ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued 2)

In these verses it is evident that the death of the body is recognised as a fact. It is even more manifest that the death of the body is put aside as weighing for naught against the absolute conviction that the loved one still exists. But reunion is sought in this world; another world is not yet thought of. The next world has not yet been called into existence to redress the sorrows and the sufferings of this life. Where the discovery of that solution has not been made, the human mind seeks such consolation as may be found elsewhere. If the aspiration, "come to us, come to us again," can find no other realisation, it welcomes the reappearance of the lost one in another form. In Australia, amongst the Euahlayi tribe, the mother who has lost her baby or her young child may yet believe that it is restored to her and born again in the form of another child. In West Africa, according to Miss Kingsley, "the new babies as they arrived in the family were shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls were still absent,—the thing the child caught hold of identified him. 'Why, he's Uncle John; see! he knows his own pipe;' or 'That's Cousin Emma; see! she knows her market calabash;' and so on." But it is not only amongst Australian black fellows or West African negroes that the attempt is made to extract consolation for death from the speculation that we die only to be reborn in this world. The theory of rebirth is put forward by a distinguished student of Hegel—Dr. McTaggart—in a work entitled Some Dogmas of Religion. It is admitted by Dr. McTaggart to be true that we have no memory whatever of our previous stages of existence; but he declares, "we may say that, in spite of the loss of memory, it is the same person who lives in the successive lives" (p. 130); and he appears to find the same consolation as his remote forefathers did in looking forward to a future stage of existence in which he will have no more memory of his present existence, and no more reason to believe in it, than he now has memory of, or reason to believe in, his preëxistence. "It is certain," he says, "that in this life we remember no previous lives," and he accepts the position that it is equally certain we shall have in our next life absolutely no memory of our present existence. That, of course, distinguishes Dr. McTaggart from the West African Uncle John who, when he is reborn, at any rate "knows his own pipe."

The human mind, as I have said, seeks such consolation as it may find in the doctrine of rebirth. It finds evidence of rebirth either in the behaviour of the new-born child or in its resemblance to deceased relations. But it also comes to the conclusion that the reincarnation may be in animal form. Whether that conclusion is suggested by the strangely human expression in the eyes of some animals, or whether it is based upon the belief in the power of transformation, need not be discussed. It is beyond doubt that transformation is believed in: the Cherokee Indian sings a verse to the effect that he becomes a real wolf; and "after stating that he has become a real wolf, the songster utters a prolonged howl, and paws the ground like a wolf with his feet" (Frazer, Kingship, p. 71). Indeed, identity may be attained or manifested without any process of transformation; in Australia, amongst the Dieri tribe, the head man of a totem consisting of a particular sort of a seed is spoken of by his people as being the plant itself which yields the seed (ib., p. 109). Where such beliefs are prevalent, the doctrine of the reincarnation of the soul in animal form will obviously arise at the stage of evolution which we are now discussing, that is to say when the soul is not yet supposed to depart to another world, and must therefore manifest itself in this world in one way or another, if not in human shape, then in animal form. In the form of what animal the deceased will be reincarnated is a question which will be answered in different ways. Purely fortuitous circumstances may lead to particular animals being considered to be the reincarnation of the deceased. Or the fact that the deceased has a particular animal for totem may lead the survivors to expect his reappearance in the form of that particular animal. The one fact of importance for our present purpose is that at its origin the belief in animal reincarnation had no necessary connection with the theory of future punishments and rewards. At the stage of evolution in which the belief in transmigration arose many animals were the object of genuine respect because of the virtues of courage, etc., which were manifested by them; or because of the position they occupied as totems. Consequently no loss of status was involved when the soul transmigrated from a human to an animal form. No notion of punishment was involved in the belief.

The doctrines of reincarnation and transmigration belong to a stage in the evolution of belief, or to a system of thought, in which the conviction that the death of the body does not entail the destruction of the soul is undoubted, but from which the conception, indeed the very idea, of another world than this is excluded. That conception begins to manifest itself where ancestor worship establishes itself; but the manifestation is incomplete. Deceased chieftains and heroes, who have been benefactors to the tribe, are remembered; and the good they did is remembered also. They are themselves remembered as the doers of good; and their spirits are naturally conceived as continuing to be benevolent, or ready to confer benefits when properly approached. But thus envisaged, they are seen rather in their relation to the living than in their relation to each other. It is their assistance in this world that is sought; their condition in the next world is of less practical importance and therefore provokes less of speculation, in the first instance. But when speculation is provoked, it proves ultimately fatal to ancestor worship.

First, it may lead to the question of the relation of the spirits of the deceased benefactors to the god or gods of the community. There will be a tendency to blur the distinction between the god and his worshippers, if any of the worshippers come to be regarded as being after death spirits from whom aid may be invoked and to whom offerings must be made. And if the distinction ceases after death, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to maintain it during life; an emperor who is to be deified after death may find his deification beginning before his death. Belief in such deification may be accepted by some members of the community. Others will regard it as proof that religion is naught; and yet others will be driven to seek for a form of religion which affords no place for such deifications, but maintains explicitly that distinction between a god and his worshippers which is present in the most rudimentary forms of religion.

But though the tendency of ancestor worship is to run this course and to pass in this way out of the evolution of religion, it may be arrested at the very outset, if the religious spirit is, as it has been in one case at least, strong enough to stand against it at the beginning. Thus, amongst the Jews there was a tendency to ancestor worship, as is shown by the fact of its prohibition. But it was stamped out; and it was stamped out so effectually that belief in the continued existence of the soul after death ceased for long to have any practical influence. "Generally speaking, the Hebrews regarded the grave as the final end of all sentient and intelligent existence, 'the land where all things are forgotten'" (Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Sheol). "In death," the Psalmist says to the Lord, "there is no remembrance of thee: in Sheol who shall give thee thanks?" "Shall they that are deceased arise and praise thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave?" or "thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" Thus the Sheol of the Old Testament remains to testify to the view taken of the state of the dead by a people amongst whom the worship of ancestors was arrested at the outset. Amongst such a people the dead are supposed simply to continue in the next world as they left this: "in Sheol the kings of the nations have their thrones, and the mighty their weapons of war," just as in Virgil the ghost of Deiphobus still shows the ghastly wounds by which he perished (Jevons, History of Religion, p. 301).

This continuation theory, the view that the dead continue in the next world as they left this, means that, to the people who entertain it, the dead are merely a memory. It is forbidden to think of them as doing anything, as affecting the living in any way. They are conceived as powerless to gratify the wishes of the living, or to thwart them. Where the Lord God is a jealous God, religion cannot tolerate the idea that any other spirit should be conceived as usurping His functions, still less that such spirits should receive the offerings and the prayers which are the due of Him alone. But though the dead are thus reduced to a mere memory, the memory itself does not and cannot die. Accordingly the dead, or rather those whose bodies are dead, continue to live. But, as they exercise no action in, or control over, the world of the living, their place of abode comes to be regarded as another world, to which they are confined. Speculation, therefore, where speculation is made, as to the case of the inhabitants of this other world, must take the direction of enquiring as to their fate. Where speculation is not made, the dead are conceived merely to continue to be as they are remembered to have been in this life. But, if there is to be room for any speculation at all, there must be assumed to be some diversity in their fate, and therefore some reason, intelligible to man, for that diversity. That is a conclusion to which tribes attain who have apparently gone through no period of ancestor worship,—indeed, ancestor worship only impedes or defers the attainment of that conclusion. The diversity of fate could only consist in the difference between being where you would be and being where you would not. But the reasons for that diversity may be very different amongst different peoples. First, where religion is at its lowest or is in its least developed form, the gods are not the cause of the diversity nor do they seem concerned in it. Such diversity as there is seems in its simplest form merely to be a continuance of the social distinctions which prevail among the living: the high chieftains rest in a calm, plenteous, sunny land in the sky; while "all Indians of low degree go deep down under the earth to the land of Chay-her, with its poor houses and no salmon and no deer, and blankets so small and thin, that when the dead are buried the friends often bury blankets with them" (Tylor, P. C., II, 85). Elsewhere, it is not social distinctions, but moral, that make the difference: "the rude Tupinambas of Brazil think the souls of such as had lived virtuously, that is to say who have well avenged themselves and eaten many of their enemies," (ib.) rejoin the souls of their fathers in the happy land, while the cowards go to the other place. Thus, though the distinctions in the next world do not seem originally to have sprung from or to have been connected with morality, and still less with religion, they are, or may be at a very early period, seized upon by the moral consciousness as containing truth or implying it, when rightly understood. Truth indeed of the highest import for morality is implied in the distinctions thus essayed to be drawn. But before the truth implicit could be made explicit, it was necessary that the distinctions should be recognised to have their basis in religion. And that was impossible where religion was at its lowest or in its least developed form.

