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Title: The Making of Religion

Author: Andrew Lang

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THE MAKING OF RELIGION

BY
ANDREW LANG

M.A., LL.D. ST ANDREWS

HONORARY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE OXFORD
SOMETIME GIFFORD LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

SECOND EDITION
1900




_TO THE PRINCIPAL
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS


DEAR PRINCIPAL DONALDSON,

I hope you will permit me to lay at the feet of the University of St.
Andrews, in acknowledgment of her life-long kindnesses to her old pupil,
these chapters on the early History of Religion. They may be taken as
representing the Gifford Lectures delivered by me, though in fact they
contain very little that was spoken from Lord Gifford's chair. I wish they
were more worthy of an Alma Mater which fostered in the past the leaders
of forlorn hopes that were destined to triumph; and the friends of lost
causes who fought bravely against Fate--Patrick Hamilton, Cargill, and
Argyll, Beaton and Montrose, and Dundee.

Believe me

Very sincerely yours,

ANDREW LANG_.

       *       *       *       *       *

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION

By the nature of things this book falls under two divisions. The first
eight chapters criticise the current anthropological theory of the origins
of the belief in _spirits._ Chapters ix.-xvii., again, criticise the
current anthropological theory as to how, the notion of _spirit_ once
attained, man arrived at the idea of a Supreme Being. These two branches
of the topic are treated in most modern works concerned with the Origins
of Religion, such as Mr. Tyler's "Primitive Culture," Mr. Herbert
Spencer's "Principles of Sociology," Mr. Jevons's "Introduction to the
History of Religion," the late Mr. Grant Allen's "Evolution of the Idea of
God," and many others. Yet I have been censured for combining, in this
work, the two branches of my subject; and the second part has been
regarded as but faintly connected with the first.

The reason for this criticism seems to be, that while one small set of
students is interested in, and familiar with the themes examined in the
first part (namely the psychological characteristics of certain mental
states from which, in part, the doctrine of spirits is said to have
arisen), that set of students neither knows nor cares anything about the
matter handled in the second part. This group of students is busied with
"Psychical Research," and the obscure human faculties implied in alleged
cases of hallucination, telepathy, "double personality," human automatism,
clairvoyance, and so on. Meanwhile anthropological readers are equally
indifferent as to that branch of psychology which examines the conditions
of hysteria, hypnotic trance, "double personality," and the like.
Anthropologists have not hitherto applied to the savage mental conditions,
out of which, in part, the doctrine of "spirits" arose, the recent
researches of French, German, and English psychologists of the new school.
As to whether these researches into abnormal psychological conditions do,
or do not, indicate the existence of a transcendental region of human
faculty, anthropologists appear to be unconcerned. The only English
exception known to me is Mr. Tylor, and his great work, "Primitive
Culture," was written thirty years ago, before the modern psychological
studies of Professor William James, Dr. Romaine Newbold, M. Richet, Dr.
Janet, Professor Sidgwick, Mr. Myers, Mr. Gurney, Dr. Parish, and many
others had commenced.

Anthropologists have gone on discussing the trances, and visions, and
so-called "demoniacal possession" of savages, as if no new researches into
similar facts in the psychology of civilised mankind existed; or, if they
existed, threw any glimmer of light on the abnormal psychology of savages.
I have, on the other hand, thought it desirable to sketch out a study of
savage psychology in the light of recent psychological research. Thanks to
this daring novelty, the book has been virtually taken as two books;
anthropologists have criticised the second part, and one or two Psychical
Researchers have criticised the first part; each school leaving one part
severely alone. Such are the natural results of a too restricted
specialism.

Even to Psychical Researchers the earlier division is of scant interest,
because witnesses to _successful_ abnormal or supernormal faculty in
savages cannot be brought into court and cross-examined. But I do not give
anecdotes of such savage successes as evidence to _facts;_ they are only
illustrations, and evidence to _beliefs and methods_ (as of crystal gazing
and automatic utterances of "secondary personality"), which, among the
savages, correspond to the supposed facts examined by Psychical Research
among the civilised. I only point out, as Bastian had already pointed out,
the existence of a field that deserves closer study by anthropologists
who can observe savages in their homes. We need persons trained in
the psychological laboratories of Europe and America, as members of
anthropological expeditions. It may be noted that, in his "Letters from
the South Seas," Mr. Louis Stevenson makes some curious observations,
especially on a singular form of hypnotism applied to himself with
fortunate results. The method, used in native medicine, was novel; and
the results were entirely inexplicable to Mr. Stevenson, who had not been
amenable to European hypnotic practice. But he was not a trained expert.

Anthropology must remain incomplete while it neglects this field, whether
among wild or civilised men. In the course of time this will come to be
acknowledged. It will be seen that we cannot really account for the origin
of the belief in spirits while we neglect the scientific study of those
psychical conditions, as of hallucination and the hypnotic trance, in
which that belief must probably have had some, at least, of its origins.

As to the second part of the book, I have argued that the first dim
surmises as to a Supreme Being need not have arisen (as on the current
anthropological theory) in the notion of spirits at all. (See chapter xi.)
Here I have been said to draw a mere "verbal distinction" but no
distinction can be more essential. If such a Supreme Being as many savages
acknowledge is _not_ envisaged by them as a "spirit," then the theories
and processes by which he is derived from a ghost of a dead man are
invalid, and remote from the point. As to the origin of a belief in a
kind of germinal Supreme Being (say the Australian Baiame), I do not, in
this book, offer any opinion. I again and again decline to offer an
opinion. Critics, none the less, have said that I attribute the belief to
revelation! I shall therefore here indicate what I think probable in so
obscure a field.

As soon as man had the idea of "making" things, he might conjecture as to
a Maker of things which he himself had not made, and could not make. He
would regard this unknown Maker as a "magnified non-natural man." These
speculations appear to me to need less reflection than the long and
complicated processes of thought by which Mr. Tylor believes, and probably
believes with justice, the theory of "spirits" to have been evolved. (See
chapter iii.) This conception of a magnified non-natural man, who is a
Maker, being given; his Power would be recognised, and fancy would clothe
one who had made such useful things with certain other moral attributes,
as of Fatherhood, goodness, and regard for the ethics of his children;
these ethics having been developed naturally in the evolution of social
life. In all this there is nothing "mystical," nor anything, as far as I
can see, beyond the limited mental powers of any beings that deserve to be
called human.

But I hasten to add that another theory may be entertained. Since this
book was written there appeared "The Native Tribes of Central Australia,"
by Professor Spencer and Mr. Gillen, a most valuable study.[1] The
authors, closely scrutinising the esoteric rites of the Arunta and other
tribes in Central Australia, found none of the moral precepts and
attributes which (according to Mr. Howitt, to whom their work is
dedicated), prevail in the mysteries of the natives of New South Wales and
Victoria. (See chapter x.) What they found was a belief in 'the great
spirit, _Twanyirika_,' who is believed 'by uninitiated boys and women'
(but, apparently, not by adults) to preside over the cruel rites of tribal
initiation.[2] No more is said, no myths about 'the great spirit' are
given. He is dismissed in a brief note. Now if these ten lines contain
_all_ the native lore of Twanyirika, he is a mere bugbear, not believed in
(apparently) by adults, but invented by them to terrorise the women and
boys. Next, granting that the information of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen is
exhaustive, and granting that (as Mr. J.G. Frazer holds, in his essays in
the 'Fortnightly Review,' April and May, 1899) the Arunta are the most
primitive of mortals, it will seem to follow that the _moral_ attributes
of Baiame and other gods of other Australian regions are later accretions
round the form of an original and confessed bugbear, as among the
primitive Arunta, 'a bogle of the nursery,' in the phrase repudiated by
Maitland of Lethington. Though not otherwise conspicuously more civilised
than the Arunta (except, perhaps, in marriage relations), Mr. Howitt's
South Eastern natives will have improved the Arunta confessed 'bogle'
into a beneficent and moral Father and Maker. Religion will have its
origin in a tribal joke, and will have become not '_diablement_,' but
'_divinement_,' '_changée en route_.' Readers of Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen will see that the Arunta philosophy, primitive or not, is of a high
ingenuity, and so artfully composed that it contains no room either for a
Supreme Being or for the doctrine of the survival of the soul, with a
future of rewards and punishments; opinions declared to be extant among
other Australian tribes. There is no creator, and every soul, after death,
is reincarnated in a new member of the tribe. On the other hand (granting
that the brief note on Twanyirika is exhaustive), the Arunta, in their
isolation, may have degenerated in religion, and may have dropped, in the
case of Twanyirika, the moral attributes of Baiame. It may be noticed
that, in South Eastern Australia, the Being who presides, like Twanyirika,
over initiations is _not_ the supreme being, but a son or deputy of his,
such as the Kurnai Tundun. We do not know whether the Arunta have, or have
had and lost, or never possessed, a being superior to Twanyirika.

With regard, to all such moral, and, in certain versions, creative Beings
as Baiame, criticism has taken various lines. There is the high a priori
line that savage minds are incapable of originating the notion of a moral
Maker. I have already said that the notion, in an early form, seems to be
well within the range of any minds deserving to be called human. Next, the
facts are disputed. I can only refer readers to the authorities cited.
They speak for tribes in many quarters of the world, and the witnesses
are laymen as well as missionaries. I am accused, again, of using a
misleading rhetoric, and of thereby covertly introducing Christian or
philosophical ideas into my account of "savages guiltless of Christian
teaching." As to the latter point, I am also accused of mistaking for
native opinions the results of "Christian teaching." One or other charge
must fall to the ground. As to my rhetoric, in the use of such words as
'Creator,' 'Eternal,' and the like, I shall later qualify and explain it.
For a long discussion between myself and Mr. Sidney Hartland, involving
minute detail, I may refer the reader to _Folk-Lore_, the last number of
1898 and the first of 1899, and to the Introduction to the new edition of
my 'Myth, Ritual, and Religion' (1899).

Where relatively high moral attributes are assigned to a Being, I have
called the result 'Religion;' where the same Being acts like Zeus in
Greek fable, plays silly or obscene tricks, is lustful and false, I have
spoken of 'Myth.'[3] These distinctions of Myth and Religion may be, and
indeed are, called arbitrary. The whole complex set of statements about
the Being, good or bad, sublime or silly, are equally Myths, it may be
urged. Very well; but one set, the loftier set, is fitter to survive, and
does survive, in what we still commonly call Religion; while the other
set, the puerile set of statements, is fairly near to extinction, and is
usually called Mythology. One set has been the root of a goodly tree: the
other set is being lopped off, like the parasitic mistletoe.

I am arguing that the two classes of ideas arise from two separate human
moods; moods as different and distinct as lust and love. I am arguing
that, as far as our information goes, the nobler set of ideas is as
ancient as the lower. Personally (though we cannot have direct evidence)
I find it easy to believe that the loftier notions are the earlier. If man
began with the conception of a powerful and beneficent Maker or Father,
then I can see how the humorous savage fancy ran away with the idea of
Power, and attributed to a potent being just such tricks as a waggish and
libidinous savage would like to play if he could. Moreover, I have
actually traced (in 'Myth, Ritual, and Religion') some plausible processes
of mythical accretion. The early mind was not only religious, in its way,
but scientific, in its way. It embraced the idea of Evolution as well as
the idea of Creation. To one mood a Maker seemed to exist. But the
institution of Totemism (whatever its origin) suggested the idea of
Evolution; for men, it was held, developed out of their Totems-animals and
plants. But then, on the other hand, Zeus, or Baiame, or Mungun-ngaur, was
regarded as their Father. How were these contradictions to be reconciled?
Easily, thus: Zeus _was_ the Father, but, in each case, was the Father by
an amour in which he wore the form of the Totem-snake, swan, bull, ant,
dog, or the like. At once a degraded set of secondary erotic myths cluster
around Zeus.

Again, it is notoriously the nature of man to attribute every institution
to a primal inventor or legislator. Men then, find themselves performing
certain rites, often of a buffooning or scandalous character; and, in
origin, mainly magical, intended for the increase of game, edible plants,
or, later, for the benefit of the crops. _Why_ do they perform these
rites? they ask: and, looking about, as usual, for a primal initiator,
they attribute what they do to a primal being, the Corn Spirit, Demeter,
or to Zeus, or to Baiame, or Manabozho, or Punjel. This is man's usual way
of going back to origins. Instantly, then, a new set of parasitic myths
crystallises round a Being who, perhaps, was originally moral. The savage
mind, in short, has not maintained itself on the high level, any more than
the facetious mediaeval myths maintained themselves, say, on the original
level of the conception of the character of St. Peter, the keeper of the
keys of Heaven.

All this appears perfectly natural and human, and in this, and in other
ways, what we call low Myth may have invaded the higher realms of
Religion: a lower invaded a higher element. But reverse the hypothesis.
Conceive that Zeus, or Baiame, was _originally_, not a Father and
guardian, but a lewd and tricky ghost of a medicine-man, a dancer of
indecent dances, a wooer of other men's wives, a shape-shifter, a
burlesque droll, a more jocular bugbear, like Twanyirika. By what means
did he come to be accredited later with his loftiest attributes, and with
regard for the tribal ethics, which, in practice, he daily broke and
despised? Students who argue for the possible priority of the lowest, or,
as I call them, mythical attributes of the Being, must advance an
hypothesis of the concretion of the nobler elements around the original
wanton and mischievous ghost.

Then let us suppose that the Arunta Twanyirika, a confessed bugbear,
discredited by adults, and only invented to keep women and children in
order, was the original germ of the moral and fatherly Baiame, of South
Eastern Australian tribes. How, in that case, did the adults of the tribe
fall into their own trap, come to believe seriously in their invented
bugbear, and credit him with the superintendence of such tribal ethics as
generosity and unselfishness? What were the processes of the conversion of
Twanyirika? I do not deny that this theory may be correct, but I wish to
see an hypothesis of the process of elevation.

I fail to frame such an hypothesis. Grant that the adults merely chuckle
over Twanyirika, whose 'voice' they themselves produce; by whirling the
wooden tundun, or bull-roarer. Grant that, on initiation, the boys learn
that 'the great spirit' is a mere bogle, invented to mystify the women,
and keep them away from the initiatory rites. How, then, did men come to
believe in _him_ as a terrible, all-seeing, all-knowing, creative, and
potent moral being? For this, undeniably, is the belief of many Australian
tribes, where his 'voice' (or rather that of his subordinate) is produced
by whirling the tundun. That these higher beliefs are of European origin,
Mr. Howitt denies. How were they evolved out of the notion of a confessed
artificial bogle? I am unable to frame a theory.

From my point of view, namely, that the higher and simple ideas may well
be the earlier, I have, at least, offered a theory of the processes by
which the lower attributes crystallised around a conception supposed
(_argumenti gratia_) to be originally high. Other processes of degradation
would come in, as (on my theory) the creed and practice of Animism, or
worship of human ghosts, often of low character, swamped and invaded the
prior belief in a fairly moral and beneficent, but not originally
spiritual, Being. My theory, at least, _is_ a theory, and, rightly or
wrongly, accounts for the phenomenon, the combination of the highest
divine and the lowest animal qualities in the same Being. But I have yet
to learn how, if the lowest myths are the earliest, the highest attributes
came in time to be conferred on the hero of the lowest myths. Why, or how,
did a silly buffoon, or a confessed 'bogle' arrive at being regarded as a
patron of such morality as had been evolved? An hypothesis of the
processes involved must be indicated. It is not enough to reply, in
general, that the rudimentary human mind is illogical and confused. That
is granted; but there must have been a method in its madness. What that
method was (from my point of view) I have shown, and it must be as easy
for opponents to set forth what, from their point of view, the method was.

We are here concerned with what, since the time of the earliest Greek
philosophers, has been the _crux_ of mythology: why are infamous myths
told about 'the Father of gods and men'? We can easily explain the nature
of the myths. They are the natural flowers of savage fancy and humour.
But wherefore do they crystallise round Zeus? I have, at least, shown some
probable processes in the evolution.

Where criticism has not disputed the facts of the moral attributes, now
attached to, say, an Australian Being, it has accounted for them by a
supposed process of borrowing from missionaries and other Europeans. In
this book I deal with that hypothesis as urged by Sir A.B. Ellis, in West
Africa (chapter xiii.). I need not have taken the trouble, as this
distinguished writer had already, in a work which I overlooked, formally
withdrawn, as regards Africa, his theory of 'loan-gods.' Miss Kingsley,
too, is no believer in the borrowing hypothesis for West Africa, in
regard, that is, to the highest divine conception. I was, when I wrote,
unaware that, especially as concerns America and Australia, Mr. Tylor had
recently advocated the theory of borrowing ('Journal of Anthrop.
Institute,' vol. xxi.). To Mr. Tylor's arguments, when I read them, I
replied in the 'Nineteenth Century,' January 1899: 'Are Savage Gods
Borrowed from Missionaries?' I do not here repeat my arguments, but await
the publication of Mr. Tylor's 'Gifford Lectures,' in which his hypothesis
may be reinforced, and may win my adhesion.

It may here be said, however, that if the Australian higher religious
ideas are of recent and missionary origin, they would necessarily be known
to the native women, from whom, in fact, they are absolutely concealed by
the men, under penalty of death. Again, if the Son, or Sons, of Australian
chief Beings resemble part of the Christian dogma, they much more closely
resemble the Apollo and Hermes of Greece.[4] But nobody will say that the
Australians borrowed them from Greek mythology!

In chapter xiv., owing to a bibliographical error of my own, I have done
injustice to Mr. Tylor, by supposing him to have overlooked Strachey's
account of the Virginian god Ahone. He did not overlook Ahone, but
mistrusted Strachey. In an excursus on Ahone, in the new edition of 'Myth,
Ritual, and Religion,' I have tried my best to elucidate the bibliography
and other aspects of Strachey's account, which I cannot regard as
baseless. Mr. Tylor's opinion is, doubtless, different, and may prove more
persuasive. As to Australia, Mr. Howitt, our best authority, continues to
disbelieve in the theory of borrowing.

I have to withdraw in chapters x. xi. the statement that 'Darumulun never
died at all.' Mr. Hartland has corrected me, and pointed out that, among
the Wiraijuri, a myth represents him as having been destroyed, for his
offences, by Baiame. In that tribe, however, Darumulun is not the highest,
but a subordinate Being. Mr. Hartland has also collected a few myths in
which Australian Supreme Beings _do_ (contrary to my statement) 'set the
example of sinning.' Nothing can surprise me less, and I only wonder that,
in so savage a race, the examples, hitherto collected, are so rare, and so
easily to be accounted for on the theory of processes of crystallisation
of myths already suggested.

As to a remark in Appendix B, Mr. Podmore takes a distinction. I quote his
remark, 'the phenomena described are quite inexplicable by ordinary
mechanical means,' and I contrast this, as illogical, with his opinion
that a girl 'may have been directly responsible for all that took place.'
Mr. Podmore replies that what was 'described' is not necessarily identical
with what _occurred_. Strictly speaking, he is right; but the evidence was
copious, was given by many witnesses, and (as offered by me) was in part
_contemporary_ (being derived from the local newspapers), so that here Mr.
Podmore's theory of illusions of memory on a large scale, developed in the
five weeks which elapsed before he examined the spectators, is out of
court. The evidence was of contemporary published record.

The handling of fire by Home is accounted for by Mr. Podmore, in the same
chapter, as the result of Home's use of a 'non-conducting substance.'
Asked, 'what substance?' he answered, 'asbestos.' Sir William Crookes,
again repeating his account of the performance which he witnessed, says,
'Home took up a lump of red-hot charcoal about twice the size of an egg
into his hand, on which certainly no asbestos was visible. He blew into
his hands, and the flames could be seen coming out between his fingers,
and he carried the charcoal round the room.'[5] Sir W. Crookes stood close
beside Home. The light was that of the fire and of two candles. Probably
Sir William could see a piece of asbestos, if it was covering Home's
hands, which he was watching.

What I had to say, by way of withdrawal, qualification, explanation, or
otherwise, I inserted (in order to seize the earliest opportunity) in the
Introduction to the recent edition of my 'Myth, Ritual, and Religion'
(1899). The reader will perhaps make his own kind deductions from my
rhetoric when I talk, for example, about a Creator in the creed of low
savages. They have no business, anthropologists declare, to entertain so
large an idea. But in 'The Journal of the Anthropological Institute,'
N.S. II., Nos. 1, 2, p. 85, Dr. Bennett gives an account of the religion
of the cannibal Fangs of the Congo, first described by Du Chaillu. 'These
anthropophagi have some idea of a God, a superior being, their _Tata_
("Father"), _a bo mam merere_ ("he made all things"), Anyambi is their
_Tata_ (Father), and ranks above all other Fang gods, because _a'ne yap_
(literally, "he lives in heaven").' This is inconsiderate in the Fangs. A
set of native cannibals have no business with a creative Father who is in
heaven. I say 'creative' because 'he made all things,' and (as the bowler
said about a 'Yorker') 'what else can you call him?' In all such cases,
where 'creator' and 'creative' are used by me, readers will allow for the
imperfections of the English language. As anthropologists say, the savages
simply cannot have the corresponding ideas; and I must throw the blame on
people who, knowing the savages and their language, assure us that they
_have_. This Fang Father or _Tata_ 'is considered indifferent to the wants
and sufferings of men, women, and children.' Offerings and prayers are
therefore made, not to him, but to the ghosts of parents, who are more
accessible. This additional information precisely illustrates my general
theory, that the chief Being was not evolved out of ghosts, but came to be
neglected as ghost-worship arose. I am not aware that Dr. Bennett is a
missionary. Anthropologists distrust missionaries, and most of my evidence
is from laymen. If the anthropological study of religion is to advance,
the high and usually indolent chief Beings of savage religions must be
carefully examined, not consigned to a casual page or paragraph. I have
found them most potent, and most moral, where ghost-worship has not
been evolved; least potent, or at all events most indifferent, where
ghost-worship is most in vogue. The inferences (granting the facts) are
fatal to the current anthropological theory.

The phrases 'Creator,' 'creative,' as applied to Anyambi, or Baiame,
have been described, by critics, as rhetorical, covertly introducing
conceptions of which savages are incapable. I have already shown that I
only follow my authorities, and their translations of phrases in various
savage tongues. But the phrase 'eternal,' applied to Anyambi or Baiame,
may be misleading. I do not wish to assert that, if you talked to a savage
about 'eternity,' he would understand what you intend. I merely mean what
Mariner says that the Tongans mean as to the god Tá-li-y Tooboo. 'Of his
origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal.' The savage
theologians assert no beginning for such beings (as a rule), and no end,
except where Unkulunkulu is by some Zulus thought to be dead, and
where the Wiraijuris declare that their Darumulun (_not_ supreme) was
'destroyed' by Baiame. I do not wish to credit savages with thoughts more
abstract than they possess. But that their thought can be abstract is
proved, even in the case of the absolutely 'primitive Arunta,' by
their myth of the _Ungambikula_, 'a word which means "out of nothing,"
or "self-existing,"' say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen.[6] Once more,
I find that I have spoken of some savage Beings as 'omnipresent'
and 'omnipotent.' But I have pointed out that this is only a modern
metaphysical rendering of the actual words attributed to the savage: 'He
can go everywhere, and do everything.' As to the phrase, also used, that
Baiame, for example, 'makes for righteousness,' I mean that he sanctions
the morality of his people; for instance, sanctions veracity and
unselfishness, as Mr. Howitt distinctly avers. These are examples of
'righteousness' in conduct. I do not mean that these virtues were
impressed on savages in some supernatural way, as a critic has daringly
averred that I do. The strong reaction of some early men against the
cosmical process by which 'the weakest goes to the wall,' is, indeed, a
curious moral phenomenon, and deserves the attention of moralists. But I
never dreamed of supposing that this reaction (which extends beyond the
limit of the tribe or group) had a 'supernatural' origin! It has been
argued that 'tribal morality' is only a set of regulations based on the
convenience of the elders of the tribe: is, in fact, as the Platonic
Thrasymachus says, 'the interest of the strongest.' That does not appear
to me to be demonstrated; but this is no place for a discussion of the
origin of morals. 'The interest of the strongest,' and of the nomadic
group, would be to knock elderly invalids on the head. But Dampier says,
of the Australians, in 1688, 'Be it little, or be it much they get, every
one has his part, as well the young and tender, and the old and feeble,
who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty.' The origin of
this fair and generous dealing may be obscure, but it is precisely the
kind of dealing on which, according to Mr. Howitt, the religion of the
Kurnai insists (chapter x.). Thus the Being concerned does 'make for
righteousness.'

With these explanations I trust that my rhetorical use of such phrases as
'eternal,' 'creative,' 'omniscient,' 'omnipotent,' 'omnipresent,' and
'moral,' may not be found to mislead, or covertly to import modern or
Christian ideas into my account of the religious conceptions of savages.

As to the evidence throughout, a learned historian has informed me that
'no anthropological evidence is of any value.' If so, there can be no
anthropology (in the realm of institutions). But the evidence that I
adduce is from such sources as anthropologists, at least, accept, and
employ in the construction of theories from which, in some points, I
venture to dissent.

A.L.

[Footnote 1: Macmillans, 1899.]

[Footnote 2: Op. cit. p. 246, note.]

[Footnote 3: See the new edition of _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_,
especially the new Introduction.]

[Footnote 4: See Introductions to my _Homeric Hymns_. Allen. 1899.]

[Footnote 5: _Journal S.P.R._, December 1890, p. 147.]

[Footnote 6: _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 388.]




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

'The only begetter' of this work is Monsieur Lefébure, author of 'Les
Yeux d'Horus,' and other studies in Egyptology. He suggested the writing
of the book, but is in no way responsible for the opinions expressed.

The author cannot omit the opportunity of thanking Mr. Frederic Myers for
his kindness in reading the proof sheets of the earlier chapters and
suggesting some corrections of statement. Mr. Myers, however, is probably
not in agreement with the author on certain points; for example, in
the chapter on 'Possession.' As the second part of the book differs
considerably from the opinions which have recommended themselves to most
anthropological writers on early Religion, the author must say here, as he
says later, that no harm can come of trying how facts look from a new
point of view, and that he certainly did not expect them to fall into the
shape which he now presents for criticism.

ST. ANDREWS: _April 3, 1898._




CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
II. SCIENCE AND 'MIRACLES'

III. ANTHROPOLOGY AND RELIGION
IV. 'OPENING THE GATES OF DISTANCE'
V. CRYSTAL VISIONS, SAVAGE AND CIVILISED
VI. ANTHROPOLOGY AND HALLUCINATIONS
VII. DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
VIII. FETISHISM AND SPIRITUALISM
IX. EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
X. HIGH GODS OF LOW RACES
XI. SUPREME GODS NOT NECESSARILY DEVELOPED OUT OF 'SPIRITS'
XII. SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS
XIII. MORE SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS
XIV. AHONE. TI-RA-WÁ. NÀ-PI. PACHACAMAC. TUI LAGA. TAA-ROA
XV. THE OLD DEGENERATION THEORY
XVI. THEORIES OF JEHOVAH
XVII. CONCLUSION

APPENDICES.

A. OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE
B. THE POLTERGEIST AND HIS EXPLAINERS
C. CRYSTAL-GAZING
D. CHIEFS IN AUSTRALIA

INDEX

       *       *       *       *       *

THE MAKING OF RELIGION

I

_INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER_

The modern Science of the History of Religion has attained conclusions
which already possess an air of being firmly established. These
conclusions may be briefly stated thus: Man derived the conception of
'spirit' or 'soul' from his reflections on the phenomena of sleep, dreams,
death, shadow, and from the experiences of trance and hallucination.
Worshipping first the departed souls of his kindred, man later extended
the doctrine of spiritual beings in many directions. Ghosts, or other
spiritual existences fashioned on the same lines, prospered till they
became gods. Finally, as the result of a variety of processes, one of
these gods became supreme, and, at last, was regarded as the one only God.
Meanwhile man retained his belief in the existence of his own soul,
surviving after the death of the body, and so reached the conception of
immortality. Thus the ideas of God and of the soul are the result of early
fallacious reasonings about misunderstood experiences.

It may seem almost wanton to suggest the desirableness of revising a
system at once so simple, so logical, and apparently so well bottomed on
facts. But there can never be any real harm in studying masses of evidence
from fresh points of view. At worst, the failure of adverse criticism must
help to establish the doctrines assailed. Now, as we shall show, there are
two points of view from which the evidence as to religion in its early
stages has not been steadily contemplated. Therefore we intend to ask,
first, what, if anything, can be ascertained as to the nature of the
'visions' and hallucinations which, according to Mr. Tylor in his
celebrated work 'Primitive Culture,' lent their aid to the formation of
the idea of 'spirit.' Secondly, we shall collect and compare the accounts
which we possess of the High Gods and creative beings worshipped or
believed in, by the most backward races. We shall then ask whether these
relatively Supreme Beings, so conceived of by men in very rudimentary
social conditions, can be, as anthropology declares, mere developments
from the belief in ghosts of the dead.

We shall end by venturing to suggest that the savage theory of the soul
may be based, at least in part, on experiences which cannot, at present,
be made to fit into any purely materialistic system of the universe. We
shall also bring evidence tending to prove that the idea of God, in its
earliest known shape, need not logically be derived from the idea of
spirit, however that idea itself may have been attained or evolved. The
conception of God, then, need not be evolved out of reflections on dreams
and 'ghosts.'

If these two positions can be defended with any success, it is obvious
that the whole theory of the Science of Religion will need to be
reconsidered. But it is no less evident that our two positions do not
depend on each other. The first may be regarded as fantastic, or
improbable, or may be 'masked' and left on one side. But the strength of
the second position, derived from evidence of a different character, will
not, therefore, be in any way impaired. Our first position can only be
argued for by dint of evidence highly unpopular in character, and, as a
general rule, condemned by modern science. The evidence is obtained by
what is, at all events, a legitimate anthropological proceeding. We may
follow Mr. Tylor's example, and collect savage _beliefs_ about visions,
hallucinations, 'clairvoyance,' and the acquisition of knowledge
apparently not attainable through the normal channels of sense. We may
then compare these savage beliefs with attested records of similar
_experiences_ among living and educated civilised men. Even if we attain
to no conclusion, or a negative conclusion, as to the actuality and
supernormal character of the alleged experiences, still to compare data of
savage and civilised psychology, or even of savage and civilised illusions
and fables, is decidedly part, though a neglected part, of the function of
anthropological science. The results, whether they do or do not strengthen
our first position, must be curious and instructive, if only as a chapter
in the history of human error. That chapter, too, is concerned with no
mean topic, but with what we may call the X region of our nature. Out of
that region, out of miracle, prophecy, vision, have certainly come forth
the great religions, Christianity and Islam; and the great religious
innovators and leaders, our Lord Himself, St. Francis, John Knox, Jeanne
d'Arc, down to the founder of the new faith of the Sioux and Arapahoe. It
cannot, then, be unscientific to compare the barbaric with the civilised
beliefs and experiences about a region so dimly understood, and so fertile
in potent influences. Here the topic will be examined rather by the method
of anthropology than of psychology. We may conceivably have something to
learn (as has been the case before) from the rough observations and hasty
inferences of the most backward races.

We may illustrate this by an anecdote:

'The Northern Indians call the _Aurora Borealis_ "Edthin," that is "Deer."
Their ideas in this respect are founded on a principle one would not
imagine. Experience has shown them that when a hairy deer-skin is briskly
stroked with the hand on a dark night, it will emit many sparks of
electrical fire.'

So says Hearne in his 'Journey,' published in 1795 (p. 346).

This observation of the Red Men is a kind of parable representing a part
of the purport of the following treatise. The Indians, making a hasty
inference from a trivial phenomenon, arrived unawares at a probably
correct conclusion, long unknown to civilised science. They connected the
Aurora Borealis with electricity, supposing that multitudes of deer
in the sky rubbed the sparks out of each other! Meanwhile, even in
the last century, a puzzled populace spoke of the phenomenon as 'Lord
Derwentwater's Lights.' The cosmic pomp and splendour shone to welcome the
loyal Derwentwater into heaven, when he had given his life for his exiled
king.

Now, my purpose in the earlier portion of this essay is to suggest that
certain phenomena of human nature, apparently as trivial as the sparks
rubbed out of a deer's hide in a dark night, may indicate, and may be
allied to a force or forces, which, like the Aurora Borealis, may shine
from one end of the heavens to the other, strangely illumining the
darkness of our destiny. Such phenomena science has ignored, as it so long
ignored the sparks from the stroked deer-skin, and the attractive power of
rubbed amber. These trivial things were not known to be allied to the
lightning, or to indicate a force which man could tame and use. But just
as the Indians, by a rapid careless inference, attributed the Aurora
Borealis to electric influences, so (as anthropology assures us) savages
everywhere have inferred the existence of soul or spirit, intelligence
that

  'Does not know the bond of Time,
  Nor wear the manacles of Space,'

in part from certain apparently trivial phenomena of human faculty. These
phenomena, as Mr. Tylor says, 'the great intellectual movement of the last
two centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless.'[1] I refer to alleged
experiences, merely odd, sporadic, and, for commercial purposes, useless,
such as the transference of thought from one mind to another by no known
channel of sense, the occurrence of hallucinations which, _prima facie_,
correspond coincidentally with unknown events at a distance, all that is
called 'second sight,' or 'clairvoyance,' and other things even more
obscure. Reasoning on these real or alleged phenomena, and on other quite
normal and accepted facts of dream, shadow, sleep, trance, and death,
savages have inferred the existence of spirit or soul, exactly as the
Indians arrived at the notion of electricity (not so called by them, of
course) as the cause of the Aurora Borealis. But, just as the Indians
thought that the cosmic lights were caused by the rubbing together of
crowded deer in the heavens (a theory quite childishly absurd), so the
savage has expressed, in rude fantastic ways, his conclusion as to the
existence of spirit. He believes in wandering separable souls of men,
surviving death, and he has peopled with his dreams the whole inanimate
universe.

My suggestion is that, in spite of his fantasies, the savage had possibly
drawn from his premises an inference not wholly, or not demonstrably
erroneous. As the sparks of the deer-skin indicated electricity, so the
strange lights in the night of human nature may indicate faculties which
science, till of late and in a few instances, has laughed at, ignored,
'thrown aside as worthless.'

It should be observed that I am not speaking of 'spiritualism,' a word of
the worst associations, inextricably entangled with fraud, bad logic, and
the blindest credulity. Some of the phenomena alluded to have, however,
been claimed as their own province by 'spiritists,' and need to be rescued
from them. Mr. Tylor writes:

'The issue raised by the comparison of savage, barbaric, and civilised
spiritualism is this: Do the Red Indian medicine-man, the Tatar
necromancer, the Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the
possession of belief and knowledge of the highest truth and import,
which, nevertheless, the great intellectual movement of the last two
centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless?'

_Distinguo!_ That does not seem to me to be the issue. In my opinion the
issue is: 'Have the Red Indian, the Tatar, the Highland seer, and the
Boston medium (the least reputable of the menagerie) observed, and
reasoned wildly from, and counterfeited, and darkened with imposture,
certain genuine by-products of human faculty, which do not _prima facie_
deserve to be thrown aside?'

That, I venture to think, is the real issue. That science may toss aside
as worthless some valuable observations of savages is now universally
admitted by people who know the facts. Among these observations is the
whole topic of Hypnotism, with the use of suggestion for healing purposes,
and the phenomena, no longer denied, of 'alternating personalities.' For
the truth of this statement we may appeal to one of the greatest of
Continental anthropologists, Adolf Bastian.[2] The missionaries, like
Livingstone, usually supposed that the savage seer's declared ignorance--
after his so-called fit of inspiration--of what occurred in that state,
was an imposture. But nobody now doubts the similar oblivion of what has
passed that sometimes follows the analogous hypnotic sleep. Of a
remarkable cure, which the school of the Salpêtrière or Nancy would
ascribe, with probable justice, to 'suggestion,' a savage example will be
given later.

Savage hypnotism and 'suggestion,' among the Sioux and Arapahoe, has been
thought worthy of a whole volume in the Reports of the Ethnological Bureau
of the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, U.S., 1892-98). Republican
Governments publish scientific matter 'regardless of expense,' and the
essential points might have been put more shortly. They illustrate the
fact that only certain persons can hypnotise others, and throw light on
some peculiarities of _rapport._[3] In brief, savages anticipated us in
the modern science of experimental psychology, as is frankly acknowledged
by the Society for Experimental Psychology of Berlin. 'That many mystical
phenomena are much more common and prominent among savages than among
ourselves is familiar to everyone acquainted with the subject. The
_ethnological_ side of our inquiry demands penetrative study.'[4]

That study I am about to try to sketch. My object is to examine some
'superstitious practices' and beliefs of savages by aid of the comparative
method. I shall compare, as I have already said, the ethnological evidence
for savage usages and beliefs analogous to thought-transference,
coincidental hallucinations, alternating personality, and so forth, with
the best attested modern examples, experimental or spontaneous. This
raises the question of our evidence, which is all-important. We proceed to
defend it. The savage accounts are on the level of much anthropological
evidence; they may, that is, be dismissed by adversaries as 'travellers'
tales.' But the best testimony for the truth of the reports as to actual
belief in the facts is the undesigned coincidence of evidence from all
ages and quarters.[5] When the stories brought by travellers, ancient and
modern, learned and unlearned, pious or sceptical, agree in the main, we
have all the certainty that anthropology can offer. Again, when we find
practically the same strange neglected sparks, not only rumoured of
in European popular superstition, but attested in many hundreds of
depositions made at first hand by respectable modern witnesses, educated
and responsible, we cannot honestly or safely dismiss the coincidence of
report as indicating a mere 'survival' of savage superstitious belief, and
nothing more.

We can no longer do so, it is agreed, in the case of hypnotic phenomena. I
hope to make it seem possible that we should not do so in the matter of
the hallucinations provoked by gazing in a smooth deep, usually styled
'crystal-gazing.' Ethnologically, this practice is at least as old as
classical times, and is of practically world-wide distribution. I shall
prove its existence in Australia, New Zealand, North America, South
America, Asia, Africa, Polynesia, and among the Incas, not to speak of
the middle and recent European ages. The universal idea is that such
visions may be 'clairvoyant.' To take a Polynesian case, 'resembling the
Hawaiian _wai harru_.' When anyone has been robbed, the priest, after
praying, has a hole dug in the floor of the house, and filled with water.
Then he gazes into the water, 'over which the god is supposed to place the
spirit of the thief.... The image of the thief was, according to their
account, reflected in the water, and being perceived by the priest, he
named the individual, or the parties.'[6] Here the statement about the
'spirit' is a mere savage philosophical explanation. But the fact that
hallucinatory pictures can really be seen by a fair percentage of educated
Europeans, in water, glass balls, and so forth, is now confirmed by
frequent experiment, and accepted by opponents, 'non-mystical writers,'
like Dr. Parish of Munich.[7] I shall bring evidence to suggest that the
visions may correctly reflect, as it were, persons and places absolutely
unknown to the gazer, and that they may even reveal details unknown to
every one present. Such results among savages, or among the superstitious,
would be, and are, explained by the theory of 'spirits.' Modern science
has still to find an explanation consistent with recognised laws of
nature, but 'spirits' we shall not invoke.

In the same way I mean to examine all or most of the 'so-called mystical
phenomena of savage life.' I then compare them with the better vouched for
modern examples. To return to the question of evidence, I confess that I
do not see how the adverse anthropologist, psychologist, or popular
agnostic is to evade the following dilemma: To the anthropologist we say,
'The evidence we adduce is your own evidence, that of books of travel in
all lands and countries. If _you_ may argue from it, so may we. Some
of it is evidence to unusual facts, more of it is evidence to singular
beliefs, which we think not necessarily without foundation. As raising a
presumption in favour of that opinion, we cite examples in which savage
observations of abnormal and once rejected facts, are now admitted by
science to have a large residuum of truth, we argue that what is admitted
in some cases may come to be admitted in more. No _a priori_ line can here
be drawn.'

To the psychologist who objects that our modern instances are mere
anecdotes, we reply by asking, 'Dear sir, what are _your_ modern
instances? What do you know of "Mrs. A.," whom you still persistently
cite as an example of morbid recurrent hallucinations? Name the German
servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she
had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who
vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no
evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said
by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year
or two before my arrival at Göttingen.... Many eminent physiologists and
psychologists visited the town." Why do you not name a few out of the
distinguished crowd?'[8] This anecdote, a rumour of a rumour of a
Protestant explanation of a Catholic marvel, was told by Coleridge at
least twenty years after the possible date. The psychologists copy it,[9]
one after the other, as a flock of sheep jump where their leader has
jumped. An example by way of anecdote may be permitted.

According to the current anthropological theory, the idea of soul or
spirit was suggested to early men by their experiences in dreams. They
seemed, in sleep, to visit remote places; therefore, they argued,
something within them was capable of leaving the body and wandering about.

This something was the soul or spirit. Now it is obvious that this opinion
of early men would be confirmed if they ever chanced to acquire, in
dreams, knowledge of places which they had never visited, and of facts as
to which, in their waking state, they could have no information. This
experience, indeed, would suggest problems even To Mr. Herbert Spencer, if
it occurred to him.

Conversing on this topic with a friend of acknowledged philosophical
eminence, I illustrated my meaning by a story of a dream. It was reported
to me by the dreamer, with whom I am well acquainted, was of very recent
occurrence, and was corroborated by the evidence of another person, to
whom the dream was narrated, before its fulfilment was discovered. I am
not at liberty to publish the details, for good reasons, but the essence
of the matter was this: A. and B. (the dreamer) had common interests. A.
had taken certain steps about which B. had only a surmise, and a vague
one, that steps had probably been taken. A. then died, and B. in an
extremely vivid dream (a thing unfamiliar to him) seemed to read a mass of
unknown facts, culminating in two definite results, capable of being
stated in figures. These results, by the very nature of the case, could
not be known to A., so that, before he was placed out of B.'s reach by
death, he could not have stated them to him, and, afterwards, had
assuredly no means of doing so.

The dream, two days after its occurrence, and after it had been told to
C., proved to be literally correct. Now I am not asking the reader's
belief for this anecdote (for that could only be yielded in virtue of
knowledge of the veracity of B. and C.), but I invite his attention to the
psychological explanation. My friend suggested that A. had told B. all
about the affair, that B. had not listened (though his interests were
vitally concerned), and that the crowd of curious details, naturally
unfamiliar to B., had reposed in his subconscious memory, and had been
revived in the dream.

Now B.'s dream was a dream of reading a mass of minute details, including
names of places entirely unknown to him. It may be admitted, in accordance
with the psychological theory, that B. might have received all this
information from A., but, by dint of inattention--'the malady of not
marking'--might never have been _consciously_ aware of what he heard. Then
B.'s subconscious memory of what he did not _consciously_ know might break
upon him in his dream. Instances of similar mental phenomena are not
uncommon. But the general result of the combined details was one which
could not possibly be known to A. before his death; nor to B. could it be
known at all. Yet B.'s dream represented this general result with perfect
accuracy, which cannot be accounted for by the revival of subconscious
memory in sleep. Neither asleep nor awake can a man remember what it is
impossible for him to have known. The dream contained no _prediction_ for
the results were now fixed; but (granting the good faith of the narrator)
the dream did contain information not normally accessible.

However, by way of psychological explanation of the dream, my friend cited
Coleridge's legend, as to the German girl and her unconscious knowledge of
certain learned languages. 'And what is the evidence for the truth of
Coleridge's legend?' Of course, there is none, or none known to all the
psychologists who quote it from Coleridge. Neither, if true, was the
legend to the point. However, psychology will accept such unauthenticated
narratives, and yet will scoff at first baud, duly corroborated testimony
from living and honourable people, about recent events.

Only a great force of prejudice can explain this acceptance, by
psychologists, of one kind of marvellous tale on no evidence, and this
rejection of another class of marvellous tale, when supported by first
hand, signed and corroborated evidence, of living witnesses. I see only
one escape for psychologists from this dilemma. Their marvellous tales are
_possible_, though unvouched for, because they have always heard them and
repeated them in lectures, and read and repeated them in books. _Our_
marvellous tales are impossible, because the psychologists know that they
are impossible, which means that they have not been familiar with them,
from youth upwards, in lectures and manuals. But man has no right to have
'clear ideas of the possible and impossible,' like Faraday, _a priori_,
except in the exact sciences. There are other instances of weak evidence
which satisfies psychologists.

Hamilton has an anecdote, borrowed from Monboddo, who got it from Mr. Hans
Stanley, who, 'about twenty-six years ago,' heard it from the subject of
the story, Madame de Laval. 'I have the memorandum somewhere in my
papers,' says Mr. Stanley, vaguely. Then we have two American anecdotes by
Dr. Flint and Mr. Rush; and such is Sir William Hamilton's equipment of
odd facts for discussing the unconscious or subconscious. The least
credible and worst attested of these narratives still appears in popular
works on psychology. Moreover, all psychology, except experimental
psychology, is based on anecdotes which people tell about their own
subjective experiences. Mr. Galton, whose original researches are well
known, even offered rewards in money for such narratives about visualised
rows of coloured figures, and so on.

Clearly the psychologist, then, has no _prima facie_ right to object to
our anecdotes of experiences, which he regards as purely subjective. As
evidence, we only accept them at first hand, and, when possible, the
witnesses have been cross-examined personally. Our evidence then, where it
consists of travellers' tales, is on a level with that which satisfies the
anthropologist. Where it consists of modern statements of personal
experience, our evidence is often infinitely better than much which is
accepted by the nonexperimental psychologist. As for the agnostic writer
on the Non-Religion of the Future, M. Guyau actually illustrates the
Resurrection of our Lord by an American myth about a criminal, of whom a
hallucinatory phantasm appeared to each of his gaol companions, separately
and successively, on a day after his execution! For this prodigious fable
no hint of reference to authority is given.[10] Yet the evidence appears
to satisfy M. Guyau, and is used by him to reinforce his argument.

The anthropologist and psychologist, then, must either admit that their
evidence is no better than ours, if as good, or must say that they only
believe evidence as to 'possible' facts. They thus constitute themselves
judges of what is possible, and practically regard themselves as
omniscient. Science has had to accept so many things once scoffed at as
'impossible,' that this attitude of hers, as we shall show in chapter ii.,
ceases to command respect.

My suggestion is that the trivial, rejected, or unheeded phenomena
vouched for by the evidence here defended may, not inconceivably, be of
considerable importance. But, stating the case at the lowest, if we are
only concerned with illusions and fables, it cannot but be curious to note
their persistent uniformity in savage and civilised life.

To make the first of our two main positions clear, and in part to justify
ourselves in asking any attention for such matters, we now offer an
historical sketch of the relations between Science and the so-called
'Miraculous' in the past.

[Footnote 1: _Primitive Culture_, i. 156. London, 1891.]

[Footnote 2: _Ueber psychische Beobachiungen bei Naiurvülkern_. Leipzig,
Gunther, 1890.]

[Footnote 3: See especially pp. 922-926. The book is interesting in other
ways, and, indeed, touching, as it describes the founding of a new Red
Indian religion, on a basis of Hypnotism and Christianity.]

[Footnote 4: Programme of the Society, p. iv.]

[Footnote 5: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i, 9, 10.]

[Footnote 6: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, ii. p. 240.]

[Footnote 7: _Hallucinations and Illusions_, English edition, pp. 69-70,
297.]

[Footnote 8: Sir William Hamilton's _Lectures_, i. 345.]

[Footnote 9: Maudsley, Kerner, Carpentor, Du Prel, Zangwill.]

[Footnote 10: Coleridge's mythical maid (p. 10) is set down by Mr. Samuel
Laing to an experiment of Braid's! No references are given.--Laing:
_Problems of the Future._]




II

SCIENCE AND 'MIRACLES'

_Historical Sketch_

Research in the X region is not a new thing under the sun. When Saul
disguised himself before his conference with the Witch of Endor, he made
an elementary attempt at a scientific test of the supernormal. Croesus,
the king, went much further, when he tested the clairvoyance of the
oracles of Greece, by sending an embassy to ask what he was doing at a
given hour on a given day, and by then doing something very _bizarre_. We
do not know how the Delphic oracle found out the right answer, but various
easy methods of fraud at once occur to the mind. However, the procedure of
Croesus, if he took certain precautions, was relatively scientific.
Relatively scientific also was the inquiry of Porphyry, with whose
position our own is not unlikely to be compared. Unable, or reluctant, to
accept Christianity, Porphyry 'sought after a sign' of an element of
supernormal truth in Paganism. But he began at the wrong end, namely at
Pagan spiritualistic _séances_, with the usual accompaniments of darkness
and fraud. His perplexed letter to Anebo, with the reply attributed to
Iamblichus, reveal Porphyry wandering puzzled among mediums, floating
lights, odd noises, queer dubious 'physical phenomena.' He did not begin
with accurate experiments as to the existence of rare, and apparently
supernormal human faculties, and he seems to have attained no conclusion
except that 'spirits' are 'deceitful.'[1]

Something more akin to modern research began about the time of the
Reformation, and lasted till about 1680. The fury for burning witches led
men of sense, learning, and humanity to ask whether there was any reality
in witchcraft, and, generally, in the marvels of popular belief. The
inquiries of Thyraeus, Lavaterus, Bodinus, Wierus, Le Loyer, Reginald
Scot, and many others, tended on the whole to the negative side as regards
the wilder fables about witches, but left the problems of ghosts and
haunted houses pretty much where they were before. It may be observed that
Lavaterus (circ. 1580) already put forth a form of the hypothesis of
telepathy (that 'ghosts' are hallucinations produced by the direct action
of one mind, or brain, upon another), while Thyraeus doubted whether the
noises heard in 'haunted houses' were not mere hallucinations of the sense
of hearing. But all these early writers, like Cardan, were very careless
of first-hand evidence, and, indeed, preferred ghosts vouched for by
classical authority, Pliny, Plutarch, or Suetonius. With the Rev. Joseph
Glanvil, F.R.S. (circ. 1666), a more careful examination of evidence came
into use. Among the marvels of Glanvil's and other tracts usually
published together in his 'Sadducismus Triumphatus' will be found letters
which show that he and his friends, like Henry More and Boyle, laboured to
collect first-hand evidence for second sight, haunted houses, ghosts, and
wraiths. The confessed object was to procure a 'Whip for the Droll,' a
reply to the laughing scepticism of the Restoration. The result was to
bring on Glanvil a throng of bores--he was 'worse haunted than Mr.
Mompesson's house,' he says-and Mr. Pepys found his arguments 'not very
convincing.' Mr. Pepys, however, was alarmed by 'our young gib-cat,'
which he mistook for a 'spright.' With Henry More, Baxter, and Glanvil
practically died, for the time, the attempt to investigate these topics
scientifically, though an impression of doubt was left on the mind of
Addison. Witchcraft ceased to win belief, and was abolished, as a crime,
in 1736. Some of the Scottish clergy, and John Wesley, clung fondly
to the old faith, but Wodrow, and Cotton Mather (about 1710-1730) were
singularly careless and unlucky in producing anything like evidence for
their narratives. Ghost stories continued to be told, but not to be
investigated.

Then one of the most acute of philosophers decided that investigation
ought never to be attempted. This scientific attitude towards X phenomena,
that of refusing to examine them, and denying them without examination,
was fixed by David Hume in his celebrated essay on 'Miracles.' Hume
derided the observation and study of what he called 'Miracles,' in the
field of experience, and he looked for an _a priori_ argument which would
for ever settle the question without examination of facts. In an age of
experimental philosophy, which derided _a priori_ methods, this was Hume's
great contribution to knowledge. His famous argument, the joy of many an
honest breast, is a tissue of fallacies which might be given for exposure
to beginners in logic, as an elementary exercise. In announcing his
discovery, Hume amusingly displays the self-complacency and the want of
humour with which we Scots are commonly charged by our critics:

'I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument which, if just,
will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds
of superstitious delusions, and consequently will be useful as long as
the world endures.'

He does not expect, however, to convince the multitude. Till the end of
the world, 'accounts of miracles and prodigies, I suppose, will be found
in all histories, sacred and profane.' Without saying here what he
means by a miracle, Hume argues that 'experience is our only guide in
reasoning.' He then defines a miracle as 'a violation of the laws
of nature.' By a 'law of nature' he means a uniformity, not of all
experience, but of each experience as he will deign to admit; while he
excludes, without examination, all evidence for experience of the absence
of such uniformity. That kind of experience cannot be considered. 'There
must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the
event would not merit that appellation.' If there be any experience in
favour of the event, that experience does not count. A miracle is counter
to universal experience, no event is counter to universal experience,
therefore no event is a miracle. If you produce evidence to what Hume
calls a miracle (we shall see examples) he replies that the evidence is
not valid, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact.
Now no error of human evidence can be more miraculous than a 'miracle.'
Therefore there can be no valid evidence for 'miracles.' Fortunately,
Hume now gives an example of what he means by 'miracles.' He says:--

'For, first, there is _not to be found_, in _all history_, any miracle
attested by a _sufficient number_ of men, of such unquestioned _good
sense, education_, and _learning_, as to secure us against all delusion
in themselves; of such undoubted _integrity_, as to place them beyond
all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and
reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in
case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time
attesting facts performed in such a _public manner_, and in so
_celebrated a part of the world_, as to render the detection
unavoidable; all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full
assurance in the testimony of men.'[2]

Hume added a note at the end of his book, in which he contradicted every
assertion which he had made in the passage just cited; indeed, be
contradicted himself before he had written six pages.

'There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person
than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the
tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people
were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf,
and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the usual effects of
that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles
were _immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned
integrity_, attested by _witnesses of credit and distinction_, in _a
learned age_, and on the most _eminent theatre_ that is _now in the
world_. Nor is this all. A relation of them was published and dispersed
everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported
by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions,
in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able
_distinctly to refute or detect them_. Where shall we find such a number
of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what
have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute
_impossibility, or miraculous nature_ of the events which they relate?
And this, surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be
regarded as a sufficient refutation.'

Thus Hume, first denies the existence of such evidence, given in such
circumstances as he demands, and then he produces an example of that very
kind of evidence. Having done this, he abandons (as Mr. Wallace observes)
his original assertion that the evidence does not exist, and takes refuge
in alleging 'the absolute impossibility' of the events which the evidence
supports. Thus Hume poses as a perfect judge of the possible, in a kind of
omniscience. He takes his stand on the uniformity of all experience that
is not hostile to his idea of the possible, and dismisses all testimony to
other experience, even when it reaches his standard of evidence. He is
remote indeed from Virchow's position 'that what we call the laws of
nature must vary according to our frequent new experiences.'[3] In his
note, Hume buttresses and confirms his evidence for the Jansenist
miracles. They have even a martyr, M. Montgeron, who wrote an account of
the events, and, says Hume lightly, 'is now said to be somewhere in a
dungeon on account of his book.' 'Many of the miracles of the Abbé Paris
were proved immediately by witnesses before the Bishop's court at Paris,
under the eye of Cardinal Noailles....' 'His successor was an enemy to the
Jansenists, yet twenty-two _curés_ of Paris ... pressed him to examine
these miracles ... _But he wisely forbore_.' Hume adds his testimony to
the character of these _curés_. Thus it is wisdom, according to Hume, to
dismiss the most public and well-attested 'miracles' without examination.
This is experimental science of an odd kind.

The phenomena were cases of healing, many of them surprising, of
cataleptic rigidity, and of insensibility to pain, among visitors to the
tomb of the Abbé Paris (1731). Had the cases been judicially examined (all
medical evidence was in their favour), and had they been proved false, the
cause of Hume would have profited enormously. A strong presumption would
have been raised against the miracles of Christianity. But Hume applauds
the wisdom of not giving his own theory this chance of a triumph. The
cataleptic seizures were of the sort now familiar to science. These have,
therefore, emerged from the miraculous. In fact, the phenomena which
occurred at the tomb of the Abbé Paris have emerged almost too far, and
now seem in danger of being too readily and too easily accepted. In 1887
MM. Binet and Féré, of the school of the Salpêtrière, published in English
a popular manual styled 'Animal Magnetism.' These authors write with great
caution about such alleged phenomena as the reading, by the hypnotised
patient, of the thoughts in the mind of the hypnotiser. But as to the
phenomena at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, they say that 'suggestion
explains them.'[4] That is, in the opinion of MM. Binet and Féré
the so-called 'miracles' really occurred, and were worked by 'the
imagination,' by 'self-suggestion.'

The most famous case--that of Mlle. Coirin--has been carefully examined by
Dr. Charcot.[5]

Mlle. Coirin had a dangerous fall from her horse, in September 1716, in
her thirty-first year. The medical details may be looked for in Dr.
Charcot's essay or in Montgeron.[6] 'Her disease was diagnosed as cancer
of the left breast,' the nipple 'fell off bodily.' Amputation of the
breast was proposed, but Madame Coirin, believing the disease to be
radically incurable, refused her consent. Paralysis of the left side set
in (1718), the left leg shrivelling up. On August 9, 1731, Mlle. Coirin
'tried the off chance' of a miracle, put on a shift that had touched the
tomb of Paris, and used some earth from the grave. On August 11, Mlle.
Coirin could turn herself in bed; on the 12th the horrible wound 'was
staunched, and began to close up and heal.' The paralysed side recovered
life and its natural proportions. By September 3, Mlle. Coirin could go
out for a drive.

All her malady, says Dr. Charcot, paralysis, 'cancer,' and all, was
'hysterical;' 'hysterical oedema,' for which he quotes many French
authorities and one American. 'Under the physical [psychical?] influence
brought to bear by the application of the shift ... the oedema, which was
due to vaso-motor trouble, disappeared almost instantaneously. The breast
regained its normal size.'

Dr. Charcot generously adds that shrines, like Lourdes, have cured
patients in whom he could not 'inspire the operation of the faith cure.'
He certainly cannot explain everything which claims to be of supernatural
origin in the faith cure. We have to learn the lesson of patience. I am
among the first to recognise that Shakespeare's words hold good to-day:

  'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
   Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

If Dr. Charcot had believed in what the French call _suggestion mentale_--
suggestion by thought-transference (which I think he did not)--he could
have explained the healing of the Centurion's servant, 'Say the word,
Lord, and my servant shall be healed,' by suggestion & distance
(telepathy), and by premising that the servant's palsy was 'hysterical.'
But what do we mean by 'hysterical'? Nobody knows. The 'mind,' somehow,
causes gangrenes, if not cancers, paralysis, shrinking of tissues; the
mind, somehow, cures them. And what is the 'mind'? As my object is to give
savage parallels to modern instances better vouched for. I quote a
singular Red Indian cure by 'suggestion.' Hearne, travelling in Canada, in
1770, met a native who had 'dead palsy,' affecting the whole of one side.
He was dragged on a sledge, 'reduced to a mere skeleton,' and so was
placed in the magic lodge. The first step in his cure was the public
swallowing by a conjurer of a board of wood, 'about the size of a
barrel-stave,' twice as wide across as his mouth. Hearne stood beside the
man, 'naked as he was born,' 'and, notwithstanding I was all attention, I
could not detect the deceit.' Of course, Hearne believes that this was
mere legerdemain, and (p. 216) mentions a most suspicious circumstance.
The account is amusing, and deserves the attention of Mr. Neville
Maskelyne. The same conjurer had previously swallowed a cradle! Now
bayonet swallowing, which he also did, is possible, though Hearne denies
it (p. 217).

The real object of these preliminary feats, however performed, is,
probably, to inspire _faith_, which Dr. Charcot might have done by
swallowing a cradle. The Indians explain that the barrel staves apparently
swallowed are merely dematerialised by 'spirits,' leaving only the forked
end sticking out of the conjurer's mouth. In fact, Hearne caught the
conjurer in the act of making a separate forked end.

Faith being thus inspired, the conjurer, for three entire days, blew,
sang, and danced round 'the poor paralytic, fasting.' 'And it is truly
wonderful, though the strictest truth, that when the poor man was taken
from the conjuring house ... he was able to move all the fingers and toes
of the side that had been so long dead.... At the end of six weeks he went
a-hunting for his family' (p. 219). Hearne kept up his acquaintance, and
adds, what is very curious, that he developed almost a secondary
personality. 'Before that dreadful paralytic stroke, he had been
distinguished for his good nature and benevolent disposition, was entirely
free from every appearance of avarice,... but after this event he was the
most fractious, quarrelsome, discontented, and covetous wretch alive'
(p. 220).

Dr. Charcot, if he had been acquainted with this case, would probably have
said that it 'is of the nature of those which Professor Russell Reynolds
has classified under the head of "paralysis dependent on idea."'[7]
Unluckily, Hearne does not tell us how his hunter, an untutored Indian,
became 'paralysed by idea.'

Dr. Charcot adds: 'In every case, science is a foe to systematic negation,
which the morrow may cause to melt away in the light of its new triumphs.'
The present 'new triumph' is a mere coincidence with the dicta of our
Lord, 'Thy faith hath made thee whole.... I have not found so great faith,
no, not in Israel.' There are cures, as there are maladies, caused 'by
idea.' So, in fact, we had always understood. But the point is that
science, wherever it agrees with David Hume, is not a foe, but a friend to
'systematic negation.'

A parallel case of a 'miracle,' the stigmata of St. Francis, was, of
course, regarded by science as a fable or a fraud. But, now that blisters
and other lesions can be produced by suggestion, the fable has become a
probable fact, and, therefore, not a miracle at all.[8] Mr. James remarks:
'As so often happens, a fact is denied till a welcome interpretation
comes with it. Then it is admitted readily enough, and evidence quite
insufficient to back a claim, so long as the Church had an interest
in making it, proves to be quite sufficient for modern scientific
enlightenment the moment it appears that a reputed saint can thereby be
claimed as a case of "hystero-epilepsy."'[9]

But the Church continues to have an interest in the matter. As the class
of facts which Hume declined to examine begins to be gradually admitted by
science, the thing becomes clear. The evidence which could safely convey
these now admittedly possible facts, say from the time of Christ, is so
far proved to be not necessarily mythical--proved to be not incapable of
carrying statements probably correct, which once seemed absolutely
false. If so, where, precisely, ends its power of carrying facts? Thus
considered, the kinds of marvellous events recorded in the Gospels,
for example, are no longer to be dismissed on _a priori_ grounds as
'mythical.' We cannot now discard evidence as necessarily false because
it clashes with our present ideas of the possible, when we have to
acknowledge that the very same evidence may safely convey to us facts
which clashed with our fathers' notions of what is possible, but which
are now accepted. Our notions of the possible cease to be a criterion of
truth or falsehood, and our contempt for the Gospels as myths must
slowly die, as 'miracle' after 'miracle' is brought within the realm of
acknowledged law. With each such admission the hypothesis that the Gospel
evidence is mythical must grow weaker, and weaker must grow the negative
certainty of popular science.

The occurrences which took place at and near the tomb of Paris were
attested, as Hume truly avers, by a great body of excellent evidence. But
the wisdom which declined to make a judicial examination has deprived us
of the best kind of record. Analogous if not exactly similar events now
confessedly take place, and are no longer looked upon as miraculous. But
as long as they were held to be miraculous, not to examine the evidence,
said Hume, was the policy of 'all reasonable people.' The result was to
deprive Science of the best sort of record of facts which she welcomes as
soon as she thinks she can explain them.[10] Examples of the folly of
_a priori_ negation are common. The British Association refused to hear
the essay which Braid, the inventor of the word 'hypnotism,' had written
upon the subject. Braid, Elliotson, and other English inquirers of the
mid-century, were subjected to such persecutions as official science could
inflict. We read of M. Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer, about 1783, that he
was 'condemned by the Faculty of Medicine, without any examination of the
facts.' The Inquisition proceeded more fairly than these scientific
obscurantists.

Another curious example may be cited. M. Guyau, in his work 'The
Non-Religion of the Future,' argues that Religion is doomed. 'Poetic
genius has withdrawn its services,' witness Tennyson and Browning! 'Among
orthodox Protestant nations miracles do not happen.'[11] But 'marvellous
facts' _do_ happen.[12] These 'marvellous facts,' accepted by M. Guyau,
are what Hume called 'miracles,' and advised the 'wise and learned' to
laugh at, without examination. They were not facts, and could not be, he
said. Now to M. Guyau's mind they _are_ facts, and therefore are not
miracles. He includes 'mental suggestion taking place even at a distance.'
A man 'can transmit an almost compulsive command, it appears nowadays, by
a simple tension of his will.' If this be so, if 'will' can affect matter
from a distance, obviously the relations of will and matter are not what
popular science tells us that they are. Again, if this truth is now
established, and won from that region which Hume and popular science
forbid us to investigate, who knows what other facts may be redeemed from
that limbo, or how far they may affect our views of possibilities? The
admission of mental action, operative _à distance_, is, of course,
personal only to M. Guyau, among friends of the new negative tradition.

We return to Hume. He next argues that the pleasures of wonder make all
accounts of 'miracles' worthless. He has just given an example of the
equivalent pleasures of dogmatic disbelief. Then Religion is a disturbing
force; but so, manifestly, is irreligion. 'The wise and learned are
content to deride the absurdity, without informing themselves of the
particular facts.' The wise and learned are applauded for their scientific
attitude. Again, miracles destroy each other, for all religions have their
miracles, but all religions cannot be true. This argument is no longer of
force with people who look on 'miracles' as = 'X phenomena,' not as divine
evidences to the truth of this or that creed. 'The gazing populace
receives, without examination, whatever soothes superstition,' and
Hume's whole purpose is to make the wise and learned imitate the gazing
populace by rejecting alleged facts 'without examination.' The populace
investigated more than did the wise and learned.

Hume has an alternative definition of a miracle--'a miracle is a
transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or
by the interposition of some invisible agent.' We reply that what
Hume calls a 'miracle' may result from the operation of some as yet
unascertained law of nature (say self-suggestion), and that our business,
at present, is to examine such events, not to account for them.

It may fairly be said that Hume is arguing against men who wished to make
so-called 'miracles' a test of the truth of Jansenism, for example, and
that he could not be expected to answer, by anticipation, ideas not
current in his day. But he remains guilty of denouncing the investigation
of apparent facts. No attitude can be less scientific than his, or more
common among many men of science.

According to the humorous wont of things in this world, the whole question
of the marvellous had no sooner been settled for ever by David Hume than
it was reopened by Emanuel Swedenborg. Now, Kant was familiar with certain
of the works of Hume, whether he had read his 'Essay on Miracles' or not.
Far from declining to examine the portentous 'visions' of Swedenborg, Kant
interested himself deeply in the topic. As early as 1758 he wrote his
first remarks on the seer, containing some reports of stories or legends
about Swedenborg's 'clairvoyance.' In the true spirit of psychical
research, Kant wrote a letter to Swedenborg, asking for information at
first hand. The seer got the letter, but he never answered it. Kant,
however, prints one or two examples of Swedenborg's successes. Madame
Harteville, widow of the Dutch envoy in Stockholm, was dunned by a
silversmith for a debt of her late husband's. She believed that it had
been paid, but could not find the receipt. She therefore asked Swedenborg
to use his renowned gifts. He promised to see what he could do, and, three
days later, arrived at the lady's house while she was giving a tea, or
rather a coffee, party. To the assembled society Swedenborg remarked, 'in
a cold-blooded way, that he had seen her man, and spoken to him.' The late
M. Harteville declared to Swedenborg that he had paid the bill, seven
months before his decease: the receipt was in a cupboard upstairs. Madame
Harteville replied that the cupboard had been thoroughly searched to no
purpose. Swedenborg answered that, as he learned from the ghost, there was
a secret drawer behind the side-plank within the cupboard. The drawer
contained diplomatic correspondence, and the missing receipt. The whole
company then went upstairs, found the secret drawer, and the receipt among
the other papers. Kant adds Swedenborg's clairvoyant vision, from
Gothenburg, of a great fire at Stockholm (dated September 1756). Kant
pined to see Swedenborg himself, and waited eagerly for his book, 'Arcana
Coelestia.' At last he obtained this work, at the ransom, ruinous to Kant
at that time, of 7£. But he was disappointed with what he read, and in
'Träume eines Geistersehers,' made a somewhat sarcastic attempt at a
metaphysical theory of apparitions.

  'Velut aegri somnia vanae
  Finguntur species'

is his motto.

Kant's real position about all these matters is, I venture to say, almost
identical with that of Sir Walter Scott. A Scot himself, by descent, Kant
may have heard tales of second-sight and bogles. Like Scott, he dearly
loved a ghost-story; like Scott he was canny enough to laugh, publicly, at
them and at himself for his interest in them. Yet both would take trouble
to inquire. As Kant vainly wrote to Swedenborg and others--as he vainly
spent 7£. on 'Arcana Coelestia,' so Sir Walter was anxious to go to Egypt
to examine the facts of ink-gazing clairvoyance. Kant confesses that each
individual ghost-story found him sceptical, whereas the cumulative mass
made a considerable impression.[13]

The first seventy pages of the 'Tribune' are devoted to a perfectly
serious discussion of the metaphysics of 'Spirits.' On page 73 he
pleasantly remarks, 'Now we shall understand that all said hitherto is
superfluous,' and he will not reproach the reader who regards seers _not_
as citizens of two worlds (Plotinus), but as candidates for Bedlam.

Kant's irony is peculiarly Scottish. He does not himself know how far he
is in earnest, and, to save his self-respect and character for canniness,
he 'jocks wi' deeficulty.' He amuses himself with trying how far he can
carry speculations on metaphysics (not yet reformed by himself) into the
realm of the ghostly. He makes admissions about his own tendency to think
that he has an immaterial soul, and that these points are, or may be, or
some day will be, scientifically solved. These admissions are eagerly
welcomed by Du Prel in his 'Philosophy of Mysticism;' but they are only
part of Kant's joke, and how far they are serious, Kant himself does not
know. If spiritualists knew their own business, they would translate and
publish Kant's first seventy pages of 'Träume.' Something like telepathy,
action of spirit, even discarnate, on spirit, is alluded to, but the idea
is as old as Lavaterus at least (p. 52). Kant has a good deal to say, like
Scott in his 'Demonology,' on the physics of Hallucination, but it is
antiquated matter. He thinks the whole topic of spiritual being only
important as bearing on hopes of a future life. As speculation, all is 'in
the air,' and as in such matters the learned and unlearned are on a level
of ignorance, science will not discuss them. He then repeats the
Swedenborg stories, and thinks it would be useful to posterity if some one
would investigate them while witnesses are alive and memories are fresh.

In fact, Kant asks for psychical research.

As for Swedenborg's so costly book, Kant laughs at it. There is in it no
evidence, only assertion. Kant ends, having pleased nobody, he says, and
as ignorant as when he began, by citing _cultivons notre jardin_.

Kant returned to the theme in 'Anthropologische Didaktik.' He discusses
the unconscious, or sub-conscious, which, till Sir William Hamilton
lectured, seems to have been an absolutely unknown topic to British
psychologists. 'So ist das Feld dunkler Vorstellungen das grösste in
Menschen.' He has a chapter on 'The Divining Faculty' (pp. 89-93). He will
not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland
second-sight. The 'possessed' of anthropology are epileptic patients.
Mystics (Swedenborg) are victims of _Schwärmerei_.

This reference to Swedenborg is remarked upon by Schubert in his preface
to the essay of Kant. He points out that 'it is interesting to compare the
circumspection, the almost uncertainty of Kant when he had to deliver a
judgment on the phenomena described by himself and as to which he had made
inquiry [i.e. in his letter _re_ Swedenborg to Mlle. de Knobloch], and the
very decided opinions he expressed forty years later on Swedenborg and
his companions' [in the work cited, sections 35-37. The opinion in
paragraph 35 is a general one as to mystics. There is no other mention of
Swedenborg].

On the whole Kant is interested, but despairing. He wants facts, and no
facts are given to him but the book of the Prophet Emanuel. But, as it
happened, a new, or a revived, order of facts was just about to solicit
scientific attention. Kant had (1766) heard rumours of healing by
magnetism, and of the alleged effect of the magnet on the human frame. The
subject was in the air, and had already won the attention of Mesmer, about
whom Kant had information. It were superfluous to tell again the familiar
story of Mesmer's performances at Paris. While Mesmer's theory of
'magnetism' was denounced by contemporary science, the discovery of the
hypnotic sleep was made by his pupil, Puységur. This gentleman was
persuaded that instances of 'thought-transference' (not through known
channels of sense) occurred between the patient and the magnetiser, and he
also believed that he had witnessed cases of 'clairvoyance,' 'lucidity,'
_vue à distance_, in which the patient apparently beheld places and events
remote in space. These things would now be explained by 'unconscious
suggestion' in the more sceptical schools of psychological science. The
Revolution interrupted scientific study in France to a great degree, but
'somnambulism' (the hypnotic sleep) and 'magnetism' were eagerly examined
in Germany. Modern manuals, for some reason, are apt to overlook these
German researches and speculations. (Compare Mr. Vincent's 'Elements of
Hypnotism,' p. 34.) The Schellings were interested; Ritter thought he had
detected a new force, 'Siderism.' Mr. Wallace, in his preface to Hegel's
'Philosophie des Geistes,' speaks as if Ritter had made experiments in
telepathy. He may have done so, but his 'Siderismus' (Tübingen, 1808)
is a Report undertaken for the Academy of Munich, on the doings of an
Italian water-finder, or 'dowser.' Ritter gives details of seventy-four
experiments in 'dowsing' for water, metals, or coal. He believes in the
faculty, but not in 'psychic' explanations, or the Devil. He talks
about 'electricity' (pp. 170, 190). He describes his precautions to
avoid vulgar fraud, but he took no precautions against unconscious
thought-transference. He reckoned the faculty 'temperamental' and useful.

Amoretti, at Milan, examined hundreds of cases of the so-called Divining
Rod, and Jung Stilling became an early spiritualist and 'full-welling
fountain head' of ghost stories.

Probably the most important philosophical result of the early German
researches into the hypnotic slumber is to be found in the writings of
Hegel. Owing to his peculiar use of a terminology, or scientific language,
all his own, it is extremely difficult to make Hegel's meaning even
moderately clear. Perhaps we may partly elucidate it by a similitude of
Mr. Frederic Myers. Suppose we compare the ordinary everyday consciousness
of each of us to a _spectrum_, whose ends towards each extremity fade out
of our view.

Beyond the range of sight there may be imagined a lower or physiological
end: for our ordinary consciousness, of course, is unaware of many
physiological processes which are eternally going on within us. Digestion,
so long as it is healthy, is an obvious example. But hypnotic experiment
makes it certain that a patient, in the _hypnotic_ condition, can
consciously, or at least purposefully, affect physiological processes to
which the _ordinary_ consciousness is blind--for example, by raising a
blister, when it is suggested that a blister must be raised. Again
(granting the facts hypothetically and merely for the sake of argument),
at the _upper_ end of the spectrum, beyond the view of ordinary everyday
consciousness, knowledge may be acquired of things which are out of the
view of the consciousness of every day. For example (for the sake of
argument let us admit it), unknown and remote people and places may be
seen and described by clairvoyance, or _vue à distance_.

Now Hegel accepted as genuine the facts which we here adduce merely for
the sake of argument, and by way of illustrations. But he did not regard
the clairvoyant consciousness (or whatever we call it) which, _ex
hypothesi_, is untrammelled by space, or even by time, as occupying what
we style the _upper_ end of the psychical spectrum. On the contrary, he
placed it at the _lower_ end. Hegel's upper end 'loses itself in light;'
the lower end, _qui voit tant de choses_, as La Fontaine's shepherd says,
is _not_ 'a sublime mental phase, and capable of conveying general
truths.' Time and space do not thwart the consciousness at Hegel's _lower_
end, which springs from 'the great soul of nature.' But that lower end,
though it may see for Jeanne d'Arc at Valcouleurs a battle at Rouvray, a
hundred leagues away, does not communicate any lofty philosophic
truths.[14] The phenomena of clairvoyance, in Hegel's opinion, merely
indicate that the 'material' is really 'ideal,' which, perhaps, is as much
as we can ask from them. 'The somnambulist and clairvoyant see without
eyes, and carry their visions directly into regions where the waiting
consciousness of orderly intelligence cannot enter' (Wallace). Hegel
admits, however, that 'in ordinary self-possessed conscious life' there
are traces of the 'magic tie,' 'especially between female friends of
delicate nerves,' to whom he adds husband and wife, and members of the
same family. He gives (without date or source) a case of a girl in Germany
who saw her brother lying dead in a hospital at Valladolid. Her brother
was at the time in the hospital, but it was another man in the nest bed
who was dead. 'It is thus impossible to make out whether what the
clairvoyants really see preponderates over what they deceive themselves
in.'

As long as the facts which Hegel accepted are not officially welcomed by
science, it may seem superfluous to dispute as to whether they are
attained by the lower or the higher stratum of our consciousness. But
perhaps the question here at issue may be elucidated by some remarks of
Dr. Max Dessoir. Psychology, he says, has proved that in every conception
and idea an image or group of images must be present. These mental images
are the recrudescence or recurrence of perceptions. We see a tree, or a
man, or a dog, and whenever we have before our minds the conception or
idea of any of these things the original perception of them returns,
though of course more faintly. But in Dr. Dessoir's opinion these revived
mental images would reach the height of actual hallucinations (so that the
man, dog, or tree would seem visibly present) if other memories and new
sensations did not compete with them and check their development.

Suppose, to use Mlle. Ferrand's metaphor, a human body, living, but with
all its channels of sensation hitherto unopened. Open the sense of sight
to receive a flash of green colour, and close it again. Apparently,
whenever the mind informing this body had the conception of green (and it
could have no other) it would also have an hallucination of green, thus

  'Annihilating all that's made,
  To a green thought in a green shade.'

Now, in sleep or hypnotic trance the competition of new sensations and
other memories is removed or diminished, and therefore the idea of a man,
dog, or tree once suggested to the hypnotised patient, does become an
actual hallucination. The hypnotised patient sees the absent object which
he is told to see, the sleeper sees things not really present.

Our primitive state, before the enormous competition of other memories and
new sensations set in, would thus be a state of hallucination. Our normal
present condition, in which hallucination is checked by competing memories
and new sensations, is a suppression of our original, primitive, natural
tendencies. Hallucination represents 'the main trunk of our psychical
existence.'[15] In Dr. Dessoir's theory this condition of hallucination
is man's original and most primitive condition, but it is not a _higher_,
rather a lower state of spiritual activity than the everyday practical
unhallucinated consciousness.

This is also the opinion of Hegel, who supposes our primitive mental
condition to be capable of descrying objects remote in space and time. Mr.
Myers, as we saw, is of the opposite opinion, as to the relative dignity
and relative reality of the present everyday self, and the old original
fundamental Self. Dr. Dessoir refrains from pronouncing a decided opinion
as to whether the original, primitive, hallucinated self within us does
'preside over powers and actions at a distance,' such as clairvoyance; but
he believes in hypnotisation at a distance. His theory, like Hegel's, is
that of 'atavism,' or 'throwing back' to some very remote ancestral
condition. This will prove of interest later.

Hegel, at all events, believed in the fact of clairvoyance (though deeming
it of little practical use); he accepted telepathy ('the magic tie'); he
accepted interchange of sensations between the hypnotiser and the
hypnotised; he believed in the divining rod, and, unlike Kant, even in
'Scottish second-sight.' 'The intuitive soul oversteps the conditions of
time and space; it beholds things remote, things long past, and things to
come.'[16]

The pendulum of thought has swung back a long way from the point whither
it was urged by David Hume. Hegel remarks: 'The facts, it might seem,
first of all call for verification. But such verification would be
superfluous to those on whose account it was called for, since they
facilitate the inquiry for themselves by declaring the narratives,
infinitely numerous though they be, and accredited by the education and
character of the witnesses, to be mere deception and imposture. Their _a
priori_ conceptions are so rooted that no testimony can avail against
them, and they have even denied what they have seen with their own eyes,'
and reported under their own hands, like Sir David Brewster. Hegel, it
will be observed, takes the facts as given, and works them into his
general theory of the Sensitive Soul (_fühlende Seele_). He does not try
to establish the facts; but to establish, or at least to examine them, is
the first business of Psychical Research. Theorising comes later.

