James Henry Leuba

“ The method illustrated above by which animals learn to deal with forces in the midst of which they live has a much wider range of application in human existence than is generally supposed. Man’s fundamental mode of learning is also the unreflective, experimental, one in which frequent blind attempts and chance successes slowly lead to the elimination of ineffective movements. Would you convince yourself of the vastly exaggerated rôle ascribed to abstract ideas and to logical processes in ordinary human behaviour, inquire how ‘power’ is conceived of by those who use it. ”

“ Yet so it is; before any speculation on power, before any induction or deduction, before any abstract notion of the nature of spirit and matter, animals have learned to deal quite well with what we call physical and personal forces. How did they do it? The study under experimental conditions of the establishment of new reactions in animals reveals the process very clearly. Imagine a cat shut up in a cage, the door of which can be opened by pressing down a latch. When weary of confinement the cat begins to claw, pull, and bite, here, there, and everywhere. ”

“ If animal plays serve a highly valuable purpose in affording practice in sense-observation and motor co-ordination, Magic makes its chief call upon the imagination: in this consists one of its most far-reaching values. It becomes a training for the achievement of those higher mental syntheses requiring the momentary disregard of the actual sense-impressions, from which it is so difficult to liberate oneself, in behalf of the accumulated experience of a whole life. ”

“ So that the words ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ mean different things to the philosopher and to the layman. In the popular mind, if spirits are not perceptible it is because the senses are not sufficiently acute. Spirits are here or there, diffused over wide areas or concentrated in narrow spaces. The average Christian, whatever he may say to the contrary, is, theoretically speaking, a materialist, and, I might add, a polytheist. Whatever matter and spirit mean to him, and they certainly have a substantial meaning, the distinction made by the philosopher is for him non-existent. ”

“ For, the moment the existence of the fixed quantitative relations, implicitly acknowledged in the first type of behaviour, is explicitly recognised, science is born. Magic separates itself, on the one hand, from the mechanical behaviour by the absence of implied quantitative relations, and, on the other hand, from anthropopathic behaviour by the failure to use means of personal influence; punishment and reward are just as foreign to Magic as to mechanical behaviour. As to the anthropopathic type of activity, it includes the ordinary relations of men with men as well as those with gods. ”

“ The second objection to the assumption that the trial-and-error method could have led to the establishment of magical and religious habits arises from the inability of animals to act towards unperceived objects as if they were actually present. A dog never welcomes by gambols or licks the hand of an absent friend, while Religion, and at times Magic, show primitive man in more or less systematic relations with powers he has never sensed. ”

“ What are the abstract conceptions necessary to the establishment of the three modes of behaviour?—There is usually little difficulty in determining what end any particular action is intended to secure. It is quite otherwise if one wishes to ascertain the nature of the power from which the desired effect is supposed to proceed. The philosopher, suffering from the illusion to which his class is subject, is in danger of imagining the presence of highly abstract notions where much simpler mental processes actually take place. ”

“ The first of the two differences I intend to bring out, is that if a particular action is to be learned by an animal, the gratification of the actuating desire must follow immediately, or nearly so, upon the performance of the successful act, and be frequently repeated at short intervals; whereas in man, as far as Magic and Religion are concerned, the results may follow quite irregularly upon the performance, often only long after, and, not infrequently, not at all. ”

“ A comparatively easy way of getting oneself disentangled from these high-flown interpretations and of ascertaining what is the intellectual minimum really involved in these types of behaviour, is to examine them in the least developed men known to us, or, better still—if they are to be found there—among animals. Let us accordingly turn for a moment to animal behaviour with the intention of determining what ideas of power, or of agency, are involved in their modes of action, and thus take a preliminary step towards the solution of our problem. ”

“ Nothing more than the immediate association of an antecedent with its consequent need be looked for in the mind of most civilised, superstitious persons, and, of course, nothing more in the mind of a savage. That is sufficient for practical purposes.
The words ‘matter’ and ‘spirit’ wield a very considerable influence among us; what do they mean to most of those who use them? Physical science ascribes either extension alone, or extension and weight, to physical substances. Nonmaterial forces are, then, according to science, both spaceless and weightless. ”

“ That the first glimmer of these capacities should have plunged man in the darkness of primitive Magic and Religion, and made him the ridiculous fool he appears to be by the side of the matter-of-fact, intelligent animal is, however, a very striking and singular fact.
If the constant and immediate appearance of the desired results does not seem necessary to the establishment of Magic and Religion, it should not be thought, however, that these arts are altogether useless. ”

“ Both these modes of behaviour, but especially Magic, appeal to the gambling instinct. All men crave excitement; the savage is no exception. In the daring game in which the rain-maker or the disease-healer engages, the high tension of the gambling- table is, to a certain extent, present. (3) Less obvious, perhaps, than the preceding advantages, but not less valuable, is the general mental stimulation induced by Magic and Religion. Magic is the great social play of the savage. ”

“ It is the Agent or the Power with which man thinks himself in relation, and through whom he endeavours to secure the gratification of his desires, which alone is distinctive of religious life. And so the origin of the idea of gods, though not identical with the origin of Religion, is at any rate its central problem. ”

“ The trial-and-error method which serves to establish the efficient modes of behaviour observed in animals is so far reaching in its possibilities that one might be tempted to regard it as accounting for the existence of Magic and of Religion. Were this theory tenable, the origin of the three modes of human behaviour would have been brought back to one method of learning, the unreasoning, trial-and-error method. ”

