_MAGIC AND RELIGION_
'The sin of witchcraft is as the sin of rebellion.' The idea which
inspires this text probably is that a person who seeks to obtain his
ends by witchcraft is rebelling against the deity or deities through
whom alone these ends should be sought. Witchcraft is also an insult
and injury to the official priests, who regard the witch as the surgeon
regards the bone-setter, or as the geologist regards the 'dowser' or
water-finder who uses the divining-rod.
Magic or witchcraft falls into two main classes. The former is magic of
the sort used by people who think that things accidentally like each
other influence each other. You find a stone shaped like a yam, and you
sow it in the yam plot You find a stone like a duck, and expect to have
good duck-shooting while you carry the stone about in a bag. In the
same way the part influences the whole; you burn some of a man's hair,
and so he catches a fever. Imitation works in the same manner; you
imitate the emergence of grubs from the larvæ, and you expect grubs to
emerge.
All magic of this kind is wrought by material objects, sticks, stones,
hair, and so forth, which sometimes have been 'charmed' by songs
chanted over them. Among the Arunta of Central Australia, in many
respects a backward people, we do hear of an 'evil spirit' influencing
the material object which has been charmed.[1] We also hear of spirits
which instruct men in medical magic. But, as a rule, the magic is
materialistic. It really does produce effects, by suggestion: a man
dies and a woman is won, if they know that magic is being worked to
kill or woo.
The second sort of magic acts by spells which constrain spirits or
gods to do the will of the magician. This magic involves itself in
religion when the magical ceremonies are, so to speak, only symbolic
prayers expressed in a kind of sign-language. But if the idea is to
put constraint by spells on a god or spirit, then the intention is
magical and rebellious. Though the official priest of a savage god may
use magic in his appeal to that deity, he is not a wizard. It is the
unofficial practitioner who is a witch, just as the unqualified medical
practitioner is a quack. In the same way if a minister of the kirk
was clairvoyant or second-sighted that was a proof of godliness and
inspiration. But if a lay parishioner was second-sighted, he or she was
in danger of the stake as a witch or wizard.
These, briefly stated, are the points of contrast and points of contact
between magic and religion. The question has recently been raised by
Mr. Frazer, in the new edition of his 'Golden Bough,' whether magic
has not everywhere preceded religion. Have men not attempted to secure
weather and everything else to their desire by magic, before they
invented gods, and prayed to them for what magic, as they learned by
experience, failed to provide'?
This question cannot be historically determined. If we find a race
which has magic but no religion, we cannot be certain that it did not
once possess a religion of which it has despaired. I once knew a man
who, as a child, suffered from toothache. He prayed for relief: it did
not come. He at once, about the age of eight, abandoned religion. What
a child may do, in the way of despair of religion, a childlike race may
do. Therefore, if we find a race with magic but without religion, we
cannot scientifically say that the race has never possessed a religion.
Thus the relative priority of religion or magic cannot be ascertained
historically.
Again, all depends on our definition of religion, if we are to pursue
a speculation rather airy and unbottomed on facts. Mr. Frazer defines
religion as 'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man
which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of
human life.'[2] I But clearly this definition does not include all
that we usually mean by religion. If men believe in a potent being who
originally made or manufactured the nature of things or most things
(I am warned not to use the word 'creator'), that is an idea so far
religious that it satisfies, by the figment of a supernatural agent,
the speculative faculty. Clearly the belief in such a being is a germ
whence may spring the ideas of duty towards, and an affection for, the
being. Nobody can deny that these are religious ideas, though they do
not appeal in Mr. Frazer's definition. The believers in such a being,
even if they never ask him for anything, cannot be called irreligious.
At a period of his life when Coleridge never prayed, he would have been
much and not unjustly annoyed if Mr. Frazer had called him irreligious.
A man may believe in God, and yet trust him too utterly to address him
in petitions for earthly goods and gear. 'Thy Will be Done' may be his
only prayer; yet he does not lack religion. He only lacks it in the
sense of Mr. Frazer's definition.
If that definition is granted, Mr. Frazer is prepared to produce a
backward race, houseless, without agriculture, metals, domestic
animals, and without religion in Mr. Frazer's sense. They have magic,
but they have no religion, says Mr. Frazer, who presently informs us
that 1 the first-born child of every woman was eaten by the tribe as
part of a religious ceremony.'[3] So they have a religion, and a bloody
religion it is.
That people is the Australian, among whom, 'while magic is universally
practised, religion in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of
the higher powers seems to be nearly unknown.'[4] 'Nobody dreams of
propitiating gods or spirits by prayer or sacrifice.'
We are presently to see that Mr. Frazer gives facts which contradict
his own statement. But first I must cite all that he says about
Australian religion. 'In the south-eastern parts of Australia, where
the conditions of life in respect of climate, water, and vegetation
are more favourable than elsewhere, some faint beginnings of religion
appear in the shape of a slight regard for the comfort of departed
friends. Thus some Victorian tribes are said to have kindled fires
near the bodies of their dead in order to warm the ghost, but "the
recent custom of providing food for it is derided by the intelligent
old aborigines as 'white fellows' gammon."'[5] Some tribes in this
south-eastern region are further reported to believe in a supreme
spirit, who is regarded sometimes as a benevolent, but more frequently
as a malevolent, being.[6] Brewin, the supreme being of the Kurnai,
was at first identified by two intelligent members of the tribe with
Jesus Christ, but on further reflection they thought he must be the
devil.[7] But whether viewed as gods or devils it does not seem that
these spirits were ever worshipped.[8] It is worth observing that
in the same districts which thus exhibit the germs of religion, the
organisation of society and the family has also made the greatest
advance. The cause is probably the same in both cases--namely, a
more plentiful supply of food due to the greater fertility of the
soil.[9] On the other hand, in the parched and barren regions of
Central Australia, where magic attains its highest importance, religion
seems to be entirely wanting.[10] The traces of a higher faith in
Australia, where they occur, are probably sometimes due to European
influence. 'I am strongly of opinion,' says one who knew the aborigines
well, 'that those who have written to show that the blacks had some
knowledge of God, practised prayer, and believed in places of reward
and punishment beyond the grave, have been imposed upon, and that
until they had learned something of Christianity from missionaries
and others the blacks had no beliefs or practices of the sort. Having
heard the missionaries, however, they were not slow to invent what I
may call kindred statements with aboriginal accessories with a view
to please and surprise the whites.'[11] Sometimes, too, the reported
belief of the natives in a great or good spirit may rest merely on a
misunderstanding. Mr. Lorimer Fison informs me (in a letter dated June
3, 1899) that a German missionary, Mr. Siebert, resident in the Dieri
tribe of Central Australia, has ascertained that their Mura Mura, which
Mr. Gason explained to be the Good Spirit,[12] is nothing more or less
than the ancestors in the 'dream times.' There are male and female
Mura Mura--husbands, wives, and children--just as among the Dieri at
the present day. Mr. Fison adds: 'The more I learn about savage tribes,
the more I am convinced that among them the ancestors grow into gods.'
