BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION
§ 1. SUPERSTITION
Inasmuch as the influence of superstition upon the history of society
can hardly be exaggerated, it must be worth while to inquire into
its origin and nature. But this inquiry leads into a quagmire of
ambiguous words: and to attempt to define them for all purposes would
entangle the discussion in endless controversies. So it will be best
to explain merely in what sense certain words will be used in this
book. “Superstition,” for example, means in common use (I think) false
beliefs concerning supernatural powers, especially such as are regarded
as socially injurious, and particularly as leading to obscurantism or
cruelty: but it is often extended to cover beliefs of a negligible or
frivolous kind, such as stories about “fairy-rings,” or the unluckiness
of seeing the new moon for the first time through glass. Plainly the
injuriousness of a false belief is often in dispute, and at any rate is
a question of time and place. “Superstition,” then, is here used merely
as a collective term for the subjects of the ensuing chapters—Magic
(or the belief in occult forces) and Animism (or the belief in the
activity of spirits).
The consequences of a belief, again, whether good or evil, cannot
affect its psychological character: in trying to explain its nature and
origin, one cannot take account of its social values. The explanation
of superstitions must hold of all false beliefs, whatever their utility
or disutility. Nay, further, whether a belief is false or true does not
necessarily affect its psychological character: for a man may hold two
doctrines, one true and the other false, both derived from the sincere
testimony of the same person, and he may not be able to discern any
difference in the degrees of confidence with which he holds them or in
their influence upon his conduct. The understanding of false belief,
then, requires an examination of belief in general.
Still, whilst in the mind of any given man a true and a false belief
may have the same character and origin, considered generally they
must surely have different origins and grounds; and to make the
sequel clearer, I will anticipate its conclusions so far as to say
that true beliefs seem to rest on perception or inferences verified
by perception, and false beliefs seem to depend upon imagination
that cannot be verified. This general statement will need several
qualifications. But I rely upon it at present so far as to say that
superstitions are essentially imagination-beliefs.
We shall find that these superstitions, though often held by whole
tribes with the utmost assurance, differ in some subtle way from the
perception-beliefs of their common sense, as that “fire burns” and
that “water quenches fire.” They are unstable: (1) they become active
on occasions, and otherwise are apt to be forgotten—as ghosts are
only thought of at night. (2) They are modifiable merely for the sake
of economy or other convenience. (3) They lose their hold on a tribe,
fall off and die in course of time without any change in the evidence
for them. (4) They depend a good deal upon the assent of a crowd. (5)
They often vary in neighbouring countries or families, or amongst the
members of a family. This is not like common sense. Superstitions or
imagination-beliefs are unstable, in spite of being often held with
great obstinacy (so that people die for them), and of their enduring,
in the simpler forms and at a certain level of social life, for
thousands of years. There is something wanting in the holdfast or
anchorage of imagination-beliefs.
It is necessary to explain what I mean by “imagination.”
§ 2. IMAGINATION
Is it enough to define “imagination” as merely the having of mental
“images,” pictures before the mind’s eye? This would confine
imagination to visual representations, to the exclusion of auditory,
olfactory, etc., which are all a man born blind can have, and which
sometimes occur to those who can see, though the visual are commonest.
The word “images,” therefore, is sometimes used to cover all these
modes of representation; though “phantasmata” would be better.
Again, a mental image or phantasm, visual or auditory, is improperly
called an imagination, if there is nothing more than the reproduction
of a single sense-quality. Imaginations represent not abstract
sensations, but perceptions. To see an armed knight is not merely to
have a visual impression of him, but to perceive a living, solid,
heavy object definitely in space; and imagination reproduces the whole
of this, and otherwise would be quite uninteresting. What would the
tournament in _Ivanhoe_ amount to if the knights were only phantoms?
Further, imagination, merely as a reproduction of perception, is not
distinguished from memory; but, in use, the two are always contrasted.
Memories are recognised (in their complete form) as returning to us
from earlier experience, both their component pictures and the order of
them, and they are relatively stable; imaginations are felt to be more
or less novel, and can easily be modified. Probably all the elements
of an imagination might have occurred in a memory; but the arrangement
of these elements is often so different from any actual experience as
to baffle every attempt to redistribute them amongst their sources.
Hence, in normal cases, our attitudes toward a memory and toward an
imagination are entirely different. If a seeming memory prove false, we
say it was only an imagination.
But, once more, a good many men never have images or phantasmata
(except words), or very few or faint ones, or only when falling asleep,
and so on. Yet they are not wanting in imagination; words or other
signs serve them instead of images to carry all meanings (the important
matter); they enter into the spirit of poetry and literary fiction:
so that imagination may be active without images. And the fact seems
to be that the effectiveness of mental processes depends very little
upon phantasmata, but upon something much deeper in the mind; and that
there exist in men all degrees of concrete representative power, from
those who picture everything they think of with vivid and definite
detail, down, through many stages of decreasing realisation, to those
who have only faint or fragmentary “images,” or even none at all:
without its being possible to say (at present) that one type of mind is
better or worse than another; though they may be adapted to different
tasks.
Expectation and reasoning, which are closely allied (for every
definite expectation is a sort of inference), are often carried on in
pictures—“picture thinking”—and this also is called imagination.
Tyndall’s brilliant address on _The Scientific Uses of the Imagination_
is well known. It greatly helps some men in thinking to form pictures
of what they think about, such as a machine or an anatomical specimen,
as if they had the thing before them; or even of an atom, which no man
ever has before him, and which cannot be imagined by reproducing the
precept, but only by constructing a picture from much grosser materials
according to concepts. The picture thus formed necessarily falls short
in some ways of the thing thought or meant, and can only be prevented
from misleading us by guarding it with definitions or rules or abstract
ideas; and this shows that the effectiveness of thought, the deeper
process mentioned above, is a concatenation or evolution of meanings
or general ideas, and that it is, in part, by illustrating these that
pictures are useful: they also serve to fix attention, as words do.
Thus reasoning may express itself by imagination. On the other hand,
imagination is more frequently contrasted with reason, as dealing in
fiction, not reality. Our confusion is shown thus: to call an historian
imaginative is depreciatory; yet it is as bad to say he is wanting in
imagination. In the latter case, we mean that he fails adequately to
conceive the events he treats of; in the former, that he embellishes or
distorts them with unverifiable representations.
Again, the term “imagination” is sometimes confined to intellectual
processes in the fine arts: dramas, novels, etc., are works of
imagination. Now dramas and novels all proceed upon one method, namely:
they begin by stating or insinuating an hypothesis concerning certain
persons in a given situation, and then deducing (that is reasoning out)
the consequences, occasionally helping the plot by further assumptions:
at least that is how it appears, though probably the main incident of
the plot is thought of first, and then an hypothesis is framed that
conveniently leads up to it. And if the reasoning is feeble, and if
the subsidiary assumptions are too numerous or too facile, we say the
work is flimsy or improbable—allowing for the _genre_; for a romance
is not expected to be as probable as a modern novel. _Gulliver’s
Travels_ afford the most perfect example of this method; for each
voyage begins with a frank absurdity—men six inches or sixty feet
high, a flying island, rational horses; but this being granted, the
sequel makes tolerable logic. Well, many scientific investigations seem
to follow exactly the same method—begin with an hypothesis, deduce
the consequences, and occasionally help out the argument with further
hypotheses (though that is not all): and here again the conclusion is
usually thought of first, and the hypothesis invented to explain it.
If it be said that the scientist believes his hypothesis to be true,
whilst the romancer does not, it may be replied that the scientist
sometimes expressly warns us that his assumption is only a “working
hypothesis,” which may not be true (though he thinks it may be),
whereas early epic poets and minstrels often regarded their work as by
no means without a foundation in fact.
