Of all the topics which present themselves to the student of the
science of religion for investigation and explanation there is none
which has caused more diversity of opinion, none which has produced
more confusion of thought, than magic. The fact is that the belief in
magic is condemned alike by science and religion,--by the one as
essentially irrational, and by the other as essentially irreligious.
But though it is thus condemned, it flourishes, where it does flourish,
as being science, though of a more secret kind than that usually
recognised, or as being a more potent application of the rites and
ceremonies of religion. It is indeed neither science nor religion; it
lives by mimicking one or other or both. In the natural history of
belief it owes its survival, so long as it does survive, to its
"protective colouring" and its power of mimicry. It is, always and
everywhere, an error,--whether tried by the canons of science or
religion; {71} but it lives, as error can only live, by posing and
passing itself off as truth.
If now the only persons deceived by it were the persons who believed in
it, students of the science of religion would have been saved from much
fruitless controversy. But so subtly protective is its colouring that
some scientific enquirers have confidently and unhesitatingly
identified it with religion, and have declared that magic is religion,
and religion is magic. The tyranny of that error, however, is now
well-nigh overpast. It is erroneous, and we may suppose is seen to be
erroneous, in exactly the same way as it would be to say that science
is magic, and magic science. The truth is that magic in one aspect is
a colourable imitation of science: "in short," as Dr. Frazer says
(_Early History of the Kingship_, p. 38), "magic is a spurious system
of natural law." That is, we must note, it is a system which is
spurious in our eyes, but which, to those who believed in it, was "a
statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events
throughout the world--a set of precepts which human beings observe in
order to compare their ends" (_ib._, p. 39).
The point, then, from which I wish to start is that {72} magic, as it
is now viewed by students of the science of religion, on the one hand
is a spurious system of natural law or science, and on the other a
spurious system of religion.
Our next point is that magic could not be spurious for those who
believed in it: they held that they knew some things and could do
things which ordinary people did not know and could not do; and,
whether their knowledge was of the secrets of nature or of the spirit
world, it was not in their eyes spurious.
Our third point is more difficult to explain, though it will appear not
merely obvious, but self-evident, if I succeed in explaining it. It
will facilitate the work of explanation, if you will for the moment
suppose--without considering whether the supposition is true or
not--that there was a time when no one had heard that there was such a
thing as magic. Let us further suppose that at that time man had
observed such facts as that heat produces warmth, that the young of
animals and man resemble their parents: in a word, that he had attained
more or less consciously to the idea, as a matter of observation, that
like produces like, and as a matter of practice that like may be
produced by like. Having attained to that practical idea, he will of
{73} course work it not only for all that it is worth, but for more.
That is indeed the only way he has of finding out how much it is good
for; and it is only repeated failure which will convince him that here
at length he has reached the limit, that in this particular point
things do not realise his expectations, that in this instance his
anticipation of nature has been "too previous." Until that fact has
been hammered into him, he will go on expecting and believing that in
this instance also like will produce like, when he sets it to work; and
he will be perfectly convinced that he is employing the natural and
reasonable means for attaining his end. As a matter of fact, however,
as we with our superior knowledge can see, in the first place those
means never can produce the desired effect; and next, the idea that
they can, as it withers and before it finally falls to the ground, will
change its colour and assume the hue of magic. Thus the idea that by
whistling you can produce a wind is at first as natural and as purely
rational as the idea that you can produce warmth by means of fire.
There is nothing magical in either. Both are matter-of-fact
applications of the practical maxim that like produces like.
{74}
That, then, is the point which I have been wishing to make, the third
of the three points from which I wish to start. There are three ways
of looking at identically the same thing, _e.g._ whistling to produce a
wind. First, we may regard it, and I suggest that it was in the
beginning regarded, as an application, having nothing to distinguish it
from any other application, of the general maxim that like produces
like. The idea that eating the flesh of deer makes a man timid, or
that if you wish to be strong and bold you should eat tiger, is, in
this stage of thought, no more magical than is the idea of drinking
water because you are dry.
