116 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK oh. 



the savage have a reality and an importance which 

 we can scarcely appreciate. During sleep the 

 spirit seems to desert the body ; and as in dreams 

 we visit other localities and even other worlds, 

 living, as it were, a separate and different life, 

 the true phenomena are not unnaturally regarded 

 as the complements of one another. Hence the 

 savage considers the events in his dreams to be 

 as real as these of his waking hours, and hence he 

 likes to feel that he has a spirit which can quit 

 the body. ' Dreams,' says Burton, ' according 

 to the Yorubans (West Africa) and to many of 

 our fetichists, are not an irregular action and 

 partial activity of the brain, but so many revela- 

 tions brought by the manes of the departed.' 

 So strong was the North American faith in dreams 

 that on one occasion, when an Indian dreamt he 

 was taken captive, he induced his friends to make 

 a mock attack on him, to bind him and treat him 

 as a captive, actually submitting to a considerable 

 amount of torture, in the hope thus to fulfil his 

 dream. The Greenlanders also believe in the 

 reality of dreams, and think that at night they 

 go hunting, visiting, courting, and so on. It is 

 of course obvious that the body takes no part in 

 these nocturnal adventures, and hence it is natural 

 to conclude that they have a spirit which can 

 quit the body." 



The effect of the book was to enhance his 

 already very considerable reputation in the 

 scientific world. 



In the autumn of 1870 he had attended the 

 meeting of the British Association at Liverpool, 

 where he gave a lecture to the Working Men, 