Imagination and reasoning, then, are closely allied or interwoven,
and the contrasting of them depends entirely upon this, that there
is a sense in which imagination is not a presentation of truth or
matter-of-fact, whether it is believed to be or not; and a sense in
which reasoning is devoted solely to the discovery of truth concerning
facts, and to that end is protected by a methodology, carefully
comparing its premises, carefully verifying its conclusions; whereas
the imagination that is contrasted with reasoning knows nothing of a
methodology nor of verification. Even the modern novelist, a great part
of whose hypothesis is usually true—the present state of society,
facts of history or geography, etc.,—does not pretend to present a
truth of fact. It belongs to his art to play at reasoning; he has
learnt to play the game very well; but it remains play: he aims at and
attains not truth but verisimilitude. And when we look back on the
history of fiction we see (on the whole) the verisimilitude growing,
age by age, slighter and fainter; till in early romance and poetry
it is disturbed and broken and destroyed by stories about monsters,
impossible heroes, magicians and gods, believed at one time to be true,
and just the same as stories still believed by barbarians and savages,
but which we believe no longer.
It is such stories as these last, including all superstitions, that
I especially call “imagination-beliefs.” The term includes all false
beliefs, but with the rest I am not directly concerned. How are
imagination-beliefs possible?
§ 3. BELIEF
Belief is here used to denote the attitude of mind in which perceptions
are regarded as real, judgments as true of matters-of-fact, actions and
events as about to have certain results. It is a serious and respectful
attitude; for matter-of-fact compels us to adjust our behaviour to
it, whether we have power to alter it or not. Hume describes belief
as having a certain “force, vivacity, solidity, firmness, steadiness;
influence and importance in governing our actions”;[85] and these terms
are quite just, but most of them are synonyms; and the whole dictionary
will not make anybody understand what belief is who has never felt it.
However, there is no such person.
The quality of this attitude (or the “feeling” of it) as a specific
“state of consciousness” is difficult to observe, because (like
pleasure or displeasure) it is always marginal to something else in
the focus of attention, some object, judgment or action; but we can
appreciate it in its variations by considering the very different
degrees of “force, steadiness,” etc., which characterise several
beliefs regarded as more or less probable. The degree of belief
ought to correspond with the weight of evidence: if evidence for
any judgment is complete and uncontradicted, it may be called 1, and
the corresponding state of mind should be “certainty”; if evidence
for it there is none, or if evidence for the contradictory judgment
is complete, it may be called 0, and the state of mind “disbelief.”
Between these extremes there is room for an infinite series of
fractions, and for corresponding shades of doubt (which, of course, do
not really occur); and in the middle, at ½, there should be suspension
of judgment. But most of these refined attitudes are the luxury of a
few men severely trained in estimating evidence, and by them enjoyed
only in the departments they have been trained in. For the mass of
mankind, a very few shades of confidence or dubiety fill up their
scale of judgment-values; and these may be far from corresponding as
they should do with the quantity or quality of the evidence; and the
nearest they get to suspension of judgment is a state of hesitation
between alternatives that by turns seem equally likely. Disbelief,
though the opposite logically to belief, as rejection to acceptance,
has, nevertheless, much in common with it—the character of finality
and positiveness, which is often (perhaps always) derived from belief
in something else which is incompatible with the given judgment.
When the attitude of belief is established in one’s mind by evidence
clearly conceived, whether by the examination of facts or the weighing
of arguments, it is called “conviction,” and so is the process of
bringing it about; but if it results from considerations imperfectly
appreciated, and from emotional appeals, especially when urged by
another person, it may be called “persuasion,” though the word
describes the process rather than the result. Most imagination-beliefs,
including all superstitions, are persuasions.
It is generally admitted that the test of the strength of one’s belief
is its influence upon our actions—where the test is practicable. With
full belief one acts “confidently” (a significant verbal proposition!);
in doubt, hesitatingly or cautiously; in disbelief, not at all, or in
the sense of the contrary belief. But we cannot always judge of a man’s
beliefs from his actions; for he may be actuated by several beliefs,
and we do not know what they are. And popular actions that involve no
loss or hardship may express mere assent without belief.
There is a kind of imagination-belief, and the purest kind, which has
nothing to do with evidence: it is often called “make-believe” or
“play-belief”: the entering into or contemplating some activity, which
we know to have no direct bearing on our necessary interests, with as
much ardour and absorption as if it were the only important thing in
the world: as in games and sports, especially in drama and romance.
This is one of the many things that do not astonish because they are
so common; and the usual (and probably the true) explanation of it is,
that this state of mind is of the utmost utility in giving zest to
play, especially during youth. For many animals share in this spirit;
and the young of the higher animals, which enjoy a long protected
youth, pass the time chiefly at play, and thereby develop and train
all their faculties, physical and mental. It somewhat outlasts youth
in many animals, and conspicuously in ourselves, some having nothing
better to do (and they might do worse), and others relieving from time
to time the strain or tedium of work and, in some sort, prolonging
youth into middle age; till play becomes gradually less engrossing.
This play-belief depends entirely upon imaginative excitement; and it
shows that the attitude of belief may be adopted voluntarily, or fall
upon us (as it were) by surprise and maintain itself for a time in
great strength: with many at a melodrama it runs to anxiety, weeping
and anguish; and this not only without evidence, but in spite of the
knowledge that this is London, whose magistrates would never permit
such doings: only one forgets London, with all its dull conventions of
law and order. Attention is engrossed by the play.
Play-belief has the same traits as were said above to mark
superstitions: (1) it becomes active on occasions, and otherwise
disappears; (2) it is always modifiable for convenience or by a change
of taste; (3) it loses its hold and tends to die out in a man as time
goes on; (4) it is strengthened by the assent of an excited crowd; (5)
the objects of such beliefs are very variable. We shall find that in
other ways there is a close alliance between superstition and play.
But, certainly, superstition has a much deeper hold upon our nature;
for it not only excites fear and anxiety, but itself is born of those
passions: the desire of security and confidence, the dread of impending
and unknown perils, these are its life and strength. So that the wonder
is that superstitions are not more enduring. And the truth seems to be
that the tendency to adopt superstitions does endure at a certain level
of mentality, though particular superstitious beliefs are mutable; just
as in the individual, a disposition to play outlasts many particular
modes of recreation.
Belief, then, is an attitude of mind in which we may find ourselves
for good reasons, or for bad reasons, or for none at all; sometimes
even slipping into it voluntarily or involuntarily when we know the
situation is unreal; indeed, an attitude in which, in play or earnest,
we pass our lives, unless something happens to arouse doubt or
criticism.
§ 4. CAUSES AND GROUNDS OF BELIEF
The source, direct or indirect, of all belief is perception. In
perception must be included, for subjective studies, introspection;
though being difficult to keep steady, to repeat and to compare with
the observation of other minds, it carries less conviction. As to
perception we say that “seeing is believing”; and, in fact, an object
holds the eye in a way that vouches for its own reality; but, if we
suspect that our eyes deceive us, reassurance comes with the handling
of the thing. Belief has sometimes been discussed as if it were
chiefly concerned with ideas or the relations of ideas; and systems
of philosophy have sought justification in the coherence of ideas,
with little or no regard (not to say with contempt) for the coherence
of ideas with perceptions. But nearly the whole of every man’s life
(savage or philosopher) passes in an attitude of unquestioning belief
in the evidence of his senses; and it is thence that belief extends
to ideas on a presumption of their representing reality. We know that
a perception may be fallible, but perceptions and the comparison of
perceptions in the long run overrule everything else; and experimental
methods consist in taking precautions against the errors of perception,
and in bringing every hypothesis to the test of perception.
Further causes of belief are either Evidentiary, which (though often
misleading) may generally be justified on reflection as raising
some degree of probability, and which may, therefore, be called
“grounds”; or Non-evidentiary, which (though very influential) cannot,
on reflection, be justified as having any logical value, and are,
therefore, causes only and not grounds.
(1) Evidentiary grounds of belief are (_a_) memory, which is plainly
indispensable if we are to learn by experience; and (_b_) testimony,
which must be trusted if language is not to be useless and social
co-operation impossible: both these grounds are supposed to rest
upon the primary rock of previous perception, but are slippery and
treacherous. Memory is only valid so far as it truthfully represents
original experience, and testimony only so far as it presents (i)
a valid memory, (ii) correctly reported. Hence in serious matters
precautions must be taken against their fallibility: otherwise they
are not good evidence. A specious memory, so far as it is false, is
imagination; and false testimony, so far as it reports (i) a false
memory or (ii) an invention of the reporter, is also imagination.
