jieratta liibrary atljata. Neid gnrk " , ■^- ■ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 CorneM University Library GN325 .M35 1920 Psychology and folk-lore / by R. R. Mare olin 3 1924 029 906 504 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029906504 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE THRESHOLD OF RELIGION PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE BY R. R. MARETT, M.A., D.Sc. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY READER IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1920 \^'\ tsai- TO MY PUPILS PREFACE I AM not sure whether these addresses, essays, and reviews are worth the republishing ; but I hope that they are. To attend to one's subject dviring the War was not easy. Yet the very confusion of the times made thinking necessary, if only in order that the mind might keep its beatings during the storm. For the same reason one's thought tended to dwell on first principles. These are none too steadfast, to be sure, in such a new and complex science as anthropology. But to find them to be relatively stable, or at any rate to seek how they could be made so, proved comforting to me. In the hope, therefore, that others have also of late been examining foundations with similar results, I venture to appeal to their sympathetic attention. I apologize to any reader who is troubled by echoes of the spoken word in these pages. It is hard to turn a lecture into an article without taking half the life out of it ; and so I have changed nothing, not even suppress- ing a few passages of an occasional character. Anyone with imagination can make the necessary allowances. The title is borrowed from the first paper, but provides a fair notion of the general scope of the book. The prevailing interest is throughout psychological; and whatever is not folk-lore in the strict sense belongs at least to anthropology. vii PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Nos. 1-5 were Presidential Addresses delivered to the Folk-lore Society in the years 1914-18. No. 11 was also delivered (or but for the interposition of submarines would have been delivered) ex cathedra to Section H of the British Association at the Newcastle meeting of 1916. Nos. 8 and 10 were originally lectures, the one given to the Royal Medical Society, and subsequently published in The Hibhert Journal of October 1918 ; the other read before the Woodbrooke Settlement, Birming- ham, and afterwards appearing in Progress and History, Oxford University Press, edited by Prof. F. S. Marvin. No. 7 is an article from The American Journal of Theology of October 1916, written in response to an invitation to define an anthropologist's attitude towards theology. Nos. 6 and 8 were reviews of two of Sir James Frazer's works. The Golden Bough, third edition, and Folk-lore in the Old Testament ; they severally appeared in The Edinburgh Review of April 1914 and The Quarterly Review of April 1919. I have to thank the Councils of the Folk-lore Society and of the British Association, Professor Marvin, and the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, and the Editors and Publishers of The Hibbert Journal, The American Journal of Theology, The Edinburgh Review, and The Quarterly Review, for leave to republish. R. R. MARETT Exeter Collsge November 11, 1919 vm CONTENTS I. Psychology and Folk-lore ^ II. War and Savagery . \,' III. Primitive Values .... IV. The Psychology of Culture-Contact V. The Transvaluation of Culture VI. The Interpretation of Survivals ^ VII. Origin and Validity in Religion 1 VIII. Magic or Religion ? ... IX. The Primitive Medicine-Man '' X. Progress in Prehistoric Times XI. Anthropology and University Education Index PASS I 27 49 72 99 120 ' 143 168 196 223 246 273 IX PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE I PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE ARGUMENT 'pOLK-LORE cannot restrict itself to a purely sociological, that is, exterior, view of its subject-matter. Not only is its ultimate aim to illustrate and explain the workings of the human soul; hut even at the present stage of its advance it cannot dispense with psychological considerations. Thus the so-called ethnological method, from which so much is expected, is hound to employ a psychological criterion. This method proceeds stratigraphically, seeking to resolve a given complex of culture into a series of deposits left by successive waves of ethnic in- fluence ; former conditions being traced by the wreckage, the partially useless survivals, that they leave behind. But how is such partial uselessness to be proved if not by reference to the experience of the people concerned? Their life is not merely being fashioned by culture-contact from without, hut is all the while developing from within by the exercise of selection on what is offered. Hence, unless what is outwardly perceived as a body of custom he likewise inwardly apprehended as a process of mind, the treatment is hound to be mechanical and correspond- ingly lifeless. The folk-lorist, then, must attend to the psycho- logical side of the study of survivals by dwelling on the question — How and why do survivals survive ? He will thereupon find that, relics of the past though they be, they are something more. I I \. PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE They have a present value for old-fashioned minds ; and to ignore this living function of theirs is to lose touch with that movement of history which the folk-lorist has the chance of studying at his very door. The transformation of culture among the folk, the whole process of selection whereby old and V new are combined, ought to be made the prime object of folk-lore study. It follows that the folk-lorist ought as far as possible to be versed in the actual practice of that which he would sym- pathetically understand. Let him, for instance, personally participate in the folk-dances, folk-songs, and folk-dramas that survive or are being revived. He will thus acquire insight into that constant readaptation of traditional themes under stress of fresh interests which we are so apt to overlook in dealing with savage custom ; as though the same vital thrust were not at work there also. To treat folk-lore, however, as a living and changing growth is not to reduce it to a mere flux. On the contrary, human nature rather reveals an unexpected degree of con- servatism, if we look beneath the surface of the mental life and take stock of certain steadfast currents of impulse such as manifest themselves in consciousness chiefly by way of the emotions. In the presentiment of luck, or the fear of witch- craft, or the awe associated with an initiation ceremony, we have examples of universal feelings that the folk-lorist may study near at hand if he have the inward-seeking temper and can converse with the peasant in his own idiom. Survivals in folk-lore, then, are no mere wreckage of the past, but are like- wise symptomatic of those tendencies of our common human nature which have the best chance of surviving in the long run. OUR world of Folk-lore is, on the whole, a very placid world. In it the happenings are innumerable, but events are rare. In other words, it affords plenty about which one may be busy, but little about which there is any call to raise a fuss. PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE But this must count with us as a wonder-year ; for it is marked by an event of quite first-rate importance. I refer, of course, to the completion of the third many- volumed edition of The Golden Bough. Sir James Frazer is one of ourselves. He has been a member of this Society for a long time past, has served on the Council, and is actually Vice-President. Besides, he has the entire contents of our manifold publications at his fingers' ends. There is scarcely a page of his encyclo- paedic work that does not bear witness to the activity of our Society. Hence his triumph is likewise our triumph. We participate collectively in his supreme achievement. In fact I am almost tempted to describe The Golden Bough as the " external soul " of this Society. The very spirit of its work is enshrined therein, and so is perpetuated for an indefinite time to come ; seeing that, of all the creations of man, there is none so im- perishable as a noble book. But it may be asked, — Is not the prime concern of the author of The Golden Bough with social anthropology rather than with folk-lore ? If anybody were to raise such an objection, I should suspect him to be one of the " Little-Englanders " of folk-lore — one of those who believe not only that folk-lore, like charity, should begin at home (a doctrine with which I cordially agree), but that it should stay at home for good and all. Sir James Frazer's, surely, is the better way. He sees that, if folk-lore is to take rank as science, it must push beyond mere description in the direction of explanation ; and that the explanation of the beliefs and practices of our own peasants is not to be fully achieved, unless we also take due cognizance of the kindred beliefs and practices of ruder and remoter types of mankind. Hence, taking as his base of operations that mass of European folk- PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE customs into which the genius of Mannhardt had already read no inconsiderable measure of meaning by sheer intensive study of their specific features, he boldly undertakes all manner of excursions into the outer wilderness of savagery ; in the hope that, by such an extensive method, he will be able finally to verify principles which must otherwise remain purely hypothetical, since not yet proved to be conformable with the universal nature of man. Now, in regard to various matters of detail, I may have had occasion in the past to adopt a somewhat critical attitude towards his theories ; but to-night, when it is his general method that calls for review, I can whole-heartedly declare that I come, not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. All honour be to Sir James Frazer for never losing sight of the truth that the ultimate aim of folk-lore and of its ally, social anthro- pology, is to illustrate and explain the workings of the human soul. It is to Psychology, the rightful queen of the historical methods, that he proffers an unswerving fealty. That the workings of the human soul are influenced by external conditions, and notably by that particular group of external conditions constituting what is •known as social tradition or culture, he would of course be perfectly ready to allow. Were it not so, indeed, it would be impossible to separate off for special treatment that phase of the soul-life of mankind to which folk-lore and social anthropology pay exclusive attention, namely, the primitive or rudimentary type of mentality. But that history can ever be identified with the history of mere culture, of the mere outward integument and garb of the spirit, is a notion, fashion- able at the present hour, to which Sir James Frazer gives no countenance whatever. A historian of culture, if ever PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE there was one, he nevertheless sets himself from first to last to indite the first chapter of the recordable history of the human mind ; and, with his shining example to Ught us on our way, we have only ourselves to blame if we turn aside to follow Jack-o'-lantern, and are pre- sently engulfed in the dismal slough of materiaUsm. At this point I would like to pick a crow with a friend who is likewise a distinguished member of this Society. Dr Rivers has recently read before the Socio- logical Society a brilliant paper entitled " Survival in Sociology." 1 Having defined the proper task of the sociologist as " the study of the correlation of social phenomena with other social phenomena, and the reference of the facts of social fife to social antecedents," he goes on to say : " Only when this has been done, or at any rate when this process has made far greater advances than at present, will it be profitable to en- deavour to explain the course of social life by psycho- logical processes." Now in a footnote to this passage he tells us that he does not mean hereby in any way to exclude the study of these psychological processes, since " there is no study greater in interest, and none of greater importance if we are ever fully to understand the development of human society." His dictum, then, to the effect that it is not at present profitable to apply psychology to the explanation of the course of social life would seem to mean merely that it is not profit- able so long as one is content to remain at the level of sociology pure and simple. Now I have nothing to do with that. I am not addressing a society of sociologists to-night, but a society of folk-lorists. But if, as I am inclined to suspect, Dr Rivers is ready to identify the interest of the folk-lorist with that of the sociologist, ^ See The Sociological Review, Oct. 1913, pp. 293 et seq. 5 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE and to lay it down for all those who study survivals of human culture of whatever kind that, until they receive further orders, they are to keep psychological con- siderations at arm's length, and confine themselves to a purely sociological or exterior view of the movement of history, then it is high time that some one should utter an emphatic protest in the name of all that this Society holds to be most sacred. Dr Rivers supports his case by an analogy. Now an analogy, unless it is capable of being turned into homology, is no more than a literary device, and one that is somewhat out of place in a scientific argument. Because two things have some superficial feature in common, you cannot, without assuming some under- lying identity between them, go on to expect that in some further respect also the one wiU turn out to be as the other. Dr Rivers compares sociology with geology on the strength of the fact that each in some sense, — a very loose sense, to be sure,- — is primarily concerned with problems of stratification. Just as the geologist has hitherto usually begun by trying to plot out the actual order observable in the layers com- posing the earth's crust, so the sociologist, Dr Rivers maintains, should begin by trjdng to make out the actual order in which one deposit of culture has been superimposed on another in the formation of social custom. Until the stratigraphical sequences are sufficiently established, he argues, it is more or less futile in the case of geology to attempt explanations in terms of physics and chemistry ; whence, by analogy, it must be equally futile to attempt explanations in terms of psychology in the case of sociology. For sociology has not yet succeeded in determining the seriation of past conditions, at any rate whenever a 6 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE people lacks written records, and there is consequently nothing to represent the equivalent of a geological section. Such, I trust, is a fair rendering of the gist of Dr Rivers' contention. Now there are probably more ways than one in which this contention might be met, but the simplest of all would seem to be the following. One has only to point out that the procedure of a science must adapt itself to the nature of its special subject-matter. One sort of subject-matter invites one hne of treatment, and another another. The logic must be accommodated to the facts, not the facts to the logic. Thus the crust of the earth lends itself readily to the stratigraphical method of exploration. Geological considerations of this nature must have impressed themselves on the mind of Adam when first he struck a spade into the ground. On the other hand, as we have just seen, the savage who is destitute of a recorded history does not lend himself to be viewed in section by the casual observer. A spade makes no impression on the hard soil, and operations are perforce confined to the surface. It is as if a geologist had to depend for his determination of the invisible strata below ground on the uncertain indications afforded by what he takes to be their several outcrops, — a method which would at once oblige him to call in the aid of those physical theories which, according to Dr Rivers, should normally serve him but as a sort of savoury after meat. Survivals of culture are just such outcrops showing at the surface. They are at first sight as much a part of the existing life of the people under investigation as is the rest of their customs. To the discerning eye of the theorist, however, they admit of correlation with otherwise hidden strata, — ^with former land-surfaces, as it were, that are PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE now for the most part obliterated beneath the accumu- lations of time,— because of their present uselessness. But what is the test of such uselessness ? Is it the observer's sense of fitness and convenience, or is it that of the people concerned ? But if you decide, as surely you must, that the useless is what the people concerned perceive and judge to be of no use to themselves, then how are you going to keep psychology out of the reckoning ? Must not your first duty be to get into touch, by means of sympathetic insight, with the whole mentality, the whole purposive scheme of hfe, of those whose customs you seek to differentiate as variously help- ful and not helpful ? When you apply your criterion of uselessness, are you not playing the psychologist all the while, though it may be without knowing it ? In the western islands of Torres Straits, says Dr Rivers by way of example, the mother's brother enjoys in certain respects more authority than does the father. Thus, if he commands his nephew to cease fighting, the latter must immediately obey ; whereas, if his father gives the order, the young man is wont to exercise a certain discretion in the matter. Now this function of the mother's brother must be a survival, argues Dr Rivers, because it cannot be useful, but is on the contrary likely to be harmful, that a child should be called upon to serve two masters. If those ties of affection and of a common habitation which unite father and son are in this way relaxed, the social order must correspondingly suffer. Now in so stating his case Dr Rivers gives one the impression of having taken that most perilous of short-cuts, the " high priori road." He does not tell us that he found the boys of the western islands of Torres Straits to be more disorderly than other boys of his acquaintance. He cannot cite the 8 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE declaration of some peevish house-father to the effect that the peace-making efforts of his wife's brother brought about more harm than good. Instead, he simply makes appeal to our patriarchal prejudices. One may be sure, however, that so sound an empiricist as Dr Rivers had duly taken note, while dwelling among these islanders, of a stream of conscious or subconscious tendency making in general for a strictly patriarchal system, but in this particular matter of the brother- in-law's power of interference suffering a perceptible check. Such must be the real, though unexpressed, ground of his attribution of uselessness. His right to make such a judgment must rest on the study of the soul of the people, a study so sympathetic and pro- found as to have revealed to him the dominant trend of their united purposes. Otherwise, we stand committed to that naive conception of human evolution which pictures aU the peoples of the earth as proceeding along a single path of advance, and consequently identifies the useless with whatever does not directly lead to the supreme position occupied by our noble selves. Or here, again, is another simple way of showing the misleading nature of the parallel suggested by Dr Rivers between geology and the study of survivals. It brings us back to our former principle that method must conform to subject-matter, not subject-matter to method. The respective methods of geology and of human history must remain as the poles asunder for the obvious reason that the earth is dead, while man is ahve. For a philosopher, indeed, such as Fechner, the earth may embody the soul of a god, and there is no justification for assuming it to be wholly and merely material. Rather Fechner would have us treat the earth as our special guardian angel. We can pray to PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE it, he thinks, as men pray to their saints.^ But for the geologist the physical nature of the earth con- stitutes no abstract aspect, but a substantive fact. According to the strictly scientific view, which goes back at least as far as Democritus, the earth is no more than a venerable rubbish-heap. Well, so be it. Let science turn the earth into stone. But man does not lend himself so readily to theoretical petrifaction. Philosophy apart, it is unprofitable even for purely scientific purposes to ignore the animating mind and will, and explain the various manifestations of human life in terms of the carnal tenement. To resolve the history of man into a chapter of mechanics may or may not be speculatively agreeable ; but in any case it does not come within the range of practical policy for those who work seriously at the subject. Now downright materiaUsm in these days is some- what out of fashion, and with it for the nonce has been relegated to the lumber-room that plain-saihng variety of determinism which philosophers denominate " hard." But there exists a " soft " determinism as well, which, instead of professing to reduce the spiritual to the material, insists that unchanging rigidity of form is common to thern both ; the difference between physical change and purposive development being treated as negligible, since movement of either kind is equally incompatible with the notion of an absolute system. Now as part of an ultimate philosophy this doctrine may appeal to some. I am not here to-night to discuss metaphysics ; and, if anyone find peace in the con- templation of a fossil universe, I shall not go out of my way to pronounce him moon-struck. All I insist on here is that at the level of science we keep metaphysical 1 C/. William James, A Pluralistic Universe {1909), p. 153. 10 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE postulates at arm's length, and deal with facts according to the appearances which they present after their dis- tinguishable kinds. And, if this working principle be granted, I go on to maintain that the brute earth and the hve purposive man are such distinguishable kinds, of which the latter offers the appearance of not merely changing but developing, not merely being moulded from without but growing from within in response to an immanent power of selfhood and will. What, then, of sociology, considered in its bearing on folk-lore ? Has it a right to hmit itself to a purely exterior view of human life ? I answer that it has a perfect right so to do. But has it hkewise a right to impose this same limited outlook on folk-lore, on the study of survivals ; so as, at this or any other stage of the development of this branch of science, to leave psychology out in the cold ? I answer with no less assurance that it has no such right. Let me develop these points very shortly. It is quite legitimate to regard culture, or social tradition, in an abstract way as a tissue of externalities, as a robe of many colours woven on the loom of time by the human spirit for its own shielding or adorning. Moreover, for certain purposes which in their entirety may be termed sociological, it is actually convenient thus to concentrate attention on the outer garb. In this case, indeed, the garb may well at first sight seem to count for everything ; for certainly a man naked of all culture would be no better than a forked radish. Nevertheless, folk-lore cannot out of deference to socio- logical considerations afford to commit the fallacy of identifying the clothes worn with their live wearer. Such a doctrine were fit only for tailors. Human history is no Madame Tussaud's show of decorated II PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE dummies. It is instinct with purposive movement through and through ; and must so be represented by folk-lore, — kinematographically as it were. Now it is the special business of psychology to emphasize the dynamic side of hfe, or in other words the active con- ditions that enable us to suck strength and increase out of the passive conditions comprised under the term environment. It is because we have experience in our inmost being of what M. Bergson would term " real duration," that the notion of development becomes possible for us at all. Hence I would maintain that in the hierarchy of the sciences psychology is superior to sociology, for the reason that as the study of the soul it brings us more closely into touch with the nature of reality than does the study of the social body. Mean- while, in relation to folk-lore, which is concrete, psy- chology and sociology alike are entitled to rank as no more than methods, inasmuch as they are but abstract. Folk-lore in its wide embrace can and must find room for them both, itself remaining aloof from all one-sided- ness, seeing that it stands for a whole department of the historical study of mankind. The business of this Society is to seek to know the folk in and through their lore, so that what is outwardly perceived as a body of custom may at the same time be inwardly apprehended as a phase of mind. I have said enough, perhaps more than enough, con- cerning the ideal relations of sociology and psychology J| within the domain of folk-lore. After all, in such I matters it is not so much logic as sheer practice that has the best right to lay down the law. According to the needs of the work l5dng nearest to our hand, let us play the sociologist or the psychologist, without pre- ju(hce as regards ultimate explanations. On one point 12 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE only I would insist, namely, that the living must be studied in its own right and not by means of methods borrowed from the study of the Hfeless. If a purely sociological treatment contemplates man as if there were no Hfe in him, there will hkewise be no life in it. The nemesis of a deterministic attitude towards history is a deadly dullness. How, then, is psychology going to help us to keep /| folk-lore fresh and living ? I suggest that it may do so by making the study of survivals turn on the question, — How and why do survivals survive ? In folk-lore, I believe, antiquarianism may easily be over- done. We go about collecting odd bits of contemporary culture which seem to us to be more or less out of place in a so-called civiHzed world, and are exceedingly apt to overlook the truth that for old-fashioned minds the old fashions are as ever new. Now, of course, I am not against the study of origins. By all means let us try, so far as we can, to refer back this or that obsolescent institution or beUef to some more or less remote past, reconstituted by means of the supposed analogies pro- vided by backward peoples of to-day, among whom similar institutions or beliefs are seen to exist in full working order. But to make this the sole concern of folk-lore is to subordinate it as a mere appendix to the anthropology of savages. Folk-lore becomes an affair of shreds and tatters, since it institutes on its own account no study of human mind and society in their wholeness, but takes this over ready-made from another branch of science. But this unequal state of things can assuredly be remedied, if we folk-lqrists will only reahze our opportunities. I am convinced that folk- lore, if developed along the right lines, can teach the anthropology of savages as much as the anthropology 13 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE of savages can teach folk-lore. Let me try to show how this may be done. Human nature, whether savage or civilized, is subject to perpetual transformation. This means that some- thing is always disappearing while something else is coming into being. This law holds good of the most backward of societies no less than of the most advanced. It follows that survivals are no mere by-products of a latter-day civilization, but form an essential feature of human history taken at any of its successive stages and in any of its branching forms. The rate of change may vary according to the special conditions, but not the . nature of the process. Transformism is the very nerve .,\ of history. Nay, it is its very soul ; since the continual give-and-take must not merely be construed objectively as loss and gain, but may be expressed with fuller significance in terms of will as rejection and selection. Where, then, if not close at hand, within range of our personal experience, are we to look for a key to the movement of history ? Surely transformism as it occurs palpably among our own folk will always mean more for us than as it looms obscurely in the reported doings of alien peoples. It seems to me that the foUc- lorist still halts on the threshold of his real work. He has yet to enter into his kingdom. Let him have done with jottings. We ask of him not details as such, but rather a detailed account of the whole process of the transformation of culture as it takes place among the folk. Let him show us exactly how the new gains at the expense of the old, — how it partly readapts, partly diminishes and dwarfs, and partly destroys altogether. The sociology, and still more the psychology, of the generation, degeneration, and regeneration of culture *' mostly remains to be written. We hear a great deal in 14 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE these days about culture-contact as it operates amongst savages. But has anyone yet been at pains to describe the effects on the folk at home of culture-contact as between class and class, — ^to tell us, for instance, exactly how board-school education is assimilated by the mind of the peasant ? When the folk-lorist has done this for us, we shall then have some chance of appreciating what culture-contact among savages means from the inside. So long as we examine such a process merely from the outside, as Dr Rivers apparently would have us do, for all our stir we shall mainly be marking time. Let me show by means of an example how the study of the psychology of transformism ought to begin at home. We have folk-dances, folk-songs, and foll<- dramas with us still ; whether in a state of survival or revival, it hardly matters for my argument. The sympathetic study of these has of late made consider- able progress among us, more especially after educated people had made the discovery that a method of ac- quiring insight into their nature was actually to take a hand in them, — ^to dance, sing, or act them as the case might be. I would not go so far as to say that such a method will enable us, if we are educated, not to say sophisticated, persons, to recover the full feel of the thing as it is for the relatively simple-minded peasant. At the risk of paradox, however, I would venture to suggest that, for psychological purposes, this is the right way to begin. One should first give oneself the benefit of the experience so far as it can be reconstituted with the help of the traditional actions and words ; and then may proceed to the observation of the peasant's behaviour in the Uke case, so as to infer as best one can how allowance is to be made for the necessary differences in the accompanying frame of mind. It is perhaps 15 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE rather late in the day for us to overtake the ceremonial mood, even when aided by the more solemn of surviving measures ; for after aU our peasants themselves have nearly lost that, and at most take seasonal festivals a little more heartily and seriously than the rest of us, while perhaps occasionally they likewise dimly imagine that a due observance of them makes for luck. But at any rate the later stages of transformism to which such folk-customs are inherently subject may become tolerably manifest to the practising folk-lorist. He will perceive, for instance, how readily a change in the aesthetic motive may supervene with instant aU-per- vading effect on the traditional features, grave passing into gay, simple into complex, coarse into refined, with consequent losses and gains to the total experience. Or he will learn how the individual artist is apt to carry the chorus with him down devious paths, and how the gift of improvisation will not be denied. He wiU have experience, again, of the power of form to discard or renew its matter, a good tune, for example, or a telling dramatic situation, having the power to persist in conjunction with words that are either nonsensical or else newfangled. Once more, he may note how a village celebration strengthens social soHdarity, — how, for instance, it may provide an occasion for the settle- ment of outstanding quarrels, or serve the purpose of a popular demonstration in favour of some ancient franchise such as a right of way. All this, then, and much else of great psychological interest is to be brought to hght by the student of British folk-lore, more especially if, as I have suggested, he be at the same time versed in the actual practice of that which he submits to analysis. Once the folk-lorist has learned amongst familiar i6 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE conditions to lay his finger on the living pulse of the simple life, he may venture further afield. Thus, if he has the good fortune, as some of us, thanks to Professor Baldwin Spencer's kinematograph, have recently had, of witnessing the strange ceremonies of Australian savages, will he not be able by the aid of a home-grown sympathy to perceive that movement, that forward thrust, in the cultural history of the aborigines which the merely book-learned are so apt to miss altogether ? There is no greater fallacy than to regard this or any other type of savagery as something that, having long ceased to grow, has somehow persisted as a fossil. Anyone who brings experience gained in the field of folk-lore to bear on the dances, songs, and dramas of Austraha wiU find that, despite the difference in ex- ternals, the inward process of transformism is much the same. We recognize a similar alternation and rivalry between the reUgious and aesthetic interests, between deference to tradition and the spirit of im- provisation, between form that tolerates a degenerated matter and matter calling for a renovated form. The sacred dance hardly distinguishable in its modes from the profane corrobborree, the inspired inventor of variations on a traditional theme, the words that keep their place though turned to nonsense, the assimilation of one t5^e of ceremony by another so that, for instance, echoes of totemic solemnities find their way into the ritual of initiation, — all these manifestations of the spirit of eternal change have their parallels in our own folk-lore, and by its aid may be referred to their ultimate springs and sources, which lie within the human mind. I shaU perhaps be told that modern anthropology is perfectly aware that it is necessary to construe such a culture as that of native Australia as instinct with 2 17 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE complicated movement rather than as if it were rigid and all of a piece ; but that this end is only to be achieved by treating Australian culture as a separate ethnological deposit, and dividing up this deposit into strata, the order of which will tell us how development proceeded. Now I am far from denying that such a method would be helpful if the facts proved sufficiently amenable thereto. I have my doubts, however, if it is likely to prove a success in regard to_AustraUa, when so many practical difficulties are seen to impede its fruitful application nearer home. For what has this so-called "ethnological method" done, or is it likely to do, for folk-lore ? In the first place, how are you going to define your ethnological province ? I suppose all Europe at the very least must be regarded by the folk-lorist as his special area of characterization. Then, in the second place, how are our stratigraphical divisions to be made out ? The folk-lorist has always supposed that elements which must have originated at very various epochs are contained in our folk-customs ; but, as we see in the case of such a very careful piece of work as Mr Chambers' History of the Mediceval Stage,^ it is not possible beyond a certain point, even though there be historical records to assist us, to take stock of internal developments and external accretions in any strict order of succession. Failing, then, any certain clue to the actual regress of conditions as regards the culture of our peasants, — and the same thing holds of savage culture with even greater force, — ^we must school ourselves to discern the past as it lives on in the present. And this, as I have tried to show, is made possible only by psychology, which enables us to apprehend the present not as an envisaged state but as a felt move- 1 Oxford ; Clarendon Press, 1903. PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE ment. To interpret the Man vital in terms of soul" and will, — of the human purpose that means so much more than any amount of external properties, inherited or acquired, since it uses, misuses, or disuses them at pleasure, — such must be the aim of the historian who wants to put some life into his work. Now, we are not ourselves peasants ; so that, to project ourselves into the hfe of the peasant, and to arrive by intuition at the push of the life-force as manifested therein, is no easy task. Yet we are near enough in sympathy to our own folk to make it well worth the trying. Then, II using the peasant as our bridge, let us proceed as best Uwe can to do the same for the remoter savage. From folk-lore to the anthropology of savages, — ^that, I am sure, is the only sound method in social psychology. !«, Not the child, as some have thought, but the peasant, is the true middle term of the anthropological syllogism. The first step is from town to country, and it is but another step on from the country to the wilds. It remains to add that, while the true business of the folk-lorist, as I conceive it, is to think of his subject- matter as changing rather than stable, as living rather than dead, this does not mean that, from a psychological point of view, there wiU be no durable set of impressions yielded by the kinematographic process, nothing that can be made to serve as a measure of the flux by reason of its relative steadiness. On the contrary, one is tempted to exclaim about human nature when it is studied from within, plus ga change, plus c'est la meme chose. One would almost be justified in maintaining, by way of counterblast to the usual paeans sung over the march of civilization, that the human species, having once for all broken away from the apes by some sort of sudden mutation, had ever since bred remarkably 19 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE true to itself ; the apparent multiplicity of its varia- tions representing little more than so much indefinite fluctuation about a constant type. Now probably this would be to go too far. Yet such is certainly the sort of view to which the psychologist inclines after a study of the human emotions ; and these, as Mr M'Dougall has tried to show in his Introduction to Social Psychology} would seem in their turn to be indicative of certain steadfast currents of impulse, which govern the flow of the tide of human life as it were from the nether depths, even while on 'the surface the waves are being driven hither and thither by every wind that blows. I would ask the folk-lorist, then, when he reports a piece of rustic custom, not to neglect the emotions that are hidden away behind the superficial sayings and doings, since the former belong not to the mere context and atmosphere, but to the very essence, of what he has to study ; and, standing as they do for the principle of vital continuity, afford a truer measure of human evolution, so far as there is such a thing as distinct from aimless fluctuation and unrest, than does all the surface-display of history, with its series of fashion- plates, that tell us next to nothing about the man beneath the tailoring, whether he be at heart the same Old Adam or no. Take, for instance, the so-called idea of luck, which on closer analysis turns out to be little more than a raw emotion evoked by a certain complejf of conditions. As every folk-lorist knows, there are plenty of oppor- tunities along the countryside of stud5dng the feeling of luck, since it is wont to attach to ceremonial practices that are in the last throes of obsolescence. Now I strongly suspect that in this particular respect senility ' London : Methuen & Co., 1908. 20 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE is equivalent to second childhood ; in other words, that the feeling of luck presides in much the same form over the final extinction and over the prime inception of a rite. Thus the student of savagery at present finds it almost impossible to tell whether the vague notions of mana, tabu, and so on, which amount to little more than the presentiment of luck or ill-luck "as bound up with certain things, actions, and situations, are rudimentary or vestigial, — an effect of early dawn or of lingering twiHght. Let some folk-lorist provide us with a psychological stiidy of the mental accompaniments of ritualistic degeneration and ritualistic invention, ex- amining not merely the outward manifestations, but seeking to describe from within the actual experience of those classes of the community into whose scheme of existence luck enters most, — ^tillers of the ground, fishermen, miners, and indeed all who live hard and precariously, all who have to depend most on that racial happy-go-luckiness which is perhaps the most fundamental quality in man. Surely we are likely here, if anywhere, to discover criteria whereby the phenomena of progression and of retrogression in the savage's philosophy of luck may be distinguished ; since only thus can we learn by sjonpathetic intuition how the luck-feeling waxes or wanes, according as the external conditions either bring it into play by re- quiring men to rough it and take their chance, or else promote feelings of security and a corresponding sense of a rational and law-abiding universe. Or take as another example the fear of witchcraft. Can we not study it among ourselves more effectively than among savages, even though it be written in larger letters on the surface of their lives ? Surely the root- feeling must be apprehended by experience, before its 21 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE manifestations can be recognized for what they truly are ; and the root-feehng, I maintain, lurks here and now within the breast of every one of us. Education has scotched it, may be, but it has not succeeded in kilUng it. We may do as Kim did in the story, and with the help of the multiplication-table divert the attentiorTfrom the paralysing sensation of magic wrought upon us. But in the penumbra of the civiHzed mind lurk the old bogeys, ready to leap back into the centre of the picture if the effort to be rational relax for an instant. If, then, the psychology of magic begins at home, why need the folk-lorist look to the student of savagery for his leading, just because the latter operates on more simple social conditions in the light of a vast ignorance of what it feels like to live under such con- ditions ? Even as I write I receive a newspaper from the Channel Islands in which there is to be read the fuU story, as told in the police court, of how a woman, reputed by her neighbours to be a witch, nearly drove another woman to suicide by her supposed incanta- tions. First the cattle perished mysteriously ; they had clearly been overlooked. Then the owner's death was prophesied, did she not take steps to buy release from the prophet. The house became full of devils ; and no wonder, since the witch herself, sniffing with her nose, declared that the place smelt of witchcraft. So powders must be purchased, and buried in the garden at the four points of the compass ; also a metal box " full of devils " was obtained and carried about, pre- sumably to neutralize the circumambient devils ; finally, a dance was prescribed. The patient, however, despite powders, box, dancing, and all, grew worse instead of better, and took to her bed, a nervous wreck. At last she pulled herself together and went off to tell the poUce, 22 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE and even then she was witch-ridden ; so that, if some one had not forcibly stopped her in the road, she would have gone on running for ever. All this in the year of grace 1914 in the fortunate islands where I was born.^ I am about to go round the world in search of anthropological adventures, but, as for the acquisition of authentic experience of the primitive, it seems as if I might be better occupied at home. One more example, which will serve to show how we need not discriminate too nicely between survival and revival, when we are studying some old-world type of experience as realized under modern and familiar con- ditions. If we want to understand the psychological rationale of an initiation ceremony, shall we not do well before we try to determine the inwardness of savage rites, into the secrets of which we may be pretty sure that no European has been allowed fully to penetrate, to seek entrance into a lodge of freemasons, and taste for oneself the feehngs of exaltation, of submission, and what not, — I speak as one of the profane, — ^to which the novice is wrought up, with more or less effect on the subsequent conduct of his hfe ? There may be reasons in this case, — treasons the very existence of which throws a flood of light on the similar esotericism of the savage, — why knowledge so acquired cannot be turned directly to account. Yet the example is none the less apposite as regards the point that I have been labouring throughout, — namely that you are not in a position to explain a human institution until, by direct experience, or by sympathetic self -projection from close at hand, you are enabled to speak about it as an insider. To recur to the present instance, it is of quite secondary importance to have determined the origins 1 Guernsey Evening Press, Jan. 29, 191 4. 