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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Psychological Origin and the Nature of
+Religion, by James H. Leuba
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
+
+Author: James H. Leuba
+
+Release Date: April 22, 2012 [EBook #39511]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN, NATURE OF RELIGION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
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+
+
+  RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
+
+  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
+  AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
+
+
+
+
+RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
+
+Animism. By EDWARD CLODD, author of _The Story of Creation_.
+
+Pantheism. By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of _The Religion of the
+Universe_.
+
+The Religions of Ancient China. By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of
+Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
+
+The Religion of Ancient Greece. By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham
+College, Cambridge, author of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_.
+
+Islam. By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His
+Majesty's Privy Council, author of _The Spirit of Islam_ and _Ethics of
+Islam_.
+
+Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at
+Cambridge University.
+
+The Religion of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.
+
+The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of
+the British Museum.
+
+Early Buddhism. By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The
+Royal Asiatic Society.
+
+Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed
+Books and MSS., British Museum.
+
+Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the _Oxford
+English Dictionary_.
+
+Celtic Religion. By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University
+College, Aberystwyth.
+
+The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLES SQUIRE, author of
+_The Mythology of the British Islands_.
+
+Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge
+University, author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_.
+
+The Religion of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.
+
+Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G.
+
+The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.
+
+Early Christianity. By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.
+
+The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor J. H. LEUBA.
+
+The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STANLEY A. COOK.
+
+Mithraism. By W. J. PHYTHIAN-ADAMS.
+
+
+PHILOSOPHIES
+
+Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of _The Philosophy of
+Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century_.
+
+Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of _Deductive Logic_,
+editor of the _Apology of Plato_, etc.
+
+Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of _The
+Problem of Conduct_.
+
+Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S.J.
+
+Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
+
+Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
+
+Comte and Mill. By T. WHITTAKER, author of _The Neoplatonists Apollonius
+of Tyana and other Essays_.
+
+Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of _An Introduction to Spencer's
+Philosophy_.
+
+Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKER.
+
+Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.
+
+Swedenborg. By Dr. SEWALL.
+
+Nietzsche: His Life and Works. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICH.
+
+Bergson. By JOSEPH SOLOMON.
+
+Rationalism. By J. M. ROBERTSON.
+
+Pragmatism. By D. L. MURRAY.
+
+Rudolf Eucken. By W. TUDOR-JONES.
+
+Epicurus. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
+
+William James. By HOWARD V. KNOX.
+
+
+
+
+  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
+  AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
+
+
+  By JAMES H. LEUBA
+  BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, U.S.A.
+
+
+  LONDON
+  CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
+  10 AND 12 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE W.C.2
+  1921
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This little book, the last of a series of similar volumes each containing
+an exposition by a recognised authority of one of the many Religions the
+world has known, might have been put with as much propriety at the head of
+the series, there to show how Religion originated in the mind of man, what
+mental powers it presupposes, what is its nature and what its relation to
+the non-religious life. But one is, no doubt, better able to take up
+profitably these problems after having familiarised oneself with the
+several aspects of religious life. Therefore _The Psychological Origin and
+the Nature of Religion_ was placed at the end, where it fulfils the
+additional purpose of linking the concluded series of Histories of
+Religions with a cognate one, now being prepared by the same publishers,
+on Ancient and Modern Systems of Philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                             PAGE
+
+    I. THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION,                             1
+
+   II. THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED,                       11
+
+  III. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS,        39
+
+   IV. MAGIC AND RELIGION,                                            48
+
+       Magic classified,                                              49
+
+       Two Theses maintained: (1) the probable priority of Magic;
+       (2) the independence of Religion from Magic,                   53
+
+       Magic and Religion combine, but never fuse,                    65
+
+       What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion?           68
+
+       Magic and the Origin of Science,                               74
+
+    V. THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE,              80
+
+   VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND THE FUNCTION OF
+       RELIGION,                                                      87
+
+
+
+
+THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION
+
+
+The opinions advanced in this essay and the arguments with which they are
+supported will be more readily appreciated if the fundamental nature of
+Religion is set forth in a few introductory pages.
+
+The students of Religion have usually been content to describe it either
+in intellectual or in affective terms. 'This particular idea or belief,'
+or 'this particular feeling or emotion,' is, they have said, 'the essence'
+or the 'vital element' of Religion. So that most of the hundreds of
+definitions which have been proposed fall into two classes. We have, on
+the one hand, the definitions of Spencer, Max Mueller, Romanes, Goblet
+d'Alviella, and others, for whom Religion is 'the recognition of a
+mystery pressing for interpretation,' or 'a department of thought,' or 'a
+belief in superhuman beings'; and, on the other, the formulas of
+Schleiermacher, the Ritschlian theologians, Tiele, etc., who hold that
+Religion is 'a feeling of absolute dependence upon God,' or 'that pure and
+reverential disposition or frame of mind we call piety.' According to
+Tiele, 'the essence of piety, and, therefore, the essence of Religion, is
+adoration.'
+
+The recent advance of psychological science and the increasingly careful
+and minute work of ethnographists have tended to discredit these one-sided
+conceptions. To-day it has become customary to admit that 'in Religion all
+sides of the personality participate. Will, feeling, and intelligence are
+necessary and inseparable constituents of Religion.' But statements such
+as this one do not necessarily imply a correct understanding of the
+functional relation of the three aspects of psychic life. One may be
+acquainted with the three branches of government--legislative, executive,
+and judicial--and nevertheless grossly misunderstand their respective
+functions. Pfleiderer, for instance, hastens to add to the sentences last
+quoted, 'Of course we must recognise that knowing and willing are here
+[in religion] not ends in themselves, as in science and in morality, but
+rather subordinate to feeling as the real centre of religious
+consciousness.' Thus feeling reappears as _the real centre_ of religious
+consciousness. What the author may well have meant here by 'centre,' _I_
+do not know. A similar criticism is applicable to Max Mueller and to Guyau.
+The latter begins promisingly with a criticism of the one-sided formulas
+of Schleiermacher and of Feuerbach, and declares that they should be
+combined. 'The religious sentiment,' says he, is 'primarily no doubt a
+feeling of dependence. But this feeling of dependence really to give birth
+to Religion must provoke in one a reaction--a desire for deliverance.'
+Very good, indeed! But, on proceeding, the reader discovers that the
+opinion the book defends is that 'Religion is the outcome of an effort to
+explain all things--physical, metaphysical, and moral--by analogies drawn
+from human society, imaginatively and symbolically considered. In short,
+it is a universal, sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.'[1] What is
+this but once more the intellectualistic position? Religion arising from
+an effort to _explain_; Religion an _hypothesis_! It is Herbert Spencer
+over again with an additional statement concerning the way in which man
+attempts to explain 'the mystery pressing for interpretation.'
+
+It must be admitted, however, that several of the more recent definitions
+have completely broken with this bad psychology. Among these are those of
+J. G. Frazer, of A. Sabatier, and of William James. The first understands
+by Religion 'propitiation, or conciliation of powers superior to man,
+which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human
+life.'[2] For A. Sabatier, Religion 'is a commerce, a conscious and willed
+relation into which the soul in distress enters with the mysterious power
+on which it feels that it and its destiny depend.'[3] William James
+expresses his mind thus: 'In broadest and most general terms possible, one
+might say that religious life consists in the belief that there is an
+unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting
+ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious
+attitude of the soul. In the ordinary sense of the word, however, no
+attitude is accounted religious unless it be grave and serious; the
+trifling, sneering attitude of a Voltaire must be thrown out if we would
+not strain the ordinary use of language. Moreover, there must be something
+solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate
+Religion. If glad, it must not grin or snigger; if sad, it must not scream
+or curse. The sallies of a Schopenhauer and a Nietzsche lack the
+purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth. And finally we must
+exclude also the chilling reflections of Marcus Aurelius on the eternal
+reason, as well as the passionate outcry of Job.'[4]
+
+But the battle against intellectualistic and affectivistic conceptions of
+Religion is not yet won. The recent definitions of Tiele and of Kaftan
+show only too clearly how strong the tendency remains to identify Religion
+with some feeling or emotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the amazing discrepancies and contradictions offered by authorised
+definitions of Religion arise, in my opinion, primarily from a faulty
+psychology, a moment may profitably be devoted to an untechnical statement
+of the present teaching of that science upon the relation existing
+between the three acknowledged modes of consciousness--willing, feeling,
+and thinking.
+
+Aristotle characterised man as _thinking-desire_. In swinging back from
+Intellectualism to Voluntarism, modern psychology has accepted the
+fundamental truth excellently expressed by the Greek philosopher. 'Will is
+not merely a function which sometimes accrues to consciousness, and is
+sometimes lacking; it is an integral property of consciousness.'[5] Will
+without intelligence may be possible; but intelligence without will is
+not, not even in the case of so-called disinterested, theoretical
+thinking. There is, there can be, no thinking without desire, intention,
+or purpose. 'The one thing that stands out,' says, for instance, Professor
+Dewey, 'is that thinking is inquiry, and that knowledge as science is the
+outcome of systematically directed inquiry.' Thought absolutely undirected
+would be not even a dream--mere meaningless, chaotic atoms of thought. It
+is _the intention_, _the purpose_, which makes thought what it is; that is
+to say, significant. We think because we will. Thought does not exist for
+itself; it is the instrument of desire. To discover ways and means of
+gratifying proximate or distant desires, needs, cravings, is the function
+of intelligence. The psychologist speaks, therefore, of the _instrumental_
+character of thought, and considers cognition to be a function of conduct.
+The mastery of desire over thought is abundantly illustrated in the
+history of belief, and nowhere so strikingly as in Religion.
+
+With regard to the relation of feeling to the will and to the intellect,
+it is to be observed that where there is desire for an object, there
+liking is present; and, conversely, where there is liking, there actual or
+potential desire is felt. As to sentiments and emotions, they involve
+ideas and conative elements in addition to sensations and feelings. An
+emotion is a reaction, the response of an organism to a situation. It is a
+form of action. Aristotle's characterisation of man is thus seen to be
+adequate; it does not leave out the feelings, as it might seem at first.
+Thinking-desire includes the affection since it is included in desire.
+Every pulse of consciousness is psychically compounded of will, feeling,
+and thought. Successive moments can differ one from the other neither in
+the absence of one or two of these three constituents, nor in the
+essential relation they bear to one another--that is fixed and
+unchangeable--but only in the intensity and vividness of their respective
+components. This, then, is the double teaching of psychology in this
+matter:--(1) Will, feeling, and thought enter in some degree into every
+moment of consciousness which can be looked upon as an actuality, and not
+merely as an abstraction; they are necessary constituents of
+consciousness. The unit of conscious life is neither thought, nor feeling,
+nor will, but all three in movement towards an object. (2) The will is
+primal; or, in other words, conscious life is always oriented towards
+something to be secured or avoided immediately or ultimately.
+
+If, with this conception in mind, we turn to Religion, we shall understand
+it to be compounded of will, thought, and feeling, bearing to each other
+the relation which belongs to them in every department of life. And it
+will, moreover, be clear that a purpose or an ideal, _i.e._ something to
+be attained or maintained, must always be at the root of it. The outcome
+of the application of current psychological teaching to religious life is,
+then, to lead us to regard Religion as a particular kind of activity, as a
+mode or type of behaviour, and to make it as impossible for us to identify
+it with a particular emotion or with a particular belief, as it would be
+to identify, let us say, family life with affection, or to define trade
+as 'belief in the productivity of exchange'; or commerce as 'greed touched
+with a feeling of dependence upon society.' And yet this last definition
+is no less informing and adequate than the far-famed formula of Matthew
+Arnold, which I forbear to repeat. We shall, however, have to remember
+that Religion is multiform, and that certain ideas, emotions, and purposes
+appear in it prominently at certain moments, and other ideas, emotions,
+and purposes at other times. But neither prominence nor predominance is
+synonymous with 'essence' or with 'vital element.'
+
+I do not intend, at this stage of our inquiry, to offer a complete
+definition of Religion. But I must guard against a possible
+misinterpretation. In speaking of Religion as an activity, or as a type of
+behaviour, I would not be understood to exclude from it whatever does not
+express itself in overt acts, in rites of propitiation, submission, or
+adoration. For, just as man's relations with his fellow-men are not all
+directly expressed, or expressible, in actions, so his relations with
+gods, or their impersonal substitutes, may not have any visible form; they
+may remain purely subjective and none the less exercise a definite guiding
+and inspiring influence over his life.
