[111] Ibid., pp. 434-442.
[112] Of the negroes of southern Guinea, Tylor says that "their sleeping hours are characterized by almost as much intercourse with the dead as their waking are with the living" (Primitive Culture, I, p. 443). In regard to these peoples, the same author cites this remark of an observer: "All their dreams are construed into visits from the spirits of their deceased friends" (ibid., p. 443). This statement is certainly exaggerated; but it is one more proof of the frequency of mystic dreams among the primitives. The etymology which Strehlow proposes for the Arunta word altjirerama, which means "to dream," also tends to confirm this theory. This word is composed of altjira, which Strehlow translates by "god" and rama, which means "see." Thus a dream would be the moment when a man is in relations with sacred beings (Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme, I, p. 2).
[113] Andrew Lang, who also refuses to admit that the idea of the soul was suggested to men by their dream experiences, believes that he can derive it from other empirical data: these are the data of spiritualism (telepathy, distance-seeing, etc.). We do not consider it necessary to discuss the theory such as it has been exposed in his book The Making of Religion. It reposes upon the hypothesis that spiritualism is a fact of constant observation, and that distance-seeing is a real faculty of men, or at least of certain men, but it is well known how much this theory is scientifically contested. What is still more contestable is that the facts of spiritualism are apparent enough and of a sufficient frequency to have been able to serve as the basis for all the religious beliefs and practices which are connected with souls and spirits. The examination of these questions would carry us too far from what is the object of our study. It is still less necessary to engage ourselves in this examination, since the theory of Lang remains open to many of the objections which we shall address to that of Tylor in the paragraphs which follow.
[114] Jevons has made a similar remark. With Tylor, he admits that the idea of the soul comes from dreams, and that after it was created, men projected it into things. But, he adds, the fact that nature has been conceived as animated like men does not explain how it became the object of a cult. "The man who believes the bowing tree or the leaping flame to be a living thing like himself, does not therefore believe it to be a supernatural being—rather, so far as it is like himself, it, like himself, is not supernatural" (Introduction to the History of Religions, p. 55).
[115] See Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 506, and Nat. Tr., p. 512.
[116] This is the ritual and mythical theme which Frazer studies in his Golden Bough.
[117] The Melanesians, p. 119.
[118] Ibid., p. 125.
[119] There are sometimes, as it seems, even funeral offerings. (See Roth, Superstition, Magic and Medicine, in North Queensland Ethnog., Bulletin No. 5, § 69 c., and Burial Customs, in ibid., No. 10, in Records of the Australian Museum, Vol. VI, No. 5, p. 395). But these offerings are not periodical.
[120] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 538, 553, and Nor. Tr., pp. 463, 543, 547.