Thus forewarned of the difficulties and dangers of our path, let us
proceed to enquire whether there are any general ideas relating to
religion disseminated among men in the lower stages of culture, that
either are themselves primitive, or can have been derived from an
earlier condition of thought discoverable by us.
The religious practices of savage and barbarous peoples are largely
based upon ideas which anthropologists have agreed to group together
under the comprehensive title of animism. Animism is, to quote Sir
Edward Tylor, who was the first to investigate the subject and to use
the word in this sense, “the groundwork of the philosophy of religion,
from that of savages up to that of civilized man.”[26.1] As he uses
the word, it expresses the doctrine which attributes a living and
often a separable soul--a soul in any case distinct from the
body--alike to human beings, to the lower animals and plants, and even
to inanimate objects. Let us note, however, that this soul is not
necessarily immaterial. The refined conception of the soul, which we
have received from the Greek philosophers, belongs not to the savage.
To him, as to the average man of civilization, the notion of an
absolutely immaterial being would seem to be unthinkable. At all {27}
events it has hardly occurred to him. The soul, to him, may be thin as
a vapour, oftentimes invisible as the air; at other times it takes a
visible and even tangible form. So far as it is connected with what we
know as a living body, the ordinary, familiar form and substance, it
is the principle of life. But it is capable of existing independently
of the body, at least for a time. The body, on the other hand, is also
capable of continuing to exist, and even to live, though not in full
health and vigour, for a time without the soul; but a lengthened
separation usually means death. This, without taking account of
details varying from culture to culture and people to people, may be
described as the outline of the savage doctrine of the soul, reduced
as nearly as may be into the terms in which we think. Beyond this, and
probably as a development of it, is the belief in spirits, beings
frequently vague and shadowy, sometimes regarded as more substantial,
sometimes inhabiting objects and persons known and definite, at other
times unattached, but in all cases of more or less power, which may be
exercised to the advantage or to the detriment of their human fellows,
or perhaps subordinates. The distinction between spirits and gods is
not very easy to formulate, and need not for our present purpose
trouble us.
Animism thus conceived is, it is obvious, too complex and elaborate to
be really primitive. It appears to be itself derived from a simpler
and earlier conception, whereby man attributes to all the objects of
external nature life and personality. In other words, the external
world is first interpreted by the savage thinker in the terms of his
own consciousness; animism, or the distinction of soul and body, is a
development necessitated by subsequent observation and the train of
reasoning which that observation awakens.
{28}
Primitive man is so far away from us, not merely in time but in
thought, that we find it difficult to imagine his attempts to grapple
with the interpretation of external phenomena. What waves of desire,
of curiosity, of wonder, of awe, of terror, of hope, of bewilderment
must have rolled through the sluggish dawn of his intellect! As he
struggled in his little communities (tiny by comparison with ours)
with the evolution of speech, how did those various and perhaps
ill-defined emotions come to utterance? He was not naturally
speculative. Savage man even now is not, as a rule, speculative,
though, as we have seen in the preceding essay, observers who have had
opportunities of comparison have noted differences in this respect
between one people and another. Everything primitive man saw,
everything he heard or felt must have struck his mind primarily in
relation to himself--or rather to the community (the food-group, as it
has been called), of which the individual formed a part, to its
dangers and its needs. The personal element would dominate his
thoughts, and must have found expression in his words. As a matter of
fact, it forms everywhere the basis of language. Hence it was
impossible for man to interpret external phenomena in any other than
personal terms. This necessity may have been an inheritance from a
pre-human stage, since there is reason to think that the lower animals
project their own sensations to other animals, and even to objects
without life. Yet to fix the objective personalities that primitive
man thought he saw and felt about him must have taken time and
observation. Not all objects claimed his attention in the same degree
or with the same insistence. Some would stand out aggressively, would
fill him with a sense of power manifested in ways that seemed
analogous with his own. Others would long remain comparatively
unregarded, {29} until something happened which aroused his interest.
His attitude was first of all and intensely practical, not
contemplative. His fellow-men, the animals he hunted, the trees whose
branches he saw waving in the breeze, the sun and moon overhead going
their daily rounds--to all these he would early attach significance:
they would easily yield the personal quality. But what of the pools,
the hills, the rocks, and so forth? There must have been many things
that long abode in the twilight of perception--many things upon which
reflection was not yet concentrated. The North American Indian lays a
tribute of tobacco at the foot of any strange rock whose form strikes
him as he goes by, or strews his gift upon the waters of the lake or
stream that bears his canoe. On the top of every pass in the
Cordilleras of South America and of every pass in the mountains of
China the native leaves a token still more trivial. It may be that his
earliest forefather, who set the example of such an offering, did so
without any definite conception of a personality behind the
phenomenon, but, smitten by fear or awe, simply sought, by the means
familiar to him in the case of known personal beings, to conciliate
whatever power might lurk beneath an unwonted form. And although a
comparatively definite conception of a personality might in time
crystallize, to be transformed later by the evolution of animism into
the idea of a spirit, yet there must always have remained, after all
these crystallizations, the vague and formless Unknown, confronted in
all its more prominent manifestations through the medium of an
undefined dread of power which might at any time be revealed from it.
In this relation of the personal and the impersonal lies, as it seems
to me, the secret of primitive philosophy, if philosophy it may be
called, all un-selfconscious as {30} it must have been. There is no
written record of man’s earliest guesses at the meaning of the
universe. Whatever they were, they were limited to his immediate
surroundings and the relation of these surroundings to himself. We
must judge of them as they are represented in the beliefs and actions
of modern, or at all events much later, savages and in those of great
historic nations. For all scientific enquirers are agreed that the
history of the human mind has been that of a slow evolution from
something lower than the lowest savagery known to-day, that it has not
everywhere evolved in the same way or to the same degree, and that the
course it has taken has left traces, discoverable by close inspection,
upon every mental product and in every civilization throughout the
world. The testimony on which we have to rely in the investigation is
of the most various value, and often most difficult of interpretation.
Its difficulties and defects have already been touched upon; nor do I
propose further to consider them now. The minute examination and
relentless criticism to which it has been subjected have revealed its
weakness; they have also revealed its strength. They have left a solid
body of evidence from which we may cautiously but confidently reason.
What can we learn from it on the point under discussion?
The first thing to be noticed is the fluidity of the savage concept of
personality. It is not confined within the bounds of one stable and
relatively unchangeable body. You may quite easily be transformed,
like the hero of Apuleius’ tale, into an ass. Your next-door
neighbour, for whom you have the profoundest respect as a prosperous
man of business and a churchwarden of exemplary piety, may startle you
some morning with a sudden change into a noisy little street-arab, not
a tenth {31} of his own portly dimensions, turning a wheel all down
his garden path, or into a melancholy cow cropping a bare pittance of
grass from his closely trimmed lawn. He and his magnificent wife may
even become, like Philemon and Baucis, an oak and a lime-tree before
your eyes, or a pair of standing stones upon the moor. None of these
metamorphoses would be accounted impossible by peoples in the lower
culture. To them the essential incident of the tale of Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde would be mere commonplace. The personality which they have
known running in one mould can, in their opinion, be directed into,
and will run as freely in, another mould, and yet be the same. So hard
do such archaic beliefs die, that in remote parts of our own country
it is still firmly believed that a witch may assume the form of a
hare, and if any bold sportsman succeed in wounding the animal, the
injury will afterwards be found on the witch’s proper person,
testifying beyond dispute to the preservation of her individuality
under the temporary change of shape and species.
