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. Now the 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. 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.

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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

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;

tion thus put upon them, is the more intelligible because sometimes it is practically the only thing which saves them from extinction at the hands of their more advanced neighbours or conquerors; and at all times it is gratifying to the despised "nigger" or "barbarian" to excite the terror of his owner or his superior in civilisation. The privilege thus conferred upon the lower race or section would be jealously preserved and handed down; and hence probably nowadays all those who are credited by their neighbours with this power firmly believe themselves that they possess it.

We may now proceed to consider the conditions under which was waged that struggle for existence between magic and religion, on the issues of which the future progress, scientific as well as religious, of mankind depended. And first let it be observed that, though evolution is universal, progress, whether in religion, morality, science, or art, is exceptional. The law of the survival of the fittest works inexorably; the fittest form of belief-be it the belief in magic or the belief in religion-inevitably survives, only the "fittest" is not necessarily or usually the highest; it is that which the particular race under its special conditions is fittest for.

The hostility from the beginning between religion and magic is, as has already been said, universally admitted; its origin is disputed. The suggestion made by those who regard sorcery as the primeval fact of which religion was an offshoot, that it is due to the priest's jealousy of the sorcerer, once his confrère and then his professional rival, does not carry us very far. To say nothing of the fact that he who says priest says religion, i.e. of the fact that to assume without explanation the existence of the priest is to leave the origin of religion unexplained, the jealousy of the priest is not the fact of real importance in the discussion. What we want to know is why the jealousy of the priest woke an answering chord in the heart of the average man, for without that response the priest's jealousy would be powerless for good or for evil. The probable answer is that the sentiment of the supernatural, the conviction of the existence of an overruling supernatural power, whatever the occasion under which man first became aware of its existence as one of the

facts of his internal experience, was offended by the pretension of any merely human being to wield supernatural power; such a pretension was irreconcilable with the existence of the sentiment, and the shock which ensued from the collision of the two resulted in the feeling, or rather was the feeling, that the pretension was impious. But it is obvious that the violence of the shock and the vigour of the consequent reaction would depend considerably on the strength of the sentiment and conviction of the supernatural. This brings us to note that in the historical instances given by Dr. Tylor of the existence in civilised races of the belief in magic, those races have not yet reached the stage of development in which sorcery is seen to be an absolute impossibility,. both from the religious and the scientific point of view. Probably even their present stage of development is higher, however, than that in which they were when the belief first appeared amongst them. In fine, the triumph of magic, where it was complete, is itself a considerable presumption that the conflict began at a time when the religious sentiment was quite immature and incapable of successfully asserting itself. Where the sentiment of the supernatural succumbed, it did not cease to exist, but was modified or misinterpreted in accordance with the magical view of the universe. Progress in science and religion ceased, but the evolution and organisation of magic into a system went on apace, until, where a people is entirely given up to magic, the world is filled with supernatural terrors, and life with the rites prescribed to exorcise them. On the other hand, where we find religion in the ascendant but sorcery coexisting with it, we may infer that religion had become firmly established in the more progressive section of the community before the contrast between the beliefs of the more and the less enlightened members had produced that confusion of ideas which is the essential condition of the belief in magic. And here we may remark that, as sorcery, when it is victorious, does not kill the sentiment of the supernatural, but, on the contrary, lives on it and perverts it to its own uses, so there are few religions which succeed in entirely uprooting the belief in magic from the minds of the most backward members of their congregations; and that, owing to the vitality and tenacity of primitive