34 Hutton Webster 



III. PERIODS OF ABSTINENCE AT SACRED TIMES 

 AND SEASONS 



7. THE CONCEPTION OF HOLINESS 



To the primitive mind that variety of impersonal spiritual 

 power known as sanctity or holiness, which attaches to the 

 divine chief or king, to such objects of special reverence as bull- 

 roarer, idol, and temple, and even to particular localities, is suffi- 

 ciently material to be transmissible, and to be capable of infect- 

 ing with its mysterious qualities whatever is done at a particular 

 time. It is, of course, only for the purpose of closer analysis 

 that we may separate the taboos restricting or prohibiting secular 

 employments on sacred days from those other negative regula- 

 tions which, as has been seen, afifect a community at critical 

 epochs (supra). In the primitive consciousness what is danger- 

 ous because polluted and what is dangerous because sacred, are 

 not sharply differentiated. The " holy " thing and the " unclean " 

 thing possess alike the mystic potency, the magical power, the 

 mana or orcnda, to employ an aboriginal terminology which 

 expresses early man's sense of being ever surrounded by un- 

 known agencies among which he must walk warily if he is to 

 walk in safety.^ 



" The Greeks and the barbarians," says an old geographer, 

 " have this in common, that they accompany their sacred rites 

 by a festal remission of labor."- To drop work on a joyous 

 feast-day and give free rein to the primitive play instincts may be 

 regarded as the most natural of proceedings. The cessation of 

 ordinary activities is often dictated by practical considerations : 

 if men are to gather for religious exercises they must abandon, 

 temporarily, their usual occupations. Among peoples which 



^ The best study of holiness in its relation to the concept of taboo is still 

 that of W. Robertson Smith {Religion of the Semites,' London, 1894, 

 chaps, iv-v). Mr. Marett has some interesting remarks on the subject in 

 the Oxford inaugural lecture referred to above (Tlie Birili of Humility, 

 14 sqq.). 



' Strabo, Geographica, x. 3, 9. 



34 



