1410 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE UNDERGRADUATE., DATE DUE -W^ ripi S K - ' J ' t . ^ t n i . a..,L.-j,;fis£j^ !^^UU© 4*JS-M? 4998- PRINTED IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library GN 470.M32 The threshold of religion / 3 1924 014 376 150 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014376150 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION BY R. R. MARETT, M.A. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD ; SECRETARY TO THE UNIVERSITY COMMITTEE FOR ANTHROPOLOGY; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON »'ie'\ Hid Firsi PiOmHlS in igog vJ.' l:J^^ CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. Pre-Animistic Religion .... i II. From Spell to Prayer .... 33 III. Is Taboo a Negative Magic? . . 85 IV. The Conception of Mana . . 115 V. A Sociological View of Comparative Religion 143 Index 171 TO M. N. PREFACE A T the International Congress for the '^*- History of Rehgions held recently in Oxford, several friends who listened to the paper on " The Conception of Mana," which appears fourth in the present collec- tion, were kind enough to suggest that it ought to be published under one cover with various scattered essays wherein aspects of the same subject had previously been ex- amined. The essays in question were: " Pre-Animistic Religion," Folk-Lore, June 1900, pp. 162-182; " From Spell to Prayer," Folk-Lore, June 1904, pp. 132-165; "Is Taboo a Negative Magic? " Anthropological Essays, presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in honour of his y^th birthday, October 2, 1907, pp. 219-234; and " A Sociological View of Comparative Religion," Sociological Review, January 1908, pp. 48-60. By the kind leave of the Editor of Folk-Lore,th.e Delegates vil THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION of the Clarendon Press, and the Editor of the Sociological Review, it has been possible to proceed to the realisation of this idea, conceived as I have shown amid the fervent courtesies of a festive occasion. Now, how- ever, that in cold blood one contemplates the accomplished deed, the doubt not un- naturally arises whether, after all, it was worth while to reprint articles that in their original form received, from experts at all events, as full and favourable an attention as their author could venture to expect. It is true that the veteran psychologist, Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig, has, in his important Volkerpsychologie (Vol. II., Pt. II., 171 foil.), done me the honour of associating my name with what, under the designation of die prdanimistische Hypothese, he treats as a representative theory of the origin of religion, formulated in direct opposition to the Tylorian " animism." Had I any such ambitious doctrine to promulgate, I suppose I ought to embrace every opportunity of sowing my opinions broadcast. But, to be frank, I scarcely recognise myself in the r6le imputed to me. In the paper on " Pre- viii PREFACE animistic Religion " I had no intention of committing myself to a definite solution of the genetic problem. For me the first chapter of the history of religion remains in large part indecipherable. My chief concern was simply to urge that primitive or rudimentary religion, as we actually find it amongst savage peoples, is at once a wider, and in certain respects a vaguer, thing than " the belief in spiritual beings " of Tylor's famous " minimum definition." It there- fore seemed advisable to pr6vide the working anthropologist with a new category under which he could marshal those residual phenomena which a strictly animistic inter- pretation of rudimentary religion would be likely to ignore, or at all events to misrepre- sent. Before our science ventures to dog- matise about genesis, it must, I think, push on with the preliminary work of classifying its data under synoptic headings. My essay, then, more immediately served its turn when it succeeded in introducing a new classificatory term into the vocabidary of the working anthropologist. This, I think, it can be said to have done in view of the Ix THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION use to which the word " pre-animistic " has been put by writers such as Dr Preuss, Dr Farnell, Mr Clodd, Mr Warde Fowler, Mr Hodson, and others. I take it, however, that "non-animistic" would have served most of their purposes almost as well. At the same time it would be untrue to deny that the term " pre-animistic " was used by me designedly and with a chrono- logical reference. What I would not be prepared to lay down dogmatically or even provisionally is merely that" there was a pre-animistic era in the history of religion, when animism was not, and nevertheless religion of a kind existed. For all I know, some sort of animism in Tylor's sense of the word was a primary condition of the most primitive religion of mankind. But I believe that there were other conditions no less primary. Moreover, I hold that it can be shown conclusively that, in some cases, animistic interpretations have been super- imposed on what previously bore a non- animistic sense. I would go further still. I hold that religion in its psychological aspect is, funda- PREFACE mentally, a mode of social behaviour. To emphasise this point, which scarcely receives explicit attention in the previous essays, the fifth paper of this series is appended. Now I agree with those psychologists who hold that the most deep-seated and persistent springs of social behaviour are furnished, less by our ideas, than by our emotions, taken together with the impulses that are therein manifested.' llius awe, in the case ■ of religion, will, on this view, have to be treated as a far more constant factor in religion than any particular conception of the awful. Such awe, we may therefore expect, will be none the less of marked effect on social behaviour, because the power of representing the awful under clear-cut and consistent ideal forms is relatively back- ward. Hence I am ready to assume that, before animism, regarded as an ideal system of religious beliefs, can have come into its kingdom, there must have been numberless ^ I would refer especially to the recently published work of my friend, Mr William M'Dougall (^An Introduction to Social Psychology, Methuen & Co., 1908), where this position is set forth more lucidly and plausibly than in any other psychological treatise known to me. His account of the emotions that underlie religion is especially illuminating. See 12% foil. , and again %a2,foll. THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION dimly-lighted impressions of the awful that owned no master in the shape of some one systematising thought. It is, I think, be- cause Wundt mistakes my " pre-animistic religion " for a system of ideas of alleged priority to animism that he accuses me of making the evolution of thought proceed from abstract to concrete instead of the other way about. My theory is not con- cerned with the mere thought at work in religion, but with religion as a whole, the organic complex of thought, emotion and behaviour. In regard to reUgion thus understood I say, not that its evolution proceeds from abstract to concrete — ^which would be meaningless — , but that it proceeds from indistinct to distinct, from undiffer- entiated to differentiated, from incoherent to coherent. And that, I claim, is a hypothesis which has the best part of evolutionary science at its back. I have said enough, I hope, to show that, in regard to. Tylor's animism, I am no irreconcilable foe who has a rival theory to put forward concerning the origin of religion. May I now be permitted to say a word about xii PREFACE the attitude adopted in my second, third and fourth papers towards the views of another great anthropologist — I mean Dr Frazer? It is more or less of a corollary from the position taken up in the first essay, that magic and religion are differentiated out from a common plasm of crude beliefs about the awful and occult. As far as Dr Frazer denies this, so far I should declare against him. If he means, for example, to exclude taboo from the sphere of religion (as he seems to do wl^en he identifies it with a negative magic, and identifies magic in its turn with the natural science of the primitive man), then in my opinion he understands religion in so narrow a sense that, for historical purposes, his definition simply will not work. I cannot, for instance, imagine how the British Sunday is to be excluded from the sphere of British religion. On the other hand, if he would consent not to press the analogy — ^for surely it is hardly' more — between primitive man's magic and what we know as natural science, I venture to think that his " magical " and my " pre- animistic " could be used as well-nigh xiii THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION convertible terms. Be this as it may, I woTild gratefully acknowledge that by far the richest collection in existence of what are for me pre-animistic phenomena is contained in that masterpiece of anthropo- logical research, The Golden Bough.^ Finally, I ought, perhaps, to say some- thing about the criticisms that have been levelled against the principles my sugges- tions embody. Apart from Wundt's objec- tions, which have already been considered and, I hope, met, they amount to very Uttle. The flowing tide is with us. Thus the contentions of my first essay were, some time after its first appearance (it was read to the British Association in September 1899, and published in Folk-Lore in the course of the following year), independently reaffirmed by Mr Hewitt's important article, " Orenda and a Definition of Religion," in the American Anthropologist, N.S., Vol. IV. (1902), 33 foil. Again, hardly had my essay " From SpeU to Prayer " seen the light in 1904, when MM. ' I note also that Dr Haddon, in his useful little book, Magic ami Fetishism (A. Constable & Co., 1906), seems to find no difficulty in accepting Dr Frazer's main findings about magic, whilst at the same time endorsing my account of the psychology of the magical process. xiv PREFACE Hubert and Mauss published their far more systematic " Esquisse d'une theorie g6n6rale de la Magie " in V Annte Sociologique, Vol. VII., which no less independently reaffirmed my view of the common participation of magic and religion in notions of the mana type. Further, Mr Hartland has lent his great authority to this group of opinions, and has presented the whole case in the most telling fashion in his brilliant " Address to the Anthropological Section of the British Association," York, 1906 — a pamphlet which is unfortunately not so accessible as could be wished. Thus on reviewing the course of recent speculation concerning rudimentary religion one is led to hope that these views have come to stay. I ought to mention, however, that Mr Lovejoy, in his interesting paper on " The Fundamental Concept of the Primitive Philosophy " in The Monist, Vol. XVI., No. 3, objects that in my treatment of such a notion as mana I tend " to put the emphasis on the wrong side," namely, on the aspect in which it stands for the supernormal rather than on that in which it stands for the efficacious. THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION His own view is that the perceived energy is mysteriovis because it is so potent, not potent because it is mysterious in the first instance. Now I do not know that, for the purposes of general theory, I would care to emphasise either aspect at the expense of the other. It seems to me, however, that, in certain instances, at all events, say, in the case of a corpse, the awfulness is what strikes home first, the potency primarily consisting in the very fact that the dead body is able to cause such a shock to the feelings. A less friendly critic is Father Schmidt, whose terrible denunciations are even now in process of descending upon my head in the pages of his excellent periodical, Anthropos. On the principle, I suppose, that " he who is not with me is against me," he chooses to regard me as an enemy of true religion. I wish he would do me the honour to read my paper on " Origin and Validity in Ethics " in Personal Idealism, to see how, mutatis mutandis, I there in principle contend that the function of a psychological treatment of religion is to determine its history but not its truth. Meanwhile, the chief objection of an anthro- xvi PREFACE pological kind brought by him against my views is that I take no account of the presence of what Mr Lang calls " high gods " in primitive religion. Let me assure him that I have complete faith in Mr Lang's " high gods " — or in a great many of them, at all events. On the other hand, I am not at present prepared to admit (as apparently Father Schmidt would do) the postulate of a world-wide degeneration from the belief in such beings, as accounting for pre-animistic phenomena in general. On the contrary, I assume for working purposes that Mr Lang's " high gods " must have had a psychological pre-history of some kind which, if known, would connect them with vaguer and ever vaguer shapes — ^phantoms teeming i in the penumbra of the primitive mind, and/ dancing about the darkling rim of the tribal _. fire-circle. The upshot of these somewhat discursive considerations is that, if I am justified at all in publishing these essays, it is because they belong to a movement of anthropological thought which has for some time demanded a more permanent vehicle of expression than xvil THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION is afforded by periodical literature. Further, in view of the fact that to me personally there has been attributed in certain quarters a sweeping and even revolutionary dog- matism about religious origins, I gladly embrace the opportunity of showing, by means of this handful of gleanings and suggestions, what a small, humble and tentative affair my theory — so far as I have a theory — is. A note on a point of fact must be added. The statement about Ngai on p. 12, de- rived from Joseph Thomson, appears to be incorrect. Mr HoUis, who is thoroughly at home with the Masai language (whereas Thomson, I believe, was not), informs me that Eng-At is a thoroughly anthropo- morphic god, of much the same character as was the sky-god Zeus for the ancient world. Thomson, he thinks, must have misunderstood the Masai. They would never have alluded to his lamp, or to him- self, as Eng-A'i. It is possible, on the other hand, that they said e-ng-A't, or en-doki e^'ng-Ai\ "it is of God, it is something supernatural." Mr HoUis tells me also xviil PREFACE that the true form of the name of the volcano which Krapf calls Donyo Engai, and which for years figured on the maps as Donyo Ngai, is Ol-doinyo le-ng-A'i, the mountain of God. If it were a hill, it would be En- doinyo e-'ng-Ai. xix THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION THE object of the present paper is simply to try to give relatively definite shape to the conception of a certain very primitive phase o f Religion, as Religion may for anthropological purposes be understood. The conception in question wiU strike many, I daresay, as familiar, nay possibly as commonplace to a degree. Even so, however, I venture to think that it is one amongst several of those almost tacitly accepted commonplaces of Comparative Religion which serve at present but to " crib, cabin, and confine " the field of active and critical research. Com- parative Religion is stOl at the classificatory stage. Its genuine votaries are almost exclusively occupied in endeavouring to find " pigeon-holes " wherein to store with some approach to orderly and distinct arrangement the vast and chaotic piles of " slips " which their observation or reading has accumulated. Now in such a case the THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION tendency is always to start with quite a few pigeon-holes, and but gradually, and, as it were, grudgingly, to add to their number. On the other hand considerable division and sub-division of topics is desirable, both in the interest of specialised study, and in order to baffle and neutralise the efforts of popularisers to enlist prejudice on the side of one or another would-be s5aioptic version of the subject, based on some narrow and frag- mentary view of the data as provided by current science. Nay, so essential is it to detach " work- able " portions of the evidence for separate and detailed consideration, that it is comparatively imimportant whether the divisions at any moment recognised and adopted be capable of exact co-ordination in respect to one another,, so long as each taken by itself is clearly marked and leads immediately to business. Thus in the present case I have ventured to call attention to a phaseof early Religio n which, I believe, only needs clearly marking off by the aid of a few technical designa- tions, to serve as a rallying point for a quantity of facts that have hitherto largely " gone about loose." I have therefore improvised some techni- cal terms. I have likewise roughly surveyed the ground covered by the special topic in question, with a view to showing how the facts may there PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION be disposed and regimented. Choicer technical terms no doubt may easily be found. Moreover, my illustrations are certainly anything but choice, having been culled hastily from the few books nearest to hand. May I hope, however, at least to be credited with the good intention of calling the attention of anthropologists to the possibilities of a more or less disregarded theme in Comparative Religion; and may I, conversely, be acquitted of any design to dogmatise prematurely about Religious Origins because I have put forward a few experimental formulae, on the chance of their proving useful to this or that researcher who may be in need of an odd piece of twine wherewith to tie his scopce dissolutce into a handy, if temporary, besom? Definitions of words are always troublesome; and Religion is the most troublesome of all words to define. Now for the purposes of Anthropology at its present stage it matters less to assign exact limits to the concept to which the word in question corresponds, than to make sure that these limits are cast on such wide and generous lines, as to exclude no feature that has characterised Religion at any moment in the long course of its evolution. Sufl&ce it, then, to presuppose that the word stands for a certain composite or concrete state of mind 3 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION wherein various emotions and ideas are together directly provocative of action. Let it be likewise noted at the start, that these emotions and ideas are by no means always harmoniously related in the religious consciousness, and indeed perhaps can never be strictly commensurate with each other. Now for most persons, probably, thej emotional side of Religion constitutes its more i real, more characteristic feature. Men are, how- ever, obliged to communicate expressly with each other on the subject of their religious experience by the way of ideas solely. Hence, if for no other reason, the ideas composing the religious state tend to overlay and outweigh the emotional element, when it comes to estimating man's religious experience taken at its widest. Thus we catch at an idea that reminds us of one belonging to an advanced creed and say. Here is Religion; or, if there be found no clear-cut palpable idea we are apt to say. There is no Religion here; but whether the subtle thrill of what we know in ourselves as religious emotion be present there or no, we rarely have the mindfulness or patience to inquire, simply because this far more delicate criterion is hard to formulate in thought and even harder to apply to fact. Now the object of this paper is to grope about 4 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION amongst the roots of those beliefs and practices that at a certein stage of their deyelopment have usually been treated as forming a single growth which is labelled Animism, or more properly Animistic Religion. It is a region hard to explore, because the notions that haunt it are vague and impalpable ; the religious sense (if such it may be called) manifesting itself in almost unideated^ fedings that_dQubtless...fall to a large extent qutsidethe savage " field pL attention," and at anyrate fall wholly outside our field of direct observation. Now, even where there undeniably do exist precise ideas of the savage mind for Anthropology to grasp and gamer, everyone is aware how exceedingly difl&cult it is to do them justice. How much more difficult, therefore, must it be, in the case of the earliest dim heart-stirrings and fancies of the race, to truthfully preserve the indistinctness of the original, and yet make clear the nature of that germinal source whence our own complex beliefs and aspirations must be supposed to have arisen. Animism, as a technical term applied to Religion, \ calls attention to the presence of a. more .or. Jess jdefinite creed or body of ideas. According to Dr Tylor, who presented it to Anthropology, it signifies " the belief in the existence of Spiritual 5 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Beings," ' that is to say, of " spirits " in the wide sense that includes " souls." A looser use of the word by some writers, whereby it is made to cover the various manifestations of what is commonly but cumbrously styled the " anthropomorphic " tendency of savage thought, will here be ignored, and a fresh expression substituted, seeing that such an extension of its meaning robs the term of its exacter and more convenient connotation, and, further, seeing that it has failed to win general recognition from men of science. No anthropologist, of course, has ever supposed himself able fuUy and finally to explain the origin of the belief in souls and spirits. Indeed, with regard to absolute origins of aU kinds we had best say at once with the philosopher that " Nothing is strictly original save in the sense that everything is." Dr Tylor and others, however, have with great plausibility put forward a view as to the specifically formative source of the idea, in what has been nicknamed " the dream-theory." This theory asserts that the prototype of soul and spirit i s to be soug ht especially in the dream-image and trance-images— that vision of the niglxt or day that comes to a man clothed distinctively in what Dr Tylor describes as " vaporous materiality," or, ^ Prim, Cult. (3rd edition), i., 424. PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION as the Greenland angekok puts it, " pate and soft so that if a man try to grasp it he feels nothing " — par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno. Perhaps it is only due to Mr Lang's latest re- searches '■ to say with regard to this theory that its centre of gravity, so to speak, has of late shown signs of shifting from dream to trance, so that " the hallucination-theory " might possibly now prove the more appropriate descriptive title. I shall not, however, pause to inquire whether the " thrill " of ghost-seeing is likely to have given form and character to the religious emotions of the savage more directly or forcibly than the less unfamiliar, yet more kindly and sympathetic, appearance of "dream-faces"; nor, again, whether the practical proofs, as they may be called, of Spiritualism (which after aU is but another name for Animism),* I mean clairvoyance and the Uke, were brought into earlier or greater prominence by normal dreamers or by abnormal " seers." It is enough for my present purpose to assume that Animism, the belief in the existence of visionary shapes, whether of the dead or sui juris, became with the savage, at a certain stage of his develop- ment, the typical, nay almost the universal, means ^ Tie Making of Religion, Longmans, Green & Co., 1898. ^ Pnm. Cult., i., 426. 7 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION of clothing the facts of his religious experience in ideas and words, and the typical and aU but uni- versal theory on which he based his religious practice. And this being assumed, we reach our special problem : Before, or at anyrate apart from. Animism, was early man subject to any experience, whether in the form of feeling, or of thought, or of both combined, that might be termed specifically "religious "? Let us begin by asking ourselves what was the precise ground originally covered by animistic belief. The answer, if purely tentative, is soon made. The savage as we know him to-day believes in an infinitely miscellaneous collection of spiritual entities. " To whom are you praying? " asked Hale of a Sakai chief at one of those fruit festivals so characteristic of the Malay peninsula. " To the Hantus (spirits)," he replied — " the Hantus of the forest, of the mountains, of the rivers, the Hantus of the Sakai chiefs who are dead, the Hantus of head-ache and stomach-ache, the Hantus that make people gamble and smoke opium, the Hantus that send disputes, and the Hantus that send mosquitoes." * Now are aU these Hantus, ani- mistically speaking, on a par, or are some original, others derived? I take it that I am at one with *y. A. I., XV., 300-1. 