Ritual and belief

by Edwin Sidney Hartland

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.