Shape-shifting, as it is called, may even take place by means of death
and a new birth without loss of identity. Miss Kingsley tells us that
in West Africa “the new babies as they arrive in the family are shown
a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose
souls are still absent: the thing the child catches hold of identifies
him. ‘Why, he’s Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe’; or ‘That’s
Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash,’ and so on.”[31.1]
This belief and corresponding practices are found over a large part of
the world. Nor is it necessary that the deceased should be born again
in human form, or even of the same sex. A group of tribes in Central
Australia {32} have elaborated the doctrine of re-birth to an unusual
degree. Two of the tribes, the Warramunga and Urabunna, definitely
hold, if we may trust our authorities, that the sex changes with each
successive birth.[32.1] A Mongolian tale relates that a certain
Khotogait prince, having been beheaded for conspiracy against the
Chinese Emperor, twice reappeared as a child of the Empress, and was
identified by the cicatrice on his neck. Both children were destroyed,
and he was then born as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is still
preserved.[32.2] In the same way, fish, fruit, worms, stones, any
object indeed, may, if it can once (no matter how) enter the body of
a woman, be born again and become human. As developed by animism, the
doctrine of a new birth has become what we know as that of the
Transmigration of Souls, which has played a part in more religions and
more philosophies than one.[32.3]
Moreover, detached portions of the person, as locks of hair, parings
of finger-nails, and so forth, are not dead inert matter. They are
still endued with the life of their original owner. Nay, garments once
worn, or other objects which have been in intimate contact with a
human being, are penetrated by his personality, remain as it were
united with him for good and ill. It would be no exaggeration to say
of this belief that it is universal. Upon it rests much of the
practice of witchcraft, as well as of the medicine of the lower
culture. The cleft ash through which a child has been drawn for the
cure of infantile hernia, bound up and allowed to grow together,
continues to sympathize with him in health and sickness {33} as though
part of his own body. In ancient Greece maidens on their marriage
offered their veils to Hera, the goddess who favoured marriage and
aided childbirth;[33.1] and Athenian women who became pregnant for
the first time used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis.
These customs were not mere acts of homage; they had a practical
intention.
Some votive offerings may perhaps be interpreted as surrogates of
human sacrifice. Others, made when the votary is suffering from
sickness, may be intended to transfer the disease. These explanations
are in many cases very questionable; and a large number of offerings
remain that do not easily submit to be thus explained. The Greek women
just mentioned had no disease to be returned to the custody of the
goddess, ready for another victim. In view of future contingencies
they placed in her care objects identified with themselves; they
brought into physical touch with her a portion of their own
personality. Convergence of more than one rite, similar in outward
form but distinct in origin, has doubtless occurred very often in
human history. But the ambiguity which would follow is not always to
be traced on a careful analysis. It is obvious, at all events, that if
an article of my clothing in a witch’s hands may cause me to suffer
and die, the same article in contact with a beneficent power may
relieve my pain, restore me to health, or promote my general
prosperity. My shirt or stocking, or a shred from it, placed upon a
sacred bush, or thrust into a sacred well--a lock of my hair laid upon
a sacred image--my name written upon the walls of a temple--a stone
from my hand cast upon a sacred cairn--a remnant of my food thrown
into a sacred waterfall or suspended from a sacred tree--a nail {34}
driven by my hand into the trunk of a tree--is thenceforth in
immediate contact with divinity. It is a portion of my personality
enveloped with the sanctity of the divine being; and so long as it
remains there I am myself in contact with the same divine being,
whoever he may be, and derive all the advantages incident to the
contact.
Such beliefs as these are world-wide; they are a commonplace of
anthropology; and it would be waste of time to multiply examples. They
exhibit a concept of personality imperfectly crystallized. It is still
fluid and vague, only to become entirely definite under the influence
of trained reason and larger and more scientific knowledge. But, such
as it is, there is behind and around it the still vaguer, the
unlimited territory of the Impersonal, because the Unknown. Every
object on which the attention has been fixed, every object, therefore,
that may be said to be known, has its own personality--every object,
whether living, or, according to our ideas, not-living. What remains
is the stuff out of which personalities are formed as it is gradually
reduced into relations with the savage observer. These personalities
do not necessarily correspond even to anything objective. They may be
creations of the excited imagination. It is sufficient for the savage
that they seem to be, and to have a relation to himself which he
cannot otherwise interpret. His emancipation from this state of mind
is slow, though among some peoples in the lower culture it is more
perceptible than among others. But it leaves its traces
everywhere--there, most of all, where emotion is most acute and
permanent, where hopes and fears are most overwhelming, in the sphere
of religion.
Now every personality is endowed with qualities which enable it to
persist, to influence others, and even to {35} overcome, subjugate,
and destroy them for its own ends. No more than ourselves could the
primeval savage avoid being influenced and often overmatched by the
charm and wiles of woman, the wisdom of the elders of his horde, the
dauntless might of the warrior. The non-human personalities with which
he came in contact possessed qualities not less remarkable than those
of the human. The strength, the fierceness, the agility of the lion,
the speed of the antelope, the cunning of the fox, the lofty forms and
endurance of the forest trees, their response to every breath of wind,
and the kindly shelter they yielded to birds and beasts and men, the
fantastic forms and stern patience of the rocks, the smooth and
smiling treachery of the lake, the gentle murmur and benign largess of
the river, the splendour, the burning heat of the sun, the
changeableness and movement of the clouds are a few of the more
obvious qualities attached to the myriad personalities with which men
found themselves environed. These personalities and their qualities
would impress them all the more because of the mystery that
perpetually masked them. Mystery magnified them. Hence every non-human
personality was apt to be conceived in larger than human terms, and
its qualities were larger than human.
I do not pause here to adduce illustrations of this attitude towards
the objects surrounding mankind. In any event it would of course be
impossible to illustrate it from prehistoric, not to say primeval,
ages. It is characteristic of modern savages wherever an intimate
acquaintance enables the civilized observer to penetrate into their
_arcana_. Some of them have got no further; others have advanced to
the full stage of animism. Reference may be made to any work in which
the life and ideas of a savage tribe are depicted.
{36}
Not merely was every personality, human and other, endowed with
qualities, but by virtue of those qualities it possessed a
potentiality and an atmosphere of its own. The successful warrior and
huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag,
his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered
elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of
far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a
belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a
dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a
political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary.
