I Feared It Most Behind The Head Of My Cot,
Because I Could Not See It If It Were So.
This, it will be said, is the description of a nightmare.
Exactly so. My agony of fright was a nightmare; but a
nightmare when every sense was strained with wakefulness,
when all the powers of imagination were concentrated to
paralyse my shattered reason.
The experience here spoken of is so common in some form or
other that we may well pause to consider it. What is the
meaning of this fear of ghosts? - how do we come by it? It
may be thought that its cradle is our own, that we are
purposely frightened in early childhood to keep us calm and
quiet. But I do not believe that nurses' stories would
excite dread of the unknown if the unknown were not already
known. The susceptibility to this particular terror is there
before the terror is created. A little reflection will
convince us that we must look far deeper for the solution of
a mystery inseparable from another, which is of the last
importance to all of us.
CHAPTER VI
THE belief in phantoms, ghosts, or spirits, has frequently
been discussed in connection with speculations on the origin
of religion. According to Mr. Spencer ('Principles of
Sociology') 'the first traceable conception of a supernatural
being is the conception of a ghost.' Even Fetichism is 'an
extension of the ghost theory.' The soul of the Fetich 'in
common with supernatural agents at large, is originally the
double of a dead man.' How do we get this notion - 'the
double of a dead man?' Through dreams. In the Old Testament
we are told: 'God came to' Abimelech, Laban, Solomon, and
others 'in a dream'; also that 'the angel of the Lord'
appeared to Joseph 'in a dream.' That is to say, these men
dreamed that God came to them. So the savage, who dreams of
his dead acquaintance, believes he has been visited by the
dead man's spirit. This belief in ghosts is confirmed, Mr.
Spencer argues, by other phenomena. The savage who faints
from the effect of a wound sustained in fight looks just like
the dead man beside him. The spirit of the wounded man
returns after a long or short period of absence: why should
the spirit of the other not do likewise? If reanimation
follows comatose states, why should it not follow death?
Insensibility is but an affair of time. All the modes of
preserving the dead, in the remotest ages, evince the belief
in casual separation of body and soul, and of their possible
reunion.
Take another theory. Comte tells us there is a primary
tendency in man 'to transfer the sense of his own nature, in
the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever.' Writing
in the same key, Schopenhauer calls man 'a metaphysical
animal.' He is speaking of the need man feels of a theory,
in regard to the riddle of existence, which forces itself
upon his notice; 'a need arising from the consciousness that
behind the physical in the world, there is a metaphysical
something permanent as the foundation of constant change.'
Though not here alluding to the ghost theory, this bears
indirectly on the conception, as I shall proceed to show.
We need not entangle ourselves in the vexed question of
innate ideas, nor inquire whether the principle of casuality
is, as Kant supposed, like space and time, a form of
intuition given A PRIORI. That every change has a cause must
necessarily (without being thus formulated) be one of the
initial beliefs of conscious beings far lower in the scale
than man, whether derived solely from experience or
otherwise. The reed that shakes is obviously shaken by the
wind. But the riddle of the wind also forces itself into
notice; and man explains this by transferring to the wind
'the sense of his own nature.' Thunderstorms, volcanic
disturbances, ocean waves, running streams, the motions of
the heavenly bodies, had to be accounted for as involving
change. And the natural - the primitive - explanation was by
reference to life, analogous, if not similar, to our own.
Here then, it seems to me, we have the true origin of the
belief in ghosts.
Take an illustration which supports this view. While sitting
in my garden the other day a puff of wind blew a lady's
parasol across the lawn. It rolled away close to a dog lying
quietly in the sun. The dog looked at it for a moment, but
seeing nothing to account for its movements, barked
nervously, put its tail between its legs, and ran away,
turning occasionally to watch and again bark, with every sign
of fear.
This was animism. The dog must have accounted for the
eccentric behaviour of the parasol by endowing it with an
uncanny spirit. The horse that shies at inanimate objects by
the roadside, and will sometimes dash itself against a tree
or a wall, is actuated by a similar superstition. Is there
any essential difference between this belief of the dog or
horse and the belief of primitive man? I maintain that an
intuitive animistic tendency (which Mr. Spencer repudiates),
and not dreams, lies at the root of all spiritualism. Would
Mr. Spencer have had us believe that the dog's fear of the
rolling parasol was a logical deduction from its canine
dreams? This would scarcely elucidate the problem. The dog
and the horse share apparently Schopenhauer's metaphysical
propensity with man.
The familiar aphorism of Statius: PRIMUS IN ORBE DEOS FECIT
TIMOR, points to the relation of animism first to the belief
in ghosts, thence to Polytheism, and ultimately to
Monotheism. I must apologise to those of the transcendental
school who, like Max Muller for instance (Introduction to the
'Science of Religion'), hold that we have 'a primitive
intuition of God'; which, after all, the professor derives,
like many others, from the 'yearning for something that
neither sense nor reason can supply'; and from the assumption
that 'there was in the heart of man from the very first a
feeling of incompleteness, of weakness, of dependency, &c.'
All this, I take it, is due to the aspirations of a much
later creature than the 'Pithecanthropus erectus,' to whom we
here refer.
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