Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/293

Rh which works mischief, but we do not find that magic alone is believed in. They have their ceremonies, which they perform for the good of the community; but those ceremonies, being for the good of the community, are clearly different from the magic which works harm to the community or its members. The modus operandi is doubtless much the same in the two cases; but as killing is not the same thing as murder, so the ceremonies are not the same thing as magic, even though the modus operandi be the same. Amongst the Australian black-fellows therefore we find magic, but we do not find "an age of magic," meaning thereby an age in which magic alone is believed in—for we find them also practising ceremonies which are just as much, or just as little, like magic as killing is like murder.

Again, the same herb may be used for murderous or for medicinal purposes. But that fact would not warrant us in inferring that an age of medicine was preceded by an age of poison. The herb itself is neither medicinal nor murderous: it is the use it is put to that makes it so. Its use for medicinal purposes is approved, and for the purpose of murder is condemned by the community. But there is no ground for imagining that herbs of this kind were used originally for none but harmful purposes, and only in a later age came to be used for purposes of medicine. So too there is no ground for supposing that originally the only rites practised were magical, that is, were rites practised with evil intent. On the contrary, tribes amongst whom magic is practised are tribes that also have ceremonies which they do not regard as magical—ceremonies of which they as thoroughly approve as they thoroughly condemn magic. And the difference between what they approve and what they condemn is a real difference, not a mere question of terminology. To us it may seem a mere matter of words whether their ceremonies for ensuring the food supply are or are not to be called magical. But to