118 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



To an educated Earopean nowadays this sounds like a mere 

 truism, so self-evident that it is not necessary to make a formal 

 statement of it ; but it may nevertheless be shown that this 

 is one of the cases in which the accumulated experience and 

 the long course of education of the civilized races, have brought 

 them not only to reverse the opinion of the savage, but com- 

 monly to think that their own views are the only ones that 

 could naturally arise in the mind of any rational human being. 

 It needs no very large acquaintance with the life and ways of 

 thought of the savage, to prove that there is to be found all over 

 the world, especially among races at a low mental level, a view 

 as to this matter which is very different from that which a more 

 advanced education has impressed upon us. Man, in a low stage 

 of culture, very commonly believes that between the object and 

 the image of it there is a real connexion, which does not arise 

 from a mere subjective process in the mind of the observer, and 

 that it is accordingly possible to communicate an impression to 

 the original through the copy. We may follow this erroneous 

 belief up into periods of high civilization, its traces becoming 

 fainter as education advances, and not only is this confusion of 

 subjective and objective relation the prime cause of most of the 

 delusions of idolatry, but even so seemingly obscure a subject 

 as magic and sorcery may be brought in great measure into 

 clear daylight, by looking at it as evolved from this process of 

 the mind. 



It is related by an early observer of the natives of Australia, 

 that in one of their imitative dances they made use of a grass- 

 figure of a kangaroo, and the ceremony was held to give them 

 power over the real kangaroos in the bush.^ In North America, 

 when an Algonquin wizard wishes to kill a particular animal, 

 he makes a grass or cloth image of it, and hangs it up in his 

 wigwam. Then he repeats several times the incantation, " See 

 how I shoot," and lets fly an arrow at the image. If he di'ives 

 it in, it is a sign that the animal will be killed next day. Again, 

 while an arrow touched by the magical medawin, and after- 

 wards fired into the track of an animal, is believed to arrest 

 his course, or otherwise aflPect him, till the hunter can come 

 > Collina, ' New South Wales ;' London, 1798, vol. i. p. 569. 



