the ranks of crystal gazers.]




VI

ANTHROPOLOGY AND HALLUCINATIONS

We have been examining cases, savage or civilised, in which knowledge is
believed to be acquired through no known channel of sense. All such
instances among savages, whether of the nature of clairvoyance simple,
or by aid of gazing in a smooth surface, or in dreams, or in trance, or
through second sight, would confirm if they did not originate the belief
in the separable soul. The soul, if it is to visit distant places and
collect information, must leave the body, it would be argued, and must so
far be capable of leading an independent life. Perhaps we ought next to
study cases of 'possession,' when knowledge is supposed to be conveyed by
an alien soul, ghost, spirit, or god, taking up its abode in a man, and
speaking out of his lips. But it seems better first to consider the
alleged super-normal phenomena which may have led the savage reasoner to
believe that _he_ was not the only owner of a separable soul: that other
people were equally gifted.

The sense, as of separation, which a savage dreamer or seer would feel
after a dream or vision in which he visited remote places, would satisfy
him that _his_ soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what
he would take to be visits from the spirits of others, would be needed
before he recognised that other men, as well as he, had the faculty of
sending their souls a journeying.