Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/310

302 the highest degree difficult to determine how much such observations and reflections actually contributed to the evolution of the notions in question.

VI.—My sixth Query is: Does not the theory of Animism wholly obscure the more profound "principle underlying" all that immense class of primitive phenomena which may be generally indicated under the name of Magic; and hence, does it not hinder rather than forward what, from the point of view of the Philosophy of History, should be the chief object of Folk-lore Research—the discovery and definition of the primitive conception of Causation?

"The principal key to the understanding of Occult Science", says Dr. Tylor, "is to consider it as based upon the Association of Ideas." It may be readily admitted that the Laws of the Association of Ideas give certain superficial explanations of the erroneous fancies as to causes and effects which are found in the "Occult Sciences", or generally, in Magic. But to treat such superficial explanations as the most profound that can be given is, I submit, only to obscure the necessity for more penetrating research. What is the general conception of Nature which underlies those special notions of causes which we find in the Occult Sciences and the Magical Arts? That is the question to which we must endeavour to discover a verifiable answer. Now, in above urging my Second Query, I have attempted to show that the primordial consciousness of Things among Men, and general consciousness of Things among Animals, down to Mr. Spencer's "cirrhipeds and seaflies", is a consciousness only of those objects with which they are specially concerned, and of them simply as Powers, harmful or beneficial. But if the different objects of Nature are thus primordially conceived, how can the primordial general conception of Nature—whenever such conception, or the germ of it, arises—be characterised save as a conception of Mutual