Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/118

108 and horses, though it never disappears, must be sought for in the midst of more complex phenomena. Perhaps nothing in after life more closely resembles the effect of a doll upon a child, than the effect of the illustrations of a tale upon a grown-up reader. Here the objective resemblance is very indefinite: two artists would make pictures of the same scene that were very unlike one another, the very persons and places depicted are imaginary, and yet what reality and definiteness is given to the scene by a good picture. But in this case the direct action of an image on the mind complicates itself with the deepest problems of painting and sculpture. The comparison of the workings of the mind of the uncivilized man, and of the civilized child, is much less difficult.

Mr. Backhouse one day noticed in Van Diemen's Land a native woman arranging several stones that were flat, oval, and about two inches wide, and marked in various directions with black and red lines. These he learned represented absent friends, and one larger than the rest stood for a fat native woman on Flinders Island, known by the name of Mother Brown. Similar practices are found among far higher races than the ill-fated Tasmanians. Among some North American tribes, a mother who has lost a child keeps its memory ever present to her by filling its cradle with black feathers and quills, and carrying it about with her for a year or more. When she stops anywhere, she sets up the cradle and talks to it as she goes about her work, just as she would have done if the dead baby had been still alive within it. Here we have no image; but in Africa we find a rude doll, representing the child, kept as a memorial. It is well known that over a great part of Africa the practice prevails, that whenever twin children are born, one or both of them are immediately killed. Among the Wanyamwezi, one of the two is always killed; and, strange to say, "the universal custom amongst these tribes, is for the mother to wrap a gourd or calabash in skins, to place it to sleep with, and feed it like, the survivor." Bastian saw Indian women in Peru, who had lost an infant, carrying about