The Making of Religion

ature of clairvoyance simple, or by aid of gazing in a smooth surface, or in dreams, or in trance, or through second sight, would confirm if they did not originate the belief in the

taking up its abode in a man, and speaking out of his lips. But it seems better first to consider the alleged super-normal phenomena wh

would satisfy him that his soul, at least, was volatile. But some experience of what he would take to be visits from the spirits o

part of Mr. Tylor’s contention that savages (like some children) are subject to the difficulty which most of us may have occasionally felt in deciding ‘Did this really hap

losopher than a score of dreams, for to be easily forgotten is of the essence of a dream. Savages, indeed, oddly enough, have hit on our theory, ‘dreams go by contraries.’ Dr. Callaway illustrates this for the Zulus, and Mr. Scott for the Mang’anza. Thus they do discriminate between sleeping and waking. We must therefore examine waking hallucinations in the field of actual experience, and on such

cinations of persons of genius — Jeanne d’Arc, Luther, Socrates, Pascal, were by some attributed to lunacy in these famous people. Scarcely any writers before Mr. Galton had recognised the occurrence of hallucinations once in a life, perhaps, among healthy, sober, and mentally sound people. If these were known to occur,

d. On the other hand, the new studies have raised the perhaps insoluble question, ‘Do not hallucinations of the sane, representing the living, coincide more frequently than mere luck can account for, with the death or other crisis of the person apparently seen?’ If this could be proved, then there would seem to be a causal nexus, a relation of cause and effect between the hallucination and the coincident crisis. That connection would be provisionally expl

phantasms, but the logically inconceivable entities which were at once material and non-material, at once ‘spiritual’ and ‘space-filling.’ There is no such difficulty about hallucinations, which, whatever else may be said about them, are familiar facts of experience. The only real objections are the

s, or other effects on the percipient, exist in a regular rising scale of potency and perceptibility. Suppose that ‘A’s’ death in Yorkshire is to affect the consciousness of ‘B’ in Surrey before he knows anything about the fact (suppose it for the sake of argument), then t

hen they do, are often wrong. Thus a friend of my own was suddenly so overwhelmed, at golf, with inexplicable misery (though winning his match) that he apologised to his opponent

ible conviction that something terrible had occurred, not to her children. On reaching their house they found that one of their maids had fallen through the glass roof and killed herself. They also learned that the girl’s sister had arrived at the house, immediately after the accident, explaining that she was driven to come by a sense that something dreadf

eeling that somebody is in the room, followed by a mental, or mind’s eye picture of a person dying at a distance, up to a kind of ‘vision’ of a person or scene, and so on to hallucinations appealing, at once, to touch, sight, and hearing. As some hundreds of the

inations of the sane coincide with no ascertainable fact. We only provisionally posit the possibility of an influence, in its nature unknown, of one mind on another at a dis

ong other experiences which led early savage thinkers to be

that it is ‘objective,’ is his friend in flesh and blood, till he finds out his mistake, by examination or reflection. As Professor William James remarks, in his ‘Principles of Psychology,’ such solitary hallucinations of the sane and healthy, once in a life-time, are difficult to account for, and are by no means rare. ‘Sometimes,’ Mr. Tylor observes, ‘the phantom h

minds are in a properly receptive state.’ But this is arguing in a circle; What is ‘a properly receptive state’? If illness, overwork, ‘expectant attention,’ make ‘a properly receptive state,’ I should have seen several phantoms in several ‘haunted houses.’ But the only thing of the sort I ever saw occurred when I was thinking of nothing less, when I was

something symbolised in the word ‘shadow,’ or ‘breath’ (spiritus), had come to say farewell. The modern ‘spiritualistic’ theory, again, that the dead man’s ‘spirit’ is actually present to the percipient, in space, corresponds to, and is derived from, the animistic philosophy of the savage. But we may believe in such ‘death-wraiths,’ or hallucinatory appearances of the dying, without being either savages or spiritualists. We may believe without pretending to explain, or we may advance the theory of ‘Telepathy,’ Hegel’s ‘magical tie,’ according to which the distan

