Chapter VIII: The Mind of the Wizard (2)

But it is not only chiefs and heroes whose minds are sometimes emancipated from popular superstitions. An old Australian whose duty it was to watch the bones of a dead man and to keep alight a fire near them, sold them for some tobacco and a tomahawk, in great fear lest it should be known to his tribesmen; but he “evidently suffered from no qualms of conscience”:[478] that is to say, he feared the living, but not the dead. W. Stanbridge says of the aborigines of Victoria that “there are doctors or priests of several vocations; of the rain, of rivers and of human diseases ... but there are natives who refuse to become doctors and disbelieve altogether the pretensions of those persons.”[479] John Matthew writes of the tribe with which he was best acquainted—“whilst the blacks had a term for ghosts and behind these were departed spirits, ... individual men would tell you upon inquiry that they believed that death was the last of them.”[480] Near Cape King William in New Guinea, there is a general belief in spirits and ghosts and also in one Mate; but some whisper that there is no such being.[481] The Bakongo villagers do not believe in all witchcraft; but respect some sorcerers, and regard others with more or less contempt: every man, however, must profess belief, or else “his life will be made wretched by accusations of witchcraft.”[482] Before missionaries came amongst the Baloki, many people had no faith in the medicine-men, but would not oppose them for fear of being charged with witchcraft.[483] The religious convictions of the Zulus were very shallow; belief in the spirit-world depended on prosperity: “fullness declares the Itongo exists; affliction says it does not exist.” ... “For my part, I say the Amadhlozi of our house died forever.”[484] Capt. Whiffen reports of the tribes of S. Amerinds whom he visited that, “among individuals there are sceptics of every grade.”[485] Whilst all Dakotas reverence the great, intangible, mysterious power Takoo-Wahkon, as to particular divinities, any man may worship some and despise others. “One speaks of the medicine-dance with respect; another smiles at the name.” The Assiniboin generally believe that good ghosts migrate to the south where game is abundant; whilst the wicked go northward; but some think that death ends all.[486] At Ureparapara (Banks Islands) food is buried with a corpse; and “if there be too much, some is hung above the grave, whence the bolder people take it secretly and eat it.”[487] Disbelief is expressed in actions more emphatically than in words; the plundering of tombs has been universal. An idol-maker of Maeva assured Ellis that, “although at times he thought it was all deception and only practised his trade for gain, yet at other times he really thought the gods he himself had made were powerful beings.”[488] In Tonga it was orthodox that chiefs and their retainers were immortal, doubtful whether men of the third rank were so, certain that those of the lowest rank, Tooas, were not; their souls died with the body; yet some of these Tooas ventured to think that they too would live again.[489] A sceptical Kayan could hardly believe that men continue to exist after death; for then they would return to visit those they love. “But,” he concluded, “who knows?” The traditionary lore of the Kayans answers many deep questions; but the keener intelligences inquire further—“why do the dead become visible only in dreams?” etc.[490] A Tanghul told me, says Mr. T. C. Hodson, that no one had ever seen a Lai (deity): when things happened men said a Lai had done it. “In his view clearly a Lai was a mere hypothesis.”[491]

Of such examples of the occurrence of “free-thought” in all parts of the world, no doubt, a little investigation would discover many more. Everywhere some savages think for themselves; though, like civilised folk, they cannot always venture to avow their conclusions. We must not suppose that belief is as uniform as custom or conventional doctrine: custom and convention hinder thought in dull people, but do not enslave it in the “keener intelligence.” Without the enviable advantage of personal intimacy with savages, I have, by reading about them, gained the impression that they enjoy a considerable measure of individuality—as much as the less educated Europeans—and are not mere creatures of a social environment.

