SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY" OF ABERDEEN. 53 



to call up that of the hunt, and in this way the rock is thought of as a 

 being which in this particular case has been favourable to man. 



The third principle is the law of association by similarity, of which we 

 have found many instances in sympathetic magic ; here the principle is that 

 the thought of one thing may tend to call up that of some other thing 

 which resembles it in some particular quality ; thus the moon suggests a 

 saucer or vice versa, and a glade in a wood suggests the aspect of a cathedra] ; 

 by primitive man, again, as by the child, this connection is not regarded as 

 a mental connection, but as a real connection, so that when two things do 

 resemble each other (for the mind), it follows that they also belong together, 

 and all that influences the cne must also and at the same time influence the 

 other. Of this we have still hundreds of instances; for example, in the super- 

 stition that if twins resemble each other then whatever happens to the one 

 will also happen simultaneously to the other, however distant they may be ; 

 in omens, in ideas of luck, in the interpretation of dreams, we are constantly 

 exercising this tendency. Again the tendency to exaggerate was as common 

 in the youth of the race as in that of the individual : something gripped a 

 man's interest and excluded other things from his mind ; as it was in his 

 mind so it was held to be in reality. This is the principle of realism, 

 capable of wide application, namely, that the primitive man does not 

 distinguish between the process in the mind and the object, apart from the 

 mind and acting upon it: between what he knows and how he knows. 

 Everyone begins at this level ; whatever comes to our mind is therefore real : 

 criticism, distinction, recognition of error, these are discoveries of culture, 

 and are not divinely given powers present from the first. What has a big 

 place in a man's mind, for example, the chief of the clan or tribe, is regarded 

 as a big thing ; after the chief's death, when there is no longer the test of 

 actual perception to apply, he is thought of as big physically as well as big 

 in strength and power. " There were giants in those days." 



The above suggestions are made only as an illustration, an imperfect 

 one, of the way in which appeal must be made, in the last resort, to psy- 

 chology, for an explanation of the origins of belief. It is not contended 

 that the " primitive mind " was so simple a thing as the classical theory of 

 Association assumes, still less that all its phenomena can be directly deduced 

 from a few general laws. 