Nor would this atmosphere surround only important or successful men.
Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would
attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess
in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very
small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of
others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this
atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human
beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the
sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would
be richly endowed. None, human or non-human, would (in theory, at
least) be wholly without it.
The Iroquoian tribes of North America possess a word which exactly
expresses this potentiality, this atmosphere, which they believe
inheres in and surrounds every personality. They call it _orenda_. A
fine hunter is one whose _orenda_ is fine, superior in quality. When
he is successful he is said to baffle or thwart the _orenda_ of the
quarry; when unsuccessful, the game is said to have foiled or
outmatched his _orenda_. A person who defeats {37} another in a game
of skill or chance is said to overcome his _orenda_. “At public games
or contests of skill or endurance, or of swiftness of foot, where clan
is pitted against clan, phratry against phratry, tribe against tribe,
or nation against nation, the _shamans_--men reputed to possess
powerful _orenda_--are employed for hire by the opposing parties
respectively to exercise their _orenda_ to thwart or overcome that of
their antagonists,” and thus secure victory. So, when a storm is
brewing, it (the storm-maker) is said to be preparing its _orenda_;
when it is ready to burst, it has finished, has prepared its _orenda_.
Similar expressions are used for a man or one of the lower animals
when in a rage. A prophet or soothsayer is one who habitually puts
forth his _orenda_, and has thereby learned the secrets of the future.
The _orenda_ of shy birds and other animals which it is difficult to
ensnare or kill is said to be acute or sensitive--that is, in
detecting the presence of the hunter, whether man or beast. Anything
reputed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or
accomplishing some end is said to possess _orenda_. Of one who, it is
believed, has died from witchcraft it is said, “An evil _orenda_ has
struck him.”[37.1]
Among the Algonkian and Siouan tribes are found beliefs that seem to
go behind this personal but mystic potentiality to its source in the
Unknown, the Impersonal. The Algonkian word expressive of the idea is
_manitou_. The early French missionaries, who were the first to make
it known to us, interpreted it of a personal being--God or the Devil,
they hardly knew which. They were reading into it their own more
highly crystallized beliefs. As in the case of _orenda_, we are
fortunate in having the term more accurately defined for us by a
descendant {38} of the native tribes, who may be presumed to have been
better equipped by inheritance and early associations to understand
Algonkian thought than the Jesuit Fathers were. “The Algonkin
conception of the manitou,” he tells us, “is bound up with the
manifold ideas that flow from an unconscious relation with the outside
world.… The term _manitou_ is a religious word; it carries with it
the idea of solemnity; and whatever the association it always
expresses a serious attitude, and kindles an emotional sense of
mystery.… The essential character of Algonkin religion is a pure,
naïve worship of nature. In one way or another associations cluster
about an object and give it a certain potential value; and because of
this supposed potentiality the object becomes the recipient of an
adoration. The degree of the adoration depends in some measure upon
the extent of confidence reposed in the object, and upon its supposed
power of bringing pleasure or inflicting pain. The important thing
with the individual is the emotional effect experienced while in the
presence of the object, or with an interpreted manifestation of the
object. The individual keeps watch for the effect, and it is the
effect that fills the mind with a vague sense of something strange,
something mysterious, something intangible. One feels it as the result
of an active substance, and one’s attitude toward it is purely
passive. To experience a thrill is authority enough of the existence
of the substance. The sentiment of its reality is made known by the
fact that something has happened. It is futile to ask an Algonkin for
an articulate definition of the substance, partly because it would be
something about which he does not concern himself, and partly because
he is quite satisfied with only the sentiment of its existence. He
feels that the property is everywhere, is omnipresent. The feeling
that it is {39} omnipresent leads naturally to the belief that it
enters into everything in nature; and the notion that it is active
causes the mind to look everywhere for its manifestations. These
manifestations assume various forms; they vary with individuals and
with reference to the same and different objects.
“Language affords means of approaching nearer to a definition of this
religious sentiment. In the Algonkin dialects of the Sauk, Fox, and
Kickapoo, a rigid distinction of gender is made between things with
life and things without life.… Accordingly, when they refer to the
manitou in the sense of a virtue, a property, an abstraction, they
employ the form expressive of inanimate gender. When the manitou
becomes associated with an object, then the gender becomes less
definite.…
“When the property becomes the indwelling element of an object, then
it is natural to identify the property with animate being. It is not
necessary that the being shall be the tangible representative of a
natural object.” This the writer illustrates from the account given by
a Fox Indian of the sweat-lodge, in the course of which he observes:
“The manitou comes from the place of his abode in the [heated] stone,
… when the water is sprinkled on it. It comes out in the steam, and
in the steam it enters the body wherever it finds entrance. It moves
up and down and all over inside the body, driving out everything that
inflicts pain. Before the manitou returns to the stone it imparts some
of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having
been in the sweat-lodge.” The writer’s comment on this is instructive.
“The sentiment,” he says, “behind the words rests upon the
consciousness of a belief in an objective presence; it rests on the
sense of an existing reality with the quality of self-dependence; it
rests on the perception of a definite, {40} localized personality. Yet
at the same time there is the feeling that the apprehended reality is
without form and without feature. This is the dominant notion in
regard to the virtue abiding in the stone of the sweat-lodge; it takes
on the character of conscious personality with some attributes of
immanence and design.”
But further, as the manitou--this mystic, all-pervasive property or
substance--on investing an object acquires conscious personality, so
also “it is natural to confuse the property”--the manitou--“with an
object containing,” or invested with, “the property.” “It is no
trouble for an Algonkin to invest an object with the mystic substance,
and then call the object by the name of the substance. The process
suggests a possible explanation of how an Algonkin comes to people his
world with manitou forces different in kind and degree; it explains in
some measure the supernatural performances of mythological beings, the
beings that move in the form of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and other
objects of nature. All these are a collection of agencies. Each
possesses a virtue in common with all the rest, and in so far do they
all have certain marks of agreement. Where one differs from another is
in the nature of its function, and in the degree of the possession of
the cosmic substance. But the investment of a common mystic virtue
gives them all a common name, and that name is _manitou_.”
The conclusion is “that there is an unsystematic belief in a cosmic
mysterious property which is believed to be existing everywhere in
nature; that the conception of the property can be thought of as
impersonal, but that it becomes obscure and confused when the property
becomes identified with objects in nature; that it manifests itself in
various forms; and that its emotional effect awakens a sense of
mystery; that there is a lively {41} appreciation of its miraculous
efficacy; and that its interpretation is not according to any regular
rule, but is based on one’s feelings rather than on one’s
knowledge.”[41.1]
Whatever differences an exact analysis, in accordance with the clearly
cut methods of scientific thought, may result in discovering between
the concept of _manitou_ as here displayed and the Iroquoian _orenda_,
two resemblances stand out prominently. _Orenda_ is, like _manitou_, a
mystic, or magical--not a natural--quality or potentiality, which
resides in some persons or objects in greater measure than others. And
the fact that it is “held to be the property of all things, all
bodies, and by the inchoate mentation of man is regarded as the
efficient cause of all phenomena, all the activities of his
environment,”[41.2] approximates the conception very closely to that
of _manitou_.
