MODERN EVOLUTION. 243 



west coast of Madagascar the people suddenly be- 

 came hostile. On the previous day the travellers, 

 not without difficulty, had photographed the royal 

 family, and now found themselves accused of taking 

 the souls of the natives with the object of selling 

 them when they returned to France. Denial was 

 of no avail; following the custom of the Malagasays, 

 they were compelled to catch the souls, which were 

 then put into a casket, and ordered by Dr. Catat 

 to return to their respective owners (Times, 24th 

 March, 1891). 



Although the difiference presented by such phe- 

 nomena and by death is that it is abiding, while they 

 are temporary, to the barbaric mind the difiference is 

 in degree, and not in kind. True, the " other self " 

 has left the body, and will never return to it; but it 

 exists, for it appears in dreams and hallucinations, 

 and therefore is believed to revisit its ancient haunts, 

 as well as to tarry often near the exposed or buried 

 body. The nebulous theories which identified the 

 soul with breath, and shadow, and reflection, slowly 

 condensed into theories of semi-substantiality still 

 charged with ethereal conceptions, resulting in the 

 curious amalgam which, in the minds of cultivated 

 persons, whenever they strive to envisage the idea, 

 represents the disembodied soul. 



Therefore, in vain may we seek for points of dif- 

 ference in our comparison of primitive ideas of the 

 origin and nature of the soul with the later ideas. 

 The copious literature to which these have given 



