The mental differences between man and the higher animals to which the presence of Magic and Religion is to be referred, are not in themselves startling, however considerable their consequences may have been. Psychological analysis leaves absolutely no standing ground to those who insist upon interpreting the advent of Religion as the manifestation of essentially new kinds of powers, of the birth of a 'spiritual life,' for instance. We hope to have made clear that the use of this term in this connection constitutes a misrepresentation of the facts. CHAPTER III ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS AND GODS Every savage tribe known to us has already passed beyond the naturistic stage of development. The living savages believe in ghosts, in spirits, and all of them, perhaps, also in particular spirits elevated to the dignity of gods. Whence these ideas of unseen personal beings? They may be traced to four independent sources. (1) _States of temporary loss of consciousness--trances, swoons, sleep, etc._--seem in themselves sufficient to suggest to ignorant observers the existence of 'doubles,' _i.e._ of beings dwelling within the body, animating it, and able to absent themselves from it for a time or permanently. These alleged beings have been called 'ghosts' or 'souls.' The belief in a second life of the dead would also spring easily enough from these observations. (2) _Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity, etc._, of persons still living or dead, seem also sufficient to lead to a belief in ghosts and in survival after death. These two distinct classes of facts have no doubt co-operated in the production of the belief in ghosts, so that I shall refer to them in the sequel as the double origin of the ghost-belief. Echos, and reflections in water and in polished surfaces may have played a subsidiary rôle in establishing, or confirming, the belief in ghosts and in spirits. (3) When discussing animal behaviour, we saw reasons to admit that a fleeting personification of objects moving in an unusual way might be within the mental possibilities of the higher animals. The third independent source of belief in unseen personal agents is _the spontaneous personification of striking natural phenomena, storms, tornadoes, thunder, sudden spring-vegetation, etc._ The report of Tanner[16] that one night Picheto (a North American Chief), becoming much alarmed at the violence of a storm, got up, offered some tobacco to the thunder and entreated it to stop, should not excite surprise even though it should refer to the lowest savage. There is, of course, a long way between the sudden, temporary, and isolated personification of a natural phenomenon and the stable and generalised belief in the existence of personal agents behind visible nature. What we mean to assert here is merely that the systematised belief can have arisen out of the impulsive and occasional personification of awe-striking and frightening spectacles.