THE SUPERNATURAL: ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION. Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE SUPERNATURAL: ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION. BY JOHN H. KING. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ; AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. LONDON : G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET, COVENT GARDEN. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAiNTA BARBARA CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE INTRODUCTION ... 1 BOOK I. The Origin and Nature of Supernal Concepts. CHAPTER I. The organic tendency to evolve Super- natural Concepts .... 13 CHAPTER II. The Supernatural attributes in things conceived as due to impersonal, powers 29 CHAPTER III. Supernal Concepts derived from natural appearances ..... 45 CHAPTER IV. The Evolution of Supernal Concepts in dreams ...... 51 CHAPTER V. The inter-relations of the Supernal powers 66 BOOK II. The Evolution of the Supernatural. CHAPTER I. Animal Concepts of the Supernal . . 77 CHAPTER II. The Concept of the uncanny as forms of luck .... 89 CHAPTER III. The Evolution of Charms and Spells in the individual mind .... 103 CHAPTER IV. The Differentiation of the Medicine-man 132 CHAPTER V. The origin of Ghosts Human and Animal ...... 165 CHAPTER VI. The Evolution of ancestral worship and the sentiment of Supernal goodness . 208 CIIAPIKI, VII. The Evolution of Human Ghosts and Nature Powers into Tutelar Deities . -'I CHAPIKI: VIII. The DiH'erentiation of King-Gods in Egypt . 270 CHAIIM IX. Tin- Involution of the Gods of Assyria Western THE SUPERNATURAL: ITS ORIGIN, NATURE, AND EVOLUTION. INTRODUCTION. As the great abstract principles that regulate the inter- relations of the various modes of matter and the various forms of life become more and more cognizant to human thought, we become conscious not only of their affinities, but of their representative characteristics. As it is with the organic and the inorganic, so is it with the organic and mental. Thus in the whole range of organic evolution no essential stage in organic life has ever been lost, special forms have perished, but organisms presenting every important stage in evolution continue still to exist with the same vital attributes that the first beings of their kind, so far as we can judge from paleontological evidence, possessed. Thus wo now have representatives of the whole scheme of phylogenic evolution from the incipient exposition of the uncentralized plasraic group through all the ranges of unicellular organisms to the highest organic evolvement yet known man. And while all the classes and orders of living beings still have their representatives, the one continuous unity of all life is still expressed by every organism in its ontological development, passing through the same essential stages as in ages past marked the evolution of its ancestors. 1 INTRODUCTION. Formative laws of an equally persistent character have in like manner regulated the output of the mental powers, and no mental forms once manifested have ever passed away, and not only does the ontogenic mind pass through the stages of the phylogenic mind, but, as is the case with men, living men may express any form of thought, any habit of will, any diseased, aborted or undeveloped mental status ever manifested by any human beings. Body and soul may revert to any possible stage of living continuity. Hence we have ever persistent in our midst men who are actuated by every form of emotion that savage and barbarous races present. Not only are the crimes they commit of the same nature as those committed by the lower races, but their sentiments regarding such are wholly influenced by the same undeveloped attributes. As with the moral attributes, so with the intellectual, and it is even so with their supernal sentiments. We have, in our midst, men brought up under the ordinary conditions of modern civilization who are influenced by the same class of supernal thoughts as are noted among the lowest races who fear ghosts, have faith in evil spirits and witches, who believe in luck, charms and spells, and expect immediate Divine assistance by praying to saint or martyr. On this subject Leland, in his Gipsy Sorcery, writes : " A habit-and-repute thief has always in his pocket or somewhere about his person a bit of coal or chalk, or a lucky stone, or an amulet of some sort on which he relies for safety in his hour of peril. Omens he firmly trusts in, divination is regular!} 7 practised by him. The supposed power of witches and wizards makes many of them live in terror, and pay black-mail. As for the fear of the Evil-eye, it is affirmed that most of the foreign thieves dread more being brought before a particular magis- trate who has the reputation of being endowed with that fatal gift than of being summarily sentenced by any other whose judicial glare is less severe. " Not only is Fetish or Shamanism the real religion of INTRODUCTION. 6 criminals but of vast numbers who are not suspected of it. There is not a town in England or in Europe in which witchcraft is not extensively practised. The prehistoric man exists, he is still to be found everywhere by millions, he will cling to the old witchcraft of his ancestors. Until you change his very nature, the only form in which he can realize supernaturalism will be by means of superstition. Research and reflection have taught us that this sorcery is far more widely extended than any cultivated person dreams. It would seem as if by some strange process white advanced scientists are occupied in eliminating magic from religion, the coarser mind is actually busy in reducing it to religion only" (p. 13). But this survival of early supernal sentiments is not only the result of inheritance ; it arises de novo in the aborted mind from failure in development. It is a well-known fact that there are human organic faculties withheld at the lower types that mark the standard of the quadrumana, quadrupeds, even reptiles; so in like manner the intellectual powers may be stayed, and the moral faculties held back. The son of normal elevated parents may be an idiot ; the daughter of those purely chaste and morally refined may be sunk in lewdness, in bestiality; the offspring of the just and pure in thought and action may be a brutal coward, who lies from the very pleasure of lying. So it is with the expression of supernal sentiments ; the worshippers of an abstract God who recognize the power of law and goodness in all mental and material manifestations may beget sons or daughters who cling to the lowest fetish powers and regulate their volitions by omens and charms, and suppose they can control the action of the elements and the souls of men by the most trivial spells worked with filth, rubbish, and the fragments of dead animals and men. Man indivi- dually may advance to the full standard of his race, or ho may be held back at any ontological stage. Moro, the advanced man may not always retain the 1 * 4 INTRODUCTION. status to which his mental powers have once advanced him, he may degenerate, any faculty of the mind may retrograde, and without arriving at second childhood, he may descend to worship imbecile charms and cling to spells to save him from devils and witches. Hence we ever have with us, and possibly ever shall, not only the maimed and aborted physically, but the maimed and aborted mentally, and among these arising from natural causes a due series of the worshippers of every form of the supernal. It is by a comparison of the respective status of these representatives of the various concepts of supernals that we are enabled not only to define the stages in the development of supernal ideas, but in many cases the feelings that led to the evolvement of such sentiments. In some cases we can, as in the history of magic, witchcraft, and ghost presentations, recognize certain historical data, but the universality of the theory of impersonal powers and the evidence thereof presented in all ages, seem to intimate that they are so grounded in human nature as almost to denote an organic origin, and we in one chapter show that the concepts of luck and ill-luck are presented in certain bodily states apparently without any mental volition. It would seem, as many affirm of the God-thought, that ideas of fate, luck and fortune, are inherent instincts in the mind. With these organic feelings as the basis on which to form his concepts of knowledge and rules of conduct, man has to associate the three classes of perceptive ideas he conceives, the apparent, the seemingly apparent, and the ideationally apparent, and it is from the last two classes that all supernal concepts are derived. Primary man, like the infant of to-day, found himself more or less powerless in the presence of the natural forces, and he sought some means of protection outside his own physical powers. Then it was that the ethical organic impulses in his nature, acting through his seeming and ideational perceptions, INTRODUCTION. 5 taught him to realize the concepts of supernal protecting powers; these at first were the mere expositions of luck according as the objects or acts were associated with corresponding results. Thus a series of false sentiments arise in the human mind induced by its special organic sympathies, the same as another class of physical and mental attributes become defined in special instincts. All human supernal concepts have the same primary source in man's organic sympathies, and the forms in which they find expression depend on his status in evolution. The mental and organic depression that ensues when men recognize their powerlessness in the presence of the real or the seeming induces them to seek in the unexplainable powers they affirm sources of pro- tective influences. The first sentiment thus evolved in the mind of man is that of luck, fear of uncanny evil or the desire for canny good, and now the same class of sentiments predominate, in the lowest evolved minds and mark their appreciation of the supernal. As with every other human faculty, so with man's concepts of supernal influence, we trace a gradual advance in the nature of his deduction, a fuller and more enlarged expres- sion of power, and a greater capacity to work out details. Thus from the mere protective influence of chance in all presentations, man advanced to the recognition of supernal powers or virtues of an impersonal character present in objects and appearances, and thus he learnt, that by certain combinations, or may be, certain actions or words, he could at his will exercise maleficent or protective powers ; thus arose the doctrine of spells and charms. The forms of these may vary, and the power once affirmed of a lucky stone or hazel twig may now be associated with the relics of saint or martyr. This phase of early supernal develop- ment takes form according to the bearings of local sentiments, and even now it represents a vast mass of the supernal concepts of men, not only rude barbarians, or rustic villagers, 6 INTRODUCTION. but those who deem they hold position among the elitt in society. As in the growth of society men assume certain duties or are set apart for certain functions, owing to their more especial attainments, so was it with men supposed to mani- fest special supernal attributes. There are men now, as there were men in the olden time, who indiscriminately practise and even invent spells and charms ; but as the local groups formed clans, some more acute or neurotic men assumed or were accredited with greater powers in working the spells and charms, they became the medicine men of the local groups ; and now, instead of each man working his own spell, selecting his own charm, he looked for protection in the occult skill of the shaman, the mystery possessed by the medicine man. As every form of supernal protection denotes a distinct aspiration for the good and power to withstand evil, so it implies a special element of faith. We have seen that this at first was founded on chance-luck, then on the con- trolling power that gave occult virtues to things. After the working of these powers became the privilege of men supernally endowed. "We have now to consider the evolution of a new supernal form of power, derived from the dream ghost and which in successive stages advanced from the standard of the vulgar apparition to the ancestral spirit, the chieftain, the tutelar god, until it culminated in the highest concept of divinity man has yet evolved. But whatever its anthropomorphic or spiritual status, it is always present to men as a form of luck, either as a protec- tive god or malignant demon. Every form of faith is the worship of luck. Each local group of men evolved their supernal ghost powers from their own race and their own suroundings, and the attributes they attached to these powers were in all cases derived from the status in evolution of their own or the neighbouring races. Men could only attach power to INTBODUCTION. 7 ghosts or spirits in accord with those present in the natural world, physical or vital ; hence as men advanced in mental, moral and social aspirations, so did their gods, and in the attributes attached to the gods, we have the marks of the human social evolution. The transcendental attributes attached to spiritual manifestations were in all cases derived from ideal readings of natural perceptions. The lowest doctrine of faith, the primary religion, is thus that of luck ; the universality of its influence all will acknow- ledge. Under its conception powers and objects with sympathetic influences are present to the mind as denoting either good or bad fortune, luck or ill-luck, in harmony with the organic and mental status of the individual. In the second phase of supernal concepts the religion of charms and spells the human mind has defined the good and evil presentiments it holds as classes of transcendental influences of a curative, protective, prophetic, and death or disease-producing character. Thus each individual conceives he can produce whatever result he wills by the uncanny resources he has learnt how to utilize; hence he protects himself with amulets, or influences himself and others by using spells and charms. The third stage of supernal evolution is the religion of the medicine man, or magic, in which the ordinary mind conceives that some men possess greater occult powers than their fellows, derived from various sources, and are thereby capable of controlling for good or evil the mystic powers of the supernal. Under the influence of the medicine man, through acquired neurotic states and dreams, the ghost, and hence the spirit concept was evolved. Primarily the ghost power was only evil, and men had to buy off the spirit or spell-evil by offerings to the medicine man. Hence the faith in, or religion of evil spirit influence became a phase in the development of the supernal. The origin of spiritual goodness, and the religion of ancestral worship, followed as a necessary deduction from 8 INTEODUCTION. men conceiving that the ghosts of their warriors and leaders after death manifested the same protective attributes as when living ; more so when, through the social development, ancestral spirits were evolved and conjointly therewith the doctrine of totem descent which raised animals, trees, and all physical manifestations into spirit kin-protectors. These began their supernal expression in the individual, then the family, and after into tribal pro- tectors, ultimately evolving into the religion of tutelar deities. The subsequent God-phases which have been evolved, pass from confederations of associate tutelar powers to the ascendency of a Regal deity, then to that of a Supreme Autocratic deity, and lastly to that of the Universal Abstract God. We have to show that these various stages of supernal evolution are co-ordinate with human development or are due to the original mind-powers possessed by great thinkers. In the latter case they are only individual expositions, in the former they are tribal. But, as in the stratification on the earth's surface, there are local gaps, the coal measures being deficient in one tract, the cretaceous formation in another, so there are races of men who have failed to manifest the ancestral supernal stage, while with other races it has been persistent even when they have developed the higher tutelar and chieftain forms of divinity. What we have undertaken to demonstrate is that the impersonal forms of supernal faith have preceded the personal, and that when the supernal personal powers were evolved by any race, they commenced with the lowest class of ghosts or spirits, and in advancing they proceeded in accordance with their own social development, to scheme the divine government on the standard of their own social state. Thus for instance when the Australian aborigine came to recognize headmen in his tribe, then he built up the theory of spirit headmen in the sky. So, generally among the lower races of men when chieftain rule was INTRODUCTION. 