Chapter III: Part 3

It is not easy to formulate a clear idea of the original source of _mana_. It is said to be impersonal, to be present in the atmosphere of life and communicable to persons and to things. To that extent it resembles the {51} impersonal power or potentiality we have found elsewhere. But wherever it is manifested it is connected with some personal being who originates and directs it.[51.1] It is not a quality inherent in men of more than ordinary power and skill. “If a man,” writes Bishop Codrington, “has been successful in fighting, … he has certainly got the _mana_ of a spirit or of some deceased ancestor to empower him.” And again: “No man has this power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be _mana_ himself, using the word to express a quality; he can be said to have _mana_, it may be said to be with him, the word being used as a substantive.”[51.2] It would thus seem as if it were an essential characteristic not of personal beings--even of powerful personal beings--in general, but belonging to the world of spirits, including the spirits of the dead. Yet not to all spirits; for elsewhere we read: “It must not be supposed that every ghost becomes an object of worship,” as a source of _mana_. “A man in danger may call upon his father, his grandfather, or his uncle; his nearness of kin is sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be worshipped is the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had _mana_ in him; the souls of common men are the common herd of ghosts, nobodies alike before and after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in his ghost after death with increased vigour and more ease of movement.”[51.3] Thus {52} we are found in something like what logicians call a vicious circle. Only those ghosts have _mana_, or are _mana_, after death who had _mana_ in their lifetime. But if they had _mana_ in their lifetime, it was because they derived it from ghosts or other spirits. In any case _mana_ appears to be conceived of as transcending humanity, belonging to the mysterious region of the Unknown, embodied in its primitive denizens, flowing from them, by the channel of material objects (amulets), forms of words (charms) or names, to certain human beings, and taken back by the latter into the same great reservoir of power when they die, thence to be communicated afresh to favoured mortals, and so on for ever. Probably, however, no such definite concept finds a place in the Melanesian brain; the mode of savage thought hardly admits of such crystallization.

It is likely that _mana_ (both the word and the meaning) {53} was introduced into the Melanesian islands from Polynesia, where it is widely spread and the word has numerous derivatives. In seeking there its explanation we are at a disadvantage; because, with all their devotion and merits, no missionary and no scientific enquirer has given us such a study of Polynesian mentality as Dr Codrington has given of that of the Melanesians. We turn therefore, in the first place, to the more dangerous guidance of a dictionary. From that we learn that everywhere _mana_ has the signification of power, and almost everywhere of supernatural power. It is also defined as influence, prestige, honour, authority; in Hawaiian it is used to express, besides supernatural power such as would be attributed to the gods, the simpler idea of power, and also spirit (in the sense of energy of character), glory, majesty, intelligence--all doubtless secondary meanings. We need not discuss in detail the derivatives in various Polynesian dialects. Their general trend is towards the expression of thought, opinion or belief, industry, vehement desire, love--all of them activities primarily of the mind or emotions. _Manava_ or _manawa_ is a word meaning the belly or internal organs of the body, then the heart as the seat of affection, the feelings or emotions, soul, conscience, and in one dialect at least, an apparition, a ghost or spirit. _Mana_, in short, seems to recall the idea of extraordinary qualities, especially power, and the emotional reactions caused by their exhibition. Power or energy, overwhelming, supernatural, is evidently the root-idea, vested in individual, personal beings. One phrase, to be sure, in a Maori myth suggests the independent possession of this power by an object we should not regard as personal: _He taiaha whaimana_, explained by the lexicographer as “A wooden sword which has done {54} deeds so wonderful as to possess a sanctity and power of its own.” Literally it is “A sword in which _mana_ is resident.” Whether this or the parallel Mangarevan _e turuturu mana_, a powerful or magical staff, really implies an inherent power independent of spiritual origin, must remain undecided.[54.1] We are led to think of the weapons of Teutonic mythology and romance, having names as if they were personalities, and endowed with powers to render their bearers invincible--nay, when drawn, to inspire them with ungovernable fury. But in the form in which their stories reach us all such weapons owe their peculiar properties, like the curse upon the Nibelung hoard, to some more than earthly being, or at least to a mortal wizard.

