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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 874 



result of the interaction of two or more of 

 the blending peoples. 



I must be content with this brief sketch of 

 my scheme of the history of Melanesian so- 

 ciety, for my object to-day is to point out 

 that if Melanesian society possesses the com- 

 plexity and the heterogeneous character I 

 have indicated and is the resultant of the 

 mixture of three or four main cultures, it 

 can not be right to take out of the complex 

 any institution or belief and regard it as 

 primitive merely because Melanesian culture 

 on the whole possesses a more or less primi- 

 tive character. It is probable that some of 

 the immigrants into Melanesia had a rela- 

 tively advanced culture, possibly even that 

 the institutions and ideas they brought with 

 them had been taken from a culture higher 

 still, and, therefore, when we bring forward 

 any Melanesian institution or belief as an 

 example of primitive thinking or acting, 

 our first duty should be to inquire to which 

 stratum of Melanesian culture it belongs. 



To illustrate my meaning I have time for 

 only one example. No concept of Melanes- 

 ian culture has bulked more largely in re- 

 cent speculation than that of mana, the 

 mysterious virtue to which the magico-re- 

 ligious rites of Melanesia are believed to 

 owe their efficacy. This word now seems on 

 its way to enter the English language as a 

 term for that power or virtue which in- 

 duces the emotions of awe and wonder, and 

 thus provides a most important element 

 not only in the specific mental states which 

 underlie religion, but also plays much the 

 same part in the early history of magic. 

 In recent speculation the idea of mana is 

 coming to be regarded as having been the 

 basis of religious ideas and practises pre- 

 ceding the animism which, following Pro- 

 fessor Tylor, we have for long regarded as 

 the earliest form of religion, and mana is 

 thus held to be not only the foundation of 

 pre-animistic religion, but also the basis of 



that primitive element of human culture 

 which can hardly be called either religion 

 or magic, but is the common source from 

 which both have been derived. If I am 

 right in my analysis of Oceanic culture, the 

 Melanesian concept of mana is not a suit- 

 able basis for these speculations. It is cer- 

 tain that the word mana belongs to the cul- 

 ture of the immigrants into Melanesia and 

 not to that of the aborigines. It is, of 

 course, possible that though the word be- 

 longs to the immigrant culture, the ideas 

 which it connotes may belong to a more 

 primitive stratum, but this is a pure as- 

 sumption and one which I believe to be 

 contrary to all probability. At any rate, 

 we can be confident that even if the ideas 

 connoted by the term mana belong to or 

 were shared by the primitive stratum of 

 Melanesian society, they must have been 

 largely modified by the influence of the 

 alien, but superior culture from which the 

 word itself has been taken. I believe that 

 the Melanesian evidence can legitimately 

 be used in favor of the view that the power 

 or virtue denoted by mana is a fundamental 

 element of religion. The analysis of cul- 

 ture, however, indicates that it is not le- 

 gitimate to use the Melanesian evidence to 

 support the primitiveness of the concept of 

 mana. This evidence certainly does not 

 support the view that the concept of mana 

 is more primitive than animism, for the 

 immigrants were already in a very ad- 

 vanced stage of animistic religion, a cult 

 of the dead being certainly one of the most 

 definite of their religious institutions. 



Further, I believe that the use of the 

 term mana in Melanesia in connection 

 with magic, as a term for that attribute of 

 objects used in magic to which they owe 

 their efficacy, is due to an extension of the 

 original meaning of the term, and that it 

 would only be misleading to use the Mela- 

 nesian facts as evidence in favor of the 



