For these sound reasons official science long looked askance on Anthropology. Her followers21 were not regarded as genuine scholars, and, perhaps as a result of this contempt, they were often ‘broken men,’ intellectual outlaws23, people of one wild idea. To the scientific mind, anthropologists or ethnologists were a horde25 who darkly muttered of serpent worship, phallus worship, Arkite doctrines27, and the Ten Lost Tribes that kept turning up in the most unexpected places. Anthropologists were said to gloat over dirty rites of dirty savages, and to seek reason where there was none. The exiled, the outcast, the pariah28 of Science, is, indeed, apt to find himself in odd company. Round the camp-fire of Psychical Research too, in the unofficial, unstaked waste of Science, hover30 odd, menacing figures of Esoteric Buddhists31, Satanistes, Occultists, Christian32 Scientists, Spiritualists, and Astrologers, as the Arkites and Lost Tribesmen haunted the cradle of anthropology.
But there was found at last to be reason in the thing, and method in the madness. Evolution was in it. The acceptance, after long ridicule33, of palaeolithic weapons as relics34 of human culture, probably helped to bring Anthropology within the sacred circle of permitted knowledge. Her topic was full of illustrations of the doctrine26 of Mr. Darwin. Modern writers on the theme had been anticipated by the less systematic35 students of the eighteenth century — Goguet, de Brosses, Millar, Fontenelle, Lafitau, Boulanger, or even Hume and Voltaire. As pioneers these writers answer to the early mesmerists and magnetists, Puységur, Amoretti, Ritter, Elliotson, Mayo, Gregory, in the history of Psychical Research. They were on the same track, in each case, as Lubbock, Tylor, Spencer, Bastian, and Frazer, or as Gurney, Richet, Myers, Janet, Dessoir, and Von Schrenck–Notzing. But the earlier students were less careful of method and evidence.
Evidence! that was the stumbling block of anthropology. We still hear, in the later works of Mr. Max Müller, the echo of the old complaints. Anything you please, Mr. Max Müller says, you may find among your useful savages, and (in regard to some anthropologists) his criticism is just. You have but to skim a few books of travel, pencil in hand, and pick out what suits your case. Suppose, as regards our present theme, your theory is that savages possess broken lights of the belief in a Supreme36 Being. You can find evidence for that. Or suppose you want to show that they have no religious ideas at all; you can find evidence for that also. Your testimony is often derived37 from observers ignorant of the language of the people whom they talk about, or who are themselves prejudiced by one or other theory or bias38. How can you pretend to raise a science on such foundations, especially as the savage informants wish to please or to mystify inquirers, or they answer at random39, or deliberately40 conceal41 their most sacred institutions, or have never paid any attention to the subject?
To all these perfectly42 natural objections Mr. Tylor has replied.1 Evidence must be collected, sifted43, tested, as in any other branch of inquiry44. A writer, ‘of course, is bound to use his best judgment45 as to the trustworthiness of all authors he quotes, and, if possible, to obtain several accounts to certify46 each point in each locality.’ Mr. Tylor then adduces ‘the test of recurrence,’ of undesigned coincidence in testimony, as Millar had already argued in the last century.2 If a mediaeval Mahommedan in Tartary, a Jesuit in Brazil, a Wesleyan in Fiji, one may add a police magistrate48 in Australia, a Presbyterian in Central Africa, a trapper in Canada, agree in describing some analogous49 rite15 or myth in these diverse lands and ages, we cannot set down the coincidence to chance or fraud. ‘Now, the most important facts of ethnography are vouched50 for in this way.’
We may add that even when the ideas of savages are obscure, we can often detect them by analysis of the institutions in which they are expressed.3
Thus anthropological, like psychical or any other evidence, must be submitted to conscientious51 processes of testing and sifting52. Contradictory53 instances must be hunted for sedulously54. Nothing can be less scientific than to snatch up any traveller’s tale which makes for our theory, and to ignore evidence, perhaps earlier, or later, or better observed, which makes against it. Yet this, unfortunately, in certain instances (which will be adduced) has been the occasional error of Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer.4 Mr. Spencer opens his ‘Ecclesiastical Institutions’ by the remark that ‘the implication [from the reported absence of the ideas of belief in persons born deaf and dumb] is that the religious ideas of civilised men are not innate’ (who says they are?), and this implication Mr. Spencer supports by ‘proofs that among various savages religious ideas do not exist.’ ‘Sir John Lubbock has given many of these.’ But it would be well to advise the reader to consult Roskoff’s confutation of Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Tylor’s masterly statement.5 Mr. Spencer cited Sir Samuel Baker55 for savages without even ‘a ray of superstition’ or a trace of worship. Mr. Tylor, twelve years before Mr. Spencer wrote, had demolished56 Sir Samuel Baker’s assertion,6 as regards many tribes, and so shaken it as regards the Latukas, quoted by Mr. Spencer. The godless Dinkas have ‘a good deity57 and heaven-dwelling creator,’ carefully recorded years before Sir Samuel’s ‘rash denial.’ We show later that Mr. Spencer, relying on a single isolated59 sentence in Brough Smyth, omits all his essential information about the Australian Supreme Being; while Mr. Huxley — overlooking the copious60 and conclusive61 evidence as to their ethical62 religion — charges the Australians with having merely a non-moral belief in casual spirits. We have also to show that Mr. Huxley, under the dominance of his theory, and inadvertently, quotes a good authority as saying the precise reverse of what he really does say.
If the facts not fitting their theories are little observed by authorities so popular as Mr. Huxley and Mr. Spencer; if instantiae contradictoriae are ignored by them, or left vague; if these things are done in the green tree, we may easily imagine what shall be done in the dry. But we need not war with hasty vulgarisateurs and headlong theorists.
