The history of the antecedents of hypnotism is rich in suggestiveness. For the historian of the inductive sciences it illustrates the influence of the circumstances accompanying a discovery upon the status of the discovery itself; that the acceptance of a discovery depends more upon its logical concordance with current scientific conceptions, upon the manner of its demonstration, than upon the intrinsic content of what is demonstrated. It is as difficult in science as in real life to escape the influences of unfortunate associates; the interesting state which we now recognize as hypnosis was naturally discredited when it consorted with animal magnetism and the marvels of somnambulism, but was recognized when its credentials were expressed in intelligible physiological and psychological terms. For the historian of human error the story is equally significant. It illustrates again that the mental attitude essentially influences truth and error alike; that with all due allowance for ignorance, for faulty observation,for defective organization of knowledge, error was due, more than to any of these, to the lack of suitable concepts for the proper absorption and appreciation of the phenomena in their true significance. For lack of these there was misconception and oversight, and in their stead prepossession by notions of a wholly irrelevant character. Such notions were fostered by what we retrospectively recognize as pseudo-science; such was the fictitious animal magnetism, an entity never demonstrated, but supported only by a superficial analogical plausibility. They were fostered also by the activity of the marvel-loving impulse, which is unresponsive to the uniformities of nature, and favors mystic fable, while overlooking sensible fact. "Wer unmögliches geglaubt, könnt unmögliches verrichten." The special form of belief, the name of the system, the nature of the explanatory theory, seem almost accidental. Throughout all times, the same intense craving to overthrow the limitations of the human mind has been present, and has been satisfied by much the same beliefs and theories. Mesmerism harks back to astrology; prophets and seers have always existed; the mystery of the attractive force of the magnet for long made magnetism a most popular explanation of any obscure phenomena; the same performances that convinced the mesmerist of the existence of the magnetic fluid are evidence to the electro-biologist of the electro-vital force, of the "od" to the followers of Reichenbach; and—more striking still—the outfit of the modern spiritualistic medium, the trance, the clairvoyant discovery of one's private affairs, the reading of messages in sealed envelopes, the conversation withabsent or departed friends, are all to be found in the annals of somnambulism. Truly, history repeats itself; and the endless forms of mysticism, error, and extravagance seem immortal; they change in form and accommodate themselves to the advance in knowledge and civilization, and parody the forms of statement and the methods of science in an age which has learned to be impressed with scientific demonstrations.
For the special student of hypnotism no lesson of the history of its antecedents is more practically significant than its illumination of the extent, variety, and subtlety of unconscious suggestion. If Puységur's subjects prescribe for their own ills and see without their eyes; if Pétetin's read what is placed on their stomachs; or the interposition of poor electric-conductors prevent manifestations; if one of the subjects examined by the commission of 1784 could not be deprived of speech unless the magnetizing band passed below his mouth; if one of the Salpêtrière subjects of 1829 could be cured only by immersion in the river; if Deleuze's subjects respond differently to the minute differences in manipulations, which he believed to be essential; if the subjects whom Braid examined could prove the truth of phrenology, and the mesmerist's subjects feel the magnetic fluid streaming through their systems; if within recent times paralyses are transferred from one arm to the other by the action of a magnet, or Dr. Luys's subjects show the characteristic effects of a drug when a sealed vial containing it is placed upon the subject's neck, or respond to the puppets which he has manipulated,—surely it is as obvious that some spontaneous caprice of the subjector unconscious suggestions of the operator have originated these notions, and that unconscious imitation has further contributed to their dissemination, as it is obvious that all these in part mutually contradictory phenomena cannot be true, objective facts. The significance of more recent investigations in allied fields still turns upon the factor which unconscious suggestion plays in their production. The advocates of telepathy, whether occurring under hypnotic or more normal conditions, feel confident that unconscious suggestion as well as all other sources of error have been eliminated; the skeptical critics point out overlooked and novel modes of unconscious suggestion, and draw confidence from the history of the past, both of the unwarranted flight to improbable hypothesis on the basis of an alleged absence of a natural explanation, and of the solvent power which future investigation may hold in store.