When we turn to the Omaha, a Siouan tribe, we find a concept hardly
distinguishable from that of the Algonkins. Here again we have the
advantage of native help. Mr Francis La Flesche, the son of a former
chief of the tribe, is jointly responsible for an exhaustive monograph
on the Omaha with Miss Alice Fletcher, whose knowledge of this and
neighbouring tribes is among investigators of European descent
unrivalled. We may therefore rely upon their exposition with
confidence equal to that we have given to those already cited on the
Iroquois and the Algonkins. “An invisible and continuous life was
believed,” they tell us, “to permeate all things, seen and unseen.
This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move--all
motion, all actions of mind or body are because of this invisible
life; second, by causing {42} permanency of structure and form, as in
the rock, the physical features of the landscape, mountains, plains,
streams, rivers, lakes, the animals and man. This invisible life was
also conceived of as being similar to the will-power of which man is
conscious within himself--a power by which all things are brought to
pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to
one another and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the
living, a fragment of anything to its entirety. This invisible life
and power was called _Wakonda_. While it was a vague entity, yet there
was an anthropomorphic colouring to the conception, as is shown in the
prayers offered and the manner in which appeals for compassion and
help were made, also in the ethical quality attributed to certain
natural phenomena--the regularity of night following day, of summer
winter (these were recognized as emphasizing truthfulness as a
dependable quality and set forth for man’s guidance),--and in the
approval by Wakonda of certain ethical actions on the part of
mankind.”[42.1] “There is therefore,” the writers tell us in another
place, “no propriety in speaking of Wakonda as ‘the Great Spirit.’
Equally improper would it be to regard the term as a synonym of
nature, or of an objective god, a being apart from nature. It is
difficult to formulate the native idea expressed in this word. The
European mind demands a kind of intellectual crystallization of
conceptions, which is not essential to the Omaha, and which, when
attempted, is apt to modify the original meaning.” But while the
concept appears to be vague and impersonal, inasmuch as human
conditions were projected upon nature, “certain anthropomorphic
attributes were ascribed to it, approximating to a kind of {43}
personality.” Moreover, “there is a distinction in the Omaha mind
between varying meanings of the word _wakonda_. The Wakonda addressed
in the tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which
pertain to the welfare of all the people is _the_ Wakonda that is the
permeating life of visible nature--an invisible life and power that
reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to
send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on
the one hand, the application of the word _wakonda_ to anything
mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on
the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or
inanimate form can be transferred to man. The means by which this
transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda, but is
not Wakonda. So the media--the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the
animal, the mythic monster--may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are
not regarded as _the_ Wakonda.”[43.1]
Like the Algonkian _manitou_, the Siouan _wakonda_ is thus seen to
hover between the Personal and the Impersonal, whereas the Iroquoian
_orenda_ clings about persons and things. Yet it is applied in an
adjectival form by various Siouan tribes to medicine-men, to the
sacred pipe, to the sleight-of-hand tricks performed by the
medicine-men or jugglers, and apparently to anyone who displays
unusual qualities or powers. Thus it is used for a man who is
extraordinarily stingy, to a man who has a habit of loud and rapid
speech, to one who is a hard, almost an unmerciful, rider, to a child
who speaks or walks for the first time and has thus manifested a new
and individual power to act. A woman during her menstrual period is
_wakan_; to perform acts of worship is to make _wakan_; the secret
society among the Dakotas {44} which is the depository of their
mysteries is _wakanwacipi_, the sacred dance. In these cases the word
conveys the sense not only of mysterious, powerful, wonderful, but
also of sacred, spiritual, taboo. And a Ponka medicine-man once told
the late J. O. Dorsey, “I am a wakanda.”[44.1]
Equivalent ideas and expressions are used by other American tribes.
Supernatural power impresses the Tlingit, for example, “as a vast
immensity, one in kind and impersonal, inscrutable as to its nature,
but whenever manifesting itself to men, taking a personal, and it
might be said a human personal, form in whatever object it displays
itself. Thus the sky-spirit is the ocean of supernatural energy as it
manifests itself in the sky, the sea-spirit as it manifests itself in
the sea, the bear-spirit as it manifests itself in the bear, the
rock-spirit as it manifests itself in the rock, etc. It is not meant
that the Tlingit consciously reasons this out thus, or formulates a
unity in the supernatural, but such appears to be his unexpressed
feeling. For this reason there is but one name, _yēk_, a name which
is affixed to any specific personal manifestation of it.… This
supernatural energy must be carefully differentiated from natural
energy and never confused with it. It is true that the former is
supposed to bring about results similar to the latter, but in the mind
of the Tlingit the conceived difference between these two is as great
as with us. A rock rolling downhill or an animal running is by no
means a manifestation of supernatural energy, although if something
peculiar be associated with these actions, something outside of the
Indian’s usual experience of such phenomena, they may be thought of as
such.” On the other hand, and here we approach the Iroquoian idea,
“the number of {45} spirits [_yēk_] with which this world was peopled
was simply limitless.… There is said to have been a spirit in every
trail on which one travelled, and one around every fire; one was
connected with everything one did.” The writer whom I am quoting goes
on to give a large number of instances showing that the heavenly
bodies, the wind, the sea, mountains, lakes, trees, animals, in short,
all things, were addressed, to conciliate them, to render them
friendly, to acquire some gift or advantage, were treated with
reverence or with magical intent. And of course the medicine-men or
shamans were the special favourites of the spirits, and were endowed
with power which they often matched against one another.[45.1]
Thus we have in these North American ideas two distinct
conceptions--the possession of what I have called a potentiality or
atmosphere of its own by the individual personality, whether human or
non-human; and the impersonal, mysterious, undefined reservoir of
power in the universe as conceived by the savage. These two
conceptions are not mutually exclusive, for the impersonal power is
often held to be the source of the personal power or potentiality. As
among the American Indian tribes, so elsewhere they are differently
emphasized by different peoples. The Bantu of the Lower Congo basin
emphasize the impersonal conception. According to the Bafiote, the
first ages of the world were ruled by Nzambi, though whether he made
everything seems a matter of doubt. When he retired from active
interference in the concerns of men, he left behind, or sent, or there
remained in the earth, Something. Indeed, it seems to be believed that
Nzambi himself, or his power, his vital and creative energy, is still
in earth and water, in the air, in plants, animals and men. In any
case, the Something remaining {46} on earth since Nzambi’s outward and
visible departure is or has _Lunyēnsu_. The concept of _Lunyēnsu_ is
that of natural force, vital energy, power of increase, in short, the
All-ruling, the Highest, that penetrates every living thing. It is not
life, but an activity bound up with life, its manifestation, its
condition. A crippled limb does not possess it, and with death it
ceases entirely, it is gone. The Something, however, which either is
or has _Lunyēnsu_ is even wider than this. It is represented by
_Bu-nssi_ (probably the older name) or _Mkissi-nssi_. The latter means
the supernatural or magical power of the earth, and seems to be due to
the later overgrowth of fetishism. The former conveys the idea of the
force, the energy of earth. In any case it is not to be confounded
with fetish-power, for it is revered as fetish-power is not, nor with
the earth-spirit, for the Bafiote know no elemental spirits. It must
be conceived as the terrestrial energy, the all-permeating creative
force, the all-wielding, the fertility, the becoming. Hence there is a
sacredness attaching to the earth; and connected as the earth is with
the idea of fecundity and the operations of agriculture, and as it is
an inseparable condition of life, these all form a foundation for the
right to the soil, for hospitality and the relations of the sexes. The
indefiniteness of _Bu-nssi_ is shown by the fact that the natives
themselves are not agreed whether it is one or many. In fact, in the
use of its synonym, _Mkissi_, the plural form--and what is
significant, the plural personal form--is often heard. Opinion wavers
as the needs or the excitement of the moment may demand, or perhaps as
tradition wavers with changing mental environment. But those who claim
the older faith or the deeper insight adhere to the statement that
there is but one _Mkissi-nssi_, even _Bu-nssi_.