Testimony gathers force, as a cause of belief, with the numbers and
consideration of those who support it, and is especially strengthened
by their unanimity; but, as a ground of belief, it depends only on
their knowledge and truthfulness. A third ground of belief is (_c_)
inference; which is necessary to all original adjustment of our conduct
to the future or to unperceived circumstances, but highly fallible,
and constituting the chief problem for the exercise of Logic when
that science arises: especially to explain the conditions of valid
observations and experiments, of probability, of the conclusion of
an argument being covered by its premises, and of the sufficiency of
verification. False inferences that cannot be verified are imaginations.
As the growing mind of society deals with true beliefs they are piled
up and classified in systems of science and philosophy: in which
systems each belief or judgment strengthens and is strengthened by
the rest. Even without systematisation, the mere structural similarity
of judgments, formed unconsciously on the same implicit principles of
causation and classification, throws them into those loose apperceptive
masses which we call “common sense.” Such systems or masses, whether
of science or of common sense, readily assimilate and confirm new
inferences having the same character, and offer resistance to all
inferences having a different structure, such as those about magic
and spirits. The selective power of these apperceptive masses over
novel ideas constitutes “understanding,” and is the plain solid man’s
substitute for Logic; and so it is with many scientists, who often
neglect the abstract study of Logic. For these systems or masses of
experience are the substance of Logic and Methodology, which are their
skeletons abstracted from them. They are the basis of all effective
comparison and criticism; agreement or disagreement with them is the
test of truth or error. It is the chief defect of common sense that the
verification of its judgments depends almost entirely upon repetition
of experiences (what Logicians call “simple enumeration”), without that
analysis of observations which alone can show the necessary relations
of facts; but this defect is in some measure remedied in good minds
by that power of unformulated ideas of natural order, the result of
unconscious analysis, which we call “good judgment”—a power which the
fortunate possessor may be unable to explain.
(2) Non-evidentiary causes of belief are all reducible to bad
observations, imaginations, and the causes that excite imagination; and
bad observations are caused by false imaginations as to the meaning
of sense-data. If it should seem to any one that since imagination
consists of ideas it must be by nature incompatible with intense
belief, we must consider that memory, the effects of testimony, and
inferences also consist entirely of ideas; so that in that character
they do not differ from imagination. Even perception depends for
its meaning upon implicit ideas, and erroneous perception is due to
erroneous ideas. The weakness of imagination-belief which (despite its
frequent intensity) always in time becomes manifest, is due to its not
being constantly confirmed by experience.
In detail the non-evidentiary causes of belief are as follows: (_a_)
not only the truths of experience become massed or systematised
in common sense and science, but the errors of misinterpreted
experience and tradition form similar aggregates. Coincidences
mistaken for causation, illusions, dreams, tales of thaumaturgy
and ghost-stories, so far as they have anything in common in their
outlines or emotional tone, form apperceptive masses which function
in the same way as scientific systems: each of their constituent
beliefs strengthens and is strengthened by the rest; and each mass
(as a delusive “understanding”) readily assimilates and confirms any
new tale or illusion having its own character, and resists and repels
every judgment having a different structure—and, therefore, refuses
explanation. And just as science and common sense have a sort of
internal skeleton of principles which has been exhibited as Logic, so
some of these comparatively obscure and chaotic masses of illusion
and tradition contain certain structural principles which, though
unconscious at the lowest human level, obtain recognition as culture
advances—for example, the principles of mimetic and contagious magic;
and then, too, arise such caricatures of science as theogonies and
cosmologies, chiromancy, astrology and so forth. But nothing ever
emerges from them that can be called a test of truth or methodology;
much less, of course, can such a thing be found at lower levels of
culture. There you see the accumulating clouds of imagination-belief,
which gather together from all the winds and pile themselves up to
overshadow poor humanity age after age; which still, in our own world,
are by no means dissipated; and to whose persistent influence we may (I
suppose) attribute the mysticism that periodically infects philosophy
itself.
(_b_) Contributory to these masses of error are bad observations,
confused and distorted memories, dreams and corrupted testimony and
tradition, all of them having their origin in some sort of experience
and matter-of-fact, and all issuing in vain imaginations. For of course
there is no such thing as imagination underived from experience;
experience is distorted and corrupted by superstition, but it
transfers to superstition the attitude of belief that always belongs
to experience, and supplies materials from which (as we shall see) it
is often possible to construct such a defence of superstition as, to
an unsophisticated mind, must be very plausible and persuasive.[86]
Direct experience is often interpreted by a story in such a way as
to make the story more credible. If a stone is shown as marking the
tomb of a hero, or a cleft in the mountain as proving the prowess of a
wizard, one unconsciously transfers the attitude of belief involved in
contemplating these relics to all the legends concerning those mighty
men of old.
(_c_) The causes determining belief are reinforced in various ways
by feeling and emotion. The agreeableness or disagreeableness of any
judgment draws attention to, or diverts it from such a judgment and the
evidence for it: except that some disagreeable emotions, especially
fear, by a sort of fascination of attention, are favourable to belief
in the reality of an imagined evil. They possess the whole mind.
(_d_) Every desire fixes attention upon beliefs favourable to it,
and upon any evidence favourable to them, and diverts attention from
conflicting beliefs and considerations. Thus every desire readily forms
about itself a relatively isolated mass of beliefs, which resists
comparison and, therefore (as Ribot says),[87] does not recognise the
principle of contradiction. Incompatible desires may be cherished
without our becoming aware of their incompatibility; or, if the fact
obtrudes itself upon us, we repudiate it and turn away.
The more immature a mind, again, and the less knowledge it has, the
less inhibition of desire is exerted by foresight of consequences that
ought to awaken conflicting desires or fears; and the less compassion
one has, the less is desire inhibited by its probable consequences to
others: therefore, in both cases, the less check there is upon belief.
(_e_) Voluntary action in connection with any belief, whether of a
rational kind or in the routine of rites and ceremonies, favours that
belief: (1) by establishing the idea-circuit of means and end, the
end suggesting the means to it, and the thought of means running
forward to the end—a circuit that resists interruption: (2) by the
general effect of habit and prejudice; for every habit of action or of
thought has inertia, and, moreover, it is agreeable, and to break it is
disagreeable; so that, again, a relatively isolated system is formed,
which resists comparison and criticism.
On the influence of desire and of activities for an end depends “the
will to believe.” We cannot believe anything by directly willing it;
but we can will what to attend to, or what to do, and that determines
belief.
(_f_) Finally, belief is determined by certain social influences
besides testimony and tradition: especially by sympathy and antipathy
between families, parties, tribes; and by imitativeness and
suggestibility (qualified fortunately by contra-suggestibility); so
that beliefs become fashionable, endemic, coercive, impassioned and
intolerant. The power of a crowd to inflict its passions and beliefs
upon the individual has recently been much explained: it has always
been practically understood by wizards, priests and politicians who
lead mankind by the ears. Suggestibility, in general, is the liability
to follow example or testimony without criticising it; and for many
people it is so easy to fall into the attitude of belief upon slight
provocation, that this liability, to the extent of weakness, is very
common. Contra-suggestibility in general is the opposite tendency.
But special suggestibility (I should say) is the liability to adopt a
belief on testimony not only in the absence of evidence, but against
evidence; and contra-suggestibility is the liability to reject a belief
against the evidence. They are merely extreme cases. If you draw two
equal straight lines, A and B, and say, “It seems to me that B is
longer than A,” one person will reply “Certainly,” another “Certainly
not; A is the longer.” The art of suggestion consists in reducing
your audience to this state of imbecility; it requires you to bring
them into such a condition of exclusive attention to your words that,
comparison and criticism being excluded, their natural disposition to
assent shall (for the time) have free play. The specially suggestible
person is easily thrown into this state of exclusive attention, as if
hypnotised. He who is suggestible by one man may not be so by another;
or he may be more suggestible in the line of his prejudices than
against them.
