Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/109

 MAGIC AND RELIGION; A CRITICISM OF DR. JEVONS.

{Folk- Lore, xxviii. 259 g/ seqq.)

BY N. VV. THOMAS, M.A.

[Read before the Society, ijth April, 1918.)

The essence of Dr. Jevons's paper is his suggestion of a criterion to distinguish between magic and rehgion. He complicates his thesis (l) by a criticism of Sir James Frazer's use of the term magic, (2) by the use of analogies (such as kilhng and murder, leechcraft and poisoning), which bear no very close resemblance to the matter in hand, (3) by a certain lack of firmness which allows him to speak indifferently of the opinion of the community and the mental attitude of the performer of the rite, as decisive of its character, (4) by a complete reversion, in dealing with spell and prayer, to the Frazerian criterion of an appeal to higher powers as characteristic of the latter, while the efficacy of the former depends on a kind of natural law, as it were, and not on the voluntary yielding of a thinking being. (5) Over and above these excrescences, which do not affect the main thesis, is an assumption, verifiable perhaps but totally unsupported by argument or example, that Dr. Jevons's own view is also that of peoples who believe in magic, which has led the author to lay down that the existence of a world-wide ethical creed of varying content, which distinguishes the licit (called by Dr. Jevons religion) from the illicit (called by Dr. Jevons magic), is adequate proof that magic = the illicit, without