ps owing to our own want of capacity, puzzled by what
seem to be two kinds of early philosophy--(1) a sort of instinctive or
unreasoned belief in universal animation, which Mr. Spencer calls
'Animism' and does not believe in, (2) the reasoned belief in separable
and surviving souls of men (and in things), which Mr. Spencer believes in,
and Mr. Tylor calls 'Animism'--we must also note another difficulty. Mr.
Tylor may seem to be taking it for granted that the earliest, remote,
unknown thinkers on life and the soul were existing on the same psychical
plane as we ourselves, or, at least, as modern savages. Between modern
savages and ourselves, in this regard, he takes certain differences, but
takes none between modern savages and the remote founders of religion.

Thus Mr. Tylor observes:

'The condition of the modern ghost-seer, whose imagination passes on
such slight excitement into positive hallucination, is rather the rule
than the exception among uncultured and intensely imaginative tribes,
whose minds may be thrown off their balance by a touch, a word, a
gesture, an unaccustomed noise.'[18]

I find evidence that low contemporary savages are _not_ great ghost-seers,
and, again, I cannot quite accept Mr. Tylor's psychology of the 'modern
ghost-seer.' Most such favoured persons whom I have known were steady,
unimaginative, unexcitable people, with just one odd experience. Lord
Tennyson, too, after sleeping in the bed of his recently lost father on
purpose to see his ghost, decided that ghosts 'are not seen by imaginative
people.'

We now examine, at greater length, the psychical conditions in which,
according to Mr. Tylor, contemporary savages differ from civilised men.
Later we shall ask what may be said as to possible or presumable psychical
differences between modern savages and the datelessly distant founders of
the belief in souls. Mr. Tylor attributes to the lower races, and
even to races high above their level, 'morbid ecstasy, brought on by
meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement, or disease.' Now, we may
still 'meditate'--and how far the result is 'morbid' is a matter for
psychologists and pathologists to determine. Fasting we do not practise
voluntarily, nor would we easily accept evidence from an Englishman as to
the veracity of voluntary fasting visions, like those of Cotton Mather.
The visions of disease we should set aside, as a rule, with those of
'excitement,' produced, for instance, by 'devil-dance