Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, the doctrine of animism has become classical. This passage from _Primitive Culture_,[31] 'What men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be used, or the material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious but half-human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath,' expresses, no doubt, fairly correctly, a very early philosophy of life. I would not object even to its being termed the earliest philosophy, provided it be granted that the progress of the human race was already well under way when it appeared. But when it is assumed, as it is by many, that the animistic conception of nature is necessary to, and antedates, the establishment of Magic, I must dissent and affirm that a very large number of magical practices neither presuppose, nor in any way involve, a belief in animism, and that there are good reasons for considering them original, _i.e._ not corruptions of practices primitively implying that belief. So much I trust to have shown in the preceding pages.[32] I do not in the least deny that some of the magical practices in existence are derived from actions of a different character. Many of the 'superstitions' of civilised countries have had a long history. Several of the marriage customs; for instance, the cutting of the cake by the bride, and the lifting of the bride over the threshold, are vestiges of actions once necessary or useful.[33] But it would be absurd to conclude from the existence of derived magical practices that Magic, as a whole, is to be accounted for on a theory of 'lapsed intelligence.'