unsuccessfully, himself.[24] His reminiscences, which he dictated on his
return to civilisation, were certainly not feigned in the interests of any
theories. But the most telepathic human stocks, it may be said, ought,
_ceteris paribus_, to have been the most successful in the struggle
for existence. We may infer that the _cetera_ were not _paria_, the
clairvoyant state not being precisely the best for the practical business
of life. But really we know nothing of the psychical state of the earliest
men. They may have had experiences tending towards a belief in 'spirits,'
of which we can tell nothing. We are obliged to guess, in considerable
ignorance of the actual conditions, and this historical ignorance
inevitably besets all anthropological speculation about the origin of
religion.

The knowledge of our nescience as to the psychical condition of our first
thinking ancestors may suggest hesitation as to taking it for granted that
early man was on our own or on the modern savage level in 'psychical'
experience. Even savage races, as Mr. Tylor justly says, attribute
superior psychical knowledge to neighbouring tribes on a yet lower level
of culture than themselves. The Finn esteems the Lapp sorcerers above his
own; the Lapp yields to the superior pretensions of the Samoyeds. There
may be more ways than one of explaining this relative humility: there is
Hegel's way and there is Mr. Tylor's way. We cannot be certain, _a
priori_, that the earliest man knew no more of supernormal or apparently
supernormal experiences than we commonly do, or that these did not
influence his thoughts on animism.

It is an example of the chameleon-like changes of science (even of
'science falsely so called' if you please) that when he wrote his book, in
1871, Mr. Tylor could not possibly have anticipated this line of argument.