Next, the idea of whistling to produce a wind, or of sticking splinters
of bone into a man's footprints in order to injure his feet, may be an
idea not generally known, a thing not commonly done, a proceeding not
generally approved of. It is thus marked off from the commonplace
actions of drinking water to moisten your parched throat or sitting by
a fire to get warm. When it is thus marked off, it is regarded as
magic: not every one knows how to do it, or not every one has the power
to do it, or not every one cares to do it. That is the second stage,
the heyday of magic.
{75}
The third and final stage is that in which no educated person believes
in it, when, if a man thinks to get a wind by whistling he may whistle
for it. These three ways of looking at identically the same thing may
and do coexist. The idea of whistling for a wind is for you and me
simply a mistaken idea; but possibly at this moment there are sailors
acting upon the idea and to some of them it appears a perfectly natural
thing to do, while to others there is a flavour of the magical about
it. But though the three ways may and do coexist, it is obvious that
our way of looking at it is and must be the latest of the three, for
the simple reason that an error must exist before it can be exploded.
I say that our way of looking at it must be the latest, but in saying
so I do not mean to imply that this way of looking at it originates
only at a late stage in the history of mankind. On the contrary, it is
present in a rudimentary form from very early times; and the proof is
the fact generally recognised that magicians amongst the lowest races,
though they may believe to a certain extent in their own magical
powers, do practise a good deal of magic which they themselves know to
be fraudulent. Progress takes place when other people also, and a {76}
steadily increasing number of people, come to see that it is fraudulent.
In the next place, just as amongst very primitive peoples we see that
some magic is known by some people, viz. the magicians themselves, to
be fraudulent, though other people believe in it; so, amongst very
primitive peoples, we find beliefs and practices existing which have
not yet come to be regarded as magical, though they are such as might
come, and do elsewhere come, to be considered pure magic. Thus, for
instance, when Cherokee Indians who suffer from rheumatism abstain from
eating the flesh of the common grey squirrel "because the squirrel eats
in a cramped position, which would clearly aggravate the pangs of the
rheumatic patient" (Frazer, _History of the Kingship_, p. 70), or when
"they will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard for fear of
themselves becoming bald" (_ib._), they are simply following the best
medical advice of their day,--they certainly do not imagine they are
practising magic, any more than you or I do when we are following the
prescriptions of our medical adviser. On the contrary, it is quite as
obvious, then, that the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard are
infectious as it is now that the clothes {77} of a fever patient are
infectious. Neither proposition, to be accepted as true, requires us
to believe in magic: either might spring up where magic had never been
heard of. And, if that is the case, it simply complicates things
unnecessarily to talk of magic in such cases. The tendency to believe
that like produces like is not a consequence of or a deduction from a
belief in magic: on the contrary, magic has its root or one of its
roots in that tendency of the human mind. But though that tendency
helps to produce magic amongst other things, magic is not the only
thing which it produces: it produces beliefs such as those of the
Cherokees just quoted, which are no more magical than the belief that
fire produces warmth, or that _causa aequat effectum_, that an effect
is, when analysed, indistinguishable from the conditions which
constitute it.
To attempt to define magic is a risky thing; and, instead of doing so
at once, I will try to mark off proceedings which are not magical; and
I would venture to say that things which it is believed any one can do,
and felt that any one may do, are not magical in the eyes of those who
have that belief and that feeling. You may abstain from eating {78}
squirrel or wearing fine feathers because of the consequences; and
every one will think you are showing your common sense. You may hang
up the bones of animals you have killed, in order to attract more
animals of the like kind; and you are simply practising a dodge which
you think will be useful. Wives whose husbands are absent on hunting
or fighting expeditions may do or abstain from doing things which, on
the principle that like produces like, will affect their husbands'
success; and this application of the principle may be as
irrational--and as perfectly natural--as the behaviour of the beginner
at billiards whose body writhes, when he has made his stroke, in excess
of sympathy with the ball which just won't make the cannon. In both
cases the principle acted on,--deliberately in the one case, less
voluntarily in the other,--the instinctive feeling is that like
produces like, not as a matter of magic but as a matter of fact. If
the behaviour of the billiard player is due to an impulse which is in
itself natural and in his case is not magical, we may fairly take the
same view of the hunter's wife who abstains from spinning for fear the
game should turn and wind like the spindle and the hunter be unable to
hit it (Frazer, {79} p. 55). The principle in both cases is that like
produces like. Some applications of that principle are correct; some
are not. The incorrectness of the latter is not at once discovered:
the belief in their case is erroneous, but is not known to be
erroneous. And unless we are prepared to take up the position that
magic is the only form of erroneous belief which is to be found amongst
primitive men, we must endeavour to draw a line between those erroneous
beliefs which are magical and those erroneous beliefs which are not.