9 established chieftain gods were created. In no case was the concept of universal rule ascribed to a deity before the people were elevated to that sentiment by the human rule of a king of kings. Our purpose is to show by the internal evidence contained in the supernal concepts of all the great races of men that they have graduated through the various stages of supernal development, and carry in their lower concepts of the supernal, the survival forms of the archaic impersonal manifestations as well as the more advanced concepts of evil and good ghost powers. Hence we considered that it was judicious to take in review the evidences of supernal progress that the great races of men have presented, holding that it was only by so doing we could demonstrate the universality of the laws we propound that denote supernal evolution. More, in special chapters we detail the rarer instances in which certain races have evolved the concepts of Supreme and Abstract Deities ; then one giving a general retrospect of the various forms of the God-idea now held by the highest as well as lowest minds among the various races of men. In conclusion we show that there have been men of original mental capacity in all times and countries, whose mental concepts have passed out of the limited role of their contemporaries and have advanced to the full appreciation of the oneness in nature the united and universal Deity. This we demonstrate by a series of literary and historical records. BOOK I. THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. CHAPTER I. The organic tendency to evolve supernatural concepts. THERE is a natural tendency in the human mind to evolve supernal sentiments. Luck and ill-luck have no existence in themselves ; they are but forms of thought, and their special deductions are due to the physical condition of the organism. Men when organically depressed cannot help assuming the prevalence of untoward conditions, nor when healthily excited can they forego anticipating favourable results. Incongruous, unsympathetic objects or appearances which, without implying any definite danger or an active offensive attribute, excite in us feelings of revulsion or dread, vague concepts that bode us no good, we cannot account for these influences in any other way than as the result of certain mental and physical conditions, and according to the strength of the impression is our fetish concept of the ill-luck or good-luck supervening. The portents that start the emotion may be in our feelings, in any sense-impression of our own bodies ; they may glance to us from the sky, and any object in nature may seem to present other than its natural attributes. Mnro, as misfortunes and other deleterious influences are often affecting us, and these may seemingly be connected in our minds with certain natural phenomena of time or place, wo are apt to connect the phenomena with such ts and thereby create sentiments of good or ill-luck. Thus, the fear of some pending evil may override the 14 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY mental will and evolve uncanny influences, as with a shying horse creating the sense of dread ever presaging ill-luck. The nature of these indeterminate sentiments of good or ill depend upon the previous impressions on the mind, and the special results thereof entertained, which, as ID all human volitions and thoughts, have a tendency to be repeated on like lines until they become sentimental habits. Of the tendency of affirmed emotions of good or ill to become chronic, Dr. A. B. Granville in his Autobiography avows himself not only as a believer in presentiments, but in the vulgar accredited forms of luck. He says, " I am alarmed at the spilling of a salt-cellar. I don't like to meet a hearse while going out of the street-door. I would not undertake a journey or anything important on a Friday ; and the breaking of a looking-glass would throw me into fits. One afternoon I became suddenly depressed in spirits, and this endured till the succeeding day when the knife and fork, laid before me cross ways, startled me." So he describes their appearance at the two following courses; then on looking at his calendar he found it was a Friday. In this case we have the predisposing physical depression the sentiment of ill-luck and the iteration of like deductions from trivial incidents associated with the sentiment. Each distinct physical state produces its own forms of supernal conceptions, often widely different; imbecility, senility, the various forms of idiocy, are each distinguished by their supernal tendencies as well as the special loss of normal tendencies. There are men unconscious of moral re- sponsibility, who have lost all preservative instincts, have no fear, no sense of time or distance, who cannot co-ordinate their own muscular powers are incapable of education and exhibit mental reversions to the instinctive states of the lower animals; so in like manner some men are devoid of all supernal concepts, they know nothing of ghost or other forms of delusion; incapable of kindness, they could not TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 15 conceive of a protective power, and equally some repudiate all forms of luck ; they know nothing of God or spirit, and are never troubled by any of the feelings or sentiments those ideas imply. To others the supernal is an ever present reality; they recognize its presence as distinctly as the natural world, and they obey its behests with the same direct affirmations as they accord to their relations with all things living. We only know of the supernal through human thought. We see it expressed by others, we feel its sentiments in our own minds, and we may infer from their actions that like influ- ences affect some animals. The bird, the dog, the elephant and other animals dream, but of the nature of the sentiments left in their sensoriums we are wholly in the dark. In the waking state animals exhibit the same dread and doubt, if not terror, as men. In the presence of anything strange, mysterious or uncouth, they manifest the same mental emotions as the savage. The bases on which all supernal concepts are founded are the sentiments of Wonder, Fear, Hope, and Love ; and these severally, according as they are evolved, give character to the supernal concepts to which they become attached. Under the general aspects of things there is a quiet accord between the mind of man and the phenomena of the universe, but should the condition of things lose its accepted normal character then influences of dread fill the mind, and, as in the presence of the eclipse or the meteor, if the dread is more than spasmodic, man doubts the stability of the universe. So it is even with less variations from the normal. It may be a feather, a leaf, a stone, or an animal which presents unknown characteristics and excites first wonder, then dread, and on his failure to recognize their status they become to him uncanny they are not natural and excite sentiments of erratic influence, of supernal action. That mere novelty may excite supernal sentiments may be seen in the following incidents. 0. C. Stone, in a few 16 THE OEGANIC TENDENCY Months in New Guinea, writes : " A few years ago they had no idea of any land existing but their own, and when at rare intervals the sails of some distant ship were seen on the horizon they believed them to be a spirit or vaoha float- ing over the surface of the deep " (p. 86) . Again, Gill, in Gems from Goral Islands, writes : " When Davida landed he brought with him a pig. Having never before seen any animal larger than a rat, the people looked on this pig with emotions of awe; they believed it to be the representative of some invisible power. The teacher did all he could to- convince them that it was only an animal, but they were determined to do it honour ; they clothed it in white bark sacred cloth and took it in triumph to the principal temple, where they fastened it to the pedestal of one of their gods. For two months her degraded votaries brought her daily offerings of the best fruits of the land and presented to her the homage of worship " (p. 77). A man may not be able to explain all the normal common phenomena that his senses present to him, yet in ordinary cases he feels assured that they accord with the nature of things ; but when from organic defect, mental excitation, or vague perception his imaginative powers endeavour to correct the impressions presented to his sensorium, they become modified to the prevailing sentiments in his mind, and may assume any supernal characters that his memory reactions may induce. The primary abnormal presentation only suggests the idea of the uncanny, and there is in the unsubstantiality of the perception a doubt or a fear of the nature of the object excited. This may be like an incoming presentation in a dissolving view entirely diverse from the full reality. So little are the new perceptions determinate in the mind, that the figures first accepted are regularly cast aside. We have this mental phase presented by Hamlet when Polonius accepts the semblance of a cloud as being that of a camel or weasel, " or very much like a whale." TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 17 But not only may the false reasoning result from the vagueness of the impression on the sensorium; the very presence of the object seen may be an unreality of the sense and only due to a morbid mental impression ; a persistent idea from the arcana of the memory may seem a physical reality. Dr. Hammond, in his work on Nervous Derange- ment, gives the following illustrative case : " A lady of a highly nervous temperament, one day intently thinking on her mother and picturing to herself her appearance as she looked when dressed for church, happening to raise her eyes, saw her mother standing before her clothed as she imagined. In a few moments it disappeared, but she soon found that she had the ability to recall it at will, and that the power existed in regard to many other forms, even those of animals and of inanimate objects. She could thus reproduce the image of any person on whom she strongly concentrated her thoughts. At last she lost the control of the operation and was constantly subject to hallucinations of sight and hearing " (p. 81). There are many ghost presentations that these mental phenomena may cover. We may even carry the influence of the deceptive but accepted supernal power another stage, in which even unconsciously the organic powers act under the influence of the memory, not the judgment. In the Journal of Mental Science we read of a boy at school who had shortly before lost his brother, both belonging to a family in which psychical concepts were dominant. One day he "found his hand filling with some feeling before unknown, and then it began to move involuntarily upon the paper and to form words and sentences. Sometimes even when he wished to write, his hand moved in drawing small flowers such as exist not hero, and sometimes when he expected to draw flowers, his hand moved into writing; these writings being communications from his spirit-brother describing his own happy state and the means by which the living- brother could obtain like felicity. Tho mother tried if the 2 18 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY spirit would move her hand with a pencil in it, but days and weeks passed without any result. At last her willing but not self-moved hand wrote the initials of the boy's name, then after a time a flower was drawn. Afterwards the father had the power of involuntary writing." (IV. p. 369, &c.) This, like the forms of supernal suggestion, shows how the memory, or even the organic parts, may evolve habits outside the influence of the sensorium, and which it accepts as denoting supernal manifestations. Some subjective sensations, and therefore deemed by some persons of a supernal nature, are due to organic changes, and the individual receives impressions to which others are not amenable. Thus in epilepsy, before fits, there are subjective sensations of smell, and a scent resembling phosphorus precedes loss of smell, and injuries to the head cause all substances to have a gaseous or paraffin smell. (Gower, Dis. of Nerv. Sys., II. p. 132.) Hallucinations deemed supernal may affect any one or more of the senses and express any possible form of deranged activity, they may be wholly imaginative or a blending of the real and the ideal, and they pass from objective realities to subjective concepts, from concrete facts to supernal manifestations. Hammond describes a case in transition. A gentleman all his life was affected by the appearance of spectral figures. When he met a friend in the street he could not be sure whether he saw a real or an imaginary person. He had the power of calling up spectral figures at will by directing his attention for some time to the conceptions of his own mind, and these either -consisted of a figure or a scene he had witnessed, or a composition created by his own imagination. Though he had the power of calling up an hallucination, he had no power to lay it; the person or scene haunted him. All these cases intimate that local powers may be mentally suggestive without the cognizance of the central judgment, and thus evolve ideas that of necessity seem supernal. TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 1 & The effects of such supernal concepts are not limited to the recipient of the abnormal sensations, but affect the sentiment of the supernal in all who are cognizant of the case. To the perceptive individual they may be simply realities ; and, however absurd or incongruous, he accepts them as perfectly natural, or he may recognize their subjective nature and, according to their characteristics, attach any supernatural qualities to their presentations. Those observant of the expressed hallucinations and ignor- ant of the causes that may induce such, ever recognize in them the output of powers not belonging to the natural world and are apt to accept any supernal explanation thereof that may be present to their thoughts. The standard of natural perception is formed in each man's own mind, and consequently as these differ so does the perception or conception of the uncanny; every sense- power may be excited or depressed, may tally with the ordinary human scale, be deficient or extend beyond the usual range. Under various forms of physical disorgani- zation and mental alienation the sense-powers are often perverted and in most cases give origin to fetish concepts. Things not in existence may affect any one or more senses, caused sometimes by the misperception of real objects, at others the forms and feelings induced are all subjective. One may always smell turpentine, another the odour of fresh blood. One may always see a black cat before him, another be constantly conscious of a human phantom accompanying him. Voices may be heard by the disturbed mind-powers; they may speak in whispers, they may come from above or below, out of the sky or from the depths of the earth. Thus Lord Herbert heard a sound from Heave 11. That the physical state of the organism which presents the capacity to exhibit any supernatural state or power iiniy In- induced by various means, is a fact not only well known to the scientific observer, but is familiar to tho 2 - 20 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY medicine man in all countries. The prophetic state may be induced the capacity to see visions, the power to affirm spells, even the belief in our holding transcendental attributes. Naturally in certain organic derangements men exhibit mental and bodily phenomena which are conceived to indicate supernal influences, as forms of somnambulism, catalepsy, ecstatic states, and epileptic and convulsive abnormal conditions. These various symptoms being deemed of supernal origin, led to the inference that like conditions which could be induced by personal excitation of various kinds, and more so by toxic agents, were of the same character; hence it was the object of the rude medicine men who, in the early social state, took charge of such phenomena, to simulate by any means in their power similar abnormal states. In the hunt for food substances men readily learnt to distinguish the various vegetal productions of their native districts, into those good for food, and those having baneful or exciting qualities, and from the latter the individuals naturally neurotic and therefore most strongly affected by toxics selected suitable materials to induce such states, when for various social purposes they required to manifest those special powers. The Australian aborigine found such a neurotic agent in the leaves of a native shrub, and when he obtained tobacco from white men that was chewed for the same purpose. The Thlinkeet medicine man produces a supernal delusive state by the root of a Panax and the Siberian Shaman by the infusion of a mushroom. Mediaeval witches in like manner, for like effects, used preparations of nightshade, henbane, and opium. Boisment describes the old Italian sorcerers as making a cheese containing a drug which changed their nature. Greek inspiration was said to have been produced by inhaling mephitic vapours and various fetish drinks. That infusions containing certain vegetal principles will TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 21 produce mental and bodily phenomena of remarkable potency is generally known, and herbs and berries having those powers have in all countries been esteemed as possessing supernal virtues. Among these aconite, datura, belladonna, and opium have ever held the highest status. Van Helmont, after tasting the root of Napellus, said he felt as if the power was transferred to the pit of his stomach. Dr. Laycock having once accidentally taken a drop of tincture of aconite, described the sensations that came to him as strains of grand aerial music in exquisite harmony, and most have read of the vast poetical imaginings that are induced by opium and hachsbesh. The power of manifesting states of inspiration and prophetic powers was greatly enhanced when men learnt to make intoxicating beverages, and there are few races of men but have attained this knowledge. The mental phenomena presented under the effect of stimulants may be excited ideality, inspiration, the desire to prophecy, or to manifest any extraordinary gift; and under these conditions the wondering savage looks on and marvels, deeming the herb or fruit capable of inducing such' effects of divine origin and those special manifestations the evidence of a supernal state. Nor are the concepts of supernal action in man limited to attributes derived from infusions of leaves and berries. Like sentiments of the uncanny arise in various actions which simulate corresponding states in epilepsy and mania when men in dancing, leaping, rotating, and simulating various animal activities, continue their unnatural actions as if they would never cease, and seem to the onlookers endowed with more than human powers of endurance. That men under these induced states should claim the possession of various transcendental powers as invisibility, that of transformation, the conquest of time and space, and special prophetic knowledge, is duo to the mental presenta- 22 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY tions they have under such conditions, and as to the onlookers so much that is wonderful is present to them they are in the due mental state to readily accept such assumptions. Hence the wide belief in mystic principles and powers, in ghosts and spirits, in transformation, in the conquest of death and disease, in the assumptions of controlling the rain, the thunder, and modifying natural appearances. Hence the belief in dreams, and in reading dreams in charms and spells, and all the spiritual phenomena of the later world. The more extended knowledge of the properties of drugs has demonstrated that there exist natural associations and reactions between such principles and the various parts of the human organization. When we read that Podophyllum acts specially on the intestines, that Aconite diminishes sensibility and Chloral withholds it, that Digitalis influences the heart's