Having furnished ourselves with this key, we may examine some of the incidents of Polynesian life and religion reported by competent observers. The inauguration ceremony of a Tahitian king, we are told by the missionary Ellis, consisted in girding him with the _maro ura_, or sacred girdle of red feathers. This girdle “was made with the beaten fibres of the _aoa_; with these a number of _uru_, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities, were interwoven with feathers of other colours. The _maro_ thus became sacred, even as the person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed, and with which it was designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed was it that “it not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified {55} him with” the gods.[55.1] The same missionary elsewhere relates that “throughout Polynesia the ordinary medium of communicating or extending supernatural powers was the red feather of a small bird found in many of the islands and the beautiful long tail-feathers of the tropic or man-of-war bird. For these feathers the gods were supposed to have a strong predilection; they were the most valuable offerings that could be presented; to them the power or influence of the gods was imparted, and through them transferred to the objects to which they might be attached.” On certain ceremonial occasions those persons “who wished their emblems of deity to be impregnated with the essence of the gods, repaired to the ceremony with a number of red feathers, which they delivered to the officiating priest. The wooden idols being generally hollow, the feathers were deposited in the inside of the image, which was filled with them.” When the idols were solid, the feathers were attached on the outside. To anyone who brought fresh feathers, two or three of the same kind which had been thus “united to the god” at a former festival were given in return. “These feathers were thought to possess all the properties of the images to which they had been attached, and a supernatural influence was supposed to be infused into them. They were carefully wound round with very fine cord, the extremities alone remaining visible. When this was done, the new-made gods were placed before the larger images from which they had been taken; and lest their detachment should induce the god to withhold his power, the priest addressed a prayer to the principal deities, requesting them to abide in the red feathers before them. {56} At the close of his _ubu_, or invocation, he declared that they were dwelt in or inhabited (by the gods), and delivered them to the parties who had brought the red feathers. The feathers, taken home, were deposited in small bamboo-canes, excepting when addressed in prayer. If prosperity attended their owner, it was attributed to their influence, and they were usually honoured with a _too_, or image, into which they were inwrought; and subsequently, perhaps, an altar and a rude temple were erected for them. In the event, however, of their being attached to an image, this must be taken to the large temple, that the supreme idols might sanction the transfer of their influence.”[56.1]

In the foregoing passages it will be perceived that the missionary is doing something more than describing rites he had no doubt often witnessed; he is labouring also to translate into English and incorporate with his account the explanations he had extracted from his Polynesian friends. He seems to exhaust his spiritual vocabulary in speaking of “powers,” “influence,” “the communication of attributes,” of “the essence of the gods.” But when he recalls the words of the priest, they are even stronger and at the same time simpler than any of these expressions: the god is prayed to “abide in” the feathers; he is declared to “inhabit” them. If these be an accurate translation of the words employed, it would seem that not merely the power but a portion of the personality of the god passed into the feathers, and that while his chief residence was still at the great temple where his principal image dwelt, he was also present whithersoever the bunches of feathers which had been consecrated by deposition within or upon it were carried. He himself inhabited them; and it was this fact that “identified” the king, as the wearer of such feathers, with the gods.

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It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the concept of personality. But what we have already learned of _mana_ may lead us to place another interpretation upon it. It was not merely the gods whose influence or personality was conveyed by contact. The king in his turn spread an awful influence in the same way, or even by the utterance of a word. In New Zealand “the garments of an _ariki_, or high chief, were _tapu_, as well as everything relating to him; they could not be worn by anyone else, lest they should kill him.” If a single drop of a high chief’s blood flowed on anything, it consecrated the object to him, or, as the natives phrased it, rendered it _tapu_. This consequence resulted to everything touched by him, to everything to which he chose to affix his name or the name of one of his ancestors. He could not eat with his wife, lest his sanctity should kill her, though she herself was by marriage consecrated to him. Nor was the sanctity by any means confined to the highest chiefs. It extended downwards to the lower ranks, but always in a decreasing measure. It mainly depended on rank and influence;[57.1] it could be none other than the effect of _mana_.

