The first thing to be noticed is the fluidity of the savage concept of personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and relatively unchangeable body. You may quite easily be transformed, like the hero of Apuleius’ tale, into an ass. Your next-door neighbour, for whom you have the profoundest respect as a prosperous man of business and a churchwarden of exemplary piety, may startle you some morning with a sudden change into a noisy little street-arab, not a tenthof his own portly dimensions, turning a wheel all down his garden path, or into a melancholy cow cropping a bare pittance of grass from his closely trimmed lawn. He and his magnificent wife may even become, like Philemon and Baucis, an oak and a lime-tree before your eyes, or a pair of standing stones upon the moor. None of these metamorphoses would be accounted impossible by peoples in the lower culture. To them the essential incident of the tale of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde would be mere commonplace. The personality which they have known running in one mould can, in their opinion, be directed into, and will run as freely in, another mould, and yet be the same. So hard do such archaic beliefs die, that in remote parts of our own country it is still firmly believed that a witch may assume the form of a hare, and if any bold sportsman succeed in wounding the animal, the injury will afterwards be found on the witch’s proper person, testifying beyond dispute to the preservation of her individuality under the temporary change of shape and species.
Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death and a new birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that in West Africa “the new babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent: the thing the child catches hold of identifies him. ‘Why, he’s Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe’; or ‘That’s Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash,’ and so on.”31.1This belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of the world. Nor is it necessary that the deceased should be born again in human form, or even of the same sex. A group of tribes in Central Australiahave elaborated the doctrine of re-birth to an unusual degree. Two of the tribes, the Warramunga and Urabunna, definitely hold, if we may trust our authorities, that the sex changes with each successive birth.32.1A Mongolian tale relates that a certain Khotogait prince, having been beheaded for conspiracy against the Chinese Emperor, twice reappeared as a child of the Empress, and was identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both children were destroyed, and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is still preserved.32.2In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any object indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of a woman, be born again and become human. As developed by animism, the doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions and more philosophies than one.32.3
Moreover, detached portions of the person, as locks of hair, parings of finger-nails, and so forth, are not dead inert matter. They are still endued with the life of their original owner. Nay, garments once worn, or other objects which have been in intimate contact with a human being, are penetrated by his personality, remain as it were united with him for good and ill. It would be no exaggeration to say of this belief that it is universal. Upon it rests much of the practice of witchcraft, as well as of the medicine of the lower culture. The cleft ash through which a child has been drawn for the cure of infantile hernia, bound up and allowed to grow together, continues to sympathize with him in health and sicknessas though part of his own body. In ancient Greece maidens on their marriage offered their veils to Hera, the goddess who favoured marriage and aided childbirth;33.1and Athenian women who became pregnant for the first time used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. These customs were not mere acts of homage; they had a practical intention.
Some votive offerings may perhaps be interpreted as surrogates of human sacrifice. Others, made when the votary is suffering from sickness, may be intended to transfer the disease. These explanations are in many cases very questionable; and a large number of offerings remain that do not easily submit to be thus explained. The Greek women just mentioned had no disease to be returned to the custody of the goddess, ready for another victim. In view of future contingencies they placed in her care objects identified with themselves; they brought into physical touch with her a portion of their own personality. Convergence of more than one rite, similar in outward form but distinct in origin, has doubtless occurred very often in human history. But the ambiguity which would follow is not always to be traced on a careful analysis. It is obvious, at all events, that if an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer and die, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general prosperity. My shirt or stocking, or a shred from it, placed upon a sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well—a lock of my hair laid upon a sacred image—my name written upon the walls of a temple—a stone from my hand cast upon a sacred cairn—a remnant of my food thrown into a sacred waterfall or suspended from a sacred tree—a naildriven by my hand into the trunk of a tree—is thenceforth in immediate contact with divinity. It is a portion of my personality enveloped with the sanctity of the divine being; and so long as it remains there I am myself in contact with the same divine being, whoever he may be, and derive all the advantages incident to the contact.
Such beliefs as these are world-wide; they are a commonplace of anthropology; and it would be waste of time to multiply examples. They exhibit a concept of personality imperfectly crystallized. It is still fluid and vague, only to become entirely definite under the influence of trained reason and larger and more scientific knowledge. But, such as it is, there is behind and around it the still vaguer, the unlimited territory of the Impersonal, because the Unknown. Every object on which the attention has been fixed, every object, therefore, that may be said to be known, has its own personality—every object, whether living, or, according to our ideas, not-living. What remains is the stuff out of which personalities are formed as it is gradually reduced into relations with the savage observer. These personalities do not necessarily correspond even to anything objective. They may be creations of the excited imagination. It is sufficient for the savage that they seem to be, and to have a relation to himself which he cannot otherwise interpret. His emancipation from this state of mind is slow, though among some peoples in the lower culture it is more perceptible than among others. But it leaves its traces everywhere—there, most of all, where emotion is most acute and permanent, where hopes and fears are most overwhelming, in the sphere of religion.
Now every personality is endowed with qualities which enable it to persist, to influence others, and even toovercome, subjugate, and destroy them for its own ends. No more than ourselves could the primeval savage avoid being influenced and often overmatched by the charm and wiles of woman, the wisdom of the elders of his horde, the dauntless might of the warrior. The non-human personalities with which he came in contact possessed qualities not less remarkable than those of the human. The strength, the fierceness, the agility of the lion, the speed of the antelope, the cunning of the fox, the lofty forms and endurance of the forest trees, their response to every breath of wind, and the kindly shelter they yielded to birds and beasts and men, the fantastic forms and stern patience of the rocks, the smooth and smiling treachery of the lake, the gentle murmur and benign largess of the river, the splendour, the burning heat of the sun, the changeableness and movement of the clouds are a few of the more obvious qualities attached to the myriad personalities with which men found themselves environed. These personalities and their qualities would impress them all the more because of the mystery that perpetually masked them. Mystery magnified them. Hence every non-human personality was apt to be conceived in larger than human terms, and its qualities were larger than human.
I do not pause here to adduce illustrations of this attitude towards the objects surrounding mankind. In any event it would of course be impossible to illustrate it from prehistoric, not to say primeval, ages. It is characteristic of modern savages wherever an intimate acquaintance enables the civilized observer to penetrate into theirarcana. Some of them have got no further; others have advanced to the full stage of animism. Reference may be made to any work in which the life and ideas of a savage tribe are depicted.
Not merely was every personality, human and other, endowed with qualities, but by virtue of those qualities it possessed a potentiality and an atmosphere of its own. The successful warrior and huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag, his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary. Nor would this atmosphere surround only important or successful men. Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would be richly endowed. None, human or non-human, would (in theory, at least) be wholly without it.
The Iroquoian tribes of North America possess a word which exactly expresses this potentiality, this atmosphere, which they believe inheres in and surrounds every personality. They call itorenda. A fine hunter is one whoseorendais fine, superior in quality. When he is successful he is said to baffle or thwart theorendaof the quarry; when unsuccessful, the game is said to have foiled or outmatched hisorenda. A person who defeatsanother in a game of skill or chance is said to overcome hisorenda. “At public games or contests of skill or endurance, or of swiftness of foot, where clan is pitted against clan, phratry against phratry, tribe against tribe, or nation against nation, theshamans—men reputed to possess powerfulorenda—are employed for hire by the opposing parties respectively to exercise theirorendato thwart or overcome that of their antagonists,” and thus secure victory. So, when a storm is brewing, it (the storm-maker) is said to be preparing itsorenda; when it is ready to burst, it has finished, has prepared itsorenda. Similar expressions are used for a man or one of the lower animals when in a rage. A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts forth hisorenda, and has thereby learned the secrets of the future. Theorendaof shy birds and other animals which it is difficult to ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive—that is, in detecting the presence of the hunter, whether man or beast. Anything reputed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or accomplishing some end is said to possessorenda. Of one who, it is believed, has died from witchcraft it is said, “An evilorendahas struck him.”37.1
