Political tactics would indeed be a much simpler matter if ballot-papers were a natural product, and if on beholding a ballot-paper at about the age of twenty-one a youth who had never heard of one before were invariably seized with a desire to vote.
The whole ritual of social and political organisation among savages, therefore, illustrates the process of creating artificial and easily recognisable political likenesses.

If the chief is to be recognised as a chief he must, like the ghost of Patroclus, 'be exceedingly like unto himself.' He must live in the same house, wear the same clothes, and do the same things year by year; and his successor must imitate him.

If a marriage or an act of sale is to be recognised as a contract, it must be carried out in the customary place and with the customary gestures.

In some few cases the thing thus artificially brought into existence and made recognisable still produces its impulsive effect by acting on those biologically inherited associations which enable man and other animals to interpret sensations without experience.

The scarlet paint and wolfskin headdress of a warrior, or the dragon-mask of a medicine man, appeal, like the smile of a modern candidate, directly to our instinctive nature.