ts
of civilisation' read 'psychical phenomena,' and Mr. Tylor's
argument applies to the evidence for these rejected and scouted
beliefs.

The countries from which 'ghosts' and 'wraiths' and 'clairvoyance'
are reported are 'distant'; the dates are 'wide apart'; the 'creeds
and characters of the observers' 'are 'different'; yet the evidence
is as uniform, and as recurrent, as it is in the case of
institutions, manners, customs. Indeed the evidence for the
rejected and abnormal phenomena is even more 'recurrent' than the
evidence for customs and institutions. Polyandry, totemism, human
sacrifice, the taboo, are only reported as existing in remote and
semi-civilised countries. Clairvoyance, wraiths, ghosts, mysterious
disturbances and movements of objects are reported as existing, not
only in distant ages, but today; not only among savages or
barbarians, but in London, Paris, Milan. No ages can be more wide
apart, few countries much more distant, than ancient Egypt and
modern England: no characters look more different than that of an
old scribe under Pharaoh, and that of a distinguished soldier under
Queen Victoria. Yet the scribe of Khemi and General Campbell suffer
from the same inexplicable annoyance, attribute it to the same very
abnormal agency, and attempt (not unsuccessfully) to communicate
with that agency, in precisely the same way.

This, though a striking, is an isolated and perhaps a casual example
of recurrence and uniformity in evidence. Mr. Tylor's Primitive
Culture is itself a store-house of other examples, to which more may
easily be added. For example, there is the old and savage belief in
a 'sending'. The medicine-man, or medium, or witch, can despatch a
conscious, visible, and intelligent agent, non-normal, to do his
bidding at a distance. This belief is often illustrated in the
Scandinavian sagas. Rink testifies to it among the Eskimo, Grinnell
among the Pawnees: Porphyry alleges that by some such 'telepathic
impact' Plotinus, from a distance, made a hostile magician named
Alexander 'double up like an empty bag,' and saw and reported this
agreeable circumstance. {352} Hardly any abnormal phenomenon or
faculty sounds less plausible, and the 'spectral evidence' for the
presence of a witch's 'sending,' when the poor woman could establish
an alibi for her visible self, appeared dubious even to Cotton
Mather. But, in their Phantasms of the Living, Messrs. Gurney and
Myers give cases in whic