This is all that Mr. Frazer has here to say about the religious belief
of the Australians. He has found, in 'the museum of the past,' a people
with abundance of magic, yet with no religion, or not enough to affect
his theory that religion was everywhere second in order of time to
magic. I am very content to meet him on Australian ground. There we
find abundance of testimony to the existence of a belief speculative,
moral, and emotional, but not practical. The beings of this belief
are not propitiated by sacrifice, and very seldom by prayer, but
they are makers, friends, and judges. Mr. Tylor accepts (I think)
the evidence for the beliefs as at present found, but presumes many
of their characteristics to be of European importation. Against that
theory I have argued in the preceding essay, giving historical dates.
Mr. Frazer omits and ignores the evidence for the beliefs. He denies
to the Australians more than 'some faint beginnings of religion,' and
puts down 'traces of a higher faith' as 'probably sometimes due' (and
perhaps it sometimes is) 'to European influence.' For this theory Mr.
Curr is cited: 'Having heard the missionaries, they were not slow to
invent what I call kindred statements with aboriginal accessories, with
a view to please and surprise the whites.'[13]
To please and surprise the whites the natives concealed their
adaptations of Christian ideas in the mysteries, to which white men
are very seldom, or were very seldom, admitted! Is this likely? I
believe that the exclusive rule is now relaxed where the natives
are practically paid to exhibit.[14] One Bora was under European
patronage, and the old men and children were fed on European supplies.
But when Mr. Howitt was initiated by the Kurnai, and so first learned
the secret of their religion,' the old men.... desired to be satisfied
that I had in very deed been fully initiated by the Brajerak black
fellows in their Kuringal.' He therefore retired to a lonely spot,
'far from the possibility of a woman's presence,' and exhibited the
token of his previous initiation by the Murrings. Hitherto 'long as
the Kurnai had known me, these special secrets of the tribe had been
kept carefully from me by all but two,' one of whom was now dead. The
inmost secret was the belief in Mungan-ngaur, 'the Great Father of
the tribe, who was once on earth, and now lives in the sky, [he] is
rather the beneficent father, and the kindly though severe headman of
the whole tribe, than the malevolent wizard, such as are other of the
supernatural beings believed in by the Australian blacks.'[15]
Mr. Frazer cites Mr. Howitt thus: 'Some tribes in this south-eastern
region are further reported to believe in a supreme spirit, who is
regarded sometimes as a benevolent but more frequently as a malevolent
being.'[16] What has become of Mr. Howitt's evidence _after_ initiation
by the Kurnai, evidence published in 1885? How can the blacks invent
beliefs to please the whites when they only reveal them to Mr. Howitt,
after he has produced a bull roarer as a token of initiation? Mr.
Frazer then writes: 'Brewin, the supreme being of the Kurnai, was
at first identified by two intelligent members of the tribe with
Jesus Christ, but on further reflection they thought he must be the
devil.' This is cited from a work of 1881, Messrs. Fison and Howitt's
'Kamilaroi and Kurnai' (p. 255). It must have escaped even Mr. Frazer's
erudition that Mr. Howitt says: 'When I wrote of Brewin in my paper
on "Some Australian Beliefs" I was not aware of the doctrines as to
Mungan-ngaur. These the Kurnai carefully concealed from me until I
learned them at the Jeraeil, or mysteries.'[17]
Had Mr. Frazer observed this remark of Mr. Howitt's, he could not
have cited, without comment or correction, Mr. Howitt's earlier and
confessedly erroneous opinion that 'Brewin' is 'the supreme being of
the Kurnai.'[18] To Mr. Howitt's correction in 1885 of his mistake of
1881 Mr. Frazer, as far as I observe, makes no allusion.
Mr. Frazer must either have overlooked all the evidence for an
Australian belief ruinous to his theory of the origin of religion
(ruinous if Australia represents the earliest known stages of
religion), or he must have reasons, not produced, for thinking all that
evidence too worthless to deserve confutation or even mention. We are
anxious to know his reasons, for, on other matters, he freely quotes
our witnesses. Yet I cannot think Mr. Frazer consistently so severe as
to Australian evidence. He has a picturesque theory that the origin of
the Passover was a rite in which masked men ran about through Hebrew
towns in the night, butchering all the first born of Israel.[19] No
people, we exclaim, ever did such a thing! In proof of the existence of
the custom Mr. Frazer adduces an Australian parallel: 'In some tribes
of New South Wales the first-born child of every woman was eaten by
the tribe as part of a religious ceremony.'[20] Mr. Frazer's authority
is a communication by Mr. John Moore Davis, and was published in 1878,
twenty-three years ago, by Mr. Brough Smyth. Here is what Mr. Davis
says: 'In parts of N. S. W., such as Bathurst, Goulburn, the Lachlan,
or Macquarie, it was customary _long ago_ for the first-born of every
lubra to be eaten by the tribe, as part of a religious ceremony, and I
recollect a black fellow who had, in compliance with the custom, been
thrown when an infant on the fire, but was rescued and brought up by
some stock-keepers who happened accidentally to be passing at the time.
The marks of the burns were distinctly visible on the man when I saw
him....'
The evidence is what the Society for Psychical Research calls 'remote.'
