Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/330

 order was becoming regular and settled, the wise men turned their minds to devise guarantees stronger than mere yes and no. Thus the ordeal and the oath were introduced, that wrong-doing should not be concealed or denied, that unrighteous claims should not be backed by false witness, and that covenants made should not be broken.

The principles on which these ordeals and oaths were invented and developed may to this day be plainly made out. It is evident that the matter was referred to the two intellectual orders of early times, the magicians and the priests. Each advised after the manner of his own profession. The magician said, "With my symbols and charms I will try the accused, and bind the witness and the promiser." The priest said, "I will call upon my spirits, and they shall find out the hidden thing, and punish the lie and the broken vow." Now, magic and religion are separate in their nature and origin. Magic is based on a delusive tendency arising out of the association of ideas, namely, the tendency to believe that things which are ideally connected in our minds must therefore be really connected in the outer world. Religion is based on the doctrine of spiritual beings, souls, demons, or deities, who take cognizance of men and interpose in their affairs. It is needful to keep this absolute distinction clear in our minds, for on it depends our finding our mental way through a set of complicated proceedings, in which magical and religious elements have become mixed in the most intricate manner. Well they might, considering how commonly the professions of sorcerer and priest have overlapped so as even to be combined in one and the same person. But it seems, from a general survey of the facts of ordeals and oaths, that on the whole the magical element in them is earliest and underlying, while the religious element is apt to come in later in history, often only taking up and consecrating some old magical process.

In the series of instances to be brought into view, this blending of the religious with the magical element will be repeatedly observable. It will be seen also that the ordeal and the oath are not only allied in their fundamental principles, but that they continually run into one another in their use. Oaths, we shall see, may be made to act as ordeals, and ordeals are brought in as tests of oaths. While recognizing this close connection, it will be convenient to divide the two and take them in order according to their practical application, ordeals being proceedings for the discovery of wrong-doers, while oaths are of the nature of declarations of undertakings.

The association of ideas which serves as a magical basis for an ordeal is quite childish in its simplicity. Suppose it has to be decided which of two men has acted wrongfully, and appeal is had to the ordeal. There being no evidence on the real issue, a fanciful issue is taken instead, which can be settled, and the association of ideas does not rest. Thus in Borneo, when two Dyaks have to decide which is in the right, they have two equal lumps of salt given them to drop