The line will not be a hard and fast line, because a belief which
originally had nothing magical about it may come to be regarded as
magical. Indeed, on the assumption that belief in magic is an error,
we have to enquire how men come to fall into the error. If there is no
such thing as magic, how did man come to believe that there was? My
suggestion is that the rise of the belief is not due to the
introduction of a novel practice, but to a new way of looking at an
existing practice. It is due in the first instance to the fact that
the practice is regarded with disapproval as far as its consequences
are concerned and without regard to the means employed to produce them.
Injury to a member of the community, {80} especially injury which
causes death, is viewed by the community with indignant disapproval.
Whether the death is produced by actual blows or "by drawing the figure
of a person and then stabbing it or doing it any other injury" (Frazer,
p. 41), it is visited with the condemnation of the community. And
consequently all such attempts "to injure or destroy an enemy by
injuring or destroying an effigy of him" (_ib._), whenever they are
made, whether they come off or not, are resented and disapproved by
society. On the other hand, sympathetic or hom[oe]opathic magic of
this kind, when used by the hunter or the fisherman to secure food,
meets with no condemnation. Both assassin and hunter use substantially
the same means to effect their object; but the disapproval with which
the community views the object of the assassin is extended also to the
means which he employs. In fine, the practice of using like to produce
like comes to be looked on with loathing and with dread when it is
employed for antisocial purposes. Any one can injure or destroy his
private enemy by injuring an effigy of him, just as any one can injure
or destroy his enemy by assaulting and wounding him. But though any
one may do this, it is felt {81} that no one ought to do it. Such
practices are condemned by public opinion. Further, as they are
condemned by the community, they are _ipso facto_ offensive to the god
of the community. To him only those prayers can be offered, and by him
only those practices can be approved, which are not injurious to the
community or are not felt by the community to be injurious. That is
the reason why such practices are condemned by the religious as well as
by the moral feeling of the community. And they are condemned by
religion and morality long before their futility is exposed by science
or recognised by common sense. When they are felt to be futile, there
is no call upon religion or morality especially to condemn the
practices--though the intention and the will to injure our fellow-man
remains offensive both to morality and religion. With the means
adopted for realising the will and carrying out the intention, morality
and religion have no concern. If the same or similar means can be used
for purposes consistent with the common weal, they do not, so far as
they are used for such purposes, come under the ban of either morality
or religion. Therein we have, I suggest, the reason of a certain
confusion of thought {82} in the minds of students of the science of
religion. We of the present day look at the means employed. We see
the same means employed for ends that are, and for ends that are not,
antisocial; and, inasmuch as the means are the same and are alike
irrational, we group them all together under the head of magic. The
grouping is perfectly correct, inasmuch as the proceedings grouped
together have the common attribute of being proceedings which cannot
possibly produce the effects which those who employ them believe that
they will and do produce. But this grouping becomes perfectly
misleading, if we go on to infer, as is sometimes inferred, that
primitive man adopted it. First, it is based on the fact that the
proceedings are uniformly irrational--a fact of which man is at first
wholly unaware; and which, when it begins to dawn upon him, presents
itself in the form of the further error that while some of these
proceedings are absurd, others are not. In neither case does he adopt
the modern, scientific position that all are irrational, impossible,
absurd. Next, the modern position deals only with the proceedings as
means,--declaring them all absurd,--and overlooks entirely what is to
primitive man the point of fundamental importance, viz. the object {83}
and purpose with which they are used. Yet it is the object and purpose
which determine the social value of these proceedings. For him, or in
his eyes, to class together the things which he approves of and the
things of which he disapproves would be monstrous: the means employed
in the two cases may be the same, but that is of no importance in face
of the fact that the ends aimed at in the two cases are not merely
different but contradictory. In the one case the object promotes the
common weal, or is supposed by him to promote it. In the other it is
destructive of the common weal.
