144 CONSCIOUSNESS 



one of which may be the cause. There is no 

 room in the mind of an uncultured man for the 

 idea of chance or accident : the acknowledge- 

 ment of ignorance is a sceptical refinement that 

 is out of accord with the first promptings of our 

 instinct to infer. Accordingly, where causes are 

 not discoverable by his observation, he is ready to 

 accept as such any ideas that are suggested to him 

 with a show of authority, although they may be 

 derived from visioned as opposed to observed 

 experiences are the fruit not of observation but 

 of imagination. So he may believe that rain is caused 

 by the performance of a magic ceremony. Thus 

 was opened a curious chapter in the history of man- 

 kind. Its last pages record the achievements of 

 science and philosophy : but, for the most part, it 

 is an account of extraordinary error. A concep- 

 tion of cause and effect has enabled man to put 

 the earth into a balance and to determine the 

 chemical constituents of the stars. For untold 

 generations it has led him to believe in the grossest 

 extravagances of magic and witchcraft. 



Children display very instructively the begin- 

 nings of these delusions. They are insatiably 

 curious respecting the causes of things, but they 

 accept without question the answers that are 

 given them, whether as to the constitution of the 

 moon or of the origin of babies. So is the rapacity 

 of a dragon accepted in India and China as the 

 cause of an eclipse of the moon. Unending would 

 be a list of the errors to which man has been com- 

 mitted by an imperfect use of his reasoning facul- 

 ties. Fetishism, magic, witchcraft, and astrology : 

 belief in a fateful connection between man and 

 various animals, which are adopted as totems, 

 worshipped as protectors, dissected as a means of 

 discovering the future and eaten in the hope of 

 appropriating their qualities : the ascription of 



