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  THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND OF
  HIS SUPERSTITIONS




  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
  LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4

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  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
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  THE ORIGIN OF MAN
  AND OF HIS SUPERSTITIONS

  BY

  CARVETH READ, M.A.

  LECTURER ON COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY (FORMERLY GROTE PROFESSOR
  OF PHILOSOPHY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

  CAMBRIDGE
  AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
  1920




  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
  RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
  BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
  AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.




PREFACE


The volume now published explains in its first part an hypothesis that
the human race has descended from some ape-like stock by a series
of changes which began and, until recently, were maintained by the
practice of hunting in pack for animal food, instead of being content
with the fruits and other nutritious products of the tropical forest.
The hypothesis occurred to me many years ago, and was first published
(in brief) in _The Metaphysics of Nature_ (1805), Chap. XIII., and
again in _Natural and Social Morals_ (1909); but all it implied did not
become clear until, in lecturing on Comparative Psychology, there was
forced upon me the necessity of effecting an intelligible transition
from the animal to the human mind, and of not being satisfied to say
year after year that hands and brains were plainly so useful that
they must have been developed by Natural Selection. Then one day
the requisite ideas came to light; and an outline of the hypothesis
was read at the Meeting of the British Association (Section H) at
Birmingham in 1913, and printed in _Man_, November 1914. The Council
of the Anthropological Institute has kindly consented to my using the
substance of that article in the first chapter here following.

The article in _Man_ dealt chiefly with the physical changes which our
race has undergone. The correlative mental changes were explained in
the _British Journal of Psychology_ in an article which supplies the
basis of the second chapter of this book.

The hunting-pack, then, was the first form of human society; and in
lecturing on Ethnopsychology two questions especially interested me:
(1) Under what mental conditions did the change take place from the
organisation of the hunting-pack (when this weakened) to the settled
life of the tribe or group? and (2) Why is the human mind everywhere
befogged with ideas of Magic and Animism? They seemed at last to have
the same answer: these superstitions were useful and (apparently) even
necessary in giving to elders enough prestige to preserve tradition
and custom when the leader of the hunt was no longer conspicuous in
authority. A magic-working gerontocracy was the second form of society;
and the third form was governed by a wizard-king or a priest-king,
or by a king supported by wizards or priests. One must, therefore,
understand the possibility of these beliefs in Magic and Animism, and
how they arose and obtained a hold upon all tribes and nations; and
hence the second part of this volume—on Superstition.

Some results of inquiry into these matters were also published in the
_British Journal of Psychology_ (namely, much of the substance of
Chaps. III., IV., V., VI., and VIII.) and are here reproduced, with
the editor’s consent, enlarged and, for the most part, rewritten: the
least altered are Chaps. VI. and VIII. Chaps. VII., IX. and X. have not
hitherto been printed; but part of Chap. X. was read at the Meeting of
the British Association at Bournemouth last year.

Messrs. Williams and Norgate have given permission to use the diagram
in the footnote to p. 3, based on one of Prof. Keith’s in his
_Antiquity of Man_.

Extensive use has, of course, been made of the works of Darwin, Herbert
Spencer and E. B. Tylor, and (among living authors) of the volumes
of Sir J. G. Frazer and Prof. Ed. Westermarck. I am grateful to my
friends and colleagues, Prof. Spearman, Prof. J. P. Hill and Prof.
Arthur Keith for assistance in various ways. Mr. Pycraft, too, of the
Natural History Museum has given me important information; and my old
friend, Mr. Thomas Whittaker, has helped me, as usual, when my need was
greatest.

      CARVETH READ.

  _University College, London.
    July 1920_




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I
                                                                    PAGE
  ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF MAN FROM THE ANTHROPOIDS                   1

    § 1. _The Hypothesis._—That Man was differentiated from
          the anthropoid stock by becoming a hunter; perhaps in
          the Oligocene period                                       1-3

    § 2. _What the Hypothesis Explains._—World-wide range;
          why the earliest known men were hunters; the erect
          gait; specialisation of hands; reduction of arms;
          and of teeth and jaws; modification of skull; social
          co-operation; rudiments of speech; intelligence;
          control of fire                                           4-13

    § 3. _Minor and Secondary Consequences._—Alimentary
          canal; loss of seasonal marriage; naked skin;
          cannibalism; division into races; Nordic sub-race        13-21

    § 4. _Prey and Competitors._—Climate and landscape
          in Oligocene and Miocene; animals, herbivorous;
          anthropoids and their stature in late Oligocene;
          carnivorous contemporaries                                21-8

    § 5. _Conclusion._—Summary                                     28-9


CHAPTER II

  ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE HUMAN FROM THE ANTHROPOID MIND        30

    § 1. _Heredity, Adaptation, Accommodation_                     30-31

    § 2. _The Original Stock and the Conditions of
          Differentiation._—Mind of the higher apes the best
          clue to that of the original stock. Conditions of
          differentiation: the hunting life; geographical
          diffusion; social life; imaginations concerning Magic
          and Animism                                               31-5

    § 3. _Primal Society._—Forms of gregariousness amongst
          Mammalia; the hunting-pack most likely original of
          human society. Other conjectures                         35-40

    § 4. _Psychology of the Hunting-pack._—Interest in the
          chase and in killing; gregariousness; various modes
          of sympathy; aggressiveness; claim to territory;
          recognition of leaders, submission to the pack,
          emulation, precedency; strategy and persistence;
          struggle to share the prey; intelligence. Different
          mentality of the herbivorous herd                        40-49

    § 5. _The Wolf-type of Man established by Natural
          Selection._—Keith’s hypothesis as to epoch of
          differentiation. Slow progress of culture; full
          adaptation to hunting life prior to Neolithic culture    49-52

    § 6. _Some further Consequences of the
          Hunting-life._—Growth of constructiveness; language;
          customs—marriage; property; war; sports and games;
          laughter and lamentation                                 52-61

    § 7. _Moralisation of the Hunters._—Character of
          Anthropoids; human benevolence; moral sense; effect
          of industry; of growing intelligence                      61-6

    § 8. _Influence of the Imaginary Environment._—Belief in
          Magic and Spirits often injurious; but on the whole
          advantageous; especially by establishing government      66-70


CHAPTER III

  BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION                                             71

    § 1. “_Superstition._”—Here used merely to include Magic
          and Animism as imagination-beliefs                        71-2

    § 2. _Imagination._—Various uses of the word; mental
          “images”; in connection with reasoning; and
          with literary fiction. Here means unverifiable
          representation                                            72-6

    § 3. _Belief._—Nature of belief; degrees of probability;
          tested by action; play-belief                             76-9

    § 4. _Causes and Grounds of Belief._—Derived from
          perception. Evidentiary causes, or grounds,
          raising some probability; and non-evidentiary
          causes which are not grounds. Memory, testimony,
          inference so far as unverifiable are imagination.
          Influence of apperceptive masses and of methodology.
          Non-evidentiary causes have their own apperceptive
          masses—derived from bad observation, memory,
          testimony; influenced by emotion, desire and
          voluntary action; by sympathy and antipathy, and by
          suggestibility                                           79-85

    § 5. _The Beliefs of Immature Minds._—Non-evidentiary
          causes more influential than with us;
          picture-thinking more vivid; no common standard of
          truth; feeble power of comparison, due perhaps to
          undeveloped brain                                        85-92

    § 6. _The Reasoning of Immature Minds._—Fallacies
          of induction; ignorance of the minor premise in
          deduction; reasoning by analogy                           92-8

    § 7. _General Ideas at the Savage Level._—Savages have
          general ideas, though often not recognised or named;
          force; relations of causation and equality              99-103

    § 8. _The Weakness of Imagination-beliefs._—Superficial
          resemblance to perception-beliefs; more nearly allied
          to play-belief                                           103-7


CHAPTER IV

  MAGIC                                                              108

    § 1. _Antiquity of Magic_                                      108-9

    § 2. _What is Magic?_—Magic defined; imaginary impersonal
          force contrasted with power of spirits; its action
          uniform like laws of nature. Kinds of Magic             109-12

    § 3. _The Beginnings of Magic._—A matter of speculation.
          The earliest were probably the simplest, and the
          kinds that have prevailed most widely by tradition
          and hereditary predisposition. The chief source of
          belief in Magic is the mistaking of coincidence for
          causation                                               112-19

    § 4. _Magical Force and Primitive Ideas of
          Causation._—Idea of magical force derived from
          physical force (empathy, Animatism, invisible action
          at a distance, mana). How Animism and Magic corrupt
          the ideas of causation                                  119-24

    § 5. _Magic and Mystery_                                       124-6

    § 6. _Volitional Magic._—A relatively late idea               126-8

    § 7. _The Evolution of Magic—Direct Magic._—Growth and
          differentiation; four stages; spells and charms; taboo  128-34

    § 8. _Indirect or “Sympathetic” Magic._—Principles
          of Sympathetic Magic—mimesis and participation;
          connection with Animism. Exemplary Magic                134-42

    § 9. _The Dissolution of Magic_                                143-4


CHAPTER V

  ANIMISM                                                            145

    § 1. _What is Animism?_—Hyperphysical and psychological
          Animism. Not all savages think that every man has a
          separable soul                                           145-7

    § 2. _Psychological Animism._—That everything is animated
          not an universal or primitive illusion. Animatism.
          Causes of the treatment of some inanimate things as
          living or sentient                                      147-53

    § 3. _The Ghost Theory._—Originated chiefly by dreams;
          which are regarded as objective experience               153-7

    § 4. _Extension of the Ghost Theory to
          Animals._—Influence of shadows and reflections.
          Generally, only things individually interesting have
          ghosts. Examples                                        157-60

    § 5. _Ghosts and Soul-stuff._—Separated spirits need
          bodies and food, that is, soul-stuff. Abstract ideas
          of “spirit,” “force,” etc.                               161-4

    § 6. _Ghosts and Spirits._—Ghosts first imagined, and
          other spirits on their model. Some spirits, formerly
          ghosts, now declared not to have been; others never
          incarnate                                                164-9

    § 7. _How Ghosts and Spirits are imagined._—Have the same
          attributes, and not at first immaterial; confused
          with the corpse. Various conceptions. Number of souls
          to each body. External souls                            169-73

    § 8. _Origin and Destiny of
          Souls._—Reincarnation—Transmigration—Liable to
          second death. Place of the departed. Importance of
          next life resembling the present                         174-7

    § 9. _The Treatment of Ghosts._—Results partly from fear,
          partly from affection. Funerary rites—extravagance
          and economy. Simplicity of ghosts. Inconsistent
          behaviour toward them                                   178-82

    § 10. _Evolution and Dissolution of Animism._—Popular
          and priestly Animism. Different emotions excited by
          ghosts and by gods                                       182-6


CHAPTER VI

  THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MAGIC AND ANIMISM                            187

    § 1. _The Question of Priority._—Wundt’s theory of
          Animism and of the derivation from it of Magic.
          Reasons for dissenting. Origins of Magic and of
          Animism independent                                     187-93

    § 2. _Magic and Religion._—Frazer’s hypothesis as to
          the superseding of Magic by Religion. Reasons for
          dissenting. Alternative hypothesis. Caprice of
          spirits the essential distinction of Animism             193-7

    § 3. _Ideas and Practices of Magic adopted by
          Animism._—Invisible force. Power of charms ascribed
          to spirits. Omens first magical, then spiritual
          warnings. Spells become prayers. Magical rites become
          religious ceremonies                                   197-203

    § 4. _Retrogradation._—Wundt’s theory explains the loss
          in many cases of animistic ideas; Fetiches; Omens;
          Prayers; religious ceremonies                            203-7

    § 5. _Spirits know Magic, teach it, and inspire
          Magicians._—Examples of spirits knowing and teaching
          Magic. Inspiration and possession                       207-12

    § 6. _Spirits operate by Magic._—Possession; smiting;
          metamorphosis; charms and spells                        212-16

    § 7. _Spirits are controlled by Magic._—Biological
          necessity of controlling spirits—by fear—or by
          Magic. Analogy with politics. The higher barbaric
          religions. Magico-legal control of gods. Idea of
          Fate. Free-will and uniformity                          216-24


CHAPTER VII

  OMENS                                                              225

    § 1. _The Prevalence of Omens_ everywhere, in all ages.
          Examples                                                 225-6

    § 2. _Omens and Natural Signs._—Natural signs
          all-important to hunters; and Omens are imaginary
          signs                                                    226-7

    § 3. _Some Signs Conceived of as Magical._—By coincidence
          some events become signs of others by a mysterious
          and infallible tie. Moods of elation or depression
          favour belief in Omens; their validity may depend
          upon acceptance. Antiquity of subjective Omens.
          Whatever causes elation or depression is ominous.
          Coincidence and analogy                                 227-32

    § 4. _Differentiation of Omens from General Magic._—Omens
          are classed with charms, rites and spells, but
          distinguished by being signs only, not causes. Other
          differences                                              232-4

    § 5. _Omens Interpreted by Animism._—Omens resemble
          warnings—at first given by friendly animals, then by
          spirits, hence connected with Oracles and Dreams         234-8

    § 6. _Natural and Artificial Omens_—Natural Omens
          not being always at hand, means are discovered
          for obtaining them at any time; _e. g._ Dice,
          Hepatomancy, Astrology                                  238-40

    § 7. _Divination and Oracles._—Diviners and the art of
          Divination. Power of Diviners and Oracles. Ways of
          obtaining oracles and of being inspired derived from
          low savagery                                            240-45

    § 8. _Apparent Failure of Omens_—ascribed to faulty
          observation or interpretation; frustration by
          spirits, or by superior Magic; or by having been
          symbolically fulfilled                                   245-7

    § 9. _Apology for Omens._—The Diviner or oracular person
          tries to be well-informed. The Stoics and Divination.
          Omens involved in Fate. Conditional and unconditional
          Omens                                                   247-61


CHAPTER VIII

  THE MIND OF THE WIZARD                                             252

    § 1. _The Rise and Fall of Wizardry._—At first no
          professionals. Early professionals unpaid; except
          by influence; which enables them to maintain order.
          Animism gives rise to sorcerers and priests. Priests
          suppress sorcery and black Magic, and absorb white
          Magic in religious rites. Societies of wizards           252-7

    § 2. _The Wizard’s Pretensions._—Control of Nature;
          shape-changing and flying; the causing and curing of
          diseases; Divination; control of ghosts and spirits.
          General trust in them                                    257-9

    § 3. _Characteristics of the Wizard_—Intelligence and
          knowledge; force of will and daring (initiation);
          motives—attraction of mystery, reputation, power;
          distinctive costume and demeanour of a “superman”;
          jealousy of rivals; histrionic temperament;
          hysterical diathesis. Suggestibility of his clients     259-76

    § 4. _The Wizard and the Sceptic._—Social delusion and
          imposture. Scepticism frequent amongst chiefs and the
          higher social ranks, and also amongst the people,
          because of common sense. Still more difficult for
          Wizards to maintain self-delusion                       276-83

    § 5. _The Wizard’s Persuasion._—Honesty and fraud. The
          Wizard by vocation. Fascination of Black Wizardry.
          Artifices professionally necessary seem justified by
          social utility. His belief strengthened by effects
          of natural causes set going by himself or by his
          clients, and by coincidences                            284-92


CHAPTER IX

  TOTEMISM                                                           293

    § 1. _Meaning and Scope of Totemism._—Frazer’s
          definitions. The Clan-Totem, and observances
          connected with it                                        293-6

    § 2. _Of the Origin of Totemism._—Totemism not universal.
          Totemic names sometimes recent, generally ancient.
          Totemism has not the psychological necessity of Magic
          and Animism. Originates with the names of individuals
          or of groups?                                            296-9

    § 3. _The Conceptional Hypothesis of Frazer._—Belief in
          Totems derived from the fancies of women as to cause
          of pregnancy. Criticisms                               299-304

    § 4. _Lang’s Hypothesis._—Names of animals or plants
          given to groups probably by other groups.
          Circumstances of origin having been forgotten,
          explanatory myths are invented with corresponding
          observances. Comments                                    304-7

    § 5. _Totemism and Marriage._—Exogamy, Totemism and
          Marriage Classes. Westermarck’s hypothesis as to
          Exogamy                                                 307-11

    § 6. _The Clansman and his Totem_—perhaps believed to
          have the same soul                                      312-14

    § 7. _Totemism and Magic._—Magical properties of names.
          Transformation. Penalties on breach of observances.
          Control of Totems                                       314-19

    § 8. _Totemism and Animism._—Totems in Australia
          give warnings; are sometimes invoked in aid; the
          Wollunqua. Fusion of Totem with spirit of hero in
          Fiji; in Polynesia. Propitiation of guardian spirits,
          “elder brothers,” species-gods in North and South
          America. Zoolatry in Africa; in Egypt                   319-25


CHAPTER X

  MAGIC AND SCIENCE                                                  326

    § 1. _Their Common Ground._—Both assume uniformity of
          action. Differentiated in opposite directions from
          common-sense                                             326-8

    § 2. _The Differentiation._—The Wizard a
          physician—genuine and magical drugs; a surgeon with
          some knowledge of Anatomy—effective remedies and
          the sucking-cure; of Psychology and suggestion; his
          Physiological Psychology. Knowledge of natural signs;
          Natural signs and Omens; Astronomy and Astrology.
          Rain-rites and Meteorology                              328-37

    § 3. _Why Magic seems to be the Source of
          Science._—Conducted for ages by the same people, and
          develops faster                                        337-340

    § 4. _Animism and Science._—Naturally opposed as caprice
          to uniformity; but, indirectly, Animism is the great
          nurse of Science and Art. Animism and Philosophy.
          Conclusion                                              340-42

  INDEX                                                              345




THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND OF HIS SUPERSTITIONS




CHAPTER I

ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF MAN FROM THE ANTHROPOIDS


§ 1. THE HYPOTHESIS

That the human species as we now see it, with its several races,
Mongolian, Negro, Mediterranean, etc., represents a Family of the
Primates is generally agreed; and there is evidence that the Family
formerly comprised other species that have become extinct. Our nearest
surviving zoological relatives are the Gorilla, Chimpanzee and Orang,
and (at a further remove) the Siamang and Gibbons; and in spite of the
fundamental anatomical resemblance between those apes and ourselves,
the difference is so great that some explanation of how it came about
is very desirable.

The differences between Man and his nearest relatives are innumerable;
but taking the chief of them, and assuming that the minor details are
correlated with these, it is the hypothesis of this essay that they
may all be traced to the influence of one variation operating amongst
the original anthropoid conditions. That variation was the adoption
of a flesh-diet and the habits of a hunter in order to obtain it.
Without the adoption of a flesh-diet there could have been no hunting;
but a flesh-diet obtained without hunting (supposing it possible)
could have done nothing for the evolution of our stock. The adoption
of the hunting-life, therefore, is the essential variation upon which
everything else depends. We need not suppose that a whole ancestral
species varied in this way: it is enough that a few, or even one, of
the common anthropoid stock should have done so, and that the variation
was advantageous and was inherited.

Such a variation _must_ have occurred at some time, since Man is
everywhere more or less carnivorous; the earliest known men were
hunters; weapons are among the earliest known artefacts. And it
is not improbable that the change began at the anthropoid level;
because although extant anthropoids are mainly frugivorous, yet they
occasionally eat birds’-eggs and young birds; the gorilla has been said
to eat small mammals; and other Primates (cebidæ, macaques and baboons)
eat insects, arachnids, crabs, worms, frogs, lizards, birds; and the
crab-eating macaque collects a large portion of its food on the Malay
littoral. Why, then, should not one ape have betaken itself to hunting?

We need not suppose that our ancestors were ever exclusively
carnivorous: that is very unlikely. A mixed diet is the rule even
amongst hunting tribes, and everywhere the women collect and consume
fruits and roots. But if at first nearly omnivorous, our ancestor
(it is assumed) soon preferred to attack mammals, and advanced at a
remote date to the killing of the biggest game found in his habitat.
Everywhere savage hunters do so now: the little Semang kills the tiger,
rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo; and many thousands of years ago, in
Europe men slew the reindeer and the mammoth, the horse and the bison,
the hyæna and the cave-bear. It is true they had weapons and snares,
whilst the first hunter had only hands and teeth.

The change from a fruit-eating to a hunting life subserved the great
utility of opening fresh supplies of food; and, possibly, a failure
of the normal supply of the old customary food was the direct cause
of the new habit. If our ape lived near the northern limits of the
tropical forest, and a fall of temperature there took place, such as to
reduce (especially in winter) the yield of fruit and other nutritious
vegetation on which he had subsisted, famine may have driven him
to attack other animals;[1] whilst more southerly anthropoids, not
suffering from the change of climate, continued in their ancient manner
of life. A large anthropoid (_Dryopithecus_) inhabited Central Europe
in the Miocene, for his bones have been found; there may have been
others; and during that period the climate altered from sub-tropical
to temperate, with corresponding changes in fauna and flora. Hence it
formerly occurred to me that perhaps the decisive change in the life of
our Family happened there and then. It seems, however, that good judges
put the probable date of the great differentiation much earlier, in the
Oligocene;[2] and since I cannot find that any extensive alteration
of climate is known to have happened during that period, it seems
necessary to fall back upon “spontaneous” variation (as one must in
many other cases); that is to say, from causes which are at present
beyond our vision, the fateful ape did, in fact, prefer animal food
so decidedly as to begin a-hunting for it. That being granted, the
rest of the history was inevitable. The new pursuit was of a nature to
engross the animal’s whole attention and co-ordinate all his faculties;
and to maintain and reinforce it, his structure in body and mind may
reasonably be supposed to have undergone rapid modification by natural
selection; because those individuals that were in any organ or faculty
best adapted to the new life had an advantage, which was inherited and
gradually intensified.[3]


§ 2. WHAT THE HYPOTHESIS EXPLAINS

Let me run rapidly through the chief differences between Man and his
nearest congeners: some of them are obvious and can be stated very
briefly; others I shall return to in the next chapter. We shall see
that they all follow naturally from the above hypothesis.

(1) The anthropoids are never found out of the tropical forests of
Africa and Malaya (including Borneo and Sumatra). They feed chiefly on
the fruits and other highly nutritious vegetable products that, all
the year round, are only there obtainable. Although often coming to
the ground, especially the chimpanzee and gorilla, they are adapted
to living in the trees: that is their home. In contrast with their
habits, Man is at home on the ground, with unlimited range over the
whole planet from beyond the Arctic Circle to Tasmania and Tierra
del Fuego; because on the ground (chiefly) he everywhere finds his
food in the other animals whom he hunts and slays. This, then, is the
condition of his emancipation from the tropical forest. It is, indeed,
conceivable that a frugivorous animal, originally of the forest, should
obtain a wider range by taking to a coarser diet of roots and herbage,
such as suffices the Ungulates, browsing or grazing or digging with
their snouts; but this would not have led to the upright gait, or the
big brain, or any of the marks that distinguish Man. Not advance but
retrogression must have followed such a change.

(2) That the earliest men of whose condition of life we have any
knowledge were hunters agrees with the hypothesis. Any other view
of Man’s origin must explain how and when he became a hunter. There
seems to be no reason to put the change of habits (which certainly
occurred at some time) anywhere nearer than the beginning of our
differentiation. The further we put it back the better it explains
other modifications.

(3) The erect attitude was reached by the apes in the course of
adaptation to arboreal life;[4] but the erect gait as the normal mode
of progression is (if we neglect the gibbons’ imperfect performance)
peculiar to ourselves; and such a gait was attained because the
most successful hunters followed their prey afoot upon the ground.
The feeble ineffective shuffle of the anthropoids upon the ground,
supporting themselves with their arms where there are no overhanging
boughs to swing by and help themselves along, could not have served
the hunter, especially if he was to leave the forest. We may, indeed,
suppose that at first prey was sometimes attacked by leaping upon it
from the branch of a tree, as leopards sometimes do; but the less our
ancestor in his new career trusted to trees the better for him. Such
simple strategy could not make him a dominant animal throughout the
world; nothing could do this but the gradual attainment of erect gait
adapted to running down his prey. Hence the numerous modifications of
structure necessary to it, whenever from time to time they occurred,
were preserved and accumulated by natural selection: namely, the
curving of the vertebral column, the balancing of the head upon a
relatively slender neck, changes in the joints, bones and muscles of
the legs, the lengthening of the leg and the specialisation of the foot
(in which the heel is developed more than in the gorilla, and the great
toe is lengthened and lies parallel with the other toes).

(4) The specialisation of the legs and feet, as it proceeded, made
possible the specialisation of the hands: being gradually rid of the
task of assisting locomotion, whether in trees or on the ground, they
were used in grappling with prey, seconded by massive jaws and powerful
canine teeth. In course of time they brought cudgels and stones to the
encounter, and after many ages began to alter such means of offence
into weapons that might be called artefacts. These simple beginnings
probably occupied an immense time, perhaps more than half of the total
period down to the present. The utility and consequent selection of
hands had been great throughout; but their final development may be
referred to the making and using of weapons fashioned according to a
mental pattern. Those who had the best hands were selected because they
made the best weapons and used them best; but we know from remains of
several palæolithic stages of the art of manufacturing implements how
very slowly the art improved.

(5) Along with specialisation of the hands went a reduction in
the length and massiveness of the arms; and this must have been
disadvantageous in directly grappling with prey. But it was necessary
to the runner in order to lessen the weight and cumbersomeness of
the upper part of the body and to improve his balance and agility.
The change may also have been beneficial by affording physiological
compensation for the lengthening and strengthening of the legs. And as
soon as unwrought stones and clubs came into use there was mechanical
compensation for the shortening of the arms. The result is an adaptive
co-ordination of the total structure to the life of a two-footed hunter.

(6) Darwin says: “The early male forefathers of Man were, as previously
stated, probably furnished with great canine teeth; but as they
gradually acquired the habit of using stones, clubs, or other weapons,
for fighting with their enemies or rivals, they would use their jaws
and teeth less and less. In this case the jaws, together with the
teeth, would become reduced in size, as we may feel almost sure from
numerous analogous cases.”

(7) Hence the profile began to approach the orthognathous type; and it
progressed further in that direction on account of accompanying changes
in the skull. The skull became less thick and rough, (_a_) because, as
the hands (using weapons) superseded the teeth in fighting, jaws and
neck grew less massive, and their muscles no longer needed such solid
attachments; (_b_) because the head was less liable to injury when no
longer used as the chief organ in combat. At the same time the skull
slowly increased in capacity and became vaulted to make room for the
brains of an animal, which (as we shall see) acquired much knowledge
(parietal association area) and lived by the application of its
knowledge to the co-ordination of increasingly complex and continuous
activities (anterior association area).[5]

(8) Monkeys of most species, whether in the New World or in the Old,
are social, living in bands of from ten to fifty or more, and may
co-operate occasionally in mutual defence or in keeping watch. Baboons,
indeed, are seen in herds of several hundreds; and they are credibly
reported to co-operate in raiding plantations, and in defending
themselves against leopards, other baboons and even human hunters.[6]
Gibbons, again, are social, going in bands to the number of fifty. But
the large anthropoids live only in families—the male orang being even
of a somewhat solitary habit; three or four families of chimpanzees may
for a time associate together. Man, however, is everywhere—with a few
doubtful exceptions, probably degenerate—both social and co-operative;
and the purpose of his co-operation at the level of the Australian
or the Semang is instructive. It is not, as we might suppose, in
industry, but in hunting, war, or tribal ceremonies that tribesmen work
together—the last no doubt of comparatively recent origin: so that a
few thousand years ago there was no co-operation except hunting and war
(which come to the same thing).

That the large anthropoids are neither gregarious nor co-operative
follows from their having no task in which co-operation would be
useful, no common purpose: they are able alone to defend themselves
and their families; and when families range apart through the woods
their food is in better supply. But the ancestor of Man found an object
for association and co-operation in the chase. Spencer, indeed, says
that a large carnivore, capable of killing its own prey, profits by
being solitary; and this may be true where game is scarce: in the
Oligocene and Miocene periods game was not scarce. Moreover, when our
ape first pursued game, especially big game (not being by ancient
adaptation in structure and instinct a carnivore), he may have been,
and probably was, incapable of killing enough prey single-handed; and,
if so, he will have profited by becoming both social and co-operative
as a hunter, like the wolves and dogs—in short, a sort of wolf-ape
(_Lycopithecus_). The pack was a means of increasing the supply of food
per unit; and gregariousness increased by natural selection up to the
limit set by utility. Hence (as will be shown at length in the next
chapter) Man is in character more like a dog or a wolf than he is like
any other animal.

(9) Some development of the rudiments of speech may be confidently
traced to social co-operation. The gibbon, most social, is also
the most vocal of anthropoids; but having no common task in which
united action is necessary, he uses his remarkable power of voice
(apparently) merely to express his feelings and to keep the troop
together. The chimpanzee and the gorilla enjoy probably a close and
affectionate family life, but one that makes little or no demand
for concerted effort. Hence their vocalisation is very rudimentary.
According to R. L. Garner, it is true speech: a chimpanzee (he says)
knows the meaning of the sounds he makes, and intends to convey it
to some definite individual at whom he looks. But he has at command
very few sounds, and those mainly expressive of natural wants.[7] If
it be urged that anthropoids do not talk because their lower jaw and
tongue have not the special adaptation to speech that is found in
Man, it should be considered (_a_) that if such structure had been
useful to them it would have been acquired, as at some time it must
have been by Man himself; and (_b_) that even without any change they
might have jabbered well enough to convey a good many discriminated,
objective meanings if they had needed to do so: for Man must have
begun in that way; he cannot have waited for the development of
physical structure before trying to talk. Sufficient intelligence is
not wanting to chimpanzees; for in captivity they learn to understand
a good deal that is said to them. What they wanted was a sufficient
motive for persistently trying to communicate, such that those who
made any progress in the art had a living advantage over others. Man
had such a motive; because co-operation was necessary to him, not (as
we have seen) in industry, but in hunting. In hunting, in planning
and directing the hunt, speech is plainly useful; and it is better
than gesture, which probably preceded, and generally accompanied it;
because, as speech became independent of gesture, it could go on
whilst the hands and body were otherwise employed, or where comrades
could not see one another—transferring, by a very profitable division
of labour, the whole business of expression to organs not otherwise
needed. It may not be much more than very simple beginnings of
articulate speech that can be traced to early co-operative hunting;
but in the beginning lies the whole difficulty. And the situation was
particularly favourable to the beginning of language by onomatopœia,
imitating the characteristic noises of different animals and of the
weapons and actions employed in pursuing and slaying them.

(10) The intelligence and extensive knowledge (compared with
anthropoids) that distinguish Man in his lowest known condition are
clearly accounted for by his adoption of the hunting life. Already
(as we may assume) the most intelligent of living animals, with great
knowledge of the forest, he had everything to learn about the world
beyond the forest as soon as he ventured into it, and everything to
learn about the art of hunting. Depending chiefly upon sight and
hearing, he had to learn by observation, and to remember, and to apply
all and more than all that the carnivore knows and does instinctively,
or learns by following its mother. He must have learned to discriminate
all sorts of animals, many of them new in a strange country; their
reactions to himself, manner of flight, or of attack, or defence; the
spoor of each and its noises; its habits and haunts, where it reposed
or went to drink, where to set snares or lie in wait for it. Advancing
to the use of weapons, he must have adapted them to his prey; he must
have discovered the best materials—wood, or stone, or bone—for making
weapons, the best materials for snares, and where to find such things.
He must have fixed in his mind this series: game, weapons, the making
of them, materials, where found; and must have learned to attend to
the items of the series in the necessary order without impatience or
confusion: a task far beyond the power of any other animal.

Further, the hunting life supplied a stimulus that had formerly been
wanting to our ape. There is some difficulty in comprehending why
the anthropoid should be as intelligent as he is; and, similarly, it
seemed to Wallace that the savage has intelligence above his needs—“in
his large and well-developed brain he possesses an organ quite
disproportionate to his actual requirements.”[8] This illusion results
from our not reflecting that the first task of increasing intelligence
is to deal appropriately with details in greater and greater number
and variety, and that the details of their life, with both savage and
anthropoid, are just what we cannot appreciate. Still, the anthropoid
seems to have a rather lazy time of it: especially, he seems to have
hardly any occasion for following out a purpose needing some time for
its accomplishment. This powerful stimulus the hunting life applies
to carnivores, above all to dogs and wolves; and in the same way it
affected our ape: compelling him to combine many activities for a
considerable period of time, along with his fellows, and direct them
to one end in the actual hunting, and (later) to prosecute still other
activities for a longer period in preparing weapons and snares to make
the hunting more effective. Add to these considerations the development
of gesture and rudiments of speech, exacting intelligence for their
acquisition and increasing intelligence by their attainment, and the
superiority of the lowest savage to an anthropoid is sufficiently
explained. Severe must have been the selection of those that were
capable of such progress, and correspondingly rapid the advance and
differentiation of the species.

(11) Using stones as weapons, and finding that broken stones do most
damage, and breaking them for that purpose, the progressive hunter
necessarily makes some sparks fly; and if these fall amongst dry
leaves or grass, he may light a fire. “In making flint implements
sparks would be produced; in polishing them it would not fail to be
observed that they became hot; and in this way it is easy to see how
the two methods of making fire may have originated.”[9] But if the
production of fire by friction had been suggested by the polishing of
flints, it could hardly have been discovered before the neolithic
stage; whereas hearths are known of much earlier date. And it may have
happened earlier whilst some one was polishing an arrow or a spear
with another piece of wood: a supposition which dispenses with the
long inference from a warm flint to a flaming stick. It is a curious
fact that to this day in Australia fire is sometimes made by rubbing
a spear-thrower upon a shield;[10] but I lay no stress upon this, as
if such a practice must be traditionary from the earliest discovery
of the method. Either in the chipping of flints or in the polishing
of spears it is far easier, and a more probable way, to learn the art
of making fire than by observing that dried boughs or bamboos driven
together by the wind sometimes catch fire; because those processes
include the very actions which the art employs: imitation of nature is
not called for. It is true that the natives of Nukufetan in the South
Seas explain the discovery of fire by their having seen smoke arise
from two crossed branches of a tree shaken in the wind;[11] but this,
probably, is merely the speculation of some Polynesian philosopher.
Volcanoes, too, have been pointed out as a possible source of fire;
and, in the myth, Demeter is said to have lit her torches at the crater
of Ætna—an action fit for a goddess. But were such an origin of fire
conceivable with savages, it would not show how they came to make it
themselves. Fire at first must have excited terror. Until uses were
known for fire no one could have ventured to fetch it from a volcano,
nor to make it by imitating the friction of boughs in the wind. Fires
were accidentally lit by man again and again, and much damage done,
before he could learn (_a_) the connection of events, (_b_) the uses
of fire, (_c_) purposely to produce it, (_d_) how to control it. The
second and fourth of these lessons are much more difficult than the
mere making of fire; they are essential, yet generally overlooked.
It seems necessary to suppose a series of accidents at each step, in
order to show the effects of fire in hardening wood, hollowing wood,
cooking game, baking and (later) glazing clay, and so forth. Perhaps
a prairie-fire disclosed the advantages of cooking game, and many a
prairie was afterwards burnt to that end before a more economical plan
was discovered. As to the effect of fire on clay, Lord Avebury observes
that clay-vessels may have been invented by (1) plastering gourds or
coco-nuts with clay to resist the fire when boiling water in them; (2)
observing the effect of fire on the clay; (3) leaving out the vegetable
part.[12] This must have been a comparatively recent discovery; though
there is some evidence of pottery having been made by palæolithic man.
It is impossible to say when fire was discovered; but it was certainly
known to the Mousterian culture—say, 50,000 years ago: probably very
much earlier; and it was made by hunters.


§ 3. MINOR AND SECONDARY CONSEQUENCES

(1) The extensive adoption by Man of a flesh-diet many hundreds
of thousands of years ago might be expected to have shortened his
alimentary canal in comparison with that of the anthropoids; but not
much evidence of it is obtainable. Topinard, giving a proportionate
estimate, says that in Man it is about six times the length of the
body, in the gibbon about eight times. Dr. Arthur Keith, in a private
communication with which he has favoured me, says that the adult
chimpanzee’s intestine is slightly longer than the adult man’s, but
that the measurements are for certain reasons unsatisfactory, and that
there have not been enough measurements of adult chimpanzees. We must
remember that, on the one hand, the chimpanzee is not exclusively
frugivorous, and that, on the other hand, it is not likely that Man has
been at any time exclusively carnivorous; though the return of large
populations to a vegetarian diet by means of agriculture is recent.

(2) Man has lost the restraint of seasonal marriage, common to the
anthropoids with other animals, as determined by food-supply and
other conditions of infantile welfare; though, according to Prof.
Westermarck, traces of it may still be found in a few tribes.[13]
That our domestic carnivores have also lost this wholesome restraint
on passion and population points, probably, to some condition of a
steadier food-supply as determining or permitting the change amongst
ourselves. No growth of prudence, however, or habit of laying up stores
can explain the steadier supply of food; since the lower savages have
no prudence and no stores. On the whole, the change may be attributed
(_a_) to an omnivorous habit being more steadily gratified than one
entirely frugivorous or carnivorous; (_b_) to our ancestors having
wandered in quest of game from country to country in which the seasons
varied, so that the original correspondence of birth-time with
favourable conditions of welfare was thrown out. There may also have
been causes that kept down the normal numbers of the pack, so as to
be equivalent, in scarce seasons, to more abundant food: the hunter’s
life, whilst securing a richer normal diet, involved many destructive
incidents. And this (by the way) was favourable to rapid selection
and adaptation; though if the destruction had been great enough to
counterbalance the advantages of animal food, it must have frustrated
the whole experiment.

(3) There is one characteristic difference of Man from the anthropoids
which his hunting habits do not clearly explain—his relatively naked
skin. Darwin attributed this condition to sexual selection.[14] He
argued that, on the one hand, so far as Man has had the power of
choice, women have been chosen for their beauty; and that, on the other
hand, women have had more power of selection, even in the savage state,
than is usually supposed, and “would generally choose not merely the
handsomest men, according to their standard of taste, but those who
were at the same time best able to defend and support them.” Hence,
if a partial loss of hair was esteemed ornamental by our ape-like
progenitors, sexual selection, operating age after age, might result in
relative nakedness. “The faces of several species of monkey and large
surfaces at the posterior end of the body have been denuded of hair;
and this we may safely attribute to sexual selection.” The beard of
the male, and the great length of the hair of the head in some races,
especially seem due to this cause. The greater hairiness of Europeans,
compared with other races, may be a case of reversion to remote
ancestral conditions. But as all races are nearly naked, the common
character was probably acquired before the several races had diverged
from the common stock.

The species of monkey that have lost the hair on various parts of their
bodies, and the beard of males (together with the longer head-hair of
women) of our own race are cases that strongly support the ascription
of such secondary sexual characters to sexual selection. Yet, going
back to the time before the division of modern Man into races (say,
600,000 years), it seems incredible that any women then went unmarried,
hair or no hair, if they were healthy (and the unhealthy soon ceased
to exist); or that any man went unmarried, if he could do his share
in the hunting-field (and, if not, he also soon ceased to exist). No
facts observed amongst extant savages—the choice exerted by women, or
the polygamy of chiefs—throw much light upon that ancient state of
affairs. There were then no chiefs: the hunt-leader of pack or clan
had no authority but his personal prowess, no tradition of ancestry or
religion, nor probably the prestige of magic, to give him command of
women. Unless, at that time, relative nakedness was strongly correlated
with personal prowess in the male and efficiency in the female, it is
difficult to understand how it can have been preserved and increased
by sexual selection. Forgive me for adding an unkind remark: if the
selection of women for their beauty has gone on for hundreds of
thousands of years, and has had a cumulative effect upon the race,
is not the result disappointing? Go into the street and look. That
“women have become more beautiful, according to the general opinion,
than men,” is not an objective, truly æsthetic judgment, but one
determined by causes of which “general opinion” is falsely unconscious.
Schopenhauer[15] thought that men are better looking than women; and of
average specimens this seems to be true; though, to be sure, he was a
sort of misogynist.

Another explanation of Man’s nakedness was suggested by Thomas Belt,
based on the parallel case of certain races of naked dogs, namely,
that he is the better able to free himself from parasites.[16] Darwin
mentions this hypothesis and, in a footnote, cites in its favour “a
practice with the Australians, when the vermin get troublesome, to
singe themselves”; but he says, in the text, “whether this evil is of
sufficient magnitude to have led to the denudation of the body through
natural selection, may be doubted, since none of the many quadrupeds
inhabiting the tropics have, as far as I know, acquired any specialised
means of relief.”[17] It appears, too, that against the probability
of such a result must be set the actual disadvantage of nakedness,
as insisted upon by Wallace, who says that savages feel the want of
protection and try to cover their backs and shoulders.[18] Still, the
disadvantage implied in occasionally feeling the want of protection
would not prevent the loss of hair, if this would deliver the race
from serious dangers from vermin; and the force of the argument from
the condition of other tropical quadrupeds depends, at least in some
measure, upon whether or not there is something peculiar in the case of
naked dogs and men.

Belt argues that the naked dogs with dark, shining skins, found in
Central America and also in Peru,[19] and which were found there at
the Spanish conquest, have probably acquired their peculiar condition
by natural selection, because they are despised by the natives, and no
care is taken of their breeding, and yet they do not interbreed with
the common hairy varieties, as usually happens with artificial stocks.
The advantage of a naked skin being the greater freedom it gives from
ticks, lice and other vermin, the advantage is especially great for a
domestic animal living in the huts of savages, where, because they are
inhabited year after year, vermin are extraordinarily abundant. The
naked dog, then, differs from tropical quadrupeds which are adapted
from a dateless antiquity to such vermin as infest them, by having been
thrown by human companionship amongst not only strange vermin, but
vermin in extraordinarily dense aggregation. Belt would have guarded a
weak point in his case, had he explained why naked races of dogs are so
scarce. Hairy races may have been more recently domesticated, or bred
for their hairiness, or less addicted to an indoor life.

The case of our own forefather also differs somewhat from that of
other tropical mammalia; because, by hypothesis, he underwent pretty
rapidly such an extraordinary change of life; which may have brought
him into circumstances where vermin, formerly negligible, became highly
injurious. “Monkeys,” as Belt observes, “change their sleeping-places
almost daily”; the Orang is said to construct a fresh nest every
night; this is also reported of the Gorilla. Not improbably, then,
daily change of locality was the practice of the original anthropoid
stock, whence we also are descended: thereby avoiding the accumulation
of vermin. Did the hunting life introduce a new habit? In the old
frugivorous forest life, the custom was to get up into some tree for
the night, and within a short radius there were hundreds equally
suitable; and, therefore, there was nothing to check the natural
preference for a fresh one. When, however, the hunting pack began to
make its lair on the ground, there was no such wide choice amongst
caves, rock-shelters, or thickets: one might be better than any
other for miles around. If, then, they settled down there as in a
common lair, the circumstances were, for the time, favourable to the
multiplication of vermin, and therefore to nakedness of skin, in order
the more easily to be rid of them. Perhaps, then, this difference of
Man from the anthropoids may be referred to one common cause with all
the others—the hunting life. There, too, the defilement of blood made
fur inconvenient to animals not apt to cleanse themselves, like those
in the true carnivorous heredity and tradition.

When we consider how injurious some insects are to vertebrate life,
being suspected of having caused in some cases the extinction of
species, can it be said that facility in ridding oneself of such vermin
as lice and ticks is an inadequate cause of human nakedness, or not one
that might outweigh the drawbacks of cold and wet? It is not, however,
incompatible with the action of sexual selection, tending to the same
result; nor, again, with the preferential destruction of hairy children
if ever infanticide was practised. A further possible ground of
deliberate selection may have been the mere ambition of differing from
other animals; for a tribe on the Upper Amazons is reported to depilate
to distinguish themselves from the monkeys, and the wish to be superior
to other animals led a tribe in Queensland to pretend that they, unlike
kangaroos, etc., have no fathers according to the flesh.[20] Admitting
that this last motive can hardly have been primitive, still, our
nakedness may be a resultant of several causes.

(4) Cannibalism, where it has been found amongst extant peoples, or
is known to have been formerly practised, was often justified by
certain magical or animistic ideas, but sometimes frankly by dietetic
taste, or by the satisfaction of revenge or of emphatic triumph
over an enemy. Was it an ancient and perhaps general custom? The
excavations at Krapina in Croatia disclosed along with remains of the
Neanderthal species, which seems to have had a habitation there, those
of rhinoceros and cave-bear and of some other kind of Man; and “some
of the human bones had been apparently split open: on that slender
basis the Krapina men have been suspected of cannibalism.”[21] If the
suspicion is valid, the practice existed (say) 50,000 years ago in one
species of Man; and perhaps much earlier, if we consider how it was
merely an extension of the practice of devouring game to include the
slain members of a hostile pack; for as primitive Man, or Lycopithecus,
his pre-human forebear, no doubt regarded other animals as upon the
same level as himself, so he will have regarded human enemies as upon
the same footing with other animals. That true carnivores are not
generally cannibals may be put down to their more ancient and perfect
adaptation to a predatory life. For them persistent cannibalism would
have been too destructive, and for us it belongs to the experimental
stage of history; though, of course, even in recent times, under stress
of famine, reversion to the practice is not unknown to civilised men.

(5) The extraordinary variability of modern Man (considered as one
species) in stature, shape of skull, size and power of brain, colour,
hairiness, quality of hair, and other characters, physical and mental,
may be referred chiefly to his having become adapted to various local
conditions upon settling here or there for long periods of time after
wandering over the world in quest of game. The settling of offshoots
of the original stock in certain regions long enough for them to
undergo adaptation to local circumstances is the simplest explanation
of existing races: the Negro adapted to equatorial Africa; the Asiatic
stock (“Mongolian”) to Central Asia; the Mediterranean race to the
neighbourhood of the sea after which it is named. As to the Nordic
sub-race (of the Mediterranean, we may suppose), with its fair hair
and skin, it has the appearance of an Arctic beast of prey, like the
Polar bear. The snow-leopard of the Himalaya is found at a midway
stage of such adaptation. Some geologists and zoologists now believe
that, during the Glacial Period, the climate of Northern Europe was
not everywhere such as necessarily to destroy the local fauna and
flora, and in that case our ancestors may for ages have maintained
themselves there; or, if that was impossible (as the absence of
palæolithic remains in Scandinavia seems to indicate), they may have
roamed for many ages along the borders of glaciation, perhaps as far
as the Pacific Coast. Chinese annals refer to fair tribes in Eastern
Siberia 200 years before the Christian era;[22] and it seems requisite
to imagine some extensive reservoir of mankind in order to explain the
origin of the vast hordes which in prehistoric as in historical times
again and again invaded Europe—hordes

                    “which the populous North
    Poured ever from her frozen loins, to pass
    Rhene or the Danau; when her barbarous sons
    Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
    Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.”

That the race was formerly fairer than it is now may be inferred from
the whiteness of its children’s hair: the trait has outlived its
utility. The occurrence of a fair complexion in some mountain tribes,
in the Alps, _e. g._, has occasioned the conjecture that it may be due
in some way to mountainous conditions,[23] of which snow might be one;
but, if we suppose that the Nordic race extended during the Glacial
Period into Western Europe (having already acquired its distinctive
characters), a fair complexion in the Alps may be understood by
supposing that, whilst the greater number of them followed the
ice-sheet back to the north-east, some followed it southward up into
the mountains—if the complexion is really ancient there.

Two objections to this hypothesis will occur to every one: (i) Why are
not the Esquimo fair? Because, I suppose, they are much more recent
immigrants into the Arctic regions, and perhaps were fully clothed when
they arrived there. (ii) Could the Nordic people have existed in such
circumstances unclothed? Whether this was possible physiologists must
judge. We see the Fuegians maintain themselves, practically naked,
under very inclement conditions. And it is not necessary to assume that
the Nordic hunters were entirely naked; since the correlation between
the hair, eyes and all parts of the skin is such that, if the whitening
of any part (say the hair) was sufficiently advantageous to determine
natural selection, the remainder of the body would be similarly
affected. And, no doubt, the Mediterranean race was always whitish.

The Amerinds seem to have been derived chiefly from the Asiatic race.
Pygmies and Australians may represent separate and still older stocks.
But, as a result of migrations and conquests, most peoples are of mixed
descent; and hence (i) individuals in the same locality sometimes
vary greatly, because they inherit the blood of different strains in
different proportions; and (ii) classification is difficult, so that
whilst some observers are content to find half a dozen races, Deniker
enumerates twenty-nine.

Besides general racial differences, there exist within each race and
within each national group further differences between individuals in
their physical, and still more in their mental, stature and ability. As
it was necessary that Man should vary greatly in undergoing adaptation
to the hunting life (as well as to different local environments), he
was in an organic condition favourable to further variation.[24] And
this has been utilised in his adaptation to a certain special condition
of his gregariousness, namely, life in the hunting-pack; for this
requires a difference of personality between leaders and followers,
first in the chase and later in war. A good democrat may think it would
have been a better plan to make all men equal from the first; and I
would it had been so; for then the head of the race would not have had
to drag along such an altogether disproportionate tail: a tail so huge
and unwieldy that one may doubt whether it can ever be extricated from
the morass of barbarism. But in the early days of gregariousness, a
pack could not have held together, or have hunted efficiently, if all
had been equal and each had exercised the right of private judgment.
So in successful packs one led and the rest followed; as they still
do, and will continue to do, of whatever kind may be the leader. And
of all structures that make up a human being the most variable is the
brain: the differences between men in stature and physique are trifling
compared with those in mental power. Whatever feat of strength your
Samson can perform, half a dozen ordinary men can also accomplish; but
in every generation tasks are carried out by intellectual athletes,
toward which all the ordinary men in the world, uniting their efforts,
could do nothing—absolutely nothing.


§ 4. PREY AND COMPETITORS

If we suppose the differentiation of the _Hominidæ_ from the
_Anthropoidea_ to have begun in the Upper Oligocene, and that the
decisive change was initiated by some ape that adopted the life of a
hunter, it is interesting to consider what the world was like in which
he lived, what sort of animals surrounded him, what animals probably
became his prey, and what were his rivals in the chase.[25]

The surface of the planet was less mountainous than at present; in
Europe the Pyrenees had risen, but the Alps were only beginning to
rise; and in Asia the Himalayas began to dominate the world only in
the middle of the next epoch, the Miocene. The distribution of land
and water, too, was very different in the Oligocene from that which
we now see: Europe was divided from Asia by a broad gulf stretching
from the Indian Ocean to the Arctic Circle, and an arm of this gulf
toward the west submerged a great part of Central Europe; Asia was
broadly connected with North America, where now the sea penetrates
between Siberia and Alaska; Africa had no connection with either
Europe or Asia; North and South America were separated—perhaps at
Panama. In the Miocene, Europe, Asia and Africa became united. These
physiographic changes may have affected climate; for during the Eocene
tropical conditions prevailed far to the north, and coal-beds were laid
down in Alaska; but from the Oligocene onwards there was a gradual
fall of temperature, slow at first, but ending (for the present) in
the cataclysms of the Glacial Period. There was also a decrease in
some regions of atmospheric moisture, which determines the density of
vegetation. In its general character the vegetation was similar to
that which now prevails in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions
of the world. The species of plants now existing had not yet arrived;
but of the same genera and families as those we see, conifers, palms
and dicotyledonous flowering plants crowded the forests and overhung
the rivers. The forests were more extensive and continuous than ours
outside the tropics; for by degrees browsing animals, feeding down
the young trees, check the renovation of forests and clear open
spaces, where grasses grow; changes of temperature limit the northern
or southern extension of certain kinds of plants, and a failure of
humidity starves all the larger kinds; converting, at successive
stages, forest into steppe and steppe into desert.

Animals, especially mammalia, with which chiefly we are concerned,
were, at the close of the Oligocene, very different from any that now
roam the lands; all the species, most genera, many families and some
whole orders have since disappeared. But there were plenty to eat and a
good many to dread. Until we know the neighbourhood in which our ape’s
adventures began, nothing precise can be said of his circumstances.
Probably it was somewhere in the Old World, and probably it was in
Asia. Unfortunately, we know nothing of the zoological antiquities of
Asia until the early Miocene, and even then a very small selection
of what must have existed, because geologists have hitherto explored
a very small part of the continent—a few beds in north-western and
northern India and in Burmah. But there is so much evidence of the
migrations of animals in successive ages of the Tertiary Period, that
any remains from the Oligocene and Miocene will help us to understand
what sort of neighbours our remote ancestors had to live amongst.

For prey there was great variety of birds and reptiles (everywhere
eaten by savages) and fishes; but we are most concerned with the
mammalia, which he may be supposed to have pursued afoot. Of these
the most important are the hoofed animals, which fall into two great
groups, perhaps not closely connected—the odd-toed (Perissodactyls)
and the even-toed (Artiodactyls). During the Oligocene there lived in
Europe, or in North America, or in both—and, therefore, probably in
Asia—numbers of the odd-toed group: tapirs; rhinoceroses of several
species, some without horns, some with, some amphibious (Amynodonts),
all smaller than their modern representatives; chalicotheres, strange
beasts something like horses, but instead of hoofs they had claws
on their toes—perhaps survived in China into the Pleistocene;
small predecessors of the horse with three toes on each foot;
titanotheres, hugest animals of their age, extinct in the middle of
it—something like the rhinoceros and nearly as big as an elephant
(_Brontotherium_). Of the even-toed group, pig-like animals abounded,
and some true pigs appeared; entelodonts, or giant-pigs, were common;
anthracotheres, somewhat pig-like in size and shape; ancestral camels
about the size of sheep were to be had in North America; oreodonts,
unfinished-looking creatures of many species; primitive deer and other
ruminants, small in size and not having yet grown any horns. In Europe,
during the Upper Oligocene, cœnotheres, small and graceful animals,
lived in large herds around the lakes. There were also primitive
proboscidia about half the size of modern elephants; many insectivores;
and, amongst rodents, beavers and tailless hares. Generally, animals
of this age that have left descendants were smaller than their modern
representatives; and notably their brains were smaller.

In the Lower and Middle Miocene there appeared also horned cervuline
deer, chevrotaines, and horned antelopes; dinotheres and mastodons,
probably from Africa; primitive hedgehogs, moles and shrews; and in the
Upper Miocene, hipparion, true hares, several varieties of hornless
giraffe, true deer, and ancestral sheep. True horses and cattle are
first known from Pliocene beds; but it is needless to follow the story
further: the fauna becomes more and more modern in its character, and
uncouth forms die out.

Anthropoids are first met with in the Miocene and in Europe:
pliopithecus, allied to the gibbons, in the Lower; and dryopithecus,
related to the chimpanzee, in the Middle Miocene; but they are believed
to have come from Asia. There, in Pliocene beds of the Siwaliks
(southern foot-hills of the Himalayas), occur the orang and chimpanzee,
besides macaques, langurs and baboons. Since the orang is now found
only in Borneo and Sumatra, and the chimpanzee only in Africa,
southern Asia seems to have been the centre from which the anthropoids
dispersed; and this seems to be the chief positive ground for believing
that the human stock began to be differentiated in that region. Since,
again, by the Middle Miocene a chimpanzee form had already migrated
into Europe, it may be assumed that the orang was already distinct from
it (and perhaps had spread eastward): the differentiation of these
genera must, therefore, have happened earlier; and, therefore, also the
differentiation of the human stock; so that this event cannot be put
later than some time in the Oligocene.

How big was Lycopithecus to begin with? The answer to this question
must affect our view of his relations both to prey and to enemies.
Inasmuch as the three extant anthropoids and Man are all of about the
same size, there is a presumption that their common ancestor was in
stature superior to the gibbons and to the largest monkeys—in fact,
a “giant” ape (to borrow a term from Dr. Keith). Dryopithecus “was
smaller than the chimpanzee, but much larger than the gibbon.”[26]
Awaiting further evidence of fossils, which is much to be desired,
it is probable, on the whole, that Lycopithecus weighed less on the
average than modern man, but more than the wolf.

As to competitors and aggressive enemies, there were snakes and
crocodiles; but, confining our attention to carnivorous mammals, the
time seems to have been favourable to the enterprise of a new hunter.
By the middle of the Oligocene, the ancient Creodonts (primitive
flesh-eaters which had flourished in the Eocene) were nearly extinct,
represented in the deposits by their last surviving family, the
Hyœnodonts. Ancestors of the modern carnivores, such as may be called
by anticipation dogs and cats, derived (according to Prof. Scott) from
the Creodont Family of the Miacidæ, were becoming numerous, but for the
most part were still of small size. Apparently, the primitive dogs and
their allies must, for some time, have been more formidable adversaries
than the primitive cats, especially if we suppose them to have already
begun to hunt in pack; and this is not improbable, both on account of
their structure and because several distinct varieties and even genera,
now extant, have that habit—such as wolf, jackal, dingo, dhole, Cape
hunting-dog, etc. In the Upper Oligocene of North America, occurs a
dog as big as a large modern wolf, and in Europe the bear-like dog,
Amphicyon, of about the same size, but said to have been clumsy and
slow-moving. There were several other dog-like species; they continue
in the Miocene, and some of them increase in bulk; but true modern dogs
or wolves (_Canis_) do not appear before the Pliocene. Then, too, first
occur true bears (_Ursus_); hyænas in the Upper Miocene. “Cats” belong
to two sub-families: (i) the true felines, our modern species and
their ancestors; and (ii) the machærodonts, or sabre-toothed cats. The
latter first appear in North America in the Lower Oligocene; the former
in Europe in the Middle Oligocene. The sabre-tooths are so called from
their thin, curved upper canines; which were so long (3 to 6 inches)
that it is not easy to understand how they could open their mouths
wide enough to bite with them. That they were effective in some way
is proved by the fact that machærodonts, first appearing in the Lower
Oligocene, increased in numbers and diversity of species for ages, and
some of them in bulk. In North America, in the Upper Oligocene, one
species was as large as a jaguar, and some of the biggest and most
terrifying were contemporary with Man, and only became extinct in the
Pleistocene. Their limbs were relatively shorter and thicker than those
of the _Felinæ_. These, the true cats, at first progressed more slowly
than the _Machærodontidæ_; but in the Siwalik deposits (Pliocene)
there occur, along with machærodonts, forms resembling the leopard
and the lynx, with others as large as tigers. The largest of all this
group seems to have been the cave-lion, perhaps a large variety of
the common African lion, which also lived with Man in Europe in the
Pleistocene. These were serious competitors in the hunting-life of
Lycopithecus and of primitive Man; and the effect of such competition
in exterminating inferior forms is shown by the fate of the carnivorous
marsupials of South America (allied to _Thylacinus_), which were the
predatory fauna of that region, until in the Pliocene, North and South
America having become united by continuous land, cats and dogs came
in from the northern continent and put an end to them; and also by
the fate of the creodonts, which in the Oligocene seem everywhere to
have been exterminated by the new carnivores. In both cases the beaten
competitors were very inferior in the size and complexity of their
brains; and if Man has succeeded in the struggle for life against the
same foes, in spite of his inferior bodily adaptation, it is probably
due to his very superior brains. This may also be the reason why
modern Man (_Homo sapiens!_), wandering everywhere over the world,
has everywhere exterminated such experiments in human nature as
Pithecanthropus, Eoanthropus, and Neanderthalensis; as others are soon
to follow them into the Hades of extinct species.

These few pages give a ridiculously faint sketch of the animal world
amidst which our remote ancestors began their career. But it may
serve to indicate that there was always plenty to eat if you could
kill it, and plenty of rivals who wanted their share. After the
disappearance of the dinosaurs at the close of the Cretaceous period,
the mammalia, already numerous, developed rapidly, and spread in ever
multiplying numbers and diverging shapes over the whole area of the
land. We may take it that from the Middle Eocene (at least) onwards
the earth has always been as full of wild beasts as it would hold. To
understand what it was like in the Middle Oligocene, one should read
the adventures of hunters in South Africa seventy or eighty years
ago (their verisimilitude is vouched for by Livingstone),[27] before
a gun in the hands of every Kaffir had begun to thin the vast herds
that then covered the whole landscape, and in whose numbers the wild
hunters and the lions could make no appreciable diminution. The little
Bushmen regarded themselves and the lions as joint owners and masters
of all the game. The masters fought one another, indeed; but there was
no necessity to fight, for there was more than enough for both: lions
were then sometimes met in gangs of ten or a dozen. Game throughout
the Cainozoic ages was abundant and of all sizes: many small, many
middle-sized and some prodigious. Even in the Eocene, some of the
Amblypoda (_Dinoceras_, Am.) and of the Barypoda (_Arsinotherium_,
Af.) were as big as rhinoceroses; in the Oligocene, Titanotheres not
much smaller than elephants; in South America, in Miocene and Pliocene
times, the Toxodonts; in the Pleistocene, Ground-sloths of huge
bulk, and Glyptodonts. Of Families still represented amongst living
animals, dinotheres and mastodons occur in the Miocene; and elephant,
rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe have abounded from the Pliocene to
recent times, in many species, over most of Africa and the northern
hemisphere. Even the marsupials in Australia produced a species
(_Diprotodon_) as large as a rhinoceros with a skull three feet long.
Any one of these would have been a meal for a whole pack of hunters, if
they could kill it—as we may be sure they could.


§ 5. CONCLUSION

From the addiction of some ancestral ape to animal food, and to
the life of a hunter in order to obtain it, then, the special
characteristics of Man seem to be natural consequences. The
hypothesis from which everything follows is exceptionally simple and
moderate. It is generally admitted that our ancestor was a large
anthropoid—possibly more gregarious than others, possibly more apt to
live upon the ground; but neither of these suppositions is requisite.
He was adapted to his life, as the chimpanzee and gorilla are to
theirs: in which, probably, they have gone on with little change for
ages. But into his life a disturbing factor entered—the impulse to
attack, hunt and eat animals, which extensively replaced his former
peaceable, frugivorous habit. The cause of this change may have been a
failure in the supply of his usual diet, or an “accidental variation”
of appetite. Not a great number need have shared in the hunting
impulse; it is enough that a few should have felt it, or even one. If
advantageous and inheritable, it would spread through his descendants.
It was advantageous (_a_) in enlarging their resources of nutrition,
and (_b_) in enabling them to escape from the tropical forest. On
the other hand, to those least fit for the new life it brought the
disadvantages of more strenuous exertion and of competition with other
carnivorous types. But with hands and superior intelligence, those
that had the requisite character succeeded. There was rapid selection
of those whose variations of structure, character, activity were most
effective in dealing with game and with enemies; especially of those
who combined and co-operated, and learned to direct co-operation by
some rudimentary speech.

But, again, the hunting impulse here assumed to have possessed some
anthropoid was not something entirely new; anthropoids and many
other Primates are known to seize and devour birds, lizards and even
small mammals when chance offers an easy opportunity. It is merely a
greater persistence in this behaviour that turns it into hunting.
How very improbable that such a change should _not_ sometimes occur!
Is it not likely to have occurred often, and with many failures?
Similarly, of the resulting changes: the differentiation of our hands
and feet is only an advance upon what you see in the gorilla; as for
our ground-life, can the adult male gorilla be fairly called arboreal?
Several Primates use unwrought weapons; most of them lead a gregarious
life, to which our own is a return; they are co-operative at least in
defence; like many other animals, they communicate by gestures and
inarticulate vocal cries. Co-operative hunting, indeed, seems to be
new in our Order; but since wolves and dogs, or their ancestors, fell
in with it some time or other, why should it be beyond the capacity of
apes? On second thoughts, is the co-operative raiding of plantations
by baboons something altogether different from hunting in pack? Thus
at each occasion of change in structure or function, Lycopithecus
merely carried some tendency of the other Primates a little further,
and a little further; until, certainly, he went a long way. The whole
movement can be distinctly pictured throughout, and it has an air of
being natural or even inevitable. Few hypotheses ask us to grant less
than this one.

Moreover, if the story is not true, Man is an exception to the rule
of animal life, that the structure of every organism is made up
of apparatus subserving its peculiar conditions of nutrition and
reproduction. Indeed, conditions of nutrition are the ground of the
differentiation of animals and plants. Conditions of reproduction need
not here be considered, as the apparatus is the same in the anthropoids
and in ourselves. With many species to avoid being eaten and to mate
are the reasons for some secondary characters, such as protective
armour or coloration, fleetness with its correlative structures,
nuptial plumage, and so forth. But to avoid being eaten and to mate,
it is first of all necessary to eat and live; and accordingly, for
each sort of animal, starting from the organisation of some earlier
stock, its structure and activities are determined by the kind of food
it gets, and the conditions of getting it: in our case, the hunting of
game afoot.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This was suggested to me by Mr. G. A. Garfitt.

[2]

[Illustration]

Estimated duration of the Cainozoic Period, assuming that the thickness
of the deposits is about 63,000 feet, and that deposits accumulate at
the rate of 1 foot in 100 years. Drawn to the scale of 1 mm. to 100,000
years. The estimate is given and explained by Prof. Sollas in the
_Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society_, LXV. (1909). The “tree”
is based on that given by Dr. A. Keith in _The Antiquity of Man_, p.
509.

If we suppose the differentiation of the _Hominidæ_ to have begun
before the close of the Oligocene, about (say) 3,500,000 years are
allowed for the evolution of the existing species of Man. All these
reckonings are provisional.

[3] That Man was from the first a hunter has been suggested by several
authors; but the consequences of the assumption have never (as far as I
know) been worked out. A. R. Wallace, in _Darwinism_ (p. 459), has the
following passage: “The anthropoid apes, as well as most of the monkey
tribe, are essentially arboreal in their structure, whereas the great
distinctive character of man is his special adaptation to terrestrial
locomotion. We can hardly suppose, therefore, that he originated in a
forest region, where fruits to be obtained by climbing are the chief
vegetable food. It is more probable that he began his existence on the
open plains on high plateaux of the temperate or subtropical zone,
where the seeds of indigenous cereals, numerous herbivora, rodents,
game-birds, with fishes and molluscs in the lakes and rivers and seas
supplied him with an abundance of varied food. In such a region he
would develop skill as a hunter, trapper or fisherman, and later as a
herdsman and cultivator—a succession of which we find indications in
the palæolithic and neolithic races of Europe.”

Prof. MacBride, in his popular introduction to _Zoology_ (p. 84), also
traces the specialisation of Man to the hunting life.

My friend Mr. Thomas Whittaker has sent me the following extract
from Comte’s _Politique Positive_, I. pp. 604-5: “L’obligation de se
nourrir d’une proie qu’il faut atteindre et vaincre, perfectionne à
la fois tous les attributs animaux, tant intérieurs qu’extérieurs.
Son influence envers les sens et les muscles est trop évidente pour
exiger ici aucun examen. Par sa réaction habituelle sur les plus
hautes fonctions du cerveau, elle développe également l’intelligence
et l’activité, dont le premier essor lui est toujours dû, même chez
notre espèce. A tous ces tîtres, cette nécessité modifie aussi les
races qui en sont victimes, d’après les efforts moins énergiques, mais
plus continus, qu’elle y provoque pour leur défense. Dans les deux
cas, et surtout quant à l’attaque, elle détermine même les prémières
habitudes de co-opération active, au moins temporaire. Bornées à
la simple famille chez les espèces insociables, ces ligues peuvent
ailleurs embrasser quelquefois de nombreuses troupes. Ainsi commencent,
parmi les animaux, des impulsions et des aptitudes qui ne pouvaient se
développer que d’après la continuité propre à la race la plus sociable
et la plus intelligente. Enfin, la condition carnassière doit aussi
être appreciée dans sa réaction organique. Une plus forte excitation,
une digestion moins laborieuse et plus rapide, une assimilation
plus complète produisant un sang plus stimulant: telles sont ses
propriétés physiologiques. Toutes concourent à développer les fonctions
supérieures, soit en augmentant l’énergie de leurs organes, soit en
procurant plus de temps pour leur exercice.”

[4] F. Wood Jones, _Arboreal Man_, pp. 117-22.

[5] On these paragraphs—(3), (4), (5), (6), (7)—see Darwin’s _Descent
of Man_, 2nd ed., pp. 49-54: whence, of course, I have freely borrowed.

[6] Numerous references might be given, from which I select Hagenbeck,
_Beasts and Men_, p. 63.

[7] R. L. Garner, _Gorillas and Chimpanzees_, ch. vi.: where
mention is made of such meanings as “food,” “calling to some one,”
“affection,” “good” (said, I suppose, of food), “warning cries,” “cold
or discomfort,” “drink,” “illness,” “dead”: the entire vocabulary,
perhaps, not more than twenty signs. The value of Garner’s work is
disputed.

[8] _Natural Selection_, p. 193.

[9] Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_, 7th ed., p. 578.

[10] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 619.

[11] Turner’s _Samoa_, p. 285.

[12] _Op. cit._, p. 579.

[13] _Primitive Marriage_, ch. ii.

[14] _Descent of Man_, 2nd ed., pp. 595-604.

[15] _Parerga and Paralipomena_, B. II, Kap. 27.

[16] _A Naturalist in Nicaragua_, ch. xi.

[17] _Op. cit._, p. 57.

[18] _Natural Selection_, pp. 195-7.

[19] Naked races of dogs have also been reported to exist in China,
Manila and South Africa; but I can learn no particulars of them.

[20] W. E. Ling Roth, _North Queensland Ethnology_, Bulletin V. § 81.

[21] A. Keith, _The Antiquity of Man_, p. 134.

[22] M. A. Czaplicka, _My Siberian Year_, p. 230.

[23] Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 76-7.

[24] Darwin, _Animals and Plants under Domestication_, Pop. ed., II. p.
308.

[25] The contents of this section lie outside my own studies, and have
been taken from various books of Geology and Palæontology: I must
especially mention Prof. Osborne’s _Age of Mammals_ (1910) and Prof.
Scott’s _Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere_ (1913). I have also
profited by inspecting the Palæontological Gallery at South Kensington
with the help of its excellent Guide-Book.

[26] A. Keith, _The Human Body_, p. 58.

[27] _Travels and Researches in Western Africa_, ch. vii.




CHAPTER II

ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE HUMAN FROM THE ANTHROPOID MIND


§ 1. HEREDITY, ADAPTATION, ACCOMMODATION

Following the general belief that Man is descended from a stock nearly
allied to the greater anthropoids—Orang, Chimpanzee, Gorilla—we may
assume that his mental endowments were once much the same as theirs;
and that, so far as they are still the same, _heredity_ sufficiently
explains his having them. Thus the senses, perception, the simpler
forms of comparison and inference, the appetites and many of the
instincts and emotions are common to us with the apes, are seen in
our children under three years old, and (in short) constitute that
generic consciousness (as I have called it) from which the human
mind in general and the peculiar traits of races and individuals are
differentiated.

So much for heredity; but the differences of the human from the
anthropoid mind, alike in intelligence and in character, are enormous,
and must be accounted for in some other way. Allowing for some original
specific difference which we can hardly hope to discover, the changes
that have taken place may be considered as the result of _adaptation_
to those habits of life under which our species (now ranking
zoologically as a Family) has been developed. And this adaptation I
shall assume to have been brought about under conditions of natural
selection: human races, as we now see them, being the survivors of
many variations, more or less successful, and the others having been
destroyed. For good judges are of opinion that, amongst the discovered
remains of ancient specimens of the human family, some that exhibit
marked deviations from the modern type—Neanderthalensis, Eoanthropus,
Pithecanthropus—should be regarded not as belonging to our ancestral
line, but rather as representing distinct species that have failed in
the struggle for existence.[28]

But besides the innate dispositions of human nature determined by
heredity and natural selection, which are found in some measure
universally, because they are adaptations to conditions that, at one
time and not long ago, weighed upon the ancestors of all of us, there
are numerous traits (some of them quite superficial) that vary from
country to country and from age to age, according to the economic or
political type of the society in which a man lives, his place therein,
geographical circumstances, religious institutions and the countless
causes that govern manners and customs. In the lives of most men these
traits are not necessary; they may be adopted and cast aside more than
once in an individual’s career: they are temporary _accommodations_
due to education, imitation, tradition; and, in fact, are often the
disguises of human nature. Still, as society grows more and more
complex, orderly and stable, there is, no doubt, again some natural
selection of those individuals who are capable of undergoing the
requisite accommodations. Those that cannot endure the restraints of
civilisation, wander away; the extremely lazy, improvident, dishonest,
or aggressive, in considerable numbers, perish.