The story of the conquest of a realm of fable by a campaign of enlightenment is always a tale of interest. The opening of a new vista directs one's gaze outward over unexplored areas. It may be, as our seventeenth-century chronicler tells us, that "we are all Indians and Salvages in what we have not accustomed our senses," and that, "what was Conjuring in the last age is Mathematiques in this"; but our more extensive acquaintance with the course of discovery and the demonstration of truth has given us a more logical sense of the probable and the improbable; and the evolution by which conjuring becomes mathematics is more intimately understood. The recent establishment of hypnotism in its scientific aspects furnishes the properperspective for the comprehension of its antecedents; it gives confidence that its future development will incorporate the spirit of present research, as it will avoid the aberrations of the past; and it gives to the story of its vicissitudes a timely pertinence as well as a psychological significance.
The origin of human endowment lies hidden in an obscure and unrecorded past; the fact of development, of the gradual unfoldment of capacity, stands out conspicuously throughout the historical record of human achievement, and is equally recognizable in the extensive remains of prehistoric humanity. The story of the mental development of man is constructed from travelers' accounts of primitive peoples, from the records of early civilizations, from the sequences of thought and belief that are considered in the history of culture, from the study of the intellectual growth of childhood, from the observation of the less progressive elements of current civilizations. The present essay attempts to portray the status of one form of intellectual process, or of mental attitude, which characterizes undeveloped stages of human thought, and has played an important and variable part in the drama of mental evolution. I propose to present the "Natural History of Analogy,"—meaning thereby the treatment, according to the methods of natural science, of a type of mental action, interesting at once as a psychological process, and again from its practical results as a factor in the anthropological history of the race.
An analogy is a type of reasoning, and as such is referred to the logician for more precise definition. His briefest explanation of the term may be stated as the inference of a further degree of resemblance from an observed degree of resemblance; the argument that because the Earth and Mars agree in the common possession of a solid crust, an atmosphere, presence of water, changes of season, the possibilities of rain and snow, and other observed qualities, they will also agree in the further respect of being inhabited. This may serve as an exemplar of the analogical argument in its purest and most developed form; but in the survey of the varieties and distribution of this natural product of rationality, it will be necessary to include many forms of thought diverging more or less from, though always retaining, a recognizable relation to this type. The analogical inference, indeed, goes back to an inarticulate form, in which it merges into a feeling rather than an argument, a susceptibility to an influence supported by undefined plausibility, rather than a conclusion from tangible evidence. But however lacking in definiteness or formulation, however unconsciously realized and barely expressible, the tendency or disposition to believe is communicated to others and becomes an influential factor in the ultimate fixation of belief and in the guidance of conduct. Logically considered, analogy is always a weak argument; and becomes weaker, as the range of observed resemblance is more and more limited, as the resemblances belong to accidental, unessential traits, and as the underlying basis of the inference is removed from direct verification. Psychologically, its power to influence beliefmay be very strong, and when this is not the case, there still may exist a disposition to be influenced by analogical considerations, even when these are successfully resisted or suppressed. The instinctive proclivity towards the use of analogies, whether it be logical or anti-logical in effect, forms an interesting psychological trait. Logic counsels how we may think most profitably and correctly; psychology describes how we actually do think or tend to think. The logician is the gardener bent upon training certain selected flowers according to an ideal standard, and eradicating all others as weeds; while the psychologist is the botanist to whom all plants, weeds, and flowers alike are worthy objects of study, and who, indeed, traces significant resemblances between the despised weed and the choice flower.
The natural history account of analogy will consider the status in less advanced stages of human development, and the evolution of this form of thought, which scientists to-day use only with the greatest caution, and to which they at best assign but a limited and corroborative value. It will appear that analogy is dominant in primitive types of thought; that it has an important cultural history; and has left an unmistakable impress upon many beliefs of our civilization, marked as obsolete, perhaps, in the dictionary of the cultured, but current still in the parlance of average and untutored humanity.
The great law of apperception, teaching that we observe according to our inherited capacities and ouracquired experience, that we in a very real sense create the world in which we live, explains the difficulty of realizing modes of thought strikingly different from our own, either as more primitive, or more complex, or as based upon other perspectives of the social, intellectual, and ethical rules that guide thought and conduct. To the supremely civilized citizen of the nineteenth century, the mental life of one who has hardly a firm hold on the first round of the ladder of civilization is naturally somewhat incomprehensible. An illustration of the conspicuous contrast, though doubtless amidst an inherent community, of the thought-habits of untutored and of cultured man, may suggest the direction and the nature of the evolutionary development that separates, yet binds, the one and the other. Prominent among such contrasts is the different standing assumed by the facts and reasonings of science in primitive and in highly civilized life; and an important part of this difference may be viewed as the shifting of the position occupied by the argument by analogy. Deeper than the language of words, and underlying their use and formation, is the habit of comparing object with object, of tracing resemblances and noting contrasts. It would seem that in the primitive use of this process there is lacking the distinction between the resemblances more strictly inherent in the objects and those originating in the mode of viewing them; subject and object are still merged in a vaguer realm of perception where myth and science, poetical fiction and evident fact, are as yet undifferentiated and mingle without let or hindrance. The savage frames his world by the realization of simple fancies suggested by slight analogies, wherethe man of culture examines the objective causes of phenomena under the guidance of scientifically established principles and accurate logic. Fortunately, however, for our power of realizing bygone mental traits, these forms of belief still find currency as survivals, in Mr. Tylor's apt words, "of the lower culture which they are of to the higher culture which they are in." We thus can understand the belief we no longer share; we can appreciate as suggestive myth or far-fetched analogy what to our ancestors may have been a plausible belief or a satisfactory explanation.
The prominence of analogy among undeveloped peoples supplies unlimited illustrations of the rôle which it plays in primitive circles, the essential influence which it exerts over thoughts and customs in the early history of mankind. Consider first that widespread class of customs and observances by which the savage regards himself as influencing for good or ill the fate of friend or foe. The Zulu chewing a bit of wood to soften the heart of the man he wishes to buy oxen from, or of the woman he is wooing (Tylor); the Illinois Indians making figures of those whose days they desire to shorten, and stabbing these images to the heart, or by performing incantations upon a stone trying to form a stone in the hearts of their enemies (Dorman); the Peruvian sorcerer, making rag dolls and piercing them with cactus-thorns, and hiding them about the beds to cripple people; or the native of Borneo, making a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image melts, the enemy's body will waste away (Tylor); the Zulu sorcerer who secures a portion of a desired victim's dress and buries it secretly, so that, as it rots away, hislife may decay (Clodd); the confession recorded in a seventeenth-century trial for witchcraft, that the accused had "buried a glove of the said Lord Henry in the ground, so that as the glove did rot and waste, the liver of the said lord might rot and waste" (Brand); the New Britain sorcerer of to-day who burns a castaway banana skin, so that he who carelessly left it unburied may die a tormenting death (Clodd); bewitching by operating upon a lock of hair or the parings of the finger-nails, and the consequent widespread custom of religiously preventing such personal scraps from falling into others' possession;—all these varied forms of primitive witchcraft rest upon the notion that one kind of connection, one link of resemblance, will bring with it others. The argument, if explicitly stated, as can hardly be done without doing violence to its instinctive force, may be put thus: this bit of wood or stone or lock of hair or scrap of clothing resembles this man or woman in that the one represents the other or that the one had a personal connection with the other; therefore they will further resemble one another in that whatever will make the one soft and yielding or the other hard and unfeeling will have the same effect on the other, or in that whatever is done to the one will happen to the other. Other considerations combine with this underlying analogical factor to impart cogency and plausibility to a belief or custom; but the type of the logic, crooked though it be, is recognizable throughout.
