Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/307

Rh is meant is much more like what a chemist means by an "essential principle", such as of tea, coffee, etc., than what a Christian means by "soul", "ghost", or "spirit"; or again, that what is really meant may be but an extraordinarily gifted, rather than supernaturally different, being. It is, indeed, found that the main condition of a genuine understanding of primitive Folk-conceptions is the getting rid altogether — or at least while endeavouring to enter into these conceptions — of the Christian notion of "souls", "ghosts", and "spirits". For conceiving the so-called "Soul" to be still attached to the corpse, and the corpse to be still in a manner living, we shall have no difficulty in understanding the care taken, by the Egyptians particularly, to ensure the preservation of the corpse; nor any difficulty in understanding the deposition with the corpse of the dead man's belongings; but difficulty only in accepting Dr. Tylor's theory of the "ghosts" of the things accompanying the "ghost" of the dead into "Ghostland". And, thirdly, as to the abandonment of these terms in scientific discussions of Folk-conceptions, there would surely be much less chance of misrepresenting them if, when a general term was required for other than ordinary beings, such a term as "Supernals" were used; while we at the same time frankly acknowledged our inability adequately to translate native words for conceptions which we do not share, and freely borrowed these words.