22 NATURE STUDIES. 



untrained intelligence in different ages among different 

 races on corresponding levels of culture, and therefore 

 to the underlying unity of our race. This we shall 

 realise only as we realise that the laws of mind, liko 

 those of matter, are uniform, and approximately cal- 

 culable in their operation; the phenomena of one 

 interrelated and interdependent as are the phenomena 

 of the other, and equally the subjects of observation 

 and comparison, if not by identical methods, yet on 

 like principles. 



It would be an interesting and informing chapter- 

 in the history of the illusions through which man has 

 made continuous, and as yet unaccomplished, passage 

 to the truth, to show how belief in indwelling spirits, 

 of fitful habit and varying form, was enlarged to belief 

 in souls in the lower animals, in plants, and in lifeless 

 things, from stars to stones ; how the phantasms of 

 the brain have filled earth, sea, and sky with spirits 

 innumerable, from white-winged celestials to the 

 degraded ghosts of haunted houses. But this would 

 be an- undue extension of the subject, for the com- 

 pleteness of which some reference must be made to 

 the part played by dreams as supposed media of com- 

 munication between gods and men, and as monitions 

 of coming events. 



The awe and wonder excited in the savage mind by 

 waving trees and swirling waters, by drifting cloud, 

 whistling wind, and stately march of sun. and rnoon 

 all invested by him with personal life and will were 

 immensely quickened by his dreams. In their unre- 