If, therefore, we wish to avoid confusion of thought, we must in
discussing magic constantly bear in mind that we group together--and
therefore are in danger of confusing--things which to the savage differ
_toto caelo_ from one another. A step towards avoiding this confusion
is taken by Dr. Frazer, when he distinguishes (_History of the
Kingship_, p. 89) between private magic and public magic. The
distinction is made still more emphatic by Dr. Haddon (_Magic and
Fetichism_, p. 20) when he speaks of "nefarious magic." The very same
means when employed against the good of the community are regarded, by
morality and religion {84} alike, as nefarious, which when employed for
the good of the community are regarded with approval. The very same
illegitimate application,--I mean logically illegitimate in our
eyes,--the very same application of the principle that like produces
like will be condemned by the public opinion of the community when it
is employed for purposes of murder and praised by public opinion when
it is employed to produce the rain which the community desires. The
distinction drawn by primitive man between the two cases is that,
though any one can use the means to do either, no one ought to do the
one which the community condemns. That is condemned as nefarious; and
because it is nefarious, the "witch" may be "smelled out" by the
"witch-doctor" and destroyed by, or with the approval of, the community.
But though that is, I suggest, the first stage in the process by which
the belief in magic is evolved, it is by no means the whole of the
process. Indeed, it may fairly be urged that practices which any one
can perform, though no one ought to perform, may be nefarious (as
simple, straightforward murder is), but so far there is nothing magical
about them. And I am prepared to accept that view. Indeed, {85} it is
an essential part of my argument, for I seek to show that the belief in
magic had a beginning and was evolved out of something that was not a
belief in magic, though it gave rise to it. The belief that like
produces like can be entertained where magic has not so much as been
heard of. And, though it may ultimately be worked out into the
scientific position that the sum of conditions necessary to produce an
effect is indistinguishable from the effect, it may also be worked out
on other lines into a belief in magic; and the first step in that
evolution is taken when the belief that like produces like is used for
purposes pronounced by public opinion to be nefarious.
The next step is taken when it comes to be believed not only that the
thing is nefarious but that not every one can do it. The reason why
only a certain person can do it may be that he alone knows how to do
it--or he and the person from whom he learnt it. The lore of such
persons when examined by folk-lore students is found generally to come
under one or other of the two classes known as sympathetic and mimetic
magic, or hom[oe]opathic and contagious magic. In these cases it is
obvious that the _modus operandi_ is the same as it {86} was in what I
have called the first stage in the evolution of magic and have already
described at great length. What differentiates this second stage from
the first is that whereas in the first stage these applications of the
principle that like produces like are known to every one, though not
practised by every one, in the second stage these applications are not
known to every one, but only to the dealers in magic. Some of those
applications of the principle may be applications which have descended
to the dealer and have passed out of the general memory; and others may
simply be extensions of the principle which have been invented by the
dealer or his teacher. Again, the public disapproval of nefarious arts
will tend first to segregate the followers of such arts from the rest
of the community; and next to foster the notion that the arts thus
segregated, and thereby made more or less mysterious, include not only
things which the ordinary decent member of society would not do if he
could, but also things which he could not do if he would. The mere
belief in the possibility of such arts creates an atmosphere of
suspicion in which things are believed because they are impossible.
When this stage has been reached, when he who {87} practises nefarious
arts is reported and believed to do things which ordinary decent people
could not do if they would, his personality inevitably comes to be
considered as a factor in the results that he produces; he is credited
with a power to produce them which other people, that is to say
ordinary people, do not possess. And it is that personal power which
eventually comes to be the most important, because the most mysterious,
article in his equipment. It is in virtue of that personal power that
he is commonly believed to be able to do things which are impossible
for the ordinary member of the tribe.
