Part 8

I presume this importance of the confession of a transgression with a view to warning others to keep at a distance from the transgressor has gradually led to the idea that a transgression, or we might say a sin, can be atoned for by confession. This is one of the most remarkable religious beliefs of the Central Eskimo. There are innumerable tales of starvation brought about by the transgression of a taboo. In vain the hunters try to supply their families with food; gales and drifting snow make their endeavors fruitless. Finally the help of the angakok[D] is invoked, and he discovers that the cause of the misfortune of the people is due to the transgression of a taboo. Then the guilty one is searched for. If he confesses, all is well, the weather moderates, and the seals will allow themselves to be caught; but if he obstinately maintains his innocence, his death alone will soothe the wrath of the offended deity.

[D] The medicine-man or shaman of the Eskimo.

While thus the reason appears clear why the taboos are rigorously enforced by public opinion, the origin of the taboos themselves is quite obscure. It is forbidden, after the death of a sea mammal or after the death of a person, to scrape the frost from the window, to shake the beds, or to disturb the shrubs under the bed, to remove oil-drippings from under the lamp, to scrape hair from skins, to cut snow for the purpose of melting it, to work on iron, wood, stone, or ivory. Women are, furthermore, forbidden to comb their hair, to wash their faces and to dry their boots and stockings.

A number of customs, however, may be explained by the endeavors of the natives to keep the sea mammals free from contaminating influences. All the clothing of a dead person, more particularly the tent in which he died, must be discarded; for if a hunter should wear clothing made of skins that had been in contact with the deceased, these would appear dark and the seal would avoid him. Neither would a seal allow itself to be taken into a hut darkened by a dead body, and all those who entered such a hut would appear dark to it and would be avoided.

While it is customary for a successful hunter to invite all the men of the village to eat of the seal that he has caught, they must not take any of the seal meat out of the hut, because it might come in contact with persons who are under taboo, and thus the hunter might incur the displeasure of the seal and of Sedna.

It is very remarkable that the walrus is not included in this series of regulations. It is explicitly stated that the walrus, the white whale and the narwhal are not subject to these laws, which affect only the sea animals that originated from Sedna’s fingers. There is, however, a series of laws that forbid contact between walrus, seal and caribou. It is not quite clear in what mythical concept these customs originate. There is a tradition regarding the origin of walrus and caribou which is made to account for a dislike between these two animals. A woman created both these animals from parts of her clothing. She gave the walrus antlers and the caribou tusks. When man began to hunt them, the walrus upset the boats with his antlers and the caribou killed the hunter with his tusks. Therefore the woman called both animals back and took the tusks from the caribou and gave them to the walrus. She took the antlers, kicked the caribou’s forehead flat and put the antlers on to it. Ever since that time, it is said, walrus and caribou avoid each other, and the people must not bring their meat into contact. They are not allowed to eat caribou and walrus meat on the same day except after changing their clothing. The winter clothing which is made of caribou-skin must be entirely completed before the men will go to hunt walrus. As soon as the first walrus has been killed, a messenger goes from village to village and announces the news. All work on caribou-skins must cease immediately. When the caribou-hunting season begins, all the winter clothing, and the tent that has been in use during the walrus-hunting season, are buried, and not used again until the following walrus-hunting season. No walrus hide, or thongs made of such hide, must be taken inland, where is the abode of the caribou.

Similar laws, although not quite so stringent, hold good in regard to contact between seal and walrus. The natives always change their clothing or strip naked before eating seal during the walrus season.

The soul of the salmon is considered to be very powerful. Salmon must not be cooked in a pot that has been used for boiling other kinds of meat. It is always cooked at some distance from the hut. Boots that were used while hunting walrus must not be worn when fishing salmon, and no work on boot-legs is allowed until the first salmon has been caught and placed on a boot-leg.

The fact that these taboos are not restricted to caribou and walrus suggests that the mythical explanation given above does not account for the origin of these customs, but must be considered as a later effort to explain their existence.

