There are, no doubt, many instances of dramatic ritual the purpose of which is as yet a matter of discussion. With regard to some of the symbolic dances representing hunting or fishing or the movements of game-animals, much may be said in favour of Mr. Farrer’s view that the object of the pantomime is to make clearer to the deity a prayer regarding the things imitated.[480] Similarly it is open to doubt whether the dramatic performances at initiation ceremonies, such as, for instance, the kangaroo dance described by Collins, are meant to impart instruction concerning the customs of the animals to the novitiates, or to confer upon them a magic power over the game.[481] In the therapeutic practices of primitive tribes we may find still more puzzling points of controversy. The sucking cure, for instance, by which the medicine-man pretends to extract from the patient the cause of his illness in the form of some small object—a pebble, a tuft of hair, or the like—may be, as Professor Tylor thinks, a mere “knavish trick.”[482] But it is also possible, we believe, that, at least originally, it may have been performed as a bona fide magic, based upon the notion of the efficacy of vehicles and symbolic action. The method of restoring sick people and sick cattle to health by pulling them through a narrow opening, for instance, in a tree, which has been explained by most authors as a case of magical transference by contact—i.e. transference of the disease from the patient and of the vital power represented by the tree to him[483]—ought, according to the brilliant hypothesis of Professor Nyrop, to be considered as a magically symbolic representation of regeneration.[484]
While leaving undecided all these subtle questions, each of which would require a chapter of its own in order to be definitively treated, we have only to maintain the great probability which stands on the side of the dramatic interpretation. However fantastic the belief in a magical connection between similar things may appear at the outset, a continued ethnological study must needs convince every one of its incalculable importance in the life of primitive man. And such a conviction can only become confirmed by an examination of the influence which this superstition has exercised on the formative arts.
The belief in picture magic is evinced by its negative as well as by its positive results. All over the world we meet with the fear of being depicted. In so far as this superstition has given rise to a prohibition of painting and sculpture, it has thus seriously arrested the development of art. But, on the other hand, the same notion has commonly called forth pictorial representation, the aim of which is to gain a power over the things and beings represented. Most frequent, perhaps, of all these specimens of magical art are the volts, i.e. those dolls and drawings used for bewitching, which are spoken of as early as in the ancient Chaldean incantations, which are used by the majority of savage tribes, and which may incidentally be found even now among the European nations.[485] But owing to their necessarily clandestine character these charms have never exercised any important influence on the pictorial art. More important, from the historical point of view, than these black and cryptic arts is the white magic by which social benefits are pursued. Just as the principal forms of magical drama correspond to the chief requirements of mankind, so the most important magical sculptures and paintings are found in connection with agricultural rites,[486] the observances of hunting and fishing,[487] medical practices,[488] and ceremonies for removing sterility.[489] And in the same way as dramatic representation, but with far greater efficacy, pictorial representation has been able to satisfy the highest material as well as spiritual requirement by bringing the deity in concrete relation with man through the sympathetic force of the image. The art of conjuring a spirit to take its abode in what is believed to be a counterfeit of its corresponding body has thus given rise to the fashioning of idols and the subsequent adoring of them. Although essentially the same as in the simple medical cures and the practices of sorcery, pictorial magic has in these cases of idol-making exercised a more far-reaching and thorough influence on mankind than in any of its other manifestations.
We need not dwell at any length on the superstitions connected with poetic or literary descriptions of things. The universal objection to the mentioning of proper names is evidently based upon a belief in the efficacy of words. And, on the other hand, this same belief lies behind the equally universal use of incantations. Songs that are sung in order to facilitate the labour of workers and to increase the result of it, poems that aim at conjuring the favour of a hard-hearted or indifferent woman, charms for invoking or expelling spirits, and medical spells,—all these forms of poetic magic are too familiar to be more than mentioned.
