b INTRODUCTION. 



do appear to others, wlien the men and women themselves are 

 at a distance, and after they are dead. We call these appari- 

 tions dreams or phantasms, according as the person to whom 

 they appear is asleep or awake, and when we hear of their 

 occurrence in ordinary life, set them down as subjective pro- 

 cesses of the mind. We do not think that the phantom of the 

 dark Brazilian who used to haunt Spinoza was a real person ; 

 that the head which stood before a late distinguished English 

 peer, whenever he was out of health, was a material object ; that 

 the fiends Avhich torment the victim of delirium tremens, are 

 what and where they seem to him to be ; that any real occur- 

 rence corresponds to the dreams of the old men who tell us 

 they were flogged last night at school. It is only a part of 

 mankind, however> who thus disconnect dreams and visions 

 from the objects whose forms they bear. Among the less 

 civilized races, the separation of subjective and objective im- 

 pi'essions, which in this, as in several other matters, makes the 

 most important difference between the educated man and the 

 savage, is much less fully carried out. This is indeed true to 

 some extent among the higher nations, for no Greenlander or 

 Kafir ever mixed up his subjectivity Avith the evidence of his 

 senses into a more hopeless confusion than the modern spiritu- 

 alist. As the subject is only brought forward here as an illus- 

 tration, it is not necessary to go at length into its details. A 

 few picked examples will bring into view the two great theories 

 of dreams and visions, current among the lower races. One is, 

 that when a man is asleep or seeing visions, the figures which 

 appear to him come from their places and stand over against 

 him ; the other, that the soul of the dreamer or seer goes out 

 on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it 

 has seen. 



The Australians, says Sir George Grey, believe that the 

 nightmare is caused by an evil spirit. To get rid of it they 

 jump up, catch a lighted brand from the fire, and with various 

 muttered imprecations fling it in the direction where they think 

 the spirit is. He simply came for a light, and having got it, 

 he will go away.^ Others tell of the demon Koin, a creature 



' Grey, ' Journals ; ' London, 1841, vol. ii. p. 339. 



