§ 4 The Wizard and the Sceptic
Inasmuch as the wizard’s boasting, conjuring, ventriloquising, dramatising and practising of all the arts of suggestion, seem incompatible with sincerity, whilst nevertheless he is devoted to his calling, some observers have declared him a calculating impostor, whilst others maintain that he, in various degrees, believes in himself and shares the delusions which he propagates. Examples may be found in support of either position.
Some say that the wizard believes in himself because all others believe in him; that at a certain level of culture, there is an universal social obsession by certain ideas, from which the individual cannot escape, and for whose consequences, therefore, he is not responsible. According to this theory, a sort of tribal insanity prevails. Dr. Mercier says that, in the individual, paranoia is characterised by systematised delusion: “there is an organised body of (false) knowledge, and it differs from other delusions in the fact that it colours the whole life of the patient; it regulates his daily conduct; it provides him with an explanation of all his experiences; it is his theory of the cosmos.” And, again, “as long as the highest level of thought is intact, so that we can and do recognise that our mistakes are mistakes and our disorders, whether of mind or conduct, are disorders, so long sanity is unaffected, and our mistakes and disorders are sane. As soon, however, as we become incompetent to make this adjustment... insanity is established.”468 These passages exactly describe the condition of a wizard and his tribe afflicted with social paranoia: their theories of Magic and Animism and of the wizard’s relations with invisible powers, may truly be said to form an organised body of (false) knowledge, to colour all their lives, to explain everything that happens to them; and their mistakes and disorders to be incorrigible by reflection or experience. Such conditions of the social mind have, I believe, existed (and may still exist), tending toward, and sometimes ending in, a tribe’s destruction. That, in such a case, there should be unanimity is not necessary; it is enough that the current of belief, in certain directions, be overwhelming. But such extreme cases are rare. Normally there may be found, even in backward tribes, a good deal of incredulity and of what may be called primitive rationalism or positivism.
Considerable sections of a tribe sometimes co-operate in imposture, the men against the women and children, or the old against the young; and it cannot be supposed that, where this occurs, anything like universal delusion prevails. The Arunta, who teach their women and children that Twanyiriki is a spirit living in wild regions, who attends initiations, and that the noise of the bull-roarer is his voice; whilst they reveal to the youths when initiated that the bundle of churinga is the true Twanyiriki,469 cannot be blind to the existence of social fictions. The discovery by initiated youths in some parts of New Guinea, that Balum, the monster that is believed to swallow them during initiation, is nothing but a bug-a-boo, and that his growl is only the bull-roarer, must be a shock to their credulity.470 Indeed, disillusionment as to some popular superstition is a common characteristic of initiation ceremonies.471 On the mainland of New Caledonia, a spirit-night is held every five months; when the people assemble around a cave and call upon the ghosts, supposed to be inside it, to sing; and they do sing—the nasal squeak of old men and women predominating.472 There is not in such cases any natural growth of social delusion, subduing the individual mind, but prearranged cozenage; and a wizard with such surroundings, instead of being confirmed in the genuineness of his art, only reads there the method of his own imposture in large type.473
Home-bred wizards, who are less trusted than those who live further off, or than those of an inferior tribe, do not derive self-confidence from the unanimous approval of their neighbours.
Again, the general prevalence of delusions in a tribe does not suppress the scepticism of individuals. It is reasonable to expect such scepticism to be most prevalent amongst men of rank, who are comparatively exempt from the oppression of popular sanctions; and probably this is the fact. Such exemption, by preserving a nucleus of relatively sane people, is one of the great social utilities of rank. The Basuto chief, Mokatchané, surrounded by people grossly superstitious, lent himself to their practices; but in paying his diviners he did not hesitate so say “that he regarded them as the biggest impostors in the world.”474 In Fiji, it is doubtful whether the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of the priests, though it suited their policy to appear to do so. There was an understanding between the two orders: one got sacrifices (food), the other good oracles. A chieftain, on receiving an unfavourable oracle, said to the priest: “Who are you? Who is your god? If you make a stir, I will eat you”475—not metaphorically. In Tonga, “even seventeen years before the arrival of the first missionaries, the chiefs did not care to conceal their scepticism.” In Vavou, Taufaahan, having long been sceptical of his ancestral faith, on learning of Christianity, hanged five idols by the neck, beat the priestess, and burned the spirit-houses.476 The Vikings, like the Homeric heroes, are said to have fought their gods; and at other times to have declared entire disbelief in them. Hence the easy conversion of the North to Christianity. Scepticism may have been fashionable at court much earlier: “It is scarcely possible to doubt,” says Mr. Chadwick, “that familiarity, not to say levity, in the treatment of the gods characterised the Heroic Age [Teutonic—A.D. 350-550] just as much as that of the Vikings.”477 The burlesque representations of the gods in some passages of the Iliad are a sort of atheism: in astonishing contrast with the sublime piety elsewhere expressed. And the inadequacy of such a literary religion (like that of Valhalla) may explain the facile reception (or revival) of the Mysteries in the sixth century B.C. History abounds with examples of rulers and priests who, in collusion, have used religion for political convenience, in a way that implied their own disbelief and opened unintentionally the doors of disbelief to others.
