[257-2] The object was essentially the same as when the
bones alone were preserved; and in the case of rulers, the same homage
was often paid to their corpses as had been the just due of their living
bodies.
The opinion underlying all these customs was, that a part of the soul,
or one of the souls, dwelt in the bones; that these were the seeds
which, planted in the earth, or preserved unbroken in safe places,
would, in time, put on once again a garb of flesh, and germinate into
living human beings. Language illustrates this not unusual theory. The
Iroquois word for bone is _esken_--for soul, _atisken_, literally that
which is within the bone.[257-3] In an Athapascan dialect bone is
_yani_, soul _i-yune_.[257-4] The Hebrew Rabbis taught that in the bone
_lutz_, the coccyx, remained at death the germ of a second life, which,
at the proper time, would develop into the purified body, as the plant
from the seed.
But mythology and supersitions[TN-15] add more decisive testimony. One of
the Aztec legends of the origin of man was, that after one of the
destructions of the world the gods took counsel together how to renew
the species.
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