The Banks Islanders ’believe in two orders of intelligent beings different from living men.’ (1) Ghosts of the dead, (2) ’Beings who were not, and never had been, human.’  This, as we have shown, and will continue to show, is the usual savage doctrine.  On the one hand are separable souls of men, surviving the death of the body.  On the other are beings, creators, who were before men were, and before death entered the world.  It is impossible, logically, to argue that these beings are only ghosts of real remote ancestors, or of ideal ancestors.  These higher beings are not safely to be defined as ‘spirits,’ their essence is vague, and, we repeat, the idea of their existence might have been evolved before the ghost theory was attained by men.  Dr. Codrington says, ’the conception can hardly be that of a purely spiritual being, yet, by whatever name the natives call them, they are such as in English must be called spirits.’

That is our point.  ‘God is a spirit,’ these beings are Gods, therefore ‘these are spirits.’  But to their initial conception our idea of ‘spirit’ is lacking.  They are beings who existed before death, and still exist.

The beings which never were human, never died, are Vui, the ghosts are Tamate.  Dr. Codrington uses ‘ghosts’ for Tamate, ‘spirits’ for Vui.  But as to render Vui ‘spirits’ is to yield the essential point, we shall call Vui ‘beings,’ or, simply, Vui.  A Vui is not a spirit that has been a ghost; the story may represent him as if a man, ’but the native will always maintain that he was something different, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man.’[13]

This distinction, ghost on one side—­original being, not a man, not a ghost of a man, on the other—­is radical and nearly universal in savage religion.  Anthropology, neglecting the essential distinction insisted on, in this case, by Dr. Codrington, confuses both kinds under the style of ‘spirits,’ and derives both from ghosts of the dead.  Dr. Codrington, it should be said, does not generalise, but confines himself to the savages of whom he has made a special study.  But, from the other examples of the same distinction which we have offered, and the rest which we shall offer, we think ourselves justified in regarding the distinction between a primeval, eternal, being or beings, on one hand, and ghosts or spirits exalted from ghost’s estate, on the other, as common, if not universal.

There are corporeal and incorporeal Vuis, but the body of the corporeal Vui is ’not a human body.’[14] The chief is Qat, ’still at hand to help and invoked in prayers.’  ’Qat, Marawa, look down upon me, smooth the sea for us two, that I may go safely over the sea!’ Qat ’created men and animals,’ though, in a certain district, he is claimed as an ancestor (p. 268).  Two strata of belief have here been confused.

The myth of Qat is a jungle of facetiae and frolic, with one or two serious incidents, such as the beginning of Death and the coming of Night.  His mother was, or became, a stone; stones playing a considerable part in the superstitions.