If such an experience be in rerum natura, it will not, of course, justify the savage’s theory that the soul is a separable entity, capable of voyaging, and also capable of existing after the death of the body.  But it will give the savage a better excuse for his theory than normal experiences provide; and will even raise a presumption that reflection on mere ordinary experiences—­death, shadow, trance—­is not the sole origin of his theory.  For a savage so acute as Mr. Tylor’s hypothetical early reasoner might decline to believe that his own or a friend’s soul had been absent on an expedition, unless it brought back information not normally to be acquired.  However, we cannot reason, a priori, as to how far the logic of a savage might or might not go on occasion.

In any case, a scientific reasoner might be expected to ask:  ’Is this alleged acquisition of knowledge, not through the ordinary channels of sense, a thing in rerum natura?’ Because, if it is, we must obviously increase our list of the savage’s reasons for believing in a soul:  we must make his reasons include ‘psychical’ experiences, and there must be an X region to investigate.

These considerations did not fail to present themselves to Mr. Tylor.  But his manner of dealing with them is peculiar.  With his unequalled knowledge of the lower races, it was easy for him to examine travellers’ tales about savage seers who beheld distant events in vision, and to allow them what weight he thought proper, after discounting possibilities of falsehood and collusion.  He might then have examined modern narratives of similar performances among the civilised, which are abundant.  It is obvious and undeniable that if the supernormal acquisition of knowledge in trance is a vera causa, a real process, however rare, Mr. Tylor’s theory needs modifications; while the character of the savage’s reasoning becomes more creditable to the savage, and appears as better bottomed than we had been asked to suppose.  But Mr. Tylor does not examine this large body of evidence at all, or, at least, does not offer us the details of his examination.  He merely writes in this place: 

’A typical spiritualistic instance may be quoted from Jung-Stilling, who says that examples have come to his knowledge of sick persons who, longing to see absent friends, have fallen into a swoon, during which they have appeared to the distant objects of their affection.’[29]

Jung-Stilling (though he wrote before modern ‘Spiritualism’ came in) is not a very valid authority; there is plenty of better evidence than his, but Mr. Tylor passes it by, merely remarking that ’modern Europe has kept closely enough to the lines of early philosophy.’  Modern Europe has indeed done so, if it explains the supernormal acquisition of knowledge, or the hallucinatory appearance of a distant person to his friend by a theory of wandering ‘spirits.’  But facts do not cease to be facts because wrong interpretations