On the Survival of Savage Thought in Modern Civilization, Part I [pp. 566-568]

1869.] LITEBA TUBE, ScIENcL AND ART 567
proposed to change the point of view, and, taking for granted an early
rude condition of mankind, to explain some phenomena of our present
civilization as being traceable survivals from more primitive states of
culture.
Among the most important uses of the study of survival in civilization, is the light it throws on superstition. Three times out of four
superstition is a case of survival. When the Hindu Brahman, making
his sacrifice, has to forget his flint and steel, and go back to the simple
wooden fire-drill for making fire by friction, one Brahman pulling the
thong backward and forward, and another standing with tinder to
catch the sacred spark, he believes that he keeps up this time-honored
process in order to obtain pure and holy fire; but we see that it is a
rude old primitive art, long discarded in practical life, but retained for
ceremonial use: in a word, it is a survival.
Thus it is with superstition. Some old belief or custom belonging
to a low level of culture is carried on into the midst of a higher civilization which practically disowns it, and such relics of ancient thought
not only survive, but sometimes revive with wonderful vigor. Mediaeval
witchcraft is a typical instance; it was no new product of medievalism,
but a revival in principle, and mostly even in detail, from the crudest
savage sorcery, which had been carried along the course of civilization
till, finding in medieval life a congenial soil, it burst out afresh, and
grew apace, like the ill weed it was.
Witchcraft is all but dead among us, but there is going on at this
day a great revival of belief and philosophy from the same low stage
of culture to which belongs the witchcraft of the New Zealander or of
the Puritan of the Commonwealth. Some details of the ethnography
of spiritualism will serve to show that it is an example of savage
thought surviving in modern civilization.
The world-wide doctrine of spiritual beings has been described
before by the general name of Animism. Animism is the doctrine of
l11 men who believe in active spiritual beings; it is essentially the
antagonist of materialism, and in some form or other it is the religion
of mankind, from the rude savage of the Australian bush or the Brazilian forest, up to the most enlightened Christian. Now, Animism in
the lower civilization is not only a religion, but also a philosophy; it
has to furnish rational explanations of one phenomenon after another,
which we treat as belonging to biology or physics. If a man is alive
and moving, the animistic explanation is that his soul, a thin, ethereal,
not immaterial being in the man's likeness, is within him animating
him, just as one gets inside a coat and moves it. If the man sleeps
and dreams, then either the soul has gone out of him to see sights that
he will remember when he wakes, or it is lying quiet in his body, receiving visits from the spirits of other people, dead or alive-visits
which we call dreams. If the man, when fasting or sick, sees a vision,
this is a ghost or some other spirit; if he faints or falls into a fit, his
soul has gone out of him for a time, and must be recalled with mystic
ceremonies; if it returns, he recovers, but, if it stays away permanently,
then the man is dead. If the man takes a fever or goes mad, then it
is a spirit which is hovering about the patient, shaking and maltreat ing him, or it has got inside him, and is driving him, tearing him,
speaking and crying by his voice.
These details are only a few out of the great system of savage
animism, which accounts for what we call physical cause and effect as
produced by the immediate action of spiritual beings; but even these
are enough to show that it is far from being nonsense, that in fact it
is a highly rational theory for men in a low state of knowledge. It
is common to hear the religion of savages spoken of with contempt by
those who have never realized its meaning or its place in history, but
it is surely unjust to despise a religion which is abreast of the highest
intellectual level of the people it prevails among, and which is part
and parcel of their most advanced knowledge.
This early animistic doctrine is to a great degree superseded by
science, which sees in dreams and visions, not objective spiritual
visits, but subjective phenomena of the mind, and regards the afflicted
cataleptic now no longer as doctor, but as patient. Yet it survives
largely in popular belief, and has even from time to time come up
vigorously in revivals. One of these revivals is the great modern
Spiritualistic movement, a movement due to many men, but perhaps
especially, though indirectly, to the intensely animistic teachings of
one man, Emanuel Swedenborg. In comparing savage and barbaric
with modern spiritualism, it will be better to give typical cases rather
than to multiply details.
