Adg. 22, 1884.] 



♦ KNO\VLEDGE ♦ 



153 



DREAIIS: 



THEIR PLACE IN THE GEOWTH OF PEIMITIVE 

 BELIEFS. 



By Edward Clodd. 



VII. 



IN thus far illustrating the confusion inherent in the 

 barbaric mind between what is and what is not 

 external to itself, and the explanation which it conse- 

 quently gives of such simple matters as a man's name and 

 likeness, the explanation given of matters still dividing 

 philosophers into opposite camps has been hardly indi- 

 cated. The uniformity of this among the lower intelligence 

 in every zone and age might surprise us, and we should be 

 in bondage to the theory which explains it by assumption 

 of primal intuitions of the race, were we not rejoicing in 

 the freedom of the truth of the doctrine of the descent, or 

 ascent, of man from an ape-like ancestry, and the resulting 

 slow development of his psychical faculties, involving his 

 accounting for motion in things around by the like per- 

 sonal life and will of which he is conscious in himself, and 

 for his regarding the world of gi'eat and small alike as the 

 home and haunt of spirits. 



For the assumption underlying the savage explanation 

 of such things as dreams and diseases involves a larger 

 assumption — namely, that the spirit which acts thus 

 arbitrarily, playing this game of hide-and-seek, now, as it 

 were, caught up into Paradise, and now dodging its owner 

 and worrying its enemy on earth — is, to quote Mr. Spencer's 

 appropriate term, a man's otlier self. It is, at least, what 

 the scientists call a working hypothesis ; it is the only 

 possible explanation which the uncultivated mind can give 

 of what it has not the power to see is a subjective pheno- 

 menon. Odd and out-of-the-way events have happened to 

 the dreamer ; he has been to strange places and seen strange 

 doings, but waking up^ he knows that he is in the same 

 wigwam where he lay down to sleep, and can be convinced 

 by his squaw that he has not moved therefrom all night 

 Therefore it is the other self, this phantom-soul, which has 

 been away for a time, seeing and taking part in things both 

 new and old. We civilised folk, as Dr. Wendell Holmes re- 

 marks, not rarely find our personality doubled in our 

 dreams, and do battle with ourselves, unconscious that we 

 are our own antagonists. Dr. Johnson dreamed that he had 

 a contest with an opponent and got the worst of it ; of 

 course, he found the argument for both ! Tartini heard the 

 Devil play a wonderful sonata, and lay entranced by the 

 arch-fiend's execution. On waking, he seized his violin, 

 and although he could not reproduce the actual succession 

 of notes, he recovered sufficient impressions to compose his 

 celebrated " Devil's Sonata." Obviously the Devil was no 

 other than TartinL 



Thus the philosopher, to whom dreaming merely indicates 

 a certain amount of uncontrolled mental activity, may 

 satisfy himself; not thus can the savage, who cannot even 

 think that he thinks, and to whom the phenomena of 

 shadows, reflection, and echoes bring confirming evidence 

 of the existence of his mysterioiis double. What else than 

 a veritable entity can his shadow be to him ? Its intangi- 

 bility feeds his awe and wonder, and increases his bewilder- 

 ment ; its actions, ever corresponding with his own, make 

 it, even more than its outline, a part of himself, the loss of 

 which may be serious. Only when the light is withdrawn 

 or Intercepted does it cease to accompany, precede, or 

 follow him, and to lengthen, shorten, or distort itself; 

 whilst not he alone, but all things above and around, have 

 this phantom attendant. The Choctaws believed that each 

 man has an outside shadow, shilombisli, and an inside 



shadow, shihip, both of which survive his decease. Among 

 the Fijians a man's shadow is called the dark spirit, which 

 goes to the unseen world, while the other spirit, which is 

 his likeness reflected in water or a mirror, stays near 

 the place where he dies. The Basutos are careful, when 

 walking by a river, not to let their shadow fall on the 

 water, lest a crocodile seize it, and harm the owner. 

 Among the Algonquin Indians sickness is accounted 

 for by the patient's shadow being unsettled or detached 

 from the body ; the Zulus say that a corpse cannot 

 cast a shadow, and in the barbaric belief that its loss 

 is baleful, we have the germ of the mediaeval legends of 

 shadowless men and of tales of which Chamisso's story of 

 Peter Schlemihl is a type. The New England tribes called 

 the soul chemung, the shadow, and in the Quiche and 

 Eskimo langi-iages, as also in the several dialects of Costa 

 Pica, the same word expresses both ideas ; while civilised 

 speech indicates community of thought in the skia of the 

 Greeks, the manes or umbra of the Romans, and the shade 

 of our own tongue. Still more complete in the mimicry is 

 the reflection of the body in water or mirror, the image 

 repeating every gesture and adopting every colour, whilst 

 in the echoes which forest and hillside fling back, the savage 

 hears confirmation of his belief in the other self, as well as 

 in the nearness of the spirit of the dead. The Sonora 

 Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and 

 nooks of the cliffs, and that the echoes are their voices, and 

 in South Pacific myth echo is the first and parent fairy, 

 to whom at Marquesas divine honours are still paid as the 

 giver of food, and as she who " speaks to the worshippers 

 out of the rocks." In Greek myth she is punished by 

 Juno for divei-ting her attention whDst Jupiter flirts with 

 the nymphs, and at last, pining in grief at her unrequited 

 love for Narcissus, there remains nothing but her voice. 



But what, in primitive conception, is the more specific 

 nature of the other-self, and how does it make the passage 

 from within to without, and vice versa 1 Very early in 

 man's history he must have wondered at the difference 

 between a waking and a sleeping person, a living and a 

 dead one, and sought wherein this consisted. There lay 

 the body in the repose, more or less broken, of sleep, or in 

 the undisturbed repose of the unawakening sleep ; in the 

 latter case with nothing tangible or visible gone, but that 

 which was once "quick" and warm, which had spoken, 

 moved, smiled, or frowned but a little while before, and 

 which still came in dream or vision, was now cold and still. 



It should here be remarked, in passing, that many savage 

 races do not believe in death as a natural event, but regard 

 it as differing from sleep only in the length of time that the 

 spirit is absent from the body. Xo matter what anyone's 

 age may be, if his death is not caused by wounds, it is 

 attributed to magic, and the search for the sorcerer becomes 

 a family duty, like the vendetta for other injuries. And the 

 widespread myths which account for death have as their 

 underlying idea the infraction of some law or custom, for 

 which the offender pays the extreme penalty. And that 

 personification of it which pervades barbaric thought, 

 whilst undergoing many changes of form, yet retains its 

 hold in popular conception as well as in poetry. Pictured 

 as the messenger of Deity, the awful angel who sought the 

 rebellious and impious, or who, in mission of tenderness, 

 bore the soul to its home in the bosom of the Eternal, it 

 was transformed and degraded by the grotesque fancy of a 

 later time into a grim and dancing skeleton whetting his 

 sickle for ingathering of the young and fair to their doom, 

 or into the grinning skull and crossbones of Christian 

 head-stones. 



But to resume. Whilst shadows, reflections, and echoes, 

 one and all seemed to satisfy the uncivilised mind as to the 



