MAGIC AND RELIGION
In the preceding section, I have compared animal with human behaviour in
an attempt to single out the psychological traits whose presence in man
accounts for his possession of Religion and of Magic. I must now complete
the characterisation and the account of the origin of these two higher
types of behaviour.
The relation obtaining between Magic and Religion has been variously
understood. Most authorities hold that Magic preceded Religion, and that
they are in some way genetically related. In the following pages we shall
argue in support of two opinions: (1) the primary forms of Magic probably
antedated Religion; (2) whether Magic antedated Religion or not, Religion
arose independently of Magic; they are different in principle and
independent in origin.
But the word Magic includes an almost endless number of practices so far
quite inadequately classified. We cannot go on without first marking out
at least its more prominent groups. And since the common bond of these
practices is neither a common purpose (Magic serves to gratify every kind
of desire), nor a common method (the magician's methods are literally
numberless), but the non-personal nature of the power pressed into
service, we shall make use of this last element as a means of
classification. Three groups are thus obtained.
=Magic classified.=--_Class 1_ is characterised by the absence of any idea
of a power belonging to the operator or his instrument and passing from
either one of them to the object of the magical art. To this class belong
many instances of so-called sympathetic Magic;[18] a good many of the
taboo customs; most charms; the casting of lots, when a spirit or god is
not supposed to guide the cast; most modern superstitions, those, for
instance, regarding Friday, the number thirteen, horse-shoes, planting
when the tide is coming in. In these instances the effect is thought of
as following upon the alleged cause, without the mediation of a force
conceived as passing, let us say, from the warm arrow to the wound and
irritating it. The idea of power is reduced here to its least possible
complexity.
_Class 2._ A power, not itself personal, is supposed to belong to the
magician, to his instrument, or to particular substances, and to pass
into, or act upon, the object. Howitt relates how some native Australians
begged him not to carry in a bag containing quartz crystals a tooth,
extracted at an initiation ceremony. They thought that if he did so, the
evil power of the crystals would enter the tooth and so injure the body to
which it had belonged.[19] The potency of many charms is of this nature,
while others have a fetichistic significance, _i.e._ they involve the
action of spirits, and so do not belong to this class. Rubbing oneself
with, or eating the fat, or another portion, of a brave and strong man in
order to make oneself courageous and powerful, belongs also to this second
class, together with most instances of contagion-magic. So does, usually,
the power defined in the following passage and the similar powers believed
in and used in other than Melanesian populations: 'That invisible power
which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend
their conception of the regular course of nature, and to reside in
spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the
ghosts of the dead, being imparted to them, to their names and to various
things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of
all sorts, is that generally known as _mana_.... No man, however, 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 ... he can be said to have mana.'[20]
_Class 3._ Perhaps a special class should be made of the cases in which
the magician feels as if his will-effort was the efficient factor. This is
often true of spells, of incantations, and of solemn curses. A man
addressing the magical spear, saying, 'Go straight, go straight and kill
him,' feels no doubt that, somehow, by the words in which quivers his
whole soul he directs the spear on its errand of death.
Though Magic does not make an anthropopathic appeal it may, and frequently
does, bring to bear its peculiar coercitive virtue upon anthropopathic
beings. It aims then at compelling souls, spirits or gods, into doing the
operator's will, or in preventing them from doing their own. In
necromancy, spirits are summoned by means of spells and incantations. In
old Egypt the art of dealing coercitively with spirits and gods reached a
high development. Maspero, speaking of a strange belief regarding names,
says, 'when the god in a moment of forgetfulness or of kindness had taught
them what they wanted [the sacred names], there was nothing left for him
but to obey them.'[21] At Eleusis, it was not the name but the intonation
of the voice of the magician which produced the mysterious results.[22]
But whether Magic acts upon personal or impersonal objects, its effective
power is ever impersonal.
