ctrine of rebirth may be satisfied by the belief that the soul is
reincarnated in animal form. This belief is specially likely to grow
up where totem ancestors are believed to manifest themselves in the
shape of some animal. Belief in such animal reincarnation has, in its
origin, however, no connection with any theory that transmigration from
a human to an animal form is a punishment. Up to this point in the
evolution of the belief in immortality, the belief in another world
than this does not show itself. Even when ancestor-worship begins to
grow up, the ancestors' field of operations is in this world, rather
than in the next. But the fact that their aid and protection can be
invoked by the community tends to elevate them to the level of the god
or gods of the community. This tendency, however, may be defeated, as
it was in Judaea, where the religious sentiment will not permit the
difference between God and man to be blurred. {xii} Where the fact
that the dead do not return establishes itself as incontrovertible, the
belief grows up that as the dead continue to exist, it is in another
world that their existence must continue. At first they are conceived
to continue to be as they are remembered to have been in this life.
Later the idea grows up that they are punished or rewarded there,
according as they have been bad or good here; according as they have or
have not in this life sought communion with the true God. This belief
thus differs entirely from the earlier belief, _e.g._ as it is found
amongst the Eskimo, that it is in this world the spirits of the
departed reappear, and that their continued existence is unaffected by
considerations of morality or religion. It is, however, not merely the
belief in the next world that may come to be sanctified by religion and
moralised. The belief in reincarnation in animal form may come to be
employed in the service of religion and morality, as it is in Buddhism.
There, however, what was originally the transmigration of souls was
transformed by Gotama into the transmigration of character; and the
very existence of the individual soul, whether before death or after,
was held to be an illusion and a deception. This tenet pushes the
doctrine of self-sacrifice, which is essential both to religion and to
morality, to an extreme which is fatal in logic to morality and
religion alike: communion between man and God--the indispensable
presupposition of both religion and morals--