Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/223

Rh MAGIC 205 This, however, is hardly doing it justice, for in the early developments of the human mind both religion and science were intimately connected with magic, whose various branches, unfruitful as they may be, are nevertheless growths from the tree of knowledge. The universal diffusion of magical ideas among mankind, excepting only the limited class who have abandoned them through higher education, shows that we are here in presence of adeep-seated intellectual process, while the strong likeness in the principles of magic among the rudest tribes points to its having sprung up under most ancient and primitive conditions. The connexion between magic and religion in its lower stages is obvious from the impossibility of separating them, inasmuch as in every country sorcerers and diviners, savage or civilized, are found invoking the aid of ghosts, demons, or gods, to give them information or execute their will. So far as magic is ascribed to the influence of spirits, its theory belongs to the animistic philosophy developed in the lower levels of civilization, where all the powers of life and nature are set down to spiritual beings (see ANIMISM). A chief part of the magician s business being to converse with spirits and gain their help, he sets about this in various ways. More often than not the spirit is considered to be a human ghost, which behaves much as it did while it was still a living man s soul ; or if it is called a demon or deity, still these are beings modelled on the human soul. Thus their manner of hearing prayers and receiving offerings is like human intercourse, especially in the frequent cases where the sorcerer is a &quot; medium &quot; possessed by the spirit, who is considered to inhabit his body like his ordinary soul, and to give oracles speaking by his human voice. In such supposed interviews with spirits there is plenty of delusion and fraud, but nothing specially magical ; and, in fact, were the whole craft of the sorcerer of this spiritualistic kind, there would be no practical distinction between the sorcerer and the priest, and magic would fall into its place as an inferior branch of religion. It is because magical practices are by no means accounted for altogether by the doctrine of spirits, but involve other special explanations of their own, that it is found convenient to make magic a department by itself. Such explanation is needed in ordinary magical practices, like that of the American medicine-man, who draws a deer on a piece of bark and shoots at it, expecting thereby to kill a real deer next day, or of the Tongan soothsayer, who spins a cocoa-nut as a teetotum, in order to discover a thief by noticing towards whom the monkey-face of the nut is looking when it stops. The magical train of thought which leads men to resort to such devices is childishly simple. It is merely imperfect reasoning, the mistaking of an ideal connexion for a real one, the confusion of ineffective analogy with effective cause. Our minds go with those of the barbaric magicians so far as to recognize the analogy between shooting an animal and its picture ; we see as plainly as they that the cocoa-nut as it were looks in a particular direction. The difference is that, in the magical stage of thought, these are taken to be real connexions, while more advanced knowledge discards them as ideal. As Wilhelm von Humboldt well remarks, &quot; Man begins by seeking the connexion even of external phenomena in the region of thought ;. . . . pure observation, still more experiment, follow at a wide distance after ideal or phantastic systems. Man s first attempt is to govern nature through its idea.&quot; _ So much of the intellect of mankind has been spent since remote antiquity on magic that it may seem hard to believe the chief secret of the occult sciences to be after all nothing but bad reasoning. This at any rate is very unlike the theories propounded by those who have con demned magic as a real craft made known to man by dia bolical influence, or by those who have thought to find in its mystic precepts relics of antique wisdom. The question is not, however, an abstruse one, for every reader has the means of satisfying himself by inspection of a few magical processes, as to what amount of reason really goes to making them. In a large proportion of cases there may be perceived, not absolute nonsense, but a kind of half- formed sense stopping short of practical value. There being an evident relation between an object and the thought of it, it becomes one of the chief practices of the sorcerer to try to make things happen by thinking about them. Thus he so &quot; takes the will for the deed &quot; that when he &quot;ill-wishes &quot; his enemies, and looks upon them with the &quot; evil eye,&quot; he believes that he does them direct harm. On the other hand, those who know or suspect that such influence has been used against them suffer in reality from fear, often even dying of it. The belief in this mysterious power furnishes an explanation which is resorted to when any one falls ill or has any misfortune, and thus the belief in witchcraft among savages leads to constant enmity and revenge. Nor is this state of things to be traced only in what is called the uncivilized world, for those who have much intercourse with English country folks may still meet with instances of some cow or child firmly believed to have been &quot; overlooked,&quot; the death of which may possibly be revenged on a neighbouring cottager, supposed to be the witch. Whenever a good or evil wish is uttered in words, it becomes a blessing of curse. When these are addressed to some deity or demon, they are in fact prayers, but when they are merely expressed wishes, without reference to any spiritual being, then their supposed effects are purely magical. Thus, in an ancient Hindu love-charm, the girl expects to bring back an offended lover by repeating the formula, &quot; May thy heart devour itself for me, may thy dry mouth water for me !&quot; &c. Still more does this kind of magic explain itself in the various rites where some object is used as a symbol, and the association of ideas transfers whatever is done to it to the person it represents. Thus Ovid s sorceress (Heroid., vi. 91) &quot; simulacraque cerea fingit, Et miserum tenuis in jecur urget acns.&quot; King James in his Dsemonology says that &quot; the ctevil teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by continual sickness.&quot; By a similar association of ideas, any object which has belonged to a person may be thus practised on, as has been already here mentioned among the South Sea islanders, or, to take a case nearer home, when in 1618 two women were executed at Lincoln for burying the glove of Henry Lord Rosse, so that, &quot;as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of the said lord rot and waste.&quot; By like reasoning, when internal disease is ascribed to knots within the patient s body, it becomes a branch of witchcraft to tie magic knots, which produce their corresponding effect within the victim. Kindlier though not less delusive operations of misunderstood analogy are found in attempted cures by sympathetic magic, on the same principle which malignant sorcerers would have used in giving the disease itself. Thus knots are untied in order to untie internal complications in the sick beast, and weapons treated to cure by sympathy the wounds they made : &quot; But she lias ta en the broken lance, And washed it. from the clotted gore, And salved the splinter o er and o er. William of Deloraine in trance, Whene er she turned it round and round, Twisted, as if she galled his wound. Then to her maidens she did say That he should be whole man and sound Withia the course of a night and day.&quot; Lay of the Last Minstrel, iii. 23. The herbs used as medicaments in the infancy of