Enough has been said to show the position of anthropology as regards evidence, and to prove that, if he confines his observations to certain anthropologists, the censures64 of Mr. Max Müller are justified65. It is mainly for this reason that the arguments presently to follow are strung on the thread of Mr. Tylor’s truly learned and accurate book, ‘Primitive Culture.’
Though but recently crept forth66, vix aut ne vix quidem, from the chill shade of scientific disdain67, Anthropology adopts the airs of her elder sisters among the sciences, and is as severe as they to the Cinderella of the family, Psychical Research. She must murmur68 of her fairies among the cinders69 of the hearth70, while they go forth to the ball, and dance with provincial71 mayors at the festivities of the British Association. This is ungenerous, and unfortunate, as the records of anthropology are rich in unexamined materials of psychical research. I am unacquainted with any work devoted72 by an anthropologist24 of renown73 to the hypnotic and kindred practices of the lower races, except Herr Bastian’s very meagre tract74, ‘über psychische Beobachtungen bei Naturv?lkern.’7 We possess, none the less, a mass of scattered75 information on this topic, the savage side of psychical phenomena76, in works of travel, and in Mr. Tylor’s monumental ‘Primitive Culture.’ Mr. Tylor, however, as we shall see, regards it as a matter of indifference77, or, at least, as a matter beyond the scope of his essay, to decide whether the parallel supernormal phenomena believed in by savages, and said to recur47 in civilisation78, are facts of actual experience, or not.
Now, this question is not otiose79. Mr. Tylor, like other anthropologists, Mr. Huxley, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and their followers and popularisers, constructs on anthropological grounds, a theory of the Origin of Religion.
That origin anthropology explains as the result of early and fallacious reasonings on a number of biological and psychological phenomena, both normal and (as is alleged80 by savages) supernormal. These reasonings led to the belief in souls and spirits. Now, first, anthropology has taken for granted that the Supreme Deities81 of savages are envisaged82 by them as ‘spirits.’ This, paradoxical as the statement may appear, is just what does not seem to be proved, as we shall show. Next, if the supernormal phenomena (clairvoyance, thought-transference, phantasms of the dead, phantasms of the dying, and others) be real matters of experience, the inferences drawn83 from them by early savage philosophy may be, in some degree, erroneous. But the inferences drawn by materialists who reject the supernormal phenomena will also, perhaps, be, let us say, incomplete. Religion will have been, in part, developed out of facts, perhaps inconsistent with materialism84 in its present dogmatic form. To put it less trenchantly85, and perhaps more accurately86, the alleged facts ‘are not merely dramatically strange, they are not merely extraordinary and striking, but they are “odd” in the sense that they will not easily fit in with the views which physicists87 and men of science generally give us of the universe in which we live’ (Mr. A.J. Balfour, President’s Address, ‘Proceedings88,’ S.P.R. vol. x. p. 8, 1894).
As this is the case, it might seem to be the business of Anthropology, the Science of Man, to examine, among other things, the evidence for the actual existence of those alleged unusual and supernormal phenomena, belief in which is given as one of the origins of religion.
To make this examination, in the ethnographic field, is almost a new labour. As we shall see, anthropologists have not hitherto investigated such things as the ‘Fire-walk’ of savages, uninjured in the flames, like the Three Holy Children. The world-wide savage practice of divining by hallucinations induced through gazing into a smooth deep (crystal-gazing) has been studied, I think, by no anthropologist. The veracity89 of ‘messages’ uttered by savage seers when (as they suppose) ‘possessed’ or ‘inspired’ has not been criticised, and probably cannot be, for lack of detailed90 information. The ‘physical phenomena’ which answer among savages to the use of the ‘divining rod,’ and to ‘spiritist’ marvels91 in modern times, have only been glanced at. In short, all the savage parallels to the so-called ‘psychical phenomena’ now under discussion in England, America, Germany, Italy, and France, have escaped critical analysis and comparison with their civilised counterparts.
An exception among anthropologists is Mr. Tylor. He has not suppressed the existence of these barbaric parallels to our modern problems of this kind. But his interest in them practically ends when he has shown that the phenomena helped to originate the savage belief in ‘spirits,’ and when he has displayed the ‘survival’ of that belief in later culture. He does not ask ‘Are the phenomena real?’ he is concerned only with the savage philosophy of the phenomena and with its relics in modern spiritism and religion. My purpose is to do, by way only of ébauche, what neither anthropology nor psychical research nor psychology92 has done: to put the savage and modern phenomena side by side. Such evidence as we can give for the actuality of the modern experiences will, so far as it goes, raise a presumption93 that the savage beliefs, however erroneous, however darkened by fraud and fancy, repose94 on a basis of real observation of actual phenomena.
Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man — humani nihil a se alienum putat. These researches, therefore, are within the anthropological province, especially as they bear on the prevalent anthropological theory of the Origin of Religion. By ‘religion’ we mean, for the purpose of this argument, the belief in the existence of an Intelligence, or Intelligences not human, and not dependent on a material mechanism95 of brain and nerves, which may, or may not, powerfully control men’s fortunes and the nature of things. We also mean the additional belief that there is, in man, an element so far kindred to these Intelligences that it can transcend96 the knowledge obtained through the known bodily senses, and may possibly survive the death of the body. These two beliefs at present (though not necessarily in their origin) appear chiefly as the faith in God and in the Immortality97 of the Soul.
It is important, then, to trace, if possible, the origin of these two beliefs. If they arose in actual communion with Deity (as the first at least did, in the theory of the Hebrew Scriptures), or if they could be proved to arise in an unanalysable sensus numinis, or even in ‘a perception of the Infinite’ (Max Müller), religion would have a divine, or at least a necessary source. To the Theist, what is inevitable98 cannot but be divinely ordained99, therefore religion is divinely preordained, therefore, in essentials, though not in accidental details, religion is true. The atheist100, or non-theist, of course draws no such inferences.