Between _mana_, however, and personality the dividing line is very thin. We find it the same in other parts of the world. Father De Acosta relates that upon the even of his feast the Mexican idol Tezcatlipuca was furnished with a new robe. When it was put on, the old robe was taken off “and kept with as much or more reverence than we doe our ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments of course are meant; and the writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the idoll many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as bracelets and pretious feathers, which served to no other vse than to be {58} there, and was [_sic_] worshipped as their god it selfe.”[58.1] Here the ornaments would seem to all intents identified with the god, exactly as the red feathers of the Tahitian god are “inhabited” by him. The explanation of the one is the explanation of the other. The same ambiguity is discoverable in a much higher civilization than either the Polynesian or the Mexican. Down to the end of the eighteenth century Breton women, in order to secure a happy delivery, used to dip their girdles in certain sacred fountains; and even to-day the expectant mother who can wrap around her body a ribbon thus dipped is sure in due course to bring into the world a robust child, and that without danger to herself.[58.2] This we may be inclined to think an example of an impersonal power analogous to that of the Siouan _wakonda_ or the Algonkian _manitou_. But we can carry the matter a step further. The Ursuline nuns of Quintin keep a girls’ school of high reputation in Brittany. When one of their pupils has married and become pregnant, they sometimes send her as a special favour a ribbon which has touched a reliquary containing a fragment of the Virgin Mary’s zone; and it is worn by the recipient around her waist until her baby is born.[58.3] It is not surely misinterpreting the rite to deem that the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with her divinity, has acquired and retains a portion of the _mana_ emanating from her person; the reliquary in turn is permeated by that _mana_, and communicates it to everything that touches it. The worthy nuns probably have no exact theory on the subject; but a little consideration of the practice will lead us to think that we have understated its meaning. {59} It is the converse case to that of the deposit of clothing and other articles on the shrine or the image of the divine being, which we have already considered. In the latter case there could be no question of _mana_ conveyed to the god from his votary. Moreover, the true interpretation of the practice must explain the cult of relics of the saints, whether Christian, Mohammedan, or Buddhist. Now, these relics consist not merely of garments and articles of use, like a staff, but also of the bodies or fragments of the bodies of the saints. In them a portion of their very personality inheres, and accounts for the beneficent potentiality residing in the relics, as it accounts also for the liability to injury by witchcraft upon similar fragments of the body or clothing of ordinary mortals. For ordinary mortals, whatever their potentiality, cannot measure it against that of saints and witches.

Yet human beings who are neither saints nor witches, and the lower animals also, have their potentialities, the benefit of which is capable of being transferred to others. This is one of the reasons for cannibalism. Among the Veddas of Ceylon, one of the lowest known peoples, it is said to have been the custom, when a man had been killed, for the slayer to open the body and take out a piece of the liver, which he would dry in the sun and keep in his pouch. Indeed a man was sometimes put to death for the purpose. Its object was to make its possessor strong and confident to avenge insults. He would bite off a piece of the dried liver and chew it, saying to himself: “I have killed this man; why should I not be strong and confident and kill this other one who has insulted me?”[59.1] So the Turks, after the death of the Albanian hero Scanderbeg, dug up his body and from his bones constructed amulets to inspire courage into the wearer on {60} the battlefield.[60.1] This potentiality may be communicated, like the Melanesian _mana_, through other objects; and the possibility has led to certain funeral customs in Europe as well as elsewhere. After a death in the Highlands of Bavaria it was formerly the duty of the housewife to prepare corpse-cakes (_Leichen-nudeln_). Having kneaded the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay on a bier enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief attached that “they contained the virtues and advantages of the deceased,” and that his “living strength passed over into the kinsmen who consumed the cakes, and was thus retained within the kindred.”[60.2] The eating of the flesh of animals remarkable for qualities such as ferocity, strength, fleetness, and so forth, with intent to acquire these qualities is well known. One illustration will be sufficient here. The Basuto, before going to war, make assurance doubly, trebly sure by a cruel rite. The foreleg of a living bull is cut off. The warriors eat it and are sprinkled with blood from the animal, which is then killed. They are lanced by the witch-doctor, and a powder made of the flesh of the bull is rubbed into the wounds. In this way, namely, by eating the flesh, by sprinkling the blood, and by inoculation, “the strength and courage of the animal” are imparted to them.[60.3]

