The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

358 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)[305]driven by the progress of the reaping into the last patch ofstanding corn, and make their escape from it as it is being cutdown. So regularly does this happen that reapers and othersoften stand round the last patch of corn armed with sticks or guns,with which they kill the animals as they dart out of their lastrefuge among the stalks. Now, primitive man, to whom magicalchanges of shape seem perfectly credible, finds it most naturalthat the spirit of the corn, driven from his home in the ripe grain,should make his escape in the form of the animal which is seen torush out of the last patch of corn as it falls under the scythe of thereaper. Thus the identification of the corn-spirit with an animalis analogous to the identification of him with a passing stranger.As the sudden appearance of a stranger near the harvest-field orthreshing-floor is, to the primitive mind, enough to identify himas the spirit of the corn escaping from the cut or threshed corn,so the sudden appearance of an animal issuing from the cut cornis enough to identify it with the corn-spirit escaping from hisruined home. The two identifications are so analogous that theycan hardly be dissociated in any attempt to explain them. Thosewho look to some other principle than the one here suggested forthe explanation of the latter identification are bound to shew thattheir theory covers the former identification also.[307]