§ 2. THE ORIGINAL STOCK AND THE CONDITIONS OF DIFFERENTIATION

To the original mentality of man we can only seek a clue in the
higher Primates, and especially in the extant anthropoids. No doubt,
during the long millennia that have elapsed since the separation of
our own stock from those of other genera and species, they also have
undergone some evolution, but probably much less change than we have.
Unfortunately, our knowledge of their habits and abilities is still
deplorably limited. It seems certain, however, that their intelligence
is much greater than that of any other kind of animal. They must have
extensive knowledge of their habitat, of all the forest can yield for
food or shelter, and of its other denizens dangerous or otherwise.
They construct for themselves some sort of sleeping-place, not much
inferior to the Australians’ “lean-to,” by piling branches together
in the trees. Toward men, anthropoids seem to be unaggressive, and
usually retreat from them; but, when attacked, defend themselves with
fury. From other animals the male gorilla has nothing to fear, and he
defends his family against leopards; the chimpanzee is said to fight
leopards with varying success; and, as for the orang, Dyak chiefs told
Wallace that no animals dare attack him, except crocodiles and pythons,
and that he kills both of them.[29] The food of these apes is chiefly
fruit and the tender shoots of trees and bamboos; but they sometimes
eat eggs and young birds; and the gorilla is said to eat small mammals:
in confinement they all take cooked flesh freely. Socially, they
hardly get beyond family life. Orangs male and female are even seen
alone, and young ones together without parents; gorillas are seen in
family parties; chimpanzees in families, and occasionally three or
four families in company. It is said that gorillas and chimpanzees
have been seen together in a large band. I have met with no report of
these animals fighting amongst themselves, except that male gorillas
sometimes fight for a wife. Gorillas have also been said, upon very
slight evidence, to be polygamous; chimpanzees and orangs seem to be
monogamous.[30] Their family life is probably, as amongst all the other
Primates, affectionate: the long youth of their children implies much
parental care. Whilst the smaller anthropoids—siamang and gibbon—go
in troops, as also do the baboons and most monkeys of both hemispheres,
the less sociability of the great anthropoids may be understood to
result (_a_) from the limited supply of the right sort of food for
them, even in the tropical forest to which they are confined—since
animals of their bulk must consume a great deal; and (_b_) from their
having no need of combining for the purpose of defence.

From the type thus outlined the mentality of the human race has
departed so widely that some even of those who believe that our bodies
have been derived from some simian stock (_e. g._ Wallace) hesitate to
admit that our minds can have had a similar history. But as everywhere
else in the animal kingdom mind and body constitute one organism, it is
reasonable to consider whether the differentiation of the mind of man
may not be understood to have taken place under the same conditions as
those which determined the transformation of his body. What were these
conditions?

(_a_) In the foregoing chapter I have collected a number of facts and
arguments pointing to the probability that the chief cause of the
evolution of the human Family was the adoption by some anthropoid (or
allied form) of the life of the hunter in order to obtain animal food.
That the change from a frugivorous to a carnivorous diet may itself
have had some effect upon our temperament and activity is possible;
but I lay no stress upon that. Most monkeys are almost exclusively
frugivorous; the only Primate, except man, that depends a good deal
upon animal food is, I believe, the crab-eating macaque (_Macacus
cynomolgus_), of the Burmese and Malay littoral; yet monkeys are the
most alert and active of animals; some of them are amongst the most
courageous; anthropoids are amongst the most powerful. A carnivorous
diet alone would not explain any changes in the shape and proportions
of our trunk and limbs, nor the upright gait, nor the gregarious habit,
nor the development of the brain, nor the invention of weapons, nor the
use of fire, nor any of the mental and emotional characteristics that
distinguish man from the other Primates; but all these things readily
follow from our remote ancestor’s adoption of the life of the hunter.

Sociologists, surveying extant peoples, have usually distinguished
four stages of culture, the hunting, pastoral, agricultural and
manufacturing; and some have indicated what they suppose to have been a
still earlier stage, the “collecting,” such as may be seen, _e. g._,
amongst the Fuegians. But the collecting state is plainly degenerate,
the resource of tribes fallen into distress; it cannot have been the
first stage, because it implies no conditions that tend in any way to
develop body or mind or society. That hunting came first is a true
intuition: and, to understand the development of human nature, we
need only refer the hunting-life back to the very origin of the human
stock.[31]

(_b_) The great anthropoids are all confined to the equatorial forests;
and it is obvious that, with their diet, it is impossible to pass out
of tropical or (at furthest) sub-tropical regions. But the adoption
of a flesh diet enabled the human stock to extend the range of its
hunting (allowing for gradual adaptation to climate or accommodation
by clothing) to any country that supplied the requisite prey; and,
accordingly, in course of time, it wandered to every part of the world.
The settling of various off-shoots of the original stock in certain
regions long enough for them to undergo adaptation to local conditions
is (as we have seen) the simplest explanation of existing races.

(_c_) Whilst none of the great anthropoids has advanced socially beyond
family life, man is everywhere (with few and doubtful exceptions)
gregarious—living at the lowest grade in tribes or bands of about
fifty; and the gregarious life is one of the most important conditions
of his peculiar development. Possibly, he may originally have been
more gregarious than any extant anthropoid, in spite of his not
needing society for defence, and of its seeming to be for so large a
frugivorous animal inconvenient in relation to nutrition. Moreover,
if the great anthropoids and our own ancestors were descended from
some stock of the lower monkeys, such as always go in troops, the
gregarious instinct may have remained with them as a latent character.
Still, it is my conjecture that man became gregarious, or recovered
the social habit, because of the utility of co-operative hunting; so
that he became at first a sort of wolf-ape. This will be discussed in
the next section. I observe here, however, that the hypothesis helps
us to understand why man is still imperfectly sociable; the purpose
of the hunting-pack, each wolf-ape seeking prey, was unfavourable to
social life in other relations. That in human life group-consciousness
preceded self-consciousness is a groundless and fantastic notion:
all known savages are fully self-conscious, as their sentiments and
behaviour imply; and even the higher brutes are (in my judgment)
self-conscious in their relations with others. Current speculations
about fashion, imitation, tradition, crowd-psychology, are in danger of
exaggeration, and overlook the patent facts of individualism, as shown
by the hypocrite, the criminal, the vagrant, the contra-suggestible,
the hermit, the sceptic, the saint. Some people—without being in any
way morbid—find that a good deal of solitude is necessary to the
complete life: by nature the student and the pioneer escape from the
crowd.

(_d_) The later stages of human development have been considerably
modified by certain imaginary conditions peculiar to Man; for he—we
know not at what date—invented them. These may be summed up under the
names of Magic and Animism; and in subsequent chapters they will be
discussed, with their astonishing vagaries and still more astonishing
reactions upon human life.

The chief conditions, then, to which man has been adapted, and thereby
differentiated in body and mind from the anthropoid stock, I take to be
four: the hunting life; geographical circumstances; social life; and
his own imaginations.


§ 3. PRIMAL SOCIETY

In looking for the probable form of the earliest human or (rather)
prehuman society, one naturally makes a survey of other mammalian
societies; and the task is soon accomplished. It is surprising how
few and simple the types of them are, in contrast with the elaborate
polities of some hymenoptera and of the termites: these have much
greater superficial resemblance to modern human societies; but, in
fact, they are families rather than societies; their interesting
activities will one day probably be traced to relatively simple
mechanisms; and in every way they are too remote from us for any useful
comparison. As for mammalian societies, even using the term to include
families, they may be classified under four or five types:

(1) Families: (_a_) Monogamous: of which the best examples seem to
be found in some monkeys. Many of the cats are believed to pair
monogamously; but it is doubtful whether, or in what measure, the male
takes part in the rearing of the whelps.

(_b_) Polygamous: characteristic of many species of deer;—after the
breeding-season, the stags often wander away by themselves.

(2) Associations of families without apparent structure or
organisation, such as those of the vizcacha and the beaver. They
have no leaders, and make no attempt at mutual defence; but their
inco-ordinated activities, in making their burrows, dams, etc., have
results which, especially in the case of the beavers, look as if the
animals had worked upon a common, premeditated plan. Gregariousness
exists widely in the animal kingdom without any utility in attack or
defence, but merely for convenience of breeding, or for the advantage
of signalling the approach of danger, from any direction, to the whole
flock.

(3) Troops or herds, comprising several families. This type is common
amongst monkeys: generally the families are monogamous, and both
parents care for the offspring; they have leaders, and combine in
mutual defence. This is especially effective with the baboons—who,
however, are polygamous. A very similar type is characteristic of
cattle; who also have leaders as the result of battle between the
bulls, each trying to control and keep together as many cows as he can;
and they often combine their forces against beasts of prey.

(4) Hunting-packs—most noticeable with wolves and wild dogs: they
have leaders, and probably an order of precedence determined by
battle. In the breeding-season (February to August) a pack of wolves
breaks up into pairs; but whether their pairing is for life or merely
seasonal is disputed; and it is also doubtful whether the male takes
any share in caring for the puppies; such habits may vary in different
localities.[32] The numbers of the pack depend on circumstances, and
are now much smaller in Canada than in Russia.

Was our own primitive society, then, like any of these? Since direct
evidence cannot be obtained, we must be guided in forming our
hypothesis by two considerations: (_a_) what type of society gives
the best explanation of human nature as we now find it? and (_b_) for
which type can we give the best reason why it should have been adopted?
So I point out (_a_) that man, in character, is more like a wolf or
dog than he is like any other animal; and (_b_) that for the forming
of a pack there was a clear ground in the advantage to be obtained by
co-operative hunting.[33]

It must be admitted that Darwin, discussing sexual selection in man,
suggests a different hypothesis. He says: “Looking far enough back in
the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now
exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small
communities, each with a single wife, or if powerful with several, whom
he jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may not have been a
social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the gorilla;
for all the natives ‘agree that but one adult male is seen in a band;
when the young male grows up, a contest takes place for mastery, and
the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes
himself as the head of the community.’ The younger males, being thus
expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding
a partner, prevent too close inter-breeding within the limits of the
same family.”[34] The information concerning the polygamy of the
gorilla, quoted here from Dr. Savage, who wrote in 1845, has not since
(I believe) been confirmed, except by Prof. Garner.[35]

Naturally, the above passage has attracted the attention of
anthropologists; and I am sorry to expose myself to the charge of
immodesty in venturing to put forward a different view. Atkinson in
his essay on _Primal Law_, edited with qualified approval by Andrew
Lang, starts from Darwin’s hypothesis, and merely modifies it by urging
that the young males, when driven off by their father, did not wander
away, but kept near the family, always on the watch to murder their
father. This amendment he makes, because he had observed the same
habits in cattle and horses. Then, through a row of hypotheses with
little evidence or rational connection, he arrives at an explanation of
certain savage laws of avoidance, exogamy, etc. More recently, Prof.
Freud has produced a most ingenious and entertaining essay on _Totem
und Tabu_, in which he builds upon the same foundations. You easily
see how the “Œdipus complex” emerges from such a primitive state of
things, but will hardly, without reading the work, imagine the wealth
of speculation it contains or its literary attractiveness. Atkinson
probably relied upon the supposed parallel case of wild cattle and
horses, because those animals resemble the apes in being vegetarian:
though the diets are, in fact, very different. But even if such a
comparison indicates a possible social state of our original ape-like
stock, what is there in such a state that can be supposed to have
introduced the changes that made our forebears no longer ape-like?
Supposing those changes to have already taken place, what evidence is
there that the same social state endured? None: for it was assumed
to have been the social state of our forebears on the ground of their
resemblance in diet and family economy to the gorilla.

Returning, then, to our hypothesis as to the chief cause of human
differentiation, namely, that a certain Primate, more nearly allied
to the anthropoids than to any other, became carnivorous and adopted
the life of a hunter, there are (as I have said) two ways in which
this may have happened: either by such a variation on the part of our
ancestor that he felt a stronger appetite for animal food than the
gorilla does—strong enough to make him hunt for prey; or by such a
change of climate in the region he inhabited—say from sub-tropical to
temperate—as to make his former diet scarce, especially in winter,
so that he became a hunter to avoid starvation. Every one admits that
he became a hunter at some time: why not at the earliest? Nothing
less than some great change of life, concentrating all his powers
and straining every faculty, can possibly account for the enormous
differentiation of Man. The adoption of the hunting life is such a
change; and the further back we put it, the better it explains the
other changes that have occurred in our physical and mental nature.

From the outset, again, our ancestor may have attacked big game,
probably Ungulates—to whom he owed much; for not only did they provide
prey, but by clearing the forest over wide areas compelled him to run
in pursuit remote from his native trees, thus giving great selective
advantage to every variation of legs and feet adapted to running:
though at the very first there may have been little need to run, as
he was not yet an object of terror; “we must remember that if man was
unskilful, animals were unsuspicious.”[36] I suppose him, at first, to
have fallen to with hands and teeth: combining with others in a hungry,
savage onslaught. By attacking big game advantage was given to those
individuals and families who co-operated in hunting: thus forming the
primal society of the human stock; a society entirely different from
that of any of the Primates, or of cattle, and most like that of the
dogs and wolves—a hunting-pack.

As in the course of generations the hunting-pack developed, no doubt,
it had recognised leaders, the most powerful males, one perhaps
pre-eminent. But it was not subject to one old male who claimed all
the females; for the more adult males it comprised, the stronger it
was; and, for the same reason, pairing, as among wolves, was the most
efficient form of sexual relationship. But, in my judgment, it is
altogether vain to try to deduce from this form of society, which may
have existed three or four million years ago, any of the known customs
of savages concerning marriage, such as avoidance, totemism, exogamy;
which would be of comparatively recent date if we put back their origin
500,000 years. Many such rules can only have arisen when there was
already a tradition and a language capable of expressing relationships.


§ 4. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HUNTING-PACK

Possibly our ape-like ancestor was more sociable than any of the
anthropoids; but sociability in ape-life would in no way account for
our present character as men: nothing accounts for it, except the early
formation of the hunting-pack. Since, however, we can know nothing of
that institution directly, we must try to learn something about it
from the parallel case of dogs and wolves. Galton remarks how readily
the proceedings of man and dog “are intelligible to one another. Every
whine or bark of the dog, each of his fawning, savage, or timorous
movements is the exact counterpart of what would have been the man’s
behaviour, had he felt similar emotions. As the man understands the
thoughts of the dog, so the dog understands the thoughts of the man, by
attending to his natural voice, his countenance, and his actions.”[37]
No more, if as much, could be said of the terms upon which we stand
with a tame chimpanzee, in spite of greater physical and facial
resemblance and nearer kinship. What can connect us so closely in mind
with an animal so remote from us in lineage and anatomy as the dog is?
Adaptation to the same social conditions, the life of the hunting-pack.


(1) The master-interest of every member of the pack lies in the
chase, because success in it is necessary to life. To show how this
passion actuates ourselves, I quote Mr. F. C. Selous; who, during an
expedition in Canada, roused a caribou stag within twenty yards, saw
“the dreadful terror” in his eyes, and shot him. “Did I feel sorry for
what I had done? it may be asked. Well! no, I did not. Ten thousand
years of superficial and unsatisfying civilisation have not altered
the fundamental nature of man, and the successful hunter of to-day
becomes a primeval savage, remorseless, triumphant, full of a wild,
exultant joy, which none but those who have lived in the wilderness,
and depended on their success as hunters for their daily food, can ever
know or comprehend.”[38] To the hunter my paradox must seem a truism.
And that the hunter temporarily released from civilised restraints,
who suffers such intoxication, merely renews old savage raptures is
shown by the following curious parallel: a Bushman, returning from a
successful hunt to the wagons of the traveller Baines—“Behold me!”
he shouted, “the hunter! Yea, look on me, the killer of elephants
and mighty bulls! Behold me, the big elephant, the lion! Look on
me, ye Damaras and Makalaka; admire and confess that I am a great
Bull-calf.”[39]

Again, since the interest of the chase culminates in the kill—for this
is the condition of making a meal—to kill becomes, in some predatory
animals, a passion that is often gratified without regard to their
needs. Wolves often slay many more sheep than they devour: a sheep-dog
that undergoes reversion kills by night the sheep on neighbouring farms
without any call of hunger; and, says Mr. Thompson Seton (writing of
the natives of North Canada), “the mania for killing that is seen in so
many white men, is evidently a relic of savagery; for all these Indians
and half-breeds are full of it.”[40] They fired at everything they saw.
The manners of my own pack—now long dispersed—were very similar to
the Indians’; and the sport of pigeon- or of pheasant-shooting has
been reduced to its last element—skilful slaying.

The disposition to slay is reinforced, when prey makes serious
resistance, by anger; and generally by a distinct tendency, sometimes
called “destructiveness,” perhaps a latent character derived from the
monkeys, and which I take to be partly a play-impulse and partly an
expression of curiosity.

(2) The gregariousness of the pack is variable; probably, amongst
wolves, it was much greater anciently than it is to-day. There are
conflicting statements about the gregariousness of wolves that have
been studied in different countries. Couteulx de Canteleu (France)
says: “The wolf is an enemy of all society; when they assemble it is
not a pacific society, but a band of brigands.”[41] Thompson Seton
(Canada) says: “Wolves are the most sociable of beasts of prey; they
arrange to render one another assistance. A pack seems to be an
association of personal acquaintances, and would resent the presence
of a total stranger.”[42] Gregariousness of wolves must be reduced by
failure of game (as by the destruction of bison in North America), and
still more by the encroachments of civilisation (as in France). The
primitive human pack, probably, was more constantly gregarious than
wolves are: (_a_) because its individuals, having no instinctive or
traditionary knowledge of hunting, were more dependent on co-operation;
and (_b_) because the long youth of children made it necessary for
parents to associate with the pack during their nurture—else no pack
could have existed; for whilst wolves are nearly full-grown at eighteen
months, apes are not mature until the eighth or ninth year. At a later
period, after the invention of effective weapons, an individual became,
for many kinds of game, less dependent on co-operation; but by that
time, the hunting-grounds of a pack were circumscribed by those of
other hostile packs; so that no one dared go far alone.

(3) With gregariousness went, of course, (_a_) perceptive
sympathy—every animal read instantly in the behaviour of others
their feelings and impulses; (_b_) contagious sympathy—the impulses
of any animal, expressed in its behaviour, spread rapidly to all the
rest; and (_c_) effective sympathy, so far (at least) as that all
united to defend any associate against aggression from outside the
pack. Perceptive and contagious sympathy, however, extend beyond the
limits of the pack or the species. Most of the higher mammalia can
read the state of mind of others, though of widely different kinds,
in their expression and behaviour; and many are liable to have their
actions immediately affected by signs of the emotional impulses of
others, especially fear. These modes of sympathy, therefore, though
liveliest amongst gregarious animals, are not dependent on specific
gregariousness.

(4) The pack has a disposition to aggression upon every sort of
animal outside the pack, either as prey or as a competitor for prey:
limited no doubt by what we should call considerations of prudence or
utility; which must vary with the size of the pack, the prowess of its
individuals, the possession of weapons, etc. After the invention of
weapons and snares, many savage tribes can kill every sort of animal in
their habitat, as the palæolithic Europeans did many thousands of years
ago. From the outset the human pack must have come into competition
with the true carnivores, must have defended itself against them, may
have discovered that attack was the safest defence, and may have been
victorious even without weapons. Mr. G. P. Sanderson writes: “It is
universally believed by the natives (of South India) that the tiger is
occasionally killed by packs of wild dogs.... From what I have seen of
their style of hunting, and of their power of tearing and lacerating, I
think there can be no doubt of their ability to kill a tiger.... Causes
of hostility may occasionally arise between the tiger and wild dogs
through attempted interference with each other’s prey.”[43]

(5) A hunting-pack, probably, always claims a certain territory. This
is the first ground of the sense of property, so strongly shown
by domestic dogs: the territorial claims of the half-wild dogs of
Constantinople are well known. To nourish a pack the hunting-grounds
must be extensive. Mr. Thompson Seton says that in Canada the wolf
has a permanent home-district and a range of about fifty miles.[44]
Very many generations must have elapsed before the deviation of our
forebears from anthropoid habits resulted in the formation of so many
packs as to necessitate the practical delimitation of hunting-grounds.
Then the aggressiveness of the pack turned upon strangers of its own
species; the first wars arose, and perhaps cannibalism on the part of
the victors. It is certain that, in North America, wolves kill and eat
foxes, dogs, coyotes; and it is generally believed that wolves will eat
a disabled companion; though, according to Mr. W. H. Hudson, a wolf
will only eat another when it has killed that other, and then only as
the carrying out of the instinct to eat whatever it has killed.[45] It
may be so.

(6) A pack must have a leader, and must devotedly follow him as long as
he is manifestly the best of the pack; and here we have a rudimentary
loyalty.

(7) Every individual must be subservient to the pack, as long as it
works together; and this seems to be the ground of the “instinct of
self-abasement” (McDougall), so far as the attitudes involved in such
subserviency are due to a distinct emotional impulse, and are not
rather expressive of fear or of devotion.

(8) The members of the pack must be full of emulation; in order that,
when the present leader fails, others may be ready to take his place.

(9) For the internal cohesion of the pack, there must be the equivalent
of a recognised table of precedence amongst its members; and this is
reconciled with the spirit of emulation, by fighting until each knows
his place, followed by complete submission on the part of the inferior.
Mr. Th. Roosevelt says of a pack of dogs employed in bear-hunting,
“at feeding-time each took whatever his strength permitted, and each
paid abject deference to whichever animal was his known superior
in prowess.”[46] Mr. W. H. Hudson writes of dogs on cattle-breeding
establishments on the pampas, that he presumes “they are very much like
feral dogs and wolves in their habits. Their quarrels are incessant;
but when a fight begins the head of the pack, as a rule, rushes to
the spot,” and tries to part the combatants—not always successfully.
“But from the foremost in strength and power down to the weakest
there is a gradation of authority; each one knows just how far he can
go, which companion he can bully when in a bad temper or wishing to
assert himself, and to which he must humbly yield in his turn.”[47]
The situation reminds one of a houseful of schoolboys, and of how
ontogeny repeats phylogeny. Where political control is very feeble,
as in mining camps or backwoods settlements, civilised men revert to
the same conditions. Fifty years ago, “all along the frontier between
Canada and the United States, every one knew whom he could lick, and
who could lick him.”[48] Amongst Australian aborigines, we are told
that “precedence counts for very much.”[49]

(10) A pack of wolves relies not merely upon running down its prey,
but resorts to various stratagems to secure it: as by surrounding it;
heading it off from cover; driving it over a precipice; arranging
relays of pursuers, who take up the chase when the first begin to flag;
setting some to lie in ambush while the rest drive the prey in their
direction. Such devices imply intelligent co-operation, some means of
communicating ideas, patience and self-control in the interests of the
pack and perseverance in carrying out a plan. Failure to co-operate
effectually is said to be punished with death. Primitive man, beginning
with more brains than a wolf, may be supposed soon to have discovered
such arts and to have improved upon them.

(11) When prey has been killed by a pack of wolves, there follows a
greedy struggle over the carcass, each trying to get as big a meal as
possible. Mr. Th. Roosevelt writes of dogs used in hunting the cougar
(puma): “The relations of the pack amongst themselves (when feeding)
were those of wild beast selfishness.... They would all unite in the
chase and the fierce struggle which usually closed it. But the instant
the quarry was killed, each dog resumed his normal attitude of greedy
anger or greedy fear toward the others.”[50] As this was a scratch
pack of hounds, however, we cannot perhaps infer that a naturally
formed pack of wolves is equally discordant, or that the human pack
was ever normally like that. Galton, indeed, says: “Many savages are
so unamiable and morose as to have hardly any object in associating
together, besides that of mutual support;”[51] but this is by no means
true of all savages. At any rate, the steadier supply of food obtained
by our race since the adoption of pastoral or agricultural economy,
with other circumstances, has greatly modified the greedy and morose
attitude in many men and disguised it in others; though it reappears
under conditions of extreme social dislocation, and it is a proverb
that “thieves quarrel over their plunder.” In the original pack such
a struggle over the prey may have subserved the important utility of
eliminating the weak, and of raising the average strength and ferocity.
But some custom must have been established for feeding the women and
children. No doubt when fruits were obtainable, the women and children
largely subsisted upon them. But the strong instinct of parental care
in Primates, the long youth of children, and the greater relative
inferiority of females to males (common to anthropoids and savages)
than is found amongst dogs and wolves, must have made the human pack
from the first differ in many ways from a pack of wolves.

So much, then, as to the traits of character established in primitive
man by his having resorted to co-operative hunting: they all plainly
persist in ourselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

On our intelligence life in the hunting-pack had just as revolutionary
an influence, as already explained in the first chapter. The whole art
of hunting had to be learned from its rudiments by this enterprising
family. With them there was no inherited instinct or disposition, and
no tradition or instruction, as there is with the true carnivores: they
depended solely on observation, memory, inference. With poor olfactory
sense (as usual in apes) prey must be followed and inconvenient
enemies outwitted, by acquiring a knowledge of their footprints and
other visible signs of neighbourhood, and by discrimination of all
the noises they make. The habits and manners of prey and of enemies,
their favourite lairs, feeding-grounds and watering-places, their
paths through forest, marsh, thicket and high grass, must all be
learnt: so must their speed, endurance, means and methods of attack
and defence. The whole country within the range of the pack must be
known, its resources and its difficulties; and whenever new territory
was entered, new lessons in all these matters had to be learned. This
must have entailed a rapid natural selection of brains. Only a rapidly
developing, plastic brain could have been capable of the requisite
accommodation of behaviour in such conditions: a mechanism was required
by which more and more new lines of specialised reaction were related
to numerous newly observed and discriminated facts.

The very crudest weapons may be handled with variable dexterity; the
best handling must be discovered and practised; and this had a high
selective value for the hands as well as for the brain. Probably crude
weapons were very early used; for some monkeys (and baboons generally)
throw sticks or stones, or roll stones down upon an enemy. In Borneo,
Wallace came upon a female orang who, “as soon as she saw us, began
breaking off branches and the great spiny fruits [of the durian]
with every appearance of rage, causing such a shower of missiles as
effectually kept us from approaching too near the tree. This habit of
throwing down branches has been doubted; but I have, as here narrated,
observed it myself on three separate occasions.”[52] The importance
of the observation consists in its proving the existence in an
anthropoid of the impulse to use missiles under the occasional stress
of anger; so that it might be expected rapidly to develop under the
constant pressure of hunger. The use of clubs and stones induced the
discrimination of the best materials for such weapons, and where they
could be found; and, in process of time, brought in a rough shaping of
them, the better to serve their purposes. Then came the invention of
snares and pitfalls and the discovery of poisons.

Thus the primitive human, or prehuman mind, was active in many
new directions; and depending for its skill, not upon instinct or
imitation, but upon observation and memory and inference, it was
necessary for it to arrange ideas in a definite order before acting
upon them, as in making weapons or planning a hunt; indefiniteness
or confusion in such matters was fatal. The contrast between growing
memory of the past and present experience, between practical ideas and
the actions realising them that had been suspended until the right
moment came, furthered the differentiation of self-consciousness amidst
the world; the contrasts of co-operation and greed, of emulation
and loyalty and submission, of honour and shame, furthered the
differentiation of self-consciousness amidst the tribe.

       *       *       *       *       *

If it be asked—how much of all this development attributed to the
hunting-pack might have been brought about just as well by the
formation of a defensive herd, such as we see in cattle and horses?—a
definite answer can be given. The herd is, of course, marked by (2)
gregariousness, (3) perceptive and contagious sympathy and sometimes
effective sympathy in common defence, (7) recognition of leaders (all
herds that travel have leaders), (8) emulation, (9) precedence; but not
by (1) interest in the chase and in killing, nor (4) aggressiveness,
nor (10) strategy and perseverance in attack, nor (11) greed; and
herd-life affords no conditions for the development of intelligence
and dexterity, nor for any of the physical characters that distinguish
man. Herd-life does not involve the great and decisive change which
is implied in the evolution of human nature. We must conceive, then,
of the primitive human mind as a sort of chimpanzee mind adapted to
the wolfish conditions of the hunting-pack. Wolves themselves have
undergone no great development, compared (say) with cats, for want of
hands and other physical advantages which we had to begin with. If some
species of baboon had taken to the hunting-life, there might have been
very interesting results.


§ 5. THE WOLF-TYPE OF MAN ESTABLISHED BY NATURAL SELECTION

The differentiation of the human from the anthropoid stock must have
begun a long time ago; as to when it began there is no direct evidence;
and even if fossil remains of the earlier stages of our evolution had
been discovered, we could only judge from the strata in which they
occurred what must have been their relative antiquity. When it comes
to reducing the chronology of past ages to figures, geologists either
decline to make any estimate, or the results of their calculations
may differ as 1 to 10. Since my own studies give me no claim to an
opinion on such matters, whilst it is helpful to have clear ideas,
however tentative, I shall adopt the views of Dr. Arthur Keith in his
work on _The Antiquity of Man_, based on estimates published by Prof.
Sollas.[53] On turning to p. 509 of that work, a genealogical tree
will be found, showing the probable lines of descent of the higher
Primates. The separation of the human from the great anthropoid stock
is represented as having happened at about the last third of the
Oligocene period—say 2,000,000 years ago (or, according to the later
estimate, 3,500,000). Pithecanthropus (of Java) branched off as a
distinct genus about the middle of the Miocene. Neanderthal man (_Homo
Neanderthalensis_) and Piltdown man (_Eoanthropus Dawsoni_) separated
as distinct species (or genera) from the stock of modern man (absurdly
named _Homo sapiens_) early in the Pliocene, and became extinct
respectively (say) 20,000 and 300,000 years ago. The races of modern
man began to differentiate near the end of the Pliocene (say) 500,000
years from the present time. Such is the “working hypothesis.”

The skull capacity of the great anthropoids averages 500 c.c.; that of
Pithecanthropus is estimated at 900 c.c.; the Australian native average
is 1200 c.c.; Eoanthropus, according to Dr. Keith, rises to 1400;[54]
a Neanderthal skull has been measured at 1600 c.c.; the modern English
average is under 1500 c.c. Of course, mental power depends not on size
of the brain only, but also on its differentiation, which may have
recently advanced.

As to culture, the Neolithic period extends in Western Europe from
about 2000 to 10,000 B.C.: and to that age is usually attributed the
introduction of agriculture, the domestication of animals, pottery,
weaving, permanent constructed dwellings, and monuments requiring
collective labour; but some of these improvements may be of earlier
date. In other parts of the world, _e. g._ in the Eastern Mediterranean
region, such culture is probably older, but still comparatively recent.
What is known as the Palæolithic stage of culture is often supposed
to have begun early in the second quarter of the Pleistocene period,
giving us a retrospect of (say) 300,000 years. But if we include
under “Palæolithic” all unpolished stone-work that shows clear signs
of having been executed according to an idea or mental pattern (and
this seems a reasonable definition), the “rostro-carinate” implements
must be so called, and then the beginning of this culture must be
pushed back into the Pliocene.[55] In Pliocene (and perhaps Miocene)
deposits have further been discovered numerous “eoliths”: stones so
roughly chipped that they do not imply an idea-pattern; so that, whilst
many archæologists accept them as of human workmanship, some experts
dispute their claim to be considered artefacts. Of course, there must
be eoliths; the only question is whether we have yet unearthed any
of them. Our forefathers cannot have begun by shaping stones to a
definite figure and special purpose. Beginning with stones taken up
as they lay, they discovered that a broken stone with a sharp edge
inflicted a worse wound than a whole one; then broke stones to obtain
this advantage; used sharp fragments to weight clubs; and very slowly
advanced to the manufacture of recognisable axes and spear-heads,
meanwhile discovering other uses for flaked stones; and it seems to
have needed at least 1,400,000 (or 2,800,000) years to arrive at the
poorest of known palæoliths. This strikingly agrees with the law,
often stated, that the progress of culture is, by virtue of tradition,
cumulative, and flows, as a stone falls, with accelerating velocity: in
spite of the ebb, to which from age to age we see it to be liable. At
any one time, moreover, the art of stone-working was, probably, even in
adjacent tribes, at different stages of advancement; it depends partly
upon the kind of stone obtainable; but it has been only recently that
such contrasts could occur as Herodotus[56] describes among the hosts
of Xerxes: when, beside the well-accoutred Persians and Medes, marched
Libyans and Mysians armed with wooden javelins hardened in the fire,
and Ethiopians with stone-tipped arrows and spears headed with the
sharpened horns of antelopes.

The moral of all this is that there was abundant time before the
rise of Neolithic culture (which may be called the beginning of
civilisation) for the complete adaptation of mankind everywhere, by
natural selection, to the life of hunters; and that, since then, there
has not been time for the biological adaptation of any race to the
civilised state. We shall see that natural selection has probably had
some civilising influence; but any approach to complete adaptation has
been impossible, not only for want of time, but also because of rapid
changes in the structure of civilisation, the social protection of some
eccentrics, the persistence of the hunting-life as a second resource
or as a pastime, and by the frequent recurrence of warfare—that
is to say, man-hunting. To civilisation we are, for the most part,
merely accommodated by experience, education, tradition and social
pressure. A few people seem to be adapted to civilised life from their
birth, and others to the slavish life; but all inherit, more or less
manifestly, the nature of the hunter and warrior. This is a necessary
basis of general and social psychology; and perhaps tribal or national
characters (so far as distinguishable) may be understood by assigning
the conditions under which they have, in various directions, been
modified from this type.

To avoid the appearance of overlooking an obvious objection, I may add
that the life of the hunter does not imply an exclusively carnivorous
diet, but merely that hunting is the activity upon which his faculties
are bent and upon which his livelihood chiefly depends. It is most
unlikely that a cousin of the frugivorous anthropoids should entirely
give up his ancestral food, immediately, or perhaps at any time. Even
the diet of the wolf, in North-East Canada, includes “much fruit,
especially the uva-ursi”; and the coyote there also eats berries;[57]
so does the jackal in India. Savage women everywhere subsist largely
on roots and fruits. Dr. Keith says the teeth and jaws of the
Neanderthal species were adapted to a coarse vegetable diet.[58] Yet
the Neanderthal burials at La Ferrasie, La Chapelle aux Saints, Jersey
and Krapina, with their implements and animal remains, leave no doubt
that the species hunted the biggest game. At Krapina, besides mammoth
and rhinoceros, “the cave-bear occurred abundantly, it was evidently
a favourite article of diet”: the inhabitants were not fanatical
vegetarians.


§ 6. SOME FURTHER CONSEQUENCES OF THE HUNTING-LIFE

Between the remote age when our hypothetical ancestor became a hunter
and the time to which probably belong the remains of the oldest known
men, there lies a gap of (say) one (or two) and a half million years,
concerning which we have not only no direct evidence but not even
any parallel in the world by means of which to apply the comparative
method. Just at the beginning, the parallel of the wolf-pack sheds some
light upon our path; but the light soon grows faint; for the primitive
human, from the first more intelligent than wolves, and inheriting
from the ape-stock qualities of character which the new life greatly
modified but could not extirpate, must under pressure of selection have
become, after not many ages, an animal unlike any other. Just at the
end, again, something concerning those who lived many thousand years
before the beginning of history may be inferred from the parallel of
existing savage customs; from their rock-dwellings, drawings, tools,
weapons, hearths, something about their way of life; from evidence of
their burial-customs, something of their beliefs. But what can be said
of our ancestors during all those years that intervene between the
beginning and the end?

Having been a hunter at the first and at the last, we may reasonably
suppose that he had been so all the time. But, with our present
knowledge, our chief guide as to other matters seems to be the fact
that the most backward of existing savages possess powers of body and
mind, and forms and products of culture, which must have been acquired
gradually through a long course of development from no better origins
than are traceable in apes and wolves. As the use of good stone weapons
by living savages and the occurrence of stone weapons in deposits
of various age in the Pleistocene—less and less perfectly made the
further we go back—justify us in assuming that there must have been
eoliths of even cruder workmanship at remoter dates, so the possession
by savages of extensive languages, intricate customs, luxuriant myths,
considerable reasoning powers and even humane sentiments, compel us to
imagine such possessions as belonging to our prehistoric ancestors,
in simpler and simpler forms, as we go back age by age toward the
beginning. A tentative reconstruction of the lost series of events may
sometimes be supported by what has been observed of the individual
development of our children.

(_a_) For example, the constructive impulse, slightly shown by
anthropoids that make beds and shelters in the trees, was called into
activity in man especially in the making of weapons, tools and snares,
and became an absorbing passion; so that a savage (often accused of
being incapable of prolonged attention!) will sit for days working at
a spear or an axe: they are inattentive only to what does not interest
them. Many children from about the sixth year come under the same sort
of fascination—digging, building, making bows and arrows, boats and
so forth. This is a necessary preparation for all the achievements
of civilised life; and it is reasonable to suppose that the stages
of growth of such interest in construction are indicated by the
improvement of ancient implements.

(_b_) As to language—in the most general sense, as the communication
of emotions and ideas by vocal sounds—the rudiments of it are
widespread in animal life. A sort of dog-language is recognised, and
monkeys seem to have a still greater “vocabulary.” Hence, a number of
emotional vocal expressions was probably in use among the primitive
human stock. And the new hunting-life was favourable to the development
of communicative signs; for it depended on co-operation, which is
wanting in ape-life, and in the lower extant savages hardly exists,
except in hunting, war, and magical or religious rites. Hunting,
moreover, is (as I have said) especially encouraging to onomatopœic
expression in imitating the noises of animals, etc. It was still more
favourable, perhaps, to the growth of gesture-language in imitating
the behaviour of animals and the actions involved in circumventing
and attacking them. Increasing powers of communication were extremely
useful, and the pack must have tried to develop them. Without the
endeavour to communicate, there could never have been a language better
than the ape’s; nor could there have been the endeavour without the
need. That gesture alone was very helpful may be assumed; and it must
have assisted in fixing the earliest vocal signs for things and actions
and qualities, and probably determined the earliest syntax; but when,
in hunting, members of the pack were hidden from one another, or when
their hands were occupied, gesture was not available, and communication
depended on the voice. The speech of children similarly emerges from
emotional noises and impulsive babbling, assisted by gesture.

Passing to later ages, we cannot expect to learn much about the
speech of prehistoric men, whom we know only by a few bones. As to the
Java skull, Dr. Keith observes that “the region of the brain which
subserves the essentially human gift of speech, was not ape-like in
Pithecanthropus. The parts for speech are there; they are small, but
clearly foreshadow the arrangement of convolutions seen in modern
man.” On the other hand, “the higher association areas ... had not
reached a human level.”[59] The jaw of this skull not having been
found, nothing can be said of its fitness for carrying out the process
of articulation. As to Eoanthropus, “if our present conception of
the orbital part of the third frontal convolution is well founded,
namely, that it takes part in the mechanism of speech, then we have
grounds for believing that the Piltdown man had reached that point
of brain-development when speech had become a possibility. When one
looks at the lower jaw, however, and the projecting canine teeth,
one hesitates to allow him more than a potential ability.”[60] The
jaw had not undergone the characteristic changes which in modern man
give freedom to the tongue in the articulation of words.[61] But Dr.
Keith “cannot detect any feature in the frontal, parietal or occipital
areas which clearly separate this brain-cast from modern ones.”[62]
Eoanthropus, therefore, must have had a good deal to say and, being a
social animal, must have felt the need of expression; and, though he
was not a direct ancestor of ours, it can hardly be doubted that at
some period the jaws of our own ancestors were no better adapted than
his to articulate speech. May we not infer that articulate speech,
meeting a need of the stock, arose very gradually, and was slowly
differentiated from some less definite and structural connection of
expressive and onomatopœic vocables, such as we have seen may naturally
have arisen amongst the earliest hunters? _Pari passu_ the jaw was
modified.

(_c_) All savages live by custom; gregarious animals have their
customs; and in the primitive hunting-pack customs must have been
early established as “conditions of gregariousness.” M. Salomon
Reinach, indeed, thinks that the anthropoid probably became human
as the result of inventing taboos, especially in sexual relations;
there was economy of nervous energy in the direction of the senses,
and consequent enrichment of the intellect.[63] His hypothesis does
not carry us far, perhaps, into the particulars of human form and
faculty; but it contains this truth, that without the growth of customs
there could have been no progress for human nature; and it certainly
points to the probability that some custom was early established with
regard to marriage. In Prof. Westermarck’s opinion our species was
originally monogamous.[64] Supposing this to have been the custom,
as it is amongst many Primates, could it have persisted after the
formation of the hunting-pack? According to Mr. Thompson Seton,
wolves pair “probably for life”;[65] but this is disputed; and so it
is whether or no the male of a seasonal pair takes part in caring
for the puppies.[66] Of the primitive human stock one may say that
whilst, on the one hand, the association of many males and females in
the same pack may have tended to break up the family, on the other
hand, the long youth of the children and the parental care generally
characteristic of Primates would have tended to preserve it; that the
practice of pairing requires the largest number of males (setting aside
polyandry), and lessens quarrelling, and is therefore favourable to the
strength of the pack; and that any custom may have been established
that was most favourable to the species in its new life. The least
probable of all conditions is promiscuity; for the rearing of children
with their ever-lengthening youth must have been difficult, taxing the
care of both parents.

(_d_) The claim to property is instinctive in most animals—claim
to a certain territory, or to a nest, or lair, or mate. Each early
human pack probably claimed a certain hunting-range; and each family
its lair, which it guarded, as our domestic dog guards the house. In
Australia “every tribe has its own country, and its boundaries are
well known; and they are respected by others”;[67] and the Bushmen,
who retained the ancient hunting-life more perfectly than any other
known people, are said to have been formerly divided into large tribes
with well-defined hunting-grounds.[68] As weapons or other implements,
charms, or ornaments came into use, the attitude toward the territory
or lair will have been extended to include them; indeed, it seems to be
instinctive even in lower Primates. “In the Zoological Gardens,” says
Darwin, “a monkey, which had weak teeth, used to break open nuts with a
stone; and I was assured by the keepers that, after using the stone, he
hid it in the straw, and would not let any other monkey touch it. Here,
then, we have the idea of property.”[69] Among the half-wolf train-dogs
of Canada, the claims of one to property seem to be recognised by
others; for a dog will defend its _cache_ of food against another that
ordinarily it fears; and “the bigger dog rarely presses the point.”[70]
The utility of keeping the peace within the tribe, no doubt, led to the
growth of customs concerning property, and to their protection by the
social sanction, and later by the taboo.[71] For taboo cannot be the
origin of respect for property or for any custom: it implies a custom
already existing, which it protects by the growth of a belief in some
magical penalty that is effective even when there are no witnesses. The
same utility of order must have established customs of dividing the
kill of the pack: later also protected by taboo, as we still see in
many savage tribes.

The attitude towards property is very variable amongst the tribes now
known to us. Still, considering how early and strongly it is manifested
by children, we may infer with some plausibility its antiquity in
the race. The urgent desire of property, and tenacity in holding it,
displayed by many individuals, though not an amiable, has been a highly
useful trait, to which is due that accumulation of capital that has
made possible the whole of our material and much of our spiritual
civilisation. Amongst barbarians it may be a necessary condition
of social order. Had not wealth been highly prized amongst our own
ancestors, it is hard to see how revenge could ever have been appeased
by the wergeld. The payment, indeed, was not the whole transaction;
it implied an acknowledgment of guilt and of the obligation to make
amends; but these things would not have mollified an enemy nurtured in
the tradition of the blood-feud, if silver had not been dear to him.
It is still accepted as compensation for injuries that seem difficult
to measure by the ounce. Wealth gives rank, and gratifies not only the
greed but also the emulative spirit of the pack. Acquisitiveness is an
essential trait of aristocracy, and adhesiveness of its perpetuity.
Homespun prudence belongs, in our ancestry, to a more recent stratum
of motives; we see it as a blind instinct in squirrels and beavers, a
quasi-instinctive propensity in dogs and wolves (who hide food that
they cannot immediately devour); but it is not known in any anthropoid,
and is acquired at some stage by some human races—not by all; for
it is not found in many extant savages. The only occasion on which
Australian tribes show prudential foresight as to food is on the
approach of the season of magical rites, when they lay in a stock of
food before giving themselves up for weeks or months body and soul
to thaumaturgy.[72] Prudence is not, however, merely a function of
foresight or intelligence, or else the Irish would be as prudent as the
Scotch.

(_e_) The first wars, probably, were waged for hunting-grounds; and
this may have been a revival, for the carnivorous anthropoid pack,
of a state of affairs that existed amongst their ancestors at a much
earlier date; for battles for a feeding-ground have been witnessed
between troops of the lower Primates. Such a battle between two bands
of langur (_Semnopithecus entellus_) has been described;[73] and Darwin
relates after Brehm how “in Abyssinia, when baboons of one species (_C.
gelada_) descend in troops from the mountains to plunder the fields,
they sometimes encounter troops of another species (_C. hamadryas_),
and then a fight ensues. The Geladas roll down great stones, which
the Hamadryas try to avoid, and then both species, making a great
uproar, rush furiously against each other.”[74] As packs of the
wolf-ape increased in numbers and spread over the world, they no doubt
generally came to regard one another as rivals upon the same footing
as the great cats and packs of dogs, and every attempt at expansion or
migration provoked a battle. Wars strengthened the internal sympathies
and loyalties of the pack or tribe and its external antipathies, and
extended the range and influence of the more virile and capable tribes.

It is true that neighbouring tribes of savages are not now always
mutually hostile. In Australia, we are told, local groups and adjacent
tribes are usually friendly;[75] but with them the age of expansion
seems to have closed some time ago, and a sort of equilibrium has been
established. On the other hand, it is a shallow sort of profundity that
insists upon interpreting every war as a struggle for nutrition, an
effort to solve the social problem. Aggressiveness and insatiable greed
are characteristic of many tribes—passions always easily exploited by
their leaders, as in the civilised world by dynasts and demagogues.
Plethora is more insolent than poverty. Lust of power, of glory, of
mere fighting is a stronger incentive than solicitude for the poor.

However, in the development of society nothing has been so influential
as war: an immense subject, for the outlines of which I refer to
Herbert Spencer’s _Political Institutions_.[76]

(_f_) Most of the amusements as well as the occupations of mankind
depend for their zest upon the spirit of hunting and fighting, which
they gratify and relieve, either directly or in a conventionalised
and symbolical way, and at the same time keep alive. Sports and games
involve the pursuit of some end by skill and strategy, often the
seizing upon some sort of prey, or slaying outright, and they give
scope to emulation. Emulation is a motive in the race for wealth, in
every honourable career, even in addiction to science and learning:
though here the main stress is upon an instinct older than the
pack—curiosity, a general character of the Primates. That children
at first play alone, later play together, and then “make up sides,”
repeats the change from the comparatively solitary life of anthropoids
to the social life and combined activities of the hunting-pack. From
the interest of the chase and the aggressiveness that is involved in it
must be derived all that we call “enterprise,” whether beneficent or
injurious: a trait, certainly, which there is little reason to regard
as inherited from the anthropoid stock.

(_g_) The great amusement and pastime of feeding has, no doubt,
descended to us in unbroken tradition, through harvest and vintage
festivals, from the unbridled indulgence that followed a successful
hunt. And I offer the conjecture that the origin of laughter and
the enjoyment of broad humour (so often discussed) may be traced to
these occasions of riotous exhilaration and licence. We may suppose,
indeed, that these conditions began to prevail not in the earliest
days of the ravenous pack, but after some advance had been made in the
customs of eating. Savages usually cram to repletion when possible,
and with huge gusto, for there may not soon be another opportunity.
If uproarious feasting was advantageous physically and socially (as
till recently we all thought it was), addiction to the practice was a
ground of survival; and laughter (a discharge of undirected energy, as
Spencer says), being its natural expression and enhancement, shared in
its perpetuation. This social origin agrees with the infectiousness
of laughter, with its connection with triumph and cruelty, and with
the quality of the jokes that still throughout the world excite
most merriment—practical jokes and allusions to drunkenness, the
indecorous, the obscene. Sir Robert Walpole preferred such humour as
the most sociable; because in that everybody could take part. Many
refinements have been introduced in polite circles; but it is in vain
that one begins a theory of laughter with an analysis of the genius of
Molière.

Similarly, I suppose that weeping, lamentation and the facial and
bodily expressions of grief were developed by the social utility of
common mourning in tribal defeat and bereavement.


§ 7. MORALISATION OF THE HUNTERS

We are left to speculate about the earliest growth of magnanimity,
friendliness, compassion, general benevolence and other virtues.
They cannot be explained merely by the hunting-life, which so easily
accounts for greed, cruelty, pride and every sort of aggressiveness.
Robert Hartmann writes: “It is well known that both rude and civilised
peoples are capable of showing unspeakable and, as it is erroneously
termed, inhuman cruelty towards each other. These acts of cruelty,
murder and rapine are often the result of the inexorable logic of
national characteristics and, unhappily, are truly human, since nothing
like them can be traced in the animal world. It would, for instance,
be a grave mistake to compare a tiger with a bloodthirsty executioner
of the Reign of Terror, since the former only satisfies his natural
appetite in preying on other animals. The atrocities of the trials
for witchcraft, the indiscriminate slaughter committed by the Negroes
on the coast of Guinea, the sacrifice of human victims by the Khonds,
the dismemberment of living men by the Battus, find no parallel in the
habits of animals in their savage state. And such a comparison is,
above all, impossible in the case of anthropoids, which display no
hostility toward men or other animals unless they are first attacked.
In this respect the anthropoid ape stands upon a higher plane than
many men.”[77] Are we, then, to explain the more amiable side of human
nature, partly at least, by derivation from the frugivorous Primates,
extensively modified by our wolfish adaptation, but surviving as latent
character?

(_a_) Several further considerations may be offered to account for the
growth of what we call humanity, (i) The long non-age of human children
is favourable to the attachments of family life, and such attachments
may under certain conditions be capable of extension beyond the
family; but I cannot trace the whole flood of altruistic regard to the
sole source of maternal or parental love. (ii) Friendliness and the
disposition to mutual aid are so useful to a hunting-pack that is not
merely seasonal but permanent (as I take ours to have been), both to
individuals and to the pack as a whole, within certain limits (as that
the wounded, sick, or aged must not amount to an encumbrance), that we
may suppose natural selection to have favoured the growth of effective
sympathy, not merely in mutual defence, but so far as it is actually
found at present in backward tribes. It nowhere seems to be excessive;
and its manifestation in some civilised races seems to depend not
upon a positive increase of benevolence in the generality, but (iii)
upon the breaking down here and there of conditions that elsewhere
oppose and inhibit it. Thus the generosity, mercy and magnanimity that
constitute the chivalrous ideal, depend (I believe) upon the attainment
by a class of such undisputed superiority that there is no occasion
for jealousy or rivalry in relation to other classes; for should the
superiority be disputed, these virtues quickly disappear. Similarly,
what have been called the “slavish virtues” of charity, humility,
long-suffering may arise amongst those who are free from rivalry,
because they have no hope of aggrandisement in wealth or honour,
and who have indeed suffered long. With the interfusion of classes,
their virtues interfuse; for they have a common root, and are active,
provided that circumstances do not inhibit them.

(iv) But since in individuals our complex nature varies in all
directions, and amongst the rest in the direction of benevolence; and
since any organ or quality that varies is apt to continue to do so,
and may go on varying even beyond the limits of biological utility;
why in human life may not this happen with benevolence (or with any
other passion or virtue); so that in some men it expands with wonderful
richness and beauty even to the sacrifice of themselves—nay, by
excessive clemency or generosity, even to the injury of the tribe or of
the race?

(_b_) The moral sense or conscience has been discussed by Darwin[78]
“exclusively from the side of natural history”; so as this is the way
of considering human nature in the present book, I shall epitomise his
account of it; which seems to be true, and to which I see little to
add. He finds four chief conditions of the growth of a moral sense:
(_a_) the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the
society of its fellows, to sympathise with them and to help them.
(_b_) When the mind is highly developed, images of past actions and
motives continually recur; “and that feeling of dissatisfaction or even
misery which invariably results ... from any dissatisfied instinct
would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always
present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time
stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a
very vivid impression”—as with anger or greed. (_c_) After language
has been acquired, public opinion can be expressed, and becomes the
paramount guide of action; though still “our regard for the approbation
and disapprobation of our fellows depends on sympathy.” (_d_) Social
instinct, sympathy and obedience to the judgment of the community are
strengthened by the formation of habit. Darwin then proves successively
these four positions.

Seeing the stress here laid upon sympathy, it may make the matter
clearer if we observe that the word occurs in different senses—for
the participation in another’s satisfaction or distress (emotional
sympathy) and readiness to help (effective sympathy); and these are the
meanings under (_a_), the first of the above heads: and, again, for the
knowledge that there are ideas or judgments in another’s mind together
with approval or disapproval of our actions; and this is the meaning
under (_c_), the third head. But knowledge of another’s thoughts is
not sympathy, except so far as, being accompanied with assent to
his judgment, there is participation in his feelings of approval or
disapproval; and, if we dissent from his judgment, there may, indeed,
be perceptive sympathy as to his feelings, but there is no emotional
sympathy or participation in them—there is rather fear or resentment.
It is necessary to bear in mind that perception of another’s feelings,
participation in them and impulse to help or relieve are separable
processes, and that perceptive sympathy is as active in cruelty as in
generosity or mercy.

It may be added that (_b_), the second of the four conditions assigned
by Darwin as determining the growth of the moral sense or conscience,
accounts more especially for “remorse of conscience”; and that (_c_),
the third condition, explains that tone of authority attaching to
conscience on which Bishop Butler laid so much stress.[79]

How early the moral sense began to form itself in our stock cannot be
estimated because it must have been a very gradual process. Probably
the rudiments of it appeared in the family life of the ape even before
our differentiation; and the authoritative character of conscience
established itself under the discipline of the hunting-pack before
there was much development of mind (for dogs know what theft is), and
under pressure of a public opinion that managed to express itself
without language. In an original and suggestive book[80] Mr. Trotter
has shown that a herd (pack, tribe or nation) necessarily approves
of whatever actions are done in its interests as good or right, and
disapproves of the contrary actions as bad or wrong. Confident that
its beliefs and customs are good and right, the pack persecutes
dissenters and nonconformists. “Good” is a relative idea. “‘The good
are good warriors and hunters,’ said a Pawnee chief; whereupon the
author who mentions the saying remarks that this would also be the
opinion of a wolf if he could express it.”[81] Hence we may guess the
principal contents of the primitive categorical imperative. The study
of Ethnology and History enables us to trace the modification and
enrichment of those contents under varying conditions of culture, and
for the results of such study I refer to Edward Westermarck’s _Origin
and Development of Moral Ideas_.

(_c_) After the introduction of agriculture, the stress of natural
selection was in certain directions altered. At first, indeed, most
agricultural work, probably, was done by women; but in its progress it
fell extensively into the hands of men; and then advantage accrued to
those tribes that were capable of steady industry and prudence. The new
employment decreased aggression on the principle that “had Alexander
been holding the plough, he could not have run his friend Clitus
through with a spear.” The sick and aged were now less an encumbrance
than they had been to hunters. Those who could not endure a settled
life wandered away in their old pursuits. The more aggressive clans
slaughtered one another in the vendetta. Social pressure and hanging
eliminated many of the more idle, improvident, dishonest and unruly,
whose instincts resisted “accommodation.” The more neighbourly and
co-operative tended to predominate. As civilisation intensifies, the
numerous ways of getting a livelihood, which (as we have seen) derive
their motive-force from the spirit of the pack, gratify that spirit
under so many disguises and with so little direct personal collision,
as to be compatible with a great deal of friendliness and benevolence;
and co-operation, direct or indirect, steadily increases.

(_d_) Increasing capacity of forming ideas of remote ends and of
co-ordinating many activities in their pursuit, implies the inhibition
of many aggressive or distracting impulses, and constitutes an
automatic control. And although it is now fashionable to depreciate
the power of intelligence in human life, surely, its development has
had great influence. As men come to foresee the many consequences
of action they learn to modify and regulate it, as each foreseen
consequence excites some impulse, either reinforcing or inhibiting
action. Reflection upon our lot has done much to ameliorate it. The
“conditions of gregariousness” (to use W. K. Clifford’s definition
of morality) have been expounded by the more penetrating and
comprehensive minds—prophets, poets, philosophers; and some disciples
have understood them and have persuaded many to believe. Nor have
such luminaries arisen only in the later phases of culture when their
writings have been delivered or their sayings recorded. Probably it
was some one man who first pointed out to a tribe that had ignored
the fact, that whether a wrong had been done by accident or on
purpose affected the agent’s guilt and ought to affect the penalty
exacted. Some one man, probably, first saw what injustice is often
disguised by the specious equality of the _lex talionis_; another
first tried to assuage the bitterness of a vendetta by appointing
compensation; another, perhaps first proposed to substitute animal
for human sacrifice, or a puppet for a slave. And when we read the
lists of sagacious proverbs that have been collected from many savage
tribes, we must consider that it was by eminent individuals that those
sayings were first uttered one by one: individuals with the gifts of
insight and expression to summarise the experience of a whole tribe in
memorable words, rude forerunners of our prophets and philosophers.


§ 8. INFLUENCE OF THE IMAGINARY ENVIRONMENT

The necessity of learning the whole art of hunting from its rudiments,
without the help of instinct or tradition, by sheer observation, memory
and inference, put extraordinary stress upon the brain. At first by
knowledge, strategy, co-operation and persistence of will, later by
devising weapons and snares, evolving language and discovering the ways
of making and utilising fire, man found means of entirely changing the
conditions of his life; but this would have been impossible without
a great development of his brain; and, accordingly, it appears that
Eoanthropus, at the beginning of the Pleistocene, had a skull with
three times the cubic capacity of the anthropoids. With the growth of
the brain came a continually increasing fecundity of ideas. “Piltdown
man saw, heard, felt, thought, and dreamt much as we do.”[82] The use
of ideas is to foresee events and prepare for them beforehand: the
great advantage of distance-senses over contact-senses, is to give an
animal time to adapt its actions to deferred events; and ideas give
this power in a vastly higher degree. So far the utility of brains and
ideas seems obvious. But in order that ideas may be useful in this
way, they must (one would suppose) represent and anticipate the actual
course of events. If they falsely indicate the order of nature, or
even beings and actions that do not exist at all, ideas may seem to be
worse than useless.

Now, when we turn to the lowest existing savages, they are found to
possess, in comparison with apes, a considerable fecundity of ideas;
constituting, on the one hand, a good stock of common sense, or
knowledge of the properties and activities of the things and animals
around them, and of how to deal with them, which enables them to carry
on the affairs of a life much more complex and continuous than any
animal’s: but including, on the other hand, a strange collection of
beliefs about magic and spirits, which entirely misrepresent the course
of nature and the effective population of the world. These latter
beliefs, or imaginative delusions, hamper them in so many ways, waste
so much time, lead them sometimes into such dark and cruel practices,
that one may be excused for wondering whether their bigger brains
can have been, on the whole, of any biological advantage to them in
comparison with the anthropoids. The anthropoids live by common sense.
So do savages, and they have much more of it; but the anthropoids seem
not to be troubled by magic and animism. We must suppose that the
common sense of primitive man increased age by age, as he became more
and more perfectly adapted to the hunting-life, and that at some stage
his imagination began to falsify the relations of things and the powers
of nature. It seems that imagination-beliefs depend chiefly upon the
influence of desire and fear, suggestibility, hasty generalisation, and
the seduction of reasoning by analogy. At what stage imaginations, thus
divorced from reality, began to influence human life, it is impossible
to say; but it cannot be less than half a million years ago, if (as Dr.
Keith says) Eoanthropus, 400,000 years ago, “thought and dreamt much as
we do.” Why did not such delusions hinder our development? Or did they
promote it?

The first consideration is, that biological adaptation is nearly always
a compromise: if any organ or faculty be useful on the whole, in spite
of some disutility, its increase favours the survival of those in
whom it increases; and this is true of the brain and its thinking.
The second is, that nearly all the magical and animistic beliefs and
practices that are socially destructive, probably belong to a stage
of human life that is attained long after our differentiation has
been established, and when some progress has been made in arts and
customs. Savages of the lowest culture have few beliefs that can be
called positively injurious. Talismans and spells, not by themselves
relied upon, but only adscititious to common-sense actions, give
confidence without weakening endeavour. To curse, or to “point the
bone,” does not create but merely expresses a malevolent purpose; and,
although sometimes fatal by suggestion, is on the whole better than
to assassinate. Taboos do more good by protecting person and property
and custom than they do harm by restricting the use of foods. Belief
in imaginary evils waiting upon secret sins exerts, whilst supported
by social unanimity, a control upon all kinds of behaviour: it is the
beginning of the “religious sanction,” and one sort of conscience. The
dread of spirits that prowl at night keeps people in the family-cave
or by the camp-fire; and that is the best place for them. Many rites
and observances are sanitary. Totemism rarely does any harm, and may
once have usefully symbolised the unity of social groups. Totemic and
magical dances give excellent physical training, promote the spirit
of co-operation, are a sort of drill; and (like all art), whilst
indulging, they also restrain imagination by imposing upon it definite
forms. For a long time there was no special profession of wizard or
priest, with whose appearance most of the evil of magic and animism
originates; though probably even they generally do more good than
harm by their courage and sagacity, by discovering drugs and poisons,
by laying ghosts, and by their primitive studies in medicine and
psychology.

The wizard, however, and the priest, who could never have existed but
for the prevalent beliefs in Magic and Animism, have a further and far
more important function in human life, namely, the organisation, or
rather reorganisation of society. The organisation of the hunting-pack
described above was liable through several causes to fall asunder.
Some of these causes are obvious: (_a_) The improvement of weapons
and snares and discovery of poisons made very small parties, or even
single families, self-sufficing—as among the Bushmen (though they
sometimes assembled for a grand hunt).[83] (_b_) Failure of game from
desiccation, as in Australia, or because the tribe has been driven into
a poor country like Tierra del Fuego; so that a small population is
scattered over a wide area, and reduced to a greater or less dependence
on “collecting.” (_c_) The adoption of even a primitive agricultural
or pastoral life may make hunting a secondary interest. In such cases
the natural leaders of a clan are no longer (as in the old pack)
plainly indicated; and if society is to be saved from anarchy, some
new control must establish itself for the preservation of tradition
and custom. Conceivably this happened in several ways; but in fact
(I believe) we know of only one, namely: First, the rule of wizards,
who are chiefly old men credited with mysterious power that makes
the boldest tribesman quail, such as the headmen and elders of an
Australian tribe. In New Guinea, too, and much of Melanesia, the power
of rulers, even though recognised as of noble birth, depends chiefly
upon their reputation for Magic. And among the Bushmen secrets about
poisons and antidotes and colours for painting (probably considered
magical) were heirlooms in certain families of chiefs, and gave them
caste.[84] Secondly, at a later stage, as the belief in ghosts more
and more prevails, and ancestral ghosts are worshipped, and ghosts
of heroes or chiefs become veritable gods, the priests who celebrate
their worship strengthen the position of chiefs or kings descended
from these gods, and help to maintain more comprehensive and coherent
governments than those established upon Magic only; though to these
later forms, also, and to Religion itself magical beliefs contribute
their support. The inevitable development of illusory imaginations
along with common sense, then, assisted early and also later culture,
because they preserved order and cohesion by re-arousing the ancient
submission and loyalty of the pack. For common sense is always limited
to present conditions, it could never have foreseen the dependence of
human life upon order and the necessity of maintaining cohesion even
at great immediate sacrifices. These interests were, therefore, served
indirectly through delusions; natural selection must, within certain
limits, have favoured the superstitious. Excessively imaginative
and superstitious tribes may sometimes have been eliminated; for
common sense also has biological utility. But, perverse as it may
seem, imaginations utterly false have had their share in promoting
“progress”: co-operating with agriculture and trade, magic, religions
and the fine arts have, by supporting government and civil order,
helped in accommodating us, and even in some measure adapting us, to
our present condition, such as it is.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] See _The Antiquity of Man_, by Arthur Keith.

[29] _Malay Archipelago_, pp. 46-7.

[30] According to R. L. Garner, however, both gorillas and chimpanzees
are polygamous. See _Gorillas and Chimpanzees_, pp. 54 and 214.

[31] This view is not opposed to the suggestion I have somewhere
seen that the collecting activities of women, whilst men hunted,
may, at some stage, have led to property and domestication of plants
and animals. Again, the pastoral and agricultural states are not
necessarily successive: it depends upon local conditions. For an
excellent survey of the gradual rise of primitive culture and the
difficulties it encountered, see H. Spencer’s _Industrial Institutions,
Principles of Sociology_, Vol. III.

[32] It is certainly believed by fox-hunters that a fox feeds his vixen
when she is occupied with their family, and that “if the vixen is
killed he will bring up the family by himself.”—Thomas F. Dale, _The
Fox_, pp. 12, 13.

Nothing incredible in this—nor of wolves. Can the vixen provide for
herself and litter alone? If not, the dog must do it: else there could
be no foxes or wolves.

However, de Canteleu denies that the he-wolf takes any part in rearing
the young (_La Chasse du Loup_, p. 30).

[33] W. P. Pycraft, in his entertaining _Courtship of Animals_, after
assuming that Man became a hunter for the sake of the excitement such
a life afforded, goes on (p. 23): “A little later the advantages of
neighbourliness were borne in on him, largely for the sake of the
greater ease wherewith the animals of the chase could be captured by
their combined efforts; but this begat comradeship and some of the
graces that follow therefrom.”

[34] _Descent of Man_, ch. xx.

[35] See above, footnote on p. 32.

[36] Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_, 7th ed., p. 580.

[37] _Inquiries into Human Faculty_, p. 262.

[38] _Hunting Trips in North America_, p. 349.

[39] G. W. Stone, _Native Races of South Africa_, p. 91.

[40] _The Arctic Prairies_, p. 20.

[41] _La Chasse du Loup_, p. 21.

[42] _Life Histories of Northern Animals_, p. 755.

[43] _Wild Beasts of India_, pp. 275-6. Cf. Casserly, _Life on an
Indian Outpost_, pp. 94-5. Brehm says, in _Thierleben_, that in Russia
wolves attack and kill the bear.

[44] _Life Histories of Northern Animals_, p. 754.

[45] _Naturalist in La Plata_, p. 346.

[46] _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_, p. 70.

[47] _Op. cit._, pp. 336-7.

[48] Hiram S. Maxim, _My Life_, p. 57.

[49] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 388.

[50] _Op. cit._, pp. 6-7.

[51] _Op. cit._, p. 78.

[52] _Malay Archipelago_, p. 43.

[53] See the _Report of the British Association_, 1900, pp. 711-30. The
author has since then revised his estimates, assigning much greater
depth to the Pliocene and Miocene deposits and proportionally more
time for their formation. See the _Quarterly Journal of the Geological
Society_, LXV. (1909).

[54] Dr. Smith Woodward’s reconstruction gives the skull of Eoanthropus
a capacity of about 1300 c.c.

[55] See Ray Lankester’s _Description of the Test-Specimen_. R.A.I.,
_Occasional Papers_, No. 4.

[56] Book VII. chs. 69, 71, 74.

[57] E. Thompson Seton, _The Arctic Prairies_, pp. 304 and 352.

[58] _Op. cit._, pp. 151, 239, 476.

[59] _Antiquity of Man_, p. 268.

[60] A. Keith, _op. cit._, p. 408.

[61] _Op. cit._, p. 452.

[62] _Op. cit._, p. 414.

[63] _Cultes, Mythes et Religion_, III. p. 430.

[64] _Primitive Marriage_, ch. iii.

[65] _Life Histories of Northern Animals_, p. 757.

[66] See above, § 3 (4), footnote, p. 37.

[67] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 198.

[68] G. W. Stone, _Native Races of South Africa_, p. 33.

[69] _Descent of Man_, ch. iii.

[70] E. Thompson Seton, _Life Histories of Northern Animals_, p. 769.

[71] E. Westermarck, _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, II. p. 52.

[72] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Northern Territory of
Australia_, p. 27.

[73] _Royal Natural History_, I. pp. 72-3.

[74] _Descent of Man_, ch. iii.

[75] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 200.

[76] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. II.

[77] _Anthropoid Apes_, pp. 294-5.

[78] _Descent of Man_, ch. iv.

[79] _Sermons on Human Nature._

[80] _The Herd Instinct._

[81] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 89.

[82] A. Keith, _op. cit._, p. 429.

[83] G. M. Theal, _History and Ethnology of South Africa_, p. 11.

[84] G. W. Stone, _Native Races of South Africa_, p. 76.




CHAPTER III

BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION


§ 1. SUPERSTITION

Inasmuch as the influence of superstition upon the history of society
can hardly be exaggerated, it must be worth while to inquire into
its origin and nature. But this inquiry leads into a quagmire of
ambiguous words: and to attempt to define them for all purposes would
entangle the discussion in endless controversies. So it will be best
to explain merely in what sense certain words will be used in this
book. “Superstition,” for example, means in common use (I think) false
beliefs concerning supernatural powers, especially such as are regarded
as socially injurious, and particularly as leading to obscurantism or
cruelty: but it is often extended to cover beliefs of a negligible or
frivolous kind, such as stories about “fairy-rings,” or the unluckiness
of seeing the new moon for the first time through glass. Plainly the
injuriousness of a false belief is often in dispute, and at any rate is
a question of time and place. “Superstition,” then, is here used merely
as a collective term for the subjects of the ensuing chapters—Magic
(or the belief in occult forces) and Animism (or the belief in the
activity of spirits).

The consequences of a belief, again, whether good or evil, cannot
affect its psychological character: in trying to explain its nature and
origin, one cannot take account of its social values. The explanation
of superstitions must hold of all false beliefs, whatever their utility
or disutility. Nay, further, whether a belief is false or true does not
necessarily affect its psychological character: for a man may hold two
doctrines, one true and the other false, both derived from the sincere
testimony of the same person, and he may not be able to discern any
difference in the degrees of confidence with which he holds them or in
their influence upon his conduct. The understanding of false belief,
then, requires an examination of belief in general.

Still, whilst in the mind of any given man a true and a false belief
may have the same character and origin, considered generally they
must surely have different origins and grounds; and to make the
sequel clearer, I will anticipate its conclusions so far as to say
that true beliefs seem to rest on perception or inferences verified
by perception, and false beliefs seem to depend upon imagination
that cannot be verified. This general statement will need several
qualifications. But I rely upon it at present so far as to say that
superstitions are essentially imagination-beliefs.

We shall find that these superstitions, though often held by whole
tribes with the utmost assurance, differ in some subtle way from the
perception-beliefs of their common sense, as that “fire burns” and
that “water quenches fire.” They are unstable: (1) they become active
on occasions, and otherwise are apt to be forgotten—as ghosts are
only thought of at night. (2) They are modifiable merely for the sake
of economy or other convenience. (3) They lose their hold on a tribe,
fall off and die in course of time without any change in the evidence
for them. (4) They depend a good deal upon the assent of a crowd. (5)
They often vary in neighbouring countries or families, or amongst the
members of a family. This is not like common sense. Superstitions or
imagination-beliefs are unstable, in spite of being often held with
great obstinacy (so that people die for them), and of their enduring,
in the simpler forms and at a certain level of social life, for
thousands of years. There is something wanting in the holdfast or
anchorage of imagination-beliefs.

It is necessary to explain what I mean by “imagination.”


§ 2. IMAGINATION

Is it enough to define “imagination” as merely the having of mental
“images,” pictures before the mind’s eye? This would confine
imagination to visual representations, to the exclusion of auditory,
olfactory, etc., which are all a man born blind can have, and which
sometimes occur to those who can see, though the visual are commonest.
The word “images,” therefore, is sometimes used to cover all these
modes of representation; though “phantasmata” would be better.