I would not give the impression in this attempt at classification, that
the conceptions of the savage are clear and definite. I hold them to be,
on the contrary, hazy and fluid. What appears to him impersonal one moment
may suddenly assume the characteristics of a spirit. _Mana_, for
instance, although usually an impersonal force stored into plants, stones,
animals or men, assumes at times truly personal traits; it becomes the god
himself. One should not be surprised to meet with cases that fall between
rather than in the classes, for the sharp lines of demarcation it suits us
to draw are not often found in nature.
And now we return to our two theses.
=1. The Probable Priority of Magic.=--Certain historical facts might be
held to support the pre-religious origin of Magic. As one descends from
the higher to the lower social levels, Religion dwindles and Magic grows.
In the lowest societies of which we have extensive and accurate knowledge,
the Central Australian tribes, Religion is represented by mere rudiments,
whereas Magic is everywhere and always in evidence. I have had occasion in
a preceding section to quote Howitt with regard to the slight role played
by Religion among the South-East Australians. The presence of Religion in
the lives of the tribes inhabiting the central portions of Australia is
still less obvious. Frazer reflects the views of Spencer and Gillen, of
Howitt, and probably of every recent first-hand student of that country,
when he writes: 'Among the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as
to whom we possess accurate information, Magic is universally practised,
whereas Religion, in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the
higher powers, seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in
Australia are magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can
influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but
nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.'[23] If we may
trust our knowledge of other savages, the general fact thus affirmed of
the native Australians holds good with regard to every other uncivilised
tribe.
But as the least civilised of existing tribes are far from being
'primitive' in the true sense of the word, it could be argued that Magic
is, after all, the outcome of the corruption of a primitive Religion, of
which almost nothing remains in the savage tribes of the present day. And
so we shall have to rest our case not upon historical evidences, but upon
considerations regarding the psychological nature of Magic and Religion,
and upon analogies we may discover between them and certain facts
observed in children and in adults of uncivilised races.
In his attempt to support the belief in the priority of Magic, Frazer, who
has put every student of Religion in his debt by his monumental work,
affirms its greater simplicity when compared with Religion. The opinion
itself is tenable, but the defence of it, made as it is from the
standpoint of the old English associationism, is unfortunately worthless.
'Magic,' he tells us, 'is nothing but a mistaken application of the very
simplest and most elementary process of the mind, namely, the association
of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity,' while 'Religion assumes
the operation of conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the
visible screen of nature. Obviously the concept of personal agent is more
complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of
ideas.... The very beasts associate the ideas of things that are like each
other or that have been found together in their experience.... But who
attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena are worked by a
multitude of invisible animals or by one enormous and prodigiously strong
animal behind the scenes?'[24] It is undoubtedly true that the mind of
man tends to pass from an object to others like it, or experienced at the
same time, but this psychological fact does not in itself account for
Magic. The mind of animals is regulated in a similar manner. In
spring-time the sight of a feather makes the bird think of nest-building,
and the smell and sight of his master's coat brings the master to the
dog's mind. Yet animals do not practise the magical art. This fact should
be sufficient to make one realise the insufficiency of 'a simple
[mistaken] recognition of the similarity and contiguity of ideas' as an
explanation of the origin of Magic. An animal might observe the
colour-likeness between carrots and jaundice (not, however, unless
practical dealings with them had attracted his attention to the colour),
and 'coat' and 'master' might follow each other in a dog's mind. But in
order to treat the coat as he would the master, and in order to eat
carrots or give them to be eaten for the cure of jaundice, there is
required, in addition to the association, the belief that whatever is done
to the coat will be suffered by the master, and that the eating of carrots
will cure the disease. It is the existence of these ideas with their
motor and affective values and of their dynamic connection which makes
Magic possible in beings subject to the laws of association. This
fundamental difference between mere association of ideas and the essential
mental processes involved in Magic, Frazer has completely overlooked. The
difference may be further illustrated by the instance of a dog biting in a
rage the stick with which he is being beaten. He is indeed doing to the
stick what he would like to do to the man. But in attacking the stick he
does not conceive that, although the stick is not the man, the injury done
to it will hurt the man. His action is blindly impulsive, while the form
of Magic in question involves generalisations and other mental processes
not expressed by the laws of association.[25]
If magical actions cannot be deduced from the principle of association,
they can at least be classified according to the kind of association they
illustrate. For, although the various ideas brought together in Magic, in
a relation of cause and effect, are frequently said to have come together
by 'chance,' some of the conditions under which they have in fact become
connected are expressed in the universal laws of association, namely,
association by similarity or contrast, by contiguity or spatial
opposition, and by emotional congruity or disparity. Whenever magical acts
have been classified, it has been according to the principle of
association.[26] But every kind of activity involving mental operations
falls in some of its relations under the laws of association, hence the
relative unfruitfulness of these classifications, hence also our attempt
at grouping magical practices according to a factor of greater
significance, namely, the nature of the power they involve.
