Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/155

 FroDi Spell to Prayer. 137

generation ago, no doubt, when the self-styled school of " experience " dominated British psychology, these expres- sions would have passed muster. In which context it is perhaps relevant to remark that Dr. Frazer's theory of the associationalist origin of magic would seem to have been influenced by that of Dr. Jevons, and that of Dr. Jevons in its turn by that of Dr. Tylor, which was framed more than thirty years ago, and naturally reflects the current state of psychological opinion. To-day, however, no psychologist worth seriously considering holds that association taken strictly for just what it is suffices to explain anything that deserves the name of reasoning or thought, much less any form of practical contrivance based on reasoning or thought. First of all, association is no self-acting " mental chemistry," but depends on continuity of interest. Secondly, thought, that is, thought-construction, instead of merely reproducing the old, transforms it into something new. The psychological purist, then, might justly find fault with Dr. Frazer's remarks as lacking in technical accuracy, were technical accuracy to be looked for in a passage that, to judge from its style, is semi-popular in its purport. Even so, however, this loose language is to be regretted. Seeing that an all-sufficient associationalism has for sound reason been banished from psychology, the retention of its pecu- liar phraseology is to be deprecated as liable to suggest that anthropology is harbouring an impostor on the strength of obsolete credentials.

A word more touching the want of precision in Dr. Frazer's language. As in his account of the interior history of the genesis of religion, so in his characterisation of the inner nature of magic he seems to exaggerate the work of pure ratiocination. Thus he speaks of magic as a "philosophy" consisting in "principles" from which the savage "infers" and "concludes" this and that ;^ magic

■ G. B.;-i., 9.