In 1878 the event was already 'long ago.' The testimony is from we know
not how remote a hand. The black sufferer, as a baby at the time, could
not remember the facts. The stock-keepers who were present are not
named, nor do we even know whether Mr. Davis was informed by them, or
heard their story at third or fourth hand. We do not know whether they
correctly interpreted the alleged sacrifice, in a religious ceremony
(by a people said to be almost or quite irreligious), of all the
first-born children of women. Mr. Frazer has circulated inquiries as to
Australian customs, and has published the results in the 'Journal of
the Anthropological Institute.'[21] He does not appeal to the answers
in corroboration of Mr. Davis's remarkable story.[22]
Imbued with the superstition of psychical research, I once investigated
the famous Australian tale of Fisher's ghost (1826). I sent for
the Court archives (the ghost led to a trial for murder), and I
received these and a contemporary plan of the scene of the murder
and the apparition. These documents left me doubtful about the
ghost of Fisher.[23] May I not say that similar researches and good
corroborative evidence are needed before we accept a settler's tale
of an Australian _sacrifice_, 'long ago,' as confirming a theory of
a Hebrew _yearly massacre_ of all the first-born? Moreover, if Mr.
Moore's evidence is good as to a sacrifice, why is the latest evidence
of Mr. Howitt and all my other witnesses as to Australian religion not
worth mentioning? Why is it so bad that Mr. Frazer goes back to Mr.
Howitt's evidence of 1881, before he knew the secret, and is silent
about Mr. Howitt's evidence of 1885?
We may quote Sir Alfred Lyall: 'One effect of the accumulation of
materials has been to encourage speculative generalisations, because it
has provided a repertory out of which one may make arbitrary selection
of examples and precedents to suit any theory.' Has Mr. Frazer escaped
this error?
I cannot think that he has escaped, and the error is fatal. He cites
Mr. Howitt, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Oldfield, Mr. Dawson, and Mr. Cameron (whom
I am about to quote), all of whom speak to a native religion of the
kind for which I contend. Their witness is enough for him in other
matters, but as to this matter these witnesses, for some reason, are
absolutely ignored. I myself have omitted the affirmative evidence
of Mr. Oldfield and Mr. Foelsche as to religion, because I think
it contaminated, although in part corroborated. But my witnesses,
all cited for other points by Mr. Frazer, are not even mentioned on
the point where, if their reports be correct, they seem rather to
invalidate his central theory--that religion was invented in the
despair of magic.
As to that despair, it does not exist. The religions of Babylon,
Greece, and Egypt lived side by side with superabundant magic. The
Australians, when their magic fails, merely say that some other black
fellow is working stronger counter-magic.[24]
However, that is a different question. The question at present is, Why
does Mr. Frazer not cite and confute the evidence of witnesses, whom
he quotes on other points, evidence fatal to his theory? Why does he
ignore it? Among so many witnesses, distrustful of facts that surprise
them, anxious to explain by borrowing, all cannot be biassed. If they
were, why is not the testimony of witnesses with the opposite bias also
discredited or ignored? Why is it welcomed? Mr. Frazer prefers the
opinion of Mr. Siebert, a German missionary, that the Dieri propitiate
ancestral spirits, to the opinion of Mr. Gason, that the being of
their belief is a good spirit who made them. I do not know which of
these gentlemen is right; possibly both views are held by different
native informants. But Mr. Siebert's ancestral spirits come through
Mr. Fison, who says: 'The more I learn about savage tribes, the more I
am convinced that among them ancestors grow into Gods '--so natural a
process where the names of the dead are tabooed!
'Oh no, we never mention them,
Their names are never heard.'
So they grow into gods! Mr. Fison is a Spencerian; so, for all that I
know, may Mr. Siebert be. If so, both have a theory and a bias, yet
they are cited. It is only witnesses who hold that the Australians,
certainly not, as a rule, ancestor worshippers, believe in a kind of
god, who are not deemed worthy of mention on this point, though quite
trustworthy on other points.
I cannot understand this method. The historian has a theory. He
searches for contradictory facts. The chemist or biologist does not
fail to mention facts hostile to his theory.
We are not asking Mr. Frazer to accept the testimony of Mr. Howitt,
Mr. Cameron, Mr. Ridley, Mr. Greenway, Mr. Gason, Mr. Hale, Archdeacon
Günther, the Benedictines of Nursia, Mr. Dawson, Mr. Eyre, Mr. Roth,
Mrs. Langloh Parker; or to accept the opinion of Waitz, Mr. Howitt,
and others as to unborrowed Australian religion. Their testimony may
be erroneous; when it is proved erroneous I shall abandon it. But
perhaps anthropologists may be allowed to be curious as to the reasons
for which this and similar testimony is ignored. The reason cannot be
that there is contradictory evidence, for some observers deny magic to
the tribes whom they know.[25] Yet Mr. Frazer has no doubt as to the
prevalence of magic, though one of his witnesses, Mr. Foelsche, gives
no magic, but gives religion. 'Whether viewed as gods or devils,' Mr.
Frazer says of South-East Australian beings, 'it does not seem that
these spirits were ever worshipped.' He has ignored the evidence that
they are worshipped (if the rights of the Bora are worship), but, if
they are not worshipped, so much the worse for his theory. Gods, in
his theory, were invented just to be worshipped. 'To these mighty
beings.... man now addressed himself.... beseeching them of their mercy
to furnish him with all good things....'[26]
As against the correctness of my witnesses I only know the mass of
evidence by white observers who have detected no religion among these
savages. But I do not necessarily accept the negative evidence, because
the beliefs are reported, by the affirmative witnesses, to be guarded
with the utmost secrecy.[27] It is not every inquirer who has the power
of eliciting beliefs which, for many reasons, are jealously guarded.
Many Englishmen or Lowlanders are unable to extract legends of fairies,
ghosts, and second-sight from Gaelic Highlanders. On the other hand,
they are kind enough to communicate to me plenty of their folk-lore.
'The Urkus were very shy and frightened when asked about their
religion,' says Mr. Pope Hennessy in his 'Notes on the Jukos and other
Tribes of the Middle Benæ' (1898).[28]
Thus I prefer the affirmative evidence of Europeans who have won the
confidence of the Australians, and have been initiated, to the denials
of observers less fortunate. As for their theory that the religious
practices, if they exist, are borrowed from Christians, I have stated
my case in the preceding essay. There could be no stronger evidence
than the absence of prayer that the Australian religion is not borrowed.
