Volume 1

Primitive culture : researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art and custom / by Edward B. Tylor.

  • Tylor, Edward B. (Edward Burnett), 1832-1917.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Primitive culture : researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art and custom / by Edward B. Tylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spirit-world, which will be described in the next chapter, belong to this class. A typical spiritualistic instance may be quoted from Jung-Stilling, who says that examples have come to his knowledge of sick persons who, longing to see absent friends, have fallen into a swoon during which they have appeared to the distant objects of their affection.1 As an illustration from our own folklore, the well-known superstition may serve, that fasting watchers on St. John's Eve may see the apparitions of those doomed to die during the year come with the clergyman to the church door and knock; these apparitions are spirits who come forth from their bodies, for the minister has been noticed to be much troubled in his sleep while his phantom was thus engaged, and when one of a party of watchers fell into a sound sleep and could not be roused, the others saw his apparition knock at the church door.2 Modern Europe has indeed kept closely enough to the lines of early philosophy, for such ideas to have little strangeness to our own time. Language preserves record of them in such expressions as ‘ out of oneself/ ‘ beside oneself/ ‘ in an ecstasy/ and he who says that his spirit goes forth to meet a friend, can still realize in the phrase a meaning deeper than metaphor. This same doctrine forms one side of the theory of dreams prevalent among the lower races. Certain of the Green¬ landers, Cranz remarks, consider that the soul quits the body in the night and goes out hunting, dancing, and visit¬ ing ; their dreams, which are frequent and lively, having brought them to this opinion.3 Among the Indians of North America, we hear of the dreamer’s soul leaving his body and wandering in quest of things attractive to it. These things the waking man must endeavour to obtain, 1 R. D. Owen, ‘ Footfalls on the Boundary of another World,’ p. 259. See A. R. Wallace, ‘Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural,’ p. 43. 2 Brand, ‘Pop. Ant.’ vol. i. p. 331, vol. iii. p. 236. See Calmet, ‘ Diss. sur les Esprits ;’ Maury, ‘ Magie,’ part ii. ch. iv. 3 Cranz, ‘ Gronland,’ p. 257.