22 Science Religion and Reality 



Thus originated the belief in ghosts and the spirits of the dead, in 

 immortality and in a nether world. But man in general, and 

 primitive man in particular, has a tendency to imagine the outer 

 world in his own image. And since animals, plants, and objects 

 move, act, behave, help man or hinder him, they also must be 

 endowed with souls or spirits. Thus animism, the philosophy 

 and the religion of primitive man, had been built up from observa- 

 tions and by inferences, mistaken but comprehensible in a crude 

 and untutored mind. 



Tylor's view of primitive religion, important as it was, was 

 based on too narrow a range of facts, and it made early man too 

 contemplative and rational. Recent fieldwork, done by specialists, 

 shows us the savage interested rather in his fishing and gardens, in 

 tribal events and festivities than brooding over dreams and visions, 

 or explaining " doubles " and cataleptic fits, and it reveals also a great 

 many aspects of early religion which cannot be possibly placed in 

 Tylor's scheme of animism. 



The extended and deepened outlook of modern anthropology 

 finds its most adequate expression in the learned and inspiring 

 writings of Sir James Frazer. In these he has set forth the three 

 main problems of primitive religion with which present-day 

 anthropology is busy : magic and its relation to religion and science ; 

 totemism and the sociological aspect of early faith ; the cults of 

 fertility and vegetation. It will be best to discuss these subjects in 

 turn. 



Frazer's " Golden Bough," the great codex of primitive magic, 

 shows clearly that animism is not the only, nor even the dominating 

 belief in primitive culture. Early man seeks above all to control 

 the course of nature for practical ends, and he does it directly, 

 by rite and spell, compelling wind and weather, animals and crops 

 to obey his will. Only much later, finding the limitations of his 

 magical might, does he in fear or hope, in supplication or defiance, 

 appeal to higher beings ; that is, to demons, ancestor-spirits or gods. 

 It is in this distinction between direct control on the one hand and 

 propitiation of superior powers on the other that Sir James Frazer 

 sees the difference between religion and magic. Magic, based 

 on man's confidence that he can dominate nature directly, if only 

 he knows the laws which govern it magically, is in this akin to 

 science. Religion, the confession of human impotence in certain 

 matters, lifts man above the magical level, and later on maintains 