23 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE of the masonic rite, — how one feature was borrowed from this quarter, while another supervened from that. The soul of the process must be seized before such archaeological gossip can be made to exhibit the all- pervading movement of genuine history. In short, to be a folk-lorist worthy of the name you must first I have undergone initiation amongst the folk, must have n become one of them inwardly and in the spirit . Then the rest will be added unto you ; the continuity of the present with the past will be revealed ; you wiU be able to cast backward without losing the sense of the live process ; and, for all your antiquarianism, you will not become a bore. There are other ways in which it might be shown that folk-lore can give to the anthropology of savages as much as it receives, or more. Thus, in order to acquire field-methods based on sound psychological principles for use amongst peoples of the lower culture, the student can do no better than practise first on the folk at his gate. How break through, for instance, the characteristic reticence of the peasant ? As Mrs Wright has recently shown us in her delightful book, Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore} the key to unlock his seemingly quite inarticulate thoughts is an intimate acquaintance with his dialect. Nay, his inmost feelings are bound up with the traditional words and turns of expression ; so that you hold his heart-strings in your hands, if only you control the forms of his speech. If, then, you would persuade the even more evasive savage to share his secrets with you, you will have done well to have graduated beforehand in the school of conversational experience which folk-lore-hunting provides. And, as I have tried all along to show, folk-lore-hunting means far more than the compilation of curious oddments. ^ Oxford University Press, 1913. 24 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE It means the study of the life of the folk, the acquisi- tion, based on friendly converse, of insight into their mind and character. If he have this inward-seeking method and temper, the student of folk-lore is entitled to rank as a psychologist even if he be innocent of formal erudition. For his documents are human beings, not books, and are to be read by the light, not of learning, but of human sympathy and common sense. At this point I break off, aghast at my own imper- tinence. Who am I that would preach, not having practised, to those who have practised and have taught me whatever I know about the folk-lorist's true destiny and mission ? I rejoice to think that the psychologist among the folk is no mere dream of my own, but a reality ; which this famous Society of ours collectively represents, while its individual members, as for example Sir James Frazer, who, as I said at the beginning, may justly claim the chief honours of the year, likewise afford many shining examples of the worker who works at folk-lore from within. What I have ventured to do to-night is merely to give an abstract, and perhaps unnecessarily academic, expression to the principle which for most of you, I daresay, is something taken for granted, something about which you have no more need to worry than a caterpillar has need to worry about its method of progression. Further, as one whose main concern has hitherto been with the psycho- logical side of the anthropology of savages, I can at least offer to folk-lore, by way of graceful concession, priority of place and standing, in the Ught of the law, which to-night I have been tr5dng to formulate, that psychology must always work from personal experience outwards, and from the more famiUar to the less famihar. Folk-lore is no study of the dead-alive, else it must 25 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE itself be dead-alive too. It is rather a study of the live as manifested in the so-called surviving ; and this is indeed at once living and surviving in a deeper sense than is at first sight obvious. For the life ©f the folk, being rooted in nature, like the wild plant that it is, would seem to be hardier and more fit to endure than any form of the cultivated life ; which springs out of it, and, in time grown tired as it were, reverts to it again. Even if, as we must all hope, the Hfe of man be no mere process, but a progress involving increase and better- ment in the long run, it is in the life of the folk that we must seek the principle of growth. The continuous hfe of the folk constitutes as it were the germ-plasm of society. Unless the external conditions, that so largely make up the apparatus of so-called civilization, so act on the social body that their effects are transmitted to this germinal element and cause it to be itself trans- formed, then our cultural acquisitions are vain, because utterly transient, in the judgment of history. Thus it may be that the true answer to the question, " Why do survivals survive ? " is this : that they survive because they are the constantly renewed symptoms of that life of the folk which alone has the inherent power of sur- viving in the long rtm. Let me close with a quotation from a recent acute study of the psychology of our British working-class : " PFe," said the young university man . . ., "we look at things from the point of view of civilization, whereas they only look at them from the point of view of mankind." " Mankind remains," I answered, " but civihzations snuff out, mainly because they refuse to take sufficient count of mankind." ^ ' Seems So I, by Stephen Reynolds and Bob and Tom WooUey (1911), p. 124. 26 II WAR AND SAVAGERY ARGUMENT 7^0 war and savagery imply each other? Certainly not, ij savagery he understood, in the sense that applies to wild folk in general, whose common characteristic is simply that they live in close dependence on the physical environment. For there are among such wild folk two sharply contrasted types, the one mild and ^mwarlike, the other warlike and fierce. The former type is apt to be regarded as morally superior ; but such a view is unscientific. The mild savages stand lower in the evolutionary scale, being confined to protected regions where they become a prey to stagnation or sheer degeneration. Thus their virtues are but negative, being on a par with their passivity in the struggle for existence. On the other hand, the fighting tribes are found in the world's chief areas of characterization. In their case war acts as a civilizing agency, being the supreme cause of social discipline ; while with compactness of organiza- tion goes a sense of corporate loyalty. Ethically considered, however, the predatory life has its drawbacks, since it checks the development of the sympathetic side of the character. The savage brave is indeed not lacking in a certain chivalry : yet his undoubted manliness is purchased at the price of an in- sensibility to human suffering and to the claims of the weak. The problem of the civilized man is how to acquire such hardi- hood without such hardness. For it cannot be assumed that civilization stands no longer in need of the fighting type of man. A people occupying a delectable portion of the earth's surface 27 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE musi defend its borders or submit to be overwhelmed. Again, the art of war shows no signs of decay, hut has evolved with the general evolution of society. Lastly, there is no biological ground for supposing that the warlike strain in our breed is being gradually eliminated. Yet, though the animal and im- pulsive basis of human character tends to be constant, a system of moral education can do much to bring our warlike and peace- ful propensities into harmony. Savagery in the sense of bloodthirstiness and cruelty is the accident, not the essence, of the fighting quality proper to the dominant type of man. It is characteristic of the uncivilized man, because his social life is of the mobbish order, favouring a contagious violence of excite- ment such as causes him in war to " see red." But it is possible by means of education to supply the necessary controls, so that the warrior may be inspired by another kind of anger, one that is not explosive hut cool and judicial. The sentiment of righteous indignation is rooted in the love of humanity, being the trained capacity to react forcibly and repressively upon all unfair aggression and all gross violation of the rights of others. Nothing of the brute need attach to the mood, stern yet disci- plined, in which the best of civilized men may be expected to fight against injustice and oppression. A YEAR ago, when we were met together, as now, to take periodic stock of our work, all seemed to be very well with the Society and with the world at large ; the glass was steady and the sun shone ; and, as honest reapers and harvesters are wont to do, we celebrated our rites festively. This year we are in no mood for festivity, and hardly in a mood for any scientific occupation. Our thoughts are fixed upon the War. It would be empty to pretend to ourselves that we care about anything else. Science, 28 WAR AND SAVAGERY after all, is but a function of the Higher Life, and the Higher Life itself is in jeopardy. Hence I have not sought to avoid the subject of war, but rather propose to make it my chief theme to-night. On the other hand, it behoves us to remember that science aims at a rigid impartiality of view. It may not, indeed, be humanly possible to divest ourselves wholly of prejudice. But those who foregather in the name of science must, at least, try to see things as they truly are. Thus in the hour of greatest stress we may have recourse to science as to some anodyne, because it teaches us to face facts and keep a cool head. Moreover, it Ues beyond our province to discuss, at any rate in a direct way, the rights and wrongs of the present struggle in Europe. Our pecuUar concern is not with " civiUzation," as we optimistically call it, but with the opposite condition which for want of a better word goes by the name of " savagery." Now, as Sir Everard im Thurn points out in the Address which I had the pleasure of hearing him deliver a short while ago in Austraha,i it is unfortunate that there is no " term of less misleading suggestion " to provide a label for that form of human culture which in broad contrast to our own we class as rude or primitive. One is apt in speaking of " savagery " to allow the implica- tion of brutal ferocity to sUp in unchallenged. But such a piece of question-begging is utterly unfair. No wonder that, by way of counterblast, Professor von Luschan was moved to emit his famous paradox : " The only ' savages ' in Africa are certain white men ! " ^ 1 Sii- E. im Thurn, Presidential Address to Section H of Brit. Assoc, Sydney, 1914, i. * F. von Luschan in Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, ed. G. Spiller 22. 29 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE For, as we all know, " savage " is by etymology nothing other than " silvaggio," a " forester " or " wood- lander " resembUng those of whom Lucretius sang : — " silvestria membra Nuda dahant terrcs, nocturno tempore capti, Circum se foHis ac frondibus involventes." ^ Now such a label would not be inappropriate if it could be made to carry a purely economic, as distinguished from a moral, connotation. Economically regarded, the class of savage or wild folk includes all those who live in close dependence on the immediate physical environment. The savage is thus the veritable " child of nature," since his natural surroundings so largely make him what he is. This description does not merely apply to the most backward jungle tribes who, Hke Pliny's Artabatites, " wander and go up and downe in the forests like foure-footed sauvage beasts." ^ It is no less true of the member of a relatively advanced community, as, for example, the native of East Central Africa, of whom Drummond with a word-painter's Ucence writes : " One stick, pointed, makes him a spear ; two sticks rubbed together make him a fire ; fifty sticks together make him a home. The bark he peels from them makes his clothes ; the fruits which hang on them form his food." * If, then, we construe " forest " as equivalent to any kind of natural waste, whether it be tangled jungle or bare mountain-side, variegated park-land or monotonous desert, we may find in it a sufficiently accurate differentia of savagery as compared with civilization, when the two are con- sidered primarily as opposed conditions of the economic '^ Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, v. 969. * Pliny, Philemon Holland's Trans., London, 1635, VI. xxx. ' H. Drummond, Tropical Africa, 55. 30 WAR AND SAVAGERY order. As Buckle puts it not unfairly : " Looking at the history of the world as a whole, the tendency has been, in Europe to subordinate nature to man ; out of Europe to subordinate man to nature." ^ Can we, however, proceed to assume offliand that the conquest of nature involves the conquest of self ? It would certainly be unscientific to accept it as a dogma that moraUty is but a function of the economic hfe. Let us beware of a priori judgments coloured by the " historical materialism " of Marx and his school of thought. Only the study of the facts of human history can reveal how far material prosperity and righteous- ness go together ; and these facts do not on the face of them tell a plain tale. It was no less a historian than Gibbon who returned the dubious verdict : " Every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race." ^ Indeed, if we belong to the party of those who look with jaundiced eye on the flaunting triumphs of this age of machines — machines which at this present moment are proving their quality mainly as instruments of destruction — ^we may be too ready to yield to the converse fallacy, namely, that of identif5dng the morals of the primaeval forest with those of the Garden of Eden. For fallacy it surely is to overlook the fact that a great many savages are bloodthirsty and cruel, even if other savages be mild and innocuous in the extreme. The problem thereupon arises : Which of these two types, the bloodthirsty or the mild, is the higher and better, as judged from an ethical stand- 1 H. T. Buckle, History of Civilization in England (1857), ^38. " Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, xxxviii., ap. Sir E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture,'^ i. 35. 31 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE point ? When we turn aside from the burning questions of this distressful hour, and contemplate in a calm spirit, and as it were from a distance, the various dis- positions and fortunes of the wild folk of the earth, shall we award the palm of moral worth to the warlike or to the peaceful among them ? Or, if it turn out that there is something unsatisfactory in the actual moral state of each aUke, which of the two must be held to exhibit the greater promise of growth, the richer possibilities of ultimate moral expansion ? Does inno- cence prove the more blessed condition from first to last ? Or is the savagery that deservedly carries with it the suggestion of ruthlessness and ferocity more prolific notwithstanding of human good in the long run ? On the one hand, then, there is no difficulty in gather- ing together a cloud of witness on behalf of the claims of the mild type of savage. The Hottentots, for instance, were considered by Kolben to be " certainly the most friendly, the most liberal, and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth." ^ Of the Let-htas Colquhoun writes, " They have no laws or rulers, and the Karens say they do not require any, as the Let-htas never commit any evil among themselves or against any other people." ^ And so one traveller after another ascribes the character of " blameless Ethiopians " to this or that small and unwarlike group of wild folk.* We need not spend 1 p. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 334, ap. Sir J. Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Prehistoric Times, 342, who shares his admiration. " A. R. Colquhoun, Among the Shans, 234. ' See the multitude of examples collected by H. Spencer in Prin- ciples of Sociology, ii. Part 2, 234 ff. ; or consult the anonymous monograph, Der Volhergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen, Berlin, 1881, esp. 24, 46, and notes. 32 WAR AND SAVAGERY time over the enumeration of instances, when the testimony is so unanimous. It is plain that hidden away in the odd comers of the world are many little peoples, as innocent as they are insignificant, of whom one might say in the language of cold science very much what in the romantic pages of Sir John Mandeville is expressed thus : " and alle be it that thei ben not cristned, ne have no perfyt lawe, zit natheless of k5mdily lawe thei ben fuUe of aU Vertue, and thei eschewen alle Vices and alle MaUces and alle Synnes." ^ On the other hand, again, the predatory savages form a well-marked type ; and it is incontestable that, though Iroquois or Zulus, let us say, represent in some sense the very flower of the North American or African stocks, yet their cruelty and ruthlessness were on a level with their energy and courage. What need to labour the point ? Their record, written in blood, speaks for itself. Comparing, then, the mild savages with the fierce in respect of their position in the evolutionary scale, we are at once struck by the fact that, whereas the fierce peoples were estabhshed and, until the oncoming of the Whites, held their own, in the midst of some crowded field of competition, some capital " area of characterization," as de Quatrefages would term it, the mild peoples, on the contrary, are one and all the denizens of " protected " districts. The latter, in other words, pursue the simple life in tropical jungles, deserts, hill-country, islands, polar regions, and, gener- ally, in isolated and unattractive portions of the globe, where stagnation or positive degeneration must inevitably obtain in default of the bracing effects of the struggle for existence. It does not follow in the 1 Halliwell's edition, London, 1837, 291. 3 33 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE least, because a tribe has persisted through the ages, that it has Hkewise been growing and improving through the ages. There are many modes of survival, and not all are equally creditable. " Nam qucBcumque vides vesci vitalihus auris, Aut dolus aui virtus aut denique mobilitas est Ex ineunte aevo genus id tutata reservans." '■ Mobility, indeed, in the sense of the power of beating a wise retreat in time is largely responsible for the con- tinuance of the milder varieties of man. An element of sheer luck, too, may well enter in, more especially when survival depends on merely lying low. As the Preacher says, " I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skiU ; but time and chance happeneth to them all." ^ Nay, insignificance itself may confer a vital advantage. When adaptation takes the direction of greater simplicity of organization, as is seen, for example, in the typical parasite, we term the process one of degeneration. The simple reason is, however, that we who promulgate this judgment of value are ourselves committed to a policy of progress ; such progress being definable in technical language as an elaboration of society involving at once an ever fuller differentiation of the component units and an ever closer integration of the group as a whole.* Nevertheless, if we put aside questions of value, and look in a scientific spirit at the bare facts of life, we have to admit that fitness or ability to survive consists sometimes in a capacity to grovel ; though at other times, and doubtless more characteristically for 1 Lucretius, v. 857. * Ecclesiastes ix. 11. ' Cf. G. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, 241 34 WAR AND SAVAGERY the human race, it consists in a power of rising to the occasion. In the present case, however, we cannot ignore con- siderations of value, since the object of our discussion precisely is to weigh two t5rpes of savagery the one against the other. Our own moral point of view cannot be treated as irrelevant. On the contrary, we may be sure that if a European philosopher is led to contrast the morahty of a warrior of the Five Nations with that of a feeble Wood-Vedda to the advantage of the latter, it is because he seems to see his own peace-loving tendencies reflected in the lamb-Uke behaviour of that lowly Arcadian. But any analogy that may be per- ceived between the unraovdiity of some savage Arcady and the morahty of the Gospel is utterly superficial. Let us hsten rather to the honest " Naturahst on the Amazons," who, fond as he is of his Brazilian forest- folk, yet dispas^onately observes : " With so little mental activity, and with feeHngs and passions slow of excitement, the life of these people is naturally monotonous and dull, and their virtues are, properly speaking, only negative : but the picture of harmless, homely contentment they exhibit is very pleasing." ^ Mere innocence does not amount to positive merit as we judge it who are the inheritors and sustainers of a culture elaborated in the world's area of central struggle and most typical characterization. As well describe the negative freedom of a wild beast in terms of Shelley's Ode to Liberty as decorate the savage of the mild and furtive type with the inappropriate crown of a Christian saint. Let these poor by-products of human evolution continue to exist and vegetate by all means. Yet we must set a value on their survival, not for any purposes ^ H. W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amaions, ■i'j'j. 35 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE of moral edification, but simply for the purposes of an all-embracing science — as well as for pity's sake. Let us consider in turn the predatory savage. No doubt much has been urged, not unjustly, in his dis- paragement. But we must remember that the criticism comes from without, namely, from those to whom the fighting tribe necessarily displays its unamiable side. The European who approaches in the guise of a stranger, and mostly, let us add, in the guise of an armed stranger, is apt to meet with a rough reception at the hands of just that group of wild folk whose morale and military spirit are highest ; and in such a case uncharitable epithets are likely to be forthcoming by way of response. Cet animal est Ms michant — Quand on I'attaque, il se defend. A more impartial estimate of the morality of savages of the fierce type must needs make full allowance for the fact that, amongst themselves, they manifest much forbearance and goodwill. The worst charge that can be brought against them relates to what a German author calls the "dualism" of their ethics^ — in other words, their acquiescence in the two-edged doctrine which Sir Edward Tylor formulates thus : " Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." ^ Postponing for a moment the investigation of their limitations on the side of strict ethics, let us first pay heed to their achievements in the way of worldly success. It is a commonplace of anthropology that at a certain stage of evolution — ^the half-way stage, so to speak — war is a prime civiUzing agency ; in fact, that, as Bagehot puts it, " Civilization begins, because the ' M. Kulischer, Der Dualismus der Ethik bei den primitiven Volkem, in Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1885, vi. Sir E. B. Tylor, Contemporary Review, xxi. 718. 36 WAR AND SAVAGERY beginning of civilization is a military advantage." ^ The reason is not far to seek. " The compact tribes win," says Bagehot.^ Or, as Spencer more elaborately explains, " From the very beginning, the conquest of one people over another has been, in the main, the conquest of the social man over the anti-social man." ^ ..." Where there neither is, nor has been, any war, there is no government." * Strong government, says Sir Edward Tylor, speaking to the same effect, sets- up " the warrior-tyrant to do work too harsh and heavy for the feebler hands of the patriarch." ^ Nothing short, it would seem, of a mihtary despotism can infuse into a tribe that is just emerging from that precarious and ineffectual condition known as the state of nature a spirit of " intense legality," ® a stringent respect for the rights of others and notably for the rights of property ; apart from which chastened frame of mind it is im- possible to pass out of the savage tribe into the civilized nation. To sum up in Bagehot's words, "It is a rule of the first times that you can infer merit from conquest, and that progress is promoted by the competitive examination of constant war." ' Now some one may object that such an anthropo- logical justification of war, which is by this time a very old story, represents little more than an appKca- tion, crude, wholesale, and a -priori, of the Darwinian hypothesis to the facts of politics ; though, to be sure, such an objection is usually raised only when an extension of the argument to our own politics is thought to be implied. If, however, the generalization ' W. Bagehot, Physics and Politics, 52. ' Bagehot, op. cit., ib. ' H. Spencer, Social Statics, 455. * H. Spencer, Principles of Ethics, Pt. iv. 202. ■■ Sir E. B. Tylor, Contemporary Review, xxii. 69, ' Bagehot, op. cit., 64. ' Bagehot, op. cit., 82. 37 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE be taken as referring solely to savages of the predatory type, there is certainly no lack of empirical proofs whereby it might be confirmed. Since it is out of the question to survey the evidence here, let a single iUus- strative case be cited as being perhaps sufficiently crucial for our purpose. Mr M'Dougall, who enjoys the two- fold advantage of being a trained thinker and a first- hand observer of savage life, divides those tribes which in conjunction with Dr Charles Hose he studied in Borneo into three groups — peaceful coast-dwellers, ex- tremely warlike peoples dwelUng far up the rivers, and moderately bellicose folk who are situated half- way and fulfil the thankless function of a buffer. " It might be supposed," he writes, " that the peaceful coastwise people would be found to be superior in moral qualities to their more warlike neighbours ; but the contrary is the case. In almost all respects the ad- vantage lies with the warlike tribes. Their houses are better built, larger and cleaner ; their domestic morahty is superior ; they are physically stronger, are braver, and physically and mentally more active, and in general are more trustwori;hy. But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient, because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs, and their loyalty to their community, are much greater ; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him. And the moderately warlike tribes occupying the intermediate regions stand midway between them and the people of the coast as regards these moral qualities." ^ Now when an eminent psychologist speaks of moral qualities,, we may be sure that he has duly weighed his 1 W. M'Dougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, 289. 38 WAR AND SAVAGERY words ; even if it would appear that, according to Mr M'Dougall, to build a large house and keep it clean ranks among the cardinal virtues. We may take it from him, then, that the head-hunter of Borneo is essentially a gentleman in the making. We, at least, who are the lineal descendants of some of the most terrible fighting races that the world has ever known,^ cannot afford to harbour any other conclusion. Yet the head-hunting mood has its ethical draw- backs. So much will be admitted by most civilized persons. What, then, are these drawbacks ? We have already had occasion to note the so-caUed " duaUsm " of primitive morals. As Spencer phrases it, the " ethics of enmity " and the " ethics of amity " ^ must co-exist in the breast of the predatory savage as best they can. Now if the lion and the lamb are to flourish side by side, it is necessary to separate them by a wall of brass. Unfortunately^' or, rather, fortunately, the human soul is a " unity in difference," which as such cannot endure any absolute separation of its activi- ties by brazen barriers or otherwise. The sUghtest acquaintance with the psychology of the predatory savage will convince us that, in his case, the Hon tends to encroach on the lamb — with the usual result. To put the matter less picturesquely, the predatory life as pursued by the savage imposes a decided check on the development of his sympathies. All this has been so well explained by Bagehot that it will be enough here to repeat his main contention. " War," he says, speaking more particularly of primitive war as waged 1 W. M'Dougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, 290; cf. B. Kidd, Principles of Western Civilization, 156. ' H. Spencer, Principles of Ethics, i. 316. 39 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE at the " nation-making " stage of society, " both needs and generates certain virtues ; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of disci- pline . . ."1 " Humanity, charity, a nice sense of the rights of others, it certainly does not foster." ^ In short, the best that can be said for primitive war is that it provides the cure for that most deep-seated of savage failings, namely, the sleepy, hstless apathy to which the innocuous kind of wild man, the " blameless Ethiopian," is so notoriously addicted. For these negative and passive virtues, if such a name can be given to them at all, the predatory life substitutes certain positive and active virtues — ^the " manly " virtues, as even the civilized man is wont by perference to regard them. In a similar vein old Charlevoix writes of his American Indians : " Dans ce Pays tous les Hommes se croyent egalement Hommes, et dans I'Homme ce qu'ils estiment le plus, c'est I'Homme." * Now this manliness of the Indian carries with it a certain sense of chivalry. The savage is, as it is the British fashion to put it, a thorough " sportsman " in his way. Thus Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied relates how a war party of Cheyennes mounted on horseback fell in with some Mandans who happened to be on foot. At once the former dismount, in order that the chances of battle may be equal.* Nor was this an isolated act of knightly generosity, to judge from the following spirited account of a duel between a Cheyenne warrior and the Mandan Mah-to-toh-pa : ' Bagehot, op. cit., 74. " Bagehot, op. cit., 78. ' P. F. X. de Charlevoix, Histoin et Description Gin4rale de la Nouvelle France (1744), iii. 342. * Maximilian Prinz zu Wied-Neuwied, Travels in the Interior of North America, i. 153. 40 WAR AND SAVAGERY " The two full-plumed chiefs, at full speed, drove furiously upon each other, both firing their guns at the same moment. They passed each other a little distance, and then wheeled, when Mah-to-toh-pa drew off his powder-horn, and by holding it up showed his adversary that the bullet had shattered it to pieces and destroyed his ammunition. He then threw it from him, and his gun also, drew his bow from his quiver and an arrow, and his shield upon his left arm. The Shienne instantly did the same. His horn was thrown ofif, and his gun was thrown into the air, his shield was balanced on his arm, his bow drawn ; and quick as Ughtning they were both on the wing for a deadly combat." i And yet when the Indian brave has the fury of fighting upon him, he cannot be said to be altogether nice in his ways. Thus Prince Maximilian, who witnessed a battle royal between Blackfeet and Assiniboin, testifies with reference to the latter : " The enemy, with guns, arrows, spears, and knives, kiUed and wounded men, women, and children indiscrinain- ately, and scalped even the women." ^ Or, again, the Cheyenne fire-eater, for all his gallantry towards a foeman worthy of his steel, would display among his trophies a bagful of the right hands of infants gathered among his deadly enemies, the Shoshoni. Possibly he attributed some taUsmanic or "medicinal" potency to his prize ; but we shall hardly err in supposing that incontinent vainglory and an utter insensibihty to human suffering and to the claims of the weak were among the primary conditions of the horrid custom.^ 1 G. Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, i. 153. ' Prinz Maximilian, op. cit., 257. ' J. G. Bourke, The Medicine Men of the Apache, in Smithsonian Institution, Ann. Rep. Bur. Eihn., ix. 481 ff. 41 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE There is no need to enlarge on other manifestations of the ferocity of these savage Paladins, such as notably the torturing of their prisoners. And yet the evil passions provoked by war may be curiously specialized, the discharge of purely spiteful feeling being confined to certain traditional channels ; so that, for instance, that last indignity which can be offered to the weakness of woman, the outrage of rape, was utterly unknown amongst these warrior stocks.^ Take him all in all, however, the Indian brave affords a standing instance of a manly man and yet a man emotionally starved and arrested. No civilized person, who has tasted of the richer moral experience which ripens under conditions of enduring and widespread peace, would be willing to purchase military capacity at the price of becoming in heart and soul a typical Iroquois, or even, let us say, a typical Roman. Civilization must move, not backwards, but forwards. The problem of the modern world in respect to the development of character is, shortly, this : how to acquire hardihood without hardness. Now that wars may one day cease upon earth is a pious aspiration, to gainsay which may be churlish. It is, at any rate, certain that the science of man is not in a position to oppose a downright " No " to such a possibility. On the other hand, just because it seeks to envisage the entire evolutionary history of man, anthropology is chary of doctrines that are based whoUy or mainly on the study of recent phases of Western civilization — whether it be yesterday's phase of in- dustrialism or to-day's phase of militancy. Thus it is 1 Cf. Catlin, op. cit., ii. 240, or H. R. Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information respecting the Indian Tribes of the United States, iii. 188. 42 WAR AND SAVAGERY apt to engender in the minds of its votaries the im- pression that we are closer in type to our forefathers than we care to think ; and that racial evolution, hke geological change, is a process so majestically slow as to evade the direct notice of the passing generations. Moreover, his natural bias apart, the anthropologist can point to three considerations at least that would seem to justify a behef in the likelihood of a warUke future for man, the heir of the ages. The first of these considerations relates to the well- worn topic of the " wandering of peoples." The earth is occupied by man on a system of leasehold tenures. Whenever rents are revised, there is apt to be a flitting. If the racial gift of mobihty takes the form of a moving- off in response to another's moving-on, the devil rarely forgets to claim the hindmost as his due. The delectable portions of the globe's surface are not so many that one may inhabit any of them on sufferance. Adverse possession, as the jurists say, provides the only charter that the rest of the world respects. Such possession may be ripened by the prescription of a hundred or a thousand years of undisputed ownership ; but if once the ripeness turn to rottenness, if the watchman at the gate grow fat and sleepy, then the freebooters will flock together to their prey as surely as crows to a carcase. All this is written pltiin to read on every page of human history, perhaps even on the last. The next consideration touches the subject of war itself, regarded as a specialized pursuit or industry which has a history of its own. It is a time-honoured view, and doubtless one still current, that savagery is a helium omnium contra omnes ; that it forms the mili- taristic pole of the social universe, whereas civiUzation with its industrialism represents the opposite pole of 43 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE peace. Major Powell, one of the pioneers of American anthropology, has done his best to explode this popular fallacy. " Warfare," he contends, " has had its course of evolution, as have all other human activities. That human progress has been from mihtancy to in- dustrialism is an error so great that it must necessarily vitiate any system of sociology or theory of culture of which it forms a part." ..." The savage tribes of mankind carried on petty warfare with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows. But these wars interrupted their peaceful pursuits only at comparatively long intervals. The wars of barbaric tribes were on a larger scale and more destructive of life ; but there were no great wars until wealth was accumulated and men were organized into nations. The great wars began with civilization." ^ Savage war, after all, is, in some aspects at all events, a genial occupation ; it is perhaps comparable to pig-sticking as a sport. But civilized war resembles a pig-killing by machinery after the manner of Chicago ; it is a matter of sordid business without redeeming glamour of any kind. If the age of stone slew its thousands in a year, the age of steel slays its tens of thousands in a day. But an art does not usually become obsolete at the moment of its highest elaboration and efficiency. The third and last consideration has a psychological and even biological bearing. Why do such writers as Spencer and Bagehot, though fully recognizing the salutary part played by war in the making of civilized man, go on to assume that henceforth the struggle for * J. W. Powell, From Barbarism to Civilization, in American Anthro- pologist, i. 103 ; cf. what the same author says about the compara- tively peaceful life of the North American Infdians in pre-Columbian times, Smithsonian Institution, Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., vii. 39. 44 WAR AND SAVAGERY existence will be radically transformed ; since " in- dustrialism," or " the age of discussion," or what not, will somehow persuade the lion and the lamb to sit down together to a peaceful if ruinous game of beggar- my-neighbour ? The error — for it is an error of a fundamental kind in the eyes of the modern Darwinian — consists in thinking that, if one generation can gain a respite from war and develop peaceful habits, the next generation must tend to inherit by sheer force of biological descent a positive distaste for warlike avocations.! ^s if the whelps of the tamed fox would not run after chickens. Though one expel nature with a pitchfork in the parent's case, it reappears in the youngsters. Now the peoples of Western Europe " have been moulded by a prolonged and severe process of military selection." ^ There is war in the very blood of us ; and it would task the powers of all the professors of eugenics to eradicate the strain. The only hope for peace, therefore, would seem to be offered by a purely social method of self-improvement ; namely, by a system of moral education, renewed and reinforced from generation to generation, that should endeavour to harmonize our warlike and peaceful propensities — for, of coiurse, we have our fair share of both — ^by organizing the life of each and all on a rational instead of a merely animal and impulsive basis. What, then, would be the lesson laid down by a rational theory of peace and war ? At this point the argument passes beyond the frontiers of our special province. Such a problem belongs, not to anthropology, but to ethics ; seeing that it has regard, not to matter of fact, but to policy. Even so, however, though he cannot be judge, the anthropologist may aspire to serve 1 C/. M'Dougall, op. cit., 284. » Cf. M'Dougall, op. cit., 294. 45 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE amongst the expert witnesses.^ For example, he is bound to have paid special attention to the sort of savagery that is displayed by the ruder peoples during war. He might well be asked, therefore, by the judge of the high court of ethics whether in the long run such savagery appears to pay — whether he would recommend it to future ages as something that might in some fashion be rationalized, and so might be brought within the scope of some sound scheme of what we may call " civilized dominancy." Without venturing further afield, then, let us by way of conclusion shortly inquire how an anthropological witness would be likely to reply to this question. The judge, we may suppose, might think fit to inform the witness that the court was anxious to retain in use the old-fashioned " manly " virtues in so far as they did not unduly hamper the development of humani- tarian feeling ; and that, in particular, it desired to find a place among these for the virtue described by Bishop Butler under the name of " righteous indigna- tion," namely, the trained capacity to react forcibly and repressively upon all unfair aggression and all gross violation of the rights of others. Would the witness be kind enough to say whether those special characteristics of the manlier variety of wild folk which have given the word " savagery " its unfavourable sense, namely, their bloodthirstiness and indiscriminate cruelty, contain, or do not contain, the germ and promise of that stern yet disciplined mood in which the best of 1 Another expert witness would be the psychologist ; thus, for psychological expedients whereby the force of the pugnacious impulse may be turned to peaceful uses, see M'Dougall, op. cit., 293 ; or W. James, The Moral Equivalent of War, International Conciliation Pamphlets, No. 27 (reprinted in Memories and Studies as Paper XI. ; cf. Papers III. and XII. in the same volume). 46 WAR AND SAVAGERY civilized men may be expected to fight against injustice and oppression ? The answer of the anthropologist would, surely, be that the savagery of the primitive warrior is the accident, not the essence, of his fighting quaUty. His is a " hair- trigger organization " of soul, deficient in those controls which turn the passions into servants of the will.^ Consequently, he is apt to " see red," and play the mad dog, not because his purposes are thereby con- sciously advanced, but simply because, being con- stitutionally prone to hysteria, he readily gets beyond himself and relapses into the brute. For the rest, his social tradition, as must happen in any type of community that stifles individuality, is most binding just where it is most mobbish in its appeal, and by consecrating the extravagances of contagious excite- ment turns the soalp-hunter into a scalp-dancer, the raving butcher into a still more raving devotee. Contrariwise, it would seem that righteous indigna- tion involves the sort of anger which is not hot but cold. When controlled by the higher system re- presented by all the principles for which the word " righteousness " stands, the anger of the strong brain which sets the strong arm in motion is like " the still water that runneth deep." As Mr Shand demonstrates in a recent work, "It is neither excited, nor explosive, nor violent. It has lost the primitive character of the emotion ; and those bodily changes which physiologists attribute to it are hardly appreciable. If it has no longer the same strength in one sense, in another it has a greater. In immediate physical energy it is weaker ; in power of persistence immeasurably stronger. In place of thoughtless impulse, and crude, primitive 1 Cf. W. James, Principles of Psychology, ii. 538. 47 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE methods of offence, it has the thoughtfulness, self- control, and adaptability of the sentiment." ^ This developed sentiment, which offers so marked a contrast to that primitive violence of warlike feeling whereof acts of brutal savagery are the by-product, is an " anger organized in love " ^ ; namely, a righteous indignation, formidably cool and judicial, which is rooted in the love of freedom, of social and political justice, of the spiritual blessings of civiUzation, and finally, of mankind at large, not forgetting even the misguided enemy himself. ' A. F. Shand, The Foundations of Character, 246, • Shand, op. cit., 245. 