The years which have passed between the date of Hegel's 'Philosophy of
Mind' and our own time have witnessed the long dispute over the existence,
the nature, and the causes of the hypnotic condition, and over the reality
and limitations of the phenomena. Thus the Academy of Medicine in Paris
appointed a Committee to examine the subject in 1825. The Report on
'Animal Magnetism,' as it was then styled, was presented in 1831. The
Academy lacked the courage to publish it, for the Report was favourable
even to certain of the still disputed phenomena. At that time, in
accordance with a survival of the theory of Mesmer, the agent in hypnotic
cases was believed to be a kind of efflux of a cosmic fluid from the
'magnetiser' to the patient. There was 'a magnetic connection.'

Though no distinction between mesmerism and hypnotism is taken in popular
language, 'mesmerism' is a word implying this theory of 'magnetic' or
other unknown personal influence. 'Hypnotism,' as will presently be seen,
implies no such theory. The Academy's Report (1831) attested the
development, under 'magnetism,' of 'new faculties,' such as clairvoyance
and intuition, also the production of 'great changes in the physical
economy,' such as insensibility, and sudden increase of strength. The
Report declared it to be 'demonstrated' that sleep could be produced
'without suggestion,' as we say now, though the term was not then in use.
'Sleep has been produced in circumstances in which the persons could not
see or were ignorant of the means employed to produce it.'

The Academy did its best to suppress this Report, which attests the
phenomena that Hegel accepted, phenomena still disputed. Six years later
(1837), a Committee reported against the pretensions of a certain Berna,
a 'magnetiser.' No person acted on both Committees, and this Report was
accepted. Later, a number of people tried to read a letter in a box, and
failed. 'This,' says Mr. Vincent, 'settled the question with regard to
clairvoyance;' though it might be more logical to say that it settled the
pretensions of the competitors on that occasion. The Academy now decided
that, because certain persons did not satisfy the expectations raised by
their preliminary advertisements, therefore the question of magnetism was
definitely closed.

We have often to regret that scientific eminence is not always accompanied
by scientific logic. Where science neglects a subject, charlatans and
dupes take it up. In England 'animal magnetism' had been abandoned to this
class of enthusiasts, till Thackeray's friend, Dr. Elliotson, devoted
himself to the topic. He was persecuted as doctors know how to persecute;
but in 1841, Braid, of Manchester, discovered that the so-called 'magnetic
sleep' could be produced without any 'magnetism,' He made his patients
stare fixedly at an object, and encouraged them to expect to go to sleep.
He called his method 'Hypnotism,' a term which begs no question. Seeming
to cease to be mysterious, hypnotism became all but respectable, and was
being used in surgical operations, till it was superseded by chloroform.
In England, the study has been, and remains, rather _suspect_, while on
The Continent hypnotism is used both for healing purposes and in the
inquiries of experimental psychology. Wide differences of opinion still
exist, as to the nature of the hypnotic sleep, as to its physiological
concomitants, and as to the limits of the faculties exercised in or out of
the slumber. It is not even absolutely certain that the exercise of the
stranger faculties--for instance, that the production of anaesthesia and
rigidity--are the results merely of 'suggestion' and expectancy. A
hypnotised patient is told that the middle finger of his left hand will
become rigid and incapable of sensation. This occurs, and is explained by
'suggestion,' though _how_ 'suggestion' produces the astonishing effect
is another problem. The late Mr. Gurney, however, made a number of
experiments in which no suggestion was pronounced, nor did the patients
know which of their fingers was to become rigid and incapable of pain. The
patient's hands were thrust through a screen; on the other side of which
the hypnotist made passes above the finger which was to become rigid. The
lookers-on selected the finger, and the insensibility was tested by a
strong electric current. The effect was also produced _without_ passes,
the operator merely pointing at the selected finger, and 'willing' the
result. If he did not 'will' it, nothing occurred, nor did anything occur
if he willed without pointing. The proximity of the operator's hand
produced no effect if he did not 'will,' nor was his 'willing' successful
if he did not bring his hand near that of the patient. Other people's
hands, similarly situated, produced no effect.

Experiments in transferring taste, as of salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, from
operator to subject, were also successful. Drs. Janet and Gibert also
produced sleep in a woman at a distance, by 'willing' it, at hours which
were selected by a system of drawing lots.[17] These facts, of course,
rather point to an element of truth in the old mesmeric hypothesis of some
specific influence in the operator. They cannot very well be explained by
suggestion and expectancy. But these facts and facts of clairvoyance and
thought-transference will be rejected as superstitious delusions by people
who have not met them in their own experience. This need not prevent us
from examining them, because _all_ the facts, including those now
universally accepted by Continental and scarcely impeached by British
science, have been noisily rejected again and again on Hume's principles.

The rarer facts, as Mr. Gurney remarks, 'still go through the hollow form
of taking place.' Here is an example of the mode in which these phenomena
are treated by popular science. Mr. Vincent says that 'clairvoyance and
phrenology were Elliotson's constant stock in trade.' (Phrenology was
also Braid's stock in trade.) 'It is a matter of congratulation to have
been so soon delivered from what Dr. Lloyd Tuckey has well called "a mass
of superincumbent rubbish."'[18] Clairvoyance is part of a mass of
rubbish, on page 57. On page 67, Mr. Vincent says: 'There are many
interesting questions, such as telepathy, thought-reading, clairvoyance,
upon which it would be perhaps rash to give any decided opinion.... All
these strange psychical conditions present problems of great interest,'
and are only omitted because 'they have not a sufficient bearing on the
normal states of hypnosis....' Thus what was 'rubbish' in one page
'presents problems of great interest' ten pages later, and, after offering
a decided opinion that clairvoyance is rubbish, Mr. Vincent thinks it rash
to give any decided opinion. It is rather rash to give a decided opinion,
and then to say that it is rash to do so.[19]

This brief sketch shows that science is confronted by certain facts,
which, in his time, Hume dismissed as incredible miracles, beneath the
contempt of the wise and learned. We also see that the stranger and rarer
phenomena which Hegel accepted as facts, and interwove with his general
philosophy, are still matters of dispute. Admitted by some men of science,
they are doubted by others; by others, again, are denied, while most of
the journalists and authors of cheap primers, who inspire popular
tradition, regard the phenomena as frauds or fables of superstition. But
it is plain that these phenomena, like the more ordinary facts of
hypnotism, _may_ finally be admitted by science. The scientific world
laughed, not so long ago, at Ogham inscriptions, meteorites, and at
palaeolithic weapons as impostures, or freaks of nature. Now nobody has
any doubt on these matters, and clairvoyance, thought-transference, and
telepathy may, not inconceivably, be as fortunate in the long run as
meteorites, or as the more usual phenomena of hypnotism.

It is only Lord Kelvin who now maintains, or lately maintained, that in
hypnotism there is nothing at all but fraud and malobservation. In years
to come it may be that only some similar belated voice will cry that in
thought-transference there is nothing but malobservation and fraud. At
present the serious attention and careful experiment needed for the
establishment of the facts are more common among French than among English
men of science. When published, these experiments, if they contain any
affirmative instances, are denounced as 'superstitious,' or criticized
after what we must charitably deem to be a very hasty glance, by the
guides of popular opinion. Examples of this method will be later quoted.
Meanwhile the disputes as to these alleged facts are noticed here, because
of their supposed relation to the Origin of Religion.

[Footnote 1: See Mr. Myers's paper on the 'Ancient Oracles,' in _Classical
Essays_, and the author's 'Ancient Spiritualism,' in _Cock Lane and Common
Sense_.]

[Footnote 2: The italics here are those of Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, in
his _Miracles and Modern Science_. Mr. Huxley, in his exposure of Hume's
fallacies (in his Life of Hume), did not examine the Jansenist 'miracles'
which Hume was criticising.]

[Footnote 3: Moll, _Hypnotism_, p. 357.]

[Footnote 4: _Animal Magnetism_, p. 355.]

[Footnote 5: A translation of his work was published in the _New Review_,
January 1693.]

[Footnote 6: _La Vérité des Miracles_, Cologne, 1747, Septièmo
Démonstration.]

[Footnote 7: See Dr. Russell Reynolds's paper in _British Medical
Journal_, November 1869.]

[Footnote 8: James, _Principles of Psychology_, ii. 612. Charcot,
op. cit.]

[Footnote 9: I do not need to be told that Dr. Maudsley denied the fact in
1886. I am prepared with the evidence, if it is asked for by some savant
who happens not to know it.]

[Footnote 10: I am not responsible, of course, for the scientific validity
of Dr. Charcot's theory of healing 'by idea.' My point merely is that
certain experts of no slight experience or mean reputation do now admit,
as important certainties within their personal knowledge, exactly the
phenomena which Hume asks the wise and learned to laugh at, indeed, but
never to investigate.]

[Footnote 11: Pp. 353-356.]

[Footnote 12: P. 93.]

[Footnote 13: _Träume_, p. 76.]

[Footnote 14: Hegel accepts the clairvoyance of the Pucelle.]

[Footnote 15: See Dr. Dessoir, in _Das Doppel Ich,_ as quoted by Mr.
Myers, _Proceedings_, vol. vi. 213.]

[Footnote 16: _Philosophie des Geistes, Werke,_ vol. vii. 179. Berlin.
1845. The examples and much of the philosophising are in the _Zusätze_,
not translated in Mr. Wallace's version, Oxford, 1894.]

[Footnote 17: _Proceedings_, S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 201-207, 390-392.]

[Footnote 18: _Elements of Hypnotism_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 19: Possibly Mr. Vincent only means that Elliotson's
experiments, 'little more than sober footing' (p. 57), with the sisters
Okey, were rubbish. But whether the sisters Okey were or were not honest
is a question on which we cannot enter here.]




III

ANTHROPOLOGY AND RELIGION

Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the
new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough,
Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of
the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining. The British
Association used to reject anthropological papers as 'vain dreams based on
travellers' tales.' No doubt the British Association would reject a paper
on clairvoyance as a vain dream based on old wives' fables, or on
hysterical imposture. Undeniably the study of such themes is hampered by
fable and fraud, just as anthropology has to be ceaselessly on its guard
against 'travellers' tales,' against European misunderstandings of savage
ideas, and against civilised notions and scientific theories unconsciously
read into barbaric customs, rites, traditions, and usages. Man, _ondoyant
et divers_, is the subject alike of anthropology and of psychical
research. Man (especially savage man) cannot be secluded from disturbing
influences, and watched, like the materials of a chemical experiment in a
laboratory. Nor can man be caught in a 'primitive' state: his intellectual
beginnings lie very far behind the stage of culture in which we find the
lowest known races. Consequently the matter on which anthropology works is
fluctuating; the evidence on which it rests needs the most sceptical
criticism, and many of its conclusions, in the necessary absence of
historical testimony as to times far behind the lowest known savages, must
be hypothetical.

For these sound reasons official science long looked askance on
Anthropology. Her followers were not regarded as genuine scholars, and,
perhaps as a result of this contempt, they were often 'broken men,'
intellectual outlaws, people of one wild idea. To the scientific mind,
anthropologists or ethnologists were a horde who darkly muttered of
serpent worship, phallus worship, Arkite doctrines, and the Ten Lost
Tribes that kept turning up in the most unexpected places. Anthropologists
were said to gloat over dirty rites of dirty savages, and to seek reason
where there was none. The exiled, the outcast, the pariah of Science, is,
indeed, apt to find himself in odd company. Round the camp-fire of
Psychical Research too, in the unofficial, unstaked waste of Science,
hover odd, menacing figures of Esoteric Buddhists, _Satanistes_,
Occultists, Christian Scientists, Spiritualists, and Astrologers, as the
Arkites and Lost Tribesmen haunted the cradle of anthropology.

But there was found at last to be reason in the thing, and method in the
madness. Evolution was in it. The acceptance, after long ridicule, of
palaeolithic weapons as relics of human culture, probably helped to bring
Anthropology within the sacred circle of permitted knowledge. Her topic
was full of illustrations of the doctrine of Mr. Darwin. Modern writers on
the theme had been anticipated by the less systematic students of the
eighteenth century--Goguet, de Brosses, Millar, Fontenelle, Lafitau,
Boulanger, or even Hume and Voltaire. As pioneers these writers answer to
the early mesmerists and magnetists, Puységur, Amoretti, Ritter,
Elliotson, Mayo, Gregory, in the history of Psychical Research. They
were on the same track, in each case, as Lubbock, Tylor, Spencer,
Bastian, and Frazer, or as Gurney, Richet, Myers, Janet, Dessoir, and Von
Schrenck-Notzing. But the earlier students were less careful of method and
evidence.

Evidence! that was the stumbling block of anthropology. We still hear, in
the later works of Mr. Max Müller, the echo of the old complaints.
Anything you please, Mr. Max Müller says, you may find among your useful
savages, and (in regard to some anthropologists) his criticism is just.
You have but to skim a few books of travel, pencil in hand, and pick out
what suits your case. Suppose, as regards our present theme, your theory
is that savages possess broken lights of the belief in a Supreme Being.
You can find evidence for that. Or suppose you want to show that they have
no religious ideas at all; you can find evidence for that also. Your
testimony is often derived from observers ignorant of the language of the
people whom they talk about, or who are themselves prejudiced by one or
other theory or bias. How can you pretend to raise a science on such
foundations, especially as the savage informants wish to please or to
mystify inquirers, or they answer at random, or deliberately conceal their
most sacred institutions, or have never paid any attention to the subject?

To all these perfectly natural objections Mr. Tylor has replied.[1]
Evidence must be collected, sifted, tested, as in any other branch of
inquiry. A writer, 'of course, is bound to use his best judgment as to
the trustworthiness of all authors he quotes, and, if possible, to obtain
several accounts to certify each point in each locality.' Mr. Tylor then
adduces 'the test of recurrence,' of undesigned coincidence in testimony,
as Millar had already argued in the last century.[2] If a mediaeval
Mahommedan in Tartary, a Jesuit in Brazil, a Wesleyan in Fiji, one may add
a police magistrate in Australia, a Presbyterian in Central Africa, a
trapper in Canada, agree in describing some analogous rite or myth in
these diverse lands and ages, we cannot set down the coincidence to chance
or fraud. 'Now, the most important facts of ethnography are vouched for in
this way.'

We may add that even when the ideas of savages are obscure, we can
often detect them by analysis of the institutions in which they are
expressed.[3]

Thus anthropological, like psychical or any other evidence, must be
submitted to conscientious processes of testing and sifting. Contradictory
instances must be hunted for sedulously. Nothing can be less scientific
than to snatch up any traveller's tale which makes for our theory, and to
ignore evidence, perhaps earlier, or later, or better observed, which
makes against it. Yet this, unfortunately, in certain instances (which
will be adduced) has been the occasional error of Mr. Huxley and Mr.
Spencer.[4] Mr. Spencer opens his 'Ecclesiastical Institutions' by the
remark that 'the implication [from the reported absence of the ideas of
belief in persons born deaf and dumb] is that the religious ideas of
civilised men are not innate' (who says they are?), and this implication
Mr. Spencer supports by 'proofs that among various savages religious ideas
do not exist.' 'Sir John Lubbock has given many of these.' But it would be
well to advise the reader to consult Roskoff's confutation of Sir John
Lubbock, and Mr. Tylor's masterly statement.[5] Mr. Spencer cited Sir
Samuel Baker for savages without even 'a ray of superstition' or a trace
of worship. Mr. Tylor, twelve years before Mr. Spencer wrote, had
demolished Sir Samuel Baker's assertion,[6] as regards many tribes, and so
shaken it as regards the Latukas, quoted by Mr. Spencer. The godless
Dinkas have 'a good deity and heaven-dwelling creator,' carefully recorded
years before Sir Samuel's 'rash denial.' We show later that Mr. Spencer,
relying on a single isolated sentence in Brough Smyth, omits all his
essential information about the Australian Supreme Being; while Mr.
Huxley--overlooking the copious and conclusive evidence as to their
ethical religion--charges the Australians with having merely a non-moral
belief in casual spirits. We have also to show that Mr. Huxley, under the
dominance of his theory, and inadvertently, quotes a good authority as
saying the precise reverse of what he really does say.

If the facts not fitting their theories are little observed by authorities
so popular as Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer; if _instantiae contradictoriae_
are ignored by them, or left vague; if these things are done in the green
tree, we may easily imagine what shall be done in the dry. But we need not
war with hasty _vulgarisateurs_ and headlong theorists.

Enough has been said to show the position of anthropology as regards
evidence, and to prove that, if he confines his observations to certain
anthropologists, the censures of Mr. Max Müller are justified. It is
mainly for this reason that the arguments presently to follow are strung
on the thread of Mr. Tylor's truly learned and accurate book, 'Primitive
Culture.'

Though but recently crept forth, _vix aut ne vix quidem_, from the chill
shade of scientific disdain, Anthropology adopts the airs of her elder
sisters among the sciences, and is as severe as they to the Cinderella of
the family, Psychical Research. She must murmur of her fairies among the
cinders of the hearth, while they go forth to the ball, and dance with
provincial mayors at the festivities of the British Association. This is
ungenerous, and unfortunate, as the records of anthropology are rich in
unexamined materials of psychical research. I am unacquainted with any
work devoted by an anthropologist of renown to the hypnotic and kindred
practices of the lower races, except Herr Bastian's very meagre tract,
'Über psychische Beobachtungen bei Naturvölkern.'[7] We possess, none the
less, a mass of scattered information on this topic, the savage side of
psychical phenomena, in works of travel, and in Mr. Tylor's monumental
'Primitive Culture.' Mr. Tylor, however, as we shall see, regards it as a
matter of indifference, or, at least, as a matter beyond the scope of his
essay, to decide whether the parallel supernormal phenomena believed
in by savages, and said to recur in civilisation, are facts of actual
experience, or not.

Now, this question is not otiose. Mr. Tylor, like other anthropologists,
Mr. Huxley, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and their followers and popularisers,
constructs on anthropological grounds, a theory of the Origin of Religion.

That origin anthropology explains as the result of early and fallacious
reasonings on a number of biological and psychological phenomena, both
normal and (as is alleged by savages) supernormal. These reasonings led to
the belief in souls and spirits. Now, first, anthropology has taken for
granted that the Supreme Deities of savages are envisaged by them as
'spirits.' This, paradoxical as the statement may appear, is just what
does not seem to be proved, as we shall show. Next, if the supernormal
phenomena (clairvoyance, thought-transference, phantasms of the dead,
phantasms of the dying, and others) be real matters of experience, the
inferences drawn from them by early savage philosophy may be, in some
degree, erroneous. But the inferences drawn by materialists who reject the
supernormal phenomena will also, perhaps, be, let us say, incomplete.
Religion will have been, in part, developed out of facts, perhaps
inconsistent with materialism in its present dogmatic form. To put it less
trenchantly, and perhaps more accurately, the alleged facts 'are not
merely dramatically strange, they are not merely extraordinary and
striking, but they are "odd" in the sense that they will not easily fit in
with the views which physicists and men of science generally give us of
the universe in which we live' (Mr. A.J. Balfour, President's Address,
'Proceedings,' S.P.R. vol. x. p. 8, 1894).

As this is the case, it might seem to be the business of Anthropology, the
Science of Man, to examine, among other things, the evidence for the
actual existence of those alleged unusual and supernormal phenomena,
belief in which is given as one of the origins of religion.

To make this examination, in the ethnographic field, is almost a new
labour. As we shall see, anthropologists have not hitherto investigated
such things as the 'Fire-walk' of savages, uninjured in the flames, like
the Three Holy Children. The world-wide savage practice of divining by
hallucinations induced through gazing into a smooth deep (crystal-gazing)
has been studied, I think, by no anthropologist. The veracity of
'messages' uttered by savage seers when (as they suppose) 'possessed' or
'inspired' has not been criticised, and probably cannot be, for lack of
detailed information. The 'physical phenomena' which answer among savages
to the use of the 'divining rod,' and to 'spiritist' marvels in modern
times, have only been glanced at. In short, all the savage parallels
to the so-called 'psychical phenomena' now under discussion in England,
America, Germany, Italy, and France, have escaped critical analysis and
comparison with their civilised counterparts.

An exception among anthropologists is Mr. Tylor. He has not suppressed the
existence of these barbaric parallels to our modern problems of this kind.
But his interest in them practically ends when he has shown that the
phenomena helped to originate the savage belief in 'spirits,' and when he
has displayed the 'survival' of that belief in later culture. He does not
ask 'Are the phenomena real?' he is concerned only with the savage
philosophy of the phenomena and with its relics in modern spiritism and
religion. My purpose is to do, by way only of _ébauche_, what neither
anthropology nor psychical research nor psychology has done: to put the
savage and modern phenomena side by side. Such evidence as we can give for
the actuality of the modern experiences will, so far as it goes, raise a
presumption that the savage beliefs, however erroneous, however darkened
by fraud and fancy, repose on a basis of real observation of actual
phenomena.

Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man--_humani nihil
a se alienum putat_. These researches, therefore, are within the
anthropological province, especially as they bear on the prevalent
anthropological theory of the Origin of Religion. By 'religion' we mean,
for the purpose of this argument, the belief in the existence of an
Intelligence, or Intelligences not human, and not dependent on a material
mechanism of brain and nerves, which may, or may not, powerfully control
men's fortunes and the nature of things. We also mean the additional
belief that there is, in man, an element so far kindred to these
Intelligences that it can transcend the knowledge obtained through the
known bodily senses, and may possibly survive the death of the body. These
two beliefs at present (though not necessarily in their origin) appear
chiefly as the faith in God and in the Immortality of the Soul.

It is important, then, to trace, if possible, the origin of these two
beliefs. If they arose in actual communion with Deity (as the first at
least did, in the theory of the Hebrew Scriptures), or if they could be
proved to arise in an unanalysable _sensus numinis_, or even in 'a
perception of the Infinite' (Max Müller), religion would have a divine, or
at least a necessary source. To the Theist, what is inevitable cannot but
be divinely ordained, therefore religion is divinely preordained,
therefore, in essentials, though not in accidental details, religion is
true. The atheist, or non-theist, of course draws no such inferences.

But if religion, as now understood among men, be the latest evolutionary
form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a
blunder, and its present form only the result of progressive but
unessential refinements on that blunder, the inference that religion is
untrue--that nothing actual corresponds to its hypothesis--is very easily
drawn. The inference is not, perhaps, logical, for all our science itself
is the result of progressive refinements upon hypotheses originally
erroneous, fashioned to explain facts misconceived. Yet our science is
true, within its limits, though very far from being exhaustive of the
truth. In the same way, it might be argued, our religion, even granting
that it arose out of primitive fallacies and false hypotheses, may yet
have been refined, as science has been, through a multitude of causes,
into an approximate truth.

Frequently as I am compelled to differ from Mr. Spencer both as to facts
and their interpretation, I am happy to find that he has anticipated me
here. Opponents will urge, he says, that 'if the primitive belief' (in
ghosts) 'was absolutely false, all derived beliefs from it must be
absolutely false?' Mr. Spencer replies: 'A germ of truth was contained in
the primitive conception--the truth, namely, that the power which
manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of
the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness.' In fact, we find
Mr. Spencer, like Faust as described by Marguerite, saying much the same
thing as the priests, but not quite in the same way. Of course, I allow
for a much larger 'germ of truth' in the origin of the ghost theory than
Mr. Spencer does. But we can both say 'the ultimate form of the religious
consciousness is' (will be?) 'the final development of a consciousness
which at the outset contained a germ of truth obscured by multitudinous
errors.'[8]

  'One God, one law, one element,
  And one far-off divine event,
  To which the whole creation moves.'

Coming at last to Mr. Tylor, we find that he begins by dismissing the idea
that any known race of men is devoid of religious conceptions. He
disproves, out of their own mouths, the allegations of several writers who
have made this exploded assertion about 'godless tribes.' He says:
'The thoughts and principles of modern Christianity are attached to
intellectual clues which run back through far pre-Christian ages to the
very origin of human civilisation, _perhaps even of human existence_.'[9]
So far we abound in Mr. Tylor's sense. 'As a minimum definition of
religion' he gives 'the belief in spiritual beings,' which appears
'among all low races with whom we have attained to thoroughly intimate
relations.' The existence of this belief at present does not prove that no
races were ever, at any time, destitute of all belief. But it prevents us
from positing the existence of such creedless races, in any age, as a
demonstrated fact. We have thus, in short, no opportunity of observing,
_historically_, man's development from blank unbelief into even the
minimum or most rudimentary form of belief. We can only theorise and make
more or less plausible conjectures as to the first rudiments of human
faith in God and in spiritual beings. We find no race whose mind, as to
faith, is a _tabula rasa_.

To the earliest faith Mr. Tylor gives the name of _Animism_, a term not
wholly free from objection, though 'Spiritualism' is still less desirable,
having been usurped by a form of modern superstitiousness. This Animism,
'in its full development, includes the belief in souls and in a future
state, in controlling deities and subordinate spirits.' In Mr. Tylor's
opinion, as in Mr. Huxley's, Animism, in its lower (and earlier) forms,
has scarcely any connection with ethics. Its 'spirits' do not 'make for
righteousness.' This is a side issue to be examined later, but we may
provisionally observe, in passing, that the ethical ideas, such as they
are, even of Australian blacks are reported to be inculcated at the
religious mysteries (_Bora_) of the tribes, which were instituted by and
are performed in honour of the gods of their native belief. But this topic
must be reserved for our closing chapters.

Mr. Tylor, however, is chiefly concerned with Animism as 'an ancient and
world-wide philosophy, of which belief is the theory, and worship is the
practice.' Given Animism, then, or the belief in spiritual beings, as the
earliest form and minimum of religious faith, what is the origin of
Animism? It will be seen that, by Animism, Mr. Tylor does not mean the
alleged early theory, implicitly if not explicitly and consciously held,
that all things whatsoever are animated and are personalities.[10] Judging
from the behaviour of little children, and from the myths of savages,
early man may have half-consciously extended his own sense of personal and
potent and animated existence to the whole of nature as known to him. Not
only animals, but vegetables and inorganic objects, may have been looked
on by him as persons, like what he felt himself to be. The child (perhaps
merely because _taught_ to do so) beats the naughty chair, and all objects
are persons in early mythology. But this _feeling_, rather than theory,
may conceivably have existed among early men, before they developed the
hypothesis of 'spirits,' 'ghosts,' or souls. It is the origin of _that_
hypothesis, 'Animism,' which Mr. Tylor investigates.

What, then, is the origin of Animism? It arose in the earliest traceable
speculations on 'two groups of biological problems:

(1) 'What is it that makes the difference between a living body and a
dead one; what causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death?'

(2) 'What are those human shapes which appear in dreams and
visions?'[11]

Here it should be noted that Mr. Tylor most properly takes a distinction
between sleeping 'dreams' and waking 'visions,' or 'clear vision.' The
distinction is made even by the blacks of Australia. Thus one of the
Kurnai announced that his _Yambo_, or soul, could 'go out' during sleep,
and see the distant and the dead. But 'while any one might be able to
communicate with the ghosts, _during sleep_, it was only the wizards who
were able to do so in waking hours.' A wizard, in fact, is a person
susceptible (or feigning to be susceptible) when awake to hallucinatory
perceptions of phantasms of the dead. 'Among the Kulin of Wimmera River a
man became a wizard who, as a boy, had seen his mother's ghost sitting at
her grave.'[12] These facts prove that a race of savages at the bottom of
the scale of culture do take a formal distinction between normal dreams in
sleep and waking hallucinations--a thing apt to be denied.

Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer offers the massive generalisation that savages do
not possess a language enabling a man to say 'I dreamed that I saw,'
instead of 'I saw' ('Principles of Sociology,' p. 150). This could only be
proved by giving examples of such highly deficient languages, which Mr.
Spencer does not do.[13] In many savage speculations there occur ideas as
subtly metaphysical as those of Hegel. Moreover, even the Australian
languages have the verb 'to see,' and the substantive 'sleep.' Nothing,
then, prevents a man from saying 'I saw in sleep' (_insomnium_,
[Greek: enupnion]).

We have shown too, that the Australians take an essential distinction
between waking hallucinations (ghosts seen by a man when awake) and the
common hallucinations of slumber. Anybody can have these; the man who sees
ghosts when awake is marked out for a wizard.

At the same time the vividness of dreams among certain savages, as
recorded in Mr. Im Thurn's 'Indians of Guiana,' and the consequent
confusion of dreaming and waking experiences, are certain facts. Wilson
says the same of some negroes, and Mr. Spencer illustrates from the
confusion of mind in dreamy children. They, we know, are much more
addicted to somnambulism than grown-up people. I am unaware that
spontaneous somnambulism among savages has been studied as it ought to be.
I have demonstrated, however, that very low savages can and do draw an
essential distinction between sleeping and waking hallucinations.

Again, the crystal-gazer, whose apparently telepathic crystal pictures are
discussed later (chap. v.), was introduced to a crystal just because she
had previously been known to be susceptible to waking and occasionally
veracious hallucinations.

It was not only on the dreams of sleep, so easily forgotten as they are,
that the savage pondered, in his early speculations about the life and the
soul. He included in his materials the much more striking and memorable
experiences of waking hours, as we and Mr. Tylor agree in holding.

Reflecting on these things, the earliest savage reasoners would decide:
(1) that man has a 'life' (which leaves him temporarily in sleep, finally
in death); (2) that man also possesses a 'phantom' (which appears to
other people in their visions and dreams). The savage philosopher would
then 'combine his information,' like a celebrated writer on Chinese
metaphysics. He would merely 'combine the life and the phantom,' as
'manifestations of one and the same soul.' The result would be 'an
apparitional soul,' or 'ghost-soul.'

This ghost-soul would be a highly accomplished creature, 'a vapour, film,
or shadow,' yet conscious, capable of leaving the body, mostly invisible
and impalpable, 'yet also manifesting physical power,' existing and
appearing after the death of the body, able to act on the bodies of other
men, beasts, and things.[14]

When the earliest reasoners, in an age and in mental conditions of which
we know nothing historically, had evolved the hypothesis of this
conscious, powerful, separable soul, capable of surviving the death of the
body, it was not difficult for them to develop the rest of Religion, as
Mr. Tylor thinks. A powerful ghost of a dead man might thrive till, its
original owner being long forgotten, it became a God. Again (souls once
given) it would not be a very difficult logical leap, perhaps, to conceive
of souls, or spirits, that had never been human at all. It is, we may say,
only _le premier pas qui coûte_, the step to the belief in a surviving
separable soul. Nevertheless, when we remember that Mr. Tylor is
theorising about savages in the dim background of human evolution, savages
whom we know nothing of by experience, savages far behind Australians and
Bushmen (who possess Gods), we must admit that he credits them with great
ingenuity, and strong powers of abstract reasoning. He may be right in his
opinion. In the same way, just as primitive men were keen reasoners, so
early bees, more clever than modern bees, may have evolved the system of
hexagonal cells, and only an early fish of genius could first have hit
on the plan, now hereditary of killing a fly by blowing water at it.

To this theory of metaphysical genius in very low savages I have no
objection to offer. We shall find, later, astonishing examples of savage
abstract speculation, certainly not derived from missionary sources,
because wholly out of the missionary's line of duty and reflection.

As early beasts had genius, so the earliest reasoners appear to have been
as logically gifted as the lowest savages now known to us, or even as some
Biblical critics. By Mr. Tylor's hypothesis, they first conceived the
extremely abstract idea of Life, 'that which makes the difference between
a living body and a dead one.'[15] This highly abstract conception must
have been, however, the more difficult to early man, as, to him, all
things, universally, are 'animated.'[16] Mr. Tylor illustrates this
theory of early man by the little child's idea that 'chairs, sticks, and
wooden horses are actuated by the same sort of personal will as nurses and
children and kittens.... In such matters the savage mind well represents
the childish stage.'[17]

Now, nothing can be more certain than that, if children think sticks are
animated, they don't think so because they have heard, or discovered, that
they possess souls, and then transfer souls to sticks. We may doubt, then,
if primitive man came, in this way, by reasoning on souls, to suppose
that all things, universally, were animated. But if he did think all
things animated--a corpse, to his mind, was just as much animated as
anything else. Did he reason: 'All things are animated. A corpse is not
animated. Therefore a corpse is not a thing (within the meaning of my
General Law)'?

How, again, did early man conceive of Life, before he identified Life
(1) with 'that which makes the difference between a living body and a dead
one' (a difference which, _ex hypothesi_, he did not draw, _all_ things
being animated to his mind) and (2) with 'those human shapes which appear
in dreams and visions'? 'The ancient savage philosophers probably reached
the obvious inference that every man had two things belonging to him, a
life and a phantom.' But everything was supposed to have 'a life,' as far
as one makes out, before the idea of separable soul was developed, at
least if savages arrived at the theory of universal animation as children
are said to do.

We are dealing here quite conjecturally with facts beyond our experience.

In any case, early man excogitated (by the hypothesis) the abstract idea
of Life, _before_ he first 'envisaged' it in material terms as 'breath,'
or 'shadow.' He next decided that mere breath or shadow was not only
identical with the more abstract conception of Life, but could also take
on forms as real and full-bodied as, to him, are the hallucinations of
dream or waking vision. His reasoning appears to have proceeded from the
more abstract (the idea of Life) to the more concrete, to the life first
shadowy and vaporous, then clothed in the very aspect of the real man.

Mr. Tylor has thus (whether we follow his logic or not) provided man with
a theory of active, intelligent, separable souls, which can survive the
death of the body. At this theory early man arrived by speculations on the
nature of life, and on the causes of phantasms of the dead or living
beheld in 'dreams and visions.' But our author by no means leaves out of
sight the effects of alleged supernormal phenomena believed in by savages,
with their parallels in modern civilisation. These supernormal phenomena,
whether real or illusory, are, he conceives, facts in that mass of
experiences from which savages constructed their belief in separable,
enduring, intelligent souls or ghosts, the foundation of religion.

While we are, perhaps owing to our own want of capacity, puzzled by what
seem to be two kinds of early philosophy--(1) a sort of instinctive or
unreasoned belief in universal animation, which Mr. Spencer calls
'Animism' and does not believe in, (2) the reasoned belief in separable
and surviving souls of men (and in things), which Mr. Spencer believes in,
and Mr. Tylor calls 'Animism'--we must also note another difficulty. Mr.
Tylor may seem to be taking it for granted that the earliest, remote,
unknown thinkers on life and the soul were existing on the same psychical
plane as we ourselves, or, at least, as modern savages. Between modern
savages and ourselves, in this regard, he takes certain differences, but
takes none between modern savages and the remote founders of religion.

Thus Mr. Tylor observes:

'The condition of the modern ghost-seer, whose imagination passes on
such slight excitement into positive hallucination, is rather the rule
than the exception among uncultured and intensely imaginative tribes,
whose minds may be thrown off their balance by a touch, a word, a
gesture, an unaccustomed noise.'[18]

I find evidence that low contemporary savages are _not_ great ghost-seers,
and, again, I cannot quite accept Mr. Tylor's psychology of the 'modern
ghost-seer.' Most such favoured persons whom I have known were steady,
unimaginative, unexcitable people, with just one odd experience. Lord
Tennyson, too, after sleeping in the bed of his recently lost father on
purpose to see his ghost, decided that ghosts 'are not seen by imaginative
people.'

We now examine, at greater length, the psychical conditions in which,
according to Mr. Tylor, contemporary savages differ from civilised men.
Later we shall ask what may be said as to possible or presumable psychical
differences between modern savages and the datelessly distant founders of
the belief in souls. Mr. Tylor attributes to the lower races, and
even to races high above their level, 'morbid ecstasy, brought on by
meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement, or disease.' Now, we may
still 'meditate'--and how far the result is 'morbid' is a matter for
psychologists and pathologists to determine. Fasting we do not practise
voluntarily, nor would we easily accept evidence from an Englishman as to
the veracity of voluntary fasting visions, like those of Cotton Mather.
The visions of disease we should set aside, as a rule, with those of
'excitement,' produced, for instance, by 'devil-dances.' Narcotic and
alcoholic visions are not in question.[19] For our purpose the _induced_
trances of savages (in whatever way voluntarily brought on) are analogous
to the modern induced hypnotic trance. Any supernormal acquisitions of
knowledge in these induced conditions, among savages, would be on a par
with similar alleged experiences of persons under hypnotism.

We do not differ from known savages in being able to bring on non-normal
psychological conditions, but we produce these, as a rule, by other
methods than theirs, and such experiments are not made on _all_ of us, as
they were on all Red Indian boys and girls in the 'medicine-fast,' at
the age of puberty.

Further, in their normal state, known savages, or some of them, are more
'suggestible' than educated Europeans at least.[20] They can be more
easily hallucinated in their normal waking state by suggestion. Once more,
their intervals of hunger, followed by gorges of food, and their lack of
artificial light, combine to make savages more apt to see what is not
there than are comfortable educated white men. But Mr. Tylor goes too far
when he says 'where the savage could see phantasms, the civilised man has
come to amuse himself with fancies.'[21] The civilised man, beyond all
doubt, is capable of being _enfantosmé_.

In all that he says on this point, the point of psychical condition, Mr.
Tylor is writing about known savages as they differ from ourselves. But
the savages who _ex hypothesi_ evolved the doctrine of souls lie beyond
our ken, far behind the modern savages, among whom we find belief not
only in souls and ghosts, but in moral gods. About the psychical condition
of the savages who worked out the theory of souls and founded religion we
necessarily know nothing. If there be such experiences as clairvoyance,
telepathy, and so on, these unknown ancestors of ours may (for all that we
can tell) have been peculiarly open to them, and therefore peculiarly apt
to believe in separable souls. In fact, when we write about these far-off
founders of religion, we guess in the dark, or by the flickering light of
analogy. The lower animals have faculties (as in their power of finding
their way home through new unknown regions, and in the ants' modes of
acquiring and communicating knowledge to each other) which are mysteries
to us. The terror of dogs in 'haunted houses' and of horses in passing
'haunted' scenes has often been reported, and is alluded to briefly by Mr.
Tylor. Balaam's ass, and the dogs which crouched and whined before Athene,
whom Eumaeus could not see, are 'classical' instances.

The weakness of the anthropological argument here is, we must repeat, that
we know little more about the mental condition and experiences of the
early thinkers who developed the doctrine of Souls than we know about
the mental condition and experiences of the lower animals. And the more
firmly a philosopher believes in the Darwinian hypothesis, the less, he
must admit, can he suppose himself to know about the twilight ages,
between the lower animal and the fully evolved man. What kind of creature
was man when he first conceived the germs, or received the light,
of Religion? All is guess-work here! We may just allude to Hegel's
theory that clairvoyance and hypnotic phenomena are produced in a
kind of temporary _atavism_, or 'throwing hack' to a remotely ancient
condition of the 'sensitive soul' (_füklende Seele_). The 'sensitive'
[unconditioned, clairvoyant] faculty or 'soul' is 'a disease when it
becomes a state of the self-conscious, educated, self-possessed human
being of civilisation.'[22] 'Second sight,' Hegel thinks, was a product
of an earlier day and earlier mental condition than ours.

Approaching this almost untouched subject--the early psychical condition
of man--not from the side of metaphysical speculations like Hegel, but
with the instruments of modern psychology and physiology, Dr. Max Dessoir,
of Berlin, following, indeed, M. Taine, has arrived, as we saw, at
somewhat similar conclusions. 'This fully conscious life of the spirit,'
in which we moderns now live, 'seems to rest upon a substratum of reflex
action of a hallucinatory type.' Our actual modern condition is _not_
'fundamental,' and 'hallucination represents, at least in its nascent
condition, the main trunk of our psychical existence.'[23]

Now, suppose that the remote and unknown ancestors of ours who first
developed the doctrine of souls had not yet spread far from 'the main
trunk of our psychical existence,' far from constant hallucination. In
that case (at least, according to Dr. Dessoir's theory) their psychical
experiences would be such as we cannot estimate, yet cannot leave, as a
possibility influencing religion, out of our calculations.

If early men were ever in a condition in which telepathy and clairvoyance
(granting their possibility) were prevalent, one might expect that
faculties so useful would be developed in the struggle for existence. That
they are deliberately cultivated by modern savages we know. The Indian
foster-mother of John Tanner used, when food was needed, to suggest
herself into an hypnotic condition, so that she became _clairvoyante_ as
to the whereabouts of game. Tanner, an English boy, caught early
by the Indians, was sceptical, but came to practise the same art, not
unsuccessfully, himself.[24] His reminiscences, which he dictated on his
return to civilisation, were certainly not feigned in the interests of any
theories. But the most telepathic human stocks, it may be said, ought,
_ceteris paribus_, to have been the most successful in the struggle
for existence. We may infer that the _cetera_ were not _paria_, the
clairvoyant state not being precisely the best for the practical business
of life. But really we know nothing of the psychical state of the earliest
men. They may have had experiences tending towards a belief in 'spirits,'
of which we can tell nothing. We are obliged to guess, in considerable
ignorance of the actual conditions, and this historical ignorance
inevitably besets all anthropological speculation about the origin of
religion.

The knowledge of our nescience as to the psychical condition of our first
thinking ancestors may suggest hesitation as to taking it for granted that
early man was on our own or on the modern savage level in 'psychical'
experience. Even savage races, as Mr. Tylor justly says, attribute
superior psychical knowledge to neighbouring tribes on a yet lower level
of culture than themselves. The Finn esteems the Lapp sorcerers above his
own; the Lapp yields to the superior pretensions of the Samoyeds. There
may be more ways than one of explaining this relative humility: there is
Hegel's way and there is Mr. Tylor's way. We cannot be certain, _a
priori_, that the earliest man knew no more of supernormal or apparently
supernormal experiences than we commonly do, or that these did not
influence his thoughts on animism.

It is an example of the chameleon-like changes of science (even of
'science falsely so called' if you please) that when he wrote his book, in
1871, Mr. Tylor could not possibly have anticipated this line of argument.

'Psychical planes' had not been invented; hypnotism, with its problems,
had not been much noticed in England. But 'Spiritualism' was flourishing.
Mr. Tylor did not ignore this revival of savage philosophy. He saw very
well that the end of the century was beholding the partial rehabilitation
of beliefs which were scouted from 1660 to 1850. Seventy years ago, as Mr.
Tylor says, Dr. Macculloch, in his 'Description of the Western Islands of
Scotland,' wrote of 'the famous Highland second sight' that 'ceasing to be
believed it has ceased to exist.'[25]

Dr. Macculloch was mistaken in his facts. 'Second sight' has never
ceased to exist (or to be believed to exist), and it has recently been
investigated in the 'Journal' of the Caledonian Medical Society. Mr. Tylor
himself says that it has been 'reinstated in a far larger range of
society, and under far better circumstances of learning and prosperity.'
This fact he ascribes generally to 'a direct revival from the regions of
savage philosophy and peasant folklore,' a revival brought about in great
part by the writings of Swedenborg. To-day things have altered. The
students now interested in this whole class of alleged supernormal
phenomena are seldom believers in the philosophy of Spiritualism in the
American sense of the word.[26]

Mr. Tylor, as we have seen, attributes the revival of interest in this
obscure class of subjects to the influence of Swedenborg. It is true, as
has been shown, that Swedenborg attracted the attention of Kant. But
modern interest has chiefly been aroused and kept alive by the phenomena
of hypnotism. The interest is now, among educated students, really
scientific.

Thus Mr. William James, Professor of Psychology in the University of
Harvard, writes:

'I was attracted to this subject (Psychical Research) some years ago by
my love of fair play in Science.'[27]

Mr. Tylor is not incapable of appreciating this attitude. Even the
so-called 'spirit manifestations,' he says, 'should be discussed on their
merits,' and the investigation 'would seem apt to throw light on some most
interesting psychological questions.' Nothing can be more remote from the
logic of Hume.

The ideas of Mr. Tylor on the causes of the origin of religion are
now criticised, not from the point of view of spiritualism, but of
experimental psychology. We hold that very probably there exist human
faculties of unknown scope; that these conceivably were more powerful
and prevalent among our very remote ancestors who founded religion; that
they may still exist in savage as in civilised races, and that they may
have confirmed, if they did not originate, the doctrine of separable
souls. If they _do_ exist, the circumstance is important, in view of the
fact that modern ideas rest on a denial of their existence.

Mr. Tylor next examines the savage and other _names_ for the ghost-soul,
such as shadow (_umbra_), breath (_spiritus_), and he gives cases in
which the _shadow_ of a man is regarded as equivalent to his _life_. Of
course, the shadow in the sunlight does not resemble the phantasm in a
dream. The two, however, were combined and identified by early thinkers,
while _breath_ and _heart_ were used as symbols of 'that in men which
makes them live,' a phrase found among the natives of Nicaragua in 1528.
The confessedly symbolical character of the phrase, 'it is _not_
precisely the heart, but that in them which makes them live,' proves that
to the speaker life was _not_ 'heart' or 'breath,' but that these terms
were known to be material word-counters for the conception of life.[1]
Whether the earliest thinkers identified heart, breath, shadow, with life,
or whether they consciously used words of material origin to denote an
immaterial conception, of course we do not know. But the word in the
latter case would react on the thought, till the Roman inhaled (as his
life?) the last breath of his dying kinsman, he well knowing that the
Manes of the said kinsman were elsewhere, and not to be inhaled.

Subdivisions and distinctions were then recognised, as of the Egyptian
_Ka_, the 'double,' the Karen _kelah_, or 'personal life-phantom'
(_wraith_), on one side, and the Karen _thah_, 'the responsible moral
soul,' on the other. The Roman _umbra_ hovers about the grave, the _manes_
go to Orcus, the _spiritus_ seeks the stars.

We are next presented with a crowd of cases in which sickness or lethargy
is ascribed by savages to the absence of the patient's spirit, or of one
of his spirits. This idea of migratory spirit is next used by savages to
explain certain proceedings of the sorcerer, priest, or seer. His soul,
or one of his souls is thought to go forth to distant places in quest of
information, while the seer, perhaps, remains lethargic. Probably, in the
struggle for existence, he lost more by being lethargic than he gained by
being clairvoyant!

Now, here we touch the first point in Mr. Tylor's theory, where a critic
may ask, Was this belief in the wandering abroad of the seer's spirit a
theory not only false in its form (as probably it is), but also wholly
unbased on experiences which might raise a presumption in favour of the
existence of phenomena really supernormal? By 'supernormal' experiences I
here mean such as the acquisition by a human mind of knowledge which could
not be obtained by it through the recognised channels of sensation. Say,
for the sake of argument, that a person, savage or civilised, obtains in
trance information about distant places or events, to him unknown, and,
through channels of sense, unknowable. The savage will explain this by
saying that the seer's soul, shadow, or spirit, wandered out of the body
to the distant scene. This is, at present, an unverified theory. But
still, for the sake of argument, suppose that the seer did honestly
obtain this information in trance, lethargy, or hypnotic sleep, or any
other condition. If so, the modern savage (or his more gifted ancestors)
would have other grounds for his theory of the wandering soul than any
ground presented by normal occurrences, ordinary dreams, shadows, and so
forth. Again, in human nature there would be (if such things occur) a
potentiality of experiences other and stranger than materialism will admit
as possible. It will (granting the facts) be impossible to aver that there
is _nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu_. The soul will be not
_ce qu'un vain peuple pense_ under the new popular tradition, and the
savage's theory of the spirit will be, at least in part, based on other
than normal and every-day facts. That condition in which the seer acquires
information, not otherwise accessible, about events remote in space, is
what the mesmerists of the mid-century called 'travelling clairvoyance.'

If such an experience be _in rerum natura_, it will not, of course,
justify the savage's theory that the soul is a separable entity, capable
of voyaging, and also capable of existing after the death of the body. But
it will give the savage a better excuse for his theory than normal
experiences provide; and will even raise a presumption that reflection on
mere ordinary experiences--death, shadow, trance--is not the sole origin
of his theory. For a savage so acute as Mr. Tylor's hypothetical early
reasoner might decline to believe that his own or a friend's soul had been
absent on an expedition, unless it brought back information not normally
to be acquired. However, we cannot reason, _a priori_, as to how far the
logic of a savage might or might not go on occasion.

In any case, a scientific reasoner might be expected to ask: 'Is this
alleged acquisition of knowledge, _not_ through the ordinary channels of
sense, a thing _in rerum natura_?' Because, if it is, we must obviously
increase our list of the savage's reasons for believing in a soul: we
must make his reasons include 'psychical' experiences, and there must be
an X region to investigate.

These considerations did not fail to present themselves to Mr. Tylor. But
his manner of dealing with them is peculiar. With his unequalled knowledge
of the lower races, it was easy for him to examine travellers' tales about
savage seers who beheld distant events in vision, and to allow them what
weight he thought proper, after discounting possibilities of falsehood and
collusion. He might then have examined modern narratives of similar
performances among the civilised, which are abundant. It is obvious and
undeniable that if the supernormal acquisition of knowledge in trance is a
_vera causa_, a real process, however rare, Mr. Tylor's theory needs
modifications; while the character of the savage's reasoning becomes more
creditable to the savage, and appears as better bottomed than we had been
asked to suppose. But Mr. Tylor does not examine this large body of
evidence at all, or, at least, does not offer us the details of his
examination. He merely writes in this place:

'A typical spiritualistic instance may be quoted from Jung-Stilling, who
says that examples have come to his knowledge of sick persons who,
longing to see absent friends, have fallen into a swoon, during which
they have appeared to the distant objects of their affection.'[29]

Jung-Stilling (though he wrote before modern 'Spiritualism' came in) is
not a very valid authority; there is plenty of better evidence than his,
but Mr. Tylor passes it by, merely remarking that 'modern Europe has kept
closely enough to the lines of early philosophy.' Modern Europe has indeed
done so, if it explains the supernormal acquisition of knowledge, or the
hallucinatory appearance of a distant person to his friend by a theory of
wandering 'spirits.' But facts do not cease to be facts because wrong
interpretations have been put upon them by savages, by Jung-Stilling, or
by anyone else. The real question is, Do such events occur among lower and
higher races, beyond explanation by fraud and fortuitous coincidence? We
gladly grant that the belief in Animism, when it takes the form of a
theory of 'wandering spirits,' is probably untenable, as it is assuredly
of savage origin. But we are not absolutely so sure that in this aspect
the theory is not based on actual experiences, not of a normal and
ordinary kind. If so, the savage philosophy and its supposed survivals in
belief will appear in a new light. And we are inclined to hold that an
examination of the mass of evidence to which Mr. Tylor offers here so
slight an allusion will at least make it wise to suspend our judgment,
not only as to the origins of the savage theory of spirits, but as to the
materialistic hypothesis of the absence of a psychical element in man.

I may seem to have outrun already the limits of permissible hypothesis. It
may appear absurd to surmise that there can exist in man, savage or
civilised, a faculty for acquiring information not accessible by the known
channels of sense, a faculty attributed by savage philosophers to the
wandering soul. But one may be permitted to quote the opinion of
M. Charles Richet, Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine
in Paris. It is not cited because M. Richet is a professor of physiology,
but because he reached his conclusion after six years of minute
experiment. He says: 'There exists in certain persons, at certain moments,
a faculty of acquiring knowledge which has no _rapport_ with our normal
faculties of that kind.'[30]

Instances tending to raise a presumption in favour of M. Richet's idea may
now be sought in savage and civilised life.

[Footnote 1: _Primitive Culture,_ i. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 2: _Origin of Ranks._]

[Footnote 3: I may be permitted to refer to 'Reply to Objections' in the
appendix to my _Myth, Ritual, and Religion,_ vol. ii.]

[Footnote 4: Spencer, _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, pp. 672, 673.]

[Footnote 5: _Primitive Culture_, i. 417-425. Cf. however _Princip. Of
Sociol._, p. 304.]

[Footnote 6: Op. cit. i. 423, 424.]

[Footnote 7: Published for the Berlin Society of Experimental Psychology,
Günther, Leipzig, 1890.]

[Footnote 8: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, 837-839.]

[Footnote 9: _Primitive Culture_, i. 421, chapter xi.]

[Footnote 10: This theory is what Mr. Spencer calls 'Animism,' and does
not believe in. What Mr. Tylor calls 'Animism' Mr. Spencer believes in,
but he calls it the 'Ghost Theory.']

[Footnote 11: _Primitive Culture_, i. 428.]

[Footnote 12: Howitt, _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, xiii.
191-195.]

[Footnote 13: The curious may consult, for savage words for 'dreams,' Mr.
Scott's _Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language_, s.v. 'Lots,' or any
glossary of any savage language.]

[Footnote 14: _Prim. Cult._ i. 429.]

[Footnote 15: _Prim. Cult._ i. 428.]

[Footnote 16: Ibid. i. 285.]

[Footnote 17: Ibid. i. 285, 286.]

[Footnote 18: _Primitive Culture_, i. 446.]

[Footnote 19: See, however, Dr. Von Schrenck-Notzing, _Die Beobachtung
narcolischer Mittel für den Hypnotismus_, and S.P.R. _Proceedings_, x.
292-899.]

[Footnote 20: _Primitive Culture_, i. 306-316.]

[Footnote 21: i. 315.]

[Footnote 22: _Phil. des Geistes_, pp. 406, 408.]

[Footnote 23: See also Mr. A.J. Balfour's Presidential Address to the
Society for Psychical Research, _Proceedings_, vol. x. See, too, Taine,
_De l'Intelligence_, i. 78, 106, 139.]

[Footnote 24: Tanner's _Narrative_, New York, 1830.]

[Footnote 25: _Primitive Culture_, i. 143.]

[Footnote 26: As 'spiritualism' is often used in opposition to
'materialism,' and with no reference to rapping 'spirits,' the modern
belief in that class of intelligences may here be called spiritism.]

[Footnote 27: _The Will to Believe_, preface, p. xiv.]

[Footnote 28: _Primitive Culture_, i. 432,433. Citing Oviedo, _Hist. De
Nicaragua,_ pp. 21-51.]

[Footnote 29: _Primitive Culture_, i. 440. Citing Stilling after Dale Owen,
and quoting Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace's _Scientific Aspect of the
Supernatural_, p. 43. Mr. Tylor also adds folk-lore practices of
ghost-seeing, as on St. John's Eve. St. Mark's Eve, too, is in point, as
far as folk-lore goes.]

[Footnote 30: _Proceedings_, S.P.R. v. 167.]




IV

'OPENING THE GATES OF DISTANCE'

'To open the Gates of Distance' is the poetical Zulu phrase for what is
called clairvoyance, or _vue à distance_. This, if it exists, is the
result of a faculty of undetermined nature, whereby knowledge of remote
events may be acquired, not through normal channels of sense. As the Zulus
say: '_Isiyezi_ is a state in which a man becomes slightly insensible. He
is awake, but still sees things which he would not see if he were not in a
state of ecstasy (_nasiyesi_).'[1] The Zulu description of _isiyezi_
includes what is technically styled 'dissociation.' No psychologist or
pathologist will deny that visions of an hallucinatory sort may occur in
dissociated states, say in the _petit mal_ of epilepsy. The question,
however, is whether any such visions convey actual information not
otherwise to be acquired, beyond the reach of chance coincidence to
explain.

A Scottish example, from the records of a court of law, exactly
illustrates the Zulu theory. At the moment when the husband of Jonka
Dyneis was in danger six miles from her house in his boat, Jonka 'was
found, and seen standing at her own house wall in a trance, and being
taken, she could not give answer, but stood as bereft of her senses, and
when she was asked why she was so moved, she answered, "If our boat be not
lost, she was in great hazard."' (October 2, 1616.)[2]

The belief in opening the Gates of Distance is, of course, very widely
diffused. The gift is attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, to Plotinus, to
many Saints, to Catherine de' Medici, to the Rev. Mr. Peden,[3] and to
Jeanne d'Arc, while the faculty is the stock in trade of savage seers in
all regions.[4]

The question, however, on which Mr. Tylor does not touch, is, _Are any of
the stories true?_ If so, of course they would confirm in the mind
of the savage his theory of the wandering soul. Now, to find anything
like attested cases of successful clairvoyance among savages is a
difficult task. White men either scout the idea, or are afraid of seeming
superstitious if they give examples, or, if they do give examples, are
accused of having sunk to the degraded level of Zulus or Red Indians. Even
where travellers, like Scheffer, have told about their own experiences,
the narratives are omitted by modern writers on savage divination.[5] We
must therefore make our own researches, and it is to be noted that
the stories of successful savage clairvoyance are given as illustrations
merely, not as evidence to facts, for we cannot cross-examine the
witnesses.

Mr. Tylor dismisses the topic in a manner rather cavalier:

'Without discussing on their merits the accounts of what is called
"second sight,"[6] it may be pointed out that they are related among
savage tribes, as when Captain Jonathan Carver obtained from a Cree
medicine-man a true prophecy of the arrival of a canoe with news next
day at noon; or when Mr. J. Mason Brown, travelling with two _voyageurs_
on the Copper Mine River, was met by Indians of the very band he was
seeking, these having been sent by their medicine-man, who, on
enquiry, stated that "he saw them coming, and heard them talk on their
journey."'[7]

Now, in our opinion, the 'merits' of stories of second sight need
discussion, because they may, if well attested, raise a presumption that
the savage's theory has a better foundation than Mr. Tylor supposes. Oddly
enough, though Mr. Tylor does not say so, Dr. Brinton (from whom he
borrows his two anecdotes) is more or less of our opinion.

'There are,' says Dr. Brinton, 'statements supported by unquestionable
testimony, which ought not to be passed over in silence, and yet I cannot
but approach them with hesitation. They are so revolting to the laws of
exact science, so alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our
lives. Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put
aside without serious consideration?'

That is exactly what we complain of; the alleged facts are 'put aside
without serious consideration.'

We, at least, are not slaves to the idea that 'the laws of exact science'
must be the only laws at work in the world. Science, however exact, does
not pretend to have discovered all 'laws.'

To return to actual examples of the alleged supernormal acquisition of
knowledge by savages: Dr. Brinton gives an example from Charlevoix and
General Mason Brown's anecdote.[8] In General Mason Brown's instance the
medicine-man, at a great distance, bade his emissaries 'seek three whites,
whose horses, arms, attire, and personal appearance he minutely described,
which description was repeated to General Brown by the warriors _before
they saw his two companions.'_ General Brown assured Dr. Brinton of 'the
accuracy of this in every particular.' Mr. Tylor has certainly not
improved the story in his condensed version. Dr. Brinton refers to 'many'
tales such as these, and some will be found in 'Among the Zulus,' by Mr.
David Leslie (1875).

Mr. Leslie was a Scottish sportsman, brought up from boyhood in
familiarity with the Zulus. His knowledge of their language and customs
was minute, and his book, privately printed, contains much interesting
matter. He writes:

'I was obliged to proceed to the Zulu country to meet my Kaffir
elephant-hunters, the time for their return having arrived. They were
hunting in a very unhealthy country, and I had agreed to wait for them
on the North-East border, the nearest point I could go to with safety.
I reached the appointed rendezvous, but could not gain the slightest
intelligence of my people at the kraal.

'After waiting some time, and becoming very uneasy about them, one of
my servants recommended me to go to the doctor, and at last, out of
curiosity and _pour passer le temps_, I did go.

'I stated what I wanted--information about my hunters--and I was met by
a stern refusal. "I cannot tell anything about white men," said he, "and
I know nothing of their ways." However, after some persuasion and
promise of liberal payment, impressing upon him the fact that it was not
white men but Kaffirs I wanted to know about, he at last consented,
saying "he would _open the Gate of Distance_, and would travel through
it, even although his body should lie before me."

'His first proceeding was to ask me the number and names of my hunters.
To this I demurred, telling him that if he obtained that information
from me he might easily substitute some news which he may have heard
from others, instead of the "spiritual telegraphic news" which I
expected him to get from his "familiar."

'To this he answered: "I told you I did not understand white men's ways;
but if I am to do anything for you it must be done in my way--not
yours." On receiving this fillip I felt inclined to give it up, as I
thought I might receive some rambling statement with a considerable
dash of truth, it being easy for anyone who knew anything of hunting to
give a tolerably correct idea of their motions.

'However, I conceded this point also, and otherwise satisfied him.

'The doctor then made eight little fires--that being the number of my
hunters; on each he cast some roots,[9] which emitted a curious sickly
odour and thick smoke; into each he cast a small stone, shouting, as he
did so, the name to which the stone was dedicated; then he ate some
"medicine," and fell over in what appeared to be a trance for about ten
minutes, during all which time his limbs kept moving. Then he seemed to
wake, went to one of the fires, raked the ashes about, looked at the
stone attentively, described the man faithfully, and said: "This man has
died of the fever, and your gun is lost."

'To the next fire as before: "This man" (correctly described) "has
killed four elephants," and then he described the tusks. The next: "This
man" (again describing him) "has been killed by an elephant, but your
gun is coming home," and so on through the whole, the men being minutely
and correctly described; their success or non-success being equally so.
I was told where the survivors were, and what they were doing, and that
in three months they would come out, but as they would not expect to
find me waiting on them there so long after the time appointed, they
would not pass that way.

'I took a particular note of all this information at the time, and to my
utter amazement _it turned out correct in every particular_.

'It was scarcely within the bounds of possibility that this man could
have had ordinary intelligence of the hunters; they were scattered about
in a country two hundred miles away.'

Mr. Leslie could discover no explanation, nor was any suggested by friends
familiar with the country and the natives whom he consulted. He gives
another example, which may be explained by 'suggestion.' A parallel case
from Central Africa will be found in the 'Journal of the Anthropological
Institute,' November 1897, p. 320, where 'private information,' as usual,
would explain the singular facts.

The Zulus themselves lay claim to a kind of clairvoyance which looks like
the result of intense visualising power, combined with the awakening of
the subconscious memory.[10]

'There is among black men a something which is divination within them.
When anything valuable is lost, they look for it at once; when they
cannot find it, each one begins to practise this inner divination,
trying to feel where the thing is; for, not being able to see it, he
feels internally a pointing, which tells him if he will go down to such
a place it is there, and he will find it. At length it says he will find
it; at length he sees it, and himself approaching it; before he begins
to move from where he is, he sees it very clearly indeed, and there is
an end of doubt. That sight is so clear that it is as though it was not
an inner sight, but as if he saw the very thing itself, and the place
where it is; so he quickly arises and goes to the place. If it is a
hidden place he throws himself into it, as though there was something
that impelled him to go as swiftly as the wind; and, in fact, he finds
the thing, if he has not acted by mere head-guessing. If it has been
done by real inner divination, he really sees it. But if it is done by
mere head-guessing and knowledge that he has not gone to such a place
and such a place, and that therefore it must be in such another place,
he generally misses the mark.'

Other Zulu instances will be given under the heads 'Possession' and
'Fetishism.'

To take a Northern people: In his 'History of the Lapps'[11] Scheffer
describes mechanical modes of divination practised by that race, who use a
drum and other objects for the purpose. These modes depend on more
traditional rules for interpreting the accidental combinations of lots.
But a Lapp confessed to Scheffer, with tears, that he could not help
seeing visions, as he proved by giving Scheffer a minute relation 'of
whatever particulars had happened to me in my journey to Lapland. And he
further complained that he know not how to make use of his eyes, since
things altogether distant were presented to them.' This Lapp was anxious
to become a Christian, hence his regret at being a 'rare and valuable'
example of clairvoyance. Torfaeus also was posed by the clairvoyance of a
Samoyed, as was Regnard by a Lapp seer.[12]

The next case is of old date, and, like the other savage examples, is
merely given for purposes of illustration.

  '_25e Lettre_.[13]

  '"_Suite des Traditions des Sauvages._"

  'Au Fort de la Rivière de St. Joseph, ce 14 Septembre 1721.

  '"_Des Jongleurs_"-- ... Vous ayez vu à Paris Madame de Marson, & elle
  y est encore; voici ce que M. le Marquis de Vaudreuil son Gendre,
  actuellement notre Gouverneur Général, me raconta cet Hyver, & qu'il a
  sçû de cette Dame, qui n'est rien moíns qu'un esprit foible. Elle etoit
  un jour fort inquiette an sujet de M. de Marson, son Mari, lequel
  commandoit dans un Poste, que nous avions en Accadie; et etoit absent, &
  le tems qu'il avoit marqué pour son retour, etoit passé.

  'Une Femme Sauvage, qui vit Madame de Marson en peine, lui en demanda la
  cause, & l'ayant apprise, lui dit, après y avoir un peu rêvé, de ne plus
  se chagriner, que son Epoux reviendroit tel jour et à telle heure,
  qu'elle lui marqua, avec un chapeau gris sur la tête. Comme elle
  s'apperçut que la Dame n'ajoutoit point foi à sa prédiction, au jour & à
  l'heure, qu'elle avoit assignée, elle rotourna chez elle, lui demanda si
  elle ne vouloit pas venir voir arriver son Mari, & la pressa de telle
  sorte de la suivre, qu'elle l'entraîna au bord de la Rivière.

  'A peine y etoíent-elles arrivées, que M. de Marson parut dans un Canot,
  un chapeau gris sur la tête; & ayant appris ce qui s'etoit passé, assûra
  qu'il ne pouvoit pas comprendre comment la Sauvagesse avoit pû sçavoir
  l'heure & le jour de son arrivée.'

It is unusual for European travellers and missionaries to give anecdotes
which might seem to 'confirm the delusions of benighted savages.' Such
anecdotes, again, are among the _arcana_ of these wild philosophers, and
are not readily communicated to strangers. When successful cases are
reported, it is natural to assert that they come through Europeans who
have sunk into barbarous superstition, or that they may be explained by
fraud and collusion. It is certain, however, that savage proficients
believe in their own powers, though no less certainly they will eke them
out by imposture. Seers are chosen in Zululand, as among Eskimos and
Samoyeds, from the class which in Europe supplies the persons who used to
be, but are no longer the most favourite hypnotic subjects, 'abnormal
children,' epileptic and hysterical. These are subjected to 'a long and
methodical course of training.'[14] Stoll, speaking of Guatemala, says
that 'certainly most of the induced and spontaneous phenomena with which
we are familiar occur among savages,' and appeals to travellers for
observations.[15] Information is likely to come in, as educated travellers
devote attention to the topic.

Dr. Callaway translates some Zulu communications which indicate the
amount of belief in this very practical and sceptical people. Amusing
illustrations of their scepticism will be quoted later, under
'Possession,' but they do accept as seers certain hysterical patients.
These are tested by their skill in finding objects which have been
hidden without their knowledge. They then behave much like Mr. Stuart
Cumberland, but have not the advantage of muscular contact with the
person who knows where the hidden objects are concealed. The neighbours
even deny that they have hidden anything at all. 'When they persist in
their denial ... he finds all the things that they have hidden. They see
that he is a great _inyanga_ (seer) when he has found all the things they
have concealed.' No doubt he is guided, perhaps in a super-sensitive
condition, by the unconscious indications of the excited spectators.

The point is that, while the savage conjurer will doubtless use fraud
wherever he can, still the experience of low races is in favour of
employing as seers the class of people who in Europe were, till recently,
supposed to make the best hypnotic subjects. Thus, in West Africa, 'the
presiding elders, during your initiation to the secret society of your
tribe, discover this gift [of Ebumtupism, or second sight], and so select
you as "a witch doctor."'[15] Among the Karens, the 'Wees,' or prophets,
'are nervous excitable men, such as would become mediums,'[16] as mediums
are diagnosed by Mr. Tylor.

In short, not to multiply examples, there is an element of actual
observation and of _bona fides_ entangled in the trickery of savage
practice. Though the subjects may be selected partly because of the
physical phenomena of convulsions which they exhibit, and which
favourably impress their clients, they are also such subjects as
occasionally yield that evidence of supernormal faculty which is
investigated by modern psychologists, like Richet, Janet, and William
James.

The following example, by no means unique, shows the view taken by savages
of their own magic, after they have become Christians. Catherine Wabose, a
converted Red Indian seeress, described her preliminary fast, at the age
of puberty. After six days of abstention from food she was rapt away to an
unknown place, where a radiant being welcomed her. Later a dark round
object promised her the gift of prophecy. She found her natural senses
greatly sharpened by lack of food. She first exercised her powers when her
kinsfolk in large numbers were starving, a medicine-lodge, or 'tabernacle'
as Lufitau calls it, was built for her, and she crawled in. As is well
known, these lodges are violently shaken during the magician's stay within
them, which the early Jesuits at first attributed to muscular efforts by
the seers. In 1637 Père Lejeune was astonished by the violent motions of a
large lodge, tenanted by a small man. One sorcerer, with an appearance of
candour, vowed that 'a great wind entered boisterously,' and the Father
was assured that, if he went in himself, he would become clairvoyant. He
did not make the experiment. The Methodist convert, Catherine, gave the
same description of her own experience: 'The lodge began shaking violently
by supernatural means. I knew this by the compressed current of air above,
and the noise of motion.' She had been beating a small drum and singing,
now she lay quiet. The radiant 'orbicular' spirit then informed her that
they 'must go westwards for game; how short-sighted you are!' 'The
advice was taken and crowned by instant success.' This established her
reputation.[17] Catherine's conversion was led up to by a dream of her
dying son, who beheld a Sacred Figure, and received from Him white
raiment. Her magical songs tell how unseen hands shake the magic lodge.
They invoke the Great Spirit that

    'Illumines earth
    Illumines heaven!
  Ah, say what Spirit, or Body, is this Body,
    That fills the world around,
    Speak, man, ah say
  What Spirit, or Body, is this Body?'

It is like a savage hymn to Hegel's _fühlende Seele_: the all-pervading
Sensitive Soul. We are reminded, too, of 'the doctrine of the Sanscrit
Upanishads: There is no limit to the knowing of the Self that knows.'[18]

Unluckily Catherine was not asked to give other examples of what she
considered her successes.

Acosta, who has not the best possible repute as an authority, informs us
that Peruvian clairvoyants 'tell what hath passed in the furthest parts
before news can come. In the distance of two or three hundred leagues
they would tell what the Spaniards did or suffered in their civil wars.' To
Du Pont, in 1606, a sorcerer 'rendered a true oracle of the coming of
Poutrincourt, saying his Devil had told him so.'[19]

We now give a modern case, from a scientific laboratory, of knowledge
apparently acquired in no normal way, by a person of the sort usually
chosen to be a prophet, or wizard, by savages.

Professor Richet writes:[20]

'On Monday, July 2, 1888, after having passed all the day in my
laboratory, I hypnotised Léonie at 8 P.M., and while she tried to make
out a diagram concealed in an envelope I said to her quite suddenly:
"What has happened to M. Langlois?" Léonie knows M. Langlois from
having seen him two or three times some time ago in my physiological
laboratory, where he acts as my assistant.--"He has burnt himself,"
Léonie replied,--"Good," I said, "and where has he burnt himself?"--"On
the left hand. It is not fire: it is--I don't know its name. Why does he
not take care when he pours it out?"--"Of what colour," I asked, "is the
stuff which he pours out?"--"It is not red, it is brown; he has hurt
himself very much--the skin puffed up directly."

'Now, this description is admirably exact. At 4 P.M. that day M.
Langlois had wished to pour some bromine into a bottle. He had done this
clumsily, so that some of the bromine flowed on to his left hand, which
held the funnel, and at once burnt him severely. Although he at once put
his hand into water, wherever the bromine had touched it a blister was
formed in a few seconds--a blister which one could not better describe
than by saying, "the skin puffed up." I need not say that Léonie had not
left my house, nor seen anyone from my laboratory. Of this I am
_absolutely certain,_ and I am certain that I had not mentioned the
incident of the burn to anyone. Moreover, this was the first time for
nearly a year that M. Langlois had handled bromine, and when Léonie saw
him six months before at the laboratory he was engaged in experiments
of quite another kind.'

Here the savage reasoner would infer that Léonie's spirit had visited M.
Langlois. The modern inquirer will probably say that Léonie became aware
of what was passing in the mind of M. Richet. This supranormal way of
acquiring knowledge was observed in the last century by M. de Puységur in
one of his earliest cases of somnambulism. MM. Binet and Féré say: 'It is
not yet admitted that the subject is able to divine the thoughts of the
magnetiser without any material communication;' while they grant, as a
minimum, that 'research should be continued in this direction.'[21] They
appear to think that Léonie may have read 'involuntary signs' in the
aspect of M. Richet. This is a difficult hypothesis.

Here follows a case recorded in his diary by Mr. Dobbie, of Adelaide,
Australia, who has practised hypnotism for curative purposes. He explains
(June 10, 1884) that he had mesmerised Miss ---- on several occasions to
relieve rheumatic pain and sore throat. He found her to be clairvoyant.

'The following is a verbatim account of the second time I tested her
powers in this respect, April 12, 1884. There were four persons present
during the _séance_. One of the company wrote down the replies as they
were spoken.

'Her father was at the time over fifty miles away, but we did not know
exactly where, so I questioned her as follows: "Can you find your father
at the present moment?" At first she replied that she could not see him,
but in a minute or two she said, "Oh, yes; now I can see him, Mr.
Dobbie." "Where is he?" "Sitting at a large table in a large room, and
there are a lot of people going in and out." "What is he doing?"
"Writing a letter, and there is a book in front of him." "Whom is he
writing to?" "To the newspaper." Here she paused and laughingly said,
"Well, I declare, he is writing to the A B" (naming a newspaper). "You
said there was a book there. Can you tell me what book it is?" "It has
gilt letters on it." "Can you read them, or tell me the name of the
author?" She read, or pronounced slowly, "W.L.W." (giving the full
surname of the author). She answered several minor questions _re_ the
furniture in the room, and I then said to her, "Is it any effort or
trouble to you to travel in this way?" "Yes, a little; I have to think."

'I now stood behind her, holding a half-crown in my hand, and asked her
if she could tell me what I had in my hand, to which she replied, "It is
a shilling." It seemed as though she could see what was happening miles
away easier than she could see what was going on in the room.

'Her father returned home nearly a week afterwards, and was perfectly
astounded when told by his wife and family what he had been doing on
that particular evening; and, although previous to that date he was a
thorough sceptic as to clairvoyance, he frankly admitted that my
clairvoyant was perfectly correct in every particular. He also informed
us that the book referred to was a new one, which he had purchased after
he had left his home, so that there was no possibility of his daughter
guessing that he had the book before him. I may add that the letter in
due course appeared in the paper; and I saw and handled the book.'

A number of cases of so-called 'clairvoyance' will be found in the
'Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.'[22] As the authors of
these essays remark, even after discounting, in each case, fraud,
malobservation, and misreporting, the residue of cases can seldom justify
either the savage theory of the wandering soul (which is not here
seriously proposed) or Hegel's theory that the _fühlende Seele_ is
unconditioned by space. For, if thought transference be a fact, the
apparent clairvoyant may only be reading the mind of a person at a
distance. The results, however, when successful, would naturally suggest
to the savage thinker the belief in the wandering soul, or corroborate it
if it had already been suggested by the common phenomena of dreaming.

To these instances of knowledge acquired otherwise than by the recognised
channels of sense we might add the Scottish tales of 'second sight.' That
phrase is merely a local term covering examples of what is called
'clairvoyance'--views of things remote in space, hallucinations of sight
that coincide with some notable event, premonitions of things future, and
so on. The belief and hallucinatory experiences are still very common in
the Highlands, where I have myself collected many recent instances. Mr.
Tylor observes that the examples 'prove a little too much; they vouch not
only for human apparitions, but for such phantoms as demon dogs, and for
still more fanciful symbolic omens.' This is perfectly true. I have found
no cases of demon dogs; but wandering lights, probably of meteoric or
miasmatic origin, are certainly regarded as tokens of death. This is
obviously a superstitious hypothesis, the lights being real phenomena
misconstrued. Again, funerals are not uncommonly seen where no funeral is
taking place; it is then alleged that a real funeral, similar and
similarly situated, soon afterwards occurred. On the hypothesis of
believers, the percipients somehow behold

  'Such refraction of events
    As often rises ere they rise.'

Even the savage cannot account for this experience by the wandering of the
soul in space; nor do I suggest any explanation. I give, however, one or
two instances. They are published in the 'Journal of the Caledonian
Medical Society,' 1897, by Dr. Alastair Macgregor, on the authority of the
MSS. of his father, a minister in the island of Skye.

'He once told me that when he first went to Skye he scoffed at the idea of
such a power as second sight being genuine; but he said that, after having
been there for some years as a clergyman, he had been so often consulted
_beforehand_ by people who said they had seen visions of events which
subsequently occurred, to my father's knowledge, in exact accordance with
the form and details of the vision as foretold, that he was compelled to
confess that some folks had, apparently at least, the unfortunate faculty.

'As my father expressed it, this faculty was "neither voluntary nor
constant, and was considered rather annoying than agreeable to the
possessors of it. The gift was possessed by individuals of both sexes, and
its fits came on within doors and without, sitting and standing, at night
and by day, and at whatever employment the votary might chance to be
engaged."'

Here follows a typical example of the vision of a funeral:

'The session clerk at Dull, a small village in Perthshire, was ill, and
my grandfather, clergyman there at the time, had to do duty for him. One
fine summer evening, about 7 o'clock, a young man and woman came to get
some papers filled up, as they were going to be married. My grandfather
was with the couple in the session clerk's room, no doubt attending to
the papers, when suddenly _all three_ saw through the window a funeral
procession passing along the road. From their dress the bulk of the
mourners seemed to be farm labourers--indeed the young woman recognised
some of them as natives of Dull, who had gone to live and work near
Dunkeld. Remarks were naturally made by my grandfather and the young
couple about the untimely hour for a funeral, and, hastily filling in
the papers, my grandfather went out to get the key of the churchyard,
which was kept in the manse, as, without the key, the procession
could not get into God's acre. Wondering how it was that he had received
no intimation of the funeral, he went to the manse by a short cut, got
the key, and hurried down to the churchyard gate, where, of course, he
expected to find the cortège waiting. _Not a soul was there_ except the
young couple, who were as amazed as my grandfather!

'Well, at the same hour in the evening of the same day in the following
week the funeral, this time in reality, arrived quite unexpectedly. The
facts were that a boy, a native of Dull, had got gored by a bull at
Dunkeld, and was so shockingly mangled that his remains were picked
up and put into a coffin and taken without delay to Dull. A grave was
dug as quickly as possible--the poor lad having no relatives--and the
remains were interred. My grandfather and the young couple recognised
several of the mourners as being among those whom they had seen out of
the session clerk's room, exactly a week previously, in the phantom
cortège. The young woman knew some of them personally, and related to
them what she had seen, but they of course denied all knowledge of the
affair, having been then in Dunkeld.'

I give another example, because the experience was auditory, as well as
visual, and the prediction was announced before the event.

