We have now finished our study of the less normal and usual phenomena, which gave rise to belief in separable, self-existing, conscious, and powerful souls.  We have shown that the supernormal factors which, when reflected on, probably supported this belief, are represented in civilised as well as in savage life, while as to their existence among the founders of religion we can historically know nothing at all.  If we may infer from certain considerations, the supernormal experiences were possibly more prevalent among the remote ancestors of known savage races than among their modern descendants.  We have suggested that clairvoyance, thought transference, and telepathy cannot be dismissed as mere fables, by a cautious inquirer, while even the far more obscure stories of ’physical manifestations’ are but poorly explained away by those who cannot explain them.[17] Again, these faculties have presented—­in the acquisition of otherwise unattainable knowledge, in coincidental hallucinations, and in other ways—­just the kind of facts on which the savage doctrine of souls might be based, or by which it might be buttressed.  Thus, while the actuality of the supernormal facts and faculties remains at least an open question, the prevalent theory of Materialism cannot be admitted as dogmatically certain in its present shape.  No more than any other theory, nay, less than some other theories, can it account for the psychical facts which, at the lowest, we may not honestly leave out of the reckoning.

We have therefore no more to say about the supernormal aspects of the origins of religion.  We are henceforth concerned with matters of verifiable belief and practice.  We have to ask whether, when once the doctrine of souls was conceived by early men, it took precisely the course of development usually indicated by anthropological science.

[Footnote 1:  Darwin, Journal, p. 458; Tylor, Prim.  Cult. ii. 152.  The spoon was not untouched.]

[Footnote 2:  Rowley, Universities’ Mission, p. 217.]

[Footnote 3:  Africana, vol. i. p. 161.]

[Footnote 4:  In the author’s Custom and Myth, ‘The Divining Rod.’]

[Footnote 5:  Codrington’s Melanesia, p. 210.]

[Footnote 6:  Op. cit. pp. 229-325.]

[Footnote 7:  Prim.  Cult. vol. i. p. 125.]

[Footnote 8:  Callaway, Amazulu, p. 330.]

[Footnote 9:  Callaway, Amazulu, p. 368.]

[Footnote 10:  The So-called Divining-Rod, S.P.R. 1897.]

[Footnote 11:  See especially The Waterford Experiments, p. 106.]

[Footnote 12:  Authorities and examples are collected in the author’s Cock Lane and Common Sense.]

[Footnote 13:  Proceedings, xii. 7, 8.]

[Footnote 14:  Personal Narrative, by M. Zoller.  Hanke, Zurich, 1863.]

[Footnote 15:  Daumer, Reich des Wundersamen, Regensburg, 1872, pp. 265, 266.]