48 Ill PRIMITIVE VALUES ARGUMENT 'PiOES the natural, in the sense of the primitive, man value power simply as a means of self-aggrandizement and the exploitation of his fellows ? This is a question of historical fact, and history cannot of itself determine values, since these are ultimately affirmations of the will. Ethics, however, may appeal to history to show whether a given doctrine is actually conformable with practice or not ; and thus a historical justi- fication is sought for the ethics of the militant state when it is asserted that charity and loving-kindness are denaturalized values. This statement implies that the unsophisticated kind of man on whom the struggle for existence presses most hardly ~'^:,has no such tender feelings, hut is swayed wholly- by a lust for -do mination . Is it, then, true that people of lowly culture are in general prone to hate rather than to love ? Is a hard life bound to produce a hard man ? Though a strain of hard- ness, a certain fighting quality, is an ingredient in all true manliness, it can he shown that there is likewise a gentle element in the natural man which stands to the hard element in a normal relation of superiority. A test case is the develop- ment of the will for power among the simpler peoples. The direction of primitive aspiration is typically revealed by words of the type of mana. Such a word stands, not for material power simply, but for a spiritual power on which material prosperity attends as a result. Mana implies tabu. Spiritual power is not to be attained without self -discipline. Again, 4 49 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE mana comes as a boon, and as such must be received and used in a spirit of due humility. It is a will to be strong in spite of, rather than for the sake of, the animal passions. A possible misuse of mana is recognized by the savage, and he who works black magic must die the death. In short, that higher plane of experience for which mana stands is one in which spiritual enlargement is appreciated for its own sake. The primitive will for power is primarily a will for confidence and peace of mind. For the rest, the savage is, of course, no saint, and is subject to ebullitions of the blood-lust. But it is truer to say that such ferocity is a by-product of his nature than that the gentler virtues are a by-product. Further, seeing that the emotional characteristics of mankind as a whole are extremely stable, we may speak in a psychological sense of the ever- lasting values ; regarding them as summed up in the ideal of a power to rule which has self, not other men, for its object. From first to last the kingdom of man is within. I WONDER if Sir James Frazer can furnish us with an example of a primitive king who, when the proper time had come for him to die for the good of his people, found himself unexpectedly reprieved and bidden to reign for a fresh term. Something of the sort has happened in the present case. The cere- monial slajing of the President is an annual, or at most biennial, custom which this Society for its own good must duly perform in normal times. But the times are not normal. Hence it has been ordained that the outworn vessel in which the mana of the Society is stored should continue to fulfil its functions as best it may — fit symbol, I suppose, of a diminished, though, let us hope, merely suspended, vitality on the part of that science which the Society exists to further. As 50 PRIMITIVE VALUES for personal inclination or disinclination to remain in of&ce, I ought perhaps to say nothing about it, since such a consideration is, strictly, not in point at all. A vessel as such has no feelings. Thus the primitive king was expected to keep his private sentiments to himself. Neither need he take up his duties with a nolo episcopari on his Ups, nor need he lay them down with a volo immolari. Nevertheless, despite the lack of anthropo- logical precedent, let me thank you heartily for the great honour you have done me in thus affixing a fresh clasp to my presidential medal. Your kindness might well induce me to give way to spiritual pride ; but I try to keep myself humble by reflecting that the proverb about not swapping horses when in the middle of the stream might be applied with almost equal force to a humbler beast of burden. As for what I have to say to-night, I must apologize for once more introducing the well-worn topic of the war. The fact is that I cannot get my thoughts away from the subject, much as I could wish to do so. Even, then, at the risk of repeating myself, I must out with that which I find it in my heart to say ; and, for your part, you must bear with me if I am more than usually tedious. After aU, man is on his trial to-day ; and we, as students of man, cannot remain indifferent to the great moral issue that is at stake, namely, whether man is at heart a brute or not. Before embarking on my theme, however, let me refer very briefly and inadequately to the great loss that has befallen this Society in the death of Sir John Rhp'S, for many years our Vice-President. He was a personal friend of mine. Indeed, our respective colleges face each other across a narrow street ; and he was always ready to let me drop in upon him for a chat. 51 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE I used to regard him not merely as a mine of information concerning the manifold questions with which our science deals — though of course he was that — but rather as an incarnation of the very spirit of folk-lore. He himself came of the folk, having been born and bred in a countryside that almost literally bordered on fairy- land. Moreover, a thorough knowledge of his native idiom gave him a sure clue to the psychology of his own people, so that even the twihght depths of the racial consciousness were revealed to him. Thus, as a man of science, he could work from the heart of his subject outwards. The soul of the matter could not escape him, or he would have had to escape from his own soul. About details, however, he might change his mind constantly, and, in fact, did so ; for his sense of pro- portion, being determined by an abiding intuition of the Celtic mentality in its wholeness, could afford to rate triviahties, whether of archaeology or of scholar- ship, at their real worth. Some of his critics might complain that he was erratic in his opinions. Those who knew him intimately, however, would say rather that, in all its flights, his mind remained true to an unfailing sense of direction ; such a faculty having been implanted in him by heredity, nurtured by an early training amid homely surroundings, and brought to full development by years of patient and intelligent study. Wales never bore a son who loved her more or understood her better. The moral problem that confronts Europe to-day is : What sort of righteousness are we, individually and collectively, to pursue ? Is the new righteousness to be realized in a return to the old brutality ? Shall the last values be as the first ? Must ethical process con- 52 PRIMITIVE VALUES form to natural process as exemplified by the life of any animal that secures dominancy at the expense of the weaker members of its kind ? Now this is not a question to which we as anthro- pologists can give a final answer. In such a capacity we are merely concerned with the history of man. But, though human values have a history, they are not fully explained and justified by their history. Ulti- mately, values are constituted by the wiU. A man's free choice determines that one course of action shall rank as better than another. At most, history can try to show that, on the average and in the long run, a certain type of conduct as compared with some alterna- tive tjrpe leads to extinction on the part of those who choose to put it into practice. But if the free agent, thus threatened with extinction, boldly replies, "For the sake of what I hold to be right and just, I am ready to persevere even unto the death," there is an end to the argument. History has nothing more to say, unless possibly it be by way of an epitaph. Can ethics, then, in virtue of this indisputable claim to pronounce the last word about right and wrong, really afford to dictate to the human will regardless of the warn- ings uttered by history. Is an ethical principle primarily something to die for rather than something to live by ? Can the will of man authorize a pohcy of suicide without abdicating its right to a genuine freedom ? If we were, indeed, to pay exclusive attention ta certain phases of the history of human morals, it might seem that, in the view of the purest ethical thought, the price of spirituahty was the renunciation of the world. Such a doctrine has comm'anded a large measure of respect in the more advanced religions both of East and West. Philosophers, too, have upheld the same 53 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE idea, whether it be Plato passionately proclaiming the euthanasia of Socrates, or Kant scholastically vindicat- ing the rigour of the moral law. So there might seem to be nothing in common between the voice of conscience, preaching the absolute supremacy of duty, and the voice of history, prating of consequences and conditions. It needs, however, but a modest gift of psychological insight to rid us of the paradox that moral goodness is neither of, nor for, this world of living and striving humanity. Up to a point the psychology of devotion and of obsession is the same. A certain contraction of the field of mental illumination accompanies a heightened focus of attention. It is characteristic of the mood of action no less than of the mood of detached contempla- tion that the consciousness concentrates on a single object. The man who is strung up to the pitch of martyrdom, be it for a good cause or for a bad, has lost the sense of his surroundings. Cost what it may, he will see this thing through. Nevertheless, it is essential that the will, thus braced and mobiUzed, shall con- centrate on the object immediately presented. As the martyr does not look back, so neither does he look forward. He must establish his everlasting kingdom here and now. He does not sacrifice to that hollow kind of eternity which excludes the present. Thus, though the man of principle, intensely set on the object before him, cannot spare a glance over his shoulder to see if and how he is being followed, we need not think of him as one who leaves the world of men to take care of itself. The " noble army of mart37rs " is a many in one, and the member of such an army a one in many, inasmuch as a universal rule is individually obeyed for the common good, by each putting it into action for himself without waiting upon the rest. And 54 PRIMITIVE VALUES this army is no exclusive corps, but by the terms of its service embraces all mankind. If there were a general desire on the part of suffering humanity to emigrate from this poor planet, the matter could doubtless be arranged ; but, even so, nothing would be gained from the standpoint of ethics, unless sin should somehow be excluded from the baggage. Let us, then, make aU due allowance for the psycho- logical need of attending to the moral intuition regard- less of consequences, while notwithstanding we insist that this woild of men as a whole is the true sphere of moral endeavour. Thus history, nay, even that humble department of history known as anthropology, may legitimately aspire to shape and guide the thought of the morahst overtaken " in a cool hour." The initiative lies with him. History with anthropology merely constitutes an advisory board without power to act. Ethics lays down a policy. History, if it deem such a policy disastrous in the light of past events, can at most seek to dissuade. Ethics does not require to prove its case so long as intuition points the direction clearly. History, on the other hand, must shoulder the burden of disproof, and can hope to affect the ethical judgment only if it can make it highly probable that the proposed course of action is incompatible with the present and future welfare of the human race. Having thus defined the extent to which we as anthro- pologists may undertake to throw light on a problem of practical morals, let us proceed to examine that strife of principles which is now agitating Europe, from our own strictly hmited point of view. That a strife of principles of some sort is involved in the present war between the European Powers will, I suppose, hardly be denied. Moreover, if anyone were 55 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE to contend that the principles thus brought into violent conflict were of the purely political order, and did not implicate certain moral and spiritual issues, he might surely be set aside as a superficial observer. The pohtical aspect of the struggle is, doubtless, of no little importance. Democracy is at death-grips with the miUtant state. But more is at stake than this or that type of social organization. Is it to be a reign of freedom or a reign of force ? The moral ideas behind the rival organizations are themselves at war. The more vital question for us, then, is whether anthropology can show which moral idea is likely to defeat the other, whether in the near future or at any rate in the end. Some philosophers, indeed, would be loth to admit that a war between moral principles is conceivable at all. I am not referring to those thinkers who would simply declare that whatever conflicted with their own moral principles is neither moral nor a principle at all. I am speaking, not of the jingoes of the speculative world, but rather of the pacificists, who would reconcile all contradictions in some higher, if vaguer, unity. It is easy to parody this notion of a formal all-inclusive- ness. Thus, once it is assumed that the perfect animal must be omnivorous in the sense of eating nothing in particular, there can be no difficulty in showing how the carnivorous lion and the herbivorous lamb, when fully evolved, may lie down and be happy together. But it is better to allow that, discreetly used, such a philosophic method can do much to promote the harmony of the world, by showing half-truths to be complementary to each other. If, for instance, the democratic inter- pretation of the principle of freedom were to ignore the need both of self-discipUne and of that external 56 PRIMITIVE VALUES system of sanctions which is the school of such self- disciphne, then it would be profitable to reahze that something may be learnt from the militant state with its uncompromising ideal of a social drill. But it is scarcely in point here to discuss the philosophy of Hegel, more especially seeing that it no longer reflects the spirit of the country where it arose. In its stead there reigns in the country in question the philosophy of Nietzsche. The world is for the superman. Dominancy within the human kind must be secured at all costs. As for the old values, they are all wrong. Christian humility is a slavish virtue ; so is Christian charity. Such values have become "de- naturaUzed." They are the by-product of certain primitive activities, which were intended by nature to subserve strictly biological ends, but have somehow escaped from nature's control and run riot on their own account.^ Hence man, in order to realize his true and natural self, must revert to the primitive. He must put off the new man, and put on the old. Or, if he cannot be archaic in his moral style, at least he can try to be archaistic. Now, dialectically speaking, it clears the air when one party to a controversy is prepared to define his position in set terms. Often it is only by this means that the other party becomes fully conscious of the purport of his opposition. He who is not with Nietzsche is against him. The adversaries of the nation which appears to find spiritual comfort in a hymn of hate might hesitate to claim a monopoly of the Christian virtues, were it not actually thrust upon them. As 1 See my essay on " Origin and Validity in Ethics " in Personal Idealism (1902), p. 262 ; cf. A. J. Balfour, Theism and Humanism (1915), p. 118. 57 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE between the warring peoples, the religion of love, the philosophy of the brotherhood of mankind, find their friends on our side, or nowhere ; for the other side will have none of them. That democracy implies a doctrine of love cannot be demonstrated by any formal process of logic. De- mocracy is not a system but a ferment. The militant state, on the contrary, is a system, and herein lies both its weakness and its strength. It appeals to the head, but it leaves the heart cold. It embodies law ; but it fails alike to embrace morality and to enshrine rehgion. The militant state is static, democracy is djmamic. The one stands until it breaks, the other is a growing thing which suffers death only to Uve again more abun- dantly. And the seed of democracy is social sympathy. Viewed externally, the democratic spirit might seem to be but a spirit of revolt. Viewed from within, it is perceived to be a spirit of toleration such as enables outworn conventions to be constantly renewed without rupture of the social tie. Hence democracy is hateful to a certain type of philosopher. It smacks of the infinite, that bugbear of the tidy-minded. It cannot be reduced to an idea ; its content is a discontent, which is divine only for those who seek God in the indefinable. This school of thought, indeed, would likewise regard a philosophy of love as something of a misnomer. Love implies hope, which is the despair of knowledge ; it impUes faith, which is heresy for the dogmatic. Then let us say, in deference to the prejudices of those who view the world through the spectacles of formal logic, that the humanism with which the cause of democracy is bound up is not so much a philosophy as a rehgion. It involves a more spiritual interpretation of the destiny of man than does the complacent conceptuaUsm of the 58 PRIMITIVE VALUES militant state, which is through and through mechanical in its determination of human functions. And yet it is the upholders of the militant state who appeal to nature and the primitive — as if the voice of nature and the wild bore unmistakable witness to the truth of mechanism, of a cosmic arrangement of brute matter organized from without .^ It is with this aspect of the question that we are especially concerned here. Anthropology is science only in the sense that history is science. It can and it must keep itself free from the philosophy of naturaUsm, with its cardinal principle of mechanism, determinism, materialism, or whatever its adherents choose to call their creed. Anthropology, then, as being primarily concerned with human nature in its more primitive forms, has simply to report on what it finds, leaving it to philosophy and religion to discuss its findings and draw their own conclusions in their own way. All that anthropology seeks to do as science is to be fair to the facts. Even if they seem to lead up to contradictory conclusions of a philosophical or practical kind, we anthropologists must frame our descriptions, whether particular or general, so as to do equal justice to every phase of the life-history of man. Now I am not sure if all my anthropological brethren will be content to acquiesce in such a hmitation of outlook. Historically, some of them may say, an- thropology is the child of the natural sciences ; a naturalistic philosophy is the mother's milk whence it first drew sustenance. Well, even if that were so, it does not foUow that the same diet must suit it in its riper years. Besides, if it come to that, it might be 1 See below, p. 70, where I have tried to show, in regard to savages, that " their view of the universe regularly puts the moral aspect above the mechanical." 59 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE argued that all history is afflicted with a certain bias towards determinism. After all, it embodies what must be partly and may be wholly an external view of human life. Thus the soulless sort of historian tends to envisage his world of men simply as a puppet-show. But the historian with a soul projects it into his subject, and forthwith his stage is thronged with living actors. So too, then, we need an anthropology with a soul. An exterior account of man is bound to be false, because it leaves man out — leaves him out, that is, as he exists in all the " warmth and intimacy " of his conscious self- existence. Hence, if we are to treat of primitive values, it must be by means of a trans-personal appreciation of those values. We must somehow join souls with the so-called child of nature, in order to discover whether the sophisticated ethics of the militant state are really germane to the wild heart of him, whether the inner spring of his psychology is a lust of domination. How are we to join souls with the savage ? In a former address to this Society, I tried to show, in a quite general and untechnical fashion, how this might be done.^ I then uttered the paradox — at least, it might have seemed a paradox to any other Society but this — ^that the student of folk-lore, of all the an- thropological band, has the best chance of understanding uncultivated humanity with an insight worthy of a true science of man. If he be a bit of a savage himself — as I hope that more than one of us here present may be — he can make friends with the savage at his door. The cottage stands half-way between the city and the cave. Inveterate, yet ever young, the peasant cherishes most the things in our life that change least. Does the peasant form the backbone of the militant state ? * See p. 19. 60 PRIMITIVE VALUES On a hasty view of the matter, he may seem to do so. No man can fight more sturdily than he to defend hearth and home. But does he love war or dominancy for its own sake ? I leave the question to be answered by those who know him best. Here at any rate we have ready to hand a touchstone to be apphed to this great controversy about the bent of the natural man. Specu- lation concerning cave-men " that tare each other in their sUme " is infinitely less profitable in comparison. If, how, and why the cave-men fought, we cannot tell for sure ; though perhaps we can answer for the slime. My own theory about the peasant, as I know him, and about people of lowly culture in general so far as I have learnt to know about them, is that the ethics of amity belong to their natural and normal mood, whereas the ethics of enmity, being but as " the shadow of a passing fear," are relatively accidental. Thus to the thesis that human charity is a by-product, I retort squarely with the counter-thesis that human hatred is a by-product. The brute that lurks in our common human nature wiU break bounds sometimes ; but I believe that whenever man, be he savage or civilized, is at home to himself, his pleasure and pride is to play the good neighbour. It may be urged by way of objection that I over- estimate the amenities, whether economic or ethical, of the primitive state ; that a hard life is bound to produce a hard man. I am afraid that the psycho- logical necessity of the alleged correlation is by no means evident to me. Surely the hard-working individual can find plenty of scope for his energies without needing, let us say, to beat his wife. Nor are the hard-working peoples of the earth especially notorious for their in- humanity. Thus the Eskimo, whose Ufe is one long 6i PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE fight against the cold, has the warmest of hearts. Mr Stef dnsson says of his newly discovered " Blonde Eskimo," a people still Uving in the stone-age : " they are the equals of the best of our own race in good breeding, kindness, and the substantial virtues." ^ Or, again, heat instead of cold may drive man to the utmost limit of his endurance. Yet the inevitable consequence is not a drying-up of his natural affections. In the deserts of Central AustraUa, where the native is ever threatened by a scarcity of food, his constant preoccupation is not how to prey on his companions. Rather he -unites with them in guilds and brotherhoods, so that they ma.y feast together in the spirit, sustaining themselves with the common hope and mutual suggestion of better luck to come. But there is no need to go so far afield for one's proofs. I appeal to those who have made it their business to be intimate with the folk of our own countryside. Is it not the fact that unselfishness in regard to the sharing of the necessaries of life is char- acteristic of those who find them most difficult to come by ? The poor are by no means the least " rich towards God." At any rate, if poverty sometimes hardens, wealth, especially sudden wealth, can harden too, causing arrogance, boastfulness, and the bullying temper. " A proud look, a lying tongue, and the shedding of innocent blood " — ^these go together. I am far from suggesting, however, that human nature can afford to dispense with a strain of hardness altogether. The individual needs grit ; society needs the legal fibre. This is the point that I was trying to make in my last address to this Society : namely, that a certain fighting quality forms an essential ingredient in all true manliness; though it is only by an aberration and I V. Stefansson, My Life with the Eskimo {1913), 188. 62 PRIMITIVE VALUES perversion of the genuine impulse that it gives rise to savagery in the damnatory sense of the word. But to-night I am seeking rather to maintain the converse proposition, that there is Ukewise a gentle element in the natural man which stands to the hard element in a normal relation of superiority. Let me take as a test case the development of the " will for power " among the simpler peoples. If it appear that it is on the whole a wiU to exert power over other men, whereby they may become the slaves of the superman, who in this domination and exploita- tion of the rest tastes the highest value that Hfe affords, then it would seem that the hard element in human nature is the master-principle. But if it turn out, on the contrary, that it is mainly a will to exert power over self, whereby a spiritual experience, indirectly involving a disposition towards a Ufe of social service, may be attained for its own sake, then, so far as a merely anthropological proof can take us, the presumption is that the gentle element has the better natural right to rule. Now it cannot be denied that the savage is at one with his civilized brother in wishing to enjoy material blessings of all sorts. His appetites are hearty. But he can at least claim this merit, that he has not based a philosophy on the desire to wax fat. On the other hand, notions of the type of mana or orenda, which are of a nascently philosophic order, testify to the pre- dominance in the minds of those who use such ex- pressions of another, and, we may fairly say, a higher form of desire. To have mana is incidentally, no doubt, to be able to procure pigs or yams to a more than ordinary extent. It makes a man master of his material en- vironment according to the degree in which the mys- 63 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE terious power is present. But primarily mana is sought for its own sake, not merely for what it brings. The felt need is for something indweUing, something per- taining to the inner man. Thus we know how the word mana and its derivatives have given birth in the Polynesian dialects to a multitude of phrases ex- pressive of the various activities and states of the soul. "Feeling," "desire," "affection," "love," "behef," " memory," " thought," " the interior of a person," " con- science," " soul " — all these are attempts on the part of Tregear to translate the native terms into the language of civiHzation.i And the same thought can be shown to be there among still humbler folk whose vocabulary is of even more restricted range. Among the Kabi tribe of Queensland the professional healer is said to be manngur — full of vitahty. He cures his patient by means of certain sacred stones whereby the vital force is transmitted from his own body to that of the sufferer ; and we have it on the strength of a native account that there are always such stones in the doctor's inside, his hand, bones, calves, head and nails alike being full of them.2 So too, among the Kaitish of Central Australia, when the headman of the grass-seed totem, in the course of making intichiuma, has been visiting the store-house where the churinga or sacred stones are kept, and per- haps has carried one of these about with him for days while he " sings " the grass-seed to make it grow, he be- comes " full of churinga " ; a consequence of this inward condition being that he must observe strict chastity, since to act otherwise would be iturka — deadly sin.* ^ E. Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (1891), s.v. mana. Cf. what I say in The Threshold of Religion', 118. " J. Mathew, Eaglehawk and Crow (1899), 191-2. ' B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), 293. 64 PRIMITIVE VALUES These instances will suiiice to show — what is indeed by this time of day almost a commonplace of anthro- pology — ^that the savage superman is reckoned to be such in virtue of a certain spiritual endowment. This state of the inner man is the means whereby his practical triumphs are effected, but has value on its own account, if only because it is the end to which his striving is proximately directed. The last example, moreover, calls attention to an aspect of the primitive notion of supernormal power which is a characteristic and even universal feature. Mana implies tabu. The sense of spiritual invigoration is acquired at the cost of withdrawal into self and away from the world. We need not be offended by the vagaries of tabu as practised, say, by the medicine- man or the divine king. If we are astounded that the savage is so freakishly shy, let us at least take note of the fact that he has made a virtue of his shyness, that upon the fabric of his very fears he has founded a strong- hold in which the character may develop. It is the sensitive soul, not the caUous, that can thus reach high tension by submitting to insulation. Life can afford to undergo simplification only when the object is to bring out an intrinsic richness of tone. This power, then, which comes through self-discipline and self- control, is utterly different in kind from the power which discharges itself in wanton riot and the breaking of bounds. The savage in his groping way is trying to be a law unto himself, and instinctively avoids the blasphemy of setting up an ideal of lawlessness among the eternal values. In the next place, we note that the primitive theory of supernormal power tends to represent it as a gift, or, one might almost say, as a loan on terms. There is 5 65 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE great confusion of thought, to be sure, when it is sought to determine the precise source of the benefit received. It may be, as Codrington declares, that, according to the Melanesian belief, it exclusively belongs to personal beings of a supernatural kind to originate mana.'^ If so, this is a far more definite piece of constructive theology than is usually to be extracted from our an- thropological records. The state of mind of the typical savage would seem to be too undifferentiated, too blurred, to allow him to distinguish clearly between the value that he prizes and the agency whereby the realization of that value is accompUshed.^ To speak broadly, the agency to which he trusts is a system of rites. A multitude of ceremonial acts and abstinences is the outward vehicle whereby the inward reinforce- ment is conveyed. That the ritual is a mere medium of communication, that it constitutes a sort of visual language whereby spirit speaks to spirit — such an idea is not likely to take definite shape in his nebulous consciousness. Yet there are hints, even in the most naive of primitive theologies, of an awareness that by means of the ex- ternals of religion a participation of the human in the divine is brought about. Thus the crystals and other properties whereby the Kabi healer works his cures come from Dhakkan, the Rainbow ; and, whereas these cause the doctor to be manngur, " full of vitaUty," Dhakkan himself is manngurngur, vital and vitaUzing in a superlative degree.^ Even if we grant, however, that, on the whole, ritual is the savage substitute for God, we must go on to admit that a certain strictness 1 Codrington, op. cit., 119 n. 2 Cf. W. K. Wright, Philosophical Revieiv, xxv. (1916), 38. 3 Matthew, op. cit., 192. 66 PRIMITIVE VALUES of life is thus made the condition of spiritual increase. Not that the power can be claimed by right of desert. If it come, it comes as a boon, as something bestowed by act of grace, something received humbly with fear and wonder. This is made plain by the evidence re- lating to the making of the medicine-man in Australia. The man who finds in himself a special capacity for ecstatic experience proceeds of his own initiative to develop it by means of a long and painful initiation. ^ In a word, he has a " call " and obeys it. But, if desert cannot command the gift, want of desert can at any time cause it to depart. We remember the Kurnai doctor who confessed to Howitt that he had taken to drinking and then lost all his power. ^ Once again, by a slightly different train of thought, we are brought to see that the savage will for power is, at its most conscious, a will to be strong in spite of, rather than for the sake of, the animal nature. Such a will is fitly associated with a spirit of humility, because the man in us is ever afraid of the brute. Hence, if the monster leave him in freedom even for a brief space, he is ready to offer thanks to some divine Helper. Lastly, the power thus wiUed and sought involves a capacity for social service, though as it were indirectly and by way of implication. At first sight the savage conception of supernatural power may seem to be quite unmoral. The wonder-working healer and the baneful sorcerer, the good spirit and the bad, are alike powerful in a transcendent way. That there should be some ambiguity in the notion is inevitable. A 1 C/. H. Hubert et M. Mauss, Milanges d'Histoire des Religions (1909), 171. 2 A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), 409. 67 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE judgment from heaven is easily mistaken for a plague from hell. Or, again, magic and religion are wont to borrow weapons from each other's armouries, the black mass parodying the sacred rites of the Church, while the exorcist defeats the wizard simply by reversing the machinery. Nevertheless, at the most primitive levels of thought, as the facts of language prove, there is a clear distinction drawn between powers of light and powers of darkness. ^ Conformably with such a duahstic terminology, a use and a misuse of super- normal power are recognized as polar opposites. In practice, indeed, this antithesis is not hkely to be applied consistently, more especially when the reference is not to men, but to remoter beings such as spirits or gods.'^ Savages sometimes descend to a veritable devil- worship, placating the evil demon with a fawning submission, and incidentally flattering the devilish element in themselves. On the whole, however, they know the bad kind of superman from the good. Thus one who has the evil eye is always abominable. Primi- tive philosophy is hardly capable of the paradox of admiring a good hater. If a man work black magic, let him die the death — so runs the universal code. On the other hand, to exert supernormal power, in- dividually or collectively, in connexion with an initia- tion ceremony or a fertility rite, is the mark of a leader and friend of the community. The good kind of super- normal power is known by its fruits. Nevertheless, it would be a shallow psychology that detected in the will for such power nothing but the mechanical response to a social stimulus and sanction. Rather the social situation which calls the power into play is the passive condition, the mere occasion, of the spiritual process 1 Cf . The Threshold of Religion^, 85. 68 PRIMITIVE VALUES whereby the higher plane of experience is reached. The superman is in some sense supersocial. Even when he is in the midst of the congregation he may feel that he walks alone with God. This truth, we may suspect, is apprehended by the savage in his own way. At any rate, he would seem to value mana, fruitful as he knows it to be, not merely for the good works it enables him to perform, but also, and even chiefly, for what it is in itself, namely, a quickening and enlargement of the spirit. His will for power, in the form which has alone found clear expression in his philosophy, is a will for confidence and peace of mind. So much, then, by way of a summary account of what seems to me to be the most explicitly conceived of primitive values. If we apply to the known facts about the peoples of the lowUest culture the method which has the right to say the last word in anthro- pology — I mean, a psychological method, a method of critical introj action — ^we seem to reach conclusions that are diametrically opposed to the contention of Nietzsche ; who suggests that the natural man values power simply as a means of self-aggrandizement and the exploitation of his fellows. Nietzsche is welcome to his own opinion as to what should be the final rendering of the idea of virtue. That is a matter of choice ; and, being so, it is apt to become an affair of battle-ships and armies. But when Nietzsche implies that it is likewise the original rendering of the idea of virtue, he can be proved by the verdict of anthro- pology to be wrong ; unless, indeed, he claim that the modem savage as compared with his prehistoric ancestor is as '' denaturalized " as the Christian, or perhaps even more '' denaturahzed " than some people who call themselves Christians. 69 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Now it would be ridiculous if one sought to represent the man living in a state of nature — if by " nature " we mean primitive culture — as a sort of " plaster saint." The burden of my last address to this Society was that savagery in the sense of ferocity and cruelty is indeed incidental to such a lowly state of society ; at any rate so far as concerns the inhabitants df^the world's chief areas of characterization, where the struggle for existence is most severe. But I tried to show that the fighting quality of these tougher stocks involved brutahty by way of accident rather than of essence.^ At any rate the savage cannot be charged with claiming for sundry hysterical ebullitions of the blood-lust that these are the only principles having supreme value. Just as there are all sorts of men, so there are aU sorts of moods to be reckoned with at every stage of human evolution, and it cannot be contended that the savage, with his' relatively undeveloped intelligence, has as good a chance as we have of discriminating accurately and soundly between his better and his worse impulses. But, as we have just seen, he is at least capable of giving to the cult of power for power's sake an en- nobhng interpretation. For he recognizes a spiritual kind of power, whereby we may become masters of that inner world which is the true kingdom of man. Indeed, I believe, with my friend Mr M'Dougall, that the emotional nature of man is on the whole so stable as to vary little in its most characteristic manifestations from age to age and from race to race. Thus, even in a psychological sense, we are justified in speaking of the everlasting values. At heart a man, be he civiUzed or savage, knows whether he is worthy or unworthy of his own self-respect, whether he has ' Cf. p. 47- 70 or has not a right to rejoice in the plenitude and strength of his inward being. He may rank as a great lord, yet know himself a lackey ; may see the buffoon's face in the glass while he paints it up for the part of stage-hero. When a king was raised to the throne in Madagascar, he must cry aloud three times : " Have I the power ? " Whereupon the assembled people cried back : " The power is thine." And the word they used, hasina, means " spiritual power." ^ Suppose a man to be crowned emperor of aU the world ; and suppose aU his dutiful subjects, the professors of ethics with the rest, to shout, " Thou art the most powerful and there- fore the best of men." Would he be satisfied, if his heart told him it was a he ? He might believe that his temporal power made him the best of men, if his heart had gone rotten, if he had contracted the lie in the soul. But not otherwise — to judge at least by what anthropology has to teach concerning the healthy instincts of the natural man. 1 A. van Genuep, Tahou et ToUmisme cl Madagascar (1904), 82. 71 IV THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT ARGUMENT /jRE the methods severally pursued by Tylor in anthropology and by Gomme in folk-lore antagonistic or complementary ? The one is psychological in its leading aspect, the other socio- logical and ethnological ; while both are equally evolutionary and historical in the broad sense that they relate to the develop- ment of culture as revealed by historical research. Sometimes, however, they are contrasted as evolutionary and historical in a narrower sense, and one that is apt to be misleading ; the meaning in this case being that Tylor relies on the principle of parallel 'and independent growth, Gomme on that of mutual influence by culture-contact. Now it can be proved from their writings that each of them fully recognizes the need of a joint use of the principles in question. Meanwhile, Tylor\e chief interest lies in showing certain pervasive elements of culture, which he selects for comparative treatment on a world-wide plan, to be due to the uniform workings of the human mind. Gomme, on the other hand, puts his strength into a stratigraphical analysis of British folk-custom with the special object of detect- ing, by the intensive study of a limited area, what different strands of ethnic influence are involved in the complex. In view, then, of the example set by these great pioneers, modern students must eschew a one-sided application either of the psychological or of the ethnological method. Indeed, it would seem that the time has come for employing them in close con- junction, as may be done by conceiving culture-contact as not 72 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT only an ethnological hut likewise, and even more essentially, a psychological process. For methodological purposes we can group the influences at work in culture-contact under various heads, one set relating to environment, another to material culture, a third to social organization, and a fourth to language and lore. Most important of all, however, is it to grasp the nature of the synthesis whereby such diverse influences unite so as to bring a new form of culture into being. This is not a mechanical but a spiritual process ; the law of which would seem to be that, just as in the mental development of the indi- vidual a conflict of impressions invites selective attention, so in the spiritual development of society a clash of cultures awakes latent energies of a constructive kind. Explanation along such lines will he at once historical inasmuch as it has reference to the movements of peoples whereby the culture-contact was brought about, and evolutionary because the creative effort of which such contact is the bare occasion must be accounted for in terms of a self-active, self-unfolding soul. SIR EDWARD TYLOR and SIR LAURENCE GOMME, two original members of this Society, have lately passed away. Both were master minds ; and it would ill become me to venture to institute any comparison between them in respect of their intellectual calibre or the value of their work. If the one was per- haps more widely known to the world, his writings hav- ing been translated into many tongues, the other was at any rate more intimately known to us, seeing that he had the best of titles to rank as our founder or co-founder.^ ' Gomme himself speaks of W. J. Thorns as " founder " of the Folk-Lore Society (Folk-Lore, iii. 3), and Sir E. Brabrook repeats this, while calling Gomme " co-founder " {Folk-Lore, xiii. 12, 13) ; but Thorns himself seems to disclaim-the honour {Folk-Lore Record, i., xiii.). Thorns was, however, first "director," Gomme succeeding him in the office. 73 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Nevertheless, it will be legitimate, and also not without profit at the present time, to compare them in respect of their theoretic .interests and methods of research. I would try to prove that wisdom is justified of all her children, though interests be diverse and methods many. We must avoid narrowness of view. There is ever, for instance, a tendency at work among us to magnify some partial aspect of a subject at the expense of the rest. Or, again, it is a common and natural fallacy to suppose that we are initiating funda- mental changes in the way of scientific procedure when we are but following up the clues provided by the labour of a former generation. Thus it may be useful, as it is undoubtedly pious, to look backwards as well as forwards — not to forget, lest we lose time in having to re-learn. In the first place, then, Tylor stood for anthropology and Gomme for folk-lore. With smaller men this might have been a cause of dissociation and cross purposes. Instead, both realized clearly from the outset that they were exploring the same field from opposite ends. Tylor led the way by introducing the term " survivals." ^ He appUed it to " that great class of facts " constituted by " processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from ' See Primitive Culture (ist edit. 1871), 15 (pp. 16, 17 of 4th edit.) for his claim to this effect, as also for the passages subsequently cited ; and see generally chaps, iii. and iv. He had already developed the notion of survivals as covering " the superstitious practices which belong to peasant folk-lore " in a lecture given at the Royal Institu- tion, April 23, 1869, " On the Survival of Savage Thought in Modern Civilization " ; see Proc. Roy. Inst., v. 522-35, asp. 530 (compare also *^'> 534) oil revivals). 74 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE- CONTACT that in whicji they had their original home." Here they " remain as proofs and examples of an older con- dition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved." " The serious business of ancient society may be seen to sink into the sport of later generations, and its serious behef to Unger on in nursery folk-lore." Let us, too, note in passing that Tylor was no adherent of that false psychology which treats a survival as mere inert matter, a waste product passively impeding the exercise of organic function. On the contrary, he was fully aware that " sometimes old thoughts and practices will burst out afresh, to the amazement of a world that thought them long since dead or d5dng " ; in brief, that the survival may be quickened into a revival, the savage impulses having meanwhile but lain dormant in the heart of the civihzed man. So much, then, for Tylor's recognition of the study of survivals as a branch of what he calls the science of culture. Now folk-lore, as this Society has consistently conceived it, corresponds exactly to that branch of the science of culture which Tylor has here in view. It is true that, when William Thoms gave the word to the world in 1846, he was content to assign to his " good Saxon compound " the broad and comfortable meaning of " the lore of the People." ^ But already in the same year that saw the first general meeting of this Society Andrew Lang had roundly defined folk- lore as " the study of survivals." ^ And not only in this respect does he conform to the Tylorian ter- minology, but Ukewise in describing the content of folk-lore as the " culture " that the people has created ' See his letter, Aihencsum, August 22, 1846, reprinted in the First Annual Report (1879), pp. 1^3 (appended to Folk-Lore Record, ii.). * Preface to Folk-Lore Record, ii., vii. 75 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE out of its own resources.! If both he and the Council in its First Report prefer to decorate the word culture with inverted commas, it was merely because in those days it was felt, as indeed there has been reason to feel more recently, that culture and barbarism do not naturally go together in our common speech or practice. For the rest, this First Report, drafted as we may plausibly conjecture by the hand of the secretary and chief organizer Gomme, indicates in the clearest lan- guage how it must always be the aim of our Society ,to combine folk-lore with the study of savagery in the interest of a single comprehensive science of culture. The statement of policy is so broad-minded that I make no apology for quoting it in a slightly abridged form. " Folk-lore may be said to include all the ' culture ' of the people, which has not been worked into the official rehgion and history, but which is and has always been of self-growth. It represents itself in civiUzed history by strange and uncouth customs. ... In savage life all these things are extant, not as survivals but as actual portions of the prevalent state of society. The Folk-lore survivals of civiUzation and the Folk-lore status of savage tribes both, therefore, belong to the primitive history of mankind ; and in collecting and printing these relics of one epoch, from two such widely different sources, the Folk-lore Society will produce that necessary comparison and illustration which is of so much service to the anthropologist." ^ Assuming, then, as we surely may on the strength of such evidence, that Tylor the anthropologist and Gomme the folk-lorist were in scientific outlook wholly at one, let us, in the next place, inquire whether on the question of method their agreement was any less 1 Folk-Lore Record, i. 99, ' First Annual Report (1879), 4. 