ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS--_continued_
_The Notion of the Totemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force_
Since individual totemism is later than the totemism of the clan, and
even seems to be derived from it, it is to this latter form that we must
turn first of all. But as the analysis which we have just made of it has
resolved it into a multiplicity of beliefs which may appear quite
heterogeneous, before going farther, we must seek to learn what makes
its unity.
I
We have seen that totemism places the figured representations of the
totem in the first rank of the things it considers sacred; next come the
animals or vegetables whose name the clan bears, and finally the members
of the clan. Since all these things are sacred in the same way, though
to different degrees, their religious character can be due to none of
the special attributes distinguishing them from each other. If a certain
species of animal or vegetable is the object of a reverential fear, this
is not because of its special properties, for the human members of the
clan enjoy this same privilege, though to a slightly inferior degree,
while the mere image of this same plant or animal inspires an even more
pronounced respect. The similar sentiments inspired by these different
sorts of things in the mind of the believer, which give them their
sacred character, can evidently come only from some common principle
partaken of alike by the totemic emblems, the men of the clan and the
individuals of the species serving as totem. In reality, it is to this
common principle that the cult is addressed. In other words totemism is
the religion, not of such and such animals or men or images, but of an
anonymous and impersonal force, found in each of these beings but not to
be confounded with any of them. No one possesses it entirely and all
participate in it. It is so completely independent of the particular
subjects in whom it incarnates itself, that it precedes them and
survives them. Individuals die, generations pass and are replaced by
others; but this force always remains actual, living and the same. It
animates the generations of to-day as it animated those of yesterday and
as it will animate those of to-morrow. Taking the words in a large
sense, we may say that it is the god adored by each totemic cult. Yet it
is an impersonal god, without name or history, immanent in the world and
diffused in an innumerable multitude of things.
But even now we have only an imperfect idea of the real ubiquity of this
quasi-divine entity. It is not merely found in the whole totemic
species, the whole clan and all the objects symbolizing the totem: the
circle of its action extends beyond that. In fact, we have seen that in
addition to the eminently holy things, all those attributed to the clan
as dependencies of the principal totem have this same character to a
certain degree. They also have something religious about them, for some
are protected by interdictions, while others have determined functions
in the ceremonies of the cult. Their religiousness does not differ in
kind from that of the totem under which they are classified; it must
therefore be derived from the same source. So it is because the totemic
god--to use again the metaphorical expression which we have just
employed--is in them, just as it is in the species serving as totem and
in the men of the clan. We may see how much it differs from the beings
in which it resides from the fact that it is the soul of so many
different beings.
But the Australian does not represent this impersonal force in an
abstract form. Under the influence of causes which we must seek, he has
been led to conceive it under the form of an animal or vegetable
species, or, in a word, of a visible object This is what the totem
really consists in: it is only the material form under which the
imagination represents this immaterial substance, this energy diffused
through all sorts of heterogeneous things, which alone is the real
object of the cult. We are now in a better condition for understanding
what the native means when he says that the men of the Crow phratry, for
example, are crows. He does not exactly mean to say that they are crows
in the vulgar and empiric sense of the term, but that the same principle
is found in all of them, which is their most essential characteristic,
which they have in common with the animals of the same name and which is
thought of under the external form of a crow. Thus the universe, as
totemism conceives it, is filled and animated by a certain number of
forces which the imagination represents in forms taken, with only a few
exceptions, from the animal or vegetable kingdoms: there are as many of
them as there are clans in the tribe, and each of them is also found in
certain categories of things, of which it is the essence and vital
principle.
When we say that these principles are forces, we do not take the word in
a metaphorical sense; they act just like veritable forces. In one sense,
they are even material forces which mechanically engender physical
effects. Does an individual come in contact with them without having
taken proper precautions? He receives a shock which might be compared to
the effect of an electric discharge. Sometimes they seem to conceive of
these as a sort of fluid escaping by points.[614] If they are introduced
into an organism not made to receive them, they produce sickness and
death by a wholly automatic action.[615] Outside of men, they play the
rôle of vital principle; it is by acting on them, we shall see,[616]
that the reproduction of the species is assured. It is upon them that
the universal life reposes.
