LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK”
Sir Edward Tylor begins the chapters on Animism in that great work which laid the foundation of the modern study of the history of civilization, by a discussion of the evidence for the existence of tribes destitute of religion. In some half-dozen pages he easily shows that the existence of such tribes, “though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled to demand.” He convicts travellers and missionaries who have made the assertion, of contradicting themselves; and he renders probable that the denial of religion to peoples in the lower culture is begotten of a perverted judgement in theological matters, and “the use of wide words in narrow senses.”[1.1]
Other causes are equally prolific of error in regard to savage beliefs. Sir Edward Tylor refers to haste and imperfect acquaintance by the traveller with the people whose beliefs he is professing to repeat. These are obvious causes on which it is needless to dwell. Many peoples, too, are accustomed out of mere politeness to endeavour to divine what sort of answer to his remarks will please a guest, or what sort of answer an enquirer expects to his questions, and to make it accordingly, regardless whether it has any relation to the facts or not. This courtier-like etiquette of agreement applies to every subject, and is emphasized when the enquirer is an official or social superior from whom favour may be looked for or displeasure apprehended. The Malayans, a jungle tribe of southern India, invariably say “Yes” in reply to a question by a government officer or a member of a higher caste, “believing that a negative answer might displease him.”[2.1] In such cases it is difficult to extract the truth on the most indifferent and trivial, to say nothing of weightier, matters.
Passing over these commonplaces, let us pause for a moment on another cause mentioned by Tylor, namely, the natural reluctance of savages to reveal “to the prying and contemptuous foreigner their worship of gods who seem to shrink, like their worshippers, before the white man and his mightier Deity.”[2.2] Very instructive is the account given by Kolben of the Hottentots. Writing in the early years of the eighteenth century, he says it is “a difficult thing to get out of the Hottentots what are really their notions concerning God and religion, or whether they have any at all. They keep all their religious opinions and ceremonies, as they do every other matter established among them, as secret as they can from Europeans, and when they are questioned concerning such matters are very shy in their answers and hide the truth as much as they can.” They take refuge from questions in “a thousand fictions,” which they excuse, when taxed with them, by alleging that “the Europeans are a crafty, designing people. They never ask a question for the sake of the answer only, but have other ends to serve, perhaps against the peace and security of the Hottentots.” From this source, we are told, have sprung most of the contradictions to be found in authors upon the religion of the Hottentots.[3.1] More than a hundred years after Kolben’s day a British traveller, exploring Great Namaqualand under the auspices of the British Government and of the Royal Geographical Society, assembled some of the old men among the Namaqua and put them through an examination. His thirst for information was doubtless praiseworthy; and he was at least successful in proving, albeit unconsciously, the truth of the older traveller’s words. For the proceeding he adopted affords a brilliant example of “how not to do it.” I quote some of his questions: “What laws have the Namaqua?” Answer—“They have none; they only listen to their chiefs.” “Do the people know anything of the stars?” Answer—“Nothing.” “Do the Namaqua believe in lucky and unlucky days?” Answer—“They don’t know anything of these things.” “Are there rainmakers in the land?” Answer—“None.” “What do the old Namaqua think becomes of people when they die?” Answer—“They know nothing of these things; all they see is that the people die and are buried, but what becomes of them they know not; and before the missionaries came to the Great River the people had never heard of another world.”[3.2]
Many European casuists justify one who is questioned concerning matters he desires to keep secret, and who meets the inquisitive person with a falsehood. It cannot therefore be surprising that these poor Hottentots thus took advantage of the only defence open to them when they found their most cherished beliefs and customs the subject of impertinent and bungling interrogations by an unsympathetic intruder into their country. Their Bantu neighbours do the same. The Kaffir, we are told, “dislikes to find Europeans investigating his customs, and he usually hides all he can from them and takes a sportive pleasure in baffling and misleading them.”[4.1] When questioned by Andersson, the Ovambo denied that they had any belief, or abruptly stopped him with a “Hush!”[4.2] Prying of this kind is rarely welcomed even among peoples on a much higher plane of civilization. Not to appeal to our own feelings, we may take as an illustration a people of the Far East. To question a native of Korea concerning custom or belief at once arouses his suspicions. Indeed, for a stranger to enquire the number of houses in a village, or what the land produces, needs much tact if bad feeling is to be avoided. A missionary who lived for many years in the country was of opinion that people are unconscious of their customs. At any rate a Korean asked suddenly about a certain custom will in all likelihood deny that such a thing exists; and yet he may be absolutely free from dishonesty in the matter: he is simply unconscious, he has never thought about it.[4.3]
To this point we will return directly: our present point is the conscious refusal of information. And here it should be noted that savages, as well as others, do not hide their beliefs only because they do not understand the motive of enquiry, or because they are afraid of ridicule or of the denunciations of the missionary, even where the Christian priest can call down the thunderbolt of the magistrate. These reasons operate, but not alone. From all quarters of the world comes the report that the native is uncommunicative. The Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco are quite aware that their “superstition is regarded with disfavour by the missionaries”; but they are naturally “very reticent in these matters,” and their reticence is only heightened—not caused—by this knowledge.[5.1] An excellent illustration of the difficulty of discovering the beliefs and even the practices of savages is afforded by Mr Batchelor, a missionary who, having resided among the Ainu of Japan for more than twelve years, wrote an interesting book upon them. He naturally supposed that so long a residence and intimacy with them entitled him to think he knew practically all that could be told about them. Alas for the fallibility of even a careful observer! There was one chamber in the mind of every Ainu which he had not explored. When another twelve years had elapsed he wrote that “when writing that book I must frankly confess that I had no idea, nor had I for many years after, that ophiolatry was practised at all by this people.” And all the while the Ainu whom he knew so well were holding beliefs, relating myths, and practising rites of which he had not the least suspicion.[5.2] Nor is there any reason to suggest that they were concealing those things from him out of fear of ridicule or clerical reproofs.
Deeper reasons exist. German missionaries have been labouring for a number of years among the tribes on the north-eastern coast of New Guinea. In view of the various difficulties attending the investigation of the beliefs of these tribes the latest scientific explorer of the country called in the aid of some of the more experienced of the missionaries. He thus sums up the position: “The heathen Papuan is a reticent fellow, and no power in the world can move him to disclose the secrets of his fathers. He has too much fear of the vengeance of the spirits and of the sorcerers, who would infallibly kill him if he betrayed the smallest thing. Long years of work accomplished with endless patience have been necessary to convince the Black that sorcery is powerless,—that it is all lies and deceit. Only if he is about to be baptized will he voluntarily deliver up to his teacher his knowledge of witchcraft and its methods. In plain terms, he feels the need on this point to lighten both his conscience and his pocket.”[6.1] Reasons of this order have never been better put than by an eminent French anthropologist whose untimely death a few years ago was a serious blow to the cause of science. Reviewing the work of a lady for whom English colleagues yet mourn, he says: “The savage does not like to speak of his belief; he fears the contemptuous mockery of the Whites. Perhaps, too, he fears to give an advantage over himself, in allowing more to be known than is fitting of the rites by which he tries to conciliate the benevolence of the spirits, or to turn away their disfavour from his hut and his plantations. To make known his resources for the fight would be to half-disarm him; surrounded with supernatural dangers, he does not willingly indicate the supernatural means by which he guarantees himself against them.”[6.2] One other reason may be added to these: a reason probably operative in many more cases than enquirers have been aware of. The things after which they ask are often revealed only to the initiate. An outsider, one who is not known to be, or at least treated as, an initiate, will seek in vain by means direct or indirect for information on these matters. A stony silence or repeated lies are all he will get. This has been the cause of much mystification and many contradictory statements about tribes in various parts of the world, not the least in Australia.[7.1]
It is not suggested, of course, that all contradictory statements emanate from the deliberate mystification of non-initiate enquirers. We have not by any means exhausted the causes of error in regard to savage beliefs. Contradictory statements are made in good faith because those who make them hold contradictory beliefs. On the subject, for example, of the future life the mutually destructive character of the beliefs often held by the same tribes, and even by the same individuals, is one of the truisms of anthropology. The Zulus and their neighbours hold that their dead are to be recognized in the form of various animals, notably snakes, that haunt the tomb or the abodes of the living, and yet that these very dead dwell in the bowels of the earth, presiding in patriarchal fashion over shadowy kraals, and rejoicing in the possession of herds of sky-blue kine with red and white spots. Moreover, notwithstanding this wealth of cattle, they are dependent, if not for their continued existence, at least for their comfort, on the sacrifices offered by their descendants. The truth is that “the whole spirit-world is one of haze and uncertainty.”[7.2] This opinion, expressed by an experienced missionary, is true of all savage and barbarous nations. It is not merely the doctrine of souls that is difficult to understand fully and to state clearly: all the relations with the supernatural are shifting; and the supernatural itself melts away into mist and gloom and the undefined terrors of night.
Proof of the mental capacity of peoples in the lower culture, and their alertness within the narrow range of their appetites, their bodily needs, and the warfare they wage for existence against untoward environment of various kinds, is to be found in every record of exploration, in the reports of every missionary. Beyond that range there are differences between races, as between individuals, in reasoning power, in curiosity, and in general development. Some cause to us unknown may have turned the thoughts of one people into profounder and subtler channels than those of another. We are told of two neighbouring tribes in California that their differences are very striking, and are based on deep-lying racial factors. The mythology of the one is more dramatic, that of the other is more metaphysical, exhibiting “more of the power of abstract thought and intellectual conception.”[8.1] We must beware of reading too extensive a meaning into what is after all merely a comparison of characteristics. It is adduced here for the sole purpose of illustrating the statement that such differences exist even between tribes that are subject to similar external influences. In spite of these differences the unanimous verdict, alike of missionaries and explorers, scientific enquirers and traders, given with tiresome iteration, is that of dormant faculties, want of interest, inability to follow a train of thought, and dislike of intellectual effort. These are qualities that we are sufficiently familiar with at home to render them fully credible in “the poor heathen.” Ask a man anywhere—ask a Zulu, ask an English peasant—why such and such a thing is done. He will tell you: “It is the custom,” and will look at you with wondering eyes that you can demand a reason or dream of any alternative as possible. Custom to him is more than a second nature. It is nature itself, the established order, the cosmos. To conceive of departure from it would entail a greater burden of thought than he has ever undertaken or would willingly bear. It may even be so much a part of his existence that, like the Korean referred to above, he is barely conscious of it.
In such a case the custom may be denied in perfect good faith. Sometimes, it is true, another cause may lead to the denial. This is well illustrated in a recent work on the Holy Land. The author, speaking of local variations of custom, says: “The small area in which peculiar customs occur, and the comparative isolation of these areas which still prevails, make it often extremely difficult to ascertain local customs and usages. Many of these can only be discovered accidentally or by long residence in the particular locality. The people of neighbouring villages may be quite unaware of the existence of a certain custom, while only a few miles away it may be very familiar. I have known intelligent, educated natives to be entirely ignorant of certain customs, and even to deny their existence, because they were not in vogue in their own particular district, whereas further enquiry or fuller acquaintance with other parts revealed the fact that they were perfectly familiar to others.”[9.1] Here the expression “intelligent, educated natives” must be interpreted of course by reference to the standard of intelligence and education in the rural parts of a country so backward as Palestine. In such a case the ignorance by natives described as intelligent and educated of customs quite different from, and perhaps opposed to, their own may be due to the concentration of their faculties in the struggle for daily needs, or the absorption of their interests in the concerns of their own little community. Millions of men and women in our country, who may be fairly described, by reference to their class and occupation, as “intelligent, educated natives,” are quite ignorant—and supremely indifferent—about everything not pertaining to their material well-being, their habitual amusements, the affairs of their little town, their family or their church, or the latest scandal whispered in their tiny coterie. These fill up their life; they have neither leisure nor inclination to worry about anything beyond. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that where the facilities for communication are smaller and the general indigence greater, similar mental indolence may exist. Economic causes, the product themselves of the environment, are often responsible for internal conditions, and cannot be disentangled from them. Intelligent curiosity about things not immediately or apparently affecting ourselves is a rare virtue, and of late development. We ourselves often deem that we pay it abundant homage by witnessing the exhibition of a few lantern slides, or slumbering tranquilly through a lecture on Dante. But to it, if rightly and strenuously pursued, we owe how much of modern discovery and the amenities of civilization! Let us, however, return to our savages.
Of the Nootkas or Ahts of Vancouver Island we are told by Sproat in a passage that has often been quoted that he “had abundant proof in conversing with them about matters in which they took an interest, that their mental capacities are by no means small. It is true that the native mind, to an educated man, seems generally to be asleep; and if you suddenly ask a novel question, you have to repeat it while the mind of the savage is awaking, and to speak with emphasis until he has got your meaning. This may partly arise from the questioner’s imperfect knowledge of the language; still, I think, not entirely, as the savage may be observed occasionally to become forgetful when voluntarily communicating information. On his attention being fully aroused he often shows much quickness in reply and ingenuity in argument. But a short conversation wearies him, particularly if questions are asked that require efforts of thought or memory on his part. The mind of the savage then appears to rock to and fro out of mere weakness, and he tells lies and talks nonsense.”[11.1] On this Professor Boas, the distinguished American anthropologist, comments thus: “I happen to know through personal contact the tribes mentioned by Sproat. The questions put by the traveller seem mostly trifling to the Indian; and he naturally soon tires of a conversation carried on in a foreign language, and one in which he finds nothing to interest him. As a matter of fact, the interest of those natives can easily be raised to a high pitch, and I have often been the one who was wearied out first. Neither does the management of their intricate system of exchange prove mental inertness in matters which concern the natives. Without mnemonic aids, they plan the systematic distribution of their property in such a manner as to increase their wealth and social position. These plans require great foresight and constant application.”[11.2]
So far as this comment is directed to depreciate the value of Sproat’s estimate of the mental powers of the Nootkas, I cannot think that Professor Boas has been quite fair to the writer. Sproat was no passing traveller, speaking to the natives in a foreign language, and jotting down superficial impressions derived from hasty observation. He had “lived among them and had a long acquaintanceship with them.” He was a settler, and for five years a colonial magistrate in constant contact with several of their tribes. His own account of his method of collecting information and the substance of his book are conclusive as to his painstaking researches; and Professor Boas himself elsewhere bears testimony to his trustworthiness.[12.1] Moreover, a comparison of the quotations renders it clear that on the whole they confirm one another. Probably, however, Professor Boas’ criticism is intended to apply not so much to Sproat’s statements as to the use made of them by Herbert Spencer and other theorists. It comes to this, therefore, that the Nootka’s mental capacity is considerable, his mind is alert and active on subjects that interest him, but that he is not interested in many of those on which an anthropologist desires to learn, and hence he speedily becomes “bored” and answers at random.
The horizon of savage interests among the neighbouring Dene or Ten’a of the Yukon Valley is thus defined by an experienced missionary: “The activity of their minds is commonly confined within a narrow circle, as is evidenced by their favourite subjects of conversation. Food, hunting and fishing, with their attendant circumstances, family happenings, health and disease, devils and their actions, sexual propensities—such are the topics which practically sum up the encyclopædia of their conversation.” “The Ten’a mind,” he says in another place, “is anything but speculative, and its imaginative powers have not been turned to building theories of its belief, but rather to excogitate a variety of ways whereby this belief perseveringly asserts itself.” The native’s “dogmas are very nebulous and undefined, and he has never heard them explicitly formulated, nor even attempted to state them distinctly to himself.” Consequently, “whereas there is a certain uniformity in the practices, and an overabundance of them, there are very few points of belief common to several individuals, and these are of the vaguest kind.”[13.1]
If we turn to an entirely different race, the same features present themselves. The capacity of the Bantu peoples of the Lower Congo for the intellectual acts of perception, recognition, memory, and so forth, is well developed and appears early in childhood. “In this respect the natives are much on a par with the civilized races; but the limit is reached early in life, and but little mental progress is observable after adolescence is reached. The ideas are mostly of the simpler forms, seldom passing the concretes of actual experience, generalizations being as a rule beyond their power. Association of ideas, though good as implied by good memory, only takes place in the concrete form of contiguity in time and space as actually already perceived; analogies are confined to the crudest forms, and a very simple figure of speech is apt to be unintelligible.… The fundamental act of intelligence, the intuition of likeness and unlikeness, is very circumscribed; and high acts of intellect are thereby negatived.… An accompanying trait is the absence of rational surprise. On seeing something new a vacant wonder is all that is observable; and this is very transient, and the new experience is classified as ‘white man’s fashion.’ It almost follows as a matter of course that there is no curiosity, no wish to enquire into the cause of a novel experience; it never occurs to the native that there is a cause of the novelty or an explanation required. In like manner there is almost total absence of theorizing about natural phenomena.” In fact, the relation of cause and effect in all but the most patent and mechanical cases is said to be beyond his grasp.[14.1] In general terms this description may stand for all the Bantu, due allowance being made, as pointed out above, for individual and tribal differences.
The natural result is vagueness on all religious and metaphysical subjects. This is a characteristic of savages all over the world. Nor is it limited by any means to them. Recent investigations have established the evolution of some at least of the majestic figures of the Olympian Pantheon from not merely rude but vague and nameless personalities; and to the very end of Hellenic religion, unknown gods and dim, indefinite heroes continued to be honoured not merely in every country place, but in Athens herself. The Arabs of Moab have professed for many generations the religion of the Prophet. Yet they have the feeblest apprehension of that great Allah in whom they are supposed to believe. When questioned on his nature, his abode, his occupation, they usually answer: “We do not know.” One of them told a missionary: “It is said that Allah is like an old man with a white beard, but I do not know where he dwells; it is asserted that he is above,” pointing to the sky. They also honour numerous beings called by the generic name of Wely (protector or friend), who are identified with rocks, trees, and other holy places. Even of these, however, their ideas are obscure. Like the local hero of the Greeks, the Wely is not as a rule individualized with a personal name. Who he is in most cases is unknown. His exact connection with the spot where he is honoured is equally unknown. Some Arabs say that it is he who gives vigour to the sacred tree; others declare that he dwells beneath it, or that he dwells in the branches and the leaves; but Allah knows.[15.1] And the pious reference to Allah and his knowledge is sufficient for the Arab.
The fact is that on these subjects the majority of the human race, whether savage or civilized, think little. Their minds are seldom excited to the point of reasoning on their beliefs. They accept what they are told, and do not even know whether they believe it or not, because they have never reflected upon it. One has only to talk for a few minutes to a peasant at home to find out how narrow the border of his knowledge is, how misty and uncertain is everything beyond the routine of his daily life and the village gossip and amusements, unless where in the neighbourhood of a town the supreme interests of football open to him a prospect into another world. Gossip, amusements, his daily bread are subjects of importance; they fill his horizon; on them his views are perfectly definite. Nor does he differ in this respect from people who are looked upon as his social superiors. It would be making too strenuous a demand upon their intellectual life to expect them to rise above the markets, the newspaper, the latest novel, the county cricket-score, and the problems of golf and bridge. All the rest they are content to leave to their professional advisers, who in nine cases out of ten, if the truth must be told, have as little taste or capacity as themselves for metaphysical speculation, historical research or theological enquiry, and are bound as tightly in the cords of tradition as the far more imaginative Zulu medicine-man, or the Eskimo wizard. For the average man in civilization appraises the subjects of thought no otherwise than does his brother in savagery. Each alike is eminently practical. Something done, or to be done, by himself or others is what interests him. Some personal gain, some bodily pleasure—for this he will think and think hard; all other mental exertion must be easy and short. Nor could the human race exist on any other terms.
Still further difficulties beset the enquirer into the beliefs of the lower culture. On the threshold is that of language. To be sure that you have grasped the real meaning of your savage friend you must be able to talk his language as he talks it himself—and even then you may be mistaken. “When there is no certain medium of communication,” says Bishop Codrington, writing of the Melanesians, “when a native interpreter who speaks a little broken English is employed to ask questions and to return the answers, nothing can be depended on as certain which is received. To be able to use some European word, or word supposed to be English, to describe a native practice or to convey a native belief, is to have an easy means of giving information; and so among the islands ‘plenty devil’ is the description given of a sacred spot, and ‘tevoro’ (devil) in Fiji has become the common appellation of the native ghosts or spirits. Supposing, again, that the enquirer is able to communicate pretty freely on ordinary subjects in the language of any island, he will surely find himself baffled when any one of the elder people undertakes to give him information. The vocabulary of ordinary life is almost useless when the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.”[16.1]
The use of the word “devil,” universal in and around Melanesia when speaking in pigeon English of the native mysteries and the objects of the native cult or fear, illustrates one of the pitfalls in the path of the anthropologist. The native ideas do not coincide with ours. The history, the environment, the social and intellectual condition of peoples in the lower culture are as diverse from ours as their geographical situation. Consequently their speech contains no equivalent for many of our words, even of words that seem to us to convey ideas elementary and simple. No Australian language possesses a word which is the exact equivalent of our word “mother.” The word we roughly equate with “mother” includes a host of other women beside her who has given birth to the child. Some of these women we should designate as “aunt,” or as “stepmother”; but many of them stand in no relation of kinship according to our reckoning. Yet they are all addressed and spoken of by the same term as the veritable mother. Kinship, in fact, is counted in the lower culture along lines quite different from ours; and though it is probable that our degrees of kindred have evolved from a rudimentary condition similar to that which we find among savages, we have so far outgrown it that their reckoning is often unintelligible to us, and only a very few of the terms in use among European nations remain to point back to an earlier stage of development. If we have this difficulty in finding equivalents for terms expressive of the simplest relationships of our social life, how much greater must be our difficulty when we come to terms expressive of the mysterious and supersensual relations of man to the unknown and dimly conceived powers of the universe about him! We have no word to render the Fijian mana, the Siouan wakan, the Malagasy andria-manitra. Conversely, scarce a savage language can render our word “God.” Over and over again missionaries have sought, and sought in vain, for a native word for the purpose. When they have fixed upon one, as often as not they have had to confess a blunder; and many times in despair they have invented a word. The idea embodied in the acts by which the mysterious relations between man and the supernatural are emphasized and knit together is equally incapable of translation by any one vocable. A Roman Catholic missionary, speaking of the religious assembly of the Creeks of North America, says: “The mitewewin represents the highest expression of magic (maeghiw or maskikiy) among the nations of the Algonkian stock. The word, in fact, signifies at the same time labour, occupation, judgement, adoration, and sacrifice. It is a religious act addressed to the powakans, or animal fetishes, and a sort of Illinoian freemasonry requiring initiation and inviolable secrecy; it is a camp-meeting…; it is the grand council of an entire nation.”[18.1] These sentences afford an excellent example of the difficulty of translating the native ideas into English words. They unite a brave and more or less successful attempt to convey the notion of mitewewin, with incidental but none the less certain failures in the cases of maeghiw or maskikiy and powakan. For none of them would a single English word, or even a phrase, be adequate.
The opportunity of blundering in the endeavour to understand and report the beliefs and usages of the lower races is obviously as great as could be desired. When to the various causes enumerated above is added not merely the conscious want of sympathy on the part of the observer, but his unconscious prejudice in favour of certain interpretations derived from the civilized and the specifically Christian notions in which he has been brought up from his youth, the wonder is not that so many mistakes have been made, but that we have on the whole succeeded in obtaining so large a mass of fairly trustworthy information. Even that of which we are the best assured, however, must be used with caution. It must be criticized, checked with other accounts of the same or neighbouring tribes; and allowance must be made for the personal equation of the observer. The use of a word like worship, spirit, or God, which connotes to us very different ideas from those connoted to the native mind by the native word thus translated, must put us at once on our guard. Fancied resemblances between the myths, heard perhaps at second-hand and only half-understood, and some story, Biblical or other, known to the reporter, and the expectation of finding in savage tradition some fragment of divine revelation have proved real Will-o’-the-wisps to the unwary. Nor must we forget that things actually seen are also liable to be misinterpreted. Captain John Smith, in writing of Virginia, describes as a human sacrifice—a sacrifice of children—what seems to have been no more than the ceremony of initiation into manhood.[19.1] It is true that his account was written three hundred years ago, and that he was not allowed to witness the whole performance. But after all our subsequent experience and accumulation of records, nothing is harder even yet than to determine the meaning of ceremonies and institutions, often carefully examined and minutely described by skilled eyewitnesses and scientific explorers.
