Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/56

 28 Presidential Address.

darkness.^3 Conformably with such a dualistic terminology, a use and a misuse of supernormal power are recognized as polar opposites. In practice, indeed, this antithesis is not likely to be applied consistently, more especially when the reference is not to men, but to remoter beings such as spirits or gods. Savages sometimes descend to a veritable devil- worship, placating the evil demon with a fawning submission, and incidentally flattering the devilish element in themselves. On the whole, however, they know the bad kind of super- man from the good. Thus one who has the evil eye is always abominable. Primitive philosophy is hardly capable of the paradox of admiring a good hater. If a man work black magic, let him die the death — so runs the universal code. On the other hand, to exert supernormal power, individually or collectively, in connexion with an initiation ceremony or a fertilit}^ rite, is the mark of a leader and friend of the community. The good kind of supernormal power is known by its fruits. Nevertheless, it would be a shallow psychology that detected in the will for such power nothing but the mechanical response to a social stimulus and sanction. Rather the social situation which calls the power into play is the passive condition, the mere occasion, of the spiritual process whereby the higher plane of experience is reached. The superman is in some sense supersocial. Even when he is in the midst of the congregation he may feel that he walks alone with God. This truth, we may suspect, is apprehended by the savage in his own way. At any rate, he would seem to value inana, fruitful as he knows it to be, not merely for the good works it enables him to perform, but also, and even chiefly, for what it is in itself, namely, a quickening and enlargement of the spirit. His will for power, in the form which has alone found clear expression in his philosophy, is a will for confidence and peace of mind.

So much, then, by way of a summary account of what i^^Cf. The Threshold of Kelisio7i'\ 85.