Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/304

 278 Greek Votive Offerings.

said he, would do as well as if I were to sacrifice my finger itself." But a principle of this sort is the growth of ages^ and the fact that express mention of it is late should not prevent us from using it to explain early customs. Dr. Rouse himself resfards the ofTerinor of hair as the offeringr of a substitute for the whole person fp. 370). It is possible, therefore, that this principle enters largely into those species of dedication, which we have so far spoken of as " The prize won by the action blessed " and " the implement or means by which success had been attained." Thus the victorious choregos, when he dedicated his prize-tripod to Dionysus, not improbably regarded himself as thereby devoted to the service of the god ; and the initiates, who hung up their garments at Eleusis, may have felt thence- forward that they were inmates of Demeter's sekos.

I am disposed to think that these principles, that of similarity and that of synecdoche, if so we may designate them, are only two manifestations of one and the same underlying idea, viz., the primitive conception or miscon- ception of personality. It is difficult even for the modern psychologist to draw a clear line of demarcation between the / and the nof-I. Lotze in his Microcosmus i. 136 con- fesses as much : " We can as yet hardly say what are even the local boundaries that divide the organism from its environment. When does the air in our lungs begin to belong to us, and when does it cease to be a constituent of the body ? " If the German philosopher is thus at a loss, what can we expect of primitive man ? He regards as part of himself not only his breath, but his clothes, his weapons, his chattels, his possessions of all sorts, even his name and his likeness. Whatever touches any of these touches him. Hence the wax model of his body, the imprint of his limbs on a bed, the reflection of his face in the water, his height measured off on a string, are so many equivalents for him- self, similia pro verts. All these were, or are, used as such in Greek superstitious practices. And here we have the