The most backward savages have a large stock of common sense concerning the properties of bodies, of wind and water and fire, of plants and animals and human nature; for this is the necessary ground of their life. This common sense has certain characters which are in conflict with their superstitions; the facts known to common sense are regular, proportional, the same for all; not often failing and needing excuses, not extravagant and disconnected, not depending on the presence of some fantastic mountebank. Savages do not draw explicitly the comparisons that make this conflict apparent; but it may be felt without being defined. Some of them, especially, are (as amongst ourselves) naturally inclined to a positive way of thinking; their common sense predominates over the suggestions of Magic and Animism, and they, more than others aware of the conflict, become the proto-sceptics or rationalists. Lecky observes that beliefs and changes of belief depend not upon definite arguments, but upon habits of thought. In the seventeenth century a new habit of thought overcame the belief in witchcraft and miracles;[492] and in many other centuries it has everywhere done the same for those in whom the “apperceptive mass” of common sense became more or less clearly and steadily a standard of belief, repelling the apperceptive masses of Magic and Animism with all their contents and alliances. They had more definite ideas than others, little love of the marvellous, little subjection to fear, desire, imagination.

Sometimes the dictates of common sense are imposed by necessity. The Motu (Papuasian) were accustomed to rub spears with ginger to make them fly straight. It had, however, been discovered that no amount of Magic would turn a poor spearman into an accurate thrower.[493] Spear-throwing is too serious a concern not to be judged of upon its merits, however interesting the properties of ginger. A whole tribe may in some vital matter, whilst practising a superstitious rite, disregard its significance: like the Kalims, who hold a crop-festival in January, and afterwards take the omens as to what ground shall be cultivated for next harvest; “but this seems a relic of old times, for the circle of cultivation is never broken, let the omens be what they may.”[494] That is a tacit triumph of common sense.

The bearing of all this on the character of the wizard is as follows: since everywhere sceptics occur, and some individuals go further than others in openly or secretly rejecting superstitions, why should not the wizard or sorcerer, who is amongst the most intelligent and daring of his tribe, be himself a rationalist and, therefore, a conscious impostor? That much of his art is imposture no one disputes; and so far as it is so, he sees it as part of the ordinary course of experience. The sorcerer on the Congo who drove a spirit into the dark corner of a hut, stabbed it there, and showed the blood upon his spear, having produced the blood (as his son confessed to Mr. Weeks) by scratching his own gums, was by that action himself instructed in common sense.[495] He saw in it quite plainly an ordinary course of events, the “routine of experience”; whilst the spectators were mystified. Must he not, then, have more common sense than other people?

In fact, he recognises the course of nature and his own impotence, whenever an attempt to conjure would endanger his reputation. The Arunta medicine-men exhibit great dramatic action in curing various diseases; but waste no antics on recognisable senile decay.[496] The medicine-man of Torres Straits admits that he cannot make a “big wind” from the south-east during the north-west season.[497] The Polynesian sorcerers confessed their practices harmless to Europeans;[498]—who were not suggestible on that plane of ideas. Shamans amongst the Yakuts would not try to cure diarrhœa, small-pox, syphilis, scrofula or leprosy, and would not shamanise in a house where small-pox had been.[499] These miracle-mongers sometimes know a hawk from a handsaw. It seems reasonable, then, to assume that wizards have more common sense than other people; since, besides the instruction of common experience, they know in their professional practice (at least in a superficial way) the real course of events, which is concealed from the laity. And, no doubt, of those whose art is deliberate imposture, this is true. But the infatuation of those who are wizards by vocation may be incorrigible by any kind of evidence: especially as to the genuineness of another’s performance. Dr. Rivers speaks of the blindness of the man of rude culture to deceitful proceedings on the part of others with which he is familiar in his own actions.[500] For the wizard there are established prejudices, professional and personal interest, fear of trusting his own judgment, supernatural responsibility, desire of superhuman power, sometimes even a passionate desire to alleviate the sufferings of his tribesmen, and everything else that confirms the will to believe.

§5. THE WIZARD’S PERSUASION

Many practices of wizards involve a representation of the course of events as something very different from the reality; and there is no doubt that frequently, or even in most cases, wizards are aware of this, as in performing the sucking cure or visiting the man in the moon. But some anthropologists dislike to hear such practices described as “fraud,” “imposture” or “deceit”; and for certain classes of wizards it seems (as I shall show) unjust to speak in these terms of their profession. Still, taking the profession and its actions on the whole, it is difficult to find in popular language terms more fairly descriptive. We meet here the inconvenience that other social or moral sciences find when they try to use common words in a specially restricted sense. In Economics, _e. g._, “rent,” “wages,” “profits” have definite meanings very different from their popular acceptance. In Ethics, what controversy, what confusion in the defining of “virtue” and “the good”! In Metaphysics, what is the meaning of “cause”; what is the meaning of “intuition”? The terms must be defined in each system. If then, in these pages, the conduct of a man who, on his way to cure a sufferer of “stitch in the side,” conceals in his mouth a piece of bone or pebble, and after dancing, and sucking hard enough at the patient’s belly, produces that bone or pebble as the cause of pain—is described as “fraud,” or “imposture,” or “deceit,” the words are used to describe the fact only, without any such imputation upon the man’s character as they convey in popular usage. Scientifically considered, the man and his circumstances being such as they are, his actions are a necessary consequence; in this limited region of thought moral censure is irrelevant.

There are some wizards, as it were in minor orders, such as Professor Seligman calls “departmental experts,” especially the man who blesses gardens, so earnest and harmless that no one will abuse them. They visit the garden at the owner’s request, practise a little hocus-pocus, mutter a few spells, take a small fee and go peaceably home. The owner indeed supposes himself to buy fertility, and obtains only peace of mind—a greater good say the moralists. The wizard has done what he learnt of his father, what respectable neighbours approve of; there is always some crop to justify his ministry, and many an evil power to excuse occasional blight or drought. If he is convinced of being a really indispensable man, it is easily intelligible.

As to the profession in general, a small number of wizards—wizards by vocation—may be strongly persuaded of the genuineness of the art; a much larger body mingles credulity in various proportions with fraud; and not a few are deliberate cheats. Some of the greatest masters of wizardry are dissatisfied with their own colleagues: that eminent shaman Scratching Woman said to Bogoras the traveller, “There are many liars in our calling.”[501] On the other hand, the wizard who demonstrated the “pointing-stick” to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and having no object upon which to discharge its Magic, thought it had entered his own head and thereupon fell ill, was certainly a believer;[502] and so was the wizard who felt that he had lost his power after drinking a cup of tea, because hot drinks were taboo to him.[503] Now a cheat needs no explanation—at least no more on the Yenisei than on the Thames; and the variety of those who mingle credulity with fraud is too great to be dealt with. What chiefly needs to be accounted for is the persuasion of those who—in spite of so many circumstances that seem to make disillusion inevitable—are in some manner true believers—in the manner, that is to say, of imaginative belief, founded on tradition and desire, unlike the perceptual belief of common sense.

(_a_) Men under a vocation to wizardry, of course, begin with full belief in it. Probably they are possessed by the imaginative and histrionic temperament, which we have seen to be favourable to eminence as a wizard. Their vocation consists in the warm sympathy and emulation with which, before their own initiation, they witness the feats of great practitioners, and which generally imply a stirring of their own latent powers; just as many an actor has begun by being “stage-struck.” A man of such temperament is prone to self-delusion not only as to his own powers, but in other ways. The wizard often begins by fasting and having visions; thereby weakening his apprehension of the difference between fact and phantasy. The fixed idea of his calling begets in his imagination a story of what happened at his initiation, manifestly false, but not a falsehood—a “rationalisation” according to wizardly ideas of what he can remember of that time. If initiated with torture, which he endures for the sake of his vocation, he is confirmed in it. When called upon to perform, he “works himself up” by music, dancing and whatever arts he may have learned or discovered, into a state of dissociation, during which his judgment of everything extraneous to his task is suspended; and his dramatic demeanour uninhibited by fear or shame, unembarrassed by any second thoughts, makes, by vivid gestures and contortions and thrilling tones, a profound impression upon patients, clients and witnesses. His performances may derive some original traits from his own genius; but must generally conform to a traditionary pattern and to the consequent expectations of the audience. By practice he acquires—as for their own tasks all artists, poets and actors must—a facility in inducing the state of dissociation (more or less strict), in which work goes smoothly forward under the exclusive dominance of a certain group of ideas and sentiments. Whether, in this condition, he believes in himself and his calling, or not, is a meaningless question. Whilst the orgasm lasts there is no place for comparison or doubt. And since he really produces by his frenzy or possession a great effect upon the spectators—though not always the precise effect of curing a patient or of controlling the weather at which he aimed—we need not wonder if he believes himself capable of much more than he ever accomplishes. The temperament, most favourable to a wizard’s success is not likely to be accompanied by a disposition to the positive or sceptical attitude of mind. Moreover, to the enthusiast for whom belief is necessary, it is also necessary to create the evidence. That the end justifies the means is not his explicit maxim, but a matter of course. Gibbon comments on “the vicissitudes of pious fraud and hypocrisy, which may be observed, or at least suspected, in the characters of the most conscientious fanatics.”[504] After failures, indeed, or in the languor that follows his transports, there may come many chilling reflections; only, however, to be dispersed by an invincible desire to believe in his own powers and in the profession to which he is committed.

The “white” wizard may pacify a troubled conscience by reflecting that at any rate he discharges a useful social function; as, in fact, he does, so far as he relieves the fears of his tribesmen and gives them confidence. To understand the “black” wizard, we must turn to the dark side of human nature. That a man should resort to magic or sorcery to avenge himself or his kinsmen, or to gratify his carnality, jealousy or ambition, is intelligible to everybody; but that he should make a profession of assisting others for a fee to betray, injure, or destroy those with whom he has no quarrel, seems almost too unnatural to be credible. Yet it admits of a very easy explanation. The love of injuring and slaying is deeply rooted in us: men afflicted with homicidal neurosis are known to the asylums and to the criminal courts of all civilised nations; assassins on hire have often been notoriously obtainable. To slay in cold blood by violence, or even by poison, seems, however, less revolting than to slay by sorcery and obscene rites. But the fascination of this employment may be further understood by considering the attraction that secret power and the proof of their own cunning has for many people. To slay is sweet; but the ancient hunter depended more upon strategy than upon the frontal attack; and no strategy is so secret or needs so much skill as the Black Art. Finally, if sorcery is persecuted, it excites the contra-suggestibility which in some neurotics becomes a passion capable of supporting them at the stake. Hence the malevolent wizard may feel a vocation, may believe in his own powers; and, of course, he will be confirmed in his belief by the fear excited wherever his reputation spreads. If you put yourself in his place whilst practising some unholy rite, you may become aware that the secrecy, the cunning, the danger, the villainy and the elation of it exert a peculiar fascination, and that this is enhanced by foul and horrible usages, such as appeal to the perverted appetites of insanity.

(_b_) The deceit employed by a wizard in conjuring, ventriloquising, dressing up, keeping a “familiar,” choosing favourable opportunities for his _séance_ and inciting himself to frenzy, seems incompatible with sincerity; but whilst he knows such proceedings to be artifices, he also knows them to be necessary to the effect which he produces. For that effect, so far as it depends upon wizardly practices, not on such means as massage, or poisons, or drugs, is always subjective—an influence on other men’s belief. Are we not demanding of him greater discrimination than he is likely to enjoy, if we expect him to see the hollowness of his profession, because some of the means by which he operates are not what his clients suppose them to be? If it be said that the wizard’s stock excuses for failure—that there has been a mistake in the rites, or that another wizard has counteracted his efforts—are those of a man who has anticipated detection in fraud and prepared a way of escape, it may be replied that, according to accepted tenets concerning wizardry, these excuses are reasonable and not necessarily subterfuges.