76 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT complete. Now, it goes without saying that, if the material be different, the mode of treatment will differ accordingly. Dealing as they did with separate parts of the same subject, each would naturally pursue his own Une of speciaUzed research. But such diversity as was merely incidental to a division of labour need not concern us here. The only point at issue is whether their methods were in any sense antagonistic. We must ask how far, if at all, they championed rival principles of explanation. Were both for giving the same general orientation to the study of culture ? Or does the subsequent development prove that the one rather than the other divined its real path of advance ? Tylor is usually represented as the chief exponent of a method known as the psychological or evolutionary. Gomme, on the other hand, relies mainly on the method which is variously distinguished as the sociological, i\ ethnological, or historical. These have hitherto been, 1 j and stiU are, the only methods that can claim first-rate importance in regard to the science of culture. The question for us is whether their claims are in any way incompatible. For it may well be that, in the hands of the masters of the science, these methods prove in effect complementary to each other, affording access < to the same truth by different avenues of approach. Tylor's method, of course, is evolutionary in the sense that he concerns himself from first to last with the development of culture. But, on this very ground, it equally deserves the name of a historical method ; his subject being the history of culture neither more nor less. It should, therefore, be clearly understood at the start that a curtailment, not to say a downright distortion, of our terms is necessary if we are to use 77 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE " evolutionary " and " historical " to describe methods that are narrower in scope than the method of the science as a whole. In this restricted sense of the words, an evolutionary explanation is one that regards a custom as of independent origin, that is to say, as the direct outcome of the conditions operat- ing within a given area of culture ; whereas a historical explanation is one that treats it as the result of some connexion in the way of inheritance or of intercourse between the area under investigation and the out- side world. " Does Tylor, then, ignore or seek to disparage this so-called historical method ? By no means. On the contrary, he expounds its nature and possibilities at great length, showing by many well-chosen illustrations how historical connexions are to be traced in detail, as notably by the study of the geographical distribution of customs.^ Indeed, I am not acquainted with any more recent writer who has succeeded in stating the case for a critical use of this method with so much force and lucidity. Nay, so far is Tylor from showing undue partiality for the theory of spontaneous origina- tion, that he actually thrusts on it the burden of proof as against the mere general presumption of transmission. " Anyone," he says, " who claims a particular place as the source of even the smallest art, from the mere fact of finding it there, must feel that he may be using his own ignorance as evidence, as though it were know- ledge. It is certainly playing against the bank for a student to set up a claim to isolation for any art or custom, not knowing what evidence there may be against him, buried in the ground, hidden among remote ' See Researches into the Early History of Mankind^, chaps, i., vii., xii., xiii. 78 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT tribes, or contained even in ordinary books, to say nothing of the thousands of volumes of forgotten histories and travels." ^ For the rest, he suggests in prophetic vein that "it is possible that the ethno- grapher may some day feel himself justified' in giving to this kind of argument a far wider range " ^ — namely, the argument relating to the propagation of customs. Even at the time when he wrote his first ethnological treatise, historical connexions loomed invitingly on all sides. " On the whole," he sums up, " it does not seem to be an unreasonable, or even over-sanguine view, that the mass of analogies in art and knowledge, myth- ology and custom, confused and indistinct as they at present are, may already be taken to indicate that the civilizations of many races, whose history even the evidence of language has not succeeded in bringing into connexion, have really grown up under one another's influences, or derived common material from a common source." ^ Yet Tylor's name will always be associated with the evolutionary method, seeing that his most famous generalizations have been reached by its aid. Let us see how this came about. Now, his interest through- out lay, not in the cultural history of particular societies, much less in the history of individual culture- makers, but in the history of human culture in general. Numberless uniformities are displayed by primitive culture as a whole, and, somewhat less obviously, by various wholesale levels or stages that can be dis- tinguished within it. Some of these uniformities might be due to accident, and a great many are undoubtedly the result of the borrowing of customs. But there 1 Researches into the Early History of Mankind^, 175. 2 lb., 377. ' Ih; 379. 79 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE remain other similarities which, in Tylor's view, are to be accounted for by direct reference to that similarity of mind which up to a certain point all human beings alike display. Thus, in so far as a given feature of culture can be explained as the expression of some universal tendency on the part of our minds, spon- taneous origination, an evolutionary development in the narrower sense, may be said to occur. Moreover, as compared with the other method of tracing historical connexions, this " direct method," ^ as he terms it, promises quicker returns ; since thereby " the use of detailed history is very much superseded." ^ The reason is that " the facts have not, so to speak, travelled far from their causes." The mental law involved can be inferred from the given group of facts without further ado. At the same time, Tylor is perfectly ready to admit that such a method is practicable " only in particular parts of human culture." Yet " they are among the easiest and most inviting parts of the subject " ; and so he attacks them mainly, without having much regard for their " absolute im- portance.'^' Indeed, as we have already seen, he looked forward to an indefinitely wider and more fruitful use of the theory of transmission in the future. But he does not believe that the time has come for writing a systematic treatise on the history of culture ; and at all events is content on his own account to present a mere offering of first-fruits, or, as Bacon would say, a vindemiatio prima. A common misconception of the principle involved in the evolutionary method may be noticed. Accord- ing to this versioi|, or rather perversion, of its meaning, ' Early History of Mankind^, 4. * lb., 3, as also for the following citations. 80 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT it would run as follows : while the evolution of culture has taken place independently in a number of different areas, the process as a whole has repeated itself more or less exactly ; so that we either may treat any one development as typical of all, or, if no one complete history be available, may patch together a representa- tive account out of fragments taken indifferently from any of the particular areas concerned. If there be any student of culture who has consciously or un- consciously done homage to so absurd a principle, it is certainly not Tylor. He was neither so ignorant nor so wrong-headed as to suppose that history repeats itself by means of a paralleUsm of concrete cultures, each the product of a pure self-growth. Such a doctrine, indeed, is quite unthinkable. A strictly indigenous culture is as unknown to science as a strictly auto- chthonous race. Tylor's evolutionary hypothesis, how- ever is simply this : that certain pervasive elements of culture are susceptible of separate treatment and explanation, inasmuch as they can be extracted by analysis from the infinitely various concrete settings in which they occur. One may speak, of them as customs, as Tylor often does ; but really they are features of custom rather than samples of it — threads running through the tissue, not actual pieces of the stuff. The pervasive elements in question are the effects of our common mentaUty. Thus Tylor's evolu- tionary method is likewise a psychological one. Such effects do not display similarity only when the cultural conditions are otherwise similar. On the contrary, the special function of the comparative method is to testify to a unity in difference, as in this case con- stituted by the human mind ; which, amid an endless diversity of outer circumstance, remains ever true to 6 8i PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE its destiny in virtue of an innate self-activity, uncon- ditional, spontaneous, perennial as life itself. I have already alluded to Tylor's doctrine that a survival may at times pass into a revival. Here we have ready to hand an admirable test of the value of his psychological method. Underlying primitive magic, he discerns a natural tendency to mistake casual associa- tions and coincidences for real connexions. We can learn to overcome this tendency by means of a training in the logic of science ; but it is always there, a per- manent idolon of the mind. Hence, given conditions unfavourable to the predominance of the scientific temper, the lurking superstition will out ; so that the magic-haunted phantasy of aboriginal Australia comes to life again in the witch-mania of a Europe which, paradoxically enough, is in the throes of an intellectual and spiritual re-birth. Or, aigain, Tylor explains the animism of the savage as a natural interpretation of his dreams and visions. Such experiences are common to us all, and it thus remains open to us all to attribute a serious import, say, to the visionary appearance of one who is recently dead. Hence ancient animism has its counterpart — Tylor roundly says its revival — in modem spirituahsm. The cultural conditions are altogether different, yet the mental attitude recurs. These illustrations will suffice to show at once how Tylor uses his evolutionary method, and how it serves the ultimate purpose of his writings. For he was not one of those who set up a monument to savage un- reason. Rather he was bent on proving how reasonable the savage is according to his Hghts. The history of human culture, he insists, is all of a piece. Man has worked his long way upward by one and the same expedient, namely, " by the stern method of trial and 82 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT error." ^ Tylor was ever a kindly soul, as indeed every good anthropologist must be ; and this, his main con- clusion, is as kindly as it is true. I pass on. Not but what I should Uke to say much more, did time allow, in praise of Tylor's methods, and in particular of his psychological method. So, too were I to pursue this theme further, I might be led on to discuss how far it is possible, while continuing to use his psychological method as , such in exactly his way, yet to modify the psychol6gical doctrine with which the mental science of his day supplied him ; so as, for instance, to allow feehng and wiU a fuller juris- diction by the side of thought, or, again, to make more of the specific mental effects of social intercourse and tradition. But appreciation rather than criticism is appropriate to the present occasion. In the same spirit, I would ask you to consider the work of Gomme, with special reference to his use of the historical method. Gomme's views about method touch us very nearly, seeing that to introduce order and discipline into the researches of this Society was his heart's desire— nay, was probably the prime incentive that moved him to work out those principles of method which were after- wards embodied in his own studies. From the time of our foundation onwards he was resolved that this Society should be no league of elegant triflers. We are collectors, it is true, rather than theorists in the first instance ; and your collector of folk-lore is bom, not' made. Nevertheless, even hounds of the right breed will lose themselves if there be no whipper-in. So it fell to Gomme, as secretary and director, to see that the work of the Society should advance along 1 Macmillan's Magazine, xlvi. (1882), 86. 83 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE strictly scientific lines. I need not review in detail the steps that he took to this end — ^how, for instance, he provided us with a careful bibUography of folk-lore, so that what the French would call our " documenta- tion " might be thoroughly systematic. It is enough to say that he laboured to form our scientific methods, as did no other of our leaders with such conscious intent ^ ; so that, indeed, we can scarcely fail to be sympathetic towards principles that are part, as it were, of our social inheritance. Now, there is a sense in which a historical method is practicable for the folk-lorist in a way that it can never be for his brother the anthropologist. It is a sense differing alike from that in which we speak of the general method of the science of culture as the com- parative or historical, and from the more restricted use of the term to signify the theory of historical con- nexion or transmission. In this, its third meaning, the historical method is one which by direct reference to the literary records of the past traces the develop- ment of a custom from stage to stage. It might seem hardly necessary to formulate so obvious a principle of research were it not that the kind of material inter- esting to the folk-lorist, consisting in the sayings and doings of those whom Hume describes as " the lowest vulgar," is precisely such as official historians will be likely to slur over or misrepresent ; so that a positive rule is required to remind us that the accidents of history are the opportunities of folk-lore. The historical method is Tyler's name for this straightforward way of hunting up the pedigree of a survival ; and, by ' Thus in Folk-Lore, xUi. (1902), 13, Sir Edward Brabrook singles him out from among the protagonists of the Society for his contribu- tions to the subject of method. 84 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT way of illustration, he applies it very prettily to the explanation of the led horse at the soldier's funeral.^ Historical research, then, in this plain sense of the term, has always been a main concern of this Society. We have enjoyed many demonstrations of the value of this method not only for constructive, but likewise for critical, purposes ; as, for instance, when Miss Bume, in a striking Presidential Address, showed us how, by the aid of recorded history, it was possible " to distinguish between one survival and another, between survivals from mediaeval days and survivals from totemic days, between local variations and radical differences." ^ As for Gomme, his examination of the archives of British custom was so systematic and fruitful as to entitle him to rank high among the historians of this country. But it is not this aspect of his work that I propose to consider to-night. He was Ukewise a follower of the historical method in the sense in which it is contrasted with the evolutionary ; and, since the relative value of these methods for the science of culture is even to-day by no means clear, it may be useful to inquire how the argument from historical connexion took shape under the hand of a great pioneer. Culture-contact is a notion that has long been familiar to this Society. I find the actual term in use in early days,' while the principle that it stands for was con- stantly to the front ; as, notably, during the protracted battle over folk-tales between the " diffusionists " and the " casualists," namely, the parties that severally • In " The Study of Custom," Macmillan's Magazine, xlvi. (1882), 79. '- Folk-Lore, xxi. (1910), 32. ' See J. Jacobs in Internat. Folk-Lore Congress (1891), 83; cf. Folk-Lore, iv. (1893), 236. 85 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE favoured " dissemination from a common centre " and " parallel invention." Looking back on this ancient controversy, one is able to perceive that the two schools were at loggerheads because their prevail- ing interests, rather than their theories of method, were diverse. The one group fixed their attention on the particular history of some tale as a whole. The other group, on the contrary, were for the most part bent on extracting from it some particular feature, say, an odd piece of magic, or a reminiscence of animism, so that they might forthwith explain such an isolated element as the outcome of some world-wide habit of mind. At all events, it would be quite unfair, as was done then and is sometimes done now, to name the doctrine of independent origins the " anthropological " view, as if to imply that anthropology tends to reject the principle of diffusion by culture-contact altogether. It has been shown already how Tylor strove to render equal justice to the evolutionary and the historical points of view. And, if Tylor was not a typical an- thropologist, who is ? Now Gomme in so many words declares that his own point of view — ^he even terms it a " bias " — is an- thropological.i He belongs [to the " anthropological " school as contrasted withl the " literary " in regard to the study of folk-tales. In other words, his interest lies, not in the particular history of the tale as such, but inTthe general history of culture as explained by the: analysis of the tale in question. Nor will he join with those who will have nothing to do with the evolutionary theory. On the contrary, he rebukes Mr Jacobs, when the latter pours scorn on those he nicknamed the casualists, as one " who is ^ Folk-Lore, iii. (1892), 4 ; compare ib., ii. (1891), 2 ; iv. (1893), 18. 86 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT perpetually forgetting his masters in the science," and reminds him of " a man called Tylor." ^ Gomme's own position in respect to the theory of independent origins is eminently reasonable. He is prepared to make the assumption in certain cases, but does so " provisionally," just as Tylor did also.^ One cause, he says, with which the folk-lorist must always reckon is " the generation of the same thought by people of the same mental development, wherever they may be existing, or at whatever date." ^ The evolutionary principle could not be more fairly stated. Nevertheless, Gomme put most of his strength into the exposition and advocacy of the complementary method — the historical, sociological, ethnological. He gave it emphasis, because it needed it. In those early days the interest in belief and story had outrun the interest in institutions ; though it is true that the Folk- Lore Congress of 189 1 had impartially allotted sections to each of these three departments of the subject. Gomme's researches into the history of the village- community in this country had taught him betimes the value of referring oddments of custom to their institutional basis, as established by exhaustive inquiry within a particular area of culture. So, in the course of several Presidential Addresses delivered in the early nineties, and elsewhere, he developed, for the lasting benefit of this Society and of our science in general, his conception of the fundamental importance of the study of institutions, or, as he otherwise phrases it, of social organization. Even as regards this' kind of method he gracefully concedes the lead to Tylor, re- ferring more specially to his essay " On a Method of ' Folk-Lore, iv. (1893), 13. * lb., 14. » lb., 10. 87 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE investigating the development of Institutions applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent." ^ Gonime's special merit, however, consists in having formulated the principle of method that institutions need, first and foremost, to be studied in their local context. In- tensive ethnographical research is the necessary prius of comparative ethnology. Before we proceed to trace historical connexions between different areas of culture on the strength of the geographical distribution of customs, we must have worked out the topographical distribution of customs within the several areas con- cerned, so as to make sure that in each case the things to be compared are themselves envisaged in the hght of their authentic development. Such a method, then, as appUed to a region with a recorded past such as this country, will be historical in two senses at once ; because it is the only way of proving the historical transmission of customs, and at the same time because it involves the testing of each custom by its historical pedigree. It is Hkewise essentially sociological, since it insists that social organization rather than belief or story brings us directly into touch with that continuous life of the people of which the various customs are but the expression. Further, such a method is no less characteristically ethnological. Even if we concentrate on a single area, we can hardly fail to discover, in its institutional history, the effects of culture-contact., We are proud to re- member that under Gomme's Presidency this Society was to the fore in promoting an ethnological survey of Britain. 2 Gomme's own work, too, had led him 1 In Journ. Anth. Inst., xviii. (1888), 245 f. ; see Gomme in Folk- Lore, ii. (1891), 487. ' Compare Folk-Lore, v. (1894), 50. 88 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT straight to the explanation of the British village-com- munity in terms of culture-contact. Into the particular merits of this explanation we cannot go now ; but it will serve as an excellent example of an ethnological hypothesis as employed by the historical method of folk-lore. Having tried to ehminate the effects of Roman and later influences, Gomme thought that he could resolve the viUage-community into a dual system due to the settlement of Aryan conquerors amid a pre-Aryan population that was thereby reduced to serfdom. The groimds on which the theory was made to rest were primarily sociological. The Aryan over- lords were credited with a tribal system that has left various survivals in the way of institutional custom or belief ; whereas the aborigines were supposed to have already possessed a viUage-organization which continued to exist in a modified form.^ When we are provided with so perfect a specimen of a theory of culture-con- tact, I need not labour the point that Gomme's favourite method was no less ethnological than it was sociological and historical in its purpose. Indeed, I have said enough — or perhaps more than enough, seeing that I am speaking to those who kiiew him well — to justify the assertion that, just as we think naturally of Tylor in connexion with the evolutionary method, so the historical method ought to be for all time associated with the name of Gomme, who, while others groped, lit a lamp, and so Hghted himself and the rest of us along a sure way. I have now accompUshed the main object of these remarks, which was to endeavour to do honour to the 1 Gomme has frequently expounded the theory in question. See, for instance. The Village Community (London, 1890), 137 ; Ethnology in Folk-lore (London, 1892), 70 ; Folk-lore as a Historical Science (London, 1908), 357 ; and Sociological Review (1909), 323- 89 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE memory of Sir Edward Tyler and of Sir Laurence Gomme, by examining their worlc — very hastily and imperfectly I am afraid — ^from the limited but crucial standpoint of method. It remains to consider how we, who are left to carry on that work, may develop those pioneer methods of theirs in a way worthy of their approval, were they still here. There are active among us to-day eager advocates of the ethnological method, such as Dr Rivers and Professor Elliot Smith. On the other hand, the evolutionary school can claim adherents so powerful as Sir James Frazer and Mr Hartland ; while at Oxford, if only out of sheer loyalty to Tylor, some of us may always incline towards a psychological interpretation of primitive culture. Now how deep does the difference cut ? Is there any need to prosecute science in the spirit of partisans ? We have seen how Tylor and Gomme paid equal homage to both methods, though as anthropologist and as folk-lorist they severally applied a single and an opposite method to the work immediately confronting them. Has not the time come, then, when we may aspire to a joint use of the historical and the evolutionary methods ? Logically they are not incompatible, but would rather seem to be complementary to each other. Cannot we make them practically so ? I venture to suggest, then, in the name of those masters of method, Tylor and Gomme, who realized that the paths to the truth are many but converging, that we bring our divided forces to bear on a theme that promises exercise for them all — I mean the psy- chology of culture-contact. I cannot, indeed, claim to have thought out in any detail how such a subject ought to be treated. Even had I done so, I could not attempt at this late hour to put my thoughts into 90 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT words. But I hail it as a sign of the times that Dr Rivers, whose passion for the strictest scientific method first led him to the study of social organization, and thenceforward to the study of ethnological intermixture, has tended more and more as he went on to eke out history by means of psychological considerations of a general nature. Being himself a psychologist of no mean repute, he was never, as some hot-heads would seem to be, for excluding psychology from the science of culture altogether. Yet for a long time he cried " to-morrow " to his poor handmaid, eager to serve. She must sit in the cold and wait. But somehow she has sHpped in and got to work ; and it is plainly not in his heart any longer to wish it otherwise. Going back for a moment to Gomme's ethnological work, we may note the same surreptitious ingress of a psychology that wiU not be denied. I take a couple of examples almost at hazard. Thus his theory of the origin of the village-community demands that the Aryan immigrants stand to the pre-Aryan aborigines in the relation of conquerors to conquered. Yet the former are assumed to have " adopted and adapted " certain beliefs of the indigenous population. Why ? Because for rehgious reasons the invaders are apt to borrow from the local folk so as to make themselves at home among the sacred powers of the land.^ Now such a principle is to a certain extent susceptible of proof, or disproof, by the collection and comparison of historical instances. But in essence it is a psy- chological cause that is invoked, and one which, if genuine, must have operated independently again and again. Once more, he puts forward a hypothesis 1 Compare Folk-Lore, iv. (1893), 13. In confirmation of such an explanation, see E. S. Hartland in Folk-Lore, xxvii. (1916), 319. 91 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE which, though it is to be taken in close connexion with the other, rests on a psychological principle of another order, namely, one belonging to the psychology of sex. " H seems to me quite possible," he writes, " that the women of a conquered race, feared as they often were by their conquerors as the devotees of the local deities, might use that fear under some conditions to establish a place of power which has left its mark on the history of marriage." ^ Now here we have just the sort of problem concerning the effect of culture-contact on marriage-organization that Dr Rivers has constantly to face in his History of Melanesian Society. It may or may not be necessary in such a context to speculate on what might happen in virtue of the tendency to regard women as the mysterious sex. But I fail to see how we are ever to get at grips with such a question if psychological considerations are altogether ruled out on a priori grounds of method. Gomme at any rate was not such a pedant as to reject a useful hint, though it come from any quarter. Nor does Dr Rivers show himself pedantic, inasmuch as he has passed on from sociology to ethnology, and from ethnology to psychology, with a progressive enlargement of outlook which makes his book a classic for all those who wish to study method in the making. Dr Rivers, indeed, allows in so many words that " there is one department of sociology in which . . . psychological assumptions become indispensable," namely, when the purpose is "to show how social in- stitutions come into existence as the result of the contact and blending of peoples." ^ Such assumptions, however, * Folk-Lore, ii, (1891), 494. ' Sociological Review, ix. (1916), 8. 92 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT he insists, are not to be treated as " laws." They must be tested by the study of social processes ere ever we can so regard them.^ With this we must all agree. After all, as folk-lorists and anthropologists, we are not interested in psychology or sociology as such, but in the science of human culture, a far more concrete and comprehensive study, which makes use of these discipUnes, and of others as weU, just in so far as they throw Ught on the subject of culture from this side or from that. Or again, we are not interested as ethnolo- gists in the history of any particular culture-area in itself. A so-called " law " is no law, a demonstration of tendency is not a real demonstration, so long as it holds good only for the British Isles, or for Melanesia. Our science is concerned with the general conditions of culture-contact ; and to this end, and to nothing short of it, must our sociological and psychological studies be conjointly directed. Dr Rivers is, of course, fuUy aware of this. Indeed, though his treatise on the history of Melanesian society has primarily an ethnographical scope, he has managed, in a few pregnant pages, to formulate such general conditions in a way that, to my mind, provides an excellent programme for future research.^ It is true that considerations of relevancy make him hmit his attention to one, and that the simplest, case of the diffusion of culture, namely, where the representatives of different cultures not only come into direct contact, but actually combine to form one society. How, then, may we classify the general conditions governing culture- contact in this special but highly typical case ? First, there are the various geographical conditions 1 Sociological Review, ix. (1916), 9. « The History of Melanesian Society (Cambridge, 1914)) "• 292-303- 93 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE that may be summed up under the heads of route and habitat. It goes without sa,ying that these must be studied in their influence on the cultural as well as on the purely physical Hfe of the people, so as to bring out all the sociological and psychological effects that such influence involves. Thus, to illustrate the latter only, route must be taken into account in explaining the beliefs of a band of immigrant sea-rovers ^ ; or, again, habitat will have a bearing if we try to show that fauna and flora, a special type of weather, a volcanic en- vironment, and so forth, can give a peculiar turn to religious ideas. ^ In the next place, the material culture of the peoples who intermix, comprising all appliances brought into play by their arts, whether industrial or aesthetic, may be distinguished as a special set of conditions. Here, again, though we treat these facts to some extent apart, we must never lose sight of their relation to the rest. Thus, on the one hand, they must be connected with route and habitat ; sea-farers may have no use for the bow in warfare,* while inland-dwellers will hardly be expert in sea-fishing. On the other hand, they affect, and are affected by, the sociological and psy- chological conditions ; so that, for instance, religion will retain otherwise useless appliances for ceremonial purposes, or, conversely, as Dr Rivers has so brilliantly suggested, useful arts will be discarded because the accompanying ceremonies are somehow lost.* '^ Compare Hist. Mel. Soc, ii. 262. * As regards the effect of volcanic surroundings on belief, see Hist. Mel. Soc, ii. 263, 479 ; compare Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (3rd ed.), V. 188 f. on " volcanic religion." ' Compare Hist. Mel. Soc, ii. 447. • Compare W. H. R. Rivers, " The Disappearance of Useful Arts," in Festskrift tillegnad E. Westermarck (Helsingfors, 1912), 109 f. 94 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT Thirdly, the social organization of the interacting parties involves a most important class of conditions. Whether the immigrants are few or many, whether they are organized for w,ar or come as peaceful traders or settlers, whether they have chiefs and a social system that wiU bear transplanting, whether they bring women with them, and these women of their own race and culture — aU these, and many more, are matters that must largely determine the whole conception of the mixing process ; while the social arrangements of the indigenous population form a no less important element in the problem. Kinship and marriage, government and law, and, hardly less directly, the organization of the economic and of the religious life, are dependent on these facts in such a degree that to consider them abstractly as functions of the social order is quite allowable on the part of a trained thinker ; for he will know that the value of a given abstraction is in inverse ratio to the import- ance of what is for the moment put out of sight. Fourthly, there are psychological conditions that can and must be considered apart in estimating what the combining units severally contribute to the blend. Thus, whether the immigrants have a peaceful or war- hke disposition, and whether the local population receive them in the one spirit or the other, is not wholly a matter of numbers and organization, however much the pure sociologist might wish to simplify the problem by supposing so. Again, the facts relating to language, and to oral tradition, are most naturally dealt with under this head. But I need not insist further on a point which Dr Rivers has amply stated, if indeed he has not overstated it ; since he says " the only way in which the culture of an immigrant people can be 95 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE carried about the world is in a psychological form, in the form of sentiments, beliefs, and ideas." ^ Lastly, we come to the most interesting of all the conditions involved in culture-contact, namely, the new conditions brought into play by the actual contact itself. Dr Rivers finds fault with Dr Graebner for conceiving ethnological intermixture as a mechanical process, and suggests that the notion of a chemical process comes nearer to the mark.^ I confess that such analogies drawn from the physical sciences and redolent of the " lower categories " seem to me one and all misleading. We must keep steadily in view the fact that culture-contact is, for the science of culture, essentially a psychical process. Only by applying the conception of soul, taken in its individual and social aspects together, can we do justice to such develop- ment as is brought about by a synthesis of spiritual elements — such as culture-contact truly is when viewed, not from some lower standpoint, but from the stand- point of culture itself. Now, as regards psychological " laws," Dr Rivers writes : "I have never heard of them, and I am afraid I should not believe them if I heard." ^ I dare not, then, offer him one, but would nevertheless call attention to what is at least an accepted working principle in the domain of individual psychology. It is this, that the occasion of the development of the higher processes of thought is conflict arising among our sense impressions. I would venture, then, to suggest that some very similar principle ought to be provided in the domain of social psychology to account for the spiritual awakening which a clash of cultures 1 Sociological Review, ix. (191 6), 8. ' History of Melanesian Society, ii. 585. ' Sociological Review, ix. (1916), 9. 96 PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTURE-CONTACT in circumstances otherwise favourable may occasion. I deliberately say " occasion," not " cause," because I regard soul as a prime-mover — the only one. For the rest, the specific conditions brought into play by virtue of the culture-contact itself need to be subjected to detailed analysis, and to be classified according to the aspects of culture involved. Here, then, is the chosen ground to which I would point as the meeting-place and joint laboratory of the evolution- ary and historical methods. While the historical method will attend chiefly to the assemblage of pre-existing conditions, the evolutionary, which is Hkewise essentially a psychological, method will be mostly concerned with the spontaneous origination, the live and truly evolu- tionary movement of spiritual awakening, that ensues upon the fact of cultural contact and cross-fertilization. Sometimes, the result of this quickening wiU wear an institutional and sociological guise, as in the startling case, regarded as by no means impossible by Dr Rivers, of father-right resulting from the fusion of two matri- Hneal stocks.^ Even in such a case, however, when Dr Rivers comes to formulate a " mechanism " — by which sinister expression he simply means a scheme — he frankly resorts to psychology in order to exhibit the true nature of the process. In other cases, the product of contact will be on the face of it a psychological fact, to which a psychological explanation may be appHed without more ado. Thus, an setiological myth may be generated to account for some unfamiliar im- portation, a process attributable to the stimulating effect on the imagination of the new and strange. As regards this last example, I am thinking, of course, of the illuminating paper on "The Sociological Signifi- 1 Hist. Mel. Soc, ii. 320 7 97 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE cance of Myth " which Dr Rivers read before this Society some five years ago.^ I have exhausted your patience, without by any means exhausting a theme which takes us down to the roots of the science of culture, the science of Tylor and Gomme. It must suffice to have tried to show two things : firstly, how in the past the evolutionary and historical methods, with which the names of Tylor and Gomme are severally associated, were used by them, yet never abused ; and, secondly, how in the future we might hope to bring these methods into closer co-operation by concentrating on the general conditions, and especially on the psychology, of culture- contact. If I have sounded the psychological note too strongly, I would ask you to bear with my individual bent or bias. For, as compared with sociology, psy- chology has always seemed to me to have the first word and the last ; just as thought comes first and last as compared with speech. A meaning is there before we try to put it into words, and, though the words help it out, yet they always lag a little behind our ideal meaning. So too, then, I conceive the soul of man, in its individual and social capacities taken together, to be a self-active power which both originates institutions, and, though developing through their aid, ever transcends them, ever seeks to transmute them so that they may subserve still higher and more ideal ends. Tylor called our science the science of culture, and it is a good name. But let us not forget that culture stands at once for a body and a life, and that the body is a function of the life, not the life of the body. 1 Folk-Lore, xxiii. (1912), 307 f. Let me confess that I appreciate the psychological principle as to the effect of the unfamiliar all the more because my own theory of pre-animistio religion is based largely on a like presupposition. 98 V THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE ARGUMENT IPOLK-LORE, usually defined as the study of survivals, needs to conceive its object in a dynamic, not a static, way. It is concerned with a process or movement, not with an inert mass of cultural fossils. Nor is this process one of sheer degeneration, despite the fact that folk-lore deals largely with the decadent. Revival no less than survival must be reckoned with, the history of culture testifying to the continuous interplay of old and new forces. In one word, then, cultural process is a transvaluation. Regarded from without, such a process of change may be expressed in terms of form and function ; but regarded from within as an expression of the human will, it is change in respect of the values recognized and sought. Mean- while, folk-lore as a special department of social anthropology considers the pivoting of values from one side only, namely, the side of the underworld constituted by the unlettered tradition of society ; and from this point of view the modes of transvaluation may be conveniently distinguished and classed as follows. The first type of cultural movement may he termed metataxis or change of standing. It may he figured as a vertical process, one of rise or fall ; fall of value or vulgarization being on the whole more in evidence in the special field of folk-lore than rise of value or devulgarization. The second type may be called metalepsis or change of meaning. It resembles a horizontal process, one of transposition from one part of a system to another ; as notably when depragmatization occurs, that is, when a custom is trans- ferred from the sphere of the useful to that of the ornamental, for 99 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE instance, is dropped by religion and taken up by art. For the rest, these two modes of transvaluation, though abstractly dis- tinguishable, tend to co-exist in the concrete case. On the one hand, lowered status and deflected meaning are apt to go together. On the other hand, devulgarization and depragmatization are conjoined in the typical revival. Thus the CBsthetic tradition of the folk, which is the last home of many decadent interests of a practical kind, can furnish material on which the literary genius may profitably draw. Indeed, the old themes embodied in our national folk-lore must not be allowed to die. For they may be so re-adapted as to provide a nursery or playground of the mind; and this will save the emotional life of the people from being starved and perverted. THE chair that I am about to vacate has been occupied by me for a round five years ; and, though Roman precedent would justify the omission of the lustral ceremony at the end of such a period did the circumstances seem untoward, there is happily no reason as things are why a purificatory sacrifice should not now be accomplished in my person. My successor, Dr Haddon, with his cathoUc experience of anthropological work in the field, the study, and the lecture-room — not to speak of his long connexion with this Society — may be trusted to reinvigorate our fellow- ship of keen workers as " iron sharpeneth iron." It is my privilege to be the first to congratulate the Society on having acquired a President so full of mana. During the greater part of the time covered by my term of of&ce a world-war has raged ; nor is the end yet in sight. If, however, much else remain obscure, this at least grows plainer every day, that the war is a war of ideals — that no mere redistribution of territory and of political influence is involved in its issue, but a reconstruction of 100 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE civilized society, according to one or another of certain conflicting doctrines of human nature and destiny. Now as students of folk-lore we are not concerned with problems of social reconstruction. Our business is to cultivate a particular corner of the field of science, and raise a goodly crop of truths ; whereas it is for the practical man — the food-controller, as it were — to see to it that our produce is not wasted. Nevertheless, how can we afford to shut our eyes to the meaning of this phase of downright revolution through which the world is passing ? Suppose it possible for us to make clean abstraction of what such a crisis portends for us as citizens, even so as pure observers and theorists we can surely find here matter for thought in plenty. For in what way chiefly does the revolutionary tendency of the times make itself felt ? Are we not conscious, before all else, of a wholesale shifting of values — an utter derange- ment of the hierarchy of established interests and activi- ties constituting that "old order" which we were brought up to accept ? In a word, then, the " transvaluation " of culture provides us with a theme at once topical and, as I hope to show, of fundamental significance for our science. Such transvaluation, I would even con- tend, yields the ultimate conception of a dynamic type whereby the scope and method of folk-lore studies ought to be determined. In the first place, then, we shall all doubtless be agreed that we cannot for methodological purposes dispense with a dynamic conception of some sort ; in other words, that folk-lore research must be regulated by reference to an object which is defined generally as a kind of movement or process. For to describe our science as the study of survivals is apt to prove misleading, at any rate for the outsider. The latter is ready on the strength of the lOI PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE phrase to set us down as mere curiosity-hunters — amiable triflers who collect fossils for fun. Now it might seem enough to reply to such an imputation on our scientific character that we do indeed collect fossils, but in the spirit of the palaeontologist, for whom the inanimate relics bear witness to a life that is gone. But I beheve that we should do better to reject the fossil metaphor altogether. As I have argued before this Society on a former occasion,^ it would appear, inasmuch as survivals survive, that they are not quite dead after all — that in some humble and surreptitious way of their own they help to constitute and condition the living present, whether it be for worse or for better. From such a point of view, then, it seems of chief importance to inquire what survival is as a process ; and, further, how this particular process is related to the other processes that go with it to make up the general movement of history. In short, a d3mamic study of the facts relating to survival keeps in to uchjwjth-- reality as manifested in thelife^^iofcer A static treatment, on the contrary, can but result in a bloodless typology ; while, if it be likewise pseudo-dynamic, and array its arbitrary seriation of types in the guise of a time-order, so much the worse. Let us, in this connexion, note how the study of savage culture has of late correspondingly felt the need for a more positively dynamic method. That branch of the science of man has, indeed, always sought to proceed upon genetic lines, having from the first been associated with the Darwinian theory of the development of life. But the very comprehensiveness of outlook thus acquired — the age-long and world-wide extent of the interpreta- tion of human history thereby demanded — for a long time caused a somewhat sweeping style of explanation to See p. 26 103 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE be attempted. Yet it is easy to exaggerate the evils due to such premature generalization. I do not hold with the current depreciation of the work of the great pioneers of anthropology, to the tacit glorification of their smug successors. One is reminded of the absurd wren in the fable who mounted sky-high on the eagle's back. To ignore what we owe to our spiritual ancestry amounts to a denial of the doctrine of development, and hence is dis- loyal in two ways at once. The whole history of science proves that it is legitimate to leap from a narrow ground- work of facts to the widest generaUzations, so long as the complementary task of verification is thereafter duly performed. Our business, then, is to complete what our predecessors began. We must sift and test their pro- visional findings : partly by the discovery of fresh evidence, together with a more accurate presentation of what is already to hand ; and partly by a search for middle principles, such as are not to be obtained without intensive study of the details taken group by group instead of in the lump. Now the only natural groups are afforded by the various culture-areas of the world wherein specific developments have occurred in relative isolation. Hence the prime concern of students of savage culture at the present day is to determine how, within such natural provinces, cultural change has in each case proceeded under the joint stress of internal and external influences. But this plainly implies a closer corre- spondence with the actual ebb and flow of human development — in a word, a more dynamic treatment. As a sheer effect of intellectual perspective, the history of man takes on life and movement by being f ocussed in the history of a given people. For the rest, it is plain that, as regards method, no essential difference exists between this branch of the 103 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE science of culture and our own. Folk-lore is but social anthropology as appHed within the home-circle. Thus there is no reason why some of those who to-day count as savages should not in course of time become well enough educated to study their own institutions in a scientific spirit. Were this to happen, the outcome would be folk- lore. Moreover, the chances presumably are that the native would carry out the inquiry with more sympathy and insight than the most intelligent of strangers. Mean- while, whether future folk-lorists are likely to arise out of present " primitives " or not, the bare notion of such a possibility will serve to illustrate our own position in regard to folk-lore research. We are ex-savages with customs bearing visible traces of our ancient condition ; and, further, being indigenous to the culture-area that we study, we are sympathetically aware how the drift on the surface answers to deep-moving currents in the social Ufe. Here, then, if anywhere, namely, at home, in the midst of the historical movement in which we ourselves actively participate, we can hope to put anthropological principles to the proof in an intensive and crucial way. Studied thus from within, that apparent medley of functions in which the cultural life of a people consists will gradually reveal itself as a concrete expression of the universal laws of human nature. So much, then, concerning the dynamic reference — the suggestion of a movement to be studied — which folk-lore needs to embody in the definition of its end. It remains, in the second place, to ask whether this requirement is not already satisfied by that patient maid-of-all-work, the concept of evolution. Now I have no quarrel with this historic notion. May it long hold its own, if only to prove what a wealth of inspiration may be vested in a single word — or, rather, a single regulative idea. Spencer 104 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE established it, Darwin accepted it ; and, whatever may be thought of its apphcability to the cosmic process in general, it is at any rate well fitted to characterize biological process in respect of its prevailing tendency. Let us, then, be resolved to rate anthropology among the evolutionary sciences ; ignoring recent attempts to identify evolution with such social development as is independent of intercourse with others— a barren abstraction to which its perpetrators are welcome. Yet, although the ultimate suzerainty of the evolution- ary principle be admitted, does not folk-lore also have occasion for a departmental formula of its own ? After all, evolution stands for vital process only by a euphemism. Development has also its seamy side. There is degenera- tion to be reckoned with as well. Is the latter, then, the limitative conception that we are seeking ? Is folk-lore to be merely the study of cultural decadence ? Speaking for myself, I must own that such a prospect leaves me joyless. Years ago there was a discussion — initiated, I think, by Mr Stead — on the question. What are the best hundred books ? If I rightly remember, Mr Ruskin was for excluding Gibbon from the list ; and the reason he gave was that he did not care to let his mind dwell on the "decline and fall" of anything. "Just so my mind would draw cold comfort, I am afraid, from a pure pathology of institutions ; and the thought that these were primarily the institutions of my own country could but serve to make me the more depressed. Even if survival be taken — ^wrongly, as I believe — ^to imply as such a moribund condition, revival, clearly, does nothing of the kind ; nor can this cognate topic be neglected by us without being false to the facts as we find them. It is true that this important subject of revival tends, perhaps, to be a little unpopular in folk-lore circles. 