Myth, Ritual, and Religion / The Mental Condition Of Savages--Magic--Metamorphosis--Metaphysic-- Psychology

The Mental Condition Of Savages--Magic--Metamorphosis--Metaphysic-- Psychology

Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples:
incantations, ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other
institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical
beliefs.

"I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable
lies and monstrous vanities."--PLINY, ap. Phil. Holland.

"Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments,
et puis encores en hommes?"--MONTAIGNE, Apologie pour Raymond de
Sebonde.

The second feature in the savage intellectual condition which we
promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery. The
world and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as
sensible and rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain
members of each tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors.
These conjurors, like Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work
miracles, assume what shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they
please, and can metamorphose other persons into similar shapes. It
has already been shown that savage man has regarded all THINGS as
PERSONS much on a level with himself. It has now to be shown WHAT
KIND OF PERSON HE CONCEIVES HIMSELF TO BE. He does not look on men
as civilised races regard them, that is, as beings with strict
limitations. On the other hand, he thinks of certain members of
his tribe as exempt from most of the limitations, and capable of
working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed to
prophets or gods. Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical
omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among
themselves. Though highly valued, miraculous attainments are not
believed to be unusual. This must be kept steadily in mind. When
myth-making man regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does
not mean merely a person with the limitations recognised by modern
races. He means a person with the miraculous powers of the
medicine-man. The sky, sun, wind or other elemental personage can
converse with the dead, and can turn himself and his neighbours
into animals, stones and trees.

To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary
to examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics,
and the savage theory of the state of the dead. The medicine-man's
supernatural claims are rooted in the general savage view of the
world, of what is possible, and of what (if anything) is
impossible. The savage, even more than the civilised man, may be
described as a creature "moving about in worlds not realised". He
feels, no less than civilised man, the need of making the world
intelligible, and he is active in his search for causes and
effects. There is much "speculation in these eyes that he doth
glare withal". This is a statement which has been denied by some
persons who have lived with savages. Thus Mr. Bates, in his
Naturalist on the Amazon,[1] writes: "Their want of curiosity is
extreme. . . . Vicente (an Indian companion) did not know the
cause of thunder and lightning. I asked him who made the sun, the
stars, the trees. He didn't know, and had never heard the subject
mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates admits that even Vicente
had a theory of the configuration of the world. "The necessity of
a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and a theory had
been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain Brazilian
tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the
want of a theory of the soul"; and he thinks the cause of this
indolence is the lack "of a written language or a leisured class".
Now savages, as a rule, are all in the "leisured class," all
sportsmen. Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, has expressed scepticism
about the curiosity attributed to savages. The point is important,
because, in our view, the medicine-man's powers are rooted in the
savage theory of things, and if the savage is too sluggish to
invent or half consciously evolve a theory of things, our
hypothesis is baseless. Again, we expect to find in savage myths
the answer given by savages to their own questions. But this view
is impossible if savages do not ask themselves, and never have
asked themselves, any questions at all about the world. On this
topic Mr. Spencer writes: "Along with absence of surprise there
naturally goes absence of intelligent curiosity".[2] Yet Mr.
Spencer admits that, according to some witnesses, "the Dyaks have
an insatiable curiosity," the Samoans "are usually very
inquisitive," and "the Tahitians are remarkably curious and
inquisitive". Nothing is more common than to find travellers
complaining that savages, in their ardently inquiring curiosity,
will not leave the European for a moment to his own undisturbed
devices. Mr. Spencer's savages, who showed no curiosity, displayed
this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them exhibit
signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many
uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no
curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when
his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical
appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr.
Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to
think and the accompanying desire to know, is without tendency to
speculate". He backs Mr. Bates's experience with Mungo Park's
failure to "draw" the negroes about the causes of day and night.
They had never indulged a conjecture nor formed an hypothesis on
the matter. Yet Park avers that "the belief in one God is entire
and universal among them". This he "pronounces without the
smallest shadow of doubt". As to "primitive man," according to Mr.
Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances
does not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about
"primitive man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds
his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail
foundation of evidence.

[1] Vol. ii. p. 162.

[2] Sociology, p. 98.

Mr. Spencer has admitted speculation, or at least curiosity, among
New Caledonians, New Guinea people, Dyaks, Samoans and Tahitians.
Even where he denies its existence, as among the Amazon tribes
mentioned by Mr. Bates, we happen to be able to show that Mr. Bates
was misinformed. Another traveller, the American geologist,
Professor Hartt of Cornell University, lived long among the tribes
of the Amazon. But Professor Hartt did not, like Mr. Bates, find
them at all destitute of theories of things--theories expressed in
myths, and testifying to the intellectual activity and curiosity
which demands an answer to its questions. Professor Hartt, when he
first became acquainted with the Indians of the Amazon, knew that
they were well supplied with myths, and he set to work to collect
them. But he found that neither by coaxing nor by offers of money
could he persuade an Indian to relate a myth. Only by accident,
"while wearily paddling up the Paranamirim of the Ituki," did he
hear the steersman telling stories to the oarsmen to keep them
awake. Professor Hartt furtively noted down the tale, and he found
that by "setting the ball rolling," and narrating a story himself,
he could make the natives throw off reserve and add to his stock of
tales. "After one has obtained his first myth, and has learned to
recite it accurately and spiritedly, the rest is easy." The tales
published by Professor Hartt are chiefly animal stories, like those
current in Africa and among the Red Indians, and Hartt even
believed that many of the legends had been imported by Negroes.
But as the majority of the Negro myths, like those of the
Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some
phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and
vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian
myths were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief
in the intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of
Negroes on the reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it
turns out that both Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do
satisfy an unscientific curiosity, and it is even held that the
Negroes lent the Amazonians these very stories.[1] The
Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give themselves a reason why
for everything, according to their own lively fancy, and do not
leave the smallest matter uncriticised".[2] As far, then, as Mr.
Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may consider
them overweighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naive
savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the
causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's
craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the
reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no
other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of
his race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is
already an intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of
the moments not engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep. Even in
the Botocudo or the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ
in actual experience."[3] It will be shown later that the food of
the savage intellectual appetite is offered and consumed in the
shape of explanatory myths.