Again, a mental image or phantasm, visual or auditory, is improperly
called an imagination, if there is nothing more than the reproduction
of a single sense-quality. Imaginations represent not abstract
sensations, but perceptions. To see an armed knight is not merely to
have a visual impression of him, but to perceive a living, solid,
heavy object definitely in space; and imagination reproduces the whole
of this, and otherwise would be quite uninteresting. What would the
tournament in _Ivanhoe_ amount to if the knights were only phantoms?

Further, imagination, merely as a reproduction of perception, is not
distinguished from memory; but, in use, the two are always contrasted.
Memories are recognised (in their complete form) as returning to us
from earlier experience, both their component pictures and the order of
them, and they are relatively stable; imaginations are felt to be more
or less novel, and can easily be modified. Probably all the elements
of an imagination might have occurred in a memory; but the arrangement
of these elements is often so different from any actual experience as
to baffle every attempt to redistribute them amongst their sources.
Hence, in normal cases, our attitudes toward a memory and toward an
imagination are entirely different. If a seeming memory prove false, we
say it was only an imagination.

But, once more, a good many men never have images or phantasmata
(except words), or very few or faint ones, or only when falling asleep,
and so on. Yet they are not wanting in imagination; words or other
signs serve them instead of images to carry all meanings (the important
matter); they enter into the spirit of poetry and literary fiction:
so that imagination may be active without images. And the fact seems
to be that the effectiveness of mental processes depends very little
upon phantasmata, but upon something much deeper in the mind; and that
there exist in men all degrees of concrete representative power, from
those who picture everything they think of with vivid and definite
detail, down, through many stages of decreasing realisation, to those
who have only faint or fragmentary “images,” or even none at all:
without its being possible to say (at present) that one type of mind is
better or worse than another; though they may be adapted to different
tasks.

Expectation and reasoning, which are closely allied (for every
definite expectation is a sort of inference), are often carried on in
pictures—“picture thinking”—and this also is called imagination.
Tyndall’s brilliant address on _The Scientific Uses of the Imagination_
is well known. It greatly helps some men in thinking to form pictures
of what they think about, such as a machine or an anatomical specimen,
as if they had the thing before them; or even of an atom, which no man
ever has before him, and which cannot be imagined by reproducing the
precept, but only by constructing a picture from much grosser materials
according to concepts. The picture thus formed necessarily falls short
in some ways of the thing thought or meant, and can only be prevented
from misleading us by guarding it with definitions or rules or abstract
ideas; and this shows that the effectiveness of thought, the deeper
process mentioned above, is a concatenation or evolution of meanings
or general ideas, and that it is, in part, by illustrating these that
pictures are useful: they also serve to fix attention, as words do.

Thus reasoning may express itself by imagination. On the other hand,
imagination is more frequently contrasted with reason, as dealing in
fiction, not reality. Our confusion is shown thus: to call an historian
imaginative is depreciatory; yet it is as bad to say he is wanting in
imagination. In the latter case, we mean that he fails adequately to
conceive the events he treats of; in the former, that he embellishes or
distorts them with unverifiable representations.

Again, the term “imagination” is sometimes confined to intellectual
processes in the fine arts: dramas, novels, etc., are works of
imagination. Now dramas and novels all proceed upon one method, namely:
they begin by stating or insinuating an hypothesis concerning certain
persons in a given situation, and then deducing (that is reasoning out)
the consequences, occasionally helping the plot by further assumptions:
at least that is how it appears, though probably the main incident of
the plot is thought of first, and then an hypothesis is framed that
conveniently leads up to it. And if the reasoning is feeble, and if
the subsidiary assumptions are too numerous or too facile, we say the
work is flimsy or improbable—allowing for the _genre_; for a romance
is not expected to be as probable as a modern novel. _Gulliver’s
Travels_ afford the most perfect example of this method; for each
voyage begins with a frank absurdity—men six inches or sixty feet
high, a flying island, rational horses; but this being granted, the
sequel makes tolerable logic. Well, many scientific investigations seem
to follow exactly the same method—begin with an hypothesis, deduce
the consequences, and occasionally help out the argument with further
hypotheses (though that is not all): and here again the conclusion is
usually thought of first, and the hypothesis invented to explain it.
If it be said that the scientist believes his hypothesis to be true,
whilst the romancer does not, it may be replied that the scientist
sometimes expressly warns us that his assumption is only a “working
hypothesis,” which may not be true (though he thinks it may be),
whereas early epic poets and minstrels often regarded their work as by
no means without a foundation in fact.

Imagination and reasoning, then, are closely allied or interwoven,
and the contrasting of them depends entirely upon this, that there
is a sense in which imagination is not a presentation of truth or
matter-of-fact, whether it is believed to be or not; and a sense in
which reasoning is devoted solely to the discovery of truth concerning
facts, and to that end is protected by a methodology, carefully
comparing its premises, carefully verifying its conclusions; whereas
the imagination that is contrasted with reasoning knows nothing of a
methodology nor of verification. Even the modern novelist, a great part
of whose hypothesis is usually true—the present state of society,
facts of history or geography, etc.,—does not pretend to present a
truth of fact. It belongs to his art to play at reasoning; he has
learnt to play the game very well; but it remains play: he aims at and
attains not truth but verisimilitude. And when we look back on the
history of fiction we see (on the whole) the verisimilitude growing,
age by age, slighter and fainter; till in early romance and poetry
it is disturbed and broken and destroyed by stories about monsters,
impossible heroes, magicians and gods, believed at one time to be true,
and just the same as stories still believed by barbarians and savages,
but which we believe no longer.

It is such stories as these last, including all superstitions, that
I especially call “imagination-beliefs.” The term includes all false
beliefs, but with the rest I am not directly concerned. How are
imagination-beliefs possible?


§ 3. BELIEF

Belief is here used to denote the attitude of mind in which perceptions
are regarded as real, judgments as true of matters-of-fact, actions and
events as about to have certain results. It is a serious and respectful
attitude; for matter-of-fact compels us to adjust our behaviour to
it, whether we have power to alter it or not. Hume describes belief
as having a certain “force, vivacity, solidity, firmness, steadiness;
influence and importance in governing our actions”;[85] and these terms
are quite just, but most of them are synonyms; and the whole dictionary
will not make anybody understand what belief is who has never felt it.
However, there is no such person.

The quality of this attitude (or the “feeling” of it) as a specific
“state of consciousness” is difficult to observe, because (like
pleasure or displeasure) it is always marginal to something else in
the focus of attention, some object, judgment or action; but we can
appreciate it in its variations by considering the very different
degrees of “force, steadiness,” etc., which characterise several
beliefs regarded as more or less probable. The degree of belief
ought to correspond with the weight of evidence: if evidence for
any judgment is complete and uncontradicted, it may be called 1, and
the corresponding state of mind should be “certainty”; if evidence
for it there is none, or if evidence for the contradictory judgment
is complete, it may be called 0, and the state of mind “disbelief.”
Between these extremes there is room for an infinite series of
fractions, and for corresponding shades of doubt (which, of course, do
not really occur); and in the middle, at ½, there should be suspension
of judgment. But most of these refined attitudes are the luxury of a
few men severely trained in estimating evidence, and by them enjoyed
only in the departments they have been trained in. For the mass of
mankind, a very few shades of confidence or dubiety fill up their
scale of judgment-values; and these may be far from corresponding as
they should do with the quantity or quality of the evidence; and the
nearest they get to suspension of judgment is a state of hesitation
between alternatives that by turns seem equally likely. Disbelief,
though the opposite logically to belief, as rejection to acceptance,
has, nevertheless, much in common with it—the character of finality
and positiveness, which is often (perhaps always) derived from belief
in something else which is incompatible with the given judgment.

When the attitude of belief is established in one’s mind by evidence
clearly conceived, whether by the examination of facts or the weighing
of arguments, it is called “conviction,” and so is the process of
bringing it about; but if it results from considerations imperfectly
appreciated, and from emotional appeals, especially when urged by
another person, it may be called “persuasion,” though the word
describes the process rather than the result. Most imagination-beliefs,
including all superstitions, are persuasions.

It is generally admitted that the test of the strength of one’s belief
is its influence upon our actions—where the test is practicable. With
full belief one acts “confidently” (a significant verbal proposition!);
in doubt, hesitatingly or cautiously; in disbelief, not at all, or in
the sense of the contrary belief. But we cannot always judge of a man’s
beliefs from his actions; for he may be actuated by several beliefs,
and we do not know what they are. And popular actions that involve no
loss or hardship may express mere assent without belief.

There is a kind of imagination-belief, and the purest kind, which has
nothing to do with evidence: it is often called “make-believe” or
“play-belief”: the entering into or contemplating some activity, which
we know to have no direct bearing on our necessary interests, with as
much ardour and absorption as if it were the only important thing in
the world: as in games and sports, especially in drama and romance.
This is one of the many things that do not astonish because they are
so common; and the usual (and probably the true) explanation of it is,
that this state of mind is of the utmost utility in giving zest to
play, especially during youth. For many animals share in this spirit;
and the young of the higher animals, which enjoy a long protected
youth, pass the time chiefly at play, and thereby develop and train
all their faculties, physical and mental. It somewhat outlasts youth
in many animals, and conspicuously in ourselves, some having nothing
better to do (and they might do worse), and others relieving from time
to time the strain or tedium of work and, in some sort, prolonging
youth into middle age; till play becomes gradually less engrossing.

This play-belief depends entirely upon imaginative excitement; and it
shows that the attitude of belief may be adopted voluntarily, or fall
upon us (as it were) by surprise and maintain itself for a time in
great strength: with many at a melodrama it runs to anxiety, weeping
and anguish; and this not only without evidence, but in spite of the
knowledge that this is London, whose magistrates would never permit
such doings: only one forgets London, with all its dull conventions of
law and order. Attention is engrossed by the play.

Play-belief has the same traits as were said above to mark
superstitions: (1) it becomes active on occasions, and otherwise
disappears; (2) it is always modifiable for convenience or by a change
of taste; (3) it loses its hold and tends to die out in a man as time
goes on; (4) it is strengthened by the assent of an excited crowd; (5)
the objects of such beliefs are very variable. We shall find that in
other ways there is a close alliance between superstition and play.
But, certainly, superstition has a much deeper hold upon our nature;
for it not only excites fear and anxiety, but itself is born of those
passions: the desire of security and confidence, the dread of impending
and unknown perils, these are its life and strength. So that the wonder
is that superstitions are not more enduring. And the truth seems to be
that the tendency to adopt superstitions does endure at a certain level
of mentality, though particular superstitious beliefs are mutable; just
as in the individual, a disposition to play outlasts many particular
modes of recreation.

Belief, then, is an attitude of mind in which we may find ourselves
for good reasons, or for bad reasons, or for none at all; sometimes
even slipping into it voluntarily or involuntarily when we know the
situation is unreal; indeed, an attitude in which, in play or earnest,
we pass our lives, unless something happens to arouse doubt or
criticism.


§ 4. CAUSES AND GROUNDS OF BELIEF

The source, direct or indirect, of all belief is perception. In
perception must be included, for subjective studies, introspection;
though being difficult to keep steady, to repeat and to compare with
the observation of other minds, it carries less conviction. As to
perception we say that “seeing is believing”; and, in fact, an object
holds the eye in a way that vouches for its own reality; but, if we
suspect that our eyes deceive us, reassurance comes with the handling
of the thing. Belief has sometimes been discussed as if it were
chiefly concerned with ideas or the relations of ideas; and systems
of philosophy have sought justification in the coherence of ideas,
with little or no regard (not to say with contempt) for the coherence
of ideas with perceptions. But nearly the whole of every man’s life
(savage or philosopher) passes in an attitude of unquestioning belief
in the evidence of his senses; and it is thence that belief extends
to ideas on a presumption of their representing reality. We know that
a perception may be fallible, but perceptions and the comparison of
perceptions in the long run overrule everything else; and experimental
methods consist in taking precautions against the errors of perception,
and in bringing every hypothesis to the test of perception.

Further causes of belief are either Evidentiary, which (though often
misleading) may generally be justified on reflection as raising
some degree of probability, and which may, therefore, be called
“grounds”; or Non-evidentiary, which (though very influential) cannot,
on reflection, be justified as having any logical value, and are,
therefore, causes only and not grounds.

(1) Evidentiary grounds of belief are (_a_) memory, which is plainly
indispensable if we are to learn by experience; and (_b_) testimony,
which must be trusted if language is not to be useless and social
co-operation impossible: both these grounds are supposed to rest
upon the primary rock of previous perception, but are slippery and
treacherous. Memory is only valid so far as it truthfully represents
original experience, and testimony only so far as it presents (i)
a valid memory, (ii) correctly reported. Hence in serious matters
precautions must be taken against their fallibility: otherwise they
are not good evidence. A specious memory, so far as it is false, is
imagination; and false testimony, so far as it reports (i) a false
memory or (ii) an invention of the reporter, is also imagination.
Testimony gathers force, as a cause of belief, with the numbers and
consideration of those who support it, and is especially strengthened
by their unanimity; but, as a ground of belief, it depends only on
their knowledge and truthfulness. A third ground of belief is (_c_)
inference; which is necessary to all original adjustment of our conduct
to the future or to unperceived circumstances, but highly fallible,
and constituting the chief problem for the exercise of Logic when
that science arises: especially to explain the conditions of valid
observations and experiments, of probability, of the conclusion of
an argument being covered by its premises, and of the sufficiency of
verification. False inferences that cannot be verified are imaginations.

As the growing mind of society deals with true beliefs they are piled
up and classified in systems of science and philosophy: in which
systems each belief or judgment strengthens and is strengthened by
the rest. Even without systematisation, the mere structural similarity
of judgments, formed unconsciously on the same implicit principles of
causation and classification, throws them into those loose apperceptive
masses which we call “common sense.” Such systems or masses, whether
of science or of common sense, readily assimilate and confirm new
inferences having the same character, and offer resistance to all
inferences having a different structure, such as those about magic
and spirits. The selective power of these apperceptive masses over
novel ideas constitutes “understanding,” and is the plain solid man’s
substitute for Logic; and so it is with many scientists, who often
neglect the abstract study of Logic. For these systems or masses of
experience are the substance of Logic and Methodology, which are their
skeletons abstracted from them. They are the basis of all effective
comparison and criticism; agreement or disagreement with them is the
test of truth or error. It is the chief defect of common sense that the
verification of its judgments depends almost entirely upon repetition
of experiences (what Logicians call “simple enumeration”), without that
analysis of observations which alone can show the necessary relations
of facts; but this defect is in some measure remedied in good minds
by that power of unformulated ideas of natural order, the result of
unconscious analysis, which we call “good judgment”—a power which the
fortunate possessor may be unable to explain.

(2) Non-evidentiary causes of belief are all reducible to bad
observations, imaginations, and the causes that excite imagination; and
bad observations are caused by false imaginations as to the meaning
of sense-data. If it should seem to any one that since imagination
consists of ideas it must be by nature incompatible with intense
belief, we must consider that memory, the effects of testimony, and
inferences also consist entirely of ideas; so that in that character
they do not differ from imagination. Even perception depends for
its meaning upon implicit ideas, and erroneous perception is due to
erroneous ideas. The weakness of imagination-belief which (despite its
frequent intensity) always in time becomes manifest, is due to its not
being constantly confirmed by experience.

In detail the non-evidentiary causes of belief are as follows: (_a_)
not only the truths of experience become massed or systematised
in common sense and science, but the errors of misinterpreted
experience and tradition form similar aggregates. Coincidences
mistaken for causation, illusions, dreams, tales of thaumaturgy
and ghost-stories, so far as they have anything in common in their
outlines or emotional tone, form apperceptive masses which function
in the same way as scientific systems: each of their constituent
beliefs strengthens and is strengthened by the rest; and each mass
(as a delusive “understanding”) readily assimilates and confirms any
new tale or illusion having its own character, and resists and repels
every judgment having a different structure—and, therefore, refuses
explanation. And just as science and common sense have a sort of
internal skeleton of principles which has been exhibited as Logic, so
some of these comparatively obscure and chaotic masses of illusion
and tradition contain certain structural principles which, though
unconscious at the lowest human level, obtain recognition as culture
advances—for example, the principles of mimetic and contagious magic;
and then, too, arise such caricatures of science as theogonies and
cosmologies, chiromancy, astrology and so forth. But nothing ever
emerges from them that can be called a test of truth or methodology;
much less, of course, can such a thing be found at lower levels of
culture. There you see the accumulating clouds of imagination-belief,
which gather together from all the winds and pile themselves up to
overshadow poor humanity age after age; which still, in our own world,
are by no means dissipated; and to whose persistent influence we may (I
suppose) attribute the mysticism that periodically infects philosophy
itself.

(_b_) Contributory to these masses of error are bad observations,
confused and distorted memories, dreams and corrupted testimony and
tradition, all of them having their origin in some sort of experience
and matter-of-fact, and all issuing in vain imaginations. For of course
there is no such thing as imagination underived from experience;
experience is distorted and corrupted by superstition, but it
transfers to superstition the attitude of belief that always belongs
to experience, and supplies materials from which (as we shall see) it
is often possible to construct such a defence of superstition as, to
an unsophisticated mind, must be very plausible and persuasive.[86]
Direct experience is often interpreted by a story in such a way as
to make the story more credible. If a stone is shown as marking the
tomb of a hero, or a cleft in the mountain as proving the prowess of a
wizard, one unconsciously transfers the attitude of belief involved in
contemplating these relics to all the legends concerning those mighty
men of old.

(_c_) The causes determining belief are reinforced in various ways
by feeling and emotion. The agreeableness or disagreeableness of any
judgment draws attention to, or diverts it from such a judgment and the
evidence for it: except that some disagreeable emotions, especially
fear, by a sort of fascination of attention, are favourable to belief
in the reality of an imagined evil. They possess the whole mind.

(_d_) Every desire fixes attention upon beliefs favourable to it,
and upon any evidence favourable to them, and diverts attention from
conflicting beliefs and considerations. Thus every desire readily forms
about itself a relatively isolated mass of beliefs, which resists
comparison and, therefore (as Ribot says),[87] does not recognise the
principle of contradiction. Incompatible desires may be cherished
without our becoming aware of their incompatibility; or, if the fact
obtrudes itself upon us, we repudiate it and turn away.

The more immature a mind, again, and the less knowledge it has, the
less inhibition of desire is exerted by foresight of consequences that
ought to awaken conflicting desires or fears; and the less compassion
one has, the less is desire inhibited by its probable consequences to
others: therefore, in both cases, the less check there is upon belief.

(_e_) Voluntary action in connection with any belief, whether of a
rational kind or in the routine of rites and ceremonies, favours that
belief: (1) by establishing the idea-circuit of means and end, the
end suggesting the means to it, and the thought of means running
forward to the end—a circuit that resists interruption: (2) by the
general effect of habit and prejudice; for every habit of action or of
thought has inertia, and, moreover, it is agreeable, and to break it is
disagreeable; so that, again, a relatively isolated system is formed,
which resists comparison and criticism.

On the influence of desire and of activities for an end depends “the
will to believe.” We cannot believe anything by directly willing it;
but we can will what to attend to, or what to do, and that determines
belief.

(_f_) Finally, belief is determined by certain social influences
besides testimony and tradition: especially by sympathy and antipathy
between families, parties, tribes; and by imitativeness and
suggestibility (qualified fortunately by contra-suggestibility); so
that beliefs become fashionable, endemic, coercive, impassioned and
intolerant. The power of a crowd to inflict its passions and beliefs
upon the individual has recently been much explained: it has always
been practically understood by wizards, priests and politicians who
lead mankind by the ears. Suggestibility, in general, is the liability
to follow example or testimony without criticising it; and for many
people it is so easy to fall into the attitude of belief upon slight
provocation, that this liability, to the extent of weakness, is very
common. Contra-suggestibility in general is the opposite tendency.
But special suggestibility (I should say) is the liability to adopt a
belief on testimony not only in the absence of evidence, but against
evidence; and contra-suggestibility is the liability to reject a belief
against the evidence. They are merely extreme cases. If you draw two
equal straight lines, A and B, and say, “It seems to me that B is
longer than A,” one person will reply “Certainly,” another “Certainly
not; A is the longer.” The art of suggestion consists in reducing
your audience to this state of imbecility; it requires you to bring
them into such a condition of exclusive attention to your words that,
comparison and criticism being excluded, their natural disposition to
assent shall (for the time) have free play. The specially suggestible
person is easily thrown into this state of exclusive attention, as if
hypnotised. He who is suggestible by one man may not be so by another;
or he may be more suggestible in the line of his prejudices than
against them.


§ 5. THE BELIEFS OF IMMATURE MINDS

All these grounds and causes of belief, evidentiary and non-evidentiary
(except Logic and Science) are common to both mature and immature
minds: but their proportional influence with individuals or with
societies is very different at different stages of development; and
in immature minds and in the lower stages of culture, the power of
the non-evidentiary causes is excessive. Probably the chief cause of
the growth of common sense in the generality of men is an increasing
regularity of social life, as (notably) in the bloom of the classical
civilisations and in the last four hundred years.

Perception, in normal circumstances, is accepted by all as a matter
of course or, rather, of necessity: it controls the activities of
practical life in hunting and in industry, in making weapons, hoeing
the ground, building houses: however, these labours may sometimes be
modified or interrupted by the intrusion of beliefs derived from other
sources. If a savage sings a spell to his prey, or weapon, or tool, or
keeps the head of a slain enemy on a shelf that his victim’s soul may
assist him as a slave, he may thereby increase his own confidence in
the work of hunting or gardening; but, otherwise, if his work be no
better, neither need it be the worse for such fancies. The properties
of matter exact practical recognition, without which nothing can be
done. Even magical practices presuppose a sane perception of the
central facts: as who is acting, for what purpose, when and where,
with what and toward whom. Upon this basis there may be an astonishing
superstructure of imagination-belief; but there are limits to the
effectiveness of such beliefs.

M. Levy-Bruhl, indeed, in a very interesting book, maintains[88] that,
under the influence of social ideas (_représentations collectives_),
the primitive mind actually perceives things differently from what
we do. Whilst we succeed in attaining an objective presentation,
eliminating subjective associations, with primitives _propriétés
mystique_, _forces occultes_ are integral qualities of the object. He
grants that, in certain cases of immediate practical interest, we find
them very attentive and able to discriminate slight impressions, and to
recognise the external signs of an object on which their subsistence
or even their life depends; but holds that, in a very great majority
of cases, their perceptions are over-weighted by subjective elements.
This doctrine reverses (I venture to think) the real relations between
perceptions and other causes of belief and their proportionate
influence in savage life. It is not only where subsistence or life
is at stake that backward peoples see things as they are: in merely
experimental tests, Dr. Rivers found amongst both Papuans and Todas,
that, as to suggestibility in perception, they showed a high degree
of independence of judgment.[89] Their confidence in perception is
not, like imagination-belief, occasional, modifiable for convenience,
liable to lapse in course of time, dependent on the assent of a crowd.
So far as occult or mystical attributes are by a savage assigned to
things, such as magical force to a weapon, they constitute a secondary,
imaginary integration with the percept. Such imaginary attributes
cannot, like perception attributes, be verified by sensation: compare
the hardness of a spearhead with its magical force.

The peculiarity of savage beliefs is due, not to corrupt and clouded
perception, but to the influence of desire and anxiety upon their
imagination, unrestrained by self-criticism and reinforced by the
popular consensus. The savage’s imagination is excited by the
pressing needs of his life in hunting, love, war, agriculture, and
therefore by hunger and emulation, hate and grief, fear and suspicion.
Imaginations spring up in his mind by analogy with experience; but
often by remote or absurd analogies; and there is no logic at hand
and not enough common sense to distinguish the wildest imaginative
analogies from trustworthy conclusions. The same pressing needs and the
same emotional storms often affect a whole tribe, and simultaneously
stimulate every one’s imagination; and originating (no doubt) in
ancient times and slowly accumulating and condensing, there grows up a
mass of public imagination-beliefs, which are inculcated into every
individual by tradition and common ceremonies. Such beliefs embodied
in stories and formulæ, and associated with rites and customs, have
for a long time the strength of custom in governing the behaviour
of individuals and in tribal respect; but they prove at last to be
weaker than custom, inasmuch as the observances may continue whilst
the beliefs are forgotten or replaced by others, as the progress of
culture makes it necessary to think of the old rites in a different
way. In their flourishing period they extensively influence practical
affairs, sometimes helpfully or harmlessly, sometimes injuriously and
disastrously. In general, imaginations are prevented by biological
necessity from modifying a tribe’s conduct beyond certain limits; but,
exceptionally, they result in tribal insanity, tending toward, if not
accomplishing, the tribe’s destruction, as in extreme cases of the
practice of human sacrifice or of the ordeal by poison.

Indeed, so violent and tyrannous is the power of superstitious beliefs
in many cases, that it may be difficult to understand how they are
almost entirely born of the imagination. In a civilised country there
are always current some beliefs as imaginative and absurd as any to
be found in the middle of Africa; but surviving amidst a greater mass
of perception-beliefs and positive ideas about industry and commerce,
they have lost much of their driving power; and when the imaginative
character of any belief has been recognised, it passes into the region
of fine art or mythology, or even of ridicule. If such things have any
place in our life, we turn to them of personal choice in the intervals
of affairs. Under the influence of the fine arts or of literature
treating of such things, our emotional states may be intense; but
they are dissociated from action, exist for their own sake, have an
appropriate tone (æsthetic) which marks their lack of energy, so
that they require only an imaginary satisfaction. With a backward
people there is much less “positive” opposition to their imaginative
prepossessions and pursuits; what seems to us absurd, seems to them
necessary; the actions and observances that express their beliefs are
not performed as a matter of personal choice, but of public custom; the
ends to be obtained (they think) are the same as those of what we call
“business.” And it must be so. Considering the function of superstition
in promoting political evolution, it is plain that primitive man must
have been capable of believing and doing those things which (within
certain limits) had so much biological and social value.

To understand how the magical and religious beliefs of savages and the
play-beliefs of civilised man, having a common source in imagination,
are (in spite of strong contrasts) closely allied, we must call to mind
the many degrees of intensity of play-belief in ourselves, varying
from the momentary entertainment of playing with a child, through many
grades of fiction or ceremony, down to a deeply serious frame of mind,
a profound movement of dread or compassion that may long outlast our
play. A child’s absorption in such beliefs is more intense than ours;
but circumstances prevent his attaining to the solid faith of a savage.
The child of civilised people has little or no support in tradition
(except from nursemaids); he is not driven by the desires and anxieties
of subsistence; and he is frequently interrupted by his seniors. The
savage has an overwhelming tradition and authority, pressing anxieties
and no seniors. Until the civilised sceptic reaches his shores, there
is, for the average tribesman, nothing but tardy experience or social
fatigue to check his vagaries. His imagination vies with the sense of
reality, often overpowers it; yet his beliefs show many signs of their
insecure foundations.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is not only the influence of society and tradition that renders
imagination-beliefs coercive to a savage; in the immature mind of the
individual there are certain conditions favourable to their prevalence.

(_a_) The process of imagination itself, the memory and the
picture-thinking of savages, seems to be more vivid, sensuous, stable,
more like perception than our own normally is. “The Australians,”
says Spencer and Gillen, “have the most wonderful imagination.”[90]
They often die of it; and so do Hindoo peasants, Maories, Fijians,
Negroes and others, if they know they have been cursed or have broken
a taboo. With the Melanesians, says Dr. Coddrington, thinking is like
seeing;[91] and Dr. Rivers has confirmed this statement. Hence there is
a tendency to accept imaginations as perceptions are accepted; and to
believe in the efficacy of rites, because the mere performing of them
with an imagined purpose makes their purpose seem to be accomplished.
When a man of intense and excited imagination makes an image of an
enemy, and stabs it, that his enemy may suffer, his action gratifies
the impulse to stab, as if he wounded the enemy himself, and revenge
seems to be a present fact. Similar intensity of imagination is found
in civilised children—greater than in ordinary adults. Savages,
again, seem to dream more vividly and convincingly than is usual
amongst ourselves, and are said to be more liable to hallucinations.
Physiological conditions of the immature brain (childish or savage),
in which excitement does not rapidly spread through many associated
neurones, may be the basis of the vividness of imagination, dreaming
and hallucination.

(_b_) But more important than any intensity of picture-thinking to
the growth and persistence of imagination-beliefs, is the want of a
mental standard, by which they might be discredited. It is true that
even at a low level of culture individuals are found for whom common
sense constitutes a private standard, and who are sceptics in relation
to their tribal beliefs.[92] But such a private standard cannot be
communicated, and for the great majority of the tribesmen common
sense is no confident guide; and perhaps they are even incapable of
effectively comparing their ideas. At any rate, one reason why we
believe our memories and not our imaginations is that, whilst in
both cases the images (or elements of images) entering into them are
derived from experience, in memory the relations of images in place,
time and context are also derived directly from experience; whereas in
imagination images (or their elements) are reconstructed in relations
in which they have never been experienced, by analogies of experience
(often distorted) or by condensations the most capricious. Therefore,
to make imaginations credible to us, even in play, the relations of
experience must be faithfully imitated, as (_e. g._) in _Robinson
Crusoe_; or else our emotions must be so strongly excited as to possess
our minds with the fiction to the exclusion of all criticism. But with
immature minds observation of fact, outside the practical, repetitive,
necessary course of life, is not exact and coherent; and, accordingly,
their memories are not coherent, especially as to time-relations; so
that, by comparison with such memories, irregular imaginations suffer
little. There is not enough orderly memory or general knowledge to
discredit even absurd imaginations; for so far as observation and
memory are disorderly, generalisation, conscious or unconscious, is
impossible. Hence not only traditionary myths may be monstrous and
arbitrary, but occasional tales of private invention, amongst both
children and savages, usually exhibit disconnected transitions and
impossible happenings. Yet they satisfy the immature mind.

(_c_) There are certain other conditions of the immature mind that
hinder the comparison of ideas and, therefore, the criticism of
beliefs. About every imperative need, such as success in hunting, with
its desires and anxieties, rites and ceremonies grow up to gratify
imaginatively the desires and relieve the anxieties; and ideas of
these observances form relatively isolated systems. To us these ideas
usually seem absurd and irrelevant when compared with the savage’s own
experiences and his other practices. We see a hunter, for example,
endeavour to gain his ends by two distinct series of actions. In one
he fasts, enchants his weapons, casts spells upon his expected prey;
in the other he carefully prepares his weapons, patiently tracks his
prey, warily approaches and slays it. The latter series we approve
and appreciate as causation; the former we ridicule as hocus-pocus,
contributing objectively nothing to the event (though probably it
increases his confidence); and we pity “the heathen in his blindness.”
And, indeed, he may be said to be mind-blind; for in observing the
rites, his attention is so occupied by means and end, and caught in the
circuit in which these ideas revolve, and he is so earnest in carrying
out the prescribed actions, that he cannot compare them with the really
effective actions, so as to discover their absurdity and irrelevancy.
In short, a state of mental dissociation is established for the system
of magical ideas. So far does illusion go that he seems to regard
the rites as the most important part of his proceedings. But that is
not really his deepest conviction: he trusts in Magic and keeps his
bowstring dry.

(_d_) In the case of children we may assume, and in the more backward
races of men we may suspect, that the comparison of judgments is
difficult, or sometimes even impossible, because of the imperfect
development of the cerebral cortex. There must be some structural
conditions of the free flow of energy through all organs of the brain,
corresponding with the associability and comparability of all ideas.
We may doubt if these conditions are complete even in good cultivated
minds; since everybody finds one or another study or art especially
difficult for him, or the freeing of himself from this or that sort
of prejudice especially repugnant. And it is not only deliberate
comparison that is hindered in the immaturity of the brain, but also
that automatic process (more or less unconscious) of assimilation
and discrimination to which (I think) we owe most of the results of
abstraction and generalisation that may seem to have required purposive
comparison. Such imperfections of structure, greatest at the lowest
levels of organisation, and gradually decreasing as ideal rationality
is approached, we may call “incoördination”; and, so far as it obtains,
the results must be somewhat similar to the discoördination, the
breaking down or interruption of organic efficiency, that occurs in
hysteria, hypnosis and some forms of insanity. One of the results
probably is suggestibility—the tendency to accept what is told,
or insinuated, without examination; for freedom from this common
liability depends (apart from the contra-suggestible disposition) upon
the rapidity and definiteness with which one can compare that which
is suggested with present fact or with one’s knowledge and former
experience; and this is hindered by incoördination.

Effective incoördination may, however, be merely functional for want
of practice in thinking; and it exists often enough in civilised
people, because they have not even the desire to be consistent. In
either case, whether from defective structure or from the dull inertia
of disuse, there will be failure of comparison and, therefore, of
criticism, and also (we may suppose) a greater intensity of imagination
and of dreaming and a liability to hallucination, such as is said to be
frequently the case with immature minds.


§ 6. THE REASONING OF IMMATURE MINDS

We have seen that many beliefs result from inferences, and that
inferences, when logically justifiable, may be considered as grounds
(raising some degree of probability); but, when not justifiable,
they are only causes of belief and their results are only
imagination-beliefs. Since the general nature of reasoning is the same
for Socrates and Sambo, we must inquire into the particular nature of
the reasoning which leads immature minds into such bewildering mazes of
error as we see (for example) in the world-wide prevalence of Magic and
Animism.

On the inductive side of knowledge (the obtaining of premises) there
is, of course, much imperfect observation and hasty generalisation;
but, in spite of these faults, a savage learns by repeated experiences
a great many narrow general truths about the physical world, plants,
animals and his fellow-men, which constitute his stock of common sense
and on the strength of which he lives as a very intelligent animal. We
shall find from time to time errors of observation (such as the taking
of a dream for reality) and of generalisation (such as the classing of
worms with reptiles); but, strictly speaking, this is not reasoning:
all reasoning is deductive, and the immature mind’s deductive processes
need a fuller analysis.

Our Logic consists of a few universal principles generally accepted,
with which any more particular judgment may be compared in order
to test its validity. The matter may be superficially acquired in
a few hours; but the full comprehension of it implies the widest
comparison of types of judgment from all departments of knowledge:
Logic being (as I have said) a sort of skeleton of knowledge. Hence
in any mind incapable of comparison and criticism—or so far as it
is incapable—there must be an absence of Logic. So much effective
comparison of experience, however, goes on without our specially
attending to it that a man’s logical power bears no proportion to
his investigations into the structure of knowledge. One man may be a
great student of Logic and a very inefficient reasoner from a want
of discipline in the world of fact; another, who has never opened a
text-book, may yet show by the definiteness of his judgments and the
adequacy of his plans, that he is a sort of incarnate Logic, that his
mind works according to reason or (in other words) according to the
order of facts. It is the highest manifestation of common sense. Such
men occur among backward peoples.

The only universal principles that need be considered here are the Law
of Causation and the Form of Substance and Attribute (Mill’s doctrine
of Natural Kinds): which may be called the principles of parallel
reasoning; because the greater part of ordinary reasoning consists in
drawing some inference parallel to one or the other of them, usually
in some restricted shape. For example, a restriction of causation is
the proposition that “exposure to intense daylight causes sun-burn,”
of substance and attribute that “the specific gravity of gold is
about 19·5”: whence we infer that if we expose ourselves to sunlight
our faces or hands will suffer, or that any piece of gold will be
relatively very heavy. But in such cases erroneous inferences are
easy: for example, to expect that exposure to London sunshine will
cause sunburn; for there the foul atmosphere cuts off the actinic
rays: or to expect that a lump of brass will have specific gravity
19·5. A necessary precaution before trusting an inference, therefore,
is the ascertaining that the inference deals with the very same sort
of case as the premise describes: else there is no complete parallel.
And Logicians show in the form of the syllogism this necessary
precaution—to use their favourite example in a case of Substance and
Attribute:

  Major premise—_All men are mortal_;
  Minor premise—_Socrates is a man_;
   ⁂ Conclusion—_Socrates is mortal_.

The conclusion _Socrates is Mortal_ is parallel to the major premise
_All men are mortal_; and that it deals with the very same sort of case
is secured by the minor premise, _Socrates is a man_. Whoever reasons
must see to it that this premise is true. But the savage has never
noticed that necessity; and thence come most of his errors.

The syllogism (it is now admitted) does not describe the way in which
we reason, but is only a form which gives some help in testing the
validity of reasoning if one should ever think of doing such a thing.
In practice we do not think first of the major premise, then of the
minor premise and lastly of the conclusion. As a rule we do not think
of either premise at all: the “conclusion” comes first to mind. In
certain circumstances of association, because of our hopes or our
fears, it occurs to us that “Socrates is mortal.” If some one should
doubt this judgment and ask for proof, we might think of the major
premise, and then put it into words for the first time—“All men die;”
even then it might not seem necessary to add that “Socrates is a man.”
But although we may not have been at the time aware of these premises
until we were asked for them, their presence in the mind in some way
was necessary to determine the inference: the major premise was there
as latent memory of one or more cases of people who had died; the minor
premise was represented by the assimilation of the case of Socrates to
those cases of mortal men. The former experiences have left an engram,
which serves as a mould into which subsequent experience may run, and
which conceivably may determine subsequent judgments even though the
former experiences can no longer be remembered.

The phrase “form of thought” is most used for premises of high
generality, such as the axioms of mathematics, causation, substance
and attribute, space in three dimensions; and, undoubtedly, these are
forms which determine the lines of all thinking to which they are
relevant; but they would be useless, if there were not, under them,
forms established in very concrete material by the repetition of simple
experiences and ordinary events (or even by single impressive events),
such as “men are mortal,” “water quenches fire,” which determine the
lines of common-sense judgments. If there has been an experiential
judgment—X is related to Y, when X again appears it is expected to be
related to Y.

Amongst savages also, of course, experience settles in their minds
such forms of thought; both the most general ones, which they never
formulate but which necessarily control their thoughts, and many
particular ones concerning the experience of daily life; which last
control the details of their thoughts, and for practical purposes are
true; but which, through ignorance of the minor premise, are allowed
to assimilate many judgments of a very different nature. Thus, X
being known to be related to Y, they are apt to infer that things
that are like X, or which they suppose to be like X, are also in the
same way related to Y; and this is disastrous. In civilised life,
most occupations are so mechanical, and the general tradition is so
positive, that there is little encouragement to think nonsense; so that
the average man reasons tolerably about simple matters without having
heard of the minor premise; but the savage’s life is much less regular,
and less fully occupied, and the tradition is full of magic and ghosts.
Accordingly, he is always ready to think about magic and ghosts; and
since his thoughts about such things can only run in the mould of his
experiences (with some playroom for amplification, distortion and
condensation), whilst he is also ignorant of the function of the minor
premise, he seems to draw often from a very sound major premise a very
absurd conclusion. For the minor premise is an invention of Logicians
(perhaps their greatest): it does not occur to cursory, but only to
critical thought.

For example, a savage judges that to put a lock of a man’s hair in the
fire injures and may destroy him: how comes he to think so? He has
learnt by experience that for a man to put his hand in the fire, or
to fall into it, hurts him; and this supplies the mould in which his
inference about the lock of hair is cast. Similarly, he is apt to judge
that to throw a man’s image into the fire hurts him and may destroy
him; and this clearly rests upon the same experience. His reasoning
assumes the minor premise that (for the purpose of his revenge) a
separated part of a man, or his image, is the same as the man himself;
and this assumption is made explicit in the famous maxims of Magic,
that in rites, whatever has been in contact with a man—or that any
likeness of a man—may be substituted for him. But the generalisation
of these maxims is left for an advanced stage of culture; the savage,
who acts as if he held them, has never thought of, much less formulated
them. They are derived, by later thought, entirely from an analysis of
his conduct in magic. What the causes are that determine him to act as
if he accepted the maxims of Magic will presently be discussed.[93]

There are certain other reasonings implied in savage practices, where
the error lies not so much in the minor premise as in the minor term,
thus: It is matter of experience that a sense of personal power and
elation is produced by dancing and singing; and (perhaps without
remembering such experience) a savage infers that magical power is
increased by the same means. Or, again, it is matter of experience that
men eat and use solid food and weapons; and a savage infers that ghosts
eat ghostly food and use ghostly weapons; that is to say, that where
food and spears are left at a tomb and remain untouched, the ghost has
taken to himself the soul of these things which was his proper share.
Now granting that there are such things as magical powers and ghosts,
the reasoning that identifies them respectively with physical power and
with men is, for the purpose of the inference, not unplausible; with a
liberal examiner the minor premises might pass. But if magical powers
and ghosts do not exist, the minor terms are imaginary.[94] In short,
all these reasonings turn upon imaginations. The experiential major
premises are true enough, but the minor premises are illusory, and as
it is a maxim with Logicians that the force of reasoning follows the
weaker premise, the conclusion is illusory. It is not in perception but
in imagination that a part is the same as the whole, or that a likeness
is the same as the thing itself; that magic controls events and that
ghosts haunt their sepulchres.

These reasonings are fallacious imitations of parallel inferences
according to cause and effect; but there are others of a kind peculiar
to imagination: I mean reasonings by analogy—as when a Zulu, courting
the dusky fair, chews a piece of wood, in the expectation that, as
the wood is reduced to pulp, her heart, too, will be softened. These
processes are not parallel; there is no resemblance between a lady’s
heart and a piece of wood, nor between mastication and court-ship; but
the relation involved, the softening process, is felt to be the same in
both connections and, therefore, the cases on the whole are thought to
be the same. Many rites and observances depend upon such analogies—for
this is the strict sense of analogy, “like relations of unlike terms”;
and they have a leading part in the formation of myths in which natural
events are represented as personal relations—Apollo chasing the
Dawn, and so forth. And I formerly thought that such arguments as the
foregoing, in which the actions of ghosts are identified with those
of men, or the sufferings of a part are equated with those of the
whole, were examples of analogical reasoning; for certainly, the terms
involved are different: a ghost, or an image, or a nail-paring is not
the same as a man. But, on reflection, I see that though these terms
are really different, that has nothing to do with the psychology of
the matter, for they are conceived by the savage to be the same; and,
therefore, the inference is conceived as parallel to the experiential
ground (even though this remain latent in consciousness).

Analogical thought is now understood to be imaginative only, and is
confined to the metaphors and similes of poetry or rhetoric; though it
is not very long ago that it was seriously trusted in argument, as in
defending absolute monarchy in the State by the examples of patriarchy
in the family, and even by the supposed “regiment” of bees and quails
in their societies, of the lion over beasts and of the eagle over birds.

In this spirit, Malays, having identified the life of the rice plant
with human life, regard the flowering rice as in its infancy, and
proceed to feed it with pap: and carry out the analogy at further
stages of its development. Similarly, to facilitate childbirth, or to
liberate the struggling soul of the dying, it is a respected recipe
to untie all knots, unfasten all buttons, unlock all doors, open all
windows; for opening or loosing, no matter what, is always the same
process-relation.

These seem to be the chief modes of fallacious thinking—(1) false
parallels and (2) analogies—which mislead the untutored mind and give
to imagination-beliefs such coherence as they ever attain. Two accounts
of superstitious reasoning have been given by those who admit that
savages reason at all; one is that they reason correctly from absurd
premises; the other that they reason absurdly from correct premises.
If the foregoing analysis is sound, there is some truth and some error
in both these doctrines. So far as primitive ratiocination is purely
analogical, it is quite futile, whether its premises be true or false;
for it cannot be cast in any admissible logical form. So far as in
superstition it imitates parallel reasoning, according to cause and
effect or substance and attribute, the major premise is, for the most
part, empirically true; the minor premise is false; and the conclusion
is a vain imagination. There are three types of ratiocination: (1)
equations, as in mathematics; and here primitive man for a long time
got no further than the counting of things by his fingers and toes.
(2) Parallels of premise and inference, according to causation or
substance and attribute, as in the physical and natural sciences;
and here the savage collects by experience much common sense, and by
inevitable fallacies much superstition. (3) Analogies of imagination.
The natural progress of reason consists in relegating analogies to
poetry and rhetoric; in introducing greater and greater accuracy into
the judgments that serve as major premises, and greater caution in
assuming minor premises; at last, in counting and measuring the facts
reasoned about, and so preparing the beginnings of mathematical method.
Such progress is promoted by the high biological value of greater
definiteness of thought. Immature man in the necessary practical
life—which may be called the biological life—has many definite
perceptions and judgments and well-adjusted actions; outside that life,
in the region of superstitious observance, he is not a rational, but an
imaginative animal.


§ 7. GENERAL IDEAS AT THE SAVAGE LEVEL

The language of savages is often wanting in names of classes of
things for which names are with us a matter of course, and it has
been supposed that those who use the language must be without the
corresponding general ideas. Thus it is reported that a tribe had a
name for each kind of tree but none for tree in general; another had
a name for coco-nuts at various stages of growth (when they serve
different uses) but none for coco-nut at all times: therefore, it is
inferred, they had no general idea of tree or of coco-nut. A Siberian
example is still more remarkable. The Tunguses depend entirely upon
reindeer for food, clothes, tents and locomotion, and keep herds of
them; yet they have no name for the animal. But they have a name for
wild and another for tame reindeer; a name for domestic reindeer that
have been broken in, and another for the unbroken; a name for the
female fawn, for the doe with young, for a doe with one fawn, a doe in
the third year with two fawns; a name for each age-class of buck, and
so on.[95] Are we to infer that the Tunguses have no general idea of
reindeer?

It was, no doubt, natural to assume that we first perceive individuals,
which now stand clearly before us, and then, having compared them,
arrive at general ideas. But if knowledge grows by the assimilation
and differentiation of experiences, the class on the one hand
and the individual on the other, must be joint products of this
process: classes becoming clearer as more and more individuals are
discriminated. Classes, or class-ideas never stand before us as
individuals do; but the greater part of the meaning of every perception
of an individual is the kind of thing it is. And as to priority,
to perceive the kind of thing is (biologically) far more important
than its individuality. If the individual did not mean the class, to
perceive it would be useless as a guide to action. The general idea
derived from the assimilation of experiences is the apperceptive mass
that converts sense-stimulation into cognition: when unconscious
Romanes called it a “recept.”

The primitiveness of general ideas is shown by gesture-language, which
probably precedes speech, and which (except in direct indication
of what is thought of) depends wholly upon general ideas suggested
by imitative or significant actions. Primitive language must have
described things by general characters, so far as it consisted in
onomatopœia; to growl like a lion could only suggest the kind of
animal. Primitive drawing (whether by children or savages) is nearly
always generic: dog, horse, frigate-bird, hammer-headed shark, but not
any individual.

There can be no doubt that savages are capable of general and abstract
ideas; and no one now supposes that language is an adequate measure of
thought. A language contains names only for things, groups, and aspects
or actions of things which the people who use it need to discuss: if
they do not need to speak of abstractions, there are no words for them.
But we cannot assume of the contents of the mind, any more than of the
outside world, that things do not exist unless we have noticed and
named them. Professor Franz Boas has shown[96] that languages of the
northern Amerinds, that do not idiomatically express abstract ideas,
may be made to do so without violence, and that the abstract expression
is intelligible to men native to the languages. “Every one who knows
people of low culture,” says Dr. Rivers, “must recognise the difficulty
which besets the study of any abstract question, not so much because
the savage does not possess abstract ideas as that he has no words of
his own to express them.”[97]

Amongst the ideas attained by savages, and having an important part
in their lives, though often taken for granted and unexpressed, are
some of the highest generality: for example “force.” The notion of
force is derived from the experience of effort in our own muscular
exertions; but with the development of our perception of physical
objects by the integration of sense-data—sight, touch, movement and
resisted movement (kinæsthesis), smell, hearing—this sense of effort,
being transferred to objects as equivalent to our own exertions about
them, becomes the all-important core of every object (or meaning of
every perception of an object), without which the thing would be a
mere show, neither useful nor injurious—sheep and tigers, rocks and
pumpkins alike indifferent. Probably the perceptions of all the higher
animals (down to reptiles) have this meaning. Force is reality, and by
primitive man is thought of as the essence of whatever he conceives
of as real, such as spells, talismans and ghosts. Having a subjective
ground, from which it never becomes free, the notion of it is
indefinite, varies for each of us with our constitution, age, health,
and not only lends itself to the wildest whims of superstition, but has
misled scientific investigations.

Relations are a class of general ideas familiar to savage thought,
often appreciated with great subtlety and especially prominent in
some magical operations. Relations are not only thought of by savages
but compared, and likenesses discovered between them that may often
surprise us. A gardener of New Guinea, having planted taro, ensured the
growth of the crop by saying: “A muræna, left on the shore by the tide,
was exhausted and on the point of expiring, when the tide returned,
and it revived and swam away.” And he struck the ground with a branch
three times.[98] He saw that renewal of life in the muræna and in the
taro were the same thing; so that to describe one must strengthen the
other—such is the “force” of a spell!

The most important relation involved in knowledge and in its practical
applications is causation. Savages who have no word for causation and
have never thought of it in the abstract, must always act as if they
assume it. This is apt to be misunderstood. It is written: “The natives
[of Australia] have no idea of cause and effect. They notice that two
things occur one after the other, and at once jump to the conclusion
that one is cause and the other effect.” They have, then, some idea of
the relation, though ill-discriminated. Thus, having noticed that the
plover often cries before rain, they imitate the cry when performing
rites to bring on rain. We rather suppose that an atmospheric change,
preceding the approaching rain, excites the plovers. But that does not
occur to the natives: that “one after the other” is the same as effect
after cause, or (as Logicians say) _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_, lies
at the bottom of innumerable superstitions. The subconscious control
exercised by this latent form of thought is very imperfect. The maxims
of indirect Magic, that a likeness may be substituted for the thing
itself, or a part of it for the whole, are merely formulæ of causation
assumed under an erroneous belief as to what can be a cause. There are
cases in which the like may be a substitute (one man for another) and
a part may nearly serve for the whole (part of a broken knife). Hence
these principles were stated and avowed by physicians and alchemists of
the Middle Ages, and observed in their practice.

The quantitative axiom of mediate relation—“Magnitudes equal to the
same magnitude are equal”—is, of course, never expressed by savages;
but it is practically understood and applied by them whenever they
use a common measure—the fingers for counting, the pace, or hand or
arm-stretch to measure distance. These devices are gesture language;
and the truth which the gestures assume has been forced upon the
observation of primitive men whenever they saw three or more nearly
equal things together—men in a row, birds in a flock, eggs in a nest.
We need not suppose that conscious analysis is necessary to determine
the relations between such things; the brain has its own method of
analysis; and some day we learn the results. It was late in the day
that the results became known; not, apparently, till the Greeks gave
scientific form to the rudiments of mathematics. For then, for the
first time, articulate axioms were wanted—to satisfy the form of
science. The innumerable exact calculations of Egypt and Assyria could
go on very well without them. Their discovery required the specific
purpose of a scientist in search of them, the state of profound
meditation and abstraction, excluding all irrelevant ideas, when in the
emptiness and darkness of the mind their light became visible, like a
faint sound in a silent room. Thus an idea, whose functioning has for
ages controlled thought without being recognised, suddenly takes its
place in the organisation of knowledge.


§ 8. THE WEAKNESS OF IMAGINATION-BELIEFS

With immature minds their superstitions seem to rest on good evidence.
Some of those who pray to Neptune are saved from shipwreck, and the
drowned are forgotten: all confirmatory coincidences are deeply
impressive, and failures are overlooked or excused. By suggestion
the sick are often healed, and the hale are struck down. Curses and
incantations, if known to the intended victim, fulfil themselves. So do
good omens that give confidence, and bad omens that weaken endeavour.
If a magician has the astuteness to operate for rain only when the
wet season approaches, the event is likely to confirm his reputation.
Sleight of hand, ventriloquism and the advantages of a dark séance are
not unknown to sorcerers tutored in an old tradition of deceit, and
their clients take it for demonstration. The constant practice by a
whole village of both magic and industry for the same end, makes it
impossible for ordinary mortals to see which of them is the real agent
of success. For the failures of magic or of sacrifice the practitioners
always have plausible explanations. Hence between imagination-beliefs
and perception-beliefs, as to their causes, there may be, for the
believers, no apparent difference.

But in character, also, imagination-beliefs may seem indistinguishable
from perception-beliefs; in immediate feeling-quality they are
certainly very much like them; and, on a first consideration, they
appear to have as much influence over men’s actions: but this is not
true. We must not infer that to suffer martyrdom for a cult (as witches
have done) can be a sign of nothing but unalterable faith in it:
besides fanaticism and other abnormal states of mind, one must allow
for loyalty to a party or leader, for oppositeness and hatred of the
persecutor, for display, self-assertion and (in short) for a strong
will. Those who take part in a religious war—are they driven wholly by
enthusiasm for the supernatural, and not at all by hatred of aliens,
love of fighting and hope of plunder? Discounting the admixture of
other motives, the power of imagination-beliefs is, with most people,
much less than we are apt to suppose. They are unstable, and in course
of time change, though the “evidence” for them may remain the same.
Moulded from the first by desire and anxiety, they remain plastic
under the varying stress of these and other passions. In a primitive
agricultural community, preparation of the soil, hoeing, reaping
and harvesting go on (though with inferior tools and methods) just
as they do with us; and from age to age the processes are generally
confirmed or slowly improved. At the same time, every such employment
is surrounded by a sort of aura of rites, which seem to be carried out
with equal, or greater, scrupulosity and conviction; yet, age by age,
these rites slowly atrophy and lose their importance and their ancient
meaning, which is explained by new myths; or other rites may be learnt
from neighbours or from invaders; for some rites may be necessary to
their life, though not any particular ones.

The unstable character of superstitions and their close alliance with
play-beliefs may be shown in various ways:

(_a_) The rites which express them are often carried out with
deception, practised on the crowd in a public performance, as by
obtaining from heaven a shower of rice, which (over night) has been
lodged in the tree-tops, and is shaken down at the decisive moment; or,
in private practice, played off on the patient, by bringing a stone in
one’s waist-belt and then extracting it from his body. Half the tribe
may deceive the rest, the men mystifying the women and children, or the
old the young.

(_b_) Religious beliefs often comprise incompatible attitudes: the
worshippers of a god acknowledge in prosperity his superior wisdom and
power—at the same time, perhaps, employing devices to cheat him; or,
in long continuing distress from drought or war, they may threaten
to punish him, withhold his sacrifices and desecrate his shrine.
In Raiatea, when a chief of rank fell ill, extravagant rites and
sacrifices were practised; but if these failed, “the god was regarded
as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image
destroyed.”[99]

(_c_) Imagination-beliefs break down under various trials—such as
economy, selling the Rice-mother when the price of grain rises;
offering the gods forged paper-money instead of good, or leaving many
things at a grave and taking back the more precious; self-preservation,
as in substituting the king’s eldest son for himself in sacrifice;
compassion, in burying with the dead puppets instead of slaves (though
in this economy may have some part), or substituting in sacrifice a
bull for a man.

In such cases as these we see how any desire, whose satisfaction
is incompatible with a given belief or observance, tends to create
a limiting belief and to modify the rites. Social indolence and
fatigue—the product of many individual fatigues and occasional levity,
whereby the meaning of rites is forgotten, and the rites themselves
are gradually slurred and abbreviated—must be an important condition
of the degeneration of rites, as it is of language. Foreign influence
through trade or war introduces disturbing ideas that appeal to lovers
of novelty, and show that other people with other beliefs are as well
off as ourselves. Even repeated experience of failure may shake a man’s
confidence and make him throw away his fetish: though usually he gets
another.

(_d_) The beliefs of Magic and Animism are generally supported by
intense emotional excitement during the incantations and ceremonies
that express them. Emotion is artificially stimulated and, probably,
is felt to be necessary in order to sustain illusion. It excludes
criticism and increases suggestibility.

(_e_) The specific connexion of such beliefs with the play attitude
is shown: by their rites including games, such as leaping, swinging,
spear-throwing—supposed to have some magical efficacy; the
ceremonies themselves are often dances, dramas, choruses; and with
the degeneration of belief, the rites remain as dramatic or musical
pastimes, whilst the myths survive in epic poems, fairy-tales and
ghost-stories. When rites and incantations are not intended to incite
to immediate action, it is necessary that the emotions generated in
their performance shall subside with only an imaginary satisfaction:
they, therefore, acquire the æsthetic tone of beauty, or sublimity,
or pathos (or some rudimentary form of these feelings); so that the
performance, thus experienced, becomes an end in itself.

These beliefs with their correlative ceremonies have a further
resemblance to play in the indirectness of their utility. Play develops
faculty; but no child thinks of that. Magic and Animism (as we have
seen) tend to maintain custom and order; but this is not known to
any one at first and hardly now to the generality. Rites of public
interest, to procure rain or to encourage the crops, though useless
for such purposes, gratify the desire to do something, or to feel as
if something were being done toward the end desired, especially in the
intervals when really effective work cannot be carried on, as whilst
the crops are growing or after harvest: they allay anxiety and give
hope and confidence. Moreover, they are organised pastimes—not that
they are designed to pass the time, but that they have in fact that
valuable function. The men of backward societies, during a considerable
part of their lives, have not enough to do. Social ceremonies keep
people out of mischief, and, at the same time, in various ways exercise
and develop their powers. With us industry is a sufficient occupation,
or even too engrossing, and circumstances keep us steady; so that,
in leisure, pastimes may be treated lightly. With the savage some
pastimes must present themselves as necessary periodical religious
duties, whose performance (in his belief) encourages and enhances
industry. So far, again, as needs and interests are common to a tribe,
village or other group, these ceremonies ensure social co-operation
and unity and also emulation in their performance; and they preserve
tradition and the integration of successive generations. Our games
are free from practical hopes and anxieties; but the more elaborate,
such as horse-racing, have still a social function; or, like cricket
and football, a tribal character: the school, college, county or even
the nation feels deeply concerned about them. The Olympic Games, which
interested the Greek world throughout all its scattered cities, have
been traced back to primitive religious observances.[100]

As for the dark side of superstition, it needs no other explanation
than crime, fanaticism and insanity: which also are diseases of
the imagination. Jealousy, hatred, greed, ferocious pride and the
lust of power are amongst the causes that mould belief. Any calling
pursued in secret, like that of the sorcerer, under a social ban, is
of course demoralised. Where the interest of an organised profession
stands in a certain degree of antagonism to the public interest, it
may become the starting-point of unlimited abominations; and of this
truth the interests of magicians and priests have supplied the most
terrific examples. Dwelling upon what you know of black magic and
red religion, the retrospect of human culture fills you with dismay;
but need not excite astonishment; for human nature is less adapted
to its environment (chiefly social) than anything else in the world;
the development of the mind and of society has been too recent for us
reasonably to expect anything better.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] _Treatise of Human Nature_, Part III. § 7. For the recent
psychology of Belief see James Sully’s _The Human Mind_, ch. xiii., and
James Ward’s _Psychological Principles_, ch. xiv.

[86] See below, ch. viii. § 5.

[87] _Logique des Sentiments_, II. § 4.

[88] _Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures_, p. 40.

[89] _British Journal of Psychology_, Vol. I. p. 393.

[90] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 462.

[91] _The Melanesians_, p. 247.

[92] Below, ch. viii. § 4.

[93] Ch. iv. § 8.

[94] In assuming that there are no magical powers I do not mean that
the magician has no professional powers, but that such real powers as
he has are not magical.

[95] Czaplicka, _My Siberian Year_, p. 94. Other examples in Romanes,
_Mental Evolution in Man_, pp. 351-3.

[96] _The Mind of Primitive Man_, V. pp. 150-52.

[97] _Sociological Review_, January 1910, p. 9.

[98] Quoted by Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, I. p. 105.

[99] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 216

[100] F. M. Cornford in Miss Jane Harrison’s _Themis_, ch. vii.




CHAPTER IV

MAGIC

  “The histories I borrow, I refer them to the consciences of those I
  take them from.”—_Montaigne_, I. 20.


§ 1. ANTIQUITY OF MAGIC

Magic, until recently, was somewhat neglected by those who treated of
savage ideas. In Sir E. B. Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_ only one chapter
is given to Magic, against seven to Animism (belief in the agency of
spirits). In Spencer’s _Sociology_, Part I. is almost wholly devoted
to the genesis and development of Animism, without a single chapter on
Magic. The importance of early Animism became such an obsession, that
travellers observed and reported upon it wherever they went, making
only casual references to Magic—much to our loss. The tradition of
this way of thinking seems to run back to Hume’s _Natural History
of Religion_, where he traces the development of religion from a
primitive belief that all natural activities are like our own, and
that everything is possessed and actuated by a spirit. This idea was
adopted by Comte, and elaborated in his celebrated law of the three
stages of the explanation of Nature as determining the growth of human
culture: Fetichism, which ascribes all causation to the particular will
of each object, and which by generalisation leads through polytheism to
monotheism; Metaphysics, which, giving up the notion of personal will,
attributes the activities of things to abstract forces; and Positivism,
which, discarding the variety of forces that can never be known, turns
to the exact description of the order of phenomena. Mill, in turn,
adopted these doctrines from Comte, and gave them currency amongst us,
as part of the extraordinary influence which for many years he exerted
upon all our thoughts. Hence the priority of Animism to every other
theory of things seemed at that time a matter of course.

Recently there have been signs that this conception of primitive
thought is giving way to another, namely, that Animism was preceded
by Magic. Sir J. G. Frazer puts it, that the idea of Magic is simpler
than that of Animism; that Magic is found in full force amongst people
whose Animism is feebly developed, and that its beliefs are more
uniform throughout the world.[101] Substantially—with qualifications
that will appear hereafter—this view of the matter is here accepted.
When one comes to argue it, to produce the primitive facts is, of
course, impossible. It must even be admitted that such evidence as we
have amongst the few facts collected of late years concerning ancient
races of men, gives the earlier date to animistic ideas; for if some of
the cave-paintings of Aurignacian origin, in which, for example, wild
cattle are shown pierced with arrows, may be interpreted as of magical
significance; on the other hand, the burial at Le Moustier, still more
ancient, shows a regard for the corpse, in the disposal of it and in
the things left with it, such as usually goes with the ghost-theory.
These discoveries take us back some thousands of years before Menes;
but probably leave us far from the beginning of human ideas concerning
the supernatural.

If Magic preceded Animism, we must insert a stage of thought at
the beginning of Comte’s series, making four instead of three; and
the suggestion may perhaps be made to appear plausible, that the
Metaphysical stage, the reign of occult forces in explanation, is not
a mere residue of Fetichism after the spirit has departed, but rather
the re-emergence into daylight of magical ideas of force, that always
persisted, but for ages were kept in comparative obscurity by the vogue
of Animism.


§ 2. WHAT IS MAGIC?

In his _Development of Moral Ideas_ (II. 47) Prof. Westermarck observes
that savages distinguish two classes of phenomena; the natural or
familiar, and the supernatural or mysterious. The latter again are
divided into the mechanical (Magic) and the volitional (Animism).
This seems to be true: it corrects the notion, still common, that the
savage explains all natural activities by Animism; recognises that
he takes some phenomena as a matter of course, as the animals do;
and, as to events that are not a matter of course, rightly marks the
distinction between his conceptions of them as either mechanical (due
to some uniformly acting force) or volitional (that is, arbitrary or
capricious). With the savage, then, there are ongoings of things around
him that are _perceived_ to be regular and continuous; and there are
others between which connections are _imagined_ to take place, and
these either regularly or capriciously: for thus I venture to interpret
the difference between the natural and the supernatural; it is the
difference between perception-belief and imagination-belief. Common
sense, Magic, Animism—these are the three great congeries of ideas
that compete for the control of his thoughts and in his interpretation
of the world.

Magic may be defined as a connexion of events imagined to be constant
and to depend upon the agency of some thing or activity possessing an
efficacious quality or force (in fact unreal), and not to depend (as a
connexion) upon the will of any particular person.

Whether Magic is ever wrought by the bare wish or will of a human
being will be discussed below (§ 6). Here, the proviso that a magical
connexion does not depend upon the will of a person, is meant to
exclude Animism. For pure Animism involves the belief that a ghost,
spirit, or god (though he may work by Magic) can produce an effect by
his direct action, without using any visible or invisible means other
than his own spiritual body and force. This is not what a magician
does: he works by means of a connexion of events known (so he thinks)
to himself and often to others. The magical implement (talisman or
spell) that he uses has qualities that are magical facts, just as
the qualities of his spear are physical facts. He can make a stone
spear-head by means of another stone; and he may be able to make a
talisman by means of a spell; but the powers of the talisman or of the
spell are their own; he cannot create Magic, but only discover and use
it. Whether he shall use it, depends upon his choice; but its powers
do not; they are inherent, like physical forces. Faust can conjure
the devil; but so can Wagner, if he knows the spell: the power of the
spell is indifferent to the conjuror. A man may, indeed, be a source of
magical power because he is a chief, or has the evil eye, or is taboo
for unpurged homicide; but these things do not depend upon his will; he
is in the same class with impersonal things that are magical.

A rule of Magic, as describing a uniform connexion of events, resembles
what we call a law of nature; and further in this, that it is not
supposed to be absolute or unconditional, but a tendency, subject to
counteraction by hostile Magic or (perhaps) by demonic force. But it
differs from a law of nature in being wholly imaginary and incapable of
verification.

To practise Magic is to use some such rule in order to obtain an end
desired. This can be attempted by any man, so far as his knowledge
reaches; and the greater his knowledge the greater his power, provided
he have the courage to act upon it. All stages of proficiency may be
traced from the simple layman who swings a bull-roarer to raise the
wind, to the wizard who lives by his art, and is feared by all his
tribe and far beyond it, or to the erudite magician who controls the
demons and vies with the gods.

Magical things, objects or actions, in their simplest forms, are
charms, spells and rites; and since the ends for which they can be used
are either to protect oneself or to exert power over other persons
or things, each of these kinds of magic-thing may be defensive or
offensive. A defensive charm is called an amulet; an offensive charm is
a talisman. For a defensive spell (say, against sickness or accident)
there is, I believe, no appropriate name; offensive spells (say, to
control the weather or to curse an enemy) may be called incantations
(but the usage is not fixed). Rites (that is, any magic actions that
are not spells) may also be defensive (as to touch wood), or offensive
(as to point at a man); but we have no names for these different
intentions. From these simplest beginnings the whole learning and
mystery of Magic seems to have developed.


§ 3. THE BEGINNINGS OF MAGIC

The quest of origins is fascinating, because, if successful, it will
help us to frame that outline of the history of the world which the
philosophic mind regards as a necessary of life. To discuss the
beginnings of Magic must necessarily be, in some measure, a speculative
undertaking; because the facts are lost. If Magic was practised in the
Aurignacian culture (say) 20,000 years ago, how can we get to the back
of it? But speculation is not guess-work, if we always keep in view
such facts as we have; if we are careful to give notice whenever the
facts fail us; if we guide ourselves by scientific principles; and if
we make no assumptions merely to suit our case, but only such as are
generally admitted in all departments. For example:

(1) We may reasonably assume that the simplest magical beliefs and
practices are of the earliest type: and nothing can be simpler than the
belief in charms, rites and spells. It is, indeed, difficult to find
many of these practices—though some can be produced—in their simplest
forms in our records of backward peoples; partly because they have
not been enough observed; partly because Magic is apt everywhere to
become saturated with Animism; partly because charms, rites and spells
are generally, for greater efficacy, compounded with one another. But
these considerations do not affect the simplicity of the idea involved
in the magical beliefs; which is merely this, that a certain object by
its presence, or that an action, or an utterance, by merely entering
into the course of events, will serve our purpose. A bare uniformity
of connexion—if _A_, then _B_—in accordance with the familiar
ongoings of Nature and our common activities, is all that is assumed.
Many kinds of obstacles stop an arrow or a dart; carrion collects the
vultures: so a patterned comb in one’s hair stops the demon of disease;
a patterned quiver, or a certain song, brings the monkeys down from
the tree-tops.[102] A spell assumes merely that certain objects,
or animals, or spirits, must always comply with a wish or command
expressed in words, just as another human being often does. It is their
supposed uniform coerciveness that makes the words magical. If any
form of words ever seems to have been successful, it must be repeated;
because to have the same effect the action must be the same. Immersed
in an indefinite mass of experiences, the postulate that we call “cause
and effect” (unformulated, of course) underlies every action, and
therefore underlies Magic; it is the ground of all expectation and of
all confidence.

(2) The types of Magic that are the most prevalent are probably the
earliest; and these are charms, rites and spells. They are found not
only amongst savages, but the world over: even in civilised countries
most of the uneducated, many of the half-educated, and not a few of
those who have “finished their education,” employ them; whereas more
complicated magical practices, except such as have been taken up
into religious celebrations, are apt to fall into desuetude. What is
universal must be adapted to very simple conditions of existence; these
beliefs, therefore, to mental wants and proclivities that are probably
primitive; and what conditions can be more simple, or more primitive,
or more universal than ignorance of our fate and eagerness to clutch at
anything that may give us confidence.

And not only are charms, rites and spells in all ages and everywhere
employed in their simplest forms; but analysis of the most elaborate
ritual and of nominally animistic practices will discover the same
beliefs at the bottom of them. The idea of the amulet or the talisman
is found in fetiches, beads, praying-wheels, and equally in a long
mimetic dance or a passion-play; whose central purpose always is to
avert some evil or to secure some good—success in hunting, or war, or
agriculture. Similarly, the spell is involved in all rites, so far as
verbal formulæ are used in them; and in all curses or prayers, so far
as their efficacy depends upon a sound form of words.

The persistence of magical beliefs amongst civilised people is, in some
measure, due to tradition; though the tradition could not continue
effective if there were not in every generation a predisposition to
accept it; and how far it is due to tradition, how far to a spontaneous
proclivity, in any one who is inclined to believe in charms, rites
and spells, he himself must judge as best he can. Superstition having
been at one time extremely useful socially, there is some presumption
that tribes addicted to it (within limits) had an advantage, and that
the disposition became hereditary. It is a recent acquisition compared
with the love of climbing; but once ingrained, it must remain till
disutility breeds it out. Meanwhile, it is a stain on the human soul.
So much of one’s early life is always forgotten that no one can be sure
that he was not inoculated with such notions in childhood; especially
when we consider that religious practices, taught before they can be
well understood, must often wear a magical habit to a child; and that
medicines, whose operations nobody used to understand, were on the
same foot with Magic. For my own part, bating the last considerations,
I cannot remember ever to have heard in childhood any sort of Magic
spoken of except with amusement; yet magical beliefs have always
haunted me. With Animism it was otherwise. When six or seven years old,
I was told by a nursemaid—a convinced adherent of one of the many
little sects that have ramified out of Wesleyanism in Cornwall—the
most appalling ghost-stories; and these stories, exciting no doubt
an ancient disposition, and reinforced by a visualising faculty that
nightly peopled the darkness with innumerable spectres, entirely
overpowered the teachings of those whom there was better reason to
trust, that ghosts are a superstition from which true religion has
for ever set us free. The effects lasted into middle age. Andrew Lang
said of ghosts that “he did not believe, but he trembled”; and that
precisely describes my own state of mind for many years. Now, as to
Magic, my impression is that had it been suggested to me in a serious
way, and not merely by casual allusions to “luck,” the experience
would have stuck in my memory. The first time that I can remember
practising rites, I was between ten and eleven years old, living at a
small boarding-school. To keep off a dreaded event, I used to go every
morning to the pump, fill my mouth with water and spurt it out in a
violent stream—three times. This went on for some weeks. To the best
of my recollection, the impulse was spontaneous, and I cannot remember
why the particular rite was adopted: to spout water out of the mouth
may have been symbolic of a pushing away of what was feared; but I do
not think I was conscious of that meaning. Nothing further of the kind
recurs to me until about the age of fifteen, when, at another school,
the master-passion of my life was cricket; and I always practised some
rite before going on the field, and carried a charm in my pocket; but I
cannot recall what they were. At present, a day rarely passes without
my experiencing some impulse to practise Magic. In lighting my first
pipe in the morning (for example), if I remember how I lit it, where I
struck the match, etc., yesterday, and if no misfortune has happened
since, I feel an unmistakable impulse to “light up” again in the same
way. No reason is distinctly present to me for acting so, and therefore
it is hazardous to analyse the attitude; but it is not merely incipient
habit: to the best of my judgment it is this, that such a way of
lighting my pipe was one amongst the antecedents of a quiet time, and
that it will be well to reinstate as many of them as possible. It is
more comfortable to do it than to alter it: one feels more confident.

