The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

48 THE EVIL EYE chap.
of facts, operations, and conditions, with which our
human senses and powers of comprehension are quite
incapable of deaHng. This has certainly been the experience
of all people in all ages ; we see in his magic
but the feeble efforts of feeble man to approach and
to step over the boundary his senses can appreciate,
into what is intended to be, and must always remain,
beyond his ken—essentially the supernatural.
Man, having come to associate in thought those things which
he found by experience to be connected in fact, proceeded
erroneously to invert this action, and to conclude that association
in thought must involve similar connection in reality.''^
Here no doubt we have the true reason for that
association of ideas with facts which a recent author ^'"
calls Sympathetic Magic. He says : " One of the
principles of this is that any effect may be produced
by imitating it." So concise a definition may well be
borne in mind, for we are told that it lies at' the very
foundation of human reason, and of unreason also.
We Christians, however, certainly cannot agree to
call this association of ideas with facts a superstition
in the conventional sense ; for we must see that the
principle, perhaps to suit our humanity and our
limited reason, has been appointed and adopted for
our most sacred rites. Surely in the act of baptism
we hope for the spiritual effect we imitate or typify
by the actual use of water. So in that highest of
our sacraments we spiritually eat and drink, by the
actual consumption of the elements.
Leaving sacred things, which are merely men-
tioned here, with all reverence, by way of illustration,
and to show how association of ideas with facts
'I Tylor, Primitive Ciiltufe, vol. i. p. 104.
"-' F"razer, Golden Bough, vol. i. p. 9.