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Our inference would be no more than that our eyes should be kept on such phenomena, if they are reported to recur. Mr. Such investigation, pursued by careful observation in a scientific spirit, would seem apt to throw light on some interesting psychological questions. Acting on Mr. Tylor's hint, Mr.
Now, if this suggestion of Professor Tylor's be correct, it will follow that as charms and spells are degraded survivals of prayer, so magic generally of which charms and spells are but one department is a degradation of religion.
Tylor's example, and collect savage beliefs about visions, hallucinations, 'clairvoyance, and the acquisition of knowledge apparently not attainable through the normal channels of sense. We may then compare these savage beliefs with attested records of similar experiences among living and educated civilised men.
Spencer supports by 'proofs that among various savages religious ideas do not exist. 'Sir John Lubbock has given many of these. But it would be well to advise the reader to consult Roskoff's confutation of Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Tylor's masterly statement. Mr. Spencer cited Sir Samuel Baker for savages without even 'a ray of superstition' or a trace of worship. Mr.
The Finn esteems the Lapp sorcerers above his own; the Lapp yields to the superior pretensions of the Samoyeds. There may be more ways than one of explaining this relative humility: there is Hegel's way and there is Mr. Tylor's way.
Accepting Professor Tylor's famous minimum definition of religion as "the belief in Spiritual Beings," it is safe to say that religious belief constitutes one of the largest facts in human history. No other single subject has occupied so large a share of man's conscious life, no other subject has absorbed so much of his energy.
It has been suggested that they are due to changes in the weather of such a slight character that, "our nerves are incapable of appreciating them, or the mercury of recording their accompanying oscillations." Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 1873, i. 130. See "English Folk-lore," pp. 42, 43. "Primitive Manners and Customs," p. 74. Dublin University Magazine, December 1873, p. 677.
The thing once conceived of, it is easy, on Mr. Tylor's theory, to account for all after the first.
Tylor's argument in favour of his evidence for institutions applies equally well to our evidence for mysterious 'facts'. 'How distant are the countries, he goes on, 'how wide apart are the dates, how different the creeds and characters in the catalogue of the facts of civilisation, needs no further showing' to the student of Mr. Tylor's erudite footnotes.
Tylor's hypothesis, help to originate the conception of 'spirits. We defended the nature of our evidence, as before anthropologists, by showing that, for the savage belief in the supernormal phenomena, we have exactly the kind of evidence on which all anthropological science reposes.
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