CHAPTER VIII

THE MIND OF THE WIZARD

§ 1. THE RISE AND FALL OF WIZARDRY

In describing the occult arts and those who practise them, terms are

so loosely used that it may be convenient to premise that by “Wizard”

(or Medicine-man) is here meant either a magician or a sorcerer; that

is, either one who puts into operation impersonal magical forces (or

so far as he does so), or one who relies upon the aid (or so far as

he does so) of ghosts or spirits under magical control. It is an

objection to this use of the word “sorcerer,” that it is often applied

to those chiefly whose practice is maleficent: but there seems to be no

word used only in the more general sense; and the difference between

maleficent and beneficent wizards, whether magicians or sorcerers, will

here be marked, when necessary, by the familiar epithets “black” and

“white.”

In backward societies, wizardry is, or may be, practised by every

man or woman; and, indeed, in its simpler operations or observances

this is true at every stage of culture. But in every kind of task it

appears that some men can do it better than others, and they attract

the attention of the rest; and probably this is the beginning of the

differentiation of the professional wizard: he is at first merely

one whom others ask to help them in certain matters, because they

believe that he, more than themselves, has the knack of it. As the

occult arts become complicated and dangerous the superiority of the

master-mind is more manifest. We are told that amongst the Tasmanians

there were no professional wizards or medicine-men, but that some

people practised more than others. From the beginning the art excites

wonder, and wonder credulity; and an old fellow, who was subject to

fits of contraction in the muscles of one breast, used this mysterious

affection to impose upon his neighbours.[389] Wonder and the deference

it brings with it, with the self-delusion of power it generates, are

at first the wizard’s sole recompense; and to the end they remain his

chief recompense. In Australia a wizard is initiated (in fact or by

repute), and is in some ways a man apart from others; yet in several

cases it is reported that he receives no fees. For magical services

amongst the Arunta “no reward of any kind is given or expected.”[390]

Sometimes a wizard expects no fee unless he is successful, as among the

Tungus, Yakut and Buryats.[391] Generally, the wizard earns his living

like other men, and merely supplements it by fees and presents. He

rarely attains the professional dignity of living solely by his art and

mystery.

Nevertheless in simple societies the wizard is a leader or a chief. The

predominance of old men in council depends upon their occult powers

rather than upon their worldly wisdom: even hereditary chiefs may

have greater prestige through Magic than through royal descent.[392]

I conceive that after the organisation of the primitive hunting-pack

had, by various causes, been weakened or destroyed, it was through

belief in Magic that some sort of leadership and subordination were

re-established: perhaps in many experimental social forms, of which

some specimens may be found in Australia and survivals of others in

all parts of the world. Among the Massim of the Trobriand Islands,

hereditary chieftainship is better developed than anywhere to the south

or west; yet “at the back of every chief’s power over his people is the

dread of sorcery, without which I feel sure he is little more than a

cypher.”[393] Or the medicine-man may appear as the chief’s rival, as

among the Indians of the upper Amazons described by Capt. Whiffen, who

observes that in a contest between the medicine-man and the chief the

odds are in favour of the former, since to his opponents death comes

speedily (by poison). He has great influence over international policy:

war is never made without his advice. Here we see the beginning of that

struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers which continues

with alternate victory and defeat through the whole course of history.

Callaway[394] describes a Bantu chief as inducted to his office by

diviners that he may be “really a chief” not merely by descent. A

dangerous concession! But other Bantu chiefs are themselves wizards,

and strive to collect all the medicine of the tribe in their own hands;

and Chaka declared he was the only diviner in the country.[395] The

rise and spread of the political power of wizards, however, has been

fully illustrated by Sir J. G. Frazer in the sixth chapter of _The

Magic Art_.

As animistic interpretation prevails in any society, so that the

marvels of Magic come to be attributed to spiritual causes, magicians

tend to become sorcerers, and, being thus associated with spirits,

may not be easily distinguishable from priests. Among the Buryat a

shaman was a priest, as knowing the will of the gods and directing

sacrifices, but he was also an exorcist and diviner.[396] The great

majority of those who deal with spirits rely, more or less openly,

upon both coercion and propitiation: but we may say generally that an

officiant is a sorcerer so far as he depends upon coercing spirits by

Magic; a priest so far as he relies upon propitiating them by prayer

and sacrifice. The sorcerer is aggressive and domineering toward

supernatural powers; the priest professes humility. In any case the

character of a cult is liable, in course of time, to change from one

side to the other; and at the same time, two men may officiate in the

same rites and, at heart, one of them may be a priest and the other a

sorcerer. Custom gives the name of priest to him who, when a certain

stage has been reached in the development of Animism, when gods are

recognised, serves and sacrifices to the more public and reputable

spirits. A conflict then breaks out between him and the sorcerer.

Whilst magic-beliefs greatly strengthen chieftainship, religion,

without impairing the magical sanction, reinforces it with other ideas,

and therefore has a political advantage. A god is often the ancestor

of the king and the ground of his sovereignty; and the king himself,

or his brother, may be high-priest. The priesthood acquires commanding

dignity; it shares the culture of the highest social rank, and may

become almost the sole repository of learning and art. Wizards then

lose their place in the sun. The beneficent practice of wizardry (or

White Magic) is more or less incorporated with religious rites; the

maleficent practice (or Black Magic) is forbidden and punished: under

polytheism because “it is destructive to human life or welfare”; under

monotheism, as offensive to God.[397] The sorcerer is outlawed, and

betakes himself to the secret performance of unholy rites in dark and

unwholesome circumstances. He may be in full antagonism to the official

gods, invoking demons or old down-trodden gods not yet forgotten by

the people, and, in the service of demons, inverting and profaning

the rites of public worship. But to forbid and punish the black art

is to punish crime, not to persecute Magic as such; whose beneficent

practices still flourish under another name. Prof. Yrjö Hirn has

shown that, during all the ignorant and superstitious prosecutions of

witches in Europe, the public religious ceremonies and observances

were permeated by magical ideas.[398] In spite of the antagonism

between priest and sorcerer, there is not the full opposition between

Religion and Sorcery that exists between Animism and Magic—between

the recognition of caprice and the belief in uniformity—since the

gods themselves work by Magic and may be subject to its powers. It is

not an antagonism of principle, but partly of allegiance and partly of

ambition.

The influence of wizards is generally extended by means of clubs and

secret societies: wizards form a marked class, are well aware of it,

and are naturally drawn into mutual understanding. In Australia no

regular societies seem to have existed, but the medicine-men recognised

one another, initiated and trained new-comers into the profession,

had an esoteric tradition of rites and methods and fictions, and

sometimes met for consultation. Among the savages of Torres Straits,

the _maidelaig_ meet together in the bush at night, in order to perform

their sorcery, and the body of sorcerers can control an individual

_maidelaig_; but they appear not to have a definitely organised

society.[399] In Melanesia, however, many regular societies exist;[400]

and among the Northern Amerinds they were numerous and powerful. The

Midewinian society of the Ojibways is typical of these institutions.

It was the club of the legitimate professionals, in contrast with

private practitioners, who were said (of course) to be favoured by evil

_manidos_. To join the society one must undergo instruction, paying

fees and making presents to its members. It comprised about one-tenth

of the tribe, and what with influence, what with perquisites, did very

well.[401] In Africa also such societies flourish.

Every profession, organised or unorganised, provided there be an

understanding amongst its members, is prone to acquire anti-social

interests and to establish a secret tradition; and as long as moral

sense is very imperfect, the antagonism of the profession to the

public may be a virulent evil, as we see in the history of wizardry

and priestcraft. Both the profession and its tradition begin with

practices common to all members of a tribe; and the tradition grows

by accumulating the discoveries and inventions of the professionals.

Experiment and observation are employed by them (according to their

lights) probably from the first. Dr. Haddon says that, in controlling

the wind and rain, the procedure of wizards in the eastern islands

of Torres Straits was subject to variation, and so doubtless were

the spells, and experts relied on their own variants;[402] and Prof.

Seligman[403] observes that, in British New Guinea, the knowledge of

“the departmental expert” (wizard controlling rain, or fertility of

garden, or what not) is traditionary from father to son, consisting

partly of magical processes or formulæ, partly of the results of

years of observation and thought. All improvements in science, art,

industry and humbug are made by individuals. The cumulative tradition

becomes more voluminous, the spells more intricate, the rites more

elaborate; because the possible membership of the profession is thereby

narrowed, the self-valuation of the initiated is heightened, the wonder

and credulity of the laity is enhanced: so much of the doctrine and

discipline being allowed to transpire as to make this last effect a

maximum. Whilst tribal belief in Magic is the necessary ground of the

wizard’s existence, he—being once recognised—thenceforth confirms,

sways and guides the tribal belief.

§ 2. THE WIZARD’S PRETENSIONS

Whilst societies are formed to promote the common interests of wizards,

too severe competition amongst themselves is in some measure avoided

by the specialisation of individuals in different branches of their

mystery. In pure Magic there is some room for the division of labour

to deal with the weather, or fertility, or disease, but the spread

of Animism and the multiplication of fetiches and demons open to

the sorcerers a wide field for the multiplication of specialists.

Amongst the Beloki, says Mr. Weeks,[404] there are eighteen classes of

specialists; on the lower Congo, fifty.

