The question in point is simply whether dreams, visions, and the like have been an original source of belief in ghosts or doubles. I see nothing in Durkheim's criticisms to invalidate Marett's assertion that it is "one amongst the few relative certainties which Anthropology can claim to have established in the way of theory."[1]
Subclass Ic.—I am ready to grant that the spontaneous personification of striking nature phenomena, such as thunder, fire, floods, cataracts, and heavenly bodies, by bestowing upon them either human or animal attributes, was a factor of less importance than dreams and visions. This mode of origin seems to have played an uncommonly important role among the old Aryans, who worshipped "the heavenly ones," "the shining ones," that is, the powers of the luminous heaven. More frequently, perhaps, the tendency to personify served to confirm beliefs in powerful invisible beings and to give to them new characteristics.
Conclusions as to the probability of this origin may be drawn from the behaviour of the child. Many a child barely able to speak forms the habit of ascribing human or animal nature to what is for the adult simply non-personal. He personifies not only because it is for him a natural form of explanation, but also because he finds an inexhaustible source of delight in the fictitious world he creates. Who can make the division between belief and pretence in this mythopoeic world? It was during his fourth year that C. began "to create fictitious persons and animals, and to surround himself by a world, unseen by others, but terribly real to himself."[2] In this connection one should keep in mind the fact of great individual differences. Some children live almost entirely in the real world, and many probably never confuse make-believe with reality. But there are also those who hold firmly to the reality of a world of their
- ↑ R. R. Marett, The Threshold of Religion, p. 9.
- ↑ J. Sully, op. cit. p. 453.
