Chapter III: Sympathetic Magic (7)

Even in Europe many people still believe that a person’s destiny is more or less bound up with that of his navel-string or afterbirth. Thus in Rhenish Bavaria the navel-string is kept for a while wrapt up in a piece of old linen, and then cut or pricked to pieces according as the child is a boy or a girl, in order that he or she may grow up to be a skilful workman or a good sempstress.[720] In Berlin the midwife commonly delivers the dried navel-string to the father with a strict injunction to preserve it carefully, for so long as it is kept the child will live and thrive and be free from sickness.[721] In Beauce and Perche the people are careful to throw the navel-string neither into water nor into fire, believing that if that were done the child would be drowned or burned.[722] Among the Ruthenians of Bukowina and Galicia, the owner of a cow sometimes endeavours to increase its milk by throwing its afterbirth into a spring, “in order that, just as the water flows from the spring, so milk may flow in abundance from the udders of the cow.”[723] Some German peasants think that the afterbirth of a cow must be hung up in an apple-tree, otherwise the cow would not have {p199} a calf next year.[724] Similarly at Cleveland in Yorkshire, when a mare foals, it is the custom to hang up the placenta in a tree, particularly in a thorn-tree, in order to secure luck with the foal. “Should the birth take place in the fields, this suspension is most carefully attended to, while as for the requirements of such events at the homestead, in not a few instances there is a certain tree not far from the farm-buildings still specially marked out for the reception of these peculiar pendants. In one instance lately, I heard of a larch tree so devoted, but admittedly in default of the thorn; the old thorn-tree long employed for the purpose having died out.”[725] Again, in Europe children born with a caul are considered lucky;[726] in Holland, as in the East Indies, they can see ghosts.[727] The Icelanders also hold that a child born with a caul will afterwards possess the gift of second sight, that he will never be harmed by sorcery, and will be victorious in every contest he undertakes, provided he has the caul dried and carries it with him.[728] This latter belief explains why both in ancient and modern times advocates have bought cauls with the hope of winning their cases by means of them.[729] Probably they thought that the spirit in the caul would prove an invincible ally to the person who had purchased its services. In like manner the aborigines of Central Australia believe that their sacred sticks or stones (_churinga_) are intimately associated with the spirits of the dead men to whom they belonged, and that in a fight a man who carries one of these sticks or stones will certainly vanquish an adversary who has no such talisman.[730] Further, it is an ancient belief in Iceland that the child’s guardian spirit or a part of its soul has its seat in the chorion or foetal membrane, which usually forms part of the afterbirth, but is known as the caul when the child {p200} happens to be born with it. Hence the chorion was itself known as the _fylgia_ or guardian spirit. It might not be thrown away under the open sky, lest demons should get hold of it and work the child harm thereby, or lest wild beasts should eat it up. It might not be burned, for if it were burned the child would have no _fylgia_, which would be as bad as to have no shadow. Formerly it was customary to bury the chorion under the threshold, where the mother stepped over it daily when she rose from bed. If the chorion was thus treated, the man had in after life a guardian spirit in the shape of a bear, an eagle, a wolf, an ox, or a boar. The guardian spirits of cunning men and wizards had the shape of a fox, while those of beautiful women appeared as swans. In all these forms the guardian spirits formerly announced their coming and presented themselves to the persons to whom they belonged; but nowadays both the belief and the custom have changed in many respects.[731]

[Sidenote: Afterbirth or navel-string a seat of the external soul.]

Thus in many parts of the world the navel-string, or more commonly the afterbirth, is regarded as a living being, the brother or sister of the infant, or as the material object in which the guardian spirit of the child or part of its soul resides. This latter belief we have found among the aborigines of Queensland, the Battas of Sumatra, and the Norsemen of Iceland. In accordance with such beliefs it has been customary to preserve these parts of the body, at least for a time, with the utmost care, lest the character, the fate, or even the life of the person to whom they belong should be endangered by their injury or loss. Further, the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a person and his afterbirth or navel-string comes out very clearly in the widespread custom of treating the afterbirth or navel-string in ways which are supposed to influence for life the character and career of the person, making him, if it is a man, a swift runner, a nimble climber, a strong swimmer, a skilful hunter, or a brave soldier, and making her, if it is a woman, an expert fisher, a cunning sempstress, a good cook or baker, and so forth. Thus the beliefs and usages {p201} concerned with the afterbirth or placenta, and to a less extent with the navel-string, present a remarkable parallel to the widespread doctrine of the transferable or external soul and the customs founded on it. Hence it is hardly rash to conjecture that the resemblance is no mere chance coincidence, but that in the afterbirth or placenta we have a physical basis (not necessarily the only one) for the theory and practice of the external soul. The consideration of that subject is reserved for a later part of this work.[732]