By spells and rites and charms wizards undertake the general control

of Nature. They cause rain or drought, determine the rising of the sun

and, for this purpose, may go every morning to a hill-top to summon

him. An Australian wizard claimed to have driven away a comet by means

of his sacred stones.[405] The adept procures a favourable wind for

his friends, or for his enemies an adverse; prospers the crops or

blights them; controls the game of the hunter, and the cattle of the

herdsman. The height of such claims may be read in Medea’s boast in the

_Metamorphoses_.[406]

In his own person the wizard may have the power of shape-changing

into some animal, or into any animal. He can fly through the air to

skyland to visit Daramulun; or to help dull imaginations, he throws up

a rope and climbs up by it, or throws up a thread (like a spider’s)

and climbs up by that.[407] Or he may fly to the moon to be the guest

of the man whom we see there;[408] or to the region of death to visit

Erlik Khan.[409] By daylight he only flies in the spirit, during a

trance; but when it is quite dark he can go bodily. And probably this

points to the origin of such beliefs: for to dream that one flies is

not uncommon; and as in dreams we visit distant places, and on waking

seem suddenly to have returned by no known means, the analogy of flight

offers the easiest explanation of such experiences. To fly is one of

the most ancient and persistent exploits of the profession: European

witches flew upon broomsticks (degenerate from Siberian horse-staves);

Dr. Faustus upon his magical cloak; and “levitation” has been exhibited

by recent “mediums.”

Wizards cause and cure love and other forms of sickness; slay, or

recall the soul to its accustomed habitation; sometimes the same man

kills and cures; sometimes he works only evil, or only against evil;

the Black and the White Magicians may become well-recognised hostile

sects. Wizards discover thieves and murderers, or sell a fetich by

whose power an evil-doer walks invisible, if he takes care not to be

seen. They administer the ordeal and have in their power the life of

every one who undergoes it. They interpret dreams, and prophesy by the

flight of birds, the fall of dice, the making of shoulder-blades and

the aspect of the stars.

The sorcerer communicates with the ghosts of the dead or with the

spirits of nature and, by their aid, accomplishes whatever can be done

by Magic. He is possessed by them, and operates or speaks by their

power or inspiration; he drives them out of others whom they possess,

or sends them on errands, controlling them either by the help of

stronger spirits or by his profound knowledge of enchantments. Many of

these things he is believed to do best during fits or ecstasy; which he

produces in himself by rhythmic drumming and dancing, or by drugs, or

by voluntary control of a disciplined temperament, to the astonishment

and conviction of all beholders.

Such are the wizard’s pretensions, so well known that a brief recital

of them suffices; and whilst they seem to us too absurd for any one

to believe, least of all the wizard himself, yet observers assure us

that he often does believe in them, and they are certainly taken to be

genuine by the majority of his tribesmen. For them his performances

are so wonderful as to put to shame the achievements of scientific

invention; and probably this partly explains the frequent reports that

savages are deficient in wonder. “It takes a good deal to astonish

a savage,” say Spencer and Gillen; “he is brought up on Magic, and

things that strike us with astonishment he regards as simply the

exhibition of Magic more powerful than any possessed by himself.”[410]

Still the blacks were astonished by the phonograph. Similarly we

are told by Stefánson[411] that things unusual but of an understood

kind—a bow that shoots fifty yards further than any other—may excite

endless marvelling amongst the Esquimo; but what seems miraculous—a

rifle-shot, or a binocular—is compared with the supposed powers of the

shaman, who can kill an animal on the other side of a mountain, or see

things that are to happen to-morrow. Our surgery, too, is very inferior

to the shaman’s, who can take out a diseased heart or vertebral column

and replace it with a sound one.

§ 3. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WIZARD

(1) Observers generally agree that the wizard, or medicine-man, is

distinguished in his tribe for intelligence and penetration, or at

least for cunning. He is apt to impress an unsympathetic witness as

“some fellow with more brains and less industry than his fellows.”

The wizard amongst the Fuegians, says Fitzroy, is the most cunning

and deceitful of his tribe, and has great influence over his

companions.[412] Amongst the Bakongo, the witch-doctors, according

to Mr. Weeks, have sharp eyes, acute knowledge of human nature, and

tact.[413] The Samoyed shamans “are, as a rule, the most intelligent

and cunning of the whole race.”[414] Cunning is plainly necessary to

the wizard’s life, and, for some of his functions, much more than

cunning. In many tribes his advice is asked in every difficulty and

upon every undertaking. Sir E. im Thurn reports that the _peaiman_

of the Arawaks learns and hands down the traditions of his tribe

and is the depository of its medical and hunting lore.[415] The

surgical skill of Cherokee medicine-men in the treatment of wounds

was considerable.[416] Still greater seems to have been that of

the Fijians, with no mean knowledge of anatomy learnt during their

incessant wars.[417] Medicine-men of the Amerinds discovered the

virtues of coca, jalap, sarsaparilla, chinchona, and guiacum,[418]

implying on their part superior curiosity and observation. The Bantu

doctors of S. Africa employ aloes, nux vomica, castor-oil, fern,

rhubarb and other drugs.[419] Livingstone says[420] that the doctors,

who inherit their profession, have “valuable knowledge, the result

of long and close observation,” and that they thankfully learnt from

him—when their patients were not present. In all parts of the world

some knowledge of drugs and of certain methods of treatment, such as

sweat-baths and massage, ligatures, cauterisation and fomentation,

seems to have been possessed by the magical profession. As

weather-doctors and crop-guardians, they laid out the first rudiments

of astronomy and meteorology. All their knowledge of this sort is, of

course, no Magic, but experience and common sense; though science is

not derived from Magic, the scientist does descend from the magician:

not, however, in so far as the magician operates by Magic, but in so

far as he operates by common sense. Among the Lushai tribes the name

for sorcerer, _puithiam_, means “great knower,”[421] the equivalent

of our “wizard.” But sorcery degrades the magic art of medicine by

discouraging with its theory of “possession” every impulse of rational

curiosity, and by substituting for empirical treatment (however crude)

its rites of exorcism and propitiation.

In parts of the world so widely separated as Siberia, Greenland, the

remote back-woods of Brazil and S. Africa, wizards have discovered

the secret of ventriloquism. Everywhere they have learned the art of

conjuring, without which (especially the trick of “palming”) many

of their performances, and notably the sucking-cure, could not be

accomplished. Their practice is generally clumsy and easily detected by

sophisticated whites, but imposes upon their patients and the native

bystanders.[422] In India it is carried to a much higher degree of

illusion. Wizards often have a practical knowledge of some obscure

regions of psychology; such as the force of suggestion and various

means of conveying it, and the effect of continuous rhythmic movements

and noises in inducing a state of exaltation or of dissociation.

A wizard’s tribesmen, of course, believe him to possess knowledge

absurdly in excess of the reality. He boasts of it as the foundation

of his power over nature or over spirits; often as a supernatural gift

of spirits whom he has visited, or who have visited him, and who have

initiated him; or else as secret traditionary lore. It is by knowledge

of human nature that he rules his fellows; and he asserts that

knowledge of the names and origins of things and of spirits gives him

the same control over them. In Mr. Skeat’s _Malay Magic_, incantations

addressed by a miner to spirits or to metals, adjuring the spirits to

withdraw from his “claim,” or the grains of metal to assemble there,

contain the intimidating and subduing verse:

“I know the origin from which you sprang!”

The same compelling power was employed—if we may trust the

_Kalevala_—by Finnish wizards; for “every thing or being loses its

ability for evil, as soon as some one is found who knows, who proclaims

its essence, its origin, its genealogy.” “Tietaja, which etymologically

signifies wise, or learned, is ordinarily used for magician.”[423]

It was by profound science that mediæval magicians were believed to

control demons; and anybody celebrated for science was suspected of

sorcery: such as Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas,

and Raymond Lulli; whose reputation supported the credit of such men as

Paracelsus and John Dee.

The fine arts in their rudiments owe much to the wizards. Incantations

in verse often reach a high pitch of lyric fervour. The words _rune_,

_carmen_, _laulaa_ bear witness to the magic of poetry. Virgil and

Taliessin have been famous for more than natural gifts; that one by

superstitious repute, and this by his own vaunting.[424] Dancing and

pantomime were cultivated for their magical virtues. Primitive carving

and painting are in many cases undertaken in order to influence the

spirits, or the animals, or the natural powers they represent; and if

Magic was the motive of the recently discovered animal paintings dating

from the old Stone Age, its efficacy in encouraging art at that remote

period rivalled that of religious patronage in some later ages.

(2) In most tribes the wizard needs great force of will and persistency

of purpose—whether from deliberate choice or from infatuation with

the profession—to carry him through the severe training that is often

exacted from candidates for the office; great audacity and courage to

impel and sustain him in the practice of his art, pestered by taboos

and (the sorcerer especially) always beset by supernatural terrors and

often by more real dangers; and unusual presence of mind to extricate

himself from very embarrassing situations. It is true that, in some

cases, where the office of wizard is hereditary, or may be assumed by

alleging the favour of spirits, or some other underhand device—perhaps

upon the evidence of visions, or by mere fraud, or by a mixture of

both—we hear little of really serious initiatory rites; but often

these formalities are very painful or very expensive. Among the Arunta,

there are three classes of wizards: the first and second, made by

spirits, undergo no severe trial—except the boring of a hole in their

own tongues and the keeping of it open, as evidence of a professional

story about spirits who slew them with spears, cut out their entrails

and replaced them with a new set and certain magic stones. But the

third class are initiated by two wizards of the first and second

class, who pretend to force crystal stones[425] into their bleeding

bodies from the front of the leg up to the breast bone, into the crown

of their heads and under the nail of the right forefinger. This they

must suffer in perfect silence, three times a day on three consecutive

days, with other tortures, followed by various taboos; and, after all,

they do not stand as well with the tribe as those whom the spirits

have initiated.[426] Can there be any doubt that the initiatory rites

of the third class represent the older magical custom, and that the

fabulous initiation by spirits is an overgrowth of Animism? There are

clear motives for the change; since the latter method is easily carried

out by oneself, is far less painful, and is more stimulating to the

imaginative belief of the laity, and therefore more imposing. For the

inverse change there are no motives. And therefore, probably, wizards

of the third class are really less competent than the others; for the

man who, after the new spirit-path has been opened up, still prefers

the old road through pain and privation must be (comparatively) an

unimaginative, dull, honest, inferior fellow.