We may go further still. Where the observer puts aside his prejudices, where he is animated by true sympathy—not the false and mawkish sympathy that too often takes its place—where he is able to communicate with the natives in their own tongue, there is notwithstanding very often a difficulty in following their ideas. We have been told of the Andaman Islanders that “with these, as with other savages, it is vain to expect them to understand the logical conclusions to which their beliefs tend.”[20.1] That may be because they have never thought them out. In the majority of cases it would probably be juster to say that their logic follows a different course, their ideas run in different channels, from ours. After conceding everything that has been said with perfect truth as to their vagueness, their indolence of mind on subjects not concerned with their daily life, and their dislike of intellectual effort, there remains the fact that they are human; they do reason, albeit after their own fashion. Language among the higher races has been trained and tortured during many centuries to express the highest thoughts of the highest thinkers; and how inadequate an instrument has it often been found! It must therefore not surprise us if the thought of races in the lower culture occasionally surpasses a language not yet exercised and adapted to the complicated processes of ideation and ratiocination. Thus not merely is it difficult or impossible to translate native words by English equivalents, as I have already pointed out: the native finds it not easy to translate his thoughts into his own tongue. When he has struggled with more or less success to effect this, his course of thought is so widely different from ours that we can hardly believe in its coherence.
The objects of thought, alike among savages and among ourselves, fall into categories. Many of these categories manifest themselves in the very fibre of language. A familiar illustration is the curious distinctions of grammatical gender, so different even in different languages sprung from a common stock, and those comparatively simple, as are the Aryan tongues of civilization. When we refer to the languages of the lower culture, with their minute distinctions of number and person, of action, tense, and all sorts of relations of time and place, we are overwhelmed by their complexity and puzzled by the oddness of their grouping. Categories of another kind become visible when we attempt to push our explorations further into savage thought. The counting of kinship and the difficulties attending the attempt to translate words expressive of religious ideas have already been mentioned. In the totemism of Australia the totems are classes of animals or other objects not merely united by some mystic bond to one or other class of tribesmen; they are related to other objects of human environment in such a way that the whole universe is shared among them. To us these relationships are strange and inexplicable; they form categories that we do not understand. To the native these categories are familiar by immemorial association; they have become part of the texture of his mind; and thereby they have acquired emotional values, from the bonds of which he can hardly deliver himself. So it seems that the West African Bantu comprise their entire social system, every activity of their mental and physical life, and every aspect of the external universe under a limited number of categories wholly alien to our modes of thought. Hints of them are perhaps to be found in the various classes of Bantu nouns that have not yet been fully explained by philologists. In any case the classification of these nouns is probably no arbitrary association of purely formal significance. It is based on some archaic experience, which has grouped together various objects often to us utterly dissimilar: the connecting links escape us.[22.1] Among other peoples in parts of the earth remote from one another categories have been discovered associating and dissociating acts and modes of feeling, and apportioning their environment in unexpected ways. Such categories must react on mentality to an extent that we can hardly measure. They form part of the traditional presuppositions of thought. They are the framework in which ideas are grouped. We, who have gradually elaborated and established through generations of increasing discovery and invention a habit of regarding everything from a more or less scientific standpoint, have acquired a series of presuppositions of an entirely different character. To the educated classes of Europe and America they in their turn have become traditional. They are the axioms from which we argue. Every new experience must be fitted into the framework thus supplied, otherwise we cannot logically interpret it. At the best we may make for it what has been wittily called a watertight compartment. Men of the lower culture brought suddenly into contact with civilization and civilized ideas experience a corresponding difficulty. Missionaries are often in despair over their converts’ relapses. These relapses are occasioned not merely by the difference of moral atmosphere, but quite as much by the intellectual abyss between savagery and civilization. Christianity and heathenism—the new and the old—are jumbled together in the convert’s mind. His traditional modes of thought are as little changed as his outward environment, and the new ideas are incongruous with them. The result is chaos. So the civilized enquirer into savage belief is constantly brought up in what seems a blind alley. He cannot find the way out, not because there is not a logical issue, but because the landscape is unfamiliar. He attempts to adapt the thoughts of the savage, so far as he has seized them, to his own totally different mental framework; and they are refractory. Not until the effort is abandoned, and patient, unprejudiced search has discovered the true pattern of the puzzle, will it be solved.
For it needs a considerable apprenticeship to enable the observer, in Miss Kingsley’s phrase, to “think black,” to understand the logic of “black” thought, and accurately, or at least approximately, to reproduce its process and aims. When we are told, therefore, by a writer whom I cited a few pages back that the relation of cause and effect in all but the most patent and mechanical cases is beyond the grasp of the West African Bantu, that statement must be taken with some qualification. It should be explained that it is the relation of cause and effect according to our ideas and our reasoning that is beyond the native grasp, because our axioms are unknown to him; he reasons from quite another set of logical presuppositions. To change the figure, he is a child, but a child familiar only with what we deem a topsy-turvy world, though it is the same world from which we ourselves emerged long ago. If we would comprehend him we must painfully climb down into that world again, breathe its air, familiarize ourselves with its scenes of wonder and of terror, and make intimate companions of all its strange inhabitants. Thus and thus only can we recover the clue that will lead us safely through the shadowy forests and haunted valleys and over the primeval mountain-tops of native thought. Then we shall find that the savage is not so irrational as we have thought him, and that in his wildest divergence from our methods of reasoning he has a method of his own—a method followed once upon a time by our own ancestors, a method from which the peasantry of many a European country is not yet wholly emancipated.
This is to “think black.” It is not everybody who can do it: it requires more sympathy and insight than are given to all men. Above all, it requires patience, long and close contact with the native, and the persistent and self-abandoning endeavour to penetrate his thoughts. Some missionaries have achieved it, some travellers, some traders, some colonists, some government officials. Too many of them, alas! have only skimmed the surface of the native mind. Even the latter, however, though they have failed to read the underlying meaning of what they saw, have sometimes taught us what to look for. To that extent the modern school of anthropology is founded on their observations. The training now given in anthropology at the universities and elsewhere utilizes and criticizes the reports of all observers, as well as the conclusions drawn from them by anthropologists at home. That training is of material assistance in fitting new labourers out for fresh fields of enquiry, or for working over again those fields which have been hitherto imperfectly reaped by ill-equipped enquirers. In some measure it supplies the place of longer preliminary intercourse with the man of lower culture; and it has the advantage that it teaches the student what kind of phenomenon to expect—an advantage perhaps not unaccompanied by dangers of its own.
Be that as it may, the information of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent, already at our service on the subject of the religions of the lower culture has been and is still being subjected to ruthless comparison and criticism. The result of this constant sifting is to put us in possession of a considerable body of material for a sane judgement in regard to some of the beliefs of tribes in various parts of the world and to help us forward on the track of others. We no longer summarily deny the possession of religion to tribes whose practices we do not understand. We no longer attempt to docket beliefs imperfectly apprehended under headings applicable only to the highly developed and literary theology of Europe. We lie under a more insidious temptation—that of the too rapid generalization of the beliefs of the lower culture, for which the groundwork may not as yet exist. But we are learning the lesson that only by unwearied investigation, diligent observation, sympathetic enquiry without prepossession, can we attain to a real grasp of the protean ideas and half-formulated speculations of savage minds.
THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION
AND MAGIC
I. The Common Root
Thus forewarned of the difficulties and dangers of our path, let us proceed to enquire whether there are any general ideas relating to religion disseminated among men in the lower stages of culture, that either are themselves primitive, or can have been derived from an earlier condition of thought discoverable by us.
The religious practices of savage and barbarous peoples are largely based upon ideas which anthropologists have agreed to group together under the comprehensive title of animism. Animism is, to quote Sir Edward Tylor, who was the first to investigate the subject and to use the word in this sense, “the groundwork of the philosophy of religion, from that of savages up to that of civilized man.”[26.1] As he uses the word, it expresses the doctrine which attributes a living and often a separable soul—a soul in any case distinct from the body—alike to human beings, to the lower animals and plants, and even to inanimate objects. Let us note, however, that this soul is not necessarily immaterial. The refined conception of the soul, which we have received from the Greek philosophers, belongs not to the savage. To him, as to the average man of civilization, the notion of an absolutely immaterial being would seem to be unthinkable. At all events it has hardly occurred to him. The soul, to him, may be thin as a vapour, oftentimes invisible as the air; at other times it takes a visible and even tangible form. So far as it is connected with what we know as a living body, the ordinary, familiar form and substance, it is the principle of life. But it is capable of existing independently of the body, at least for a time. The body, on the other hand, is also capable of continuing to exist, and even to live, though not in full health and vigour, for a time without the soul; but a lengthened separation usually means death. This, without taking account of details varying from culture to culture and people to people, may be described as the outline of the savage doctrine of the soul, reduced as nearly as may be into the terms in which we think. Beyond this, and probably as a development of it, is the belief in spirits, beings frequently vague and shadowy, sometimes regarded as more substantial, sometimes inhabiting objects and persons known and definite, at other times unattached, but in all cases of more or less power, which may be exercised to the advantage or to the detriment of their human fellows, or perhaps subordinates. The distinction between spirits and gods is not very easy to formulate, and need not for our present purpose trouble us.
Animism thus conceived is, it is obvious, too complex and elaborate to be really primitive. It appears to be itself derived from a simpler and earlier conception, whereby man attributes to all the objects of external nature life and personality. In other words, the external world is first interpreted by the savage thinker in the terms of his own consciousness; animism, or the distinction of soul and body, is a development necessitated by subsequent observation and the train of reasoning which that observation awakens.
Primitive man is so far away from us, not merely in time but in thought, that we find it difficult to imagine his attempts to grapple with the interpretation of external phenomena. What waves of desire, of curiosity, of wonder, of awe, of terror, of hope, of bewilderment must have rolled through the sluggish dawn of his intellect! As he struggled in his little communities (tiny by comparison with ours) with the evolution of speech, how did those various and perhaps ill-defined emotions come to utterance? He was not naturally speculative. Savage man even now is not, as a rule, speculative, though, as we have seen in the preceding essay, observers who have had opportunities of comparison have noted differences in this respect between one people and another. Everything primitive man saw, everything he heard or felt must have struck his mind primarily in relation to himself—or rather to the community (the food-group, as it has been called), of which the individual formed a part, to its dangers and its needs. The personal element would dominate his thoughts, and must have found expression in his words. As a matter of fact, it forms everywhere the basis of language. Hence it was impossible for man to interpret external phenomena in any other than personal terms. This necessity may have been an inheritance from a pre-human stage, since there is reason to think that the lower animals project their own sensations to other animals, and even to objects without life. Yet to fix the objective personalities that primitive man thought he saw and felt about him must have taken time and observation. Not all objects claimed his attention in the same degree or with the same insistence. Some would stand out aggressively, would fill him with a sense of power manifested in ways that seemed analogous with his own. Others would long remain comparatively unregarded, until something happened which aroused his interest. His attitude was first of all and intensely practical, not contemplative. His fellow-men, the animals he hunted, the trees whose branches he saw waving in the breeze, the sun and moon overhead going their daily rounds—to all these he would early attach significance: they would easily yield the personal quality. But what of the pools, the hills, the rocks, and so forth? There must have been many things that long abode in the twilight of perception—many things upon which reflection was not yet concentrated. The North American Indian lays a tribute of tobacco at the foot of any strange rock whose form strikes him as he goes by, or strews his gift upon the waters of the lake or stream that bears his canoe. On the top of every pass in the Cordilleras of South America and of every pass in the mountains of China the native leaves a token still more trivial. It may be that his earliest forefather, who set the example of such an offering, did so without any definite conception of a personality behind the phenomenon, but, smitten by fear or awe, simply sought, by the means familiar to him in the case of known personal beings, to conciliate whatever power might lurk beneath an unwonted form. And although a comparatively definite conception of a personality might in time crystallize, to be transformed later by the evolution of animism into the idea of a spirit, yet there must always have remained, after all these crystallizations, the vague and formless Unknown, confronted in all its more prominent manifestations through the medium of an undefined dread of power which might at any time be revealed from it.
In this relation of the personal and the impersonal lies, as it seems to me, the secret of primitive philosophy, if philosophy it may be called, all un-selfconscious as it must have been. There is no written record of man’s earliest guesses at the meaning of the universe. Whatever they were, they were limited to his immediate surroundings and the relation of these surroundings to himself. We must judge of them as they are represented in the beliefs and actions of modern, or at all events much later, savages and in those of great historic nations. For all scientific enquirers are agreed that the history of the human mind has been that of a slow evolution from something lower than the lowest savagery known to-day, that it has not everywhere evolved in the same way or to the same degree, and that the course it has taken has left traces, discoverable by close inspection, upon every mental product and in every civilization throughout the world. The testimony on which we have to rely in the investigation is of the most various value, and often most difficult of interpretation. Its difficulties and defects have already been touched upon; nor do I propose further to consider them now. The minute examination and relentless criticism to which it has been subjected have revealed its weakness; they have also revealed its strength. They have left a solid body of evidence from which we may cautiously but confidently reason. What can we learn from it on the point under discussion?
The first thing to be noticed is the fluidity of the savage concept of personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and relatively unchangeable body. You may quite easily be transformed, like the hero of Apuleius’ tale, into an ass. Your next-door neighbour, for whom you have the profoundest respect as a prosperous man of business and a churchwarden of exemplary piety, may startle you some morning with a sudden change into a noisy little street-arab, not a tenth of his own portly dimensions, turning a wheel all down his garden path, or into a melancholy cow cropping a bare pittance of grass from his closely trimmed lawn. He and his magnificent wife may even become, like Philemon and Baucis, an oak and a lime-tree before your eyes, or a pair of standing stones upon the moor. None of these metamorphoses would be accounted impossible by peoples in the lower culture. To them the essential incident of the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would be mere commonplace. The personality which they have known running in one mould can, in their opinion, be directed into, and will run as freely in, another mould, and yet be the same. So hard do such archaic beliefs die, that in remote parts of our own country it is still firmly believed that a witch may assume the form of a hare, and if any bold sportsman succeed in wounding the animal, the injury will afterwards be found on the witch’s proper person, testifying beyond dispute to the preservation of her individuality under the temporary change of shape and species.
Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death and a new birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that in West Africa “the new babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent: the thing the child catches hold of identifies him. ‘Why, he’s Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe’; or ‘That’s Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash,’ and so on.”[31.1] This belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of the world. Nor is it necessary that the deceased should be born again in human form, or even of the same sex. A group of tribes in Central Australia have elaborated the doctrine of re-birth to an unusual degree. Two of the tribes, the Warramunga and Urabunna, definitely hold, if we may trust our authorities, that the sex changes with each successive birth.[32.1] A Mongolian tale relates that a certain Khotogait prince, having been beheaded for conspiracy against the Chinese Emperor, twice reappeared as a child of the Empress, and was identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both children were destroyed, and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is still preserved.[32.2] In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any object indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of a woman, be born again and become human. As developed by animism, the doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions and more philosophies than one.[32.3]
Moreover, detached portions of the person, as locks of hair, parings of finger-nails, and so forth, are not dead inert matter. They are still endued with the life of their original owner. Nay, garments once worn, or other objects which have been in intimate contact with a human being, are penetrated by his personality, remain as it were united with him for good and ill. It would be no exaggeration to say of this belief that it is universal. Upon it rests much of the practice of witchcraft, as well as of the medicine of the lower culture. The cleft ash through which a child has been drawn for the cure of infantile hernia, bound up and allowed to grow together, continues to sympathize with him in health and sickness as though part of his own body. In ancient Greece maidens on their marriage offered their veils to Hera, the goddess who favoured marriage and aided childbirth;[33.1] and Athenian women who became pregnant for the first time used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. These customs were not mere acts of homage; they had a practical intention.
Some votive offerings may perhaps be interpreted as surrogates of human sacrifice. Others, made when the votary is suffering from sickness, may be intended to transfer the disease. These explanations are in many cases very questionable; and a large number of offerings remain that do not easily submit to be thus explained. The Greek women just mentioned had no disease to be returned to the custody of the goddess, ready for another victim. In view of future contingencies they placed in her care objects identified with themselves; they brought into physical touch with her a portion of their own personality. Convergence of more than one rite, similar in outward form but distinct in origin, has doubtless occurred very often in human history. But the ambiguity which would follow is not always to be traced on a careful analysis. It is obvious, at all events, that if an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer and die, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. My shirt or stocking, or a shred from it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—a lock of my hair laid upon a sacred image—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone from my hand cast upon a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food thrown into a sacred waterfall or suspended from a sacred tree—a nail driven by my hand into the trunk of a tree—is thenceforth in immediate contact with divinity. It is a portion of my personality enveloped with the sanctity of the divine being; and so long as it remains there I am myself in contact with the same divine being, whoever he may be, and derive all the advantages incident to the contact.
Such beliefs as these are world-wide; they are a commonplace of anthropology; and it would be waste of time to multiply examples. They exhibit a concept of personality imperfectly crystallized. It is still fluid and vague, only to become entirely definite under the influence of trained reason and larger and more scientific knowledge. But, such as it is, there is behind and around it the still vaguer, the unlimited territory of the Impersonal, because the Unknown. Every object on which the attention has been fixed, every object, therefore, that may be said to be known, has its own personality—every object, whether living, or, according to our ideas, not-living. What remains is the stuff out of which personalities are formed as it is gradually reduced into relations with the savage observer. These personalities do not necessarily correspond even to anything objective. They may be creations of the excited imagination. It is sufficient for the savage that they seem to be, and to have a relation to himself which he cannot otherwise interpret. His emancipation from this state of mind is slow, though among some peoples in the lower culture it is more perceptible than among others. But it leaves its traces everywhere—there, most of all, where emotion is most acute and permanent, where hopes and fears are most overwhelming, in the sphere of religion.
Now every personality is endowed with qualities which enable it to persist, to influence others, and even to overcome, subjugate, and destroy them for its own ends. No more than ourselves could the primeval savage avoid being influenced and often overmatched by the charm and wiles of woman, the wisdom of the elders of his horde, the dauntless might of the warrior. The non-human personalities with which he came in contact possessed qualities not less remarkable than those of the human. The strength, the fierceness, the agility of the lion, the speed of the antelope, the cunning of the fox, the lofty forms and endurance of the forest trees, their response to every breath of wind, and the kindly shelter they yielded to birds and beasts and men, the fantastic forms and stern patience of the rocks, the smooth and smiling treachery of the lake, the gentle murmur and benign largess of the river, the splendour, the burning heat of the sun, the changeableness and movement of the clouds are a few of the more obvious qualities attached to the myriad personalities with which men found themselves environed. These personalities and their qualities would impress them all the more because of the mystery that perpetually masked them. Mystery magnified them. Hence every non-human personality was apt to be conceived in larger than human terms, and its qualities were larger than human.
I do not pause here to adduce illustrations of this attitude towards the objects surrounding mankind. In any event it would of course be impossible to illustrate it from prehistoric, not to say primeval, ages. It is characteristic of modern savages wherever an intimate acquaintance enables the civilized observer to penetrate into their arcana. Some of them have got no further; others have advanced to the full stage of animism. Reference may be made to any work in which the life and ideas of a savage tribe are depicted.
Not merely was every personality, human and other, endowed with qualities, but by virtue of those qualities it possessed a potentiality and an atmosphere of its own. The successful warrior and huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag, his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary. Nor would this atmosphere surround only important or successful men. Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would be richly endowed. None, human or non-human, would (in theory, at least) be wholly without it.
The Iroquoian tribes of North America possess a word which exactly expresses this potentiality, this atmosphere, which they believe inheres in and surrounds every personality. They call it orenda. A fine hunter is one whose orenda is fine, superior in quality. When he is successful he is said to baffle or thwart the orenda of the quarry; when unsuccessful, the game is said to have foiled or outmatched his orenda. A person who defeats another in a game of skill or chance is said to overcome his orenda. “At public games or contests of skill or endurance, or of swiftness of foot, where clan is pitted against clan, phratry against phratry, tribe against tribe, or nation against nation, the shamans—men reputed to possess powerful orenda—are employed for hire by the opposing parties respectively to exercise their orenda to thwart or overcome that of their antagonists,” and thus secure victory. So, when a storm is brewing, it (the storm-maker) is said to be preparing its orenda; when it is ready to burst, it has finished, has prepared its orenda. Similar expressions are used for a man or one of the lower animals when in a rage. A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts forth his orenda, and has thereby learned the secrets of the future. The orenda of shy birds and other animals which it is difficult to ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive—that is, in detecting the presence of the hunter, whether man or beast. Anything reputed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or accomplishing some end is said to possess orenda. Of one who, it is believed, has died from witchcraft it is said, “An evil orenda has struck him.”[37.1]
Among the Algonkian and Siouan tribes are found beliefs that seem to go behind this personal but mystic potentiality to its source in the Unknown, the Impersonal. The Algonkian word expressive of the idea is manitou. The early French missionaries, who were the first to make it known to us, interpreted it of a personal being—God or the Devil, they hardly knew which. They were reading into it their own more highly crystallized beliefs. As in the case of orenda, we are fortunate in having the term more accurately defined for us by a descendant of the native tribes, who may be presumed to have been better equipped by inheritance and early associations to understand Algonkian thought than the Jesuit Fathers were. “The Algonkin conception of the manitou,” he tells us, “is bound up with the manifold ideas that flow from an unconscious relation with the outside world.… The term manitou is a religious word; it carries with it the idea of solemnity; and whatever the association it always expresses a serious attitude, and kindles an emotional sense of mystery.… The essential character of Algonkin religion is a pure, naïve worship of nature. In one way or another associations cluster about an object and give it a certain potential value; and because of this supposed potentiality the object becomes the recipient of an adoration. The degree of the adoration depends in some measure upon the extent of confidence reposed in the object, and upon its supposed power of bringing pleasure or inflicting pain. The important thing with the individual is the emotional effect experienced while in the presence of the object, or with an interpreted manifestation of the object. The individual keeps watch for the effect, and it is the effect that fills the mind with a vague sense of something strange, something mysterious, something intangible. One feels it as the result of an active substance, and one’s attitude toward it is purely passive. To experience a thrill is authority enough of the existence of the substance. The sentiment of its reality is made known by the fact that something has happened. It is futile to ask an Algonkin for an articulate definition of the substance, partly because it would be something about which he does not concern himself, and partly because he is quite satisfied with only the sentiment of its existence. He feels that the property is everywhere, is omnipresent. The feeling that it is omnipresent leads naturally to the belief that it enters into everything in nature; and the notion that it is active causes the mind to look everywhere for its manifestations. These manifestations assume various forms; they vary with individuals and with reference to the same and different objects.
“Language affords means of approaching nearer to a definition of this religious sentiment. In the Algonkin dialects of the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo, a rigid distinction of gender is made between things with life and things without life.… Accordingly, when they refer to the manitou in the sense of a virtue, a property, an abstraction, they employ the form expressive of inanimate gender. When the manitou becomes associated with an object, then the gender becomes less definite.…
“When the property becomes the indwelling element of an object, then it is natural to identify the property with animate being. It is not necessary that the being shall be the tangible representative of a natural object.” This the writer illustrates from the account given by a Fox Indian of the sweat-lodge, in the course of which he observes: “The manitou comes from the place of his abode in the [heated] stone, … when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds entrance. It moves up and down and all over inside the body, driving out everything that inflicts pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having been in the sweat-lodge.” The writer’s comment on this is instructive. “The sentiment,” he says, “behind the words rests upon the consciousness of a belief in an objective presence; it rests on the sense of an existing reality with the quality of self-dependence; it rests on the perception of a definite, localized personality. Yet at the same time there is the feeling that the apprehended reality is without form and without feature. This is the dominant notion in regard to the virtue abiding in the stone of the sweat-lodge; it takes on the character of conscious personality with some attributes of immanence and design.”
But further, as the manitou—this mystic, all-pervasive property or substance—on investing an object acquires conscious personality, so also “it is natural to confuse the property”—the manitou—“with an object containing,” or invested with, “the property.” “It is no trouble for an Algonkin to invest an object with the mystic substance, and then call the object by the name of the substance. The process suggests a possible explanation of how an Algonkin comes to people his world with manitou forces different in kind and degree; it explains in some measure the supernatural performances of mythological beings, the beings that move in the form of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and other objects of nature. All these are a collection of agencies. Each possesses a virtue in common with all the rest, and in so far do they all have certain marks of agreement. Where one differs from another is in the nature of its function, and in the degree of the possession of the cosmic substance. But the investment of a common mystic virtue gives them all a common name, and that name is manitou.”