105 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Some prefer antiquities such as are only fit foi: a glass case. The genuine article for them is broken beyond the hope, or rather danger, of repair. They can appreciate a ruin, but hardly the standing edifice, however ancient and however tenderly restored. So it comes about that they construe the notion of degeneration in an inverted sense — topsy-turvywise. This may even, perhaps, be called the folk-lorist's fallacy. It is, however, by no means confined to our branch of anthropology. Thus I have heard an all-too-enthusiastic totemist define a god as a degraded totem. Renovation, on this view, spells destruction. The rule that ghosts must not walk is applied to survivals. Let a stake be driven through them at the cross-roads rather than that they should thus unconscionably resurrect. More especially is it re- sented if revival lift the obsolescent custom to a higher plane of culture. Not only is it unseemly on the part of the unquiet spirit ; it is snobbish into the bargain. But it will be urged that I misrepresent the attitude of the folk-lorist by ignoring his scientific motive. Since his one aim is to reconstruct the original institution out of its remaining fragments, these are really spoilt for his purpose if they turn out to have been re-adapted. I hope that it will not sound a paradox if I reply to this argument that the original institution in question never existed. Origins are relative, and the regress of con- ditions is endless. The supposed prototype is but an effect of historical mirage. However far we pursue it, the steadfast illusion keeps its distance, while shifting sands are about our feet as before. There never was a time, in short, when the interplay of old and new did not go on, exactly as it does now — ^when survival and revival, degeneration and regeneration, were not pulsating together in the rhythm of the social fife. It io6 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE is at least as necessary to read the present into the past as the past into the present. Let it, then, be an article of our creed to recognize the immanence of folk-lore. Old-fashioned stuff though it be, it belongs to the here and now ; and so may at any moment renew its youth in the way that old fashions have. The motto of folk-lore as of fashion in dress is. Never say die ! Does the transvaluation of culture, then, supply the formula we want ? I suggest that it will be found adequate. For it certainly conforms to the two criteria already laid down. Firstly, it is dynamic, connoting a process to be examined. Secondly, it has not the unilinear sense of such a term as degeneration, or even, if taken strictly, the " blessed word " evolution, but indicates process without limiting it to a single direction. It remains to show that it has a further merit, namely, that of signifying cultural process as studied from within Thus for many purposes it might seem enough to speak of transformation. But change of form is as an object relative to a purely external view of things. It cannot, therefore, stand for the last word in anthropology, unless we are prepared to renounce our birth-right of self- knowledge. Even when treated as facts — as they must be in the historical sciences — values retain their inward- ness as expressions of the human wiU. Transvaluation then, not transformation, calls attention to the hving soul of cultural process. It reminds us that our task is to study not merely its " how," but its " why." It may be thought that function, by an enlargement of its biological meaning, can be made to cover the impUcations here claimed for value. But function, in common with form, had far better, I think, be confined to its proper sphere, namely, that of an exterior history. Besides, where function is at its vanishing-point, value of 107 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE a sort may still be predicated. Take the case of a custom that to all appearance is utterly effete — the so-called fossil, in fact. It might fairly be judged functionless. Why, then, when so obviously we ought to be done with it, is it allowed to linger on ? Because it has what may be termed prescriptive value. After all, the functional view of life is apt to be rather hard and narrow. Your conservative is the born liberal. The squirearchy is long- suffering with the gipsy ; whereas bureaucratic efficiency would altogether deny him his idle place in the sun. Sheer customariness, in short, amounts to a kind of value — one that for the most part is apprehended sub- consciously, yet is none the less inwardly satisfying. The appeal of the famihar counts among the great equilibrat- ing forces of the moral world. It helps us to maintain a comfortable automatism ; and, so long as we do this solely in regard to such things as matter little, we are the better enabled, through economy of effort, to con- centrate on the things that matter much. Thus the antiquated custom, though it seem functionless on a sociological or external view, is perceived on a psy- chological estimate to have value, if only because it is restful — because it passively ministers to the easy- going, effort-saving side of our life. It is not in value, however, so much as in change of value, that we are now immediately interested. One has to think of every morsel of folk-lore as subject to con- tinual process. Such process is ultimately intelligible only in the light of the cultural hfe as a whole. On the other hand, the student of folk-lore has a special stand- point of his own that constrains him to regard the general culture-movement from one side — the under-side, as it were. His business is to observe the pivoting that takes place at his end of the shifting scale of values. He io8 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE watches custom, belief, and story as they fluctuate in importance within this lower hemisphere ; whereas what happens to them when they have passed beyond this horizon is the concern of another inquirer, namely, the historian of civilization in its more restricted sense. In a civilized country folk-lore begins where " clerk-lore " ends. As soon as the art of writing is well-estabHshed, the lettered and the relatively or wholly unlettered classes tend to follow different traditions in regard to aU matters of culture. Even if we extend the notion of folk-lore so far as to attribute it hkewise to peoples that are without a Hterature, the same criterion holds. For here a Hke distinction may be drawn between the traditions that severally depend on organized and on unorganized folk-memory ; such organization being seen in the schooling of the novices at the initiation, the mnemonic exercises of bards and other official remem- brancers, the insistence on verbal exactness in rehgious and legal formularies, and so on. This view of folk-lore as belonging to an underworld suggests one of the two main heads under which the modes of cultural transvaluation may conveniently be classed. This first type of movement may be called change of standing, or, if a technical term be required, metataxis. It is, so to speak, a vertical process. The unfashionable bit of furniture is cast out of the parlour and goes downstairs to fill a comer of the kitchen or of the children's play-room. Or, conversely, there is re-migration upstairs. The Chippendale masterpiece emerges from the depths to oust in turn some Victorian eyesore. Now it must be admitted that on the whole a great deal more sinks, than is ever destined to rise, in status-value. The downward way threatens utter extinction ; and the history of culture bears witness 109 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE to an unremitting bustle of spring-cleaning, such as leads not only to the abandonment of worn-out devices, but also, as Dr Rivers has shown, to the untimely loss of useful arts.i Indeed, it may be roundly assumed that every denizen of the poorhouse of folk-lore has seen better days. This is true even when — as, perhaps, is not so often as we are ready to suppose — a custom of the folk can be proved to be a genuine survival of savage times. In that case it certainly had a lesser distance to fall ; but, inasmuch as it once formed part of a dominant culture, it has at least to this extent lost caste. Mean- while, it is by attending carefully to the facts of trans- valuation that we are hkely to overcome the sluggard tendency to refer folk-lore in the mass either to a pre- existent savage condition, or, worse stiU, to the abiding savage instinct of the crowd. As is well known to the medisevaUst, a great many of the tales and fables, the proverbs, the prognostics, the leechcraft prescriptions, and so forth, in vogue to-day among the folk are but the debased product of yesterday's official wisdom.^ The opposite process which Dieterich has termed " revolution from below," ^ though not so general and consequently not so obvious, must none the less be given its due. It is especially apt to occur in con- junction with what the same writer calls " revolution from without." An invading people, let us suppose, which possesses a higher culture, or a culture that is at any rate secure in its predominancy, engages more or less consciously in a pohcy of race-amalgamation. Being in a position to pick and choose, it can dignify certain elements of the local custom at the expense of 1 Festskrifi t. E. Westermarch, 109 f. 2 Cf. Miss C. S. Burne in Folk-Lore, xxii. 28 ; and M. Gaster, ih., XXV. 136. 3 Cf. Folk-Lore, xxiv. 141. no THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE others ; and it may well be that such patronage is lent rather to the institutions of the lower orders, who have to be concihated as future subjects, than to those of the former aristocracy which is once for all dethroned. In such a case there occurs a process which may be named devulgarization. An illustration is to be found in the absorption of primitive cult-elements by Hinduism ; accompanied as it was by the expurgation of grosser details, the invention of justificatory m3rths, and similar appHcations of patrician varnish.^ Apart, too, from con- ditions of culture-contact — in itself a vast subject, since it may take many other forms than the one just con- sidered — the history of religion is full of revivals that force their way up from below ; the reason being that religious experience is by no means a monopoly of the ruKng classes, though these are usually not slow to ex- ploit, if they dare not suppress, such popular transports. Or, again, good examples of this kind of transvaluation are to be obtained frohi the study of folk-tales ; which constantly work their way up to the level of polite society, though not without submitting to an obsequious change of garb. Finally, be it remembered that there is an underworld in which all have been reared, namely, the nursery. It may, thanks to a nurse of the old-fashioned type, have direct relations with the other underworld of peasant folk-lore, but in any case it has an analogous tradition of its own, and one as conservative as any known to man. Here old-time values retain their spell. We shudder at ogres, and long to dance with the fairies. These values, moreover, grow up with us, and in variously transmuted forms enrich adult life; quickening the sense of wonder, the spirit of adventure, the love of simple and vital things. The function of 1 Cf. W. Crooke in Folk-Loye, xxv. 77. Ill PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE folk-lore in education is a subject from which a genius might strike fire. The second main type of cultural transvaluation is change of meaning, or, as it may be phrased, metalepsis. This is, as it were, a horizontal process. If the main interests of life be conceived to stretch longitudinally from pole to pole of the sphere of culture, movement across these hnes can, for analytic purposes, be distinguished from movement up or down. A famiUar illustration of this kind of change is afforded by the transference of a theme from religion to art. A discarded rite colours an incident in a folk-story ; a mask, once of sacred import, decorates the actor in a secular play ; a charm against the evil eye becomes an ornament ; and so on. What happens in such a case ? Regarding it from the psycho- logical standpoint appropriate to the study of value, we may say that a new interest, or fresh system of meanings, has assimilated — or, as a psychologist might put it tech- nically, has apperceived — the theme in question. Now, whereas it was easy to apply the notion of value to the other type of process termed change of standing, since standing and social repute almost come to the same thing, it is not so obvious how change of meaning — that is, assimilation by a new interest — is to be translated off- hand into terms of better and worse. Does it necessarily imply decadence, for example, if a custom be dropped by rehgion and taken up by art ? Surely a wise man will say that it depends on the kind of religion and the kind of art involved. Thus it is, to say the least, a moot point whether an amulet is degraded or advanced by being reinterpreted as a trinket. There is, however, one way in which the scientific historian can roughly estimate the comparative value of the interests that are constitutive of a given state of culture. He can class them as hfe- 112 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE preserving or merely life-adorning, in so far as they do or do not appear to have a practical and utilitarian bearing on the struggle for existence. On the one hand, govern- ment and law, cult and morals, war and commerce, the useful arts and sciences are, plainly, so many nerve- centres of the social organization. On the other hand, what of the speculative sciences and fine arts, the so- called humaner letters, together with the other recrea- tions and amenities of the social life ? Are they not to be reckoned among the luxuries of the leisured class ? The folk must be content to live ; they cannot, in the Aristotelian sense, Uve well. Is it not, then, a sign of loss of value past cure if, at their level of penurious existence, a once helpful observance be relegated to the charge of an unpractical interest — if, in short, they merely sing about what they used to do ? Now it has already been admitted that in the under- world of folk-lore the prevailing movement is downhill. It may weU be, then, that the process just described — it might perhaps be termed depragmatization — is on the whole suggestive of decline. That the institution should first of all disappear ; that the associated belief should thereupon persist for a while as a floating super- stition ; and that, finally, aU that remains of either institution or behef should be some memory of it pre- served in story : all this represents a familiar mode of cultural degeneration. But it is only fair to remember that, whereas institutions are easily upset, beUefs die hard ; and are perhaps secretly biding their time in order that later they may reclothe themselves in an institutional form. For example, we have forcibly put down thuggism and suttee in India, as also twin-murder, the poison- ordeal, and the smelling-out of witches in Africa ; but who knows whether, if European control were removed, 8 113 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE such barbarities would be found to have lost their appeal ? Once more, oral tradition, even when it has come to treat former institutions and behefs mainly as material for wonder-tales, is capable of keeping alive for ages those germinal ideas and sentiments out of which a whole culture may be reproduced. More especially is this so if the inheritors of the lore differ in language and race from the governing stock ; and, in any case, whereas the dominant peoples usually make good learners — ^the Normans may be taken as an example — the under-folk ever find it hard to forget. Change of meaning, then, regarded simply as a trans- valuation, may in general be figured as a transverse movement or transference from one interest to another on the same plane of culture. Moreover, since each major interest can be conceived as made up of a number of minor interests similarly juxtaposed — ritual and dogma, for instance, being comprised in religion, dance and song in art, and so on — such a mode of representa- tion may be indefinitely extended. It remains to note that, while we thus characterize the process from the standpoint of value, it is quite open to us to describe it simultaneously from a different standpoint, namely, that of cause. Let me, without attempting to be exhaustive, give a few examples of such causal ways of viewing change of meaning. Thus sometimes we can account for it as a process of modernization. Old songs are accommodated to new instruments. A mummers' play makes room for a popular hero of the day. Un- familiar animals give way to famiUar ; as in my own part of the world, where a monstrous dog that still haunts the countryside can be proved by a place-name to have succeeded a werewolf. Under the same head, too, might be brought the far-reaching effects in the way of the re- 114 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE interpretation of custom that are produced by the intro duction of a new calendar. Again, there is the somewhat analogous process of acclimatization, when proximity in space, instead of proximity in time, enables new meanings to triumph over old. Thus the remarkable bird-cult of Easter Island, which Mr and Mrs Scoresby Routledge have recently made known to us, now centres round the Sooty Tern or " Wideawake," thanks to the fact that this species alone is locally abundant. It is a fair deduction, however, from the thick-hooked beak and gular pouch of certain of the bird-hke figures sculptured on the rocks, that we have here to do with an immigrant rite originally inspired by the Frigate-bird.^ But I must content myself now with having called attention to change of meaning as a main object of research for the student of folk-lore. To discuss its causes and conditions in detail would carry me altogether too far. A general principle, however, in regard to such causation may be laid down provisionally ; namely, that within the domain of folk-lore the accompanying process of re-adaptation is always subconscious. A breach in the continuity of tradition having somehow come about, the tissue spontaneously repairs itself, partly by the assimilation of fresh matter, and partly by the coalescence of such elements as survive. Con- scious renovation occurs only at a higher level of culture. On the other hand, its ulterior effects will often be noticeable in the nether region of folk-lore, where most of the material used for patching was acquired at second- hand and has known better times. Having up to this point tried to keep apart in thought the two types of transvaluation severally described as 1 See Mrs Scoresby Routledge, in Folk-Lore, xxviii. 337 f. ; and H. Balfour, ib., 356 f„ and esp. 373. PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE change of standing and change of meaning, we may now go on to note how, in practice, it is quite possible for these processes to occur together. Indeed, the presumption is that, when a custom has come down in the world, it must likewise have suffered deflection of meaning by the way, as when the festival of a saint decUnes into a rustic pastime. Equally instructive, however, for purpose of illustration, and at the same time perhaps less obvious, is a twofold movement characteristic of the converse process of revival. It consists in depragmatization conjoined with de vulgar- ization. Folk-institutions are constantly liable to interference from above. Even folk-beliefs cannot be given free expression if they are to escape the assaults of the educated reformer. Hence the trend of cultural degeneration is towards a final rally of the decadent values under the banner of some unpractical interest — one that, as it were, but dreams of the past — such as festivity, song, or story. Of course such an interest has, and always has had, a specific content of its own. Its matter is never a mere detritus-heap of derived oddments. A good wonder-tale or a good dance has been prized for its own sake ever since there were men and women and children in the world. At the same time, the aesthetic tradition of the folk tends to be the residuary legatee of all other expiring interests. Memory and fancy can still play with thoughts that no longer bear directly on the day's work. Now, possibly, the sense of beauty depends more on innate predisposition than on education ; so that what its selective influence preserves is likely to make equal appeal to all ranks, at any rate among those of the same race. Be this as it may, it is certain that the unconscious art of the folk can develop into art of the Ii6 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE conscious and refined order, and must do so if the latter is to be truly national in type. Of course such a process of devulgarization is bound to involve innovation in no small degree. The change wiU be partly of a techni- cal kind, as, for instance, by way of elaboration and synthesis ; but partly also in respect to meaning and spirit, as notably by elevation of the moral tone. Here, then, we have a good instance of the complexity of cultural transvaluation when its movements up, down, and across are followed through a considerable tract of history. A solemn ritual, let us say, is disestablished and descends to the underfolk, the " pagans," deviating from its original meaning as it drops. But the grave of rehgion is the seed-bed of art. First the popular tradition adopts surviving elements such as lend them- selves to imaginative treatment. Then constructive genius re-adapts the rude material conformably to some high moral purpose. Whereupon the cycle of change is complete ; the downward way being com- pensated by the upward way, the falling rain by the reascending vapour. This must suffice as a rapid survey of a vast subject. My purpose throughout has been purely methodological, namely, to call attention to the essential nature of the supreme object of our research. I have insisted that the student of folk-lore must ever keep in touch with the movement, the vital thrust, of present reality, instead of approaching history in the spirit of a sexton. But it would exceed my aim no less than my powers to put this principle into practice, by appending a com- mentary on the European crisis. At most, then, let me acknowledge the eventfulness of the times in a few parting observations. The war is changing all values. So thorough a shuffling must rearrange every "7 / PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE card in the pack. Men will come out of this struggle for liberty either less equal or more equal than before. If the cause of equality succeed — if the philosophy, or rather the reUgion, of the future be that men, though undoubtedly unequal on a mechanical and functional view of society, are nevertheless equal in a spiritual and vital sense — then we may expect the gradual correction of that disparity of social level that hitherto has confined the folk within a narrow world of their own. Spiritual equality, however, is not to be achieved by the bare recitation of a creed. There must be practical realization of the truth that the final cause of the state is not to manage affairs but rather to educate. Shall we say, then, that by education the folk must be abolished in the interest of the people ? To the members of the Folk-lore Society, however, it may not appear at the first blush that " 'tis a con- summation devoutly to be wish'd." They will be apt to say in their hearts : No pheasant, no sport ; no folk, no science of folk-lore. I can assure them that survivals, which Tylor, the inventor of the term, identifies with superstitions,^ are not confined to the folk, as anyone knows who is making a collection of the super- stitions resuscitated among all classes by the present war. Besides, the moral of the present discourse is that our interest must not be restricted to the retro- grade movements of the cultural life. We must get over our prejudice against revival as a tampering with our museum specimens ; and may even assist, as only those who have knowledge of the facts can do effectively, in the rehabiUtation of the simple life, so that it shall be homely, and yet not boorish. The nation can afford to recapture something of its primitive innocence, * Cf. [Sir] E. B. Tylor, Proc. Roy. Inst., v. gi, ii8 THE TRANSVALUATION OF CULTURE Two-thirds of education, it is said, are completed in the nursery. So let a nursery of the mind be created for the people out of the aesthetic tradition of the folk, which can be so re-adapted that all, whether hand- workers or brain-workers, may find nurture therein, as children are taught by pla37ing. Now our educational experts tell us that more science is the need of the time. It may be so ; but more science must not mean less literature. Physical science by itself would but make us the slaves of a world-machine. We need letters also to keep us humane. The thinking and reasoning powers must not be cultivated at the expense of the emotions ; and, whereas the former are exercised on abstractions, the latter develop only in association with concretes. These concretes are but symbols ; the intrinsic or original meaning of any one of them is as nothing in comparison with its value ,as a rallying-point of the assodations whereby a senti- ment" is sustained? Bunting is bunting, but the flag is a nation's pride and hope. But associations are of slow growth. The symbols of a people cannot be replaced suddenly, any more than stately trees can be replaced by saplings. Indeed, wholesale deforestation may be the prelude to utter ruin of the land. Thus in the garden of literature it is well to deal tenderly with venerable timber, though it stand, not in tidy rows, but wherever nature planted it. Even so, then, let us be tender with the old themes embodied in our national folk-lore. Here, despite a certain litter of dead wood, is many an ancient heart of oak stiU fuU of the move- ment of Ufe — a movement hidden during the dead season and revealed but in a power of sheer endurance, yet, as often as spring calls, becoming manifest in an access of fresh efflorescence and increase. 119 VI THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS ARGUMENT TpOLK-LORE in the original and ordinary sense of the term stands for what is essentially a form of primitive culture, namely, the oral tradition of the unlettered peasantry of Europe. Since the folk in this sense is rapidly ceasing to exist, it was natural to think of its lore as so much dead matter. But the so-called survival can never be understood if it is treated merely as a fossil. Its true meaning is perceived only when it is .^ regarded as the outcome of a folk-life full of change and move- ment. Psychological no less than historical conditions must he taken into account. The fossil-hunter tends to overlook the permanent forces at work in the minds to which such lore appeals. Hence he is given over to the fallacy of confounding the psychologically crude with the historically ancient, the primitive in type with the primitive in time. This tendency to ignore existing conditions in favour of causes that acted in some distant past is reinforced by the equally fallacious assump- tion thai a custom at present resting on no obviously intelligible motive must originally have had a clear meaning and purpose. Survivals being defined as habits of society that have in part lost their significance for those that retain them, it follows that in the case of an alleged survival loss of meaning, and not merely lack of meaning, must he proved. Modern psychology, however, extending the doctrine of the unconscious to the men- tality of the group, recognizes that impulses devoid of meaning in the sense of rational justification may nevertheless exert a secret mastery over thought and conduct. Thus lack of meaning I2Q THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS may he due to quite another cause than a process of disuse requiring a historical explanation. It may need to he explained psychologically as the result of an existing mental condition, namely, one of an unintegrated or imperfectly rational type. For example, a folk-tale is not necessarily derived from a savage original because it embodies a naive mode of thinking ; for such a mental habit is not confined to savages. Or, again, the emotions that lie at the root of religion and magic are likely to manifest themselves spontaneously wherever human institutions embody the sentiments of the many rather than the opinions of the few. On the other hand, if a custom can be shown to have had organic connexion with an obsolete type of social organization, the presumption is that loss of meaning has occurred. In short, historical conditions change, whereas psychological conditions are relatively permanent ; and the student of folk-lore must do equal justice to both. THE original meaning of the word " folk-lore " is tolerably clear. When Mr William Thoms in 1846 designated under this title a new field of research, and subsequently helped to found the Folk-lore Society in order to exploit it, he had in mind, more or less exclusively, the traditional culture of the European peasant. For him, and for those who worked with him, such rustic folk-lore is essentially a form of primitive culture, differentiated from other forms by the fact that, through contact with a high civiUzation, the old-world institutions are in a general state of decay. And there is much truth in this view. The folk is out of keeping with modem conditions. It is not to be found in cities. A new country, such as a British colony, is without it. Again, the vehicle of its ideas is an oral tradition. The folk as such is un- lettered, and hence ceases to be itself when the board 121 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE school and the newspaper invade its haunts. Books and book-learning being almost unknown to it, it relies for guidance in the daily round on neighbourly example and word-of-mouth communication. The mass of such examples and communications forms the lore of the folk, its social keritage of wisdom. Thus, the folk itself being as it were in a state of survival throughout Europe, it was nattiral to regard its lore as made up of survivals. To use the metaphor that had wide currency from the first, folk-lore was but a heap of fossils. Correspondingly, then, the science of folk-lore was defined as the study of survivals, a palaeontology of human culture. But the results of such a method of interpretation have not proved wholly satisfactory. The scientific interest is one-sided. Fossil-hunting has been overdone. Owing to this bias there has been failure to discriminate between the old and the merely old-fashioned, the chrono- logically and the typologically primitive. Hence the need is felt for a revised method of folk-lore study. This must treat folk-lore not as so much dead matter, but as the outcome of an organic process, namely, of an existing or recently existing folk-life. If this folk- life be studied as a whole, change and movement are in evidence ever3nvhere. If the old be conserved, it is likewise re-adapted and transformed ; nor is the new altogether rejected, though it is so created or assimilated as normally to wear the semblance of the old. To take an example. A charm for removing warts may, apparently, resemble a piece of savage magic. Yet comparisons based simply on its form will not tell us how old it is, nor whence it comes. It may have been improvised yesterday by some latter-day medicine-man of the countryside, half leech and half 123 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS wizard. It may be a degraded scrap of scientific medicine, perhaps mediaeval, or perhaps, if it belong to what is known as the southern tradition, going right back by way of the Arabs to Hippocrates himself. Or, again, it may be part of the northern tradition and embody the rude notions of ancestral Danes or Saxons. Meanwhile, whatever be its origin, it is likely to conform to a general pattern such as the mind of the folk abidingly approves. In order to explain it, therefore, psycho- logical, no less than historical, conditions must be taken into account. Moreover, the former lend themselves to observation ; whereas the latter are mostly matters of inference, shading off by degrees into bare conjecture. It must next be asked what folk-lore means for Sir James Frazer, in his capacity of Biblical critic. Clearly the term is used in an extended sense that carries us beyond the peasant-culture of Europe Indeed, a general definition is provided in his Preface that assigns it a connotation so wide as almost to be vague. Folk-lore, he says, " in the broadest sense of the word may be said to embrace the whole body of a people's traditionary beliefs and customs, so far as these appear to be due to the collective action of the multitude and cannot be traced to the individual influence of great men." It would be easy to carp at this generous conception of the subject. Are we to gather that the folk is society minus its leaders, and that folk-lore and biography are henceforth to divide the field of history between them ? But history certainly has these two sides, whatever we are going to call them ; and perhaps all that Sir James Frazer wishes to indicate is that in a general way his present work relates to the one side rather than to the other. Nay, we might venture to pursue this line of thought 123 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE a little further on our own account. Just as there is a psychology of the crowd, so there might be a psy- chology of what Sir James Frazer would call the multitude or, less happily, the folk. The crowd is a temporary and casual assemblage of human beings. As such it exhibits pecuUar activities and impulses that have been described and analysed with some success. So too, then, the multitude, being a permanent crowd, as it were, and one that can perpetuate its collective tendencies in the form of a tradition, displays a special type of behaviour such as is well worth studying apart. Or, since the multitude, as thus understood, though it stands for a universal aspect of human society, is by no means so prominent a feature in one social context as in another, it might be more profitable to institute a series of studies devoted, as one might say, to leading cases. In this direction something has already been achieved. M. Levy-Bruhl, for instance, in his well-known book, Les Fonctions Mentales dans les SocieUs Infdrieures, deals with the collective mind or " mentality " of the savage tribe. Mr Graham Wallas, again, in his Human Nature in Politics, has examined the proletariat of the modern state from the same point of view. But the folk, in the ordinary sense of the peasantry, though it provides a prerogative instance of the kind required, has hitherto been almost ignored by the student of social psychology. Despite the vast mass of detailed evidence that hes ready to hand, there has never yet been attempted a comprehensive description of the mental life of the folk at our doors, much less a general analysis that brings out how and why it is so markedly gregarious in its distinctive manifestations. If this were to be done, the piecemeal method of dealing with folk-lore as a scrap-heap of cultural fossils would presumably go by 134 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS the board once for all. In so far, then, as Sir James Frazer's definition of folk-lore foreshadows a better way of dealing with subjects of the kind, namely, one that regards tradition as the live expression of a collective consciousness, it is heartily to be welcomed, even if his use of the name betrays a tendency to confound the species with the genus. It remains to Inquire whether Sir James Frazer's actual treatment of the folk-lore of the Old Testament accords with his general definition of the subject, or with the psychological method that this definition seems to imply. If it does, the fact is not obvious. The reader is frankly told that the aim of the treatise is to look for folk-lore in the shape of sundry " survivals " of savagery that are " preserved hke fossils " in the Old Testament. As far as this goes, folk-lore might consist entirely in survivals ; and, more than that, it might seem that the proposition can be converted simply, and all survivals, even such as occur in a literature, are to rank as folk-lore. For the rest, " the collective action of the multitude " is nowhere in evidence as a principle of explanation, being applied neither to the Jewish people nor to those sava,ges from whom the survivals in question are supposed to have descended. What method, then, does the actual treatment involve ? At first sight the procedure might seem to be simply this : to pick out certain stories, beliefs or customs of the Jews that have an old-fashioned air ; to adduce savage parallels in plenty ; and to leave the student to draw his own conclusions. But to say that no more is attempted would be unfair. Sir James Frazer's intimate acquaintance with the savage and his ways enables him usually to suggest some plausible ground for a given idea or institution as found among the savages that he cites. 