Thus far I have been tracing the steps of the process by which the
worker of nefarious arts starts by employing for nefarious purposes
means which any one could use if he would, and ends by being credited
with a power peculiar to himself of working impossibilities. I now
wish to point out that a process exactly parallel is simultaneously
carried on by which arts beneficent to society are supposed to be
evolved. Rain-making may be taken as an art socially beneficial. The
_modus operandi_ of rain-making appears in all cases to be based on the
principle that like produces like; and to be in its {88} nature a
process which any one can carry out and which requires no mysterious
art to effect and no mysterious personal power to produce. At the same
time, as it is a proceeding which is beneficial to the tribe as a
whole, it is one in which the whole tribe, and no one tribesman in
particular, is interested. It must be carried out in the interest of
the tribe and by some one who in carrying it out acts for the tribe.
The natural representative of the tribe is the head-man of the tribe;
and, though any one might perform the simple actions necessary, and
could perform them just as well as the head-man, they tend to fall into
the hands of the head-man; and in any case the person who performs them
performs them as the representative of the tribe. The natural
inference comes in course of time to be drawn that he who alone
performs them is the man who alone can perform them; and when that
inference is drawn it becomes obvious that his personality, or the
power peculiar to him personally, is necessary if rain is to be made,
and that the acts and ceremonies through which he goes and through
which any one could go would not be efficacious, or not as efficacious,
without his personal agency and mysterious power. Hence the man who
works {89} wonders for his tribe or in the interests of his tribe, in
virtue of his personal power, does things which are impossible for the
ordinary member of the tribe.
Up to this point, in tracing the evolution of magic, we have not found
it once necessary to bring in or even to refer to any belief in the
existence of spiritual beings of any kind. So far as the necessities
of the argument are concerned, the belief in magic might have
originated in the way I have described and might have developed on the
lines suggested, in a tribe which had never so much as heard of
spirits. Of course, as a matter of fact, every tribe in which the
belief in magic is found does also believe in the existence of spirits;
animism is a stage of belief lower than which or back of which science
does not profess to go. But it is only in an advanced stage of its
evolution that the belief in magic becomes involved with the belief in
spirits. Originally, eating tiger to make you bold, or eating saffron
to cure jaundice, was just as matter of fact a proceeding as drinking
water to moisten your throat or sitting by a fire to get warm; like
produces like, and beyond that obvious fact it was not necessary to
go--there was no more need to imagine that the action of the saffron
was due to a spirit than to imagine {90} that it was a water spirit
which slakes your thirst. The fact seems to be that animism is a
savage philosophy which is competent to explain everything when called
upon, but that the savage does not spend every moment of his waking
life in invoking it: until there is some need to fall back upon it, he
goes on treating inanimate things as things which he can utilise for
his own purposes without reference to spirits. That is the attitude
also of the man who in virtue of his lore or his personal power can
produce effects which the ordinary man cannot or will not: he performs
his ceremony and the effect follows--or will follow--because he knows
how to do it or has mysterious personal power to produce the effect.
But he consults no spirits--at any rate in the first instance.
Eventually he may do so; and then magic enters on a further stage in
its evolution. (See Appendix.)
If the man who has the lore or the personal power, and who uses it for
nefarious purposes, proposes to employ it on obtaining the same control
over spirits as he has over things, his magic reaches a stage of
evolution in which it is difficult and practically unnecessary to
distinguish it from the stage of fetichism in which the owner of a
fetich {91} applies coercion to make the fetich spirit do what he
wishes. With fetichism I deal in another lecture. If, on the other
hand, the man who has the lore or the personal power and uses it for
social or "communal" purposes (Haddon, p. 41) comes to believe that,
for the effects which he has hitherto sought to produce by means of his
superior knowledge or superior power, it is necessary to invoke the aid
of spirits, he will naturally address himself to the spirit or god who
is worshipped by the community because he has at heart the general
interests of the community; or it may be that the spirit who produces
such a benefit for the community at large, as rain for example, will
take his place among the gods of the community as the rain-god, in
virtue of the benefit which he confers upon the community generally.
