Chapter III: Belief and Superstition (2)

For example, a savage judges that to put a lock of a man’s hair in the fire injures and may destroy him: how comes he to think so? He has learnt by experience that for a man to put his hand in the fire, or to fall into it, hurts him; and this supplies the mould in which his inference about the lock of hair is cast. Similarly, he is apt to judge that to throw a man’s image into the fire hurts him and may destroy him; and this clearly rests upon the same experience. His reasoning assumes the minor premise that (for the purpose of his revenge) a separated part of a man, or his image, is the same as the man himself; and this assumption is made explicit in the famous maxims of Magic, that in rites, whatever has been in contact with a man—or that any likeness of a man—may be substituted for him. But the generalisation of these maxims is left for an advanced stage of culture; the savage, who acts as if he held them, has never thought of, much less formulated them. They are derived, by later thought, entirely from an analysis of his conduct in magic. What the causes are that determine him to act as if he accepted the maxims of Magic will presently be discussed.[93]

There are certain other reasonings implied in savage practices, where the error lies not so much in the minor premise as in the minor term, thus: It is matter of experience that a sense of personal power and elation is produced by dancing and singing; and (perhaps without remembering such experience) a savage infers that magical power is increased by the same means. Or, again, it is matter of experience that men eat and use solid food and weapons; and a savage infers that ghosts eat ghostly food and use ghostly weapons; that is to say, that where food and spears are left at a tomb and remain untouched, the ghost has taken to himself the soul of these things which was his proper share. Now granting that there are such things as magical powers and ghosts, the reasoning that identifies them respectively with physical power and with men is, for the purpose of the inference, not unplausible; with a liberal examiner the minor premises might pass. But if magical powers and ghosts do not exist, the minor terms are imaginary.[94] In short, all these reasonings turn upon imaginations. The experiential major premises are true enough, but the minor premises are illusory, and as it is a maxim with Logicians that the force of reasoning follows the weaker premise, the conclusion is illusory. It is not in perception but in imagination that a part is the same as the whole, or that a likeness is the same as the thing itself; that magic controls events and that ghosts haunt their sepulchres.

These reasonings are fallacious imitations of parallel inferences according to cause and effect; but there are others of a kind peculiar to imagination: I mean reasonings by analogy—as when a Zulu, courting the dusky fair, chews a piece of wood, in the expectation that, as the wood is reduced to pulp, her heart, too, will be softened. These processes are not parallel; there is no resemblance between a lady’s heart and a piece of wood, nor between mastication and court-ship; but the relation involved, the softening process, is felt to be the same in both connections and, therefore, the cases on the whole are thought to be the same. Many rites and observances depend upon such analogies—for this is the strict sense of analogy, “like relations of unlike terms”; and they have a leading part in the formation of myths in which natural events are represented as personal relations—Apollo chasing the Dawn, and so forth. And I formerly thought that such arguments as the foregoing, in which the actions of ghosts are identified with those of men, or the sufferings of a part are equated with those of the whole, were examples of analogical reasoning; for certainly, the terms involved are different: a ghost, or an image, or a nail-paring is not the same as a man. But, on reflection, I see that though these terms are really different, that has nothing to do with the psychology of the matter, for they are conceived by the savage to be the same; and, therefore, the inference is conceived as parallel to the experiential ground (even though this remain latent in consciousness).

Analogical thought is now understood to be imaginative only, and is confined to the metaphors and similes of poetry or rhetoric; though it is not very long ago that it was seriously trusted in argument, as in defending absolute monarchy in the State by the examples of patriarchy in the family, and even by the supposed “regiment” of bees and quails in their societies, of the lion over beasts and of the eagle over birds.

In this spirit, Malays, having identified the life of the rice plant with human life, regard the flowering rice as in its infancy, and proceed to feed it with pap: and carry out the analogy at further stages of its development. Similarly, to facilitate childbirth, or to liberate the struggling soul of the dying, it is a respected recipe to untie all knots, unfasten all buttons, unlock all doors, open all windows; for opening or loosing, no matter what, is always the same process-relation.