Old wizards of the Warramunga, receiving a new candidate for the

profession, allow him during the process no rest; he must stand or

walk until quite worn out, when he scarcely knows what is happening

to him; deprived for a long time of water and food, he becomes dazed

and stupefied.[427] In the western islands of Torres Straits, a novice

was taken into the bush by his instructor, who defæcated into a shell

full of water and made him drink it with his eyes open; next he must

chew certain fruits and plants, which made his inside bad and his

skin itch; then shark’s flesh, and, finally, the decomposing flesh

of a dead man full of maggots. He became very ill and half frantic.

Few cared to undergo these rites; some gave up the undertaking; some

died of it.[428] In British Guiana, an aspirant to wizardry undergoes

long fasts, wanders alone in the bush (full of terrors to the timid

Indian), and accustoms himself to take large draughts of tobacco-juice

mixed with water, which cause temporary insanity.[429] Across the

watershed to the S.W., the office of medicine-man is hereditary; yet

Waterton reports that probationers have to endure exhausting ordeals

and tortures.[430] The severe training of the Bantu witch-doctor kills

many novices.[431] Under such conditions, only men of unusual force

of will, or constancy of infatuation (qualities not always easy to

discriminate), can become wizards. Preparatory ritual for the office

of shaman among the Buryats of Siberia is elaborate, expensive and

intimidating: a candidate of poor family is helped by the community to

get animals for sacrifice and objects necessary for the rites; but many

shrink from the trial, “dreading the vast responsibility it brings; for

the gods deal severely with those who have undergone consecration, and

punish with death any serious mistake.” There are nine degrees in the

profession, each requiring a special initiation.[432] Thus, in many

cases, the ordeal of initiation turns away the weak and incompetent,

and keeps up the wizardly profession at a high level of resolution

and endurance. In more sophisticated societies a similar result is

obtained by the belief that the attainment of magical powers depends

upon the undergoing of prolonged austerity in study, or in privations

and tortures, which give a mystical right to supernatural power: the

superstition upon which Southey raised _The Curse of Kehama_—least

unreadable of his romances.

As for the courage that may be requisite for carrying on the wizard’s

practices, when he is the terror of his neighbours, their attitude

towards him varies, in different tribes, from the tamest toleration to

murderous antagonism. Thus, in the western islands of Torres Straits,

Professor Haddon never knew the sorcerers mobbed or violently put to

death on account of their magical practices.[433] In New Caledonia,

when a sorcerer causes a general famine, the people merely make him

presents to procure a return of plenty.[434] Among the Todas, a man who

is the victim of a sorcerer pays him to have the curse removed.[435] In

such cases, effrontery is all the sorcerer needs. On the other hand,

near Finsch Harbour in New Guinea, a dangerous sorcerer is often put

to death; and so he is amongst the neighbouring Kais.[436] Such in

fact is the more general practice;[437] and the wizard, carrying on his

profession at the risk of his life, must be supported by the sort of

fearlessness that criminals often show.

Confronted with supernatural dangers, the sorcerer’s need of courage

must depend upon the sincerity of his own belief in them: a matter to

be discussed in the fourth section of this chapter. If his professions

are veracious, the attitude of such a man toward spiritual powers

cannot be sustained by any ordinary daring. In the N.W. Amazons the

shaman is the only one of his tribe who dares go alone into the haunted

forest. Zulu doctors, who specialise as “heaven-herds,” fight the

Thunderstorm with spear and shield until he flees away.[438] Everywhere

the sorcerer fights the demons of disease with reckless valour. On the

Congo he drives them into some animal, and then cuts its head off. In

North America he intimidates, quells and exorcises them with furious

boasting. In Siberia, to capture the fleeting soul of a patient, he

follows it over land and sea and into the regions of the dead. The

Innuit of Greenland acknowledge Sedna as the supreme Being and the

creatress of all living things; yet their angakoq subdue even her:

one lures her from Adlivun with a magic song; whilst another, as she

emerges, harpoons her with a seal-spear, which is then found to be

smeared with blood.[439] To obtain assistance from even the highest

spirits the wizard deceives them; or to slay an enemy he usurps their

powers. The Malay avenges himself by making an image of his victim in a

shroud, and praying over it as over the dead; then he buries it in the

path to his victim’s house, and says:

“Peace be to you, ho prophet Tap, in whose charge the earth is!

Lo I am burying the corpse of (name of victim)

I am bidden by the prophet Mohammed,

Because he (the victim) was a rebel against God.

Do you assist in killing him.

If you do not kill him,

You shall be a rebel against God,

A rebel against Mohammed.

It is not I who am burying him.

It is Gabriel who is burying him.

Do you grant my prayer this day:

Grant it by the grace of my petition within the fold of the creed

La ilaha, etc.”[440]

One might suppose that the audacity of blaspheming could rise no higher

than this; but an Egyptian woman, when in labour, was taught to declare

herself to be Isis, and to summon the gods to her help. “Should they

refuse to come, ‘Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven

shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days

over and above the year shall cease to be; offerings shall no more be

made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis, etc.’”[441] If the facts

were not before us, it would be incredible that a fixed purpose of

obtaining supernatural aid should thus exclude from the mind all

thoughts of the divine attributes and of one’s own insignificance.

(3) What motives impel a man to adopt this strange and hazardous

profession, or sustain him amidst all the dangers and disappointments

of exercising it? In the first place, some men are oppressed by a

vocation toward wizardry; just as amongst ourselves some men have an

irresistible vocation to be poets, though that way poverty stares them

in the face. To ordinary people these seem to be cases for the asylum.

Yet we may understand the “votary of the Muses” by considering that

the poet, as the master of rhythm, the treasurer of tradition, the

arbiter of fame, has had a necessary place in the ancient culture of

the tribes, and greatest in the noblest tribes. A tribe that produces

poets has an advantage in the struggle of life; and, accordingly,

a strain of poet-blood is bred in the tribe, and shows itself in a

certain number of youths in each generation. I think the same must be

true of wizards. They are often “called”; the Altaians believe that

no man of his free will becomes a shaman.[442] Like poets, they are

sacred and possessed. They are also very useful: their functions in

several ways overlap those of the poet, as in cherishing traditions;

and often they themselves are poets. They give confidence to their

fellows amidst the awful imaginary dangers of savage life. Their

nervous temperament may raise the vital level of a tribe. They keep

alive the beliefs in taboo and the like mysterious dangers, on which

savage order and morality depend; and in many cases they become leaders

and chieftains. In this way, belief in Magic and Animism seems to have

been the necessary scaffolding of social life.[443] And were this all,

the utility of wizards would be clear. But they often do so much and

such horrible mischief, prohibiting every improvement and spreading

general terror, that it is difficult to judge, in such cases, whether

their activities leave a balance of good or of evil. Perhaps sometimes

the evil may exceed, and a tribe may degenerate and perish of it. On

the whole, however, there is certainly a balance of good, especially

by leadership at early stages of social development; and this accounts

for the flourishing from age to age of the wizardly profession, and for

the attraction it has for those of wizardly blood who enter it, because

it promises to satisfy an innate disposition. Even in a civilised

country, this disposition still, in a few people, manifests itself in

the old way; but for the most part has been “sublimated” into other

professions. Of course that which attracts the neophyte of wizardry is

not the utility of the profession, any more than the youthful poet is

allured by the utility of poetry. That which appeals to the wizard of

inbred genius is (besides the indulgence of his personal powers) the

mystery of wizardry; which excites in his soul a complex, consisting

chiefly of curiosity as to the unknown powers that control nature and

spirit, the fascination of fear in approaching them and an exaltation

of self-consciousness at the prospect of attaining superhuman wisdom

and authority. The article on Shamanism,[444] which I have cited so

often, describes the shaman as sometimes profoundly convinced that he

was chosen for the service of the spirits; and says that some feel

a compulsive vocation, and endure persecution for their faith; they

cannot help shamanising. One is mentioned as having been gifted with a

sensitive nature and an ardent imagination, he had a strong belief in

the spirits and in his own mysterious intercourse with them.

Men of such a temperament, I take it, distinguishing themselves

above others when every man practised magic or sorcery, founded the

profession, and are always its vital nucleus, though in time they

may become but a small proportion of its members. Under sincere

infatuation they established its observances—the fastings, sufferings,

austerities, visions and frenzies of initiation, whether into magical

knowledge or spiritual possession; the working of themselves up,

whilst officiating, into the orgiastic intoxication in which they felt

their own greatness and dominated their audience; and they discovered

some of the modes of operating by drugs and suggestion and some real

remedies. But the profession, once formed, soon had attractions for

a very different sort of man, impelled by very different motives;

who saw in it the road sometimes to wealth, always to reputation and

power. Since, amongst very primitive people there is little wealth

to collect, and sometimes (as we have seen) remuneration of magical

services is neither given nor expected, the earlier of these motives

must have been the love of causing wonder and fear, of the power which

their fellows’ fears conferred and of the reputation which consequently

spread far and wide. In Mota (Melanesia) a man in control of magical

virtue will render services without reward, merely to add to his

reputation for the possession of _mana_.[445] At first they seem to

have had no privileges, but power acquires privilege: so that, among

the Warramunga, wizards are free from sexual taboos;[446] in Guiana no

tribesman dares refuse the sorcerer anything, not even his wife;[447]

among the Boloki, the sorcerer is never charged with injurious

witchcraft and, therefore, is never in danger of the ordeal.[448]

Sometimes, indeed, the wizard may not be respected in private life,

but only in the exercise of his office. Fear and wonder, in fact, do

not always entirely blind the eyes of neighbours to his shortcomings.

Spencer and Gillen tell us that the Magic of distant places, being

the less known, is the more feared.[449] The Rev. J. H. Weeks even

says that on the Congo the village medicine-man is seldom engaged at

home; for the people know that his fetich cannot protect him or his

from harm and, therefore, hire some one from another village of whom

they know less.[450] Similarly, a tribe is apt to fear its own adepts

less than those of another tribe of lower culture, whose ways are less

known and more mysterious: as Malays fear especially the Jakuns;[451]

formerly the Swedes the Finns, and the Finns the Lapps; the Todas the

Kurumba;[452] and in Macedonia Mohammedan monks enjoy a far higher

reputation for Magic than the Christian.[453]

Still, the wizard, whether of home or foreign growth, becomes necessary

in every crisis of life, at birth and marriage, in misfortune, sickness

and death; in every undertaking—hunting, agriculture or commerce;

and by his omens and auguries may determine war and peace. After his

own death, he may sometimes look forward to being deified. With such

powers, surrounded by intimidated and dependent crowds, and often

enjoying a long career of conscious or unconscious imposture, he seems

to himself, as to others, a “superman”; his _Selbstgefühl_ rises to

megalomania, and his boasting becomes monstrous and stupefying.

(4) The more to impress the imagination of all spectators and enhance

his reputation, the wizard usually affects a costume, or behaviour,

or strange companionship of animals, that distinguishes him from the

rest of his tribe. Not always; for Miss Czaplicka[454] says that in

Siberia the shaman is in everyday life not distinguished from others,

except occasionally by a haughty demeanour; but the rule is otherwise.

A. W. Howitt[455] relates that one Australian medicine-man obtained

influence by always carrying about with him a lace-lizard four feet

long; another cherished a tame brown snake; and an old woman kept a

native cat (_Daysurus_): “familiars” that correspond to the black cats

and goats of our own witches. The Arunta medicine-man bores a hole

in his tongue, appears with a broad band of powdered charcoal and

fat across the bridge of his nose and learns to look preternaturally

solemn, as one possessing knowledge hidden from ordinary men.[456] In

the forest of the upper Amazons, the medicine-man does not depilate,

though the rest of his tribe do so to distinguish themselves from

monkeys; and he attempts to present in his costume something original

and striking.[457] In S. Africa, too, the witch-doctor’s dress is often

very conspicuous. So it is throughout history: the thaumaturgist, by

his wand, robes, austerities, demeanour, advertises himself as a man

apart from the crowd. Rites of initiation mark this superiority: as

tribal initiation separates a man from women and boys, so the wizard’s

initiation makes him a “superman.”

(5) Such a temper cannot endure opposition, and is jealous of

rivalry; the man whom it actuates lives in constant fear of failure

and discredit and is, therefore, full of suspicion and cruelty. In

S. Africa, professional hatred is pushed to its last limits amongst

magicians. They test their colleagues, steal each other’s drugs, or

pray to the gods to make their rival’s art inefficient.[458] The savage

sorcerer looks with no kindly eye upon the European; who, too plainly,

possesses extraordinary Magic. Captain Whiffen says[459] of the

sorcerer amongst the South Amerinds, who has much knowledge of poisons,

that to maintain his reputation, if he has declared that he cannot cure

a patient, he poisons him. Of the sorcerer of the Lower Congo, Mr.

Weeks says, that “his face becomes ugly, repulsive, the canvas on which

cruelty, chicanery, hatred and all devilish passions are portrayed with

repellent accuracy.”[460] An extreme case perhaps; but, leading up to

it, there are all degrees of rancour and malignity toward those who

hinder our ambitions; and it can only be in exceptional magicians that

megalomania is reconcilable with considerateness and magnanimity.

(6) Since the greater part of the wizard’s practice is imposture

(whether he believes in himself or not), he must be an actor; and his

success must greatly depend on the degree in which he possesses the

actor’s special gifts and temperament: an audience must be a stimulus

to him and not a check; he exhibits himself not unwillingly. To the

shaman, Miss Czaplicka tells us,[461] an audience is useful: though

the presence of an European is depressing. A Chuckchee shaman without

a sort of chorus considers himself unable to discharge his office:

novices in training usually get a brother or sister to respond to their

exercises. And, indeed, a wizard’s exhibitions often provide without

design the same sort of social entertainment as those of an actor.

One cannot read of the shaman’s performance of a pantomimic journey

on horseback to the South, over frozen mountains, burning deserts,

and along the bridge of a single hair, stretched across a chasm over

foaming whirlpools, to Erlik Khan’s abode, and then home again on the

back of a flying goose, without perceiving that in the wilds of Siberia

such an entertainment, whatever other virtues it may have, supplies the

want of theatres and music-halls, and that in such displays a dramatic

profession might originate.

But there are two kinds of actors; and they correspond well enough with

the two kinds of wizards already described—the vocational and the

exploitative. Some actors are said to identify themselves with their

assumed character and situation so profoundly as to substantiate the

fiction: concentration of imagination, amounting to dissociation, makes

the part they play, whilst it lasts, more real than anything else; and

raises them, for that time, in energy of thought, feeling and action,

much above their ordinary powers; so that they compel the attention,

sympathy and belief of the audience. But others study their part and

determine beforehand exactly what tones, gestures, expressions are the

most effective reinforcement of every word, and thereafter carry out

upon the stage in cold blood the whole dramatic lesson which they have

taught themselves. Perhaps more common than either of these extreme

types is the actor who begins by studying under a sort of inspiration,

and after experimenting for a few nights, repeats what he has found to

answer best. We need not consider those who can do nothing but what

they have been taught by others. Well, the wizard by vocation probably

behaves like the first kind of actor: enters upon any office to which

he may be called in exclusive devotion to his task; works himself into

a frenzy, groans, writhes and sweats under the possession of his demon;

chants incantations in an archaic tongue; drums and dances by the

hour, and falls into speechless trance—according to the professional

pattern—all in what may be described as dramatic good faith. By native

disposition and by practised self-suggestion he obtains a temporary

dissociation. The opposite sort of wizard, exploiting the profession,

sees all this, and imitates it with such improvements as he may be

able to devise. Of the intervening crowd of charlatans, who mingle

self-delusion with deceit in all possible proportions, no definite

account can be given.

According to Diderot,[462] the greatest actors belong to the second

class, to the deliberate and disciplined artists. We may be sure the

gods in the gallery, if they understood what was going on under their

eyes, would always prefer the inspired performers. Probably these are,

in fact, the greatest in their best hours, but less to be depended on,

less sure of being always equal to themselves. And the same may be

true of the corresponding sorts of wizards. The lucid impostor, at any

rate, is less likely to be abashed by unforeseen difficulties and by

the awkwardness of failure, less likely to be mobbed and murdered and

pegged down in his grave with aspen stakes.

(7) Wizards are very often people who manifest an hysterical or

epileptoid diathesis; and candidates for the profession who show signs

of it are often preferred by the doctors. According to Miss Czaplicka,

hysteria (common in Siberia) is at the bottom of the shaman’s vocation:

but it is not merely a matter of climate; for the Rev. E. T. Bryant

writes of the Zulus—“the great majority of diviners being clearly of

neurotic type”;[463] and on all sides we obtain from descriptions of

wizards the same impression. The word “shaman” comes not, as usually

supposed, from the Sanskrit (_śramana_ = work, a religious mendicant),

but from _saman_, which is Manchu for “one who is excited, moved,

raised.”[464] The effect on the audience of shamanising depends in

great measure upon the fits, ecstasy, convulsions introduced at some

stage of the performance and attributed to possession by the spirits.

Similar exhibitions have been reported by all observers of wizardry.

Professor Otto Stoll of Zurich has described[465] the phenomena as they

occur in all countries and all ages; and he attributes them, as well as

hallucinations and analgesia (as in the fire-walk), which wizards also

have at command, to the power of self-suggestion acquired by practice

and training, on the basis (of course) of a natural disposition.

Cagliostro declared that he could smell atheists and blasphemers; “the

vapour from such throws him into epileptic fits; into which sacred

disorder he, like a true juggler, has the art of falling when he

likes.”[466] The wizard’s fits are voluntarily induced; but from the

moment the attack takes place the development of its symptoms becomes

automatic. Between the fits, however, says Miss Czaplicka, he must be

able to master himself, or else he becomes incapable of his profession:

nervous and excitable often to the verge of insanity, if he passes that

verge he must retire.[467] In short, his ecstasy is the climacterical

scene of his dramatic performance, the whole of which must be rendered

with the disciplined accuracy of an artist. We are not to think of the

shaman as an hysterical patient: if he were, there would be greater,

not less, reason to suspect him of deceit. No doubt the training which

gives control of the nervous attack protects the subject from its

unwholesome consequences; there seems to be no special liability to

disease or to a shortening of life. Formerly in Siberia, before the

power of the profession was broken by immigrant beliefs and practices,

it was necessary that the shaman should be well-developed mentally

and physically (as has often been required of priests); and such a

constitution is by no means incompatible with an intense histrionic

temperament.

A necessary complement to the suggestive devices of a wizard is the

suggestibility of his clients. There is such a thing as an assenting or

a dissenting disposition—suggestibility or contrasuggestibility; but

the latter is, like the former, a tendency to react without reflection,

and may be as well controlled by appropriate suggestions. The power

of any given suggestion to control the course of a man’s thought and

action depends upon the resistance (apart from contra-suggestibility)

which it meets with in his mind; and this depends upon the extent,

quality and integration of his apperceptive masses, and upon the

facility with which they come into action. Upon the perceptual plane a

savage’s mind is well organised, and accordingly his suggestibility is

low; but upon the ideational plane it is in most cases ill organised,

poor in analysis, classification, generalisation, poor in knowledge,

abounding in imagination-beliefs about Magic and Animism; so that,

except in natural sceptics (who, as we shall see, exist among savages),

the suggestions of the wizard meet with little resistance from common

sense and with ready acceptance by magical and animistic prejudice.

But even with a man of common sense, a suggestion, however absurd,

may for a time prevail, if his mental reaction is slow; although,

with time for reflection, he will certainly reject it. The art of the

wizard consists in getting such hold of his client’s attention that,

as in hypnosis, the power of reflective comparison is suspended and

criticism abolished. There are many masters of this art. The client’s

state of mind is very common in the effects of oratory, the theatre,

ghost-stories and generally in the propagation of opinion, suspicion

and prejudice.

§ 4. THE WIZARD AND THE SCEPTIC

Inasmuch as the wizard’s boasting, conjuring, ventriloquising,

dramatising and practising of all the arts of suggestion, seem

incompatible with sincerity, whilst nevertheless he is devoted to his

calling, some observers have declared him a calculating impostor,

whilst others maintain that he, in various degrees, believes in himself

and shares the delusions which he propagates. Examples may be found in

support of either position.

Some say that the wizard believes in himself because all others believe

in him; that at a certain level of culture, there is an universal

social obsession by certain ideas, from which the individual cannot

escape, and for whose consequences, therefore, he is not responsible.

According to this theory, a sort of tribal insanity prevails. Dr.

Mercier says that, in the individual, paranoia is characterised

by systematised delusion: “there is an organised body of (false)

knowledge, and it differs from other delusions in the fact that it

colours the whole life of the patient; it regulates his daily conduct;

it provides him with an explanation of all his experiences; it is his

theory of the cosmos.” And, again, “as long as the highest level of

thought is intact, so that we can and do recognise that our mistakes

are mistakes and our disorders, whether of mind or conduct, are

disorders, so long sanity is unaffected, and our mistakes and disorders

are sane. As soon, however, as we become incompetent to make this

adjustment ... insanity is established.”[468] These passages exactly

describe the condition of a wizard and his tribe afflicted with social

paranoia: their theories of Magic and Animism and of the wizard’s

relations with invisible powers, may truly be said to form an organised

body of (false) knowledge, to colour all their lives, to explain

everything that happens to them; and their mistakes and disorders to

be incorrigible by reflection or experience. Such conditions of the

social mind have, I believe, existed (and may still exist), tending

toward, and sometimes ending in, a tribe’s destruction. That, in such

a case, there should be unanimity is not necessary; it is enough that

the current of belief, in certain directions, be overwhelming. But such

extreme cases are rare. Normally there may be found, even in backward

tribes, a good deal of incredulity and of what may be called primitive

rationalism or positivism.

Considerable sections of a tribe sometimes co-operate in imposture, the

men against the women and children, or the old against the young; and

it cannot be supposed that, where this occurs, anything like universal

delusion prevails. The Arunta, who teach their women and children that

Twanyiriki is a spirit living in wild regions, who attends initiations,

and that the noise of the bull-roarer is his voice; whilst they reveal

to the youths when initiated that the bundle of churinga is the true

Twanyiriki,[469] cannot be blind to the existence of social fictions.

The discovery by initiated youths in some parts of New Guinea, that

Balum, the monster that is believed to swallow them during initiation,

is nothing but a bug-a-boo, and that his growl is only the bull-roarer,

must be a shock to their credulity.[470] Indeed, disillusionment as

to some popular superstition is a common characteristic of initiation

ceremonies.[471] On the mainland of New Caledonia, a spirit-night is

held every five months; when the people assemble around a cave and

call upon the ghosts, supposed to be inside it, to sing; and they do

sing—the nasal squeak of old men and women predominating.[472] There

is not in such cases any natural growth of social delusion, subduing

the individual mind, but prearranged cozenage; and a wizard with such

surroundings, instead of being confirmed in the genuineness of his art,

only reads there the method of his own imposture in large type.[473]

Home-bred wizards, who are less trusted than those who live further

off, or than those of an inferior tribe, do not derive self-confidence

from the unanimous approval of their neighbours.

Again, the general prevalence of delusions in a tribe does not

suppress the scepticism of individuals. It is reasonable to expect

such scepticism to be most prevalent amongst men of rank, who are

comparatively exempt from the oppression of popular sanctions; and

probably this is the fact. Such exemption, by preserving a nucleus

of relatively sane people, is one of the great social utilities of

rank. The Basuto chief, Mokatchané, surrounded by people grossly

superstitious, lent himself to their practices; but in paying his

diviners he did not hesitate so say “that he regarded them as the

biggest impostors in the world.”[474] In Fiji, it is doubtful whether

the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of the priests, though it

suited their policy to appear to do so. There was an understanding

between the two orders: one got sacrifices (food), the other good

oracles. A chieftain, on receiving an unfavourable oracle, said to

the priest: “Who are you? Who is your god? If you make a stir, I will

eat you”[475]—not metaphorically. In Tonga, “even seventeen years

before the arrival of the first missionaries, the chiefs did not

care to conceal their scepticism.” In Vavou, Taufaahan, having long

been sceptical of his ancestral faith, on learning of Christianity,

hanged five idols by the neck, beat the priestess, and burned the

spirit-houses.[476] The Vikings, like the Homeric heroes, are said

to have fought their gods; and at other times to have declared

entire disbelief in them. Hence the easy conversion of the North to

Christianity. Scepticism may have been fashionable at court much

earlier: “It is scarcely possible to doubt,” says Mr. Chadwick,

“that familiarity, not to say levity, in the treatment of the gods

characterised the Heroic Age [Teutonic—A.D. 350-550] just as much as

that of the Vikings.”[477] The burlesque representations of the gods

in some passages of the _Iliad_ are a sort of atheism: in astonishing

contrast with the sublime piety elsewhere expressed. And the inadequacy

of such a literary religion (like that of Valhalla) may explain the

facile reception (or revival) of the Mysteries in the sixth century

B.C. History abounds with examples of rulers and priests who, in

collusion, have used religion for political convenience, in a way that

implied their own disbelief and opened unintentionally the doors of

disbelief to others.

But it is not only chiefs and heroes whose minds are sometimes

emancipated from popular superstitions. An old Australian whose duty

it was to watch the bones of a dead man and to keep alight a fire near

them, sold them for some tobacco and a tomahawk, in great fear lest

it should be known to his tribesmen; but he “evidently suffered from

no qualms of conscience”:[478] that is to say, he feared the living,

but not the dead. W. Stanbridge says of the aborigines of Victoria

that “there are doctors or priests of several vocations; of the rain,

of rivers and of human diseases ... but there are natives who refuse

to become doctors and disbelieve altogether the pretensions of those

persons.”[479] John Matthew writes of the tribe with which he was best

acquainted—“whilst the blacks had a term for ghosts and behind these

were departed spirits, ... individual men would tell you upon inquiry

that they believed that death was the last of them.”[480] Near Cape

King William in New Guinea, there is a general belief in spirits and

ghosts and also in one Mate; but some whisper that there is no such

being.[481] The Bakongo villagers do not believe in all witchcraft; but

respect some sorcerers, and regard others with more or less contempt:

every man, however, must profess belief, or else “his life will be made

wretched by accusations of witchcraft.”[482] Before missionaries came

amongst the Baloki, many people had no faith in the medicine-men, but

would not oppose them for fear of being charged with witchcraft.[483]

The religious convictions of the Zulus were very shallow; belief in

the spirit-world depended on prosperity: “fullness declares the Itongo

exists; affliction says it does not exist.” ... “For my part, I say

the Amadhlozi of our house died forever.”[484] Capt. Whiffen reports

of the tribes of S. Amerinds whom he visited that, “among individuals

there are sceptics of every grade.”[485] Whilst all Dakotas reverence

the great, intangible, mysterious power Takoo-Wahkon, as to particular

divinities, any man may worship some and despise others. “One speaks

of the medicine-dance with respect; another smiles at the name.” The

Assiniboin generally believe that good ghosts migrate to the south

where game is abundant; whilst the wicked go northward; but some think

that death ends all.[486] At Ureparapara (Banks Islands) food is buried

with a corpse; and “if there be too much, some is hung above the grave,

whence the bolder people take it secretly and eat it.”[487] Disbelief

is expressed in actions more emphatically than in words; the plundering

of tombs has been universal. An idol-maker of Maeva assured Ellis that,

“although at times he thought it was all deception and only practised

his trade for gain, yet at other times he really thought the gods he

himself had made were powerful beings.”[488] In Tonga it was orthodox

that chiefs and their retainers were immortal, doubtful whether men of

the third rank were so, certain that those of the lowest rank, Tooas,

were not; their souls died with the body; yet some of these Tooas

ventured to think that they too would live again.[489] A sceptical

Kayan could hardly believe that men continue to exist after death; for

then they would return to visit those they love. “But,” he concluded,

“who knows?” The traditionary lore of the Kayans answers many deep

questions; but the keener intelligences inquire further—“why do the

dead become visible only in dreams?” etc.[490] A Tanghul told me, says

Mr. T. C. Hodson, that no one had ever seen a Lai (deity): when things

happened men said a Lai had done it. “In his view clearly a Lai was a

mere hypothesis.”[491]

Of such examples of the occurrence of “free-thought” in all parts of

the world, no doubt, a little investigation would discover many more.

