The words ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ wield a very considerable influence among us; what do they mean to most of those who use them? Physical science ascribes either extension alone, or extension and weight, to physical substances. Non-material forces are, then, according to science, both spaceless and weightless. I will venture to affirm that not one educated person in a thousand is acquainted with this distinction. Most of the few who have known it have forgotten it. So that the words ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ mean different things to the philosopher and to the layman. In the popular mind, if spirits are not perceptible it is because the senses are not sufficiently acute. Spirits are here or there, diffused over wide areas or concentrated in narrow spaces. The average Christian, whatever he may say to the contrary, is, theoretically speaking, a materialist, and, I might add, a polytheist. Whatever matter and spirit mean to him, and they certainly have a substantial meaning, the distinction made by the philosopher is for him non-existent. The following facts may be of some interest in this connection. A few years ago, in a conversation with a shop-clerk, I happened to mention a lead coffin made hermetic with solder. He was shocked, and objected to a dead body being shut up in a coffin of that description because it prevented the escape of the soul. This man had had an ordinary grammar-school education. Here are two quotations taken from answers of American College students to questions requesting a description of their idea of God. It should be added that the questions were given only to classes which had not yet taken up, or were just beginning the study of philosophy. ‘God, to me, is a being of flesh and blood, for without this form he would seem unnatural and unsympathetic as our leader.’ (Female, twenty years old.)—‘I think of God as real, actual flesh and blood and bones, something we shall all see with our eyes some day.’ (Male, twenty-one years old.) Together with these, and from the same classes of students, came a great number of very different answers; for instance this, ‘God is an impersonal being.... I think of him as the embodiment of natural laws.’ Descartes’ conception may serve as a point of comparison: ‘What the soul itself was, I either did not stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle, like wind or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts.’[7]
If the philosophical distinction between matter and spirit is not ordinarily made, these terms express none the less a very definite practical meaning of prime importance: they mark the difference between forces that are not responsive to psychic influences (desire and emotion, ethical and æsthetic considerations) and those that are.
The trial-and-error method which serves to establish the efficient modes of behaviour observed in animals is so far reaching in its possibilities that one might be tempted to regard it as accounting for the existence of Magic and of Religion. Were this theory tenable, the origin of the three modes of human behaviour would have been brought back to one method of learning, the unreasoning, trial-and-error method. But even a superficial consideration discovers insuperable obstacles in the way of this enticingly simple explanation, and compels the admission that magical art and Religion involve the operation of mental powers not required for the establishment of the mechanical, and of the non-religious anthropopathic behaviours.
The first of the two differences I intend to bring out, is that if a particular action is to be learned by an animal, the gratification of the actuating desire must follow immediately, or nearly so, upon the performance of the successful act, and be frequently repeated at short intervals; whereas in man, as far as Magic and Religion are concerned, the results may follow quite irregularly upon the performance, often only long after, and, not infrequently, not at all. Had not the door opened every time the cat pressed the latch, but, let us say, only once every ten times, or, if every time, one week after the movement, he would never have learned to make his escape. No more would he have acquired the trick, had he not been placed in the cage repeatedly and at short intervals. An interesting instance of the gradual undoing of a habit in consequence of the absence of the sensory results for the sake and under the guidance of which the action had been learned, is reported by Lloyd Morgan.[8] He had brought up in his study a brood of ducks. They had had a bath every morning in a tin tray. After a while, the tray was placed empty in its accustomed place. The ducks got into it and went through all their ordinary ablutions. The next day, they again enjoyed the missing water, but not as long as on the first day. On the third day they gave up the useless practice of bathing in an empty tray.
In three days ducklings eliminate a habit which has become useless, whereas generations after generations of men have gone through innumerable, time-wasting, often costly and painful ceremonies for results rarely secured, and, as we think, never directly secured by the magical or the religious ceremonies themselves. There is here a curious point of psychology: animals establish habits under the guidance of immediate results while man develops the magical art and Religion despite the usual absence of the results sought after. The very possibility of deceiving himself reveals the superiority of man over animals, for self-deception requires a degree of independence from sense-observation, a capacity of constructive imagination, a susceptibility to auto-suggestion, not to be found in animals. That the first glimmer of these capacities should have plunged man in the darkness of primitive Magic and Religion, and made him the ridiculous fool he appears to be by the side of the matter-of-fact, intelligent animal is, however, a very striking and singular fact.