+
+The adjectives _passive_ and _active_ might be used to separate amorphous
+from organised Religion, _i.e._ the feeling-attitude from the behaviour.
+'Passive,' used in this connection, would mean simply that the person does
+not actively seek those advantages the gods might procure, but is content
+to be acted upon by them.
+
+_Unorganised religiosity_ must be, it seems, the necessary precursor of
+organised Religion; it is its larval stage. But it does not by any means
+disappear from society when a system of definite relations with gods, or
+with impersonal sources of religious inspiration, has been developed. In
+all societies there is always a large number of people who live in the
+limbo of organised Religion. They are open to the influence of religious
+agents, in which they believe more or less cold-heartedly, without ever
+entering into definite and fixed relations with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED
+
+
+In his dealings with the different kinds of objects or forces with which
+he is, or thinks himself, in relation, man has developed three distinct
+types of behaviour. A concrete illustration will bring them before us more
+forcibly than an abstract characterisation. A stoker in the hold of a
+ship, throwing coal into the furnace, represents one of them. His purpose
+is to produce propelling energy. The amount of coal he shovels in,
+together with the air-draught, the condition of the boiler and other
+factors of the same sort, determine, as he understands the matter, the
+velocity of the ship. The same man, playing cards of an evening, and
+having lost uninterruptedly for a long time, might get up and walk round
+the table backwards in order to change his luck. He would then illustrate
+a second mode of behaviour. If a storm threatens to sink the ship, our
+stoker might be seen falling on his knees, lifting his hands to heaven,
+and addressing in passionate words an invisible being. These are the three
+differentiated kinds of responses he has learned to make, the three ways
+by which he endeavours to make use of the forces about him in his struggle
+for the preservation and the enrichment of life. We may designate them
+as--
+
+    1. The mechanical behaviour.
+
+    2. The coercitive behaviour, or Magic.
+
+    3. The anthropopathic behaviour, which includes Religion.
+
+The mechanical behaviour differs from the anthropopathic by the absence of
+any reference to personal beings. In the sphere in which it obtains,
+threats and presents are equally ineffective. It implies instead the
+practical--not the theoretical--recognition of a fairly definite and
+constant quantitative relation between cause and effect. If science is to
+be provided with an ancestor, and only with one, it should be this first
+type of behaviour rather than Magic. For, the moment the existence of the
+fixed quantitative relations, implicitly acknowledged in the first type of
+behaviour, is explicitly recognised, science is born. Magic separates
+itself, on the one hand, from the mechanical behaviour by the absence of
+implied quantitative relations, and, on the other hand, from
+anthropopathic behaviour by the failure to use means of personal
+influence; punishment and reward are just as foreign to Magic as to
+mechanical behaviour. As to the anthropopathic type of activity, it
+includes the ordinary relations of men with men as well as those with
+gods. One's frame of mind and behaviour when dealing with a human person,
+especially if exalted far above us, resembles Religion so closely that it
+is proper to place them in the same class.
+
+Mechanical behaviour and Religion are, obviously, by far the most common
+and important modes of activity among civilised peoples, whereas in
+primitive culture the coercitive behaviour (Magic) is everywhere in
+evidence and Religion may be practically unknown. As one ascends from the
+lowest stages of culture, Magic gradually loses official recognition.
+Among us, though it leads only a surreptitious existence, it has by no
+means lost all influence. The list of magical superstitions that have
+retained a hold among us would be found tediously long. A numerous class
+of them includes the gambler's methods of securing luck. So-called
+'religious' practices may really be magical. The cross, the rosary,
+relics, and other accessories of Religion, acquire in the mind of many
+Christians a power of the coercitive type; that is, for instance, the case
+when the sign of the cross, of itself, without the mediation of God or
+Saint, is felt to have power; or when 'saying one's beads' is held to
+possess a curative virtue of the kind ascribed to sacred relics by the
+superstitious. Even when the symbolism of the sign of the cross, and the
+meaning of the _Ave Maria_ are realised, it happens not infrequently that
+signing oneself and saying one's beads are regarded as acting upon the
+Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or God, in the manner of an incantation _i.e._
+magically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has been the habit of most students of the origin of Religion to
+concern themselves exclusively with the origin of the god-idea, as if
+belief in the existence of gods was identical with Religion. They have
+ignored its other essential components: the motives or desires and the
+feelings, as well as the means by which, in Religion, the gratification of
+desire is sought. But the limitation of the problem of origin to that of
+the god-idea is not entirely amiss. For there are neither specifically
+religious motives, nor specifically religious feelings. Any and every
+human need and longing may, at some stage or other, become a spring of
+Religion, and conversely the feelings and emotions met with in any form of
+Religion appear also in non-religious experience. As to the practical
+means of securing the favour of the gods, it is agreed that they were at
+the beginning essentially the same as those men were already in the habit
+of using in their relations with their fellow-men. It is the Agent or the
+Power with which man thinks himself in relation, and through whom he
+endeavours to secure the gratification of his desires, which alone is
+distinctive of religious life. And so the origin of the idea of gods,
+though not identical with the origin of Religion, is at any rate its
+central problem.
+
+In the preceding remarks, as also in practically all writings on the
+origin of Religion, it is assumed that the god-concept precedes, in the
+mind of man, the establishment of Religion. This opinion is, as we shall
+see, the correct one. But it cannot be taken as a matter of course.
+Actions may become established in other ways. Our first problem is to
+discover how Religion arose, and what psychological capacities and
+conceptions it implies.
+
+A comparative study of the three modes of behaviour is, after all, the
+shortest way of gaining a satisfactory understanding of the origin of
+Religion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_What are the abstract conceptions necessary to the establishment of the
+three modes of behaviour?_--There is usually little difficulty in
+determining what end any particular action is intended to secure. It is
+quite otherwise if one wishes to ascertain the nature of the power from
+which the desired effect is supposed to proceed. The philosopher,
+suffering from the illusion to which his class is subject, is in danger of
+imagining the presence of highly abstract notions where much simpler
+mental processes actually take place. A comparatively easy way of getting
+oneself disentangled from these high-flown interpretations and of
+ascertaining what is the intellectual minimum really involved in these
+types of behaviour, is to examine them in the least developed men known to
+us, or, better still--if they are to be found there--among animals. Let us
+accordingly turn for a moment to animal behaviour with the intention of
+determining what ideas of power, or of agency, are involved in their modes
+of action, and thus take a preliminary step towards the solution of our
+problem.
+
+Apes, dogs, beavers, in fact all the higher animals, show by their
+behaviour a 'working understanding' of the more common physical forces.
+They estimate weight, resistance, heat, distance, etc., and adapt their
+actions more or less exactly to these factors when climbing, swinging at
+the end of boughs, breaking, carrying, etc. I remember observing a
+chimpanzee trying to recover a stick which had fallen through the bars of
+his cage and rolled beyond the reach of his arm. He looked around, walked
+deliberately to the corner of the cage, picked up a piece of burlap, and
+threw the end of it over the stick. Then, pulling gently, he made the
+stick roll until near enough for him to get hold of it with his hand. This
+ape dealt successfully with physical forces. Towards animals and men,
+animal behaviour is quite different. A dog will beg from a man; he will
+not beg from a ham suspended out of his reach. Towards animals and men,
+animal behaviour is similar to that of men when dealing with invisible
+anthropopathic beings.
+
+One may well believe that the inner experiences of animals differ in these
+modes of behaviour as much as their external movements. The feelings and
+emotions which appear in a dog's intercourse with his master are of the
+same species, if not of the same variety, as those felt by man when he
+deals with his fellow-men and with superhuman beings. Certain highly
+gifted animals feel blame and approbation, independently of physical
+punishment or reward, and attach themselves to their masters with a
+devoted affection possessing all the marks of altruism. The higher animals
+do, then, without any doubt, practise both the mechanical and the
+anthropopathic types of behaviour, but they exercise the latter only
+towards _actually present_ persons or animals. We shall have to consider
+subsequently the significant psychological difference to which this fact
+points.
+
+But, is there no trace in animal life of the coercitive behaviour? I know
+of none, though some perplexity might be caused by certain reactions
+animals learn under the tuition of man. What shall be said, for instance,
+of a dog who has learned to raise its forepaws when he wishes to be
+liberated from confinement under circumstances making the person causing
+the door to open invisible to him? Is this magical behaviour? There is
+certainly no quantitative nor any qualitative relation between lifting up
+the forepaws and the opening of a door, neither is there any visible
+continuity between cause and effect. That the dog's action is not
+determined, in this instance, in the same way as that of a magician,
+appears when it is observed that whereas the latter would perform the same
+magical rite in a great variety of external circumstances, the dog will
+seek liberation by lifting its paws only when in the particular cage in
+which he has learned the trick, or in one very much like it.[6] But more
+about this presently. It is not to be overlooked that without the
+interference of man, the dog would never have learned to perform this
+quasi-magical trick. This illustration serves, if no other purpose, at
+least to indicate how apparently slight is the impediment which prevents
+the higher animals from setting up a magical art.
+
+It may be a matter for astonishment that two complicated and effective
+modes of reaction are arrived at by animals in the absence of abstract
+ideas about forces. Yet so it is; before any speculation on power, before
+any induction or deduction, before any abstract notion of the nature of
+spirit and matter, animals have learned to deal quite well with what we
+call physical and personal forces. How did they do it? The study under
+experimental conditions of the establishment of new reactions in animals
+reveals the process very clearly. Imagine a cat shut up in a cage, the
+door of which can be opened by pressing down a latch. When weary of
+confinement the cat begins to claw, pull, and bite, here, there, and
+everywhere. After half an hour, or an hour of this purposive, but
+unreasoned, activity, he chances to put his paw upon the latch and
+escapes. If again put into the cage, he does not seem to know any better
+than before how to proceed. Yet something has been gained by the first
+experience. For now he directs his clawing, pulling, and biting more
+frequently towards the part of the cage occupied by the latch. Because of
+this improvement he finds himself released sooner than the first time. The
+repetition of the experiment shows the cat learning to bring his movements
+to bear more and more exclusively upon the door or its immediate
+surroundings. Ultimately he will have learned to make just the necessary
+movement and no other. In this gradual exclusion of useless movements, the
+cat is guided entirely by results. The psycho-physiological endowment
+required for acquisitions of this kind involves no abstract ideas but only
+(1) the desire to escape; (2) the impulse and ability to perform the
+various movements we have named; (3) an indefinite remembrance of the
+position occupied when success was achieved, combined with a tendency to
+repeat the same movements when in the same situation.
+
+The method illustrated above by which animals learn to deal with forces in
+the midst of which they live has a much wider range of application in
+human existence than is generally supposed. Man's fundamental mode of
+learning is also the unreflective, experimental, one in which frequent
+blind attempts and chance successes slowly lead to the elimination of
+ineffective movements. Would you convince yourself of the vastly
+exaggerated role ascribed to abstract ideas and to logical processes in
+ordinary human behaviour, inquire how 'power' is conceived of by those who
+use it. What is in the mind of the stoker when he thinks of the power of
+coal? What in the mind of the gambler when he tries to coerce fate? What
+in the mind of the necromancer when he summons the shades of spirits?
+Nothing definite beyond a knowledge of what is to be done in order to
+secure the desired results and the anticipation of these results them
+selves. The stoker thinks of what he sees and feels: the coal, in burning,
+gives heat; the heat makes the water boil; the steam pushes the
+piston-rod, and so forth. Each one of the successive links in the chain is
+vaguely thought of by him as striving to bring about the following one.
