Note 116 — Chapter III

Conférence, p. 381. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the first chapters of his Principles of Sociology, has given a curious and plausible explanation of how this conception of a double was formed. He finds its origin chiefly in the phenomena of sleep, of dreams, and of the faintness caused by wounds or illness. He shows how these more or less transitory suspensions of animation led men to suppose that death was nothing but a prolonged interruption of life. He also thinks that the actual shadow cast by a man's body contributed to the formation of that belief. But had it no other elements which belonged to the general disposition of humanity in those early periods of intellectual life? Into that question we cannot enter here further than to say that Mr. Spencer's pages make us acquainted with numerous facts which prove that the beliefs in question were not confined to a single race, but were common to all humanity.