One of the commonest illustrations is the attempt to compass the death of an enemy by injuring or destroying an image or figure supposed to correspond to him. Such images were made in ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. One North American Indian will draw a figure of his adversary in the sand, or in ashes, and prick it with a sharp stick. Another will make a wooden image, and insert a needle into the head or the heart. Clay is used for the purpose by the African Matabele, wax in Arabia, the guelder rose in Japan, materials of all kinds in India. In Scotland the _corp chre_, as it was called, was a clay body, which was stuck full of pins, nails, and broken bits of glass, and set in a running stream with its head to the current; a modern specimen from Inverness-shire may be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Is all this really as Dr. Frazer supposes, prior to the birth of religion, and does man only turn to the propitiation of superior powers when he cannot get what he wants through magic? Of that process no evidence can be offered. The essence of magic lies in some kind of compulsion or constraint. Through the proper spell, or through the will of the magician, {77} a control is exerted which produces the desired result. The power which is thus claimed implies an attitude wholly unlike that of religion. Into that attitude there enter elements of wonder and submission in the presence of energies which man cannot master, though he desires to get them on his side. But no observer was at hand to watch the first processes of feeling and thought which the interaction of man and his environment produced. The crudest forms of religion which we actually know, meet us in tribes which have possessed them from an unknown past. Here religion has a social character binding the members of a group together, and tending to maintain certain uniformities of conduct and character. Over against it stands the antisocial character of magic, at any rate when directed against individuals. Along this line it is urged that magic and religion have both issued out of common conditions. In the world around all sorts of events are continually happening. Man, in the midst of them, moves to and fro impulsively among various objects and agencies. Out of these arise various reactions for self-maintenance, for protection and defence. Certain acts tend to establish themselves as successful; they make for security and welfare. At first man's efforts have no definite direction; but some are found effective, others are futile, and attention is concentrated on those that produce satisfactory results. After {78} many trials certain beliefs, certain processes, certain persons, gradually stand out above the rest, and through them relations of advantage are established with the environing powers.