“ Apes, dogs, beavers, in fact all the higher animals, show by their behaviour a ‘working understanding’ of the more common physical forces. They estimate weight, resistance, heat, distance, etc., and adapt their actions more or less exactly to these factors when climbing, swinging at the end of boughs, breaking, carrying, etc. I remember observing a chimpanzee trying to recover a stick which had fallen through the bars of his cage and rolled beyond the reach of his arm. ”

“ Any and every human need and longing may, at some stage or other, become a spring of Religion, and conversely the feelings and emotions met with in any form of Religion appear also in non-religious experience. As to the practical means of securing the favour of the gods, it is agreed that they were at the beginning essentially the same as those men were already in the habit of using in their relations with their fellow-men. ”

“ Does not the growling of Darwin’s dog indicate as much? It would seem to me an unjustifiably dogmatic assertion to affirm that no animal can think of thunder as caused by a being like those with which his senses have made him familiar. ”

“ In three days ducklings eliminate a habit which has become useless, whereas generations after generations of men have gone through innumerable, time- wasting, often costly and painful ceremonies for results rarely secured, and, as we think, never directly secured by the magical or the religious ceremonies themselves. There is here a curious point of psychology: animals establish habits under the guidance of immediate results while man develops the magical art and Religion despite the usual absence of the results sought after. ”

“ When, for instance, the rain ceremonies are performed during a spell of dry weather, success, more or less distant, always crowns the efforts of the magicians: the rain does come and the earth does bring forth its fruits. The ceremonies for the healing of disease are often followed by the recovery of the patient, however absurd the treatment may have been. One should not forget, in this connection, the considerable effect of suggestion upon the credulous savage. ”

“ Were he to do so, he would do as the savage who projects his ordinary notion of animated beings behind inanimate phenomena. Creative imagination is not any more required for such an interpretation than for the belief in survival after death when it is suggested by apparitions in dreams or trances. It is quite in point, at any rate, to affirm that man and beasts are much nearer to each other, regarding the possibility of interpreting animistically certain striking natural events, than most people are willing to admit. ”

“ That the dog’s action is not determined, in this instance, in the same way as that of a magician, appears when it is observed that whereas the latter would perform the same magical rite in a great variety of external circumstances, the dog will seek liberation by lifting its paws only when in the particular cage in which he has learned the trick, or in one very much like it. ”

“ Psychological analysis leaves absolutely no standing ground to those who insist upon interpreting the advent of Religion as the manifestation of essentially new kinds of powers, of the birth of a ‘spiritual life,’ for instance. ”

“ Certain highly gifted animals feel blame and approbation, independently of physical punishment or reward, and attach themselves to their masters with a devoted affection possessing all the marks of altruism. The higher animals do, then, without any doubt, practise both the mechanical and the anthropopathic types of behaviour, but they exercise the latter only towards actually present persons or animals. ”

“ The mental differences between man and the higher animals to which the presence of Magic and Religion is to be referred, are not in themselves startling, however considerable their consequences may have been. ”

“ Nothing definite beyond a knowledge of what is to be done in order to secure the desired results and the anticipation of these results them selves. The stoker thinks of what he sees and feels: the coal, in burning, gives heat; the heat makes the water boil ”

“ Towards animals and men, animal behaviour is quite different. A dog will beg from a man; he will not beg from a ham suspended out of his reach. Towards animals and men, animal behaviour is similar to that of men when dealing with invisible anthropopathic beings.
One may well believe that the inner experiences of animals differ in these modes of behaviour as much as their external movements. ”

“ When the Shaman draws lines upon the sand, describes various curves with his arms, utters sundry incantations, he does not address a power he perceives, nor even one he has really seen, although he may believe that he, or some one else, has seen it. ”

“ A stoker in the hold of a ship, throwing coal into the furnace, represents one of them. His purpose is to produce propelling energy. The amount of coal he shovels in, together with the air-draught, the condition of the boiler and other factors of the same sort, determine, as he understands the matter, the velocity of the ship. ”

“ Another significant point is that the absent objects towards which animals may direct their actions are always, so far as one may judge, identical with those actually sensed by them at some time, i.e. their behaviour never shows that they have transformed, imaginatively, objects with which their senses have made them familiar. Whereas man can not only believe in the presence of unseen objects, but he can also imagine beings never actually sensed by him, and behave towards them according to the traits and capacities with which he has endowed them. ”

“ But even a superficial consideration discovers insuperable obstacles in the way of this enticingly simple explanation, and compels the admission that magical art and Religion involve the operation of mental powers not required for the establishment of the mechanical, and of the non-religious anthropopathic behaviours. ”

“ And what does the ordinary person know, for instance, about electricity? Simply what is to be done in order to start the dynamo, light the lamp, switch the current, and what the effect will be in each case, nothing more. The superstitious person, whether belonging to a primitive tribe or to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation of the twentieth century, understands in no other than this practical way the forces he deals with. ”

“ In his dealings with the different kinds of objects or forces with which he is, or thinks himself, in relation, man has developed three distinct types of behaviour. A concrete illustration will bring them before us more forcibly than an abstract characterisation. ”

“ Without the advantage conferred by speech, upon even the lowest savages, to hold, clarify, keep alive, and bring to fruition impressions of this evanescent nature, I do not see how a stable belief in animism could have been established. ”

“ It is in substance what would happen to any person if, on opening his bed in the dark, his hands came in contact with some object concealed in it. Personalisation of the unexpected object is not necessary to cause fright. And yet, who shall say that in none of these instances is there anything corresponding to the anthropomorphic interpretation of natural event so common among men of low culture? ”