too common occurrences. "What is dream in our life? How small a place it holds . . . and how surprising it is that the unfortunate Australians spend so much energy in evolving a theory of it."
Let it be observed, first, that whatever objection there may be to the ghost-hypothesis as a means of interpreting the phenomena in question, the savage actually does account for them by that notion. This fact, which even Durkheim admits, causes many of his arguments to lose their relevancy. Sir Everard im Thurn relates the following incident in his book, Among the Indians of Guiana[1]: —
"One morning when it was important to me to get away from a camp on the Essequibo river, at which I had been detained for some days by the illness of some of my Indian companions, I found that one of the invalids, a young Macusi, though better in health, was so enraged against me that he refused to stir, for he declared that, with great want of consideration for his weak health, I had taken him out during the night and had made him haul the canoe up a series of difficult cataracts. Nothing could persuade him that this was but a dream, and it was some time before he was so far pacified as to throw himself sulkily into the bottom of the canoe. At that time we were all suffering from a great scarcity of food, and, hunger having its usual effect in producing vivid dreams, similar events frequently occurred. More than once, the men declared in the morning that some absent man, whom they named, had come during the night, and had beaten or otherwise maltreated them; and they insisted upon much rubbing of the bruised parts of their bodies."
That man should have originally regarded as memories vivid dreams in which he feels and hears himself walking and talking with another person, whose face he sees and whose voice he hears as clearly as in waking life, seems to me an impossible supposition; and to try to explain the dreadful experience of feeling the hand of one's enemy around one's neck, and choking in his grasp, on the ground
- ↑ Pp. 344-5.