[Sidenote: Contagious magic exemplified in the sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a wound and the weapon which inflicted it.

Bacon on the custom of anointing the weapon in order to heal the wound.

East Anglian practice of anointing the weapon instead of the wound.]

A curious application of the doctrine of contagious magic is the relation commonly believed to exist between a wounded man and the agent of the wound, so that whatever is subsequently done by or to the agent must correspondingly affect the patient either for good or evil. Thus Pliny tells us that if you have wounded a man and are sorry for it, you have only to spit on the hand that gave the wound, and the pain of the sufferer will be instantly alleviated.[733] In Melanesia, if a man’s friends get possession of the arrow which wounded him, they keep it in a damp place or in cool leaves, for then the inflammation will be trifling and will soon subside. Meantime the enemy who shot the arrow is hard at work to aggravate the wound by all the means in his power. For this purpose he and his friends drink hot and burning juices and chew irritating leaves, for this will clearly inflame and irritate the wound. Further, they keep the bow near the fire to make the wound which it has inflicted hot; and for the same reason they put the arrow-head, if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus.[734] Similarly when a Kwakiutl Indian of British Columbia had bitten a piece out of an enemy’s arm, he used to drink hot water afterwards for the purpose of thereby inflaming the wound in his foe’s {p202} body.[735] Among the Lkuñgen Indians of the same region it is a rule that an arrow, or any other weapon that has wounded a man, must be hidden by his friends, who have to be careful not to bring it near the fire till the wound is healed. If a knife or an arrow which is still covered with a man’s blood were thrown into the fire, the wounded man would suffer very much.[736] In the Yerkla-mining tribe of south-eastern Australia it is thought that if any one but the medicine-man touches the flint knife with which a boy has been subincised, the boy will thereby be made very ill. So seriously is this belief held that if the lad chanced thereafter to fall sick and die, the man who had touched the knife would be killed.[737] “It is constantly received and avouched,” says Bacon, “that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), you shall note the points following: first, the ointment wherewith this is done is made of divers ingredients, whereof the strangest and hardest to come by are the moss upon the skull of a dead man unburied, and the fats of a boar and a bear killed in the act of generation.” The precious ointment compounded out of these and other ingredients was applied, as the philosopher explains, not to the wound but to the weapon, and that even though the injured man was at a great distance and knew nothing about it. The experiment, he tells us, had been tried of wiping the ointment off the weapon without the knowledge of the person hurt, with the result that he was presently in a great rage of pain until the weapon was anointed again. Moreover, “it is affirmed that if you cannot get the weapon, yet if you put an instrument of iron or wood resembling the weapon into the wound, whereby it bleedeth, the anointing of that instrument will serve and work the effect.”[738] Remedies of the {p203} sort which Bacon deemed worthy of his attention are still in vogue in the eastern counties of England. Thus in Suffolk if a man cuts himself with a bill-hook or a scythe he always takes care to keep the weapon bright, and oils it to prevent the wound from festering. If he runs a thorn or, as he calls it, a bush into his hand, he oils or greases the extracted thorn. A man came to a doctor with an inflamed hand, having run a thorn into it while he was hedging. On being told that the hand was festering, he remarked, “That didn’t ought to, for I greased the bush well arter I pulled it out.” If a horse wounds its foot by treading on a nail, a Suffolk groom will invariably preserve the nail, clean it, and grease it every day, to prevent the foot from festering. Arguing in the same way, a Suffolk woman, whose sister had burnt her face with a flat-iron, observed that “the face would never heal till the iron had been put out of the way; and even if it did heal, it would be sure to break out again every time the iron was heated.”[739] At Norwich in June 1902 a woman named Matilda Henry accidentally ran a nail into her foot. Without examining the wound, or even removing her stocking, she caused her daughter to grease the nail, saying that if this were done no harm would come of the hurt. A few days afterwards she died of lockjaw.[740] Similarly Cambridgeshire labourers think that if a horse has run a nail into its foot, it is necessary to grease the nail with lard or oil and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not recover. A few years ago a veterinary surgeon was sent for to attend a horse which had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost. On arriving at the farm he found that nothing had been done to the wounded horse, but that a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost in order that it might be greased and put away, which, in the opinion of the Cambridge wiseacres, would conduce to the recovery of the {p204} animal.[741] Similarly Essex rustics opine that, if a man has been stabbed with a knife, it is essential to his recovery that the knife should be greased and laid across the bed on which the sufferer is lying.[742] So in Bavaria you are directed to anoint a linen rag with grease and tie it on the edge of the axe that cut you, taking care to keep the sharp edge upwards. As the grease on the axe dries, your wound heals.[743] Similarly in the Harz mountains they say that if you cut yourself, you ought to smear the knife or the scissors with fat and put the instrument away in a dry place in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the knife dries, the wound heals.[744] Other people, however, in Germany say that you should stick the knife in some damp place in the ground, and that your hurt will heal as the knife rusts.[745] Others again, in Bavaria, recommend you to smear the axe or whatever it is with blood and put it under the eaves.[746]