Another significant group of primitive beliefs, involving a similarly indirect argument by analogy, relates to the partaking of an animal for the sake ofthus absorbing its typical qualities. The Malays eat tiger to acquire the sagacity as well as the cunning of that animal; the Dyaks refuse to eat deer for fear of becoming faint-hearted; the Caribs eschew pigs and tortoises for fear of having their eyes grow small (Lubbock); even cannibalism may be indulged in, in the hopes of absorbing the courage of a brave man, as in the case of Captain Wells, who was killed near Chicago in 1812, and whose body was cut up and distributed among the Indians, "so that all might have the opportunity of getting a taste of the courageous soldier" (Clodd); and in an ancient Mexican rite, called the eating of the god, there occurs an elaborated and symbolical form of the same belief.
The use of omens, the interpretation of signs and coincidences, forms another rich field for illustration of arguments by analogy. "Magical arts," says Mr. Tylor, "in which the connection is that of mere analogy or symbolism, are endlessly numerous throughout the course of civilization. Their common theory may be readily made out from a few typical cases, and thence applied confidently to the general mass. The Australian will observe the track of an insect near a grave to ascertain the direction where the sorcerer is to be found by whose craft the man died.... The Khondi sets up the iron arrow of the war god in a basket of rice, and judges from its standing upright that war must be kept up also, or from its falling that the quarrel may be let fall too; and when he tortures human victims sacrificed to the earth goddess he rejoices to see them shed plentiful tears, which betoken copious showers to fall upon his land." "In the burial ceremoniesof the natives of Alaska, if too many tears were shed they said that the road of the dead would be muddy, but a few tears just laid the dust" (Dorman). "The Zapotecs had a very curious manner of selecting a manitou for a child at its birth. When a woman was about to be delivered, the relatives assembled in the hut and commenced to draw on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing out each one as fast as completed. The one that remained at the time of the birth was called the child's second self, and as soon as grown up he procured the animal, and believed his health and existence bound up with it" (Dorman). The taking of omens by the flight of birds or the tracks of animals, by the sky, by the inspection of sacrifices, by the trivial happenings of daily life, abound in savage ceremonials, and in a fair proportion of cases carry with them the rationale of their origin, that saves them from being mere caprice. And in all those endless appeals to chance or lot for the detection of crime, the unfoldment of the future, the prediction of the issue of disease or of important tribal events, there is always some underlying link of connection between the kind of omen or the nature of its interpretation and the issue it signifies; and this connection it is, however slight or fanciful, that maintains the belief in the further bond of omen and issue.
That such connections may travel still farther along the path of analogy without losing force, is well illustrated in the observances regarding the use of names. The connection seems to pass from thing to image, toname, much as picture-writing passes into word-writing. The use of idols is abundant evidence of the extent of this mental operation; what is done to or for the idol is analogically transferred to the god, and the confusion may become so gross that when the oracles of two gods disagree, their idols are knocked against each other, and the one that breaks is declared in the wrong. A drawing or other rough resemblance may do service for the thing, especially in sacrifices of objects of value. By similar steps the name becomes an essential portion of the object or person named, and analogies formed through the name are applied to the thing. Accordingly, a man may be bewitched through his name; hence there arise the most elaborate and rigid observances prohibiting the use of the name, which are grouped together in the complex code of the Taboo,—that "dread tyrant of savage life, ... the Inquisition of the lower culture, only more terrible and effective than the infamous 'Holy Office'" (Clodd). For uncomplicated illustrations of name analogies, however, we must go to other customs than the Taboo. It is related that in the British war with Nepaul, Goree Sah had sent orders to "find out the name of the commander of the British army; write it upon a piece of paper; take it some rice and turmeric; say the great incantation three times; having said it, send for some plum-tree wood, and therewith burn it;" thus was the life of the commander to be destroyed. Similarly it was suspected that the King of Dahomey refused to sign a letter, written in his name to the President of the French Republic, for fear that M. Carnot might bewitch him through it (cited by Clodd). "Barbaricman believes that his name is a vital part of himself, and therefore that the names of other men and of superhuman beings are also vital parts of themselves. He further believes that to know the name is to put its owner, whether he be deity, ghost, or mortal, in the power of another, involving risk of harm or destruction to the named. He therefore takes all kinds of precautions to conceal his name, often from his friend, and always from his foe" (Clodd). In Borneo the name of a sickly child is changed to deceive the evil spirits that torment it. "When the life of a Kwapa Indian is supposed to be in danger from illness, he at once seeks to get rid of his name, and sends to another member of the tribe, who goes to the chief and buys a new name, which is given to the patient. With the abandonment of the old name it is believed that the sickness is thrown off. 