Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/188

 178 Pre-animistic Relig

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own belief is that the two spheres do not originally coin- cide, that the Awful in dream and trance is at first distinct from the Awful in death and disease, though the former readily comes to overlay and colour the latter. Thus I conceive that the trance-image, alike on account of its singularity, its accompaniments in the way of physical no less than mental derangement, and its coincidental possi- bilities, must have been originally and of its own right Awful; and that so, though perhaps to a lesser extent, must have been the dream-image, if only on the ground last mentioned. Nor would I deny that, in regard to death, these two kinds of vision taken together would be bound to suggest to the savage mind that there is a something which survives the body. But have we here a complete account of the influences whereby there is produced that mingled fear and love of the dead which culminate in Manes-worship ? I think not. For one thing, it is almost an axiom with writers on this subject, that a sort of Sol- ipsism, or Berkleianism (as Professor Sully terms it as he finds it in the Child), operates in the savage to make him refuse to recognise death as a fact, there being at any rate plenty of proof that he is extremely unwilling to recognise the fact of natural death. The influence, however, which I consider most fundamental of all is something else — namely the awfulness felt to attach to the dead human body in itself. Here, I think, we probably have the cause of the definite assignment to a passing appearance like the trance-image of real and permanent existence in relation to a dead owner ; and certainly the main source of the ascrip- tion of potency to the soul thus rendered substantive. The thrill of ghost-seeing may be real enough, but I fancy it is nothing to the horror of a human corpse instilled into man's heart by his instinct of self-preservation. In confirmation of this view I would refer to the mass of evidence dealing with the use of human remains for purposes of protective or offensive magic. A skull, a human hand, a scalp-lock, a