action, Conium that of the nerves, that Belladonna arrests the secretions and Cantharides stimulates the sexual parts, we trace a method in the medicine man's mode of proceeding. These various facts real and assumed intimate that the human organism has a natural tendency to evolve supernal powers and principles, and that men duly constituted, either naturally or by drugs, can no more withhold expressing supernal beliefs than they can the use of their limbs for walking. Men take faith as they take disease, by internal change, by inoculation ; and as forms of growth, we may even predicate the evolution of supernal symptoms by the phenomena of the heavens. That there is a oneness in the universal exposition of the supernal in fetish ideas, ghosts, magic and classes of Divine beings only, ex- presses the fact that all normal men hold the same organic and mental powers, and are amenable to the same external influences. A man can no more help believing in supernal manifestations when his system is in accord with such forms TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTS. 23- of belief than he can resist the influence of sense-perceptions on his mind ; they may be real or illusory, but he must receive them and find their due place in his sensorium. That there are great organic differences in individual men we all know. It is patent to us all that we have our own individual special affections, that we are variously affected by things. This is well shown in Reynolds' s System of Medicine. He writes : " Six people take an indigestible meal and one of them suffers nothing, a second is troubled with dyspepsia, a third with asthma, a fourth has an epileptic fit, a fifth an attack of gout, and the sixth is disturbed with diarrhoea." (I. p. 7.) So it is with a mental presentation ; with one it is a normal object, another rejects it as spurious, a third looks at it with wonder, a fourth with doubt, a fifth detects in it a special emotion, while the sixth is excited to rapture. Nor is the influence once excited in the mind alike a continuous form of expression, it changes as the individual grows and is altered, and not only is the influence of normal things modified in the development of the being, but the spiritual sentiments, however attained, are liable to like variations, even though the habit of life renders their uniform concept the desire of the soul. Men fight against the rising sense of change, they redouble their devotions, they attempt to coerce the mind by bodily austerities, but nothing avails, and they become heretics, even self- excommunicated, and are cast off by self, earth, and heaven, unless, by a great effort of will, they can accept the new mental dispensation, and mould their lives to its dictates. The distinguishing attribute of man is to attach abstract conceptions of relations to the objects that are perceived by t-nses; hence, he readily draws not only general prin- ciples out of extraneous presentations, but he attaches to them special affinities and special powers, not intrinsic in the object, but resulting from his own mental assumptions. 24 THE ORGANIC TENDENCY These assumptions may be founded on the actual indices presented by the objects, and lead to the evolution of the natural laws regarding the nature and actions of objects, or they may be founded on imperfect concepts in things, or false interpretations of phenomena by imperfect perception, or they may be wholly ideal, and have no existence outside the conceptive mind. To the last class, we hold, belong all the many sentiments which have built up the world of supernaturalism that not only in a great measure engrosses human thought, but tends so materially to excite, both mentally and socially, organic states exhibiting the greatest amount of both good and ill. Sentiments of such importance, and so universal among men, cannot be due to accident or chance ; there must be some inciting cause in the human mind or its physical organism to create such a wide range of assumptions, and produce the mental state that was enabled to evolve them. As an example of the organic tendency to form supernal concepts, we take the case of Madame Hauffe, the ghost-seer of Prevost, who at a vei*y early age manifested a tendency to conceive transcendental presentations. When almost a child she had premonitory and prophetic visions. Blamed by her father for the loss of an article of value, she dreamt upon it till the place appeared to her in a vision, much in the same manner as Dr. Callaway describes the Zulu boys divining the whereabouts of stray cattle, and, equally with them, cases of unconscious cerebration. She showed great uneasiness in passing by churchyards and in old castles, and once saw a tall, dark apparition in her god- father's house. At one time she was confined by a remark- able sensibility in the nerves of her eyes, which induced in her the capacity to see things invisible to ordinary eyes. She was, after, subject to frightful dreams. After her confinement for a long time she could not endure the light. Then gradually her gift of ghost-seeing was developed ; TO EVOLVE SUPEENAL CONCEPTION. 25 she had prophetic visions, divinations, and saw objects and motions in glass, and spectral figures were commonly about her. Their presence, she said, was confirmed by the opening of doors, and no one present to do so, kuockings on the walls, the ringing of glasses, and their moving, even in a strong light. Amongst her spectral visitors was a knight, whose coming was announced by loud noises and the candle- sticks voluntarily moving. This spectre rehearsed one of the old ghost tales of murder, contrition, and the gallows moral, of conversion in the presence of death. Another spectre was a short figure in a dark cowl, also a murderer, and his discourses with her, or rather hers to him, in both characters, were heard by the residents in the house ; and he, like the other spectre, became femininely religious, and desired to be present if we may use the phrase in his invisible state at the baptism of her child. We are not told whether he became godfather to it. Later on she had visits by a tall female with a child. These were announced by a sharp metallic sound. This spectre was intensely religious ; and when Madame Hauffe had taught her how to pray, the spectre appeared to her in a white robe, claiming to be one of the redeemed. Others, under her strong affirmation, declared they saw the same spectres visiting her, with the usual accompaniments of ghost tales, antique dresses, spots of blood, veils and babies. Later on her multiplied experiences, after a tendency for somnambulism set in, were most remarkable. Crystal put in her hand awakened her, sand or glass on the pit of her stomach produced a cataleptic state, the hoof of an elephant touching her educed an epileptic paroxysm, diamonds caused dilations of the pupils, sunlight induced headache, moon- light melancholy, whilst music made her speak in rhythm. On looking into tho right eye of a person she saw behind her own reflected image that of the individual's inner self ; on looking into tho left eye she saw the diseased organ pictured forth, and was enabled to prescribe for it. Like SO THE ORGANIC TENDENCY those of the old medicine men, her prescriptions were mostly amulets, though occasionally homoeopathic or old-wife herb remedies. She claimed to read with the pit of her stomach, but her reading only implied the conception of lucky or unlucky; so, if it was good news, she expressed its inter- pretation by laughing, if bad, by sadness. Her death dreams were of coffins and children, but they might not be realized for months. She affirmed that her spirit was in the habit of leaving her body and passing into space, like as with other mystics even the Australian wizard. She was a strange blending of primary supernal concepts, with modern spiritual innovations. Nor is it only our waking sensations and mental exposi- tions that are influenced by our organic condition. It is the same with our perceptions and deductions in dreams. We dream most of what the mind is most interested in, or the state of the body most prominently presents to it. Hence, as Macnish judiciously observes, " The miser dreams of wealth, the lover of his mistress, the musician of melody, the philosopher of science, the merchant of trade. So in like manner the choleric man is passionate in his sleep, a virtuous man with deeds of benevolence, that of a humourist with ludicrous ideas." Deranged bodily in- fluences in like manner give their special impressions in dream forms ; " the dropsical subject has the idea of foun- tains and rivers and seas in his sleep, jaundice tinges the objects beheld with its own yellow, sickly hue, hunger induces dreams of eating agreeable food, an attack of inflammation disposes us to see all things of the colour of blood, and thirst presents us with visions of parched oceans, burning sands, and unmitigable heat." Even self-willed thought to the ecstatic may not only present ideal concepts as realities ; they may so affect the sensations as to organically affect the organism, and induce reaction by the special faculty. Thus Balzac alleged when he wrote the story of the poisoning of one of his characters TO EVOLVE SUPERNAL CONCEPTION. 27 in a novel, he had so distinct a taste of arsenic in his mouth afterwards, that he vomited his dinner. (Taine, Intelligence.) So self-willing in certain neurotic states not only conceives of prescient power, but itself affirms its own wishes and deductions as prophetic declarations. Dr. Hammond describes the case of a lady who thus would promptly affirm as facts, not only the far distant as present to her, as the affirmations in second sight, but that of the future. (Mental Derangement, p. 14.) Du Prel cites cases of organic monitions in dreams, as Galen's case of a man's leg being turned in stone, and in a few days it was paralyzed. Macario dreamt of an acute pain in his neck, yet found himself quite well on awaking; but a few hours after he had a violent inflammation of the tonsils. So many other cases of premonitory signs felt in the deranged part, and not in the sensorium. There are many local premonitory indications which by unconscious cerebration reach the consciousness and seem to it prophetic. CHAPTER II. The supernal attributes in things conceived as due to impersonal powers, or spirit action. MEN almost universally recognize the existence of supernal objects and powers, as well as material objects and powers. As a general rule the objects and the powers of the material world convey like ideas of form, colour, and action to the minds of all men, however much they may differ in regard to their causation or origin ; but while the general supernal concepts are not only varied and diverse, there are men who deny in toto the presence or powers of supernal agents, yet no one disputes the existence of his own personality, nor the presence of other things, or the forces present in wind, fire, and water. The facts in the material world depend upon the amount of knowledge an individual man possesses ; the disputed concepts of supernals rather express the absence of knowledge, and that its duties are supplemented by mystic idealizations, and these take the special characters of the race and the time. If we endeavour to follow the evolution of the various forms of supernal concepts, we find we are thwarted in the first place by the absence of all evidence of the original state of man and the rise of each subsequent supernal sentiment. In this direction we have no records. Neither is there at present in existence any tribes of men whose mental character expresses the primary type. But though we are thus devoid of historical data, we have other AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 29" resources that will enable us to classify and explain the stages in the evolution of supernal ideas. The scientific naturalist has been long familiar with the fact that the ontology of the individual expresses the types in the phylogeny of the race, and that if the mind or faculties of an individual are from any malcause restrained in development, the mind or body exhibits the reversionary types of those stages. As supernal sentiments are one of the forms of mental evolution it necessarily follows that living individuals may at all times express the immature stages of the supernal phenomena. Hence to become cognizant of the origin and progress of supernal senti- ments, it is only necessary that we duly classify the supernal ideas expressed by individual men. To do this we must be able to mentally form a scheme of supernal evolution as a basis for our deductions. There was a time, and that not long distant, in which it was taken for granted that the assumed presentations of supernal forms and volitions were considered as real as those of the material world, and in which the differences between the highest and lowest supernal natures but marked the special standards of evolution; not essential typical differences. The old writers classified the supernal beings and supernal states according to the standards of supernal powers they were presumed to hold, and without explaining the difference defined all supernal manifestation* as being due to ghosts or spirits or to the occult powers of magic. No doubt the old mystics confused and blended the phenomena of magic with spirit manifestations, though they often distinctly expressed the one as the inherent virtue in things and ascribed the other class to the- willing volitions of spirits; but modern writers on the nature of supernals, with the ghost theory prominently in their minds, deduce all supernal manifestations as the varied modes of action of ghosts and spirits. With them. 30 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED the beginning and end of all forms of supernalism are deduced from, at first, the concept of the human ghost through dreams, and the after evolvement of spirits in all material things and forms of material power. Dr. Tylor, in his Primitive Culture, has collected a vast mass of local conceptions of spirits and their ghostly con- nection with humanity. These which represent the various stages of the passage of the ghost into the higher spiritual personality are, however, unfortunately mixed up with some lew of the many expressions of supernal power that have nothing ghostly in their attributes. It is strange how commonly the facts which present the influence of occult virtue or power as an inherent quality in things, are mixed up with the more advanced idea which conceives the power to express a willing and selective mind. We recognize a wide difference between the natural chemic powers in objects and even their physical manifestations to those presented by mental thought and will, and we never apply the concept of self-willed thought or judgment to the action of medicaments or the virtues in mystic stones. No one prays to an amulet, no one treats the lucky stone as having a will, no one supposes that the curative material, whether a medicine or a charm, has any choice in the matter. Yet all these impersonal powers or attri- butes are classed by Dr. Tylor with, and as, ghost manifes- tations. We know there are many objects in which we perceive the active powers of selective animals some in which, according to vulgar conception, certain so-called ghost or spirit-attributes are generally recognized; but there are also various objects, the action of which on other materials and the attributes they present to the human mind, imply the presence of an impersonal passive power, good or evil only to the one possessing it. More, the same object may to one man convey the idea that it repre- sents an impersonal attribute, while another man may conceive that it expresses ghost or spirit-power. If the A3 DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 31 force were its natural attribute it would express that character to all men, but when it is only supposititious it mere.y expresses the tone of mind of the beholder. Among the incidents quoted by Dr. Tylor to affirm the general spirit is one from Homer in which a negress pro- poses to effect a cure by tho suppliant killing a white cock, and then after tying it up place it at a four-cross- way, or he was simply to drive a dozen wooden pegs into the ground and thereby bury the disease. Both these magic formulae have no ghost or spirit-will, they merely present an impersonal charm-power. So the virtue in the Australian's bit of quartz has no necessary connection with ghost-action, though according to their advanced theory a spirit might use it; the actual boylya is in the mineral itself, and the same impersonal power may be used, as in the case he quotes, to conquer a spirit's evil influence. That similar boylya powers were once common among the Caribs and at the Antilles only implies that the impersonal occult charm-power preceded the concept of a fetish ghost- power, not that they are the same thing. "We infer that the supposition of spirit or ghost making use of the charm-stone was long subsequent to the original rnagic use of it by men, and that by an after-thought when ghosts were conceived they repeated as in so many other things their actions when men, but in no case even now among races like the Australian aborigines have men worked out the concept of ghost or spirit-created evil, they only make use of the same impersonal powers as men. The Malagassy are in au intermediate state between the man who only knows a charm-evil, and the one who ascribes tho evil to the personal action of a ghost or spirit. Thus we are told that they ascribe all diseases to evil spirits, but the diviner docs not expel the spirit-caused disease by the will of a more powerful spirit, but calls to his aid impersonal charms, from which wo infer that they were originally caused by chasms for which afterwards ghosts were substituted, but 32 Till] SUPEENAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED like the higher races of men they had not evolved the higher god concept of exorcism ; so impersonal charms in the form of a faditir were employed to conquer the disease. No doubt originally the Carib and the Malagassy saw the origin of the disease as an evil spell and cured it by a good spell, but as with so many other races of men they had evolved the Bhute or evil spirit but not the good or guar- dian spirit. So in the case of the Dyaks of Borneo, it is not the evil spirit that has caused the injury either by its active personal interposition or by the higher form of possession, it is the impersonal fetish stones and