218 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



in the face of any dangerous phenomenon is acquired 

 with danger and difficulty. Habit and customs arise by 

 disaster and repair, for both are, in essence, construction. 



It can now be perceived how all these mixed and 

 mingled ceremonies for magic purification by water 

 gradually crystallized into habits. Little by little 

 results occurred which were not foreseen either by 

 initiate or hierophant. People gradually get to like 

 water. Among some races swimming seems on the way 

 to become truly instinctive. Any great progress of 

 man has almost always arisen through accident or as a 

 side-effect. All doctors are or should be professors of 

 sanitation ; and cleanliness, however it arises, has good 

 results. In parts of the Pacific sanitary science may 

 be said to have arisen from the practice of malignant 

 sorcerers burning nahak or food refuse belonging to some 

 one in the community. By contagious magic anything 

 with which a man has been in contact is part of himself ; 

 it can therefore be hurt or tortured, and the man himself 

 will be ill. Certain malignants who understood this 

 used to go about villages and pick up little bits of some 

 discarded orange or banana skin. They were burnt with 

 ceremonies, and those who were ill sent presents to the 

 sorcerer to stop his enchantments. As a result people 

 were careful to be clean. When I was in Apia I 

 remember quite well that it seemed remarkably well kept. 

 So sanitary science arrives blindfold. It was created by 

 a desire to avoid the possible evil of magic, while bathing 

 comes no doubt out of people's desire to use its good 

 effects of purification. The loss of magic may be a 

 disaster. It is for men of science to bring it back 

 purified as by water. 



If living water, with all its senses and powers of 