Everywhere some savages think for themselves; though, like civilised

folk, they cannot always venture to avow their conclusions. We must

not suppose that belief is as uniform as custom or conventional

doctrine: custom and convention hinder thought in dull people, but

do not enslave it in the “keener intelligence.” Without the enviable

advantage of personal intimacy with savages, I have, by reading about

them, gained the impression that they enjoy a considerable measure of

individuality—as much as the less educated Europeans—and are not mere

creatures of a social environment.

The most backward savages have a large stock of common sense concerning

the properties of bodies, of wind and water and fire, of plants and

animals and human nature; for this is the necessary ground of their

life. This common sense has certain characters which are in conflict

with their superstitions; the facts known to common sense are regular,

proportional, the same for all; not often failing and needing excuses,

not extravagant and disconnected, not depending on the presence of some

fantastic mountebank. Savages do not draw explicitly the comparisons

that make this conflict apparent; but it may be felt without being

defined. Some of them, especially, are (as amongst ourselves)

naturally inclined to a positive way of thinking; their common sense

predominates over the suggestions of Magic and Animism, and they,

more than others aware of the conflict, become the proto-sceptics

or rationalists. Lecky observes that beliefs and changes of belief

depend not upon definite arguments, but upon habits of thought. In the

seventeenth century a new habit of thought overcame the belief in

witchcraft and miracles;[492] and in many other centuries it has

everywhere done the same for those in whom the “apperceptive mass” of

common sense became more or less clearly and steadily a standard of

belief, repelling the apperceptive masses of Magic and Animism with all

their contents and alliances. They had more definite ideas than others,

little love of the marvellous, little subjection to fear, desire,

imagination.

Sometimes the dictates of common sense are imposed by necessity. The

Motu (Papuasian) were accustomed to rub spears with ginger to make

them fly straight. It had, however, been discovered that no amount

of Magic would turn a poor spearman into an accurate thrower.[493]

Spear-throwing is too serious a concern not to be judged of upon its

merits, however interesting the properties of ginger. A whole tribe may

in some vital matter, whilst practising a superstitious rite, disregard

its significance: like the Kalims, who hold a crop-festival in January,

and afterwards take the omens as to what ground shall be cultivated for

next harvest; “but this seems a relic of old times, for the circle of

cultivation is never broken, let the omens be what they may.”[494] That

is a tacit triumph of common sense.

The bearing of all this on the character of the wizard is as follows:

since everywhere sceptics occur, and some individuals go further than

others in openly or secretly rejecting superstitions, why should not

the wizard or sorcerer, who is amongst the most intelligent and daring

of his tribe, be himself a rationalist and, therefore, a conscious

impostor? That much of his art is imposture no one disputes; and so far

as it is so, he sees it as part of the ordinary course of experience.

The sorcerer on the Congo who drove a spirit into the dark corner of

a hut, stabbed it there, and showed the blood upon his spear, having

produced the blood (as his son confessed to Mr. Weeks) by scratching

his own gums, was by that action himself instructed in common

sense.[495] He saw in it quite plainly an ordinary course of events,

the “routine of experience”; whilst the spectators were mystified. Must

he not, then, have more common sense than other people?

In fact, he recognises the course of nature and his own impotence,

whenever an attempt to conjure would endanger his reputation. The

Arunta medicine-men exhibit great dramatic action in curing various

diseases; but waste no antics on recognisable senile decay.[496] The

medicine-man of Torres Straits admits that he cannot make a “big wind”

from the south-east during the north-west season.[497] The Polynesian

sorcerers confessed their practices harmless to Europeans;[498]—who

were not suggestible on that plane of ideas. Shamans amongst the

Yakuts would not try to cure diarrhœa, small-pox, syphilis, scrofula

or leprosy, and would not shamanise in a house where small-pox had

been.[499] These miracle-mongers sometimes know a hawk from a handsaw.

It seems reasonable, then, to assume that wizards have more common

sense than other people; since, besides the instruction of common

experience, they know in their professional practice (at least in

a superficial way) the real course of events, which is concealed

from the laity. And, no doubt, of those whose art is deliberate

imposture, this is true. But the infatuation of those who are wizards

by vocation may be incorrigible by any kind of evidence: especially

as to the genuineness of another’s performance. Dr. Rivers speaks of

the blindness of the man of rude culture to deceitful proceedings on

the part of others with which he is familiar in his own actions.[500]

For the wizard there are established prejudices, professional and

personal interest, fear of trusting his own judgment, supernatural

responsibility, desire of superhuman power, sometimes even a passionate

desire to alleviate the sufferings of his tribesmen, and everything

else that confirms the will to believe.

§5. THE WIZARD’S PERSUASION

Many practices of wizards involve a representation of the course of

events as something very different from the reality; and there is

no doubt that frequently, or even in most cases, wizards are aware

of this, as in performing the sucking cure or visiting the man in

the moon. But some anthropologists dislike to hear such practices

described as “fraud,” “imposture” or “deceit”; and for certain classes

of wizards it seems (as I shall show) unjust to speak in these terms

of their profession. Still, taking the profession and its actions on

the whole, it is difficult to find in popular language terms more

fairly descriptive. We meet here the inconvenience that other social or

moral sciences find when they try to use common words in a specially

restricted sense. In Economics, _e. g._, “rent,” “wages,” “profits”

have definite meanings very different from their popular acceptance. In

Ethics, what controversy, what confusion in the defining of “virtue”

and “the good”! In Metaphysics, what is the meaning of “cause”; what is

the meaning of “intuition”? The terms must be defined in each system.

If then, in these pages, the conduct of a man who, on his way to cure

a sufferer of “stitch in the side,” conceals in his mouth a piece of

bone or pebble, and after dancing, and sucking hard enough at the

patient’s belly, produces that bone or pebble as the cause of pain—is

described as “fraud,” or “imposture,” or “deceit,” the words are used

to describe the fact only, without any such imputation upon the man’s

character as they convey in popular usage. Scientifically considered,

the man and his circumstances being such as they are, his actions are a

necessary consequence; in this limited region of thought moral censure

is irrelevant.

There are some wizards, as it were in minor orders, such as Professor

Seligman calls “departmental experts,” especially the man who blesses

gardens, so earnest and harmless that no one will abuse them. They

visit the garden at the owner’s request, practise a little hocus-pocus,

mutter a few spells, take a small fee and go peaceably home. The owner

indeed supposes himself to buy fertility, and obtains only peace of

mind—a greater good say the moralists. The wizard has done what he

learnt of his father, what respectable neighbours approve of; there

is always some crop to justify his ministry, and many an evil power

to excuse occasional blight or drought. If he is convinced of being a

really indispensable man, it is easily intelligible.

As to the profession in general, a small number of wizards—wizards

by vocation—may be strongly persuaded of the genuineness of the art;

a much larger body mingles credulity in various proportions with

fraud; and not a few are deliberate cheats. Some of the greatest

masters of wizardry are dissatisfied with their own colleagues: that

eminent shaman Scratching Woman said to Bogoras the traveller, “There

are many liars in our calling.”[501] On the other hand, the wizard

who demonstrated the “pointing-stick” to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,

and having no object upon which to discharge its Magic, thought it

had entered his own head and thereupon fell ill, was certainly a

believer;[502] and so was the wizard who felt that he had lost his

power after drinking a cup of tea, because hot drinks were taboo

to him.[503] Now a cheat needs no explanation—at least no more on

the Yenisei than on the Thames; and the variety of those who mingle

credulity with fraud is too great to be dealt with. What chiefly needs

to be accounted for is the persuasion of those who—in spite of so many

circumstances that seem to make disillusion inevitable—are in some

manner true believers—in the manner, that is to say, of imaginative

belief, founded on tradition and desire, unlike the perceptual belief

of common sense.

(_a_) Men under a vocation to wizardry, of course, begin with full

belief in it. Probably they are possessed by the imaginative and

histrionic temperament, which we have seen to be favourable to

eminence as a wizard. Their vocation consists in the warm sympathy

and emulation with which, before their own initiation, they witness

the feats of great practitioners, and which generally imply a

stirring of their own latent powers; just as many an actor has begun

by being “stage-struck.” A man of such temperament is prone to

self-delusion not only as to his own powers, but in other ways. The

wizard often begins by fasting and having visions; thereby weakening

his apprehension of the difference between fact and phantasy. The

fixed idea of his calling begets in his imagination a story of what

happened at his initiation, manifestly false, but not a falsehood—a

“rationalisation” according to wizardly ideas of what he can remember

of that time. If initiated with torture, which he endures for the sake

of his vocation, he is confirmed in it. When called upon to perform,

he “works himself up” by music, dancing and whatever arts he may have

learned or discovered, into a state of dissociation, during which his

judgment of everything extraneous to his task is suspended; and his

dramatic demeanour uninhibited by fear or shame, unembarrassed by any

second thoughts, makes, by vivid gestures and contortions and thrilling

tones, a profound impression upon patients, clients and witnesses. His

performances may derive some original traits from his own genius; but

must generally conform to a traditionary pattern and to the consequent

expectations of the audience. By practice he acquires—as for their

own tasks all artists, poets and actors must—a facility in inducing

the state of dissociation (more or less strict), in which work goes

smoothly forward under the exclusive dominance of a certain group

of ideas and sentiments. Whether, in this condition, he believes in

himself and his calling, or not, is a meaningless question. Whilst the

orgasm lasts there is no place for comparison or doubt. And since he

really produces by his frenzy or possession a great effect upon the

spectators—though not always the precise effect of curing a patient or

of controlling the weather at which he aimed—we need not wonder if he

believes himself capable of much more than he ever accomplishes. The

temperament, most favourable to a wizard’s success is not likely to be

accompanied by a disposition to the positive or sceptical attitude of

mind. Moreover, to the enthusiast for whom belief is necessary, it is

also necessary to create the evidence. That the end justifies the means

is not his explicit maxim, but a matter of course. Gibbon comments on

“the vicissitudes of pious fraud and hypocrisy, which may be observed,

or at least suspected, in the characters of the most conscientious

fanatics.”[504] After failures, indeed, or in the languor that follows

his transports, there may come many chilling reflections; only,

however, to be dispersed by an invincible desire to believe in his own

powers and in the profession to which he is committed.