Inquiry amongst my friends shows that some have similar experiences,
and others (both men and women) have not. A _questionnaire_ on such
a point might be useful; but difficult to arrange without giving
suggestion or exciting bias.[103]

(3) There are causes originating the belief in charms, rites and spells
so simple that nothing could be more natural to the primitive human
mind. What is more universally powerful in producing belief in the
connexion of events, and consequent expectancy of repetition, than an
interesting coincidence? If, says Sir E. F. im Thurn,[104] a Carib
sees a rock in any way abnormal or curious, and if shortly afterwards
any evil happens to him, he regards rock and evil as cause and effect,
and perceives in the rock a spirit. This is animistic; but the same
tendency to be impressed by coincidence underlies Magic. For example:
A hunting party of Esquimos met with no game. One of them went back
to the sledges and got the ham-bone of a dog to eat. Returning with
this in his hand, he met and killed a seal. Ever afterwards he carried
a ham-bone in his hand when hunting.[105] The ham-bone had become a
talisman. Such a mental state as the Esquimo’s used to be ascribed
to the association of ideas; but it is better to consider it as an
empirical judgment. Other circumstances of the event may have been
associated in his mind; but as to the ham-bone and the kill, he thinks
of them together, and judges that they are connected. Then, having
judged that the ham-bone influenced the kill, he carries it with him in
future in order to repeat the conditions of success.

We may perhaps discern the moment when Magic first fastened upon the
human mind by considering how the use of weapons and snares by the
primitive hunter impaired his sense of the mechanical continuity of
the work. In a struggle with prey body to body, success or failure
was thoroughly understood; but with the use of weapons and snares it
became conditional upon the quality of these aids and upon his skill
with them: more and more conditional as the number of steps increased
between the first preparation and the event; at any one of which
unforeseen occurrences might frustrate his plans. Hence an irresistible
desire to strengthen and insure every step of his task; and to gratify
this desire Magic arose.

That Magic should depend upon the assumption that “things connected
in thought are connected in fact” seems unintelligible, until we
consider that the thought in which they are connected is a judgment
concerning the facts. But how is it possible to judge so foolishly?
Absurd association is intelligible; it cannot be helped; but judgment
is not a passive process. Well: a logician might interpret the case
as a fallacy in applying the inductive canons: the Esquimo had two
instances: (_a_) no ham-bone, no seal; (_b_) ham-bone, seal: or, again,
into the circumstances of his expedition he introduced a ham-bone,
and the seal followed. Therefore, the carrying of a ham-bone was the
cause of getting a seal. He had not read Mill, and did not know what
precautions should be taken before adopting such conclusions. The mind
must have begun in this way; and after many thousands of years, the
opportunities of error in empirical judgment began to be appreciated,
and the canons were formulated. The experience of every man at every
stage of life, personal or social (probably evoking an inherited
disposition), continually impresses him with the belief in some
connexion of antecedent and consequent, that each event arises out of
others. But what it is in the antecedent that determines the event can
never, in practical affairs, be exactly known. In definite cases, where
method is applicable, we may analyse the consequent into the tendencies
of forces in amount and direction; or we may sometimes reproduce it by
an experiment exactly controlled. But where these resources fail us, as
they often do in practical affairs, we are little confident of grasping
all, or even the chief conditions of any event that interests us. The
savage knows nothing of method, and, therefore, feels less distrust.
He learns something of the conditions of success in hunting; this is
biologically necessary to him as it is to a tiger; only those survive
that learn them. He knows that he must have weapons as efficient as
possible, must go to the habitat of his prey, must not be heard, or
seen, or smelt. But with all precautions he sometimes fails; therefore
there must be some other condition which he does not understand. Hence
anything observed, or any word or action, that happens to be followed
by success, may have been a means to that success.

And if it once has been, it always will be: not that he thinks of
it in this general way. But even animals, as soon as they have
learnt a sequence, trust to it. Dogs and cats learn faster than
guinea-pigs; monkeys faster than dogs and cats; man quicker still.
But in no case would there be any use in learning, if it did not
lead to action as if the experience had been generalised. There is
no mystery in generalisation; it is spontaneous, and only waits for
language to express itself; the difficult thing to acquire is caution.
In default of method, the only test of truth is relative constancy
in experience—_per enumerationem simplicem_—faulty but broadly
effective; which requires time and practice. Primitive Magic is an
incautious, unexpressed generalisation; and the conditions are such
that the error cannot be easily detected. As long as a savage follows
the instinctive, traditionary and acquired knowledge that he has of
hunting, practices based on wrong judgments, but not interfering with
the traditionary art, such as the carrying about of a bone, or a
crystal, or having a special pattern on his quiver, cannot impair his
success; may add to it by increasing his confidence: so that as long as
success lasts there is nothing to suggest the falsity of the judgment.
A series of failures may make the hunter throw away his talisman, or
(at a later stage of Magic) take it to a medicine-man to be redoctored.
How many thousands of times may Magic have begun in this way and lost
its hold again, before the human mind became chronically infected with
it!

Similarly with amulets, anything unusual that a man happens to have
about him, when attacked by a leopard or snake, from which he escapes,
may be kept as a safeguard against future perils. And with rites:
any gesture or action, however irrelevant, that happens to precede
a successful effort, may be repeated in order to reinstate all the
antecedents of success. So, too, with the origin of spells. It is a
common impulse, and quite spontaneous, to accompany an action with
words, incentive or expletive. If a hunter does so in driving home
his spear successfully, he will next time repeat the words: they then
become a spell.[106] First, then, there are practices of carrying
about charms, repeating words, repeating actions; next, along with
these practices, beliefs grow up as to the nature of their efficacy,
their virtue; and much later it is discovered that some of the
practices seem to involve certain common principles which the savage
had never thought of.

In trying to imagine ourselves in the place of such a man, we must not
omit the emotional excitement that determines his judgment. It is the
intensity of his desire for success, his anxiety about it, that makes
him snatch at, and cling to, whatever may possibly be a means to it: he
does not see how it acts, but will take no risks by omitting it. Since
what is true of primitive hunting is true of all undertakings—that
we know some conditions of success but far from all—and since we are
all of us frequently in this position—the wonder is that we resort so
little to Magic. That many people do so in London is notorious.


§ 4. MAGICAL FORCE AND PRIMITIVE IDEAS OF CAUSATION

Magic is a uniform connexion of events, depending on some impersonal
force that has no real existence. What causes make men believe in such
force? In the first place, everything is necessarily conceived of by
everybody (and probably in some dim way by the higher animals) as a
centre of forces. Its weight, when we try to lift it; inertia, when
we push it, or when it is moving and we try to stop it; degree of
hardness, when we strike or grasp it; elasticity, when the bent bough
of a tree recoils; the sway of torrents and the lift of waves; falling
trees, avalanches, water-spouts, hurricanes: all these things a man
must think of, as he does of other men and animals, in comparison with
his own strength or impotence. Into their actions and reactions he
reads such tension and effort as he himself feels in struggling with
them, or in grappling one of his own hands with the other; and as
their action is full of surprises he does not suppose himself to know
all that they can do.

But, further, the strain exhibited by some objects, especially trees;
the noises they make, creaking and groaning in the wind; the shrieking
and moaning of the wind itself, the threatening and whispering of the
sea, thunder and the roar of torrents: all excite _Einfühlung_ or
empathy, illusory sympathy with things that do not feel. Their voices,
more than anything else, I believe, endow them for our imaginations
with an inward life, which Mr. Marett has well called Animatism,[107]
and which must not be confounded with the Animism that used to be
attributed to all children and all savages—the belief that every
object is actuated by a spirit, or even that it has a consciousness
like our own. What truth there was in that doctrine is fully covered by
Animatism.

Again, the savage is acquainted with invisible forces some of which
seem to act at a distance. The wind is the great type of invisible
force; heat, sound, odour are also invisible, and act at a distance;
the light of the camp-fire acts at a distance, spreading across the
prairie or into the recesses of the forest; and lightnings issue from
the clouds. In dreams, one visits some remote hunting-ground and
returns instantly; distance and time are distorted or annihilated; and
if you can act where you dream, why not where you intensely imagine
yourself?

Hence there are abundant analogues in experience by which the savage
can conceive of his talisman as a force-thing that acts invisibly and
acts at a distance. Australian medicine-men “threw their joïas (evil
magic) invisibly, ‘like the wind,’ as they said.”[108] The talisman
acts at a distance, like a missile; it acts for the person who owns it
as his spear does, and is dangerous to others who have not practised
with it. Sometimes, indeed, magic things have no owners, and are
dangerous to everybody: malignant influence radiating from them, like
the heat of a fire or the stench of a corpse. Such are two stones
described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen[109] as marking the place
where an old man and two women died for breaking a marriage-taboo.
“They are so full of evil magic that if any but old men go near, it
kills them. Now and then a very old man goes and throws stones and
bushes upon the spot to keep down the evil magic.” It is as if one
covered up a fire or a corpse. And, further, magical force may exist
in a diffused way, like darkness, heat, cold, epidemic disease, tribal
unrest, without necessarily attaching to any particular thing. In the
Western Isles of Torres Straits[110] mishaps may be signs of an unlucky
state of things in general. A fisherman, usually successful, having
once failed at his task, was depressed; but on two women dying in his
village soon after, he was consoled; since this showed that failure
was not his fault. Currents of this magical force, favourable or
unfavourable to things in general, may be seen in the flow and ebb of
the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, and in the course of the
seasons. From this way of thinking it is but a step to the conception
of _mana_, as it is called in Melanesia:[111] _orenda_ of the Iroquois,
_manitou_ of the Algonquin, _wakanda_ of the Omaha.[112] It is the
power of the wonderful and mysterious in the world, which becomes
especially manifest in Magic and in the agency of spirits. Similar
notions are found in many regions at various stages of culture, but
nowhere (I believe) at the lowest stages; so that it is unreasonable to
treat it as the first source of ideas of the supernatural. It is too
comprehensive a generalisation to find expression amongst savages. The
Arunta have got as far as the generalisation of evil Magic under the
name of _arungquiltha_.[113] But _mana_ is a generalisation of all the
imaginary forces of superstition, vague and mysterious; as “cause,” in
popular use, is a generalisation of all the supposed “forces” of nature.

Rites also act at a distance by invisible force; for this power belongs
to gesture-language, and the simplest rites are gestures. And so do
spells; for wishes, commands, threats expressed in words, act upon
men at a distance by invisible force; and spells are nothing but
such expressions conceived of in a particular way, as having that
uniform efficacity which is Magic. Spells, being thought of as forces,
are reified; so that blessings or curses cling to their objects like
garlands, or like contaminating rags.

Magical force, then, is a notion derived from experience of natural
forces and employed to account for events that are unusual, wonderful,
mysterious, not to be interpreted by that common sense which is the
cumulative result of usual occurrences. It is superimposed upon the
older and wider presumption of causation, and is expected to manifest
itself with the same uniformity; so that, if the laws of it can be
discovered, it supplies a basis for the Art of Magic. So far is Magic
from being the source of the belief in causation! But I have spoken
of the “older and wider _presumption_ of causation”; for (as has been
shown) the definite postulate that all the ongoings of the world may be
analysed upon the principal of cause and effect, can never come into
the minds of primitive men; and even to ourselves it rarely occurs,
except in scientific discussions or logical exercises; but we always
act as if we trusted in it, and so does a savage, and so does a dog.
The presumption is reinforced by every moment’s ordinary experience;
and without it no consistency of life is possible. This ungeneralised
presumption determines all thoughts and actions, mechanical, animistic,
or magical. That the forces implied in superstition are generalised
in such concepts as _mana_ before the principle of causation obtains
expression, is due to the prepotency of the unusual, wonderful,
mysterious in attracting attention.

In our modern analysis of mechanical causation there are four
requirements: (1) every event has a cause; (2) causation is uniform;
(3) the cause is the assemblage of the indispensable conditions of the
effect (and no others); (4) the cause is proportional to the effect. In
the savage’s mind these requirements are also obscurely recognised: (1)
he seeks a cause for everything: (2) he expects it to act uniformly:
(3) he believes in reinstating all the conditions of the effect, as
appears from his preparations for hunting, or war, or marriage, or
whatever he may have in hand; but he is much more ignorant than we are
as to what conditions are indispensable and decisive: (4) he knows
vaguely that the cause is proportional to the effect; for (_a_) he
succeeds in making effective weapons, etc., by mechanical means; (_b_)
he is very susceptible to the “size-weight illusion,” twice as much as
we are,[114] and this implies the adjustment of effort to a supposed
weight; (_c_) he repeats a spell in order to strengthen it, or unites
a talisman, a rite and a spell in one assault, implying that greater
force must be directed against greater resistance; and so on.

Causation, then, is universally assumed: how do Animism and Magic
influence the latent conception? As to Animism, (1) it palters with the
uniformity of causation; for though the ghost or spirit acts from human
motives, no one knows exactly what its motives are. It may be cajoled,
implored, even threatened; but the result does not always answer
desire: there is apparent caprice or free will, with consequent loss of
confidence, and an uncomfortable feeling that leads to a reaction in
favour of controlling the god, or ghost, by Magic. (2) The ghost is at
first merely a man-force disengaged from the visible body, but still
having its own body through which it can produce various effects. But
the fear of a ghost immediately endows it with superhuman power; and in
course of time it becomes more and more powerful, even to omnipotence;
so that it can of itself bring about any event; and, therefore, the
“assemblage of conditions” becomes unnecessary to causation: there
need be no visible conditions: miracles occur; creation out of nothing
is possible. (3) For such a power the “proportionality of cause and
effect” becomes almost meaningless; but not quite, for there are
degrees of spirit-force; and what one cannot do a stronger can.

As to Magic, it has the great merit of (1) preserving the uniformity
of causation. But (2) it vitiates the presumption of causation by
including in the total antecedent unreal conditions, namely, the forces
of rites and spells; and by generating a frame of mind that makes
it impossible to eliminate them. The hunter uses all the resources
of his art in hunting; he also practises rites and spells. To which
does he owe his success? We might suggest that he should try the
hunting without the rites; but he is afraid to; and should he try, his
positivism would probably break down at the first failure to kill.
Well, then, let him try the rites without the hunting; but he is not
such a fool: and, if he were, the medicine-man would tell him that,
of course, he must “use the means.” (3) Magic impairs the sense of
proportionality between cause and effect, by recognising antecedents
which are, in their nature, immeasurable. In their admirable work, _The
Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, Messrs. Hose and McDougall remark[115] that
it is sometimes said, that people of lowly culture have “no conception
of mechanical causation, and that every material object is regarded by
them as animated”; but they do not think that this could be truthfully
said about any of the peoples of Borneo. In the construction of houses,
boats, weapons, traps, they have a nice appreciation of the principles
involved. Yet we find[116] that these skilled artisans believe that
they can retard an enemy’s boat by hanging under one of its benches a
quartz pebble. Similarly, the Boloki of the Congo, having made a good
canoe, before launching, strike it on the stern with an axe “to take
away the weight.”[117] And the Fijians, still better boat-builders,
believe that to put a basket of bitter oranges on a canoe reduces its
speed.[118]

Inasmuch as the possibility of action at a distance is still in debate,
the savage cannot perhaps upon that tenet be confidently corrected.

If there is any truth in the foregoing account of the latent ideas, or
presumptions, of savages concerning causation, it is plain that Magic
(and likewise Animism) did not help, but hindered the development of
these ideas. Notwithstanding (or, perhaps, because of) certain specious
resemblances to science, Magic is, and always has been, the enemy of
science.


§ 5. MAGIC AND MYSTERY

Magic begins with ignorance of some of the conditions of a desired
event, and the adoption (on account of coincidence) of anything that
fixes one’s attention as contributing to the total antecedent. As
the supposed conditions of events grow more and more miscellaneous,
the disposition increases to regard anything as a possible cause of
anything else. Hence unbounded suspicion whenever an interesting event
occurs whose antecedents are not familiar and manifest. The more
unusual any occurrence, the more it must excite attention and be apt to
arouse suspicion; and the first arrival of travellers or missionaries
amongst a wild tribe is an event so unprecedented, that it is likely
enough to occasion exaggerated suspicions and behaviour which, when
reported, misrepresent the tribe’s normal attitude of mind. For this
allowance should be made.

However, in Magic the causation is never traceable; therefore it
becomes mysterious. The sense of mystery arises when something excites
wonder, wonder gives place to curiosity, curiosity is baffled, and
wonder returns with fear. The magical power of an inert object, such
as a black pebble or a shark’s tooth, or of a bone that is pointed
towards a victim, or of a spear that is swung but not thrown, and
nevertheless inflicts a wound, though an invisible one, is something
unknown, or mysterious. That is to say, it is a merely imagined action
which remains obscure and inscrutable, in comparison with the perceived
action of a spear thrown at a deer and slaying it with a visible wound.
The savage has adequate practical knowledge of the latter process; of
the former only a vague analogical image. He feels the difference, and
that the Magic is mysterious; and mystery, being common to all magical
processes, and deeply impressive (especially in black Magic), becomes
what we call a “fundamental attribute” of Magic, pervading the whole
apperceptive mass that is formed by a man’s magic-beliefs. Therefore
whatever excites the sense of mystery tends to be assimilated[119]
by this apperceptive mass and confirmed as magical; just as the mass
of our scientific knowledge assimilates and confirms any proposition
that has the attributes of a scientific law. Hence the savage accepts
the mysterious remedies of an European doctor as magical; and he is
ready to regard as magical, and to fear, anything—a rock, tree, or
water-spout—that by any trait excites his sense of mystery. Magic,
then, does not arise from mystery; but having come into existence, it
appeals to the feeling of mystery; and then whatever else is mysterious
tends to become magical.[120]

Magic being mysterious, the more mysterious the more powerful it must
be. Hence foreign Magic is more dreaded than the home-made; ancient
Magic is more powerful than modern; muttered spells, or formulæ in
a strange language, or in one whose meaning has been lost, are more
efficacious than intelligible speech; written characters and numbers
have a subduing prestige; verse is more subtle than prose (for poets
are everywhere respected); a wizard is more impressive in a mask than
when bare-faced, in a fit than when sober; and operations in the dark,
that ought to excite scepticism, enhance credulity.

Masses of ideas having this mysterious quality form relatively
dissociated systems, which offer resistance to all ideas that want it,
and therefore to what we call “explanation.” Hence the conservative,
inexpugnable character of Magic and its easy alliance with Mysticism.
Resistance to explanation may go the length of denying present
experience; as when a man is seen to be slain by a weapon or by a
falling tree, and yet his death is ascribed to sorcery: the fear of
sorcery having become a fixed idea.


§ 6. VOLITIONAL MAGIC

Magical power inheres in things, rites and spells without regard to the
man who uses them; they may be sold or taught, and then serve the new
possessor. But much the greater part of all known magical operation
depends upon the agency of some person, man or spirit, who sets it
going; and rites and spells are from the first, by their nature,
personal actions.

In the later stages of Magic, no doubt, it is held that a mere wish or
volition may be efficacious: in Cornwall they still tell you, when you
are cold or tired, that you “look wisht,” that is, as if you had been
ill-wisht and were pining away (this meaning is generally forgotten).
But it seems to me improbable that such an idea should be primitive.
People who, in inflicting penalties, do not discriminate between
accidental and intentional offences, cannot be supposed to ascribe
power to a mental process as such; and I have not been able to find
in reports of very backward tribes any case of wish-magic unsupported
by magical implements. Dr. Haddon says[121] that, among the eastern
islanders of Torres Straits, the power of words and the projection of
the will are greatly believed in. A youth who makes love procures a
piece of black lava shaped significantly, and anoints it with coco-nut
oil, etc.; he also anoints his own temples, and thinks as intently as
possible about the girl, and repeats a spell whenever he sees her,
using the names of Sagaro and Pikaro, wife and mistress of the hero
Sida. Now, with this complex apparatus of talisman, rite and spell,
how much is left to wishing or the projection of the will? He thinks
hard about the girl, no doubt; but that needs no voluntary effort: at
least, in this climate, voluntary effort is soon exhausted in trying to
think of anything else. Mr. Weeks, in his book _Among Congo Cannibals_,
describing a people of somewhat higher culture, and much more advanced
Animism than the natives of Torres Straits, explains the nervousness
in the poison ordeal even of those who are innocent of any nefarious
practices, by asking—“For who has not at some time wished another’s
death?”—and by the admitted doctrine that a man may be full of evil
magic without knowing it. From this it seems to be inferable that a
mere wish may be effective. But not justly; for a man full of evil
magic is an incarnate talisman; and such a man may operate without
wishing, as often happens with the evil-eye. At any rate, these casual
Congo wishes do not amount to volition; the faintest velleity is enough
for the hair-trigger of such explosive personalities. In Japan, too,
the angry spirit of a living person may inflict a curse unknown to
himself.[122]

Still, with the progress of Magic, deliberate wishes may acquire
independent power. A man practising evil Magic, and desiring secrecy,
has a strong motive to believe (that is, there is a cause of his
believing) that his tacit wish has the power of invisible action at
a distance; and the way by which he arrives at that belief is quite
clear: for a spell is a magical force; it is also an expressed wish or
command; and, if muttered, is more rather than less powerful than when
uttered aloud. Why not, then, “sub-muttered,” or merely thought?

From this degenerate notion of will-work we must distinguish the
personal power of an accomplished wizard in his whole magical activity.
Whatever a man does with a talisman or a spell, as it were with a
tool or a weapon, may be done with more or less concentration of
energy and proficiency in the performance; and one man will be plainly
superior to another. Success depends upon doing one’s best; therefore
upon the will. And Magic often needs courage and resource; but in the
development of the art it depends still more upon knowledge; wherein
the magician is wont to boast himself. For wizardry is the most
reputable faculty of primitive scholarship: to know all spells and
rites, the arts of divination and medicine, the ancestry and true name
of all dangerous things, which gives control over them: and it is a
universal belief that knowledge is power.


§ 7. THE EVOLUTION OF MAGIC—DIRECT MAGIC

From the simple beginnings thus described, Magic, like everything
else in the world, proceeds to grow and differentiate. It grows by
the lengthening of spells from the briefest wish or command to many
verses;[123] by the extension of rites from the waving of a bough
to raise the wind to the Australian Intichiuma ceremonies that go on
for many days; by the accumulating of charms by the bagful; by the
compounding of rites with spells, and by repetition of them three
times or some other sacred number. It differentiates by being applied
and adapted to more and more purposes: from hunting (if we suppose
it to begin there) to war and love; to birth, marriage and death; to
the giving of diseases and the curing of them; to the protection of
property and to the discovery (or concealment) of theft; to navigation,
building, agriculture, the care of flocks and herds, the procuring of
rain, renewing the vigour of the sun and binding the influence of the
Pleiades. At the same time Magic, originally practised (we may presume)
by individuals, comes to engage the concern and co-operation of
families, clans and tribes; and a distinction grows up between what we
call “white” and “black” Magic: practices that are for the welfare of
the tribe, or of some portion of it, and practices designed to gratify
private passions without regard to their effect upon the community.

One may notice certain stages (not always serial) in the development
of Magic: First, the simple and direct defence of oneself or fellows
against other persons or things, storms, diseases, etc.; or, again,
direct attack upon such hostile powers—by means of charms, spells or
rites. Secondly, indirect or dramatic Magic, operating not upon persons
or things themselves, but (expecting the same effect) upon imitations
of them, or upon detached parts or appurtenances; as in the well-known
device of making a waxen figure of a man and melting it in the fire to
his destruction. Thirdly, the alliance of Magic with Animism, leading
to sorcery, exorcism and ceremonies associated with Religion—discussed
below in the sixth and seventh chapters. Fourthly, the confusion of
Magic with Science, as in Astrology and Alchemy—referred to in the
seventh and tenth chapters.

Direct magical rites begin in very simple ways, probably with gestures:
as to point at a man in threatening; to throw out the open hand in
warding off evil; to claw the air behind a man’s back, as Australian
women do. It becomes more and more elaborate as the result of much
study devoted to a matter of supreme interest: especially after the
rise of a professional class of medicine-men, with whom inventions
accumulate and become traditionary. Similarly, spells are at first
merely wishes, or commands, or warnings. An Australian Wind-doctor
cries, “Let the west wind be bound.”[124] The southern Massim of New
Guinea have a spell to open a cave—“O rock, be cleft!” and, again,
to shut the cave—“O rock, be closed!”[125] Nothing can be simpler.
How spells rise into poetry and are combined with rites and charms is
shown by a Polynesian example: a man being ill with consumption, which
is called _Moomoo_, a medicine-man is sent for. He comes, sits by the
patient, and sings—

   “O Moomoo, O Moomoo!
    I’m on the eve of spearing you.”

Then, rising, he flourishes his spear over the patient’s head, and goes
away. No one dares speak or smile.[126]

As to charms, the simplest, and perhaps the earliest, are small
pebbles, such as the Australian “bulks,” or crystals.[127] In Papua
there are quartz charms so powerful that it is not safe for even the
owner to touch them. In that country the qualities that make a thing
suitable for a charm are: (1) similarity in contour, or in other ways,
to the object to be influenced; (2) rarity; (3) unusual shape in not
very uncommon objects:[128] in short, whatever arrests attention. Dr.
Codrington says: “A stone takes a man’s fancy; it is like something,
clearly not a common stone; there must be _mana_ in it: puts it in his
garden; and a good crop proves he was right.”[129] Among the Esquimo,
strange or curious objects never before seen are sometimes considered
to bring success to the finder; and charms are carried shaped like
the animals hunted.[130] Such a taste is very ancient, if the same
purpose was served by those animal-shaped stones, retouched to increase
the resemblance, which have been found in considerable numbers in
France and England.[131] In the bag of a West African sorcerer may be
seen a bit of leopard skin, of snake’s skin, hawk’s talons, bone of a
dead man, leaves of certain plants, etc.; each having its own virtue,
and uniting their powers in the interest of the formidable owner.
The _Chanson de Roland_ describes a talisman to which the chief of
Charlemagne’s peers must have owed no small part of his prowess—his
famous sword:—

   “Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!
    Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:
    Saint Peter’s Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,
    Some of the Hairs of my lord, Saint Denise,
    Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.”[132]

I cannot call it fair fighting, and wonder that, thus armed, he should
ever have been mortally wounded by the miscreant hordes of Mahum and
Tervagant, however numerous.

An influential outgrowth of primitive Magic is the taboo. Taboo is the
dangerousness of a person, or thing, or action, or word, conceived of
as a motive for not touching or uttering or meddling therewith. The
dangerousness may either lie in the nature of a person or thing, or
be imposed upon it. A chief, for example, and everything belonging to
him, is generally taboo by inherent sacredness: he is, like Mr. Weeks’s
Congolese, full of evil magic. The idea of the talisman has thus been
extended to include certain men. In many tribes it includes all women;
but since to make them always taboo is too much for human nature, they
are treated as such only periodically, or when a man is about to be
exposed to some further danger, which will be the more likely to injure
him when already contaminated by evil magic.[133] This is very clear in
a case reported by Prof. Seligman:[134] at Yam warriors were forbidden
to sleep with their wives before battle; else “bow and arrow belong
other fellow he smell you, he shoot you, you no got luck.” Still,
physical consequences (which may explain the superstition) are also
considered: a diver for pearl-shell must similarly abstain; because,
else, “man he sleepy.” The continence required of women to ensure the
safety of their husbands when away at war or hunting may be due to a
belief in a “sympathy” or “participation,” as if husband and wife were
in some mysterious _rapport_; but, deeper, there may have been a fetch
of policy. When magical taboos are generally recognised and feared,
it becomes possible to use them for social purposes: one cannot be
sure that every magical observance had its origin in magical belief.
Thus the food-rules of Australian tribes consist of taboos upon the
enjoyment of certain foods by women and young men, and are plainly
devised in the interests of the gerontocracy: so why should not a
fiction be founded on Magic in the interest of absent husbands?

The sanctity or dangerousness of the chief is probably due, first,
to his being really dangerous; but, secondly, to the biological
advantage to a tribe of respecting him, which leads to a selection of
those tribes amongst whom respect for the chief arises. As biological
adaptation is never more than a moving, oscillating equilibrium, this
feeling sometimes becomes excessive, even to the point of insanity.
Everything the chief touches becomes taboo; only a few sacred servants
can approach him; he may be thus reduced to helplessness. It is one
of Nature’s checks upon tyranny. Such is the force of taboo, that a
Maori tribesman, being hungry, seeing some food by the wayside, and
eating it, on learning that it was the remains of the meal of a sacred
chief, immediately fell ill, and died. The offence was fatal—as soon
as it was known. The dangerousness of women has been referred to their
weakness; association with them must be weakening, and is therefore
forbidden when exertion is needed.[135] Prof. Westermarck traces it
to a “horror of blood”;[136] very probably; but other things may
co-operate towards it. The life of women separates them from men, and
brings them into a freemasonry and community of interests, to which men
are not admitted; differentiates their mentality, until the result is
mysterious and therefore magical: the sexual orgasm, being more like
pain than anything that is not pain, at once attractive and revulsive,
acquires the same character. Homicides and mourners, again, are liable
to be taboo, either because there clings to them the mysterious quality
and taint of death (a magical motive), or because they are followed by
the ghosts of the departed.

There are unlucky words which it is a social offence to utter: words
of ill-omen, but especially names of dead people, demons and sometimes
gods; for people are apt to come when they are called, and, if the call
is conceived of according to Magic, come they certainly will. There
are likewise many actions that seem to us entirely innocent, yet in
one or another tribe must be avoided by all who desire a prosperous or
only a tranquil life. The Papagoe Indians of Mexico forbid a girl at a
certain time to scratch her head, or even to touch her hair with her
hand; for which there may be an excuse in the sacredness of the head;
but her brother comes at the same time under the same restriction.[137]
The case seems to be a type of many taboos, as being due wholly to
suspicion and anxiety: an anxious mother who sees her boy scratch
his head is reminded of his sister who must not do so; her fears are
excited, and she prohibits the action that excites her fear: it is
taboo. Writing of a Bantu tribe, M. Jounod says, “Most often taboos are
inexplicable.”[138] So are the penalties that await the breach of them:
the punishment rarely fits the crime. Premature baldness, failure in
hunting or fishing, boils, lameness, dysentery—may avenge the eating
of wild duck or marriage within the forbidden circle. And if any such
thing happens to a man, he is liable to be accused of having broken a
taboo; and that proves the truth of the belief in taboo.

Besides things that are in their magical nature dangerous, and
therefore taboo, things inoffensive in themselves can sometimes be made
taboo by merely declaring them to be so, or by setting up a symbolic
notice that they are so, or by laying a conditional curse upon anybody
who meddles with them. They have then become dangerous. This is the
common case of making a talisman by means of a spell, transferring to
it invisible power. Such practices, especially common in Melanesia, are
often useful as a cheap defence of property (in gardens, for instance),
but are also a means of exaction and tyranny. The prevalence of taboo
amongst savages, by the way, enables them readily to appreciate our
great commandment to do no work on Sunday.[139]


§ 8. INDIRECT OR “SYMPATHETIC” MAGIC

The use of charms, rites and spells, having been established in one
department—say, hunting—may be extended to others by analogy, and is
confirmed there in the same way, namely, by still doing one’s best.
Having obtained the charms and learnt, or invented, the rites and
spells, one applies them, but at the same time makes war or love as
cunningly as one can, cultivates one’s garden, drives a bargain, and so
forth, and ascribes all good results to the Magic. At first, I suppose,
all such action was direct, discharged at the person or thing to be
influenced. To slay an enemy a bone of a dead man was pointed, or a
crocodile’s tooth hurled, in his direction (though, probably, not in
his sight). To keep off evil Magic a wish was expressed—“Never sharp
barn catch me”;[140] or to drive away a pest a command was issued, as
in Borneo: “O rats, sparrows and noxious insects, go feed on the padi
of people down river.”[141] But a time came when Magic began also to be
carried out by practices indirect and purely dramatic, rites performed
and spells recited not at the person or thing to be affected, but upon
some substitute, or representative, or symbol; and this must have
happened pretty early; for dramatic Magic is met with in Australia.
To this sort of Magic belong the widely-diffused methods of operating
upon the image of a man or anything assigned to stand for him, or upon
hair-clippings, remains of food, or footprints instead of himself; or
of tying knots to bind, or untying them to release a curse. With spells
the indirect method is less common, but remarkable examples of it occur
at a low level of culture. The Yabim of New Guinea, to promote the
growth of their taro, tell a story: “Once upon a time, a man labouring
in his field complained that he had no taro-shoots. Then came two doves
flying from Paum. They had devoured much taro, and they perched upon a
tree in the field, and during the night vomited up all the taro. Thus
the man got so many shoots that he was even able to sell some of them
to other people.”[142] Here, then, a mere story of a wish fulfilled is
substituted, as a spell, for the wish itself, and expected to have the
same effect upon the crop; and as that is, indeed, true, any failure
of it is no more liable to be detected. But such practices seem to us
sillier and less promising even than direct Magic. What can be the
meaning of them?

The indirectness of a rite makes it more mysterious and magical, and
that is a recommendation. Moreover, its dramatic character gives
an imaginative satisfaction, which must suffice to initiate such
pantomime again and again. Amongst ourselves many people are prone to
dramatise every situation of their lives; to act in imagination their
loves, their revenges, their opportunities of self-display, and to
derive satisfaction from such imaginations even to the weakening of
their will—satisfaction without effort or danger. But although this
impulse may initiate pantomimic magic, it can hardly maintain it in
the absence of any deeper satisfaction. The belief in its efficacy,
again, once established, the effect of suggestion upon a victim of
black Magic (who by some means is acquainted with what has been done
against him) may have consequences that seem to verify the rites; but
this can only happen when a belief in the efficacy of such practices
already prevails. The power of suggestion depends upon the belief;
it cannot create the belief. We must fall back upon coincidence.
If, indeed, immediate and complete coincidence were requisite, if,
when one practised on an enemy’s life, nothing less than his speedy
death would do, coincidences might be too rare to give the requisite
confirmation. But if some less injury will be acceptable, and if it
need not follow immediately; if a delay of not merely two or three
days, but two or three months will bring the event within the limits
of satisfaction; and if the degree of injury may vary from death to
a bad fall, or some failure in hunting on the victim’s part, or a
quarrel with his wife; if even (as often happens) a misfortune to any
one of his family may suffice—the confirmatory coincidences will be
tolerably frequent. There must, of course, be many disappointments; but
these count for little, because the particular practice is supported
by a general belief in Magic; because men desire to believe and are
afraid to disbelieve; because failures are explained by some error in
performing the rites, or by the counteraction of superior Magic, or by
the intervention of hostile spirits.

Special reasons for practising and believing in indirect operations of
black Magic are their greater secrecy and, therefore, greater safety,
and greater gratification of the love of cunning: which last (I think)
explains much of the elaboration that marks these performances.

In the development of indirect Magic, very many of its practices seem
to involve one or other of the assumptions often called the principles
of sympathetic Magic, namely, Mimesis and Participation: (1) that to
operate upon a likeness or representation, or by analogy, affects the
person, or object, or process imitated or represented as if it were
directly assailed; and (2) that a part or appurtenance of any one may,
in any magical undertaking, be substituted for the whole. Among savages
these principles (as has already been said) are only latent forms of
procedure, tacitly assumed, not formulated, and cannot have been the
source of the practices, but must gradually have been established by
them; but when notions of scientific arrangement came into vogue,
they were discovered and explicitly stated by the early physicians
and alchemists, in whose thoughts Magic and Science were not clearly
differentiated.

It has been supposed that these principles are natural consequences of
the laws of the association (or reproduction) of ideas. According to
the “law of similarity,” an idea of one thing often makes us think of
another that resembles it: hence the thought of an enemy is supposed
to make me think of an image of him, or the sight of his image makes
me think of him. According to the law “of contiguity,” any two things
having been seen or thought of together, thereafter the thought or
sight of one of them makes me think of the other: hence the thought of
an enemy makes me think of his footprint, or his footprint reminds me
of him. Possibly. But must there not have been a long preparation of
ideas before the thought of an enemy awakens in me these particular
associations rather than many others? And if they should occur to me,
how do the laws of association explain my astonishing belief that to
put his image in the fire, or to thrust a thorn into his footprint, or
to dig it up, carry it home and put it in the oven, will make him lame
or afflict him with some wasting disease? There must be some system of
ideas to determine these particular judgments.

Some, again, suppose that savages cannot distinguish similarity from
identity, part from whole; so that an image appears to them to be
in earnest the same thing as a man, or his nail-parings the same as
himself. Yet it is certain that in their work-a-day life they do make
these distinctions, and that otherwise they could not get on at all.
If, then, in certain cases, and in Magic (which is all that concerns
us now), they act or speak as if unable to draw such distinctions, it
must be from an acquired incapacity in that connection; just as in some
cases they suffer from an acquired incapacity to recognise that their
beliefs are contradicted by experience; that is to say, some fixed
idea or dissociation prevents them from comparing the facts; though
sometimes it may be merely that customary forms of speech hinder the
expression of distinctions that really exist among their ideas.

It has been suggested that the supposed force of mimetic Magic rests
upon the belief that as a man’s shadow or reflection implies his
presence, so does his image. And we shall see that, in some cases,
this explanation is not far from the mark, though it cannot serve for
all cases; inasmuch as the image operated upon in any rite need not be
a likeness (of course it never is)—a stick will serve, if declared
to stand for the victim; and, moreover, his presence is not needed in
carrying out rites that act at a distance. What truth there is in this
view has been better expressed by Prof. Yrjö Hirn:[143] namely, that a
unity or solidarity exists between all persons and things that stand
to one another in a relationship of contact or similarity, on account
of a certain magical virtue; and that this solidarity is not destroyed
by any breach of physical continuity. To take away a man’s cloak,
or a lock of his hair, or a remnant of his food, does not interrupt
the magical continuity which contact has established with the man:
something of him, his virtue, remains with it. And in the same way an
image of him contains something of his virtue; for to the immature
mind, images or pictures are nothing but radiations or decortications
of the thing itself, an efflux, like the Epicurean εἴδωλα. Hence the
bones of a saint and his picture convey his virtue to a devotee by the
same process: both are conductors of some emanation from himself. There
is much truth in this theory.

When Animism is called in to explain Magic, this virtue or emanation
of a man is apt to be explained as his soul, or part of it. A savage
dislikes being photographed, lest you should take away his soul.
M. Jounod says the Bantu regard a photograph as “an unsheathing of
soul”;[144] Mr. Dorsey says no Dakota would have his portrait taken
lest one of his souls [out of four] should remain in the picture,
instead of going after death to spirit-land;[145] Mr. Carl Lumholtz
says the Papagoes refused to be photographed, lest part of themselves
should be taken away, and remain behind after death.[146] And it is
a trick with some sorcerers to keep a looking-glass, in which they
pretend to catch the souls of their dupes; and, of course, shadows and
reflections are frequently confounded with the soul. So if the use
of an image in Magic does not imply the presence of the man himself,
generally it does imply the presence of a very important part of him.
And this explanation is strengthened by an apparent exception; for some
Malays, when they make an image of an enemy to compass his destruction,
think it necessary before operating to coax his soul into it by a
potent spell.

   “Hither, Soul, come hither!
    Hither, little one, come hither!
    Hither, bird, come hither!
    Hither, filmy one, come hither!”[147]

Must we not infer that these Malays have in some way lost the common
belief, and so are put to this extra trouble?

If it be asked how this account of the matter can justify the use of
a stick or stone instead of a man’s image, merely assigning it to
represent him, the reply (I think) is that the stick is a symbol. Since
images are never much like the man, and may be unlike in all degrees,
the stick is a sort of limiting case. A symbol is always the remainder,
or reminder, of something that once had intrinsic value, as an image,
shadow, or reflection has by being or participating in the man’s
soul. Besides, it is perhaps a tacit assumption of Magic (as in other
departments of life—including Philosophy), “that whatever for one’s
purpose it is necessary to assume, is real or true”: the situation
demands it.

As to the magical continuity between a man and whatever has been
in contact with him, the belief in it may with some confidence be
derived from the fact that it retains his odour; and when an animistic
explanation is required, it is naturally thought that this odour is his
soul or soul-stuff, as the savour of a burnt-offering is its soul-stuff
that regales the gods.

Belief in the participation of an image, or part or appurtenance of a
man in the man himself, or in his virtue, or in his soul, must give to
rites of black Magic a great deal of the subjective satisfaction which
is a secret motive of all Magic. The images, or nail-parings, or what
not, identify the man to be attacked; they fix the wizard’s attention,
vivify his imagination, direct the spell whom to strike (as a dog is
set upon a trail), and heighten the joy of imaginary revenge.

There are, however, many cases usually classed as “sympathetic
Magic” that cannot without great violence be explained in this way;
and I complain of the epithet “sympathetic,” as applied to all
indirect Magic, that it implies this explanation. Consider the Mandan
buffalo-dances, the hunting dance and the mating dance; these are
imitations or dramatic representations of the hunting of buffaloes and
of their mating, which they are designed to prosper: can such dances
be interpreted as the efflux or decortications of the future hunt or
mating? Or, again, the story of the muræna (quoted above, p. 101)
and its resuscitation by the rising tide—is this a radiation of the
budding of the taro which it is expected to expedite? Such cases, which
are pretty numerous, must be understood upon some other ground than
“participation.”

Many rites and observances seem to depend upon the notion of favourable
or unfavourable currents of invisible power, which may be taken
advantage of, or influenced, to obtain one’s ends, in hunting, or in
obtaining rain, or in fertilisation of animals or crops. It is good
to plant seed, or begin any undertaking, when the moon is waxing, or
the tide rising; for these events show that the set of the current
is favourable to increase or prosperity. Again, one may incite the
current or strengthen it, as in bringing on rain by throwing water
in the air, or by leaping to help the crops to grow. To instigate or
assist in such ways the ongoings of Nature is not the same thing as
to cause the event: a rain-wizard does not pretend to procure rain
in the dry season; the times of ploughing, sowing, reaping (whatever
rites may accompany them) are not decided by Magic. Much pantomimic
Magic may be best understood as attempting to set up such currents of
causation rather than as directly causative. Since instances of cause
and effect are observed to repeat themselves, a pantomimic murder, or
a hunting dance, or fertility-rites, may be considered as setting an
example which Nature is expected to follow: the muræna-spell promotes
vitality by merely describing an example of reinvigoration. The Kai of
N.E. New Guinea hold that if a man, by falling on a stump of bamboo in
the path, wounds himself to death, it is because a sorcerer, having
obtained something infected with his victim’s soul-stuff, has spread it
over a pile stuck in the ground, and pretended to wound himself upon
it and to groan with pain.[148] The belief implies that such practices
are in vogue; and they seem to rely upon the assumption that “what
happens once will happen again”; and that who shall repeat the disaster
is determined by the presence, among the conditions, of something
belonging to the victim in default of himself. It is not by sympathy
or participation that the “something infected with his soul-stuff”
acts; but by contributing to reinstate as far as possible all the
circumstances of a cause like the cause of the man’s death.

In other cases an exemplary cause may be constituted by the
substitution of similars that do not imply participation. Dr. Haddon
tells us that in the western islands of Torres Straits[149] the Kuman
vine breaks up in dry weather, and the segments look like human bones;
hence they are employed in Magic. Similarly red ochre or some other
stain may be used instead of blood, so that a skeleton may be coloured
with it as a means of keeping it alive. In Chinese popular religion,
before setting up a new idol, it is first carried to the temple of
an older one, who is besought to let a portion of his soul-stuff
transmigrate into the new one; then, carried to its own temple and
enthroned, its hands, feet, eyes, mouth, nose and ears are smeared
with blood, _or with red paint_, to open its senses and bring its
soul into relation with the outer world.[150] Such a substitution of
similars is true in one sense; red paint is a substitute for blood as
colour: Magic requires that it shall also be a substitute in other
ways; and, therefore, it is so. Thus, down and feathers thrown into
the air in Australian rain-rites are a substitute for clouds; in
Mandan hunting-rites, men disguised in buffalo-skins are a substitute
for buffaloes; and thus, by substitution, a cause can always be
constituted which, once having been set to work, Nature is constrained
to repeat the operation.

Ought we not, then, to recognise two kinds of indirect Magic—the
sympathetic, and what may be called the exemplary?[151]

       *       *       *       *       *

The rise of the wizard as a professional authority introduces many
changes into magical practice, and decisively alters its social
importance. He sometimes experiments in new rites and spells or in
new versions of the old ones; he decides some matters arbitrarily,
as in imposing taboos on food; generally, he develops the art in the
direction of his professional interests, learning to conjure, act,
ventriloquise, suggest, hypnotise, and to provide excuses for failure;
he begins to train novices, form a school and establish a tradition
which influences the whole life of his tribe. How far arbitrary
elements enter into rites it is impossible to say, until some one
shall discover (as some one may) marks by which to distinguish them.
Meanwhile, there may be many rites, or ritual elements, that cannot be
explained on any known principles of Magic, because in fact they are
arbitrary: still, such things must usually be an imitation of other
magical practices. Prof. Leuba suggests, probably enough, that rites
may sometimes be adopted to relieve excitement, such as the dancing
of women when the men are at war.[152] It was the custom (_e. g._) of
Araucanian women; and as they danced, they swept the dust away with
their fans, and sang: “As we sweep the dust away, so may our husbands
scatter the enemy.” If this was arbitrarily invented, it was by analogy
with much mimetic Magic: they set an example of what should happen and
confirmed it with a spell.[153]


§9. THE DISSOLUTION OF MAGIC

In spite of the human mind’s strong proclivity to Magic, the art, after
rising to a maximum power and reputation, in course of time loses
its influence, and is to be found festering only in the backwater
and stagnant pools of society. Its power is not at the zenith in
primitive society, but much later, when there are men in command of
great wealth who feel insecure, and turn for confidence to diviners and
thaumaturgists, whom they bribe heavily to give what they most desire.
But by that time Magic is confused with Animism. As civil order and
material civilisation prevail, Magic is no longer invoked to increase
one’s confidence, because this is ensured by the regularity of ordinary
affairs. As positive methods in war, building, commerce are learnt and
practised, the magical accompaniments of such undertakings, without
being wholly disused, may become less and less important—what we call
“survivals,” such as the breaking of a bottle of wine on the bows when
launching a ship (it is forgotten that the wine must be red). Or they
may be lost altogether without injury to industry; whereas in savage
economy there is some risk that a most useful craft, such as pottery,
weaving, or canoe-building, may be entirely discontinued, if by the
extinction of some group of men or women the rites and songs are
forgotten with which such labour had always been made good.[154] For
who would trust a pot or a canoe unconsecrated?

The great systematisations of Oneiromancy, Alchemy, Cheiromancy,
Astrology, necessarily come forward late in the day, because they
involve the constitution of science; but for that reason they are
soon discredited by being confronted with the positive sciences;
when, without being forgotten, they are relegated to what may be
euphemistically called “select circles.”

With the growth of Animism, again, pure Magic becomes comparatively
rare; its observances are interpreted according to the fashionable
creed, no longer as setting occult, quasi-mechanical forces to work,
but as requiring the intervention of a spirit or a god. They become
symbolic: ritual now does nothing of itself, but is a sign of what the
god does, or is desired to do. Yet Magic often has its revenge upon
Animism: enchaining by mysterious uniformities the god himself.

In its own nature Magic comprises qualities that tend to weaken it
(at least, to weaken each particular form of it) and to bring about
its decline. Magical rites and spells, on whatever scale performed,
are things to be repeated, and what is repeated is mechanised and
ceases to live. Custom can maintain a practice whilst dispensing with
its meaning; slowly the practice (spell or ritual) is slurred and
corrupted. Economy, “least effort,” is the enemy of all ceremonial.
There is also a tendency to the attenuation of rites on the principle
(unconscious, of course) that “the sign of a sign is a sign of the
thing signified”; whereby a meaning may be disguised in a symbol
for the sake of secrecy, or even for politeness. Prof. Westermarck
has shown how, in Morocco, the full rite for averting the evil eye
is to throw forward the hand with outspread fingers and to exclaim,
“Five in your eye.” But as this is too insulting for common use, you
may instead casually mention the number “five”; or if even that be
too plain-spoken, you can refer to “Thursday,” which happens to be
the fifth day of the week. In this process there is great risk of
forgetting the original meaning of the rite or spell; and when this
comes to pass, we are left with the empty shells of superstition, such
as a dread of “thirteen,” “Friday,” salt-spilling, walking under a
ladder; for hardly a soul knows what they mean.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] _History of the Kingship_, p. 38; cf. also _The Magic Art_, I. p.
235, and footnote: “faith in magic is probably older than a belief in
spirits.”

[102] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p.
417.

[103] In the _American Journal of Psychology_, p. 83 (1919), E. S.
Conkling has an instructive article on _Superstitious Belief and
Practice among College Students_. Of a large group examined 53 per
cent. entertained some superstition (40 per cent. M., 66 per cent.
F.). At some time, now or formerly, 82 per cent. had been so affected
(73 per cent. M., 90 per cent. F.). Half assigned their former
superstitions to the age from twelve to sixteen. Twenty-two per cent.
attributed the disposition to the suggestion of elders, 47 per cent. to
social suggestion, 15 per cent. to social inheritance, and 15 per cent.
to emotions and feelings beyond the control of reason.

[104] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 354.

[105] Quoted by Ames, _Psychology of Religious Experience_, p. 60.

[106] Charms (and possibly rites and spells) are sometimes revealed in
dreams (Howitt, _The Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 378;
and Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, I. p. 110). But this
can only happen either where the belief in charms already exists (as in
the cases cited), or by the coincidence of the dream with good or bad
fortune. The connexion of events must first of all present itself as
something observed: whether waking or dreaming is indifferent.

For further illustrations of the influence of coincidences in
establishing a belief in Magic, see ch. viii. § 5.

[107] R. R. Marett, _Preanimistic Religion, Folk-Lore_, 1900.

[108] A. W. Howitt, _The Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 371.

[109] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 472.

[110] A. C. Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres
Straits_, V. p. 361.

[111] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 118-19.

[112] For a comparison of these allied notions see E. S. Hartland’s
_Ritual and Belief_, pp. 36-51.

[113] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 548.

[114] W. McDougall, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres
Straits_, II. p. 199.

[115] Vol. II. p. 2.

[116] Vol. II. p. 124.

[117] Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 311.

[118] Thomas Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 79.

[119] _Tends to be_ assimilated—for if the presentation have some
special character of Animism, it will be assimilated to the animistic
system; or if Animism be the more active and fashionable theory in a
man’s social group.

[120] It has been thought strange that such a thing as a whirlwind
may excite in the savage either fear or anger. To explain this we
must consider the nature of wonder: it is an imaginative expansion
of surprise, temporary paralysis of the imagination, with emotional
disturbance, but no progressive instinct of its own. It either subsides
helplessly, or gives place to curiosity, or passes into some other
emotion that is connected with an instinct. Accordingly, it usually
passes into curiosity or else fear, but sometimes into anger: which of
these emotions shall be aroused depends, partly, upon the character of
the person who wonders, partly, upon circumstances.

[121] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p.
321.

[122] W. G. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 52.

[123] One may trace this process in the interesting collection of
spells in Skeat’s _Malay Magic_.

[124] Howitt, _The Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 397.

[125] Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 376.

[126] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 138. For further development of the spell,
see (besides Skeat, _op. cit._) the collected examples at the end of
Sayce’s _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_.

[127] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 26.

[128] Seligman, _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 173-5.

[129] _The Melanesians_, pp. 118-19.

[130] Turner, _Ethnology of the Ungava District_, Am. B. of Ethn., XI.
p. 201; and Murdoch, Ethnology of Point Barrow, _Am. B. of Ethn._, IX.
p. 434.

[131] W.M. Newton, On Palæological Figures of Flint, _Journ. of B.
Arch. Ass._, March 1913.

[132] _The Song of Roland_, done into English by C. Scott Moncrieff,
CLXXIII.

[133] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 88.

[134] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits_, V.
p. 271.

[135] A. E. Crawley, _J.A.I._, XXIV. p. 123.

[136] _Development of Moral Ideas_, I, c. 26.

[137] Carl Lumholtz, _New Trails in Mexico_, p. 350.

[138] _Life of a South African Tribe_, p. 528.

[139] See the exhaustive treatment of this subject in Frazer’s _Taboo
and the Perils of the Soul_.

[140] A “barn” is a small spindle-shaped stick, supposed to be
thrown in a magical attack by wizards. Howitt, _The Native Tribes of
South-East Australia_, p. 377.

[141] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, I. p. 110.

[142] Quoted by Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, I. p.
105.

[143] _The Sacred Shrine_, pp. 33-9.

[144] _Life of a South African Tribe_, p. 340.

[145] Sioux Cults, _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI. p. 484.

[146] _New Trails in Mexico_, p. 61.

[147] Skeat, _Malay Magic_, p. 48.

[148] Quoted by Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 268.

[149] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits_, V.
p. 325.

[150] W. Grube, _Rel. u. K. d. Chinese_, p. 153.

[151] In the _B. of Am. Ethn._, XIII. p. 374, F. H. Cushing, describing
“Zuñi Creation Myths,” says the dramaturgic tendency is to suppose that
Nature can be made to act by men, if “they do first what they wish the
elements to do,” according “as these things were done or made to be
done by the ancestral gods of creation.” The last clause is, perhaps,
an animistic gloss of the Zuñis’, who were, of course, very far from
primitive thought.

[152] _The Psychological Study of Religion_, p. 165.

[153] Cf. S. H. Ray, “People and Language of Lifu,” _J.R.A.I._
(XLVII.), p. 296, who says, a woman whose son or husband was away at
war would place a piece of coral to represent him on a mat, move it
about with her right hand as he might move in fight, and with her left
brush away imaginary evils. This protected him (evidently by exemplary
Magic).

[154] W. H. R. Rivers, _The Disappearance of Useful Arts_, also
_History of Melanesian Society_, II. p. 445; and in Turner’s _Samoa_
(p. 145) we are told that the practice of embalming died out with the
family of embalmers.




CHAPTER V

ANIMISM


§ 1. WHAT IS ANIMISM?

If, when the cohesion of the hunting-pack had weakened, belief in Magic
by giving authority to elders became very influential and useful in
primitive societies, still greater in subsequent evolution has been
the power of Animism. For belief in ghosts led in time to the worship
of ancestors, and then especially to the worship of the ancestors of
chiefs or heroes, some of whom became gods; and the belief in gods
strengthened the authority of chiefs and kings who were descended from
them, and helped to maintain the unity of the tribe or nation from
generation to generation and from age to age.

In anthropology, the term Animism is usually employed to denote the
proneness of savages and barbarians, or people of unscientific culture,
to explain natural occurrences, at least the more remarkable or
interesting—the weather, the growth of crops, disease and death—as
due to the action of spirits: (1) ghosts (that is, spirits that have
formerly been incarnate); (2) dream-spirits, that have temporarily
quitted some body during sleep or trance; (3) invisible, living,
conscious beings that have never been incarnate. This may be called
Hyperphysical Animism. Sometimes, however, “Animism” is used to denote
a supposed attitude of savages and children toward all things, animate
and inanimate, such that they spontaneously and necessarily attribute
to everything a consciousness like our own, and regard all the actions
and reactions of natural objects as voluntary and purposive. And this
may be called Psychological Animism. These two meanings of “Animism”
are entirely different: it is one thing to regard an object as moved
by its own mind, another to attribute its movement or influence to a
separable agent which for the time possesses it; it is one thing to
regard an object as having an anthropomorphic consciousness, another
to believe that that consciousness is a distinct power capable of
quitting it and sometimes returning, or of surviving its destruction,
or of existing independently. Even if the doctrine of Animism in the
second sense were granted, it would remain to be shown how men came to
conceive that the consciousness of a thing can be separated from it,
and exist and act by itself, and even with greater powers than it had
before—contrary to the opinion of Don Juan,

      “that soul and body, on the whole,
    Were odds against a disembodied soul.”

Savages do not always regard a separable spirit as necessarily
belonging even to human nature. Dr. Seligman writes that, among the
Veddas, a few old men “were by no means confident that all men on their
death became _yaku_” (veridical ghosts). Influential men and mediums
would do so; but for the rest, at Godatalawa it was determined by
experiment. The ordinary man was invoked soon after death, and desired
to give good success in hunting; and if much game was then obtained,
he had become a _yaka_.[155] Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that,
according to the Guanjis, a woman has no _moidna_ (spirit part).[156]
Major C. H. Stigand says “the Masai have no belief in a future state
for any but chiefs”; the common dead are not even buried, but merely
thrown out into the bush.[157] Among the Omaha, though each person has
a spirit that normally survives the body, still, a suicide ceases to
exist.[158] In Tonga the souls of the lowest rank of the people (Tooas)
died with their bodies.[159] The human spirit, then, is not necessarily
believed to enter upon a life after death; still less is the spirit of
an animal. On the other hand, it is held by many tribes that something
inherent in weapons, utensils, food and other objects, a “soul” or
soul-stuff, may be separable from them and go to Hades or serve as the
food of spirits, although the things themselves are not regarded as
having a spirit or intelligent life.


§ 2. PSYCHOLOGICAL ANIMISM

Andrew Lang described savages as existing in “a confused frame of
mind to which all things, animate and inanimate, ... seem on the
same level of life, passion and reason.”[160] Children and other
immature people are often supposed to be in the same condition. As
to children, it is pointed out how deeply concerned they are about
dolls and rocking-horses, how passionately they turn to strike a table
after knocking their heads against it. But probably it is now admitted
that impulsive retaliation, on a table or bramble or shirt-stud (not
unknown to civilised men), implies not any belief in the malignity
or sensitiveness of those objects. Animals behave in the same way.
Th. Roosevelt reports that an elephant was seen to destroy in rage a
thorn tree that had pricked its trunk;[161] and that in America he
himself saw a bear that was burying a carcass, and lost hold of it
and rolled over, strike it a savage whack, like a pettish child.[162]
Moreover, in children, such behaviour is in large measure due to
suggestion; inasmuch as the setting of them to beat the table, or what
not, is an easy way of diverting them from their own pain. And, of
course, the dealing with dolls, or rocking-horses, or walking-sticks,
as if alive, is play. Such play involves intense imaginative belief,
which, at first, is not clearly differentiated from earnest. But this
stage corresponds with the play of the young of the higher animals,
whilst they are still physically incapable of completing the preluded
actions; and the engrossing interest of their play expresses the
biological necessity of it as a means of developing their mental and
bodily faculties. By the time that children are at all comparable with
savages, their play has become a temporary attitude, compatible with
brusque transition to matter-of-fact, or even with actions which at
the height of play show that the illusion is incomplete.

In savages, likewise, much of the behaviour that is supposed to betray
an illusionary animism, even in their simple apprehension of things,
is really an acquired way of acting, in a temporary attitude, under
the influence of imagination-belief, and is compatible with other
actions that show how incomplete is the illusion. Andrew Lang, after
the passage above quoted, appears to limit the scope of it by the words
“when myth-making”: no doubt, when myth-making and in practising many
rites, savages speak or act as if they believed in the full sense that
the objects dealt with are sensitive intelligent beings; and yet their
effective conduct toward them is entirely positive. They may, for
example, feed the growing rice-plant with pap; in harvesting it, speak
a secret language that the rice may not understand them and be alarmed,
and proceed to cut it with knives concealed in their palms: but they
do cut it. They carry it home and garner it with honour, and come from
time to time to take a portion for food with solemn observances: but
then they cook and eat it.[163] Their animistic attitude, therefore,
is not primitive, spontaneous, necessary illusion, but an acquired,
specialised way of imagining and dealing with certain things. Were
it not possible to combine in this way the imaginative with the
practical, all wizardry and priestcraft would be nothing but the sheer
cheating which it often seems to be to superficial observers. Normally,
imagination-beliefs that have only indirect biological utility (say, in
maintaining customs in order to ensure the tribe’s welfare) are unable
to overcome immediate biological needs (say, for food and shelter); but
often they do so within certain limits, or in certain directions, as in
innumerable taboos of food, customs of destroying a man’s property at
his death, starving or maiming tribesmen on the war-path. A universal
taboo on rice is not inconceivable. For these are social-pathological
cases; like the self-destructive beliefs of individuals and sects
amongst ourselves, such as the faith-healers, who in sickness call upon
their god instead of a physician.

Children, savages and ourselves, in some degree, attribute
spontaneously to _some_ inanimate things, in our mere apprehension of
them (for this has nothing to do with the metaphysics of Pampsychism),
something more than external existence: regarding them as force-things
and, by empathy, as experiencing effort and quiescence, strain and
relief, and sometimes emotion and pain. It is for this attitude toward
nature that I adopt Mr. Marett’s term “animatism”: as not ascribing
to inanimate things, or to plants, in general, anything like a human
personal consciousness; but merely an obscure, fragmentary, partial
consciousness, enough to correspond with our occasional experiences
in dealing with them. Perhaps those observers who report in strong
terms universal Animism as the tenet of a tribe, mean no more than
this; for example, the author above quoted as writing in the _American
Bureau of Ethnology_, who says (p. 433) that according to the Dakotas,
everything—“the commonest sticks and clays”—has a spirit that may
hurt or help and is, therefore, to be propitiated. It would be unjust
to the adherents of psychological Animism to accuse them of believing
that savages have universally made so much progress in “faculty
Psychology” as to distinguish personality, will, passion and reason;
especially as they add that savages project these powers into all
natural objects through incapacity for discrimination and abstraction;
and, at the same time, know very well that in some languages of the
most animistic tribes (e. g. Algonquin and Naga) the distinction of
animate and inanimate is the ground of grammatical gender.

We find, accordingly, that some explorers explicitly deny that, in
their experience, savages regard all things as on the same level of
life, passion and reason. Dr. Coddrington says that, in the Banks’
Islands, yams and such things are not believed to have any _tarunga_
(spirit)—“they do not live with any kind of intelligence”;[164]
and that Melanesians do not fail to distinguish the animate and the
inanimate. Messrs. Skeat and Blagden report that with the Semang of the
Malay Peninsula there is very little trace of animistic beliefs; and
they relate a folk-tale of how a male elephant tells a female that he
has found a live stone (pangolin rolled into a ball): “Swine,” said
the female, “stones are never alive.”[165] Messrs. Hose and McDougall
tell us that the Kayans hang garments and weapons on a tomb, and seem
to believe that shadowy duplicates of these things are at the service
of the ghost, but that such duplicates are inert (relatively) and not
to be confused with the principle of intelligence.[166] “Soul” does not
imply personality.

To be clear about Animism, it is necessary to bear in mind several
modes of belief: (1) Hyperphysical Animism, that certain things
have, or are possessed by a conscious spirit, and that this spirit
is a separable entity; (2) that things are themselves conscious (or
semi-conscious), but their consciousness is not a separable entity;
(3) that things are not conscious, but are informed by a separable
essence, usually called soul (better, soul-stuff), which may be eaten
by spirits, or may go to ghost-land with them; (4) the extension or
limitation of these beliefs to more or fewer classes of things. Unless
these distinctions are recognised, any report upon savage beliefs can
hardly be clear and adequate; but generally we may take it that when
a traveller tells us that such and such things are not believed to
have souls, and says nothing of any belief as to their consciousness,
he means (except with regard to animals) to deny that anything like
human consciousness is attributed to them. And when Mr. Torday writes
that, according to the Bahuana of the Upper Congo, there are two
incorporeal parts—_doshi_, common to man, animals and fetiches, and
_bun_, peculiar to man—he seems to leave it as a matter of course
that plants and inanimate things have neither of these, and are not
conscious beings; though probably some of them have soul-stuff, since
clothes, weapons and food are buried with a corpse.[167] The Rev.
J. H. Weeks says that the Bakongo of the Lower Congo attribute a
spirit only to the _nkasa_ tree (from whose bark the ordeal poison is
derived) amongst plants;[168] and, similarly, the Baloki, further up
the river, attribute a spirit only to the _nka_ tree.[169] Since many
things are buried by these people in a grave, or broken above it, the
things may be supposed to have soul-stuff; but from the denying of
spirits to plants, and from silence as to psychological Animism, it
may be inferred that neither plants nor inanimate things are regarded
as conscious beings. Sir E. F. im Thurn tells us that material things
of all sorts are believed by the natives of Guiana to have each a body
and a spirit—evidently a conscious and malicious spirit; “and that
not all inanimate objects have this dual nature avowedly attributed to
them, is probably only due to the chance that ... the spirit has not
yet been noticed in some cases.”[170] Even with these Guiana Indians,
then, whose Animism, in every sense, is unusually active and extensive,
their attitude is an acquired, specialised way of imagining and dealing
with things that draw their attention and excite their suspicions, not
a primitive, necessary illusion; else there could be no exceptions.

The reasonable view, therefore, is that savages distinguish between
themselves and certain animals, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
remaining animals, plants and inanimate things; and raise the second
class to the rank of the first, as conscious agents, only when there
are special incentives to do so. To find all the causes that excite the
animistic attitude toward things would be a difficult task, but some
of them may be indicated. Beginning from Animatism, which really is a
primitive and necessary illusion, it is reasonable to expect:

(_a_) That any plant or inanimate thing adopted as a Totem should, by
that very fact, be endowed with human consciousness; though the savage
mind is too inconsistent for us to infer that this must always happen.

(_b_) That whatever seems to move or act spontaneously, like the winds
and streams and echoes, the sun, moon, planets, and shooting stars,
should be felt as a spiritual agency; especially if it cry out with
empathetic reverberation, as winds and cataracts do, trees tormented
by the storm, waves, fire, and the ice-floe when it breaks up in
spring; or if it excite fear by being extraordinary and dangerous, as
thunder and lightning are, whirlwinds and whirlpools, waterspouts and
volcanoes. Dr. Speisser writes that at Ambrym, when the volcano is
active, the natives climb to the top and bring sacrifices to appease
it, throwing coco-nuts and yams into the crater.[171]

(_c_) That whatever has been regarded as having magical force should
be treated—after the rise of the ghost-theory (supposing this to be
of later origin) has given vogue to a new principle of explanation—as
owing its virtue to a spirit, either by immanence or possession (two
modes of actuation which may or may not be distinguished), and so
become a fetich, instead of being merely an amulet or talisman.

(_d_) That whatever is much used in ritual, especially if often
addressed in spells or incantations, should become an object of
reverence, apt to be personified and raised to, or even above, the
human level as a conscious agent: for example, padi and rice in
Indonesia, the ordeal tree on the Congo, already mentioned. Fire-sticks
used in the ritual of sacrifice are often deified. In India, the conch,
having for ages been used in religious rites, “the people gradually
came to revere the instrument itself and to adore and invoke it.”[172]
“A strange religious feature [of the _Rigveda_] pointing to a remote
antiquity is the occasional deification and worship even of objects
fashioned by the hand of man, when regarded as useful to him. These
are chiefly sacrificial implements.”[173] The practice now extends in
India to nearly every tool and utensil. Amongst the very few inanimate
gods of the Cherokees are the Stone, invoked by the Shaman when seeking
lost goods by means of a pebble suspended by a string; and the Flint,
invoked when about to scarify a patient with an arrow-head before
rubbing in medicine.[174] By the Apache, heddontin (pollen of the
cat-tail rush) is used as the sacrificial powder in nearly all rites,
and is personified and prayed to.[175] When spells are addressed to
any object, the analogy of address to human beings tends to cause that
object to be thought of as humanly conscious.

(_e_) Stocks and stones have been worshipped, as the dwelling-place of
spirits in many parts of the world; having superseded in the mind of
their devotees the ghost of the men whose burial-place they formerly
marked, but who themselves have been forgotten; and probably, on the
analogy of these stones, others that no ghost ever haunted.

(_f_) Where Animism is active amongst a timid and suspicious people,
whatever injures a man is believed to act of malice: as amongst the
Indians of Guiana, who are so timid that rather than go hunting alone
they will take a woman or a child along with them.[176]

Under such conditions as these a sort of acquired psychological
Animism is very widely though very irregularly diffused; but were it
universal and uniform, it could not of itself account for hyperphysical
Animism—the doctrine that men (or some men), some animals, plants,
things, places, are possessed or informed by spirits that are capable
of separate existence.


§ 3. THE GHOST THEORY

Hyperphysical Animism may be easiest understood as having arisen with
the belief in human ghosts. The causes of this belief have been fully
set forth by Herbert Spencer[177] and Sir E. B. Tylor[178] in a way
that to my mind is convincing. Amongst those causes dreams predominate;
wherein the dead are met again as in the flesh. The living body having
always been for the savage a conscious force-thing, at death the
conscious force leaves the thing or corpse. This might be accepted by
him as a fact of the same kind as the loss of its virtue by a talisman
or amulet (which is known sometimes to happen), were it not for dreams
in which the dead still live. That this conscious force that has left
the body is not visible except in dreams need excite little wonder,
since many forces natural and magical are invisible.

A dream not being common to two men at the same time, the things that
are seen in it cannot be pointed out, nor therefore directly named (in
this resembling subjective experiences). It was for ages impossible to
narrate a dream as a dream: there was no way of distinguishing it from
external events, either for the dreamer himself or (were that possible)
in reporting it to another. He was far away and met his father, yet had
lain by the fire all night! Hence to find names with which to describe
such things men turned to other ways in which they seemed to have a
double existence, to shadows and reflections: which in their sudden
appearance and disappearance, and sometimes faint, sometimes distorted
outlines, bear some resemblance to dream-images; and probably it is
felt to be significant that shadows and reflections disappear at night,
just when dreams occur. Shadows and reflections are not necessarily
identified with the ghost derived from the dream-image, because their
names are given to it; but sometimes they certainly are; so that a
man who, on looking into water, happens not to see his reflection may
believe that his spirit has gone away, and that he himself must be
ill, and accordingly he becomes ill; or if at noon near the equator he
notices that he has no shadow, he may think his soul is gone, and run
to a medicine-man to get it back; and dead bodies may be believed to
have no shadows.[179] Inasmuch as a body even lying on the ground casts
a shadow, except at tropical noon, the belief that it does not do so
at any time implies an acquired inability to see what is before one’s
eyes; as sometimes happens in hypnosis and other conditions of negative
hallucination.

The idea of a separable conscious personal force, or spirit, that
leaves the body at death, serves also, as it gathers strength, to
explain sleep, fainting, epilepsy; and sometimes every sickness is
attributed to the partial detachment or desertion of the spirit; which,
therefore, it is the doctor’s business to plug in, or to catch and
restore; or (if I rightly remember a report of Miss Kingsley’s) he may
even supply another one from a basketful of souls kept at hand for such
exigencies.

That the ghost theory arises not only from dreams, but is also
suggested by hallucinations and hypnagogic visions is very probable.
In various parts of the world savages have been described as having
visions of remarkably coherent and convincing vividness that seem not
to have been dreams.[180] But such experiences, even when artificially
induced by fasting or drugs (as happens among many tribes), are rare
in comparison with dreams; and to the influence of dreams upon these
savage beliefs there is abundant testimony. With some tribes dreams are
treated as part of their objective experience; so that to be injured
by your neighbour in a dream is just ground for avenging yourself as
soon as you wake; and to see a dead man in a dream is, therefore, clear
proof of his continued existence, and that either he has come to the
dreamer or the dreamer has gone to visit him.

