with, in dreams, are as real as any waking impressions.  But, moreover, these dreams will be very often, as children’s dreams are wont to be, of a painful and terrible kind.  Perhaps they will be always painful; perhaps his dull brain will never dream, save under the influence of indigestion, or hunger, or an uncomfortable attitude.  And so, in addition to his waking experience of the terrors of nature, he will have a whole dream-experience besides, of a still more terrific kind.  He walks by day past a black cavern mouth, and thinks, with a shudder—­Something ugly may live in that ugly hole:  what if it jumped out upon me?  He broods over the thought with the intensity of a narrow and unoccupied mind; and a few nights after, he has eaten—­but let us draw a veil before the larder of a savage—­his chin is pinned down on his chest, a slight congestion of the brain comes on; and behold he finds himself again at that cavern’s mouth, and something ugly does jump out upon him:  and the cavern is a haunted spot henceforth to him and to all his tribe.  It is in vain that his family tell him that he has been lying asleep at home all the while.  He has the evidence of his senses to prove the contrary.  He must have got out of himself, and gone into the woods.  When we remember that certain wise Greek philosophers could find no better explanation of dreaming than that the soul left the body, and wandered free, we cannot condemn the savage for his theory.  Now, I submit that in these simple facts we have a group of “true causes” which are the roots of all the superstitions of the world.

And if any one shall complain that I am talking materialism:  I shall answer, that I am doing exactly the opposite.  I am trying to eliminate and get rid of that which is material, animal, and base; in order that that which is truly spiritual may stand out, distinct and clear, in its divine and eternal beauty.

To explain, and at the same time, as I think, to verify my hypothesis, let me give you an example—­fictitious, it is true, but probable fact nevertheless; because it is patched up of many fragments of actual fact:  and let us see how, in following it out, we shall pass through almost every possible form of superstition.

Suppose a great hollow tree, in which the formidable wasps of the tropics have built for ages.  The average savage hurries past the spot in mere bodily fear; for if they come out against him, they will sting him to death; till at last there comes by a savage wiser than the rest, with more observation, reflection, imagination, independence of will—­the genius of his tribe.