Research source

M. Paul Bourget (who is not superstitious), after consulting Mrs. Piper, concludes

Date of account: Published 1898
Source: The Making of Religion
Reference: The Making of Religion · selected passage 203
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Mana is the uncanny, is X, the unknown

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 only

Mana is the uncanny, is X, the unknown. A revived impression of sense is _nunuai_, as when a tired fisher, half asleep at night, feels the 'draw' of a salmon, and automatically strikes.[15] The common ghost is a bag of _nunuai_, as living man, in the opinion of some philosophers, is a bag of 'sensations.' Ghosts are only seen as spiritual lights, which so commonly attend hallucinations among the civilised. Except in the prayers to Qat and Marawa, prayer only invokes the dead (p. 285). 'In the western islands the offerings are made to ghosts, and consumed by fire; in the eastern (Banks) isles they are made to spirits (beings, _Vui_), and there is no sacrificial fire.' Now, the worship of ghosts goes, in these isles, with the higher culture, 'a more considerable advance in the arts of life;' the worship of non-ghosts, _Vui_, goes with the lower material culture.[16] This is rather the reverse of what we should expect, in accordance with the anthropological theory. According, however, to our theory, Animism and ghost-worship may be of later development, and belong to a higher level of culture, than worship of a being, or beings, that never were ghosts.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

The 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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