But if religion, as now understood among men, be the latest evolutionary101 form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a blunder, and its present form only the result of progressive but unessential refinements102 on that blunder, the inference that religion is untrue — that nothing actual corresponds to its hypothesis — is very easily drawn. The inference is not, perhaps, logical, for all our science itself is the result of progressive refinements upon hypotheses originally erroneous, fashioned to explain facts misconceived. Yet our science is true, within its limits, though very far from being exhaustive of the truth. In the same way, it might be argued, our religion, even granting that it arose out of primitive fallacies and false hypotheses, may yet have been refined, as science has been, through a multitude of causes, into an approximate truth.
Frequently as I am compelled to differ from Mr. Spencer both as to facts and their interpretation103, I am happy to find that he has anticipated me here. Opponents will urge, he says, that ‘if the primitive belief’ (in ghosts) ‘was absolutely false, all derived beliefs from it must be absolutely false?’ Mr. Spencer replies: ‘A germ of truth was contained in the primitive conception — the truth, namely, that the power which manifests itself in consciousness is but a differently conditioned form of the power which manifests itself beyond consciousness.’ In fact, we find Mr. Spencer, like Faust as described by Marguerite, saying much the same thing as the priests, but not quite in the same way. Of course, I allow for a much larger ‘germ of truth’ in the origin of the ghost theory than Mr. Spencer does. But we can both say ‘the ultimate form of the religious consciousness is’ (will be?) ‘the final development of a consciousness which at the outset contained a germ of truth obscured by multitudinous errors.’8
‘One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.’
Coming at last to Mr. Tylor, we find that he begins by dismissing the idea that any known race of men is devoid104 of religious conceptions. He disproves, out of their own mouths, the allegations of several writers who have made this exploded assertion about ‘godless tribes.’ He says: ‘The thoughts and principles of modern Christianity are attached to intellectual clues which run back through far pre-Christian ages to the very origin of human civilisation, perhaps even of human existence.’9 So far we abound105 in Mr. Tylor’s sense. ‘As a minimum definition of religion’ he gives ‘the belief in spiritual beings,’ which appears ‘among all low races with whom we have attained106 to thoroughly107 intimate relations.’ The existence of this belief at present does not prove that no races were ever, at any time, destitute108 of all belief. But it prevents us from positing109 the existence of such creedless races, in any age, as a demonstrated fact. We have thus, in short, no opportunity of observing, historically, man’s development from blank unbelief into even the minimum or most rudimentary form of belief. We can only theorise and make more or less plausible110 conjectures111 as to the first rudiments112 of human faith in God and in spiritual beings. We find no race whose mind, as to faith, is a tabula rasa.
To the earliest faith Mr. Tylor gives the name of Animism, a term not wholly free from objection, though ‘Spiritualism’ is still less desirable, having been usurped113 by a form of modern superstitiousness114. This Animism, ‘in its full development, includes the belief in souls and in a future state, in controlling deities and subordinate spirits.’ In Mr. Tylor’s opinion, as in Mr. Huxley’s, Animism, in its lower (and earlier) forms, has scarcely any connection with ethics115. Its ‘spirits’ do not ‘make for righteousness.’ This is a side issue to be examined later, but we may provisionally observe, in passing, that the ethical ideas, such as they are, even of Australian blacks are reported to be inculcated at the religious mysteries (Bora) of the tribes, which were instituted by and are performed in honour of the gods of their native belief. But this topic must be reserved for our closing chapters.
Mr. Tylor, however, is chiefly concerned with Animism as ‘an ancient and world-wide philosophy, of which belief is the theory, and worship is the practice.’ Given Animism, then, or the belief in spiritual beings, as the earliest form and minimum of religious faith, what is the origin of Animism? It will be seen that, by Animism, Mr. Tylor does not mean the alleged early theory, implicitly116 if not explicitly117 and consciously held, that all things whatsoever118 are animated119 and are personalities120.10 Judging from the behaviour of little children, and from the myths of savages, early man may have half-consciously extended his own sense of personal and potent121 and animated existence to the whole of nature as known to him. Not only animals, but vegetables and inorganic122 objects, may have been looked on by him as persons, like what he felt himself to be. The child (perhaps merely because taught to do so) beats the naughty chair, and all objects are persons in early mythology123. But this feeling, rather than theory, may conceivably have existed among early men, before they developed the hypothesis of ‘spirits,’ ‘ghosts,’ or souls. It is the origin of that hypothesis, ‘Animism,’ which Mr. Tylor investigates.
What, then, is the origin of Animism? It arose in the earliest traceable speculations124 on ‘two groups of biological problems:
(1) ‘What is it that makes the difference between a living body and a dead one; what causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death?’
(2) ‘What are those human shapes which appear in dreams and visions?’11
Here it should be noted126 that Mr. Tylor most properly takes a distinction between sleeping ‘dreams’ and waking ‘visions,’ or ‘clear vision.’ The distinction is made even by the blacks of Australia. Thus one of the Kurnai announced that his Yambo, or soul, could ‘go out’ during sleep, and see the distant and the dead. But ‘while any one might be able to communicate with the ghosts, during sleep, it was only the wizards who were able to do so in waking hours.’ A wizard, in fact, is a person susceptible127 (or feigning128 to be susceptible) when awake to hallucinatory perceptions of phantasms of the dead. ‘Among the Kulin of Wimmera River a man became a wizard who, as a boy, had seen his mother’s ghost sitting at her grave.’12 These facts prove that a race of savages at the bottom of the scale of culture do take a formal distinction between normal dreams in sleep and waking hallucinations — a thing apt to be denied.
Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer offers the massive generalisation that savages do not possess a language enabling a man to say ‘I dreamed that I saw,’ instead of ‘I saw’ (‘Principles of Sociology,’ p. 150). This could only be proved by giving examples of such highly deficient129 languages, which Mr. Spencer does not do.13 In many savage speculations there occur ideas as subtly metaphysical as those of Hegel. Moreover, even the Australian languages have the verb ‘to see,’ and the substantive130 ‘sleep.’ Nothing, then, prevents a man from saying ‘I saw in sleep’ (insomnium, [Greek: enupnion]).
We have shown too, that the Australians take an essential distinction between waking hallucinations (ghosts seen by a man when awake) and the common hallucinations of slumber131. Anybody can have these; the man who sees ghosts when awake is marked out for a wizard.
At the same time the vividness of dreams among certain savages, as recorded in Mr. Im Thurn’s ‘Indians of Guiana,’ and the consequent confusion of dreaming and waking experiences, are certain facts. Wilson says the same of some negroes, and Mr. Spencer illustrates132 from the confusion of mind in dreamy children. They, we know, are much more addicted133 to somnambulism than grown-up people. I am unaware134 that spontaneous somnambulism among savages has been studied as it ought to be. I have demonstrated, however, that very low savages can and do draw an essential distinction between sleeping and waking hallucinations.
Again, the crystal-gazer, whose apparently135 telepathic crystal pictures are discussed later (chap. v.), was introduced to a crystal just because she had previously136 been known to be susceptible to waking and occasionally veracious137 hallucinations.
It was not only on the dreams of sleep, so easily forgotten as they are, that the savage pondered, in his early speculations about the life and the soul. He included in his materials the much more striking and memorable138 experiences of waking hours, as we and Mr. Tylor agree in holding.
Reflecting on these things, the earliest savage reasoners would decide: (1) that man has a ‘life’ (which leaves him temporarily in sleep, finally in death); (2) that man also possesses a ‘phantom139’ (which appears to other people in their visions and dreams). The savage philosopher would then ‘combine his information,’ like a celebrated140 writer on Chinese metaphysics. He would merely ‘combine the life and the phantom,’ as ‘manifestations of one and the same soul.’ The result would be ‘an apparitional141 soul,’ or ‘ghost-soul.’
This ghost-soul would be a highly accomplished142 creature, ‘a vapour, film, or shadow,’ yet conscious, capable of leaving the body, mostly invisible and impalpable, ‘yet also manifesting physical power,’ existing and appearing after the death of the body, able to act on the bodies of other men, beasts, and things.14
When the earliest reasoners, in an age and in mental conditions of which we know nothing historically, had evolved the hypothesis of this conscious, powerful, separable soul, capable of surviving the death of the body, it was not difficult for them to develop the rest of Religion, as Mr. Tylor thinks. A powerful ghost of a dead man might thrive till, its original owner being long forgotten, it became a God. Again (souls once given) it would not be a very difficult logical leap, perhaps, to conceive of souls, or spirits, that had never been human at all. It is, we may say, only le premier143 pas qui co?te, the step to the belief in a surviving separable soul. Nevertheless, when we remember that Mr. Tylor is theorising about savages in the dim background of human evolution, savages whom we know nothing of by experience, savages far behind Australians and Bushmen (who possess Gods), we must admit that he credits them with great ingenuity144, and strong powers of abstract reasoning. He may be right in his opinion. In the same way, just as primitive men were keen reasoners, so early bees, more clever than modern bees, may have evolved the system of hexagonal cells, and only an early fish of genius could first have hit on the plan, now hereditary145 of killing146 a fly by blowing water at it.
To this theory of metaphysical genius in very low savages I have no objection to offer. We shall find, later, astonishing examples of savage abstract speculation125, certainly not derived from missionary147 sources, because wholly out of the missionary’s line of duty and reflection.
As early beasts had genius, so the earliest reasoners appear to have been as logically gifted as the lowest savages now known to us, or even as some Biblical critics. By Mr. Tylor’s hypothesis, they first conceived the extremely abstract idea of Life, ‘that which makes the difference between a living body and a dead one.’15 This highly abstract conception must have been, however, the more difficult to early man, as, to him, all things, universally, are ‘animated.’16 Mr. Tylor illustrates this theory of early man by the little child’s idea that ‘chairs, sticks, and wooden horses are actuated by the same sort of personal will as nurses and children and kittens. . . . In such matters the savage mind well represents the childish stage.’17
Now, nothing can be more certain than that, if children think sticks are animated, they don’t think so because they have heard, or discovered, that they possess souls, and then transfer souls to sticks. We may doubt, then, if primitive man came, in this way, by reasoning on souls, to suppose that all things, universally, were animated. But if he did think all things animated — a corpse148, to his mind, was just as much animated as anything else. Did he reason: ‘All things are animated. A corpse is not animated. Therefore a corpse is not a thing (within the meaning of my General Law)’?
How, again, did early man conceive of Life, before he identified Life (1) with ‘that which makes the difference between a living body and a dead one’ (a difference which, ex hypothesi, he did not draw, all things being animated to his mind) and (2) with ‘those human shapes which appear in dreams and visions’? ‘The ancient savage philosophers probably reached the obvious inference that every man had two things belonging to him, a life and a phantom.’ But everything was supposed to have ‘a life,’ as far as one makes out, before the idea of separable soul was developed, at least if savages arrived at the theory of universal animation150 as children are said to do.
We are dealing151 here quite conjecturally152 with facts beyond our experience.
In any case, early man excogitated (by the hypothesis) the abstract idea of Life, before he first ‘envisaged’ it in material terms as ‘breath,’ or ‘shadow.’ He next decided153 that mere63 breath or shadow was not only identical with the more abstract conception of Life, but could also take on forms as real and full-bodied as, to him, are the hallucinations of dream or waking vision. His reasoning appears to have proceeded from the more abstract (the idea of Life) to the more concrete, to the life first shadowy and vaporous, then clothed in the very aspect of the real man.
