repeated exactly as before. Such seems to be the psychological origin of a principle to be expressed in some such formula as "like is equivalent to like" or, better still, in more precise terms, "the static can replace the dynamic when it traces the pattern of the latter". In this ultimate form, reminiscent of its origin, the principle would not lend itself to indefinite extension. But in the first form it permits of the belief that it is possible to affect a distant object through the intermediary of a near object bearing the merest superficial resemblance to it. It need not even be explicitly stated or formulated. Merely implied in an almost instinctive process, it enables this natural magic to proliferate indefinitely. Magic practices are referred to yet other laws: "it is pos- sible to influence a being or a thing by acting on something ii ON MAGIC IN GENERAL 143 it has touched", "the part is valid for the whole", etc. But the psychological origin remains the same. The essential is always to repeat in tranquillity, with the conviction that it is efficacious, the act which has given a quasi-hallucinatory impression of its efficacy when performed in a moment of excitement. In time of drought, the sorcerer is asked to pro- duce the rain. If he were actually to put his whole soul into the task, he would, by an effort of imagination, raise himself up to the cloud, he would believe that he felt himself cleaving it asunder,