of the cottagers, who had allowed a light to be taken out of their dwelling in Christmas-tide.[1] We see the same confusion between antecedence and consequence in time on one side, and cause and effect on the other, when the Red Indians aver that birds actually bring winds and storms or fair weather. They take literally the sense of the Rhodian swallow-song,[2]—
"The swallow hath come,
Bringing fair hours,
Bringing fair seasons,
On black back and white breast."
Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute hurricanes to the machinations of the people of the nearest island to windward. The wind comes from them; therefore (as their medicine-men can notoriously influence the weather), they must have sent the wind. This unneighbourly act is a casus belli, and through the whole of a group of islands the banner of war, like the flag of freedom in Byron, flies against the wind. The chief principle, then, of savage science is that antecedence and consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.[3] Again, savage science holds that like affects like; that you can injure a man, for example, by injuring his effigy. On these principles the savage explains the world to himself, and on these principles he tries to subdue to himself the world. Now the putting of these principles into practice is simply the exercise of art magic,
- ↑ Shropshire Folk-Lore, by Miss Burne, iii. 401.
- ↑ Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107.
- ↑ See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine Myths.