These seem to be the chief modes of fallacious thinking—(1) false parallels and (2) analogies—which mislead the untutored mind and give to imagination-beliefs such coherence as they ever attain. Two accounts of superstitious reasoning have been given by those who admit that savages reason at all; one is that they reason correctly from absurd premises; the other that they reason absurdly from correct premises. If the foregoing analysis is sound, there is some truth and some error in both these doctrines. So far as primitive ratiocination is purely analogical, it is quite futile, whether its premises be true or false; for it cannot be cast in any admissible logical form. So far as in superstition it imitates parallel reasoning, according to cause and effect or substance and attribute, the major premise is, for the most part, empirically true; the minor premise is false; and the conclusion is a vain imagination. There are three types of ratiocination: (1) equations, as in mathematics; and here primitive man for a long time got no further than the counting of things by his fingers and toes. (2) Parallels of premise and inference, according to causation or substance and attribute, as in the physical and natural sciences; and here the savage collects by experience much common sense, and by inevitable fallacies much superstition. (3) Analogies of imagination. The natural progress of reason consists in relegating analogies to poetry and rhetoric; in introducing greater and greater accuracy into the judgments that serve as major premises, and greater caution in assuming minor premises; at last, in counting and measuring the facts reasoned about, and so preparing the beginnings of mathematical method. Such progress is promoted by the high biological value of greater definiteness of thought. Immature man in the necessary practical life—which may be called the biological life—has many definite perceptions and judgments and well-adjusted actions; outside that life, in the region of superstitious observance, he is not a rational, but an imaginative animal.

§ 7. GENERAL IDEAS AT THE SAVAGE LEVEL

The language of savages is often wanting in names of classes of things for which names are with us a matter of course, and it has been supposed that those who use the language must be without the corresponding general ideas. Thus it is reported that a tribe had a name for each kind of tree but none for tree in general; another had a name for coco-nuts at various stages of growth (when they serve different uses) but none for coco-nut at all times: therefore, it is inferred, they had no general idea of tree or of coco-nut. A Siberian example is still more remarkable. The Tunguses depend entirely upon reindeer for food, clothes, tents and locomotion, and keep herds of them; yet they have no name for the animal. But they have a name for wild and another for tame reindeer; a name for domestic reindeer that have been broken in, and another for the unbroken; a name for the female fawn, for the doe with young, for a doe with one fawn, a doe in the third year with two fawns; a name for each age-class of buck, and so on.[95] Are we to infer that the Tunguses have no general idea of reindeer?

It was, no doubt, natural to assume that we first perceive individuals, which now stand clearly before us, and then, having compared them, arrive at general ideas. But if knowledge grows by the assimilation and differentiation of experiences, the class on the one hand and the individual on the other, must be joint products of this process: classes becoming clearer as more and more individuals are discriminated. Classes, or class-ideas never stand before us as individuals do; but the greater part of the meaning of every perception of an individual is the kind of thing it is. And as to priority, to perceive the kind of thing is (biologically) far more important than its individuality. If the individual did not mean the class, to perceive it would be useless as a guide to action. The general idea derived from the assimilation of experiences is the apperceptive mass that converts sense-stimulation into cognition: when unconscious Romanes called it a “recept.”

The primitiveness of general ideas is shown by gesture-language, which probably precedes speech, and which (except in direct indication of what is thought of) depends wholly upon general ideas suggested by imitative or significant actions. Primitive language must have described things by general characters, so far as it consisted in onomatopœia; to growl like a lion could only suggest the kind of animal. Primitive drawing (whether by children or savages) is nearly always generic: dog, horse, frigate-bird, hammer-headed shark, but not any individual.

There can be no doubt that savages are capable of general and abstract ideas; and no one now supposes that language is an adequate measure of thought. A language contains names only for things, groups, and aspects or actions of things which the people who use it need to discuss: if they do not need to speak of abstractions, there are no words for them. But we cannot assume of the contents of the mind, any more than of the outside world, that things do not exist unless we have noticed and named them. Professor Franz Boas has shown[96] that languages of the northern Amerinds, that do not idiomatically express abstract ideas, may be made to do so without violence, and that the abstract expression is intelligible to men native to the languages. “Every one who knows people of low culture,” says Dr. Rivers, “must recognise the difficulty which besets the study of any abstract question, not so much because the savage does not possess abstract ideas as that he has no words of his own to express them.”[97]