§ 5. THE BELIEFS OF IMMATURE MINDS
All these grounds and causes of belief, evidentiary and non-evidentiary
(except Logic and Science) are common to both mature and immature
minds: but their proportional influence with individuals or with
societies is very different at different stages of development; and
in immature minds and in the lower stages of culture, the power of
the non-evidentiary causes is excessive. Probably the chief cause of
the growth of common sense in the generality of men is an increasing
regularity of social life, as (notably) in the bloom of the classical
civilisations and in the last four hundred years.
Perception, in normal circumstances, is accepted by all as a matter
of course or, rather, of necessity: it controls the activities of
practical life in hunting and in industry, in making weapons, hoeing
the ground, building houses: however, these labours may sometimes be
modified or interrupted by the intrusion of beliefs derived from other
sources. If a savage sings a spell to his prey, or weapon, or tool, or
keeps the head of a slain enemy on a shelf that his victim’s soul may
assist him as a slave, he may thereby increase his own confidence in
the work of hunting or gardening; but, otherwise, if his work be no
better, neither need it be the worse for such fancies. The properties
of matter exact practical recognition, without which nothing can be
done. Even magical practices presuppose a sane perception of the
central facts: as who is acting, for what purpose, when and where,
with what and toward whom. Upon this basis there may be an astonishing
superstructure of imagination-belief; but there are limits to the
effectiveness of such beliefs.
M. Levy-Bruhl, indeed, in a very interesting book, maintains[88] that,
under the influence of social ideas (_représentations collectives_),
the primitive mind actually perceives things differently from what
we do. Whilst we succeed in attaining an objective presentation,
eliminating subjective associations, with primitives _propriétés
mystique_, _forces occultes_ are integral qualities of the object. He
grants that, in certain cases of immediate practical interest, we find
them very attentive and able to discriminate slight impressions, and to
recognise the external signs of an object on which their subsistence
or even their life depends; but holds that, in a very great majority
of cases, their perceptions are over-weighted by subjective elements.
This doctrine reverses (I venture to think) the real relations between
perceptions and other causes of belief and their proportionate
influence in savage life. It is not only where subsistence or life
is at stake that backward peoples see things as they are: in merely
experimental tests, Dr. Rivers found amongst both Papuans and Todas,
that, as to suggestibility in perception, they showed a high degree
of independence of judgment.[89] Their confidence in perception is
not, like imagination-belief, occasional, modifiable for convenience,
liable to lapse in course of time, dependent on the assent of a crowd.
So far as occult or mystical attributes are by a savage assigned to
things, such as magical force to a weapon, they constitute a secondary,
imaginary integration with the percept. Such imaginary attributes
cannot, like perception attributes, be verified by sensation: compare
the hardness of a spearhead with its magical force.
The peculiarity of savage beliefs is due, not to corrupt and clouded
perception, but to the influence of desire and anxiety upon their
imagination, unrestrained by self-criticism and reinforced by the
popular consensus. The savage’s imagination is excited by the
pressing needs of his life in hunting, love, war, agriculture, and
therefore by hunger and emulation, hate and grief, fear and suspicion.
Imaginations spring up in his mind by analogy with experience; but
often by remote or absurd analogies; and there is no logic at hand
and not enough common sense to distinguish the wildest imaginative
analogies from trustworthy conclusions. The same pressing needs and the
same emotional storms often affect a whole tribe, and simultaneously
stimulate every one’s imagination; and originating (no doubt) in
ancient times and slowly accumulating and condensing, there grows up a
mass of public imagination-beliefs, which are inculcated into every
individual by tradition and common ceremonies. Such beliefs embodied
in stories and formulæ, and associated with rites and customs, have
for a long time the strength of custom in governing the behaviour
of individuals and in tribal respect; but they prove at last to be
weaker than custom, inasmuch as the observances may continue whilst
the beliefs are forgotten or replaced by others, as the progress of
culture makes it necessary to think of the old rites in a different
way. In their flourishing period they extensively influence practical
affairs, sometimes helpfully or harmlessly, sometimes injuriously and
disastrously. In general, imaginations are prevented by biological
necessity from modifying a tribe’s conduct beyond certain limits; but,
exceptionally, they result in tribal insanity, tending toward, if not
accomplishing, the tribe’s destruction, as in extreme cases of the
practice of human sacrifice or of the ordeal by poison.
Indeed, so violent and tyrannous is the power of superstitious beliefs
in many cases, that it may be difficult to understand how they are
almost entirely born of the imagination. In a civilised country there
are always current some beliefs as imaginative and absurd as any to
be found in the middle of Africa; but surviving amidst a greater mass
of perception-beliefs and positive ideas about industry and commerce,
they have lost much of their driving power; and when the imaginative
character of any belief has been recognised, it passes into the region
of fine art or mythology, or even of ridicule. If such things have any
place in our life, we turn to them of personal choice in the intervals
of affairs. Under the influence of the fine arts or of literature
treating of such things, our emotional states may be intense; but
they are dissociated from action, exist for their own sake, have an
appropriate tone (æsthetic) which marks their lack of energy, so
that they require only an imaginary satisfaction. With a backward
people there is much less “positive” opposition to their imaginative
prepossessions and pursuits; what seems to us absurd, seems to them
necessary; the actions and observances that express their beliefs are
not performed as a matter of personal choice, but of public custom; the
ends to be obtained (they think) are the same as those of what we call
“business.” And it must be so. Considering the function of superstition
in promoting political evolution, it is plain that primitive man must
have been capable of believing and doing those things which (within
certain limits) had so much biological and social value.
To understand how the magical and religious beliefs of savages and the
play-beliefs of civilised man, having a common source in imagination,
are (in spite of strong contrasts) closely allied, we must call to mind
the many degrees of intensity of play-belief in ourselves, varying
from the momentary entertainment of playing with a child, through many
grades of fiction or ceremony, down to a deeply serious frame of mind,
a profound movement of dread or compassion that may long outlast our
play. A child’s absorption in such beliefs is more intense than ours;
but circumstances prevent his attaining to the solid faith of a savage.
The child of civilised people has little or no support in tradition
(except from nursemaids); he is not driven by the desires and anxieties
of subsistence; and he is frequently interrupted by his seniors. The
savage has an overwhelming tradition and authority, pressing anxieties
and no seniors. Until the civilised sceptic reaches his shores, there
is, for the average tribesman, nothing but tardy experience or social
fatigue to check his vagaries. His imagination vies with the sense of
reality, often overpowers it; yet his beliefs show many signs of their
insecure foundations.
* * * * *
It is not only the influence of society and tradition that renders
imagination-beliefs coercive to a savage; in the immature mind of the
individual there are certain conditions favourable to their prevalence.
(_a_) The process of imagination itself, the memory and the
picture-thinking of savages, seems to be more vivid, sensuous, stable,
more like perception than our own normally is. “The Australians,”
says Spencer and Gillen, “have the most wonderful imagination.”[90]
They often die of it; and so do Hindoo peasants, Maories, Fijians,
Negroes and others, if they know they have been cursed or have broken
a taboo. With the Melanesians, says Dr. Coddrington, thinking is like
seeing;[91] and Dr. Rivers has confirmed this statement. Hence there is
a tendency to accept imaginations as perceptions are accepted; and to
believe in the efficacy of rites, because the mere performing of them
with an imagined purpose makes their purpose seem to be accomplished.
When a man of intense and excited imagination makes an image of an
enemy, and stabs it, that his enemy may suffer, his action gratifies
the impulse to stab, as if he wounded the enemy himself, and revenge
seems to be a present fact. Similar intensity of imagination is found
in civilised children—greater than in ordinary adults. Savages,
again, seem to dream more vividly and convincingly than is usual
amongst ourselves, and are said to be more liable to hallucinations.
Physiological conditions of the immature brain (childish or savage),
in which excitement does not rapidly spread through many associated
neurones, may be the basis of the vividness of imagination, dreaming
and hallucination.
