ief in
wraiths has survived into modern times, and now and then appears in the
records of that remnant of primeval philosophy known as "spiritualism,"
as, for example, in the case of the lady who "thought she saw her own
father look in at the church-window at the moment he was dying in his
own house."

The belief in the "death-fetch," like the doctrine which identifies
soul with shadow, is instructive as showing that in barbaric thought the
other self is supposed to resemble the material self with which it has
customarily been associated. In various savage superstitions the minute
resemblance of soul to body is forcibly stated. The Australian, for
instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb
of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from
throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion
to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the
spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian
doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self
that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive
conception that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the
coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if
it likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in some
parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides by
attended by his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are opened,
in order that the soul, if it chooses to depart, may not be hindered
from joining in the headlong chase. And so, adds Mr. Tylor, after
the Indians of North America had spent a riotous night in singeing an
unfortunate captive to death with firebrands, they would howl like the
fiends they were, and beat the air with brushwood, to drive away the
distressed and revengeful ghost. "With a kindlier feeling, the Congo
negroes abstained for a whole year after a death from sweeping the
house, lest the dust should injure the delicate substance of the ghost";
and even now, "it remains a German peasant saying that it is wrong
to slam a door, lest one should pinch a soul in it." [172] Dante's
experience with the ghosts in hell and purgatory, who were astonished at
his weighing down the boat in which they were carried, is belied by the
sweet German notion "that the dead mother's coming back in the night to
suckle the baby she has left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed