VII

From folk-medicine to false and absurd forms of remedial systems,

the transition is slight. For present purposes the most instructive

of such systematized beliefs is the doctrine of sympathy, of which

the most familiar survival is the phrase, "to take a hair of the dog

that bit you." The system appeared in various phases and at various

times. We find Paracelsus a believer in it in the form of a "weapon

salve," which is to be applied to the weapon that caused the wound

and thereby to heal the wound; weapon and wound having once been

related as cause and effect, this relation is supposed to insure

further connection. The system found wide circulation through the

efforts of Sir Kenelm Digby. While Sir Kenelm's practices involved

bad observation and ignorance of medicine, what gave the method its

plausibility and induced the faulty observation was an underlying

belief in the argument by analogy. His treatment may be gathered from

a story he tells of a Mr. Howell, whose hand was cut in an attempt

to stop a duel between friends. Sir Kenelm arrives on the scene and

asks for anything that had the blood upon it; he is given the garter

wherewith the hand was first bound; this he places in a basin of

water, when suddenly Mr. Howell, who is unaware of what is going on,

experiences a cooling effect and a relief from pain. When the garter

is placed before a great fire, Mr. Howell experiences an intense

burning in the wound. Still another form of this idea appears in the

"sympathetic alphabet," in which each of two friends cuts out a piece

of his skin and has it transferred to the other; on this grafted skin

an alphabet is tattooed, and when a letter is pricked on the skin of

the one friend, the other feels the pain at the corresponding point;

and thus intercourse is established. A still more curious form of

the doctrine appears in an out-of-the-way pamphlet; its title (a

German translation from the French) is "The Thought Telegraph: or the

instantaneous communication of thought at any distance, even from one

end of the world to the other, by means of a portable machine. The

most wonderful invention of our age." The true basis of the method,

we are told, depends upon a "sympathetic-galvano, magnetic, mineral,

animal, adamitic fluid;" the practice depends upon the alleged

discovery of a species of snails, placed in a sympathetic relation,

so that ever after their movements are in harmony. Accordingly each

operator takes one of the snails and places it upon the alphabet

chart; the snail crawls over the chart resting upon certain letters,

and the other snail, however far removed, will do just the same, and

thus the thought-telegraph will be established. Like Charles the

Second's famous fish, that would not add to the weight of a dish

of water in which it was placed, it lacks nothing but truth to be

a great invention. Practices of the same general nature are still

current; in the Netherlands, the knife that cut one is rubbed with

fat in the belief that as the fat dries the wound will heal. The

relation may become more remotely analogical and more arbitrary, as

when, to cure ague, as many notches are cut in a stick as there have

been fits; as the stick dries the ague is to disappear; ruptured

children are passed through a split tree, and thus a sympathy is

produced between child and tree, so that as the tree heals the child

will be cured. A like sympathy is supposed to exist between celestial

objects and human events; this is particularly applied to the moon,

the moon's growth and wane indicating the fortunate times for growth

and decay of earthly things. One must sow grain, cut the hair, and

perform sundry other operations with the increase of the moon, to

insure increase of growth. The tides are similarly significant, as

the ever-pathetic Barkis "going out with the tide" sufficiently

illustrates.

While in the doctrine of sympathy, the resemblance basal to the

analogy is one of relation,--such as the relation of cause and

effect, of owner and the object owned, of implement and the action

performed by its use,--in the doctrine of seals or signatures, the

resemblance is an outward, usually a visible one, of form, color,

or the possession of marked peculiarities. Underlying this doctrine

seems to be the belief that no object or event is without profound

significance for man's welfare. The key to this significance is to

be found in a resemblance obvious or remote, actual or ideal. Hence

the uses of things are suggested by their appearance. The euphrasia

or eyebright is useful in case of sore eyes on account of the bright

eye-like spot in its corolla; special virtues are ascribed to the

ginseng on account of the resemblance of its roots to a human shape.

