Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/307

 Rh distinction thus drawn by Dr. Söderblom will hardly suffice to mark off magic from religion. The person who uses magic trusts in it, and also fears it. The distinction which Dr. Söderblom draws is a distinction without a difference. So far from distinguishing magic and religion it would identify them.

The real difference is that, though the means or the modus operandi, regarded by themselves and viewed in the abstract, are the same in the two cases, the ends to which they are applied are different—different with all the difference between good and bad, between what is approved and what is disapproved by society. And the difference which is felt between the ends constitutes in itself the difference' between the means. The difference between the means is exactly the same as the difference between the ends. Means and ends apart from one another are mere abstractions. In reality they are no more separable from one another than a cause is from its effect. It is because the intention of the agent in the one case is good and in the other case is evil, that his action is approved in the one case and disapproved of in the other.

Dr. Söderblom himself on a later page (215) sees that the difference between primitive religion and magic consists partly in the use to which they are put, and states explicitly that in both religion and magic "power" or mana is employed. The difference, he says, originates in the purpose aimed at. He should therefore hold that it is the purpose which constitutes the difference, and not merely the feelings of fear and trust—for, as already said, those feelings accompany the use of magic as well as the practice of religion. A difference in the feeling with which magic and religion are viewed there is. But the difference is that the one is felt by the community to be used for evil and the other for good. So long as we take that to be a fundamental difference between magic and religion, we shall be constrained to reject the notion that