+That is how he understands the coal-power. And what does the ordinary
+person know, for instance, about electricity? Simply what is to be done in
+order to start the dynamo, light the lamp, switch the current, and what
+the effect will be in each case, nothing more. The superstitious person,
+whether belonging to a primitive tribe or to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation
+of the twentieth century, understands in no other than this practical way
+the forces he deals with. I remember the delight shown by an elderly lady
+when a brood of swallows fell down our sitting-room chimney. 'It will
+bring luck to the household,' said she. I did my best, patiently and in
+several ways, to ascertain the sort of notion the lady had regarding the
+nature of the power that was to bring about the fortunate events
+predicted, and also to discover her idea of the connection existing
+between the fall of the swallows and the exertion of the 'power' in our
+behalf. I had to come to the conclusion that there was no idea whatsoever
+in her mind beyond those expressed by 'swallows-down-the-chimney' and
+'happy-events-coming.' These two ideas were in her mind directly
+associated. When I declared my inability to see the causal connection
+between the two, she complained of my abnormal critical sense! Nothing
+more than the immediate association of an antecedent with its consequent
+need be looked for in the mind of most civilised, superstitious persons,
+and, of course, nothing more in the mind of a savage. That is sufficient
+for practical purposes.
+
+The words 'matter' and 'spirit' wield a very considerable influence among
+us; what do they mean to most of those who use them? Physical science
+ascribes either extension alone, or extension and weight, to physical
+substances. Non-material forces are, then, according to science, both
+spaceless and weightless. I will venture to affirm that not one educated
+person in a thousand is acquainted with this distinction. Most of the few
+who have known it have forgotten it. So that the words 'matter' and
+'spirit' mean different things to the philosopher and to the layman. In
+the popular mind, if spirits are not perceptible it is because the senses
+are not sufficiently acute. Spirits are here or there, diffused over wide
+areas or concentrated in narrow spaces. The average Christian, whatever he
+may say to the contrary, is, theoretically speaking, a materialist, and, I
+might add, a polytheist. Whatever matter and spirit mean to him, and they
+certainly have a substantial meaning, the distinction made by the
+philosopher is for him non-existent. The following facts may be of some
+interest in this connection. A few years ago, in a conversation with a
+shop-clerk, I happened to mention a lead coffin made hermetic with solder.
+He was shocked, and objected to a dead body being shut up in a coffin of
+that description because it prevented the escape of the soul. This man had
+had an ordinary grammar-school education. Here are two quotations taken
+from answers of American College students to questions requesting a
+description of their idea of God. It should be added that the questions
+were given only to classes which had not yet taken up, or were just
+beginning the study of philosophy. 'God, to me, is a being of flesh and
+blood, for without this form he would seem unnatural and unsympathetic as
+our leader.' (Female, twenty years old.)--'I think of God as real, actual
+flesh and blood and bones, something we shall all see with our eyes some
+day.' (Male, twenty-one years old.) Together with these, and from the same
+classes of students, came a great number of very different answers; for
+instance this, 'God is an impersonal being.... I think of him as the
+embodiment of natural laws.' Descartes' conception may serve as a point of
+comparison: 'What the soul itself was, I either did not stay to consider,
+or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle,
+like wind or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts.'[7]
+
+If the philosophical distinction between matter and spirit is not
+ordinarily made, these terms express none the less a very definite
+practical meaning of prime importance: they mark the difference between
+forces that are not responsive to psychic influences (desire and emotion,
+ethical and aesthetic considerations) and those that are.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trial-and-error method which serves to establish the efficient modes
+of behaviour observed in animals is so far reaching in its possibilities
+that one might be tempted to regard it as accounting for the existence of
+Magic and of Religion. Were this theory tenable, the origin of the three
+modes of human behaviour would have been brought back to one method of
+learning, the unreasoning, trial-and-error method. But even a superficial
+consideration discovers insuperable obstacles in the way of this
+enticingly simple explanation, and compels the admission that magical art
+and Religion involve the operation of mental powers not required for the
+establishment of the mechanical, and of the non-religious anthropopathic
+behaviours.
+
+The first of the two differences I intend to bring out, is that if a
+particular action is to be learned by an animal, the gratification of the
+actuating desire must follow immediately, or nearly so, upon the
+performance of the successful act, and be frequently repeated at short
+intervals; whereas in man, as far as Magic and Religion are concerned, the
+results may follow quite irregularly upon the performance, often only long
+after, and, not infrequently, not at all. Had not the door opened every
+time the cat pressed the latch, but, let us say, only once every ten
+times, or, if every time, one week after the movement, he would never
+have learned to make his escape. No more would he have acquired the trick,
+had he not been placed in the cage repeatedly and at short intervals. An
+interesting instance of the gradual undoing of a habit in consequence of
+the absence of the sensory results for the sake and under the guidance of
+which the action had been learned, is reported by Lloyd Morgan.[8] He had
+brought up in his study a brood of ducks. They had had a bath every
+morning in a tin tray. After a while, the tray was placed empty in its
+accustomed place. The ducks got into it and went through all their
+ordinary ablutions. The next day, they again enjoyed the missing water,
+but not as long as on the first day. On the third day they gave up the
+useless practice of bathing in an empty tray.
+
+In three days ducklings eliminate a habit which has become useless,
+whereas generations after generations of men have gone through
+innumerable, time-wasting, often costly and painful ceremonies for results
+rarely secured, and, as we think, never directly secured by the magical or
+the religious ceremonies themselves. There is here a curious point of
+psychology: animals establish habits under the guidance of immediate
+results while man develops the magical art and Religion _despite_ the
+usual absence of the results sought after. The very possibility of
+deceiving himself reveals the superiority of man over animals, for
+self-deception requires a degree of independence from sense-observation, a
+capacity of constructive imagination, a susceptibility to auto-suggestion,
+not to be found in animals. That the first glimmer of these capacities
+should have plunged man in the darkness of primitive Magic and Religion,
+and made him the ridiculous fool he appears to be by the side of the
+matter-of-fact, intelligent animal is, however, a very striking and
+singular fact.
+
+If the constant and immediate appearance of the desired results does not
+seem necessary to the establishment of Magic and Religion, it should not
+be thought, however, that these arts are altogether useless. On the
+contrary, they are, even independently of the results at which they aim,
+of a most substantial value to the cause of individual and social
+development. Let it be said first, concerning the expected results, that
+they happen more frequently, perhaps, than I may have seemed to imply.
+When, for instance, the rain ceremonies are performed during a spell of
+dry weather, success, more or less distant, always crowns the efforts of
+the magicians: the rain does come and the earth does bring forth its
+fruits. The ceremonies for the healing of disease are often followed by
+the recovery of the patient, however absurd the treatment may have been.
+One should not forget, in this connection, the considerable effect of
+suggestion upon the credulous savage. Many cures are, no doubt, performed
+in this manner by the medicine-man. Davenport, speaking of tribes of Puget
+Sound, says: 'Their cure for disease consists in the members of the cult
+shaking in a circle about a sick person, dressed in ceremonial costume.
+The religious practitioner waves a cloth in front of the patient, with a
+gentle fanning motion, and, blowing at the same time, proceeds to drive
+the disease out of the body, beginning at the feet and working upward. The
+assistant stands ready to seize the disease with his cloth when it is
+driven out of the head! And they are able to boast of many real cures.'[9]
+A psychologist is not inclined to doubt the report of Curr, that among the
+aborigines of Victoria persons who knew themselves to have been devoted to
+destruction with magical ceremonies have pined away and died,[10] nor
+that of Howitt, who, alluding to the habit of the medicine-men of certain
+tribes to knock a man insensible in order to remove the kidney fat for
+magical purposes, writes, 'In the Kurnai tribe men have died believing
+themselves to have been deprived of their fat.'[11]
+
+But the intended results form only a part, and that perhaps not the most
+important, of the gains to be credited to the practice of Magic and of
+Religion. The most noteworthy of these unsought by-products are:--(1) The
+gratification of the lust for power. The Magician and the Priest are
+mediators between superior, mysterious powers and their fellow-men. The
+sense of mastery over, or communion with, these powers, and the respect
+and fear with which Magicians and Priests are regarded, are, of
+themselves, almost sufficient to keep up these practices.(2) Both these
+modes of behaviour, but especially Magic, appeal to the gambling instinct.
+All men crave excitement; the savage is no exception. In the daring game
+in which the rain-maker or the disease-healer engages, the high tension
+of the gambling-table is, to a certain extent, present. (3) Less obvious,
+perhaps, than the preceding advantages, but not less valuable, is the
+general mental stimulation induced by Magic and Religion. Magic is the
+great social play of the savage. If animal plays serve a highly valuable
+purpose in affording practice in sense-observation and motor-co-ordination,
+Magic makes its chief call upon the imagination; in this consists one of
+its most far-reaching values. It becomes a training for the achievement of
+those higher mental syntheses requiring the momentary disregard of the
+actual sense-impressions, from which it is so difficult to liberate
+oneself, in behalf of the accumulated experience of a whole life.
+
+The second objection to the assumption that the trial-and-error method
+could have led to the establishment of magical and religious habits arises
+from the inability of animals to act towards unperceived objects as if
+they were actually present. A dog never welcomes by gambols or licks the
+hand of an absent friend, while Religion, and at times Magic, show
+primitive man in more or less systematic relations with powers he has
+never sensed. When the Shaman draws lines upon the sand, describes
+various curves with his arms, utters sundry incantations, he does not
+address a power he perceives, nor even one he has really seen, although he
+may believe that he, or some one else, has seen it. That animals are moved
+to action by memories of past perceptions, is, of course, not open to
+doubt. Their whole life is a long testimony to that ability. Any one will
+recall instances of chains of concerted actions indicating clearly, on the
+part of some one of the higher animals, domesticated or wild, the
+anticipation of a particular person, object, or event. What they never do,
+is to behave as if the remembered object was really present, though not
+sensed. H. Spencer, discussing adversely A. Comte's opinion that
+fetichistic conceptions are formed by the higher animals, relates the
+following observation concerning a retriever who had learned for herself
+to perform an 'act of propitiation.' She had associated the fetching of
+game with the pleasure of the person to whom she brought it, and so,
+'after wagging her tail and grinning, she would perform this act of
+propitiation as nearly as practicable in the absence of a dead bird.
+Seeking about, she would pick up a dead leaf, a bit of paper, a twig, or
+other small object, and would bring it with renewed manifestations of
+friendliness. Some kindred state of mind it is which, I believe, prompts
+the savage to certain fetichistic observances.'[12] So far the dog could
+go, but she could not have imagined the presence of an unseen being and
+behaved towards him in the same manner. Another significant point is that
+the absent objects towards which animals may direct their actions are
+always, so far as one may judge, identical with those actually sensed by
+them at some time, _i.e._ their behaviour never shows that they have
+transformed, imaginatively, objects with which their senses have made them
+familiar. Whereas man can not only believe in the presence of unseen
+objects, but he can also imagine beings never actually sensed by him, and
+behave towards them according to the traits and capacities with which he
+has endowed them.
+
+There are observations on record which compel the qualification of the
+assertion, I may have seemed to make in the preceding paragraph, of a
+clean break between man and animals. Certain dogs are thrown into
+paroxysms of fear by peals of thunder, and run into hiding. Darwin relates
+how his dog, 'full grown and very sensible,' growled fiercely and barked
+whenever an open parasol standing at some distance was moved by a slight
+breeze. He is of the opinion that the dog 'must have reasoned to himself,
+in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent
+cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no
+stranger had a right to be on his territory.'[13] Romanes, in a short and
+interesting paper entitled 'Fetichism in Animals,'[14] after reporting the
+preceding illustration, relates this observation touching a remarkably
+'intelligent,' 'pugnacious,' and 'courageous' dog. 'The terrier [Skye] in
+question, like many other dogs, used to play with dry bones, by tossing
+them in the air, throwing them to a distance, and generally giving them
+the appearance of animation, in order to give himself the ideal pleasure
+of worrying them. On one occasion, therefore, I tied a long and fine
+thread to a dry bone, and gave him the latter to play with. After he had
+tossed it about for a short time, I took an opportunity, when it had
+fallen at a distance from him, and while he was following it up, of gently
+drawing it away from him by means of the long and invisible thread.
+Instantly his whole demeanour changed. The bone which he had previously
+pretended to be alive, now began to look as if it really were alive, and
+his astonishment knew no bounds. He first approached it with nervous
+caution as Mr. Spencer describes, but as the slow receding motion
+continued, and he became quite certain that the movement could not be
+accounted for by any residuum of the force which he had himself
+communicated, his astonishment developed into dread, and he ran to conceal
+himself under some articles of furniture, there to behold at a distance
+the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life.' Certain instances of
+instinctive fear of harmless things may help to interpret the preceding
+observations. G. Stanley Hall mentions a little girl who would scream when
+she saw feathers floating through the air. To keep another child in a
+room, it was sufficient to place a feather in the keyhole.[15]
+
+Shall we hold that these animals interpreted the unusual experiences
+reported above as the work of hidden beings of the kind known to them, or
+shall we agree rather with Lloyd Morgan, Romanes, Spencer, and others, in
+thinking that their behaviour indicated merely surprise, astonishment, and
+fear at the unexpected movements of familiar objects? That explanation is
+probably sufficient. The failure of an object to fit in with the
+psycho-physiological attitude of expectation which past experience has
+taught us to assume brings about the sudden disturbance called surprise,
+astonishment, or fear. It is in substance what would happen to any person
+if, on opening his bed in the dark, his hands came in contact with some
+object concealed in it. Personalisation of the unexpected object is not
+necessary to cause fright. And yet, who shall say that in none of these
+instances is there anything corresponding to the anthropomorphic
+interpretation of natural event so common among men of low culture? Does
+not the growling of Darwin's dog indicate as much? It would seem to me an
+unjustifiably dogmatic assertion to affirm that no animal can think of
+thunder as caused by a being like those with which his senses have made
+him familiar. Were he to do so, he would do as the savage who projects his
+ordinary notion of animated beings behind inanimate phenomena. Creative
+imagination is not any more required for such an interpretation than for
+the belief in survival after death when it is suggested by apparitions in
+dreams or trances. It is quite in point, at any rate, to affirm that man
+and beasts are much nearer to each other, regarding the possibility of
+interpreting animistically certain striking natural events, than most
+people are willing to admit.
+
+The most significant difference between men and animals is not found in
+the fact that animals may be unable to interpret animistically certain
+striking natural phenomena--an opinion open to question--but in their
+inability to _fix_ by means of communicable signs any fleeting animistic
+interpretation which might chance to cross their mind. Without the
+advantage conferred by speech, upon even the lowest savages, to hold,
+clarify, keep alive, and bring to fruition impressions of this evanescent
+nature, I do not see how a stable belief in animism could have been
+established. The decisive role played by language appears forcibly when
+one considers the part it takes in introducing dream experiences into
+waking life. The baffling evanescence of dreams caught sight of on
+awakening is familiar to every one. Unless one succeeds in putting them in
+linguistic form they are soon completely lost; verbal expression makes
+them part and parcel of our mental possessions.
+
+The mental differences between man and the higher animals to which the
+presence of Magic and Religion is to be referred, are not in themselves
+startling, however considerable their consequences may have been.
+Psychological analysis leaves absolutely no standing ground to those who
+insist upon interpreting the advent of Religion as the manifestation of
+essentially new kinds of powers, of the birth of a 'spiritual life,' for
+instance. We hope to have made clear that the use of this term in this
+connection constitutes a misrepresentation of the facts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS AND GODS
+
+
+Every savage tribe known to us has already passed beyond the naturistic
+stage of development. The living savages believe in ghosts, in spirits,
+and all of them, perhaps, also in particular spirits elevated to the
+dignity of gods. Whence these ideas of unseen personal beings? They may be
+traced to four independent sources.
+
+(1) _States of temporary loss of consciousness--trances, swoons, sleep,
+etc._--seem in themselves sufficient to suggest to ignorant observers the
+existence of 'doubles,' _i.e._ of beings dwelling within the body,
+animating it, and able to absent themselves from it for a time or
+permanently. These alleged beings have been called 'ghosts' or 'souls.'
+The belief in a second life of the dead would also spring easily enough
+from these observations.
+
+(2) _Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity,
+etc._, of persons still living or dead, seem also sufficient to lead to a
+belief in ghosts and in survival after death.
+
+These two distinct classes of facts have no doubt co-operated in the
+production of the belief in ghosts, so that I shall refer to them in the
+sequel as the double origin of the ghost-belief. Echos, and reflections in
+water and in polished surfaces may have played a subsidiary role in
+establishing, or confirming, the belief in ghosts and in spirits.
+
+(3) When discussing animal behaviour, we saw reasons to admit that a
+fleeting personification of objects moving in an unusual way might be
+within the mental possibilities of the higher animals. The third
+independent source of belief in unseen personal agents is _the spontaneous
+personification of striking natural phenomena, storms, tornadoes, thunder,
+sudden spring-vegetation, etc._ The report of Tanner[16] that one night
+Picheto (a North American Chief), becoming much alarmed at the violence of
+a storm, got up, offered some tobacco to the thunder and entreated it to
+stop, should not excite surprise even though it should refer to the
+lowest savage. There is, of course, a long way between the sudden,
+temporary, and isolated personification of a natural phenomenon and the
+stable and generalised belief in the existence of personal agents behind
+visible nature. What we mean to assert here is merely that the
+systematised belief can have arisen out of the impulsive and occasional
+personification of awe-striking and frightening spectacles.
+
+(4) Many persons have observed with surprise the apparition in young
+children of the problem of creation. A child notices a curiously-shaped
+stone, and asks who made it. He is told that it was formed in the stream
+by the water. Then, suddenly, he throws out, in quick succession,
+questions that are as much exclamations of astonishment as queries, 'Who
+made the stream, who the mountain, who the earth?' _The necessity of a
+Maker is, no doubt, borne in upon the savage at a very early time_, not
+upon every member of a tribe, but upon some peculiarly gifted individual,
+who imparts to his fellows the awe-striking idea of a mysterious,
+all-powerful Creator. The form under which the Creator is imagined is, of
+course, derived from the beings with which his senses have made the savage
+familiar.
+
+In what chronological order did the three kinds of unseen beings appear?
+Which was first: ghosts, nature-beings, or creator? Our present knowledge
+does not provide an answer to this query. But this one may venture to
+affirm: they need not have appeared in the same order everywhere. It is
+conceivable that among certain groups of men the idea of a creator first
+attained clearness and influence, while elsewhere the idea of ghosts
+implanted itself before the others.
+
+A question of greater importance to the student of the origin of Religion
+is that of the lineage of the first god or gods, _i.e._ of the first
+unseen, personal agents with whom men entered into relations definite and
+influential enough to deserve the name Religion. Are they descended from
+ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? I say, 'descended' from
+ghosts, for ghosts have not, originally, all the qualities required of a
+divinity. They are at first hardly greater than men, though somewhat
+different. They must be magnified and differentiated from human beings if
+they are to generate the religious attitude. A comparison of the
+double-source of the ghost-belief with the source of the belief in
+nature-beings suggests the following remarks. Phenomena belonging to
+classes one and two necessarily lead to a belief in unseen _man-like_
+beings. The familiar relation of ghosts with the tribe, and also the great
+number of them, offer a definite resistance to the process of deification.
+It is otherwise with the personified nature-powers, for they are not
+necessarily, like ghosts, mere dead men in another life. In conceiving of
+an agent animating nature, the imagination is not limited to the thought
+of a particular human being, not even of a human being at all. The thunder
+might be the voice of some monstrous animal. The surpassing variety, the
+magnitude and magnificence of nature, stimulate the imagination into more
+original activity than the apparitions of men and women in dreams or in
+trances. For these reasons, if the choice was between ghosts and
+nature-beings, it would be advisable to favour the hypothesis that the
+first gods were derived from the spontaneous personification of striking
+natural events. But the idea of a creator must take precedence of ghosts
+and nature-beings in the making of Religion, for a world-creator possesses
+from the first the greatness necessary to the object of a cult, and the
+creature who recognises a creator can hardly fail to feel his relationship
+to him. A Maker cannot, moreover, be an enemy to those who issue from
+him, but must, it seems, appear as the Great Ancestor, benevolently
+inclined towards his offspring. Incomparable greatness, creative power,
+benevolence, are as many attributes favourable to the appearance of a
+Religion in the high sense which, as we shall see, W. Robertson Smith
+gives to the word.
+
+The order in which appeared the three kinds of unseen agents is of
+considerable importance, for if, for instance, the ghost-belief was first,
+it seems unavoidable that ghosts should have been projected into natural
+objects and used to explain natural phenomena. It is a task for the
+historian of Religion to trace the rise of the idea of God in its several
+possible sources, and to indicate in each particular case the contribution
+of each source to the making of the earliest gods.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Belief in the existence of unseen, anthropopathic beings is not
+Religion._ It is only when man enters into relation with them that
+Religion comes into existence. The passage from the animistic
+interpretation of nature, or from the mere belief in ghosts, or in a
+creator, to Active Religion is not to be taken as a matter of course, for
+it may require on the one hand, as we have said, a transformation of the
+man-like or animal-like unseen beings, such as will make entering into
+relation with them possible and worth while, and, on the other, the
+invention of ways and means to that end, or, at least, the adaptation of
+old habits of behaviour to the requirements of the new relation. The
+slowness with which our modern ritual has been envolved should be
+sufficient to undeceive any one inclined to think that the establishment
+of the initial religious rites presented no difficulty.
+
+That a belief in ghosts may coincide with only a pre-religious stage of
+culture is not a mere supposition. There are tribes in South-East
+Australia among which it is customary to make fires in the graves, and to
+place in them water, food, and weapons. Yet we are told that these people
+have no system of propitiation or of worship. It appears probable that in
+certain instances of this sort, the only motive of action is benevolence.
+They wish the ghost to be able to warm himself, eat, drink, and defend
+himself against enemies. At times, however, the promptings of fear are
+discernible, as, for instance, when the legs of the corpse are broken in
+order that he may not roam at night. It seems that originally ghosts are
+not endowed with sufficient mischievous or benevolent power to cause the
+appearance and the organisation of propitiatory reactions. But even when
+some particular ghost or spirit has been fabled into awe-striking
+magnitude, systematic worship is not necessarily present. How far the
+deification process can go without bringing with it active relations, is
+well shown in the case of the 'Father' of the tribes of South-East
+Australia. Different tribes call him by different names, _Daramulun_,
+_Baiame_, etc. Howitt tells us that Daramulun is an anthropomorphic,
+supernatural being who used to dwell upon the earth, but now lives in a
+land beyond the sky. He can make himself visible, and then appears in the
+form of an old man of the Australian race. 'He is imagined as the ideal of
+those qualities which are, according to their standard, virtues worthy of
+being imitated. Such would be a man who is skilful in the use of weapons
+of offence and defence, all-powerful in magic, but generous and liberal to
+his people; who does no injury nor violence to any one, yet treats with
+severity any breaches of custom or of morality. Such is, according to my
+knowledge of the Australian tribes, their ideal of the Head-man, and
+naturally it is that of the Biamban, the master of the sky-country.' Now,
+despite their belief in this definite, powerful, and benevolent Father,
+'there is not any worship of him'; but 'the dances round the figure of
+clay and the invocating of his name by the medicine-men, certainly might
+have led up to it.'[17] For my part, I see here an instance of what I have
+called _Passive Religion_. The point of special interest to us is that
+nothing more than these simplest of rites co-exists with the belief in a
+being so definite and elevated so high above ordinary spirits and above
+man as is this All-Father of the Australians.
+
+It seems highly probable that for generations the relations maintained
+with ghosts, nature-beings, and creators, by primitive man were too
+occasional and unofficial to permit of our regarding them as anything more
+than steps preliminary to the formation of Positive Religion.
+
+Rites and ceremonies serve, in addition to their ostensible purpose, to
+complete the work of fixation begun by language. It is only when a belief
+has become embodied in a system of actions that it has attained the full
+measure of reality and durability of which it is capable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MAGIC AND RELIGION
+
+
+In the preceding section, I have compared animal with human behaviour in
+an attempt to single out the psychological traits whose presence in man
+accounts for his possession of Religion and of Magic. I must now complete
+the characterisation and the account of the origin of these two higher
+types of behaviour.
+
+The relation obtaining between Magic and Religion has been variously
+understood. Most authorities hold that Magic preceded Religion, and that
+they are in some way genetically related. In the following pages we shall
+argue in support of two opinions: (1) the primary forms of Magic probably
+antedated Religion; (2) whether Magic antedated Religion or not, Religion
+arose independently of Magic; they are different in principle and
+independent in origin.
+
+But the word Magic includes an almost endless number of practices so far
+quite inadequately classified. We cannot go on without first marking out
+at least its more prominent groups. And since the common bond of these
+practices is neither a common purpose (Magic serves to gratify every kind
+of desire), nor a common method (the magician's methods are literally
+numberless), but the non-personal nature of the power pressed into
+service, we shall make use of this last element as a means of
+classification. Three groups are thus obtained.