Thus the conception of _Bu-nssi_ roughly corresponds {47} with that of
the reservoir of power we have already found among the Omaha and other
tribes. On the other hand, the Bafiote hold that everything in nature
has its peculiar property, everything is pervaded by forces. All
things influence one another by visible deeds of power or in
secret-wise. Hence are evolved manifold relations, among which the
most important for man are those that extend to his person. The effect
of physical forces is obvious. But experience teaches that there are
other forces that are efficacious, although the process is not always
understood. Such forces as these act without immediate and perceptible
contact. So at least the wise men believe, and they act accordingly.
How it happens they do not bother their heads. It is so, and that is
enough. If it were otherwise they could not explain the events that
happen. Here is, in something more than germ, the Iroquoian _orenda_.
But the more sensual Bafiote, whether from their own nature and social
organization, or from the tropical environment in which they live, are
preoccupied with the relations of the various forces thus permeating
all things. These forces are misused. Prudence and activity, strength
of limb and skill do not suffice; far too much evil occurs among them.
The Bafiote are obsessed, like all the African peoples, with the idea
of witchcraft. They must be protected against it. Power is therefore
matched against power, spell against spell. If there were not
thoroughly wicked men who sought openly or secretly to injure others,
fetishes would hardly be needed. By the use of fetishes they seek to
master the forces of which on every side they see indications, and to
make them their own. Fetishes are not gods. There is nothing
spiritual, nothing independent of men, about them. They are material
objects, fabricated by art, so as to embody forces working by
mysterious means for the aid {48} or injury of men. The destruction of
the fetish involves the annihilation of the forces it embodies,
whereas the existence of a god is in nowise imperilled by the
destruction of his image. In short, fetishes are magical instruments.
Yet such is the inveterate anthropomorphism of mankind that they do
acquire a quasi-personal character, and tend to be thought of as
individual and conscious beings. But they are never worshipped; the
Fiote has no gods. He has only fetishes, the incorporation of powers
and energies he sees acting around him everywhere. By that
incorporation these powers and energies are appropriated for his
benefit, for his particular ends, or for the ends and benefit of the
society of which he is a member.[48.1]
Similar ideas of mysterious force wavering between the personal and
the impersonal and permeating all things appear to underlie the
Chinese conceptions of the _Tsing_, or operative energy, which
inspires, or manifests itself in, the _Khi_, breath or soul, to
produce the living being.[48.2] These ideas have been taken over by
the Annamites, among whom the _Tinh_ is “a fluid, a force which
resides in all things, and without which no existence can manifest
itself,” and is “the essential principle of all action.” Uniting with
the _Khi_, breath or soul, it produces “the life, the movement, the
beings and the things peopling the world.” It is their essential
condition. The entire system of magic and religion rests on these
ideas.[48.3] Much the same may be said of the Japanese _Kami_,
probably connected with Ainu _Kamui_.[48.4] It is, however,
unnecessary to discuss {49} at length the conceptions involved. They
have been elaborated through centuries of civilization and
philosophical exposition, until it is now difficult to determine how
much of their present form and content they owe to archaic savagery.
Let us turn to the Melanesian islands of the South Pacific. “The
Melanesian mind,” says Dr Codrington, “is entirely possessed by the
belief in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universally
_mana_. This is what works to effect everything which is beyond the
ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature; it is
present in the atmosphere of life, attaches itself to persons and to
things, and is manifested by results which can only be ascribed to its
operation. When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its
force may break forth at some new point; the presence of it is
ascertained by proof. A man comes by chance upon a stone which takes
his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like something, it is
certainly not a common stone, there must be _mana_ in it.… Having
that power, it is a vehicle to convey _mana_ to other stones.… But
this power, though itself impersonal, is always connected with some
person who directs it; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some
men. If a stone is found to have a supernatural power, it is because a
spirit has associated itself with it; a dead man’s bone has with it
_mana_, because the ghost is with the bone; a man may have so close a
connexion with a spirit or ghost that he has _mana_ in himself also,
and can so direct it as to effect what he desires; a charm is powerful
because the name of a spirit or ghost expressed in the form of words
brings into it the power which the ghost or spirit exercises through
it. Thus all conspicuous success is a proof that a man has _mana_; his
influence depends on the impression made {50} on the people’s mind
that he has it; he becomes a chief by virtue of it. Hence a man’s
power, though political or social in its character, is his _mana_; the
word is naturally used in accordance with the native conception of the
character of all power and influence as supernatural. If a man has
been successful in fighting, it has not been his natural strength of
arm, quickness of eye or readiness of resource that has won success;
he has certainly got 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 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.” Such a power or influence as this is of
course not physical, though it may show itself “in physical force or
in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.” Finally,
“all Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this _mana_ for
one’s self, or getting it used for one’s benefit--all religion, that
is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices.”[50.1]
(The very intention that animates the Fiote rites of fetishism.)