'The parishioners in Skye were evidently largely imbued with the
Romanist-like belief in the powers of intercession vested in their
clergyman; so when they had a "warning" or "vision" they usually consulted
my father as to what they could do to prevent the coming disaster
befalling their relatives or friends. In this way my father had the
opportunity of noting down the minutiae of the "warning" or "vision"
directly it was told him. Having had the advantage of a medical, previous
to his theological, training, he was able to note down sound facts,
unembellished by superadded imagination. Entering into this method of
case-taking with a mind perfectly open, except for a slight touch of
scepticism, he was greatly surprised to discover how very frequently
realisations occurred exactly in conformance with the minutiae of the
vision as detailed in his note-book. Finally, he was compelled to
discard his scepticism, and to admit that some people had undoubtedly
the uncanny gift. Almost the first case he took (Case X.) was that of a
woman who had one day a vision of her son falling over a high rock at Uig,
in Skye, with a sheep or lamb.

'CASE X.--She heard her son exclaim in Gaelic, "This is a fatal lamb for
me." As her son lived several miles from Uig, and was a fisherman,
realisation seemed to my father very unlikely, but one month afterwards
the realisation occurred only too true. Unknown to his mother, who had
warned him against having anything to do with sheep or lambs, the son
one day, instead of going out in his boat, thought he would take a
holiday inland, and went off to Uig, where a farmer enlisted his
services in separating some lambs from the ewes. One of the lambs ran
away, and the fisher lad ran headlong after it, and not looking where he
was going, on catching the lamb was pulled by it to the edge of one of
the very picturesque but exceedingly dangerous rocks at Uig. Too late
realizing his critical position, he exclaimed, "This is a fatal lamb for
me," but going with such an impetus he was unable to bring himself up in
time, and, along with the lamb, fell over into the ravine below, and
was, of course, killed on the spot. The farmer, when he saw the lad's
danger, ran to his assistance, but was only in time to hear him cry out
in Gaelic before disappearing over the brink of the precipice. This was
predicted by the mother a month before. Was this simply a coincidence?'

Dr. Macgregor's remarks on the involuntary and unwelcome nature of the
visions is borne out by what Scheffer, as already quoted, says concerning
the Lapps.

In addition to visions which thus come unsought, contributing knowledge of
things remote or even future, we may glance at visions which are provoked
by various methods. Drugs (_impepo_) are used, seers whirl in a wild
dance till they fall senseless, or trance is induced by various kinds of
self-suggestion or 'auto-hypnotism.' Fasting is also practised. In modern
life the self-induced trance is common among 'mediums'--a subject to which
we recur later.

So far, it will be observed, our evidence proves that precisely similar
_beliefs_ as to man's occasional power of opening the gates of distance
have been entertained in a great variety of lands and ages, and by races
in every condition of culture.[23] The alleged experiences are still
said to occur, and have been investigated by physiologists of the eminence
of M. Richet. The question cannot but arise as to the residuum of fact in
these narrations, and it keeps on arising.

In the following chapter we discuss a mode of inducing hallucinations
which has for anthropologists the interest of universal diffusion. The
width of its range in savage races has not, we believe, been previously
observed. We then add facts of modern experience, about the authenticity
of which we, personally, entertain no doubt; and the provisional
conclusion appears to be that savages have observed a psychological
circumstance which has been ignored by professed psychologists, and which,
certainly, does not fit into the ordinary materialistic hypothesis.

[Footnote 1: Callaway, _Religion of the Zulus_, p. 232.]

[Footnote 2: Graham Dalzell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, p. 481.]

[Footnote 3: See good evidence in _Ker of Kersland's Memoirs_.]

[Footnote 4: Autus Gellius, xv. 18, Dio Cassius, lxvii., Crespet, _De la
Haine du Diable, Procès de Jeanne d'Arc_.]

[Footnote 5: See 'Shamanism in Siberia,' _J.A.I._, November 1894,
pp. 147-149, and compare Scheffer. The article is very learned and
interesting.]

[Footnote 6: Williams mentions second sight in Fiji, but gives no
examples.]

[Footnote 7: _Primitive Culture,_ i. 447. Mr. Tylor cites Dr. Brinton's
_Myths of the New World,_ p. 269. The reference in the recent edition is
p. 289. Carver's case is given under the head 'Possession' later.]

[Footnote 8: _Journal Historique_ p. 362; _Atlantic Monthly_, July 1866.]

[Footnote 9: Probably _impepo_, eaten by seers, according to Callaway.]

[Footnote 10: Callaway's _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 358.]

[Footnote 11: Oxford, 1674.]

[Footnote 12: _Voyages_.]

[Footnote 13: From Charlevoix, _Journal Historique_, p. 362.]

[Footnote 14: Bastian, _Ueber psych. Beobacht_. p.21.]

[Footnote 14: Op. cit. p.26.]

[Footnote 15: Miss Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 460.]

[Footnote 16: _Primitive Culture_, ii, 181; Mason's _Burmah_, p. 107.]

[Footnote 17: Schoolcraft, i. 394.]

[Footnote 18: Brinton's _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 57.]

[Footnote 19: Purchas, p. 629.]

[Footnote 20: S.P.R. _Proceedings_, vol. vi. 69.]

[Footnote 21: Binet and Féré, _Animal Magnetism_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 22: Vol. vii. Mrs. Sidgwick, pp. 30, 356; vol. vi. p. 66,
Professor Richet, p. 407, Drs. Dufay and Azam.]

[Footnote 23: The examples in the Old Testament, and in the _Life of St.
Columba_ by Adamnan, need only be alluded to as too familiar for
quotation.]




V

CRYSTAL VISIONS, SAVAGE AND CIVILISED

Among savage methods of provoking hallucinations whence knowledge may be
supernormally obtained, various forms of 'crystal-gazing' are the most
curious. We find the habit of looking into water, usually in a vessel,
preferably a glass vessel, among Red Indians (Lejeune), Romans (Varro,
cited in _Civitas Dei_, iii. 457), Africans of Fez (Leo Africanus); while
Maoris use a drop of blood (Taylor), Egyptians use ink (Lane), and
Australian savages employ a ball of polished stone, into which the seer
'puts himself' to descry the results of an expedition.[1]

I have already given, in the Introduction, Ellis's record of the
Polynesian case. A hole being dug in the door of his house, and filled
with water, the priest looks for a vision of the thief who has carried off
stolen goods. The Polynesian theory is that the god carries the spirit of
the thief over the water, in which it is reflected. Lejeune's Red Indians
make their patients gaze into the water, in which they will see the
pictures of the things in the way of food or medicine that will do them
good. In modern language, the instinctive knowledge existing implicitly
in the patient's subconsciousness is thus brought into the range of his
ordinary consciousness.

In 1887 the late Captain J. T. Bourke, of the U.S. Cavalry, an original
and careful observer, visited the Apaches in the interests of the
Ethnological Bureau. He learned that one of the chief duties of the
medicine-men was to find out the whereabouts of lost or stolen property.
Na-a-cha, one of these _jossakeeds_, possessed a magic quartz crystal,
which he greatly valued. Captain Bourke presented him with a still finer
crystal. 'He could not give me an explanation of its magical use, except
that by looking into it he could see everything he wanted to see,'
Captain Bourke appears never to have heard of the modern experiments in
crystal-gazing. Captain Bourke also discovered that the Apaches, like the
Greeks, Australians, Africans, Maoris, and many other, races, use the
bull-roarer, turndun, or _rhombos_--a piece of wood which, being whirled
round, causes a strange windy roar--in their mystic ceremonies. The wide
use of the rhombos was known to Captain Bourke; that of the crystal was
not.

For the Iroquois, Mrs. Erminie Smith supplies information about the
crystal. 'Placed in a gourd of water, it could render visible the
apparition of a person who has bewitched another.' She gives a case in
European times of a medicine-man who found the witch's habitat, but
got only an indistinct view of her face. On a second trial he was
successful.[2] One may add that treasure-seekers among the Huille-che
'look earnestly' for what they want to find 'into a smooth slab of black
stone, which I suppose to be basalt.'[3]

The kindness of Monsieur Lefébure enables me to give another example from
Madagascar.[4] Flacourt, describing the Malagasies, says that they
_squillent_ (a word not in Littré), that is, divine by crystals, which
'fall from heaven when it thunders,' Of course the rain reveals the
crystals, as it does the flint instruments called 'thunderbolts' in many
countries. 'Lorsqu'ils squillent, ils ont une de ces pierres au coing de
leurs tablettes, disans qu'elle à la vertu de faire faire operation à leur
figure de geomance.' Probably they used the crystals as do the Apaches. On
July 15 a Malagasy woman viewed, whether in her crystal or otherwise, two
French vessels which, like the Spanish fleet, were 'not in sight,' also
officers, and doctors, and others aboard, whom she had seen, before their
return to France, in Madagascar. The earliest of the ships did not arrive
till August 11.

Dr. Callaway gives the Zulu practice, where the chief 'sees what will
happen by looking into the vessel.'[5] The Shamans of Siberia and Eastern
Russia employ the same method.[6] The case of the Inca, Yupanqui, is very
curious. 'As he came up to a fountain he saw a piece of crystal fall into
it, within which he beheld a figure of an Indian in the following
shape ... The apparition then vanished, while the crystal remained. The
Inca took care of it, and they say that he afterwards saw everything he
wanted in it.'[7]

Here, then, we find the belief that hallucinations can be induced by one
or other form of crystal-gazing, in ancient Peru, on the other side of the
continent among the Huille-che, in Fez, in Madagascar, in Siberia, among
Apaches, Hurons, Iroquois, Australian black fellows, Maoris, and in
Polynesia. This is assuredly a wide range of geographical distribution. We
also find the practice in Greece (Pausanias, VII. xxi. 12), in Rome
(Varro), in Egypt, and in India.

Though anthropologists have paid no attention to the subject, it was of
course familiar to later Europe. 'Miss X' has traced it among early
Christians, in early Councils, in episcopal condemnations of _specularii_,
and so to Dr. Dee, under James VI.; Aubrey; the Regent d'Orléans
in St. Simon's Memoirs; the modern mesmerists (Gregory, Mayo) and the
mid-Victorian spiritualists, who, as usual, explained the phenomena, in
their prehistoric way, by 'spirits[8].' Till this lady examined the
subject, nobody had thought of remarking that a belief so universal had
probably some basis of facts, or nobody if we except two professors of
chemistry and physiology, Drs. Gregory and Mayo. Miss X made experiments,
beginning by accident, like George Sand, when a child.

The hallucinations which appear to her eyes in ink, or crystal, are:

  1. Revived memories 'arising thus, and thus only, from the subconscious
  strata;'

  '2. Objectivation of ideas or images--(a) consciously or (b)
  unconsciously--in the mind of the percipient;

  '3. Visions, possibly telepathic or clairvoyant, implying acquirement of
  knowledge by supernormal means.'[9]

The examples given of the last class, the class which would be so useful
to a priest or medicine-man asked to discover things lost, are of very
slight interest.[10]

Since Miss X drew attention to this subject, experiments have proved
beyond doubt that a fair percentage of people, sane and healthy, can see
vivid landscapes, and figures of persons in motion, in glass balls and
other vehicles. This faculty Dr. Parish attributes to 'dissociation,'
practically to drowsiness. But he speaks by conjecture, and without
having witnessed experiments, as will be shown later. I now offer a series
of experiments with a glass ball, coming under my own observation, in
which knowledge was apparently acquired in no ordinary way. Of the absence
of fraud I am personally convinced, not only by the characters of all
concerned, but by the nature of the circumstances. That adaptive memory
did not later alter the narratives, as originally told, I feel certain,
because they were reported to me, when I was not present, within less than
a week, precisely as they are now given, except in cases specially noted.

Early in the present year (1897) I met a young lady who told me of three
or four curious hallucinatory experiences of her own, which were
sufficiently corroborated. She was innocent of psychical studies, and
personally was, and is, in perfect health; the pale cast of thought being
remote from her. I got a glass ball, and was present when she first looked
into it. She saw, I remember, the interior of a house, with a full-length
portrait of a person unknown. There were, I think, one or two other fancy
pictures of the familiar kind. But she presently (living as she was, among
strangers) developed a power of 'seeing' persons and places unknown to
her, but familiar to them. These experiences do seem to me to be good
examples of what is called 'thought transference;' indeed, I never before
could get out of a level balance of doubt on that subject, a balance which
now leans considerably to the affirmative side. There may be abundance of
better evidence, but, knowing the persons and circumstances, and being
present once at what seemed to me a crucial example, I was more inclined
to be convinced. This attitude appears, to myself, illogical, but it is
natural and usual.

We cannot tell what indications may be accidentally given in experiments
in thought transference. But, in these cases of crystal-gazing, the detail
was too copious to be conveyed, by a looker-on, in a wink or a cough. I do
not mean to say that success was invariable. I thought of Dr. W.G. Grace,
and the scryer saw an old man crawling along with a stick. But I doubt if
Dr. Grace is very deeply seated in that mystic entity, my subconscious
self. The 'scries' which came right were sometimes, but not always, those
of which the 'agent' (or person scried for) was consciously thinking. But
the examples will illustrate the various kinds of occurrences.

Here one should first consider the arguments against accepting recognition
of objects merely described by another person. The crystal-gazer may know
the inquirer so intimately as to have a very good guess at the subject of
his meditation. Again, a man is likely to be thinking of a woman, and a
woman of a man, so the field of conjecture is limited. In answer to the
first objection I may say that the crystal-gazer was among strangers, all
of whom, myself included, she now saw for the first time. Nor could she
have studied their histories beforehand, for she could not know (normally)
when she left home, that she was about to be shown a glass ball, or whom
she would meet. The second objection is met by the circumstance that
ladies were _not_ usually picked out for men, nor men for women. Indeed,
these choices were the exceptions, and in each case were marked by
minutely particular details. A third objection is that credulity, or the
love of strange novelties, or desire to oblige, biases the inquirers, and
makes them anxious to recognise something familiar in the scryer's
descriptions. In the same way we know how people recognise faces
in the most blurred and vague of spiritist photographs, or see family
resemblances in the most rudimentary doughfaced babies. Take descriptions
of persons in a passport, or in a proclamation sketching the personal
appearance of a criminal. These fit the men or women intended, but they
also fit a crowd of other people. The description given by the scryer then
may come right by a fortuitous coincidence, or may be too credulously
recognised.

The complex of coincidences, however, could not be attributed to chance
selection out of the whole possible field of conjecture. We must remember,
too, that a series of such hits increases, at an enormous rate, the odds
against accidental conjecture. Of such mere luck I may give an example. I
was writing a story of which the hero was George Kelly, one of the 'Seven
Men of Moidart.' A year after composing my tale, I found the Government
description of Mr. Kelly (1736). It exactly tallied with my purely
fanciful sketch, down to eyes, and teeth, and face, except that I made my
hero 'about six feet,' whereas the Government gave him five feet ten. But
I knew beforehand that Mr. Kelly was a clergyman; his curious career
proved him to be a person of great activity and geniality--and he was of
Irish birth. Even a dozen such guesses, equally correct, could not
suggest any powers of 'vision,' when so much was known beforehand about
the person guessed at. I now give cases in the experience of Miss Angus,
as one may call the crystal-gazer. The first occurred the day after she
got the glass ball for the first time. She writes:

'I.--A lady one day asked me to scry out a friend of whom she would
think. Almost immediately I exclaimed "Here is an old, old lady looking
at me with a triumphant smile on her face. She has a prominent nose and
nut-cracker chin. Her face is very much wrinkled, especially at the
sides of her eyes, as if she were always smiling. She is wearing a
little white shawl with a black edge. _But!_ ... she _can't_ be old as
her hair is quite brown! although her face looks so very very old." The
picture then vanished, and the lady said that I had accurately described
her friend's _mother_ instead of himself; that it was a family joke that
the mother must dye her hair, it was so brown and she was eighty-two
years old. The lady asked me if the vision were distinct enough for me
to recognise a likeness in the son's photograph; next day she laid
several photographs before me, and in a moment, without the slightest
hesitation I picked him out from his wonderful likeness to my vision!'

The inquirer verbally corroborated all the facts to me, within a week, but
leaned to a theory of 'electricity.' She has read and confirms this
account.

'II.--One afternoon I was sitting beside a young lady whom I had never
seen or heard of before. She asked if she might look into my crystal,
and while she did so I happened to look over her shoulder and saw a ship
tossing on a very heavy choppy sea, although land was still visible in
the dim distance. That vanished, and, as suddenly, a little house
appeared with five or six (I forget now the exact number I then counted)
steps leading up to the door. On the second step stood an old man
reading a newspaper. In front of the house was a field of thick
stubbly grass where some _lambs_, I was going to say, but they were more
like very small sheep.. were grazing.

'When the scene vanished, the young lady told me I had vividly described
a spot in Shetland where she and her mother were soon going to spend a
few weeks.'

I heard of this case from Miss Angus within a day or two of its
occurrence, and it was then confirmed to me, verbally, by the other lady.
She again confirms it (December 21, 1897). Both ladies had hitherto been
perfect strangers to each other. The old man was the schoolmaster,
apparently. In her MS., Miss Angus writes 'Skye,' but at the time both she
and the other lady said Shetland (which I have restored). In Shetland the
sheep, like the ponies, are small. Fortuitous coincidence, of course, may
be invoked. The next account is by another lady, say Miss Rose.

'III.--Writes Miss Rose--My first experience of crystal gazing was not
a pleasant one, as will be seen from the following which I now relate as
exactly as I can remember. I asked my friend, Miss Angus, to allow me to
look in her crystal, and, after doing so for a short time, gave up,
saying it was very unsatisfactory, as, although I saw a room with a
bright fire in it and a bed all curtained and people coming and going,
I could not make out who they were, so I returned the crystal to Miss
Angus, with the request that she might look for me. She said at once,
"I see a bed with a man in it looking very ill and a lady in black
beside it." Without saying any more Miss Angus still kept looking, and,
after some time, I asked to have one more look, and on her passing the
ball back to me, I received quite a shock, for there, perfectly clearly
in a bright light, I saw stretched out in bed an old man apparently
dead; for a few minutes I could not look, and on doing so once more
there appeared a lady in black and out of dense darkness a long black
object was being carried and it stopped before a dark opening overhung
with rocks. At the time I saw this I was staying with cousins,
and it was a Friday evening. On Sunday we heard of the death of the
father-in-law of one of my cousins; of course I knew the old gentleman
was very ill, but my thoughts were not in the least about him when
looking in the crystal. I may also say I did not recognise in the
features of the dead man those of the old gentleman whose death I
mention. On looking again on Sunday, I once more saw the curtained bed
and some people.'

I now give Miss Angus's version of this case, as originally received from
her (December 1897). I had previously received an oral version, from a
person present at the scrying. It differed, in one respect, from what Miss
Angus writes. Her version is offered because it is made independently,
without consultation, or attempt to reconcile recollections.

'At a recent experience of gazing, for the first time I was able to make
another see what _I_ saw in the crystal. Miss Rose called one afternoon,
and begged me to look in the ball for her. I did so, and immediately
exclaimed, "Oh! here is a bed, with a man in it looking very ill [I saw
he was dead, but refrained from saying so], and there is a lady dressed
in black sitting beside the bed." I did not recognise the man to be
anyone I knew, so I told her to look. In a very short time she called
out, "Oh! I see the bed too! But, oh! take it away, the man is _dead_!"
She got quite a shock, and said she would never look in it again. Soon,
however, curiosity prompted her to have one more look, and the scene at
once came back again, and slowly, from a misty object at the side of the
bed, the lady in black became quite distinct. Then she described
several people in the room, and said they were carrying something all
draped in black. When she saw this, she put the ball down and would not
look at it again. She called again on Sunday (this had been on Friday)
with her cousin, and we teased her about being _afraid_ of the crystal,
so she said she would just look in it once more. She took the ball, but
immediately laid it down again, saying, "No, I won't look, as the bed
with the awful man in it is there again!"

'When they went home, they heard that the cousin's father-in-law had
died that afternoon,[11] but to show he had never been in our thoughts,
although we _all_ knew he had not been well, _no one_ suggested him; his
name was never mentioned in connection with the vision.'

'Clairvoyance,' of course, is not illustrated here, the corpse being
unrecognised, and the coincidence, doubtless, accidental.

The next case is attested by a civilian, a slight acquaintance of Miss
Angus's, who now saw him for the second time only, but better known to her
family.

'IV.--On Thursday, March --? 1897, I was lunching with my friends the
Anguses, and during luncheon the conversation turned upon crystal balls
and the visions that, by some people, can be seen in them. The subject
arose owing to Miss Angus having just been presented with a crystal ball
by Mr. Andrew Lang. I asked her to let me see it, and then to try and
see if she could conjure up a vision of any person of whom I might
think.... I fixed my mind upon a friend, a young trooper in the
[regiment named], as I thought his would be a striking and peculiar
personality, owing to his uniform, and also because I felt sure that
Miss Angus could not possibly know of his existence. I fixed my mind
steadily upon my friend, and presently Miss Angus, who had already seen
two cloudy visions of faces and people, called out, "Now I see a man on
a horse most distinctly; he is dressed most queerly, and glitters all
over--why, it's a soldier! a soldier in uniform, but it's not an
officer." My excitement on hearing this was so great that I ceased to
concentrate my attention upon the thought of my friend, and the vision
faded away and could not afterwards be recalled.--December 2, 1897.'

The witness gives the name of the trooper, whom he had befriended in a
severe illness. Miss Angus's own account follows: she had told me the
story in June 1897.

'Shortly after I became the happy possessor of a "crystal" I managed to
convert several very decided "sceptics," and I will here give a short
account of my experiences with two or three of them.

'One was with a Mr. ----, who was so determined to baffle me, he said he
would think of a friend it would not be _possible_ for me to describe!

'I had only met Mr. ---- the day before, and knew utmost nothing about
him or his personal friends.

'I took up the ball, which immediately became misty, and out of this
mist gradually a crowd of people appeared, but too indistinctly for me
to recognise anyone, until suddenly a man on horseback came galloping
along. I remember saying, "I can't describe what he is like, but he is
dressed in a very queer way--in something so bright that the sun shining
on him quite dazzles me, and I cannot make him out!" As he came nearer I
exclaimed. "Why, it's a _soldier_ in shining armour, but it's not an
_officer_, only a soldier!" Two friends who were in the room said
Mr. ----'s excitement was intense, and my attention was drawn from the
ball by hearing him call out, "It's wonderful! it's perfectly true! I
was thinking of a young boy, a son of a crofter, in whom I am deeply
interested, and who is a trooper in the ---- in London, which would
account for the crowd of people round him in the street!"'

The next case is given, first in the version of the lady who was
unconsciously scried for, and next in that of Miss Angus. The other lady
writes:

'V.--I met Miss A. for the first time in a friend's house in the south
of England, and one evening mention was made of a crystal ball, and our
hostess asked Miss A. to look in it, and, if possible, tell her what was
happening to a friend of hers. Miss A. took the crystal, and our hostess
put her hand on Miss A.'s forehead to "will her." I, not believing in
this, took up a book and went to the other side of the room. I was
suddenly very much startled to hear Miss A., in quite an agitated way,
describe a scene that had most certainly been very often in my thoughts,
but of which I had never mentioned a word, She accurately described a
race-course in Scotland, and an accident which happened to a friend of
mine only a week or two before, and she was evidently going through the
same doubt and anxiety that I did at the time as to whether he was
actually killed or only very much hurt. It really was a most wonderful
revelation to me, as it was the very first time I had seen a crystal.
Our hostess, of course, was very much annoyed that she had not been able
to influence Miss A., while I, who had appeared so very indifferent,
should have affected her.--November 28, 1897.'

Miss Angus herself writes:

'Another case was a rather interesting one, as I somehow got inside the
thoughts of _one_ lady while _another_ was doing her best to influence
me!

'Miss ----, a friend in Brighton, has strange "magnetic" powers, and
felt quite sure of success with me and the ball.

'Another lady, Miss H., who was present, laughed at the whole thing,
especially when Miss ---- insisted on holding my hand and patting her
other hand on my forehead! Miss H. in a scornful manner took up a book,
and, crossing to the other side of the room, left us to our folly.

'In a very short time I felt myself getting excited, which had never
happened before, when I looked in the crystal. I saw a crowd of people,
and in some strange way I felt I was in it, and we all seemed to be
waiting for something. Soon a rider came past, young, dressed for
racing. His horse ambled past, and he smiled and nodded to those he
knew in the crowd, and then was lost to sight.

'In a moment we all seemed to feel as if something had happened, and I
went through great agony of suspense trying to see what seemed _just_
beyond my view. Soon, however, two or three men approached, and carried
him past before my eyes, and again my anxiety was intense to discover if
he were only very badly hurt or if life were really extinct. All this
happened in a few moments, but long enough to have left me so agitated
that I could not realise it had only been a vision in a glass ball.

'By this time Miss H. had laid aside her book, and came forward quite
startled, and told me that I had accurately described a scene on a
race-course in Scotland which she had witnessed just a week or two
before--a scene that had very often been in her thoughts, but, as we
were strangers to each other, she had never mentioned. She also said I
had exactly described her own feelings at the time, and had brought it
all back in a most vivid manner.

'The other lady was rather disappointed that, after she had concentrated
her thoughts so hard, I should have been influenced instead by one who
had jeered at the whole affair.'

[This anecdote was also told to me, within a few days of the occurrence,
by Miss Angus. Her version was that she first saw a gentleman rider going
to the post and nodding to his friends. Then she saw him carried on a
stretcher through the crowd. She seemed, she said, to be actually present,
and felt somewhat agitated. The fact of the accident was, later, mentioned
to me in Scotland by another lady, a stranger to all the persons.--A.L.]

VI.--I may briefly add an experiment of December 21, 1897. A gentleman had
recently come from England to the Scottish town where Miss Angus lives. He
dined with her family, and about 10.15 to 10.30 P.M. she proposed to look
in the glass for a scene or person of whom he was to think. He called up a
mental picture of a ball at which he had recently been, and of a young
lady to whom he had there been introduced. The lady's face, however, he
could not clearly visualise, and Miss Angus reported nothing but a view of
an empty ball-room, with polished floor and many lights. The gentleman
made another effort, and remembered his partner with some distinctness.
Miss Angus then described another room, not a ball-room, comfortably
furnished, in which a girl with brown hair drawn back from her forehead,
and attired in a high-necked white blouse, was reading, or writing
letters, under a bright light in an unshaded glass globe. The description
of the features, figure, and height tallied with Mr. ----'s recollection;
but he had never seen this Geraldine of an hour except in ball dress. He
and Miss Angus noted the time by their watches (it was 10.30), and
Mr. ---- said that on the first opportunity he would ask the young lady
how she had been dressed and how employed at that hour on December 21. On
December 22 he met her at another dance, and her reply corroborated the
crystal picture. She had been writing letters, in a high-necked white
blouse, under an incandescent gas lamp with an unshaded glass globe. She
was entirely unknown to Miss Angus, and had only been seen once by
Mr. ----. Mr. ---- and the lady of the crystal picture corroborated all
this in writing.

I now suggested an experiment to Miss Angus, which, after all, was clearly
not of a nature to establish a 'test' for sceptics. The inquirer was to
write down, and inclose in an envelope, a statement of his thoughts; Miss
Angus was to do the same with her description of the picture seen by her;
and these documents were to be sent to me, without communication between
the inquirer and the crystal-gazer. Of course, this could in no way prove
absence of collusion, as the two parties might arrange privately
beforehand what the vision was to be.

Indeed, nobody is apt to be convinced, or shaken, unless he is himself the
inquirer and a stranger to the seeress, as the people in these experiments
were. Evidence interesting to _them_--and, in a secondary degree, to
others who know them--can thus be procured; but strangers are left to the
same choice of doubts as in all reports of psychological experiences,
'chromatic audition,' views of coloured numerals, and the other topics
illustrated by Mr. Galton's interesting researches.

In this affair of the envelopes the inquirer was a Mr. Pembroke, who had
just made Miss Angus's acquaintance, and was but a sojourner in the land.
He wrote, before knowing what Miss Angus had seen in the ball:

'VII.--On Sunday, January 23, 1898, whilst Miss Angus was looking in the
crystal ball, I was thinking of my brother, who was, I believe, at that
time, somewhere between Sabathu (Punjab, India) and Egypt. I was anxious
to know what stage of his journey he had reached.'

Miss Angus saw, and wrote, before telling Mr. Pembroke:

'A long and very white road, with tall trees at one side; on the other,
a river or lake of greyish water. Blue sky, with a crimson sunset. A
great black ship is anchored near, and on the deck I see a man lying,
apparently very ill. He is a powerful-looking man, fair, and very much
bronzed. Seven or eight Englishmen, in very light clothes, are standing
on the road beside the boat.

'January 28, 1898.'

'A great black ship,' anchored in 'a river or lake,' naturally suggests
the Suez Canal, where, in fact, Mr. Pembroke's brother was just arriving,
as was proved by a letter received from him eight days after the
experiment was recorded, on January 31. At that date Mr. Pembroke had not
yet been told the nature of Miss Angus's crystal picture, nor had she any
knowledge of his brother's whereabouts.

In February 1898, Miss Angus again came to the place where I was residing.
We visited together the scene of an historical crime, and Miss Angus
looked into the glass ball. It was easy for her to 'visualise' the
incidents of the crime (the murder of Cardinal Beaton), for they are
familiar enough to many people. What she did see in the ball was a tall,
pale lady, 'about forty, but looking thirty-five,' with hair drawn
back from the brows, standing beside a high chair, dressed in a wide
farthingale of stiff grey brocade, without a ruff. The costume corresponds
well (as we found) with that of 1546, and I said, 'I suppose it is
Mariotte Ogilvy'--to whom Miss Angus's historical knowledge (and perhaps
that of the general public) did not extend. Mariotte was the Cardinal's
lady-love, and was in the Castle on the night before the murder,
according to Knox. She had been in my mind, whence (on the theory of
thought transference) she may have passed to Miss Angus's mind; but I had
never speculated on Mariotte's costume. Nothing but conjecture, of course,
comes of these apparently 'retrospective' pictures; though a most singular
and picturesque coincidence occurred, which may be told in a very
different connection.

The next example was noted at the same town. The lady who furnishes it is
well known to me, and it was verbally corroborated by Miss Angus, to whom
the lady, her absent nephew, and all about her, were entirely strange.

'VIII.--I was very anxious to know whether my nephew would be sent to
India this year, so I told Miss Angus that I had thought of something,
and asked her to look in the glass ball. She did so, but almost
immediately turned round and looked out of the window at the sea, and
said, "I saw a ship so distinctly I thought it must be a reflection."
She looked in the ball again, and said, "It is a large ship, and it is
passing a huge rock with a lighthouse on it. I can't see who are on the
ship, but the sky is very clear and blue. Now I see a large building,
something like a club, and in front there are a great many people
sitting and walking about. I think it must be some place abroad, for the
people are all dressed in very light clothes, and it seems to be very
sunny and warm. I see a young man sitting on a chair, with his feet
straight out before him. He is not talking to anyone, but seems to be
listening to something. He is dark and slight, and not very tall; and
his eyebrows are dark and very distinctly marked."

'I had not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angus before, and she knew
nothing whatever about my nephew; but the young man described was
exactly like him, both in his appearance and in the way he was sitting.'

In this case thought transference may be appealed to. The lady was
thinking of her nephew in connection with India. It is not maintained, of
course, that the picture was of a prophetic character.

The following examples have some curious and unusual features. On
Wednesday, February 2, 1897, Miss Angus was looking in the crystal,
to amuse six or seven people whose acquaintance she had that day made.
A gentleman, Mr. Bissett, asked her 'what letter was in his pocket,'
She then saw, under a bright sky, and, as it were, a long way off,
a large building, in and out of which many men were coming and going.
Her impression was that the scene must be abroad. In the little company
present, it should be added, was a lady, Mrs. Cockburn, who had
considerable reason to think of her young married daughter, then at a
place about fifty miles away. After Miss Angus had described the large
building and crowds of men, some one asked, 'Is it an exchange?' 'It
might be,' she said. 'Now comes a man in a great hurry. He has a broad
brow, and short, curly hair;[12] hat pressed low down on his eyes. The
face is very serious; but he has a delightful smile.' Mr. and Mrs.
Bissett now both recognised their friend and stockbroker, whose letter was
in Mr. Bissett's pocket.

The vision, which interested Miss Angus, passed away, and was interrupted
by that of a hospital nurse, and of a lady in a _peignoir_, lying on a
sofa, _with bare feet_.[13] Miss Angus mentioned this vision as a bore,
she being more interested in the stockbroker, who seems to have inherited
what was once in the possession of another stockbroker--'the smile of
Charles Lamb.' Mrs. Cockburn, for whom no pictures appeared, was rather
vexed, and privately expressed with freedom a very sceptical opinion
about the whole affair. But, on Saturday, February 5, 1897, Miss Angus was
again with Mr. and Mrs. Bissett. When Mrs. Bissett announced that she had
'thought of something,' Miss Angus saw a walk in a wood or garden, beside
a river, under a brilliant blue sky. Here was a lady, very well dressed,
twirling a white parasol on her shoulder as she walked, in a curious
'stumpy' way, beside a gentleman in light clothes, such as are worn in
India. He was broad-shouldered, had a short neck and a straight nose, and
seemed to listen, laughing, but indifferent, to his obviously vivacious
companion. The lady had a 'drawn' face, indicative of ill health. Then
followed a scene in which the man, without the lady, was looking on at a
number of Orientals busy in the felling of trees. Mrs. Bissett recognised,
in the lady, her sister, Mrs. Clifton, in India--above all, when Miss
Angus gave a realistic imitation of Mrs. Clifton's walk, the peculiarity
of which was caused by an illness some years ago. Mrs. and Mr. Bissett
also recognised their brother-in-law in the gentleman seen in both
pictures. On being shown a portrait of Mrs. Clifton as a girl, Miss Angus
said it was 'like, but too pretty.' A photograph done recently, however,
showed her 'the drawn face' of the crystal picture.[14]

Next day, Sunday, February 6, Mrs. Bissett received, what was not
usual--a letter from her sister in India, Mrs. Clifton, dated January 20.
Mrs. Clifton described a place in a native State, where she had been at a
great 'function,' in certain gardens beside a river. She added that they
were going to another place for a certain purpose, 'and then we go into
camp till the end of February.' One of Mr. Clifton's duties is to direct
the clearing of wood preparatory to the formation of the camp, as in Miss
Angus's crystal picture.[15] The sceptical Mrs. Cockburn heard of these
coincidences, and an idea occurred to her. She wrote to her daughter, who
has been mentioned, and asked whether, on Wednesday, February 2, she had
been lying on a sofa in her bed-room, with bare feet. The young lady
confessed that it was indeed so;[16] and, when she heard how the fact came
to be known, expressed herself with some warmth on the abuse of glass
balls, which tend to rob life of its privacy.

In this case the _prima facie_ aspect of things is that a thought
of Mr. Bissett's about his stockbroker, _dulce ridentem_, somehow
reflected itself into Miss Angus's mind by way of the glass ball, and
was interrupted by a thought of Mrs. Cockburn's, as to her daughter. But
how these thoughts came to display the unknown facts concerning the
garden by the river, the felling of trees for a camp, and the bare feet,
is a question about which it is vain to theorise.[17]

On the vanishing of the jungle scene there appeared a picture of a man in
a dark undress uniform, beside a great bay, in which were ships of war.
Wooden huts, as in a plague district, were on shore. Mr. Bissett asked,
'What is the man's expression?' 'He looks as if he had been giving a lot
of last orders.' Then appeared 'a place like a hospital, with five or six
beds--no, berths: it is a ship. Here is the man again.' He was minutely
described, one peculiarity being the way in which his hair grew--or,
rather, did not grow--on his temples.

Miss Angus now asked, 'Where is my little lady?'--meaning the lady of the
twirling parasol and _staccato_ walk. 'Oh, I've left off thinking of her,'
said Mrs. Bissett, who had been thinking of, and recognised in the
officer in undress uniform, her brother, the man with the singular hair,
whose face, in fact, had been scarred in that way by an encounter with a
tiger. He was expected to sail from Bombay, but news of his setting
forth has not been received (February 10) at the moment when this is
written.[18]

In these Indian cases, 'thought transference' may account for the
correspondence between the figures seen by Miss Angus and the ideas in the
mind of Mr. and Mrs. Bissett. But the hypothesis of thought transference,
while it would cover the wooden huts at Bombay (Mrs. Bissett knowing that
her brother was about to leave that place), can scarcely explain the scene
in the garden by the river and the scene with the trees. The incident of
the bare feet may be regarded as a fortuitous coincidence, since Miss
Angus saw the young lady foreshortened, and could not describe her face.

In the Introductory Chapter it was observed that the phenomena which
apparently point to some unaccountable supernormal faculty of acquiring
knowledge are 'trivial.' These anecdotes illustrate the triviality; but
the facts certainly left a number of people, wholly unfamiliar with such
experiments, under the impression that Miss Angus's glass ball was like
Prince Ali's magical telescope in the 'Arabian Nights.'[19] These
experiments, however, occasionally touch on intimate personal matters,
and cannot be reported in such instances.

It will be remarked that the faculty is freakish, and does not always
respond to conscious exertion of thought in the mind of the inquirer.
Thus, in Case I. a connection of the person thought of is discerned; in
another the mind of a stranger present seems to be read. In another
case (not given here) the inquirer tried to visualise a card for a
person present to guess, while Miss Angus was asked to describe an object
which the inquirer was acquainted with, but which he banished from his
conscious thought. The double experiment was a double-barrelled success.

It seems hardly necessary to point out that chance coincidence will not
cover this set of cases, where in each 'guess' the field of conjecture
is boundless, and is not even narrowed by the crystal-gazer's knowledge
of the persons for whose diversion she makes the experiment. As
'muscle-reading' is not in question (in the one case of contact between
inquirer and crystal-gazer the results were unexpected), and as no
unconsciously made signs could convey, for example, the idea of a cavalry
soldier in uniform, or an accident on a race-course in two _tableaux_, I
do not at present see any more plausible explanation than that of thought
transference, though how that is to account for some of the cases given I
do not precisely understand.

Any one who can accept the assurance of my personal belief in the
good faith of all concerned will see how very useful this faculty of
crystal-gazing must be to the Apache or Australian medicine-man or
Polynesian priest. Freakish as the faculty is, a few real successes, well
exploited and eked out by fraud, would set up a wizard's reputation. That
a faculty of being thus affected is genuine seems proved, apart from
modern evidence, by the world-wide prevalence of crystal-gazing in the
ethnographic region. But the discovery of this prevalence had not been
made, to my knowledge, before modern instances induced me to notice the
circumstances, sporadically recorded in books of travel.

The phenomena are certainly of a kind to encourage the savage theory of
the wandering soul. How else, thinkers would say, can the seer visit the
distant place or person, and correctly describe men and scenes which, in
the body, he never saw? Or they would encourage the Polynesian belief
that the 'spirit' of the thing or person looked for is suspended by a god
over the water, crystal, blood, ink, or whatever it may be. Thus, to
anthropologists, the discovery of crystal-gazing as a thing widely
diffused and still flourishing ought to be grateful, however much they
may blame my childish credulity. I may add that I have no ground to
suppose that crystal-gazing will ever be of practical service to the
police or to persons who have lost articles of portable property. But I
have no objection to experiments being made at Scotland Yard.[20]

[Footnote 1: Information, with a photograph of the stones, from a
correspondent in West Maitland, Australia.]

[Footnote 2: _Report Ethnol. Bureau_, 1887-88, p. 460; vol. ii. p. 69.
Captain Bourke's volume on _The Medicine Men of the Apaches_ may also be
consulted.]

[Footnote 3: Fitzroy, _Adventure_, vol. ii. p. 389.]

[Footnote 4: _L'Histoire de la grand Ile Madagascar_, par le Sieur de
Flacourt. Paris, 1661, ch. 76. Veue de deux Navires de France predite par
les Negres, avant que l'on en peust sçavoir des Nouvelles, &c.]

[Footnote 5: _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 341.]

[Footnote 6: _J.A.I_., November 1894, p. 155. Ryckov is cited; _Zhurnal_,
p. 86.]

[Footnote 7: _Rites and Laws of the Yncas_, Christoval de Molina, p. 12.]

[Footnote 8: See Miss X's article, S.P.R. _Proceedings_, v. 486.]

[Footnote 9: Op. cit. v. 505.]

[Footnote 10: If any reader wishes to make experiments, he, or she, should
not be astonished if the first crystal figure represents 'the sheeted
dead,' or a person ill in bed. For some reason, or no reason, this is
rather a usual prelude, signifying nothing.]

[Footnote 11: Sunday afternoon. It is not implied that the pictures on
Friday were prophetic. Probably Miss Rose saw what Miss Angus had seen by
aid of 'suggestion.']

[Footnote 12: Miss Angus could not be sure of the colour of the hair.]

[Footnote 13: The position was such that Miss Angus could not see the face
of the lady.]

[Footnote 14: I saw the photographs.]

[Footnote 15: I have been shown the letter of January 20, which confirmed
the evidence of the crystal pictures. The camp was formed for official
purposes in which Mr. Clifton was concerned. A letter of February 9
unconsciously corroborates.]

[Footnote 16: The incident of the feet occurred at 4.30 to 7.30 P.M. The
crystal picture was about 10 P.M.]

[Footnote 17: Miss Angus had only within the week made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Cockburn and the Bissetts. Of these relations of theirs at a distance
she had no knowledge.]

[Footnote 18: I have seen a photograph of this gentleman, Major Hamilton,
which tallies with the full description given by Miss Angus, as reported
by Mrs. Bissett. All the proper names here, as throughout, are altered.

This account I wrote from the verbal statement of Mrs. Bissett. It
was then read and corroborated by herself, Mr. Bissett, Mr. Cockburn,
Mrs. Cockburn, and Miss Angus, who added dates and signatures.]

[Footnote 19: The letters attesting each of these experiments are in my
possession. The real names are in no case given in this account, by my own
desire, but (with permission of the persona concerned) can be communicated
privately.]

[Footnote 20: The faculty of seeing 'fancy pictures' in the glass is
far from uncommon. I have only met with three other persons besides
Miss Angus, two of them men, who had any success in 'telepathic'
crystal-gazing. In correcting 'revises' (March 16), I leant that the
brother of Mr. Pembroke (p. 105) wrote from Cairo on January 27. The
'scry' of January 23 represented his ship in the Suez Canal. He was, as
his letter shows, in quarantine at Suez, at Moses's Wells, from January 25
to January 26. Major Hamilton (pp. 109, 110), on the other hand, left
Bombay, indeed, but not by sea, as in the crystal-picture. See Appendix C.
Mr. Starr, an American critic, adds Cherokees, Aztecs, and Tonkaways to
the ranks of crystal gazers.]




VI

ANTHROPOLOGY AND HALLUCINATIONS

We have been examining cases, savage or civilised, in which knowledge is
believed to be acquired through no known channel of sense. All such
instances among savages, whether of the nature of clairvoyance simple,
or by aid of gazing in a smooth surface, or in dreams, or in trance, or
through second sight, would confirm if they did not originate the belief
in the separable soul. The soul, if it is to visit distant places and
collect information, must leave the body, it would be argued, and must so
far be capable of leading an independent life. Perhaps we ought next to
study cases of 'possession,' when knowledge is supposed to be conveyed by
an alien soul, ghost, spirit, or god, taking up its abode in a man, and
speaking out of his lips. But it seems better first to consider the
alleged super-normal phenomena which may have led the savage reasoner to
believe that _he_ was not the only owner of a separable soul: that other
people were equally gifted.

The sense, as of separation, which a savage dreamer or seer would feel
after a dream or vision in which he visited remote places, would satisfy
him that _his_ soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what
he would take to be visits from the spirits of others, would be needed
before he recognised that other men, as well as he, had the faculty of
sending their souls a journeying.

Now, ordinary dreams, in which the dreamer seemed to see persons who were
really remote; would supply to the savage reasoner a certain amount of
affirmative evidence. It is part of Mr. Tylor's contention that savages
(like some children) are subject to the difficulty which most of us may
have occasionally felt in deciding 'Did this really happen, or did I dream
it?' Thus, ordinary dreams would offer to the early thinker some
evidence that other men's souls could visit his, as he believes that his
can visit them.

But men, we may assume, were not, at the assumed stage of thought, so
besotted as not to take a great practical distinction between sleeping
and waking experience on the whole. As has been shown, the distinction
is made by the lowest savages of our acquaintance. One clear _waking_
hallucination, on the other hand, of the presence of a person really
absent, could not but tell more with the early philosopher than a score of
dreams, for to be easily forgotten is of the essence of a dream. Savages,
indeed, oddly enough, have hit on our theory, 'dreams go by contraries.'
Dr. Callaway illustrates this for the Zulus, and Mr. Scott for the
Mang'anza. Thus they _do_ discriminate between sleeping and waking. We
must therefore examine _waking_ hallucinations in the field of actual
experience, and on such recent evidence as may be accessible. If these
hallucinations agree, in a certain ratio, beyond what fortuitous
coincidence can explain, with real but unknown events, then such
hallucinations would greatly strengthen, in the mind of an early
thinker, the savage theory that a man at a distance may, voluntarily or
involuntarily, project his spirit on a journey, and be seen where he is
not present.

When Mr. Tylor wrote his book, the study of the occasional waking
hallucinations of the sane and healthy was in its infancy. Much, indeed,
had been written about hallucinations, but these were mainly the chronic
false perceptions of maniacs, of drunkards, and of persons in bad
health such as Nicolai and Mrs. A. The hallucinations of persons of
genius--Jeanne d'Arc, Luther, Socrates, Pascal, were by some attributed
to lunacy in these famous people. Scarcely any writers before Mr. Galton
had recognised the occurrence of hallucinations once in a life, perhaps,
among healthy, sober, and mentally sound people. If these were known to
occur, they were dismissed as dreams of an unconscious sleep. This is
still practically the hypothesis of Dr. Parish, as we shall see later.
But in the last twenty years the infrequent hallucinations of the sane
have been recognised by Mr. Galton, and discussed by Professor James,
Mr. Gurney, Dr. Parish, and many other writers.

Two results have followed. First, 'ghosts' are shown to be, when not
illusions caused by mistaking one object for another, then hallucinations.
As these most frequently represent a living person who is not present, by
parity of reason the appearance of a dead person is on the same level, is
not a space-filling 'ghost,' but merely an hallucination. Such an
appearance can, _prima facie_, suggest no reasonable inference as to the
continued existence of the dead. On the other hand, the new studies have
raised the perhaps insoluble question, 'Do not hallucinations of the sane,
representing the living, coincide more frequently than mere luck can
account for, with the death or other crisis of the person apparently
seen?' If this could be proved, then there would seem to be a causal
_nexus_, a relation of cause and effect between the hallucination and the
coincident crisis. That connection would be provisionally explained by
some not understood action of the mind or brain of the person in the
crisis, on that of the person who has the hallucination. This is no new
idea; only the name, Telepathy, is modern. Of course, if all this were
accepted, it would be the next step to ask whether hallucinations
representing the dead show any signs of being caused by some action on the
side of the departed. That is a topic on which the little that we have to
say must be said later.

In the meantime the reader who has persevered so far is apt to go no
further. The prejudice against 'wraiths' and 'ghosts' is very strong; but,
then, our innocent phantasms are neither (as we understand their nature)
ghosts nor wraiths. Kant broke the edges of his metaphysical tools
against, not these phantasms, but the logically inconceivable entities
which were at once material and non-material, at once 'spiritual' and
'space-filling.' There is no such difficulty about hallucinations, which,
whatever else may be said about them, are familiar facts of experience.
The only real objections are the statements that hallucinations are
always _morbid_ (which is no longer the universal belief of physiologists
and psychologists), and that the alleged coincidences of a phantasm of a
person with the unknown death of that person at a distance are 'pure
flukes.' That is the question to which we recur later.

In the meantime, the defenders of the theory, that there is some not
understood connection of cause and effect between the death or other
crisis at one end and the perception representing the person affected by
the crisis at the other end, point out that such hallucinations, or other
effects on the percipient, exist in a regular rising scale of potency and
perceptibility. Suppose that 'A's' death in Yorkshire is to affect the
consciousness of 'B' in Surrey before he knows anything about the fact
(suppose it for the sake of argument), then the effect may take place
(1) on 'B's' emotions, producing a vague _malaise_ and gloom; (2) on his
motor nerves, urging him to some act; (3) or may translate itself into his
senses, as a touch felt, a voice heard, a figure seen; or (4) may render
itself as a phrase or an idea.

Of these, (1) the emotional effect is, of course, the vaguest. We may all
have had a sudden fit of gloom which we could not explain. People rarely
act on such impressions, and, when they do, are often wrong. Thus a
friend of my own was suddenly so overwhelmed, at golf, with inexplicable
misery (though winning his match) that he apologised to his opponent and
walked home from the ninth hole. Nothing was wrong at home. Probably some
real ground of apprehension had obscurely occurred to his mind and
expressed itself in his emotion.

But one may illustrate what did look like a coincidence by the experience
of the same friend. He inhabited, as a young married man, a flat in a
house belonging to an acquaintance. The hall was covered by a kind of
glass roof, over part of its extent. He was staying in the country
with his wife, and as they travelled home the lady was beset with an
irresistible conviction that something terrible had occurred, _not_ to her
children. On reaching their house they found that one of their maids had
fallen through the glass roof and killed herself. They also learned that
the girl's sister had arrived at the house, immediately after the
accident, explaining that she was driven to come by a sense that something
dreadful had happened. The lawyer, too, who represented the owner of the
house, had appeared, unsummoned, from a conviction, which he could not
resist, that for some reason unknown he was wanted there.[1] Here, then,
was not an hallucination, but an emotional effect simultaneously reaching
the consciousness of three persons, and coinciding with an unknown
crisis.[2]

Cases in which a person feels urged to an act (2) are also recorded.
Indeed, the lawyer's in our anecdote is such an instance. Not to trouble
ourselves (3) with 'voices,' hallucinations of sight, coinciding with a
distant unknown crisis, are traced from a mere feeling that somebody is in
the room, followed by a _mental_, or _mind's eye_ picture of a person
dying at a distance, up to a kind of 'vision' of a person or scene, and so
on to hallucinations appealing, at once, to touch, sight, and hearing. As
some hundreds of these narratives of coincidental hallucinations in every
degree have been collected from witnesses at first hand, often personally
known, and usually personally cross-questioned, by the student, it is
difficult to deny that there is a _prima facie_ case for inquiry.[3]

There is here no question of 'spirits,' with all their physical and
metaphysical difficulties. Nor is there any desire to shirk the fact that
many 'presentiments' and hallucinations of the sane coincide with no
ascertainable fact. We only provisionally posit the possibility of an
influence, in its nature unknown, of one mind on another at a distance,
such influence translating itself into an hallucination. An inquiry into
this subject, in the ethnographic and modern fields, may be new but
involves no 'superstition.'

We now return to Mr. Tylor, who treats of hallucinations among other
experiences which led early savage thinkers to believe in ghosts or
separable souls, the origin of religion.

As to the causes of hallucinations in general, Mr. Tylor has something to
say, but it is nothing systematic. 'Sickness, exhaustion, and excitement'
cause savages to behold 'human spectres,' in 'the objective reality' of
which they believe. But if an educated modern, not sick, nor exhausted,
nor excited, has an hallucination of a friend's presence, he, too,
believes that it is 'objective,' is his friend in flesh and blood, till
he finds out his mistake, by examination or reflection. As Professor
William James remarks, in his 'Principles of Psychology,' such solitary
hallucinations of the sane and healthy, once in a life-time, are difficult
to account for, and are by no means rare. 'Sometimes,' Mr. Tylor observes,
'the phantom has the characteristic quality of not being visible to all of
an assembled company,' and he adds 'to assert or imply that they are
visible sometimes, and to some persons, but not always, or to everyone,
is to lay down an explanation of facts which is not, indeed, our usual
modern explanation, but which is a perfectly rational and intelligible
product of early science.'

It is, indeed, nor has later science produced any rational and
intelligible explanation of collective hallucinations, shared by several
persons at once, and perhaps not perceived by others who are present. Mr.
Tylor, it is true, asserts that 'in civilised countries a rumour of some
one having seen a phantom is enough to bring a sight of it to others whose
minds are in a properly receptive state.' But this is arguing in a circle;
What is 'a properly receptive state'? If illness, overwork, 'expectant
attention,' make 'a properly receptive state,' I should have seen several
phantoms in several 'haunted houses.' But the only thing of the sort I
ever saw occurred when I was thinking of nothing less, when I was in good
health, and when I did not know (nor did I learn till long after) that it
was the right and usual phantom to see. Mr. Podmore remarks that various
members of the Psychical Society have sojourned in various 'haunted
houses,' 'some of them in a state of expectancy and nervous excitement,'
which never caused them to see phantoms, for they saw none.[4]

Mr. Tylor treats of waking hallucinations in much the same manner as he
deals with 'travelling clairvoyance.' He does not study them 'in the field
of experience.' He is not concerned with the truth of the facts, important
as we think it would be, but with his theory that hallucinations, among
other causes, would naturally give rise to the belief in spirits, and thus
to the early philosophy of Animism. Now, certainly, the hallucination of a
person's presence, say at the moment of his death at a distance, would
suggest to a savage that something of the dying man's, something
symbolised in the word 'shadow,' or 'breath' _(spiritus)_, had come to say
farewell. The modern 'spiritualistic' theory, again, that the dead man's
'spirit' is actually present to the percipient, in space, corresponds to,
and is derived from, the animistic philosophy of the savage. But we may
believe in such 'death-wraiths,' or hallucinatory appearances of
the dying, without being either savages or spiritualists. We may
believe without pretending to explain, or we may advance the theory of
'Telepathy,' Hegel's 'magical tie,' according to which the distant mind
somehow impresses itself, in a more or less perfect hallucination, on the
mind of the person who perceives the wraith. If this be so, or even if no
explanation be offered, the truth of the stories of coincidental
apparitions becomes important, as pointing to a new region of psychical
inquiry. Then the evidence of savages as to hallucinations of their own,
coincident with the death of their absent friends, will confirm,
_quantum valeat_, the evidence of many modern observers in all ranks of
life, and all degrees of culture, from Lord Brougham to an old nurse.[5]

As to hallucinations coincident with the death of the person apparently
seen, Mr. Tylor says: 'Narratives of this class I can here only specify
without arguing on them, they are abundantly in circulation.'[6] Now, the
modern hallucinations themselves can scarcely, perhaps, be called
'survivals from savagery,' though the opinion that an hallucination of a
person must be his 'spirit' is really such a survival. It is with that
opinion, with Animism in its hallucinatory origins, that Mr. Tylor is
concerned, not with the hallucinations themselves or with the evidence
for their veridical existence.

Mr. Tylor gives three anecdotes, narrated to him, in two cases, by the
seers, of phantasms of the living beheld by them (and in one case by a
companion also) when the real person was dying at a distance. He adds: 'My
own view is that nothing but dreams and visions could have ever put into
men's minds such an idea as that of souls being ethereal images of
bodies.'[7] The idea may be perfectly erroneous; but if the occurrence
of such coincidental appearances as Mr. Tylor tells us about could be
shown to be too frequent for mere chance to produce, then there would be
a presumption in favour of some unknown faculties in our nature--a proper
theme for anthropology.

The hallucinations of which we hear most are those in which a person
sees the phantom of another person, who, unknown to him, is in or near
the hour of death. Mr. Tylor, in addition to his three instances in
civilised life, alludes to one in savage life, with references to other
cases.[8] We turn to his savage instance, offering it at full length from
the original.[9]

'Among the Maoris' (says Mr. Shortland) 'it is always ominous to see the
figure of an absent person. If the figure is very shadowy, and its face is
not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized his
prey. If the face of the absent person is seen, the omen forewarns the
beholder that he is already dead.'

The following statement is from the mouth of an eyewitness:

'A party of natives left their village, with the intention of being
absent some time, on a pig-hunting expedition. One night, while they
were seated in the open air around a blazing fire, the figure of a
relative who had been left ill at home was seen to approach. The
apparition appeared to two of the party only, and vanished immediately
on their making an exclamation of surprise. When they returned to the
village they inquired for the sick man, and then learnt that he had
died about the time he was said to have been seen.'

I now give Maori cases, communicated to me by Mr. Tregear, F.R.G.S.,
author of a 'Maori Comparative Dictionary.'

A very intelligent Maori chief said to me, 'I have seen but two ghosts.
I was a boy at school in Auckland, and one morning was asleep in bed
when I found myself aroused by some one shaking me by the shoulder. I
looked up, and saw bending over me the well-known form of my uncle, whom
I supposed to be at the Bay of Islands. I spoke to him, but the form
became dim and vanished. The next mail brought me the news of his
death. Years passed away, and I saw no ghost or spirit--not even when
my father and mother died, and I was absent in each case. Then one day I
was sitting reading, when a dark shadow fell across my book. I looked
up, and saw a man standing between me and the window. His back was
turned towards me. I saw from his figure that he was a Maori, and I
called out to him, "Oh friend!" He turned round, and I saw my other
uncle, Ihaka. The form faded away as the other had done. I had not
expected to hear of my uncle's death, for I had seen him hale and strong
a few hours before. However, he had gone into the house of a missionary,
and he (with several white people) was poisoned by eating of a pie made
from tinned meat, the tin having been opened and the meat left in it all
night. That is all I myself had seen of spirits.'

One more Maori example may be offered:[10]

From Mr. Francis Dart Fenton, formerly in the Native Department of the
Government, Auckland, New Zealand. He gave the account in writing to his
friend, Captain J.H. Crosse, of Monkstown, Cork, from whom we received
it. In 1852, when the incident occurred, Mr. Fenton was 'engaged in
forming a settlement on the banks of the Waikato.'

'March 25, 1860

'Two sawyers, Frank Philps and Jack Mulholland, were engaged cutting
timber for the Rev. R. Maunsell at the mouth of the Awaroa creek--a very
lonely place, a vast swamp, no people within miles of them. As usual,
they had a Maori with them to assist in felling trees. He came from
Tihorewam, a village on the other side of the river, about six miles
off. As Frank and the native were cross-cutting a tree, the native
stopped suddenly, and said, "What are you come for?" looking in the
direction of Frank. Frank replied, "What do you mean?" He said, "I am
not speaking to you; I am speaking to my brother." Frank said, "Where is
he?" The native replied, "Behind you. What do you want?" (to the other
Maori), Frank looked round and saw nobody. The native no longer saw
anyone, but bid down the saw and said, "I shall go across the river; my
brother is dead."

'Frank laughed at him, and reminded him that be had left him quite well
on Sunday (five days before), and there had been no communication since.
The Maori spoke no more, but got into his canoe and pulled across. When
he arrived at the landing-place, he met people coming to fetch him. His
brother had just died. I knew him well.'

In answer to inquiries as to his authority for this narrative, Mr. Fenton
writes:

'December 18, 1883.

'I knew all the parties concerned well, and it is quite true, _valeat
quantum_, as the lawyers say. Incidents of this sort are not infrequent
among the Maoris.

'F.D. FENTON,
 _'Late Chief Judge, Native Law-Court of N.Z.'_

Here is a somewhat analogous example from Tierra del Fuego:

'Jemmy Button was very superstitious' (says Admiral Fitzroy, speaking of
a Fuegian brought to England). 'While at sea, on board the "Beagle," he
said one morning to Mr. Bynoe that in the night some man came to the
side of his hammock and whispered in his ear that his father was dead.
He fully believed that such was the case,' and he was perfectly
right.... 'He reminded Bennett of the dream.'[11]

Mr. Darwin also mentions this case, a coincidental auditory hallucination.

I have found no other savage cases quite to the point. This is,
undeniably, 'a puir show for Kirkintilloch,' a meagre collection of savage
death-wraiths, but it may be so meagre by reason of want of research, or
of lack of records, travellers usually pooh-poohing the benighted
superstitions of the heathen, or fearing to seem superstitious if they
chronicle instances. However few the instances, they are, undeniably,
exact parallels to those recorded in civilised life.

In filling up the lacuna in Mr. Tylor's anthropological work, in asking
questions as to the proportion between phantasms of the living which
coincide with a crisis in the experience of the person seen, and those
which do not, it is obviously necessary to reject all evidence of people
who were ill, or anxious, or overworked, or in poignant grief at the time
of the hallucination. It will be seen later that neither grief nor amatory
passion (dominating the association of our ideas as they do) beget many
phantasms. Our business, however, is with the false perceptions of persons
trustworthy, as far as we know, sane, healthy, not usually visionary, and
in an unperturbed state of mind.

There remains a normal cause of subjective hallucinations, expectancy.
This appears to be a real cause of hallucination or, at least, of
illusion. Waiting for the sound of a carriage you may hear it often before
it comes, you taking other sounds for that which you desire. Again, in an
inquiry embracing 17,000 people, the S.P.R. collected thirteen cases of an
hallucinatory appearance of one person to another who was _expecting_ his
arrival. Once more, it is very conceivable that a trifle, the accidental
opening of a door, a noise of a familiar kind in an unfamiliar place, may
touch the brain into originating an hallucination of a person passing
through the door, or of the place where the sound now heard used once to
be familiar. Expectancy, again, and nervousness, might doubtless cause an
hallucination to a person who felt uncomfortable in a house with a name to
be 'haunted,' though, as we have seen, the effect is far less common than
the cause. All these sorts of causes are undoubtedly more apt to be
prevalent among superstitious savages than among educated Europeans.
And it stands to reason that savages, where one man 'thinks he sees
something,' will be readier than we are to think they 'see something' too.
Yet collective hallucinations, which are shared by several persons at
once, are especially puzzling. Even if they occur when all are in a
strained condition of expectancy, it is odd that all see them in _the same
way_.[12] Examples will occur later. When there is no excitement, the
mystery is increased. We may note that, among the expectant multitudes who
looked on while Bernadette was viewing the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes, not
one person, however superstitious or hysterical, pretended to share the
vision. Again, only one person, and he on doubtful evidence, is asserted
to have shared, once, the visions of Jeanne d'Arc. In both cases all the
conditions said to produce collective hallucination were present in the
highest degree. Yet no collective hallucination occurred.

Narratives about hallucinations coincident with a death, narratives well
attested, are abundant in modern times, so abundant that one need only
refer the curious to Messrs. Gurney and Myers's two large volumes,
'Phantasms of the Living,' and to the S.P.R 'Report of Census of
Hallucinations' (1894). Mr. Tylor says: 'The spiritualistic theory
specially insists on cases of apparitions, where the person's death
corresponds more or less nearly with the time when some friend perceives
his phantom.' But visionaries, he remarks truly, often see phantoms of
living persons when nothing occurs. That is the case, and the question
arises whether more such phantoms are viewed (_not_ by 'visionaries')
in connection with the death or other crisis of the person whose
hallucinatory appearance is perceived, than ought to occur, if there be no
connection of some unknown cause between deaths and appearances. As Mr.
Tylor observes, 'Man, as yet in a low intellectual condition, came to
associate in thought those things which he found by experience to be
connected in fact.'[13] Did early man, then, find _in experience_ that
apparitions of his friends were 'connected in fact' with their deaths?
And, if so, was that discovered connection in fact the origin of his
belief that an hallucinatory appearance of an absent person sometimes
announced his death?

That the belief exists in New Zealand we saw, and find confirmed by this
instance, one of 'many such relations,' says the author. A Maori chief was
long absent on the war-path. One day he entered his wife's hut, and sat
mute by the hearth. She ran to bring witnesses, but on her return the
phantasm was no longer visible. The woman soon afterwards married again.

Her husband then returned in perfect health, and pardoned the lady, as
she had acted on what, to a Maori mind, seemed good legal evidence of
his decease. Of course, even if she fabled, the story is evidence to the
existence of the belief.[14]

What, then, is the cause of the belief that a phantom of a man is a token
of his death? On the theory of savage philosophy, as explained by Mr.
Tylor himself, a man's soul may leave his body and become visible to
others, not at death only, but on many other occasions, in dream, trance,
lethargy. All these are much more frequent conditions, in every man's
career, than the fact of dying. Why, then, is the phantasm supposed by
savages to announce death? Is it because, in a sufficient ratio of cases
to provoke remark, early man has found the appearance and the death to be
'things connected in fact'?

I give an instance in which the philosophy of savages would lead them
_not_ to connect a phantasm of a living man with his death.

The Woi Worung, an Australian tribe, hold that 'the Murup [wraith] of an
individual could be sent from him by magic, as, for instance, when a
hunter incautiously went to sleep when out hunting.'[15] In this case the
hunter is exposed to the magic of his enemies. But the Murup, or detached
soul, would be visible to people at a distance when its owner is only
asleep--according to the savage philosophy. Why, then, when the wraith is
seen, is the owner believed to be dying? Are the things bound to be
'connected in fact'?

As is well known, the Society for Psychical Research has attempted a
little census, for the purpose of discovering whether hallucinations
representing persons at a distance coincided, within twelve hours, with
their deaths, in a larger ratio than the laws of chance allow as possible.
If it be so, the Maori might have some ground for his theory that such
hallucinations betoken a decease. I do not believe that any such census
can enable us to reach an affirmative conclusion which science will
accept. In spite of all precautions taken, all warnings before, and
'allowances' made later, collectors of evidence will 'select' affirmative
cases already known, or (which is equally fatal) will be suspected of
doing so. Again, illusions of memory, increasing the closeness of the
coincidence, will come in--or it will be easy to say that they came in.
'Allowances' for them will not be accepted.

Once more, 17,000 cases, though a larger number than is usual in
biological inquiries, are decidedly not enough for a popular argument on
probabilities; a million, it will be said, would not be too many.
Finally, granting honesty, accurate memory, and non-selection (none of
which will be granted by opponents), it is easy to say that odd things
_must_ occur, and that the large proportion of affirmative answers as to
coincidental hallucinations is just a specimen of these odd things.

Other objections are put forward by teachers of popular science who have
not examined--or, having examined, misreport--the results of the Census in
detail. I may give an example of their method.

Mr. Edward Clodd is the author of several handbooks of science--'The Story
of Creation,' 'A Manual of Evolution,' and others. Now, in a signed review
of a book, a critique published in 'The Sketch' (October 13, 1897), Mr.
Clodd wrote about the Census: 'Thousands of persons were asked whether
they had ever seen apparitions, and out of these some hundreds, mostly
unintelligent foreigners, replied in the affirmative. Some eight or ten of
the number--envied mortals--had seen "angels," but the majority,
like the American in the mongoose story, had seen only "snakes."...
In weighing evidence we have to take into account the competency as
well as the integrity of the witnesses.' Mr. Clodd has most frankly and
good-humouredly acknowledged the erroneousness of his remark. Otherwise we
might ask: Does Mr. Clodd prefer to be considered not 'competent' or not
'veracious'? He cannot be both on this occasion, for his signed and
published remarks were absolutely inaccurate. First, thousands of persons
were _not_ asked 'whether they had seen apparitions.' They were asked:
'Have you ever, when believing yourself to be perfectly awake, had a vivid
impression of seeing, or being touched by a living being or inanimate
object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could
discover, was not due to any external physical cause?' Secondly, it is not
the fact that 'some hundreds, _mostly unintelligent foreigners,_ replied
in the affirmative.' Of English-speaking men and women, 1,499 answered the
question quoted above in the affirmative. Of foreigners (naturally
'unintelligent'), 185 returned affirmative answers. Thirdly, when Mr.
Clodd says, 'The majority had seen only "snakes,"' it is not easy to know
what precise sense 'snakes' bears in the terminology of popular science.
If Mr. Clodd means, by 'snakes,' fantastic hallucinations of animals,
these amounted to 25, as against 830 representing human forms of persons
recognised, unrecognised, living or dead. But, if by 'snakes' Mr. Clodd
means purely subjective hallucinations, not known to coincide with any
event--and this _is_ his meaning--his statement agrees with that of the
Census. His observations, of course, were purely accidental errors.

The number of hallucinations representing living or dying recognised
persons in the answers received, was 352. Of first-hand cases, in which
coincidence of the hallucination with the death of the person apparently
seen was affirmed, there were 80, of which 26 are given.

The non-coincidental hallucinations were multiplied by four, to allow for
forgetfulness of 'misses.' The results being compared, it was decided that
the hallucinations collected coincided with death 440 more often than
ought to be the case by the law of probabilities. Therefore there was
proof, or presumption, in favour of some relation of cause and effect
between A's death and B's hallucination.

If we were to attack the opinion of the Committee on Hallucinations, that
'Between deaths and apparitions of the dying a connection exists which is
not due to chance alone,' the assault should be made not only on the
method, but on the details. The events were never of very recent, and
often were of remote occurrence. The remoteness was less than it seems,
however, as the questions were often answered several years before the
publication of the Report (1894). There was scarcely any documentary
evidence, any note or letter written between the hallucination and the
arrival of news of the death. Such letters, the evidence alleged, had in
some cases existed, but had been lost, burnt, eaten by white ants, or
written on a sheet of blotting paper or the whitewashed wall of a barrack
room. If I may judge by my own lifelong success in mislaying, losing, and
casually destroying papers, from cheques to notes made for literary
purposes, from interesting letters of friends to the manuscripts of
novelists, or if I may judge by Sir Walter Scott's triumphs of the same
kind, I should not think much of the disappearance of documentary evidence
to death-wraiths. Nobody supposed, when these notes were written, that
Science would ask for their production; and even if people had guessed at
this, it is human to lose or destroy old papers.

The remoteness of the occurrences is more remarkable, for, if these things
happen, why were so few recent cases discovered? Again, the seers were
sometimes under anxiety, though such cases were excluded from the final
computation: they frequently knew that the person seen was in bad health:
they were often very familiar with his personal aspect. Now what are
called 'subjective hallucinations,' non-coincidental hallucinations,
usually represent persons very familiar to us, persons much in our minds.
I know seven cases in which such hallucinations occurred. 1, 2, of husband
to wife; 3, son to mother; 4, brother to sister; 5, sister to sister;
6, cousin (living in the same house) to cousin; 7, friend (living a mile
away) to two friends. In no case was there a death-coincidence. Only in
case 4 was there any kind of coincidence, the brother having intended to
do (unknown to the sister) what he was seen doing--driving in a dog-cart
with a lady. But he had _not_ driven. We cannot, of course, _prove_ that
these seven cases were _not_ telepathic, but there is no proof that they
were. Now most of the coincidental cases, on which the Committee relied as
their choicest examples, represented persons familiarly known to the
seers. This looks as if they were casual; but, of course, if telepathy
does exist, it is most likely (as Hegel says) to exist between kinsfolk
and friends.[16]

The dates might be fresher!

In case 1, percipient knew that his aunt in England (he being in
Australia) was not very well. No anxiety.

2. Casual acquaintance. No anxiety. Case of accident or suicide.

3. Acquaintance who feared to die in childbed, and did. Percipient not
much interested, nor at all anxious.

4. Father in England to son in India. No anxiety.

5. Uncle to niece. Sudden death. No anxiety. No knowledge of illness.

6. Brother-in-law to sister-in-law, and her maid. No anxiety reported.
_Russian_.

7. Father to son. No anxiety reported. _Russian_.

8. Friend to friend. No knowledge of illness or anxiety reported.

9. Grandmother to grandson. No anxiety. No knowledge of illness.

10. Casual acquaintance, to seven people, and apparently to a dog. Illness
known. _Russian._

11. Step-brother to step-brother. No anxiety. No knowledge of illness.

12. Friend to friend. No anxiety or knowledge of illness.

13. Casual acquaintance. No anxiety.

14. Aunt to nephew and to his wife. Illness known. No anxiety.

15. Sister to brother. Illness known. No anxiety.

16. Father to daughter. No knowledge of illness. No anxiety.

17. Father to son. Much anxiety. (Uncounted.)

18. Sister to sister. Illness known. 'No immediate danger' surmised.

19. Father to son. Much anxiety. _Russian._ (Uncounted.)

20. Friend to friend. Illness known. Percipient had been nursing patient.
_Brazilian._ (Very bad case!)

21 Friend to friend. Illness known. No anxiety.

22. Brother to brother. Illness known. No anxiety.

23. Grandfather to grand-daughter. Illness known. No pressing anxiety.

24. Grandfather to grandson. Illness known. No anxiety.

25. Father's _hand._ Illness chronic. No anxiety. Percipient a daughter.
_Russian._

20. Husband to wife. Anxiety in time of war.

27. Brother to sister. Slightly anxious from receiving no letter.

28. Friend to friend. No anxiety.

Anxiety is only reported, or to be surmised, in two or three cases. In a
dozen the existence of illness was known.

It may therefore be argued, adversely, that in the selected coincidental
hallucinations, the persons seen were in the class most usually beheld in
non-coincidental and, probably, purely subjective hallucinations
representing real persons; also, that knowledge of their illness, even
when no anxiety existed, kept them in some cases before the mind; also,
that several cases are foreign, and that 'most foreigners are fools.' On
the other hand, affection, familiarity, and knowledge of illness had _not_
produced hallucinations even in the case of these percipients, till
within the twelve hours (often much less) of the event of death.

It would have been desirable, of course, to publish all the
_non_-coincidental cases, and show how far, in these not _veridical_
cases, the recognised phantasms were those of kindred, dear friends, known
to be ill, and subjects of anxiety[17].

The Census, in fact, does contain a chapter on 'Mental and Nervous
Conditions in connection with Hallucinations,' such as anxiety, grief,
and overwork. Do these produce, or probably produce, many empty
hallucinations _not_ coincident with death or any great crisis? If they
do, then all cases in which a coincidental hallucination occurred
to a person in anxiety, or overstrained, will seem to be, probably,
fortuitous coincidences like the others. All percipients, of all sorts
of hallucinations, hits or misses, were asked if they were in grief or
anxiety. Now, out of 1,622 cases of hallucination of all known kinds
(coincidental or not), mental strain was reported in 220 instances; of
which 131 were cases of grief about known deaths or anxiety. These mental
conditions, therefore, occur only in twelve per cent. of the instances. On
the whole, it does not seem fair to argue that anxiety produces so much
hallucination that it will account by itself for those which we have
analysed as coincidental.

The impression left on my own mind by the Census does pretty closely agree
with that of its authors. Fairly well persuaded of the possibility of
telepathy, on other grounds, and even inclined to believe that it does
produce coincidental hallucinations, the evidence of the Census, by
itself, would not convince me nor its authors. We want better records; we
want documentary evidence recording cases before the arrival of news of
the coincidence. Memories are very adaptive. The authors, however, made a
gallant effort, at the cost of much labour, and largely allowed for all
conceivable drawbacks.

I am, personally, illogical enough to agree with Kant, and to be more
convinced by the cumulative weight of the hundreds of cases in 'Phantasms
of the Living,' in other sources, in my own circle of acquaintance, and
even by the coincident traditions of European and savage peoples, than by
the statistics of the Census. The whole mass, Census and all, is of very
considerable weight, and there exist individual cases which one feels
unable to dispute. Thus while I would never regard the hallucinatory
figure of a friend, perceived by myself, as proof of his death, I
would entertain some slight anxiety till I heard of his well-being.

On this topic I will offer, in a Kantian spirit, an anecdote of the kind
which, occurring in great quantities, disposes the mind to a sort of
belief. It is not given as evidence to go to a jury, for I only received
it from the lips of a very gallant and distinguished officer and V.C.,
whose own part in the affair will be described.

This gentleman was in command of a small British force in one of the
remotest and least accessible of our dependencies, not connected by
telegraph, at the time of the incident, with the distant mainland. In the
force was a particularly folly young captain. One night he went to a
dance, and, as the sleeping accommodation was exhausted, he passed the
night, like a Homeric hero, on a couch beneath the echoing _loggia_. Next
day, contrary to his wont, he was in the worst of spirits, and, after
moping for some time, asked leave to go a three days' voyage to the
nearest telegraph station. His commanding officer, my informant, was
good-natured, and gave leave. At the end of a week Captain ---- returned,
in his usual high spirits. He now admitted that, while lying awake in the
verandah, after the ball, he had seen a favourite brother of his, then
in, say, Peru. He could not shake off the impression; he had made the long
voyage to the nearest telegraph station, and thence had telegraphed to
another brother in, let us say, Hong Kong, 'Is all well with John?' He
received a reply, 'All well by last mail,' and so returned, relieved in
mind, to his duties. But the next mail bringing letters from Peru brought
news of his Peruvian brother's death on the night of the vision in the
verandah.

This, of course, is not offered as evidence. For evidence we need
Captain ----'s account, his Hong Kong brother's account, date of the
dance, official date of the Peruvian brother's death, and so on. But the
character of my informant indisposes me to disbelief. The names of places
are intentionally changed, but the places were as remote from each other
as those given in the text.

We find ourselves able to understand the Master of Ravenswood's
cogitations after he saw the best wraith in fiction:

'She died expressing her eager desire to see me. Can it be, then--can
strong and earnest wishes, formed during the last agony of nature,
survive its catastrophe, surmount the awful bounds of the spiritual
world, and place before us its inhabitants in the hues and colouring of
life? And why was that manifested to the eye, which could not unfold its
tale to the ear?' ('Her withered lips moved fast, although no sound
issued from them.') 'And wherefore should a breach be made in the laws
of nature, yet its purpose remain unknown?'

The Master's reasonings are such as, in hearing similar anecdotes, must
have occurred to Scott. They no longer represent our views. The death and
apparition were coincidental almost to the minute: it would be impossible
to prove that life was utterly extinct, when Alice seemed to die, 'as the
clock in the distant village tolled one, just before' Ravenswood's
experience. We do not, like him, postulate 'a breach in the laws of
nature,' only a possible example of a law. The tale was not 'unfolded to
the ear,' as the telepathic impact only affected the sense of sight.

Here, perhaps, ought to follow a reply to certain scientific criticisms of
the theory that telepathy, or the action of one distant mind, or brain,
upon another, may be the cause of 'coincidental hallucinations,'
whether among savage or civilised races. But, not to delay the argument
by controversy, the Reply to Objections has been relegated to the
Appendix[18].

[Footnote 1: The lady, her husband, and the lawyer, all known to me, gave
me the story in writing; the servant's sister has been lost sight of.]

[Footnote 2: See three other cases in _Proceedings_, S.P.R., ii. 122, 123.
Two others are offered by Mr. Henry James and Mr. J. Neville Maskelyne of
the Egyptian Hall.]

[Footnote 3: See 'Phantasms of the Living' and 'A Theory of Apparitions,'
_Proceedings_, S.P.R., vol. ii., by Messrs. Gurney and Myers.]

[Footnote 4: _Studies in Psychical Research,_ p. 388.]

[Footnote 5: This, at least, scorns to myself a not illogical argument.
Mr. Leaf has argued on the other side, that 'Darwinism may have done
something for Totemism, by proving the existence of a great monkey
kinship. But Totemism can hardly be quoted as evidence for Darwinism.'
True, but Darwinism and Totemism are matters of opinion, not facts of
personal experience. To a believer in coincidental hallucinations, at
least, the alleged parallel experiences of savages must yield some
confirmation to his own. His belief, he thinks, is warranted by human
experience. On what does he suppose that the belief of the savage is
based? Do his experience and their belief coincide by pure chance?]

[Footnote 6: _Prim. Cult._ i. 449.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid. i. 450.]

[Footnote 8: _Prim. Cult._ vol. i. p. 450.]

[Footnote 9: From Shortland's _Traditions of New Zealand,_ p. 140.]

[Footnote 10: Gurney and Myers, 'Phantasms of the Living,' vol. ii.
ch. v. p. 557.]

[Footnote 11: _The 'Adventure' and 'Beagle,'_ iii. 181, cf. 204.]

[Footnote 12: It will, of course, be said that they worked their stories
into conformity.]

[Footnote 13: _Prim. Cult._ i. 116.]

[Footnote 14: Polack's _Manners of the New Zealanders_, i. 268.]