+
+=Magic classified.=--_Class 1_ is characterised by the absence of any idea
+of a power belonging to the operator or his instrument and passing from
+either one of them to the object of the magical art. To this class belong
+many instances of so-called sympathetic Magic;[18] a good many of the
+taboo customs; most charms; the casting of lots, when a spirit or god is
+not supposed to guide the cast; most modern superstitions, those, for
+instance, regarding Friday, the number thirteen, horse-shoes, planting
+when the tide is coming in. In these instances the effect is thought of
+as following upon the alleged cause, without the mediation of a force
+conceived as passing, let us say, from the warm arrow to the wound and
+irritating it. The idea of power is reduced here to its least possible
+complexity.
+
+_Class 2._ A power, not itself personal, is supposed to belong to the
+magician, to his instrument, or to particular substances, and to pass
+into, or act upon, the object. Howitt relates how some native Australians
+begged him not to carry in a bag containing quartz crystals a tooth,
+extracted at an initiation ceremony. They thought that if he did so, the
+evil power of the crystals would enter the tooth and so injure the body to
+which it had belonged.[19] The potency of many charms is of this nature,
+while others have a fetichistic significance, _i.e._ they involve the
+action of spirits, and so do not belong to this class. Rubbing oneself
+with, or eating the fat, or another portion, of a brave and strong man in
+order to make oneself courageous and powerful, belongs also to this second
+class, together with most instances of contagion-magic. So does, usually,
+the power defined in the following passage and the similar powers believed
+in and used in other than Melanesian populations: 'That invisible power
+which is believed by the natives to cause all such effects as transcend
+their conception of the regular course of nature, and to reside in
+spiritual beings, whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the
+ghosts of the dead, being imparted to them, to their names and to various
+things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes, and indeed objects of
+all sorts, is that generally known as _mana_.... No man, however, has this
+power of his own; all that he does is done by the aid of personal beings,
+ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said, as a spirit can, to be _mana_
+himself ... he can be said to have mana.'[20]
+
+_Class 3._ Perhaps a special class should be made of the cases in which
+the magician feels as if his will-effort was the efficient factor. This is
+often true of spells, of incantations, and of solemn curses. A man
+addressing the magical spear, saying, 'Go straight, go straight and kill
+him,' feels no doubt that, somehow, by the words in which quivers his
+whole soul he directs the spear on its errand of death.
+
+Though Magic does not make an anthropopathic appeal it may, and frequently
+does, bring to bear its peculiar coercitive virtue upon anthropopathic
+beings. It aims then at compelling souls, spirits or gods, into doing the
+operator's will, or in preventing them from doing their own. In
+necromancy, spirits are summoned by means of spells and incantations. In
+old Egypt the art of dealing coercitively with spirits and gods reached a
+high development. Maspero, speaking of a strange belief regarding names,
+says, 'when the god in a moment of forgetfulness or of kindness had taught
+them what they wanted [the sacred names], there was nothing left for him
+but to obey them.'[21] At Eleusis, it was not the name but the intonation
+of the voice of the magician which produced the mysterious results.[22]
+But whether Magic acts upon personal or impersonal objects, its effective
+power is ever impersonal.
+
+I would not give the impression in this attempt at classification, that
+the conceptions of the savage are clear and definite. I hold them to be,
+on the contrary, hazy and fluid. What appears to him impersonal one moment
+may suddenly assume the characteristics of a spirit. _Mana_, for
+instance, although usually an impersonal force stored into plants, stones,
+animals or men, assumes at times truly personal traits; it becomes the god
+himself. One should not be surprised to meet with cases that fall between
+rather than in the classes, for the sharp lines of demarcation it suits us
+to draw are not often found in nature.
+
+And now we return to our two theses.
+
+=1. The Probable Priority of Magic.=--Certain historical facts might be
+held to support the pre-religious origin of Magic. As one descends from
+the higher to the lower social levels, Religion dwindles and Magic grows.
+In the lowest societies of which we have extensive and accurate knowledge,
+the Central Australian tribes, Religion is represented by mere rudiments,
+whereas Magic is everywhere and always in evidence. I have had occasion in
+a preceding section to quote Howitt with regard to the slight role played
+by Religion among the South-East Australians. The presence of Religion in
+the lives of the tribes inhabiting the central portions of Australia is
+still less obvious. Frazer reflects the views of Spencer and Gillen, of
+Howitt, and probably of every recent first-hand student of that country,
+when he writes: 'Among the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savages as
+to whom we possess accurate information, Magic is universally practised,
+whereas Religion, in the sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the
+higher powers, seems to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in
+Australia are magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can
+influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but
+nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.'[23] If we may
+trust our knowledge of other savages, the general fact thus affirmed of
+the native Australians holds good with regard to every other uncivilised
+tribe.
+
+But as the least civilised of existing tribes are far from being
+'primitive' in the true sense of the word, it could be argued that Magic
+is, after all, the outcome of the corruption of a primitive Religion, of
+which almost nothing remains in the savage tribes of the present day. And
+so we shall have to rest our case not upon historical evidences, but upon
+considerations regarding the psychological nature of Magic and Religion,
+and upon analogies we may discover between them and certain facts
+observed in children and in adults of uncivilised races.
+
+In his attempt to support the belief in the priority of Magic, Frazer, who
+has put every student of Religion in his debt by his monumental work,
+affirms its greater simplicity when compared with Religion. The opinion
+itself is tenable, but the defence of it, made as it is from the
+standpoint of the old English associationism, is unfortunately worthless.
+'Magic,' he tells us, 'is nothing but a mistaken application of the very
+simplest and most elementary process of the mind, namely, the association
+of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity,' while 'Religion assumes
+the operation of conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the
+visible screen of nature. Obviously the concept of personal agent is more
+complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of
+ideas.... The very beasts associate the ideas of things that are like each
+other or that have been found together in their experience.... But who
+attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena are worked by a
+multitude of invisible animals or by one enormous and prodigiously strong
+animal behind the scenes?'[24] It is undoubtedly true that the mind of
+man tends to pass from an object to others like it, or experienced at the
+same time, but this psychological fact does not in itself account for
+Magic. The mind of animals is regulated in a similar manner. In
+spring-time the sight of a feather makes the bird think of nest-building,
+and the smell and sight of his master's coat brings the master to the
+dog's mind. Yet animals do not practise the magical art. This fact should
+be sufficient to make one realise the insufficiency of 'a simple
+[mistaken] recognition of the similarity and contiguity of ideas' as an
+explanation of the origin of Magic. An animal might observe the
+colour-likeness between carrots and jaundice (not, however, unless
+practical dealings with them had attracted his attention to the colour),
+and 'coat' and 'master' might follow each other in a dog's mind. But in
+order to treat the coat as he would the master, and in order to eat
+carrots or give them to be eaten for the cure of jaundice, there is
+required, in addition to the association, the belief that whatever is done
+to the coat will be suffered by the master, and that the eating of carrots
+will cure the disease. It is the existence of these ideas with their
+motor and affective values and of their dynamic connection which makes
+Magic possible in beings subject to the laws of association. This
+fundamental difference between mere association of ideas and the essential
+mental processes involved in Magic, Frazer has completely overlooked. The
+difference may be further illustrated by the instance of a dog biting in a
+rage the stick with which he is being beaten. He is indeed doing to the
+stick what he would like to do to the man. But in attacking the stick he
+does not conceive that, although the stick is not the man, the injury done
+to it will hurt the man. His action is blindly impulsive, while the form
+of Magic in question involves generalisations and other mental processes
+not expressed by the laws of association.[25]
+
+If magical actions cannot be deduced from the principle of association,
+they can at least be classified according to the kind of association they
+illustrate. For, although the various ideas brought together in Magic, in
+a relation of cause and effect, are frequently said to have come together
+by 'chance,' some of the conditions under which they have in fact become
+connected are expressed in the universal laws of association, namely,
+association by similarity or contrast, by contiguity or spatial
+opposition, and by emotional congruity or disparity. Whenever magical acts
+have been classified, it has been according to the principle of
+association.[26] But every kind of activity involving mental operations
+falls in some of its relations under the laws of association, hence the
+relative unfruitfulness of these classifications, hence also our attempt
+at grouping magical practices according to a factor of greater
+significance, namely, the nature of the power they involve.
+
+=2. The Independence of Religion from Magic.=--The following psychological
+arguments appear to me to go a long way towards proving that _magical
+behaviour has had an origin independent of the animistic[27] belief_, and
+that some of its forms, at least, antedated it, and therefore also
+Religion:--
+
+(_a_) The absorbing interest found by young children in the _use_ of
+things, and their complete indifference at first to the _modus operandi_,
+point, it would seem, to a stage in human development at which the
+explanation of things is not yet desired. It is well known that long
+before a child asks 'how?' he wearies his guardians with the question,
+'what for?'[28] He wants to know what things are good for, and, in
+particular, what _he_ can do with them before he cares for an
+understanding of their origin, and of their mechanism. This keen interest
+in the production of results, this curiosity about the practical meaning
+of things, is apparently quite independent of any abstract idea of power.
+Since the child passes through a pre-interpretative stage, may we not
+admit a corresponding period in racial development during which no
+explanatory soul-theory, no animistic philosophy, is entertained? A mental
+attitude such as this would make Religion impossible, while it would
+provide the essential condition for a Magic of our first class.
+
+(_b_) Children--and adult savages resemble children in many respects--like
+to amuse themselves by setting up prohibitions and backing them up with
+threats of punishment. 'If you do this,' they will say, 'that will happen
+to you.' The 'this' and the 'that' have usually no logical connection with
+each other, neither is there in the mind of the child any thought of a
+particular kind of power, or agent, meting out the punishment. This kind
+of play is strikingly similar to a large number of magical practices. Can
+it not be regarded as the prototype of most taboo customs? In taboo there
+is usually no logical and no qualitative relation between the prohibition
+and the punishment. Neither is there, ordinarily, any notion of a
+particular agent carrying out the threat. It involves, it seems, nothing
+more than the assumption of a causal connection between two facts brought
+together by 'chance' association under the pressure of a desire for food
+or success at war, or for the enforcement of a rule of conduct.[29] The
+punishment announced is anything on the efficacy of which one may choose
+to rely. In Madagascar conjugal fidelity is enforced by the threat that
+the betrayed husband will be killed or wounded in the war; among the
+indigenous tribes of Sarawak, the belief is that the camphor obtained by
+the men in the jungle will evaporate if the women are unfaithful during
+the absence of their husbands, while in East Africa, the husband would, in
+the same eventuality, be killed or hurt by the elephant he is hunting.[30]
+The high sanction which the requirements of social life give to beliefs of
+this sort is readily understood.
+
+(_c_) It is a fact of common observation that in passionate moments, men
+of every degree of culture act, in the absence of the object of their
+passion, more or less as if it was present. A man grinds his teeth, shakes
+his fist, growls at the absent enemy; a mother presses to her breast and
+talks fondly to the departed babe. The pent-up motor tendencies must find
+an outlet. To restrain every external sign of one's desires or intentions
+when under great emotional excitement is unendurable pain. By the sick-bed
+of one beloved, one must do something, however useless to him. Who shall
+say that we do not have in this natural tendency the origin of the large
+class of magical acts represented by sticking pins into, or burning, an
+effigy? The less a person is under the control of reason, the more likely
+is he, not only to yield to promptings of this order, but also to be
+seduced by his wish into a belief in their efficacy.
+
+If any one finds it difficult to admit that the savage can so easily be
+deceived, I would direct his attention to the well-known instances of
+children's self-deceptions. Most of them behave, at a certain age, as if
+their dolls were alive and, to all appearances, there are some moments
+when they think so. What they think at other moments is another matter. We
+need not suppose that the savage cannot take, at times, a critical
+attitude and perhaps undeceive himself. It is sufficient that at other
+moments, when under the pressure of needs or in the excitement
+accompanying ceremonies of considerable social significance or of much
+personal importance, he should be able to assume the attitude of the
+believer. The behaviour of certain mentally deranged persons throws some
+light on this point. Such a person may believe that his hands are always
+dirty and be constantly washing them. If reasoned with, he may perhaps be
+convinced that they cannot be dirty. Yet a few seconds later he will
+exclaim, 'But I feel they are dirty,' and return to the wash-basin. The
+savage is under the control of his impulses and feelings to a degree
+approaching that of the person instanced. In this connection, the effect
+of repetition, and of the tribal sanction obtained by magical customs,
+should not be overlooked. They tend to make doubt and criticism next to
+impossible.
