§ 3 The Ghost Theory
Hyperphysical Animism may be easiest understood as having arisen with the belief in human ghosts. The causes of this belief have been fully set forth by Herbert Spencer177 and Sir E. B. Tylor178 in a way that to my mind is convincing. Amongst those causes dreams predominate; wherein the dead are met again as in the flesh. The living body having always been for the savage a conscious force-thing, at death the conscious force leaves the thing or corpse. This might be accepted by him as a fact of the same kind as the loss of its virtue by a talisman or amulet (which is known sometimes to happen), were it not for dreams in which the dead still live. That this conscious force that has left the body is not visible except in dreams need excite little wonder, since many forces natural and magical are invisible.
A dream not being common to two men at the same time, the things that are seen in it cannot be pointed out, nor therefore directly named (in this resembling subjective experiences). It was for ages impossible to narrate a dream as a dream: there was no way of distinguishing it from external events, either for the dreamer himself or (were that possible) in reporting it to another. He was far away and met his father, yet had lain by the fire all night! Hence to find names with which to describe such things men turned to other ways in which they seemed to have a double existence, to shadows and reflections: which in their sudden appearance and disappearance, and sometimes faint, sometimes distorted outlines, bear some resemblance to dream-images; and probably it is felt to be significant that shadows and reflections disappear at night, just when dreams occur. Shadows and reflections are not necessarily identified with the ghost derived from the dream-image, because their names are given to it; but sometimes they certainly are; so that a man who, on looking into water, happens not to see his reflection may believe that his spirit has gone away, and that he himself must be ill, and accordingly he becomes ill; or if at noon near the equator he notices that he has no shadow, he may think his soul is gone, and run to a medicine-man to get it back; and dead bodies may be believed to have no shadows.179 Inasmuch as a body even lying on the ground casts a shadow, except at tropical noon, the belief that it does not do so at any time implies an acquired inability to see what is before one’s eyes; as sometimes happens in hypnosis and other conditions of negative hallucination.
The idea of a separable conscious personal force, or spirit, that leaves the body at death, serves also, as it gathers strength, to explain sleep, fainting, epilepsy; and sometimes every sickness is attributed to the partial detachment or desertion of the spirit; which, therefore, it is the doctor’s business to plug in, or to catch and restore; or (if I rightly remember a report of Miss Kingsley’s) he may even supply another one from a basketful of souls kept at hand for such exigencies.
That the ghost theory arises not only from dreams, but is also suggested by hallucinations and hypnagogic visions is very probable. In various parts of the world savages have been described as having visions of remarkably coherent and convincing vividness that seem not to have been dreams.180 But such experiences, even when artificially induced by fasting or drugs (as happens among many tribes), are rare in comparison with dreams; and to the influence of dreams upon these savage beliefs there is abundant testimony. With some tribes dreams are treated as part of their objective experience; so that to be injured by your neighbour in a dream is just ground for avenging yourself as soon as you wake; and to see a dead man in a dream is, therefore, clear proof of his continued existence, and that either he has come to the dreamer or the dreamer has gone to visit him.
Thus Sir Everard im Thurn says of the native of Guiana, his dreams are as real as any events of his waking life; his dream-actions are done by his spirit: in dreams he continues to see the dead—that is, their spirits.181 Similarly, the Lengua Indians (W. of R. Paragua) have great faith in dreams; wherein the spirit is believed to leave the body and to do in fact what is dreamed.182 According to the Cherokees, to dream of being bitten by a snake requires the same treatment as actual snake-bite; else (perhaps years later) the same inflammation will appear in the wounded spot, with the same consequences.183 The Motu hold that sua (ghosts or spirits) are seen in dreams, and that when a man sleeps his own sua leaves his body.184 “The Lifuans believe in the reality of what is seen in a dream, and are influenced by it. Their dead ancestors appeared in dreams.”185 And the Polynesians of Manatuki thought that “dreams were occasioned by the spirit going to the places seen in them.”186 Many more of such witnesses might be cited.
It is recognised by psychologists that dreams, as immediate experience, have more the character of perception than of imagination. Children are apt to confuse dreams with reality. It can only have been gradually, with the growing knowledge of continuity and coherence in the course of events, and therewith the demand for corroboration of testimony, that dreams were distinguished from the waking life. When no longer supposed to be all of them real, some are still so regarded: the Dieri, amongst lower savages, distinguish between visions, as revelations made by Kutchi (an evil Spirit), and ordinary dreams, as mere fancies.187 But so impressive are dreams to many people, in their eagerness to know more than sense and philosophy can tell them, that they persist in hoping, and therefore believing, that dreams, if they give no knowledge of this world, may still be revelations of another, perhaps more real; or if not revelations, adumbrations by way of allegory, which some learned or inspired Daniel may interpret; or, at least, omens of good or evil, which the ancient science of Oneiromancy undertakes to explain. There is now a new and more promising Oneiromancy that interprets dreams as indicating not the future, but one’s own past, chiefly a forgotten past, and teaches to know oneself: more promising; for what but experience can possibly be the source of dreams—at least, of dream-elements? Some of the new principles of interpretation, however, may compare for obscurity with the ancient.
That the dead are seen alive in dreams is, then, for the savage a fact of observation; and, therefore, the continued existence of the dead is, for him, not in the first place supernatural; although it may be called hyperphysical, because it is experienced only in dreams and not by daylight, and is exempt from ordinary conditions of time and place. But it gradually becomes supernatural, as the capricious incidents of dream-life are felt to be “uncanny,” as that which occurs only at night is involved in the fears of the night, and as a great cloud of imaginations accumulates about the dead and obscures the simple facts of dream-perception in which the belief originated. This cloud of imaginations, by its mysterious character and by various alliances with Magic, spreads and deepens until it overshadows the whole of human life; is generally, indeed, dispersed here and there by the forces of biological necessity, often by subterfuges laughable enough; which have, however, the merit of saving mankind from destruction: but sometimes it extinguishes the last ray of common sense, impoverishes the believer, enfeebles him, fills his days and nights with terror, gives him over to practices the most cruel or the most disgusting, leads him to slay his own tribesmen, his own children, his own parents, and to offer up himself in the sure hope of resurrection.