splinters, which through the magic of the spell have entered his body and which the medicine man affirms by his greater boylya he is able to extract. Even the case of Dr. Callaway's Zulu widow, who affirms- she is troubled by her late husband's ghost haunting her, not in her, and which the medicine man lays by certain charm objects, not conquering it with a greater spirit power, exhibits the same stage of evil-spirit injury and charm cure. In like manner the Mandan widow talking to her husband's skull held that his spirit was present; the same with the Guinea negro and the bones of his parents which he prayed to ; but in these cases we are presented with a, higher stage of supernal development, the power of good as well as evil spirits. The same sentiment is manifest in the- very idea of penates, household gods, and tutelar deities. In the instance of finding a thief quoted by Dr. Tylor from Rowley's Universities' Mission, we have the contest of the two principles impersonal fetish and ghost evidence. The medicine man affirmed the woman selected as guilty by the spirit was indeed guilty, but the charm ordeal, wiser than the spirit, absolved her and she was acquitted. We now have more immediately to do with those influences whether pro or con that express luck, curing or protecting the wearer and presaging good or evil to him. In no case do objects holding these virtues necessarily AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 83 express this power by ghostly or spiritual influence. Ghosts may in some cases be affirmed as the inducing causes, but we hold when such is the case that originally the sentiment was impersonal, and that the attribute, when the ghost became a power, was transferred to it. But not only among savage races, but among all classes of men who hold the doctrine of luck and the other impersonal attributes, we look in vain for any evidence that they hold the inter- mediate agent as a ghost or spirit, and we therefore demur to the tone in which amulets are mentioned in connection with the exposition of ghost sentiments. Neither the igno- rant and superstitious, nor those more enlightened who con- sider their mysterious virtues as quaint survivals from the past, ascribe those virtues to an indwelling ghost or spirit, or even assert a personality in the object. They never affirm that the power is expressed by will in the form of choice or selection, but that the unconscious virtue serves its possessor the same as any other substance, and like a piece of coal it might lie inert in the earth to no end of time and only exhibit its active or presumed virtue when man utilized it. But amulets become idols when the man who possesses them esteems that they hold angels or demons, as in the case of the Dacotah who painted his boulder and called it grandfather and prayed to it ; but we ought always clearly distinguish such personified idols from impersonal mystic objects. In the one series the power is ascribed to a mental activity, in the other to a mere passive, insensate agent. Surely there is no difficulty in a man recognizing one form of power in a boiling crater, others in the lightning flash, the bursting of a torpedo, even in the ascent of warm vapour, the flowing of a stream or the inrolling of the sea. So in like manner flame has its own special virtue of burn- ing, water of cleansing, stone of hardness, nml these virtues act on diverse things in different ways. Besides, the stone or other object may have many like passive powers. So 3 34 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED with the Indian imbued with, fetish sentiments there was nothing extravagant in attributing to stones luck for crops, for women in labour, and for bringing sunshine or rain. We know these powers never were in the stones any more than the often iterated power of luck, or of curing disease or protecting from ills. These were all mental occult powers and only existed in connection with the stone in the mind of man, and men could only ascribe powers to objects which they did not naturally express by already having formed these concepts in their minds, consequently the power affirmed can only exhibit the same status as the mind of its exponent. Dr. Tylor quotes several instances of charms which have no ghost or spirit attribute, as Pliny's statement of the ail- ment in a patient's body being transferred to a puppy or duck. This form of charming is common in fetish leechdom. So the Hindu's third wife having her husband first married to a tree was only a charm to keep away from her what she esteemed a fetish influence, and the father's trousers being turned inside out in China to save the babe from uncanny influences. These and many other presumed evil influences may and have been evolved into forms of ghost and spirit- evil, but in the stage in which Dr. Tylor puts them they only express impersonal occult evil influences, not spirit manifestations. They are like all the folk-lore spells and charms, simply prestiges of uncanny influences. He admits that modern folk-lore still cherishes such ideas, and he quotes instances yet does not appear to note that these admissions nullify his own theory that such evils and diseases are supposed to arise only from ghost and spirit powers. In like manner with Dr. Tylor, Herbert Spencer ignores all the assumed powers of charms and spells, and from his statement of first principles we should not be led to infer that such concepts even now guide and influence the minds of the greater part of human beings. In his observations AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OK SPIRIT ACTION. 35 on fetish he sees the power, not as an attribute of the object, but resulting from the mental action of the spirit controlling' it. He appears to know nothing of the assumed impersonal powers in precious and other stones, and in all fetish objects, but conceives that these things represent the higher attri- butes of ghost or spirit-powers. All the primitive magic supernal powers denoting luck and ill-luck, curative, protec- tive, and presaging powers, are by him passed over without comment; he ignores the whole philosophy of the impersonal, it does not appear in his scheme of evolution. Sir J. Lubbock, in tracing his concept of the evolution of religion, similarly ignores all the primary ideas on which the more developed faiths were built. The beginning of religion with him is the birth of the ghost. It is true he illustrates natural magic, and quotes a few cases of imper- sonal divination, but he fails to perceive that they point to other than ghost power. The needles which floating designate living men, and the one sinking the dead man, and the mats of the Zulus which cease to cast the shadow, are considered as marks of ghostly intervention, not as presaging impersonal monitions. So the sticks which indicate the living by standing when planted but falling when the personality they represent is dead, with him present not self-contained occult powers, but the direct, action of ghosts. The same ghost personality is attached to Father Merolla's experience of witchcraft. Our inquiry into the nature and attributes of supernal powers intimates that they are all deductions from the forms of power in the natural world, the ghost is the type of mental power, human or animal. But the forms of power in the natural world are not all mental: we have power as expressed by mat i rial physical force; we have r as presented by the chemical interchange of atoms ; we have power as manifest in the action of the celestial bodies, the change of day and night, summer and win we have special powers as denoting the attributes of like 3 * 36 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED objects of the most varied character. Now all these forms of power have their supernatural as well as their natural deductions in the minds of men. It is from the supernal concepts of human and animal activities men have deduced the whole series of ghost and spirit manifestations. So in like manner from the physical forces the chemical trans- formations the influence of the sun, moon, and stars, and the general phenomena of the elementary bodies men have evolved all the lower phenomena of supernal powers. We thus have two great series of supernatural forces : the impersonal derived from the attributes of things, the personal whose origin is seen in mental action human or animal. These two series of forces are absolutely distinct in the natural world, but it is a common thing to blend their powers in human supernal concepts. Hence, while in the living material world we never lose the actual dis- tinctions of the mental and the material, we are in supernal relations always confusing and blending these distinct powers. Hence, a stone may not only have its own natural attributes as a mineral substance, but it may have mental characteristics, it may have volition, it may hear, talk, manifest selective attributes and emotions, at one and the same time being both personal and impersonal. Hence we can understand how it happened that impersonal attributes were denned as ghostly manifestations, and the common tendency to read material transcendental qualities as spiritual manifestations. We have already shown in con- sidering Dr. Tylor's ghostly supernalisms how the two powers are blended in the same series of supernal relations. Many impersonal attributes, because they are attached to- objects that formed parts of organic personalities, are supposed to be under ghostly influence, and their canny or uncanny expressions are inferred to be due to the ghost once connected with them. That this is a false deduction we infer in the case of parts of animals esteemed as amulets, whether curative, protective, or denoting luck. It is not AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 37 that the mind of the animal dwells in the bone, or claw, or hair, or feathers ; it is the special fetish power that the claw or feather exhibited, and which was a power beyond its own mental to the animal itself, and which continues still in the bone or claw now that the animal ghost- mind has gone out of it. The impersonal power was in the claw or nail when it formed part of the animal and at the service of the animal ; and the same impersonal power is devoted to its new possessor whoever he may be. We are not aware that this aspect of the supernal question has ever been propounded, or that those who trace a ghost connection in the assumed supernal power continuous in the claw or bone, ever realize that men at one time affirmed special occult powers to the various parts of organisms individually distinct and separate from the mental powers that govern the general organism. It was so with feathers and bills of birds, teeth and claws of carnivorous animals, and generally expressive of the heart, liver, and other internal parts. It was manifest in phallic worship. We recognize its influence in the cannibal custom of eating the heart of a brave enemy. In all these instances a special power distinct from the ghost, soul, or spirit manifestation is affirmed of an impersonal nature. More, there are occult powers supposed to be widely diffused, that by no question of gender, no characteristic of origin, is it possible to affirm or denote a ghostly nature. These mystic impersonal powers active for good or evil, curative or destructive exist in days and hours, in the position of the heavenly bodies, in forms, in words, even in the direction in which objects are placed ; any of these characteristics may override not only the will of an individual but that of thousands, as in war, or at birth, or in connection with any individual or multiple of individuals performing certain volitions. None of tlu>r forms of occult power are duo to the soul of any individual or the person they affect. It may bo due to the accident 38 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED of the hour of birth, it may result from neglecting to make chalk marks on the wall of the room, as with the Jews in which the child-bed woman lies ; or the neglecting to affix the sign of the bloody hand, as is customary with Eastern races. These customs, or charms, belong to the ante-ghost age, and their place was supplied at the evolution of the ghost by the mental action of guardian angels and evil demons. It thus appears that there exist, or are presumed to exist, many forms of supernal power ; and our purpose is to trace their origin and status, and as we have no historical data to aid us, we are thrown upon the internal evidence of such facts that they present; and it is from the examination and classification of the various characteristics and their special relations to men that we have deduced our scheme of the development of supernal ideas. There is one important deduction we would point out that is, all the impersonal forms of power may be accounted for by natural deductions from physical states and symptoms, while the supernal attributes of ghosts are either deductions from the impersonal attributes, or have no explainable origin. Thus the prophetic character which would seem essentially a ghostly attribute, is simply an attribute that arises as we have seen from the state of the organic capacity; there are certain medicaments that produce it. Colquhoun, in his History of Magic, also writes : " The delirium which accompanies certain inflammatory disorders, especially of the brain, frequently assumes a prophetic character. De Seze holds it to be undisputed, that especially in inflammation of the brain and in apoplexy ecstatic states occur in which not only ideas are acquired, but also extraordinary powers are displayed of penetrating into the secrets of futurity.'" (I. p. 61.) In the impersonal state all forms of curing are the result of the inherent virtues that are affirmed as existing in things or actions. In the intermediate state this is pre- AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 3& sented as due to certain actions in connection with the will of the agent after it is simply effected by the power of will, be it by a man, a ghost, or a spirit. The various mental states, modes of sympathy and affinity, have their impersonal as well as personal attributes; the impersonal would be affirmed long before the personal were known. This is exemplified in the special action of toxics, various infusions of material substances producing special bodily and mental states; thus alcohol from wine induced gay drunkenness, while that from grain induces furious intoxication. The taking absinthe results in paralysis of the legs. Cherry-laurel water taken by a woman pro- duces a religious ecstatic state the eyes are turned up, the arms slowly raised, the hands being extended to heaven; other symptoms are, falling on the knees, weeping in a state of prostration, and having religious transcendental visions. These characteristics that are ascribed to spiritual possession in toxic states are due to special material sub- stances, and the various transcendental expositions has each its own material origin. Thus the cherry-laurel water holds in it two toxic principles prussic acid, and the volatile oil of laurel. The convulsions in the ecstatic state are due to the prussic acid, and hallucinatory visions to the volatile oil. Thus the compound ecstatic state results from taking the two in connection, or either of its special manifestations may be induced by taking the special agent. Other toxic agents are nitro-benzol, which produces convulsive shocks and visions, and Valerian induces violent excitement. (Journal of Sconce, VII. p. 780.) Not only real but presumed mental states are affirmed to arise from impersonal attributes, as in all cases of assumed sympathetic relations. Bacon, in his Sylva Sylvarum, writes: "To superinduce any virtue or disposition in :i person, choose the living creature wherein that virtue is most eminent, and at the time when that virtue is most exercised, and then apply it to tho part of a man wherein 40 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED the same virtue chiefly exists. Thus to superinduce courage, take a lion or cock and choose the heart, tooth, or paw of the lion and take them immediately after he has been in fight, so with a cock, and let them be worn on a man's heart or wrist." All the transcendental qualities ascribed to ghost and spirit interposition equally exist in the impersonal attributes in things, and from which we esteem they were primarily educed. Of these we may specify the power in impersonals to give diseases to cure diseases, to rack and torture the body or the mind, to render men impotent, women un- fruitful, to cause injuries and death. So the power of transformation of permeating solids annihilating space and time are common attributes without the intervention of ghost. We doubt whether any first principle of a supernal nature has ever evolved from ghostly influences. All the characteristic actions of fetish, of magic, of devilry and spiritualism, are presented in impersonal attributes. As the Australian aborigines are the lowest race of which we have anything like a full exposition of their supernal concepts, we will endeavour to find what of them are primary derivations from impersonal sources, and what are due to after-ghost theories. The fullest exposition of these senti- ments are those given by Mr. Howitt in his essay on the attributes of the medicine man in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. The supernal power exists in the wizard himself, it is not derived, as we shall show, from any ghost or spirit, but evolves in his own nature by induced bodily conditions resulting from fasting, toxics, solitude, sleeplessness, and acquiring by fetish actions boylya from other men. In using this personal power he does not appeal to ghosts or spirits, but to the fetish attributes and powers in things. Thus, he by his magic propels the mystic quartz-stone into his victim as any other man by his physical power might do ; it is the occult virtue in the stone itself that then works evil in the mind AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 41 of the man, or rather we should affirm, that all is semblance; and the mind of the man, itself susceptible of occult inGuence, accepts the theory that the stone is in his body, and fetish fear brings about the presumed result. It is the same impersonal power which induces action when the quartz crystal is placed in the victim's footsteps, or when the Casuarina cone exhibits its affirmed mystic power. In the mixing the flesh of a dead man with tobacco, and the roasting of something fetish once part