In either case, the attitude of the priest or person who approaches him
on behalf of the community will be that which befits a supplicant
invoking a favour from a power that has shown favour in the past to the
community. And it will not surprise us if we find that the ceremonies
which were used for the purpose of rain-making, before rain was
recognised as the gift of the gods, continue for a time to be practised
as the proper rites with {92} which to approach the god of the
community or the rain-god in particular. Such survivals are then in
danger of being misinterpreted by students of the science of religion,
for they may be regarded as evidence that religion was evolved out of
magic, when in truth they show that religion tends to drive out magic.
Thus Dr. Frazer, in his _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_
(pp. 73-75), describes the practice of the New Caledonians who, to
promote the growth of taro, "bury in the field certain stones
resembling taros, praying to their ancestors at the same time," and he
goes on to say: "In these practices of the New Caledonians the magical
efficacy of the stones appears to be deemed insufficient of itself to
accomplish the end in view; it has to be reinforced by the spirits of
the dead, whose help is sought by prayer and sacrifice. Thus in New
Caledonia sorcery is blent with the worship of the dead; in other
words, magic is combined with religion. If the stones ceased to be
employed, and the prayers and sacrifices to the ancestors remained, the
transition from magic to religion would be complete." Thus it seems to
be suggested in these words of Dr. Frazer's that religion may be
evolved out of magic. If that is what is suggested, {93} then there is
little doubt that the suggestion is not borne out by the instance
given. Let us concede for the moment what some of us would be inclined
to doubt, viz. that prayers and sacrifice offered to a human being,
alive or dead, is religion; and let us enquire whether this form of
religion is evolved out of magic. The magic here is quite clear:
stones resembling taros are buried in the taro field to promote the
growth of taros. That is an application of the principle that like
produces like which might be employed by men who had never heard of
ancestor worship or of any kind of religion, and who had never uttered
prayers or offered sacrifices of any kind. Next, the religious
element, according to Dr. Frazer, is also quite clear: it consists in
offering sacrifices to the dead with the prayer or the words, "Here are
your offerings, in order that the crop of yams may be good." Now, it
is not suggested, even by Dr. Frazer, that this religious element is a
form of magic or is in any way developed out of or evolved from magic.
On the contrary, if this element is religious--indeed, whether it be
really religious or not--it is obviously entirely distinct and
different from sympathetic or hom[oe]opathic magic. The mere fact that
the magical {94} rite of burying in the taro fields stones which
resemble taros has to be supplemented by rites which are, on Dr.
Frazer's own showing, non-magical, shows that the primitive belief in
this application of the principle that like produces like was already
dying out, and was in process of becoming a mere survival. Suppose
that it died out entirely and the rite of burying stones became an
unintelligible survival, or was dropped altogether, and suppose that
the prayers and sacrifices remained in possession of the field, which
would be the more correct way of stating the facts, to say that the
magic had died out and its place had been taken by something totally
different, viz. religion; or that what was magic had become religion,
that magic and religion are but two manifestations, two stages, in the
evolution of the same principle? The latter statement was formally
rejected by Dr. Frazer in the second edition of his _Golden Bough_,
when he declared that he had come to recognise "a fundamental
distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and
religion" (Preface, xvi). His words, therefore, justify us in assuming
that when he speaks, in his _Lectures on the Early History of the
Kingship_, of the "transition from magic to religion," he cannot {95}
mean that magic becomes religion, or that religion is evolved out of
magic, for the "distinction and even opposition of principle" between
the two is "fundamental." He can, therefore, only mean that magic is
followed and may be driven out by something which is fundamentally
opposed to it, viz. religion.
What then is the fundamental opposition between magic and religion? and
is it such as to require us to believe with Dr. Frazer that magic
preceded religion, and that of two opposite ideas the mind can conceive
the one without conceiving--and rejecting--the other?
The fundamental opposition between magic and religion I take to be that
religion is supposed to promote the interests of the community, and
that magic, so far forth as it is nefarious, is condemned by the moral
and by the religious feeling of the community. It is the ends for
which nefarious magic is used that are condemned, and not the means.