Thus Sir Everard im Thurn says of the native of Guiana, his dreams are
as real as any events of his waking life; his dream-actions are done
by his spirit: in dreams he continues to see the dead—that is, their
spirits.[181] Similarly, the Lengua Indians (W. of R. Paragua) have
great faith in dreams; wherein the spirit is believed to leave the body
and to do in fact what is dreamed.[182] According to the Cherokees, to
dream of being bitten by a snake requires the same treatment as actual
snake-bite; else (perhaps years later) the same inflammation will
appear in the wounded spot, with the same consequences.[183] The Motu
hold that _sua_ (ghosts or spirits) are seen in dreams, and that when
a man sleeps his own _sua_ leaves his body.[184] “The Lifuans believe
in the reality of what is seen in a dream, and are influenced by it.
Their dead ancestors appeared in dreams.”[185] And the Polynesians of
Manatuki thought that “dreams were occasioned by the spirit going to
the places seen in them.”[186] Many more of such witnesses might be
cited.

It is recognised by psychologists that dreams, as immediate experience,
have more the character of perception than of imagination. Children are
apt to confuse dreams with reality. It can only have been gradually,
with the growing knowledge of continuity and coherence in the course
of events, and therewith the demand for corroboration of testimony,
that dreams were distinguished from the waking life. When no longer
supposed to be all of them real, some are still so regarded: the Dieri,
amongst lower savages, distinguish between visions, as revelations made
by Kutchi (an evil Spirit), and ordinary dreams, as mere fancies.[187]
But so impressive are dreams to many people, in their eagerness to know
more than sense and philosophy can tell them, that they persist in
hoping, and therefore believing, that dreams, if they give no knowledge
of this world, may still be revelations of another, perhaps more
real; or if not revelations, adumbrations by way of allegory, which
some learned or inspired Daniel may interpret; or, at least, omens
of good or evil, which the ancient science of Oneiromancy undertakes
to explain. There is now a new and more promising Oneiromancy that
interprets dreams as indicating not the future, but one’s own past,
chiefly a forgotten past, and teaches to know oneself: more promising;
for what but experience can possibly be the source of dreams—at least,
of dream-elements? Some of the new principles of interpretation,
however, may compare for obscurity with the ancient.

That the dead are seen alive in dreams is, then, for the savage a fact
of observation; and, therefore, the continued existence of the dead
is, for him, not in the first place supernatural; although it may be
called hyperphysical, because it is experienced only in dreams and not
by daylight, and is exempt from ordinary conditions of time and place.
But it gradually becomes supernatural, as the capricious incidents
of dream-life are felt to be “uncanny,” as that which occurs only at
night is involved in the fears of the night, and as a great cloud of
imaginations accumulates about the dead and obscures the simple facts
of dream-perception in which the belief originated. This cloud of
imaginations, by its mysterious character and by various alliances
with Magic, spreads and deepens until it overshadows the whole of
human life; is generally, indeed, dispersed here and there by the
forces of biological necessity, often by subterfuges laughable enough;
which have, however, the merit of saving mankind from destruction: but
sometimes it extinguishes the last ray of common sense, impoverishes
the believer, enfeebles him, fills his days and nights with terror,
gives him over to practices the most cruel or the most disgusting,
leads him to slay his own tribesmen, his own children, his own parents,
and to offer up himself in the sure hope of resurrection.


§ 4. EXTENSION OF THE GHOST THEORY TO ANIMALS

Spirits, having once been conceived of as explaining the actions of
men and surviving their bodily death, may by analogy be conceived to
explain the action of any other things in circumstances that suggest
a motive for the action, and therefore to possess or inhabit such
things, and to be capable of separating from them, like ghosts. Other
things are already, by Magic and Animatism, force-things, in some
degree conscious, whose forces may be capable of acting invisibly at
a distance; and at the death of a man it is his conscious force that
leaves the body and becomes a ghost. Since, then, there is hardly any
natural object whose action may not in some circumstances seem to be
interpretable by motives, especially amongst a timid and suspicious
people, how can we assign any necessary limits to the spread of
Animism? Moreover, the causes most influential in establishing the
ghost theory for man directly require its extension to other things.
For not human beings only are seen in dreams, but also their clothes,
weapons and utensils, and also animals, plants, localities. If,
then, the dead, because they are seen in dreams, are inferred still
to live under conditions in which they are not visible by daylight
to ordinary men, how can the inference be avoided that all sorts
of things, artefacts, animals, plants, localities, share in that
mode of existence—that all have their doubles? And “Why not?” the
savage might ask, since it is literally true of all things, without
exception, that they are sometimes visible, sometimes invisible.[188]
Similar inferences seem to be justifiable from the alliance of ghosts
with shadows and reflections, and the fact that not man only but
everything else has a shadow and a reflection, and that their shadows
and reflections disappear at night, just when the things themselves
sometimes appear in dreams. Moreover, so far as the breath, the pulse,
the shining of the eye, which cease in the human corpse, are sometimes
identified with the departed spirit, the same processes likewise cease
at the death of animals; though, it is true, there is here no analogy
with inanimate things, and the breathing and circulation of plants are
beyond the savage’s observation. Therefore, although Animism is an
inferential construction, were the construction entirely due to the
logic of analogy, there would be nothing surprising in the discovery
that the belief “that everything has a ghost” is just as universal and
uniform in the human race as if it had been an innate or primitive
belief. That, on the contrary, Animism prevails very irregularly
amongst the tribes of men; that, in all directions, inferences that
are analogically specious fail to be drawn; that instead of a general
system of Animism every tribe has its own Animism; this is surprising
and needs to be explained. The extension of the theory is easier to
understand than its irregular limitation.

Bearing in mind that we are at present considering Animism as a belief
in ghosts, not in spirits generally (to which we shall come in Sec.
6), I venture to think that, although dreams, shadows and reflections
certainly suggest a double existence of everything, yet savages never
assign a true ghost to anything inanimate, nor to plants, nor even to
animals, unless there is a special reason for doing so; because only
in the case of human beings is the suggestion interesting enough to
take hold of the social imagination. Hence, even though other things
appear in the ghost-world, they have no significance there, except in
relation to human ghosts (or ghostlike spirits) on whom they attend.
Accordingly, human ghosts have a place in the beliefs of every tribe,
because human beings excite affection, admiration and fear, have
well-marked individuality; are therefore remembered and have stories
told of them; and if they are seen after death, it is, of course,
reported. The evidence makes it only too plain that the paralysis of
attention by fear is the chief (though not the only) emotional factor
of belief in ghosts; and what other thing in all nature is to be feared
in comparison with one’s fellow-man?

The belief in ghosts, escaped and roaming independent of any normally
visible body, as a social belief, is involved in the practice of
reporting and discussing dreams, which becomes the same thing as
telling ghost-stories—the first and most persistent motive of
literature. Stories can only be told effectively of things generally
interesting; and, at first, such things must have been recognisable by
the hearers and must have had some individuality. Hence—

(_a_) Animals that attain to such individuality may have ghosts: (i)
An animal that occasions widespread fear, such as a man-eating tiger.
We must distinguish from such cases the frequent beliefs that tigers,
wolves, sharks, snakes, etc., are, or are possessed by, the spirits or
ghosts of men. (ii) An animal that comes to be upon terms of special
intimacy with men; such as the very tame dogs and pigs that come when
they are called among the Bakongo;[189] or hunting dogs that have been
specially doctored among the Baloki.[190]

(_b_) Animals slain at funeral feasts to accompany the dead have ghosts
so far as necessary for that purpose; but, wanting individuality and
personal interest, they make no further figure in ghost-lore; they do
not “walk” or revisit the glimpses of the moon. Thus the Tanghouls say
that ghosts, on reaching Kazairam (their Hades), find the gates barred
against them by the deity Kokto; so at the burial feast of a rich man
a buffalo is killed, that his mighty ghost may burst open the massive
gates of that abode. Poor ghosts must wait about outside, till a rich
one comes up with his buffalo; when they all rush in behind him.[191]
But we hear nothing further of the buffalo. In the Banks’ Islands, pigs
killed at a funeral feast have no true ghosts to follow the dead to
Panoi, but only a sort of wraith; because they only go for show, that
their master may be well received there.[192]

(_c_) Animals that are important prey to a hunting tribe are often
believed to have ghosts that may be hunted by dead tribesmen; or that
must be propitiated when one of them is slain: the ghosts, for example,
of seals and bears are bribed by the Esquimo to entice other seals and
bears to come and be killed. A seal desires above everything, they
say, a drink of fresh water; so as soon as one is brought ashore a
dipperful is poured into his mouth; else the other seals will not allow
themselves to be caught. The polar bear (male) desires crooked knives
and bow-drills, or (female) women’s knives and needle-cases. Hence,
when a bear is killed, its ghost accompanies its skin into the hunter’s
hut; and the skin is hung up with the appropriate tools for four or
five days. Then the bear-ghost is driven out by a magic formula, takes
with it the souls of the tools, and reports well of the hunter in
bear-soul land. Whilst in the hut, as an honoured guest, nothing is
done that it dislikes in human customs.[193]

(_d_) In the development of mythology, animals and monsters of various
kinds may be found inhabiting shadow-land; but these are not true
ghosts of any particular things that once died in this world.

This list of the ways in which animals may come to have ghosts is not
offered as exhausting all the cases.


§ 5. GHOSTS AND SOUL-STUFF

A ghost is a disembodied soul, having a consciousness and power at, or
generally (because it is feared) above, the human level; but there may
be disembodied souls, or souls capable of disembodiment, that have no
consciousness, or none above the level of Animatism. Even if a living
thing have a consciousness, its post-mortem apparition may not; like
the Banks’ Islanders’ pig, which, though “a distinguished animal and
acknowledged to be intelligent,” has no true ghost. Among nearly all
tribes, whatever is offered in sacrifice to gods or left in, or at,
the tombs of men deceased, is believed to have some sort of soul;
because, plainly, spirits do not eat or consume the visible food or
utensils; yet it is necessary to the success of the rites to suppose
that the spirits are satisfied; they must, therefore, take the souls of
the offerings. And what can be more plausible reasoning than to argue
that, as solid men eat solid food, ghosts eat ghostly food? “Soul” thus
appears as a sort of ghost-substance, or ghost-body. For, in dreams,
the departed are seen as if in the flesh; and moreover analogy requires
that the ghost consciousness and ghost-force shall have a body of some
sort, and, of course, one that will maintain in ghost-land the same
relations to other things that the mortal body did in this world. In
ghost-land, or shadow-land, or dream-land, the substance of all things
is this soul-stuff. Sometimes the force of analogy requires a tribe to
believe that, in order that the souls of things (such as earthen pots
or weapons) may be released to accompany a ghost to the underworld,
the things themselves must be “killed,” that is to say, broken; but
other tribes are not such consistent logicians; and in some cases where
things left exposed at a grave (not buried) are broken, it may be to
prevent their being stolen.

Anything, then, may have “soul” after its kind: relatively inert
things have relatively inert souls, but never true ghosts; some
animals may have ghosts, especially if they have attained to a certain
individuality, but generally only in so far as they are imagined to
attend upon human ghosts or spirits. Inasmuch as the word “soul”
is often used as equivalent to “ghost,” it would be convenient
always to speak of the soul which is ghost-food, or ghost-body, “as
soul-stuff.”[194] Soul-stuff is conceived of as material, though subtle
and normally invisible. A man’s soul-stuff may be regarded not only
as permeating his body, but also as infecting everything he possesses
or touches: no doubt by analogy with his odour; for a man’s odour is
a personal quality, distinguishable by dogs and (I believe) by some
savages and hypnotic subjects; and the stench of his putrefying corpse
may be supposed to convey his courage and skill to those who inhale
it.[195] And the savour of a burnt-offering is food for gods. Indeed,
Ellis says explicitly that, in Tahiti, food was put to the mouth of a
chieftain’s corpse; because, they said, there was a spiritual as well
as a material part of food, a part which they could smell.[196]

Savage ideas are generally so little thought out, and are so
irregularly thought out by different tribes, that the relation of
a thing to its soul-stuff varies widely from one tribe to another.
In many cases the extraction by ghost or god of the soul-stuff from
an offering may affect it so little, that the devotee or the priest
proceeds to feast upon it; and I have nowhere met with the notion
(which logic requires) that such metaphysically eviscerated food can
only nourish a man’s body and not his soul. However, since the eating
of the sacrifice may be an act of communion with the ghost, he then
naturally extracts the goodness only from his own share. In other
cases, the breaking of weapons and utensils buried with a corpse
implies an intimate unity between the wholeness of an object and its
soul-stuff; and the Rev. J. H. Weeks says of the considerable wealth
put into a grave by the Bakongo, that only the shell or semblance of
anything is supposed to remain there.[197]

This conception of soul-stuff may have been an important contribution
to metaphysics. The doctrine of material substance is reached by
abstracting all the qualities of things; but then there would be
nothing left, were it not for this venerable idea of something
invisible and intangible in things in which qualities may “inhere,”
or which may serve as a “support” to them; so that, when it is taken
away there is only a shell or semblance of anything left. But such a
tenet is uncommon. Along another line of speculation this soul-stuff
may become the Soul of the World. When by philosophers spirits are
no longer conceived to have bodies, but to be the very opposite of
bodies, a spiritual substance must be invented to support their
qualities, in order to put them upon an equal footing of reality with
corporeal things; but as there is no spirit-stuff ready made by the
wisdom of our forefathers, this concept remains uncomfortably empty.
To appear as ghosts and to have mechanical energy, spirits may be
invested with “soul-stuff” as a spiritual body; but this is only subtle
matter. Their own substance must be correlative with their proper
attributes as pure conscious beings, the very opposite of bodies; and,
therefore, immaterial, unextended, simple, self-identical, according
to the “paralogisms of Rational Psychology.” But such speculations
are confined to philosophers and theologians: some of whom, however,
maintain (as if reverting to the original savage idea) that spirit is
the true substance of material things, at least that material things
depend upon a spirit, or spirits, for their existence. Monists, again,
say there is one substance of both matter and mind, which is not either
of these any more than it is the other. Locke very honestly calls it “a
supposed I know not what.”

In writing of Magic, I have indicated the origin of the notion of
force; and if my view is justifiable, it appears that those celebrated
abstractions “force” and “matter,” form and substance, spirit and body,
may be traced to the savage mind. That savages are incapable of general
and abstract ideas we have seen to be an illusion. They are necessary
to economy in the organisation of the mind. When a tribe bases its
grammatical gender on the distinction of Animate and Inanimate, has
it in no sense corresponding ideas? But an abstract idea results from
a long process of dissociative growth from its concrete sources, and
must exist in some manner at all stages of that growth, before its
distinctness is completed by an appropriate name; and it is reasonable
to suppose that at every stage of growth it functions and influences
the course of thought. Accordingly, it is plain that from very early
times thought has been greatly influenced by ideas of force, form,
spirit and the rest of them.


§ 6. GHOSTS AND SPIRITS

Whilst of some tribes (for example the Indians of Guiana) it is said
that there is nothing to indicate that they “know of any spirits,
except such as are, or once were, situated in material bodies,”[198]
amongst others we are often told that not only ghosts are known but
also spirits that are declared never to have been incarnate. An extreme
form of the ghost-theory maintains that all spirits were once ghosts
whose incarnation has been forgotten; but this is needless, and seems
not to be true. It is enough that probably the original inhabitants of
the spirit-world were ghosts; that some of those now believed not to
have been ghosts were once really so; and that those spirits that were
never ghosts are later immigrants, who have obtained domicile by having
been imagined in analogy with ghosts. The following list indicates more
or less probable reasons why (_A_) ghosts have sometimes come to be
regarded as non-human spirits, and (_B_) why certain non-human things
have come to be regarded as spirits, or as possessed by spirits, more
or less resembling the human.

_A._ Spirits that were formerly ghosts, but are now declared not to
have been:

(_a_) Ghosts whose former life has been forgotten by mere lapse of
time. The memory of the dead amongst many tribes does not extend
beyond three or four generations. If then the ghost of some unusually
impressive personality happens to be remembered, when all his relatives
and contemporaries have been forgotten, he seems to be separated
from the human race. And if his name was that of some natural object,
his ghost, according to Spencer’s hypothesis, may now be regarded as
the spirit of that phenomenon. But as to Spencer’s hypothesis,[199]
although it gives such a plausible explanation of much nature-worship
by real facts as to the working of savage language and thought that it
seems to me unreasonable to doubt that it has had some of the effects
he traces to it, yet it presses upon me more and more that most cases
of nature-worship are to be explained by more particular causes.

(_b_) To dissociate a ghost from mankind is especially easy if his
tomb has been forgotten, or if he has no tomb. As the drowned have no
tombs, they easily become water-demons. Tombs must often be forgotten
in consequence of migrations. In Central Melanesia both ghosts and
spirits are recognised; but in the west worship is directed chiefly
to ghosts, in the east chiefly to spirits. As migration has been from
west to east, the tombs of ancestors can no longer be pointed out by
the eastern islanders, and so their ghosts may have become spirits.
In Tumloo (northern New Guinea) there are temples of spirits (all
female) distinct from ancestral ghosts, and on the banisters of ladders
leading up to these temples there are ornamental figures of ape-like
animals; the architecture of the temples points to a former superior
culture.[200] As there are no apes in New Guinea, these figures and
temples may indicate a former residence under better conditions in
Java or Borneo; and the spirits with which they are associated may
be ancestral ghosts whose tombs and other earthly vestiges have been
forgotten in the migration.

(_c_) We may see another way in which a ghost may become a pure spirit,
if we suppose that as a ghost he had attained to some measure of
worship, but that with the rise of new gods (by conquest, or by the
reputation of being more helpful), or by his being himself too good
to be worth worshipping, his rites have been neglected and his legend
forgotten. Then he is no longer remembered as a ghost, or ancestor.

(_d_) It may be thought honourable to a god to deny that he was ever a
man.

(_e_) The construction of a world-myth makes it necessary to begin
somewhere with some one; and whoever becomes the first being, it
is necessary to deny that he was ever begotten. But there may be
inconsistent stories: the supreme being of the central Esquimo is
a woman, Sedna, who created all things that have life; but other
traditions give her a human origin.[201] Similarly, in drawing up the
genealogy of ancestral gods, we come at last to one who was never
begotten. Such is Unkulunkulu of the Zulus, generally said to have
sprung from a bed of reeds.[202]

_B._ Spirits that were never incarnate, but have been imagined by
analogy with ghosts already propitiated:

(_f_) A Totem may become a spirit; whilst, having himself no human
antecedents, he can hardly be a ghost as of an ordinary mortal. Nothing
can be more irregular than the life of Totemism: with some tribes it
seems to die out early, or leaves few and doubtful vestiges; with
others traces of it seem to remain even amidst conditions of high
culture. Apparently, where it survives, the Totem tends gradually to
lose his bestial or vegetal properties, or most of them, and to become
an anthropomorphic spirit with his myths, in analogy with heroic or
patriarchal ancestors. He has attained to a considerable degree of
individuality; yet, by association and tradition, may still confer more
or less sacredness upon his animal kindred (cf. chap. ix. § 8).

(_g_) To address any object with a spell, as a man is addressed
in summons or command, is (as said above) an approach toward its
personification. Hence corn, rice, padi, nkasa, or whatever has been
the object of tribal rites and spells—the sun and moon, the earth,
fire, wind, clouds and rain—having perhaps long been influenced and
reinforced by Magic—are apt, when Animism has gained control of man’s
imagination, to become first the embodiment and then the possession
of spirits; the spells become prayers, and the rites religious
ceremonies or mysteries. Such spirits, at first locally honoured, may
with the evolution of the tribe or nation, the increasing intercourse
of its villages, and the centralisation of its culture in some city,
be released from local conditions and generalised into transcendent
gods, either each of its own kind—corn or wine—or of still wider
sway over agriculture or the weather. The meteorological gods are not
impaired in strength by even wide migrations; for they are found to
rule everywhere; and this may be a reason of their predominance in the
higher religions. Plants from which intoxicants are obtained, such
as soma or the vine, bringing men to a condition resembling insanity
or the ravings of a sorcerer who is supposed to be possessed, are
especially easy to understand as sources of inspiration. A belief in
vegetation spirits, having originated in any way, may be extended
according to the circumstances and mentality of a tribe, until every
wood is populous with dryads.

(_h_) Natural objects that have, at first, been regarded with awe
and therefore endowed with magical powers—mountain-tops, ravines,
whirlpools, ancient trees—under Animism, become the abode of spirits;
and these, again, may, by analogy with others, cease to be conceived as
merely local. Among the Moors, “the _jnūn_, which form a special race
of beings created before Adam, are generally supposed to be active on
occasions or in places which give rise to superstitious fear, and in
many cases they are personifications of some mysterious qualities in
persons or lifeless objects.”[203]

In each of these cases, (_f_), (_g_), (_h_), however, an Euhemerist
explanation may be offered. As to (_f_), Spencer, of course, argued
that the Totem-ancestor is always a man, who bore the name of an
animal, and was confounded with it after death; and Dr. Rivers has
suggested that some gods who seem to have been derived from Totems may
really represent heroes who had such Totems.[204] As to (_g_), Grant
Allen suggested that the spirit of the corn or vine is always at first
the spirit of the man upon whose grave the plant grew.[205] And as
to (_h_), the spirit of a mountain may be the ghost of a man who was
buried on the top of it; and the spirit of a whirlpool the ghost of
a man who was drowned in it. Indeed some spirits may have originated
in one of these ways, others in another way; and what happened in any
particular case can only be determined, if at all, by examination of
its particular circumstances.

(_i_) Abstract ideas may, at a very early stage of culture, be
personified and treated as spirits. The Semang, according to Messrs.
Skeat and Blagden, personify Death, Hunger, Disease;[206] and the
Beloki, according to the Rev. J. H. Weeks, attribute all personal
qualities to the aid of spirits; so that if one man wrestles better
than another, it is because the spirit Embanda is in him.[207] The
modern Greeks of Macedonia personify and propitiate Lady Small
Pox.[208] In the tenth and latest book of the _Rigveda_, “the
deification of purely abstract ideas, such as Wrath and Faith, appears
for the first time.”[209] At a higher stage of culture we find Fides,
Fortuna, Concordia and many others. Such things are conceived of as
mysterious powers, and they have names; and so far they resemble
demons. Why, then, should they not be personified and propitiated like
demons?

(_j_) Various ways have been pointed out in which the grammatical
structures of language, metaphors and other figures of speech may
influence the growth of mythology.

(_k_) Animism having been generally adopted, spirits may be freely
invented in explanatory myths. The Kalinis believe that thunder
and lightning are the clang and flash of bracelets on the arms of
Kidilumai, a girl who dances in heaven, as formerly on earth, for joy
of the welcome rain.[210] It would be absurd to suppose that she must
once have lived on earth. Some amongst the Ekoi say that Thunder is a
giant marching across the sky; others that Thunder is the enemy of
Lightning and, on seeing it, growls to drive it away.[211] If free
invention may originate myths, it may modify old ones, with results
that cannot always be interpreted upon general principles.

Finally, any spirits that have been anthropomorphised in analogy with
ancestor-ghosts may be further disguised by giving them mythical family
connections with the ancestors and with one another, as happened to
Bacchus and Demeter.


§ 7. HOW GHOSTS AND SPIRITS ARE IMAGINED

Ghosts and spirits have the same qualities and characters, eat the
same food, appear in dreams, possess men and animals, help sorcerers,
give diseases, determine the success of hunting or agriculture. At
first, they are solid things, not truly incorporeal, merely invisible
to ordinary people by daylight; though dogs or pigs may see them even
then. A ghost is so associated with its corpse, that it is not always
clear which it is that escapes from the grave and walks; and one may
judge whether a dead man has yet gone to Hades or still haunts the
neighbourhood, by observing whether in the morning there are footprints
around his grave; and to keep the ghost from walking, one may fill
the belly of the corpse with stones, or break its limbs, or bury it
deep and pile the earth upon it; or one may burn it. In South-East
Australia, ghosts can be heard at night jumping down from the trees or
from the sky.[212] They may be heard to speak or sing, usually with
thin voices, like bats: as

                      “the sheeted dead
    Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome.”

Spirits may have all the appurtenances of an animal body; for two of
them waylaid an Australian, and made a wizard of him by taking out
his entrails and filling up the cavity with the entrails of one of
themselves.[213] They may marry mortals, as a devil begat Caliban upon
a witch; and not long ago the “incubus” was very troublesome throughout
Europe. In short, a ghost or spirit can act physically, just as a
man can, because he has the same organs; but with greater power,
because mysterious and more feared. And such beliefs persist amongst
people whose culture is much higher than the Australian, as in Jacob’s
wrestling with something at the ford Jabbok, and Grettir’s slaying of
the ghost of Glam at Thorhallstad;[214] and Euthymus, the boxer, having
put on his armour, defeated the ghost of Lycas at Temesa.[215] To this
day, in Macedonia, there are vampires, or animated corpses (chiefly
Turks), that walk, and throttle people and suck their blood.[216] “The
Moslem corpse,” says R. Burton, “is partly sentient in the tomb.”[217]
The Karok of California consider it the highest crime to utter the
name of the dead; for it makes the mouldering skeleton turn in its
grave and groan.[218] In fact, it is difficult to think of one’s own
future corpse as entirely inanimate, and this adds some discomfort
to one’s thoughts of death. According to Wundt, the Körperseele, as
eine Eigenschaft des lebenden Körpers, is a starting-point of Animism
independent of, and probably prior to, the breath and the dream, which
suggest the idea of a free separable soul.[219] This confusion of ideas
in popular Animism seems to me due to (1) the strong association of the
ghost with the corpse, and the performance of rites (which must take
place somewhere, if at all) naturally at the grave or in connection
with relics; (2) the manifestation of ghosts as visible, speaking,
tangible bodies in dreams; (3) the difficulty of imagining spirits
to live and act except in the likeness of the body (though non-human
forms—usually animal—are sometimes substituted); (4) the convenience
of such imaginations to the story-teller; (5) the convenience of
them to sorcerers and purveyors of mysteries, who rely upon such
imaginations in producing illusion by suggestion. For ages a confusion
of ghost with corpse may exist in the popular mind along with the
more refined notion of soul-stuff in which a ghost becomes manifest,
whilst there is no attempt to reconcile these imaginations; and it
is only by metaphysical subtilties about “mind” and “matter,” or by
mystical aversion to sensuosity, that the notion of pure incorporeal
spirit without even spatial limitations is at last freed from these
primitive associations, partially and amongst a few people. A tendency
to abstract conception of the spirit is set up, indeed, in the ordinary
way of “dissociation” by the belief in transmigration. For if a spirit
may “possess” all sorts of bodies—men, plants, animals, etc.—it is
independent of any particular body; though it may still be thought to
need _some_ body. Where the idea of pure spirit has been established
amongst educated people, it becomes necessary for those who believe
in ghosts and have forgotten their soul-stuff to explain how a spirit
can manifest itself to eye, ear, nose, hand, without a physical body,
by “materialising” itself, as invisible vapour (say one’s own breath
on a frosty morning) condenses into a cloud or into dew; for the power
of analogy as an aid to thought, or as a substitute for it, is not yet
exhausted.

The varieties of belief that occur here and there in the world cannot
be explained without a much fuller knowledge of local circumstances
than is usually available. The Semang say that souls are red, like
blood, and no bigger than a grain of maize;[220] the Malays that they
are vapoury, shadowy, filmy essences, about as big as one’s thumb;[221]
in both cases shaped like the owner. Elsewhere in the Indian
Archipelago, “the animating principle is conceived of, not as a tiny
being confined to a single part of the body, but as a sort of fluid or
ether diffused through every part.”[222] The less educated classes in
Japan consider the soul as a small, round, black thing that can leave
the body during sleep.[223] Amongst the Ekoi, the soul is a small thing
dwelling in the breast, whilst a man lives; but at death expands into
the body’s full stature.[224] The difficulty of finding the soul in the
body leads some thinkers to suppose it must be very small, others very
attenuated—thin as a shadow and as breath invisible.

Whilst many savages believe, like ourselves, that the body entertains
one soul and gives up one ghost, the Ekoi believe in two, one animating
a man’s body, the other possessing, or changing into, some animal in
the bush. Three souls, the vegetative, sensitive and rational, are
well known to European philosophy. The Mandans thought that a man has
one black, one brown, and one light-coloured soul; but that only the
last returned to the Lord of Life.[225] The observer who tells us
this also reports (p. 484) that some of the Dakotas assign to each
man four spirits: one that dies with the body; one that remains with,
or near, it; one that accounts for its deeds and at death goes to
the spirit-world; and one that lingers with the small bundle of the
deceased’s hair, which is kept by relatives until they can throw it
into an enemy’s country to become a roving, hostile demon. In West
Africa, too, Miss Kingsley found four souls: one that survives the
body; one that lives with some animal in the bush; one, the body’s
shadow, that lies down every night in the shadow of the great god,
and there recovers its strength; and, finally, the dream-soul. Some
natives hold that the three last are functions of the first or true
soul; but the witch-doctor treats all four separately.[226] The
shadow of a man, his reflection, his name, his totem, his breath, his
dream-wraith, his blood, his corpse, supply natural starting-points
for such speculations. Some Chinese philosophers held that “each of
the five viscera has its own separate male soul.”[227] I have found
no belief in six souls; but in Siberia the Altaians distinguish six
parts or (rather) conditions or stages of the soul; and this probably
is only another attempt to convey the same meaning.[228] Mr. Skeat
reports that, probably, in the old Animism of the Malays, each man
had seven souls; though now they talk of only one; except in using
spells, when the souls are addressed separately.[229] In the religion
of Osiris there seems to have been a still greater number of souls:
as of the name, the shape, the strength, the shadow, etc.: all
reuniting with the immortal counterpart of a man’s mummy, if justified
at the last judgment. Prof. Wiedemann suggests that these beliefs
may have been collected from different local sources, and preserved
for fear of losing anything that might be true.[230] Whereas, then,
the prescientific mind is often accused of confusing things that are
separate, we see here the opposite tendency to reify abstract aspects,
and to separate things that are in nature united; and one probable
cause of this is the practical interest of treating, and therefore of
attending to and addressing, separately, certain aspects of a man in
rites of exorcism, lustration, summoning, reinforcing, propitiation.

The belief in an external soul that exists apart from oneself (though
identified with oneself for good or evil) in an animal, in the bush,
or where not, may have arisen from the connecting of the soul with the
shadow or reflection. The shadow is, indeed, attached to a man by the
feet (except when he leaps), if the whole is seen; but it goes away
at night: it stretches, as the sun declines, far across the plain,
and then disappears. The reflection is quite separate, and is seen
_within_ a pool (as in a mirror), not on the surface, approaching us
when we advance, and withdrawing when we retire: whence it is easy to
understand that to take a man’s photograph may be to take away his
soul. If this kind of soul may be some feet distant, why may it not
be much further off, if there be any motive (such as the desire of
secrecy) to wish or think it so? If it may reside within a pool, why
not within anything else? What, in fact, becomes of it when we turn
away? That it should be in an animal in the bush is reasonable enough,
if one’s Totem (even though imperfectly remembered as such) is an
animal in the bush, and if oneself is in some sort that animal.


§ 8. ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF SOULS

Beliefs as to the origin of souls sometimes bear the character of
fanciful explanation myths. The Semang say that souls grow upon a
soul-tree in the world of Kari (their chief god); whence they are
brought by birds, which are killed and eaten by an expectant mother:
souls of fishes and animals are also obtained by the mothers’ eating
certain fungi and grasses.[231] Here the analogy of the growth of
fruits is adopted: being so familiar as to need no further explanation.
Leibnitz’s suggestion that monads are _fulgurations continuelles de la
Divinité_,[232] is at about the same level of thought. In other cases,
we see the struggling to birth of ideas that still seem plausible:
such is the widespread tenet that every present human soul is the
reincarnation of an ancestor, which we find in Australia, Melanesia,
Borneo, Manipur, on the Congo, in North America and elsewhere. The
Bakongo seem to base their belief in reincarnation partly on personal
resemblance; upon which ground a child may be thought to have the
soul even of a living man; so that to point out such a resemblance is
displeasing, since it implies that, the child having his soul, he must
soon die.[233] Another reason they give for their belief is that the
child speaks early of things its mother has not taught it, and that
this must be due to an old soul talking in a new body. But Bakongo
albinos are incarnations of water-spirits, and greatly feared. Possibly
in some cases people began by naming children after their ancestors,
and later inferred that those who bore the same name must be the same
persons. Plato thought that, by a sort of law of psychic conservation,
there must always be the same number of souls in the world:[234] there
must, therefore, be reincarnation. That nothing absolutely begins to
be, or perishes, though first explicit in the Ionian philosophy, is
generally assumed in savage thinking; so why should it not be true of
souls?

As to the destiny of souls there seems to exist amongst the tribes
of men even greater variety of belief than as to their origin. They
may pass through more than one stage of development: as in the western
isles of Torres Straits one becomes at death, first a _mari_, and later
a _markai_ with a more definite status;[235] or as with the Veddas, one
is at first called, without much confidence, “the living one,” and only
a few days later becomes, after trial of one’s virtue, a _yaka_,[236]
or authentic ghost. Often the dead will be reincarnated, but the
interval between death and rebirth may be passed in an underworld, or
in a city in the forest, or indefinitely in a land of ancestors. They
may turn into plants; as among the Mafulu old people’s ghosts become
large funguses growing in the mountains:[237] but more frequently into
animals; perhaps their Totems, or (with seeming caprice) into such
things as termites or wild pigs; or (because wings seem to suit the
spirit) into a butterfly or bee; or into owls or bats that haunt the
night and dwell in caves that may be tombs; or into deer or bear-cats,
because these are seen in the clearings near tombs; or into snakes,
because these are seen to come out of tombs, and often come into huts
as if returning to their homes, and, moreover, cast their skins and so
typify the renewal of life. They may also become stars, or shooting
stars, or mere naked demons, or white men.

It is only after ages of thought concerning the fate of our souls that
there arises in any systematic form the doctrine of metempsychosis,
which now prevails over great part of southern and eastern Asia, and
was formerly known in Egypt and even in Greece. But in the widely
diffused doctrines of reincarnation in men or in animals, or even in
plants, and in the general belief that a soul may wander and possess
any kind of body, we see the sources from which this vast flood of
superstition collected its waters. The Buddhist belief that not the
soul wanders, but its _karma_ (or character) creates a new body, may be
considered as a retrogression from Animism to Magic; for what is it but
a law of the action of an occult force or virtue?

Though the ghost survive the body, and it may be said (as by the
Ekoi) that it cannot perish, and the reason may even be given (as in
the Bismarck Archipelago), that it is of different nature from the
body,[238] it is by no means always immortal. It may die, as it were a
natural death, by oblivion; or, the next world being just like this,
ghosts may fight together and kill one another;[239] according to the
Tongans a ghost may be killed with a club; amongst the Bakongo it may
be destroyed by burning its corpse.[240] It has been thought that
to suppress the ghost was the original motive of cremation; but the
western Tasmanians cremated their dead, and can hardly have done so to
be rid of such mild Animism as seems to have been entertained by the
eastern tribes, who buried their dead or abandoned them.[241] However,
they seem to have been rid of it; whereas, in general, ghosts survive
cremation, because this process cannot put an end to dreams; and it may
then come to be believed that burning is necessary in order to set the
soul free from its body; and, therefore, the wife of Periander, tyrant
of Corinth, complained to him of being cold in the ghost world, because
her clothes had been only buried in her tomb and not burnt.[242]
According to the Egyptians, the ghost participated in every mutilation
of the body, and perished with its dissolution. It may be held that
even the gods die if neglected, and depend for their immortality upon
the perpetuation of their rites and sacrifices.[243]

Whilst the ghost’s life endures, its dwelling may be in the earth
or sky, sea or forest, or in the land of the setting sun, or in the
land of ancestors whence the tribe remembers to have migrated. Before
departing to that undiscovered country, it may haunt the grave or the
old home, till burial, or till the flesh decays, or till the funeral
feast, or till death has been avenged; or it may roam the country, a
resentful demon, if its funeral rites be not duly celebrated. There
may be one place for all ghosts, or two, or more, according to their
age, or rank, or qualities (as sociable or unsociable), or whether
or not their noses were bored; or according to the manner of their
death, by violence, or suicide, or sorcery. It is late before our
posthumous destiny is thought to depend on moral character (as it does
in metempsychosis); and even then varies with the local conception
of the good man, as observing custom or religious rites or, finally,
the dictates of conscience.[244] I remember how puzzling it was in
childhood to make out from sermons how far “going to heaven” depended
on being good (conscientious) or on faith. Both seemed very desirable;
yet there was a shadow of opposition between them, and to be good was
a little dangerous. But faith was indispensable, and apparently the
more difficult of the two, needing more elucidation, exhortation and
reiteration.

The journey of ghosts to their own world may be short or long, an
unadorned migration or rich in details of adventure. They may begin
the new life exactly as they finished this one, or the old may be
rejuvenated. As to their manner of life there, oftenest it is a
repetition of their earthly state, perhaps better, or even much
better, perhaps worse. And this conception is historically of the
utmost importance: for (1) it seems to give the greatest confidence
in a hereafter. Hume ascribes what seemed to him the incredulity of
men with regard to a future life “to the faint idea we form of our
future condition, derived from its want of resemblance to the present
life.”[245] And (2) from this conception proceeds the development of
ghostly polities: presided over, according to tribes that have no
chiefs, by a headman, such as Damarulum, or by the greatest known
hunt-leader, like Kande Yaka of the Veddas; under advancing political
structures, by chieftains, amongst whom one may be paramount, and
so become a king or lord of all. These ghostly politics support the
earthly ones they imitate. It is everywhere an edifice built by hope
and fear, under the guidance of analogy, and sometimes decorated by
caprice, if this find acceptance with the tribe.


§ 9. THE TREATMENT OF GHOSTS

The behaviour of men toward the ghosts of their dead is chiefly
governed by fear. The human power that has left the corpse is now
invisible; that power, rarely quite trustworthy whilst in the body,
especially when unobserved, retains its desires, caprices and hatreds
that were partially controlled by social influences. What controls
them now that the man is exempt from observation? How shall one defend
oneself against him, or procure his neutrality, or even (as sometimes
in the flesh) his help? The fear of ghosts has peculiar qualities:
the invisibility of a spiritual enemy produces a general objectless
suspicion and a sense of helplessness; associations with the physical
conditions of the corpse and with darkness excite feelings very much
like those aroused by snakes and reptiles. This fear explains why
savages, such as the Australians, may believe in ghosts for ages
without ever venturing to pray even to father or mother deceased; for
to pray is to invoke, and they will come, and, on the whole, they are
not wanted. Fear may make the survivors quit the neighbourhood of the
dead; sometimes makes them adopt means to induce the ghost to leave,
and invent stories of how and whither he goes, which are believed by
biological necessity; because, unless they can be rid of the ghost and
the dread of him, or establish in some way the _pax deorum_, it is
impossible to go on living.

The Yerkla-mining never bury their dead, nor in any way dispose of
them. On seeing death approaching a tribesman, they make up a good fire
for him, and leave the neighbourhood, not to return for a considerable
time.[246] The Sakai, having buried the dead affectionately with
necklaces, wallets, etc., say to him: “Do not remember any more your
father, mother, or relations. Think only of your ancestors gone to
another place. Your living friends will find food.” They then burn his
house and desert the settlement, even abandoning standing crops.[247]
Among the Kikuyu, “if a person dies in a village, that village is
often burnt, and the people trek off and build elsewhere,” though much
labour may have been spent on the surrounding fields. Sick people are
often deserted.[248] Where land is closely settled such flight becomes
impossible, and in any case it is very inconvenient; so that if any one
can believe it possible to deceive the ghost, or to frighten him away
by shouting at him, beating the air with boughs or firebrands, letting
off arrows or guns, or to restrain him from walking by breaking the
corpse’s legs, or by placing loaded “ghost-shooters” (straws filled
with gunpowder) around the grave, so much the better. Many such plans
are adopted, and they _must_ be believed in.[249]

Affection, however, has its part in the treatment of the dead: it is
reasonable to attribute to affection the beginnings of the practices
of leaving food at the tomb, burying weapons or ornaments with the
corpse, celebrating funerary rites with lamentations; though in time
this motive may be mixed with, or superseded by, fear of the ghost,
or by fear of being suspected of having murdered the deceased by
sorcery, should rites be neglected or maimed. It is not uncommon to
carry about some bones of the departed, to hang round one’s neck the
skulls of infants untimely dead. The wild Veddas, though, having
covered a corpse with boughs, they avoid the place for a long time
for fear of being stoned, nevertheless have a strong feeling of good
fellowship for the spirits of their dead.[250] In the eastern isles
of Torres Straits, the Miriam perform an eschatological mystery, in
which the recently deceased reappear on their way to the other world.
The women and children take it for reality: their affections are said
to be gratified; and at the same time their fears are allayed by the
conviction that the ghosts, having been seen on their way to Hades,
will no longer haunt them.[251] The old Norsemen believed that the
dead were still united with the living by intense sympathy.[252] As
rites begun in affection may become propitiatory through fear, and
after prayer has been instituted may be further extended to obtain the
aid of spirits or gods in hunting, war, revenge, love, agriculture,
trade, or any undertaking for subsistence, riches or power, every
passion in turn seeks its gratification through Animism.

Extravagance in funerary rites, often ruinous to the family, may
sometimes be checked by considerations of economy or convenience.
Thus some tribes of South Australia may burn all the property of the
deceased except their stone axes, which are too valuable to be lost to
the survivors. The Nagas bury with the body the things most closely
associated with the dead; but things of small value, never the gun
or the cornelian necklace.[253] The Todas, who burn their dead, lay
the body on a bier with many valuable offerings and swing it three
times over the fire; they then remove the money and the more valuable
ornaments and burn the rest with the corpse. They say that the dead
still have the use of everything that was swung over the fire; and tell
a story to explain the ceremony; but Dr. Rivers observes that “this
symbolic burning has the great advantage that the objects of value
are not consumed, and are available for use another time.”[254] The
Araucanians buried many things with the dead, and at the grave of a
chief slew a horse. But for all valuables—silver spurs and bits and
steel lance-heads—they left wooden substitutes. As for the horse, the
mourners ate it, and the ghost got nothing but the skin and the soul
of it.[255] Economy may also induce the belief that ghosts are easily
deceived, or are unaccountably stupid in some special way: as in the
widespread practice of carrying a corpse out of its house through a
hole in the wall; trusting that, the hole having been immediately
repaired, the ghost can never find his way back; so soon does he
forget the familiar door. This is cheaper than to burn the house
down. Superstitious practices may be carried out with self-destructive
infatuation, or restricted at will: in Florida (Melanesia), in a
certain stream, a very large eel was taken for a ghost; no one might
bathe in, or drink at, the stream—“except at one pool, which for
convenience was considered not to be sacred.”[256] A conflicting desire
creates a limiting belief. Whilst often the most painful or disgusting
rites are endured for fear of ghosts, at other times they are assumed
to be so dull that we are tempted to say: “Whatever is convenient is
credible.”

If we desire to know the future, ghosts are so wise that we consult
their oracles and pay handsome fees to their inspired priests; but if
we dread their presence, it is easy to accept any suggestion that they
are obtuse or infatuated. They may (_e. g._) be afflicted with what
psychiatrists call “arithmomania.” Returning from a funeral, strew the
ground with millet-seed: then the ghost can never overtake you, for he
must stop to count them. Or hang a sieve outside your window: he cannot
enter until he has counted all the holes; moreover, his system of
numeration does not reach beyond “two.” You can always block his path
by drawing a line across it and pretending to jump over the line as if
it were a stream of water: of course, he cannot pass that. Or blaze
through the wood a circular trail, beginning at his grave and returning
to it: he must follow it around for ever, always ending at the same
cold grave. Alas, poor thin, shivering thing, that would go back to the
old hearth and sit close amongst the kinsmen by the fire, and laugh at
the old jokes and listen to the old stories—chiefly about ghosts—have
you forgotten all the tricks that can be played upon your kind? Such is
the homœopathy of superstition: imagination creates the fear of ghosts,
and imagination cures it.

Imagination-beliefs, being swayed by moods and passions, are
necessarily inconsistent. Natives of the Bismarck Archipelago are
cannibals and greatly fear the ghosts of those they devour. Whilst
feasting they hang up a slice for the ghost himself, and afterwards
make an uproar to scare him away. Nevertheless they keep his skull and
jawbone, which the ghost might be supposed especially to haunt; so
easily do other passions overcome fear. Of the fear of ghosts sometimes
seems true that which Bacon says of the fear of death, that there is
no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters it.
Sacrilegious miscreants have always robbed tombs, even the tombs of
Pharaohs who were gods; and timid lovers have kept tryst in graveyards.
The Sia Indians of North Mexico had a masterful way of dealing with
the ghost of a slain enemy: they annexed him together with his scalp;
for this having been brought to the village, a shaman offered a long
prayer, and thus addressed the ghost: “You are now no longer an enemy;
your scalp is here; you will no more destroy my people.”[257] To
capture and enslave the ghost of an enemy is said to have been the
chief motive of head-hunting in Malaya. Compare the conduct of the
Romans in carrying off Juno from Veii and establishing her at Rome.
The inconsistency (sometimes met with) of supposing a man’s personal
qualities to go with his ghost, and yet eating some part of his body to
obtain those qualities, may be due to the latter practice having been
magical, and having persisted after the rise of Animism. Some of the
Esquimo have such control over ghosts by Magic, that they fear them
very little. After a death, the ghost remains peaceably in the house
four days (if a man) or five (if a woman), and is then dismissed by
a ceremony to the grave, to wait there until a child is born in the
village, when it is recalled to be the child’s tutelary spirit.[258]


§ 10. EVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION OF ANIMISM

Animism, originating in the belief in ghosts of men, tends to spread
as the explanation of whatever had formerly been attributed to Magic
(if we take this to have been earlier); although it is far from
occupying the whole region that thus lies open to it. We have seen
that the extent of its prevalence as an explanatory principle, and
consequently as the basis of cults, differs greatly amongst different
peoples. But more interesting than the spread of belief as to the
agency of spirits so as to include more and more objects, is the
gradual differentiation of some of them from common ghosts in power,
character and rank, and their integration into families and polities,
such as we see in the _Edda_ and the _Iliad_. A process, going on for
ages and varying with every people, cannot be briefly described: the
work of E. B. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, W. Wundt and others in this
department is well known. In general it may be said that, allowing for
the influences of geographical conditions and tradition and foreign
intercourse, the chief cause of the evolution of a spirit-world is
the political evolution of those who believe in it; so that the
patriarchies, aristocracies, monarchies and despotisms of this world
are reflected in heaven. Tribes of the lowest culture—some African
Pygmies, Fuegians, Mafulu, Semangs, Veddas—have the least Animism;
at successive grades—Australians, Melanesians, Congolese, Amerinds,
Polynesians—Animism increases and grows more systematic; and it
culminates in the barbaric civilisations of Egypt, Babylonia and India,
and of Mexico and Peru. But in civilisations of our modern type it
rapidly loses ground.

The cause of such differences in the extension and elaboration of the
animistic hypothesis cannot be that some tribes have had more time
than others to think it out; since they have all had an equally long
past. Animism is known to be very ancient, and there is no reason
to think that some races adopted it later than others. That, in the
lower grades of culture, men want brains to think it out, is not a
satisfactory explanation; because, on contact with superior races,
backward peoples show themselves capable of much more than could have
been inferred from their original state. Improvement in culture depends
upon much besides native brains, namely, opportunities afforded by the
resources of their habitat, and communication with other peoples. The
most backward peoples are the most isolated peoples. The development
of Animism is entirely a matter of operating with ideas; and it seems
to me that before men can build with ideas they must build with their
hands; there must be occupations that educate, and give advantage
to, constructive power, as in the making of boats and the building
of houses and temples; for to this day a nation’s material edifices
are always, in clearness of plan, coherence and serviceableness, much
in advance of their systems of theology and philosophy; because they
must “work,” as the Pragmatists say. If you have ever gone over a
battleship, compare her with the _Kritik d. r. Vernunft_. Secondly,
a suitable model for the edifice of ideas must be presented in the
world of fact; and this, as we have seen, is supplied by the tribe’s
social and political structure; which, again, is clearly correlated
with the improvement of architecture in building the houses of chiefs
and gods. Thirdly, a favourable condition of the working out of any
theory is to have the means of recording, either in oral literature or
(still better) in writing, the advances already made; and, fourthly—a
condition historically involved in the foregoing—the growth of a
class of men, generally a priestly caste or order, sometimes poets,
who have time to think, and the education and vocation to bring the
accumulating masses of animistic—now religious—ideas into greater
order and consistency. Hence there are two stages in the development
of Animism—of course, not sharply separated: first, a long period of
irregular growth in the tribal mind; and, secondly, a much shorter
period, in which the extension of animistic theory depends more or less
upon quasi-philosophical reflection.

With the differentiation of superior beings—heroic, ancestral or
other gods—from common ghosts, Religion arises. As to the meaning of
the word “religion,” indeed, there is no agreement: some lay stress
upon the importance of beliefs concerning supernatural beings; others
upon prayer, sacrifice and other rites of worship; still others upon
the emotions of awe and mystery. To define “religion” (as a tribal
institution) by all three of these characters seems to me the most
convenient plan, and the most agreeable to common usage. That, on
the one hand, pure Buddhism (if it ever was a living faith outside
of a coterie of philosophers and saints), and, on the other hand,
the spiritual condition of a few savages, may be wanting in one or
other mark, is no serious objection. The former case is, in fact,
exceptional and aberrant, and the latter rudimentary; not to give them
the name of “religion” in a technical sense is no wrong to anybody.
Thus understood, then, Religion brings to the development and support
of Animism many social utilities and other influences; especially the
influence of dynasties supposed to have descended from the gods; and of
priesthoods, whose sustentation and authority depend upon the supposed
necessity of their intervention in worship. In their hands the free
popular development of animistic ideas comes to an end, and gives place
to the co-ordination of ideas by reflection, and to the dictation of
tenets and rites by policy. The simple motives of hope and fear that
actuated popular Animism are now supplemented by dynastic and priestly
interests and ambitions; beneath which lies, faintly recognised and ill
served, the interest of society in order.

This later sophisticated Animism, so far as it obtains a hold upon the
people, is imposed upon them by suggestion, authority and deception;
but being superimposed upon ancient popular traditions that are never
obliterated, it still appeals to the sentiments of awe, consolation,
hope and enthusiastic devotion. The part of deception in the history
of Animism, indeed, begins at the beginning, preceded, perhaps, and
prepared for by the devices of Magic-mongers. Amongst the Arunta,
women and children are taught that the noise of the bull-roarer during
initiation ceremonies is the voice of the spirit Twanyirika.[259] Near
Samoa Harbour, at harvest, they offer some of the firstfruits in a bowl
to the ghosts; and, whilst the family feasts on the remainder, “the
householder will surreptitiously stir the offerings in the bowl with
his finger, and then show it to the others in proof that the souls
of the dead have really partaken.”[260] So early is the end supposed
to justify the means. Animism, like Magic, strives to maintain its
imaginations by further stimulating the imagination; and, in both
cases, such practices are, with many men, compatible with firm belief
on the part of the practitioner; who is merely anxious to promote the
public good by confirming the weaker brethren: himself weak in the
perception of incongruities. But I am concerned chiefly with origins,
and will pursue this nauseous topic no further.

Parallel with the development of Religion, a change takes place in
the emotions connected with Animism. As the gods emerge from the
shadow of night and the grave, and are cleansed from the savour of
corruption, and withdraw to the summit of the world, they are no longer
regarded with the shuddering fear that ghosts excite; as they acquire
the rank of chiefs and kings, the sentiments of attachment, awe,
duty, dependence, loyalty, proper to the service of such superiors,
are directed to them; and since their power far exceeds that of
kings, and implies the total dependence of man and nature upon their
support and guidance, these sentiments—often amazingly strong toward
earthly rulers—may toward the gods attain to the intensest heat of
fanaticism. Extolled by priests and poets, the attributes of the gods
are exaggerated, until difficulties occur to a reflective mind as to
how any other powers can exist contrary to, or even apart from, them:
so that philosophical problems arise as to the existence of evil and
responsibility, and the doctors reason high—

   “Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
    Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
    And find no end, in wandering mazes lost.”

This is one cause of the dissolution of Animism: the power that
comprehends all powers ceases to be an object, and becomes the
immanence of all things, good and evil. Another cause is the complexity
of theogonies, or of spiritual kingdoms with their orders and degrees:
found too fanciful, when hierarchic despotisms, that furnished the
analogues, give place to the simpler social structure of democracies;
or, to a certain type of democrat, even insulting, a provocative
disparagement of the sovereignty of the people. And Animism has other
enemies in the growth of Positivism, and sometimes in the resurgence of
Magic.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] _The Veddas_, pp. 126-7.

[156] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 170.

[157] _The Land of Zing_, p. 219.

[158] J. O. Dorsey, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 419.

[159] Mariner’s _Tonga_, p. 105.

[160] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, p. 48.

[161] _African Game Trails_, p. 333.

[162] _Outdoor Pastimes_, p. 77.

[163] Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[164] _The Melanesians_, pp. 249 and 356.

[165] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. p. 222.

[166] _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[167] _Camp and Tramp in African Wilds_, p. 174.

[168] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 283.

[169] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 275.

[170] _Among the Indians of Guiana_, p. 355.

[171] _Two Years with the Natives of the West Pacific_, p. 199. As
to waterspouts and shooting stars, see the _Reports of the Cambridge
Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 252.

[172] J. Hernell in the _Quarterly Journal of the Mythical Society_
(Bangalore), IV. No. 4, p. 158.

[173] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 112.

[174] J. Mooney in _Reports of the American Bureau of Ethnology_,
1885-6, VII. p. 341.

[175] J. E. Bourke in the _Reports of the American Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1887-8, IX. pp. 499-507.

[176] E. F. im Thurn, _Among the Indians of Guiana_, pp. 288, 354.

[177] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I. chs. viii.-xii.

[178] _Primitive Culture_, chs. xi., xii.

[179] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, pp. 262-3. My friend, Mr.
Torday, tells me this belief is very common in Africa.

[180] See, _e. g._, A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East
Australia_, p. 406; and P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, pp.
83-8.

[181] _Indians of Guiana_, p. 344.

[182] S. H. C. Hawtrey, “The Lengua Indians,” _J.A.I._, 1901.

[183] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” _Am. B. of Ethn._,
VII. p. 352.

[184] C. G. Seligman, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 190-91.

[185] S. H. Ray, “People and Language of Lifu,” _J.R.A.I._, LXVII. p.
296.

[186] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 277.

[187] A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 358.

[188] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, § 53.

[189] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 238.

[190] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 233.

[191] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 160.

[192] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 269.

[193] V. Stefànson, _My Life with the Eskimo_, p. 57.

[194] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. p. 3.

[195] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 403.

[196] _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 523.

[197] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 371.

[198] E. im Thurn, _op. cit._, p. 363.

[199] _Principles of Sociology_, §§ 165-93.

[200] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 220.

[201] Franz Boas, _American Bureau of Ethnology_, VI. 1884-5, p. 583.

[202] Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_, pp. 1 and 40. Cf.
Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 150: Koevasi, a spirit, was never
human, yet in some way the originator of the human race.

[203] E. Westermarck, _Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco_, p. 343.

[204] _J.R.A.I._, 1909, p. 163.

[205] See his ingenious speculations in _The Evolution of the Idea of
God_, ch. xiii.

[206] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II. iii. ch. vi.

[207] _Among Congo Cannibals_, p. 272.

[208] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 236.

[209] A. A. Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, p. 44.

[210] T. C. Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 126.

[211] P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 73.

[212] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 437.

[213] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
483.

[214] _Grettir Saga_, ch. xxxv.

[215] _Pausanias_, VI. p. 6.

[216] G. F. Abbott, _Macedonian Folklore_, p. 217.

[217] _First Footsteps in East Africa_, p. 52 note.

[218] _American Bureau of Ethnology_, I. p. 200.

[219] _Mythus und Religion_, 2º ed., p. 78.

[220] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[221] _Malay Magic_, p. 47.

[222] _Spirits of the Corn and the Wild_, I. p. 183.

[223] W. G. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 50.

[224] _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 230.

[225] J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults” in the _American Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 512.

[226] _West African Studies_, p. 200.

[227] J. G. Frazer, _Balder the Beautiful_, II. pp. 196-208; where are
reported other beliefs in a plurality of souls; in one case thirty, in
another thirty-six.

[228] M. A. Czaplicka, _Aboriginal Siberia_, p. 282.

[229] _Malay Magic_, p. 48.

[230] _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, ch. ix.

[231] _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, I. p. 194.

[232] _Monadologie_, 47.

[233] _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 115.

[234] _Republic_, 611_a_.

[235] Haddon, _Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits_, Vol. V. p.
355.

[236] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 133.

[237] R. W. Williamson, _The Mafulu_, p. 266.

[238] J. G. Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 396.

[239] C. G. Seligman, _The Melanesians_, p. 658.

[240] J. H. Weeks, _The Primitive Bakongo_, p. 224.

[241] Ling Roth, _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, pp. 57-61.

[242] Herodotus, V. p. 93.

[243] On the mortality of gods, see Frazer, _The Dying God_, ch. i.

[244] _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 75-96.

[245] _Treatise_, B. I., Part III. § 9.

[246] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 450.

[247] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, II.
pp. 95-9. For similar formulæ of dismission (which, of course, are
constraining spells) see W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, I. p. 522;
and J. O. Dorsey, “Siouan Cults,” _American Bureau of Ethnology_, X. p.
420.

[248] Stigand, _The Land of Zing_, p. 250.

[249] For the practice of appointing certain seasons at which the whole
tribe or nation unites in driving out ghosts or demons by force of arms
(sometimes with the help of cannon and elephants), as obtaining at all
levels of culture, from Australian savagery to the enlightenment of
China and Peru, and with more decorum at Athens and Rome, see Frazer,
_The Scapegoat_, ch. iii. § 2.

[250] C. G. Seligman, _The Veddas_, p. 131.

[251] _Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p. 253.

[252] Vigfussen and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, I. p. 417. For
further examples of affectionate interest in ghosts, see _Primitive
Culture_, II. pp. 31-3.

[253] Hodson, _The Naga Tribes of Manipur_, p. 100.

[254] _The Todas_, p. 363.

[255] E. R. Smith, _The Araucanians_, p. 172.

[256] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 177.

[257] Miss M. C. Stevenson, “The Sia” in _American Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1889-90, XI. p. 121.

[258] Stefànson, _My Life among the Eskimo_, p. 397.

[259] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
497.

[260] Frazer, _Belief in Immortality_, p. 259.




CHAPTER VI

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN MAGIC AND ANIMISM


§ 1. THE QUESTION OF PRIORITY

Magic and Animism now everywhere flourish side by side, or in confused
association, and, by those who believe in them, are not discriminated
as they may be by a spectator. As to their origin, we have seen that
both of them are prehistoric; it is useless to inquire about it amongst
believers (who can only tell you that they learnt these things from
their forefathers), or to look for any sort of direct proof. In Chapter
IV. I mentioned general considerations in favour of the priority of
Magic; but said nothing of the opposite opinion, that Animism is prior
and Magic derivative: an opinion held by many and, amongst them, by
Wundt, whose treatment of the problem claims attention.

Prof. Wundt holds that the idea of the soul is older than Magic
and has three principal sources: (1) the gebundene Seele, or
Körperseele (consciousness as an attribute of the body), is
immediately given, without the need of any reflection, as a result of
perception-associations; for thinking, feeling and willing are constant
elements of a living body.[261] The influence of this idea is seen
in the practices of making offerings to the dead at their tombs, of
preserving the body itself, of treating the blood and various parts of
the body as vehicles of the soul, the use of hair and nail-parings in
sorcery, and so forth. By contact, this soul can be transfused into
other things. But the freie Seele, a being differing from and opposed
to the body, is suggested (2) by breath and by the cessation of the
body’s living functions with the last breath—the Hauchseele; and also
(3) by dreams and visions—the Schattenseele. This third conception
gradually subordinates the other two, and has the chief part in the
development of Animism and Mythology.[262] As to sorcery (Zauber), it
is, at first, always attributed to the human will; inasmuch as this is
the original type of causation. Ordinary events raise no question of
causes for the Naturmensch; but only extraordinary occurrences do so,
such as sickness and death. Even pain or death from wounds is a matter
of course, for the antecedents are visible to him; but pain or death
from sickness has no such customary antecedent; so to explain them he
imagines an enemy who can operate at a distance by sorcery. Sorcery he
conceives of as an operation of one soul upon another; either directly,
or indirectly by various appliances, such as pantomimic injury by means
of an image. Pantomime is at first believed to affect the victim’s
soul, and so to cause sickness in his body; but the oftener such rites
are repeated, the more the intervention of the soul is obscured. For
in many-linked associations, especially where the first and last links
stand as means and end, the middle links are apt to disappear; and
since these are, in this case, ideas about the soul, there remains,
after their loss, the indefinite idea of some incomprehensible action
at a distance by means of the pantomime: it is then no longer Sorcery
but Magic. Similarly, a fetich, or a talisman or amulet (which differs
from a fetich only in not being the object of a cult), originally owes
its power to an indwelling spirit, but may degenerate into a magical
object.[263] Magic, therefore, is always derivative and secondary; and
Animism is entirely independent of Magic.[264]

This theory is worked out with Prof. Wundt’s usual comprehensiveness
and methodical clearness; and the exposition abounds with interesting
discussions; but it has not convinced me. The Körperseele, as an
attribute of the body, is, surely, not a soul at all. Customary
perception of other men interpreted by self-consciousness, with the
habitual treatment of others (and of ourselves by others) as conscious
bodies—making it difficult to conceive that a corpse is really
dead—no doubt influences animistic rites; for even though the soul
seen in dreams may be believed to live, having the consciousness of
its former body in dreamland, yet some consciousness seems to remain
with the body in the grave. Many rites performed at a tomb, however,
may also be understood in relation to a belief that the soul, though
having a separate existence as seen in dreams, still desires to
reinhabit its body, or to protect its buried treasures, and therefore,
though its new home be far away, frequently returns and haunts the
neighbourhood of its tomb, and will certainly return if summoned.
But it is not until the soul seen in dreams has become an object of
popular belief, that any idea can be formed of a body-soul—or more
properly of a soul within the body, and thence of a soul-stuff of the
body—which leaves the body at death (and under other conditions) as
the vehicle of consciousness. This soul-stuff which leaves the body at
death may easily come to be identified with the breath, but not until
the discussion of dreams has given rise to the belief in a separable
soul. The fact that in cold weather the last breath (or any other!)
may appear for a moment as a vapour, and is never seen again, cannot
by itself suggest a separate persistent existence like that of the
soul; and over a considerable part of the earth such a vapour is seldom
formed by the breath. The Körperseele and the Hauchseele, therefore,
are not independent sources of Animism, but are entirely dependent for
their imaginary existence upon the Schattenseele, upon the growth of a
belief in a separable soul as seen in dreams.

As to Sorcery, it may be defined as Magic practised with the aid of
spirits; and since its existence implies that a belief in spirits and
their influence has already formed itself, it may also be believed to
operate, in the first place, on the souls of its victims and so, in the
second place, on their bodies. Then, as Prof. Wundt explains, a process
of retrogradation sometimes occurs, in the course of which the spirits
are forgotten, and only the mechanical rites remain as a residuum of
bare Magic. Similarly, a fetich sometimes becomes a merely magical
talisman or amulet. This is hardly disputable; but it does not prove
that the degeneration of Sorcery is the _only_ source of Magic, or
that Magic has not (for the most part, indeed,) another, independent
origin. The issue is difficult to argue upon the ground of facts,
because magical practices are of such high antiquity. If, for example,
one should urge that the intichiuma ceremonies of the Arunta are not,
so far as we have evidence, designed to operate by spiritual power upon
the souls of the emu or the witchettygrub, but directly to promote by
Magic the fertility of these objects, it might be replied that such,
indeed, may be their present character, but that the original intention
must have been to promote fertility by first influencing their souls,
and that this has been forgotten. Or, again, if one should point to
the little stones—tied up in bark and believed by the Kaitish to be
stores of evil Magic—as having no mark of the fetich, no character
to indicate that their power is due to spirits, so that they seem to
be merely magical, the answer would be ready, that by long use and
retrogradation they may have ceased to be fetiches, but that a good
theory requires them to have been of that nature aforetime. Thus any
case of apparently bare Magic may be treated as a residuum of lapsed
Animism; or, should its origin be recent and ascertainable, it may
still be said to have been constituted by analogy with such residua.

We are driven, therefore, to rest the argument upon the psychological
conditions of such beliefs. Is the nature of the human mind, so far
as we can interpret it at the savage level, such that the belief in
Animism necessarily precedes and (later) gives rise to the belief in
Magic; or is it possible to indicate conditions that may independently
give rise to Magic? According to Prof. Wundt, as I have said, Sorcery
precedes Magic and, at first, is always attributed to human volition,
because this is the original type of causation. Contrary to Hume’s
doctrine (he says), the ordinary course of events does not excite in
the savage the idea of causation, or the need of explanation. Customary
series of events belong to those matter-of-course properties of things
which he, eben wegen ihrer Regelmässigkeit, unmöglich hinweg denken
kann.[265] It is the unusual occurrences—accidents, storms, drought
(where rain is much desired) and especially sickness and death—that
awaken in him the need of causal explanation. He is accustomed to pain
from wounds, where he sees the conditions on which they always follow;
but the pain of disease has no such antecedents, and he supplies the
gap in routine by free associations, imagining that this pain also
must be the work of some enemy. For in the regular course of events
there is for him only one region in which an effect appears notwendig
verknüpft mit dem Vorausgehende: namely, that of his own voluntary
actions. The connexion is, indeed, only a matter of fact; but it
includes the sensations and feelings of his own power über den Eintritt
des Ereignisses. This, as Berkeley saw (says Prof. Wundt), is the
true origin of the notion of causality; though the true principle of
causality requires the elimination of this subjective ground of its
origin.[266]

It is true, of course, that the savage has no definite idea of the
principle of causation; but he has obscure ideas of all its chief
marks—the need of some antecedent for every event, regularity of
connexion, and proportionality; and probably, in the depths of his
mind, the abstract principle has made some progress toward maturity.
(_a_) The ground or source of such ideas, according to Hume, is
customary experience; and that such experience includes its own
causation (and, therefore, needs no explanation) is proved by Prof.
Wundt’s contention that it is the unusual which first demands causal
explanation; because there the familiar causation is missing; so that
the savage tries to fill up the lacuna, as best he can, according to
the type of what is usual. But (_b_), according to Prof. Wundt, there
is in the regular course of events only one region in which the idea of
causation (though illusory) first arises: namely, our own actions, in
which we are aware of our own power over the beginning of the event.
And no one, I suppose, doubts that the notion of power is derived
originally from the consciousness of our own exertions[267]: read, by
sympathy, into the actions of other men and animals and, by empathy,
into the movements of trees, stones, winds and waters. All this,
however, occurs so early in the individual and in the race (probably
in the higher animals) that, before the need of causal explanation is
felt, the world is seen as if pervaded by forces, which are manifested
in _every_ usual course of events and not merely in voluntary actions.
Again (_c_), power is only one character of the primitive belief in
causation: another, not less important, is uniformity; and the study
of our own actions is notoriously unfavourable for the discovery of
uniformity. Without any obvious reason for it, our visceral activities
can hardly be controlled at all; compound reflexes (such as yawning,
sneezing, laughing, weeping) are very imperfectly controlled; our
habitual actions, once started, go on of themselves, and often
begin without (or contrary to) our wishes, especially gestures and
expressions; in fatigue control flags, in disease is often lost;[268]
we do not always give the same weight to the same motives, nor fulfil
our intentions whether good or bad. But if the relation of will to
action is not apparently uniform, it cannot be seen to be necessary;
so that volition is generally regarded as the peculiar region of
caprice. This is very important in Animism. But, further (_d_), were
the connexion between volition and movement more constant than it is,
it would still be most improbable that ideas of causation should be
chiefly drawn from our consciousness of it; for the interest of action
lies not in the mere control of our own movements, or power over the
beginning of events, but in the attainment of our ends; and there is
no department of nature in which the failure of connexion is nearly
so impressive. It is because of this failure that the savage becomes
fascinated by ideas of magical and (later) of spiritual aid. Finally
(_e_), no control is exercised by the will over pain—headache, colic,
rheumatism, etc.; yet we are told that the savage, when so afflicted,
refers his sufferings at once to the will of some enemy operating at
a distance. Such inferences are not primitive, but the result of a
long growth of superstitions. Among Australian aborigines, disease
and natural death are generally believed to be caused by the magical
practices of an enemy, not merely by his will.

We are not, then, obliged to infer that, because volition is the
type of necessary connexion, Sorcery, or any other form of Animism,
preceded Magic. On the other hand, there are conditions that may have
given rise independently to a belief in Magic. The savage has frequent
experience of regular trains of event which, for want of analytic
ability, he does not clearly understand, but which exist in his mind
as types determining his apprehension of other sequences. When two
interesting events happen about the same time, the later recalls the
earlier; because the impression of the earlier, having been deep,
perseverates, and is apt to be re-excited by almost any occurrence.
An association is then formed between them, and obtains as strong a
hold upon the mind as less interesting ones can by many repetitions.
The man judges them to be connected; and expects the coincidence to
repeat itself as usual occurrences do; and the more vividly the more
he desires or fears it. Such expectations, together with the idea of
invisible force and the oppression of mystery, by degrees establish
the belief in Magic. Probably no traveller amongst wild peoples, or
observer of the unsophisticated at home, will think that too much
stress is here laid upon the power of coincidence to create general
expectations. Even the Chaldean priests (we are told) had grasped but
imperfectly the idea of causation. “When two events had been noticed
to happen one after another, the first was the cause of the second.
Hence their anxiety to record the phenomena of the heavens and the
occurrences that took place after each.”[269] The Egyptians, says
Herodotus, “whenever a prodigy takes place, watch and record the
result; then, if anything similar ever happens again, they expect
the same consequences.”[270] They had merely reduced to a system the
universal practice of unanalytic minds.


§ 2. MAGIC AND RELIGION

The origin of Magic, then, is independent of Animism; and in the
history of human thought Magic probably preceded Animism as an
imaginary agent in the explanation and control of interesting and
obscure events. Sir J. G. Frazer, in the _History of the Kingship_ and
in the _Magic Art_,[271] says that Magic, as a means of gratifying
one’s desires, is prior to Religion conceived of as a means of
attaining one’s ends by the propitiation of spirits. This is a much
narrower contention than that Magic is prior to Animism (which perhaps
he does not maintain), and it is proportionally more defensible. Whilst
the priority of Magic to Animism seems to me to have some low degree
of probability, the priority of Magic to Religion, as the propitiation
of spirits, seems probable in a much higher degree; since we have
plain information that both the Australians and the Indians of Guiana
practise Magic extensively and also believe in ghosts and spirits
without propitiating them.[272]

On the other hand, Sir J. G. Frazer’s explanation of _how_ Religion
superseded Magic is questionable. He conjectures “that a tardy
recognition of the inherent falsehood and barrenness of magic set
the more thoughtful part of mankind to cast about for a truer theory
of Nature and a more fruitful method of turning her resources to
account. The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to perceive
that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the
results which they were designed to produce,” and the wizard inferred
that, “if the great world went on its way without the help of him
or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings,
like himself, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its
course.”[273] To these he addressed himself, and sought by prayer what
he had formerly hoped to obtain by Magic. Such is Sir J. G. Frazer’s
suggestion, offered tentatively, and (surely) not agreeing well with
the facts which he has set before us. For he has shown that no amount
of experience can discredit Magic, generally, in untutored minds; that
certain kinds of Magic are sometimes pushed into the background by
Religion, but never forgotten; whilst other kinds of Magic become fused
with Religion itself and constitute an essential factor in its rites;
so that they are indeed few who can be said to have betaken themselves
to Religion _instead_ of Magic. Besides, the only ground upon which
a penetrating mind, that had discarded Magic as discredited by
experience, could resort by preference to the worship of spirits must
be that experience showed prayer and sacrifice to be more efficacious
than Magic in attaining our ends. Is there reason to think that (lucky
coincidences apart) this has ever happened? Must we not rather say
that, whether one relies on Magic or on Religion, experience of failure
counts for almost nothing? So many excuses are at hand.