[1] See Amazonian Tortoise-Myth., pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr.
Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.

[2] Steller, p. 267. Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.

[3] Primitive Culture, i. 369.

But we must now observe that the "actual experience," properly so
called, of the savage is so limited and so coloured by misconception
and superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much
from the conceptions of civilised races. He seeks an explanation, a
theory of things, based on his experience. But his knowledge of
physical causes and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is
driven to fall back upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many
cases "supernatural" explanations. The narrower the range of man's
knowledge of physical causes, the wider is the field which he has to
fill up with hypothetical causes of a metaphysical or "supernatural"
character. These "supernatural" causes themselves the savage
believes to be matters of experience. It is to his mind a matter of
experience that all nature is personal and animated; that men may
change shapes with beasts; that incantations and supernatural beings
can cause sunshine and storm.

A good example of this is given in Charlevoix's work on French
Canada.[1] Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the
Hurons and other tribes of North America. He thus describes the
philosophy of the Red Men: "The Hurons attribute the most ordinary
effects to supernatural causes".[2] In the same page the good
father himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and
the cure of certain savage patients to the prayers of Pere Brebeuf
and to the exhibition of the sacraments. Charlevoix had
considerably extended the field in which natural effects are known
to be produced by natural causes. He was much more scientifically
minded than his savage flock, and was quite aware that an ordinary
clock with a pendulum cannot bring bad luck to a whole tribe, and
that a weather-cock is not a magical machine for securing
unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing less of natural
causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as convinced that his
clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his weather-cock
spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of the truth of
his own inferences. One or two other anecdotes in the good
father's history and letters help to explain the difference between
the philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf
was once summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or
"medicine-man" before a council of the tribe. His judges told the
father that nothing had gone right since he appeared among them.
To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing the attention of the savages to
the absurdity of their principles". He admitted[3] the premise
that nothing had turned out well in the tribe since his arrival.
"But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is angry with your
hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus demonstrated
the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the malignant
Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet! This event naturally added
to the confusion of the savages.

[1] Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.

[2] Vol. i. p. 191.

[3] Vol. i. p. 192.

Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds.
Catlin, the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who
consolidated his power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the
whites. The chief used to prophesy the sudden death of his
opponents, which always occurred at the time indicated. The
natural results of the administration of arsenic were attributed by
the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the possession of
the chief.[1] Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas
cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it
flies hastily to a hypothesis of "supernatural" causes which are
only guessed at, and are incapable of demonstration. This frame of
mind prevails still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes
showed when, in 1846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to "the
excesses of the press and the general disregard of Sunday". That
"supernatural" causes exist and may operate, it is not at all our
intention to deny. But the habit of looking everywhere for such
causes, and of assuming their interference at will, is the main
characteristic of savage speculation. The peculiarity of the
savage is that he thinks human agents can work supernaturally,
whereas even the Bishop reserved his supernatural explanations for
the Deity. On this belief in man's power to affect events beyond
the limits of natural possibility is based the whole theory of
MAGIC, the whole power of sorcerers. That theory, again, finds
incessant expression in myth, and therefore deserves our attention.

[1] Catlin, Letters, ii. 117.

The theory requires for its existence an almost boundless
credulity. This credulity appears to Europeans to prevail in full
force among savages. Bosman is amazed by the African belief that a
spider created the world. Moffat is astonished at the South
African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl.
Charlevoix says, "Les sauvages sont d'une facilite a croire ce
qu'on leur dit, que les plus facheuse experiences n'ont jamais pu
guerir".[1] But it is a curious fact that while savages are, as a
rule, so credulous, they often laugh at the religious doctrines
taught them by missionaries. Elsewhere they recognise certain
essential doctrines as familiar forms of old. Dr. Moffat remarks,
"To speak of the Creation, the Fall and the Resurrection, seemed
more fabulous, extravagant and ludicrous to them than their own
vain stories of lions and hyaenas." Again, "The Gospel appeared
too preposterous for the most foolish to believe".[2] While the
Zulus declared that they used to accept their own myths without
inquiry,[3] it was a Zulu who suggested to Bishop Colenso his
doubts about the historical character of the Noachian Deluge.
Hearne[4] knew a Red Man, Matorabhee, who, "though a perfect bigot
with regard to the arts and tricks of the jugglers, could yet by no
means be impressed with a belief of any part of OUR religion".
Lieutenant Haggard, R.N., tells the writer that during an eclipse
at Lamoo he ridiculed the native notion of driving away a beast
which devours the moon, and explained the real cause of the
phenomenon. But his native friend protested that "he could not be
expected to believe such a story". Yet other savages aver an old
agreement with the belief in a moral Creator.