It appears then that the concept of personality is inseparable from that of the potentiality with which a personality is endowed. Hence the ambiguity of the Tahitian rite. Whether the feathers which had been {61} attached to an image retained and transmitted to the next wearer the _mana_, or a portion of the personality, of the god, the one effect was equivalent to the other: they are indistinguishable. But between _mana_ and the potentiality that elsewhere invests a personality there is a difference. The latter may be, and frequently is, held to be drawn from the common source of power, the invisible and continuous life that permeates all things; whereas in Melanesia (and perhaps in Polynesia too) _mana_ is definitely ascribed only to a personal origin, if Dr Codrington has rightly interpreted the belief. It is the special property of spirits--that is to say, of supernatural beings--and is communicated by them to whatsoever or whomsoever they will. An important step has thus been taken by the Melanesian mind towards separating the Personal from the Impersonal, and human from superhuman attributes and potentialities.

Thus we find in widely separated regions, among widely different races and in cultures the most diverse, the idea of mystic power or potentiality, often concentrated in individual persons or things, but in effect spread throughout the world. Some peoples have been more alive to the impersonal character of this power, and have ascribed to it, wherever manifested, a unity of origin akin to the scientific concept of force behind all phenomena. To others it has assumed a more individual character. It clings in any case to personality and tends to become inseparable from it; but the impersonal aspect is never wholly wanting.

The patient reader will have observed the difficulty experienced alike by scientific explorers and missionaries in expounding this idea in its varied forms and applications. The difficulty has not arisen wholly from its strangeness. It is due in large part to its want of clarity. The savage {62} himself does not know; he has rarely had occasion, and still more rarely inclination, to reflect on his beliefs. He has had no schools of science or philosophy to think out his thoughts for him. Hence they are ill defined; like clouds in the sky, they take first one shape and then another. Yet those very clouds, by comparison with the formless vapour from whence they have been condensed, are continents of solidity and definiteness.

