Magic Science and Religion 75 



purpose. The substitute action in which the passion finds its 

 vent, and which is due to impotence, has subjectively all the value 

 of a real action, to which emotion would, if not impeded, naturally 

 have led. 



As the tension spends itself in these words and gestures the 

 obsessing visions fade away, the desired end seems nearer satis- 

 faction, we regain our balance, once more at harmony with life. 

 And we remain with a conviction that the words of malediction 

 and the gestures of fury have travelled towards the hated person 

 and hit their target ; that the imploration of love, the visionary 

 embraces, cannot have remained unanswered, that the visionary 

 attainment of success in our pursuit cannot have been without 

 a beneficial influence on the pending issue. In the case of fear, 

 as the emotion which has led us to frenzied behaviour gradually 

 subsides, we feel that it is this behaviour that has driven away the 

 terrors. In brief, a strong emotional experience which spends 

 itself in a purely subjective flow of images, words, and acts of 

 behaviour, leaves a very deep conviction of its reality, as if of 

 some practical and positive achievement, as if of something done 

 by a power revealed to man. This power, born of mental and 

 physiological obsession, seems to get hold of us from outside, and 

 to primitive man, or to the credulous and untutored mind of all 

 ages, the spontaneous spell, the spontaneous rite, and the spontaneous 

 belief in their efliciency must appear as a direct revelation from some 

 external and no doubt impersonal sources. 



When we compare this spontaneous ritual and verbiage of 

 overflowing passion or desire with traditionally fixed magical 

 ritual and with the principles embodied in magical spells and 

 substances, the striking resemblance of the two products shows 

 that they are not independent of each other. Magical ritual, 

 most of the principles of magic, most of its spells and substances, 

 have been revealed to man in those passiortate experiences which 

 assail him in the impasses of his instinctive life and of his practical 

 pursuits, in those gaps and breaches left in the ever-imperfect wall 

 of culture which he erects between himself and the besetting 

 temptations and dangers of his destiny. In this I think we have 

 to recognise not only one of the sources but the very fountain- 

 head of magical belief. 



To most types of magical ritual, therefore, there corresponds 

 a spontaneous ritual of emotional expression or of a forecast of the 