[1] Vol. ii. p. 378.

[2] Missionary Labours, p. 245.

[3] Callaway, Religion of Amazulus, i. 35.

[4] Journey among the Indians, 1795, p. 350.

We have already seen sufficient examples of credulity in savage
doctrines about the equal relations of men and beasts, stars,
clouds and plants. The same readiness of belief, which would be
surprising in a Christian child, has been found to regulate the
rudimentary political organisations of grey barbarians. Add to
this credulity a philosophy which takes resemblance, or contiguity
in space, or nearness in time as a sufficient reason for
predicating the relations of cause and effect, and we have the
basis of savage physical science. Yet the metaphysical theories of
savages, as expressed in Maori, Polynesian, and Zuni hymns, often
amaze us by their wealth of abstract ideas. Coincidence elsewhere
stands for cause.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is the motto of the savage philosophy
of causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles
of the Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.[1] "The
Egyptians have discovered more omens and prodigies than any other
men; for when aught prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and
write down what follows; and then, if anything like the prodigy be
repeated, they expect the same events to follow as before." This
way of looking at things is the very essence of superstition.

[1] II. p. 82.

Savages, as a rule, are not even so scientific as the Egyptians.
When an untoward event occurs, they look for its cause among all
the less familiar circumstances of the last few days, and select
the determining cause very much at random. Thus the arrival of the
French missionaries among the Hurons was coincident with certain
unfortunate events; therefore it was argued that the advent of the
missionaries was the cause of the misfortune. When the Bechuanas
suffered from drought, they attributed the lack of rain to the
arrival of Dr. Moffat, and especially to his beard, his church
bell, and a bag of salt in his possession. Here there was not even
the pretence of analogy between cause and effect. Some savages
might have argued (it is quite in their style), that as salt causes
thirst, a bag of salt causes drought; but no such case could be
made out against Dr. Moffat's bell and beard. To give an example
from the beliefs of English peasants. When a cottage was buried by
a little avalanche in 1772, the accident was attributed to the
carelessness of the cottagers, who had allowed a light to be taken
out of their dwelling in Christmas-tide.[1] We see the same
confusion between antecedence and consequence in time on one side,
and cause and effect on the other, when the Red Indians aver that
birds actually bring winds and storms or fair weather. They take
literally the sense of the Rhodian swallow-song:--

The swallow hath come,
Bringing fair hours,
Bringing fair seasons,
On black back and white breast.[2]

[1] Shropshire Folk-Lore, by Miss Burne, iii. 401.

[2] Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107.

Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute
hurricanes to the machinations of the people of the nearest island
to windward. The wind comes from them; therefore (as their
medicine-men can notoriously influence the weather), they must have
sent the wind. This unneighbourly act is a casus belli, and
through the whole of a group of islands the banner of war, like the
flag of freedom in Byron, flies against the wind. The chief
principle, then, of savage science is that antecedence and
consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.[1] Again,
savage science holds that LIKE AFFECTS LIKE, that you can injure a
man, for example, by injuring his effigy. On these principles the
savage explains the world to himself, and on these principles he
tries to subdue to himself the world. Now the putting of these
principles into practice is simply the exercise of art magic, an
art to which nothing seems impossible. The belief that his Shamans
or medicine-men practise this art is universal among savages. It
seriously affects their conduct, and is reflected in their myths.

[1] See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine
Myths.

The one general rule which governs all magical reasoning is, that
casual connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection
in fact. Like suggests like to human thought by association of
ideas; wherefore like influences like, or produces analogous
effects in practice. Any object once in a man's possession,
especially his hair or his nails, is supposed to be capable of
being used against him by a sorcerer. The part suggests the whole.
A lock of a man's hair was part of the man; to destroy the hair is
to destroy its former owner. Again, whatever event follows another
in time suggests it, and may have been caused by it. Accompanying
these ideas is the belief that nature is peopled by invisible
spiritual powers, over which magicians and sorcerers possess
influence. The magic of the lower races chiefly turns on these two
beliefs. First, "man having come to associate in thought those
things which he found by experience to be connected in fact,
proceeded erroneously to invert their action, and to conclude that
association in thought must involve similar connection in reality.
He thus attempted to discover, to foretell, and to cause events,
by means of processes which we now see to have only an ideal
significance."[1] Secondly, man endeavoured to make disembodied
spirits of the dead, or any other spirits, obedient to his will.
Savage philosophy presumes that the beliefs are correct, and that
their practical application is successful. Examples of the first
of the two chief magical ideas are as common in unscientific modern
times or among unscientific modern people as in the savage world.

[1] Primitive Culture, i. 14.

