CHAPTER IV

SYMPATHETIC MAGIC

THE law of continuity holds not only in science but of science. It is true not only of the subject-matter with which science deals, but of the evolution of science itself. The assured triumphs of modern science are linked to the despised speculations of the savage by a chain which may be ignored but cannot be snapped; for, in the first place, though the mass of observed facts which the modern investigator has at his command is greater than that which was at the disposal of the ancient student of nature, the accumulation has been gradual; and, in the next place, the foundation, the principle, and the methods of savage logic and scientific logic are identical.1

The foundation of both logics is the same, for it is the uniformity of nature. What reason we have for believing that nature is uniform is a matter much disputed by philosophers. The cause of the belief, the inherent tendency of the human mind to expect similar sequences or coexistences in similar conditions, was as strong in primitive man as in the modern savant; and the savage not only expects a cause to produce its effect, but also holds with Mill that a single instance of the production of a phenomenon by a given antecedent is enough to warrant the belief that it will always tend to be produced by that antecedent. Thus, "the king of the Koussa Kaffirs having broken off a piece of a stranded anchor died soon afterwards, upon which all the Kaffirs looked upon the anchor as alive, and saluted it respectfully whenever they passed near it."2

1 See Folk-Lore, ii. 2. 220, F. B. Jevons, " "Report on Greek Mythology" (June 1891).

2 Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, 188.

Here the Kaffirs' error consisted in jumping to the conclusion that the molestation of the anchor was the cause of the king's death; and as it is against this class of error that the inductive methods are designed to guard, the reader may be tempted to imagine that it is in the ignorance of those methods that the difference between savage and scientific logic consists. But the reader would be mistaken. The savage has not indeed formulated the methods, but he uses them all to distinguish the antecedent which is the cause from the other antecedents which have nothing to do with the effect under investigation. Thus the Peruvian mountaineers mentioned in the last chapter, who observed that a certain kind of illness befell them whenever they were in sight of the sea, were using the Method of Agreement in inferring that the sea-spirit was the cause of that particular kind of illness. The Method of Difference, according to which, if the introduction of a new antecedent into a set of conditions already known is immediately followed by the emergence of a new effect, the new antecedent may be regarded as the cause of the new effect, is employed by the Dusuns in Borneo, who, according to Mr. Hatton (North Borneo, 2331), "attribute anything—whether good or bad, lucky or unlucky-that happens to them to something novel which has arrived in their country. For instance, my living in Kindram has caused the intensely hot weather we have experienced of late." The Method of Concomitant Variations again plays a large part in savage logic. According to this method, things which vary together are causally related to one another, or, vice versa, things which are related together vary together. Hence the world-wide belief that, if the nail-parings or the cut hair of a man pass into the possession of an enemy, the enemy can injure the man; and hence, too, the equally widespread custom of burying hair or nail-parings, or otherwise placing them beyond reach of an enemy. The shadow, the image, the picture, and the name of a man are closely related to him; and therefore as they are treated so will he suffer. Hence the witch could torture her victim by roasting or wounding a waxen image of him. The savage declines to be sketched or photographed for the same 1 Quoted in G. B. i. 174.

reason;1 the ancient Egyptian secured happiness hereafter by having his tomb filled with pictures representing him engaged in his favourite occupations and surrounded by luxury; wounds inflicted on the shadow or the foot-prints of a man will take effect on him; savages frequently keep their names a profound secret, and the safety and inviolability of the city of Rome depended on the secrecy observed as to the name of its tutelary deity. If the connection required by the method does not exist, then it must be artificially created, as it easily may be the Ephesians placed their city under the protection of Artemis by connecting the city and the temple with a rope seven furlongs long. But the best exemplification of the savage application of the Method of Concomitant Variations is the waxing and the waning of the moon, with which the growth and decay of all sorts of sub-lunar objects, plants, and animals, things animate and inanimate, are associated; and if the reader is inclined to smile at the obvious folly and puerility of the savage, let him remember that the weather is still supposed, by educated people, to vary with the changes of the moon; and that as to the influence of her phases on vegetation and the advisability of sowing on a waxing moon, the founder of inductive logic, Bacon himself, thought there was something in it: "videmus enim in plantationibus et insitionibus ætatum lunæ observationes non esse res omnino frivolas" (De Aug. Scient. iii. 4). So thin are the partitions between savage and scientific logic.

