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 Müller 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.
Probably spirits and ghosts were originally of an evil kind. Sir John
Lubbock (‘The Origin of Civilisation’) says: ‘The baying of the dog to
the moon is as much an act of worship as some ceremonies which have been
so described by travellers.’ I think he would admit that fear is the
origin of the worship. In his essay on ‘Superstition,’ Hume writes:
‘Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true
sources of superstition.’ Also ‘in such a state of mind, infinite
unknown evils are dreaded from unknown agents.’
Man’s impotence to resist the forces of nature, and their terrible
ability to injure him, would inspire a sense of terror; which in turn
would give rise to the twofold notion of omnipotence and malignity. The
savage of the present day lives in perpetual fear of evil spirits; and
the superstitious dread, which I and most others have suffered, is
inherited from our savage ancestry. How much further back we must seek
it may be left to the sage philosophers of the future.