Cremation, ancient and modern : the history of fire-funeral a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 14th March, 1886 / by George Wotherspoon.

  • Wotherspoon, G. (George)
Date:
1886
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cremation, ancient and modern : the history of fire-funeral a lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society, St. George's Hall, Langham Place, on Sunday afternoon, 14th March, 1886 / by George Wotherspoon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    What was it, we would fain learn, that first# induced men to cremate ? What led them to take such a startlingly new de¬ parture ? Why did some one suddenly conceive the idea of setting fire to a human body? His motive must have been a powerful one: was it sanitary, sentimental, or religious ? I cannot think that it was sanitary. In that distant epoch, when the living were not crowded together in such vast communities as ours, there was room enough and to spare for the bodies of the dead, and the sanitary problems, which are now so pressing, could hardly have arisen. Neither can I agree with the theory that Cremation wTas suggested by a feeling of friendship for the deceased, whose ashes were preserved as we preserve a lock of hair, or some other token of a dead friend. It must be borne in mind that in those days of ancestor-worship the deceased was regarded not so much with friendship as with superstitious veneration. Everything in the way of burial was done from his point of view, not, as common sense would direct, from the point of view of the survivors. The dead man was believed to retain all his corporal wants and feelings. Along with him in his grave must be interred armour to protect him, food to nourish him, his horse to carry him, his favourite wife to bear him company. It would have been looked upon as sacrilege to injure his body, unless obviously for his own advantage. But experience gradually taught that the body faded away through corruption into nothingness. What was it then that apparently survived and revisited the living in their dreams ? It must needs be something holier, which the body only polluted and kept back from the land of spirits. Became it not, then, a religious duty to separate after death, as speedily as pos¬ sible this shadow from the unclean substance ? And how better could this be effected than by dedicating the substance to that purifying element which, after his own ancestors, seemed worthiest of man’s adoration ? I have little doubt in my own mind that the custom of Cremation arose out of this early union of ancestor- worship and the worship of Eire. On this theory we may expect to find, as we emerge from pre¬ historic twilight into the dawn of tradition and record, Eire- funeral commonest among those nations by whom fire continued to be worshipped, and correspondingly rare among those wdio were not, or had ceased to be, Eire-worshippers. And this, with one notable exception, to be mentioned in its place, is pre¬ cisely what we do find. By the Egyptians and the Semitic peoples of Asia, who held fire in no special reverence, Eire- funeral was very seldom practised. A few instances of its use are