From the fact that on the one hand the conception of a future life in another world, when it arose amongst people in a low stage of religious development, bore but little moral and no religious fruit; and on the other, where it did yield fruit, there had been a previous period when religion closed its eyes as far as possible to the condition of the dead in Hades or in Sheol,—we may draw the inference that the conception of the future state formed by such people, as "the rude Tupinambas of Brazil" had to be sterilised, so to speak,—to be purified from associations dangerous both to morality and religion. We may fairly say that as a matter of fact that was the consequence which actually happened, and that both in Greece and Judæa the prospect of a future life at one time became practically a tabula rasa on which might be written a fairer message of hope than had ever been given before. In Greece the message was written, indeed, and was received with hope by the thousands who joined in the celebration of the mysteries. But the characters in which it was written faded soon. The message was found to reveal nothing. It revealed nothing because it demanded nothing. It demanded neither a higher life nor a higher conception of the deity. It did not set forth a new and nobler morality; and it accommodated itself to the existing polytheism. What it did do was to familiarise the Hellenic world with the conviction that there was a life hereafter, better than this life; and that the condition of its attainment was communion with the true God, peradventure He could be found. It was by this conviction and this expectation that the ground was prepared, wherever Hellenism existed, for the message that was to come from Israel.

From the beginning, or let us say in the lowest forms in which religion manifests itself, religion is the bond in which the worshippers are united with one another and with their God. The community which is thus united is at first the earliest form of society, whatever that form may have been, in which men dwell together for their common purposes. It is the fact that its members have common purposes and common interests which constitute them a community; and amongst the common interests without which there could be no community is that of common worship: knowledge of the sacra, being confined to the members of the community, is the test by which members are known, outsiders excluded, and the existence of the community as a community secured. At this stage, in a large number of societies—negro, Malayo-Polynesian, North American Indians, Eskimo, Australians—the belief in reincarnation takes a form in which the presence of souls of the departed is recognised as necessary to the very conception of the community. Thus in Alaska, among the Unalits of St. Michael's Bay, a festival of the dead is observed, the equivalent of which appears to be found amongst all the Eskimo. M. Mauss (L'Année Sociologique, IX, 99) thus describes it: "It comprises two essential parts. It begins with praying the souls of the dead graciously to consent to reincarnate themselves for the moment in the namesake which each deceased person has; for the custom is that in each station the child last born always takes the name of the last person who has died. Then these living representatives of the deceased receive presents, and having received them the souls are dismissed from the abodes of the living to return to the land of the dead. Thus at this festival not only does the group regain its unity, but the rite reconstitutes the ideal group which consists of all the generations which have succeeded one another from the earliest times. Mythical and historic ancestors as well as later ones thus mingle with the living, and communion between them is conducted by means of the exchange of presents." Amongst people other than the Eskimo, a new-born child not only takes the name of the last member of the family or clan who has died, but is regarded as the reincarnation of the deceased. "Thus the number of individuals, of names, of souls, of social functions in the clan is limited; and the life of the clan consists in the death and rebirth of individuals who are always identically the same" (l.c. 267).

The line of evolution thus followed by the belief in reincarnation results in the total separation of the belief from morality and from religion, and results in rendering it infertile alike for morality, religion, and progress in civilisation generally. Where the belief in reincarnation takes the form of belief in the transmigration of the soul into some animal form, it may be utilised for moral purposes, provided that the people amongst whom the belief obtains have otherwise advanced so far as to see that the punishments and rewards which are essential to the development of morality are by no means always realised in this life. When that conviction has established itself, the reincarnation theory will provide machinery by which the belief in future punishments and rewards can be conceived as operative: rebirth in animal form, if the belief in it already exists, may be held out as a deterrent to wrongdoing. That is, as a matter of fact, the use to which the belief has been put by Buddhism. The form and station in which the deceased will be reborn is no longer, as amongst the peoples just mentioned, conceived to be determined automatically, so to speak, but is supposed to depend on the moral qualities exhibited during life. If this view of the future life has struck deeper root and has spread over a greater surface than the doctrine taught in the Greek mysteries ever did, the reason may probably be found in the fact that the Greek mysteries had no higher morality to teach than was already recognised, whilst the moral teaching of the Buddha was far more exalted and far more profoundly true than anything that had been preached in India before. If a moral system by itself, on its own merits, were capable of affording a sure foundation for religion, Buddhism would be built upon a rock. To the spiritual community by which man may be united to his fellow-man and to his God, morality is essential and indispensable. But the moral life derives its value solely from the fact that on it depends, and by means of it is realised, that communion of man with God after which man has from the beginning striven. If then that communion and the very possibility of that communion is denied, the denial must prove fatal alike to religion and to morality. Now, that is the denial which Buddhism makes. But the fact of the denial is obscured to those who believe, and to those who would like to believe, in Buddhism, by the way in which it is made. It is made in such a way that it appears and is believed to be an affirmation instead of a denial. Communion with God is declared to be the final end to which the transmigration of souls conducts. But the communion to which it leads is so intimate that the human soul, the individual, ceases to be. Obviously, therefore, if it ceases to be, the communion also must cease; there is no real communion subsisting between two spirits, the human and the divine, for two spirits do not exist, but only one. If this way of stating the case be looked upon with suspicion as possibly not doing justice to the teaching of Buddhism, or as pressing unduly far the union between the human and the divine which is the ultimate goal of the transmigration of souls, the reply is that in truth the case against Buddhism is stronger than appears from this mode of stating it. To say that from the Buddhist point of view the human soul, the individual, eventually ceases to be, is indeed an incorrect way of putting the matter. It implies that the human soul, the individual, now is; and hereafter ceases to be. But so far from admitting that the individual now is, the Buddhist doctrine is that the existence of the soul, now, is mere illusion, mâyâ. It is therefore logical enough, and at any rate self-consistent, to say that hereafter, when the series of transmigrations is complete, the individual will not indeed cease to be, for he never was, but the illusion that he existed will be dissipated. Logically again, it follows from this that if the existence of the individual soul is an illusion from the beginning, then there can strictly speaking be no transmigration of souls, for there is no soul to transmigrate. But with perfect self-consistency Buddhism accepts this position: what is transmitted from one being to the next in the chain of existences is not the individuality or the soul, but the character. Professor Rhys Davids says (Hibbert Lectures, pp. 91, 92): "I have no hesitation in maintaining that Gotama did not teach the transmigration of souls. What he did teach would be better summarized, if we wish to retain the word transmigration, as the transmigration of character. But it would be more accurate to drop the word transmigration altogether when speaking of Buddhism, and to call its doctrine the doctrine of karma. Gotama held that after the death of any being, whether human or not, there survived nothing at all but that being's 'karma,' the result, that is, of its mental and bodily actions." "He discarded the theory of the presence, within each human body, of a soul which could have a separate and eternal existence. He therefore established a new identity between the individuals in the chain of existence, which he, like his forerunners, acknowledged, by the new assertion that that which made two beings to be the same being was—not soul, but—karma" (ib., pp. 93, 94). Thus once more it appears that there can be no eventual communion between the human soul, at the end of its chain of existence, and the divine, for the reason, not that the human soul ultimately ceases to be, but that it never is or was, and therefore neither transmigrates from one body to another, nor is eventually absorbed in the âtmân.

Logically consistent though this train of argument be, it leaves unanswered the simple question, How can the result of my actions have any interest for me—not hereafter, but at the present moment—if I not only shall not exist hereafter but do not exist at the present moment? It is not impossible for a man who believes that his existence will absolutely cease at death to take some interest in and labour for the good of others who will come after him; but it is impossible for a man who does not exist now to believe in anything whatever. And it is on that fundamental absurdity that Buddhism is built: it is directed to the conversion of those who do not exist to be converted, and it is directed to the object of relieving from existence those who have no existence from which to be relieved.