The means may be and, as we see, are silly and futile; and, for
intellectual progress, their silliness and futility must be recognised
by the intellect. But, it is only when they are used for purposes
inimical to the public good that they are {96} condemned by religion
and morality as nefarious. If therefore we talk of a fundamental
opposition between magic and religion, we must understand that the
fundamental opposition is that between nefarious magic and religion;
neither religion nor morality condemns the desire to increase the food
supply or to promote any other interest of the community. Whether a
man uses skill that he has acquired, or personal power, or force of
will, matters not, provided he uses it for the general good. The
question whether, as a cold matter of fact, the means he uses are
efficacious is not one which moral fervour or religious ardour is
competent by itself to settle: the cool atmosphere and dry light of
reason have rather that function to perform; and they have to perform
it in the case both of means that are used for the general good and of
those used against it.
I take it therefore that what religion is fundamentally opposed to is
magic--or anything else--that is used for nefarious purposes.
The question then arises whether we have any reason to believe that
magic used for nefarious purposes must have existed before religion.
Now by nefarious purposes I mean purposes inconsistent with or
destructive of the common good. {97} There can be no such purposes,
however, unless and until there is a community, however small, having
common interests and a common good. As soon as there exists such a
community, there will be a distinction between actions which promote
and actions which are destructive of the common good. The one class
will be approved, the other disapproved, of by public opinion. Magic
will be approved and disapproved of according as it is or is not used
in a way inconsistent with the public good. If there is a spirit or a
god who is worshipped by the community because he is believed to be
concerned with the good of the community, then he will disapprove of
nefarious proceedings whether magical or not. But Dr. Frazer's
position I take to be that no such spirit or god can come to be
believed in, unless there has been previously a belief in magic. Now,
that argument either is or is not based on the assumption that magic
and religion are but two manifestations, two stages, in the evolution
of the same principle. If that is the basis, then what manifested
itself at first as magic subsequently manifests itself as religion; and
"the transition from magic to religion" implies the priority of magic
to religion. But, as we have seen, Dr. Frazer {98} formally
postulates, not an identity, but an "opposition of principle" between
the two. We must therefore reject the assumption of an identity of
principle; and accept the "opposition of principle." But if so, then
there must be two principles which are opposed to one another, religion
and magic; and we might urge that line of argument consistently enough
to show that there can be no magic save where there is religion to be
opposed to it.
Now, there is an opposition of principle between magic used for
nefarious purposes and religion; and the opposition is that the one
promotes social and the other anti-social purposes. Nefarious
purposes, whether worked by magic or by other means, are condemned by
religion and are nefarious especially because offensive to the god who
has the interests of the community at heart. That from the moment
society existed anti-social tendencies also manifested themselves will
not be doubted; and neither need we doubt that the principle that like
produces like was employed from the beginning for social as well as for
anti-social purposes. The question is whether, in the stage of
animism, the earliest and the lowest stage which science recognises in
the evolution of man, there is ever found a society {99} of human
beings which has not appropriated some one or more of the spirits by
which all things, on the animistic principle, are worked, to the
purposes of the community. No such society has yet been proved to
exist; still less has any _a priori_ proof been produced to show that
such a society must have existed. The presumption indeed is rather the
other way. Children go through a period of helpless infancy longer
than the young of any other creatures; and could not reach the age of
self-help, if the family did not hold together for some years at least.
But where there is a family there is a society, even if it be confined
to members of the family. There also, therefore, there are social and
anti-social tendencies and purposes; and, in the animistic stage, the
spirits, by which man conceives himself to be surrounded, are either
hostile or not hostile to the society, and are accordingly either
worshipped or not worshipped by it. Doubtless, even in those early
times, the father and the husband conceived himself to be the whole
family; and if that view had its unamiable side--and it still has--it
also on occasion had the inestimable advantage of sinking self, of
self-sacrifice, in defence of the family.
