g is nefarious but that not every one can do it. The reason why
only a certain person can do it may be that he alone knows how to do
it--or he and the person from whom he learnt it. The lore of such
persons when examined by folk-lore students is found generally to come
under one or other of the two classes known as sympathetic and mimetic
magic, or hom[oe]opathic and contagious magic. In these cases it is
obvious that the _modus operandi_ is the same as it {86} was in what I
have called the first stage in the evolution of magic and have already
described at great length. What differentiates this second stage from
the first is that whereas in the first stage these applications of the
principle that like produces like are known to every one, though not
practised by every one, in the second stage these applications are not
known to every one, but only to the dealers in magic. Some of those
applications of the principle may be applications which have descended
to the dealer and have passed out of the general memory; and others may
simply be extensions of the principle which have been invented by the
dealer or his teacher. Again, the public disapproval of nefarious arts
will tend first to segregate the followers of such arts from the rest
of the community; and next to foster the notion that the arts thus
segregated, and thereby made more or less mysterious, include not only
things which the ordinary decent member of society would not do if he
could, but also things which he could not do if he would. The mere
belief in the possibility of such arts creates an atmosphere of
suspicion in which things are believed because they are impossible.
When this stage has been reached, when he who {87} practises nefarious
arts is reported and believed to do things which ordinary decent people
could not do if they would, his personality inevitably comes to be
considered as a factor in the results that he produces; he is credited
with a power to produce them which other people, that is to say
ordinary people, do not possess. And it is that personal power which
eventually comes to be the most important, because the most mysterious,
article in his equipment. It is in virtue of that personal power that
he is commonly believed to be able to do things which are impossible
for the ordinary member of the tribe.

Thus far I have been tracing the steps of the process by which the
worker of nefarious arts starts by employing for nefarious purp