8 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION most orthodox upholders of Animism in supposing the Hantus of the dead to be the original animce whence the rest have derived their distinctively animistic, that is to say ghostly, characteristics. For this view it wiU perhaps be enough to allege a single reason. The revenant of dream and halluci- nation in its actual appearance to the senses presents so exactly and completely the type to which every spirit, however indirect its methods of self-manifestation, is believed and asserted to conform, that I am personally content to regard this conclusion as one amongst the few relative certainties which Anthropology can claim to have established in the way of theory. Suppose this granted, then we find ourselves confronted with the following important train of questions, yielding us a definite nucleus and raUying-point for our present inquiry : " How came an animistic colour to be attached to a number of things not primarily or obviously coimected with death and the dead? What inherent general character of their own suggested to man's mind the grouping together of the multifarious classes of so-called ' spiritual ' phenomena as capable of common explanation? Was not this common explanation the outcome of a common regard, a common and yet highly specific feeling or emotion? And is not this 9 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION feeling related to the ideas wherein it finds as it were symbolical expression — ^as for example to the animistic idea — as something universal and fixed to something particular and transitory? " Now by way of answer to these questions, let me repeat, I have no brand-new theory to pro- pound. The doctrine that I now wish to formu- late imambiguously, and at the same time, so far as may be possible within the limits of a short article, to supply with a basis of illustrative fact, is one that in a vague and general form constitutes a sort of commonplace with writers on Religious Origins. These writers for the most part profess, though not always in very plain or positive terms, to discern beneath the fluctuating details of its efforts at self-interpretation, a certain Religious Sense, or, as many would call it, Instinct, whereof the component " moments " are Fear, Admiration, Wonder, and the like, whilst its object is, broadly speaking, the Supernatural. Now that this is roughly and generally true no one, I think, is likely to deny. Thus, to put the matter as broadly as possible, whether we hold with one extreme school that there exists a specific religious instinct, or whether we prefer to say with the other that man's religious creeds are a by-product of his intellectual development, we must, I think, in 10 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION any case admit the fact that in response to, or at anyrate in connection with, the emotions of Awe, Wonder, and the like, wherein feeUng would seem for the time being to have outstripped the power of "natural," that is reasonable, explanation, there arises in the region of human thought a powerful impulse to objectify_aiid^yeii_perssQi^ t he myst erious or " supernatura l " som etlung felt, and in the region of will a corresponding impulse to render it innocuous, or better still propitious, by force of constraint, communion, or conciliation. Supernaturalism, then, as this uni- versal feeling taJcen at its widest and barest may be called, might, as such, be expected to prove iLot only logically butalso in some sense chronologically piiSrto J^nimism, constituting as the latter do^s but a particular ideal embodiment of the former. The appeal to fact that will occupy the rest of this paper, cursory though it must be in view of our space conditions, will suffice, I hope, to settle the matter. First, let us remind ourselves by the help of one or two typical quotations how widely and indiscriminately Supernaturalism casts its net. Thus EUis writes of the Malagasy : "What- ever is great, whatever exceeds the capacity of their understandings, they designate by the one convenient and comprehensive appellation, II THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Andriamanitra. Whatever is new and useful and extraordinary is called god. SUk is considered as god in the highest degree, the superlative adjective being added to the noun — Andnamanitra-indrinda. Rice, money, thunder and lightning, and earth- quake are all called god. Their ancestors and a deceased sovereign they designate in the same manner. Tarantasy or book they call god, from its wonderful capacity of speaking by merely looking at it. Velvet is called by the singular epithet, ' son of god.' " ^ So too of the Masai, though far lower than the Malagasy in the scale of culture, the account given by Joseph Thomson is precisely similar. " Their conception of the deity, " he says, " seems marvellously vague . I was Ngai. My lamp was Ngai. Ngai was in the steaming holes. His house was in the eternal snows of Kilimanjaro. In fact, whatever struck them as strange or incomprehensible, that they at once assumed had some connection with Ngai." ' As I have said, such quotations are typical and might be multiplied indefinitely. Andriamanitra and Ngai reappear in the Wakan of the North American Indian, the Mana of the Melanesian, the Kalou of the Fijian, and so on. It is the common • Ellis, Hist, of Madagascar, i„ 391-2. ' Thomson, Atasailaml, 445. But see^Prefece ad fin. 13 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION element in ghosts and gods, in the magical and the mystical, the supernal and the infernal, the un- known within and the unknown without. It is the Supernatural or Supernormal, as distinguished from the Natural or Normal; that in short which, as Mr Jevons phrases it, " defeats reasonable expectation." Or perhaps another and a better way of putting it, seeing that it calls attention to the feeling Jbehind the logic, is to say thatjt is the. Awful, and that everything wherein or whereby it manifests itself is, so to speak, a Power of Awfulness, or, more shortly, a Power (though this, like any other of our verbal equivalents, cannot but fail to preserve the vagueness of the original notion).' Of all English words Awe is, I think, the one that expresses^ the jundamental ReU^us Feehng most ne arly. Awe is not the same thing as " pure fimk." " Primus in orbe deos fecit iimor " is only true if we admit Wonder, Admira- tion, Interest, Respect, even Love perhaps, to be, no less than Fear, essential constituents of this elemental mood. Now ghosts and spirits are undoubtedly Powers, but it does not follow that all Powers are ghosts and spirits, even if they tend to become so. In ■" .The Greek word that comes nearest to " Power '' as used above is T^pos. Perhaps "Teratism" may be preferred as a designation for that attitude of mind which I have termed " Supernaturalism." 13 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION what follows I propose that we examine a few typi- cal cases of Powers, which, beneath the animistic colour that in the course of time has more or less completely overlaid them, show traces of having once of their own right possessed m^-animistic validity as objects and occasions of man's religious ^ feeling". ' TSefus start with some cases that, pertaining as they do to the " Unknown Without " as it appears in most direct contradistinction to the " Unknown Within," are thus farthest removed from the proper domain and parent-soil of Animism, and may therefore be supposed to have suffered its influences least. What we call " physical nature " may very well be " nature " also to the savage in most of its normsd aspects ; yet its more startling manifestations, thunderstorms, eclipses, eruptions, and the like, are eminently calculated to awake in him an Awe that I believe to be specyically relijious _both in its essence and in its fruits. whether^nimign_h^ve, or have notj succeedgdJn iir^^ing._its..di&tin,ctiva .CQlaur-^upoa it. Thus, when a thunderstorm is seen approaching in South Africa, a Kaffir village, led by its medicine-man, will rush to the nearest hill and yell at the hurricane to divert it from its course.' Here we have Awe > Macdonald,y. A. I., xix„ 283. 14 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION finding vent in what on the face of it may be no more than a simple straightforward act of per- sonification. It is Animism in the loose sense of some writers, or, as I propose to call it, Animatism; but it is not Animism in the strict scientific sense that implies the attribution, not merely of person- ality and will, but of " soul " or " spirit," to the storm. The next case is but slightly different. The Point Barrow natives, believing the Aurora Borealis to do them harm by striking them at the back of the neck, brandish knives and throw filth at it to drive it away.' Now I doubt if we need suppose Animism to be latent here any more than in the African example. Nevertheless the associa- tion of the Aurora's banefulness with a particular malady would naturally pave the way towards it, whilst the precautionary measures are exactly such as would be used against spirits. The following case is more dubious. When a glacier in Alaska threatened to swaUow up a valuable fishing stream, two slaves were killed in order to bring it to a standstill.' Here the advanced character of the propitiatoTLrite probably presumes ac- quaintance with some form of the animistic theory. It may very well be, however, that sacrifice is here ' Murdoch, Poif^ Barrow Expedition, 432. ' Peet, Am. Antig., ix., 327 ; an instance, however, that might be better authenticated. 15 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION resorted to as a general religious panacea without involving any distinct recognition of a particiilar Racier spirit. And now let us take a couple of instances where the theory behind the reUgious observance is more explicit. The Fuegians abstain from killing young ducks on the ground that, if they do, " Rain come down, snow come down, haU come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow." The storm is sent by a " big man " who lives in the woods.' Now is this Animism? I think not. What may be called a " coincidental marvel " is explained by a myth, and Mythology need be no more than a sort of Animatism grown picturesque. When, however, a Point Barrow Esquimaux, in order to persuade the river to yield him fish, throws tobacco, not into the river, but into the ^r, and cries out " Tuana, Tuana " (spirit),' then here is a full-fledged Animism. Meanwhile, whatever view be taken of the parts respectively played by Animatism, Mythology, Animism, or what not, in investing these observ- ances with meaning and colour, my main point is that the quality of religiousness attaches to them far less in virtue of any one of these ideal construc- Hons than in yirtue of that basic feeling of Awe, which drives a man, ere he can think or theorise ^ Fiteroy, ii., l8o. " Murdoch, ib., 433. 16 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION jipon jt, into personal relations with the Super- natural. "In order to establish the thesis that the attitude of Supematuralism towards what we should call Inanimate Nature may be independent of animistic interpretations, much more is required in the way of evidence than what I have the space to bring forward here. In the case of matters so indirectly ascertainable as the first beginnings of human thought, the cumulative testimony of very numer- ous and varied data affords the only available substitute for crucial proof. As it is, however, I must content myself with citing but two more sets of instances bearing on this part of my subject. The first of these may be of interest to those who have lent their attention to Mr Lang's recent discovery of " Pure " — that- is to say, Ethical — religion in the wUds of Australia. I have to confess to the opinion with regard to Daramuhm, Mungan-ngaur, Tundun, and Baiamai, those divinities whom the Kumai, Murrings, Kamilaroi, and other Australian groups address severally as "Our Father," recognising in them the super- natural headmen and lawgivers of their respective tribes, that their prototype is nothing more or less than that well-known material and inanimate object, the bull-roarer. Its thunderous booming 2 17 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION must have been eminently awe-inspiring to the first inventors, or rather discoverers, of the instrument, and would not unnaturally provoke the " ani- matistic " attribution of life and power to it. Then Mythology seems to have stepped in to explain why and how the bull-roarer enforces those tribal ceremonies with which its use is associated, and, after the manner of Myth, to have invented schemes and genealogies of bull- roarers whose wonderful history and dreadful powers it proceeded to chronicle. Thus, for example, Baiamai kills Daramulwn for devouring some of the youths undergoing initiation, but puts his voice into the wood of the bull-roarer.* Or Mungan-ngaur begets Tundun, who first makes the buU-roarers in actual use amongst the Kumai, and then becomes a porpoise." Further, Myth- ology is reinforced by S3nnbolistic ritual. Figures made of logs are set up on the initiation ground to represent Baiamai and his wife; or the men throw blazing sticks at the women and children as if it were Daramulun coming to bum them.^ As for Animism, however, we never get anywhere near to it save perhaps when Daramulun^s voice is said to inhabit the bull-roarer, or when he is ^ Matthews,y. A. I., xxv., 298, ' Howitt,y. A. /., xiv., 312. ' Matthews,y. A. /., xxiv., 416; xxv., 298. 18 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION spoken of as living in the sky and ruling the ghosts of the dead Kumai.' Nevertheless, despite its want of animistic colouring, a genuine Religion (if reverence shown towards supernatural powers and obedience to their mandates be a sufficient test of genuineness) has sprung up out of the Awe inspired by the bull-roarer; and Mr Lang's asser- tion may safely be endorsed that Animism, with the opportunities it affords for spiritualistic hocus-pocus, could serve to introduce therein a principle of degeneration only. My other set of instances pertains to the fascin- ating subject of stone-worship — a subject, alas! from which I would fain illustrate my point at far greater length. Stones that are at all curious in shape, position, size, or colour — not to speak of properties derived from remarkable coincidences of all sorts — ^would seem specially designed by nature to appeal to primitive man's " super- naturalistic "tendency. A solitary pillar of rock, a crumpled volcanic boulder, a meteorite, a pebble resembling a pig, a yam, or an arrowhead, a piece of shining quartz, these and such as these are almost certain to be invested by his imagination with the vague but dreadful attributes of Powers. Nor, although to us nothing appears so utterly ' Howitt,/. A. I., xxT., 321. 19 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION inanimate as a stone, is savage animatism in the least afraid to regard it as alive. Thus the Kanakas differentiate their sacred stones into males and females, and firmly believe that from time to time little stones appear at the side of the parent blocks.' On the other hand, when a Banks' Islander sees a big stone with little stones around it, he says that there is a Vui (spirit) inside it, ready if properly conciliated to make the women bear many children and the sows large litters.'' Now, this is no longer Animatism, but Animism proper. A piece of sympathetic magic is explained in terms of spirit-causation. The following case from the Baram district of Borneo is transitional. A man protects his fruit trees by placing near them certain round stones in cleft sticks. He then utters a curse, calling upon the stones to witness it : " May he who steals this fruit suffer from stones in the stomach as large as these." Further, suppose a friend of the proprietor wish to eat of the fruit, he wUl light a fire, and ask the fire to explain to the stone that nothing wrong is being done.^ Here we seem to have simple Animatism, but it may be said to tremble on the verge of Animism, inasmuch as by itself — that is, ' Ellis, Tour routtd Hawaii, 1 1 3. ' Codrington,/. A, /., x., 276. ' Hose,/. A. /., xxiii., 161. 20 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION by the mere attribution of life and will — it is unable to account for the magical powers of the stone. How this may be done with the help of Animism is shown us by the Banks' Islanders, already referred to, who, employing stones of a peculiar long shape in much the same way to protect their houses, do so on the explicit ground that the stones have " eaten ghost " — the ghost of a dead man being not unnaturally taken as the type and ne plus ultra of awful power.* Not to multiply instances, let me roundly state that, amid the vast array of facts relating to the worship of stones, there will be found the most divergent ideal representations of their supernatural nature and p^OT^erSj ranging from the vaguest semi-conscious belief in their luckiness,"" onwards through Animat- ism, to the distinct animistic conception of them as the home of spirits of the dead or the unborn, or astheJmage and visible .presence of a god; but that underlying aU these fluctuating interpreta- tions of thought there may be discerned a single imiversal f eeiing, namely the sense of an Awf ulness * Codrington, I.e. ^ I am afraid it may be said that I have not given sufficient pro- minence to that " moment" in religious feeling which corresponds to the belief in Luck. I do not, however, regard it as a specific emotion in itself, but rather as a compound of the Wonder pro- duced by a coincidence and of sufficient Awe of the /flzc;?' therewith seemingly connected, to make it appear worth while to try to con- ciliate it. 21 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION in them intimately affecting man and demanding of him the fruits of Awe, namely respect, venera- tion, propitiation,, service. Passing now from the region of what we regard as the Inanimate to that of the Sub-animate and the Animate, we come first in order of upward progress to that tantalising theme, the worship of plants and animals. Now to a large extent this coincides with the subject of Totemism, about which I shall say little, if only because it teems with controversial matter. This much, however, I take to be now relatively certain with regard to it, that in their origin totemistic observances had a magical Tiib.exJhan^a strictly religious impor t. TTiatTs to say, their object was not so much to conciliate powers in plant or animal form, as to establish sympathetic control over classes of serviceable plants and animals regarded simply as such, namely as clans or tribes very much on a par with the human ones. Now I am ready to suppose that sympathetic^ magic in the eyes of the savage is, primarily, no exclusive instrument of reli^on, but a means of caiisatiQi).. on_ a level with hisjather methods of exerting force — just as with him talking is not confined exclusively to praying. On the other hand, I believe that the abnormal, and mysterious element in magical 22 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION causation is bound to strike him sooner or later, and to call for explanation in the terms most familiar and most satisfying to primitive mysti- cism. Thus, in the case of Totemism, the con- ception of an affinity between the spirits of the plants and animals and their human clients, as effected by Transmigration or some other animistic contrivance, is sure to arise, with the resxilt that the plants and a.nimals by reason of their " spirit- ualisati on " f orthwith assume Jhe plenary rank , and attributes, of JPoweg. Meanwhile, in order to show how this may come about, I shall bring forward one or two illustrations that have no direct coimection with Totemism, as they will then at the same time serve to caU attention to the qualities that constitute an intrinsic as opposed to a merely derivatory right to be revered as Super- natural and Awful. There are many animals that are propitiated by primitive man neither because they are merely useful nor merely dangerous, but because they are, in a word, uncanny. White animals (for example, white elephants or white buffaloes), birds of night (notably the owl), monkeys, mice, frogs, crabs, snakes, and lizards, in fact a host of strange and gruesome beasts, are to the savage, of their own right and on the face of them, instinct with dreadful divinity. To take a 23 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION single instance, a fishing party of Crees catch a new and terrible-looking kind of fish. It is promptly returned to the water as a Manitu, and five days are wasted whilst it is being appeased.* Now in the case of Powers like these, S5nnpathetic magic wiU naturally suggest the wearing of tooth or claw, bone or skin as a means of sharing in the divine potency. Here is the chance for Animism to step in. Thus a Kennaiah chief who wishes to wear the skin of the Borneo tiger-cat for luck in war, wiU wrap himself in it, and before lying down to sleep wiU explain to the skin exactly what he wants, and beg the spirit to send him a propitious dream.^ Or in other cases mere association and coincidence wiU pave the way towards an animistic version of the facts. Thus I have no doubt that it is the imcanny appearance of the snake, com- bined with its habit of frequenting graves and of entering dwellings, which has led more than one savage people to treat it as the chosen incarnation of their ancestral ghosts.^ And here let me leave this part of the subject, having thus barely touched upon it in order to confirm the single point that Religious Awe is towards Powers, and that these ^ Hind, Red River Exped., ii., 135. " Hose.y. A. I., xxiii., 159. ' "Zulus," Macdonald, f. A. /., xx., 122. "Malagasy," Sibree, /. A. I., xxi., 227. 24 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION are not necessarily spirits or ghosts, though they tend to become so. At length we reach what I have roughly de- scribed as the proper domain and parent-soil of Animism, namely the phenomena that have to do with dream and trance, disease and death. Here the question for us must be, " Do Supematuralism and Animism originally coincide in respect to these phenomena? " Or, in other words, " Is the Awful, in each and all of them alike, primarily soul or spirit? " My own belief is that the two spheres do not originally coincide, that the Awful in dream £uid trance is at first distinct from the Awful in death and disease, though the former readily comes to overlay and colour the latter. Thus I conceive that the trance-image, alike on account of its singularity, its accompaniments in the way of physical no less than mental derangement, and its coincidental possibilities, must have been originally and of its own right Awful ; and that so, though perhaps to a lesser extent, must have been the dream-image, if only on the ground last mentioned. Nor would I deny that, in regard to death, these two kinds of vision taken together would be bound to suggest to the savage mind that there is a something which survives the body. But have we here a complete account of the influences 25 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION whereby there is produced that mingled fear and love of the dead which culminate in Manes- worship? I think not. For one thing, it is almost an axiom with writers on this subject, that a sort of Solipsism, or Berkleianism (as Professor Sully terms it as he finds it in the Child), operates in the savage to make him refuse to recognise death as a fact, there being at anyrate plenty of proof that he is extremely unwilling to recognise the fact of natural death. The influence, however, which I consider most fimdamental of all is some- thing else — namely the awf ulness felt to 5..ttasJi to the dead human body in itself . Here, I think, we probably have the cause of the definite assign- ment to a passing appearance like the trance- image of real and permanent existence in relation to a dead owner; and certainly the main source of the ascription of potency to the soul thus rendered substantive. The thrill of ghost-seeing may be real enough, but I fancy it is nothing to the horror of a human corpse instilled into man's heart by his instinct of self-preservation. In confirmation of this view I would refer to the mass of evidence dealing with the use of hiraian remains for piu"- poses of protective or offensive magic. A skull, a human hand, a scalp-lock, a portion of dried and pounded flesh are potent medicine in themselves, 26 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION so long as S37mpathetic magic is at the stage at which it takes itself for granted. Magical pro- cesses, however, as we have seen, specially invite explanation. What more natural, then, given an acquaintance with the images of trance and dream, than to attribute the mysterious potency of a dead man's body to that uncanny thing his wraith? Let me quote just one instance to show how easy is the transition from the one idea to the other. A young native of Leper's Island, out of affection for his dead brother, made his bones into arrow- tips. Thereafter he no longer spoke of himself as " I," but as " we two," and was much feared.' The Melanesian explanation was that he had thus acquired the mana, or supernatural power, of the dead man. Clearly it is but a hair's breadth that divides the mana thus personified from the notion of the attendant ghost, which elsewhere so often meets us. There remains the difficult question whether "l Animism is primarily, or only derivatively, con- nected with the religious Awe felt in the presence of most kinds of disease. I am disposed to say " distinguo." As regards delirium, epUepsy, and kindred forms of seizure, the patient's experience of hallucinatory images, combined with the 1 Codrington, /. A. /., six., 216-7. 