Note 80.2 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

Thus antisocial character is no sufficient test of magic as opposed to religion. Professor Doutté, dealing with magic as developed in Islam, adheres generally to the views of Messrs Hubert and Mauss. He proposes, however, another definition. Quoting with approval the late M. Marillier’s observation that magic is “the action on the without by the within,”80.2 he remarks that the savage has not yet made a sufficient distinction between subject and object; he does not differentiate himself from the universe. And he concludes that magic, invented under the pressure of need, is only the objectivation of desire under the form of an extended force, singular, bound to gestures representative of the phenomenon desired and mechanically producing it. If the savage externalize this magical force so far that he ends by personifying it, we have the genesis of a god; the god, in fact, may be a personified mana. A god can only be anthropomorphic; he is the psycho-physical objectivation of man in phenomena.80.3 This brings Professor Doutté much nearer to Dr Frazer’s position, and might form the basis of an eirenicon between them. For though he is fully aware that much in magic is indistinguishable from religion, he holds it to be a subsequent development: magic has so far modelled itself on religion and borrowed its theistic methods of procedure. It presents itself as an anti-religion. Under Christianity it reaches its ultimate term with the Black Mass and the cult of the devil: Islam does not lend itself so well to hideous parody. Yet Professor Doutté, after flirting with Professor Frazer’s opinion, comes back to the orthodoxy of the French sociologists: the real distinction between religion and magic is that the one is social—it sustains the life of the society; the other applies its rites to strictly personal ends—it is antisocial. The one is magic lawful and even obligatory; the other is magic useless or injurious to society, and it is condemned and interdicted. Islam even recognizes white or religious magic; the Prophet himself recommended it. Ibn Khaldoûn, a great Mohammedan jurist, can find, indeed, no solid distinction between the miracle of the saint and the prodigy wrought by the sorcerer, save that of the morality of its aim. The test of morality is what is permitted by the Law. That which is permitted by the Law is moral; the rest is immoral. It comes to this, then, that a miracle is legitimate magic, and magic is a forbidden miracle.81.1