The matter presents itself to me in this way: at first, belief in Magic
arises as a means of obtaining good and averting evil. Grounded, as Sir
E. B. Tylor says,[274] in the desire “to discover, to foretell, and to
cause events,” it is irresistibly attractive by its power of increasing
one’s confidence, of making sure.

Secondly, at some stage after the rise of Animism, religious practices
are added to the magical, to make assurance doubly sure, just as one
magical practice may be added to another, a rite to a spell. At this
stage, there is no sense of opposition between Magic and Religion.
That, in fact, they are opposed in their nature, as an invariable
to a capricious force, even if this difference were appreciated by
savages, need not prevent their co-operation; for Magic is known to
be a tendency that may fail of the effect desired, either by the
counteraction of superior Magic, or by imperfection in the rites; and
one sees no reason why a spirit should not be supplicated to supplement
the imperfect rites, or to frustrate the superior Magic. To supplicate
the intervention of spirits, once they are fully believed in, is an
act so simple and natural, that we may wonder how it should ever be
omitted where Animism prevails. For what can be more spontaneous
than to ask the aid of one’s father or friend, and why not ask the
spirits disembodied as freely as those in the flesh? In Melanesia not
every ghost is worshipped (as not having _mana_); but a man in danger
may call upon his father, grandfather or uncle: his nearness of kin
being sufficient ground for it.[275] Certainly: and that this is not
always done where ghosts are rife can only be because it is believed
that the less one has to do with them the better! Probably, this
consideration restrains for ages the early impulses to pray. Primitive
man anticipates the advice of Confucius: “Pay all respect to spiritual
beings, but keep them at a distance.”[276]

Thirdly, certain forms of Magic come, after a time, to be
discountenanced or punished: black Magic, because it is anti-social
and criminal; other forms of Magic, when carried on by private
practitioners, because they infringe the monopoly of supernatural
power that has now been claimed by dynasties and priesthoods; or (in
other words) because the public gods are jealous of all competitors.
Legitimate Magic has now been incorporated with Religion. And the
power of Religion becomes greater than that of Magic without Religion,
not only by the support of the influential classes, but also because
Religion, whether as worship of the public gods or as sorcery or
devil-worship, afflicts the human mind with peculiar terrors; and,
again, because Religion, should it clarify morally and æsthetically,
appeals more and more to the affections—to the family affections
and to loyalty. The impersonality of pure Magic sets it (as it does
Science) at a great disadvantage in this competition.

Finally, whilst the failures of Magic always need to be excused,—as
by a mistake in the rites or by the opposition of stronger
Magic,—Religion brings with it a new excuse for failure, namely, the
caprice of the spirits or gods propitiated. At their pleasure they
may reject the prayers and sacrifices. Persistence in such conduct on
their part is sometimes met by banishment, deprivation of rank, or
other punishment—the civilised methods of China; at other times by
praying louder and sacrificing more extravagantly, in the style that
culminated in Mexico together with the power of barbaric priesthood.
Still the gods may be obdurate; and, probably, to excuse the failure
of propitiation by the caprice of the gods was, from the first, looked
upon as an eligible device:[277] not observing that the caprice of the
gods was incompatible with the security of their worshippers; and,
therefore, in conflict with that desire of security which is the root
of the whole supernatural structure, whether magical or religious. This
conflict must have consequences.

Religion, then, very probably, is of later growth than Magic; but
whether Animism, as a belief in separable (or separate) spirits, human
or other, is later or not than Magic, there is insufficient evidence.
At any rate, their origins are independent. Perhaps my own preference
for the priority of Magic depends, partly at least, on the convenience
of that view in arranging the following considerations.


§ 3. IDEAS AND PRACTICES OF MAGIC ADOPTED BY ANIMISM

(_a_) Fundamental in Magic, wherever practised, is the idea of force,
invisible and intangible, which can operate at a distance without any
visible or tangible vehicle. The idea may have been formed (as we have
seen) by analogy with several natural phenomena, such as the wind,
radiant heat, sound, odour, and it is involved in a savage’s beliefs
concerning the efficacy of charms, rites and spells. When a man dies,
he lies speechless and motionless, no longer exerts his accustomed
force in any way; but, if seen in a dream, he still speaks and acts,
perhaps wrestles with the dreamer. Here, then, is that force which
had deserted the body: it is visible and tangible in dreams only, or
perhaps sometimes by twilight; or to gifted seers, or to dogs or pigs.
The force exerted by the ghost or spirit is the same thing as force
magical, except in one character: its action is capricious, depending
on the good or ill will of the ghost or spirit; whereas purely magical
forces have uniform tendencies. Magic, then, prepares and partially
develops this idea of mysterious force, without which the appearance of
a dead man in a dream, after his body has been buried or burnt, would
have no reality or practical consequences for the living. Comparison
with shadows and reflections could not lend reality to dreams; for they
require the presence of the body, and themselves have no mechanical
significance. Their association with the spirit or ghost probably
follows the use of their names to describe the dream-imagery, which
cannot at first have a name of its own. The same names being used for
shadow or reflection and for spirit or dream-soul, the things are in
some measure identified; and then the idea of force may be associated
with shadows and reflections; so that the falling of a shadow upon a
man may injure or slay him.

Magic-force and spirit-force being the same thing, the question whether
_mana_ is a magical or animistic notion is misleading. It will be
conceived of by different tribes in one way or the other, according to
the relative prevalence in one or the other tribe of the animistic or
of the magical mode of explanation.

(_b_) It is reasonable to expect that, as the ghost-theory spread, the
magical force of things should sometimes be conceived of as spiritual;
so that amulets and talismans would come to be regarded as owing their
virtue either to a controlling spirit, or to an indwelling spirit
peculiar to each: in the latter case the charm is a fetich. When a
charm is thus considered, its efficacy is no longer expected to be
uniform, but depends on the mood of the indwelling or controlling
spirit. The fact that its efficacy, though formerly presumed to be
uniform, never was so, favours the new interpretation; and this having
been accepted, a cult (or a discipline) of the spirit is apt to follow.
Thus the magician becomes a sorcerer or a priest.

In North Central Australia, short sticks or bones are used for pointing
at an enemy and directing magical force against him. Only the Guangi
and other tribes of the Gulf coast manufacture dead men’s bones
(femur or fibula) into pointers; but these are traded southward, and
are considered more potent than other pointers.[278] A stick, then,
is the primitive talisman, often “sung” with a spell in Alcheringa
words, which the operator himself does not understand; and it acts by
pure magic. The dead man’s bone is more potent, at first perhaps only
because it is more oppressively gruesome and terrifying; we are not
told that it carries the power of its former owner’s ghost; but how
near the thought must be! In South-East Australia, pointing with the
bone (human fibula) is very common; in pointing you name your victim
and say how he is to die; but that the efficacy of the rite does not
depend upon a spirit is shown by this, that, when pointing, you tie a
cord of human hair (attached to the bone) tightly around your upper
arm, in order to drive blood into the bone. In other rites, however, in
which the fat of a dead man is used, the ghost of the dead is believed
to assist the operation; for a man’s fat, especially kidney-fat, is
the seat of his prowess and other virtues.[279] An easy extension of
ideas by analogy would interpret a rite in which a dead man’s bone is
used, and which is on that account more potent, as owing its superior
potency to the assistance of the dead man’s ghost. It seems easy;
but resistance to the progress of explanation is not peculiar to the
civilised mind.

Again, in South-East Australia, a _bulk_—a pebble, usually black
and roundish—is carried by wizards as a powerful talisman. A native
dreamt of seeing two ghosts by his camp fire, and, on waking, found
a _bulk_ where they had stood.[280] How could such an impressive
experience fail to raise a belief in a connexion between ghosts and
_bulks_: both so attractive to the imagination, and alike mysterious
and powerful? Many such situations must strongly indicate an extension
of the ghost-theory, once it has been formed, to explain the influence
of charms and rites. A time comes with some tribes when the activity
and ubiquity of spirits is so much a matter of course that every
mysterious power is apt to be ascribed to their presence. If a person
or thing was originally taboo, either by inherent virtue or by force
of a spell or curse—a talisman dangerous to every one who violated
its sanctity—Animism explains the danger by the wrath of a protecting
spirit. A boundary having long been taboo, a spirit is imagined to
protect the boundary, and becomes the god Terminus. Diseases, at first
attributed to Magic, are later explained by Animism; so that whilst an
Australian wizard is content to suck a magically implanted stone or
splinter from his patient’s body, a priest of the Dyaks, having sucked
out a similar object, calls it a spirit.[281] The wonder is that at
this stage of thought any purely magical power can survive.

(_c_) An Omen is regarded as giving warning of some event, although
between event and omen there is no traceable connexion—in this
resembling many magical operations; and at first omens may have
been always so conceived of, and only by degrees distinguished from
charms and spells. But in most parts of the world omens have come to
be treated as divine or spiritual premonitions; and the marks which
distinguish omens from the rest of Magic are such as to favour a growth
of the belief that they are sent by spirits. This subject, however, is
so extensive that a separate chapter must be given to it.

(_d_) Inasmuch as spells addressed to any object tend to the
personification of it, the personified object may, as the ghost-theory
gains strength, acquire an indwelling or controlling spirit, and the
spell addressed to it may become a prayer. Not that this is the only
way in which prayer may originate; for (as remarked above) nothing can
be simpler or less in need of explanation than the invoking of the
spirit of one’s relatives (the ghost-theory having been established) to
help one or, at least, not to persecute. Indeed, it is not unreasonable
to suppose that this was often attempted, and not persisted in for
want of obtaining an answer; so that a long tentative age preceded
the settled custom of prayer. Nor is it easy to see how belief in
the efficacy of prayer (beginning in this way) could ever have been
established, unless it were confirmed by coincidence—just like
Magic. However, the earliest form of prayer and of spell (whichever
may have been the earlier) being the same—a simple expression of
desire—whence prayer and spell have been differentiated, it may be
impossible to decide whether a given ejaculation belongs to one class
or to the other. Thus Mr. R. W. Williamson tells us that, amongst the
Mafulu of New Guinea, when fishing in the river Aduala, the fishers,
after forming a weir, but before fixing their net, all join in a sort
of prayer or invocation to the river: “Aduala, give us plenty of
fish that we may eat well.”[282] But he expressly says that, whilst
they believe certain parts of the river, such as a waterfall or deep
pool, to be haunted by spirits, they do not believe this of the river
itself,[283] and that generally their Animism is very backward. The
ejaculation, therefore, seems to be a spell. Compare with it the Jakun
spell to bring monkeys within shooting distance:

   “Come ye down with souls enchanted,
    Monkeys, by my spells enchanted.”[284]

If, then, the original form of prayer and of spell is often the same,
the sole difference between them lies in the intention of the speaker.
One of the Kurnai, to stop the gales, cried: “Let the West Wind be
bound,”[285] and this is evidently a command and a spell; but if he
regarded the wind as controlled by a spirit, a change of tone would
make it a prayer. Still, whether with the spread of Animism a spell
shall become a prayer, must depend upon whether the spirit addressed is
believed to be the more easily importuned or coerced.

The taboo that often attaches to the names of the dead and of other
spirits may easily have been derived from the magical practice of
summoning by name, or of naming the victim of a rite. To call a living
man by name draws his attention and often brings him to the spot; a
magical naming is (from the temper of Magic) uniformly effective; so
that to avoid such control names are kept secret; and when ghosts are
believed in, naming has the same power over them and is, therefore,
extremely dangerous. Hence, in Sorcery (a dangerous art), to introduce
the names of spirits into spells is to secure their presence and
assistance: and, in prayer, to use the true name of the spirit or god
addressed may be indispensable; the worshipper’s intention is not
enough.

(_e_) With the spread of Animism, magical rites often become religious.
This may occur by simply adding the invocation of a spirit to a magical
rite (as a spell may be added) in order to strengthen it—the two
actions remaining quite distinct; or some degree of fusion may take
place, obscuring more or less the original character of the practice.
The Kai (Papuans of northern New Guinea) “make rain” by muttering
a spell over a stone, and at the same time calling upon Balong and
Batu to drive away Yondimi, a woman who holds up the rain; and when
rain enough has fallen, they strew hot ashes on the stone, or put it
in the fire, to stop the rain.[286] The animistic invocation, being
omitted from the process of stopping the rain, seems to be merely
adscititious to the making of it. Again, “When rain is badly wanted
in the Oraon country, the Oraons of each village fix a day for the
rain-making ceremony. On the morning of the appointed day, the women
of the village, with the wife of the village priest or Pahan at
their head, proceed to the village spring or tank, and there, after
ablution, each woman fills her pitcher with water, and all proceed
in a body to a sacred pipar-tree.... On their arrival at the sacred
tree, all the women simultaneously pour the water in their pitchers
over the root of the tree, saying ‘May rain fall on the earth like
this.’ The wife of the village priest now puts marks of vermilion,
diluted in oil, on the trunk of the tree. After this the women depart,
and the Pahan or village priest proceeds to sacrifice a red cock to
the god Baranda at the spot.... In this case, apparently, by direct
alliance, sacrifice and the anointing of the tree with vermilion have
been superimposed upon what was once, perhaps, purely a ceremony of
imitative magic.”[287] Mr. Warde Fowler tells us that an ancient
Iguvian document contains instructions for the lustration of the
people before a campaign: the male population assembled in its military
divisions; around the host a procession went three times; at the end of
each circuit there was prayer to Mars and to two female associates of
his power, to bless the people of Iguvium and to curse their enemies:
and he observes that religion has here been imposed upon the original
magic-ceremony. For the idea must have been that, by drawing a magic
circle around the host, it would be protected in the enemy’s country
against hostile magic by being rendered holy. “A later and animistic
age would think of them (the soldiers) as needing protection against
hostile spirits, of whose ways and freaks they were, of course,
entirely ignorant.” Hence the prayer to Mars.[288]

Similarly, rites connected with seed-time and harvest, originally
magical, become religious, as beliefs grow up in spirits of the rice,
or corn, or vine, or in gods of agriculture or fertility. Thus, as
magical power is the same thing as spiritual power, magical practices
may be not merely the antecedents but even the foundations of religious
practices. Long after the development of Animism, magical practices
are maintained by natural conservatism; if priests exist, they try,
of course, to annex such practices to the worship of their god; and
if the annexation is accomplished, whether by priestly management or
by a popular movement, no incongruity may be felt for a long time
between the uniformity of Magic and the caprice of Animism; the whole
celebration is called Religion, and becomes suffused with religious
feeling.


§ 4. RETROGRADATION

On the other hand, in all these cases, the animistic interpretation
of the power of fetiches, omens, prayers, rites, whether original
(as Prof. Wundt holds) or acquired, may be lost, and a magical
interpretation alone remain. For one’s mind becomes so engrossed with
objects or practices (such as fetich-things or prayers) that are
regarded as necessary to the gratification of any masterful desire,
that not only irrelevant ideas, but any ideas not indispensable to the
connexion between the objects or practices and the gratifications,
may be forgotten; and as objects or practices acquire interest in
themselves, even the gratifications formerly desired may be forgotten.
Just as such means as money or books, business or study, may become
ends to the exclusion of further enjoyments, so images or rites, at
first subsidiary to the obtaining of demonic aid in love or revenge,
may be cared for with a fervour that excludes the thought of any
intervening means to those ends (especially such means as a capricious
spirit who may fail one), and may even be employed under a vague fear
or discomfort in the omission of them, when no particular purpose is
any longer remembered. On the principle of least effort, we attend only
to what is necessary.

(_a_) A saint’s finger-joint may at first be treasured as a fetich
having the power of the saint to save from shipwreck; after a time
it may be carried as an amulet without any thought of the saint’s
interposition; whilst the evil to be averted is more and more vaguely
imagined. Seeing that spiritual and magical agencies are the same
invisible, unintelligible force, how easy to interchange them!

(_b_) Similarly omens, from being divine messages, each relating to
a particular undertaking, may come to be merely occurrences that
encourage or discourage a man, or a tribe, at any time; because, by
tradition, they are lucky or unlucky. Or practically the same result
may be reached by philosophy: as with those Stoics who explained that
omens are prophetic not as sent by the gods, but as involved in the
same procession of fatal events. Fate, before any laws of nature had
been discovered, was nothing but all-comprehensive Magic: which left
out or mediatised the gods, because, in a philosophical consideration
of the world, they are worse than useless.

(_c_) As to prayers, in any rational conception of them, the form
of words conveying them cannot matter to a god, as long as they are
piously meant and devoutly meditated. Yet everywhere there has been a
tendency to reduce them to strict formulæ, any departure from which
may, it is feared, impair their efficacy. So far as this occurs, their
operation is magical; they have become spells. Such is the result of
custom, with mental inertia too dull to think; of an irreligious
temperament, getting quickly through an uncongenial task; of a
superstitious unimaginative spirit, afraid to omit any traditionary
means of safety and for whom a praying-wheel is the way of peace. To
rob prayer of its religious meaning, there is the ever-present example
of the magical spells that operate by their own force. A form of words,
whether magical or supplicatory, that has been among the antecedents
of a time of peace or of gain, seems to be amongst its causes, and is
repeated that such a time may continue. Of the countless cases in which
prayers have degenerated into spells, none is more instructive than
the one recorded by Dr. Rivers in his account of the dairy-ritual of
the Todas. The prayers offered during this ritual are uttered in the
throat, so that the words are undistinguishable; and they are divided
into two parts: first, a list of sacred beings and objects mentioned
by sacred names, much of it unintelligible; and, secondly, a petition
for the protection and welfare of the buffaloes: the former is now
the more important; the latter is apt to be slurred over, or perhaps
omitted.[289] Of the Roman public prayers, Mr. Warde Fowler says:
“The idea that the spoken formula (derived from an age of Magic) was
efficient only if no slip were made, seems to have gained in strength
instead of diminishing, as we might have expected it to do with
advancing civilisation.”[290] To justify the belief in formulæ it may
be asserted that the gods themselves prescribed them: an excuse for
the superstitious dread of altering what is traditionary, and for the
persuasion that the form itself has mysterious virtue.

(_d_) That other religious ceremonies, repeated from age to age, have
the same tendency as prayers to become dead forms from which the
spirit of communion or devotion has departed—though under favourable
conditions it may return from time to time—is too well known; and
if in their emptiness they are still believed somehow to serve their
purpose, it can only be as magical rites. One may be surprised to find
at what an early stage of culture this tendency is fully realised.
William Ellis, the celebrated missionary, says of the people of
Raiatea: “The efficacy of their [religious] services consisted in
the rigid exactness with which sacred days were kept, and religious
ceremonies performed, without the least regard to the motives and
dispositions of the devotees.... In their idol-worship, however costly
the sacrifice, and however near its close the ceremony might be, if
the priest omitted or misplaced any word in the prayers, or if his
attention was diverted by any means so that the prayer was broken,
the whole was rendered unavailing: he must prepare other victims and
repeat his prayers over from the commencement.”[291] How this concern
for details must be a relapse into magical notions may be read in the
account of rites to stop the rainfall in Torres Straits; where (we
are told) if the wizard omit any detail, the rain continues.[292]
Perhaps the notion of the perfect definiteness of causation (though not
consistently adhered to in other matters) arose from this meticulous
anxiety of superstition: it also, however, furnishes excuses for
failure both to priests and wizards.

(_e_) In Magic there must be something deeply satisfying to the
average mind: it precedes Religion, supplies the basis and framework
of religious practices, and remains when Religion is in ruins; and
when people change their Religion, they retain their Magic. Among
the Fijians,[293] those who were Christianised lost their dread of
witchcraft last of all the relics of their heathenism. Among the
Cherokees, “Gahuni, like several others of their Shamans, combined the
professions of Indian conjuror and Methodist preacher.”[294] In Norway,
after the general acceptance of Christianity, Lapland witchcraft was
still valued. The victory of the insurgents at Stiklestad, where
St. Olaf fell, was thought to have been due to the magic armour of
reindeer-skin that Thore Hund had brought from Lapland; though all St.
Olaf’s men wore the cross upon helmet and shield.[295]

Since then the spiritualising of Magic and the despiritualising of
Religion are both real processes of evolution, it may be difficult,
or even impossible, to say of any given magical practice, without
particular knowledge of its history, whether it is primitive or
residuary. Sir E. B. Tylor writes: “Charm formulas are in very many
cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they
are merely verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man
by some unexplained process, may not they, or the types they were
modelled on, have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic
sentences?”[296] The circumstances of each case must guide our
judgment. What shall we say, for example, of the addresses to spirits
in Melanesia, where it is difficult to find in any dialect a word for
prayer, “so closely does the notion of efficacy cling to the form of
words employed”?[297] Are spells there rising into prayers, or prayers
sinking back into spells?


§ 5. SPIRITS KNOW MAGIC, TEACH IT, AND INSPIRE MAGICIANS

Ghosts know Magic, because they knew it in the flesh; and, by analogy,
similar knowledge is likely to be attributed to spirits that are
reputed never to have been in the flesh. As fear exalts all the powers
of a ghost above his former reach, it may be expected to raise his
magical powers, especially if he had already been famous in that way.
And, generally, it does so; but, exceptionally, we read that, among
the Lengua Indians (west of the Paraguay), whilst any man may attempt
Magic, professional “witch-doctors” are numerous and powerful; yet they
are not credited with extraordinary powers after death.[298] Elsewhere,
however, the dead magician does not forget his art. Where Shamanism
prevails and the power of Magic or Sorcery attains its greatest social
importance, the spirit of a dead shaman makes some advance toward
deification. Among the Buryats, dead shamans are worshipped with prayer
and sacrifice.[299] According to the _Kalevala_, the famous collection
of Finnish poetry, in Tuonela (Hades), whither all dead shamans
descend, their wisdom and magical power accumulate, exceeding that of
any living adept; so that even Väinämöinen, the wizard hero, goes down
to learn there the magical words he does not know.[300]

Spirits, knowing Magic, also teach it, and make magicians and prophets.
In South-East Australia, the profession of wizard may be hereditary in
the eldest son; or obtained through initiation by another wizard—(a
corpse is dug up, its bones pounded for the neophyte to chew; he is
plastered with excrement, etc., till he becomes frenzied, his eyes
bloodshot, his behaviour maniacal);[301] or a man may become a wizard
by meeting a spirit who opens his side and inserts quartz-crystals,
etc.; or by deriving power from Daramulun; or by sleeping at a grave,
where the deceased opens him, and takes out and replaces his bowels.
Here we have a list of the most usual ways in which magical powers
can anywhere be acquired—by inheritance, by tuition, by the aid of
ghosts or spirits; and it suggests the hypothesis that at first the
magic art was inherited, or learnt from a former wizard; and that, with
the growth of Animism, it became in some cases preferable, because
more impressive (and cheaper), to acquire it from a ghost or spirit.
For this is more probable than that, at the early stage in which
Animism exists in South-East Australia, retrogradation should have
taken place; so that the making of wizards, formerly ascribed only to
spirits, should in some cases have been remitted to inheritance or to
professional tuition. That in spite of the greater prestige that may
attach to a diploma obtained from spirits, the right of practising by
inheritance or by tuition often still persists, though, no doubt, due
in part to dull conservatism, may also be understood by considering
family and professional motives. There are heavy fees for teaching
witchcraft, besides the profits made in some tribes by selling the
control of familiar spirits; the profession is lucrative, and a wizardy
family has an interest in its monopoly; which must be impaired,
if any man who loses himself in the bush may come back with some
cock-and-bull story about a ghost and his new metaphysical insides, and
straightway set himself up with the equivalents of a brass plate and
red lantern. Among the Boloki on the Congo, the careers of blacksmith
and witch-doctor are open only to the relatives of living adepts. At
least, practically (but for a few exceptionally cunning and rascally
interlopers who creep and intrude and climb into the fold), the office
of witch-doctor is hereditary: a father trains his son, and will
train (for a large fee) any youth whose family has already produced a
witch-doctor. But a candidate without family connexion is told that
he must first kill by witchcraft all the members of his family, as
offerings to the fetich of that branch of the profession to which he
aspires.[302]

Not only the spirits of primitive Animism, but likewise the gods of
maturer Religions, know and teach Magic. In the Maori mythology,
Tumatauenga, one of the first generation of gods, determined
incantations for making all sorts of food abundant and for controlling
the winds, as well as prayers to Heaven suited to all the circumstances
of human life; and the god Rongotakawin, having shaped the hero
Whakatau out of the apron of Apakura, taught him Magic and enchantments
of every kind.[303] Prof. Rhys tells us that the Welsh god Mâth ab
Mathonwy, or Math Hên (the ancient), was the first of the three great
magicians of Welsh Mythology; and he taught Magic to the culture
hero, Gwydion ab Dôn, with whose help he created a woman out of
flowers.[304] The Teutonic equivalent of Gwydion is Woden, or Othin;
and he too was a magician, “the father of spells,” who acquired his
wisdom by gazing down into the abyss, whilst he hung nine nights on
the tree, an offering to himself (and in other ways); and, in turn, he
teaches Siegfried the omens.[305] He also taught the northern people
shape-changing, and by spells controlled fire and the winds.[306] In
Egypt Magic was taught by Thoth, in Babylonia by Merodach, and in Japan
by Ohonomachi the earth-god. Indeed, whence, unless from divine beings,
could this precious wisdom be obtainable?

Spirits also inspire or possess the magician, so that through him,
as their mouthpiece or instrument, prophecies are uttered or wonders
wrought. We have seen that in South-East Australia the rites of
initiation to wizardry by a wizard, without the aid of spirits, cause a
candidate to become frenzied or maniacal. With the growing fashion of
animistic interpretation, such behaviour is (along with insanity) put
down to possession by a spirit. The common beliefs that a man’s soul
can slip in and out of him and that a man may reincarnate the spirit
of an ancestor, facilitate this idea of possession. Dreams concerning
spirits also promote the belief that a miracle-monger owes to them
his supernatural powers. The Tunguses of Turnkhausk say that the man
destined to be a shaman sees in a dream the devil performing rites, and
so learns the secrets of his craft. Among the Trans-Baikal Tunguses,
he who wishes to become a shaman declares that such or such a dead
shaman appeared to him in a dream, and ordered him to be his successor;
and he shows himself crazy, stupefied and timorous. The Yakut shaman
is preordained to serve the spirits, whether he wishes it or not: he
begins by raging like a madman, gabbles, falls unconscious, runs about
the woods, into fire and water, injures himself with weapons. Then an
old shaman trains him.[307] On the Congo, a man may become a wizard
by claiming to be the medium of a dead man; and a medium falls into a
frenzy, shouts, trembles all over, his body undulates, sweat breaks
out, foam gathers on his mouth, his eyeballs roll: he speaks an archaic
language if he knows one.[308] In Santa Cruz (Melanesia), prophecy
is practised by men whose bodies are taken possession of, and their
voices used, by ghosts: they foam at the mouth, writhe, are convulsed
as if in madness; and the mad, too, are believed to be possessed.[309]
Similarly the Pythoness: the behaviour of the possessed is everywhere
the same. But as the same behaviour marks the youth training for
a wizard before the theory of possession or inspiration has been
adopted, it is plain that the animistic theory does not create the
phenomena, but is merely, at a certain stage of thought, the inevitable
explanation of them.

Facility of falling into frenzy may be the test of fitness for
wizardry; the Bokongo professor who trains a pupil, beats his drum,
shakes his rattle, and tries to drive the fetich-power into him; if the
pupil remains stolid, he is disqualified; but if he sways to the music
of the drum, jumps about like a madman, etc., he passes.[310] These
antics at first astonish the beholder, strengthen the faith of patients
in the witch-doctor, and of the witch-doctor in himself, and often have
a sort of hypnotic fascination for both him and them; and they gain in
value under Animism by being also proofs of supernatural assistance or
control: and being an essential mark of the adept at certain stages of
the art’s development, they are sometimes induced by rhythmic drumming,
singing and dancing, sometimes by fastings or drugs.

“Black Magic” is, at first, merely the use of Magic for anti-social
purposes; very early a distinction is recognised between wizards
who cause disease and those who cure it.[311] “Black” and “white”
wizards are sometimes at open strife.[312] When tribal gods come to be
recognised, “black” wizards are those who are assisted or inspired by
inferior gods or demons, who may be opponents and rivals of the high
gods. Hence the same god who, whilst paramount, aids or inspires in an
honourable way, may, if deposed or superseded, become the abettor of
Black Magic—as happened to our own gods, and to others, before and
after the coming of Christianity; for the ancient divine sources of
power and prophecy became devils and witch-masters. The magicians of
our Middle Ages, of whom Faustus is the type, were “black” and, in the
spirit of Shamanism, pretended to rule the devils; but, overshadowed by
Christianity, they—at least in popular belief—bought their power at a
price.


§ 6. SPIRITS OPERATE BY MAGIC

Spirits may operate through men whom they possess, or by their naked
soul-force, or by words (that is, by spells), or by merely thinking:

(_a_) When a man is possessed by a spirit, it is the soul-force of that
spirit which has entered him and taken command of his voice or limbs;
and we have seen that this soul-force is the same as force magical.
The spirit’s action is the same as that of the _bugin_ or wizard, who
boasted of having entered a horse and galloped off.[313]

(_b_) By Animism, prior to philosophical reflection, the spirit is not
conceived of as strictly incorporeal; its force, which is magical, is
quasi-mechanical. Hence, in South-East Australia, spirits can carry off
a man in a bag[314] (made, no doubt, of bag-soul-stuff). But spirits
may act upon a man very effectually without being mechanically felt;
as among the Ekoi, where ghosts are either good or bad, and generally
a good goes with a bad one to counteract his malevolence; but should a
bad one wander forth alone, and should a man without the gift of seeing
ghosts (which depends upon his having four eyes) run against it in the
street, the ghost will not step aside, but strikes the man in the face;
who then has lock-jaw, and dies.[315] As we have reason to believe that
this is not the natural ætiology of lock-jaw, the ghost’s action is
plainly magical: like that of the corpse-candle which, not long ago, on
a slope of Plinlimmon one rainy night, a man inadvertently ran against,
and was “struck down dead as a horse.”[316] The mere apparition of a
ghost (at least, to any one who has not four eyes) is magical. The
sending of a bird as an omen is magical.

This immediate power of the gods is nowhere shown more emphatically
than in their metamorphoses: that these are sometimes wrought by
spells or other enchantments proves that the operation is magical.
Australian wizards transform themselves into kangaroos and other
animals; and, in Arunta mythology, in the earliest Alcheringa (period
of mythical ancestors), the Ungambikula—so called from having arisen
out of nothing—with stone knives cut men out of rudimentary masses
of unorganised matter (inapertua), and then transformed themselves
into little lizards.[317] So this sort of self-conjuring may be said
to begin at the beginning; and it cannot be necessary to accumulate
examples of metamorphosis.

Several explanations of this belief in the possibility of changing
the form of one’s body, or of having it changed by others, have been
offered: none perhaps entirely satisfactory. We are not here concerned
with the passing of a soul from one body to another—from a man into
a wolf or into a serpent, or conversely: given the conception of a
separable soul, that is easy to understand. What has to be explained
is the belief in a magical change of the body itself, as in the common
European superstition that a man may turn into a wolf, and back again,
like Sigmund and his son in the _Volsung Saga_. It has been pointed
out (i) that the savage may observe striking changes in nature: as
in the shape of clouds and smoke, the burning of wood into flame,
smoke and ashes, the evaporation of water; the turning of eggs into
caterpillars, reptiles, birds, or of a chrysalis into an imago; the
appearance of worms in putrefying bodies, and so forth.[318] With
such facts before him, why should not the savage imagine himself also
capable of transformation? (ii) Dream-images, too, pass one into
another in a marvellous way. (iii) Since men are often called by the
names of animals, how easy to suppose that, at times, they may really
be those animals. How easy to confound a man with his Totem. In many
savage dances, animals are imitated, and the imagination-belief in
the reality of the pantomime grows very strong. (iv) The savage,
when his imagination has been excited, is not clever at penetrating
conjuring tricks and disguises; and some men, at first for their own
ends, may have disguised themselves as animals and passed as animals;
and in support of this explanation it may be observed that the animal
into which men transform themselves is oftenest the most feared in
their neighbourhood—the wolf, leopard, or tiger; and, of course,
one case believed in, others follow by analogy. The mere report of
such an happening might generate belief by force of fear. (v) In a
wild country, a man (say one who is pursued) often disappears and is
indiscoverable; so that he may seem to have turned into a kangaroo,
or a stone, or a tree that appears in his place, as Daphne hid
successfully in a laurel-thicket: or if such an occurrence did not
originate the belief in metamorphosis, it may have helped to confirm
it. (vi) In mental disease, the patient sometimes believes himself to
be some kind of animal, and acts accordingly: perhaps as a result of
the popular belief, but doubtless also confirming it.[319] Weighing all
these hypotheses, I lean to the view that, starting from the fact (as
ground of analogy) that astonishing changes are observed in nature and
in dreams, the belief in metamorphosis as a magical operation rests
chiefly upon the deceptions and confident assertions of wizards that
they can, and do, change their form, supported by their reputation for
wonder-working and by the fears of their neighbours. Now, if wizards
can change their shapes, of course the gods can.[320]

(_c_) Spirits and gods are known to use amulets and talismans, not
invented by poets as symbols, but prized as the instruments of their
power, as an enchanter values his wand. Such are the caduceus of
Hermes, the cestus of Aphrodite, Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, Woden’s spear
Gunguir and his wishing staff. The gods of Egypt and Babylon also wore
charms. Since chieftains are frequently magicians, and also become
gods, it follows that the gods are magicians; though, indeed, as Grimm
observes, their power is to be called miraculous rather than magical.
But Magic, being the highest power known to men, and the most desired,
is of course attributed to spirits and to gods.

The most extensive powers of spirits, however, depend on the use of
words or spells. The hero of the Western Isles of Torres Straits,
Kwoiam, employed magical formulæ.[321] The gods and demigods of the
Maories carried out their extraordinary adventures by the power of
incantations. Maui, by incantations, fishes up dry land from the bottom
of the sea, and turns his brother-in-law into a dog; Tawhaki and
his brother Karahi, by incantations, make themselves invisible, and
avenge their father Hema upon his enemies; and so forth.[322] Celtic
and Teutonic deities worked wonders by songs and spells. Isis was the
greatest enchantress that ever lived. She made from the spittle of Ra
a serpent that bit and poisoned him; and then she healed him by an
incantation, having first compelled him to reveal to her his name, to
the knowledge of which the god himself owed his power over gods and
men; so that she obtained the mastery over all the gods.[323]

As spells, when used by men, may be more efficacious when muttered and
whispered than when spoken aloud, so they may retain their power when
silently wished or thought; and it is the same with spirits: to control
events it may be enough for them to think. And this belief emerges at
no very high level of Animism; it needs no philosophical instruction
in the mysterious energy of ideas. The Sia Indians (North Mexico) have
a Cougar Society, which meets for a two days’ ceremonial, before a
hunting expedition, to propitiate the cougar (puma), because he is the
great father and master of all game. He is believed to draw all kinds
of game to him by sitting still with folded arms and mentally demanding
their presence; and by the same means he sends game to whomsoever he
favours.[324]

Apparently, then, Magic is an art antecedent to the existence of
spirits and ready for their use; and they stand in the same relations
to it as men do. Animistic usages are originally magical—spells,
rites, metamorphoses; and all animistic ideas are magical, except
one—the capriciousness of spiritual agency.


§ 7. SPIRITS ARE CONTROLLED BY MAGIC

The savage imagination having created out of dreams and other strange
experiences a world of invisible and powerful beings who may be
friendly or hostile,—so human that they must be accessible to prayers,
but often turn a deaf ear to them—must desire sacrifices, yet often
reject them—capricious and inscrutable—it became necessary, in
order to restore confidence in all the relations of life, that their
caprice should somehow be overcome; and to accomplish this three
ways were open: first, to increase the prayers and sacrifices until
their importunity and costliness should prove irresistible—and this
way led to all the magnificence and to all the horrors of religious
rites; secondly, to work upon the fears or vulnerability of spirits by
beating, starving, slaying, banishing or degrading them; or, thirdly,
to constrain them, as men are often constrained, by magical rites and
formulæ. From the beginning this necessity is felt.

The constraint of spirits by fear or violence is characteristic of
Fetichism. The wizards of the Congo catch spirits in traps; or drive
them into animals, which they behead; or spear them in some dark
corner, and then exhibit their blood upon the spear-head. Passing from
the Congo through many ages of progress, we arrive in China, and find
that in time of drought, if the city-god neglects to put an end to it,
he is first of all entreated; but that failing, his idol is stripped
naked and put to stand in the sun; or an iron chain is hung round his
neck—the mark of a criminal—till rain falls; or he may be dethroned
altogether.[325] With such crude practices, however, we are not now
concerned.

The control of spirits by Magic, especially by spells—or by other
spirits who, in turn, are controlled by spells—is in its earlier form
characteristic of Shamanism: indeed, it is the essence of Shamanism;
though, of course, in many shamanistic tribes, having intercourse with
peoples of different culture, other beliefs, ascribing independent
or even superior power to spirits, are often found. Spirits may be
so completely subdued by spells as to excite little fear. Among the
Yurats and Ostyaks, the shamans treat their spirits without ceremony,
and even buy and sell them.[326] So do the Esquimo angekoqs. In
Greenland, “all phenomena are controlled by spirits, and these spirits
are controlled by formulæ or charms, which are mainly in possession of
the medicine-men, although certain simple charms may be owned and used
by any one.” Hence, “nothing like prayer or worship is possible”;[327]
for why supplicate spirits whom you can command? “The rule of man—not
of all men, but of one specially gifted (the shaman), over Nature,
or over the superior beings who direct her, is the fundamental idea
of Shamanism.”[328] The shaman’s power depends on knowledge of the
names, natures and origins of all things and spirits, and of the words
that control them; but also on his own extraordinary personality, as
manifested in orgiastic frenzy. Megalomania, the vain imagination of
being a “superman,” is generally characteristic of magicians. Nothing
can be more contrary than this attitude to what most of us understand
by Religion.

One condition of the prevalence of Shamanism among any people, or group
of peoples, seems to be the absence from among them of chieftains
who have attained to any high degree of political power, and the
consequent non-existence of authoritative gods. Hence it spreads
throughout the tribes of Northern Europe and Asia, from Finland to
Kamtchatka, and with a less intensive sway amongst the Indians of North
and South America. Under such conditions the shaman is subordinate to
no one in this world; nor, therefore, in the spirit-world. But where
there are authoritative chiefs, authoritative gods correlative with
them are approached by an order of men who are priests rather than
magicians—that is to say, are regarded as dealing less in magic than
in prayer and sacrifice. And this state of affairs is apt to give rise
to increasing pomp and extravagance of rites, to which there is no
visible limit; so that in some cases, as in Ashanti and Mexico, worship
became homicide, and a sort of national insanity was established. For
from such practices there results no security in the satisfaction of
desire; the caprice of the gods cannot by such means be overcome; their
appetite grows by what it feeds on, and so does the fanaticism of the
priesthood.

Now, in political affairs something similar happens: the caprice of
despotic rulers becomes intolerable; and, in some countries, submission
to their tyranny has amounted to a sort of national insanity. Elsewhere
devices have been adopted to limit the power of rulers. Avoiding
assassination or revolution, it has been found possible to impose upon
a king restraints derived from his own sanctity and divine power. One
such device has been to surround him with innumerable taboos which,
at length, prevent him from doing anything. It is true that the
ostensive reason for this was not the limitation of his power, but
the preservation of his vitality, upon which hung the welfare of the
whole world; and probably this was, at first, the conscious purpose;
but one effect of it was to limit his power, and the utility of
this was its natural sanction. There are many cases in human life in
which a great advantage has been gained for the race by means which
were intended by the conscious agents to have an entirely different
result.[329] In several countries, where the king has been bound by
taboos, another man has by some pretext usurped his power; so that this
way of restraining despotism is not a good one. But in Japan, where
it had been adopted by a political people, the Tycoon, who succeeded
to the power of the taboo-burdened Mikado, himself fell at last under
equivalent restrictions, whilst affairs were directed by his ministers.
Such is the natural tendency of this device amongst positivists, like
the Japanese; elsewhere it may transfer the regal power to warriors or
to priests.[330] Another way of restraining the king is to establish
the principle that he rules by the laws, and that laws, though made
by himself, cannot be altered. And this may have been the purpose
of the unchangeableness of the laws of the Medes and Persians; and
according to the _Book of Daniel_[331] it was used in this way; though,
certainly, the older authority of Herodotus[332] shows that, in some
cases, the king’s advisers could find a way out for their master. Our
own forefathers were no doubt the wisest people that ever lived; and
their plan was to acknowledge fully the divinity that doth hedge a
king, to declare that, in fact, he could do no wrong, and then to visit
all the iniquities of government upon his ministers.

If kings need restraint, much more do invisible gods: and many nations
have sought to limit their prerogative, either by Magic or by legal
fictions which, in relation to gods, can have only a magical operation.
Whilst the tone of the _Rigveda_ is truly religious (though even there
“the idea is often expressed that the might and valour of the gods is
produced by hymns, sacrifices and especially offerings of soma”), “in
the Yajurveda the sacrifice itself has become the centre of thought and
desire, its correct performance in every detail being all-important.
Its power is now so great that it not only influences but compels
the gods to do the will of the officiating priest.”[333] In Egyptian
rites of sacrifice and prayer, the kind of victim and the manner of
slaying and cutting it up were minutely and unchangeably decreed. “The
formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained
a certain number of words, whose due sequence and harmonies might
not suffer the slightest modification even by the god himself, under
penalty of losing their efficacy. They were always recited with the
same rhythm, according to a system of melody in which every tone had
its virtue, combined with movements that confirmed the sense and worked
with irresistible effect; one false note, a single discord between the
succession of gestures and the utterance of the sacramental words, any
hesitation, any awkwardness in the accomplishment of a rite, and the
sacrifice was vain.”[334] But if all was in order, the god was bound to
grant the petition. Babylonian religious ceremonies “had for the most
part the same end and object as the magical text used with them; they
were not so much a communion with the deities of heaven, as an attempt
to compel them by particular words to relieve the worshipper from
trouble, or to bestow upon him some benefit.” Ceremonies, therefore,
were useless unless accurately performed in word and deed; “ritual was
a sort of acted magic.”[335] These accounts of the religious ceremonies
of the highest barbaric civilisations are almost in the same words
as William Ellis uses in his account of worship at Raiatea about the
beginning of the nineteenth century; except that Ellis does not say
that the Polynesian gods were bound to grant the requests so presented.
Accordingly, I have treated the Raiatean example under Retrogradation,
and those of Egypt and Babylon as cases of half-conscious policy. No
doubt both retrogradation and policy were present in all cases; but it
seems reasonable to suppose that the latter predominated where order
was more settled (an analogue of the order required in heaven) and
thought was better trained.

One may wonder why a magical ritual should be preferred and trusted
rather than genuinely devotional worship; since it must, in fact, just
as often result in disappointment. But, first, as to the priesthood,
an elaborate ritual, difficult to carry out, is favourable to their
power, because only professionals can execute it; so that they must
necessarily be employed; and the more elaborate and exigent it is,
the more necessary they are. But, then, the more attention the
ritual demands, the less there is to spare for thinking of the gods.
Secondly, as to the people, since the failure of worship in attaining
our ends may be due either (animistically) to the caprice of the gods
or (magically) to an error of the priest, it is not surprising that
men should trust the specialist whose education is well attested
rather than the god whose character is inscrutable. Thirdly, a magical
ritual appeals to the expectation of uniformity, the sole ground
of confidence concerning the future, and therefore what men most
desire. Nevertheless, the religious form of the rites (though empty of
religious feeling) is maintained; partly, because the whole political
and ecclesiastical fabric rests upon the animistic tradition; partly,
because Animism has such hold upon men’s minds that a few remain
devout; whilst even those who regard the rites as magical do not
perceive that magic is the antithesis of religion and rigidly excludes
it. Only a few natural positivists and philosophers regard public
worship as merely a political institution.

The idea of a transaction by which the gods are legally bound—so
much help for so much worship—may be present in all magical ritual;
but in some religions the analogy of human relations according to law
is explicitly extended to the relations of men with gods. The Jewish
religion was based on a covenant; and, according to some theologians,
so is the Christian. It has often been said that Roman religion implied
a belief in legal obligation imposed upon the gods by rites duly
performed; and Mr. Warde Fowler, who thinks more highly than some have
done of the genuineness of religious feeling amongst the Romans, at
least in private worship, yet says that in the _vota publica_ we find
something like a bargain or covenant with the deity in the name of the
State.[336] Legal obligation implies effectual sanctions that may be
brought to bear upon transgressors, gods or men; and at a low stage
of Animism, when no spirit exceeds the rank of demon, there may be no
incongruity in bringing to reason a recalcitrant spirit by stopping
his rations or maltreating his image; but when high gods have obtained
the homage of men, to punish _them_ calls for great audacity or very
subtle management. The Chinese have managed the matter to admiration.
The Emperor of China acknowledged himself subject to the spirits of
Earth and Heaven; but he himself was the son of Heaven, and all other
spirits were subject to him. He ruled alike over the dead and the
living. He made deities and appointed them their functions; promoted
them and distributed amongst them titles of honour, if they did good
works; or, if they failed in their duties, degraded them. In the _Pekin
Gazette_ one finds “the deities figuring, not occasionally but very
frequently, in every department of official business, and treated much
as if they were highly respectable functionaries of a superior order,
promoted to some kind of upper house, whose abilities and influence
were nevertheless still at the service of the State.”[337] Nowhere has
the unity of Church and State been so completely realised, and the
_pax deorum_ so conclusively established. One may interpret the facts
at discretion: an animist may accept them literally and seriously; a
devotee of Magic may regard decrees in the _Pekin Gazette_ as spells
that have coercive power in the spirit-world; a Confucian mandarin
will think that an excellent plan has been devised for enlisting the
superstitions of the simple-minded in support of law and order. We may
suppose that for him Animism is but an episode in the history of human
thought.

Another way of excluding spiritual caprice, which we might suppose to
have been discovered by philosophers, but which appears to be older
than what we usually call “Philosophy,” is to subordinate the gods to
Fate. The idea has been attributed to the astronomers or astrologers
of Babylon that Fate must be above the gods as the constant heaven of
the fixed stars is above the planets:[338] an analogy characteristic
of magical thought. But the roots of the idea of Fate are much
older and wider spread in the slow, steady growth of the belief in
uniformity, which is the common ground of Magic and Science; and (as
I have said) before laws of nature had been discovered, Fate was an
all-comprehensive Magic. Fate reduces the gods to the status of wheels
in a machine; omens and oracles, instead of being sent or inspired
by the gods, are also part of the machinery, and may point to their
destruction; prayers and sacrifices are other parts of the machinery
and, at most, may be a means of assuaging the anxiety of one’s own
heart. A stern way of envisaging the world: but it gives not only
security against the gods, but also resignation and tranquillity.

Philosophical Christianity regards the actions of God as always
manifested, in the physical order, through “second causes,” or, in
other words, in “the laws of nature”; and, in the spiritual order,
as always observing the moral laws that are the principles of divine
Reason; in either case there can be no variableness nor shadow of
turning.

Magic, like Science, believes in uniformities of nature, and seeks
by a knowledge of them to control events; but Magic is so eager to
control events that it cannot wait to learn the true uniformities;
it is not moved, like Science, by curiosity as to the truth, but by
blind desire for present results. The cult of spirits seeks to control
events not by knowledge of their natural causes, but by appealing to
hyperphysical causes, and it resembles the belief in Free Will, by
which men hope, through the influx of some unknown energy, to escape
the bondage of their own vices: for Kant rightly treated “Freedom” as
a cosmological problem, the supposed intervention of a cause that is
transcendent and not in the course of nature. The intervention of Free
Will (whether divine or human) is sought in order to avert injurious
fortune, to realise our personal or social schemes more quickly and
cheaply than our own efforts can, to avoid the consequences of our own
actions, amongst which is bondage to our own vices: for all these, give
us variability, miracle, caprice. But to foresee and control events
physical or social, including the conduct of others, to be confident
in the effects of our own actions according to our purposes, and in
the stability of our own character: for all these, there must be
uniformity. In the long run the latter considerations determine our
thoughts; and the necessity of uniformity to a rational life may be one
cause of our belief (so far out-running the evidence) in uniformities
of causation and of space-relations and of all that we mean by natural
law.

FOOTNOTES:

[261] _Mythus und Religion_, pp. 78, 79.

[262] _Op. cit._, p. 125 _et seq._

[263] _Op. cit._, p. 202 _et seq._

[264] This was also Spencer’s opinion, _op. cit._, § 133.

[265] _Op. cit._, p. 263.

[266] _Op. cit._, p. 267.

[267] See above, pp. 100 and 119-24.

[268] Hume, _Inquiry_, § vii.

[269] A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 398.

[270] Book II. p. 82; Rawlinson’s Translation.

[271] Vol. I. ch. iv.

[272] But see the footnote at p. 235 of _The Magic Art_, I.: “faith
in magic is probably older than the belief in spirits.” In the same
note, a passage in Hegel’s _Philosophy of Religion_ is referred to as
anticipating the doctrine of the priority of Magic to Religion. The
passage, as translated in an appendix (pp. 423-6), shows, however,
no conception of Magic as akin to natural law, as it is described in
several passages of _The Golden Bough_, but treats it as a belief in
any human being “as the ruling power over nature in virtue of his
own will.” This is rather an anticipation of Prof. Wundt’s doctrine
concerning Sorcery; which Hegel seems not to have distinguished from
Magic. I need hardly add that a belief in any human being as the ruling
power over nature in virtue of his own will has never been discovered
in any part of the world.

[273] _Op. cit._, pp. 237-9.

[274] _Primitive Culture_, I. 116.

[275] R. H. Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 125.

[276] H. A. Giles, _Chinese Literature_, p. 202.

[277] Animism gave the priest another excuse for the failure of rites
(besides those enjoyed by a mere magician), namely, that during, or
since, the celebration some fresh offence against the gods had been
committed.

[278] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.
453, 463.

[279] A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.
359-361-367.

[280] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 378.

[281] E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 148.

[282] _The Mafulu_, p. 193.

[283] _Op. cit._, p. 272.

[284] Extract from a spell in Skeat’s _Malay Magic_, p. 571.

[285] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 397.

[286] J. G. Frazer, _The Belief in Immortality_, p. 288. For similar
instances see the same work, pp. 335 and 375.

[287] Sarat Chandra Roy, “Magic and Witchcraft on the Chota Nagpur
Plateau,” _J.R.A.I._, XLIV. p. 330. I have slightly altered the last
sentence, which seems to have been misprinted.

[288] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 215.

[289] _The Todas_, pp. 30, 213.

[290] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 286. But whether
we should expect the idea to weaken with advancing civilisation must
depend upon whether intelligent belief in the gods was increasing.
Perhaps this was not the case at Rome.

[291] _Polynesian Researches_, II. pp. 144 and 157 (1st ed.).

[292] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p.
199.

[293] Thomas Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 209.

[294] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees” in _Am. B. of
Ethn._, VII. p. 314 (1885-6).

[295] _Heimskringla, St. Olaf’s Saga_, chs. cciv. and ccxl.

[296] _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 273 (2nd ed.).

[297] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 145.

[298] S. H. C. Hawtrey, “The Lengua Indians,” _Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute_, 1901.

[299] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
XXIV. (1894-5).

[300] Comparetti, _The Traditionary Poetry of the Finns_, p. 184.

[301] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 404. Is this type of the neophyte’s
behaviour, which is conformed to on certain occasions by magicians
and inspired priests in every age and country, itself conformed to
the natural type of insanity or epilepsy; and, if so, consciously or
unconsciously?

[302] J. H. Weeks, _Among Congo Cannibals_, pp. 145 and 276.

[303] Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, chs. i. and vii.

[304] _Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic
Heathendom_, p. 225.

[305] _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, pp. 24, 34, 181, 196.

[306] _Heimskringla Saga, Yuglingasaga_, chs. xvii.-xviii.

[307] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
X., XIV. p. 85.

[308] Weeks, _Congo Cannibals_, p. 265.

[309] The fullest and most dramatic account of such possession may be
found in Williams’ _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 190. See below, p. 243.

[310] Weeks, _Primitive Bokongo_, p. 215.

[311] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp.
480-8.

[312] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
XXIV. p. 130.

[313] Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 374.

[314] _Ibid._, p. 437.

[315] P. A. Talbot, _In the Shadow of the Bush_, p. 230.

[316] G. Borrow, _Wild Wales_, ch. lxxxviii.

[317] Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._, p. 388.

[318] H. Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, § 55.

[319] E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 308 _et seq._

[320] In a paper on _Leopard Men of the Naga Hills_, read at a meeting
of the R.A.I. (December 9, 1919), Mr. J. J. H. Hutton reported that
such men do not change into leopards; but sometimes their souls
involuntarily pass into them. If the leopard be injured or killed he
whose soul was in it suffers or dies—when he hears of it. Such men are
not feared, because their leopards do very little harm.

For this reason (I suppose) the belief is not exploited by wizards, who
have no use for innocent superstition, and it remains pure folklore.
There may not be any connexion between this animistic doctrine of human
souls possessing animals and the magical doctrine of shape-changing. If
they are connected, it is easy to see that in a certain atmosphere of
popular philosophy, if shape-changing were believed in, the possession
theory might be accepted as the true explanation upon merely being
proposed. Indeed, it would make intelligible such a case as this: a
man’s leopard is seen on the skirts of the village; but he himself is
known to be in his hut.

Animistic explanation does not always follow culture: Europe adheres to
shape-changing. Yet in the _Volsung Saga_ the superstition is already
degenerate: Sigmund and his son change into wolves by putting on
wolf-skins belonging to two were-wolves whom they find asleep. This is
a rationalisation—disguise as a step toward change. An earlier step is
to say a man who would change must put on a belt of wolf-skin.

[321] Haddon, _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_,
V. p. 329.

[322] Grey, _op. cit._, “Legends of Maui and Tawhaki.”

[323] Wiedemann, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, pp. 54-8.

[324] M. C. Stevenson, “The Sia,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI. p. 118.

[325] W. Grube, _Rel. u. K. d. Chinese_, p. 132.

[326] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_,
ch. xxiv. p. 133.

[327] Stephánsen, _My Life with the Eskimo_, p. 391.

[328] D. Comparetti, _The Traditional Poetry of the Finns_, p. 26.

[329] _Natural and Social Morals_, ch. ii. § 4.

[330] See many examples in J. G. Frazer’s _Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul_, ch. i.

[331] Ch. vi.

[332] III. p. 31.

[333] Macdonell, _Sanskrit Literature_, pp. 73 and 183.

[334] Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, p. 124.

[335] A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 319.

[336] _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 202.

[337] Alfred Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, essays on _The State and
Religion in China_. In a milder form this system has been adopted by
Japan; W. E. Aston, _Shinto_, p. 237.

[338] Franz Cumont, _Astrology and Religion_.




CHAPTER VII

OMENS


§ 1. THE PREVALENCE OF OMENS

“When great disasters are about to befall a state or nation it often
happens that there is some warning,” says Herodotus.[339] It happens,
indeed, not only to states and nations, but to eminent men, or even to
common men, children and old women. An old woman who in England sees
the new moon for the first time through glass, will not be surprised
when, next morning, the market-basket drops from her arm in the middle
of the street. In Fiji, if a woman putting bananas into a pot let one
fall on the outside, or if the bread-fruit burst in roasting, she wrung
her hands in dismay and cried aloud.[340] The whole world is full of
such portents, and has been many thousands of years; and there is no
clearer disproof of the vulgar error that age is the mother of wisdom
than this, that the older the race grows the less it attends to them:
or rather, whilst it attends to them more and more sedulously up to a
certain critical hour—reached by the Greeks (say) 400 B.C., and by
Western Europe (say) A.D. 1600—it then begins to disregard, rapidly
neglects them, till in a comparatively short time what is called the
“enlightened” part of mankind forgets to take account of them at all;
although it is well known that an eclipse of the moon a little before
sunrise in the sign of Leo was a token that Darius should be defeated
at Arbela; that on the first day that Julius Cæsar sat on the golden
throne and wore the purple robe, an ox, having been sacrificed, was
found to have no heart—at which Cæsar himself was surprised, and soon
after he was assassinated; and that many signs and wonders announced
quite recently the coming of the Spaniards into Mexico; Montezuma had
visions and grew melancholy; the idol of Quetzalchoatl declared that a
strange people approached to possess his kingdom, and so did witches
and sorcerers; a stone spoke and warned him; a lake overflowed its
banks; a pyramid of fire was seen in the sky; monsters were born with
two heads, and there were other portents, all to no purpose.[341]

Omens, enjoyed with fear and trembling by all men in all ages, have
sometimes been conceived of as due to magical power, but much more
generally as the sendings of demons or gods; although the fact that
they are rarely of any use to the recipient, or even intelligible to
him until after the event, makes it very improbable that they involve
the intervention of any intelligent cause. And what are we to think of
the intelligence of mankind, who in spite of their experience of omens
during so many ages, were still eager to observe them?


§ 2. OMENS AND NATURAL SIGNS

For the wild man seeking game or on the alert for enemies it is
necessary to read every sign of the presence of enemies or of game in
the neighbourhood: footprints, broken twigs and bent grass, droppings
of feathers, hair or dung, remnants of food or marks of habitation
instantly catch his eye; noises or odours arrest his other senses.
His world is full of these signs, and he must always be on the watch
for them: the birds being suddenly silent, on looking up he sees a
hawk; a change of wind, or the aspect of clouds, announces rain or
fair weather; the coming and departure of certain birds—as with us
the swallow and the cuckoo—portend the change of seasons. In all
these cases causation is active and sometimes obvious, but often very
obscure: the apparent may be the reverse of the real order: for the
coming of swallows is the antecedent of our enjoying the summer; but in
the order of nature the course of the seasons determines the migration
of birds. That the true relation may be misunderstood is shown by the
behaviour of certain Australian natives who, noticing that plovers cry
before the coming of rain, take their cry to be a cause of rain, and
therefore imitate it when performing their rain-rites.[342] We may
observe how obscure is the distinction between sign and cause even
amongst ourselves, in the general belief that “a change of the moon” is
connected somehow with a change of weather; for what the relation is no
one seems clearly to conceive.

The relation between natural signs and the events signified, being
obscure, may be mysterious; and accordingly its obscurity has been made
use of to defend the belief in Omens. In the _De Divinatione_[343]
Quintus, who is unkindly given by his brother the post of apologist for
all that nonsense, (following, I suppose, the sophistry of some Stoic)
quotes Aratus’ description of how certain movements of the sea presage
a coming storm; the gull, too, and the crow by their behaviour: and the
croaking of frogs and the snuffing of cattle foretell rain. I cannot
explain, he says, how animals have such knowledge any more than I can
explain the divinations of augurs; nor is it necessary to do so: in
both cases there are the facts.

No wonder, then, that the savage, depending for his life upon a
knowledge of signs, driven by eagerness and anxiety to observe
them, and unable to distinguish coincidence from causation and the
entanglements of causation, should imagine himself to have discovered
many more signs than are comprised in the order of nature. Thus in
Torres Straits, the biro-biro announces by its arrival that yams are
ready for eating (which seems needless), and the cry of the koko
predicts fine weather (which is credible); but, further, the sunbird
can foretell the coming of a boat,[344] and that must be imagination.


§ 3. SOME SIGNS CONCEIVED OF AS MAGICAL

Very gradually, we may suppose, a difference came to be felt between
two classes of signs: (1) those that are of a usual kind, such as the
tracks of game, the return of the swallows, the croaking of frogs,
which are almost constantly the antecedents of interesting events, such
as the getting of food, the coming of spring, or of rain; sequences
that recur again and again, some of them being, like the tracks of
game, easily intelligible; all which, accordingly, are accepted as a
matter of course and incorporated with common sense. (2) Less usual
events, such as strange animals, lightning, eclipses, shooting-stars;
which come to be considered as signs by being connected in imagination
with interesting events which happen soon after them, such as a failure
in hunting, an attack by enemies, a death in the tribe, the wreck of
a canoe; though the connexions are irregular and never intelligible,
and are accepted not as a matter of course, but as mysterious, magical
and portentous: they are Omens. They acquire the hold upon men that
belongs to the growing body of superstition. Although irregular, they
are classed with the connexions that are believed to be most regular,
and failures are overlooked. To these are added and accumulated in
tradition, by analogy or caprice, innumerable other signs and warnings.

That Omens obtain an inextricable hold in the tangle of superstitious
beliefs results from men’s strong desire to foresee the future,
especially in social conditions full of dangers and uncertainties,
without the settled organisation which, with us in ordinary times,
makes one year so much like another. Upon many people, indeed, this
desire has the same effect to this day, and becomes more active in
troubled times like the present. Anxious to know whether they are to
marry, or to hear of a death, or to come into money or some other
advancement, they hope to find out by visiting Mrs. Sludge in a stuffy
chamber, or (as you may see in London) by consulting a canary at
the street-corner. When a fixed idea of love or ambition or anxiety
possesses the mind and leaves it no peace, we are ready to try any
device that promises to relieve the strain, and we do things sillier
than could have been predicted even by those who knew us best.

Belief in Omens and the practice of observing them having been
established, the list of portentous events grows ever larger. (_a_) In
a depressed frame of mind the future looks gloomy; in exhilaration,
cheerful. A sensation, such as shivering, or sweating, that accompanies
fear is apt to excite fear. In fear or depression one acts feebly
and fails; in hope and confidence one acts vigorously and wins: the
expectations produced by such moods fulfil themselves, and therefore
the moods are ominous. This may be the reason why, when men are at
strife and some ambiguous Omen occurs, he who first claims its favour
or denounces its menace upon his enemy, gains an advantage;[345] for
the other may be daunted and unable to rally his forces. But that
depends on character.

This subjective value of an Omen, making its virtue a function of the
recipient’s disposition, sometimes became so prominent as to obscure
its truly magical character; according to which it must be indissolubly
connected in some way with the event and can have nothing to do with
the recipient’s attitude. Thus it might be held that an Omen, if it
deeply affected a man’s imagination, would be fulfilled; but, if
neglected, it might not be. Pliny says[346] that, according to the
augurs, auspices had no import for one who in any enterprise declared
that he would not regard them. Or, again, the bearing of an Omen may be
determined by the way in which it is accepted: Julius Cæsar, landing in
Africa, fell; and that must have seemed a very bad Omen; but he, having
the presence of mind (though not exempt from superstition) to exclaim:
“Africa, I lay hold of thee!” changed its significance;[347] and,
doubtless, greatly altered its effect upon the minds of his officers
and soldiers and of all who heard of it; and that was the important
matter. Hope and desire and anxiety created Omens, and they had also
the power to direct the incidence and corrupt the interpretation of
Omens. In fact, there were conventional formulæ for accepting good
Omens and rejecting bad ones: _Accipio omen, Absit omen, Tibi in caput
redeat;_ which were counteractive spells; and it is agreed that Magic
may be overcome by stronger Magic.

This attitude of mind that makes an Omen subject to its acceptance,
may explain the otherwise absurd practice of taking the Omens again
and again, when the earlier have been unfavourable, until one is
obtained that flatters the inquirer’s hopes. Not only amongst
sophisticated peoples, who might be supposed to treat Omens in a
formal and perfunctory way, but even in the lower barbarism Omens are
thus garbled. The Karens of Borneo, consulting the liver of a pig to
authorise an expedition, if with one pig the appearance is forbidding,
sacrifice a second, third, or fourth; though without a satisfactory
forecast they will not set out. Then, having set out, they try to avoid
hearing the cry of the woodpecker (which has two notes, the one of
good, the other of evil augury), lest it should be against their plans.
And the same simple-minded people believe in the magical efficacy of
the sign, no matter how obtained. Vaticinating by the flight of a hawk,
a man will try, by shouting and by waving to it, to turn its flight
toward the left, that being with them the prosperous direction.[348]
Imagination-beliefs are saturated with insincerity; their unconscious
maxim is, “Believe as you list.”

Although it may be a general principle that savages are more impressed
by external than by internal experiences, yet the suggestion of the
foregoing paragraphs, that the finding of Omens in one’s own sensations
is secondary to, and dependent on, the growth of a belief in Omens
presented by physical events, is not one upon which I much rely.
Possibly sensations and moods are a distinct and primitive source of
this superstition: for it has been noticed in Australia, where the lore
of Omens in general has made but little progress. Whilst performing
tribal ceremonies under strong emotion, the aborigines think that their
entrails sometimes acquire “sight”; so that they know whether their
wives have been unfaithful, or they feel the approach of danger.[349]
In the Western Isles of Torres Straits shivering and uneasy feelings
are presentiments; and in the Eastern Isles, a dryness of one’s skin
or sneezing:[350] in New Guinea, if the right shoulder ache, expect
good news; if the left, bad.[351] And these simplest of all whims are
the longest lived; for amongst ourselves many a woman suddenly has a
presentiment, “as if some one were walking over her grave.”

(_b_) As a mood of elation or depression is itself ominous, so is
whatever excites such a mood. Depressing objects are cripples, old
women, sick people, timid hares, loathsome toads, a snake coming to
meet a war-party, discouraging words, ugly dreams; whereas pleasant
dreams, encouraging words, a snake going before us as against the
enemy, hawks, wolves and blooming youth are all exhilarating: the list
varies from tribe to tribe. Many ominous things promise good or evil
according as they appear on the right hand or on the left: the left
being generally held inauspicious, because (it is said) the left hand
is the clumsier and weaker; and this may be true. But we have seen that
in Borneo the left is preferred; and whereas the Greeks followed the
general rule, assigning evil to the left hand, the Romans thought the
right hand was the direction of danger. And this contrariety has been
explained as due to a difference of orientation in the formal taking of
Omens; for the Greek then faced northward, and had the place of sunrise
upon his right hand; whilst the Roman faced southward and had on his
right hand the place of sunset: so that it was not anything to do with
his own body, but the direction whence the sun appeared and advanced
with growing power and splendour which each of them judged of good
hope, in contrast with that whither the sun declined and weakened to
his death. To illustrate these fancies would be an endless task, and a
superfluous labour, since nothing is better known.

(_c_) Coincidence, the occurrence near together of two interesting
events, is sure to make people think there must be some connexion
between them; and the earlier event will be classed, according to
circumstances, as either a cause or a sign of the later; and if the
connexion is mysterious, it must be either a magical power like that
of a talisman, or that special kind of Magic which is an Omen. What
circumstances determine this distinction, I will presently try to
show. Possibly all Omens that are not derived from subjective moods
and sensations, or from things or events that excite such moods,
were originally founded upon coincidence. Upon this, apparently, the
Egyptians relied in the records they kept (according to Herodotus) of
Omens and their fulfilment; and Quintus Cicero is represented[352] as
believing that the Babylonians kept such records for 470,000 years: so
that it was, in their view, an inductive science; but we never hear of
their having kept a record of failures and disappointments.

Some Omens having been established by subjective prognostication or
by coincidence, many more may be added by analogy, or by a sort of
reasoning. An analogy with the contrast of right and left hand may
be noticed in all opposites: the woodpecker in Borneo, for example,
having two cries, and one of them a warning, must not the other
be an encouragement? The belief in Omens having taken hold of the
public mind, everybody is on the look-out for signs and wonders; and
anything unusual seen, or heard, or rumoured, becomes a possible
Omen of anything else, and men ask one another what it portends. The
superstitious imagination is greedy of its accustomed food. Under
such conditions, too, Omens are discovered by retrospection: a public
calamity, such as the death of a king, the defeat of an army, or a
pestilence (or in private life some private misfortune), makes us
remember some foregoing event or events, which must have forewarned
us, had we had the skill to interpret the significance of Time’s
progression.


§ 4. DIFFERENTIATION OF OMENS FROM GENERAL MAGIC

The savage mind, sensitive to the resemblance of relations, cannot
overlook the analogy between signs and warning cries; many Omens are
cries; and with the spread of animistic explanation, they came to
be considered as the sendings of spirits or gods. But, at first, by
mere magical thinking, under the stress of anxiety to know the future,
and the helplessness of common sense to predict anything outside
the everyday routine, Omens are gradually separated from ordinary
probable signs (such as the tracks of game) as necessary infallible
signs (or tendencies) if cunning can find them out, connected by some
supernatural law with the unknown future that certainly awaits us, and
as a kind of Magic. The magical habit of mind may be supposed to have
resulted from the coalescence of beliefs concerning several imaginary
operations—by charms, spells, rites—each class of beliefs having its
own occasions, causes, or fallacious grounds. Those operations had in
common the marks of being connexions of events due to imagined forces
of a mysterious kind, and therefore grouped themselves together in
men’s minds as the Magic apperception-mass. Omens had these marks and,
therefore, were assimilated to Magic. An Omen is an event regarded as
a magical sign of the good or ill success of some undertaking, or of
the approach of good fortune, or of calamity. And on the principle that
ideas are differentiated from a confused matrix, it is probable that
Omens, having at first been confused with other magical antecedents
of events, were only gradually again distinguished from them. But
an important distinction existed and at last came to light: charms,
rites and spells are causes of events; whereas Omens are signs only,
not causes. The difference is that whereas charms, rites and spells
directly exert their powers upon the course of things, Omens themselves
exert no power, but show only that there is some power at work, which
will have such or such results.[353]

Comparing Omens with other modes of Magic, several peculiarities may be
noticed: (_a_) Omens themselves (apart from the preparation of victims,
etc.) imply no human intervention, whereas rites and spells must be
performed or recited by some one, and even charms are carried about
one, or used in rites, or solemnly affixed to doors, animals or other
possessions. (_b_) Partly as a consequence of this, Omens, considered
in themselves, generally (as I have said) convey no suggestion of
force. This cannot, indeed, be said of eclipses and thunderstorms;
but the note of a bird, the appearance of entrails, a mere shivering
or other change of feeling, though ominous, suggests no energetic
operation; whilst rites and spells are often carried out with much
expenditure of energy, and even charms, though not obviously active,
are necessarily believed to be powerful in some obscure way of their
own. (_c_) Omens are often so remote in time, as well as in place,
from the events indicated that any quasi-mechanical determination
of the issue by them can hardly be thought of; but with rites and
spells, though they may not operate openly in the hour of their setting
to work, yet the delay is not expected to be great, and (as said)
their impulsion or _nisus_ is often very impressive; and charms are
incessantly and immediately active. (_d_) Omens in general do not
foretell precisely what is to happen, but only the success or failure
of some enterprise (not the “how” of it), happiness or misfortune;
whereas rites and spells have some definite object, and most charms
inflict, or guard against, some one kind of evil, disease or shipwreck;
though others (it is true) bring luck or loss at large. Thus Omens are
very different from other magical conditions; and although it is not
likely that the ordinary savage or even the wizard ever consciously
draws these distinctions or sums them up, still they have an effect
upon his mind, and the observation of Omens and the reading of them
becomes at last a special branch of the Magic Art—Divination.


§ 5. OMENS INTERPRETED BY ANIMISM

Omens, then, being only signs and not causes of future events, having
no power in themselves, must be connected with some efficient power,
or else the events prognosticated could not happen. How is that
power to be understood? For a long time, probably, there is no clear
conception of it: the connexion is mysterious. But there are two ways
in which it may be interpreted: (_a_) Following the impersonal magical
way of thinking, we are led to the idea of currents of force in which
both Omen and event are borne along; and, at last, to the conception
of a fatal order of the world in which all events have their necessary
places. There A is always followed by B; so that, although A exerts no
power over B, yet (if we know the law of the sequence) when the former
appears it is an infallible portent of the latter. The power at work is
Fate; and to this idea I must return; for in its full development it
comes late in history.