[Footnote 15: Howitt, op. cit. p. 186.]

[Footnote 16: On examining the cases, we find, in 1894, these dates of
reported occurrences, in twenty-eight cases: 1890, 1882, 1879, 1870, 1863,
1861, 1888, 1885, 1881, 1880, 1878, 1874, 1869, 1869, 1845, 1887, 1881,
1877, 1874, 1873, 1860 (?), 1864 (?), 1855, 1830 (?!), 1867, 1862, 1888,
1870.]

[Footnote 17: On this point see _Report_, p. 260. Fifty phantasms out of
the whole occurred during anxiety or presumable anxiety. Of these,
thirty-one coincided (within twelve hours) with the death of the person
apparently seen. In the remaining nineteen, the person seen recovered in
eight cases.]

[Footnote 18: Appendix A.]




VII

DEMONIACAL POSSESSION

There is a kind of hallucinations--namely, Phantasms of the Dead--about
which it seems better to say nothing in this place. If such phantasms are
seen by savages when awake, they will doubtless greatly corroborate that
belief in the endurance of the soul after death, which is undeniably
suggested to the early reasoner by the phenomena of dreaming. But, while
it is easy enough to produce evidence to recognised phantasms of the dead
in civilised life, it would be very difficult indeed to discover many good
examples in what we know about savages. Some Fijian instances are given by
Mr. Fison in his and Mr. Howitt's 'Kamilaroi and Kurnai,' Others occur in
the narrative of John Tanner, a captive from childhood among the Red
Indians. But the circumstance, already noted, that an Australian lad
became a wizard on the strength of having seen a phantasm of his dead
mother, proves that such experiences are not common; and Australian black
fellows have admitted that they, for their part, never did see a ghost,
but only heard of ghosts from their old men. Mr. David Leslie, previously
cited, gives some first-hand Zulu evidence about a haunted wood, where the
_Esemkofu_, or ghosts of persons killed by a tyrannical chief, were heard
and felt by his native informant; the percipient was also pelted with
stones, as by the European _Poltergeist_. The Zulu who dies commonly
becomes an Ihlozi, and receives his share of sacrifice. The _Esemkofu_ on
the other hand, are disturbed and haunting spirits[1].

As a rule, so far as our information goes, it is not recognised phantasms
of the dead, in waking vision, which corroborate the savage belief in the
persistence of the spirit of the departed. The savage reasoner rather
rests his faith on the alleged phenomena of noises and physical movements
of objects apparently untouched, which cause so many houses in civilised
society to be shut up, or shunned, as 'haunted.' Such disturbances the
savage naturally ascribes to 'spirits.' Our evidence, therefore, for
recognised phantasms of the savage dead is very meagre, so it is
unnecessary to examine the much more copious civilised evidence. The facts
attested may, of course, be theoretically explained as the result of
telepathy from a mind no longer incarnate; and, were the evidence as
copious as that for coincidental hallucinations of the living, or dying,
it would be of extreme importance. But it is not so copious, and, granting
even that it is accurate, various explanations not involving anything so
distasteful to science as the action of a discarnate intelligence may be,
and have been, put forward.

We turn, therefore, from a theme in which civilised testimony is more
bulky than that derived from savage life, to a topic in which savage
evidence is much more full than modern civilised records. This topic is
the so-called Demoniacal Possession.

In the philosophy of Animism, and in the belief of many peoples, savage
and civilised, spirits of the dead, or spirits at large, can take up their
homes in the bodies of living men. Such men, or women, are spoken of as
'inspired,' or 'possessed.' They speak in voices not their own, they act
in a manner alien to their natural character, they are said to utter
prophecies, and to display knowledge which they could not have normally
acquired, and, in fact, do not consciously possess, in their normal
condition. All these and similar phenomena the savage explains by the
hypothesis that an alien spirit--perhaps a demon, perhaps a ghost, or a
god--has taken possession of the patient. The possessed, being full of the
spirit, delivers sermons, oracles, prophecies, and what the Americans call
'inspirational addresses,' before he returns to his normal consciousness.
Though many such prophets are conscious impostors, others are sincere. Dr.
Mason mentions a prophet who became converted to Christianity. 'He could
not account for his former exercises, but said that it certainly appeared
to him as though a spirit spoke, and he must tell what it communicated.'
Dr. Mason also gives the following anecdote:

'...Another individual had a familiar spirit that he consulted and with
which he conversed; but, on hearing the Gospel, he professed to become
converted, and had no more communication with his spirit. It had left
him, he said; it spoke to him no more. After a protracted trial I
baptised him. I watched his case with interest, and for several years he
led an unimpeachable Christian life; but, on losing his religious zeal,
and disagreeing with some of the church members, he removed to a distant
village, where he could not attend the services of the Sabbath, and it
was soon after reported that he had communications with his familiar
spirit again. I sent a native preacher to visit him. The man said
he heard the voice which had conversed with him formerly, but it
spoke very differently. Its language was exceedingly pleasant to
hear, and produced great brokenness of heart. It said, "Love each
other; act righteously--act uprightly," with other exhortations such us
he had heard from the teachers. An assistant was placed in the village
near him, when the spirit left him again; and ever since he has
maintained the character of a consistent Christian.'[2]

This anecdote illustrates what is called by spiritists 'change of
control.' After receiving, and deserting, Christian doctrine, the patient
again spoke unconsciously, but under the influence of the faith which he
had abandoned. In the same way we shall find that a modern American
'Medium,' after being for a time constantly in the society of educated
and psychological observers, obtained new 'controls' of a character more
urbane and civilised than her old 'familiar spirit.'[3]

It is admitted that the possessed sometimes display an eloquence which
they are incapable of in their normal condition.[4] In China, possessed
women, who never composed a line of poetry in their normal lives, utter
their thoughts in verse, and are said to give evidence of clairvoyant
powers.[5]

The book--_Demon Possession in China_--of Dr. Nevius, for forty years a
missionary, was violently attacked by the medical journals of his native
country, the United States. The doctor had the audacity to declare that he
could find no better explanation of the phenomena than the theory of the
Apostles--namely, that the patients were possessed. Not having the fear of
man before his eyes, he also remarked that the current scientific
explanations had the fault of not explaining anything.

For example, 'Mr. Tylor intimates that all cases of supposed demoniacal
possession are identical with hysteria, delirium, and mania, and
suchlike bodily and mental derangements.' Dr. Nevius, however, gave what
he conceived to be the notes of possession, and, in his diagnosis,
distinguished them from hysteria (whatever that may mean), delirium, and
mania. Nor can it honestly be denied that, if the special notes of
possession actually exist, they do mark quite a distinct species of mental
affection. Dr. Nevius then observed that, according to Mr. Tylor,
'scientific physicians now explain the facts on a different principle,'
but, says Dr. Nevius, 'we search in vain to discover what this principle
is.'[6] Dr. Nevius, who had the courage of his opinions, then consulted a
work styled 'Nervous Derangement,' by Dr. Hammond, a Professor in the
Medical School of the University of New York.[7] He found this scientific
physician admitting that we know very little about the matter. He knew,
what is very gratifying, that 'mind is the result of nervous action,'
and that so-called 'possession' is the result of 'material derangements of
the organs or functions of the system.'

Dr. Nevius was ready to admit this latter doctrine in cases of idiocy,
insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria; but then, said he, these are not what I
call possession. The Chinese have names for all these maladies, 'which
they ascribe to physical causes,' but for possession they have a different
name. He expected Dr. Hammond to account for the abnormal conditions in
so-called possession, but 'he has hardly even attempted to do this.' Dr.
Nevius next perused the works of Dr. Griesinger, Dr. Baelz, Professor
William James, M. Ribot, and, generally, the literature of 'alternating
personality.' He found Mr. James professing his conviction that the
'alternating personality' (in popular phrase, the demon, or familiar
spirit) of Mrs. Piper knew a great deal about things which Mrs. Piper, in
her normal state, did not, and could not know. Thus, after consulting many
physicians, Dr. Nevius was none the better, and came back to his faith in
Diabolical Possession. He was therefore informed that he had written 'one
of the most extraordinarily perverted books of the present day' on the
evidence of 'transparent ghost stories'--which do not occur in his book.

The attitude of Dr. Nevius cannot be called strictly scientific. Because
pathologists and psychologists are unable to explain, or give the _modus_
of a set of phenomena, it does not follow that the devil, or a god, or a
ghost, is in it.

But this, of course, was precisely the natural inference of savages.

Dr. Nevius catalogues the symptoms of possession thus:

1. The automatic, persistent and consistent acting out of a new
personality, which calls himself _shieng_ (genius) and calls the patient
_hiang to_ (incense burner, 'medium').

2. Possession of knowledge and intellectual power not owned by the patient
(in his normal state), nor explainable on the pathological hypothesis.

3. Complete change of moral character in the patient.

Of these notes, the second would, of course, most confirm the savage
belief that a new intelligence had entered into the patient. If he
displayed knowledge of the future, or of the remote, the inference that a
novel and wiser intelligence had taken possession of the patient's body
would be, to the savage, irresistible. But the more cautious modern, _even
if he accepted the facts_, would be reduced to no such extreme conclusion.
He would say that knowledge of the remote in space, or in the past, might
be telepathically communicated to the brain of some living person; while,
for knowledge of the future, he could fly, with Hartmann, to contact with
the Absolute.

But the question of evidence for the facts is, of course, the only real
question. Now, in Dr. Nevius's book, this evidence rests almost entirely
on the written reports of native Christian teachers, for the Chinese were
strictly reticent when questioned by Europeans. 'My heathen brother, you
have a sister who is a demoniac?' asks the intelligent European. The reply
of the heathen brother is best left in the obscurity of a remarkably
difficult and copious Oriental language. We are thus obliged to fall back
on the reports of Mr. Leng and other native Christian teachers. They are
perfectly modest and rational in style. We learn that Mrs. Sen, a lady in
her normal state incapable of lyrical efforts, lisped in numbers in her
secondary personality, and detected the circumstance that Mr. Leng was on
his way to see her, when she could not have learned the fact in any normal
way.[8] 'They are now crossing the stream, and will be here when the sun
is about so high;' which was correct. The other witnesses were examined,
and corroborated.[9] Dr. Nevius himself examined Mrs. Kwo, when possessed,
talking in verse, and, physically, limp.[10]

The narratives are of this type; the patient, on recovering consciousness,
knows nothing of what has occurred; Christian prayers are often
efficacious, and there are many anecdotes of movements of objects
untouched.[11]

By a happy accident, as this chapter was passing through the press, a
scientific account of a demoniac and his cure was published by Dr. Pierre
Janet.[12] Dr. Janet has explained, with complete success, everything in
the matter of possession, except the facts which, in the opinion of Dr.
Nevius, were in need of explanation. These facts did not occur in the case
of the demoniac 'exorcised' by Dr. Janet. Thus the learned essay of that
eminent authority would not have satisfied Dr. Nevius. The facts in which
he was interested did not present themselves in Dr. Janet's patient, and
so Dr. Janet does not explain them.

The simplest plan, here, is to deny that the facts in which Dr. Nevius
believes ever present themselves at all; but, if they ever do, Dr. Janet's
explanation does not explain them.

1. His patient, Achille, did _not_ act out a new personality.

2. Achille displayed _no_ knowledge or intellectual power which he did not
possess in his normal state.

3. His moral character was _not_ completely changed; he was only more
hypochondriacal and hysterical than usual.

Achille was a poor devil of a French tradesman who, like Captain Booth,
had infringed the laws of strict chastity and virtue. He brooded on this
till he became deranged, and thought that Satan had him. He was convulsed,
anaesthetic, suicidal, involuntarily blasphemous. He was not 'exorcised'
by a prayer or by a command, but after a long course of mental and
physical treatment. His cure does not explain the cures in which Dr.
Nevius believed. His case did not present the features of which Dr.
Nevius asked science for an explanation. Dr. Janet's essay is the
_dernier cri_ of science, and leaves Dr. Nevius just where it found him.

Science, therefore, can, and does, tell Dr. Nevius that his evidence for
his facts is worthless, through the lips of Professor W. Romaine Newbold,
in 'Proceedings, S.P.R.,' February 1898 (pp. 602-604). And the same
number of the same periodical shows us Dr. Hodgson accepting facts similar
to those of Dr. Nevius, and explaining them by--possession! (p. 406).

Dr. Nevius's observations practically cover the whole field of
'possession' in non-European peoples. But other examples from other areas
are here included.

A rather impressive example of possession may be selected from
Livingstone's 'Missionary Travels' (p. 86). The adventurous Sebituane was
harried by the Matabele in a new land of his choice. He thought of
descending the Zambesi till he was in touch with white men; but Tlapáne,
'who held intercourse with gods,' turned his face west-wards. Tlapáne used
to retire, 'perhaps into some cave, to remain in a hypnotic or mesmeric
state' until the moon was full. Then he would return _en prophète_.
'Stamping, leaping, and shouting in a peculiarly violent manner, or
beating the ground with a club' (to summon those under earth), 'they
induce a kind of fit, and while in it pretend that their utterances are
unknown to themselves,' as they probably are, when the condition is
genuine. Tlapáne, after inducing the 'possessed' state, pointed east:
'There, Sebituane, I behold a fire; shun it, it may scorch thee. The gods
say, Go not thither!' Then, pointing west, he said, 'I see a city and a
nation of black men, men of the water, their cattle are red, thine own
tribe are perishing, thou wilt govern black men, spare thy future tribe.'

So far, mere advice; then,

'Thou, Ramosinii, thy village will perish utterly. If Mokari moves first
from the village, he will perish first; and thou, Ramosinii, wilt be the
last to die.'

Then,

  'Like some bold seer in a trance,
  Seeing all his own mischance,'

  'The gods have given other men water to drink, but to me they have given
  bitter water. They call me away. I go.'[13]

Tlapáne died, Mokari died, Ramosinii died, their village was destroyed
soon after, and so Sebituane wandered westward, not disobedient to the
voice, was attacked by the Baloiana, conquered, and spared them.

Such is 'possession' among savages. It is superfluous to multiply
instances of this world-wide belief, so freely illustrated in the New
Testament, and in trials for witchcraft. The scientific study of the
phenomena, as Littré complained, 'had hardly been sketched' forty years
ago. In the intervening years, psychologists and hypnotists have devoted
much attention to the theme of these 'secondary personalities,' which
Animism explains by the theory of possession. The explanations of modern
philosophers differ, and it is not our business to discuss their
physiological and pathological ideas.[14] Our affair is to ask whether, in
the field of experience, there is any evidence that persons thus
'possessed' really evince knowledge which they could not have acquired
through normal channels? If such evidence exists, the facts would
naturally strengthen the conviction that the possessed person was inspired
by an intelligence not his own, that is, by a spirit. Now it is the firm
conviction of several men of science that a certain Mrs. Piper, an
American, does display, in her possessed condition, knowledge which
she could not normally acquire. The case of this lady is precisely on a
level with that of certain savage or barbaric seers. Thus: 'The Fijian
priest sits looking steadily at a whale's tooth ornament, amid dead
silence. In a few minutes he trembles, slight twitchings of face and limbs
come on, which increase to strong convulsions.... Now the god has
entered.'[15]

In China, 'the professional woman sits at a table in contemplation, till
the soul of a deceased person from whom communication is desired enters
her body and talks through her to the living....'[16]

The latter account exactly describes Mrs. Piper. When consulted she passes
through convulsions into a trance, after which she talks in a new voice,
assumes a fresh personality, and affects to be possessed by the spirit of
a French doctor (who does not know French)--Dr. Phinuit. She then displays
a varying amount of knowledge of dead and living people connected with her
clients, who are usually strangers, often introduced under feigned names.
Mrs. Piper and her husband have been watched by detectives, and have not
been discovered in any attempts to procure information. She was for some
months in England under the charge of the S.P.R. Other ghosts, besides
Dr. Phinuit, ghosts more civilised than he, now influence her, and her
latest performances are said to exceed her former efforts.[17]

Volumes of evidence about Mrs. Piper have been published by Dr. Hodgson,
who unmasked Madame Blavatsky and Eusapia Paladino.[18] He was at first
convinced that Mrs. Piper, in her condition of trance, obtains knowledge
not otherwise and normally accessible to her. It was admitted that her
familiar spirit guesses, attempts to extract information from the people
who sit with her, and tries sophistically to conceal his failures. Here
follow the statements of Professor James of Harvard.

'The most convincing things said about my own immediate household were
either very intimate or very trivial. Unfortunately the former things
cannot well be published. Of the trivial things I have forgotten the
greater number, but the following, _rarae nantes_, may serve as samples
of their class. She said that we had lost recently a rug, and I a
waistcoat. (She wrongly accused a person of stealing the rug, which was
afterwards found in the house.) She told of my killing a grey-and-white
cat with ether, and described how it had "spun round and round" before
dying. She told how my New York aunt had written a letter to my wife,
warning her against all mediums, and then went off on a most amusing
criticism, full of _traits vifs_, of the excellent woman's character.
(Of course, no one but my wife and I knew the existence of the letter in
question.) She was strong on the events in our nursery, and gave striking
advice during our first visit to her about the way to deal with certain
"tantrums" of our second child--"little Billy-boy," as she called him,
reproducing his nursery name. She told how the crib creaked at night, how
a certain rocking-chair creaked mysteriously, how my wife had heard
footsteps on a stair, &c. &c. Insignificant as these things sound when
read, the accumulation of them has an irresistible effect; and I repeat
again what I said before, that, taking everything that I know of Mrs.
Piper into account, the result is to make me feel as absolutely certain as
I am of any personal fact in the world that she knows things in her
trances which she cannot possibly have heard in her waking state, and that
the definitive philosophy of her trances is yet to be found. The
limitations of her trance information, its discontinuity and fitfulness,
and its apparent inability to develop beyond a certain point, although
they end by arousing one's moral and human impatience with the phenomenon,
yet are, from a scientific point of view, amongst its most interesting
peculiarities, since where there are limits there are conditions, and the
discovery of them is always the beginning of an explanation.

'This is all I cam tell you of Mrs. Piper. I wish it were more
"scientific." But _valcat quantum!_ it is the best I can do.'

Elsewhere Mr. James writes:

'Mr. Hodgson and others have made prolonged study of this lady's trances,
and are all convinced that supernormal powers of cognition are displayed
therein. They are, _prima facie_, due to "spirit control." But the
conditions are so complex that a dogmatic decision either for or against
the hypothesis must as yet be postponed.'[19]

Again--

'In the trances of this medium I cannot resist the conviction that
knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of
her eyes, ears, and wits.

'The trances have broken down, for my own mind, the limits of the admitted
order of nature.'

M. Paul Bourget (who is not superstitious), after consulting Mrs. Piper,
concludes:

'L'esprit a des procédés de connaître non soupçonnés par notre
analyse.'[20]

In this treatise I may have shown 'the will to believe' in an unusual
degree; but, for me, the interest of Mrs. Piper is purely anthropological.
She exhibits a survival or recrudescence of savage phenomena, real or
feigned, of convulsion and of secondary personality, and entertains a
survival of the animistic explanation.

Mrs. Piper's honesty and excellent character, in her normal condition, are
vouched for by her friends and observers in England and America; nor do I
impeach her normal character. But 'secondary personalities' have often
more of Mr. Hyde than of Dr. Jekyll in their composition. It used to be
admitted that, when 'possessed,' Mrs. Piper would cheat when she
could--that is to say, she would make guesses, try to worm information out
of her sitter, describe a friend of his, alive or dead, as 'Ed.,' who may
be Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edith, or anybody. She would shuffle, and repeat
what she had picked up in a former sitting with the same person; and the
vast majority of her answers started from vague references to probable
facts (as that an elderly man is an orphan), and so worked on to more
precise statements. Professor Macalister wrote:

'She is quite wide-awake enough all through to profit by suggestions. I
let her see a blotch of ink on my finger, and she said that I was a
writer.... Except the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there was
not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. Piper is not anaesthetic
during the so-called trance, and if you ask my private opinion, it is that
the whole thing is an imposture, and a poor one.'[21]

Mr. Barkworth said that, as far as his experience went, 'Mrs. Piper's
powers are of the ordinary thought-reading [i.e. muscle-reading] kind,
dependent on her hold of the visitor's hand.' Each of these gentlemen had
only one 'sitting.' M. Paul Bourget also informed me, in conversation,
that Mrs. Piper held his hand while she told the melancholy tale connected
with a key in his possession, and that she did not tell the story promptly
and fluently, but very slowly and hesitatingly. Even so, he declared that
he did not feel able to account for her performance.

As these pages were passing through the press, Dr. Hodgson's last report
on Mrs. Piper was published.[22] It is quite impossible, within the space
allotted, to criticise this work. It would be necessary to examine
minutely scores of statements, in which many facts are suppressed as too
intimate, while others are remarkably incoherent. Dr. Hodgson deserves the
praise of extraordinary patience and industry, displayed in the very
distasteful task of watching an unfortunate lady in the vagaries of
'trance.' His reasonings are perfectly calm, perfectly unimpassioned, and
his bias has not hitherto seemed to make for credulity. We must, in fact,
regard him as an expert in this branch of psychology. But he himself makes
it clear that, in his opinion, no written reports can convey the
impressions produced by several years of personal experience. The results
of that experience he sums up in these words:

'At the present time I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the chief
"communicators" to whom I have referred in the foregoing pages are
veritably the personalities that they claim to be, that they have survived
the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with
us, whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper's entranced organism.'[23]

This means that Dr. Hodgson, at present, in this case, accepts the
hypothesis of 'possession' as understood by Maoris and Fijians, Chinese
and Karens.

The published reports do not produce on me any such impression. As a
personal matter of opinion, I am convinced that those whom I have honoured
in this life would no more avail themselves of Mrs. Piper's 'entranced
organism' (if they had the chance) than I would voluntarily find myself in
a 'sitting' with that lady. It is unnecessary to wax eloquent on this
head; and the curious can consult the writings of Dr. Hodgson for
themselves. Meanwhile we have only to notice that an American 'possessed'
woman produces on a highly educated and sceptical modern intelligence
the same impression as the Zulu 'possessed' produce on some Zulu
intelligences.

The Zulus admit 'possession' and divination, but are not the most
credulous of mankind. The ordinary possessed person is usually consulted
as to the disease of an absent patient. The inquirers do not assist the
diviner by holding his hand, but are expected to smite the ground
violently if the guess made by the diviner is right; gently if it is
wrong. A sceptical Zulu, named John, having a shilling to expend on
psychical research, smote violently at _every_ guess. The diviner was
hopelessly puzzled; John kept his shilling, and laid it out on a much more
meritorious exhibition of animated sticks.[24]

Uguise gave Dr. Callaway an account of a female possessed person with
whom Mrs. Piper could not compete. Her spirit spoke, not from her mouth,
but from high in the roof. It gave forth a kind of questioning remarks
which were always correct. It then reported correctly a number of singular
circumstances, ordered some remedies for a diseased child, and offered to
return the fee, if ample satisfaction was not given.[25]

In China and Zululand, as in Mrs. Piper's case, the spirits are fond of
diagnosing and prescribing for absent patients.

A good example of savage possession is given in his travels by Captain
Jonathan Carver (1763).

Carver was waiting impatiently for the arrival of traders with provisions,
near the Thousand Lakes. A priest, or jossakeed, offered to interview the
Great Spirit, and obtain information. A large lodge was arranged, and the
covering drawn up (which is unusual), so that what went on within might be
observed. In the centre was a chest-shaped arrangement of stakes, so far
apart from each other 'that whatever lay within them was readily to be
discerned.' The tent was illuminated 'by a great number of torches.' The
priest came in, and was first wrapped in an elk's skin, as Highland seers
were wrapped in a black bull's hide. Forty yards of rope made of elk's
hide were then coiled about him, till he 'was wound up like an Egyptian
mummy.'

I have elsewhere shown[26] that this custom of binding with bonds the seer
who is to be inspired, existed in Graeco-Egyptian spiritualism, among
Samoyeds, Eskimo, Canadian Hareskin Indians, and among Australian blacks.

'The head, body, and limbs are wound round with stringy bark cords.'[27]
This is an extraordinary range of diffusion of a ceremony apparently
meaningless. Is the idea that, by loosing the bonds, the seer demonstrates
the agency of spirits, after the manner of the Davenport Brothers?[28] But
the Graeco-Egyptian medium did _not_ undo the swathings of linen, in which
he was rolled, _like a mummy_. They had to be unswathed for him, by
others.[29] Again, a dead body, among the Australians, is corded up tight,
as soon as the breath is out of it, if it is to be buried, or before being
exposed on a platform, if that is the custom.[30] Again, in the Highlands
second-sight was thus acquired: the would-be seer 'must run a Tedder
(tether) of Hair, _which bound a corpse to the Bier_, about his Middle
from end to end,' and then look between his legs till he sees a funeral
cross two marches.[31] The Greenland seer is bound 'with his head between
his legs.'[32]

Can it be possible, judging from Australia, Scotland, Egypt, that the
binding, as of a corpse or mummy, is a symbolical way of putting the seer
on a level with the dead, who will then communicate with him? In three
remote points, we find seer-binding and corpse-binding; but we need to
prove that corpses are, or have been, bound at the other points where the
seer is tied up--in a reindeer skin among the Samoyeds, an elk skin in
North America, a bull's hide in the Highlands.

Binding the seer is not a universal Red Indian custom; it seems to cease
in Labrador, and elsewhere, southwards, where the prophet enters a magic
lodge, unbound. Among the Narquapees, he sits cross-legged, and the lodge
begins to answer questions by leaping about.[33] The Eskimo bounds, though
he is tied up.

It would be decisive, if we could find that, wherever the sorcerer is
bound, the dead are bound also. I note the following examples, but the
Creeks do not, I think, bind the magician.

Among the Creeks,

'The corpse is placed in a hole, with a blanket wrapped about it, and the
legs bent under it _and tied together_.'[34] The dead Greenlanders were
'wrapped and sewed up in their best deer-skins.'[35]

Carver could only learn that, among the Indians he knew, dead bodies were
'wrapped in skins;' that they were also swathed with cords he does not
allege, but he was not permitted to see all the ceremonies.

My theory is, at least, plausible, for this manner of burying the dead,
tied tightly up, with the head between the legs (as in the practice of
Scottish and Greenland seers), is very old and widely diffused. Ellis
says, of the Tahitians, 'the body of the dead man was ... placed in a
sitting posture, with the knees elevated, _the face pressed down between
the knees_,... and the whole body tied with cord or cinet, wound repeatedly
round.'[36]

The binding may originally have been meant to keep the corpse, or ghost,
from 'walking.' I do not know that Tahitian prophets were ever tied up, to
await inspiration. But I submit that the frequency of the savage form of
burial with the corpse tied up, or swathed, sometimes with the head
between the legs; and the recurrence of the savage practice of similarly
binding the sorcerer, probably points to a purpose of introducing the
seer to the society of the dead. The custom, as applied to prophets, might
survive, even where the burial rite had altered, or cannot be ascertained,
and might survive, for corpses, where it had gone out of use, for seers.
The Scotch used to justify their practice of putting the head between
the knees when, bound with a corpse's hair tether, they learned to
be second-sighted, by what Elijah did. The prophet, on the peak of
Carmel, 'cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his
knees.'[37] But the cases are not analogous. Elijah had been hearing a
premonitory 'sound of abundance of rain' in a cloudless sky. He was
probably engaged in prayer, not in prophecy.

Kirk, by the way, notes that if the wind changes, while the Scottish seer
is bound, he is in peril of his life. So children are told, in Scotland,
that, if the wind changes while they are making faces, the grimace will be
permanent. The seer will, in the same way, become what he pretends to be,
a corpse.

This desertion of Carver's tale may be pardoned for the curiosity of the
topic. He goes on:

'Being thus bound up like an Egyptian mummy' (Carver unconsciously making
my point), 'the seer was lifted into the chest-like enclosure. I could now
also discern him as plain as I had ever done, and I took care not to turn
my eyes away a moment'--in which effort he probably failed.

The priest now began to mutter, and finally spoke in a mixed jargon of
scarcely intelligible dialects. He now yelled, prayed, and foamed at the
mouth, till in about three quarters of an hour he was exhausted and
speechless. 'But in an instant he sprang upon his feet, notwithstanding at
the time he was put in it appeared impossible for him to move either his
legs or arms, and shaking off his covering, as quick as if the bands with
which it had been bound were burst asunder,' he prophesied. The Great
Spirit did not say when the traders would arrive, but, just after high
noon, next day, a canoe would arrive, and the people in it would tell when
the traders were to appear.

Next day, just after high noon, a canoe came round a point of land about a
league away, and the men in it, who had met the traders, said they would
come in two days, which they did. Carver, professing freedom from any
tincture of credulity, leaves us 'to draw what conclusions we please.'

The natural inference is 'private information,' about which the only
difficulty is that Carver, who knew the topography and the chances of a
secret messenger arriving to prompt the Jossakeed, does not allude to this
theory.[38] He seems to think such successes not uncommon.

All that psychology can teach anthropology, on this whole topic of
'possession;' is that secondary or alternating personalities are facts
_in rerum natura_, that the man or woman in one personality may have no
conscious memory of what was done or said in the other, and that cases of
knowledge said to be supernormally gained in the secondary state are worth
inquiring about, if there be a chance of getting good evidence.

A few fairly respectable savage instances are given in Dr. Gibier's 'Le
Fakirisme Occidental' and in Mr. Manning's 'Old New Zealand;' but, while
modern civilised parallels depend on the solitary case of Mrs. Piper (for
no other case has been well observed), no affirmative conclusion can be
drawn from Chinese, Maori, Zulu, or Red Indian practice.

[Footnote 1: _Among the Zulus_, p. 120.]

[Footnote 2:_ Burmah_, p. 107.]

[Footnote 3: Hodgson, _Proceedings_, S.P.E., vol. xiii. pt. xxxiii. Dr.
Hodgson by no means agrees with this view of the case--the case of Mrs.
Piper.]

[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 184.]

[Footnote 5: Nevius's _Demon Possession in China_, a curious collection of
examples by an American missionary. The reports of Catholic missionaries
abound in cases.]

[Footnote 6: Op. cit. p. 169.]

[Footnote 7: Putnam, 1881.]

[Footnote 8: Nevius, p. 33.]

[Footnote 9: Ibid. p. 35.]

[Footnote 10: Op. cit. p. 38.]

[Footnote 11: See 'Fetishism and Spiritualism.']

[Footnote 12: _Nécroses et Idées Fixes_. Alcan, Paris, 1898. This is the
first of a series of works connected with the Laboratoire de Psychologie,
at the Salpétritère, in Paris.]

[Footnote 13: 'Macleod shall return, but Macrimmon shall never!']

[Footnote 14: See Ribot, _Les Maladies de la Personnalité,_; Bourru
et Burot, _Variations de la Personnalité_; Janet, _L'Automatisme
Psychologique_; James, _Principles of Psychology_; Myers, in _Proceedings_
of S.P.R., 'The Mechanism of Genius,' 'The Subliminal Self.']

[Footnote 15: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 133.]

[Footnote 16: Doolittle's _Chinese_, i. 143; ii. 110, 320.]

[Footnote 17: _Proceedings_, S.P.R., pt. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 18: _Proceedings_, S.P.R., vi. 436-650; viii. 1-167; xiii.
284-582].

[Footnote 19: _The Will to Believe_, p. 814.]

[Footnote 20: _Figaro_, January 14, 1895.]

[Footnote 21: _Proceedings_, vi. 605, 606.]

[Footnote 22: _Proceedings_, S.P.R, part xxxiii. vol. xiii.]

[Footnote 23: Op. cit. part xxxiii. p. 406.]

[Footnote 24: See 'Fetishism.' Compare Callaway, p. 328.]

[Footnote 25: Callaway, pp. 361-374.]

[Footnote 26: _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, p. 66.]

[Footnote 27: Brough Smyth, i. 475. This point is disputed, but I did not
invent it, and a case appears in Mr. Curr's work on the natives.]

[Footnote 28: _Prim. Cult_. i. 152.]

[Footnote 29: Eusebius, _Prap. Evang_. v. 9.]

[Footnote 30: Brough Smyth, i. 100, 113.]

[Footnote 31: Kirk, _Secret Commonwealth_ 1691.]

[Footnote 32: Crantz, p. 209.]

[Footnote 33: Père Arnaud, in Hind's _Labrador_, ii. 102.]

[Footnote 34: Major Swan, 1791, official letter on the Creek Indians,
Schoolcraft, v. 270.]

[Footnote 35: Crantz, p. 237.]

[Footnote 36: _Polynesian Researches_, i. 519.]

[Footnote 37: 1 Kings xviii. 42.]

[Footnote 38: Carver, pp. 123, 184.]




VIII

FETISHISM AND SPIRITUALISM

It has been shown how the doctrine of souls was developed according to the
anthropological theory. The hypothesis as to how souls of the dead were
later elevated to the rank of gods, or supplied models after which such
gods might be inventively fashioned, will be criticised in a later
chapter. Here it must suffice to say that the conception of a separable
surviving soul of a dead man was not only not essential to the savage's
idea of his supreme god, as it seems to me, but would have been wholly
inconsistent with that conception. There exist, however, numerous forms of
savage religion in addition to the creed in a Supreme Being, and these
contribute their streams to the ocean of faith. Thus among the kinds of
belief which served in the development of Polytheism, was Fetishism,
itself an adaptation and extension of the idea of separable souls. In this
regard, like ancestor-worship, it differs from the belief in a Supreme
Being, which, as we shall try to demonstrate, is not derived from the
theory of ghosts or souls at all.

_Fetish_ (_fétiche_) seems to come from Portuguese _feitiço_, a talisman
or amulet, applied by the Portuguese to various material objects
regarded by the negroes of the west coast with more or less of religious
reverence. These objects may be held sacred in some degree for a number of
incongruous reasons. They may be tokens, or may be of value in sympathetic
magic, or merely _odd_, and therefore probably endowed with unknown mystic
qualities. Or they may have been pointed out in a dream, or met in a
lucky hour and associated with good fortune, or they may (like a tree with
an unexplained stir in its branches, as reported by Kohl) have seemed to
show signs of life by spontaneous movements; in fact, a thing may be what
Europeans call a fetish for scores of reasons. For our present purpose, as
Mr. Tylor says, 'to class an object as a fetish demands explicit statement
that a spirit is considered as embodied in it, or acting through it, or
communicating by it, or, at least, that the people it belongs to do
habitually think this of such objects; or it must be shown that the object
is treated as having personal consciousness or power, is talked with,
worshipped...' and so forth. The in-dwelling spirit may be human, as when
a fetish is made out of a friend's skull, the spirit in which may even be
asked for oracles, like the Head of Bran in Welsh legend.

We have tried to show that the belief in human souls may be, in part at
least, based on supernormal phenomena which Materialism disregards. We
shall now endeavour to make it probable that Fetishism (the belief in the
souls tenanting inanimate objects) may also have sources which perhaps are
not normal, or which at all events seemed supernormal to savages. We say
'perhaps not normal' because the phenomena now to be discussed are of the
most puzzling character. We may lean to the belief in a supernormal cause
of certain hallucinations, but the alleged movements of inanimate objects
which probably supply one origin of Fetishism, one suggestion of the
presence of a spirit in things dead, leave the inquiring mind in
perplexity. In following Mr. Tylor's discussion of the subject, it is
necessary to combine what he says about Spiritualism in his fourth with
what he says about Fetishism in his fourteenth and later chapters. For
some reason his book is so arranged that he criticises 'Spiritualism'
long before he puts forward his doctrine of the origin and development of
the belief in spirits.

We have seen a savage reason for supposing that human spirits inhabit
certain lifeless things, such as skulls and other relics of the dead. But
how did it come to be thought that a spirit dwelt in a lifeless and
motionless piece of stone or stick? Mr. Tylor, perhaps, leads us to a
plausible conjecture by writing: 'Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in
Keeling Island, who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll:
this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming
inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively, like
a table or a hat at a modern spirit séance.'[1] Now M. Lefébure has
pointed out (in 'Mélusine') that, according to De Brosses, the African
conjurers gave an appearance of independent motion to small objects, which
were then accepted as fetishes, being visibly animated. M. Lefébure
next compares, like Mr. Tylor, the alleged physical phenomena of
spiritualism, the flights and movements of inanimate objects apparently
untouched.

The question thus arises, Is there any truth whatever in these world-wide
and world-old stories of inanimate objects acting like animated things?
Has fetishism one of its origins in the actual field of supernormal
experience in the X region? This question we do not propose to answer,
as the evidence, though practically universal, may be said to rest on
imposture and illusion. But we can, at least, give a sketch of the nature
of the evidence, beginning with that as to the apparently _voluntary_
movements of objects, _not_ untouched. Mr. Tylor quotes from John Bell's
'Journey in Asia' (1719) an account of a Mongol Lama who wished to
discover certain stolen pieces of damask. His method was to sit on a
bench, when 'he carried it, or, as was commonly believed, it carried him,
to the very tent' of the thief. Here the bench is innocently believed to
be self-moving. Again, Mr. Rowley tells how in Manganjah the sorcerer, to
find out a criminal, placed, with magical ceremonies, two staffs of wood
in the hands of some young men. 'The sticks whirled and dragged the men
round like mad,' and finally escaped and rolled to the feet of the
wife of a chief, who was then denounced as the guilty person.[2]

Mr. Duff Macdonald describes the same practice among the Yaos:[3]

'The sorcerer occasionally makes men take hold of a stick, which, after a
time, begins to move as if endowed with life, and ultimately carries them
off bodily and with great speed to the house of the thief.'

The process is just that of Jacques Aymard in the celebrated story of the
detection of the Lyons murderer.[4]

In Melanesia, far enough away, Dr. Codrington found a similar practice,
and here the sticks are explicitly said by the natives to be moved by
_spirits_.[5] The wizard and a friend hold a bamboo stick by each end, and
ask what man's ghost is afflicting a patient. At the mention of the
right ghost 'the stick becomes violently agitated.' In the same way, the
bamboo 'would run about' with a man holding it only on the palms of his
hands. Again, a hut is built with a partition down the middle. Men sit
there with their hands _under_ one end of the bamboo, while the other end
is extended into the empty half of the hut. They then call over the names
of the recently dead, till 'they feel the bamboo moving in their hands.' A
bamboo placed on a sacred tree, 'when the name of a ghost is called, moves
of itself, and will lift and drag people about.' Put up into a tree, it
would lift them from the ground. In other cases the holding of the sticks
produces convulsions and trance.[6] The divining sticks of the Maori are
also 'guided by spirits,'[7] and those of the Zulu sorcerers rise, fall,
and jump about.[8]

These Zulu performances must be really very curious. In the last chapter
we told how a Zulu named John, having a shilling to lay out in the
interests of psychical research, declined to pay a perplexed diviner, and
reserved his capital far a more meritorious performance. He tried a medium
named Unomantshintshi, who divined by Umabakula, or dancing sticks--

'If they say "no," they fall suddenly; if they say "yes," they arise and
jump about very much, and leap on the person who has come to inquire. They
"fix themselves on the place where the sick man is affected; ... if the
head, they leap on his head.... Many believe in Umabakula more than in the
diviner. But there are not many who have the Umabakula."'

Dr. Callaway's informant only knew two Umabakulists, John was quite
satisfied, paid his shilling, and went home.[9]

The sticks are about a foot long. It is not reported that they are moved
by spirits, nor do they seem to be regarded as fetishes.

Mr. Tylor also cites a form of the familiar pendulum experiment. Among the
Karens a ring is suspended by a thread over a metal basin. The relations
of the dead strike the basin, and when he who was dearest to the ghost
touches it the spirit twists the thread till it breaks, and the ring falls
into the basin. With us a ring is held by a thread over a tumbler, and our
unconscious movements swing it till it strikes the hour. How the Karens
manage it is less obvious. These savage devices with animated sticks
clearly correspond to the more modern 'table-turning.' Here, when the
players are honest, the pushing is certainly _unconscious_.

I have tested this in two ways--first by trying the minimum of _conscious_
muscular action that would stir a table at which I was alone, and by
comparing the absolute unconsciousness of muscular action when the table
began to move in response to no _voluntary_ push. Again, I tried with a
friend, who said, 'You are pushing,' when I gently removed my hands
altogether, though they seemed to rest on the table, which still revolved.
My friend was himself unconsciously pushing. It is undeniable that, to
a solitary experimenter, the table _seems_ to make little darts of its own
will in a curious way. Thus, the unconsciousness of muscular action on the
part of savages engaged in the experiment with sticks would lead them to
believe that spirits were animating the wood. The same fallacy beset the
table-turners of 1855-65, and was, to some extent, exposed by Faraday.
Of course, savages would be even more convinced by the dancing spoon of
Mr. Darwin's tale, by the dancing sticks of the Zulus, and the rest,
whether the phenomena were supernormal or merely worked by unseen strings.
The same remark applies to modern experimenters, when, as they declare,
various objects move untouched, without physical contact.

Still more analogous than turning tables to the savage use of inspired
sticks for directing the inquirer to a lost object or to a criminal, is
the modern employment of the divining-rod--a forked twig which, held by
the ends, revolves in the hands of the performer when he reaches the
object of his quest. He, like the savage cited, is occasionally agitated
in a convulsive manner; and cases are quoted in which the twig writhes
when held in a pair of tongs! The best-known modern treatise on the
divining-rod is that of M. Chevreul, 'La Baguette Divinatoire' (1854). We
have also 'L'Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,' by M.
Figuier (1860). In 1781 Thouvenel published his 600 experiments with
Bleton and others; and Hegel refers to Amoretti's collection of hundreds
of cases. The case of Jacques Aymard, who in the seventeenth century
discovered a murderer by the use of the rod in true savage fashion, is
well known. In modern England the rod is used in the interests of private
individuals and public bodies (such as Trinity College, Cambridge) for the
discovery of water.

Professor Barrett has lately published a book of 280 pages, in which
evidence of failures and successes is collected.[10] Professor Barrett
gives about one hundred and fifty cases, in which he was only able to
discover, on good authority, twelve failures. He gives a variety of tests
calculated to check frauds and chance coincidence, and he publishes
opinions, hostile or agnostic, by geologists. The evidence, as a general
rule, is what is called first-hand in other inquiries. The actual
spectators, and often the owners of the land, or the persons in whose
interest water was wanted, having been present, give their testimony; and
it is certain that the 'diviner' is called in by people of sense and
education, commonly too practical to have a theory, and content with
getting what they want, especially where scientific experts have
failed.[11]

In Mr. Barrett's opinion, the subconscious perception of indications of
the presence of water produces an equally unconscious muscular 'spasm,'
which twirls the rod till it often breaks. Yet 'it is almost impossible to
imitate its characteristic movement by any voluntary effort.' I have
myself held the hands of an amateur performer when the twig was moving,
and neither by sight nor touch could I detect any muscular movement on his
part, much less a spasm. The person was bailiff on a large estate, and,
having accidentally discovered that he possessed the gift, used it when he
wanted wells dug for the tenants on the property.

The whole topic is obscure; nor am I concerned here with the successes or
failures of the divining-rod. But the movements of the twig have never, to
my knowledge, been attributed by modern English performers to the
operation of spirits. They say 'electricity.' Mr. Tylor merely writes:

'The action of the famous divining-rod, with its curiously versatile
sensibility to water, ore, treasure, and thieves, seems to belong partly
to trickery and partly to more or less conscious direction by honester
operators.'

As the divining-rod is the only instance in which automatism, whatever its
nature and causes, has been found of practical value by practical men, and
as it is obviously associated with a number of analogous phenomena, both
in civilised and savage life, it certainly deserves the attention of
science. But no advance will be made till scientifically trained inquirers
themselves arrange and test a large number of experiments. Knowledge of
the geological ignorance of the dowsers, examples of fraud on their part,
and cases of failure or reported failure, with a general hostile bias, may
prevent such experiments from being made by scientific experts on an
adequate scale. Such experts ought, of course, to avoid working the
dowsers into a state of irritation.

It is just worth while to notice cases in which the rod acts like those of
the Melanesians, Africans, and other savages. A Mr. Thomas Welton
published an English translation of 'La Verge de Jacob' (Lyon, 1693). In
1651 he asked his servant to bring into the garden 'a stick that stood
behind the parlour door. In great terror she brought it to the garden, her
hand firmly clutched on it, nor could she let it go.' When Mrs. Welton
took the stick, 'it drew her with very considerable velocity to nearly the
centre of the garden,' where a well was found. Mr. Welton is not likely to
have known of the lately published savage examples. The coincidence with
the African and Melanesian cases is, therefore, probably undesigned.

Again, in 1694, the rod was used by le Père Menestrier and others, just as
it is by savages, to indicate by its movements answers to all sorts of
questions. Experiments of this kind have not been made by Professor
Barrett, and other modern inquirers, except by M. Richet, as a mode of
detecting automatic action. But it would be just as sensible to use the
twig as to use planchette or any other 'autoscopic' apparatus. If these
elicit knowledge unconsciously present to the mind, mere water-finding
ought not to be the sole province of the rod. In the same class as
these rods is the forked twig which, in China, is held at each end by
two persons, and made to write in the sand. The little apparatus called
_planchette_, or the other, the _ouija_, is of course, consciously or
unconsciously, pushed by the performers. In the case of the twig, as held
by water-seekers, the difficulty of consciously moving it so as to
escape close observation is considerable.

In the case of the _ouija_ (a little tripod, which, under the operators'
hands, runs about a table inscribed with letters at which it points), I
have known curious successes to be achieved by amateurs. Thus, in the
house of a lady who owned an old _château_ in another county, the _ouija_,
operated on by two ladies known to myself, wrote a number of details about
a visit paid to the _château_ for a certain purpose by Mary Stuart. That
visit, and its object, a purely personal one, are unknown to history, and
the _château_ is not spoken of in Mr. Hay Fleming's careful, but
unavoidably incomplete, itinerary of the Queen's residence in Scotland.
After the communication had been made, the owner of the _château_
explained that she was already acquainted with the circumstances
described, as she had recently read them in documents in her charter
chest, where they remain.

Of course, the belief we extend to such narratives is entirely conditioned
by our knowledge of the personal character of the performers. The point
here is merely the civilised and savage practice of _automatism_, the
apparent eliciting of knowledge not otherwise accessible, by the
movements of a stick, or a bit of wood. These movements, made without
conscious exertion or direction, seem, to savage philosophy, to be caused
by in-dwelling spirits, the sources of Fetishism.

These examples, then, demonstrating unconscious movement of objects by the
operators, make it clear that movements even of touched objects, may be
attributed, by some civilised and by savage amateurs, to 'spirits.' The
objects so moved may, by savages, be regarded in some cases as fetishes,
and their movements may have helped to originate the belief that spirits
can inhabit inanimate objects. When objects apparently quite untouched
become volatile, the mystery is deeper. This apparent animation and
frolicsome behaviour of inanimate objects is reported all through history,
and attested by immense quantities of evidence of every degree. It would
be tedious to give a full account of the antiquity and diffusion of reports
about such occurrences. We find them among Neo-Platonists, in the English
and Continental Middle Ages, among Eskimo, Hurons, Algonkins, Tartars,
Zulus, Malays, Nasquapees, Maoris, in witch trials, in ancient Peru
(immediately after the Spanish Conquest), in China, in modern Russia, in
New England (1680), all through the career of modern spiritualism, in
Hayti (where they are attributed to 'Obeah'), and, sporadically,
everywhere.[12]

Among all these cases, we must dismiss whatever the modern paid medium
does in the dark. The only thing to be done with the ethnographic and
modern accounts of such marvels is to 'file them for reference.' If a
spontaneous example occurs, under proper inspection, we can then compare
our old tales. Professor James says: 'Their mutual resemblances suggest a
natural type, and I confess that till these records, or others like them,
are positively explained away, I cannot feel (in spite of such vast
amounts of detected frauds) as if the case of physical mediumship itself,
as a freak of nature, were definitely closed.... So long as the stories
multiply in various lands, and so few are positively explained away, it is
bad method to ignore them.'[13] Here they are not ignored, because,
whatever the cause or causes of the phenomena, they would buttress, if
they did not originate, the savage belief in spirits tenanting inanimate
matter, whence came Fetishism. As to facts, we cannot, of course, 'explain
away' events of this kind, which we know only through report. A conjurer
cannot explain a trick merely from a description, especially a description
by a non-conjurer. But, as a rule, nothing so much leads to doubt on this
theme as the 'explanation' given--except, of course, in the case of 'dark
séances' got up and prepared by paid mediums. We know, sometimes, how the
'explanation' arose.

Thus, the house of a certain M. Zoller, a lawyer and member of the Swiss
Federal Council, a house at Stans, in Unterwalden, was made simply
uninhabitable in 1860-1862. The disturbances, including movements of
objects, were of a truly odious description, and occurred in full
daylight. M. Zoller, deeply attached to his home, which had many
interesting associations with the part his family played in the struggle
against revolutionary France, was obliged to abandon the place. He had
made every conceivable sort of research, and had called in the local
police and _savants_, to no purpose.

But the affair was explained away thus: While the phenomena could still be
concealed from public curiosity, a client called to see M. Zoller, who was
out. The client, therefore, remained in the drawing-room. Loud and heavy
blows resounded through the room. The client, as it chanced, had once felt
the effects of an electric battery, for some medical reason, apparently.
M. Zoller writes: 'My eldest son was present at the time, and, when my
client asked whether there was such a thing as an electrical machine in
the house (the family having been enjoined to keep the disturbances as
secret as possible), he allowed S. to think that there was.' Consequently,
the phenomena were set down to M. Zoller's singular idea of making
his house untenantable with an 'electric machine'--which he did not
possess.[14] A number of the most respected citizens, including the
Superintendent of Police, and the chief magistrate for law, published a
statement that neither Zoller, nor any of his family, nor any of
themselves, produced or could have produced the phenomena witnessed by
them in August 1862. This declaration they put forth in the 'Schwytzer
Zeitung,' October 5, 1863.[15] No electric machine known to mortals
could have produced the vast variety of alleged effects, none was ever
found; and as M. Zoller changed his servants without escaping his
tribulations, they can hardly be blamed for what, _prima facie_, it seems
that they could not possibly do. However, 'electricity,' like Mesopotamia,
is 'a blessed word.'[16]

My own position in this matter of 'physical phenomena' is, I hope, clear.
They interest me, for my present purpose, as being, whatever their real
nature and origin, things which would suggest to a savage his theory of
Fetishism. 'An inanimate object may be tenanted by a spirit, as is proved
by its extraordinary movements.' Thus the early thinker might reason, and
go on to revere the object. It is to be wished that competent observers
would pay more attention to such savage practices as crystal-gazing and
automatism as illustrated by the sticks of the Melanesians, Zulus, and
Yaos. Our scanty information we pick up out of stray allusions, but
it has the advantage of being uncontaminated by theory, the European
spectator not knowing the wide range of such practices and their value in
experimental psychology.

We have now finished our study of the less normal and usual phenomena,
which gave rise to belief in separable, self-existing, conscious, and
powerful souls. We have shown that the supernormal factors which, when
reflected on, probably supported this belief, are represented in civilised
as well as in savage life, while as to their existence among the founders
of religion we can historically know nothing at all. If we may infer from
certain considerations, the supernormal experiences were possibly more
prevalent among the remote ancestors of known savage races than among
their modern descendants. We have suggested that clairvoyance, thought
transference, and telepathy cannot be dismissed as mere fables, by a
cautious inquirer, while even the far more obscure stories of 'physical
manifestations' are but poorly explained away by those who cannot explain
them.[17] Again, these faculties have presented--in the acquisition of
otherwise unattainable knowledge, in coincidental hallucinations, and in
other ways--just the kind of facts on which the savage doctrine of souls
might be based, or by which it might be buttressed. Thus, while the
actuality of the supernormal facts and faculties remains at least an open
question, the prevalent theory of Materialism cannot be admitted as
dogmatically certain in its present shape. No more than any other theory,
nay, less than some other theories, can it account for the psychical facts
which, at the lowest, we may not honestly leave out of the reckoning.

We have therefore no more to say about the supernormal aspects of the
origins of religion. We are henceforth concerned with matters of
verifiable belief and practice. We have to ask whether, when once the
doctrine of souls was conceived by early men, it took precisely the course
of development usually indicated by anthropological science.

[Footnote 1: Darwin, _Journal_, p. 458; Tylor, _Prim. Cult_. ii. 152. The
spoon was not untouched.]

[Footnote 2: Rowley, _Universities' Mission_, p. 217.]

[Footnote 3: _Africana_, vol. i. p. 161.]

[Footnote 4: In the author's _Custom and Myth_, 'The Divining Rod.']

[Footnote 5: Codrington's _Melanesia_, p. 210.]

[Footnote 6: Op. cit. pp. 229-325.]

[Footnote 7: _Prim. Cult_. vol. i. p. 125.]

[Footnote 8: Callaway, _Amazulu_, p. 330.]

[Footnote 9: Callaway, _Amazulu_, p. 368.]

[Footnote 10: _The So-called Divining-Rod_, S.P.R. 1897.]

[Footnote 11: See especially _The Waterford Experiments_, p. 106.]

[Footnote 12: Authorities and examples are collected in the author's _Cock
Lane and Common Sense_.]

[Footnote 13: _Proceedings_, xii. 7, 8.]

[Footnote 14: _Personal Narrative_, by M. Zoller. Hanke, Zurich, 1863.]

[Footnote 15: Daumer, _Reich des Wundersamen_, Regensburg, 1872,
pp. 265, 266.]

[Footnote 16: A criticism of modern explanations of the phenomena here
touched upon will be found in Appendix B.]

[Footnote 17: See Appendix B.]




IX

EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD

To the anthropological philosopher 'a plain man' would naturally put the
question: 'Having got your idea of spirit or soul--your theory of
Animism--out of the idea of ghosts, and having got your idea of ghosts out
of dreams and visions, how do you get at the Idea of God?' Now by 'God'
the proverbial 'plain man' of controversy means a primal eternal Being,
author of all things, the father and friend of man, the invisible,
omniscient guardian of morality.

The usual though not invariable reply of the anthropologist might be given
in the words of Mr. Im Thurn, author of a most interesting work on the
Indians of British Guiana:

'From the notion of ghosts,' says Mr. Im Thurn, 'a belief has arisen, but
very gradually, in higher spirits, and eventually in a Highest Spirit,
and, keeping pace with the growth of these beliefs, a habit of reverence
for, and worship of spirits.... The Indians of Guiana know no God.'[1]

As another example of Mr. Im Thurn's hypothesis that God is a late
development from the idea of spirit may be cited Mr. Payne's learned
'History of the New World,' a work of much research:[2]

'The lowest savages not only have no gods, but do not even recognise those
lower beings usually called spirits, the conception of which has
invariably preceded that of gods in the human mind.'

Mr. Payne here differs, _toto caelo_, from Mr. Tylor, who finds no
sufficient proof for wholly non-religious savages, and from Roskoff, who
has disposed of the arguments of Sir John Lubbock. Mr. Payne, then, for
ethnological purposes, defines a god as 'a benevolent spirit, permanently
embodied in some tangible object, usually an image, and to whom food,
drink,' and so on, 'are regularly offered for the purpose of securing
assistance in the affairs of life.'

On this theory 'the lowest savages' are devoid of the idea of god or of
spirit. Later they develop the idea of spirit, and when they have secured
the spirit, as it were, in a tangible object, and kept it on board wages,
then the spirit has attained to the dignity and the savage to the
conception of a god. But while a god of this kind is, in Mr. Payne's
opinion, relatively a late flower of culture, for the hunting races
generally (with some exceptions) have no gods, yet 'the conception of a
creator or maker of all things ... obviously a great spirit' is 'one of
the earliest efforts of primitive logic.'[3]

Mr. Payne's own logic is not very clear. The 'primitive logic' of the
savage leads him to seek for a cause or maker of things, which he finds in
a great creative spirit. Yet the lowest savages have no idea even of
spirit, and the hunting races, as a rule, have no god. Does Mr. Payne mean
that a great creative spirit is _not_ a god, while a spirit kept on board
wages in a tangible object is a god? We are unable, by reason of evidence
later to be given, to agree with Mr. Payne's view of the facts, while his
reasoning appears somewhat inconsistent, the lowest savages having, in his
opinion, no idea of spirit, though the idea of a creative spirit is, for
all that, one of the earliest efforts of primitive logic.

On any such theories as these the belief in a moral Supreme Being is a
very late (or a very early?) result of evolution, due to the action of
advancing thought upon the original conception of ghosts. This opinion of
Mr. Im Thurn's is, roughly stated, the usual theory of anthropologists.
We wish, on the other hand, to show that the idea of God, as he is
conceived of by our inquiring plain man, is shadowed forth (among
contradictory fables) in the lowest-known grades of savagery, and
therefore cannot arise from the later speculation of men, comparatively
civilised and advanced, on the original datum of ghosts. We shall
demonstrate, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and even
Mr. Tylor, that the Supreme Being, and, in one case at least, the casual
sprites of savage faith, are active moral influences. What is even more
important, we shall make it undeniable that Anthropology has simplified
her problem by neglecting or ignoring her facts. While the real problem is
to account for the evolution out of ghosts of the eternal, creative moral
god of the 'plain man,' the germ of such a god or being in the creeds of
the lowest savages is by anthropologists denied, or left out of sight, or
accounted for by theories contradicted by facts, or, at best, is explained
away as a result of European or Islamite influences. Now, as the problem
is to account for the evolution of the highest conception of God, as far
as that conception exists among the most backward races, the problem can
never be solved while that highest conception of God is practically
ignored.

Thus, anthropologists, as a rule, in place of facing and solving their
problem, have merely evaded it--doubtless unwittingly. This, of course, is
not the practice of Mr. Tylor, though even his great work is professedly
much more concerned with the development of the idea of spirit and with
the lower forms of animism than with the real crux--the evolution of the
idea (always obscured by mythology) of a moral, uncreated, undying God
among the lowest savages. This negligence of anthropologists has arisen
from a single circumstance. They take it for granted that God is always
(except where the word for God is applied to a living human being)
regarded as Spirit. Thus, having accounted for the development of the
idea of spirit, they regard God as that idea carried to its highest
power, and as the final step in its evolution. But, if we can show that
the early idea of an undying, moral, creative being does not necessarily
or logically imply the doctrine of spirit (or ghost), then this idea of an
eternal, moral, creative being may have existed even before the doctrine
of spirit was evolved.

We may admit that Mr. Tylor's account of the process by which Gods were
evolved out of ghosts is a little _touffu_--rather buried in facts. We
'can scarcely see the wood for the trees.' We want to know how Gods,
makers of things (or of most things), fathers in heaven, and friends,
guardians of morality, seeing what is good or bad in the hearts of men,
were evolved, as is supposed, out of ghosts or surviving souls of the
dead. That such moral, practically omniscient Gods are known to the very
lowest savages--Bushmen, Fuegians, Australians--we shall demonstrate.

Here the inquirer must be careful not to adopt the common opinion that
Gods improve, morally and otherwise, in direct ratio to the rising grades
in the evolution of culture and civilisation. That is not necessarily the
case; usually the reverse occurs. Still less must we take it for granted,
following Mr. Tylor and Mr. Huxley, that the 'alliance [of religion and
morality] belongs almost, or wholly, to religions above the savage
level--not to the earlier and lower creeds;' or that 'among the Australian
savages,' and 'in its simplest condition,' 'theology is wholly independent
of ethics.'[4] These statements can be proved (by such evidence as
anthropology is obliged to rely upon) to be erroneous. And, just because
these statements are put forward, Anthropology has an easier task in
explaining the origin of religion; while, just because these statements
are incorrect, her conclusion, being deduced from premises so far false,
is invalidated.

Given souls, acquired by thinking on the lines already described, Mr.
Tylor develops Gods out of them. But he is not one of the writers who is
certain about every detail. He 'scarcely attempts to clear away the haze
that covers great parts of the subject.'[5]

The human soul, he says, has been the model on which man 'framed his
ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports
in the grass up to the heavenly creator and ruler of the world, the
Great Spirit.' Here it is taken for granted that the Heavenly Ruler was
from the first envisaged as a '_spiritual_ being'--which is just the
difficulty. Was He?[6]

The process of framing these ideas is rather obscure. The savage 'lives
in terror of the souls of the dead as harmful spirits.' This might yield
a Devil; it would not yield a God who 'makes for righteousness.'
Happily, 'deified ancestors are regarded, on the whole, as kindly
spirits.' The dead ancestor is 'now passed into a deity.'[7] Examples of
ancestor-worship follow. But we are no nearer home. For among the Zulus
many Amatongo (ancestral spirits) are sacred. 'Yet their father
[i.e. the father of each actual family] is far before all others when
they worship the Amatongo.... They do not know the ancients who are dead,
nor their laud-giving names, nor their names.'[8] Thus, each new
generation of Zulus must have a new first worshipful object--its own
father's Itongo. This father, and his very name, are, in a generation or
two, forgotten. The name of such a man, therefore, cannot survive as that
of the God or Supreme Being from age to age; and, obviously, such a real
dead man, while known at all, is much too well known to be taken for the
creator and ruler of the world, despite some African flattering titles and
superstitions about kings who control the weather. The Zulus, about
as 'godless' a people as possible, have a mythical first ancestor,
Unkulunkulu, but he is 'beyond the reach of rites,' and is a centre of
myths rather than of worship or of moral ideas.[9]

After other examples of ancestor-worship, Mr. Tylor branches off into a
long discussion of the theory of 'possession' or inspiration,[10] which
does not assist the argument at the present point. Thence he passes to
fetishism (already discussed by us), and the transitions from the
fetish--(1) to the idol; (2) to the guardian angel ('subliminal self');
(3) to tree and river spirits, and local spirits which cause volcanoes;
and (4) to polytheism. A fetish may inhabit a tree; trees being
generalised, the fetish of one oak becomes the god of the forest. Or,
again, fetishes rise into 'species gods;' the gods of _all_ bees, owls,
or rabbits are thus evolved.

Next,[11]

'As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser
spirits.... With little exception, wherever a savage or barbaric system of
religion is thoroughly described, great gods make their appearance in the
spiritual world as distinctly as chiefs in the human tribe.'

Very good; but whence comes the great God among tribes which have neither
chief nor king and probably never had, as among the Fuegians, Bushmen, and
Australians? The maker and ruler of the world known to _these_ races
cannot be the shadow of king or chief, reflected and magnified on the mist
of thought; for chief or king these peoples have none. This theory
(Hume's) will not work where people have a great God but no king or
chief; nor where they have a king but no Zeus or other supreme King-god,
as (I conceive) among the Aztecs.

We now reach, in Mr. Tylor's theory, great fetish deities, such as Heaven
and Earth, Sun and Moon, and 'departmental deities,' gods of Agriculture,
War, and so forth, unknown to low savages.

Next Mr. Tylor introduces an important personage. 'The theory of family
Manes, carried back to tribal Gods, leads to the recognition of superior
deities of the nature of Divine Ancestor, or First Man,' who sometimes
ranks as Lord of the Dead. As an instance, Mr. Tylor gives the Maori Maui,
who, like the Indian Yama, trod first of men the path of death. But
whether Maui and Yama are the Sun, or not, both Maori and Sanskrit
religion regard these heroes as much later than the Original Gods. In
Kamschatka the First Man is the 'son' of the Creator, and it is about the
origin of the idea of the Creator, not of the First Man, that we are
inquiring. Adam is called 'the son of God' in a Biblical genealogy, but,
of course, Adam was made, not begotten. The case of the Zulu belief will
be analysed later. On the whole, we cannot explain away the conception
of the Creator as a form of the conception of an idealised divine
First Ancestor, because the conception of a Creator occurs where
ancestor-worship does not occur; and again, because, supposing that the
idea of a Creator came first, and that ancestor-worship later grew more
popular, the popular idea of Ancestor might be transferred to the waning
idea of Creator. The Creator might be recognised as the First Ancestor,
_après coup_.

Mr. Tylor next approaches Dualism, the idea of hostile Good and Bad
Beings. We must, as he says, be careful to discount European teaching,
still, he admits, the savage has this dualistic belief in a 'primitive'
form. But the savage conception is not merely that of 'good = friendly
to me,' 'bad = hostile to me.' Ethics, as we shall show, already come into
play in his theology.

Mr. Tylor arrives, at last, at the Supreme Being of savage creeds. His
words, well weighed, must be cited textually--

'To mark off the doctrines of monotheism, closer definition is required
[than the bare idea of a Supreme Creator], assigning the distinctive
attributes of Deity to none save the Almighty Creator. It may be declared
that, in this strict sense, no savage tribe of monotheists has been ever
known.[12] Nor are any fair representatives of the lower culture in a
strict sense pantheists. The doctrine which they do widely hold, and
which opens to them a course tending in one or other of these directions,
is polytheism culminating in the rule of one supreme divinity. High above
the doctrine of souls, of divine Manes, of local nature gods, of the great
gods of class and element, there are to be discerned in barbaric theology,
shadowings, quaint or majestic, of the conception of a Supreme Deity,
henceforth to be traced onward in expanding power and brightening glory
along the history of Religion. It is no unimportant task, partial as it
is, to select and group the typical data which show the nature and
position of the doctrine of supremacy, as it comes into view within the
lower culture.[13]

We shall show that certain low savages are as monotheistic as some
Christians. They have a Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes of
Deity' are not by them assigned to other beings, further than as
Christianity assigns them to Angels, Saints, the Devil, and, strange as
it appears, among savages, to mediating 'Sons.'

It is not known that, among the Andamanese and other tribes, this last
notion is due to missionary influence. But, in regard to the whole chapter
of savage Supreme Beings, we must, as Mr. Tylor advises, keep watching for
Christian and Islamite contamination. The savage notions, as Mr. Tylor
says, even when thus contaminated, may have 'to some extent, a native
substratum.' We shall select such savage examples of the idea of a
Supreme Being as are attested by ancient native hymns, or are inculcated
in the most sacred and secret savage institutions, the religious Mysteries
(manifestly the last things to be touched by missionary influence), or are
found among low insular races defended from European contact by the
jealous ferocity and poisonous jungles of people and soil. We also note
cases in which missionaries found such native names as 'Father,' 'Ancient
of Heaven,' 'Maker of All,' ready-made to their hands.

It is to be remarked that, while this branch of the inquiry is practically
omitted by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor can spare for it but some twenty pages
out of his large work. He arranges the probable germs of the savage
idea of a Supreme Being thus: A god of the polytheistic crowd is simply
raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no
polytheism. Or the principle of Manes worship may make a Supreme Deity
out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being
supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in
Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative
philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through
and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach
their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all
powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and
calm ... too benevolent to need human worship ... too merely existent to
concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always
animistic.

Now, in addition to the objections already noted in passing, how can we
tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception,
_animistic_ at all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, as
_Spirit_? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question
'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in
Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathless _Being_, no
question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for
the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to
lead to some very singular conclusions.

It will be more fully stated and illustrated, presently, but I find that
it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a
heaven-god; he says 'it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to
the heavens _long ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and God
spiritual_?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I
aware that it has been developed previously.

The notion of a God about whose spirituality nobody has inquired is new to
us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain
level of culture, such a Divine Being _must_ be animistic, _must_ be a
'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks
Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings
who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called
spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but, _ex hypothesi_, the Beings 'who
never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of
thought do not enable us to envisage them _except_ as 'spirits.' They
never were men, 'the natives will always maintain that he (the _Vui_) was
_something different_, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man,' while
resolute that he was not a ghost.[16]

This point will be amply illustrated later, as we study that strangely
neglected chapter, that essential chapter, the Higher beliefs of the
Lowest savages. Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being, not as
merely 'alleged,' there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in
the ethnographic region.

It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers,
and missionaries, have again and again recognised our God in theirs.

The mythical details and fables about the savage God are, indeed,
different; the ethical, benevolent, admonishing, rewarding, and creative
aspects of the Gods are apt to be the same.[17]

'There is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of
these people of the existence of God, or of a future state, 'the facts
being universally admitted.'[18]

'Intelligent men among the Bakwains have scouted the idea of any of them
ever having been without a tolerably clear conception of good and evil,
God and the future state; Nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to
them as otherwise,' except polygamy, says Livingstone.

Now we may agree with Mr. Tylor that modern theologians, familiar
with savage creeds, will scarcely argue that 'they are direct or
nearly direct products of revelation' (vol. ii. p. 356). But we may
argue that, considering their nascent ethics (denied or minimised by many
anthropologists) and the distance which separates the high gods of
savagery from the ghosts out of which they are said to have sprung;
considering too, that the relatively pure and lofty element which, _ex
hypothesi_, is most recent in evolution, is also, _not_ the most honoured,
but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing
historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may
hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesis _en masse_. At best
it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more
justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of
savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest
elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of that
hypothesis, but I see what its advocates mean, or ought to mean, and the
strength of their position. Mr. Tylor, with his unique fairness, says
'the degeneration theory, no doubt in some instances with justice, may
claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remains of higher religion'
(vol. ii. p. 336).

I do not pretend to know how the lowest savages evolved the theory of a
God who reads the heart and 'makes for righteousness,' It is as easy,
almost, for me to believe that they 'were not left without a witness,'
as to believe that this God of theirs was evolved out of the maleficent
ghost of a dirty mischievous medicine-man.

Here one may repeat that while the 'quaint or majestic foreshadowings'
of a Supreme Being, among very low savages, are only sketched lightly
by Mr. Tylor; in Mr. Herbert Spencer's system they seem to be almost
omitted. In his 'Principles of Sociology' and 'Ecclesiastical
Institutions' one looks in vain for an adequate notice; in vain for almost
any notice, of this part of his topic. The watcher of conduct, the
friendly, creative being of low savage faith, whence was he evolved? The
circumstance of his existence, as far as I can see; the chastity, the
unselfishness, the pitifulness, the loyalty to plighted word, the
prohibition of even extra-tribal homicide, enjoined in various places on
his worshippers, are problems that appear somehow to have escaped
Mr. Spencer's notice. We are puzzled by endless difficulties in his
system: for example as to how savages can forget their great-grandfathers'
very names, and yet remember 'traditional persons from generation to
generation,' so that 'in time any amount of expansion and idealisation can
be reached,'[19]

Again, Mr. Spencer will argue that it is a strange thing if 'primitive men
had, as some think, the consciousness of a Universal Power whence they and
all other things proceeded,' and yet 'spontaneously performed to that
Power an act like that performed by them to the dead body of a fellow
savage'--by offerings of food.[20]

Now, first, there would be nothing strange in the matter if the crude idea
of 'Universal Power' came _earliest_, and was superseded, in part, by a
later propitiation of the dead and ghosts. The new religious idea would
soon refract back on, and influence by its ritual, the older conception.
And, secondly, it is precisely this 'Universal Power' that is _not_
propitiated by offerings of food, in Tonga, (despite Mr. Huxley)
Australia, and Africa, for example. We cannot escape the difficulty by
saying that there the old ghost of Universal Power is regarded as dead,
decrepit, or as a _roi-fainéant_ not worth propitiating, for that is not
true of the punisher of sin, the teacher of generosity, and the solitary
sanction of faith between men and peoples.

It would appear then, on the whole, that the question of the plain man to
the anthropologist, 'Having got your idea of spirit into the savage's
mind, how does he develop out of it what I call God?' has not been
answered. God cannot be a reflection from human kings where there have
been no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of
gods where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor
where men do not worship their ancestors; while, again, the spirit of a
man who died, real or ideal, does not answer to a common savage conception
of the Creator. All this will become much more obvious as we study in
detail the highest gods of the lowest races.

Our study, of course, does not pretend to embrace the religion of all the
savages in the world. We are content with typical, and, as a rule,
well-observed examples. We range from the creeds of the most backward and
worst-equipped nomad races, to those of peoples with an aristocracy,
hereditary kings, houses and agriculture, ending with the Supreme Being of
the highly civilised Incas, and with the Jehovah of the Hebrews.

[Footnote 1: _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ xi. 874. We shall return to this
passage.]

[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 389, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Payne, i. 458.]

[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 381; _Science and Hebrew
Tradition_, pp. 346, 372.]

[Footnote 5:  _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. p. 109.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 110.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 113.]

[Footnote 8: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 115, 116, citing Callaway and
others.]

[Footnote 9: The Zulu religion will be analysed later.]

[Footnote 10: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 130-144.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 248.]

[Footnote 12: And very few civilised populations, if any, are monotheistic
in this sense.]

[Footnote 13: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 332, 333.]

[Footnote 14: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 335, 336.]

[Footnote 15: _Myths of the New World_, 1868, p. 47.]

[Footnote 16: I observed this point in _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, while
I did not see the implication, that the idea of 'spirit' was not
necessarily present in the savage conception of the primal Beings,
Creators, or Makers.]

[Footnote 17: See one or two cases in _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. p. 340.]

[Footnote 18: Livingstone, speaking of the Bakwain, _Missionary Travels_,
p. 168.]

[Footnote 19: _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. p. 450.]

[Footnote 20: Op. cit. vol. i. p. 302.]




X

HIGH GODS OF LOW RACES

To avoid misconception we must repeat the necessary cautions about
accepting evidence as to high gods of low races. The missionary who does
not see in every alien god a devil is apt to welcome traces of an original
supernatural revelation, darkened by all peoples but the Jews. We shall
not, however, rely much on missionary evidence, and, when we do, we must
now be equally on our guard against the anthropological bias in the
missionary himself. Having read Mr. Spencer and Mr. Tylor, and finding
himself among ancestor-worshippers (as he sometimes does), he is apt to
think that ancestor-worship explains any traces of a belief in the Supreme
Being. Against each and every bias of observers we must be watchful.

It may be needful, too, to point out once again another weak point in all
reasoning about savage religion, namely that we cannot always tell what
may have been borrowed from Europeans. Thus, the Fuegians, in 1830-1840,
were far out of the way, but one tribe, near Magellan's Straits,
worshipped an image called Cristo. Fitzroy attributes this obvious trace
of Catholicism to a Captain Pelippa, who visited the district some time
before his own expedition. It is less probable that Spaniards established
a belief in a moral Deity in regions where they left no material traces of
their faith. The Fuegians are not easily proselytised. 'When discovered by
strangers, the instant impulse of a Fuegian family is to run off into the
woods.' Occasionally they will emerge to barter, but 'sometimes nothing
will induce a single individual of the family to appear.' Fitzroy thought
they had no idea of a future state, because, among other reasons not
given, 'the evil spirit torments them in _this_ world, if they do wrong,
by storms, hail, snow, &c.' Why the evil spirit should punish evil deeds
is not evident. 'A great black man is supposed to be always wandering
about the woods and mountains, who is certain of knowing every word and
every action, who cannot be escaped and who influences the weather
according to men's conduct.'[1]

There are no traces of propitiation by food, or sacrifice, or anything but
conduct. To regard the Deity as 'a magnified non-natural man' is not
peculiar to Fuegian theologians, and does not imply Animism, but the
reverse. But the point is that this ethical judge of perhaps the lowest
savages 'makes for righteousness' and searches the heart. His morality is
so much above the ordinary savage standard that he regards the slaying of
a stranger and an enemy, caught redhanded in robbery, as a sin. York's
brother (York was a Fuegian brought to England by Fitzroy) killed a 'wild
man' who was stealing his birds. 'Rain come down, snow come down, hail
come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow. Very bad to kill man. Big man
in woods no like it, he very angry.' Here be ethics in savage religion.
The Sixth Commandment is in force. The Being also prohibits the slaying of
flappers before they can fly. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come wind,
come rain, blow, very much blow.'[2]

Now this big man is not a deified chief, for the Fuegians 'have no
superiority of one over another ... but the doctor-wizard of each party has
much influence.' Mr. Spencer disposes of this moral 'big man' of the
Fuegians as 'evidently a deceased weather-doctor.'[3] But, first, there is
no evidence that the being is regarded as ever having died. Again, it is
not shown that Fuegians are ancestor-worshippers. Next, Fitzroy did not
think that the Fuegians believed in a future life. Lastly, when were
medicine-men such notable moralists? The worst spirits among the
neighbouring Patagonians are those of dead medicine-men. As a rule
everywhere the ghost of a 'doctor-wizard,' shaman, or whatever he may be
called, is the worst and wickedest of all ghosts. How, then, the Fuegians,
who are not proved to be ancestor-worshippers, evolved out of the
malignant ghost of an ancestor a being whose strong point is morality, one
does not easily conceive. The adjacent Chonos 'have great faith in a good
spirit, whom they call Yerri Yuppon, and consider to be the author of all
good; him they invoke in distress or danger.' However starved they do not
touch food till a short prayer has been muttered over each portion, 'the
praying man looking upward.'[4] They have magicians, but no details are
given as to spirits or ghosts. If Fuegian and Chono religion is on this
level, and if this be the earliest, then the theology of many other higher
savages (as of the Zulus) is decidedly degenerate. 'The Bantu gives one
accustomed to the negro the impression that he once had the same set of
ideas, _but has forgotten half of them_,' says Miss Kingsley.[5]

Of all races now extant, the Australians are probably lowest in culture,
and, like the fauna of the continent, are nearest to the primitive
model. They have neither metals, bows, pottery, agriculture, nor fixed
habitations; and no traces of higher culture have anywhere been found
above or in the soil of the continent. This is important, for in some
respects their religious conceptions are so lofty that it would be natural
to explain them as the result either of European influence, or as relics
of a higher civilisation in the past. The former notion is discredited
by the fact that their best religious ideas are imparted in connection
with their ancient and secret mysteries, while for the second idea, that
they are degenerate from a loftier civilisation, there is absolutely no
evidence.

It has been suggested, indeed, by Mr. Spencer that the singularly complex
marriage customs of the Australian blacks point to a more polite condition
in their past history. Of this stage, as we said, no material traces have
ever been discovered, nor can degeneration be recent. Our earliest account
of the Australians is that of Dampier, who visited New Holland in the
unhappy year 1688. He found the natives 'the miserablest people in the
world. The Hodmadods, of Mononamatapa, though a nasty people, yet for
wealth are gentlemen to these: who have no houses, sheep, poultry, and
fruits of the earth.... They have no houses, but lie in the open air.'
Curiously enough, Dampier attests their _unselfishness_: the main ethical
feature in their religious teaching. 'Be it little or be it much they get,
every one has his part, as well the young and tender as the old and
feeble, who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty.' Dampier
saw no metals used, nor any bows, merely boomerangs ('wooden cutlasses'),
and lances with points hardened in the fire. 'Their place of dwelling was
only a fire with a few boughs before it' (the _gunyeh_).

This description remains accurate for most of the unsophisticated
Australian tribes, but Dampier appears only to have seen ichthyophagous
coast blacks.

There is one more important point. In the _Bora_, or Australian
mysteries, at which knowledge of 'The Maker' and of his commandments is
imparted, the front teeth of the initiated are still knocked out. Now,
Dampier observed 'the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all
of them, men and women, old and young.' If this is to be taken quite
literally, the Bora rite, in 1688, must have included the women, at least
locally. Dampier was on the north-west coast in latitude 16 degrees,
longitude 122-1/4 degrees east (Dampier Land, West Australia). The natives
had neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs; but it seems that they had their
religious mysteries and their unselfishness, two hundred years ago.[6]

The Australians have been very carefully studied by many observers, and
the results entirely overthrow Mr. Huxley's bold statement that 'in its
simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages,
theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and dispositions
(usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or
scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage
theology is wholly independent of ethics.'