The conclusion is “that there is an unsystematic belief in a cosmic mysterious property which is believed to be existing everywhere in nature; that the conception of the property can be thought of as impersonal, but that it becomes obscure and confused when the property becomes identified with objects in nature; that it manifests itself in various forms; and that its emotional effect awakens a sense of mystery; that there is a lively appreciation of its miraculous efficacy; and that its interpretation is not according to any regular rule, but is based on one’s feelings rather than on one’s knowledge.”[41.1]
Whatever differences an exact analysis, in accordance with the clearly cut methods of scientific thought, may result in discovering between the concept of manitou as here displayed and the Iroquoian orenda, two resemblances stand out prominently. Orenda is, like manitou, a mystic, or magical—not a natural—quality or potentiality, which resides in some persons or objects in greater measure than others. And the fact that it is “held to be the property of all things, all bodies, and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his environment,”[41.2] approximates the conception very closely to that of manitou.
When we turn to the Omaha, a Siouan tribe, we find a concept hardly distinguishable from that of the Algonkins. Here again we have the advantage of native help. Mr Francis La Flesche, the son of a former chief of the tribe, is jointly responsible for an exhaustive monograph on the Omaha with Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of this and neighbouring tribes is among investigators of European descent unrivalled. We may therefore rely upon their exposition with confidence equal to that we have given to those already cited on the Iroquois and the Algonkins. “An invisible and continuous life was believed,” they tell us, “to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move—all motion, all actions of mind or body are because of this invisible life; second, by causing permanency of structure and form, as in the rock, the physical features of the landscape, mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animals and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will-power of which man is conscious within himself—a power by which all things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything to its entirety. This invisible life and power was called Wakonda. While it was a vague entity, yet there was an anthropomorphic colouring to the conception, as is shown in the prayers offered and the manner in which appeals for compassion and help were made, also in the ethical quality attributed to certain natural phenomena—the regularity of night following day, of summer winter (these were recognized as emphasizing truthfulness as a dependable quality and set forth for man’s guidance),—and in the approval by Wakonda of certain ethical actions on the part of mankind.”[42.1] “There is therefore,” the writers tell us in another place, “no propriety in speaking of Wakonda as ‘the Great Spirit.’ Equally improper would it be to regard the term as a synonym of nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of conceptions, which is not essential to the Omaha, and which, when attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning.” But while the concept appears to be vague and impersonal, inasmuch as human conditions were projected upon nature, “certain anthropomorphic attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind of personality.” Moreover, “there is a distinction in the Omaha mind between varying meanings of the word wakonda. The Wakonda addressed in the tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which pertain to the welfare of all the people is the Wakonda that is the permeating life of visible nature—an invisible life and power that reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on the one hand, the application of the word wakonda to anything mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or inanimate form can be transferred to man. The means by which this transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda, but is not Wakonda. So the media—the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the animal, the mythic monster—may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are not regarded as the Wakonda.”[43.1]
Like the Algonkian manitou, the Siouan wakonda is thus seen to hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoian orenda clings about persons and things. Yet it is applied in an adjectival form by various Siouan tribes to medicine-men, to the sacred pipe, to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by the medicine-men or jugglers, and apparently to anyone who displays unusual qualities or powers. Thus it is used for a man who is extraordinarily stingy, to a man who has a habit of loud and rapid speech, to one who is a hard, almost an unmerciful, rider, to a child who speaks or walks for the first time and has thus manifested a new and individual power to act. A woman during her menstrual period is wakan; to perform acts of worship is to make wakan; the secret society among the Dakotas which is the depository of their mysteries is wakanwacipi, the sacred dance. In these cases the word conveys the sense not only of mysterious, powerful, wonderful, but also of sacred, spiritual, taboo. And a Ponka medicine-man once told the late J. O. Dorsey, “I am a wakanda.”[44.1]
Equivalent ideas and expressions are used by other American tribes. Supernatural power impresses the Tlingit, for example, “as a vast immensity, one in kind and impersonal, inscrutable as to its nature, but whenever manifesting itself to men, taking a personal, and it might be said a human personal, form in whatever object it displays itself. Thus the sky-spirit is the ocean of supernatural energy as it manifests itself in the sky, the sea-spirit as it manifests itself in the sea, the bear-spirit as it manifests itself in the bear, the rock-spirit as it manifests itself in the rock, etc. It is not meant that the Tlingit consciously reasons this out thus, or formulates a unity in the supernatural, but such appears to be his unexpressed feeling. For this reason there is but one name, yēk, a name which is affixed to any specific personal manifestation of it.… This supernatural energy must be carefully differentiated from natural energy and never confused with it. It is true that the former is supposed to bring about results similar to the latter, but in the mind of the Tlingit the conceived difference between these two is as great as with us. A rock rolling downhill or an animal running is by no means a manifestation of supernatural energy, although if something peculiar be associated with these actions, something outside of the Indian’s usual experience of such phenomena, they may be thought of as such.” On the other hand, and here we approach the Iroquoian idea, “the number of spirits [yēk] with which this world was peopled was simply limitless.… There is said to have been a spirit in every trail on which one travelled, and one around every fire; one was connected with everything one did.” The writer whom I am quoting goes on to give a large number of instances showing that the heavenly bodies, the wind, the sea, mountains, lakes, trees, animals, in short, all things, were addressed, to conciliate them, to render them friendly, to acquire some gift or advantage, were treated with reverence or with magical intent. And of course the medicine-men or shamans were the special favourites of the spirits, and were endowed with power which they often matched against one another.[45.1]
Thus we have in these North American ideas two distinct conceptions—the possession of what I have called a potentiality or atmosphere of its own by the individual personality, whether human or non-human; and the impersonal, mysterious, undefined reservoir of power in the universe as conceived by the savage. These two conceptions are not mutually exclusive, for the impersonal power is often held to be the source of the personal power or potentiality. As among the American Indian tribes, so elsewhere they are differently emphasized by different peoples. The Bantu of the Lower Congo basin emphasize the impersonal conception. According to the Bafiote, the first ages of the world were ruled by Nzambi, though whether he made everything seems a matter of doubt. When he retired from active interference in the concerns of men, he left behind, or sent, or there remained in the earth, Something. Indeed, it seems to be believed that Nzambi himself, or his power, his vital and creative energy, is still in earth and water, in the air, in plants, animals and men. In any case, the Something remaining on earth since Nzambi’s outward and visible departure is or has Lunyēnsu. The concept of Lunyēnsu is that of natural force, vital energy, power of increase, in short, the All-ruling, the Highest, that penetrates every living thing. It is not life, but an activity bound up with life, its manifestation, its condition. A crippled limb does not possess it, and with death it ceases entirely, it is gone. The Something, however, which either is or has Lunyēnsu is even wider than this. It is represented by Bu-nssi (probably the older name) or Mkissi-nssi. The latter means the supernatural or magical power of the earth, and seems to be due to the later overgrowth of fetishism. The former conveys the idea of the force, the energy of earth. In any case it is not to be confounded with fetish-power, for it is revered as fetish-power is not, nor with the earth-spirit, for the Bafiote know no elemental spirits. It must be conceived as the terrestrial energy, the all-permeating creative force, the all-wielding, the fertility, the becoming. Hence there is a sacredness attaching to the earth; and connected as the earth is with the idea of fecundity and the operations of agriculture, and as it is an inseparable condition of life, these all form a foundation for the right to the soil, for hospitality and the relations of the sexes. The indefiniteness of Bu-nssi is shown by the fact that the natives themselves are not agreed whether it is one or many. In fact, in the use of its synonym, Mkissi, the plural form—and what is significant, the plural personal form—is often heard. Opinion wavers as the needs or the excitement of the moment may demand, or perhaps as tradition wavers with changing mental environment. But those who claim the older faith or the deeper insight adhere to the statement that there is but one Mkissi-nssi, even Bu-nssi.
Thus the conception of Bu-nssi roughly corresponds with that of the reservoir of power we have already found among the Omaha and other tribes. On the other hand, the Bafiote hold that everything in nature has its peculiar property, everything is pervaded by forces. All things influence one another by visible deeds of power or in secret-wise. Hence are evolved manifold relations, among which the most important for man are those that extend to his person. The effect of physical forces is obvious. But experience teaches that there are other forces that are efficacious, although the process is not always understood. Such forces as these act without immediate and perceptible contact. So at least the wise men believe, and they act accordingly. How it happens they do not bother their heads. It is so, and that is enough. If it were otherwise they could not explain the events that happen. Here is, in something more than germ, the Iroquoian orenda. But the more sensual Bafiote, whether from their own nature and social organization, or from the tropical environment in which they live, are preoccupied with the relations of the various forces thus permeating all things. These forces are misused. Prudence and activity, strength of limb and skill do not suffice; far too much evil occurs among them. The Bafiote are obsessed, like all the African peoples, with the idea of witchcraft. They must be protected against it. Power is therefore matched against power, spell against spell. If there were not thoroughly wicked men who sought openly or secretly to injure others, fetishes would hardly be needed. By the use of fetishes they seek to master the forces of which on every side they see indications, and to make them their own. Fetishes are not gods. There is nothing spiritual, nothing independent of men, about them. They are material objects, fabricated by art, so as to embody forces working by mysterious means for the aid or injury of men. The destruction of the fetish involves the annihilation of the forces it embodies, whereas the existence of a god is in nowise imperilled by the destruction of his image. In short, fetishes are magical instruments. Yet such is the inveterate anthropomorphism of mankind that they do acquire a quasi-personal character, and tend to be thought of as individual and conscious beings. But they are never worshipped; the Fiote has no gods. He has only fetishes, the incorporation of powers and energies he sees acting around him everywhere. By that incorporation these powers and energies are appropriated for his benefit, for his particular ends, or for the ends and benefit of the society of which he is a member.[48.1]
Similar ideas of mysterious force wavering between the personal and the impersonal and permeating all things appear to underlie the Chinese conceptions of the Tsing, or operative energy, which inspires, or manifests itself in, the Khi, breath or soul, to produce the living being.[48.2] These ideas have been taken over by the Annamites, among whom the Tinh is “a fluid, a force which resides in all things, and without which no existence can manifest itself,” and is “the essential principle of all action.” Uniting with the Khi, breath or soul, it produces “the life, the movement, the beings and the things peopling the world.” It is their essential condition. The entire system of magic and religion rests on these ideas.[48.3] Much the same may be said of the Japanese Kami, probably connected with Ainu Kamui.[48.4] It is, however, unnecessary to discuss at length the conceptions involved. They have been elaborated through centuries of civilization and philosophical exposition, until it is now difficult to determine how much of their present form and content they owe to archaic savagery.
Let us turn to the Melanesian islands of the South Pacific. “The Melanesian mind,” says Dr Codrington, “is entirely possessed by the belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universally mana. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature; it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and to things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation. When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its force may break forth at some new point; the presence of it is ascertained by proof. A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like something, it is certainly not a common stone, there must be mana in it.… Having that power, it is a vehicle to convey mana to other stones.… But this power, though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person who directs it; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some men. If a stone is found to have a supernatural power, it is because a spirit has associated itself with it; a dead man’s bone has with it mana, because the ghost is with the bone; a man may have so close a connexion with a spirit or ghost that he has mana in himself also, and can so direct it as to effect what he desires; a charm is powerful because the name of a spirit or ghost expressed in the form of words brings into it the power which the ghost or spirit exercises through it. Thus all conspicuous success is a proof that a man has mana; his influence depends on the impression made on the people’s mind that he has it; he becomes a chief by virtue of it. Hence a man’s power, though political or social in its character, is his mana; the word is naturally used in accordance with the native conception of the character of all power and influence as supernatural. If a man has been successful in fighting, it has not been his natural strength of arm, quickness of eye or readiness of resource that has won success; he has certainly got the mana of a spirit or of some deceased warrior to empower him, conveyed in an amulet of a stone round his neck, or a tuft of leaves in his belt, in a tooth hung upon a finger of his bow-hand, or in the form of words with which he brings supernatural assistance to his side. If a man’s pigs multiply, and his gardens are productive, it is not because he is industrious and looks after his property, but because of the stones full of mana for pigs and yams that he possesses. Of course a yam naturally grows when planted; that is well known; but it will not be very large unless mana comes into play; a canoe will not be swift unless mana be brought to bear upon it, a net will not catch many fish nor an arrow inflict a mortal wound.” Such a power or influence as this is of course not physical, though it may show itself “in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.” Finally, “all Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this mana for one’s self, or getting it used for one’s benefit—all religion, that is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices.”[50.1] (The very intention that animates the Fiote rites of fetishism.)
It is not easy to formulate a clear idea of the original source of mana. It is said to be impersonal, to be present in the atmosphere of life and communicable to persons and to things. To that extent it resembles the impersonal power or potentiality we have found elsewhere. But wherever it is manifested it is connected with some personal being who originates and directs it.[51.1] It is not a quality inherent in men of more than ordinary power and skill. “If a man,” writes Bishop Codrington, “has been successful in fighting, … he has certainly got the mana of a spirit or of some deceased ancestor to empower him.” And again: “No man has this power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be mana himself, using the word to express a quality; he can be said to have mana, it may be said to be with him, the word being used as a substantive.”[51.2] It would thus seem as if it were an essential characteristic not of personal beings—even of powerful personal beings—in general, but belonging to the world of spirits, including the spirits of the dead. Yet not to all spirits; for elsewhere we read: “It must not be supposed that every ghost becomes an object of worship,” as a source of mana. “A man in danger may call upon his father, his grandfather, or his uncle; his nearness of kin is sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be worshipped is the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had mana in him; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts, nobodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death with increased vigour and more ease of movement.”[51.3] Thus we are found in something like what logicians call a vicious circle. Only those ghosts have mana, or are mana, after death who had mana in their lifetime. But if they had mana in their lifetime, it was because they derived it from ghosts or other spirits. In any case mana appears to be conceived of as transcending humanity, belonging to the mysterious region of the Unknown, embodied in its primitive denizens, flowing from them, by the channel of material objects (amulets), forms of words (charms) or names, to certain human beings, and taken back by the latter into the same great reservoir of power when they die, thence to be communicated afresh to favoured mortals, and so on for ever. Probably, however, no such definite concept finds a place in the Melanesian brain; the mode of savage thought hardly admits of such crystallization.
It is likely that mana (both the word and the meaning) was introduced into the Melanesian islands from Polynesia, where it is widely spread and the word has numerous derivatives. In seeking there its explanation we are at a disadvantage; because, with all their devotion and merits, no missionary and no scientific enquirer has given us such a study of Polynesian mentality as Dr Codrington has given of that of the Melanesians. We turn therefore, in the first place, to the more dangerous guidance of a dictionary. From that we learn that everywhere mana has the signification of power, and almost everywhere of supernatural power. It is also defined as influence, prestige, honour, authority; in Hawaiian it is used to express, besides supernatural power such as would be attributed to the gods, the simpler idea of power, and also spirit (in the sense of energy of character), glory, majesty, intelligence—all doubtless secondary meanings. We need not discuss in detail the derivatives in various Polynesian dialects. Their general trend is towards the expression of thought, opinion or belief, industry, vehement desire, love—all of them activities primarily of the mind or emotions. Manava or manawa is a word meaning the belly or internal organs of the body, then the heart as the seat of affection, the feelings or emotions, soul, conscience, and in one dialect at least, an apparition, a ghost or spirit. Mana, in short, seems to recall the idea of extraordinary qualities, especially power, and the emotional reactions caused by their exhibition. Power or energy, overwhelming, supernatural, is evidently the root-idea, vested in individual, personal beings. One phrase, to be sure, in a Maori myth suggests the independent possession of this power by an object we should not regard as personal: He taiaha whaimana, explained by the lexicographer as “A wooden sword which has done deeds so wonderful as to possess a sanctity and power of its own.” Literally it is “A sword in which mana is resident.” Whether this or the parallel Mangarevan e turuturu mana, a powerful or magical staff, really implies an inherent power independent of spiritual origin, must remain undecided.[54.1] We are led to think of the weapons of Teutonic mythology and romance, having names as if they were personalities, and endowed with powers to render their bearers invincible—nay, when drawn, to inspire them with ungovernable fury. But in the form in which their stories reach us all such weapons owe their peculiar properties, like the curse upon the Nibelung hoard, to some more than earthly being, or at least to a mortal wizard.
Having furnished ourselves with this key, we may examine some of the incidents of Polynesian life and religion reported by competent observers. The inauguration ceremony of a Tahitian king, we are told by the missionary Ellis, consisted in girding him with the maro ura, or sacred girdle of red feathers. This girdle “was made with the beaten fibres of the aoa; with these a number of uru, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities, were interwoven with feathers of other colours. The maro thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that “it not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with” the gods.[55.1] The same missionary elsewhere relates that “throughout Polynesia the ordinary medium of communicating or extending supernatural powers was the red feather of a small bird found in many of the islands and the beautiful long tail-feathers of the tropic or man-of-war bird. For these feathers the gods were supposed to have a strong predilection; they were the most valuable offerings that could be presented; to them the power or influence of the gods was imparted, and through them transferred to the objects to which they might be attached.” On certain ceremonial occasions those persons “who wished their emblems of deity to be impregnated with the essence of the gods, repaired to the ceremony with a number of red feathers, which they delivered to the officiating priest. The wooden idols being generally hollow, the feathers were deposited in the inside of the image, which was filled with them.” When the idols were solid, the feathers were attached on the outside. To anyone who brought fresh feathers, two or three of the same kind which had been thus “united to the god” at a former festival were given in return. “These feathers were thought to possess all the properties of the images to which they had been attached, and a supernatural influence was supposed to be infused into them. They were carefully wound round with very fine cord, the extremities alone remaining visible. When this was done, the new-made gods were placed before the larger images from which they had been taken; and lest their detachment should induce the god to withhold his power, the priest addressed a prayer to the principal deities, requesting them to abide in the red feathers before them. At the close of his ubu, or invocation, he declared that they were dwelt in or inhabited (by the gods), and delivered them to the parties who had brought the red feathers. The feathers, taken home, were deposited in small bamboo-canes, excepting when addressed in prayer. If prosperity attended their owner, it was attributed to their influence, and they were usually honoured with a too, or image, into which they were inwrought; and subsequently, perhaps, an altar and a rude temple were erected for them. In the event, however, of their being attached to an image, this must be taken to the large temple, that the supreme idols might sanction the transfer of their influence.”[56.1]
In the foregoing passages it will be perceived that the missionary is doing something more than describing rites he had no doubt often witnessed; he is labouring also to translate into English and incorporate with his account the explanations he had extracted from his Polynesian friends. He seems to exhaust his spiritual vocabulary in speaking of “powers,” “influence,” “the communication of attributes,” of “the essence of the gods.” But when he recalls the words of the priest, they are even stronger and at the same time simpler than any of these expressions: the god is prayed to “abide in” the feathers; he is declared to “inhabit” them. If these be an accurate translation of the words employed, it would seem that not merely the power but a portion of the personality of the god passed into the feathers, and that while his chief residence was still at the great temple where his principal image dwelt, he was also present whithersoever the bunches of feathers which had been consecrated by deposition within or upon it were carried. He himself inhabited them; and it was this fact that “identified” the king, as the wearer of such feathers, with the gods.
It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the concept of personality. But what we have already learned of mana may lead us to place another interpretation upon it. It was not merely the gods whose influence or personality was conveyed by contact. The king in his turn spread an awful influence in the same way, or even by the utterance of a word. In New Zealand “the garments of an ariki, or high chief, were tapu, as well as everything relating to him; they could not be worn by anyone else, lest they should kill him.” If a single drop of a high chief’s blood flowed on anything, it consecrated the object to him, or, as the natives phrased it, rendered it tapu. This consequence resulted to everything touched by him, to everything to which he chose to affix his name or the name of one of his ancestors. He could not eat with his wife, lest his sanctity should kill her, though she herself was by marriage consecrated to him. Nor was the sanctity by any means confined to the highest chiefs. It extended downwards to the lower ranks, but always in a decreasing measure. It mainly depended on rank and influence;[57.1] it could be none other than the effect of mana.
Between mana, however, and personality the dividing line is very thin. We find it the same in other parts of the world. Father De Acosta relates that upon the even of his feast the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca was furnished with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken off “and kept with as much or more reverence than we doe our ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments of course are meant; and the writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and pretious feathers, which served to no other vse than to be there, and was [sic] worshipped as their god it selfe.”[58.1] Here the ornaments would seem to all intents identified with the god, exactly as the red feathers of the Tahitian god are “inhabited” by him. The explanation of the one is the explanation of the other. The same ambiguity is discoverable in a much higher civilization than either the Polynesian or the Mexican. Down to the end of the eighteenth century Breton women, in order to secure a happy delivery, used to dip their girdles in certain sacred fountains; and even to-day the expectant mother who can wrap around her body a ribbon thus dipped is sure in due course to bring into the world a robust child, and that without danger to herself.[58.2] This we may be inclined to think an example of an impersonal power analogous to that of the Siouan wakonda or the Algonkian manitou. But we can carry the matter a step further. The Ursuline nuns of Quintin keep a girls’ school of high reputation in Brittany. When one of their pupils has married and become pregnant, they sometimes send her as a special favour a ribbon which has touched a reliquary containing a fragment of the Virgin Mary’s zone; and it is worn by the recipient around her waist until her baby is born.[58.3] It is not surely misinterpreting the rite to deem that the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, has acquired and retains a portion of the mana emanating from her person; the reliquary in turn is permeated by that mana, and communicates it to everything that touches it. The worthy nuns probably have no exact theory on the subject; but a little consideration of the practice will lead us to think that we have understated its meaning. It is the converse case to that of the deposit of clothing and other articles on the shrine or the image of the divine being, which we have already considered. In the latter case there could be no question of mana conveyed to the god from his votary. Moreover, the true interpretation of the practice must explain the cult of relics of the saints, whether Christian, Mohammedan, or Buddhist. Now, these relics consist not merely of garments and articles of use, like a staff, but also of the bodies or fragments of the bodies of the saints. In them a portion of their very personality inheres, and accounts for the beneficent potentiality residing in the relics, as it accounts also for the liability to injury by witchcraft upon similar fragments of the body or clothing of ordinary mortals. For ordinary mortals, whatever their potentiality, cannot measure it against that of saints and witches.
Yet human beings who are neither saints nor witches, and the lower animals also, have their potentialities, the benefit of which is capable of being transferred to others. This is one of the reasons for cannibalism. Among the Veddas of Ceylon, one of the lowest known peoples, it is said to have been the custom, when a man had been killed, for the slayer to open the body and take out a piece of the liver, which he would dry in the sun and keep in his pouch. Indeed a man was sometimes put to death for the purpose. Its object was to make its possessor strong and confident to avenge insults. He would bite off a piece of the dried liver and chew it, saying to himself: “I have killed this man; why should I not be strong and confident and kill this other one who has insulted me?”[59.1] So the Turks, after the death of the Albanian hero Scanderbeg, dug up his body and from his bones constructed amulets to inspire courage into the wearer on the battlefield.[60.1] This potentiality may be communicated, like the Melanesian mana, through other objects; and the possibility has led to certain funeral customs in Europe as well as elsewhere. After a death in the Highlands of Bavaria it was formerly the duty of the housewife to prepare corpse-cakes (Leichen-nudeln). Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay on a bier enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief attached that “they contained the virtues and advantages of the deceased,” and that his “living strength passed over into the kinsmen who consumed the cakes, and was thus retained within the kindred.”[60.2] The eating of the flesh of animals remarkable for qualities such as ferocity, strength, fleetness, and so forth, with intent to acquire these qualities is well known. One illustration will be sufficient here. The Basuto, before going to war, make assurance doubly, trebly sure by a cruel rite. The foreleg of a living bull is cut off. The warriors eat it and are sprinkled with blood from the animal, which is then killed. They are lanced by the witch-doctor, and a powder made of the flesh of the bull is rubbed into the wounds. In this way, namely, by eating the flesh, by sprinkling the blood, and by inoculation, “the strength and courage of the animal” are imparted to them.[60.3]
It appears then that the concept of personality is inseparable from that of the potentiality with which a personality is endowed. Hence the ambiguity of the Tahitian rite. Whether the feathers which had been attached to an image retained and transmitted to the next wearer the mana, or a portion of the personality, of the god, the one effect was equivalent to the other: they are indistinguishable. But between mana and the potentiality that elsewhere invests a personality there is a difference. The latter may be, and frequently is, held to be drawn from the common source of power, the invisible and continuous life that permeates all things; whereas in Melanesia (and perhaps in Polynesia too) mana is definitely ascribed only to a personal origin, if Dr Codrington has rightly interpreted the belief. It is the special property of spirits—that is to say, of supernatural beings—and is communicated by them to whatsoever or whomsoever they will. An important step has thus been taken by the Melanesian mind towards separating the Personal from the Impersonal, and human from superhuman attributes and potentialities.