If the constant and immediate appearance of the desired results does not seem necessary to the establishment of Magic and Religion, it should not be thought, however, that these arts are altogether useless. On the contrary, they are, even independently of the results at which they aim, of a most substantial value to the cause of individual and social development. Let it be said first, concerning the expected results, that they happen more frequently, perhaps, than I may have seemed to imply. When, for instance, the rain ceremonies are performed during a spell of dry weather, success, more or less distant, always crowns the efforts of the magicians: the rain does come and the earth does bring forth its fruits. The ceremonies for the healing of disease are often followed by the recovery of the patient, however absurd the treatment may have been. One should not forget, in this connection, the considerable effect of suggestion upon the credulous savage. Many cures are, no doubt, performed in this manner by the medicine-man. Davenport, speaking of tribes of Puget Sound, says: ‘Their cure for disease consists in the members of the cult shaking in a circle about a sick person, dressed in ceremonial costume. The religious practitioner waves a cloth in front of the patient, with a gentle fanning motion, and, blowing at the same time, proceeds to drive the disease out of the body, beginning at the feet and working upward. The assistant stands ready to seize the disease with his cloth when it is driven out of the head! And they are able to boast of many real cures.’[9] A psychologist is not inclined to doubt the report of Curr, that among the aborigines of Victoria persons who knew themselves to have been devoted to destruction with magical ceremonies have pined away and died,[10] nor that of Howitt, who, alluding to the habit of the medicine-men of certain tribes to knock a man insensible in order to remove the kidney fat for magical purposes, writes, ‘In the Kurnai tribe men have died believing themselves to have been deprived of their fat.’[11]
But the intended results form only a part, and that perhaps not the most important, of the gains to be credited to the practice of Magic and of Religion. The most noteworthy of these unsought by-products are:—(1) The gratification of the lust for power. The Magician and the Priest are mediators between superior, mysterious powers and their fellow-men. The sense of mastery over, or communion with, these powers, and the respect and fear with which Magicians and Priests are regarded, are, of themselves, almost sufficient to keep up these practices.(2) Both these modes of behaviour, but especially Magic, appeal to the gambling instinct. All men crave excitement; the savage is no exception. In the daring game in which the rain-maker or the disease-healer engages, the high tension of the gambling-table is, to a certain extent, present. (3) Less obvious, perhaps, than the preceding advantages, but not less valuable, is the general mental stimulation induced by Magic and Religion. Magic is the great social play of the savage. If animal plays serve a highly valuable purpose in affording practice in sense-observation and motor-co-ordination, Magic makes its chief call upon the imagination; in this consists one of its most far-reaching values. It becomes a training for the achievement of those higher mental syntheses requiring the momentary disregard of the actual sense-impressions, from which it is so difficult to liberate oneself, in behalf of the accumulated experience of a whole life.
The second objection to the assumption that the trial-and-error method could have led to the establishment of magical and religious habits arises from the inability of animals to act towards unperceived objects as if they were actually present. A dog never welcomes by gambols or licks the hand of an absent friend, while Religion, and at times Magic, show primitive man in more or less systematic relations with powers he has never sensed. When the Shaman draws lines upon the sand, describes various curves with his arms, utters sundry incantations, he does not address a power he perceives, nor even one he has really seen, although he may believe that he, or some one else, has seen it. That animals are moved to action by memories of past perceptions, is, of course, not open to doubt. Their whole life is a long testimony to that ability. Any one will recall instances of chains of concerted actions indicating clearly, on the part of some one of the higher animals, domesticated or wild, the anticipation of a particular person, object, or event. What they never do, is to behave as if the remembered object was really present, though not sensed. H. Spencer, discussing adversely A. Comte’s opinion that fetichistic conceptions are formed by the higher animals, relates the following observation concerning a retriever who had learned for herself to perform an ‘act of propitiation.’ She had associated the fetching of game with the pleasure of the person to whom she brought it, and so, ‘after wagging her tail and grinning, she would perform this act of propitiation as nearly as practicable in the absence of a dead bird. Seeking about, she would pick up a dead leaf, a bit of paper, a twig, or other small object, and would bring it with renewed manifestations of friendliness. Some kindred state of mind it is which, I believe, prompts the savage to certain fetichistic observances.’[12] So far the dog could go, but she could not have imagined the presence of an unseen being and behaved towards him in the same manner. Another significant point is that the absent objects towards which animals may direct their actions are always, so far as one may judge, identical with those actually sensed by them at some time, i.e. their behaviour never shows that they have transformed, imaginatively, objects with which their senses have made them familiar. Whereas man can not only believe in the presence of unseen objects, but he can also imagine beings never actually sensed by him, and behave towards them according to the traits and capacities with which he has endowed them.
There are observations on record which compel the qualification of the assertion, I may have seemed to make in the preceding paragraph, of a clean break between man and animals. Certain dogs are thrown into paroxysms of fear by peals of thunder, and run into hiding. Darwin relates how his dog, ‘full grown and very sensible,’ growled fiercely and barked whenever an open parasol standing at some distance was moved by a slight breeze. He is of the opinion that the dog ‘must have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory.’[13] Romanes, in a short and interesting paper entitled ‘Fetichism in Animals,’[14] after reporting the preceding illustration, relates this observation touching a remarkably ‘intelligent,’ ‘pugnacious,’ and ‘courageous’ dog. ‘The terrier [Skye] in question, like many other dogs, used to play with dry bones, by tossing them in the air, throwing them to a distance, and generally giving them the appearance of animation, in order to give himself the ideal pleasure of worrying them. On one occasion, therefore, I tied a long and fine thread to a dry bone, and gave him the latter to play with. After he had tossed it about for a short time, I took an opportunity, when it had fallen at a distance from him, and while he was following it up, of gently drawing it away from him by means of the long and invisible thread. Instantly his whole demeanour changed. The bone which he had previously pretended to be alive, now began to look as if it really were alive, and his astonishment knew no bounds. He first approached it with nervous caution as Mr. Spencer describes, but as the slow receding motion continued, and he became quite certain that the movement could not be accounted for by any residuum of the force which he had himself communicated, his astonishment developed into dread, and he ran to conceal himself under some articles of furniture, there to behold at a distance the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life.’ Certain instances of instinctive fear of harmless things may help to interpret the preceding observations. G. Stanley Hall mentions a little girl who would scream when she saw feathers floating through the air. To keep another child in a room, it was sufficient to place a feather in the keyhole.[15]