Amongst savages also, of course, experience settles in their minds such forms of thought; both the most general ones, which they never formulate but which necessarily control their thoughts, and many particular ones concerning the experience of daily life; which last control the details of their thoughts, and for practical purposes are true; but which, through ignorance of the minor premise, are allowed to assimilate many judgments of a very different nature. Thus, X being known to be related to Y, they are apt to infer that things that are like X, or which they suppose to be like X, are also in the same way related to Y; and this is disastrous. In civilised life, most occupations are so mechanical, and the general tradition is so positive, that there is little encouragement to think nonsense; so that the average man reasons tolerably about simple matters without having heard of the minor premise; but the savage’s life is much less regular, and less fully occupied, and the tradition is full of magic and ghosts. Accordingly, he is always ready to think about magic and ghosts; and since his thoughts about such things can only run in the mould of his experiences (with some playroom for amplification, distortion and condensation), whilst he is also ignorant of the function of the minor premise, he seems to draw often from a very sound major premise a very absurd conclusion. For the minor premise is an invention of Logicians (perhaps their greatest): it does not occur to cursory, but only to critical thought. For example, a savage judges that to put a lock of a man’s hair in the fire injures and may destroy him: how comes he to think so? He has learnt by experience that for a man to put his hand in the fire, or to fall into it, hurts him; and this supplies the mould in which his inference about the lock of hair is cast. Similarly, he is apt to judge that to throw a man’s image into the fire hurts him and may destroy him; and this clearly rests upon the same experience. His reasoning assumes the minor premise that (for the purpose of his revenge) a separated part of a man, or his image, is the same as the man himself; and this assumption is made explicit in the famous maxims of Magic, that in rites, whatever has been in contact with a man—or that any likeness of a man—may be substituted for him. But the generalisation of these maxims is left for an advanced stage of culture; the savage, who acts as if he held them, has never thought of, much less formulated them. They are derived, by later thought, entirely from an analysis of his conduct in magic. What the causes are that determine him to act as if he accepted the maxims of Magic will presently be discussed.[93]