HONORARY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE OXFORD SOMETIME GIFFORD LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS
- Date of account
- Published 1898
- Source
- The Making of Religion
- Reference
- The Making of Religion · selected passage 8
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
dd, sporadic, and, for commercial purposes, useless, such as the transference of thought from one mind to another by no known channel of sense, the occurrence of hallucinations which, prima facie, correspond coincidentally with unknown events at a distance, all that is called 'second sight,' or 'clairvoyance,' and othe…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlydd, sporadic, and, for commercial purposes, useless, such as the transference of thought from one mind to another by no known channel of sense, the occurrence of hallucinations which, _prima facie_, correspond coincidentally with unknown events at a distance, all that is called 'second sight,' or 'clairvoyance,' and other things even more obscure. Reasoning on these real or alleged phenomena, and on other quite normal and accepted facts of dream, shadow, sleep, trance, and death, savages have inferred the existence of spirit or soul, exactly as the Indians arrived at the notion of electricity (not so called by them, of course) as the cause of the Aurora Borealis. But, just as the Indians thought that the cosmic lights were caused by the rubbing together of crowded deer in the heavens (a theory quite childishly absurd), so the savage has expressed, in rude fantastic ways, his conclusion as to the existence of spirit.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThe passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.
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