125 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE If thereupon he could prove that the Jewish analogue had little or no present meaning for the Jews of Biblical times, this would at least afford a presumption that we must seek for its origin in the past history of the people ; though not necessarily in a savage past, unless no inter- mediate state of culture could possibly have brought it into being. But on this side the argument tends to be sketchy. After all, Jewish history is a secondary interest with Sir James Frazer. Nevertheless, his industry and his erudition are both so prodigious that he is not likely to have left anything undone that seemed to him worth doing. The chances are that, if any of his results are at all inconclusive, the cause — apart, of course, from sheer lack of evidence— is the tendency, deeply rooted in folk-lore study, to pursue a naive method of survivals that confuses the historically ancient with the psychologically crude. Genuine survivals are habits of society that have in part lost their meaning and use for those who retain them. But in practice it is very difficult to apply these tests of meaning and use to the habits — the customary ways of feeling, thinking, and acting — of any society or section of society with an outlook widely differing from our own. Their standards, not ours, provide the only objective criterion of the inadequacy imputed to the alleged survival ; but it is only too easy to succumb to the fallacy of supposing that what is more or less mean- ingless and useless in our own eyes must be so for all sorts and conditions of men. And not only is it certainly untrue to imagine that human behaviour universally rests on the same reasons ; it is even uncertain how far some of its varieties can be attributed to motives of the rational type at all. As in the psychology of the in- dividual some experiences, for instance dreams, are held to be governed from below the threshold of conscious- 126 THE INTERPRETATION OP SURVIVALS ness, so on social psychology it is the modern fashion to postulate a " collective unconscious " whence processes originate that in their surface appearance seem to set the logic of the purposive Hfe at defiance. Be this as it may, it is a well-established law that conduct ever runs ahead of the power of analysing its grounds ; so that, even where a trained faculty of reflexion is at work, the real springs of action remain obscure, being never identical and sometimes quite at variance with the reasons whereby we justify it after the event. How much harder, then, is it to arrive at the true motives in the case of the unsophisticated type of man who lacks the power of ex-post-facto justification ; who, like the gentleman in the story, " never apologizes." As Turgenev says of the Russian peasant : " Who can understand him ? He does not understand himself." Thus the student of survivals must beware lest he embark on a wild-goose chase in search of an original meaning that never was. The peasant does so-and-so, he knows not why. Here are savages that seem to do the like, but, alas ! if they once knew why, they have forgotten. Whereupon infinite regress seems suggested. The method of survivals has great value when critically employed ; but due allowance must be made for the fact that lack of meaning may or may not imply loss of meaning. It may either be the effect of disuse, and so be referable to antecedent historical conditions ; or, as the symptom of an imperfect mental integration, it may be assignable to psychological conditions operating here and now. It is high time to pass on to consider -Sir James Frazer's particular results ; and aU the more so because much of what has hitherto been said is not meant to apply especially to him. Rather the opportunity caused by the 127 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLlC-LORE appearance of an important work constructed on what may be called the classical model has been utilized in order to glance at recent tendencies, such as augur the adoption of new methods, or at any rate an exacter use of the old. Thus, oif" the one hand, the principle of historical affiliation, as proved by cultural diffusion from a centre, has of late received great emphasis ; and in its service a method has been developed whereby the evi- dential value of survivals is clearly demonstrated, at any rate within the two departments of technology and social organization. On the other hand, psychologists of the Freudian school have essayed a new interpretation of primitive culture, more especially as regards certain aspects of mythology and religion ; and their findings, however tentative at present, at least suggest that we must reckon not only -with the formative influence of a quasi-mechanical transmission from one group of men to another, but likewise with that of a spontaneous genera- tion, constantly renewed, such as issues from the depths of our common human nature. In the mean- time. Sir James Frazer, preferring fact to theory, is more concerned to adduce similarities in culture than to decide whether these similarities are to be explained in one way or in the other. In so far as he wears the mantle of Robertson Smith, he seeks to do justice to historical causes. Inasmuch, however, as he like- wise loyally maintains the tradition of Tylor, he is not oblivious of psychological conditions, which Tylor long ago distinguished as the causes lying nearer at hand, and hence forming an especially profitable object of research. If there is a flaw in his method, it is simply that he does not realize how near at hand these latter causes often are, but tends to relegate them one and all to the past. Yet at all events it is a cheering view that 128 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS any low-grade habits we may still possess are due to historical accident, not to ourselves. Sir James Frazer's sub-title implies a logical division of his subject under the three heads of religion, legend, and law. Some such classification of the material is convenient, and may be followed here ; though it must not be forgotten that every topic alike falls in the first instance under the category of rehgion, since it relates to the content of a hierarchical tradition and a sacred text. First, then, we may deal with legend, if, as he presumably does. Sir James Frazer intends to include under this heading, not only stories about remarkable persons and events, but also stories about origins, such as are usually classed as aetiological, or explanatory, myths. A tjrpical example is the myth of the creation of man. Having analysed the earher and more naive of the two narratives preserved in Genesis, Sir James Frazer proceeds to muster by its side a large number of more or less similar tales. Some belong to what Dr FameU would term " the adjacent anthropology," here represented by a fairly civilized environment ; and the rest hail from the remotest comers of the uncivilized world. He " cannot doubt that such rude conceptions of the origin of mankind, common to Greeks, Hebrews, Babylonians and Egyptians, were handed down to the civihzed peoples of antiquity by their savage or barbarous forefathers." ^ But can he, and does he, prove it ? This certainly is an occasion when we must allow for the possibiUty of independent invention. What could be more natural and universal than to want to know how first there came to be men ? To which question there can be but one of two answers : either that they were made, or that they grew. The latter view is widespread • Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, i, 8, 9 129 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE among savages, who are notoriously proud to claim an animal ancestry ; and it may weU be that some folk- lorist of the future will maintain that the Darwinian theory itself is a survival of totemism. But here we are concerned with the other notion that men were made. The Bibhcal account simply says that God " formed man of the dust of the ground." Hereupon Sir James Frazer comments : "To the Hebrews this derivation of our species from the dust of the ground suggested itself aU the more naturally because, in their language, the word for ' ground ' (adamah) is in form the feminine of the word for ' man ' {adam)." ^ He elsewhere adds : " The Hebrew word for man in general is adam, the word for ground is adamah, and the word for red is adom ; so that by a natural and almost necessary concatenation of causes we arrive at the conclusion that our first parent was modelled out of red earth." ^ The tone of the last passage perhaps verges on irony ; but, if the suggestion of an et5miological basis for the myth is seriously meant, then surely our search for its origin must be confined to one linguistic area. But in this case what is the precise relevance of a parallel from outside this area — say, the example cited from Egypt of the god Khnoumou who moulded men out of clay on his potter's wheel ? Besides, in the comparison of stories it is highly unsafe to deduce a historical connexion from the recurrence of a single incident. Further, an incident is hardly recognizable as one and the same when it varies from an exhibition of the potter's art, as in the Egyptian instance, to the making of a clay figure in relief upon a piece of bark, as in an Australian case adduced as a parallel ; where perhaps a piece of imitative magic is implied, since neither god nor man in aboriginal Australia ever tried 1 F. 0. T., i. 6. « F. O. T., i. 29. 130 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS to make a pot. The only satisfactory way of demon- strating diffusion by culture-contact in the case of a story is to discover variants of the same plot or com- bination of incidents, as is done for instance in Miss Cox's Cinderella, a model investigation of folk-tale distribu- tion. Nothing of the sort being attempted here, we are left to make what we can out of the scattered episodes. Of these, perhaps, the most striking is the creation of Eve out of a rib. Certain Asiatic parallels Sir James Frazer beheves to be echoes of the Biblical account, due to missionary influence. But what is to be made of a story, reported from three different parts of Poljmesia, that the first woman was named Ivi, having been created out of a rib or bone, for which ivi is the regular Pol37nesian word ? It appears too that ivi, bone, is widely used in various secondary senses that include wife, widow, relation, famUy. Thus there is good reason to suspect the development of an etymological myth on the spot ; and yet the coincidence, if it be but that, with the Genesis story is most remarkable. But enough has been said to make plain both the intrinsic difficulty of the comparative study of folk-tales and the inadequacy of the proof that the Bibhcal creation-myth is derived from a savage original. Naive it certainly is, and the product of a naive way of thinking. But such a mental habit is not peculiar to a low stage of general culture ; as witness the fact that a large number of civihzed people accept the Bible story to this day. The treatment of the myth of the fall of man is more convincing. In the first place, it is clearly shown that the tale as we have it is what Tylor would term a partial survival, a re-adaptation of an older theme which has, however, left its mark on the new version in the shape of certain irrelevancies. Thus the tree of life appears in 131 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE the story without contributing to its point ; and this fact by itself leads us to suspect that the somewhat transcendental problem, How came sin into the world ? was grafted on to the ingenuous and more downright question, How did death first come ? In the second place, the hunt for parallels culminates in the discovery of a genuine story-cycle of the primitive type required. Man is sent a message bidding him live and not die, but the animal deputed as messenger perverts the message, so that man dies. Sometimes the messenger by his lie gets immortal life for himself, as did the frog ; for it is well known that frogs come to life again as soon as the rainy season begins. This group of tales belongs to Africa ; but outside this area Sir James Frazer collects many stories about animals, and in particular serpents, that, by casting their skin or otherwise, renew their youth and do not die ; and some of these narratives from South America, Indonesia, Melanesia, and so on, hke- wise explain, in one way or another, how man lost or missed the gift of immortality which the animal now has. Meanwhile, not the slightest hint is given how a his- torical connexion between the Biblical myth and these savage " Just-so stories " is to be made out ; and the adjacent anthropology that might have supplied an in- termediate link is totally neglected. This is the more surprising because a tree of life is known to Babylonian mythology. But Sir James Frazer throughout deals with Babylonian analogies somewhat perfunctorily, perhaps because he feels that so intricate a matter is better left to the special student. Babylonia, however, is duly made responsible for the stories of Babel and of the Flood. Babel, indeed, seems to mean Babylon. " The commentators are probably right in tracing the origin of the story to the deep im- 132 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS pression produced by the great city on the simple minds of Semitic nomads." ^ One of the great temple-towers provides the nucleus of the tale ; and ideas have gathered roimd it concerning the nemesis attending such heaven- scaling efforts, and, again, about the origin of language — ^ideas that can be matched elsewhere among primitive folk, though they are nowhere found in this particular combination. The legend of the Flood, which formed the subject of Sir James Frazer's Huxley Lecture, is examined at great length ; and his method of handling and interpreting such material is expUcitly revealed as nowhere else in the book. He wiU not seek to rival Wintemitz in the attempt to prove historical relation- ship by reference to the number of elements that different versions have in common, leaving such calculations to those who have " a statistical and mathematical turn of mind." By simple inspection, however, he decides that, though diffusion from local centres may have occurred in certain regions such as America and Polynesia, these deluge-stories have for the most part originated inde- pendently. The Bible story, of course, goes back to Babylon and Sumer, and presumably relates to the inundations of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, if not to some particular flood that impressed the popular imagination by its violence. Hence it must be classed as a legend. Certain other tales, however, are to be regarded rather as " myths of observation." Thus Sir James Frazer refuses to connect the Greek tradition of Deucalion with the Babylonian group of legends. " The Thessalian story is probably nothing but a false inference from the physical geography of the mountain-ringed Thessahan basin and its outlet, the gorge of Tempe."^ Whatever be the value of such explanations, it is to be noted that 1 F. O. T., i. 365. 2 F. 0. T., i. 360. PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE they do not necessarily carry us far into the " backward of time," merely postulating a pre-scientific habit of mind which, in the case of Sumer, need not even have been pre-literary. The same remark applies to Sir James Frazer's interpretation of the kero-legends of the Jews, as for example those concerning Moses, Samson, Solomon, Elijah, Jonah. It is in respect of quality, not age, that they are primitive, presupposing much the same mental conditions as do the mediaeval lives of the saints. Passing on from legend to religion and law, we may note that under the two latter heads customs are mostly examined ; and that the method of survivals is more likely to be successful in dealing with customs than with mental habits. Religious and legal institutions tend to be organized in systems, and a given custom that is not in keeping with the prevailing system and lacks its support may with some safety be treated as the relic of an earlier dispensation. To go further, however, and assign each system to its place in a general evolutionary scale would be at best a precarious task. For instance, the centralized and henotheistic system of religion so passionately advocated by the Prophets was in principle incompatible with the chaotic polj^heism involved in the cult of local baalim, high places, sacred trees and stones, and so forth. The fossil-hunter, however, can by no means claim as his own these manifestations of a cruder faith, seeing that the so-called survivals were in a seething state of revival in ancient Israel, while in modern Judsea their status is almost completely restored, thanks to Mohammedan toleration of the local saint and his shrine. Sir James Frazer does not attempt to present a con- spectus of the customs prevailing at this lower level of religion, though passing hints would seem to show that 134 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS such practices as religious prostitution and human sacrifice were especially characteristic of this phase. He does, however, illustrate certain aspects in a veiy inter- esting way, arguing, for example, that the sacred groves were probably such remnants of primaeval forest as agriculture had spared in deference to the spirit of the wood, whose last resting-place it would be dangerous to disturb. He has also much to say about the attribution of sacredness to stones. He might, however, with ad- vantage have distinguished between the cult of the natural rock rendered impressive by its shape or situa- tion, and the reverence shown towards the rude stone monuments of a vanished race ; while the actual setting up of stones with some religious end in view might have furnished him with a third topic. The examples given chiefly relate to the first of these subjects. But, seeing that the dolmen, the stone circle and the cairn, each distributed through a different region, abounded in Judaea, it would have been instructive to compare the attitude of the immigrant Israelites towards such mys- terious reUcs of the past with that of the European peasant, say, the Breton, whose awe is ever tempting him towards acts of positive worship. Again, here and there stones are still being erected, as by the Khasis and Nagas ; and it might have proved worth while to analyse such imperfect information as we have concerning the motives on which the usage rests. Some of the customs discussed, however, belonged to the estabUshed system of religion, and in such a case rank as survivals only in the sense that their grounds were now obscure ; though whether these had once been clear must remain somewhat doubtful. Thus the priest who ministered in the sanctuary wore golden bells on the skirts of his robe, and these must sound as he entered 135 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE and when he came forth lest he should die. The under- lying idea is supposed to be that evil influences are scared away by the sound of metal ; and such may well have been the reason for the Christian practice of ring- ing the passing bell, while the value of church bells for averting thunderstorms and the like was widely recog- nized in the Middle Ages. On- the other hand. Sir James Frazer wisely deems it not irrelevant to illustrate the power of bells to touch the heart, so that, as a religion of fear develops into a rehgion of love, there is not loss, but change and even gain, of meaning in respect of the traditional symbol. He adds : "A study of the emo- tional basis of folk-lore has hardly yet been attempted ; inquirers have confined their attention almost exclusively to its logical and rational, or, as some might put it, its illogical and irrational elements." ^ Truly, the bane of the psychological study of human belief is a shallow intellectualism. Reasons of the heart are far more universal and abiding than reasons of the head ; and to them must primarily be referred those astonishing simi- larities that crop up spontaneously wherever human institutions embody the sentiments of the many rather than the opinions of the few. Thus it is by sjonpathetic insight rather than by the parade of imreal explanations extorted from bewildered savages and rustics that we may hope to arrive, if at all, at the inwardness of many a vague behef precipitated in custom. Why, for instance, did the Jews object to taking a census ? So the savage will not mention the number of his children. So, too, the European shepherd will not number his flock, nor the fisherman his draught of fishes. No explicit reason for the prejudice has ever been formulated by these simple-minded folk. But perhaps we can detect 1 F. 0. T., iii. 434. 136 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS in ourselves a sense of some nemesis attaching to the arrogance that would hold fortune to strict account. Again, why did the Jews have priests who bore the title of Keepers of the Threshold ? Sir James Frazer collects endless instances of rites, mostly rites of avoid- ance, that show the threshold, not only of a temple, but hkewise of the private house or tent, to have been esteemed sacred all the world over. Yet no plain reason for the behef is in evidence anj^where, since the occasional practice of burying the dead under the threshold will hardly account for it. Nevertheless, the emotion we ourselves experience in taking a decisive step, in crossing a Rubicon, may afford us an inkhng of the motive that prompts a ceremonial passage across the limit that marks off from the profane outer world the temple pre- cinct or the scarcely less sacred home. At the same time, whereas all men have much the same emotions, their expression varies greatly with the stage of culture reached. Due restraint in the matter of expression does not desiccate the feelings. On the contrary, by trans- forming a transient excitement into a diffused fervour it perpetuates the mood, enriches it with internal rhythm, promotes its aUiance with ideal elements, and in a word fosters that refinement of mind which is the supreme end of culture. Thus Sir James Frazer is justified in treating such phenomena as " cutting for the dead," and weeping by way of salutation, as features of low-grade mind and society. As the savage parallels show — and the same point might be illustrated in many other ways — ^joy and sorrow and physical pain hardly exist as distinct values for the " hair-trigger organization " that can find no solace save in the nervous discharge, immediate, violent, and almost undirected. There is not room for more than a brief mention of 137 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE sundry practices here discussed that can scarcely be referred to any religious system, whether past or still prevailing, but must have always tended to be suspect as unofficial and private dealings with the occult. Saul's visit to the Witch of Endor was at best a hole-and-corner affair, and, on a sterner view of the case, might be set down as a thoroughly disreputable transaction with a professional votary of the black art. Rachel's man- drake, on the other hand, or Joseph's divining cup, or David's bundle of life — ^presumably some sort of strong box in which his soul could be stored out of harm's way — are, if not actually nefarious, at any rate related to the self-regarding and, as such, shady side of hfe. As for the vitality of these so-called dry bones of the past, fertility charms are still on sale in the East End of London, while in the West End a seance with a Witch of Endor is doubtless to be obtained for a suitable fee. To deal, lastly, with the subject of law, it is well known to the student of ancient society that no hard- and-fast Une can be drawn between religious and legal institutions. Thus Abraham's covenant involves a method of binding the contracting parties by making them pass between the severed portions of a sacrificial victim. On the strength of various analogies Sir James Frazer suggests that the double sanction is impHed — first a conditional curse that a Uke severing may befall him who breaks his word, and secondly a blessing im- parted by the holy relics that strengthens each in his moral purpose. An obscurer question bearing on the same topic is why sacrificial skins should be used cere- monially to render a legal adoption valid, as also to make covenants binding. The custom is at present confined to East Africa ; but Sir James Frazer, sug- gesting possible culture-contact with the Senaitic world, 138 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS tries to discover some similar motive in the wearing of kid skins on hand and neck by Jacob when he ousted his brother from the paternal inheritance. Equally dark is the problem why a slave who refused the offer of freedom and preferred to stay with his master must undergo the painful rite of having his ear nailed to the sacred doorpost, as if so to seal the contract with his blood. Whatever be the answer to these riddles, it is not likely to be found in some clear idea that once issued from the mind of a prehistoric philosopher. The blood- covenant is rather one of the many crystallizations in custom of a fluid and indeterminate sentiment regarding the power inherent in the sacred — a power at once to heal and to hurt, to fortify the just and punish the unjust. Such a sentiment is no product of a particular age and coiuitry, but is as catholic and perennial as the religious consciousness itself. The special institution, on the other hand, has a traceable history ; though, being but a variation on a world-wide theme, the odds are all in favour of its constant repetition in forms so much ahke as in practice to be indistinguishable. Thus the notion of the two-edged power of the sacred underUes the ordeal, as when at the trial of the adulteress the priest pUed her with " the bitter water that causeth the curse." Whether there is historical connexion with the African custom of the poison-ordeal it is hard to say ; but mankind has found it profitable to experiment in all sorts of ways upon the susceptibiUty of a guilty conscience to the threat of supernatural justice ; and so it is that, even if ordeals be now out of fashion, modem law is content to retain the oath. In these cases the sacred or supernatural is approached that it may put forth its power in the interest of man. In other cases its negative aspect is prominent, namely, 139 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE that in which the " contagion of holiness " is chiefly felt as something to be shunned. The bearing of taboo on the law of homicide is a subject on which much might be said. Sir James Frazer touches on it when discussing the mark of Cain. Was it a disguise to protect him from the avenging power of the kindred blood that he had shed ? Again, the homicidal ox must be slain, on the world-wide principle, illustrated by the English law of deodand, that everything associated with the act of bloodshed is infectious with the taint of sin. For the rest, his examples show how, while the impulse is uni- form, the thought is mixed. The blood is contagious, yet cries aloud for vengeance and may be baffled by disguise. The ox is at once an accursed thing and a criminal that must be punished. Wherever we look we find the same " confusion of categories " — of our cate- gories, that is to say. Why is it taboo to seethe the kid in the mother's milk ? Is it lest the heat of the fire by sympathetic transference dry up the udder, or lest injury be done to the goat's maternal feelings ? To the primitive logic of the heart it is indifferent which reason be given ; nor even in these days of criticism is there any guide of life so sure as the bare intuition of the seemly. If the bearing of the foregoing remarks has been mainly psychological, it is because it seemed that from this point of view the significance of survivals for the science of man might be apprehended in a new light. A surface-view of history as a welter of chance clashings and collocations shows change and decay everywhere. Seeking deeper, however, we come upon tendencies and motives that are, humanly speaking, everlasting. Yet equal justice must be done to passing and to permanent conditions. Thus, where the psychologist prefers to lay 140 THE INTERPRETATION OF SURVIVALS stress on the continuity of the mental life, the sociologist, working at another level of thought, may legitimately choose rather to insist on the relativity of custom, its dependence on the circumstances and convenience of the moment. Two of Sir James Frazer's most elaborate arguments sound this latter note. He deduces from the story of Jacob's displacement of Esau a former law, now surviving as a bare memory, by which the younger son succeeds. This practice of junior right or ultimogeni- ture — our Borough EngUsh — ^he explains, after a careful study of its distribution, as due to some migratory form of the economic hfe which causes the children as they grow up to desert the family dwelling, so that the youngest is left last in charge and possession. Again, Jacob's marriage with the daughters of his maternal uncle furnishes the text for what amounts to a complete treatise on this type of matrimonial arrangement, so prevalent in the primitive world. Sir James Frazer argues with great plausibihty that it is the result of the exchange of sisters and daughters at a stage of society when this is the easiest and cheapest way of obtaining a wife. But it is impossible here to do justice to these sociological researches which, for the pure anthro- pologist, constitute — if it may be said without prejudice to the rest — the cream of the book. Suffice it to say that in this field of speculation the method of survivals is seen at its best. In conclusion, let what has been said be construed as no grudging testimony to the worth of a work that on forty separate main topics, not to take stock of the infinite number of other matters that are touched on by the way, has brought to bear the searchlight of a vast erudition, illuminating by its means wide tracts of the mental and social history of man. The method employed 141 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE is that of the traditional anthropology ; and, granted the validity of this method, the results cannot but be whole-heartedly approved. If certain apparent Umita- tions of this method have been dwelt on here, it does not follow that for a science of history as distinguished from a philosophy it is altogether practicable or even desirable to transcend them. At any rate, the master of a more fruitful method has not yet appeared in this field. Mean- while, the ultimate question is how the study of survivals is to serve as a pathway to reahty. Just as all symbols are as nothing in themselves, their reahty consisting in their meaning, so, it has been suggested, the crude con- ceptual and institutional forms of an age more inar- ticulate than ours must be interpreted, not by reference to the shifting shapes themselves, but in the light of the persistent vital purposes that they embody and in their own way express. The truth, if it is to be touched at aU, will not consist in the dying letter, but in the spirit that Hves on. 142 VII ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION ARGUMENT TT^HAT is the relation between the attitudes of the anthro- pologist and of the theologian towards religion ; in other words, between the attempt to trace religious development and the effort to establish religious truth? The terms origin and validity are used severally to denote the observed starting-point of a process and the proved sufficiency of a principle ; so that they serve to distinguish the separate interests in question. The one is the interest of history and science, the other that of philosophy and religion. These four disciplines furnish the student of man with a scale or ascent of widening outlook. History states a " that," describing the actual seriation of events. Science goes on to exhibit the " how " of the process, by discovering within it a law of normal sequence or tendency. So far the interest is in fad, but henceforth it relates to value. Philosophy seeks to supplement the " how " of science with a " why," by subordinating cause to purpose, compulsion from without to determination from within ; though it fails to recon- cile completely these rival principles of explanation. Finally, religion, being not merely teleological but ieleopractical, not a mere way of thought but a way of life, solves the contradiction between necessity and freedom by an act of faith which takes the all-sufficiency of the goodwill for granted. As for theology, since it has to render religious experience into terms of thought, it cannot transcend the level of philosophy, and thus can never overtake the vital movement of religion ; though on the other 143 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE hand it can by criticism counteract to some extent the aberra- tions incidental to a blind enthusiasm. Such, then, being the place oj anthropological science in a graded scheme of studies leading up to the religious life, it is clear that its outlook is strictly limited, and that the definition of religion found suitable for its special purposes may well prove inadequate for the purposes of the philosopher-theologian. Thus the student of human origins may be content to define the quality common to the religions he compares as sacredness ; going on to characterize the sacred negatively as that which is supernatural, separated, and esoteric, positively as that which is powerful, personal, and good. The net result of such a view of religion as the stand- point of origin permits would seem to be that as a fact mankind universally tends to believe in a power that makes for righteous- ness and one that by humble approach men may draw on for their own good. Whether the fact that religion is so valued proves it to be truly valuable is a question that concerns, not the anthropologist, but the theologian. Meanwhile religion solves the problem ambulando — by a progressive experience or trying. WHAT is the present attitude of the Christian theologian toward the study of anthropologi- cal origins in their bearing on the history of religion ? Even if it be circumspect rather than cordial, it is at any rate no longer actively hostile, as half a century ago it used to be. Thus the first attempt to found the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1846 was rendered futile by the church-supporting government of the day. Even when finally in 1859, the year of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, such a society was duly constituted, its illustrious founder Broca was formally bound over to keep the discussions within orthodox limits, a police agent actually attending the 144 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION sittings so as to enforce this stipulation.^ But the progress of time has brought about a welcome change of spirit. To-day I find myself invited as an anthro- pologist to make a statement in a periodical devoted to theology concerning the anthropological view of religion. The assumption clearly is that it may be fruitfully com- bined with the theological view ; else why be at pains to consider it here at all ? In short, sympathy is proffered in place of the old-world antipathy. The time is evi- dently ripe for trying to determine how, and to what extent, we anthropologists and theologians can help one another, while none the less remaining true to our several methods and aims. Of course we have our several prejudices also. They may not be those of fifty years ago, but even so they are doubtless strong enough to count for a good deal. As an anthropologist, however, who has tried to take stock of the complex human impulses for which the word " prejudice " stands, I must confess to a certain respect for prejudice, as one of the major forces that move the world of men. Regarding it from this point of view, one's utmost hope is to see it, not eradicated, but trans- formed. Prejudices have only to be purged by criticism, and they become principles ; all principles being in the last resort, as I at least am incHned to believe, attitudes of faith, rather than expressions of pure reason,whatever that may be. Now there is at least one prejudice that the theologian and the anthropologist have in common, and that is the love of truth. The very nerve of science consists in the will to believe only the truth. Religion too is surely bound to regard this as the only genuine " will to believe." This cardinal prejudice, however, stands in need of critical confirmation if it is to acquire ' Cf. Atheneeum, July 24, 1909, p. 103. 10 145 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE the enhanced authority of a principle. A thoroughly enlightened pursuit of truth — that, one feels, would bring theologian and anthropologist once for all into line. The end is plain enough. The difficulty is how to attain it. Now it is notorious that philosophers are aU in a maze about the nature of truth. Yet it is their business, I suppose, to co-ordinate the intellectual activities of man by exhibiting truth as a crystal of many facets which each departmental study may aspire to illuminate from a different side. Are we to wait, involved in con- troversy and confusion of spirit, until they are in a position to tell us what truth is ? It would seem the sounder policy that each should play the philosopher for himself so far as to try to make clear the aspect in which truth is revealed to him through his special re- searches. This, then, I shall endeavour to do, speaking from the anthropological point of view. Let the theo- logian in his turn do the same from his distinct, and un- doubtedly more comprehensive, point of view. There- upon we shall have pooled our notions of truth, as it were ; and the result must assuredly be to bring us nearer together. So much then for the ultimate orientation of the present inquiry. I have insisted on the need of agreeing at the outset to will the truth and the truth only, because, though this may sound a platitude, it, is really nothing of the sort. Few educated persons, it may be, would be ready to sacrifice truth to personal convenience. But most of us are cowards when it is a question of setting truth above social convenience. I do not say that truth and convenience, whether personal or social, are ultimately opposed. But it is obvious that the social convenience of the moment is at constant war 146 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION with the tendency, manifested by the best minds of every nation and age, to be honest with themselves at all costs. The impulse that bids such noble spirits manfuUy to refuse to cling to illusions cannot itself be an illusion. The last stronghold of faith is here — ^in the conviction that hfe is not a lie. So far then as we have this faith in common, there cannot be any final parting of the ways as between anthropologist and theologian. Whatever be our temporary versions of the truth, truth in itself must be one for all. Now the nature of the question before us is suitably expressed by means of an antithesis which is currently employed by philosophers in this as in many a similar context.^ Let Origin represent the standpoint of the anthropologist and Validity the standpoint of the theologian. It wiU be necessary to consider these terms apart before proceeding to ask how, if at all, they may be taken together, may be harmonized according to a higher synthesis. Origin, of course, means beginning, and beginning is a relative term, at any rate so far as it applies to what- ever is conditioned by time and change. Since absolute beginnings fall outside the sphere of the anthropologist, it foUows that he may treat any former state of the thing under investigation as its original condition, according to the needs of a given inquiry. Since he can never complete the. infinite regress, he can but proceed thus or thus far in his search for the primitive, as specu- lative interest dictates or evidential opportunity allows. Origin, then, covers all previous history, any chapter ' See, for instance, my essay, " Origin and Validity in Ethics," in Personal Idealism, ed. H. Sturt, London, 1902, to which the present paper is intended to provide a sequel. 147 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE in that history serving as a possible starting-point. In short. Origin, as it concerns the anthropologist, presides over the use of the past tense of the verb "to be," however wide be that use or however restricted. Besides this merely historical meaning of the term Origin, there is another which is so intimately associated with it that the two are in practice usually confused. From signifying " beginning," origin slips imperceptibly into meaning " cause " ; though whenever we say origin in the place of cause we are employing the looser expression. Now in the context to which anthropology wholly relates, namely, the sphere of time and change, cause imphes the notion of antecedence combined, as best may be, with the notion of necessity. If the anthropologist argues that the modern king is hedged in by a strict etiquette " because " the primitive king was sacred, or that we throw rice at weddings to-day " because " it was once a magico-religious way of im- parting fertility, he means or ought to mean that not otherwise could the more recent institution have come into being. As it is, however. Origin may stand more or less indifferently for the merely historical or for the causal, for post hoc or propter hoc — modes of relation which it would be disastrous to identify offhand. Mean- while, Origin, being at best a loose expression for cause, is likely to betray the would-be historian of origins into causal explanations unawares. Now anthropology is at least history. It considers mankind as subject to time and change. Man in evolu- tion — such is its favourite way of describing its object. Doubtless the term " evolution " tends to imply a pro- gress rather than a simple process. The anthropologist, however, professes to be evolutionary primarily in the sense that he assumes a certain serial order, not by any 148 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION means unilinear, to pervade the secular changes under- gone by the human race. His first task, he would affirm, is to trace this order. Did he stop here, this task would be purely historical. But can he stop here ? Is anthro- pology to correspond to what the word avdpomokoyia. means in Greek, .namely, " gossip " ? For in that case it would exist only to satisfy a wholly unpractical curiosity about mere particulars. Inevitably, then, the anthropologist allows a comfortable breadth to his in- terpretation of the standpoint of Origin. From begin- ning to cause — the transition, assisted by the ambiguity of the word Origin, is soon made. It becomes part of the anthropological creed that a certain necessity under- hes the serial order of events into which human history has been unravelled ; that the process, however complex, obeys an evolutionary law. Once admit, however, that all human hves are bound together as by a chain, a mood of unpractical curiosity no longer satisfies. In these leaves of the book of man, torn and fragmentary as they are, we may read our own fate. So much, then, for the standpoint of anthropology as designated by Origin. It is an interest in the history of mankind re- garded both as history and as something more, namely, as a process with which we are ourselves in some sense causally connected and therefore practically concerned. Secondly, validity means, in general, value or worth. The term, however, tends to have a special connotation. To be valid is not so much to be good as to hold good. Thus Lotze uses the equivalent word Geltung to signify the sort of value that attaches to an idea as such, namely, universality. Now for a principle to be valid in this sense, it might seem that it must be altogether inde- pendent of time and change. And indeed, it appears easy enough to think of certain propositions as holding 149 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE good in this absolute way. Most people would allow that 2 + 2=4 is valid everywhere and always; and, apart from mathematics, they might be almost as ready to concede a like validity to the ethical principle that " happiness implies virtue." Most people, on the other hand, would admit that the mere form of universality cannot justify the claim to absoluteness. On the face of it, 2 + 2=5, or " vice is preferable to virtue," is no less free of limiting conditions. Some philosophers, however, would say that propositions of the latter type are immediately seen to be unthinkable. Speaking for myself, however, I must confess that my own way of testing such principles would be different. To con- template them simply as ideas, with a view to discovering their validity, is a process likely in practice to generate a sort of mental stupor. So I should test them rather by inquiring whether they can be fruitfully applied to life or not. Further, even supposing it to be true that a few universal principles have an axiomatic validity such as must win instant and final acceptance from any mind which contemplates them fairly and squarely, yet it is clear that there are thousands of our ordinary judgments which we invest with the same form of universality without intending to imply any such necessity. I may say with all the sweep and emphasis of a universal judgment that " aU men are fools," and yet come to recognize later on that I made the remark in haste. In regard, then, to this latter class of judgments, their validity, or value as ideas, is plainly relative to applica- tion, or in other words is conditioned by time and change. The form of universality cloaks a merely hypothetical judgment — one that may be striving to rise above all limitations, but is none the less limited for all that. Here validity can mean no more than normality, or 150 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION tendency to hold -good. A judgment of this class is valid if, on the whole, it proves good enough to hve by. Doubtless, the troubled mariner would prefer to steer by the everlasting stars. Failing their light, however, he is glad enough to lay his course by the shifting set of the tidal currents. Can theology acquiesce in principles that, in respect of their validity, are less than absolute ? Of course theology has a perfect right to prefer propositions of the axiomatic type. So would science, if it saw any chance (outside mathematics, at any rate) of obtaining them. Besides, theology has a special reason for this predilection. As the handmaid of religion, which is eminently practical and hence rooted in faith, theology is bound to try to supply logical certainties, so that the practical certainties which rehgion needs may rest on firm foundations. Hence it has been inclined to ascribe infaUibihty now to the Church, now to Scripture, now to some form of dogmatic philosophy. The very variety, however, of the means whereby assurance is sought sounds a note of uncertainty. What, then, of theological principles that are less than absolute, that can claim only an empirical validity ? It is at least theoretically possible that no others are available. The purpose of theology being to vahdate, to make good, the reaUty of the divine, two alternative theories concerning that reality have to be considered. One is that the divine nature is changeless. Even so, however, it will not necessarily be expressible in terms of a changeless definition or law for beings whose in- teUigence is in process of growth. Need it afford glimpses of itself that within certain limits show the divine nature for what it absolutely is ? May not the validation (or, one might say, the revelation), while relating to the PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE eternal, nevertheless make good the truth, not piece- meal, but rather by gradual approximation ? The other possible view is that the divine nature is itself in evolu- tion. On such a theory the divine experience, like the experience that we know in ourselves, would be eventu- ally a trying. But if it were a dynamic movement of self-reaUzation conditioned by a real time, then any validation, or revelation, of it must surely be a dynamic process too. Only a pessimist would declare that, even so, human thought might still require certain unchanging universals round which to rally its streaming impressions. If these fixed points had no counterpart in the objective order, if God and the universe were moving on despite our pauses, miserable indeed would be man, the so-called rational animal. So much for validity as representing the standpoint of the theologian. Some sort of intellectual certainty must be supplied by theology so as to support and undergird the practical certainty which rehgion must have. I have tried to show that, within the sphere of intellect itself, a practical or empirical certainty might be the only kind of certainty obtainable. Theology might thus have to acquiesce in a validation by means of trial and error, or, in other words, in an approximate and pro- gressive form of revelation. It remains to be shown how in any case, though perhaps in that case especially, theology may profitably ally itself with science, and notably with anthropology, the science of human origins. There are two points of view from which human nature may be envisaged, one of which let me call com- pendiously, if ^somewhat barbarously, the " historico- scientific," while the other may be named the " philo- 152 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION sophico-religious." The former is the cardinal interest of anthropology, the latter that of theology. The ideal relations between history and science for the one part and philosophy and religion for the other may be exhibited by arranging them in a sort of ascend- ing scale. Of the four, history affords least insight into the nature of man, because its method of treatment is chronological. The historian may be conceived for our present purpose as a mere annaHst, a recorder of passing events. Here he finds one serial order of facts to be chronicled and there another ; and to make one out of the many ceases at a certain point to be his business. An anthropologist, for instance, who is content to play the mere historian wiU make out one history, let us say, for pre-Columbian America and another for aboriginal Austraha, without attempting to show their common bearing on the general evolution of man. We may say, then, that history as such is concerned with establish- ing a " that." Science, on the other hand, tries to go deeper. Thus, as regards the subject of man, its method is not chronological but comparative. It takes note of the points of likeness and difference displayed by this and that historical series with the object of determining general laws of seriation, of normal sequence or tendency. To a corresponding extent it is more abstract .than history, because it seeks to distinguish in a given series of events the essential elements governing the develop- ment, while discarding the irrelevant details. So far, then, as science succeeds in discovering such a law of tendency, it may be said to 3deld a " how." And here we touch the limit of the anthropological ideal. It would embrace no more than " that " and " how " — the facts about man as facts, and as bound together according to their normal sequences. Beyond these 153 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE limits one has the right to speak, not as an anthropologist, but, if at all, in some other capacity. Passing on to philosophy, we may lay it down that its method is teleological. Its function is to supplement the " how " of science with a " why." Why ? means What is the good ? Such a question applies obviously to the facts of human history, but perhaps not so obvi- ously to the facts of the material world. Nevertheless, it would be a poor kind of philosophy that knuckled down to any form of mere science, whether it be physical science or any other. After all, if we thought the subject-matter of any science of no good at all, we should lack all impulse to construct a science in regard to it. There is, however, a great contrast between the notions of law as they apply severally to the self-deter- mining man and to an externally determined nature. Indeed, the problem of freedom vs. necessity is the most fundamental of philosophical difficulties. Nay, it is more than a problem ; it is a crux, an insoluble antimony from the philosophic standpoint, because philosophy is merely a way of thinking. Yet, though the problem will not think out, it does not follow that it cannot be lived out. Hence we need to move beyond philosophy to a still higher, and, in fact, the highest, plane of all. This is the plane of religion. Religion, to coin a word, is " teleo-practical." Its function is to supplement " why " theoretical with " why " practical, to convert good as descried by the mere intellect into such a form of good as may be absorbed into the economy of our thinking, feeling, and willing soul-life as a whole. All sound rehgion is optimistic. It answers the question " What is the good ? " with an unhesitating " Why, all the good in the world." Of course it looks back for support to philosophy, just as philosophy looks back to 154 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION science, and science to history. But it contributes more than it receives, being the higher synthesis, the fuller interpretation, which has come " not to destroy but to fulfil." Fact in detaU, fact generalized, fact intel- lectually valued, fact vitally valued, or in other words, harmonized with the purposes of the best attainable life — such is the ascending scale which leaves reUgion in a position of highest authority, and of greatest responsibility. Now theology is not religion, but only the philosophy of rehgion, though as such it is philosophy as it grapples with its most ultimate problems. Biblical studies by themselves do not make the theologian. He needs philosophy. He must be competent to throw hght on such a question as how facts and values may be correlated, and may both together be conceived in terms of law as appUcable to a world in evolution. When he has thought these things out as best he can, he may offer himself to reUgion as the intellectual guide it craves. Even so, however, he will find that he must, as it were, overtake religion. Religion cannot afford to wait until theology has made up its mind. Religion is the life of the serious man, and must perforce carry on, whether thought be at its side to render assistance, or, through loss of touch with the vital strivings of man, diverge into futile ideology. On the other hand, without help from the side of the intellect, rehgion will be but a bhnd force, and as such Uable to terrible aberrations, as no one knows better than the student of religion in its more primitive forms. Moreover, the philosophy which the theologian must profess is not simply the philosophy of God as distinct from that of man or of nature. Philosophy is one, and, to be philosophers, we must study it in all its aspects 155 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE together. Let me suggest, then, that, so far from neglecting the philosophy of man, the theologian will do well to begin with it, and then proceed to the philosophy of nature, so as finally to attain to a philosophy of God. The old maxim, " Know thyself," is a sound one. Philo- sophy, like charity, must begin at home. If one begin with the philosophy of nature, taking one's clues from the physical sciences, one is Ukely to be misled by the apparent serenity of the laws of matter and motion, and, as happens naturally enough in a materialistic age, to identify religion with the worship of a sort of cosmic machine. But there is even more serenity and strength to be discerned in human nature than in any machinery, man-made or cosmic, if only one can develop the eyes to see it there. When the theologian seeks to frame his final conception of the divine reality, he will be nearer the truth if he think of it less as a force than as a will. But to know it as a will, as free and purposive and creative, he must from the first know himself as man ; that is to say, must ally himself with the study that views the history of human effort and advance both from without and from within, though chiefly from within. Now definitions are relative to logical purposes. Hence the definition of religion that suits the historico- scientific purposes of anthropology is constructed solely in order to further the interests of the study of human origins. Thus Origin, as we have seen, does not mean absolute beginning. The student of human origins begins wherever he most conveniently can. But, as one seeks to trace back the descent of man, one is brought up sharply at a certain point by a total lack of direct evidence. We know only the distinctively human. 