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 ex
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