very often, as children's dreams are wont to be, of a painful and
terrible kind. Perhaps they will be always painful; perhaps his
dull brain will never dream, save under the influence of
indigestion, or hunger, or an uncomfortable attitude. And so, in
addition to his waking experience of the terrors of nature, he will
have a whole dream-experience besides, of a still more terrific
kind. He walks by day past a black cavern mouth, and thinks, with a
shudder--Something ugly may live in that ugly hole: what if it
jumped out upon me? He broods over the thought with the intensity
of a narrow and unoccupied mind; and a few nights after, he has
eaten--but let us draw a veil before the larder of a savage--his
chin is pinned down on his chest, a slight congestion of the brain
comes on; and behold he finds himself again at that cavern's mouth,
and something ugly does jump out upon him: and the cavern is a
haunted spot henceforth to him and to all his tribe. It is in vain
that his family tell him that he has been lying asleep at home all
the while. He has the evidence of his senses to prove the contrary.
He must have got out of himself, and gone into the woods. When we
remember that certain wise Greek philosophers could find no better
explanation of dreaming than that the soul left the body, and
wandered free, we cannot condemn the savage for his theory.

Now, I submit that in these simple facts we have a group of "true
causes" which are the roots of all the superstitions of the world.

And if any one shall complain that I am talking materialism: I
shall answer, that I am doing exactly the opposite. I am trying to
eliminate and get rid of that which is material, animal, and base;
in order that that which is truly spiritual may stand out, distinct
and clear, in its divine and eternal beauty.