156 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION The pre-human is unknown, except in the way of pure speculation. Anthropology, therefore, has not much choice in the matter of a starting-point. It so under- stands its postulate of continuity that all the more important kinds of vital activity are treated as present in germ in the earhest known condition of man ; whereas the pre-social, the pre-matrimonial, the pre-scientific, the pre-rehgious — aU these are at best but possible aspects of the unknown pre-human character of the race. Thus, for the anthropologist, religion is a universal attribute of man, because his historico-scientific purposes require him to have a free hand in the following up of origins right back to the point where the direct evidence about human history breaks off. It may be well to remark in passing, however, that, when the anthro- pologist states every kind of man to be rehgious in the anthropological sense of the term, the theologian has no right to conclude that every kind of man is likewise religious in the theological sense of the term. The business of the philosopher-theologian is to identify religion, not with any kind of religion that any kind of man may profess, but with the right kind of rehgion a thinking kind of man ought to profess. To ignore the difference between the two standpoints is to confuse Origin with Validity. But, if it be remembered that anthropology is but a part of the propaedeutic of theology, no such trouble need arise. The anthro- pologist frames a definition of religion in view of certain strictly limited ends of his own. What, then, is the anthropological definition of re- ligion ? Despite endless quarrels about words, it would seem that students of human origins are largely in agreement as regards the facts with which rehgion has to do. These facts belong partly to the subjective and 157 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE partly to the objective order, and yet are so related that a certain quality is common to them all. To express this common quality I know no better term than " sacredness." ^ The reUgious hfe is sacred, and the objects that sustain it are likewise sacred. Rehgion draws its sustenance from two roots at once — from our- selves and from the not-ourselves. This two-sidedness or polarity of the sacred must be noted at the start, because we are thus prepared to expect a certain am- biguity in the forms in which it is historically manifested. Some of its most characteristic manifestations let us now consider. Under conditions of primitive culture sacredness reveals itself both negatively and positively, both by contrast and by direct experience. Thus, on the one hand, the need is felt to break away from common things, to embark on a vita nuova, to cross a threshold and commune with what has hitherto been hidden as behind a veil. From this point of view consecration is a conversion. Positively, however, we have yet to learn what this change of front brings with it. What fruition ensues upon conversion — ^what access of vitahty and force — what profit in the way of knowledge or friendship ? When such a positive characterization of sacredness is given in terms of the experience that it involves, we are nearer to its true nature, because we envisage it no longer from without but from within. At the risk of repeating what I have elsewhere treated more fully, and with a better chance of illustrating my meaning by examples, I must say something more about these two aspects of the sacred in turn. First let us as anthropologists examine sacredness in ' See my article on " Religion (primitive) " in Encyolopadia Britannica, nth ed. ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION its negative capacity. In three ways is the insufficiency of ordinary life asserted by contrast with a mode of hfe which is somehow other. This otherness is variously indicated by saying that the sacred is supernatural ; that it is separated ; and that it is esoteric. When the sacred is said to be supernatural, it is re- garded as non-natural and at the same time higher or better than the natural. Nature stands for the whole order of commonplace happenings in respect to which reasonable expectation is normally satisfied. Whatever falls outside this order is non-natural. As such, it may affect mankind favourably or unfavourably. Both miracles of heahng and " the sUngs and arrows of out- rageous fortune " belong to this sphere of influence. Nay, since the savage, Uke his civiUzed brother, tends to take " the blessings of Providence " as a matter of course, whereas any mishap strikes him as unaccountable and portentous in the last degree, it comes about that the supernatural and the untoward are found in especially close association at the primitive level of thought. At any rate, the bad supernaturaUsm is hkely, for the peoples of the lower culture, to obtrude itself of its own accord ; whereas the good supematmralism has usually to be invoked by them by way of counterblast. Thus, if the presence of the supernatural always operates with primitive folk as a call to the serious Ufe, it is for the most part primarily a call to wrestle with the powers of darkness, and only secondarily and by way of conse- quence a call to seek aUiance with the powers of hght. In any case, duahsm is paramount — a system of devils and gods conceived in sheer antithesis. It is only the more advanced religions that try to reconcile the ap- pearance of evil in the world with the reaUty of good as expressed in the divine nature. Meanwhile, in early 159 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE religion, the supernatural in either aspect begets serious- ness, inasmuch as it spells crisis. Savage life has few safeguards, while crisis is everywhere. Hence every department of activity tends to be pervaded with a sense of the supernatiiral and sacred. Whenever the careless animal is put off and the circumspect man put on, be it in food-getting or in fighting, in merrymaking or in mating, then a touch of consecration is imparted, though it comes in the first instance as a touch of the spur, as something that goads him out of his natural jog-trot pace. Moreover, the history of religion would seem to show that, the more the pace is quickened, the more man comes to appreciate it. At any rate, the more his religious thought develops, the more does man tend to perceive God rather than the devil behind the crisis that he is forced to face. Again, whatever is sacred is held to be separated off from the profane. The subject of primitive taboo is too vast for justice to be done to it here. Taking a great deal for granted, however, one may venture to affirm that, just as the supernatural is primarily conceived rather as bad than as good, so that which is taboo is for- bidden to the profane crowd rather lest it hurt them than lest they hurt it. The profane are those who are Uving the ordinary careless animal Hfe. If a certain food, for instance, is " profane," it simply means that anyone may eat it anyhow. Taboo, on the other hand, spells fear. One eats a tabooed food at one's peril. Now fear in itself may be a bad thing, but as an ingredient in an emotional complex it has its uses. Reverence, for example, or the sense of discipline, would be im- possible but for the dash of fear that they contain. So •it comes about that, by association with other emotional elements, the_taboo-feeling proves a beneficent factor in i6o ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION religious evolution. Combined with curiosity, admiration, affection, and so forth, it in every case deepens and enlarges the feeling by introducing an element of self-restraint. A certain humiUty helps rather than hinders the serious Ufe, since it invests the sacred with dignity, protecting it from the famiharitythat would otherwise breed contempt. This is especially noticeable when the taboo-feeling fuses with the sense of social obhgation. Sacredness and the customary sanction join forces, so that each lends a new majesty to the other. Thereupon, by a curious reaction, the sacred is no longer avoided merely lest the profane be injured ; but, on the strength of the majesty bound up with its obhgatoriness, it must be avoided by the profane lest they soil and contaminate it. As religion advances, the latter becomes more and more the pre- vailing aspect in which the sacred is viewed. Its danger- ous character fades out of sight, whUe its remoteness and inviolabiUty are increasingly felt to be the marks of ex- alted worth. Correspondingly fear develops into reverence. Thirdly, the sacred is treated as esoteric. Distin- guishable from the taboo-feeUng, though in some ways akin to it, is the tendency to deal with it secretively. Now the bad side of the esotericism which is so typical of all primitive reUgion is obvious. Hocus-pocus and terrorism follow in its train. Yet the effort to shield the intimacies of reUgious experience from the prying gaze of the unsympathetic is not less justifiable than it is natural. Rehgion must always preserve something of the character of a mystery, if only because the capacity for rehgious experience is different in different men, and their sympathy is hkely to be Umited in like degree. Thus, with the advance of religious evolution, though esotericism on the whole loses ground in face of what may be termed the catholic idea, the individual con- II i6i PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE sciousness asserts a certain claim to privacy of worsWp and communion ; and God is conceived, not indeed to listen to personal petitions that are purely selfish, but nevertheless to " hear in secret." So much, then, for the negative aspects of the sacred. Now it is plain that to exclaim " Marvellous ! " or " Beware ! " or " Hush ! " in the presence of the sacred tells lis directly nothing more than that there is something at hand which must be regarded with special attention. What has yet to be shown is not merely that it is other, but how it is other. We need not be surprised, however, if primitive theology turns out to be deficient on the positive side, seeing that even advanced theology is re- latively weak in the matter of constructive theory. Certain characterizations of the sacred, however, occur in savage thought which attribute positive quality to it in a rather tentative way. These may likewise be con- sidered under three heads. First, the sacred is powerful. Of all the positive ideas that centre in the notion of the sacred, that of a tran-, scendent power is, perhaps, the most fundamental. Whether it bring weal or bring woe, in any case a mighty force is held to be at work. This sense of a power in men and things that surpasses the ordinary is the com- mon root whence spring the rival developments of magic and rehgion. Both involve supematuralisms. Both are traifickings on the part of man with the " super " element in the universe ; only magic is the bad kind of trafficking and religion the good kind. I can only sketch in outline here a view of the relation between magic and religion which I have tried to justify at length in The Threshold of Religion and elsewhere.^ Suffice it to say that the power which at first is conceived somewhat am- * See The Threshold of Religion, and ed,, 1914, chaps, ii.-iv. ; also p. 169 f . 162 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION biguously as working weal or woe in a transcendent way comes gradually to reflect the moral quality attaching to man's attitude toward it. It is magical and bad, if man draws near to it in a masterful and overbearing spirit, if he uses it but to exploit it. On the other hand, it is religious and good, if the applicant for favour and grace is fiUed with a spirit of reverence, if, in the Iroquois phrase, be " lays down his own power " in its presence. It comes to this, that so long as man falls short of the perfect love that waits on perfect understanding he cannot afford to cast out fear, in the shape of humility and self- restraint. These virtues are the springs of the serious life, whereas a crass self-satisfaction is its bane. The life of the evolving man, the hfe of spiritual effort and advance, is conditioned by fear and hope — bythefear of self and by the hope of overcoming seff with the help of something higher. Next, the sacred is conceived as personal. Now power is not necessarily personal, and therefore com- parable in quahty with the wiU-power that we know in ourselves. There is power of a kind in poison, or in strong drink. In primitive rehgion, then, there appears at times a tendency to identify the bad kind of super- natural power with a sort of poison and the good kind with a sort of stimulant. In magic especially, where the human operator's mood is masterful, it is easy to represent the end sought as the control of an occult force no more personal in its mode of action than the force attributed by the old alchemist to his elixir vita or his philosopher's stone. Even in religion, at the savage level at all events, a more or less impersonal grace may be acquired by contact with sacred objects. Thus the cult of the sacred bull-roarer or churinga is the very soul of the religion of Central Austraha. Physical contact, as by rubbing on the stomach, causes a man to^be " glad " 163 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE and " good " and " strong." It is trae that these sacred objects are vaguely connected with ancestors, with sacred animals, and so on. But to become " full of churinga," as the native phrase puts it, would seem to be largely an end in itself. I am therefore inclined to think that to attribute personaUty to the sacred is less fundamental, from the standpoint of the study of re- ligious origins, than to attribute power. Even certain phases of advanced religion, for instance Buddhism, show that it is possible to conceive the divine in a largely or wholly impersonal way. Nevertheless I believe that to construe the power ascribed to the sacred as the power of a superhuman will is the normal tendency of human reUgion as it becomes reflective. As thought gradually concentrates more on the end of religion and less exclusively on the means — and all forms of intel- lectual advance display this tendency — divine power is no longer regarded as inherent primarily in ceremonies and ceremonial objects, but these things are treated as mere vehicles of communication between the mind of man and the mind of a Being not only able but willing to be man's helper. Lastly, the sacred is good. For, whereas the magician tends to stand alone, and is deservedly a pariah because he plays for his own hand, religious men tend to associate in brotherhoods ; so that every form of social union, the family, the clan, the tribe itself, is in some sense a church as well. Thus, from the first, reUgion is associated with the ethics of social obligation, and the divine in its transcendent way makes for the common welfare as a matter of course. Now the social and the ethical are not to be identified offhand ; and that private good is not necessarily selfish is gradually but slowly borne in upon the religious consciousness. The destruction of 164 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION the pagan system of classical antiquity at the hands of Christianity, or the Lutheran Reformation, may^ be regarded as in large part due to the protest of the individual conscience against too much socialism in re- hgion. But there has been no going back on the old- world instinct against private contracts with the gods. The serious hfe may seem to lift the individual clean out of the world of human affairs, but even so he is bound to try to take the rest of humanity with him.^ Here must perforce cease what cannot be more than a very summary account, from the standpoint of an- thropology, of that notion of sacredness which I believe to be the best working clue to the interpretation of the vast complex of behefs and practices summed up under the name of primitive religion. What moral, then, is the philosopher-theologian to draw from the foregoing sketch of the tendencies at work in historical reUgion ? As an anthropologist, I am incHned to break off abruptly at this point. Yet, though I am innocent of any desire to give the theologian a lead, it is perhaps only fair that I should state very briefly how it seems to me that my Origin and his Validity stand in a certain significant relation to each other. Put very shortly, the moral of the history of primitive religion would seem to be this — that religion is all along vital to man as a striving and progressive being. My point is not merely that there is always to be found something that the anthropologist would call reUgion ; because, as has been already said, that is largely a question of words, the universality of reUgion being 1 On the relation between religion and ethics in primitive society see also my article on " Ethics (rudimentary) " in Encyclopesdia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings, vol. v„ especially ad fin. 165 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE implied in his postulate of continuity. But enough has been said to show that, corresponding to the anthro- pologist's wide use of the term " religion," there is a real sameness, felt all along, if expressed with no great clearness at first, in the characteristic manifestations of the reUgious consciousness at all times and in all places. It is the common experience of man that he can draw on a power that makes for, and in its most typical form wills, righteousness, the sole condition being that a certain fear, a certain shyness and humility, accompany the effort so to do. That such a universal belief exists amongst all mankind, and that it is no less universally helpful in the highest degree, is the abiding impression left on my mind by the study of religion in its historico-scientific aspect. But is such a belief not only helpful but true ? The philosopher-theologian in his search for the valid has to ask himself this further question, whether the anthro- pologist can throw light on it or not. Now there is a danger lest the anthropologist, limiting himself as he has a perfect right to do to the standpoint of science, proceed illegitimately to conclude that the standpoint is final, not merely for him, but in an absolute sense. Thus Sir James Frazer, after showing in his brilliant little book entitled Psyche's Task that primitive religion (he usually misnames it superstition) has proved useful to mankind in all sorts of ways, ends feebly with the assertion that it is a mere will-o'-the-wisp ; for all that it has shown on th^? whole a marvellous faculty of keeping away from the boggy spots and illuminating the ground that can be trusted. Now I imagine that Sir James Frazer pronounces religion to be an illusion because it seems to him to fail to acquiesce in what he is pleased to regard as the laws of nature. Such positivism, how- ever, which treats the mere " how " of science as likewise i66 ORIGIN AND VALIDITY IN RELIGION an all-sufficient " why," is due to the failure to realize that science as such generalizes the observable tendencies of men and things without alleging any real necessity whatever. Philosophy, on the other hand, which is essentially teleological in its function, may well doubt whether there is any necessity which does not at the same time imply will. Even those necessities of thought on which aU other necessary truth depends are the outcome of a wiU to think. For the rest, it need not unduly trouble us that primi- tive rehgion has generated much evil by the way. Ex- perience is experiment, as the psychologists say, and that truth emerges out of error holds good of religion no less than of every other form of the strenuous Ufe. There is at any rate no difficulty in holding this from the standpoint of the historian of rehgion who treats it as something that has evolved and is stiU evolving. Now the philosophy of rehgion, as has been said above, shows a decided preference for some axiomatic and final form of reUgious truth ; so that it may perhaps tend to deny that the development of beUef has any bearing on its vaUdity. But the last word, fortunately, is not with theology but with rehgion. While theo- logians prate that religious truth is unalterable, behold it is growing and expanding before their very eyes. Rehgion is in^ evolution, nay, is the very rationale of evolution, since it construes what otherwise were simple process into a progress Ughted by faith in the ideal. It is such a faith, I beheve, that vahdates rehgion. The belief in the value of science is part of that faith, but a part only. Science, therefore, may join with theology in doing honour to the virtue of humility, whereby both may avoid dogmatism and advance by the joint aid of faith and experience. 167 VIII MAGIC OR RELIGION ? ARGUMENT /^AN there he religion without a God? " The Golden Bough" first made the world familiar with a primitive phase of mind and society in which gods and even spirits are of little or no account, hut attention is concentrated on certain occult powers, superficially like the natural forces recognized by modern science ; which powers, it is held, can be moved by means of ritual to work for the good of man. This fact was confirmed by discoveries in Central Australia showing that the natives devote themselves to such ceremonies with all the earnestness proper to cult. Are we, then, with Sir James Frazer, to dub this a system of " magic " as implying a would-be scientific attempt to control nature; reserving the name of " religion " for a system involving some sort of appeal to a God, in the sense of a spirit excelling man in knowledge, goodness, and power ? On such a view the test of a religious character is the presence or absence of a certain con- cept. Contrast the method of Durkheim which inquires whether a certain social and moral function is fulfilled or not. The totemic mysteries of the Central Australia embody for the natives the highest values that life has to offer — in a word, all that is for them most sacred. On the other hand, they bring under a separate category, corresponding to our " black magic," the anti-social procedure of the wizard. Durkheim's distinction, then, accords more nearly with the valuation of the people con- cerned. Moreover, the other method, which identifies religion with theism in accordance with our own standards, is unable to i68 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? do justice to the continuity of religious development. Thus, religion on this theory is held to have displaced magic because it eventually dawned on the mind of man that magic did not pay. But, when religion degenerates into magic, as, for in- stance, has happened, as the folk-lorist knows, with the paganism of the classical world, does this mean that religion in its turn has been judged unprofitable ? Or, again, if the sacramental rites of sacrifice incidental to Australian toiemism are pro- nounced magical, how are we to account for the survival of a form of magic^ as the central mystery of the Christian religion ? Once more, how can tabu be defined as a negative magic, and the slain king hedged round with tabus be nevertheless correlated with the slain god of religion ? In short, this is to assert dis- continuity in the interest of a logical antithesis when the facts of history bear clear witness to continuity. As theology is not equivalent to religion, so neither can a concept or system of concepts be treated as the differentia of religion, which is a way of life — one which, whether it employ spell or prayer as its medium of expression, is essentially an effort to realize values of a spiritual rather than a material order. ' TWENTY -THREE years ago a handsome pair of volumes was offered to +he learned world by a scholar of the highest academic credentials. Naturally, the book was received with every mark of respect. If a serious student of the classics — one who might aspire eventually to produce a standard com- mentary on a text — chose to amuse himself with folk- lore, well and good. But that this was a revolutionary manifesto, an heretical tract for the times, no one sus- pected for an instant. Otherwise, in sheer self-preserva- tion, the united body of the erudite might well have treated the author of these disturbing speculations as a backslider and an outcast. 169 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Another school of thought, of course, there was, which might perhaps be expected to provide sanctuary for the offender. Tylor and the other anthropologists would realize that European folk-lore, with its corollaries bearing on the classics, was no child's play, no idle occupation of a winter's evening, but matter for sober science, something capable of being elaborately ex- plained in terms of savages and survivals. As it was, however, official anthropology was at first incUned to stand aloof. This seemed to be literary rather than truly scientific work. The author might have rendered the spirit of our old wives' tales very nicely. But had he hobnobbed with cannibals, had he measured heads at the risk of losing his own, had he, in fact, spent a single working day outside the four walls of his study, so as to learn how to discriminate between the smell of his lamp and the genuine reek of uncultivated humanity ? Tylor's revelations in regard to the primitive mind were not, after all, excessively startling. Animism, to be sure, proved a freakish affair when carried to extremes. Yet most people believe in souls and spirits to some extent. Or again, that a sacrifice is typically a gift, or that prayer in its earliest form is just such a request as might be addressed to a great chief — all this verged on the obvious for anyone who had studied his Old Testa- ment. Even magic, so long as it was thought of mainly as the practice of the black art, might be set down as something which but recently filled the imagination of the educated classes of our own country, while along the countryside it still keeps the gossips busy. Altogether, the savage as he appears in the pages of Primitive Culture is a rational being. Homo sapiens, who would have drawn his conclusions soundly enough, if only the right premises had been forthcoming. But this latest 170 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? version of the primitive mind was surprising to a fault, since it made out the savage to be little better than crazy, a distressful wretch whose existence was a per- petual nightmare. It surely must have somehow got the values wrong, if it thus sought to represent super- stition, taken at its most foolish and foul, not merely as the by-product of man's intellectual advance, but as the staple 3deld of his mental activities, his daily sustenance and support, the very staff of his life. One anthropologist, indeed, it might seem, ought to have displayed a warmer interest in the new venture. Andrew Lang was a classical scholar, a man of letters, as well as an enthusiastic upholder of what he termed " Mr Tylor's Science." Again, he was one of the most distinguished members of the Folk-lore Society, and was in a position to rate Mannhardt's discoveries in the sphere of Eiuropean folk-custom at their true worth. Yet of sympathy Lang showed none. On the contrary, he laid himself out to annihilate " the Covent Garden school of mythology," as he called it, as thoroughly as he had already annihilated the school which identified mythology with a " disease of language." How it came about that two scholars whose interests had so much in common should fail utterly to see eye to eye — and it re- mained ever thus — it boots not to inquire. Suffice it to say, as regards Lang's services to anthropology, that, on the one hand, he imported into the science just what it happened to need most, namely, criticism of the most searching kind applied alike to arguments and to sources ; and that, on the other hand, his gay and flippant manner of conducting a cross-examination, even if it mightily tickled the bystanders, would now and then bear some- what hardly on his victim. To another of his countrymen, however, who was 171 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE likewise an anthropologist of' the highest repute, the author of The Golden Bough might look with the certain hope of cordial appreciation. Robertson Smith, having fared ill at the hands of certain zealots of the North, had in the end made Cambridge his asylum. A Semitic scholar in the first instance, he had acquired in the course of editing the ninth edition of the Encyclofcedia Britannica a just sense of the spaciousness of history — an experience of the infinite wealth of the material to which the comparative method might be fruitfully applied by the student of human culture and, in particular, of human religion. Nor did his genius lend itself any less to intensive than to extensive study. Force of industry and fineness of perception were con- joined in him ; learning was tempered with insight ; the orderliness of the classical temperament was matched by the fire of the romantic. Cut off, as he was soon to be, in his prime, he had already taken rank as one of the master minds of his generation. Seeing, then, that The Golden Bough stands in closest affinity with the spirit of his pioneer work, and that its author was his personal friend, we may endorse the latter's modest claim to be his follower and disciple ; not taking the admission too literally, but recognizing that association with such a tower of intellectual strength must have been a source of moral support in those early days when the classics were stiU the classics, and the proper place of the Priest of Nemi was in a footnote to Ovid, with a possible reference to Macaulay's Lays thrown in. Ten years passed, and in the meantime The Golden Bough had once for all made good its footing within the spheres, or twin hemispheres, of letters and of science. A new edition appeared, which substituted three volumes for the original two. Though thus enlarged, the book 172 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? retained its identity in all respects. The author retracted none of his theories ; he merely sought to formulate them more exactly, to apply them more widely, and, in particular, to verify them and' bring them home by means of fresh examples. The priest of Nemi stiU figured as the final cause of the argimient. True, one lost sight of him ever and anon, while pursuing some devious twist of the maze. But that he stood for the central mystery, that the fifty thousand odd facts on which one had stumbled by the way would somehow be gathered up and expressed in this supreme fact, this epitome of human foUy, this arch-superstition — to doubt this would have seemed rank heresy in the eyes of the now rapidly increasing party of the faithful. Who, then, constituted this party of the faithful ? In the first place, the pubUc. The Golden Bough is eminently readable. The lucidity of its style proves captivating even to those who profess to detect a certain obscurity in its logic. This is no philosopher's farrago of bloodless abstractions. The book is written in simple and sensuous language, as befits a circumstantial account of the simple life. We are children again as we study these childish doings of the peasant or the savage. No doubt, they behave as very naughty children some- times. But who shall say that he was never a naughty child, or that it is not human to derive satisfaction from the story of one's infant peccadilloes ? Not that the public cared a straw about the pros and cons relating to the problem concerning the priest of Nemi. That particular carrot might have to be dangled before the nose of the scholar, in order to carry him over the ground ; but the pubhc, being out for pleasure, con- tentedly browsed along the wayside, and found the rich mixed feeding all to its taste. If our imperial race is 173 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE beginning to know something about those people of rudimentary culture whose fate is in its hands, is in no small part due to the wide circulation achieved by The Golden Bough, that golden treasury of stories for grown-up children. Whether students of the classics in the course of a decade had become tolerant of a line of research which outraged their sense of self-sufficiency is not so certain. The champions of sound scholarship in this country are, perhaps, more deeply versed and directly interested in teaching than in learning. The philologist and the ancient historian conspire to keep the archaeologist and the anthropologist out in the cold, not because they are at the bottom of their hearts obscurantists of the deepest dye, but simply because, as practical men, educators of youth, they do not see how such new-fangled stuff is profitably to be introduced into any existing cur- riculum. But even the highest educational authorities are but the servants of the pubUc. If The Golden Bough becomes a household word, it must e'en be ad- mitted into general-knowledge papers ; whereupon con- scientious examiners must read the subject up. For the rest, the irrepressible Junior Fellow, sowing his in- tellectual wild oats, will insist on publishing an essay to the tune of the latest extravaganza. Thus by imper- ceptible degrees first the University and then the Public School become resigned to the inevitable ; and the paradox of yesterday, now advanced to the decent status of a commonplace, becomes part of what every schoolboy knows, and what every gentleman must at least have forgotten. Further, whatever classical scholars might have come to think about The Golden Bough it was by this time acceptable in the eyes of the anthropologists, who 174 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? had to confess that, despite its literary method, it had reached results that were in keeping with the strictest demands of Science. A year before the second edition appeared, Spencer and GiUen had published The Native Tribes of Central Australia, a work which marks an epoch in the history of anthropological re- search. These first-hand observers had been for some time past in close touch with Sir James Frazer, who indeed had the privilege of access to early information in its most authentic form, seeing that he was charged by them with the final revision of their proofs. Now, the Arunta of the central deserts of Australia might have been expressly created in order to illustrate the principles of The Golden Bough. They did not exhibit, perhaps, that particular complex of conditions which met in the priest of Nemi. But theirs was precisely that general attitude of mind which characterizes what Sir James Frazer terms the " age of magic," when man's one idea of getting anjTthing done is to pull at invisible strings by which miraculous agencies are supposed to be set in motion. Thanks to the unexampled thoroughness of the scrutiny to which their customs and beUefs had been submitted by the -'jxplorers, it was borne in upon all how these savages of the Antipodes, the most backward of mankind, stood upside down in relation to ourselves not only geographically but, as it were, mentally as well. Our sense was as their nonsense, and our nonsense as their sense. None the less, they managed to rub along after a fashion in this topsy-turvy world of theirs. Though they were sheer irrationalists, should one judge them by logic, they were rational enough, should one judge them by life. Hence the anthropo- logical world, hailing as it did the work of Spencer and Gillen with instant acclamation as the key to a new psy- 175 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE chology of the savage, found itself almost unconsciously committed to the contention of Th& Golden Bough that superstition was as the very soul of primitive culture. The book had got the values right after all. Mannhardt's peasants must mean business, or must have only just left off meaning business, seeing that in the heart of Australia things every whit as fantastic and absurd are being done day by day in the soberest earnest, and, in fact, constitute for the doers well-nigh the whole meaning of their life. Thus the second edition of The Golden Botigh, backed by the anthropologists almost to a man, had no longer anything to fear from the assaults of the captious amateur. It might have been a fairy-tale once ; but now it was science. One group of thinkers, however, might be inclined to hold that, whether the first edition was edifying or not, the second was unprofitable and even positively baneful. The theologians were startled to find that, by some trick of analogous reasoning, the priest of Nemi was now brought into relation with the Founder of Christianity. Of course it might be said that considerations of a purely anthropological nature could bear at most only on the historical setting of the sacred story ; that, so far as the divinity of Christ was affected, the possible resemblance to a mock-king of the Sacsea thrust upon him by the circumstances of the time wag neither here nor there. But Christianity, after all, is, in one aspect, a manifestation conditioned by time and circumstance. Even if the Church was divinely instituted, its history cannot be entirely dissevered from the general history of religious belief. It was, to say the least, ominous, therefore, that, in a treatise dedicated to primitive superstition, there should be introduced a discussion of Christian origins. Moreover, the author's personal con- 176 Magic or religion ? victions, as might be gathered from his general tone, and, more particularly, from his references to other reputed saviours of humanity, were clearly unfavourable to the exemption of any form of religious faith from the law of historic continuity. Indeed, if open scandal was averted, if the passages that gave offence to the orthodox were, if in no wise condoned, at least received in com- parative silence, it was largely because, on closer in- vestigation, the case against them appeared so thin, the analogies on which it rested so far-fetched, that Christian apologists might safely decide to leave such a theory to explode itself. The second decade having passed, a third edition was projected, and within the space of three years has been triumphantly brought to completion. The two volumes of the first edition have now expanded into twelve. In what sense is it The Golden Bough any longer ? Appalled by the luxuriance of the encompassing growths we may well echo the prayer of .lEneas : ' Si nunc se nobis ille aureus arbore ramus Ostendat nemore in tanto ! " Indeed, it might seem that the disciple of Robertson Smith sought, after the manner of disciples, to go one step better than his master ; inasmuch as, instead of editing, he had now actually composed an encyclopaedia. The whole circuit of the superstitious beliefs of savages being comprised in its survey, The Golden Bough, never remarkable for uniformity of plot, must henceforth throw aside the last pretence of dramatic unity, and resolve itself into a series of dissolving views, a panorama of the primitive life and mind. Nay, this change of design is openly acknowledged. In the preface to the seventh and concluding part, en- 12 ^77 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE titled " Balder the Beautiful," the long-suspected cat is at last let out of the bag. " Balder the Beautiful," writes Sir James Frazer, " in my hands is little more than a stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the gravity with which he sta.lks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and it is time to unmask him before laying him in the box." ^ It is no longer the function of the facts to support the theories, but rather that of the theories to support the facts. Sir James Frazer declares a little later on : "In this as in other branches of study it is the fate of theories to be washed away hke the children's castles of sand by the rising tide of knowledge, and I am not so presump- tuous as to expect or desire for mine an exemption from the common lot. I hold them all very lightly, and have used them chiefly as convenient pegs on which to hang my collections of facts. For I believe that, while theories are transitory, a record of facts has a permanent value, and that as a chronicle of ancient customs and beUefs my book may retain its utility when my theories are as obsolete as the customs and beliefs themselves deserve to be." ^ Now, without prejudice to the question of the value of Sir James Frazer's theories, it may be admitted at once that, considered merely as a corpus of assorted evidence, his book amounts to a liberal education in social an- thropology. Indeed, it will usually be found that those who seek to refute his doctrines have to rely on data of 1 The Golden Bough', x. v. 2 q _g s^ ^ ^i. 178 