+
+What need is there in cases of this kind to introduce a middle term
+between the actions of the magician and their expected effect? None
+whatsoever. The thought of an efficient agent or power passing out of the
+magician or of his instrument to work upon the victim is no necessary part
+of this type of Magic.
+
+(_d_) The belief at the root of a great variety of magical practices, that
+'like' produces 'like,' may have arisen in still other ways than the one
+just indicated. Nothing is more common than the invisible passage of
+things, be they heat, cold, light, thunderbolt, odours, diseases, etc.,
+from one person or object to another, either by contact or through space.
+The frequent instances of diseases spreading by infection among men,
+animals, and vegetables, seem in themselves sufficient to suggest the
+belief that 'like' produces 'like.' The idea of contagion must have
+appeared very early indeed. Now, as the savage is quite unable to
+distinguish between the different agencies involved in the variety of
+experiences of this sort, he cannot draw the line between the 'likes' that
+really produce 'likes' and those that do not; hence his very strange
+expectations. This class of Magic also is independent of the conception of
+an agent effecting the connection between the objects related as cause and
+effect.
+
+Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, the doctrine of animism has become
+classical. This passage from _Primitive Culture_,[31] 'What men's eyes
+behold is but the instrument to be used, or the material to be shaped,
+while behind it there stands some prodigious but half-human creature, who
+grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath,' expresses, no
+doubt, fairly correctly, a very early philosophy of life. I would not
+object even to its being termed the earliest philosophy, provided it be
+granted that the progress of the human race was already well under way
+when it appeared. But when it is assumed, as it is by many, that the
+animistic conception of nature is necessary to, and antedates, the
+establishment of Magic, I must dissent and affirm that a very large number
+of magical practices neither presuppose, nor in any way involve, a belief
+in animism, and that there are good reasons for considering them
+original, _i.e._ not corruptions of practices primitively implying that
+belief. So much I trust to have shown in the preceding pages.[32]
+
+I do not in the least deny that some of the magical practices in existence
+are derived from actions of a different character. Many of the
+'superstitions' of civilised countries have had a long history. Several of
+the marriage customs; for instance, the cutting of the cake by the bride,
+and the lifting of the bride over the threshold, are vestiges of actions
+once necessary or useful.[33] But it would be absurd to conclude from the
+existence of derived magical practices that Magic, as a whole, is to be
+accounted for on a theory of 'lapsed intelligence.'
+
+=Magic and Religion combine but never fuse.=--When ghosts and
+nature-beings have become mental possessions of the savage, one may expect
+the sphere of Magic to extend so as to include these unseen, mysterious
+beings. Why should not the magical power take effect upon ghosts and gods
+as well as upon men? The savage, like everybody else, is anxious to use
+every available means to secure his preservation and his advancement. Why
+then should he not use both Magic and the offering of food? From the
+moment Religion appears, until the efficiency of Magic is totally
+discredited, we may expect to find these two modes of behaviour associated
+in men's dealings with gods, except, however, where the god is clearly
+thought of as a world-creator. For the savage could hardly have the
+presumption of attempting to control a power he recognises as the maker of
+the human race and of the world. Here are two instances of the combination
+of Magic with Religion. 'In the Babar Archipelago, when a woman desires to
+have a child, she invites a man, who is himself the father of a large
+family, to pray on her behalf to Upulero, the spirit of the sun. A doll is
+made of red cotton, which the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would
+suckle it. Then the father of many children takes a fowl and holds it by
+the legs to the woman's head, saying, "O Upulero, make use of the fowl;
+let fall, let descend a child, I beseech you, I entreat you, let a child
+fall into my hands and on my lap." Then he asks the woman, "Has the child
+come?" and she answers, "Yes, it is sucking already."... Lastly, the bird
+is killed, and laid, together with some betel, on the domestic plate of
+sacrifice....'[34] In this ceremony prayer and sacrifice to a god are
+associated with magical practices of a mimetic and sympathetic character.
+In a large number of ceremonies, the god is dealt with religiously in
+order to secure from him 'power,' and then Magic is added to make the
+power effective. In old Egypt one of the formulas according to which the
+help of gods was secured began with an appeal to them under their popular
+names. It was a prayer which they were free to heed or to neglect. Then
+followed, in order to compel them to act, an adjuration introducing the
+mystical names, 'those written at birth in their heart by their father and
+mother.'[35] The magician not only claimed the power to force the gods to
+do his bidding, but also, in case of disobedience, to punish them, even by
+destruction. Remnants of magical dealings with gods are found even in the
+Christian Religion, if we are to believe the authors quoted by Frazer.[36]
+Magic and Religion are so closely interwoven in the life of peoples of
+low culture that some authors have affirmed the impossibility of
+separating them. Their affirmation need not be contradicted unless it be
+intended to mean that originally they were one and the same thing. However
+closely interwoven they may be, Magic and Religion remain distinct, as in
+the above instances. One might say, borrowing the language of the chemist,
+that they do not form compounds, but only mixtures.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+=What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion? Frazer's
+Theory.=--Our conclusions are, so far, that Magic has had an independent
+origin, that it very probably antedated Religion, and that they associate
+for common purposes without ever fusing, for they are referable to
+different principles. Are we, then, driven to the opinion that even though
+Magic should have antedated Religion and been often combined with it in
+common undertakings, it has, nevertheless, contributed in no way to the
+establishment of Religion? That conclusion is not unavoidable. Frazer's
+conception presents an alternative which, however, we cannot accept. As he
+recognises not only a fundamental distinction, but even an opposition of
+principle between Magic and Religion, he cannot think of allowing the
+former a positive influence in the establishment of Religion. Yet he
+admits a genetic relation between them: it is, according to him, the
+recognition of the failure of Magic that is the cause of the worship of
+gods. 'I would suggest,' writes Frazer, '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.' When man saw that his magical
+actions were not the real cause of the activity of nature, it occurred to
+him 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 and
+brought about all the various series of events which he had hitherto
+believed to be dependent on his own Magic.... To these mighty beings,
+whose handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of
+nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on
+their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him
+with all good things.... In this, or some such way as this, the deeper
+minds may be conceived to have made the transition from Magic to
+Religion.'[37] Several obvious objections may be raised against this view.
+I would remark first of all that Frazer does not discredit the sources of
+the belief in ghosts and in nature-beings mentioned in the preceding
+section: sleep and trances; apparitions; the impulse to personify great
+and startling natural phenomena; the idea of creation. His hypothesis of
+the origin of Religion is, therefore, superfluous, unless he could show
+that the transition from Magic to Religion took place in the manner he
+suggests before the experiences and reflections we have named had given
+rise to the idea of god.
+
+The assumption on which Frazer's hypothesis rests, namely, that sagacious
+men of wild races persuaded themselves and their fellows of the
+inefficiency of Magic, seems clearly contradicted by the history of the
+relation of Magic to Religion, and also by the psychology of belief. On
+the latter ground, he may justly be accused of attributing neither enough
+influence to the will to believe nor to the support it receives from the
+many apparent or real successes of Magic. These successes, with the help
+of the several ways of accounting for failures without giving up the
+belief,[38] were in my opinion sufficient to support a belief in the
+efficiency of Magic until long after the birth of Religion. Is not that
+the conclusion we must draw from the recent spread of the spiritualistic
+movement, not only among the untutored, but even among representatives of
+our higher culture? The late gains of spiritism have been made despite
+numberless failures, the repeated discovery of deception, and the
+satisfactory scientific explanation of a large proportion of the alleged
+spiritistic facts, and thanks merely to a desire to believe, and to a few
+questionable facts not readily explained by accepted hypotheses. To
+suppose that before ghosts and nature-beings had been thought of and made
+great enough to exercise a practical influence upon men's conduct, there
+had existed, in the barbarous circumstances implied in the supposition,
+persons so keenly observant, so capable of scientific generalisation, and
+so free from the obscuring influences of passion as to be able to reject
+the many instances of apparent success of Magic, is to posit a miracle
+where a satisfactory natural explanation already exists.
+
+In _Magic and Religion_, Andrew Lang directs a vigorous and successful
+attack upon Frazer's hypothesis.[39] A part of his argument, based on
+generally accepted historical data, is summarised in this passage: 'If we
+find that the most backward race known to us believes in a power, yet
+propitiates him neither by prayer nor sacrifice, and if we find, as we do,
+that in many more advanced races in Africa and America, it is precisely
+the highest power which is left unpropitiated, then we really cannot argue
+that gods were first invented as power who could give good things, on
+receipt of other good things, sacrifice and prayer.'[40] He remarks, in
+addition, that although one would not expect people who had recognised the
+uselessness of Magic and turned to gods, to continue the development of
+the magical art, yet, in order to find the highest Magic one has to go to
+no less a civilisation than that of Japan, where gods are plentiful.
+
+Although the hypothesis that gods and Religion are the consequence of the
+recognition of the failure of Magic, must be rejected, it does not follow
+that two modes of activity in the service of common purposes, as are Magic
+and early Religion, do not act upon each other in many ways. If Magic was
+first in the field, we may believe that the satisfaction it gave to man by
+its results, apparent and real, and in providing him with a means of
+expressing his desires, tended to retard the establishment of any other
+method of securing the same ends. The habit of doing a thing in a
+particular manner always stands more or less in the way of the discovery
+of other ways of doing the same thing. So that Magic was, in these
+respects, a hindrance to the making of Religion. There is, however, a
+grain of truth in Frazer's hypothesis. Had Magic completely satisfied
+man's multifarious desires, he would, in all probability, have paid but
+scant attention to the gods, for it is in times of trial that man turns to
+them. It was thus greatly advantageous to the making of Religion that the
+inadequacy of Magic should have been felt. Moreover, Magic exercised, in
+ways mentioned before, a very considerable influence on the general mental
+growth of savage populations; in this sense also it may be said to have
+helped Religion.
+
+In a penetrating comparison of Magic with Religion, Marett[41] points out
+how easily our third class of Magic--Spell-Magic--assumes 'the garb of an
+affair between persons,' and thus approaches very close to Religion. But
+even when Magic involves the 'projection of an imperative will,' the
+fundamental difference between the two modes of behaviour remains quite
+distinct. In ancient Peru, when a war expedition was contemplated, they
+were wont to starve certain black sheep for some days and then slay them,
+uttering the incantation, 'As the hearts of these beasts are weakened, so
+let our enemies be weakened.' If this utterance is to be regarded as
+expressing an attempt to project the operator's 'will' upon the enemies,
+we are clearly in the realm of pure Magic. But if it is to be understood
+as addressed to a personal being, it is a prayer, and then we deal with an
+instance of the combination of Magic with Religion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+=Magic and the Origin of Science.=--A common opinion has it that Magic and
+not the mechanical type of behaviour is the precursor of science. Before
+bringing this chapter to a close, we shall try and determine in what
+sense this statement is to be understood.
+
+The reader will remember that after discriminating roughly, in the
+introduction, the three modes of behaviour observable in man, I added that
+the anthropopathic behaviour becomes Religion when it is directed to gods,
+and the mechanical becomes science when the principle of quantitative
+proportion it implies is definitively recognised. Frazer, who sets forth
+in his great book the magical origin of science, may stand as the
+representative of that theory. 'Magic,' he tells us, 'is next of kin to
+science,' for science 'assumes that in nature one event follows another
+necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any special
+spiritual or personal agency. Thus its fundamental conception is identical
+with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith,
+implicit, but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature ... his
+power [the magician's], great as he believes it to be, is by no means
+arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly
+conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of
+nature as conceived by him.... Thus the analogy between the magical and
+the scientific conception of the world is close. In both of them the
+succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being determined by
+immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated
+precisely.'[42] Upon this I observe, first, that the acknowledgment of a
+fixed relation between actions or beliefs and their results is not
+peculiar to Magic; it is implied also in Religion and, more perfectly, in
+mechanical behaviour. Salvation is by the right practice, or by the right
+faith, or both. The gods cannot be approached and conciliated in _any_
+way; worshipper, no less than magician, has to conform to a definite
+ritual. In certain not entirely barbarous communities salvation or
+damnation is held to follow, respectively, belief or disbelief in no less
+than thirty-nine articles! So that 'definite and certain succession of
+events,' their determination 'by immutable laws' to the elimination of
+caprice, chance, or accident, are expressions which apply, on the whole,
+as well to Religion as to Magic. These phrases do not denote a kinship of
+Magic to Science, which could not be claimed also by Religion.