[Sidenote: Further extensions of this case of contagious magic.]

The train of reasoning which thus commends itself to English and German rustics, in common with the savages of Melanesia and America, is carried a step further by the aborigines of Central Australia, who conceive that under certain circumstances the near relations of a wounded man must grease themselves, restrict their diet, and regulate their behaviour in other ways in order to ensure his recovery. Thus when a lad has been circumcised and the wound is not yet healed, his mother may not eat opossum, or a certain kind of lizard, or carpet snake, or any kind of fat, for otherwise she would retard the healing of the boy’s wound. Every day she greases her digging-sticks and never lets them out of her sight; at night she sleeps with them close to her head. No one is allowed to touch them. Every day also she rubs her body all over with grease, as in some way this is believed to help her son’s recovery.[747] Another {p205} refinement of the same principle is due to the ingenuity of the German peasant. It is said that when one of his pigs or sheep breaks its leg, a farmer of Rhenish Bavaria or Hesse will bind up the leg of a chair with bandages and splints in due form. For some days thereafter no one may sit on that chair, move it, or knock up against it; for to do so would pain the injured pig or sheep and hinder the cure.[748] In this last case it is clear that we have passed wholly out of the region of contagious magic and into the region of homoeopathic or imitative magic; the chair-leg, which is treated instead of the beast’s leg, in no sense belongs to the animal, and the application of bandages to it is a mere simulation of the treatment which a more rational surgery would bestow on the real patient.

[Sidenote: Sympathetic connexion between a wounded person and his spilt blood.

A sympathetic connexion is supposed to exist between a person and his clothes, so that any injury done to the clothes is felt by the man.

Contagious magic of clothes.

Prussian custom of beating the garments which a thief has dropped.]