This argument ought especially to appeal to Mr. Frazer. His definition
of religion is that of Euthyphro, in the Platonic Dialogue of that name.
_Socrates_. Sacrificing is giving to the Gods, and piety
is asking from them?
_Euthyphro_. Yes, Socrates.
_Socrates_. Upon this view, then, piety is a science of
asking and giving?
_Euthyphro_. You understand me capitally, Socrates.
Mr. Frazer agrees with Euthyphro. But 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 impropriated, then we really cannot argue that gods were
first invented as powers who could give good things, on receipt of
other good things, sacrifice and prayer.
Sir Alfred Lyall here agrees with Mr. Frazer. 'The foundation of
natural religion is.... the principle of _Do ut des_' ('I give that
you may give'), 'and the most ingenious researches into the evolution
of primitive ideas will hardly take us beyond or behind it.'[29] My
'researches' do not pretend to be I ingenious.' It is a mere question
of facts. Have Mr. Howitt's tribes the idea of a power, a very great
power, which is interested in conduct, sanctions conduct, but is not
asked for material benefits? Have, or had, all the American and African
peoples whom I have cited a highest power often unconciliated? If
so, why did they invent these beings? Certainly not to play with them
at the game of _Do ut des_. Yet that game was the origin of religion,
according to Sir Alfred and Mr. Frazer. The facts must be mentioned,
must be disproved, before the theory of _Do ut des_ can be established.
Even if we accepted the theory of Euthyphro and of Mr. Frazer it is
beset by difficulties. Religion is the despair of magic, says the
theory. Magic is found by the higher minds to be a failure. Rain is not
produced, nor sunshine, nor food, as a result of magic. Consequently
invisible powers, 'like himself, but far stronger,' are invented by
man. They are immortal, and are asked to take man's immortal spirit
home to them.[30] Yet they are mortal themselves.[31] They are so
dependent on man, these beings which are far stronger, that man
actually has to sacrifice his kings to them annually to keep these
far stronger beings in vigour.[32] I am willing to suppose, with Mr.
Frazer, a very gradual process of evolution in religious thought. Man
began by thinking his own magic all powerful. He found that a failure,
'and came to rest, as in a quiet haven after a tempestuous voyage, in a
new system of faith and practice.... a substitute, however precarious,
for that' (magical) 'sovereignty over nature which he had reluctantly
abdicated.' To be sure he had not abdicated, Greek and Babylonic magic
are especially notorious. But let us fancy that man at large but
gradually reached the conception of powers far higher than himself.
They were very limited powers at first: they helped him, but he had to
help them, to the extent, sometimes, of killing his kings annually to
keep them in health. This is Mr. Frazer's position.[33] But if our
Australian evidence is correct, this theory is baseless. That is why
our evidence cannot be neglected.
It is another difficulty that the more man ought to be finding out the
fallacy of magic, the less does he find it out. Mr. Frazer chooses the
Arunta of Central Australia as a people wholly without religion, but
universally magicians. I have frequently read the account of Arunta
magic by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, but I never found that it included
a belief like this: 'A man god.... draws his extraordinary power from a
certain sympathy with nature.' He is defined not as an incarnation of
a god 'of an order different from and superior to man,' but as only a
superior sorcerer where most men are sorcerers. 'He is not merely the
receptacle of a divine spirit.' We have just been told that he is not
the receptacle of a divine spirit at all, and we shall take it to be
so. 'His whole being, body and soul, is so attuned to the harmony of
the world, that a touch of his hand or a turn of his head may send a
thrill vibrating through the universal framework of things.[34]....'
But you will look in vain for this portentous belief among the Arunta,
who, not having found out the fallacy of magic, have not invented
beings superior to man. For this sorcerer of the very highest magic
you have to go to the civilisation of Japan, or to the peoples on the
Congo, much more civilised than the Arunta.[35]These peoples, by Mr.
Frazer's theory, had experience and intelligence enough to find out the
fallacy of magic, and had gods in great plenty. But they have carried
the belief in magic, in a magician much superior to his neighbours, to
a pitch infinitely beyond the Arunta. Yet the Arunta have no gods with
whom to draw comparisons invidious and unfavourable to magicians; they
have, it is said, no gods at all.
Just as magic thus reaches its highest power, according to Mr. Frazer,
where there is most religious competition (while the reverse should
be the case by his theory), so religion flourishes most in Australia,
exactly where, by Mr. Frazer's theory, the circumstances are most
unfavourable to religion and most favourable to magic. Magic, by the
hypothesis, must prosper most, its fallacy must be latest discovered,
it must latest give place to religion, where it appears to be most
successful, and _vice versâ_. Yet Mr. Frazer assures us that in
Australia magic flourishes alone, where every circumstance demonstrates
its failure; and religion begins to blossom precisely where magic must
seem to its devotees a relative success.
Before examining this apparent inconsistency, let us note Mr. Frazer's
inadvertent proof that his irreligious Australians are religious. One
part of the business of magic is to produce rain in season, sun in
season, and consequently an abundant food supply.[36] The Dieri of
Central Australia need especially excellent magic. 'In a dry season
their lot is a hard one.' Having no religion, they ought, of course, to
work by mere materialistic magic, like the Arunta.[37] But they, oddly
enough, 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which they
call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain,' and then
men inspired by the Mura Mura work magic, or pray in sign-language,
as you please.[38] Now the Mura Mura, the rain-givers, by evidence
which Mr. Frazer himself has published, is 'a Good Spirit,' not a set
of remote ancestral spirits. The witness is Mr. Gason, 'than whom'
(says Mr. Frazer's authority, Dr. Stirling) 'no man living has been
more among blacks or knows more of their ways.' If on this excellent
evidence the Australian Dieri call for rain to a good spirit, then they
have religion, which Mr. Frazer denies. But if Mr. Siebert, a German
missionary, is right (and Mr. Frazer, as we saw, prefers his view to
that of Mr. Gason), then the Mura Mura are only ancestral spirits.
