CHAPTER V.
CREMATION AND INHUMATION.
The discussion of those abnormal cases of after-death existence,
to which the last chapter has been devoted, has disclosed
to us the fact that in all ages of Greece the condition most to be
dreaded by the dead has been incorruptibility and the boon most
to be desired a sure and quick dissolution; and that of the two
methods by which the living might promote the disintegration
of the dead, cremation and inhumation, the former alone has
been accounted infallible. What benefit in the future existence
was in old time thought to accrue to those whose bodies had been
duly dissolved, and to be withheld from revenants, is a question
which may conveniently be adjourned for a while. First we
must verify the results obtained from the study of the abnormal
by consideration of the normal; we must see whether ordinary
funeral usage has had for its sole object the dissolution of the
dead in the interests of the dead; and what, if any, distinction
has been made between inhumation and cremation as a means of
securing that object.
Now diverse methods of disposing of the dead, especially among a primitive folk, would naturally suggest diverse religious purposes to be served thereby, diverse conceptions of the future estate of the dead, or of their future abode, or of their future relations with the living; and for my part I do not doubt that, if our eyes could pierce the darkness of a long distant past which neither history nor even archaeology has illumined, we should see that the peoples who first used cremation and inhumation side by side in Greece were in so doing animated by diverse religious sentiments. But I hold also that in no period of which we have any cognisance have the Greeks regarded inhumation
