Dr. Macculloch was mistaken in his facts.  ‘Second sight’ has never ceased to exist (or to be believed to exist), and it has recently been investigated in the ‘Journal’ of the Caledonian Medical Society.  Mr. Tylor himself says that it has been ’reinstated in a far larger range of society, and under far better circumstances of learning and prosperity.’  This fact he ascribes generally to ’a direct revival from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folklore,’ a revival brought about in great part by the writings of Swedenborg.  To-day things have altered.  The students now interested in this whole class of alleged supernormal phenomena are seldom believers in the philosophy of Spiritualism in the American sense of the word.[26]

Mr. Tylor, as we have seen, attributes the revival of interest in this obscure class of subjects to the influence of Swedenborg.  It is true, as has been shown, that Swedenborg attracted the attention of Kant.  But modern interest has chiefly been aroused and kept alive by the phenomena of hypnotism.  The interest is now, among educated students, really scientific.

Thus Mr. William James, Professor of Psychology in the University of Harvard, writes: 

’I was attracted to this subject (Psychical Research) some years ago by my love of fair play in Science.’[27]

Mr. Tylor is not incapable of appreciating this attitude.  Even the so-called ‘spirit manifestations,’ he says, ’should be discussed on their merits,’ and the investigation ’would seem apt to throw light on some most interesting psychological questions.’  Nothing can be more remote from the logic of Hume.

The ideas of Mr. Tylor on the causes of the origin of religion are now criticised, not from the point of view of spiritualism, but of experimental psychology.  We hold that very probably there exist human faculties of unknown scope; that these conceivably were more powerful and prevalent among our very remote ancestors who founded religion; that they may still exist in savage as in civilised races, and that they may have confirmed, if they did not originate, the doctrine of separable souls.  If they do exist, the circumstance is important, in view of the fact that modern ideas rest on a denial of their existence.

Mr. Tylor next examines the savage and other names for the ghost-soul, such as shadow (umbra), breath (spiritus), and he gives cases in which the shadow of a man is regarded as equivalent to his life.  Of course, the shadow in the sunlight does not resemble the phantasm in a dream.  The two, however, were combined and identified by early thinkers, while breath and heart were used as symbols of ’that in men which makes them live,’ a phrase found among the natives of Nicaragua in 1528.  The confessedly symbolical character of the phrase, ’it is not precisely the heart, but that in them which makes them live,’ proves that to the speaker life was not ‘heart’