Science of Man, to examine, among other things, the evidence for the
actual existence of those alleged unusual and supernormal phenomena,
belief in which is given as one of the origins of religion.

To make this examination, in the ethnographic field, is almost a new
labour. As we shall see, anthropologists have not hitherto investigated
such things as the 'Fire-walk' of savages, uninjured in the flames, like
the Three Holy Children. The world-wide savage practice of divining by
hallucinations induced through gazing into a smooth deep (crystal-gazing)
has been studied, I think, by no anthropologist. The veracity of
'messages' uttered by savage seers when (as they suppose) 'possessed' or
'inspired' has not been criticised, and probably cannot be, for lack of
detailed information. The 'physical phenomena' which answer among savages
to the use of the 'divining rod,' and to 'spiritist' marvels in modern
times, have only been glanced at. In short, all the savage parallels
to the so-called 'psychical phenomena' now under discussion in England,
America, Germany, Italy, and France, have escaped critical analysis and
comparison with their civilised counterparts.

An exception among anthropologists is Mr. Tylor. He has not suppressed the
existence of these barbaric parallels to our modern problems of this kind.
But his interest in them practically ends when he has shown that the
phenomena helped to originate the savage belief in 'spirits,' and when he
has displayed the 'survival' of that belief in later culture. He does not
ask 'Are the phenomena real?' he is concerned only with the savage
philosophy of the phenomena and with its relics in modern spiritism and
religion. My purpose is to do, by way only of _ébauche_, what neither
anthropology nor psychical research nor psychology has done: to put the
savage and modern phenomena side by side. Such evidence as we can give for
the actuality of the modern experiences will, so far as it goes, raise a