Magic and religion are very generally held to be not only distinct from one another, but antithetical. There is, however, a tendency among certain living students to regard them as analogous phenomena, both being expressions of a belief in a power or energy which may be designated by the Melanesian term “mana,” or the American “orenda.” It has more than once been pointed out that it is in some cases very hard—perhaps impossible—to determine whether certain actions can be classed as either magical or religious, as they appear to belong to both categories. As in the case of religion from the ethnological standpoint, magic has been investigated in the field, and immediate references to it are to be found in ethnological literature—the comparative study of magic has to some extent been undertaken by Frazer, Jevons, and others; but one of the most important contributions to the subject is by Hubert and Mauss,[[110]] who treat it from a sociological aspect.
[108]. An Introduction to Social Psychology, 1908.
[109]. Congress of Arts and Sci., St. Louis, 1904, v. (1906), p. 869.
[110]. H. Hubert et M. Mauss, “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la magie,” L’Année sociologique, vii., 1904. M. Mauss, “L’Origine des pouvoirs magiques dans les sociétés Australiennes,” École pratique des Haute Études (Sec. Relig.), 1904.
Anthropology and Religion.
Parson Thwackum in Tom Jones says: “When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.” Anthropology, by a reverse process, passes “in larger sympathy from specific creeds to partake of the universal spirit which every creed tries to embody.”[[111]] The interest of Anthropology in religion was defined by Huxley.[[112]] “Anthropology has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of religion—it holds itself absolutely and entirely aloof from such questions—but the natural history of religion, and the origin and growth of the religions entertained by the different tribes of the human race, are within its proper and legitimate province.”
[111]. Clodd, Animism, 1905, p. 11.
[112]. Address to Dept. of Anthrop., Brit. Ass. Dublin, 1878.
This is not the place to attempt a definition of religion—a task which has led to so many failures. We must be content with the statement that it most frequently presents itself under the aspects of ritual, myth, and belief. Anthropology has hitherto practically confined its attention to ritual and myth, and but too frequently exclusively to the last.
As Andrew Lang (1887)[[113]] points out, in the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes complained that the gods were credited with the worst crimes, and other classical writers were shocked at the contradictions between the conception and ritual worship of the same god. In ancient Egypt the priests strove to shift the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their own deities. It taxed the ingenuity of pious Brahmans to explain the myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman. Euhemerus (316 B.C.), in his philosophical romance, Sacra Historica, in rationalising the fables about the gods was regarded as an atheist. Certain writers like Plutarch (60 A.D.) and Porphyry (270 A.D.) made the ancient deities types of their own favourite doctrines, whatever these might happen to be. The early Christians had a good case against the heathen. Eusebius, in the Præparatio Evangelica, anticipating Andrew Lang himself, “ridiculed, with a good deal of humour, the old theories which resolved so many mythical heroes into the sun” (p. 20). “The physical interpreters,” said Eusebius, “do not even agree in their physical interpretations.” The light of the anthropological method had dawned on Eusebius. Many centuries later Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1630-93), had no other scheme in his mind in his erudite work on Hebrew ritual,[[114]] which he considered was but an expurgated adaptation of heathen customs. Fontenelle[[115]] explained the irrational element in myth as inherited from savagery.