=2. The Independence of Religion from Magic.=--The following psychological
arguments appear to me to go a long way towards proving that _magical
behaviour has had an origin independent of the animistic[27] belief_, and
that some of its forms, at least, antedated it, and therefore also
Religion:--
(_a_) The absorbing interest found by young children in the _use_ of
things, and their complete indifference at first to the _modus operandi_,
point, it would seem, to a stage in human development at which the
explanation of things is not yet desired. It is well known that long
before a child asks 'how?' he wearies his guardians with the question,
'what for?'[28] He wants to know what things are good for, and, in
particular, what _he_ can do with them before he cares for an
understanding of their origin, and of their mechanism. This keen interest
in the production of results, this curiosity about the practical meaning
of things, is apparently quite independent of any abstract idea of power.
Since the child passes through a pre-interpretative stage, may we not
admit a corresponding period in racial development during which no
explanatory soul-theory, no animistic philosophy, is entertained? A mental
attitude such as this would make Religion impossible, while it would
provide the essential condition for a Magic of our first class.
(_b_) Children--and adult savages resemble children in many respects--like
to amuse themselves by setting up prohibitions and backing them up with
threats of punishment. 'If you do this,' they will say, 'that will happen
to you.' The 'this' and the 'that' have usually no logical connection with
each other, neither is there in the mind of the child any thought of a
particular kind of power, or agent, meting out the punishment. This kind
of play is strikingly similar to a large number of magical practices. Can
it not be regarded as the prototype of most taboo customs? In taboo there
is usually no logical and no qualitative relation between the prohibition
and the punishment. Neither is there, ordinarily, any notion of a
particular agent carrying out the threat. It involves, it seems, nothing
more than the assumption of a causal connection between two facts brought
together by 'chance' association under the pressure of a desire for food
or success at war, or for the enforcement of a rule of conduct.[29] The
punishment announced is anything on the efficacy of which one may choose
to rely. In Madagascar conjugal fidelity is enforced by the threat that
the betrayed husband will be killed or wounded in the war; among the
indigenous tribes of Sarawak, the belief is that the camphor obtained by
the men in the jungle will evaporate if the women are unfaithful during
the absence of their husbands, while in East Africa, the husband would, in
the same eventuality, be killed or hurt by the elephant he is hunting.[30]
The high sanction which the requirements of social life give to beliefs of
this sort is readily understood.
(_c_) It is a fact of common observation that in passionate moments, men
of every degree of culture act, in the absence of the object of their
passion, more or less as if it was present. A man grinds his teeth, shakes
his fist, growls at the absent enemy; a mother presses to her breast and
talks fondly to the departed babe. The pent-up motor tendencies must find
an outlet. To restrain every external sign of one's desires or intentions
when under great emotional excitement is unendurable pain. By the sick-bed
of one beloved, one must do something, however useless to him. Who shall
say that we do not have in this natural tendency the origin of the large
class of magical acts represented by sticking pins into, or burning, an
effigy? The less a person is under the control of reason, the more likely
is he, not only to yield to promptings of this order, but also to be
seduced by his wish into a belief in their efficacy.