Mr. Tylor has thus (whether we follow his logic6 or not) provided man with a theory of active, intelligent, separable souls, which can survive the death of the body. At this theory early man arrived by speculations on the nature of life, and on the causes of phantasms of the dead or living beheld154 in ‘dreams and visions.’ But our author by no means leaves out of sight the effects of alleged supernormal phenomena believed in by savages, with their parallels in modern civilisation. These supernormal phenomena, whether real or illusory, are, he conceives, facts in that mass of experiences from which savages constructed their belief in separable, enduring, intelligent souls or ghosts, the foundation of religion.
While we are, perhaps owing to our own want of capacity, puzzled by what seem to be two kinds of early philosophy — (1) a sort of instinctive155 or unreasoned belief in universal animation, which Mr. Spencer calls ‘Animism’ and does not believe in, (2) the reasoned belief in separable and surviving souls of men (and in things), which Mr. Spencer believes in, and Mr. Tylor calls ‘Animism’ — we must also note another difficulty. Mr. Tylor may seem to be taking it for granted that the earliest, remote, unknown thinkers on life and the soul were existing on the same psychical plane as we ourselves, or, at least, as modern savages. Between modern savages and ourselves, in this regard, he takes certain differences, but takes none between modern savages and the remote founders156 of religion.
Thus Mr. Tylor observes:
‘The condition of the modern ghost-seer, whose imagination passes on such slight excitement into positive hallucination, is rather the rule than the exception among uncultured and intensely imaginative tribes, whose minds may be thrown off their balance by a touch, a word, a gesture, an unaccustomed noise.’18
I find evidence that low contemporary savages are not great ghost-seers, and, again, I cannot quite accept Mr. Tylor’s psychology of the ‘modern ghost-seer.’ Most such favoured persons whom I have known were steady, unimaginative, unexcitable people, with just one odd experience. Lord Tennyson, too, after sleeping in the bed of his recently lost father on purpose to see his ghost, decided that ghosts ‘are not seen by imaginative people.’
We now examine, at greater length, the psychical conditions in which, according to Mr. Tylor, contemporary savages differ from civilised men. Later we shall ask what may be said as to possible or presumable psychical differences between modern savages and the datelessly distant founders of the belief in souls. Mr. Tylor attributes to the lower races, and even to races high above their level, ‘morbid ecstasy157, brought on by meditation158, fasting, narcotics159, excitement, or disease.’ Now, we may still ‘meditate’ — and how far the result is ‘morbid’ is a matter for psychologists and pathologists to determine. Fasting we do not practise voluntarily, nor would we easily accept evidence from an Englishman as to the veracity of voluntary fasting visions, like those of Cotton Mather. The visions of disease we should set aside, as a rule, with those of ‘excitement,’ produced, for instance, by ‘devil-dances.’ Narcotic160 and alcoholic161 visions are not in question.19 For our purpose the induced trances of savages (in whatever way voluntarily brought on) are analogous to the modern induced hypnotic trance. Any supernormal acquisitions of knowledge in these induced conditions, among savages, would be on a par29 with similar alleged experiences of persons under hypnotism.
We do not differ from known savages in being able to bring on non-normal psychological conditions, but we produce these, as a rule, by other methods than theirs, and such experiments are not made on all of us, as they were on all Red Indian boys and girls in the ‘medicine-fast,’ at the age of puberty.
Further, in their normal state, known savages, or some of them, are more ‘suggestible’ than educated Europeans at least.20 They can be more easily hallucinated in their normal waking state by suggestion. Once more, their intervals162 of hunger, followed by gorges163 of food, and their lack of artificial light, combine to make savages more apt to see what is not there than are comfortable educated white men. But Mr. Tylor goes too far when he says ‘where the savage could see phantasms, the civilised man has come to amuse himself with fancies.’21 The civilised man, beyond all doubt, is capable of being enfantosmé.
In all that he says on this point, the point of psychical condition, Mr. Tylor is writing about known savages as they differ from ourselves. But the savages who ex hypothesi evolved the doctrine of souls lie beyond our ken22, far behind the modern savages, among whom we find belief not only in souls and ghosts, but in moral gods. About the psychical condition of the savages who worked out the theory of souls and founded religion we necessarily know nothing. If there be such experiences as clairvoyance, telepathy, and so on, these unknown ancestors of ours may (for all that we can tell) have been peculiarly open to them, and therefore peculiarly apt to believe in separable souls. In fact, when we write about these far-off founders of religion, we guess in the dark, or by the flickering165 light of analogy. The lower animals have faculties166 (as in their power of finding their way home through new unknown regions, and in the ants’ modes of acquiring and communicating knowledge to each other) which are mysteries to us. The terror of dogs in ‘haunted houses’ and of horses in passing ‘haunted’ scenes has often been reported, and is alluded168 to briefly169 by Mr. Tylor. Balaam’s ass4, and the dogs which crouched170 and whined171 before Athene, whom Eumaeus could not see, are ‘classical’ instances.
The weakness of the anthropological argument here is, we must repeat, that we know little more about the mental condition and experiences of the early thinkers who developed the doctrine of Souls than we know about the mental condition and experiences of the lower animals. And the more firmly a philosopher believes in the Darwinian hypothesis, the less, he must admit, can he suppose himself to know about the twilight172 ages, between the lower animal and the fully58 evolved man. What kind of creature was man when he first conceived the germs, or received the light, of Religion? All is guess-work here! We may just allude167 to Hegel’s theory that clairvoyance and hypnotic phenomena are produced in a kind of temporary atavism, or ‘throwing hack’ to a remotely ancient condition of the ‘sensitive soul’ (füklende Seele). The ‘sensitive’ [unconditioned, clairvoyant173] faculty174 or ‘soul’ is ‘a disease when it becomes a state of the self-conscious, educated, self-possessed human being of civilisation.’22 ‘Second sight,’ Hegel thinks, was a product of an earlier day and earlier mental condition than ours.