'On the reception of the new name the patient becomes related to the Kwapa who purchased it. Any Kwapa can change or abandon his personal name four times, but it is considered bad luck to attempt such a thing for the fifth time'" (Clodd). The Mohawk chief can confer no higher honor on his visitor than by giving him his name, with which goes the right of regarding the chief's fame and deeds of valor as his own. A Tahitian chief became so smitten with Stevenson's charms that he assumed Stevenson's name; in exchange Stevenson took the name of the chief, and in one of his letters signs himself, "Teritera, which he was previously known as Robert Louis Stevenson." When totem and tribal names are assumed to obtain the qualities of the animal namesake, or the reverence due to the person is transferred to the name, and whenincantations and the utterances of mystic formulæ are granted like efficacy as the manipulation of the things themselves, we see the operation of the mental law under discussion; though it is still more saliently illustrated in the more artificialized practices of the Chinese physician, who, for lack of a desired drug, will "write the prescription on a piece of paper and let the sick man swallow its ashes or an infusion of the writing in water;" or of the Moslem who expects relief from a decoction in which a verse of the Koran written on paper has been washed (Tylor).
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 stuckinto 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 sayingunberufen, 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.
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 seriousinjuries "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.
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 psychologicallyinformed 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.
We may now enter in the search for reasonings by analogy into a field of greatest interest to the student of the history of culture; namely, the household traditions, the superstitions, and the pseudo-scientific systems, that originated among our ancestors, remote or immediate, and are still far from obsolete in all but the upper strata of our civilization. This portion of the theme indeed presents anembarras de richesses, and the illustrations to be cited form but an insignificant share of those that could readily be collected.Certainly more than one chapter of the history of human error could be profitably devoted to those due to an unwarranted use of the argument by analogy.
We may begin by taking a flying excursion into that body of superstitions and folk-lore customs which no nation, however high or low in the scale of civilization, is without. The widespread custom of carrying baby upstairs before being taken to the lower floors of the house, so that he may be successful in life and participate in its ups rather than its downs, rests upon baby-logic indeed. The belief that if baby keeps his fists tightly closed he will be stingy, but if he holds an open palm he will be generous, likewise requires no interpretation. It is forbidden, too, to measure a child, for measuring it is measuring it for its coffin. To the German peasant, if a dog howls looking downward it means death, if upward recovery from sickness. "The Hessian lad thinks that he may escape the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his pocket—a symbolic way of repudiating manhood." "Fish," says the Cornishman, "should be eaten from the tail to the head, to bring other fishes' heads towards the shore, for eating them the wrong way turns them from the coast." "It is still plain," says Mr. Tylor, from whom I have cited some of these examples, "why the omen of the crow should be different on the right or left hand, why a vulture should mean rapacity; a stork, concord; a pelican, piety; an ass, labor; why the fierce, conquering wolf should be a good omen, and the timid hare a bad one; why bees, types of an obedient nation, should be lucky to a king, while flies returning, however often they are driven off, should be signs of importunity andimpudence." And as parallels to these signs, in the vegetable world, one may cite the amaranth as signifying immortality; ivy, strength; cypress, woe; heliotrope, attachment; aspen, fear; aloes, bitterness; while through more artificial associations the laurel becomes the sign of renown; the rose, of love; the olive, of peace; and the palm, of victory.
