renewal of old family names by giving them to new-born children may always be suspected of involving some such thought. The following is a curious pair of instances from the two halves of the globe. The New Zealand priest would repeat to the infant a long list of names of its ancestors, fixing upon that name which the child by sneezing or crying when it was uttered, was considered to select for itself; while the Cheremiss in Russia would shake the baby till it cried, and then repeat names to it, till it chose itself one by leaving off crying.[1]
The belief in the new human birth of the departed soul, which has even led West African negroes to commit suicide when in distant slavery, that they may revive in their own land, in fact amounts among several of the lower races to a distinct doctrine of an earthly resurrection. One of the most remarkable forms which this belief assumes is when dark-skinned races, wanting some reasonable theory to account for the appearance among them of human creatures of a new strange sort, the white men, and struck with their pallid deathly hue combined with powers that seem those of superhuman spiritual beings, have determined that the manes of their dead must have come back in this wondrous shape. The aborigines of Australia have expressed this theory in the simple formula, 'Blackfellow tumble down, jump up Whitefellow.' Thus a native who was hanged years ago at Melbourne expressed in his last moments the hopeful belief that he would jump up Whitefellow, and have lots of sixpences. The doctrine has been current among them since early days of European intercourse, and in accordance with it they habitually regarded the Englishmen as their own deceased kindred, come back to their country from an attachment to it in a former life. Real or imagined likeness completed the delusion, as when
- ↑ R. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 284; see Shortland, 'Traditions,' p. 145; Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 353; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 279; see also p. 276 (Samoyeds). Compare Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 426; Steller, 'Kamtschatka,' p. 353; Kracheninnikow, ii. 117. See Plath, 'Rel. der alten Chinesen,' ii. p. 98.