Although the idea of _orenda_, or _mana_, may not receive everywhere the same explicit recognition, it is implied in the customs and beliefs of mankind throughout the world. It underlies the practice of Taboo. We have had already occasion to notice this in reference to the _mana_ of Maori chiefs. In the population of Madagascar there is a large, perhaps a predominant Polynesian element. When a Malagasy sticks up in his field a figure or scarecrow to keep off robbers, it is not that they may dread prosecution with all the rigour of the law, though that may be the result if they are caught. What is threatened is sickness, mysteriously induced by the power of the owner of the field, or by the power which he has caused to be conjured into the scarecrow.[62.1] A Samoan in the same way suspends to a cocoa-nut palm a small figure of a shark made with a leaf of the tree; it is notice to the robber that he will be inevitably devoured by a white shark the next time he goes to fish.[62.2] Similar practices prevail in the Melanesian islands.[62.3] Taboo has obtained a very prominent position in the social order and government of Polynesian communities. It is {63} from them that the word has been adopted into English parlance, and adapted to a sense near akin to that of another interesting word--to _boycott_. But it is not only in Polynesia and the neighbouring islands of Melanesia that the dread of a mysterious _mana_ is found, or that it leads to prohibitions and abstinences often very burdensome. It is unnecessary to adduce examples of the taboos on women, practically universal in the lower culture at certain times. The Siberian Chukchi, whose fire has gone out on the cold and timberless tundra, cannot borrow fire from his neighbour, for “the fire of a strange family is regarded as infectious and as harbouring strange spirits. Fear of pollution extends also to all objects belonging to a strange hearth, to the skins of the tent and the sleeping room, and even to the keepers and worshippers of strange penates. The Chukchi from far inland, who travel but little, when they come to a strange territory fear to sleep in tents or to eat meat cooked on a strange fire, preferring to sleep in the open air and to subsist on their own scant food-supply. On the other hand, an unknown traveller, coming unexpectedly to a Chukchi camp, can hardly gain admittance to a tent,” a difficulty of which the writer I am quoting had personal experience.[63.1] This reluctance to contact with strangers is not shyness; nor is it the dread of hostile intentions. Each individual, each family or body of men, has its own atmosphere; and this atmosphere conveys “pollution.” It is only throwing the idea a step backwards to imagine the cause of the pollution as “strange spirits.” Spirits are _mana_; and it is the _mana_ that is feared--the mystic influence or potentiality that may strike the unwary stranger. This is what issues in practice as the taboo. The subject of Taboo has been treated so fully by {64} Professor Frazer[64.1] that it is needless to discuss it here. Moreover, to do so in any detail would require a volume. Suffice it to say that the universal avoidance of a dead body, the prohibitions observed by priests, by chiefs, by hunters and warriors, the prohibitions of temple and shrine, of times and seasons, of speech and act, may all be traced to the same root-idea. Our words _sanctity_, _pollution_, _infection_ feebly and partially translate the intuitive dread of _orenda_ which is embodied in a taboo.

The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief in _orenda_ that has survived into civilized communities. Here the whole maleficent potentiality of a person is concentrated in a glance; and the amulets so often worn on the body or suspended on the wall or at the door of a house are directed to intercepting and so exhausting the influence. In many cases, either by means of them or by a word or gesture, a counter-_orenda_ is exercised, intended to annihilate, or at least neutralize, the evil influence. An analogous superstition may be cited from the Upper Congo. The Boloki believe that an occult power is possessed and exercised by many individuals. They call it _likundu_. Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A person is accused of possessing _likundu_ when he or she is extraordinarily successful in hunting, fishing, skilled labour or the accumulation of wealth. There is apparently,” says Rev. J. H. Weeks, “only a certain amount of skill extant, only a certain number of fish to be caught, only a certain amount of wealth to be gained; and for a person to excel all others is a proof that he is using evil means {65} to his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he lays himself open to the charge of possessing _likundu_.” Consequently “a person who possesses this _likundu_ may unconsciously cause the hunting skill of any hunter in his family to fail.” When the charge is seriously made “it causes much annoyance, and can only be disproved by either drinking the ordeal or refraining from doing that which has brought the charge,” of which Mr Weeks goes on to give an illustration that had come under his own observation.[65.1]

Finally, what foundation there may be for the modern psychological doctrine of Telepathy it is not my business to determine. But its resemblance to the Iroquoian doctrine of _orenda_ may be pointed out here. Telepathic communication may result from conscious or unconscious exertion of will; it may occur at a supreme crisis of fate or at a casual moment. It is in either case the product of a potentiality which we call _mystic_ for want of a better name, and which attaches to, or flows from, some personalities more strongly than others. We have all had the experience of occasionally meeting, or receiving a letter from, someone on whom our thoughts have been more or less insistently dwelling, and whom we did not expect immediately to see or hear from. Goethe is reported by his friend Eckermann as having told him: “I have often enough had the experience in my youthful years of a powerful longing for a beloved maiden taking possession of me during a {66} lonely walk; and I thought about her and thought about her until she really came and met me.” We need, however, no such commonplace illustration to convince us of Goethe’s _orenda_.