The transgressions of taboos do not affect the souls of game alone. It has already been stated that the sea mammals see their effect upon man also, who appears to them of a dark color, or surrounded by a vapor which is invisible to ordinary man. This means, of course, that the transgression also affects the soul of the evil-doer. It becomes attached to it and makes him sick. The shaman is able to see, by the help of his guardian spirit, these attachments, and is able to free the soul from them. If this is not done the person must die. In many cases the transgressions become attached also to persons who come in contact with the evil-doer. This is especially true of children, to whose souls the sins of their parents, and particularly of their mothers, become readily attached. Therefore when a child is sick the shaman, first of all, asks its mother if she has transgressed any taboos. The attachment seems to have a different appearance, according to the taboo that has been violated. A black attachment is due to removing oil-drippings from under the lamp. As soon as the mother acknowledges the transgression of a taboo, the attachment leaves the child’s soul and the child recovers.

The souls of the deceased stay with the body for three days. If a taboo is violated during this time the transgression becomes attached to the soul of the deceased. The weight of the transgression causes the soul pain, and it roams about the village, endeavoring to free itself of its burden. It seeks to harm the people who, by their disobedience to custom, are causing its sufferings. It causes heavy snows to fall and brings sickness and death. Such a soul is called a tupilak. Toward the middle of autumn it hovers around the doors of the huts. When a shaman discovers the tupilak he advises the people, who assemble, and prepare to free it of its burden. All the shamans go in search of it, each a knife in hand. As soon as they find it, they stab it with their knives, and thus cut off the transgressions. Then the tupilak becomes a soul again. The knives with which it was stabbed are seen by the people to be covered with blood.

The Central Eskimo believe that man has two souls. One of these stays with the body, and may enter temporarily the body of a child which is given the name of the departed. The other soul goes to one of the lands of the souls. Of these there are several. There are three heavens, one above another, of which the highest is the brightest and best. Those who die by violence go to the lowest heaven. Those who die by disease go to Sedna’s house first, where they stay for a year. Sedna restores their souls to full health and then she sends them up to the second heaven. Those who die by drowning go to the third heaven. People who commit suicide go to a place in which it is always dark and where they go about with their tongues lolling. Women who have had premature births go to Sedna’s abode and stay in the lowest world.

The other soul stays with the body. When a child has been named after the deceased, the soul enters its body and remains there for about four months. It is believed that its presence strengthens the child’s soul, which is very light and apt to escape from the body. After leaving the body of the infant, the soul of the departed stays nearby, in order to re-enter its body in case of need. When a year has elapsed since the death of the person, his soul leaves the grave temporarily and goes hunting, but returns frequently to the grave. When the body has entirely decayed it may remain away for a long time.

Evidently the Eskimo also believe in the transmigration of souls. There is one tradition in which it is told how the soul of a woman passed through the bodies of a great many animals, until finally it was born again as an infant. In another story it is told how a hunter caught a fox in a trap and recognized in it the soul of his departed mother. In still another tale the soul of a woman, after her death, entered the body of a huge polar bear in order to avenge wrongs done to her during her lifetime.

Almost the sole object of the religious ceremonies of the Eskimo is to appease the wrath of Sedna, of the souls of animals, or of the souls of the dead, that have been offended by the transgressions of taboos. This is accomplished by the help of the guardian spirits of the angakut. The most important ceremony of the Eskimo is celebrated in the fall. At this time of the year the angakut, by the help of their guardian spirits, visit Sedna and induce her to visit the village, and they endeavor to free her of the transgressions that became attached to her during the preceding year. One angakok throws her with his harpoon, another one stabs her, and by this means they cut off all the transgressions. The ceremony is performed in a darkened snow-house. After the ceremony the lamps are lighted again and the people see the harpoon and the knife that were used in the ceremony covered with blood. If the angakut should fail to free Sedna from the transgressions, bad weather and hunger would prevail during the ensuing winter. On the following day Sedna sends her servant, who is called Kaileteta, to visit the tribe. She is represented by a man dressed in a woman’s costume and wearing a mask made of seal-skin. On this day the people wear attached to their hoods pieces of skin of that animal of which their first clothing was made after they were born. It seems that the skins of certain animals are used for this purpose, each month having one animal of its own. It is said that if they should not wear the skin of the proper animal, Sedna would be offended and would punish them.

The angakut also cure sick persons and make good weather with the help of their guardian spirits. They discover transgressions of taboos and other causes of ill luck. One of the most curious methods of divination applied by the angakut is that of ‘head-lifting.’ A thong is placed around the head of a person who lies down next to the patient. The thong is attached to the end of a stick which is held in hand by the angakok. Then the latter asks questions as to the nature and outcome of the disease, which are supposed to be answered by the soul of a dead person, which makes it impossible for the head to be lifted if the answer is affirmative, while the head is raised easily if the answer is negative. As soon as the soul of the departed leaves, the head can be moved without difficulty.

