THE belief in phantoms, ghosts, or spirits, has frequentlybeen discussed in connection with speculations on the originof religion. According to Mr. Spencer ('Principles ofSociology') 'the first traceable conception of a supernaturalbeing is the conception of a ghost.' Even Fetichism is 'anextension of the ghost theory.' The soul of the Fetich 'incommon with supernatural agents at large, is originally thedouble of a dead man.' How do we get this notion - 'thedouble of a dead man?' Through dreams. In the Old Testamentwe are told: 'God came to' Abimelech, Laban, Solomon, andothers 'in a dream'; also that 'the angel of the Lord'

　　appeared to Joseph 'in a dream.' That is to say, these mendreamed that God came to them. So the savage, who dreams ofhis dead acquaintance, believes he has been visited by thedead man's spirit. This belief in ghosts is confirmed, Mr.

　　Spencer argues, by other phenomena. The savage who faintsfrom the effect of a wound sustained in fight looks just likethe dead man beside him. The spirit of the wounded manreturns after a long or short period of absence: why shouldthe spirit of the other not do likewise? If reanimationfollows comatose states, why should it not follow death?

　　Insensibility is but an affair of time. All the modes ofpreserving the dead, in the remotest ages, evince the beliefin casual separation of body and soul, and of their possiblereunion.

　　Take another theory. Comte tells us there is a primarytendency in man 'to transfer the sense of his own nature, inthe radical explanation of all phenomena whatever.' Writingin the same key, Schopenhauer calls man 'a metaphysicalanimal.' He is speaking of the need man feels of a theory,in regard to the riddle of existence, which forces itselfupon his notice; 'a need arising from the consciousness thatbehind the physical in the world, there is a metaphysicalsomething permanent as the foundation of constant change.'

　　Though not here alluding to the ghost theory, this bearsindirectly on the conception, as I shall proceed to show.

　　We need not entangle ourselves in the vexed question ofinnate ideas, nor inquire whether the principle of casualityis, as Kant supposed, like space and time, a form ofintuition given A PRIORI. That every change has a cause mustnecessarily (without being thus formulated) be one of theinitial beliefs of conscious beings far lower in the scalethan man, whether derived solely from experience orotherwise. The reed that shakes is obviously shaken by thewind. But the riddle of the wind also forces itself intonotice; and man explains this by transferring to the wind'the sense of his own nature.' Thunderstorms, volcanicdisturbances, ocean waves, running streams, the motions ofthe heavenly bodies, had to be accounted for as involvingchange. And the natural - the primitive - explanation was byreference to life, analogous, if not similar, to our own.

　　Here then, it seems to me, we have the true origin of thebelief in ghosts.

　　Take an illustration which supports this view. While sittingin my garden the other day a puff of wind blew a lady'sparasol across the lawn. It rolled away close to a dog lyingquietly in the sun. The dog looked at it for a moment, butseeing nothing to account for its movements, barkednervously, put its tail between its legs, and ran away,turning occasionally to watch and again bark, with every signof fear.

　　This was animism. The dog must have accounted for theeccentric behaviour of the parasol by endowing it with anuncanny spirit. The horse that shies at inanimate objects bythe roadside, and will sometimes dash itself against a treeor a wall, is actuated by a similar superstition. Is thereany essential difference between this belief of the dog orhorse and the belief of primitive man? I maintain that anintuitive animistic tendency (which Mr. Spencer repudiates),and not dreams, lies at the root of all spiritualism. WouldMr. Spencer have had us believe that the dog's fear of therolling parasol was a logical deduction from its caninedreams? This would scarcely elucidate the problem. The dogand the horse share apparently Schopenhauer's metaphysicalpropensity with man.

　　The familiar aphorism of Statius: PRIMUS IN ORBE DEOS FECITTIMOR, points to the relation of animism first to the beliefin ghosts, thence to Polytheism, and ultimately toMonotheism. I must apologise to those of the transcendentalschool who, like Max Muller for instance (Introduction to the'Science of Religion'), hold that we have 'a primitiveintuition of God'; which, after all, the professor derives,like many others, from the 'yearning for something thatneither sense nor reason can supply'; and from the assumptionthat 'there was in the heart of man from the very first afeeling of incompleteness, of weakness, of dependency, &c.'

　　All this, I take it, is due to the aspirations of a muchlater creature than the 'Pithecanthropus erectus,' to whom wehere refer.

　　Probably spirits and ghosts were originally of an evil kind.

　　Sir John Lubbock ('The Origin of Civilisation') says: 'Thebaying of the dog to the moon is as much an act of worship assome ceremonies which have been so described by travellers.'

　　I think he would admit that fear is the origin of theworship. In his essay on 'Superstition,' Hume writes:

　　'Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are thetrue sources of superstition.' Also 'in such a state ofmind, infinite unknown evils are dreaded from unknownagents.'

　　Man's impotence to resist the forces of nature, and theirterrible ability to injure him, would inspire a sense ofterror; which in turn would give rise to the twofold notionof omnipotence and malignity. The savage of the present daylives in perpetual fear of evil spirits; and thesuperstitious dread, which I and most others have suffered,is inherited from our savage ancestry. How much further backwe must seek it may be left to the sage philosophers of thefuture.