The “white” wizard may pacify a troubled conscience by reflecting

that at any rate he discharges a useful social function; as, in fact,

he does, so far as he relieves the fears of his tribesmen and gives

them confidence. To understand the “black” wizard, we must turn to

the dark side of human nature. That a man should resort to magic or

sorcery to avenge himself or his kinsmen, or to gratify his carnality,

jealousy or ambition, is intelligible to everybody; but that he should

make a profession of assisting others for a fee to betray, injure, or

destroy those with whom he has no quarrel, seems almost too unnatural

to be credible. Yet it admits of a very easy explanation. The love

of injuring and slaying is deeply rooted in us: men afflicted with

homicidal neurosis are known to the asylums and to the criminal courts

of all civilised nations; assassins on hire have often been notoriously

obtainable. To slay in cold blood by violence, or even by poison,

seems, however, less revolting than to slay by sorcery and obscene

rites. But the fascination of this employment may be further understood

by considering the attraction that secret power and the proof of their

own cunning has for many people. To slay is sweet; but the ancient

hunter depended more upon strategy than upon the frontal attack; and no

strategy is so secret or needs so much skill as the Black Art. Finally,

if sorcery is persecuted, it excites the contra-suggestibility which

in some neurotics becomes a passion capable of supporting them at the

stake. Hence the malevolent wizard may feel a vocation, may believe in

his own powers; and, of course, he will be confirmed in his belief by

the fear excited wherever his reputation spreads. If you put yourself

in his place whilst practising some unholy rite, you may become aware

that the secrecy, the cunning, the danger, the villainy and the

elation of it exert a peculiar fascination, and that this is enhanced

by foul and horrible usages, such as appeal to the perverted appetites

of insanity.

(_b_) The deceit employed by a wizard in conjuring, ventriloquising,

dressing up, keeping a “familiar,” choosing favourable opportunities

for his _séance_ and inciting himself to frenzy, seems incompatible

with sincerity; but whilst he knows such proceedings to be artifices,

he also knows them to be necessary to the effect which he produces.

For that effect, so far as it depends upon wizardly practices, not on

such means as massage, or poisons, or drugs, is always subjective—an

influence on other men’s belief. Are we not demanding of him greater

discrimination than he is likely to enjoy, if we expect him to see

the hollowness of his profession, because some of the means by which

he operates are not what his clients suppose them to be? If it be

said that the wizard’s stock excuses for failure—that there has been

a mistake in the rites, or that another wizard has counteracted his

efforts—are those of a man who has anticipated detection in fraud and

prepared a way of escape, it may be replied that, according to accepted

tenets concerning wizardry, these excuses are reasonable and not

necessarily subterfuges.

The professional attitude may induce a man to exonerate himself and

his colleagues in certain dubious dealings, for the sake of the public

utility of their office on the whole; which is so manifest to him and

to them, and is also acknowledged by the public. For a wizard’s belief

in his art is supported by the testimony of other wizards, in whom he

also believes, and by the belief of the tribe generally in the power of

the profession, even though he himself be not greatly esteemed. “Who am

I,” he will ask, “that I should have a conscience of my own?” And if

this attitude is inconsistent with keen intelligence and megalomania,

such inconsistency is not inconsistent with our experience of human

nature.

(_c_) The effects produced by charms, spells and rites, simple or to

the last degree elaborate, purely magical or reinforced by spirits, are

always subjective, but are believed to have a much wider range. The

wizard seems to make the sun rise when he summons it just in time every

morning; to cause clouds to gather in the sky when he invokes them just

before the rainy season; and so on. Such performances convince others,

but seem to us poor evidence for any one who is in the secret. He is

not, however, left without further evidence of three kinds:

(i) From the effects of natural causes that form part of his

professional resources. Some of a wizard’s practices are really good;

_e. g._ in curing the sick he may employ massage, or sweat-baths, or

skilful surgery, or medicinal drugs, or suggestion, and thereby succeed

without any Magic; whilst he is incapable of clearly distinguishing

these means from useless rites and incantations. He does not understand

intimately why _any_ method is efficacious, and therefore cannot

understand the limits of his power. His whole art is empirical. Even

in modern science explanation always ends sooner or later (and often

pretty soon) in pointing to some connexion of phenomena which we are

obliged to accept as a fact: the wizard is always brought to this pass

at the first step. He has no generally acknowledged public standard

of what may possibly happen: it is only in the mind of a natural

positivist that a standard of common sense grows up by experience

without explicit generalisation; and this standard is incommunicable.

Hence the wizard is always trying experimentally to extend his

power—of course on the model of his traditionary art; always desiring

power, and believing that he has obtained, because he desires it.

(ii) The wizard’s arts are justified by the action of natural causes

set in motion by his clients. He prepares the hunter and his weapons

for an expedition; the hunter does his best, and his success swells the

reputation of the wizard. Similarly in agriculture, and in war. And in

all these cases nothing is really due to the wizard, except the greater

confidence his clients derive from his ministrations: the hunter’s

hand is steadier; the sower and the reaper work more cheerfully; and

the warrior fights more courageously in the belief that his enemies

are surely devoted to the infernal gods. But the wizard, with general

acquiescence, claims far more than this, and rises in his own esteem

as well as in the esteem of his tribe.

(iii) The persevering wizard is often aided by coincidences. An

Australian squatter at Morton’s Plains, after a drought, promised

a native rain-maker half a bullock, a bag of flour and some tea,

if he would fill his new tank for him before the morrow night. The

rain-maker set his rites and spells to work, filled the tank and got

the reward.[505] Whilst Messrs. Spencer and Gillen were with the

Urabunna tribe, “the leading rain-maker performed a ceremony and within

two days there was a downpour—possibly connected with the fact that

it was the usual time for rain to fall in that part of the country.”

The reputation of the rain-maker was firmly established, and, no

doubt, his self-confidence. The Australian wizard already mentioned,

who thought that his Magic had entered his own head, claimed to have

driven away a comet by means of his magic stones. Certainly the comet

disappeared, and what other cause could any one point out? “At one time

the gusts were very unpleasant and one of the men told a wind-man to

make it stop. Accordingly he shouted out to the wind, and in a minute

there was a lull; and no one doubted that this was due to the power of

the wind-man.”[506] Many similar cases might be given.[507] Striking

coincidences are not very rare: there is an illogical prejudice that

they are rare because they excite wonder. Moreover, as I have observed,

so remote a resemblance to the event shamanised or prophesied may be

regarded as a fulfilment, that fulfilment is not uncommon. In the

interpretation of omens, where there is only the alternative of good

or ill success, half the guesses must be right; and by the glozing of

doubtful cases, more than half will seem to be right. And as for the

effect of coincidence, Mr. Basil Thompson says, “Tongans never admit

coincidences”[508]—that is to say, in our sense of the word: for them,

in what we call coincidence, there must be causation; and this seems

to be generally true of the untutored mind. Among the Churaches, the

profession of shaman is generally hereditary; but a man may become a

shaman against his will. It is enough “to make a lucky guess as to

the issue of some event, and people flock to him for advice from all

parts.”[509] How many failures are necessary to discredit one lucky

guess?

These three kinds of evidence in favour of the wizard’s power—natural

causes set in motion by himself, natural causes introduced by his

clients, and sheer favourable coincidences—have so much the air of

perceptual proof, or of an appeal to common sense, that the savage

positivist who is able to resist them must have a more solid judgment

than most of our educated civilised people. Judgment is an innate

individual character, on which education has little effect, except in

the special department of a man’s training. A scientific expert, for

example, may be an excellent judge of evidence in his own pursuit,

and elsewhere quite helpless; for where he is strong it is not a set

of rules but the mass of his special experience that guides him. That

out of the mass of general experience, so disorderly and fragmentary

as it is, some minds should have the power of extracting common sense,

in spite of the misrepresentations of Magic and Animism, is very

remarkable, and very fortunate for the rest of us.

That the three kinds of evidence which serve so well to confirm belief

in wizardry are all of them—as to the connexion between a wizard’s

rites or spells and the event—entirely coincidental, gives some

support to the hypothesis that coincidences are the foundation of the

belief in Magic.

Bearing in mind, then, that a wizard’s practices sometimes include real

causes, and that his shallow knowledge disables him for discriminating

between causation and hocus-pocus; that Magic or Sorcery is generally

believed in by those about him, who seek his aid, or the aid of

others of his class; that both they and he earnestly desire that

his pretensions should be well founded; that he produces striking

subjective effects; that in such cases his artifices are a condition of

his success, and that a good many coincidences, complete or partial,

seem to prove that his art has further extraordinary influence upon men

and nature—it is no wonder that some wizards are deluded along with

their dupes, especially neurotic enthusiasts or men of an imaginative

and histrionic temperament.