27 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION bystanders' impression that the former is, as we say, " no longer himself," would, I think, wellnigh immediately and directly stamp it as a case of possession by a spirit. Then all convulsive move- ments, sneezing, yawning, a ringing in the ear, a twitching of the eyelid, and so on, would be ex- plained analogously. On the other hand there is a large and miscellaneous number of diseases that primitive man attributes to witchcraft, without at the same time necessarily ascribing them to the visitation of bad spirits. Thus a savage will imagine that he has a crab or a frog, some red ants or a piece of crystal, in his stomach, introduced by magical means, as for instance by burying the crab (perhaps with an invocation to the crab- fetish) ' in his path. To remedy such supposed evUs the native doctor betakes himself to the sucking cure and the like, whilst he meets spirits with a more or less distinct set of contrivances, for instance the drum or rattle to frighten them, and the hollow bone to imprison them. Mean- while Animism undoubtedly tends to provide a general explanation for aU disease, since disease to the savage mind especially connotes what may be described as " infection " in the widest sense, and infection is eminently suggestive of the ' ConoUy,y. A. /., xxvi., 151. 28 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION workings of a mobile aggressive agency such as spirit appears intrinsically to be. Let me briefly refer, however, to one form of malady which aU the world over excites the liveliest religions Awe, and yet is, so far as I know, but rarely and loosely coimected with Animism by savage theorists. The horror of blood I take to be strictly parallel to the horror of a corpse already alluded to; and I believe that in what Westermarck has termed the " mystic detestation " of woman, or in the un- reasoning dread which causes a North American brave with a rimning sore to be banned from the camp,' we have a crucial case of a pure and virtually uncoloured religious feeling. The issue of blood " pertains to Wakanda," as the Omahas said.'' That is the primary vague utterance of Supematuralism ; and strictly secondary, I con- ceive, and by way of ex post facto justification, is the belief in the magical properties of the blood, the theory that the blood is the life, or the Maori notion that it is fuU of germs ready to turn into malicious spirits.^ At this point my list of illustrations must come to a close ; and it therefore only remains for me to utter a last word in my own defence for having ^ Adair, Hist, of Am. Inti; 124. ' Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, 267. ' Cf. Tregear,/. A. I., xix., lot. 29 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION called attention to a subject that many will be ready to pronounce both trite, and at the same time incapable of exact or final treatment, As regards the charge of triteness, I would only say that a disregarded commonplace is no common- place at all, and that disregard is, anthropologic- ally speaking, to be measured by the actual use to which a conception is put when there is available evidence in the shape of raw facts waiting to be marshalled and pigeon-holed by its aid. I do not find that the leading theorists have by the organisation of their material shown themselves to be sufficiently aware that the animistic idea represents but one amongst a number of ideas, for the most part far more vague than it is, and hence more liable to escape notice; all of which ideas, however, are active in savage rehgion as we have it, struggling one with the other for supremacy in accordance with the normal tendency of re- ligious thought towards uniformity of doctrinal expression. On the contrary, the impression left on my mind by a study of the leading theorists is that animistic interpretations have by them been decidedly overdone; that, whereas they are prone in the case of the religions of civiUsation to detect survivals and fading rudimentary forms, they are less inclined to repeat the process when 30 PRE-ANIMISTIC RELIGION their clues have at length led them back to that stage of primitive thought which perforce must be " original " for them by reason of the lack of earlier evidence, but is not in the least " original " in an absolute sense and from the standpoint of the racial history. As for the charge of inconclusiveness, this might be in point were it a question of assigning exact limits to the concept to which the word Religion, as employed by Anthropology, ought to corre- spond. As I have said, however, the only real danger at present can come from framing what is boimd to be a purely experimental and preliminary definition in too hard-and-fast a manner. Thus Dr Frazer, though he is doubtless well aware of all the facts I have cited, prefers to treat of Magic and Religion as occupying mutually exclusive spheres, whilst I regard these spheres, not indeed as coincident by any means, but stiU as overlap- ping. I, on the other hand, would hold out for the widest possible rendering of the idea of Religion on practical and theoretical grounds alike. As regards the former, I should fear to cut myself off pre- maturely from any group of facts that might possibly bear upon the history of man's religious evolution. As regards theory, I would rest my case on the psychological argument that, if there 31 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION be reason, as I think there is, to hold that man's religious sense is a constant and universal feature of his mental life, its essence and true nature must then be sought, not so much in the shifting variety of its ideal constructions, as in that stead- fast groundwork of specific emotion whereby man is able to feel the supernatural precisely at the point at which his thought breaks down. Thus, from the vague utterance of the Omaha, " the blood pertains to Wakanda," onwards through Animism, to the dictum of the greatest living idealist philosopher, "" the Universe is a Spiritual Whole," a single impulse may be discerned as active — the impulse, never satisfied in finite consciousness yet never abandoned, to bring together and grasp as one the That and the What of God. 32 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER THIS paper represents the fruit of some rather perfunctory, if only because interrupted, meditation on the broader and, so to speak, more philosophic features of the contrast drawn between magic and religion by Dr Frazer in the second edition of his Golden Bough. Meanwhile, it is more immediately written round the subject of the rela- tion of incantation to invocation, the spell to the prayer. I confess to having reached my con- clusions by ways that are largely a priori. By this I do not mean, of course, that I have excogitated them out of my inner consciousness, as the Teutonic professor in the story is said to have excogitated the camel. I simply mean that the preliminary induction on which my hypothesis is based consists partly in considerations pertaining to the universal psychology of man, and partly in general impressions derived from a limited amount of discursive reading about savages. The verifica- tion of my theory, on the other hand, by means of a detailed comparison of its results with the relevant evidence is a task beyond my present 3 33 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION means. As for my illustrations, these have been hastily gathered from a few standard books and papers, and most of all, I think, from that house of heaped-up treasure, the Golden Bough itself. In these circumstances my sole excuse for challenging the views of an authority whose knowledge and command of anthropological fact is truly vast, must be that in the present inchoate state of the science there can be no closed questions, nor even any reserved ones — no mysteries over which ex- pert may claim the right to take counsel with expert, secure from the incursions of the irre- sponsible amateur. I would add that what I have to say is not intended in any way to abrogate Dr Frazer's contrast between magic and religion. On the contrary, I consider it to embody a work- ing distinction of first-rate importance. I merely wish to mitigate this contrast by proposing what, in effect, amounts to a separation in lieu of a divorce. A working principle, if it is to work, must not be pushed too hard. The question, then, that I propose to discuss is the following : Does the spell help to generate the prayer, and, if so, how? Now the spell belongs to magic, and the prayer to religiofi. Hence we are attacking, in specific shape, no less a problem than this : Does magic help to generate religion? 34 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER Perhaps it will make for clearness of exposition if I outline the reply I would offer in what follows to this latter question. First, I suppose certain beliefs, of a kind natural to the infancy of thought, to be accepted at face value in a spirit of naive faith, whilst being in fact illusory. The practice corre- sponding to such naive belief I call " rudimentary magic." Afterwards I conceive a certain sense of their prima facie illusiveness to come to attach to these beliefs, without, however, managing to invalidate them. This I call the stage of " de- veloped magic." Such magic, as embodying 'a\ reality that to some extent transcends appearance, becomes to a corresponding extent a mystery. As such, on my view, it tends to fall within the sphere of religion. For I define the object of religion to be whatever is perceived as a my stery and treated accordingly. (Dr Frazer, however, defines religion differently, and this must be borne in mind in estimating the pertinence of such criticisms as I may pass on his interpretations of the facts.) Let us now turn to the Golden Bough to see what light it throws on this same problem, viz. whether magic is a factor in the genesis of religion. If I understand Dr Frazer aright — and of this I am by no means sure — his position comes to this. Magic 35 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION is a negative, but not a positive, condition of the genesis of religion. The failure of magic is the opportunity of religio n. Hence it may be said to he5~tFgenerate religion in the sense in which the idle apprentice may be said to help to set up his more industrious rival by allowing him to step into his shoes. But it makes no positive contribu- tion to religion either in the way of form or of content. More explicitly stated, Dr Frazer's theory runs somewhat thus. (It is only fair to note that it is a theory which he puts forward " tentatively " and " with diffidence.")' Originally, and so long as the highest human culture was at what may be described as an Australian level, magic reigned supreme, and religion was not. But time and trial proved magic to be a broken reed. " Man saw that he had taken for causes what were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these imaginary causes had been vain. His painful toil had been wasted, his curious ingenuity had been squandered to no purpose. He had been pulling at strings to which nothing was attached." Whereupon " our primitive philosopher " (and truly, we may say, did that savage of " deeper mind " and " shrewder intelligence " deserve this ' G. A,M.,73«.,7S. 36 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER title of "philosopher," if he could thus reason, as Dr Frazer makes him do, about " causes " and the like) advanced, " very slowly," indeed, and " step by step," to the following " solution of his harassing doubts." " If the great world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings, like himself, but far stronger, who, unseen them- selves, directed its course and brought about all the varied series of events which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own magic." Now the impression I get from these passages, and from the whole of those twenty pages or so which Dr Frazer devotes to the subject of the relation of magic to religion as such, is that the epic vein decidedly predominates therein. The glowiHg" periods in which the history of " the great transition " is recounted are not easily translated into the cold prose of science. Construed literally they appear liable to not a few serious strictures. For example, pure ratiocination seems to be credited with an effectiveness without a parallel in early culture. Almost as well say that when man found he could not make big enough bags with the throwing-stick, he sat down and excogitated the bow-and-arrow. Or again " unseen beings " seem to be introduced as " mysterious powers " sprung 37 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION fully-armed from the brain of man, and otherwise without assigned pre-history.' Finally, magic and religion appear to be treated as in their inmost psychologic nature disparate and unsympathetic forces, oil and water, which even when brought into juxtaposition are so far from mixing that the observer has no difficulty in distinguishing what is due to the presence of each.' One's first im- pression is that a purely analytic method has escaped its own notice in putting on a pseudo- genetic guise, that mere heads of classification have first been invested with an impermeable essence, and then identified with the phases of a historical development which is thereby robbed of all intrinsic continuity. But on second thoughts one sees, I think, that to construe literally here is to construe illiberally. Dr Frazer, in order to dispose summarily of an interminable question, may be supposed to have resorted to a kind of Platonic myth. A certain priority and a certain absoluteness within its own province had to be vindicated for magic as against religion, if the special problem of the Golden Bough was to be kept free of irrelevancies. This vindication the myth contrives, and the rest is, so to speak, literature. If Dr Frazer contemplates a specific I G. £.,' i., 78. = Cf. it., 33, 45, etc. 38 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER work on the early history of religion, he doubtless intends to fill in what are manifest gaps in the present argument. Meanwhile, as regards the inquiry we are now embarked on, we may say that, so far as he goes, Dr Frazer is against the view that magic is capable of merging in religion so as to become part and parcel of it, but that he does not go very far into the question, and leaves it more or less open to further discussion. Where- fore to its further discussion let us proceed. Now in the first place it would clearly simplify our task if we could find sufficient reason for assuming that, whatever it may afterwards have become, magic was originally something wholly unrelated to religion — that, in short, it was origin- ally sui generis. I may point out that this is by no means the same thing as to postulate, with Dr Frazer, an " Age of Magic," when religion simply was not." Our assumption would not exclude the possibility of some sort of religion having been coeval with magic. Which, let me add, might have been the case, even were it shoivn that magic can generate religion of a kind. For religion has all the appearance of being a highly complex and multifarious growth — a forest rather than a tree. That magic was originally sui generis might seem 1 See G. B.,' i., 73, 39 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION a doctrine that hardly calls for establishment, so universally is it accepted by anthropologists. Its peculiar provenance is held to be completely known. Thus Dr Frazer tells us that Magic may be " de- duced immediately from elementary processes of reasoning," meaning the laws of association, or, specifically, the laws of association by similarity and by contiguity in space or time.' Now it seems to me that, once more, these statements need to be construed liberally. The psychological purist might justly doubt whether Dr Frazer is literally able to deduce magic im- mediately from the laws of association. He would, at anyrate, deny Dr Frazer's right to describe the laws of association as " processes of reasoning " or " laws of thought " in any strict sense of these terms.'' A generation ago, no doubt, when the self-styled school of " experience " dominated British psychology, these expressions would have passed muster. In which context it is perhaps relevant to remark that Dr Frazer's theory of the associationalist origin of magic would seem to have been influenced by that of Dr Jevons, and that of Dr Jevons in its turn by that of Dr Tylor, which was framed more than thirty years ago, and naturally reflects the current state of > G. B.,"" i., 70. Cf. 62. ^ lb., 70 and 62. 40 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER psychological opinion. To-day, however, no psy- chologist worth seriously considering holds that association taken strictly for just what it is suffices to explain anything that deserves the name of reasoning or thought, much less any form of practical contrivance based on reasoning or thought. First of all, association is no self-acting " mental chemistry," but depends on continuity of interests Secondly, thought, that is, thought- construction, instead of merely reproducing the old, transforms it into something new. The psychological purist, then, might justly find fault with Dr Frazer's remarks as lacking in technical accuracy, were technical accuracy to be looked for in a passage that, to judge from its style, is semi- popular in its purport. Even so, however, this loose language is to be regretted. Seeing that an all-sufficient associationalism has for sound reason been banished from psychology, the retention of its peculiar phraseology is to be deprecated as liable to suggest that anthropology is harbour- ing an impostor on the strength of obsolete credentials. A word more touching the want of precision in Dr Frazer's language. As in his account of the interior history of the genesis of religion, so in his characterisation of the inner nature of magic he 41 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION seems to exaggerate the work of pure ratiocination. Thus he speaks of magic as a " philosophy " con- sisting in " principles " from which the savage " infers " and " concludes " this and that;' magic " proceeds upon " such and such " assumptions "; and so on." Now on the face of them these appear to be glaring instances of what is known as " the psychologist's fallacy." The standpoint of the observer seems to be confused,with the standpoint of the mind under observation. But there are indications that Dr Frazer expects us to make the necessary allowance for his metaphorical diction. Thus one of the " assumptions " of magic is said to consist in a " faith " that whilst " real and firm " is nevertheless " implicit."' Meanwhile, from the point of view of the psychological purist, implicit, that is, unconscious, inferences, assump- tions, and so on, are little better than hybrids. Now doubtless a considerable amount of real inference may be operative at certain stages in the development of magic. Nay, certain forms of magic may even be found to have originated in a theorising about causes that did not arise out of practice save indirectly, and was the immediate fruit of reflection. I refer more ^especially to divination, if divination is to be classed under ' G. B.? i., 9. 2 lb., 49. 3 lb. Cf. 62 with 61. 42 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER magic, as Dr Tylor thinks that it should.' But, speaking generally, the working principle we had better adopt as inquirers into the origin of magic is, I suggest, the following: to expect the theory to grow out of the practice, rather than the other way about ; to try to start from a savage Monsieur Jourdain who talks prose whilst yet unaware that he is doing so. In what follows I shall seek to observe this working principle. MeanwhUe, I cannot pretend to a systematic and all-inclusive treatment of a subject which, for me, I confess, has at present no well-marked limits. Dr. Frazer's division of magic into two kinds, imitative and sympathetic," is highly convenient for analysis, but I^nTlioir so sure that it directly subserves genesis. Not to speak of the question already touched on whether divination falls under magic, there are other practices quasi-magical in form, for instance the familiar sucking-cure, which cannot be easily reduced to cases either of imitative or sympathetic magic, and which nevertheless, I believe, are of connate psychological origin with practices of one or other of the last-mentioned types. In these circumstances my attempt at a derivation of magic ' See his article " Magic" in Encycl. Brit, (ninth edit.). 2 G. ^.,M.,9. 43 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION must be taken in the spirit in which it is offered — namely as illustrative merely. I shall keep as closely as I can to undisputed forms of magical practice, for instance the casting of speUs by means of an image, in the hope that their develop- ment moves along the central line of historical advance. To start, then, as Dr Frazer seems to suggest that we might,' from the brutes. When a bull is in a rage — and let us note that the rage as deter- mining the direction of interest has a good deal to do with the matter * — it will gore my discarded coat instead of me, provided that the coat is sufficiently near, and I am sufficiently remote, for the proximate stimulus to dominate its attention. Of course it is very hard to say what really goes on in the bull's mind. Possibly there is little or no meaning in speaking of association as contributory to its act, as would be the case supposing it be simply the sight of something immediately gorable that lets loose the discharge of wrath. On the other hand, suppose it to perceive in the coat the slightest hint or flavour of the intruding presence of a moment before, suppose it to be moved by the least aftertaste of the sensations provoked by my 1 Cf. G. B.,H.,7Q. ' Cf. Stout, Groundwork of Psychology , Section on "Emotion as determining ideal revival," p. 120. 44 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER red tie or rapidly retreating form, and we might justly credit association with a hand in the matter. And now to pass from the case of the animal to that of man, in regard to whom a certain measure of sympathetic insight becomes possible. With a fury that well-nigh matches the bull's in its narrow- ing effect on the consciousness, the lover, who yesterday perhaps was kissing the treasured glove of his mistress, to-day, being jilted, casts her portrait on the fire. Here let us note two things. Firstly, the mental digression, the fact that he is for the nonce so " blind," as we say, with love or rancour, that the glove or the portrait has by a ssociation become s ubstituted f or the original object of his sentiments, namely his mistress. Secondly, the completeness of the digression. This dear glove ntoiflyTo be kisiedTtEisTiatefQl portrait fit only to be burnt, occupies h is whole atjteation, and is therefore equivalent to an irresistible belief that realises itself as inevitably as a suggestion does in the case of the hypnotic patient. Such at least is the current psychological explanation of the phenomenon known as " primitive credulity." Now can the man who throws the faithless maiden's portrait into the fire, simply because the sight of it irresistibly provokes him to do so, be said to be practising magic? I think, hardly. 