We may next proceed to more general uses of the analogical
trait,--more general because the special analogical appropriateness
of thought or custom is no longer so apparent, but requires to
be viewed more as a special and, it may be, a somewhat arbitrary
application of a principle, itself supported or believed in on
analogical grounds. Metaphor and simile and symbolism may be based
upon the same types of resemblances that underlie analogy, but it is
desirable, so far as may be possible, to hold these distinct; yet
what is metaphor to us may still be analogy to others.
When we speak of a head of cabbage, the trunk of a tree, or the legs
of a table, we understand that we have applied these names on the
basis of resemblances to objects to which the names more strictly
belong, and there is no thought that the name carries with it any
further connection; but when the Chinese doctor administers the
heads, middle parts, and roots of plants, for the heads, bodies,
and legs of his patients respectively, he is clearly led to do so by
a vague sense of analogical fitness, by a feeling that the bodily
similarities are indicative of further connection of a quasi-causal
type. This kind of reasoning abounds in primitive ceremonials, in
which the appropriateness of the observances and of the elements of
the ritual depend upon resemblances or symbolical suggestiveness.
It is difficult to find instances of this trait in which a more or
less conscious symbolism is excluded, for we know how readily the
savage mind, in its somewhat more developed stages, uses this mode of
thought, as is evidenced by the ingenuity of their picture-writing,
gesture-language, and tribal systems. But apart from symbolical
procedures, in which the unreality of the underlying resemblances
is half acknowledged, we may note the application of such general
principles as that unusual phenomena have unusual significance,
and that to accomplish important objects drastic means and rare
substances must be employed; that operations and remedies will be
effective according to their divergence from the usual and the common
experience of mankind. The influence of this principle is traceable
in the bizarre fancies and grotesque performances of savages, as also
in the reverence shown to the belongings of the white man and the
curious uses to which they are put. In their ritual observances, as
well as in medical practice, the same principle is involved; a single
illustration will suffice to recall this well-known form of thought.
Dorman cites the fate of an Indian warrior brought to camp after a
most disastrous encounter with a grizzly bear. To repair his very
serious injuries "the doctor compounded a medicine that really ought
to have worked wonders. It was made by boiling together a collection
of miscellaneous weeds, a handful of chewing tobacco, the heads of
four rattlesnakes, and a select assortment of worn-out moccasins. The
decoction thus obtained was seasoned with a little crude petroleum
and a large quantity of red pepper, and the patient was directed
to take a pint of the mixture every half hour. He was a brave man,
conspicuous for his fortitude under suffering, but after taking his
first dose he turned over and died with the utmost expedition."
Another one of these general principles may have been suggested
by the failure of the ordinary omens; and thus the conclusion was
reached that the analogy proceeds not according to resemblance but
by contrast. For example, the Zulus, when dreaming "of a sick man
that he is dead, ... say, 'because we have dreamt of his death he
will not die.' But if they dream of a wedding dance it is the sign
of a funeral. So the Maoris hold that a kinsman dreamt of as dying
will recover, but to see him well is a sign of death. Both races thus
worked out, by the same crooked logic that guided our own ancestors,
the axiom that dreams go by contraries" (Tylor). It will be seen
in later portions of our exposition that these and other general
principles of an analogical type have lost none of their potency in
their more modern or more erudite phases.
V
The parallelism between the mental development of the individual
and of the race, though necessarily incomplete, is yet deeply
suggestive and significant. In a very true sense the unfoldment of
mental faculty from childhood to maturity reflects the allied course
of evolution from savagery to civilization; yet the reflection is
distorted and is traceable only in general outlines. Undeveloped
forms of thought and instinctive tendencies, of a related though by
no means of an identical character, should be traceable in each; and
among them the natural proclivity for dependence upon analogies.
That children are fond of reasoning by analogy there can be no
doubt; their confusion of fact with fancy, their lack of extensive
knowledge and the ability to refer effects to proper causes, their
great love for sound effects and play of words, the earnestness of
their play convictions--all these furnish a rich soil for the growth
of such habits of thought as we are now considering. On the other
hand, the influence of their adult companions, of their conventional
surroundings, of the growth of the make-believe sentiment by
which the laws of the real world are differentiated from those of
fairy-land, make it difficult to pronounce as an argument by analogy
what may really be a half-conscious play of fancy or jugglery
of words and ideas. There is, further, considerable difficulty
in collecting characteristic and unimpeachable illustrations of
arguments by analogy in children, owing to the general lack of
suitable collections of children's spontaneous and original mental
reactions. What fond parents are apt to observe and newspaper
paragraphers to record are sayings that amuse by a quaintness or
the assumption of a worldly wisdom beyond their years, while the
truly suggestive traits pass unrecorded for lack of psychologically
informed observers. There is thus a gap to be supplied by valuable
and suggestive study of analogy in childhood. However, not to pass by
the topic without illustration, I may cite the reply of the little
boy who, when asked his age, said he was nine when he stood on his
feet but six when he stood on his head, because an inverted 9 makes
a 6; he was certainly reasoning by a far-fetched analogy, however
little faith he may have had in the correctness of his reasoning. The
children who believed that butter comes from butterflies, and grass
from grasshoppers, beans from bees, and kittens from pussy-willows
(Stanley Hall), may have been simply misled by sound analogies;
but when Sir John Lubbock tells us of a little girl saying to her
brother, "If you eat so much goose you will be quite silly," and adds
that, "there are perhaps few children to whom the induction would not
seem perfectly legitimate," we appreciate that such arguments, so
closely paralleling the superstitions of savages, may be more real to
children than we suspect.