DREAMS. 19 



mare/' 1 when gaping, grinning spectre-monsters sit 

 upon the breast, stopping breath and paralysing motion, 

 which has helped to create the vast army of nocturnal 

 demons that fill the folk-lore of the world, and that 

 under infinite variety of hideousness have had lodg- 

 ment for centuries in the beliefs of higher races. 



What Schoolcraf t says of the Indian mind, that ' e a, 

 dream or a fact is alike patent to it," applies through- 

 out the whole range of the lower culture, a marked 

 and wide-spread form of the confusion being in the 

 belief that the soul leaves the body during sleep. 

 Among the Zulus, when dead relatives appear to a 

 man in his sleep, he concludes that their spirits still 

 live, and the savage notion, that a sleeper should not 

 be wakened, because of the possible absence of his 

 soul, finds some continuity in the belief of medieeval 

 times, that trance and catalepsy were proofs of the 

 temporary departure of the soul from the body. 

 Hence, as Mr. Fiske has remarked, " it was no easy 

 matter for a person accused of witchcraft to prove an 

 alibi ; for to any amount of evidence showing that the 

 body was innocently reposing at home and in bed, the 

 answer was obvious, that the soul may, nevertheless, 

 have been in attendance at the witches' Sabbath, or 

 busied in maiming a neighbour's cattle ! " 



Keeping in mind what has been said about savage 

 mental philosophy, it is not surprising that the infe- 

 rence drawn from the phenomena of dreams is belief 



1 i.e. Night spirit. A.S. mare, nymph. 

 C 2 