From the point of view of the civilised observer the above-quoted examples of dramatic, pictorial, and poetic magic may seem to have an obvious and ready explanation. A work of art always gives to the spectator, and no doubt also to the creator, an illusion of reality. As, moreover, primitive man is notoriously unable to distinguish between subjective and objective reality, it seems natural to assume that it is the mental illusion created by his work which makes the magician believe that he has acquired a power over the things represented by it. And this assumption is all the more tempting because even to civilised, enlightened man there is something magical in the momentary satisfaction which art affords to all our unfulfilled longings by its semblance of reality. Strong desire always creates for itself an imaginary gratification which easily leads the uncritical mind to a belief in the power of will over the external world. The whole of art-creation may thus be looked upon as an embodiment of the greatest wishes of mankind, which have sought the most convincing appearance of their fulfilment in the form and shape of objective works. What is in us a conscious and intentional self-deception, may be in the unsophisticated man a real illusion. The main psychological aspects of the activity could not be changed by these different subjective attitudes on the part of the producer. The essential point is that in both cases the greatest possible resemblance to the original would be sought for in order to increase in the one case the magical efficacy of the work, in the other the pleasure to be derived from the illusion. The belief in a magical connection between similar things would thus exercise an incalculable influence on the growth of realism in art. But, unfortunately, this easy explanation is not corroborated by an impartial examination of the lower stages of art-development. The statement of M. Guaita as to the volt, Plus la ressemblance est complète plus le maléfice a chance de réussir,[490] does not appear to be borne out by the evidence. The only instance we know of in which greater or less resemblance to the model is thought of as bearing on the magical efficacy of a painting is that of the East Indian artists. We are told that it was in order to evade the Mohammedan prohibition of painting that they resorted to that style of treating nature, bordering on caricature, which is so characteristic of, say, Javanese art.[491] Similarly it is by an appeal to their virtue of non-resemblance that artists among the Laos defend their pictures as being harmless and innocent.[492] But such references to barbaric or semi-barbaric art do not tell us much about the conditions prevailing at the beginning of art-development. The primitive man who avails himself of dolls and drawings in order to bewitch is generally quite indifferent to the life-like character of his magical instruments. The typical volt gives only a crude outline of the human body, and, which is most remarkable, it does not display any likeness to the man who is to be bewitched. As a rule the same vagueness can also be noticed in the paintings and sculptures which serve the aims of medical cure and religious cultus. With due allowance for the deficient technical ability and the naïve suggestibility of primitive man, it seems hard to believe that illusion could have been either intended or effected by the rude works of pictorial magic. Thus it becomes doubtful whether the belief in the magical power of painting and sculpture can have been based upon a confusion between subjective and objective reality.
This doubt can only be increased when we see how little confidence primitive men themselves put in the mere likeness as such. When M. Rochas produced his modern imitations of the volt, he was always anxious to have his wax dolls sufficiently saturated by contact with the person over whom they were intended to give him power.[493] And in this he closely followed the methods of the native sorcerers, who generally tried to increase the efficiency of their magical instruments by attaching to them such objects as nail-cuttings, locks of hair, or pieces of cloth belonging to the man to be bewitched.[494] In the making of idols we can often observe the same principle. The statue itself is not sacred by virtue of its form; it acquires divine power only by being put in material connection with the deity. The most obvious example is that of the West African Negroes, who, when they wish to transplant the wood deity from his original home to their towns and villages, build up a wooden doll of branches taken from the tree in which he lives.[495] The god is certainly supposed to feel a special temptation to take up his abode in the idol made in his own likeness; but it is evident that the material link established by the choice of the wood is thought of as being of no less, perhaps even of greater, importance than the resemblance. The same close and inseparable combination of magic by connection and magic by similarity meets us in the ancestor statues of New Guinea, which contain the skull of the dead in hollows inside their head.[496] And although the procedure is more indirect, the underlying thought is nevertheless the same in the curious practices found, e.g., on the island of Nias. The spirit of the deceased is here conducted to his statue by means of some small animal which has been found in the neighbourhood of his grave.[497] In none of these examples—which might be supplemented by analogous instances from various tribes—do we see any hint of that manner of regarding statues and paintings which prevails among civilised men. While with us the mental impression on the spectator constitutes, so to speak, the object and the essential purport of the work of art, the magicians and the idolaters seem to look chiefly for material power and influence in their simulacra.
