ore it finally falls to the ground, will
change its colour and assume the hue of magic. Thus the idea that by
whistling you can produce a wind is at first as natural and as purely
rational as the idea that you can produce warmth by means of fire.
There is nothing magical in either. Both are matter-of-fact
applications of the practical maxim that like produces like.

{74}

That, then, is the point which I have been wishing to make, the third
of the three points from which I wish to start. There are three ways
of looking at identically the same thing, _e.g._ whistling to produce a
wind. First, we may regard it, and I suggest that it was in the
beginning regarded, as an application, having nothing to distinguish it
from any other application, of the general maxim that like produces
like. The idea that eating the flesh of deer makes a man timid, or
that if you wish to be strong and bold you should eat tiger, is, in
this stage of thought, no more magical than is the idea of drinking
water because you are dry.

Next, the idea of whistling to produce a wind, or of sticking splinters
of bone into a man's footprints in order to injure his feet, may be an
idea not generally known, a thing not commonly done, a proceeding not
generally approved of. It is thus marked off from the commonplace
actions of drinking water to moisten your parched throat or sitting by
a fire to get warm. When it is thus marked off, it is regarded as
magic: not every one knows how to do it, or not every one has the power
to do it, or not every one cares to do it. That is the second stage,
the heyday of magic.

{75}

The third and final stage is that in which no educated person believes
in it, when, if a man thinks to get a wind by whistling he may whistle
for it. These three ways of looking at identically the same thing may
and do coexist. The idea of whistling for a wind is for you and me
simply a mistaken idea; but possibly at this moment there are sailors
acting upon the idea and to some of them it appears a perfectly natural
thing to do, while to others there is a flavour of the magical about
it. But though the three ways may and do coexist, it is obvious that
our way of looking at it is and must be the latest of the three, for
the simple reason that an error must exist before it can be exploded.
I say that our way of looking at it must be the latest, but in saying
so I do not mean to imply that this way of looking at it originates
onl