The Origin of Man and of His Superstitions

by Carveth Read

And if it once has been, it always will be: not that he thinks of it in this general way. But even animals, as soon as they have learnt a sequence, trust to it. Dogs and cats learn faster than guinea-pigs; monkeys faster than dogs and cats; man quicker still. But in no case would there be any use in learning, if it did not lead to action as if the experience had been generalised. There is no mystery in generalisation; it is spontaneous, and only waits for language to express itself; the difficult thing to acquire is caution. In default of method, the only test of truth is relative constancy in experience—per enumerationem simplicem—faulty but broadly effective; which requires time and practice. Primitive Magic is an incautious, unexpressed generalisation; and the conditions are such that the error cannot be easily detected. As long as a savage follows the instinctive, traditionary and acquired knowledge that he has of hunting, practices based on wrong judgments, but not interfering with the traditionary art, such as the carrying about of a bone, or a crystal, or having a special pattern on his quiver, cannot impair his success; may add to it by increasing his confidence: so that as long as success lasts there is nothing to suggest the falsity of the judgment. A series of failures may make the hunter throw away his talisman, or (at a later stage of Magic) take it to a medicine-man to be redoctored. How many thousands of times may Magic have begun in this way and lost its hold again, before the human mind became chronically infected with it!

Similarly with amulets, anything unusual that a man happens to have about him, when attacked by a leopard or snake, from which he escapes, may be kept as a safeguard against future perils. And with rites: any gesture or action, however irrelevant, that happens to precede a successful effort, may be repeated in order to reinstate all the antecedents of success. So, too, with the origin of spells. It is a common impulse, and quite spontaneous, to accompany an action with words, incentive or expletive. If a hunter does so in driving home his spear successfully, he will next time repeat the words: they then become a spell.[106] First, then, there are practices of carrying about charms, repeating words, repeating actions; next, along with these practices, beliefs grow up as to the nature of their efficacy, their virtue; and much later it is discovered that some of the practices seem to involve certain common principles which the savage had never thought of.

In trying to imagine ourselves in the place of such a man, we must not omit the emotional excitement that determines his judgment. It is the intensity of his desire for success, his anxiety about it, that makes him snatch at, and cling to, whatever may possibly be a means to it: he does not see how it acts, but will take no risks by omitting it. Since what is true of primitive hunting is true of all undertakings—that we know some conditions of success but far from all—and since we are all of us frequently in this position—the wonder is that we resort so little to Magic. That many people do so in London is notorious.

§ 4. Magical Force and Primitive Ideas of Causation

Magic is a uniform connexion of events, depending on some impersonal force that has no real existence. What causes make men believe in such force? In the first place, everything is necessarily conceived of by everybody (and probably in some dim way by the higher animals) as a centre of forces. Its weight, when we try to lift it; inertia, when we push it, or when it is moving and we try to stop it; degree of hardness, when we strike or grasp it; elasticity, when the bent bough of a tree recoils; the sway of torrents and the lift of waves; falling trees, avalanches, water-spouts, hurricanes: all these things a man must think of, as he does of other men and animals, in comparison with his own strength or impotence. Into their actions and reactions he reads such tension and effort as he himself feels in struggling with them, or in grappling one of his own hands with the other; and as their action is full of surprises he does not suppose himself to know all that they can do.

But, further, the strain exhibited by some objects, especially trees; the noises they make, creaking and groaning in the wind; the shrieking and moaning of the wind itself, the threatening and whispering of the sea, thunder and the roar of torrents: all excite Einfühlung or empathy, illusory sympathy with things that do not feel. Their voices, more than anything else, I believe, endow them for our imaginations with an inward life, which Mr. Marett has well called Animatism,[107] and which must not be confounded with the Animism that used to be attributed to all children and all savages—the belief that every object is actuated by a spirit, or even that it has a consciousness like our own. What truth there was in that doctrine is fully covered by Animatism.

