ABSTRACT
THE aim of this Chapter is to show by a linguistic analysis of two magical texts, and by a general survey of a greater number, what sort of words are believed to exercise magical power. This, of course, does not mean that we are under the delusion that the composers or inventers of magic had a theory about the efficiency of words, and carried this theory into practice by inventing the formula. But, as the moral ideas and rules prevalent in society, though not codified, can be found out by analysing human behaviour; as we reach the underlying principles of law and social propriety by examining customs and manners; as in the study of rites, we see some definite tenets of belief and dogmas—so, in analysing the direct verbal expressions of certain modes of thinking in the magical formulae, we are justified in assuming that these modes of thinking must have somehow guided those who shaped them. The exact manner in which we must imagine the relation between a typical way of thinking in a society on the one hand, and the fixed, crystallised results of this thinking on the other, is a problem of Social Psychology. For this branch of science we are, in ethnography, under the obligation of gathering material, but we need not encroach upon its field of study.