The granulated roots of the white meadow saxifrage were regarded

as efficacious against calculous complaints. The Solomon's-seal

is so called on account of the marks in the cross-section of its

roots, and is used to seal wounds. Water-soldier, on account of its

sword-shaped leaves, was regarded as useful for gunshot wounds. The

red rose suggests its use in blood diseases; and yellow flowers were

used in jaundice and liver complaints. The walnut was clearly defined

for use in mental diseases: for its shape was that of the head,

the outer green covering being the pericranium, the hard shell the

skull, and the kernel the brain. Old ladies' thistle was for stitches

in the side, nettle tea for nettle-rash, hearts'-ease for heart

troubles. Plants whose parts resembled teeth were prescribed for

toothache, quaking grass against shakes, and so on with consistent

illogicality (Dyer). The resemblances here involved are obvious

enough; they are just such as underlie popular names of plants and

the metaphorical use of terms. They form another illustration of

how metaphor and analogy overlap; what we accept as a sufficient

suggestion for an appropriate name was by pseudo-science, by

folk-lore, or by superstition regarded as sufficiently significant to

support a cause-and-effect-like or a teleological relation. This,

furthermore, is a line of practice in which modern superstition and

savage belief stand on an equal footing; the prescriptions just

cited are matched by the operations of the Cherokee, who make "a

decoction of the cone-flower for weak eyes because of the fancied

resemblance of that plant to the strong-sighted eye of the deer"

(Clodd); who carry out the notion more elaborately when they "drink

an infusion of the tenacious burrs of the common beggars'-lice, an

American species of the genus Desmodium, to strengthen the memory,"

or to "insure a fine voice, boil crickets and drink the liquor"

(Clodd). The "Zulu medicine-man, who takes the bones of the oldest

bull or dog of the tribe, giving scrapings of these to the sick,

so that their lives may be prolonged to old age," in turn finds a

parallel in the seventeenth-century doctors, "who, with less logic,

but perchance unconscious humor, gave their patients pulverized mummy

to prolong their years" (cited by Clodd). Analogy in savagery, in

pseudo-science, and in undeveloped science, in superstition and in

survival, are of a nature all compact.

The transition from magic to science was made possible by, and

itself illustrates the supplanting of, loose and false reasoning by

close and logical thought; the pseudo-sciences represent weak and

erroneous inference even more than they embody defective observation

or mere ignorance. An over-dependence upon analogy characterizes some

portions of them all, and finds its fullest development in astrology,

as also in the various forms of alchemy and magic with which it is

historically connected. Although this body of thought engaged the

energies of many able and famous scholars, we can look upon it only

as a system of resemblances and coincidences, elaborate and complex

indeed, but requiring little more than a vivid imagination and a

somewhat keen sense for far-fetched analogies. "This investigation,"

says the astrologer in Rydberg's "Magic of the Middle Ages," "relies

on the resemblances of things, for this similarity is derived from

a correspondence, and causality is interwoven with correspondence.

Thus, for instance, we judge from the resemblance between the

splendor of gold and that of the sun, that gold has its celestial

correspondence in that luminary and sustains to it a causal

relation." Again, "the two-horned beetle bears a causal relation to

the moon, which at its increase and wane is also two-horned; and if

there were any doubt of this intimate relation between them, it must

vanish when we learn that the beetle hides its eggs in the earth for

the space of twenty-eight days, or just so long a time as is required

for the moon to pass through the zodiac, but digs them up again on

the twenty-ninth, when the moon is in conjunction with the sun."

(Agrippa, "De Occulta Philosophiæ," i. 24.)