Thus we find in widely separated regions, among widely different races and in cultures the most diverse, the idea of mystic power or potentiality, often concentrated in individual persons or things, but in effect spread throughout the world. Some peoples have been more alive to the impersonal character of this power, and have ascribed to it, wherever manifested, a unity of origin akin to the scientific concept of force behind all phenomena. To others it has assumed a more individual character. It clings in any case to personality and tends to become inseparable from it; but the impersonal aspect is never wholly wanting.
The patient reader will have observed the difficulty experienced alike by scientific explorers and missionaries in expounding this idea in its varied forms and applications. The difficulty has not arisen wholly from its strangeness. It is due in large part to its want of clarity. The savage himself does not know; he has rarely had occasion, and still more rarely inclination, to reflect on his beliefs. He has had no schools of science or philosophy to think out his thoughts for him. Hence they are ill defined; like clouds in the sky, they take first one shape and then another. Yet those very clouds, by comparison with the formless vapour from whence they have been condensed, are continents of solidity and definiteness.
Although the idea of orenda, or mana, may not receive everywhere the same explicit recognition, it is implied in the customs and beliefs of mankind throughout the world. It underlies the practice of Taboo. We have had already occasion to notice this in reference to the mana of Maori chiefs. In the population of Madagascar there is a large, perhaps a predominant Polynesian element. When a Malagasy sticks up in his field a figure or scarecrow to keep off robbers, it is not that they may dread prosecution with all the rigour of the law, though that may be the result if they are caught. What is threatened is sickness, mysteriously induced by the power of the owner of the field, or by the power which he has caused to be conjured into the scarecrow.[62.1] A Samoan in the same way suspends to a cocoa-nut palm a small figure of a shark made with a leaf of the tree; it is notice to the robber that he will be inevitably devoured by a white shark the next time he goes to fish.[62.2] Similar practices prevail in the Melanesian islands.[62.3] Taboo has obtained a very prominent position in the social order and government of Polynesian communities. It is from them that the word has been adopted into English parlance, and adapted to a sense near akin to that of another interesting word—to boycott. But it is not only in Polynesia and the neighbouring islands of Melanesia that the dread of a mysterious mana is found, or that it leads to prohibitions and abstinences often very burdensome. It is unnecessary to adduce examples of the taboos on women, practically universal in the lower culture at certain times. The Siberian Chukchi, whose fire has gone out on the cold and timberless tundra, cannot borrow fire from his neighbour, for “the fire of a strange family is regarded as infectious and as harbouring strange spirits. Fear of pollution extends also to all objects belonging to a strange hearth, to the skins of the tent and the sleeping room, and even to the keepers and worshippers of strange penates. The Chukchi from far inland, who travel but little, when they come to a strange territory fear to sleep in tents or to eat meat cooked on a strange fire, preferring to sleep in the open air and to subsist on their own scant food-supply. On the other hand, an unknown traveller, coming unexpectedly to a Chukchi camp, can hardly gain admittance to a tent,” a difficulty of which the writer I am quoting had personal experience.[63.1] This reluctance to contact with strangers is not shyness; nor is it the dread of hostile intentions. Each individual, each family or body of men, has its own atmosphere; and this atmosphere conveys “pollution.” It is only throwing the idea a step backwards to imagine the cause of the pollution as “strange spirits.” Spirits are mana; and it is the mana that is feared—the mystic influence or potentiality that may strike the unwary stranger. This is what issues in practice as the taboo. The subject of Taboo has been treated so fully by Professor Frazer[64.1] that it is needless to discuss it here. Moreover, to do so in any detail would require a volume. Suffice it to say that the universal avoidance of a dead body, the prohibitions observed by priests, by chiefs, by hunters and warriors, the prohibitions of temple and shrine, of times and seasons, of speech and act, may all be traced to the same root-idea. Our words sanctity, pollution, infection feebly and partially translate the intuitive dread of orenda which is embodied in a taboo.
The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief in orenda that has survived into civilized communities. Here the whole maleficent potentiality of a person is concentrated in a glance; and the amulets so often worn on the body or suspended on the wall or at the door of a house are directed to intercepting and so exhausting the influence. In many cases, either by means of them or by a word or gesture, a counter-orenda is exercised, intended to annihilate, or at least neutralize, the evil influence. An analogous superstition may be cited from the Upper Congo. The Boloki believe that an occult power is possessed and exercised by many individuals. They call it likundu. Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A person is accused of possessing likundu when he or she is extraordinarily successful in hunting, fishing, skilled labour or the accumulation of wealth. There is apparently,” says Rev. J. H. Weeks, “only a certain amount of skill extant, only a certain number of fish to be caught, only a certain amount of wealth to be gained; and for a person to excel all others is a proof that he is using evil means to his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he lays himself open to the charge of possessing likundu.” Consequently “a person who possesses this likundu may unconsciously cause the hunting skill of any hunter in his family to fail.” When the charge is seriously made “it causes much annoyance, and can only be disproved by either drinking the ordeal or refraining from doing that which has brought the charge,” of which Mr Weeks goes on to give an illustration that had come under his own observation.[65.1]
Finally, what foundation there may be for the modern psychological doctrine of Telepathy it is not my business to determine. But its resemblance to the Iroquoian doctrine of orenda may be pointed out here. Telepathic communication may result from conscious or unconscious exertion of will; it may occur at a supreme crisis of fate or at a casual moment. It is in either case the product of a potentiality which we call mystic for want of a better name, and which attaches to, or flows from, some personalities more strongly than others. We have all had the experience of occasionally meeting, or receiving a letter from, someone on whom our thoughts have been more or less insistently dwelling, and whom we did not expect immediately to see or hear from. Goethe is reported by his friend Eckermann as having told him: “I have often enough had the experience in my youthful years of a powerful longing for a beloved maiden taking possession of me during a lonely walk; and I thought about her and thought about her until she really came and met me.” We need, however, no such commonplace illustration to convince us of Goethe’s orenda.
Without multiplying illustrations which will spring to the mind of everyone, I venture to suggest that in man’s emotional response to his environment, in his interpretation in the terms of personality of the objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by him with potentiality, atmosphere, orenda, mana—call it by what name you will—we have the common root of magic and religion.
II. Theories and Definitions
At this point we are confronted with the difficult questions What is Religion? and What is Magic?
Religion is notoriously hard to define. Every man thinks he knows what it is; but when he comes to define it he never succeeds, clever as he may be, in framing a definition generally acceptable. The ordinary man, with a particular religion—the only one of which he has had any experience—in his eye, defines it to square with that religion: if others cannot be brought into the definition, so much the worse for them. The anthropologist, whatever his bias, fares no better than the ordinary man. He has his theories; and in expounding them he is frequently called upon to define religion. In practice his theories are hardly a safer guide than the other’s prejudices or ignorance. Hence a definition of religion usually begs the question.
We will confine our attention here to some of the recent attempts made by anthropologists to define religion.
To Professor Jevons the fundamental principle of religion is “belief in the wisdom and goodness of God”; “the revelation of God to man’s consciousness was immediate, direct, and carried conviction with it”; and the original religion was monotheism, albeit a low form of that faith.[67.1] This may perchance fit the religion of the Hebrews as seen through theological spectacles; but it definitely excludes Buddhism, at all events in its primitive form. For though Buddhism arose out of an earlier religion, and in a comparatively high stage of civilization, and though its founder admitted (apparently) the existence of other intelligences than man, he would have nothing to do with them. Sir Edward Tylor surmounts this difficulty by his famous “minimum definition of religion—the belief in Spiritual Beings.”[67.2] But it is only to land himself in another. For religion is nothing if not practical: the mere belief is not religion. As Lord Avebury points out: “A belief in ghosts is in itself no evidence of religion. A ghost is not a god, though it may become one.”[67.3] Australian savages believe in ghosts—and tremble; but of very few of them is anything approaching to worship recorded. Conscious of this objection, Professor Frazer employs the word Religion to express “a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them.… Hence belief and practice or, in theological language, faith and works are equally essential to religion, which cannot exist without both of them.”[68.1]
This definition supplies the obvious deficiency in Tylor’s; but it does not touch the case of Buddhism. And there is one important respect in which all these definitions fail. None of them explicitly recognizes the social character of the religions of the lower culture. For aught that appears, religion might be the business of solitary men, founded on their speculations, hopes and fears, uncommunicated to and unshared by others, their own individual concern. But, in savage life at least, religion is pre-eminently social. Individual rites there may be; they are, however, parts of a whole, subordinate to the common observances and common beliefs on which they are founded. The individualist idea—the supreme necessity of saving one’s own soul—has no place in them. St Simeon Stylites and the Hindu fakir are equally the product of a much higher development.
A recent French writer, impressed with these objections to the foregoing and similar definitions, has attempted to formulate one more comprehensive and more subtle. Summing up a long discussion, he concludes that “a religion is a connected (solidaire) system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred—that is to say, separated, interdicted—things,—beliefs and practices that unite into one moral community, called Church, all who adhere to them.”[68.2] This, however, is not Religion (with a capital letter). Religion, referring of course to the theoretical side or belief, he says elsewhere, “is before everything a system of notions by means of which individuals interpret the society of which they are members, and the obscure but intimate relations they sustain with it.” And he goes on to say of the practical side that the function of religious rites is to tighten the bonds that unite the individual to the society.[69.1] In other words, Religion is Society realizing itself. Before considering this definition, let us turn to Magic.
Professor Frazer draws a sharp line between religion and magic. The latter is founded (unconsciously indeed, for the primitive magician “never analyses the mental processes on which his practice is based”) on the assumption “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.… The magician does not doubt that the same causes will always produce the same effects, that the performance of the proper ceremony, accompanied by the appropriate spell, will inevitably be attended by the desired results, unless indeed his incantations should chance to be thwarted and foiled by the more potent charms of another sorcerer.”[69.2] The laws governing the practical application of this assumption are resolved into two: “first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely, the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not. Charms based on the Law of Similarity may be called Homœopathic or Imitative Magic. Charms based on the Law of Contact or Contagion may be called Contagious Magic.”[70.1] Magic therefore is the result of a mistaken association of ideas. It preceded religion. But when man began to find out “the inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic,” when “men for the first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be completely within their control,” they fell back on the theory that there were other beings like themselves who directed the course of nature and brought about the effects they had hitherto believed to be dependent on their own magic. To them they turned in their helplessness, and thus evolved religion.[70.2] Accordingly, magic and religion have always been hostile. Magic has indeed in many ages and in many lands permeated religion, has often gone the length of fusing and amalgamating with it. But this fusion was not primitive: they are originally and fundamentally distinct.[70.3]
In a powerful criticism of this theory Messrs Hubert and Mauss, two French anthropologists, have pointed out that Professor Frazer has omitted one essential item. The effect of a magical rite is not attained merely by sympathy. All magic is not sympathetic magic, whether that sympathy be expressed by the Law of Similarity or the Law of Contact. Moreover, even in sympathetic magic the sympathetic formula is insufficient to account for the facts. Sympathy is only the means by which the magical force passes from the magician to the object at which it is aimed; it is not the magical force itself. That still remains to be explained. It cannot be wholly explained by the properties attributed to the materials used in the magical rite, and that for three reasons. In the first place, the notion of property is normally not the only one present. The employment of substances having magical properties is ritually conditioned. They must be collected according to rule, at certain times, in certain places, with certain means, and after certain ritual preparations. When collected, they must be employed according to certain rules and with the accompaniment of rites, often exceedingly elaborate, which permit the utilization of their qualities. In the second place, the magical property is not conceived as naturally, absolutely, and specifically inherent in the thing to which it is attached, but always as relatively extrinsic and conferred. Sometimes it is conferred by a rite. At other times it is explained by a myth; and in this case it is clearly regarded as accidental and acquired. It often resides in secondary characters, such as form, colour, rarity, and so forth. In the third place, the notion of magical property suffices so little that it is always confounded with a very generalized idea of force and nature. The idea of the effect to be produced may indeed be precise; but that of the special qualities of the substance used to produce it, and their immediate action, is always obscure. In fact, the idea of things having undefined virtues is always prominent in magic. Salt, blood, saliva, coral, iron, crystals, precious metals, the mountain ash, the birch, the sacred fig-tree, camphor, incense, tobacco are among the many objects which embody general magical powers, capable of all sorts of applications. Corresponding with this is the extreme vagueness of the designations applied to magical properties, such as divine, sacred, mysterious, lucky, unlucky, and equivalent expressions. The notion of property passes over easily into power and spirit. Property and power are inseparable terms; property and spirit are often confounded. The virtues or properties of a thing often belong to it as the abode of a spirit. Spirits are indeed often the agents of magic. It is hardly too much to say that there is no magical rite in which their presence is not in some degree possible, though not expressly mentioned. Magic works in a special atmosphere, if not in the world of demons, at least in conditions in which their presence is possible. Beyond doubt, one of the essential characteristics of magical causality is that it is spiritual. Yet the idea of spiritual personalities ill represents the general anonymous forces which constitute the power of magicians. It gives no account of the virtue of words or gestures, the power of a look or of the intention, the influence or the mode of action of a rite. It does not explain why the magical rite controls and directs spiritual existences, any more than the sympathetic formula explains why the rite acts directly on the object.[72.1]
I do not tarry now to give illustrations in detail of the various points in the argument I have here summarized. It is clear that Professor Frazer has overlooked something of importance, from one fact alone to which he alludes, but of which he fails to observe the vast implications. The commonest excuse made by the magician for the failure of his spells is that some other magician of greater power is thwarting him. There must therefore be degrees of power among magicians, however it be acquired, and whether temporary or permanent, inherent or due to the possession of greater knowledge or more powerful spells. But that is a factor that tumbles the whole edifice of the theory down. It introduces another element—the personal potentiality. The same causes do not always produce the same effects, apart from the personal element; the performance of the proper ceremony, accompanied by the appropriate spell, is not inevitably attended by the desired results; the magician has not reached the scientific conclusion “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably, without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.” Nay, the intervention of the magician himself is proof to the contrary.
Destructive criticism is comparatively easy; anyone can make objections. Not everyone can substitute a sounder theory in place of that destroyed. It is when Messrs Hubert and Mauss come to construct their own theory of magic that they find themselves in difficulty. For they have to admit that in magic the same collective forces operate as in religion. Faith is as necessary to magic as to religion; it is as necessary to the magician as to the priest. Trickery no doubt there is; that has not always been excluded from religion. But there is much more than trickery. The magician believes in his own powers; and he believes all the more strongly because his public believes. The faith of society and his own faith act and react upon one another. But this is precisely the case with the priest and his religion.
If we examine the magician’s methods we can hardly distinguish them from those employed in religion. The attempt to bewitch an enemy by means of his clothing or a fragment of his body is precisely the same in principle as the proceedings already described at the inauguration of a Polynesian king or the communication of the virtues of mediæval saints by means of their relics. It is true that in the one case the object of the ceremony is maleficent, in the other cases it is beneficent. If that were a real distinction, the processes would still remain analogous. It is not real, however; for the sanctity of Polynesian kings has its maleficent side, and the relics of the saints have been often employed to the injury of an enemy, as well as to the healing of a friend. Nor can it be said that magic is purely an art, a technique, while religion is dependent upon higher and independent wills. The aid of spirits is often invoked in magic; spell passes easily into prayer, and prayer into spell. The accounts that have reached us of the Witches’ Sabbath may be the product of hallucination, or confessions extorted from victims who said what they were expected to say. But at least they bear witness to the general belief of the times, which regarded magic rather as a counter-religion than as a mere technique. Professor Frazer’s reply to this is of course that such a belief, such practices, were the result of a later fusion of religion and magic. That the fusion was not primitive is, however, incapable of proof. As we shall see by and by, in the lowest societies of which we have evidence practices usually regarded as magical are indistinguishable from those regarded as religious. The mutual hostility of religion and magic, where it exists, is, in truth, the result of a later development.
Like religion, the chief factor in magic—that by which it accomplishes its ends—is the mystic force that is released and set at work by the rite or the spell. Behind the sympathetic formula, behind the notions of property and of spirits, there is another notion still more mysterious, the notion of power, vague, impersonal, always operating, irresistible, or depending for its efficaciousness on conditions not altogether at command. The investigations of the last chapter have disclosed to us what this power is. By its very vagueness and impersonality it enshrines possibilities illimitable. It may be materialized, localized, personalized; but it ceases not to be spiritual, to act at a distance, and that by direct connection, if not by contact, to be mobile and to move without movement, to be impersonal though clothed in personal forms, to be divisible yet continuous. It is this notion that accounts in the last resort for the phenomena of magic. Without it, magic is incomprehensible; like a sentence without the copula, the action, the affirmation is wanting.
All this is equally true of religion. The authors see therefore that magic is, like religion, a social phenomenon; it has parallel rites with those of religion; it has parallel postulates and beliefs. To distinguish it from religion they are driven to erect into a test the individualistic aims of its practitioners, or of those on whose behalf it is called in aid. Its true distinction is, according to this, that it tends to be isolated, to be furtive, to be put into motion on behalf of individuals and against the community; its methods become arbitrary; it ceases to be a common obligation. Individuals in magic have appropriated the ideas and the collective forces generated by religion, and turned them to their own ends. Religion, in short, is social in its aims, magic is antisocial. That is the only difference between them. In this distinction Professor Durkheim agrees. Everywhere, he says, religious life has for its substratum a definite group; even what are called private cults are celebrated by the family or the corporation or society to which they are restricted. On the other hand, though magical beliefs are widely diffused and practised by large classes of a population, their effect is not to bind together those who adhere to them and unite them into a group having one common life: there is no magical Church. Between the magician and those who consult him there is no durable bond. He has clients, not a church. His relations with them are accidental, not permanent; and they may have no relations with one another; they may even be ignorant of one another’s existence.[76.1]
But this very charge of being antisocial is brought by many dominant religions against their rivals. It was substantially the charge brought against the early Christians by the Pagans. It is to-day the charge formulated by fanatical Russian Christians against the Jews. Here in the west of Europe it is, in a somewhat vaguer form, the reproach of orthodox Christians against Agnostics and all shades of Rationalists. To apply it as a test to distinguish religion from magic is to qualify the same practices as religious or as magical, according as they have social or antisocial ends. And how shall we define these ends? The act which at one stage of civilization is antisocial, at another is often a social duty. To attempt a change in this respect may be antisocial as regards the existing society, though it may result in ultimate benefit; and the attempt may be made from purely individualist motives, for purely individualist ends. Nay, the same act may be in the same society social or antisocial, according to circumstances. In Central Australia the man who kills an enemy by means of arungquiltha, which may be rendered evil magic, commits an antisocial act; he does it in secret: it would be dangerous to let it become known. But if a woman run away from her husband and cannot be recovered, he may lawfully avenge himself with the aid of arungquiltha. He is performing an act of social justice, and will be joined in doing it by the men of his local group. In the same way vengeance may be taken for a murder, real or supposed, by a Kurdaitcha party, which performs what we should designate as a magical ceremony to cause the victim to sicken and die. This is held to be a social, not an antisocial act, for it is fulfilling the social duty of revenge. It is done with the sanction of the council of elders.[77.1] In Melanesia, as we have seen, all religion consists in getting mana for oneself, not for the benefit of others; though doubtless the mana, when obtained, is often used for the advantage of the community.[77.2] Often it is not. “A man will commonly have his keramo, a tindalo tindalo, albeit the object of religious worship, has no prejudice against antisocial acts. His worshipper, before going out to commit what we should call murder, performs an elaborate ceremony, sacrificing to the ghost, and cursing his victim. If he succeed in killing him, the tindalo gets as his share of the spoil the ghost of the deceased, and is invoked to give mana in return.[77.3]
The man who, in Europe or elsewhere, makes use of spells to injure individuals, or even of the Evil Eye, is practising magic: he is doing an antisocial act. The man who defends himself with a gesture, with spells, or by loading his body with amulets, is not doing an antisocial act; he is simply protecting himself. But is he practising religion or magic? Be it remembered here that a man may have the Evil Eye without knowing it. Pius the Ninth, Vicar of Christ, was reputed to have the Evil Eye. Nothing was so fatal as his blessing; the faithful quailed at his glance and doubtless protected themselves with amulets. So the Boloki of the Congo hold that “one can have witchcraft without knowing it.”[78.1] In these cases there can be no antisocial intention. Among the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa a common procedure is to point at one’s enemy with the index-finger. This is antisocial: it is witchcraft. Before they go to war a ceremony is performed by an old woman, naked and in a state of ritual purity, over the warriors, and an incantation is muttered, to enable them to kill their foes.[78.2] This may not be antisocial; but is it anything else than magic? True, the men murmur prayers to their ancestral spirits for help; but then religion is penetrated with magic. Even Professor Durkheim admits that he cannot show a solution of continuity between them; the frontiers between their respective domains are often undefined, unfixed.[78.3] At all events he cannot say where the one ends and the other begins.
Perhaps, however, not the intention but the tendency, whether social or antisocial, is the test. In that case it is hard to conceive anything more antisocial than the operations of the Holy Inquisition. They were, it is true, not performed by supernatural instrumentality, or for supernatural purposes. To that extent they are not directly parallel with the rites we have been considering. But they were carried on by persons consecrated to religion, as religious acts, surrounded by religious rites, by exorcisms, imprecations, conjurations, shielded by the Church with all her powers, and sanctioned, if not set in motion, by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. They desolated every society where the institution was introduced.[79.1] Secrecy has been already noted as a characteristic of magic as opposed to religion. Naturally antisocial acts are performed in secret. The deeds of the Holy Office were done in the deepest dens of the building, and surrounded by impervious precautions against discovery, except the last dread act. In that consummation of cruelty, that supreme Act of Faith, as it was called, its officials nominally took no part; though it was well known that they insisted upon it relentlessly and with every terror, ghostly or secular, which they knew so well how to wield. On the other hand, the African sorcerer, conjuring the rain or the sunshine so necessary for the crops, performs an eminently social work, and does it very often in the open eye of day and before the assembled people. When a fisher-boat was launched in the north-east of Scotland a bottle of whisky used to be broken on the prow or stern with the words:
“Frae rocks an’ saands
An’ barren lands
An’ ill men’s hands
Keep’s free.
Weel oot, weel in,
Wi’ a gueede shot.”
“On the arrival of the boat at its new home the skipper’s wife, in some of the villages, took a lapful of corn or barley, and sowed it over the boat.”[80.1] These are not antisocial acts; they have no antisocial tendency; and they are not performed in secret. Must we account them religious, and the operations of the Inquisition magical?
Thus antisocial character is no sufficient test of magic as opposed to religion. Professor Doutté, dealing with magic as developed in Islam, adheres generally to the views of Messrs Hubert and Mauss. He proposes, however, another definition. Quoting with approval the late M. Marillier’s observation that magic is “the action on the without by the within,”[80.2] he remarks that the savage has not yet made a sufficient distinction between subject and object; he does not differentiate himself from the universe. And he concludes that magic, invented under the pressure of need, is only the objectivation of desire under the form of an extended force, singular, bound to gestures representative of the phenomenon desired and mechanically producing it. If the savage externalize this magical force so far that he ends by personifying it, we have the genesis of a god; the god, in fact, may be a personified mana. A god can only be anthropomorphic; he is the psycho-physical objectivation of man in phenomena.[80.3] This brings Professor Doutté much nearer to Dr Frazer’s position, and might form the basis of an eirenicon between them. For though he is fully aware that much in magic is indistinguishable from religion, he holds it to be a subsequent development: magic has so far modelled itself on religion and borrowed its theistic methods of procedure. It presents itself as an anti-religion. Under Christianity it reaches its ultimate term with the Black Mass and the cult of the devil: Islam does not lend itself so well to hideous parody. Yet Professor Doutté, after flirting with Professor Frazer’s opinion, comes back to the orthodoxy of the French sociologists: the real distinction between religion and magic is that the one is social—it sustains the life of the society; the other applies its rites to strictly personal ends—it is antisocial. The one is magic lawful and even obligatory; the other is magic useless or injurious to society, and it is condemned and interdicted. Islam even recognizes white or religious magic; the Prophet himself recommended it. Ibn Khaldoûn, a great Mohammedan jurist, can find, indeed, no solid distinction between the miracle of the saint and the prodigy wrought by the sorcerer, save that of the morality of its aim. The test of morality is what is permitted by the Law. That which is permitted by the Law is moral; the rest is immoral. It comes to this, then, that a miracle is legitimate magic, and magic is a forbidden miracle.[81.1]
The same difficulty in severing magic from religion is experienced by one of the acutest writers who has considered the subject. “Magic and religion,” says Dr Marett, “according to the view I would support, belong to the same department of human experience.… Together they belong to the supernormal world, the x-region of experience, the region of mental twilight. Magic I take to include all bad ways, and religion all good ways, of dealing with the supernormal—bad and good, of course, not as we may happen to judge them, but as the society concerned judges them. Sometimes, indeed, the people themselves hardly know where to draw the line between the two; and in that case the anthropologist cannot well do it for them. But every society thinks witchcraft bad. Witchcraft consists in leaguing oneself with supernormal powers of evil in order to effect selfish and antisocial ends. Witchcraft then is genuine magic—black magic, of the devil’s colour.”[82.1] Presumably white magic—magic performed for good and social ends—is not magic; it is a part of religion, notwithstanding that precisely the same means may be employed as in witchcraft—black magic. For Dr Marett adds: “Every primitive society also distinguishes certain salutary ways of dealing with supernormal powers. All these ways taken together constitute religion.”[82.2] Coming more particularly to define religion, he says: “Savage life has few safeguards. Crisis is a frequent, if intermittent, element in it. Hunger, sickness and war are examples of crisis. Birth and death are crises. Marriage is usually regarded by humanity as a crisis. So is initiation—the turning-point in one’s career, when one steps out into the world of men. Now what in terms of mind does crisis mean? It means that one is at one’s wits’ end; that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected; that we are projected into the world of the unknown.… Psychologically regarded, then, the function of religion is to restore men’s confidence when it is shaken by crisis.… Religion is the facing of the unknown. It is the courage in it that brings comfort.” Sociologically, “a religion is the effort to face crisis, so far as that effort is organized by society in some particular way. A religion is congregational—that is to say, serves the ends of a number of persons simultaneously. It is traditional—that is to say, has served the ends of successive generations of persons. Therefore inevitably it has standardized a method. It involves a routine, a ritual. Also, it involves some sort of conventional doctrine, which is, as it were, the inner side of the ritual—its lining.”[83.1]
On this definition two observations may be made. The first is that it does not exclude any rites performed for social ends, or for individual ends, so far as they are not definitely antisocial. The Australian husband meets the crisis of desertion by his wife by means of arungquiltha. He performs an act organized by society to meet this very crisis—on the definition, therefore, a religious act. But if by precisely the same process he attempt to slay his enemy, he is guilty of magic. Or is the wife’s desertion not a crisis in the sense attached to the word by Dr Marett? Perhaps it is a relief, a solution of a domestic crisis.