The sympathetic connexion supposed to exist between a man and the weapon which has wounded him is probably founded on the notion that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood in his body. For a like reason the Papuans of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea, are careful to throw into the sea the bloody bandages with which their wounds have been dressed, for they fear that if these rags fell into the hands of an enemy he might injure them magically thereby. Once when a man with a wound in his mouth, which bled constantly, came to the missionaries to be treated, his faithful wife took great pains to collect all the blood and cast it into the sea.[749] Strained and unnatural as this idea may seem to us, it is perhaps less so than the belief that magic sympathy is maintained between a person and his clothes, so that whatever is done to the clothes will be felt by the man himself, even though he may be far away at the time. That is why these same Papuans of Tumleo search most anxiously for the smallest scrap which they may have lost of their scanty garments,[750] and why other Papuans, travelling through the thick forest, will stop and carefully scrape from a bough any clot of red pomade which {p206} may have adhered to it from their greasy heads.[751] In the Wotjobaluk tribe of Victoria a wizard would sometimes get hold of a man’s opossum rug and tie it up with some small spindle-shaped pieces of casuarina wood, on which he had made certain marks, such as likenesses of his victim and of a poisonous snake. This bundle he would then roast slowly in the fire, and as he did so the man who had owned the opossum rug would fall sick. Should the patient suspect what was happening, he would send to the wizard and beg him to let him have the rug back. If the wizard consented, “he would give the thing back, telling the sick man’s friends to put it in water, so as to wash the fire out.” In such cases, we are told, the sick man would feel cooled and would most likely recover.[752] In Tanna, one of the New Hebrides, a man who had a grudge at another and desired his death would try to get possession of a cloth which had touched the sweat of his enemy’s body. If he succeeded, he rubbed the cloth carefully over with the leaves and twigs of a certain tree, rolled and bound cloth, twigs, and leaves into a long sausage-shaped bundle, and burned it slowly in the fire. As the bundle was consumed, the victim fell ill, and when it was reduced to ashes, he died.[753] In this last form of enchantment, however, the magical sympathy may be supposed to exist not so much between the man and the cloth as between the man and the sweat which issued from his body. But in other cases of the same sort it seems that the garment by itself is enough to give the sorcerer a hold upon his victim. The witch in Theocritus, while she melted an image or lump of wax in order that her faithless lover might melt with love of her, did not forget to throw into the fire a shred of his cloak which he had dropped in her house.[754] In Prussia they say that if you cannot catch a thief, the next best thing you can do is to get hold of a garment which he may have shed in his flight; for it {p207} you beat it soundly, the thief will fall sick. This belief is firmly rooted in the popular mind. Some seventy or eighty years ago, in the neighbourhood of Berend, a man was detected trying to steal honey, and fled, leaving his coat behind him. When he heard that the enraged owner of the honey was mauling his lost coat, he was so alarmed that he took to his bed and died.[755] But in Germany it is not every stick that is good enough to beat an absent man with. It should be a hazel rod cut before sunrise on Good Friday. Some say it should be a one-year-old hazel-sapling, and that you should cut it with three strokes, looking to the east, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Others think the best time for cutting the rod is at the new moon on a Tuesday morning before sunrise. Once you have got this valuable instrument, you have only to spread a garment on a mole-hill or on the threshold, and to lay on with hearty goodwill, mentioning the name of the person whom you desire to injure. Though he may be miles off, he will feel every whack as if it descended on his body.[756]

[Sidenote: Contagious magic may be wrought on a man through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth, particularly through his footprints.

Contagious magic of footprints.]

