As time went on, a belief in spirits was developed from causes already mentioned, the rude theory of incarnation followed as its corollary, and this sentiment was naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images; for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of men and animals.  In these figures the amulet, talisman, or gris-gris of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superstitions.  The belief in spirits, resulting from the personification of shadows, or of the image of a man’s own soul which was supposed to return from the tomb, had a mythical influence on the mode and ceremonies of sepulture, on the position of corpses, on the orientation of tombs, and their form.  In fact, the mythical ideas of spirits, and the fanciful place they took in the primitive idea of the world, produced the custom of burying corpses in an upright, stooping, or sitting position, and their situation with reference to the four cardinal points.  In America the cross which was placed in very early times above the tombs is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been a symbol of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb itself and to the human remains enclosed in it.  One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the head and feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom.  Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east.  The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west.  The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the attitude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile.  Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have special customs in burying their dead.

All the primitive artistic representations of the human form, the orientation of tombs and temples and their peculiar form, were prompted by these spiritualist and superstitious ideas; they expressed a symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the constitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends.  This assertion might be verified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among all peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those of our times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, and particularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, beginning with the Greeks and passing through the Latins down to the Christianity of our day; nor need we exclude the Oceanic races, and those of the two frigid zones.