IMAGES AND NAMES. 137 



conform. He was not only prohibited from toucliing a clog", a 

 slie-goat^ raw meat^ beans, and ivy, but he might not even 

 name them, he might not have a knot tied in his clothes, and 

 the parings of his nails and the clippings of his hair were col- 

 lected and buried under a lucky tree.^ So little difference does 

 the mere course of time make in such things as these, that a 

 modern missionary to a savage tribe may learn to understand 

 them better than the Romans who practised them two thousand 

 years ago. 



It is quite true that there are anomalies among the supersti- 

 tious practices of the lower races, proceedings of which the 

 meaning is not clear, signs of the breaking-down or stiffening 

 into formalism of beliefs carried down by tradition to a distance 

 from their source ; and besides, the rites of an old religion, car- 

 ried down through a new one, may mix with such practices as 

 have been described here, while the adherents of one religion 

 are apt to ascribe to magic the beliefs and wonders of another, 

 as the Christians held Odin, and the Romans Moses, to have 

 been mighty enchanters of ancient times. But when we see 

 the whole system of sorcery and divination comparatively com- 

 pact and intelligible among savage tribes, less compact and 

 less intelligible among the lower civilized races, and still less 

 among ourselves, there seems reason to think that such imper- 

 fection and inconsistency as are to be found among this class 

 of superstitions in the lower levels of our race, are signs of a 

 degeneration (so to speak) from a system of error that was more 

 perfect and harmonious in a yet lower condition of mankind, 

 when man had a less clear view of the difference between what 

 was in him and what was out of him, than the lowest savages 

 we have ever studied, — when his life was more like a long 

 dream than even the life that the Puris are leading at this day, 

 deep in the forests of South America. 



There is a remarkable peculiarity by which the sorcery of 

 the savage seems to repudiate the notion of its having come 

 down from something higher, and to date itself from the child- 

 hood of the human race. There is one musical instrument (if 

 the name may be allowed to it) which we give over to young 

 ' Aulus Gellius, 'Noctes Atticse,' x. 15. Plut., Q. E., cix. etc. 



