Sometimes the dictates of common sense are imposed by necessity. The Motu (Papuasian) were accustomed to rub spears with ginger to make them fly straight. It had, however, been discovered that no amount of Magic would turn a poor spearman into an accurate thrower.[493] Spear-throwing is too serious a concern not to be judged of upon its merits, however interesting the properties of ginger. A whole tribe may in some vital matter, whilst practising a superstitious rite, disregard its significance: like the Kalims, who hold a crop-festival in January, and afterwards take the omens as to what ground shall be cultivated for next harvest; “but this seems a relic of old times, for the circle of cultivation is never broken, let the omens be what they may.”[494] That is a tacit triumph of common sense. The bearing of all this on the character of the wizard is as follows: since everywhere sceptics occur, and some individuals go further than others in openly or secretly rejecting superstitions, why should not the wizard or sorcerer, who is amongst the most intelligent and daring of his tribe, be himself a rationalist and, therefore, a conscious impostor? That much of his art is imposture no one disputes; and so far as it is so, he sees it as part of the ordinary course of experience. The sorcerer on the Congo who drove a spirit into the dark corner of a hut, stabbed it there, and showed the blood upon his spear, having produced the blood (as his son confessed to Mr. Weeks) by scratching his own gums, was by that action himself instructed in common sense.[495] He saw in it quite plainly an ordinary course of events, the “routine of experience”; whilst the spectators were mystified. Must he not, then, have more common sense than other people?