(_b_) But more important than any intensity of picture-thinking to
the growth and persistence of imagination-beliefs, is the want of a
mental standard, by which they might be discredited. It is true that
even at a low level of culture individuals are found for whom common
sense constitutes a private standard, and who are sceptics in relation
to their tribal beliefs.[92] But such a private standard cannot be
communicated, and for the great majority of the tribesmen common
sense is no confident guide; and perhaps they are even incapable of
effectively comparing their ideas. At any rate, one reason why we
believe our memories and not our imaginations is that, whilst in
both cases the images (or elements of images) entering into them are
derived from experience, in memory the relations of images in place,
time and context are also derived directly from experience; whereas in
imagination images (or their elements) are reconstructed in relations
in which they have never been experienced, by analogies of experience
(often distorted) or by condensations the most capricious. Therefore,
to make imaginations credible to us, even in play, the relations of
experience must be faithfully imitated, as (_e. g._) in _Robinson
Crusoe_; or else our emotions must be so strongly excited as to possess
our minds with the fiction to the exclusion of all criticism. But with
immature minds observation of fact, outside the practical, repetitive,
necessary course of life, is not exact and coherent; and, accordingly,
their memories are not coherent, especially as to time-relations; so
that, by comparison with such memories, irregular imaginations suffer
little. There is not enough orderly memory or general knowledge to
discredit even absurd imaginations; for so far as observation and
memory are disorderly, generalisation, conscious or unconscious, is
impossible. Hence not only traditionary myths may be monstrous and
arbitrary, but occasional tales of private invention, amongst both
children and savages, usually exhibit disconnected transitions and
impossible happenings. Yet they satisfy the immature mind.
(_c_) There are certain other conditions of the immature mind that
hinder the comparison of ideas and, therefore, the criticism of
beliefs. About every imperative need, such as success in hunting, with
its desires and anxieties, rites and ceremonies grow up to gratify
imaginatively the desires and relieve the anxieties; and ideas of
these observances form relatively isolated systems. To us these ideas
usually seem absurd and irrelevant when compared with the savage’s own
experiences and his other practices. We see a hunter, for example,
endeavour to gain his ends by two distinct series of actions. In one
he fasts, enchants his weapons, casts spells upon his expected prey;
in the other he carefully prepares his weapons, patiently tracks his
prey, warily approaches and slays it. The latter series we approve
and appreciate as causation; the former we ridicule as hocus-pocus,
contributing objectively nothing to the event (though probably it
increases his confidence); and we pity “the heathen in his blindness.”
And, indeed, he may be said to be mind-blind; for in observing the
rites, his attention is so occupied by means and end, and caught in the
circuit in which these ideas revolve, and he is so earnest in carrying
out the prescribed actions, that he cannot compare them with the really
effective actions, so as to discover their absurdity and irrelevancy.
In short, a state of mental dissociation is established for the system
of magical ideas. So far does illusion go that he seems to regard
the rites as the most important part of his proceedings. But that is
not really his deepest conviction: he trusts in Magic and keeps his
bowstring dry.
(_d_) In the case of children we may assume, and in the more backward
races of men we may suspect, that the comparison of judgments is
difficult, or sometimes even impossible, because of the imperfect
development of the cerebral cortex. There must be some structural
conditions of the free flow of energy through all organs of the brain,
corresponding with the associability and comparability of all ideas.
We may doubt if these conditions are complete even in good cultivated
minds; since everybody finds one or another study or art especially
difficult for him, or the freeing of himself from this or that sort
of prejudice especially repugnant. And it is not only deliberate
comparison that is hindered in the immaturity of the brain, but also
that automatic process (more or less unconscious) of assimilation
and discrimination to which (I think) we owe most of the results of
abstraction and generalisation that may seem to have required purposive
comparison. Such imperfections of structure, greatest at the lowest
levels of organisation, and gradually decreasing as ideal rationality
is approached, we may call “incoördination”; and, so far as it obtains,
the results must be somewhat similar to the discoördination, the
breaking down or interruption of organic efficiency, that occurs in
hysteria, hypnosis and some forms of insanity. One of the results
probably is suggestibility—the tendency to accept what is told,
or insinuated, without examination; for freedom from this common
liability depends (apart from the contra-suggestible disposition) upon
the rapidity and definiteness with which one can compare that which
is suggested with present fact or with one’s knowledge and former
experience; and this is hindered by incoördination.
Effective incoördination may, however, be merely functional for want
of practice in thinking; and it exists often enough in civilised
people, because they have not even the desire to be consistent. In
either case, whether from defective structure or from the dull inertia
of disuse, there will be failure of comparison and, therefore, of
criticism, and also (we may suppose) a greater intensity of imagination
and of dreaming and a liability to hallucination, such as is said to be
frequently the case with immature minds.
§ 6. THE REASONING OF IMMATURE MINDS
We have seen that many beliefs result from inferences, and that
inferences, when logically justifiable, may be considered as grounds
(raising some degree of probability); but, when not justifiable,
they are only causes of belief and their results are only
imagination-beliefs. Since the general nature of reasoning is the same
for Socrates and Sambo, we must inquire into the particular nature of
the reasoning which leads immature minds into such bewildering mazes of
error as we see (for example) in the world-wide prevalence of Magic and
Animism.
On the inductive side of knowledge (the obtaining of premises) there
is, of course, much imperfect observation and hasty generalisation;
but, in spite of these faults, a savage learns by repeated experiences
a great many narrow general truths about the physical world, plants,
animals and his fellow-men, which constitute his stock of common sense
and on the strength of which he lives as a very intelligent animal. We
shall find from time to time errors of observation (such as the taking
of a dream for reality) and of generalisation (such as the classing of
worms with reptiles); but, strictly speaking, this is not reasoning:
all reasoning is deductive, and the immature mind’s deductive processes
need a fuller analysis.
Our Logic consists of a few universal principles generally accepted,
with which any more particular judgment may be compared in order
to test its validity. The matter may be superficially acquired in
a few hours; but the full comprehension of it implies the widest
comparison of types of judgment from all departments of knowledge:
Logic being (as I have said) a sort of skeleton of knowledge. Hence
in any mind incapable of comparison and criticism—or so far as it
is incapable—there must be an absence of Logic. So much effective
comparison of experience, however, goes on without our specially
attending to it that a man’s logical power bears no proportion to
his investigations into the structure of knowledge. One man may be a
great student of Logic and a very inefficient reasoner from a want
of discipline in the world of fact; another, who has never opened a
text-book, may yet show by the definiteness of his judgments and the
adequacy of his plans, that he is a sort of incarnate Logic, that his
mind works according to reason or (in other words) according to the
order of facts. It is the highest manifestation of common sense. Such
men occur among backward peoples.
The only universal principles that need be considered here are the Law
of Causation and the Form of Substance and Attribute (Mill’s doctrine
of Natural Kinds): which may be called the principles of parallel
reasoning; because the greater part of ordinary reasoning consists in
drawing some inference parallel to one or the other of them, usually
in some restricted shape. For example, a restriction of causation is
the proposition that “exposure to intense daylight causes sun-burn,”
of substance and attribute that “the specific gravity of gold is
about 19·5”: whence we infer that if we expose ourselves to sunlight
our faces or hands will suffer, or that any piece of gold will be
relatively very heavy. But in such cases erroneous inferences are
easy: for example, to expect that exposure to London sunshine will
cause sunburn; for there the foul atmosphere cuts off the actinic
rays: or to expect that a lump of brass will have specific gravity
19·5. A necessary precaution before trusting an inference, therefore,
is the ascertaining that the inference deals with the very same sort
of case as the premise describes: else there is no complete parallel.
And Logicians show in the form of the syllogism this necessary
precaution—to use their favourite example in a case of Substance and
Attribute:
Major premise—_All men are mortal_;
Minor premise—_Socrates is a man_;
⁂ Conclusion—_Socrates is mortal_.
The conclusion _Socrates is Mortal_ is parallel to the major premise
_All men are mortal_; and that it deals with the very same sort of case
is secured by the minor premise, _Socrates is a man_. Whoever reasons
must see to it that this premise is true. But the savage has never
noticed that necessity; and thence come most of his errors.
