What is true of names is also regarded as true of other representatives or embodiments of personality—the footprint, the drawing, the image, the shadow. "Broken bottle ends or sharp stones are put, in Russia and in Austria, in the footprints of a foe, for the purpose of laming him (Lang); or a nail may be driven into a horse's footprint to make him go lame" (Grimm). The Ojibways practice magic "by drawing the figure of any person in sand or clay, or by considering any object as the figure of a person, and then pricking it with a sharp stick or other weapon; ... the person thus represented will suffer likewise" (Dorman). The same idea appears in King James's "Demonology," in which he speaks of "the devil teaching how to make pictures of wax or clay, that by roasting thereof the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or dried away by sickness;" and even now Highland crofters perforate the image of an enemy with pins. The same idea finds a tangible illustration in the collection of objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford (such as a pig's heart from Devonshire, with pins stuck into it), which were used for a like purpose. And Catlin's story of the accusation brought against him by the Yukons, that he had made buffaloes scarce by putting so many pictures of them in his book, may be paralleled by the stories gathered from Scotland to Somerset, of "ill health or ill luck which followed the camera, of folks who 'took bad and died' after being 'a-tookt'" (Clodd). "The Basuto avoids the riverbank, lest, as his shadow falls on the water, a crocodile may seize it and harm the owner. In Wetar Island, near Celebes, the magicians profess to make a man ill by spearing or stabbing his shadow; the Arabs believe that if a hyæna treads on a shadow, it deprives the man of the power of speech; and in modern Roumania the ancient custom of burying a victim as sacrifice to the earth-spirit under any new structure has a survival in the builder enticing some passer-by to draw near, so that his shadow is thrown on the foundation-stone, the belief being that he will die within the year" (Clodd).
To the underlying notions thus variously embodied may be applied Mr. Clodd's characterization: they form "a part of that general confusion between the objective and the subjective—in other words, between names and things, or between symbols and realities—which is a universal feature of barbaric modes of thought. This confusion attributes the qualities of living things to things not living; it lies at the root of all fetichism and idolatry; of all witchcraft, Shamanism, and other instruments which are as keys to the invisible kingdom of the dreaded." It is in such an atmosphere that the philosophy of analogy rules with undisputed sway.
"Ideas are universal, incidents are local," says Mr. Clodd, in speaking of the diffusion of folk-lore tales. The same is true of thought tendencies. We may realize more intimately the analogical potency of names by recalling their survivals from the solemn uses of curses and excommunications, to the charms carried about the person consisting of magic or cabalistic writing, to the playful or the serious German usage of saying unberufen, and rapping three times under the table if a word or thought "tempting Providence" has fallen from the lips. Clearly, if we follow analogy as a guide, there is much in a name.
IV
We may next proceed to more general uses of the analogical trait,—more general because the special analogical appropriateness of thought or custom is no longer so apparent, but requires to be viewed more as a special and, it may be, a somewhat arbitrary application of a principle, itself supported or believed in on analogical grounds. Metaphor and simile and symbolism may be based upon the same types of resemblances that underlie analogy, but it is desirable, so far as may be possible, to hold these distinct; yet what is metaphor to us may still be analogy to others.
