Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/127

Rh such a connexion as there is between the bucket in the well and the hand that draws it up,—when the hand stops, the bucket stops too; or between a man and his shadow,—when the man moves, the shadow moves too; or between an electro-magnet and the iron filings near it,—when the current passes through the coil, a change takes place in the condition of the iron filings. These are, of course, crude examples; but if more nicety is necessary, it might be said that the connexion is in some degree what a mathematician expresses in saying that y is a function of x, when, if x changes, y changes too. The connexion between a man and his portrait is not objective, for what is done to the man has no effect upon the portrait, and vice versâ.

To an educated European nowadays this sounds like a mere truism, so self-evident that it is not necessary to make a formal statement of it; but it may nevertheless be shown that this is one of the cases in which the accumulated experience and the long course of education of the civilized races have brought them not only to reverse the opinion of the savage, but commonly to think that their own views are the only ones that could naturally arise in the mind of any rational human being. It needs no very large acquaintance with the life and ways of thought of the savage, to prove that there is to be found all over the world, especially among races at a low mental level, a view as to this matter which is very different from that which a more advanced education has impressed upon us. Man, in a low stage of culture, very commonly believes that between the object and the image of it there is a real connexion, which does not arise from a mere subjective process in the mind of the observer, and that it is accordingly possible to communicate an impression to the original through the copy. We may follow this erroneous belief up into periods of high civilization, its traces becoming fainter as education advances, and not only is this confusion of subjective and objective relations connected with many of the delusions of idolatry, but even so seemingly obscure a subject as magic and sorcery may be brought in great measure into clear daylight, by looking at it as evolved from this process of the mind.

It is related by an early observer of the natives of Australia,