Note 191 — Chapter III · SYMPATHETIC MAGIC

It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Y. Hirn that magic by similarity may be reduced to a case of magic by contact. The connecting link, on his hypothesis, is the old doctrine of emanations, according to which everything is continually sending out in all directions copies of itself in the shape of thin membranes, which appear to the senses not only as shadows, reflections, and so forth, but also as sounds and names. See Y. Hirn, Origins of Art (London, 1900), pp. 293 sqq. This hypothesis certainly furnishes a point of union for the two apparently distinct sides of sympathetic magic, but whether it is one that would occur to the savage mind may be doubted.