{100}
Thus far I have been concerned to show how, starting from a principle
such as that like produces like, about which there is nothing magical
in the eyes either of those who believe in magic or of those who have
left the belief behind, man might evolve the conception of magic as
being the lore or the personal power which enables a man to do what
ordinary people cannot do. A few words are necessary as to the decline
of the belief. The first is that the belief is rotten before it is
ripe. Those applications of the principle that like produces like
which are magical are generally precisely those which are false. The
fact that they are false has not prevented them from surviving in
countless numbers to the present day. But some suspicion of their
falsity in some cases does arise; and the person who has the most
frequent opportunities of discovering their falsity, the person on
whose notice the discovery of their falsity is thrust most pointedly,
is the person who deals habitually and professionally in magic. Hence,
though it is his profession to work wonders, he takes care as far as
may be not to attempt impossibilities. Thus Dr. Haddon (_l.c._, p. 62)
found that the men of Murray Island, Torres Straits, who made a "big
wind" by magic, only made it in the {101} season of the southeast trade
wind. "On my asking," he says, "whether the ceremony was done in the
north monsoon, my informant said emphatically, 'Can't do it in
northwest.' That is, the charm is performed only at that season of the
year when the required result is possible--indeed when it is of normal
occurrence. In this, as in other cases, I found that the impossible
was never attempted. A rain charm would not be made when there was no
expectation of rain coming, or a southeast wind be raised during the
wrong season." The instance thus given to us by Dr. Haddon shows how
the belief in magic begins to give way before the scientific
observation of fact. The collapse of magic becomes complete when every
one sees that the southeast trade wind blows at its appointed time,
whether the magic rites are performed or not. In fine, what kills
magic regarded as a means for producing effects is the discovery that
it is superfluous, when for instance the desired wind or rain is
coming, and futile when it is not. And whereas morality and religion
only condemn the end aimed at by magic, and only condemn it when it is
anti-social, science slowly shows that magic as a means to any end is
superfluous and silly.
{102}
Science, however, shows this but slowly; and if we wish to understand
how it is that the belief in the magician's power has survived for
thousands of years down to the present moment amongst numerous peoples,
we must remember that his equipment and apparatus are not limited to
purely nonsensical notions. On the contrary, in his stock of
knowledge, carefully handed down, are many truths and facts not
generally known; and they are the most efficacious articles of his
stock in trade. Dr. Frazer may not go farther than his argument
requires, but he certainly goes farther than the facts will support
him, when he says (_l.c._, p. 83) "for it must always be remembered
that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as
such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception,
conscious or unconscious."
If now, in conclusion, we look once more at the subject of magic and
look at it from the practical point of view of the missionary, we shall
see that there are several conclusions which may be of use to him. In
the first place, his attitude to magic will be hostile, and in his
hostility to it he will find the best starting-point for his campaign
against it to be in the fact that everywhere magic is felt, to a
greater {103} or less extent, to be anti-social, and is condemned both
by the moral sentiments and the religious feeling of the community. It
is felt to be essentially wicked; and in warring against it the
missionary will be championing the cause of those who know it to be
wrong but who simply dare not defy it. The fact that defiance is not
ventured on is essential to the continuance of the tyranny; and what is
necessary, if it is to be defied, is an actual concrete example of the
fact that when defied it is futile.
Next, where magic is practised for social purposes, where it mimics
science or religion and survives in virtue of its power of "protective
colouring," it is in fact superfluous and silly; and where the natives
themselves are beginning to recognise that the magic which is supposed,
for instance, to raise the southeast trade wind won't act at the wrong
season, it should not be difficult to get them to see that it is
unnecessary at the right season. The natural process which tends thus
to get rid of magic may be accelerated by the sensible missionary; and
some knowledge of science will be found in this, as in other matters,
an indispensable part of his training.
Finally, the missionary may rest assured in the conviction that his
flank will not be turned by the {104} science of religion. The idea
that religion was preceded by and evolved out of magic may have been
entertained by some students of the science of religion in the past,
and may not yet have been thrown off by all. But it holds no place now
in the science of religion. To derive either science or religion from
the magic which exists only by mimicking one or the other is just as
absurd as to imagine that the insect which imitates the colour of the
leaf whereon it lives precedes and creates the tree which is to support
it.
{105}