It is not easy to formulate a clear idea of the original source of
_mana_. It is said to be impersonal, to be present in the atmosphere
of life and communicable to persons and to things. To that extent it
resembles the {51} impersonal power or potentiality we have found
elsewhere. But wherever it is manifested it is connected with some
personal being who originates and directs it.[51.1] It is not a
quality inherent in men of more than ordinary power and skill. “If a
man,” writes Bishop Codrington, “has been successful in fighting, …
he has certainly got the _mana_ of a spirit or of some deceased
ancestor to empower him.” And again: “No man has this power of his
own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings, ghosts or
spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be _mana_ himself,
using the word to express a quality; he can be said to have _mana_, it
may be said to be with him, the word being used as a
substantive.”[51.2] It would thus seem as if it were an essential
characteristic not of personal beings--even of powerful personal
beings--in general, but belonging to the world of spirits, including
the spirits of the dead. Yet not to all spirits; for elsewhere we
read: “It must not be supposed that every ghost becomes an object of
worship,” as a source of _mana_. “A man in danger may call upon his
father, his grandfather, or his uncle; his nearness of kin is
sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to be worshipped is the
spirit of a man who in his lifetime had _mana_ in him; the souls of
common men are the common herd of ghosts, nobodies alike before and
after death. The supernatural power abiding in the powerful living man
abides in his ghost after death with increased vigour and more ease of
movement.”[51.3] Thus {52} we are found in something like what
logicians call a vicious circle. Only those ghosts have _mana_, or are
_mana_, after death who had _mana_ in their lifetime. But if they had
_mana_ in their lifetime, it was because they derived it from ghosts
or other spirits. In any case _mana_ appears to be conceived of as
transcending humanity, belonging to the mysterious region of the
Unknown, embodied in its primitive denizens, flowing from them, by the
channel of material objects (amulets), forms of words (charms) or
names, to certain human beings, and taken back by the latter into the
same great reservoir of power when they die, thence to be communicated
afresh to favoured mortals, and so on for ever. Probably, however, no
such definite concept finds a place in the Melanesian brain; the mode
of savage thought hardly admits of such crystallization.
It is likely that _mana_ (both the word and the meaning) {53} was
introduced into the Melanesian islands from Polynesia, where it is
widely spread and the word has numerous derivatives. In seeking there
its explanation we are at a disadvantage; because, with all their
devotion and merits, no missionary and no scientific enquirer has
given us such a study of Polynesian mentality as Dr Codrington has
given of that of the Melanesians. We turn therefore, in the first
place, to the more dangerous guidance of a dictionary. From that we
learn that everywhere _mana_ has the signification of power, and
almost everywhere of supernatural power. It is also defined as
influence, prestige, honour, authority; in Hawaiian it is used to
express, besides supernatural power such as would be attributed to the
gods, the simpler idea of power, and also spirit (in the sense of
energy of character), glory, majesty, intelligence--all doubtless
secondary meanings. We need not discuss in detail the derivatives in
various Polynesian dialects. Their general trend is towards the
expression of thought, opinion or belief, industry, vehement desire,
love--all of them activities primarily of the mind or emotions.
_Manava_ or _manawa_ is a word meaning the belly or internal organs of
the body, then the heart as the seat of affection, the feelings or
emotions, soul, conscience, and in one dialect at least, an
apparition, a ghost or spirit. _Mana_, in short, seems to recall the
idea of extraordinary qualities, especially power, and the emotional
reactions caused by their exhibition. Power or energy, overwhelming,
supernatural, is evidently the root-idea, vested in individual,
personal beings. One phrase, to be sure, in a Maori myth suggests the
independent possession of this power by an object we should not regard
as personal: _He taiaha whaimana_, explained by the lexicographer as
“A wooden sword which has done {54} deeds so wonderful as to possess a
sanctity and power of its own.” Literally it is “A sword in which
_mana_ is resident.” Whether this or the parallel Mangarevan _e
turuturu mana_, a powerful or magical staff, really implies an
inherent power independent of spiritual origin, must remain
undecided.[54.1] We are led to think of the weapons of Teutonic
mythology and romance, having names as if they were personalities, and
endowed with powers to render their bearers invincible--nay, when
drawn, to inspire them with ungovernable fury. But in the form in
which their stories reach us all such weapons owe their peculiar
properties, like the curse upon the Nibelung hoard, to some more than
earthly being, or at least to a mortal wizard.
Having furnished ourselves with this key, we may examine some of the
incidents of Polynesian life and religion reported by competent
observers. The inauguration ceremony of a Tahitian king, we are told
by the missionary Ellis, consisted in girding him with the _maro ura_,
or sacred girdle of red feathers. This girdle “was made with the
beaten fibres of the _aoa_; with these a number of _uru_, red
feathers, taken from the images of their deities, were interwoven with
feathers of other colours. The _maro_ thus became sacred, even as the
person of the gods, the feathers being supposed to retain all the
dreadful attributes of power and vengeance which the idols possessed,
and with which it was designed to endow the king.” So potent indeed
was it that “it not only raised him to the highest earthly station,
but identified {55} him with” the gods.[55.1] The same missionary
elsewhere relates that “throughout Polynesia the ordinary medium of
communicating or extending supernatural powers was the red feather of
a small bird found in many of the islands and the beautiful long
tail-feathers of the tropic or man-of-war bird. For these feathers the
gods were supposed to have a strong predilection; they were the most
valuable offerings that could be presented; to them the power or
influence of the gods was imparted, and through them transferred to
the objects to which they might be attached.” On certain ceremonial
occasions those persons “who wished their emblems of deity to be
impregnated with the essence of the gods, repaired to the ceremony
with a number of red feathers, which they delivered to the officiating
priest. The wooden idols being generally hollow, the feathers were
deposited in the inside of the image, which was filled with them.”
When the idols were solid, the feathers were attached on the outside.
To anyone who brought fresh feathers, two or three of the same kind
which had been thus “united to the god” at a former festival were
given in return. “These feathers were thought to possess all the
properties of the images to which they had been attached, and a
supernatural influence was supposed to be infused into them. They were
carefully wound round with very fine cord, the extremities alone
remaining visible. When this was done, the new-made gods were placed
before the larger images from which they had been taken; and lest
their detachment should induce the god to withhold his power, the
priest addressed a prayer to the principal deities, requesting them to
abide in the red feathers before them. {56} At the close of his _ubu_,
or invocation, he declared that they were dwelt in or inhabited (by
the gods), and delivered them to the parties who had brought the red
feathers. The feathers, taken home, were deposited in small
bamboo-canes, excepting when addressed in prayer. If prosperity
attended their owner, it was attributed to their influence, and they
were usually honoured with a _too_, or image, into which they were
inwrought; and subsequently, perhaps, an altar and a rude temple were
erected for them. In the event, however, of their being attached to an
image, this must be taken to the large temple, that the supreme idols
might sanction the transfer of their influence.”[56.1]
In the foregoing passages it will be perceived that the missionary is
doing something more than describing rites he had no doubt often
witnessed; he is labouring also to translate into English and
incorporate with his account the explanations he had extracted from
his Polynesian friends. He seems to exhaust his spiritual vocabulary
in speaking of “powers,” “influence,” “the communication of
attributes,” of “the essence of the gods.” But when he recalls the
words of the priest, they are even stronger and at the same time
simpler than any of these expressions: the god is prayed to “abide in”
the feathers; he is declared to “inhabit” them. If these be an
accurate translation of the words employed, it would seem that not
merely the power but a portion of the personality of the god passed
into the feathers, and that while his chief residence was still at the
great temple where his principal image dwelt, he was also present
whithersoever the bunches of feathers which had been consecrated by
deposition within or upon it were carried. He himself inhabited them;
and it was this fact that “identified” the king, as the wearer of such
feathers, with the gods.
