"10 that both parties, in defiance of their own knowledge as to who was the guilty party could pray: "Whoever brought on these woes, let him die!" And the outcome of the appeal to divine justice is made a just one-Menelaus had Paris at his mercyeven though a piece of divine favoritism is allowed to perturb the absolute consummation of justice. But in other cases the persistence of the old and irrational is not so strong. Of this phase of evolution a few instances must suffice: take as a case the attitude evinced toward dreams and omens. The Greeks could distinguish between the dream that signified nothing—a mere dream (ovap)—and the one which was portentous, and they even had a word for the latter (vwap). Further, they would, on some occasions, express indifference or even contempt for omens. "Many are the birds," says Eurymachus, "that fly about beneath the rays of the sun; but all are not portentous.' And Hector, in patriotic ardor, can go farther, and exclaim in a curiously modern-sounding passage: "Thou dost bid obedience to the long-pinioned birds, but I care not one whit for them, nor regard them. One bird of omen is the best-to defend the fatherland." Similarly with prophecies; not all were regarded as of vital significance. But right here comes in one of the most telling cases of inference as to the mores of the day respecting these matters: the poet, enjoying the privilege of "prophecy after the act," is in a position to make these disregarded omens and prophecies come true or not, just as he pleases-and he has chosen invariably, so far as I know, to impress through the sequel that it is a most unwise thing to disregard anything that looks like a hint from the gods. Relying upon such instances and the implied criticism passed upon even incipient rationalization, it is not hard to reconstruct the actual spiritual status of the time respecting such accessories of the religious system. Some forms of rationalization are not so surprising, as, for instance, that visible wounds should be treated with concrete and sometimes well-adapted physical remedies, while hidden ailments should be regularly referred to a supernatural origin and must be healed by supernatural means; but it seems to me rather striking that 10 Odyssey, II, 181, 182. ... 11 "Iliad, XII, 237-238, 243. dreams and omens should ever be questioned by people upon the stage of the Homeric Greeks. If, as some Greek scholars think, the poet really burlesques and makes fun of the gods, our astonishment at the anachronism must be the greater. But the last and greatest, and really inexplicable discrepancy is the emergence of the two epics themselves out of their social setting. I do not see how anybody can regard the Homeric society of the poems as a sort of antiquarian reconstruction; the picture of the society is too perfect, and too unconsciously so, to have been drawn from without. I do not know that this last statement could be proved-not, at least, without a searching of the text for the sources of the accumulation of impressions upon which the personal conviction has been, half-unconsciously, based. For this is the way such an impression must have arisen, just as the belief in the molding influence of a single mind upon these epics forces itself upon the person who reads and rereads Homer, and at length becomes aware of such a conviction through some subtle rolling-up of almost intangible impressions. Here is a society where the mores are not yet fully turned against the use of poisoned arrows; where human sacrifice upon the funeral pyre is actually practiced; where doughty heroes shrink in pale terror during a thunder-storm, not daring to drink their wine without pouring a libation; where it is only just becoming an "evil deed" to "dishonor the dumb clay," as in the dragging about of Hector's body in the dust to avenge the death of Patroclus. One only of the host of similes in Homer is drawn from the action. of the waking mind.12 And yet out of this primitive setting comes one of the admittedly greatest examples of world-literature. The incongruity is too vast to need to be dwelt upon. This last point does not align itself very evidently with the subject of this essay; but a contemplation of its exceptionality and its bearings cannot fail to enforce upon the student of human societies the futility of generalization unless it is done with the utmost modesty and discretion. The student of man and of human society must never be surprised to see his convenient systems and categories broken down before his eyes; nor yet 12 Jebb, Introduction to Homer, p. 31. must he be disheartened thereby. If there is any branch of science which is in need of the very keenest and most cautious of scientific research, it is the science of society. And this leads. me to say that a man could well spend a lifetime in developing the sociological aspects of legendary material similar to that of Homer. The