The physicians of the age of Charles II. were wont to give their
patients "mummy powder," that is, pulverised mummy. They argued
that the mummy had lasted for a very long time, and that the
patients ought to do so likewise. Pliny imagined that diamonds
must be found in company with gold, because these are the most
perfect substances in the world, and like should draw to like.
Aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, was a favourite medical nostrum
of the Middle Ages, because gold, being perfect, should produce
perfect health. Among savages the belief that like is caused by
like is exemplified in very many practices. The New Caledonians,
when they wish their yam plots to be fertile, bury in them with
mystic ceremonies certain stones which are naturally shaped like
yams. The Melanesians have reduced this kind of magic to a system.
Among them certain stones have a magical efficacy, which is
determined in each case by the shape of the stone. "A stone in the
shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable
find. No garden was planted without the stones which were to
increase the crop."[1] Stones with a rude resemblance to beasts
bring the Zuni luck in the chase.

[1] Rev. R. H. Codrington, Journ. Anth. Inst., February, 1881.

The spiritual theory in some places is mixed up with the "like to
like" theory, and the magical stones are found where the spirits
have been heard twittering and whistling. "A large stone lying
with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her
sucklings, was good for a childless woman."[1] It is the savage
belief that stones reproduce their species, a belief consonant with
the general theory of universal animation and personality. The
ancient belief that diamonds gendered diamonds is a survival from
these ideas. "A stone with little disks upon it was good to bring
in money; any fanciful interpretation of a mark was enough to give
a character to the stone and its associated Vui" or spirit in
Melanesia. In Scotland, stones shaped like various parts of the
human body are expected to cure the diseases with which these
members may be afflicted. "These stones were called by the names
of the limbs which they represented, as 'eye-stone,' 'head-stone'."
The patient washed the affected part of the body, and rubbed it
well with the stone corresponding.[2]

[1] Codrington, Journ. Anth. Soc., x. iii. 276.

[2] Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.

To return from European peasant-magic to that of savages, we find
that when the Bushmen want wet weather they light fires, believing
that the black smoke clouds will attract black rain clouds; while
the Zulus sacrifice black cattle to attract black clouds of
rain.[1] Though this magic has its origin in savage ignorance, it
survives into civilisation. Thus the sacrifices of the Vedic age
were imitations of the natural phenomena which the priests desired
to produce.[2] "C'etait un moyen de faire tombre la pluie en
realisant, par les representations terrestres des eaux du nuage et
de l'eclair, les conditions dans lesquelles celui-ci determine dans
le ciel l'epanchement de celles-la." A good example of magical
science is afforded by the medical practice of the Dacotahs of
North America.[3] When any one is ill, an image of his disease, a
boil or what not, is carved in wood. This little image is then
placed in a bowl of water and shot at with a gun. The image of the
disease being destroyed, the disease itself is expected to
disappear. Compare the magic of the Philistines, who made golden
images of the sores which plagued them and stowed them away in the
ark.[4] The custom of making a wax statuette of an enemy, and
piercing it with pins or melting it before the fire, so that the
detested person might waste as his semblance melted, was common in
mediaeval Europe, was known to Plato, and is practised by Negroes.
Some Australians take some of the hair of an enemy, mix it with
grease and the feathers of the eagle, and burn it in the fire.
This is "bar" or black magic. The boarding under the chair of a
magistrate in Barbadoes was lifted not long ago, and the ground
beneath was found covered with wax images of litigants stuck full
of pins.

[1] Callaway, i. 92.

[2] Bergaigne, Religion Vedique, i. 126-138, i., vii., viii.

[3] Schoolcraft, iv. 491.

[4] 1 Samuel vi. 4, 5.

The war-magic of the Dacotahs works in a similar manner. Before a
party starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies,
takes his club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls
hoops at him; each hoop represents an enemy, and for each he
strikes a foeman is expected to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is
also set out to entice the spirits of the enemy.[1] The war-magic
of the Aryans in India does not differ much in character from that
of the Dacotahs. "If any one wishes his army to be victorious, he
should go beyond the battle-line, cut a stalk of grass at the top
and end, and throw it against the hostile army with the words,
Prasahe kas trapasyati?--O Prasaha, who sees thee? If one who has
such knowledge cuts a stalk of grass and throws the parts at the
hostile army, it becomes split and dissolved, just as a daughter-
in-law becomes abashed and faints when seeing her father-in-law,"--
an allusion, apparently, to the widespread tabu which makes
fathers-in-law, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and mothers-in-law
avoid each other.[2]

[1] Schoolcraft, iv. 496.

[2] Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 22.

The hunt-dances of the Red Indians and Australians are arranged
like their war-magic. Effigies of the bears, deer, or kangaroos
are made, or some of the hunters imitate the motions of these
animals. The rest of the dancers pretend to spear them, and it is
hoped that this will ensure success among the real bears and
kangaroos.

Here is a singular piece of magic in which Europeans and Australian
blacks agree. Boris Godunoff made his servants swear never to
injure him by casting spells with the dust on which his feet or his
carriage wheels had left traces.[1] Mr. Howitt finds the same
magic among the Kurnai.[2] "Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I
asked him what was the matter. He said, 'Some fellow has put
BOTTLE in my foot'. I found he was probably suffering from acute
rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot-
track and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The magic
influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot." On another
occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows
putting poison in his foot-tracks. Bosman mentions a similar
practice among the people of Guinea. In Scottish folk-lore a screw
nail is fixed into the footprint of the person who is to be
injured.