Where then lies the strength of Buddhism, if as a logical structure it is rent from top to bottom by glaring inconsistency? It lies in its appeal to the spirit of self-sacrifice. What it denounces, from beginning to end, is the will to live. The reason why it denounces the will to live is that that will manifests itself exclusively in the desires of the individual; and it is to the desires of man that all the misery in the world are directly due. Destroy those desires by annihilating the will to live—and in no other way can they be destroyed—and the misery of the world will cease. The only termination to the misery of the world which Buddhism can imagine is the voluntary cessation of life which will ultimately ensue on the cessation of the will to live. And the means by which that is to be brought about is the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires by means of the higher morality of self-sacrifice. What the Buddhist overlooks is that the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires results, not in the annihilation, but in the purification and enhanced vitality, of the self that uproots them. The outcome of the unselfish and self-sacrificing life is not the destruction of individuality, but its highest realisation. Now, it is only in society and by living for others that this unselfishness and self-sacrifice can be carried out; man can only exist and unselfishness can only operate in society, and society means the communion of man with his fellows. It is true that only in society can selfishness exist; but it is recognized from the beginning as that which is destructive of society, and it is therefore condemned alike by the morality and the religion of the society. The communion of man with his fellows and his God is hindered, impeded, and blocked wholly and solely by his self-regarding desires; it is furthered and realised solely by his unselfish desires. But his unselfish desires involve and imply his existence—I was going to say, just as much, I mean—far more than his selfish desires, for they imply, and are only possible on, the assumption of the existence of his fellow-man, and of his communion with him. Nay! more, by the testimony of Buddhism itself as well as of the religious experience of mankind at large, the unselfish desires, the spirit of self-sacrifice, require both for their logical and their emotional justification, still more for their practical operation, the faith that by means of them the will of God is carried out, and that in them man shows likest God. It is in them and by them that the communion of man with his fellow-man and with his God is realised. It is the faith that such communion, though it may be interrupted, can never be entirely broken which manifests itself in the belief in immortality. That belief may take shape in the idea that the souls of the departed revisit this earth temporarily in ghostly form, or more permanently as reincarnated in the new-born members of the tribe; it may body forth another world of bliss or woe, and if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it must so do; nay! more, if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it is into the presence of the Lord that the soul must go. But in any and whatever shape the belief takes, the soul is conceived or implied to be in communion with other spirits. There is no other way in which it is possible to conceive the existence of a soul; just as any particle of matter, to be comprehended in its full reality, implies not only every other particle of matter but the universe which comprehends them, so the existence of any spirit logically implies not only the existence of every other but also of Him without whom no one of them could be.

It is in this belief in the communion of spirits wherever he may find it—and where will he not?—that the missionary may obtain a leverage for his work. It is a sure basis for his operations because the desire for communion is universal; and Christianity alone, of the religions of the world, teaches that self-sacrifice is the way to life eternal.

MAGIC

Of all the topics which present themselves to the student of the science of religion for investigation and explanation there is none which has caused more diversity of opinion, none which has produced more confusion of thought, than magic. The fact is that the belief in magic is condemned alike by science and religion,—by the one as essentially irrational, and by the other as essentially irreligious. But though it is thus condemned, it flourishes, where it does flourish, as being science, though of a more secret kind than that usually recognised, or as being a more potent application of the rites and ceremonies of religion. It is indeed neither science nor religion; it lives by mimicking one or other or both. In the natural history of belief it owes its survival, so long as it does survive, to its "protective colouring" and its power of mimicry. It is, always and everywhere, an error,—whether tried by the canons of science or religion; but it lives, as error can only live, by posing and passing itself off as truth.

If now the only persons deceived by it were the persons who believed in it, students of the science of religion would have been saved from much fruitless controversy. But so subtly protective is its colouring that some scientific enquirers have confidently and unhesitatingly identified it with religion, and have declared that magic is religion, and religion is magic. The tyranny of that error, however, is now well-nigh overpast. It is erroneous, and we may suppose is seen to be erroneous, in exactly the same way as it would be to say that science is magic, and magic science. The truth is that magic in one aspect is a colourable imitation of science: "in short," as Dr. Frazer says (Early History of the Kingship, p. 38), "magic is a spurious system of natural law." That is, we must note, it is a system which is spurious in our eyes, but which, to those who believed in it, was "a statement of the rules which determine the sequence of events throughout the world—a set of precepts which human beings observe in order to compare their ends" (ib., p. 39).

The point, then, from which I wish to start is that magic, as it is now viewed by students of the science of religion, on the one hand is a spurious system of natural law or science, and on the other a spurious system of religion.

Our next point is that magic could not be spurious for those who believed in it: they held that they knew some things and could do things which ordinary people did not know and could not do; and, whether their knowledge was of the secrets of nature or of the spirit world, it was not in their eyes spurious.

Our third point is more difficult to explain, though it will appear not merely obvious, but self-evident, if I succeed in explaining it. It will facilitate the work of explanation, if you will for the moment suppose—without considering whether the supposition is true or not—that there was a time when no one had heard that there was such a thing as magic. Let us further suppose that at that time man had observed such facts as that heat produces warmth, that the young of animals and man resemble their parents: in a word, that he had attained more or less consciously to the idea, as a matter of observation, that like produces like, and as a matter of practice that like may be produced by like. Having attained to that practical idea, he will of course work it not only for all that it is worth, but for more. That is indeed the only way he has of finding out how much it is good for; and it is only repeated failure which will convince him that here at length he has reached the limit, that in this particular point things do not realise his expectations, that in this instance his anticipation of nature has been "too previous." Until that fact has been hammered into him, he will go on expecting and believing that in this instance also like will produce like, when he sets it to work; and he will be perfectly convinced that he is employing the natural and reasonable means for attaining his end. As a matter of fact, however, as we with our superior knowledge can see, in the first place those means never can produce the desired effect; and next, the idea that they can, as it withers and before it finally falls to the ground, will change its colour and assume the hue of magic. Thus the idea that by whistling you can produce a wind is at first as natural and as purely rational as the idea that you can produce warmth by means of fire. There is nothing magical in either. Both are matter-of-fact applications of the practical maxim that like produces like.

That, then, is the point which I have been wishing to make, the third of the three points from which I wish to start. There are three ways of looking at identically the same thing, e.g. whistling to produce a wind. First, we may regard it, and I suggest that it was in the beginning regarded, as an application, having nothing to distinguish it from any other application, of the general maxim that like produces like. The idea that eating the flesh of deer makes a man timid, or that if you wish to be strong and bold you should eat tiger, is, in this stage of thought, no more magical than is the idea of drinking water because you are dry.

Next, the idea of whistling to produce a wind, or of sticking splinters of bone into a man's footprints in order to injure his feet, may be an idea not generally known, a thing not commonly done, a proceeding not generally approved of. It is thus marked off from the commonplace actions of drinking water to moisten your parched throat or sitting by a fire to get warm. When it is thus marked off, it is regarded as magic: not every one knows how to do it, or not every one has the power to do it, or not every one cares to do it. That is the second stage, the heyday of magic.

The third and final stage is that in which no educated person believes in it, when, if a man thinks to get a wind by whistling he may whistle for it. These three ways of looking at identically the same thing may and do coexist. The idea of whistling for a wind is for you and me simply a mistaken idea; but possibly at this moment there are sailors acting upon the idea and to some of them it appears a perfectly natural thing to do, while to others there is a flavour of the magical about it. But though the three ways may and do coexist, it is obvious that our way of looking at it is and must be the latest of the three, for the simple reason that an error must exist before it can be exploded. I say that our way of looking at it must be the latest, but in saying so I do not mean to imply that this way of looking at it originates only at a late stage in the history of mankind. On the contrary, it is present in a rudimentary form from very early times; and the proof is the fact generally recognised that magicians amongst the lowest races, though they may believe to a certain extent in their own magical powers, do practise a good deal of magic which they themselves know to be fraudulent. Progress takes place when other people also, and a steadily increasing number of people, come to see that it is fraudulent.