+
+Turning to another side of the matter, we observe that Frazer finds it
+convenient to minimise, in this connection, the considerable share of the
+personal, _i.e._ of the capricious, the incalculable, in Magic. The
+personality of the magician introduces an indeterminate and undeterminable
+factor about which enough has been said in preceding sections. Nothing
+could be in more direct antagonism to the scientific attitude than these
+two factors: the influence accorded to the personality of the magician and
+the belief in occult powers belonging to particular objects and events. So
+that it is truer to the facts to say that the fundamental conception of
+science, so far from being identical with that of Magic, is absent from
+it. For the essential presupposition of science--the one that
+differentiates it alike from Magic and from Religion--is the
+acknowledgment of definite and constant _quantitative_ relations between
+causes and effects, relations which completely exclude the personal
+element and the occult. If that scientific presupposition is absent from
+Magic and from Religion, it is implicitly present in mechanical behaviour.
+The savage is nearer the scientific spirit and its method when he
+constructs a weapon to fit a particular purpose, or when he adjusts his
+bow and his arrow to the direction and the strength of the wind, than
+when he burns an enemy in effigy, abstains from sexual intercourse to
+promote success in the hunt, or exorcises diseases.
+
+What magic shares with science is not the belief in the fundamental
+principle we have named, but the desire to gain the mastery over the
+powers of nature and the practice of the experimental method. The
+experimentation of Magic is, however, so limited and so unconscious that
+it can hardly be assimilated to the modern scientific method. If any one
+were to turn to history for an argument in support of the thesis defended
+by Frazer, and point out that the alchemist is the lineal ancestor of the
+scientist, the sufficient answer would be--(1) Historical succession does
+not imply continuity of principle. Although Magic, Alchemy, and Science
+form an historical sequence, the fundamental principle of the last is not
+to be found in the others. (2) The clear recognition of the principle of
+fixed quantitative relations is, whenever and wherever it appears, the
+birth of Science and the death of both Magic and Alchemy. This last fact
+demonstrates clearly the fundamental enmity of these arts to the
+scientific principle.
+
+The discovery of the scientific principle was probably almost as much
+hindered by the false notions and the pernicious habits of mind
+encouraged by Magic, as furthered by the gain in general mental activity
+and knowledge which it brought about. Magic, no more than Religion,
+encourages the exact observation of external facts, but rather
+self-deception with regard to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE
+
+
+The failure to recognise in Religion three functionally related
+constituents--conation, feeling, and thought--is responsible for a
+confusing use of the term 'origin.' Some have said that Religion began
+with the belief in superhuman, mysterious beings; others that it had its
+origin in the emotional life, and these usually specify fear; while a
+third group have declared that its genesis is to be found in the
+will-to-live. At this stage of our inquiry the reader realises no doubt
+that these three utterances are incomplete, inasmuch as each one of them
+expresses either the origin, or the original form, of only one of the
+constituents of Religion.
+
+I have in the preceding sections dealt with the establishment of the
+religious attitude or behaviour and, afterwards, more specifically, with
+the origin of the god-idea. The space at my disposal does not allow me to
+say anything regarding the rise of the methods by which man entered in
+relation with the divine beings in whom he believes. For the same reason,
+I shall have to be very brief in dealing with the original emotional form
+of Religion.
+
+Two opposed opinions divide the field. The more widely held is that fear
+is the beginning of Religion; the other, accepted by a small but weighty
+minority, that it has its origin in a 'loving reverence for known gods.'
+We shall have little difficulty in arriving at an understanding of the
+matter in which these two views, instead of opposing, supplement each
+other. The origin of the two emotions mentioned, fear and love, fall, of
+course, outside the limits of this essay, since they both existed before
+Religion.
+
+'Fear begets gods,' said Lucretius. Hume concluded that 'the first ideas
+of religion arose ... from a concern with regard to the events of life and
+fears which actuate the human mind.' A similar opinion is maintained by
+most of our contemporaries. Among psychologists, Ribot, for instance,
+affirms that 'the religious sentiment is composed first of all of the
+emotion of fear in its different degrees, from profound terror to vague
+uneasiness, due to faith in an unknown, mysterious, impalpable Power.'[43]
+The fear-theory is well supported by two classes of interdependent facts
+observed, we are told, in every uncivilised people: (1) Evil spirits are
+the first to attain a certain degree of definiteness; (2) man enters into
+definite relations first with these evil spirits. If the reader will refer
+to _The Origin of Civilisation_ by Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 3rd
+ed., pp. 212-215, he will see there how widely true is the opinion
+expressed by Scheinfurth:--'Among the Bongos of central Africa good
+spirits are quite unrecognised, and, according to the general negro idea,
+no benefit can ever come from a spirit.' In many other tribes the good
+spirits are known, but the savage always 'pays more attention to
+deprecating the wrath of the evil than securing the favour of the good
+beings.' The tendency is to let alone the good spirits, because, being
+good, they will do us good of themselves, just as evil spirits do us harm
+unsolicited.
+
+Shall we, then, admit the fear-origin of Religion? Yes, provided it be
+understood that fear represents only one of the three constituents of
+Religion, that it is not in virtue of a particular quality or property
+that fear is the primitive emotional form of Religion, and that this
+admission is not intended to imply the impossibility of Religion having
+ever anywhere begun with aggressive or tender emotions. Regarding the
+second reservation, it should be understood that the making of Religion
+requires nothing found in fear that is not also present in other emotions.
+If aggressive emotions are not conspicuous at the dawn of Religion, it is
+only because it so happens that the circumstances in which the least
+cultured peoples known to us live are such as to keep fear in the
+foreground of consciousness. Fear was the first of the well-organised
+emotional reactions. It antedated the human species, and appears to this
+day first in the young animal, as well as in the infant. No doubt, before
+the protective fear-reaction could have been established, the lust of life
+had worked itself out into aggressive habits, those for the securing of
+food, for instance. But these desires did not, as early as in the case of
+fear, give rise to any emotional reaction possessing the constancy,
+definiteness, and poignancy of fear. The place of fear in primitive
+Religion is, then, due not to its intrinsic qualities, but simply to
+circumstances which made it appear first as a well-organised emotion
+vitally connected with the maintenance of life. It is for exactly the same
+reason that the dominant emotion in the relations of uncivilised men with
+each other, and still more evidently so, of wild animals with each other,
+is usually that of fear.
+
+When I said that fear need not have been the original religious emotion, I
+had in mind the possibility of groups of primitive men having lived in
+circumstances so favourable to peace and safety that fear was not very
+often present with them. This is not a preposterous supposition. Wild men
+need not, any more than wild animals, have found themselves so situated as
+to be kept in a constant state of fright. If the African antelope runs for
+its life on an average twice a day, as Francis Galton supposes, the wild
+horse on the South American plains, before the hunter appeared on his
+pastures, ran chiefly for his pleasure. Travellers have borne testimony to
+the absence of fear in birds inhabiting certain regions. But, it may be
+asked, would Religion have come into existence under these peaceful
+circumstances? A life of relative ease, comfort, and security is not
+precisely conducive to the establishment of practical relations with gods.
+Why should happy and self-sufficient men look to unseen, mysterious beings
+for an assistance not really required? Under these circumstances the
+unmixed type of fear-Religion would never have come into existence.
+Religion would have appeared later, and from the first in a nobler form.
+In such peoples a feeling of dependence upon benevolent gods, regarded
+probably as Creators and All-Fathers, eliciting admiration rather than
+fear or selfish desire, would have characterised its beginnings. This
+possibility should not be rejected _a priori_.
+
+The other theory is well represented by W. Robertson Smith. He denies that
+the attempt to appease evil beings is the foundation of Religion. I quote:
+'From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic or sorcery,
+addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry
+with their people for a time, but are always placable except to the
+enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the community. It
+is not with a vague fear of unknown powers but with a loving reverence for
+known gods who are knit to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship,
+that religion, in the only sense of the word, begins.'[44] One may agree
+with Robertson Smith without denying that certain practices intended to
+avert impending evils preceded the establishment of affectionate relations
+with benevolent powers. As a matter of fact, our author admits this fully.
+What he denies is that the attempt to propitiate, in dread, evil spirits,
+is Religion. It cannot be doubted that the inner experience as well as
+the outer attitude and behaviour of a person are substantially different
+when he seeks to conciliate a radically evil being and when he communes
+with a fundamentally benevolent one. Yet in both cases an anthropopathic
+relation with a personal being is established. In this respect, both stand
+opposed to magical behaviour. This common element is so fundamental that
+it seems to us advisable to make the name Religion include both types of
+relation. And since they differ, nevertheless, in important respects, the
+phrases _Negative_ Religion may be used to designate man's dealings with
+radically bad spirits, and _Positive_ Religion his relations with
+fundamentally benevolent ones.
+
+Positive Religion is at first not at all free from fear. The benevolent
+gods are prompt to wrath, and cruelly avenge their broken laws. The more
+striking development of religious life is the gradual substitution of love
+for fear in worship.[45] This is one more reason for not completely
+dissociating the propitiation of evil spirits from the worship of kindly
+gods.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND THE FUNCTION OF RELIGION
+
+
+The organised, historical Religions are sufficiently described, in their
+objective aspect, as systems of practical relations with unseen,
+hyperhuman, and personal Beings. The experiences in which this type of
+Religion consists, when subjectively considered, are the states of
+consciousness correlated with the aforesaid relations. Judged according to
+this definition, several savage tribes and a very large number of persons
+among civilised peoples would have to be accounted non-religious. Most of
+them may, however, lay claim to what we have called Passive Religiosity.
+In these concluding pages we propose to give increased precision and
+coherence to the conception of Religion presented in this essay. We shall
+do so under two heads, (1) Passive and (2) Godless Religions.
+
+1. Andrew Lang's polemic against Frazer's definition of Religion will
+serve as a convenient text for the introduction of what we wish to say
+under the first head. According to the habit of anthropologists, Frazer
+has put forward as the mark of Religion the _propitiation or the
+conciliation_ of personal beings superior to man and believed to direct
+and control the course of nature and of human life. Lang objects, and very
+properly, that this definition is too narrow. 'I mean by Religion,' says
+he, 'what Mr. Frazer means and more. The conciliation of higher powers by
+prayer and sacrifice is Religion, but it need not be the whole of
+Religion. The belief in a higher power who sanctions conduct and is a
+father and a loving one to mankind is also Religion,'[46] although it
+should not be accompanied by request for benefits. The presence in the
+higher societies and even at the dawn of civilisation of persons strangers
+to any religious rite, yet influenced by a belief in divine beings cannot
+be denied. With regard to the most barbarous of the Australian savages
+Howitt writes: 'If Religion is defined as being the formulated worship of
+a divinity, then these savages have no Religion; but I venture to assert
+that it can be no longer maintained that they have no belief which can be
+called Religion, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and
+individual morality under a supernatural sanction.'[47] The reader will
+remember that we included under the term Religion the amorphous relations
+to which Howitt alludes. But the difference, objective and subjective,
+between the organised Religions, let us say that of Saint Ignatius, and
+the guiding and restraining influence exercised upon an African savage or
+a Parisian deist by the apprehension of a Great Ruler, justifies the use
+of the differentiating appellations, Passive and Active Religion.
+
+We take this opportunity of remarking how difficult it is even for
+particularly clear-headed persons to keep Religion distinct from
+philosophy. Lang was ill-advised enough to write in the same place, 'If
+men believe in a potent being who originally made or manufactured ...