The professional attitude may induce a man to exonerate himself and his colleagues in certain dubious dealings, for the sake of the public utility of their office on the whole; which is so manifest to him and to them, and is also acknowledged by the public. For a wizard’s belief in his art is supported by the testimony of other wizards, in whom he also believes, and by the belief of the tribe generally in the power of the profession, even though he himself be not greatly esteemed. “Who am I,” he will ask, “that I should have a conscience of my own?” And if this attitude is inconsistent with keen intelligence and megalomania, such inconsistency is not inconsistent with our experience of human nature.

(_c_) The effects produced by charms, spells and rites, simple or to the last degree elaborate, purely magical or reinforced by spirits, are always subjective, but are believed to have a much wider range. The wizard seems to make the sun rise when he summons it just in time every morning; to cause clouds to gather in the sky when he invokes them just before the rainy season; and so on. Such performances convince others, but seem to us poor evidence for any one who is in the secret. He is not, however, left without further evidence of three kinds:

(i) From the effects of natural causes that form part of his professional resources. Some of a wizard’s practices are really good; _e. g._ in curing the sick he may employ massage, or sweat-baths, or skilful surgery, or medicinal drugs, or suggestion, and thereby succeed without any Magic; whilst he is incapable of clearly distinguishing these means from useless rites and incantations. He does not understand intimately why _any_ method is efficacious, and therefore cannot understand the limits of his power. His whole art is empirical. Even in modern science explanation always ends sooner or later (and often pretty soon) in pointing to some connexion of phenomena which we are obliged to accept as a fact: the wizard is always brought to this pass at the first step. He has no generally acknowledged public standard of what may possibly happen: it is only in the mind of a natural positivist that a standard of common sense grows up by experience without explicit generalisation; and this standard is incommunicable. Hence the wizard is always trying experimentally to extend his power—of course on the model of his traditionary art; always desiring power, and believing that he has obtained, because he desires it.

(ii) The wizard’s arts are justified by the action of natural causes set in motion by his clients. He prepares the hunter and his weapons for an expedition; the hunter does his best, and his success swells the reputation of the wizard. Similarly in agriculture, and in war. And in all these cases nothing is really due to the wizard, except the greater confidence his clients derive from his ministrations: the hunter’s hand is steadier; the sower and the reaper work more cheerfully; and the warrior fights more courageously in the belief that his enemies are surely devoted to the infernal gods. But the wizard, with general acquiescence, claims far more than this, and rises in his own esteem as well as in the esteem of his tribe.

(iii) The persevering wizard is often aided by coincidences. An Australian squatter at Morton’s Plains, after a drought, promised a native rain-maker half a bullock, a bag of flour and some tea, if he would fill his new tank for him before the morrow night. The rain-maker set his rites and spells to work, filled the tank and got the reward.[505] Whilst Messrs. Spencer and Gillen were with the Urabunna tribe, “the leading rain-maker performed a ceremony and within two days there was a downpour—possibly connected with the fact that it was the usual time for rain to fall in that part of the country.” The reputation of the rain-maker was firmly established, and, no doubt, his self-confidence. The Australian wizard already mentioned, who thought that his Magic had entered his own head, claimed to have driven away a comet by means of his magic stones. Certainly the comet disappeared, and what other cause could any one point out? “At one time the gusts were very unpleasant and one of the men told a wind-man to make it stop. Accordingly he shouted out to the wind, and in a minute there was a lull; and no one doubted that this was due to the power of the wind-man.”[506] Many similar cases might be given.[507] Striking coincidences are not very rare: there is an illogical prejudice that they are rare because they excite wonder. Moreover, as I have observed, so remote a resemblance to the event shamanised or prophesied may be regarded as a fulfilment, that fulfilment is not uncommon. In the interpretation of omens, where there is only the alternative of good or ill success, half the guesses must be right; and by the glozing of doubtful cases, more than half will seem to be right. And as for the effect of coincidence, Mr. Basil Thompson says, “Tongans never admit coincidences”[508]—that is to say, in our sense of the word: for them, in what we call coincidence, there must be causation; and this seems to be generally true of the untutored mind. Among the Churaches, the profession of shaman is generally hereditary; but a man may become a shaman against his will. It is enough “to make a lucky guess as to the issue of some event, and people flock to him for advice from all parts.”[509] How many failures are necessary to discredit one lucky guess?

