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  PART II.   DREAMS: THEIR PLACE IN THE GROWTH OF BELIEFS IN THE SUPERNATURAL. SECTION   PAGE I. Difference between Savage and Civilised Man 143 II. Limitations of Barbaric Language 148 III. Barbaric Confusion between Names and Things 154 IV. Barbaric Belief in Virtue in Inanimate Things 160 V. Barbaric Belief in the Reality of Dreams 168 VI. Barbaric Theory of Disease 174 VII. Barbaric Theory of a Second Self or Soul 182 VIII. Barbaric Philosophy in “Punchkin” and Allied Stories 188 IX. Barbaric and Civilised Notions of the Soul’s Nature 198 X. Barbaric Belief in Souls in Brutes and Plants and Lifeless Things 207 XI. Barbaric and Civilised Notions about the Soul’s Dwelling Place 215 XII. Conclusions from the Foregoing 222 XIII. Dreams as Omens and Media of Communication between Gods and Men 236   INDEX 245

 

 

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I.

MYTH:
ITS BIRTH AND GROWTH.

 

 

 

MYTH: ITS BIRTH AND GROWTH.

 

§ I.

ITS PRIMITIVE MEANING.

It is barely thirty years ago since the world was startled by the publication of Buckle’s History of Civilisation, with its theory that human actions are the effect of causes as fixed and regular as those which operate in the universe; climate, soil, food, and scenery being the chief conditions determining progress.

That book was a tour de force, not a lasting contribution to the question of man’s mental development. The publication of Darwin’s epoch-making Origin of Species[1] showed wherein it fell short; how the importance of the above-named causes was exaggerated and the existence of equally potent causes overlooked. Buckle probably had not read Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics, and he knew nothing of the profound revolution in silent preparation in the quiet of Darwin’s home; otherwise, his book must have been rewritten. This would have averted the oblivion from which not even its charm of style can rescue it. Its brilliant but defective theories are obscured in the fuller light of that doctrine of descent with modifications by which we learn that external circumstances do not alone account for the widely divergent types of men, so that a superior race, in supplanting an inferior one, will change the face and destiny of a country, “making the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.” Darwin has given us the clue to those subtle and still obscure causes which bring about, stage by stage, the unseen adaptations to requirements varying a type and securing its survival, and which have resulted in the evolution of the manifold species of living things. The notion of a constant relation between man and his surroundings is therefore untenable.

But incomplete as is Buckle’s theory, and all-embracing as is Darwin’s, so far as organic life is concerned, the larger issue is raised by both, and for most men whose judgment is worth anything it is settled. Either man is a part of nature or he is not. If he is not, there is an end of the matter, since the materials lie beyond human grasp, and cannot be examined and placed in order for comparative study. Let Christian, Brahman, Bushman, and South Sea Islander each hold fast his “form of sound words” about