Magic Science and Religion 37 



III 

 Life, Death, and Destiny in Early Faith and Cult 



We pass now to the domain of the sacred, to religious and 

 magical creeds and rites. Our historical survey of theories has left 

 us somewhat bewildered with the chaos of opinions and with the 

 jumble of phenomena. While it was difficult not to admit into 

 the enclosure of religion one after the other, spirits and ghosts, 

 totems and social events, death and life, yet in the process religion 

 seemed to become a thing more and more confused, both an all 

 and a nothing. It certainly cannot be defined by its subject- 

 matter in a narrow sense, as " spirit worship," or as " ancestor 

 cult," or as the " cult of nature." It includes animism, animatism, 

 totemism, and fetishism, but it is not any one of them exclusively. 

 The ism definition of religion in its origins must be given up, for 

 religion does not cling to any one object or class of objects, though 

 incidentally it can touch and hallow all. Nor, as we have seen, is 

 religion identical with Society or the Social, nor can we remain 

 satisfied by a vague hint that it clings to life only, for death opens 

 perhaps the vastest view on to the other world. As an " appeal 

 to higher powers," religion can only be distinguished from magic 

 and not defined in general, but even this view will have to be 

 slightly modified and supplemented. 



The problem before us is, then, to try to put some order into 

 the facts. This will allow us to determine somewhat more 

 precisely the character of the domain of the Sacred and mark it 

 off from that of the Profane. It will also give us an opportunity 

 to state the relation between magic and religion. 



I. The Creative Jets of Religion 



It will be best to face the facts first and, in order not to narrow 

 down the scope of the survey, to take as our watchword the 

 vaguest and most general of indices : " Life." As a matter of 

 fact, even a slight acquaintance with ethnological literature is 

 enough to convince anyone that in reality the physiological 

 phases of human life, and, above all, its crises, such as conception, 

 pregnancy, birth, puberty, marriage, and death, form the nuclei of 

 numerous rites and beliefs. Thus beliefs about conception, such 

 as that in reincarnation, spirit-entry, magical impregnation, exist 