Remarks more crudely in defiance of known facts could not be made. The
Australians, assuredly, believe in 'spirits,' often malicious, and
probably in most cases regarded as ghosts of men. These aid the wizard,
and occasionally inspire him. That these ghosts are _worshipped_ does not
appear, and is denied by Waitz. Again, in the matter of cult, 'there is
none' in the way of _sacrifice_ to higher gods, as there should be if
these gods were hungry ghosts. The cult among the Australians is the
keeping of certain 'laws,' expressed in moral teaching, supposed to be in
conformity with the institutes of their God. Worship takes the form, as at
Eleusis, of tribal mysteries, originally instituted, as at Eleusis, by
the God. The young men are initiated with many ceremonies, some of which
are cruel and farcical, but the initiation includes ethical instruction,
in conformity with the supposed commands of a God who watches over
conduct. As among ourselves, the ethical ideal, with its theological
sanction, is probably rather above the moral standard of ordinary
practice. What conclusion we should draw from these facts is uncertain,
but the facts, at least, cannot be disputed, and precisely contradict the
statement of Mr. Huxley. He was wholly in the wrong when he said: 'The
moral code, such as is implied by public opinion, derives no sanction from
theological dogmas,'[7] It reposes, for its origin and sanction, on such
dogmas.

The evidence as to Australian religion is abundant, and is being added to
yearly. I shall here content myself with Mr. Howitt's accounts.[8]

As regards the possible evolution of the Australian God from
ancestor-worship, it must be noted that Mr. Howitt credits the groups with
possessing 'headmen,' a kind of chiefs, whereas some inquirers, in Brough
Smyth's collection, disbelieve in regular chiefs. Mr. Howitt writes:--

'The Supreme Spirit, who is believed in by all the tribes I refer to here
[in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently
as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the defunct headman.'

Now, the traces of 'headmanship' among the tribes are extremely faint; no
such headman rules large areas of country, none is known to be worshipped
after death, and the malevolence of the Supreme Spirit is not illustrated
by the details of Mr. Howitt's own statement, but the reverse. Indeed, he
goes on at once to remark that '_Darumulun_ was not, it seems to me,
everywhere thought a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could
severely punish the trespasses committed against these tribal ordinances
and customs whose first institution is ascribed to him.'

To punish transgressions of his law is not the essence of a malevolent
being. Darumulun 'watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish, by
disease or death, the breach of his ordinances,' moral or ritual. His name
is too sacred to be spoken except in whispers, and the anthropologist will
observe that the names of the human dead are also often tabooed. But the
divine name is not thus tabooed and sacred when the mere folklore about
him is narrated. The informants of Mr. Howitt instinctively distinguished
between the mythology and the religion of Darumulun.[9] This distinction--
the secrecy about the religion, the candour about the mythology--is
essential, and accounts for our ignorance about the inner religious
beliefs of early races. Mr. Howitt himself knew little till he was
initiated. The grandfather of Mr. Howitt's friend, _before the white men
came to Melbourne_, took him out at night, and, pointing to a star, said:
'You will soon be a man; you see _Bunjil_ [Supreme Being of certain
tribes] up there, and he can see you, and all you do down here.' Mr.
Palmer, speaking of the Mysteries of Northern Australians (mysteries under
divine sanction), mentions the nature of the moral instruction. Each lad
is given, 'by one of the elders, advice so kindly, fatherly, and
impressive, as often to soften the heart, and draw tears from the youth.'
He is to avoid adultery, not to take advantage of a woman if he finds her
alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]

At the Mysteries Darumulun's real name may be uttered, at other times he
is 'Master' (_Biamban_) or 'Father' (_Papang_), exactly as we say 'Lord'
and 'Father.'

It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose
instructions would certainly not be conveyed in the _Bora_, or tribal
mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798,
and must have been practised in 1688. Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral
lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless
love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the
example of Gods, in classical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the
Master, Biamban; and to make such idols, except at the Mysteries, is
forbidden 'under pain of death.' Those which are made are destroyed as
soon as the rites are ended.[12] The future life (apparently) is then
illustrated by the burial of a living elder, who rises from a grave.
This may, however, symbolise the 'new life' of the Mystae, 'Worse have I
fled; better have I found,' as was sung in an Athenian rite. The whole
result is, by what Mr. Howitt calls 'a quasi-religious element,' to
'impress upon the mind of the youth, in an indelible manner, those rules
of conduct which form the moral law of the tribe.'[13]

Many other authorities could be adduced for the religious sanction of
morals in Australia. A watchful being observes and rewards the conduct or
men; he is named with reverence, if named at all; his abode is the
heavens; he is the Master and Lord of things; his lessons 'soften the
heart,'[14]

  'What wants this Knave
  That a _God_ should have?'

I shall now demonstrate that the religion patronised by the Australian
Supreme Being, and inculcated in his Mysteries, is actually used to
counteract the immoral character which natives acquire by associating with
Anglo-Saxon Christians.[15]

Mr. Howitt[16] gives an account of the Jeraeil, or Mysteries of the
Kurnai. The old men deemed that through intercourse with whites 'the lads
had become selfish and no longer inclined to share that which they
obtained by their own exertions, or had given them, with their friends.'
One need not say that selflessness is the very essence of goodness, and
the central moral doctrine of Christianity. So it is in the religious
Mysteries of the African Yao; a selfish man, we shall see, is spoken of as
'uninitiated.' So it is with the Australian Kurnai, whose mysteries and
ethical teaching are under the sanction of their Supreme Being. So much
for the anthropological dogma that early theology has no ethics.

The Kurnai began by kneading the stomachs of the lads about to be
initiated (that is, if they have been associating with Christians), to
expel selfishness and greed. The chief rite, later, is to blindfold every
lad, with a blanket closely drawn over his head, to make whirring sounds
with the _tundun_, or Greek _rhombos_, then to pluck off the blankets, and
bid the initiate raise their faces to the sky. The initiator points to it,
calling out, 'Look there, look there, look there!' They have seen in this
solemn way the home of the Supreme Being, 'Our Father,' Mungan-ngaur
(Mungan = 'Father,' ngaur = 'our'), whose doctrine is then unfolded by the
old initiator ('headman') 'in an impressive manner.'[17] 'Long ago there
was a great Being, Mungan-ngaur, who lived on the earth.' His son Tundun
is _direct ancestor_ of the Kurnai. Mungan initiated the rites, and
destroyed earth by water when they were impiously revealed. 'Mungan left
the earth, and ascended to the sky, where he still remains.'

Here Mungan-ngaur, a Being not defined as spirit, but immortal, and
dwelling in heaven, is Father, or rather grandfather, not maker,
of the Kurnai. This _may_ be interpreted as ancestor-worship, but the
opposite myth, of making or creating, is of frequent occurrence in many
widely-severed Australian districts, and co-exists with evolutionary
myths. Mungan-ngaur's precepts are:

  1. _To listen to and obey the old men_.
  2. _To share everything they have with their friends_.
  3. _To live peaceably with their friends_.

  4. _Not to interfere with girls or married women_.

  5. _To obey the food restrictions until they are released from them by
     the old men_.

Mr. Howitt concludes: 'I venture to assert that it can no longer be
maintained that the Australians have no belief which can be called
religious, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and
individual morality under a supernatural sanction.' On this topic
Mr. Hewitt's opinion became more affirmative the more deeply he was
initiated.[18]

The Australians are the lowest, most primitive savages, yet no
propitiation by food is made to their moral Ruler, in heaven, as if he
were a ghost.

The laws of these Australian divine beings apply to ritual as well as to
ethics, as might naturally be expected. But the moral element is
conspicuous, the reverence is conspicuous: we have here no mere ghost,
propitiated by food or sacrifice, or by purely magical rites. His very
image (modelled on a large scale in earth) is no vulgar idol: to make such
a thing, except on the rare sacred occasions, is a capital offence.
Meanwhile the mythology of the God has often, in or out of the rites,
nothing rational about it.

On the whole it is evident that Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example,
underrates the nature of Australian religion. He cites a case of
addressing the ghost of a man recently dead, which is asked not to bring
sickness, 'or make loud noises in the night,' and says: 'Here we may
recognise the essential elements of a cult.' But Mr. Spencer does not
allude to the much more essentially religious elements which he might have
found in the very authority whom he cites, Mr. Brough Smyth.[19] This
appears, as far as my scrutiny goes, to be Mr. Spencer's solitary
reference to Australia in the work on 'Ecclesiastical Institutions.' Yet
the facts which he and Mr. Huxley ignore throw a light very different from
theirs on what they consider 'the simplest condition of theology.'

Among the causes of confusion in thought upon religion, Mr. Tylor mentions
'the partial and one-sided application of the historical method of inquiry
into theological doctrines.'[20] Here, perhaps, we have examples. In its
highest aspect that 'simplest theology' of Australia is free from the
faults of popular theology in Greece. The God discourages sin, though, in
myth, he is far from impeccable. He is almost too revered to be named
(except in mythology) and is not to be represented by idols. He is not
moved by sacrifice; he has not the chance; like Death in Greece, 'he only,
of all Gods, loves not gifts.' Thus the status of theology does not
correspond to what we look for in very low culture. It would scarcely be a
paradox to say that the popular Zeus, or Ares, is degenerate from
Mungan-ngaur, or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy,
and almost literally 'marks the sparrow's fall.'

If we knew all the mythology of Darumulun, we should probably find it
(like much of the myth of Pundjel or Bunjil) on a very different level
from the theology. There are two currents, the religious and the mythical,
flowing together through religion. The former current, religious, even
among very low savages, is pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit.
The latter current, mythological, is full of magic, mummery, and
scandalous legend. Sometimes the latter stream quite pollutes the
former, sometimes they flow side by side, perfectly distinguishable, as
in Aztec ethical piety, compared with the bloody Aztec ritualism.
Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on the impure stream, the
lusts, mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively,
or altogether, neglecting (as we have shown) what is honest and of good
report.

The worse side of religion is the less sacred, and therefore the more
conspicuous. Both elements are found co-existing, in almost all races, and
nobody, in our total lack of historical information about the beginnings,
can say which, if either, element is the earlier, or which, if either, is
derived from the other. To suppose that propitiation of corpses and then
of ghosts came first is agreeable, and seems logical, to some writers
who are not without a bias against all religion as an unscientific
superstition. But we know so little! The first missionaries in Greenland
supposed that there was not, there, a trace of belief in a Divine Being.
'But when they came to understand their language better, they found quite
the reverse to be true ... and not only so, but they could plainly gather
from a free dialogue they had with some perfectly wild Greenlanders (at
that time avoiding any direct application to their hearts) that their
ancestors must have believed in a Supreme Being, and did render him some
service, which their posterity neglected little by little...'[21] Mr.
Tylor does not refer to this as a trace of Christian Scandinavian
influence on the Eskimo.[22]

That line, of course, may be taken. But an Eskimo said to a missionary,
'Thou must not imagine that no Greenlander thinks about these things'
(theology). He then stated the argument from design. 'Certainly there
must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too...
Ah, did I but know him, how I would love and honour him.' As St. Paul
writes: 'That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath
showed it unto them ... being understood by the things which are made ...
but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened.'[23] In fact, mythology submerged religion. St. Paul's theory of
the origin of religion is not that of an 'innate idea,' nor of a direct
revelation. People, he says, reached the belief in a God from the Argument
for Design. Science conceives herself to have annihilated teleological
ideas. But they are among the probable origins of religion, and would lead
to the belief in a Creator, whom the Greenlander thought beneficent, and
after whom he yearned. This is a very different initial step in religious
development, if initial it was, from the feeding of a corpse, or a ghost.

From all this evidence it does not appear how non-polytheistic,
non-monarchical, non-Manes-worshipping savages evolved the idea of a
relatively supreme, moral, and benevolent Creator, unborn, undying,
watching men's lives. 'He can go everywhere, and do everything.'[24]

[Footnote 1: Fitzroy, ii. 180. Darwin. _Descent of Man_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. We seem to have little information about Fuegian
religion either before or after the cruise of the _Beagle_.]

[Footnote 3: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 422.]

[Footnote 4: Fitzroy, ii. 190, 191]

[Footnote 5: _Travels in West Africa_, p. 442.]

[Footnote 6: _Early Voyages to Australia_, 102-111 (Hakluyt Society).]

[Footnote 7: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 846.]

[Footnote 8: _Journal of the Anthrop. Institute_, 1884. See, for less
dignified accounts, op. cit. xxiv. xxv.]

[Footnote 9: _Journal_, xiii. 193.]

[Footnote 10: _Journal_, xiii. 296.]

[Footnote 11: Op. cit. p. 450.]

[Footnote 12: P. 453.]

[Footnote 13: P. 457.]

[Footnote 14: See Brough Smyth, _Aborigines_, i. 426; Taplin, _Native
Races of Australia_. According to Taplin, Nurrumdere was a deified black
fellow, who died on earth. This is not the case of Baiame, but is said,
rather vaguely, to be true of Daramulun. _J.A.I._, xiii. 194, xxv. 297.]

[Footnote 15: From a brief account of the Fire Ceremony, or _Engwurra_ of
certain tribes in Central Australia, it seems that religious ceremonies
connected with Totems are the most notable performances. Also 'certain
mythical ancestors,' of the '_alcheringa_, or dream-times,' were
celebrated; these real or ideal human beings appear to 'sink their
identity in that of the object with which they are associated, and from
which they are supposed to have originated.' There appear also to be
places haunted by 'spirit individuals,' in some way mixed up with Totems,
but nothing is said of sacrifice to these Manes. The brief account is by
Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F.J. Gillen, _Proc. Royal Soc.
Victoria_, July 1897. This Fire Ceremony is not for lads--not a kind of
confirmation in the savage church--but is intended for adults.]

[Footnote 16: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1886, p. 310.]

[Footnote 17: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1885, p. 313.]

[Footnote 18: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. p. 459.]

[Footnote 19: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, p. 674.]

[Footnote 20: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 450.]

[Footnote 21: Cranz, pp. 198, 199.]

[Footnote 22: _Journal Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. 348-356.]

[Footnote 23: Rom. i. 19. Cranz, i. 199.]

[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work, _The Australian Race_, reports of
'godless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and
in Gippsland. These reports are usually the result of the ignorance or
contempt of white observers, cf. Tylor, i. 419. The reader is referred to
the Introduction for additional information about Australian beliefs, and
for replies to objections.]




XI

SUPREME GODS NOT NECESSARILY DEVELOPED OUT OF 'SPIRITS'

Before going on to examine the high gods of other low savages, I must here
again insist on and develop the theory, not easily conceived by us, that
the Supreme Being of savages belongs to another branch of faith than
ghosts, or ghost-gods, or fetishes, or Totems, and need not be--probably
is not--essentially derived from these. We must try to get rid of our
theory that a powerful, moral, eternal Being was, from the first, _ex
officio_, conceived as 'spirit;' and so was necessarily derived from a
ghost.

First, what was the process of development?

We have examined Mr. Tylor's theory. But, to take a practical case: Here
are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers
than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor worshippers; not polytheists; with
no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on
the _Anima Mundi_. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost
of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above,
'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge
continent? I cannot see that this problem has been solved or frankly
faced.

The distinction between the Australian deity, at his highest power,
unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the ordinary, waning, easily forgotten,
cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman, is essential. It is not easy to
show how, in 'the dark backward' of Australian life, the notion of
Mungan-ngaur grew from the idea of the ghost of a warrior. But there is no
logical necessity for the belief in the evolution of this god out
of that ghost. These two factors in religion--ghost and god--seem to
have perfectly different sources, and it appears extraordinary that
anthropologists have not (as far as I am aware) observed this circumstance
before.

Mr. Spencer, indeed, speaks frequently of living human beings adored as
gods. I do not know that these are found on the lowest levels of savagery,
and Mr. Jevons has pointed out that, before you can hail a man as a god,
you must have the idea of God. The murder of Captain Cook notoriously
resulted from a scientific experiment in theology. 'If he is a god, he
cannot be killed.' So they tried with a dagger, and found that the honest
captain was but a mortal British mariner--no god at all. 'There are
degrees.' Mr. Spencer's men-gods become real gods--after death.[1]

Now the Supreme Being of savage faith, as a rule, never died at all. He
belonged to a world that knew not Death.

One cause of our blindness to the point appears to be this: We have from
childhood been taught that 'God is a Spirit.' We, now, can only conceive
of an eternal being as a 'spirit.' We know that legions of savage gods are
now regarded as spirits. And therefore we have never remarked that there
is no reason why we should take it for granted that the earliest deities
of the earliest men were supposed by them to be 'spirits' at all. These
gods might most judiciously be spoken of, not as 'spirits,' but as
'undefined eternal beings.' To us, such a being is necessarily a spirit,
but he was by no means necessarily so to an early thinker, who may not
yet have reached the conception of a ghost.

A ghost is said, by anthropologists, to have developed into a god. Now,
the very idea of a ghost (apart from a wraith or fetch) implies the
previous _death_ of his proprietor. A ghost is the phantasm of a _dead_
man. But anthropologists continually tell us, with truth, that the idea
of death as a universal ordinance is unknown to the savage. Diseases and
death are things that once did not exist, and that, normally, ought not to
occur, the savage thinks. They are, in his opinion, supernormally caused
by magicians and spirits. Death came into the world by a blunder, an
accident, an error in ritual, a decision of a god who was before Death
was. Scores of myths are told everywhere on this subject.[2]

The savage Supreme Being, with added power, omniscience, and morality, is
the idealisation of the savage, as conceived of by himself, _minus_
fleshly body (as a rule), and _minus_ Death. He is not necessarily a
'spirit,' though that term may now be applied to him. He was not
originally differentiated as 'spirit' or 'not spirit.' He is a Being,
conceived of without the question of 'spirit,' or 'no spirit' being
raised; perhaps he was originally conceived of before that question could
be raised by men. When we call the Supreme Being of savages a 'spirit' we
introduce our own animistic ideas into a conception where it may not have
originally existed. If the God is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th
power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as
well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of God. He
believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the
sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just a
_Being_, anthropomorphic, not a _mrart_, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is
a _wesen_, Being, _Vui_; we have hardly a term for an immortal existence
so undefined. If the being is an idealised first ancestor (as among the
Kurnai), he is not, on that account, either man or ghost of man. In the
original conception he is a powerful intelligence who was from the first:
who was already active long before, by a breach of his laws, an error in
the delivery of a message, a breach of ritual, or what not, death entered
the world. He was not affected by the entry of death, he still exists.

Modern minds need to become familiar with this indeterminate idea of the
savage Supreme Being, which, logically, may be prior to the evolution of
the notion of ghost or spirit.

But how does it apply when, as by the Kurnai, the Supreme Being is
reckoned an ancestor?

It can very readily be shown that, when the Supreme Being of a savage
people is thus the idealised First Ancestor, he can never have been
envisaged by his worshippers as at any time a _ghost_; or, at least,
cannot logically have been so envisaged where the nearly universal
belief occurs that death came into the world by accident, or needlessly.

Adam is the mythical first ancestor of the Hebrews, but he died, [Greek:
uper moron], and was not worshipped. Yama, the first of Aryan men who
died, was worshipped by Vedic Aryans, but _confessedly_ as a ghost-god.
Mr. Tylor gives a list of first ancestors deified. The Ancestor of the
Maudans did not die, consequently is no ghost; _emigravit_, he 'moved
west.' Where the First Ancestor is also the Creator (Dog-rib Indians), he
can hardly be, and is not, regarded as a mortal. Tamoi, of the Guaranis,
was 'the ancient of heaven,' clearly no mortal man. The Maori Maui was the
first who died, but he is not one of the original Maori gods. Haetsh,
among the Kamchadals, precisely answers to Yama. Unkulunkulu will be
described later.[3]

This is the list: Where the First Ancestor is equivalent to the Creator,
and is supreme, he is--from the first--deathless and immortal. When he
dies he is a confessed ghost-god.

Now, ghost-worship and dead ancestor-worship are impossible before the
ancestor is dead and is a ghost. But the essential idea of Mungan-ngaur,
and Baiame, and most of the high gods of Australia, and of other low
races, is that _they never died at all_. They belong to the period before
death came into the world, like Qat among the Melanesians. They arise in
an age that knew not death, and had not reflected on phantasms nor evolved
ghosts. They could have been conceived of, in the nature of the case, by a
race of immortals who never dreamed of such a thing as a ghost. For these
gods, the ghost-theory is not required, and is superfluous, even
contradictory. The early thinkers who developed these beings did not need
to know that men die (though, of course, they did know it in practice),
still less did they need to have conceived by abstract speculation the
hypothesis of ghosts. Baiame, Cagn, Bunjil, in their adorers' belief, were
_there_; death later intruded among men, but did not affect these divine
beings in any way.

The ghost-theory, therefore, by the evidence of anthropology itself, is
not needed for the evolution of the high gods of savages. It is only
needed for the evolution of ghost-propitiation and genuine dead-ancestor
worship. Therefore, the high gods described were not necessarily once
ghosts--were not idealised _mortal_ ancestors. They were, naturally, from
the beginning, from before the coming in of death, immortal Fathers, now
dwelling on high. Between them and apotheosised mortal ancestors there is
a great gulf fixed--the river of death.

The explicitly stated distinction that the high creative gods never were
mortal men, while other gods are spirits of mortal men, is made in every
quarter. 'Ancestors _known_ to be human were _not_ worshipped as
[original] gods, and ancestors worshipped as [original] gods were not
believed to have been human.'[4]

Both kinds may have a generic name, such as _kalou_, or _wakan_, but the
specific distinction is universally made by low savages. On one hand,
original gods; on the other, non-original gods that were once ghosts. Now,
this distinction is often calmly ignored; whereas, when any race has
developed (like late Scandinavians) the Euhemeristic hypothesis ('all gods
were once men'), that hypothesis is accepted as an historical statement of
fact by some writers.

It is part of my theory that the more popular ghost-worship of souls of
people whom men have loved, invaded the possibly older religion of the
Supreme Father. Mighty beings, whether originally conceived of as
'spirits' or not, came, later, under the Animistic theory, to be reckoned
as spirits. They even (but not among the lowest savages) came to be
propitiated by food and sacrifice. The alternative, for a Supreme Being,
when once Animism prevailed, was sacrifice (as to more popular ghost
deities) or neglect. We shall find examples of both alternatives. But
sacrifice does not prove that a God was, in original conception, a ghost,
or even a spirit. 'The common doctrine of the Old Testament is not that
God is spirit, but that the spirit [_rúah_ = 'wind,' 'living breath'] of
Jehovah, going forth from him, works in the world and among men.'[5]

To resume. The high Gods of savagery--moral, all-seeing directors of
things and of men--are not explicitly envisaged as spirits at all by their
adorers. The notion of soul or spirit is here out of place. We can best
describe Pirnmeheal, and Nápi and Baiame as 'magnified non-natural men,'
or undefined beings who were from the beginning and are undying. They are,
like the easy Epicurean Gods, _nihil indiga nostri_. Not being ghosts,
they crave no food from men, and receive no sacrifice, as do ghosts, or
gods developed out of ghosts, or gods to whom the ghost-ritual has been
transferred. For this very reason, apparently, they seem to be spoken of
by Mr. Grant Allen as 'gods to talk about, not gods to adore; mythological
conceptions rather than religious beings.'[6] All this is rather hard on
the lowest savages. If they sacrifice to a god, then the god is a hungry
ghost; if they don't, then the god is 'a god to talk about, not to adore,'
Luckily, the facts of the Bora ritual and the instruction given there
prove that Mungan-nganr and other names _are_ gods to adore, by ethical
conformity to their will and by solemn ceremony, not merely gods to talk
about.

Thus, the highest element in the religion of the lowest savages does not
appear to be derived from their theory of ghosts. As far as we can say, in
the inevitable absence of historical evidence, the highest gods of savages
may have been believed in, as Makers and Fathers and Lords of an
indeterminate nature, before the savage had developed the idea of souls
out of dreams and phantasms. It is logically conceivable that savages may
have worshipped deities like Baiame and Darumulun before they had evolved
the notion that Tom, Dick, or Harry has a separable soul, capable of
surviving his bodily decease. Deities of the higher sort, by the very
nature of savage reflections on death and on its non-original casual
character, are prior, or may be prior, or cannot be shown not to be prior,
to the ghost theory--the alleged origin of religion. For their evolution
the ghost theory is not logically demanded; they can do without it. Yet
_they_, and not the spirits, bogles, Mrarts, _Brewin_, and so forth, are
the high gods, the gods who have most analogy--as makers, moral guides,
rewarders, and punishers of conduct (though that duty is also occasionally
assumed by ancestral spirits)--with our civilised conception of the
divine. Our conception of God descends not from ghosts, but from the
Supreme Beings of non-ancestor-worshipping peoples.

As it seems impossible to point out any method by which low, chiefless,
non-polytheistic, non-metaphysical savages (if any such there be) evolved
out of ghosts the eternal beings who made the world, and watch over
morality: as the people themselves unanimously distinguish such beings
from ghost-gods, I take it that such beings never were ghosts. In this
case the Animistic theory seems to me to break down completely. Yet these
high gods of low savages preserve from dimmest ages of the meanest culture
the sketch of a God which our highest religious thought can but fill up to
its ideal. Come from what germ he may, Jehovah or Allah does not come from
a ghost.

It may be retorted that this makes no real difference. If savages did not
invent gods in consequence of a fallacious belief in spirit and soul,
still, in some other equally illogical way they came to indulge the
hypothesis that they had a Judge and Father in heaven. But, if the ghost
theory of the high Gods is wrong, as it is conspicuously superfluous, that
_does_ make some difference. It proves that a widely preached scientific
conclusion may be as spectral as Bathybius. On other more important
points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion
without too much diffident apprehensiveness.

[Footnote 1: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 417, 421. 'The medicine men
are treated as gods.... The medicine man becomes a god after death.']

[Footnote 2: I have published a chapter on Myths on the Origin of Death in
_Modern Mythology_.]

[Footnote 3: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 311-316.]

[Footnote 4: Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 197.]

[Footnote 5: Robertson Smith. _The Prophets of Israel_, p. 61.]

[Footnote 6: _Evolution of the Idea of God_, p. 170.]




XII

SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS

It is among 'the lowest savages' that the Supreme Beings are most regarded
as eternal, moral (as the morality of the tribe goes, or above its
habitual practice), and _powerful_. I have elsewhere described the Bushman
god Cagn, as he was portrayed to Mr. Orpen by Qing, who 'had never
before seen a white man except fighting.' Mr. Orpen got the facts from
Qing by inducing him to explain the natives' pictures on the walls of
caves. 'Cagn made all things, and we pray to him,' thus: 'O Cagn, O Cagn,
are we not thy children? Do you not see us hunger? Give us food.' As to
ethics, 'At first Cagn was very good, but he got spoilt through fighting
so many things.' 'How came he into the world?' 'Perhaps with those who
brought the Sun: only the initiated know these things.' It appears that
Qing was not yet initiated in the dance (answering to a high rite of the
Australian _Bora_) in which the most esoteric myths were unfolded.[1]

In Mr. Spencer's 'Descriptive Sociology' the religion of the Bushmen is
thus disposed of. 'Pray to an insect of the caterpillar kind for success
in the chase.' That is rather meagre. They make arrow-poison out of
caterpillars,[2] though Dr. Bleek, perhaps correctly, identifies Cagn
with i-kaggen, the insect.

The case of the Andaman Islanders may be especially recommended to
believers in the anthropological science of religion. For long these
natives were the joy of emancipated inquirers as the 'godless Andamanese.'
They only supply Mr. Spencer's 'Ecclesiastical Institutions' with
a few instances of the ghost-belief.[3] Yet when the Andamanese are
scientifically studied _in situ_ by an educated Englishman, Mr. Man, who
knows their language, has lived with them for eleven years, and presided
over our benevolent efforts 'to reclaim them from their savage state,'
the Andamanese turn out to be quite embarrassingly rich in the higher
elements of faith. They have not only a profoundly philosophical
_religion_, but an excessively absurd _mythology_, like the Australian
blacks, the Greeks, and other peoples. If, on the whole, the student of
the Andamanese despairs of the possibility of an ethnological theory of
religion, he is hardly to be blamed.

The people are probably Negritos, and probably 'the original inhabitants,
whose occupation dates from prehistoric times.'[4] They use the bow, they
make pots, and are considerably above the Australian level. They have
second-sighted men, who obtain status 'by relating an extraordinary dream,
the details of which are declared to have been borne out subsequently by
some unforeseen event, as, for instance, a sudden death or accident.' They
have to produce fresh evidential dreams from time to time. They see
phantasms of the dead, and coincidental hallucinations.[5] All this is as
we should expect it to be.

Their religion is probably not due to missionaries, as they always shot
all foreigners, and have no traditions of the presence of aliens on the
islands before our recent arrival.[6] Their God, Puluga, is 'like fire,'
but invisible. He was never born, and is immortal. By him were all things
created, except the powers of evil. He knows even the thoughts of the
heart. He is angered by _yubda_ = sin, or wrong-doing, that is falsehood,
theft, grave assault, murder, adultery, bad carving of meat, and (as a
crime of witchcraft) by burning wax.[7] 'To those in pain or distress he
is pitiful, and sometimes deigns to afford relief.' He is Judge of Souls,
and the dread of future punishment 'to _some_ extent is said to affect
their course of action in the present life.'[8]

This Being could not be evolved out of the ordinary ghost of a
second-sighted man, for I do not find that ancestral ghosts are
worshipped, nor is there a trace of early missionary influence, while
Mr. Man consulted elderly and, in native religion, well-instructed
Andamanese for his facts.

Yet Puluga lives in a large stone house (clearly derived from ours at Port
Blair), eats and drinks, foraging for himself, and is married to a green
shrimp.[9] There is the usual story of a Deluge caused by the moral wrath
of Puluga. The whole theology was scrupulously collected from natives
unacquainted with other races.

The account of Andamanese religion does not tally with the anthropological
hypothesis. Foreign influence seems to be more than usually excluded by
insular conditions and the jealousy of the 'original inhabitants.' The
evidence ought to make us reflect on the extreme obscurity of the whole
problem.

Anthropological study of religion has hitherto almost entirely overlooked
the mysteries of various races, except in so far as they confirm the entry
of the young people into the ranks of the adult. Their esoteric moral and
religious teaching is nearly unknown to us, save in a few instances. It is
certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies,
because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use
of the _rhombos_ to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual
daubing with dirt; and the sacred _ballets d'action_, in which, as Lucian
and Qing say, mystic facts are 'danced out.'[10] But, while Greece
retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis
which filled minds like Plato's and Pindar's with a happy religious awe.
Now, similar 'softening of the heart' was the result of the teaching in
the Australian _Bora_: the Yao mysteries inculcate the victory over self;
and, till we are admitted to the secrets of all other savage mysteries
throughout the world, we cannot tell whether, among mummeries,
frivolities, and even license, high ethical doctrines are not presented
under the sanction of religion. The New Life, and perhaps the future life,
are undeniably indicated in the Australian mysteries by the simulated
Resurrection.

I would therefore no longer say, as in 1887, that the Hellenic genius must
have added to 'an old medicine dance' all that the Eleusinian mysteries
possessed of beauty, counsel, and consolation[11]. These elements, as well
as the barbaric factors in the rites, may have been developed out of such
savage doctrine as softens the hearts of Australians and Yaos. That this
kind of doctrine receives religious sanction is certain, where we know the
secret of savage mysteries. It is therefore quite incorrect, and strangely
presumptuous, to deny, with almost all anthropologists, the alliance of
ethics with religion among the most backward races. We must always
remember their secrecy about their inner religion, their frankness about
their mythological tales. These we know: the inner religion we ought to
begin to recognise that we do not know.

The case of the Andamanese has taught us how vague, even now, is our
knowledge, and how obscure is our problem. The example of the Melanesians
enforces these lessons. It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any
theory. Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and
reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on
common subjects 'the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when
the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.'[12] The Banks
Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side,
and a Polynesian element on the other.

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.

The incorporeal Vuis, 'with nothing like a human life, have a much higher
place than Qat and his brothers in the religious system.' They have
neither names, nor shapes, nor legends, they receive sacrifice, and are in
some uncertain way connected with stones; these stones usually bear a
fanciful resemblance to fruits or animals (p. 275). The only sacrifice, in
Banks Islands, is that of shell-money. The mischievous spirits are Tamate,
ghosts of men. There is a belief in _mana_ (magical _rapport_). Dr.
Codrington cannot determine the connection of this belief with that in
spirits. Mana is the uncanny, is X, the unknown. A revived impression of
sense is _nunuai_, as when a tired fisher, half asleep at night, feels the
'draw' of a salmon, and automatically strikes.[15] The common ghost is a
bag of _nunuai_, as living man, in the opinion of some philosophers, is a
bag of 'sensations.' Ghosts are only seen as spiritual lights, which so
commonly attend hallucinations among the civilised. Except in the prayers
to Qat and Marawa, prayer only invokes the dead (p. 285). 'In the western
islands the offerings are made to ghosts, and consumed by fire; in the
eastern (Banks) isles they are made to spirits (beings, _Vui_), and
there is no sacrificial fire.' Now, the worship of ghosts goes, in these
isles, with the higher culture, 'a more considerable advance in the arts
of life;' the worship of non-ghosts, _Vui_, goes with the lower material
culture.[16] This is rather the reverse of what we should expect, in
accordance with the anthropological theory. According, however, to our
theory, Animism and ghost-worship may be of later development, and belong
to a higher level of culture, than worship of a being, or beings, that
never were ghosts. In Leper's Isle, 'ghosts do not appear to have prayers
or sacrifices offered to them,' but cause disease, and work magic.[17]

The belief in the soul, in Melanesia, does _not_ appear to proceed 'from
their dreams or visions in which deceased or absent persons are presented
to them, for they do not appear to believe that the soul goes out from the
dreamer, or presents itself as an object in his dreams,' nor does belief
in other spirits seem to be founded on 'the appearance of life or motion
in inanimate things.'[18]

To myself it rather looks as if all impressions had their _nunuai_, real,
bodiless, persistent, after-images; that the soul is the complex of all of
these _nunuai_; that there is in the universe a kind of magical other,
called _mana_, possessed, in different proportions, by different men,
_Vui_, _tamate_, and material objects, and that the _atai_ or _ataro_ of a
man dead, his ghost, retains its old, and acquires new _mana_.[19] It is an
odd kind of metaphysic to find among very backward and isolated savages.
But the lesson of Melanesia teaches us how very little we really know of
the religion of low races, how complex it is, how hardly it can be forced
into our theories, if we take it as given in our knowledge, allow for our
ignorance, and are not content to select facts which suit our hypothesis,
while ignoring the rest. On a higher level of material culture than the
Melanesians are the Fijians.

Fijian religion, as far as we understand, resembles the others in drawing
an impassable line between ghosts and eternal gods. The word _Kalou_ is
applied to all supernal beings, and mystic or magical things alike. It
seems to answer to _mana_ in New Zealand and Melanesia, to _wakan_ in
North America, and to _fée_ in old French, as when Perrault says, about
Bluebeard's key, 'now the key was _fée_.' All Gods are _Kalou_, but all
things that are _Kalou_ are not Gods. Gods are _Kalou vu_; deified ghosts
are _Kalou yalo_. The former are eternal, without beginning of days or end
of years; the latter are subject to infirmity and even to death.[20]

The Supreme Being, if we can apply the term to him, is Ndengei, or Degei,
'who seems to be an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal
existence.' This idea is not easily developed out of the conception of a
human soul which has died into a ghost and may die again. His myth
represents him as a serpent, emblem of eternity, or a body of stone with a
serpent's head. His one manifestation is given by eating. So neglected is
he that a song exists about his lack of worshippers and gifts. 'We made
men,' says Ndengei, 'placed them on earth, and yet they share to us only
the under shell.'[21] Here is an extreme case of the self-existent
creative Eternal, mythically lodged in a serpent's body, and reduced to a
jest.

It is not easy to see any explanation, if we reject the hypothesis that
this is an old, fallen form of faith, 'with scarcely a temple.' The other
unborn immortals are mythical warriors and adulterers, like the popular
deities of Greece. Yet Ndengei receives prayers through two sons of his,
mediating deities. The priests are possessed, or inspired, by spirits and
gods. One is not quite clear as to whether Ndengei is an inspiring god or
not; but that prayers are made to him is inconsistent with the belief in
his eternal inaction. A priest is represented as speaking for Ndengei,
probably by inspiration. 'My own mind departs from me, and then, when it
is truly gone, my god speaks by me,' is the account of this 'alternating
personality' given by a priest.[22]

After informing us that Ndengei is starved, Mr. Williams next tells about
offerings to him, in earlier days, of hundreds of hogs.[23] He sends rain
on earth. Animals, men, stones, may all be _Kalou_. There is a Hades as
fantastic as that in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead,' and second sight
flourishes.

The mysteries include the sham raising of the dead, and appear to be
directed at propitiatory ghosts rather than at Ndengei. There are scenes
of license; 'particulars of almost incredible indecency have been
privately forwarded to Dr. Tylor.'[24]

Suppose a religious reformer were to arise in one of the many savage
tribes who, as we shall show, possess, but neglect, an Eternal Creator.
He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of Japan.
The Mikado was a political Dendid or Ndengei--an awful, withdrawn,
impotent potentate. Power was wielded by the Tycoon. A Mikado of genius
asserted himself; hence arose modern Japan. In the same way, a religious
reformer like Khuen Ahten in Egypt would preach down minor gods, ghosts
and sacred beasts, and proclaim the primal Maker, Ndengei, Dendid, Mtanga.
'The king shall hae his ain again.' Had it not been for the Prophets,
Israel, by the time that Greece and Rome knew Israel, would have been
worshipping a horde of little gods, and even beasts and ghosts, while the
Eternal would have become a mere name--perhaps, like Ndengei and Atahocan
and Unkulunkulu, a jest. The Old Testament is the story of the prolonged
effort to keep Jehovah in His supreme place. To make and to succeed in
that effort was the _differentia_, of Israel. Other peoples, even the
lowest, had, as we prove, the germinal conception of a God--assuredly not
demonstrated to be derived from the ghost theory, logically in no need of
the ghost theory, everywhere explicitly contrasted with the ghost theory.
'But their foolish heart was darkened.'

It is impossible to prove, historically, which of the two main elements in
belief--the idea of an Eternal Being or Beings, or the idea of surviving
ghosts--came first into the minds of men. The idea of primeval Eternal
Beings, as understood by savages, does not depend on, or require, the
ghost theory. But, as we almost always find ghosts and a Supreme Being
together, where we find either, among the lowest savages, we have no
historical ground for asserting that either is prior to the other. Where
we have no evidence to the belief in the Maker, we must not conclude that
no such belief exists. Our knowledge is confused and scanty; often it is
derived from men who do not know the native language, or the native sacred
language, or have not been trusted with what the savage treasures as his
secret. Moreover, if anywhere ghosts are found without gods, it is an
inference from the argument that an idea familiar to very low savage
tribes, like the Australians, and falling more and more into the
background elsewhere, though still extant and traceable, might, in certain
cases, be lost and forgotten altogether.

To take an example of half-forgotten deity. Mr. Im Thurn, a good observer,
has written on 'The Animism of the Indians of British Guiana.' Mr. Im
Thurn justly says: 'The man who above all others has made this study
possible is Mr. Tylor.' But it is not unfair to remark that Mr. Im Thurn
naturally sees most distinctly that which Mr. Tylor has taught him to
see--namely, Animism. He has also been persuaded, by Mr. Dorman, that the
Great Spirit of North American tribes is 'almost certainly nothing more
than a figure of European origin, reflected and transmitted almost beyond
recognition on the mirror of the Indian mind,' That is not my opinion: I
conceive that the Red Indians had their native Eternal, like the
Australians, Fijians, Andamanese, Dinkas, Yao, and so forth, as will be
shown later.

Mr. Im Thurn, however, dilates on the dream origin of the ghost theory,
giving examples from his own knowledge of the difficulty with which Guiana
Indians discern the hallucinations of dreams from the facts of waking
life. Their waking hallucinations are also so vivid as to be taken for
realities.[25] Mr. Im Thurn adopts the hypothesis that, from ghosts, 'a
belief has arisen, but very gradually, in higher spirits, and, eventually,
in a Highest Spirit; and, keeping pace with the growth of these beliefs,
a habit of reverence for and worship of spirits.' On this hypothesis,
the spirit latest evolved, and most worshipful, ought, of course, to be
the 'Highest Spirit.' But the reverse, as usual, is the case. The Guiana
Indians believe in the continued, but not in the everlasting, existence of
a man's ghost.[26] They believe in no spirits which were not once tenants
of material bodies.[27]

The belief in a Supreme Spirit is only attained 'in the highest form of
religion'--Andamanese, for instance--as Mr. Im Thurn uses 'spirit' where
we should say 'being.' 'The Indians of Guiana know no god.'[28]

'But it is true that various words have been found in all, or nearly all,
the languages of Guiana which have been supposed to be names of a Supreme
Being, God, a Great Spirit, in the sense which those phrases bear in the
language of the higher religions.'

Being interpreted, these Guiana names mean--

  _The Ancient One,
  The Ancient One in Sky-land,
  Our Maker,
  Our Father,
  Our Great Father._

'None of those in any way involves the attributes of a god.'

The Ancient of Days, Our Father in Sky-land, Our Maker, do rather convoy
the sense of God to a European mind. Mr. Im Thurn, however, decides that
the beings thus designated were supposed ancestors who came into Guiana
from some other country, 'sometimes said to have been that entirely
natural country (?) which is separated from Guiana by the ocean of the
air.'[29]

Mr. Im Thurn casually observed (having said nothing about morals in
alliance with Animism):

'The fear of unwittingly offending the countless visible and invisible
beings ... kept the Indians very strictly within their own rights and from
offending against the rights of others.'

This remark dropped out at a discussion of Mr. Im Thurn's paper, and
clearly demonstrated that even a very low creed 'makes for
righteousness.'[30]

Probably few who have followed the facts given here will agree with Mr. Im
Thurn's theory that 'Our Maker,' 'Our Father,' 'The Ancient One of the
Heaven,' is merely an idealised human ancestor. He falls naturally into
his place with the other high gods of low savages. But we need much more
information on the subject than Mr. Im Thurn was able to give.

His evidence is all the better, because he is a loyal follower of Mr.
Tylor. And Mr. Tylor says: 'Savage Animism is almost devoid of that
ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainspring
of practical religion.'[31] 'Yet it keeps the Indians very strictly
within their own rights and from offending the rights of others.' Our own
religion is rarely so successful.[32]

In the Indians of Guiana we have an alleged case of a people still deep in
the animistic or ghost-worshipping case, who, by the hypothesis, have not
yet evolved the idea of a god at all.

When the familiar names for God, such as Maker, Father, Ancient of Days,
occur in the Indian language, Mr. Im Thurn explains the neglected Being
who bears these titles as a remote deified ancestor. Of course, when a
Being with similar titles occurs where ancestors are not worshipped, as in
Australia and the Andaman Islands, the explanation suggested by Mr. Im
Thurn for the problem of religion in Guiana, will not fit the facts.

It is plain that, _a priori_, another explanation is conceivable. If a
people like the Andamanese, or the Australian tribes whom we have studied,
had such a conception as that of Puluga, or Baiame, or Mungan-ngaur and
then, _later_, developed ancestor-worship with its propitiatory sacrifices
and ceremonies, ancestor-worship, as the newest evolved and infinitely the
most practical form of cult, would gradually thrust the belief in a
Puluga, or Mungan-ngaur, or Cagn into the shade. The ancestral spirit, to
speak quite plainly, can be 'squared' by the people in whom he takes a
special interest for family reasons. The equal Father of all men cannot
be 'squared,' and declines (till corrupted by the bad example of ancestral
ghosts) to make himself useful to one man rather than to another. For
these very intelligible, simple, and practical reasons, if the belief in
a Mungan-ngaur came first in evolution, and the belief in a practicable
bribable family ghost came second, the ghost-cult would inevitably crowd
out the God-cult.[33] The name of the Father and Maker would become a
mere survival, _nominis umbra_, worship and sacrifice going to the
ancestral ghost. That explanation would fit the state of religion which
Mr. Im Thurn has found, rightly or wrongly, in British Guiana.

But, if the idea of a universal Father and Maker came last in evolution,
as a refinement, then, of course, it ought to be the newest, and therefore
the most fashionable and potent of Guianese cults. Precisely the reverse
is said to be the case. Nor can the belief indicated in such names
as Father and Maker be satisfactorily explained as a refinement of
ancestor-worship, because, we repeat, it occurs where ancestors are not
worshipped.

These considerations, however unpleasant to the devotees of Animism, or
the ghost theory, are not, in themselves, illogical, nor contradictory of
the theory of evolution, which, on the other hand, fits them perfectly
well. That god thrives best who is most suited to his environment. Whether
an easy-going, hungry ghost-god with a liking for his family, or a moral
Creator not to be bribed, is better suited to an environment of not
especially scrupulous savages, any man can decide. Whether a set of not
particularly scrupulous savages will readily evolve a moral unbribable
Creator, when they have a serviceable family ghost-god eager to oblige, is
a question as easily resolved.

Beyond all doubt, savages who find themselves under the watchful eye of a
moral deity whom they cannot 'square' will desert him as soon as they have
evolved a practicable ghost-god, useful for family purposes, whom they
_can_ square. No less manifestly, savages, who already possess a throng of
serviceable ghost-gods, will not enthusiastically evolve a moral Being who
despises gifts, and only cares for obedience. 'There is a great deal of
human nature in man,' and, if Mr. Im Thurn's description of the Guianese
be correct, everything we know of human nature, and of evolution, assures
us that the Father, or Maker, or Ancient of Days came first; the
ghost-gods, last. What has here been said about the Indians of Guiana
(namely, that they are now more ghost and spirit worshippers, with only a
name surviving to attest a knowledge of a Father and Maker in Heaven)
applies equally well to the Zulus. The Zulus are the great standing type
of an animistic or ghost-worshipping race without a God. But, had they a
God (on the Australian pattern) whom they have forgotten, or have they not
yet evolved a God out of Animism?

The evidence, collected by Dr. Callaway, is honest, but confused. One
native, among others, put forward the very theory here proposed by us as
an alternative to that of Mr. Im Thurn. 'Unkulunkulu' (the idealised but
despised First Ancestor) 'was not worshipped [by men]. For it is not
worship when people see things, as rain, or food, or corn, and say,
"Yes, these things were made by Unkulunkulu.... Afterwards they [men]
had power to change those things, that they might become the Amatongos"
[might belong to the ancestral spirits]. _They took them away from
Unkulunkulu_.'[34]

Animism supplanted Theism. Nothing could be more explicit. But, though we
have found an authentic Zulu text to suit our provisional theory, the most
eminent philosophical example must not reduce us into supposing that this
text settles the question. Dr. Callaway collected great masses of Zulu
answers to his inquiries, and it is plain that a respondent, like the
native theologian whom we have cited, may have adapted his reply to what
he had learned of Christian doctrine. Having now the Christian notion of a
Divine Creator, and knowing, too, that the unworshipped Unkulunkulu is
said to have 'made things,' while only ancestral spirits, are worshipped,
the native may have inferred that worship (by Christians given to the
Creator) was at some time transferred by the Zulus from Unkulunkulu to the
Amatongo. The truth is that both the anthropological theory (spirits
first, Gods last), and our theory (Supreme Being first, spirits next) can
find warrant in Dr. Callaway's valuable collections. For that reason, the
problem must be solved after a survey of the whole field of savage and
barbaric religion; it cannot be settled by the ambiguous case of the
Zulus alone.

Unkulunkulu is represented as 'the First Man, who broke off in the
beginning.' 'They are ancestor-worshippers,' says Dr. Callaway, 'and
believe that their first ancestor, the First Man, was the Creator.'[35]
But they may, like many other peoples, have had a different original
tradition, and have altered it, just because they are now such fervent
ancestor-worshippers. Unkulunkulu was prior to Death, which came among men
in the usual mythical way.[36] Whether Unkulunkulu still exists, is
rather a moot question: Dr. Callaway thinks that he does not.[37] If not,
he is an exception to the rule in Australia, Andaman, among the Bushmen,
the Fuegians, and savages in general, who are less advanced in culture
than the Zulus. The idea, then, of a Maker of things who has ceased to
exist occurs, if at all, not in a relatively primitive, but in a
relatively late religion. On the analogy of pottery, agriculture, the use
of iron, villages, hereditary kings, and so on, the notion of a dead Maker
is late, not early. It occurs where men have iron, cattle, agriculture,
kings, houses, a disciplined army, _not_ where men have none of these
things. The Zulu godless ancestor-worship, then, by parity of reasoning,
is, like their material culture, not an early but a late development. The
Zulus 'hear of a King which is above'--'the heavenly King.'[38] 'We did
not hear of him first from white men.... But he is not like Unkulunkulu,
who, we say, made all things.'

Here may be dimly descried the ideas of a God, and a subordinate demiurge.
'The King is above, Unkulunkulu is beneath.' The King above punishes sin,
striking the sinner by lightning. Nor do the Zulus know how they have
sinned. 'There remained only that word about the heaven,' 'which,' says
Dr. Callaway, 'implies that there might have been other words which are
now lost.' There is great confusion of thought. Unkulunkulu made the
heaven, where the unknown King reigns, a hard task for a
First Man.[39]

'In process of time we have come to worship the Amadhlozi (spirits) only,
because we know not what to say about Unkulunkulu.'[40] 'It is on that
account, then, that we seek out for ourselves the Amadhlozi (spirits),
that we may not always be thinking about Unkulunkulu.'

All this attests a faint lingering shadow of a belief too ethereal, too
remote, for a practical conquering race, which prefers intelligible
serviceable ghosts, with a special regard for their own families.

Ukoto, a very old Zulu, said: 'When we were children it was said "The Lord
is in heaven." ... They used to point to the Lord on high; we did not hear
his name.' Unkulunkulu was understood, by this patriarch, to refer to
immediate ancestors, whose mimes and genealogies he gave.[41] 'We heard it
said that the Creator of the world was the Lord who is above; people used
always, when I was growing up, to point towards heaven.'

A very old woman was most reluctant to speak of Unkulunkulu; at last she
said, 'Ah, it is he in fact who is the Creator, who is in heaven, of whom
the ancients spoke.' Then the old woman began to babble humorously of how
the white men made all things. Again, Unkulunkulu is said to have been
created by Utilexo. Utilexo was invisible, Unkulunkulu was visible, and so
got credit not really his due.[42] When the heaven is said to be the
Chief's (the chief being a living Zulu) 'they do not believe what they
say,' the phrase is a mere hyperbolical compliment.[43]

On this examination of the evidence, it certainly seems as logical to
conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as
lower races entertain, and then nearly lost it; as to say that Zulus,
though a monarchical race, have not yet developed a King-God out of the
throng of spirits (Amatongo). The Zulus, the Norsemen of the South, so to
speak, are a highly practical military race. A Deity at all abstract was
not to their liking. Serviceable family spirits, who continually provided
an excuse for a dinner of roast beef, were to their liking. The less
developed races do not kill their flocks commonly for food. A sacrifice is
needed as a pretext. To the gods of Andamanese, Bushmen, Australians, no
sacrifice is offered. To the Supreme Being of most African peoples no
sacrifice is offered. There is no festivity in the worship of these
Supreme Beings, no feasting, at all events. They are not to be 'got at' by
gifts or sacrifices. The Amatongo are to be 'got at,' are bribable, supply
an excuse for a good dinner, and thus the practical Amatongo are honoured,
while, in the present generation of Zulus, Unkulunkulu is a joke, and the
Lord in Heaven is the shadow of a name. Clearly this does not point to the
recent but to the remote development of the higher ideas, now superseded
by spirit-worship.

We shall next see how this view, the opposite of the anthropological
theory, works when applied to other races, especially to other African
races.

[Footnote 1: When I wrote _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_ (ii. 11-13) I
regarded Cagn as 'only a successful and idealised medicine man.' But I now
think that I confused in my mind the religious and the mythological
aspects of Cagn. One of unknown origin, existing before the sun, a Maker
of all things, prayed to, but not in receipt of sacrifice, is no medicine
man, except in his myth.]

[Footnote 2: The omissions in Mr. Spencer's system may possibly be
explained by the circumstance that, as he tells us, he collected his
facts 'by proxy.' While we find Waitz much interested in and amazed by the
benevolent Supreme Being of many African tribes, that personage is only
alluded to as 'Alleged Benevolent Supreme Being' in Mr. Spencer's
_Descriptive Sociology_, and is usually left out of sight altogether in
his _Principles of Sociology_ and _Ecclesiastical Institutions_. Yet we
have precisely the same kind of evidence of observers for this 'alleged'
benevolent Supreme Being as we have for the _canaille_ of ghosts and
fetishes. If he is a deity of a rather lofty moral conception, of course
he need not be propitiated by human sacrifices or cold chickens. _That_
kind of material evidence to the faith in him must be absent by the
nature of the case; but the coincident testimony of travellers to belief
in a Supreme Being cannot be dismissed as 'alleged.']

[Footnote 3: Pp. 676, 677.]

[Footnote 4: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 70.]

[Footnote 5: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 96-98.]

[Footnote 6: xii. 156, 157.]

[Footnote 7: xii. 112.]

[Footnote 8: xii. 158.]

[Footnote 9: xii. 158.]

[Footnote 10: _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 281-288.]

[Footnote 11: Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, 133.]

[Footnote 12: _J.A.I_. x. 263.]

[Footnote 13: _J.A.I_. 267.]

[Footnote 14: _J.A.I_. x. 267.]

[Footnote 15: P. 281. This is a _nunuai_ with which I am familiar. Flying
fish, in Banks Island, take the _rôle_ of salmon. The natives think it
real, but without form or substance.]

[Footnote 16: Codrington, _Melanesia_, p. 122.]

[Footnote 17: _J.A.I_. x. 294.]

[Footnote 18: Op. cit. x. 313.]

[Footnote 19: _J.A.I_. x. 300.]

[Footnote 20: Williams's _Fiji_, p. 218. See Mr. Thomson's remarks cited
later.]

[Footnote 21: _Fiji_, p. 217.]

[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 228.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. p. 230.]

[Footnote 24: _J.A.I_. xiv. 30.]

[Footnote 25: _J.A.I_. xi. 361-366.]

[Footnote 26: Ibid. xi. 374.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid. xi. 376.]

[Footnote 28: Ibid. xi. 376]

[Footnote 29: _J.A.I_. xi. 378.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid. 382.]

[Footnote 31: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360.]

[Footnote 32: Conceivably, however, the Guiana spirits who have so much
moral influence, exert it by magical charms. 'The belief in the power of
charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but a great amount of
gentle dealing,' says Livingstone, of the Africans. However they work, the
spirits work for righteousness.]

[Footnote 33: Obviously there could be no Family God before there was the
institution of the Family.]

[Footnote 34: Callaway, _Rel. of Amazulu_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 35: Callaway, p. 1.]

[Footnote 36: Op. cit. p. 8.]

[Footnote 37: Op. cit. p. 7.]

[Footnote 38: Op. cit. p. 19.]

[Footnote 39: Callaway, pp. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 40: Pp. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 41: Pp. 49, 50.]

[Footnote 42: P. 67.]

[Footnote 43: P. 122.]




XIII

MORE SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS

If many of the lowest savages known to us entertain ideas of a Supreme
Being such as we find among Fuegians, Australians, Bushmen, and
Andamanese, are there examples, besides the Zulus, of tribes higher in
material culture who seem to have had such notions, but to have partly
forgotten or neglected them? Miss Kingsley, a lively, observant, and
unprejudiced, though rambling writer, gives this very account of the Bantu
races. Oblivion, or neglect, will show itself in leaving the Supreme Being
alone, as he needs no propitiation, while devoting sacrifice and ritual to
fetishes and ghosts. That this should be done is perfectly natural if the
Supreme Being (who wants no sacrifice) were the first evolved in thought,
while venal fetishes and spirits came in as a result of the ghost theory.
But if, as a result of the ghost theory, the Supreme Being came last in
evolution, he ought to be the most fashionable object of worship, the
latest developed, the most powerful, and most to be propitiated. He is the
reverse.

To take an example: the Dinkas of the Upper Nile ('godless,' says Sir
Samuel Baker) 'pay a very theoretical kind of homage to the all-powerful
Being, dwelling in heaven, whence he sees all things. He is called
"Dendid" (great rain, that is, universal benediction?).' He is omnipotent,
but, being all beneficence, can do no evil; so, not being feared, he is
not addressed in prayer. The evil spirit, on the other hand, receives
sacrifices. The Dinkas have a strange old chant:

  'At the beginning, when Dendid made all things,
    He created the Sun,
  And the Sun is born, and dies, and comes again!
    He created the Stars,
  And the Stars are born, and die, and come again!
    He created Man,
  And Man is born, and dies, and returns no more!'

It is like the lament of Moschus.[1]

Russegger compares the Dinkas, and all the neighbouring peoples who hold
the same beliefs, to modern Deists.[2] They are remote from Atheism and
from cult! Suggestions about an ancient Egyptian influence are made, but
popular Egyptian religion was not monotheistic, and priestly thought could
scarcely influence the ancestors of the Dinkas. M. Lejean says these
peoples are so practical and utilitarian that missionary religion takes no
hold on them. Mr. Spencer does not give the ideas of the Dinkas, but it is
not easy to see how the too beneficent Dendid could be evolved out of
ghost-propitiation, 'the origin of all religions.' Rather the Dinkas, a
practical people, seem to have simply forgotten to be grateful to
their Maker; or have decided, more to the credit of the clearness of their
heads than the warmth of their hearts, that gratitude he does not want.
Like the French philosopher they cultivate _l'indépendance du coeur_,
being in this matter strikingly unlike the Pawnees.

Let us now take a case in which ancestor-worship, and no other form of
religion (beyond mere superstitions), has been declared to be the practice
of an African people. Mr. Spencer gives the example of natives of the
south-eastern district of Central Africa described by Mr. Macdonald in
'Africana.'[3] The dead man becomes a ghost-god, receives prayer and
sacrifice, is called a Mulungu (= great ancestor or = sky?), is preferred
above older spirits, now forgotten; such old spirits may, however, have a
mountain top for home, a great chief being better remembered; the
mountain god is prayed to for rain; higher gods were probably similar
local gods in an older habitat of the Yao.[4]

Such is in the main Mr. Spencer's _résumé_ of Mr. Duff Macdonald's report.
He omits whatever Mr. Macdonald says about a Being among the Yaos,
analogous to the Dendid of the Dinkas, or the Darumulun of Australia, or
the Huron Ahone. Yet analysis detects, in Mr. Macdonald's report,
copious traces of such a Being, though Mr. Macdonald himself believes in
ancestor-worship as the Source of the local religion. Thus, Mulungu,
or Mlungu, used as a proper name, 'is said to be the great spirit,
_msimu_, of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits
together.[5] This is a singular stretch of savage philosophy, and
indicates (says Mr. Macdonald) 'a grasping after a Being who is the
totality of all individual existence.... If it fell from the lips of
civilised men instead of savages, it would be regarded as philosophy.
Expressions of this kind among the natives are partly traditional, and
partly dictated by the big thoughts of the moment.' Philosophy it is, but
a philosophy dependent on the ghost theory.

I go on to show that the Wayao have, though Mr. Spencer omits him, a Being
who precisely answers to Darumulun, if stripped (perhaps) of his ethical
aspect. On this point we are left in uncertainty, just because Mr.
Macdonald could not ascertain the secrets of his mysteries, which, in
Australia, have been revealed to a few Europeans.

Where Mulungu is used as a proper name, it 'certainly points to a personal
Being, by the Wayao sometimes said to be the same as Mtanga. At other
times he is a Being that possesses many powerful servants, but is himself
kept a good deal beyond the scene of earthly affairs, like the gods of
Epicurus.'

This is, of course, precisely the feature in African theology which
interests us. The Supreme Being, in spite of the potency which his
supposed place as latest evolved out of the ghost-world should naturally
give him, is neglected, either as half forgotten, or for philosophical
reasons. For these reasons Epicurus and Lucretius make their gods
_otiosi_, unconcerned, and the Wayao, with their universal collective
spirit, are no mean philosophers.

'This Mulungu' or Mtanga, 'in the world beyond the grave, is represented
as assigning to spirits their proper places,' whether for ethical reasons
or not we are not informed.[6] Santos (1586) says 'they acknowledge a God
who, both in this world and the next, measures retribution for the good or
evil done in this.'

'In the native hypothesis about creation "the people of Mulungu" play a
very important part.' These ministers of his who do his pleasure are,
therefore, as is Mulungu himself, regarded as prior to the existing world.
Therefore they cannot, in Wayao opinion, be ghosts of the dead at all; nor
can we properly call them 'spirits.' They are _beings_, original,
creative, but undefined. The word Mulungu, however, is now applied to
spirits of individuals, but whether it means 'sky' (Salt) or whether it
means 'ancestor' (Bleek), it cannot be made to prove that Mulungu himself
was originally envisaged as 'spirit.' For, manifestly, suppose that the
idea of powerful beings, undefined, came first in evolution, and was
followed by the ghost idea, that idea might then be applied to explaining
the pre-existent creative powers.

Mtanga is by 'some' localised as the god of Mangochi, an Olympus left
behind by the Yao in their wanderings. Here, some hold, his voice is still
audible. 'Others say that Mtanga never was a man ... he was concerned in
the first introduction of men into the world. He gets credit for ...
making mountains and rivers. He is intimately associated with a year of
plenty. He is called Mchimwene juene, 'a very chief.' He has a kind of
evil opposite, _Chitowe_, but this being, the Satan of the creed, 'is a
child or subject of Mtanga,' an evil angel, in fact.[7]

The thunder god, Mpambe, in Yao, Njasi (lightning) is also a minister of
the Supreme Being. 'He is sent by Mtanga with rain.' Europeans are
cleverer than natives, because we 'stayed longer with the people of
God (Mulungu).'

I do not gather that, though associated with good crops, Mtanga or
Mulungu receives any sacrifice or propitiation. 'The chief addresses
his own god;'[8] the chief 'will not trouble himself about his
great-great-grand-father; he will present his offering to his own
immediate predecessor, saying, 'O father, I do not know all your
relatives; you know them all: invite them to feast with you.'[9]

'All the offerings are supposed to point to some want of the spirit,'
Mtanga, on the other hand, is _nihil indiga nostri_.

A village god is given beer to drink, as Indra got Soma. A dead chief is
propitiated by human sacrifices. I find no trace of any gift to Mtanga.
His mysteries are really unknown to Mr. Macdonald: they were laughed at
by a travelled and 'emancipated' Yao.[10]

'These rites are supposed to be inviolably concealed by the initiated, who
often say that they would die if they revealed them.'[11]

How can we pretend to understand a religion if we do not know its secret?
That secret, in Australia, yields the certainty of the ethical character
of the Supreme Being. Mr. Macdonald says about the initiator (a grotesque
figure):--

'He delivers lectures, and is said to give much good advice ... the
lectures condemn selfishness, and a selfish person is called _mwisichana_,
that is, "uninitiated."'

There could not be better evidence of the presence of the ethical element
in the religious mysteries. Among the Yao, as among the Australian Kurnai,
the central secret lesson of religion is the lesson of unselfishness.

It is not stated that Mtanga instituted or presides over the mysteries.
Judging from the analogy of Eleusis, the Bora, the Red Indian initiations,
and so on, we may expect this to be the belief; but Mr. Macdonald knows
very little about the matter.

The legendary tales say 'all things in this world were made by "God."'
'At first there were not people, but "God" and beasts.' 'God' here,
is Mlungu. The other statement is apparently derived from existing
ancestor-worship, people who died became 'God' (Mlungu). But God is prior
to death, for the Yao have a form of the usual myth of the origin of
death, also of sleep: 'death and sleep are one word, they are of one
family.' God dwells on high, while a malevolent 'great one,' who disturbed
the mysteries and slew the initiated, was turned into a mountain.[12]

In spite of information confessedly defective, I have extracted from Mr.
Spencer's chosen authority a mass of facts, pointing to a Yao belief in a
primal being, maker of mountains and rivers; existent before men were; not
liable to death--which came late among them--beneficent; not propitiated
by sacrifice (as far as the evidence goes); moral (if we may judge by the
analogy of the mysteries), and yet occupying the religious background,
while the foreground is held by the most recent ghosts. To prove Mr.
Spencer's theory, he ought to have given a full account of this being, and
to have shown how he was developed out of ghosts which are forgotten in
inverse ratio to their distance from the actual generation. I conceive
that Mr. Spencer would find a mid-point between a common ghost and Mtanga,
in a ghost of a chief attached to a mountain, the place and place-name
preserving the ghost's name and memory. But it is, I think, a far cry from
such a chief's ghost to the pre-human, angel-served Mtanga.

Of ancestor worship and ghost worship, we have abundant evidence. But the
position of Mtanga raises one of these delicate and crucial questions
which cannot be solved by ignoring their existence. Is Mtanga evolved
out of an ancestral ghost? If so, why, as greatest of divine beings, 'Very
Chief,' and having powerful ministers under him, is he left unpropitiated,
unless it be by moral discourses at the mysteries? As a much more advanced
idea than that of a real father's ghost, he ought to be much later in
evolution, fresher in conception, and more adored. How do we explain his
lack of adoration? Was he originally envisaged as a ghost at all, and, if
so, by what curious but uniform freak of savage logic is he regarded as
prior to men, and though a ghost, prior to death? Is it not certain that
such a being could be conceived of by men who had never dreamed of ghosts?
Is there any logical reason why Mtanga should not be regarded as
originally on the same footing as Munganngaur, but now half forgotten and
neglected, for practical or philosophical reasons?

On these problems light is thrown by a successor of Mr. Spencer's
authority, Mr. Duff Macdonald, in the Blantyre Mission. This gentleman,
the Rev. David Clement Scott, has published 'A Cyclopaedic Dictionary
of the Mang'anja Language in British Central Africa.'[13] Looking at
ancestral spirits first, we find _Mzimu_, 'spirits of the departed,
supposed to come in dreams.' Though abiding in the spirit world, they also
haunt thickets, they inspire Mlauli, prophets, and make them rave and
utter predictions. Offerings are made to them. Here is a prayer: 'Watch
over me, my ancestor, who died long ago; tell the great spirit at the head
of my race from whom my mother came.' There are little hut-temples, and
the chief directs the sacrifices of food, or of animals. There are
religious pilgrimages, with sacrifice, to mountains. God, like men in this
region, has various names, as Chiuta, 'God in space and the rainbow sign
across;' Mpambe, 'God Almighty' (or rather 'pre-excellent'); Mlezi, 'God
the Sustainer,' and Mulungu, 'God who is spirit.' Mulungu = God, 'not
spirits or fetish.' 'You can't put the plural, as God is One,' say the
natives. 'There are no idols called gods, and spirits are spirits of
people who have died, not gods.' Idols are _Zitunzi-zitunzi_. 'Spirits
are supposed to be with Mulungu.' God made the world and man. Our author
says 'when the chief or people sacrifice it is to God,' but he also says
that they sacrifice to ancestral spirits. There is some confusion of
ideas here: Mr. Macdonald says nothing of sacrifice to Mtanga.

Mr. Scott does not seem to know more about the Mysteries than Mr.
Macdonald, and his article on Mulungu does not much enlighten us. Does
Mulungu, as Creative God, receive sacrifice, or not?[14] Mr. Scott gives
no instance of this, under _Nsembe_ (sacrifice), where ancestors, or
hill-dwelling ghosts of chiefs, are offered food; yet, as we have seen,
under _Mulungu_, he avers that the chiefs and people do sacrifice to God.
He appears to be confusing the Creator with spirits, and no reliance can
be placed on this part of his evidence. 'At the back of all this'
(sacrifice to spirits) 'there is God.' If I understand Mr. Scott,
sacrifices are really made only to spirits, but he is trying to argue
that, after all, the theistic conception is at the back of the animistic
practice, thus importing his theory into his facts. His theory would,
really, be in a better way, if sacrifice is _not_ offered to the Creator,
but this had not occurred to Mr. Scott.

It is plain, in any case, that the religion of the Africans in the
Blantyre region has an element not easily to be derived from ancestral
spirit-worship, an element not observed by Mr. Spencer.

Nobody who has followed the examples already adduced will be amazed by
what Waitz calls the 'surprising result' of recent inquiries among the
great negro race. Among the branches where foreign influence is least to
be suspected, we discover, behind their more conspicuous fetishisms and
superstitions, something which we cannot exactly call Monotheism, yet
which tends in that direction.[15] Waitz quotes Wilson for the fact that,
their fetishism apart, they adore a Supreme Being as the Creator: and do
not honour him with sacrifice.

The remarks of Waitz may be cited in full:

'The religion of the negro may be considered by some as a particularly
rude form of polytheism and may be branded with the special name of
fetishism. It would follow, from a minute examination of it, that--apart
from the extravagant and fantastic traits, which are rooted in the
character of the negro, and which radiate therefrom over all his
creations--in comparison with the religions of other savages it is neither
very specially differentiated nor very specially crude in form.

'But this opinion can be held to be quite true only while we look at the
_outside_ of the negro's religion, or estimate its significance from
arbitrary pre-suppositions, as is specially the case with Ad. Wuttke.

'By a deeper insight, which of late several scientific investigators have
succeeded in attaining, we reach, rather, the surprising conclusion that
several of the negro races--on whom we cannot as yet prove, and can hardly
conjecture, the influence of a more civilised people--in the embodying of
their religious conceptions are further advanced than almost all other
savages, so far that, even if we do not call them monotheists, we may
still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism, seeing that
their religion is also mixed with a great mass of rude superstition which,
in turn, among other peoples, seems to overrun completely the purer
religious conceptions.'

This conclusion as to an element of pure faith in negro religion would not
have surprised Waitz, had recent evidence as to the same creed among lower
savages lain before him as he worked.

This volume of his book was composed in 1860. In 1872 he had become well
aware of the belief in a good Maker among the Australian natives, and of
the absence among them of ancestor worship.[16]

Waitz's remarks on the Supreme Being of the Negro are well worth noting,
from his unconcealed astonishment at the discovery.

Wilson's observations on North and South Guinea religion were published in
1856. After commenting on the delicate task of finding out what a savage
religion really is, he writes: 'The belief in one great Supreme Being,
who made and upholds all things, is universal.'[17] The names of the being
are translated 'Maker,' 'Preserver,' 'Benefactor,' 'Great Friend.' Though
compact of all good qualities, the being has allowed the world to 'come
under the control of evil spirits,' who, alone, receive religious worship.
Though he leaves things uncontrolled, yet the chief being (as in Homer)
ratifies the Oath, at a treaty, and is invoked to punish criminals when
ordeal water is to be drunk. So far, then, he has an ethical influence.
'Grossly wicked people' are buried outside of the regular place. Fetishism
prevails, with spiritualism, and Wilson thinks that mediums might pick up
some good tricks in Guinea. He gives no examples. Their inspired men do
things 'that cannot be accounted for,' by the use of narcotics.

The South Guinea Creator, Anyambia (= good spirit?), is good, but
capricious. He has a good deputy, Ombwiri (spelled 'Mbuiri' by Miss
Kingsley); _he alone has no priests_, but communicates directly with men.
The neighbouring Shekuni have mysteries of the Great Spirit. No details
are given. This great being, Mwetyi, witnesses covenants and punishes
perjury. This people are ancestor-worshippers, but their Supreme Being is
not said to receive sacrifice, as ghosts do, while he is so far from
being powerless, like Unkulunkulu, that, but for fear of his wrath,
'their national treaties would have little or no force.'[18] Having no
information about the mysteries, of course, we know nothing of other moral
influences which are, or may be exercised by these great, powerful, and
not wholly otiose beings.

The celebrated traveller, Mungo Park, who visited Africa in 1805, had good
opportunities of understanding the natives. He did not hurry through the
land with a large armed force, but alone, or almost alone, paid his way
with his brass buttons. 'I have conversed with all ranks and conditions
upon the subject of their faith,' he says, 'and can pronounce, without the
smallest shadow of doubt, that the belief in one God and in a future state
of reward and punishment is entire and universal among them.' This cannot
strictly be called monotheism, as there are many subordinate spirits who
may be influenced by 'magical ceremonies.' But if monotheism means belief
in One Spirit alone, or religious regard paid to One Spirit alone, it
exists nowhere--no, not in Islam.

Park thinks it remarkable that 'the Almighty' only receives prayers at the
new moon (of sacrifice to the Almighty he says nothing), and that, being
the creator and preserver of all things, he is 'of so exalted a nature
that it is idle to imagine the feeble supplications of wretched mortals
can reverse the decrees and change the purpose of unerring Wisdom.' The
new moon prayers are mere matters of tradition; 'our fathers did it before
us.' 'Such is the blindness of unassisted nature,' says Park, who is not
satirising, in Swift's manner, the prayers of Presbyterians at home on
Yarrow.

Thus, the African Supreme Being is unpropitiated, while inferior spirits
are constrained by magic or propitiated with food.

We meet our old problem: How has this God, in the conception of whom there
is so much philosophy, developed out of these hungry ghosts? The influence
of Islam can scarcely be suspected, Allah being addressed, of course, in
endless prayers, while the African god receives none. Indeed, it would be
more plausible to say that Mahomet borrowed Allah from the widespread
belief which we are studying, than that the negro's Supreme Being was
borrowed from Allah.

Park had, as we saw, many opportunities of familiar discussion with the
people on whose mercies he threw himself.

'But it is not often that the negroes make their religious opinions the
subject of conversation; when interrogated, in particular, concerning
their ideas of a future state, they express themselves with great
reverence, but endeavour to shorten the discussion by saying, _"Mo o mo
inta allo_" ("No man knows anything about it").'[19]

Park himself, in extreme distress, and almost in despair, chanced to
observe the delicate beauty of a small moss-plant, and, reflecting that
the Creator of so frail a thing could not be indifferent to any of His
creatures, plucked up courage and reached safety.[20] He was not of the
negro philosophy, and is the less likely to have invented it. The new moon
prayer, said in a whisper, was reported to Park, 'by many different
people,' to contain 'thanks to God for his kindness during the existence
of the past moon, and to solicit a continuation of his favour during the
new one.' This, of course, may prove Islamite influence, and is at
variance with the general tendency of the religious philosophy as
described.

We now arrive at a theory of the Supreme Being among a certain African
race which would be entirely fatal to my whole hypothesis on this topic,
if it could be demonstrated correct in fact, and if it could be stretched
so as to apply to the Australians, Fuegians, Andamanese, and other very
backward peoples. It is the hypothesis that the Supreme Being is a
'loan-god,' borrowed from Europeans.

The theory is very lucidly set forth in Major Ellis's 'Tshi-speaking
Peoples of the Gold Coast.'[21] Major Ellis's opinion coincides with that
of Waitz in his 'Introduction to Anthropology' (an opinion to which Waitz
does not seem bigoted)--namely, that 'the original form of all religion is
a raw, unsystematic polytheism,' nature being peopled by inimical powers
or spirits, and everyone worshipping what he thinks most dangerous or
most serviceable. There are few general, many local or personal, objects
of veneration.[22] Major Ellis only met this passage when he had formed
his own ideas by observation of the Tshi race. We do not pretend to
guess what 'the original form of all religion' may have been; but we have
given, and shall give, abundant evidence for the existence of a loftier
faith than this, among peoples much lower in material culture than the
Tshi races, who have metals and an organised priesthood. They occupy, in
small villages (except Coomassie and Djuabin), the forests of the Gold
Coast. The mere mention of Coomassie shows how vastly superior in
civilisation the Tshis (Ashantis and Fantis) are to the naked, houseless
Australians. Their inland communities, however, are 'mere specks in a vast
tract of impenetrable forest.' The coast people have for centuries been in
touch with Europeans, but the 'Tshi-speaking races are now much in the
same condition, both socially and morally, as they were at the time of the
Portuguese discovery.'[23]

Nevertheless, Major Ellis explains their Supreme Being as the result of
European influence! _A priori_ this appears highly improbable. That a
belief should sweep over all these specks in impenetrable forest, from
the coast-tribes in contact with Europeans, and that this belief should,
though the most recent, be infinitely the least powerful, cannot be
regarded as a plausible hypothesis. Moreover, on Major Ellis's theory the
Supreme Beings of races which but recently came for the first time in
contact with Europeans, Supreme Beings kept jealously apart from European
ken, and revered in the secrecy of ancient mysteries, must also, by
parity of reason, be the result of European influence. Unfortunately,
Major Ellis gives no evidence for his statements about the past history of
Tshi religion. Authorities he must have, and references would be welcome.

'With people in the condition in which the natives of the Gold Coast now
are, religion is not in any way allied with moral ideas.'[24] We have given
abundant evidence that among much more backward tribes morals rest on a
religious sanction. If this be not so on the Gold Coast we cannot accept
these relatively advanced Fantis and Ashantis as representing the
'original' state of ethics and religion, any more than those people with
cities, a king, a priesthood, iron, and gold, represent the 'original'
material condition of society. Major Ellis also shows that the Gods exact
chastity from aspirants to the priesthood.[25] The present beliefs
of the Gold Coast are kept up by organised priesthoods as 'lucrative
business.'[26] Where there is no lucre and no priesthood, as among more
backward races, this kind of business cannot be done. On the Gold Coast
men can only approach gods through priests.[27] This is degeneration.

Obviously, if religion began in a form relatively pure and moral, it
_must_ degenerate, as civilisation advances, under priests who 'exploit'
the lucrative, and can see no money in the pure elements of belief and
practice. That the lucrative elements in Christianity were exploited by
the clergy, to the neglect of ethics, was precisely the complaint of the
Reformers. From these lucrative elements the creed of the Apostles was
free, and a similar freedom marks the religion of Australia or of the
Pawnees. We cannot possibly, then, expect to find the 'original' state
of religion among a people subdued to a money-grubbing priesthood, like
the Tshi races. Let religion begin as pure as snow, it would be corrupted
by priestly trafficking in its lucrative animistic aspect. And priests are
developed relatively late.

Major Ellis discriminates Tshi gods as--

  1. General, worshipped by an entire tribe or more tribes.
  2. Local deities of river, hill, forest, or sea.
  3. Deities of families or corporations.
  4. Tutelary deities of individuals.

The second class, according to the natives, were appointed by the first
class, who are 'too distant or indifferent to interfere ordinarily in
human affairs.' Thus, the Huron god, Ahone, punishes nobody. He is all
sweetness and light, but has a deputy god, called Okeus. On our hypothesis
this indifference of high gods suggests the crowding out of the great
disinterested God by venal animistic competition. All of class II. 'appear
to have been originally malignant.' Though, in native belief, class I.
was prior to, and 'appointed' class II., Major Ellis thinks that malignant
spirits of class II. were raised to class I. as if to the peerage, while
classes III. and IV. 'are clearly the product of priesthood'--therefore
late.

Major Ellis then avers that when Europeans reached the Gold Coast, in the
fifteenth century, they 'appear to have found' a Northern God, Tando, and
a Southern God, Bobowissi, still adored. Bobowissi makes thunder and rain,
lives on a hill, and receives, or received, human sacrifices. But, 'after
an intercourse of some years with Europeans,' the villagers near European
forts 'added to their system a new deity, whom they termed Nana Nyankupon.
This was the God of the Christians, borrowed from them, and adapted under
a new designation, meaning 'Lord of the sky.' (This is conjectural.
_Nyankum_ = rain. _Nyansa_ has 'a later meaning, "craft."')[28]

Now Major Ellis, later, has to contrast Bosman's account of fetishism
(1700) with his own observations. According to Bosman's native source of
information, men then selected their own fetishes. These are _now_
selected by priests. Bosman's authority was wrong--or priesthood has
extended its field of business. Major Ellis argues that the revolution
from amateur to priestly selection of fetishes could not occur in
190 years, 'over a vast tract of country, amongst peoples living in
semi-isolated communities, in the midst of pathless forests, where there
is but little opportunity for the exchange of ideas, _and where we know
they have been uninfluenced by any higher race_.'

