The Psychology of Magic 505 
magician, a god; he does not pray, he wills. Moreover he wills 
collectively’, reinforced by the will and action of his whole tribe. 
Truly of him it may be said, “La vie déborde l'intelligence, l’intelligence 
cest un retrécissement?.” 
The magical extension and heightening of personality come out 
very clearly in what are rather unfortunately known as mimetic 
dances. Animal dances occur very frequently among primitive 
peoples. The dancers dress up as birds, beasts, or fishes, and repro- 
duce the characteristic movements and habits of the animals imper- 
sonated. So characteristic is this impersonation in magical dancing 
that among the Mexicans the word for magic, navali, means “ dis- 
guise®.” A very common animal dance is the frog-dance. When it 
rains the frogs croak. If you desire rain you dress up like a frog and 
croak and jump. We think of such a performance as a conscious 
imitation. The man, we think, is more or less like a frog. That is 
not how primitive man thinks; indeed, he scarcely thinks at all; what 
he wants done the frog can do by croaking and jumping, so he croaks 
and jumps and, for all he can, becomes a frog. “L’intelligence animale 
joue sans doute les représentations plutét qu'elle ne les pense*” 
We shall best understand this primitive state of mind if we study 
the child “born in sin.” If a child is “ playing at lions” he does not 
émitate a lion, i.e. he does not consciously try to be a thing more or 
less like a lion, he becomes one. His reaction, his terror, is the same 
as if a real lion were there. It is this childlike power of utter 
impersonation, of being the thing we act or even see acted, this 
extension and intensification of our own personality that lives deep 
down in all of us and is the very seat and secret of our joy in the 
drama. 
A child’s mind is indeed throughout the best clue to the under- 
standing of savage magic. A young and vital child knows no limit 
to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that 
he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do 
not exist for him. Like the artist he goes forth to the work of 
creation, gloriously alone. His attitude towards other recalcitrant 
wills is “they simply must.” Let even a grown man be intoxicated, 
be in love, or subject to an intense excitement, the limitations of 
personality again fall away. Like the omnipotent child he is again a 
god, and to him all things are possible. Only when he is old and 
weary does he cease to command fate. 
1 The subject of collective hallucination as an element in magic has been fully worked 
out by MM. Hubert and Mauss, ‘Théorie générale de la Magie,” in L’Année Sociologique, 
1902—3, p. 140. 
2 Henri Bergson, L’ Evolution Créatrice, p. 50. 
8 K. Th. Preuss, Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, 1906, p. 97. 
“ Bergson, L’ Evolution Créatrice, p. 205. 
