TRANSFORMATION 251 



a more elusive self, emerged and like the prior con- 

 ception of personality was applied not alone to human 

 beings but also to the lower animals trees rocks and 

 indeed to all external objects. But it must not be 

 supposed that the soul was conceived as immaterial. 

 Long ages elapsed before civilised thinkers arrived at 

 this ; and the difficulties of such a concept are so great 

 that even the highest religions, though paying lip- 

 service to it, fall back in their rites their legends their 

 promises and their threats on grosser and more 

 material implications. The distinction between spirit 

 and matter is unknown in the lower culture. The 

 African, whether Negro or Bantu, as Miss Kingsley 

 says, "does not believe in anything being soulless; 

 he regards even matter itself as a low form of soul, 

 because not lively ; " 1 in his mind, that is to say, the 

 confusion is complete. The same confusion appears 

 in the ideas of peoples the most widely sundered in 

 space and civilisation. To the savage as to our own 

 forefathers and to \hefolk of all civilised countries still 

 the idea of an incorporeal soul wanting every attribute 

 of physical existence, such as a more refined philosophy 

 demands, is incomprehensible. A man may not be 

 able to see the soul, he may not be able to handle it, 

 when it is united with the body that normally possesses 

 it. But this kernel, this inner self of friend or foe, 

 comes to him in dreams ; he beholds it in the snake or 

 the toad the insect or the dove that haunts the tomb 

 of one who was dear to him, or in the rose-bush or the 

 lily growing upon the grave ; or he fetches it back in 

 the shape of a white stone to his child who has 

 sickened from its absence and is like to die. Finally, 

 1 Kingsley, Studies, 199. 