If any one finds it difficult to admit that the savage can so easily be
deceived, I would direct his attention to the well-known instances of
children's self-deceptions. Most of them behave, at a certain age, as if
their dolls were alive and, to all appearances, there are some moments
when they think so. What they think at other moments is another matter. We
need not suppose that the savage cannot take, at times, a critical
attitude and perhaps undeceive himself. It is sufficient that at other
moments, when under the pressure of needs or in the excitement
accompanying ceremonies of considerable social significance or of much
personal importance, he should be able to assume the attitude of the
believer. The behaviour of certain mentally deranged persons throws some
light on this point. Such a person may believe that his hands are always
dirty and be constantly washing them. If reasoned with, he may perhaps be
convinced that they cannot be dirty. Yet a few seconds later he will
exclaim, 'But I feel they are dirty,' and return to the wash-basin. The
savage is under the control of his impulses and feelings to a degree
approaching that of the person instanced. In this connection, the effect
of repetition, and of the tribal sanction obtained by magical customs,
should not be overlooked. They tend to make doubt and criticism next to
impossible.
What need is there in cases of this kind to introduce a middle term
between the actions of the magician and their expected effect? None
whatsoever. The thought of an efficient agent or power passing out of the
magician or of his instrument to work upon the victim is no necessary part
of this type of Magic.
(_d_) The belief at the root of a great variety of magical practices, that
'like' produces 'like,' may have arisen in still other ways than the one
just indicated. Nothing is more common than the invisible passage of
things, be they heat, cold, light, thunderbolt, odours, diseases, etc.,
from one person or object to another, either by contact or through space.
The frequent instances of diseases spreading by infection among men,
animals, and vegetables, seem in themselves sufficient to suggest the
belief that 'like' produces 'like.' The idea of contagion must have
appeared very early indeed. Now, as the savage is quite unable to
distinguish between the different agencies involved in the variety of
experiences of this sort, he cannot draw the line between the 'likes' that
really produce 'likes' and those that do not; hence his very strange
expectations. This class of Magic also is independent of the conception of
an agent effecting the connection between the objects related as cause and
effect.
Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, the doctrine of animism has become
classical. This passage from _Primitive Culture_,[31] 'What men's eyes
behold is but the instrument to be used, or the material to be shaped,
while behind it there stands some prodigious but half-human creature, who
grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath,' expresses, no
doubt, fairly correctly, a very early philosophy of life. I would not
object even to its being termed the earliest philosophy, provided it be
granted that the progress of the human race was already well under way
when it appeared. But when it is assumed, as it is by many, that the
animistic conception of nature is necessary to, and antedates, the
establishment of Magic, I must dissent and affirm that a very large number
of magical practices neither presuppose, nor in any way involve, a belief
in animism, and that there are good reasons for considering them
original, _i.e._ not corruptions of practices primitively implying that
belief. So much I trust to have shown in the preceding pages.[32]
I do not in the least deny that some of the magical practices in existence
are derived from actions of a different character. Many of the
'superstitions' of civilised countries have had a long history. Several of
the marriage customs; for instance, the cutting of the cake by the bride,
and the lifting of the bride over the threshold, are vestiges of actions
once necessary or useful.[33] But it would be absurd to conclude from the
existence of derived magical practices that Magic, as a whole, is to be
accounted for on a theory of 'lapsed intelligence.'