of a man, or that has simply touched him, the fetish is neither in the fetish object or in the dead man's part thus utilized, it requires the two or more objects to be united, and the uncanny influence of the dead man's ghost has no part in the affair any more than the ghost of the fetish animal gives power to the nail or claw charm. The spell, as we have said, is in the purport of the object and had the same consistency when it formed part of the animal as when it affected the man's supernal concepts by possessing it. In like manner the abstraction of the omentum fat was a mystic not ghostly rite, or a cannibal act under the sup- position of presumed sympathetic relations. So with the medicine man's transcendental claims they are not due to ghostly or spirit interposition ; but powers, he presumes, he acquired through the boylya in him, that a supposititious impersonal qualification. Such is his assumed invisibility, his power of ascending into the sky, of transforming himself into a kangaroo or even the stump of a decayed tree, and the clairvoyant power of telling who caused his death which ho simply derives from knowing whose quartz crystal he takes out of his own or the victim's body, the same as men tell the nationality of a shot, a lance, or arrow-head by its make. So the wizard's magic tool, the bone Yulo. Its virtue has no connection with a ghost, but to its being a fetish com- bination of the fibula of a kangaroo with cords formed of : -s of human skin or human sinews. Rain-making and 42 THE SUPERNAL ATTEIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED weatlier-making are simply magic done by magic songs or spells. The power in the throw-stick pointing to the sleepers, which falls when the fascination is completed, is equally impersonal as a spell as is the sucking to draw out the evil object in sickness; they never exorcise a spirit, but by fetish actions presume to withdraw the fetish cause of ill, they also cured diseases by charm songs and various manipulations. The first intimation we have of personal supernal power being claimed by the Australian wizard is that of the ghost or soul of the living, not of the dead, going at night to look at his victim in the grave. Other imitations of a ghostly nature arise in the abnormal wizard initiations, as- when the novice sees in the tiger-snake his Bunjan, and when in his dreams he is present at a corrobery of kangaroos. When there is so little of the presence of ghostly influence in the whole range of the Australian's supernal concepts, we conceive it intimates either the very modern evolvement of the ghost theory in his sentiments, or may be its acquisition from without. Essentially his supernal concepts are limited to the religion of charms and spells, the ghost and evil spirit being forms of supernal power that are only now acquiring influence in his sentiments. There are various instances given in which the mode of causing injuries or disease are defined as being personally done, not by a ghost, but by a living medicine man, whose possession of the enchanting power, or boylya, enabled him to fly through the air and, invisible, work his spells! A native in Sir Gr. Grey's Journals of Discovery, describes the nature of this power as possessed by living men. " The boylyas eat up a great many natives, they eat them up as fire would. They move stealthily, they steal on you, they come moving along in the sky, the natives cannot see them, they do not bite, they feed stealthily, they do not eat the bones, but consume the flesh" (II. p. 339) . As an illustration AS DUE TO IMPERSONAL POWERS, OR SPIRIT ACTION. 43. Sir George 'quotes the case of a native who injured his spine by falling from a tree; paralysis of the lower parts of the body ensued, and as so commonly occurs under such conditions, the man wasted away and died. The natives, however, holding their special concepts of the wizard's power, read the progress of the disease in the lines that theory presented. They affirmed that the wizard had obtained fetish power over the man by having obtained possession of his cloak used it as the means to work his supernal spell, first he broke his back by causing him to fall from the tree, then disguised he attended him, and in his invisible state applied fire (inflammation) to the injured part to increase the potency of the charm ; the wasting away of the body was due to the unfriendly wizard coming in the night and feasting on his flesh (II. p. 323). That many writers ascribe to the Australian aborigines the full development of the theory of ghosts and spirits, we are aware. Oldfield speaks of the wizards working their evil designs by the aid of malevolent Ingnas, the same as the devil-workers of the Middle Ages, and of these ghost spirits haunting all sorts of places; but the deeper researches of such men as Howitt explain them as acting under a much lower class of influences. The white man commonly looks for a God, and devils; he anticipates the presence of ghosts, and every supi-mal exposition of savages, however low and incoherent, he refers to one or other of those supernal sentiments. If the statements of Mr. Howitt and many others are to bo relied upon, the Australian native mind uninfluenced by white men has only the most meagre concept of a ghost or spirit, the idea special to the race is the acquisition of the power of enchanting through the boylya influence and working that power in the person <>f tho boylya man by means of spells and charms which,, though of the sarno character as among other barbarous races, are of local origin. We may note in another race how the white man's 44 THE SUPERNAL ATTRIBUTES IN THINGS CONCEIVED. sentiment of the nature of supernal evil is suggested to people who know nothing of devils. Darwin in his Journal refers twice to the fact that the simple Fuegian who had been staying some time on the vessel and had thereby become inoculated with the devil sentiment, repudiated it as a belief of his people, and though he abused other tribes he did not conceive that their dead men became evil spirits. There was no devil in his land. All he appeared to dread was the fetish influence of the elements, and the mystic powers of the bad wild men. The two chief charms that the Australians make use of, are simply impersonal spells ; and these as the charm objects of other races are either drawn from animals, or vegetables, or stones, but in all cases their virtues are not due to ghostly influence, but to their own intrinsic powers. That so many materials used in spells are supplied by animals to produce spells, may be accounted for by their having presented vital powers of action; but we have no evidence that these powers were continued to be influenced by the ghost of the animal that once owned them ; rather, as we have seen, these special powers are always esteemed to be at the service of the present owner of the fetish object. The Australian Yountoo is a charm to produce sickness. It is a small bone from the leg of one man wrapped in a piece of flesh cut from another man and tied with a string made from the hair of a third. This charm taken to the hut of the man to be enchanted, is placed before the fire pointing to him, then a small piece of the bone is broken off, cast on the victim, and afterwards burnt. The Molee is a piece of white quartz with a string of opossum fur gummed to one end ; this also is pointed at the intended victim and then burnt. In either case to cure or destroy the spell, the wizard has to suck out the charmed bone or stone. (Jour. Anthrop. Inst., XIII. p. 130.) CHAPTER III. Supernal concepts derived from natural appearances. MANY phenomena read as supernal are the natural in unusual conditions. Such was the colossal figure of an angel seen in the heavens at Florence, due to the special form of a cloud and the position of the sun, in relation to the image of the gilded angel on the top of the Duomo, and as the cloud slowly moved the reflection seemed hovering over the city. Ships have thus been seen, with their canvas and colours abroad, floating in the sky. Of a liko origin is the " Spectre of the Brocken " and the " Fata Morgana." In the moving lights, as sometimes observed in the Aurora Borealis, the Icelander beheld the spirits of his ancestors, and many have discovered armies and torrents of blood in the lambent meteors of a wintry sky. It needs but colour and faint gleams of light for the mind to conjure up definite idealisms. A gentleman travelling in Scotland put up at a small inn. He found on retiring to bed that a pedlar had died in the room, and that from superstitious motives the people had declined to take the corpse through the doorway, but had removed the small window, breaking away part of the- wall. The window had been replaced, but the irregular gap left. Full of this incident, he had a dream of a fright- ful apparition before him, and in his half-wakeful state the appearance still was before him, and he saw a corpse dressed in a shroud reared erect against the wall by tho 46 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DERIVED window. After a few minutes lie passed one hand over it, but felt nothing, and staggered back. When he renewed his investigation the mental image was laid, and he found the object of his terror was produced by the moonbeams coming through the gap in the broken wall. (Ferriar on Apparitions, p. 27.) In the ordinary inexpressive nature of things, there is no supernal all are passive, inert, and excite no special emo- tion ; it is only when there is a movement, be it in waves of light or colour, or sound, or in a pressure felt, the cause of which is unseen, that the sentiment of the uncanny arises. Smyth, in his Aborigines of Victoria, gives an illustration of this mental origin of the supernal. " In Victoria, where hot winds and other electrical disturbances of the atmo- sphere are common, the natives used to think that the ground was haunted, and that the swirls of dust so often seen in the summer-time were caused by demons passing along in the ground/' A remarkable illustration of vague optical perceptions becoming spiritualized, is seen in the following statement -of Big Plume, a Blackf oot Indian. He said : " The souls of the Indians go to the sandhills east of the Blackfeet territory. At a distance we can see them hunting the buffalo, and we can hear them talking and praying, and inviting one another to their feasts. In the summer we often go there and see the trails of the spirits and the places where they have been camping. I have been there myself and have seen them and heard them beating their drums. We can see them in the distance, but when we get near they vanish. I believe they will live for ever. There will still be fighting between the Crows and the Blackfeet in the spiritual world." (Reports, Brit. Asso., 1887, p. 387.) The natural world is always the source of the supernatural, consequently a man's spiritual deductions harmonize with the phenomena of his geographical position. Does not the of Zerdusht in the opening chapters of the Avesta, FROM NATURAL APPEARANCES. 47 dwelling on the double character of the surrounding scenery, with its arid deserts and richly-teeming fertile vales, find the same contrast of good and ill in the human soul as in his natural world ? Heaven ever accommodates its attri- butes to the living conditions of its human creators. We know that the islands of the blessed could only have been conceived by those who in life had dwelt in an island world. The Polynesian, used to distant voyages, must needs cross the vast ocean to his soul land, but the inland red man saw in the misty shades of the far distant hills, with their many play of colours, the home of his spirit-fathers. The nature of this life ever proclaims the future aspirations of the living; he would ouly eliminate the physical evils he has learnt to dread out of his ideal paradise. All the varying terrific or mysterious phenomena in the natural world have induced supernal deductions dependent for their forms of expression on the amount of information in the mind of the beholder. It is so all the world over In connection with comets, eclipses, meteors, thunder, the Maelstrom, and all unusual sights in the sky. These are ever portents dire and terrible, produced by fetish power or malign spirits, and they foretell war, pestilence, or famine. When an eclipse takes place, the Moslems in Syria, like the Chinese and the Red Indian, crowd together with gongs, rattles, drums, every noisy instrument they possess, to drive away by the hideous sounds they produce the evil monster who is devouring the sun or the moon. The Red Indian, in the black cloud out of which the thunderbolt is launched, beholds the dreaded thunder bird, and the Karen regards the thunderbolt as a living thing it tears up the trees in the form of a hog with bat-like wings ; when it utters its voice it thunders, when it flaps its wings fire is produced. (Aei. Soc. Beng. Jour. XXXIV., p. 217.) Dorm-ui reports in his Pri/nifiue Superstitions that the Indians hold that all sounds issuing from CM \vnis wrn> thought to bo produced by their spiritual inhabitants. The 48 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DERIVED Sonora Indians say the departed souls dwell among the caves and nooks of their cliffs, and that the echoes are- their voices. When explosions, caused by the bursting of sulphurous gases, are heard, the superstitious Indians attribute them to the breathing of the manitous. Dead Mountain, at the head of the Mojave valley, is regarded with reverence by the Indians, who believed it the abode of departed spirits. "When its hoary crest is draped in a light floating haze and misty wreaths are winding like phantoms among its peaks, they see the spirits of the departed hovering above their legendary dwelling (p. 302). The Chinooks thought the milky-way was produced by a turtle swimming along the bottom of the sky and disturbing the mud. The red clouds of the rising and setting sun were thought to be coloured by the blood of men slain in battle. (Ibid. p. 346.) The man who has been under the influence of a toxic, or noted others in that state, ascribes the weird influence, whether produced by alcohol, so ma, kava or pulque, to the action of a supernal principle contained in the drink, and all the betimes pleasing mental excitements they induced are attached to a weird cause. So when a man observes a companion attacked by epilepsy or some form of neurosis, or expressing strange mental hallucinations, he can only account for the change by inferring that the spirit of some man or animal has entered his body or he has been enchanted by a spell, and that the strange actions, the discordant sounds, the unnatural movements, are due to the supernal influence. As illustrating the failure of the judgment in the presence of something not fully comprehended, we quote the follow- ing : " A maid-servant in the Rue St. Victor, who had gone down into the cellar, came back very much frightened, saying she had seen a spectre standing upright between two barrels. Some persons went down and saw the same. It was a dead body which had fallen from a cart coming from FROM NATURAL APPEARANCES. 49 the Hotel Dieu. It had slid down the cellar window or grating, and had remained standing between two casks." (Calmet, Phantom World, I. p. 252.) Sounds heard at night high up in the air were formerly, and now are by some, ascribed to Gabriel's hounds, they were supposed to be the cries of spirits in the air, and were considered the foretellers of bad luck, or death, to those who heard them. They are now known to be caused by batches of widgeons or teals, and which usually migrate in the night. (Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. II. p. 206.) Betimes certain natural phenomena resulting from various special combinations of the elements, inasmuch as they occur only at long intervals, are esteemed to be due to supernal action, and often a legend or myth is invented to account for the phenomena. In Jones's Credulities we have two such instances recorded. At Saltburne Mouth there is a small creek which empties into the sea under a high bank; sometimes the incoming tide produces a horrible groaning, and the people say it is the cry of a sea-monster hungering for men's carcases (p. 64). Again on the west coast of Scotland certain conjunctions of the wind and tide produce what is called a " bore ; " this became evolved into a fetish personification as the " avenging wave," and was accounted for by a fisherman having there killed a mermaid (p. 25). In another instance in Canada, at Manitobah Island, in a lake of the same name, there is a singular sound produced by the action of the waves on a peculiar pebble shingle which rub together with an intoning voice. This occurs only when the gale blows from the north, and the Ojibbeway Indians say it is the voice of the speaking God (p. 101). 