Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/175

 Rh too common occurrences. "What is dream in our life? How small a place it holds . . . and how surprising it is that the unfortunate Australians spend so much energy in evolving a theory of it."

Let it be observed, first, that whatever objection there may be to the ghost-hypothesis as a means of interpreting the phenomena in question, the savage actually does account for them by that notion. This fact, which even Durkheim admits, causes many of his arguments to lose their relevancy. Sir Everard im Thurn relates the following incident in his book, Among the Indians of Guiana : —

That man should have originally regarded as memories vivid dreams in which he feels and hears himself walking and talking with another person, whose face he sees and whose voice he hears as clearly as in waking life, seems to me an impossible supposition; and to try to explain the dreadful experience of feeling the hand of one's enemy around one's neck, and choking in his grasp, on the ground