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 al 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 hal ucinatory
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 hal ucinations 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 occasional y
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 coute_, 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 cel s, 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 shal find, later, astonishing examples of savage
abstract speculation, certainly not derived from missionary sources,
because whol y out of the missionary's line of duty and reflection.
As early beasts had genius, so the earliest reasoners appear to have been
as logical y 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, al
things, universal y, 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 al things, universal y, 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 fol ow his logic or not) provided man with
a theory of active, intel igent, 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 al eged supernormal phenomena believed in by savages, with their paral els 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 cal s '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 _al _ of us, as
they were on al 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 hal ucinated in their normal waking state by suggestion. Once more, their intervals of hunger, fol owed 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 al
doubt, is capable of being _enfantosme_.
In al 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 tel ) 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 ful y 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 al ude 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' (_fueklende 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, fol owing, indeed, M. Taine, has arrived, as we saw, at
somewhat similar conclusions. 'This ful y conscious life of the spirit,'
in which we moderns now live, 'seems to rest upon a substratum of reflex
action of a hal ucinatory 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 hal ucination. 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
unsuccessful y, 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 real y 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 cal ed' 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
wel 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. Maccul och, 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 al eged 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, real y
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 wel 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 i