358 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Oct. 31, 1884. 



with her anger brewing for the event of his thinking better of the 

 :^ift ; but he bestows it on her as if he were abstracting his mind 

 from the sacrifice, and with many servile thanks she goes her way. 

 John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his lighthouse is shining 

 when Mr. Datchory returns alone towards it. As mariners on a 

 dangerous voyage, approaching an ironbound coast, may look along 

 the beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that 

 may never be reached, so Mr. Datchery's wistful gaze is dii-ected 

 to this beacon and beyond. 



I am unable to understand how any one can read thia 

 scene without feeling certain that Mr. Datchery is Edwin 

 Drood, that he has purposely recalled the scene of which 

 Drood alone knew anything, that he is moved when his own 

 old name is mentioned, and still more when the thought of 

 Rosa is brought before him. I feel for my own part as 

 certain of this as though Dickens had said as much in so 

 many words. What a detective would have had to do with 

 such ideas as trouble Datchery, or how they can be asso- 

 ciated with Bazzard's dull seltishness, or in fine with any 

 one except Drood himself, passes my comprehension. 



{To he continued.) 



DREAMS: 



THEIE PLACE IN THE GROWTH OF PRIMITIVE 

 BELIEFS. 



By Edward Clodd. 

 XI. 



IT would exceed the limits and purport of these papers 

 to follow the extension of the belief in spirits to its 

 extreme range ; in other words, to belief in controlling 

 spirits in inanimate objects, which were advanced pari 

 passu with man's advancing conceptions to place and rank 

 as the higher gods of polytheism. Such belief, as already 

 indicated, is the outcome of that primitive philosophy 

 which invests the elements above and the earth beneath 

 with departmental deities, until, through successive stages 

 of dualism, the idea of a Supreme Deity is reached, and 

 the approach is thus made towards a conception of the 

 unity and unvarying order of nature. 



The arbitrariness with which the gods are credited will 

 have reference when the part played by dreams as media 

 of communication between heaven and earth, and as warn- 

 ings of coming events, is dealt with. Now, the intervals 

 which have passed between the appearance of former 

 chapters make it desirable to fucus the conclusions which 

 thus far have been reached, and to ask whether the evidence 

 gathered together has justified them. 



It has been shown that races have existed, and exist 

 still, at so low a level that their scanty stock of words has 

 to be supplemented by gestures, rendering converse in the 

 dark next to impossible. Such people are bewildered by 

 any effort to count beyond their fingers ; they have no idea 

 of the relation of things, or of their differences ; they have 

 no power of generalisation by which to merge the acci- 

 dental in the essential. They believe that their names 

 and likenesses are integral parts of themselve.s, and that 

 they can be bewitched or harmed through them at the 

 hands of any one who knows the one or has obtained the 

 other. As an im|5ortant result of their confusion between 

 the objective and the subjective, we find a vivid and 

 remarkable belief in the reality of their dreams. The 

 events which make up these are explained only on the 

 theory that if the body did not move from its sleeping 

 place, something related to it did, and that the people, both 

 living and dead, who appeared in dream and virion did in 

 very presence come. The puzzle is solved by the theory of 



a second self which can leave the body and return to it. 

 For the savage knows nothing of mind. The belief in thia 

 other self is strengthened (possibly, more or less created) 

 by its appearance in shadow or reflection, in mocking 

 echo, in various diseases, especially fits, when the sufl'erer 

 is torn by an indwelling foe, and writhes as if in his 

 merciless grasp. The belief in such a ghost-soul, as to 

 the form and ethereal nature of which all kinds of 

 theories are started, is extended to animals and lifeless 

 things, since like evidence of its existence is supplied by 

 them. The fire that destroys his hut, the wind that blows 

 it down, the lightning that darts from the clouds and 

 strikes his fellow-man dead beside him, the rain-storm that 

 floods his fields, the swollen river that sweeps away bis 

 store of food — these and every other force manifest in nature 

 add their weight to the influences rude man has drawn. 

 The phenomena which have accounted for the vigour of life 

 and the prostration of disease account for the motion of 

 things in heaven above and the earth beneath, and the bar- 

 baric mind thus enlarges its belief in a twofold existence 

 in man to a far-reaching doctrine of spirits everywhere. 

 Step by step, from ghostrsoul flitting round the wigwam to 

 the great spirits indwelling in the powers of nature, the 

 belief in supernatural beings with physical qualities arises, 

 until the moral element comes in, and they appear as good 

 and evil gods contending for the mastery of the universe. 

 Passing by details as to the whereabouts of the other self 

 and its doings and destiny in the other world which the 

 dream involves, and following the order of ideas on scientific 

 lines, two queries arise : — 



1. Does the evidence before us suffice to warrant the 

 conclusions drawn from it as to the serious and permanent 

 part which dreams have played in the origin and growth of 

 primitive belief in spirits ; in short, of belief in super- 

 natural agencies from past to present times 1 In this place, 

 the answer is brief. 



If dreams, apparitions, shadows, and the like, are sufiicing 

 causes, then, in obedience to the Law of Parsimony (as it is 

 termed in logic), we need not invoke the play of higher 

 causes when lower causes are found competent to account 

 for the efiects. If it seems to some that the base is too 

 narrow, the foundation too weak for the superstructure, and 

 that our metaphysics and our beliefs regarding the invisible 

 rest upon something wider and stronger than the illusions 

 of a remote savage ancestry, the facts of man's history 

 may be adduced as witness to his continuous passage 

 into truth througli illusions ; to the vast revolutions 

 and readjustments made in his correction of the first 

 impressions of the senses. There is not a belief of 

 the past, from the notions of savages about their dreams 

 and ghost- world to those of more advanced races about their 

 spirit-realms and its occupants, to which this does not 

 apply. In the more delicate observations of the astronomer 

 he must, when estimating the position of any celestial 

 body, take into account its displacement through the 

 refractive properties of the atmosphere, and must also 

 allow for defects of perception in himself due to what is 

 called " personal equation." And in ascertaining our 

 place in the scale of being, as well as in seeking for the 

 grounds of belief concerning our own nature, we have to 

 take into account the refracting media of dense ignorance 

 and prejudice through which these beliefs have come, and 

 to allow for the confirming errors due to personal equation 

 — fond desire. 



2. Does the theory of evolution iu its application to the 

 development of the spiritual nature of man, and to the 

 origin and growth of ideas, find any breach of continuity ? 

 In its inclusion of him as a part of nature, in accounting 

 tor his derivation from prehuman ancestry by a process of 