In the next place, just as amongst very primitive peoples we see that some magic is known by some people, viz. the magicians themselves, to be fraudulent, though other people believe in it; so, amongst very primitive peoples, we find beliefs and practices existing which have not yet come to be regarded as magical, though they are such as might come, and do elsewhere come, to be considered pure magic. Thus, for instance, when Cherokee Indians who suffer from rheumatism abstain from eating the flesh of the common grey squirrel "because the squirrel eats in a cramped position, which would clearly aggravate the pangs of the rheumatic patient" (Frazer, History of the Kingship, p. 70), or when "they will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard for fear of themselves becoming bald" (ib.), they are simply following the best medical advice of their day,—they certainly do not imagine they are practising magic, any more than you or I do when we are following the prescriptions of our medical adviser. On the contrary, it is quite as obvious, then, that the feathers of the bald-headed buzzard are infectious as it is now that the clothes of a fever patient are infectious. Neither proposition, to be accepted as true, requires us to believe in magic: either might spring up where magic had never been heard of. And, if that is the case, it simply complicates things unnecessarily to talk of magic in such cases. The tendency to believe that like produces like is not a consequence of or a deduction from a belief in magic: on the contrary, magic has its root or one of its roots in that tendency of the human mind. But though that tendency helps to produce magic amongst other things, magic is not the only thing which it produces: it produces beliefs such as those of the Cherokees just quoted, which are no more magical than the belief that fire produces warmth, or that causa aequat effectum, that an effect is, when analysed, indistinguishable from the conditions which constitute it.

To attempt to define magic is a risky thing; and, instead of doing so at once, I will try to mark off proceedings which are not magical; and I would venture to say that things which it is believed any one can do, and felt that any one may do, are not magical in the eyes of those who have that belief and that feeling. You may abstain from eating squirrel or wearing fine feathers because of the consequences; and every one will think you are showing your common sense. You may hang up the bones of animals you have killed, in order to attract more animals of the like kind; and you are simply practising a dodge which you think will be useful. Wives whose husbands are absent on hunting or fighting expeditions may do or abstain from doing things which, on the principle that like produces like, will affect their husbands' success; and this application of the principle may be as irrational—and as perfectly natural—as the behaviour of the beginner at billiards whose body writhes, when he has made his stroke, in excess of sympathy with the ball which just won't make the cannon. In both cases the principle acted on,—deliberately in the one case, less voluntarily in the other,—the instinctive feeling is that like produces like, not as a matter of magic but as a matter of fact. If the behaviour of the billiard player is due to an impulse which is in itself natural and in his case is not magical, we may fairly take the same view of the hunter's wife who abstains from spinning for fear the game should turn and wind like the spindle and the hunter be unable to hit it (Frazer, p. 55). The principle in both cases is that like produces like. Some applications of that principle are correct; some are not. The incorrectness of the latter is not at once discovered: the belief in their case is erroneous, but is not known to be erroneous. And unless we are prepared to take up the position that magic is the only form of erroneous belief which is to be found amongst primitive men, we must endeavour to draw a line between those erroneous beliefs which are magical and those erroneous beliefs which are not. The line will not be a hard and fast line, because a belief which originally had nothing magical about it may come to be regarded as magical. Indeed, on the assumption that belief in magic is an error, we have to enquire how men come to fall into the error. If there is no such thing as magic, how did man come to believe that there was? My suggestion is that the rise of the belief is not due to the introduction of a novel practice, but to a new way of looking at an existing practice. It is due in the first instance to the fact that the practice is regarded with disapproval as far as its consequences are concerned and without regard to the means employed to produce them. Injury to a member of the community, especially injury which causes death, is viewed by the community with indignant disapproval. Whether the death is produced by actual blows or "by drawing the figure of a person and then stabbing it or doing it any other injury" (Frazer, p. 41), it is visited with the condemnation of the community. And consequently all such attempts "to injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroying an effigy of him" (ib.), whenever they are made, whether they come off or not, are resented and disapproved by society. On the other hand, sympathetic or homœopathic magic of this kind, when used by the hunter or the fisherman to secure food, meets with no condemnation. Both assassin and hunter use substantially the same means to effect their object; but the disapproval with which the community views the object of the assassin is extended also to the means which he employs. In fine, the practice of using like to produce like comes to be looked on with loathing and with dread when it is employed for antisocial purposes. Any one can injure or destroy his private enemy by injuring an effigy of him, just as any one can injure or destroy his enemy by assaulting and wounding him. But though any one may do this, it is felt that no one ought to do it. Such practices are condemned by public opinion. Further, as they are condemned by the community, they are ipso facto offensive to the god of the community. To him only those prayers can be offered, and by him only those practices can be approved, which are not injurious to the community or are not felt by the community to be injurious. That is the reason why such practices are condemned by the religious as well as by the moral feeling of the community. And they are condemned by religion and morality long before their futility is exposed by science or recognised by common sense. When they are felt to be futile, there is no call upon religion or morality especially to condemn the practices—though the intention and the will to injure our fellow-man remains offensive both to morality and religion. With the means adopted for realising the will and carrying out the intention, morality and religion have no concern. If the same or similar means can be used for purposes consistent with the common weal, they do not, so far as they are used for such purposes, come under the ban of either morality or religion. Therein we have, I suggest, the reason of a certain confusion of thought in the minds of students of the science of religion. We of the present day look at the means employed. We see the same means employed for ends that are, and for ends that are not, antisocial; and, inasmuch as the means are the same and are alike irrational, we group them all together under the head of magic. The grouping is perfectly correct, inasmuch as the proceedings grouped together have the common attribute of being proceedings which cannot possibly produce the effects which those who employ them believe that they will and do produce. But this grouping becomes perfectly misleading, if we go on to infer, as is sometimes inferred, that primitive man adopted it. First, it is based on the fact that the proceedings are uniformly irrational—a fact of which man is at first wholly unaware; and which, when it begins to dawn upon him, presents itself in the form of the further error that while some of these proceedings are absurd, others are not. In neither case does he adopt the modern, scientific position that all are irrational, impossible, absurd. Next, the modern position deals only with the proceedings as means,—declaring them all absurd,—and overlooks entirely what is to primitive man the point of fundamental importance, viz. the object and purpose with which they are used. Yet it is the object and purpose which determine the social value of these proceedings. For him, or in his eyes, to class together the things which he approves of and the things of which he disapproves would be monstrous: the means employed in the two cases may be the same, but that is of no importance in face of the fact that the ends aimed at in the two cases are not merely different but contradictory. In the one case the object promotes the common weal, or is supposed by him to promote it. In the other it is destructive of the common weal.

If, therefore, we wish to avoid confusion of thought, we must in discussing magic constantly bear in mind that we group together—and therefore are in danger of confusing—things which to the savage differ toto caelo from one another. A step towards avoiding this confusion is taken by Dr. Frazer, when he distinguishes (History of the Kingship, p. 89) between private magic and public magic. The distinction is made still more emphatic by Dr. Haddon (Magic and Fetichism, p. 20) when he speaks of "nefarious magic." The very same means when employed against the good of the community are regarded, by morality and religion alike, as nefarious, which when employed for the good of the community are regarded with approval. The very same illegitimate application,—I mean logically illegitimate in our eyes,—the very same application of the principle that like produces like will be condemned by the public opinion of the community when it is employed for purposes of murder and praised by public opinion when it is employed to produce the rain which the community desires. The distinction drawn by primitive man between the two cases is that, though any one can use the means to do either, no one ought to do the one which the community condemns. That is condemned as nefarious; and because it is nefarious, the "witch" may be "smelled out" by the "witch-doctor" and destroyed by, or with the approval of, the community.

But though that is, I suggest, the first stage in the process by which the belief in magic is evolved, it is by no means the whole of the process. Indeed, it may fairly be urged that practices which any one can perform, though no one ought to perform, may be nefarious (as simple, straightforward murder is), but so far there is nothing magical about them. And I am prepared to accept that view. Indeed, it is an essential part of my argument, for I seek to show that the belief in magic had a beginning and was evolved out of something that was not a belief in magic, though it gave rise to it. The belief that like produces like can be entertained where magic has not so much as been heard of. And, though it may ultimately be worked out into the scientific position that the sum of conditions necessary to produce an effect is indistinguishable from the effect, it may also be worked out on other lines into a belief in magic; and the first step in that evolution is taken when the belief that like produces like is used for purposes pronounced by public opinion to be nefarious.

