Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/306

298 and in the absolute difference between what they call "dead" and living matter; in accepting and theorising on these reports, no allowance has been made for the turn given to them by the preconceived notions of these Christian missionaries and travellers; nor any allowance for the unwillingness and inability of savage peoples and uncultured classes to reveal what their notions of things really are, and their persistent effort, indeed, to conceal and mislead when questioned as to these notions. Secondly, the scientific study of Folk-lore, in its comparison of the genuine expressions of Folk-belief in Folk-customs, Folk-sayings, and Folk-poesies shows that the terms which would be usually translated by our words "soul", "ghost", or "spirit" do not mean anything like what these words signify to us. One finds, for instance, that what is really meant by the terms thus translated is not a wandering "spirit", but a restless corpse, and that Dr. Tylor's definition of the "soul" as "capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body", is a Christian Culture-conception, rather than a Pagan Folk-conception; or that what