Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/157

 From Spell to Prayer. 139

there are other practices quasi-magical in form, for instance the familiar sucking-cure, which cannot be easily reduced to cases either of imitative or sympathetic magic, and which nevertheless, I believe, are of connate psychological origin with practices of one or other of the last-mentioned types. In these circumstances my attempt at a derivation of magic must be taken in the spirit in which it is offered — namely as illustrative merely. I shall keep as closely as I can to undisputed forms of magical practice, for instance the casting of spells by means of an image, in the hope that their development moves along the central line of historical advance.

To start, then, as Dr. Frazer seems to suggest that we might, ^^ from the brutes. When a bull is in a rage — and let us note that the rage as determining the direction of interest has a good deal to do with the matter ^'^ — it will gore my discarded coat instead of me, provided that the coat is sufficiently near, and I am sufficiently remote, for the proximate stimulus to dominate its attention. Of course it is very hard to say what really goes on in the bull's mind. Possibly there is little or no meaning in speaking of association as contributory to its act, as would be the case supposing it be simply the sight of something imme- diately gorable that lets loose the discharge of wrath. On the other hand, suppose it to perceive in the coat the slightest hint or flavour of the intruding presence of a moment before, suppose it to be moved by the least after- taste of the sensations provoked by my red tie or rapidly- retreating form, and we might justly credit association with a hand in the matter. And now to pass from the case of the animal to that of man, in regard to whom a certain measure of sympathetic insight becomes possible. With a fury that well-nigh matches the bull's in its narrowing

'- Cf. G.B.,-\., 70.

" Cf. Stout, Groundwork cf Psychology, Section on " Enioliun as deter- mining ideal revival," u. 1 20.