The way in which pictorial art is used for curative purposes affords us—if further proofs are wanted—a still more telling example of the difference between the magical and the aesthetic points of view. Nothing could be more crude and primitive than the notions held by the Navajo with regard to the salutary influences of their famous sand-paintings. The cure is effected, they believe, not by the patient’s looking at the represented figures, but by his rolling himself on them, or having the pigments of the mosaic applied to the corresponding parts of his own body. The more of the sacred sand he can thus attach to his body, the more complete is his recovery.[498] Among other tribes at the same stage of development as the Navajos the prevailing views are almost equally materialistic.[499] And even among the barbaric and semi-civilised peoples, although we do not meet with quite as gross superstitions, the fundamental idea of pictorial magic appears often to be the same. The power of a painting or a sculpture is thought of as something which is quite independent of its mental effects upon the spectator. That interpretation of sympathetic magic, therefore, which to us seemed most natural, cannot possibly be applied to its lower forms.
As the concepts by which primitive man justifies to himself his beliefs and practices are naturally vague and hazy, it may seem futile to attempt to reconstruct his reasoning. Nothing final or definite can be asserted on so obscure a topic. But we may legitimately discuss the most consistent and most probable way in which to account for the various forms of sympathetic magic. And with regard to this question of probabilities we may rely to some extent upon the illustrative and suggestive analogies to primitive thought which can be found in scientific philosophies. For it is evident that a philosophical doctrine, if it fits in with the facts of primitive superstition, may be explanatory of those vague and latent notions which, without logical justification or systematical arrangement, lie in the mind of the magician and the idolater. Such a doctrine is presented to us in the familiar emanation-theories, according to which every image of a thing constitutes a concrete part of that thing itself. According to the clear and systematic statement of this doctrine given by the old Epicurean philosophers, shadows, reflections in a mirror, visions, and even mental representations of distant objects, are all caused by thin membranes, which continually detach themselves from the surface of all bodies and move onward in all directions through space.[500] If there are such things as necessary misconceptions, this is certainly one. Such general facts of sensuous experience as reflection, shadow, and mirage will naturally appear as the result of a purely material decortication—as in a transfer picture.[501] How near at hand this theory may lie even to the modern mind appears from the curious fact that such a man as Balzac fell back upon it when attempting to explain the newly-invented daguerreotype, that most marvellous of all image-phenomena.[502]
To the primitive mind it is only natural to apply this reasoning even to artificial images. Whether the likeness of a thing is fashioned by nature in water or air, or whether it be made by man, it is in both cases thought of as depriving the thing itself of some part of its substance. Such a notion, which cannot surprise us when met with among the lower savages, seems to have been at the bottom of even the Mohammedan prohibition of the formative arts.[503] It is evident that, wherever images are explained in this crude manner, magic by similarity in reality becomes merely a case of magic by contiguity.
The materialistic thought which lies behind the belief in a solidarity between similar things appears nowhere so clearly as within the department of pictorial magic. But we believe that its influence can also be traced in all the other superstitions regarding sympathetic causation. In spite of that feeling of superiority so common in nations which have no leaning towards formative arts, poetical and musical magic in its lower forms is founded on quite as crude a conception as any idolatry or pictorial sorcery. It would indeed be unnatural if the theory of corporeal emanations had not been applied to acoustic as well as to optical phenomena. To the unscientific mind sounds and reverberations are something quite synonymous with sights and reflections. The sounds connected with the impression of a being, thing, or phenomenon will therefore be conceived as being a part of the being, thing, or phenomenon itself. To these easily-explained notions there are to be added the peculiar superstitions entertained with regard to a class of sounds which are only associated with things, viz. their names. To the primitive man a name literally constitutes a part of the object it denotes. The magician may therefore get the mastery over the spirits he invokes and the men he bewitches by merely mentioning their names.[504] In many cases a most potent spell consists of unintelligible words, which to the conjurer himself has no meaning at all. In other cases, although the words really have a sense, we can easily observe that they are not used for the purpose of creating an illusion of reality. The typical incantation may indeed in a manner be called descriptive. The singer is anxious not to pass by any detail, the omitting of which may be injurious to the potency of his magic. But the result is only a sort of inventory, which seldom suggests a full and vivid mental picture. Many of the Shaman prayers and songs show us by their whole character that in their case at least poetical illusion has had nothing to do with the belief in the power of words over things.[505]