These three kinds of evidence in favour of the wizard’s power—natural causes set in motion by himself, natural causes introduced by his clients, and sheer favourable coincidences—have so much the air of perceptual proof, or of an appeal to common sense, that the savage positivist who is able to resist them must have a more solid judgment than most of our educated civilised people. Judgment is an innate individual character, on which education has little effect, except in the special department of a man’s training. A scientific expert, for example, may be an excellent judge of evidence in his own pursuit, and elsewhere quite helpless; for where he is strong it is not a set of rules but the mass of his special experience that guides him. That out of the mass of general experience, so disorderly and fragmentary as it is, some minds should have the power of extracting common sense, in spite of the misrepresentations of Magic and Animism, is very remarkable, and very fortunate for the rest of us.

That the three kinds of evidence which serve so well to confirm belief in wizardry are all of them—as to the connexion between a wizard’s rites or spells and the event—entirely coincidental, gives some support to the hypothesis that coincidences are the foundation of the belief in Magic.

Bearing in mind, then, that a wizard’s practices sometimes include real causes, and that his shallow knowledge disables him for discriminating between causation and hocus-pocus; that Magic or Sorcery is generally believed in by those about him, who seek his aid, or the aid of others of his class; that both they and he earnestly desire that his pretensions should be well founded; that he produces striking subjective effects; that in such cases his artifices are a condition of his success, and that a good many coincidences, complete or partial, seem to prove that his art has further extraordinary influence upon men and nature—it is no wonder that some wizards are deluded along with their dupes, especially neurotic enthusiasts or men of an imaginative and histrionic temperament.

To explain the possibility of some men being sincere in witchcraft is not to palliate the profession, much less the anti-social practices of witchcraft. For the most part those practices are deceitful. They are not the invention of savage society; society invents nothing; only the individual invents. They are the invention and tradition of wizards, who keep the secret so far as it is to their advantage: of wizards growing more and more professional, and trading upon the fears and hopes, the anxiety and credulity of their fellows. The spirit of superstition is common to the tribe, but its professional exploitation is the work of those who profit by it.

Observing with satisfaction that, even amongst savages, the positive mind can sometimes free itself from popular superstitions and penetrate the disguise of mystery-mongers, one asks why Nature could not produce whole tribes of men so minded, and spare the folly and horror and iniquity which take up so much space in the retrospect of human life. Because common sense is only related to actual experience, and could not appreciate the necessity of government and social co-ordination as the condition of all improvement in human life, until it already existed. Such co-ordination had, therefore, to grow up without being understood; and it did grow up under the protection of certain beliefs that induced the tribes of men to hold together and subordinate themselves to leaders: amongst which beliefs the superstitions exploited by wizards had no small part.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, p. 65.

[390] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 336.

[391] Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 177.

[392] The political importance of the wizard seems to have been first noticed by Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, II. p. 178 (§ 474).

[393] Bellamy, quoted by Seligman, _Melanesians of British North Guinea_, p. 694.

[394] _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 40.

[395] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 114.

[396] Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 191.

[397] E. Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ch. xlix.

[398] _The Sacred Shrine._

[399] _Report of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. pp. 322-3.

