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 It means that one is at one’s wits’ end; that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary and unexpected; that we are projected into the world of the unknown.… Psychologically regarded, then, the function of religion is to restore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.