ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



15 



New Zealand, hold that a man's soul can travel in dreams- 

 beyond the limits of the earth to the regions of the dead, and 

 can enter into conversation there with his departed kinsmen and 

 friends. 



The Fijians* hold that the spirit of a man, while he is still 

 alive, can quit his body during sleep to inflict trouble or 

 suffering upon his enemies. It is a reasonable supposition, as I 

 have already urged, that, if primitive man looked upon the 

 temporary departure of the spirit from the body as the theory 

 naturally accounting for the phenomena of sleep and dreams, he 

 would give the same account of such an event as a trance or a 

 swoon. For unconsciousness is a feature of one case as of the 

 other ; and the reason of unconsciousness, as he supposes, is 

 that the soul for the time being has left the body. And here 

 the testimony of travellers and explorers confirms the 

 supposition. 



According to Schurmann,t for example, the word for " soul or 

 spirit " in the Parukalla language is wilya. But the word for 

 " unconscious " is vnlya marraha, which means " without soul " 

 or " without spirit." Keatingij: relates that in the belief of the 

 Chippewa Indians, the soul, when it leaves the body, makes its 

 way to a stream which it must cross on the back of a large 

 snake. " Some souls come to the edge of the stream, but are 

 prevented from passing by the snake that threatens to devour 

 them ; these are the souls of persons in a lethargy or trance." 

 Williams§ is the authority for the extraordinary statement 

 that in Fiji " when anyone faints or dies, their spirit, it is said,, 

 may sometimes be brought back by calling after it ; and 

 occasionally the ludicrous scene is witnessed of a stout man 

 lying at full length and bawding out lustily for the return of 

 his own soul." Not less ample is the evidence for the 

 primitive view of physical or mental disease as caused l)y the 

 temporary departure of the soul from the body. 



T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, vol. i, cli. 7, p. 204. 



t Vocabulary of the Parukalla Language, pp. 72, 73. The Parukalla 

 language is described as " spoken by the natives inhabiting the western 

 shores of Spencers Gulf in South Australia.'"' 



\^ Expedition to the Soiirces of St. Peter's River, vol. ii, ch. 3, p. 154. 



v5 Fiji and the Fijians, ch. 7, p. 204. 



