Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/541

Rh places for the stars? and did those which disappeared during the day go below where the rest are? Once more, overhanging the pool is this dead tree, from which he breaks off branches for firewood. Is there not an image of it too? and the branch which he burns and which vanishes into nothing in burning—is there not some connection between its invisible state and that image of it in the water which he could not touch, any more than he can now touch the consumed branch?

That reflections thus generate a belief—confused and inconsistent it may be, but still a belief—that each individual has a duplicate, usually unseen, but which may be seen on going to the water-side and looking in, is not an a priori inference only; there are facts verifying it. According to Williams, some Feejeeans "speak of man as having two spirits. His shadow is called 'the dark spirit,' which, they say, goes to Hades. The other is his likeness reflected in water or a looking-glass, and is supposed to stay near the place in which a man dies." This belief in two spirits is, indeed, the most consistent one. For are not a man's shadow and his reflection separate? and are they not coexistent with one another and with himself? Can he not, standing at the water-side, observe that the reflection in the water and the shadow on the shore, simultaneously move as he moves? Clearly, while both belong to him, the two are independent of him and of one another; for both may be absent together, and either may be present in the absence of the other.

Early theories about this duplicate are now beside the question, and must be ignored. We are concerned only with the fact that it is thought of as real. To the primitive mind, making first steps in the interpretation of the surrounding world, here is revealed another class of facts confirming the notion that existences have their visible and invisible states, and strengthening the implication of a duality in each existence.

Let any one ask himself what would be his thought if, in a state of childlike ignorance, he were to pass some spot and to hear repeated a shout which he uttered. Would he not inevitably conclude that the answering shout came from another person? Succeeding shouts severally repeated with words and tones like his own, yet without visible source, would rouse the idea that this person was mocking him, and at the same time concealing himself. A futile search in the wood or under the cliff would end in the conviction that the hiding person was very cunning: especially when joined to the fact that here, in the spot whence the answer before came, no answer was now given—obviously because it would disclose the mocker's whereabouts. If at this same place, on subsequent occasions, this responsive shout from a source eluding search always came to any passer-by who called out, the resulting thought would be that in this place there dwelt one of these