Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/507

 Reviews. 46 1

some indication of the nature and value of their contents must be attempted.

The first is by M. P. Huvelin, and is an attempt to carry a step further the conclusions arrived at three years before by MM. Hubert and Mauss in an article discussed in these pages {Folklore, vol. xv., pp. 359 sqq.^. Starting from the position that there is no opposition in kind between magical and religious acts, and from MM. Hubert and Mauss' provisional definition of magical acts as rites not part of an organized cult, but rather private, secret, mysterious, and tending towards the prohibited, he finds himself in an impasse. How can the magical act, if it be a social act, pass for prohibited ? How can it be at once licit and illicit, religious and irreligious ? He finds the way out of his difficulty by carefully examining the practical applications of magic. An activity presenting every characteristic of a social activity, and therefore lawful, can only become unlawful indirectly; that is to say, if and so far as it is employed in an anti-social interest. We must therefore take into consideration the object sought in a magical proceeding. Magic is not to be fully understood if we sever it from the different modes in which it tends to realize itself. Each of them must be analysed, to ascertain in what respects it is anti-social. MM. Hubert and Mauss, though con- scious of the antinomy, though they seem to have discerned the importance of taking into account the various interests to which magical rites have been made to respond, and though they have noted that they are often practised by individuals isolated from the social group and acting in their own interest, or in that of other individuals, and in their name, have not pursued this branch of the investigation. This is where M. Huvelin steps in. Taking up the notion of interests, he directs his atten- tion to the legal idea ot rights of various kinds — rights of family or clan, public rights — exhibits them as in essence religious rights, enquires into the procedure by which they were originally enforced, and shows that it was more or less a religious procedure, fortified by religious sanctions. Rights of property, on the other hand, are more usually individual, and the procedure by which they are enforced is more predcmiinantly magical. The same pro- cedure is also applied to the enforcement of personal rights, such