But he ascribes it to a "fusion or confusion of magic with religion," which he thinks is "not primitive;" for he holds "that there was a time when man trusted to magic alone for the satisfaction of such wants as transcended his immediate animal cravings." The entire trend of Messrs. Hubert and Mauss' argument contravenes this opinion. For them the notion of mana is not merely the idée mère of magic; it is also the idée mère of religion. In other words magic and religion are not opposed to one another as Dr. Frazer would oppose them. Magic, it is true, has relations with technics and with science. But its deepest, its most intimate relations are with religion, for magic and religion grow from a common root.
Such is in outline the theory of magic here propounded. Fully to appreciate the argument, it should be read in extenso. For want of space I have been obliged to omit, or pass lightly over, not only many of the details (some of them important links in the chain) but also some digressions throwing light on the main thesis. Much is said on magical rites, on magical contagion, on the limitation of the effect of the rite by attention to its object, on the dead and on demons as magical agents, and on the social aspects of magic, which would repay consideration. The argument, though lengthy, is well sustained; and, to express my own opinion, the theory satisfies the conditions more completely than any other hitherto put forward in a connected form. The rationalism of primitive man is incredible. Sceptical, using the word in the sense of hesitating to believe anything which does not square with one's prejudices, he may have been, as the modern savage is sceptical, as the devout believer is sceptical. But the unknown must have pressed too heavily upon him, with all its terrors, to admit of rationalism. From the condition of mind thus generated, the feeling of unpersonalized power all around him, its possibilities and his comparative helplessness, rose the stock, at first undifferentiated, but ultimately branching on the one hand into religion and on the other hand into magic. There he found a present refuge and help in time of trouble. The "fusion or confusion of magic with religion" is, in my view, primitive; their opposition is the result of the evolution of both. No other theory will explain the facts.[1]
- ↑ The point is personal and unimportant, but Messrs. Hubert and Mauss seem to have mistaken my position. I may, therefore, perhaps be allowed to say that I have never regarded sympathetic magic as more than a single department of magic, and I have never accepted the theory that magic is incipient
