Edwin Sidney Hartland

“ The orenda of his quarry sometimes foils his own. The cicada chirping in the fields ripens the maize for the Iroquois; the orenda of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it must fall. The awful mountain, the treacherous sea, those mighty beings who command the winds, who send forth the storm, who rule in the darkness and mystery of the forest, possess an orenda surpassing man’s. ”

“ His own orenda felt in his passion, his will, his effort, and displayed in his acts and words, the orenda of the spear, either inherent in itself, conceived as a personal being, or conferred by its maker, and manifested in the keenness of its point, the precision and the force with which it flies to its work and inflicts the deadly wound—these would be to him the true causes of his enemy’s fall. His orenda is mightier than his enemy’s and overcomes it. So, when the enemy is absent and he cannot visibly reach him, his orenda may yet suffice to accomplish the desired injury. ”

“ The successful warrior and huntsman by more than his successes, by his confidence and his brag, his readiness to quarrel and his vindictiveness, or the many-wintered elder, wise and slow to wrath, experienced in war and forestry, of far-reaching purpose and subtle in execution, would be enshrined in a belief in his powers, surrounded with a halo of which we still see a dim, a very dim, reflection in the touching regard entertained for a political leader or the worship paid to an ecclesiastical dignitary. ”

“ For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. ”

“ The existence everywhere of organized societies implies the paramount influence of the community over the individual. Nor is that influence only a matter of implication. Abundant evidence is found of the control wielded by society over the actions and the very thoughts of its members. The individual is nothing: the group is everything. As Professor Durkheim remarks, every society exercises power over its members, power physical and above all moral. It keeps them in a sensation of perpetual dependence. ”

“ Everyone is conscious of powers of some sort, and everyone would attribute to others capabilities larger or smaller. Some would possess in their own consciousness and in the eyes of their fellows a very small modicum of power for good or evil. The mere glance or voice of others would inspire terror or confidence. This potentiality, this atmosphere would often cling with greater intensity to non-human beings, objective or imaginary. The snake, the bird, the elephant, the sun, the invisible wind, the unknown wielder of the lightning, would be richly endowed. ”

“ In the lower culture grief at a death is often intensified by fear—on the one hand, of an accusation of witchcraft—on the other hand, of the ill-will of the deceased himself, who is naturally disgusted to find himself dead. Against the latter danger at any rate the forlorn condition of the survivors, stiff with wounds, thrust like him from the company of their friends and fellow-tribesmen, made to wear a distinctive garb, often in rags or dirt, wailing, watching, fasting, would constitute an appeal that even the ghost of a savage would feel hard to resist. ”

“ In all these instances the professor of magic places his skill, knowledge, experience, and the terror of his name and incantations—in one word, his orenda—at the service of his clients without distinction. As civilization advances, and religion and religious ministers begin to be differentiated from the wizard or medicine-man, the latter is probably called on less and less to perform rites on behalf of the public, and more and more on behalf of individuals. The portions of magic that can be disposed for the purposes of the community are taken up into religion. ”

“ On the other hand, so great is the terror inspired by magic, and so instinctively gregarious is mankind, that mere eccentricity, the failure to follow the crowd, is often of itself sufficient to start the cry of witchcraft. The slavery of man in the lower culture to custom is a commonplace of anthropology. That custom is religious to the core, for religion is only one aspect of the social polity. ”

“ At this point we are confronted with the difficult questions What is Religion? and What is Magic?
Religion is notoriously hard to define. Every man thinks he knows what it is; but when he comes to define it he never succeeds, clever as he may be, in framing a definition generally acceptable. The ordinary man, with a particular religion—the only one of which he has had any experience—in his eye, defines it to square with that religion: if others cannot be brought into the definition, so much the worse for them. The anthropologist, whatever his bias, fares no better than the ordinary man. ”

“ Among the affections and appetites of mankind those connected with the sexual life are almost the strongest. It is natural therefore to imagine that the dead will still endeavour, by social and even by fleshly intercourse with the survivors, to gratify them. For if the belief in their activity in other directions be conceded, this cannot be denied; and perhaps the very horror that would be inspired by the ultimate stages of such a possibility serves to attract the thoughts, and therefore the belief, of peoples on the lower planes of civilization. ”

“ Vague, uncertain, and contradictory as the savage may be in his beliefs, sluggish as his mind may be in regard to matters of speculation,—in matters of practical importance, the provision of food and shelter, the protection of his women and children, and the defence of his little community against aggression by human foes or the wild beasts, he is bound to be on the alert and to act. His wits are therefore sharpened for action. Action is natural to him; thought which has no immediate objective in action is strange. ”

“ We no longer summarily deny the possession of religion to tribes whose practices we do not understand. We no longer attempt to docket beliefs imperfectly apprehended under headings applicable only to the highly developed and literary theology of Europe. We lie under a more insidious temptation—that of the too rapid generalization of the beliefs of the lower culture, for which the groundwork may not as yet exist. ”

