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