This exhibits one of the most noxious tendencies of the mind--namely, personification. It is one of the most virulent enemies of clear thinking. We speak of the Spirit of the Reformation or the Spirit of Revolt or the Spirit of Disorder and Anarchy. The papers tell us that, "Berlin says", "London says", "Uncle Sam so decides", "John Bull is disgruntled". Now, whether or no there are such things as spirits, Berlin and London have no souls, and Uncle Sam is as mythical as the great god Pan. Sometimes this regression to the savage is harmless, but when a newspaper states that "Germany is as militaristic as ever", on the ground that some insolent Prussian lieutenant says that German armies will occupy Paris within five years, we have an example of animism which in a society farther removed from savagery than ours might be deemed a high crime and misdemeanor. Chemists and physicians have given up talking of spirits, but in discussing social and economic questions we are still victimized by the primitive animistic tendencies of the mind. The dream has had a great influence in the building up of the mind. Our ideas, especially our religious beliefs, would have had quite another history had men been dreamless. For it was not merely his shadow and his reflection in the water that led man to imagine souls and doubles, but pre-eminently the visions of the night. As his body lay quiet in sleep he found himself wandering in distant places. Sometimes he was visited by the dead. So it was clear that the body had an inhabitant who was not necessarily bound to it, who could desert it from time to time during life, and who continued to exist and interest itself in human affairs after death. Whole civilizations and religions and vast theological speculations have been dominated by this savage inference. It is true that in very recent times, since Plato, let us say, other reasons have been urged for believing in the soul and its immortality, but the idea appears to have got its firm footing in savage logic. It is a primitive inference, however it may later have been revised, rationalized, and ennobled. The taboo--the forbidden thing--of savage life is another thing very elementary in man's make-up. He had tendencies to fall into habits and establish inhibitions for reasons that he either did not discover or easily forgot. These became fixed and sacred to him and any departure from them filled him with dread. Sometimes the prohibition might have some reasonable justification, sometimes it might seem wholly absurd and even a great nuisance, but that made no difference in its binding force. For example, pork was taboo among the ancient Hebrews--no one can say why, but none of the modern justifications for abstaining from that particular kind of meat would have counted in early Jewish times. It is not improbable that it was the original veneration for the boar and not an abhorrence of him that led to the prohibition.