Relations are a class of general ideas familiar to savage thought, often appreciated with great subtlety and especially prominent in some magical operations. Relations are not only thought of by savages but compared, and likenesses discovered between them that may often surprise us. A gardener of New Guinea, having planted taro, ensured the growth of the crop by saying: “A muræna, left on the shore by the tide, was exhausted and on the point of expiring, when the tide returned, and it revived and swam away.” And he struck the ground with a branch three times.[98] He saw that renewal of life in the muræna and in the taro were the same thing; so that to describe one must strengthen the other—such is the “force” of a spell!
The most important relation involved in knowledge and in its practical applications is causation. Savages who have no word for causation and have never thought of it in the abstract, must always act as if they assume it. This is apt to be misunderstood. It is written: “The natives [of Australia] have no idea of cause and effect. They notice that two things occur one after the other, and at once jump to the conclusion that one is cause and the other effect.” They have, then, some idea of the relation, though ill-discriminated. Thus, having noticed that the plover often cries before rain, they imitate the cry when performing rites to bring on rain. We rather suppose that an atmospheric change, preceding the approaching rain, excites the plovers. But that does not occur to the natives: that “one after the other” is the same as effect after cause, or (as Logicians say) post hoc, ergo propter hoc, lies at the bottom of innumerable superstitions. The subconscious control exercised by this latent form of thought is very imperfect. The maxims of indirect Magic, that a likeness may be substituted for the thing itself, or a part of it for the whole, are merely formulæ of causation assumed under an erroneous belief as to what can be a cause. There are cases in which the like may be a substitute (one man for another) and a part may nearly serve for the whole (part of a broken knife). Hence these principles were stated and avowed by physicians and alchemists of the Middle Ages, and observed in their practice.
The quantitative axiom of mediate relation—“Magnitudes equal to the same magnitude are equal”—is, of course, never expressed by savages; but it is practically understood and applied by them whenever they use a common measure—the fingers for counting, the pace, or hand or arm-stretch to measure distance. These devices are gesture language; and the truth which the gestures assume has been forced upon the observation of primitive men whenever they saw three or more nearly equal things together—men in a row, birds in a flock, eggs in a nest. We need not suppose that conscious analysis is necessary to determine the relations between such things; the brain has its own method of analysis; and some day we learn the results. It was late in the day that the results became known; not, apparently, till the Greeks gave scientific form to the rudiments of mathematics. For then, for the first time, articulate axioms were wanted—to satisfy the form of science. The innumerable exact calculations of Egypt and Assyria could go on very well without them. Their discovery required the specific purpose of a scientist in search of them, the state of profound meditation and abstraction, excluding all irrelevant ideas, when in the emptiness and darkness of the mind their light became visible, like a faint sound in a silent room. Thus an idea, whose functioning has for ages controlled thought without being recognised, suddenly takes its place in the organisation of knowledge.
§ 8. The Weakness of Imagination-beliefs
With immature minds their superstitions seem to rest on good evidence. Some of those who pray to Neptune are saved from shipwreck, and the drowned are forgotten: all confirmatory coincidences are deeply impressive, and failures are overlooked or excused. By suggestion the sick are often healed, and the hale are struck down. Curses and incantations, if known to the intended victim, fulfil themselves. So do good omens that give confidence, and bad omens that weaken endeavour. If a magician has the astuteness to operate for rain only when the wet season approaches, the event is likely to confirm his reputation. Sleight of hand, ventriloquism and the advantages of a dark séance are not unknown to sorcerers tutored in an old tradition of deceit, and their clients take it for demonstration. The constant practice by a whole village of both magic and industry for the same end, makes it impossible for ordinary mortals to see which of them is the real agent of success. For the failures of magic or of sacrifice the practitioners always have plausible explanations. Hence between imagination-beliefs and perception-beliefs, as to their causes, there may be, for the believers, no apparent difference.
But in character, also, imagination-beliefs may seem indistinguishable from perception-beliefs; in immediate feeling-quality they are certainly very much like them; and, on a first consideration, they appear to have as much influence over men’s actions: but this is not true. We must not infer that to suffer martyrdom for a cult (as witches have done) can be a sign of nothing but unalterable faith in it: besides fanaticism and other abnormal states of mind, one must allow for loyalty to a party or leader, for oppositeness and hatred of the persecutor, for display, self-assertion and (in short) for a strong will. Those who take part in a religious war—are they driven wholly by enthusiasm for the supernatural, and not at all by hatred of aliens, love of fighting and hope of plunder? Discounting the admixture of other motives, the power of imagination-beliefs is, with most people, much less than we are apt to suppose. They are unstable, and in course of time change, though the “evidence” for them may remain the same. Moulded from the first by desire and anxiety, they remain plastic under the varying stress of these and other passions. In a primitive agricultural community, preparation of the soil, hoeing, reaping and harvesting go on (though with inferior tools and methods) just as they do with us; and from age to age the processes are generally confirmed or slowly improved. At the same time, every such employment is surrounded by a sort of aura of rites, which seem to be carried out with equal, or greater, scrupulosity and conviction; yet, age by age, these rites slowly atrophy and lose their importance and their ancient meaning, which is explained by new myths; or other rites may be learnt from neighbours or from invaders; for some rites may be necessary to their life, though not any particular ones.
The unstable character of superstitions and their close alliance with play-beliefs may be shown in various ways:
(a) The rites which express them are often carried out with deception, practised on the crowd in a public performance, as by obtaining from heaven a shower of rice, which (over night) has been lodged in the tree-tops, and is shaken down at the decisive moment; or, in private practice, played off on the patient, by bringing a stone in one’s waist-belt and then extracting it from his body. Half the tribe may deceive the rest, the men mystifying the women and children, or the old the young.
(b) Religious beliefs often comprise incompatible attitudes: the worshippers of a god acknowledge in prosperity his superior wisdom and power—at the same time, perhaps, employing devices to cheat him; or, in long continuing distress from drought or war, they may threaten to punish him, withhold his sacrifices and desecrate his shrine. In Raiatea, when a chief of rank fell ill, extravagant rites and sacrifices were practised; but if these failed, “the god was regarded as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image destroyed.”[99]
(c) Imagination-beliefs break down under various trials—such as economy, selling the Rice-mother when the price of grain rises; offering the gods forged paper-money instead of good, or leaving many things at a grave and taking back the more precious; self-preservation, as in substituting the king’s eldest son for himself in sacrifice; compassion, in burying with the dead puppets instead of slaves (though in this economy may have some part), or substituting in sacrifice a bull for a man.