[400] Rivers, _History of Melanesian Sociology_.

[401] _Am. B. of Ethn._, VII., “Ojibway Medicine,” by W. J. Hoffman; XI., “The Sia,” by M. C. Stevenson; XIV., “The Menomini Indians,” by W. Hoffman. For a collection of the facts see Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV. ch. xix; and Hutton Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_.

[402] _Report of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 200.

[403] _Op. cit._, p. 278.

[404] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 251.

[405] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 326.

[406] Book VII. The witch, imitated from Circe and Medea by Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, became a traditionary, romantic motive.

[407] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 388.

[408] Stefánson, _op. cit._, p. 403.

[409] Czaplicka, _op. cit._, p. 240.

[410] _Across Australia_, p. 51.

[411] _Op. cit._, p. 184.

[412] _Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle_, II. p. 178.

[413] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 216.

[414] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV., “Shamanism,” p. 144.

[415] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 335.

[416] _Am. B. of Ethn._, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” by J. Mooney, p. 323.

[417] W. Mariner’s _Account of the Tonga Islands_, ch. xxi.

[418] _Am. B. of Ethn._, IX., “Medicine Men of the Apache,” by J. E. Bourke, p. 471.

[419] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 135.

[420] _Travels and Researches in South Africa_, ch. i.

[421] J. Shakespeare, _The Lushai Kuki Clans_, p. 80.

[422] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, p. 120, and _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI. p. 417; XIV. pp. 97, 148.

[423] D. Comparetti, _The Traditional Poetry of the Finns_, pp. 27 and 25.

[424] Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 548-50.

[425] The crystals forced into a wizard’s body, whether by spirits or by other wizards, are essential to his profession, and if they leave him his power is lost. “It is the possession of these stones which gives his virtue to the medicine-man” (Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 480 note). John Mathew says that, according to the belief of the Kabi (Queensland): “A man’s power in the occult art would appear to be proportioned to his vitality, and the degree of vitality which he possessed depended upon the number of sacred pebbles and the quantity of _yurru_ (rope) which he carried within him” (_Eagle-hawk and Crow_, p. 143). “Rope” was the property of the higher grade of medicine-men (substitute for snakes?), who had obtained it from the Rainbow in exchange for some of their pebbles. Certain pebbles, especially crystals, are independent magic-powers throughout Australasia and elsewhere, probably of much older repute than the profession of wizardry; and the wizard gets his personal power by having them inside him. Similarly, Jounod describes Bantu wizards as “endowed with magical power, or rather possessing enchanted drugs” (_Life of a South African Tribe_, p. 293): whereas we are often told that the occult art begins with the extraordinary personality of the wizard.

[426] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 522-9.

[427] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 485.

[428] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. p. 321.

[429] E. im Thurn, _The Indians of Guiana_, p. 334.

[430] Thomas Whiffen, _The North-West Amazons_, p. 181.

[431] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 156.

[432] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV., “Shamanism,” pp. 87-90.

[433] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. p. 322.

[434] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 334.

[435] W. H. R. Rivers, _The Todas_, pp. 256-7.

[436] _Belief in Immortality_, pp. 249, 269.

[437] For examples see Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 204; Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 149; Callaway, _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 391; Hose and McDougall, _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 115; Turner, _Samoa_, p. 342; _Shamanism_, p. 130; Carl Lumholtz, _New Trails in Mexico_, p. 24; T. A. Joyce, _South American Archæology_, p. 245; E. Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, II. pp. 650-2.

[438] Callaway, _Religion of the Amazulu_, pp. 384-6 and 404.

[439] Franz Boas, “The Central Esquimo,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, VI. (1884-5), p. 603.

[440] W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_, p. 571.

[441] A. Wiedemann, _The Religion of the Egyptians_, pp. 273-4.

[442] A. M. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 178.

[443] J. G. Frazer, _Psyche’s Task_.

[444] Pp. 138-9.

