s on the subject, since details recorded
by an accurate observer are far more instructive than the vague
generalities of superficial observers, which are too often all the
information we possess as to the religion of savages.

[Sidenote: Melanesian theory of the soul.]

In the first place, all the Central Melanesians believe that man is
composed of a body and a soul, that death is the final parting of the
soul from the body, and that after death the soul continues to exist as
a conscious and more or less active being.[553] Thus the creed of these
savages on this profound subject agrees fundamentally with the creed of
the average European; if my hearers were asked to state their beliefs as
to the nature of life and death, I imagine that most of them would
formulate them in substantially the same way. However, when the Central
Melanesian savage attempts to define the nature of the vital principle
or soul, which animates the body during life and survives it after
death, he finds himself in a difficulty; and to continue the parallel I
cannot help thinking that if my hearers in like manner were invited to
explain their conception of the soul, they would similarly find
themselves embarrassed for an answer. But an examination of the Central
Melanesian theory of the soul would lead us too far from our immediate
subject; we must be content to say that, "whatever word the Melanesian
people use for soul, they mean something essentially belonging to each
man's nature which carries life to his body with it, and is the seat of
thought and intelligence, exercising therefore power which is not of the
body and is invisible in its action."[554] However the soul may be
defined, the Melanesians are universally of opinion that it survives the
death of the body and goes away to some more or less distant region,
where the spirits of all the dead congregate and continue for the most
part to live for an indefinite time, though some of them, as we shall
see presently, are supposed to die a second death and so to come to an
end altogether. In Western Melanesia, that is, in the Solomon Islands,
the abode of the dead is supposed to be in certain islands, which differ
in the creed of different islanders; but in Eastern Melanesia the abode
of the dead is thought to be a subterranean region called Panoi.[555]

[Sidenote: Distinction between ghosts of power and ghosts of no
account.]

But though the souls of the departed go away to the spirit land,