Yet Major Ellis's theory is that this isolated people _were_ influenced
by a higher race, to the extent of adopting a totally new Supreme Being,
from Europeans, a being whom they in no way sought to propitiate, and who
was of no practical use. And this they did, he says, not under priestly
influence, but in the face of priestly opposition.[29]

Major Ellis's logic does not appear to be consistent. In any case we ask
for evidence how, in the 'impenetrable forests' did a new Supreme Deity
become universally known? Are we certain that travellers (unquoted) did
not discover a deity with no priests, or ritual, or 'money in the
concern,' later than they discovered the blood-stained, conspicuous,
lucrative Bobowissi? Why was Nyankupon, the supposed new god of a new
powerful set of strangers, left wholly unpropitiated? The reverse was to
be expected.

Major Ellis writes: 'Almost certainly the addition of one more to an
already numerous family' of gods, 'was strenuously resisted by the
priesthood,' who, confessedly, are adding now lower gods every day! Yet
Nyankupon is universally known, in spite of priestly resistance.
Nyankupon, I presume = Anzambi, Anyambi, Nyambi, Nzambi, Anzam, Nyam, the
Nzam of the Fans, 'and of all Bantu coast races, the creator of man,
plants, animals, and the earth; he takes no further interest in the
affair.'[30] The crowd of _spirits_ take only too much interest; and,
therefore, are the lucrative element in religion.

It is not very easy to believe that Nyam, under all his names, was picked
up from the Portuguese, and passed apparently from negroes to Bantu all
over West Africa, despite the isolation of the groups, and the resistance
of the priesthood among tribes 'uninfluenced by any higher race.'

Nyam, like Major Ellis's class I., appoints a subordinate god to do his
work: he is truly good, and governs the malevolent spirits.[31]

The spread of Nyankupon, as described by Major Ellis, is the more
remarkable, since 'five or six miles from the sea, or even less, the
country was a _terra incognita_ to Europeans,'[32] Nyankupon was, it is
alleged, adopted, because our superiority proved Europeans to be
'protected by a deity of greater power than any of those to which they
themselves' (the Tshi races) 'offered sacrifices.'

Then, of course, Nyankupon would receive the best sacrifices of all, as
the most powerful deity? Far from that, Nyankupon received no sacrifice,
and had no priests. No priest would have a traditional way of serving him.
As the unlucky man in Voltaire says to his guardian angel, 'It is well
worth while to have a presiding genius,' so the Tshis and Bantu might
ironically remark, 'A useful thing, a new Supreme Being!' A quarter of a
continent or so adopts a new foreign god, and leaves him _planté là_;
unserved, unhonoured, and unsung. He therefore came to be thought too
remote, or too indifferent, 'to interfere directly in the affairs of the
world.' 'This idea was probably caused by the fact that the natives had
not experienced any material improvement in their condition ... although
they also had become followers of the god of the whites.'[33]

But that was just what they had not done! Even at Magellan's Straits, the
Fuegians picked up from a casual Spanish sea-captain and adored an image
of Cristo. Name and effigy they accepted. The Tshi people took neither
effigy nor name of a deity from the Portuguese settled among them. They
neither imitated Catholic rites nor adapted their own; they prayed not,
nor sacrificed to the 'new' Nyankupon. Only his name and the idea of his
nature are universally diffused in West African belief. He lives in no
definite home, or hill, but 'in Nyankupon's country.' Nyankupon, at the
present day, is 'ignored rather than worshipped,' while Bobowissi has
priests and offerings.

It is clear that Major Ellis is endeavouring to explain, by a singular
solution (namely, the borrowing of a God from Europeans), and that
a solution improbable and inadequate, a phenomenon of very wide
distribution. Nyankupon cannot be explained apart from Taaroa, Puluga,
Ahone, Ndengei, Dendid, and Ta-li-y-Tochoo, Gods to be later described,
who cannot, by any stretch of probabilities, be regarded as of European
origin. All of these represent the primeval Supreme Being, more or less
or altogether stripped, under advancing conditions of culture, of his
ethical influence, and crowded out by the horde of useful greedy ghosts or
ghost gods, whose business is lucrative. Nyankupon has no pretensions to
be, or to have been a 'spirit.'[34]

Major Ellis's theory is a natural result of his belief in a tangle of
polytheism as 'the original state of religion.' If so, there was not much
room for the natural development of Nyankupon, in whom 'the missionaries
find a parallel to the Jahveh of the Jews.'[35] On our theory Nyankupon
takes his place in the regular process of the corruption of theism by
animism.

The parallel case of Nzambi Mpungu, the Creator among the Fiorts (a Bantu
stock), is thus stated by Miss Kingsley:

'I have no hesitation in saying I fully believe Nzambi Mpungu to be a
purely native god, and that he is a great god over all things, but the
study of him is even more difficult than the study of Nzambi, because the
Jesuit missionaries who gained so great an influence over the Fiorts in
the sixteenth century identified him with Jehovah, and worked on the
native mind from that stand-point. Consequently semi-mythical traces
of Jesuit teaching linger, even now, in the religious ideas of the
Fiorts.'[36]

Nzambi Mpungu lives 'behind the firmament.' 'He takes next to no interest
in human affairs;' which is not a Jesuit idea of God.

In all missionary accounts of savage religion, we have to guard against
two kinds of bias. One is the bias which makes the observer deny any
religion to the native race, except devil-worship. The other is the bias
which lends him to look for traces of a pure primitive religious
tradition. Yet we cannot but observe this reciprocal phenomenon:
missionaries often find a native name and idea which answer so nearly to
their conception of God that they adopt the idea and the name, in
teaching. Again, on the other side, the savages, when first they hear the
missionaries' account of God, recognise it, as do the Hurons and Bakwain,
for what has always been familiar to them. This is recorded in very early
pre-missionary travels, as in the book of William Strachey on Virginia
(1612), to which we now turn. The God found by Strachey in Virginia
cannot, by any latitude of conjecture, be regarded as the result of
contact with Europeans. Yet he almost exactly answers to the African
Nyankupon, who is explained away as a 'loan-god.' For the belief in
relatively pure creative beings, whether they are morally adored, without
sacrifice, or merely neglected, is so widely diffused, that Anthropology
must ignore them, or account for them as 'loan-gods'--or give up her
theory!

[Footnote 1: Lejean, _Rev. des Deux Mondes_, April 1862, p. 760. Citing
for the chant, Beltrame, _Dictionario della lingua denka_, MS.]

[Footnote 2: Waitz, ii. 74.]

[Footnote 3: 1882.]

[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, 681.]

[Footnote 5: _Africana_, i. 66.]

[Footnote 6: _Africana_, i. 67.]

[Footnote 7: _Africana_, i. 71, 72_]

[Footnote 8: i 88.]

[Footnote 9: i. 68.]

[Footnote 10: i. 130.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid.]

[Footnote 12: _Africana_, i 279-301.]

[Footnote 13: Edinburgh, 1892.]

[Footnote 14: Incidentally Mr. Macdonald shows that, contrary to Mr.
Spencer's opinion, these savages have words for dreams and dreaming. They
interpret dreams by a system of symbols, 'a canoe is ill luck,' and 'dreams
go by contraries.']

[Footnote 15: Waitz, _Anthropologie_, ii. 167.]

[Footnote 16: Waitz and Gerland, _Anthropologie_, vi. 796-799 and 809. In
1874 Mr. Howitt's evidence on the moral element in the mysteries was not
published. Waitz scouts the idea that the higher Australian beliefs are of
European origin. 'Wir schen vielmehr uralte Trümmer ähnlicher Mythologenie
in ihnen,' (vi. 798) flotsam from ideas of immemorial antiquity.]

[Footnote 17: Wilson, p. 209.]

[Footnote 18: Wilson, p. 392.]

[Footnote 19: Park's _Journey_, i. 274, 275, 1815.]

[Footnote 20: P. 245.]

[Footnote 21: London, 1887.]

[Footnote 22: Ellis, pp. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 23: P. 4.]

[Footnote 24: Ellis, p. 10.]

[Footnote 25: P. 120.]

[Footnote 26: P. 15.]

[Footnote 27: P. 125.]

[Footnote 28: Ellis, pp. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 29: Ellis, p. 189.]

[Footnote 30: Miss Kingsley, p. 442.]

[Footnote 31: Ellis, p. 229.]

[Footnote 32: Ibid. p. 25.]

[Footnote 33: Op. cit. p. 27.]

[Footnote 34: Ellis, p. 29.]

[Footnote 35: Op. cit. p. 28.]

[Footnote 36: 'African Religion and Law,' _National Review_, September
1897, p. 132.]




XIV

AHONE. TI-RA-WÁ. NÀ-PI. PACHACAMAC. TUI LAGA. TAA-ROA

In this chapter it is my object to set certain American Creators beside
the African beings whom we have been examining. We shall range from Hurons
to Pawnees and Blackfeet, and end with Pachacamac, the supreme being of
the old Inca civilisation, with Tui Laga and Taa-roa. It will be seen that
the Hurons have been accidentally deprived of their benevolent Creator by
a bibliographical accident, while that Creator corresponds very well
with the Peruvian Pachucamac, often regarded as a mere philosophical
abstraction. The Pawnees will show us a Creator involved in a sacrificial
ritual, which is not common, while the Blackfeet present a Creator who is
not envisaged as a spirit at all, and, on our theory, represents a very
early stage of the theistic conception.

To continue the argument from analogy against Major Ellis's theory of the
European origin of Nyankupon, it seems desirable first to produce a
parallel to his case, and to that of his blood-stained subordinate
deity, Bobowissi, from a quarter where European influence is absolutely
out of the question. Virginia was first permanently colonised by
Englishmen in 1607, and the 'Historie of Travaile into Virginia,' by
William Strachey, Gent., first Secretary of the Colony, dates from the
earliest years (1612-1616). It will hardly be suggested, then, that the
natives had already adopted _our_ Supreme Being, especially as Strachey
says that the native priests strenuously opposed the Christian God.
Strachey found a house-inhabiting, agricultural, and settled population,
under chiefs, one of whom, Powhattan, was a kind of Bretwalda. The temples
contained the dried bodies of the _weroances_, or aristocracy, beside
which was their Okeus, or Oki, an image 'ill favouredly carved,' all
black dressed, 'who doth them all the harm they suffer. He is propitiated
by sacrifices of their own children' (probably an error) 'and of
strangers.'

Mr. Tylor quotes a description of this Oki, or Okeus, with his idol and
bloody rites, from Smith's 'History of Virginia' (1632)[1]. The two books,
Strachey's and Smith's, are here slightly varying copies of one original.
But, after censuring Smith's (and Strachey's) hasty theory that Okeus is
'no other than a devil,' Mr. Tylor did not find in Smith what follows in
Strachey. Okeus has human sacrifices, like Bobowissi, 'whilst the great
God (the priests tell them) who governes all the world, and makes
the son to shine, creatyng the moone and starrs his companyons ... they
calling (_sic_) Ahone. The good and peaceable God requires no such dutyes,
nor needs to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto them,'
Okeus, on the contrary, 'looking into all men's accions, and examining the
same according to the severe scheme of justice, punisheth them.... Such is
the misery and thraldome under which Sathan hath bound these wretched
miscreants.'

As if, in Mr. Strachey's own creed, Satan does not punish, in hell, the
offences of men against God!

Here, then, in addition to a devil (or rather a divine police magistrate),
and general fetishism and nature worship, we find that the untutored
Virginian is equipped with a merciful Creator, without idol, temple, or
sacrifice, as needing nought of ours. It is by the merest accident, the
use of Smith's book (1632) instead of Strachey's book (1612), that Mr.
Tylor is unaware of these essential facts[2].

Dr. Brinton, like Mr. Tylor, cites Smith for the nefarious or severe
Okeus, and omits any mention of Ahone, the benevolent Creator.[3]
Now, Strachey's evidence is early (1612), is that of a well-educated
man, fond of airing his Greek, and not prejudiced in favour of these
worshippers of 'Sathan.' In Virginia he found the unpropitiated loving
Supreme Being, beside a subordinate, like Nyankupon beside Bobowissi in
Africa.

Each highest deity, in Virginia or on the Gold Coast, is more or less
eclipsed in popular esteem by nascent polytheism and nature worship. This
is precisely what we should expect to find, if Ahone, the Creator, were
earlier in evolution, while Okeus and the rest were of the usual greedy
class of animistic corruptible deities, useful to priests. This could not
be understood while Ahone was left out of the statement.[4]

Probably Mr. Strachey's narrative justifies, by analogy, our suspicion of
Major Ellis's theory that the African Supreme Being is of European origin.
The purpose in the Ahone-Okeus creed is clear. God (Ahone) is omnipotent
and good, yet calamities beset mankind. How are these to be explained?
Clearly as penalties for men's sins, inflicted, not by Ahone, but by his
lieutenant, Okeus. But that magistrate can be, and is, appeased by
sacrifices, which it would be impious, or, at all events, useless, to
offer to the Supreme Being, Ahone. It is a logical creed, but how was the
Supreme Being evolved out of the ghost of a 'people-devouring king' like
Powhattan? The facts, very fairly attested, do not fit the anthropological
theory. It is to be remarked that Strachey's Ahone is a much less
mythological conception than that which, on very good evidence, he
attributes to the Indians of the Patowemeck River. Their Creator is spoken
of as 'a godly Hare,' who receives their souls into Paradise, whence they
are reborn on earth again, as in Plato's myth. They also regard the four
winds as four Gods. How the god took the mythological form of a hare is
diversely explained.[5]

Meanwhile the Ahone-Okeus creed corresponds to the Nyankupon-Bobowissi
creed. The American faith is certainly not borrowed from Europe, so it is
less likely that the African creed is borrowed.

As illustrations of the general theory here presented, we may now take two
tribal religions among the North American Indians. The first is that of
the equestrian Pawnees, who, thirty years ago, were dwelling on the Loup
Fork in Nebraska. The buffaloes have since been destroyed, the lands
seized, and the Pawnees driven into a 'Reservation,' where they are, or
lately were, cheated and oppressed in the usual way. They were originally
known to Europeans in four hordes, the fourth being the Skidi or Wolf
Pawnees. They seem to have come into Kansas and Nebraska, at a date
relatively remote, from Mexico, and are allied with the Lipans and
Tonkaways of that region. The Tonkaways are a tribe who, in a sacred
mystery, are admonished to 'live like the wolves,' in exactly the same way
as were the Hirpi (wolf tribe), of Mount Soracte, who practised the feat
of walking unhurt through fire.[6] The Tonkaways regard the Pawnees, who
also have a wolf tribe, as a long-separated branch of their race. If,
then, they are of Mexican origin, we might expect to find traces of Aztec
ritual among the Pawnees.

Long after they obtained better weapons they used flint-headed arrows for
slaying the only two beasts which it was lawful to sacrifice, the deer and
the buffalo. They have long been a hunting and also an agricultural
people. The corn was given to them originally by the Ruler: their god,
_Ti-ra-wá_, 'the Spirit Father.' They offer the sacrifice of a deer with
peculiar solemnity, and are a very prayerful people. The priest 'held a
relation to the Pawnees and their deity not unlike that occupied by Moses
to Jehovah and the Israelites.' A feature in ritual is the sacred bundles
of unknown contents, brought from the original home in Mexico. The Pawnees
were created by Ti-ra-wá. They believe in a happy future life, while the
wicked die, and there is an end of them. They cite their dreams of the
dead as an argument for a life beyond the tomb. 'We see ourselves living
with Ti-ra-wá!' An evil earlier race, which knew not Ti-ra-wá, was
destroyed by him in the Deluge; evidence is found in large fossil bones,
and it would be an interesting inquiry whether such fossils are always
found where the story of a 'sin-flood' occurs. If so, fossils must be
universally diffused.

As is common, the future life is attested, not only by dreams, but in the
experience of men who 'have died' and come back to life, like Secret Pipe
Chief, who told the story to Mr. Grinnell. These visions in a state of
apparent death are not peculiar to savages, and, no doubt, have had much
effect on beliefs about the next world.[7] Ghosts are rarely seen, but
auditory hallucinations, as of a voice giving good advice in time of
peril, are regarded as the speech of ghosts. The beasts are also friendly,
as fellow children with men of Ti-ra-wá. To the Morning Star the Skidi or
Wolf Pawnees offered on rare occasions a captive man. The ceremony was not
unlike that of the Aztecs, though less cruel. Curiously enough, the slayer
of the captive had instantly to make a mock flight, as in the Attic
_Bouphonia_. This, however, was a rite paid to the Morning Star, not to
Ti-ra-wá, 'the power above that moves the universe and controls all
things.' Sacrifice to Ti-ra-wá was made on rare and solemn occasions out
of his two chief gifts, deer and buffalo. 'Through corn, deer, buffalo,
and the sacred bundles, we worship _Ti-ra-wá_.'

The flesh was burned in the fire, while prayers were made with great
earnestness. In the old Skidi rite the women told the fattened captive
what they desired to gain from the Ruler. It is occasionally said that
the human sacrifice was made to _Ti-ra-wá_ himself. The sacrificer not
only fled, but fasted and mourned. It is possible that, as among the
Aztecs, the victim was regarded as also an embodiment of the God, but this
is not certain, the rite having long been disused. Mr. Grinnell got the
description from a very old Skidi. There was also a festival of thanks to
Ti-ra-wá for corn. During a sacred dance and hymn the corn is held up to
the Ruler by a woman. Corn is ritually called 'The Mother,' as in Peru.[8]
'We are like seed, and we worship through the Corn.'

Disease is caused by evil spirits, and many American soldiers were healed
by Pawnee doctors, though their hurts had refused to yield to the
treatment of the United States Army Surgeons.[9]

The miracles wrought by Pawnee medicine men, under the eyes of Major
North, far surpass what is told of Indian jugglery. But this was forty
years ago, and it is probably too late to learn anything of these
astounding performances of naked men on the hard floor of a lodge.
'Major North told me' (Mr. Grinnell) 'that he saw with his own eyes the
doctors make the corn grow,' the doctor not manipulating the plant, as in
the Mango trick, but standing apart and singing. Mr. Grinnell says: 'I
have never found any one who could even suggest an explanation.'

This art places great power in the hands of the doctors, who exhibit many
other prodigies. It is notable that in this religion we hear nothing of
ancestor-worship; all that is stated as to ghosts has been reported. We
find the cult of an all-powerful being, in whose ritual sacrifice is the
only feature that suggests ghost-worship. The popular tales and historical
reminiscences of the last generation entirely bear out by their allusions
Mr. Grinnell's account of the Pawnee faith, in which the ethical element
chiefly consists in a sense of dependence on and touching gratitude to
Ti-ra-wá, as shown in fervent prayer. Theft he abhors, he applauds valour,
he punishes the wicked by annihilation, the good dwell with him in his
heavenly home. He is addressed as A-ti-us ta-kaw-a, 'Our father in all
places.'

It is not so easy to see how this Being was developed out of
ancestor-worship, of which we find no traces among Pawnees. For
ancestor-worship among the Sioux, it is usual to quote a remark of one
Prescott, an interpreter: 'Sometimes an Indian will say, "Wah negh on she
wan da," which means, "Spirits of the dead have mercy on me." Then they
will add what they want. That is about the amount of an Indian's
prayer.'[10] Obviously, when we compare Mr. Grinnell's account of Pawnee
religion, based on his own observations, and those of Major North, and
Mr. Dunbar, who has written on the language of the tribe, we are on much
safer ground, than when we follow a contemptuous, half-educated European.

The religion of the Blackfoot Indians appears to be a ruder form of the
Pawnee faith. Whether the differences arise from tribal character, or from
decadence, or because the Blackfoot belief is in an earlier and more
backward condition than that of the Pawnees, it is not easy to be certain.
As in China, there exists a difficulty in deciding whether the Supreme
Being is identical with the great nature-god; in China the Heaven, among
the Blackfeet the Sun; or is prior to him in conception, or has been,
later, substituted for him, or placed beside him. The Blackfoot mythology
is low, crude, and, except in tales of Creation, is derisive. As in
Australia, there is a specific difference of tone between mythology and
religion.

The Blackfoot country runs east from the summit of the Rocky Mountains, to
the mouth of the Yellowstone river on the Missouri, then west to the
Yellowstone sources, across the Rocky Mountains to the Beaverhead, thence
to their summit.

As to spirits, the Blackfeet believe in, or at least tell stories of,
ghosts, which conduct themselves much as in our old-fashioned ghost
stories. They haunt people in a rather sportive and irresponsible way. The
souls or shadows of respectable persons go to the bleak country called the
Sand Hills, where they live in a dull, monotonous kind of Sheol. The
shades of the wicked are 'earth-bound' and mischievous, especially ghosts
of men slain in battle. They cause paralysis and madness, but dread
interiors of lodges; they only 'tap on the lodge-skins.' Like many Indian
tribes, the Blackfeet have the Eurydice legend. A man grieving for his
dead wife finds his way to Hades, is pitied by the dead, and allowed to
carry the woman back with him, under certain ritual prohibitions, one of
which he unhappily infringes. The range of this deeply touching story
among the Red Men, and its close resemblance to the tale of Orpheus, is
one of the most curious facts in mythology. Mr. Grinnell's friend Young
Bear, when lost with his wife in a fog, heard a Voice, 'It is well. Go on,
you are going right.' 'The top of my head seemed to lift up. It seemed as
if a lot of needles were running into it.... This must have been a ghost.'
As the wife also heard the Voice it was probably human, not hallucinatory.

Animals receive the usual amount of friendly respect from the Blackfeet.
They have also an inchoate polytheism, 'Above Persons, Ground Persons, and
Under Water Persons.' Of the first, Thunder is most important, and is
worshipped. There is the Cold Maker, a white figure on a white horse, the
Wind, and so on.

The Creator is Nà-pi, Old Man; Dr. Brinton thinks he is a personification
of Light, but Mr. Grinnell reckons it absurd to attribute so abstract a
conception to the Blackfeet. Nà-pi is simply a primal Being, an Immortal
Man,[11] who was before Death came into the world, concerning which one of
the usual tales of the Origin of Death is told. 'All things that he had
made understood him when he spoke to them--birds, animals, and people,' as
in the first chapters of Genesis. With Nà-pi, Creation worked on the lines
of adaptation to environment. He put the bighorn on the prairie. There it
was awkward, so he set it on rocky places, where it skipped about with
ease. The antelope fell on the rocks, so he removed it to the level
prairie. Nà-pi created man and woman, out of clay, but the folly of the
woman introduced Death. Nà-pi, as a Prometheus, gave fire, and taught the
forest arts. He inculcated the duty of prayer; his will should be done by
emissaries in the shape of animals. Then he went to other peoples. The
misfortunes of the Indians arise from disobedience to his laws.

Chiefs were elective, for conduct, courage, and charity.

Though weapons and utensils were buried with the dead, or exposed on
platforms, and though great men were left to sleep in their lodges,
henceforth never to be entered by the living, there is no trace known to
me of continued ancestor-worship. As many Blackfeet change their names
yearly, ancestral names are not likely to become those of gods.

The Sun is by many believed to have taken the previous place of Nà-pi in
religion; or perhaps Nà-pi _is_ the Sun. However, he is still separately
addressed in prayer. The Sun receives presents of furs and so forth; a
finger, when the prayer is for life, has been offered to him. Fetishism
probably shows itself in gifts to a great rock. There is daily prayer,
both to the Sun and to Nà-pi. Women institute Medicine Lodges, praying,
'Pity me, Sun. You have seen my life. You know that I am pure.' 'We look
on the Medicine Lodge woman as you white people do on the Roman Catholic
Sisters.' Being 'virtuous in deed, serious, and clean-minded,' the Medical
Lodge woman is in spiritual _rapport_ with Nà-pi and the Sun. To this
extent, at least, Blackfoot religion is an ethical influence.

The creed seems to be a nascent polytheism, subordinate to Nà-pi as
supreme Maker, and to the personified Sun. As Blackfoot ghosts are
'vaporous, ineffectual' for good, there seems to be nothing like ancestor
worship.

These two cults and beliefs, Pawnee and Blackfoot, may be regarded as
fairly well authenticated examples of un-Christianised American religion
among races on the borderland of agriculture and the chase. It would be
difficult to maintain that ghost-worship or ancestor-worship is a potent
factor in the evolution of the deathless Ti-ra-wá or the immortal Creator
Nà-pi, who has nothing of the spirit about him, especially as ghosts are
not worshipped.[12]

Let us now look at the Supreme Being of a civilised American people. There
are few more interesting accounts of religion than Garcilasso de la Vega's
description of faith in Peru. Garcilasso was of Inca parentage on the
spindle side; he was born in 1540, and his book, taken from the traditions
of an uncle, and aided by the fragmentary collections of Father Blas
Valera, was published in 1609. In Garcilasso's theory the original people
of Peru, Totemists and worshippers of hills and streams, Earth and Sea,
were converted to Sun worship by the first Inca, a child of the Sun. Even
the new religion included ancestor-worship and other superstitions. But
behind Sun worship was the faith in a Being who 'advanced the Sun so far
above all the stars of heaven.'[13] This Being was Pachacamac, 'the
sustainer of the world.' The question then arises, Is Pachacamac a form of
the same creative being whom we find among the lowest savages; or is he
the result of philosophical reflection? The latter was the opinion
of Garcilasso. 'The Incas and their Amautas' (learned class) 'were
philosophers.'[14]

'Pacha,' he says, = universe, and 'cama' = soul. Pachacamac, then, is
_Anima Mundi_. 'They did not even take the name of Pachacamac into their
mouths,' or but seldom and reverently, as the Australians will not, in
religious matters, mention Darumulun. Pachacamac had no temple, 'but they
worshipped him in their hearts.' That he was the Creator appears in an
earlier writer, cited by Garcilasso, Agustin de Zarate (ii. ch. 5).
Garcilasso, after denying the existence of temples to Pachacamac, mentions
one, but only one. He insists, at length, and with much logic, that He
whom, as a Christian, he worships, is in Quichua styled Pachacamac.
Moreover, the one temple to Pachacamac was not built by an Inca, but by
a race which, having heard of the Inca god, borrowed his name, without
understanding his nature, that of a Being who dwells not in temples made
with hands (ii. 186). In the temple this people, the Yuncas, offered even
human sacrifices. By the Incas to Pachacamac no sacrifice was offered
(ii. 189). This negative custom they also imposed upon the Yuncas, and
they removed idols from the Yunca temple of Pachacamac (ii. 190). Yunca
superstitions, however, infested the temple, and a Voice gave oracles
therein.[15] The Yuncas also had a talking idol, which the Inca, in
accordance with a religious treaty, occasionally consulted.

While Pachacamac, without temple or rite, was reckoned the Creator, we
must understand that Sun-worship and ancestor-worship were the practical
elements of the Inca cult. This appears to have been distasteful to the
Inca Huayna Ccapac, for at a Sun feast he gazed hard on the Sun, was
remonstrated with by a priest, and replied that the restless Sun 'must
have another Lord more powerful than himself.'[16]

This remark could not have been necessary if Pachacamac were really an
article of living and universal belief. Perhaps we are to understand that
this Inca, like his father, who seems to have been the original author of
the saying, meant to sneer at the elaborate worship bestowed on the Sun,
while Pachacamac was neglected, as far as ritual went.

In Garcilasso's book we have to allow for his desire to justify the creed
of his maternal ancestors. His criticism of Spanish versions is acute, and
he often appeals to his knowledge of Quichua, and to the direct traditions
received by him from his uncle. Against his theory of Pachacamac as a
result of philosophical thought, it may be urged that similar conceptions,
or nearly similar, exist among races not civilised like the Incas, and not
provided with colleges of learned priests. In fact, the position of
Pachacamac and the Sun is very nearly that of the Blackfoot Creator Nà-pi,
and the Sun, or of Shang-ti and the Heaven, in China. We have the Creative
Being whose creed is invaded by that of a worshipped aspect of nature, and
whose cult, quite logically, is _nil_, or nearly _nil_. There are also, in
different strata of the Inca empire, ancestor-worship, or mummy-worship,
Totemism and polytheism, with a vague mass of _huaca = Elohim, kalou,
wakan._

Perhaps it would not be too rash to conjecture that Pachacamac is not a
merely philosophical abstraction, but a survival of a Being like Nà-pi or
Ahone. Cieza de Leon calls Pachacamac 'a devil,' whose name means
'creator of the world'![17] The name, when it _was_ uttered, was spoken
with genuflexions and signs of reverence. So closely did Pachacamac
resemble the Christian Deity, that Cieza de Leon declares the devil to
have forged and insisted on the resemblance![18] It was open to Spanish
missionaries to use Pachacamac, as to the Jesuits among the Bantu to use
Mpungu, as a fulcrum for the introduction of Christianity. They preferred
to regard Pachacamac as a fraudulent fiend. Now Nzambi Mpungu, among the
Bantu, is assuredly not a creation of a learned priesthood, for the Bantu
have no learned priests, and Mpungu would be useless to the greedy
conjurers whom they do consult, as he is not propitiated. On grounds of
analogy, then, Pachacamac may be said to resemble a savage Supreme
Being, somewhat etherealised either by Garcilasso or by the Amautas, the
learned class among the subjects of the Incas. He does not seem, even so,
much superior to the Ahone of the Virginians.

We possess, however, a different account of Inca religion, from which
Garcilasso strongly dissents. The best version is that of Christoval de
Molina, who was chaplain of the hospital for natives, and wrote between
1570 and 1584.[19] Christoval assembled a number of old priests and other
natives who had taken part in the ancient services, and collected their
evidence. He calls the Creator ('not born of woman, unchangeable
and eternal') by the name Pachayachachi. 'Teacher of the world' and
'Tecsiviracocha,' which Garcilasso dismisses as meaningless.[20] He also
tells the tale of the Inca Yupanqui and the Lord of the Sun, but
says that the Incas had already knowledge of the Creator. To Yupanqui he
attributes the erection of a gold image of the Creator, utterly denied by
Garcilasso.[21] Christoval declares, again contradicted by Garcilasso,
that sacrifices were offered to the Creator. Unlike the Sun, Christoval
says, the Creator had no woman assigned to him, 'because, as he created
them, they all belonged to him' (p. 26), which, of course, is an idea that
would also make sacrifice superfluous.

Christoval gives prayers in Quichua, wherein the Creator is addressed as
_Uiracocha_.

Christoval assigns images, sacrifice, and even human sacrifice, to the
Creator Uiracocha. Garcilasso denies that the Creator Pachacamac had any
of these things, he denies that Uiracocha was the name of the Creator,
and he denies it, knowing that the Spaniards made the assertion.[22] Who
is right? Uiracocha, says Garcilasso, is one thing, with his sacrifices;
the Creator, Pachacamac, without sacrifices, is another, is GOD.

Mr. Markham thinks that Garcilasso, writing when he did, and not
consciously exaggerating, was yet less trustworthy (though 'wonderfully
accurate') than Christoval. Garcilasso, however, is 'scrupulously
truthful.'[23] 'The excellence of his memory is perhaps best shown in
his topographical details.... He does not make a single mistake,' in the
topography of three hundred and twenty places! A scrupulously truthful
gentleman, endowed with an amazing memory, and a master of his native
language, flatly contradicts the version of a Spanish priest, who also
appears to have been careful and honourable.

I shall now show that Christoval and Garcilasso have different versions of
the same historical events, and that Garcilasso bases his confutation of
the Spanish theory of the Inca Creator on his form of this historical
tradition, which follows:

The Inca Yahuarhuaccac, like George II., was at odds with his Prince of
Wales. He therefore banished the Prince to Chita, and made him serve as
shepherd of the llamas of the Sun. Three years later the disgraced
Prince came to Court, with what the Inca regarded as a cock-and-bull story
of an apparition of the kind technically styled 'Borderland.' Asleep or
awake, he knew not, he saw a bearded robed man holding a strange animal.
The appearance declared himself as Uiracocha (Christoval's name for the
Creator), a Child of the Sun; by no means as Pachacamac, the Creator of
the Sun. He announced a distant rebellion, and promised his aid to the
Prince. The Inca, hearing this narrative, replied in the tones of
Charles II., when he said about Monmouth, 'Tell James to go to hell!'[24]
The predicted rebellion, however, broke out, the Inca fled, the Prince
saved the city, dethroned his father, and sent him into the country. He
then adopted, from the apparition, the throne-name _Uiracocha,_ grew a
beard, and dressed like the apparition, to whom he erected a temple,
roofless, and unique in construction. Therein he had an image of the god,
for which he himself gave frequent sittings. When the Spaniards arrived,
bearded men, the Indians called them Uiracochas (as all the Spanish
historians say), and, to flatter them, declared falsely that Uiracocha was
their word for the Creator. Garcilasso explodes the Spanish etymology of
the name, in the language of Cuzco, which he 'sucked in with his mother's
milk.' 'The Indians said that the chief Spaniards were children of the
Sun, to make gods of them, just as they said they were children of the
apparition, Uiracocha.'[25] Moreover, Garcilasso and Cieza de Leon agree
in their descriptions of the image of Uiracocha, which, both assert,
the Spaniards conceived to represent a Christian early missionary, perhaps
St. Bartholomew.[26] Garcilasso had seen the mummy of the Inca Uiracocha,
and relates the whole tale from the oral version of his uncle, adding many
native comments on the Court revolution described.

To Garcilasso, then, the invocations of Uiracocha, in Christoval's
collection of prayers, are a native adaptation to Spanish prejudice: even
in them Pachacamac occurs.[27]

Now, Christoval has got hold of a variant of Garcilasso's narrative,
which, in Garcilasso, has plenty of humour and human nature. According to
Christoval it was not the Prince, later Inca Uiracocha, who beheld the
apparition, but the Inca Uiracocha's _son,_ Prince of Wales, as it were,
of the period, later the Inca Yupanqui.

Garcilasso corrects Christoval. Uiracocha saw the apparition, as Père
Acosta rightly says, and Yupanqui was _not_ the son but the grandson of
this Inca Uiracocha.[28] Uiracocha's own son was Pachacutec, which simply
means 'Revolution,' 'they say, by way of by-word _Pachamcutin,_ which
means "the world changes."'

Christoval's form of the story is peculiarly gratifying in one way.
Yupanqui saw the apparition _in a piece of crystal_, 'the apparition
vanished, while the piece of crystal remained. The Inca took care of it,
and they say that he afterwards saw everything he wanted in it.' The
apparition, in human form and in Inca dress, gave itself out for the Sun;
and Yupanqui, when he came to the throne, 'ordered a statue of the Sun to
be made, as nearly as possible resembling the figure he had seen in the
crystal.' He bade his subjects to 'reverence the new deity, as they had
heretofore worshipped the Creator,'[29] who, therefore, was prior to
Uiracocha.

Interesting as a proof of Inca crystal-gazing, this legend of Christoval's
cannot compete as evidence with Acosta and Garcilasso. The reader,
however, must decide as to whether he prefers Garcilasso's unpropitiated
Pachacamac, or Christoval's Uiracocha, human sacrifices, and all.[30]

Mr. Tylor prefers the version of Christoval, making Pachacamac a title of
Uiracocha.[31] He thinks that we have, in Inca religion, an example of 'a
subordinate god' (the Sun) 'usurping the place of the supreme deity,' 'the
rivalry between the Creator and the divine Sun.' In China, as we shall
see, Mr. Tylor thinks, on the other hand, that Heaven is the elder god,
and that Shang-ti, the Supreme Being, is the usurper.

The truth in the Uiracocha _versus_ Pachacamac controversy is difficult to
ascertain. I confess a leaning toward Garcilasso, so truthful and so
wonderfully accurate, rather than to the Spanish priest. Christoval, it
will be remarked, says that 'Chanca-Uiracocha was a _huaca_ (sacred place)
in Chuqui-chaca.'[32] Now Chuqui-chaca is the very place where, according
to Garcilasso, the Inca Uiracocha erected a temple to 'his Uncle, the
Apparition.'[33] Uiracocha, then, the deity who receives human sacrifice,
would be a late, royally introduced ancestral god, no real rival of the
Creator, who receives no sacrifice at all, and, as he was bearded, his
name would be easily transferred to the bearded Spaniards, whose arrival
the Inca Uiracocha was said to have predicted. But to call several or all
Spaniards by the name given to the Creator would be absurd. Mr. Tylor and
Mr. Markham do not refer to the passage in which Christoval obviously gets
hold of a wrong version of the story of the apparition.

There is yet another version of this historical legend, written forty
years after Christoval's date by Don Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-yamqui
Salcamayhua. He ranks after Garcilasso and Christoval, but before earlier
_Spanish_ writers, such as Acosta, who knew not Quichua. According to
Salcamayhuia, the Inca Uiracocha was like James III., fond of architecture
and averse to war. He gave the realm to his bastard, Urca, who was
defeated and killed by the Chancas. Uiracocha meant to abandon the
contest, but his legitimate son, Yupanqui, saw a fair youth on a rock, who
promised him success in the name of the Creator, and then vanished. The
Prince was victorious, and the Inca Uiracocha retired into private
life. This appears to be a mixture of the stories of Garcilasso and
Christoval.[34]

It is not, in itself, a point of much importance whether the Creator was
called Uiracocha (which, if it means anything, means 'sea of grease!'), or
whether he was called Pachacamac, maker of the world, or by both names.
The important question is as to whether the Creator received even human
sacrifices (Christoval) or none at all (Garcilasso). As to Pachacamac, we
must consult Mr. Payne, who has the advantage of being a Quichua scholar.
He considers that Pachacamac combines the conception of a general spirit
of living things with that of a Creator or maker of all things.
'Pachacamac and the Creator are one and the same,' but the conception of
Pachayachacic, 'ruler of the world,' 'belongs to the later period of the
Incas.'[35] Mr. Payne appears to prefer Christoval's legend of the Inca
crystal-gazer, to the rival version of Garcilasso. The Yunca form of the
worship of Pachacamac Mr. Payne regards as an example of degradation.[36]
He disbelieves Garcilasso's statement, that human sacrifices were not
made to the Sun. Garcilasso must, if Mr. Payne is right, have been a
deliberate liar, unless, indeed, he was deceived by his Inca kinsfolk.
The reader can now estimate for himself the difficulty of knowing much
about Peruvian religion, or, indeed, of any religion. For, if Mr. Payne
is right about the lowest savages having no conception of God, or even of
spirit, though the idea of a great Creator, a spirit, is one of the
earliest efforts of 'primitive logic,' we, of course, have been merely
fabling throughout.

Garcilasso's evidence, however, seems untainted by Christian attempts to
find a primitive divine tradition. Garcilasso may possibly be refining on
facts, but he asks for no theory of divine primitive tradition in the case
of Pachacamac, whom he attributes to philosophical reflection.

In the following chapter we discuss 'the old Degeneration theory,' and
contrast it with the scheme provisionally offered in this book. We have
already observed that the Degeneration theory biasses the accounts of some
missionaries who are obviously anxious to find traces of a Primitive
Tradition, originally revealed to all men, but only preserved in a pure
form by the Jews. To avoid deception by means of this bias we have chosen
examples of savage creative beings from wide areas, from diverse ages,
from non-missionary statements, from the least contaminated backward
peoples, and from their secret mysteries and hymns.

Thus, still confining ourselves to the American continent, we have the
ancient hymns of the Zuñis, in no way Christianised, and never chanted in
the presence of the Mexican Spanish, These hymns run thus: 'Before the
beginning of the New Making, Awonawilona, the Maker and container of All,
the All-Father, solely had being.' He then evolved all things 'by thinking
himself outward in space.' Hegelian! but so are the dateless hymns of the
Maoris, despite the savage mythology which intrudes into both sets of
traditions. The old fable of Ouranos and Gaia recurs in Zuñi as in
Maori.[37]

I fail to see how Awonawilona could be developed out of the ghost of chief
or conjurer. That in which all things potentially existed, yet who was
more than all, is not the ghost of a conjurer or chief. He certainly is
not due to missionary influence. No authority can be better than that of
traditional sacred chants found among a populace which will not sing them
before one of their Mexican masters.

We have tried to escape from the bias of belief in a primitive divine
tradition, but bias of every kind exists, and must exist. At present the
anthropological hypothesis of ancestor-worship as the basis, perhaps (as
in Mr. Spencer's theory) the only basis of religion, affects observers.

Before treating the theory of Degeneration let us examine a case of the
anthropological bias. The Fijians, as we learned from Williams, have
ancestral gods, and also a singular form of the creative being, Ndengei,
or, as Mr. Basil Thomson calls him, Degei. Mr. Thomson writes: 'It is
clear that the Fijians humanised their gods, because they had once existed
on earth in human form.... Like other primitive people, the Fijians
deified their ancestors.' Yet the Fijians 'may have forgotten the names
of their ancestors three generations back'! How in the world can you deify
a person whom you don't remember? Moreover, only malevolent chiefs were
deified, so apparently a Fijian god is really a well-born human
scoundrel, so considerable that _he_ for one is not forgotten--just as if
we worshipped the wicked Lord Lyttelton! Of course a god like Ahone could
not be made out of such materials as these, and, in fact, we learn from
Mr. Thomson that there are other Fijian gods of a different origin.

'It is probable that there were here and there, _gods that were the
creation of the priests that ministered to them, and were not the
spirits of dead chiefs_. Such was the god of the Bure Tribe on the Ra
coast, who was called Tui Laga or "Lord of Heaven." When the missionaries
first went to convert this town they found the heathen priest their
staunch ally. He declared that they had come to preach the same god that
he had been preaching, the Tui Laga, and that more had been revealed to
them than to him of the mysteries of the god.'

Mr. Thomson is reminded of St. Paul at Athens, 'whom then ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you.'[38]

Mr. Thomson has clearly no bias in favour of a God like our own, known to
savages, and _not_ derived from ghost-worship. He deduces this god, Tui
Laga, from priestly reflection and speculation. But we find such a God
where we find no priests, where a priesthood has not been developed. Such
a God, being usually unpropitiated by sacrifice and lucrative private
practice, is precisely the kind of deity who does not suit a priesthood.
For these reasons--that a priesthood 'sees no money in' a God of this
kind, and that Gods of this kind, ethical and creative, are found where
there are no priesthoods--we cannot look on the conception as a late one
of priestly origin, as Mr. Thomson does, though a learned caste, like the
Peruvian Amantas, may refine on the idea. Least of all can such a God be
'the creation of the priests that minister to him,' when, as in Peru, the
Andaman Isles, and much of Africa, this God is ministered to by no
priests. Nor, lastly, can we regard the absence of sacrifice to the
Creative Being as a mere proof that he is an ancestral ghost who 'had
lived on earth at too remote a time;' for this absence of sacrifice occurs
where ghosts are dreaded, but are not propitiated by offerings of food (as
among Australians, Andamanese, and Blackfoot Indians), while the Creative
Being is not and never was a ghost, according to his worshippers.

At this point criticism may naturally remark that whether the savage
Supreme Being is fêted, as by the Comanches, who offer puffs of smoke: or
is apparently half forgotten, as by the Algonquins and Zulus: whether
he is propitiated by sacrifice (which is very rare indeed), or only by
conduct, I equally claim him as the probable descendant in evolution of
the primitive, undifferentiated, not necessarily 'spiritual' Being of such
creeds as the Australian.

One must reply that this pedigree cannot, indeed, be historically traced,
but that it presents none of the logical difficulties inherent in the
animistic pedigree--namely, that the savage Supreme Being is the last and
highest result of evolution on animistic lines out of ghosts. It does not
run counter to the evidence universally offered by savages, that their
Supreme Being never was mortal man. It is consistent, whereas the
animistic hypothesis is, in this case, inconsistent, with the universal
savage theory of Death. Finally, as has been said before, granting my
opinion that there are two streams of religious thought, one rising in the
conception of an undifferentiated Being, eternal, moral, and creative, the
other rising in the ghost-doctrine, it stands to reason that the latter,
as best adapted to everyday needs and experiences, normal and supernormal,
may contaminate the former, and introduce sacrifice and food-propitiation
into the ritual of Beings who, by the original conception, 'need nothing
of ours.' At the same time, the conception of 'spirit,' once attained,
would inevitably come to be attached to the idea of the Supreme Being,
even though he was not at first conceived of as a spirit. We know, by our
own experience, how difficult it has become for us to think of an eternal,
powerful, and immortal being, except as a spirit. Yet this way of looking
at the Supreme Being, merely as _being_, not as spirit, must have existed,
granting that the idea of spirit has ghost for its first expression, as,
by their very definition, the high gods of savages are not ghosts, and
never were ghosts, but are prior to death.

Here let me introduce, by way of example, a Supreme Being _not_ of the
lowest savage level. Metaphysically he is improved on in statement,
morally he is stained with the worst crimes of the hungry ghost-god, or
god framed on the lines of animism. This very interesting Supreme Being,
in a middle barbaric race, is the Polynesian Taa-roa, as described by
Ellis in that fascinating book 'Polynesian Researches.'[39] 'Several of
their _taata-paari_, or wise men, pretend that, according to other
traditions, Taa-roa was only a man who was deified after death.'
Euhemerism, in fact, is a natural theory of men acquainted with
ancestor-worship, but a Euhemeristic hypothesis by a Polynesian thinker is
not a statement of national belief. Taa-roa was 'uncreated, existing from
the beginning, or from the time he emerges from the _po_, or world of
darkness.' In the Leeward Isles Taa-roa was _Toivi_, fatherless and
motherless from all eternity. In the highest heavens he dwells alone. He
created the gods of polytheism, the gods of war, of peace, and so on. Says
a native hymn, 'He was: he abode in the void. No earth, _no sky_, no men!
He became the universe.' In the Windward Isles he has a wife, Papa the
rock = Papa, Earth, wife of Rangi, Heaven, in Maori mythology. Thus it may
be argued, Taa-roa is no 'primaeval theistic idea,' but merely the
Heaven-God (Ouranos in Greece). But we may distinguish: in the Zuñi hymn
we have the myth of the marriage of Heaven and Earth, but Heaven is not
the Eternal, Awonawilona, who 'thought himself out into the void,' before
which, as in the Polynesian hymn, 'there was no sky.'[40]

Whence came the idea of Taa-roa? The Euhemeristic theory that he was a
ghost of a dead man is absurd. But as we are now among polytheists it may
be argued that, given a crowd of gods on the animistic model, an origin
had to be found for them, and that origin was Taa-roa. This would be more
plausible if we did not find Supreme Beings where there is no departmental
polytheism to develop them out of. In Tahiti, _Atuas_ are gods, _Oramutuas
tiis_ are spirits; the chief of the spirits were ghosts of warriors. These
were mischievous: they, their images, and the skulls of the dead needed
propitiation, and these ideas (perhaps) were reflected on to Taa-roa, to
whom human victims were sacrificed.[41]

Now this kind of horror, human sacrifice, is unknown, I think, in early
savage religions of Supreme Beings, as in Australia, among the Bushmen,
the Andamanese, and so on. I therefore suggest that in an advanced
polytheism, such as that of Polynesia, the evil sacrificial rites
unpractised by low savages come to be attached to the worship even of the
Supreme Being. Ghosts and ghost-gods demanded food, and food was therefore
also offered to the Supreme Being.

It was found difficult, or impossible, to induce Christian converts, in
Polynesia, to repeat the old prayers. They began, trembled, and abstained.
They had a ritual 'for almost every act of their lives,' a thing
unfamiliar to low savages. In fact, beyond all doubt, religious criminal
acts, from human sacrifice to the burning of Jeanne d'Arc, increase as
religion and culture move away from the stage of Bushmen and Andamanese to
the stage of Aztec and Polynesian culture. The Supreme Being is succeeded
in advancing civilisation, and under the influences of animism, by
ruthless and insatiable ghost-gods, full of the worst human qualities.
Thus there is what we may really call degeneration, moral and religious,
inevitably accompanying early progress.

That this is the case, that the first advances in culture _necessarily_
introduce religious degeneration, we shall now try to demonstrate. But we
may observe, in passing, that our array of moral or august savage supreme
beings (the first who came to hand) will, for some reason, not be found in
anthropological treatises on the Origin of Religion. They appear, somehow,
to have been overlooked by philosophers. Yet the evidence for them
is sufficiently good. Its excellence is proved by its very uniformity,
assuredly undesigned. An old, nay, an obsolete theory--that of
degeneration in religion--has facts at its basis, which its very
supporters have ignored, which orthodoxy has overlooked. Thus the Rev.
Professor Flint informs the audience in the Cathedral of St. Giles's,
that, in the religions 'at the bottom of the religious scale,' 'it is
always easy to see how wretchedly the divine is conceived of; how little
conscious of his own true wants ... is the poor worshipper.' The poor
worshipper of Baiame wishes to obey His Law, which makes, to some extent,
for righteousness.[42]

[Footnote 1: In Pinkerton, xiii. pp. 13, 39; _Prim. Cult_. ii. 342.]

[Footnote 2: See Preface to this edition for corrected statement.]

[Footnote 3: _Myths of the New World_, p. 47.]

[Footnote 4: There is a description of Virginia, by W. Strachey, including
Smith's remarks, published in 1612. Strachey interwove some of this work
with his own MS. in the British Museum, dedicated to Bacon (Verulam). This
MS. was edited by Mr. Major, for the Hakluyt Society, in 1849, with a
glossary, by Strachey, of the native language. The remarks on religion are
in Chapter VII. The passage on Ahone occurs in Strachey (1612), but _not_
in Smith (1682), in Pinkerton. I owe to the kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse
photographs of the drawings accompanying the MS. Strachey's story of
sacrifice of children (pp. 94, 95) seems to refer to nothing worse than the
initiation into the mysteries.]

[Footnote 5: See Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, for a philological
theory.]

[Footnote 6: Compare 'The Fire Walk' in _Modern Mythology_.]

[Footnote 7: Compare St. Augustine's curious anecdote in _De Cura pro
Mortuis habenda_ about the dead and revived Curio. The founder of the new
Sioux religion, based on hypnotism, 'died' and recovered.]

[Footnote 8: Cf. Demeter.]

[Footnote 9: Major North, for long the U.S. Superintendent of the Pawnees.]

[Footnote 10: Schoolcraft, iii. 237.]

[Footnote 11: As envisaged here, Nà-pi is not a spirit. The question
of spirit or non-spirit has not arisen. So far, Nà-pi answers to
Marrangarrah, the Creative Being of the Larrakeah tribe of Australians.
'A very good Man called Marrangarrah lives in the sky; he made all living
creatures, except black fellows. He made everything.... He never dies, and
likes all black fellows.' He has a demiurge, Dawed (Mr. Foelsche, _apud_
Dr. Stirling, _J.A.I_., Nov. 1894, p. 191). It is curious to observe how
savage creeds often shift the responsibility for evil from the Supreme
Creator, entirely beneficent, on to a subordinate deity.]

[Footnote 12: Grinnell's _Blackfoot Lodge-Tales_ and _Pawnee Hero
Stories_.]

[Footnote 13: Garcilasso, i. 101.]

[Footnote 14: Op. cit. i. 106.]

[Footnote 15: From all this we might conjecture, like Mr. Prescott, that
the Incas borrowed Pachacamac from the Yuncas, and etherealised his
religion. But Mr. Clements Markham points out that 'Pachacamac is a pure
Quichua word.']

[Footnote 16: Garcilasso, ii. 446, 447.]

[Footnote 17: Cieza de Leon. p.253]

[Footnote 18: Markham's translation, p. 253.]

[Footnote 19: _Rites and Laws of the Yncas_, Markham's translation,
p. vii.]

[Footnote 20: _Rites_, p. 6. Garcilasso, i. 109.]

[Footnote 21: _Rites_, p. 11.]

[Footnote 22: Compare _Reports on Discovery of Peru,_ Introduction.]

[Footnote 23: _Rites_, p. xv.]

[Footnote 24: Lord Ailesbury's _Memoirs_.]

[Footnote 25: Garcilasso, ii. 68.]

[Footnote 26: Cieza de Leon, p. 357.]

[Footnote 27: _Rites,_ pp. 28, 29.]

[Footnote 28: Acosta, lib. vi. ch. 21: Garcilasso. ii. 88, 89.]

[Footnote 29: _Rites_, p. 12.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid. p.54.]

[Footnote 31: _Prim. Cult_. ii, 337, 338.]

[Footnote 32: _Rites_, p. 29.]

[Footnote 33: Garcilasso, ii. 69.]

[Footnote 34: _Rites and Laws_, p. 91 _et seq_.]

[Footnote 35: Payne, i. 139.]

[Footnote 36: Op. cit. i. 468. Mr. Payne absolutely rejects
Ixtlilochitl's story of the monotheism of Nezahualcoyotl; 'Torquemada
knows nothing of it,' i. 490.]

[Footnote 37: Cushing, _Report, Ethnol. Bureau_, 1891-92, p. 379.]

[Footnote 38: _J.A.I_. May 1895, pp. 341-344.]

[Footnote 39: ii. 191, 1829.]

[Footnote 40: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 345, 346. Ellis, ii. 193.]

[Footnote 41: Ellis, ii. 221.]

[Footnote 42: _The Faiths of The World_, p. 413.]




XV

THE OLD DEGENERATION THEORY

If any partisan of the anthropological theory has read so far into this
argument, he will often have murmured to himself, 'The old degeneration
theory!' On this Dr. Brinton remarked in 1868:

'The supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened
conditions, before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed which
afterwards, at various times, was revived by reformers, is a belief that
should have passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises
of a state of nature ceased to be the theme of philosophers[1].'

'The old degeneration theory' practically, and fallaciously, resolved
itself, as Mr. Tylor says, into two assumptions--'first, that the history
of culture began with the appearance on earth of a semi-civilised race of
men; and second, that from this stage culture has proceeded in two
ways--backward to produce savages, and forward to produce civilised
men[2].' That hypothesis is false to all our knowledge of evolution.

The hypothesis here provisionally advocated makes no assumptions
at all. It is a positive fact that among some of the lowest savages
there exists, not a doctrinal and abstract Monotheism, but a belief
in a moral, powerful, kindly, creative Being, while this faith is found
in juxtaposition with belief in unworshipped ghosts, totems, fetishes,
and so on. The powerful creative Being of savage belief sanctions truth,
unselfishness, loyalty, chastity, and other virtues. I have set forth the
difficulties involved in the attempt to derive this Being from ghosts and
other lower forms of belief.

Now, it is mere matter of fact, and not of assumption, that the Supreme
Being of many rather higher savages differs from the Supreme Being of
certain lower savages by the neglect in which he is left, by the epicurean
repose with which he is credited, and by his comparative lack of moral
control over human conduct. In his place a mob of ghosts and spirits,
supposed to be potent and helpful in everyday life, attract men's regard
and adoration, and get paid by sacrifice--even by human sacrifice.

Turning to races yet higher in material culture, we find a crowd of hungry
and cruel gods.

On this point Mr. Jevons remarks, in accordance with my own observation,
that 'human sacrifice appears at a much earlier period in the rites for
the dead than it does in the ritual of the gods.'[3] The dead chief needs
servants and wives in Hades, who are offered to him. The Australians have
some elements of cannibalism, but do not, as a general rule, offer any
human victims. So far, then, ancestor-worship introduced a sadly
'degenerate' rite, compared with the moral faith in unfed gods.

To gods the human sacrifice was probably extended (in some cases) either
by a cannibal civilised race, like the Aztecs, or by way of _piacula_, the
god being conciliated for man's sin by the offering of what man most
prized, the 'jealousy' of the god being appeased in a similar way.
But these are relatively advanced conceptions, not to be found, to my
knowledge, among the lowest and most backward races. Therefore, advance to
the idea of spirit at one point, meant degeneration at another point, to
the extent of human sacrifice.

Thus, on looking at relatively advanced races, we find them worshipping
polytheistic deities and ghosts of the kings just dead, who are often
propitiated by terrible massacres of human victims, while, as in the case
of Taa-roa, the blood spurts back even on the uncreated Creator, who was
before earth was, or sea, sun, or sky.

Undeniably the hungry, cruel gods are degenerate from the Australian
Father in Heaven, who receives no sacrifice but that of men's lusts and
selfishness; who desires obedience, not the fat of kangaroos; who needs
nothing of ours; is unfed and unbribed. Thus, in this particular respect
the degeneration of religion from the Australian or Andamanese to the
Dinka standard--and infinitely more to the Polynesian, or Aztec, or
popular Greek standard--is as undeniable as any fact in human history.

Anthropology has only escaped the knowledge of this circumstance by laying
down the rule, demonstrably unbased on facts, that 'the divine sanction of
ethical laws ... belongs almost or wholly to religions above the savage
level, not to the earlier and lower creeds;' that 'savage Animism is
almost devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is
the very mainspring of practical religion.'[4]

I have argued, indeed, that the God of low savages who imparts the divine
sanction of ethical laws is _not_ of animistic origin. But even where Mr.
Im Thurn finds, in Guiana, nothing but Animism of the lowest conceivable
type, he also finds in that Animism the only or most potent moral
restraint on the conduct of men.

While Anthropology holds the certainly erroneous idea that the religion of
the most backward races is always non-moral, of course she cannot know
that there has, in fact, been great degeneration in religion (if religion
began on the Australian and Andamanese level, or even higher) wherever
religion is non-moral or immoral.

Again, Anthropology, while fixing her gaze on totems, on worshipped
mummies, adored ghosts, and treasured fetishes, has not, to my knowledge,
made a comparative study of the higher and purer religious ideas of
savages. These have been passed by, with a word about credulous
missionaries and Christian influences, except in the brief summary for
which Mr. Tylor found room. In this work I only take a handful of cases of
the higher religious opinions of savages, and set them side by side for
purposes of comparison. Much more remains to be done in this field. But
the area covered is wide, the evidence is the best attainable, and it
seems proved beyond doubt that savages have 'felt after' a conception of a
Creator much higher than that for which they commonly get credit. Now, if
that conception is original, or is very early (and nothing in it suggests
lateness of development), then the other elements of their faith and
practice are degenerate.

'How,' it has been asked, 'could all mankind forget a pure religion?'[5]
That is what I now try to explain. That degeneration I would account for
by the attractions which animism, when once developed, possessed for the
naughty natural man, 'the old Adam.' A moral creator in need of no gifts,
and opposed to lust and mischief, will not help a man with love-spells, or
with malevolent 'sendings' of disease by witchcraft; will not favour one
man above his neighbour, or one tribe above its rivals, as a reward for
sacrifice which he does not accept, or as constrained by charms which do
not touch his omnipotence. Ghosts and ghost-gods, on the other hand, in
need of food and blood, afraid of spells and binding charms,[6] are a
corrupt, but, to man, a useful constituency. Man being what he is, man was
certain to 'go a-whoring' after practically useful ghosts, ghost-gods, and
fetishes which he could keep in his wallet or medicine bag. For these he
was sure, in the long run, first to neglect his idea of his Creator; next,
perhaps, to reckon Him as only one, if the highest, of the venal rabble of
spirits or deities, and to sacrifice to Him, as to them. And this is
exactly what happened! If we are not to call it 'degeneration,' what are
we to call it? It may be an old theory, but facts 'winna ding,' and are on
the side of an old theory. Meanwhile, on the material plane, culture
kept advancing, the crafts and arts arose; departments arose, each needing
a god; thought grew clearer; such admirable ethics as those of the Aztecs
were developed, and while bleeding human hearts smoked on every altar,
Nezahuatl conceived and erected a bloodless fane to 'The Unknown God,
Cause of Causes,' without altar or idol; and the Inca, Yupanqui, or
another, declared that 'Our Father and Master, the Sun, must have a
Lord.'[7]

But, at this stage of culture, the luck of the state, and the interests of
a rich and powerful clergy, were involved in the maintenance of the old,
animistic, relatively non-moral system, as in Cuzco, Greece, and Rome.
That popular and political regard for the luck of the state, that
priestly self-interest (quite natural), could only be swept away by the
moral monotheism of Christianity or of Islam. Nothing else could do it. In
the case of Christianity, the central and most potent of many combined
influences, apart from the Life and Death of Our Lord, was the moral
Monotheism of the Hebrew religion of Jehovah.

Now, it is undeniable that Jehovah, at a certain period of Hebrew history,
had become degraded and anthropomorphized, far below Darumulun, and
Puluga, and Pachacamac, and Ahone, as conceived of in their purest form,
and in the high mood of savage mysteries which yet contain so much that is
grotesque. Even the Big Black Man of the Fuegians is on a higher level (as
_we_ reckon morals), when he forbids the slaying of a robber enemy, than
certain examples of early Hebrew conduct. But our knowledge of the
Fuegians is lamentably scanty.

Again, traces of human sacrifice appear in the ritual of Israel, and it is
only relatively late that the great prophets, justly declaring Jehovah to
be indifferent to the blood of bulls and rams, try to bring back his
service to that of the unpropitiated, unbought Dendid, or Ahone, or
Pundjel. Here is degeneration, even in Israel. How the conception of
Jehovah arose in Israel, whether it was a revival of a half-obliterated
idea, such as we find among low savages; or whether it was borrowed from
some foreign creed; or was the result of meditation on the philosophical
Supreme Being of high Egyptian theology, is another question. The Biblical
statement leans to the first alternative. Jehovah, not by that name, had
been the God of Israel's fathers. The question will be discussed later;
but, unless new facts are discovered, we must accept the version of the
Pentateuch, or take refuge in conjecture.

Not only is there degeneration from the Australian conception of
Mungan-gnaur, at its best, to the conception of the Semitic gods in
general, but, 'humanly speaking,' if religion began in a pure form among
low savages, degeneration was inevitable. Advancing social conditions
compelled men into degeneration. Mungan-ngaur is, so far, in line with
our own ideas of divinity because he is not localised. He dwelleth not in
temples made with hands; it is not likely that he should, when his
worshippers have neither house, tent, nor tabernacle. As Mr. Robertson
Smith says, 'where the God had a house or a temple, we recognise the work
of men who were no longer pure nomads, but had begun to form fixed homes.'
By the nature of Australian society, a deity could not be tied to a
temple, and temple-ritual, and consequent myths to explain that ritual,
could not arise. Nor could Darumulun be attached to a district, just as
'the nomad Arabs could not assimilate the conception of a god as a
land-owner, and apply it to their own tribal deities, for the simple
reason that in the desert private property in land was unknown.'[8]

Darumulun is thus not capable of degenerating into 'a local god, as
_Baal_, or lord of the land,' because this 'involves a series of ideas
unknown to the primitive life of the savage huntsman,' like the widely
spread Murring tribes.[9]

Nor could Darumulun be tied down to a place in Semitic fashion, first by
manifesting himself there, therefore by receiving an altar of sacrifice
there, and in the end a sanctuary, for Darumulun receives no sacrifice
at all.

Again, the scene of the Bora could not become a permanent home of
Darumulun, because, when the rites are over, the effigy of the god is
scrupulously destroyed. Thus Darumulun, in his own abode 'beyond the sky,'
can 'go everywhere and do everything' (is omnipresent and omnipotent),
dwells in no earthly places, has no temple, nor tabernacle, nor sacred
mount, nor, like Jehovah, any limit of land.[10]

The early Hebrew conception of Jehovah, then, is infinitely more
conditioned, practically, by space, than the Supreme Being, 'The Master,'
in the conception of some Australian blacks.

'By a prophet like Isaiah the residence of Jehovah in Zion is almost
wholly dematerialised.... Conceiving Jehovah as the King of Israel, he
necessarily conceives His kingly activity as going forth from the capital
of the nation.'[11]

But nomad hunter tribes, with no ancestor-worship, no king and no capital,
cannot lower their deity by the conditions, or limit him by the
limitations, of an earthly monarchy.

In precisely the same way, Major Ellis proves the degeneration of deity in
Africa, so far as being localised in place of being the Universal God,
implies degeneration, as it certainly does to our minds. By being attached
to a given hill or river 'the gods, instead of being regarded as being
interested in the whole of mankind, would eventually come to be regarded
as being interested in separate tribes or nations alone.'

To us Milton seems nobly Chauvinistic when he talks of what God has done
by 'His English.' But this localised and essentially degenerate conception
was inevitable, as soon as, in advancing civilisation, the god who had
been 'interested in the whole of [known] mankind' was settled on a hill,
river, or lagoon, amidst a nation of worshippers.

In the course of the education of mankind, this form of degeneration
(abstractly so considered) was to work, as nothing else could have worked,
towards the lofty conception of universal Deity. For that conception
was only brought into practical religion (as apart from philosophic
speculation) by the union between Israel and the God of Sinai and Zion.
The Prophets, recognising in the God of Sinai, their nation's God--One
to whom righteousness was infinitely dearer than even his Chosen
People--freed the conception of God from local ties, and made it
overspread the world.

Mr. Robertson Smith has pointed out, again, the manner in which the
different political development of East and West affected the religion of
Greece and of the Semites. In Greece, monarchy fell, at an early period,
before the aristocratic houses. The result was 'a divine aristocracy of
many gods, only modified by a weak reminiscence of the old kingship in the
not very effective sovereignty' (or _prytany_) 'of Zeus. In the East the
national god tended to acquire a really monarchic sway.'[12] Australia
escaped polytheistic degeneracy by having no aristocracy, as in Polynesia,
where aristocracy, as in early Greece, had developed polytheism. Ghosts
and spirits the Australians knew, but not polytheistic gods, nor
departmental deities, as of war, agriculture, art. The savage had no
agriculture, and his social condition was not departmental. In yet another
way, political advance produces religious degeneration, if polytheism be
degeneration from the conception of one relatively supreme moral being.
To make a nation, several tribes must unite. Each has its god, and the
nation is apt to receive them all, equally, into its Pantheon. Thus, if
worshippers of Baiame, Pundjel, and Darumulun coalesced into a nation,
we might find all three gods living together in a new polytheism. In fact,
granting a relatively pure starting-point, degeneration from it must
accompany every step of civilisation, to a certain distance.

Unlike Semitic gods, Darumulun receives no sacrifice. As we have said, he
has no kin with ghosts, and their sacrifices could not be carried on into
his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the
Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to
live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed
by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats.
The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun)
met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond
the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the
dead hand, carried about by the family, who would wave the black fragment
at the dreaded Aurora Borealis, crying, 'Send it away!' I am unacquainted
with any sacrifices to ancestral ghosts among this people who cannot long
remember their ancestors, consequently the practice has not been refracted
on their supreme Master's cult. In the cult of Darumulun, and of other
highest gods of lowest savages, nothing answers to the Hebrew technical
priestly word for sacrifice, 'food of the deity.'[15] Nobody feeds Puluga,
nobody fed Ahone. We hear of no Fuegian sacrifices. Mr. Robertson Smith
says: 'In all religions in which the gods have been developed out of
totems [worshipped animals and other things regarded as akin to human
stocks] the ritual act of laying food before the deity is perfectly
intelligible.' Pundjel, an Australian Supreme Being, is mixed up with
animals in some myths, but it is not easy to see how such Supreme Beings
as he could be 'developed out of totems'! I am not aware, again, that any
Australian tribe feeds the animals who are its totems, so Darumulun could
not, and did not inherit sacrifice through them. Mr. Robertson Smith had
a celebrated theory that cereal sacrifice is a tribute to a god, while
sacrifice of a beast or man is an act of communion with the god.[16] Men
and gods dined together.[17] 'The god himself was conceived of as a being
of the same stock as his comrades.' Beasts were also of the same stock,
one beast, say a lobster, was of the same blood as a lobster kin, and its
god.[18] Occasionally the sacred beast of the kin, usually not to be slain
or tasted, is 'eaten as a kind of mystic sacrament a most dubious
fact.'[19]

Now, there is, I believe, some evidence, lately collected if not
published, which makes in favour of the eating of totems by Australians,
at a certain very rare and solemn mystery. It would not even surprise me
('from information received') if a very deeply initiated person were
occasionally slain, as the highest degree of initiation, on certain most
unusual occasions. This remains uncertain, but I have at present no
evidence that, either by one road or another, either from ghost-feeding or
totem-feeding, or feeding on totems, any Australian Supreme Being receives
any sacrifice at all. Much less, as among Pawnees and Semitic peoples (to
judge from certain traces), is the Australian Supreme Being a cause of and
partaker in human sacrifice.[20] The horrible idea of the Man who is the
God, and is eaten in the God's honour, occurs among polytheistic Aztecs,
on a high level of material culture, not among Australians, Andamanese,
Bushmen, or Fuegians.[21]

Thus, in religion, the Darumulun, or other Supreme Being of the lowest
known savages, men roaming wild, when originally met, on a continent
peopled by older kinds of animals than ours, was (as we regard purity) on
a higher plane by far than the gods of Greeks and Semites in their
earliest known myths. Setting mythology aside and looking only at cult,
the God of the Murring or the Kurnai, whose precepts soften the heart,
who knows the heart's secrets, who inculcates chastity, respect of age,
unselfishness, who is not bound by conditions of space or place, who
receives no blood of slaughtered man or beast, is a conception from which
the ordinary polytheistic gods of infinitely more polite peoples are
frankly degenerate. The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief
in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy,
agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic
crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor
localised him in a temple built with hands. He cannot appear as a 'God of
Battles;' no _Te Deum_ can be sung to him for victory in a cause perhaps
unjust, for he is the Supreme Being of a certain group of allied local
tribes. One of these tribes has no more interest with him than another,
and the whole group do not, as a body, wage war on another alien group.
The social conditions of his worshippers, then, preserve Darumulun from
the patent blots on the escutcheon of gods among much more advanced races.

Once more, the idea of Animism admits of endless expansion. A spirit can
be located anywhere, in any stone, stick, bush, person, hill, or river. A
god made on the animistic model can be assigned to any department of
human activity, down to sports, or lusts, or the province of Cloacina.
Thus religion becomes a mere haunted and pestilential jungle of beliefs.
But the theistic conception, when not yet envisaged as spiritual, cannot
be subdivided and _éparpillé_. Thus, from every point of view, and on
every side, Animism is full of the seeds of religious degeneration, which
do not and cannot exist in what I take to be the earliest known form of
the theistic conception: that of a Being about whose metaphysical
nature--spirit or not spirit--no questions were asked, as Dr. Brinton long
ago remarked.

That conception alone could neither supply the moral motive of 'a soul to
be saved,' nor satisfy the metaphysical instinct of advancing mankind. To
meet these wants, to supply 'soul,' with its moral stimulus, and to
provide a phrase or idea under which the Deity could be envisaged (i.e. as
a _spirit_) by advancing thought, Animism was necessary. The blending of
the theistic and the animistic beliefs was indispensable to religion.
But, in the process of animistic development under advancing social
conditions, degeneration was necessarily implied. Degeneration of the
theistic conception for a while, therefore, occurred. The facts are the
proofs; and only contradictory facts, in sufficient quantity, can
annihilate the old theory of Degeneration when it is presented in this
form.

It mast be repeated that on this theory an explanation is given of what
the old Degeneration hypothesis does not explain. Granting a primal
religion relatively pure in its beginnings, why did it degenerate?

Mr. Max Mullet, looking on religion as the development of the sentiment of
the Infinite, regards fetishism as a secondary and comparatively late form
of belief. We find it, he observes, in various forms of Christianity;
Christianity, therefore, is primary there, relic worship is secondary.
Religion beginning, according to him, in the sense of the infinite, as
awakened in man by tall trees, high hills, and so on, it advances to the
infinite of space and sky, and so to the infinitely divine. This is
primary: fetishism is secondary. Arguing elsewhere against this idea, I
have asked: What was the _modus_ of degeneration which produced similar
results in Christianity, and in African and other religions? How did it
work? I am not aware that Mr. Max Müller has answered this question.
But how degeneration worked--namely, by Animism supplanting Theism--is
conspicuously plain on our theory.

Take the early chapters of Genesis, or any savage cosmogonic myth you
please. Deathless man is face to face with the Creator. He cannot
degenerate in religion. He cannot offer sacrifice, for the Creator
obviously needs nothing, and again, as there is no death, he cannot slay
animals for the Creator. But, in one way or another, usually by breach of
a taboo, Death enters the world. Then comes, by process of evolution,
belief in hungry spirits, belief in spirits who may inhabit stones or
sticks; again there arise priests who know how to propitiate spirits
and how to tempt them into sticks and stones. These arts become lucrative
and are backed by the cleverest men, and by the apparent evidence of
prophecies by convulsionaries. Thus every known kind of degeneration in
religion is inevitably introduced as a result of the theory of Animism. We
do not need an hypothesis of Original Sin as a cause of degeneration, and,
if Mr. Max Müller's doctrine of the Infinite were _viable_, we have
supplied, in Animism, under advancing social conditions, what he does not
seem to provide, a cause and _modus_ of degeneration. Fetishism would
thus be really 'secondary,' _ex hypothesi_, but as we nowhere find
Fetishism alone, without the other elements of religion, we cannot say,
historically, whether it is secondary or not. Fetishism logically needs,
in some of its aspects, the doctrine of spirits, and Theism, in what we
take to be its earliest known form, does not logically need the doctrine
of spirits as given matter. So far we can go, but not farther, as to the
fact of priority in evolution. Nevertheless we meet, among the most
backward peoples known to us, among men just emerged from the palaeolithic
stage of culture, men who are involved in dread of ghosts, a religious
Idea which certainly is not born of ghost-worship, for by these men,
ancestral ghosts are not worshipped.

In their hearts, on their lips, in their moral training we find (however
blended with barbarous absurdities, and obscured by rites of another
origin) the faith in a Being who created or constructed the world; who was
from time beyond memory or conjecture; who is primal, who makes for
righteousness, and who loves mankind. This Being has not the notes of
degeneration; his home is 'among the stars,' not in a hill or in a house.
To him no altar smokes, and for him no blood is shed.

'God, that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is lord
of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is
worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed any thing ... and hath
made of one blood all nations of men ... that they should seek the Lord,
if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far
from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.'

That the words of St. Paul are literally true, as to the feeling after a
God who needs not anything at man's hands, the study of anthropology seems
to us to demonstrate. That in this God 'we have our being,' in so far
as somewhat of ours may escape, at moments, from the bonds of Time and the
manacles of Space, the earlier part of this treatise is intended to
suggest, as a thing by no means necessarily beyond a reasonable man's
power to conceive. That these two beliefs, however attained (a point on
which we possess no positive evidence), have commonly been subject to
degeneration in the religions of the world, is only too obvious.

So far, then, the nature of things and of the reasoning faculty does not
seem to give the lie to the old Degeneration theory.

To these conclusions, as far as they are matters of scientific opinion, we
have been led by nothing but the study of anthropology.

[Footnote 1: _Myths of the New World_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 2: _Prim. Cult_. i. 35.]

[Footnote 3: _Introduction_, p. 199; also p. 161.]

[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360,361.]

[Footnote 5: Prof. Menzies, _History of Religion_, p. 23.]

[Footnote 6: [Greek: legomenai theion anagchai.] Porphyry.]

[Footnote 7: Ixtlilochitl. Balboa, _Hist. du Pérou_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 104, 105.]

[Footnote 9: Op. cit. p. 106.]

[Footnote 10: On the Glenelg some caves and mountain tops are haunted or
holy. Waitz, vi. 804, No authority cited.]

[Footnote 11: _Religion of Semites_, p. 110.]

[Footnote 12: _Rel. Sem_. p. 71.]

[Footnote 13: Howitt, _J.A.T_. 1884, p. 187.]

[Footnote 14: Op. cit. p. 188.]

[Footnote 15: _Rel. Sem_. p. 207.]

[Footnote 16: _Rel. Sem_. p. 225.]

[Footnote 17: Op. cit. p. 247.]

[Footnote 18: Op. cit. p. 269.]

[Footnote 19: Op. cit. p. 277.]

[Footnote 20: Op. cit. p. 343. Citing Gen. xxii 2 Kings xxi. 6, Micah
vi. 7, 2 Kings iii. 27.]

[Footnote 21: I mean, does not occur to my knowledge. New evidence is
always upsetting anthropological theories.]




XVI

THEORIES OF JEHOVAH

All speculation on the curly history of religion is apt to end in the
endeavour to see how far the conclusions can be made to illustrate the
faith of Israel. Thus, the theorist who believes in ancestor-worship as
the key of all the creeds will see in Jehovah a developed ancestral
ghost, or a kind of fetish-god, attached to a stone--perhaps an ancient
sepulchral stele of some desert sheikh.

The exclusive admirer of the hypothesis of Totemism will find evidence for
his belief in worship of the golden calf and the bulls. The partisan of
nature-worship will insist on Jehovah's connection with storm, thunder,
and the fire of Sinai. On the other hand, whoever accepts our suggestions
will incline to see, in the early forms of belief in Jehovah, a shape of
the widely diffused conception of a Moral Supreme Being, at first (or, at
least, when our information begins) envisaged in anthropomorphic form,
but gradually purged of all local traits by the unexampled and unique
inspiration of the great Prophets. They, as far as our knowledge extends,
were strangely indifferent to the animistic element in religion, to the
doctrine of surviving human souls, and so, of course, to that element
of Animism which is priceless--the purification of the soul in the light
of the hope of eternal life. Just as the hunger after righteousness of the
Prophets is intense, so their hope of finally sating that hunger
in an eternity of sinless bliss and enjoyment of God is confessedly
inconspicuous. In short, they have carried Theism to its austere
extreme--'though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him'--while unconcerned
about the rewards of Animism. This is certainly a strange result of a
religion which, according to the anthropological theory, has Animism for
its basis.

We therefore examine certain forms of the animistic hypothesis as applied
to account for the religion of Israel. The topic is one in which special
knowledge of Hebrew and other Oriental languages seems absolutely
indispensable; but anthropological speculators have not been Oriental
scholars (with rare exceptions), while some Oriental scholars have
borrowed from popular anthropology without much critical discrimination.
These circumstances must be our excuse for venturing on to this difficult
ground.

It is probably impossible for us to trace with accuracy the rise of the
religion of Jehovah. 'The wise and learned' dispute endlessly over dates
of documents, over the amount of later doctrine interpolated into
the earlier texts, over the nature, source, and quantity of foreign
influence--Chaldaean, Accadian, Egyptian, or Assyrian. We know that Israel
had, in an early age, the conception of the moral Eternal; we know that,
at an early age, that conception was contaminated and anthropomorphised;
and we know that it was rescued, in a great degree, from this corruption,
while always retaining its original ethical aspect and sanction. Why
matters went thus in Israel and not elsewhere we know not, except that
such was the will of God in the mysterious education of the world. How
mysterious that education has been is best known to all who have studied
the political and social results of Totemism. On the face of it a
perfectly crazy and degrading belief--on the face of it meant for nothing
but to make the family a hell of internecine hatred--Totemism rendered
possible--nay, inevitable--the union of hostile groups into large and
relatively peaceful tribal societies. Given the materials as we know them,
we never should have educated the world thus; and we do not see why it
should thus have been done. But we are very anthropomorphic, and totally
ignorant of the conditions of the problem.

