Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/390

 362 Reviews.

inquiry, since some definition was manifestly necessary. By the end of the inquiry the authors abandon it, if I understand them aright, insisting, as the nature of their argument requires, on the social character of the phenomena, and the mutual interaction of the magician and the society in which he ofificiates, at all events in the early stages of civilisation.

Provided with these definitions the authors proceed to their investigation. I cannot here follow the details, which occupy more than a hundred pages of keen and suggestive criticism. It must suffice to say that the sympathetic formula is shown to be insufficient to account for the facts, even of that department of magic called sympathetic magic. Sympathy is only the means by which the magical force passes from the magician to the object at which it is aimed ; it is not the magical force itself. That still remains to be explained. Nor does the notion of magical pro- perties imputed to many of the materials used in the magical rite explain of itself the facts. In the first place, normally the notion of property is not the only one present. The employment of substances having magical properties is ritually conditioned. They must be collected according to rule, at certain times, in certain places, with certain means, and after certain ritual pre- parations. And when collected they must be employed according to certain rules and with the accompaniment of rites, often exceed- ingly elaborate, which permit the utilisation of their qualities. In the second place, the magical property is not conceived as naturally, absolutely and specifically inherent in the thing to which it is attached, but always as relatively extrinsic and con- ferred. Sometimes it is conferred by a rite. At other times it is explained by a myth, in which case it is clearly regarded as acci- dental and acquired. It often resides in secondary characters, such as form, colour, rarity, and so forth. In the third place, the notion of magical property suffices so little, that it is always con- founded with a very generalised idea of force and nature. The idea of the effect to be produced may indeed be precise ; but that of the special qualities of the substance to produce it and their immediate action is always obscure. On the contrary, the idea of things having undefined virtues is particularly prominent in magic. Salt, blood, saliva, coral, iron, crystals, precious metals, the moun- tain ash, the birch, the sacred fig-tree, camphor, incense, tobacco are among the many objects which embody general magical