But in addition to this physical aspect, they also have a moral
character. When someone asks a native why he observes his rites, he
replies that his ancestors always have observed them, and he ought to
follow their example.[617] So if he acts in a certain way towards the
totemic beings, it is not only because the forces resident in them are
physically redoubtable, but because he feels himself morally obliged to
act thus; he has the feeling that he is obeying an imperative, that he
is fulfilling a duty. For these sacred beings, he has not merely fear,
but also respect. Moreover, the totem is the source of the moral life of
the clan. All the beings partaking of the same totemic principle
consider that owing to this very fact, they are morally bound to one
another; they have definite duties of assistance, vendetta, etc.,
towards each other; and it is these duties which constitute kinship. So
while the totemic principle is a totemic force, it is also a moral
power; so we shall see how it easily transforms itself into a divinity
properly so-called.
Moreover, there is nothing here which is special to totemism. Even in
the most advanced religions, there is scarcely a god who has not kept
something of this ambiguity and whose functions are not at once cosmic
and moral. At the same time that it is a spiritual discipline, every
religion is also a means enabling men to face the world with greater
confidence. Even for the Christian, is not God the Father the guardian
of the physical order as well as the legislator and the judge of human
conduct?
II
Perhaps someone will ask whether, in interpreting totemism thus, we do
not endow the native with ideas surpassing the limits of his intellect.
Of course we are not prepared to affirm that he represents these forces
with the relative clarity which we have been able to give to them in our
analysis. We are able to show quite clearly that this notion is implied
by the whole system of beliefs which it dominates; but we are unable to
say how far it is conscious and how far, on the contrary, it is only
implicit and confusedly felt. There is no way of determining just what
degree of clarity an idea like this may have in obscure minds. But it is
well shown, in any case, that this in no way surpasses the capacities of
the primitive mind, and on the contrary, the results at which we have
just arrived are confirmed by the fact that either in the societies
closely related to these Australian tribes, or even in these tribes
themselves, we find, in an explicit form, conceptions which differ from
the preceding only by shades and degrees.
The native religions of Samoa have certainly passed the totemic phase.
Real gods are found there, who have their own names, and, to a certain
degree, their own personal physiognomy. Yet the traces of totemism are
hardly contestable. In fact, each god is attached to a group, either
local or domestic, just as the totem is to its clan.[618] Then, each of
these gods is thought of as immanent in a special species of animal. But
this does not mean that he resides in one subject in particular: he is
immanent in all at once; he is diffused in the species as a whole. When
an animal dies, the men of the group who venerate it weep for it and
render pious duties to it, because a god inhabits it; but the god is not
dead. He is eternal, like the species. He is not even confused with the
present generation; he has already been the soul of the preceding one,
as he will be the soul of the one which is to follow.[619] So he has all
the characteristics of the totemic principle. He is the totemic
principle, re-clothed in a slightly personal form by the imagination.
But still, we must not exaggerate a personality which is hardly
reconcilable with this diffusion and ubiquity. If its contours were
clearly defined, it could never spread out thus and enter into such a
multitude of things.
However, it is incontestable that in this case the idea of an impersonal
religious force is beginning to change; but there are other cases where
it is affirmed in all its abstract purity and even reaches a higher
degree of generality than in Australia. If the different totemic
principles to which the various clans of a single tribe address
themselves are distinct from each other, they are, none the less,
comparable to each other at bottom; for all play the same rôle in their
respective spheres. There are societies which have had the feeling of
this unity with nature and have consequently advanced to the idea of a
unique religious force of which all other sacred principles are only
expressions and which makes the unity of the universe. As these
societies are still thoroughly impregnated with totemism, and as they
remain entangled in a social organization identical with that of the
Australians, we may say that totemism contained this idea in
potentiality.
