In the same way I mean to examine all or most of the ’so-called mystical phenomena of savage life.’  I then compare them with the better vouched for modern examples.  To return to the question of evidence, I confess that I do not see how the adverse anthropologist, psychologist, or popular agnostic is to evade the following dilemma:  To the anthropologist we say, ’The evidence we adduce is your own evidence, that of books of travel in all lands and countries.  If you may argue from it, so may we.  Some of it is evidence to unusual facts, more of it is evidence to singular beliefs, which we think not necessarily without foundation.  As raising a presumption in favour of that opinion, we cite examples in which savage observations of abnormal and once rejected facts, are now admitted by science to have a large residuum of truth, we argue that what is admitted in some cases may come to be admitted in more.  No a priori line can here be drawn.’

To the psychologist who objects that our modern instances are mere anecdotes, we reply by asking, ’Dear sir, what are your modern instances?  What do you know of “Mrs. A.,” whom you still persistently cite as an example of morbid recurrent hallucinations?  Name the German servant girl who, in a fever, talked several learned languages, which she had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim!  Where did she live?  Who vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her?  There is, you know, no evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge:  the phenomena are said by him to have been observed “in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at Goettingen....  Many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town.”  Why do you not name a few out of the distinguished crowd?’[8] This anecdote, a rumour of a rumour of a Protestant explanation of a Catholic marvel, was told by Coleridge at least twenty years after the possible date.  The psychologists copy it,[9] one after the other, as a flock of sheep jump where their leader has jumped.  An example by way of anecdote may be permitted.

According to the current anthropological theory, the idea of soul or spirit was suggested to early men by their experiences in dreams.  They seemed, in sleep, to visit remote places; therefore, they argued, something within them was capable of leaving the body and wandering about.

This something was the soul or spirit.  Now it is obvious that this opinion of early men would be confirmed if they ever chanced to acquire, in dreams, knowledge of places which they had never visited, and of facts as to which, in their waking state, they could have no information.  This experience, indeed, would suggest problems even To Mr. Herbert Spencer, if it occurred to him.