The belief in opening the Gates of Distance is, of course, very widely diffused.  The gift is attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, to Plotinus, to many Saints, to Catherine de’ Medici, to the Rev. Mr. Peden,[3] and to Jeanne d’Arc, while the faculty is the stock in trade of savage seers in all regions.[4]

The question, however, on which Mr. Tylor does not touch, is, Are any of the stories true? If so, of course they would confirm in the mind of the savage his theory of the wandering soul.  Now, to find anything like attested cases of successful clairvoyance among savages is a difficult task.  White men either scout the idea, or are afraid of seeming superstitious if they give examples, or, if they do give examples, are accused of having sunk to the degraded level of Zulus or Red Indians.  Even where travellers, like Scheffer, have told about their own experiences, the narratives are omitted by modern writers on savage divination.[5] We must therefore make our own researches, and it is to be noted that the stories of successful savage clairvoyance are given as illustrations merely, not as evidence to facts, for we cannot cross-examine the witnesses.

Mr. Tylor dismisses the topic in a manner rather cavalier: 

’Without discussing on their merits the accounts of what is called “second sight,"[6] it may be pointed out that they are related among savage tribes, as when Captain Jonathan Carver obtained from a Cree medicine-man a true prophecy of the arrival of a canoe with news next day at noon; or when Mr. J. Mason Brown, travelling with two voyageurs on the Copper Mine River, was met by Indians of the very band he was seeking, these having been sent by their medicine-man, who, on enquiry, stated that “he saw them coming, and heard them talk on their journey."’[7]

Now, in our opinion, the ‘merits’ of stories of second sight need discussion, because they may, if well attested, raise a presumption that the savage’s theory has a better foundation than Mr. Tylor supposes.  Oddly enough, though Mr. Tylor does not say so, Dr. Brinton (from whom he borrows his two anecdotes) is more or less of our opinion.

‘There are,’ says Dr. Brinton, ’statements supported by unquestionable testimony, which ought not to be passed over in silence, and yet I cannot but approach them with hesitation.  They are so revolting to the laws of exact science, so alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our lives.  Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put aside without serious consideration?’

That is exactly what we complain of; the alleged facts are ’put aside without serious consideration.’

We, at least, are not slaves to the idea that ‘the laws of exact science’ must be the only laws at work in the world.  Science, however exact, does not pretend to have discovered all ‘laws.’