7o6 



NATURE 



[August 4, 1921 



which are said to have manifested themselves by 

 various means are now added fairies. Not only 

 have fairies appeared visibly to a certain number 

 of individuals, as reported by Sir A. Conan Doyle, 

 but photographs of them have been taken and 

 published in a popular magazine. The truly won- 

 derful similarity between the real fairy or gnome, 

 as photographed, and the conventional fairy of 

 art is a remarkable tribute to the imaginative 

 genius and insight of such artists as Mr. Arthur 

 Rackham. Sir A. Conan Doyle, whom this 

 resemblance has not escaped, would account for 

 it by a tradition of a previous revelation. 



It is clear that these beliefs cannot be treated 

 as being all upon the same level. Mascots are 

 undoubtedly largely a result of fashion, and in a 

 number of cases — probably the majority — the 

 owners would deny any faith in their efficacy. 

 They are "just for luck." The spiritualist, how- 

 ever, holds his convictions with something of the 

 fervour of a religious zealot, yet taking the beliefs 

 as a whole they have one element in common. 

 They represent a reversion to a very primitive 

 point of view. 



The revival of the mascot and other forms of 

 the occult has been confined to the upper and 

 well-to-do classes. Among the lower and 

 less educated classes of Europe belief in certain 

 forms of magic has never died out; it goes back 

 to prehistoric times. In the Mediterranean the 

 belief in the evil-eye retains all its old vitality ; 

 at Naples, during the current year, an old woman 

 was harried as a witch; and a sheep's head, 

 wrapped in human hair fastened with forty -three 

 large nails, found in her possession, was seized 

 by the police and burned in a church at the 

 request of the excited populace. In the recent 

 elections in Italy a political party of gam- 

 blers was formed, also at Naples, of which 

 the chosen representatives were noted for the 

 magical powers which they placed at the 

 service of their clients. In this country the belief 

 in the witch has not died out — in 1906, at Thames 

 Police Court, a reputed witch was convicted of 

 obtaining money by means of a trick, and other 

 cases have occurred since that date. Love-charms 

 and amulets against sickness and misfortune are 

 common. A potato (against rheumatism), an 

 oddly shaped bone, a fossil, a thread of red silk, 

 even a modified phallus in glass or other material 

 worn as a pendant, are objects familiar to the 

 collector. These charms and amulets of the 

 "folk," in both town and country, are more 

 closely akin to primitive belief and less sophisti- 

 NO. 2701, VOL. 107] 



cated than the mascot; but in both cases the 

 psychological basis is identical. 



To the anthropologist it is a commonplace that 

 the belief in the efficacy of charms and amulets, 

 like other forms of magic, rests upon ignorance 

 of the operation of cause and effect. In the primi- 

 tive mind this arises from an imperfect know- 

 ledge of natural forces. The owner of a mascot, 

 though not unaware of the relation of cause and 

 effect, ignores it and hopes to influence favour- 

 ably antecedent conditions which are beyond his 

 personal control. The desire to learn what con- 

 ditions will prevail in the future, either from 

 mere curiosity or in order that they may be 

 controlled or utilised, as in a stock-exchange 

 gamble or a bet, is responsible for the clairvoyant,, 

 the crystal-gazer, and other forms of fortune- 

 teller. A further point of contact with primitive 

 belief is that the use of the mascot implies faith 

 in its efficacy ; it has occult powers, a belief which 

 differs in no way from that of the primitive mind 

 that certain individuals and certain objects have 

 mana. In the use of the figure of a policeman as 

 a motor mascot we may even see a form of 

 sympathetic magic; by its means the owner may 

 hope to escape the attentions of the real police- 

 man and the snare of the police trap. 



A similar parallel can be drawn in the case of 

 the whole-hearted believer in spiritualism. It re- 

 quires little more than a superficial acquaintance 

 with primitive animistic beliefs and practices to 

 find their counterpart in the mental attitude and 

 outlook of the modern spiritualist, while the 

 medicine-man, especially when, as is often the 

 case, he is endowed with an abnormal mental con- 

 stitution and associated with a particular spirit 

 or group of spirits, is the prototype of the medium 

 and his "control." 



To the sociologist this phase of modern 

 credulity is of the greatest moment. Religion^ 

 with the attendant moral codes, has, on the whole^ 

 proved one of the strongest factors in the pre- 

 servation of the social structure. Magic, when 

 once it has served its purpose in the development 

 of human society, has usually been antisocial,, 

 while spiritualism, at any rate in some of its 

 recent manifestations, contravenes the generally 

 accepted conceptions of religious belief. A 

 certain amount of intellectual scepticism may be 

 regarded as a healthy and necessary element in 

 any society ; but should the place of religion be 

 taken by a reversion on any extended scale to a 

 wholly primitive mode of thought, the prospect 

 affords faint hope of social security and progress- 



