204 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Death and dreams give pause to this original unity. Two real things 

 known to sense, the vapor of the breath, and the shadow-picture of 

 dreams, give rise to the idea of a soul. Psychic processes such as percep- 

 tion and feeling have nothing to do with this idea at first. Primitive 

 psychology does not even attempt to explain death and dreams, it is no 

 hypothesis or explanation but a belief about facts.. After death the 

 soul remains for a time in the body . This means that survivors cannot 

 at once dissociate the two; "even in our ashes live their wonted fires." 

 But with the decay of the body the soul leaves it in the body of the first 

 worm. Hence arise numerous superstitions about worms and snakes, 

 and much care of the corpse as among the Egyptians. Later the seat of 

 the soul is attributed to different organs of the body, and to the blood 

 and the saliva. This view leads to a sort of sundering of the functions 

 of the soul. The breath belief grows until the soul passes into other 

 animal bodies, especially such as move about quickly and are associated 

 with scenes of death; hence the beliefs in transmigration. The shadow 

 belief is supported by facts of delirium in fevers and ends in ideas of 

 ghosts and demons. Finally these spiritual powers become connected 

 by the mechanism of associative memory with natural objects and 

 forces, and lead to a crude and fantastic philosophy of nature in which 

 we discern the fountain of the great modern philosophies of natural 

 science. 



Natural science attempts to spread the great network of human 

 experience, and consequently whoever would seek for its origin in primi- 

 tive beliefs must seek for the beliefs of primitive peoples concerning the 

 law of causation. German metaphysicians have made much of the 

 universality and necessity of this law and have easily assumed that men 

 have always seen nature under some native conviction that she worked 

 in strict accordance therewith. But this assumption is far from the 

 truth. In the whole matter of perception for example the relation of 

 primitive man to objects of sense was na'ive and quite free from the idea 

 that such objects were the causes of experience. He simply experienced, 

 and in no way explained the experience as a phase of the causal nexus. 

 Then again the whole everyday, commonplace process of nature never 

 seemed to him to demand a causal explanation; its very regularity 