Without multiplying illustrations which will spring to the mind of everyone, I venture to suggest that in man’s emotional response to his environment, in his interpretation in the terms of personality of the objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by him with potentiality, atmosphere, _orenda_, _mana_--call it by what name you will--we have the common root of magic and religion.

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.

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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 {68} 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 {69} 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. {70} 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 {71} 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. {72} 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]

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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.

Destructive criticism is comparatively easy; anyone can make objections. Not everyone can substitute a sounder theory in place of that destroyed. It is when Messrs Hubert and Mauss come to construct their own theory of magic that they find themselves in difficulty. For they have to admit that in magic the same collective forces operate as in religion. Faith is as necessary to magic as to religion; it is as necessary to the magician as to the priest. Trickery no doubt there is; that has not always been excluded from religion. But there is much more than trickery. The magician believes in his own powers; {74} and he believes all the more strongly because his public believes. The faith of society and his own faith act and react upon one another. But this is precisely the case with the priest and his religion.

If we examine the magician’s methods we can hardly distinguish them from those employed in religion. The attempt to bewitch an enemy by means of his clothing or a fragment of his body is precisely the same in principle as the proceedings already described at the inauguration of a Polynesian king or the communication of the virtues of mediæval saints by means of their relics. It is true that in the one case the object of the ceremony is maleficent, in the other cases it is beneficent. If that were a real distinction, the processes would still remain analogous. It is not real, however; for the sanctity of Polynesian kings has its maleficent side, and the relics of the saints have been often employed to the injury of an enemy, as well as to the healing of a friend. Nor can it be said that magic is purely an art, a technique, while religion is dependent upon higher and independent wills. The aid of spirits is often invoked in magic; spell passes easily into prayer, and prayer into spell. The accounts that have reached us of the Witches’ Sabbath may be the product of hallucination, or confessions extorted from victims who said what they were expected to say. But at least they bear witness to the general belief of the times, which regarded magic rather as a counter-religion than as a mere technique. Professor Frazer’s reply to this is of course that such a belief, such practices, were the result of a later fusion of religion and magic. That the fusion was not primitive is, however, incapable of proof. As we shall see by and by, in the lowest societies of which we have evidence practices usually regarded as magical are indistinguishable from those regarded as {75} religious. The mutual hostility of religion and magic, where it exists, is, in truth, the result of a later development.

Like religion, the chief factor in magic--that by which it accomplishes its ends--is the mystic force that is released and set at work by the rite or the spell. Behind the sympathetic formula, behind the notions of property and of spirits, there is another notion still more mysterious, the notion of power, vague, impersonal, always operating, irresistible, or depending for its efficaciousness on conditions not altogether at command. The investigations of the last chapter have disclosed to us what this power is. By its very vagueness and impersonality it enshrines possibilities illimitable. It may be materialized, localized, personalized; but it ceases not to be spiritual, to act at a distance, and that by direct connection, if not by contact, to be mobile and to move without movement, to be impersonal though clothed in personal forms, to be divisible yet continuous. It is this notion that accounts in the last resort for the phenomena of magic. Without it, magic is incomprehensible; like a sentence without the copula, the action, the affirmation is wanting.

