682 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



and abasement are negative forms of propitiation. Tliey are perbaps the earliest 

 forms. If our reports be complete (on which we may have our doubts), abstinence 

 is the only form used among the Andaman Islanders, where belief outruns active 

 worship.' In any case, a taboo for propitiatory purposes is very early and veiy 

 persistent. Not without insight does the poet tell us that Caliban 



' Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month 

 One little mass of whelks, so he may 'scape.' 



And the modern European has still his Lent and his Fridays throughout the year. 

 Such abstinence is the laying down and submission of the orenda to those of 

 mightier beings. On the other hand, gift, prayer, cajolery are, properly speaking, 

 an active exercise of orenda. Spell and incantation are often indistinguishable 

 from prayer. They shade into one another by the finest gradations. More than 

 one comparatively civilised people has held that sacrifices properly performed not 

 merely incline, but compel, the gods to grant what their worshipper desires. 

 Gesture-language, as I need not remind you, plays a large part in savage life. A 

 ceremony such as those familiar to us in sympathetic and mimetic magic often 

 is, to a large extent, gesture-language : it helps to suggest to the mighty beings 

 of whose orenda the magician desires to make use exactly what is wanted. It is 

 more than this, of course. It is in part the make-believe which is a relief to over- 

 charged feelings ; in part it is the means by which the orenda is conveyed to the 

 desired object. The words which accompany and form part of the ceremony 

 emphasise the desire. They till and strengthen the instrument with the orenda of 

 the performer, or of the being invoked or compelled to assist; they direct the 

 instrument, considered as a personal being, in the part which it is required to take ; 

 or they allure, entreat, or command the object at which the rite is aimed. 



If the view I have taken be accurate, the essential opposition between magic 

 and religion disappears. Nor am I greatly concerned to decide whether of the 

 two developed the earlier. Their origin is the same ; they grow from one root. 

 'By whatever name it is called,' says Dr. Codrington, speaking of the Melanesian 

 mana, ' it is the belief in this supernatural power and in the efficacy of the various 

 means by which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the benefit of 

 men that is the foundation of the rites and practices which can be called 

 religious: and it is from the same belief that everything which may be called 

 magic and witchcraft draws its origin.' ' All Melanesian religion consists, in 

 fact,' he says elsewhere, ' in getting this mana for one's self, or getting it used for 

 one's benefit— all religion; that is, as far as religious practices go, prayers and 

 sacrifices.' ' Wizards, doctors, weather-mongei's, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all 

 alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this power. There are many of these 

 who may be said to exercise their art as a profession ; they get their property and 

 influence in this way. Every considerable village or settlement is sure to have 

 someone who can control the weather and the waves, someone who linows how 

 to treat sickness, someone who can work mischief with various charms. There 

 may be one whose skill extends to all these branches ; but generally one man 

 knows how to do one thing and one another. This various knowledge is handed 

 down from father to son, from uncle to sister's son [for the people of these islands 

 have not yet emerged from the stage of mother-right], in the same way as is the 

 knowledge of the rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer ; and very often the 

 same man who huows the sacrifice knows also the making of the weather and of 

 charms for many purposes besides. But as there is uo order of priests, there is 

 also no order of magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of consideration 

 knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has some secret of occult 

 practices. Knowledge of either kind can be bought if the po.ssessor chooses to 

 impart it to any other than the heirs of whatever he has besides.' - Here we see 

 the beginnings of the professional magician and the professional priest. The 

 professional magician is he who in the course of the evolution of society, by birth, 



' E. H. Man in Joiirn. Anthroj). Inst., vol. xii. pp. ICl, 163, .353, &c. 

 '■" Codrington, vp. cif., pp. 192, 119. 