1 1 uraboldt has shown how much the ordinary expressions of nature build up the supernal concepts of the various races of men, and create tones of feeling that become embodied in the social institutions. We will quoto a case in point as illustrating the influence of nature on tho Upper Indus 4 50 SUPERNAL CONCEPTS DEEIVED. in the development of the local supernatural. " The howling waste behind, invisible from the village and rising into still higher masses, affords a fitting scene for all the super- natural doings of the mountain spirits. The scenery which inspires awe has made its mark upon the inhabitants. These lofty solitudes are from their earliest years connected with ideas of dread which shape themselves into myths. The priest affirms that sometimes in the early dawn, while performing worship, he perceived a white indistinct shape hovering over the cairn, and this he said was the goddess of the spot revealing herself to her worshippers. The people believe that this demon keeps a special watch over all their actions, and in a country where frequent accidents by flood and field are almost inevitable, and where a false step or a falling rock may cause death at any time, they put down such disasters to the vengeance of the goddess for the neglect of some of their peculiar customs." (Asiat Soc. Beng. Jour., XL VII. p. 28.) Such are some of the false concepts of the supernal which have their origin in mis- conceptions of perceptive appearances. CHAPTER IV. The evolution of supernal concepts in dreams. No subject connected with the supernatural has more engrossed the minds of men in all ages than those connected with mental presentations in sleep. These generally arise when some of the mental faculties are in abeyance while others are active; they may and do occasionally occur when the dreamer is almost in a waking state; then the impressions active in the memory take a perceptive form and appeal specially to the senses. By far the greater number of premonitory apparitions occur at this awaking state, their power enhanced by the dominant figure remaining as in Newton's spectrum after the inciting cause has been withdrawn. Diverse circumstances induce dreams; some arise from special mental excitation through the memory of previous impressions, they are also induced by states of the organic functions, as by special foods or drinks and forms of disease, also by special sensations. A writer in the Journal of Psy dialog ical Medicine writes: "A man after eating a supper of halibut had a dream of sliding down a cliff on the shore and being saved by holding his niece's hand; another after a hearty fish supper dreamed of poisonous serpents ; a third, after partaking freely of cold roast beef and pickled onions, dreamed of being forced to oat of what ho loathed. A lady having a slight cough put a piece of barley sugar in her mouth and fell asleep whilo sucking it. She dreamt 4 * 52 THE EVOLUTION OF she was a little girl at an evening party, happy and enjoying herself; she enjoyed all kinds of childish sports, and after a long period had elapsed she awoke with a smile to find the cause of the dream still in her mouth, and that only a few minutes had elapsed, her daughter who gave her the barley sugar not yet having left the bedside (XI. p. 579). The cause of a dream delusion may be due to altered sense-perception. A gentleman had fallen asleep with weary feelings, arising from indigestion, when there arose an apprehension in his mind that the phantom of a dead man held the sleeper by the wrist. He awoke in horror, and found that his own left hand, in a state of numbness, had accidentally encircled his right arm. (Scott, Demonology, p. 45.) Deceptive spectral concepts, even in the conscious state, are often due to false mental deductions, and man, under such conditions, is apt to mould the seeming form to some subjective memory impression. Mr. Taylor was staying at a large old-fashioned country mansion, and from his room was a secret door leading to a private staircase. This was both locked inside and out, yet its presence evidently tended to suggest supernatural phenomena, even though he had no faith in them. One moonlight night in June he awoke about 1 o'clock, and discovered by the moonlight a tall figure in white, with arms extended, at the foot of the bed. Fear and astonishment for a time overcame him ; then he thought that it might possibly be a trick ; so, mustering resolution, he jumped out of bed, and grasped it round, only to find it was nothing more than a large new flannel dressing-gown which had been sent him in the course of the day, and which had been hung on some pegs against the wainscot at the foot of the bed. (Apparitions, by J. Taylor, VI.) Sometimes the presumed ghost is real flesh and blood, its supernatural character a mere inference in the mind. A lady, when on a visit to a Scotch friend, waking up in the night, beheld a hideous, almost shapeless, figure sitting on SUPERNAL CONCEITS IN DREAMS. 53 a chair between her and the fire. After lying in great fear for a time, believing it was a spectre, she stealthily crept from the bed, and hid herself behind the window-curtains ; then she saw the wretched ghost throw itself on her bed, and in that way the two passed the night. In the morning the lady motioned to a labourer in the garden to come up, when they found that the supposed wandering ghost was a simple lunatic, who in some way had got into the house when passing across the country. (E. P. Hood, Dreamland, p. 70.) The mental deception suggesting the supernatural may be a sound. A low muffled wail heard on the sea by a lady was taken by her for a telepathic indication of her son's death. It was afterwards found that the so-called monition was produced by an amateur ventriloquist for his own amusement. (Pliant, of Living, I. p. 125.) Simple errors of judgment and instances of false reasoning account for many ghost narratives, but there are others which the inquiring percipient cannot thus resolve, and which not only leave their supernal influence on the mind of the beholder but convey like impressions to others. To test such presentations all are not equally mentally prepared, yet there are a few test qualities that any may apply. But, first, we have to note the various conditions under which such apparitional appearances occur. A large number arise in dreams some are continuous from the dream to the semi-waking state and the presence of the mystic figure as a continuous image is affirmed to the waking senses. In some cases there is no memory of a dream-phase, the figure is simply present to the half-waking consciousness, which, when fully aroused, may still behold the object. From tho continuity of optical impressions, under certain conditions, we know that it is possible an optical impression may con- tinue after the object is removed from the sight. Now it so happens that by far the greater number of presumed apparitional appearances are seen in these conditions of the organic being; they are seen in the dream or the half- 54 THE EVOLUTIONS OF wakeful state. It is quite certain that the visionary not other people is most competent to test the nature of the ap- pearance. If the illusion or vision occurs when wide awake, men of the calibre of Nicolai, of Berlin, may be certain of the subjective nature of the impression, note its origin, and even optically prove that it exists only inside their own sensoriums. But both judgment and the powers of observa- tion are only vaguely exercised in the half-waking state, and the imagination most probably in an excited state from previous dreaming is apt to jump to hasty conclusions, and when subsequently the visionary describes the impression, it may consist only of vague generalities. However, if the seer has so far mastered the details of the vision as to be able to define specially, not generally, its characteristics, he or she may be able to affirm its subjective nature. In the old ghost tales the presumed supernal being came in its shroud, or, according to the associate circumstances, was accredited to come covered with wounds or blood, or if drowned as naked and dripping wet. Usually in such cases no clothes are noted, only the wounded or wet body ; now, as neither in a fight or at a shipwreck is it customary for the body to be stripped, the subject-nature of the impression ought to be at once apparent. One class of subjective impressions is thus built up of some memory impressions, modified by the imagination ; others wholly arise from the reawakeningof past impressions. Now, usually these memory impressions of an individual are of varying character. A mother may dream of her son as a stalwart young man, the same as when she last saw him, or she may dream of him in his boyhood or as babe. Usually in such cases there is an endless series of types in the mind. So with an ordinary acquaintance, we may call him to mind as when we first knew him or when we last beheld him. More, there are not only the differences of age and features to consider, but the clothing and ornaments, and other dis- tinguishing attributes attached to the person. Of course, SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DBEAMS. 55 if the visionary detects no special details, neither dis- tinguishing features, age or dress, and recognizes nothing but a vague impression, which it designates as a certain individual, we have no test appliances, and can only esteem the presentation as vague and unsatisfactory. But if the assumed apparition conies before the visionary clearly defined in features and wearing some special costume, we know these attributes denote a special individual at a special time. Consequently, when a lady beholds, as she thinks, the spectre of a gentleman, clothed as she had once seen him as a character in the Corsican Brothers, we are assured that it was no ghost, however ominous might be the words it said or its movements, but only a reawakened impression in her memory. So in the case of the apparition of Mrs. Matthews by Mr. Charles Matthews, the ghost came in her habit, as when alive. We know nothing of spirit fashions of dress in the other world, but we can scarcely suppose they wear crinolines, or have high-shoulder dresses. Hence, it could not have been her spirit he beheld, but a renewal of a past endearing impression. Few persons are as capable of demonstrating the unreality of an illusion as the captain whose case is quoted in Sir W. Scott's Demonology. When in a depressed state, and therefore most susceptible of being affected by supernal ideas, ho went to see his confessor, and was in great distress and apprehension of his death. The same evening, when retiring to bed, ho saw in the room the figure of the con- fessor sitting on a chair, probably as he commonly saw him in life. Being of a strong mind, and self-assured of its subjective nature, he sat down on the same chair as the figure was on. He owned after that had his friend died about the .same time ho would not have known what name to give his vision, but ho recovered, and henco ho knew that it was both physically and psychically an illusion of his own mind (p. 37). In all the cases of haunted houses in Mrs. Crowe's Night 56 THE EVOLUTION OP Side of Nature we have not one that even bears the affirmation of having been definitely seen by two individuals who noted the dress and features of the presumed supernal visitant. All is vague, indefinite, and uncertain. In one case there are two ladies in bed. The one, only a child, fancies she sees an old man in a Kilmarnock nightcap. She was not the least frightened, and probably the indistinct appearance of drapery or clothing was in the half-light personified by her imagination into a grotesque figure. The various white lady ghosts are as vague as vague can be, not a detail but that of colour is given. The most apparently definite case is said to have occurred at Sarratt, in Hertfordshire, where one individual of whom we have no credentials, and who is even nameless, is said to have seen the figure of a well-dressed man having on a blue coat with bright gilt buttons ; his own clothes had partly fallen on the floor and he saw no head, the half- drawn curtain hiding that portion of the figure. We should say he saw only his own clothes as they had partly fallen from the chair, and as from the context we read that the house was said to be haunted by a headless gentleman in a blue coat with gilt buttons, we need not look far for the illusion. In another case we are first prepared for the due feeling of dread and mystery by the narrative of an iron cage with an iron ring to which an old rusty chain is attached having a collar at the end of the same material. Necessarily after going to bed with such a preparation for a ghost strange noises are heard, then the girls say they saw a figure or something and hid themselves in the clothes. Later on this figure is more defined, it was thin with hair flowing down its back and draped in a loose powdering gown. How much they saw of it in reality, if they beheld anything but their own fears, may be noted from the circumstance that at first both the girls thought it was their sister Hannah; consequently the powdered gown was only in the SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 57 imagination, and it was only when their mother told them it could not have been Hannah trying to frighten them that they considered his ghostship had appeared to them. We cannot feel surprised that after talking over these incidents brother Harry by the light of the moon should have seen a fellow in a loose gown at the bottom of the stairs. Once again one of the ladies after being very tired by a long ride on afterwards awakening by the light of a night-light saw again the mysterious figure in the powdery coat ; she more noticed the thin pale face with its melancholy expression. But in this, the most circumstantial case, we not only have no names of persons, no references, we even do not know in what town it occurred, though one of the many publishers who have rehearsed the narrative thinks it comes from Lille. Though the various ill-conceived and undefined narratives in Mrs. Crowe's collection are unworthy of being assumed as representing supernal incidents, surely we ought to place -cine confidence in the carefully considered and select cases to which the credentials of Messrs. Gurney and Myers are attached, recorded in the Nineteenth Century (XVI. p. 69). In the first case presented a Mr. Rawlinson had heard two months before that an intimate friend was ill with cancer. How many times during the two months the image of his friend may have been present in his thoughts associated with his dangerous complaint we have no means of judging, and it is such thoughts that are apt to become vague monitions or subjective hallucinations. Yet because a vague presentiment of the appearance arose in his mind presumed to be connected with the possible time of the friend's death, but of this no proof is given, we arc asked to accept it as a supernal telepathic manifestation. The second case is equally devoid of consistency. A slight accident occurs to an individual on a Saturday in London. The mother admits writing an account of the affair on the Sunday, and on the Monday night the aunt in 58 THE EVOLUTION OP Ireland dreams she sees a confusion of cabs and hears " Maurice is hurt." Our version of the spectral intimation is that the letter was possibly written on the day of the accident, or the aunt informed thereof by another relative, or possibly the aunt's illusion occurred on Thursday not Monday night. It certainly was no visual perception but only the concept of something that might have reached the aunt in a letter as the dream as stated occurred two days after the accident. The same comments apply to the case of the Duke of Orleans, and it did not take place at the time of the impression, and the narrator of the trivial accident writes, ci I am not sure of the day of the week," yet on these im- perfect and desultory impressions we are required to accept implied supernal incidents. The incident described by Lady Chatterton is explainable in the aptitude for a dream to be fashioned from external impressions. In the half-waking state so favourable for the reception of such impressions Lady Chatterton saw the figure of her mother, the face deadly pale and blood flow- ing over the bed-clothes, she then rushed into her mother's room and saw her as in the dream. The incident had occurred hours before and could not have been a present apparition as two doctors who had to be fetched had not only arrived, but they must have been there some time as one observed that all danger was now over. Such a vision might have come in her reverie not suggested by her mothers spirit or any telepathic impression, but by the talk of the servants or the conversation of the doctors. There was only a long passage between the rooms, and the echo of the voices as they passed to the stair-head may have easily reached her ear and conveyed all the images presented in the illusion. We might pause to describe the loose character of the other narratives, but we will conclude this part of supernal cases with that referred to a Miss Manningham. First we SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 59 may note that this illusion is said to have occurred at an entertainment ; the place in one statement is described as the Argyll, in the other as the Hanover Eooms. There were also two diverse accounts of the apparition in one the features were hid by a cloth, in the other the face was turned from her ; both agreed in its being a naked corpse. As the death occurred through the upsetting of a boat we fail to realize the origin of the naked presentation even if we admit that without being able to see the features it was possible for her to recognize her naked grandfather, and it is the first time in the natural history of ghosts in which the ghost of the clothes refused to accompany the ghost of the body. As we read the narrative we would observe that even at concerts, as well as when at church, people betimes are apt to doze and may dream dreams, and that in her case she had only heard her grandfather was drowned, and the naked corpse was her own inference that it happened when he was bathing, when there can be no doubt he must at the time have been fully clothed. When in the ghost tale the particulars of dress features and externals are specified we can often detect in the narrative itself, the proofs that it is the revival of an old- memory impression. We will quote a few of such self- indications from Mr. Gurney*s Phantasms of the Living. S. and L. are both in one office in the city. S. is aroused one night by tho 1 apparition of L. coming towards him as was his wont of a morning, wearing a hat with black hat- band, tho overcoat unbuttoned, no doubt ready for its customary removal, and having a stick in his hand. But the ghost of L. who died at 9 P.M. and came after S. had gone to bed was nob likely to bo walking about with his coat unbuttoned and a walking-stick in his hand. S. might or might not have heard of the death of L. before ho retired for the night; the figure was certainly a memory reminiscence, and his absence through illness might well suggest the possibility of his death (I. p. 210). 