45 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Since, however, it is better that the class-concepts of anthropology should be framed too wide rather than too narrow, let us speak of a " rudimentary magic," of which the act of primitive credulity is the psychological terminus a quo. I contrast such " rudimentary magic " with the " developed magic " whereof the spirit is expressed in the formula: As I do this symbolically, so may something else like it be done in reality. In the former naive belief prevails, in the latter a make- believe, in what immediately foHows we~siSr be concerned with the psychological history of the transition from the rudimentary to the developed form. The feature which it is most important for our purpose to note in the act of primitive credulity is that, to coin a phrase, it_K.not^ojective. This is well illustrated by the case of the bull. The bull does not gore my coat with any ulterior motive prejudicial to me. On the contrary, it contentedly gores the coat, and, unless I am unfortunate enough to recall the bull's attention to myself, I escape. Thus there is none of that projectiveness to be ascribed to the bull's motive which so characteristically enters into the motive of the act of developed magic. We may be sure that the bull does not conceive (a) that he is acting 46 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER symbolically, that, in child-language, he is " only pretending " ; (b) that at the same time his pretending somehow causes an ulterior effect, similar as regards its ideal character, but different in that it con stitutes that r eal thing w hich is the ultimate object of the whole proceeding. And nowTet us^go" on to consider how such primitive credulity is sundered from the beginnings of enlightenment — if to practise projective magic is to be enlightened — only by the veriest hair's- breadth. The moment the bull's rage has died out of him, the coat he was goring becomes that uninteresting thing a coat must be to the normal animal whose interest is solely in the edible. Now the bull, being a bull, probably passes from the one perceptual context to the other, from coat gorable to coat inedible, without any feeling of the relation between them; they are simply not one coat for him at all, but two. But now put in the bull's place a more or less brute-like man, with just that extra dash of continuity in his mental life that is needed in order that the two coats — the two successive phases of consciousness — may be com- pared. How will they be compared? We may be sure that the comparison will be, so to speak, in favour of the more normal and abiding experi- ence of the two. If it be more normal to ignore 47 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION the coat than to gore it, there will arise a certain sense — you may make it as dim as you will to begin with, but once it is there at all it marks a step in advance of primitive credulity — of the gorable aspect of the coat as relatively delusive and unreal, of the act of passion as relatively mis- directed and idle. Meanwhile, notwithstanding this new-found capacity to recognise later on that he has been deluded, rage will continue to delude the subject so long as its grip upon him lasts. Nay more, directly there is a nascent self-consciousness, a sort of detached personality to act as passive spectator, the deluding passion may be actually accompanied by an awareness of being given over to unreal imaginings and vain- doings. Doubtless your relatively low savage might say with Kip- ling's philosopher of the barrack-room: " [I've] stood beside an' watched myself Be'avin' like a blooming fool." Make-believe, however, such as we meet with in developed magic, involves something more than mere concurrent awareness that one is being fooled by one's passion. It involves positive acquiesc- ence in such a condition of mind. The subject is not completely mastered by the suggestion, as in 48 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER the act of primitive credulity. On the contrary, he more or less clearly perceives it to be fanciful, and yet dallies with it and lets it work upon him. Now why should he do this? Well, originally, I suspect, because he feels that it does him, good. Presumably, to work off one's wrath on any apology for an enemy is expletive, that is, cathartic. He knows that he is not doing the real thing, but he finds it does him good to believe he is doing it, and so he makes himself believe it. Symbol and ulterior reality have fallen apart in his thought, but his " will to believe " builds a bridge from the one to the other. Symbolic act and ulterior act symbolised are, we must remember, connected by an ideal bond, in that they are more or less alike, have a character partially identical which so far as it is identical is provocative of one and the same type of reaction. All that is required for the symbolic act to acquire projectiveness is that this ideal bond be conceived as a real bond. Since, however, the appearance of mere ideality can ex hypothesi be no longer ignored, it must instead be explained away. Primitive credulity no longer suffices. In the place of a naive and effortless faith there is needed the kind of faith that, to whatever extent it is assailed by doubt, can recover itself by self -justification. 4 49 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION The methods of self- justification as practised by the primitive mind, become aware that it is pre- tending, yet loth to abandon a practice rooted in impulse and capable of affording relief to sur- charged emotion, are well worth the attention of tlie anthropologist. The subject tends to be ignored in proportion as association pure and simple is regarded as be-all and end-all of the " art magic." Now we need not suppose that because the primitive mind is able to explain away its doubts, there is therefore necessarily any solid and objective truth at the back of its explanations. Given sufficient bias in favour of a theory, the human mind, primitive or even civilised, by unconsciously picking its facts and by the various other familiar ways of fallacy, can bring itself to believe almost any kind of nonsense. At the same time there does happen to be an objectively true and real projectiveness in the kind of symbolic magic we have been especidly considering — the discharge of wrath on the image or what not. We know that as a fact to be symbolically tortured and destroyed by his enemy " gets on the nerves " of the savage, so that he is apt really to feel torturing pains and die.' The psychology of the matter is up to a certain point simple enough, the > See e.g. G. B.,H., 13. 50 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER principles involved being indeed more or less identical with those we have already had occasion to consider. Just as the savage is a good actor, throwing himself like a child into his mime, so he is a good spectator, entering into the spirit of another's acting, herein again resembling the child, who can be frightened into fits by the roar of what he knows to be but a " pretended " lion. Even if the make-believe is more or less make-believe to the victim, it is hardly the less efficacious; for, dominating as it tends to do the field of attention, it racks the emotional system, and, taking ad- vantage of the relative abeyance of intelligent thought and will, sets stirring aU manner of deep- lying impulses and automatisms. Well, this being objectively the fact, are we to allow that the savage magician and his victim may become aware of the fact? I think we must. Of course the true reasons of the fact, namely that suggestion is at work, and so on, are beyond the ken of primi- tive man. But I submit that the projectiveness of the magical act is grounded, not merely on a subjective bias that " fakes " its facts, but on one that is met half-way, so to speak, by the real facts themselves. I woiild even suppose that the kind of magic practised by man on man, since it lent itself especially to objective verification, may 51 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION very well have been the earliest kind of developed magic — the earliest kind to pass beyond the stage of impulse to that of more or less conscious and self-justifying policy. Were this the case, one would have to assume that the savage extended his sphere of operations by some dim sort of analogous reasoning. If, despite appearances to the contrary, magic really answered in the case of man, it would reaUy answer in the case of the weather and so on, to vent one's spleen on the weather being, meanwhile, as a naive impulsive act, hardly, if at all, less natural than to do so in the case of one's human foe.' Thus I surmise that the proved effectiveness of the social department of developed magic gave the greater share of such logical support as was required to the meteorologi- cal and other branches of the business. It is high time that we address ourselves to the more immediate subject of our interest, the spell, the nature of which, however, could not fail to be misunderstood so long as the magical act was vaguely conceived on its psychological side, that is, the side of its true inwardness, the side to which it is the supreme business even of an anthropology that prides itself on its " objective methods " to attend. To begin, then, at the beginning, why 1 Cf. G.B.y'i., 108-9. 52 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER should there be an accompanying spell at aU? Is it, in fact, an indispensable part of the true magical ceremony? Now it is true that not infrequently the absence of any incantation from a piece of magical ritual as at anyrate performed to-day is expressly noted. To give but one example. Among the Khonds of Orissa a branch cut by a priest in the enemy's country is dressed up and armed so as to personate one of the foe. There- upon it is thrown down at the shrine of the war god, but this " appeal " to him for co-operation is, we are expressly told, " silent,'" and that notwith- standing the semi-religious character which the magical rite has put on. On the other hand, the use of the spell as an accompaniment or rather integral portion of the magical performance is so prevalent, that I am inclined, merely on the strength of the historical evidence, to regard its presence as normal in the perfect and uncon- taminated ceremony. This supposition would, however, be immensely strengthened if we could discover good psychological reason why the spell ought to be there. I preferred a moment ago to speak of the spell as an integral portion, rather than as the mere accompaniment, of the magical rite, since it is !/• ^- J'-' ix-. 362- 53 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION rather with developed than with rudimentary- magic that we shall be concerned when in the sequel we consider actual specimens of the kind of spell in use. Corresponding to the act of primitive credulity there may be, I conceive, a kind of spell, if spell it can be called, which is no more than a mere accompaniment. Such a verbal accompani- ment will either be purdy^£letivet_or jt rnay^be what'I'sKallcaJl." descriptive," as when a child making a picture of a man says aloud to himself, " I am making a man "; that is, supposing him to be merely playing spectator to himself, and not to be assisting himself to imagine that what he draws is a man. Such descriptive accompani- ments would of course tend to pass, unaltered in form, into instruments of make-believe as soon as the make-believe stage of magic begins. Never- theless, the whole psychological character of the spell is from that moment changed. It henceforth forms an integral part of the rite, since it helps the action out. What do I mean by " helping the action out "? Let us recur to the notion of developed magic as a more or less clearly recognised pretending, which at the same time is believed to project itself into an ulterior effect. Now I cannot but suppose that such projectiveness is bound to strike the 54 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER savage as mysterious. " But no," says Dr Frazer; " magic is the savage equivalent of our' natural science." This I cannot but profoundly doubt. If it is advisable to use the word " science " at all in such a context, I should say that magic was occult science to the savage, " occult " standing here for the very antithesis of " natural." Dr Frazer proceeds to work out his parallel by formulating the assumption he holds to be common to magic and natural science. Both alike imply " that in nature one event follows another neces- sarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency " ; or again, " that the course of nature is determined, not by the passions or caprice of personal beings, but by the operation of immutable laws acting mechanic- ally."' But the " necessity," the " law," implicit in developed magic as revealed by the correspond- ing type of spell, namely the type of spell which helps the action out, is surely something utterly distinct in kind from what natural science postu- lates under these same notoriously ambiguous names. It is not the " is and cannot but be " of a satisfied induction. On the contrary, it is something that has but the remotest psychological ' G. £.,'{., 6i, 63. In hi,, 459, however, the view that magic and science have any real presupposition in common seems virtu- ally to be given up. 55 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION affinity therewith, namely such a " must " as is involved in " May so and so happen," or "I do this in order that so and so may happen." Such a " must " belongs to magic in virtue of the pre- monitory projectiveness that reveals itself in the operator's act of imperative willing. Meanwhile so far as the process fails to explain itself in this way — and it must always, I contend, be felt as something other than a normal and ordinary act of imperative willing — it will inevitably be felt to be occult, supernormal, supernatural, and will participate in, whilst pro tanto colouring, whatever happens to be the general mode of accounting for supernaturalistic events. But this, I take it, will always tend to be some theory of quasi-personal agency. Dr Frazer, however, is so far from allowing this that he makes the implicit presupposition to be the very opposite of the notion of personal agency, namely the idea of mechanical causation. He does not, however, attempt to go into the psy- chology of the matter, and the psychological probabilities, I submit, will be found to tell dead against this view of his. Mechanical causation is indeed by no means unknown to the savage. From the moment he employs such mechanical aids as tools he may be supposed to perceive that 56 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER the work he does with them proceeds as it were directly and immediately from them. He throws a spear at his enemy; it hits him; and the man drops. That the spear makes the man drop he can see. But when a wizard brandishes a magic spear simply in the direction of a distant, perhaps absent and invisible, person, who thereafter dies, the wizard — ^not to speak of the bystanders — is almost bound to notice something in the action of the symbolic weapon that is indirect, and as such calls aloud for explanation on non-mechanical lines. The spear did not do it of itself, but some occult power, whether in, or behind, the spear. Further, his own consciousness cannot fail to give him an intuitive inkling of what this power is, namely, his projection of will, a psychic force, a manifestation of personal agency, mana. It is a secondary consideration whether he locate the personal agency, the " devil," in the spear, in himself, or in some tertium quid that possesses it or him. In any -case the power is represented quasi- personally. I am quite prepared to believe with Mr , Lang that gods tend at first to be conceived as exercising their power precisely as a magician does.' But it does not therefore follow, as it must if Dr Frazer's theory of magical as mechanical ' Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i., 120. 57 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION causation be accepted, that in some sense the early gods came down to men " from out of a machine." We have been hitherto considering the magical act from the point of view of the operator. Let us now inquire what sort of character is imposed by it on the other party to the transaction, namely the victim. If our previous hypothesis be correct, that to the operator the magical act is generically a projection of imperative will, and specifically one that moves on a supernormal plane, it follows that the position of the victim will be, in a word, a position compatible with rapport. As the operator is master of a supernormal " must," so the victim is the slave of that same " must." Now surely there is nothing in such a position on the part of the victim that is incompatible with the possession of what we know as wiU. On the contrary, might we not expect that the operator, as soon as he comes to reflect on the matter at all, would think of his power as somehow making itself felt by his victim, as somehow coming home to him, as somehow reaching the unwilling will of the man and bending it to an enforced assent? On this theory a magical transaction ought^ hardly^ if at all^less naturally than a religious transaction, to assume the garb of an. affair between persons. We shall see presently whether there is evidence 58 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER that it actually does. On Dr Frazer's view, however, magic and religion are systems based on assumptions that are as distinct and wide apart as matter and mind, their ultimate implications. Hence if magic and religion join forces, it is for Dr Frazer a mere contamination of unrelated originals incapable of presenting the inward unity of a single self-developing plot. He is driven to allege a " confusion of ideas," a " mixture," a " fusion," an " amalgamation," such as can take place only under the pressure of some extrinsic influence.' For a satisfactory clue, however, to the nature of the collocating cause we search his writings in vain. Meanwhile, Dr Frazer seems to admit the thin end of the wedge into his case for a mechanically- causative magic by allowing that the material- on which it works is composed not merely of " things which are regarded as inanimate," but likewise of " persons whose behaviour in the particular circumstances is known to be determined with absolute certainty."' Now of course magic may be conceived as taking effect on a person through his body, as when that which is projected takes the form of an atnongara stone, viz. a piece of 1 G.B.,'i.,67,69. ' See G. B.," i., 63, where this is.clearly implied. 59 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION crystal, or of something half-material, half- personal, like the arungquiltha of the Arunta, or the badi of the Malays.' After all, magic in one of its most prominent aspects is a disease-making. But Dr Frazer's interest is not in these secondary notions. He is seeking to elucidate the ultimate implication of magic when he explains " determined with absolute certainty " to mean — determined, as is " the course of nature," "by the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically.'" But a person conceived as simply equivalent to an inanimate thing — for that is precisely what it comes to — is a fundamentally different matter, I contend, from the notion I take to be, not im- plicit, but nascently explicit ^ here, namely that of a will constrained. No doubt the modem doctrine of a psychological automatism virtually forbids us to speak any longer of " will " in such a connection. To naive thought, however, as witness the more popular explanations of the phenomena of suggestion current in our own time, the natural correlative to exercise of will on the part of the operator will surely be submission, i.e. of will, as we should say, on the part of the ' Cf. Spencer and Gillen, Tie Native Tribes of Central Amtralia, S3 1 and S37. Skeat, Malay Magic, 427. ' G. .S.,M.,63. ' Compare the effect on the woman ascribed to the lonka-lonka, below, p. 75 60 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER patient. For the rest, it would seem that Dr Frazer bases his case for it being a kind of physical necessity that is ascribed by the savage to the workings of his magic, on the explanation which the medicine-man gives of his failures, when he alleges that nothing but the interference of another more potent sorcerer could have robbed his speU of its efficacy.' But the excuse appears to imply, if anything, a conditionality and relativity of will-power, of mana, the analogy of the scientific law being manifestly far-fetched. And surely it is in any case somewhat rash to deduce the implicit assumptions of an art from such a mere piece of professional " bluff." If, then, the occult projectiveness of the magical act is naturally and almost inevitably interpreted as an exertion of wiU that somehow finds its way to another will and dominates it, the spell or uttered " must " will tend, I conceive, to embody^ the very life and soul of the affair. Nothing in- itiates an imperative more cleanly, cutting it away from the formative matrix of thought and launching it on its free career, than the spoken word. Nothing, again, finds its way home to another's mind more sharply. It is the very type ' G. JB.,' i. , 6i. See, however, Sp. and G„ 532, from which it appears that the medicine-man by no means sticks to a single form of excuse. 61 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION of a spiritual projectile. I do not, indeed, believe that what may be called the silent operations of imitative magic are ultimately sign-language and nothing more. I prefer to think, as I have Eilready explained, that they are originally like the fire drawn from an excitable soldier by the tree-stump he mistakes for an enemy, or, more precisely, mis- carriages of passion-clouded purpose prematurely caused by a chance association; and that what might be called their prefigurative function is an outgrowth. But I certainly do incline to think that, when the stage of developed magic is reached and the projectiveness of the mimic act is estab- lished as a fact, a fact however, that as mysterious, occult, calls aloud for interpretation, the pro- jective character of the silent part of the magical ritual will come to underlie its whole meaning; and further, that the spell, as being the crispest embodiment of the " must," as spring and soul of the projection, will naturally provide the general explanatory notion under which the rest will be brought, namely that of an imperative utterance. Let us now consider typical specimens of the various kinds of spell in common use, partly in order to test and substantiate the foregoing con- tentions, but more especially so that haply we may observe the spell pass by easy gradations 62 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER into the prayer, the imperative into the optative. To begin with, I would suggest that at the stage of developed magic the most perfect spell is one of the following form — a form so widely distributed and easily recognised that a single example will suffice to characterise it. In ancient Peru, when a war expedition was contemplated, they were wont to starve certain black sheep for some days and then slay them, uttering the incantation:' " As the hearts of these beasts are weakened, so let our enemies be weakened." Precisely the same type is found all over the world, from Central Australia to Scotland.'' I call this form perfect,' because it takes equal notice of present symbolisa- i tion and ulterior realisation, instrument and end. { Here the instrument is the weakening of the beasts, the end the weakening of the enemy. Let us not, however, overlook the explicitly stated link between the two, the unifying soul of the process, namely the imperative " let them be weakened." It is apt to escape one's attention because the operator, instead of obtruding his personality upon us, concentrates like a good workman on his instrument, which might therefore at the first glance be credited with the origination of the force it but transmits. Not unfrequently, however, the ' Acosta, ii., 342. ^ Cf. Sp. and G., 536, and G. B.,^ i., 17, 63 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION >q)ersonal agency of the operator appears on the surface of the spell, as when sunshine is made in New Caledonia by kindling a fire and saying: " Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot.'" Here the sun is treated as a "you," so that the operator is perhaps not unnaturally led to refer to himself as the other party to this transaction between persons. Meanwhile, though our second instance is interesting as indicating the true source of the mana immanent in the spell, namely the operator's exertion of will-power, it is better not to insist too strongly on the difference between the instrument and the force that wields ^nd as it were^fills it. Both alike belong to what may be called the protasis of the spell. The important logical cleavage occurs between protasis and apodosis — the firing of the projectile and the hitting of the target — the setting-in-motion of the instru- ment and the realisation of the end. Every true speU, I submit, distinguishes implicitly or explicitly between the two. I say implicitly or explicitly, for we find curtailed speUs of the kind " We carry Death into the water," no mention being made of the symbol.