Among the Algonkian and Siouan tribes are found beliefs that seem to go behind this personal but mystic potentiality to its source in the Unknown, the Impersonal. The Algonkian word expressive of the idea ismanitou. The early French missionaries, who were the first to make it known to us, interpreted it of a personal being—God or the Devil, they hardly knew which. They were reading into it their own more highly crystallized beliefs. As in the case oforenda, we are fortunate in having the term more accurately defined for us by a descendantof the native tribes, who may be presumed to have been better equipped by inheritance and early associations to understand Algonkian thought than the Jesuit Fathers were. “The Algonkin conception of the manitou,” he tells us, “is bound up with the manifold ideas that flow from an unconscious relation with the outside world.… The termmanitouis a religious word; it carries with it the idea of solemnity; and whatever the association it always expresses a serious attitude, and kindles an emotional sense of mystery.… The essential character of Algonkin religion is a pure, naïve worship of nature. In one way or another associations cluster about an object and give it a certain potential value; and because of this supposed potentiality the object becomes the recipient of an adoration. The degree of the adoration depends in some measure upon the extent of confidence reposed in the object, and upon its supposed power of bringing pleasure or inflicting pain. The important thing with the individual is the emotional effect experienced while in the presence of the object, or with an interpreted manifestation of the object. The individual keeps watch for the effect, and it is the effect that fills the mind with a vague sense of something strange, something mysterious, something intangible. One feels it as the result of an active substance, and one’s attitude toward it is purely passive. To experience a thrill is authority enough of the existence of the substance. The sentiment of its reality is made known by the fact that something has happened. It is futile to ask an Algonkin for an articulate definition of the substance, partly because it would be something about which he does not concern himself, and partly because he is quite satisfied with only the sentiment of its existence. He feels that the property is everywhere, is omnipresent. The feeling that it isomnipresent leads naturally to the belief that it enters into everything in nature; and the notion that it is active causes the mind to look everywhere for its manifestations. These manifestations assume various forms; they vary with individuals and with reference to the same and different objects.
“Language affords means of approaching nearer to a definition of this religious sentiment. In the Algonkin dialects of the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo, a rigid distinction of gender is made between things with life and things without life.… Accordingly, when they refer to the manitou in the sense of a virtue, a property, an abstraction, they employ the form expressive of inanimate gender. When the manitou becomes associated with an object, then the gender becomes less definite.…
“When the property becomes the indwelling element of an object, then it is natural to identify the property with animate being. It is not necessary that the being shall be the tangible representative of a natural object.” This the writer illustrates from the account given by a Fox Indian of the sweat-lodge, in the course of which he observes: “The manitou comes from the place of his abode in the [heated] stone, … when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds entrance. It moves up and down and all over inside the body, driving out everything that inflicts pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having been in the sweat-lodge.” The writer’s comment on this is instructive. “The sentiment,” he says, “behind the words rests upon the consciousness of a belief in an objective presence; it rests on the sense of an existing reality with the quality of self-dependence; it rests on the perception of a definite,localized personality. Yet at the same time there is the feeling that the apprehended reality is without form and without feature. This is the dominant notion in regard to the virtue abiding in the stone of the sweat-lodge; it takes on the character of conscious personality with some attributes of immanence and design.”
But further, as the manitou—this mystic, all-pervasive property or substance—on investing an object acquires conscious personality, so also “it is natural to confuse the property”—the manitou—“with an object containing,” or invested with, “the property.” “It is no trouble for an Algonkin to invest an object with the mystic substance, and then call the object by the name of the substance. The process suggests a possible explanation of how an Algonkin comes to people his world with manitou forces different in kind and degree; it explains in some measure the supernatural performances of mythological beings, the beings that move in the form of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and other objects of nature. All these are a collection of agencies. Each possesses a virtue in common with all the rest, and in so far do they all have certain marks of agreement. Where one differs from another is in the nature of its function, and in the degree of the possession of the cosmic substance. But the investment of a common mystic virtue gives them all a common name, and that name ismanitou.”
