Research source

VI. Other forms of involuntary indications; "involuntary whispering;" the subconscious 334

Date of account: Published 1900
Source: Fact and Fable in Psychology
Reference: Fact and Fable in Psychology · selected passage 134
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

The resemblances here involved are obvious enough; they are just such as underlie popular names of plants and the metaphorical use of terms

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Source passage

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The resemblances here involved are obvious enough; they are just such as underlie popular names of plants and the metaphorical use of terms. They form another illustration of how metaphor and analogy overlap; what we accept as a sufficient suggestion for an appropriate name was by pseudo-science, by folk-lore, or by superstition regarded as sufficiently significant to support a cause-and-effect-like or a teleological relation. This, furthermore, is a line of practice in which modern superstition and savage belief stand on an equal footing; the prescriptions just cited are matched by the operations of the Cherokee, who make "a decoction of the cone-flower for weak eyes because of the fancied resemblance of that plant to the strong-sighted eye of the deer" (Clodd); who carry out the notion more elaborately when they "drink an infusion of the tenacious burrs of the common beggars'-lice, an American species of the genus Desmodium, to strengthen the memory," or to "insure a fine voice, boil crickets and drink the liquor" (Clodd).

Historical context

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Modern context

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