The second observation is that the definition ignores the whole of life not occupied by crises. When the Californian Hupa awakes in the morning and sees the dawn, it cannot be said that he is at his wits’ end, that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected. What does he do? He greets the dawn with a silent prayer that he may see many dawns, for he regards it as a person who is benevolently inclined to him.[84.1] This surely is religion. The point is met by the further statement that “the religion of a savage is part of his custom; nay, rather it is his whole custom so far as it appears sacred—so far as it coerces him by way of his imagination. Between him and the unknown stands nothing but his custom. It is his all-in-all, his stand-by, his faith and his hope. Being thus the sole source of his confidence, his custom, so far as his imagination plays about it, becomes his ‘luck.’ We may say that any and every custom, in so far as it is regarded as lucky, is a religious rite.”[84.2] In that case religion is much more than the facing of the unknown, the organized effort to face crisis. It is custom coercing man by way of his imagination. A convenient custom coerces by way of their imagination weary women at Tlemcen in Algeria not to sweep out the house for three days at the New Year, so that they may not lose their luck.[84.3] Can we legitimately call this religion? Or take another case. There are people in England who will not utter a boast, or tell a small social fib, without taking the precaution to touch wood. I have known educated women drag a chair across the room to a visitor who had just boasted of immunity from a trifling ailment, in order that she might touch wood. Despite their education, they were coerced by way of their imagination to this little ceremony. There must be thousands of things done merely for luck, and done habitually, by peoples alike in barbarism and in civilization. Some of them probably are relics of a once living belief. About others there is no such presumption; yet they exercise the same constraint. Does that make them religious rites? Does it make even those that once were portions of some living belief, but are so no longer, religious rites now? Of course it is all a matter of definition of terms. But a definition of religion which would include all these would be catholic indeed.
The criticisms in this chapter involve no reflection on the perspicacity of scientific writers who are trying to obtain a clear vision of religion and magic and of their specific differences. But they do aim at illustrating the futility of the attempt absolutely to define anything so fluid and elusive as religion.[85.1] Both religion and magic owe their origin to society; they are born and nurtured in a social atmosphere. Both are concerned with forces mysterious, far-reaching, enveloping and constraining men and things. These forces are not always personal, though their evolution usually takes a personal direction. The means used by both are similar, because the forces are the same, or at least alike. Spell and prayer are very near akin; the one passes insensibly into the other. And the material means common to both are chosen arbitrarily or according to some fancied symbolism, and employed in closely parallel ways. There is, in short, no decided boundary between religion and magic.
The task remains, notwithstanding, of defining the words for the purposes of the following pages. It is hopeless to attempt to harmonize the definitions we have considered. Whatever definition we adopt, it is clear that we cannot so express it as to confine religion within its own bounds, or to outlaw magic from the territory occupied by its rival. Yet a working definition is needed. In framing it regard ought to be paid to the ordinary meaning of the words: the definition must not be arbitrary.
Now the word Magic, by the usage of centuries, is concerned not so much with aim or tendency as with method. It conveys the notion of power, by whatsoever means acquired, wielded by the magician as his own, and not as that of a higher being whose coöperation is only obtained by supplication and self-abasement. Supplication, self-abasement, flattery are the religious means of winning the help of divinities. Where higher beings, whether called gods or devils, or by the more ambiguous title of spirits, are invoked by spell, compliance with the call is not dependent on their goodwill; the command is irresistible; and the procedure is magical. Sacrifice is utilized in both procedures; but it has a very different value in the one and the other. In the one it operates as a communion with the divinity, as a gift to win favour which he is by no means bound to grant, or as an atonement for wrong. In the other it is a condition on the fulfilment of which the desire of him who offers it is accomplished, inevitably and by compulsion. In such a case he who offers the sacrifice is not a worshipper; he is a master of the beings to whom it is offered. True, they are sometimes gods. In the religion of the Hindus “prayers, penances, and sacrifices are supposed to possess an inherent and actual value, in no degree depending upon the disposition or motive of the person who performs them. They are drafts upon Heaven, for which the Gods cannot refuse payment. The worst men, bent upon the worst designs, have in this manner obtained power which has made them formidable to the Supreme Deities themselves.”[87.1] Thus has Southey succinctly stated the belief on which his poem of The Curse of Kehama is built. Here by prayers are meant liturgical formulæ, which everywhere tend to degenerate into magical spells. Penances are in the nature of sacrifices. Or they are taboos that preserve and enhance the force and influence of the suppliant. Both alike are a magical process, in the sense in which the word Magic is generally employed. The constraining power of sacrifices was also a tenet of Egyptian religion, at all events in its last ages.[87.2] Have analogous beliefs in the magical powers of a rite even yet disappeared from Christianity?
This then is the sense in which I venture to think the words Magic and Magical should be employed. It is based upon their general, if somewhat vague, usage; and it is therefore intelligible to the ordinary reader without recourse to a special definition. It is substantially that of Professor Frazer, save that it affirms nothing concerning the origin of the power active in magical practices: it simply takes them as they are—again an undeniable convenience. It follows that for our purpose Religion will be confined to cultual systems, whose objects, so far as they are personal, are endowed with free will, are to be approached with true worship, and may or may not grant the prayers of their suppliants. Here also we have common usage on our side, with all its advantages. In this use of the word Religion, where the object is impersonal, or is but vaguely personal, it is none the less treated with reverence and submission, as something transcending man; it is the object of an emotional attitude, actively directed towards it. The object thus, even where it is not personal, tends to become so. Buddhism, in its original form, and similar religions are the product of comparatively high civilizations. The puritan severity of their primitive thought and practice was speedily relaxed; they acquired personal gods, and thus liberated themselves from a rule of life based upon philosophical considerations and the effort to escape without the aid of the higher personalities, of which they despaired, from the evils by which they felt themselves oppressed. In the lower civilizations, as we have seen, no sooner is an impersonal power conceived as acting than it assumes personal characteristics. When once the attention is concentrated upon any manifestation of it, these characteristics, originally vague, are likely to be emphasized, and may grow into true personalities. In magic, on the other hand, the impersonal power does not so readily become thus transformed, because the attention fastens on the personal agent, the magician, rather than on the power by which he operates.
When all is said, however, religion is (ideally, at least) social—that is to say, moral—in its aims and tendencies, whereas magic lends itself to individualist aims. Religion binds the society together by raising the individual above himself, and teaching him to subordinate his desires and actions to the general good; magic has no compunction in assisting to carry out the wishes of the individual, though they may be contrary to the interests of the society as a whole. To that extent it is disruptive, antisocial, immoral; and when thus applied it may be described as Black, or Evil, or Hostile Magic. Here perhaps we find the origin of the opposition between them. So far from religion and magic having been originally hostile, the further we go back into savage life, and presumably, therefore, towards primitive humanity, the more we find them interwoven, indistinguishable. It is only in the advance of civilization, and the consequent evolution of religion and of magic that they become conscious of mutual hostility. When once the separation had begun it would tend to widen. Certain methods and means would be regarded as proper to the one, certain other methods and means as proper to the other, albeit neither of them, not even the highest known and recognized form of religion, has hitherto been able to shake itself entirely free from the methods of the other. This is not incompatible with increasing hostility. The loftier the claims of religion become, the closer its relations with the profoundest thought of mankind, the more awful the sanctions it invokes, the more inevitable, the more irreconcilable the hostility becomes. Family quarrels are ever the bitterest.
III. Development
The discussion has led to some anticipation of the argument. We turn back again to the personal potentiality.
He for whom the world is full of personal beings and hardly anything else—a universe of objects interpreted in the terms of conscious personality and projected on a background of the Unknown with all its possibilities—he for whom each of those objects, human and non-human, living and not-living, is invested in a greater or less degree with orenda, will naturally and instinctively on the one hand avail himself of his own orenda, and on the other hand will dread and endeavour to turn to account the orenda of others. But this very endeavour to turn others’ orenda to account is an exercise by prayer or compulsion of his own. I can see no satisfactory evidence that early man consciously entertained any great faith in the order and uniformity of nature. Automatically, no doubt, he assumed that night would follow day and day night, that the winter would follow the summer or the dry season the wet, that the trees would blossom in the spring or after the rains set in, as he had been accustomed to see them. But that was not the result of reflection; it was not an act of faith. So things had always been, and he could not conceive any different course. It was not part of his mental furniture; it was no acquisition of reasoning. It was the very framework of his mind. When he began to reflect he referred these phenomena to the same cause to which he referred his own acts, and the more uncertain and capricious acts of other living beings—to personal will and orenda. Even if he had risen to the large conception of the Siouan wakonda, that impersonal force must, as we have seen, clothe itself with personality in order to operate. Immediately and for practical purposes the personal will and orenda of himself or some other object were the fount of all causation. They impelled and directed all actions, all means, and were responsible for all effects. If he took aim at his enemy and flung his spear, or whatever primitive weapon served the same purpose; if it hit the man, and he fell; he might witness the result, but the mere mechanical causation, however inevitable in its action, would be the last thing he would think about. Conscious of his own will, of his own effort, of the words, perhaps, with which he had accompanied and directed the spear, he would attribute the result to such causes as these. His own orenda felt in his passion, his will, his effort, and displayed in his acts and words, the orenda of the spear, either inherent in itself, conceived as a personal being, or conferred by its maker, and manifested in the keenness of its point, the precision and the force with which it flies to its work and inflicts the deadly wound—these would be to him the true causes of his enemy’s fall. His orenda is mightier than his enemy’s and overcomes it. So, when the enemy is absent and he cannot visibly reach him, his orenda may yet suffice to accomplish the desired injury. By a psychological process which Dr Marett has subtly analysed,[91.1] he is led to perform in pantomime all the acts of a murder in the absence of the victim, either silently, or to the accompaniment of a chant, or of spoken words. His foe, who is as convinced as himself of the power of such a performance, if it come to his knowledge, falls a victim to the terror it inspires, unless he can call in the aid of some other person, objective or imaginary, whose orenda is more powerful still. Nor would the belief lack vindication even in the case of the victim’s ignorance; for any chance misfortune or sickness would be put down to a hostile orenda; and if he did escape, it would be due to his own superior orenda.
Thus what we generally call magic or witchcraft is primarily an application of orenda. By his orenda a man bewitches his enemy (or, for a consideration, someone else’s enemy), causes rain or sunshine, raises and protects the crops, gains success in hunting, divines the cause of sickness and cures it, raises the dead, spells out the future. His incantations, his gestures, his apparatus—whether of plants, stones, animal products, magical drawings, or whatever else it may be—would be of no avail without this. In Central Australia the Arunta magician arms his “pointing bone” with arungquiltha. In Central Africa the Murundi impregnates his magical implements with evil influence by means of his imprecations, his incantations, and his evocation of spirits. That is, he puts into them his orenda or the mana of the spirits: until then they are absolutely powerless and indifferent.[92.1] This influence, this orenda, mana, or arungquiltha, is the nexus—the copula, as it has been called—which links the subject, the magician, to the object, the result.
But man is not the only being who possesses orenda. The orenda of his quarry sometimes foils his own. The cicada chirping in the fields ripens the maize for the Iroquois; the orenda of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it must fall. The awful mountain, the treacherous sea, those mighty beings who command the winds, who send forth the storm, who rule in the darkness and mystery of the forest, possess an orenda surpassing man’s. It is useless to pit his orenda against theirs. Therefore he must adopt a different course. He must lay down his orenda and submit it to theirs. This is the literal meaning of the Iroquoian phrase which signifies in modern usage “He habitually prays.”[92.2] He must take such a course as he would to obtain assistance from a human being (say, a powerful chief), or to conciliate an enemy. By gift, by abasement, by abstinence, by self-torture, by cajolery he must win this powerful orenda to his side. Of these efforts abstinence and abasement are negative forms of propitiation. They are perhaps the earliest forms. If our reports be complete (on which we may have our doubts), abstinence is the only form used among the Andaman Islanders, where belief is said to outrun active worship.[93.1] In any case a taboo for propitiatory purposes is very early and very persistent. Not without insight does the poet tell us that Caliban
“Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape.”
And the modern European has still his Lent, and his Ember Days and Fridays throughout the year. Such abstinence is the laying down and submission of the orenda to those of mightier beings. On the other hand, gift, prayer, cajolery are, properly speaking, an active exercise of orenda. The relation of spell and incantation to prayer has already been alluded to. They are often indistinguishable: they shade into one another by the finest gradations. Gifts are not mere self-deprivation. They must be accompanied by rites more or less elaborate, to render them acceptable to the lofty beings for whom they are intended. Or they are part of a bargain; they are the performance on the suppliant’s side which demands a corresponding return on the side of the god. More than one comparatively civilized people has held that sacrifices properly performed not merely incline but compel the gods to grant what their worshipper desires. Gesture-language plays a large part in savage life. A ceremony such as those familiar to us in sympathetic magic—to take only one instance, the sticking of pins into a waxen figure—frequently is, to a large extent, gesture-language: it helps to suggest to the supernatural personages of whose orenda the magician desires to make use exactly what is wanted. It is more than this, of course. It is in part the make-believe which is a relief to overcharged feelings; in part it is the means by which the orenda is conveyed to the object intended to be affected. The concomitant words that form part of the ceremony emphasize the desire. They fill and strengthen the instrument with the orenda of the performer, or of the supernatural personage invoked or compelled to assist; they direct the instrument, considered as a personal being, in the service it is required to fulfil; or they allure, entreat, or command the object at which the rite is aimed.
If the view here taken be accurate, the essential opposition between magic and religion disappears. Nor am I greatly concerned to decide whether of the two developed the earlier. Their origin is the same; they grow from one root. Nay, I should hardly be wrong if I changed the metaphor and said: magic and religion are the two faces of one medal. From the lowest stage of culture to the highest we find them inseparable. Gods were not invented because man proved unequal to the strain of arranging the affairs of the universe by himself; nor has the age of religion been everywhere preceded by the age of magic. “By whatever name it is called,” says Dr Codrington, speaking of the Melanesian mana, “it is the belief in this supernatural power and in the efficacy of the various means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called religious: and it is from the same belief that everything which may be called magic and witchcraft draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise their art as a profession; they get their property and influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who knows how to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There may be one whose skill extends to all these branches; but generally one man knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handed down from father to son, from uncle to sister’s son [for in many of these islands descent is still reckoned exclusively through the mother], in the same way as is the knowledge of rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer; and very often the same man who knows the sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of charms for many purposes besides. But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of consideration knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult practices. Knowledge of either kind can be bought, if the possessor chooses to impart it to any other than the heirs of whatever he has besides.”[95.1]
Here we see, as yet undistinguished, the beginnings of the professional magician and the professional priest. Roughly and provisionally it may be said that the professional magician is he who in the course of the evolution of society, by birth, by purchase, or by study and practice in the conventional methods, has acquired the most powerful orenda. Similarly, the professional priest is he who in these ways, or by prayer and fasting, has obtained the favour of the imaginary personages believed to influence or control the affairs of men—who has, in a word, possessed himself of their orenda. The union of these two professions in one person is not adventitious; it is probably fundamental; it is at least so general that in describing the society of savages and peoples in low stages of culture observers are often at a loss whether to call their functionaries priests or wizards, exorcists or medicine-men. Consequently, many anthropological writers use the word shaman, borrowed from the Tunguz, a tribe of South-Eastern Siberia, and including all four meanings. For in that condition of society the functions of priest and sorcerer and medicine-man are, as Professor Frazer says, “not yet differentiated from each other.” That could not be until, in the course of evolution, religion became severed from magic. Yet it has never become so wholly severed that the primitive connection may not be traced. Priests have become organized into a separate order. Triumphant religions have proscribed the conquered faiths, and have repudiated their practices as magical. Magic has thus become a term of opprobrium. The conquered faiths under repression have carried on their religious worship mixed with magical rites and tending more and more to be degraded, yet never losing all religious elements. Even the magic of the Middle Ages and later, in Europe, if we may trust the confessions of the judicial victims themselves, was mingled with the worship of a being in whom they recognized the devil, perhaps the last avatar of a heathen god; and witchcraft was one of the commonest charges against heretics. On the other hand, not even the highest religions have been able to free themselves wholly from rites strictly parallel to those characterized as magical, by which their followers have striven to compass union with the objects of worship, to avail themselves of the orenda of these objects, to locate it in their own persons or in the images and implements of their cult, to intensify their own orenda, and to exercise it for the benefit, spiritual, corporal or pecuniary, of themselves and others.
It may be well to illustrate the foregoing speculation from the customs and superstitions of the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have been represented to be the lowest and least evolved of known humanity in their beliefs and institutions: they are, it is said, still in the stage of primitive absence of religion; magic alone is the object of their belief; magic alone they practise. Now none of the Australian tribes are, strictly speaking, in a primitive condition. The civilization of all of them has evolved to some extent. It has evolved, speaking in general terms, along similar lines; and these lines have been conditioned by the environment. It is admittedly significant that, in a land where so many archaic types of the lower animals have survived, we should find archaic types of human culture. Yet the most archaic types of Australian culture are far from being primitive. So far are they that the social organization is of the most complex character, the product of a succession of stages of development. The least archaic types exhibit the old social organization breaking down and new structures in course of formation. With the evolution of society an evolution of belief has also been going on. It has not been exactly concurrent. Culture rarely or never evolves equally in all directions. It is a mental process, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The collective mind of a given society, like the individual minds of which it is composed, is not exercised equally on all subjects at the same time. Hence while, for example, we find among the Euahlayi tribe, in the north of New South Wales, an advanced theology and a more developed worship than have been recorded elsewhere in Australia, the social organization is still on the basis of female descent; and though the clansmen eat without scruple their hereditary totems, in other respects the totemic system seems to be in full force. In the same way the Arunta and their neighbours certainly preserve relics of a very archaic condition of thought and social organization. Though for certain purposes a son inherits from his mother’s husband, it is doubtful whether descent is counted through the father for social purposes; the physical relation between father and child, indeed, is but imperfectly recognized. On the other hand, they have developed a very elaborate theory of reincarnation, and their totemic system seems to be in course of transformation into a number of societies bearing in some respects remarkable resemblance to those of the tribes of British Columbia.[98.1] Magical practices (chiefly in connection with these societies or totemic groups) are more prominent than religious.
Yet a closer examination will lead us to the conclusion that something more than, on any definition of magic, we can call magical practices, something we must recognize as religion, albeit of a low type, is not wholly wanting to the natives of Central Australia. We may perhaps grant that Twanyirika, with whose name the women and uninitiate children are kept in awe, is a bugbear “to frighten babes withal,” and nothing more. The Kaitish and the Loritja, adjacent tribes sharing the general culture of the Arunta, at all events believe in the real existence of a superior being, who invented the initiation rites and is pleased when men perform them now.[99.1] Indeed, if Herr Strehlow’s investigations are to be trusted, the Arunta themselves are not destitute of belief in such a being, though we learn little about him, and he has no influence on the destinies of mankind.[99.2] Among the Warramunga, a tribe a little further to the north, the Wollunqua, a gigantic mythical snake, is the object of important rites, and one of the totem-clans is called by its name. It dwells in a certain water-hole in a lonely valley of the Murchison Range, “and there is always the fear that it may take it into its head to come out of its hiding-place and do some damage.” Hence propitiation is necessary. This is effected by building a mound of sandy earth and delineating on it a representation of the animal. “They say that when he sees the mound with his representation drawn upon it, he is gratified, and wriggles about underneath with pleasure.” On the evening of the day succeeding that on which the ceremonies in connection with this mound were witnessed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, “the old men who had made the mound said that they had heard the Wollunqua talking, and that he was pleased with what had been done and was sending rain; the explanation of which doubtless was that they, like ourselves, had heard thunder in the distance. No rain fell, but a few days later the distant rumble of thunder was again heard at night-time; and this, the old men now said, was the Wollunqua growling because the remains of the mound had been left uncovered. They also told the younger men that a heavy bank of clouds which lay on the western horizon had been placed there as a warning by the Wollunqua, and at once cut down boughs and hid the ruins of the mound from view, after which the Wollunqua ceased from growling, and all went on peacefully until the end of the series” of ceremonies.[100.1] There are, of course, myths associated with the Wollunqua. The mound recalled one of them. During its building and the ceremonies about it chants were sung referring to the deeds of the Wollunqua, breaking out from time to time into refrains of words, now at least meaningless, and said to belong to the language of the mythical past. The name Wollunqua is avoided in common parlance. A circumlocution is employed instead, “because, so they told us, if they were to call it too often by its real name, they would lose their control over it and it would come out and eat them all up.”[100.2] How does this differ from the familiar taboo of sacred names? When the explorers were taken to visit the Wollunqua’s dwelling-place (should we be wrong to call it his shrine?), the two chief men of the totemic group went down to the water’s edge and addressed him in whispers with bowed heads, praying him to remain quiet and do them no harm, for they were mates of his and had brought up two great white men to see where he lived and to tell them about him. “We could plainly see that it was all very real to them, and that they implicitly believed that the Wollunqua was indeed alive beneath the water, watching them, though they could not see him.”[100.3] In all these rites (the details of which were carried out with earnestness and frequently with excitement) it can hardly be denied that we have the elements of a true cult. The only one as to which any qualification could be admitted is “the savage attack,” described as being made on the mound when the ceremony relating to it was concluded. The result of it was that the figures delineated on the mound were destroyed, and all that remained was a rough heap of sandy earth. This is represented as an attempt to “coerce the mythic beast.” It is not quite certain that the interpretation is correct, for it does not rest on native statements, but is an inference of the explorers. The obliteration of sacred figures drawn on sand or earth for the purpose of a rite is not confined to the cult of the Wollunqua, nor even to Australia. It is equally found among the Pueblo tribes of North America and the Mongolian Buddhists of Central Asia.[101.1] Its object is to hide the sacred symbols from the eyes of the profane. But if the interpretation were correct (and it is not inconsistent with some of the expressions and traditions reported), it is no more than we might expect. If a savage deals with the mythic figures of his imagination as he deals with his fellowman, we must not be surprised that he should pass from cajolery to coercion, from prayer to defiance. Peoples on a much higher religious horizon (as we shall see hereafter) do not hesitate to threaten, and even to offer violence to, the objects of their worship, when they are unable to obtain otherwise what they want.