=Magic and Religion combine but never fuse.=--When ghosts and
nature-beings have become mental possessions of the savage, one may expect
the sphere of Magic to extend so as to include these unseen, mysterious
beings. Why should not the magical power take effect upon ghosts and gods
as well as upon men? The savage, like everybody else, is anxious to use
every available means to secure his preservation and his advancement. Why
then should he not use both Magic and the offering of food? From the
moment Religion appears, until the efficiency of Magic is totally
discredited, we may expect to find these two modes of behaviour associated
in men's dealings with gods, except, however, where the god is clearly
thought of as a world-creator. For the savage could hardly have the
presumption of attempting to control a power he recognises as the maker of
the human race and of the world. Here are two instances of the combination
of Magic with Religion. 'In the Babar Archipelago, when a woman desires to
have a child, she invites a man, who is himself the father of a large
family, to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll is
made of red cotton, which the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would
suckle it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by
the legs to the woman's head, saying, "O Upulero, make use of the fowl;
let fall, let descend a child, I beseech you, I entreat you, let a child
fall into my hands and on my lap." Then he asks the woman, "Has the child
come?" and she answers, "Yes, it is sucking already."... Lastly, the bird
is killed, and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic plate of
sacrifice....'[34] In this ceremony prayer and sacrifice to a god are
associated with magical practices of a mimetic and sympathetic character.
In a large number of ceremonies, the god is dealt with religiously in
order to secure from him 'power,' and then Magic is added to make the
power effective. In old Egypt one of the formulas according to which the
help of gods was secured began with an appeal to them under their popular
names. It was a prayer which they were free to heed or to neglect. Then
followed, in order to compel them to act, an adjuration introducing the
mystical names, 'those written at birth in their heart by their father and
mother.'[35] The magician not only claimed the power to force the gods to
do his bidding, but also, in case of disobedience, to punish them, even by
destruction. Remnants of magical dealings with gods are found even in the
Christian Religion, if we are to believe the authors quoted by Frazer.[36]
Magic and Religion are so closely interwoven in the life of peoples of
low culture that some authors have affirmed the impossibility of
separating them. Their affirmation need not be contradicted unless it be
intended to mean that originally they were one and the same thing. However
closely interwoven they may be, Magic and Religion remain distinct, as in
the above instances. One might say, borrowing the language of the chemist,
that they do not form compounds, but only mixtures.
* * * * *
=What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion? Frazer's
Theory.=--Our conclusions are, so far, that Magic has had an independent
origin, that it very probably antedated Religion, and that they associate
for common purposes without ever fusing, for they are referable to
different principles. Are we, then, driven to the opinion that even though
Magic should have antedated Religion and been often combined with it in
common undertakings, it has, nevertheless, contributed in no way to the
establishment of Religion? That conclusion is not unavoidable. Frazer's
conception presents an alternative which, however, we cannot accept. As he
recognises not only a fundamental distinction, but even an opposition of
principle between Magic and Religion, he cannot think of allowing the
former a positive influence in the establishment of Religion. Yet he
admits a genetic relation between them: it is, according to him, the
recognition of the failure of Magic that is the cause of the worship of
gods. 'I would suggest,' writes Frazer, 'that a tardy recognition of the
inherent falsehood and barrenness of Magic set the more thoughtful part of
mankind to cast about for a truer theory of nature and a more fruitful
method of turning her resources to account.' When man saw that his magical
actions were not the real cause of the activity of nature, it occurred to
him that, '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 themselves, directed its course and
brought about all the various series of events which he had hitherto
believed to be dependent on his own Magic.... To these mighty beings,
whose handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of
nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on
their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him
with all good things.... In this, or some such way as this, the deeper
minds may be conceived to have made the transition from Magic to
Religion.'[37] Several obvious objections may be raised against this view.
I would remark first of all that Frazer does not discredit the sources of
the belief in ghosts and in nature-beings mentioned in the preceding
section: sleep and trances; apparitions; the impulse to personify great
and startling natural phenomena; the idea of creation. His hypothesis of
the origin of Religion is, therefore, superfluous, unless he could show
that the transition from Magic to Religion took place in the manner he
suggests before the experiences and reflections we have named had given
rise to the idea of god.
