Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/309

Rh that the conception of the objects with which a being is specially concerned is a conception of them as themselves Powers, harmful or beneficial. With many races this conception might remain as concrete as with the lower animals. But with those among whom the specially human faculties of abstraction and language were considerably developed, the conception of Things as Powers would be differentiated into Things and Powers conceived as separable, just as the chemist's theine or caffeine is conceived. And just as the chemist's "essential principle" is, so the "soul" would be conceived—as we in fact know that it was and is—as a material body itself liable to disintegration. But psychology furnishes another, and perhaps even more powerful condition of the origin of the notion of "Spirits", or of what—because of the immateriality ordinarily connoted by that term—I prefer to call Supernals. I refer to that integrating activity of mind which creates personal shapes corresponding to the impressions made by the aspects of Nature. Take, for instance, the Greek Lamia of the Ocean,, or, as she is elsewhere called, "The Mother of the Sea", , or the corresponding Gaelic "Sea-Maiden". What have we in this Supernal but a poetic synthesis of the impressions made by the glitteringly beautiful, yet cruel and capricious Sea?—a poetic synthesis which has nothing whatever to do with "ghosts". These creations of folk-fancy are, in fact, in no way essentially different, either in form or character, from the creations of the poet or poet-painter. All are images conveying impressions similar to those which their creator has received from some aspect of Nature. Further, I am quite willing to admit that observations of, and reflections on, the phenomena specially signalised by Mr. Spencer and Dr. Tylor may have had some effect in developing the notion of Supernals. But I submit that such observations and reflections are incomparably more probable among the leisured classes of Higher Races than among Primitive Savages; and further, that it would be in