An example of anthropological theory concerning Jehovah was put forth by
Mr. Huxley.[1] Mr. Huxley's general idea of religion as it is on the
lowest known level of material culture--through which the ancestors of
Israel must have passed like other people--has already been criticised.
He denied to the most backward races both cult and religious sanction of
ethics. He was demonstrably, though unconsciously, in error as to the
facts, and therefore could not start from the idea that Israel, in the
lowest historically known condition of savagery, possessed, or, like other
races, might possess, the belief in an Eternal making for righteousness.
'For my part,' he says, 'I see no reason to doubt that, like the
rest of the world, the Israelites had passed through a period of mere
ghost-worship, and had advanced through ancestor-worship and Fetishism and
Totemism to the theological level at which we find them in the Books of
Judges and Samuel.'[2]

But why does he think the Israelites did all this? The Hebrew ghosts,
abiding, according to Mr. Huxley, in a rather torpid condition in Sheol,
would not be of much practical use to a worshipper. A reference in
Deuteronomy xxvi. 14 (Deuteronomy being, _ex hypothesi_, a late pious
imposture) does not prove much. The Hebrew is there bidden to remind
himself of the stay of his ancestors in Egypt, and to say, 'Of the
hallowed things I have not given aught for the dead'--namely, of the
tithes dedicated to the Levites and the poor. A race which abode for
centuries among the Egyptians, as Israel did--among a people who
elaborately fed the _kas_ of the departed--might pick up a trace of a
custom, the giving of food for the dead, still persevered in by St. Monica
till St. Ambrose admonished her. But Mr. Huxley is hard put to it for
evidence of ancestor-worship or ghost-worship in Israel when he looks for
indications of these rites in 'the singular weight attached to the
veneration of parents in the Fourth Commandment.'[3] The _Fourth_
Commandment, of course, is a slip of the pen. He adds: 'The Fifth
Commandment, as it stands, would be an excellent compromise between
ancestor-worship and Monotheism.' Long may children practise this
excellent compromise! It is really too far-fetched to reason thus: 'People
were bidden to honour their parents, as a compromise between Monotheism
and ghost-worship.' Hard, hard bestead is he who has to reason in that
fashion! This comes of 'training in the use of the weapons of precision of
science.'

Mr. Huxley goes on: 'The Ark of the Covenant may have been a relic of
ancestor-worship;' 'there is a good deal to be said for that speculation.'
Possibly there is, by way of the valuable hypothesis that Jehovah was a
fetish stone which had been a grave-stone, or perhaps a _lingam_, and was
kept in the Ark on the plausible pretext that it was the two Tables of
the Law!

However, Mr. Huxley really finds it safer to suppose that references to
ancestor-worship in the Bible were obliterated by late monotheistic
editors, who, none the less, are so full and minute in their descriptions
of the various heresies into which Israel was eternally lapsing, and must
not be allowed to lapse again. Had ancestor-worship been a _péché mignon_
of Israel, the Prophets would have let Israel hear their mind on it.

The Hebrews' indifference to the departed soul is, in fact, a puzzle,
especially when we consider their Egyptian education--so important an
element in Mr. Huxley's theory.

Mr. Herbert Spencer is not more successful than Mr. Huxley in finding
ancestor-worship among the Hebrews. On the whole subject he writes:

'Where the levels of mental nature and social progress are lowest, we
usually find, along with an absence of religious ideas generally, an
absence, or very slight development, of ancestor-worship.... Cook
[Captain Cook], telling us what the Fuegians were before contact
with Europeans had introduced foreign ideas, said there were no
appearances of religion among them; and we are not told by him or others
that they were ancestor-worshippers.'[4]

Probably they are not; but they do possess a Being who reads their hearts,
and who certainly shows no traces of European ideas. If the Fuegians
are not ancestor-worshippers, this Being was not developed out of
ancestor-worship.

The evidence of Captain Cook, no anthropologist, but a mariner who saw and
knew little of the Fuegians, is precisely of the sort against which Major
Ellis warns us.[5] The more a religion consists in fear of a moral
guardian of conduct, the less does it show itself, by sacrifice or rite,
to the eyes of Captain Cook, of his Majesty's ship _Endeavour_. Mr.
Spencer places the Andamanese on the same level as the Fuegians, 'so far
as the scanty evidence may be trusted.' We have shown that (as known
to Mr. Spencer in 1876) it may not be trusted at all; the Andamanese
possessing a moral Supreme Being, though they are not, apparently,
ancestor-worshippers. The Australians 'show us not much persistence in
ghost-propitiation,' which, if it exists, ceases when the corpses are tied
up and buried, or after they are burned, or after the bones, carried about
for a while, are exposed on platforms. Yet many Australian tribes possess
a moral Supreme Being.

In fact ghost-worship, in Mr. Spencer's scheme, cannot be fairly well
developed till society reaches the level of 'settled groups whose
burial-places are in their midst.' Hence the development of a moral
Supreme Being among tribes _not_ thus settled, is inconceivable, on
Mr. Spencer's hypothesis.[6] By that hypothesis, 'worshipped ancestors,
according to their remoteness, were regarded as divine, semi-divine, and
human.'[7] Where we find, then, the Divine Being among nomads who do not
remember their great-grandfathers, the Spencerian theory is refuted by
facts. We have the effect, the Divine Being, without the cause, worship of
ancestors.

Coming to the Hebrews, Mr. Spencer argues that 'the silence of their
legends (as to ancestor-worship) is but a negative fact, which may be as
misleading as negative facts usually are.' They are, indeed; witness
Mr. Spencer's own silence about savage Supreme Beings. But we may fairly
argue that if Israel had been given to ancestor-worship (as might partly
be surmised from the mystery about the grave of Moses) the Prophets would
not have spared them for their crying. The Prophets were unusually
outspoken men, and, as they undeniably do scold Israel for every other
kind of conceivable heresy, they were not likely to be silent about
ancestor-worship, if ancestor-worship existed. Mr. Spencer, then, rather
heedlessly, though correctly, argues that 'nomadic habits are unfavourable
to evolution of the ghost-theory.'[8] Alas, this gives away the whole
case! For, if all men began as nomads, and nomadic habits are unfavourable
even to the ordinary ghost, how did the Australian and other nomads
develop the Supreme Being, who, _ex hypothesi_, is the final fruit of the
ghost-flower? If you cannot have 'an established ancestor-worship' till
you abandon nomadic habits, how, while still nomadic, do you evolve a
Supreme Being? Obviously not out of ancestor-worship.

Mr. Spencer then assigns, as evidence for ancestor-worship in Israel,
mourning dresses, fasting, the law against self-bleeding and cutting off
the hair for the dead, and the text (Deut. xxvi. 14) about 'I have not
given aught thereof for the dead.' 'Hence, the conclusion must be that
ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it
was repressed by a higher worship.'[9] But whence came that higher worship
which seems to have intervened immediately after the cessation of nomadic
habits?

There are obvious traces of grief expressed in a primitive way among the
Hebrews. 'Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead' (Deut. xiv. 1). 'Neither shall men lament for them,
nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them; neither shall men
tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead' (by
way of counter-irritant to grief); 'neither shall men give them the cup
of consolation to drink for their father or their mother,' because the
Jews were to be removed from their homes.[10] 'Ye shall not make any
cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.'[11]

It may be usual to regard inflictions, such as cutting, by mourners, as
sacrifices to the ghost of the dead. But one has seen a man strike himself
a heavy blow on receiving news of a loss _not_ by death, and I venture to
fancy that cuttings and gashings at funerals are merely a more violent
form of appeal to a counter-irritant of grief, and, again, a token of
recklessness caused by a sorrow which makes void the world. One of John
Nicholson's native adorers killed himself on news of that warrior's death,
saying, 'What is left worth living for?' This was not a sacrifice to the
Manes of Nicholson. The sacrifice of the mourner's hair, as by Achilles,
argues a similar indifference to personal charm. Once more, the text in
Psalm cvi. 28, 'They joined themselves unto Baal-Peor, and ate the
sacrifices of the dead,' is usually taken by commentators as a reference
to the ritual of gods who are no gods. But it rather seems to indicate an
acquiescence in foreign burial rites. All this additional evidence does
not do much to prove ancestor-worship in Israel, though the secrecy of the
burial of Moses, 'in a valley of the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor;
but no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day,' may indicate a dread of
a nascent worship of the great leader.[12] The scene of the defection in
Psalm cvi., Beth-peor, is indicated in Numbers xxv., where Israel runs
after the girls and the gods of Moab: 'And Moab called the people unto the
sacrifices of their gods; and the people did eat, and bowed down to their
gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor.' Psalm cvi. is obviously a
later restatement of this addiction to the Moabite gods, and the Psalm
adds 'they ate the sacrifices of the dead.'

It is plain that, for whatever reason, ancestor-worship among the Hebrews
was, at the utmost, rudimentary. Otherwise it must have been clearly
denounced by the Prophets among the other heresies of Israel. Therefore,
as being at the most rudimentary, ancestor-worship in Israel could not be
developed at once into the worship of Jehovah.

Though ancestor-worship among the Hebrews could not be fully developed,
according to Mr. Spencer, because of their nomadic habits, it _was_ fully
developed, according to the Rev. A.W. Oxford. 'Every family, like every
old Roman and Greek family, was firmly held together by the worship of its
ancestors, the hearth was the altar, the head of the family the priest....
The bond which kept together the families of a tribe was its common
religion, the worship of its reputed ancestor. The chief of the tribe was,
of course, the priest of the cult.' Of course; but what a pity that Mr.
Huxley and Mr. Spencer omitted facts so invaluable to their theory! And
how does the Rev. Mr. Oxford know? Well, 'there is no direct proof,'
oddly enough, of so marked a feature in Hebrew religion but we are
referred to 1 Sam. xx. 29 and Judges xviii. 19. 1 Sam. xx. 29 makes
Jonathan say that David wants to go to a family sacrifice, that is, a
family dinner party. This hardly covers the large assertions made by
Mr. Oxford. His second citation is so unlucky as to contradict his
observation that 'of course' the chief of the tribe was the priest of the
cult. Micah, in Judges xvii., xviii., is _not_ the chief of his tribe
(Ephraim), neither is he even the priest in his own house. He 'consecrated
one of his own sons who became his priest,' till he got hold of a casual
young Levite, and said, 'Be unto me a _father_ and a priest,' for ten
shekels _per annum_, a suit of clothes, and board and lodging.

In place, then, of any remote reference to a chief's being priest of his
ancestral ghosts, we have here a man of one tribe who is paid rather
handsomely to be family chaplain to a member of another tribe. Some
moss-troopers of the tribe of Dan then kidnapped this valuable young
Levite, and seized a few idols which Micah had permitted himself to make.
And all this, according to our clerical authority, is evidence for
ancestor-worship![13]

All this appears to be derived from some incoherent speculations of Stade.
For example, that learned German cites the story of Micah as a proof that
the different tribes or clans had different religions. This _must_ be so,
because the Danites asked the young Levite whether it was not better to be
priest to a clan than to an individual? It is as if a patron offered a
rich living to somebody's private chaplain, saying that the new position
was more creditable and lucrative. This would hardly prove a difference of
religion between the individual and the parish.[14]

Mr. Oxford next avers that 'the earliest form of the Israelite religion
was Fetishism or Totemism.' This is another example of Stade's logic.
Finding, as he believes, names suggestive of Totemism in Simeon, Levi,
Rachel, and so on, Stade leaps to the conclusion that Totemism in Israel
was prior to anything resembling monotheism. For monotheism, he argues,
could not give the germs of the clan or tribal organisation, while Totemism
could do so. Certainly it could, but as, in many regions (America,
Australia), we find Totemism and the belief in a benevolent Supreme Being
co-existing among savages, when first observed by Europeans, we cannot
possibly say dogmatically whether a rough monotheism or whether Totemism
came first in order of evolution. This holds as good of Israel (if once
totemistic) as it does of Pawnees or Kurnai. Stade has overlooked these
well-known facts, and his opinion filters into a cheap hand-book, and is
set in examinations![15]

We also learn from Mr. Oxford's popular manual of German Biblical
conjecture that 'Jehovah was not represented as a loving Father, but as a
Being easily roused to wrath,' a thing most incident to loving fathers.

Again, Mr. Oxford avers that 'the old Israelites knew no distinction
between physical and moral evil.... The conception of Jehovah's holiness
had nothing moral in it' (p. 90). This rather contradicts Wellhausen: 'In
all ancient primitive peoples ... religion furnishes a motive for law and
morals; in the case of none did it become so with such purity and power as
in that of the Israelites.'[16]

We began by examining Mr. Huxley's endeavours to find traces of
ancestor-worship (in his opinion the origin of Jehovah-worship) among the
Israelites. We next criticised Mr. Spencer's efforts in the same quest,
and the more dogmatic assertions of Mr. Oxford and Stade. We now return to
Mr. Huxley's account of the evolution from ghost-cult to the cult of
Jehovah.

From the history of the Witch of Endor, which Mr. Huxley sees no reason to
regard as other than a sincere statement of what really occurred, he
gathers that the Witch cried out, 'I see Elohim.' These Elohim proved to
be the phantasm of the dead Samuel. Moved by this hallucination the Witch
uttered a veridical premonition, totally adverse to her own interests, and
uncommonly dangerous to her life. This is, psychically, interesting.
The point, however, is that _Elohim_ is a term equivalent to Red
Indian _Wakan_, Fijian _Kahu_, Maori or Melanesian _Mana_, meaning the
'supernatural,' the vaguely powerful--in fact X. This particular example
of _Elohim_ was a phantasm of the dead, but _Elohim_ is also used of the
highest Divine Being, therefore the highest Divine Being is of the same
genus as a ghost--so Mr. Huxley reasons. 'The difference which was
supposed to exist between the different Elohim was one of degree, not of
kind.'[17]

'If Jehovah was thus supposed to differ only in degree from the
undoubtedly zoomorphic or anthropomorphic "gods of the nations," why is it
to be assumed that he also was not thought to have a human shape?' He
_was_ thought to have a human shape, at one time, by some theorists: no
doubt exists on that head. That, however, is not where we demur. We demur
when, because an hallucination of the Witch of Endor (probably still
incompletely developed) is called by her _Elohim_, therefore the highest
_Elohim_ is said by Mr. Huxley to differ from a ghost only in degree, not
in kind. _Elohim_, or _El_, the creative, differs from a ghost in kind,
because he, in Hebrew belief, never was a ghost, he is immortal and
without beginning.

Mr. Huxley now enforces his theory by a parallel between the religion of
Tonga and the religion of Israel under the Judges. He quotes Mariner,[18]
whose statement avers that there is a supreme Tongan being: 'of his
origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal. His name is
Tá-li-y-Tooboo = "Wait-there-Tooboo."' 'He is a great chief from the top
of the sky down to the bottom of the earth.' He, and other '_original_
gods' of his making, are carefully and absolutely discriminated from the
_atua_, which are 'the human soul after its separation from the body.' All
Tongan gods are _atua_ (_Elohim_), but all _atua_ are not 'original gods,'
unserved by priests, and unpropitiated by food or libation, like the
highest God, Tá-li-y-Tooboo, the Eternal of Tonga. 'He occasionally
inspires the How' (elective King), but often a How is not inspired at all
by Tá-li-y-Tooboo, any more than Saul, at last, was inspired by Jehovah.

Surely there is a difference _in kind_ between an eternal, immortal God,
and a ghost, though both are _atua_, or both are _Elohim_--the unknown X.

Many people call a ghost 'supernatural;' they also call God
'supernatural,' but the difference between a phantasm of a dead man and
the Deity they would admit, I conceive, to be a difference of kind. We
have shown, or tried to show, that the conceptions of 'ghost' and 'Supreme
Being' are different, not only in kind, but in origin. The ghost comes
from, and depends on, the animistic theory; the Supreme Being, as
originally thought of, does not. All Gods are _Elohim, kalou, wakan_; all
_Elohim, kalou, wakan_ are not Gods.

A ghost-god should receive food or libation. Mr. Huxley says that
Tá-li-y-Tooboo did so. 'If the god, like Tá-li-y-Tooboo, had no priest,
then the chief place was left vacant, and was supposed to be occupied by
the god himself. _When the first cup of Kava was filled_, the mataboole
who acted as master of the ceremonies said, "Give it to your god," and it
was offered, though only as a matter of form.'[19]

This is incorrect. In the case of Tá-li-y-Tooboo _'there is no cup filled
for the god.'_[20] _'Before any cup is filled_ the man by the side of the
bowl says: "The Kava is in the cup"' (which it is not), 'and the mataboole
answers, "Give it to your god;"' but the Kava is _not_ in the cup, and the
Tongan Eternal receives no oblation.

The sacrifice, says Mr. Huxley, meant 'that the god was either a deified
ghost, or, at any rate, a being of like nature to these.'[21] But as
Tá-li-y-Tooboo had no sacrifice, contrary to Mr. Huxley's averment, he was
_not_ 'a deified ghost, or a being of like nature to these.' To the lower,
non-ghostly Tongan gods the animistic habit of sacrifice had been
extended, but not yet to the Supreme Being.

Ah, if Mr. Gladstone, or the Duke of Argyll, or some bishop had made a
misstatement of this kind, how Mr. Huxley would have crushed him! But it
is a mere error of careless reading, such as we all make daily.

It is manifest that we cannot prove Jehovah to be a ghost by the parallel
of a Tongan god, who, by ritual and by definition, was _not_ a ghost. The
proof therefore rests on the anthropomorphised pre-prophetic accounts, and
on the ritual, of Jehovah. But man naturally 'anthropises' his deities: he
does not thereby demonstrate that they were once ghosts.

As regards the sacrifices to Jehovah, the sweet savour which he was
supposed to enjoy (contrary to the opinion of the Prophets), these
sacrifices afford the best presumption that Jehovah was a ghost-god, or a
god constructed on ghostly lines.

But we have shown that among the lowest races neither are ghosts
worshipped by sacrifice, nor does the Supreme Being, Darumulun or Puluga,
receive food offerings. We have also instanced many Supreme Beings
of more advanced races, Ahone, and Dendid, and Nyankupon, who do not sniff
the savour of any offerings. If then (as in the case of Taa-roa), a
Supreme Being _does_ receive sacrifice, we may argue that a piece of
animistic ritual, not connected with the Supreme Being in Australia or
Andaman, not connected with his creed in Virginia or Africa (where
ghost-gods do receive sacrifice), may in other regions be transferred from
ghost-gods to the Supreme Being, who never was a ghost. There seems to
be nothing incredible or illogical in the theory of such transference.

On a God who never was a ghost men may come to confer sacrifices (which
are not made to Baiame and the rest) because, being in the habit of thus
propitiating one set of bodiless powers, men may not think it civil or
safe to leave another set of powers out. By his very nature, man must
clothe all gods with some human passions and attributes, unless, like a
large number of savages, he leaves his high God severely alone, and is the
slave of fetishes and spectres. But that practice makes against the
ghost-theory.

In the attempt to account thus, namely by transference, for the sacrifices
to Jehovah, we are met by a difficulty of our own making. If the
Israelites did not sacrifice to ancestors (as we have shown that there is
very scant reason for supposing that they did), how could they transfer to
Jehovah the rite which, by our hypothesis, they are not proved to have
offered to ancestors?

This is certainly a hard problem, harder (or perhaps easier) because we
know so very little of the early history of the Hebrews. According to
their own traditions, Israel had been in touch with all manner of races
much more advanced than themselves in material culture, and steeped in
highly developed polytheistic Animism. According to their history, the
Israelites 'went a-whoring' incorrigibly after strange gods. It is
impossible, perhaps, to disentangle the foreign and the native elements.

It may therefore be tentatively suggested that early Israel had its Ahone
in a Being perhaps not yet named Jehovah. Israel entertained, however,
perhaps by reason of 'nomadic habits,' only the scantiest concern about
ancestral ghosts. We then find an historical tradition of secular contact
between Israel and Egypt, from which Israel emerges with Jehovah for God,
and a system of sacrifices. Regarding Jehovah as a revived memory of
the moral Supreme Being whom Israel must have known in extremely remote
ages (unless Israel was less favoured than Australians, Bushmen, or
Andamanese), we might look on the sacrifices to him as an adaptation from
the practices of religion among races more settled than Israel, and more
civilised.[22]

Speculation on subjects so remote must be conjectural, but our suggestion
would, perhaps, account for sacrifices to Jehovah, paid by a race
which, by reason of 'nomadic habits,' was never much given to
ancestor-worship, but had been in contact with great sacrificing,
polytheistic civilisations. Mr. Huxley, however, while he seems to slur
the essential distinction between ghost-gods and the Eternal, grants,
later, that 'there are very few people(s?) without additional gods,
which cannot, with certainty, be accounted for as deified ancestors.'
Tá-li-y-Tooboo, of course, is one of these gods, as is Jehovah. Mr. Huxley
gives no theory of _how_ these gods came into belief, except the
suggestion that 'the polytheistic theology has become modified by the
selection of the cosmic or tribal god, as the only god to whom worship is
due on the part of that nation,' without prejudice to the right of other
nations to worship other gods.[23] This is 'monolatry,' and 'the ethical
code, often of a very high order, comes into closer relation with the
theological creed,' _why_, we are not informed. Nor do we learn out of
what polytheistic deities Jehovah was selected, nor for what reason. The
hypothesis, as usual, breaks down on the close relation between the
ethical code and the theological creed, among low savages, with a
relatively Supreme Being, but without ancestor-worship, and without
polytheistic gods from whom to select a heavenly chief.

Whence came the moral element in the idea of Jehovah? Mr. Huxley supposes
that, during their residence in the land of Goshen (and _a fortiori_
before it), the Israelites 'knew nothing of Jehovah.'[24] They were
polytheistic idolaters. This follows, apparently, from Ezekiel xx. 5:
'In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of
the house of Jacob, _and made myself known unto them_ in the land of
Egypt.' The Biblical account is that the God of Moses's fathers, the God
of Abraham, enlightened Moses in Sinai, giving his name as 'I am that I
am' (Exodus iii. 6, 14; translation uncertain). We are to understand that
Moses, a religious reformer, revived an old, and, in the Egyptian bondage,
a half-obliterated creed of the ancient nomadic Beni-Israel. They were no
longer to 'defile themselves with the idols of Egypt,' as they had
obviously done. We really know no more about the matter. Wellhausen says
that Jehovah was 'originally a family or tribal god, either of the family
of Moses or of the tribe of Joseph.' How a family could develop a Supreme
Being all to itself, we are not informed, and we know of no such analogous
case in the ethnographic field. Again, Jehovah was 'only a special name of
El, current within a powerful circle.' And who was El?[25] 'Moses was not
the first discoverer of the faith.' Probably not, but Mr. Huxley seems to
think that he was.

Wellhausen's and other German ideas filter into popular traditions, as we
saw, through 'A Short Introduction to the History of Ancient Israel'
(pp. 19, 20), by the Rev. A.W. Oxford, M.A., Vicar of St. Luke's, Soho.
Here follows Mr. Oxford's undeniably 'short way with Jehovah.' 'Moses was
the founder of the Israelite religion. Jehovah, his family or tribal god,
perhaps originally the God of the Kenites, was taken as a tribal god by
all the Israelite tribes.... That Jehovah was not the original god of
Israel' (as the Bible impudently alleges) 'but was the god of the Kenites,
we see mainly from Deut. xxxiii. 2, Judges v. 4, 5, and from the history
of Jethro, who, according to Judges i. 16, was a Kenite.'

The first text says that, according to Moses, 'the Lord came from Sinai,'
rose up from Seir, and shone from Mount Paran. The second text mentions
Jehovah's going up out of Seir and Sinai. The third text says that Jethro,
Moses's Kenite (or Midianite) father-in-law, dwelt among the people of
Judah; Jethro being a priest of Midian. How all this proves that 'Moses
was a great impostor,' as the poet says, and that Jehovah was not 'the
original God of Israel,' but (1) Moses's family or tribal god, or (2) 'the
god of the Kenites,' I profess my inability to comprehend.

Wellhausen himself had explained Jehovah as 'a family or tribal god,
either of the family of Moses' (tribe of Levi) 'or of the tribe of
Joseph.' It seems to be all one to Mr. Oxford whether Jehovah was a god
of Moses's tribe or quite the reverse, 'a Kenite god.' Yet it really
makes a good deal of difference! For in a complex of tribes, speaking one
language, it is to the last degree unexampled (within my knowledge) that
one tribe, or family, possesses, all to itself, a family god who is also
the Creator and is later accepted as such by all the other tribes. One may
ask for instances of such a thing in any known race, in any stage of
culture. Peru will not help us--not the Creator, Pachacamac, but the Sun,
is the god of the Inca family. If, on the other hand, Jehovah was a Kenite
god, the Kenites were a half-Arab Semitic people connected with Israel,
and may very well have retained traditions of a Supreme Being which, in
Egypt, were likely to be dimmed, as Exodus asserts, by foreign religions.
The learned Stade, to be sure, may disbelieve in Israel's sojourn in
Egypt, but that revolutionary opinion is not necessarily binding on us and
involves a few difficulties.

Have critics and manual-makers no knowledge of the science of comparative
religion? Are they unaware that peoples infinitely more backward than
Israel was at the date supposed have already moral Supreme Beings
acknowledged over vast tracts of territory? Have they a tittle of positive
evidence that early Israel was benighted beyond the darkness of Bushmen,
Andamanese, Pawnees, Blackfeet, Hurons, Indians of British Guiana, Dinkas,
Negroes, and so forth? Unless Israel had this rare ill-luck (which Israel
denies) of course Israel must have had a secular tradition, however dim,
of a Supreme Being. We must ask for a single instance of a family or
tribe, in a complex of semi-barbaric but not savage tribes of one
speech, owning a private deity who happened to be the Maker and Ruler of
the world, and, as such, was accepted by all the tribes. Jehovah came out
from Sinai, because, there having been a Theophany at Sinai, that mountain
was regarded as one of his seats.[26]

We have seen that it seemed to make no difference to Mr. Oxford whether
Jehovah was a god of Moses's family or tribe or a Kenite god. The former
(with the alternative of _Joseph's_ family or tribal god) is Wellhausen's
theory. The latter is Stade's.[27] Each is inconsistent with the other;
Wellhausen's fancy is inconsistent with all that we know of religious
development: Stade's is hopelessly inconsistent with Exodus iv. 24-26,
where Moses's Kenite wife reproaches him for a ceremony of his, not of
her, religion. Therefore the Kenite differed from the Hebrew _sacra_.

The passage is very extraordinary, and is said by critics to be very
archaic. After the revelation of the Burning Bush, Jehovah met Moses and
his Kenite wife, Zipporah, and their child, at a khan. Jehovah was
anxious to slay Moses, nobody ever knew why, so Zipporah appeased
Jehovah's wrath by circumcising her boy _with a flint_. 'A bloody husband
art thou to me,' she said, 'because of the circumcision'--an Egyptian,
but clearly not a Kenite practice. Whatever all this may mean, it does not
look as if Zipporah expected such rites as circumcision in the faith of a
Kenite husband, nor does it favour the idea that the _sacra_ of Moses were
of Kenite origin.

Without being a scholar, or an expert in Biblical criticism, one may
protest against the presentation to the manual-reading intellectual middle
classes of a theory so vague, contradictory, and (by all analogy) so
impossible as Mr. Oxford collects from German writers. Of course, the
whole subject, so dogmatically handled, is mere matter of dissentient
opinion among scholars. Thus M. Renan derives the name of Jehovah from
Assyria, from 'Aramaised Chaldaeanism.'[28] In that case the name was long
anterior to the residence in Egypt. But again, perhaps Jehovah was a local
god of Sinai, or a provincial deity in Palestine.[29] He was known to very
ancient sages, who preferred such names as El Shaddai and Elohim. In
short, we have no certainty on the subject.[30]

I need hardly say, perhaps, that I have no antiquated prejudice against
Biblical criticism. Assuredly the Bible must be studied like any other
collection of documents, linguistically, historically, and in the light of
the comparative method. The leading ideas of Wellhausen, for example, are
conspicuous for acumen: the humblest layman can see that. But one may
protest against criticising the Bible, or Homer, by methods like those
which prove Shakspeare to have been Bacon. One must protest, too, against
the presentation of inconsistent and probably baseless critical hypotheses
in the dogmatic brevity of cheap handbooks.

Yet again, whence comes the moral element in Jehovah? Mr. Huxley thinks
that it possibly came from the ethical practice and theory of Egypt. In
the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 'a sort of Guide to Spirit Land,' there
are moral chapters; the ghost tells his judges in Amenti what sins he has
_not_ committed. Many of these sins are forbidden in the Ten Commandments.

They are just as much forbidden in the nascent morality of savage peoples.
Moses did not need the Book of the Dead to teach him elementary morals.
From the mysteries of Mtanga he might have learned, also, had he been
present, the virtue of unselfish generosity. If the creed of Jehovah, or
of El, retained only as much of ethics as is under divine sanction among
the Kurnai, adaptation from the Book of the Dead was superfluous.

The care for the departed, the ritual of the Ka, the intense
pre-occupation with the future life, which, far more than its morality,
are the essential characteristics of the Book of the Dead--Israel cared
for none of these animistic things, brought none of these, or very little
of these, out of the land of Egypt. Moses was certainly very eclectic; he
took only the morality of Egypt. But as Mr. Huxley advances this opinion
tentatively, as having no secure historical authority about Moses, it
hardly answers our question, Whence came the moral element in Jehovah? One
may surmise that it was the survival of the primitive divinely sanctioned
ethics of the ancient savage ancestors of the Israelite, known to them,
as to the Kurnai, before they had a pot, or a bronze knife, or seed to
sow, or sheep to herd, or even a tent over their heads. In the counsels of
eternity Israel was chosen to keep burning, however obscured with smoke
of sacrifice, that flame which illumines the darkest places of the earth,
'a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel'--a
flame how litten a light whence shining, history cannot inform us, and
anthropology can but conjecture. Here scientific nescience is wiser than
the cocksureness of popular science, with her ghosts and fetish-stones,
and gods that sprang from ghosts, which ghosts, however, could not be
developed, owing to nomadic habits.

It appears, then, if our general suggestion meets with any acceptance,
that what occurred in the development of Hebrew religion was precisely
what the Bible tells us did occur. This must necessarily seem highly
paradoxical to our generation; but the whole trend of our provisional
system makes in favour of the paradox. If savage nomadic Israel had the
higher religious conceptions proved to exist among several of the lowest
known races, these conceptions might be revived by a leader of genius.
They might, in a crisis of tribal fortunes, become the rallying point of a
new national sentiment. Obscured, in some degree, by acquaintance with
'the idols of Egypt,' and restricted and localised by the very national
sentiment which they fostered, these conceptions were purified and widened
far beyond any local, tribal, or national restrictions--widened far as the
_flammantia moenia mundi_--by the historically unique genius of the
Prophets. Blended with the doctrine of our Lord, and recommended by the
addition of Animism in its pure and priceless form--the reward of faith,
hope, and charity in eternal life--the faith of Israel enlightened the
world.

All this is precisely what occurred, according to the Old and New
Testaments. All this is just what, on our hypothesis, might be expected to
occur if, out of the many races which, in their most backward culture, had
a rude conception of a Moral Creative Being, relatively supreme, one race
endured the education of Israel, showed the comparative indifference of
Israel to Animism and ghost-gods, listened to the Prophets of Israel, and
gave birth to a greater than Moses and the Prophets.

To this result the Logos, as Socrates says, has led us, by the path of
anthropology.

[Footnote 1: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_.]

[Footnote 2: Op. cit. p. 361.]

[Footnote 3:_ Science and Hebrew Tradition_. p. 308.]

[Footnote 4: _Prin. Soc_. p. 306.]

[Footnote 5: _The Tshi-speaking Races_, p. 183.]

[Footnote 6: Some Australian tribes have cemeteries, and I have found one
native witness, King Billy, to the celebration of the mysteries near one of
these burying-places. I have not discovered other evidence to this effect,
though I have looked for it. The spot selected is usually 'near the camp,'
and the place for so large a camp in chosen, naturally, where the supply
of food is adequate.]

[Footnote 7: Cf. the Aryans, _Principles of Sociology_, p. 314.]

[Footnote 8: _Principles_, p. 316.]

[Footnote 9: Ibid. p. 317.]

[Footnote 10: Jeremiah xvi. 6, 7.]

[Footnote 11: Leviticus xix. 28.]

[Footnote 12: Deuteronomy xxxiv. 6.]

[Footnote 13: _Short Introduction to History of Ancient Israel_, pp.
83, 84.]

[Footnote 14: Stade i 403.]

[Footnote 15: Stade, i. 406.]

[Footnote 16: Wellhausen, _History of Israel_, p. 437. Mr. Oxford's book
is only noticed here because it is meant for a popular manual. As Mr.
Henry Foker says, 'it seems a pity that the clergy should interfere in
these matters.']

[Footnote 17: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 299.]

[Footnote 18: II. 127.]

[Footnote 19: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 331.]

[Footnote 20: Mariner, ii. 205.]

[Footnote 21: Op. cit. p. 335.]

[Footnote 22: Of course, it in understood that Israel (in the dark
backward and abysm of time) may also have been totemistic, like the
Australians, as texts pointed out by Mr. Robertson Smith seem to hint.
There was also worship of teraphim, respect paid to stones and trees, and
so forth.]

[Footnote 23: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 349.]

[Footnote 24: P. 351.]

[Footnote 25: _History of Israel_, p. 443 note.]

[Footnote 26: _Religion of Semites_.]

[Footnote 27: _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, i. 180.]

[Footnote 28: _Histoire du Peuple d'Israel_, citing Schrader, p. 23.]

[Footnote 29: Op. cit. p. 85]

[Footnote 30: See Professor Robertson's _Early Religion of Israel_ for a
list of these conjectures, and, generally, for criticisms of the
occasional vagaries of critics.]




XVII

CONCLUSION

We may now glance backward at the path which we have tried to cut through
the jungles of early religions. It is not a highway, but the track
of a solitary explorer; and this essay pretends to be no more than a
sketch--not an exhaustive survey of creeds. Its limitations are obvious,
but may here be stated. The higher and even the lower polytheisms are only
alluded to in passing, our object being to keep well in view the
conception of a Supreme, or practically Supreme, Being, from the lowest
stages of human culture up to Christianity. In polytheism that conception
is necessarily obscured, showing itself dimly either in the _Prytanis_,
or President of the Immortals, such as Zeus; or in Fate, behind and above
the Immortals; or in Mr. Max Müller's _Henotheism_, where the god
addressed--Indra, or Soma, or Agni--is, for the moment, envisaged as
supreme, and is adored in something like a monotheistic spirit; or,
finally, in the etherealised deity of advanced philosophic speculation.

It has not been necessary, for our purpose, to dwell on these civilised
religions. Granting our hypothesis of an early Supreme Being among
savages, obscured later by ancestor-worship and ghost-gods, but not
often absolutely lost to religious tradition, the barbaric and the
civilised polytheisms easily take their position in line, and are easily
intelligible. Space forbids a discussion of all known religions; only
typical specimens have been selected. Thus, nothing has been said of the
religion of the great Chinese empire. It appears to consist, on its
higher plane, of the worship of Heaven as a great fetish-god--a worship
which may well have begun in days, as Dr. Brinton says, 'long ere man had
asked himself, "Are the heavens material and God spiritual?"'--perhaps,
for all we know, before the idea of 'spirit' had been evolved. Thus, if it
contains nothing more august, the Chinese religion is, so far, beneath
that of the Zuñis, or the creed in Taa-roa, in Beings who are eternal, who
were before earth was or sky was. The Chinese religion of Heaven is also
coloured by Chinese political conditions; Heaven (Tien) corresponds to the
Emperor, and tends to be confounded with Shang-ti, the Emperor above. 'Dr.
Legge charges Confucius,' says Mr. Tylor, 'with an inclination to
substitute, in his religious teaching, the name of Tien, Heaven, for that
known to more ancient religion, and used in more ancient books--Shang-ti,
the personal ruling deity.' If so, China too has its ancient Supreme
Being, who is not a divinised aspect of nature.

But Mr. Tylor's reading, in harmony with his general theory, is different:

'It seems, rather, that the sage was, in fact, upholding the tradition of
the ancient faith, thus acting according to the character on which he
prided himself--that of a transmitter, not a maker, a preserver of old
knowledge, not a new revealer.'[1]

This, of course, is purely a question of evidence, to be settled by
Sinologists. If the personal Supreme Being, Shang-ti, occupies in older
documents the situation held by Tien (Heaven) in Confucius's later system,
why are we to say that Confucius, by putting forward Heaven in place of
Shang-ti, was restoring an older conception? Mr. Tylor's affection for his
theory leads him, perhaps, to that opinion; while my affection for my
theory leads me to prefer documentary evidence in its favour.

The question can only be settled by specialists. As matters stand, it
seems to me probable that ancient China possessed a Supreme Personal
Being, more remote and original than Heaven, just as the Zuñis do. On
the lower plane, Chinese religion is overrun, as everyone knows, by
Animism and ancestor-worship. This is so powerful that it has given rise
to a native theory of Euhemerism. The departmental deities of Chinese
polytheism are explained by the Chinese on Euhemeristic principles:

'According to legend, the War God, or Military Sage, was once, in human
life, a distinguished soldier; the Swine God was a hog-breeder who lost
his pigs and died of sorrow; the God of Gamblers was _un décavé_.'[2]

These are not statements of fact, but of Chinese Euhemeristic theory. On
that hypothesis, Confucius should now be a god; but of course he is not;
his spirit is merely localised in his temple, where the Emperor worships
him twice a year as ancestral spirits are worshipped.

Every theorist will force facts into harmony with his system, but I do not
see that the Chinese facts are contrary to mine. On the highest plane is
either a personal Supreme Being, Shang-ti, or there is Tien, Heaven (with
Earth, parent of men), neither of them necessarily owing, in origin,
anything to Animism. Then there is the political reflection of the Emperor
on Religion (which cannot exist where there is no Emperor, King, or Chief,
and therefore must be late), there is the animistic rabble of spirits
ancestral or not, and there is departmental polytheism. The spirits are,
of course, fed and furnished by men in the usual symbolical way. Nothing
shows or hints that Shang-ti is merely an imaginary idealised first
ancestor. Indeed, about all such explanations of the Supreme Being (say
among the Kurnai) as an idealised imaginary first ancestor, M. Réville
justly observes as follows: 'Not only have we seen that, in wide regions
of the uncivilised world, the worship of ancestors has invaded a domain
previously occupied by "Naturism" and Animism properly so called, that it
is, therefore, posterior to these; but, farther, we do not understand, in
Mr. Spencer's system, why, in so many places, the first ancestor is the
Maker, if not the Creator of the world, Master of life and death, and
possessor of divine powers, not held by any of his descendants. This
proves that it was not the first ancestor who became God, in the belief of
his descendants, but much rather the Divine Maker and Beginner of all,
who, in the creed of his adorers, became the first ancestor.'[3]

Our task has been limited, in this way, mainly to examination of
the religion of some of the very lowest races, and of the highest
world-religions, such as Judaism. The historical aspect of Christianity,
as arising in the Life, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord, would demand
a separate treatise. This would, in part, be concerned with the attempts
to find in the narratives concerning our Lord, a large admixture of the
mythology and ritual connected with the sacrificed _Rex Nemorensis_, and
whatever else survives in peasant folk-lore of spring and harvest.[4]

After these apologies for the limitations of this essay, we may survey the
backward track. We began by showing that savages may stumble, and have
stumbled, on theories not inconsistent with science, but not till
recently discovered by science. The electric origin of the Aurora Borealis
(whether absolutely certain or not) was an example; another was the
efficacy of 'suggestion,' especially for curative purposes. It was,
therefore, hinted that, if savages blundered (if you please) into a belief
in God and the Soul, however obscurely envisaged, these beliefs were not
therefore necessarily and essentially false. We then stated our purpose of
examining the alleged supernormal phenomena, savage or civilised, which,
on Mr. Tylor's hypothesis, help to originate the conception of 'spirits.'
We defended the nature of our evidence, as before anthropologists, by
showing that, for the savage belief in the supernormal phenomena, we have
exactly the kind of evidence on which all anthropological science reposes.
The relative weakness of that evidence, our need of more and better
evidence, we would be the very last to deny, indeed it is part of our
case. Our existing evidence will hardly support any theory of religion.
Anyone who is in doubt on that head has only to read M. Réville's 'Les
Religions des Peuples Non-Civilisés,' under the heads 'Mélanésiens,'
'Mincopies,' 'Les Australiens' (ii. 116-143), when he will observe that
this eminent French authority is ignorant of the facts about these races
here produced. In 1883 they had not come within his ken. Such minute and
careful inquiries by men closely intimate with the peoples concerned, as
Dr. Codrington's, Mr. Hewitt's, Mr. Man's, and the authorities compiled by
Mr. Brough Smyth, were unfamiliar to M. Réville, Thus, in turn, new facts,
or facts unknown to us, may upset my theory. This peril is of the essence
of scientific theorising on the history of religion.

Having thus justified our evidence for the savage _belief_ in supernormal
phenomena, as before anthropologists, we turned to a court of
psychologists in defence of our evidence for the _fact_ of exactly the
same supernormal phenomena in civilised experience. We pointed out that
for subjective psychological experiences, say of telepathy, we had
precisely the same evidence as all non-experimental psychology must and
does rest upon. Nay, we have even experimental evidence, in experiments in
thought-transference. We have chiefly, however, statements of subjective
experience. For the coincidence of such experience with unknown events we
have such evidence as, in practical life, is admitted by courts of law.

Experimental psychology, of course, relies on experiments conducted under
the eyes of the expert, for example, by hypnotism or otherwise, under Dr.
Hack Tuke, Professor James, M. Richet, M. Janet. The evidence is
the conduct rather than the statements of the subject. There is
also physiological experiment, by vivisection (I regret to say) and
post-mortem dissection. But non-experimental psychology reposes on the
self-examination of the student, and on the statements of psychological
experiences made to him by persons whom he thinks he can trust. The
psychologist, however, if he be, as Mr. Galton says, 'unimaginative in the
strict but unusual sense of that ambiguous word,' needs Mr. Galton's 'word
of warning.' He is asked 'to resist a too frequent tendency to assume that
the minds of every other sane and healthy person must be like his own. The
psychologist should inquire into the minds of others as he should into
those of animals of different races, and be prepared to find much to which
his own experience can afford little if any clue.'[5] Mr. Galton had to
warn the unimaginative psychologist in this way, because he was about to
unfold his discovery of the faculty which presents numbers to some minds
as visualised coloured numerals, 'so vivid as to be undistinguishable from
reality, except by the aid of accidental circumstances.'

Mr. Galton also found in his inquiries that occasional hallucinations of
the sane are much more prevalent than he had supposed, or than science had
ever taken into account. All this was entirely new to psychologists,
many of whom still (at least many popular psychologists of the press)
appear to be unacquainted with the circumstances. One of them informed me,
quite gravely, that '_he_ never had an hallucination,' therefore--_his_
mind being sane and healthy--the inference seemed to be that no sane and
healthy mind was ever hallucinated. Mr. Galton has replied to _that_
argument! His reply covers, logically, the whole field of psychological
faculties little regarded, for example, by Mr. Sully, who is not exactly
an imaginative psychologist.

It covers the whole field of automatism (as in automatic writing) perhaps
of the divining rod, certainly of crystal visions and of occasional
hallucinations, as Mr. Galton, in this last case, expressly declares.
Psychologists at least need not be told that such faculties cannot,
any more than other human faculties, be always evoked for study and
experiment. Our evidence for these faculties and experiences, then, is
usually of the class on which the psychologist relies. But, when the
psychologist, following Leibnitz, Sir William Hamilton, and Kant,
discusses the Subconscious (for example, knowledge, often complex and
abundant, unconsciously acquired) we demonstrated by examples that the
psychologist will contentedly repose on evidence which is not evidence at
all. He will swallow an undated, unlocalised legend of Coleridge, reaching
Coleridge on the testimony of rumour, and told at least twenty years after
the unverified occurrences. Nay, the psychologist will never dream of
procuring contemporary evidence for such a monstrous statement as that
an ignorant German wench unconsciously acquired and afterwards
subconsciously reproduced huge cantles of dead languages, by virtue of
having casually heard a former master recite or read aloud from Hebrew and
Greek books. This legend do psychologists accept on no evidence at all,
because it illustrates a theory which is, doubtless, a very good theory,
though, in this case, carried to an extent 'imagination boggles at.'

Here the psychologist may reply that much less evidence will content him
for a fact to which he possesses, at least, analogies in accredited
experience, than for a fact (say telepathic crystal-gazing) to which _he_
knows, in experience, nothing analogous. Thus, for the mythical German
handmaid, he has the analogy of languages learned in childhood, or
passages got up by rote, being forgotten and brought back to ordinary
conscious memory, or delirious memory, during an illness, or shortly
before death. Strong in these analogies, the psychologist will venture to
accept a case of language _not_ learned, but reproduced in delirious
memory, on no evidence at all. But, not possessing analogies for
telepathic crystal-gazing, he will probably decline to examine ours.

I would first draw his attention to the difference between revived memory
of a language once known (Breton and Welsh in known examples), or learned
by rote (as Greek, in an anecdote of Goethe's), and verbal reproduction
of a language _not_ known or learned by rote but overheard--each passage
probably but once--as somebody recited fragments. In this instance (that
of the mythical maid) 'the difficulty ... is that the original impressions
had not the strength--that is, the distinctness--of the reproduction. An
unknown language overheard is a mere sound....'[6]

The distinction here drawn is so great and obvious that for proof of the
German girl's case we need better evidence than Coleridge's rumour of a
rumour, cited, as it is, by Hamilton, Maudsley, Carpenter, Du Prel, and
the common run of manuals.

Not that I deny, _a priori_, the possibility of Coleridge's story. As Mr.
Huxley says, 'strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a right
to the title of an "impossibility," except a contradiction in terms.'[7]
To the horror of some of his admirers, Mr. Huxley would not call the
existence of demons and demoniacal possession 'impossible.'[8] Mr. Huxley
was no blind follower of Hume. I, too, do not call Coleridge's tale
'impossible,' but, unlike the psychologists, I refuse to accept it on
'Bardolph's security.' And I contrast their conduct, in swallowing
Coleridge's legend, with their refusal (if they do refuse) to accept the
evidence for the automatic writing of not-consciously-known languages (as
of eleventh-century French poetry and prose by Mr. Schiller), or their
refusal (if they do refuse) to look at the evidence for telepathic
crystal-gazing, or any other supernormal exhibitions of faculty, attested
by living and honourable persons.

I wish I saw a way for orthodox unimaginative psychology out of its
dilemma.

After offering to anthropologists and psychologists these considerations,
which I purposely reiterate, we examined historically the relations of
science to 'the marvellous,' showing for example how Hume, following his
_a priori_ theory of the impossible, would have declined to investigate,
because they were 'miraculous,' certain occurrences which, to Charcot,
were ordinary incidents in medical experience.

We next took up and criticised the anthropological theory of religion as
expounded by Mr. Tylor. We then collected from his work a series of
alleged supernormal phenomena in savage belief, all making for the
foundation of animistic religion. Through several chapters we pursued the
study of these phenomena, choosing savage instances, and setting beside
them civilised testimony to facts of experience. Our conclusion was that
such civilised experiences, if they occurred, as they are universally said
to do, among savages, would help to originate, and would very strongly
support the savage doctrine of souls, the base of religion in the theory
of English anthropologists. But apart from the savage doctrine of
'spirits' (whether they exist or not), the evidence points to the
existence of human faculties not allowed for in the current systems of
materialism.

We next turned from the subject of supernormal experiences to the admitted
facts about early religion. Granting the belief in souls and ghosts and
spirits, however attained, how was the idea of a Supreme Being to be
evolved out of that belief? We showed that, taking the creed as found in
the lowest races, the processes put forward by anthropologists could
not account for its evolution. The facts would not fit into, but
contradicted, the anthropological theory. The necessary social conditions
postulated were not found in places where the belief is found. Nay, the
necessary social conditions for the evolution even of ancestor-worship
were confessedly not found where the supposed ultimate result of
ancestor-worship, the belief in a Supreme Being, flourished abundantly.

Again, the belief in a Supreme Being, _ex hypothesi_ the latest in
evolution, therefore the most potent, was often shelved and half
forgotten, or neglected, or ridiculed, where the belief in Animism (_ex
hypothesi_ the earlier) was in full vigour. We demonstrated by facts that
Anthropology had simplified her task by ignoring that essential feature,
_the prevalent alliance of ethics with religion_, in the creed of the
lowest and least developed races. Here, happily, we have not only the
evidence of an earnest animist, Mr. Im Thurn, on our side, but that of a
distinguished Semitic scholar, the late Mr. Robertson Smith. 'We see that
even in its rudest forms Religion was a moral force, the powers that man
reveres were on the side of social order and moral law; and the fear of
the gods was a motive to enforce the laws of society, which were also the
laws of morality.'[9] Wellhausen has already been cited to the same
effect.

However, the facts proving that truth, and unselfishness, surely a large
element of Christian ethics, are divinely sanctioned in savage religion
are more potent than the most learned opinion on that side.

Our next step was to examine in detail several religions of the most
remote and backward races, of races least contaminated with Christian or
Islamite teaching. Our evidence, when possible, was derived from ancient
and secret tribal mysteries, and sacred native hymns. We found a
relatively Supreme Being, a Maker, sanctioning morality, and unpropitiated
by sacrifice, among peoples who go in dread of ghosts and wizards, but do
not always worship ancestors. We showed that the anthropological theory of
the evolution of God out of ghosts in no way explains the facts in the
savage conception of a Supreme Being. We then argued that the notion of
'spirit,' derived from ghost-belief, was not logically needed for the
conception of a Supreme Being in its earliest form, was detrimental to
the conception, and, by much evidence, was denied to be part of the
conception. The Supreme Being, thus regarded, may be (though he cannot
historically be shown to be) prior to the first notion of ghost and
separable souls.

We then traced the idea of such a Supreme Being through the creeds of
races rising in the scale of material culture, demonstrating that he was
thrust aside by the competition of ravenous but serviceable ghosts,
ghost-gods, and shades of kingly ancestors, with their magic and their
bloody rites. These rites and the animistic conception behind them were
next, in rare cases, reflected or refracted back on the Supreme Eternal.
Aristocratic institutions fostered polytheism with the old Supreme Being
obscured, or superseded, or enthroned as Emperor-God, or King-God. We saw
how, and in what sense, the old degeneration theory could be defined and
defended. We observed traces of degeneration in certain archaic aspects of
the faith in Jehovah; and we proved that (given a tolerably pure low
savage belief in a Supreme Being) that belief _must_ degenerate, under
social conditions, as civilisation advanced. Next, studying what we may
call the restoration of Jehovah, under the great Prophets of Israel, we
noted that they, and Israel generally, were strangely indifferent to that
priceless aspect of Animism, the care for the future happiness, as
conditioned by the conduct of the individual soul. That aspect had been
neglected neither by the popular instinct nor the priestly and philosophic
reflection of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Christianity, last, combined what
was good in Animism, the care for the individual soul as an immortal
spirit under eternal responsibilities, with the One righteous Eternal of
prophetic Israel, and so ended the long, intricate, and mysterious
theological education of humanity. Such is our theory, which does
not, to us, appear to lack evidence, nor to be inconsistent (as the
anthropological theory is apparently inconsistent) with the hypothesis of
evolution.

All this, it must be emphatically insisted on, is propounded 'under all
reserves.' While these four stages, say (1) the Australian unpropitiated
Moral Being, (2) the African neglected Being, still somewhat moral,
(3) the relatively Supreme Being involved in human sacrifice, as in
Polynesia, and (4) the Moral Being reinstated philosophically, as in
Israel, do suggest steps in evolution, we desire to base no hard-and-fast
system of ascending and descending degrees upon our present evidence.
The real object is to show that facts may be regarded in this light, as
well as in the light thrown by the anthropological theory, in the hands
whether of Mr. Tylor, Mr. Spencer, M. Réville, or Mr. Jevons, whose
interesting work comes nearest to our provisional hypothesis.

We only ask for suspense of judgment, and for hesitation in accepting the
dogmas of modern manual makers. An exception to them certainly appears to
be Mr. Clodd, if we may safely attribute to him a review (signed C.) of
Mr. Grant Allen's 'Evolution of the Idea of God.'

'We fear that all our speculations will remain summaries of probabilities.
No documents are extant to enlighten us; we have only mobile, complex and
confused ideas, incarnate in eccentric, often contradictory theories. That
this character attaches to such ideas should keep us on guard against
framing theories whose symmetry is sometimes their condemnation' ('Daily
Chronicle,' December 10, 1897).

Nothing excites my own suspicion of my provisional hypothesis more than
its symmetry. It really seems to fit the facts, as they appear to me, too
neatly. I would suggest, however, that ancient savage sacred hymns,
and practices in the mysteries, are really rather of the nature of
'documents;' more so, at least, than the casual observations of some
travellers, or the gossip extracted from natives much in contact with
Europeans.

Supposing that the arguments in this essay met with some acceptance, what
effect would they have, if any, on our thoughts about religion? What is
their practical tendency? The least dubious effect would be, I hope, to
prevent us from accepting the anthropological theory of religion, or any
other theory, as a foregone conclusion, I have tried to show how dim is
our knowledge, how weak, often, is our evidence, and that, finding among
the lowest savages all the elements of all religions already developed
in different degrees, we cannot, historically, say that one is earlier
than another. This point of priority we can never historically settle. If
we met savages with ghosts and no gods, we could not be sure but that they
once possessed a God, and forgot him. If we met savages with a God and no
ghosts, we could not be historically certain that a higher had not
obliterated a lower creed. For these reasons dogmatic decisions about the
_origin_ of religion seem unworthy of science. They will appear yet more
futile to any student who goes so far with me as to doubt whether the
highest gods of the lowest races could be developed, or can be shown to
have been developed, by way of the ghost-theory. To him who reaches this
point the whole animistic doctrine of ghosts as the one germ of religion
will appear to be imperilled. The main practical result, then, will be
hesitation about accepting the latest scientific opinion, even when backed
by great names, and published in little primers.

On the hypothesis here offered to criticism there are two chief sources of
Religion, (1) the belief, how attained we know not,[10] in a powerful,
moral, eternal, omniscient Father and Judge of men; (2) the belief
(probably developed out of experiences normal and supernormal) in
somewhat of man which may survive the grave. This second belief is not,
logically, needed as given material for the first, in its apparently
earliest form. It may, for all we know, be the later of the two beliefs,
chronologically. But this belief, too, was necessary to religion; first,
as finally supplying a formula by which advancing intellects could
conceive of the Mighty Being involved in the former creed; next, as
elevating man's conception of his own nature. By the second belief he
becomes the child of the God in whom, perhaps, he already trusted, and in
whom he has his being, a being not destined to perish with the death of
the body. Man is thus not only the child but the heir of God, a 'nurseling
of immortality,' capable of entering into eternal life. On the moral
influence of this belief it is superfluous to dwell.

From the most backward races historically known to us, to those of our own
status, all have been more or less washed by the waters of this double
stream of religion. The Hebrews, as far as our information goes, were
chiefly influenced by the first belief, the faith in the Eternal, and had
comparatively slight interest in whatever posthumous fortunes might await
individual souls. Other civilised peoples, say the Greeks, extended the
second, or animistic theory, into forms of beautiful fantasy, the
material of art. Yet both in Greece and Rome, as we learn from the
'Republic' (Books i. iii.) of Plato, and from the whole scope of the poem
of Lucretius, and from the Painted Porch at Delphi, answering to the
frescoes of the Pisan Campo Santo, there existed, among the people, what
was unknown to the Hebrews, an extreme anxiety about the posthumous
fortunes and possible punishment of the individual soul. A kind of
pardoners and indulgence-sellers made a living out of that anxiety in
Greece. For the Greek pardoners, who testify to an interest in the
future happiness of the soul not found in Israel, Mr. Jevons may be cited:

'The _agyrtes_ professed by means of his rites to purify men from the sins
they had themselves committed ... and so to secure to those whom he
purified an exemption from the evil lot in the next world which awaited
those who were not initiated.' 'A magic mirror' (crystal-gazing) 'was
among his properties.'[11]

In Egypt a moral life did not suffice to secure immortal reward. There
was also required knowledge of the spells that baffle the demons who, in
Amenti, as in the Red Indian and Polynesian Hades, lie in wait for souls.
That knowledge was contained in copies of the Book of the Dead--the
_gagne-pain_ of priests and scribes.

Early Israel, having, as far as we know, a singular lack of interest in
the future of the soul, was born to give himself up to developing,
undisturbed, the theistic conception, the belief in a righteous Eternal.

Polytheism everywhere--in Greece especially--held of the animistic
conception, with its freakish, corruptible deities. Greek philosophy could
hardly restore that Eternal for whom the Prophets battled in Israel; whom
some of the lowest savages know and fear; whom the animistic theory or cult
everywhere obscures with its crowd of hungry, cruel, interested,
food-propitiated ghost-gods. In the religion of our Lord and the Apostles
the two currents of faith in one righteous God and care for the individual
soul were purified and combined. 'God is a Spirit, and they who worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' Man also is a spirit, and,
as such, is in the hands of a God not to be propitiated by man's
sacrifice or monk's ritual. We know how this doctrine was again disturbed
by the Animism, in effect, and by the sacrifice and ritual of the
Mediaeval Church. Too eager 'to be all things to all men,' the august and
beneficent Mother of Christendom readmitted the earlier Animism in new
forms of saint-worship, pilgrimage, and popular ceremonial--things apart
from, but commonly supposed to be substitutes for, righteousness of life
and the selflessness enjoined in savage mysteries. For the softness, no
less than for the hardness of men's hearts, these things were ordained:
such as masses for the beloved dead.

Modern thought has deanthropomorphised what was left of anthropomorphic
in religion, and, in the end, has left us for God, at most, 'a stream
of tendency making for righteousness,' or an energy unknown and
unknowable--the ghost of a ghost. For the soul, by virtue of his
belief in which man raised himself in his own esteem, and, more or less,
in ethical standing, is left to us a negation or a wistful doubt.

To this part of modern scientific teaching the earlier position of this
essay suggests a demurrer. By aid of the tradition of and belief in
supernormal phenomena among the low races, by attested phenomena of the
same kinds of experience among the higher races, I have ventured to try to
suggest that 'we are not merely brain;' that man has his part, we know not
how, in we know not what--has faculties and vision scarcely conditioned by
the limits of his normal purview. The evidence of all this deals with
matters often trivial, like the electric sparks rubbed from the deer's
hide, which yet are cognate with an illimitable, essential potency of the
universe. Not being able to explain away these facts, or, in this place,
to offer what would necessarily be a premature theory of them, I regard
them, though they seem shadowy, as grounds of hope, or, at least, as
tokens that men need not yet despair. Not now for the first time have weak
things of the earth been chosen to confound things strong. Nor have men of
this opinion been always the weakest; not among the feeblest are Socrates,
Pascal, Napoleon, Cromwell, Charles Gordon, St. Theresa, and Jeanne d'Arc.

I am perfectly aware that the 'superstitiousness' of the earlier part of
this essay must injure any effect which the argument of the latter part
might possibly produce on critical opinion. Yet that argument in no way
depends on what we think about the phenomena--normal, supernormal, or
illusory--on which the theory of ghost, soul, or spirit may have been
based. It exhibits religion as probably beginning in a kind of Theism,
which is then superseded, in some degree, or even corrupted, by Animism in
all its varieties. Finally, the exclusive Theism of Israel receives its
complement in a purified Animism, and emerges as Christianity.

Quite apart, too, from any favourable conclusion which may, by some, be
drawn from the phenomena, and quite apart from the more general opinion
that all modern instances are compact of imposture, malobservation,
mythopoeic memory, and superstitious bias, the systematic comparison of
civilised and savage beliefs and alleged experiences of this kind cannot
wisely be neglected by Anthropology. _Humani nihil a se alienum putat._

[Footnote 1: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 352.]

[Footnote 2: Abridged from _Prim. Cult_. ii. 119.]

[Footnote 3: _Histoire des Religions_, ii. 237, note. M. Réville's system,
it will be observed, differs from mine in that he finds the first essays
of religion in worship of aspects of nature (_naturisme_) and in 'animism
properly so called,' by which he understands the instinctive, perhaps not
explicitly formulated, sense that all things whatever are animated and
personal. I have not remarked this aspect of belief as much prevalent in
the most backward races, and I do not try to look behind what we know
historically about early religion. I so far agree with M. Réville as to
think the belief in ghosts and spirits (Mr. Tylor's 'Animism') not
necessarily postulated in the original indeterminate conception of
the Supreme Being, or generally, in 'Original Gods.' But M. Réville
says, 'L'objet de la religion humaine est nécessairement un esprit'
(_Prolégoménes_, 107). This does not seem consistent with his own theory.]

[Footnote 4: Compare Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ with Mr. Grant Allen's
_Evolution of the Idea of God_.]

[Footnote 5: _J.A.I_. x. 85.]

[Footnote 6: Massey. Note to Du Prel. _Philosophy of mysticism_, ii 10.]

[Footnote 7: _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 197]

[Footnote 8: Op. cit. p. 195.]

[Footnote 9: _Religion of the Semites_, p. 53.]

[Footnote 10: The hypothesis of St. Paul seems not the most
unsatisfactory, Rom. i. 19.]

[Footnote 11: _Introd. to Hist. of Rel_. p. 333; Aristoph. _Frogs_, 159.]




APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE

The most elaborate reply to the arguments for telepathy, based on The
Report of the Census of Hallucinations, is that of Herr Parish, in his
'Hallucinations and Illusions.'[1]

Herr Parish is, at present, opposed to the theory that the Census
establishes a telepathic cause in the so-called 'coincidental' stories,
'put forward,' as he says, 'with due reserve, and based on an astonishing
mass of materials, to some extent critically handled.'

He first demurs to an allowance of twelve hours for the coincidence of
hallucination and death; but, if we reflect that twelve hours is little
even in a year, coincidences within twelve hours, it may be admitted,
_donnent à penser_, even if we reject the theory that, granted a real
telepathic impact, it may need time and quiet for its development into a
complete hallucination. We need not linger over the very queer cases from
Munich, as these are not in the selected thirty of the Report. Herr Parish
then dwells on that _hallucination of memory_, in which we feel as if
everything that is going on had happened before. It may have occurred to
most of us to be reminded by some association of ideas during the day, of
some dream of the previous night, which we had forgotten. For instance,
looking at a brook from a bridge, and thinking of how I would fish it, I
remembered that I had dreamed, on the previous night, of casting a fly for
practice, on a lawn. Nobody would think of disputing the fact that I
really had such a dream, forgot it and remembered it when reminded of it
by association of ideas. But if the forgotten dream had been 'fulfilled,'
and been recalled to memory only in the moment of fulfilment, science
would deny that I ever had such a dream at all. The alleged dream would be
described as an 'hallucination of memory.' Something occurring, it would
be said, I had the not very unusual sensation, 'This has occurred to me
before,' and the sensation would become a false memory that it _had_
occurred--in a dream. This theory will be advanced, I think, not when an
ordinary dream is recalled by a waking experience, but only when the dream
coincides with and foreruns that experience, which is a thing that dreams
have no business to do. Such coincidental dreams are necessarily 'false
memories,' scientifically speaking. Now, how does this theory of false
memory bear on coincidental hallucinations?

The insane, it seems, are apt to have the false memory 'This occurred
before,' and _then_ to say that the event was revealed to them in a
vision.[2] The insane may be recommended to make a note of the vision, and
have it properly attested, _before_ the event. The same remark applies to
the 'presentiments' of the sane. But it does _not_ apply if Jones tells me
'I saw my great aunt last night,' and if news comes _after_ this remark
that Jones's aunt died, on that night, in Timbuctoo. Yet Herr Parish
(p. 282) seems to think that the argument of fallacious memory comes in
part, even when an hallucination has been reported to another person
_before_ its fulfilment. Of course all depends on the veracity of the
narrator and the person to whom he told his tale. To take a case given:[3]
Brown, say, travelling with his wife, dreams that a mad dog bit his boy at
home on the elbow. He tells his wife. Arriving at home Brown finds that it
was so. Herr Parish appears to argue thus:

Brown dreamed nothing at all, but he gets excited when he hears the bad
news at home; he thinks, by false memory, that he has a recollection of
it, he says to his wife, 'My dear, didn't I tell you, last night, I had
dreamed all this?' and his equally excited wife replies, 'True, my Brown,
you did, and I said it was only one of your dreams.' And both now believe
that the dream occurred. This is very plausible, is it not? only science
would not say anything about it if the dream had _not_ been fulfilled--if
Brown had remarked, 'Egad, my dear, seeing that horse reminds me that I
was dreaming last night of driving in a dog-cart.' For then Brown was not
excited.

None of this exquisite reasoning as to dreams applies to waking
hallucinations, reported before the alleged coincidence, unless we accept
a collective hallucination of memory in seer or seers, and also in the
persons to whom their story was told.

But, it is obvious, memory is apt to become mythopoeic, so far as to
exaggerate closeness of coincidence, and to add romantic details. We do
not need Herr Parish to tell us _that_; we meet the circumstance in all
narratives from memory, whatever the topic, even in Herr Parish's own
writings.

We must admit that the public, in ghostly, as in all narratives on all
topics, is given to 'fanciful addenda.' Therefore, as Herr Parish justly
remarks, we should 'maintain a very sceptical attitude to all accounts' of
veridical hallucinations. 'Not that we should dismiss them as old wives'
fables--an all too common method--or even doubt the narrator's good
faith.' We should treat them like tales of big fish that get away;
sometimes there is good corroborative evidence that they really were
big fish, sometimes not. We shall return to these false memories.

Was there a coincidence at all in the Society's cases printed in the
Census? Herr Parish thinks three of the selected twenty-six cases very
dubious. In one case is a _possible_ margin of four days, another
(wrongly numbered by the way) does not occur at all among the twenty-six.
In the third, Herr Parish is wrong in his statement.[4] This is a lovely
example of the sceptical slipshod, and, accompanied by the miscitation of
the second case, shows that inexactitude is not all on the side of the
seers. However the case is not very good, the two percipients fancying
that the date of the event was less remote than it really was. Unluckily
Herr Parish only criticises these three cases, how accurately we have
remarked. He had no room for more.

Herr Parish next censures the probable selection of good cases by
collectors, on which the editors of the Census have already made
observations, as they have also made large allowances for this cause of
error. He then offers the astonishing statement that, 'in the view of the
English authors, a view which is, of course, assumed in all calculations
of the kind, an hallucination persists equally long in the memory and is
equally readily recalled in reply to a question, whether the experience
made but a slight impression on the percipient, or affected him deeply,
as would be the case, for instance, if the hallucination had been found to
coincide with the death of a near relative or friend.'[5] This assertion
of Herr Parish's is so erroneous that the Report expressly says 'as years
recede into the distance,' the proportion of the hallucinations that are
remembered in them to those which are forgotten, or at least ignored, 'is
very large.' Again, 'Hallucinations of the most impressive class will not
only be better remembered than others, but will, we may reasonably
suppose, be more often mentioned by the percipients to their friends.'[6]

Yet Herr Parish avers that, in all calculations, it is assumed that
hallucinations are equally readily recalled whether impressive or not!
Once more, the Report says (p. 246), '_It is not the case_' that
coincidental (and impressive) hallucinations are as easily subject to
oblivion as non-coincidental, and non-impressive ones. The editors
therefore multiply the non-coincidental cases by four, arguing that no
coincidental cases (hits) are forgotten, while three out of four
non-coincidentals (misses) are forgotten, or may be supposed likely to be
forgotten. Immediately after declaring that the English authors suppose
all hallucinations to be equally well remembered (which is the precise
reverse of what they do say), Herr Parish admits that the authors multiply
the misses by four, 'influenced by other considerations' (p. 289). By what
other considerations? They give their reason (that very reason which they
decline to entertain, says Herr Parish), namely, that misses are four
times as likely to be forgotten as hits. 'To go into the reason for
adopting this plan would lead us too far,' he writes. Why, it is the
very reason which, he says, does _not_ find favour with the English
authors!

How curiously remote from being 'coincidental' with plain facts, or
'veridical' at all, is this scientific criticism! Herr Parish says that a
'view' (which does not exist) is 'of course assumed in all calculations;'
and, on the very same page, he says that it is _not_ assumed! 'The
witnesses of the report--influenced, it is true, by other considerations'
(which is not the case), 'have sought to turn the point of this objection
by multiplying the whole number of (non-coincidental) cases by four.' Then
the 'view' is _not_ 'assumed in all calculations,' as Herr Parish has just
asserted.

What led Herr Parish, an honourable and clearheaded critic, into this maze
of incorrect and contradictory assertions? It is interesting to try to
trace the causes of such _non-veridical illusions_, to find the _points
de repère_ of these literary hallucinations. One may suggest that when
Herr Parish 'recast the chapters' of his German edition, as he says in his
preface to the English version, he accidentally left in a passage based
on an earlier paper by Mr. Gurney,[7] not observing that it was no longer
accurate or appropriate.

After this odd passage, Herr Parish argues that a 'veridical'
hallucination is regarded by the English authors as 'coincidental,' even
when external circumstances have made that very hallucination a probable
occurrence by producing 'tension of the corresponding nerve element
groups.' That is to say, a person is in a condition--a nervous condition--
likely, _a priori_, to beget an hallucination. An hallucination _is_
begotten, quite naturally; and so, if it happens to coincide with an
event, the coincidence should not count--it is purely fortuitous.[8]

Here is an example. A lady, facing an old sideboard, saw a friend, with no
coat on, and in a waistcoat with a back of shiny material. Within an hour
she was taken to where her friend lay dying, without a coat, and in a
waistcoat with a shiny back.[9] Here is the scientific explanation of Herr
Parish: 'The shimmer of a reflecting surface [the sideboard?] formed the
occasion for the hallucinatory emergence of a subconsciously perceived
_shiny black waistcoat_ [quotation incorrect, of course], and an
individual subconsciously associated with that impression.[10] I ask any
lady whether she, consciously or subconsciously, associates the men she
knows with the backs of their waistcoats. Herr Parish's would be a
brilliantly satisfactory explanation if it were only true to the printed
words that lay under his eyes when he wrote. There was no 'shiny black
waistcoat' in the case, but a waistcoat with a shiny _back_. Gentlemen,
and especially old gentlemen who go about in bath-chairs (like the man in
this story), don't habitually take off their coats and show the backs of
their waistcoats to ladies of nineteen in England. And, if Herr Parish had
cared to read his case, he would have found it expressly stated that the
lady 'had never seen the man without his coat' (and so could not associate
him with an impression of a shiny back to his waistcoat) till _after_ the
hallucination, when she saw him coatless on his death-bed. In this
instance Herr Parish had an hallucinatory memory, all wrong, of the page
under his eyes. The case is got rid of, then, by aid of the 'fanciful
addenda,' to which Herr Parish justly objects. He first gives the facts
incorrectly, and then explains an occurrence which, as reported by him,
did not occur, and was not asserted to occur.

I confess that, if Herr Parish's version were as correct as it is
essentially inaccurate, his explanation would leave me doubtful. For the
circumstances were that the old gentleman of the story lunched daily with
the young lady's mother. Suppose that she was familiar (which she was not)
with the shiny back of his waistcoat, still, she saw him daily, and daily,
too, was in the way of seeing the (hypothetically) shiny surface of the
sideboard. That being the case, she had, every day, the materials,
subjective and objective, of the hallucination. Yet it only occurred
_once_, and then it precisely coincided with the death agony of the old
gentleman, and with his coatless condition. Why only that once? _C'est là
le miracle!_ 'How much for this little veskit?' as the man asked David
Copperfield.

Herr Parish next invents a cause for an hallucination, which, I myself
think, ought not to have been reckoned, because the percipient had been
sitting up with the sick man. This he would class as a 'suspicious' case.
But, even granting him his own way of handling the statistics, he would
still have far too large a proportion of coincidences for the laws of
chance to allow, if we are to go by these statistics at all.

His next argument practically is that hallucinations are always only a
kind of dreams.[11] He proves this by the large number of coincidental
hallucinations which occurred in sleepy circumstances. One man went to bed
early, and woke up early; another was 'roused from sleep;' two ladies were
sitting up in bed, giving their babies nourishment; a man was reading a
newspaper on a sofa; a lady was lying awake at seven in the morning; and
there are eight other English cases of people 'awake' in bed during an
hallucination. Now, in Dr. Parish's opinion, we must argue that they were
_not_ awake, or not much; so the hallucinations were mere dreams.
Dreams are so numerous that coincidences in dreams can be got rid of as
pure flukes. People may say, to be sure, 'I am used to dreams, and don't
regard them; _this_ was something solitary in my experience.' But we must
not mind what people say.

Yet I fear we must mind what they say. At least, we must remember that
sleeping dreams are, of all things, most easily forgotten; while a
full-bodied hallucination, when we, at least, believe ourselves awake,
seems to us on a perfectly different plane of impressiveness, and
(_experto crede_) is really very difficult to forget. Herr Parish cannot
be allowed, therefore, to use the regular eighteenth-century argument--
'All dreams!' For the two sorts of dreams, in sleep and in apparent
wakefulness, seem, to the subject, to differ in _kind_. And they really
do differ in kind. It is the essence of the every night dream that we are
unconscious of our actual surroundings and conscious of a fantastic
environment. It is the essence of wideawakeness to be conscious of our
actual surroundings. In the ordinary dream, nothing actual competes with
its visions. When we are conscious of our surroundings, everything actual
does compete with any hallucination. Therefore, an hallucination which,
when we are conscious of our material environment, does compete with it in
reality, is different _in kind_ from an ordinary dream. Science gains
nothing by arbitrarily declaring that two experiences so radically
different are identical. Anybody would see this if he were not arguing
under a dominant idea.

Herr Parish next contends that people who see pictures in crystal balls,
and so on, are not so wide awake as to be in their normal consciousness.
There is 'dissociation' (practically drowsiness), even if only a
little. Herr Moll also speaks of crystal-gazing pictures as 'hypnotic
phenomena.'[12] Possibly neither of these learned men has ever seen a
person attempt crystal-gazing. Herr Parish never asserts any such personal
experience as the basis of his opinion about the non-normal state of the
gazer. He reaches this conclusion from an anecdote reported, as a not
unfamiliar phenomenon, by a friend of Miss X. But the phenomenon occurred
when Miss X. was not crystal-gazing at all! She was looking out of a
window in a brown study. This is a noble example of logic. Some one says
that Miss X. was not in her normal consciousness on a certain occasion
when she was _not_ crystal-gazing, and that this condition is familiar to
the observer. Therefore, argues Herr Parish, nobody is in his normal
consciousness when he is crystal-gazing.

In vain may 'so good an observer as Miss X. think herself fully awake' (as
she does think herself) when crystal-gazing, because once, when she
happened to have 'her eyes _fixed on the window_,' her expression was
'_associated_' by a friend 'with _something uncanny_,' and she afterwards
spoke '_in a dreamy, far-away tone_' (p. 297). Miss X., though extremely
'wide awake,' may have looked dreamily at a window, and may have seen
mountains and marvels. But the point is that she was not voluntarily
gazing at a crystal for amusement or experiment--perhaps trying to see how
a microscope affected the pictures--or to divert a friend.

I appeal to the shades of Aristotle and Bacon against scientific logic in
the hands of Herr Parish. Here is his syllogism:

  A. is occasionally dreamy when _not_ crystal-gazing.
  A. is human.
  Therefore every human being, when crystal-gazing, is more or less
  asleep.

He infers a general affirmative from a single affirmative which happens
not to be to the point. It is exactly as if Herr Parish argued:

  Mrs. B. spends hours in shopping.
  Mrs. B. is human.
  Therefore every human being is always late for dinner.

Miss X., I think, uplifted her voice in some review, and maintained that,
when crystal-gazing, she was quite in her normal state, _dans son
assiette_.

Yet Herr Parish would probably say to any crystal-gazer who argued thus,
'Oh, no; pardon me, you were _not_ wholly awake--you were a-dream. I know
better than you.' But, as he has not seen crystal-gazers, while I have,
many scores of times, I prefer my own opinion. And so, as this assertion
about the percipient's being 'dissociated,' or asleep, or not awake, is
certainly untrue of all crystal-gazers in my considerable experience, I
cannot accept it on the authority of Herr Parish, who makes no claim to
any personal experience at all.

As to crystal-gazing, when the gazer is talking, laughing, chatting,
making experiments in turning the ball, changing the light, using prisms
and magnifying-glasses, dropping matches into the water-jug, and so on,
how can we possibly say that 'it is impossible to distinguish between
waking hallucinations and those of sleep' (p. 300)? If so, it is
impossible to distinguish between sleeping and waking altogether. We are
all like the dormouse! Herr Parish is reasoning here _a priori_,
without any personal knowledge of the facts; and, above all, he is under
the 'dominant idea' of his own theory--that of _dissociation_.

Herr Parish next crushes telepathy by an argument which--like one of the
reasons why the bells were not rung for Queen Elizabeth, namely, that
there were no bells to ring--might have come first, and alone. We are
told (in italics--very impressive to the popular mind): _'No matter how
great the number of coincidences, they afford not even the shadow of a
proof for telepathy'_ (p. 301). What, not even if all hallucinations, or
ninety-nine per cent., coincided with the death of the person seen? In
heaven's name, why not? Why, because the 'weightiest' cause of all has
been omitted from our calculations, namely, our good old friend, _the
association of ideas_ (p. 302). Our side cannot prove the _absence_
(italics) of _the association of ideas_. Certainly we cannot; but ideas in
endless millions are being associated all day long. A hundred thousand
different, unnoticed associations may bring Jones to my mind, or Brown.
But I don't therefore see Brown, or Jones, who is not there. Still less do
I see Dr. Parish, or Nebuchadnezzar, or a monkey, or a salmon, or a golf
ball, or Arthur's Seat (all of which may be brought to my mind by
association of ideas), when they are not present.

Suppose, then, that once in my life I see the absent Jones, who dies in
that hour (or within twelve hours). I am puzzled. Why did Association
choose that day, of all days in my life, for her solitary freak? And,
if this choice of freaks by Association occurs among other people, say two
hundred times more often than chance allows, the freak begins to suggest
that it may have a cause.

Not even the circumstance cited by Herr Parish, that a drowsy tailor,
'sewing on in a dream,' poor fellow, saw a client in his shop while the
client was dying, solves the problem. The tailor is not said even once to
have seen a customer who was _not_ dying; yet he writes, 'I was accustomed
to work all night frequently.' The tailor thinks he was asleep, because he
had been making irregular stitches, and perhaps he was. But, out of
all his vigils and all his customers, association only formed _one_
hallucination, and that was of a dying client whom he supposed to be
perfectly well. Why on earth is association so fond of dying people--
granting the statistics, which are 'another story'? The explanation
explains nothing. Herr Parish only moves the difficulty back a step, and,
as we cannot live without association of ideas, they are taken for granted
by our side. Association of ideas does not cause hallucinations, as Mrs.
Sidgwick remarks, though it may determine their contents.

