The river speeding on its course to the sea, the sun and moon, if not the stars also, on their never-ceasing daily round, the lightning, fire, the wind, the sea, all are in motion and therefore animate; but the savage does not stop short here; mountains and lakes, stones and manufactured articles, are for him alike endowed with souls like his own; he deposits in the tomb weapons and food, clothes and implements, broken, it may be, in order to set free their souls; or he attains the same result by burning them, and thus sending them to the Other World for the use of the dead man.
With one consent Epicureanism preaches that the death of the body is the end of everything for man, and hence the other world has lost all its terrors as well as all its hopes.
The story in these forms represents an other-world abduction.
The belief gradually grew up that every dead man would have to face a similar trial before he could be admitted to a life of bliss in the other world.
Herodotus, describing the funeral customs of the Scythians, states that, on the death of a chief, the body was placed upon a couch in a chamber sunk in the earth and covered with timber, in which were deposited all things needful for the comfort of the deceased in the other world.