This can be observed in a large number of American tribes, especially
those belonging to the great Sioux family: the Omaha, Ponka, Kansas,
Osage, Assiniboin, Dakota, Iowa, Winnebago, Mandan, Hidatsa, etc. Many
of these are still organized in clans, as the Omaha[620] and the
Iowa;[621] others were so not long since, and, says Dorsey, it is still
possible to find among them "all the foundations of the totemic system,
just as in the other societies of the Sioux."[622] Now among these
peoples, above all the particular deities to whom men render a cult,
there is a pre-eminent power to which all the others have the relation
of derived forms, and which is called _wakan_.[623] Owing to the
preponderating place thus assigned to this principle in the Siouan
pantheon, it is sometimes regarded as a sort of sovereign god, or a
Jupiter or Jahveh, and travellers have frequently translated wakan by
"great spirit." This is misrepresenting its real nature gravely. The
wakan is in no way a personal being; the natives do not represent it in
a determined form. According to an observer cited by Dorsey, "they say
that they have never seen the wakanda, so they cannot pretend to
personify it."[624] It is not even possible to define it by determined
attributes and characteristics. "No word," says Riggs, "can explain the
meaning of this term among the Dakota. It embraces all mystery, all
secret power, all divinity."[625] All the beings which the Dakota
reveres, "the earth, the four winds, the sun, the moon and the stars,
are manifestations of this mysterious life and power" which enters into
all. Sometimes it is represented in the form of a wind, as a breath
having its seat in the four cardinal points and moving everything:[626]
sometimes it is a voice heard in the crashing of the thunder;[627] the
sun, moon and stars are wakan.[628] But no enumeration could exhaust
this infinitely complex idea. It is not a definite and definable power,
the power of doing this or that; it is Power in an absolute sense, with
no epithet or determination of any sort. The various divine powers are
only particular manifestations and personifications of it; each of them
is this power seen under one of its numerous aspects.[629] It is this
which made one observer say, "He is a protean god; he is supposed to
appear to different persons in different forms."[630] Nor are the gods
the only beings animated by it: it is the principle of all that lives or
acts or moves. "All life is wakan. So also is everything which exhibits
power, whether in action, as the winds and drifting clouds, or in
passive endurance, as the boulder by the wayside."[631]
Among the Iroquois, whose social organization has an even more
pronouncedly totemic character, this, same idea is found again; the word
_orenda_ which expresses it is the exact equivalent of the wakan of the
Sioux. "The savage man," says Hewitt, "conceived the diverse bodies
collectively constituting his environment to possess inherently mystic
potence ... (whether they be) the rocks, the waters, the tides, the
plants and the trees, the animals and man, the wind and the storms, the
clouds and the thunders and the lightnings,"[632] etc. "This potence is
held to be the property of all things ... and by the inchoate mentation
of man is regarded as the efficient cause of all phenomena, all the
activities of his environment."[633] A sorcerer or shaman has orenda,
but as much would be said of a man succeeding in his enterprises. At
bottom, there is nothing in the world which does not have its quota of
orenda; but the quantities vary. There are some beings, either men or
things, which are favoured; there are others which are relatively
disinherited, and the universal life consists in the struggles of these
orenda of unequal intensity. The more intense conquer the weaker. Is one
man more successful than his companions in the hunt or at war? It is
because he has more orenda. If an animal escapes from a hunter who is
pursuing it, it is because the orenda of the former was the more
powerful.
This same idea is found among the Shoshone under the name of _pokunt_,
among the Algonquin under the name of _manitou_,[634] of _nauala_ among
the Kwakiutl,[635] of _yek_ among the Tlinkit[636] and of _sgâna_ among
the Haida.[637] But it is not peculiar to the Indians of North America;
it is in Melanesia that it was studied for the first time. It is true
that in certain of the islands of Melanesia, social organization is no
longer on a totemic basis; but in all, totemism is still visible,[638]
in spite of what Codrington has said about it. Now among these peoples,
we find, under the name of _mana_, an idea which is the exact equivalent
of the wakan of the Sioux and the orenda of the Iroquois. The definition
given by Codrington is as follows: "There is a belief in a force
altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all ways for good
and evil; and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or
control. This is Mana. I think I know what our people mean by it. ... It
is a power or influence, not physical and in a way supernatural; but it
shows itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or excellence
which a man possesses. This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be
conveyed in almost anything. ... All Melanesian religion consists, in
fact, in getting this mana for one's self, or getting it used for one's
benefit."[639] Is this not the same notion of an anonymous and diffused
force, the germs of which we recently found in the totemism of
Australia? Here is the same impersonality; for, as Codrington says, we
must be careful not to regard it as a sort of supreme being; any such
idea is "absolutely foreign" to Melanesian thought. Here is the same
ubiquity; the mana is located nowhere definitely and it is everywhere.