Eddas, the Kalevala, the Vedic hymns, the ZendAvesta, the Old Testament-all of these are quoted by sociologists, and often, I suspect, uncritically. They furnish, for reasons I have mentioned, the best of fields for the beginner, who is too often under the impression that his salvation and that of the science lie in the speediest possible issuance to a panting public of grandiose sociological theories bearing the unmistakable stamp of his master-mind. Let such budding geniuses be shut up, as Carlyle would have all verdant youths, under a barrel, with a copy of one of these examples of an ancient people's selfrevelation, and a grain of common-sense withal, and the status of sociology, and of the world at large, would speedily become a less unendurable one. THE RÔLE OF MAGIC JAMES THOMSON SHOTWELL Recent discoveries indicate the existence of man, at least of some animal given to chipping stones, for hundreds of thousands of years upon this earth. This almost infinite extension of the course of human events into the so-called prehistoric ages makes the recorded past so insignificant a fraction of the whole, that it must not be wondered at if now and again a historian slips his leash and wanders out into the open fields of anthropological sociology, where time and space are at his free disposal, and all the phenomena of life from anthropoidal apes to the latest prodigy in one of our colleges find a den or a home. Such excursions are not without a certain danger for the mere student of history, but the spirit of adventure is not entirely dead, even among those whose lives are spent in the ascetic disciplines of that monkish subject. It is frankly in the spirit of adventure that I make bold tonight to take up before you what I suppose is the largest subject in human history-magic. It was the science and religion combined, much of the art, and most of the mode of thinking of our race for those vast stretches of centuries that we so lightly term the prehistoric. It is still the most important basis of action and of belief for millions of human beings, and has, as I hope to show, penetrated European history in such vital ways as to modify the structure of both church and state, dominate a large part of the philosophy, and affect the progress of science. Clothed in other forms it has enshrined itself in the most sacred association of many a person here present. It is incredible that so vital a subject should have so long escaped satisfactory treatment. But the incredible is true. For there is not an exhaustive description or analysis of magic simply as magic-in existence. It fills many treatises on other things; its dark seams run across the pages of practically every work on comparative religion; investigations on early law touch .on its domain; primitive institutions are seen to have in it many of their roots; and it is from these outside angles that we get our impressions of its mysterious rôle. But apart from a single essay, which claims to be only a sketch, and to which we refer below, there is no satisfactory treatment of magic as magic and not as an adjunct to something else. There are no encyclopedias of magic science. It is as if it had effectively protected itself from the modern investigator by the power of its own taboos. I believe that in Paris, where such taboos are most likely first to meet their revolutionary tribunal, such an exhaustive treatment has been projected; but until it appears we are without any satisfactory analysis, and therefore all the more without any satisfactory synthesis which will explain the phenomena and the rôle of magic. Meanwhile, however, we are supplied with some provisional treatments, which we may regard as working hypotheses, and it is to these, not as final results, but as possible interpretations, that I wish to direct your attention tonight. Let us take first that great compilation from which most English readers derive their ideas of comparative religion, The Golden Bough by J. G. Frazer. According to Frazer,* magic is the opposite of religion. It is a rude and mistaken science, in which man began his struggle with the mysterious forces of the world. By spell and by charm he met those dangerous powers whose presence he saw revealed in the multifold crises of his life in sickness and death, in the chances of the hunt or the perils of war, in birth, in sexual relations, in the terror of spilt blood, in the gloom of the night, in the march of the storm, in all the terrible and the wonderful in his miracle-wrought uniSuch as he was, Frazer thinks, this brute man of the eoliths, whether of the prehistoric past or of Australia today, turned his dawning consciousness upon the problem of a direct struggle with the elements. No god was invoked in that chatter verse. * In the second edition of the Golden Bough, accepting the distinction drawn by F. B. Jevons in his Introduction to the History of Religion. |