The principle of induction, again, is the same in the logic of the savage and the savant. That principle is the principle of similarity in difference. Whether the induction be an inference from particulars to particulars or to universals, it proceeds from similars to similars, and would be impossible if similar cases did not recur in experience. In such an induc

1 "When Dr. Catat and his companions, MM. Maistre and Foncart, were exploring the Bara country on the west coast of Madagascar, the people suddenly became hostile. On the previous day, the travellers, not without difficulty, had photographed the royal family, and now found themselves accused of taking the souls of the natives with the object of selling them when they returned to France. Denial'was of no avail; following the custom of the Malagasays, they were compelled to catch the souls, which were then put into a basket and ordered by Dr. Catat to return to their respective owners.

1 Folk-Lore, vi. 1. 75, from the Times of March 24, 1891.

Now the

tion, for instance, as that Socrates and Plato are mortal, therefore Aristotle is mortal, it is because Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle resemble each other in being men that we can infer that they also resemble each other in being mortal. They also resemble each other in other points, e.g. in being Greeks and philosophers, etc., and differ from each other, e.g. in size and weight; but these points of resemblance and difference do not affect the question: it is not because they were Greeks that they died, and their differences in physical characteristics did not exempt any of them from the common doom. These irrelevant points, therefore, have to be set aside, or, in technical language, "abstracted," and the result of the abstraction is that we are enabled to assert the coexistence of the two qualities of humanity and mortality. savage also is capable of abstract ideas and of asserting their coexistence. He recognises the hardness of some substances and the scent of others, and he wears a ring of iron in order that it may impart its quality of hardness to his body, as he might wear a flower for the sake of its scent; or when he is bargaining for a cow or asking a woman for wife, he chews a piece of wood to soften the heart of the person he is dealing with. In the same way, having discovered in the lion the quality of courage, or in the deer that of swiftness, he eats the former that he may become bold and the latter that he may run well. So also he will eat an enemy to acquire his boldness, or a kinsman to prevent his virtues from going out of the family. The points of resemblance between what he does and what he wishes to effect seem to the savage to be the essential points for his purpose: the man of science deems otherwise. Doubtless the man of science is right; but the savage is not therefore superstitious in this matter. He applies a principle of logic-to the wrong things perhaps, but still the process is one of logic, savage if you like, but not superstitious.

The savage theory of causation, again, is not fundamentally different from the scientific: it is only incomplete and exaggerated. The effect is the offspring of the cause, and resembles its parent; to produce motion in a body you must impart motion, to moisten a thing you must communicate moisture to it. Hence the savage makes the generalisation

that like produces like; and then he is provided with the means of bringing about anything he wishes, for to produce an effect he has only to imitate it. To cause a wind to blow, he flaps a blanket, as the sailor still whistles to bring a whistling gale. Before going on the warpath or the chase, a mimetic dance, in which the quarry or the foe are represented as falling before his weapon, will secure him success. If the vegetation requires rain, all that is needed is to dip a branch in water and with it to sprinkle the ground. Or a spray of water squirted from the mouth will produce a mist sufficiently like the mist required to produce the desired effect; or black clouds of smoke will be followed by black clouds of rain. If the moon's light threatens to fail, firetipped arrows are shot up to it by the Hottentots; and the same remedy is applied by the Ojibways to the sun when eclipsed.

To complete these outlines of savage logic, it is only necessary to point out that hypothesis is an instrument of thought which is of great service in primitive speculation. A hypothesis is any assumption made for the purpose of explaining a fact or facts already known to be true. But whereas the assumptions of the savant are hypotheses, those of the savage are called myths. Thus, when it is sought to account for the observed fact that the moon periodically decreases in size and that her appearance in the sky is the signal for the departure of the sun, a savage hypothesis accounting for the facts is that sun and moon are husband and wife who have quarrelled and separated; periodically the moon makes overtures of reconciliation and periodically wastes away before our eyes in grief at their rejection. Or the observed facts of thunderstorms are accounted for on the supposition that a jar of rain is carried by one spirit and is smashed by the mace of another; whence the crash of the thunder and the descent of the rain. The importance of hypothesis as a savage instrument of thought may be judged by the fact that it is a quite tenable position that all the countless myths in the world were originally explanatory (ætiological) myths, primitive hypotheses.

It should now be clear that there is no fundamental difference between savage and scientific logic, but that, on the