These and a thousand such misgivings may have thronged the fancy and
troubled the peace of the man who first began to reflect on the
mysteries of the world he lived in, and to take thought for a more
distant future than the morrow. It was natural, therefore, that with
such thoughts and fears he should have done all that in him lay to
bring back the faded blossom to the bough, to swing the low sun of
winter up to his old place in the summer sky, and to restore its
orbed fulness to the silver lamp of the waning moon. We may smile at
his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long
series of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed
to failure, that man learned from experience the futility of some of
his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others. After all,
magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have failed and
which continue to be repeated merely because, for reasons which have
already been indicated, the operator is unaware of their failure.
With the advance of knowledge these ceremonies either cease to be
performed altogether or are kept up from force of habit long after
the intention with which they were instituted has been forgotten.
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