Note 53 — Chapter VII · FALLACIES IN POPULAR ARGUMENTS

The belief in the efficacy of magic, it should be remembered, is exceedingly widespread, even at the present time. According to Mr. Haddon53 (citing Dr. Jevons), “four-fifths of mankind, probably, believe in sympathetic magic.” Dr. Frazer, too, reminds us that among the ignorant and superstitious classes of modern Europe it is very much what it was thousands of years ago in Egypt and India, and what it now is among the lowest savages surviving in the remotest corners of the world. “If the test of truth,” exclaims Dr. Frazer, “lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, ‘Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,’ as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.”54