Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, and some primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down by tradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to the mind.  The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions.  The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to be external, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams; primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memory and of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed to consist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance in the waking or sleeping state.  The images assumed in the memory a relative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams.  In fact, some savages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states, and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection of things, the fancy, and dreaming.  This also occurs in children, who at a very early age often call by name absent persons and things which recur to their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the facts of real life from those of dreams.  I have observed this fact in several children.

Among primitive peoples it often happens that an object with which they are unfamiliar, but which has some analogy with those with which they are acquainted, becomes associated with the latter, and is constituted into a compound being, endowed with life.  The Esquimaux believed the vessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars.  When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship to be a whale with sails.  The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, and imagined that it required the nourishment of grass.  When an Arauco saw a compass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has been held by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, which play tunes mechanically.  Herbert Spencer mentions similar behaviour in some men belonging to one of the hill tribes in India; when they saw Dr. Hooker pull out a spring measuring tape, which went back into its case of itself, they were terrified and ran away, convinced that it was a snake.  From these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it not only appears that everything is spontaneously animated by man, but also that the images of his memory are fused with those which are actually present, since their respective factors are esteemed to be equally real.  This primitive objection of the images of the memory also occurs in the mythical representations of dreams, which, as the images of absent objects, have much in common with the images of the memory.  In fact, all peoples, as we have seen, have believed in the reality of dreams.