124 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



Sucli cases as these bring clearly into view the belief in a 

 real and material connexion existing between an object and its 

 image. By virtue of their resemblance^ the two are associated 

 in thought^ and being thus brought into connexion in the 

 mind^ it comes to be believed that they are also in connexion 

 in the outside world. Now the association of an object with its 

 name is made in a very different way, but it nevertheless pro- 

 duces a series of very similar results. Except in imitative words, 

 the objective resemblance between thing and word, if it ever 

 existed, is not discernible now. A word cannot be compared 

 to an image or a picture, which, as everybody can see, is like 

 what it stands for ; but it is enough that idea and word come 

 together by habit in the mind, to make men think that there is 

 some real bond of connexion between the thing, and the name 

 which belongs to it in their mother-tongue. Professor Lazarus, 

 in his " Life of the Soul,'^ tells a good story of a German who 

 went to the Paris Exhibition, and remarked to his companion 

 what an extraordinary people the French were, " For bread, 

 they say du indn ! " "Yes," said the other, "and we say 

 Irecul." " To be sure," replied the first, " but it is bread, you 

 Jcnow."^ 



As, then, men confuse the word and the idea, in much the 

 same way as they confuse the image with that which it repre- 

 sents, there springs up a set of practices and beliefs concerning 

 names, much like those relating to images. Thus it is thought 

 that the utterance of a Word ten miles off has a direct eflTect on 

 the object which that word stands for. A man may be cursed 

 or bewitched through his name, as well as through his image. 

 You may lay a smock frock on the door-sill, and pronounce 

 over it the name of the man you have a spite against, and then 

 when you beat that smock, your enemy will feel every blow as 

 well as if he were inside it in the flesh." Thus, too, when the 

 root of the dead-nettle was plucked to be worn as a charm 

 against intermittent fevers, it was necessary to say for what 

 purpose, and for whom, and for whose son it was pulled up, 



' Lazaros, 'Leben der Seele;' Berlin, 1856-7, vol. ii. p. 77. 

 2 Kuhn, 'Die Herabkuuft des Feuers iind des G ottertranks ;' Berlin, 1S59, 

 p. 227. 