^ It would be quite wrong, however, to argue that here is no make-believe, no disjoining of instrument and end requiring an exertion of ' Cf. C. ^.,M., ii6. ' 16., Ti., 83. 64 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER credulity that simply takes the one act for the other. This is shown by the occurrence of the same sort of spell in fuUer form, e.g. " Ha, Kore, we fling you into the river, like these torches, that you may return no more."" The participants in the rite know, in short, that they are " only pretending." They have the thought which it is left to Mr Skeat's Malays to express with perfect clearness: " It is not wax that I am scorching, it is the liver, heart, and spleen of So-and-so that I scorch."' This relative disjunction, then, of instrument and end, protasis and apodosis, being taken as characteristic of the spell of developed magic, let us proceed to inquire how each in turn is in general character fitted to promote the development of the prayer out of the speU (assuming this to be possible at aU). First, then, let us consider whether magic contributes anything of its own to religion when we approach the subject from the side of what has been called the instrument. Under this head we have agreed to take account both of the projective act and of the projectile — in other words, both of the putting forth of the " must " and of the symbol in which the " must " is embodied. Now the projective act, I have tried to show, 1 Cf. G. B.,' ii., io8. ^ M.M., 570. S 65 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION whilst felt by the operator as essentially a kind of imperative willing, is yet concurrently perceived by him to be no ordinary and normal kind of impera- tive willing. Inasmuch as the merely symbolised and pretended reproduces itself in an ulterior and separate shape as solid fact, the process is mani- festly occult or supe rnor mal. Now I have elsewhere tried to show probable reason why the prime condition of the historical^enesis of refigion shoidd be sought in the awe caused in man's mind bj^Jthe perc eption of~lBe~superna,tu ral, that is, supeniOTmalTas it occurs within him and about him> /For the purposes of the anthropologist I would have the limits of primitive reUgion coincide with those of primitive " supematuralism." To adopt a happy phrase coined by Mr Hartland when noticing my view, the supernatural is the original " theoplasm, god-stuff."' Is, then, the occult or supernatural as revealed in magic at first the one and only form, of supernatural manifestation known to man? Emphatically I say. No. To take but one, and that perhaps the most obvious, example of an object of supematuralistic awe that anthropology must be content to treat as primary and sui generis, the mystery of human death may be set over against the miracle of the magical ' Folk-tore, xii., 27. 66 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER projection as at least as original and unique a rallying-point of superstition. On the other hand, I am quite prepared to believe that magical occultism was able of its own right to colour primitive supematuralism to a marked and note- worthy extent. I suggest that the peculiar contribution of magic — at all events of the kind of magic we have been considering — to religion was the idea of mana. No doubt, the actual mana of the Melanesians will on analysis be foxmd to yield a very mixed and self-contradictory set of mean- ings, and to stand for any kind of power that rests in whatever way upon the divine. I suppose it, however, to have the central and nuclear sense of magical pow er; and, apart from the question of historical fact, let me, for expository purposes at anyrate, be allowed to give the term this con- notation. The inwardness of such mana or magical power we have seen reason to regard as derived by the magician from a more or less intuitive per- ception of his projective act of will as the force which occultly transmutes his pretence into ulterior reality. But if the essence of his super- normal power he in precisely this, then wherever else there be discoverable supernormal power under control of a person, will not its essence tend to be conceived as consisting in the same? Mean- 67 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION while, all manifestations of the supernatural are likely to appear as in some sense manifestations of power, and as in some sense personally con- trolled. That they should be noticed at all by man they must come within the range of his practical interests, that is, be as agents or patients in regard to him; and, if he is in awe of them, it wiU assuredly be as agents, actual or potential, that is, as powers, that he will represent them to himself. And again, whatever is able to stand up against him as an independent and self-supporting radiator of active powers will be inevitably invested by him with more or less selfhood or personality like in kind to what he is conscious of in himself. Thus there is no difficulty in explain- ing psychologically why mana should be attributed to those quasi-personal powers of awful nature by which the savage, immersed in half-lights and starting like a child at his own shadow, feels him- self on every hand to be surrounded. Why, then, does Dr Frazer, whilst admitting that for the magician to seek for mana at the hands of ghosts of the dead, stones, snakes, and so on,' is characteristic of that " earlier stage " in the history of religion when the antagonism between sorcerer and priest as yet was not, nevertheless treat this as a " confusion of magic and religion," 68 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER and go on to lay it down that " this fusion is not primitive"?' Is it not simply that he ignores the possibility of the origin of the idea of mana itself in the inward experience that goes with the exercise of developed magic? For Dr Frazer this seeking for supernatural aid on the part of the sorcerer is a "passing into another kind." The sorcerer's exertion of power and the mana he craves of his gods have no direct psychological afi&nity. If, however, our argument has not been aU along proceeding on a false track, there is a specific identity of nature common to the force which animates the magical act as such, and that additional force which in certain cases is sought from an external supernatural source. Psycho- logically speaking, there seems every reason why, granting that the magical act is regarded as occult, and as such falls into line with whatever else is occult and supernatural, its peculiar inwardness as revealed to the operator should be read into whatever else has the prima facie appearance of a quasi-personal exertion of supernatural power. After aU, we know that, in point of fact, the savage is ready enough to put down whatever effects he cannot rationally account for (e.g. disease) to what may be termed sorcery in the abstract. ■ (F.^.,«i., 65-6,69. 69 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION But, once it is established that to feel like and inwardly be a supernatural agent is to feel oneself exerting the will-power of a human magician, then what more natural than that a human magician when in difficulties should seek, by any one of the many modes of entering into relations with the divine to reinforce his own mana from the boundless store of selfsame mana belonging to those magicians of a higher order whom, so to speak, he has created after his own image? All this, however, I confess, it is easier to deduce than to verify. When we try to study the matter in the concrete, we soon lose our way amongst plural causes and intermixed effects. For instance, it is clear that the savage has inward experience of the supernormal, not only in his feats of pro- jective magic, but likewise in his dreams, his fits of ecstasy, and so on (though these latter seem to have no place within the sphere of magic proper). Or again we have been dealing with the act of magic from the point of view of the operator. But there is also the point of view of the victim, whose suggestibility wDl, we may suppose, be largely conditioned by the amount of " asthenic " emotion — fear and fascination — induced in him. Hence any sort of association with the supernatural 70 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER and awful which the sorcerer can establish will be all to the good. An all-round obscurantism and mystery-mongering is his policy, quite apart from the considerations that make his own acts mysteri- ous to himself. However, the quotations cited by Dr Frazer from Dr Codrington seem fairly crucial as regards the hypothesis I am defending.' Mana is at aU events the power which is believed to do the work in Melanesian magic, and to obtain mana on the other hand is the object of the rites and practices that make up what anthropologists will be ready to call Melanesian " religion." Or once more we seem to find exactly what we want in the following prayer of the Malay pawang at the grave of a murdered man: " Hearken, So-and-so, and assist me ... I desire to ask for a little magic.'" I submit, then, that mana, as I have interpreted it, yields the chief clue to the original use of names of power in connection with the spell, from " in the devil's name "^ to " Im Namen Jesu."^ Mr Skeat has compared the exorcising of disease-demons by invoking a spirit of some powerful wild beast, the elephant or the tiger, to the casting out of devils through Beelzebub their ^ G. B.f i., 65-6. Cf. the same authority in /. A. I., xi., ■Joq. \ M. M., 60-1. 3 Cf. G. B. ,' i., 121. ' Cf. W. Heitmiiller, Im Namen /esu, Gottingen, 1903. 71 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION prince." Admitting the comparison to be just and apt, is there not at the back of this the notion of the magic-working power — the " control " — in- herent in the supernatural being as such?' Secondary ideas will of course tend to superimpose themselves, as when, as Mr Skeat has abundantly shown, the magician invokes the higher power no longer as an ally, but rather as a shield. " It is not I who am burying him (in the form of a waxen image), it is Gabriel who is burying him."^ Still Gabriel, I suggest, was primarily conceived as a magic-working power, and indeed as such is able to bear all responsibility on his broad shoulders. Compare the huntsman's charm addressed to the (more or less divine) deer: " It is not I who am huntsman, it is Pawang Sidi (wizard Sidi) that is huntsman; It is not I whose dogs these are, it is Pawang Sakti (the ' magic wizard '), whose dogs these are."* But I must move forward to another aspect of the inherent tendency of the magical instrument to generate religion. Instead of taking the form of a divine feUow-operator who backs the magician, the mana may instead associate itself so closely 1 Fo/i-Lore.xiii., IS9- ' The Malay charm-book quoted by Mr Skeat puts the matter typically, "God was the Eldest Mi^cian." M.M., 2. ^ M. M., S71. Cf. G. B.} i., ii. * lb., 175- 72 FROM SPELL TO PRAYEE with the magician's symbol as to seem a god whose connection is with it rather than with him. The ultimate psychological reason for this must be sought, as I have already hinted, in the good workman's tendency to throw himself literally, as far as his consciousness goes, into the work before him. He is so much one in idea with his instru- ment that the mana in him is as easily represented as resident in it. Meanwhile the capacity of naive thought to personify whatever has independent existence must help out the transference, as may be illustrated abundantly from such a magnificent collection of speUs as we get in the Golden Bough. Contrast the following pair of cases. In West Africa, when a war party is on foot, the women dance with brushes in their hands, singing " Our husbands have gone to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth.'" In much the same way in the Kei Islands, when a battle is in progress, the women wave fans in the direction of the enemy. What they say, however, is, " golden fans! let our bullets hit and those of the enemy miss."' We must not make too much of such a change from impersonal mention to personal address. It implies no more than a slight increase in vividness of idea. Still, as far as 'G. £.,'{., u- 'Ii.,33- 73 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION it goes, I take it, it is all in the direction of that more emphatic kind of personification which gives the. thing addressed enough soul of its own to enable it to possess mana. In the following Russian example we seem to see the instrument first created, then invested with personality, and lastly filled with mana more or less from without : " I attach five knots to each hostile infidel shooter. ... Do ye, O knots, bar the shooter from every road and way. ... In my knots lies hid the mighty strength of snakes — from the twelve-headed snake."' Here the mana is added more or less from without, for, though a knot is enough like a snake to generate the comparison, yet the twelve- headed snake sounds like an intensification definitely borrowed from mythology. The ex- ample, however, is not sufficiently primitive to bear close scrutiny as regards the thought it con- tains. On the other hand, the Australians are, n Dr Frazer's eyes at least, as primitive as you please, and it is precisely amongst them that he finds a magic free of religion. Yet Australia presents us with a crucial case of the deification of the magical instrument. To punish their enemies the Arunta prepare a ' G. B.J' i., 399. Cf. iii., 360, which introduces us to a ten- headed serpent (Greek). 74 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER magic spear. It is named the arungquiltha, this name, let us note, being equally applicable to the supernatural evil power that possesses anybody or anything, and to the person or object wherein it is permanently or for the time being resident. They then address it, " Go straight, go straight and kill him," and wait till the arungquiltha is heard to reply, " Where is he? " — being, we are told, " regarded in this instance as an evil spirit resident in the magic implement.'" Thereafter a crash of thunder is heard, and a fiery appearance is seen streaking across the sky — a beautifully concrete image, by the way, of the projectiveness ascribed by the savage to his magic. It is but a step from this to the identification of the arungquiltha with comets and shooting-stars." By a converse move- ment of mythologising thought, when a man wishes to charm a certain shell ornament, the lonka-lonka, so that it may gain him the affections of a woman, he sings over it certain words which convey an invitation to the lightning to come and dwell in the lonka-lonka. The supposed effect of this on the woman is precisely that we nowadays attribute to suggestion. She, though absent in her own camp, sees, with the inward eye as it were, since she alone sees it, the lightning flashing on the > Sp. and G., 548-9. 'li., 550. 75 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION lonka-lonka, " and all at once her internal organs shake with emotion.'" Now why these easy transitions of thought from the magical instru- ment to a celestial portent, and vice versa, not to speak of the identification of arungquiUha with other manifestations of the supernatural embodied in stones, alcheringa animals, and what not?" Simply, I answer, because magic proper is aU along an occult process, and as such part and parcel of the " god-stufE " out of which religion fashions itself. And more than this, by importing its peculiar projectiveness into the vague associations of the occult it provides one, though I do not say the only, centre round which those associations may crystallise into relatively clear, if even so highly fluid and unstable, forms. We may see why the medicine-man is so ready to press into his service that miscellaneous mass of " plant," dead men's bones, skins of strange animals, and what not; and why these objects in their turn come to be able to work miracles for themselves, and in fact develop into non-human medicine-men. But all these things were psychologically next door to impossible, if magic were in origin a mechanical " natural science " utterly alien in its inward essen- tial nature to all religion, and as such capable only ' Sf. and G., 545. ' lb. , SJO-I. 76 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER of yielding to it as a substitute, and never of join- ing forces with it as ally and blood-relation. Surely, if we look at the matter simply from this side alone, the side of the instrument, there is enough evidence to upset the oil-and-water theory of Dr Frazer. Before we leave the subject of the instrument let us finally note that concurrently with the personification and progressive deification of the instrument, as it may be called, the spell evolves into the prayer. Thus, on the one hand, the name of power associated with the spell, instead of being merely quoted so as by simple juxtaposition to add mana to mana, may be invoked as a personal agency by whose good grace the charm as a whole is caused to work. Dr Frazer provides us with an instance of this from the Kei Islands. When their lords are away fighting, the women, having anointed certain stones and fruits and exposed them on a board, sing : " O lord sun and moon let the buUets rebound from our husbands . . . just as raindrops rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil.'" Dr Frazer speaks of " the prayer to the sun that he wUl be pleased to give effect to the charm " as "a religious and perhaps later addition." No doubt in a sense it is. We have seen reason to believe, however, 1 G. B.? i., 33. 77 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION that such a development is natural to the spell; and this particular development would be especially natural if we regard the sun and moon as invoked not merely as magic-working powers in general, but as powers of the sky which send the rain and are thus decidedly suggested by the spell itself. At^ anyrate it seems quite certain that reflection on the occult working of a speU will generate the notion of external divine agency, and this notion in its turn give rise to prayer. Thus the New Caledonia rainmakers poured water over a skeleton so that it might run on to some taro leaves. " They believed that the soul of the deceased took up the water, converted it into rain, and showered it down again." From this belief it is but a step to prayer. And so we find that in Russia, where a very similar rite is practised, whilst some pour water on the corpse through a sieve, others beat it about the head, exclaiming, " Give us rain.'" In these cases the power invoked is more or less external to the symbol. On the other hand, it may be identical with the symbol. Thus he Fanti wizard puts a crab into a hole in the ( ground over which the victim is about to pass, I and sprinkles rum over it with the invocation: ^" O Crab-Fetish, when So-and-so walks over you, > G. B.?\., 100. 78 ^. FROM SPELL TO PRAYER may you take life from him.'" Here the crab, I suggest, was originally a magical symbol on a par with the stones which in Borneo serve to protect fruit trees, the idea of which is that the thief may suffer from stones in the stomach Hke to these. These Borneo stones are similarly treated as personal agencies. They are called on to wit- ness the anathema. Or again, if a friend of the proprietor wishes to pluck the fruit, he first lights a fire and asks it to explain to the stones that he is no thief.' In short, there is fairly crucial evidence to show how naturally and insensibly the c harm -symbol may pass _into the.Jdal.^ AU that is needed is that there should be sufficient personification for prayer to be said. It remains to speak very briefly of the corre- sponding personification and gradual deification of what in contrast to the " instrument " I have called the " end." Now clearly the curtailed form of speU with suppressed protasis is to all outward appearance a prayer and nothing else. Take a single very simple example — the " Fruit, Fruit, Fruit, Fruit," which we find at the end of >/. A. /., xxvi., 151. Cf. G. B., Hi., 69-70, where the divine cuttle-fish is propitiated, lest it make a cuttle-fish grow in the man's inside. ' /i., xxiii., 161. ^ Cf. Dr Haddon in/. A, I., xix., 324. 79 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION various Malay charms connected with the practice of " productive " magic' According to our previous conclusions, however, this is no prayer so long as the force which sets the spell in motion is felt by the operator as an exertion of imperative wiU and an attempt to establish control. But, given a form of words which need suffer no change though the thought at the back of it alter, what more natural than that the mind of the charmer should fluctuate be- tween " bluff " and blandishment, conjuration and cajolery? Mr Skeat provides us with examples of how easily this transition effects itself in the course of one and the same ceremony. Thus " Listen, O listen, to my injunctions " — which is surely prayer — is immediately followed by threat backed by the name of power: " And if you hearken not to my instructions you shall be rebels in the sight of Allah.'" And, that we need not suppose this transition to involve a change of mind from overweening pride of soul to humility and rever- ence,^ the same authority makes it clear that prayer may be resorted to as a trick, may be a ' Cf. Mr Skeat in Folk-Lore, xiii., l6l. ' Folk-Lore, xiii., 142. s Contrast what Dr Frazer says about man's new-found sense of his own littleness, etc., G. B.^ i., 78, 80 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER civil request that but masks a decoy,' a complica- tion which in itself shows how artificial must ever be the distinction we draw, purely for our own classificatory purposes, between magic and re- ligion. So far we have considered the transition from the side of the operator. And now look at it from the side of the patient or victim — the wiU he seeks to constrain. That it is truly as a will constrained, and not as a person conceived as equivalent to an inanimate thing, we have already argued. An example of the way the savage figures to himself the effects of the control he exerts was provided by the Arunta description of the woman who with the inward eye sees the lightning flashing on the lonka-lonka, and aU at once her inward parts are shaken with the projected passion. Now savage thought finds no difficulty in postulat- ing wiU constrained where we deny will and personality altogether. And, once personify, you are on the way to worship. Thus in China they sweep out the house and say, " Let the devil of poverty depart.'" In Timorlaut and Ceram they launch the disease boat, at the same time crying, " O sickness, go from here."^ Already here we seem to find the speU-form changed over into the prayer-form. Meanwhile in Euro the same ^ M. M., no, zoS. 2 G. ^.,Mu., 83. " B.,g^■». 6 81 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION rite is accompanied by the invocation: "Grand- father Small-pox, go away.'" Here the " Grand- father " is clearly indicative of the true spirit of prayer, as might be illustrated extensively. Or so again the magical ploughing of the Indian women is accompanied by what can only be described as a prayer to " Mother Earth."' Clearly the cults of the rice-mother, the maize- mother, the corn-mother, and so on, wherein magic is finally swallowed up in unmistakable religion, are the natural outcome of such a gradually- intensifying personification. But this personifica- tion in its turn would foUow naturally upon that view of the magical act which we have all along assumed to have been its ground-idea, namely the view that it is an inter-personal, inter-subjective transaction, an affair between wills — something, therefore, genericaUy akin to, if specifically distinct from, the relation which brings together the suppliant and his god. One word only in conclusion. I have been dealing, let it be remembered in justice to my hypothesis, with this question of the relation of magic to religion, the speU to the prayer, abstractly. \ It is certain that religion cannot be identified merely with the worship directly generated by 'ff.^., 98. »/i.,M.,99. 82 FROM SPELL TO PRAYER magic. Religion is a far wider and more complex thing. Again, there may be other elements in magic than the one I have selected for more or less exclusive consideration. It is to some extent a matter of definition. For instance, divination may, or may not, be treated as a branch of magic. If it be so treated, we might, as has already been said, have to admit that, whereas one kind of magic develops directly out of quasi-instinctive practice, namely the act of primitive credulity, another kind of magic, divination, is originally due to some sort of dim theorising about causes, the theory engendering the practice rather than the practice the theory. Meanwhile, if out of the im- mense confusion of beliefs and rites which the student of savage superstition is called upon to face, we shall haply have contrived to isolate, and more or less consistently keep in view, a single abstract development of some intrinsic interest and importance, we shall have done very well. Every abstraction that is " won from the void and formless infinite " is of value in the present vague and shifting condition of anthropology. Dr Frazer's abstract contrast of magic and religion is a case in point. But abstraction needs to be qualified by abstraction that the ideal whole may at length be envisaged as a unity of many 83 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION phases. My object throughout has been to show that, if from one point of view magic and religion must be held apart in thought, from another point of view they may legitimately be brought together. 