All forms of life and all the effects of the action, either of men or
of living beings or of simple minerals, are attributed to its
influence.[640]
Therefore there is no undue temerity in attributing to the Australians
an idea such as the one we have discovered in our analysis of totemic
beliefs, for we find it again, but abstracted and generalized to a
higher degree, at the basis of other religions whose roots go back into
a system like the Australian one and which visibly bear the mark of
this. The two conceptions are obviously related; they differ only in
degree, while the mana is diffused into the whole universe, what we call
the god or, to speak more precisely, the totemic principle, is localized
in the more limited circle of the beings and things of certain species.
It is mana, but a little more specialized; yet as a matter of fact, this
specialization is quite relative.
Moreover, there is one case where this connection is made especially
apparent. Among the Omaha, there are totems of all sorts, both
individual and collective;[641] but both are only particular forms of
wakan. "The foundation of the Indian's faith in the efficacy of the
totem," says Miss Fletcher, "rested upon his belief concerning nature
and life. This conception was complex and involved two prominent ideas:
First, that all things, animate and inanimate, were permeated by a
common life; and second, that this life could not be broken, but was
continuous."[642] Now this common principle of life is the wakan. The
totem is the means by which an individual is put into relations with
this source of energy; if the totem has any powers, it is because it
incarnates the wakan. If a man who has violated the interdictions
protecting his totem is struck by sickness or death, it is because this
mysterious force against which he has thus set himself, that is, the
wakan, reacts against him with a force proportionate to the shock
received.[643] Also, just as the totem is wakan, so the wakan, in its
turn, sometimes shows its totemic origin by the way in which it is
conceived. In fact, Say says that among the Dakota the "wahconda" is
manifested sometimes in the form of a grey bear, sometimes of a bison, a
beaver or some other animal.[644] Undoubtedly, this formula cannot be
accepted without reserve. The wakan repels all personification and
consequently it is hardly probable that it has ever been thought of in
its abstract generality with the aid of such definite symbols. But Say's
remark is probably applicable to the particular forms which it takes in
specializing itself in the concrete reality of life. Now if there is a
possibility that there was a time when these specializations of the
wakan bore witness to such an affinity for an animal form, that would be
one more proof of the close bonds uniting this conception to the totemic
beliefs.[645]
It is possible to explain why this idea has been unable to reach the
same degree of abstraction in Australia as in the more advanced
societies. This is not merely due to the insufficient aptitude of the
Australian for abstracting and generalizing: before all, it is the
nature of the social environment which has imposed this particularism.
In fact, as long as totemism remains at the basis of the cultural
organization, the clan keeps an autonomy in the religious society which,
though not absolute, is always very marked. Of course we can say that in
one sense each totemic group is only a chapel of the tribal Church; but
it is a chapel enjoying a large independence. The cult celebrated there,
though not a self-sufficing whole, has only external relations with the
others; they interchange without intermingling; the totem of the clan is
fully sacred only for this clan. Consequently the groups of things
attributed to each clan, which are a part of it in the same way the men
are, have the same individuality and autonomy. Each of them is
represented as irreducible into similar groups, as separated from them
by a break of continuity, and as constituting a distinct realm. Under
these circumstances, it would occur to no one that these heterogeneous
worlds were different manifestations of one and the same fundamental
force; on the contrary, one might suppose that each of them corresponded
to an organically different mana whose action could not extend beyond
the clan and the circle of things attributed to it. The idea of a single
and universal mana could be born only at the moment when the tribal
religion developed above that of the clans and absorbed them more or
less completely. It is along with the feeling of the tribal unity that
the feeling of the substantial unity of the world awakens. As we shall
presently show,[646] it is true that the Australian societies are
already acquainted with a cult that is common to the tribe as a whole.
But if this cult represents the highest form of the Australian
religions, it has not succeeded in touching and modifying the principles
upon which they repose: totemism is essentially a federative religion
which cannot go beyond a certain degree of centralization without
ceasing to be itself.
One characteristic fact clearly shows the fundamental reason which has
kept the idea of the mana so specialized in Australia. The real
religious forces, those thought of in the form of totems, are not the
only ones with which the Australian feels himself obliged to reckon.
There are also some over which magicians have particular control. While
the former are theoretically considered healthful and beneficent, the
second have it as their especial function to cause sickness and death.
