Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/33

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Presidential A ddress. 2 1

of purity. There is no evidence that the one preceded the other. There is evidence that there were in the savage mind a number of ideas which crystallised into beliefs and observances of various kinds and of different religious and ethical significance.

All that can be said to have been established, therefore, is that, side by side with the impressions from ghosts and from dreams, there has been a vague and evanescent idea of a maker. Its ethical value has been no greater than that of the other beliefs, and is due indeed to the necessity of finding a sanction for enforcing upon the young those obligations which are to be imposed upon them in the interests of the community. The impression produced upon the savage mind by the awful fact of death is likely to be more intense than that produced by speculations how the world was made. Those produced upon the mind by dreams are constant in their recurrence. As the late Rev. J. G. Campbell wrote in his delightful book on the Super- stitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland^ " Dreams have everywhere been laid hold of by superstition as indications of what is passing at a distance or what is to come, and considering the vast number of dreams there are it woifld be matter of surprise if a sufficient number did not prove so like some remote or subsequent event interesting to the dreamer as to keep the belief alive." Messrs. Vaschide and Pieron have recently laid before the Society of Anthropology of Paris a study of the prophetic dream in the beliefs and traditions of savage peoples. They say that the dream is one of the first phenomena to surprise and astonish the savage or the primitive man. He believes in its objectivity. He thinks it something distinct from the sleeping body by which it is experienced. He assumes from it the existence of a separate spirit, that wanders away and enjoys a higher form of being, superior to hunger and to fatigue. He thinks the vision has a purpose, useful for his future guidance. He establishes a faith in the prophetic