But it is not only chiefs and heroes whose minds are sometimes emancipated from popular superstitions. An old Australian whose duty it was to watch the bones of a dead man and to keep alight a fire near them, sold them for some tobacco and a tomahawk, in great fear lest it should be known to his tribesmen; but he “evidently suffered from no qualms of conscience”:478 that is to say, he feared the living, but not the dead. W. Stanbridge says of the aborigines of Victoria that “there are doctors or priests of several vocations; of the rain, of rivers and of human diseases... but there are natives who refuse to become doctors and disbelieve altogether the pretensions of those persons.”479 John Matthew writes of the tribe with which he was best acquainted—“whilst the blacks had a term for ghosts and behind these were departed spirits,... individual men would tell you upon inquiry that they believed that death was the last of them.”480 Near Cape King William in New Guinea, there is a general belief in spirits and ghosts and also in one Mate; but some whisper that there is no such being.481 The Bakongo villagers do not believe in all witchcraft; but respect some sorcerers, and regard others with more or less contempt: every man, however, must profess belief, or else “his life will be made wretched by accusations of witchcraft.”482 Before missionaries came amongst the Baloki, many people had no faith in the medicine-men, but would not oppose them for fear of being charged with witchcraft.483 The religious convictions of the Zulus were very shallow; belief in the spirit-world depended on prosperity: “fullness declares the Itongo exists; affliction says it does not exist.”... “For my part, I say the Amadhlozi of our house died forever.”484 Capt. Whiffen reports of the tribes of S. Amerinds whom he visited that, “among individuals there are sceptics of every grade.”485 Whilst all Dakotas reverence the great, intangible, mysterious power Takoo-Wahkon, as to particular divinities, any man may worship some and despise others. “One speaks of the medicine-dance with respect; another smiles at the name.” The Assiniboin generally believe that good ghosts migrate to the south where game is abundant; whilst the wicked go northward; but some think that death ends all.486 At Ureparapara (Banks Islands) food is buried with a corpse; and “if there be too much, some is hung above the grave, whence the bolder people take it secretly and eat it.”487 Disbelief is expressed in actions more emphatically than in words; the plundering of tombs has been universal. An idol-maker of Maeva assured Ellis that, “although at times he thought it was all deception and only practised his trade for gain, yet at other times he really thought the gods he himself had made were powerful beings.”488 In Tonga it was orthodox that chiefs and their retainers were immortal, doubtful whether men of the third rank were so, certain that those of the lowest rank, Tooas, were not; their souls died with the body; yet some of these Tooas ventured to think that they too would live again.489 A sceptical Kayan could hardly believe that men continue to exist after death; for then they would return to visit those they love. “But,” he concluded, “who knows?” The traditionary lore of the Kayans answers many deep questions; but the keener intelligences inquire further—“why do the dead become visible only in dreams?” etc.490 A Tanghul told me, says Mr. T. C. Hodson, that no one had ever seen a Lai (deity): when things happened men said a Lai had done it. “In his view clearly a Lai was a mere hypothesis.”491
Of such examples of the occurrence of “free-thought” in all parts of the world, no doubt, a little investigation would discover many more. Everywhere some savages think for themselves; though, like civilised folk, they cannot always venture to avow their conclusions. We must not suppose that belief is as uniform as custom or conventional doctrine: custom and convention hinder thought in dull people, but do not enslave it in the “keener intelligence.” Without the enviable advantage of personal intimacy with savages, I have, by reading about them, gained the impression that they enjoy a considerable measure of individuality—as much as the less educated Europeans—and are not mere creatures of a social environment.
