It should be noticed that this explanation of the interdicts does not depend upon the variable symbols by the aid of which religious forces are conceived. It matters little whether these are conceived as anonymous and impersonal energies or figured as personalities endowed with consciousness and feeling. In the former case, of course, they are believed to react against profaning transgressions in an automatic and unconscious manner, while in the latter case, they are thought to obey passionate movements determined by the offence resented. But at bottom, these two conceptions, which, moreover, have the same practical effect, only express one and the same psychic mechanism in two different languages. The basis of both is the antagonism of the sacred and the profane, combined with the remarkable aptitude of the former for spreading over to the latter; now this antagonism and this contagiousness act in the same way, whether the sacred character is attributed to blind forces or to conscious ones. Thus, so far is it from being true that the real religious life commences only where there are mythical personalities, that we see that in this case the rite remains the same, whether the religious beings are personified or not. This is a statement which we shall have occasion to repeat in each of the chapters which follow. IV But if this contagiousness of sacredness helps to explain the system of interdicts, how is it to be explained itself? Some have tried to explain it with the well-known laws of the association of ideas. The sentiments inspired in us by a person or a thing spread contagiously from the idea of this thing or person to the representations associated with it, and thence to the objects which these representations express. So the respect which we have for a sacred being is communicated to everything touching this being, or resembling it, or recalling it. Of course a cultivated man is not deceived by these associations; he knows that these derived emotions are due to mere plays of the images and to entirely mental combinations, so he does not give way to the superstitions which these illusions tend to bring about. But they say that the primitive naïvely objectifies his impressions, without criticising them. Does something inspire a reverential fear in him? He concludes that an august and redoubtable force really resides in it; so he keeps at a distance from this thing and treats it as though it were sacred, even though it has no right to this title.[1097]