Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/305

Rh have magic and religion. The intention and the spirit make the difference, the world of difference, between them—a difference as patent to the most primitive of peoples as it is to us. That the drug is obtained and administered in much the same way by poisoner and physician does not diminish the fundamental difference—the difference of purpose and intention—between the two. Between the murderer and the physician there is a difference. It would be vain to say that because they use the same drug there is "a unity in difference," or any unity whatever between them. And so, too, it is vain to "treat the magico-religious as a unity in difference" (E.R.E. ib.) on the ground that there are rites which are similar in magic and religion, just as there are drugs which are used both by murderer and physician. To us, indeed, who do not believe in magic it may be clear that some of the rites used in religion are the same as those used in magic; but to the men who believed in magic the difference was fundamental and absolute: it lay in the intention of the agent and in the approval or disapproval of the community. This difference it is which is ignored or denied in using the term "magico-religious," and in speaking of "all magico-religious rites as generically akin." From the point of view of tribes that believe in magic, there are rites which are magical, and there are rites which are religious; but there are no rites which are "magico-religious," for to such tribes "magical" means "non-religious," and "religious" means "non-magical"—or rather "magic" means to them what is condemned by the community, while what is approved by the community belongs to the sphere of what we call religion. But between what is approved and what is condemned by the community there is no unity—there is only difference. Approval and condemnation are not "generically akin." And to classify "all magico-religious rites as generically akin" is to commit an error in classification. To assume that there was a "magico-religious"