And at the same time that they differ so greatly in the nature of their
effects, they are contrasted also by the relations which they sustain
with the social organization. A totem is always a matter of the clan;
but on the contrary, magic is a tribal and even an intertribal
institution. Magic forces do not belong to any special portion of the
tribe in particular. All that is needed to make use of them is the
possession of efficient recipes. Likewise, everybody is liable to feel
their effects and consequently should try to protect himself against
them. These are vague forces, specially attached to no determined social
division, and even able to spread their action beyond the tribe. Now it
is a remarkable fact that among the Arunta and Loritja, they are
conceived as simple aspects and particular forms of a unique force,
called in Arunta _Arungquiltha_ or _Arúnkulta_.[647] "This is a term,"
say Spencer and Gillen, "of somewhat vague import, but always associated
at bottom with the possession of _supernatural evil power_.... The name
is applied indiscriminately to the evil influence or to the object in
which it is, for the time being, or permanently, resident."[648] "By
arúnkulta," says Strehlow, "the native signifies a force which suddenly
stops life and brings death to all who come in contact with it."[649]
This name is given to the bones and pieces of wood from which
evil-working charms are derived, and also to poisonous animals and
vegetables. So it may accurately be called a harmful mana. Grey mentions
an absolutely identical notion among the tribes he observed.[650] Thus
among these different peoples, while the properly religious forces do
not succeed in avoiding a certain heterogeneity, magic forces are
thought of as being all of the same nature; the mind represents them in
their generic unity. This is because they rise above the social
organization and its divisions and subdivisions, and move in a
homogeneous and continuous space where they meet with nothing to
differentiate them. The others, on the contrary, being localized in
definite and distinct social forms, are diversified and particularized
in the image of the environment in which they are situated.
From this we can see how thoroughly the idea of an impersonal religious
force enters into the meaning and spirit of Australian totemism, for it
disengages itself with clarity as soon as no contrary cause opposes it.
It is true that the arungquiltha is purely a magic force. But between
religious forces and magic forces there is no difference of kind:[651]
sometimes they are even designated by the same name: in Melanesia, the
magicians and charms have mana just like the agents and rites of the
regular cult;[652] the word oranda is employed in the same way by the
Iroquois.[653] So we can legitimately infer the nature of the one from
that of the other.[654]
III
The results to which the above analysis has led us do not concern the
history of totemism only, but also the genesis of religious thought in
general.
Under the pretext that in early times men were dominated by their senses
and the representations of their senses, it has frequently been held
that they commenced by representing the divine in the concrete form of
definite and personal beings. The facts do not confirm this presumption.
We have just described a systematically united scheme of religious
beliefs which we have good reason to regard as very primitive, yet we
have met with no personalities of this sort. The real totemic cult is
addressed neither to certain determined animals nor to certain
vegetables nor even to an animal or vegetable species, but to a vague
power spread through these things.[655] Even in the most advanced
religions which have developed out of totemism, such as those which we
find among the North American Indians, this idea, instead of being
effaced, becomes more conscious of itself; it is declared with a clarity
it did not have before, while at the same time, it attains a higher
generality. It is this which dominates the entire religious system.
This is the original matter out of which have been constructed those
beings of every sort which the religions of all times have consecrated
and adored. The spirits, demons, genii and gods of every sort are only
the concrete forms taken by this energy, or "potentiality," as Hewitt
calls it,[656] in individualizing itself, in fixing itself upon a
certain determined object or point in space, or in centring around an
ideal and legendary being, though one conceived as real by the popular
imagination. A Dakota questioned by Miss Fletcher expressed this
essential consubstantiability of all sacred things in language that is
full of relief. "Every thing as it moves, now and then, here and there,
makes stops. The bird as it flies stops in one place to make its nest,
and in another to rest in its flight. A man when he goes forth stops
when he wills. So the god has stopped. The sun, which is so bright and
beautiful, is one place where he has stopped. The trees, the animals,
are where he has stopped, and the Indian thinks of these places and
sends his prayers to reach the place where the god has stopped and to
win help and a blessing."[657] In other words, the wakan (for this is
what he was talking about) comes and goes through the world, and sacred
things are the points upon which it alights. Here we are, for once, just
as far from naturism as from animism. If the sun, the moon and the stars
have been adored, they have not owed this honour to their intrinsic
nature or their distinctive properties, but to the fact that they are
thought to participate in this force which alone is able to give things
a sacred character, and which is also found in a multitude of other
beings, even the smallest. If the souls of the dead have been the object
of rites, it is not because they are believed to be made out of some
fluid and impalpable substance, nor is it because they resemble the
shadow cast by a body or its reflection on a surface of water.