tion.’6 Now, the modern hallucinations themselves can scarcely, perhaps, be called ‘survivals from savagery,’ though the opinion that an hallucination of a person must be his ‘spirit’ is really such

iew is that nothing but dreams and visions could have ever put into men’s minds such an idea as that of souls being ethereal images of bodies.’7 The idea may be perfectly erroneous; but if the occurrence of such coincident

im, is in or near the hour of death. Mr. Tylor, in addition to his three instances in civilised life, alludes to one in sa

igure is very shadowy, and its face is not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized

ment is from the mo

azing fire, the figure of a relative who had been left ill at home was seen to approach. The apparition appeared to two of the party only, and vanished immediately on their mak

to me by Mr. Tregear, F.R.G.S., autho

his death. Years passed away, and I saw no ghost or spirit — not even when my father and mother died, and I was absent in each case. Then one day I was sitting reading, when a dark shadow fell across my book. I looked up, and saw a man standing between me and the window. His back was turned towards me. I saw from his figure that he was a Maori, and I called out to him, “Oh friend!” He turned round, and I saw m

i example may

ve the account in writing to his friend, Captain J.H. Crosse, of Monkstown, Cork, from whom we received it. In

h 25,

rewam, a village on the other side of the river, about six miles off. As Frank and the native were cross-cutting a tree, the native stopped suddenly, and said, “What are you come for?” looking in the direction of Frank. Frank replied, “What do you mean?” He said, “I am not speaking to

re had been no communication since. The Maori spoke no more, but got into his canoe and pulled across. When h

o his authority for this na

ber 18

ite true, valeat quantum, as the lawyers say. Incide

. FE

dge, Native La

analogous example f

Beagle,” he said one morning to Mr. Bynoe that in the night some man came to the side of his hammock and whispered in his ear that hi

this case, a coincident

it may be so meagre by reason of want of research, or of lack of records, travellers usually pooh-poohing the benighted superstitions of the heathen, or fea

is obviously necessary to reject all evidence of people who were ill, or anxious, or overworked, or in poignant grief at the time of the hallucination. It will be seen later that neither grief nor amatory passion (dominating the

or of the place where the sound now heard used once to be familiar. Expectancy, again, and nervousness, might doubtless cause an hallucination to a person who felt uncomfortable in a house with a name to be ‘haunted,’ though, as we have seen, the effect is far less common than the cause. All these sorts of causes are undoubtedly more apt to be prevalent among superstitious savages than among educated Europeans. And it stands to reason that savages, where one man ‘thinks he sees something,’ will be readier than we are to think they ‘see something’ too. Yet collective hallucinations, which are shared by several persons at once, are especially puzzling. Even if

the time when some friend perceives his phantom.’ But visionaries, he remarks truly, often see phantoms of living persons when nothing occurs. That is the case, and the question arises whether more such phantoms are viewed (not by ‘visionaries’) in connection with the death or other crisis of the person whose hallucinatory appearance is perceived, than ought to occur, if there be no connection of some unknown cause between deaths and appearan

e author. A Maori chief was long absent on the war-path. One day he entered his wife’s hut, and sat mute by the hearth.

cted on what, to a Maori mind, seemed good legal evidence of his decease. Of cou

e visible to others, not at death only, but on many other occasions, in dream, trance, lethargy. All these are much more frequent conditions, in every man’s career, than the fact of dying. Why, then,

of savages would lead them not to connect

ep when out hunting.’15 In this case the hunter is exposed to the magic of his enemies. But the Murup, or detached soul, would be visible to people at a distance when its ow

the Maori might have some ground for his theory that such hallucinations betoken a decease. I do not believe that any such census can enable us to reach an affirmative conclusion which science will accept. In spite of all precautions taken, all warnings before, and ‘allowances’ made later, collect

n, it will be said, would not be too many. Finally, granting honesty, accurate memory, and non-selection (none of which will be granted by opponents), it is easy

