Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/113

 Magic and Religion i03

being magical ; would Dr. Jevons suggest that the Israelites who ran after false gods were engaged in magical practices ? If so, can he produce any evidence to show that his point of view is shared by others, or was accepted at the time that the worship of false gods was a serious trouble among the chosen people ? It is, however, essential to his argument that nothing should be regarded as magical which is not illicit ; and here Dr. Jevons's neglect of crucial, as of all other examples, demonstrates convincingly how far his thesis is the result of introspection, and how httle his attitude is based on the actual facts.

The question is ultimately, does the classification suggested by Dr. Jevons group the facts — which are, it must be remembered, in the main mental, i.e. beliefs and explana- tions given by believers in magic — according to their natural distribution } Or does his classification rend asunder obvious concatenations and place clearly homo- logous data in different pigeon-holes }

It is obvious at the outset that references to the licit and illicit, or good and bad mana, do not bring us nearer comprehension. No one denies that some rites are approved, some condemned by the opinion of the community. But, in the first place, is the attitude of the community to be decisive } It can hardly be denied that witchcraft is commonly classed under the head of magic ; yet in the same number of Folk- Lore as contains the paper by Dr. Jevons is set forth the thesis that witchcraft is a religion for those who believe in it. Thus there is no consensus ; we cannot class a religion as magic because those who are not its adherents condemn it. Dr. Jevons himself insists that it is the mental attitude of the spell- maker that puts the spell in a different category from the prayer. Docs not this hold good also for the mental attitude of those who practise witchcraft ?

Again, if, as appears to be the case, the community labels both the licit and the illicit with the same name —