Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/330

 CORRESPONDENCE.

Pre-Animistic Religion,

(Vol. xi., p. 162.)

I HAD not the pleasure of hearing Mr. Marett's interesting paper on Pre-Animistic Religion, and perhaps the Editor will permit me to make one or two remarks on his argument. In the first thing I ever wrote on these problems, in 1872, I adopted Mr. Marett's view of " Awe " — in presence of what was reckoned the extra- natural, or unfamiliar — as the basis of the religious sentiment. This emotion might, probably, be felt before man had recognised the existence of ghosts, or developed Animism, or the ghost- theory. As to that theory, it really does not matter (for our present purpose) whether it was based on dreams chiefly, or on dreams plus hallucinations, in or out of a condition of trance. If coincidental hallucinations and veridical visions occurred, they would, so far, confirm the ghost-theory. But " supernaturalism " might be prior to Animism historically, as Mr. Marett argues.

On the other hand, I doubt if Awe is displayed, as Mr. Marett thinks, when savages yell at a hurricane, or throw filth at the Aurora Borealis ! These exercises, in the modern street-boy, denote rather an absence of Awe than otherwise. Again, Mr. Marett regards Baiame, and the other Australian — what shall I call them? — "Beings reckoned superior persons," as myths based on the awe caused by the sound of the Bull Roarer. But the "primitive" Arunta seem to have no awe of the sound; it is a tribal joke among these adult Atheists. Again, Mr. Marett may remark that similar Superior Persons (if that phrase will be passed by my adversaries), occur where we hear nothing of Bull Roarers. I have given examples enough, Mr. Marett will not argue, will he, that Baiame and Co. are apotheoses of the Bull Roarer, and that Puluga, Cagn, Mulunga, Mwetyi, Nzambi, Tui Laga, and so forth, " came otherwise " ? For this reason — because where no " Awe inspired by the Bull Roarer " is recorded, beings just like those averred to be sprung from that Awe are existing, I cannot