[1] Rambaud's History of Russia, English trans., i. 351.

[2] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 250.

Just as these magical efforts to influence like by like work their
way into Vedic and other religions, so they are introduced into the
religion of the savage. His prayers are addresses to some sort of
superior being, but the efficacy of the prayer is often eked out by
a little magic, unless indeed we prefer to suppose that the words
of the supplication are interpreted by gesture-speech. Sproat
writes: "Set words and gestures are used according to the thing
desired. For instance, in praying for salmon, the native rubs the
backs of his hands, looks upwards, and mutters the words, 'Many
salmon, many salmon'. If he wishes for deer, he carefully rubs
both eyes; or, if it is geese, he rubs the back of his shoulder,
uttering always in a sing-song way the accustomed formula. . . .
All these practices in praying no doubt have a meaning. We may see
a steady hand is needed in throwing the salmon-spear, and clear
eyesight in finding deer in the forest."[1]

[1] Savage Life, p. 208.

In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be
multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the
power of songs of INCANTATION. This is a feature of magic which
specially deserves our attention. In myths, and still more in
marchen or household tales, we shall constantly find that the most
miraculous effects are caused when the hero pronounces a few lines
of rhyme. In Rome, as we have all read in the Latin Delectus, it
was thought that incantations could draw down the moon. In the
Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing "a song of healing" over the
wound which was dealt him by the boar's tusk. Jeanne d'Arc,
wounded at Orleans, refused a similar remedy. Sophocles speaks of
the folly of muttering incantations over wounds that need the
surgeon's knife. The song that salved wounds occurs in the
Kalewala, the epic poem of the Finns. In many of Grimm's marchen,
miracles are wrought by the repetition of snatches of rhyme. This
belief is derived from the savage state of fancy. According to
Kohl,[1] "Every sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's
mouth is at once wrapped up in the garb of a wabanonagamowin
(chanson magicale). If you ask one of them to sing you a simple
innocent hymn in praise of Nature, a spring or jovial hunting
stave, he never gives you anything but a form of incantation, with
which he says you will be able to call to you all the birds from
the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves and
burrows."[2] The giant's daughter in the Scotch marchen, Nicht,
Nought, Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid "all the birds
of the sky". In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love-
song, he will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious.
The savage, in short, is extremely practical. His arts, music and
drawing, exist not pour l'art, but for a definite purpose, as
methods of getting something that the artist wants. The young
lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover of Bombyca in Theocritus,
believed in having an image of himself and an image of the beloved.
Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic powders, and he
said that this was common, lovers adding songs, "partly elegiac,
partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation".[3]

[1] Page 395.

[2] Cf. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns.

[3] Kitchi gami, pp. 395, 397.

Among the Indo-Aryans the masaminik or incantations of the Red Man
are known as mantras.[1] These are usually texts from the Veda,
and are chanted over the sick and in other circumstances where
magic is believed to be efficacious. Among the New Zealanders the
incantations are called karakias, and are employed in actual life.
There is a special karakia to raise the wind. In Maori myths the
hero is very handy with his karakia. Rocks split before him, as
before girls who use incantations in Kaffir and Bushman tales. He
assumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies in the air, all
by virtue of the karakia or incantation.[2]

[1] Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva
Veda".

[2] Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South-African
Folk-Lore Journal, passim; Shortland's Traditions of the New
Zealanders, pp. 130-135.

Without multiplying examples in the savage belief that miracles can
be wrought by virtue of physical CORRESPONDANCES, by like acting on
like, by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on
to the magical results produced by the aid of spirits. These may
be either spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never
animated mortal men. Savage magic or science rests partly on the
belief that the world is peopled by a "choir invisible," or rather
by a choir only occasionally visible to certain gifted people,
sorcerers and diviners. An enormous amount of evidence to prove
the existence of these tenets has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and
is accessible to all in the chapters on "Animism" in his Primitive
Culture. It is not our business here to account for the
universality of the belief in spirits. Mr. Tylor, following
Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the reasonings of
early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows, visions
caused by narcotics, hallucinations, and other facts which suggest
the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily organism.
It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts"
investigated by the Psychical Society--such "facts" as the
appearance of men at the moment of death in places remote from the
scene of their decease, with such real or delusive experiences as
the noises and visions in haunted houses--are familiar to savages.
Without discussing these obscure matters, it may be said that they
influence the thoughts even of some scientifically trained and
civilised men. It is natural, therefore, that they should strongly
sway the credulous imagination of backward races, in which they
originate or confirm the belief that life can exist and manifest
itself after the death of the body.[1]

[1] See the author's Making of Religion, 1898.

