This ghost-soul would be a highly accomplished creature, 'a vapour, film,
or shadow,' yet conscious, capable of leaving the body, mostly invisible
and impalpable, 'yet also manifesting physical power,' existing and
appearing after the death of the body, able to act on the bodies of other
men, beasts, and things.[14]

When the earliest reasoners, in an age and in mental conditions of which
we know nothing historically, had evolved the hypothesis of this
conscious, powerful, separable soul, capable of surviving the death of the
body, it was not difficult for them to develop the rest of Religion, as
Mr. Tylor thinks. A powerful ghost of a dead man might thrive till, its
original owner being long forgotten, it became a God. Again (souls once
given) it would not be a very difficult logical leap, perhaps, to conceive
of souls, or spirits, that had never been human at all. It is, we may say,
only _le premier pas qui coûte_, the step to the belief in a surviving
separable soul. Nevertheless, when we remember that Mr. Tylor is
theorising about savages in the dim background of human evolution, savages
whom we know nothing of by experience, savages far behind Australians and
Bushmen (who possess Gods), we must admit that he credits them with great
ingenuity, and strong powers of abstract reasoning. He may be right in his
opinion. In the same way, just as primitive men were keen reasoners, so
early bees, more clever than modern bees, may have evolved the system of
hexagonal cells, and only an early fish of genius could first have hit
on the plan, now hereditary of killing a fly by blowing water at it.

To this theory of metaphysical genius in very low savages I have no
objection to offer. We shall find, later, astonishing examples of savage
abstract speculation, certainly not derived from missionary sources,
because wholly out of the missionary's line of duty and reflection.