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means likening the thing to be explained to something already familiar, and next, that the familiar, which often most needs to be explained, is usually supposed to require no explanation and to have nothing miraculous in it.

If, then, for the phrase "life and will" we substitute the word "spirit," and say that in the view of primitive man all things which possessed (or seemed to him to possess) activity were animated by spirits, we must also add that those spirits were not in themselves supernatural spirits. They only became so when man was led to ascribe to them that supernatural power which he had already found to exercise an unexpected and irresistible control over his destiny. The immediate causes of this identification are easily conjectured. When a startling frustration of man's calculations brought home to him the existence of an overruling power, man would, as has been already said, eventually cast about for means of entering into relations with that power. The first thing to do for this purpose necessarily was to locate the power; and when primitive man was on the look-out for some indication as to the place of origin whence this power emanated, it would not be long before he found what he was on the watch for. In some cases the indications would be so clear that the identification would be immediate and indubitable; the erysipelas which was the result of bathing when overheated would be regarded as due to the supernatural power of the water-spirit, and was so interpreted by an Australian black-man. In other cases a longer process of induction would be required; the Peruvian mountaineer of the time of the Incas, who fell ill when he had to descend into the unhealthy valleys, ascribed his sickness to the supernatural power of the sea, for it was only when he was in sight of the sea that he was ill.

In this way the notion of supernatural power, which originally was purely negative and manifested itself merely in suspending or counteracting the uniformity of nature, came to have a positive content. A natural agent, such as the river-spirit, which at first confined its energies to the production of its ordinary operations, namely, the ceaseless, pauseless motion of the river, was eventually invested with the supernatural power, transcending its natural sphere of

operation, of violating the laws of nature, and producing, say, sickness. But when once one exceptional action of the riverspirit had been put down as the outcome of supernatural power, then in course of time even its ordinary operation and the customary flow of the water would also come to be regarded as having a supernatural cause, and as being the manifestation, not merely of a spirit, but of a supernatural spirit. Thus in course of time all the phenomena of nature, even the discharge of the storm-cloud and the movement of the stars in their courses, came to be regarded as due to supernatural power.

To some readers this account of the conception of the supernatural may, perhaps, seem to be an inversion of the real process by which the conception was developed. Surely, it will be said, the characteristic mark of things supernatural is that they are things which it is beyond the power of man to perform or to control, and from the very beginning he must have learnt, by painful experience of the elements, that he could not control the drenching tempest or command the scorching sun. To this the reply is that primitive man for long did not believe that these elemental phenomena were beyond his control; of which the proof is that at the present day many savages are in the habit of making rain to fall, the wind to blow, or the sun to stand still; and they do not consider the power of producing these results to be supernatural. In Africa rain-makers are to be found in most negro villages, and their reputation and even their lives depend upon their success in making it. In the Isle of Man there were, and in the Shetlands there still are, old women who make a livelihood by selling winds to seamen. The Australian black-fellow, in order that he may not be late for supper, will delay you the setting of the sun. These results are admittedly obtained by means of Sympathetic Magic. But whether sympathetic "magic" a question - begging epithet has anything supernatural about it, we have to inquire.

The inquiry has a special interest for the history of religion, because, according to a not uncommon view, all religion has been developed out of magic; the priest has been evolved out of the sorcerer, the idol is but an elaborated

fetish. On this theory the distinction between the natural and the supernatural was known to primitive man; things natural were things which men did, things supernatural were things which the gods did, e.g. causing rain or sunshine. But the distinction between men and gods, according to this theory, was somewhat blurred, because man also by means of magic art could do things supernatural, and even constrain the gods to work his will. Gradually, however, he learned that his powers were not supernatural, and that he could not use force to the gods, but must persuade them by prayer and sacrifice to grant his wishes. Then to attempt the supernatural by means of magic became an invasion of the divine. prerogative, and the priest was differentiated by his orthodoxy from the sorcerer. Thus, according to this view, divine power and magic were originally identical, and the early history of religion consists in the differentiation of the two, and the partial triumph of the former.

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But there are reasons for hesitating to accept this view, and for believing, first, that religion and magic had different origins, and were always essentially distinct from one another; next, that the belief in the supernatural was prior to the belief in magic, and that the latter whenever it sprang up was a degradation or relapse in the evolution of religion. this discussion everything turns on the recognition of the difference between the negative and the positive aspects of the supernatural: the negative aspect of supernatural power becomes manifest to the mind of man in any striking violation of that uniformity in nature which it is the inherent tendency of man to count upon with confidence; the positive aspect of supernatural power is later displayed to man's consciousness as the cause of the ordinary and familiar phenomena of nature. Now, the very essence of the conception of the supernatural in its negative aspect is that it is a power which mysteriously overrides and overturns the best founded human expectations, sometimes to man's disappointment, sometimes to his more agreeable surprise.

πολλαὶ μορφαὶ τῶν δαιμονίων,

πολλὰ δ ̓ ἀέλπτως κραίνουσι θεοί·
καὶ τὰ δοκηθέντ ̓ οὐκ ἐτελέσθη,
τῶν δ ̓ ἀδοκήτων πόρον ηὗρε θεός.

So far, then, as man was under the dominion of this conception of the supernatural, he could not possibly believe that he himself was in possession of supernatural power, or that he was on a level with the wielders of it. And if, as we have seen reason to believe, this the negative phase of the supernatural dawned upon the mind of man before the positive, then man could not have begun by thinking himself equal to or more powerful than his gods. In fine, the power of the supernatural was from the beginning conceived as something different in kind from any power exercised by man.

Next, as has already been urged, the regular and familiar phenomena of nature, such as the shining of the sun and the descent of rain, were not at first regarded as supernatural, nor was it the observation of such familiar facts which could have stimulated the sentiment of the supernatural into activity. Even when these phenomena were attributed (as probably from the beginning they were attributed) to the agency of indwelling spirits, and when material objects were regarded as living things, those living things and those indwelling spirits were not at first regarded as supernatural beings. Consequently, when man attempted, as undoubtedly at first he did attempt, to make rain or sunshine, he was not conscious, of attempting anything supernatural. He could not know à priori and at the beginning what series of changes it was possible for man to initiate and what not, what effects in nature it was and what it was not possible for man to produce. It was only by trying all things that he could learn that not all things were possible for man; and it was only when he had learned that lesson that he could extend the denotation of the term "supernatural" so as to include in it "things impossible for man." It was only after making many experiments that he learned that the power to stay the sun or to make the wind to cease was supernatural. He could not therefore have known whilst making his experiments, that he was attempting the supernatural. The conclusion that the things attempted were supernatural was the consequence of his attempts, and was the very opposite of the idea with which he started.

Finally, the means by which the savage attempts to produce results which we should but which he does not

consider to be superhuman, are not regarded by him as supernatural. He does not imagine that he possesses superHis sympathetic magic is but one branch

natural power.

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of his science, and is not different in kind from the rest. neither produces, in his opinion, supernatural results nor uses supernatural means to produce what he effects. Sympathetic magic was not in the beginning identical with the supernatural, nor was the conception of the latter evolved out of or differentiated from the latter. But perhaps we had better devote a separate chapter to the establishment of this point.

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