Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/311

Rh Influence? Now I appeal to all students of Folk-lore—or, at least, to all comparative Folk-lorists, that is to say, students who endeavour to get at Folk-conceptions of Nature by a comparison of the expressions of these conceptions in Folk-customs, Folk-sayings, and Folk-poesies—I appeal to such students to say whether there is any possibility of sympathetically understanding the most characteristic facts of Folk-lore save from the point of view of the conception of all things, not only as Powers, harmful or beneficial, but as Powers exerting, or capable of exerting, influences on each other, both for good and evil. It may be true, as Dr. Tylor says, that "it is on an error of the first order that Astrology depends, the error of mistaking ideal analogy for real connection". But this notwithstanding, I venture to say that the fundamental conception of Astrology was essentially identical with the fundamental conception of the Astronomy founded on the theory of Mutual Gravitation, and developed in the later physical applications of the principle of the Conservation of Energy. No doubt the forms and modes in which Mutual Influence was, in Astrology, supposed to be exerted were fanciful and false. But I submit that, notwithstanding this, the conception itself—at the root as it was, not only of Astrology, but of Divination in all its forms, of belief in the Evil Eye, of the use of Amulets and Charms, and of the practices of Witchcraft and Magic generally—this conception was but a concrete form of the fundamental scientific conception of Reciprocal Action. And, in verification of this, I would refer especially to Sir Alfred Lyall's illuminating paper on Witchcraft and non-Christian Religions. For he was the first, I believe, clearly to point out—and as result of his Indian studies and observations—that Witchcraft and Religion (as ordinarily defined) are founded on two opposed conceptions of Nature; that the rites of Religion and Witchcraft respectively have two completely different ob-