Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/299

Rh But it would plainly be erroneous to say that they were not essential to the earlier stages because of necessity they cease to be part of the later stages. And, as already said, it is equally erroneous to suppose that these ceremonies, because their modus operandi is the same as that of magic, are, or are supposed by their celebrants to be, magical: what is intended for the good of a community is different from what is intended for its harm. Between magic and religion in Australia the difference is, then, to begin with, a difference of value. To imagine the Australians do not distinguish between magic and religion because ceremonies practised by them as religious are felt by people in another stage of religion to be magical, is just as unreasonable as it would be to say that the Australians are unaware of the difference between good and bad, or between truth and falsehood, because they think things to be good or true which we see to be bad and false. As there is no human society which does not distinguish between good and bad, truth and falsehood, so there is none which does not distinguish between religion and magic, though in each case the line between the two may be drawn at different points. The important fact, however, is that always the line is drawn somewhere The line may be continually shifting; but it could not shift, if it did not exist.

Sir James Frazer's definition or description of religion—that the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man—receives the assent of many who do not agree with all his views. It wins their assent because it places the idea of God at the beginning of religion. It has the advantage from his point of view that it enables him to cite the Australians as an instance of a people who have not attained to the belief in personal beings superior to man—as an instance of man in a pre-religious stage. May it not, however, be, as a definition or description of religion, capable of amendment? Viewed from the point of view of science,