Again, magic may be wrought on a man sympathetically, not only through his clothes and severed parts of himself, but also through the impressions left by his body in sand or earth. In particular, it is a world-wide superstition that by injuring footprints you injure the feet that made them. Thus the natives of south-eastern Australia think that they can lame a man by placing sharp pieces of quartz, glass, bone, or charcoal in his footprints. Rheumatic pains are often attributed by them to this cause. Seeing a Tatungolung man very lame, Mr. Howitt asked him what was the matter. He said, “Some fellow has put _bottle_ in my foot.” He was suffering from rheumatism, but believed that an enemy had found his foot-track and had buried in it a piece of broken bottle, the magical influence of which {p208} had entered his foot. On another occasion Mr. Howitt’s party was followed by a number of strange natives who looked with great interest at the footprints of the horses and camels. A black fellow with Mr. Howitt was much alarmed, and declared that the strangers were putting poison in his footsteps.[757] The Wyingurri, a tribe on the border of western Australia, have a magical instrument made of resin and rats’ teeth which they call a sun, because it is supposed to contain the solar heat. By placing it on a man’s tracks they think they can throw him into a violent fever, which will soon burn him up.[758] In the Unmatjera tribe of Central Australia, when a boy has been circumcised he must hide in the bush, and if he should see a woman’s tracks he must be very careful to jump over them. For if his foot were to touch them, the spirit of the louse which lives in the woman’s hair would go to him, and his head would be full of lice.[759] In New Britain it is thought that you can cause the sickness or death of a man by pricking his footprints with the sting of a sting-ray.[760] The Maoris imagine that they can work grievous harm to an enemy by taking up earth from his footprints, depositing it in a sacred place, and performing a ceremony over it.[761] In Savage Island a common form of witchcraft was to take up the soil on which an enemy had set his foot, and to carry it to a sacred place, where it was solemnly cursed, in order that the man might be afflicted with lameness.[762] The Galelareese think that if anybody sticks something sharp into your footprints while you are walking, you will be wounded in your feet.[763] In Japan, if a house has been robbed by night {p209} and the burglar’s footprints are visible in the morning, the householder will burn mugwort on them, hoping thereby to hurt the robber’s feet so that he cannot run far, and the police may easily overtake him.[764] Among the Karens of Burma some people are said to keep poison fangs for the purpose of killing their enemies. These they thrust into the footprints of the person whom they wish to destroy, and soon he finds himself with a sore foot, as if a dog had bitten it. The sore rapidly grows worse till death follows.[765] Peasants of northern India commonly attribute all sorts of pains and sores to the machinations of a witch or sorcerer who has meddled with their footprints.[766] For example, with the Chero, a Dravidian race of labourers in the hill country of Mirzapur, a favourite mode of harming an enemy is to measure his footprints in the dust with a straw and then mutter a spell over them; that brings on wounds and sores in his feet.[767] Such magical operations have been familiar to the Hindoos from of old. In the _Kausika Sutra_, a book of sorcery, it is directed that, while your foe is walking southward, you should make cuts in his footprint with the leaf of a certain tree or with the blade of an axe (it is not quite clear which is to be used); then you must tie dust from the footprint in the leaf of a certain tree (_Butea frondosa_) and throw it into a frying-pan; if it crackles in the pan, your enemy is undone.[768] Another old Hindoo charm was to obtain earth from the footprint of a beleaguered king and scatter it in the wind.[769] The Herero of South Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion and throw it on the track of an enemy, with the wish, “May the lion kill you.”[770] The Ovambo of the same region believe that they can be bewitched by an enemy through the dust or sand {p210} of their footprints. Hence a man who has special reason to dread the spite of a foe will carefully efface his footprints with a branch as fast as he makes them.[771] The Ewe-speaking people of West Africa fancy they can drive an enemy mad by throwing a magic powder on his footprints.[772] Among the Shuswap and Carrier Indians of North-west America shamans used to bewitch a man by taking earth from the spot on which he had stood and placing it in their medicine-bags; then their victim fell sick or died.[773] In North Africa the magic of the footprints is sometimes used for more amiable purposes. A woman who wishes to attach her husband or lover to herself will take earth from the print of his right foot, tie it up with some of his hairs in a packet, and wear the packet next her skin.[774]

[Sidenote: Contagious magic of footprints in Europe.]

Similar practices prevail in various parts of Europe. Thus in Mecklenburg it is thought that if you drive a nail into a man’s footprint he will fall lame; sometimes it is required that the nail should be taken from a coffin.[775] A like mode of injuring an enemy is resorted to in some parts of France.[776] It is said that there was an old woman who used to frequent Stow in Suffolk, and she was a witch. If, while she walked, any one went after her and stuck a nail or a knife into her footprint in the dust, the dame could not stir a step till it was withdrawn.[777] More commonly, it would seem, in Germany earth from the footprint is tied up in a cloth and hung in the chimney smoke; as it dries up, so the man withers away or his foot shrivels up.[778] The same practice and the same belief are said to be common in Matogrosso, a province of Brazil.[779] A Bohemian {p211} variation of the charm is to put the earth from the footprint in a pot with nails, needles, broken glass, and so forth, then set the pot on the fire and let it boil till it bursts. After that the man whose footprint has been boiled will have a lame leg for the rest of his life.[780] Among the Lithuanians the proceeding is somewhat different. They dig up the earth from the person’s footprint and bury it, with various incantations, in a graveyard. That causes the person to sicken and die.[781] A similar practice is reported from Mecklenburg.[782] The Esthonians of the island of Oesel measure the footprint with a stick and bury the stick, thereby undermining the health of the man or woman whose foot made the mark.[783] Among the South Slavs a girl will dig up the earth from the footprints of the man she loves and put it in a flower-pot. Then she plants in the pot a marigold, a flower that is thought to be fadeless. And as its golden blossom grows and blooms and never fades, so shall her sweetheart’s love grow and bloom, and never, never fade.[784] Thus the love-spell acts on the man through the earth he trod on. An old Danish mode of concluding a treaty was based on the same idea of the sympathetic connexion between a man and his footprints: the covenanting parties sprinkled each other’s footprints with their own blood, thus giving a pledge of fidelity.[785] In ancient Greece superstitions of the same sort seem to have been current, for it was thought that if a horse stepped on the track of a wolf he was seized with numbness;[786] and a maxim ascribed to Pythagoras forbade people to pierce a man’s footprints with a nail or a knife.[787]

