Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/422

 39^ Reviews.

and effect. His ideas are confused, and his practice moves in the obscure domain of the emotions. It is in its origin more or less a direct reflex of them. Nor is sympathetic magic the whole of magic. If it were, the rite, instead of being overcharged with useless details, as it so often is, would necessarily be simplified ; it would reduce itself to the more or less strict imitation of the effect intended. But the contrary is the case. It becomes a thicket of practices, imagined in order to satisfy the desire and multiplying themselves tumultuously. The principal rite sur- rounds itself with accessory rites, precaution after precaution is taken, a mysterious fear makes itself felt ; for in magic one has to do with a special force. That force is the mana, the orenda. It is the magician's will which he seeks to make a material and active reality. It may exteriorize itself, attach itself to objects, even pre-exist in them. This is the true magical power. The position is illustrated by an analysis of the essentially magical superstition of the Evil Eye, — an analysis which the want of space forbids me to reproduce.

Summing up, M. Doutte declares that magic invented under the pressure of need is only the objectivation of the desire under the form of a force extended, singular, bound to gestures repre- sentative of the phenomenon desired and mechanically reproducing it. According to his view magic preceded religion. But religion does not owe its origin to any conviction on the part of the savage that he has not the power that he thought he had. It is not due to any revulsion of feeling consequent on repeated dis- appointments. On the contrary, it arises from the savage exteriorizing magical power so far that he finishes by personifying it. In such a proceeding we have the genesis of a god. The god may be a personified itiana and wear the aspect of a great magician. Thus the Creator of the universe is declared in a Malay charm-book quoted by Mr. Skeat to have been the eldest magician. In a word, so far from being opposed from the beginning to religion (or rather to theism, the belief in gods, for M. Doutte reserves the word religion for another meaning), magic is the true theoplasm. The god is necessarily anthropomorphic : he is the objectivation of man in phenomena. Theism retains many of the ideas of magic : mana, magical force expanded and