The subject of totemism naturally leads on to that of magic; for in Australia totemic groups have developed into co-operative magic-working societies; and there is no rashness in assuming that magic flourished everywhere before the end of the Palaeolithic Age. We are often told that magic was based upon a confused association of ideas; that it was the embryo of science;[190] and that priest and magician have ever been foes. There is much truth in this: but magic is not to be so easily explained; and most of us are still far from sympathetically understanding the mental state in which it originated. To say that one kind of magic is an outgrowth of the law of similarity, the magician fancying, for example, that by making drawings of animals he can cause their species to multiply; that the other depends upon the law of contact, when, for instance, it is supposed that whatever is done to a weapon will correspondingly affect the person whom it wounded,[191]--to say this is not to fathom the magician’s mind. Magic, notwithstanding the hostility with which priests have regarded magicians, cannot be separated from religion by a line of demarcation; nor indeed is it always possible to differentiate magicians from priests.[192] It has been well said that magic, as observed among primitive tribes, is ‘part and parcel of the “god-stuff” out of which religion fashions itself’.[193] Australian magicians believe that their powers are conferred upon them by supernatural beings;[194] and the magicians of many tribes call upon spirits to aid them in working their spells.[195] One of the most important functions of the magician is to ensure an adequate fall of rain; but in New Guinea this duty belongs to the priest of the god by whose favour the rain is believed to fall.[196] Vast learning has been expended to prove that monarchy originated in magic;[197] but we only know that magicians have sometimes succeeded in making themselves kings;[198] and doubtless in certain cases magic may have helped to sow the seed out of which gradations of rank were evolved.[199] But this would be but one more illustration of the accepted truth that family, tribe, priesthood, monarchy--all our institutions--are rooted in savagery.[200]