HUMAN SENSATION AND PEKCEPTION. 79 



as among many other peoples. In the Big-Veda the 

 wife is exhorted not to look upon her husband with 

 an evil eye. There was the same belief among the 

 ancient Greeks, and it is also found in the ocidus 

 fascinus of the Romans, and the German loses Auge. 

 The early German Eito, or fever, was a spirit (Alb) 

 which rode upon the sick man. A passage in the Big- 

 Veda states that demons assume the form of an owl, 

 cock, wolf, etc.* Such was the primitive attitude of 

 the transfusion of individual psychical life into things, 

 and consequently of general metamorphosis. Kuhn 

 identifies the Greek verb lao^al with the Sanscrit 

 yavayami, to avert, and in the Big-Veda this verb is 

 used in connection with amivd, disease; so that it 

 was necessary to drive away the demon, as the cause 

 of sickness. A physician, according to the meaning 

 of the old Sanscrit word, was the exerciser of disease, 

 the man who fought with its demon. We find the 

 practice of incantations as a remedy for disease in 

 use among the ancient Greeks, the Bomans, and all 

 European nations, as well as among savages in other 

 parts of the world. 



The objects and phenomena obvious to percep- 

 tion are therefore supposed by primitive man, as 

 well as by animals, to be conscious subjects in virtue 

 of their constitution, and of the innate character of 

 sensation and intelligence. So that the universal 

 personification of the things and phenomena of 



* Pictet, Origines Indo-Europe'ennes. 