{57}
It may be so. It may be another illustration of the fluidity of the
concept of personality. But what we have already learned of _mana_ may
lead us to place another interpretation upon it. It was not merely the
gods whose influence or personality was conveyed by contact. The king
in his turn spread an awful influence in the same way, or even by the
utterance of a word. In New Zealand “the garments of an _ariki_, or
high chief, were _tapu_, as well as everything relating to him; they
could not be worn by anyone else, lest they should kill him.” If a
single drop of a high chief’s blood flowed on anything, it consecrated
the object to him, or, as the natives phrased it, rendered it _tapu_.
This consequence resulted to everything touched by him, to everything
to which he chose to affix his name or the name of one of his
ancestors. He could not eat with his wife, lest his sanctity should
kill her, though she herself was by marriage consecrated to him. Nor
was the sanctity by any means confined to the highest chiefs. It
extended downwards to the lower ranks, but always in a decreasing
measure. It mainly depended on rank and influence;[57.1] it could be
none other than the effect of _mana_.
Between _mana_, however, and personality the dividing line is very
thin. We find it the same in other parts of the world. Father De
Acosta relates that upon the even of his feast the Mexican idol
Tezcatlipuca was furnished with a new robe. When it was put on, the
old robe was taken off “and kept with as much or more reverence than
we doe our ornaments.” Ecclesiastical ornaments of course are meant;
and the writer goes on to say that “there were in the coffers of the
idoll many ornaments, iewelles, eareings, and other riches, as
bracelets and pretious feathers, which served to no other vse than to
be {58} there, and was [_sic_] worshipped as their god it
selfe.”[58.1] Here the ornaments would seem to all intents identified
with the god, exactly as the red feathers of the Tahitian god are
“inhabited” by him. The explanation of the one is the explanation of
the other. The same ambiguity is discoverable in a much higher
civilization than either the Polynesian or the Mexican. Down to the
end of the eighteenth century Breton women, in order to secure a happy
delivery, used to dip their girdles in certain sacred fountains; and
even to-day the expectant mother who can wrap around her body a ribbon
thus dipped is sure in due course to bring into the world a robust
child, and that without danger to herself.[58.2] This we may be
inclined to think an example of an impersonal power analogous to that
of the Siouan _wakonda_ or the Algonkian _manitou_. But we can carry
the matter a step further. The Ursuline nuns of Quintin keep a girls’
school of high reputation in Brittany. When one of their pupils has
married and become pregnant, they sometimes send her as a special
favour a ribbon which has touched a reliquary containing a fragment of
the Virgin Mary’s zone; and it is worn by the recipient around her
waist until her baby is born.[58.3] It is not surely misinterpreting
the rite to deem that the Virgin’s zone, having been in contact with
her divinity, has acquired and retains a portion of the _mana_
emanating from her person; the reliquary in turn is permeated by that
_mana_, and communicates it to everything that touches it. The worthy
nuns probably have no exact theory on the subject; but a little
consideration of the practice will lead us to think that we have
understated its meaning. {59} It is the converse case to that of the
deposit of clothing and other articles on the shrine or the image of
the divine being, which we have already considered. In the latter case
there could be no question of _mana_ conveyed to the god from his
votary. Moreover, the true interpretation of the practice must explain
the cult of relics of the saints, whether Christian, Mohammedan, or
Buddhist. Now, these relics consist not merely of garments and
articles of use, like a staff, but also of the bodies or fragments of
the bodies of the saints. In them a portion of their very personality
inheres, and accounts for the beneficent potentiality residing in the
relics, as it accounts also for the liability to injury by witchcraft
upon similar fragments of the body or clothing of ordinary mortals.
For ordinary mortals, whatever their potentiality, cannot measure it
against that of saints and witches.
Yet human beings who are neither saints nor witches, and the lower
animals also, have their potentialities, the benefit of which is
capable of being transferred to others. This is one of the reasons for
cannibalism. Among the Veddas of Ceylon, one of the lowest known
peoples, it is said to have been the custom, when a man had been
killed, for the slayer to open the body and take out a piece of the
liver, which he would dry in the sun and keep in his pouch. Indeed a
man was sometimes put to death for the purpose. Its object was to make
its possessor strong and confident to avenge insults. He would bite
off a piece of the dried liver and chew it, saying to himself: “I have
killed this man; why should I not be strong and confident and kill
this other one who has insulted me?”[59.1] So the Turks, after the
death of the Albanian hero Scanderbeg, dug up his body and from his
bones constructed amulets to inspire courage into the wearer on {60}
the battlefield.[60.1] This potentiality may be communicated, like
the Melanesian _mana_, through other objects; and the possibility has
led to certain funeral customs in Europe as well as elsewhere. After a
death in the Highlands of Bavaria it was formerly the duty of the
housewife to prepare corpse-cakes (_Leichen-nudeln_). Having kneaded
the dough, she placed it to rise on the dead body, which lay on a bier
enswathed in a linen shroud. When the dough had risen, the cakes were
baked for the expected guests. To the cakes so prepared the belief
attached that “they contained the virtues and advantages of the
deceased,” and that his “living strength passed over into the kinsmen
who consumed the cakes, and was thus retained within the
kindred.”[60.2] The eating of the flesh of animals remarkable for
qualities such as ferocity, strength, fleetness, and so forth, with
intent to acquire these qualities is well known. One illustration will
be sufficient here. The Basuto, before going to war, make assurance
doubly, trebly sure by a cruel rite. The foreleg of a living bull is
cut off. The warriors eat it and are sprinkled with blood from the
animal, which is then killed. They are lanced by the witch-doctor, and
a powder made of the flesh of the bull is rubbed into the wounds. In
this way, namely, by eating the flesh, by sprinkling the blood, and by
inoculation, “the strength and courage of the animal” are imparted to
them.[60.3]
It appears then that the concept of personality is inseparable from
that of the potentiality with which a personality is endowed. Hence
the ambiguity of the Tahitian rite. Whether the feathers which had
been {61} attached to an image retained and transmitted to the next
wearer the _mana_, or a portion of the personality, of the god, the
one effect was equivalent to the other: they are indistinguishable.
But between _mana_ and the potentiality that elsewhere invests a
personality there is a difference. The latter may be, and frequently
is, held to be drawn from the common source of power, the invisible
and continuous life that permeates all things; whereas in Melanesia
(and perhaps in Polynesia too) _mana_ is definitely ascribed only to a
personal origin, if Dr Codrington has rightly interpreted the belief.
It is the special property of spirits--that is to say, of supernatural
beings--and is communicated by them to whatsoever or whomsoever they
will. An important step has thus been taken by the Melanesian mind
towards separating the Personal from the Impersonal, and human from
superhuman attributes and potentialities.