All this is equally true of religion. The authors see therefore that magic is, like religion, a social phenomenon; it has parallel rites with those of religion; it has parallel postulates and beliefs. To distinguish it from religion they are driven to erect into a test the individualistic aims of its practitioners, or of those on whose behalf it is called in aid. Its true distinction is, according to this, that it tends to be isolated, to be furtive, to be put into motion on behalf of individuals and against the community; its methods become arbitrary; it ceases to be a common obligation. Individuals in magic have appropriated the ideas and the collective forces generated by {76} religion, and turned them to their own ends. Religion, in short, is social in its aims, magic is antisocial. That is the only difference between them. In this distinction Professor Durkheim agrees. Everywhere, he says, religious life has for its substratum a definite group; even what are called private cults are celebrated by the family or the corporation or society to which they are restricted. On the other hand, though magical beliefs are widely diffused and practised by large classes of a population, their effect is not to bind together those who adhere to them and unite them into a group having one common life: there is no magical Church. Between the magician and those who consult him there is no durable bond. He has clients, not a church. His relations with them are accidental, not permanent; and they may have no relations with one another; they may even be ignorant of one another’s existence.[76.1]

But this very charge of being antisocial is brought by many dominant religions against their rivals. It was substantially the charge brought against the early Christians by the Pagans. It is to-day the charge formulated by fanatical Russian Christians against the Jews. Here in the west of Europe it is, in a somewhat vaguer form, the reproach of orthodox Christians against Agnostics and all shades of Rationalists. To apply it as a test to distinguish religion from magic is to qualify the same practices as religious or as magical, according as they have social or antisocial ends. And how shall we define these ends? The act which at one stage of civilization is antisocial, at another is often a social duty. To attempt a change in this respect may be antisocial as regards the existing society, though it may result in ultimate benefit; and the attempt may be made from purely individualist motives, for purely individualist ends. {77} Nay, the same act may be in the same society social or antisocial, according to circumstances. In Central Australia the man who kills an enemy by means of _arungquiltha_, which may be rendered _evil magic_, commits an antisocial act; he does it in secret: it would be dangerous to let it become known. But if a woman run away from her husband and cannot be recovered, he may lawfully avenge himself with the aid of _arungquiltha_. He is performing an act of social justice, and will be joined in doing it by the men of his local group. In the same way vengeance may be taken for a murder, real or supposed, by a _Kurdaitcha_ party, which performs what we should designate as a magical ceremony to cause the victim to sicken and die. This is held to be a social, not an antisocial act, for it is fulfilling the social duty of revenge. It is done with the sanction of the council of elders.[77.1] In Melanesia, as we have seen, all religion consists in getting _mana_ for oneself, not for the benefit of others; though doubtless the _mana_, when obtained, is often used for the advantage of the community.[77.2] Often it is not. “A man will commonly have his _keramo_, a _tindalo_ [a ghost that is worshipped] of killing, who will help him in fighting or in slaying his private enemy.” The _tindalo_, albeit the object of religious worship, has no prejudice against antisocial acts. His worshipper, before going out to commit what we should call murder, performs an elaborate ceremony, sacrificing to the ghost, and cursing his victim. If he succeed in killing him, the _tindalo_ gets as his share of the spoil the ghost of the deceased, and is invoked to give _mana_ in return.[77.3]

The man who, in Europe or elsewhere, makes use of {78} spells to injure individuals, or even of the Evil Eye, is practising magic: he is doing an antisocial act. The man who defends himself with a gesture, with spells, or by loading his body with amulets, is not doing an antisocial act; he is simply protecting himself. But is he practising religion or magic? Be it remembered here that a man may have the Evil Eye without knowing it. Pius the Ninth, Vicar of Christ, was reputed to have the Evil Eye. Nothing was so fatal as his blessing; the faithful quailed at his glance and doubtless protected themselves with amulets. So the Boloki of the Congo hold that “one can have witchcraft without knowing it.”[78.1] In these cases there can be no antisocial intention. Among the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa a common procedure is to point at one’s enemy with the index-finger. This is antisocial: it is witchcraft. Before they go to war a ceremony is performed by an old woman, naked and in a state of ritual purity, over the warriors, and an incantation is muttered, to enable them to kill their foes.[78.2] This may not be antisocial; but is it anything else than magic? True, the men murmur prayers to their ancestral spirits for help; but then religion is penetrated with magic. Even Professor Durkheim admits that he cannot show a solution of continuity between them; the frontiers between their respective domains are often undefined, unfixed.[78.3] At all events he cannot say where the one ends and the other begins.