+things, that is an idea so far religious that it satisfies, by the figment
+of a supernatural agent, the speculative faculty.' What has 'the
+speculative faculty' to do with Religion? As little as the gratification
+of the aesthetic or of any other 'faculty,' _i.e._ nothing at all. The
+outcome of speculative thinking is _philosophy_, of which Religion may
+make use, but that is not a reason for confusing it with philosophy. The
+religious experience consists not in seeking to understand God, but in
+fearing Him, in feeding upon Him, in finding strength and joy in Him. If
+believers in Ruling Powers may be called religious, it is not because they
+possess _an idea_ of these powers, but in virtue of the guiding and
+inspiring influence these powers exert upon them.
+
+2. _The Godless Religions._--We have found it convenient up to this point
+to speak as if Power had to be personal in order to become the centre of a
+Religion. That view would exclude original Buddhism, the Religion of
+Humanity, and several other varieties of mental attitudes generally
+regarded as religious. The significant fact that until recently every
+existing historical Religion was a worship of a personal Divinity, is not
+a sufficient reason for refusing to recognise other types. The affinity
+between the worship of a God and certain relations maintained with
+non-personal sources of power is substantial enough to be recognised by
+the use of a name common to both.
+
+What are the Religions that dispense with a God? Original Buddhism, and
+the Religion of Humanity formulated by A. Comte, are the only ones
+possessing a somewhat definite form and organisation. The Buddha Gautama
+discovered and offered to man a way of salvation in which the efficient
+power was not an external, personal power, but an indwelling, psychic
+principle. But the disciples speedily deified the Master who had enjoined
+them to adore no one, and substituted for his teaching the worship of the
+God Gautama. So that, almost as soon as born, Buddhism ceased to exist as
+a Godless Religion.
+
+'Humanity' is qualified to become the centre of a Religion because its
+service accomplishes for man in essence and by similar methods precisely
+what the acknowledged Religions do for their disciples.[48] I quote from
+A. Comte: 'Around this Real, Great Being, immediate instigator of each
+individual and collective existence, our feelings and desires centre as
+spontaneously as do our ideas and actions.... More readily accessible to
+our feelings as well as to our thinking [than the chimerical beings of the
+existing Religions], because of an identity of nature which does not
+preclude its superiority over all its servants, a Supreme Being such as
+this excites deeply an activity destined to preserve and to improve it
+[the Supreme Being].'[49] The claim of original Buddhism and of Comtism to
+be called Religions is, in our opinion, legitimate, because they each
+provide an inclusive, non-material source of power and a method of drawing
+upon it.
+
+But the term Religion is used by some in a still wider sense. Professor J.
+R. Seeley, for instance, bestows that valued name upon 'any habitual and
+permanent admiration.'[50] Should we concur in this extension, it would be
+difficult to stop anywhere. We should have to admit almost anything which
+any one may have a fancy for designating by that much-abused word, even to
+'the sense of eternity in connection with our higher experiences,' and
+'the feeling of reality and permanence of all we most value.' But since
+the function of words is to delimitate, one defeats the purpose of
+language by stretching the meaning of a word until it has lost all
+precision and unity of meaning. We would therefore throw out of our
+definition anything which did not include:--(1) A belief in a great and
+superior psychic power--whether personal or not. (2) A dynamic
+relation--formal and organised or otherwise--between man and that Higher
+Power tending to the preservation, the increase, and the ennobling of
+life. This conception is broad enough to include even the uncrystallised
+form of Religion conditioned, in the words of Professor James, by 'an
+assurance that this natural order is not ultimate, but a mere sign or
+vision, the external staging of a many-storied universe, in which
+spiritual forces have the last word and are eternal.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Active Religion may properly be looked upon as that portion of the
+struggle for life, in which use is made of the Power we have roughly
+characterised as psychic and superhuman, and for which other adjectives,
+'spiritual,' 'divine,' for instance, are commonly used. In this biological
+view of Religion, its necessary and natural spring is the same as that of
+non-religious life, _i.e._ the 'will to live' in its multiform
+appearances, while the ground of differentiation between the religious and
+the secular is neither specific feelings nor emotions, nor yet distinctive
+impulses, desires, or purposes, but the nature of the force which it is
+attempted to press into service. The current terms, 'religious feeling,'
+'religious desire,' 'religious purpose,' are deceptive if they are
+supposed to designate affective experiences, desires and purposes met
+with only in religious life.
+
+The conception of the Source of Psychic Energy, without the belief in
+which no Religion can exist, has undergone very interesting
+transformations in the course of historical development. The human or
+animal form ascribed to the gods in the earlier Religions became less and
+less definite. At the same time the number of gods decreased. The
+culmination of this double process was Monotheism, in which the One,
+Eternal, Creator and Sustainer of life was no longer necessarily framed in
+the shape of man or beast: though still anthropopathic, he might be
+formless. Sympathy, love, and justice were among his attributes. In a
+second phase, this formless, but personal, God was gradually shorn of all
+the qualities and defects which make individuality. He became the
+passionless Absolute in which all things move and have their being. Thus,
+the personifying work of centuries is undone, and humanity, after having,
+as it were, lived throughout its infancy and youth under the controlling
+eye and with the active assistance of personal divinities, on reaching
+maturity, finds itself bereft of these sources of life. The present
+religious crisis marks the difficulty in the way of an adaptation to the
+new situation. As belief in a God seems no longer possible, man seeks an
+impersonal, efficient substitute, belief in which will not mean disloyalty
+to science. For man will have life, and have it abundantly, and he knows
+from experience that its sources are not only in meat and drink, but also
+in 'spiritual faith.' It is this problem which the Comtists, the
+Immanentists, the Ethical Culturists, the Mental Scientists are all trying
+to solve. Any solution will have the right to the name Religion that
+provides for the preservation and the perfectioning of life by means of
+faith in a superhuman psychic Power.
+
+
+Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the Edinburgh
+University Press
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _The Non-Religion of the Future_, p. 2.
+
+[2] _The Golden Bough_, 2nd edition, i. p. 63.
+
+[3] _Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion_, p. 27.
+
+[4] _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 53, 38, abbreviated and
+rearranged.
+
+[5] Wuendt's _Ethics_, English tr., iii. p. 6.
+
+[6] H. B. Davis has this to say on the power of generalisation of the
+raccoon, a very intelligent animal: 'When an animal [raccoon] is forced to
+approach a new fastening from a new direction, it is often as much
+bothered by it as by a new fastening. Nevertheless, in course of time the
+animals seem to reach a sort of generalised manner of procedure which
+enables them to deal more promptly with any new fastening (not too
+different from others of their experience).' 'The Raccoon: A Study in
+Animal Intelligence,' _Amer. Jr. of Psy._, Oct. 1907, p. 486.
+
+[7] _Meditationes_, ii. p. 10, Amsterdam, 1678.
+
+[8] C. Lloyd Morgan, _Introduction to Comparative Psychology_ (The
+Contemporary Science Series, 1894), p. 89.
+
+[9] F. M. Davenport, _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, Macmillan
+(1905), p. 36; quoted from the Fourteenth Annual Report of the [Amer.]
+Bureau of Ethnology, p. 761.
+
+[10] E. M. Curr, _The Australian Race_, iii. p. 547, as quoted by Frazer,
+_The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. p. 13.
+
+[11] A. W. Howitt, _The Native Races of South-East Australia_ (1904), p.
+373.
+
+[12] _Principles of Sociology_ (3rd edition, 1885), i. Appendix A, p. 788.
+
+[13] _The Descent of Man_, 2nd ed., i. p. 145.
+
+[14] _Nature_, xvii. (1877-78), pp. 168-169. Comp. Lloyd Morgan, _Introd.
+to Comparative Psychology_, p. 92 ff.
+
+[15] A Study in Fears, _Am. Jour. of Psy._ (1897), viii. p. 166.
+
+[16] Lord Avebury, _On the Origin of Civilisation_ (3rd edition, 1875), p.
+212.
+
+[17] _The Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 500, 506-508.
+
+[18] Hang a root of vervain around the neck in order to cause the
+disappearance of a tumour: as the plant dries up, so will the tumour. If
+the fish do not appear in due season, make one of wood and put it into the
+water. Keep the arrow that has wounded a friend in a cool place that the
+wound may not become inflamed.
+
+[19] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiii. (1884), p. 456,
+quoted by Frazer.
+
+[20] Dr. R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_ (Clarendon Press, 1891), p.
+191.
+
+[21] 'Etudes de mythologie et d'archeologie egyptiennes' (Paris, 1903),
+_Bibliotheque Egyptologique_, ii. p. 298.
+
+[22] Foucart, 'Recherches sur la Nature des Mysteres d'Eleusis,' _Memoires
+de l'Institut_, xxxv. 2nd part, pp. 31-32. Comp. Maspero, _ibid._, p. 303.
+
+[23] 'The Beginnings of Religion,' _Fortn. Rev._, lxxxiv. (1905), p. 162.
+Comp. _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. pp. 71-73.
+
+[24] _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., i. p. 70. Oldenburg (_Die Religion des
+Veda_, Berlin, 1894) was first, I believe, in holding to a pre-religious
+magical stage of culture. But it is Frazer who first made a clear
+separation, not only between Magic and Religion, but also between Magic
+and belief in spirit-agents.
+
+[25] Comp. R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,' _Folk-Lore_, xv. (1904),
+pp. 136-141.
+
+[26] The latest classification is probably that of Frazer in _Lectures on
+the Early History of the Kingship_ (Macmillan, 1905), p. 54. A. van
+Gennep, in a review of that book in the _Revue de l'Histoire des
+Religions_, liii. pp. 396-401, offers a somewhat different classification.
+
+[27] I use 'animism' in the sense which Tylor gave it, _i.e._ a belief in
+the animation of all things by beings similar to the 'souls' or 'ghosts'
+revealed to the savage by dreams and other natural experiences.
+
+[28] The interested reader will find a summary of observations on this
+topic in Alex. F. Chamberlain's _The Child_ (The Contemporary _Science
+Series_, 1900), pp. 147-148. See also Sully, _Studies of Childhood_, p.
+82.
+
+[29] See, for instance, many of the prohibitions included in the
+initiation ceremonies of the Australians in Spencer and Gillen, _loc.
+cit._, chapters vii-ix.
+
+[30] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 2nd ed., I. pp. 29-31.
+
+[31] Fourth ed. (1903), i. p. 285.
+
+[32] The word _naturism_ should be adopted as a name for the pre-animistic
+and pre-religious stage of culture, a stage corresponding to the one
+through which a child passes before he inquires into hidden causes and
+mechanisms. See on this an excellent little book published in this series,
+_Animism_, by Edward Clodd, pp. 22-25.
+
+[33] Lord Avebury, _On the Origin of Civilisation_ (3rd ed., 1875), pp.
+113-114.
+
+[34] _The Golden Bough_, i. p. 19.
+
+[35] Maspero, _loc. cit._, pp. 298-299.
+
+[36] Amelie Bosquet, _La Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse_ (Paris et
+Rouen, 1845), p. 308.
+
+[37] _Loc. cit._ i., pp. 75-78.
+
+[38] A widespread opinion ascribes the failures of the magician to a rival
+or to the counter-influence of some evil spirit.
+
+'If a man died in spite of the medicine-man, they [the Chepara of
+South-East Africa] said it was Wulle, an evil being, that killed
+him.'--Howitt, _loc. cit._, p. 385.
+
+[39] Chap. iii.
+
+[40] _Ibid._, p. 59.
+
+[41] R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,' _Folk-Lore_, xv. (1904), pp.
+132-165.
+
+[42] _Loc. cit._, pp. 61-62. In the third volume (pp. 458-461), a change
+seems to have taken place in the author's opinion. What it amounts to, I
+cannot exactly make out.
+
+[43] _The Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 309.
+
+[44] _The Religion of the Semites_, p. 55.
+
+[45] See, on this development, my article, 'Fear, Awe, and the Sublime in
+Religion,' _American Jr. of Religious Psy. and Educ._, ii. p. 1.
+
+[46] _Magic and Religion_, pp. 48-49, 69.
+
+[47] 'On some Australian Customs of Initiation,' _Jr. of the Anthrop.
+Inst._, xiii. (1883-1884), p. 459.
+
+[48] F. Harrison, _Moral and Religious Socialism_, New Year's Address,
+1891.
+
+[49] A. Comte, _Catechisme Positiviste_, ed. Apostolique (1891), pp. 53,
+55.
+
+[50] _Natural Religion_, Macmillan (1882), p. 74.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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