Essays · Herbert Spencer
FOOTNOTES:
When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in some way belonging to him. 3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm the idea of duality otherwise arrived at. Incapable as he is of understanding their natural origin, the primitive man necessarily ascribes them to living beings--beings who mock him and elude his search. 4. The suggestions resulting from these and other physical phenomena are, however, secondary in importance. The root of this belief in another self lies in the experience of dreams. The distinction so easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one which the savage recognizes in but a vague way; and he cannot express even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did.
From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races. 5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning, receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been.
"Mâ miya, mâ miy, mâ deyâ, Topang koyihetti mittigan yandâh?" "My departed one, my departed one, my God! Where art thou wandering?" "This invocation appears to be used on all occasions when the intervention of the guardian spirits is required, in sickness, preparatory to hunting, etc. Sometimes, in the latter case, a portion of the flesh of the game is promised as a votive offering, in the event of the chase being successful; and they believe that the spirits will appear to them in dreams and tell them where to hunt. Sometimes they cook food and place it in the dry bed of a river, or some other secluded spot, and then call on their deceased ancestors by name. 'Come and partake of this! Give us maintenance as you did when living! Come, wheresoever you may be; on a tree, on a rock, in the forest, come!' And they dance round the food, half chanting, half shouting, the invocation."--Bailey, in _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_, London, N. S., ii., p. 301-2.]
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