Thus we find in widely separated regions, among widely different races
and in cultures the most diverse, the idea of mystic power or
potentiality, often concentrated in individual persons or things, but
in effect spread throughout the world. Some peoples have been more
alive to the impersonal character of this power, and have ascribed to
it, wherever manifested, a unity of origin akin to the scientific
concept of force behind all phenomena. To others it has assumed a more
individual character. It clings in any case to personality and tends
to become inseparable from it; but the impersonal aspect is never
wholly wanting.
The patient reader will have observed the difficulty experienced alike
by scientific explorers and missionaries in expounding this idea in
its varied forms and applications. The difficulty has not arisen
wholly from its strangeness. It is due in large part to its want of
clarity. The savage {62} himself does not know; he has rarely had
occasion, and still more rarely inclination, to reflect on his
beliefs. He has had no schools of science or philosophy to think out
his thoughts for him. Hence they are ill defined; like clouds in the
sky, they take first one shape and then another. Yet those very
clouds, by comparison with the formless vapour from whence they have
been condensed, are continents of solidity and definiteness.
Although the idea of _orenda_, or _mana_, may not receive everywhere
the same explicit recognition, it is implied in the customs and
beliefs of mankind throughout the world. It underlies the practice of
Taboo. We have had already occasion to notice this in reference to the
_mana_ of Maori chiefs. In the population of Madagascar there is a
large, perhaps a predominant Polynesian element. When a Malagasy
sticks up in his field a figure or scarecrow to keep off robbers, it
is not that they may dread prosecution with all the rigour of the law,
though that may be the result if they are caught. What is threatened
is sickness, mysteriously induced by the power of the owner of the
field, or by the power which he has caused to be conjured into the
scarecrow.[62.1] A Samoan in the same way suspends to a cocoa-nut
palm a small figure of a shark made with a leaf of the tree; it is
notice to the robber that he will be inevitably devoured by a white
shark the next time he goes to fish.[62.2] Similar practices prevail
in the Melanesian islands.[62.3] Taboo has obtained a very prominent
position in the social order and government of Polynesian communities.
It is {63} from them that the word has been adopted into English
parlance, and adapted to a sense near akin to that of another
interesting word--to _boycott_. But it is not only in Polynesia and
the neighbouring islands of Melanesia that the dread of a mysterious
_mana_ is found, or that it leads to prohibitions and abstinences
often very burdensome. It is unnecessary to adduce examples of the
taboos on women, practically universal in the lower culture at certain
times. The Siberian Chukchi, whose fire has gone out on the cold and
timberless tundra, cannot borrow fire from his neighbour, for “the
fire of a strange family is regarded as infectious and as harbouring
strange spirits. Fear of pollution extends also to all objects
belonging to a strange hearth, to the skins of the tent and the
sleeping room, and even to the keepers and worshippers of strange
penates. The Chukchi from far inland, who travel but little, when they
come to a strange territory fear to sleep in tents or to eat meat
cooked on a strange fire, preferring to sleep in the open air and to
subsist on their own scant food-supply. On the other hand, an unknown
traveller, coming unexpectedly to a Chukchi camp, can hardly gain
admittance to a tent,” a difficulty of which the writer I am quoting
had personal experience.[63.1] This reluctance to contact with
strangers is not shyness; nor is it the dread of hostile intentions.
Each individual, each family or body of men, has its own atmosphere;
and this atmosphere conveys “pollution.” It is only throwing the idea
a step backwards to imagine the cause of the pollution as “strange
spirits.” Spirits are _mana_; and it is the _mana_ that is feared--the
mystic influence or potentiality that may strike the unwary stranger.
This is what issues in practice as the taboo. The subject of Taboo has
been treated so fully by {64} Professor Frazer[64.1] that it is
needless to discuss it here. Moreover, to do so in any detail would
require a volume. Suffice it to say that the universal avoidance of a
dead body, the prohibitions observed by priests, by chiefs, by hunters
and warriors, the prohibitions of temple and shrine, of times and
seasons, of speech and act, may all be traced to the same root-idea.
Our words _sanctity_, _pollution_, _infection_ feebly and partially
translate the intuitive dread of _orenda_ which is embodied in a
taboo.
The Evil Eye is a striking example of the belief in _orenda_ that has
survived into civilized communities. Here the whole maleficent
potentiality of a person is concentrated in a glance; and the amulets
so often worn on the body or suspended on the wall or at the door of
a house are directed to intercepting and so exhausting the influence.
In many cases, either by means of them or by a word or gesture, a
counter-_orenda_ is exercised, intended to annihilate, or at least
neutralize, the evil influence. An analogous superstition may be cited
from the Upper Congo. The Boloki believe that an occult power is
possessed and exercised by many individuals. They call it _likundu_.
Like the Evil Eye, its possession and exercise may be unconscious. “A
person is accused of possessing _likundu_ when he or she is
extraordinarily successful in hunting, fishing, skilled labour or the
accumulation of wealth. There is apparently,” says Rev. J. H. Weeks,
“only a certain amount of skill extant, only a certain number of fish
to be caught, only a certain amount of wealth to be gained; and for a
person to excel all others is a proof that he is using evil means {65}
to his own advantage, and in thus defrauding others of their share he
lays himself open to the charge of possessing _likundu_.” Consequently
“a person who possesses this _likundu_ may unconsciously cause the
hunting skill of any hunter in his family to fail.” When the charge is
seriously made “it causes much annoyance, and can only be disproved by
either drinking the ordeal or refraining from doing that which has
brought the charge,” of which Mr Weeks goes on to give an illustration
that had come under his own observation.[65.1]
Finally, what foundation there may be for the modern psychological
doctrine of Telepathy it is not my business to determine. But its
resemblance to the Iroquoian doctrine of _orenda_ may be pointed out
here. Telepathic communication may result from conscious or
unconscious exertion of will; it may occur at a supreme crisis of fate
or at a casual moment. It is in either case the product of a
potentiality which we call _mystic_ for want of a better name, and
which attaches to, or flows from, some personalities more strongly
than others. We have all had the experience of occasionally meeting,
or receiving a letter from, someone on whom our thoughts have been
more or less insistently dwelling, and whom we did not expect
immediately to see or hear from. Goethe is reported by his friend
Eckermann as having told him: “I have often enough had the experience
in my youthful years of a powerful longing for a beloved maiden taking
possession of me during a {66} lonely walk; and I thought about her
and thought about her until she really came and met me.” We need,
however, no such commonplace illustration to convince us of Goethe’s
_orenda_.
Without multiplying illustrations which will spring to the mind of
everyone, I venture to suggest that in man’s emotional response to his
environment, in his interpretation in the terms of personality of the
objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by
him with potentiality, atmosphere, _orenda_, _mana_--call it by what
name you will--we have the common root of magic and religion.