Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

iv] The Tool as extension of Personality 87
part of a man's personality, charged with magical force, spreading
the contagion of its mana by its very presence. Not less sacred
are the tools of the medicine-man, the rain-rattles.
In the light of this notion of the tool, the weapon as part
of a man's personality, many a funeral custom becomes clear 1
. A
warrior's weapons, a medicine-man's gear, a woman's cooking
utensils and her baskets, are buried with them. We think it is
because they will want them in the next world. It is not quite
that ; we are nearer the truth when we say it is from sentiment.
The tools a man used are part of him, of his life, of his mana.
What life, what mana, have joined together, let not man nor death
put asunder.
Fm. 14.
A weapon then does not of necessity owe its sanctity to a god ;
rather in one case, the actual case before us, we can see before
our very eyes a god grow up out of a weapon. Pallas Athena,
Guardian, Promachos, of her city, is altogether human ; but what
of the Palladion ? The Palladia have always one characteristic,
they are sky-fallen (SioTrerels)-. They are irdXra, things hurled,
p.
1 See Levy-Bruhl, 'Les Fonctions Mentales dans
384, and E. Hertz, La Representation collective de
les Soci^tes Inferieures,
la Mart in Annee Sociologique,
x. 1905-6. In the matter of tools, etc. as part of the personality of a
man I am glad to find my view has been anticipated by Mr A. B. Cook in a paper
on Greek Votive Offering in Folk-Lore xiv. 1903, p. 278. Mr Cook quotes as his
psychological authority Lotze in the Microcosmus i. 136. My view is only an
application to the savage of William James's view of personality in general; see
his Principles of Psychology i. p. 292.
2 See M. Theodor Beinach's brilliant articles Itanos et I'lnventio Scuti no n
p. 331, in Bevue de l'Histoire des Beligions, lx. 1909.
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