84 IS TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC? IT is always easier to criticise than to construct. Many affirmative instances usually go to the founding of an induction, whereas a single contra- dictory case suffices to upset it. Meanwhile, in anthropology, it will not do to press a generalisa- tion overmuch, for at least two reasons. The first of these reasons is the fundamental one that human history cannot be shown, or at anyrate has not hitherto been shown, to be subject to hard-and-fast laws. Hence we must cut our coat according to our cloth, and be fully content if our analysis of the ways and doings of man dis- closes tendencies of a well-marked kind. The second reason is that, in the present state of the science, field-work, rightly enough, predominates over study-work. Whilst the weather lasts and the crop is stiU left standing, garnering rather than threshing must remain the order of the day. Working hypotheses, therefore, the invention of theorists who are masters of their subject, are not so plentiful that we can afford to discard them at the first hint of an exception. If, then, some one comes forward to attack a leading view, it is not enough to arm himself with a few negative in- 85 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION stances. It is likewise incumbent on the critic to provide another view that can serve as a substitute. In the present case I have sought to do this after a fashion, though I am painfully aware that, in defining taboo by means of mana, I am laying myself open to a charge of explaining obscurum per obscurius. I can only reply pro- phetically that the last word about mana has not yet been said; that it represents a genuine idea of the primitive mind, an idea no less genuine and no less widely distributed than the idea of taboo, as several writers have recently suggested, and as further investigation will, I believe, abundantly confirm. I would also rejoin that if the accusation of obscurum per obscurius hardly applies directly to the theory I am criticising — since to identify " magic " with the sympathetic principle yields a perfectly definite sense — ^yet the natural associa- tions of the word are so much at variance with this abstract use of the name of a social institution that the expression " negative magic " is more likely to cause confusion than to clear it up. So far back as when Dr Tylor published his epoch-making Researches into the Early History of Mankind -we find the suggestion put forward of a certain community of principle between taboo and that " confusion of objective with subjective con- 86 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC nection " which " may be applied to explain one branch after another of the arts of the sorcerer and diviner, till it almost seems as though we were coming near the end of his list, and might set down practices not based on this mental process as exceptions to a general rule." ' " Many of the food prejudices of savage races," continues Dr Tylor, " depend on the belief which belongs to this class of superstitions, that the qualities of the eaten pass into the eater. Thus, among the Dayaks, young men sometimes abstain from the flesh of deer, lest it should make them timid, and before a pig-hunt they avoid oil, lest the game should slip through their fingers, and in the same way the flesh of slow- going and cowardly animals is not to be eaten by the warriors of South America ; but they love the meat of tigers, stags, and boars, for courage and speed." ° Recently ^ Dr Frazer has universalised Dr Tylor's partial correlation, and has pronounced " the whole doctrine of taboo " to be a negative magic, understanding by magic a misapplication of the association of ideas by similarity and con- tiguity. A very similar definition had already been proposed by MM. Hubert and Mauss. ♦ They 1 op. dt., 3rd. edit., 129. ^ lb., 131. ^ Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, 52. * L' Annie Sociologique, vii., 56. It is to be noted that Dt Frazer arrived at his conclusion by independent means ; cf. Man, 1906, 37. 87 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION limit the identification, however, to what they name " sympathetic taboo," implying that taboo includes other varieties as well. Again, although here they seem to make the sympathetic principle the differentia of magic, the final gist of their admirable essay is rather to find this in the anti- social character ascribed to the magician's art. Now, according to the foregoing view, taboo is a ceremonial abstinence based on the fear of definite consequences. Just as sympathetic magic says, " As I do this, so may that which this symbohses follow," taboo says, " I must not do this, lest there follow that which is the counterpart of this." In violent contrast we have the view of Dr Jevons, which, at first sight at anyrate, seems to declare all consideration of consequences to be foreign to the taboo attitude. He bases his theory of taboo on an alleged " fact that among savages universally there are some things which categoric- ally and unconditionally must not be done," insisting " that this feeling is a ' primitive ' senti- ment." ' Now it is not easy to discover what is here meant, so great is the departure from the recognised terminology of philosophy. " Cate- gorically " and " unconditionally " are expressions that smack of Kantian "rigorism "; but Kant's ' An Introduction to the History of Religion, 85. TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC famous analysis of duty as a categorical and unconditional imperative makes obligation directly antagonistic to sentiment of all kinds. A senti- ment as such has a history and assignable develop- ment. The Kantian law of duty, a priori, ob- jective, absolute, has none whatever. Is Dr Jevons, then, speaking here strictly according to philosophic tradition? Or would he recognise a growth of moral principle, say, on some such lines as those which Dr Westermarck or Mr Hobhouse has recently laid down ? If he were of the former persuasion, then he would be irrelevantly inter- polating a non-genetic view of morality that for purposes of psychological and sociological explana- tion could have no value or significance at all. But if he is of the other and less uncompromising faith — ^which appears more probable, seeing that his book is professedly dealing with religion from the historical standpoint — then " categorical " and " unconditional," in their application to a mere sentiment, are to be given an elastic sense. No more is meant, we must in that case suppose, than that the taboo feeling of "Do not meddle " involves no very explicit condition, no very clear or specific idea of unpleasant consequences to be avoided, but as it were threatens by aposiopesis — " Do not meddle, or, if you do, . . . ! " If this is 89 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION as much as Dr Jevons intends — and it seems at anyrate to be all that is meant by MM. Hubert and Mauss when they speak in very similar terms of the absolute, necessary, and a priori character of the " magical judgment " ' — then I think this view has very much to be said for it. My own contention is that, whilst there is always a sanction at the back of taboo in the shape of some suggestion of mystic punishment following on a breach of the customary rule, yet the nature of the visitation in store for the offender is never a measurable quantity. Even when the penalty is apparently determinate and specific — which, how- ever, is by no means always the case, as I shall endeavour to show later — an infinite plus of awfulness will, I believe, be found, on closer examination, to attach to it. Taboo, on my view, belongs, and belongs wholly, to the sphere of the magico-religious. Within that sphere, I venture to assert, man always feels himself to be in contact with powers whose modes of action transcend the ordinary and calculable. Though he does not on that account desist from attempting to exploit these powers, yet it is with no assurance of limited liability that he enters on the undertaking. In short, dealings with whatever has mystic power ' op. cit., vii., 125. 90 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC are conducted at an i ndefinite risk ; and taboo but embodies the resolution to take no unnecessary risks of this indefinite kind. This contention I shall now try to make good. First, to attack the theory that taboo is negative magic (in Dr Frazer's sense of the terra " magic ") on the side on which that theory is strongest, namely where sympathy is most in evidence. I do not for one moment deny that in some taboos a sympathetic element is present and even prominent. Indeed, I see no harm in speaking, with MM. Hubert and Mauss, of sympathetic taboo, where " sympathetic " stands for the differentia or leading character of a variety, and the genus " taboo " is taken as already explained in independent terms. The presence of the sympathetic principle is, to my mind, amply and crucially proved in the case of those food restric- tions mentioned in the passage quoted from Dr Tylor, the prohibition to eat deer lest one become timid, and so on. Another telling set of examples is provided by those remarkable taboos on the use of knots which, as Dr Frazer has abundantly shown, are wont to be observed at critical seasons such as those of child-birth, marriage, and death.' But even here, I suggest, the consequences tend to ' The Golden Bought i., 392 sqq. 91 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION remain indefinite and vague, and that for more than one kind of reason. We can distinguish a sociological reason and a hierological or religious reason, though for the purposes of the historical study of religion, from the standpoint of which taboo is usually considered, the first may be treated as subordinate to the second. To begin with, these, no less than any other taboos, are customary observances, a portion of the unwritten law of society. To this fact, then, must be ascribed part at least of the force that renders them effective. There are always penalties of a distinctively social kind to be feared by the taboo-breaker. In extreme cases death will be inflicted; in all cases there will be more or less of what the Australian natives call " growling," ' and to bear up against public opinion is notoriously the last thing of which the savage is capable. Moreover, this social sanction is at the same time a religious sanction. To speak the language of a more advanced culture. State and Church being indivisibly one, to be outlaw is ipso facto to be excommunicate. Given the notion of m3^tic danger — of which more anon — social disapproval ' Cf. B. Spencer and F. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 196. 92 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC of all kinds will tend to borrow the tone and colour of religious aversion, the feeling that the offender is a source of spiritual peril to the community; whilst the sanctioning power remains social in the sense that society takes forcible means to remove the curse from its midst. It may be argued that these social consequences of taboo-breaking are secondary, and thus scarcely bear on the question of the intrinsic nature of taboo. Such an objection, however, will not be admitted by anyone who has reflected at all deeply on the psychology of religion. On the broadest of theoretical grounds religion must be pronounced a product of the corporate life — a phenomenon of intercourse. Confirmation a posteriori is obtained by the examination of any particular taboos of which we have detailed information. Take, for example, the elaborate list of food-restrictions imposed amongst the Arunta on the ulpmerka or boy who has not yet been circumcised.' The sympathetic principle is probably not absent, though its action happens here not to be easily recognisable. When we learn, however, that ^ Spencer and Gillen, op. cit., 470 sqg. Here, by the way, in the systematic assignment of penalties to offences we seem to have a crucial disproof of the pure " nnconditionality " of taboo. 93 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION eating parrots or cockatoos will produce a hollow on the top of the head and a hole in the chin, we may suspect that the penalty consists in becoming like a parrot or cockatoo. On the other hand, the same penalty, for instance premature old age, follows on so many different kinds of transgression that it looks here as if a tendency to dispense with particular connections and generalise the effects of mystic wrong-doing were at work. Meanwhile, in regard to all these taboos alike our authorities assure us that the underlying idea throughout is that of reserving the best kinds of food for the use of the elder men, and of thereby disciplining the novice and teaching him to " know his place." Here is a social reason with a vengeance. Even if some suspect that our authorities over-estimate the influence of conscious design upon tribal custom, they wiU hardly go the length of asserting that sympathy pure and simple has automatically generated a code so favourable to the elderly gourmet. A number of succulent meats to be reserved on the one hand, a number of diseases and malformations held in dread by the tribe on the other, and possibly a few sympathetic connec- tions established by tradition between certain foods and certain diseases to serve them as a pattern — with this as their pre-existing material the 94 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC Australian greybeards, from all we know about them, would be quite capable of constructing a taboo-system, the efficient cause of which is not so much mystic fear as statecraft. Even if the principle of sympathy lurk in the background, we may be sure that the elders are not applying it very consciously or very strictly ; and again we may be sure that society in imposing its law on the ulpmerka is at much greater pains to make it clear that he must not eat such and such than why he must not — if only because there are so many excellent reasons of a social kind why the young should not ask questions, but simply do as they are bidden. But there is, I believe, another and a deeper reason why sympathy pure and simple cannot account for taboo. Taboo, I take it, is always something of a mystic a ffair. But I cannot see why there should be anything mystic about sympathy understood, as Dr Frazer understands it, simply as a misapplication of the laws of the association of ideas. After all, the association of ideas is at the back of all our thinking (though by itself it wiU not account for any of our think- ing) ; and thinking as such does not fall within the sphere of the mystic. Or does the mystery foUow from the fact that it is a " misapplication " of the 95 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION laws aforesaid? ' Then the savage must be aware that he is misapplying these laws; for taboo is for him a mystic affair. But if he knows he is indulg- ing in error, why does he not mend his ways? Clearly Dr Frazer cannot mean his explanation of magic or of taboo to be an explanation of what it is for the savage. Now, perhaps he is entitled to say that magic, in his sense, is not a savage concept or institution at aU, but merely a counter for the use of the psychology that seeks to explain the primitive mind not from within but from without. He is, however, certainly not entitled to say that taboo is not a savage concept or in- stitution. In Polynesia tapu is a weU-recognised term that serves as perhaps the chief nucleus of embryonic reflection with regard to mystic matters of all kinds; in some of the islands the name stands for the whole system of rehgion.' Moreover, from every quarter of the primitive ' Dr Frazer writes, Lecturts on the Early History of the King- ship, S3, "It is not a taboo to say, 'Do not put your hand in the fire ' ; it is a rule of common sense, because the forbidden action entails a real, not an imi^nary, evil," It is not a taboo, but a rule of common prudence, for the savage. But not for the reason alleged. In his eyes there is nothing imsjginary, but something terribly real, about the death or other disaster he observes to overtake the taboo-breaker. How, then, does he come to bring this kind of evil under a category of its own ? Surely it ought to be the prime concern of Anthropology to tell us that. ' Cf. E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary S.v. tapu. 96 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC world we get expressions that bear the closest analogy to this word. How then are we to be content with an explanation of taboo that does not pretend to render its sense as it has sense for those who both practise it and make it a rallying- point for their thought on mystic matters? As well say that taboo is " superstition " as that it is " magic " in Dr Frazer's sense of the word. We ask to understand it, and we are merely bidden to despise it. If, on the other hand, we cast about amongst genuine primitive notions for such as may with relative appropriateness be deemed equivalent to the idea of magic, as that idea is to be under- stood and employed by a psychology that tries to establish community between savage and civilised thought, we have the choice between two alternative types. My own preference is for those primitive expressions that are definitely dyslogistic or con- demnatory, as when we speak of the " black art." The clearest cases that I know are Australian. Thus the arungquiltha of the Arunta is " associated at bottom with the possession of supernatural evil power." ' Perhaps we may say broadly that, as contrasted with churinga, the term stands for ^ Spencer and Gillen, op. cit., 548 n. 7 97 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION magic as opposed to religion — for magic, that is, as the witch-haunted England of the seventeenth century understood it, namely as something anti- social and wholly bad. The Kaitish ittha seems to be the exact analogue of arungquiltha /' and so do the mwparn of the Yerklamining, " the mung of the Wurunjerri,' and the gubbuna of the Yuin.* In aU these cases the notion seems to be that of a wonder-working of a completely noxious kind. Amongst the Arunta a man caught practising such magic is severely punished, and probably killed.' Some, however, might choose rather to assign the meaning of " magic " to the wonder-working in general, and not simply to its bad variety. Thus amongst the last-mentioned Yuin " evil magic " may be practised by the gommera or medicine-man ; but in this tribe he is the leader of society, and a wielder of good supernatural power no less than of evil. The wonder-working power he possesses goes by the comprehensive name of joia, translated " magic " by Howitt, and de- scribed as an " immaterial force " set in motion not only by the gommera but also by certain sacred ' Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 464 n. * A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of Sotah-East Australia, 4TO. 8 0>. «V.,36S. *n.,3n- ' Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, 536. 98 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC animals.' Here we seem to have a case of that very widespread notion of which the most famous representatives are the mana of the Pacific and the orenda of the Iroquois. A good deal of attention has lately been paid by anthropologists to these latter expressions, and I may perhaps be permitted to take certain of their findings for granted. It would appear that the root-idea is that of power — a power manifested in sheer luck, no doubt, as well as in cunning, yet, on the whole, tending to be conceived as a psychic energy, almost, in fact, as what we would call " will-power." " Further, though it may be that every being possesses its modicum of mana, the tendency is for the word to express extraordinary power, in short a wonder- working. Nowbetweenthe ordinary and the extraordinary, the work-a-day and the wonderful is a difference, if you will, of degree rather than of kind. The sphere of the miraculous is, subjectively, just the 1 Op. cit., 533, s6o-i. ^ It is very interesting to note, as Tregear's excellent dictionary, s.v. mana, enables one to do at a glance, how the root mana underlies an immense number of the terms by which psychical faculties and states are rendered. Thus in Samoan we find mana'o to desire, wish, manatu to think, manamea to love, atuamanatu to have a good memory ; in Tahitian manao to think, manavaru eager desire ; in Hawaiian manao to think, mananao thought, manaoio to believe, manaiva feelings, affections; and so on. 99 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION sphere of a startled experience, and clearly there are endless degrees in the intensity of felt surprise; though society tends to fix hard-and-fast limits within which surprise is, so to speak, expected of one. How the savage proceeds to differentiate the normal from the abnormal was brought home to me in the course of an interview I was accorded by the Pygmy " chief " Bokane.' I was tr57ing to verify Col. Harrison's statement " that if a Pygmy dies suddenly the body is cut in two to see whether or not the death is caused by ouiah — ^the " devU," as Col. Harrison renders it, though, for my part, I could not discover the slightest trace of personahty attaching to this evil principle.^ I asked Bokane how his people told whether the death was due to ouiah or not. He replied that, if an arrow-head or a large thorn were found inside the body, it was an arrow or a thorn that had killed the man ; but, if nothing could be found, then oud,ah must have done it. If a dangerous animal killed a man, I learnt on further inquiry, it was not ouddh, but it was oudah if you cut your finger accidentally. ^ I spent about five hours in all in private talk with the Pygmies, assisted, I need hardly say, by an interpreter, at Olympia in London, Jan. 8 and 9, 1907. ' Life among the Pygmies, Lond. , igo6, 20. ' Nothing, apparently, is done to avert or propitiate oudah. Bokane denied that the pots of honey placed at the foot of trees were for oudah. 100 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC When strange sounds were heard in the forest at night and the dogs howled, that was oudah. On some such lines as these, then, we may suppose other savages also to have succeeded in placing the strange and unaccountable under a category of its own. In the case of mana and orenda I am inclined to think that the core of the notion is provided by the wonderful feats — wonderful to himself, no doubt, as well as to his audience — of the human magician; which notion is then ex- tended to cover wonder-working animals, nature- powers, and the like by an anthropomorphism which is specifically a " magomorphism," so to say. Of course other elements beside that of sheer surprise at the unusual enter into the composition of a predominant notion such as that of mana, which in virtue of its very predominance is sure to attract and attach to itself aU manner of meanings floating in its neighbourhood. For example, as the history of the word " mystic " reminds us, the wonderful and the secret or esoteric tend to form one idea. The Australian wonder-worker owes no little of his influence over the minds of his fellows to the fact that in most tribes an exhibition of his power forms part and parcel of the impressive mystery of initiation. Let it suffice, however, for our present purpose to identify mana with a lOI THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION wonder-working power such as that of the magician — a. power that may manifest itself in actions of the S3anpathetic type, but is not limited to this t5rpe, being all that for the primitive mind is, or promises to be, extraordinarily effective in the way of the exertion of personal, or seemingly personal, will-force. Now, if " magic " is to mean mana (which, how- ever, is not Dr Frazer's sense of " magic," nor, indeed, mine, since I prefer to give it the imiformly bad meaning of arungquiltha, that is, of the anti- social variety of mana), then in describing taboo as negative magic we shall not, I believe, be far wide of the mark. Taboo I take to be a mystic affair. To break a taboo is to set in motion against oneself mystic wonder-working power in one form or another. It may be of the wholly bad variety. Thus it is taboo for the headman of the water-totem in the Kaitish tribe to touch a pointing-stick lest the " evil magic " in it turn aU the water bad.' On the other hand, many tabooed things, woman's blood or the king's touch, have power to cure no less than to kill; whilst an almost wholly beneficent power such as the clan-totem or the personal manitu is neverthe- ' Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, 463. 