Less directly analogical are the customs of a semi-symbolic character, depending upon a mysterious or potent sympathy. Thus, in "Bavaria, flax will not thrive unless it is sown by women, and this has to be done with strange ceremonies, including the scattering over the field of the ashes of a fire made of wood consecrated during matins. As high as the maids jump over the fires on the hilltops on Midsummer Night, so high will the flax grow; but we find also that as high as the bride springs from the table on her marriage night, so high will the flax grow in that year." This is paralleled by the custom, recorded by Mr. Frazer, current in the interior of Sumatra. There "the rice is sown by women who, in sowing, let the hair hang loose down their backs, in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks." It is hardly necessary to continue these illustrations, which will at once suggest others, with which the wealth of superstitious lore overflows; nor do they require elaborate interpretation. The resemblances involved may be fanciful or symbolic, obvious or obscure, superficial or intrinsic, natural or artificial, but the subtle and protean bases of analogy become recognizable as soon as the mind is directed towards their detection.
It will be more profitable to limit the inquiry to afew groups of beliefs, which have been more or less fully elaborated into systems. Of these the interpretation of dreams offers a promising harvest of analogies. This practice has a venerable history, the study of which would constitute an interesting task for the patient student of the by-paths of human culture. I shall draw only from the contemporaneous survivals of this ancient lore, the dream-books purchasable in every city and village.
My selections from this literature have been made with a view of presenting the typical kinds of analogy through which modern dream omens are believed in and through which this kind of reading finds a sale. "To dream of using glue," an authority tells us, "foretells imprisonment for yourself or friend;" and this because a prison and glue are alike in that it is difficult to be released from the hold of either. Similarly, because the pineapple has a rough and forbidding appearance it becomes in dreams the omen of "crosses and troubles." This seems hardly more than a play of words; indeed, we have here touched one of the many points where metaphor and analogy meet. For instance, we commonly speak of the ladder of success and the ups and downs of fortune; the dream-book tells us that "to dream of going up a ladder foretells the possession of wealth; coming down, of poverty." The common phrase of "mud-slinging" is thus interpreted by the dream-books, "to dream of dirty dirt or mud signifies that some one will speak ill of you. If some one throws dirt on you it foretells that you will be abused." To the same category belong the dream-book maxims, that "to dream of being mounted onstilts denotes that you are puffed up with vain pride;" "to dream that you gather fruit from a very old tree is generally supposed to prognosticate that you will succeed to the wealth of some ancient person; if you dream of a clock and the hands stop it means death; if the hands keep moving, recovery;" "to dream of a concert means a life of harmony with one you love." So, too, various objects become significant of their striking characteristics: the earthworm, from its habits of underground and secret destruction, denotes "secret enemies that endeavor to ruin and destroy us;" and all strongly redolent food, such as onions, garlic, and leek, easily betraying the one who has partaken of them, becomes indicative of the betrayal of secrets and the like. Mr. Dyer cites some apt lines in which the logic is about as meritorious as the verse:—
"To dream of eating onions meansMuch strife in thy domestic scenes;Secrets found out or else betrayed,And many falsehoods made and said."
"To dream of eating onions meansMuch strife in thy domestic scenes;Secrets found out or else betrayed,And many falsehoods made and said."
"To dream of eating onions meansMuch strife in thy domestic scenes;Secrets found out or else betrayed,And many falsehoods made and said."
From Mr. Tylor's collection of dream omens of similar character I cull the following: "to wash the hands denotes release from anxieties;" "to have one's feet cut off prevents a journey;" "he who dreams he has lost a tooth shall lose a friend;" "he that dreams that a rib is taken out of his side shall ere long see the death of his wife;" to dream of swimming and wading in the water is good, so that the head be kept above water. A good share of the omens depend upon contrasts and not upon resemblances: "to be married denotes some of your kinsfolk are dead;" "to dream of death denotes happiness and long life;" and so on.Others of these dream-book analogies depend rather upon verbal resemblance, and still others involve resemblances too subtle and peculiar to be readily explained. There is perhaps nothing more underlying the dictum that "dreaming about Quakers means that you will meet a friend soon" than the fact that the Quakers are a "Society of Friends;" a little more elaborate punning underlies the prediction that "to dream of a dairy showeth the dreamer to be of a milksop nature;" and finally what a curious mixture of perverted analogy is reflected in the notion that to dream of "a zebra indicates a checkered life"!