The assumption on which Frazer's hypothesis rests, namely, that sagacious
men of wild races persuaded themselves and their fellows of the
inefficiency of Magic, seems clearly contradicted by the history of the
relation of Magic to Religion, and also by the psychology of belief. On
the latter ground, he may justly be accused of attributing neither enough
influence to the will to believe nor to the support it receives from the
many apparent or real successes of Magic. These successes, with the help
of the several ways of accounting for failures without giving up the
belief,[38] were in my opinion sufficient to support a belief in the
efficiency of Magic until long after the birth of Religion. Is not that
the conclusion we must draw from the recent spread of the spiritualistic
movement, not only among the untutored, but even among representatives of
our higher culture? The late gains of spiritism have been made despite
numberless failures, the repeated discovery of deception, and the
satisfactory scientific explanation of a large proportion of the alleged
spiritistic facts, and thanks merely to a desire to believe, and to a few
questionable facts not readily explained by accepted hypotheses. To
suppose that before ghosts and nature-beings had been thought of and made
great enough to exercise a practical influence upon men's conduct, there
had existed, in the barbarous circumstances implied in the supposition,
persons so keenly observant, so capable of scientific generalisation, and
so free from the obscuring influences of passion as to be able to reject
the many instances of apparent success of Magic, is to posit a miracle
where a satisfactory natural explanation already exists.
In _Magic and Religion_, Andrew Lang directs a vigorous and successful
attack upon Frazer's hypothesis.[39] A part of his argument, based on
generally accepted historical data, is summarised in this passage: 'If we
find that the most backward race known to us believes in a power, yet
propitiates him neither by prayer nor sacrifice, and if we find, as we do,
that in many more advanced races in Africa and America, it is precisely
the highest power which is left unpropitiated, then we really cannot argue
that gods were first invented as power who could give good things, on
receipt of other good things, sacrifice and prayer.'[40] He remarks, in
addition, that although one would not expect people who had recognised the
uselessness of Magic and turned to gods, to continue the development of
the magical art, yet, in order to find the highest Magic one has to go to
no less a civilisation than that of Japan, where gods are plentiful.
Although the hypothesis that gods and Religion are the consequence of the
recognition of the failure of Magic, must be rejected, it does not follow
that two modes of activity in the service of common purposes, as are Magic
and early Religion, do not act upon each other in many ways. If Magic was
first in the field, we may believe that the satisfaction it gave to man by
its results, apparent and real, and in providing him with a means of
expressing his desires, tended to retard the establishment of any other
method of securing the same ends. The habit of doing a thing in a
particular manner always stands more or less in the way of the discovery
of other ways of doing the same thing. So that Magic was, in these
respects, a hindrance to the making of Religion. There is, however, a
grain of truth in Frazer's hypothesis. Had Magic completely satisfied
man's multifarious desires, he would, in all probability, have paid but
scant attention to the gods, for it is in times of trial that man turns to
them. It was thus greatly advantageous to the making of Religion that the
inadequacy of Magic should have been felt. Moreover, Magic exercised, in
ways mentioned before, a very considerable influence on the general mental
growth of savage populations; in this sense also it may be said to have
helped Religion.
In a penetrating comparison of Magic with Religion, Marett[41] points out
how easily our third class of Magic--Spell-Magic--assumes 'the garb of an
affair between persons,' and thus approaches very close to Religion. But
even when Magic involves the 'projection of an imperative will,' the
fundamental difference between the two modes of behaviour remains quite
distinct. 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.' If this utterance is to be regarded as
expressing an attempt to project the operator's 'will' upon the enemies,
we are clearly in the realm of pure Magic. But if it is to be understood
as addressed to a personal being, it is a prayer, and then we deal with an
instance of the combination of Magic with Religion.
