Note 33.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Moreover, detached portions of the person, as locks of hair, parings of finger-nails, and so forth, are not dead inert matter. They are still endued with the life of their original owner. Nay, garments once worn, or other objects which have been in intimate contact with a human being, are penetrated by his personality, remain as it were united with him for good and ill. It would be no exaggeration to say of this belief that it is universal. Upon it rests much of the practice of witchcraft, as well as of the medicine of the lower culture. The cleft ash through which a child has been drawn for the cure of infantile hernia, bound up and allowed to grow together, continues to sympathize with him in health and sickness as though part of his own body. In ancient Greece maidens on their marriage offered their veils to Hera, the goddess who favoured marriage and aided childbirth;33.1 and Athenian women who became pregnant for the first time used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. These customs were not mere acts of homage; they had a practical intention.