Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/235

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general benevolence and other virtues cannot be explained merely by the hunting life ; conditions favourable to the development of these qualities are discussed, as is also the influence of the imaginary environment. Savages, like anthro- poids, live by common sense, and have more of it, but at the same time they have imagination beliefs which depend chiefly upon the influence of desire and fear, suggestibility, hasty generalisation, and the seduction of reasoning from analogy. The inevitable development of illusionary imaginations along with common sense, assisted early and also later culture because they preserved order and cohesion by re-arousing the ancient submission and loyalty of the pack. Even imaginations utterly false have had their share in promoting " progress."

The remaining three-fourths of the book are devoted to a consideration of belief and superstition, magic, animism, the relation between magic and animism, omens, the mind of the wizard, totemism, and magic and science. ]\Iagic is grouped into " direct " and " indirect." The former is a simple and direct defence against persons or things or phenomena, or a direct attack upon such hostile powers by means of charms, spells or rites ; an influential outgrowth of primitive magic is the taboo ; the dangerousness may either lie in the nature of a person or thing, or be imposed upon it. The latter, indirect or dramatic magic, operates not upon persons or things them- selves, but upon imitations of them, or upon detached parts or appurtenances. The indirectness of a rite makes it more mysterious and magical. Mr. Read recognises two kinds of indirect. magie — the sympathetic and the exemplary. Religion, he believes, very probably is of later growth than magic ; but whether animism, as a belief in separable (or separate) spirits, human or other, is later than magic, there is insufficient evidence. At any rate, their origins are independent. His own preference is for the priority of magic. Omens took possession of men's minds, not in an age of reason, but when beliefs were freely born of hope and fear, were entirely practical, were never thought out and never verified. Whether the connection of omen with event was conceived of magically or animistically, it was always mysterious, and on that account was the more