Yet to demand the aid of remote ancestral spirits by prayer is
religion. In fact Mr. Frazer had said of the powerful beings of the
Southern Australians 'it does not seem that these spirits are ever
worshipped.'[39] But prayer is worship, and the Dieri pray, whether
to a good spirit or to ancestral spirits, potent over the sky, and
dwelling therein. If this is not religion, by Mr. Frazer's own
definition, namely 'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior
to man, which are believed to direct and control the course of nature,'
what is religion?[40] Yet in Australia 'nobody dreams of propitiating
gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice,' says our author.[41] None
the less they 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which
they call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain.' After
ceremonies magical, or more prayers in sign-language, the Mura Mura
'at once cause clouds to appear in the sky.'[42] They see the signs
which their worshippers are making. Here then we have prayer to 'powers
superior to man' (whether to the Good Spirit or to ancestral spirits),
and that, on evidence collected by Mr. Frazer, occurs in a country
where, fourteen pages earlier, he had assured us that 'nobody thinks
of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice.' Sacrifice,
happily, there is none; the Dieri have not degenerated to sacrificing
human victims like the Greeks.
The scene is Central Australia, where 'the pitiless sun beats down
for months together out of a blue and cloudless sky on the parched
and gaping earth.' Consequently rain-making magic must perpetually
prove a failure. Therefore, I presume, the Dieri have been driven
into religion by discovering the fallacy of magic. This would be a
logical argument, but Mr. Frazer's argument is the converse of what I
suggest and contradicts his theory. He dubiously grants the existence
of possible faint 'germs of religion' 'in the south-eastern parts of
Australia, where the conditions of life in respect of climate, water,
and vegetation are more favourable than elsewhere.... It is worth
observing that in the same regions which thus exhibit the germs of
religion, the organisation of society and the family has also made the
greatest advance. The cause is probably the same in both cases--namely,
a more plentiful supply of food due to the greater fertility of the
soil.'[43] Now, according to Mr. Frazer's whole argument, the confessed
failure of magic is the origin of religion.[44] But in Central
Australia, where magic notoriously fails most conspicuously to supply
water and vegetation, magic flourishes to the entire exclusion of
religion, except among the Dieri. On the other hand, in South-Eastern
Australia, where magic, if practised, is abundantly rewarded by more
water and more vegetation, there these proofs of the success of magic
are 'probably the cause' of the germs of religion. But, by Mr. Frazer's
hypothesis, what must be the apparent success of magic in securing 'a
more plentiful supply of food' ought to encourage the belief in magic,
and prevent religion from even germinating. On the other hand, the
successful result of magic (for to what else can a people of sorcerers
attribute the better food supply?) has been 'probably the cause' of the
first germs of religion. How can these things be?
All this time one tribe of Central Australia, the Arunta, remains
resolutely godless 'in spite of all temptations to join denominations'
of a religious character. For the Arunta live in the worst country, the
most rainless, and therefore their magic is most manifestly a failure.
Yet, unlike the natives of South-Eastern Australia (where magic is
most successful), the Arunta cling to magic, and have developed no
religion. If so, as of all rain-making magic theirs is about the
most unsuccessful, they must be very stupid, or they would detect
the failure, and fly to religion, 'a quiet haven after a tempestuous
voyage.' The Arunta are very far from stupid; they have the most
complete and adequate of savage metaphysics. If, then, they have not
approached superior powers, in face of the failure of their magic, it
may be that they have tried and discarded religion. 'Religion for the
women and the children, magic for men' appears to be the Arunta motto:
not so very uncivilised! This I suggest because Mr. Frazer tells us
that at the initiatory rites of the Arunta 'the women and children
believe that the roaring noise' of the wooden slat, tied to a string
and swung about, is 'the voice of the great spirit Twanyirika.'[45] A
great spirit (above all if spelled with capital letters) is rather a
religious conception. 'This spirit, the women are told, lives in wild
and inaccessible regions.... Both uninitiated youths and women are
taught to believe in the existence of Twanyirika.' So write Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen, our only sources.[46]
A brief note is all that these inquirers give in their copious book to
the great spirit. 'This belief,' they say, 'is fundamentally the same
as that found in all Australian tribes.' Now in the tribes reported
on by Mr. Howitt, the spirit whose voice is the sound of the slat or
bull roarer called the _tundun_, and by other names, is the son or
other deputy of Baiame, or some such powerful good being, Mungan-ngaur,
Pirnmeheal, Bunjil, Noorele, or by whatever style he may be called. One
of his duties is to superintend the Bora, or mysteries of the tribes.
The Wiraijuri believe that their type of Twanyirika was destroyed,
for misconduct, by his superior, Baiame. This sinful great spirit was
called Daramulun, but in other tribes Daramulun is apparently the
superior, and goes on existing. He is, says Mr. Howitt, 'the Great
Master,' 'the Father,' the sky dweller, the institutor of society, the
power whose voice 'calls to the rain to fall and make the grass green.'
He is the moral being for whom 'the boys are made so that Daramulun
likes them'--a process involving cries of _nga_ ('good'), so says Mr.
Howitt. His attributes and powers (where he is supreme) 'are precisely
those of Baiame,' who, by Mr. Ridley and many others, is spoken of as
a maker, if I may not say creator. It was in 1854, two years before
publishing his 'Gurre Kamilaroi' (in which 'Baiame' was used for
'God'), that Mr. Ridley asked a Kamilaroi man, 'Do you know Baiame?'
He said, _Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda_ ('I have not seen
Baiame; I have heard, or perceived him. They hear him in the thunder').
Among this tribe Daramulun was not the superior; he was 'author of
disease and medical skill, of mischief and wisdom also; he appears in
the form of a serpent at their assemblies,' like Asclepius and the
American Hobamok.[47] Though Mr. Ridley is a missionary, I venture to
cite him, because his evidence goes back nearly fifty years, to a time
when the blacks had less contact with Europeans. Moreover, Mr. Ridley
is corroborated by Mr. Howitt and other laymen, while Mr. Frazer even
prefers the evidence of a German missionary to that of Mr. Gason, a
lay Englishman of the greatest experience. Mr. Howitt finds, among the
Kurnai, Tundun as the patron of the mysteries and the bull roarer, like
Twanyirika. In Mr. Manning's tribe[48] the same _rôle_ is taken by
Moodgeegally, under the control of Boyma.