(_b_) The other and much simpler way of explaining Omens is to
attribute them to the intervention of spirits who, whether they control
events or not, at least foresee them, and send messages of warning
to mankind. With the spread of Animism this is a matter of course.
A sophisticated age may ask how a spirit should be able to see the
future; and may answer that spirits, having greater knowledge than we
of the present state of the world and its laws of causation, are able
to calculate the outcome, just as an astronomer foretells an eclipse
of the sun. A precious rationalisation! To the untutored savage there
is no difficulty. To foresee the future is a very common performance:
whenever we form an expectation which is fulfilled (and that happens
many times a day) we accomplish this feat; and for the most part we are
unconscious of the grounds upon which we formed the expectation. The
savage is always in this position: he has not analysed the relation
of “ground and consequence” nor examined the mental conditions that
precede an inference. To him, therefore, foreknowledge, within a
certain range, is not even mysterious; and, of course, spirits have
the gift in a much higher degree. In Melanesia a _vui_ (spirit)
knows secret things without seeing;[354] and here begins the rôle of
intuition in Philosophy. Later, a high god may give warnings, not
merely of what he foresees in the course of the world, but of what he
of his own volition will bring to pass; or a lesser god may announce
what he knows to be the will of the higher; or, later still, all
spiritual warnings may sink back into helpless incidents in the course
of Fate.

Omens (as has been mentioned) resemble warnings: (_a_) Like warnings,
they precede events, but do not cause them. (_b_) They sometimes
precede an event by a considerable interval, as if to give time for
precaution. (_c_) They do not announce the details of any event (which
a friendly counsellor may not know), but only its character as good or
evil. Then, if they are warnings (implying foreknowledge), since they
are not the act of any man, they must be given by some spirit or other
intelligence. So that once a belief in the intervention of spirits in
mundane affairs has become prevalent in any tribe, nothing can be more
natural than to regard Omens as spiritual messages. Still, this way of
thinking may have been preceded by a disposition to attribute Omens
to the good will of animals, especially Totems; for animals are often
wiser than we are. In Australia the Turbal tribe held that the chirping
of insects foretold the coming of blacks; a Wakelbwa who dreamed of
a kangaroo would expect one of the Banbe subclass next day; to dream
of old-man kangaroos sitting round the fire presaged danger.[355]
Among the Yuin (Western Australia) a Black-Duck clansman thought that
black ducks warned him against enemies; and men of the Kurnai, who had
personal Totems, thought they gave protection by warnings.[356] Very
early, however, ghosts or spirits sometimes come themselves to instruct
us; as amongst the Kurnai, the Biraark (wizards) hold _séances_ at
night, when ghosts attend, and give news of enemies or of absent
friends.[357] In New Guinea, the ghosts of dead tribesmen send their
surviving relatives Omens by fishes or birds.[358]

By this animistic theory Omens are intimately connected with Oracles
and Dreams; for these, too, are messages from the spirit-world.
Dreams are the chief causes of belief in spirits, and with many people
have not yet lost the character of supernatural visitations. Probably
for ages past there have been in each generation a few rationalists,
who treated dreams in the manner of Artabanes (as reported by
Herodotus[359]—who, however, will show that the event refuted him),
holding that “whatever a man has been thinking of during the day
is wont to hover round him in the visions of his dreams at night.”
Incensed against the diviners, rationalists have, in fact, too much
despised and neglected dreams.

Oracles and Dreams are amongst the phenomena of “possession.” Spirits,
demons, gods, roaming the world and indwelling or haunting various
bodies or localities, sometimes take up their abode in stones or bags
of charms, which then become fetiches; or attain greater dignity in
images and temples; or enter into men and women, afflicting them with
diseases, or else with dreams, or drunkenness, or madness, or prophecy,
or poetry;[360] for these things are hard to distinguish. And sometimes
the people thus afflicted wander at large, sometimes are to be found
only by some tree, or spring, or cave, or temple, where the spirit that
makes them wise above others has chosen to reside, perhaps because his
body was buried there.

Omens, Oracles and Dreams have, besides their dependence on spirits,
another trait in common, namely, obscurity of meaning. When you have
been favoured with one of these communications, what does it promise or
threaten? To answer this question passes the wit of ordinary men; and,
therefore, certain superior minds assume the important function of
Diviners and, to guide their judgment, work out in course of ages with
infinite ingenuity the Art of Divination.


§ 6. NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL OMENS

Before discussing Divination we had better remind ourselves of the
immense extension that the lore of Omens undergoes beyond the early
recognition of mysterious natural signs (thunder or the behaviour
of birds, etc.), by the preparation in various ways of conditions
under which Omens may be obtained at will (throwing dice, roasting
shoulder-blades, sacrificing pigs, etc.). Men are eager to know the
future, at least the general complexion of it as happy or unhappy;
and for this purpose they desire Omens. But natural Omens do not
always appear when wanted, though probably the mere desire of them
has multiplied them greatly; it is, therefore, very convenient to
discover devices by which Omens can always be obtained by any one for
any purpose. A common practice is to toss a halfpenny, and decide a
doubtful choice of action by head or tail: reinforcing imbecility
with superstition. It is impossible we should ever learn how such
conventions originated, but may assume that the earlier were suggested
by some accident, and many of the later by analogy. The Warramunga have
a very simple plan, when a man dies, for discovering who it was that
by evil magic slew him. They smooth the ground about the spot where
the death occurred, and next morning come to examine it; and if they
find there the trail of a snake, they know that the murderer was a
man of the Snake-totem.[361] It is reasonable to suppose that in the
first instance they found such a trail of snake or other animal upon
unprepared ground, and thereafter smoothed the ground to make such
signs plainer: thus they began the preparation of conditions for the
taking of Omens. A New Zealand wizard had a simple construction for
discovering beforehand who would have the better of a battle: he set
up two sticks near together, one for his own party, the other for the
enemy, and let them fall: whichever stick fell on the top of the other
the party it had stood for was to conquer in the fight.[362] As ages
go by and more and more intellect is concentrated upon the problem
of foreknowledge, more and more ways are discovered of preparing the
conditions of taking Omens, more and more expensive and complicated
ones; for the more difficult the preparation and interpretation, the
more necessary it is to employ a professional augur. The casting of
dice, the drawing of lots, the taking of one’s chance with verses of
Virgil or of the Bible, may seem easy, but even such devices may be
made difficult by accumulating rules of interpretation. The sacred
chicken, whose vagaries in feeding occasionally relieve with grateful
diversion the strenuous page of Roman History, cannot have required
highly skilled manipulation, but to watch them a professional eye
was necessary; and when sacrifices are employed as opportunities of
taking Omens from the behaviour of the victims, the manner of their
dying and the condition of their entrails, a technical specialist of
high training becomes indispensable. This led to the intensive study
of entrails, especially of livers (Hepatoscopy, Hepatomancy), with
some gain of knowledge in Anatomy. The study was widely diffused;
but still more widely, perhaps, the art of prophesying by the lines
to be observed in shoulder-blades cracked by roasting over a fire
(Scapulomancy).

Where nothing is or can be done to alter the physical conditions of
premonitory signs, yet a painstaking analysis has been made of those
conditions in order to interpret them in a methodical way; and this
study may demand far greater skill than augury. In Cheiromancy the
lines and eminences of the hand have been exactly mapped and defined,
and have had their several values and meanings assigned. It is really a
perplexing study, not to be entered upon with a light heart, yet simple
and obvious in comparison with Astrology. The Astrologer who would
undertake to forecast the future fate of men or nations, or to recover
forgotten facts of antiquity, such as the date of a hero’s birth (for
it was understood that a difference of forward or backward in time
should not hinder scientific calculations), had to take account of all
the visible furniture of heaven, the stars in their constellations,
especially the signs of the Zodiac; the seven planets, each with its
own qualities and powers assumed arbitrarily or by fanciful analogies,
all unquantified and all varying in the Twelve Houses of Heaven. What
learning, what stupendous abilities were demanded for such a task!
In fact, any one who now hears of it, immediately knows it to be
impossible. But until many problems had been solved and the method of
them appreciated, no one could understand what kind of problems are
insoluble. Meanwhile, in this study, for ages so honoured, a mixture
of genuine Astronomy and a parade of systematic procedure (of which
philosophers well know the force) made fatuity plausible.


§ 7. DIVINATION AND ORACLES

Omens and Oracles are, no doubt, infallible premonitions of something,
if one can find it out; but they are often so obscure or ambiguous that
one gets no guidance from them, and indeed it is sometimes impossible
to judge whether they are ever fulfilled, or not. It is, therefore,
most important that some one should be able to expound them; and here,
as in every department of human effort, we may be sure that, of the
many who attempt interpretation, one will be more successful than
others; and then to him all men flock for enlightenment, especially if
he make one good guess about some Omen or Oracle of general interest.
Such a man was thereby constituted a Diviner, and became the founder
of a profession, or (at least) of a branch or function of the great
wizardly profession. It happened long ago; for in savagery most wizards
are already Diviners.

In course of time the profession can no longer be satisfied with
interpretation by guesswork, but elaborates the principles of
the subject, the Art of Divination, upon which, perhaps, as much
painstaking and ingenuity have been expended as upon industry and
science put together. The _savants_ who carried out such work were
probably (many of them) as honest as fanatics can be; but the result
always was to raise the reputation of the profession for occult
knowledge and mysterious insight.

Diviners are either free and independent seers, soothsayers,
fortune-tellers, mostly poverty-stricken and disreputable, though
sometimes eminent and influential, like Tiresias and Epimenides; or
else officials (a much smaller party) attached to some temple or
government. Official soothsayers have often exercised immense power
in society and politics. They are not found, of course, at the bottom
of the scale of culture, where there is no government in Church
or State; but in the lower barbarism, among the Bantu tribes (for
example), Diviners have a highly influential station. The chief of
a tribe usually has a specially trusted Diviner, and also consults
others in discovering sorcerers and in forecasting the future.[363]
In the Mazwaya clan of the Thonga there is an official Diviner who
alone knows the exact composition of the royal “medicine,” on which
the welfare of the whole tribe depends. He is very much feared: no one
dares dispute with him; and he has the right of cursing even the chief
himself.[364] Such a powerful subject naturally excites the jealousy of
the chief, who sometimes endeavours to get into his own hands all the
medicines and occult virtues possessed by any of his tribesmen.[365]
The danger of opposition between Church and State was also felt in
Melanesia and Polynesia; and in Hawaii it was decisively overcome; for
when the oracle was to be consulted, the king, concealed in a frame of
wickerwork, gave the responses himself.[366]

In Greece (sixth and fifth centuries B.C.) oracles were still more
powerful: the record may be read in Herodotus. The most flourishing
States observed the Omens, and never ventured to go to war without
consulting the Oracles; and the Oracles undertook to advise on war and
peace and alliances, to settle disputed claims to sovereignty and the
constitution of States, to sanction new laws and the foundation of
colonies, to order the erection of new temples and even the worship of
new deities—some of them of very dubious reputation: to say nothing
of the infinite extent of their private practice. Their utterances
were often unintelligible; they were sometimes known to have accepted
bribes; yet the most enlightened people in the world continued to
consult them: whether in good faith, or for their effect upon the
vulgar both friends and enemies, or perhaps to share responsibility for
an action with the gods, or even because one then felt more comfortable
than in leaving them alone. But the diffusion of philosophy was too
much for them; and, as Cicero says,[367] even the Delphic Oracle
declined in reputation, not because with lapse of time the divine
virtue failed of those exhalations that inspired the priestess, but
when men became less credulous. Perhaps it was also because social
life had become, under Roman government, safer and more settled and
regular; so that a reasonable amount of foresight could be exercised
without supernatural aid. Still, after the Oracles seemed to have been
struck dumb, they revived from time to time for two or three centuries;
Plutarch was far from incredulous; and the equivalent of them will (I
suppose) continue to revive now and then, unless insane desire, and
anxiety, and pusillanimity, and wonder and confusion of mind shall one
day be extinguished.

In the great empires of the higher barbarism, the Magi amongst the
Medes and Persians, and in Egypt, Babylonia and India the priesthood
who practised soothsaying and vaticination with their other functions,
obtained still greater control over national life. The development of
Astrology has always been imputed to the Chaldeans; and the importance
of dreams and their interpretation in Egypt and Babylon is reflected in
the stories of Joseph and Daniel as well as in the profaner pages of
Herodotus.

The character of Omens and the way of obtaining Oracles and of being
inspired in Greece were merely modifications of those that have been
in vogue amongst savages. Imagination-beliefs, in spite of their
extravagance, have, in fact, a short tether and move in narrow circles,
perpetually renewing the same themes. The ravings of the Pythoness
possessed, which are said to have sometimes frightened the priests,
might have been studied in Fiji. This was what happened when a priest
was inspired: he “becomes absorbed in thought ... in a few minutes
he trembles; slight distortions are seen in his face, and twitching
movements in his limbs. These increase to a violent muscular action,
which spreads until the whole frame is violently convulsed, and the
man shivers as with a strong ague-fit. In some instances this is
accompanied by murmurs and sobs; the veins are greatly enlarged, and
the circulation of the blood quickened. The priest is now possessed by
his god, and all his words and actions are considered as no longer his
own, but those of the deity who has entered him. Shrill cries of Koi
au! Koi au! ‘It is I! It is I!’ fill the air, and the god is supposed
thus to notify his approach. While giving the answer the priest’s eyes
stand out and roll as in a frenzy; his voice is unnatural, his face
pale, his lips livid, his breathing depressed and his entire appearance
that of a furious madman. The sweat runs from every pore, the tears
start from his strained eyes; after which the symptoms gradually
disappear. The priest looks round with a vacant stare, and as the god
says ‘I depart,’ announces his actual departure by violently flinging
himself down on the mat, or by suddenly striking the ground with a
club.... The convulsive movements do not entirely disappear for some
time.”[368]

To become inspired by means of visions or dreams, or endowed with the
powers of a prophet or diviner, the obvious plan is to go to places
frequented by spirits, namely, tombs, caves and temples. The Oracle of
Trophonius in Bœotia was situated in a cave into which the consultant
descended, and there saw visions or heard strange noises, and lost his
senses: on returning to the upper air, he sat in the Chair of Memory
and reported to the priests what had happened; and they delivered him
to his friends “overpowered with fear, and quite unconscious of himself
and his surroundings.”[369] Afterwards he recovered his wits. At Oropus
was a sanctuary of Amphiaraus, who (against his better judgment) had
joined the expedition of Adrastus against Thebes and, amidst the
general defeat of the army, fled and was swallowed up in the earth. His
death ought to have occurred where his sanctuary stood; for it was a
famous Oracle, and to consult it you purified yourself and sacrificed
a ram and, spreading the skin under you, went asleep there, awaiting
a revelation in a dream.[370] In the temple of Pasiphæ, too, near
Sparta, one might hope for a divine message in a dream; and a shepherd,
sleeping by the grave of Orpheus at Libethra, was moved to sing the
verses of Orpheus.[371]

To lose one’s memory and afterwards recover one’s wits is incidental
to many initiation ceremonies, and the darkness and secrecy of
caves—which, moreover, are often burial-places—have always deeply
impressed our imagination. Amongst the Arunta there is a way of
obtaining powers of Magic and Divination by going to sleep at the
mouth of a cave; when the Iruntarinia (a kind of spirits), who live
there, pierce the sleeper’s head with lances, drag him into the
cave, disembowel him and give him new entrails. He awakes dazed and
silly; and the spirits lead him home, where gradually he recovers his
right mind.[372] Amongst the Kurnai, again, one may become a wizard
and diviner by sleeping at a grave; for in the night the dead man
disembowels one, and provides new visceral organs.[373] Elsewhere in
Australia a candidate for the wizardly profession is tied down at night
in the tribal burial-ground and visited by spirits who force a stone
into his head—apparently a kind of crystal, by gazing into which a
wizard is able to see the past, the distant and the future.[374]

The seeking of enlightenment where spirits dwell in caves or graves,
loss of wits by contact with them and subsequent recovery—all this may
remind us of stories in Pausanias; but what of the disembowelling and
renewing of the viscera? We are told by Spencer and Gillen that during
the performance of certain traditionary ceremonies, an Australian’s
emotion is very great, so that he says his inward parts get “tied
up in knots,” and sometimes acquire “sight” and give omens;[375] and
Howitt tells us that fat of the kidneys is believed to be the seat
of a man’s prowess and other virtues.[376] To extract and renew a
man’s entrails, therefore, is to renew his spirit, just as we speak
metaphorically of a “change of heart,” so that he has more vivid
emotions, firmer courage, clearer insight. In fact, it is the magical
equivalent of inspiration; the crystal, too, of the Euahlayi is a magic
source; and this is as far as the Australians have got:[377] gross
materialism, which the progress or (at least) the movement of animistic
thought has happily superseded by conceptions more refined, if not more
truthful.


§ 8. APPARENT FAILURE OF OMENS

Though in their nature infallible, Omens are not always fulfilled—at
least, their fulfilment is not always ascertainable. But this is easily
explained; for whatever an Omen may be in itself, our knowledge of
it depends on observation, which may be superficial and incomplete,
so that we may not know what it was. What kind of bird was it? Which
way did it fly? How many cries did it utter? These questions go to
the heart of the matter; yet each of them points out an opportunity
of error. But granting the observations perfect, we have still to
learn what the Omen portends; and although a simple mind, trusting to
simple rules, may be ready offhand with an answer, it becomes, with the
development of the art of Divination, more and more complicated and
difficult, demanding long experience and profound erudition—something
worth paying for. It is popularly known that dreams are perplexing as
the guide of life. Are they to be accepted at face value, or do they go
by contraries? What difference does it make whether they happen early
in the night, or in the morning, or whether we sleep in white or in
coloured night-clothes? There is an extensive casuistry of this matter.
Interpretations of Omens proceeded generally by analogy: the length
and direction of the cracks in a shoulder-blade indicate the length
and tenor of a man’s life. Oracles, again, were often distractingly
obscure; from Delphi much like riddles; but those of Zeus at Dodona are
said to have been sometimes taken to Apollo at Delphi to ask what they
meant. Clearly, then, besides possible errors of observation, there
were further pitfalls of interpretation; if a physician or a pilot is
sometimes out in his reckoning, why not also a diviner? So that an Omen
might very well be fulfilled without our knowing exactly what it was or
what it indicated.

But that is not all; for we have seen that any kind of magical force
is only infallible as a tendency; it may be counteracted, and this
is generally thought to be the case with Omens. Just as the rites of
one magician may be frustrated by the more powerful operations of
another, so an Omen indicates a course of events which may, perhaps,
be turned aside. That which is foreseen by one spirit may be prevented
by another, whose intervention was not foreseen; for spirits are by no
means infallible. Hence, however well observed and interpreted, the
tendency of an Omen, or of the force it manifests, may be diverted or
reversed by some unknown cause. Moreover, we ourselves are loth to
relinquish all control over affairs. We have seen that the efficacy of
Omens depended (not without reason) on the way they were received; and
that we may meet them with our own magical influence, accepting them,
or rejecting with a spell.

And further, we have seen that Magic often works by symbols, and that
a symbolic action will cause or incite a real event; and similarly it
is believed that the event foreshown by an Omen may be symbolically
fulfilled; that some harmless semblance of the event may be substituted
for it, absorb (as it were) the poison of the menace and let the
threatened man go free. Astyages dreamed a dream which the Magi
interpreted to mean that the child of his daughter (married to a
Persian) should reign over Asia in his stead—implying that the kingdom
must pass from the Medes. He therefore took measures to have the child
destroyed; but by a series of happy chances Cyrus, the child, escaped
and grew up; and in his boyhood Astyages discovered who he was, and was
greatly alarmed. So he sent again for the Magi; but they, on learning
that the boys in the village where Cyrus had been reared had in games
appointed him their king, decided that this fulfilled the dream; for,
said they, “he will not reign a second time.”[378] So Cyrus lived, and
the lordship of Asia passed to the Persians; for the Magi in this case
overestimated the value of symbols. But all these ways of frustrating
an Omen are incompatible with the interpretation of them by the course
of Fate, and are only fit to be believed in by the weaker brethren.


§ 9. APOLOGY FOR OMENS

It may be some excuse for Omens that the interpretation of them was
a sort of gymnastic for ingenuity, and was a means by which the
quick-witted maintained themselves in a world of violence. It is,
moreover, the business of those who undertake such work to study social
and political conditions, just as rain-doctors study the weather. Their
judgment, therefore, may often be better than that of men immersed
in affairs and biassed by particular interests. Even in the lower
savagery diviners manage to know more than others. In Queensland,
when a big mob has assembled at a camp, diviners are believed to keep
their eyes and ears open, sleepless—to learn who have death-bones,
who has operated with one, who has been pointed at, etc.;[379] and
in South Africa (two or three steps higher in culture) diviners take
pains to obtain information as a means of “opening the gates of
distance.”[380] At Delphi, also, news was welcome from all parts, and
men of capacity kept a steady eye upon the affairs of Greece and Asia.
Of course, Divination, like every other superstition, was exploited
by politicians. The Roman Government, according to Cicero, maintained
the College of Augurs for the advantage of the State in civil affairs,
although in his time the leaders of armies had ceased to consult the
Omens:[381] and Polybius thought that religion was Rome’s most useful
institution.[382] A law that the comitia should not be held when
Jupiter thundered and lightened was especially convenient when that
assembly was inconvenient; for the official whose function it was had
only to declare that he saw lightning, and thereupon the comitia broke
up. Probably even those who thus abused a superstition, yet believed
(at least in times of danger) “there was something in it.” Omens and
Oracles were sought after to allay fear and to gain confidence, and
often they gave confidence and the strength that goes with confidence;
or perhaps the rashness and folly that go with confidence, and so
betrayed the devotee; or, again, they dashed the courage of brave men,
and spread dismay, distrust and weakness.

No superiority of mere intellect seems to ensure men against
participating in these delusions. Many Stoics, though highly
disciplined in Logic, upheld the practices of Divination and Astrology.
Panætius, indeed, rejected them; and Epictetus on moral grounds
discouraged Divination. “For,” said he, “what the diviner foresees is
not what really concerns us. We have within us a diviner who tells
us what good and evil are, and what are the signs of them. Does the
diviner understand that—after all his studies of the viscera? Not what
is to happen in the future, but to do as we ought whatever happens is
our true concern.”[383] But this genuine expression of Stoic thought
was abandoned by most of the sect in their desire to defend as much as
possible the popular religion. They even staked the existence of the
gods upon the genuineness of Divination: arguing that if Divination
exists there must be gods who send Omens; and that if Divination does
not exist there can be no gods—since if there are gods who know the
future, and have a regard for mankind, and are able to give warnings,
they will certainly do so. Therefore, no Divination, no gods.[384]
There is, indeed, a widespread pitiful persuasion that some provision
must have been made whereby a man may foresee his future; and so, in
a sense, there is; for the existence of order in nature implies the
possibility of foresight; and a fanciful mind might regard Divination
as the anticipatory manifestation of an instinct in play before the
faculties became capable of serious exercise. But the play was taken
too seriously; and the worst of it was that its inane methods diverted
attention from the only possible method—if not always on the part of
the diviner, at least on the part of the great multitude, his dupes.
M. H. A. Jounod says of the Bantu tribes, “Divination kills any attempt
to use reason or experience in practical life.”[385] And, clearly, this
is everywhere its tendency, be it a question of consulting a canary at
the street-corner, whether or not we should marry, or an augur rather
than an experienced general whether or not now to engage the enemy.

Seneca[386] treated Omens as a necessary consequence of universal Fate:
for if all events are factors of one predetermined order, everything
in the present is a sign or omen of everything to occur in the future;
and some events, such as the flight of birds, have been selected as
Omens, merely because the meaning or consequents of these happen to
have been observed; and whether Omens are respected or despised, Fate
determines the whole course of events. By this way of thinking, as it
was fated that the Romans should be defeated at Lake Trasimenus, it
was also fated that the Omens should be declared unfavourable and that
the warning should not be taken; and if it was fated that the Romans
should be defeated at Cannæ, it was also fated that the Omens should be
declared favourable and that they should be accepted. A belief in Fate
makes Omens useless.

If, however, instead of Fate (all-comprehensive Magic) or
predestination (by a supreme God), we regard the course of the world
as determined by natural causation, whether Omens or Oracles may be
useful or not (supposing them possible) depends on the nature of the
event foretold—on whether it involves ourselves conditionally only
or unconditionally. Omens that warn us against events conditionally
may be useful enough, and few will think it a serious fault that
they discourage the use of reason. King Deiotarus, having set out on
a journey, was warned by an eagle not to go forward with it, and he
turned back; and that same night the house at which he was to have
slept fell down; so he escaped.[387] The danger was conditional on his
continuing the journey; and, in the course of causation, a warning
of danger, whether announced by an augur or by our own sagacity, may
often enable us to avoid it. The causes of the future are present, and
(within certain limits) are in our power. If I have reason to believe
that there will be a fire at the Opera to-night, or have a presentiment
of some calamity there, I need not go; and, then, I shall not be burnt
alive. Whether the presage come to me by an Omen, or by a message from
a god, or in an anonymous letter from one of the incendiaries who
happens to be a friend of mine, cannot matter. No, if there were gods
with intuitions of futurity, or with better knowledge than we have
of present fact and greater power of calculating the consequences,
they might make themselves useful. On this hypothesis there is not _a
priori_ any absurdity in the doctrine of Omens.

But with Omens or Oracles of magical or divine authority, that
foreshadow our own fate unconditionally, the case is different. If,
for example, they tell a man that he will die by the fall of the roof
of his own house, that must be his end; and any one who examines his
career afterwards will find that all his efforts to escape, all his
pusillanimous crouchings and windings, were just so many steps of
causation upon the road to inevitable doom. To convey such a presage
serves no purpose but to fill the victim’s last days with anxiety and
dread: it is as bad as cruelty to animals.

The defence of Omens is mere rationalisation. They took possession
of men’s minds not in an age of reason, but when beliefs were freely
born of hope and fear, were entirely practical, were never thought
out and never verified. Whether the connection of Omen with event was
conceived of magically or animistically, it was always mysterious, and
on that account was the more impressive and acceptable. The uniformity
of such connexions was, indeed, assumed—otherwise they were useless;
the same bird’s call on this hand or on that had always the same
significance; but each case at first stood by itself; it was what
we call “a miracle.” Even such assumption of causation in ordinary
cases as common sense implies did not compel the reflection that each
cause must itself be an effect of other causes, and so again, and so
on for ever. Nor did the assumption that spirits could foresee the
future require that they should foresee the whole future, so as to
imply an inviolable order of the world. Such considerations were left
to amuse or perplex a later age. A great advance is marked by the
saying of the Bechuana prince to Casalis, that “one event is the son
of another, and we must never forget the genealogy.”[388] But quite
recently amongst ourselves causation was so feebly appreciated, even by
the most educated, that testimony concerning miracles could still be
appealed to as a ground for believing something further. One reviews
all these wonderful fossils of the soul which are dead and yet alive,
not without sympathy. For myself, I am free to confess, as they used to
say in Parliament, that Omens and presentiments still haunt the shadowy
precincts of imagination with vague shapes and mutterings of evils to
come; which when they approach will be (I suppose) as hard and definite
as daylight.

FOOTNOTES:

[339] VI. c. 27 (Rawlinson’s Translation).

[340] Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 152.

[341] De Acosta, _History of the Indies_, VII. c. 23 (translated by
C. R. Markham).

[342] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 220.

[343] Book I. cc. 7-10.

[344] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, VI. p.
260.

[345] W. R. Halliday, _Greek Divination_, p. 15.

[346] _Historia Naturalis_, XXVII. p. 4.

[347] Suetonius: _Julius_, c. 59.

[348] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 56-64.

[349] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 266.

[350] _Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. p.
361; VI. p. 259.

[351] Seligman, _Mel. of B. N. G._, p. 309.

[352] _De Divinatione_, I. c. 19.

[353] An infallible sign is, in Formal Logic, the same as a cause,
according to the scheme _If A, then B_; and it is conceivable that,
with strict thinking, a belief in an Omen may give rise to a magical
practice. “For,” says Lord Avebury, “granted that the fall of a stick
certainly preludes that of the person it represents, it follows that by
upsetting the stick his death can be caused” (_Origin of Civilisation_,
p. 166). I do not see why such an inference should not be drawn, but
can give no example of it. The possibility shows how much community
there is between Magic and the lore of Omens; but as to this particular
case, the magical cast of mind is already implied in the original
setting up of the stick whose fall should prelude that of a given
individual.

[354] Coddrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 123.

[355] A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 401.

[356] Quoted by Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. pp. 489 and 495.

[357] A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 389.

[358] C. G. Seligman, _op. cit._, p. 188.

[359] VII. c. 16.

[360] The poet is closely allied at first to the wizard; for (besides
that the greatest spells and oracles are versified) the poet is
inspired. In Australia poets are sometimes carried by ghosts into
skyland, where they learn songs and dances. Some compose awake;
but the belief prevails that they are inspired in dreams by dead
and kindred spirits. Their songs travel far amongst tribes that no
longer understand the language. (Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East
Australia_, pp. 389 and 413.) Similarly in Fiji (_Fiji and the
Fijians_, p. 98). “The poem is too wonderful for me”—such is the
poet’s humility; “it was made by the gods”—such is his arrogance.

[361] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 526.

[362] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. p. 125.

[363] Casalis, _Les Bassoutos_, pp. 299 and 340.

[364] Jounod, _Life of a South African Tribe_, I. 361. This “medicine”
is the chief’s great store of magical force: its principal ingredients
are the nails and hair of chiefs deceased, fixed together by a kind of
wax.

[365] Callaway, _Religion of the Amazulu_, p. 417.

[366] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 235.

[367] _De Div._, II. c. 57.

[368] Thomas Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 190.

[369] Pausanias, IX. c. 10 (Frazer’s Translation).

[370] Pausanias, I. p. 34.

[371] _Ibid._, IX. p. 30.

[372] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 523.

[373] A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 404.

[374] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 25.

[375] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 181.

[376] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 367.

[377] This is unjust to the Australians. Amongst the Dieri (L. Eyre)
wizards with renewed entrails communicate with supernatural beings,
interpret dreams and discover murderers; but they also recognise
spiritual communication with ordinary men in visions; not ordinary
dreams, which are mere fancies, but those that are repeated; and these
come from Kutchi, an evil spirit (Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 358). We may
be sure the Greeks were mistaken in supposing that it was Amphiaraus
who instituted divination by dreams.

[378] Herodotus, I. cc. 107, 28.

[379] W. E. Roth, _Ethnological Studies_, p. 154.

[380] Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 193.

[381] _De Div._, II. cc. 33, 35.

[382] Polybius, VI. c. 2.

[383] _Discourses_, II. c. 7.

[384] _De Div._, II. c. 17; cf. c. 49.

[385] _Life of a South African Tribe_, p. 521.

[386] _Questiones Naturales_, II. c. 32.

[387] _De Div._, I. c. 15.

[388] _Les Bassoutos_, p. 248.




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
Ann. Report of Am. Bureau of Eth._, p. 431; Frazer, _Psyche’s Task_, p.
55; Risley, _The People of India_, p. 77; Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi
Tribe_, pp. 48, 49, 82, 90; Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p.
116; E. Casalis, _Les Bassoutos_ (2nd ed.), pp. 302-3; W. E. Roth,
_Ethnological Studies in North-West Central Queensland_, p. 154.

[508] _Diversions of a Prime Minister_, p. 245.

[509] “Shamanism,” _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, XXIV. p.
154.




CHAPTER IX

TOTEMISM


§ 1. MEANING AND SCOPE OF TOTEMISM

Of very much less importance in the history of culture than Animism or
Magic, Totemism interests us by its strangeness. To be descended from
a crocodile, or blood-brother to the crow, or “the same as a kangaroo”
must be, we think, the grotesque notion of a lunatic. We never meet
people who believe such a thing; it has no stronghold in our own
breasts. So much the more surprising that it should, nevertheless, be
widely entertained. It is, indeed, far from universal among mankind,
probably much less ancient than Animism and certainly far less
enduring. Where it has prevailed it is sometimes quite forgotten; and
in the higher stages of human development it has no influence. But
every student of early institutions finds it necessary to give himself
some intelligible account of its nature and sources.

“A Totem,” says Sir James Frazer, “is a class of material objects
which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that
there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and
altogether special relation.”[510]

This definition is scientifically drawn so as to include what is common
to all Totems and not to include any character that is not universally
connected with them. It is true of the Totems of individuals (or
guardian genii), very common among the Northern Amerinds; as well as
of the Sex-Totems (say Bat for men and Owl for women) which occur in
Australia; and of the Totems of clans found in many parts of the world,
of which the Australian may be supposed most nearly to represent the
original institution. When one speaks of Totems without qualification,
one means these Clan-Totems, being incomparably the most important:
others probably derive from them.

“The Clan-Totem” (to quote the same source) “is reverenced by a body
of men and women who call themselves by the name of the Totem, believe
themselves to be of one blood, descendants of a common ancestor, and
are bound together by common obligations to each other and by a common
faith in the Totem.”[511] This definition is also strict: whereas it
is not uncommon for writers on Totemism to include in their notion
of the Totem other characters which are accidents more or less often
associated with it: as that the clan believes itself descended from the
Totem; though in many cases the clan traces its origin to something
that was neither Totem nor man, or regards the Totem animal as
descended from their own human ancestress, or tells some story of the
transformation of a man into an animal, or of an animal into a man, or
of an ancestor’s friendship with the Totem animal; for the institution
is a copious source of explanatory myths. Again, it may be written that
no member of a clan may kill or injure the Totem, or eat, or utilise
it (if an animal or plant); and this is often, but not always true. If
the Totem is water, or the most important food in the district—dugong,
turtle, coconut, sago—abstention is impossible or intolerably
inconvenient. Hence among the Kaitish a Water clansman when alone may
drink; but if others are with him he may drink only when water is
given him by a man of another Totem. And to eat a little of the Totem
sacramentally, in order to confirm one’s identity with it, may be
allowed or (rather) required. Among the Warramunga the Snake clan may
kill snakes. It may even be the clan’s duty to destroy or drive away
their Totem; as happens with the Mosquito clan of the Kakadus in North
Australia, and with the Reptile clan amongst the Omahas. Similarly, the
clan sometimes, but by no means always, imitate the Totem in character,
in costume, in dances, or bear in tattoo or otherwise its badge to
manifest the community of nature. They may be thought to have special
magical powers to influence its fertility or to control its actions
(actions of game or wind or rain), and may use these powers for the
benefit of the tribe. At death the soul of a clansman may pass into,
or may appear as, the Totem animal. The Totem may be the protector of
its clansmen, and in some cases it seems to have become a god. These
accidents of Totemism, however, are very irregularly diffused and some
of them are rare.

Most important socially is the connexion between Totemism and
Marriage-customs. In the great majority of cases, men and women
of the same Totem may not intermarry; the Totem clans are said to
be exogamous; but there are exceptions even to this rule. In many
parts of the world—America, Africa, India, Indonesia, as well as
Australia—tribes are divided into non-intermarrying or exogamous
classes (moieties or phratries); sometimes the classes are subdivided,
and even the sub-classes again (in parts of Australia), so that in
all the exogamous classes are eight; and the rules concerning these
classes are such as to prevent the marriage of brothers and sisters,
parents and children and first cousins. The Totem clans are usually
distributed amongst the Marriage-classes; being probably the older
institution (whether or not originally exogamous), they may be said
to have been subordinated by the formation of the classes; and in
the matter of marriage they follow the class rules. But the Arunta
with some neighbouring tribes of Central Australia, though divided
into eight exogamous classes, have not subordinated the Totem clans;
which, accordingly, are not exogamous. If Exogamy was originally the
vital utility of Totemism, the institution is undermined by the
Marriage-classes, whether the clans are subordinated to the classes
and merely repeat their rules, or are not subordinated and lose their
Exogamy. This may explain why the classes prevail more widely than
Totems, and may be found where Totemism seems to have become extinct.


§ 2. OF THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

It has already been said that Totemism does not prevail universally
amongst mankind. There is very little evidence of its having existed
amongst the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples; and it seems to
be unknown to many of the most primitive of surviving tribes—the
Boschmans, Veddas, Puranas (Borneo), Andamanese, Yaghans (Tierra del
Fuego) and Californian Indians. It is not, therefore, something founded
in human nature itself, but must have originated (whether in one or in
several places) under particular conditions.

There is some probability that the earliest Totems were animals.
Wherever Totems are found most of them are animals. A list of Totems
recognised in North Australia, given by Spencer and Gillen,[512]
comprises 202 altogether: Animals 164,[513] Plants 22, Inanimate 16.
The animals (except insects) and plants are nearly all edible. To
hunters animals must have been of all things the most interesting;
next, certain plants, especially to women. Animals lend the greatest
plausibility to any notion of blood-relationship. The inanimate Totems
include some which it is very desirable to control by Magic, such as
Water, Wind, Fire, Sun, Moon and the Boomerang.

Generally, no doubt, Totemism is ancient; but in some cases the
existing Totems must be recent, as among the Bahima of Uganda.[514]
Nearly all their Totems are different coloured cows, or some part
of a cow, and must have been adopted since the advance to pastoral
life—at a stage of culture, therefore, much above the Australian.
“Split Totems,” arising on the division of a clan by dividing its Totem
(as the Omahas comprised Buffalo-heads, Buffalo-tails, etc.[515]),
were probably formed by deliberate agreement, and had the incidental
advantage that a clansman’s food-taboo did not extend to the whole
buffalo, the staple food of the tribe, but only to the head or tail.

Amongst the Australian aborigines, the group of beliefs and practices
included in, or connected with, Totemism are of such intense and
widespread social importance, that it must have prevailed amongst them
for many generations. The northern Amerinds are so much in advance of
the Australians in social organisation, culture and mentality, that
if their Totemism has descended to them from a time when they lived
at the Australian level, its history must go back not merely for many
generations but for thousands of years. And if Egyptian gods, such
as Hathor and Anubis, were formerly Totems, the retrospect becomes
still longer. I am not aware of any direct evidence of the prehistoric
existence of Totemism, such as we have, in some ancient burials, of the
existence of Animism; but some palæolithic carvings or paintings may
have had totemic significance.

It follows that any account of the origin of Totemism can only be
hypothetical. Were this all, indeed, it would be on the same foot
with Magic and Animism; but it is not all. That Magic should arise
from belief in mysterious forces and from confusing coincidence with
causation, or that Animism should result from a confusion between
dreams and objective experience (with the help of Magic-ideas) is
highly probable; because such errors are active to this day, and they
seem to spring up in primitive minds by psychological necessity;
though it may not be intrinsically necessary that the errors should
be perpetuated and systematised as, in general, they have been. But
the case of Totemism is different; for we do not see—at least, no one
has yet shown—any sort of necessity why in certain cases clans should
have borne the names of certain animals: and this is the root of the
whole matter. Indeed, this practice, not being universal, cannot be
necessary; and it may have had several different origins. Any relevant
hypothesis, therefore, can claim no more than to agree with the known
facts better than rival hypotheses; we cannot expect to deduce it from
laws of human nature; whilst still another hypothesis just as good may
any day be put forward by some speculative genius; and the doubt must
always remain whether some important facts of Totemism have not been
lost which, could they be recovered, would prove all our guesses to
have been made in vain.

In spite of these discouraging considerations, several hypotheses have
been proposed: this also is for us a sort of psychological necessity.
They may be grouped into two classes, according as they assume the
totemic names to have been originally names of individuals or of whole
clans. All seem to assume that one explanation must hold good for all
the cases.

Of hypotheses that trace totemic names to individuals there is, first,
Spencer’s; namely, that the name of an animal or plant was first given
to an individual, and then inherited by his family; who after a time
forgot his personality, remembered only their descent from such a name,
and assumed that their ancestor must have been an animal or plant such
as still bore that name. Secondly, there is the explanation offered
by Prof. Franz Boas, that the first Totems were guardian spirits of
individuals, and that these became Clan-Totems of their descendants.
For this account it may be said that among the Northern Amerinds the
belief in guardian spirits of individuals (generally some animal)
is universally diffused, and perhaps of greater importance than the
Clan-Totems, seeing that these are subordinate to the Marriage-classes:
moreover, the Totems are rarely, if ever, believed to have been
ancestors. On the other hand, in Australia, guardian spirits of
individuals are rare, whilst Totemism is universal. So that, if we
suppose only one origin of the institution, it is more reasonable to
view the guardian spirit as derived from the Clan-Totem. In Borneo we
find the guardian spirit with some traits similar to the American, but
much less generally, whilst there is now no plainly marked Totemism:
but there are several beliefs akin to those of Totemism which may be
marks of its former existence; and, if so, the guardian spirit may
also be one of its relics.[516] Thirdly, Frazer’s hypothesis, that
Totems originated in the fancies of pregnant women, who, ignorant of
physiological causes, supposed that that which stirred within them must
be some animal or plant that had entered them; so that the child when
born could be no other than that animal or plant.

Of hypotheses which regard totemic names as from the first names of
groups we have, first, Max Müller’s, that they originated with clan
marks.[517] But in Australia clan marks are not often to be found.
Secondly, Professor F. B. Jevons’, that the Totem was originally some
animal adopted by the tribe as a friendly natural power, aiding them
in the struggle for existence.[518] But, if so, this character seems
to have been lost, or greatly attenuated in Australia, and in America
belongs to the guardian spirit rather than to the Totem. Thirdly, Dr.
Haddon’s, that the Totem name was derived by a group from the animal
or plant which was its principal food; but cases to support this
suggestion are very few. Fourthly, Andrew Lang’s, that group names were
obtained in some way—perhaps imposed upon each group by others, and
accepted; and that names of animals or plants having been obtained in
any way, and the origin forgotten, just such beliefs concerning the
relation of the group to its namesake would be likely to arise, as in
fact we find amongst Totemists.[519]

For want of space to discuss all these doctrines I shall deal chiefly
with those of Frazer and Lang.


§ 3. THE CONCEPTIONAL HYPOTHESIS

Sir J. G. Frazer, after very candidly relinquishing two early
suggestions—by no means fanciful—concerning the origin of
Totemism, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, has put forward
a third—“conceptional Totemism”—which occurred to him upon the
discovery by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen of the doctrine of totemic
descent prevalent amongst the Arunta and allied tribes. These tribes
are said not to be aware of the connexion between sexual intercourse
and pregnancy. They say that a child is the result of the entry into
a woman of the spirit of some pre-existing tribesman of this or
that Totem; which, therefore, will also be the child’s. What Totem
it is depends upon the place where the woman first becomes aware of
quickening; for there are certain places known to the natives where
the people of such or such a Totem “went into the ground” [perhaps
were buried]; and in passing such a place any woman is liable to
be impregnated by one of the discarnate spirits; who are always
on the look-out for an opportunity to re-enter the mortal state.
This is the real cause of pregnancy, for which marriage is merely a
preparation.[520] A young woman who does not desire the dignity of
a matron, when passing such haunted ground, runs crouching by, and
cries out that she is an old woman; for facility in being deceived
is a saving grace of spirits. In modified forms this doctrine of “no
paternity and re-incarnation” is professed by tribes throughout the
centre and north of the continent, in Queensland and in parts of West
Australia.[521]

The Arunta doctrine of conception by animal or plant spirits cannot,
however, be the origin of Totemism; because, as Sir James Frazer
points out, the impregnating spirits are already totemic. One must,
therefore, suppose (he says) an earlier state of things, in which a
woman, ignorant of the true causes of childbirth, imagined at the first
symptoms of pregnancy (by which the quickening seems to be meant)
that she had been entered by some object, or by the spirit of some
object, which had been engaging her attention at the time, or which she
may have been eating—a wallaby, emu, plum or grass-seed—and later
believed that the child she bare must be, or be an incarnation of, that
object or spirit, and in fact nothing else than a wallaby, emu, plum
or grass-seed with the appearance of a human being. If other women
had similar experiences in connexion with other animals or plants,
and if the descendants of their children remembered the stories, and
considered themselves to be wallabies, grass-seed and so forth, the
hypothesis would fully explain that identification of groups of men
with groups of things which is characteristic of Totemism; and the
other characters naturally follow. Such is the conceptional theory of
Totemism, deriving that institution from “the sick fancies of pregnant
women.”[522]

Circumstances, which Sir James Frazer regards as very similar to those
which he imagined as having prevailed at some former time amongst the
Arunta, have been discovered by Dr. Rivers at Mota and Motlar in the
Banks Islands. There many people are “by the custom of the island” not
permitted to eat certain animals or fruits or even to touch certain
trees; because they are believed to _be_ those animals or plants—their
mothers having suffered some influence from such animals or plants at
conception or at some subsequent period of pregnancy. “The course of
events is usually as follows: a woman, sitting down in her garden,
or in the bush, or on the shore, finds an animal or fruit in her
loin-cloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she
asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give
birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal, or even
(it appeared) would be himself or herself that animal.”[523] She takes
it to its proper home, tries to keep it, and feeds it; but after a
time it will disappear, and is then believed to have entered into her.
There is no belief in physical impregnation by the animal, nor of its
invading the woman as a physical object; such an animal seems to be
considered as “more or less supernatural, a spirit-animal, from the
beginning.” “The belief is not accompanied by any ignorance of the
physical rôle of the human father.” Apparently the prohibition against
eating animals or plants thus connected with oneself rests on the idea
that it would amount to eating oneself—a sort of cannibalism. One
partakes of its physical and mental characters. But the resemblance
to, and the taboo on eating, a certain animal are individual matters;
there is no belief in their being passed on to one’s descendants. In
this alone the belief at Mota falls short of Totemism. “Yet it occurs
in a people whose social system has no totemic features at the present
time, whatever it may have had in the past.”[524] Possibly former
Totem-clans have been merged in secret societies, but there is no
clear evidence of it. In Melanesia, Totemism occurs in Fiji, Shortland
Islands, Bismarck Archipelago (probably), Reef Islands, Santa Cruz,
Vanikolo and in some regions of the Solomon Islands, but not in the
Banks Islands nor in the Torres Islands to the south.

       *       *       *       *       *

This hypothesis that Totemism is derived from the fancies of women
concerning the causes of their own pregnancy suggests several adverse
considerations. In the first place, it is to me incredible that the
Arunta are really ignorant of paternity; young women and children
perhaps may be, but not the seniors. My reasons for thinking so are set
out at length in the _J.R.A.I._, 1819 (p. 146), namely, that the facts
of childbirth are too interesting to be overlooked or misconstrued, and
are well within the grasp of savage understanding; that those who think
the Arunta capable of such stupidity have attended too exclusively to
particular incidents of pregnancy, especially the quickening, and have
not considered that there is a definite series of closely connected
incidents; that there is testimony, not to be lightly put aside, that
the old men know the truth in the case of human beings, and that
knowledge of the parallel phenomena amongst animals is shared even by
the Arunta children; that it is possible for knowledge to be repressed
by dogma without being extinguished; that this is an old man’s dogma,
and that we must not assume that in Australia, any more than in Europe,
what people are accustomed to say is good evidence of what they really
believe;[525] that other tribes at the same level of culture, in
South-East Australia, are so convinced of the importance of paternity
that they say the child proceeds entirely from the father; that those
who deny paternity show by their customs and myths that they are
secretly aware of it; and, finally, that in some cases they have clear
motives for maintaining the dogma and suppressing the truth.

Secondly, the observations of Dr. Rivers in the Banks Islands give
not the slightest support to the conceptional hypothesis. For (_a_)
the Banks Islands belief “is not accompanied by any ignorance of the
physical rôle of the human father.” (_b_) The belief is that the child
born to a woman who has been visited by a plant or animal is in some
way “influenced” by the experience; not, as with the Arunta, that it
is entirely due to it (except for some “preparation” by the father).
(_c_) Before the Banks Islands belief can give rise to Totemism
there must be a belief in the continuous inheritance of the plant or
animal influence; and not only is this absent, but there is a strong
tendency to prevent it. A woman having been influenced by an eel, her
child is an eel; but if that child be a girl, there is no further
transmission of eel-like qualities; the girl, on becoming pregnant, may
be influenced by a yam, and then her child will be a yam. This hinders
the formation of a group of human beings mysteriously allied to an
animal or plant, such as Totemism implies. But (_d_) the conceptional
hypothesis refers the origin of Totemism to the ignorant imaginings of
women themselves, who think they have been entered by this or that;
whereas in the Banks Islands a woman’s belief in the influence of an
animal or plant upon her offspring is not prompted by her own fancy,
but by a popular superstition. For when she carries the thing found in
her loin-cloth to the village, “the people say” she will give birth to
a child who will have the qualities of, or even will be that thing; and
a child afterwards born may not eat or touch that thing “by the custom
of the country.” Had the Arunta, then, of pre-totemic days such a
superstition and custom for the guidance of mothers? If so, the history
of that superstition and custom must be more obscure than Totemism
itself. But in the Banks Islands their origin may admit of a wide
solution; for although it is said that no manifest traces of Totemism
are to be found there now; yet, seeing that the Australians, Papuans,
Polynesians and the Melanesians to the north all have Totemism or
plain vestiges of it, the improbability that Melanesians in the Banks
Islands never had it is very great; and it is reasonable to suppose
that the superstition concerning the influence of animals or plants
upon pregnant women, and the taboo upon the eating of such an animal or
plant by the offspring, represent not a possible origin of Totemism,
but a survival of it.

These considerations raise a further question as to the employment
of the Comparative Method. Natives of the Banks Islands are far in
advance of the Arunta in all the arts of life, as well as in relation
to Totemism which they seem to have outlived. Is it admissible to
take some trait of their life as an example of what may have existed
amongst the Arunta at a stage of culture which is generally assumed
to have been inferior even to the present? When the antecedents of
an institution have been lost amongst any given people, and we set
out to supply them from parallel cases amongst other peoples, must
we not require the same relative order of development? If a social
phenomenon is found in the Banks Islands, its possibility is proved;
but strictly it was possible only where it occurred: elsewhere we can
expect only something similar, according to the similarity of other
relevant circumstances. Comparing the Banks Islands and their people
with Central Australia and its people, one discovers hardly anything
common to them. And Arunta tradition (whatever worth) shows no sign of
anything like the southern Melanesian culture: the Alcheringa ancestors
are represented as having been already Totemists. To assume, however,
that the former condition of the Arunta was even lower than the
present, may not be justifiable: social degeneration is not uncommon.
There would be something to guide our judgment if we knew how recently
the desiccation of their country approached its present severity. But,
in any case, can we suppose it to have been at all like the Melanesian?


§ 4. ANDREW LANG’S HYPOTHESIS

In some very remote age—to summarise Lang’s statement—at a level of
culture inferior to that of existing Australians, distinctive names
were acquired by small groups of mankind. Since a group needs names
for other groups more than for itself (for itself it consists of
“men” as contrasted with other kinds of animals), names may at first
have been bestowed upon each group by some other, or others, in its
neighbourhood—probably names of animals or plants—and accepted by
each; for no opprobrium attaches to such names. In _Social Origins_
Lang offers evidence concerning names (even depreciatory and mocking
names) having been conferred in this way and accepted; but in _The
Secret of the Totem_,[526] he says that how groups got their names is
not essential to his theory. They may have been given, or adopted, on
account of a group’s staple food (Haddon); or because of some animal
or plant characteristic of a group’s territory; or for some fancied
resemblance of its members to some animal. The important point is
that, from the first, they were names of groups—not derived from the
names of individuals. At the early period assumed for these events
there was not a long enough memory of individuals to make their names
traditionary; and, indeed, the reckoning of descent in the female line
(which Lang regards as universally the most ancient custom) must have
prevented the inheritance of the names of male ancestors.

Whatever may have occasioned the first fixing of names, with the flight
of time the circumstances were forgotten; and groups of men and women
found themselves with names—the names of animals or plants—without
knowing why. The bearing of a name in common with an animal or plant
inevitably suggested to the savage a mysterious connexion with the
species—perhaps that they had the same sort of soul. It gave rise to
an explanatory myth, and the analogy of family relationship suggested
a blood-bond: the animal or plant must be one’s ancestor, brother, or
primal ancestral form. From this idea follows a regard for it, respect,
reverence: it must not be killed, or eaten, or used in any way; it may
be protected, may be helpful; it is a Totem.

The connexion of Totemism with Exogamy (the custom of marrying outside
the group or kin) Lang conceives of in this way. Adopting a suggestion
of Darwin’s,[527] and the scheme of his cousin, J. J. Atkinson in
_Primal Law_, that the primary human group consisted of a powerful
male with one or more wives and their children, he argues that the
jealousy of the head of this family imposed the rule—“No male to touch
the females in my camp.” The sons, therefore, as they grew up, were
driven out, and must find wives elsewhere. This was the beginning of
Exogamy, and it may have preceded the rise of Totemism; but Totemism,
once established, strengthened the custom of Exogamy by mysterious
sanctions. As the Totem might not be eaten, or in any way used or
touched, so a woman of the same Totem could not be married; and that
not only within their immediate family-group, but not even by a male of
any group having the same Totem.

       *       *       *       *       *

In maintaining this hypothesis against those who would derive Totems
from the names and traditions of individuals, Lang seems to me to
lay too much stress upon the difficulty of establishing a tradition
of descent amongst people who trace descent (as he would say) “on
the spindle side.” If the tradition began from a woman (as it might
do), there is no difficulty; and even if it began from a man, it is
conceivable that his women-folk should adopt it. Moreover, in the
opinion of both Westermarck and Frazer, it has not been shown that the
reckoning of descent in the female line is original and universal.
Still, the further we push back the origin of Totemism the more
difficult it is to understand the growth of a tradition of the descent
and inheritance of the name and personal qualities of an individual;
and this difficulty is avoided by an hypothesis which derives Totemism
from the animal- or plant-names of groups of men and women. That such
names were conferred upon each group by others in the neighbourhood is
a reasonable conjecture;[528] being the earliest names of groups they
cannot be called nicknames; and the names of animals or plants need in
no way have been offensive. It is still more reasonable to urge that,
having been adopted by a group, the circumstances of their acquisition
would, in a few generations, be forgotten, and that they would then
become the ground of myths and mysterious totemic beliefs. But does any
one think that it will now ever be possible to decide with confidence
where, when, how or why the names were given at first? I do not.

As to the origin of Exogamy, I cannot believe that the primitive human
groups were such as Lang described; and, if not, some other origin of
that custom must be sought.


§ 5. TOTEMISM AND MARRIAGE

Generally men and women of the same Totem cannot marry. Tribes, such
as the Arunta, that do not observe this rule are so few that it
is reasonable to consider them aberrant; so that in each case the
non-coincidence of Totemism and Exogamy is a distinct problem.

Nevertheless, there is reason to think that these institutions have not
the same origin. For several primitive tribes, some of them inferior
in culture to the average Australian, have customs of Exogamy, or
(at least) forbidding marriage between individuals of some certain
description, who have not, and are not known ever to have recognised
Totemism. Many tribes, again, who by their ethnological position may
be supposed once to have entertained Totemism, have abandoned it, but
still maintain Exogamy by means of Marriage-classes (phratries) or
otherwise. Further, many nations of advanced culture cannot be shown
ever to have been totemists, but have always (as far back as can be
traced) enforced Exogamy so far as to prohibit marriage within certain
degrees of kindred. And that the connexion between Totemism and Exogamy
is not original but acquired, is indicated by the consideration that
the most obvious tendency of Totemism would be to favour Endogamy
(the practice of not marrying outside certain limits), on the obvious
principle that as an animal kangaroo mates with an animal kangaroo, so
a human kangaroo should marry a human kangaroo. This is so obvious
that the opposite rule that a human kangaroo must not marry another
one, but (zoological paradox!) only an emu or a witchety-grub,
seems perverse, and only to be explained by the influence of some
superstition or incidental custom. According to Arunta tradition, their
ancestors in the Alcheringa were endogamous.

Whether Exogamy originated in the days of the hunting-pack—which
is so far probable that the Boschmans observed it—or during the
reconstitution of society after the breaking up of the packs, or even
later, or in some regions at one period, in others at another, is, I
fear, beyond our power of verifiable guessing. The best hypothesis as
to the grounds of the custom is Westermarck’s, namely, that an instinct
of mutual avoidance grew up between near kin. This requires that at
the time of its origination promiscuity of sexual relations should not
have prevailed in the human stock, since that would have destroyed the
conditions necessary to the rise of such an instinct. If promiscuity
was ever widely practised, it must have been after the breaking up of
the hunting-packs. That at some stage of human life, and apparently
with some Australian tribes not a remote one, promiscuity was
established, has been argued (on the ground of some Australian customs)
with much plausibility; but in his _History of Human Marriage_,[529]
Westermarck has examined this opinion very carefully, and concludes
that it is not tenable. His reasoning seems to me good throughout; and,
having nothing important to add to it, I refer the reader to his work.

Whether amongst anthropoids any instinctive avoidance prevails,
preventing what we conceive of as incest, nobody knows. With their
solitary families, the growth of such a disposition may be more
difficult than amongst gregarious animals (such as our ancestors had
become long before they could be called “human”), who find other
families at hand to intermarry with; though the primitive human bands
probably were not large. Savages now at the lowest level, such as the
Veddas or Yaghans, rarely form parties of more than thirty or forty.
The Boschmans, before their tribal habits were destroyed in the early
years of last century, though sometimes assembling in large numbers
for the great hunts by means of stockade traps, yet were usually
scattered in groups of a few families. It is not likely that their
remote forefathers consorted in larger numbers: eight or ten families
may have been enough to co-operate in hunting, or in mutual defence.
Within each family constituting such a band the tendency to Exogamy may
first have manifested itself.

Westermarck’s hypothesis concerning Exogamy was first published in
the _History of Human Marriage_,[530] and has been re-stated in _The
Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_.[531] In the former work he
fully discusses the evidence as to the effects of the inter-breeding
of near kin, and concludes that it is probably injurious. The evidence
is conflicting, but his conclusion seems to me justifiable. And he
rightly points out that if, amongst civilised nations, the mischief of
inbreeding is not always manifest, it was probably much greater amongst
primitive savages: (1) because the blood of the stock was purer; for in
modern Europe (_e. g._) every marriage brings together many different
strains. (2) Because communities were then much smaller; so that
under endogamous conditions whatever vice may beset inbreeding would,
generation after generation, be perpetuated and exaggerated without
relief. It may be added that with Endogamy the young folk are likely
to begin to breed earlier—perhaps by two or three years—than they
would with Exogamy; and there is no doubt that the marriage of immature
individuals is highly injurious to the race.

But if inbreeding was injurious, Natural Selection favoured any
family or band that practised Exogamy. That any should have done
so on rational grounds, to avoid the observed evil effects of
inbreeding, cannot be supposed. The motive must have been blind to the
consequences, and may have taken the form of coldness toward those of
opposite sex with whom one had grown up from infancy, or of aversion
to the idea of marrying them. Such dispositions Natural Selection
preserved, and they have descended to ourselves; for such was the
beginning of the abhorrence of incest.

I conjecture that this feeling first showed itself within the family,
and led the families of a band to exchange their daughters; and that
later it extended to all members of the same band, and that wives were
then sought from other bands. Probably wives were obtained sometimes
by capture or enticement, sometimes by exchange so far as amicable
relations with neighbours prevailed: for the evidence is far from
showing that “marriage by capture” was ever a general custom; whilst
our knowledge of the Australians and Boschmans shows that neighbouring
bands of savages are not always hostile.

Such a state of things may have existed for ages before the rise of
Totemism, and amongst races that never adopted Totemism. When names of
animals were first given to, or adopted by, various groups, Totemism
somewhere (perhaps in several places) resulted, as a belief in the
magical or spiritual connexion between men and animals of the same
name. But the bands that adopted Totemism were already exogamous,
having an aversion to marriage with others of the same band; and the
practice of Exogamy was thus brought under the mysterious sanction of
totemic ideas. It would then be further extended to bar marriage with
those of the same Totem in other groups.

Totemic sanctions may have been useful in confirming the Exogamy of
some groups, but all superstitious aids to right conduct are liable to
perverse issues, and at best they are second best. Totemism prevents
consanguineous marriages, but also prevents marriage with thousands of
people where no blood-relationship is traceable. If any races were able
to perceive that the interest of Exogamy was the prevention of marriage
between near kin, and then to keep account of kinship and govern
themselves accordingly, they chose the better part.

Some exceptions to the rule that Totem-clans are exogamous may,
perhaps, be explained by supposing that certain bands had not adopted
Exogamy when they became totemists—may not this have happened amongst
the Arunta?—and that they have since learnt Exogamy under other
conditions from neighbouring people, or by conquest. Amongst the
other possible conditions there are the remarkable Marriage-classes,
or phratries that prevail in Australia, North America, and less
regularly in other parts of the world. These Marriage-classes are
considered by some ethnologists to be of deliberate institution—a
reform for the regulation of Exogamy; and Spencer and Gillen, who
knew the Australians so intimately, thought such a law—though its
intricacy astonishes most Europeans and stumbles many—was not beyond
their power of excogitation. Upon that point it would be absurd of me
to have any opinion. But to suppose deliberate intention is contrary
to the usual method of interpreting savage institutions: a savage
language is a system of customs much more intricate and refined than
the Marriage-classes, and not generally believed to have originated
with the deliberate enactment of rules of grammar. I conjecture
that those classes resulted at first from a grouping of exogamous
Totem-clans which grew up by custom, and that the only deliberate work
consisted in some minor adjustments of clan-relations. Marriage of
cousins is prevented in Central and North Australia by the recognition
of eight sub-classes; but the same result is obtained in other tribes
by a custom which merely forbids it. Exogamous classes having been
established in some tribes, may have been imitated in others.

One result of the classificatory marriage system, however it grew up,
is the extended use of names of kinship to denote all individuals of
the same or corresponding generation—“father” for all men who might
by custom have married your mother; “brother” and “sister” for all men
and women descended from those whom your father or mother might have
married; “husband” or “wife” for any man or woman whom, according to
custom, you might have married. When further progress has been made
in culture, distinctive names are used to express blood-relationship
and class-relationship. It may be worth considering whether, in
Australia, some of the customs which have been supposed to bear witness
to an original state of promiscuity are not really results of the
classificatory system of naming relationship: marital rights having
been claimed on the ground of the names “husband” and “wife” as used
in that system.


§ 6. THE CLANSMAN AND HIS TOTEM

The relationship of Clansman to Totem may be conceived of as one of
friendliness, protection, consanguinity, or even identity; and this
last I take to be the case in the age when Totemism is most alive and
powerful. But in what sense can a man be the same as an emu? He may be
of the same name; but by itself that would be nothing. It is not the
name, but the identity which the name has come to signify that must be
considered. Some light may be shed upon the problem by the saying of
a native to Spencer and Gillen, pointing to a photograph of himself:
“That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.” The photograph
might be “the same” as himself in the sense of resemblance; but in that
sense the kangaroo is not the same. Some, indeed, who have speculated
on the savage mind suppose that it is not only incapable of reasoning,
but even of perceiving the facts before it, when under the influence
of some strong belief; and I admit that this is sometimes true. But
all a savage’s actions in relation to his Totem show that he is aware
of the difference: not least his efforts on certain occasions to help
his imagination to establish identity by disguising himself and by
imitating the actions of this strange other self, and by eating a
little of it to insure physical identity at least to that extent. He
also seeks to multiply it that others may eat their ration, and for any
theory of his identity with the Totem, this must be a puzzle.

But a photograph may be the same as oneself in another sense than mere
superficial resemblance: it may, like a shadow or reflection, be (or
contain) a man’s soul, or part of it. And similarly a kangaroo or other
Totem may be conceived to be the same as a man, that is, as having the
same soul. Perhaps this is as near as we can get to the Australian’s
meaning in the above-quoted confession of faith. It is reconcilable
with the ceremonial eating of some part of the Totem; for that will
convey spiritual as well as physical properties: and to reconcile it
with the multiplication of the Totem that others may eat, I point to
the biological necessity that each clan’s Totem should be food for the
other tribesmen. Where all edible animals and plants are Totems, how
else can they subsist? But we have several times seen that biological
necessity will place limits to a belief, and that excuses can be found
for necessary actions which are in conflict with a belief. That the
clansmen give their own Totem to the tribe (since they cannot defend
it) is an ingenious compromise.

It is reported that amongst the Euahlayi tribe occur personal Totems
(or guardians, rare in Australia) called Yunbeai, possessed chiefly
by wizards. A man may eat his hereditary Totem, but not his Yunbeai;
which in this privilege seems to have supplanted the Totem. His spirit
is in the Yunbeai, and its spirit is in him.[532] They have, then, the
same soul; and, although this belief is not strictly Totemism, it is
probably derived from it. A clansman of the Yuin tribe (West Australia)
had as his Totem the Black Duck, which warned him against enemies;
and he related that once, whilst he slept, a Lace-Lizard man sent
his Totem, which went down his throat and almost ate his Black Duck
residing in his breast; so that he nearly died.[533] Were not his Black
Duck and his soul the same?

This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and
soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death
one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the
quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of
the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.

On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than
one soul, it may be as many as four; and one of them dwells with some
animal in the bush: thence called his “bush-soul.” Sir James Frazer’s
first hypothesis concerning Totemism was that it may have been derived
from the notion of an external soul which may be deposited in anything
(as thus in an animal in the bush) for safety. He now thinks the
connexion of the “bush-soul” with Totemism uncertain.[534] If there
has been any connexion, may it not be that the “bush-soul” is derived
from Totemism, and that every Totem is a sort of “bush-soul”—that is,
it has a soul which is the same (at least, of the same kind) as the
clansman’s?


§ 7. TOTEMISM AND MAGIC

The identity of a man with his name, as usually assumed by savages,
whether his personal or his totemic name, is not itself a magical
belief, but an inevitable result of mental association at a low level
of intelligence: perhaps earlier than any notions that can properly be
called magical. The name of a man, always thought of along with his
other properties, seems to be as much one of them as a scar on his neck
or any peculiar trait of visage or length of limb. This must be as old
as naming. But such a complication of the name with other marks having
been formed, it becomes the ground of magic beliefs and practices.
To mention the name of a man or spirit insures his presence and
participation in any rite, either acting or suffering; or where writing
is known, his name on a piece of paper is as good as his nail-parings.
The use of the name is not a mere animistic summons (which might be
disobeyed), but an immediate instatement of the given individual. Such
magic may enter into totemic observances.

The descent of the clan from the Totem-animal, or of the animal from
a forefather of the clan, or of both from a _tertium quid_, involves
metamorphosis; and this, again, is not itself a magic idea; for real
metamorphoses are common in the life of birds, amphibia, insects, and
it would be unreasonable to expect savages to perceive clearly that
these are not parallel cases. There is a difference, however, between
transformations that may be observed, such as that of a chrysalis into
a butterfly, and those that have never been observed, but are merely
imagined and asserted. The latter are more mysterious, and mystery
is one character of magic. For example, the Witchety-Grub clan among
the Arunta have as their mate a bird, the chantunga, which they will
not eat because, they say, of old some full-grown witchety-grubs
were transformed into these birds.[535] This change has a magical
character, though no magical agency is assigned. But if any attempt
were made to explain how the great change took place, recourse might
be had to powers of magic. Even when agency is assigned, it is not
always magical. In the earliest Alcheringa the two Ungambikula (“out
of nothing”) saw in groups by the shore of the salt water a number of
inapertwa, rudimentary men, mere roundish masses, without organs or
means of feeding, and these they cut out into men with stone knives,
therefore not by magic.[536] But, again, a tribe on the Darling River
(Wathi-wathi) have traditions concerning Bookoomuri who lived long ago,
excelled in Magic, and transformed themselves into animals; and here
the magical power is asserted, though the manner of its operation is
indefinite. But the Bear clan of the Tshimshians (British Columbia)
explain their position by the story that once upon a time an Indian,
whilst hunting, met a bear, which took him to its home, where he stayed
two years. On returning to his village he looked like a bear; but,
having been rubbed with medical herbs, recovered human shape.[537]
And here the magic is as explicit as in any recipe for a were-wolf,
or that fallacious ointment with which Lucius achieved his memorable
transformation.

Nor, further, has the prohibition to slay, injure or eat the Totem
in the first place any magical significance; for it merely puts the
Totem in the position of a clansman. But the situation, being strange
and mysterious, acquires a magical atmosphere; and the enforcement of
the taboo by penalties is unmistakably magical. The Untmajera (North
Central Australia) have a legend of a Beetle-Grub man of former times
who ate beetle-grubs, and thereupon broke out in sores, wasted away and
died. Or one’s hair may turn grey; or, according to the Samoan belief
(not strictly totemistic), the forbidden food may grow inside one into
the whole animal or plant to the destruction of its host. Such beliefs,
resting on the analogy of poisons and their physiological consequences,
are magical imaginations: the taboo has the same character as a
conditional curse.

Similarly, the prohibition of marriage within the Totem-clan, if it
originated (as I have supposed) with the fusion of Totemism and Exogamy
in the customs of various early groups of men and women, is not based
on Magic; but the penalties for breaking the taboo are magical. Thus
amongst the Euahlayi and their neighbours men and women of the Iguana
clan cannot intermarry, though coming from different parts of the
country and without any traceable consanguinity; because, if they
did, their children, inasmuch as their ancestors on both sides were
the same animal, would “throw back” to the form or attributes of the
iguana.[538] A grotesque anticipation of scientific ideas.

But the most remarkable connexion between Totemism and Magic occurs
in those rites by which clansmen in several parts of the world, but
especially in Australia, believe themselves able to influence their
Totems: when these are edible, to multiply them; when noxious, to
drive away or destroy them; or, as with the wind and rain, to control
them for the general good. Spencer and Gillen[539] give astonishing
descriptions of the rites of multiplication (or Intichiuma), carefully
prepared and regulated, including disguisings of clansmen in the
likeness of the Totems, drawings of the Totems on the ground, dances,
incantations and ceremonies, sometimes representing traditional
history—by which the tribesmen discharge this function of theirs.
They rely chiefly on mimetic (exemplary) Magic which, by dramatising
some natural process, brings it into real operation. In identifying
themselves with the Totem, they exert their imaginations to the
utmost, and to this end may eat a little of the Totem, at other
times forbidden. This assumption that by eating a little of any
animal, plant or human being, you become one with it, or acquire its
qualities, or, further, that two men by eating together of the same
food become allied (which is in a manner materially true, but absurdly
interpreted), is another of those notions simpler than, and antecedent
to, Magic, which provide a base for magical operations.[540] These
solemnities last for months, and are carried out with conscientious
diligence and earnestness: the infatuation is profound and universal.
Here, as at most of the higher stages of culture, we find the most
intense emotions of which men are capable excited by participation in
communal imaginative exercises that have directly, in relation to their
expectations, absolutely no result. Indeed, pre-occupation with vain
employments tends to exclude all ideas that might be useful, that might
lead (_e. g._) to the increasing of food by the cultivation of plants
or domestication of animals. Sir James Frazer has pointed out that a
passage of the rites of the Grass-seed clan, in which grass-seeds are
scattered about upon the ground, might have led to cultivation: but the
mental state of the clan is unfavourable to cool observation. As for
animals, it is some excuse for the backwardness of Australian culture
that the Marsupialia do not comprise a single species that would
repay domestication. Indirectly and undesignedly these performances
have very useful consequences: they annually restore the unity of the
tribe assembled from all parts for the great occasion; promote mutual
good-will and a spirit of co-operation, for which they afford the chief
opportunity; maintain the social organisation and the tradition of
customs by increasing the influence of the Headmen, who have a leading
part in everything that happens, and on whose authority all order and
discipline depend; interrupt the monotony of savage life with variety
of interests; stimulate ingenuity, and fill up the time, that might
else be wasted in idleness or quarrelling, with artistic and dramatic
recreation.