As the Australian native sorcerer or the Tartar shaman lies in
lethargy while his soul departs to the land of spirits, so it is usual in
modern spiritualistic narratives for persons to be in an insensible
state when their apparitions visit distant places, whence they bring
back information, and where they communicate with the living. The
Greenland angekok sees in his visions the souls of the dead; they are
pale and soft, and he who tries to seize them feels nothing, for they
have no flesh, nor bone, nor sinew. Among the Finns the professional
shaman can see the ghosts of the dead, but they are not visible to
common men except in dreams. Thus the apparitions of the dead are
seen by the modern spiritualist in vision or dream, as the case may be.
Swedenborg relates that for twenty-seven years he conversed with the
departed spirits of relatives and friends, or kings and princes, and wise
men; and he protests that these are not fictions of the imagination, as
many will believe, but really seen and heard in a state of complete
wakefulness. There may be some here who have visited the house of
a great living French novelist, and have seen the arm-chair where the
spirits of the dead sit and hold converse with him-there is a chain
fastened across the seat to keep out profane visitors.
When the soul is liberated at death, is a suitable moment for it to
appear to people in whom it takes an interest; and accordingly the
wraith or fetch, the apparition which announces death, occupies in
savage psychology the intermediate place between the outgoing soul
of the living and the ghost of the dead. The Karens say a man's la,
or spirit, appearing after death, may thus announce it; the Caribs
give the name of marangigoana to souls, which by their appearance
announce impending death; in Madagascar, the ambiroa, or apparition
which announces death, appears not only to others but even to the
dying man himself. Thence we trace on the belief into the lives of
the saints, as where, when St. Ambrose died, newly-baptized children
saw the apparition of the holy bishop, and pointed him out to their
parents; but their grosser eyes could not behold him. Folk-lore
kept up the wraith in Europe as part of the well-known Highland
second-sight. Fifty years ago, Macculloch, in his "Description of
the Western Islands," declared the old superstition to be dying out;
"ceasing to be believed, it has ceased to exist." But, if he had lived
now, he would have to finish his sentence, "coming to be believed
again, it has again begun to exist." Stories of wraiths are among the
most habitual phenomena of the " night side of Nature." The mass of
apparition stories in spiritualistic books are of types so familiar that
it is needless to quote examples from them.
Among savage animists it is to be observed that there always
arises a class of professional conjurors, who live in special intercourse
with the spirits and perform wonders by their aid. One of the old
Moravian missionaries, a century ago, gives an account of the way in
which the Greenland sorcerers used to go on their spirit journey to the
other world. When the angekok has drummed and writhed about for
a while, he is bound by one of his pupils, his head between his legs,
and his hands behind his back. The lamps are put out and the
windows darkened, for no one must see him hold intercourse with his
spirit; no one must move or even scratch his head, that the spirit may
not be interfered with; or rather, as the old missionary says, that no
one may catch the sorcerer at his trickery, and there is no going up
to heaven in broad daylight. At last, after strange noises have been
heard, and a visit received from or paid to the spirit, the magician
reappears unbound, but pale and excited, and gives an account of his
adventures. The Ojibway conjurors also do this untying trick; and
across in Siberia the shamans practice the same coarse juggle. The
shaman sits down and is bound hand and foot, the shutters are shut,
and he invokes the spirits; all at once there arises a ghostly horror
in the dark-voices are heard in different parts, and a rattling and
drumming on the dry skin the shaman sits on; bears growl, snakes hiss,
squirrels leap about the room. At last it is over, and behold, in
walks the shaman free and unbound from outside. No one doubts,
says Castren, that it was the spirits who were drumming, growling,
and hissing in the yurt, and who released the shaman from his bonds.
The unbinding trick is not unknown in English folk-lore, and it is
needless to point out the similarity in the exhibition of the Davenport
Brothers.
Savage animism flourishes in Central Asia, where the lamas
have long been great practitioners in the now familiar art of table moving. To quote only one instance: John Bell, of Antermony,
one hundred and fifty years ago, describes the process of finding a
thief who had stolen some damask. The lama got on a four-legged
bench, "and soon carried it, or, as was commonly believed, it carried
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