Again, the savage is acquainted with invisible forces some of which seem to act at a distance. The wind is the great type of invisible force; heat, sound, odour are also invisible, and act at a distance; the light of the camp-fire acts at a distance, spreading across the prairie or into the recesses of the forest; and lightnings issue from the clouds. In dreams, one visits some remote hunting-ground and returns instantly; distance and time are distorted or annihilated; and if you can act where you dream, why not where you intensely imagine yourself?

Hence there are abundant analogues in experience by which the savage can conceive of his talisman as a force-thing that acts invisibly and acts at a distance. Australian medicine-men “threw their joïas (evil magic) invisibly, ‘like the wind,’ as they said.”[108] The talisman acts at a distance, like a missile; it acts for the person who owns it as his spear does, and is dangerous to others who have not practised with it. Sometimes, indeed, magic things have no owners, and are dangerous to everybody: malignant influence radiating from them, like the heat of a fire or the stench of a corpse. Such are two stones described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen[109] as marking the place where an old man and two women died for breaking a marriage-taboo. “They are so full of evil magic that if any but old men go near, it kills them. Now and then a very old man goes and throws stones and bushes upon the spot to keep down the evil magic.” It is as if one covered up a fire or a corpse. And, further, magical force may exist in a diffused way, like darkness, heat, cold, epidemic disease, tribal unrest, without necessarily attaching to any particular thing. In the Western Isles of Torres Straits[110] mishaps may be signs of an unlucky state of things in general. A fisherman, usually successful, having once failed at his task, was depressed; but on two women dying in his village soon after, he was consoled; since this showed that failure was not his fault. Currents of this magical force, favourable or unfavourable to things in general, may be seen in the flow and ebb of the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, and in the course of the seasons. From this way of thinking it is but a step to the conception of mana, as it is called in Melanesia:[111] orenda of the Iroquois, manitou of the Algonquin, wakanda of the Omaha.[112] It is the power of the wonderful and mysterious in the world, which becomes especially manifest in Magic and in the agency of spirits. Similar notions are found in many regions at various stages of culture, but nowhere (I believe) at the lowest stages; so that it is unreasonable to treat it as the first source of ideas of the supernatural. It is too comprehensive a generalisation to find expression amongst savages. The Arunta have got as far as the generalisation of evil Magic under the name of arungquiltha.[113] But mana is a generalisation of all the imaginary forces of superstition, vague and mysterious; as “cause,” in popular use, is a generalisation of all the supposed “forces” of nature.

Rites also act at a distance by invisible force; for this power belongs to gesture-language, and the simplest rites are gestures. And so do spells; for wishes, commands, threats expressed in words, act upon men at a distance by invisible force; and spells are nothing but such expressions conceived of in a particular way, as having that uniform efficacity which is Magic. Spells, being thought of as forces, are reified; so that blessings or curses cling to their objects like garlands, or like contaminating rags.

Magical force, then, is a notion derived from experience of natural forces and employed to account for events that are unusual, wonderful, mysterious, not to be interpreted by that common sense which is the cumulative result of usual occurrences. It is superimposed upon the older and wider presumption of causation, and is expected to manifest itself with the same uniformity; so that, if the laws of it can be discovered, it supplies a basis for the Art of Magic. So far is Magic from being the source of the belief in causation! But I have spoken of the “older and wider presumption of causation”; for (as has been shown) the definite postulate that all the ongoings of the world may be analysed upon the principal of cause and effect, can never come into the minds of primitive men; and even to ourselves it rarely occurs, except in scientific discussions or logical exercises; but we always act as if we trusted in it, and so does a savage, and so does a dog. The presumption is reinforced by every moment’s ordinary experience; and without it no consistency of life is possible. This ungeneralised presumption determines all thoughts and actions, mechanical, animistic, or magical. That the forces implied in superstition are generalised in such concepts as mana before the principle of causation obtains expression, is due to the prepotency of the unusual, wonderful, mysterious in attracting attention.