The next step is taken when it comes to be believed not only that the thing is nefarious but that not every one can do it. The reason why only a certain person can do it may be that he alone knows how to do it—or he and the person from whom he learnt it. The lore of such persons when examined by folk-lore students is found generally to come under one or other of the two classes known as sympathetic and mimetic magic, or homœopathic and contagious magic. In these cases it is obvious that the modus operandi is the same as it was in what I have called the first stage in the evolution of magic and have already described at great length. What differentiates this second stage from the first is that whereas in the first stage these applications of the principle that like produces like are known to every one, though not practised by every one, in the second stage these applications are not known to every one, but only to the dealers in magic. Some of those applications of the principle may be applications which have descended to the dealer and have passed out of the general memory; and others may simply be extensions of the principle which have been invented by the dealer or his teacher. Again, the public disapproval of nefarious arts will tend first to segregate the followers of such arts from the rest of the community; and next to foster the notion that the arts thus segregated, and thereby made more or less mysterious, include not only things which the ordinary decent member of society would not do if he could, but also things which he could not do if he would. The mere belief in the possibility of such arts creates an atmosphere of suspicion in which things are believed because they are impossible. When this stage has been reached, when he who practises nefarious arts is reported and believed to do things which ordinary decent people could not do if they would, his personality inevitably comes to be considered as a factor in the results that he produces; he is credited with a power to produce them which other people, that is to say ordinary people, do not possess. And it is that personal power which eventually comes to be the most important, because the most mysterious, article in his equipment. It is in virtue of that personal power that he is commonly believed to be able to do things which are impossible for the ordinary member of the tribe.

Thus far I have been tracing the steps of the process by which the worker of nefarious arts starts by employing for nefarious purposes means which any one could use if he would, and ends by being credited with a power peculiar to himself of working impossibilities. I now wish to point out that a process exactly parallel is simultaneously carried on by which arts beneficent to society are supposed to be evolved. Rain-making may be taken as an art socially beneficial. The modus operandi of rain-making appears in all cases to be based on the principle that like produces like; and to be in its nature a process which any one can carry out and which requires no mysterious art to effect and no mysterious personal power to produce. At the same time, as it is a proceeding which is beneficial to the tribe as a whole, it is one in which the whole tribe, and no one tribesman in particular, is interested. It must be carried out in the interest of the tribe and by some one who in carrying it out acts for the tribe. The natural representative of the tribe is the head-man of the tribe; and, though any one might perform the simple actions necessary, and could perform them just as well as the head-man, they tend to fall into the hands of the head-man; and in any case the person who performs them performs them as the representative of the tribe. The natural inference comes in course of time to be drawn that he who alone performs them is the man who alone can perform them; and when that inference is drawn it becomes obvious that his personality, or the power peculiar to him personally, is necessary if rain is to be made, and that the acts and ceremonies through which he goes and through which any one could go would not be efficacious, or not as efficacious, without his personal agency and mysterious power. Hence the man who works wonders for his tribe or in the interests of his tribe, in virtue of his personal power, does things which are impossible for the ordinary member of the tribe.

Up to this point, in tracing the evolution of magic, we have not found it once necessary to bring in or even to refer to any belief in the existence of spiritual beings of any kind. So far as the necessities of the argument are concerned, the belief in magic might have originated in the way I have described and might have developed on the lines suggested, in a tribe which had never so much as heard of spirits. Of course, as a matter of fact, every tribe in which the belief in magic is found does also believe in the existence of spirits; animism is a stage of belief lower than which or back of which science does not profess to go. But it is only in an advanced stage of its evolution that the belief in magic becomes involved with the belief in spirits. Originally, eating tiger to make you bold, or eating saffron to cure jaundice, was just as matter of fact a proceeding as drinking water to moisten your throat or sitting by a fire to get warm; like produces like, and beyond that obvious fact it was not necessary to go—there was no more need to imagine that the action of the saffron was due to a spirit than to imagine that it was a water spirit which slakes your thirst. The fact seems to be that animism is a savage philosophy which is competent to explain everything when called upon, but that the savage does not spend every moment of his waking life in invoking it: until there is some need to fall back upon it, he goes on treating inanimate things as things which he can utilise for his own purposes without reference to spirits. That is the attitude also of the man who in virtue of his lore or his personal power can produce effects which the ordinary man cannot or will not: he performs his ceremony and the effect follows—or will follow—because he knows how to do it or has mysterious personal power to produce the effect. But he consults no spirits—at any rate in the first instance. Eventually he may do so; and then magic enters on a further stage in its evolution. (See Appendix.)

If the man who has the lore or the personal power, and who uses it for nefarious purposes, proposes to employ it on obtaining the same control over spirits as he has over things, his magic reaches a stage of evolution in which it is difficult and practically unnecessary to distinguish it from the stage of fetichism in which the owner of a fetich applies coercion to make the fetich spirit do what he wishes. With fetichism I deal in another lecture. If, on the other hand, the man who has the lore or the personal power and uses it for social or "communal" purposes (Haddon, p. 41) comes to believe that, for the effects which he has hitherto sought to produce by means of his superior knowledge or superior power, it is necessary to invoke the aid of spirits, he will naturally address himself to the spirit or god who is worshipped by the community because he has at heart the general interests of the community; or it may be that the spirit who produces such a benefit for the community at large, as rain for example, will take his place among the gods of the community as the rain-god, in virtue of the benefit which he confers upon the community generally. In either case, the attitude of the priest or person who approaches him on behalf of the community will be that which befits a supplicant invoking a favour from a power that has shown favour in the past to the community. And it will not surprise us if we find that the ceremonies which were used for the purpose of rain-making, before rain was recognised as the gift of the gods, continue for a time to be practised as the proper rites with which to approach the god of the community or the rain-god in particular. Such survivals are then in danger of being misinterpreted by students of the science of religion, for they may be regarded as evidence that religion was evolved out of magic, when in truth they show that religion tends to drive out magic. Thus Dr. Frazer, in his Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (pp. 73-75), describes the practice of the New Caledonians who, to promote the growth of taro, "bury in the field certain stones resembling taros, praying to their ancestors at the same time," and he goes on to say: "In these practices of the New Caledonians the magical efficacy of the stones appears to be deemed insufficient of itself to accomplish the end in view; it has to be reinforced by the spirits of the dead, whose help is sought by prayer and sacrifice. Thus in New Caledonia sorcery is blent with the worship of the dead; in other words, magic is combined with religion. If the stones ceased to be employed, and the prayers and sacrifices to the ancestors remained, the transition from magic to religion would be complete." Thus it seems to be suggested in these words of Dr. Frazer's that religion may be evolved out of magic. If that is what is suggested, then there is little doubt that the suggestion is not borne out by the instance given. Let us concede for the moment what some of us would be inclined to doubt, viz. that prayers and sacrifice offered to a human being, alive or dead, is religion; and let us enquire whether this form of religion is evolved out of magic. The magic here is quite clear: stones resembling taros are buried in the taro field to promote the growth of taros. That is an application of the principle that like produces like which might be employed by men who had never heard of ancestor worship or of any kind of religion, and who had never uttered prayers or offered sacrifices of any kind. Next, the religious element, according to Dr. Frazer, is also quite clear: it consists in offering sacrifices to the dead with the prayer or the words, "Here are your offerings, in order that the crop of yams may be good." Now, it is not suggested, even by Dr. Frazer, that this religious element is a form of magic or is in any way developed out of or evolved from magic. On the contrary, if this element is religious—indeed, whether it be really religious or not—it is obviously entirely distinct and different from sympathetic or homœopathic magic. The mere fact that the magical rite of burying in the taro fields stones which resemble taros has to be supplemented by rites which are, on Dr. Frazer's own showing, non-magical, shows that the primitive belief in this application of the principle that like produces like was already dying out, and was in process of becoming a mere survival. Suppose that it died out entirely and the rite of burying stones became an unintelligible survival, or was dropped altogether, and suppose that the prayers and sacrifices remained in possession of the field, which would be the more correct way of stating the facts, to say that the magic had died out and its place had been taken by something totally different, viz. religion; or that what was magic had become religion, that magic and religion are but two manifestations, two stages, in the evolution of the same principle? The latter statement was formally rejected by Dr. Frazer in the second edition of his Golden Bough, when he declared that he had come to recognise "a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion" (Preface, xvi). His words, therefore, justify us in assuming that when he speaks, in his Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, of the "transition from magic to religion," he cannot mean that magic becomes religion, or that religion is evolved out of magic, for the "distinction and even opposition of principle" between the two is "fundamental." He can, therefore, only mean that magic is followed and may be driven out by something which is fundamentally opposed to it, viz. religion.

