contrary, they are fundamentally identical. The uniformity of nature, the principle of induction, the theory of causation, the inductive methods, form the common framework of both logics: the savage would probably be able to give his assent to all the principles of Mill's logic. In other words, the differences are not formal but material. The errors of the early logician were extra-logical, and therefore were such as could be remedied by no process of logic but only by wider experience. The problem of induction is to ascertain the cause (or effect) of a given phenomenon; and the cause (or effect) is to be looked for amongst the immediate antecedents (or consequents) of that phenomenon. But the antecedents (or consequents) comprise every single one of the countless changes which take place in any part of the universe the moment before (or after) the occurrence of the phenomenon under investigation: any one of these antecedents (or consequents) may be the cause (or effect), and there is nothing à priori or in logic to make us select one rather than another. It is plain, therefore, that as long as man is turned loose as it were amongst these innumerable possible causes with nothing to guide his choice, the chances against his making the right selection are considerable, and that to speak of the savage's choice as haphazard and illogical is to misconceive the nature of logic. It should also be clear that no progress could be made in science until man had distinguished, at anyrate roughly, possible from absolutely impossible effects (or causes), and had learned to dismiss from consideration the impossible. Now it might be expected that, as it was only experience which could show what was impossible, so experience would suffice of itself to teach man this essential distinction. But, as a matter of fact, experience by itself has done no such thing, as is shown by the simple fact that great as is the age and long as is the experience of the human race, the vast majority of its members have not yet learnt from experience that like does not necessarily produce like: four-fifths of mankind, probably, believe in sympathetic magic, and therefore neither need nor can make any intellectual progress, whilst the progressive minority are precisely those from amongst whom magic has been uprooted by its relentless foe, religion. The reason why the real order and sequence of natural events

does not mechanically impress itself in its correct form upon the human mind, is that the mind is not the passive recipient of external impressions, but reacts upon them and remodels them, so that the ultimate shape taken by them depends as much on the form of the mental mould, so to speak, into which they are poured, as it does upon their own nature. In other words, the mind does not pay equal attention to everything which is presented to it: it only sees what it is prepared to see. Thus the preconception that things causally related to one another must be similar and vice versa-a preconception due to the mental law by which similar ideas suggest one another is so strong as to prevent the savage from seeing facts which are at variance with it, and thus the experience which might be expected automatically to correct the error serves but to strengthen it. But when the consequences of that error came in conflict with the religious sentiment, that hostility between magic and religion was aroused of which the existence is universally admitted though differently explained.

Now the fallacy that things causally related must be similar to one another, is one that the human mind, from its very constitution, must have fallen into in its very first attempts to interpret the complex manifold of nature. It is also a fallacy from which most savages, who in this may be taken as representing primitive man, have not yet escaped. But the fallacy, though primeval, has nothing to do with magic or the supernatural: it requires for its existence no belief in supernatural powers or even in spirits, it might perfectly well flourish in a region where neither religion nor magic had been heard of. Thus the fact of a man's using this fallacious mode of procedure to produce or forecast certain desired results does not in the least tend to show that he considers the process itself to be magical or supernatural; the savage who wears an iron ring to give strength to his body has not advanced so far in science as the man who takes iron in a tonic, but he no more believes himself to be dealing in magic and spells than the educated persons of to-day do who forecast the weather by the changes of the moon.

This will perhaps be made clearer if it be pointed out that it is not merely the fallacy of "like produces like," but

the inductive methods themselves which the savage uses in order to work his wonders. Most of the examples of savage logic already given in this chapter are instances of "sympathetic magic"; but as the means which the savage employs. for this purpose are precisely those used for the ordinary. commonplace purposes of life both by him and by civilised man, it cannot be argued that those means are in themselves considered magical or supernatural.

These, then, are the grounds on which it is here maintained that sympathetic magic, which is the germ of all magic, does not involve in itself the idea of the supernatural, but was simply the applied science of the savage. Yet out of the theory of causation and the methods of induction, which under certain rare, favouring conditions, and with the assistance of the religious sentiment, developed into modern science, elsewhere the process of evolution produced "one of the most pernicious delusions that ever vexed mankind, the belief in magic." It remains for us to inquire how this came

about.

