IMAGES AND NAMES. 133 



wliile, on the other hand, grafts are to be set while the moon is 

 waxing/ and it is only lucky to begin an undertaking when the 

 moon is on the increase, as has been held even in modern times. 

 It is as clear why the Chinese doctor should administer the 

 heads, middles, and roots of plants, as medicine for the heads, 

 bodies, and legs of his patients respectively, and why passages 

 in books looked at while some thought is in the reader's mind, 

 should be taken as omens, from Western Europe to Eastern 

 Asia, in old times and new. When it is borne in mind that 

 the Tahitians ascribe their internal pains to demons who are 

 inside them, tying their intestines in knots, it becomes easy to 

 understand why the Laplanders, under certain circumstances, 

 object to knots being tied in clothes, and so on from on^ phase 

 to another of witchcraft and superstition. 



It would be quite intelligible on this principle, that the sor- 

 cerer should think it possible to impress his own mind upon the 

 outer world, even without any external link of communication. 

 The mere presence of the thought in his mind might be enough 

 to cause, as it were by reflection, a corresponding reality. 

 He is usually found, however, working his will by some mate- 

 rial means, or at least by an utterance of it into the world. 

 This seems to be the case with the rainmaker, or weather- 

 changer, wherever he is met with, that is to say, among most 

 races of man below the highest culture. Sometimes he works 

 by clear association of ideas, as the Samoan rainmakers with 

 their sacred stone, which they wet when they want rain, and 

 put to the fire to dry when they want to diy the weather,^ or 

 the Lapland wizards, with the winds they used to sell to our 

 sea-captains in a knotted cord, to be let out by untying it knot 

 by knot. In the notable practice of killing an enemy by pro- 

 phesying that he will die, or by uttering a wish that he may, the 

 outward act of speech comes between the thought and the 

 reality, but perhaps a mere unspoken wish may be held suf- 

 ficient. This kind of bewitching is found over almost as wide 

 a range as the practices of the rainmaker, and extends like them 

 into the upper regions of our race. 



' Plin., ix. 35 ; xviii. 75 ; xvii. 24. " Turner, p. 347, and see p. 428. 



