MAGIC. According to J. G. Frazer (The Magic Art, 1911). the principles of thought on which magic is based resolve themselves into two : (1) that like produces like. or that an effect resembles its cause (the Law of Simi larity); (2) that things which have once been in contact continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed (the Law of Contact or Contagion). From the first of these principles, " 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." The same principles are believed to regulate the operations of inanimate nature. Magic is therefore a false science as well as a fallacious guide of conduct. " 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." The primitive magician, however, knows magic only on Its practical side. To him magic is always an art, never a science. As regards the rela tionship of magic to religion, it has been much debated whether the former originated before the latter, or whether it is a degenerate form of religion. They have
much in common. Like religion, magic has its ceremonies, sacrifices, lustrations, prayers. chants and dances. Frazer thinks that, though magic is found to fuse and amalgamate in many ages and in many lands, there are reasons for thinking that this fusion is not primitive, and that there was a time when man trusted to magic alone for the satisfaction of his higher cravings. " In the first place a consideration of the fundamental notions of magic and religion may 'incline us to surmise that magic is older than religion in the history of humanity. We have seen that on the one hand magic is nothing but a mistaken application of the very simplest and most elementary processes of the mind, namely, the association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity; and that on the other hand religion assumes the operation of con scious or persona] agents, superior to man, behind the visible screen of nature. Obviously the conception of personal agents is more complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas; and a theory which assumes that the course of nature is determined by conscious agents is more abstruse and recondite, and requires for its apprehension a far higher degree of intelligence and reflection than the view that things suc ceed each other simply by reason of their contiguity or resemblance." A. C. Haddon, and Emile Durkheim.