Nor are the rites of the Wollunqua alone among these tribes in bearing evidence of something more than magical ceremonies, namely, of rudimentary worship. When at the close of the initiation rites among the Arunta someone with a bundle of churinga, sacred stones or sticks in the shape of a bull-roarer, comes up to the newly initiated youth, saying: “Here is Twanyirika, of whom you have heard so much; they are churinga and will help to heal you quickly,”[102.1] neither the neophyte nor his friend regards them as mere toys. The statement that they will help to heal the neophyte’s wounds is enough to show this. We must not be misled by the apparent anticlimax to forget that they are, throughout this group of tribes, mysterious objects, marked with the emblem of the totem, and in the closest association with it; to the Arunta and Loritja they are the outward and visible sign, if not the embodiment, of the ancestral souls or invisible portions, and as such are regarded with veneration.[102.2] They are kept cunningly concealed from the eyes of the profane, hidden in stores which are sanctuaries, places of refuge from the pursuit of enemies, for men and even for wild animals. Herr Strehlow relates that when he was trying to find a native word to translate church, two baptized Blackfellows in all seriousness suggested to him the use of arknanaua, the name of these sacred storehouses in their tongue.[102.3] The very word churinga means, as nearly as can be rendered in a European tongue, hidden away, secret, appropriated, sacred. It is used as an adjective to describe objects employed in the sacred ceremonies, and the secret name bestowed on a child at birth. In this connection it is important to remember that the sacred ceremonies, and in fact everything sacred, are among these tribes secret also from the uninitiate. Though individuals may, at least among the Arunta and Loritja, have special property in their churingas, the latter are, as a whole, the collective property of the totemic clan; they are under the control of the ceremonial headman; their loss is the most serious evil that can befall a group; and even to lend them to another group, as is occasionally done for special purposes, is undertaken with the greatest solemnity and caution. When returned, they are received with every mark of veneration, with weeping and a low, mournful chant; and both parties must be strictly fasting.[103.1]
The churinga are, moreover, endowed with power, with mana, which not merely heals wounds, but when they are brought ceremonially in contact with the body produces other physical, mental, and even moral effects. In the Kaitish tribe the performance of some ceremonies, in the course of which the churinga are handled, renders a man so full of this mana, or, as they call it, churinga, using the very word, that he becomes for the time taboo.[103.2] In addition, the churinga have virtue to make the yams and the grass-seed grow; they frighten the game, or enable a man to secure it, and so forth. They are handled in a manner which it is no exaggeration to call devout. They are polished with red ochre to “soften” them, a term that, as Messrs Spencer and Gillen remark, “very evidently points to the fact that the [churinga] is regarded as something much more than a piece of wood or stone. It is intimately associated with the ancestor, and has ‘feelings,’ just as human beings have, which can be soothed by rubbing in the same way in which those of living men can be.” We gather that a man will sing to his churinga, that the subject of his song will be the mythical story of the ancestor (or the previous incarnation) to whom it belonged, and that as he sings and rubs it with his hand, “he gradually comes to feel that there is some special association between him and the sacred object—that a virtue of some kind passes from it to him, and also from him to it.” So from generation to generation it gathers more and more of what our authors describe as magical power—what would certainly be called in Melanesia mana—the mystic potentiality already discussed.[104.1]
Thus the churinga have to the Blackfellow a more or less definitely personal aspect. It may be said that the songs chanted over them are after all merely magical spells. But the spell implies some more or less defined personality in the objects to which it is addressed. In these tribes rites are performed, called in the Arunta tongue Intichiuma, for the purpose of causing a manifestation of the power of the totem, of multiplying the totem-animal or plant, and generally of increasing the prosperity of the totem. In the course of these rites there is much singing. The members of the group invite the witchetty grubs to come from all directions and lay their eggs, or the hakea-trees to flower and their blossoms to fill with honey; they beg the rain to come and bring fish; they direct the kangaroos to go from one place to another; and so on. Even when the songs and the actions performed in the ceremonies recall the events of the mythical past, they are not necessarily more magical than the words of sacred dramas, which everywhere in the lower culture inseparably interweave what we generally speak of as magic and religion. The mighty ancestors (as elsewhere the gods) whose deeds they chant are present in the rite. “The totem, the ancestor, and the descendant (that is to say, the performer) appear in these songs as one. Without keeping in view the indivisible unity of the totem, the mythic ancestor and the offspring (ratapa), many of the songs are quite incomprehensible.”[105.1] Thus where invitation or command is not issued directly to the object, the mana of the ancestors seems to be evoked for the accomplishment of the end.
Again, so far from the Arunta medicine-men being practitioners of anything analogous to modern science, they are initiated by, and their power is derived from, the spirits. These spirits are believed to put the candidate to death, to carry him down into their abode, and there to take out his internal organs, replacing them with a new set, planting in his body a supply of magical crystals by which all his subsequent wonders will be performed, and then bringing him to life again. He remains, however, in a condition of insanity for some days. It is true that an imitation of this process can be performed by medicine-men of flesh and blood; but candidates thus initiated have a lower repute (save apparently among the Warramunga) than those initiated directly by the spirits. The crystals are in any case the home and symbol of the magician’s powers. They are in fact full of mana. If they be lost, the magician ceases to be a magician, and the crystals themselves return to the spirits. All over Australia, so far as we know, the same influence is attributed to them.[105.2] On the eastern side of the continent, where something like a tribal All-Father is believed in, he is regarded, like Odin, as the mightiest of magicians, and the crystals are, as well as the bull-roarer, among his special attributes. Let me observe too in passing that it is not a little significant that, as in the witchcraft of Europe and Africa, portions of dead bodies are in great request in Australia for magical purposes. The “pointing bone,” to which I referred just now, is part of a dead man’s leg or arm. A portion of his personality inheres in it. Consequently, even before it is “sung,” it is endowed with his mana, which the singing only enhances and directs in its course.[106.1] For the same reason human fat and a dead man’s hair are important parts of the Australian native’s magical apparatus.
The initiation of the medicine-man or magician by spirits, often the spirits of the dead, is practically the universal belief in Australia. In this respect the Australian medicine-man is in line with many of his professional brethren elsewhere. In the island of Saghalien the Gilyak shamans are chosen vessels, to whom their tutelary gods reveal their high calling in vision or in trance. From the moment that this is done the gods install themselves as the new shaman’s assistants and perform his commands. Yet shamanhood is not regarded as a gift, but as a burden. To become a shaman, either a man must find favour with one of these assistant tutelary gods, or such a god must be bestowed upon him by his father or uncle. Conversion into a shaman forms a break in the life of the chosen, accompanied by many complicated psychical phenomena. The process in his own case was described by a shaman to a Russian anthropologist. For more than two months he was sick and lay without movement or consciousness. As soon as he revived from one attack he fell under another. “I should have died,” he said, “if I had not become a shaman.” He began to dream at night that he sang shaman songs. Visions appeared to him, and he was told to make a drum and the proper apparatus of a shaman, and to sing. If he were a simple man, the vision told him, nothing would happen; “but if thou art a shaman, be a real shaman.” When he awoke he found that it was thought the spirits had killed him, and preparations for his funeral rites had been made. But he got a drum and began to sing. This produced a feeling which hovered between intoxication and death. Then for the first time he saw his tutelary gods, and received from them instruction in his business as a shaman.[107.1] Among the Koryak on the adjacent continent, “nobody can become a shaman of his own free will. The spirits enter into any person they may choose and force him to become their servant.” Such persons are “usually nervous young men, subject to hysterical fits, by means of which the spirits express their demand” that the patient shall become a shaman. Fasting, paroxysms, exhaustion succeed one another. Finally, the spirits appear to the patient in visible form, endow him with power, inspire and instruct him.[107.2] In other words, they fill him with their mana.
Here we have manifestly the wide-spread phenomena of Possession. In these tribes there are no professional priests. The magicians, though in a sense the intermediaries between men and the higher powers, are not charged with the duty of offering sacrifice and prayer. In South Africa, among the Bantu tribes, also, there are no professional priests. Ancestor-worship is the religion; and the only worship paid is paid to the manes of the dead. The proper person to offer sacrifices is the head of the family for the time being. But medicine-men or magicians form a regular profession, which is divided into a number of branches. For some of these branches initiation by the spirits of the dead is not necessary. For others it is indispensable. Frequently, however, the same man combines the practice of several branches of the art. All who practise openly are recognized as White Wizards, exercising their powers for the wellbeing of society, in defence of the established order. Yet these very men sometimes boast of being baloyi, a term by which evil wizards are generally known. They claim to be more powerful than ordinary wizards, able to discover and baffle their tricks, and to kill. Moreover, there are good baloyi, who use their power to bless. They are sometimes sent by ancestral spirits to increase the produce of the fields, and then they are said to have bewitched the fields to make them bring forth more fruit. Thus it is clear that a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between the social and the antisocial magicians, at least among some of the Bantu tribes. One of the chief branches of the profession is that of exorcist. Now no man can set up as an exorcist without having been himself possessed by the spirits and exorcised. This is indeed the regular method of initiation, for a man is not merely restored to ordinary life by exorcism; he is also aggregated to the society of magicians; he enters a new life; he becomes a neophyte among the practitioners, and must undergo further probation which may result in his becoming more than an exorcist—he may become clairvoyant or a diviner, a prophet or a worker of marvels; he may cure diseases or cause the rain to fall. Many practitioners profess more than one of these accomplishments; the most distinguished profess several.[109.1]
How far the phenomena of possession are voluntary need not here be discussed. The Zulu or Xosa patient (if we may call him so) becomes sickly and abstinent; he distinguishes himself by dreams and visions, and begins to talk of his intercourse with spirits of the dead; he becomes “a house of dreams”; he is hysterical; he sings; he behaves as though he were out of his mind; he is possessed by an Itongo, an ancestral spirit. Then he is admitted to the society of the magicians and receives instruction from them. Finally, he is accounted a new creature, whose intercourse with spirits and share in their supernatural powers is recognized by everyone.[109.2]
Among the Ngombe in the Northern Congo basin, we are told, “the ghosts call [to the man] from the bowels of the earth. He goes into the grave, underground, and stays there four months. When the four months are finished he comes forth, rubs himself with camwood and dances, contorting his body.” This seems to be the neophyte’s only preparation for the office of nganga. After that, according to the same authority, “whenever a man is sick he is carried by others to the nganga. They accompany him to the man of ghosts. He looks at the body, then recites to the spirit. They lift up the man and go out. All the people dance, and he who is afflicted with sickness is brought to the doctor for medicine.”[109.3]
On the North American continent the medicine-man was not “possessed,” as among the Siberian tribes and the Bantu; but his mode of initiation was similar. The Ojibway sorcerer after prolonged fasting was initiated by the supernatural powers.[110.1] Among many of the Californian tribes “a spirit, be it that of an animal, a place, the sun or other natural object, a deceased relative or an entirely unembodied spirit, visits the future medicine-man in his dreams, and the connection thus established between them is the source and basis of the latter’s power. This spirit becomes his guardian spirit or ‘personal.’ From it he receives the song or rite or knowledge of the charm, and the understanding which enable him to cause or remove disease, and to do and endure what other men cannot.”[110.2] The Skidi Pawnee is allured to the abode of the mysterious animal-powers, and there taught their knowledge and gifted with their powers; or he is visited by a supernatural being in dreams for the same purpose.[110.3]
Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo “there are two descriptions of manangs [shamans], the regular and the irregular. The regular are those who have been called to that vocation by dreams, and to whom the spirits have revealed themselves. The irregular are self-created and without a familiar spirit.” It is not enough for the manang simply to say “that he feels himself called; he must prove to his friends that he is able to commune with the spirits; and in proof of this he will occasionally abstain from food and indulge in trances, from which he will awake with all the tokens of one possessed by a devil, foaming at the mouth and talking incoherently.”[110.4] One of the ways to “get magic” among the Malays is to meet the ghost of a murdered man. In order to do this a ceremony must be performed at the grave on a Tuesday at full moon. The aspirant calls upon the deceased for help, and states his request. Ultimately an aged man appears, to whom the request is repeated; and it would seem that the suppliant gets what he wants.[111.1]
In Europe the dominant religion has proscribed witchcraft with terrors spiritual and physical, which have emphasized its separation and intensified its spiritual aspect. The judicial records are full of stories of initiation to the Black Art that begin by the formal renunciation of Christian worship and baptism. The novice tramples upon symbols of the Christian faith, or otherwise treats them with indignity. He utters incantations with appropriate rites to call up the devil. That gentleman then appears to receive his formal profession of allegiance, admit him ceremonially into his band of worshippers, and tutor him in the methods of his art. That the confessions of this procedure were not wholly imaginary, and dictated by the orthodox functionaries who examined the tortured victim, is rendered probable from the fact that down to the present day, in many continental countries, if not in the British Islands, the peasant witch enters upon her trade by a rite recalling its main features.
It would be easy to expand the list. Enough has, however, been said to show that over a wide area of the world and in the most various stages of civilization what we call supernatural beings are concerned with the preparation of the magician’s career, and that the Arunta beliefs do not differ in this respect from those current among many other peoples. In none of the foregoing cases does the shaman or magician as such exercise the functions of priest. He offers no sacrifices, he addresses no prayers on behalf of the community to the divinities. He performs wonders by the aid of the spirits; but the spirits who first invade and then help him are by no means everywhere those who are the object of worship. It is not my intention to discuss the psychological and physiological aspects of the phenomena. They recall the phenomena of “conversion” among ourselves. Occurring, as they usually do, at or shortly after the commencement of adult life, they display the effervescence of puberty, accentuated by the neurotic peculiarities of the individual, acted upon, directed and controlled by the social environment. As in the case of “conversion,” too, they are liable to become epidemic, particularly at times of social and political crisis, where feeling in the tribe is more than commonly excited.
Before passing away from the subject we may turn to a different type of shaman. Among the Veddas the shaman is in effect the priest. The spirits to whom offerings are made are those of the dead. It is the shaman who makes the offering, and performs the invocation; and he is in return possessed by them. But here the novice is chosen and trained by one who already exercises the profession. He does not become possessed in his capacity as novice. Possession only takes place at the public ceremonies; it is temporary; and it may affect others besides the shaman. The position of shaman is practically hereditary, for the novice trained is usually the shaman’s son, or his sister’s son, that is to say, his actual or potential son-in-law. The Veddas are on a level of civilization as low as the Arunta. Though they do not practise rites of such senseless and revolting cruelty, in their natural condition and apart from external influence they live entirely by hunting and the collection of honey; they build no huts, but take advantage of caves and rock-shelters; their pottery is of the roughest description; and the iron arrowheads, axes and other implements which they possess are obtained by barter from the Sinhalese, for they do not exercise the art of smithying. The lowest and wildest of them, however, know nothing of hostile magic. Even protective magic is hardly practised; and the charms they make use of appear to be derived from the neighbouring Sinhalese. It is true they have traditions that it used to be customary to seek strength and confidence to avenge insults by chewing a small dried piece of the liver of a man who had been killed for the purpose. This is an application of a well-known magical principle.[113.1] But, so far as our information goes, it is a solitary case. If therefore the Vedda shaman is not initiated by the spirits, it is not because the Veddas have not yet passed out of the age of magic. If there be an age of magic in which religion is unknown, for aught that appears they have not yet passed into it. At all events they cannot be said to confirm the generalization that magic precedes religion; for magical practices once adopted persist with remarkable tenacity into the highest planes of culture.
There is, finally, an example of a functionary occupying an ambiguous position as priest or magician, at which we may glance for a moment. The Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, before the arrival of strangers in modern times, were, like the Arunta, living in the Stone Age. They had no agriculture; their food was supplied by the chase, or the search for insects, roots, and honey. They had indeed learned to build huts; and they had the use of fire, but they were ignorant how to produce it. They are divided into local tribes, ruled by elected chiefs with very limited power. The chiefs acquire such authority as they have by their skill in hunting and fishing and their reputation for generosity and hospitality; and it is on these qualifications that social status mainly depends. Social and political organization is therefore, as well as religion, in a somewhat rudimentary stage. Nor is magic more advanced than religion. The only persons who exercise any magical or religious functions are called by the title of oko-paiad, or Dreamer. Such a man obtains his position by relating an extraordinary dream foreshadowing some future event, which afterwards happens. Since these practitioners are credited with the power of communicating in dreams with the spirits, it may be presumed that the initial dream is in the nature of a “call” by them. The oko-paiad does not seem to be subject to possession by the spirits; but he is believed to have powers of second sight and a mysterious influence over the fortunes and lives of his neighbours. He is therefore the constant recipient of presents, which are in effect bribes for his favour. Our information concerning his proceedings is of the scantiest description. It does not extend to any active attempt at magical interference with the fate or the actions of others. Perhaps we may conclude that any interference he may be held to exercise is confined to his intercourse in dreams with the spirits. However this may be, his only recorded overt acts are on the occurrence of an epidemic, when “he brandishes a burning log, and bids the evil spirit keep at a distance.” Sometimes as a further precaution he plants stakes in front of each hut, and smears them in stripes with black beeswax, the smell of which, being peculiarly offensive to the demon, ensures his speedy departure.[114.1] If any inference can be drawn from this account it hardly seems to favour the priority of the evolution of magic over religion; for the oko-paiad, if not initiated by the spirits, is essentially one who is in communication with them, and who exercises his powers not merely against individuals (of which there is no direct evidence), but in favour of them and of the community.
The conclusion is that there is no solid and convincing proof of the development of magic prior to religion. If the Mincopies, the Veddas, and the tribes of Central Australia fail us, whither shall we turn for evidence?
Yet there is a consideration generally applicable to savage life that must not be overlooked here. Vague, uncertain, and contradictory as the savage may be in his beliefs, sluggish as his mind may be in regard to matters of speculation,—in matters of practical importance, the provision of food and shelter, the protection of his women and children, and the defence of his little community against aggression by human foes or the wild beasts, he is bound to be on the alert and to act. His wits are therefore sharpened for action. Action is natural to him; thought which has no immediate objective in action is strange. The energies remaining when the body is satisfied with food, when shelter is assured, and hostilities against his fellow-man or the lower animals are for the moment forgotten, must be expended in other kinds of action. Bodily recreation—play—satisfies this craving for movement and excitement, while at the same time it fulfils the useful purpose (albeit unconsciously to him) of keeping his faculties, bodily and mental, ready and supple, and of training them still further for more directly practical ends. This form of activity, organized into dances and games, easily begets ritual. The Hottentots danced all night at full moon with extravagant gestures, saluting the moon and invoking her for cattle-fodder and milk.[115.1] The Wichita of North America played every year in the spring a game of shinny, which represented, there can be little doubt, the contest of winter and spring.[116.1] In such cases as these, and they are legion, a recreation has been indulged in at a period appropriate for it—the dance in the clear, cool night, the game under the mild returning warmth and stimulating influences of the early spring. Because it thus naturally recurs at definite times it comes to be regarded as proper, even necessary: it develops into a rite. To a similar game played by the Omaha was attached, in the phrase of the writers who describe it, “a cosmic significance.”[116.2] The impulse to movement, to exertion, liberates emotion; the emotion is in turn intensified by its collective expression; and this intensification would lead to the conviction that the expression has somehow or other in itself an influence on external nature, just as it would have in human relations. The exact mechanism by which it acted probably would not trouble the savage at an early stage. Later, it would be fitted into the framework of his ideas. The Hottentot rite came to be addressed to the moon. The Wichita rite seems to have been thought to assist directly in conquest of the evil power of winter and the renewal of life.
But we may go further back still. I have referred to the make-believe that is a relief to overcharged feelings. Emotional stress is felt at times by everybody, be he savage or civilized. It causes a reaction, more or less powerful in proportion to the magnitude of the cause or the excitability of the person who undergoes it. It is expressed in acts sometimes of the wildest extravagance, sometimes rhythmic and partially controlled. These acts are spontaneous, automatic. Recurrence of the emotional stress would tend to be accompanied by repetition of the acts in which the reaction had been previously expressed. If the recurrence were sufficiently frequent, the form of the reaction would become a habit to be repeated on similar occasions, even where the stress was less vivid or almost absent. It can hardly be doubted that many rites owe their existence to such reactions. The Pawnees, like the Wichita, a tribe belonging to the Caddoan stock of North America, summoned with song and dance and other elaborate rites the buffaloes which were the mainstay of their existence. Everything depended—sustenance, provision of clothing and tents and all other necessaries, hence the very continuance of the tribal life—on the buffaloes. Their movements about the great central plains of the continent were mysterious. The true causes were unknown; the course was not predicable with certainty. Accordingly, the period of expectation while the people were awaiting the advent of the herd was one of great emotional tension. It was relieved by a series of acts, originally automatic, or quasi-automatic, which would gradually assume more and more definitely the calling and enticement of the expected herd. This form of reaction to the particular stress would become habitual. It would end as a solemn rite, which was believed to have a powerful influence in bringing the animals and effecting a satisfactory capture. The orenda of the performers, expressed in the manner consecrated by tradition, would then be held to exercise a compelling power.[117.1]
To such an origin must be ascribed the rehearsal of a battle that takes place in many savage tribes before the warriors go forth on a raid, and the dances and other ceremonies accomplished by women left at home when their husbands are absent fighting or hunting. More obviously must it be held responsible for a variety of other performances, of which the common spell in this country and on the continent of Europe, to recover an article stolen or the waning affections of a lover, is a type. The love-lorn maiden takes some object, frequently a shoulder-bone of lamb, and sticks a knife or a pin into it, saying:
“’Tis not this bone I mean to stick,
But my lover’s heart I mean to prick,
Wishing him neither rest nor sleep
Till he comes with me to speak.”
Of spells like this the preparation of an effigy, and the assaults upon it representing acts done to the person for whom the effigy stands, are an elaboration. The overcharged emotion first of all finds a vent in an attack upon any convenient object. Then from various causes a special object is singled out as the appropriate vehicle of the performer’s wrath, hatred or jealousy, the act gradually becomes more solemn and deliberate, and a formal rite is evolved.
It should hardly be necessary to say that it is not claimed that the foregoing paragraphs explain the genesis of all rites. But that many do thus originate accords with all we know of human nature. In any case a rite was not instituted because men were previously convinced of its efficacy. The primitive savage may have been a man of preternatural stupidity; but even he would not have been equal to putting the cart before the horse in that fashion. The rite must have been an established habit before a conscious meaning filtered into it. Interpretation would be a gradual process. If the rite were shared by the social group, and by expansion or accretion attained sufficient importance, the interpretation might take the form of a myth. The myth in turn would contribute to the stability of the rite, by means of the sacred character it would affix to it, or the reminiscence of an ancient experience it would be supposed to embody.
Thus ritual, religious or magical, is evolved long before belief has become definite and cogent. It may emerge from what I may style the mere surface of human nature, from necessities mainly physical, from direct nervous reaction. It may, on the other hand, have roots in the social relations of mankind. The savage naturally, habitually—I might almost say instinctively—applies the forms of social life to his relations with his non-human surroundings. Presumably, as we have seen, primitive man in his rough way did likewise.
But this affords no argument for holding that magic preceded religion. Rites are not necessarily magical because they are not addressed to defined personalities. They may be yet inchoate. Not until reflection has begun to clarify in some degree man’s relation to his environment (a slow and tedious process, slowest and most tedious of all in the early stages) can we reckon them satisfactorily under the one head or the other. If I am right in contending that magic and religion flow from a common source, rites may remain for generations in an indecisive condition which is neither, but may crystallize in either shape according to the specific occasion, the environment, or the dominant mental and institutional tendency of the social group. Such a transformation will be gradual and piecemeal, and in large part, if not entirely, unconscious. Many things done “for luck,” even in the higher civilizations, are still in this indeterminate state. The intellectual atmosphere is unfavourable; their development is arrested, probably for ever. I suspect that an accurate appreciation of the Intichiuma rites practised by the Arunta and their neighbours would show that they too are not finally to be assigned to either category.
