210 SUPERSTITION. [ix, 



stition, with, all its vagaries, may have been, indeed 

 must have been, the result of that ignorance and fear 

 which he carried about with him, every time he prowled 

 for food through the primeval forest. 



A savage's first division of nature would be, I should 

 say, into things which he can eat and things which 

 can eat him : including, of course, his most formidable 

 enemy, and most savoury food his fellow-man. In 

 finding out what he can eat, we must remember, he 

 will have gone through much experience which will 

 have inspired him with a serious respect for the hidden 

 wrath of nature ; like those Himalayan folk, of whom 

 Hooker says, that as they know every poisonous plant, 

 they must have tried them all not always with 

 impunity. 



So he gets at a third class of objects things which 

 he cannot eat, and which will not eat him ; but will only 

 do him harm, as it seems to him, out of pure malice, 

 like poisonous plants and serpents. There are natural 

 accidents, too, which fall into the same category, 

 stones, floods, fires, avalanches. They hurt him or kill 

 him, surely for ends of their own. If a rock falls from, 

 the cliff above him, what more natural than to suppose 

 that there is some giant up there who threw it at him ? 

 If he had been up there, and strong enough, and had 

 seen a man walking underneath, he would certainly 

 have thrown the stone at him and killed him. For 

 first, he might have eaten the man after; and even if 

 he were not hungry, the man might have done him a 

 mischief ; and it was prudent to prevent that by doing 

 him a mischief first. Besides, the man might have a 

 wife ; and if he killed the man, then the wife would, 

 by a very ancient law common to man and animals., 