The conclusion is “that there is an unsystematic belief in a cosmic mysterious property which is believed to be existing everywhere in nature; that the conception of the property can be thought of as impersonal, but that it becomes obscure and confused when the property becomes identified with objects in nature; that it manifests itself in various forms; and that its emotional effect awakens a sense of mystery; that there is a livelyappreciation of its miraculous efficacy; and that its interpretation is not according to any regular rule, but is based on one’s feelings rather than on one’s knowledge.”41.1
Whatever differences an exact analysis, in accordance with the clearly cut methods of scientific thought, may result in discovering between the concept ofmanitouas here displayed and the Iroquoianorenda, two resemblances stand out prominently.Orendais, likemanitou, a mystic, or magical—not a natural—quality or potentiality, which resides in some persons or objects in greater measure than others. And the fact that it is “held to be the property of all things, all bodies, and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his environment,”41.2approximates the conception very closely to that ofmanitou.
When we turn to the Omaha, a Siouan tribe, we find a concept hardly distinguishable from that of the Algonkins. Here again we have the advantage of native help. Mr Francis La Flesche, the son of a former chief of the tribe, is jointly responsible for an exhaustive monograph on the Omaha with Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of this and neighbouring tribes is among investigators of European descent unrivalled. We may therefore rely upon their exposition with confidence equal to that we have given to those already cited on the Iroquois and the Algonkins. “An invisible and continuous life was believed,” they tell us, “to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move—all motion, all actions of mind or body are because of this invisible life; second, by causingpermanency of structure and form, as in the rock, the physical features of the landscape, mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animals and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will-power of which man is conscious within himself—a power by which all things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything to its entirety. This invisible life and power was calledWakonda. While it was a vague entity, yet there was an anthropomorphic colouring to the conception, as is shown in the prayers offered and the manner in which appeals for compassion and help were made, also in the ethical quality attributed to certain natural phenomena—the regularity of night following day, of summer winter (these were recognized as emphasizing truthfulness as a dependable quality and set forth for man’s guidance),—and in the approval by Wakonda of certain ethical actions on the part of mankind.”42.1“There is therefore,” the writers tell us in another place, “no propriety in speaking of Wakonda as ‘the Great Spirit.’ Equally improper would it be to regard the term as a synonym of nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of conceptions, which is not essential to the Omaha, and which, when attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning.” But while the concept appears to be vague and impersonal, inasmuch as human conditions were projected upon nature, “certain anthropomorphic attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind ofpersonality.” Moreover, “there is a distinction in the Omaha mind between varying meanings of the wordwakonda. The Wakonda addressed in the tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which pertain to the welfare of all the people istheWakonda that is the permeating life of visible nature—an invisible life and power that reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on the one hand, the application of the wordwakondato anything mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or inanimate form can be transferred to man. The means by which this transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda, but is not Wakonda. So the media—the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the animal, the mythic monster—may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are not regarded astheWakonda.”43.1
Like the Algonkianmanitou, the Siouanwakondais thus seen to hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoianorendaclings about persons and things. Yet it is applied in an adjectival form by various Siouan tribes to medicine-men, to the sacred pipe, to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by the medicine-men or jugglers, and apparently to anyone who displays unusual qualities or powers. Thus it is used for a man who is extraordinarily stingy, to a man who has a habit of loud and rapid speech, to one who is a hard, almost an unmerciful, rider, to a child who speaks or walks for the first time and has thus manifested a new and individual power to act. A woman during her menstrual period iswakan; to perform acts of worship is to makewakan; the secret society among the Dakotaswhich is the depository of their mysteries iswakanwacipi, the sacred dance. In these cases the word conveys the sense not only of mysterious, powerful, wonderful, but also of sacred, spiritual, taboo. And a Ponka medicine-man once told the late J. O. Dorsey, “I am a wakanda.”44.1
