received. They deserve special attention because, as Mr. Jevons[1] remarks, possession and ecstasy are the first manifestations of personal as opposed to tribal religion. The difficulty of investigation lies in the fact that spirits are shy creatures, and if, as I have been assured in India, they object to manifest themselves before a cow, a Brahman, and more particularly before an Englishman, the appearance of a psychologist on the prowl may be more than their nerves can stand. But if a physicist and a psychologist could attend a fire-walking seance and make a i&w simple experiments, we should soon learn the secret of manifestations which are still not capable of full explanation. Field-work of this kind will doubtless by and by lead us to a true ethno-psychology, and thus advance our views on the origin and transmission of folk usages and beliefs.
When we come to our relations with sociology, we find a general agreement that the principles of the social process are the controlling factors in the growth of belief and custom; and that, whether we investigate primitive culture by the light of history or by analogies drawn from contemporary savagery, we can attain clearer knowledge only by analysing each fact in the complex by its relation to evidence drawn from the social group under examination, or from types adjacent to it. It is now settled doctrine that folk-beliefs are influenced by the social, and this in its turn by the physical, environment; and that it is in beliefs of this kind that the communal life finds its clearest expression. This, of course, applies only to what have been called "spontaneous" beliefs, those which grow with the evolution of the group, or are devised to meet difficulties and secure benefits as the need arises, as opposed to the "historical," which owe their origin to the predominating, sometimes the magical, influence of some lawgiver or teacher, and therefore stand outside the field of our studies.
But the older sociologist was satisfied to devote his
- ↑ The Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 110.