Amongst the ideas attained by savages, and having an important part in their lives, though often taken for granted and unexpressed, are some of the highest generality: for example “force.” The notion of force is derived from the experience of effort in our own muscular exertions; but with the development of our perception of physical objects by the integration of sense-data—sight, touch, movement and resisted movement (kinæsthesis), smell, hearing—this sense of effort, being transferred to objects as equivalent to our own exertions about them, becomes the all-important core of every object (or meaning of every perception of an object), without which the thing would be a mere show, neither useful nor injurious—sheep and tigers, rocks and pumpkins alike indifferent. Probably the perceptions of all the higher animals (down to reptiles) have this meaning. Force is reality, and by primitive man is thought of as the essence of whatever he conceives of as real, such as spells, talismans and ghosts. Having a subjective ground, from which it never becomes free, the notion of it is indefinite, varies for each of us with our constitution, age, health, and not only lends itself to the wildest whims of superstition, but has misled scientific investigations.

Relations are a class of general ideas familiar to savage thought, often appreciated with great subtlety and especially prominent in some magical operations. Relations are not only thought of by savages but compared, and likenesses discovered between them that may often surprise us. A gardener of New Guinea, having planted taro, ensured the growth of the crop by saying: “A muræna, left on the shore by the tide, was exhausted and on the point of expiring, when the tide returned, and it revived and swam away.” And he struck the ground with a branch three times.[98] He saw that renewal of life in the muræna and in the taro were the same thing; so that to describe one must strengthen the other—such is the “force” of a spell!

The most important relation involved in knowledge and in its practical applications is causation. Savages who have no word for causation and have never thought of it in the abstract, must always act as if they assume it. This is apt to be misunderstood. It is written: “The natives [of Australia] have no idea of cause and effect. They notice that two things occur one after the other, and at once jump to the conclusion that one is cause and the other effect.” They have, then, some idea of the relation, though ill-discriminated. Thus, having noticed that the plover often cries before rain, they imitate the cry when performing rites to bring on rain. We rather suppose that an atmospheric change, preceding the approaching rain, excites the plovers. But that does not occur to the natives: that “one after the other” is the same as effect after cause, or (as Logicians say) _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_, lies at the bottom of innumerable superstitions. The subconscious control exercised by this latent form of thought is very imperfect. The maxims of indirect Magic, that a likeness may be substituted for the thing itself, or a part of it for the whole, are merely formulæ of causation assumed under an erroneous belief as to what can be a cause. There are cases in which the like may be a substitute (one man for another) and a part may nearly serve for the whole (part of a broken knife). Hence these principles were stated and avowed by physicians and alchemists of the Middle Ages, and observed in their practice.

The quantitative axiom of mediate relation—“Magnitudes equal to the same magnitude are equal”—is, of course, never expressed by savages; but it is practically understood and applied by them whenever they use a common measure—the fingers for counting, the pace, or hand or arm-stretch to measure distance. These devices are gesture language; and the truth which the gestures assume has been forced upon the observation of primitive men whenever they saw three or more nearly equal things together—men in a row, birds in a flock, eggs in a nest. We need not suppose that conscious analysis is necessary to determine the relations between such things; the brain has its own method of analysis; and some day we learn the results. It was late in the day that the results became known; not, apparently, till the Greeks gave scientific form to the rudiments of mathematics. For then, for the first time, articulate axioms were wanted—to satisfy the form of science. The innumerable exact calculations of Egypt and Assyria could go on very well without them. Their discovery required the specific purpose of a scientist in search of them, the state of profound meditation and abstraction, excluding all irrelevant ideas, when in the emptiness and darkness of the mind their light became visible, like a faint sound in a silent room. Thus an idea, whose functioning has for ages controlled thought without being recognised, suddenly takes its place in the organisation of knowledge.