Equivalent ideas and expressions are used by other American tribes. Supernatural power impresses the Tlingit, for example, “as a vast immensity, one in kind and impersonal, inscrutable as to its nature, but whenever manifesting itself to men, taking a personal, and it might be said a human personal, form in whatever object it displays itself. Thus the sky-spirit is the ocean of supernatural energy as it manifests itself in the sky, the sea-spirit as it manifests itself in the sea, the bear-spirit as it manifests itself in the bear, the rock-spirit as it manifests itself in the rock, etc. It is not meant that the Tlingit consciously reasons this out thus, or formulates a unity in the supernatural, but such appears to be his unexpressed feeling. For this reason there is but one name,yēk, a name which is affixed to any specific personal manifestation of it.… This supernatural energy must be carefully differentiated from natural energy and never confused with it. It is true that the former is supposed to bring about results similar to the latter, but in the mind of the Tlingit the conceived difference between these two is as great as with us. A rock rolling downhill or an animal running is by no means a manifestation of supernatural energy, although if something peculiar be associated with these actions, something outside of the Indian’s usual experience of such phenomena, they may be thought of as such.” On the other hand, and here we approach the Iroquoian idea, “the number ofspirits [yēk] with which this world was peopled was simply limitless.… There is said to have been a spirit in every trail on which one travelled, and one around every fire; one was connected with everything one did.” The writer whom I am quoting goes on to give a large number of instances showing that the heavenly bodies, the wind, the sea, mountains, lakes, trees, animals, in short, all things, were addressed, to conciliate them, to render them friendly, to acquire some gift or advantage, were treated with reverence or with magical intent. And of course the medicine-men or shamans were the special favourites of the spirits, and were endowed with power which they often matched against one another.45.1
Thus we have in these North American ideas two distinct conceptions—the possession of what I have called a potentiality or atmosphere of its own by the individual personality, whether human or non-human; and the impersonal, mysterious, undefined reservoir of power in the universe as conceived by the savage. These two conceptions are not mutually exclusive, for the impersonal power is often held to be the source of the personal power or potentiality. As among the American Indian tribes, so elsewhere they are differently emphasized by different peoples. The Bantu of the Lower Congo basin emphasize the impersonal conception. According to the Bafiote, the first ages of the world were ruled by Nzambi, though whether he made everything seems a matter of doubt. When he retired from active interference in the concerns of men, he left behind, or sent, or there remained in the earth, Something. Indeed, it seems to be believed that Nzambi himself, or his power, his vital and creative energy, is still in earth and water, in the air, in plants, animals and men. In any case, the Something remainingon earth since Nzambi’s outward and visible departure is or hasLunyēnsu. The concept ofLunyēnsuis that of natural force, vital energy, power of increase, in short, the All-ruling, the Highest, that penetrates every living thing. It is not life, but an activity bound up with life, its manifestation, its condition. A crippled limb does not possess it, and with death it ceases entirely, it is gone. The Something, however, which either is or hasLunyēnsuis even wider than this. It is represented byBu-nssi(probably the older name) orMkissi-nssi. The latter means the supernatural or magical power of the earth, and seems to be due to the later overgrowth of fetishism. The former conveys the idea of the force, the energy of earth. In any case it is not to be confounded with fetish-power, for it is revered as fetish-power is not, nor with the earth-spirit, for the Bafiote know no elemental spirits. It must be conceived as the terrestrial energy, the all-permeating creative force, the all-wielding, the fertility, the becoming. Hence there is a sacredness attaching to the earth; and connected as the earth is with the idea of fecundity and the operations of agriculture, and as it is an inseparable condition of life, these all form a foundation for the right to the soil, for hospitality and the relations of the sexes. The indefiniteness ofBu-nssiis shown by the fact that the natives themselves are not agreed whether it is one or many. In fact, in the use of its synonym,Mkissi, the plural form—and what is significant, the plural personal form—is often heard. Opinion wavers as the needs or the excitement of the moment may demand, or perhaps as tradition wavers with changing mental environment. But those who claim the older faith or the deeper insight adhere to the statement that there is but oneMkissi-nssi, evenBu-nssi.