Some examples of savage "ghost-stories," precisely analogous to the
"facts" of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced.
The first is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example
of a belief current in Breton folk-lore. The story is vouched for
by Mr. J. J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia. Mr.
Atkinson, we have reason to believe, was unacquainted with the
Breton parallel. To him one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid
a visit, and seemed loth to go away. He took leave, returned, and
took leave again, till Mr. Atkinson asked him the reason of his
behaviour. He then explained that he was about to die, and would
never see his English friend again. As he seemed in perfect
health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypochondria; but the poor
fellow replied that his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the
wood one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart; but he
became aware too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-
spirit in the guise of the beloved. The result would be his death
within three days, and, as a matter of fact, he died. This is the
groundwork of the old Breton ballad of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after
his intrigue with the forest spectre.[1] A tale more like a common
modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C. J. Du Ve, in Australia.
In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr.
Du Ve. "The day before he died, having been ill some time, he said
that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a female
spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he
would die next day, and that they would wait for him. Mr. Du Ye
adds that, though previously the Christian belief had been
explained to this man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone
back to the belief of his childhood." Mr. Fison, who prints this
tale in his Kamilaroi and Kurnai,[2] adds, "I could give many
similar instances which have come within my own knowledge among the
Fijians, and, strange to say, the dying man in all these cases kept
his appointment with the ghosts to the very day".

[1] It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced
this belief into New Caledonia.

[2] Page 247.

In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian,
Jimmy Button, and his father's ghost.

Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the
kind of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many
educated Europeans of the existence of "veridical" apparitions has
also played its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races. On
this belief in apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage
sorcerers and necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and
are aided by disembodied spirits. These men have greatly influenced
the beginnings of mythology. Among certain Australian tribes the
necromants are called Birraark.[1] "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr.
Howitt, "that a Birraark was supposed to be initiated by the 'Mrarts
(ghosts) when they met him wandering in the bush. . . . It was from
the ghosts that he obtained replies to questions concerning events
passing at a distance or yet to happen, which might be of interest
or moment to his tribe." Mr. Howitt prints an account of a
spiritual seance in the bush.[2] "The fires were let go down. The
Birraark uttered a cry 'coo-ee' at intervals. At length a distant
reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons
jumping on the ground in succession. A voice was then heard in the
gloom asking in a strange intonation, 'What is wanted?' Questions
were put by the Birraark and replies given. At the termination of
the seance, the spirit-voice said, 'We are going'. Finally, the
Birraark was found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree,
apparently asleep."[3] There was one Birraark at least to every
clan. The Kurnai gave the name of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit)
to a Birraark who was once carried away for several days by the
Mrarts or spirits.[4] It is a belief with the Australians, as,
according to Bosman, it was with the people of the Gold Coast, that
a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the Negroes held that
to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be judged according
to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a doctrine
answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus, and
Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the
departed.[5] The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the
dead are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.[6] "A sorcerer lying on his
stomach spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side
received the precious messages which the dead man told." As a
natural result of these beliefs, the Australian necromant has great
power in the tribe. Mr. Howitt mentions a case in which a group of
kindred, ceasing to use their old totemistic surname, called
themselves the children of a famous dead Birraark, who thus became
an eponymous hero, like Ion among the Ionians.[7] Among the Scotch
Highlanders the position and practice of the seer were very like
those of the Birraark. "A person," says Scott,[8] "was wrapped up
in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a
waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange,
wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested
nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his
mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by his
exalted imagination PASSED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED
SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples
are given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.[9] In the
Century magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet
medicine-men and metamorphoses.

[1] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.

[2] Page 254.

[3] In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red
Indian sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish
suddenly away out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him,
as of Homeric gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him
come or go against his will?"

[4] Here, in the first edition, occurred the following passage:
"The conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the
idea of a God; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer
is therefore a point of importance and interest". Mr. Howitt's
later knowledge demonstrates an error here.

[5] Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.

[6] Aborigines of Australia, i. 197.

[7] In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and
brings down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57. For eponymous
medicine-men see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.

[8] Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.

[9] P. 112.

The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally
hysterical and nervous constitution. "He hears the spirits who
speak by whistlings speaking to him."[1] Whistling is also the
language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs
us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to
ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk. The ghosts in
Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit gibbering in the
secret place of a wondrous cavern, . . . even so the souls gibbered
as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar spirits
make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about to
happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks
learn songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or
diviners learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.[2]

[1] Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.

[2] On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.

The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage
belief in magic. The political power of the diviners is very
great, as may be observed from the fact that a hereditary chief
needs their consecration to make him a chief de jure.[1] In fact,
the qualities of the diviner are those which give his sacred
authority to the chief. When he has obtained from the diviners all
their medicines and information as to the mode of using the
isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often orders them
to be killed. Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that he is
lord of the air. "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus; and
when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes
clouded by the great wind that arises". Other Zulus explain this
as the mere hyperbole of adulation. "The word of the chief gives
confidence to his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has
already seen all that will happen in his vessel'. Such then are
chiefs; they use a vessel for divination."[2] The makers of rain
are known in Zululand as "heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd
the heaven that it may not break out and do its will on the
property of the people. These men are, in fact, [Greek text
omitted], "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus, the lord of the
heavens. Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a Vedic sound.
"The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does the same
as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling; he
says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'"
Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-
clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded
like sheep. There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,[3]
and no forgetfulness of the original meaning of words. The cloud-
herd is just like the cowherd, except that not every man, but only
sorcerers, and they who have eaten the "lightning-bird" (a bird
shot near the place where lightning has struck the earth), can herd
the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail among the Bushmen,
where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain";
the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a person.
Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is
said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the
east". The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird[4] behind Little
Crow's village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a
nose like an eagle's bill.[5]

[1] Callaway, p. 340.