[Sidenote: The contagious magic of footprints is used by hunters for the purpose of running down the game.]

The same superstition is turned to account by hunters in many parts of the world for the purpose of running down the game. Thus a German huntsman will stick a nail taken from a coffin into the fresh spoor of the quarry, {p212} believing that this will hinder the animal from escaping.[788] The aborigines of Victoria put hot embers in the tracks of the animals they were pursuing.[789] Hottentot hunters throw into the air a handful of sand taken from the footprints of the game, believing that this will bring the animal down.[790] Thompson Indians used to lay charms on the tracks of wounded deer; after that they deemed it superfluous to pursue the animal any further that day, for being thus charmed it could not travel far and would soon die.[791] Similarly, Ojebway Indians placed “medicine” on the track of the first deer or bear they met with, supposing that this would soon bring the animal into sight, even if it were two or three days’ journey off; for this charm had power to compress a journey of several days into a few hours.[792] Ewe hunters of West Africa stab the footprints of game with a sharp-pointed stick in order to maim the quarry and allow them to come up with it.[793] If Esthonian peasants find a wolf’s dung on a beast’s tracks, they burn it and scatter the ashes to the wind. This gives the wolf a pain in his stomach and makes him lose his way.[794] The Aino think that hares bewitch people. Hence if one of them sees the track of a hare in the snow near his hut, he should carefully scoop it up with a water-ladle and then turn it upside down, saying as he does so that he buries the soul of the hare under the snow, and expressing a wish that the animal may sicken and die.[795] In order to recover strayed cattle, the Zulus take the animals’ dung and earth from their footprints and place both in the chief’s vessel, round which a magic circle is drawn. Then the chief says: “I have now conquered them. Those cattle are now here; I am now sitting upon them. I do not know in what way they will escape.”[796] {p213}

[Sidenote: Contagious magic wrought through the impressions of other parts of the body.

Contagious magic of imprints.]

But though the footprint is the most obvious it is not the only impression made by the body through which magic may be wrought on a man. The aborigines of south-eastern Australia believe that a man may be injured by burying sharp fragments of quartz, glass, and so forth in the mark made by his reclining body; the magical virtue of these sharp things enters his body and causes those acute pains which the ignorant European puts down to rheumatism.[797] Sometimes they beat the place where the man sat with a pointed stick of the he-oak (_Casuarina leptoclada_), chanting an appropriate song at the same time; the stick will enter his person and kill him, provided the place operated on is still warm with the heat of his body.[798] At Delena, in British New Guinea, a man will sometimes revenge himself on a girl who has rejected his love by thrusting the spine of a sting-ray into the spot where she has been sitting; afterwards he puts it in the sun for a day or two and finally heats it over a fire. In a couple of days the girl dies.[799] The natives of Tumleo, an island off German New Guinea, efface the marks they have left on the ground where they sat, lest magic should be wrought on them thereby.[800] Before they leave a camping-place some of the natives of German New Guinea are careful to stab the ground thoroughly with spears, in order to prevent a sorcerer from making any use of a drop of sweat or any other personal remains which they may chance to leave behind.[801] We can now understand why it was a maxim with the Pythagoreans that in rising from bed you should smooth away the impression left by your body on the bed-clothes.[802] The rule was simply an old precaution against magic, forming part of a whole code of superstitious maxims which {p214} antiquity fathered on Pythagoras, though doubtless they were familiar to the barbarous forefathers of the Greeks long before the time of that philosopher.[803] To ensure the good behaviour of an ally with whom they have just had a conference, the Basutos will cut and preserve the grass on which the ally sat during the interview.[804] Probably they regard the grass as a hostage for the observance of the treaty, since through it they could punish the man who sat on the grass if he should break faith. Moors who write on the sand are superstitiously careful to obliterate all the marks they made, never leaving a stroke or a dot in the sand when they have done writing.[805] Another of the so-called maxims of Pythagoras bade people in lifting a pot always to smooth away the imprint it left on the ashes.[806] So in Cambodia they say that when you lift a pot from the fire you should not set it down on the ashes; but that, if you must do so, you should be careful, in lifting the pot from the ashes, to efface the impression it has made. Otherwise they think that want will knock at your door.[807] But this seems to be an afterthought, devised to explain a rule of which the original meaning was forgotten. The old notion probably was that a magician could sympathetically injure any person who ate out of a pot by means of the impression which the pot had left on the ashes; or, to be more explicit, contagious magic was supposed to work through the impression of the pot to the pot itself, through the pot to the meat contained in it, and finally through the meat to the eater.