Thus the conception ofBu-nssiroughly correspondswith that of the reservoir of power we have already found among the Omaha and other tribes. On the other hand, the Bafiote hold that everything in nature has its peculiar property, everything is pervaded by forces. All things influence one another by visible deeds of power or in secret-wise. Hence are evolved manifold relations, among which the most important for man are those that extend to his person. The effect of physical forces is obvious. But experience teaches that there are other forces that are efficacious, although the process is not always understood. Such forces as these act without immediate and perceptible contact. So at least the wise men believe, and they act accordingly. How it happens they do not bother their heads. It is so, and that is enough. If it were otherwise they could not explain the events that happen. Here is, in something more than germ, the Iroquoianorenda. But the more sensual Bafiote, whether from their own nature and social organization, or from the tropical environment in which they live, are preoccupied with the relations of the various forces thus permeating all things. These forces are misused. Prudence and activity, strength of limb and skill do not suffice; far too much evil occurs among them. The Bafiote are obsessed, like all the African peoples, with the idea of witchcraft. They must be protected against it. Power is therefore matched against power, spell against spell. If there were not thoroughly wicked men who sought openly or secretly to injure others, fetishes would hardly be needed. By the use of fetishes they seek to master the forces of which on every side they see indications, and to make them their own. Fetishes are not gods. There is nothing spiritual, nothing independent of men, about them. They are material objects, fabricated by art, so as to embody forces working by mysterious means for the aidor injury of men. The destruction of the fetish involves the annihilation of the forces it embodies, whereas the existence of a god is in nowise imperilled by the destruction of his image. In short, fetishes are magical instruments. Yet such is the inveterate anthropomorphism of mankind that they do acquire a quasi-personal character, and tend to be thought of as individual and conscious beings. But they are never worshipped; the Fiote has no gods. He has only fetishes, the incorporation of powers and energies he sees acting around him everywhere. By that incorporation these powers and energies are appropriated for his benefit, for his particular ends, or for the ends and benefit of the society of which he is a member.48.1
Similar ideas of mysterious force wavering between the personal and the impersonal and permeating all things appear to underlie the Chinese conceptions of theTsing, or operative energy, which inspires, or manifests itself in, theKhi, breath or soul, to produce the living being.48.2These ideas have been taken over by the Annamites, among whom theTinhis “a fluid, a force which resides in all things, and without which no existence can manifest itself,” and is “the essential principle of all action.” Uniting with theKhi, breath or soul, it produces “the life, the movement, the beings and the things peopling the world.” It is their essential condition. The entire system of magic and religion rests on these ideas.48.3Much the same may be said of the JapaneseKami, probably connected with AinuKamui.48.4It is, however, unnecessary to discussat length the conceptions involved. They have been elaborated through centuries of civilization and philosophical exposition, until it is now difficult to determine how much of their present form and content they owe to archaic savagery.
Let us turn to the Melanesian islands of the South Pacific. “The Melanesian mind,” says Dr Codrington, “is entirely possessed by the belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universallymana. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature; it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and to things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its operation. When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its force may break forth at some new point; the presence of it is ascertained by proof. A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like something, it is certainly not a common stone, there must bemanain it.… Having that power, it is a vehicle to conveymanato other stones.… But this power, though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person who directs it; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some men. If a stone is found to have a supernatural power, it is because a spirit has associated itself with it; a dead man’s bone has with itmana, because the ghost is with the bone; a man may have so close a connexion with a spirit or ghost that he hasmanain himself also, and can so direct it as to effect what he desires; a charm is powerful because the name of a spirit or ghost expressed in the form of words brings into it the power which the ghost or spirit exercises through it. Thus all conspicuous success is a proof that a man hasmana; his influence depends on the impression madeon the people’s mind that he has it; he becomes a chief by virtue of it. Hence a man’s power, though political or social in its character, is hismana; the word is naturally used in accordance with the native conception of the character of all power and influence as supernatural. If a man has been successful in fighting, it has not been his natural strength of arm, quickness of eye or readiness of resource that has won success; he has certainly got themanaof a spirit or of some deceased warrior to empower him, conveyed in an amulet of a stone round his neck, or a tuft of leaves in his belt, in a tooth hung upon a finger of his bow-hand, or in the form of words with which he brings supernatural assistance to his side. If a man’s pigs multiply, and his gardens are productive, it is not because he is industrious and looks after his property, but because of the stones full ofmanafor pigs and yams that he possesses. Of course a yam naturally grows when planted; that is well known; but it will not be very large unlessmanacomes into play; a canoe will not be swift unlessmanabe brought to bear upon it, a net will not catch many fish nor an arrow inflict a mortal wound.” Such a power or influence as this is of course not physical, though it may show itself “in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.” Finally, “all Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting thismanafor one’s self, or getting it used for one’s benefit—all religion, that is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices.”50.1(The very intention that animates the Fiote rites of fetishism.)