“ If I have been right in insisting throughout these essays on the fundamental organic unity of Magic and Religion, I have not denied their gradual separation and opposition at a later stage. They have their common root in the same attitude toward the environment, social and physical. Rite and belief have been elaborated and organized together. For ages during this process magic and religion must have been integral parts of one another, as they are now in many parts of the world. Except in regard to antisocial magic, they have not yet among many peoples begun to feel opposition. ”

“ Economic causes, the product themselves of the environment, are often responsible for internal conditions, and cannot be disentangled from them. Intelligent curiosity about things not immediately or apparently affecting ourselves is a rare virtue, and of late development. We ourselves often deem that we pay it abundant homage by witnessing the exhibition of a few lantern slides, or slumbering tranquilly through a lecture on Dante. But to it, if rightly and strenuously pursued, we owe how much of modern discovery and the amenities of civilization! ”

“ In any case it is not to be confounded with fetish-power, for it is revered as fetish-power is not, nor with the earth-spirit, for the Bafiote know no elemental spirits. It must be conceived as the terrestrial energy, the all-permeating creative force, the all-wielding, the fertility, the becoming. Hence there is a sacredness attaching to the earth; and connected as the earth is with the idea of fecundity and the operations of agriculture, and as it is an inseparable condition of life, these all form a foundation for the right to the soil, for hospitality and the relations of the sexes. ”

“ Happily wind-storms are of rare occurrence; but when they do come they wield terrific force, splitting or uprooting powerful trees. Against the onslaught of such foes, which, it need not be said, are regarded as personal beings, the Kai-folk have more than one means of defence. They take one of the jawbones of wild beasts which hang in the hut as trophies of the chase, put it in the fire and pray the storm-spirit to accept the soul of the deceased animal and spare the house. ”

“ When a sacrifice is offered to the ancestral manes by the Thonga of South-Eastern Africa on the occasion of sickness in the family, they are told: “You are useless, you gods; you only give us trouble! For although we give you offerings, you do not listen to us! We are deprived of everything! You [naming the ancestral spirit who is addressed as the cause of the evil] are full of hatred! You do not enrich us! All those who succeed do so by the help of their gods!” ”

“ Nor did the magician hesitate to compel even the gods to perform his wishes, and to threaten them, like the Malay robber, with dire disaster to themselves and the universe as a punishment of their obstinacy. In one papyrus preserved to us, for example, a woman in labour declares herself to be Isis and summons the gods to her help. If they refuse to come, “Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be, offerings shall no longer be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis. ”

“ The loftier the claims of religion become, the closer its relations with the profoundest thought of mankind, the more awful the sanctions it invokes, the more inevitable, the more irreconcilable the hostility becomes. Family quarrels are ever the bitterest. ”

“ Without multiplying illustrations which will spring to the mind of everyone, I venture to suggest that in man’s emotional response to his environment, in his interpretation in the terms of personality of the objects which encountered his attention, and in their investiture by him with potentiality, atmosphere, orenda, mana—call it by what name you will—we have the common root of magic and religion. ”

“ Man began with magic. He knew of no beings superior to himself, and he believed that by certain ceremonies he could cause the results he desired. “Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. ”

“ It is incredible that if rudimentary human beings had lived like them in a group consisting at the utmost of a male, female, and still dependent young, they would ever have emerged into humanity, or that if they had emerged they would have been able to hold their own against the foes that surrounded them. The lowest human beings are never found solitary. ”

“ Destructive criticism is comparatively easy; anyone can make objections. Not everyone can substitute a sounder theory in place of that destroyed. It is when Messrs Hubert and Mauss come to construct their own theory of magic that they find themselves in difficulty. For they have to admit that in magic the same collective forces operate as in religion. Faith is as necessary to magic as to religion; it is as necessary to the magician as to the priest. Trickery no doubt there is; that has not always been excluded from religion. ”

“ In the lower stages of civilization magic is undistinguished not only from religion but from medicine, from astronomy, from engineering, from literary learning, from the practice of industries other than the simplest and of art. Consequently everyone who possesses a little more skill than ordinary, or is credited with a knowledge surpassing that of the vulgar, faces the inevitable risk of being reputed a magician, and the suspicion of using his advantages to the detriment of others. ”

“ Like religion, the chief factor in magic—that by which it accomplishes its ends—is the mystic force that is released and set at work by the rite or the spell. Behind the sympathetic formula, behind the notions of property and of spirits, there is another notion still more mysterious, the notion of power, vague, impersonal, always operating, irresistible, or depending for its efficaciousness on conditions not altogether at command. ”

“ For all scientific enquirers are agreed that the history of the human mind has been that of a slow evolution from something lower than the lowest savagery known to-day, that it has not everywhere evolved in the same way or to the same degree, and that the course it has taken has left traces, discoverable by close inspection, upon every mental product and in every civilization throughout the world. The testimony on which we have to rely in the investigation is of the most various value, and often most difficult of interpretation. ”