The part played by society in the generation of religion demands some further observations. From whatever type of anthropoid ape man has been evolved, it is safe to believe that he has from the first lived in communities. But for this he could have made no progress, if even he could have existed as man. The condition of the solitary apes is incapable of improvement. It is incredible that if rudimentary human beings had lived like them in a group consisting at the utmost of a male, female, and still dependent young, they would ever have emerged into humanity, or that if they had emerged they would have been able to hold their own against the foes that surrounded them. The lowest human beings are never found solitary. If they wander on the food-quest, or are driven away from higher and more powerful societies, they do not fail to come together at certain times to enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to exchange experiences, to plan hunts or raids, to perform rites in common and partake of common pleasures. This implies organization. In fact, such communities, when they meet and live the communal life, are not found to be a mere incoherent congeries of individuals. They are true societies, organized, some more, some less closely, on a definite plan, in which every individual has his place. The Australian natives have evolved social institutions of proverbial complexity. The Bushmen of South Africa, persecuted and broken by intrusive races, have left us on the walls of the caverns they haunted representations marvellous in their skill of ceremonies apparently totemic. And if this interpretation of the drawings be doubtful, such remains as have been preserved of their traditions afford evidence of an organization by no means contemptible. The Seri of the Californian Gulf, perhaps on a still lower plane of civilization, and certainly leading their life in more miserable surroundings, are divided into clans and furnished with a social hierarchy built up on a reverence for women almost chivalrous in its type.[121.1]
The existence everywhere of organized societies implies the paramount influence of the community over the individual. Nor is that influence only a matter of implication. Abundant evidence is found of the control wielded by society over the actions and the very thoughts of its members. The individual is nothing: the group is everything. As Professor Durkheim remarks, every society exercises power over its members, power physical and above all moral. It keeps them in a sensation of perpetual dependence. It is distinct from the individuals who compose it, and consequently its interests are distinct from theirs. But as it cannot attain its ends except through and by means of the individual, it makes an imperious claim on his assistance, exacting it even to the sacrifice of his inclinations and interests. Thus at every moment we are obliged to submit to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor wished to make, and which may even be contrary to our most fundamental instincts.[121.2]
In these days and among civilized societies, when individualism is so strongly developed in thought and action, we are apt to forget to what an extent religion is an expression of the social organization. An eminent Oxford professor, not long ago deceased, used to say that religion was a social secretion. That may be an excellent way to phrase the relations between society and religion in modern Europe. It is a very incomplete account of them as they exist on the Australian steppe or in the forests of Brazil. In the lower culture religion is much more than a social secretion: it is one aspect of the social organization, inseparable from the rest. The organization cannot be understood without it—nay, it cannot exist apart from it. In these societies every member has his position and takes his share in religious rites. Whatever his place in the social scale, he is on the same level of knowledge, he shares in the same beliefs, with his fellows. The mental atmosphere of each is charged with the same electric fluid, which communicates itself to all alike. Especially on the occasions of reunion its action is intensified, frequently resulting in excitement, in vehement exaltation, translated into the wildest and most extravagant actions. But these reunions are not merely social, they are religious festivals. For religion pervades every thought and deed both of the individual and of the community. It binds the members together as no other force could do. The power of society over the individual is the power of religion. For religion is not as yet distinguished from politics, from law, from medicine, or from other forms of social activity that in our stage of culture have long vindicated their freedom.
Religion has therefore grown up with society. Its form has changed with the changing forms of society. It cannot be said to be generated by society, inasmuch as it is coeval with it. The very mould in which a society in the lower stages of culture is cast is religious. Church and State are of necessity coterminous, equivalent, one. But this evolution must of necessity have taken time. The inchoate society of half-human beings would have had a correspondingly vague and inchoate religion. As intelligence grew, the bonds of the horde would gather strength, what we may call public opinion would become more and more definite with the gradual acquisition of speech, until at last man emerged in something like a regularly ordered community. It is difficult for us to imagine the steps of this long process, by which, with society, what we call religion was evolved. I have tried in an earlier chapter to sketch the external conditions that would have impressed humanity in its dawn. These external conditions would have driven the individual more and more in upon the group, and thus would have materially contributed to the conscious formation of common interests founded upon the common need of material help, of sympathy, and of relief from anxiety and terror, whether of actual or imagined danger. The formation of common interests must have been accompanied by the increasing subordination of the individual to the group. In the extension of the authority of the group over the individual it is that M. Durkheim finds the origin of the idea of the impersonal force which the Omaha call wakonda. The idea, as I have shown, lies at the root of the religious conceptions of peoples in more than one vast cultural area. That such authority of the group, necessarily impersonal as it is, would operate to strengthen the concept of a general impersonal force, when once that concept had been formed, there can be no question. To ascribe to it the origin of the concept, however, seems to me an unwarranted inference. It is more probable that the conflict of the Personal and the Impersonal should arise in the awakening mind as the result of its outlook upon the world. The whole environment does not present a personal aspect at once. As personalities grow into relative definiteness one after another, there remains behind them the Unknown, full of vague possibilities, impersonal, but the source of personalities, which are for ever looming forth as the attention is concentrated on successive objects. Since it is the source of personalities, it is the source of power, mysterious and far-reaching, everywhere enveloping the beholder. It is true this power, in order to become effectual, must clothe itself with personal attributes. That, however, is not because it is formed on experience of the authority of the group acting by individuals, but because personalization is the inevitable tendency of the mind.
Professor Durkheim’s theory of religion is exhibited in detail only in one type. He speaks of “the aptitude of society to erect itself into a god or to create gods”;[124.1] but he illustrates his thesis only in the case of totemism, which he takes as an example of the religion of the least advanced people hitherto thoroughly examined. He is careful to say that the question whether totemism has been more or less widespread is of secondary importance; it is at all events the most primitive and the simplest religion it is possible to reach.[124.2] But his whole argument, if it prove anything, goes to show the universality of totemism. For the idea of the soul, according to the data of ethnography, appears to him to have been coeval with humanity, and that not merely in germ but in all its essential characters; and the soul is nothing else than the totemic principle incarnated in each individual, a portion of the collective soul of the group, that is to say of the totem, individualized.[124.3] Now totemism is certainly a very archaic form of religion. That it was universal is, however, very far from being demonstrated. It may well be that many branches of the human race have outgrown it, and that its traces have been obliterated. But among peoples very low down in culture there are many where it is unknown, or at least unrecognizable. It is more than possible, could we ascertain the facts, that Bushman society was organized on the basis of totemism. But there are other tribes no higher than Bushmen and Australian Blackfellows where we fail to discern it. The Veddas of Ceylon are indeed divided into clans with female descent. Yet no totem has emerged after the most careful enquiries. Their religion is essentially a cult of the dead, based on fear. The dead man is addressed as “Lord! New Driver-away of Vaeddas!” Sacrifices are offered and eaten as an act of communion with the deceased. In addition to the dead of the local group, “certain long-dead Veddas who may be regarded as legendary heroes” are invoked, of whom the most important are Kande Yaka, an ancient hunter whose assistance is implored for good hunting, and his brother Bilindi Yaka, a sort of pale double of himself. But they are not known among all the Vedda communities, though Kande is regarded by some as Lord or leader of the dead. There are also other spirits, who appear to be of foreign origin and superimposed upon the original cult of the dead, and are perhaps on their way to become nature-spirits.[125.1] The religion of the Andaman Islanders “consists of fear of the evil spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them.” There is besides an anthropomorphic being, Puluga, who is said to be “the cause of all things.” He receives no active worship, though acts thought to be displeasing to him are avoided “for fear of damage to the products of the jungle.” There is some evidence that he is the north-east wind; and Sir R. C. Temple is of opinion that he is “fundamentally, with some definiteness, identifiable with the storm, mixed up with ancestral chiefs.” He acts by his daughters, the Morowin, who are his messengers; but he seems to content himself with pointing out to the evil spirits offenders against himself, without actually taking steps against them.[126.1] Totemism is nowhere hinted at by the enquirers who have busied themselves with this childlike, and on the whole harmless, but somewhat capricious people.
Still very low in the scale of civilization, though somewhat higher than these, are the tribes of the interior forests of Brazil. They people their environment with imaginary beings more or less hostile. The object of their ceremonies appears to be to conciliate the favour of these gentry, or to hold them at arm’s length. When once the death-rites are completed little account is taken of the departed. So much we may gather from the reports of two German expeditions, written by distinguished scientific men who led the expeditions. Although they penetrated different parts of the country, there was a general resemblance between the civilization of the Indians met with by both explorers. A French anthropologist has remarked that English and German observers do not interest themselves to the same degree, or in the same way, in the social life of peoples in the lower culture; for whereas the German explorers by preference describe, and that with praiseworthy minuteness, the nature of the country and the material civilization of the people, the English, on the other hand, interest themselves more in the intellectual products, the traditions and beliefs. In other words, he said, the German is more of an ethnographer, the Englishman more of a student of folklore and psychologist. There is perhaps a measure of truth in this remark. It may go far to explain why more distinct and definite accounts have not been given either by Professor Karl von den Steinen or Dr Theodor Koch-Grünberg of the religions of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil. In any case, we miss much that we should have expected to find in their reports on the religious beliefs and ceremonies of these tribes. Among the omissions is that of any mention of totemism—an institution which concerns organization and government as much as religion. What renders the omission significant in the case of Professor von den Steinen, and not merely the result of want of interest in the subject, is that he has taken pains to ascertain and record the attitude of the natives towards the lower animals. He makes it clear that they draw no strict line of demarcation between man and brute. Nay, he goes the length of saying that we must think the boundary completely away. Human beings are indebted to the lower animals for the most important elements of their culture, many of which they have acquired from them by force or guile. More than that, the Bororó claim to be actually araras (a kind of bird with brilliant red plumage); their neighbours the Trumai are believed to be water-animals; a certain cannibal tribe is descended from the jaguar; and so forth. These beliefs are not totemic, for they concern not clans but whole tribes.[127.1] Apparently, therefore, there is no totemism among the wild forest-tribes investigated.
If the concept of the soul (which, it is needless to say, all these peoples possess) were coeval with humanity, and if it were only the totemic principle individualized, then totemism must have been coeval with humanity, and it must have been universal. If so, it is at least curious that the Veddas, the Andaman Islanders, and the forest-tribes of Brazil—all of them on the horizon of civilization on which totemism is found—should display no traces of it. If the concept of impersonal force, the substratum of religious and magical beliefs, be derived from the authority of society over the individual, and not merely strengthened and developed by it, it is odd that religious and magical beliefs should, so low down in culture, have issued in such widely divergent forms. The worship of the dead, the conciliation of hostile nature-spirits, the fear of an anthropomorphic being of enormous power, are all explicable as the result of the action of external conditions on human mentality and emotions. They are not explicable as the direct product of the authority of the group over the individual. And if totemism had originally held sway over the Veddas, the Mincopies and the Brazilian tribes, it is not easy to conceive how it could have evolved in directions so diverse,—and that without leaving any authentic witness to its past. It is quite another thing if the action of the group had been rather to combine and consolidate, to intensify and to organize the sensations and emotions awakened in its members by external nature, to give them a measure of definiteness in the process, and to habituate the individual to certain modes of reaction to the sensations, and to certain forms of expression of the beliefs engendered by the emotions thus awakened.
IV. Divergence
In the foregoing pages I have attempted to trace Magic and Religion to a common root. We have found them inextricably intertwined very low down in culture; we have seen the difficulty of distinguishing them by way of scientific definition, and have been forced back upon ordinary usage. Both alike are concerned with the supernatural and the uncanny; but the one deals with it by compulsion, by the direct exertion of human orenda upon the objects sought to be constrained, the other by the indirect method of appeal to mightier powers than human to exercise their orenda upon those objects, in order to obtain the result desired. And I have contended that the opposition of Magic and Religion, on which writers of authority like Professor Frazer and the late Sir Alfred Lyall have so much insisted, is so far from being essential that it is a result of their concurrent development and of the general advance of civilization, and is even yet imperfectly accomplished. The argument seems to require some further illustrations.
First, let me observe that the definition of magic here adopted does by no means coincide with that of Professor Frazer, though, like his, it rests upon the method of compulsion as the distinguishing characteristic. That, however, is not because of any faith by primeval man in the invariable order of nature or in the inevitable sequence of cause and effect. The compulsion of magic, as I understand it, is wielded by, and dependent upon, the personal orenda of the magician, either directly or through the medium of the powerful and uncanny beings whom he succeeds in bringing into play.
The idea of a god in our minds is associated with a reverential attitude that is very far from being universally adopted. In a later essay we shall see that threats of bodily injury, even (in the legends) actual hand-to-hand combats, and (in fact) chastisement of the material representatives of divinity, are often regarded as quite appropriate measures to be taken in dealing with beings who are ordinarily the objects of worship. I have already referred to the constraining power attributed to sacrifice and other rites in some of the more advanced religions. Where ritual has undergone a long term of development, where it has been subjected for many ages to continuous thought, and to elaboration in order to provide for new needs or against unforeseen contingencies, there it is apt to acquire a proportionate value of its own, independent of the merits of the performer. The sacrifice which is a gift to the gods imperiously demands its looked-for repayment, and will not be denied. The penance, whether it be in the nature of a sacrifice or a spell, carries with it, like the Hindu rite of dharna, an implied curse if not responded to. In either case the deity to whom it is directed has no choice but to comply.
The constraining influence may take a variety of forms, and is by no means confined to one plane of civilization, or to one cultural area. Sometimes it is expressed in knots to which is widely attributed what we call magical power. In Morocco, where civilization has rather deteriorated than progressed for many ages, the cult of the dead is largely prevalent. Professor Westermarck records that a Berber servant of his told him that once when in prison he invoked a certain great female saint whose tomb was in a neighbouring district, and tied his turban, saying: “I am tying thee, Lälla Rah’ma Yusf, and I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me.” And a person in distress will sometimes go to her grave and knot the leaves of some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words: “I tied thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou releasest me from the toils in which I am at present.”[130.1]
This perhaps also is, as Professor Westermarck suggests, a conditional curse. Now a curse, like other magical proceedings before referred to, is primarily a relief of overcharged feelings. Uttered with all the strength of those feelings by an aggrieved or baffled adversary, it evokes even in our breasts to-day shuddering and horror. Much more then in days when the man’s orenda was deemed to go out in speech with immediate result upon the object to which he directed it. When gods came to be adopted and worshipped, strength was added to the curse by invocation of the god. The god’s name added to the curse was an addition of the god himself. For the name is a part, and an important part, of the god, and cannot be used without effect. The god is bound to respond to it, and to act in accordance with the votary’s demand. For this reason the real names of gods were kept secret. Mystery thus attached to the name of the God of the Hebrews: hence the express prohibition to “take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Almost all over the world this belief in efficacy of the uttered name as a means of compulsion is responsible not merely for taboos on the names of gods, and of men living or dead, but also for the form and potency of magical formulæ. If you know the name of a spirit and utter it, or sometimes even threaten to utter it, you compel the owner’s attention to your wants. Or you may pretend to be some great personage, such as (wherever the Mohammedan tradition has penetrated) King Solomon or the angel Gabriel; and in that name you may issue your commands. Or, as among Christians, you call for the obedience of a spirit in the great name of God or the Lord Jesus Christ. In India to repeat the divine name aloud, or even by way of meditation, “is the most usual way of acquiring religious merit.… So much importance is given to this mode of meditation that Tulsidas in his Ramayan lays down that the name of Rama is greater than Rama himself.” In other words, its utterance compels him. “It is said of a certain Hindu who had notoriously lived a life of impiety that he obtained salvation by calling on his deathbed for his son by his name, which happened to be Nârâyan.”[132.1] The name Nârâyan is sacred. It was originally a title of Brahmâ, but is now usually applied to Vishnu, and is that under which he was first worshipped.[132.2]
The curse, if curse it were, involved in the rite practised by Professor Westermarck’s servant was not of the kind dependent on the utterance of a name. It was rather of that in which the curse is conveyed by a sign or figure deriving its power from the orenda of the magician himself. I have already referred to one species of such curses intended for the protection of property by marking it as taboo to the owner.[132.3] In this form they are chiefly used by the Malayo-Polynesian and Melanesian peoples and on the eastern side of Central Africa, though they have their analogues elsewhere.[132.4] The leaden tablets of defixiones employed by the ancient Greeks, of which numerous examples are known, show a similar practice founded on similar ideas. The tablet is inscribed with the name of the person intended to be injured, and it is then “defixed,” or bound, with a nail. The ceremony was doubtless accompanied by some words expressive of the intention. Indeed the expression of the intention was in course of time recorded on the tablet. A further stage in development was reached when the gods were invoked, beginning with Hermes and Ge, and going on to other chthonic divinities. Later, apparently towards the end of the third century B.C., the custom began of devoting to various gods lost property and the thief who had stolen it. Such tablets affixed to the walls of temples doubtless served the purpose of our advertisements for the recovery of lost or stolen property. The difference is that, whereas we offer material rewards, the Greeks invoked the help of the gods and threatened the thief or receiver with supernatural vengeance.[133.1] The use of defixiones spread into Italy, and has lasted into quite modern times, or, it may be truer to say, was revived under the influence of learned men who at the close of the Middle Ages became imbued with the astrology and magic of earlier days. One of these learned men, Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, who attained high judicial office under the Emperor Charles the Fifth, but afterwards got into trouble for his occult studies, wrote a book on Occult Philosophy, which was translated into English in the middle of the seventeenth century. At that time the study of magic was falling into disrepute. Agrippa’s book was left to charlatans who preyed upon the ignorant. Some of the results have been found up and down the country in the form of leaden tablets inscribed with curses, mystical numbers and signs, names of the spirits invoked to make the curses effectual and of the victims against whom the curses were intended to operate.[133.2] In these modern cases the powers appealed to are no longer beings recognized by the dominant religion. They are relics of religions passed away, or figments of the pedantic imagination. Magic, in short, has for purposes of private vengeance been ousted from religion and has set up for itself.
At any rate the Moroccan rite involves a threat; and a threat is near akin to a curse. Much may be done with gods, as with men, by means of a little judicious bluff. A certain Malay robber kept six tame spirits, to whom he made an offering from time to time. When he did so he called them by name, bidding them: “Come here! Eat my offering! Take you care that my body is not affected, that the flow of my blood is not stayed! Likewise with the bodies of my wife and children. (If not) I’ll turn the earth and the sky the wrong way round!” He was fully convinced of the power of these spirits and apparently of the value of his terrible threat, though, as Mr Annandale, who reports the case, points out, the spirits had been unable to save him from being convicted and imprisoned for his crimes.[134.1]
In ancient Egypt magic was practised in connection with religion from prehistoric times. Magic and religion “were two products of one and the same Weltanschauung, not disparate either in their methods or in their psychological basis. Nor were they differently estimated from the ethical point of view: magic was deemed permissible, so long as it was turned to no evil purpose. It follows that the classification of Egyptian superstitious practices as (a) religious, (b) magical, must be a purely external mode of classification: the distinction between religion and magic in Egypt has not, and cannot be made to have, any deeper significance.”[135.1] The scholar from whom I quote these words, so far from exaggerating the close relationship between magic and religion, may be said to understate it. Magic was an integral part of religion. The priests of the gods were magicians. Magic was employed in the ritual of worship. It enabled the great god Ra to overcome the serpent Apep.[135.2] Magical ceremonies performed by the priests over the mummy, or over a statuette representing the deceased, were the means by which his success in passing the necessary tests and his lasting happiness after death were secured. The means employed were those universally known to magic: amulets, waxen and other figures, pictures, spells and words of power, the knowledge of names, rites imitating the results desired, and so forth. Concerning the dead we are told: “Few were those who remained for ever with the Sun, and they were not necessarily the great ones of the earth, nor yet the very good, but those who possessed the most minute information as to the next world, and who were best versed in magic. Thus the whole doctrine is based on a belief in the power of magic.”[135.3] “In the next world a correct knowledge of magic words and formulas was absolutely essential. There no door would open to him who knew not its name; no demon would allow the passage of the dead who did not call upon him correctly, nor would any god come to his help unless invoked by the right name; no food could be had so long as the exactly prescribed prayers were not uttered with the true intonations. But the dead who knew these formulas, and who knew how to speak them correctly at the proper moment, who was maâ kherû (right-speaking), might rest assured of immortality and of eternal blessedness.”[136.1] This led of course to the multiplication of spells, to the elaboration of ritual, during the long ages of Egyptian history, until at last they must have become extremely burdensome.
Moreover, sorcery was not only expended by man in the service of the gods and of the dead: it was used by the gods themselves. “Only by means of conjurations could Ra himself pass through” the divisions between the twelve hourly spaces of the night.[136.2] By the power of his name Neb-er-tcher or Khepera, often identified with certain aspects of Ra, the Sun, evolved himself and created the world.[136.3] The secret name of Ra was a word of might. Isis set herself with all her arts to learn it, that she might possess the world in heaven and upon earth as Ra did (that is, become a goddess); and when she had extorted it from the august divinity, she turned the weapon without hesitation upon himself.[136.4] By examples like these men were authorized to have recourse to magic in their own secular concerns, their loves and hates, their sickness, their social and business relations, their private enterprizes, their competitions and resentments. Kings consulted the soothsayers on public affairs; they employed magical processes to vanquish their enemies; with the aid of soothsayers and magicians they governed their realm. It was only when sorcery was directed against the king’s life, when it aimed at the overthrow of his power, or the injury or death of others, that it was reckoned a crime, or even reprehended on moral grounds.
Nor did the magician hesitate to compel even the gods to perform his wishes, and to threaten them, like the Malay robber, with dire disaster to themselves and the universe as a punishment of their obstinacy. In one papyrus preserved to us, for example, a woman in labour declares herself to be Isis and summons the gods to her help. If they refuse to come, “Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be, offerings shall no longer be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis. The firmament of the south shall fail, and disaster shall break forth from the sky of the north. Lamentations shall resound from the graves, the midday sun shall no longer shine, the Nile shall not bestow its waters of inundation at the appointed time.”[137.1] Such bombastic menaces as these continued to be part of the practitioner’s stock-in-trade in the Roman Empire to the downfall of paganism.
Among the ancient Greeks in Plato’s time there were soothsayers and medicine-men who professed to have power over the gods, so that they could compel them to do their bidding, even though it were to injure another person.[137.2] I am not aware whether any of their spells have been preserved.[137.3]
Cases like these display the religion of the community applied to the private advantage of the individual. More interesting is the authority which Mr Hodson attributes to the khullakpa, or village priest, of the Naga tribes of Manipur. The khullakpa is to be distinguished from the maiba, or medicine-man, who is doctor and magician in one. The maiba is called in to deal with individual cases; the khullakpa plays the leading part when a village genna is held. It is he who offers the sacrifices and performs the rites. The term genna means forbidden. A genna extending to the whole village excludes strangers from entering, and prohibits the inhabitants from going out and from doing any work while the genna lasts; it may also prescribe fasting, continence, and other observances. In short, “the ordinary routine of life is profoundly modified, if not broken off altogether.” A genna may be either periodical, as for the sake of the crops or the hunting; or it may be occasional, as at a death, or against epidemic sickness, or at an earthquake or eclipse. A sacrifice is invariably a part of the ritual. The khullakpa “acts,” says Mr Hodson, “whenever a rite is performed which requires the whole force of the community behind it, and this force finds its operation through him. These village gennas seem in many cases to be inspired by the belief that man, the man, the khullakpa, when fortified by the whole strength and will of the village, is able to control and constrain forces which are beyond his control if unaided.”[139.1] If this inference, made by an acute observer, be correct, it is a remarkable example of the corporate strength of the society applied by means of religious rites to the coercion of the gods and other supernatural beings.
Not a little significant of the intimate relations of religion and magic is the fact that many peoples have expressly ascribed the authorship and practice of magic to their gods. In New South Wales the figure of Baiame, the idealized headman just developing into a god, is modelled upon that of a magician. He is described by one of the tribes in so many words as “mightiest and most famous of Wirreenun,” or magicians.[139.2] The Arawâk of British Guiana tell of a similar personage in a semi-deified position, named Arawânili or Orowâma, to whom the mysteries of sorcery were revealed by an orehu. The orehu is a sort of mermaid who is an important figure in the mythology of these Indians. She haunts the rivers, a capricious, mischievous, not always malicious and cruel, but sometimes benevolent figure. In one of her kindlier moments she met Arawânili brooding over the condition to which men were reduced by the evil doings of the yauhahu, downright malignant beings, the authors of sickness and death. To combat their depredations she gave him the sorcerer’s rattle and instructed him how to use it. “He followed her directions and thus became the founder of that system which has since prevailed among all the Indian tribes.” According to Arawâk belief Arawânili did not die like other men, but “went up,” that is to say, disappeared or departed in the manner of other American culture-heroes. We have no evidence, however, that he is actually worshipped.[140.1]
The coast-dwellers of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Pomerania, whose effective belief is in spirits, both manes and spirits non-human in origin, presuppose in their witchcraft the existence of these spirits. Sickness and other ills are caused by evil-disposed spirits, and are combated by magic. But this magic is due to the superior might of well-disposed spirits. It is they who reveal the spells by which human ailments may be vanquished and human desires gratified. Among these spirits are especially to be named the Inal, a spirit with wings like a bird’s and face like an owl’s, inhabiting a great giao-tree (Ficus prolixa), and the Kaya, a gigantic python with human face, worshipped by certain of the natives as ancestor. From the ascription to spirits of all spells made use of by the sorcerers, Father Meier, to whom we are indebted for our knowledge of the native beliefs, infers that the belief in spirits preceded witchcraft.[140.2] Whether the inference be right or wrong, there can be no doubt of the fact that this belief and witchcraft are now inseparable.