§ 8. THE WEAKNESS OF IMAGINATION-BELIEFS

With immature minds their superstitions seem to rest on good evidence. Some of those who pray to Neptune are saved from shipwreck, and the drowned are forgotten: all confirmatory coincidences are deeply impressive, and failures are overlooked or excused. By suggestion the sick are often healed, and the hale are struck down. Curses and incantations, if known to the intended victim, fulfil themselves. So do good omens that give confidence, and bad omens that weaken endeavour. If a magician has the astuteness to operate for rain only when the wet season approaches, the event is likely to confirm his reputation. Sleight of hand, ventriloquism and the advantages of a dark séance are not unknown to sorcerers tutored in an old tradition of deceit, and their clients take it for demonstration. The constant practice by a whole village of both magic and industry for the same end, makes it impossible for ordinary mortals to see which of them is the real agent of success. For the failures of magic or of sacrifice the practitioners always have plausible explanations. Hence between imagination-beliefs and perception-beliefs, as to their causes, there may be, for the believers, no apparent difference.

But in character, also, imagination-beliefs may seem indistinguishable from perception-beliefs; in immediate feeling-quality they are certainly very much like them; and, on a first consideration, they appear to have as much influence over men’s actions: but this is not true. We must not infer that to suffer martyrdom for a cult (as witches have done) can be a sign of nothing but unalterable faith in it: besides fanaticism and other abnormal states of mind, one must allow for loyalty to a party or leader, for oppositeness and hatred of the persecutor, for display, self-assertion and (in short) for a strong will. Those who take part in a religious war—are they driven wholly by enthusiasm for the supernatural, and not at all by hatred of aliens, love of fighting and hope of plunder? Discounting the admixture of other motives, the power of imagination-beliefs is, with most people, much less than we are apt to suppose. They are unstable, and in course of time change, though the “evidence” for them may remain the same. Moulded from the first by desire and anxiety, they remain plastic under the varying stress of these and other passions. In a primitive agricultural community, preparation of the soil, hoeing, reaping and harvesting go on (though with inferior tools and methods) just as they do with us; and from age to age the processes are generally confirmed or slowly improved. At the same time, every such employment is surrounded by a sort of aura of rites, which seem to be carried out with equal, or greater, scrupulosity and conviction; yet, age by age, these rites slowly atrophy and lose their importance and their ancient meaning, which is explained by new myths; or other rites may be learnt from neighbours or from invaders; for some rites may be necessary to their life, though not any particular ones.

The unstable character of superstitions and their close alliance with play-beliefs may be shown in various ways:

(_a_) The rites which express them are often carried out with deception, practised on the crowd in a public performance, as by obtaining from heaven a shower of rice, which (over night) has been lodged in the tree-tops, and is shaken down at the decisive moment; or, in private practice, played off on the patient, by bringing a stone in one’s waist-belt and then extracting it from his body. Half the tribe may deceive the rest, the men mystifying the women and children, or the old the young.

(_b_) Religious beliefs often comprise incompatible attitudes: the worshippers of a god acknowledge in prosperity his superior wisdom and power—at the same time, perhaps, employing devices to cheat him; or, in long continuing distress from drought or war, they may threaten to punish him, withhold his sacrifices and desecrate his shrine. In Raiatea, when a chief of rank fell ill, extravagant rites and sacrifices were practised; but if these failed, “the god was regarded as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image destroyed.”[99]

(_c_) Imagination-beliefs break down under various trials—such as economy, selling the Rice-mother when the price of grain rises; offering the gods forged paper-money instead of good, or leaving many things at a grave and taking back the more precious; self-preservation, as in substituting the king’s eldest son for himself in sacrifice; compassion, in burying with the dead puppets instead of slaves (though in this economy may have some part), or substituting in sacrifice a bull for a man.

In such cases as these we see how any desire, whose satisfaction is incompatible with a given belief or observance, tends to create a limiting belief and to modify the rites. Social indolence and fatigue—the product of many individual fatigues and occasional levity, whereby the meaning of rites is forgotten, and the rites themselves are gradually slurred and abbreviated—must be an important condition of the degeneration of rites, as it is of language. Foreign influence through trade or war introduces disturbing ideas that appeal to lovers of novelty, and show that other people with other beliefs are as well off as ourselves. Even repeated experience of failure may shake a man’s confidence and make him throw away his fetish: though usually he gets another.