Upon these rites for the multiplication and control of the Totems,
Sir James Frazer based his second hypothesis concerning the origin of
Totemism, namely, that it was a system of co-operation amongst sections
of a savage tribe for the magical supply of food, etc.: the Emu clan
multiplying emus, the Kangaroo clan kangaroos, the Witchety-Grub clan
witchety-grubs, and so forth.[541] But he afterwards reflected that
such a design was beyond the conception of savages. And, no doubt, as a
plan thought out and deliberately adopted as a whole, most ethnologists
would consider it above the capacity of Australian aborigines. But if
so—though not more difficult than the invention of the Classificatory
Marriage System—it shows what complex arrangements, simulating
design, may come into existence by the growth of custom; for the clans
certainly do co-operate in the magical supply of food.

Whatever may have been the origin of Totemism the institution seems to
have been utilised by some tribes in an ambitious attempt to control
all nature by grouping (on very obscure principles, if on any) various
classes of phenomena with the Totems, so that one clan or another is
responsible for everything. Short of this, it is plainly necessary to
control the wind, rain, hail and lightning. The control of an animal
Totem is not always benevolent toward the animals themselves. In the
Kakadu tribe it is the duty of the Mosquito clan to save the rest
from mosquitoes; they make imitation mosquitoes, dance and sing, and
imagine they are killing them.[542] In North America similar beliefs
and practices have been found both for encouraging and for discouraging
the Totem, but occasionally and irregularly. The Bird clan of the
Omahas, when birds threatened the crops, prevented their devastations
by chewing corn and spitting it about over the fields; when mosquitoes
were troublesome, the Wind people flapped blankets to raise a wind and
blow the pests away; when worms attacked the crops, the Reptile clan
(worms and reptiles are confused in primitive Zoology) countermined
their approaches by pounding up some of them with a little corn into
a soup and eating it.[543] The most remarkable American rites for
the increase of food—the Buffalo-dances and Corn-festivals of the
Mandans—were not totemic, but carried out by the whole tribe. The
buffalo hunting-dance to bring the herd within reach, was continued,
if necessary, for weeks—in fact until the animals came; so that the
Magic was always effectual.


§ 8. TOTEMISM AND ANIMISM

If the unity of clansmen with their Totem is very early conceived
of as consisting in having the same, or the same sort of, soul, it
is thenceforward essentially animistic. Yet this idea seems only
very slowly to have led to any sense of dependence on the Totem as a
spiritual power, or to any expectation that it would help or succour
the clansmen, or (consequently) to the making of any appeal to it,
except by magical coercion. Perhaps the earliest way in which the
Totem was supposed to aid its clansmen was by omens; as a Black Duck
man of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) thought that black ducks warned
him against his enemies; but this is more characteristic of guardian
spirits than of Clan-Totems. Occasionally in Australia we meet with
something like a prayer to a Totem. On the Tully River (Queensland)
we are told by Mr. W. E. Roth that before a man goes to sleep, or on
waking in the morning, he utters in a low voice the name of the animal
whose name he bears, or which belongs to his group; and that then, if
edible, he will be successful in hunting it or, if dangerous, it will
not hurt him without warning.

Professor Durkheim has an elaborate theory of the growth of divinities
from Totems in Australia, especially in the example of Bungil, the
Eagle-Hawk, a great phratry name-animal in several tribes.[544] He
is a persuasive writer, but perverse and ingenious. Bungil receives
neither prayer nor sacrifice (these, indeed, in the author’s view
are not necessary to religion), and there is nothing to show that he
differs from the other glorified Headmen who are found in Australia.
The most plausible of these superior beings is Byamee of the Euahlayi,
who is not a Totem, but the source of Totems, which are derived from
different parts of his body. At funerals prayers are addressed to him
for the souls of the dead; and, again, at the close of the Boorah
(initiation rites) for long life, inasmuch as the tribesmen have kept
his law.[545] We are told that the nearest mission-station is a hundred
miles off, and recently established; but on reading further that only
those who have been initiated can go to Byamee’s sky-camp, and that
gross sinners are punished in the next life in Eleanbah Wundah, a place
dark but for fires,[546] we cannot help reflecting that missionaries
are not the only channels of sound doctrine.

The most authentic example of the rise of a Totem to something like
divine rank is the Wollunqua, the great snake of the Warramunga,
which differs from other Totems in being not a real animal but a
mythological monster. It is not approached with prayer or sacrifice;
but is the object of rites in part propitiatory, in part coercive, and
is certainly regarded with superstitious awe much as a demon might
be. To please the Wollunqua, the clan build a long mound and draw its
representation upon it; which, however, afterwards meets with “savage
destruction.” On approaching Thapanerlu, the sacred pool where it
lives, they whispered to it “to remain quiet and do them no harm.”[547]

On the whole, funeral ceremonies, in Australia, to provide the dead
with necessaries, food, utensils, warmth—even precautions against
ghosts—come nearer to religious ideas than anything connected with
Totemism. Among the Jupagalk (Victoria) a person when in great pain
would call on some dead friend to come and help him, to visit him in a
dream and teach a song against the evil magic that hurt him.[548]

In Yam Island (Torres Straits) there is a cult of two brothers, Maiou
and Sigai, who are said to have come from Australia. They have shrines
within a fence; women and uninitiated youths are not permitted to
enter, and do not know that Maiou is the crocodile (Kodal), and Sigai
the hammer-headed shark (Kursi); for they are always addressed and
spoken of by their names as heroes, and not by their animal or Totem
names. The shrines contain effigies made of turtle-shell representing
the animals; and under each effigy is a stone in which the life or
spirit of the Totem-hero resides. The natives, in the north-west
monsoon, danced and sang before them for fine weather; and also on
going to war, praying: “O Totem Sigai and Totem Maiou, both of you
close the eyes of these men so that they cannot see us.”[549] This
is indisputably Religion; it is not, however, pure Totemism, but
apparently a fusion of hero-worship with the Totemism of the heroes.
Another hero of more recent date, Quoiam, is worshipped in the
neighbouring island of Mabuaig. He came from North Queensland; and
his house and cairn are still shown on a hill-top. His Totem was the
shovel-nosed skate, but he has undergone no fusion with that animal. We
may be inclined to infer that the hero can stand alone, whilst a Totem
needs the alliance of a hero to anthropomorphise it.

Such an inference is, on the whole, confirmed by the state of religion
in Fiji. There, amongst the coastal tribes, Totemism is decadent and
irregular; though even on the coast of Viti Levu there are deities
with animal attributes, and especially with the power of changing into
animals; and the animal connected with a god must not be eaten by
people of the district where he is worshipped.[550] In the mountainous
interior Totemism still flourishes, and animal-gods are worshipped
which have been assumed to have originated in Totems. Dr. Rivers tells
us[551] that he formerly assumed this, but is inclined to revise his
opinion. The Fijian Snake-god Ndengei was, according to tradition, a
man who came to the island from elsewhere; probably he made a great
impression and was apotheosised. His character as a Snake-god may be
derived from the snake’s having been his Totem. Probably god-like
beings in Fiji were in many cases heroes, but a close relation with
their Totem endued them with something of the animal nature. “The
evolution would not be simply from Totem to god, but from hero and
Totem together to god.”

Gods present in animals, sometimes in plants, were acknowledged in
Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, Tonga; and, in fact, Polynesia is the region
where, if anywhere, Totems contribute largely to the divine population.
Rivers will not deny (_loc. cit._) that direct evolution of gods
from Totems may have taken place; but he points out that in Samoa,
for example, the Octopus-god (Ole Fe’e) was, according to tradition,
brought to the island by a Fijian chief. Was then the mollusc or the
chief the root from which the god grew up? In Savaii there were gods
incarnate in men: one in an actual man who was a cannibal propitiated
with human flesh; another, invisible to the people, though seen by
strangers as a handsome young man wearing a girdle of leaves, was
called the King of Fiji (Tuifiti). Other gods described by Turner[552]
are Ole alii Fiti (chief of Fiji), who was manifest in an eel; and
Tinalii (King of chiefs), who was associated with the sea-eel, octopus,
mullet, and the ends of banana leaves. Fusion seems to have been common.

It must not, of course, be assumed that all animal gods are Totems.
Among the ways in which animal gods may have arisen we cannot deny
some place to Spencer’s hypothesis, that heroes have sometimes been
worshipped as animals because they bore animal names; and, after their
death, the eponymous animals, ever present to men’s eyes, superseded
the heroes, and were connected with and transformed their legends.
It is also conceivable that a hero has been worshipped in the form
of an animal or plant, because he had announced that, after death,
he would be in such an animal or plant; for at Ulawa (Solomon Isles)
bananas were _buto_, things that might not be eaten, approached or
beheld (according to Dr. Coddrington[553]), because an influential man
had prohibited the eating of them, saying that, after death, he would
be in the banana; and with so much influence he might, in favourable
circumstances, have become a Banana-god. And, again, in Professor
Westermarck’s opinion, “the common prevalence of animal worship is,
no doubt, due to the mysteriousness of the animal world; the most
uncanny of all creatures, the serpent, is also the one most generally
worshipped.”[554]

But these considerations strengthen the probability that a Totem may
sometimes become a god; having the general respect of the clan to
begin with. Some Totems having been deified with the assistance of
heroes, others may perhaps be elevated by the force of analogy; or,
once the conception of a spiritual being has been reached—chiefly (as
we suppose) by reflection on dreams—and animals and even inanimate
things have been thought to have spiritual doubles, if then the Totem
is conceived to have a spirit, and even the same as the clansman’s
soul, if it is appealed to for assistance, if it sends omens, listens
to prayer and accepts sacrifice, what is it but a god?

In North America the Totem seems nowhere to have been worshipped; and
any tendency that may have existed to propitiate it was diverted by
the superior fascination of the personal guardian-genius, to which
sometimes costly sacrifices were made and even self-mutilations;
as among the Mandans, who often cut off a finger to secure its
favour.[555] On the other hand, a class of spirits was recognised
in the “elder brother” of each species of animal (or of the most
interesting species—bear, deer, snake, etc.—all of the totemic
class), a being (in the words of an early missionary, 1634) “who is
as it were the principle and origin of all the individuals,” and
“marvellously great and powerful”:[556] it watches over the species and
avenges its wrongs. In North-West America and throughout Siberia the
Bear and the Raven are objects of religious reverence; not, indeed, as
clan-totems, but for all men. Among the Gulf nations the Yuchis are
Totemists, and a youth at his initiation is put under the care of his
clan-totem, instead of a personal guardian-genius as among the northern
tribes; he looks for protection, however, not to the living animals of
the Totem species, but to superior beings, like the “elder brothers”
of the species.[557] Similar to these must be the Beast-gods of the
Zuni Indians, to whom they offer a portion of all game, praying that
they will intercede for them with the Sun-Father. In South America,
too, the Patagonians and Araucanians teach that each species of animal
has a guardian spirit, who lives in a cave, and that the Indians
themselves at death go to live with him. We can hardly doubt that in
all these cases, the spirit-animals are in some way connected with
totemic beliefs: if not gods, they are at least divine beings, and they
exemplify a noble sort of mysticism that is natural to the Amerind
imagination.[558]

Africa is the principal home of Zoolatry. The religion of the Bantu
nations of South Africa is, indeed, ancestor-worship; and their
serpent-cult seems to be an outgrowth of ancestor-worship (for they
think that their dead return as serpents of various species according
to rank); unless, indeed, it has been diverted to such a subordinate
place from some more ancient superstition. In West Africa there are
many Beast-gods, especially the leopard, hyena, crocodile and python.
They do not, however, give much indication of totemic origin; and Sir
James Frazer observes that, as the hereditary worship of animals in
certain districts (as of the hyena at Accra) was not totemic, nor need
similar practices have been so elsewhere.[559] Hence that the Egyptians
worshipped certain animals, and that in the district of any animal’s
worship it was not killed or eaten, cannot prove that the worship
was totemic, unless it be shown that Totemism is the only road to
Zoolatry; for, if there are other ways, any animal that becomes divine
will, naturally, not be killed or eaten. On the other hand, that the
Egyptians were not Exogamists does not prove they were not Totemists;
since some known Totemists are not Exogamists. The natural impression
of a student who merely comes amongst other things to Egyptian Religion
is that Totemism was one of its sources; but it is a subject on which,
more strictly than on most, only a few specialists can form a judgment.

On the whole, the contribution of Totemism to religion seems to
have been greatly exaggerated. Compared with the influence of dead
heroes and ancestors, or with the personification of the greater
manifestations of nature—Sky, Sun, Thunder—it has been ineffective,
falling short of the production of high gods; or if, as in Polynesia,
it seems sometimes to have come near to that achievement, it may be
suspected that its success owed much to an alliance with hero-worship.

FOOTNOTES:

[510] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 3. The definition occurs in a
reprint of an earlier essay. A later definition (IV. p. 3) runs:
“Totemism is an intimate relation which is supposed to exist between
a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural
or artificial objects on the other side, which objects are called
the totems of the human group.” The relation appears to be one of
friendship and kinship, on a footing of equality, not religious in
Australia. I have, in this chapter, drawn freely upon the great mass of
facts and speculations collected in _Totemism and Exogamy_; believing
that in that work the author not only intended to present the evidence
for his own conclusions, but had also the benevolent purpose of
assisting the labours of those who might come after him. A heavy debt
of gratitude is due; which, indeed, causes some embarrassment if ever
one feels obliged to differ from him in opinion.

[511] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 4; cf. IV. pp. 3, 4. Perhaps the
author no longer approves of the word “reverenced.” Totem and clan are
rather on a footing of equality.

[512] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, App. B.

[513] The animals are: Human 2, other Mammalia 31, Birds 46, Reptiles
51, Amphibia 1, Fishes 8, Insects 24, Mollusca 1.

[514] _Totemism and Exogamy_, II. p. 535.

[515] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. pp. 90-100.

[516] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, II. pp. 96-110.

[517] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, I. p. 201.

[518] _Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 101.

[519] _Secret of the Totem_ and _Social Origins_.

[520] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
330.

[521] _Native Tribes of Northern Territory of Australia_, p. 263.

[522] _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV. pp. 57-63.

[523] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1909, p. 173.

[524] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1909, p. 175.

[525] In the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, a man applies the name
of “mother” to his real mother and also to his maternal aunts, who
accept the relationship and may assert: “We all three of us bore him”
(_Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 305 note). Is this what they believe, or
what (following their system of class-nomenclature) they are accustomed
to say?

[526] Page 125.

[527] See above, ch. ii. § 3.

[528] It is reasonable to suppose that a group named other groups
to distinguish those around them, before needing to name itself. It
follows that probably each group sometimes bore a different name when
spoken of by each of several neighbours. How amidst such confusion
could single names be fixed? Perhaps because the group designated
adopted one of them; or by the elimination of the other names through
many causes in course of time, in generations, in hundreds of years.
The march of progress was leisurely in those days.

[529] Chs. iv., v., vi.

[530] Chs. xiv., xv., _Prohibition of Marriage between Kindred_.

[531] Ch. xl., _Marriage_.

[532] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, p. 21.

[533] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 489.

[534] _Ibid._, IV. p. 54.

[535] _Totemism and Exogamy_, I. p. 254.

[536] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 388.

[537] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 13.

[538] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 22.

[539] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. vi.; _Northern Tribes
of Central Australia_, ch. ix.

[540] There is, however, another possible reason for the eating by the
clan or by its Headman of some portion of the food which they profess
to supply to the rest of the tribe—namely, that it expresses a prior
claim to some sort of proprietorship, which is then waived.

[541] _Totemism and Exogamy_, IV. pp. 55-7.

[542] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes North. Ter. Aust._, p. 324.

[543] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. pp. 104-5.

[544] _The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_, II. ch. ix.

[545] Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, pp. 458, 478, etc. In
Eleanbah Wundah, they hold their right hands pressed against their
sides, which A. Lang thought a remarkable image. It is, W. E. Roth
tells us, gesture-language for sickness. (_Ethnological Studies in
North-West Central Queensland_, p. 90.)

[546] _The Euahlayi_, pp. 4 to 8, and 78.

[547] _North. Ts. of C. Aust._, p. 253.

[548] Howitt, _Northern Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 435.

[549] Haddon, _Reports of the Expedition to Torres Straits_, V. pp. 37,
38.

[550] W. H. R. Rivers, _J. A. I._, 1909, p. 158.

[551] _J. A. I._, 1909, p. 163.

[552] _Samoa_, chs. iv., v.; especially pp. 28, 48, 62-3, 70, 75. Fiji
had in some way deeply impressed the Samoan imagination.

[553] _The Melanesians_, p. 31.

[554] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, II. p. 590.

[555] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III.

[556] Quoted by Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. p. 244.

[557] _Totemism and Exogamy_, III. p. 311.

[558] On species-gods see Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, II. pp. 242-6.

[559] _Totemism and Exogamy_, II. p. 574.




CHAPTER X

MAGIC AND SCIENCE


§ 1. THEIR COMMON GROUND

It is not infrequently said that Science is derived from Magic, and
the tenet is strengthened by eminent names; nor is it displeasing to
some bystanders whose attitude toward Science is one of imperfect
sympathy; but it seems to me to involve a misunderstanding of the
matter. Magic and Science have, indeed, some common ground; for both
are products of our poor human mind, which is sorely pestered in
explaining its experiences by the notion of “forces” that somehow
bring about events, and which cannot get on at all without assuming
uniformities of relation. Magic supposes constant connexions of events
due to the agency, force, influence or virtue of charms, rites and
spells; which connexions, however, are found only to be tendencies of
some events to excite others, inasmuch as they may be frustrated by
counteracting charms, rites or spells. This reads like a caricature
of scientific ideas. Not long ago, too, “forces” had a considerable
vogue amongst scientists; and such mysteries as “vital force” and
“psychic force” are still to be met with. But it is plain that we never
know more than that under certain conditions a change takes place;
and when we try to explain the change by analysing the conditions,
we never find any “force” distinct from the collocation and motion
of bodies or particles. “Force” may be technically and formally used
in various propositions, but the idea never contributes anything to
the explanation of events; whilst the fact that with many people it
seems to do so, often makes it a nuisance. That it seems to carry some
explanation with it is due to the continuous influence of Magic which,
though always the antithesis of Science, was yet for very many ages
associated with Science. Magic is entirely constituted by notions
of force, sometimes violent, as in the discharge of an enchanted
spear; sometimes subtle, like the efficacy of an opal; intangible,
invisible, and operating at a distance through space and time, like a
witch’s spells that eclipse the sun or moon. These forces have only a
one-sided relation to the workaday world; they meet with no resistance
from what we take to be the “properties of matter,” such as weight
and impenetrability; but are themselves entirely exempt from natural
law: what we call the “real world” has no hold upon them; they live
in a world of their own. They are absolutely immeasurable; and hence
the causation, which is certainly implied in the notion of their
operation, is indefinite, and becomes vaguer and vaguer as the magical
system develops; and all this is the opposite of what happens in the
history of Science. In spite of having a necessary common ground in the
human mind, Magic and Science are contrasted from the first, in their
development grow wider and wider apart, in their methods and ideas
more and more opposed. If either can be said to precede the other, it
is Science (at least, in its earliest and crudest form) that precedes
Magic.

We had better begin, however, by considering a third something which is
earlier than either of them, and which I have called Common-sense: I
mean the accumulation of particular items of positive knowledge (which,
as such, is the first form of Science) acquired by primitive man,
and in less measure by the higher brutes: facts about cold and heat,
sunshine and rain, the powers of water and fire, the life of trees and
animals, the properties of wood and stone, and so forth, which are
unfailingly confirmed by further experience. Examination of the life
of savages discovers that this positive knowledge of theirs amounts
to a great deal, and that they are able to use it “and reason not
contemptibly.” From this Common-sense Science and a good deal of Magic
are differentiated, and they expand at very unequal rates in opposite
directions. Each of them starts from it; but whilst Magic rapidly
distorts, perverts and mystifies it out of recognition in innumerable
imaginations, Science slowly connects its fragments together,
corrects, defines and extends it, without ever altering its original
positive character. The difference between Magic and Science lies (as
we have seen) in the causes that establish belief in them; in the
character of their ideas—respectively, incoherent and vague, coherent
and definite; and, as a consequence, in their respective falsity and
truth.


§ 2. THE DIFFERENTIATION

Whilst Magic, amongst savage and barbarous people, is practised
more or less by almost everybody, it is especially developed by
the professional wizard, and in his art and tradition it is most
conveniently studied. The wizard, or (at least) a leader amongst
wizards, is a man of superior ability, penetration and enterprise;
liable to be misled by a sanguine and ambitious temperament into
extravagant imaginations and impostures, but with much more real
knowledge than the rest of the tribe. He often takes pains to increase
his knowledge, for it is the true basis of his power: “the power of
the Angoqok,” says Mr. Turner, writing of the Esquimo,[560] “has some
basis in experienced weather-lore, and knowledge of the habits of
animals, by which he advises hunters.” But this knowledge is often the
starting-point of his delusions, not altogether by any fault of his
own, but as a result of his attempts to apply knowledge to new cases
without any appreciation of the need of caution or of the conditions
of sound inference and of proof and disproof. He never knows why he
is right or why he is wrong. Hence, beside the modest edifice of his
real knowledge, he builds out in one direction a few genuine additions
warranted by sound inference and observation; whilst in the other
direction he raises, largely by analogy, with the help of “sympathy”
and spiritual powers, a towering structure of imaginations, which
throws his little hut of Common-sense quite into the shade.

(_a_) For example, the wizard is often literally a medicine-man or
physician, and knows the use of certain drugs; and he may discover
other drugs and more uses for them, and in that direction lies
Pharmacology. But in the other direction he adopts on altogether
fanciful occasions a great many other recipes that serve no purpose but
charlatanry and mystification. Pliny, much of whose _Natural History_
is a handbook of ancient medicine, describes hundreds of remedies
derived from animals, vegetables and minerals; and Burton[561] cites
Galeottus as having enumerated 800 medicinal herbs and other drugs.
Some of these were good and are still in use, but most were useless
or worse than useless. The difference between these two classes of
drugs depended on a difference of method in determining their uses: a
difference that existed but was not yet understood (namely), on the one
hand, proof by experience, giving in the smaller class the rudiments
of medical science; and, on the other hand, acceptance on the strength
of superficial likeness, or of the doctrine of qualities, virtues and
signatures, which made the larger class essentially magical.

Thus all sorts of precious stones and metals were believed to be
medicinal, not because they had been known to cure any disease, but
because it seemed obvious in those days that precious things must
have all sorts of desirable effects by some occult virtue. Gold, the
most perfect of all substances (according to the alchemists), must in
particular be a propitious and powerful restorative. So Chaucer says of
his Doctour of Phisik:

   “For gold in phisik is a cordial,
    Therefore he lovede gold in special.”

And throughout India at the present day gold is a trusty item in any
prescription. Belief in the virtue of precious stones probably goes
back to very early times; since we find that in Australia crystals are
not only magically powerful but the great primary sources of Magic, by
having which inside him the wizard acquires and maintains his power.

With herbs, again, whilst the utility of some, such as quinine or
senna, was a matter of experience, others were equally prized out
of pure fancy. Dracunculus, a plant spotted with various colours,
like a viper’s skin, was supposed to be a remedy for all kinds of
snake-stings.[562] The Cherokees gave their children a concoction of
burs to strengthen their memories; for as a bur will stick to anything,
the mind of a man with bur inside him will cling to all kinds of useful
information. The same Amerinds had other remedies which illustrate
the character of magical physic. They concocted a vermifuge of the
red fleshy stalks of chickweed, which somewhat resemble worms, and
therefore must have some influence upon them; and they steeped in
this concoction a flint arrow-head, that its sharpness, communicated
to the brew, might cut the worms in pieces. Biliousness, marked by
the vomiting of yellow bile, was cured by four herbs—all yellow in
root, or stalk, or flower. To ward off smallpox they ate the flesh of
the buzzard: that bird being, in their opinion, exempt from smallpox,
because its foul stench keeps the disease-spirit at a distance. To cure
snake-bite, they said, rub the place in the direction contrary to that
in which the snake coils itself (to the right); because this is the
same as uncoiling it.[563] But here there seems to be some hiatus in
the thought, for how does uncoiling the snake counteract its poison?
One easily appreciates the exultation of the wizard to whom this idea
first revealed itself, and his contempt for the dull process of working
it out, when its place in the harmony of things was self-evident.

In some of these cases we find the assumption (tacit with primitive
practitioners, but explicit in Mediæval Medicine) that “like causes
like”: the adhesiveness of the bur is communicated to the memory, the
sharpness of the flint arrow-point to the vermifuge, the buzzard’s
immunity from smallpox to the eater of the buzzard. And this is
intelligible: because, first, there are many examples (superficially
considered) of like causing like, such as animal generation, the
spread of fire; hot things heat, and cold things cool, and so forth:
and, secondly, qualities such as stickiness and sharpness, are thought
of by savages as fine material, like curses and ghosts, which may
be transferred from one thing to another. But in other cases it is
assumed that “like cures like,” as chickweed cures worms, and yellow
herbs biliousness (as in Europe turmeric was long believed to cure
jaundice); and this is a very different matter—equivalent to “like
expels or annuls like.” In ordinary experience, there seem to be no
obvious examples of it: but in primitive medical practice it is found
that fomentation reduces inflammation, rubbing with snow is good for
frost-bite, an emetic cures sickness, and castor oil diarrhœa; and such
may be the experiential ground of these magico-medical fancies.

The power of herbs may depend upon rites observed at their gathering:
when a Cherokee wizard pulled up a plant for medicine, he dropped a
bead into the hole to compensate the earth for the theft;[564] and
when a Greek physician gathered the _Panaces Asclepion_, which was
a remedy for all diseases, he filled the hole with various kinds of
grain by way of expiation.[565] In employing medicinal herbs it is
also important to remember _when_ they should be procured, as on the
eve of the summer solstice, at the new or the full moon, or at the
turn of the tide; _by whom_—a child or a virgin; and _where_—on a
mountain-top or at a grave. Hierabotane was so potent that whoever
rubbed himself with it obtained whatever he desired; and in gathering
it, you first offered honey to the earth in expiation, then traced
a circle around it with iron, and—taking care that neither sun nor
moon should shine upon it—at the rising of the Dog Star, you pulled
it up with the left hand, and dried separately in the shade the root,
the stem and the leaves.[566] Indeed the conditions under which a
drug can be legitimately obtained so as to ensure its efficacy, may
be so numerous, minute and exigent as to make the satisfying of them
almost impossible; so we need not wonder if the remedy sometimes fails.
Prescriptions often include the flesh or juices of dead bodies, or
their pounded bones, or other foul and repulsive ingredients related to
Black Magic—much trusted, and still traditional in some strata of this
country, where the belief is inexpugnable that medicine, the nastier it
is, is the more efficacious.

If any one wonders how such prescriptions can have held their ground
for ages, it was because patients did not always die. Recovery was
credited to the drastic medicine, and death to evil Magic; and the _vis
medicatrix naturæ_, that staunch ally of honest physic, was sometimes
too strong for the wizard’s whole pharmacopœia.

(_b_) Again, the wizard is a surgeon, and knows something of the
construction and working of the human body, and this is the beginning
of Anatomy and Physiology. He was especially well informed in these
matters in such a country as Fiji, where he had access to two great
sources of anatomical knowledge—frequent wars and cannibalism. He
also knows certain ways of treating wounds and other lesions, such
as bandages, ligatures, splints, slings, massage and fomentations,
which all admit of rational development and have been continuously
practised to this day. Could he be content to abide by the facts, all
might be well; but he is tempted to extend his methods in various
directions to cases which, on very slight grounds, he believes to be
similar. The best known example of the erroneous extension by analogy
of a sound method is the sucking-cure. It is, or has been, practised
all over the world, and obviously rests on the proved utility of
suction in extracting from the flesh thorns or poisons. In Australia
snake-bite is sometimes cured by sucking the wound and rinsing the
mouth with water.[567] But the operation is gradually applied to other
cases until, whatever pain you suffer, it is attributed to something
like poison, or a thorn (or, later, a spirit), that has got inside
you, though by an invisible wound, and may be sucked out. The wizard,
accordingly, undertakes to suck it out, and he sometimes exhibits it to
you—a piece of wood or bone, which he brought to your bedside in his
waistband. Sometimes a medicine-man enjoys great suctorial powers by
having a lizard in his own body.[568]

For getting a foreign body out of a man a method alternative to suction
is pressure. Mr. Howitt[569] reports a remarkable prescription for
curing headache. Cut out of the ground a circular turf, place the
sufferer’s head in the hole and the turf upon his head; then sit or
stand upon it. He may presently declare that he feels relief; but
perhaps he only desires it. It is a fact that a patient sometimes feels
better after such treatment, though the cause of his pain was nothing
that could possibly yield to suction or pressure: that is to say, his
mind yields to suggestion. But not all savages are equally suggestible,
any more than we are. Dr. Coddrington says[570] that, in Pentecost
Island, witches profess to cure pain with a leaf-poultice, and in
taking it off to remove with it the cause of pain, perhaps a snake
or a lizard. “But,” said a native, “no one sees the things but the
woman, and the pain remains”—one of those troublesome sceptics! Yet
it is possible that had he just undergone the operation, he would not
have denied that the pain was better. There is a state of mind between
suggestibility and sane judgment, namely, assentation: unwillingness or
unreadiness to form or state one’s own opinion, and, consequently, an
appearance of acquiescing in another’s assertion. There is confusion
and conflict, from which assent is the easiest relief. This state of
mind for the immediate purpose of medicine-man or orator may serve as
well as suggestibility; but may soon pass off when the patient recovers
his faculties, and should be distinguished from the suggestibility
that takes a relatively permanent impression from the pretensions of a
mountebank. The power of suggestion, however, is one of the facts that
the wizard has observed, and he counts upon its aid. He has also learnt
to practise hypnotism; and seeing how mysterious these things have been
to the most enlightened moderns, we need not wonder that he employs
them in magical therapeutics—dancing, drumming, shouting to overpower
his patient and to incite himself to put forth his utmost energy.
Nowhere, probably, in the whole range of his art, is the difference
between Reality and Magic so obscure to himself.

The wizard, then, acquired in his medical functions (and in others) a
certain empirical knowledge of some obscure facts in Psychology, and
this knowledge persisted in his profession in shady quarters to our own
time; but with the growth of positive Science, its mysteriousness was
mistaken for quackery, until quite recently, when the facts forced
themselves on the attention of some men, who needed great courage
to confess their conviction. A crude Physiological Psychology, too,
resulted from savage observation of a connexion between the agitations
of body and mind. Very early sundry mental powers—skill, courage,
affection—are located in special parts of the body—the heart, spleen,
kidneys, bowels—as they still are in popular language. Apart from the
bare observation that the bowels and heart are disturbed during emotion
(which is true and important), these doctrines are not Science; nor
are they exactly Magic, but belong to the region of ideas ancillary to
Magic—ideas of qualities as material things. The savage, always eager
to apply his supposed knowledge to practice, utilises his Physiological
Psychology for the improvement of his mind, and misses no opportunity
to make a meal upon an enemy’s (or perhaps a relative’s) heart or
spleen or kidney or tongue or eye, in order to appropriate the quality
for which the deceased had been conspicuous.

(_c_) Savages (as we have seen in the chapter on Omens) are familiar
with a great many natural signs by which to judge of things not now
present, but that have happened, or are about to happen. Every hunter
must have a great stock of such knowledge, inasmuch as the pursuit of
game entirely depends upon it. This knowledge of natural signs is, on
the one hand, a genuine contribution to Natural History; it increases,
is handed down from generation to generation, and forms the nucleus
of Botany and Zoology. But, on the other hand, there is reared upon
it, under the influence of hope and fear, the belief in Omens that
give warning of good or ill success in all the affairs of life. Omens,
at first merely signs mysteriously connected with events, are later
regarded as the sendings of spirits or gods, whose oracles forecast the
fate of heroes and nations. At first, perhaps, the wizard may do no
more than other tribesmen to promote this particular superstition; but
it is he who works out the great art of Divination, without which Omens
would have been a matter of much less consequence.

The most famous branch of Divination, namely, Astrology, was the
invention of a comparatively late age, and it was, of course, long
preceded by the discovery of the rudiments of Astronomy as part of
the common sense of agriculture: some knowledge of the regularity of
the motions of the sun and moon and of the constancy of the stars
in contrast with the planets. This is plainly presupposed by the
comprehensive system of predictions based on sympathetic Magic,
arbitrary assumptions and fanciful analogies which, for the last four
or five thousand years, has promised to disclose to any mother the
career of her infant, or to any monarch the future of his kingdom. But
what now seems fanciful or arbitrary once seemed reasonable. The sun
manifestly rules all things; the waxing and waning of the moon must
strengthen and weaken all things; the signs of the Zodiac are certainly
connected with the seasons; the planets partake of the nature of the
gods.[571] If there are gods they must, as the Stoics argued, have some
way of communicating with men; and what way can be more congruous with
their nature than by writing on the face of the heavens? But generally
the ideas of Astrology were magical rather than animistic. Having
determined the powers and dispositions of the heavenly bodies, let us
consider only what must necessarily follow from their influences in
conjunction or opposition and various relations in trine, quartile and
sextile. Thus they dreamed and speculated, but at the same time made
many exact observations on the sky. And so Astronomy made some progress
in spite of Magic.

(_d_) More widely prevalent than Astrology and far more ancient is the
art of controlling the weather, especially rain; for rain, from its
uncertainty in many countries and its indispensableness, is a matter of
deeper interest and anxiety than even the sun himself. “Rain-making,”
as it is called, common in Australia and other regions of lowly
culture, survives when society has risen to higher levels, becomes the
function of the most eminent wizards or priests, sometimes the duty of
kings, and is not extinct amongst ourselves. But from what knowledge of
fact or common sense can “rain-making” be derived? I conjecture it was
from facts observed in the behaviour of fire.

The making of fire was the first great chemical experiment and the
foundation of all Chemistry. Having made fire, the most wonderful of
all achievements, there would be little excuse for astonishment if men
had then thought they could also make rain; but probably they never
thought so. It seems to me a misconception of rain-rites to describe
them as endeavours to “make” rain; for they plainly aim not at making,
but at inducing, instigating or propagating it. The Swazies, we are
told explicitly, try to procure rain by throwing water high into the
air, expecting that the falling drops will stimulate the clouds in
sympathy with them.[572] Savages may be said to “make” fire; for until
they rub their sticks, or knock their flints together, it does not
exist. But in the so-called “making” of rain there is nearly always
some water to begin with; and the essence of a rain-rite is the
splashing of water into the air, or the pouring of it out, sometimes on
a particular stone, or on a particular person, with many variations.
In rare instances the water has been forgotten: the Kurnai, instead
of water, let blood, and throw down into the air for clouds; but in
another rite they fill their mouths with water and squirt it out in one
direction or another (according to the clan) and sing a spell: to stop
the rain they throw up fire-sticks.[573] Those who practise such rites
hope that the spilling of a little water will bring on a great downfall
or outpouring of water, namely, rain; and this agrees with the fact
that a wizard will not operate except when the rainy season approaches.
Now this inducing of much by little is not, indeed, analogous to the
_making_ of fire; but it is analogous to the spread or propagation of
fire; when, having produced a few sparks, these spread through tinder
to the firewood, and thence a conflagration may be communicated to the
prairie or to the forest. My conjecture is, then, that not the making
(which is never attempted) but the inducing, or propagation of rain is
based on the analogy of the propagation of fire, and belongs to the
class of exemplary or incentive rites; which are to be understood not
as intending the direct causation of events, but rather as instigating
Nature to bring it about: the class described in Chap. IV. § 8, such
as the furthering of crops by fertility-rites, or the ensuring of
successful hunting or warfare by a dramatic dance.

Rain-rites being very apt to fail of their purpose, the wizard is in
danger of losing his reputation, or of some worse fate. His attention
is, therefore, drawn to the signs of the weather, the character and
course of the seasons, the connexion of rain with the aspect of the
sky and direction of the wind; so that he learns to operate for rain
only when rain may reasonably be expected. He has then laid out the
rudiments of Meteorology, but by observation, not by hocus-pocus.


§ 3. WHY MAGIC SEEMS TO BE THE SOURCE OF SCIENCE

In no case, then, is Science derived from Magic, but Science on the one
hand and Magic on the other are differentiated from Common-sense,[574]
and Science is much nearer akin to Common-sense than Magic is, being
of the same substance and only formally different. And in that sense
it is earlier than Magic, and sometimes formally earlier, as in the
case of Astronomy and Astrology. The illusion that Magic is the earlier
is due to the misinterpretation of two facts: (_a_) Magic and Science
are, for the most part and during many ages, worked out by the same
men—magicians or priests; and all that they do is mistaken for Magic,
even by themselves. And (_b_) Magic in most of its branches undergoes
immense development, whilst the Sciences remain rudimentary; grows old
and even decrepit, whilst they are still in infancy; so that, on first
emerging into public notice, they seem to issue from the matrix of
Magic.

The reasons for the relative backwardness of Science, again, are
chiefly three: (_a_) For ages it is in the hands of wizards who, though
highly valuing knowledge, are mainly eager for power and prophecy. It
is true that Science gives power, and the hope of power is a reasonable
incentive to the study of Science; but it must be a remote incentive,
in the actual work of research rigorously excluded. There, unless
truth is the sole end in view, the procedure will not be clean, will
be confined to immediate utility. But this is a recent discovery. The
wizard has no such ideas: he is governed by his desires and traditions.
Hence for verification he is content with coincidences; negative
instances he neglects, or regards failure merely as an occasion for
excuses. He accepts connexions of events remote in space and time, and
is very slow to see the necessity of connecting events in the closest
possible sequence. Moreover, having no understanding even of the facts
he knows (such as the making of fire), the mysteriousness of any
relation of events constitutes no objection to his acceptance of it; as
the magical side of his practice grows, so does its mystery; until at
last mysteriousness is a strong recommendation, and becomes a character
of the apperceptive mass that assimilates and confirms all magical
beliefs. This state of mind always offers strong resistance to positive
explanation.

(_b_) Another reason of the backwardness of Science is the slow
elucidation of the idea of Causation—long obscured by the
impressiveness of coincidence and by fallacious imaginations of magical
and spiritual forces: a process still incomplete. Until this idea had
made considerable progress in definiteness (in antiquity, say, with
Archimedes, and in modern times with Galileo), it was impossible that
the indispensableness of analysis and elimination should be understood,
that absolute respect should be felt for negative instances and that
any gap in a series of events should always be regarded as an instant
problem. And, finally (_c_), for scientific progress it was necessary
that reasoning by analogy should be abandoned, and a methodology
discovered of parallel and equational reasoning, with the apparatus
that makes exact investigation possible.

As the Sciences grow in comprehensiveness, precision and solidarity,
they constitute their own apperceptive mass, assimilation with which
is the supreme test of all relevant beliefs; and this, together with
a methodology that has become a habit of mind, tends to establish a
social atmosphere in which Magic is no longer thinkable. Exact habits
of thought in commerce and industry contribute greatly to this result.
So we are tempted to ridicule our benighted predecessors; but a study
of the conditions of their life shows that darkness was no more their
fault than illumination is our merit.

The nearest approach that can be truthfully made to the position that
Science is derived from Magic, is to say that the scientist is derived
from the wizard (or wizard-priest), on that side of his activity in
which he relied upon fragments of positive knowledge; but this was,
in nature, always opposed to his Magic. In the course of thousands of
years some men grew more interested in the positive than in the magical
side of their profession, and became scientists; whilst others adhered
to the fanciful and mystical. It is remarkable that, as sceptics occur
in the most unsuspected quarters, so pure scientists may sometimes
be found as an institution in barbarous or even savage communities.
In a Bantu tribe there is a class of doctors that claim no powers by
the aid of spirits or Magic, but without any ceremony dispense a few
well-known drugs—aloes, nux vomica, castor-oil, fern-root, rhubarb,
and the bark of various trees, purgative or emetic.[575] The Kanyahs of
Borneo have a weather-prophet to determine the right time for sowing;
he is not expected to cultivate padi, but is supplied with it by the
rest of the village. Not knowing how many days there are in a year,
and finding that the seasons do not correspond with any certain number
of lunar months, he depends entirely upon observation of the altitude
of the sun by means of an upright pole, whose upper end is carved into
a human figure.[576] Except the carving on his pole, there is nothing
to indicate that either Magic or Animism perturbs the method of this
Astronomer Royal. Hence the adventure, though most wonderful, is not
unexampled in a humbler world, by which eminent citizens amongst
the Greek laity, with minds almost free from Magic and Animism,
established for ever Philosophy and the Sciences as liberal studies.


§ 4. ANIMISM AND SCIENCE

Animism is opposed to Science, as well as to Magic,[577] by its
rejection of uniformity. A spirit, indeed, has some character (though
it may be very faintly marked); for he is, or is assimilated to, a
human ghost. But although he is supposed to have reasons or motives
for his actions, they are often unintelligible. Until he is brought
under the control of magical rites and formulæ, he may reject offerings
and prayers, as if by pure caprice or free-will. His interventions
are incalculable. Hence he may be the unseen agent in anything that
happens; and the habit is formed of putting upon him, or one of his
kind, every occurrence whose cause is not obvious: diseases, deaths,
storms, droughts, noises in the forest, unusual behaviour of animals. A
spirit-being with its body of soul-stuff capable of taking any shape, a
material thing exerting mechanical power, there is nothing that may not
be imputed to it. But being entirely imaginary, its supposed agency can
only satisfy the imagination by the assimilation of each intervention
by the animistic apperceptive mass. It is never seen or known to do any
one of the actions attributed to it; for the understanding, based on
perception and the classification and analysis of perceptions, it is
nothing. Moreover, so far as the actions of a spirit are of free-will,
or motiveless, or pure caprice, there is no distinct imagination of
even a spiritual cause. When a man, suffering from disease, or hearing
an unfamiliar noise, refers it to a spirit, there is usually nothing in
his mind but the word of vague meaning and a feeling of awe, wonder,
or dread. He gets no further in the understanding of the fact, and
curiosity is paralysed. To say “a spirit did it” becomes, therefore,
a means of avoiding the labour of explanation; it is a good example
of the “principle of least effort.” But in another direction his wits
may get to work. He is full of fear, and objectless fear must invent
a danger, which is easily done by supposing that the spirit has
been actuated by wrath. Then something must have been done to enrage
him: a taboo has been broken, his rites have been neglected, sin has
been committed—according to the customary ideas of the tribe. There
must be lustration, propitiation, expiation, perhaps with horrible
cruelty. Again, then, shall we say the man has been diverted from the
important inquiry into the causes of disease or drought? But this is
laughable: how can he set about such a task? It is the tragedy of the
world that for thousands of years the speculative powers of man—of
some men—expanded without any power, except in the classical age, of
discriminating sense from nonsense. Therefore, looking back, we see
everywhere else superstition and the kingdom of darkness.

Animism can never have directly enriched Science with a single natural
law; but, indirectly, it has instigated many investigations. With the
development of Religion, the building of temples and the regulation
of sacrifices and festivals according to their seasons, necessitated
at least the empirical study of Geometry, Arithmetic and Astronomy;
and the preservation of the ancient language of the sacred formulæ of
ritual required a knowledge of prosody, phonetics and grammar. For
thousands of years erudition was confined to the priestly orders.
They also practised, or were the chief patrons of, all the fine arts,
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry; and by their
connexion with government they left in Egypt and Assyria, in monuments
and inscriptions, History, or the materials of History. Indirectly,
the progress of mental culture, both in learning and in æsthetics, has
depended almost entirely on the development of Animism; and this in
turn has depended on the aid which Animism gave to government and to
the extension of law and order, however imperfect, over wide regions
of the earth. This is the fundamental utility which, first, Magic and,
afterwards, Animism subserve, and for the sake of which—unconsciously,
of course—they arise and prevail. Mankind has been subdued through
imagination; because the peoples that had the cast of imagination
requisite for their political organisation and co-operation had an
advantage over others.

We must qualify this by observing that other imaginations, such as
devotion to the Family and Patriotism, with a much surer hold than
Animism has upon experience, have had a great and growing influence
upon the solidarity and civilisation of some branches of the human
race, especially the Nordic.

Philosophy has derived from Animism most of her problems—free-will
and predestination, final causes, creation and miracles, emanation
and intuition, idealism and materialism, immortality, the being and
attributes of God, eternity, infinity—in some of which, indeed,
magical ideas are deeply concerned: all of them the exercise of the
most eminent minds, exercise so delightful and so disappointing.
Considering their source, we cannot wonder that these problems remain
problems, and that philosophical discussion has, of late years, turned
from them to questions concerning the theory of knowledge.

       *       *       *       *       *

A student of human origins is under no obligation to predict the
future. Fortunately: for several considerations make the task appear
altogether impossible. Of these I will mention three: (_a_) Whereas
nations have hitherto submitted to, and enforced, law and order, and
undertaken costly works of utility or splendour, in large measure under
the influence of animistic illusions, it is now everywhere noticeable
in the more civilised countries, that these illusions are being
dissipated, and it is very difficult to judge how people will behave
when they are gone. It is, indeed, true that our ordinary working life
has always depended chiefly on common sense, a knowledge of facts
within the range of ordinary experience and memory. Animistic or
magical rites and ceremonies associated with the working-life may have
increased the confidence and encouraged the co-operation of labourers,
but were not indispensable; although the association of Magic with
industry seems sometimes to have become so close, that to forget the
Magic was to destroy the industry. When, however, we turn to those
conditions of social life that are beyond the purview of common sense,
such as the preservation of tribal tradition and solidarity, and future
prosperity, loyalty to the king and obedience to his officers, it is
plain that something else than common sense was needed to reinforce
the interest of the whole against the tendency of the individual’s
self-assertion to overcome his social dispositions, and that this
control was found chiefly in Religion. It is also true that at present,
whilst some beliefs concerning supernatural things are being lost,
others are being resuscitated; but the lapsing beliefs are noble and
venerable and have exerted great public power and authority; whilst
those now eagerly propagated, are the raw infatuation of quacks, on a
level with the Animism of an Australian medicine-man and, indeed, much
inferior to his, as having no moral influence or authority. What must
come of this is so dubious, as to discourage one about the future of
the world.

(_b_) Reflection on the levity with which imagination-beliefs are let
slip and lost, or received and adopted, upon no evidence either way,
from mere shallowness of soul, brings forward a second consideration
that makes the future impredictable, namely, the low average
development of mankind in both intellect and character. This is the
consequence of our having depended, probably from the very beginning,
on leaders. A pack or tribe needed enough variability to produce able
leaders and enough average ability to follow and support them in a
crowd. Natural Selection, therefore, has operated first in producing
variability; and all tribes, even the lowest, produce relatively
eminent men. The average intelligence or ability of the crowd, in
which individuality is liable to be lost, is much less important. The
result is that each nation has its military affairs, organisation of
industry, science, invention, literature and art provided for it by
a small number of citizens; the rest fill the ranks, and learn what
they are taught. Thus arranged, the leading nations have of late years
made wonderful progress in science and in everything that can be done
by machinery; but there is no reason to suppose that anything has
been done towards raising the average intelligence and character; and
in default of that, in my judgment, nothing has been done to advance
civilisation. The world is no safer against war, revolution, demagogy,
despotism, degeneration. The greatest improvements have been made in
means of destruction; next we may put the invention of flying machines;
and their chief use has been destruction. Destruction now pauses, not
because the antagonists are satiated; they are only exhausted; and
there is more hatred in the world than was ever known before. How then
shall we judge of things to come?

(_c_) Speaking of the average man, we usually think of the European and
North American average; but in considering what changes may be expected
in the world, the people of India (800,000,000), China (350,000,000),
and the millions of the rest of Asia, the Eastern Archipelago, Africa
and South America cannot be left out; and to include them does not
raise the average. What will be their contribution to history? There
are two rational proposals for raising the average, namely, eugenics
and deliberate elimination of the unfit; and there are 1,600,000,000 on
whom to operate.

Any one who anxiously desires to foresee the future of our race is in
a position to sympathise with the ancients. Go, inquire at Delphi or
Dodona; or sleep in Stonehenge, or at the tomb of Merlin, or by the
barrows at Upsala, and dream of things to come; or consult the stars,
cast the nativity of Lycopithecus, and read in heaven the fate of his
posterity. If these methods are not very hopeful, any one of them is as
good as guessing. The only safe reflection is that he who lives longest
will see most.

FOOTNOTES:

[560] “Ethnology of the Ungava District,” _Am. B. of Ethn._, XI. p.
195. Other examples _ante_, ch. viii. § 3.

[561] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part II. Sec. IV. Mem. 1, Subsec. 3.

[562] Pliny, XXV. c. 6.

[563] J. Mooney, “Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” _Am. B. of Ethn._,
VII. pp. 323-39.

[564] J. Mooney, _op. cit._

[565] Pliny, XXV. c. 11.

[566] _Ibid._, XXV. c. 59.

[567] A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 384.

[568] Spencer and Gillen, _Across Australia_, p. 339.

[569] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 381.

[570] _The Melanesians_, p. 199.

[571] For Proclus’ defence of Astrology see Whewell’s _History of the
Inductive Sciences_, Book IV. ch. iii., 1st ed., pp. 298-300.

[572] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, p. 114.

[573] A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 397-9.

[574] I do not mean that Magic is always a _direct_ derivative of
Common-sense: we have seen (ch. vi. § 5) that it sometimes comes from
Animism by retrogradation, and (elsewhere) often from coincidences.

[575] Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, pp. 134-5.

[576] Hose and McDougall, _Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, I. p. 106.

[577] _Ante_, ch. vi. § 3.




INDEX


A

  Abstract and general ideas in lower culture, 99-102, 163-4;
    personified, 168
  Actor and Wizard, 272-3
  Adaptation, 30, 67
  Affection for the dead, 179
  Aggressiveness, 43
  Agriculture, neolithic, 50;
    as affecting natural selection, 64
  Allen, Grant, on plant-spirits, 167
  Analogy, 97-8
  Animals give Omens, 236
  Animatism, 120, 149, 151, 157
  Animism, 35;
    evil effects of, 67;
    good effects, 69;
    Chap. V. (145-86), see Contents;
    and Magic and Common-sense, 110;
    extended to plants and lifeless things, 150-3;
    development of, 183-4;
    deception in, 185;
    how related to Magic, Chap. VI. (187-284), see Contents;
    political advantage over Magic, 255;
    and Totemism, 319-25;
    and Science, 341;
    and Fine Art, 341;
    and Philosophy, 342
  Anthropoids, habitat of, 5;
    mentality and habits, 31-2;
    skull capacity, 50;
    character, 61
  Apperceptive mass of Science and Common-sense, 81;
    of Magic and Animism, 82, 126
  Arbitrary Magic, 133, 142;
    taboos, 133;
    myths, 168
  Archer, W., _Masks and Faces_, 273 _n._
  Asia, southern, probable locus of Man’s origin, 23-4
  Astrology, 239, 242, 335
  Atkinson, J. J., on _Primal Law_, 38, 306
  Avebury on making fire, 11;
    baking clay, 13;
    omens and Magic, 233 _n._


B

  Baboons, 58
  Belief, Chap. III. (71-107), see Contents
  Belt, Th., on hairless dogs, 15;
    habits of monkeys sleeping, 17
  Berkeley on causality, 191
  Black Magic, 107, 125, 129, 135-6, 139, 196, 211, 255, 287
  Boas, Franz, on savage language, 100;
    on Totemism, 298
  Bogoras on the Shaman, 285
  _Book of Daniel_, 219
  Brain development in Man, 7, 26, 50;
    in child and savage, 91
  Brehm on baboons, 58
  Bryant, E. T., on South African diviners, neurotic, 274
  Buddhist _karma_, 175
  Burton, R., on Moslem corpse, 170
  Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ on drugs, 329
  Butler, J., on Conscience, 64


C

  Callaway on chiefs and diviners, 254
  Cannibalism, 18
  Canteleu, C. de, on wolves, 42
  Casalis on Bassoutos, 251
  Cats in the Oligocene, etc., 26
  Causation tacitly assumed by savages, 101;
    confused with coincidence, 101, 122;
    implied in Magic, 113;
    how the idea affected by Animism and Magic, 123;
    origin of idea, 188-92;
    its slow development, 338
  Causes of belief, 80-4
  Chadwick on treatment of Teutonic gods, 278
  Charms, 111, 113, 130-1, 198
  Chaucer on the Doctour of Phisik, 329
  Cheiromancy, 239
  Chief’s taboo, 132
  Chronology of geologic ages, 3, 49
  Cicero on the Delphic Oracle, 242;
    on the Augurs, 248
  Coddrington on savage thought, 89;
    in Banks Islands, 149;
    on _buto_, 322
  Coincidence confused with causation, 101;
    source of belief in Magic, 116-8, 124, 136, 193;
    in Omens, 231-2;
    confirms Wizard’s pretensions, 290-1
  Common-sense, 67;
    its limitations, 69, 292;
    unlike superstition, 72, 110;
    makes sceptics, 281-2, 291;
    forced upon Wizard, 282-3;
    relation to Magic and Science, 327, 337
  Comparative Method, 304
  Comte on early hunting life of Man, 4 _n._;
    on stages of culture, 108-9
  Confucius on attitude toward spirits, 196
  Conkling, E. S., on superstitious beliefs among students, 115 _n._
  Conscience, growth of, 62-4
  Constructive impulse in anthropoids and men, 53
  Contra-suggestibility, 84
  Co-operation, in hunting, 8;
    the ground of language, 9;
    amongst wolves, 45
  Criticism of beliefs hindered by relative dissociation, 90
  Crystal a Magic source, 245, 263 _n._
  Cushing, T. H., on dramaturgic Magic, 142 _n._
  Czaplicka, A. M., on Siberian shaman, 270, 272, 274


D

  Darwin, C., on teeth and jaws of Man, 7;
    on sexual selection as cause of naked skin, 14;
    on vermin as possible cause, 16;
    on growth of moral sense, 63
  _De Divinatione_, 227, 232
  Deniker on races of Men, 20
  Desire as cause of belief, 83
  Diderot on actors, 273
  Diet of Primates and hunters, 2
  Differentiation of Man began in the Oligocene, 3, and _note_;
    of Omens from other Magic, 232-3
  Diviners, 234, 238, 240, 241, 247, 249
  Dogs, naked varieties, 16;
    primitive, 25;
    likeness to Man, 40, 43, 44, 46, 57, 64
  Dorsey, J. O., on Dakotas, 138, 149;
    on Omaha, 146
  Dramatic Magic, 134-5
  Dreams and ghosts, 153-6, 159;
    and Omens, 237, 245 _n._
  Durkheim on Totem divinities, 319


E

  Edda, 183
  Ellis, W., on spirit-food, 162;
    on Religion in Raiatea, 206, 220;
    the idol-maker, 280
  Emotion as cause of belief, 83, 86;
    in religion, 185, 186
  Emulation within the pack, 44;
    in games, business, etc., 59
  Endogamy, 307
  Eoanthropus, 49, 55, 66, 67
  Eoliths, 50, 53
  Epictetus on divination, 248
  Erect gait of Man, 5
  Evil eye, 128
  Exemplary Magic, 140-2, 336
  Exogamy and Totems and Marriage Classes, 295, 305, 307-11
  External soul, 173


F

  Fate and Magic, 223;
    and Omens, 235, 249;
    and Causation, 249-50
  Fear a cause of superstition, 83;
    gives power to ghosts, 123;
    of the dead, 178-9
  Feeling as cause of belief, 83
  Fetichism, 108
  Fire, how first made, 11
  Force, idea of, 100-1, 119-22, 163;
    force and ghosts, 197-8;
    in Magic and Science, 326-7
  Forms of thought in primitive mind, 94, 95
  Fowler, Ward, on Iguvian Magic, 202, 203;
    on Roman prayers, 205, 221
  Fraud, in what sense attributed to Wizards, 284
  Frazer, J. G., on Magic and Animism, 109;
    on driving out ghosts, 179 _n._;
    on Magic and Religion, 193, 195;
    on power of Wizard, 284;
    on Totemism, 293, 299, 304;
    first Hypothesis on Totemism, 313;
    on Grass-seed Rites, 317;
    second Hypothesis on Totemism, 317;
    on Zoolatry, 324
  Free-will and Animism, 223
  Freud on _Totem und Tabu_, 38
  Funerary rites, extravagance and economy, 180;
    and Religion, 320


G

  Galton, F., on dog and man, 40;
    moroseness of savages, 46
  Garner, R. L., on speech of chimpanzee, 9;
    on polygamy of apes, 32 _n._
  General ideas at savage level, Chap. III. § 7;
    present though unnamed, 100
  Generic consciousness of Primates, 30
  Gesture, 54, 100, 121;
    and Magic, 129
  Ghosts and spirits alike, 169;
    how imagined, 169, 173;
    and corpse, 170;
    may die or be killed, 176;
    their way of life, 177, 183;
    easily deceived, 181;
    and Magic, 199
  Ghost-theory, 163-7;
    extended to animals, 157-60;
    and soul-stuff, 161-4;
    and spirits, 164-9
  Gibbon on fanatics, 287
  Gods from tools, etc., 152;
    from plants and meteors, 166-7;
    from abstract ideas, 168;
    subject to death, 176;
    act by Magic, 213-5;
    controlled by Magic, 219-23;
    teach Magic, 309, 310;
    from ancestors, 69, 255;
    and Totems, 321-4
  Gregariousness, 8, 34, 42
  Grimm, J., on divine power, 215


H

  Haddon, A. C., on Magic in Torres Straits, 127, 141, 150, 256;
    on treatment of Wizard, 265;
    Totemism, 299
  Hallucination, 89, 92, 155
  Hartland, E. S., 121 _n._
  Hartmann, R., on character of anthropoids, 61
  Hegel on sorcery, 194 _n._
  Hepatoscopy, 239
  Herd-life, the character it develops, 48
  Herodotus on the army of Xerxes, 51;
    on Egyptian prediction, 193;
    on Persian law, 219;
    on Omens, 225, 232;
    on Dreams, 237, 241, 242
  Hirn, Yrjö, on sympathetic Magic, 138;
    Magic and Religion, 253
  _History of Human Marriage_, 308-9
  Hodson, T. C., on a Tanghul sceptic, 281
  Hose and McDougall on Pagan tribes of Borneo, 124
  Howitt, A. W., prowess in kidney-fat, 245;
    on Medicine Man, 271;
    to cure headache, 332
  Hudson, W. H., on wolves, 44;
    on dogs, 45
  Humanity, growth of the sentiments, 61-2
  Hume, J., _Natural History of Religion_, 108;
    on future life, 177;
    on causation, 190, 191
  Hunting-life, influence of, 1, 2, Chap. I. §§ 2, 3 (see Contents),
      33, 35, 37, 39, Chap. II. § 4 (see Contents);
    on intelligence, 47, 66
  Hunting-pack, its organisation, 36, 41, 45;
    organisation lost, 68, 69
  Hutton, J. J. H., on Leopard men, 214 _n._
  Hyperphysical Animism, 145, 150


I

  _Iliad_, 183, 279
  Images or mental pictures, 73;
    vivid in savages and children, 89
  Imagination, Chap. III. § 4 (see Contents);
    as unverifiable representation, 74
  Imagination-beliefs, 67, 76;
    mimic perception-beliefs, 103;
    their power overrated, 103-4;
    allied to play-belief, 104-6, 148;
    often inconsistent, 181-2
  Indirect Magic, 129, Chap. IV. §§ 6, 7 (see Contents)
  Industry and Magic, 143
  Initiation of Wizard, 203, 211, 263-5 _n._;
    and disillusion, 277
  Intelligence of Man, how developed, 10, 47-8;
    of Anthropoids, 31-2;
    its influence on morals, 65
  Intichiuma, 129, 316
  Intuition, 235


J

  Jevons, F. B., on Totemism, 299
  Jounod, H. A., on taboos, 133;
    on photograph-soul, 138;
    on divination, 249;
    on Magician’s power, 263 _n._


K

  _Kalevala_, 208, 262
  Kant on free-will, 223
  Keith, A., on epoch of Man’s differentiation, 3 _n._;
    on length of intestine, 13;
    on the genealogical tree of the Primates, 49;
    capacity of skulls, 50;
    on Neanderthal species, 52;
    on speech-organs of Pithecanthropus and Eoanthropus, 56, 66-7
  Kingsley, Mary, on soul-doctors, 155;
    on four souls, 172


L

  Lamentation and weeping, 61
  Lang, A., on ghosts, 114;
    on Animism, 147, 148;
    on Totemism, 299, 304-7
  Laughter, 60
  Laws of Association of Ideas, 137
  Lecky on Belief, 174
  Leibnitz, 174
  Leuba, J. H., 142
  Levy-Bruhl on the primitive mind, 85-6
  Livingstone on South African game, 27;
    on South African doctors, 260
  Love of the chase, 41
  Lyall, Alfred, _Asiatic Studies_, 222
  Lycopithecus, 8, 18;
    his stature, 25, 26, 29


M

  MacBride, E. W., on specialisation of Man, 4 _n._
  McDougall, W., on self-abasement, 44, 124. _See also_ Hose and
      McDougall
  Magic, 35, Chap. IV., see Contents;
    relation to government, 68-69, 253-4;
    relation to Animism, Chap. VI., see Contents;
    to Fine Art, 262;
    to Religion, 194-7, 254-5;
    to Omens, 227-34;
    its equivalent for inspiration, 245;
    relation to Totemism, 314-8;
    to science, 111, Chap. X. §§ 1, 2, 3, see Contents;
    to Medicine, 260, 328-31
  Major premise of primitive reasoning, 94, 95, 98
  _Mana_, 121, 122, 193
  Marett, R. R., on Animatism, 120, 149
  Marriage, seasonal, 13;
    and Totemism, 307-11
  Mathew, J., on source of magical power, 263 _n._
  Maxim, H. S., on precedence, 45
  Memory and Belief, 73, 80
  Mercier, C., on paranoia, 276
  Metamorphosis, 213-14, 314-15
  Methodology, none for the primitive mind, 82, 117
  Mill, J. S., on Comte, 108;
    on induction, 117
  Mimesis, principle of, 136
  Minor premise not understood in primitive reasoning, 95-6
  Mousterian culture, 13
  Müller, Max, on Totemism, 299


N

  Natural selection of best hunters, 4;
    of the gregarious, 8;
    of the intelligent, 11;
    adapted Man to the hunting life, not to civilisation, 51;
    except partially, 64;
    within limits favoured the superstitious, 70, 114
  Neanderthal Man, 49, 50, 52
  Neolithic culture, 50, 51
  Nordic Race, 19-20


O

  Odour as soul-stuff, 139, 162
  Oligocene supposed age of the differentiation of _Hominidæ_, 3, 24;
    landscape, flora and fauna then, 22-8
  Omen, magical or spiritual, 200, 204, Chap. VII., see Contents
  Oracles, dreams and omens, 236-7;
    in Greece, 241-3;
    in Fiji, 243;
    often obscure, 246
  _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, 109, 309


P

  Palæolithic Culture, 50
  Panætius on Divination, 248
  Participation, principle of, 136
  Pausanias, 244
  Pawnee chief on the good man, 64
  _Pekin Gazette_, 222
  Perception as source of belief, 79, 85;
    among savages, 36, 137
  Philosophy and Animism, 342
  Photograph and soul, 312
  Pithecanthropus, 49, 55
  Pliny (the Elder) on Ancient Medicine, 329, 331
  Plutarch, 242
  Poet respected, 126;
    inspired, 237 _n._;
    and wizard, 267
  Polybius on Roman Religion, 248
  Positivism, 108
  Possession, 210-11, 212, 237, 242-3
  Prayers, at first seem dangerous, 195-6;
    from spells, also spontaneous, 200, 201;
    become spells, 204, 205
  Precedence in the hunting-pack, 44;
    amongst Australians, 45
  Priest, 68-9;
    and sorcerer, 254-5;
    and learning, 341
  _Primal Law_, 38, 306
  Property, 43, 56-8
  Psychology of the hunting-pack, Chap. II. § 4 (40-8)
  Psychological Animism, 145, Chap. V. § 2 (147-53)


R

  Races of Men, 19
  Rain-rites, 202, 335-7
  Ray, S. H., on the Lifuans, 142 _n._, 156
  Reason and imagination, 74-5;
    in immature minds, Chap. III. § 6
  Reflection and ghost, 154, 158
  Reinach, S., on sex-taboo, 56
  Reincarnation, 174
  Relations in savage thought, 101
  Religion, 69;
    meaning of word, 184;
    and Magic, 193-7;
    and Totemism, 321-5
  Retrogradation, Ch. VI. § 4 (203-7)
  _Rigveda_, 152, 168, 219
  Rivera, W. H. R., on suggestibility in savages, 86;
    on savage thought, 89, 100;
    on Totemic gods, 167, 321-2;
    on Toda prayers, 205;
    blindness of savages to deceit, 283;
    on a custom at Mota, 301, 303
  Roosevelt on dogs, 44, 45;
    elephant and bear, 147
  Roth, W. E., on prayer to Totem, 319
  Roy, S. C., on Oraon rain-rites, 202


S

  Sanderson, G. P., on Indian wild dogs, 43
  Scapulomancy, 239
  Schopenhauer on female beauty, 15
  Scientists in barbarism, 339
  _Secret of the Totem_, 305
  Seligman on sex-taboo, 131;
    on departmental experts, 257, 284
  Selous, F. C., on the hunter’s joy, 41
  Seneca on Omens, 249
  Seton, Thompson, on Indians’ love of killing, 41;
    on wolves, 42, 44, 56
  Sexual selection as cause of naked skin, 14
  Shadow and ghost, 154, 158
  Shaman derivation of word, 274
  Shamanism, 217-8, 254
  Skeat and Blagden on the Semang, 149, 168;
    on Malay Magic, 172, 261
  Skin naked, 14-18
  Skull changes in, 7;
    capacity of, 50
  Social life of Primates, 7, 32;
    of Man, 8, 34-6, 37-8
  _Social Origins_, 305
  Societies of Wizards, 256
  Sollas on geological time, 3 _n._, 49 _n._
  Sorcerer and Magician, 252;
    and Priest, 254
  Sorcery, 129;
    defined, 189
  Soul and soul-stuff, 147, 151, 154, 155, 161-3, 171;
    how many, 172;
    origin and destiny of, 174-7;
    of Totem and clansman, 312, 313
  Southey, R., _The Curse of Kehama_, 265
  Species of Man, 31
  Speech in apes and men, 9, 54, 55
  Speisser on Animism in Ambrym, 152
  Spell, 68, 111, 113, 130;
    tends to personify, 152, 156;
    and prayer, 200, 201
  Spencer, H., _Pol. Institutions_, 8, 59;
    on Laughter, 60;
    Sociology, 108;
    on Animism, 153, 165, 167, 183;
    on Totemism, 298
  Spencer and Gillen on savage imagination, 83;
    on Guanjis, 146;
    on magic stones, 120-1, 263 _n._;
    emotions of Australians, 244;
    foreign Magic, 270;
    account of a Wizard, 285;
    list of Totems, 296
  Spirits and ghosts, Chap. V. §§ 6-7 (164-73);
    power of, 212-3;
    controlled by Magic, 216-24;
    and Omens, 234-8
  Stages in development of Magic, 129
  Stanbridge, W., on aborigines’ scepticism, 279
  Standard of truth for savages, 89
  Stefánson on Esquimo, 160
  Stigand, G. H., on the Masai, 146
  Stoics and divination, 248
  Stoll, Otto, on self-suggestion, 274
  Struggle over prey, 45-6
  Substitution in Magic, 141
  Suggestibility, 84, 275
  Superstition, Chap. III., see Contents;
    utility of, 69;
    its dark side, 107;
    innate disposition to, 114, 153
  Syllogism and savage thinking, 92-7
  Symbols, 139;
    may fulfil Omens, 246
  Sympathy, perceptive, contagious, effective in the pack, 48;
    and moral sense, 63-4


T

  Taboo, 68;
    on persons and things, 131-2;
    on words, 133;
    names of dead and of spirits, 201;
    on kings, 219;
    connected with Totemism, 315, 316
  Talisman, 68, 131, etc.
  Testimony, 80, 82
  Thompson, Basil, on Tongan rejection of coincidence, 291
  Thurn, E. F. im, on savage belief, 116, 151, 155;
    on the _peaiman_, 260
  Torday, E., on Bahuana, 150;
    dead cast no shadow, 154 _n._
  Totemism, 68, 151, 166, 167, 173;
    Chap. IX. (293-325), see Contents
  Transmigration, 171, 175
  Trotter on herd-instinct, 64
  Turner, G., on Samoan gods, 322
  Turner (_Am. B. of Ethn._) on Esquimo Angoqok, 328
  Tylor, E. B., _Primitive Culture_, 108;
    on Animism, 153, 183;
    on motivation of Magic, 195;
    on spell and prayer, 207
  Tyndall on the _Scientific Uses of the Imagination_, 74


V

  Ventriloquism practised by Wizard, 261
  Vocation of Wizard, 267-9, 285
  _Volsung Saga_, 213, 215 _n._
  Voluntary action as cause of belief, 83;
    supposed source of idea of cause, 188, 192


W

  Wallace, A. R., on place of Man’s origin, 4 _n._;
    on human brain, 11;
    nakedness, 16; the Orang, 32, 33, 47
  War, 58-9
  Weeks, J. H., on _Congo Cannibals_, 127, 131;
    the Bakongo, 130, 162, 168;
    specialists in Magic, 257;
    on character of wizard, 260, 271;
    sorcerer not honoured at home, 270;
    his trickery, 282
  Westermarck, E., on seasonal marriage, 13;
    primitive monogamy, 56;
    on moral ideas, 64;
    savage classification of phenomena, 109;
    on sex-taboo, 132;
    on averting the evil eye, 144;
    descent in female line, 306;
    Totemism and marriage, 308-9;
    animal worship, 323
  Whiffen, Th., on chief and medicine-man, 254;
    medicine-man’s unscrupulousness, 271;
    sceptics, 280
  Wiedemann on Religion of Ancient Egyptians, 173, 267
  Williamson, R. W., on the Mafulu, 201
  Wizard, 68-9, 128;
    the mind of, Chap. VIII. (252-92), see Contents;
    and government, 253-4;
    societies, 256;
    his utility, 268;
    and Pharmacology, 328, 331;
    Anatomy and Physiology, 332;
    Psychology, 333-4;
    Botany and Zoology, 334;
    Astronomy, 335;
    Meteorology, 337
  Wollunqua, 320
  Wolves, 8, 11, 25, 36, 37 and note, 41, 42, 44, 45, 52, 53, 64
  Wundt, W., on Körperseele, 170, 183;
    on Animism and Magic and idea of cause, 187-92;
    or retrogradation, 203




Transcriber’s note


Words in italics have been surrounded by _underscores_, and words in
small capitals changed to all capitals. Footnotes were renumbered and
moved to the end of the chapter they belong to.

Some minor corrections were made without note, such as missing
punctuation and missing page numbers in the index. Also the following
corrections were made, on page

   13 “probaby” changed to “probably” (probably very much earlier)
   93 “critisism” changed to “criticism” (incapable of comparison and
      criticism)
  224 “shephered” changed to “shepherd” (and a shepherd, sleeping by
      the grave of Orpheus)
  348 “McDougal” changed to “McDougall” (See also Hose and McDougall)
  350 “unscupulousness” changed to “unscrupulousness” (medicine-man’s
      unscrupulousness)
  350 “Wiedermann” changed to “Wiedemann” (Wiedemann on Religion of
      Ancient Egyptian).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistent spelling,
hyphenation, capitalization, and possible errors in foreign words.
Additional: The names of some of the quoted authors were spelled
inconsistently in the original, for example Codrington was spelled most
of the time with two d’s. Also the name of Vilhjálmur Stefánsson (who
was born as William Stephenson) was spelled in several different ways.
These have not been corrected. The also mentioned Stevenson is somebody
else. Also: The index has not been checked for errors, besides the ones
in the list above.