Among the Lushai-Kuki of Assam, Pathian the creator, a quasi-supreme and benevolent being, was acquainted with, but is not definitely stated to have been the author of, witchcraft. It was taught by his daughter, as a ransom for her life, to Vahrika, who had caught her stealing water from his private supply. Vahrika is described as “something like” Pathian—a purely mythological figure. He in turn taught it all to others.[140.3] In Japan, Jimmu Tennō, the deified legendary founder of the empire, is said to have first taught the use of magical formulæ; while the gods Ohonamochi and Sukunabikona are credited with the invention of medicine and magic.[141.1] The ancient Egyptians held Thoth, the god of writing and guardian of law, “to have written the most sacred books and formulas with his own hand, and therein to have set down his knowledge of magic, in which art Isis was his only rival. His pre-eminence in magic naturally led to his becoming the god of medicine, for magic was fully as important to the medical practitioners of the Nile Valley as knowledge of remedies.”[141.2] In other words, medicine was not yet separated from magic, the physician was a sorcerer, who may have been versed in simples, but whose practice was essentially mysterious and derived its effect rather from what we call supernatural than natural modes of action. Hence to recognize Thoth as god of medicine was equivalent to recognizing him as god of magic, a character peculiarly suitable to a god of letters.
Finally, not to lengthen the list, if we may trust the Ynglinga-saga, Odin was the author of those crafts which men have long since plied, and among them of magic. He “was wise in that craft wherewith went most might, which is called spell-craft; and this he himself followed. Wherefore he had might to know the fate of men and things not yet come to pass; yea, or how to work for men bane or illhap or ill-heal, and to take wit or strength from men and give them unto others.” He was a notorious shape-shifter. “He knew how by words alone to slake the fire or still the sea, and how to turn the wind to whichso way he would.” He could “wake up dead men from the earth.” He “knew of all buried treasures where they were hidden; and he knew lays whereby the earth opened before him, and mountains and rocks and mounds, and how to bind with words alone whoso might be found dwelling therein; and he would go in and take thence what he would. From all this craft he became exceeding famed, and his foes dreaded him, but his friends put their trust in him, and had faith in his craft and himself; but he taught the more part of his cunning to the temple-priests, and they were next to him in all wisdom and cunning: albeit many others got to them much knowledge thereof, and thence sorcery spread far and wide and endured long.”[142.1] Although the opening chapters of the Ynglinga-saga, from which I have extracted these particulars, are a late and euhemerized version of the Scandinavian mythology, the account of Odin’s magical powers contains little that does not appear in the early poems, or cannot be inferred from them. Whatever may have been the primitive form of this renowned god, there can be no doubt that he was before the close of the pagan age regarded as a god of magic and sorcery. His reputation as god of poetry, and probably as war-god, is bound up with this. The magical value attached to verse is very common among peoples in an archaic stage of culture; and it was shared to the full by the ancient Norsemen. Many of them—at least in Viking days, and it is by no means unlikely much earlier—combined in their own persons the warrior with the poet and the sorcerer. Nor shall we go far astray if we conclude that these various strands had been long interwoven to form the character of the Lord of the Anses. The intimate relation existing among the Norse between religion and magic is further indicated by the superior magical knowledge and powers ascribed to them and stated to be originally derived from Odin.
Thus, on the one hand, we find constraint of the higher powers for public or private ends; on the other hand, the invention of spells and practice of magic are attributed to the gods themselves. We may think that constraint of the gods is inconsistent with worship. This is not the notion of peoples among which magic and religion are thus interwoven. The object of religion is to acquire benefits for the individual or the community. With this end men deem themselves justified in applying any means likely to secure it; and they treat their gods as they would powerful fellow-men, seeking favours where favours are to be had for the asking or in return for favours, enforcing compliance with their wishes where prayers will not avail, or cheating them where they get the chance. The repetition of a divine name may be either a favour to the god, or may be compulsion. The votary cares not to distinguish. In either case it brings about the gratification of his wishes. The village genna practised by the Nagas is compulsion. It is none the less worship. Many of the magical texts of ancient Egypt are directed to assisting the gods to overcome their enemies, thus rendering them a favour which they were bound to return. The ritual of the Scapegoat, familiar to us in its Hebrew form,[143.1] but in fact found in many other quarters of the globe, presents another form of these magical practices. The sins of which men have been guilty, the evils from which they have been suffering are laden on the head of the unfortunate victim, who is forthwith put to death or driven away forever from society. Whether in the earliest form of the rite the victim was regarded as divine may be doubted: it is certain that it has been taken up into the cult of the gods in many religions, and has been deemed a pious act, a work of obligation, for the wellbeing of the joint community of gods and men.
Divine beings may even be made accomplices in Black or antisocial Magic without any compulsion. The white-headed carrion-hawk (Haliaster intermedius) is the most important bird of omen observed by the Kenyahs of Borneo. Under the name of Bali Flaki he is looked upon as messenger and intermediary between themselves and Bali Penyalong, the Supreme Being. Apparently every individual hawk is such a messenger, but his sacred character appears in his title Bali: a word probably derived from the Sanskrit and sometimes translated holy, but having the force of “an adjectival equivalent of the mana of the Melanesians, or of the wakanda or orenda of North American tribes, words which seem to connote all power other than purely mechanical.”[144.1] Bali Flaki is appealed to publicly on behalf of the community on various occasions, as on sowing or harvesting the rice-crop, making war or peace, or in fact before any undertaking or decision. His aid may also “be sought privately by any man who wishes to injure another. For this purpose a man makes a rough wooden image in human form, and retires to some quiet spot on the river-bank, where he sets up a tegulun, a horizontal pole supported about a yard above the ground by a pair of vertical poles. He lights a small fire beside the tegulun, and taking a fowl in one hand, he sits on the ground behind it, so as to see through it a square patch of sky, and so waits until a hawk becomes visible upon the patch. As soon as a hawk appears he kills the fowl, and with a frayed stick smears its blood on the wooden image, saying: ‘Put fat in his mouth.’” This appears to be addressed to the hawk. In the description of what is in effect the same rite as practised among some of the Klemantans of the same island, we are definitely told it is so addressed. The expression means, “Let his head be taken”; for the people are head-hunters, and fat is put in the mouth of every head taken. Messrs Hose and M‘Dougall, whom I am quoting, proceed: “And he puts a bit of fat in the mouth of the image. Then he strikes at the breast of the image with a wooden spear, and throws it into a pool of water reddened with red earth, and then takes it out and buries it in the ground,” in the manner in which only persons dying by violence or some much feared disease are buried. “While the hawk is visible he waves it towards the left; for he knows that if it flies to the left he will prevail over his enemy, but that if it goes to the right his enemy is too strong for him.” In the Klemantan rite, as described for us, he also shouts to the hawk to go to the left. When it has gone in the desired direction he addresses a prayer beginning “O Bali Flaki, go your way, let this man (naming him) die; go and put him in the lake of blood, O Bali Flaki; stab him in the chest, Bali Flaki,” and so on, invoking all sorts of evil deaths upon him.[145.1] Now here we have a well-known rite of antisocial magic. But to make it effectual the coöperation of the divine power is requisite. That power is called upon. There is no attempt to coerce Bali Flaki, who, if not himself a god, is at least a messenger and intermediary of the great god Bali Penyalong. Yet there is confidence that he can perform the request, and that he shows by his flight that he will do so.
So on the mainland of India, in the Nilgiri Hills, the Toda sorcerer, having procured some human hair—not that of the person to be injured, for it would be impossible to get it—ties together by its means five small stones, and with a piece of cloth makes a bundle of them. Over them thus tied up he utters his incantation. It begins by calling on his gods; and whether the opening clauses be precisely rendered or not in the following free translation, it is clear that the gods are invoked. Indeed, Dr Rivers, after careful enquiry, expresses the opinion that “in the formulæ used in Toda sorcery appeal to the gods is even more definite than in the prayers of the dairy ritual,” the most important of the religious ceremonies. “In them,” he says, “the names of four most important gods are mentioned, and it seems quite clear that the sorcerer believes he is effecting his purpose through the power of the gods.” The spell runs something like this: “For the sake of Pithioteu, Ön, Teikirzi and Tirshti; by the power of the gods, if there be power; by the gods’ country, if there be a country; may his calves perish; as birds fly away, may his buffaloes go when the calves come to suck; as I drink water, may he have nothing but water to drink; as I am thirsty, may he also be thirsty; as I am hungry, may he also be hungry; as my children cry, so may his children cry; as my wife wears only a ragged cloth, so may his wife wear only a ragged cloth.” The bundle thus enchanted he hides in the thatch of the victim’s hut.[146.1]
Another example of the complicity in hostile magic of a supernatural being, who perhaps can hardly be pronounced a god in the strict sense of the term, though powerful for good and ill, may be cited, this time from the continent of Africa. The religion of the Boloki (Bangala) on the Upper Congo, we are told, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole or appease, cheat, or conquer and kill those spirits that trouble them—hence their nganga [medicine-man], their rites, their ceremonies and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to be circumvented, there would be no need of their medicine-men and their charms.” Among these various spirits is one called Ejo, the spirit of wealth. “A man who wants to become rich pays a large fee to nganga ya bwaka [the most feared and respected of all the classes of medicine-men], who then uses his influence with Ejo on behalf of his client, who must in all future gains set apart a portion for Ejo, and should he fail to do so, Ejo has the power to punish him.… When a person has received the mono mwa ejo (ejo medicine or charm), and has become wealthy by his luck-giving power, he takes the nail-parings and hair-cuttings of a woman and makes medicine with them; and the woman soon dies and her spirit goes to Ejo as an offering for its help. He is said to lekia nkali (to pass her on as a gift or sacrifice to Ejo).”[147.1] It is difficult to distinguish a transaction like this from the ordinary relations of a man to his god. The votary pays tithe of his gains obtained by favour of the spirit; and over and above the tithe, he is under the necessity of providing a human sacrifice from time to time for the spirit. But the means by which the sacrifice is provided are the exercise of witchcraft, and that with the full knowledge and assistance of the supernatural being who is to be kept in good humour thereby.
An example of the intermingling of religion and magic in a different way may also be taken from the same people. “Physical phenomena (as heavy storms), when taking place about the time that a person dies, or is being buried, are regarded as caused by the deceased person; hence when a storm threatens to break during the funeral festivities of a man, the people present will call the beloved child of the deceased, and, giving him a lighted ember from the hearth with a vine twined round it, they will ask him to stop the rain. The lad steps forward and waves the vine-encircled ember towards the horizon where the storm is rising, and says: ‘Father, let us have fine weather during your funeral ceremonies.’ The son, after this rite, must not drink water (he may drink sugar-cane wine), nor put his feet in water for one day. Should he not observe this custom, the rain will at once fall.”[148.1] The boy’s father, having died, has become a mongoli, that is to say, an ancestral spirit of indefinite powers, who watches over the perpetuation of his family, haunts the forest or the river, inspires mediums to deliver oracles, and visits the village at times in the material form of a crocodile or a hippopotamus to receive offerings of sugar-cane wine and food. His favourite son has influence with him to change his purposes, and exercises that influence by prayer. But to make the prayer effectual in staying the storm, he must use a widely diffused charm against rain—the waving of a brand and abstinence from water.
It is probable, as we have seen, that the early stages of ritual were vague and inchoate. It was adaptable to interpretation as culture progressed, as new beliefs were evolved or imported. Such an example of adaptability has been pointed out by Miss Werner in a rite practised by the Anyanja of British Central Africa when rain is wanted. It is complete in itself, but is now prefaced by an appeal to Mpambe, a quasi-supreme being. “The principal part was taken by a woman—the chief’s sister. She began by dropping ufa [maize-flour] on the ground, slowly and carefully, till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched voice, ‘Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula’ (Hear thou, O God, and send rain!), and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning—they always intone their prayers—‘Imva Mpambe.’ The beer was then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a form of salutation to superiors), and finally danced round the chief where he sat on the ground.” Then followed the rite in question. “The dance ceased; a large jar of water was brought and placed before the chief. First Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms and face; then water was poured over her by another woman; then all the women rushed forward with calabashes in their hands, and, dipping them into the jar, threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild gesticulations.” This is obviously a rain-charm, but, as Miss Werner says, it “might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is wanted.” She adds: “Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to show that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and wash themselves in the rivers and streams.”[149.1] The women’s action and cries may be interpreted as addressed to someone or something, though possibly originating merely in excessive emotion and now become traditional. It would be only necessary for the cries to become articulate and the name of Mpambe, or some other name, to be pronounced, to form a genuine invocation, as has happened in the Boloki rite just described. Actually the invocation forms the preliminary of the rite: that may be what, for want of better knowledge, we should call an accident. That it is comparatively recent is shown by the employment of maize-flour. The evolution might easily have taken another course.
Turning to another continent, we may find an example of adaptability of a more elaborate ceremony. The Navaho are in the main an Athapascan people who have wandered down to the sterile plains of New Mexico and Arizona. There, ages ago, they came into contact with the more settled Pueblo tribes. The researches of American anthropologists show the practical identity of certain of their religious rituals with those of their Pueblo neighbours. It would seem that these rituals have been taken over from the latter. This is only natural, seeing that the Navaho came down from the north with an undeveloped culture and organization into a country where new needs were experienced and a higher civilization was met with. But in taking over the rituals they have applied them to purposes different from those of their original performers. The chief aim of the ceremonies as used among the Pueblo tribes is to obtain fertility, and the condition of fertility is rain. This is clear from the use made of corn-meal and corn-pollen. “Pollen is the symbol of fertility, and the rite at bottom is for rain. The Navaho took over the use of the corn and the pollen together with the other features; but the corn no longer served its previous purpose as a prayer for rain and the ripening of the crops: it was used for the cure of disease.”[151.1] The Dene or Athapascans, of which stem the Navaho are a branch, are a people of migratory hunters. Agriculture would be foreign to them. Their principal ceremonies are concerned with the conjuration of evil spirits and the cure of diseases, which are usually ascribed to the spirits. It was natural that when they borrowed the ceremonies of a settled agricultural community they should imbue them with their own ideas. In their hands the cure of disease “became the fundamental feature of the borrowed rites. A ceremony intended for rain-making would naturally need some alteration in order to serve as a cure of disease.”[151.2] And it has received it. The fact that they have been able so to adapt the rites probably points to some want of definiteness in the form of the rites at the time they were borrowed.
Another illustration of adaptability is seen in the rites at wells or rocks common all over Europe. What may have been the original cause of the sacredness of a well or a rock, what may have been the original intention of the processions, the dances and the decorations we have of course no means of knowing. We may guess that some peculiarity in the shape of the rock, the sweet or healing waters of the fountain, or some sudden and unexplained or untoward incident first called and concentrated popular attention, and that a precise, intelligible meaning may hardly have been attached to the few and simple ceremonies first performed. In course of time, we may conjecture, ritual and belief were elaborated and defined. However this may be, we know that before the end of paganism—at least in those countries of the west where inscriptions have been preserved—a spirit or god was believed to haunt the place and to preside over the rites of which it was the scene. To him they were addressed, and it was his favour they sought to conciliate. Christianity came and diverted the rites to new objects, not altogether forbidding, but baptizing them, in accordance with the policy enunciated in Pope Gregory’s famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus. All these changes necessitate adaptations of practice. That which at first was formless receives a definite form. That which may have been an indeterminate expression of awe and reverence becomes distinctly worship, though not without elements, often retained to the last, that we should call magical. And the changes in the nominal objects of worship are accompanied by progressive changes in the details of the ritual. Lastly when, as in many cases, official recognition of the ritual is abandoned, and it is left to the unguided superstition of the peasant, it tends to slip back into its original indeterminate condition. Acts are performed or avoided, and ceremonies undertaken, not as worship of a power known and resident on the hallowed spot, but for benefits sometimes precise, more often for luck mysterious, impersonal, half-credited, or from fear of something equally mysterious, but for that reason all the more terrible. Beyond this, the practices linger into a stage, unknown to the savages who began them, where they are performed for pleasure, or else in the hope of monetary gain, by children and adolescents, and die away gradually under the stress of modern life and the influence of the schoolmaster.
The earlier stages of this round may, as we have seen, be observed occasionally in the rites of peoples still in the lower culture. Close observation, accurate analysis and comparison would probably result in finding them more frequently. Meanwhile let us turn to another question.
If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. But this unity, as civilization progresses, becomes more and more unstable. Where, as is said to be the case in Morocco, civilization has recoiled, magic comes more and more to the front. Though it does so not without protests on the part of those who retain any consciousness of the higher development of religion, still on the whole it is successful in overlaying religion and pushing it into the background. Another people whose religion is in process of degeneration, if Dr Rivers’ opinion be correct, is the Todas. There the magic of the dairy ritual has thrust aside the worship of the gods. In this case, however, the opposition is not open and avowed. The history of the Todas is a blank. We cannot put our finger on one period and say: Here the gods were worshipped and the dairy magic was unknown. We have no records. We can only conclude from an examination of the internal evidence that the gods once played a more prominent part in the life of the community than they do now, but that Toda culture had not so far progressed that magic was not an inseparable part of religion, and that any growth of magic at the expense of religion would have been viewed without misgiving or even consciousness. Even religions where the opposition is most pronounced are themselves by no means pure from magic. All the subtlety, all the rhetoric of theologians may well be needed to rebut the charge of magic against the seven sacraments of the Church. I at least have no intention to risk the curse levelled by the Council of Trent at him who denies their efficacy ex opere operato, and whether or not the minister may be in a state of mortal sin.
In denouncing witchcraft the Christian Church has followed the lead of the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew law against witchcraft was unambiguous, pitiless. “Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live”[154.1] is the grim direction of the oldest Hebrew writing. It is expanded by the Deuteronomist: “When thou art come into the land which Yahwè thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found with thee anyone that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth divination, one that practiseth augury, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto Yahwè; and because of these abominations Yahwè thy God doth drive them out from before thee.”[154.2] This is pretty comprehensive. Yet it left many practices within the national religion, recognized as part of it, though essentially magical. The scapegoat I have already mentioned. The ordeal of the water of bitterness, to which a woman suspected by her husband of infidelity was compelled to submit, is equally a magical proceeding.[154.3] Both are sanctioned, not to say prescribed, by Yahwè; though in their present form the prescriptions may be late. Divination is prohibited, and consultation with familiar spirits or the ghosts of the dead, augury, and the taking of omens. Nevertheless, the children of Israel enquired of Yahwè, and he answered them by dreams; and the high priest divined by means of Urim and Thummim. Teraphim seem to have been amulets—one might almost say fetishes. They are referred to more than once in the Hebrew books. As late as the prophet Hosea they were not merely tolerated but regarded as necessities to the prosperity of the people. “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar (massebah), and without ephod or teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”[155.1] The use of the ephod was probably connected with divination, and Yahwè, speaking through the prophet, expressly countenanced not only this, but also the use of teraphim. With growing monotheism they were, however, eventually repressed.
Indeed, a comparison of the passages in which reference is made to various magical practices will suggest that the real reason of the hostility to them arose from their connection with heathenism. They were representative practices of a rival religion. They hindered the concentration of worship on Yahwè at his sole shrine on Mount Zion. On the other hand, the casting out of evil spirits continued unabated and unreproved into New Testament times, and the wearing of personal amulets in the shape of phylacteries persists among the uneducated classes of Jews to the present day and has full rabbinical sanction. Both these practices are uncontrovertibly magical.
Similar considerations inspired mediæval hostility to witchcraft, and continued it with little decrease of intensity into the eighteenth century. Witchcraft was rebellion against the established religion. It was identified with heresy. It involved contempt of the omnipotent priesthood, derogating thus not merely from its reputation, but also its gains. It was believed even to set up a rival god. This belief was an inheritance from primitive Christianity, which looked upon the heathen gods as devils. Every miracle which imposed on the credulity of those ages, if performed by a Christian, was attributed to divine interference; if performed, on the contrary, by a pagan, was with as little hesitation ascribed to Satan and his underlings. In either case nobody doubted the fact of the occurrence, or thought it worth while minutely to examine the evidence. The hostility of the Church to witchcraft had, however, the excuse that the heathen rites were in a large measure magical, and that magic, other than Black Magic, was avowedly practised during pagan times and regarded with toleration, if not complacency. Heathenism died a hard death. Somewhat changed in form it survived for centuries; and many of the heretical sects were more or less impregnated with it.
But all this does not fully account for the horror and hatred felt against magic alike by churchmen and the laity. What gave intensity to the opposition was the dread that magical powers would be used to the disadvantage, the injury, the death of all against whom the magician had a grudge. So persistently did this dread take hold of the imagination that the practice of magic was finally identified with Black Magic, and to be accused of witchcraft meant to be charged with the attempt to injure, and perhaps to slay, one’s neighbours by mysterious, and because mysterious, horrible means. Against proceedings of this kind there was no protection but in hunting out and putting an end to the magicians. This feeling had manifested itself even in pagan times. Both in Greece and at Rome the laws condemned magicians to death.
It is, in fact, the tendency to individualism rather than magic itself that has awakened hostility everywhere. But this tendency is inherent in magic. In the lower stages of civilization magic is undistinguished not only from religion but from medicine, from astronomy, from engineering, from literary learning, from the practice of industries other than the simplest and of art. Consequently everyone who possesses a little more skill than ordinary, or is credited with a knowledge surpassing that of the vulgar, faces the inevitable risk of being reputed a magician, and the suspicion of using his advantages to the detriment of others. Nor is the suspicion unfounded. Human nature being what it is, power, of whatever kind, is utilized for the benefit of its possessor, frequently without regard to the claims of others or the public good. The shaman or the wizard who is called in to the aid of the sick is often the depositary of knowledge of healing herbs and of poisons. The powers that are at the disposal of beneficence are equally applied to baleful ends. The healing of disease, whether it be effected by suggestion or by physical remedies, may be a social good: primarily and directly it is an individual benefit. To put the public foe under a spell excites the approval of the community. To lay a private enemy low is a very different matter. But the same expert by the exercise of the same skill performs both. Moreover, he subserves the ends of private gain and private revenge with equal indifference, and, it is believed, by the same mysterious means. In all these instances the professor of magic places his skill, knowledge, experience, and the terror of his name and incantations—in one word, his orenda—at the service of his clients without distinction. As civilization advances, and religion and religious ministers begin to be differentiated from the wizard or medicine-man, the latter is probably called on less and less to perform rites on behalf of the public, and more and more on behalf of individuals. The portions of magic that can be disposed for the purposes of the community are taken up into religion. What remains when this is done becomes specifically the method and practice of the magician. Small wonder then that the only magic recognized as such is antisocial magic.
On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. Everyone observes it, because upon it depends the weal of all alike. Everyone’s eye too is upon his neighbour; and a departure from custom is sure to be noticed, and equally sure to be resented as something sinister. At the least it is viewed with suspicion and concern. Done innocently, it will bring misfortune on the doer and all connected with him. Done with a purpose, it is abhorred and punished as evil magic. Happily the fear of witchcraft is not everywhere an obsession. Where it is, as almost all over Africa, it has become the most powerful cause of the stagnation of culture. Mr Weeks, a missionary of long experience, and an admirable observer, speaking of the Bangala on the Upper Congo, says the native “has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native, to save his life and live in peace, has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him.”[159.1]
This deplorable result is attributable to the suspicion of antisocial ends. It is this kind of magic which alone is reprobated in the lower culture. Death is very generally regarded as unnatural. If not caused by open violence, it must be due to spirits or to magic. Magic indeed is often deemed responsible for deaths by violence, or deaths credited to the immediate action of the spirits. Magic sets both causes in motion. Hence at a death, however occasioned, an inquest is commonly held to ascertain who is responsible; the accused is required to undergo an ordeal, and is punished if found guilty—as he usually is. But it is not the practice of magic that is condemned; it is the application of magic to the injury of the community. The chieftain of a tribe of Bantu “smells out” and puts to death the witch who has slain his father. The same chieftain will habitually practise magic on another chief before fighting with him. He will make rain, or employ a wizard for the purpose. His sacrifices and acts of worship are inextricably mingled with magic. Even when the schism between magic and religion has attained much wider dimensions than anywhere among the Bantu, it is rather magic in its antisocial aspect than in itself that is reprobated and punished. The departure from established custom and established belief involves a severance from the community and an imputation of antisocial ends. The pursuit of individual desires and hatreds at odds with the general interest is what arouses the anger of society. Practices essentially magical may be incorporated in religious rites and exercised for what is believed to be the public good; and they will continue to be exercised with general assent, even in the highest forms of religion.