capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains
have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word "longev-
ity" embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known as
"longevity garments," is esteemed by the Chinese an act of filial piety and a delicate mark of attention. As the garment purports to
prolong the life of its owner, he often wears it, especially on festive occasions, in order to allow the influence of longevity, created
by the many golden letters with which it is bespangled, to work their full effect upon his person. On his birthday, above all, he hardly
ever fails to don it, for in China common sense bids a man lay in a large stock of vital energy on his birthday, to be expended in the
form of health and vigour during the rest of the year. Attired in the gorgeous pall, and absorbing its blessed influence at every pore,
the happy owner receives complacently the congratulations of friends and relations, who warmly express their admiration of these
magnificent cerements, and of the filial piety which prompted the children to bestow so beautiful and useful a present on the author
of their being.
Another application of the maxim that like produces like is seen in the Chinese belief that the fortunes of a town are deeply affected by its shape, and that they must vary according to the character of the thing which that shape most nearly resembles. Thus it is
related that long ago the town of Tsuen-cheu-fu, the outlines of which are like those of a carp, frequently fell a prey to the depredations of the neighbouring city of Yung-chun, which is shaped like a fishing-net, until the inhabitants of the former town conceived the plan of erecting two tall pagodas in their midst. These pagodas, which still tower above the city of Tsuen-cheu-fu, have ever
since exercised the happiest influence over its destiny by intercepting the imaginary net before it could descend and entangle in its meshes the imaginary carp. Some forty years ago the wise men of Shanghai were much exercised to discover the cause of a local rebellion. On careful enquiry they ascertained that the rebellion was due to the shape of a large new temple which had most unfortunately been built in the shape of a tortoise, an animal of the very worst character. The difficulty was serious, the danger was pressing; for to pull down the temple would have been impious, and to let it stand as it was would be to court a succession of similar or worse disasters. However, the genius of the local professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty
and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable
animal and rendered him incapable of doing further mischief.
Sometimes homoeopathic or imitative magic is called in to annul an evil omen by accomplishing it in mimicry. The effect is to circumvent destiny by substituting a mock calamity for a real one. In Madagascar this mode of cheating the fates is reduced to a regular system. Here every man's fortune is determined by the day or hour of his birth, and if that happens to be an unlucky one
his fate is sealed, unless the mischief can be extracted, as the phrase goes, by means of a substitute. The ways of extracting the
mischief are various. For example, if a man is born on the first day of the second month (February), his house will be burnt down
when he comes of age. To take time by the forelock and avoid this catastrophe, the friends of the infant will set up a shed in a field
or in the cattle-fold and burn it. If the ceremony is to be really effective, the child and his mother should be placed in the shed and
only plucked, like brands, from the burning hut before it is too late. Again, dripping November is the month of tears, and he who is
born in it is born to sorrow. But in order to disperse the clouds that thus gather over his future, he has nothing to do but to take the
lid off a boiling pot and wave it about. The drops that fall from it will accomplish his destiny and so prevent the tears from trickling
from his eyes. Again, if fate has decreed that a young girl, still unwed, should see her children, still unborn, descend before her with
sorrow to the grave, she can avert the calamity as follows. She kills a grasshopper, wraps it in a rag to represent a shroud, and mourns
over it like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. Moreover, she takes a dozen or more other grasshoppers,
and having removed some of their superfluous legs and wings she lays them about their dead and shrouded fellow. The buzz of the
tortured insects and the agitated motions of their mutilated limbs represent the shrieks and contortions of the mourners at a funeral.
After burying the deceased grasshopper she leaves the rest to continue their mourning till death releases them from their pain; and
having bound up her dishevelled hair she retires from the grave with the step and carriage of a person plunged in grief. Thenceforth
she looks cheerfully forward to seeing her children survive her; for it cannot be that she should mourn and bury them twice over.
Once more, if fortune has frowned on a man at his birth and penury has marked him for her own, he can easily erase the mark in
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question by purchasing a couple of cheap pearls, price three halfpence, and burying them. For who but the rich of this world can thus afford to fling pearls away?
3. Contagious Magic
THUS far we have been considering chiefly that branch of sympathetic magic which may be called homoeopathic or imitative. Its leading principle, as we have seen, is that like produces like, or, in other words, that an effect resembles its cause. The other great branch of sympathetic magic, which I have called Contagious Magic, proceeds upon the notion that things which have once been conjoined must remain ever afterwards, even when quite dissevered from each other, in such a sympathetic relation that whatever is
done to the one must similarly affect the other. Thus the logical basis of Contagious Magic, like that of Homoeopathic Magic, is a
mistaken association of ideas; its physical basis, if we may speak of such a thing, like the physical basis of Homoeopathic Magic, is
a material medium of some sort which, like the ether of modern physics, is assumed to unite distant objects and to convey impressions from one to the other. The most familiar example of Contagious Magic is the magical sympathy which is supposed to exist between a man and any severed portion of his person, as his hair or nails; so that whoever gets possession of human hair or nails may
work his will, at any distance, upon the person from whom they were cut. This superstition is world-wide; instances of it in regard to hair and nails will be noticed later on in this work.
Among the Australian tribes it was a common practice to knock out one or more of a boy's front teeth at those ceremonies of initiation to which every male member had to submit before he could enjoy the rights and privileges of a full-grown man. The reason of the practice is obscure; all that concerns us here is the belief that a sympathetic relation continued to exist between the lad and his teeth after the latter had been extracted from his gums. Thus among some of the tribes about the river Darling, in New South Wales, the extracted tooth was placed under the bark of a tree near a river or water-hole; if the bark grew over the tooth, or if the tooth
fell into the water, all was well; but if it were exposed and the ants ran over it, the natives believed that the boy would suffer from a disease of the mouth. Among the Murring and other tribes of New South Wales the extracted tooth was at first taken care of by an old man, and then passed from one headman to another, until it had