[2] Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.

[3] Ibid., p. 385.

[4] Schoolcraft, iii. 486.

[5] Compare Callaway, p. 119.

The political and social powers which come into the hands of the
sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians.
Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid
of the man who listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the
future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the
tribe, can direct the vengeance of the survivors against the
hostile magician who has committed a murder by "bar" or magic.
Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the
power of the chief. "The winds and weather are at the command" of
Bosman's "great fetisher". Inland from the Gold Coast,[1] the king
of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make rain
fall on earth". Similar beliefs, with like political results, will
be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red
Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers
among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence.
Charlevoix and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the
jongleurs, as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were
their chief opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the
Australians and the Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by
the spirits. He covers a hut with the skin of the animal which he
commonly wears, retires thither, and there converses with the
bodiless beings.[2] The good missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa,
was convinced that the exercises of the Jossakeeds were verily
supernatural. "Ces seducteurs ont un veritable commerce avec le
pere du mensonge."[3] This was denied by earlier and wiser Jesuit
missionaries. Their political power was naturally great. In time
of war "ils avancent et retardent les marches comme il leur plait".
In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa Ta Way, who by
his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up a
formidable war against the United States.[4] According to Mr.
Pond,[5] the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan,"
signifies "men supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed
to be "wakanised" by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings.
The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to
lead and direct parties on the war-trail, "to raise the storm or
calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with
familiar friends".[6] The wakanised man, like the Australian
Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants and prayers". In
battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man as almost his
only resource". Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says, universal
among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined it.
"Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe,
and controls all their affairs." The Wakan man's functions are
absorbed by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in
Schoolcraft (iv. 495), Captain Eastman prints copies of native
scrolls showing the war-chief at work as a wizard. "The war-chief
who leads the party to war is always one of these medicine-men."
In another passage the medicine-men are described as "having a
voice in the sale of land". It must be observed that the
Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power
which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when associated
with inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as
among the Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man
becomes diviner and chief, and is a person of great and sacred
influence. The liveliest account of the performances of the Maori
"tohunga" or sorcerer is to be found in Old New Zealand,[7] by the
Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman who had lived with the natives
like one of themselves. The tohunga, says this author,[8] presided
over "all those services and customs which had something
approaching to a religious character. They also pretended to power
by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events,
and even in some cases to control them. . . . The spirit 'entered
into' them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of
half whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper
language of spirits." In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has
witnessed a similar exhibition. The "spirits" told the truth in
this case. The Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall
when the spirit of a young man, a great friend of his own, was
called up by a tohunga. "Suddenly, without the slightest warning,
a voice came out of the darkness. . . . The voice all through, it
is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a
strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a
hollow vessel. 'It is well with me; my place is a good place.'
The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to be correct,
and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE GROUND.
'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR. 'Farewell,' once more came
moaning through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in
New Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and
magical power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or
person an inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the
mysterious punishment for infringement of tabu, it appears probable
that in New Zealand, as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians,
chiefs have a tendency to absorb the sacred character and powers of
the tohungas. This is natural enough, for a tohunga, if he plays
his cards well, is sure to acquire property and hereditary wealth,
which, in combination with magical influence, are the necessary
qualifications for the office of the chieftain.

[1] Pinkerton, xvi. 401.

[2] Charlevoix, i. 105. See "Savage Spiritualism" in Cock Lane and
Common Sense.

[3] Ibid., iii. 362.

[4] Catlin, ii. 17.

[5] In Schoolcraft, iv. 402.

[6] Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647.

[7] Auckland, 1863.

[8] Page 148.

Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it
may appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the
development of mythology. Property and rank seem to have been
essential to each other in the making of social rank, and where one
is absent among contemporary savages, there we do not find the
other. As an example of this, we might take the case of two
peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the outermost of men,
and dwell far apart at the ends of the world. The Eskimos and the
Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American continent,
agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs. Yet
magic is providing a kind of basis of rank. The bleak plains of
ice and rock are, like Attica, "the mother of men without master or
lord". Among the "house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is
no head-man, and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that "still
less than among the house-mates was any one belonging to such a
place to be considered a chief". The songs and stories of the
Eskimo contain the praises of men who have risen up and killed any
usurper who tried to be a ruler over his "place-mates". No one
could possibly establish any authority on the basis of property,
because "superfluous property, implements, etc., rarely existed".
If there are three boats in one household, one of the boats is
"borrowed" by the community, and reverts to the general fund.
If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral
Fitzroy's cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by
similar causes. "The perfect equality among the individuals
composing the tribes must for a long time retard their
civilisation. . . . At present even a piece of cloth is torn in
shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes richer than
another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a
chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he
might manifest and still increase his authority." In the same
book, however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can
be exercised. "The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence
over his companions." Among the Eskimos this element in the growth
of authority also exists. A class of wizards called Angakut have
power to cause fine weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and
magical practices, can detect crimes, so that they necessarily
become a kind of civil magistrates. These Angekkok or Angakut have
familiar spirits called Torngak, a word connected with the name of
their chief spiritual being, Torngarsak. The Torngak is commonly
the ghost of a deceased parent of the sorcerer. "These men," says
Egede, "are held in great honour and esteem among this stupid and
ignorant nation, insomuch that nobody dare ever refuse the
strictest obedience when they command him in the name of
Torngarsak." The importance and actual existence of belief in
magic has thus been attested by the evidence of institutions, even
among Australians, Fuegians and Eskimos.

