _bure_), where I saw a tall young
man about twenty years old. He appeared to be somewhat ailing, but not
at all emaciated. He was rolling up the mat he had been sleeping upon,
evidently preparing to go away somewhere. I addressed him, and asked him
where he was going, when he immediately answered that he was going to be
buried. I observed that he was not dead yet, but he said he soon should
be dead when he was put under ground. I asked him why he was going to be
buried? He said it was three days since he had eaten anything, and
consequently he was getting very thin; and that if he lived any longer
he would be much thinner, and then the women would call him a _lila_
(skeleton), and laugh at