Still more remarkable are the remains of world-old usage, wherein may be remarked tendencies which have formerly been expressed in elaborate rituals. In customs relating to death, a controlling feature is that sense of individual possession which has been prevalent from a time antecedent to the rudimentary beginnings of civilization. To early man, doubt is but a change of state; the head of the household, in his place, be it the tumulus erected for his shelter, be it the distant land to which his spirit has been transported, holds the same rights and is entitled to the same privileges which on earth he enjoyed. His wives, his slaves, his steeds, his arms, are his own,[TN-2] property, which none dare meddle with, inasmuch as the departed, now more than heretofore, has the power to enforce his title. In a measure, therefore, these possessions must accompany him on his voyage, and remain with him in his new abode. But this deprivation is too great: in the natural course of things, the living cannot waive so much and continue to live. A part is given for the whole; substitution takes the place of direct offering. The dead is no more to be received among the living, bringing with him, as he does, a claim on other lives; by many methods, by concealment, placation, substitution, ritual exile, he must be banned to the place where only on occasions he may be sought and consulted. One of these methods of avoidance is the habit of making the return of the funeral procession so intricate that the spirit may be deceived in its attempt to retrace the route; it is perhaps a consequence of this manner of thought that even now, in retired districts, it is held unwise for the mourners to return on the same path by which they proceeded.
These usages change their character, inasmuch as the original intent of ceremonial actions being forgotten, acts intended to secure more practical ends are performed in order to correspond to supposed obligations of decency. Such is the case with the arrangement of the chamber of death, with the stoppage of the clock, of which traces are found in customary usage; so it is with the inversion of garments, of which also in our lore traces seem to linger. Different, perhaps, is the idea underlying the covering of the mirror; indications show that the practice was once extended to all objects in the room, which formerly seems to have been draped with white cloth. The object appears to have been to protect domestic objects from the contamination caused by contact with the dead, which would protect them from subsequent employment by the living, who otherwise could not with safety associate themselves with the other world, just as even at the present time it is not held lucky to wear the garments of the departed. In the same manner the Mosaic law commanded the Israelite to cover, at the time of death, the vessels used in his tent. It has been remarked that white, and not black, is the proper color for such drapery. The association of white with the dead, as the hue of mourning, is ancient; it appears to me that the idea of ritual purity, expressed by the color, is at the bottom of the custom. In Hellenic times white continued to be the hue most closely associated with the dead, albeit black, as the sign of melancholy, was also introduced. The character of funeral rites, from Western Europe to Japan, exhibits a similarity which, in my judgment, is to be explained only on the supposition of very early and long continued historical contact,--a contact otherwise demonstrable.
On the other hand, a world-old custom, which may be set down as human and universal, dictated, and among all nomadic peoples continues to dictate, the abandonment of any habitation in which a death has occurred. The obvious motive is expressed in a surviving superstition that a second decease is likely to follow a first. Death, naturally impersonated and identified with the spirit of the departed, will return to the place where he has once made himself at home, and in which he has proprietary rights. This idea constitutes a superstition which stands directly in the way of progress; thus the Navajo refuses to build a house, which at the first mortality among his family it would be necessary to desert. The cause of the general custom is to be sought, not in any sanitary principle, but in the associations explained, acting with superstitious force. In the course of time and with the advance of culture such desertion is no longer possible, and some means must be found by which the requirement shall be evaded; the desired escape is effected by such alterations as shall vary the character of the mansion and indicate it as a new place of abode, not subject to the perils of the home invaded by death.
