THE GENESIS OF SUPERSTITIONS. 521 



girl of some seven, who did not know what a shadow was, and to 

 whom I could give no conception of its true nature. 



On ignoring acquired ideas, we shall see this difficulty to be quite 

 natural. A thing having outlines, and differing from surrounding 

 things in color, and especially a thing which moves, is, in other cases, 

 a reality. Why is not this a reality ? The conception of it, merely 

 a negation of light, is a conception not to be framed until after the 

 behavior of light is in some degree understood. It is true that the 

 uncultured among ourselves, without clearly formulating the truth 

 that light, proceeding in straight lines, necessarily leaves unlighted 

 spaces behind opaque objects, nevertheless come to regard a shadow 

 as naturally attending an object exposed to light, and as not being 

 any thing real. But this is one of the countless cases in which inquiry 

 is set at rest by a verbal explanation. " It's only a shadow," is the 

 answer given in early days ; and this answer, repeatedly given, dead- 

 ens wonder and stops further thought. 



But the primitive man, with no one to answer his questions, and 

 without ideas of physical causation, necessarily concludes a shadow to 

 be an actual existence, which belongs in some way to the person cast- 

 ing it. He simply accepts the facts. Whenever the sun or moon is 

 visible, he sees this attendant thing which rudely resembles him in 

 shape, which moves when he moves, which now goes before him, now 

 keeps by his side, now follows him, which lengthens and shortens as 

 the ground inclines this way or that, and which distorts itself in 

 strange ways as he passes by irregular surfaces. True he cannot see 

 it in cloudy weather ; but, in the absence of a physical interpretation, 

 this simply proves that his attendant something comes out only on 

 bright days and bright nights. It is true, also, that such resemblance 

 as his shadow bears to him, and its approximate separateness from 

 him, are shown only when he stands up : on crouching, it becomes 

 indefinitely formed ; and as he lies down it seems to disappear and 

 partially merge into him. But this observation confirms his im- 

 pression of its reality. This greater or less separateness of his 

 own shadow reminds him of cases where a shadow is quite separ- 

 ate. When watching a fish in the water on a fine day, he sees 

 a dark, fish-shaped patch on the bottom at a considerable distance 

 from the fish, but nevertheless following it hither and thither. Lift- 

 ing up his eyes, he observes dark patches moving along the moun- 

 tain-sides patches which, whether traced or not to the clouds that 

 cast them, are seen to be widely disconnected from objects. These facts 

 show him that shadows, often so closely joined with their objects as to 

 be hardly distinguishable from them, may become distinct and remote. 



Thus, by minds beginning to generalize, shadows must be con- 

 ceived as existences appended to, but capable of separation from, ma- 

 terial things. And that they are so conceived is abundantly proved. 

 We find it stated by Bastian of the Benin negroes, that they regard 



