imic dancing. When Macedonian farmers
have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air
and, catching them again, exclaim, "May the crop grow as high as the
spade has gone." In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by
one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked
with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell
and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her
arms vigorously and cry, "Flax, grow," or words to that effect. When she
has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her
partner.

Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer "No." Is it ritual? With
some hesitation we shall probably again answer "No." It is, we think,
not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and
women. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North
America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the
sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four
times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into
the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain.
Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon
the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their
faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would
describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of primitive
_ritual_." The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one
the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the
other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially
for the public good.

The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what
concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what
is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing
in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says,
"Flax, grow," prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her
intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest
possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better
still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in
sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where
the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the
suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology
teaches us, i