We have thus five or six parallels to the Twanyirika of the godless
Arunta, and all are subordinate to a higher power. If then, as Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen tell us, the belief in the Arunta Twanyirika, the
great spirit, 'is fundamentally the same as that found in all the
Australian tribes,' Twanyirika ought to have a much more powerful
benevolent superior. In that case the Arunta would
Incline to think there is a god,
Or something very like one,
as Clough says. If so, as they do not propitiate him, they did not
conceive him as a partner in the game of _Do ut des_. But our only
witnesses, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, are extremely reticent about
Twanyirika. Nothing is said about his having a superior, and I assume
that he has none. It seems to follow that he is a mere Mumbo Jumbo, or
bogle, devised by the men to keep the women and children in order.
But in South-Eastern Australia (if I may trust Mr. Howitt's evidence,
to which Mr. Frazer does not here allude) the counterpart of Twanyirika
is a mere servant of a much higher being, everywhere called by
names meaning 'our father.' Therefore either 'our father' Baiame,
Mungan-ngaur, and the rest, have been developed out of a sportive
bugbear like Twanyirika, or Twanyirika (if he really has no superior)
is a rudimentary survival of a belief like that in Mungan-ngaur, and
his subordinate, Tundun. In the former case Twanyirika, a germ of the
more advanced religion of South-Eastern Australia, was not invented
as a power behind nature, who might be useful if propitiated, as in
Mr. Frazer's theory. In the latter case the Arunta do not represent
man prior to religion (as Mr. Frazer holds), but man who has cast off
religion. But Mr. Frazer does not seem to notice this dilemma.
The evidence for what most people call 'religion' among the Australian
natives is so far from scanty that one finds it when looking for
other matters, as I am going to show. True, in the following report
the religion does not answer to Mr. Frazer's definition, no powerful
being is here said to be conciliated or propitiated: he is only said
to exist and favour morality. But Mr. Frazer's definition, if pressed,
produces the effect of arguing in a vicious circle. His theory asserts
that powerful beings are only invented by man, in view of man's tardy
discovery that his own magic is powerless. The invented beings are then
propitiated, for selfish ends, and that, by the definition, is religion.
If we produce, as we do, evidence that the belief in powerful beings
has been evolved, and yet that these beings are certainly not
propitiated by sacrifice, and seldom if ever by prayer, that they are
only won by conduct, and by rites not involving sacrifice, Mr. Frazer
can reply, 'Perhaps; but by my definition that kind of belief is not
religion.' Then what is it? 'What else can you call it?' Its existence,
if proved, is fatal to Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of religion
in the despair of magic, because the faithful of the belief of which
I speak do not usually implore the god to do for them what magic has
failed to do. Their belief satisfies their speculative and moral needs:
it does not exist to supply their temporal wants. Yet it is none the
less, but much the more, a religion on that account, except by Mr.
Frazer's definition. If religion is to be defined as he defines it,
'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man,' and so
on, religion can only have arisen as it does in his theory, setting
aside a supernormal revelation. But if we do not deny the name of
religion to the speculative belief in a power superior to man, and to
the moral belief that he lends a supernormal sanction to conduct, and
to the emotional belief that he loves his children, then the belief is
religion, but something other than religion as defined by Mr. Frazer.
Nobody will deny the name of religion to such a belief. Mr. Frazer
says: 'I would ask those who dissent from my conclusions to make sure
that they mean the same thing by religion that I do; for otherwise the
difference between us may be more apparent than real.'[49]
I mean by religion what Mr. Frazer means--and more. The conciliation
of higher powers by prayer and sacrifice is religion, but it need not
be the whole of religion. The belief in a higher power who sanctions
conduct, and is a father and a loving one to mankind, is also religion;
few, if any, will dispute the fact. But this belief, if unaccompanied,
as in Australia, by prayer and sacrifice, cannot be accounted for on
Mr. Frazer's theory: that religion was invented, for worldly ends,
after the recognised failure of magic, which aimed at the same ends
fruitlessly. It is only by limiting his definition of religion, as he
does, that he can establish his theory of the origin of religion. It
is only by omitting mention of the evidence for what nobody else can
deny to be religion, that he can secure his theory.
I return to my additional evidence for Australian religion. As will be
seen, it does not come within Mr. Frazer's definition, but will anybody
deny that the belief is religious? The evidence is that of Mr. A. L. P.
Cameron,[50] and contains a brief comparative glossary of words used
by different tribes of New South Wales to indicate the same objects.
Mr. Cameron had been interested in the black fellows since 1868 at
least, when their numbers were much larger than at present. He had
seen gatherings of from 800 to 1,000. The tribes chiefly in question
dwelt along the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers, and do not include the
Kamilaroi, the Kurnai, and Coast Murring of whom Mr. Howitt speaks.
As to religion, ghosts of the dead are believed to visit the earth,
and to be frequently seen. The blacks 'will often resort to peculiar
devices to avoid mentioning the names of the dead,' a practice hostile
to the development of ancestor worship. No ghost of a man can grow into
a god if his name is tabooed and therefore forgotten. 'The people of
all these tribes appear to have a belief in a Deity, and in a future
state of some kind.' The Wathi Wathi call this being Tha-tha-pali; the
Ta-ta-thi call him Tulong. Mr. Cameron could not obtain translations
of these names, any more than we know the meaning of the names Apollo
or Artemis. The being 'is regarded as a powerful spirit, or perhaps a
supreme supernatural being. They say that he came from the far north,
and now lives in the sky. He told each tribe what language they were to
speak. He made men, women, and dogs, and the latter used to talk, but
he took the power of speech from them. The Ta-ta-thi do not care to
speak much of Tulong, and say that he does not often come to the earth.
Although it seems that in many of the Australian tribes there is only a
very dim idea as to the attributes of the Supreme Being and of a future
state, yet in the Ta-ta-thi and its allied tribes there is certainly a
belief not only in a future state of existence, but also in a system of
rewards and punishments. My Ta-ta-thi informant stated that one of the
doctors ascended long ago through the sky, and there saw a place where
wicked men were roasted.'