Lightness and fluidity are not enough to confer sanctity; they have been
invested with this dignity only in so far as they contained within them
something of this same force, the source of all religiosity.
We are now in a better condition to understand why it has been
impossible to define religion by the idea of mythical personalities,
gods or spirits; it is because this way of representing religious things
is in no way inherent in their nature. What we find at the origin and
basis of religious thought are not determined and distinct objects and
beings possessing a sacred character of themselves; they are indefinite
powers, anonymous forces, more or less numerous in different societies,
and sometimes even reduced to a unity, and whose impersonality is
strictly comparable to that of the physical forces whose manifestations
the sciences of nature study. As for particular sacred things, they are
only individualized forms of this essential principle. So it is not
surprising that even in the religions where there are avowed divinities,
there are rites having an efficient virtue in themselves, independently
of all divine intervention. It is because this force may be attached to
words that are pronounced or movements that are made just as well as to
corporal substances; the voice or the movements may serve as its
vehicle, and it may produce its effects through their intermediacy,
without the aid of any god or spirit. Even should it happen to
concentrate itself especially in a rite, this will become a creator of
divinities from that very fact.[658] This is why there is scarcely a
divine personality who does not retain some impersonality. Those who
represent it most clearly in a concrete and visible form, think of it,
at the same time, as an abstract power which cannot be defined except by
its own efficacy, or as a force spread out in space and which is
contained, at least in part, in each of its effects. It is the power of
producing rain or wind, crops or the light of day; Zeus is in each of
the raindrops which falls, just as Ceres is in each of the sheaves of
the harvest.[659] As a general rule, in fact, this efficacy is so
imperfectly determined that the believer is able to form only a very
vague notion of it. Moreover, it is this indecision which has made
possible these syncretisms and duplications in the course of which gods
are broken up, dismembered and confused in every way. Perhaps there is
not a single religion in which the original mana, whether unique or
multiform, has been resolved entirely into a clearly defined number of
beings who are distinct and separate from each other; each of them
always retains a touch of impersonality, as it were, which enables it to
enter into new combinations, not as the result of a simple survival but
because it is the nature of religious forces to be unable to
individualize themselves completely.
This conception, to which we have been led by the study of totemism
alone, has the additional recommendation that many scholars have
recently adopted it quite independently of one another, as a conclusion
from very different sorts of studies. There is a tendency towards a
spontaneous agreement on this point which should be remarked, for it is
a presumption of objectivity.
As early as 1899, we pointed out the impossibility of making the idea of
a mythical personality enter into the definition of religious
phenomena.[660] In 1900, Marrett showed the existence of a religious
phase which he called _preanimistic_, in which the rites are addressed
to impersonal forces like the Melanesian mana and the wakan of the Omaha
and Dakota.[661] However, Marrett did not go so far as to maintain that
always and in every case the idea of a spirit is logically and
chronologically posterior to that of mana and is derived from it; he
even seemed disposed to admit that it has sometimes appeared
independently and consequently, that religious thought flows from a
double source.[662] On the other hand, he conceived the mana as an
inherent property of things, as an element of their appearance; for,
according to him, this is simply the character which we attribute to
everything out of the ordinary, and which inspires a sentiment of fear
or admiration.[663] This practically amounts to a return to the naturist
theory.[664]
A little later, MM. Hubert and Mauss, while attempting to formulate a
general theory of magic, established the fact that magic as a whole
reposes on the notion of mana.[665] The close kinship of the magic rite
and the religious rite being known, it was even possible to foresee that
the same theory should be applied to religion. This was sustained by
Preuss in a series of articles in the _Globus_[666] that same year.
Relying chiefly upon facts taken from American civilizations, Preuss set
out to prove that the ideas of the soul and spirit were not developed
until after those of power and impersonal force, that the former are
only a transformation of the latter, and that up to a relatively late
date they retain the marks of their original impersonality. In fact, he
shows that even in the advanced religions, they are represented in the
form of vague emanations disengaging themselves automatically from the
things in which they reside, and even tending to escape by all the ways
that are open to them: the mouth, the nose and all the other openings of
the body, the breath, the look, the word, etc. At the same time, Preuss
pointed out their Protean forms and their extreme plasticity which
permits them to give themselves successively and almost concurrently to
the most varied uses.[667] It is true that if we stick to the letter of
the terminology employed by this author, we may believe that for him the
forces have a magic, not a religious nature: he calls them charms
(_Zauber, Zauberkräfte_). But it is evident that in expressing himself
thus, he does not intend to put them outside of religion; for it is in
the essentially religious rites that he shows their action, for example,
in the great Mexican ceremonies.[668] If he uses these expressions, it
is undoubtedly because he knows no others which mark better the
impersonality of these forces and the sort of mechanism with which they
operate.
