IMAGES AND NAMES. 139 



The question whetlier there is any historical connexion 

 among the superstitious practices of the lower races, is distinct 

 from that of their development from the human mind. On the 

 whole, the similarity that runs through the sorcerer's art in the 

 most remote countries, not only in principle, but so often in 

 details, as for instance in the wide prevalence of the practice 

 of bewitching by locks of hair and rubbish which once be- 

 longed to the victim, often favours the view that these coinci- 

 dences are not independent growths from the same principle, 

 but practices which have spread from one geographical source. 

 I have put together in another place some accounts of one of 

 the most widely spread phenomena of sorcery, the pretended 

 extraction of bits of wood, stone, hair, and such things, from 

 the bodies of the sick, which is based upon the belief that 

 disease is caused by such objects having been conjured into 

 them. The value of this belief to the ethnologist depends 

 much on its being difficult to explain it, and therefore also 

 difficult to look upon it as having often arisen independently in 

 the human mind. But from the intelligible, and to a particular 

 state of mind one might almost say reasonable, beliefs and 

 practices which have been described in the present chapter, it 

 seems hardly prudent to draw inferences as to the descent and 

 communication of the races among whom they are found, at 

 least while the ethnological argument from beliefs and customs 

 is still in its infancy. 



To turn now to a different subject, the same state of mind 

 which has had so large a share in the development of sorcery, 

 has also manifested itself in a very remarkable series of obser- 

 vances regarding spoken words, prohibiting the mention of the 

 names of people, or even sometimes of animals and things. A 

 man will not utter his own name ; husband and wife will not 

 utter one another's names ; the son or daughter-in-law wiU not 

 mention the name of the father or mother-in-law, and vice versa; 

 the names of chiefs may not be uttered, nor the names of cer- 

 tain other persons, nor of superhuman beings, nor of animals 

 and things to which supernatural powers are ascribed. These 

 various prohibitions are not found all together, but one tribe 

 may hold to several of them. A few details will suffice to give 

 an idea of the extent and variety of this series of superstitions. 