What then is the fundamental opposition between magic and religion? and is it such as to require us to believe with Dr. Frazer that magic preceded religion, and that of two opposite ideas the mind can conceive the one without conceiving—and rejecting—the other?

The fundamental opposition between magic and religion I take to be that religion is supposed to promote the interests of the community, and that magic, so far forth as it is nefarious, is condemned by the moral and by the religious feeling of the community. It is the ends for which nefarious magic is used that are condemned, and not the means. The means may be and, as we see, are silly and futile; and, for intellectual progress, their silliness and futility must be recognised by the intellect. But, it is only when they are used for purposes inimical to the public good that they are condemned by religion and morality as nefarious. If therefore we talk of a fundamental opposition between magic and religion, we must understand that the fundamental opposition is that between nefarious magic and religion; neither religion nor morality condemns the desire to increase the food supply or to promote any other interest of the community. Whether a man uses skill that he has acquired, or personal power, or force of will, matters not, provided he uses it for the general good. The question whether, as a cold matter of fact, the means he uses are efficacious is not one which moral fervour or religious ardour is competent by itself to settle: the cool atmosphere and dry light of reason have rather that function to perform; and they have to perform it in the case both of means that are used for the general good and of those used against it.

I take it therefore that what religion is fundamentally opposed to is magic—or anything else—that is used for nefarious purposes.

The question then arises whether we have any reason to believe that magic used for nefarious purposes must have existed before religion. Now by nefarious purposes I mean purposes inconsistent with or destructive of the common good. There can be no such purposes, however, unless and until there is a community, however small, having common interests and a common good. As soon as there exists such a community, there will be a distinction between actions which promote and actions which are destructive of the common good. The one class will be approved, the other disapproved, of by public opinion. Magic will be approved and disapproved of according as it is or is not used in a way inconsistent with the public good. If there is a spirit or a god who is worshipped by the community because he is believed to be concerned with the good of the community, then he will disapprove of nefarious proceedings whether magical or not. But Dr. Frazer's position I take to be that no such spirit or god can come to be believed in, unless there has been previously a belief in magic. Now, that argument either is or is not based on the assumption that magic and religion are but two manifestations, two stages, in the evolution of the same principle. If that is the basis, then what manifested itself at first as magic subsequently manifests itself as religion; and "the transition from magic to religion" implies the priority of magic to religion. But, as we have seen, Dr. Frazer formally postulates, not an identity, but an "opposition of principle" between the two. We must therefore reject the assumption of an identity of principle; and accept the "opposition of principle." But if so, then there must be two principles which are opposed to one another, religion and magic; and we might urge that line of argument consistently enough to show that there can be no magic save where there is religion to be opposed to it.

Now, there is an opposition of principle between magic used for nefarious purposes and religion; and the opposition is that the one promotes social and the other anti-social purposes. Nefarious purposes, whether worked by magic or by other means, are condemned by religion and are nefarious especially because offensive to the god who has the interests of the community at heart. That from the moment society existed anti-social tendencies also manifested themselves will not be doubted; and neither need we doubt that the principle that like produces like was employed from the beginning for social as well as for anti-social purposes. The question is whether, in the stage of animism, the earliest and the lowest stage which science recognises in the evolution of man, there is ever found a society of human beings which has not appropriated some one or more of the spirits by which all things, on the animistic principle, are worked, to the purposes of the community. No such society has yet been proved to exist; still less has any à priori proof been produced to show that such a society must have existed. The presumption indeed is rather the other way. Children go through a period of helpless infancy longer than the young of any other creatures; and could not reach the age of self-help, if the family did not hold together for some years at least. But where there is a family there is a society, even if it be confined to members of the family. There also, therefore, there are social and anti-social tendencies and purposes; and, in the animistic stage, the spirits, by which man conceives himself to be surrounded, are either hostile or not hostile to the society, and are accordingly either worshipped or not worshipped by it. Doubtless, even in those early times, the father and the husband conceived himself to be the whole family; and if that view had its unamiable side—and it still has—it also on occasion had the inestimable advantage of sinking self, of self-sacrifice, in defence of the family.

Thus far I have been concerned to show how, starting from a principle such as that like produces like, about which there is nothing magical in the eyes either of those who believe in magic or of those who have left the belief behind, man might evolve the conception of magic as being the lore or the personal power which enables a man to do what ordinary people cannot do. A few words are necessary as to the decline of the belief. The first is that the belief is rotten before it is ripe. Those applications of the principle that like produces like which are magical are generally precisely those which are false. The fact that they are false has not prevented them from surviving in countless numbers to the present day. But some suspicion of their falsity in some cases does arise; and the person who has the most frequent opportunities of discovering their falsity, the person on whose notice the discovery of their falsity is thrust most pointedly, is the person who deals habitually and professionally in magic. Hence, though it is his profession to work wonders, he takes care as far as may be not to attempt impossibilities. Thus Dr. Haddon (l.c., p. 62) found that the men of Murray Island, Torres Straits, who made a "big wind" by magic, only made it in the season of the southeast trade wind. "On my asking," he says, "whether the ceremony was done in the north monsoon, my informant said emphatically, 'Can't do it in northwest.' That is, the charm is performed only at that season of the year when the required result is possible—indeed when it is of normal occurrence. In this, as in other cases, I found that the impossible was never attempted. A rain charm would not be made when there was no expectation of rain coming, or a southeast wind be raised during the wrong season." The instance thus given to us by Dr. Haddon shows how the belief in magic begins to give way before the scientific observation of fact. The collapse of magic becomes complete when every one sees that the southeast trade wind blows at its appointed time, whether the magic rites are performed or not. In fine, what kills magic regarded as a means for producing effects is the discovery that it is superfluous, when for instance the desired wind or rain is coming, and futile when it is not. And whereas morality and religion only condemn the end aimed at by magic, and only condemn it when it is anti-social, science slowly shows that magic as a means to any end is superfluous and silly.

Science, however, shows this but slowly; and if we wish to understand how it is that the belief in the magician's power has survived for thousands of years down to the present moment amongst numerous peoples, we must remember that his equipment and apparatus are not limited to purely nonsensical notions. On the contrary, in his stock of knowledge, carefully handed down, are many truths and facts not generally known; and they are the most efficacious articles of his stock in trade. Dr. Frazer may not go farther than his argument requires, but he certainly goes farther than the facts will support him, when he says (l.c., p. 83) "for it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician as such is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious."

If now, in conclusion, we look once more at the subject of magic and look at it from the practical point of view of the missionary, we shall see that there are several conclusions which may be of use to him. In the first place, his attitude to magic will be hostile, and in his hostility to it he will find the best starting-point for his campaign against it to be in the fact that everywhere magic is felt, to a greater or less extent, to be anti-social, and is condemned both by the moral sentiments and the religious feeling of the community. It is felt to be essentially wicked; and in warring against it the missionary will be championing the cause of those who know it to be wrong but who simply dare not defy it. The fact that defiance is not ventured on is essential to the continuance of the tyranny; and what is necessary, if it is to be defied, is an actual concrete example of the fact that when defied it is futile.

Next, where magic is practised for social purposes, where it mimics science or religion and survives in virtue of its power of "protective colouring," it is in fact superfluous and silly; and where the natives themselves are beginning to recognise that the magic which is supposed, for instance, to raise the southeast trade wind won't act at the wrong season, it should not be difficult to get them to see that it is unnecessary at the right season. The natural process which tends thus to get rid of magic may be accelerated by the sensible missionary; and some knowledge of science will be found in this, as in other matters, an indispensable part of his training.

Finally, the missionary may rest assured in the conviction that his flank will not be turned by the science of religion. The idea that religion was preceded by and evolved out of magic may have been entertained by some students of the science of religion in the past, and may not yet have been thrown off by all. But it holds no place now in the science of religion. To derive either science or religion from the magic which exists only by mimicking one or the other is just as absurd as to imagine that the insect which imitates the colour of the leaf whereon it lives precedes and creates the tree which is to support it.