It is not easy to formulate a clear idea of the original source ofmana. 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 theimpersonal power or potentiality we have found elsewhere. But wherever it is manifested it is connected with some personal being who originates and directs it.51.1It 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 themanaof 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 bemanahimself, using the word to express a quality; he can be said to havemana, it may be said to be with him, the word being used as a substantive.”51.2It 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 ofmana. “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 hadmanain 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.”51.3Thuswe are found in something like what logicians call a vicious circle. Only those ghosts havemana, or aremana, after death who hadmanain their lifetime. But if they hadmanain their lifetime, it was because they derived it from ghosts or other spirits. In any casemanaappears 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 thatmana(both the word and the meaning)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 everywheremanahas 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.Manavaormanawais 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 donedeeds so wonderful as to possess a sanctity and power of its own.” Literally it is “A sword in whichmanais resident.” Whether this or the parallel Mangarevane turuturu mana, a powerful or magical staff, really implies an inherent power independent of spiritual origin, must remain undecided.54.1We 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 themaro ura, or sacred girdle of red feathers. This girdle “was made with the beaten fibres of theaoa; with these a number ofuru, red feathers, taken from the images of their deities, were interwoven with feathers of other colours. Themarothus 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 identifiedhim with” the gods.55.1The 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.At the close of hisubu, 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 atoo, 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.
It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the concept of personality. But what we have already learned ofmanamay 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 anariki, or high chief, weretapu, 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 ittapu. 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;57.1it could be none other than the effect ofmana.
Betweenmana, 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 bethere, and was [sic] worshipped as their god it selfe.”58.1Here 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.58.2This we may be inclined to think an example of an impersonal power analogous to that of the Siouanwakondaor the Algonkianmanitou. 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.58.3It 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 themanaemanating from her person; the reliquary in turn is permeated by thatmana, 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.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 ofmanaconveyed 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?”59.1So 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 onthe battlefield.60.1This potentiality may be communicated, like the Melanesianmana, 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.”60.2The 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 beenattached to an image retained and transmitted to the next wearer themana, or a portion of the personality, of the god, the one effect was equivalent to the other: they are indistinguishable. But betweenmanaand 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)manais 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 savagehimself 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 oforenda, ormana, 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 themanaof 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.62.1A 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.62.2Similar practices prevail in the Melanesian islands.62.3Taboo has obtained a very prominent position in the social order and government of Polynesian communities. It isfrom them that the word has been adopted into English parlance, and adapted to a sense near akin to that of another interesting word—toboycott. But it is not only in Polynesia and the neighbouring islands of Melanesia that the dread of a mysteriousmanais 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.63.1This 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 aremana; and it is themanathat 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 byProfessor Frazer64.1that 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 wordssanctity,pollution,infectionfeebly and partially translate the intuitive dread oforendawhich is embodied in a taboo.
The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief inorendathat 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-orendais 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 itlikundu. Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A person is accused of possessinglikunduwhen 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 meansto his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he lays himself open to the charge of possessinglikundu.” Consequently “a person who possesses thislikundumay 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 oforendamay 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 callmysticfor 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 alonely 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’sorenda.
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.
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.
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.67.1This 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.”67.2But 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.”67.3Australian 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 worksare 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.”68.2This, however, is not Religion (with a capitalletter). 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.69.1In 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.”69.2The 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.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.”70.1Magic 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.70.2Accordingly, 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 pointedout 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.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