The syllogism (it is now admitted) does not describe the way in which
we reason, but is only a form which gives some help in testing the
validity of reasoning if one should ever think of doing such a thing.
In practice we do not think first of the major premise, then of the
minor premise and lastly of the conclusion. As a rule we do not think
of either premise at all: the “conclusion” comes first to mind. In
certain circumstances of association, because of our hopes or our
fears, it occurs to us that “Socrates is mortal.” If some one should
doubt this judgment and ask for proof, we might think of the major
premise, and then put it into words for the first time—“All men die;”
even then it might not seem necessary to add that “Socrates is a man.”
But although we may not have been at the time aware of these premises
until we were asked for them, their presence in the mind in some way
was necessary to determine the inference: the major premise was there
as latent memory of one or more cases of people who had died; the minor
premise was represented by the assimilation of the case of Socrates to
those cases of mortal men. The former experiences have left an engram,
which serves as a mould into which subsequent experience may run, and
which conceivably may determine subsequent judgments even though the
former experiences can no longer be remembered.
The phrase “form of thought” is most used for premises of high
generality, such as the axioms of mathematics, causation, substance
and attribute, space in three dimensions; and, undoubtedly, these are
forms which determine the lines of all thinking to which they are
relevant; but they would be useless, if there were not, under them,
forms established in very concrete material by the repetition of simple
experiences and ordinary events (or even by single impressive events),
such as “men are mortal,” “water quenches fire,” which determine the
lines of common-sense judgments. If there has been an experiential
judgment—X is related to Y, when X again appears it is expected to be
related to Y.
Amongst savages also, of course, experience settles in their minds
such forms of thought; both the most general ones, which they never
formulate but which necessarily control their thoughts, and many
particular ones concerning the experience of daily life; which last
control the details of their thoughts, and for practical purposes are
true; but which, through ignorance of the minor premise, are allowed
to assimilate many judgments of a very different nature. Thus, X
being known to be related to Y, they are apt to infer that things
that are like X, or which they suppose to be like X, are also in the
same way related to Y; and this is disastrous. In civilised life,
most occupations are so mechanical, and the general tradition is so
positive, that there is little encouragement to think nonsense; so that
the average man reasons tolerably about simple matters without having
heard of the minor premise; but the savage’s life is much less regular,
and less fully occupied, and the tradition is full of magic and ghosts.
Accordingly, he is always ready to think about magic and ghosts; and
since his thoughts about such things can only run in the mould of his
experiences (with some playroom for amplification, distortion and
condensation), whilst he is also ignorant of the function of the minor
premise, he seems to draw often from a very sound major premise a very
absurd conclusion. For the minor premise is an invention of Logicians
(perhaps their greatest): it does not occur to cursory, but only to
critical thought.
For example, a savage judges that to put a lock of a man’s hair in the
fire injures and may destroy him: how comes he to think so? He has
learnt by experience that for a man to put his hand in the fire, or
to fall into it, hurts him; and this supplies the mould in which his
inference about the lock of hair is cast. Similarly, he is apt to judge
that to throw a man’s image into the fire hurts him and may destroy
him; and this clearly rests upon the same experience. His reasoning
assumes the minor premise that (for the purpose of his revenge) a
separated part of a man, or his image, is the same as the man himself;
and this assumption is made explicit in the famous maxims of Magic,
that in rites, whatever has been in contact with a man—or that any
likeness of a man—may be substituted for him. But the generalisation
of these maxims is left for an advanced stage of culture; the savage,
who acts as if he held them, has never thought of, much less formulated
them. They are derived, by later thought, entirely from an analysis of
his conduct in magic. What the causes are that determine him to act as
if he accepted the maxims of Magic will presently be discussed.[93]
There are certain other reasonings implied in savage practices, where
the error lies not so much in the minor premise as in the minor term,
thus: It is matter of experience that a sense of personal power and
elation is produced by dancing and singing; and (perhaps without
remembering such experience) a savage infers that magical power is
increased by the same means. Or, again, it is matter of experience that
men eat and use solid food and weapons; and a savage infers that ghosts
eat ghostly food and use ghostly weapons; that is to say, that where
food and spears are left at a tomb and remain untouched, the ghost has
taken to himself the soul of these things which was his proper share.
Now granting that there are such things as magical powers and ghosts,
the reasoning that identifies them respectively with physical power and
with men is, for the purpose of the inference, not unplausible; with a
liberal examiner the minor premises might pass. But if magical powers
and ghosts do not exist, the minor terms are imaginary.[94] In short,
all these reasonings turn upon imaginations. The experiential major
premises are true enough, but the minor premises are illusory, and as
it is a maxim with Logicians that the force of reasoning follows the
weaker premise, the conclusion is illusory. It is not in perception but
in imagination that a part is the same as the whole, or that a likeness
is the same as the thing itself; that magic controls events and that
ghosts haunt their sepulchres.
These reasonings are fallacious imitations of parallel inferences
according to cause and effect; but there are others of a kind peculiar
to imagination: I mean reasonings by analogy—as when a Zulu, courting
the dusky fair, chews a piece of wood, in the expectation that, as
the wood is reduced to pulp, her heart, too, will be softened. These
processes are not parallel; there is no resemblance between a lady’s
heart and a piece of wood, nor between mastication and court-ship; but
the relation involved, the softening process, is felt to be the same in
both connections and, therefore, the cases on the whole are thought to
be the same. Many rites and observances depend upon such analogies—for
this is the strict sense of analogy, “like relations of unlike terms”;
and they have a leading part in the formation of myths in which natural
events are represented as personal relations—Apollo chasing the
Dawn, and so forth. And I formerly thought that such arguments as the
foregoing, in which the actions of ghosts are identified with those
of men, or the sufferings of a part are equated with those of the
whole, were examples of analogical reasoning; for certainly, the terms
involved are different: a ghost, or an image, or a nail-paring is not
the same as a man. But, on reflection, I see that though these terms
are really different, that has nothing to do with the psychology of
the matter, for they are conceived by the savage to be the same; and,
therefore, the inference is conceived as parallel to the experiential
ground (even though this remain latent in consciousness).
Analogical thought is now understood to be imaginative only, and is
confined to the metaphors and similes of poetry or rhetoric; though it
is not very long ago that it was seriously trusted in argument, as in
defending absolute monarchy in the State by the examples of patriarchy
in the family, and even by the supposed “regiment” of bees and quails
in their societies, of the lion over beasts and of the eagle over birds.
In this spirit, Malays, having identified the life of the rice plant
with human life, regard the flowering rice as in its infancy, and
proceed to feed it with pap: and carry out the analogy at further
stages of its development. Similarly, to facilitate childbirth, or to
liberate the struggling soul of the dying, it is a respected recipe
to untie all knots, unfasten all buttons, unlock all doors, open all
windows; for opening or loosing, no matter what, is always the same
process-relation.
These seem to be the chief modes of fallacious thinking—(1) false
parallels and (2) analogies—which mislead the untutored mind and give
to imagination-beliefs such coherence as they ever attain. Two accounts
of superstitious reasoning have been given by those who admit that
savages reason at all; one is that they reason correctly from absurd
premises; the other that they reason absurdly from correct premises.
If the foregoing analysis is sound, there is some truth and some error
in both these doctrines. So far as primitive ratiocination is purely
analogical, it is quite futile, whether its premises be true or false;
for it cannot be cast in any admissible logical form. So far as in
superstition it imitates parallel reasoning, according to cause and
effect or substance and attribute, the major premise is, for the most
part, empirically true; the minor premise is false; and the conclusion
is a vain imagination. There are three types of ratiocination: (1)
equations, as in mathematics; and here primitive man for a long time
got no further than the counting of things by his fingers and toes.
(2) Parallels of premise and inference, according to causation or
substance and attribute, as in the physical and natural sciences;
and here the savage collects by experience much common sense, and by
inevitable fallacies much superstition. (3) Analogies of imagination.