FETICHISM

The line of action taken by the missionary at work will, like that of any other practical man, be conditioned, not only by the object which he wishes to attain, but also by the nature of the material on which and with which he has to work. He requires therefore all the information which the science of religion can place at his disposal about the beliefs and practices of those amongst whom his work is cast; and, if he is to make practical use of that information, he must know not only that certain beliefs and practices do as a matter of fact obtain, he must know also what is their value for his special purpose—what, if any, are the points about them which have religious value, and can be utilized by him; and what are those points about them which are obstructive to his purpose, and how best they may be removed and counteracted. To supply him with this information, to give him this estimate of values, to guide him as to the attitude he should assume and the way in which he may utilise or must attack native practices and beliefs, is the object with which the applied science of religion, when it has been constituted by the action of Hartford Theological Seminary, will address itself.

Now, it may seem from the practical point of view of the missionary that with regard to fetichism there can be no question as to what its value is or as to what his attitude should be towards it. But, even if we should ultimately find that fetichism is obstructive to religion, we shall still want to know what hints we can extract from the science of religion as to the best way of cutting at the roots of fetichism; and therefore it will be necessary to consider what exactly fetichism is. And, as a matter of fact, there is a tendency manifesting itself amongst students of the science of religion to say, as Dr. Haddon says (Magic and Fetichism, p. 91), that "fetichism is a stage of religious development"; and amongst writers on the philosophy of religion to take fetichism and treat it, provisionally at any rate, if not as the primitive religion of mankind, then as that form of religion which "we find amongst men at the lowest stage of development known to us" (Höffding, Philosophy of Religion, E. T., §§ 45, 46). If, then, fetichism is the primitive religion of mankind or a stage of religious development, "a basis from which many other modes of religious thought have been developed" (Haddon, p. 91), it will have a value which the missionary must recognise. And in any case he must know what value, if any, it has.

Now, if we are, I will not say to do justice to the view that fetichism is the primitive religion of mankind or a stage from which other modes of religious thought have been developed, but if we are simply to understand it, we must clearly distinguish it from the view—somewhat paradoxical to say the least—that fetichism has no religious value, and yet is the source of all religious values. The inference which may legitimately be drawn from this second view is that all forms of religious thought, having been evolved from this primitive religion of mankind, have precisely the same value as it has; they do but make explicit what it really was; the history of religion does but write large and set out at length what was contained in it from the first; in fetichism we see what from the first religion was, and what at the last religion is. On this view, the source from which all religious values spring is fetichism; fetichism has no value of any kind, and therefore the evolved forms of fetichism which we call forms of religion have no value either of any kind. Thus, science—the science of religion—is supposed to demonstrate by scientific methods the real nature and the essential character of all religion.

Now, the error in this reasoning proceeds partly on a false conception of the object and method of science—a false conception which is slowly but surely disappearing. The object of all science, whether it be physical science or other, whether it be historic science or other, is to establish facts. The object of the historic science of religion is to record the facts of the history of religion in such a way that the accuracy of the record as a record will be disputed by no one qualified to judge the fact. For that purpose, it abstains deliberately and consistently from asking or considering the religious value of any of the facts with which it deals. It has not to consider, and does not consider, what would have been, still less what ought to have been, the course of history, but simply what it was. In this it is following merely the dictates of common sense; before we can profitably express an opinion on any occurrence, we must know what exactly it was that occurred; and to learn what occurred we must divest our minds of preconceptions. It is the business of the science of religion to set aside preconceptions as to whether religion has or has not any value; and if it does set them aside, that is to say so far as it is scientific, it will end as it began without touching on the question of the value of religion. In fine, it is, and would I think now be generally admitted to be, a misconception of the function of the science of religion to imagine that it does, or can, prove anything as to the truth of religion, one way or the other.

There is, however, another error in the reasoning which is directed to show that in fetichism we see what religion was and essentially is. That error consists not only in a false conception of what religion is,—the man who has himself no religion may be excused if he fails to understand fully what it is,—it is based on a misunderstanding of what fetichism is. And so confusion is doubly confounded. The source of that misunderstanding is to be found in Bosman (Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, London, 1814, XVI, 493), who says: "I once asked a negro with whom I could talk very freely ... how they celebrated their divine worship, and what number of gods they had; he, laughing, answered that I had puzzled him; and assured me that nobody in the whole country could give me an exact account of it. 'For, as for my own part, I have a very large number of gods, and doubt not but that others have as many. For any of us being resolved to undertake anything of importance, we first of all search out a god to prosper our designed undertaking; and going out of doors with the design, take the first creature that presents itself to our eyes, whether dog, cat, or the most contemptible creature in the world for our god; or, perhaps, instead of that, any inanimate that falls in our way, whether a stone, a piece of wood, or anything else of the same nature. This new-chosen god is immediately presented with an offering, which is accompanied by a solemn vow, that if it pleaseth him to prosper our undertakings, for the future we will always worship and esteem him as a god. If our design prove successful, we have discovered a new and assisting god, which is daily presented with a fresh offering; but if the contrary happen, the new god is rejected as a useless tool, and consequently returns to his primitive estate. We make and break our gods daily, and consequently are the masters and inventors of what we sacrifice to.'" Now, all this was said by the negro, as Bosman himself observed, to "ridicule his own country gods." And it is not surprising that it should have been, or should be, accepted as a trustworthy description of the earliest form of religion by those who in the highest form can find no more than this negro found in fetichism when he wished to ridicule it.

Let us hold over for the moment the question whether fetichism is or is not a form of religion; and let us enquire how far the account given by Bosman's negro accords with the facts. First, though there is no doubt that animals are worshipped as gods, and though there is no doubt that the guardian spirits of individuals are chosen, or are supposed to manifest themselves, for example, amongst the North American Indians, in animal form, and that "the first creature that presents itself" to the man seeking the manifestation of his guardian spirit may be taken to be his god, even though it be "the most contemptible creature in the world "; still students of the science of religion are fairly satisfied that such gods or guardian spirits are not to be confused with fetiches. A fetich is an inanimate or lifeless object, even if it is the feather, claw, bone, eyeball, or any other part of an animal or even of a man. It is as Bosman's negro said, "any inanimate that falls in our way." When he goes on to say that it "is immediately presented with an offering," and, so long as its owner believes in it, "is daily presented with a fresh offering," he is stating a fact that is beyond dispute, and which is fully recognised by all students. A typical instance is given by Professor Tylor (Primitive Culture, II, 158) of the owner of a stone which had been taken as a fetich: "He was once going out on important business, but crossing the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt himself. Ha! ha! thought he, art thou there? So he took the stone, and it helped him through his undertaking for days." When Bosman's negro further goes on to state that if the fetich is discovered by its owner not to prosper his undertakings, as he expected it to do, "it is rejected as a useless tool," he makes a statement which is admitted to be true and which, in its truth, may be understood to mean that when the owner finds that the object is not a fetich, he casts it aside as being nothing but the "inanimate" which it is. Bosman's negro, however, says not that the inanimate but that "the new god is rejected as a useless tool." That we must take as being but a carelessness of expression; the evidence of Colonel Ellis, an observer whose competence is undoubted, is: "Every native with whom I have conversed on the subject has laughed at the possibility of it being supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice to some such object as a stone, which of itself would be perfectly obvious to his senses was a stone only and nothing more" (The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 192). From these words it follows that the object worshipped as a fetich is a stone (or whatever it is) and something more, and that the object "rejected as a useless tool" is a stone (or whatever it is) and nothing more. When, then, Bosman's negro goes on to say, "we make and break our gods daily," he is not describing accurately the processes as they are conceived by those who perform them. The fetich worshipper believes that the object which arrests his attention has already the powers which he ascribes to it; and it is in consequence of that belief that he takes it as his fetich. And it is only when he is convinced that it is not a fetich that he rejects it as a useless tool. But what Bosman's negro suggests, and apparently intended to suggest, is that the fetich worshipper makes, say, a stone his god, knowing that it is a stone and nothing more; and that he breaks his fetich believing it to be a god. Thus the worshipper knows that the object is no god when he is worshipping it; but believes it to be a god when he rejects it as a useless tool. Now that is, consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or not, a misrepresentation of fetichism; and it is precisely on that misconception of what fetichism is that they base themselves who identify religion with fetichism, and then argue that, as fetichism has no value, religious or reasonable, neither has religion itself.

