“Such is the general character of this primal and wholly immediate standpoint, namely, that the human consciousness, any definite human being, is recognised as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his own will. The natural has, however, by no means that wide range which it has in our idea of it. For here the greater part of nature still remains indifferent to man, or is just as he is accustomed to see it. Everything is stable. Earthquakes, thunder-storms, floods, animals, which threaten him with death, enemies, and the like, are another matter. To defend himself against these recourse is had to magic.[1447] Such is the oldest mode of religion, the wildest, most barbarous form. . . .
“By recent travellers, such as Captain Parry, and before him Captain Ross, this religion has been found among the Esquimaux, wholly without the element of mediation and as the crudest consciousness. Among other peoples a mediation is already present. {p425}
“Captain Parry says of them[1448]: ‘. . . They have not the slightest idea of Spirit, of a higher existence, of an essential substance as contrasted with their empirical mode of existence. . . . On the other hand, they have amongst them individuals whom they call Angekoks, magicians, conjurers. Those assert that they have it in their power to raise a storm, to create a calm, to bring whales near, etc., and say that they learnt these arts from old Angekoks. The people regard them with fear; in every family, however, there is at least one. A young Angekok wished to make the wind rise, and he proceeded to do it by dint of phrases and gestures. These phrases had no meaning and were directed toward no Supreme Being as a medium, but were addressed in an immediate way to the natural object over which the Angekok wished to exercise power; he required no aid from any one whatever.’ . . .
“This religion of magic is very prevalent in Africa, as well as among the Mongols and Chinese; here, however, it is no longer found in the absolute crudeness of its first form, but mediations already come in, which owe their origin to the fact that the Spiritual has begun to assume an objective form for self-consciousness.
“In its first form this religion is more magic than religion; it is in Africa among the negroes that it prevails most extensively. . . . In this sphere of magic the main principle is the direct domination of nature by means of the will, of self-consciousness—in other words that Spirit is something of a higher kind than nature. However bad this magic may look regarded in one aspect, still in {p426} another it is higher than a condition of dependence upon nature and fear of it. . . .
“Such, then, is the very first form of religion, which cannot indeed as yet be properly called religion. To religion essentially pertains the moment of objectivity, and this means that spiritual power shows itself as a mode of the Universal relatively to self-consciousness, for the individual, for the particular empirical consciousness. This objectivity is an essential characteristic, on which all depends. Not until it is present does religion begin, does a God exist, and even in the lowest condition there is at least a beginning of it. The mountain, the river, is not in its character as this particular mass of earth, as this particular water, the Divine, but as a mode of the existence of the Divine, of an essential, universal Being. But we do not yet find this in magic as such. It is the individual consciousness as this particular consciousness, and consequently the very negation of the Universal, which is what has the power here; not a god in the magician, but the magician himself is the conjurer and conqueror of nature. . . . Out of magic the religion of magic is developed.”[1449]
NOTES
CHAPTER I—The King of the Wood
[1] Strictly speaking, nemus is a natural opening or glade in a forest. Thus Lucan says (Pharsal. i. 453 sq.) that the Druids inhabited “deep glades in sacred groves far from the haunts of men” (“nemora alta remotis incolitis lucis”), as the words are rendered by Haskins in his edition, who compares Propertius v. 9. 24, “lucus ubi umbroso fecerat orbe nemus.” But commonly nemus means no more than a wood or grove. See for example Lucan, Pharsal. iii. 396, “procumbunt nemora et spoliantur robora silvae.” At Nemi the sacred grove (lucus) formed part of the woodlands (nemus), as we learn from Cato, quoted by Priscian, Inst. iv. 21 (vol. i. p. 129, ed. M. Hertz), “lucum Dianium in nemore Aricino,” etc. As to the thick woods of Nemi in antiquity see Ovid, Fasti, iii. 263 sq.; id., Metam. xv. 485.
[2] Cato, loc. cit.; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 756; Statius, Sylvae, iii. 1. 56; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. iv. 36. A loose expression of Appian (Bellum Civile, v. 24) has sometimes given rise to the notion that there was a town called Nemus. But this is a mistake. See E. Desjardins, Essai sur la Topographie du Latium (Paris, 1854), p. 214, and on the other side, A. Bormann, Altitalische Chorographie (Halle, 1852), pp. 135 sq.