Magic Science and Religion 27 



" practical concerns " — we are led to ask, not without dismay : 

 What remains outside it, what is the world of the " profane " in 

 primitive life ? Here is a first problem into which modern anthro- 

 pology, by the number of contradictory views, has thrown some 

 confusion, as can be seen even from the above short sketch. We 

 shall be able to contribute towards its solution in the next section. 



Primitive religion, as fashioned by modern anthropology, 

 has been made to harbour all sorts of heterogeneous beings. At 

 first reserved in animism for the solemn figures of ancestral 

 spirits, ghosts and souls, besides a few fetishes, it had gradually to 

 admit the thin, fluid, ubiquitous mana ; then, like Noah's Ark, 

 it was with the introduction of totemism loaded with beasts, not 

 in pairs but in shoals and species, joined by plants, objects, and 

 even manufactured articles ; then came human activities and 

 concerns and the gigantic ghost of the Collective Soul, Society 

 Divinised. Can there be any order or system put into this medley 

 of apparently unrelated objects and principles ? This question 

 will occupy us in the third section. 



One achievement of modern anthropology we shall not 

 question : the recognition that magic and religion are not merely 

 a doctrine or a philosophy, not merely an intellectual body of 

 opinion, but a special mode of behaviour, a pragmatic attitude 

 built up of reason, feeling, and will alike. It is a mode of action 

 as well as a system of belief, and a sociological phenomenon as well 

 as a personal experience. But with all this, the exact relation 

 between the social and the individual contributions to religion 

 is not clear, as we have seen from the exaggerations committed on 

 either side. Nor is it clear what are the respective shares of 

 emotion and reason. All these questions will have to be dealt 

 with by future anthropology, and it will be possible only to suggest 

 solutions and indicate lines of argument in this short essay. 



II 



Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings 



The problem of primitive knowledge has been singularly 

 neglected by anthropology. Studies on savage psychology were 

 exclusively confined to early religion, magic and mythology. Only 

 recently the work of several English, German, and French writers, 

 notably the daring and brilliant speculations of Professor Levy- 