Thus this same idea tends to come to light on every side.[669] The
impression becomes more and more prevalent that even the most elementary
mythological constructions are secondary products[670] which cover over
a system of beliefs, at once simpler and more obscure, vaguer and more
essential, which form the solid foundations upon which the religious
systems are built. It is this primitive foundation which our analysis of
totemism has enabled us to reach. The various writers whose studies we
have just mentioned arrived at this conclusion only through facts taken
from very diverse religions, some of which even correspond to a
civilization that is already far advanced: such is the case, for
example, with the Mexican religions, of which Preuss makes great use. So
it might be asked if this theory is equally applicable to the most
simple religions. But since it is impossible to go lower than totemism,
we are not exposed to this risk of error, and at the same time, we have
an opportunity of finding the initial notion from which the ideas of
wakan and mana are derived: this is the notion of the totemic
principle.[671]
IV
But this notion is not only of primary importance because of the rôle it
has played in the development of religious ideas; it also has a lay
aspect in which it is of interest for the history of scientific thought.
It is the first form of the idea of force.
In fact, the wakan plays the same rôle in the world, as the Sioux
conceives it, as the one played by the forces with which science
explains the diverse phenomena of nature. This, however, does not mean
that it is thought of as an exclusively physical energy; on the
contrary, in the next chapter we shall see that the elements going to
make up this idea are taken from the most diverse realms. But this very
compositeness of its nature enables it to be utilized as a universal
principle of explanation. It is from it that all life comes;[672] "all
life is wakan"; and by this word life, we must understand everything
that acts and reacts, that moves and is moved, in both the mineral and
biological kingdoms. The wakan is the cause of all the movements which
take place in the universe. We have even seen that the orenda of the
Iroquois is "the efficient cause of all the phenomena and all the
activities which are manifested around men." It is a power "inherent in
all bodies and all things."[673] It is the orenda which makes the wind
blow, the sun lighten and heat the earth, or animals reproduce and which
makes men strong, clever and intelligent. When the Iroquois says that
the life of all nature is the product of the conflicts aroused between
the unequally intense orenda of the different beings, he only expresses,
in his own language, this modern idea that the world is a system of
forces limiting and containing each other and making an equilibrium.
The Melanesian attributes this same general efficacy to his mana. It is
owing to his mana that a man succeeds in hunting or fighting, that
gardens give a good return or that flocks prosper. If an arrow strikes
its mark, it is because it is charged with mana; it is the same cause
which makes a net catch fish well, or a canoe ride well on the sea,[674]
etc. It is true that if certain phrases of Codrington are taken
literally, mana should be the cause to which is attributed "everything
which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes
of nature."[675] But from the very examples which he cites, it is quite
evident that the sphere of the mana is really much more extended. In
reality, it serves to explain usual and everyday phenomena; there is
nothing superhuman or supernatural in the fact that a ship sails or a
hunter catches game, etc. However, among these events of daily life,
there are some so insignificant and familiar that they pass unperceived:
they are not noticed and consequently no need is felt of explaining
them. The concept of mana is applied only to those that are important
enough to cause reflection, and to awaken a minimum of interest and
curiosity; but they are not marvellous for all that. And what is true of
the mana as well as the orenda and wakan, may be said equally well of
the totemic principle. It is through this that the life of the men of
the clan and the animals or plants of the totemic species, as well as
all the things which are classified under the totem and partake of its
nature, is manifested.
So the idea of force is of religious origin. It is from religion that it
has been borrowed, first by philosophy, then by the sciences. This has
already been foreseen by Comte and this is why he made metaphysics the
heir of "theology." But he concluded from this that the idea of force is
destined to disappear from science; for, owing to its mystic origins, he
refused it all objective value. But we are going to show that, on the
contrary, religious forces are real, howsoever imperfect the symbols may
be, by the aid of which they are thought of. From this it will follow
that the same is true of the concept of force in general.