Amulets are extensively used as a protection against evil influences and to secure good luck. Pregnant women wear the teeth of wolves on the backs of their shirts. These same teeth are fastened to the edge of the infant’s hood. The string which passes under the large hood of the woman who carries her child on her back is fastened at one end to a bear’s tooth, which serves to strengthen the child’s soul. When the child begins to walk about, this string and the bear’s tooth are attached to its shirt and worn as amulets. Pyrites, when thrown upon a spirit, are believed to drive it away.

As compared with the beliefs of the Greenlanders, the beliefs of the Central Eskimo are characterized by the great importance of the Sedna myth and the entire absence of the belief in a powerful spirit called Tonarssuk, which seems to have been one of the principal features of Greenland beliefs. There is an evident tendency among the Central Eskimo to affiliate all customs and beliefs with the myth of the origin of sea animals. This tendency seems to have been one of the principal causes that molded the customs and beliefs of the people into the form in which they appear at the present time.

MENTAL ENERGY.[E]

BY EDWARD ATKINSON.

[E] Presented before the New York meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

According to the common conception, political economy is held to deal with material forces only; with land, labor and capital; with the production, distribution and consumption of the materials of human existence. These are food, clothing and shelter. It, therefore, bears the aspect of a purely material study of material forces. Yet no more purely metaphysical science exists, and there can be, in my view of the subject, no more ideal conceptions than those which are derived from the study of these purely material forces. Many of the errors commonly presented under the name of the ‘claims of labor’ have arisen from the limited and partial conception of the function of economic science.

We have become accustomed to deal with the so-called material forces of nature and with the physical work and labor of man under the general term of ‘Energy’. What man does by his own labor or physical energy is to convert the products of land and sea, of mine and forest, into new forms from which he derives shelter, food and clothing. In a material sense all that any one can get in or out of life, be he rich or poor, is what we call our board and clothing. Such being the fact, what a man consumes is his cost to the community; what he spends yields to others the means of buying the supplies for their own wants; their consumption is then their cost to the community.

The physical forces of nature are limited. The earth is endowed with a fixed quantity of materials that we call gaseous, liquid and solid. It receives a certain amount of heat from the sun which, for all practical purposes, may be considered a fixed quantity of energy, even if in eons it may be exhausted. The physical energy of man is devoted to the transformation of these physical forces under the law of conservation; he can neither add to nor diminish the quantity. He can transform solid into gas and gas into liquid. He can, according to common speech, consume some of these products, but his consumption is only another transformation. His own body is but one of the forms of physical energy on the way toward another form. These elements of nature, formerly limited to earth, air and water, are now listed under many titles of what are called elements; I believe over sixty that have not yet been differentiated, but all may yet be resolved into a unit of force.

You will observe that in our arithmetic we have ten numerals which can be divided into fractions. In our music we deal with seven notes and their variants. In our alphabet we have twenty-six letters. These factors correspond in some measure to what we call elements in nature. There is a limit to the number of combinations that can be made of the numerals and their fractions, to the notes of music and their variants, and of the letters of the alphabet; but in each case this limit is so remote as to be negligible, like the exhaustion of the heat of the sun. May we not deal with the elements of nature in the same way? Can any one prescribe a limit to their conversion and reconversion to the use of mankind? Is it not in these processes of conversion that we derive our subsistence?

We make nothing. All that we can do is to move something. We move the soil and we move the seed; nature gives the harvest. We direct the currents of falling water, of heat and of steam; nature imparts the force or energy to which man has only given a new direction. We are now imparting new directions to the force that we call electricity, and to what we call cold. What is the force from which we derive this power of transforming physical energy? May we not call it mental energy? Is not mental energy the factor in mankind by which he is differentiated from the beast? Does not man only accumulate experience, and is there any limit to the power of mind over matter?

If these points are well taken, mental energy is the fourth and paramount factor in providing for material existence, and the science of political economy, which deals with land, labor and capital, becomes a purely metaphysical science when we admit the force of mental energy into the combination.

