TRIBAL SOCIETY 261 



the minds of peoples that have made some advance be- 

 yond the lowest savagery by a belief in personal spirits 

 or ghosts. The basis of magic is the "mana," already 

 mentioned. 



Frazer reduces the fundamental principles of magic 

 to two: first, that like produces like, or that an 

 effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which 

 have once been in contact, but have ceased to be so, 

 continue to act on each other as if the contact still per- 

 sisted. The savage infers from the first of these prin- 

 ciples that he can produce any desired effect by merely 

 imitating it ; from the second principle he concludes that 

 he can influence at pleasure and at any distance, any per- 

 son of whom, or any thing of which he possesses a 

 particle. Magic of the first sort Frazer has called ''imi- 

 tative magic, ' ' and magic of the second kind he has called 

 "sympathetic magic." But inasmuch as the efficacy of 

 the imitative magic depends upon a certain physical in- 

 fluence or sympathy, both kinds of magic may be con- 

 veniently called sympathetic magic. 



The most familiar application of imitative magic based 

 upon the principle that like produces like, is the attempt 

 to injure or destroy an enemy by mutilating or destroy- 

 ing an image of him, in the belief that, just as the 

 image is hurt, so does the man suffer and die when the 

 image perishes. 46 The Ojebway Indian desiring to work 

 evil to his enemy, makes a little wooden image of him 

 and runs a needle into its head or heart, or he shoots an 

 arrow into it, for he believes that by so doing his foe 

 will at the same instant be seized with a sharp pain in 

 the corresponding part of his body. A Malay charm 

 which enables one to injure another person is to take 



46 Frazer, J. G. The Golden Bough, 2nd. ed., vol. i, pp. 9-74. 