[445] Rivers, _History of Melanesian Sociology_, II. p. 156.

[446] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_.

[447] im Thurn, _op. cit._, p. 339.

[448] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 145.

[449] _Across Australia_, p. 350.

[450] _Primitive Bakongo_, p. 285.

[451] Skeat, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 563.

[452] Rivers, _The Todas_, p. 263.

[453] Abbot, _Macedonian Folk-Lore_, p. 225.

[454] _Op. cit._, p. 203.

[455] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 387-8.

[456] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, pp. 334-5.

[457] Whiffen, _op. cit._, pp. 182-3.

[458] Jounod, _Life of a South African Tribe_, II. p. 456.

[459] Whiffen, _op. cit._, pp. 64 and 168.

[460] _Primitive Bakongo_, p. 216.

[461] _Aboriginal Siberia_, pp. 230, 240.

[462] _Paradoxe sur le comédien._ Mr. William Archer, some years ago, published _Masks and Faces_, an entertaining and very instructive book, in which he (as a genuine though unprofessional psychologist) discusses this paradox in the light of evidence obtained, by _questionnaire_ and otherwise, from actors then living.

[463] _Man_, September 1817, p. 144.

[464] _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 197.

[465] _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._

[466] Meiners, _Briefe über die Schweiz_ (quoted by Carlyle in essay on _Count Cagliostro_).

[467] _Aboriginal Siberia_, pp. 169, 172.

[468] _Text-book of Insanity_, pp. 281 and 79.

[469] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 497.

[470] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, pp. 250-60.

[471] For another example see Rivers, _History of Melanesian Sociology_, II. p. 411.

[472] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 346.

[473] For the most elaborate of all such performances, see the initiation into the Ghost Society of the Kwakintle Indians, in Frazer’s _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 538.

[474] Casalis, _My Life in Basuto Land_, p. 185.

[475] Basil Thompson, _The Fijians_, p. 158.

[476] Basil Thompson, _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, pp. 201 and 346.

[477] _The Heroic Age_, p. 413.

[478] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, pp. 374-5.

[479] “Aborigines of Victoria,” _Transactions of the Ethnological Society_, New Series, I. p. 300.

[480] _Eagle-hawk and Crow_, p. 146.

[481] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 239.

[482] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, pp. 284 and 285.

[483] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 293.

[484] Callaway, _op. cit._, pp. 29-30.

[485] _The North-West Amazons_, p. 218.

[486] J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults,” pp. 431-2 and 485, _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI.

[487] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 270.

[488] _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 204.

[489] John Martin, _W. Mariner’s Account of the Tonga Islands_, II. pp. 105 and 137.

[490] Hose and McDougall, _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 48 and 214.

[491] _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 126.

[492] Introduction to _The Rise of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_.

[493] C. G. Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 179.

[494] T. C. Hodson, _op. cit._, p. 171.

[495] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 284.

[496] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 531-2.

[497] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 201.

[498] Ellis, _op. cit._, II. p. 232.

[499] _Shamanism_, p. 92.

[500] _History of Melanesian Society_, II. p. 107.

[501] A. M. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 180.

[502] _Across Australia_, p. 326.

[503] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 481.

[504] _Decline and Fall_, ch. xvii—discussing the character of Julian.

[505] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 398.

[506] _Across Australia_, pp. 14, 326, 366.

[507] See Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 210; Stefánson, _My Life with the Esquimo_, p. 88; Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, in _Ninth Ann. Report of Am. Bureau of Eth._, p. 431; Frazer, _Psyche’s Task_, p. 55; Risley, _The People of India_, p. 77; Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, pp. 48, 49, 82, 90; Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 116; E. Casalis, _Les Bassoutos_ (2nd ed.), pp. 302-3; W. E. Roth, _Ethnological Studies in North-West Central Queensland_, p. 154.

[508] _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 245.

[509] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV. p. 154.