It is the belief, and perhaps the hope, of not a few men of light and learning that a comparison of the results of the S.P.R. investigations with those of anthropology touching the beliefs and superstitions of savages and ruder races, may point to an order of facts which, with reference to the admissions of existing science, are rightly called supernormal, and yet which are in another sense strictly normal, namely, with reference to that science of experimental psychology which, amid the usual storm of ridicule and jealousy, is slowly struggling into existence—ridicule from all devout slaves of the intellectual fashion of the times; jealousy from the neighbour sciences of mental physiology and neurology, which it declares bankrupt in the face of newly-discovered liabilities.
So far this gathered evidence seems, in the eyes of some of its interpreters, to point to a close connection, if not of being, at least of influence, between soul and soul, such as binds each atom of matter to every other; a connection which increases as we descend from the above-ground level of full consciousness, through ever lower strata of subconsciousness, to those hidden depths of unconscious operation from which the most unintelligibly intelligent effects of the soul proceed—as though, in the darkness, it were taught by God, and guided blindfold by the hand of its Maker. In other words, the individuation of souls is conceived to be somewhat like that of the separate branches of the same tree which, traced downwards, run into a common root, from whence they are differenced by every hour of their growth, yet not disconnected, as though each several consciousness sprang from some unconscious psychic basis common to all, wherein, like forgotten memories, the experiences of all are buried, at a depth far beyond the reach of all normal powers of reminiscence, yet through which terminus of converging souls thoughts can, in our intenser moments, pass from mind to mind,—reverberated as it were from the base, and thence caught by the one consciousness altogether resonant to that particular vibration. How far such an interpretation may favour pantheism, or imperil personality, or involve a doctrine of "pre-existence," or of innate ideas, is not for us here to discuss. If we are to judge it fairly, it must be simply as a provisional working-hypothesis explanatory of certain observations, and apart from all other psychological theories with which it may seem in conflict. Truth will in the end adjust itself with truth, but nothing is to be hoped from forced and premature adjustments.
Mr. Lang's second and principal contention is that even if we allow the animistic account of the belief in spirits, in no sense can we admit that process by which belief in God is supposed to be a later development of the belief in spirits, as though inequality among spirits had given rise to aristocracy, and aristocracy to monarchy.
By God here we understand: "a primal eternal Being, author of all things, the father and the friend of man, the invisible omniscient guardian of morality," a definition which, while it fixes the high-water mark of monotheism, yet only states with formidable distinctness what, according to Mr. Lang, is found confusedly in the apprehension of the rudest savages. There are two senses in which we can understand an evolution of this idea of God; first, as Mr. Tylor understands it, in the sense of a development by accretion from a simple germ, from the idea of a phantasm nowise a god, to that of a spirit still lacking divinity, thence to that of a Supreme Spirit in whom first the essential definition of God is somewhat fulfilled. Secondly, it can be understood strictly as a mere unfolding of the contents of a confused apprehension; so that there is an advance only in point of coherence and distinctness. Thus understood, the entire religious history of the race, as also of the individual, viewed from its mental side, consists in an evolution of the idea of God and culminates in a face-to-face seeing of God.
From the evidence amassed, or perhaps rather, sampled, by Mr. Lang it would seem that, what we account the lowest races are in possession of a confused idea of God, whencesoever derived, which is in substantial agreement with the reflex conception contained in the above definition; and that there is no existing series of intellectual stages whereby this can be seen, as it were, in the act of growing out of previous simpler ideas. Evolution in the direction of greater clearness and distinctness is to be observed, as well as a downward process of obscuration and confusion: but for a substantial development of the idea of God from an idea of "not God" there is no proof forthcoming so far.
On the animistic hypothesis we should be prepared to find the notion of God, as above stated, to be of very late development and accepted only by races fairly advanced in culture. We should, à priori, deem it impossible to discover more among the lower savages than a rude religion of ghost-worship, without any consciousness of a moral Supreme Being, the father and friend of man. Whatever might seem to suggest the contrary, would be explainable by some infiltration of more civilized beliefs.
Armed with this hypothesis the eye is quick "to see that it brings with it the power of seeing," and to impose its own forms and schemata on the phenomena offered to its observation. The "animist" ill-acquainted with the savage's language and modes of thought; excluded from those inner "mysteries" which figure in nearly every savage religion; confounding the symbolism, the popular mythology, and also the corruptions, distortions, and abuses which are the parasites of all religion, with the religion itself, can easily come away with the impression that there is nothing but ghost-worship, priestcraft, and superstition, no conception whatever of a personal "Power that makes for Righteousness." If Protestants have almost as crude an idea of the religion of their Catholic fellow-Christians with whom they live side by side, and converse in the same language, if they are so absolutely dominated by their own form of religious thought, as to be as helpless as idiots in the presence of any other, can we expect that the ordinary British traveller, "brandishing his Bible and his bath," strong in the smug conviction of his mental, moral, and religious preeminence, will be a very sympathetic, conscientious, and reliable interpreter of the religion of the Zulu or the Andamanese?
The fact is that without a preliminary hypothesis he would see nothing at all except dire confusion. But an assumption such as that of "animism," has the selective power of a magnet, drawing to itself all congruous facts and little filings of probability, until it so bristles over with evidence that a hedge-hog is easier to handle.
But before discussing the relation of this assumption to existing facts and so bringing it to an à posteriori test, let us examine its à priori supports.
First of all, as Mr. Lang points out, it takes for granted that the savage can have no idea of the Creator until he conceive Him as a spirit. "God is a spirit," has been dinned into our ears from childhood; and hence we conclude that he who has no notion of a spirit can have no notion of God; and that the idea of God is of later growth than that of a ghost. In truth, he who ascribes to God a body does not know all about Him; but which of us knows all about God? The point is, not whether the savage can know the metaphysics of divinity, but whether he can conceive a primal eternal moral being, author of all things, man's father and judge—a conception which abstracts entirely from the question of matter and spirit. We ourselves, like the savage, necessarily speak of God and imagine Him humanwise,—although our instructed reason, at times, corrects the error of our fancy,—and perhaps only "at times,"—only when we leave the ground of spontaneous thought, to walk on metaphysical stilts—nor while that childish image remains uncorrected and we neither affirm nor deny to Him a body, can our notion be called false, however obscure it be and inadequate. If the savage has no notion of spirit, yet he may have, and often seems to have a very true, though of course infinitely imperfect, notion of God; nay, perhaps a truer notion than those who affirm, without any sense of using analogy, that God is a spirit. For if His spirituality is insisted on, it is rather to exclude from Him the grossness and limitation of matter, and to ascribe to Him a transcendental degree of whatever perfection our notion of spirit may involve, than to classify Him, or to predicate of Him that finite nature which we call a spirit. God is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless Being, no question of 'spirit' being raised;" so that the first intuition of the unsophisticated mind is found to be in more substantial agreement with the last results of reflex philosophical thought, than those early philosophizings which halt between the affirmation and denial of bodily attributes, unable to prescind from the difficulty and unable to solve it. The history of the Jews, nay, the history of our own mind proves to demonstration that the thought of God is a far easier thought and a far earlier, than that of a spirit. Our mind, oar heart, our conscience, affirm the former instinctively, while the latter does continual violence to our imagination, except so far as spirit is misconceived to be an attenuated phantasmal body. Not only, therefore, does the savage imagine God and speak of Him humanwise, as we all do; but if he does not actually believe Him to be material, he at least will be slow in mastering the thought of His spirituality.