Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/437

 by a sort of intellectual degeneration, to have been succeeded by a static type of thought, giving us a world of shadowy replicas of substantial objects. But, surely, as the earliest traceable form of language was mainly an expression of function rather than structure, of activities rather than substances, so the earliest stage of thought would share the same character. A being without substantial body, or even form, would simply be a moving force in nature, or life, or man. And this would be widely different from the complex conceptions of personality, or self-consciousness, which we are apt to credit the early mind with transferring to natural objects or to supposed spectres.

These later conceptions are now undergoing a severe sifting. And the labours of physio-psychologists, alienists, and students of hypnotism threaten, however little they may establish, to undermine much which has appeared till now impregnable. Who knows whether we may not end by finding that here also we have to revert, as well as to advance (as it were on a spiral course), to a dynamic, instead of a static, view of the world, and again enthrone motion as at once the primary and the ultimate fact?

Take "spirit", meaning breath. This needs a book to itself never yet written. But meanwhile even now it may be remarked that we use the words "a spirit" not merely to mean a form, or a being in the sense of shadow, or double, or phantom, but as in some sense a motive force or spring of energy. When we say that the whole spirit of a man's work is right or wholesome, that some example is inspiriting, that the practical spirit which animates a given course of conduct will ensure success, our imagery is at least free from some misleading associations. And, after all, breath is first (like pulse) a rhythm.

But to return to "Mana". It is curiously utilised in what are called "ghost-shooters". A man, so to speak, puts his own hatred and will to injure (which he conveniently shelters under the neutral term "Mana") into a bit of bamboo, waits for his enemy, and lets it out upon him; when, of course, the victim is stricken, probably to death, by the "shock" or "impression" thus made. A graphic story relates how, when the wrong man was thus nearly killed, he revived on being convinced of the mistake.

The author goes on to tell us that, "What that is which in life