RELIGIOUS AGENCIES 331 



study of their life. " The fact is," says Mr. Brinton, " that there 

 has not been a single tribe, no matter how rude, known in history 

 or visited by travelers, which has been shown to be destitute of 

 religion under some form." * 



All human beings have some notion of powers superhuman to which 

 they are related, and there are always agencies, of some kind, by 

 which they hope to influence or modify these relations. Perhaps 

 what is called animism, by which is meant the attribution of con- 

 scious life to everything which manifests any kind of force, is the 

 earliest form of religion. " The ascription," says one authority, 

 "of life analogous to his own to trees, rivers, fire, and the like, is not 

 necessarily religious in itself; but the transition from animism in 

 theory to animism in cult seems to involve a recognition of their 

 superhuman powers. If a river is endowed with life as is a man, 

 it has power to benefit, as in irrigation, or to injure, as in flood; and 

 it becomes necessary either to propitiate the river, that it may be 

 bounteous in its waters, or to induce it to refrain from destructive 

 floods." 



The agency by which primitive men seek to control these forces, 

 to avert their enmity or make them benign, is magic, the practice 

 of certain incantations by which evil powers are quelled and good 

 powers made propitious. The medicine men and the priests in the 

 African jungles and in our own American forests assume this function, 

 and gain great influence through the use of it. Sometimes they are 

 supposed to exert this superhuman power in the injury of their 

 enemies; sometimes in warding off injuries caused by alien forces, 

 human or superhuman; sometimes in securing the favor of unseen 

 influences. " The sorcerer," says Tyler, " is described as being 

 initiated by living in some wild spot till by fasting and torture he 

 attains his supernatural craft, becoming able to see spirits, to con- 

 secrate bits of bone or of stone into powerful amulets, to make good 

 or bad weather, to gain mystic power over familiar birds or beasts, 

 to take omens from their cries or from the itching of his own skin. 

 . . . The medicine man's apparatus includes the sorcerer's usual 

 music, the rattle and the drum, simple and primitive instruments 

 whose constant association with the lower magic bears witness to the 

 beginnings of music and magic having been associated together when 

 civilization was yet in its low stages of development. The American 

 sorcerer carries a ' medicine bag ' made from the skin of his guardian 

 animal, which protects him in fight, cures the bites of serpents, and 

 strikes at a distance as a spiritual weapon. He knows magic chants 

 of power over the elements; he can, by sucking and blowing, extract 

 disease elements from the sick; he can make pictures and images, 

 and pierce them with thorns so as to kill the men or animals they 

 1 Religions of Primitive People, p. 30. 



