Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/114

104 his image disappears. The Peruvian sorcerers still proceed in the same way, except that their figures are made of rags. In the Indies, according to Dubois, they knead earth collected from a very salt place with hair or pieces of skin, and make a figure on the chest of which they write the name of an enemy, and then stab it with needles, or mutilate in some way, in the belief that the same harm will be suffered by the person represented.

Traces of this primitive superstition are also found among civilized people, for Grimn reports that in the eleventh century Jews were accused in Europe of having killed Bishop Ebergard by a sorcery of the kind. They were said to have made a figure of wax representing the bishop, hired a priest to baptize it, and put it into the fire. As soon as the wax was melted, the bishop was attacked by a mortal disease. The famous adventurer, Jacob, chief of the Pastorals, in the thirteenth century, seriously believed, as he says in his Demonology, that the devil taught men the att of making images of wax and clay, the destruction of which brought on the sickness and death of the persons they represented. It was a custom in the time of Catharine de' Medici to make such figures of wax, and melt them slowly before the fire or stab them with needles, in order to bring suffering to enemies. This operation was called putting a spell upon them. We may also mention the opinion of the earlier Christian writers, who believed, according to Draper, that painting and sculpture were interdicted in the Scriptures, and were consequently evil arts. It may be questioned if this opinion did not have its roots in the idea of primitive peoples that the art of drawing was an instrument of sorcery, by means of which one acquired the power to act upon a person. Mussulmans still have a horror of images, and the Koran forbids having one's portrait made and possessing any image at all.

We would not exhaust this evidence if we did not cite all the facts that go to prove that, in the mind of primitive man, it was sufficient to possess anything—a piece of the garment, hair, a bit of a nail—that had belonged to a person to have power to act upon him and do him harm. The belief in the efficacy of this means is still so strong among some backward peoples, that persons who have any reason to distrust others hide their clothes so that they shall not be robbed of any part of them. Others, when they cut their hair or nails, put the cut parts on the roofs of their houses or bury them in the ground. So peasants in some countries bury the teeth which they pull from themselves.

We should add, to complete the picture, that writing to the savage enjoys the same magic power as drawing. This is easily understood when we recollect that writing by figures preceded writing by letters or any conventional signs, and is still met