Moreover, as man observed the world about him, he would note many a phenomenon in nature which he could explain only by assuming strange and subtle influences. There was, for instance, the magnet, so different from other stones; the hot spring, so different from other waters; the action of electricity—still a mystery. Such things, too, as a calf with five legs, a dream, a sneeze, appealed to him as peculiar and striking, and perplexed him. He thought that they must have some important significance. His attempt to explain all such phenomena generally led him into magic. Man often had to decide between two or more courses of action, apparently equally pleasing and advantageous or displeasing and disadvantageous. Should he turn to the right or to the left; should he begin his journey to-day or to-morrow? The thought probably came to him that one of these directions, one of these days, would in the end prove more advantageous than the other, though at present he could see no difference between them. One must be lucky, the other unlucky. This belief in lucky times, places and actions was magic. For such times, places and actions were magical as truly as the cloak that is unlike other cloaks or the change that differs from other changes. Akin to man’s desire to discover what course of action would bring him good luck was the longing he doubtless had to know the future; a knowledge which would be as interesting as those tales of his ancestor’s doings in which he delighted, and of more practical use. As he had no difficulty in granting to matter spiritual qualities or in subjecting to trivial material influences mind and soul without power of resistance, so now he sought in the present sure signs of his own future. Such indications seemed to him to be found not only in dreams, which indeed had some connection with his personality, but also in such things as the flight of birds or the movements of the stars. He often did more than assign magic powers to the heavenly bodies; often he worshiped them as gods. His effort thus to learn the future from inadequate and irrelevant present phenomena was divination or magic. These notions of primitive man do not exhaust the field of magic. As he became educated, he would extend the attribution of magic properties to such things as numbers and written characters or formulæ. His original ideas might be elaborated or refined. But already he accepted the principles upon which a belief in magic founds itself. These principles were evidently common property. Of course some men would come to surpass others in their knowledge of the supposed bonds of sympathy between different things, or of lucky objects, seasons and methods, of ways to coax and control natural forces, of the meaning of portents and of means to predict the future. In the progress of time the finer mysteries of the art might become the monopoly of a priesthood. But everybody believed in magic; everybody understood something about it.