food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat,
or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight.
But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind.
I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same
reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural
and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true,
the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that
is because, like all the important emotions of human existence
it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage
for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself.
And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason
that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed
through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all
purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious
and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we
call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human.
Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is
phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse
any man's wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger,
how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love
of the beautiful. The man's desire for the pork-chop remains
literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven.
All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things,
at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science
of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy.
You can no more be certain in economic history that a man's desire
for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in
hagiology that a saint's desire for God was merely a desire for God.