Approaching this almost untouched subject — the early psychical condition of man — not from the side of metaphysical speculations like Hegel, but with the instruments of modern psychology and physiology175, Dr. Max Dessoir, of Berlin, following, indeed, M. Taine, has arrived, as we saw, at somewhat similar conclusions. ‘This fully conscious life of the spirit,’ in which we moderns now live, ‘seems to rest upon a substratum of reflex action of a hallucinatory type.’ Our actual modern condition is not ‘fundamental,’ and ‘hallucination represents, at least in its nascent176 condition, the main trunk of our psychical existence.’23
Now, suppose that the remote and unknown ancestors of ours who first developed the doctrine of souls had not yet spread far from ‘the main trunk of our psychical existence,’ far from constant hallucination. In that case (at least, according to Dr. Dessoir’s theory) their psychical experiences would be such as we cannot estimate, yet cannot leave, as a possibility influencing religion, out of our calculations.
If early men were ever in a condition in which telepathy and clairvoyance (granting their possibility) were prevalent, one might expect that faculties so useful would be developed in the struggle for existence. That they are deliberately cultivated by modern savages we know. The Indian foster-mother of John Tanner used, when food was needed, to suggest herself into an hypnotic condition, so that she became clairvoyante as to the whereabouts of game. Tanner, an English boy, caught early by the Indians, was sceptical, but came to practise the same art, not unsuccessfully, himself.24 His reminiscences, which he dictated177 on his return to civilisation, were certainly not feigned178 in the interests of any theories. But the most telepathic human stocks, it may be said, ought, ceteris paribus, to have been the most successful in the struggle for existence. We may infer that the cetera were not paria, the clairvoyant state not being precisely179 the best for the practical business of life. But really we know nothing of the psychical state of the earliest men. They may have had experiences tending towards a belief in ‘spirits,’ of which we can tell nothing. We are obliged to guess, in considerable ignorance of the actual conditions, and this historical ignorance inevitably180 besets181 all anthropological speculation about the origin of religion.
The knowledge of our nescience as to the psychical condition of our first thinking ancestors may suggest hesitation182 as to taking it for granted that early man was on our own or on the modern savage level in ‘psychical’ experience. Even savage races, as Mr. Tylor justly says, attribute superior psychical knowledge to neighbouring tribes on a yet lower level of culture than themselves. The Finn esteems183 the Lapp sorcerers above his own; the Lapp yields to the superior pretensions184 of the Samoyeds. There may be more ways than one of explaining this relative humility185: there is Hegel’s way and there is Mr. Tylor’s way. We cannot be certain, a priori, that the earliest man knew no more of supernormal or apparently supernormal experiences than we commonly do, or that these did not influence his thoughts on animism.
It is an example of the chameleon-like changes of science (even of ‘science falsely so called’ if you please) that when he wrote his book, in 1871, Mr. Tylor could not possibly have anticipated this line of argument.
‘Psychical planes’ had not been invented; hypnotism, with its problems, had not been much noticed in England. But ‘Spiritualism’ was flourishing. Mr. Tylor did not ignore this revival186 of savage philosophy. He saw very well that the end of the century was beholding187 the partial rehabilitation188 of beliefs which were scouted189 from 1660 to 1850. Seventy years ago, as Mr. Tylor says, Dr. Macculloch, in his ‘Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ wrote of ‘the famous Highland190 second sight’ that ‘ceasing to be believed it has ceased to exist.’25
Dr. Macculloch was mistaken in his facts. ‘Second sight’ has never ceased to exist (or to be believed to exist), and it has recently been investigated in the ‘Journal’ of the Caledonian Medical Society. Mr. Tylor himself says that it has been ‘reinstated in a far larger range of society, and under far better circumstances of learning and prosperity.’ This fact he ascribes generally to ‘a direct revival from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folklore,’ a revival brought about in great part by the writings of Swedenborg. To-day things have altered. The students now interested in this whole class of alleged supernormal phenomena are seldom believers in the philosophy of Spiritualism in the American sense of the word.26
Mr. Tylor, as we have seen, attributes the revival of interest in this obscure class of subjects to the influence of Swedenborg. It is true, as has been shown, that Swedenborg attracted the attention of Kant. But modern interest has chiefly been aroused and kept alive by the phenomena of hypnotism. The interest is now, among educated students, really scientific.
Thus Mr. William James, Professor of Psychology in the University of Harvard, writes:
‘I was attracted to this subject (Psychical Research) some years ago by my love of fair play in Science.’27
Mr. Tylor is not incapable191 of appreciating this attitude. Even the so-called ‘spirit manifestations,’ he says, ‘should be discussed on their merits,’ and the investigation192 ‘would seem apt to throw light on some most interesting psychological questions.’ Nothing can be more remote from the logic of Hume.
The ideas of Mr. Tylor on the causes of the origin of religion are now criticised, not from the point of view of spiritualism, but of experimental psychology. We hold that very probably there exist human faculties of unknown scope; that these conceivably were more powerful and prevalent among our very remote ancestors who founded religion; that they may still exist in savage as in civilised races, and that they may have confirmed, if they did not originate, the doctrine of separable souls. If they do exist, the circumstance is important, in view of the fact that modern ideas rest on a denial of their existence.
