Section 1. The Principles of Magic.
IF we analyse the principles of thought on which magic is based, they
will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like
produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that
things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act
on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.
The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the
Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely
the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any
effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that
whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person
with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his
body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called
Homoeopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or
Contagion may be called Contagious Magic. To denote the first of these
branches of magic the term Homoeopathic is perhaps preferable, for the
alternative term Imitative or Mimetic suggests, if it does not imply, a
conscious agent who imitates, thereby limiting the scope of magic too
narrowly. For the same principles which the magician applies in the
practice of his art are implicitly believed by him to regulate the
operations of inanimate nature; in other words, he tacitly assumes that
the Laws of Similarity and Contact are of universal application and are
not limited to human actions. In short, magic is a spurious system of
natural law as well as a fallacious guide of conduct; it is a false
science as well as an abortive art. Regarded as a system of natural law,
that is, as a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of
events throughout the world, it may be called Theoretical Magic:
regarded as a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to
compass their ends, it may be called Practical Magic. At the same time
it is to be borne in mind that the primitive magician knows magic only
on its practical side; he never analyses the mental processes on which
his practice is based, never reflects on the abstract principles
involved in his actions. With him, as with the vast majority of men,
logic is implicit, not explicit: he reasons just as he digests his food
in complete ignorance of the intellectual and physiological processes
which are essential to the one operation and to the other. In short, to
him magic is always an art, never a science; the very idea of science is
lacking in his undeveloped mind. It is for the philosophic student to
trace the train of thought which underlies the magician's practice; to
draw out the few simple threads of which the tangled skein is composed;
to disengage the abstract principles from their concrete applications;
in short, to discern the spurious science behind the bastard art. 1
If my analysis of the magician's logic is correct, its two great
principles turn out to be merely two different misapplications of the
association of ideas. Homoeopathic magic is founded on the association
of ideas by similarity: contagious magic is founded on the association
of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of
assuming that things which resemble each other are the same: contagious
magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been
in contact with each other are always in contact. But in practice the
two branches are often combined; or, to be more exact, while
homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself, contagious
magic will generally be found to involve an application of the
homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two
things may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily become
intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples. Both
trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It could
hardly be otherwise, since they are familiar in the concrete, though
certainly not in the abstract, to the crude intelligence not only of the
savage, but of ignorant and dull-witted people everywhere. Both branches
of magic, the homoeopathic and the contagious, may conveniently be
comprehended under the general name of Sympathetic Magic, since both
assume that things act on each other at a distance through a secret
sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means
of what we may conceive as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that
which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose,
namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a
space which appears to be empty. 2
It may be convenient to tabulate as follows the branches of magic
according to the laws of thought which underlie them: 3
I will now illustrate these two great branches of sympathetic magic by
examples, beginning with homoeopathic magic. 4