conjured with. Indeed it is
not improbable a priori that the original inference involved in the
notion of the other self may be sufficiently simple and obvious to fall
within the capacity of animals even less intelligent than uncivilized
man. An authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being
accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his
haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball placed on the
chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump down and play with him.
[160] Such a fact as this is quite in harmony with Auguste Comte's
suggestion that such intelligent animals as dogs, apes, and elephants
may be capable of forming a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of
the terrier here rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the
same sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which implies, not
that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a soul, but that in his
mind the distinction between life and inanimate existence has never been
thoroughly established. Just this confusion between things living
and things not living is present throughout the whole philosophy of
fetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things dreamed,
which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to this same
twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man has not yet clearly
demonstrated his immeasurable superiority to the brutes. [161]

The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away from
the body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from the
phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy, [162] which occur
less rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than
among civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer, "is
afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence
of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen
that the other self on returning denies all knowledge of what his body
has been doing? And this supposition, that the body has been 'possessed'
by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and
insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we recollect
that savages are very generally unwilling to have their portraits taken,
lest a portion of themselves should get carried off and be exposed to
foul play, [163] we must readily admit that the weird reflection of the
person and imitation of the gestures in rivers or still wo