hat they themselves
are governed by law, they may naturally in imagination transfer this
order of things to the whole invisible world; spirits, gods, and the
mana-power, it is assumed, work on lines similar to those followed by
man, only with superhuman breadth and force. The task before the
originators of society was to discover these modes of procedure in order
to act in accordance with them. The discovery was made gradually by
observation, and there grew up thus in process of time a science of
supernatural procedure which is the basis of the practice of magic.

This science does not necessarily regard the superhuman power as
purposely antagonistic to man. Rather its native attitude appears to
have been conceived of as one of indifference (as nature is now regarded
as careless of man); it was and is thought of as a force to be guarded
against and utilized by available means, which, of course, were and are
such as are proper to an undeveloped stage of social growth.

+885+. Magic is a science of sequences, but only of sequences supposed
not to be explicable from ordinary experience. When the savage puts his
hand into the fire or receives a spear-thrust in his body he recognizes
visible and familiar causes of pain, and accepts the situation as a fact
of life, calling for no further explanation. But when the pain comes
from no familiar tangible source he is driven to seek a different sort
of source. A cause there must be, and this cause, though superhuman,
must follow definite methods--it must have the will to act, and it must
have knowledge and skill to carry out its designs. To discover its
methods man must observe the processes of nature and imitate them, and
must at the same time have in mind familiar human modes of action. The
savage scientific explanation of mysterious facts is that superhuman
Powers are intellectually akin to human beings; the question of motive
in such Powers (except in the case of developed gods) seems not to be
considered. The basis of magical procedure is imitation of nature and of
man. This principle is supplemented by the conception of the unity of
the world, a feeling at first vague, that all things have the same
nature and are bound together in a cosmos; animals and men, trees,
stones and waters, and fragments of all these are parts of one great
whole, and each feels, so to speak, what is done to or by one of the
others. This feeling, derived from observation and reflection, is not
formul