Note 95.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

If the view here taken be accurate, the essential opposition between magic and religion disappears. Nor am I greatly concerned to decide whether of the two developed the earlier. Their origin is the same; they grow from one root. Nay, I should hardly be wrong if I changed the metaphor and said: magic and religion are the two faces of one medal. From the lowest stage of culture to the highest we find them inseparable. Gods were not invented because man proved unequal to the strain of arranging the affairs of the universe by himself; nor has the age of religion been everywhere preceded by the age of magic. “By whatever name it is called,” says Dr Codrington, speaking of the Melanesian mana, “it is the belief in this supernatural power and in the efficacy of the various means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of men that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called religious: and it is from the same belief that everything which may be called magic and witchcraft draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this power. There are many of these who may be said to exercise their art as a profession; they get their property and influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who knows how to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There may be one whose skill extends to all these branches; but generally one man knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handed down from father to son, from uncle to sister’s son [for in many of these islands descent is still reckoned exclusively through the mother], in the same way as is the knowledge of rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer; and very often the same man who knows the sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of charms for many purposes besides. But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of consideration knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult practices. Knowledge of either kind can be bought, if the possessor chooses to impart it to any other than the heirs of whatever he has besides.”95.1