If early men were ever in a condition in which telepathy and clairvoyance (granting their possibility) were prevalent, one might expect that faculties so useful would be developed in the struggle for existence.  That they are deliberately cultivated by modern savages we know.  The Indian foster-mother of John Tanner used, when food was needed, to suggest herself into an hypnotic condition, so that she became clairvoyante as to the whereabouts of game.  Tanner, an English boy, caught early by the Indians, was sceptical, but came to practise the same art, not unsuccessfully, himself.[24] His reminiscences, which he dictated on his return to civilisation, were certainly not feigned in the interests of any theories.  But the most telepathic human stocks, it may be said, ought, ceteris paribus, to have been the most successful in the struggle for existence.  We may infer that the cetera were not paria, the clairvoyant state not being precisely the best for the practical business of life.  But really we know nothing of the psychical state of the earliest men.  They may have had experiences tending towards a belief in ‘spirits,’ of which we can tell nothing.  We are obliged to guess, in considerable ignorance of the actual conditions, and this historical ignorance inevitably besets all anthropological speculation about the origin of religion.

The knowledge of our nescience as to the psychical condition of our first thinking ancestors may suggest hesitation as to taking it for granted that early man was on our own or on the modern savage level in ‘psychical’ experience.  Even savage races, as Mr. Tylor justly says, attribute superior psychical knowledge to neighbouring tribes on a yet lower level of culture than themselves.  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.  We cannot be certain, a priori, that the earliest man knew no more of supernormal or apparently supernormal experiences than we commonly do, or that these did not influence his thoughts on animism.

It is an example of the chameleon-like changes of science (even of ‘science falsely so called’ if you please) that when he wrote his book, in 1871, Mr. Tylor could not possibly have anticipated this line of argument.

‘Psychical planes’ had not been invented; hypnotism, with its problems, had not been much noticed in England.  But ‘Spiritualism’ was flourishing.  Mr. Tylor did not ignore this revival of savage philosophy.  He saw very well that the end of the century was beholding the partial rehabilitation of beliefs which were scouted from 1660 to 1850.  Seventy years ago, as Mr. Tylor says, Dr. Macculloch, in his ’Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ wrote of ‘the famous Highland second sight’ that ’ceasing to be believed it has ceased to exist.’[25]