It is now necessary to pass from examples of tribes who have
superstitious respect for certain individuals, but who have no
property and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of
superstitious reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges.
To take the example of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we
learn that the chiefs, just like the Angakut of the Eskimos, had
"power to make fair or foul weather" in the literal sense of the
words.[1] In Africa, in the same way, as Bosman, the old traveller,
says, "As to what difference there is between one negro and another,
the richest man is the most honoured," yet the most honoured man has
the same magical power as the poor Angakuts of the Eskimos.

[1] Early History of Institutions, p. 195.

"In the Solomon Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to
prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he
has the mana (supernatural power) for it."[1]

[1] Journ. Anth. Inst., x. iii. 287, 300, 309.

Though it is anticipating a later stage of this inquiry, we must
here observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of
barbarous chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of
European races. The children of Odin and of Zeus were "sacred
kings". The Homeric chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Red
Men, and of the early Irish and Swedes, exercised an influence over
the physical universe. Homer[1] speaks of "a blameless king, one
that fears the gods, and reigns among many men and mighty, and the
black earth bears wheat and barley, and the sheep bring forth and
fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good
sovereignty".

[1] Od., xix. 109.

The attributes usually assigned by barbarous peoples to their
medicine-men have not yet been exhausted. We have found that they
can foresee and declare the future; that they control the weather
and the sensible world; that they can converse with, visit and
employ about their own business the souls of the dead. It would be
easy to show at even greater length that the medicine-man has
everywhere the power of metamorphosis. He can assume the shapes of
all beasts, birds, fishes, insects and inorganic matters, and he
can subdue other people to the same enchantment. This belief
obviously rests on the lack of recognised distinction between man
and the rest of the world, which we have so frequently insisted on
as a characteristic of savage and barbarous thought. Examples of
accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere, and so well
known, that it would be waste of space to give a long account of
them. In Primitive Culture[1] a cloud of witnesses to the belief
in human tigers, hyaenas, leopards and wolves is collected.[2] Mr.
Lane[3] found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working
belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of
Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a
witch who was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape
she was wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she
resumed her human appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century,
found precisely the same tale, except that the wizards took the
form of birds, not of hares, among the Red Indians. The birds were
wounded by the magical arrows of an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui
Eretsi, and these bolts were found in the bodies of the human
culprits. In Japan, as we learn from several stories in Mr.
Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, people chiefly metamorphose
themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras[4]
"possess the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were
much feared accordingly". Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated
people of Guatemala, the very name of the clergy, haleb, was
derived from their power of assuming animal shapes, which they took
on as easily as the Homeric gods.[5] Regnard, the French
dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at the end of the
seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches can turn
men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows,
falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".[6]
Among the Bushmen "sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and
jackals".[7] Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay,
found that "sorcerers arrogate to themselves the power of
transforming themselves into tigers".[8] He was present when the
Abipones believed that a conversion of this sort was actually
taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his whole body is
beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are growing".
Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose
himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his
proper form".[9] Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are
still alive they may enter into lions and alligators".[10] Among
the Mayas of Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves
into dogs, pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a
victim".[11] The Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can
metamorphose themselves into animals at pleasure; and a very old
raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E. S. Wood as an incarnation of the
soul of a Shaman.[12] Sir A. C. Lyall finds a similar belief in
flourishing existence in India. The European superstition of the
were-wolf is too well known to need description. Perhaps the most
curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis about a man and
his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They retained
human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith, and
sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In
an old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and
hunted and slain by her brother's hounds. The "aboriginal" peoples
of India retain similar convictions. Among the Hos,[13] an old
sorcerer called Pusa was known to turn himself habitually into a
tiger, and to eat his neighbour's goats, and even their wives.
Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's
head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in
America.[14] Hearne found that the Indians believed they descended
from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man.[15]

[1] Vol. i. pp. 309-315.

[2] See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.

[3] Arabian Nights, i. 51.

[4] Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.

[5] Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.

[6] Pinkerton, i. 471.

[7] Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.

[8] English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.

[9] Missionary Travels, p. 615.

[10] Livingstone, p. 642.

[11] Bancroft, ii.

[12] Century Magazine, July, 1882.

[13] Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.

[14] Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau,
Washington, 1880-81.

[15] A Journey, etc., p. 342.

Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by
the lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all
miracles at his command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air,
he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any
form at pleasure, and resume his human shape. He can control
spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their
abodes.

When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised,
as distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and
creative guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general,
though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very
same accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed,
birraark, or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the
Greeks, Zeus, mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the
attributes of the medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le
Jeune, the old Jesuit missionary, observed,[1] the medicine-man
enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous
and supernatural endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods
be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties
with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not
at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that
the god was once a real living medicine- man. But myth-making man
confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims
for himself.

[1] Relations (1636), p. 114.

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