Relation of Magic to Religion 509 



to another, though they ultimately blend, they are at the outset 

 diametrically opposed, magic being a sort of rudimentary and mis- 

 taken science 1 , religion having to do from the outset with spirits. 



But, setting controversy aside, at the present stage of our inquiry 

 their relation becomes, I think, fairly clear. Magic is, if my 2 view be 

 correct, the active element which informs a supersensuous world 

 fashioned to meet other needs. This blend of theory and practice 

 it is convenient to call religion. In practice the transition from 

 magic to religion, from Spell to Prayer, has always been found easy. 

 So long as mana remains impersonal you order it about ; when it is 

 personified and bulks to the shape of an overgrown man, you drop 

 the imperative and cringe before it. My will be done is magic, Thy 

 Will be done is the last word in religion. The moral discipline 

 involved in the second is momentous, the intellectual advance not 

 striking. 



I have spoken of magical ritual as though it were the informing 

 life-spirit without which religion was left as an empty shell. Yet 

 the word ritual does not, as normally used, convey to our minds this 

 notion of intense vitalism. Rather we associate ritual with something 

 cut and dried, a matter of prescribed form and monotonous repetition. 

 The association is correct; ritual tends to become less and less in- 

 formed by the life-impulse, more and more externalised. Dr Beck 3 

 in his brilliant monograph on Imitation has laid stress on the almost 

 boundless influence of the imitation of one man by another in the 

 evolution of civilisation. Imitation is one of the chief spurs to 

 action. Imitation begets custom, custom begets sanctity. At first 

 all custom is sacred. To the savage it is as much a religious duty to 

 tattoo himself as to sacrifice to his gods. But certain customs 

 naturally survive, because they are really useful ; they actually 

 have good effects, and so need no social sanction. Others are 

 really useless ; but man is too conservative and imitative to abandon 

 them. These become ritual. Custom is cautious, but la vie est 

 aleatoire*. 



Dr Beck's remarks on ritual are I think profoundly true and 



1 This view held by Dr Frazer is fully set forth in his Golden Bough (2nd edit.), 

 pp. 73 79, London, 1900. It is criticised by Mr B. E. Marett in From Spell to Prayer, 

 Folk-Lore, xi. 1900, p. 132, also very fully by MM. Hubert and Mauss, " Theorie generate 

 de la Magie," in L'Armee Sociologique, vn. p. 1, with Mr Marett's view and with that of 

 MM. Hubert and Mauss I am in substantial agreement. 



2 This view as explained on p. 508 is, I believe, my own most serious contribution to the 

 subject. In thinking it out I was much helped by Prof. Gilbert Murray. 



3 Die Nachahmung und ihre Bedeutung filr Psychologie und Volkerkunde, Leipzig, 

 1904. 



4 Bergson, op. cit. p. 143. 



