e thinly disguised in a jargon learned from the superficial
reading of modern books of science, M. Figuier maintains that human
souls are for the most part the surviving souls of deceased animals; in
general, the souls of precocious musical children like Mozart come from
nightingales, while the souls of great architects have passed into them
from beavers, etc., etc. [174]

The practice of begging pardon of the animal one has just slain is in
some parts of the world extended to the case of plants. When the
Talein offers a prayer to the tree which he is about to cut down, it is
obviously because he regards the tree as endowed with a soul or ghost
which in the next life may need to be propitiated. And the doctrine of
transmigration distinctly includes plants along with animals among the
future existences into which the human soul may pass.

As plants, like animals, manifest phenomena of life, though to a much
less conspicuous degree, it is not incomprehensible that the
savage should attribute souls to them. But the primitive process of
anthropomorphisation does not end here. Not only the horse and dog,
the bamboo, and the oak-tree, but even lifeless objects, such as the
hatchet, or bow and arrows, or food and drink of the dead man, possess
other selves which pass into the world of ghosts. Fijis and other
contemporary savages, when questioned, expressly declare that this is
their belief. "If an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away
flies its soul for the service of the gods." The Algonquins told
Charlevoix that since hatchets and kettles have shadows, no less than
men and women, it follows, of course, that these shadows (or souls) must
pass along with human shadows (or souls) into the spirit-land. In this
we see how simple and consistent is the logic which guides the savage,
and how inevitable is the genesis of the great mass of beliefs, to our
minds so arbitrary and grotesque, which prevail throughout the barbaric
world. However absurd the belief that pots and kettles have souls
may seem to us, it is nevertheless the only belief which can be held
consistently by the savage to whom pots and kettles, no less than human
friends or enemies, may appear in his dreams; who sees them followed
by shadows as they are moved about; who hears their voices, dull
or ringing, when they are struck; and who watches their doubles
fantastically dancing in the water as they are carried across the
stream. [175] To minds, even in civil