164 



DISCOVERY 



ing with them new arts, new customs, and, donbtless, a 

 new rehgion. We ma\ be sure that the domestication of 

 animals was one of these, and it is in his imaginative 

 description of the process that Professor MacaUster stands 

 out as first and foremost a prehistorian who has had the 

 opportunity of living amongst primitive peoples and 

 profited by the experience. " The beginnings of the 

 domestication of animals," he says (p. 520), " were prohiably 

 quite simple and commonplace. To some extent I have 

 seen the process re-enacted for myself, when encamped 

 in the Judasan wilderness. Some wretched starving half- 

 jackal cur creeps stealthily up to the refuse heap and roots 

 for bones, watching warily the while for the expected 

 stone. The master of the encampment is, however, for 

 the moment in a good himiour. He has for once dined 

 well, and in a fit of idle joviality he throws, not a stone, 

 but another bone, to the visitor. The grateful beast, 

 which has sprung aside with an anticipatory velp, is taken 

 by surprise at the unexpected favour, and creeps a little 

 closer into the confidence of the encampment. At night, 

 some thief or enemy comes to surprise the camp, and the 

 dog rouses the sleepers in time to defend themselves. 

 Thus the use of a watch dog is discovered, and the animal 

 becomes permanently attached to the settlement. After 

 a time he begins to accompany the man who is now his 

 master on hunting expeditions, and there proves Iiimself 

 of further use." 



The book has two unfortunate lapses — the maps on 

 pp. 263 and 277, Many of the places are in the wrong 

 position and the rivers are very inaccurately drawn. 

 The Blackwater, for instance, is made a tributary of the 

 Wey, and the Kennet Basin is entirely wrong in nearly 

 every detail. The map on p. 277, where the Wylye is 

 miscalled the Nadder, is no better. These, however, are 

 matters which can easily be set right in a new edition. 



O. G. S. C. 



COMMUNICATION WITH SPIRITS 



The Survival of the Soul and its Evolution after Death. By 

 Pierre-Emile Cornillier. (Kegan Paul, Trench, 

 Trubner & Co., Ltd., los. 6d.) 



When w-e are presented with a phenomenon such as 

 communication with the dead, which is at variance with 

 our common experience, we tend to adopt towards it an 

 attitude of incredulity that has in it something of hostility 

 because, it might be supposed, the new idea is a challenge 

 to our faith in the " continuity of phenomena," and to 

 accept it would mean for us a new adaptation to reality. 



Such an attitude is probably instinctive, and would 

 seem to serve a useful purpose in stabilising society, since 

 it prevents the adoption of new ideas before their value 

 has been conclusively proved, but it has the disadvantage 

 of hampering criticism ; the new ideas are defended with 

 embittered and often indiscriminate zeal by their prophets, 

 and what is true may be obscured by a multiplicity of 

 fallacious " evidence." And to this particular question 

 of communication from the dead some special unconscious 

 resistance seems to be provoked, for primitive man every- 



where looks upon his dead as at least potentially hostile, 

 and the burial rites all the world over have a common 

 object in placating the spirits of the departed or prevent- 

 ing their return. No wonder, then, that attempts to 

 recall the dead have been proscribed as necromancy, or 

 as spiritualism have been opposed with mingled uneasiness 

 and derision, for something of the old primitive feeling still 

 survives. 



Much spiritualistic evidence has been exposed as fraud 

 and much is pathetically slender, built up by the recorder 

 to sustain a belief in the continued existence and happiness 

 of some lost friend or relative. But M. Cornillier's work 

 comes imder neither of these headings ; it would be an 

 impertinence to suspect the good faith of the author, and 

 his medium gained nothing from the seances, nor, for the 

 most part, were the " spirits " who appeared known to 

 anyone concerned. 



The medium was a girl of eighteen, an artist's model by 

 profession, and in a state of deep hypnosis induced by the 

 author she appeared to see and speak with a number of 

 spirits, chiefly with a venerable old man who dictated to 

 her an account of the life after death, confirming the 

 views held, we believe, by the theosophists ; and, if we 

 do not accept these views, at least they do not flagranth- 

 outrage our sense of inherent possibility. In addition to 

 exhibiting spiritualistic manifestations, the medium 

 appeared to visit and to be able to describe towns and 

 houses unknown to her and sometimes imperfectly known 

 to the author. The spirits spoke of many subjects, 

 including music and musical composition, with which the 

 medium in her waking state appeared to be completely 

 unacquainted, for her education was very limited and her 

 tastes and outlook of the simplest. 



If we do not uncritically accept an external, i.e. a 

 spiritistic, agency for these results, with its momentous 

 implications, we must seek to analyse them into terms of 

 the already known, which is the normal, if (as some critics 

 assert) the limited, method of scientific investigation. 

 If we rule out conscious fraud and telepathy, which, even 

 were it tenable, would prove in this case an inadequate 

 explanation, there seems to remain only the question of 

 whethsr we are dealing here with the expression of part 

 of the unconscious self of the medium that has become 

 dissociated from the rest of the personality, ^\'ithout 

 a detailed psychological examination of the medium such 

 an hypothesis can only be very tentatively advanced, but 

 we feel that we are perhaps justified in saying that the 

 specific grounds upon which the author rejects it are not 

 altogether adequate. He says that the medium "... 

 is not a hysterical subject. She is ... of clean constitu- 

 tion with no organic weakness." Yet it is not impossible 

 that the dissociation of personality, if it existed, might 

 have found its only obvious expression in the mediumistic 

 state and the occasional hallucinations and trance-like 

 conditions that seem to have occurred spontaneoush', nor 

 does the phenomenon of dissociation imply quite so deep 

 a stigma of functional disease, still less of organic, as the 

 author seems to suppose. Sir Thomas Browne wrote, 

 " I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and 

 galliardize of company ; yet in one dream I can compose 



