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ANNCAL ADDRESS. 



was gradually ebbing away, until at last it wholly left the body 

 at death. 



The other case is that of lunacy. It is still the fashion to 

 speak of a madman as being " beside himself," or " not himself," 

 or "out of his mind," or "out of his senses," and these 

 expressions are so many evidences of the conviction that he has 

 lost something which ought to be his, and which is indeed 

 himself, but has departed from him. This conviction accounts 

 equally for the respect and the contempt shown in different lands 

 and at different periods of history for lunatics or idiots. 



It is probable, too, that the contemplation of bodily or mental 

 disease, as implying the departure of the spirit which is in man, 

 from its corporeal dwelling place, would suggest the possibility 

 of the spirit quitting the body, if only for a brief space, under 

 certain conditions without any visible loss of physical or mental 

 power. Spiritual or, as they are now called, telepathic, appear- 

 ances were not unknown to primitive man. His wild fancy 

 would soon exaggerate and multiply them. And if such 

 appearances took place and were held to be not infrequent, it 

 would be agreeable to his rude fancy of the universe that they 

 should be ascribed to the temporary emancipation of the soul 

 from the body. 



There remains death, the most striking and solemn of human 

 phenomena.* It is not ditiicult to see how primitive man would 

 regard death. The comparison of death to sleep is an old 

 favourite poetical fancy. Homer's "Tiruo^ /caalyyrjro^; Odvaro^, 

 Virgil'sf " Consanguineus leti sopor," Shelley'sJ " Death and his 

 brother sleep," are all familiar illustrations of this fancy. But 

 a poetical metaphor is to primitive man a literal truth ; and as 

 in sleep, so too in death he would believe that the spirit, being 

 set free from the body, entered upon a new and independent 

 life. He would think of it as enjoying new experiences. He 

 would anticipate its return, and when he discovered that the 

 body, instead of being reanimated by the spirit, began to moulder 

 away, he would conclude that the spirit had finally abandoned it. 



* [li<id, xiv, p. 231. t ^neid, vi, p. 278. 



+ " Queen Mab," i. 



