Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/181

 From Spell to Prayer. 163

involve a change of mind from overweening pride of soul to humility and reverence/^ the same authority makes it clear that prayer may be resorted to as a trick, may be a civil request that but masks a decoy, ''^ a complication which in itself shows how artificial must ever be the distinction we draw, purely for our own classificatory purposes, be- tween magic and religion. So far we have considered the transition from the side of the operator. And now look at it from the side of the patient or victim — the will he seeks to constrain. That it is truly as a will constrained, and not as a person conceived as equivalent to an inanimate thing, we have already argued. An example of the way the savage figures to himself the effects of the control he exerts was provided by the Arunta description of the woman who with the inward eye sees the lightning flashing on the lonka- lo7ika, and all at once her inward parts are shaken with the projected passion. Now savage thought finds no difficulty in postulating will constrained where we deny will and per- sonality altogether. And, once personify, you are on the way to worship. Thus in China they sweep out the house and say, "Let the devil of poverty depart." ^^ In Timor- laut and Ceram they launch the disease boat, at the same time crying, " O sickness, go from here." '""^ Already here we seem to find the spell-form changed over into the prayer-form. Meanwhile in Buro the same rite is accom- panied by the invocation: "Grandfather Small-pox, go away." *"" Here the " Grandfather " is clearly indicative of the true spirit of prayer, as might be illustrated extensively. Or so again the magical ploughing of the Indian women is accompanied by what can only be described as a prayer to

^ Contrast what Dr. Frazer says about man's new-found sense of his own littleness, &c., G. B.,- i., 78. " M. M., 140, 308. «« G. B.,- iii., 83. ^ G.B.,"m., 97-8. «" G. B.,- iii., 98.

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