other causes, would naturally give rise to the belief in spirits, and thus
to the early philosophy of Animism. Now, certainly, the hallucination of a
person's presence, say at the moment of his death at a distance, would
suggest to a savage that something of the dying man's, something
symbolised in the word 'shadow,' or 'breath' _(spiritus)_, had come to say
farewell. The modern 'spiritualistic' theory, again, that the dead man's
'spirit' is actually present to the percipient, in space, corresponds to,
and is derived from, the animistic philosophy of the savage. But we may
believe in such 'death-wraiths,' or hallucinatory appearances of
the dying, without being either savages or spiritualists. We may
believe without pretending to explain, or we may advance the theory of
'Telepathy,' Hegel's 'magical tie,' according to which the distant mind
somehow impresses itself, in a more or less perfect hallucination, on the
mind of the person who perceives the wraith. If this be so, or even if no
explanation be offered, the truth of the stories of coincidental
apparitions becomes important, as pointing to a new region of psychical
inquiry. Then the evidence of savages as to hallucinations of their own,
coincident with the death of their absent friends, will confirm,
_quantum valeat_, the evidence of many modern observers in all ranks of
life, and all degrees of culture, from Lord Brougham to an old nurse.[5]

As to hallucinations coincident with the death of the person apparently
seen, Mr. Tylor says: 'Narratives of this class I can here only specify
without arguing on them, they are abundantly in circulation.'[6] Now, the
modern hallucinations themselves can scarcely, perhaps, be called
'survivals from savagery,' though the opinion that an hallucination of a
person must be his 'spirit' is really such a survival. It is with that
opinion, with Animism in its hallucinatory origins, that Mr. Tylor is
concerned, not with the hallucinations themselves or with the evidence
for their veridical existence.