John Wesley Powell

“ The most subtle fallacy about causation consists in mistaking it for another property, either as force on the one hand or as thought on the other. Force, cause, and conception—or motion, space, and judgment—are disparate properties but concomitant in every particle and body of the universe. ”

“ Hence it is that in the evolution of ghosts we have to consider their transmutation from one to another as it appears when we consider them separated by many centuries of time. We are unable to find the distinction in the race of ghosts, if we consider them yesterday and again today, or last year and again this year, or even last century and again this century; but when we consider them as they appear in the stages of culture which are designated as savagery, barbarism, monarchy, and democracy, we find discrete degrees of evolution. ”

“ The stars can fly like birds and shine like fire. So the savage man considers the molar bodies of the world, which are all animals like himself, to have many magical or occult attributes which are very wonderful. But the wonderful things which they do are not attributed to their bodies, but to their ghosts. The body of a man lies inert when he sleeps, but his ghost cannot sleep, it travels about the world when his body is at rest. The bodies of the rocks are inert, but when they sleep at night their ghosts shine in the heaven as the aurora borealis. ”

“ Now we are to consider what it is that ghosts have done—how they have acted in the theater of the universe. Strange to say, we find it well recorded, for ghosts have had more complete recognition than men in all ancient history. Ghosts, as a race, have passed through interesting stages of history. All changes are in time and require time to become discrete quantities of change that may be recognized. ”

“ The ancients believed and the tribes believe that kinds, forms, and forces come out of nothing and return to nothing. This is the primal fallacy of causation. Modern science has demonstrated that kinds, forms, and forces come from something else and vanish into something else. It is only today that this is universally accepted by scientific men, while even at the present time millions of those who inhabit the earth still believe in creation from nothing. We shall not attempt to recount the multitude of fallacies which have existed and which still linger in scientific circles. ”

“ Fallacies concerning time are analogous to those concerning space. Time is persistence and change. It is not blank time, it is a time of something that exists, not the time of something that does not exist. It is the time in which all existence persists and in which it changes. The seed is developed on the apple-tree. Its time is the period of its existence as a germ, but the germ itself was developed by the incorporation of molecules. The molecules existing as particles in the air were transformed into the seed, but the molecules persisted before the seed was formed. ”

“ So I look upon mythology with no feelings of hatred, for it seems to me to have made great strides in the science of religion or ethics, out of which shall come a purified science of God, Immortality, and Freedom. ”

“ Thus a scheme of expression becomes a scheme of reality. When a three- world scheme is substituted for the seven-world scheme, the four worlds are transformed into four substances, as earth, air, fire, and water. ”

“ We have already set forth the one most important to our argument, that is, that motion is created by or comes out of some occult force which is not itself motion, and the other form in which motion is supposed to leap or creep, or in some other manner to be transferred from one body to another. An acrobatic motion is the last ghost of force. ”

“ Hence there arises the doctrine of signatures, which means among the tribesmen much more than the signatures of medicines, by which we are to learn what medicines are good for diseases—it primarily means what signatures can be made to convey our commands to ghosts. As ghosts are all animals in savagery, how can we talk to the ghosts of animals? This leads in savagery to the symbols which constitute the paraphernalia of altars. In savagery every object on the altar is a sign to ghosts of what men wish when they perform ceremonies. ”

“ In savagery the ghosts are zoomorphic. All lower animals, stones, bodies of water, the sun, the moon, and all the stars are supposed to be animals. The universe is a universe of animals living in the seven regions. All of these animals have ghosts which can leave their bodies and journey through the world, and at will inhabit other bodies, when they find them vacated by their proper ghosts. It is thus that the primitive mythology is a theory of animal ghosts. What these ghosts can do in their proper bodies is easily seen, though it is very wonderful ”

“ To the savage, lower animals seem to have attributes and to perform deeds that are more wonderful than those of human beings. The serpent is swift without legs, the bird can revel where man cannot go—through void space with wings. The fish can inhabit the water and run with fins; no human being can do this. The spider can spin a thread and travel on it; all that he has to do is to spin the thread from his own body and travel wherever he wills as it is unwound. ”

“ The habit of relegating all animals, all plants, all properties, and all qualities to the seven worlds, is continued under the new scheme by making a something like a classification between properties and qualities, and transmuting the properties and qualities to substances or attributes of substances and qualities, to world beings and attributes of world beings. Properties are grouped in fours because there are four horizontal corners of the world, and qualities are grouped in fours because there are four vertical corners of the world as evidenced by time. ”

“ It is the special cause; primitive man has no insight into the many causes that are involved. It is from this primeval concept of cause as some special condition, that is developed through the ages, when in a higher civilization we consider the special cause as if it was the total cause. Now mythology, having ghosts as actors, secures their action by causes, and explains the phenomena of the universe as the activities of ghosts acting through body by verbal causation. In savagery words are the ordinary observable causes and constitute the primal cause. ”