60 THE EVOLUTION OP A lady in case 168, describing an appearance that was presented to her, infers that it could not have been a subjective impression, but a real apparition, forgets the fact that our mental presentations are made up, not only of what we see, but what we hear or read. There are few especially ladies who hearing or reading of 'the altered appearance of any dear friend by years or illness, do not visualize the change. More particularly when he was an old sweetheart, and she knew sixteen years had passed, and that the face had become modified by the growth of a beard and whiskers, as she writes to his mother. From this we may well infer she was in regular communication with his family, and as she refers to the change, what more likely than his changed appearance had been familiarly dwelt upon : hence it would not be his old but his altered physiognomy that she might recall (I. p. 426). In several cases the ghost appears not as he would have been, wasted away and in his bed-clothes, but dressed in his old costume and hale and hearty. Again, there are cases in which we are told the dead man is seen the instant of death laying in his coffin, as if that indispensable adjunct had been ordered before-hand and the body put in it before the spirit had quitted its mortal tenement. Some of the apparitions are pleasing reminiscences of many like impressions. Thus, 195 is the case of a lady who sees the phantasms of her grandmother in the plaid cloak she usually wore, leaning on the arm of the lady's mother. She is presumed to have died at the time of the vision, when the old lady would have presented a very different appear- ance. The group as seen had, no doubt, often been pictured in her memory from a child. Case 202 is that of a lady who died after a short illness ; yet at the time of her death she is seen by the percipient riding in her own victoria. She recognizes the bonnet and the sealskin jacket as those she generally wore in winter ; but it was in August she died, therefore it must have been a subjective impression. SDPEENAL CONCEPTS IX DREAMS. 61 As for the idea of her death, the lady knew she was ill (I. p. 544). One of the most remarkable cases supposed to prove the presence of a ghost, actually, by investigation, proves the truth of its being a subjective hallucination. In case 213, an old woman is seen wearing a special duster-pattern check shawl. There was no monition in this case, for the old lady is not supposed to die it was merely an halluci- nation of a familiar figure. The percipient, however, felt assured of its ghostly character, so he visits the house and inquires specially about this shawl. He receives for answer, ' \Ve haven't such a thing in the house;" but sure of the truth of his mental impression, they hunt behind a box near the bed's head, when the identical ghost-shawl is found. From her family forgetting the article, it is evident that special shawl had not been lately worn, and the ghost of a few days past could not have appeared wearing it. Mr. Gurney writes the shawl is an important detail ; so it is, for it proves that the percipient's impression must have been subjective. The ordinary perceptive and imaginative mental states so blend into each other, that we cannot draw an absolute line between the ordinary perceptive, imaginative, halluci- imtive and dreaming states. Perception passes into memory, and memory grows into the excitations of the imagination, recalling past impressions, and gradually presenting them with ever-increasing intensity at first, mere acts of the will, gradually advancing until they are self-projected into the consciousness, in the one direction passing through reverie into dreams, in the other, from mere illunvr deceptions, to accredited perceptions, whether idealisms, dn -iinis, or hallucinations, and they may appeal to the ego through any one or more of the senses. Under healthy stimuli these presentations are more or less under the control of the will arising either from normal conscious activity or normally unconscious cere- 62 THE EVOLUTION OP bration. These thought aiid self-presentations normally are more vague than the real perceptions out of which they were evolved, not so when due to the stimulus of abnormal causes; then they are after projected with a brightness, intensity, or power proportionate to the nature of the exalting force. Of the impressions thus observed, we have several cases in the Phantasms of the Living. Thus Mrs. Willert has vivid representations; they corne with her eyes open, but more brilliant when they are shut. She sees all kinds of things in quick succession; never blending into- one another, she could never recall the same picture. " Mrs. Macdonald is accustomed to see multitudes of faces as she is lying awake. They seem to come out of the darkness and develop into sharp delineation and outline they fade and give place to others rapidly and in enormous numbers. Formerly they were ugly human but resembling animal monsters, latterly they have been beautiful " (I. p. 474). In general the dream or the hallucination is but momentary, but like some ghosts they become persistent for a long time, or after intervals, reappearing again and again, in bad neurotic states. They are always present, day and night, ever urging their victim to some special act or influencing him by denoting some special fear. There are cases in which such hallucinatory objects or persons are only seen under certain conditions, or are attached to certain forms of thought. Thus the Rev. P. H. Newman " saw figures whom he recognized in church, though they were not there, and they seemed to occupy the same place during the service." (Ibid. I. p .475.) Expectancy, self-suggestion, or suggestion by others, are prolific sources of apparitional presentations. For a gentleman to see the figure of his future wife draped in white, is a by no means uncommon appearance to an expectant bridegroom, occasionally by an exalted percep- tion defined as an appearance to the half -waking vision; SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 63 in some cases the dream-image remains, like Newton's spectrum, for a time on the retina. A very general form in which self-suggestion conceives of distinct and definite appearances, and moulds any object into the expected semblance, occurs in several cases. A Mr. Jevons sees, as he thinks, a friend walking among the trees opposite his house. Ho says, "I waved my hand to him to go up the road where wo had frequently walked." (Ibid. II. p. 528.) So in case 203. A lady who knew her mother was ill, when seated in the schoolroom reading, sees the figure of her mother, wasted by disease, reclining as in bed in her nightdress. Often the presence of appearances are suggested by others. A word, a name, an incident, appeals not only to the consciousness, but even to the more or less unconscious faculties which passively build up appropriate scenes and semblances. In case 408, a mother and daughter in India are infected by snake-fears, a not uncommon form of suggestion in tropical countries. The daughter, while undressing, fancied there was a snake in her room, probably by the rustling of her drapery ; the sound of her and the servants' talk on the subject reached the lady in her bedchamber, who after dreamed her daughter was bitten by a snake. Betimes we are told of two persons seeing the same apparition or dreaming the same dream ; but these when analyzed may generally bo traced to impressions being transferred from one to the other, verbally or otherwise. That such is the origin of duplicate dreams may bo discovered by their want of identity. Thus in case 127 a lady and her friend, asleep probably in the same room, have dreams on the same subject, but these are not identical. In tho ono the corpse of Mrs. A. is laid out in tho bod ; in the other that lady's daughter is seen running along the shore crying, "Don't stop me! my mother is dying." Tho ono dream might have been duo to 64 THE EVOLUTION OF verbal suggestion by the other in her dream state, or both due to the intimation they had previously received of the lady's dangerous illness. In case 299, a man, dying of typhus fever in his sleep, when in port is attended by a stoker belonging to the same vessel. In. his delirium he had most probably been raving about his wife and children, a not unusual thing in such a state. The stoker was personally acquainted with his family, and under those exciting conditions he affirmed that he saw the wife, mother, and two children on the other side of the bunk in which the man was dying. One of the most singular cases of a ghost suggestion, is case 331. It begins with two ladies probably by the preliminary suggestion of one of them seeing the figure of a Captain Towns in a gray flannel jacket such as they had been accustomed to recognize him by. Then a young sister, most likely aroused by the exclamations of the percipients, sees the same. Even the servant, roused by the excitement, notes "the master;" then the butler and the captain's body servant are both sent for, and they also declared they saw the figure ; and lastly the nurse is fetched, but she, more sceptical than the others, advanced as if to touch it, when the ghost, probably by the shifting of the curtains or apparel, vanishes, and after all it was found to be no apparition, though seen by so many, but a reflection on the polished wardrobe, a sort of medallion portrait. In another like case a girl was sent home from school unwell. The same night one of her companions was put in the vacant bed. In the dim light in the night the spirit of the absent girl is seen by the half-waking dreamer. She arouses the other school-girls asleep in the same room, and they also see the appearance, yet it is admitted that a bed-hanging, a curtain, suggested the image. (Ibid. II. p. 186.) Particulars, both personal and general, may be conveyed to other minds in sleep by means of words, and these may, as in the cases quoted, become attached to either the conscious SUPERNAL CONCEPTS IN DREAMS. 65 or unconscious memory. Thus two ladies sleeping together had the same experience of the presence of an old and valued friend of the one, even to the special onyx studs he habitually wore. This, a dream from experience in the one person, became by verbal suggestion a fancy image in the other's mind. Things mysteriously known to another may be transferred from mind to mind in the dream state, and that not by thought-reading, but by unconscious talking. Thus a lady, through her husband talking in his sleep and thus rehearsing an incident of his early days, became conscious of his once having had a sweetheart of whose existence, in his waking state, he had never informed her. (Phantasms, I. p. 31 7.) There are many cases in which, consciously or unconsciously, indications are transferred from one sleeper to another, not only when in the same room, but when they are in separate rooms, as in cases 89 and 90. CHAPTER V. The inter-relations of the supernal powers. THE first result of the failure of the perceptive and reflective powers is to present to the mind the many objects and move- ments it cannot comprehend as a new class of presentations diverse from any present in the natural world. One of the first supernal concepts is that the moving force in the organism is distinct from its substance, that it induces all the volitional actions of the organism, and that it is capable of existing outside the object it controls. This in man is his ghost. In the ordinary state this ghost is the life of the man : it is his mind, his spirit, his soul, and the body and limbs are but the inert material which, the ghost utilizes for its many purposes. Out of the man the ghost may act the same as it did when in the body, save that as its nature is distinct so are its attributes. Eude men cannot separate the spiritual from the material; hence the ghost is a shadow, a vapour, an attenuated entity, possessing in a low degree the same characteristics as mark the perfect man. It eats and drinks and sleeps, is amenable to injuries, susceptible to the effects of the temperature and local conditions. The sentiment of the extent of these relations may vary with different men, but we find them always present among savage races. The ghost as a separate existence is not deemed wholly amenable to the same conditions as when it formed part of the man. Then it partook of the destiny of the body in THE INTER-RELATIONS OP THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 67 which it resided, and might be appropriated by the spirit in the man or animal which devoured it. As an indepen- dent being it avoided these unpleasant consequences, and more, through the nature of its special supernal attributes it was endowed with new sources of power. Thus the wandering free ghost was not amenable to many material influences that affected it when forming part of a man. Its attenuated nature enabled it to insinuate itself in any hole or cranny, it could penetrate the solid earth and ascend into the sky, as well as manifest many other transcendental powers. The man was ever a match for his fellow-man, but the ghost to the man was ever an object of unspeakable dread. If that of a friend he may have been neglectful of certain rites that it expected to receive, and the man knows it has power to command other ghosts to control the ele- ments to pour on his head disease and death. He knows it can enter his body through any pore. What was possible in his own nature, man also esteemed as possible in the nature of other beings, other objects. What more certain cause could he conceive as marking the active life of all things than this ghost existence ? But we should err, if in the lowest races we looked for the general expression of this element of supernal power in all things. The savage is too little of a philosopher to go beyond the objects that immediately interest him to search for general causes. He accepts the appearance of each individual per- ception on its own merits. Hence the lowest savage races only affirm the presence of the ghost-power in human and local animal natures, and in some few fetish objects that have excited their animistic sentiments. Men are much more considerably advanced when they reason out that there is a soul in everything, even in the objects tlu-ir own hands have manipulated. Undeveloped man, ignorant of the chemical and physical powers induced by the altered relations of material things, and only conversant with force as resulting from the voli- 5 * 68 THE INTER-EELATIONS OF tional movements of men and animals, conceives that all its manifestations in nature are due to the action of like forces in rock, water, sky, and earth. Thus the earthquake is caused by the ghosts underground, or the huge earth sup- porting whale, elephant or tortoise, changes its position. So, in volcanic action, they perceive the might of an ingna or the dread Pele, and her myrmidons in their sports are casting up fire. The water-spout is caused by a spirit dragon, and eclipses by dogs hunting the moon through the sky. The eddying pool was the writhing of a great snake. All motion was life, and every living force was possessed by its embodied ghost. Each race of men create their own explanatory idealisms. With the Andaman islanders shooting stars and meteors viewed with apprehension are believed to be lighted faggots hurled in the air by Erenchawgala. An eclipse is caused by the sun spirit being offended. Storms are regarded as indications of Pullunga's wrath ; winds are his breath ; when it thunders he is growling, and lightning is a burning log thrown in his wrath. In all this we have embodied a savage man's fury as he quarrels round the camp-fire. (Jour. Anthrop. Inst. XII. p. 152.) There is not a presentation of power in the natural world but the savage accounts for by this ever-capable ghost- principle. We may not infer that the vast mythological systems invented to explain the many natural phenomena at once sprang into being. It is much more reasonable to infer that the primary savage, like most rude men, idiots, and animals, only took notice of those forces that imme- diately affected their own volitions. Some men have only seen great spirits in the sky-powers, others refer their primary concepts of great forces to the snowy mountain peaks or the great sea, and it is only among matured races of men we find general expositions of all the varied natural forces. It would seem that the capacity to appear in dreams is THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 69 the source of the supernatural attribute in the inanimate as well as the animate. It is the ghost of the mountain, the waterfall, the rock, and the sea that the dreamer beholds. So the weapon has a soul the dreamer saw the lance in the hand of the foeman, he even felt it penetrate his arm, yet when he attempted to seize it, it was gone, because it was a spirit. This sentiment of the spiritual nature of the secondary accompaniments in a dream is far more general than is usually conceived. Mr. Gurney shows that not only are dream-objects accompanied with all the subsidiary attri- butes of things, but that even the phantasm of the waking vision carries with it all the necessary supernal appearances of the secondary objects that constitute the idealism. The waking eyes not only behold the human spirit but the spirits of animals, trees, land, and water, the spirits of clothes, carriages, weapons, and all kinds of diverse things. Even now, without reasoning on it, the spiritually disposed accept as facts, not only that the ghost of one drowned in India an hour before its appearance in England should be able to traverse the intervening space, but that the ghosts of its garments, of the drops of water, and other material substances could, at the same time, accompany it. If developed man in the nineteenth century can passively accept such sentiments, need we be surprised that the untutored savage mind accepts the incidences which occur in his dreams as actual facts. A young Macusi Indian declared to Im Thurn that he had been taken out in the night and made to drag the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts. Nothing would persuade him of the fact that this was but a dream. (Tour. Anthrop. Int. XII. p. 304.) We have seen that to the man-ghost through the senti- ments of wonder and fear are attached mystic concepts of powers which endow it with a weird nature, so according to the natural aptitudes of animals arc they endowed with fetish powers, and this too with and without the ghost* 70 THE INTEK-BELATIONS OP concept. A snake seen has not only the ordinary powers of a snake, but as men may die of fear without having been touched by it, it can kill with a look. So the Australian aborigine, knowing the timorous nature of the kangaroo, when he observes a group coming towards him driven by an advancing body of enemies, ascribes to them the possession of weird knowledge and friendly intents ; they are coming to warn him of the advancing foes, and to affirm the spiritual association thus induced they have established the kangaroo kobong. One of the most general deductions drawn by the savage who has worked out the problem of the dual nature in animals is to affirm from the actions of the powerful local animals that they are possessed by men-ghosts. We find that the range of this concept obtains so extensively, that it seems to be almost a natural deduction from the similarity of the mental characteristics in the man and the animal. Thus the Thlinkeets hold that the ghost of a man enters