ho have not examined — or, having examined, misreport — the resul

ledged the erroneousness of his remark. Otherwise we might ask: Does Mr. Clodd prefer to be considered not ‘competent’ or not ‘veracious’? He cannot be both on this occasion, for his signed and published remarks were absolutely inaccurate. First, thousands of persons were not asked ‘whether they had seen apparitions.’ They were asked: ‘Have you ever, when believing yourself to be perfectly awake, had a vivid impression of seeing, or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?’ Secondly, it is not the fact that ‘some hundreds, mostly unintelligent foreigners, replied in the affirmative.’ Of English-speaking me

s received, was 352. Of first-hand cases, in which coincidence of the hallucination with t

as decided that the hallucinations collected coincided with death 440 more often than ought to be the case by the law of probabilitie

the Report (1894). There was scarcely any documentary evidence, any note or letter written between the hallucination and the arrival of news of the death. Such letters, the evidence alleged, had in some cases existed, but had been lost, burnt, eaten by white ants, or written on a sheet of blotting paper or the whitewashed wall of a barrack room. If I may judge by my own lifelong success in mislaying, losing, and casually destroying papers, f

familiar to us, persons much in our minds. I know seven cases in which such hallucinations occurred. 1, 2, of husband to wife; 3, son to mother; 4, brother to sister; 5, sister to sister; 6, cousin (living in the same house) to cousin; 7, friend (living a mile away) to two friends. In no case was there a death-coincidence. Only in case 4 was there any kind of coincidence, the brother having intended to do (unknown to the sister) what he was seen doing — d

might be

aunt in England (he being in Austr

e. No anxiety. Case o

n childbed, and did. Percipient not

land to son in I

en death. No anxiety. N

r-in-law, and her maid. No

n. No anxiety r

No knowledge of illne

ndson. No anxiety. No

ven people, and apparently to

p-brother. No anxiety.

d. No anxiety or kn

cquaintance.

nd to his wife. Illn

other. Illness k

er. No knowledge of

on. Much anxiet

Illness known. ‘No imm

Much anxiety. Rus

wn. Percipient had been nursing p

iend. Illness k

rother. Illness

d-daughter. Illness kno

grandson. Illness

chronic. No anxiety. Perc

wife. Anxiety

. Slightly anxious fr

to friend.

mised, in two or three cases. In a doz

representing real persons; also, that knowledge of their illness, even when no anxiety existed, kept them in some cases before the mind; also, that several cases are foreign, and that ‘most foreigners are fools

ses, and show how far, in these not veridical cases, the recognised phantasms w

red to a person in anxiety, or overstrained, will seem to be, probably, fortuitous coincidences like the others. All percipients, of all sorts of hallucinations, hits or misses, were asked if they were in grief or anxiety. Now, out of 1,622 cases of hallucination of all known kinds (coincidental or not), mental strain was reported i

eve that it does produce coincidental hallucinations, the evidence of the Census, by itself, would not convince me nor its authors. We want better records; we want documentary evidence recording case

and even by the coincident traditions of European and savage peoples, than by the statistics of the Census. The whole mass, Census and all, is of very considerable weight, and there exist individual cases which

disposes the mind to a sort of belief. It is not given as evidence to go to a jury, for I only received it from

ntrary to his wont, he was in the worst of spirits, and, after moping for some time, asked leave to go a three days’ voyage to the nearest telegraph station. His commanding officer, my informant, was good-natured, and gave leave. At the end of a week Captain —— returned, in his usual high spirits. He now admitted that, while lying awake in the verandah, after the ball, he had seen a favourite brother of his, then in, say, Peru

of the dance, official date of the Peruvian brother’s death, and so on. But the character of my informant indisposes me to disb

he Master of Ravenswood’s cogitations

wful bounds of the spiritual world, and place before us its inhabitants in the hues and colouring of life? And why was that manifested to the eye, which could not unfold its tal

inute: it would be impossible to prove that life was utterly extinct, when Alice seemed to die, ‘as the clock in the distant village tolled one, just before’ Ravenswood’s experience. We do n

stant mind, or brain, upon another, may be the cause of ‘coincidental hallucinations,’ whether among savage or civilised race