The most backward savages have a large stock of common sense concerning the properties of bodies, of wind and water and fire, of plants and animals and human nature; for this is the necessary ground of their life. This common sense has certain characters which are in conflict with their superstitions; the facts known to common sense are regular, proportional, the same for all; not often failing and needing excuses, not extravagant and disconnected, not depending on the presence of some fantastic mountebank. Savages do not draw explicitly the comparisons that make this conflict apparent; but it may be felt without being defined. Some of them, especially, are (as amongst ourselves) naturally inclined to a positive way of thinking; their common sense predominates over the suggestions of Magic and Animism, and they, more than others aware of the conflict, become the proto-sceptics or rationalists. Lecky observes that beliefs and changes of belief depend not upon definite arguments, but upon habits of thought. In the seventeenth century a new habit of thought overcame the belief in witchcraft and miracles;492 and in many other centuries it has everywhere done the same for those in whom the “apperceptive mass” of common sense became more or less clearly and steadily a standard of belief, repelling the apperceptive masses of Magic and Animism with all their contents and alliances. They had more definite ideas than others, little love of the marvellous, little subjection to fear, desire, imagination.
Sometimes the dictates of common sense are imposed by necessity. The Motu (Papuasian) were accustomed to rub spears with ginger to make them fly straight. It had, however, been discovered that no amount of Magic would turn a poor spearman into an accurate thrower.493 Spear-throwing is too serious a concern not to be judged of upon its merits, however interesting the properties of ginger. A whole tribe may in some vital matter, whilst practising a superstitious rite, disregard its significance: like the Kalims, who hold a crop-festival in January, and afterwards take the omens as to what ground shall be cultivated for next harvest; “but this seems a relic of old times, for the circle of cultivation is never broken, let the omens be what they may.”494 That is a tacit triumph of common sense.
The bearing of all this on the character of the wizard is as follows: since everywhere sceptics occur, and some individuals go further than others in openly or secretly rejecting superstitions, why should not the wizard or sorcerer, who is amongst the most intelligent and daring of his tribe, be himself a rationalist and, therefore, a conscious impostor? That much of his art is imposture no one disputes; and so far as it is so, he sees it as part of the ordinary course of experience. The sorcerer on the Congo who drove a spirit into the dark corner of a hut, stabbed it there, and showed the blood upon his spear, having produced the blood (as his son confessed to Mr. Weeks) by scratching his own gums, was by that action himself instructed in common sense.495 He saw in it quite plainly an ordinary course of events, the “routine of experience”; whilst the spectators were mystified. Must he not, then, have more common sense than other people?
In fact, he recognises the course of nature and his own impotence, whenever an attempt to conjure would endanger his reputation. The Arunta medicine-men exhibit great dramatic action in curing various diseases; but waste no antics on recognisable senile decay.496 The medicine-man of Torres Straits admits that he cannot make a “big wind” from the south-east during the north-west season.497 The Polynesian sorcerers confessed their practices harmless to Europeans;498—who were not suggestible on that plane of ideas. Shamans amongst the Yakuts would not try to cure diarrhœa, small-pox, syphilis, scrofula or leprosy, and would not shamanise in a house where small-pox had been.499 These miracle-mongers sometimes know a hawk from a handsaw. It seems reasonable, then, to assume that wizards have more common sense than other people; since, besides the instruction of common experience, they know in their professional practice (at least in a superficial way) the real course of events, which is concealed from the laity. And, no doubt, of those whose art is deliberate imposture, this is true. But the infatuation of those who are wizards by vocation may be incorrigible by any kind of evidence: especially as to the genuineness of another’s performance. Dr. Rivers speaks of the blindness of the man of rude culture to deceitful proceedings on the part of others with which he is familiar in his own actions.500 For the wizard there are established prejudices, professional and personal interest, fear of trusting his own judgment, supernatural responsibility, desire of superhuman power, sometimes even a passionate desire to alleviate the sufferings of his tribesmen, and everything else that confirms the will to believe.