Mr. Cameron, of course, had the strongest suspicions of a 'place' so
ostensibly Christian. To this we return.[51]
These tribes practise the Bora rites or initiatory mysteries. If women
witness them 'the penalty is death. The penalty for revealing the
secrets is probably the same.' Mr. Cameron, unlike Mr. Howitt, has
not been initiated, and does not know the full secret. The presiding
being (like the Twanyirika of the Arunta) is called Thuremlin, who, I
conjecture, is Daramulun in his subordinate capacity. 'Their belief
in the power of Thuremlin is undoubted, whereas the Arunta adults do
not appear to believe in Twanyirika, a mere bugbear of the women and
children. The bull roarer is Kalari, or among the Ta-ta-thi Kalk [or
Kallak]--that is to say, "word."' Concerning the instruction given
to the boys, and described by Mr. Howitt, Mr. Cameron, not being
initiated, gives no information.
As to the future life, Mr. Cameron received his account from a
tribesman named Makogo, 'an intelligent member of the Wathi Wathi
tribe.' The belief was that current 'before his people came into
contact with Europeans, and Makogo expressed an opinion that, whether
right or wrong, they would have been better off now had their beliefs
never been disturbed.' Probably Makogo was right. The beliefs were in a
future state of reward or punishment. European contact does not import
but destroy the native form of this creed.
The Wathi Wathi belief answers in character to the creeds expressed
in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Fijian hymns, the famous Orphic
gold talisman of Petilia, the Red Indian belief published by Kohl,
and to many other examples.[52] The Way of Souls, as in these ancient
or savage beliefs, is beset by dangers and temptations, to which the
Egyptian Book of the Dead is a guide-book. If any one desires to
maintain that this Australian idea, held before contact with Europeans,
and now to some extent abandoned after that contact, is of Christian
origin (we know this argument), he must suppose that the Wathi Wathi
adapted the idea from our old 'Lyke Wake Dirge:'
When Brig o' Dread is over and past,
Every night and all,
To Whinny Muir thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy saul.
A weak point there is. The soul of the Wathi Wathi, after death, is met
by another soul, 'who directs him to the road for good men.'
But the natives had no roads, the opponent will reply. They have trade
routes and markets, however, and barter of articles made in special
localities goes on across hundreds of miles of country.[53] Let us
allow that the Wathi Wathi may know a clean path or track from a dirty
one.
The soul meets a dirty and a clean path. The good soul, being
instructed, chooses the dirty path: the other path is kept clean by bad
spirits 'in order to induce the unthinking to follow it,' as Bunyan's
Mr. Ignorance unwarily chose a by-path into hell. The soul next meets a
woman who tries to seduce him. He escapes her lures, and comes to two
women who try to trip him by whirling a rope. One of them is blind,
and the soul evades her. Next comes a deep narrow gap, in which flames
rise and fall. The good soul watches the fall of the flames, and leaps
across; there is no Brig o' Dread. Bed Indian souls cross by a log
which nearly spans the abyss. Two old women meet the good soul, and
take him 'to the Deity, Tha-Tha-Puli.' He tests the soul's strength and
skill by making him throw a nulla-nulla. 'When the Wathi Wathi see a
shooting star, they believe it to be the passage of such a nulla-nulla
through space, and say: "Tha-Tha-Puli is trying the strength of some
new spirit." The soul of a bad man, if it escapes the traps set for
it, is sure to fall into the hell of fire. Many of the natives have
had their beliefs modified by contact with the whites,' and I 'feel
doubtful,' says Mr. Cameron, 'whether the pit of fire was not of this
kind, and questioned my informant very closely on the subject, but he
assured me that there was no doubt whatever that the above was the
exact belief before the settlement of the country by the white men.'
It is the standing reply of believers in the borrowing theory that a
native, cross-examined, will always agree with whatever the European
inquirer wishes him to say. The natives examined by Mr. Cameron, Mrs.
Langloh Parker, Mr. Howitt, Mr. Manning, and others were exceptions.
They would not allow that their beliefs were borrowed.
This particular form of native belief is exactly analogous to that
of ancient Egypt, of Greece, of Fiji, and so on: not to the doctrine
of our missionaries. The believers in borrowing must therefore say
that the Wathi Wathi stole heaven, hell, and the ways thither from
missionaries, and adapted them, accidentally coinciding with Egyptians,
Greeks, Red Indians, Fijians, Aztecs, and the rest, as to a gulf to
be crossed, and temptations on the way to the abode of the powerful
being and the souls of the good. The native proverbial explanation
of a shooting star establishes, as historical fact, their belief in
Tha-Tha-Puli and his home for good spirits. Mr. Frazer has six pages
on beliefs about shooting stars.[54] One case is to our point. The
Yerrunthally of Queensland think that the souls of the dead climb to
a place among the stars by a rope; when they let the rope fall, it
'appeared to people on earth as a shooting star.'[55]
Now if the evidence of Mr. Palmer, in the 'Journal of the
Anthropological Institute,' is good evidence for this Australian
belief, why is the evidence of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Cameron, in the
same serial, to an unborrowed Australian religion (in this case with
Tha-Tha-Puli and his home for good souls) unworthy even of mention?
We fall back on Sir Alfred Lyall: 'I think that one effect of
the accumulation of materials has been to encourage speculative
generalisation, because it has provided a repertory out of which one
may make arbitrary selection of examples and precedents to suit any
theory.'[56] Here I have the pleasure of agreeing with this great
authority. Mr. Frazer has chosen Australia as the home of magic, as a
land where magic is, but religion has not yet been evolved. As I have
shown, in this and the preceding paper, there is abundance of evidence
for an unborrowed Australian religion. I shall abandon the evidence
so soon as it is confuted, but I cannot reject it while the witnesses
are treated as good on many other points, but are unmentioned just
when their testimony, if true, seems inconsistent with a theory of the
priority of magic to religion.