Mr. Tylor next examines the savage and other names for the ghost-soul, such as shadow (umbra), breath (spiritus), and he gives cases in which the shadow of a man is regarded as equivalent to his life. Of course, the shadow in the sunlight does not resemble the phantasm in a dream. The two, however, were combined and identified by early thinkers, while breath and heart were used as symbols of ‘that in men which makes them live,’ a phrase found among the natives of Nicaragua in 1528. The confessedly symbolical193 character of the phrase, ‘it is not precisely the heart, but that in them which makes them live,’ proves that to the speaker life was not ‘heart’ or ‘breath,’ but that these terms were known to be material word-counters for the conception of life.28 Whether the earliest thinkers identified heart, breath, shadow, with life, or whether they consciously used words of material origin to denote an immaterial conception, of course we do not know. But the word in the latter case would react on the thought, till the Roman inhaled194 (as his life?) the last breath of his dying kinsman195, he well knowing that the Manes of the said kinsman were elsewhere, and not to be inhaled.
Subdivisions and distinctions were then recognised, as of the Egyptian Ka, the ‘double,’ the Karen kelah, or ‘personal life-phantom’ (wraith), on one side, and the Karen thah, ‘the responsible moral soul,’ on the other. The Roman umbra hovers196 about the grave, the manes go to Orcus, the spiritus seeks the stars.
We are next presented with a crowd of cases in which sickness or lethargy is ascribed by savages to the absence of the patient’s spirit, or of one of his spirits. This idea of migratory197 spirit is next used by savages to explain certain proceedings of the sorcerer, priest, or seer. His soul, or one of his souls is thought to go forth to distant places in quest of information, while the seer, perhaps, remains198 lethargic199. Probably, in the struggle for existence, he lost more by being lethargic than he gained by being clairvoyant!
Now, here we touch the first point in Mr. Tylor’s theory, where a critic may ask, Was this belief in the wandering abroad of the seer’s spirit a theory not only false in its form (as probably it is), but also wholly unbased on experiences which might raise a presumption in favour of the existence of phenomena really supernormal? By ‘supernormal’ experiences I here mean such as the acquisition by a human mind of knowledge which could not be obtained by it through the recognised channels of sensation. Say, for the sake of argument, that a person, savage or civilised, obtains in trance information about distant places or events, to him unknown, and, through channels of sense, unknowable. The savage will explain this by saying that the seer’s soul, shadow, or spirit, wandered out of the body to the distant scene. This is, at present, an unverified theory. But still, for the sake of argument, suppose that the seer did honestly obtain this information in trance, lethargy, or hypnotic sleep, or any other condition. If so, the modern savage (or his more gifted ancestors) would have other grounds for his theory of the wandering soul than any ground presented by normal occurrences, ordinary dreams, shadows, and so forth. Again, in human nature there would be (if such things occur) a potentiality of experiences other and stranger than materialism will admit as possible. It will (granting the facts) be impossible to aver200 that there is nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu. The soul will be not ce qu’un vain peuple pense under the new popular tradition, and the savage’s theory of the spirit will be, at least in part, based on other than normal and every-day facts. That condition in which the seer acquires information, not otherwise accessible, about events remote in space, is what the mesmerists of the mid-century called ‘travelling clairvoyance.’
If such an experience be in rerum natura, it will not, of course, justify201 the savage’s theory that the soul is a separable entity202, capable of voyaging, and also capable of existing after the death of the body. But it will give the savage a better excuse for his theory than normal experiences provide; and will even raise a presumption that reflection on mere ordinary experiences — death, shadow, trance — is not the sole origin of his theory. For a savage so acute as Mr. Tylor’s hypothetical early reasoner might decline to believe that his own or a friend’s soul had been absent on an expedition, unless it brought back information not normally to be acquired. However, we cannot reason, a priori, as to how far the logic of a savage might or might not go on occasion.
In any case, a scientific reasoner might be expected to ask: ‘Is this alleged acquisition of knowledge, not through the ordinary channels of sense, a thing in rerum natura?’ Because, if it is, we must obviously increase our list of the savage’s reasons for believing in a soul: we must make his reasons include ‘psychical’ experiences, and there must be an X region to investigate.
These considerations did not fail to present themselves to Mr. Tylor. But his manner of dealing with them is peculiar164. With his unequalled knowledge of the lower races, it was easy for him to examine travellers’ tales about savage seers who beheld distant events in vision, and to allow them what weight he thought proper, after discounting possibilities of falsehood and collusion. He might then have examined modern narratives203 of similar performances among the civilised, which are abundant. It is obvious and undeniable that if the supernormal acquisition of knowledge in trance is a vera causa, a real process, however rare, Mr. Tylor’s theory needs modifications204; while the character of the savage’s reasoning becomes more creditable to the savage, and appears as better bottomed than we had been asked to suppose. But Mr. Tylor does not examine this large body of evidence at all, or, at least, does not offer us the details of his examination. He merely writes in this place:
‘A typical spiritualistic instance may be quoted from Jung–Stilling, who says that examples have come to his knowledge of sick persons who, longing149 to see absent friends, have fallen into a swoon, during which they have appeared to the distant objects of their affection.’29
Jung–Stilling (though he wrote before modern ‘Spiritualism’ came in) is not a very valid205 authority; there is plenty of better evidence than his, but Mr. Tylor passes it by, merely remarking that ‘modern Europe has kept closely enough to the lines of early philosophy.’ Modern Europe has indeed done so, if it explains the supernormal acquisition of knowledge, or the hallucinatory appearance of a distant person to his friend by a theory of wandering ‘spirits.’ But facts do not cease to be facts because wrong interpretations206 have been put upon them by savages, by Jung–Stilling, or by anyone else. The real question is, Do such events occur among lower and higher races, beyond explanation by fraud and fortuitous coincidence? We gladly grant that the belief in Animism, when it takes the form of a theory of ‘wandering spirits,’ is probably untenable, as it is assuredly of savage origin. But we are not absolutely so sure that in this aspect the theory is not based on actual experiences, not of a normal and ordinary kind. If so, the savage philosophy and its supposed survivals in belief will appear in a new light. And we are inclined to hold that an examination of the mass of evidence to which Mr. Tylor offers here so slight an allusion207 will at least make it wise to suspend our judgment, not only as to the origins of the savage theory of spirits, but as to the materialistic208 hypothesis of the absence of a psychical element in man.