(_d_) The beliefs of Magic and Animism are generally supported by intense emotional excitement during the incantations and ceremonies that express them. Emotion is artificially stimulated and, probably, is felt to be necessary in order to sustain illusion. It excludes criticism and increases suggestibility.

(_e_) The specific connexion of such beliefs with the play attitude is shown: by their rites including games, such as leaping, swinging, spear-throwing—supposed to have some magical efficacy; the ceremonies themselves are often dances, dramas, choruses; and with the degeneration of belief, the rites remain as dramatic or musical pastimes, whilst the myths survive in epic poems, fairy-tales and ghost-stories. When rites and incantations are not intended to incite to immediate action, it is necessary that the emotions generated in their performance shall subside with only an imaginary satisfaction: they, therefore, acquire the æsthetic tone of beauty, or sublimity, or pathos (or some rudimentary form of these feelings); so that the performance, thus experienced, becomes an end in itself.

These beliefs with their correlative ceremonies have a further resemblance to play in the indirectness of their utility. Play develops faculty; but no child thinks of that. Magic and Animism (as we have seen) tend to maintain custom and order; but this is not known to any one at first and hardly now to the generality. Rites of public interest, to procure rain or to encourage the crops, though useless for such purposes, gratify the desire to do something, or to feel as if something were being done toward the end desired, especially in the intervals when really effective work cannot be carried on, as whilst the crops are growing or after harvest: they allay anxiety and give hope and confidence. Moreover, they are organised pastimes—not that they are designed to pass the time, but that they have in fact that valuable function. The men of backward societies, during a considerable part of their lives, have not enough to do. Social ceremonies keep people out of mischief, and, at the same time, in various ways exercise and develop their powers. With us industry is a sufficient occupation, or even too engrossing, and circumstances keep us steady; so that, in leisure, pastimes may be treated lightly. With the savage some pastimes must present themselves as necessary periodical religious duties, whose performance (in his belief) encourages and enhances industry. So far, again, as needs and interests are common to a tribe, village or other group, these ceremonies ensure social co-operation and unity and also emulation in their performance; and they preserve tradition and the integration of successive generations. Our games are free from practical hopes and anxieties; but the more elaborate, such as horse-racing, have still a social function; or, like cricket and football, a tribal character: the school, college, county or even the nation feels deeply concerned about them. The Olympic Games, which interested the Greek world throughout all its scattered cities, have been traced back to primitive religious observances.[100]

As for the dark side of superstition, it needs no other explanation than crime, fanaticism and insanity: which also are diseases of the imagination. Jealousy, hatred, greed, ferocious pride and the lust of power are amongst the causes that mould belief. Any calling pursued in secret, like that of the sorcerer, under a social ban, is of course demoralised. Where the interest of an organised profession stands in a certain degree of antagonism to the public interest, it may become the starting-point of unlimited abominations; and of this truth the interests of magicians and priests have supplied the most terrific examples. Dwelling upon what you know of black magic and red religion, the retrospect of human culture fills you with dismay; but need not excite astonishment; for human nature is less adapted to its environment (chiefly social) than anything else in the world; the development of the mind and of society has been too recent for us reasonably to expect anything better.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] _Treatise of Human Nature_, Part III. § 7. For the recent psychology of Belief see James Sully’s _The Human Mind_, ch. xiii., and James Ward’s _Psychological Principles_, ch. xiv.

[86] See below, ch. viii. § 5.

[87] _Logique des Sentiments_, II. § 4.

[88] _Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures_, p. 40.

[89] _British Journal of Psychology_, Vol. I. p. 393.

[90] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 462.

[91] _The Melanesians_, p. 247.

[92] Below, ch. viii. § 4.

[93] Ch. iv. § 8.

[94] In assuming that there are no magical powers I do not mean that the magician has no professional powers, but that such real powers as he has are not magical.

[95] Czaplicka, _My Siberian Year_, p. 94. Other examples in Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, pp. 351-3.

[96] _The Mind of Primitive Man_, V. pp. 150-52.

[97] _Sociological Review_, January 1910, p. 9.

[98] Quoted by Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, I. p. 105.

[99] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 216

[100] F. M. Cornford in Miss Jane Harrison’s _Themis_, ch. vii.