The difficult theme of coincidental collective hallucinations, as when two
or more people at once have, or profess to have, the same false perception
of a person who is really absent and dying, is next disposed of by Herr
Parish. The same _points de repère_, the same sound, or flicker of light,
or arrangement of shadow, may beget the same or a similar false perception
in two or more people at once. Thus two girls, in different rooms, are
looking out on different parts of the hall in their house. 'Both heard, at
the same time, an [objective?] noise' (p. 313). Then, says Herr Parish,
'_the one sister saw her father cross the hall_ after entering; the other
saw the dog (the usual companion of his walks) run past her door.' Father
and dog had not left the dining-room. Herr Parish decides that the same
_point de repère_ (the apparent noise of a key in the lock of the front
door) 'acted by way of suggestion on both sisters,' producing, however,
different hallucinations, 'in virtue of the difference of the connected
associations.' One girl associated the sound with her honoured sire, the
other with his faithful hound; so one saw a dog, and the other saw an
elderly gentleman. Now, first, if so, this should _always_ be occurring,
for we all have different associations of ideas. Thus, we are in a haunted
house; there is a noise of a rattling window; I associate it with a
burglar, Brown with a milkman, Miss Jones with a lady in green, Miss Smith
with a knight in armour. That collection of phantasms should then be
simultaneously on view, like the dog and old gentleman; all our reports
should vary. But this does not occur. Most unluckily for Herr Parish, he
illustrates his theory by telling a story which happens not to be
correctly reported. At first I thought that a fallacy of memory, or an
optical delusion, had betrayed him again, as in his legend of the
waistcoat. But I am now inclined to believe that what really occurred was
this: Herr Parish brought out his book in German, before the Report of the
Census of Hallucinations was published. In his German edition he probably
quoted a story which precisely suited his theory of the origin of
collective hallucinations. This anecdote he had found in Prof. Sidgwick's
Presidential Address of July 1890.[13] As stated by Prof. Sidgwick, the
case just fitted Herr Parish, who refers to it on p. 190, and again on
p. 314. He gives no reference, but his version reads like a traditional
variant of Prof. Sidgwick's. Now Prof. Sidgwick's version was erroneous,
as is proved by the elaborate account of the case in the Report of the
Census, which Herr Parish had before him, but neglected when he prepared
his English edition. The story was wrong, alas! in the very point where,
for Herr Parish's purpose, it ought to have been right. The hallucination
is believed not to have been collective, yet Herr Parish uses it to
explain collective hallucinations. Doubtless he overlooked the accurate
version in the Report.[14]

The facts, as there reported, were not what he narrates, but as follows:

Miss C.E. was in the breakfast-room, about 6:30 P.M., in January 1883, and
supposed her father to be taking a walk with his dog. She heard noises,
which may have had any other cause, but which she took to be the sounds
of a key in the door lock, a stick tapping the tiles of the hall, and the
patter of the dog's feet on the tiles. She then saw the dog pass the door.
Miss C.E. next entered the hall, where she found nobody; but in the pantry
she met her sisters--Miss E., Miss H.G.E.--and a working-woman. Miss E.
and the working-woman had been in the hall, and there had heard the sound,
which they, like Miss C.E., took for that of a key in the lock. They were
breaking a little household rule in the hall, so they 'ran straightway
into the pantry, meeting Miss H.G.E. on the way.' Miss C.E. and Miss E.
and the working-woman all heard the noise as of a key in the lock, but
nobody is said to have 'seen the father cross the hall' (as Herr Parish
asserts). 'Miss H.G.E. was of opinion that Miss E. (now dead) saw
_nothing_, and Miss C.E. was inclined to agree with her.' Miss E. and the
work-woman (now dead) were 'emphatic as to the father having entered the
house;' but this the two only _inferred_ from hearing the noise, after
which they fled to the pantry. Now, granting that some other noise was
mistaken for that of the key in the lock, we have here, _not_ (as Herr
Parish declares) a _collective_ yet discrepant hallucination--the
discrepancy being caused 'by the difference of connected associations'--
but a _solitary_ hallucination. Herr Parish, however, inadvertently
converts a solitary into a collective hallucination, and then uses the
example to explain collective hallucinations in general. He asserts
that Miss E. 'saw her father cross the hall.' Miss E.'s sisters think that
she saw no such matter. Now, suppose that Mr. E. had died at the moment,
and that the case was claimed on our part as a 'collective coincidental
hallucination,' How righteously Herr Parish might exclaim that all the
evidence was against its being collective! The sound in the lock, heard by
three persons, would be, and probably was, another noise misinterpreted.
And, in any case, there is no evidence for its having produced _two_
hallucinations; the evidence is in exactly the opposite direction.

Here, then, Herr Parish, with the printed story under his eyes, once more
illustrates want of attention. In one way his errors improve his case. 'If
I, a grave man of science, go on telling distorted legends out of my own
head, while the facts are plain in print before me,' Herr Parish
may reason, 'how much more are the popular tales about coincidental
hallucinations likely to be distorted?' It is really a very strong
argument, but not exactly the argument which Herr Parish conceives
himself to be presenting.[15]

This unlucky inexactitude is chronic, as we have shown, in Herr Parish's
work, and is probably to be explained by inattention to facts, by
'expectation' of suitable facts, and by 'anxiety' to prove a theory. He
explains the similar or identical reports of witnesses to a collective
hallucination by 'the case with which such appearances adapt themselves
in recollection' (p. 313), especially, of course, after lapse of time. And
then he unconsciously illustrates his case by the case with which
printed facts under his very eyes adapt themselves, quite erroneously, to
his own memory and personal bias as he copies them on to his paper.

Finally he argues that even if collective hallucinations are also 'with
comparative frequency' coincidental, that is to be explained thus:
'The rarity and the degree of interest compelled by it' (by such an
hallucination) 'will naturally tend to connect itself with some other
prominent event; and, conversely, the occurrence of such an event as the
death or mortal danger of a friend is most calculated to produce memory
illusions of this kind.'

In the second case, the excitement caused by the death of a friend is
likely, it seems, to make two or more sane people say, and _believe,_
that they saw him somewhere else, when he was really dying. The only
evidence for this fact is that such illusions occasionally occur, _not_
collectively, in some lunatic asylums. 'It is not, however, a form of
mnemonic error often observed among the insane.' 'Kraepelin gives two
cases.' 'The process occurs sporadically in certain sane people, under
certain exciting conditions.' No examples are given! What is rare as an
_individual_ folly among lunatics, is supposed by Herr Parish to explain
the theoretically 'false memory' whereby sane people persuade themselves
that they had an hallucination, and persuade others that they were told
of it, when no such thing occurred.

To return to our old example. Jones tells me that he has just seen his
aunt, whom he knows to be in Timbuctoo. News comes that the lady died when
Jones beheld her in his smoking-room. 'Oh, nonsense,' Herr Parish would
argue, 'you, Jones, saw nothing of the kind, nor did you tell Mr. Lang,
who, I am sorry to find, agrees with you. What happened was _this_: When
the awful news came to-day of your aunt's death, you were naturally,
and even creditably, excited, especially as the poor lady was killed by
being pegged down on an ant-heap. This excitement, rather praiseworthy
than otherwise, made you _believe_ you had seen your aunt, and _believe_
you had told Mr. Lang. He also is a most excitable person, though I
admit he never saw your dear aunt in his life. He, therefore (by virtue of
his excitement), now _believes_ you told him about seeing your unhappy
kinswoman. This kind of false memory is very common. Two cases are
recorded by Kraepelin, among the insane. Surely you quite understand my
reasoning?'

I quite understand it, but I don't see how it comes to seem good logic to
Herr Parish.

The other theory is funnier still. Jones never had an hallucination
before. 'The rarity and the degree of interest compelled by it' made Jones
'connect it with some other prominent event,' say, the death of his aunt,
which, really, occurred, say, nine months afterwards. But this is a mere
case of _evidence_, which it is the affair of the S.P.R. to criticise.

Herr Parish is in the happy position called in American speculative
circles 'a straddle.' If a man has an hallucination when alone, he was in
circumstances conducive to the sleeping state. So the hallucination is
probably a dream. But, if the seer was in company, who all had the same
hallucination, then they all had the same _points de repère_, and the same
adaptive memories. So Herr Parish kills with both barrels.

If anything extraneous could encourage a belief in coincidental and
veridical hallucinations, it would be these 'Oppositions of Science.' If a
learned and fair opponent can find no better proofs than logic and
(unconscious) perversions of facts like the logic and the statements of
Herr Parish, the case for telepathic hallucinations may seem strong
indeed. But we must grant him the existence of the adaptive and mythopoeic
powers of memory, which he asserts, and also illustrates. I grant, too,
that a census of 17,000 inquiries may only have 'skimmed the cream off'
(p. 87). Another dip of the net, bringing up 17,000 fresh answers, might
alter the whole aspect of the case, one way or the other. Moreover, we
cannot get scientific evidence in this way of inquiry. If the public were
interested in the question, and understood its nature, and if everybody
who had an hallucination at once recorded it in black and white, duly
attested on oath before a magistrate, by persons to whom he reported,
before the coincidence was known, and if all such records, coincidental or
not, were kept in the British Museum for fifty years, then an examination
of them might teach us something. But all this is quite impossible.
We may form a belief, on this point of veridical hallucinations, for
ourselves, but beyond that it is impossible to advance. Still, Science
might read her brief!

[Footnote 1: Walter Scott.]

[Footnote 2: Parish, p. 278.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. pp. 282, 283.]

[Footnote 4: P. 287, Mr. Sims, _Proceedings_, x. 230.]

[Footnote 5: Parish pp. 288, 289.]

[Footnote 6: _Report_, p. 68.]

[Footnote 7: P. 274, note 1.]

[Footnote 8: Parish, p. 290.]

[Footnote 9: _Report_, p. 297.]

[Footnote 10: Parish, p. 290.]

[Footnote 11: Pp. 291, 292.]

[Footnote 12: Moll, _Hypnotism_, p. 1.]

[Footnote 13 _Proceedings_, vol. vi. p. 433.]

[Footnote 14: Parish, p. 313.]

[Footnote 15: Compare _Report_, pp. 181-83, with Parish, pp. 190 and
313, 314.]




APPENDIX B

THE POLTERGEIST AND HIS EXPLAINERS.

In the chapter on 'Fetishism and Spiritualism' it was suggested that the
movements of inanimate objects, apparently without contact, may have been
one of the causes leading to fetishism, to the opinion that a spirit may
inhabit a stick, stone, or what not. We added that, whether such movements
were caused by trickery or not, was inessential as long as the savage did
not discover the imposture.

The evidence for the genuine supernormal character of such phenomena was
not discussed, that we might preserve the continuity of the general
argument. The history of such phenomena is too long for statement here.
The same reports are found 'from China to Peru,' from Eskimo to the Cape,
from Egyptian magical papyri to yesterday's provincial newspaper.[1]

About 1850-1870 phenomena, which had previously been reported as of
sporadic and spontaneous occurrence, were domesticated and organised by
Mediums, generally American. These were imitators of the enigmatic David
Dunglas Home, who was certainly a most oddly gifted man, or a most
successful impostor. A good deal of scientific attention was given to
the occurrences; Mr. Darwin, Mr. Tyndall, Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Huxley, had
all glanced at the phenomena, and been present at _séances_. In most cases
the exhibitions, in the dark, or in a very bad light, were impudent
impostures, and were so regarded by the _savants_ who looked into them. A
series of exposures culminated in the recent detection of Eusapia
Paladino by Dr. Hodgson and other members of the S.P.R. at Cambridge.

There was, however, an apparent exception. The arch mystagogue, Home,
though by no means a clever man, was never detected in fraudulent
productions of fetishistic phenomena. This is asserted here because
several third-hand stories of detected frauds by Home are in circulation,
and it is hoped that a well-attested first-hand case of detection may be
elicited.

Of Home's successes with Sir William Crookes, Lord Crawford, and others,
something remains to be said; but first we shall look into attempted
explanations of alleged physical phenomena occurring _not_ in the presence
of a paid or even of a recognised 'Medium.' It will appear, we think, that
the explanations of evidence so widely diffused, so uniform, so old, and
so new, are far from satisfactory. Our inference would be no more than
that our eyes should be kept on such phenomena, if they are reported to
recur.

Mr. Tylor says, 'I am well aware that the problem [of these phenomena] is
one to be discussed on its merits, in order to arrive at a distinct
opinion how far it may be connected with facts insufficiently appreciated
and explained by science, and how far with superstition, delusion, and
sheer knavery. Such investigation, pursued by careful observation in a
scientific spirit, would seem apt to throw light on some interesting
psychological questions.'

Acting on Mr. Tylor's hint, Mr. Podmore puts forward as explanations
(1) fraud; (2) hallucinations caused by excited expectation, and by the
_Schwärmerei_ consequent on sitting in hushed hope of marvels.

To take fraud first: Mr. Podmore has collected, and analyses, eleven
recent sporadic cases of volatile objects.[2] His first instance (Worksop,
1883) yields no proof of fraud, and can only be dismissed by reason of the
bad character of the other cases, and because Mr. Podmore took the
evidence five weeks after the events. To this example we confine
ourselves. This case appears to have been first reported in the 'Retford
and Gainsborough Times' 'early in March,' 1883 (really March 9). It does
not seem to have struck Mr. Podmore that he should publish these
contemporary reports, to show us how far they agree with evidence
collected by him on the spot five weeks later. To do this was the more
necessary, as he lays so much stress on failure of memory. I have
therefore secured the original newspaper report, by the courtesy of the
editor. To be brief, the phenomena began on February 20 or 21, by the
table voluntarily tipping up, and upsetting a candle, while Mrs. White
only saved the wash tub by alacrity and address. 'The whole incident
struck her as very extraordinary.' It is not in the newspaper report. On
February 26, Mr. White left his home, and a girl, Eliza Rose, 'child of a
half-imbecile mother,' was admitted by the kindness of Mrs. White to share
her bed. The girl was eighteen years of age, was looking for a place as
servant, and nothing is said in the newspaper about her mother. Mr. White
returned on Wednesday night, but left on Thursday morning, returning on
Friday afternoon. On Thursday, in Mr. White's absence, phenomena set in.
On Thursday night, in Mr. White's presence, they increased in vigour. A
doctor was called in, also a policeman. On Saturday, at 8 A.M., the row
recommenced. At 4 P.M. Mr. White sent Eliza Rose away, and peace returned.
We now offer the

STATEMENT OF POLICE CONSTABLE HIGGS. A man of good intelligence, and
believed to be entirely honest....

'On the night of Friday, March 2nd, I heard of the disturbances at Joe
White's house from his young brother, Tom. I went round to the house at
11.55 P.M., as near as I can judge, and found Joe White in the kitchen
of his house. There was one candle lighted in the room, and a good fire
burning, so that one could see things pretty clearly. The cupboard doors
were open, and White went and shut them, and then came and stood against
the chest of drawers. I stood near the outer door. No one else was in
the room at the time. White had hardly shut the cupboard doors when they
flew open, and a large glass jar came out past me, and pitched in the
yard outside, smashing itself. I didn't see the jar leave the cupboard,
or fly through the air; it went too quick. But I am quite sure that it
wasn't thrown by White or any one else. White couldn't have done it
without my seeing him. The jar couldn't go in a straight line from the
cupboard out of the door; but it certainly did go.

'Then White asked me to come and see the things which had been smashed
in the inner room. He led the way and I followed. As I passed the chest
of drawers in the kitchen I noticed a tumbler standing on it. Just
after I passed I heard a crash, and looking round, I saw that the tumbler
had fallen on the ground in the direction of the fireplace, and was
broken. I don't know how it happened. There was no one else in the room.

'I went into the inner room, and saw the bits of pots and things on the
floor, and then I came back with White into the kitchen. The girl Rose
had come into the kitchen during our absence. She was standing with
her back against the bin near the fire. There was a cup standing on the
bin, rather nearer the door. She said to me, "Cup'll go soon; it has
been down three times already." She then pushed it a little farther on
the bin, and turned round and stood talking to me by the fire. She had
hardly done so, when the cup jumped up suddenly about four or five feet
into the air, and then fell on the floor and smashed itself. White was
sitting on the other side of the fire.

'Then Mrs. White came in with Dr. Lloyd; also Tom White and Solomon
Wass. After they had been in two or three minutes, something else
happened. Tom White and Wass were standing with their backs to the
fire, just in front of it. Eliza Rose and Dr. Lloyd were near them, with
their backs turned towards the bin, the doctor nearer to the door. I
stood by the drawers, and Mrs. White was by me near the inner door. Then
suddenly a basin, which stood on the end of the bin near the door, got up
into the air, _turning over and over as it went. It went up not very
quickly, not as quickly as if it had been thrown_. When it reached the
ceiling it fell plump and smashed. I called Dr. Lloyd's attention to it,
and we all saw it. No one was near it, and I don't know how it happened.
I stayed about ten minutes more, but saw nothing else. I don't know what
to make of it all. I don't think White or the girl could possibly have
done the things which I saw.'

This statement was made five weeks after date to Mr. Podmore. We compare
it with the intelligent constable's statement made between March 3 and
March 8, that is, immediately after the events, and reported in the local
paper of March 9.

STATEMENT BY POLICE CONSTABLE HIGGS.--During Friday night, Police
Constable Higgs visited the house, and concerning the visit he makes the
following statement.

'About ten minutes past [to?] twelve on Friday night, I was met in Bridge
Street by Buck Ford, and Joe's brother, Tom White and Dr. Lloyd. Tom said
to me, "Will you go with us to Joe's, and you will see something you have
never seen before?" I went; and when I got into the house Joe went and
shut the cupboard doors. No sooner had he done so than the doors flew
open again, and an ordinary sized glass jar flew across the kitchen, out
of the door into the yard. A sugar jar also flew out of the cupboard
unseen. In fact, we saw nothing and heard nothing until we heard it smash.
The distance travelled by the articles was about seven yards. I stood
a minute or two, and then the glass which I noticed on the drawers jumped
off the drawers a yard away, and broke in about a hundred bits. The next
thing was a cup, which stood on the flour-bin just beyond the yard
door. It flew upwards, and then fell to the ground and broke. The girl
said that this cup had been on the floor three times, and that she had
picked it up just before it went off the bench. I said, "I suppose the cup
will be the next." The cup fell a distance of two yards away from the
flour-bin. Dr. Lloyd had been in the next house lancing the back of a
little boy who had been removed there. He now came in, and we began
talking, the doctor saying, "It is a most mysterious thing." He turned
with his back to the flour-bin, on which stood a basin. The basin flew up
into the air obliquely, went over the doctor's head, and fell at his feet
in pieces. The doctor then went out. I stood a short time longer, but
saw nothing farther. There were six persons in the room while these things
were going on, and so far as I could see, there was no human agency at
work. I had not the slightest belief in anything appertaining to the
super-natural. I left just before one o'clock, having been in the
house thirty minutes.'

As the policeman says, there was nothing 'super-natural,' but there was an
appearance of something rather supernormal. On the afternoon of Saturday
White sent the girl Rose away, and a number of people watched in his house
till after midnight. Though the sceptical reporter thought that objects
were placed where they might easily be upset, none were upset. The ghost
was laid. 'Excited expectation' was so false to its function as to beget
no phenomena.

The newspaper reports contain no theory that will account for White's
breaking his furniture and crockery, nor for Rose's securing her own
dismissal from a house where she was kindly received by wilfully
destroying the property of her hostess. An amateur published a theory
of silken threads attached to light articles, and thick cords to heavy
articles, whereof no trace was found by witnesses who examined the
volatile objects. An elaborate machinery of pulleys fixed in the ceiling,
the presence of a trickster in a locked pantry, apparent errors in the
account of the flight of the objects, and a number of accomplices, were
all involved in this local explanation, the explainer admitting that he
could not imagine _why_ the tricks were played. Six or eight pounds' worth
of goods were destroyed, nor is it singular that poor Mrs. White wept over
her shattered penates.

The destruction began, of course, in the _absence_ of White. The girl Rose
gave to the newspaper the same account as the other witnesses, but, as
White thought _she_ was the agent, so she suspected White, though she
admitted that he was not at home when the trouble arose.

Mr. Podmore, reviewing the case, says, 'The phenomena described are quite
inexplicable by ordinary mechanical means.[3] Yet he elsewhere[4] suggests
that Rose herself, 'as the instrument of mysterious agencies, or simply as
a half-witted girl, gifted with abnormal cunning and love of mischief, may
have been directly responsible for all that took place.' That is to say, a
half-witted girl could do (barring 'mysterious agencies') 'what is quite
inexplicable by ordinary mechanical means,' while, according to the
policeman, she was not even present on some occasions. But it is not easy
to make out, in the evidence of White, the other witness, whether this
girl Rose was present or not when the jar flew circuitously out of the
cupboard, a thing easily worked by a half-witted girl. Such discrepancies
are common in all evidence to the most ordinary events. In any case a
half-witted girl, in Mr. Podmore's theory, can do what 'is quite
inexplicable by ordinary mechanical means.' There is not the shadow of
evidence that the girl Rose had the inestimable advantage of being
'half-witted;' she is described by Mr. Podmore as 'the child of an
imbecile mother.' The phenomena began, in an isolated case (the tilted
table), _before_ Rose entered the house. She was admitted in kindness,
acted as a maid, and her interest was _not_ to break the crockery
and upset furniture. The troubles, which began before the girl's arrival,
were apparently active when she was not present, and, if she _was_
present, she could not have caused them 'by ordinary mechanical means,'
while of extraordinary mechanical means there was confessedly no trace.
The disturbances ceased after she was dismissed--nothing else connects her
with them.

Mr. Podmore's attempt at a normal explanation by fraud, therefore, is
of no weight. He has to exaggerate the value, as disproof, of such
discrepancies as occur in all human evidence on all subjects. He has to
lay stress on the interval of five weeks between the events and the
collection of testimony by himself. But contemporary accounts appeared in
the local newspapers, and he does not compare the contemporary with the
later evidence, as we have done. There is one discrepancy which looks as
if a witness, not here cited, came to think he had seen what he heard
talked about. Finally, after abandoning the idea that mechanical means can
possibly have produced the effect, Mr. Podmore falls back on the cunning
of a half-witted girl whom nothing shows to have been half-witted. The
alternative is that the girl was 'the instrument of mysterious agencies.'

So much for the hypothesis of a fraud, which has been identical in results
from China to Peru and from Greenland to the Cape.

We now turn to the other, and concomitantly active cause, in Mr. Podmore's
theory, hallucination. 'Many of the witnesses described the articles as
moving slowly through the air, or exhibiting some peculiarity of flight.'
(See e.g. the Worksop case.) Mr. Podmore adds another English case,
presently to be noted, and a German one. 'In default of any experimental
evidence' (how about Mr. William Crookes's?) 'that disturbances of this
kind are ever due to abnormal agency, I am disposed to explain the
appearance of moving slowly or flying as a sensory illusion, conditioned
by the excited state of the percipient.' ('Studies,' 157, 158.)

Before criticising this explanation, let us give the English affair,
alluded to by Mr. Podmore.

The most curious modern case known to me is not of recent date, but it
occurred in full daylight, in the presence of many witnesses, and the
phenomena continued for weeks. The events were of 1849, and the record is
expanded, by Mr. Bristow, a spectator, from an account written by him in
1854. The scene was Swanland, near Hull, in a carpenter's shop, where Mr.
Bristow was employed with two fellow workmen. To be brief, they were
pelted by odds and ends of wood, about the size of a common matchbox. Each
blamed the others, till this explanation became untenable. The workrooms
and space above were searched to no purpose. The bits of wood sometimes
danced along the floor, more commonly sailed gently along, or "moved as if
borne on gently heaving waves." This sort of thing was repeated during six
weeks. One piece of wood "came from a distant corner of the room towards
me, describing what may be likened to a geometrical square, or corkscrew
of about eighteen inches diameter.... Never was a piece seen to come in
at the doorway." Mr. Bristow deems this period 'the most remarkable
episode in my life.' (June 27, 1891.) The phenomena 'did not depend on the
presence of any one person or number of persons.'

Going to Swanland, in 1891, Mr. Sidgwick found one surviving witness of
these occurrences, who averred that the objects could not have been thrown
because of the eccentricities of their course, which he described in the
same way as Mr. Bristow. The thrower must certainly have had a native
genius for 'pitching' at base-ball. This witness, named Andrews, was
mentioned by Mr. Bristow in his report, but not referred to by him for
confirmation. Those to whom he referred were found to be dead, or had
emigrated. The villagers had a superstitious theory about the phenomena
being provoked by a dead man, whose affairs had not been settled to his
liking. So Mr. Darwin's spoon danced--on a grave.[5]

This case has a certain interest _à propos_ of Mr. Podmore's surmise that
all such phenomena arise in trickery, which produces excitement in the
spectators, while excitement begets hallucination, and hallucination
takes the form of seeing the thrown objects move in a non-natural way.
Thus, I keep throwing things about. You, not detecting this stratagem, get
excited, consequently hallucinated, and you believe you see the things
move in spirals, or undulate as if on waves, or hop, or float, or glide
in an impossible way. So close is the uniformity of hallucination
that these phenomena are described, in similar terms, by witnesses
(hallucinated, of course) in times old and new, as in cases cited by
Glanvil, Increase Mather, Telfer (of Rerrick), and, generally, in works of
the seventeenth century. Nor is this uniform hallucination confined to
England. Mr. Podmore quotes a German example, and I received a similar
testimony (to the flight of an object round a corner) from a gentleman who
employed Esther Teed, 'the Amherst Mystery,' in his service. _He_ was not
excited, for he was normally engaged in his normal stable, when the
incident occurred unexpectedly as he was looking after his live stock. One
may add the case of Cideville (1851) and Sir W. Crookes's evidence, and
that of Mr. Schhapoff.

Mr. Podmore must, therefore, suppose that, in states of excitement, the
same peculiar form of hallucination develops itself uniformly in America,
France, Germany, and England (not to speak of Russia), and persists
through different ages. This is a novel and valuable psychological law.
Moreover, Mr. Podmore must hold that 'excitement' lasted for six weeks
among the carpenters in the shop at Swanland, one of whom writes like a
man of much intelligence, and has thriven to be a master in his craft.
It is difficult to believe that he was excited for six weeks, and we still
marvel that excitement produces the same uniformity of hallucination,
affecting policemen, carpenters, marquises, and a F.R.S. We allude to Sir
W. Crookes's case.

Strictly scientific examination of these prodigies has been very rare. The
best examples are the experiments of Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., with
Home.[6] He demonstrated, by means of a machine constructed for the
purpose, and automatically registering, that, in Home's presence, a
balance was affected to the extent of two pounds when Home was not in
contact with the table on which the machine was placed. He also saw
objects float in air, with a motion like that of a piece of wood on small
waves of the sea (clearly excitement producing hallucination), while Home
was at a distance, other spectators holding his hands, and his feet being
visibly enclosed in a kind of cage. All present held each other's hands,
and all witnessed the phenomena. Sir W. Crookes being, professionally,
celebrated for the accuracy of his observations, these circumstances are
difficult to explain, and these are but a few cases among multitudes.

I venture to conceive that, on reflection, Mr. Podmore will doubt whether
he has discovered an universal law of excited malperception, or whether
the remarkable, and certainly undesigned, coincidence of testimony to the
singular flight of objects does not rather point to an 'abnormal agency'
uniform in its effects. Contagious hallucination cannot affect witnesses
ignorant of each other's existence in many lands and ages, nor could they
cook their reports to suit reports of which they never heard.

We now turn to peculiarities in the so-called Medium, such as floating in
air, change of bulk, and escape from lesion when handling or treading in
fire. Mr. Tylor says nothing of Sir William Crookes's cases (1871), but
speaks of the alleged levitation, or floating in air, of savages and
civilised men. These are recorded in Buddhist and Neoplatonic writings,
and among Red Indians, in Tonquin (where a Jesuit saw and described the
phenomena, 1730), in the 'Acta Sanctorum,' and among modern spiritualists.
In 1760, Lord Elcho, being at Home, was present at the _procès_ for
canonising a Saint (unnamed), and heard witnesses swear to having seen the
holy man levitated. Sir W. Crookes attests having seen Home float in air
on several occasions. In 1871, the Master of Lindsay, now Lord Crawford
and Balcarres, F.R.S., gave the following evidence, which was corroborated
by the two other spectators, Lord Adare and Captain Wynne.

'I was sitting with Mr. Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his. During
the sitting, Mr. Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried
out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in
at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six
inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was
there more than a twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as
a ledge to put flowers on. _We heard the window in the next room lifted
up_, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air outside
our window. The moon was shining full into the room; my back was to the
light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window sill, and Home's
feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few
seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet foremost
and sat down.

'Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the window from which
he had been carried. It was raised about eighteen inches, and he expressed
his wonder how Mr. Home had been taken through so narrow an aperture. Home
said, still entranced, "I will show you," and then with his back to the
window he leaned back and was shot out of the aperture, head first, with
the body rigid, and then returned quite quietly. The window is about
seventy feet from the ground.' The hypothesis of a mechanical arrangement
of ropes or supports outside has been suggested, but does not cover the
facts as described.

Mr. Podmore, who quotes this, offers the explanation that the witnesses
were excited, and that Home 'thrust his head and shoulders out of the
window.' But, if he did, they could not see him do it, for he was in the
next room. A brick wall was between them and him. Their first view of Home
was 'floating in the air outside our window.' It is not very easy to hold
that a belief to which the collective evidence is so large and universal,
as the belief in levitation, was caused by a series of saints, sorcerers,
and others thrusting their heads and, shoulders, out of windows where the
observers could not see them. Nor in Lord Crawford's case is it easy
to suppose that three educated men, if hallucinated, would all be
hallucinated in the same way.

The argument of excited expectation and consequent hallucination does not
apply to Mr. Hamilton Aïdé and M. Alphonse Karr, neither of whom was a man
of science. Both were extremely prejudiced against Home, and at Nice went
to see, and, if possible, to expose him. Home was a guest at a large
villa in Nice, M. Karr and Mr. Aïdé were two of a party in a spacious
brilliantly lighted salon, where Home received them. A large heavy table,
remote from their group, moved towards them. M. Karr then got under a
table which rose in air, and carefully examined the space beneath, while
Mr. Aïdé observed it from above. Neither of them could discover any
explanation of the phenomenon, and they walked away together, disgusted,
disappointed, and reviling Home.[7]

In this case there was neither excitement nor desire to believe, but a
strong wish to disbelieve and to expose Home. If two such witnesses could
be hallucinated, we must greatly extend our notion of the limits of the
capacity for entertaining hallucinations.

One singular phenomenon was reported in Home's case, which has, however,
little to do with any conceivable theory of spirits. He was said to become
elongated in trance.[8] Mr. Podmore explains that 'perhaps he really
stretched himself to his full height'--one of the easiest ways conceivable
of working a miracle, Iamblichus reports the same phenomenon in his
possessed men.[9] Iamblichus adds that they were sometimes broadened as
well as lengthened. Now, M. Féré observes that 'any part of the body of an
hysterical patient may change in volume, simply owing to the fact that the
patient's attention is fixed on that part.'[10] Conceivably the elongation
of Home and the ancient Egyptian mediums may have been an extreme case of
this 'change of volume.' Could this be proved by examples, Home's
elongation would cease to be a 'miracle.' But it would follow that in this
case observers were _not_ hallucinated, and the presumption would be
raised that they were not hallucinated in the other cases. Indeed, this
argument is of universal application.

There is another class of 'physical phenomena,' which has no direct
bearing on our subject. Many persons, in many ages, are said to have
handled or walked through fire, not only without suffering pain, but
without lesion of the skin. Iamblichus mentions this as among the
peculiarities of his 'possessed' men; and in 'Modern Mythology' (1897) I
have collected first-hand evidence for the feat in classical times, and in
India, Fiji, Bulgaria, Trinidad, the Straits Settlements, and many other
places. The evidence is that of travellers, officials, missionaries, and
others, and is backed (for what photographic testimony is worth) by
photographs of the performance. To hold glowing coals in his hand, and to
communicate the power of doing so to others, was in Home's _répertoire_.
Lord Crawford saw it done on eight occasions, and himself received from
Home's hand the glowing coal unharmed. A friend of my own, however, still
bears the blister of the hurt received in the process. Sir W. Crookes's
evidence follows:

'At Mr. Home's request, whilst he was entranced, I went with him to the
fireplace in the back drawing-room. He said, "We want you to notice
particularly what Dan is doing." Accordingly I stood close to the
fire, and stooped down to it when he put his hands in....

'Mr. Home then waved the handkerchief about in the air two or three times,
held it above his head, and then folded it up and laid it on his hand like
a cushion. Putting his other hand into the fire, he took out a large
lump of cinder, red-hot at the lower part, and placed the red part on the
handkerchief. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been in a blaze.
In about half a minute he took it off the handkerchief with his hand,
saying, "As the power is not strong, if we leave the coal longer it will
burn." He then put it on his hand, and brought it to the table in the
front room, where all but myself had remained seated.'

Mr. Podmore explains that only two candles and the fire gave light on one
occasion, and that 'possibly' Home's hands were protected by some
'non-conducting substance.' He does not explain how this substance was put
on Lord Crawford's hands, nor tell us what this valuable substance may be.
None is known to science, though it seems to be known to Fijians, Tongans,
Klings, and Bulgarians, who walk through fire unhurt.

It is not necessary to believe Sir W. Crookes's assertions that he saw
Home perform the fire-tricks, for we can fall back on the lack of light
(only two candles and the fire-light), as also on the law of hallucination
caused by excitement. But it _is_ necessary to believe this distinguished
authority's statement about his ignorance of 'some non-conducting
substance:'

'Schoolboys' books and mediaeval tales describe how this can be done with
alum and other ingredients. It is possible that the skin may be so
hardened and thickened by such preparations that superficial charring
might take place without the pain becoming great; but the surface of the
skin would certainly suffer severely. After Home had recovered from the
trance, I examined his hand with care to see if there were any signs of
burning or of previous preparation. I could detect no trace or injury
to the skin, which was soft and delicate, like a woman's. Neither were
there signs of any preparation having been previously applied. I have
often seen conjurers and others handle red-hot coals and iron, but there
were always palpable signs of burning.'[11]

In September 1897 a crew of passengers went from New Zealand to see the
Fijian rites, which, as reported in the 'Fiji Times,' corresponded exactly
with the description published by Mr. Basil Thomson, himself a witness.
The interesting point, historically, is the combination in Home of all the
_répertoire_ of the possessed men in Iamblichus. We certainly cannot get
rid of the fire-trick by aid of a hypothetical 'non-conducting substance.'
Till the 'substance' is tested experimentally it is not a _vera causa_. We
might as well say 'spirits' at once. Both that 'substance' and those
'spirits' are equally 'in the air.' Yet Mr. Podmore's 'explanations' (not
satisfactory to himself) are conceived so thoroughly in the spirit of
popular science--one of them casually discovering a new psychological law,
a second contradicting the facts it seeks to account for, a third
generously inventing an unknown substance--that they ought to be welcomed
by reviewers and lecturers.

It seems wiser to admit our ignorance and suspend our belief.

Here closes the futile chapter of explanations. Fraud is a _vera causa_,
but an hypothesis difficult of application when it is admitted that the
effects could not be caused by ordinary mechanical means. Hallucination,
through excitement, is a _vera causa_, but its remarkable uniformity,
as described by witnesses from different lands and ages, knowing nothing
of each other, makes us hesitate to accept a sweeping hypothesis of
hallucination. The case for it is not confirmed, when we have the same
reports from witnesses certainly not excited.

This extraordinary bundle, then, of reports, practically identical, of
facts paralysing to belief, this bundle made up of statements from so many
ages and countries, can only be 'filed for reference.' But it is manifest
that any savage who shared the experiences of Sir W. Crookes, Lord
Crawford, Mr. Hamilton Aïdé, M. Robert de St. Victor at Cideville, and
Policeman Higgs at Worksop, would believe that a spirit might tenant a
stick or stone--so believing he would be a Fetishist. Thus even of
Fetishism the probable origin is in a region of which we know nothing--the
_X_ region.

[Footnote 1: A sketch of the history will be found in the author's _Cock
Lane and Common Sense_.]

[Footnote 2: The best source is his article on 'Poltergeists.'
_Proceedings_ xi. 45-116. See, too, his 'Poltergeists' in _Studies in
Psychical Research_.]

[Footnote 3: _Studies in Psychical Research_, p. 140.]

[Footnote 4: See Preface to this edition for correction.]

[Footnote 5: _Proceedings_, S.P.R. vii. 383-394.]

[Footnote 6: See Sir W. Crookes's _Researches in Spiritualism_.]

[Footnote 7: Mr. Aïdé has given me this information. He recorded the
circumstances in his Diary at the time.]

[Footnote 8: _Report of Dialectical Society_, p. 209.]

[Footnote 9: See Porphyry, in Parthey's edition (Berlin, 1857), iii. 4.]

[Footnote 10: _Bulletin de la Société de Biologie_, 1880, p. 399.]

[Footnote 11: Crookes, _Proceedings_, ix. 308.]




APPENDIX C

_CRYSTAL-GAZING_

Since the chapter on crystal-gazing was in type, a work by Dr. Pierre
Janet has appeared, styled 'Les Névroses et les Idées Fixes.'[1] It
contains a chapter on crystal-gazing. The opinion of Dr. Janet, as that of
a savant familiar, at the Salpêtrière, with 'neurotic' visionaries,
cannot but be interesting. Unluckily, the essay must be regarded as
seriously impaired in value by Dr. Janet's singular treatment of his
subject. Nothing is more necessary in these researches than accuracy of
statement. Now, Dr. Janet has taken a set of experiences, or experiments,
of Miss X.'s from that lady's interesting essay, already cited; has
attributed them, not to Miss X., but to various people--for example, to
_une jeune fille, une pauvre voyante, une personne un peu mystique_; has
altered the facts in the spirit of romance; and has triumphantly given
that explanation, revival of memory, which was assigned by Miss X.
herself.

Throughout his paper Dr. Janet appears as the calm man of science
pronouncing judgment on the visionary vagaries of 'haunted' young girls
and disappointed seeresses. No such persons were concerned; no such
hauntings, supposed premonitions, or 'disillusions' occurred; the romantic
and 'marvellous' circumstances are mythopoeic accretions due to Dr.
Janet's own memory or fancy; his scientific explanation is that given by
his trinity of _jeune fille, pauvre voyante_, and _personne un peu
mystique_.

Being much engaged in the study of 'neurotic' and hysterical patients, Dr.
Janet thinks that they are most apt to see crystal visions. Perhaps they
are; and one doubts if their descriptions are more to be trusted than
the romantic essay of their medical attendant. In citing Miss X.'s paper
(as he did), Dr. Janet ought to have reported her experiments correctly,
ought to have attributed them to herself, and should, decidedly, have
remarked that the explanation he offered was her own hypothesis, verified
by her own exertions.

Not having any acquaintances in neurotic circles, I am unable to say
whether such persons supply more cases of the faculty of crystal vision
than ordinary people; while their word, one would think, is much less to
be trusted than that of men and women in excellent health. The crystal
visions which I have cited from my own knowledge (and I could cite scores
of others) were beheld by men and women engaged in the ordinary duties
of life. Students, barristers, novelists, lawyers, school-masters,
school-mistresses, golfers--to all of whom the topic was perfectly
new--have all exhibited the faculty. It is curious that an Arabian author
of the thirteenth century, Ibn Khaldoun, cited by M. Lefébure, offers the
same account of _how_ the visions appear as that given by Miss Angus in
the _Journal_ of the S.P.R., April 1898. M. Lefébure's citation was sent
to me in a letter.

I append M. Lefébure's quotation from Ibn Khaldoun. The original is
translated in 'Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Impériale,'
I. xix. p. 643-645.

'Ibn Kaldoun admet que certains hommes ont la faculté de deviner l'avenir.

'"Ceux, ajoute-t-il, qui regardent dans les corps diaphanes, tels que les
miroirs, les cuvettes remplies d'eau et les liquides; ceux qui inspectent
les coeurs, les foies et les os des animaux, ... tous ces gens-là
appartiennent aussi à la catégorie des devins, mais, à cause de
l'imperfection de leur nature, ils y occupent un rang inférieur. Pour
écarter le voile des sens, le vrai devin n'a pas besoin de grands efforts;
quant aux autres, ils tâchent d'arriver au but en _essayant de concentrer
en un seul sens toutes leurs perceptions_. Comme la vue est le sens le
plus noble, ils lui donnent la préférence; fixant leur regard sur on objet
à superficie unie, ils le considèrent avec attention jusqu'à ce qu'ils y
aperçoivent la chose qu'ils veulent annoncer. Quelques personnes croient
que l'image aperçue de cette manière se dessine sur la surface du miroir;
mais ils se trompent. Le devin regarde fixement cette surface jusqu'à ce
qu'elle disparaisse et qu'un rideau, semblable à un brouillard,
s'interpose entre lui et le miroir. Sur ce rideau se dessinent les choses
_qu'il désira apercevoir_, et cela lui permet de donner des indications
soit affirmatives, soit négatives, sur ce que l'on désire savoir. Il
raconte alors les perceptions telles qu'il les reçoit. Les devins,
pendant qu'ils sont dans cet état, n'aperçoivent pas ce qui se voit
réellement dans le miroir; c'est un autre mode de perception qui naît
chez eux et qui s'opère, non pas au moyen de la vue, mais de l'âme. Il
est vrai que, _pour eux, les perceptions de l'âme ressemblent à celles
des sens au point de les tromper_; fait qui, du reste, est bien connu. La
même chose arrive à ceux qui examinent les coeurs et les foies d'animaux.
Nous avons vu quelques-uns de ces individus _entraver l'opération des
sens_ par l'emploi de simples _fumigations_, puis se servir
d'_incantations_[2] afin de donner à l'âme la disposition requise; ensuite
ils racontent ce qu'ils ont aperçu. Ces formes, disent-ils, se montrent
dans l'air et représentent des personnages: elles leur apprennent, au
moyen d'emblèmes et de signes, les choses qu'ils cherchent à savoir. Les
individus de cette classe se détachent moins de l'influence des sens que
ceux de la classe précédente."'

[Footnote 1: Lican, Paris, 1898.]

[Footnote 2: L'auteur arabe avait déjà mentionné (p. 209) l'emploi des
incantations et indiqué qu'elles étuient un simple adjuvant physique
destiné à donner à certains hommes une exaltation dont ils se servaient
pour tâcher de découvrir l'avenir.

'Pour arriver au plus haut degré d'inspiration dont il est capable, le
devin doit avoir recours à l'emploi de certaines phrases qui se
distinguent par _une cadence et un parallelisme particuliers_. Il
essaye ce moyen _afin de soustraire son âme aux influences des sens_ et
de lui donner assez de force pour se mettre dans un contact imparfait
avec le monde spirituel.[a] Cette agitation d'esprit, jointe à l'emploi
des moyens intrinsèques dont nous avons parlé, excite dans son coeur
des idées que cet organe exprime par le ministère de la langne. Les
paroles qu'il prononce sont tantôt vraies, tantôt fausses. En effet,
le devin, voulant suppléer à l'imperfection de son naturel, se sert de
moyens tout à fait étrangers à sa faculté perceptive et qui ne
s'accordent en aucune façon avec elle. Donc la vérité et l'erreur se
présentent à lui en même temps, aussi ne doit on mettre aucune
confiance en ses paroles. Quelquefois même il a recours à des
suppositions et à des conjectures dans l'espoir de rencontrer la vérité
et de tromper ceux qui l'interrogent.']

[Footnote a: Compare Tennyson's way of attaining a state of trance by
repeating to himself his own name.]




APPENDIX D

_CHIEFS IN AUSTRALIA_

In the remarks on Australian religion, it is argued that chiefs in
Australia are, at most, very inconspicuous, and that a dead chief cannot
have thriven into a Supreme Being. Attention should be called, however, to
Mr. Howitt's remarks on Australian 'Head-men,' in his tract on 'The
Organisation of Australian Tribes' (pp. 103-113).

He attaches more of the idea of power to 'Head-men' than does Mr. Curr in
his work, 'The Australian Race.' The Head-men, as a rule, arrive at such
influence as they possess by seniority, if accompanied by courage, wisdom,
and, in some cases, by magical acquirements. There are traces of a
tendency to keep the office (if it may be called one) in the same kinship.
'But Vich Ian Vohr or Chingahgook are not to be found in Australian
tribes' (p. 113). I do not observe that the manes or ghost of a dead
Head-man receives any worship or service calculated to fix him in the
tribal memory, and so lead to the evolution of a deity, though one
Head-man was potent through the whole Dieyri tribe over three hundred
miles of country. Such a person, if propitiated after death, might
conceivably develop into a hero, if not into a creative being. But we
must await evidence to the effect that any posthumous reverence was paid
to this man, Ialina Piramurane (New Moon). Mr. Howitt's essay is in the
'Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria for 1889.'




INDEX

Academy of Medicine, Paris, inquiry into animal magnetism, 34

Achille, the case of, 134

Acosta, Père, cited, 74, 244, 246

Adare, Lord, cited, 335

Addison, cited, 16

Africans, religious faiths of, 212, 218, 221, 222.
  See under separate tribal names.

Ahone, North-American Indian god, 231-233, 241, 248, 258, 262, 280

Aïdé, Hamilton, cited, 336

Algonquins, the, 250

Allen, Grant, cited, 190

American Creators, 230;
  parallel with African gods, 230;
  savage gods of Virginia, 231;
  the Ahone-Okeus creed, 231-233;
  Pawnee tribal religions, 233-236;
  Ti-ra-wá, the Spirit Father, 234, 235;
  rite to the Morning Star, 234;
  religion of the Blackfeet, 236;
  Nà-pi, 237-239;
  one account of the Inca religion, 239-242;
  Sun-worship, 239-241;
  cult of Pachacamac, the Inca deity, 239-247;
  another account of the Inca religion, 242-246;
  hymns of the Zuñis, 247;
  _Awonawilona_, 247

Amoretti, Sig., cited, 30, 152

Ancestor, worship, 164-166, 178, 205, 212, 268, 271-277

Andamanese, the, religious beliefs of,     167, 194-197, 205, 208, 211,
    249, 252, 256, 272
'Angus, Miss,' cases in her experience of crystal-gazing, 89-102, 341

Animal magnetism, inquiry into, 29, 34, 35

Animism, nature and influence of,     48, 49, 53, 58, 63, 129, 168, 190,
    191, 206, 256, 264, 266, 268, 269, 303

Anthropology and hallucinations, 105;
  sleeping and waking experience, 105, 106;
  hallucinations in mentally sound people, 107;
  ghosts, 107;
  coincidence of hallucinations of the sane with death or other crisis of
    person seen, 107;
  morbid hallucinations and coincidental 'flukes,' 108;
  connection of cause and effect, 108;
  the emotional effect, 108;
  illustrative coincidence, 108;
  hallucinations of sight, 109;
  causes of hallucinations, 110;
  collective hallucinations, 110;
  the properly receptive state, 110;
  telepathy, 111;
  phantasms of the living, 112;
  Maori cases, 113-115;
  evidence to be rejected, 116;
  subjective hallucination caused by expectancy, 116;
  puzzling nature of hallucinations shared by several people at once, 116,
    117;
  hallucinations coincident with a death, 117;
  apparitions and deaths connected in fact, 117;
  Census of the Society for Psychical Research thereupon, 118;
  number and character of the instances, 119;
  weighing evidence, 119;
  opinion of the Committee on Hallucinations, 121;
  remoteness of occurrence of instances, 121;
  want of documentary evidence, 121
  non-coincidental hallucinations, 121;
  telepathy existing between kinsfolk and friends, 122;
  influence of anxiety, 123;
  existence of illness known, 123;
  mental and nervous conditions in connection with hallucinations, 134;
  value of the statistics of the Census, 124;
  anecdote of an English officer, 125

Anthropology and religion, 30;
  early scientific prejudice against, 40;
  evolution and evidence, 40;
  testing of evidence, 41-43;
  psychical research, 48;
  origin of religion, 44;
  inferences drawn from supernormal phenomena, 41, 53;
  savage parallels of psychical phenomena, 45;
  meanings of religion, 45, 40;
  disproof of godless tribes, 47;
  Animism, 48, 49;
  limits of savage tongues, 49;
  waking and sleeping hallucinations, 60;
  crystal-gazing, 50;
  the ghost-soul, 51;
  savage abstract speculation, 52;
  analogy of the ideas of children and primitive man, 53;
  early man's conception of life, 32;
  ghost-seers, 54;
  psychical conditions in which savages differ from civilised men, 54;
  power of producing non-normal psychological conditions, 55;
  faculties of the lower animals, 56;
  man's first conception of religion, 56;
  the suggested hypnotic state, 57;
  second-sight, 68;
  savage names for the ghost-soul, 60;
  the migratory spirit, 60-64

Anynrabia, South Guinea Creator, 220

Apaches, crystal-gazing by, 84, 85

Apollonius of Tyana, 66

Atua, the Tongan Elohim, 279

Aurora Borealis, savage ideas of the, 4, 262, 292

Australians, religious beliefs of, 50, 83, 118, 128, 165, 175-182, 185,
    188, 190, 205, 208, 211, 215, 219, 224, 240, 249, 253, 266, 261-263

Automatism, 155

Awonawilona, Zuñi deity, 248, 251

Ayinard, Jacques, case of, 150, 182

Aztecs, creed of, 104 _note_, 183, 233, 234, 255, 258, 263

Bealz, Dr., cited, 132

Baiame, deity, 189, 190, 191, 205, 261, 280

Baker, Sir Samuel, cited, 42, 211

Bakwains, the, 169

Balfour, A.J., quoted, 44, 57 _note_

Banks Islanders, their gods, 169, 197-198

Bantus, religious beliefs of, 176, 211, 220, 248

Barkworth, Mr., his opinion of Mrs. Piper, 140

Barrett, Professor, on the divining-rod, 162-154

Bostian, Adolf, cited, 6, 43

Baxter, cited, 15

Beaton, Cardinal, his mistress visualized, 97

Bell, John, cited, 149

Beni-Israel, 282

Berna, magnetiser, 34

Bernadette, case of, 117

Big Black Man, Fuegian deity, 258

Binet and Féré, quoted, 20, 76

Bissett, Mr. and Mrs., experiences of crystal-gazing, 99-102

Blackfeet, beliefs of, 230, 236

Blantyre region, religion in the, 217, 218

Bleck, Dr., cited, 194

Bobowissi, Gold Coast god, 225-227, 230-232

Bodinus, cited, 15

Book of the Dead, 286, 303

Bora, Australian mysteries, 176, 179, 190, 196, 260

Bosman, cited, 225

Bourget, Paul, his opinion of Mrs. Piper, 139, 140

Bourke, Captain J.G., cited, 83

Boyle, cited, 15

Braid, inventor of the word 'hypnotism,' 24, 35, 36

Brewster, Sir David, cited, 33

Brinton, Dr., cited, 67, 168, 232, 236, 254, 264, 290

Bristow, Mr., cited, 332

British Association decline to hear Braid's essay, 24
  rejection of anthropological papers, 89

Brasses, de, cited, 149

Brown, General Mason, cited, 68, 67

Bunjil, deity, 189

Bushmen, religious beliefs of, 165, 198, 208, 211, 252

Button, Jemmy, the Faegian, case of, 116

Caon, Boshmon deity, 189, 193, 205

Callawoy, Dr., on Zulu beliefs, 72, 85, 106, 142, 151 207, 208

Cardan, cited, 15

Carpenter, Dr., cited, 324

Carver, Captain Jonathan, his instance of savage possession, 142
  cited, 60, 144, 145

Charcot, Dr., on faith cures, 20-23, 24 _note_

Chevreul, M., cited, 152

Chinese, the, demon possession in, 181, 183
  divining-rod, 154
  religious beliefs, 237, 290, 291

Chonos, the, 176

Circumcision, 286

Clairvoyance (vue à distance), 65
  'opening the Gates at Distance.' 65, 66
  attested cases among savages, 66
  conflict with the laws of exact science, 67
  instances, 67
  among the Zulus, 68-70
  among the Lapps, 70
  the Llarson case, 71
  seers, 72
  the element of trickery, 73
  a Red Indian seeress, 73
  Peruvian clairvoyants, 75
  Professor Richet's case, 75
  Mr. Dobbie's case, 76
  Scottish tales of second-sight, 78-81
  visions provoked by various methods, 81
  See Crystal visions

Clodd, Edward, cited, 119, 120, 300

'Cockburn, Mrs.,' test of crystal-gazing, 99-101

Codrington, Dr., cited, 150, 169, 197-199

Coirin, Mlle., her miraculous cure, 20

Coleridge, cited, 9, 11, 12 _note_, 295, 296

Collins, cited, 179

Comanches, the, 250

Confucius, religious teaching of, 290, 291

Cook, Captain, cited, 271

Corpse-binding, 143, 144

Crawford, Lord, cited, 325, 334, 330, 387

Creeks, the, 143

Croesus, tests the Delphic Oracle, 14

Crookes, Sir William, cited, 325, 331, 333, 334, 337, 338

Crystal visions, 83
  savage instances, 83-85
  in later Europe, 85
  nature of 'Miss X's' experiments, 85
  attributed to 'dissociation,' 86
  examples of 'thought-transference,' 87
  arguments against accepting recognition of objects described by another
    person, 87
  coincidence of fact and fiction, 88
  cases in the experience of 'Miss Angus,' 89-102
  'Miss Rose's' experience, 91, 92
  phenomena suggest the savage theory of the wandering soul, 103
  cited, 7, 44, 50, 314-316, 340

Cumberland, Stuart, 72

Cures by suggestion, 20, 21

Curr, Mr., reports 'godless' savages, 184 _note_

Dampier, cited, 176

Dancing sticks, 149-131

Darumulun, Australian Supreme Being, 178, 179, 183, 186, 191, 213, 240,
    258-264, 280

Darwin, cited, 115, 149, 174 _note_, 324, 332

Death, savage ideas on, 187

Degeneration theory, the, 254
  the powerful creative Being of lowest savages, 254
  differences between the Supreme Being of higher and lower savages, 255
  human sacrifice, 255
  hungry, cruel gods degenerate from the Australian Father in Heaven, 256
  savage Animism, 256
  a pure religion forgotten, 257
  an inconvenient moral Creator, 257
  hankering after useful ghost-gods, 257
  lowering of the ideal of a Creator, 257
  maintenance of an immoral system in the interests of the State and the
    clergy, 258
  moral monotheism of the Hebrew religion, 258
  degradation of Jehovah, 258
  human sacrifice in ritual of Israel, 258
  origin of conception of Jehovah, 258
  Semitic gods, 259
  status of Darumulun, 259
  conception of Jehovah conditioned by space, 260
  degeneration of deity in Africa, 260
  political advance produces religious degeneration, 261
  sacrificial ideas, 262
  the savage Supreme Being on a higher plane than the Semitic and
    Greek gods, 263
  Animism full of the seeds of religions degeneration, 264
  falling off in the theistic conception, 265
  fetishism, 265
  modus of degeneration by Animism supplanting Theism, 265
  feeling after a God who needs not anything at man's hands, 267

Demoniacal possession, 128
  the 'inspired' or 'possessed,' 129
  'change of control,' 130
  gift of eloquence and poetry, 131
  instances in China, 131
  attempted explanations of the phenomena, 132
  'alternating personality,' 132
  symptoms of possession, 132
  evidence for, 133
  scientific account of a demoniac and his cure, 134
  inducing the 'possessed' state, 135
  exhibition of abnormal knowledge by the possessed, 136
  Scientific study of the phenomena, 136
  details of the case of Mrs. Piper, 136-141
  diagnosing and prescribing for patients, 142
  Carver's example of savage possession, 142, 157
  custom of binding the seer with bonds, 142, 145
  corpse-binding, 143, 144

Dendid, Dinka Supreme Being, 211, 212, 258, 280

Deslon, M., disciple of Mesmer, 24

Dessoir, Dr. Max, quoted, 32, 33, 57

Dinkas, beliefs of the, 42, 211, 212, 256

Divining-rod, use of the, 30, 152-155

Dobbie, Mr., his case of clairvoyance, 76

Dorman, Mr., cited, 203

Dunbar, Mr., cited, 236

Du Pont, cited, 75

Du Prel, cited, 28

Dynois, Jonka, trance of, 65

Ebumtupism, second sight, 73

Egyptians, beliefs of, 83, 302

Elcho, Lord, cited, 334

Eleusinian mysteries, 196

Elliotson, Dr., cited, 24, 35, 37, 40

Ellis, Major, on Polynesian and African religions ideas, 83, 144, 222-228,
    232, 251, 260, 272

Elohim, savage equivalents to the term, 277

Esemkofu, Zulu ghosts, 128, 129

Eskimo, religious beliefs of, 72, 113, 184

Faith-Cures, 20-22

Fenton, Francis Dart, on Maori ghost-seeing, 114

Ferrand, Mlle., on hallucinations, 32

Fetishism and Spiritualism, 147
  the fetish, 147
  sources super-normal to savages, 148
  independent motion in inanimate objects, 149
  comparison with physical phenomena of spiritualism, 149
  Melanesian belief in sticks moved by spirits, 150
  a sceptical Zulu, 150
  a form of the pendulum experiment, 151
  table-turning, 152
  the divining-rod, 152
  the civilised and savage practice of automatism, 156
  dark room manifestations, 156
  the disturbances in the house of M. Zoller, 156
  consideration of physical phenomena, 158
  instanced, 165, 225, 265, 266, 276, 324-339

Figuier, M., cited, 152

Fijians, religious beliefs of, 128, 136, 200, 248, 338

Finns, the, 58

Fire ceremony, the, 180 _note_

Fison, Mr., cited, 128

Fitzroy, Admiral, cited, 115, 173, 174

Flacourt, Sieur de, on crystal-gazing in Madagascar, 84

Flint, Professor, cited, 253

Francis, St., stigmata of, 22

Fuegians, beliefs and customs of, 115, 165, 173-175, 183, 187, 208,
    211, 227, 258, 262, 272

Galton, Mr., cited, 12, 96, 107, 294, 295

Garcilasso de la Vega, on Inca beliefs, 239-244

'Gates of Distance, Opening the,' 65, 66, 68

Ghost-seers, 54, 63

Ghost-soul, the, 51
  names for the, 60

Gibert, Dr., on 'willing' sleep, 36

Gibier, Dr., cited, 146

Gippsland tribes, 187

Glanvil, Rev. Joseph, his scientific investigations, 15

God, evolution of the idea of, 160
  anthropological hypothesis, 160
  primitive logic of the savage, 161
  regarded as a spirit, 162
  idea of spiritual beings framed on the human soul, 164
  deified ancestors, 164
  the Zulu first ancestor, 164
  fetishes, 165
  great gods in savage systems of religion, 165
  the Lord of the Dead, 165
  conception of an idealised divine First Ancestor, 188
  hostile Good and Bad Beings, 166
  the Supreme Being of savage creeds, 166
  mediating 'Sons,' 167
  Christian and Islamite influence on savage conceptions, 167
  probable germs of the savage idea of a Supreme Being, 168
  animistic conceptions, 168
  ghosts, and Beings who never were human, 169
  recognition by savages of our God in theirs, 169
  the hypothesis of degeneracy, 170
  the moral, friendly creative Being of low savage faith, 171
  food offerings to a Universal Power, 171
  the High Gods of low races, 173
  intrusion of European ideas into savage religions, 173
  the Fuegian Big Man, 174
  ghosts of dead medicine man, 175
  the Bora, or Australian tribal mysteries, 176, 177, 179
  possible evolution of the Australian god, 178
  mythology and theology of Darumulun, the highest Australian god, 178,
    179, 183
  religious sanction of morals, 179
  selflessness the very essence of goodness, 180
  precepts of Darumulan, 181, 182
  argument from design, 184
  Supreme Gods not necessarily developed out of 'spirits,' 185
  distinction between deities and ghosts, 185
  human beings adored as gods, 186
  deathlessness of the Supreme Being of savage faith, 186, 188
  idealisation of the savage himself, 187
  negation of the ghost-theory, 188, 189
  high creative gods never wore mortal men, 189
  low savage distinction between gods, 189
  propitiation by food and sacrifice, 190
  'magnified non-natural men,' 190
  gods to talk about, not to adore, 190
  higher gods prior to the ghost theory, 191
  See Supreme Beings; American Creators; Jehovah

Greeks, the, beliefs of, 302

Greenlanders, the, 144, 182

Gregory, Dr., cited, 86

Griesinger, Dr., cited, 132

Grinnell, Mr., on Pawnee beliefs, 234-237

Guiana Indians, religious beliefs of, 202-206, 256

Guinea, North and South, religious beliefs in, 220

Gurney, Mr., his experiments in hypnotism, 85, 86
  cited, 107, 114, 117

Guyau, M., cited, 12, 24, 25

Hallucinations. See Anthropology and Hallucinations

Hamilton, Sir William, cited, 12

Hammond, Dr., on demoniacal possession, 131

Harteville, Madame, case of, 26

Hearne, on the Aurora Borealis, 3
  on cure by suggestion, 21, 22

Hebrews. See Israelites

Hegel, cited, 30-34, 50, 56, 58, 78, 111, 152

Higgs, Police Constable, statement of, on the disturbances at Mr.
  White's house, 326-328

Highland second-sight, 143-145

Hodgson, Dr., report on Mrs. Piper, 137, 140, 141
  cited, 135, 325

Home, David Dunglas, his powers as a medium, 324, 325, 334-339

Howitt, Mr., cited, 128, 177-182

Hume, David, attitude towards miracles, 16
  definition of a miracle, 16
  self-contradictions, 17
  refuses to examine miracle of the Abbé Paris, 18, 19, 22-25
  alternative definition of a miracle, 25
  cited, 297

Huxley, Professor, on savage religious cults, 42, 43, 48, 162, 163, 171,
    176, 177, 182
  on the evolution of Jehovah, 270, 271, 277, 279, 282, 286
  cited, 17 _note_, 296, 324

Hypnotism, 6, 24, 29, 32, 34, 35, 37, 75, 76

Iamblichus, cited, 14, 336, 337, 339

Ibn Khaldoun, cited, 341

Im Thurn, on the religious ideas of the Indians of Guiana, 50, 160,
    202-207, 256, 298

Incas, the, 85, 240-247, 258

Iroquois, the, 84, 85

Islam, influence of, on African beliefs, 221

Israelites, development of their religious ideas, 258, 260, 268-284, 302

James, Professor William, quoted, 23, 59, 73, 107, 110, 132, 137, 156,
    294

Janet, Dr. Pierre, on 'willing' sleep, 36
  on demoniacal possession, 134, 135
  cited, 73, 294, 340, 341

Jeanne d'Arc, 34, 73, 115, 128, 276

Jehovah, theories of, 258, 260, 268
  as a Moral Supreme Being, 268
  anthropological theory of the origin of Jehovah-worship, 270
  absence of ancestor-worship from the Hebrew tradition, 270-273
  alleged evidence for ancestor-worship in Israel, 273-277
  evolution from ghost-cult to the cult of Jehovah, 277
  the term Elohim, 277
  human shape assumed, 278
  considered as a ghost-god, 279
  sacrifices to, 280
  suggestion of a Being not yet named Jehovah, 281
  traditional emergence of Jehovah as the god of Israel, 281
  as a deified ancestor, 282
  moral element in the idea of Jehovah, 282, 286
  a mere tribal god, 283
  a Kenite god, 283, 284
  inconsistencies of theorists concerning, 285
  the moral element a survival of primitive ethics in the savage ancestors
    of the Israelites, 287
  verity of the Biblical account, 287
  cited, 299

Jeraeil, mysteries of the Kurnai, 180

Jevons, Mr., cited, 186, 255, 300, 302

Jugglery, Pawnee, 235

Jung-Stilling, cited, 30, 63

Kaloc, Fijian name for gods, 200, 201

Kamschatkans, 166

Kant, inquires into Swedenborg's visions, 26, 59
  disappointed with Swedenborg's 'Arcana Coelestia', 26, 27
  on the metaphysics of 'spirits,' 27
  discusses the subconscious, 28
  cited, 125

Karens, beliefs of, 60, 73, 151

Karr, Alphonse, cited, 336

Kelvin, Lord, on hypnotism, 37

Kenites, the, 284

Kingsley, Miss, cited, 175, 211, 220, 328

Kirk, cited, 144

Kohl, cited, 148

Kulin, Australian tribe, 49

Kurnai, Australian tribe, their religious conceptions, 49, 180, 181, 187,
    215, 262, 263, 287, 291

Laing, Mr. Samuel, cited, 12 _note_

Langlois, M., the case of, 75, 76

Lapps, beliefs of, 58, 71, 81

Latukas, the, 42

Laverterus, telepathic hypothesis of, 15

Le Loyer, cited, 15

Leaf, Mr., cited, 112 _note_

Leeward Isles, ideas of a god in, 251

Lefèbure, M., cited, 84, 149, 341

Legge, Dr., on the teaching of Confucius, 290

Lejean, M., on the Dinkas, 212

Lejeaune, Père, cited, 74, 83

Leng, Mr., cited, 133

Leon, Cieza de, cited, 241, 244

Léonie, the case of her hypnotisation, 75, 76

Leslie, David, on Zulu clairvoyance, 68
  on ghosts, 128

Levitation, 334

Littré, M., cited, 136

Livingstone, Dr., cited, 6, 135, 170

Lloyd, Dr., cited, 327, 328

Loan-god, a, Tshi theory of, 222-229

Lourdes, cures at, 19

Lubbock, Sir John, cited, 42

Macalister, Professor, his opinion of Mrs. Piper, 140

MacCulloch, Dr., on second-sight, 58

Macdonald, Duff, cited, 150, 213, 215, 218

Macgregor, Dr. Alastair, gives instances of second-sight, 79-81

Madagascar, 84

Magnetism, 29, 34, 35

Malagasies, beliefs of, 84

Malays of Keeling Island, fetishism in, 141

Man, Mr., on Andamanese religion and mythology, 194, 195

Mans, magical rapport, 199, 200

Mandans, the, 188

Manganjah, practice of sorcery in, 149

Manning, Mr., cited, 146

Maoris, religious beliefs of, 83, 113-115, 118, 119, 150, 166, 188

Marawa, Banks Islands deity, 198, 199

Mariner, cited, 278

Markham, Mr., cited, 243, 246

Marson, Madame, case of, 71

Mason, Dr., on familiar spirits, 130

Mather, Cotton, cited, 16, 55

Maudsloy, Dr., cited, 23 _note_

Mani, Maori deity, 166, 188

Mayo, Dr., cited, 86

Medici, Catherine de', cited, 66

Medicine-men, 84

Mediums, 324-339

Melanesians, religious beliefs of, 150, 169, 189, 197, 199, 200

Menestrier, le Père, uses the divining-rod, 154

Menzies, Professor, cited, 257

Mesmer, his theory of magnetism, 29, 34

Millar, cited, 40, 41

Miracles, regarded from the standpoint of science, 14
  early tests, 14
  and more modern research, 15
  witchcraft, 15, 16
  Hume's essay on, 16
  and his definitions of a miracle, 16, 25
  cures at the tomb of the Abbè Paris, 18-20, 23
  Binet and Fèrè's explanation of these cures, 20
  cures by suggestion, 20, 21
  Dr. Charcot's views, 20
  faith cures, 20-22
  science opposed to systematic negation, 22
  refusal to examine evidence, 23-25
  'marvellous facts,' 24
  suggestion à distance, 24
  Kant's researches, 26-29
  Swedenborg's clairvoyance, 26, 27
  thought-transference and hypnotic sleep, 29, 30, 32, 35
  water-finding, 39
  phenomena of clairvoyance, 31
  Hegel's 'magic tie,' 31
  Dr. Max Dessoir's views, 31, 32
  hallucinations, 32
  animal magnetism, 34
  hypnotism, 35
  'willing,' 36
  facts and phenomena confronting science, 37

'Miss X,' on crystal-gazing, 87, 315, 316, 340, 341

Mlungu, Central African deity, 213-218

Molina, Christoval de, on Inca beliefs, 242, 243

Moll, Herr, cited, 314

Montgeron, M., cited, 19, 20

More, Henry, cited, 15

Moses, founder of the Hebrew religion, 283-286

Mtanga, African deity, 213-217

Müller, Max, cited, 41, 43, 46, 265, 266, 289

Mungan-ngaur, Kurnai Supreme Being, 181, 188, 190, 205, 217, 259

Mwetyi, Shekuni Great Spirit, 220

Myers, Frederic, on hypnotic slumber, 30, 33
  cited, 15 _note_

Nana Nyankupon, Gold Coast Supreme Being, 225-228, 232, 280

Nà-pi, American Indian deity, 237-239, 241

Ndengei, Fijian Supreme Being, 200-202, 228, 248

Nevius, Dr., on demoniacal possession, 131-135

Newbold, Professor W. Romaine, 135

Nezahuati, erects a bloodless fane to the Unknown God, 258

Nicaraguans, the, 60

North, Major, on Pawnee jugglery, 235, 236

Nzambi Mpungu, Bantu Supreme Being, 226, 228, 242

Okeus (Oki), American Indian deity, 231, 232

Okey, the sisters, case of, 37 _note_

Ombwiri, South Guinea god, 220

Orpen, Mr., cited, 193

Oxford, Rev. A.W., on ancient Israel, 275-277, 283-285

Pachacamac, Inca, Supreme Being, 230, 239-247, 258

Pachayachachi, Inca god, 242, 246

Paladino, Eusapia, case of, 325

Palmer, Mr., cited, 179

Paris, Abbè miracles wrought at his tomb, 18-20, 23

Parish, Herr, criticism of his reply to the arguments for telepathy,
    307-323
  cited, 8, 86, 107

Park, Mungo, on African beliefs, 221, 223

Pawnees, religious beliefs and practices of, 212, 224, 230, 233-236, 263

Payne, Mr., cited, 160, 161, 246

Peden, Rev. Mr., cited, 66

Pelippa, Captain, cited, 173

Pendulum experiment, a form of the, 151

Pepys, cited, 15

Peruvians, religious ideas and practices of, 75, 239-247

Phantasms of the Dead, 128

Phinuit, Dr. See Mrs. Piper

Piper, Mrs., the case of, 132, 136-141

Pliny, cited, 15

Plotinus, cited, 66

Plutarch, cited, 15

Podmore, Mr., on psychical research, 111, 325, 326, 328, 330-336, 338, 339

Poltergeist, the, and his explainers, 334-339

Polynesians, religious beliefs of, 7, 83, 251, 252, 256

Polytheism, 289, 291, 303

Porphyry, cited, 14

Powhattan, Virginian chief, 231, 232

Puluga, Andamanese Supreme Being, 195, 205, 228, 258, 262

Pundjel, Australian god, 258, 261, 262

Puységur, de, his discovery of hypnotic sleep, 29,
  cited, 76

Qat, Banks Islands deity, 189, 198, 199

Qing, Bushman, his ideas of the god Cang, 193, 196

Ravenwood, Master of, instanced, 126

Red Indians, beliefs and practices of, 3, 5, 6, 21, 22, 83, 104 _note_,
    128, 142, 143, 203

Regnard, M., cited, 71

Renan, M., cited, 285

Révillo, M., cited, 291, 293

Reynolds, Dr. Russell, cited, 22

Rhombos, use of the, 84

Ribot, M., cited, 132

Richet, Professor Charles, hypnotises Léonie, 75, 76
  cited, 64, 73, 82, 154, 294

Ritter, Dr., believes in Siderism, 29

Romans, religious ideas of, 302

'Rose, Miss,' her experience of crystal-gazing, 90,91

Rose, Eliza, the case of, 326-330

Roskoff, cited, 42

Rowley, Mr., cited, 149

Russegger, cited, 212

Salcamayhua, cited, 246

Samoyeds, 58, 72

Sand, George, cited, 86

Santos, cited, 214

Saul and the Witch of Endor, 14

Scheffer, cited, 66, 70, 71, 81

Schoolcraft, Mr., cited, 236

Schrenck-Notzing, von, cited, 55 _note_

Scot, Reginald, cited, 15

Scott, Rev. David Clement, cited, 49 _note_, 106, 217, 218

Scott, Sir Walter, his attitude towards clairvoyance, 27
  cited, 121, 126

Sebituane, case of, 135, 136

Second-sight, 56, 66, 78-81

Seer-binding, 143

Seers, 72

Shang-ti, Chinese Supreme Being, 245, 290, 291

Shortland, Mr., quoted, 113

Sidgwick, Professor, cited, 318, 332

Sioux, the, 236

Skidi or Wolf Pawnees, the, 233, 234

Smith, Mrs. Erminie, on crystal-gazing, 84

Smith, historian of Virginia, cited, 231, 232

Smith, Robertson, cited, 259, 261, 262, 281 _note_, 298

Smyth, Brough, cited, 42, 178, 182, 293

Society for Psychical Research, 116, 118

Spencer, Herbert, on early religious ideas, 42, 43
  ghosts, 47
  Animism, 48 _note_, 53, 54
  limits of savage language, 49
  the Fuegian Big Man, 174
  Australian marriage customs, 175
  Australian religion, 182
  men-gods, 186
  religion of Bushmen, 193
  ancestor-worship, 212, 213, 271-273
  cited, 162, 167, 170, 216, 218, 292

Spiritualism, 324-339.
  See Fetishism

Stade, Herr, cited, 276, 284, 285

Stanley, Hans, cited, 12

Starr, cited, 104 _note_

Stoll, cited, 72

Strachey, William, cited, 229-232

Suetonius, cited, 15

Sully, Mr., cited. 295

Sun-worship, 238-245

Supreme Beings of savages, regarded as eternal, moral, and powerful, 193
  Cagn, the Bushman god, 193
  Puluga, the Andamanese god, 195
  savage mysteries and rites, 196
  alliance of ethics with religion, 196
  the Banks Islanders' belief in Tamate (ghosts) and Vui (Beings who never
    had been human), 197
  corporeal and incorporeal Vuis, 198
  sacrificial offerings to ghosts and spirits, 199
  the soul the complex of real bodiless after-images, 200
  Fijian belief, 200
  Ndengei, the Fijian chief god, 200, 201
  the idea of primeval Eternal Beings, 202
  the Great Spirit of North American tribes, 203
  dream origin of the ghost theory, 203
  Guiana Indian names indicating a belief in a Great Spirit, 203-206
  the God-cult abandoned for the Ghost-cult, 205
  Unkulunkulu, the Zulu Creator, 207-210
  the notion of a dead Maker, 208
  preference for serviceable family spirits, 209
  the Dinka Creator, 211
  African ancestor-worship, 212
  Mlungu, a deity formed by aggregation of departed spirits, 213
  ethical element in religious mysteries, 215
  the position of Mtanga, 216
  religious beliefs in the Blantyre region, 217, 218
  negro tendency to monotheism, 218
  beliefs in North and South Guinea, 220
  Mungo Park's observation of African beliefs, 221
  Islamic influence, 221
  the Tshi theory of a loan-god,' borrowed from Europeans, 222-228
  varieties of Tshi gods, 224, 225
  fetishes, 225
  Nana Nyankupon, the 'God of the Christians,' 225-229
  American Creators (see under), 230-252
  the Polynesian cult, 251, 252
  Chinese conceptions, 290-292

Swedenborg, Emanuel, visions of, 26
  recovers Mme. Harteville's receipt, 26
  his 'Arcana Coelestia,' 27
  noticed by Kant, 28, 29, 59

Taa-Roa, Polynesian deity, 251, 252, 256, 280, 308

Table-turning, 151

Tahitians, 251

Taine, M., cited, 57

Ta-li-y-Tooboo, Tongan deity, 278, 279, 282

Tamate, Banks Islands ghosts, 197-199

Tamoi, the 'ancient of heaven,' 188

Tando, Gold Coast god, 225

Tanner, John, case of, 57, 128

Teed, Esther, the Amherst mystery, 333

Telepathy, oppositions of science to, 307
  hallucination of memory, 307
  presentiments, 308
  dreams, 308, 309, 312
  veridical hallucinations, 309, 311
  coincidence in S.P.R.'s Census cases, 310
  non-coincidental cases, 311
  condition to beget hallucination, 312
  hallucinations mere dreams, 312
  crystal-gazing, 314-316
  number of coincidences no proof, 316
  association of ideas, 316
  coincidental collective hallucinations, 317-323
  See Crystal visions

Thomson, Basil, cited, 200 _note_, 248, 249, 339

Thought-transference, 4, 29-32, 35
  illustrative cases, 88-103

Thouvenel, M., cited, 152

Thyraeus on ghosts, 15

Tien, Chinese heaven, 290, 291

Ti-ra-wá, American Indian god, 234-236, 239

Tlapané, African wizard, 135

Tongans, religious beliefs of, 278-280

Tonkaways, American tribe, 233

Torfaeus, cited, 71

Totemism, 239, 241, 262, 263, 269, 270, 276

Tregear, Mr., on Maori ghost-seeing, 113

Tshi theory of a loan-god, 223-227

Tuckey, Dr. Lloyd, cited, 36

Tui Laga, Fijian deity, 249

Tundun, ancestor of the Kurnai, 181

Tylor, Mr., his test of recurrence, 41
  on anthropological origin of religion, 43
  on savage philosophy of super-normal phenomena, 45, 53
  disproves the assertion about 'godless' tribes, 47
  his term Animism, 48, 49
  theory of metaphysical genius in low savages, 51
  ghost-seers, 54
  on psychical conditions of contemporary savages, 54-56
  on the influence of Swedenborg, 59
  savage names for the ghost-soul, 60
  second-sight, 66
  mediums, 73
  dreams, 106
  hallucinations, 110-113, 117, 118
  demoniacal possession, 131
  fetishism, 148, 149, 165
  divining-rod, 153
  evolution of gods from ghosts, 163, 164
  fetish deities, 165
  dualistic idea, 166
  Supreme Being of savage creeds, 166, 167
  the degeneration theory, 170, 254
  confusion of thought upon religion, 182
  list of first ancestors deified, 188
  savage mysteries, 201
  savage Animism, 204
  Okeus and his rites, 231
  Pachacamac, 245
  Confucius's teaching, 290
  the mystagogue Home, 325
  levitation, 334
  cited, 50, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61-63, 78, 151, 161, 162, 170, 173, 184, 185,
    203, 231, 232, 246, 257, 293, 297

Tyndall, Professor, cited, 324

Uiracocha, Inca Creator, 242-246

Umabakulists, diviners by sticks, 151

Unkulunkulu, Zulu mythical first ancestor, 164, 168, 188, 202, 207, 220

Vincent, Mr., 29
  on clairvoyance, 34, 36, 37

Virchow, cited, 19

Vui, non-ghost gods, 169, 197-200

Wabose, Catherine, Red Indian seeress, experience of, 73, 74

Waltz, cited, 177, 194 _note_, 218-220, 222, 243

Wallace, Alfred Basset, on Hume's theory of 'miracles,' 17, 18
  on Ritter, 29
  on clairvoyance, 31

Wayao, Supreme Being of the, 213, 214

Wellhausen, cited, 277, 283, 285, 286, 298

Welton, Thomas, on the divining-rod, 154

Wesley, John, cited, 16

White, Joseph, spirit manifestations at his house, 326-331

Wierus, cited, 15

Williams, Mr., cited, 201, 248

Wilson, Mr., cited, 50, 219, 220

Windward Isles, ideas of a God in, 251

Witch of Endor, the, 14, 277, 278

Witchcraft, 14-16

Wodrow, Mr., cited, 16

Wolf tribes, 233

Wynne, Captain, cited, 335

Yama, Vedic-Aryan ghost-god, 188

Yaos, religious beliefs of, 150, 213, 214-216

Yerri Yuppon, good spirit of the Chonos, 175

York, a Fuegian, cited, 174

Yuncus, a Peruvian race, worship of, 240, 246

Zarate, Augustin de, cited, 240

Zoller, M., disturbances in the house of, 156, 157

Zulus, religious beliefs and customs of, 65, 66, 68, 70, 72, 85, 128,
    141, 142, 150, 152, 207-210

Zuñis, hymns of the, 248, 251





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