=Magic=.--The older view of magic is that of Prof. Zimmern, who defines it as "the attempt on man's part to influence, persuade, or compel spiritual beings to comply with certain requests or demands." With this the view of the modern Japanese lexicographer Yamada, who calls magic (in Japanese _majinahi_) "the keeping off of calamity by the aid of the supernatural power of Kami and Buddhas," is in substantial agreement. Prof. Zimmern's definition is open to several objections. It is too wide, as it would include prayer and sacrifice; it assumes that all the sentient beings appealed to are spiritual, and it excludes the numerous cases of magic in which Gods and spirits are in no wise concerned. It is, however, impossible to leave out of consideration the last-mentioned class of magic, though it might be convenient to distinguish it by a different name, as "charms." Sir Alfred Lyall and Mr. J. G. Frazer have shown that magic of this kind has preceded religion, and that it is in principle the same as science, although based on wrong premises. =Magic and Medicine=.--Magic is the bastard brother of medicine. The two arts are associated in many countries. Hirata says that in China medicine had its origin in magic. In Japan, in Kōtoku's reign (645-654), we find State departments of medicine and of magic organized on a similar footing. A _Nihongi_ myth states that mankind owes both arts to the teaching of the Gods Ohonamochi and Sukunabikona. Evidently the myth by which these institutions are referred to a divine origin is of later growth than the institutions themselves. The same is plainly the case with the deification of the phallic emblems used to repel disease,[288] and with the various magical appliances described on p. 196. The object of the myth-maker in these cases was to lend a religious sanction to what was in its origin a non-religious magical procedure. The same principle might be copiously illustrated from non-Japanese sources. On the other hand, there are cases in which a practice based on religion has its original character obliterated, so that it might easily be mistaken for a charm of no religious import.