Returning now to the question what fetichism is—a question which must be answered before we can enquire what religious value it possesses, and whether it can be of any use for the practical purposes of the missionary in his work—we have now seen that a fetich is not merely an "inanimate," but something more; and that an object to become regarded as a fetich must attract the attention of the man who is to adopt it, and must attract the attention of the man when he has business on hand, that is to say when he has some end in view which he desires to attain, or generally when he is in a state of expectancy. The process of choice is one of "natural selection." Professor Höffding sees in it "the simplest conceivable construction of religious ideas. The choice is entirely elementary and involuntary, as elementary and involuntary as the exclamation which is the simplest form of a judgment of worth. The object chosen must be something or other which is closely bound up with whatever engrosses the mind. It perhaps awakens memories of earlier events in which it was present or coöperative, or else it presents a certain—perhaps a very distant—similarity to objects which helped in previous times of need. Or it may be merely the first object which presents itself in a moment of strained expectation. It attracts attention, and is therefore involuntarily associated with what is about to happen, with the possibility of attaining the desired end" (Philosophy of Religion, E. T., p. 139). And then Professor Höffding goes on to say, "In such phenomena as these we encounter religion under the guise of desire." Now, without denying that there are such things as religious desires—and holding as we do that religion is the search after God and the yearning of the human heart after Him, "the desire of all nations," we shall have no temptation to deny that there are such things as religious desires—yet we must for the moment reserve our decision on the question whether it is in such phenomena as these that we encounter religious desires, and we must bear in mind that there are desires which are not religious, and that we want to know whether it is in the phenomena of fetichism that we encounter religious desires.

That in the phenomena of fetichism we encounter desires other than religious is beyond dispute: the use of a fetich is, as Dr. Nassau says, "to aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish" (Fetichism in West Africa, p. 82); that is, of any specific wish. Now, a fetich is, as we have seen, an inanimate object and something more. What more? In actual truth, nothing more than the fact that it is "involuntarily associated with what is about to happen, with the possibility of attaining the desired end." But to the possessor the something more, it may be said, is the fact that it is not merely an "inanimate" but also a spirit, or the habitation of a spiritual being. When, however, we reflect that fetichism goes back to the animistic stage of human thought, in which all the things that we term inanimate are believed to be animated by spirits, it is obvious that we require some differentia to mark off those things (animated by spirits) which are fetiches from those things (animated by spirits) which are not. And the differentia is, of course, that fetiches are spirits, or objects animated by spirits, which will aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish, and are thought to be willing so to aid, owing to the fact that by an involuntary association of ideas they become connected in the worshipper's mind with the possibility of attaining the end he has in view at the moment. To recognise fetichism, then, in its simplest if not in its most primitive form, all we need postulate is animism—the belief that all things are animated by spirits—and the process of very natural selection which has already been described. At this stage in the history of fetichism it is especially difficult to judge whether the fetich is the spirit or the object animated by the spirit. As Dr. Haddon says (p. 83), "Just as the human body and soul form one individual, so the material object and its occupying spirit or power form one individual, more vague, perhaps, but still with many attributes distinctively human. It possesses personality and will ... it possesses most of the human passions,—anger, revenge, also generosity and gratitude; it is within reach of influence and may be benevolent, hence to be deprecated and placated, and its aid enlisted."

A more advanced stage in the history of fetichism is that which is reached by reflection on the fact that a fetich not unfrequently ceases to prosper the undertakings of its possessor in the way he expected it to do. On the principles of animism, everything that is—whether animate, or inanimate according to our notions—is made up of spirit, or soul, and body. In the case of man, when he dies, the spirit leaves the body. When, therefore, a fetich ceases to act, the explanation by analogy is that the spirit has left the body, the inanimate, with which it was originally associated; and when that is the case, then, as we learn from Miss Kingsley (Travels in West Africa, pp. 304-305), "the little thing you kept the spirit in is no more use now, and only fit to sell to a white man as 'a big curio.'" The fact that, in native belief, what we call an inanimate thing may lose its soul and become really dead is shown by Miss Kingsley in a passage quoted by Dr. Haddon: "Everything that he," the native, "knows by means of his senses he regards as a twofold entity—part spirit, part not spirit, or, as we should say, matter; the connection of a certain spirit with a certain mass of matter, he holds, is not permanent. He will point out to you a lightning-struck tree, and tell you its spirit has been broken; he will tell you when the cooking-pot has been broken, that it has lost its spirit" (Folk-Lore, VIII, 141). We might safely infer then that as any object may lose its spirit, so too may an object which has been chosen as a fetich; even if we had not, as we have, direct testimony to the belief.

Next, when it is believed that an object may lose its spirit and become dead indeed, there is room and opportunity for the belief to grow that its spirit may pass into some other object: that there may be a transmigration of spirits. And when this belief arises, a fresh stage in the history of fetichism is evolved. And the fresh stage is evolved in accordance with the law that governs the whole evolution of fetichism. That law is that a fetich is an object believed to aid its possessor in attaining the end he desires. In the earliest stage of its history anything which happens to arrest a man's attention when he is in a state of expectancy "is involuntarily associated with what is about to happen," and so becomes a fetich. In the most developed stage of fetichism, men are not content to wait until they stumble across a fetich, and when they do so to say, "Ha! ha! art thou there?" Their mental attitude becomes interrogative: "Ha! ha! where art thou?" They no longer wait to stumble across a fetich, they proceed to make one; and for that procedure a belief in the transmigration of spirits is essential. An object, a habitation for the spirit, is prepared; and he is invited, conjúred, or cónjured, into it. If he is conjúred into it, the attitude of the man who invites him is submissive; if cónjured, the mental attitude of the performer is one of superiority. Colonel Ellis throughout all his careful enquiries found that "so great is the fear of giving possible offence to any superhuman agent" that (in the region of his observation) we may well believe that even the makers of fetiches did not assume to command the spirits. But elsewhere, in other regions, it is impossible to doubt but that the owners of fetiches not only conjúre the spirits into the objects, but also apply coercion to them when they fail to aid their possessor in the accomplishment of his wishes. That, I take it, is the ultimate stage in the evolution, the fine flower, of fetichism. And it is not religion, it has no value as religion, or rather its value is anti-religious. Even if we were to accept as a definition of religion that it is the conciliation of beings conceived to be superior, we should be compelled by the definition to say that fetichism in its eventual outcome is not religion, for the attitude of the owner towards his fetich is then one of superiority, and his method is, when conciliation fails, to apply coercion.

But it may perhaps be argued that fetichism, except in what I have termed its ultimate evolution, is religion and has religious value; or, to put it otherwise, that what I have represented as the eventual outcome is really a perversion or the decline of fetichism. Then, in the fetichism which is or represents the primitive religion of mankind we meet, according to Professor Höffding, "religion under the guise of desire." Now, not all desires are religious; and the question, which is purely a question of fact, arises whether the desires which fetichism subserves are religious. And in using the word "religious" I will not here place any extravagant meaning on the word; I will take it in the meaning which would be understood by the community in which the owner of a fetich dwells himself. In the tribes described by Colonel Ellis, for instance, there are worshipped personal gods having proper names; and the worship is served by duly appointed priests; and the worshippers consist of a body of persons whose welfare the god has at heart. Such are some of the salient features of what all students of the science of religion would include under the head of the religion of those tribes. Now amongst those same tribes the fetich, or suhman, as it is termed by them, is found; and there are several features which make a fetich quite distinguishable from any of the gods which are worshipped there. Thus, the fetich has no body of worshippers: it is the private property, of its owner, who alone makes offerings to it. Its raison d'être, its special and only function, is to subserve the private wishes of its owner. In so far as he makes offerings to it he may be called its priest; but he is not, as in the case of the priests of the gods who are worshipped there, the representative of the community or congregation, for a fetich has no plurality of worshippers; and none of the priests of the gods will have anything to do with it. Next, "though offerings are made to the suhman by its owner, they are made in private" (Jevons, History of Religion, p. 165)—there is no public worship—and "public opinion does not approve of them." The interests and the desires which the fetich exists to promote are not those of the community: they are antisocial, for, as Colonel Ellis tells us, "one of the special attributes of a suhman is to procure the death of any person whom its worshipper may wish to have removed"—indeed "the most important function of the suhman appears to be to work evil against those who have injured or offended its worshipper."