Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/797

 THE ROLE OF MAGIC 783

ing tongue which conjured up the storm in the dry season or health in sickness. It was man against nature, says Frazer, and religion has no part in such a duel. In the tragedy of his failure, religion was bom. He turned from his futile arts to supplicate the powers he could not master. Religion, according to Frazer, comes in a second stage of human evolution. In eloquent words he sums up his view of such a process.

We may illustrate the course which thought has hitherto run by liken- ing it to a web woven of three different threads — the black thread of

magic, the red thread of religfion, and the white thread of science

Could we then survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patch- work of true and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of religion. But carry your eye farther along the fabric and you will remark that, while the black-and-white chequer still runs through it, there rests on the middle portion of the web, where religion has entered most deeply into its texture, a dark crimson stain, which shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the white thread of science is woven more and more into the tissue.^

Frazer thus claims that there is a "fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion."^ The one is a primitive "science," by which the powers of nature are compelled to work at the behest of man; the other is the attempt to placate and win over powers that may listen — or may not. It is defined as the "propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life."*

Unfortunately when we test this scheme and the definitions which it involves, the data do not support the hypothesis, or at least lead us into serious difficulties in their adjustment. It is extremely doubtful if there is or ever was a tribe of savages absolutely given up to the black arts, and never quailing before the unpropitious into acts or at least emotions of "religion." Indeed the first motive for magic acts seems to have been a psy-

^The Golden Bough. Ill, 461.


 * Ibid., I., xvi.

case by treating much of religious practice as survivals of magic.
 * Ibid., I, 63. In the pages which follow, Frazer makes the best of a bad

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