It will readily be seen how limitless are the results obtainable

with such a system. Each planet becomes associated with a definite

part of the body, and an argument such as the following becomes

possible: "Since Capricornus, which presided over the knees in the

house of Saturn, and all crawling animals are connected with the

planet, the fat of snakes is an effective remedy against gout in the

knees, especially on Saturday, the day of Saturn" (Rydberg). Tables

of correspondences were freely devised showing the representatives

of the sun, moon, and five planets among the elements, the microcosm,

animals, plants, metals, and stones. Thus Mars was represented in

these spheres respectively, by fire, acid juices, beasts of prey,

burning, poisonous and stinging plants, iron or sulphuric metals,

diamond, jasper, amethyst, and magnet; the vein of analogy lying in

the fierce character of the god, whose name the planet bears. This

idea of correspondence dominates the queer collection of odds and

ends by which the old-time magician worked his charms. "Here," for

instance, he would say, "is a plate of lead on which is engraved

the symbol of a planet; and beside it a leaden flask containing

gall. If I now take a piece of fine onyx marked with the same planet

symbol and this dried cypress branch, and add to them the skin of a

snake and the feather of an owl, you will need but to look into one

of the tables given you to find that I have only collected various

things in the elementary world which bear a relation of mutual

activity to Saturn, and if rightly combined can attract both the

powers of that planet and of the angels with which it is connected"

(Rydberg). Mr. Tylor thus ably characterizes the analogies on which

such systems are built and the uses to which they are put. "But

most of his pseudo-science seems to rest on even weaker and more

arbitrary analogies, not of things but of names. Names of stars and

constellations, of signs denoting regions of the sky and periods

of days and years, no matter how arbitrarily given, are materials

which the astrologer can work upon and bring into ideal connection

with mundane events. That astronomers should have divided the sun's

course into imaginary signs of the zodiac, was enough to originate

astrological rules, that these celestial signs have an actual effect

on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions, virgins. A child born

under the sign of the lion will be courageous, but one under the

crab will not go forward in life; one born under the waterman will

be drowned, and so forth.... Again, simply because astronomers chose

to distribute among the planets the names of certain deities, the

planets thereby acquired the characters of their divine namesakes.

Thus it was that the planet Venus became connected with love,

Mars with war, Jupiter (whose ♃ in altered shape still heads our

physicians' prescriptions) with power and joviality." The various

positions of the heavenly bodies at one's birth, interpreted by such

wild analogies, readily yield material for the prediction of future

careers, vague enough to defy close denial, and bold enough to claim

readily foreseeable consequences as striking verifications. Astrology

represents the climax of the argument by analogy, fully systematized

and calling into play many of the resources of modern learning. What

is so clearly represented in astrology appears to a less extent in

other pseudo-scientific systems; notably in palmistry and phrenology.

It captivates the well-informed as well as the ignorant, it appeals

to minds that are strong as well as those that are weak, and

emphasizes the pricelessness of our scientific inheritance and the

necessity of guarding it by the cultivation of sound logical habits

of thought.

It would be pleasant, but unwarranted, to think of these forms of

thought as obsolete; human nature is more deep-seated than learning.

"In every department of human thought," says Mr. Clodd, "evidence

of the non-persistence of primitive ideas is the exception rather

than the rule. Scratch the epiderm of the civilized man, and the

barbarian is found in the derm. In proof of which, there are more

people who believe in Zadkiel's 'Vox Stellarum' than in the

Nautical Almanac; and rare are the households where the 'Book of

Dreams' and 'Fortune-Teller' are not to be found in the kitchen.

The Singhalese caster of nativities has many representatives in

the West, and there may lie profit in the reminder of the shallow

depth to which knowledge of the orderly sequence of things has yet

penetrated in the many. Societies and serials for the promulgation of

astrology exist and flourish among us; Zadkiel boasts his circulation

of a hundred thousand, and vaunts the fulfillment of his Delphic

prophecies; while the late Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy, was

pestered, as his successor probably is, with requests to work the

planets, accompanied by silver wherewith to cross his expert palm."

The old astrology finds its descendants in modern fatuous volumes on

Heliocentric Astrology, or Kabalistic Astrology, abounding in absurd

pseudo-philosophic jargon and science-aping demonstrations, but in

reality only the "vulgarest travesty of the old."