By the concurring testimony of a crowd of observers,' writes Mr. Tylor,
'it is known that the natives of Australia were at their discovery,
and have ever since remained, a race with minds saturated with the
most vivid belief in souls, demons, and deities.'[57] What can a young
student commencing anthropologist think, when he compares Mr. Tylor's
'concurring testimony of a crowd of observers' of Australian religion
with Mr. Frazer's remark that there are 'some faint beginnings of
religion' in Southern Australia, but that 'traces of a higher faith,
where they occur, are probably sometimes due to European influence,'
though the people, Mr. Tylor says, were in all things so 'saturated
with the most vivid belief in souls, demons, and deities'--'at their
discovery'? There is no use in building a theory of the origin of
religion on the case of Australia till we are at least told about the
'concurring testimony of a crowd of observers.' That Mr. Frazer has
some reason for disregarding the testimonies which I have cited, that
he must have grounds for doubting their validity, I feel assured. But
the grounds for the doubt are not apparent, and to state them would
make Mr. Frazer's abstention intelligible.
[1] Spencer and Gillen, p. 549.
[2] _G. B_. i. p. 63.
[3] _G. B_. ii. p. 51.
[4] _G. B_. i. p. 71.
[5] J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, pp. 50, _sq_.
[6] A. W. Howitt in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiii.
(1884), 191.
[7] Fison and A. W. Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 255.
[8] See A. W. Hewitt in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xiii. (1884), p. 459.
[9] See A. W. Howitt in _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_,
xviii. (1889), pp. 32, _sq_. Religion is not mentioned here.
[10] See Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia._
[11] E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 45.
[12] _Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 260.
[13] E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 45.
[14] Cf. Mr. Matthews and Mr. Crawley, _J. A. I_. xxiv. 413.
[15] _J. A. I_. xiv. 1885, p. 521.
[16] _G. B_. i. 72, note; _J. A. I_. xiii. p. 191 (1884).
[17] _J. A. I_., 1885, p. 321, note 2.
[18] _G. B_. i. 72, note 1. In the first edition of _Myth, Ritual, and
Religion_ I quoted Mr. Howitt's evidence of 1881. In the second edition
I naturally cited his later testimony.
[19] _G. B_. ii. 49, 50.
[20] _G. B_. ii. 51, citing Brough Smyth's _Aborigines of Victoria_,
ii. 311.
[21] November 1894, pp. 158-198.
[22] _G. B_. ii. 51-53.
[23] For 'Fisher's Ghost' see _Blackwood's Magazine_, August 1897, p.
78 _et seq._
[24] _J. A. I_. xv. 4.
[25] To be true to my own principles, I note a few points in Mr.
Frazer's Australian evidence, published by him in _J. A. I_., November
1894.
Mr. Gason, an excellent witness, says that the Dieri think some souls
turn into old trees or rocks, or 'as breath ascend to the heavens,'
to 'Purriewillpanina.' The Dieri believe the Mooramoora created them
and will look after their spirits (_op. cit_. p. 175). Mr. Frazer,
however, calls the Mura Mura 'remote ancestral spirits,' who would have
a difficulty, one thinks, in creating the Dieri. The names of the dead
may not be mentioned (p. 176).
The station master at Powell's Creek denies that magic 'exists in any
shape or form.' There are no religious dances, no belief in a future
life (p. 180). Mr. Lindsay Crawford says 'nothing is known of the
nature of souls.' For the last ten years this gentleman 'had held no
communication with the natives at all, except with the rifle.' Perhaps
his negative evidence is not very valuable, as he does not appear to
have won the friendly confidence of the blacks. Mr. Matthews says:
'Many tribes believe future existence is regulated by due observances
at burial according to the rites of the tribe' (p. 190). Mr. Foelsche,
described by Dr. Stirling as 'a most intelligent and _accurate_
observer, who knows the natives well,' contributes a belief in a
benevolent creator, with a demiurge who made the blacks. He inhabits
Teelahdlah, among the stars. 'He never dies.' He is 'a very good man,'
not a 'spirit.' A subterranean being 'can read and write, and keeps a
book' of men's actions. This is so manifestly due to European influence
that I have not cited Mr. Foelsche's evidence. Mr. Foelsche 'knows of
no magic or witchcraft being practised' (p. 197). The blacks believe
that after death their souls 'go up'; they then point skywards (p. 198).
[26] _G.B._ i. 72 note i. 77.
[27] See 'The Theory of Loan Gods.'
[28] _J. A. I_. January to June, 1900, No. 31, p. 27.
[29] _Asiatic Studies_, ii. 172.
[30] _G. B_. i. 77.
[31] _G. B_. ii. 1.
[32] _G. B_. ii. 1-59, and _passim_, almost.
[33] _G. B_. i. 78, 79.
[34] _G. B_. i. 81.
[35] _G. B_. ii. 8; i. 232, 233.
[36] _G. B_. i. 81-114.
[37] _G. B_. i. 88, 89.
[38] _G. B_. i. 86.
[39] _G. B_. i. 72, note 1.
[40] _G. B_., i. 86, 87.
[41] _G. B_. i. 72.
[42] _G. B_. i. 87.
[43] _G. B_. i. 72, note.
[44] _G. B_. ii. 75-80. The hypothesis is offered with all due
diffidence.
[45] _G. B._ iii. 424.
[46] _Natives of Central Australia_, p. 246, note 1.
[47] _J. A. I_., 1872, pp. 268, 269. Lang's _Queensland_, pp. 444, 445.
Winslow, in Arber's _Captain Smith_, p. 768.
[48] See 'The Theory of Loan-Gods,' _supra_.
[49] _G. B_. i. xvii.
[50] _J. A. I._, 1885, pp. 344-370.
[51] Parenthetically, I may remark that many beliefs as to the future
state originate in, or are confirmed by, visions of 'doctors' who
visit the Hades or Paradise of a tribe, and by reports of men given
up for dead, who recover and narrate their experiences. The case of
Montezuma's aunt is familiar to readers of Mr. Prescott's _Conquest of
Mexico_. The new religion of the Sioux is based on a similar vision.
Anthropologists have given slight attention to these circumstances.
[52] See my _Modern Mythology_, and introduction to my _Homeric Hymns_.
[53] Roth, _North-West Queensland Central Aborigines_, p. 132. Spencer
and Gillen, 575.
[55] _G. B_. ii. 21. E. Palmer, _J. A. I_. xiii. p. 292.
[56] _Asiatic Studies_, i. ix.
[57] _Primitive Culture_, i. 379, 1871.