with his tongue, but lives through partly in imagination and partly in actual experience. An analysis of the contents of the spells, the study of the manner in which they are uttered; in which the concomitant rites are performed; the study of the natives’ behaviour, of the actors as well as of the spectators; the knowledge of the social position and social functions, of the magical expert—all this reveals to us, not only the bare structure of their ideas on magic, but also the associated sentiments and emotions, and the nature of magic as a social force.
An Ethnographer who, from the study of such objective data, has been able to penetrate into the natives’ attitude, to formulate a general theory of magic, can then test his conclusions by direct questionings. For he will be already in a position to use native terminology and to move along the lines of native thought, and in his questionings he will be able to accept the lead of his informant instead of misleading the latter and himself by leading questions. More especially in obtaining opinions of actual occurrences from the natives, he will not have to move in abstract generalities, but will be able to translate them into concrete applications and into the native modes of thought.
In arriving at such general conclusions about vast aspects of primitive human thought and custom, the Ethnographer’s is a creative work, in so far as he brings to light phenomena of human nature which, in their entirety, had remained hidden even from those in whom they happened. It is creative in the same sense as is the construction of general principles of natural science, where objective laws of very wide application lie hidden till brought forth by the investigating human mind. In the same sense, however, as the principles of natural science are empirical, so are also the final generalisations of ethnographic sociology because, though expressly stated for the first time by the investigator, they are none the less objective realities of human thinking, feeling and behaviour.
III
We can start from the question of how the natives imagine their magic to have originated. If