UNFOLDING OF MAN’S INTELLIGENCE 
The modern man finds it difficult to realize how com- 
pletely early man was a slave to magic. No matter what 
happened to him, he immediately laid it to some super 
natural influence, usually evil. Injuries, whether due to 
accident, to attacks by wild beasts, or to struggles with 
his fellows, were the result of his being bewitched. Failure 
in hunting meant that some enemy’s “medicine” was 
more powerful than his own and was working against him. 
Nowhere was this belief stronger than in the case of dis- 
ease, which mankind has ascribed during by far the greater 
part of its existence to the action of mysterious and malig- 
nant forces, at first vague, formless, and invisible, but 
later personified as spirits which might at times appear 
in bodily shape. The beliefin witchcraft by no means first 
acquired importance during the Middle Ages. 
The dominance of magic over the life of early man can 
not be overestimated. It represented his first attempts 
to inquire into the secret workings of nature and to con- 
trol and exploit them for his own benefit. It played the 
part with him that religion, philosophy, and science oc- 
cupy with us. It shaped and influenced all his thoughts, 
and it lies at the root of all his various slow, blundering, 
and halting steps upward—his gropings toward the light. 
The primitive medicine man, because of the mysterious 
knowledge and consequent power attributed to him, was 
the first ruler and director of mankind. He could, and 
often did, terrorize whole communities; but woe to him 
if his magic failed or if he was suspected of imposture, 
for then nothing could save him from the fury of his dupes. 
This way of thinking still persists among many peoples, 
and did until recently among many more. In the struggles 
of that remarkable Indian, Tecumseh, against the en- 
croachments of the whites, his followers drew their in- 
spiration not only from his genius as a leader, but fully as 
much from the claims to magical powers put forth by his 
brother, “the Prophet.” When these were discredited 
by the loss of the battle of Tippecanoe, all Tecumseh’s 
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