Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/173

 From Spell to Prayer. 155

in himself. Thus there is no difficulty in explaining psychologically why niana should be attributed to those quasi-personal powers of awful nature by which the savage, immersed in half-lights and starting like a child at his own shadow, feels himself on every hand to be surrounded.

Why, then, does Dr. Frazer, whilst admitting that for the magician to seek for tnana at the hands of ghosts of the dead, stones, snakes, and so on, is characteristic of that " earlier stage " in the history of religion when the antago- nism between sorcerer and priest as yet was not, neverthe- less treat this as a "confusion of magic and religion," and go on to lay it down that "this fusion is not primitive" ? ^^ Is it not simply that he ignores the possibility of the origin of the idea of via^ia itself in the inward experience that goes with the exercise of developed magic ? For Dr. Frazer this seeking for supernatural aid on the part of the sorcerer is a " passing into another kind." The sorcerer's exertion of power and the mana he craves of his gods have no direct psychological affinity. If, however, our argument has not been all along proceeding on a false track, there is a specific identity of nature common to the force which animates the magical act as such, and that additional force which in certain cases is sought from an external super- natural source. Psychologically speaking, there seems every reason why, granting that the magical act is regarded as occult, and as such falls into line with whatever else is occult and supernatural, its peculiar inwardness as revealed to the operator should be read into whatever else has the prima facie appearance of a quasi-personal exertion of supernatural power. After all, we know that, in point of fact, the savage is ready enough to put down whatever effects he cannot rationally account for {e.g. disease) to what may be termed sorcery in the abstract. But, once it is established that to feel like and inwardly be a supernatural agent is to feel oneself exerting the will-power of a human ^-i G. B.;- i., 65-6, 69.