Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/305

Rh a certain congruity in a theory of the origin of immaterial souls, from observations and meditations on "shadows, reflections, dreams," etc., there is certainly a most significant incongruity in a theory of the origin of souls conceived, as Dr. Tylor rightly affirms them to be by Savages, as "substantial material beings", from such intangibilities as "shadows, reflections, dreams", etc. And fifthly, the identity, not merely of the general, but of the special conclusions assumed to have been spontaneously arrived at by these Savage Philosophers of every race and clime postulates such an identity in the characteristics of races as is contradicted by all our later ethnological knowledge.

IV.—My fourth Query is: Is not the use of such terms as "soul", "ghost", "spirit", which ordinarily, with us, connote immateriality and (after death) disconnection from the body, in the highest degree misleading when applied to primitive conceptions; and are not these, therefore, terms which should be as much as possible abandoned in scientific discussions of these conceptions?

This Query is founded on the following considerations: First, the greater part of our assumed knowledge hitherto with respect to Savage and Folk Beliefs is derived from the reports of Christian missionaries and travellers who have all had an ingrained belief in an "immaterial soul",