We deal, as I have said, with sixty elements, so-called, more or less, but the unity of nature is the most important fact ever proved by science; the correlation of all forms of physical energy leading logically from the idea of manifold forces or gods to the unity of creation, necessarily ending in the conception of unity of a creator, or the one God. This modern development of mental science is but the Hebrew concept of the creation in a new form. The Hebrew race was the first one of the historic races with whom the unity of creation and the unity of the creator became an article of faith. I doubt not that it was in that concept and the power derived from it that the Hebrew intellect asserted its preëminence in the history of the world. According to that concept, to man is given “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” By what force does man hold dominion unless it is through his mental energy and his capacity to accumulate experience?

All the industrial arts are antedated by the industries of animals. The tailor finds his prototype in the tailor bird; the mason in the wasp; the farmer in the agricultural ant; the bridge-builder in the spider; the weaver in the weaver bird; the creator of water power in the beaver, and so on. Yet no other animal except man has developed or extended any of these arts. No other animal except man has learned to make and use fire and not to run away from it.

If, then, man by his power of mental energy converts the original and crude forces with which the earth is endowed into new forms, and by giving them new direction increases his power of production of the means of his own subsistence and enjoyment of life, _does it not follow that creation is a continuous procession in which man is a factor_? “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.” The ideal of ‘an honest God the noblest concept of man’ becomes the converse of an honest man the noblest work of God--honest in a broad sense in his dealings with the forces of nature; true to his function.

There is a painful side to statistical and economic study. The penalty of being able to read what is written between the lines and the columns of the figures is the conclusion that after we have all done the best work that the present conditions of science will permit, the entire product barely suffices to keep mankind in existence; his fixed capital, so-called, is at the mercy both of time and of the inventor who substitutes better methods which at less cost of effort or labor yield more abundance to the community as a whole. But on the other hand, no matter how hard the struggle for existence may be, we find the promise of future abundance even in the insufficient product which has been derived from the application of science and invention up to date. Witness the relative progress of the last century as compared with all the previous centuries; then attempt to conceive what will be the condition of humanity a century hence, knowing, as we do, that the applications of science through mental energy now proceed in geometric progression, reversing the dogma of Malthus and leading to the concept of production unlimited, consumption limited.

If it be true that there is no conceivable limit to the power of mind over matter or to the number of conversions of force that can be developed, providing in increasing measure for the wants of the human body, it follows that pauperism is due to poverty of mental energy, not of material resources.

The next step in the development of this theory may be presented in this form: _No man is paid by the measure in time or physical effort, for the work or labor that he performs._ No man can claim payment in money or in kind on the ground that he has done a day’s work of a greater or less number of hours. In all civilized countries we are members one of another; rich or poor; whether we work with our hands or our heads, or both combined. Material existence is supported by conversion of one form of physical energy into another. Social energy is maintained by the exchange of one form of service for another. The measure of compensation is not the number of hours of labor put into the product or service. _The standard by which services are measured is what the buyer is saved from doing, not what the seller does._ Each of us might possibly be able to house, clothe and feed ourselves if we were cast upon an island possessing sufficient natural resources. If a hundred persons representing all the classes in society were wrecked upon such an island, each adult or each person above ten years old would probably find a way to house, feed and clothe himself. Why do we not house, feed and clothe ourselves, and why would not the hundred representatives of different classes wrecked on an island each do his own part of the work for himself only? Simply for the reason that men are either endowed from birth with different aptitudes, or different aptitudes are developed in their environment. Each one finds out that by delegating to another certain kinds of work he saves his own time and energy. Each one finds out what he can do for the next man, while the next man finds out what he can do for him.

There is in every transaction of life an unconscious cerebration or estimate of the services rendered to us, saving each of us mental or manual energy, whenever we buy any product or service from another. That unconscious cerebration affects the minds or habits or acts of both parties in every purchase and sale. There may be errors in regard to the service itself. The ignorant man will buy quack medicines that he had better let alone, but what he pays under the false impression of benefit to himself is his measure of what he hopes to save; while the quack medicine vender, taking advantage of the ignorance of others, filches from them the means of subsistence, even of wealth, under the pretext of service. As time goes on, however, false measures of service are eliminated with increasing intelligence, and true benefits constitute more and more the vast proportion of the exchanges.

The same ignorance which leads the masses of the people of every country to submit to military dictation, even in a bad cause, also leads to the wars of tariffs among nations by which prejudice and animosity are kept up. The false conception that in international commerce what one nation gains another must lose, is promoted by the advocates of protection, many of whom very honestly believe that through the exclusion of foreign goods domestic industry may be promoted, wholly ignoring the fact that arts and industries are developed by intelligence and not by legislation.