It is because of this failure that the savage becomes fascinated by ideas of magical and (later) of spiritual aid. Finally (_e_), no control is exercised by the will over pain—headache, colic, rheumatism, etc.; yet we are told that the savage, when so afflicted, refers his sufferings at once to the will of some enemy operating at a distance. Such inferences are not primitive, but the result of a long growth of superstitions. Among Australian aborigines, disease and natural death are generally believed to be caused by the magical practices of an enemy, not merely by his will. We are not, then, obliged to infer that, because volition is the type of necessary connexion, Sorcery, or any other form of Animism, preceded Magic. On the other hand, there are conditions that may have given rise independently to a belief in Magic. The savage has frequent experience of regular trains of event which, for want of analytic ability, he does not clearly understand, but which exist in his mind as types determining his apprehension of other sequences. When two interesting events happen about the same time, the later recalls the earlier; because the impression of the earlier, having been deep, perseverates, and is apt to be re-excited by almost any occurrence. An association is then formed between them, and obtains as strong a hold upon the mind as less interesting ones can by many repetitions. The man judges them to be connected; and expects the coincidence to repeat itself as usual occurrences do; and the more vividly the more he desires or fears it. Such expectations, together with the idea of invisible force and the oppression of mystery, by degrees establish the belief in Magic. Probably no traveller amongst wild peoples, or observer of the unsophisticated at home, will think that too much stress is here laid upon the power of coincidence to create general expectations. Even the Chaldean priests (we are told) had grasped but imperfectly the idea of causation. “When two events had been noticed to happen one after another, the first was the cause of the second. Hence their anxiety to record the phenomena of the heavens and the occurrences that took place after each.”[269] The Egyptians, says Herodotus, “whenever a prodigy takes place, watch and record the result; then, if anything similar ever happens again, they expect the same consequences.”[270] They had merely reduced to a system the universal practice of unanalytic minds. § 2. MAGIC AND RELIGION