“ In somewhat later culture, when a somewhat clearer concept of the midworld exists, and the east, west, north, and south have been explored, but the zenith and the nadir are yet unknown, there still remains a midworld, a heaven above and a hell beneath. Laws and principles are formulated as heavenly or hellish. The transformation of seven worlds into three constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of human opinion. In the seven-world scheme, method of statement becomes a method of philosophy. ”

“ We can do nothing except as it is done by our ghosts. We cannot cause anything to be done by others except by controlling their ghosts. Words cause other human beings to do things, and their words cause us to act. The words of the mother cause action in the babe; the voice of the babe causes the mother to act. The voice of the bird brings its mate to its side, or the voice of its mate takes the bird to its side. The primeval concept of causation is the notion that words produce effects, and that effects are caused by words. ”

“ The conditions of every causation are multifarious as we look at them in a regressus of causes or a progressus of effects, and as the mind of the individual can make but one judgment at a time, it may be that the one of the causes or effects which is considered, is in fact a trivial element in the causation, for in all our language we are accustomed to speak of one of the causes as the special cause, for it must be the special one in consideration. ”

“ All tribal languages have a word which signifies the mystery, which can be used as a symbol to cause the action of ghosts. The concept is born in savagery of a mysterious cause which has power over ghosts, which again have powers over bodies, and so the universe is a realm of bodies, ghosts, and mysteries, or unknown tongues. ”

“ The seed is planted and becomes a tree by addition of other particles from the air and the water, and the eternal persistence of all the particles is occupied for a period in the state of the tree. Now, the existence of the molecules in the air and the water, and their existence in the seed, and their existence in the tree, and finally their existence as water and air, when the tree is reduced to another state by decay, is a permanent existence, while the temporary existence is in the seed and the tree. ”

“ The ghosts born on earth depart to the upper or the lower regions, where they are forever separated by an impassable barrier, and life on earth is but a probation in which ghosts are selected for the other world; hence the chief purpose of life in the body is attained by securing a happy life in ghostland.
During all this stage in mythology the ghost-gods are affected by psychological considerations. The supreme being in every religion of despotism is especially influenced by the opinions of his followers. ”

“ By a curious mode of expression often, perhaps universally, found in savage society, time is considered to be four-cornered because we measure time in terms of space. We say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and that at midday it is in the zenith and at midnight it is supposed to be in the nadir. Some savages will tell you that time is four-cornered, others will tell you that time is round, but that there are four cardinal points of time. Four-cornered time is a firmly established notion among savage and barbaric tribes. ”

“ In various ways signatures are used by the priests in invoking the aid of ghosts. Those persons who have power over ghosts are medicine men or priests, and attain great influence and sometimes are greatly feared. If they use their power for evil, they are wizards and are killed. If they use their power for good, they may be made chiefs.
Primarily the name given to a body designates some property of that body. After a time the name itself becomes the property of the body, and finally the name becomes a mythical body. ”

“ Mythology is the history of ghosts. Ghosts are specters, and we have seen what strange acts they commit as phantasms, when they leave the body and travel abroad in the world and return again to the body, or when from abroad they enter the body to take possession of it in the absence of its owner. In savage society authority is wielded by the oldest man, who thus by superior age, natural or conventional, becomes the chief. In the same manner the dwellers in ghostland are ruled by tribes ”

“ In tribal society the earth is made polar from east to west. About this Occidental and Oriental pole a system of worlds is projected—a world of the east, a world of the west, and, at right angles to these, a world of the north and a world of the south, a world of the zenith, and a world of the nadir, with a midworld which is a plane with sides and corners. All the lower tribes of mankind believe in such a world, and there are expressions used in civilized society which are survivals from this stage ‘of belief. ”

“ Astrology was necromancy at one time, but has become astronomy in modern times, and I look upon the efforts which were made in former times by astrologists as the planting of the germs of the celestial science. ”

“ Fallacies of reflection are fallacies of time and cause, and they may be classed as misreflections and myths. The misreflections are a fourth group of illusions and the myths a fourth group of delusions. ”

“ In despotism, or the third stage of social organization, ghosts are still more exalted, in that the psychic characteristics of men are personified. Certain of the gods of barbarism gradually become representatives of certain psychic characteristics, and we have the stage of psychotheism, and there is a god of War, a god of Love, a god of Hate, a god of Commerce, and many other major deities; but there is a second class of deities representing what are supposed to be secondary attributes of human and divine ghosts. ”

“ He who cannot clearly distinguish between abstract and concrete, or between body and property, is certain to fall into mysticism. Mill and Spencer in the late years, like Aristotle in ancient time, confounded causation with force or energy, while Kant and all the school of metaphysicians confound both cause and force with thought. ”

“ Fallacies of cause occur in every hour of waking life. We attribute effects to wrong causes. We are especially liable to this from the fact that both cause and effect are conditions, and causation is a change of condition from an antecedent to a consequent. ”

“ Some years ago there was published an interesting and well written book, the theme of which was the origin of deserts, giving a pessimistic view of the world, in which it was represented that desert conditions are increasing, and that wide regions of country have already been laid waste as deserts, because mankind interferes with the operations of nature by destroying the forests, and that if forests were restored rainfall would be increased. ”