I may seem to have outrun already the limits of permissible209 hypothesis. It may appear absurd to surmise210 that there can exist in man, savage or civilised, a faculty for acquiring information not accessible by the known channels of sense, a faculty attributed by savage philosophers to the wandering soul. But one may be permitted to quote the opinion of M. Charles Richet, Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. It is not cited because M. Richet is a professor of physiology, but because he reached his conclusion after six years of minute experiment. He says: ‘There exists in certain persons, at certain moments, a faculty of acquiring knowledge which has no rapport211 with our normal faculties of that kind.’30
Instances tending to raise a presumption in favour of M. Richet’s idea may now be sought in savage and civilised life.
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1
anthropology
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| n.人类学 | |
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limbo
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| n.地狱的边缘；监狱 | |
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psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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anthropological
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| adj.人类学的 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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clairvoyance
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| n.超人的洞察力 | |
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fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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imposture
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| n.冒名顶替，欺骗 | |
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hampered
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| 妨碍，束缚，限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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rite
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| n.典礼，惯例，习俗 | |
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divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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outlaws
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| 歹徒，亡命之徒( outlaw的名词复数 )； 逃犯 | |
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anthropologist
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| n.人类学家，人类学者 | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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pariah
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| n.被社会抛弃者 | |
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par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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Buddhists
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| n.佛教徒( Buddhist的名词复数 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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certify
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| vt.证明，证实；发证书(或执照)给 | |
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recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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vouched
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| v.保证( vouch的过去式和过去分词 )；担保；确定；确定地说 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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sifting
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| n.筛，过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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sedulously
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| ad.孜孜不倦地 | |
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baker
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| n.面包师 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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censures
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| v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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cinders
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| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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otiose
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| adj.无效的，没有用的 | |
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80
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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81
deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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82
envisaged
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| 想像，设想( envisage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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84
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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85
trenchantly
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86
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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87
physicists
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| 物理学家( physicist的名词复数 ) | |
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88
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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89
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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90
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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91
marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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92
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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93
presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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94
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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95
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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96
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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97
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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98
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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99
ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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100
atheist
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| n.无神论者 | |
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101
evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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102
refinements
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| n.（生活）风雅；精炼( refinement的名词复数 )；改良品；细微的改良；优雅或高贵的动作 | |
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103
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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104
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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105
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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106
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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107
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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108
destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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109
positing
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| v.假定，设想，假设( posit的现在分词 ) | |
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110
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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111
conjectures
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| 推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 ) | |
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112
rudiments
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| n.基础知识，入门 | |
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113
usurped
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| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的过去式和过去分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
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114
superstitiousness
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| 被邪教所支配 | |
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115
ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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116
implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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117
explicitly
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| ad.明确地，显然地 | |
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118
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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119
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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120
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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121
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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122
inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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123
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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124
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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125
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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126
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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127
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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128
feigning
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| 假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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129
deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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130
substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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131
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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132
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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133
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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134
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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135
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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136
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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137
veracious
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| adj.诚实可靠的 | |
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138
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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139
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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140
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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141
apparitional
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142
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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143
premier
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| adj.首要的；n.总理，首相 | |
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144
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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145
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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146
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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147
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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148
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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149
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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150
animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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151
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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152
conjecturally
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|
| adj.推测的，好推测的 | |
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153
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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154
beheld
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|
| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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155
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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156
founders
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| n.创始人( founder的名词复数 ) | |
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157
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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158
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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159
narcotics
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| n.麻醉药( narcotic的名词复数 )；毒品；毒 | |
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160
narcotic
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| n.麻醉药，镇静剂；adj.麻醉的，催眠的 | |
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161
alcoholic
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| adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者 | |
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162
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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163
gorges
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|
| n.山峡，峡谷( gorge的名词复数 )；咽喉v.（用食物把自己）塞饱，填饱( gorge的第三人称单数 )；作呕 | |
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164
peculiar
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|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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165
flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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166
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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167
allude
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| v.提及，暗指 | |
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168
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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169
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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170
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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171
whined
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| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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172
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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173
clairvoyant
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| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
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174
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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175
physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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176
nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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177
dictated
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| v.大声讲或读( dictate的过去式和过去分词 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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178
feigned
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| a.假装的，不真诚的 | |
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179
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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180
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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181
besets
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| v.困扰( beset的第三人称单数 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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182
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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183
esteems
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| n.尊敬，好评( esteem的名词复数 )v.尊敬( esteem的第三人称单数 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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184
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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185
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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186
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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187
beholding
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| v.看，注视( behold的现在分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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188
rehabilitation
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| n.康复，悔过自新，修复，复兴，复职，复位 | |
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189
scouted
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| 寻找，侦察( scout的过去式和过去分词 )； 物色（优秀运动员、演员、音乐家等） | |
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190
highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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191
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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192
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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193
symbolical
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| a.象征性的 | |
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194
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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195
kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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196
hovers
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| 鸟( hover的第三人称单数 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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197
migratory
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| n.候鸟，迁移 | |
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198
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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199
lethargic
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| adj.昏睡的，懒洋洋的 | |
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200
aver
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| v.极力声明；断言；确证 | |
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201
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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202
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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203
narratives
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| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
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204
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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205
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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206
interpretations
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| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
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207
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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208
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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209
permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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210
surmise
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| v./n.猜想，推测 | |
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211
rapport
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| n.和睦，意见一致 | |
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