When we speak of a head of cabbage, the trunk of a tree, or the legs of a table, we understand that we have applied these names on the basis of resemblances to objects to which the names more strictly belong, and there is no thought that the name carries with it any further connection; but when the Chinese doctor administers the heads, middle parts, and roots of plants, for the heads, bodies, and legs of his patients respectively, he is clearly led to do so by a vague sense of analogical fitness, by a feeling that the bodily similarities are indicative of further connection of a quasi-causal type. This kind of reasoning abounds in primitive ceremonials, in which the appropriateness of the observances and of the elements of the ritual depend upon resemblances or symbolical suggestiveness. It is difficult to find instances of this trait in which a more or less conscious symbolism is excluded, for we know how readily the savage mind, in its somewhat more developed stages, uses this mode of thought, as is evidenced by the ingenuity of their picture-writing, gesture-language, and tribal systems. But apart from symbolical procedures, in which the unreality of the underlying resemblances is half acknowledged, we may note the application of such general principles as that unusual phenomena have unusual significance, and that to accomplish important objects drastic means and rare substances must be employed; that operations and remedies will be effective according to their divergence from the usual and the common experience of mankind. The influence of this principle is traceable in the bizarre fancies and grotesque performances of savages, as also in the reverence shown to the belongings of the white man and the curious uses to which they are put. In their ritual observances, as well as in medical practice, the same principle is involved; a single illustration will suffice to recall this well-known form of thought. Dorman cites the fate of an Indian warrior brought to camp after a most disastrous encounter with a grizzly bear. To repair his very serious injuries "the doctor compounded a medicine that really ought to have worked wonders. It was made by boiling together a collection of miscellaneous weeds, a handful of chewing tobacco, the heads of four rattlesnakes, and a select assortment of worn-out moccasins. The decoction thus obtained was seasoned with a little crude petroleum and a large quantity of red pepper, and the patient was directed to take a pint of the mixture every half hour. He was a brave man, conspicuous for his fortitude under suffering, but after taking his first dose he turned over and died with the utmost expedition."
Another one of these general principles may have been suggested by the failure of the ordinary omens; and thus the conclusion was reached that the analogy proceeds not according to resemblance but by contrast. For example, the Zulus, when dreaming "of a sick man that he is dead, ... say, 'because we have dreamt of his death he will not die.' But if they dream of a wedding dance it is the sign of a funeral. So the Maoris hold that a kinsman dreamt of as dying will recover, but to see him well is a sign of death. Both races thus worked out, by the same crooked logic that guided our own ancestors, the axiom that dreams go by contraries" (Tylor). It will be seen in later portions of our exposition that these and other general principles of an analogical type have lost none of their potency in their more modern or more erudite phases.
V
The parallelism between the mental development of the individual and of the race, though necessarily incomplete, is yet deeply suggestive and significant. In a very true sense the unfoldment of mental faculty from childhood to maturity reflects the allied course of evolution from savagery to civilization; yet the reflection is distorted and is traceable only in general outlines. Undeveloped forms of thought and instinctive tendencies, of a related though by no means of an identical character, should be traceable in each; and among them the natural proclivity for dependence upon analogies. That children are fond of reasoning by analogy there can be no doubt; their confusion of fact with fancy, their lack of extensive knowledge and the ability to refer effects to proper causes, their great love for sound effects and play of words, the earnestness of their play convictions—all these furnish a rich soil for the growth of such habits of thought as we are now considering. On the other hand, the influence of their adult companions, of their conventional surroundings, of the growth of the make-believe sentiment by which the laws of the real world are differentiated from those of fairy-land, make it difficult to pronounce as an argument by analogy what may really be a half-conscious play of fancy or jugglery of words and ideas. There is, further, considerable difficulty in collecting characteristic and unimpeachable illustrations of arguments by analogy in children, owing to the general lack of suitable collections of children's spontaneous and original mental reactions. What fond parents are apt to observe and newspaper paragraphers to record are sayings that amuse by a quaintness or the assumption of a worldly wisdom beyond their years, while the truly suggestive traits pass unrecorded for lack of psychologically informed observers. There is thus a gap to be supplied by valuable and suggestive study of analogy in childhood. However, not to pass by the topic without illustration, I may cite the reply of the little boy who, when asked his age, said he was nine when he stood on his feet but six when he stood on his head, because an inverted 9 makes a 6; he was certainly reasoning by a far-fetched analogy, however little faith he may have had in the correctness of his reasoning. The children who believed that butter comes from butterflies, and grass from grasshoppers, beans from bees, and kittens from pussy-willows (Stanley Hall), may have been simply misled by sound analogies; but when Sir John Lubbock tells us of a little girl saying to her brother, "If you eat so much goose you will be quite silly," and adds that, "there are perhaps few children to whom the induction would not seem perfectly legitimate," we appreciate that such arguments, so closely paralleling the superstitions of savages, may be more real to children than we suspect.