seem exceedingly materialistic and concrete, when a careful and critical examination of their psychology, far more critical than has ever been made, might reveal idealizations of terms and concepts that do not appear on the surface. That abstraction of concrete sense meaning is not apparent because of the low degree of intelligence shown generally and the necessity of remaining by the literal meaning of their terms, or the common use of them. It is the light of later knowledge and critical study that brings out what was probably there.

Let me take a few examples which will make the case clearer. Spencer and Tylor mention Bobadilla's examination of the Indians of Nicaragua, Tylor making the incident much clearer. Bobadilla asked: "Do those who go upwards live there as they do here, with the same body and head and the rest?" The reply was: "Only the heart goes there." Further questioning brought out the belief that there were two hearts in man, and “that the heart which goes is what makes them live." Among the Chancas of Peru the word for "soul" was also "heart."

Now for one not familiar with the habits of man's mind when using language the word "heart" would be taken in the natural sense of the language in which a translation made it a substitute for "soul," and civilization has specialized the term so that it means a physical organ. But it is noticeable here that when the savage had it intimated that there was something really or apparently contradictory in his belief he made the distinction of two hearts just as we should make the distinction between the two meanings of the same word. One "heart" was "spiritual," the other physical. The distinction here made by the savage was the same that the spiritualists make between the physical and the astral body, or that even modern physics now makes between matter and its ethereal supporter or "double.”

We are not concerned with the question whether the savage is right or not, either in his own sense or in any refined sense which science might admit as applicable in remote analogies. The primary point is to illustrate the habit of the human mind which makes it impossible always to take it in a literal and materialistic sense, even among savages where there is reason to believe that it is more usually literal than elsewhere. There can, perhaps, be no doubt that savages, like children, will believe easily enough what the more intelligent person cannot believe and hence there was often a greater literalness in primitive beliefs, or conduct that seemed to imply it, than in those of maturer civilizations. But what they have preserved is distinct traces of what may have been suggested and then their conceptions became distorted, as all ideas may do in the hands of savages. They are less literal than they seem, but more literal than efforts to give them an intelligible meaning would imply.

A few illustrations of the way savages get ideas of the future life will suffice and then a few of what it is like. This is no place to examine them exhaustively. I want to choose those illustrations which bring out indications of the same kind of phenomena of which even civilized races still show the traces in their language.

Spencer quotes Bobadilla's question and the Indian's answer to it. "When they are dying, something like the person called yulio, goes off their mouth, and goes there, where that man and woman stay, and there it stays like a person and does not die, and the body remains here." "Going where that man and woman stay" is the idea of a "haunted house." The reference to something coming "off the mouth" recalls the Latin anima and spiritus, both traceable to the idea of breath, the Greek pneuma meaning the same and also the Hebrew nephesh.

Now it is not probable that these ideas of the savages originated solely from observing the issuance of the breath from the mouth in cold weather, but that they had compared this with the appearance of ghosts and the clouds sometimes noticeable at the time of death rising from the body. Their general character is the same in appearance. And it matters not whether ghosts are mere hallucinations, because savages do not distinguish between reality and dreams or hallucinations. Even the civilized man, if insane, takes hallucinations for reality. So the Indian would have but to remark the appearance to make his philosophy. The reason for thinking that he has not been governed solely by watching the steamy breath issue from the body is that he says the yulio is "something like a person" and stays like a person, evidently having the idea of a ghost in both cases. One author quoted by Spencer remarks that the Greenlanders think there are two souls, one the shadow and the other the breath. Among the Tasmanians the general name for soul is shade, shadow, ghost or apparition. In the Aztec language the soul is called a wind and a shadow. Among the Mohawk Indians the word for soul means to breathe. In psychic experiences people often feel a cool breeze and interpret it as implying something spiritual.

The truth of Tylor's remark will be seen in the following summary by him covering the ideas of many separated types of people who have had no knowledge of each other. The conception of the soul as a "shadow" recalls the "astral body" of the theosophists, the "ethereal organism" of the Epicureans, and the "spiritual body" of St. Paul.

"To understand the popular conceptions of the human soul or spirit," says Tylor, "it is instructive to notice the words which have been found suitable to express it. The ghost or phantom seen by the dreamer

or the visionary is like a shadow, and thus the familiar term of the shade comes in to express the soul. Thus the Tasmanian word for the shadow is also that for the spirit; the Algonquin Indians describe a man's soul as otachuk, 'his shadow'; Quiché language uses natub for 'shadow, soul'; the Arawac ueja means 'shadow, soul, image'; the Abipones made the one word loákal serve for 'shadow, soul, echo, image.' The Zulus not only use the word tunzi for 'shadow spirit, ghost,' but they consider that at death the shadow of a man will in some way depart from the corpse, to become an ancestral spirit. The Basutos not only call the spirit remaining after death the sereti or 'shadow,' but they think that if a man walks on the river bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in the water and draw him in; while in Old Calabar there is found the same identification of the spirit with the ukpon or 'shadow,' for a man to lose which is fatal. There are thus found among the lower races not only the types of those familiar classic terms, the skia or umbra, but what also seems the fundamental thought of the stories of shadowless men still current in the folklore of Europe, and familiar to modern readers in Chamisso's tale of Peter Schlemihl."

"Skia" and "umbra" in the classical languages are no doubt carried over from more primitive times and so had no independent origin in their spiritual significance. But the universal tendency to conceive the soul as a form is apparent in all these instances, and if Kilner's experiments in the detection of the aura be finally verified, as they seem strongly supported, we should have experimental justification of the ideas of earlier people.

One wonders whether the Arawac word "ueja" above mentioned might have a remote connection without our "Ouija," denoting a means of communication with spirits, though the Century Dictionary refers it to

"Oui" and "Ja," French and German for "Yes." Phonetically "Ouija” and “ueja" are the same.

Tylor says: "Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for future use. These Indians could have well understood why at the death of an ancient Roman, the nearest kinsman leaned over to inhale the last breath of the departing (excipies hanc animam ore pio). Their state of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like a little white cloud."

In another connection, Tylor, speaking of the widespread theory among savages that the soul may leave the body, says: "The South Australians express it when they say of one insensible or unconscious, that he is 'wily amarraba,' i. e. ‘without a soul.' Among the Algonquin Indians of North America, we hear of sickness being accounted for by the patient's 'shadow' being unsettled or detached from the body, and of the convalescent being reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was safely settled down in him; where we should say that a man was ill and recovered, they would consider that he died, but came again. Another account from among the same race explains the condition of men lying in lethargy or trance; their souls have traveled forth to the banks of the River of Death, but have been driven back and return to re-animate their bodies.

"To the Negroes of North Guiana, derangement or dotage is caused by the patient being prematurely deserted by his soul, sleep being a more temporary withdrawal." Our "losing consciousness," when we think of the literal imagery of "losing" is not any more accurate than the language of these Indians. The only difference between the primitive man and ourselves is