102 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC less taboo.' Indeed, it is inevitable that, whenever society prescribes a taboo in regard to some object in particular, that object should tend to assume a certain measure of respectability as an institution, a part of the social creed ; and, as the law upholds it, so it will surely seem in the end to uphold the law by punishing its infraction. It is to be remarked, however, that many taboos prescribed by the primitive society have regard to no object in particular, but are of the nature of general precautions against mystic perils all and sundry, the vaporous shapes conjured up by unreasoning panic. It is instructive in this con- text to consult the admirable account given by Mr Hodson of the communal taboos or gennas observed throughout the Manipur region.'' On aU sorts of occasions the gennabura or religious head of the village ordains that the community shall keep a genna. The vUlage gates are closed, and the friend outside must stay there, whilst the stranger who is within remains. The men cook and eat apart from the women during this time. ' Is Dr Frazer henceforth prepared to explain totemism on purely sympathetic principles? It would, on the other hand, be easy to show that the ideas of mana and of maniiu and the like go very closely together. * T. C. Hodson, " The ' Genna ' amongst the Tribes of Assam," J. A. I., XXX vi., 92 sqq. 103 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION The food taboos are strictly enforced.' All trade, aU fishing, all hunting, all cutting of grass and felling of trees are forbidden. And why these precautions? Sometimes a definite visitation will have occurred. " Phenomena such as earthquakes and eclipses, or the destruction of a village by fire, occasion general gennas. . . . We also find general gennas occasioned by the death of a man from wounds inflicted by an enemy or by a wild animal, by the death of a man from snakebite or from cholera or smaU-pox, or by the death of a woman in child-birth." " At other times nothing untoward has happened, but something important and " ticklish " has to be done — the crops sown, the ghosts laid of those who have died during the year. It is a moment of crisis, and the tribal nerves are on the stretch. Mr Hodson, indeed, expressly notes that " the effect of gennas is certainly to produce in those engaged in them a tension which is of great psychological interest."^ ' Some of these food taboos have a sympathetic character- Thus "young unmarried girls are not allowed to taste the flesh of the male of any animal or of female animals which have been killed while with young," li., 98. Even here, however, an element of miracle enters, unless the Manipuris find parthenogenesis no more odd than the Arunta are by some supposed to do. Another taboo is on dog's flesh, the mystic penalty being an eruption of boils. Here there is no obvious sympathetic connection. Boils are uncanny, and have to be accounted for on mystic lines — if not sympathetically, yet by some reference to evil magic ; for disease is always evil m^ic for the savage; cf. Spencer and Gillen, JVativt Tribes, 548. ' lb., 96. ' Tb., loi. 104 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC Is not what he takes for the effect rather the cause of gennas ? Anxiety says, " Let us abstain from aU acts that may bring upon us the ill-will of the powers." Anxiety sees every outlet of activity blocked by a dim shape, endowed with no definite attributes such as the sympathetic theory is obliged to postulate, but stationed there as simply a nameless representative of the environing Unknown with its quite unlimited power of bringing the tribal mana — its luck and cunning — to nought by an output of superior mana, to be manifested who knows how? It may be objected that, whereas we have made it of the very essence of mana that it shotild be indefinite and mysterious in its effects, there can be nothing indefinite or mysterious on the Dyak view — to recur to the example from which we started — ^about the effect of deer-meat, since it produces timidity exactly as it might be thought to produce indigestion. Perhaps it is enough to reply that to the savage a fit of indigestion would likewise be a phenomenon explicable only in mystic terms. The common sense of the primitive man may — to take Dr Frazer's instance — ^recog- nise that normally and as a matter of course the fire burns whoever thrusts his fingers into it ; but the moment that the fire burns someone " acci- 105 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION dentally," as we say, the savage mind scents a mystery. Just so for the Pygmy. His knife acts normally so long as it serves him to trim his arrow-shaft. As soon, however, as it slips and cuts his hand, there is oudah in, or at the back of, the " cussed " thing. Given, then, an5d;hing that behaves " cussedly " with regularity, that is nor- mally abnormal in its effects, so to speak, and a taboo or customary avoidance wiU be instituted. It becomes the duty of society to its members to keep before their eyes the nature of the direful consequences attending violation of the rule. Society shakes its head solemnly at careless youth, and mutters fiopfice. Careless youth does not believe all it is told, yet is nevertheless impressed and, on the whole, abstains. Kafir children must not eat certain small birds.' If they catch them on the veld, they must take them to their grand- parents, who alone may eat the body, though the children are given back the head. " If the parents catch children eating birds on the veld, they tell them they wiU turn out witches or wizards when they grow up. " Here we have the mystic sanction. And there is a social sanction in reserve. " The boys naturally get sound thrashings from their fathers, who feel it their duty to prevent their sons * Dudley Kidd, Savagt Childhood, a Study of Ka/ir Children, 193. 106 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC from turning out abandoned wretches in after life." Nevertheless, youth is sceptical, or at any- rate intractable. " Children do not see the logic of this rule, and consequently try to eat the bird on the veld, when they think they wUl not be found out. . . . There is no time when boys and girls are so free from observation as when watching the fields ; consequently, at such times they have glorious feasts off the birds they catch." Now the sympathetic principle may underlie this food taboo, or it may not, but clearly by itself it is not enough to account for the customary observance in the concrete. Society has to keep the taboo going, so to say ; and to keep it going it relies partly on the vis a tergo of brute force, but still more on the suggestion of mystic evil in store for the offender, not an imaginary evil, pace Dr Frazer, but what is quite another thing, an evil that ap- peals to the imagination, an indefinite, unmeasured, pregnant evil, a visitation, a doom, a judgment. Hitherto we have had in view mainly such cases of taboo as seemed most closely bound up with the sympathetic principle, minor matters of routine for the most part, outlying and relatively isolated portions of the social system, which for that reason might be expected to contain their own raison d'etre unaffected by the transforming influence of 107 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION any higher synthesis. If, however, we turn to the major taboos of primitive society, the classical weU-nigh universal cases of the woman shunned, the stranger banned, the divine chief isolated, and so on, how infinitely more difi&cult does it become to conceive sympathy, and sympathy only, as the continuously, or even the originally, efficient cause of the avoidance. Unfortunately, con- siderations of space utterly prohibit a detailed treatment of matters covering so wide an area both of fact andof hypothesis. It mustsuffice here to assert that the principles already laid down will be found to apply to these major taboos with even greater cogency. Here, too, there are at work both a social and a mystic sanction (so far as these can be kept apart in thought, the mystic sanction being but the voice of society uttering bodings instead of threats). As for the mystic sanction, we shall probably not be far wrong if we say that the woman has mana, the stranger has mana, the divine chief has mana, and for that reason pre-eminently are one and all taboo for those who have the best right to determine the meaning of taboo, namely those who practise and observe it. If there were room left in which to consider these taboos in some detail — ^the three notable cases io8 TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC mentioned do not, of course, by any means com- plete the list of taboos of the first rank ' — ^it might turn out that in our running fight with the up- holders of the sympathetic theory serious opposi- tion must be encountered at certain points, yet never so serious, let us hope, that it might not be eventually overcome. Thus the first case on our list — that of the taboo on woman — ^provides our opponents with a really excellent chance of defending their position. There can be no doubt that a sympathetic interpre- tation is often put upon this taboo by savages themselves. Mr Crawley, who has made the subject of what he terms the sexual taboo peculi- arly his own, brings forward evidence that, to my mind at least, is conclusive on this point.""- Among the Barea man and wife seldom share the same bed, the reason they give being that " the breath of the wife weakens her husband." Amongst the Omahas if a boy plays with girls he is dubbed " hermaphrodite." In the Wiraijuri tribe boys are reproved for playing with girls, and the culprit 1 Thus one of the most notable and widespread of taboos is that on the dead. Sympathetic interpretations of this taboo are by no means unknown amongst savages, but it would not be hard to show that they do not exhaust the mystery_ of death, of all human concepts the most thickly enwrapped in imaginative at- mosphere. 2 E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 93, cf. 207 sqq. 109 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION is taken aside by an old man, who solemnly ex- tracts from his legs some " strands of the woman's apron " which have got in. And so on in case after case. Here clearly what is primarily feared is the transmission of womanly characteristics, in a word, of effeminacy. Mr Crawley even goes so far as to speak of the belief in such transmission as " the chief factor in sexual taboo." ' Whether this be so or not,° he likewise shows, with singular clearness and force, that it is not the only factor. Owing, he thinks, to a natural nervousness that one sex feels towards the other, as well as to the unaccoimtable nature of various phenomena in the life-history of woman such as menstruation and child-birth, the notion of her as simply the weaker vessel " is merged in another conception of woman as a ' mysterious ' person. . . . She is more or less of a potential witch."' With this I cordially agree, and shall not labour the point more except to the extent of asking the question, How, on the ' E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 207. * Mr Crawley does not tell us on what principle he would pro- ceed to estimate predominance as between such fectors. I should have thought that the moral of his excellent study, abounding as it does in psychological insight, was to lay stress on the subcon- scious grounds of action rather than on the reasons whereby more or less ex post facto the dawning reflection of the savage seeks to interpret and justify that action. I myself believe the sympathetic explanation to be little more than such an ex post facto justification of a mystic avoidance already in full swing. » lb., 206. IIO TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC hypothesis that what is dreaded is simply the transmission of womanliness, are we to account for the fact — to quote but the best-known story of the kind — ^that when an Australian black-fellow dis- covered his wife to have lain on his blanket he wholly succumbed to terror and was dead within a fortnight ? ' Only a twilight fear, a measureless horror, could thus kill. And to show how mix^d a mode of thought prevails as to the workings of the sanction set in motion, in a very similar case from Assam it is not the man but the woman who dies of fright.° The case of the taboo on strangers seems at first sight to afford a clear proof of the effect of mere strangeness in exciting dread, especially when we compare the results of contact with novelties of all kinds. Dr Jevons, however, argues that " strangers are not inherently taboo, but, as belong- ing to strange gods, bring with them strange super- natural influences."^ In support of this view he instances the fact that newcomers are frequently fumigated to drive away the evil influences they bear in their train. But, after all, there are no taboos that religion has not learnt to neutralise by means of one or another ceremonial device. 1 /. A. I., ix., 4S8. ' Hodson, op. cit., lOO. ' An Introduction to the Hittory of Religion, 71. Ill THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Woman, for example, is inherently taboo, yet with proper precautions she may be married.' So too, then, strangers may be entertained after a purify- ing ceremony. It by no means follows, however, that they have lost all their mystic virtue, any more than it follows that woman has ceased to be mysterious after the marriage ceremony. Witness the power to bless or to curse retained by the stranger within the gate — a matter for the first time brought clearly to light by Dr Westermarck's striking investigation of the religious basis of primitive hospitality. ° Meanwhile, even if Dr Jevons's contention were to be granted that the taboo on strangers is really a taboo on the tabooed things he may have been in contact with, it is hard to see how the sympathetic explanation of taboo is going to be stretched to cover the indefinite possibility of definite sympathetic contagions of all sorts. We are left asking why mere uncer- tainty in itself can rouse imaginative fears — a line of inquiry that must presently lead to the conclu- sion that mere strangeness in itself can do the same. ^ I accept Mr Crawley's hypothesis that "marriage ceremonies neutralise the dangers attaching to union between the sexes.*' The Mystic Rose, 322. * E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, \., 583 sgq. Dr Westermarck's view, by the way, is that " the unknown stranger, like everything unknown and everything strange, arouses a feeling of mysterious awe in superstitions minds." 112 "^ TABOO A NEGATIVE MAGIC The third of our cases — that of the tabooed chief — need not detain us long. At all events in Poly- nesia, the eponymous home of taboo, they have no doubt about the explanation. The chief has mana, and therefore he is feared. Men do not dread contact with the king lest they become kingly, but lest they be blasted by the superman's supermanliness. Such, at least, is the native theory of the kingly taboo on its religious side. On its highly developed social side it is a fear of the strong arm of the State mingled with a respect for estabhshed authority — just as religious taboo is for the most part not aU cringing terror, but rather an awe as towards mystic powers recognised by society and as such tending to be reputable. We have cast but a rapid glance over an im- mense subject. We have but dipped here and there almost at random amongst the endless facts bearing on our theme to see if the sympathetic principle — a perfectly genuine thing in its way — would take us to the bottom of the taboo feeling and idea. We conclude provisionally that it will not. Indefinite rather than definite consequences appear to be associated with the violation of a taboo, and that because what is dreaded is essenti- ally a mysterious power, something arbitrary and imaccountable in its modes of action. Is, then, 8 113 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION taboo a negative mana ? Yes — ^if mana be some- what liberally interpreted. Is it a negative magic, understanding by magic sympathetic action? With aU my respect and admiration for the great authority who has propounded the hypothesis, I must venture to answer — No. 114 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA IT is no part of my present design to determine, by an exhaustive analysis of the existing evidence, how the conception of mana is under- stood and applied within its special area of distribution, namely the Pacific region. Such a task pertains to Descriptive Ethnology; and it is rather to a problem of Comparative Ethnology that I should like to call your attention. I pro- pose to discuss the value — that is to say, the appropriateness and the fruitfulness — of either this conception of mana or some nearly equivalent notion, such as the Huron orenda, when selected by the science of Comparative Religion to serve as one of its categories, or classificatory terms of the widest extension. Now any historical science that adopts the Comparative Method stands committed to the postulate that human nature is sufficiently homo- geneous and uniform to warrant us in classifying its tendencies under formulae coextensive with the whole broad field of anthropological^research. 115 '^ THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Though the conditions of their occurrence cause our data to appear highly disconnected, we claim, even if we cannot yet wholly make good, the right to bind them together into a single system of reference by means of certain general principles. By duly constructing such theoretical bridges, as Dr Frazer is fond of calling them, we hope eventu- ally to transform, as it were, a medley of insecure, insignificant sandbanks into one stable and glorious Venice. So much, then, for our scientific ideal. But some sceptical champion of the actual may be inclined to ask: "Are examples as a matter of fact forthcoming, at anjnrate from within the particular department of Comparative Religion, of categories or general principles that, when tested by use, prove reasonably steadfast? " To this challenge it may be replied that, even when we limit ourselves to the case of what may be described as " rudimentary " religion — ^in regard to which our terminology finds itself in the paradoxical position of having to grapple with states of mind themselves hardly subject to fixed terms at all — there are at aU events distinguishable degrees of value to be recognised amongst the categories in current employment. Thus most of us wiU be agreed that, considered as a head of general ii6 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA classification, " tabu " works well enough, but " totem " scarcely so well, whilst " fetish " is perhaps altogether unsatisfactory. Besides, there is at least one supreme principle that has for many years stood firm in the midst of these psychological quicksands. Dr Tylor's conception of " animism " is the crucial instance of a category that success- fully applies to rudimentary religion taken at its widest. If our science is to be compared to a Venice held together by bridges, then " animism " must be likened to its Rialto. At the same time, " lest one good custom should corrupt the world," we need plenty of customs; and the like holds true of categories. In what follows I may seem to be attacking " animism," in so far as I shall attempt to endow " mana " with classificatory authority to some extent at the ex- pense of the older notion. Let me, therefore, de- clare at the outset that I should be the last to wish our time-honoured Rialto to be treated as an obso- lete or obsolescent structure. If I seek to divert from it some of the traffic it is not naturally suited tobear, lamsurely offeringitno injury, buta service. One word more by way of preface. There are those who dislike the introduction of native terms into our scientific nomenclature. The local and general usages, they object, tend to become 117 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION confused. This may, indeed, be a real danger. On the other hand, are we not more likely to keep in touch with the obscure forces at work in rudimentary religion, if we make what use we can of the clues lying ready to hand in the recorded efforts of rudimentary reflection upon rehgion? The mana of the Pacific may be said, I think, without exaggeration to embody rudimentary reflection — to form a piece of subconscious philo- sophy. To begin with, the religious eye perceives the presence of mana here, there, and everywhere. In the next place, mana has worked its way into the very heart of the native languages, where it figures as more than one part of speech, and abounds in secondary meanings of all kinds. Lastly, whatever the word may originally have signified (as far as I know, an unsettled question), it stands in its actual use for something lying more or less beyond the reach of the senses — ^something verging on what we are wont to describe as the immaterial or unseen. AH this, however, hardly amounts to a proof that mana has acquired in the aboriginal mind the fuU status of an abstract idea. For instance, whereas a Codrington might decide in comprehensive fashion that all Melanesian religion consists in getting mana for oneself,' it is ' R. H. Codrington, Tki Melanesiam (Oxford, 1891), 119 ». 118 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA at least open to doubt whether a Melanesian sage could have arrived, unassisted, at a generalisation so abstract — a " bird's-eye view " so detached from confusing detail. Nevertheless, we may well suspect some such truth as this to have long been more or less inarticulately felt by the Melanesian mind. In fact, I take it, there would have been small difficulty on Bishop Codrington's part in making an intelligent native realise the force of his universal proposition. What is the moral of this? Surely, that the science of Comparative Religion should strive to explicate the meaning inherent in any given phase of the world's religious experience in just those terms that would naturally suggest themselves, suppose the phase in question to be somehow quickened into self-consciousness and self-expression. Such terms I would denomin- ate " sympathetic " ; and would, further, hazard the judgment that, in the case of aU science of the kind, its use of sympathetic terms is the measure of its sympathetic insight. Mana, then, I contend, has, despite its exotic appearance, a perfect right to figure as a scientific category by the side of tabu — a term hailing from the same geographical area — so long as a classificatory function of like importance can be found for it. That function let us now proceed, if so may be, to discover. 