The natural progress of reason consists in relegating analogies to
poetry and rhetoric; in introducing greater and greater accuracy into
the judgments that serve as major premises, and greater caution in
assuming minor premises; at last, in counting and measuring the facts
reasoned about, and so preparing the beginnings of mathematical method.
Such progress is promoted by the high biological value of greater
definiteness of thought. Immature man in the necessary practical
life—which may be called the biological life—has many definite
perceptions and judgments and well-adjusted actions; outside that life,
in the region of superstitious observance, he is not a rational, but an
imaginative animal.
§ 7. GENERAL IDEAS AT THE SAVAGE LEVEL
The language of savages is often wanting in names of classes of
things for which names are with us a matter of course, and it has
been supposed that those who use the language must be without the
corresponding general ideas. Thus it is reported that a tribe had a
name for each kind of tree but none for tree in general; another had
a name for coco-nuts at various stages of growth (when they serve
different uses) but none for coco-nut at all times: therefore, it is
inferred, they had no general idea of tree or of coco-nut. A Siberian
example is still more remarkable. The Tunguses depend entirely upon
reindeer for food, clothes, tents and locomotion, and keep herds of
them; yet they have no name for the animal. But they have a name for
wild and another for tame reindeer; a name for domestic reindeer that
have been broken in, and another for the unbroken; a name for the
female fawn, for the doe with young, for a doe with one fawn, a doe in
the third year with two fawns; a name for each age-class of buck, and
so on.[95] Are we to infer that the Tunguses have no general idea of
reindeer?
It was, no doubt, natural to assume that we first perceive individuals,
which now stand clearly before us, and then, having compared them,
arrive at general ideas. But if knowledge grows by the assimilation
and differentiation of experiences, the class on the one hand
and the individual on the other, must be joint products of this
process: classes becoming clearer as more and more individuals are
discriminated. Classes, or class-ideas never stand before us as
individuals do; but the greater part of the meaning of every perception
of an individual is the kind of thing it is. And as to priority,
to perceive the kind of thing is (biologically) far more important
than its individuality. If the individual did not mean the class, to
perceive it would be useless as a guide to action. The general idea
derived from the assimilation of experiences is the apperceptive mass
that converts sense-stimulation into cognition: when unconscious
Romanes called it a “recept.”
The primitiveness of general ideas is shown by gesture-language, which
probably precedes speech, and which (except in direct indication
of what is thought of) depends wholly upon general ideas suggested
by imitative or significant actions. Primitive language must have
described things by general characters, so far as it consisted in
onomatopœia; to growl like a lion could only suggest the kind of
animal. Primitive drawing (whether by children or savages) is nearly
always generic: dog, horse, frigate-bird, hammer-headed shark, but not
any individual.
There can be no doubt that savages are capable of general and abstract
ideas; and no one now supposes that language is an adequate measure of
thought. A language contains names only for things, groups, and aspects
or actions of things which the people who use it need to discuss: if
they do not need to speak of abstractions, there are no words for them.
But we cannot assume of the contents of the mind, any more than of the
outside world, that things do not exist unless we have noticed and
named them. Professor Franz Boas has shown[96] that languages of the
northern Amerinds, that do not idiomatically express abstract ideas,
may be made to do so without violence, and that the abstract expression
is intelligible to men native to the languages. “Every one who knows
people of low culture,” says Dr. Rivers, “must recognise the difficulty
which besets the study of any abstract question, not so much because
the savage does not possess abstract ideas as that he has no words of
his own to express them.”[97]
Amongst the ideas attained by savages, and having an important part
in their lives, though often taken for granted and unexpressed, are
some of the highest generality: for example “force.” The notion of
force is derived from the experience of effort in our own muscular
exertions; but with the development of our perception of physical
objects by the integration of sense-data—sight, touch, movement and
resisted movement (kinæsthesis), smell, hearing—this sense of effort,
being transferred to objects as equivalent to our own exertions about
them, becomes the all-important core of every object (or meaning of
every perception of an object), without which the thing would be a
mere show, neither useful nor injurious—sheep and tigers, rocks and
pumpkins alike indifferent. Probably the perceptions of all the higher
animals (down to reptiles) have this meaning. Force is reality, and by
primitive man is thought of as the essence of whatever he conceives
of as real, such as spells, talismans and ghosts. Having a subjective
ground, from which it never becomes free, the notion of it is
indefinite, varies for each of us with our constitution, age, health,
and not only lends itself to the wildest whims of superstition, but has
misled scientific investigations.
Relations are a class of general ideas familiar to savage thought,
often appreciated with great subtlety and especially prominent in
some magical operations. Relations are not only thought of by savages
but compared, and likenesses discovered between them that may often
surprise us. A gardener of New Guinea, having planted taro, ensured the
growth of the crop by saying: “A muræna, left on the shore by the tide,
was exhausted and on the point of expiring, when the tide returned,
and it revived and swam away.” And he struck the ground with a branch
three times.[98] He saw that renewal of life in the muræna and in the
taro were the same thing; so that to describe one must strengthen the
other—such is the “force” of a spell!
The most important relation involved in knowledge and in its practical
applications is causation. Savages who have no word for causation and
have never thought of it in the abstract, must always act as if they
assume it. This is apt to be misunderstood. It is written: “The natives
[of Australia] have no idea of cause and effect. They notice that two
things occur one after the other, and at once jump to the conclusion
that one is cause and the other effect.” They have, then, some idea of
the relation, though ill-discriminated. Thus, having noticed that the
plover often cries before rain, they imitate the cry when performing
rites to bring on rain. We rather suppose that an atmospheric change,
preceding the approaching rain, excites the plovers. But that does not
occur to the natives: that “one after the other” is the same as effect
after cause, or (as Logicians say) _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_, lies
at the bottom of innumerable superstitions. The subconscious control
exercised by this latent form of thought is very imperfect. The maxims
of indirect Magic, that a likeness may be substituted for the thing
itself, or a part of it for the whole, are merely formulæ of causation
assumed under an erroneous belief as to what can be a cause. There are
cases in which the like may be a substitute (one man for another) and
a part may nearly serve for the whole (part of a broken knife). Hence
these principles were stated and avowed by physicians and alchemists of
the Middle Ages, and observed in their practice.
The quantitative axiom of mediate relation—“Magnitudes equal to the
same magnitude are equal”—is, of course, never expressed by savages;
but it is practically understood and applied by them whenever they
use a common measure—the fingers for counting, the pace, or hand or
arm-stretch to measure distance. These devices are gesture language;
and the truth which the gestures assume has been forced upon the
observation of primitive men whenever they saw three or more nearly
equal things together—men in a row, birds in a flock, eggs in a nest.
We need not suppose that conscious analysis is necessary to determine
the relations between such things; the brain has its own method of
analysis; and some day we learn the results. It was late in the day
that the results became known; not, apparently, till the Greeks gave
scientific form to the rudiments of mathematics. For then, for the
first time, articulate axioms were wanted—to satisfy the form of
science. The innumerable exact calculations of Egypt and Assyria could
go on very well without them. Their discovery required the specific
purpose of a scientist in search of them, the state of profound
meditation and abstraction, excluding all irrelevant ideas, when in the
emptiness and darkness of the mind their light became visible, like a
faint sound in a silent room. Thus an idea, whose functioning has for
ages controlled thought without being recognised, suddenly takes its
place in the organisation of knowledge.
§ 8. THE WEAKNESS OF IMAGINATION-BELIEFS
With immature minds their superstitions seem to rest on good evidence.
Some of those who pray to Neptune are saved from shipwreck, and the
drowned are forgotten: all confirmatory coincidences are deeply
impressive, and failures are overlooked or excused. By suggestion
the sick are often healed, and the hale are struck down. Curses and
incantations, if known to the intended victim, fulfil themselves. So do
good omens that give confidence, and bad omens that weaken endeavour.
If a magician has the astuteness to operate for rain only when the
wet season approaches, the event is likely to confirm his reputation.