The great parts that names and numbers play in superstitions of all kinds is so familiar that a few instances will be sufficient. It is well to bear in mind that these number and name predictions, in the course of their venerable and eventful lives, have been systematized, and the gaps in the system supplied by arbitrary associations. Thus the modern fortune-telling books have an omen for each one of a pack of cards, or a set of dominoes, in which we find, among what seems little more than an arbitrary assignment of the ordinary events of life, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, important and trivial,—among the several cards or dominoes, here and there some underlying basis of analogy; hearts relate to love affairs, diamonds to wealth; kings and queens play important rôles; the jack is about as often a lover as a knave; threes and sevens have special significance; and double throws in dice, especially the two sixes, have important consequences. So in folk-lore, operations, to be effective, must be done just three times, or thricethree, or seven. The seventh child of a seventh child has special powers, as we all know. The twelfth hour that divides night from day is a momentous instant, as is also the time of the cock's crow. "Against a warty eruption the leeches advised the patient to take seven wafers and write on each wafer, Maximianus, Malchus, Johannes, Martinianus, Dionysius, Constantinus, Serafion; then a charm was to be sung to the man, and a maiden was afterwards to hang it about his neck" (Black). In a similar strain the dream-book informs us that if a number of young women, not less than three nor more than seven, assemble on a certain night, and if, as the hour strikes eleven, they each take a sprig of myrtle and throw it, together with nine hairs from the head, upon a live coal, and if they go to bed at exactly twelve o'clock, they will dream of their future husbands as a reward of their pains and their mathematical accuracy. Not a few of number and name ceremonials are invested with their power by religious associations; the ill luck of thirteen and of Friday is commonly regarded as due to this source. In the northern English countries, witches are said to dislike the bracken fern, because it bears on its roots the initial C (indicating Christ), which may be seen on cutting the root horizontally (Dyer). The clover, on account of its trefoil form, suggesting trinity, is likewise good against witches (Dyer). A like explanation seems applicable to the efficacy of the cross and the cross-roads, both of which enter, in a variety of ways, into folk-lore beliefs and customs. While numbers and names and definite associations seldom form the whole basis of analogy by which the belief becomesplausible, they very frequently enter to emphasize and give point to practices suggested on other grounds. The argument involved in the number analogy is extremely simple; it is nothing more than because two phenomena have in common the association with the same number, therefore they will be connected in further respects. This slender line of connection affects the minute code of superstitious action, and forms the thread whereon are strung momentous omens, powerful recipes, dire predictions, and wise precautions against various imaginary dangers.
The logic by which the treatments current in folk-medicine acquire their efficacy is passing strange; at first acquaintance with this wonderland we are apt to imagine ourselves in some weird topsy-turvydom, where everything uncanny and incongruous is greedily collected, and the most bizarre and trivial doings become endowed with marvelous efficacy. Upon closer acquaintance we discover some little order in the medley, and, in spite of much that remains arbitrary and capricious, we begin to trace the analogies according to which the various treatments are composed and the potions concocted. The common connection of toads with warts, both as giving and curing them, is due to nothing more than the warty appearance of the toad's skin; similarly, in Gloucestershire, against ear-ache a snail is pricked and the froth that exudes dropped into the patient's ear (Black); and this by reason of the snail-like passages in the ear. Fevers being connected with heat and blood, and both these closely associated with red, red things become efficacious in diseases characterized by fever. That this should be especiallyin vogue against scarlet fever is no more than natural; and it is related that when the son of Edward II. was sick of the small-pox, the physician directed that the bed-furniture should be red (Black). Other forms of such associations will be met with in the discussion of the doctrines of signatures and sympathies.
Folk-medicine forms a particularly apt field for the application of the two general forms of analogy indicated as prevalent among savages: analogies by contrast and the assignment of unusual effects to uncommon causes. If something is done with the right hand, doing it with the left reverses the action; one set of directions applies to men and contrary ones to women; saying a thing backwards is particularly efficacious. The prescription against hiccough, that you should "cross the front of the left shoe with the forefinger of the right hand while you repeat the Lord's prayer backwards" (Black) may serve to illustrate the one crooked type of argument, while for the other we have only to recall the Shakespearean witches, with their—