Perhaps, however, not the intention but the tendency, whether social or antisocial, is the test. In that case it is hard to conceive anything more antisocial than the operations of the Holy Inquisition. They were, it is {79} true, not performed by supernatural instrumentality, or for supernatural purposes. To that extent they are not directly parallel with the rites we have been considering. But they were carried on by persons consecrated to religion, as religious acts, surrounded by religious rites, by exorcisms, imprecations, conjurations, shielded by the Church with all her powers, and sanctioned, if not set in motion, by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. They desolated every society where the institution was introduced.[79.1] Secrecy has been already noted as a characteristic of magic as opposed to religion. Naturally antisocial acts are performed in secret. The deeds of the Holy Office were done in the deepest dens of the building, and surrounded by impervious precautions against discovery, except the last dread act. In that consummation of cruelty, that supreme Act of Faith, as it was called, its officials nominally took no part; though it was well known that they insisted upon it relentlessly and with every terror, ghostly or secular, which they knew so well how to wield. On the other hand, the African sorcerer, conjuring the rain or the sunshine so necessary for the crops, performs an eminently social work, and does it very often in the open eye of day and before the assembled people. When a fisher-boat was launched in the north-east of Scotland a bottle of whisky used to be broken on the prow or stern with the words:

“Frae rocks an’ saands An’ barren lands An’ ill men’s hands Keep’s free. Weel oot, weel in, Wi’ a gueede shot.”

{80}

“On the arrival of the boat at its new home the skipper’s wife, in some of the villages, took a lapful of corn or barley, and sowed it over the boat.”[80.1] These are not antisocial acts; they have no antisocial tendency; and they are not performed in secret. Must we account them religious, and the operations of the Inquisition magical?

Thus antisocial character is no sufficient test of magic as opposed to religion. Professor Doutté, dealing with magic as developed in Islam, adheres generally to the views of Messrs Hubert and Mauss. He proposes, however, another definition. Quoting with approval the late M. Marillier’s observation that magic is “the action on the without by the within,”[80.2] he remarks that the savage has not yet made a sufficient distinction between subject and object; he does not differentiate himself from the universe. And he concludes that magic, invented under the pressure of need, is only the objectivation of desire under the form of an extended force, singular, bound to gestures representative of the phenomenon desired and mechanically producing it. If the savage externalize this magical force so far that he ends by personifying it, we have the genesis of a god; the god, in fact, may be a personified _mana_. A god can only be anthropomorphic; he is the psycho-physical objectivation of man in phenomena.[80.3] This brings Professor {81} Doutté much nearer to Dr Frazer’s position, and might form the basis of an _eirenicon_ between them. For though he is fully aware that much in magic is indistinguishable from religion, he holds it to be a subsequent development: magic has so far modelled itself on religion and borrowed its theistic methods of procedure. It presents itself as an anti-religion. Under Christianity it reaches its ultimate term with the Black Mass and the cult of the devil: Islam does not lend itself so well to hideous parody. Yet Professor Doutté, after flirting with Professor Frazer’s opinion, comes back to the orthodoxy of the French sociologists: the real distinction between religion and magic is that the one is social--it sustains the life of the society; the other applies its rites to strictly personal ends--it is antisocial. The one is magic lawful and even obligatory; the other is magic useless or injurious to society, and it is condemned and interdicted. Islam even recognizes white or religious magic; the Prophet himself recommended it. Ibn Khaldoûn, a great Mohammedan jurist, can find, indeed, no solid distinction between the miracle of the saint and the prodigy wrought by the sorcerer, save that of the morality of its aim. The test of morality is what is permitted by the Law. That which is permitted by the Law is moral; the rest is immoral. It comes to this, then, that a miracle is legitimate magic, and magic is a forbidden miracle.[81.1]