Chapter 4

THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--MAGIC--METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC-- PSYCHOLOGY.

Contents:

Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples: incantations, ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical beliefs.

"I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable lies and monstrous vanities."--PLINY, ap. Phil. Holland.

"Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments, et puis encores en hommes?"--MONTAIGNE, Apologie pour Raymond de Sebonde.

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The second feature in the savage intellectual condition which we promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery. The world and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as sensible and rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain members of each tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors. These conjurors, like Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work miracles, assume what shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they please, and can metamorphose other persons into similar shapes. It has already been shown that savage man has regarded all THINGS as PERSONS much on a level with himself. It has now to be shown WHAT KIND OF PERSON HE CONCEIVES HIMSELF TO BE. He does not look on men as civilised races regard them, that is, as beings with strict limitations. On the other hand, he thinks of certain members of his tribe as exempt from most of the limitations, and capable of working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed to prophets or gods. Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among themselves. Though highly valued, miraculous attainments are not believed to be unusual. This must be kept steadily in mind. When myth-making man regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does not mean merely a person with the limitations recognised by modern races. He means a person with the miraculous powers of the medicine-man. The sky, sun, wind or other elemental personage can converse with the dead, and can turn himself and his neighbours into animals, stones and trees.

To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary to examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics, and the savage theory of the state of the dead. The medicine-man's supernatural claims are rooted in the general savage view of the world, of what is possible, and of what (if anything) is impossible. The savage, even more than the civilised man, may be described as a creature "moving about in worlds not realised". He feels, no less than civilised man, the need of making the world intelligible, and he is active in his search for causes and effects. There is much