§4. _The Magician’s Progress_

[Sidenote: Public and private magic. The public magician who practises his art for the good of the whole community, enjoys great influence and may rise to be a chief or king.]

We have now concluded our examination of the general principles of sympathetic magic. The examples by which I have illustrated them have been drawn for the most part from what may be called private magic, that is from magical {p215} rites and incantations practised for the benefit or the injury of individuals. But in savage society there is commonly to be found in addition what we may call public magic, that is, sorcery practised for the benefit of the whole community. Wherever ceremonies of this sort are observed for the common good, it is obvious that the magician ceases to be merely a private practitioner and becomes to some extent a public functionary. The development of such a class of functionaries is of great importance for the political as well as the religious evolution of society. For when the welfare of the tribe is supposed to depend on the performance of these magical rites, the magician rises into a position of much influence and repute, and may readily acquire the rank and authority of a chief or king. The profession accordingly draws into its ranks some of the ablest and most ambitious men of the tribe, because it holds out to them a prospect of honour, wealth, and power such as hardly any other career could offer. The acuter minds perceive how easy it is to dupe their weaker brother and to play on his superstition for their own advantage. Not that the sorcerer is always a knave and impostor; he is often sincerely convinced that he really possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win for themselves positions of the highest dignity and the most commanding authority. The pitfalls which beset the path of the professional sorcerer are many, and as a rule only the man of coolest head and sharpest wit will be able to steer his way through them safely. For it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious. Accordingly the sorcerer who sincerely believes in his own extravagant pretensions is in far greater peril and is much more likely to be cut short in his career than the deliberate impostor. The honest wizard always expects that his charms and {p216} incantations will produce their supposed effect; and when they fail, not only really, as they always do, but conspicuously and disastrously, as they often do, he is taken aback: he is not, like his knavish colleague, ready with a plausible excuse to account for the failure, and before he can find one he may be knocked on the head by his disappointed and angry employers.

[Sidenote: Tendency of supreme power to fall into the hands of the ablest and most unscrupulous men.]

The general result is that at this stage of social evolution the supreme power tends to fall into the hands of men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character. If we could balance the harm they do by their knavery against the benefits they confer by their superior sagacity, it might well be found that the good greatly outweighed the evil. For more mischief has probably been wrought in the world by honest fools in high places than by intelligent rascals. Once your shrewd rogue has attained the height of his ambition, and has no longer any selfish end to further, he may, and often does, turn his talents, his experience, his resources, to the service of the public. Many men who have been least scrupulous in the acquisition of power have been most beneficent in the use of it, whether the power they aimed at and won was that of wealth, political authority, or what not. In the field of politics the wily intriguer, the ruthless victor, may end by being a wise and magnanimous ruler, blessed in his lifetime, lamented at his death, admired and applauded by posterity. Such men, to take two of the most conspicuous instances, were Julius Caesar and Augustus. But once a fool always a fool, and the greater the power in his hands the more disastrous is likely to be the use he makes of it. The heaviest calamity in English history, the breach with America, might never have occurred if George the Third had not been an honest dullard.

[Sidenote: The elevation of magicians to power tends to substitute a monarchy for that primitive democracy, or rather oligarchy of old men which is characteristic of savage society; and the rise of monarchy seems to be an essential condition of the emergence of mankind from savagery.]

Thus, so far as the public profession of magic affected the constitution of savage society, it tended to place the control of affairs in the hands of the ablest man: it shifted the balance of power from the many to the one: it substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an oligarchy of old men; for in general the savage community is ruled, not by the whole body of adult males, but by a council of {p217} elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and whatever the character of the early rulers, was on the whole very beneficial. For the rise of monarchy appears to be an essential condition of the emergence of mankind from savagery. No human being is so hidebound by custom and tradition as your democratic savage; in no state of society consequently is progress so slow and difficult. The old notion that the savage is the freest of mankind is the reverse of the truth. He is a slave, not indeed to a visible master, but to the past, to the spirits of his dead forefathers, who haunt his steps from birth to death, and rule him with a rod of iron. What they did is the pattern of right, the unwritten law to which he yields a blind unquestioning obedience. The least possible scope is thus afforded to superior talent to change old customs for the better. The ablest man is dragged down by the weakest and dullest, who necessarily sets the standard, since he cannot rise, while the other can fall. The surface of such a society presents a uniform dead level, so far as it is humanly possible to reduce the natural inequalities, the immeasurable real differences of inborn capacity and temper, to a false superficial appearance of equality. From this low and stagnant condition of affairs, which demagogues and dreamers in later times have lauded as the ideal state, the Golden Age, of humanity, everything that helps to raise society by opening a career to talent and proportioning the degrees of authority to men’s natural abilities, deserves to be welcomed by all who have the real good of their fellows at heart. Once these elevating influences have begun to operate—and they cannot be for ever suppressed—the progress of civilisation becomes comparatively rapid. The rise of one man to supreme power enables him to carry through changes in a single lifetime which previously many generations might not have sufficed to effect; and if, as will often happen, he is a man of intellect and energy above the common, he will readily avail himself of the opportunity. Even the whims and caprices of a tyrant may be of service in breaking the chain of custom which lies so heavy on the savage. And as soon as the tribe ceases to be swayed by the timid and divided counsels of the elders, and yields to the direction of a single strong and resolute mind, it {p218} becomes formidable to its neighbours and enters on a career of aggrandisement, which at an early stage of history is often highly favourable to social, industrial, and intellectual progress. For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.

[Sidenote: Intellectual progress dependent on economic progress, which is often furthered by conquest and empire.]

Intellectual progress, which reveals itself in the growth of art and science and the spread of more liberal views, cannot be dissociated from industrial or economic progress, and that in its turn receives an immense impulse from conquest and empire. It is no mere accident that the most vehement outbursts of activity of the human mind have followed close on the heels of victory, and that the great conquering races of the world have commonly done most to advance and spread civilisation, thus healing in peace the wounds they inflicted in war. The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs are our witnesses in the past: we may yet live to see a similar outburst in Japan. Nor, to remount the stream of history to its sources, is it an accident that all the first great strides towards civilisation have been made under despotic and theocratic governments, like those of Egypt, Babylon, and Peru, where the supreme ruler claimed and received the servile allegiance of his subjects in the double character of a king and a god. It is hardly too much to say that at this early epoch despotism is the best friend of humanity and, paradoxical as it may sound, of liberty. For after all there is more liberty in the best sense—liberty to think our own thoughts and to fashion our own destinies—under the most absolute despotism, the most grinding tyranny, than under the apparent freedom of savage life, where the individual’s lot is cast from the cradle to the grave in the iron mould of hereditary custom.

[Sidenote: Benefits rendered to civilisation by magic.]

So far, therefore, as the public profession of magic has been one of the roads by which the ablest men have passed to supreme power, it has contributed to emancipate mankind {p219} from the thraldom of tradition and to elevate them into a larger, freer life, with a broader outlook on the world. This is no small service rendered to humanity. And when we remember further that in another direction magic has paved the way for science, we are forced to admit that if the black art has done much evil, it has also been the source of much good; that if it is the child of error, it has yet been the mother of freedom and truth.

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