Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/805

 THE ROLE OF MAGIC 791

analysis of magic we have. Meanwhile over here an article by Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy in the sixteenth volume of the Monist presented the theory in concise and clear terms, while in Germany Professor D. N. Soderblom, K. T. Preuss and others worked on the problem of this Lebenselektrizitdt.

We have no time here to take up the question as to whether this mana is behind all magic practices, or merely underlies those of contagion. This seems to me the most important point of attack for analytic criticism. But whether there are homeopathic processes in which mana is not in evidence or not, one thing is sure, this is the path which leads us onward in the evolution of religion. For mana does not die out when animism appears, nor when animism grows into anthropomorphism, nor even when polytheism passes away before monotheism. Its maleficent ele- ments grows less and less apparent, and its beneficence more, until, as divine grace, it nourishes the faith and strengthens the moral purpose of the Christian world. In the sacraments of the church it still works by the old laws of sympathetic magic. In the realm of faith it has at last left the material media of its long prehistoric phase.

It is now evident why we must readjust our definitions of religion. Evolution from simple beginnings holds in this realm as elsewhere. Religion was no special creation midway along the centuries of human groping; it was but the intenser action of that mystic power which lay at the heart of magic. The action changes with changing society. At first the brute recoil from things of terror, the sense of wonder at their awful power, the thrill that came to the confused senses from any imagined cause, this psychic reaction adjusts itself, reaches out to further and undreamed of possibilities as the reflex of the widening experi- ence of man, until at last it compasses the whole range of religious emotion. Made a blessing instead of a curse by those first specialists in psychology, the medicine men, and surround- ing society with taboos which are the basis of most early juris- prudence, the results of our ancestors' fears and awe-struck wonderings, are to be seen on every side in our institutions and civilization today.