ection in fact the origin of his
belief that an hallucinatory appearance of an absent person sometimes
announced his death?

That the belief exists in New Zealand we saw, and find confirmed by this
instance, one of 'many such relations,' says the author. A Maori chief was
long absent on the war-path. One day he entered his wife's hut, and sat
mute by the hearth. She ran to bring witnesses, but on her return the
phantasm was no longer visible. The woman soon afterwards married again.

Her husband then returned in perfect health, and pardoned the lady, as
she had acted on what, to a Maori mind, seemed good legal evidence of
his decease. Of course, even if she fabled, the story is evidence to the
existence of the belief.[14]

What, then, is the cause of the belief that a phantom of a man is a token
of his death? On the theory of savage philosophy, as explained by Mr.
Tylor himself, a man's soul may leave his body and become visible to
others, not at death only, but on many other occasions, in dream, trance,
lethargy. All these are much more frequent conditions, in every man's
career, than the fact of dying. Why, then, is the phantasm supposed by
savages to announce death? Is it because, in a sufficient ratio of cases
to provoke remark, early man has found the appearance and the death to be
'things connected in fact'?

I give an instance in which the philosophy of savages would lead them
_not_ to connect a phantasm of a living man with his death.

The Woi Worung, an Australian tribe, hold that 'the Murup [wraith] of an
individual could be sent from him by magic, as, for instance, when a
hunter incautiously went to sleep when out hunting.'[15] In this case the
hunter is exposed to the magic of his enemies. But the Murup, or detached
soul, would be visible to people at a distance when its owner is only
asleep--according to the savage philosophy. Why, then, when the wraith is
seen, is the owner believed to be dying? Are the things bound to be
'connected in fact'?

As is well known, the Society for Psychical Research has attempted a
little census, for the purpose of discovering whether hallucinations
representing persons at a distance coincided, within twelve hours, with
their deaths, in a larger ratio than the laws of chance allow as possible.
If it be so, the Maori might have some ground for his theory that such
hallucinations betoken a decease. I do not believe that any such census
can enable us to reach an affirmative