It should be observed that I am not speaking of ‘spiritualism,’ a word of the worst associations, inextricably entangled with fraud, bad logic, and the blindest credulity.  Some of the phenomena alluded to have, however, been claimed as their own province by ‘spiritists,’ and need to be rescued from them.  Mr. Tylor writes: 

’The issue raised by the comparison of savage, barbaric, and civilised spiritualism is this:  Do the Red Indian medicine-man, the Tatar necromancer, the Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the possession of belief and knowledge of the highest truth and import, which, nevertheless, the great intellectual movement of the last two centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless?’

Distinguo! That does not seem to me to be the issue.  In my opinion the issue is:  ’Have the Red Indian, the Tatar, the Highland seer, and the Boston medium (the least reputable of the menagerie) observed, and reasoned wildly from, and counterfeited, and darkened with imposture, certain genuine by-products of human faculty, which do not prima facie deserve to be thrown aside?’

That, I venture to think, is the real issue.  That science may toss aside as worthless some valuable observations of savages is now universally admitted by people who know the facts.  Among these observations is the whole topic of Hypnotism, with the use of suggestion for healing purposes, and the phenomena, no longer denied, of ‘alternating personalities.’  For the truth of this statement we may appeal to one of the greatest of Continental anthropologists, Adolf Bastian.[2] The missionaries, like Livingstone, usually supposed that the savage seer’s declared ignorance—­ after his so-called fit of inspiration—­of what occurred in that state, was an imposture.  But nobody now doubts the similar oblivion of what has passed that sometimes follows the analogous hypnotic sleep.  Of a remarkable cure, which the school of the Salpetriere or Nancy would ascribe, with probable justice, to ‘suggestion,’ a savage example will be given later.

Savage hypnotism and ‘suggestion,’ among the Sioux and Arapahoe, has been thought worthy of a whole volume in the Reports of the Ethnological Bureau of the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, U.S., 1892-98).  Republican Governments publish scientific matter ‘regardless of expense,’ and the essential points might have been put more shortly.  They illustrate the fact that only certain persons can hypnotise others, and throw light on some peculiarities of rapport.[3] In brief, savages anticipated us in the modern science of experimental psychology, as is frankly acknowledged by the Society for Experimental Psychology of Berlin.  ’That many mystical phenomena are much more common and prominent among savages than among ourselves is familiar to everyone acquainted with the subject.  The ethnological side of our inquiry demands penetrative study.’[4]