Besides which the same
accumulation of experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal
associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions
have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who
is to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these
multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer to
what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized
modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of
the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of experimentally testing
any of his newly framed notions, save perhaps a few of the commonest.
Consequently there is nothing but superficial analogy to guide the
course of his thought hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he
arrives will be determined by associations of ideas occurring apparently
at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies with which European
and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the framing of which the myth-maker
was but reasoning according to the best methods at his command. To this
simplest class, in which the association of ideas is determined by mere
analogy, belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of
wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is about
to trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may escape the
conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket,--a symbolic
way of repudiating manhood." [157] A similar style of thinking underlies
the mediaeval necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his
enemy and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the
enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in a
previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be administered
to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined
to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless
familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so
amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field
of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of
caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies that the breaking of
a mirror heralds a death in the family,--probably because of the
destruction of the reflected human image; that the "hair of the dog that
bit you" will prevent hydrophobia if laid upon the w