THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 49 



intellectual surface, and have even seemed to justify a fear 

 lest the depths should some day be upturned and the results 

 of centriries of man's toils and genius be overwhelmed. More- 

 over, they have shown that magic, so far from being an 

 'unorganised collection of bizarre superstitions, has every claim 

 to the title of a logical intellectual systems-based upon funda- 

 mental principles, to repudiate which would be at the same time 

 to repudiate science.* At the base of the whole structure we 

 find the " scientific " Principle of Uniformity, which differs 

 from the fundamental principle of Logic, that " of the same 

 the same is always true/'f only by the addition of what we 

 may, perhaps, call an " existence postulate " that " the same " 

 for the purpose of predication actually occurs. As Dr. Frazer 

 points out,t the principle takes the special form of arguments 

 based either upon Similarity or upon Contiguity. Thus to 

 secure the destruction of a distant foe, you procure a waxen 

 effigy of him, and submit it to slow-roasting or to other ill- 

 treatment, in the confident expectation that the unfortunate 

 original will suffer analogous torments. Your hope springs, 

 of course, from the belief that the two cases have a " core 

 of identity " sufficient to make the " substitution of similars " 

 effective. Again, if you have succeeded in wounding your 

 adversary, and seek to complete your work by recovering the 

 spearhead and allowing it to rust away, in order that he may 

 simultaneously languish and die, you are assuming this time 

 that the intimate association between weapon and wound 

 has set up so much identity between two situations that 

 their future developments must to a large extent be tlie 

 same. 



/ It seems highly probable that beliefs of this character 



V arose as interpretations of observed facts, and it is most 



unlikely that they have survived through ages without the 



* Op. cit., i, pp. 61, 62. 



t Cf, Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 133. 



Op. cit.j i, Ch. II, esp. pp. 10-18 and 56 et seq. 