a bear. Miss Bird describes the Ainos as crying out : <( We kill you, bear ; come back soon as an Aino." (Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, II. 98.) Of the various man and animal associations this sentiment has evoked we may refer to the Tiger-man of the Khonds, the Lion-man of the Zulus, the Jaguar-sorcerer of the Mexicans, the Hyaena-man of Abyssinia, the Negro, Leopard, and Alligator-men ; and in Europe to the many expositions of wolf-men and dog- men. The fetish concept of the animal's nature arises in the- present day as in the past. The man riding on horseback evolved the centuar among the old Pelasgians, and the- South American Indians in the days of Columbus, and but as yesterday it was a mighty fetish animal to the Anda- inanese. "Da Costa brought a donkey into the Zanzibar country ; the people had never before seen it, therefore they were much disturbed lest they should incur its displeasure,, to such an extent that they brought it corn in abundance, THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 71 and asked all sorts of questions with regard to the animal's powers." M. Williams, in his Religious Thought in India, writes : " A man bought a piece of ground and sat down to contemplate it under a tree. Suddenly he heard a hissing sound of a snake in the branches above. Panic- struck he ran off, but never dared show his face on the ground again, being firmly convinced that the serpent was the indignant spirit of its late owner " (p. 326). The ghost sentiment alone does not explain all the early concepts of savage man that intimate phenomena beyond the ordinary natural expression of things. The manifesta- tion may be that of a personality, but now as ever there are concepts of vague influences that the utmost ingenuity of the mind fails to make out as being personal. Such are most fetish objects, many omens, and all simply fetish appearances of things which are often attached to ghosts, or which in themselves do not intimate a personal appear- ance. The vulgar notions of luck are of the same nature : they may apply to an object, as a horseshoe, a day of the week, an appearance, a position, even the relation of words with thoughts. We infer that the concept of the uncanny preceded that of the ghost : it is certainly the first sentiment of the supernal in the mind of the child. Hence the first result of the sentiment of the uncomprehended is that of the uncanny; it may express doubt, ill-luck, fear; there is in the sensation received a something seen, felt, or heard that implies the inexplainable, the inconceivable. It may be due to the association of two or more objects, neither of which alone had any mysterious significance, but which, in combination, raise the sentiment of dread ; or mystic words and actions, presented at the time the objects are combined, may stimulate the sentiment of dread. So, though there bo nothing weird in the articles or words or actions in them- selves, the combination of them gives origin to a new principle that excites fear. 72 THE INTER-RELATIONS OP The two principles at first affirmed by the mind are to classify such impressions as good or evil, lucky or unlucky, and the response is the corresponding desire or dread. As all that are good are accepted by the child and the savage as mere matters of course, and excite no sentiment of per- sonal gratitude or feeling of interest other than to self, but those implying evil according to their vastness or vague- ness excite corresponding sentiments of dread. Presenting no personality to the mind it cannot be appealed to, cannot be resisted, and the soul crouches before the impersonal evil, be it ill-luck, disease, or some nameless dread. Among the large class of fetish principles and uncom- prehended impersonal powers affirmed generally by men we may specify all charms and talismans, all the fetish principles of sorcery, the power to transfer fever, ague, worts, to cure through some supernal virtue in things; to make rain, thunder, work miracles, the influence of rites on material objects, as the laying on of hands, incantations, and ordeals, chance, fate, destiny as impersonal controlling principles ; fasting, drugs as supernal powers, positions, and so forth. These may be affirmed as virtues in the objects them- selves, or they may be mere signs or tokens set up to represent ideal deductions ; they may be symbolic working by the imagined conveyance of special influences, as in the cases Dr. Tylor quotes of wearing iron rings to give mental firmness, or a kite's foot to endow with swiftness o'f motion. A fetish power may be in a thing and it be accidentally discovered, or it may be associated with some manifestation of feeling, or some action occurring in connection with its presentation. Thus a fetish man, going on important business, as he crossed the threshold of his door stumbled over a pebble which hurt him. He inferred that the stone was a stone of power, so he cherished it, and ascribed his after good luck to its possession. So, in like manner, the THE SUPERNAL POWERS. 73 fetish object causes rain, brings the salmon to the landing stage, strengthens its owner's heart, and confounds his enemies. A stone, or other fetish object, is usually credited with only one special virtue : one may ensure luck, another cause rain, a third be good for the headache, a fourth to keep money in the pocket, bring kangaroos, or turn aside an assegai; others may be good for women at childbirth, youths at initiation, men going a journey by land or by water, or any special circumstance or state. Often the fetish attribute is induced by the action of men, and results from no ghost-power, but a special mechanical combination of things. Thus, in Melanesia, stones could be caused to make rain or sunshine, and produce abundant crops of yams or bread-fruit. To make sunshine, if a very round stone was found, it was wound round with red braid and stuck with owl's feathers to represent rays, and then hung upon some high tree. (Jour. Anthrop. Inst. X. p. 278.) The essential element in all supernal manifestations is faith. It was so in all the lower impersonal attributes in all forms of healing, be they by old rags, holy water, the laying on of royal hands, or as Plutarch informs us, the passing the royal great toe over the parts affected. Talis- mans were objects possessing fetish power, and there can be little doubt that faith in their virtues upheld many a warrior in the deadly struggle. Faith in the higher spirit manifestations is the necessary law of their cognizance. BOOK II. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUPERNATUKAL CHAPTER I. Animal concepts of the supernal. IT would appear that the concept of the uncanny, that is the capacity to distinguish in the mind the natural from what is conceived as supernatural, is the common attribute of all sensible vitality. As a necessary result of having perceptive powers organisms distinguish, and therefore classify, objects present to the senses into three classes. There are, first, those that imply luck and excite desire whether for food or association ; secondly, those objects which imply ill-luck, danger, enmity; betimes objects of a third character are present to the animal's senses ; there are things that neither appear as desirable or absolutely dangerous, but those that present characteristics that the judgment of the animal cannot resolve. Of course to all forms of life there is a large class of objects regarding the appearance of which the animal is absolutely indifferent. According to the average nature of an animal's class of perceptions are the emotions evolved ; curiosity will desire to investigate all, caution will regulate the nature of the advance made, and if doubt supervene from a consciousness of possible danger, then fear is excited of a more or less : ing character. But when the perceptive presentation is read as neither exciting indifference, desire, or simple fear, but from its strangeness, want of harmony with pre- vious perceptions, or holding to the animal incomprehensible 78 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP attributes, then it is uncanny, the degree of disquietude excited depending on the extent of the concept of the unnatural. The permanent effect of the uncanny depends upon the influence of the perception on the mind of the animal. If the uneasy excitement only advances to dread, curiosity may induce special investigation and result in the nature ot the object being attached to its natural class as being indifferent, desirable, or dangerous. If the investigation is unsatisfactory, or dread has given place to horror, the animal may become fascinated or excited to mad undistin- guishing fury. What, then, may be the nature of the impression on the animal's sensorium we have yet to discover; it may represent the discordinate condition of madness, or it may attach supernal sentiments to the unexplainable mental presentations. That animal perceptions of the uncanny may by experi- ence be resolved into normal perceptions most used to animals must have become conscious. Dogs, cats, horses, cattle and other domestic animals often have objects or conditions presented to them which their reflective powers cannot resolve, they become uneasy, and by their looks and cries intimate the unsatisfactory state of their per- ceptions. If they can, they often by moving round the object determine its innocuousness. C. L. Morgan, in his Animal Life, writes : ' ' A strange noise or appearance will make a dog uneasy until he has by examination satisfied himself of the nature of that which produces it. My cat was asleep on a chair and my little son was blowing a toy horn. The cat without moving mewed uneasily, and as he continued blowing the cat grew more uneasy and at last got up and stretched herself and turned towards the source of discomfort. She stood looking at the boy as he blew, then curling herself up she went to sleep again, no amount of blowing disturbing her further. Similarly Mr. Romane's dog was cowed by the sound of apples being shot on the THE SUPERNAL. 79 floor of a loft above the stable, but when lie was taken to the place and saw what gave rise to the sound he ceased to be disquieted by it " (p. 339). Mr. Vignoli describes the case of a horse that was at first scared by a white handkerchief being waved before its eyes ; this after a little time he became accustomed to, but when it was afterwards taken out and the same hand- kerchief waved before its eyes from a stick but the man waving it hid behind a fence the horse was scared and shied violently, and afterwards even in the stable it could not see the handkerchief without trembling, and it was difficult to reconcile him to the sight of it; he evidently regarded it as fetish. (Myth and Science, p. 59.) That the same mental sentiments mark the psychic life of the lower animal organisms has been noted by various investigators. M. Binet, in his Psychic Life of Micro- Organismx, says : " There is not a single inf usory that can- not be frightened and that does not manifest fear by a rapid flight through the liquid of the preparation, fleeing in all directions like a flock of sheep." The effect of artificial light in producing the sentiment of the uncanny in fish has been noticed by Mr. Bateson. He writes : " Soles and rockling stop swimming if a light is shown, and the former bury themselves almost at once. Bass, pollock, mullet and bream generally get quickly away at first, but if they can be induced to look steadily at the light with both eyes they gradually sink to the bottom of the tank, and on touching the bottom commonly swim away. In the case of mullet effects apparently of a mesmeric character sometimes occur, for a mullet which has sunk to the bottom as described will sometimes lie there quite still for a considerable time. At other times it will slowly rise in the water until it floats with its dorsal fin out of the water as though paralyzed. I once saw one which remained in this odd position for some minutes after the light had been turned off it. Turbot are greatly affected 80 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP by the light of a lantern, they seemed to be seized with an irresistible impulse like that of a moth to a candle, and throw itself open-mouthed at the lamp. On one occasion a turbot continued to dash itself with such violence at the lamp that it wore the skin of its chin through till it bled.'* (Jour. Marine Biol. As. I. p. 216.) All the higher class animals are in like manner affected by the perception of something out of the ordinary nature of things. Captain Gillmore, in the Daily Graphic (October 21st, 1891) writes of the lion : " This grand animal is in character the most wonderful combination of timidity and courage. Thus an unexpected noise, or sight of an unfamiliar object, will scare him; while, on the other hand, regardless of consequences he will charge home into a crowded camp and carry off his prey in the teeth of all opposition. A horse the lion's favourite prey I have known to wander for days in the vicinity of a troop of these beasts unmolested simply because it was blanketed and knee-haltered; while, on the other hand, the same family rushed right up to my companion's waggons, and in spite of guns, shouts, and fires, pulled down the same nag." Thompson, in his Passions of Animals, quotes a similar instance in a beast of prey being withheld by like fetish influence from attacking what it would have esteemed desirable food. In South America a native was out shoot- ing wild ducks; he had put the corner of his poncho over his head, and was crawling along the ground upon his hands and knees, the poncho not only covering his body, but trailing on the ground behind him. As he was thus creeping he heard a sudden noise and felt something heavy strike his feet. Instantly jumping up, he saw a large puma standing on his poncho. The man remained motionless. At last the creature turned away its head, and walking very slowly away about ten yards, stopped and turned again ; the man still maintained his ground, on which, probably THE SUPERNAL. 81 deeming the object something uncanny, the beast made off (p. 120). The uncanny may be something very small. Captain Basil Hall describes the terror of a tiger into whose cage a mouse had been inserted tied by a string to a stick. The royal beast jammed himself into a corner and stood trembling and roaring in an ecstacy of fear. (Ibid. p. 122.) Fascination may be due to hopeless despair, but in many instances it appears as the effect of fetish paralysis. Vaillant saw a species of shrike trembling as if in convul- sions on the branch of a tree ; below was a large snake with outstretched neck and fiery eyes gazing steadily at the bird, the agony of the bird being so great as to prevent it having the power to move away. The concept induced by the presence of something strange may produce various emotions. At first caution, then doubt, fear of something strange, then dread of an unknown power, may be ending in fetish horror of the uncomprehended object. Thompson says : " Cranes in their migrations have been seen to be attracted by a fire and to hover round it with loud screams. Dogs are astonished at any change in the outward appearance of those they are familiar with, and at any strange object, encompassing it repeatedly and smelling at it to discover its nature. They cannot recognize their master in the water, but swim round him, astonished at hearing his voice without identifying him. A dog chasing a raven fled with astonishment as the bird faced it and uttered the words it had been taught" (p. 124). As illustrating the effect of strange appearances on animals, Mr. Vignoli writes : " I have suddenly inserted an unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have kept birds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight tho animal is always surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious, and often retreats from it. By degrees his confide mv returns, and after keeping out of tho way for some time ho 6 82 ANIMAL CONCEPTS OP becomes accustomed to it." (Myth. p. 58.) Of course different species of animals are variously affected by the presence of the unknown and therefore mysterious, and even indi- viduals of the same species are differently affected, as is also the case with human beings. Mr. Romanes had " a Scotch terrier that had a curious hatred or horror of any- thing abnormal. For instance, it was long before she could tolerate the striking of a spring bell which was a new experience to her. She expressed her dislike and seeming fear by a series of growls and barks accompanied by setting her hair on end. She used from time to time to go through the same performance after gazing fixedly on what seemed vacancy, seeming to see some enemy or portent unseen by me, as if the victim of optical illusion. I could produce the same effect by doing some unexpected and irrational thing until she had become accustomed to it, yet the seeing of some form of phantom remained unabated." (Mental Evol. in Ani. p. 150.) That animals can see phantoms and exhibit the common mental illusions the same as human beings, and like aberrations of mania and melancholia, there are many indications. The rabies in the dog runs the same course as in the man, the horse and the bull exhibit the same wild and incoherent mania as the madman, and like causes produce corresponding effects on both. " Pierquin describes a female ape which had had sunstroke and after- wards used to become terror-struck by delusions of some kind ; she used to snap at imaginary objects, and acted as if she had been watching and catching at insects on the wing/' (Mental Evol. in Animals, p. 150.) That most animals have the power to reproduce subjec- tive impressions in their minds the many evidences of animals dreaming confirms. Thompson describes the- stork, canary, eagle and parrot as dreamers among birds, and the elephant, horse and dog among mammals. The hound betrays his dream by a hoarse suppressed bark and by a convulsive movement of the limbs. Dogs are prone THE SUPERNAL. 83 to dream, and then they may be observed to move their feet ; they make efforts to bark, agitate themselves as if hunting, or become excited till the hair rises on their flanks and the skin becomes clammy. Birds, as ducks, move their legs in their sleep as if in the act of swimming. (Pas. of Ani. p. 61.) We can only judge of the waking concepts of the subjec- tive in the animal mind by its actions, as in the case of the ape just quoted and Mr. Romanes' Scotch terrier. Lindsay, in ^[i^l