as the reproduction of a former human being, especially if the
physiological conditions of birth were not understood;[108] the basis of
the belief may have been the general similarity between human forms,
and, in some cases, the special similarity between the infant or the
adult and some deceased person. An extension of the sphere of
reincarnation would also naturally arise from the recognized kinship
between man and other things, animate or inanimate.

+56+. Examples of these views are found in many parts of the world.
Tylor[109] and Marillier[110] have collected instances of such beliefs
among savage tribes in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well
as in higher religions (Brahmanism, Buddhism, Plato, Mani, the Jewish
Kabbala, Swedenborg).[111] Other instances of belief in rebirth in human
beings or in animals are found among the ancient Germans,[112] the
people of Calabar,[113] the Torres Straits islanders,[114] the Central
Australians,[115] and the Yorubans.[116]

+57+. There is an obvious relation between the belief in reincarnation
in animal form and the worship of animals;[117] both rest on the
assumption of substantial identity of nature between man and other
beings, an assumption which seems to be universal in early stages of
culture, and is not without support in modern philosophic thought.[118]
Ancient belief included gods in this circle of kinship--a view that
appears in Brahmanism and the later Buddhism.

+58+. The higher forms of the theory introduced a moral element into the
process of reincarnation--the soul ascends or descends in the scale of
being according to the moral character or illumination of its life on
earth.[119] Thus it is given a practical bearing on everyday life--a
result that is in accordance with all religious history, in which we
find that religious faith always appropriates and utilizes the ethical
ideas of its time.

+59+. At the present day the interest in the hypothesis of reincarnation
springs from its supposed connection with the doctrine of immortality.
Brahmanists and Buddhists maintain that it is the only sure basis for
this doctrine; but this view appears not to have met with wide
acceptance.

+60+. 2. An all but universal belief among lower tribes is that departed
souls remain near their earthly abodes, haunting the neighborhood of the
body or the grave or the village.[120] It is apparently assumed that a
soul is more at home in places which it knew in its prev