ABSTRACT
When the primitive observes an omen that is favourable he is filled with gratitude. He feels encouraged to take action, strengthened in his resolve, and sure of success. This chapter presents one of the many different forms in which the very slightly conceptual nature of the primitive's collective representations betrays itself, and it is to be met with in many inferior races. By virtue of the law of participation primitives do not clearly differentiate between a force and its expression. If they succeed in hindering the latter from conveying the malignant power to its destined end, if they arrest its course, they also paralyse it and prevent its efficacy. In Upper Congo, the mournful hooting of the owl, heard at midnight by a villager, is a message that death is stealing silently towards the huts waiting to select a victim, and all who hear the call will hasten to drive the messenger of ill tidings away with sticks and stones.
