ness with which the soul is thus conceived as an image of the body. As a consistent corollary to such an opinion, it is argued that the mutilation of the body will have a corresponding effect upon the soul, and very low savage races have philosophy enough to work out this idea. Thus it was recorded of the Indians of Brazil by one of the early European visitors, that they 'believe that the dead arrive in the other world wounded or hacked to pieces, in fact just as they left this.'[1] Thus, too, the Australian who has slain his enemy will cut off the right thumb of the corpse, so that although the spirit will become a hostile ghost, it cannot throw with its mutilated hand the shadowy spear, and may be safely left to wander, malignant but harmless.[2] The negro fears long sickness before death, such as will send him lean and feeble into the next world. His theory of the mutilation of soul with body could not be brought more vividly into view than in that ugly story of the West Indian planter, whose slaves began to seek in suicide at once relief from present misery and restoration to their native land; but the white man was too cunning for them, he cut off the heads and hands of the corpses, and the survivors saw that not even death could save them from a master who could maim their very souls in the next world.[3] The same rude and primitive belief continues among nations risen far higher in intellectual rank. The Chinese hold in especial horror the punishment of decapitation, considering that he who quits this world lacking a member will so arrive in the next, and a case is recorded lately of a criminal at Amoy who for this reason begged to die instead by the cruel death of crucifixion, and was crucified accordingly.[4] The series ends as usual in the folklore of the civilized world. The phantom skeleton in chains that haunted the house at
