Chapter 7

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.'