fruits of the earth, for human food, and also bringing
with it increase of animal life, for food in another form; and the other
was the return of Light and Warmth, making life easier in all ways. Food
delivering from the fear of starvation; Light and Warmth delivering from
the fear of danger and of cold. These were three glorious things which
returned together and brought salvation and renewed life to man. The
period of their return was 'Spring,' and though Spring and its benefits
might fade away in time, still there was always the HOPE of its
return--though even so it may have been a long time in human evolution
before man discovered that it really did always return, and (with
certain allowances) at equal intervals of time.

Long then before any Sun or Star gods could be called in, the return of
the Vegetation must have enthralled man's attention, and filled him with
hope and joy. Yet since its return was somewhat variable and uncertain
the question, What could man do to assist that return? naturally
became a pressing one. It is now generally held that the use of
Magic--sympathetic magic--arose in this way. Sympathetic magic seems to
have been generated by a belief that your own actions cause a similar
response in things and persons around you. Yet this belief did not rest
on any philosophy or argument, but was purely instinctive and sometimes
of the nature of a mere corporeal reaction. Every schoolboy knows how
in watching a comrade's high jump at the Sports he often finds himself
lifting a knee at the moment 'to help him over'; at football matches
quarrels sometimes arise among the spectators by reason of an
ill-placed kick coming from a too enthusiastic on-looker, behind one;
undergraduates running on the tow-path beside their College boat in
the races will hurry even faster than the boat in order to increase its
speed; there is in each case an automatic bodily response increased
by one's own desire. A person ACTS the part which he desires to be
successful. He thinks to transfer his energy in that way. Again, if by
chance one witnesses a painful accident, a crushed foot or what-not,
it commonly happens that one feels a pain in the same part oneself--a
sympathetic pain. What more natural than to suppose that the pain
really is transferred from the one person to the other? and how easy the
inference that by tormenting a wretched scape-goat or crucifying a human
victim in some cases the sufferings of people may be relie