Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/292

260 is not a mere inexactitude, not a mere error of expression. It involves a falsehood as serious and as misleading as if we were to say that killing is the same thing as murder. The execution of a murderer or the destruction of the enemy by a soldier is not murder. And there is the same difference between the proceedings which, being regarded by a community as magical, are condemned by it, and the proceedings which are approved by it and are by us falsely called magical. The modus operandi is doubtless the same in the two cases, just as the modus operandi—the use of a revolver for instance—may be the same in the case of a soldier and a criminal. But from the similarity in the modus operandi nothing whatever can be inferred as to the moral value of the act or the agent. The proceeding in the one case is magical or murderous, while in the other case it is not. And it is the difference between the two sets of proceedings which is of cardinal importance, not the similarity in the modus operandi. If then we are to bear in mind this difference and keep its importance constantly in view, it will be well to reserve the term "magic" exclusively for the proceedings which excite the disapproval of the community. It will be well also to bear in mind that the disapproval is evoked by the results which "magic" is intended or supposed to produce, rather than by any theory as to the source from which the magician's power comes: whether the power be inherent in the magician or not, its supposed effects are resented by the community.

If we once clearly grasp the fact that magical proceedings are those which are disapproved and resented by the community, it becomes evident that it is impossible to speak consistently of "an age of magic," meaning thereby an age in which magic alone was believed in. The impossibility reveals itself when we turn to the Australian black-fellows who are supposed to be in "the age of magic." Amongst them we find indeed the magic