Art magic is the exercise by man of powers which are supernatural, i.e. of powers which by their definition it is beyond man to exercise. Thus the very conception of magic is one which is essentially inconsistent with itself; and, being such, the belief in it seems to be thought by many writers to require no further explanation. Now, doubtless it is the conception's very inconsistency with itself which gives it its fascination; the prospect of being able to do the impossible is singularly attractive. At anyrate the hold which the idea, when once introduced, has over the mind of man is so familiar a fact that it does not need to be proved. But all this does not show how the idea ever could have occurred to the human mind in the first instance; it only proves what a very suitable nidus was ready for the germ when it should come. To read some writers, who derive the powers of priests (and even of the gods) from those of the magician, and who consider apparently that magic requires no explanation, one would imagine that the savage, surrounded by supernatural powers and a prey to supernatural terrors, one day conceived the happy idea that he too would himself exercise supernatural power-and the thing was done;

sorcery was invented, and the rest of the evolution of religion follows without difficulty; or, if any further explanation is required, it is to be found in the fact that the imagination of the savage is unbridled. Now, though the savage, if the idea that he too should have supernatural powers had been suggested to him, would doubtless have thought the suggestion excellent if it could be carried out, he would also have inquired how the thing was to be done. It is one thing to wish you had a certain power; it is quite another thing to imagine you have it something, be it what it may, is required to set the imagination to work, to start the idea that it is possible to work impossibilities. The suggestion that the savage fancy is so unbridled that it is capable of believing anything, does not help us much here, for several One is that, as Mr. Andrew Lang has conclusively shown,1 the incredulity of the savage is quite as strong and as marked as his credulity: he is proof against the invasion of unfamiliar ideas. Another is that, according to the best observers, the imagination of the savage is not unbridled but is singularly sterile, and moves within remarkably narrow limits. A third is that the savage's thought is subject to mental laws as much as is civilised man's; and that the conception of art magic could not possibly have sprung up uncaused and without a reason. If the conception were confined to some one region, it might possibly be due to a fortuitous combination of ideas or a fancied resemblance in particular things which no general laws could assist us to divine. But the belief in magic is world-wide, and should be due to some widely working cause.

reasons.

Dr. E. B. Tylor 2 has pointed out that "nations whose education has not advanced far enough to destroy their belief in magic itself" yet "cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it more essentially belongs to, and is more thoroughly at home among, races less civilised than themselves." "In any country an isolated or outlying race, the lingering survivor of an older nationality, is liable to the reputation of sorcery." It is from this fact that the explanation of magic here advanced takes its start. In historic times the belief in magic is fostered by the juxtaposition of two races, the 1 Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i. 91. 2 Primitive Culture, ch. iv.

one more and the other less civilised. The one race, being the more civilised, has learnt (whether in the way suggested in the last chapter or otherwise) that certain natural phenomena are due to divine agency and are beyond the power of man to influence or control. The other race, being less civilised, has not yet learnt this lesson, has not yet learnt to distinguish between what it is and what it is not possible for man to effect, but still employs for the production of both classes of effects indiscriminately those principles of induction which are common both to savage and scientific logic. Hence the more civilised race find themselves face to face with this extraordinary fact, namely, that things which they know to be supernatural are commonly and deliberately brought about by members of the other race. But this is what is meant by magic.

Now, if this be the correct account of the origin of the idea of magic, it follows, first, that the idea was not due to any freak of savage fancy, that it was not anybody's invention nor the outcome of research, but was, like most other ideas, simply and directly suggested by actual facts; and, in the next place, that the cause which suggested it is not local or transient, but is the necessary and inevitable outcome of the fact that some men progress more rapidly than others, and consequently is, what we are in search of, namely, a worldwide cause.

It is, however, not essential to the production of the idea of magic that there should be a difference of race between those who are credited with magical power and those who credit them with it. They may be members of the same community. All that is requisite is the juxtaposition, the coexistence of the more and the less enlightened views of what man can effect in different sections of the community, and the survival amongst the more backward members of the belief in the power of certain processes to produce effects which are deemed by the more advanced section to be supernatural. Wherever these conditions were to be found, that is everywhere, causes were at work which must inevitably produce in the more (but by no means fully) advanced members a belief that the lower possessed magical powers. That the lower section or race readily accepted the reputa