To explain the possibility of some men being sincere in witchcraft is

not to palliate the profession, much less the anti-social practices

of witchcraft. For the most part those practices are deceitful. They

are not the invention of savage society; society invents nothing;

only the individual invents. They are the invention and tradition of

wizards, who keep the secret so far as it is to their advantage: of

wizards growing more and more professional, and trading upon the fears

and hopes, the anxiety and credulity of their fellows. The spirit of

superstition is common to the tribe, but its professional exploitation

is the work of those who profit by it.

Observing with satisfaction that, even amongst savages, the positive

mind can sometimes free itself from popular superstitions and penetrate

the disguise of mystery-mongers, one asks why Nature could not produce

whole tribes of men so minded, and spare the folly and horror and

iniquity which take up so much space in the retrospect of human life.

Because common sense is only related to actual experience, and could

not appreciate the necessity of government and social co-ordination

as the condition of all improvement in human life, until it already

existed. Such co-ordination had, therefore, to grow up without being

understood; and it did grow up under the protection of certain beliefs

that induced the tribes of men to hold together and subordinate

themselves to leaders: amongst which beliefs the superstitions

exploited by wizards had no small part.

FOOTNOTES:

[389] Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, p. 65.

[390] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 336.

[391] Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 177.

[392] The political importance of the wizard seems to have been first

noticed by Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, II. p. 178 (§ 474).

[393] Bellamy, quoted by Seligman, _Melanesians of British North

Guinea_, p. 694.

[394] _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 40.

[395] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 114.

[396] Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 191.

[397] E. Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ch.

xlix.

[398] _The Sacred Shrine._

[399] _Report of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. pp.

322-3.

[400] Rivers, _History of Melanesian Sociology_.

[401] _Am. B. of Ethn._, VII., “Ojibway Medicine,” by W. J. Hoffman;

XI., “The Sia,” by M. C. Stevenson; XIV., “The Menomini Indians,” by

W. Hoffman. For a collection of the facts see Frazer, _Totemism and

Exogamy_, IV. ch. xix; and Hutton Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_.

[402] _Report of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p.

200.

[403] _Op. cit._, p. 278.

[404] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 251.

[405] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 326.

[406] Book VII. The witch, imitated from Circe and Medea by Ariosto,

Tasso, Spenser, became a traditionary, romantic motive.

[407] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 388.

[408] Stefánson, _op. cit._, p. 403.

[409] Czaplicka, _op. cit._, p. 240.

[410] _Across Australia_, p. 51.

[411] _Op. cit._, p. 184.

[412] _Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle_, II. p. 178.

[413] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 216.

[414] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV., “Shamanism,”

p. 144.

[415] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 335.

[416] _Am. B. of Ethn._, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” by J.

Mooney, p. 323.

[417] W. Mariner’s _Account of the Tonga Islands_, ch. xxi.

[418] _Am. B. of Ethn._, IX., “Medicine Men of the Apache,” by J. E.

Bourke, p. 471.

[419] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 135.

[420] _Travels and Researches in South Africa_, ch. i.

[421] J. Shakespeare, _The Lushai Kuki Clans_, p. 80.

[422] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, p. 120, and _Am. B.

of Ethn._, XI. p. 417; XIV. pp. 97, 148.

[423] D. Comparetti, _The Traditional Poetry of the Finns_, pp. 27 and

25.

[424] Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, pp. 548-50.

[425] The crystals forced into a wizard’s body, whether by spirits or

by other wizards, are essential to his profession, and if they leave

him his power is lost. “It is the possession of these stones which

gives his virtue to the medicine-man” (Spencer and Gillen, _Northern

Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 480 note). John Mathew says that,

according to the belief of the Kabi (Queensland): “A man’s power in

the occult art would appear to be proportioned to his vitality, and

the degree of vitality which he possessed depended upon the number of

sacred pebbles and the quantity of _yurru_ (rope) which he carried

within him” (_Eagle-hawk and Crow_, p. 143). “Rope” was the property

of the higher grade of medicine-men (substitute for snakes?), who had

obtained it from the Rainbow in exchange for some of their pebbles.

Certain pebbles, especially crystals, are independent magic-powers

throughout Australasia and elsewhere, probably of much older repute

than the profession of wizardry; and the wizard gets his personal power

by having them inside him. Similarly, Jounod describes Bantu wizards

as “endowed with magical power, or rather possessing enchanted drugs”

(_Life of a South African Tribe_, p. 293): whereas we are often told

that the occult art begins with the extraordinary personality of the

wizard.

[426] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 522-9.

[427] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

485.

[428] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_,

V. p. 321.

[429] E. im Thurn, _The Indians of Guiana_, p. 334.

[430] Thomas Whiffen, _The North-West Amazons_, p. 181.

[431] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 156.

[432] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV., “Shamanism,”

pp. 87-90.

[433] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. p.

322.

[434] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 334.

[435] W. H. R. Rivers, _The Todas_, pp. 256-7.

[436] _Belief in Immortality_, pp. 249, 269.

[437] For examples see Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 204; Dudley

Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 149; Callaway, _Religion of the

Amazulu_, p. 391; Hose and McDougall, _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_,

II. p. 115; Turner, _Samoa_, p. 342; _Shamanism_, p. 130; Carl

Lumholtz, _New Trails in Mexico_, p. 24; T. A. Joyce, _South American

Archæology_, p. 245; E. Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral

Ideas_, II. pp. 650-2.

[438] Callaway, _Religion of the Amazulu_, pp. 384-6 and 404.

[439] Franz Boas, “The Central Esquimo,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, VI.

(1884-5), p. 603.

[440] W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_, p. 571.

[441] A. Wiedemann, _The Religion of the Egyptians_, pp. 273-4.

[442] A. M. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 178.

[443] J. G. Frazer, _Psyche’s Task_.

[444] Pp. 138-9.

[445] Rivers, _History of Melanesian Sociology_, II. p. 156.

[446] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_.

[447] im Thurn, _op. cit._, p. 339.

[448] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 145.

[449] _Across Australia_, p. 350.

[450] _Primitive Bakongo_, p. 285.

[451] Skeat, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 563.

[452] Rivers, _The Todas_, p. 263.

[453] Abbot, _Macedonian Folk-Lore_, p. 225.

[454] _Op. cit._, p. 203.

[455] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 387-8.

[456] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, pp. 334-5.

[457] Whiffen, _op. cit._, pp. 182-3.

[458] Jounod, _Life of a South African Tribe_, II. p. 456.

[459] Whiffen, _op. cit._, pp. 64 and 168.

[460] _Primitive Bakongo_, p. 216.

[461] _Aboriginal Siberia_, pp. 230, 240.

[462] _Paradoxe sur le comédien._ Mr. William Archer, some years ago,

published _Masks and Faces_, an entertaining and very instructive book,

in which he (as a genuine though unprofessional psychologist) discusses

this paradox in the light of evidence obtained, by _questionnaire_ and

otherwise, from actors then living.

[463] _Man_, September 1817, p. 144.

[464] _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 197.

[465] _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie._

[466] Meiners, _Briefe über die Schweiz_ (quoted by Carlyle in essay on

_Count Cagliostro_).

[467] _Aboriginal Siberia_, pp. 169, 172.

[468] _Text-book of Insanity_, pp. 281 and 79.

[469] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

497.

[470] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, pp. 250-60.

[471] For another example see Rivers, _History of Melanesian

Sociology_, II. p. 411.

[472] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 346.

[473] For the most elaborate of all such performances, see the

initiation into the Ghost Society of the Kwakintle Indians, in Frazer’s

_Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 538.

[474] Casalis, _My Life in Basuto Land_, p. 185.

[475] Basil Thompson, _The Fijians_, p. 158.

[476] Basil Thompson, _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, pp. 201 and 346.

[477] _The Heroic Age_, p. 413.

[478] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, pp. 374-5.

[479] “Aborigines of Victoria,” _Transactions of the Ethnological

Society_, New Series, I. p. 300.

[480] _Eagle-hawk and Crow_, p. 146.

[481] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 239.

[482] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, pp. 284 and 285.

[483] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 293.

[484] Callaway, _op. cit._, pp. 29-30.

[485] _The North-West Amazons_, p. 218.

[486] J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults,” pp. 431-2 and 485, _Am. B. of

Ethn._, XI.

[487] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 270.

[488] _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 204.

[489] John Martin, _W. Mariner’s Account of the Tonga Islands_, II. pp.

105 and 137.

[490] Hose and McDougall, _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 48 and

214.

[491] _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 126.

[492] Introduction to _The Rise of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_.

[493] C. G. Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 179.

[494] T. C. Hodson, _op. cit._, p. 171.

[495] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 284.

[496] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.

531-2.

[497] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_,

VI. p. 201.

[498] Ellis, _op. cit._, II. p. 232.

[499] _Shamanism_, p. 92.

[500] _History of Melanesian Society_, II. p. 107.

[501] A. M. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 180.

[502] _Across Australia_, p. 326.

[503] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

481.

[504] _Decline and Fall_, ch. xvii—discussing the character of Julian.

[505] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 398.

[506] _Across Australia_, pp. 14, 326, 366.

[507] See Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres

Straits_, VI. p. 210; Stefánson, _My Life with the Esquimo_, p. 88;

Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, in _Ninth

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[508] _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 245.

[509] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV. p.

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