* * * * *
=Magic and the Origin of Science.=--A common opinion has it that Magic and
not the mechanical type of behaviour is the precursor of science. Before
bringing this chapter to a close, we shall try and determine in what
sense this statement is to be understood.
The reader will remember that after discriminating roughly, in the
introduction, the three modes of behaviour observable in man, I added that
the anthropopathic behaviour becomes Religion when it is directed to gods,
and the mechanical becomes science when the principle of quantitative
proportion it implies is definitively recognised. Frazer, who sets forth
in his great book the magical origin of science, may stand as the
representative of that theory. 'Magic,' he tells us, 'is next of kin to
science,' for science 'assumes that in nature one event follows another
necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any special
spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical
with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith,
implicit, but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature ... his
power [the magician's], great as he believes it to be, is by no means
arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly
conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of
nature as conceived by him.... Thus the analogy between the magical and
the scientific conception of the world is close. In both of them the
succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being determined by
immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated
precisely.'[42] Upon this I observe, first, that the acknowledgment of a
fixed relation between actions or beliefs and their results is not
peculiar to Magic; it is implied also in Religion and, more perfectly, in
mechanical behaviour. Salvation is by the right practice, or by the right
faith, or both. The gods cannot be approached and conciliated in _any_
way; worshipper, no less than magician, has to conform to a definite
ritual. In certain not entirely barbarous communities salvation or
damnation is held to follow, respectively, belief or disbelief in no less
than thirty-nine articles! So that 'definite and certain succession of
events,' their determination 'by immutable laws' to the elimination of
caprice, chance, or accident, are expressions which apply, on the whole,
as well to Religion as to Magic. These phrases do not denote a kinship of
Magic to Science, which could not be claimed also by Religion.
Turning to another side of the matter, we observe that Frazer finds it
convenient to minimise, in this connection, the considerable share of the
personal, _i.e._ of the capricious, the incalculable, in Magic. The
personality of the magician introduces an indeterminate and undeterminable
factor about which enough has been said in preceding sections. Nothing
could be in more direct antagonism to the scientific attitude than these
two factors: the influence accorded to the personality of the magician and
the belief in occult powers belonging to particular objects and events. So
that it is truer to the facts to say that the fundamental conception of
science, so far from being identical with that of Magic, is absent from
it. For the essential presupposition of science--the one that
differentiates it alike from Magic and from Religion--is the
acknowledgment of definite and constant _quantitative_ relations between
causes and effects, relations which completely exclude the personal
element and the occult. If that scientific presupposition is absent from
Magic and from Religion, it is implicitly present in mechanical behaviour.
The savage is nearer the scientific spirit and its method when he
constructs a weapon to fit a particular purpose, or when he adjusts his
bow and his arrow to the direction and the strength of the wind, than
when he burns an enemy in effigy, abstains from sexual intercourse to
promote success in the hunt, or exorcises diseases.
What magic shares with science is not the belief in the fundamental
principle we have named, but the desire to gain the mastery over the
powers of nature and the practice of the experimental method. The
experimentation of Magic is, however, so limited and so unconscious that
it can hardly be assimilated to the modern scientific method. If any one
were to turn to history for an argument in support of the thesis defended
by Frazer, and point out that the alchemist is the lineal ancestor of the
scientist, the sufficient answer would be--(1) Historical succession does
not imply continuity of principle. Although Magic, Alchemy, and Science
form an historical sequence, the fundamental principle of the last is not
to be found in the others. (2) The clear recognition of the principle of
fixed quantitative relations is, whenever and wherever it appears, the
birth of Science and the death of both Magic and Alchemy. This last fact
demonstrates clearly the fundamental enmity of these arts to the
scientific principle.
The discovery of the scientific principle was probably almost as much
hindered by the false notions and the pernicious habits of mind
encouraged by Magic, as furthered by the gain in general mental activity
and knowledge which it brought about. Magic, no more than Religion,
encourages the exact observation of external facts, but rather
self-deception with regard to them.