§ 4 Magical Force and Primitive Ideas of Causation
Magic is a uniform connexion of events, depending on some impersonal force that has no real existence. What causes make men believe in such force? In the first place, everything is necessarily conceived of by everybody (and probably in some dim way by the higher animals) as a centre of forces. Its weight, when we try to lift it; inertia, when we push it, or when it is moving and we try to stop it; degree of hardness, when we strike or grasp it; elasticity, when the bent bough of a tree recoils; the sway of torrents and the lift of waves; falling trees, avalanches, water-spouts, hurricanes: all these things a man must think of, as he does of other men and animals, in comparison with his own strength or impotence. Into their actions and reactions he reads such tension and effort as he himself feels in struggling with them, or in grappling one of his own hands with the other; and as their action is full of surprises he does not suppose himself to know all that they can do.
But, further, the strain exhibited by some objects, especially trees; the noises they make, creaking and groaning in the wind; the shrieking and moaning of the wind itself, the threatening and whispering of the sea, thunder and the roar of torrents: all excite Einfühlung or empathy, illusory sympathy with things that do not feel. Their voices, more than anything else, I believe, endow them for our imaginations with an inward life, which Mr. Marett has well called Animatism,107 and which must not be confounded with the Animism that used to be attributed to all children and all savages—the belief that every object is actuated by a spirit, or even that it has a consciousness like our own. What truth there was in that doctrine is fully covered by Animatism.
Again, the savage is acquainted with invisible forces some of which seem to act at a distance. The wind is the great type of invisible force; heat, sound, odour are also invisible, and act at a distance; the light of the camp-fire acts at a distance, spreading across the prairie or into the recesses of the forest; and lightnings issue from the clouds. In dreams, one visits some remote hunting-ground and returns instantly; distance and time are distorted or annihilated; and if you can act where you dream, why not where you intensely imagine yourself?
Hence there are abundant analogues in experience by which the savage can conceive of his talisman as a force-thing that acts invisibly and acts at a distance. Australian medicine-men “threw their joïas (evil magic) invisibly, ‘like the wind,’ as they said.”108 The talisman acts at a distance, like a missile; it acts for the person who owns it as his spear does, and is dangerous to others who have not practised with it. Sometimes, indeed, magic things have no owners, and are dangerous to everybody: malignant influence radiating from them, like the heat of a fire or the stench of a corpse. Such are two stones described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen109 as marking the place where an old man and two women died for breaking a marriage-taboo. “They are so full of evil magic that if any but old men go near, it kills them. Now and then a very old man goes and throws stones and bushes upon the spot to keep down the evil magic.” It is as if one covered up a fire or a corpse. And, further, magical force may exist in a diffused way, like darkness, heat, cold, epidemic disease, tribal unrest, without necessarily attaching to any particular thing. In the Western Isles of Torres Straits110 mishaps may be signs of an unlucky state of things in general. A fisherman, usually successful, having once failed at his task, was depressed; but on two women dying in his village soon after, he was consoled; since this showed that failure was not his fault. Currents of this magical force, favourable or unfavourable to things in general, may be seen in the flow and ebb of the tide, the waxing and waning of the moon, and in the course of the seasons. From this way of thinking it is but a step to the conception of mana, as it is called in Melanesia:111 orenda of the Iroquois, manitou of the Algonquin, wakanda of the Omaha.112 It is the power of the wonderful and mysterious in the world, which becomes especially manifest in Magic and in the agency of spirits. Similar notions are found in many regions at various stages of culture, but nowhere (I believe) at the lowest stages; so that it is unreasonable to treat it as the first source of ideas of the supernatural. It is too comprehensive a generalisation to find expression amongst savages. The Arunta have got as far as the generalisation of evil Magic under the name of arungquiltha.113 But mana is a generalisation of all the imaginary forces of superstition, vague and mysterious; as “cause,” in popular use, is a generalisation of all the supposed “forces” of nature.
Rites also act at a distance by invisible force; for this power belongs to gesture-language, and the simplest rites are gestures. And so do spells; for wishes, commands, threats expressed in words, act upon men at a distance by invisible force; and spells are nothing but such expressions conceived of in a particular way, as having that uniform efficacity which is Magic. Spells, being thought of as forces, are reified; so that blessings or curses cling to their objects like garlands, or like contaminating rags.
