Note 79.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Perhaps, however, not the intention but the tendency, whether social or antisocial, is the test. In that case it is hard to conceive anything more antisocial than the operations of the Holy Inquisition. They were, it is true, not performed by supernatural instrumentality, or for supernatural purposes. To that extent they are not directly parallel with the rites we have been considering. But they were carried on by persons consecrated to religion, as religious acts, surrounded by religious rites, by exorcisms, imprecations, conjurations, shielded by the Church with all her powers, and sanctioned, if not set in motion, by the highest ecclesiastical authorities. They desolated every society where the institution was introduced.79.1 Secrecy has been already noted as a characteristic of magic as opposed to religion. Naturally antisocial acts are performed in secret. The deeds of the Holy Office were done in the deepest dens of the building, and surrounded by impervious precautions against discovery, except the last dread act. In that consummation of cruelty, that supreme Act of Faith, as it was called, its officials nominally took no part; though it was well known that they insisted upon it relentlessly and with every terror, ghostly or secular, which they knew so well how to wield. On the other hand, the African sorcerer, conjuring the rain or the sunshine so necessary for the crops, performs an eminently social work, and does it very often in the open eye of day and before the assembled people. When a fisher-boat was launched in the north-east of Scotland a bottle of whisky used to be broken on the prow or stern with the words: