Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/149

Rh medicine-man, has cast off the proper accompaniments of his trade, and juggles with fiddles and accordions.

The question whether there is any historical connexion among the superstitious practices of the lower races, is distinct from that of their development from the human mind. On the whole, the similarity that runs through the sorcerer's art in the most remote countries, not only in principle, but so often in details, as for instance in the wide prevalence of the practice of bewitching by locks of hair and rubbish which once belonged to the victim, often favours the view that these coincidences are not independent growths from the same principle, but practices which have spread from one geographical source. I have put together in another place (Chapter X.) some accounts of one of the most widely spread phenomena of sorcery, the pretended extraction of bits of wood, stone, hair, and such things, from the bodies of the sick, which is based upon the belief that disease is caused by such objects having been conjured into them. The value of this belief to the ethnologist depends much on its being difficult to explain it, and therefore also difficult to look upon it as having often arisen independently in the human mind. But from the intelligible, and to a particular state of mind one might even say reasonable, beliefs and practices which have been described in the present chapter, it seems hardly prudent to draw inferences as to the descent and communication of the races among whom they are found, at least while the ethnological argument from beliefs and customs is still in its infancy.

To turn now to a different subject, the same state of mind which has had so large a share in the development of sorcery, has also manifested itself in a very remarkable series of observances regarding spoken words, prohibiting the mention of the names of people, or even sometimes of animals and things. A man will not utter his own name; husband and wife will not utter one another's names; the son or daughter-in-law will not mention the name of the father or mother-in-law, and vice versâ; the names of chiefs may not be uttered, nor the names of certain other persons, nor of superhuman beings, nor of animals and things to which supernatural powers are ascribed. These various prohibitions are not found all together, but one tribe may hold