is either placed on the shoulders of differences in capacity between men or is denied altogether. A spiritual world would be just like the material world of sense, whether perceptible by sense or not, and it took later development to draw the distinction.

Veridical hallucinations, which represent a distinction of modern psychic research, are the first step in making clear the difference between purely subjective creations and those experiences which are objectively caused and yet do not represent the nature of the reality in sense terms. They enable us to recognize a transcendental world without necessarily making it like the sense world, any more than we make the cause of ordinary hallucinations like that of normal sensations. In veridical hallucinations we approach or make another step toward the idealistic view, extending it to the nature of a spiritual world and keeping up the non-representative nature of our ideas.

Primitive ideas still linger in those strata of minds which are not educated to the subjective or idealistic psychology. Even when they distinguish or try to distinguish between the internal and the external world, they still employ language that does not imply this distinction. Hence with the differences of culture we find the differences of ideas in modern times, differences that cause much friction because of the importance which the religious mind attaches to the object of its interest. Savages were unanimous in their beliefs and had not the distinction between the educated and the uneducated mind. They were all uneducated. This condition guaranteed both a uniform sense of dependence and the identity between the physical and the spiritual world, though the manifestation of the latter was not so constant as the former.

I

CHAPTER II

THE IDEAS Of Civilized Nations

T is perhaps not too much to say that the period of culture was initiated by the discovery of illusions. That discovery certainly marked the rise of skepticism in both philosophy and religion. It indicated the distinction between what we could accept and what we could not accept in sense perception. Primitive psychology did not distinguish between sense perception and the work of the explanatory functions of the mind, the understanding. For it, knowledge was neither sensation nor judgment. The difference between these was not known to them. Whatever state of mind it had was trusted. But the discovery of illusions forced on the human mind a distinction between sensations and judgments, and between what was unreal and what was real.

At first this distinction was not carried very far, but it did not take long for skepticism, when once suggested, to destroy much that had been previously accepted without question. This very quickly carried the primitive religious ideas away. They would not stand the test of knowledge which skepticism placed in the senses, or in the judgment applied to sensation which was a subjective reaction against we knew not what, though it was constant. The religious ideas of the soul and a world beyond death, not subscribing to this standard, had to fall away before the onslaught of this all devouring influence.

But the strength of religious ideas was great enough

to revive their power, as the Phoenix arose from its own ashes. The passion for another life was strong enough to construct a philosophy on the basis of the supersensible after skepticism had limited knowledge to the sensible. This reconstructive tendency always based itself upon a modification of previous conceptions which the untutored mind had maintained. Hence when the

more civilized races emerged from their savagery they carried with them religious ideas tempered by their more primitive times, while they diverged from them. It is a few of those systems which we notice here. This, however, must be very briefly done, since any adequate conception of them would run into a volume. I take up that of the Chinese first.

1. Chinese Religion

The chief characteristic of the Chinese religion is ancestor worship. It is that feature of its ideas that primarily interests the psychic researcher, as it was evidently inherited from the earlier time of which we have no definite history. Perhaps we should not know anything about it were it not for our knowledge of ancestor worship among savages among whom can be found the main incidents of what has remained of it with the Chinese, modified by various forms of progress. Possibly ancestor worship would have totally disappeared among the Chinese but for their conservatism which has preserved it. But it was evidently the early form of belief and shows that it was definitely related to spiritualism. In fact, it was only a form of that belief. It is found, however, most distinctly among the common people, and though the philosophers modified it and often took rationalistic views regarding the doctrine, they never displaced it. Indeed Confucius accepted and conformed to the rites which it E imposed.

Ancestor worship was a belief or confession that the spirits of the dead were in communication with the living and had some influence upon the living, an influence that required their propitiation by sacrifices. "No more solemn duty," says Conybeare in the 11th Edition of the Britannica, "weighs upon the Chinaman than that of tending the spirits of his dead forefathers. Confucius, it is recorded, sacrificed to the dead, as if they were present, and to the spirits as if they were there. In view of such Chinese sacrifices the names of the dead are inscribed on wooden plaques called spirit tablets, into which the spirits are during the ceremony supposed to enter, having quitted the very heaven and presence of God in order to commune with posterity. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, a Chinese ruler goes in state to the imperial college in Pekin, and presents the appointed offerings before the spirit tablets of Confucius and of the worthies who have been associated with him in his temples." This, of course, represents the present status of custom as well as the past, though there has developed along with it definite ethical and philosophical views that did not supplant these ancient doctrines and customs.

The more philosophical view of things apparently begins with Taoism and was followed by Buddhism. Primitive religions and ancestor worship did not base themselves on a reasoned theory of the world. God and immortality were not associated in the same way that they were in later Christianity. In later Christianity God was the ground of immortality and of the belief in it. The reason for this was, no doubt, the decline of the age of miracles. Skepticism about the evidence of immortality by miracles was replaced by a theistic philosophy in which survival after death obtained its defense. But among savages the evidence for the existence of God and that for immortality were independent of each other and God was not necessary

to a belief in survival, and hence performed different functions in the ethical and religious life. Theistic philosophy is the result of an interest in the cosmos rather than in self, though it quickly obtains a human interest. It is first an explanation and unification of nature, and the evidence for immortality is in communication with the dead, until the two beliefs become connected as they did especially in the history of Christianity.

Taoism seems to have been the earliest philosophic theism of China. It was superposed on ancestor worship and did not supplant it. This is to say that it was not conceived in antagonism to it. But it evidently intended to reform its harsher features and perhaps did to the extent of preventing the continuance of many customs which make that practise so hideous among savages. Its insistence on an ethical life as the price of salvation and immortality is probably evidence of its rise about the lower forms of ancestor worship. But it was a monotheistic belief in its theology and a modified ancestor worship in its religion. Its founder was Lao-tsze, who existed long before the Christian era but late enough to escape the transitional period which he evidently terminated. His peculiar doctrines are not of interest here beyond their evident ethical character, which rather clearly indicates the attempt to remove cruelty and superstition from the people of his time. Confucius and he were probably contemporaries and legend makes them sympathetic in their doctrines, with important differences. Neither their agreement nor their differences are of importance here. The chief matter of interest is the relation of Taoism to ancestor worship which was older and which was never more than modified by Taoism.

Buddhism followed Taoism and rivaled it and finally conquered China and Japan, though it did not wholly displace Taoism and perhaps other minor creeds. But