Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/309

 Rh same person or the same thing, but they are none the less different powers. Doubtless when the abstract conceptions of good mana and bad mana have been reached, the still more abstract conception of mana that is neither good nor bad may be reached. But that is a further and a later conception: it is not the first or original conception. And for this reason I dissent from Dr. Söderblom's view that mana in the earliest stage of its evolution was conceived to be neither good nor bad. And I dissent from his view the more decidedly because it seems to me to imply necessarily what Dr. Söderblom himself refuses to believe, viz., that magic and religion have a common origin and therefore in their original stage were the same thing.

The other view from which I dissent is one which is held by Dr. Marett, if I understand rightly what he says about mana (E.R.E., viii., p. 379a, s.v. Mana). He says that religion and magic have an element in common. That element is mana, the wonder-working power; and as it is present in both religion and magic, it is termed by Dr. Marett "magico-religious," and it is viewed by him as constituting the unity of magic and religion. That is to say, from the point of view of logic, and of logical classification or definition, magic and religion are generically and fundamentally the same, though they are different species of the same genus—the specific difference being that in the one the wonder-working powers is social, and in the other anti-social in its use. As against Dr. Marett's view I venture to suggest that it does not follow that, because two things have an element in common, therefore the two things are generically the same or belong to the same genus. It does not follow that two things belong to the same genus because they have weight or even because they have the same weight; and it does not follow that two things belong to the same genus because they have or are believed to have power or even the same power.