119 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Codrington defines mana, in its Melanesian use, as follows : "a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil, and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control " ; or again he says: "It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way supernatural ; but it shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses." It is supernatural just in this way, namely, that it is " what works to effect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature." He illustrates his point by examples: " 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 the mana of 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 of mana for pigs and yams that he possesses. Of course a yam naturally grows when planted, that is well 120 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA known, but it will not be very large unless mana comes into play; a canoe will not be swift unless mana be brought to bear upon it, a net will not catch many fish, nor an arrow inflict a mortal wound.'" From Pol37nesia comes much the same story, Tregear in his admirable comparative dictionary of the Polynesian dialects ° renders the word, which may be either noun or adjective, thus: "super- natural power ; divine authority ; having qualities which ordinary persons or things do not possess." He seems to distinguish, however, what might be called a " secular " sense, in which the term stands generally for " authority," or, as an adjective, for " effectual, effective." He cites copious instances from the various dialects to exemplify the super- natural mode of mana. Thus the word is applied, in Maori, to a wooden sword that has done deeds so wonderful as to possess a sanctity and power of its own; in Samoan, to a parent who brings a curse on a disobedient child; in Hawaiian, to the gods, or to a man who by his death gives efiicacy to an idol ; in Tongan, to whoever performs miracles, or bewitches; in Mangarevan, to a magic staff given ' Codrington, 0p. cit,, 1 1 8-20. ' E. Tregear, The Maori- Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Wellington, N. Z., 1891), s.v. mana. 121 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION to a man by his grandfather, or, again, to divina- tion in general; and so forth. In short its range is as wide as those of divinity and witchcraft taken together. If, on the other hand, we turn to what I have called the sectilar sense attributed to mana, as, for example, when it is used of a chief, a healer of maladies, a successful pleader, or the winner of a race, we perceive at once that the distinction of meaning holds good for the civilised lexicographer rather than for the unsophisticated native. The chief who can impose tabu, the caster- out of disease-devils, and, in hardly less a degree, the man who can exercise the magic of persuasion, or who can command the luck which the most skilled athlete does not despise, is for the Poly- nesian mind not metaphorically " gifted " or " inspired," but literally. Of course, as in Europe, so in Polynesia the coin of current usage may have become clipped with lapse of time. Thus Plato tells us that both the Spartans and the Athenian ladies of his day used to exclaim of any male person they happened to admire, Qeiot av^p, " what a divine man! " ' It need not surprise us, there- fore, that in Mangarevan you may say of any number over forty manamanana — an " awful " lot, in fact. Such an exception, however, can 1 Plato, Meno 99 D. 122 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA scarcely be allowed to count against the generalisa- tion that, throughout the Pacific region, mana in its essential meaning connotes what both Codring- ton and Tregrear describe as the supernatural. Now mark the importance of this in view of the possible use of mana as a category of Comparative Religion. Comparative Religion, I woiild main- tain, at all events so long as it is seeking to grapple with rudimentary or protoplasmic types of re- ligious experience, must cast its net somewhat widely. Its interest must embrace the whole of one, and, perhaps, for savagery the more con- siderable, of the two fundamental aspects under which his experience or his universe (we may ex- press it either way) reveals itself to the rudiment- ary intelligence of man. What to call this aspect, 'so as to preserve the flavour of the aboriginal notion, is a difficulty, but a difficulty of detail. The all-important matter is to establish by in- duction that such an aspect is actually perceived at the level of experience I have called " rudi- mentary." This, I believe, can be done. I have, for instance, shown elsewhere that even the Pygmy, a person perhaps not overburdened with ideas, possesses in his notion of oudah an inkling of the difference that marks off the one province of experience from the other. Of course he cannot 123 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION deal with oudah abstractly; provinces of experi- ence and the like are not for him. But I found that, when confronted with particular cases, or rather types of case, my Pygmy friend could determine with great precision whether oudah was there or not. What practical results, if any, would be likely to flow from this effort of discern- ment my knowledge of Pygmy customs, un- fortunately, does not enable me to say; but I take it that the conception is not there for nothing. I shall assume, then, that an inductive study of the ideas and customs of savagery will show, firstly, that an awareness of a fundamental aspect of life and of the world, which aspect I shall provisionally term " supernatural," is so general as to be typical, and, secondly, that such an awareness is no less generally bound up with a specific group of vital reactions. As to the question of a name for this aspect different views may be held. The term our science needs ought to express the bare minimum of generic being required to constitute matter for the experience which, taken at its highest, though by no means at its widest, we call " religious." " Raw material for good religion and bad religion, as well as for magic white or black " — ^how are we going to designate that in a phrase? It will not 124 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA help us here, I am afraid, to cast about amongst native words. Putting aside oudah as too in- significant and too little understood to be pressed into this high service, I can find nothing more nearly adapted to the purpose than the Siouan wakan or wakanda ; of which M'Gee writes : " the term may be translated into ' mystery ' perhaps more satisfactorily than in \_sic\ any other single English word, yet this rendering is at the same time too limited, as wakanda vaguely denotes also power, sacred, ancient, grandeur, animate, immortal.'" But when vagueness reaches this pitch, it is time, I think, to resort to one of our own more clear-cut notions. Amongst such notions that of " the supernatural " stands out, in my opinion, as the least objectionable. Of course it is our term; that must be clearly understood. The savage has no word for " nature." He does not abstractly distinguish between an order of uniform happenings and a higher order of miraculous happenings. He is merely concerned to mark and exploit the difference when presented in the concrete. As Codrington says : "A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like something, it is ' W. J. M'Gee, Fifteenth Annual Report of the V.S. Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1898), 182. 125 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION certainly not a common stone, there must be mana in it. So he argues with himself, and he puts it to the proof; he lays it at the root of a tree to the fruit of which it has a certain resemblance, or he buries it in the ground when he plants his garden; an abundant crop on the tree or in the garden shows that he is right, the stone is mana, has that power in it." ' Here, however, we have at all events the germs of our formal antithesis between the natural and the supernatural; which, by the way, is perhaps not so nicely suited to the taste of the advanced theology of our day that it would have much scruple about dedicating the expression to the service of rudimentary religion. I should like to add that in any case the English word " supernatural " seems to suit this context better than the word " sacred." L'idde du sacr^ may be apposite enough in French, since sacr^ can stand either for " holy " or for " damned "; but it is an abuse of the English language to speak of the " sacredness " of some accursed wizard. Hence, if our science were to take over the phrase, it must turn its back on usage in favour of etymology; and then, I think, it would be found that the Latin sacer merely amounts to tabu, the negative mode of the supernatural — a point to which I now proceed. ' Codrington, o/. cit., 119. 126 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA Tabu, as I have tried to prove elsewhere, is the negative mode of the supernatural, to which mana corresponds as the positive mode. I am not confining my attention to the use of these terms in the Pacific region,' but am considering them as transformed, on the strength of their local use, into categories of world-wide application. Given the supernatural in any form there are always two things to note about it : firstly, that you are to be heedful in regard to it ; secondly, that it has power. The first may be called its negative character, the second its positive. Perhaps stronger expressions might seem to be required. Tabu, it might be argued, is not so much negative as prohibitive or even minatory ; whilst mana is not merely positive but operative and thaumaturgic. The more colourless terms, however, are safer when it is a question of characterising universal modes of the supernatural. Given this wide sense tabu simply implies that you must be heedful in regard to the supernatural, not that you must be on your guard ' Indeed, in Melanesia at all events, rongo answers more nearly to the purpose than does tamiu { = iaiu), since the latter always implies human sanction and prohibition. A place may, in fact, be tamiu without being nmg-o, as when a secret society taboos the approaches to its lodge by means of certain marks, which are quite effectual as representing the physical force commanded by the association. So Codrington, o}. cit., 77. Surely, however, every secret society possesses, or originally possessed, a quasi-religious character, and as such would have mana at its disposal. 127 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION against it. The prohibition to have dealings with it is not absolute; otherwise practical religion would be impossible. The warning is against casual, incautious, profane dealings. " Not to be lightly approached " is Codrington's translation for the corresponding term used in the New Hebrides.' Under certain conditions man may draw nigh, but it is well for him to respect those conditions. Thus " prohibitive " and " mina- tory " are too strong. Tabu, as popularly used, may in a given context coimote something Uke absolute prohibition, but in the universal appUca- tion I have given to it can only represent the supernatural in its negative character — ^the super- natural, so to speak, on the defensive. We come now to mana. Here, again, we must shun descriptions that are too specific. Mana is often operative and thaumaturgic, but not always. Like energy, mana may be dormant or potential. Mana, let us remember, is an adjective as well as a noun, expressing a possession which is likewise a permanent quality. The stone that looks like a banana is and has mana, whether you set it working by planting it at the foot of your tree or not. Hence it seems enough to say that mana exhibits the supernatural in its positive ' Codrington, op. cit., i88; cf. l8i. 128 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA capacity — ready, but not necessarily in act, to strike. At this point an important consideration calls for notice. Tabu and mana apply to the super- natural solely as viewed in what I should like to caU its first, or existential, dimension. With its second, or moral, dimension they have nothing to do whatever. They register judgments of fact, as philosophers would say, not judgments of value; they are constitutive categories, not normative. Thus whatever is supernatural is indifferently tabu — ^perilous to the unwary ; but as such it may equally well be holy or unclean, set apart for God or abandoned to devil, sainted or sinful, cloistered or quarantined. There is plenty of linguistic evidence to show that such distinctions of value are famihar to the savage mind. Nor is it hard to see how they arise naturally out of the tabu idea. Thus in Melanesia everything super- natural is at once tambu and rongo, words implying that it is fenced round by sanctions human and divine ; but there is a stronger term buto meaning that the sanctions are specially dreadftil and there- upon becoming equivalent to "abominable,"' where we seem to pass without a break from degree of intensity to degree of worth. Passing on to ^ Codrihgton, o^. cit., 31. 9 129 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION mana, we find exactly the same absence of moral significance. The mystic potentiality is alike for good and evil. Take, for example, two Samoan phrases found side by side in Tregear's dictionary :' fa'a-mana, to show extraordinary power or energy, as in healing; fa'a-manamana, to attribute an accident or misfortune to supernatural powers. Or again, in Melanesia European medicine is called pei mana, but on the other hand there is likewise mana in the poisoned arrow.'' Similarly, orenda is power to bless or to curse; and the same holds good of a host of similar native expressions, for instance, wakan, qube, manitu, oki, not to go out- side North America. Meanwhile, in this direction also moral valuations soon make themselves felt. Thus in the Pacific region we have plenty of special words for witchcraft ; and in Maori mythology we even hear of a personified witchcraft Makutu dwelling with the wicked goddess Miru, of whom Tregear writes : " the unclean tapu was her power {mana)."^ Or again, in Huron there is a word otgon denoting specifically the malign and de- structive exercise of orenda ; and Hewitt notes the curious fact that the former term is gradually displacing the latter — as if, he observes, the bad ' Tregear, s.v. mana. ' Codrington, op. cit., 198, 308. ^ Tregear, s.vv. Makutu, Miru. 130 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA rather than the good manifestations of super- natural power produced a lasting impression on the native mind.' Elsewhere I have given Australian examples of a similar distinction drawn between wonder-working power in general, and a speciiicaUy noxious variety of the same, such as, for instance, the well-known arungquiltha of the Arunta. I have said enough, I trust, to show that there exists, deep-engrained in the rudimentary thought of the world, a conception of a specific aspect common to all sorts of things and living beings, under which they appear at once as needing insulation and as endowed with an energy of high, since extraordinary, potential, — all this without any reference to the bearing of these facts on human welfare. In this connection I would merely add that our stock antithesis between magic and religion becomes applicable only when we pass from this to the second or moral dimension of the supernatural. Presented in its double character of tabu and mana the supernatural is not moral or immoral, but simply unmoral. It is convenient to describe its sphere as that of the magico-religious ; but strictly speaking it is that which is neither magical nor religious, since 1 J. N. B. Hewitt, The American Anthropologist (1902), N.S. iv., 37 n. 131 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION these terms of valuation have yet to be super- induced. I am aware that the normative function of these expressions is not always manifest, that it is permissible to speak of false religion, white magic, and so on. But, for scientific purposes at anyrate, an evaluatory use ought, I think, to be assigned to this historic disjunction, not merely in view of the usage of civilised society, but as a consequence of that tendency to mark off by discriminative epithets the good and the bad supematuralisms, the kingdoms of God and of the Devil, which runs right through the hierological language of the world. The rest of this paper will be concerned with a more perplexing, and hence, probably, more controversial, side of the subj ect. Put in a nutshell the problem is the following : How does " anim- ism " fit into the scheme? Is the supernatural identical with the spiritual, and is mana nothing more or less than spiritual power? Or, on the contrary, are mana and " soul " or " spirit " categories that belong to relatively distinct systems of ideas — do the two refuse to combine? As regards this latter question, our minds may quickly be set at rest. Somehow these categories do manage to combine freely, and notably in that very Pacific region where mana is at home. The 132 THE CONCEPTION OF MANA Melanesia!! evidei!ce collected by Codrington is decisive. Wherever mana is fou!!d — and that is to say, wherever the supernatural reveals itself — this mana is referred to one of three originating sources, namely, a living man, a dead man's ghost, or a "spirit"; spirits displasdng one of two forms, that of a ghostlike appearance — as a native put it, " something indistinct, with no definite outline, grey like dust, vanishing as soon as looked at '" — or that of the ordinary corporeal figure of a man. Other manifestations of the supernatural are explained in terms of these three, or rather the last two, agencies. A sacred animal, or again, a sacred stone, is one which belongs to a ghost or spirit, or in which a ghost or spirit resides.' Can we say, then, that " animism " is in com- plete possession of the field? With a little stretching of the term, I think, we can. Ghosts and spirits of ghostlike form are obviously ani- mistic to the core. Supernatural beings of human and corporeal form may perhaps be reckoned by courtesy as spirits; though really we have here the rudiments of a distinct and alternative development, namely a nthrop omor phic thekm . a mode of conception that especially appeals to the mythological fancy. Finally, animism can ' Codrington, op. cit., 151. « lb., 178 sqq. THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION be made without much trouble to cover the case of the Hving man with mana. If a man has mana, it resides in his " spiritual part '" or " soul," which after his death becomes a ghost. Besides, it appears, no man has this power of himself; you can say that he has mana with the use of the substantive, not that he is mana, as you can say of a ghost or spirit. This latter "puts the mana into the man " {manag — a causative verb) or " inspires " him; and an inspired man will even in speaking of himself say not " I " but " we two."^ There seems, however, to be a certain flaw in the native logic, involving what comes perilously near to argument in a circle. Not every man has mana, nor every ghost ;^ but the soul of a man of power becomes as such a ghost of power, though in his capacity of ghost he has it in greater force than when alive.* On the ground of this capacity for earning, if not enio5ang, during life the right to be mana, I have ventured provisionally to class the living man with the ghost, and the spirit as an independent owner of mana ; but it is clear that, in defiance of logic, animism has contrived to " jump the claim." ^ Codrington, op. cit., 191. ' 16., igi, 210, 153. ' Codrington, op. cit., 119, 125, 258; but 176 shows that even the buiying-places of common people are so far sacred that no one will go there without due cause. * lb., 258. THE CONCEPTION OF MANA Having thus shown in the briefest way that mana and " animism " can occur in combination, I proceed to the awkward task of determining how, if treated as categories applicable to rudi- mentary religion in general, they are to be pro- vided each with a classificatory function of its own. Perhaps the simplest way of meeting, or rather avoiding, the difficulty is to deny that " animism " is a category that belongs intrinsically to our science at all. Certainly it might be said to per- tain more properly to some interest wider than the magico-reUgious, call it rudimentary philosophy or what we will. It makes no difference whether we take animism in the vaguer Spencerian sense of the attribution of life and animation — an atti- tude of mind to which I prefer to give the dis- tinguishing name of " animatism " — or in the more exact Tylorian sense of the attribution of soul, ghost, or ghost-like spirit. In either case we are carried far beyond the bounds of rudimentary religion, even when magic is made co-partner in the system. There is obviously nothing in the least supernatural in being merely alive. On the other hand, to have soul is, as we have seen, not necessarily to have mana here or hereafter. The rudimentary philosophy of Melanesia abounds in nice distinctions of an animistic kind as follows. 135 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION A yam lives without intelligence, and therefore has no tarunga or " soiil." A pig has a tarunga and so likewise has a man, but with this difference that when a pig dies he has no tindalo or " ghost," but a man's tarunga at his death becomes a tindalo. Even so, however, only a great man's tarunga becomes a tindalo with mana, a " ghost of wor- ship," as Codrington renders it. Meanwhile, as regards a vui or " spirit," its nature is apparently the same as that of a soul or at anyrate a human soul, but it is never without mana.^ Thus only the higher grades of this animistic hierarchy rank ■ as supernatural beings; and you know them for what they are not by their soul-like nature, but by the mana that is in them. It remains to add that mana can come very near to meaning " soul " or " spirit," though without the connotation of wraith-like appearance. Tre- gear supplies abundant evidence from Polynesia.' Mana from meaning indwelling power naturally passes into the sense of " intelligence," " energy of character," "spirit"; and the kindred term manawa (manava) expresses " heart," " the in- terior man," " conscience," " soul "; whilst vari- ous other compounds of mana between them yield 1 Codrington, 68, 77, 83 I, on magic and science, xiii/, SS/. 61 „ on taboo, 87, 91, 95/, iD3« Genna, 103/ Green, T. H., 161 Gubburra, 98 Gumplowicz, L., 146 Haddon, A. C, xiv«, 79» Hallucination, see Trance 171 THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION Hantus, 8/ Hanison, J. , lOO Haitland, S. > xv, 60 Heitmiiller, W., 71 Heio-woiship, 140 Hewitt, J., xiv, 130 Hobhouse, L., 89 Hodson, T., x, 1037; 11 1 Hollis, A. C., xviii Hospitality, 112 Howitt, A. W.,98 Hubert, H., xv, 87, 90, 91 Ideas, association! of, see Magic „ in religion,^;ee Religion. " Instrument " of spell, 63/ 74/ Ittha, 98 Jbvons, F. B. , on magic, 40 ,, supernatural, 13 „ taboo, 88y^ III/ foia, 98 Kalou, 12 Kant, I., 88 Knots, 74, 91 Lang, A., on Animism, 19 „ gods as m^icians, 57 „ high gods, xvii, 17 „ trance, 7 Lapouge, G. de, 146 Lonka-lonka, 6o», 75, 81 Loria, A., 146 Lovejoy, A., xv Luck, 2I», 99 Magic, age of, 36, 39 ,, and religion, 31, 34/ 39, 77, 81/, 131/ ,, andscience, xiii;^55/, 61, 76 ,, and taboo, 87 ,, anti-social character of, 88, 97, 102 ,, as between persons, 58/ Mmic, association of ideas in, 40/, 45. 87, 95/ ,, developed, 35, 46, 69 ,, emotion in, 44, 70, 75, 81 ,, imitative, 43 „ make-believe in, 48/, 51 , , occultness of, 55, 69 „ projectiveness of, 46, 49, SO, 62, 6s, 73 „ rudimentary, 35, 46 „ suggestion in, 45, 75 , , symbolism in, 49, 64, 72/ „ sympathetic, 43, 88, 91 , , verification in, 49/ „ will in, 60, 81, 99 " Magico-religious," 90, 131/ " Magomorphism," loi Makutu, 130 Mana, xv, 12, 27, 67, 69/, 77, 86, 99, loi, 102, I03n, 105, 108, 113, 114, 118/, 127/, 131/ Manitu, 24, 102, I03», 130 Marx, K., 146 Mauss, M., XV, 87, 90, 91, 152 M'Dougall, W., xin M'Gee, W. J-, 125 Mint, 130 " Moral dimension " of the super- natural, 129/ Mung, 98 Mungan-ngaur, 17, 18 Mupam, 98 Mythology, 16, 18, 75 Names, 71/, 80 Nature, to the savage, 11, 13, 14, Negative magic, 87/ ' ' Negative mana," 114 Ngai, see Eng-A'i Novicow, J., 145 Oki, 130 Orenda, xiv, 99, loi, 115, 130 Origins, no absolute, 3, 6, 31 Oudah, 100/, 106, 123/ 172 INDEX Parthenogenesis, io4« Plato, 140 "Powers," 13, 19,24, 68 Prayer, 34, 79/ 81 " Fre-animistic," viii, xiii, i/, 11, 14 Preuss, T. K., X "Primitive Credulity," 45, 47, 49.83 " Projective," see Magic " Protasis," of spell, 64/, 79 Psammetichus, 156/' " Psychologist's feillacy," 42, 160 Pygmy, see Oudah Qube, 130 Race, 146 Ratzel, F., 147 Religion and magic, see Magic , , and taboo, 90, 95, 96 „ complexity of, 39, 82 ,, definition of, ix, 3^ 31, 35 „ emotion in, xi, 4 ,, ethical in Australia, 17 ,, ideas in, xi, 4, 144 ,, psychological view of, xvi, 1437; 15s/ ,, social character of, xi, 92, 103, 106, 15s/ Ritual, 167/ Kongo, I27«, 129 " Rudimentary Magic," see Magic Sacer, 126 Sacri, 126 Sacrifice, 15 Schmidt, W., xvi Science and magic, see Magic Secret society, I27« Seignobos, C, 160 Skeat, W. W., 65, 71 Snakes, in religion, 23, 24 " Social Morphology," ijl, 162, 166, 169 Solipsism, of sav^e, 26 Spell, and prayer, 34, 79/ „ function in magic, 61/ Spell,normal in magic, 53 „ types of, 63/ Spencer, H., 135, 144/ Stones, in religion, 19/, S9i 79, 120, 133 Stranger, in religion, 111/ Sucking cure, 28, 43 Suggestion, see Magic Sully, J., 26 Supernatural, as object of religion, 10/, 19, 23, 121, 123/, 137 " Supernaturalism," 11, 19, 29, 60 Sympathy , 43, 88, 91, 93, I04«, 1 1 2 Taboo (tabu, tambu, iapu), xiii, 86/, 102/, 107, 117, 126/ " Tabu-mana fotvaaXa," 137 Tarde, G., 167 Tarunga, 136 "Teratism," I3« "Theoplasm,"66, 76 Thomson, J., xviii Tindalo, 136/, 140 Totemism, 22/ I03», 117, 160 Trance, 7, 9, 25, 27/, 70 Transmigration, 23 Tregear, E., 99», 121, 130 Tuana, 16 Tuttdun, I7i 18 Tyler, E. B., on animism, viii, x, xii, 5/, 117, 135, 137 ,, on definition of re- ligion, ix ,, on divination, 43 ,, on magic, 40 ,, on taboo, 86/ 91 Vui, 20, 136/, 139 fVakan {Wakanda), 12, 29, 32, 125, 130 Westermarck, E.,29, 89, 112 Will, in magic, see Magic Woman, in religion, 29, 102/, 109/, 112 Wundt, W., viii, xii Zeus, xviii 173 EDINBOKGH COLSTON AND CO. LIMITED PRINTERS A SELECTION OF BOOKS PUBLISHED BY METHUEN AND COMPANY LIMITED 36 ESSEX STREET LONDON W.C. CONTENTS FAOa PAGB leneral Literature . • I Little Library . . < . ao Ancient Cities. IS Little Quarto Shakespeare . 21 Antiquary's Books . 15 Miniature Library 2X Arden Shakespeare '5 New? 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