Sleight of hand, ventriloquism and the advantages of a dark séance are
not unknown to sorcerers tutored in an old tradition of deceit, and
their clients take it for demonstration. The constant practice by a
whole village of both magic and industry for the same end, makes it
impossible for ordinary mortals to see which of them is the real agent
of success. For the failures of magic or of sacrifice the practitioners
always have plausible explanations. Hence between imagination-beliefs
and perception-beliefs, as to their causes, there may be, for the
believers, no apparent difference.
But in character, also, imagination-beliefs may seem indistinguishable
from perception-beliefs; in immediate feeling-quality they are
certainly very much like them; and, on a first consideration, they
appear to have as much influence over men’s actions: but this is not
true. We must not infer that to suffer martyrdom for a cult (as witches
have done) can be a sign of nothing but unalterable faith in it:
besides fanaticism and other abnormal states of mind, one must allow
for loyalty to a party or leader, for oppositeness and hatred of the
persecutor, for display, self-assertion and (in short) for a strong
will. Those who take part in a religious war—are they driven wholly by
enthusiasm for the supernatural, and not at all by hatred of aliens,
love of fighting and hope of plunder? Discounting the admixture of
other motives, the power of imagination-beliefs is, with most people,
much less than we are apt to suppose. They are unstable, and in course
of time change, though the “evidence” for them may remain the same.
Moulded from the first by desire and anxiety, they remain plastic
under the varying stress of these and other passions. In a primitive
agricultural community, preparation of the soil, hoeing, reaping
and harvesting go on (though with inferior tools and methods) just
as they do with us; and from age to age the processes are generally
confirmed or slowly improved. At the same time, every such employment
is surrounded by a sort of aura of rites, which seem to be carried out
with equal, or greater, scrupulosity and conviction; yet, age by age,
these rites slowly atrophy and lose their importance and their ancient
meaning, which is explained by new myths; or other rites may be learnt
from neighbours or from invaders; for some rites may be necessary to
their life, though not any particular ones.
The unstable character of superstitions and their close alliance with
play-beliefs may be shown in various ways:
(_a_) The rites which express them are often carried out with
deception, practised on the crowd in a public performance, as by
obtaining from heaven a shower of rice, which (over night) has been
lodged in the tree-tops, and is shaken down at the decisive moment; or,
in private practice, played off on the patient, by bringing a stone in
one’s waist-belt and then extracting it from his body. Half the tribe
may deceive the rest, the men mystifying the women and children, or the
old the young.
(_b_) Religious beliefs often comprise incompatible attitudes: the
worshippers of a god acknowledge in prosperity his superior wisdom and
power—at the same time, perhaps, employing devices to cheat him; or,
in long continuing distress from drought or war, they may threaten
to punish him, withhold his sacrifices and desecrate his shrine.
In Raiatea, when a chief of rank fell ill, extravagant rites and
sacrifices were practised; but if these failed, “the god was regarded
as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image
destroyed.”[99]
(_c_) Imagination-beliefs break down under various trials—such as
economy, selling the Rice-mother when the price of grain rises;
offering the gods forged paper-money instead of good, or leaving many
things at a grave and taking back the more precious; self-preservation,
as in substituting the king’s eldest son for himself in sacrifice;
compassion, in burying with the dead puppets instead of slaves (though
in this economy may have some part), or substituting in sacrifice a
bull for a man.
In such cases as these we see how any desire, whose satisfaction
is incompatible with a given belief or observance, tends to create
a limiting belief and to modify the rites. Social indolence and
fatigue—the product of many individual fatigues and occasional levity,
whereby the meaning of rites is forgotten, and the rites themselves
are gradually slurred and abbreviated—must be an important condition
of the degeneration of rites, as it is of language. Foreign influence
through trade or war introduces disturbing ideas that appeal to lovers
of novelty, and show that other people with other beliefs are as well
off as ourselves. Even repeated experience of failure may shake a man’s
confidence and make him throw away his fetish: though usually he gets
another.
(_d_) The beliefs of Magic and Animism are generally supported by
intense emotional excitement during the incantations and ceremonies
that express them. Emotion is artificially stimulated and, probably,
is felt to be necessary in order to sustain illusion. It excludes
criticism and increases suggestibility.
(_e_) The specific connexion of such beliefs with the play attitude
is shown: by their rites including games, such as leaping, swinging,
spear-throwing—supposed to have some magical efficacy; the
ceremonies themselves are often dances, dramas, choruses; and with
the degeneration of belief, the rites remain as dramatic or musical
pastimes, whilst the myths survive in epic poems, fairy-tales and
ghost-stories. When rites and incantations are not intended to incite
to immediate action, it is necessary that the emotions generated in
their performance shall subside with only an imaginary satisfaction:
they, therefore, acquire the æsthetic tone of beauty, or sublimity,
or pathos (or some rudimentary form of these feelings); so that the
performance, thus experienced, becomes an end in itself.
These beliefs with their correlative ceremonies have a further
resemblance to play in the indirectness of their utility. Play develops
faculty; but no child thinks of that. Magic and Animism (as we have
seen) tend to maintain custom and order; but this is not known to
any one at first and hardly now to the generality. Rites of public
interest, to procure rain or to encourage the crops, though useless
for such purposes, gratify the desire to do something, or to feel as
if something were being done toward the end desired, especially in the
intervals when really effective work cannot be carried on, as whilst
the crops are growing or after harvest: they allay anxiety and give
hope and confidence. Moreover, they are organised pastimes—not that
they are designed to pass the time, but that they have in fact that
valuable function. The men of backward societies, during a considerable
part of their lives, have not enough to do. Social ceremonies keep
people out of mischief, and, at the same time, in various ways exercise
and develop their powers. With us industry is a sufficient occupation,
or even too engrossing, and circumstances keep us steady; so that,
in leisure, pastimes may be treated lightly. With the savage some
pastimes must present themselves as necessary periodical religious
duties, whose performance (in his belief) encourages and enhances
industry. So far, again, as needs and interests are common to a tribe,
village or other group, these ceremonies ensure social co-operation
and unity and also emulation in their performance; and they preserve
tradition and the integration of successive generations. Our games
are free from practical hopes and anxieties; but the more elaborate,
such as horse-racing, have still a social function; or, like cricket
and football, a tribal character: the school, college, county or even
the nation feels deeply concerned about them. The Olympic Games, which
interested the Greek world throughout all its scattered cities, have
been traced back to primitive religious observances.[100]
As for the dark side of superstition, it needs no other explanation
than crime, fanaticism and insanity: which also are diseases of
the imagination. Jealousy, hatred, greed, ferocious pride and the
lust of power are amongst the causes that mould belief. Any calling
pursued in secret, like that of the sorcerer, under a social ban, is
of course demoralised. Where the interest of an organised profession
stands in a certain degree of antagonism to the public interest, it
may become the starting-point of unlimited abominations; and of this
truth the interests of magicians and priests have supplied the most
terrific examples. Dwelling upon what you know of black magic and
red religion, the retrospect of human culture fills you with dismay;
but need not excite astonishment; for human nature is less adapted
to its environment (chiefly social) than anything else in the world;
the development of the mind and of society has been too recent for us
reasonably to expect anything better.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] _Treatise of Human Nature_, Part III. § 7. For the recent
psychology of Belief see James Sully’s _The Human Mind_, ch. xiii., and
James Ward’s _Psychological Principles_, ch. xiv.
[86] See below, ch. viii. § 5.
[87] _Logique des Sentiments_, II. § 4.
[88] _Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures_, p. 40.
[89] _British Journal of Psychology_, Vol. I. p. 393.
[90] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 462.
[91] _The Melanesians_, p. 247.
[92] Below, ch. viii. § 4.
[93] Ch. iv. § 8.
[94] In assuming that there are no magical powers I do not mean that
the magician has no professional powers, but that such real powers as
he has are not magical.
[95] Czaplicka, _My Siberian Year_, p. 94. Other examples in Romanes,
_Mental Evolution in Man_, pp. 351-3.
[96] _The Mind of Primitive Man_, V. pp. 150-52.
[97] _Sociological Review_, January 1910, p. 9.
[98] Quoted by Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, I. p. 105.
[99] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 216
[100] F. M. Cornford in Miss Jane Harrison’s _Themis_, ch. vii.