Magical force, then, is a notion derived from experience of natural forces and employed to account for events that are unusual, wonderful, mysterious, not to be interpreted by that common sense which is the cumulative result of usual occurrences. It is superimposed upon the older and wider presumption of causation, and is expected to manifest itself with the same uniformity; so that, if the laws of it can be discovered, it supplies a basis for the Art of Magic. So far is Magic from being the source of the belief in causation! But I have spoken of the “older and wider presumption of causation”; for (as has been shown) the definite postulate that all the ongoings of the world may be analysed upon the principal of cause and effect, can never come into the minds of primitive men; and even to ourselves it rarely occurs, except in scientific discussions or logical exercises; but we always act as if we trusted in it, and so does a savage, and so does a dog. The presumption is reinforced by every moment’s ordinary experience; and without it no consistency of life is possible. This ungeneralised presumption determines all thoughts and actions, mechanical, animistic, or magical. That the forces implied in superstition are generalised in such concepts as mana before the principle of causation obtains expression, is due to the prepotency of the unusual, wonderful, mysterious in attracting attention.
In our modern analysis of mechanical causation there are four requirements: (1) every event has a cause; (2) causation is uniform; (3) the cause is the assemblage of the indispensable conditions of the effect (and no others); (4) the cause is proportional to the effect. In the savage’s mind these requirements are also obscurely recognised: (1) he seeks a cause for everything: (2) he expects it to act uniformly: (3) he believes in reinstating all the conditions of the effect, as appears from his preparations for hunting, or war, or marriage, or whatever he may have in hand; but he is much more ignorant than we are as to what conditions are indispensable and decisive: (4) he knows vaguely that the cause is proportional to the effect; for (a) he succeeds in making effective weapons, etc., by mechanical means; (b) he is very susceptible to the “size-weight illusion,” twice as much as we are,114 and this implies the adjustment of effort to a supposed weight; (c) he repeats a spell in order to strengthen it, or unites a talisman, a rite and a spell in one assault, implying that greater force must be directed against greater resistance; and so on.
Causation, then, is universally assumed: how do Animism and Magic influence the latent conception? As to Animism, (1) it palters with the uniformity of causation; for though the ghost or spirit acts from human motives, no one knows exactly what its motives are. It may be cajoled, implored, even threatened; but the result does not always answer desire: there is apparent caprice or free will, with consequent loss of confidence, and an uncomfortable feeling that leads to a reaction in favour of controlling the god, or ghost, by Magic. (2) The ghost is at first merely a man-force disengaged from the visible body, but still having its own body through which it can produce various effects. But the fear of a ghost immediately endows it with superhuman power; and in course of time it becomes more and more powerful, even to omnipotence; so that it can of itself bring about any event; and, therefore, the “assemblage of conditions” becomes unnecessary to causation: there need be no visible conditions: miracles occur; creation out of nothing is possible. (3) For such a power the “proportionality of cause and effect” becomes almost meaningless; but not quite, for there are degrees of spirit-force; and what one cannot do a stronger can.
As to Magic, it has the great merit of (1) preserving the uniformity of causation. But (2) it vitiates the presumption of causation by including in the total antecedent unreal conditions, namely, the forces of rites and spells; and by generating a frame of mind that makes it impossible to eliminate them. The hunter uses all the resources of his art in hunting; he also practises rites and spells. To which does he owe his success? We might suggest that he should try the hunting without the rites; but he is afraid to; and should he try, his positivism would probably break down at the first failure to kill. Well, then, let him try the rites without the hunting; but he is not such a fool: and, if he were, the medicine-man would tell him that, of course, he must “use the means.” (3) Magic impairs the sense of proportionality between cause and effect, by recognising antecedents which are, in their nature, immeasurable. In their admirable work, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Messrs. Hose and McDougall remark115 that it is sometimes said, that people of lowly culture have “no conception of mechanical causation, and that every material object is regarded by them as animated”; but they do not think that this could be truthfully said about any of the peoples of Borneo. In the construction of houses, boats, weapons, traps, they have a nice appreciation of the principles involved. Yet we find116 that these skilled artisans believe that they can retard an enemy’s boat by hanging under one of its benches a quartz pebble. Similarly, the Boloki of the Congo, having made a good canoe, before launching, strike it on the stern with an axe “to take away the weight.”117 And the Fijians, still better boat-builders, believe that to put a basket of bitter oranges on a canoe reduces its speed.118
Inasmuch as the possibility of action at a distance is still in debate, the savage cannot perhaps upon that tenet be confidently corrected.
If there is any truth in the foregoing account of the latent ideas, or presumptions, of savages concerning causation, it is plain that Magic (and likewise Animism) did not help, but hindered the development of these ideas. Notwithstanding (or, perhaps, because of) certain specious resemblances to science, Magic is, and always has been, the enemy of science.