de without narrowness.

II.

How, apart from the imperfect lingering tradition of some primitive
revelation, the belief in a surviving soul originates with contemporary
savages, or might have originated among still ruder past races, is a
question of some interest, not only for its own sake, but for the sake
of whatever little light it may throw upon the more vital question as to
the value of that belief. Had the doctrine of souls no other origin than
a false inference from the ordinary phenomena of sleeping and dreaming;
were it in no sense an instinctive belief, suggested perhaps and
confirmed by supernormal facts, it would still have interest for the
anthropologist as one of those almost necessary and universal errors
through which the human mind struggles to the truth, such as the errors
of astrology or alchemy; but it would in no way contribute to the
argument for immortality _ex consensu hominum_--an argument of much
avail when it is a case of man's instinctive judgments and primary
intuitions, which are God-given, but of ever less value in proportion as
there is a question of deductions, inferences, and self-formed
judgments. Even if we discard the dream-theory altogether, we get no
support from the consensus of savages as to the soul's survival, unless
we have reason to think that the facts on which their inference rests
are truly, and not only apparently, supernormal, and are, moreover, such
as leave no other inference possible.

We know only too well that there are universal fallacies as well as
universal truths of the human mind. For the practical necessities of
life the imagination stands to man in good stead, but as the inadequate
instrument of speculative thought its fertile deceitfulness is betrayed
in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent
efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and
allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow
limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which
otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny. There might well be facts,
nay, there are undoubtedly facts, which to the untutored mind
necessarily and always seem altogether supernormal, but which science
rightly explains to be, however unusual, yet natural, and in no way
outside the ordinary laws. So far as the marvels of sorcerers and
medicine-men are the work of chicanery, they will lack that persistence
and ubiquity which justifies the