Dec. 9, 1881.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



lo; 



AN ILLJJfelRATED 



MAGiZlNEorSmENCE 



PLAINmf ORJEJ -£XACTI%ESCRIB£D^^. 



LONDON: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Dreams. Bv 1>1« anl Clodd 107 



Intelligoncem .^niinals . 108 



Solids, Liquids, and Gases.— Part 



iV. By W. Mallieu Williama ... 109 

 Persppcliv,. Illusions. By H. J. 



Slack, F.O.S 110 



Reviews :-British Ferns Ill 



Hi<T,-;lvphital Insoriptions of tUe 

 < I'.ij Pyramids. By a Member of 

 < I. ietyof BiblicaHrchaiologv 111 

 i_ -iixDEXcB:— ToOur Reader's 



- Pi f,.ssor Clerk Maiirellandthe 

 Keversibililv of the Gramme Ma- 

 chine — Suudav Art Exhibition — 



PAGE. 



The PiTamid and Paradoxers^ 

 P>Tamid Mea-sures — Possible Daily 

 Variation of Pendulum Darwin's 

 Theory of ETolution— Problems 

 Geometricallv Insoluble — A Re- 

 markable Rainbow, &c 112 



The Southern Skies in Deccmbei^ 



{lUmtrated) 119 



Queries 1J2 



Replies lo Queries 12.3 



Our Mathematical Column 126 



Our Whist Column 126 



Our Ch<>ss Column 127 



Answers to Correspondents 12S 



DREAMS. 



By Edward Clodd. 



THE remarks which follow some questions concerning 

 the attitude of science towards dreams, asked in 

 KxowLEDnE of Nov. 25,* indicate how belief in their quasi- 

 supernatural character lurks in the minds of intelligent 

 persons who would resent being called superstitious. 



Certainly, the antiquity and persistence of that belief 

 are small matter of wonder when we reflect that the 

 phenomena of dreaming are precisely of a character to 

 sustain that feeling of mystery wliich man's surroundings 

 awaken within him ; but an inquirj- into its origin and 

 growth may best dispel it, while such an inquiry will add 

 its witness to that of tlie " great cloud of witnesses " 

 concerning the survival, often in least suspected form, of 

 i-ude priuuti\e philosophies among the elaborated beliefs of 

 civilised races. 



The youngest and most vigorous of the sciences, Anthro- 

 pology, has already made us familiar with the nature of a 

 vast body of evidence, uniform in character, unearthed 

 from old river-valleys, caverns, mounds, and tombs, wit- 

 nessing to the primitive savagery of man and his slow up- 

 rising therefrom ; but such evidence touches us only on the 

 intellectual side. Even should desired skeletons of veritable 

 men of mioceue times — still better, of the " missing " homo 

 simitts — turn up, we should yet be within the limits of 

 palseoutology and zoology. Such relies of our remote 

 ancestry would remain specimens onlj- — " a little less than 

 kin." It is not until the evidence from the Drift and from 

 surface remains (about which Knowledge may liereafter 

 tell its readers more in detail) gives place to that supplied 

 by immaterial reUcs — articidate speech, myths which were 

 for the time real, and sufficing explanations to him — that 

 man touches us as feUov;-vassi, as fhinAer,f striving to read 

 " the riddle of the painful earth," and to peer into the 

 mysteries of being. 



* " Qnery at," p. 80. 



t " Man, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have 

 the Sanskrit mann, originallv thinker, then man." — Max iluller's 

 Lcct. Lang. I., 437. 



Now, for the purpose of this inquiry, it is needful to 

 have understanding of the mental condition of races in low 

 stages of culture, and, generally, it may be said that the 

 modern savage is, as the primitive savage was, in a state of 

 " fog " concerning the nature and relation of what is in the 

 mind to what is outside it. In this he may perchance com- 

 mand the sympathy of the modern philosopher, there being 

 this important dill'orence between the two, that while the 

 philosopher speculates upon the nature of the connection 

 between his mind and the external world, and confesses 

 that " his knowledge of matter is restricted to 

 those feelings of which he assumes it to be the cause," 

 the savage has no capacity for such thought at all. He 

 has nothing in his slender stock of words corresponding 

 to the terms " objective " and " subjective ; " that stock has 

 no substantive verb " to be " — as, indeed, few of the lan- 

 guages of the world have ever had. He cannot distinguish 

 between an idea and an olyect, an illusion and a reality, a 

 substance and its image or shadow ; and under bodily 

 ailment, indigestion born of gorging, or delirium caused 

 by starving, gives shape and substance, a " local habitation 

 and a name," to "airy nothings," spectres of diseased or 

 morbid imagination. Misled by superficial resemblances, 

 he jumps at the most absurd conclusions ; ignorant of the 

 necessary relation between cause and etiect, he is " carried 

 about with every wind of " fancy ; nor has he the capacity, 

 which is the measure of intellectual growth, to strip the 

 special of its accidents, and sink it in the general. 



For example, he gives a difterent name to the tails of 

 various animals, but has no name for " tail " in general ; 

 he can speak of sunshine, candle, fire-flame, etc., but 

 " light " is an abstract term which he is unable to grasp. 

 Such is his confusion between a thing and its symbol, that 

 the name of a man is held to be an integral part of him- 

 self ; he shrinks from revealing his own, lest the man to 

 whom he imparts it injui'es him through it ; still more does 

 he recoil from naming the dead, or powers credited with 

 baleful influence. He dreads having his portrait taken, 

 feeling that some part of himself has gone Ln the process ; 

 the better the likeness, the more has " virtue gone out of 

 him." Catlin relates that he caused great commotion 

 among the Sioux by drawing one of their cliiefs in profile. 

 " Why was half his face left out ? " they asked ; " Mahtoo- 

 chega was never ashamed to look a white man in the face." 

 The chief liimself did not take offence, but Shonka, the 

 Dog, taunted him, saying, "The Englishman knows that 

 you are but half a man ; he has painted but one-half of 

 your face, and knows that the rest is good for nothing." 

 Which led to a quarrel, and in the end Mahtoochega was 

 shot, the bullet tearing away just that part of the face 

 which Catlin had not drawn. 



We may now more clearly understand how the savage 

 will interpret phenomena of a more complex order, and 

 why he can interpret these only in one way. The phantasies 

 which have flitted across the brain in coherent order or un- 

 related succession when complete sleep was lacking, leave 

 the traces of their passage on the memory, and they are 

 strong of head and heart, "true peptics who have no 

 system," as Carlyle says, whose awakened consciousness is 

 not afl'ected by the hai-monious or discordant, the painful or 

 pleasant, illusions which have composed their dreams. But 

 while for us they fill an empty moment in the telling, albeit 

 now and again causing "eerie " feelings, and quickening such 

 remains of superstition as slumber in the majority of us, 

 they are to the untrained intelligence of the savage as solid 

 as the experiences of his waking moments, true not only 

 " while they last," but for ever afterwards. And the 

 limits of his language only deepen the confusion withm 

 him when he tells what he has seen, and heard, and felt, and 