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? his providing ; that, in fact, if he cannot be convicted out of his own mouth, the thing is not to be managed at all. The literature from which anthropology is obliged to gather its facts is highly miscellaneous in type, and in quality too often leaves much to be desired, yielding gold by the grain and rubbish by the ton. Hence to have more or less exhaustively searched through the entire mass of material, as Sir James Frazer has done, and to have framed an apparatus of Schriftquellen con- taining everything that his critical sense approves as most authentic, is an heroic achievement in itself, and one that earns him the gratitude of all his co-workers. So much for Sir James Frazer's collection of facts. It epitomizes aU the available information. Let us remember, too, that the sources of such information are daily and hourly drpng up. Hence Sir James Frazer's hope that th3 book wiU long retain its usefulness as a conspectus of evidence would seem certain of fulfilment ; even if in the future that fuUer endowment and organiza- tion of anthropological research, of which there are signs in the sky, should bring about a far more intensive study of such traces of primitive culture as anywhere remain, causing the older data to appear somewhat thin and superficial by comparison. But is not Sir James Frazer unduly half-hearted about his theories ? WiU he not, on second thoughts, wish his book long life as much because of its theories as because of its facts, impressive as the latter are ? For surely it is incorrect to say, as he does, that theories as such are transitory, while facts endure. Not to go too deeply into the logic of the matter, may not the pre- vailing law be expressed thus ? Good theories and the facts that bear witness to them tend to be preserved together, and together go to form established truth ; 179 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE whereas bad theories are gradually weeded out, and usually carry with them to perdition most of the so-called facts — facts imperfectly described and hence as they stand useless — to which they were originally wedded. Perhaps Sir James Frazer's theories have become for himself a httle staled by dint of repetition ; seeing that now for the third time he states them in what are es- sentially the same terms. But for the rest of us they do not cease on that account to form the hving soul of his book ; and by its soul must a book be judged. To a consideration of these theories in their broader aspects let us therefore now proceed. Of questions of theory, the most far-reaching of all is suggested by the very sub-title of The Golden Bough, which describes it as " a Study in Magic and Religion." What, then, is meant by " Magic and Religion " ? Now, so long as the words are taken together as if they formed one composite idea — just as, to take a homely instance, "bread and butter" may stand for a single notion — the problem of providing a working definition of each of the terms used hardly arises. On that view of his meaning, Sir James Frazer would merely be saying in plain English that his subject was what anthropologists are pleased to call " the magico-reHgious." As a cata- logue-maker's label for hitting off comprehensively the contents of The Golden Bough, this could hardly be bettered. Whatever magic and religion may severally in essence be — a matter in considerable dispute — there is no doubt that all would agree to recognize this par- ticular collection of material as thoroughly represen- tative of the magico-reUgious. It is as if one visited an Anglo-French Exhibition, not knowing how to tell purely EngUsh work from purely French work, and either of these from work that might be of mixed origin, i8o MAGIC OR RELIGION ? but satisfied that this was the right place in which to learn to discriminate all these possible varieties. One would feel grateful to the organizer of such a show, even if left by him to do the sorting for ourselves. Sir James Frazer, however, has not only organized for our benefit a Magico-Rehgious Exhibition on the vastest scale ; he has Hkewise tried to show us how to sort the goods by reference to their origin, if only we choose to accept a simple and straightforward principle of division. It is as if the director of the Anglo-French combination laid it down that work made in England or in France counted respectively as English or French, while work made partly in one and partly in the other country must count as mixed. Here would be a plain- sailing rule, and one sufficient for most purposes, even if it failed to cope with possible objections — as, for example, that work made in England by Frenchmen might be thoroughly French in spirit. Such di£&culties, indeed, might even seem rather far-fetched to a business man intent on handling goods in gross. Sir James Frazer, then, who also must handle his goods in gross, seeing that, while his cadres are few, his collectanea are beyond all counting, resorts to a rough- and-ready plan of classifying the magical, the religious, and the mixed, among his magico-rehgious exhibits. The religious, according to him, always involves some sort of appeal to a god. The magical, on the other hand, has nothing to do with a god, but implies some form of would-be scientific attempt to control nature, based on the fallacious beHef that subjective associations may be taken at their face value for objective connexions. Finally, the mixed type of fact results wherever magic, the pseudo-science, having done its best or worst, makes common cause with religion in order that the latter may i8i PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE call in a god to put the matter through. Such are the proposed criteria, which have this merit at least, that they lend themselves readily to practical employment. An appeal to a god, and an experiment in misapplied association of ideas, ought to be easy enough to detect and to distinguish. It remains to show that this some- what summary version of Sir James Frazer's definitions of magic and rehgion does justice to his meaning. " By rehgion," he says, " I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are beheved to direct and control the course of nature and of human Ufe. Thus defined, rehgion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely, a beUef in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them. Of the two, belief clearly comes first, since we must believe in the existence of a divine being before we can attempt to please him. But unless the belief leads to a corresponding practice, it is not a religion but merely a theology ; in the language of St James, ' faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.' In other words, ' no man is religious who does not govern his conduct in some measure by the fear or love of God.' " 1 What exactly Sir Jame Frazer means by a God is brought out in the following quotation from a work of even more recent date : " By a God I understand a superhuman and supernatural being, of a spiritual and personal nature, who controls the world or some part of it on the whole for good, and who is endowed with in- tellectual faculties, moral feehngs, and active powers which we can only conceive on the analogy of human faculties, feehngs, and activities, though we are bound to suppose that in the divine nature they exist in higher * G. B.', i. 222-3. i8a MAGIC OR RELIGION ? degrees, perhaps in infinitely higher degrees, than the corresponding faculties, feelings, and activities of man. In short, by a God I mean a beneficent supernatural spirit, the ruler of the world or of some part of it, who resembles man in nature though he excels him in know- ledge, goodness, and power. This is, I think, the sense in which the ordinary man speaks of a God, and I believe that he is right in so doing." i Here, then, is our anthropological criterion : a savage is to be accounted rehgious when he recognizes and tries to please a being corresponding to what the plain man — the plain Englishman, in other words — understands by a God. Sir James Frazer adds that religion as thus defined is opposed in principle to science ; since " it clearly assumes that the course of nature is to some extent elastic or variable, and that we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow." ^ Magic is identified by Sir James Frazer with " that sympathetic magic, as it may be called, which plays a large part in most systems of superstition." ^ This has two branches^ homoeopathic magic and contagious magic ; and whether the savage mind is aware of any unity between the two Sir James Frazer regards as doubtful. On psychological analysis, however, they turn out, in our author's view, to be " merely two different mis- appHcations of the associations of ideas." " Homoeo- pathic magic is founded on the association of ideas by similarity ; contagious magic is founded on the asso- ciation of ideas by contiguity. Homoeopathic magic commits the mistake of assuming that things which ' The Belief in Immortality, i. 9-10. « G. B.», i, 274. » G. B.^ i. 51. 18^ PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE resemble each other are the same : contagious magic com- mits the mistake of assuming that things which have once been in contact with each other are always in contact." ^ Now, " the principles of association are excellent in themselves, and indeed absolutely essential to the work- ing of the human mind. Legitimately applied they yield science ; illegitimately applied they yield magic, the bastard sister of science." ^ Magic is therefore, like science, opposed in principle to reUgion, since it assumes " that the processes of nature are rigid and invariable in their operation." ^ It deals with " impersonal forces," and hence aims at control, not conciUation.* In so far as it seeks to affect the conduct of personal beings, whether men or gods, it presupposes them to be pro tanto subject to such impersonal forces, namely, to " the operation of immutable laws acting mechanically." ^ It remains to note that not only manipulations but abstentions are governed by magical considerations. " The system of S5anpathetic magic is not merely com- posed of positive precepts ; it comprises a very large number of negative precepts, that is, prohibitions. It tells you not merely what to do, but also what to leave undone. The positive precepts are charms : the negative precepts are taboos. In fact, the whole doctrine of taboo, or at all events a large part of it, would seem to be only a special application of sympathetic magic, with its two great laws of similarity and contact." ^ The quaUfication " or at all events a large part of it " was added in the third edition in deference to criticism ' ; but Sir James Frazer nowhere explains what other source of taboos is, on his principles, possible. 1 G. B.\ i. 53-4. 2 G. B.\ i. 222. » G. B.', i. 224. *GB.», i. 225. ' G. B.», i. 224. 'G.B.\i.iii. ' G, B.^, i. Ill n. 184 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? The mixture of magic and religion is, according to Sir James Frazer, not primitive. Magic, being deduced immediately from elementary processes of reasoning, is an error into which the mind falls almost spontaneously. " The very beasts associate the ideas of things that are like each other or that have been found together in their experience." ^ Whence, by the way, it would seem to follow that the beasts, in so far as they fall short of science (they have their vivisectionists, of course), are constitutionally addicted to the practice of magic. It was, in fact, a rival magician who killed Cock Robin. On the other hand : " Who attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena of nature are worked by a multitude of invisible animals, or by one enormous and prodigiously strong animal behind the scenes ? It is probably no injustice to the brutes to assume that, the honour of devising a theory of this latter sort must be reserved for human reason." ^ Passing on from these somewhat speculative analogies. Sir James Frazer calls attention to the ways of the aborigines of Australia as representing " the most back- ward state of human society now known to us." " The rr.en in AustraUa are magicians, but not one is a priest ; everybody fancies he can influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayers or sacrifice." ^ Hence : " May we not reasonably conjecture that the civilized races of the world have also at some period of their history passed through a similar intellectual phase, that they attempted to force the great powers of nature to do their pleasure before they thought of courting their favour by offerings and prayer — ^in short, that, just as on the material side of human culture there has 1 G. B.^ i. 234. ' Ibid. » Ibid. 185 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE everywhere been an Age of Stone, so on the intellectual side there has everywhere been an Age of Magic ? " ^ Sir James Frazer further makes it clear that he con- siders such a faith in magic to have been prior in time not merely to the belief in spiritual beings worthy to rank as gods, but to any behef in spirits at all. He then goes on to " venture to surmise " that the change from magic to religion may have been brought about by the " great discovery of the inefficacy of magic." ^ Re- cognizing their own inability to control nature, he thinks, men would naturally come to imagine that it was con- trolled by supernatural beings. When Sir James Frazer speaks of " the inefficacy of magic," he clearly means the inefScacy of actual as opposed to ideal magic ; since he proceeds to suggest that the mark of the transi- tion from magic to rehgion may be the belief that gods are magicians. Thus the supposed argument of " our primitive philosopher " would run thus : Magic as such must work ; man's magic does not work ; therefore the magic that does work must be in the hands of a superman, and I must ask him to work it in my interest. Mean- while, the transition must be held to have been gradual, man being slow to admit his absolute failure, and hence calling in the aid of spirits and gods just in so far as he could not manage by himself. Hence phenomena of the mixed type, in which the masterful and the prayerful attitudes are found together, just as in the aeneohthic period stone Ungered on by the side of metal. It has been necessary to examine at some length Sir James Frazer's definitions of magic and rehgion, partly because his treatment of this fundamental problem de- termines the whole orientation of his book, and partly because no more telling illustration is to be found of his 1 G. £.=, i. 235. 2 G. B.% i. 237. 186 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? favourite method of referring the origins of institutions to purely intellectual processes. Let it be said at once that, for the purposes of a rough-and-ready classification such as win best suit the plain man, his distinction between rehgion as what amounts to worship and magic as something which, while it occupies much the same place in the hves of respectable Australians as religion does in the lives of respectable Britons, does not amount to worship, is tolerably adequate. If priests, temples, prayers, sacrifices, gods are there, everyone will admit that it is religion. If none of them are there, most people wiU think that it is something else, and wiU be as ready to dub it magic as not ; more especially since the plain man has been apt at every stage of culture to set down any kind of religion that he does not understand as magical, even though it was once the religion of his own ancestors. Sir James Frazer, by the way, has told us how rehgion, owing to a change in the intellectual outlook of those concerned, may come to replace magic ; but he quite omits to explain how it is that when religion goes downhill and drops its temples, priests, and so on, it has a way of turning again into magic, as has happened conspicuously in the case of those agricultural rites of the European peasant in which Sir James Frazer's analysis discovers magical elements and little else besides. Has the European peasant thought the matter over afresh, accepted as his working hypothesis the inefficacy of rehgion, and deliberately gone back to the pseudo-scientific experimentation of his remote forefathers ? Perhaps it is better not to press this point, in the interest of what is otherwise so neat a distinction. Rehgion is what the plain man knows as rehgion, and magic is — well, the rest. This is, perhaps, hardly the place in which to elaborate a counter-theory. Suffice it to say that a less intel- 187 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE lectualistic method of explaining the genesis of magic and rehgion regarded as social institutions is bound to lead to somewhat different results. A simple way of bringing the matter to a head would be to ask the question, Can there be a non-theistic type of religion ? Sir James Frazer is bound to answer " No " ; and con- sequently, with perfect consistency, he would convict the Australians of Spencer and Gillen of living in a state of almost unadulterated magic. The late M. Durkheim, on the other hand, setting out to write a work on the elementary forms of the religious life, chooses the totemic system of these very Australians as his crucial instance of what religion essentially is for a tribe of pure hunters and gatherers. Sir James Frazer may be inclined to object that the difference is one of words — that he means by the term " rehgion " one thing and M. Durkheim another thing. But how could the two definitions fail to disagree, when the methods to which they are relative stand utterly opposed to one another ? Sir James Frazer's method is simply to ask whether a given body of associated beliefs and practices is signalized by the presence of a certain concept. But M. Durkheim's method, going deeper, considers whether it fulfils a certain social and moral function. Thus, as regards these tribes of Central Australia, Sir James Frazer finds that their totems, reincarnating ancestors, nature-spirits and so forth, hardly amount, all told, to a theistic system. On the other hand, a goodly number of their ritual performances appear to turn on the sympathetic principle, as when the witchetty- grub people tap on a big stone with little stones round it because it is like a witchetty-grub surrounded by its eggs. All this complex of thoughts and acts, therefore. Sir James Frazer would assign to the domain and age i88 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? of magic ; regardless of the fact that the people them- selves say that the totemic ceremonies make them " strong " and " glad " and " good," and, in short, hold them to embody and express the highest values that life has to offer them, whereas in sharp contra-distinc- tion they treat certain mystic practices, such as the use of the pointing-stick, as belonging to a black art punish- able by death. Now, M. Durkheim takes his stand on this very difference, so fundamental in the view of those immediately concerned, between things that are sacred and things that are accursed, and discovers herein the true counterpart to our own distinction betweeen re- Ugion and magic. By this means he is able to explain something that Sir James Frazer, had he noticed it, would have been at sore pains to explain away, namely, the fact that reUgion and magic are not strangers, but competitors and rivals — that their spheres do not he utterly apart, but represent incompatible claims to rule one and the same world on the part, as we may say, of God and the devil respectively. Rejecting, then, the specious but superficial analogy with natural science, M. Durkheim makes magic stand for all maleficent and anti-social ways of exploiting the unseen and occult, and rehgion for all such ways of dealing therewith as are supposed to further the common welfare. That such a view rests on a more penetrating analysis of the moral forces that constitute society goes almost without sajdng. It is possible, however, that the plain man will find such considerations somewhat fine-spun and hard to follow, and wiU prefer to declare that he knows of no obvious mark whereby the sacred can be distinguished, if it fall short of the divine. Meanwhile, Sir James Frazer's principle of classification has at least this virtue — that it is not over-subtle. 189 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE It is high time to pass onward to the examination of other doctrines composing the theoretical backbone of The Golden Bough. A striking feature of the first edition was a discussion of the origin and meaning of sacrifice. Robertson Smith's views on this question, as set forth in his article " Sacrifice " in the Encyclopcsdia Eritannica, seemed then to Sir James Frazer to " mark a new departure in the historical study of " rehgion." Nay, more, he writes in the preface, " The central idea of my essay — the conception of the slain god — ^is derived directly, I believe, from my friend." ^ Ten years later in the preface to the second edition there is an amazing change of tone. " Messrs H. Hubert and M. Mauss have represented my theory of the slain god as intended to supplement and complete Robertson Smith's theory of the derivation of animal sacrifice in general from a totem sacrament. On this I have to say that the two theories are quite independent of each other. I never assented to my friend's theory, and, so far as I can remember, he never gave me a hint that he assented to mine." ^ What has happened in the meantime to discredit Robertson Smith's theory of sacrifice in Sir James Frazer's eyes ? Apparently nothing. On the contrary, this hypothesis, which assumed that animal sacrifice in general had developed out of a totemic sacrament, whereby the totemites were mystically united in, by, and with the " theanthropic " animal that bestowed on them their corporate identity, had been confirmed — one might almost say crucially verified — ^by the discovery of Spencer and Gillen that in Central Australia the very rite required was to-day in full force. Why, then, has the slain god broken completely with the totemic victim ? 1 G. B.\ i. xi. « G. B.', i. xviii. 190 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? Partly, no doubt, because Sir James Frazer's further researches into totemism, which were destined ulti- mately to fill the massive volumes of his Totemism and Exogamy, were leading him to lay more stress on the social side of the institution, and less on what he had at first termed its " rehgious " side ; partly, too, because his slain god had vegetable affinities which he found hard to relate to any form of the blood-sacrifice. Surely, however, the most cogent reason of aU was that it was impossible, if he wished to maintain his hard-and-fast distinction between magic and religion, to allow the totemism or the sacramentaUsm of his typical repre- sentatives of the " age of magic " to be religious in any way whatsoever. At the time when the first edition saw the fight, Sir James Frazer, as he tells us in so many words, was disposed to class magic loosely under reHgion as one of its lower forms. Hence to derive a god from a totem, and worship from a sacramental meal, was at this stage of his thought the most natural thing in the world. Afterwards, he cuts off magic from religion " as if with a hatchet." The inevitable result is that totems and gods find themselves ranged on opposite sides of a conceptual hiatus. As for the sacrament of communion, it must be rated a form of magic, the survival of which as the central mystery of the religion of the civifized world is, to say the least, an odd coincidence. But if the slain god, being an affair of reUgion, cannot be derived any longer from the sacrifice of a totemic animal, nor, presumably, from any operation of vegeta- tion-magic, is his origin to be sought in that slajdng of the king, about which Sir James Frazer has amassed so many interesting and novel particulars ? Let us note in passing how a sagacious use of the comparative method is apt to be crowned by what amounts to a 191 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE gift of divination, so accurately is the course of future discovery foretold. Just as Robertson Smith anticipated the totemic sacrament of the Australians, so no less briUiantly Sir James Frazer described years ago a regi- cidal philosophy of which the perfect exponents were but the other day discovered by Dr Seligman in the ShiUuk of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.^ Facts of this kind as facts were very hard to believe at first ; and the world has every reason to be grateful to Sir James Frazer for piling up paradoxical instance upon instance, until the British middle-class, with what Matthew Arnold calls its " bloodthirsty love of life," had to own that there existed other people who regarded the happy despatch as a natural tribute to royalty, and were all agog to take office with the certain prospect of martyr- dom at the next election. But does the theory therewith supplied fit the important facts in question ? If the slain god is to be correlated with the slain king, the king must first be proved divine. This can be done of course, after a somewhat unconvincing fashion, by making out the king to be possessed by a god or spirit that, being independent of him, enters and confers a purely extrinsic divinity. Now no one would deny that such a theory of possession is perfectly compatible with savage notions. But is it the sole theory applicable to this group of facts, and will it cover all of them ? It is, to say the least, suspicious that chiefs and kings should be intrinsically tahu. Surely this almost universal sacredness of theirs, which moreover is often a quality held to be trans- missible to their descendants and successors, is not wholly distinct in nature from the divinity attributed ^ See C. G. Seligman, " The Cult of Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the ShiUuk," in Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, Khartoum, 1911, 216. 192 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? . to certain chiefs and kings in particular. But Sir James Frazer, having defined tabu as a negative magic, becomes once more the victim of his own logical hatchet. The sacred which is not divine and the sacred which is divine are by definition cut off from each other, and that one should pass into the other is therefore inconceivable ; even if this process should appear to occur, as, awkwardly enough, it does. It would be possible to illustrate in many another way the disastrous consequences of this root-fallacy consisting in the refusal to recognize a non-theistic type of rehgion ; but criticism has been carried far enough, and it is only fair, in conclusion, to express, however in- adequately, a grateful sense of all that Sir James Frazer's great work has done to consolidate and advance an- thropological science. Even if he has on theoretical grounds predicated discontinuity, where the facts pro- claim continuity, in regard to the rehgious history of man, he has at any rate by the comprehensiveness of his survey set those facts together in visible juxtaposition, if not always in intelligible interconnexion. We work backwards and forwards between the rites of the peasant farmers of Europe, modem or classical, and those of the savage hunters of the darker continents, and it matters httle whether we are bidden to class some as invocations and others as incantations so long as we are made to realize that the same childhke cry of the human soul, " May we have day by day our daily bread," is expressed throughout, whether manually or orally, whether through this set of symbols or through that. Moreover, we are shown that the hope of man rests chiefly on the experience of the ever-present mystery of renewal. In his own life, and in the life of nature, death is balanced and even outbalanced by birth, vital loss by 13 193 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE vital increase. Now the key to the mystery of renewal lies partly without in the discovery of scientific apphances, but mainly within in the discovery how to maintain a strong heart. That practical philosophy of life which is human religion could never afford to make the mistake of putting the machines before the strong heart, for the simple reason that societies that trusted to the machines rather than to the men behind the machines have aban- doned their chance of renewal and gone down in death. Savages and simple folk of all sorts can teach our so- called civilization an important lesson, inasmuch as their view of the universe regularly puts the moral aspect above the mechanical. It is shallow to regard the totemic ritual of Australia as a sort of science of stock-raising gone wrong. What you have first to learn in the deserts of AustraUa is how to go without your dinner on occasions, and nevertheless to fare on bravely until you find one. Having by the aid of your rites made yourself " strong " and " glad " and " good," then you get good hunting as a matter of course ; and even then you have the decency and the sound sense to ascribe your good fortune, not to yourself, but to the higher powers that are with and in you, yet are never merely you. Religion has been intellectualized as civilization has advanced ; but whether the human heart has been moralized in like proportion is not so certain. At any rate the savage, or the little child, may have something to teach the doctors, if the latter incline to suppose that theology is equivalent to religion, or are tempted to forget that knowledge is but the servant of desire and hope and faith. The Golden Bough more than any other book, has taught our generation to view the religious world as a whole — a world full of sad confusion, it may be, yet none 194 MAGIC OR RELIGION ? the less characteristically our own. To Sir James Frazer, who has laboured to such splendid purpose, our deepest gratitude is due ; for by the magic of his pen he has made the mjniad facts live, so that they tell their own tale, and we are left free to read their meaning as our several tastes and temperaments dictate. Straining hard at the desk he has perhaps at times felt in his own person the burden of existence, and has to that extent become sjmipatheticaUy conscious of the dead weight of folly and ignorance that has ever lain on the shoulders of the human pilgrim and helped to keep his eyes towards the ground. Yet Sir James Frazer has endured and won his way through to our lasting benefit. So too then man has endured and won on ; and that fact, after all, shows something better than folly and ignorance to have been there all along to help him on his way. 195 IX THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN ARGUMENT IJOW far is the modern doctor to be considered the social counterpart and spiritual heir of the primitive medicine- man ? Science is organized common sense ; and, since the savage is by no means destitute of common sense, we may credit him with a nascent medical science as represented by the rough- and-ready forms of leechcraft practised by ordinary folk on each other, as when they help a woman in child-bed, render first aid to the wounded warrior, and so on. But the methods of the medicine-man fall under another category, since they are in the eyes of the people concerned of a transcendental, not of an empirical, nature. Thus his lineal descendant is not so much the doctor as the priest. The continuity of this process of development is obscured by miscalling the medicine-man a magician. He is no hole-and-corner votary of the black art but a pillar of society, whose recognized function is by means of traditional rites to move the occult powers to exert a healing influence. Such powers are arbitrary in their working, in so far as they will only work for the medicine-man so long as he observes his manifold tabus. In other words, he does not claim to heal in his own right, but in virtue of the power conferred by a holy life ; and such, precisely, is the claim of the priest of a theistic religion. It is merely because ritual at the most primitive stage of cult is of the manual or dramatic type rather han the oral that his methods appear to be empirical, as when evil magic is extracted from the sufferer in the form of a crystal. 196 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN For those who take part, in it, however, the operation is on the transcendental plane ; the crystal being but the symbol oj that occult force which a higher power, itself equally occult, has set at nought through his mediation. It is no incipient naturalism, such as we find in the leechcraft of the plain man, but a thoroughgoing supernaturalism, a faith in the unseen which cures by imparting similar faith. The psychologist from the limited standpoint of his science explains these cures as due to suggestion ; and, further, can show how the savage through his mental instability needs, and through his suggestibility welcomes, such a healer of souls, while the soul-doctor himself obtains by auto-suggestion the power to pass the suggestion on. Mean- while in the modern world the doctor, working on empirical assumptions as derived from the Greeks, still shares the healing function with the priest ; and this fact must be taken into account in seeking to frame a full conception of human health and well-being. A HISTORICAL question of some interest is how far the modern doctor is to be considered the social counterpart and spiritual heir of the so- called doctor of the primitive world, with his impressive but, as we hold, highly unscientific methods of bewitching and bedevilling his patients back into health. I had better say at once that I am quite incapable of pro- pounding any wholesale solution of this formidable problem. At most, I may hope to adduce some de- sultory thoughts of a general nature, such as may be worth taking into account whenever this missing first chapter of the history of medical science comes to be worked out with due regard for its many-sided interest, and for the sheer bulk of the relevant facts. Huxley has defined science as " organized common 197 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE sense " ^ ; and accordingly, I suppose, medical science would be nothing else than organized common sense in regard to the particular matter of health. Now does man of the primitive type display any common sense whatever ? An anthropologist of the study might almost be pardoned if he were to deny it to him alto- gether upon a survey of his reported customs, so utterly fantastic from our point of view do they appear to be. Yet, on closer acquaintance, such as perhaps is to be obtained only in the field, the savage turns out to be anything but a fool, more especially in everything that relates at all directly to the daily struggle for existence. Hunt with him, for instance, and you soon learn that, allowance made for the conditions under which he works, he is a marvel of skill and resource. Or, again, who among our most tried explorers would claim to outvie the Eskimo in ice-craft, or the Bedouin in desert-travel ? Clearly, then, common sense is no monopoly of civiliza- tion. Indeed, a cynic might declare that the wonder is rather how under civilization there should still be so much of it left. Likewise as regards the conduct of health, then, we may expect to find plenty of common sense, and even of organized common sense, in evidence in the primitive world. Consider, for example, the manner of dealing with child-birth. As a rule it is whoUy the concern of the women's department. There are traditional modes of assisting delivery, usually very effective, — and of course the savage mother makes an excellent patient, — which are put into operation by the female relations and friends of the sufferer without any recourse being had to professional assistance. It is part of every woman's education to know how such affairs are managed, and 1 T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays, iii. 45. 198 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN thus something Uke an organized system of practical precepts is handed on from generation to generation. We may even say, I think, that common-sense measures predominate in this sphere of medical activity ; or, at any rate, that we can here discover a considerable mass of sound practices built up gradually by experience, that is, by the slow but certain method of " trial and error." Of course there are many superstitious observances — about which, indeed, oiu: observers are wont to discourse at disproportionate length, because they make such good " copy " — that accompany, and to some extent embarrass, the common-sense part of the treatment. For instance, custom may decree that the husband go to bed as well as the wife, and this not merely for the reasonable motive of getting him out of the way. Again, ordinary experience is never adequate to tackle portents ; so that a monstrous birth, let us say, or even the ap- pearance of twins, may well involve the interposition of an expert who speciaUzes in mysteries. But it is enough for my present purpose to insist that the typical " wise woman " who helps a savage infant into the world is wise in a prevailingly common-sense way, so that she might possibly put many a civiUzed Mrs Gamp to shame. Her lore constitutes a kind of folk-lore, no doubt. But it is not folk-lore in the sense that merely connotes super- stition, magic, and the like. Rather, it forms part of the precious vital tradition of the race ; and it is out of such bed-rock stuff, I suggest, that advanced medical science is in no small part developed. I cannot attempt here to deal at all exhaustively with the common-sense element in primitive medicine ; but, lest I seem to mete out unequal justice to the sexes, I had better illustrate the apphcation of common-sense principles to the healing art from the side of the mere 199 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE male. Masculine activity of the violent order, as put forth in war or in the chase, leads to manifold wounds and fractures that call for first-aid treatment on the part of comrades, to be followed up, no doubt, by nursing, in which presumably the wife plays a leading part. Thus the use of ligatures, spHnts, poultices, and so forth, is understood by every handy man ; and even though he bolster up unexceptional practice with grotesque theory — if the ligatures work because of the binding power of knots, the splints because they come from a sacred tree, the poultices because they are afterwards deposited in a grave, and one and all because they are reinforced by tremendous spells — even so, there is dis- tinguishable herein a living kernel of well-tested, worka- day experience that wiU one day burst through the husk of superstition and become a lusty growth in the garden of knowledge. Doubtless there are further refinements of primitive surgery that demand the skill of the trained hand ; some of which, however, as, for instance, the age-long practice of trephining, may have been greatly assisted in their development by superstitious notions. But within certain limits a rough but effective surgery — and the same holds good of a knowledge of the curative properties of simples — forms part of the practical equip- ment of the ordinary tribesman. Humanity owes much to the expert, but it owes not a little also to the un- sophisticated multitude. Genius tends to be erratic, pursuing every Will-o'-the-wisp, though fresh paths are at times discovered in the process. But the multitude cleaves to the beaten track, partly led and partly driven from behind by common sense, that is, by nature, who, as the poet sings, is ever " careful of the type." Having, I trust, made clear my first point, that there exists everywhere at the level of the lower culture a 200 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN leechcraft of the plain man, which is to be reckoned as one main source of modern medical science, I pass on to consider that other source to which all the credit is usually given by writers on scientific origins, namely, the professional activity of the so-called medicine-man.^ Let me say at once that this term is apt to be used very loosely, and stands in need of such definition as anthro- pological inquiry admits when it sets up a type to the exclusion of sundry related but aberrant forms. Who, then, is the typical medicine-man ? He is by no means to be identified with anyone who is reputed a cunning healer. Thus, among plain men practising the tradi- tional folk-medicine, one wiU be more successful than another, and will naturally be called in more frequently, while prestige and material benefits will correspondingly tend to come his way. Nevertheless, he may be ruled out as a layman. Similarly, the man who happens to have some special remedy as his private secret — one perhaps that he has inherited from his forebears — need be no thoroughgoing professional, even if he be unwilUng to impart his secret except for a consideration. Again, a member of the snake totem, let us say, is expected to know the cure for snake-bite ; it is part of his spiritual birthright. Yet it is in no sense the chief business of his Mfe to effect such cures ; it is purely by the way that he passes on some of his innate virtue to others. He, too, ' See, for iastance, Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough^, i. 246, 421. Compare, also, H. Hubert and M. Mauss, "Theorie generale de la magie," in L' Annie sociologique, vii. (1904), i 1, and esp. ad fin : " Dans les basses couches de la civilisation, les magiciens sont les savants et les savants sont des magiciens." (I ought, perhaps, to add that, as regards the account here given of the underlying principles of primitive magic, I am in full agreement with the distinguished authors.) Or compare Rrofessor G. Elliot Smith's statement, in J. Wilfred Jackson, Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture (1917), Introd. xviii, that religion and science were identical in early times. 201 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE then, may be eliminated. A more doubtful case is that of the member of a medicine society in North America. The fact would seem to be that, whereas some of these societies are professional guilds, others simply consist of ordinary people who are somehow in mystic touch with heaUng influences — they may, for instance, have re- covered from a severe disease — and are consequently able to perform ceremonies that make for the public weal in some fortifying but quite indefinite fashion.^ The typical medicine-man, on the other hand, is always, in a literal sense, consecrated to his vocation. Alike by native disposition and by social convention, he is destined to live a life apart. Thus he figures in the eyes of the crowd as the man of mystery, the denizen of an unearthly world. Of course he does not dwell wholly alone in this separate world of his. He always belongs in some sense to a fraternity. We hear of bedside con- sultations, for instanc^.^ In any case, the true medicine- man invariably undergoes some sort of initiation, whereby the traditional secrets of his craft are formally made over to him. Such secrets may appear at first sight to consist mainly in mere conjuring tricks, in- volving sleight of hand, ventriloquism, and so forth. But on a more searching and scientific view these things, so trivial to us, have a serious meaning and function in respect to the kind of medicine practised by the doctor. One and all, they are means of producing and applying supernormal power. The beUef in the reality of such power and in the possibility of its exercise is common aUke to the medicine-man and to his patients. The ' Cf: Dr A. Hrdlicka in Bur. American EthnoL, Bull. 30 (1907), i. 838. ' Cf.B. Spencer and F. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), 530- 202 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN mystery-monger is likewise a mystery to himself. As- suredly, in the typical case, he is no humbug. Of course charlatans are to be found here and there. Indeed, the primitive doctor rivals the modern one in. his desire to show up the disreputable person who trades in shams. But, normally, the savage faith-healer has perfect faith in himself and in his methods. A sufficient proof is that, if he feel the power to have deserted him, he will instantly retire from practice.^ To acquire this power he has undergone grievous tests and privations, and to retain it he continues to suffer the lot of a tabooed man, the Ufe of an ascetic, starved, solitary and brooding. Truly, then, if he has his reward, he has first paid the price ; and this reward consists essentially, not in his fee, if he take one, but in the sense of communion with a power that is above the power of ordinary men. Now it will be clear even from this sUght sketch of the doctor's conception of his caUing that he belongs to a wider class that Hkewise includes the priest. Indeed, the two functions are frequently combined. For the rest, there may exist side by side in the same community a plurahty of types — the faith-healer, the rain-maker, the spirit-medium, the diviner, the bard, and so on — that all aUke fall under the same category of wonder- worker vested with supernormal power.^ No wonder, then, if these various characters are to some extent interchangeable. Indeed, their historical tendency, I suggest, is to find their natural meeting-point and con- summation in the priest. But what, it wiU be said, of that standing antithesis > C/. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Mttanges d'histoire des religions (1909), 183. = Cf. A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of S.-B. Australia {1904), 355, 389, 397- 203 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE of the priest — the magician ? Is it not he, rather, who was the primitive representative of science as distin- guished from reUgion, and initiated the development of a scientific medicine ? I reply by distinguishing. The words " magic " and " magician " are notoriously of ambiguous import ; and, whereas in one sense the magician is the antithesis of the priest, in another and, I think, a better sense, he is much the same thing, namely, either identical with the priest, as in Babylonia, or a priest in the making, as in more primitive Australia. Strictly antithetic to the minister of religion is the votary of the black art, the accursed sorcerer who poisons honest folk to gain his private ends.^ Now, if the magician is to be identified with this purely nefarious type of person, it is to be hoped that we must look else- where for the prototype of the modem doctor. Medical science can hardly be a branch of crime that has some- how evolved into respectability. Moreover, it is worth noting that the much-dreaded sorcerer is very largely, though not altogether, a bogey. He usually inhabits the next village. When anything goes wrong in one's own village, it is convenient to put the blame on the wizard over the way. He provides a butt, so to speak,- against which a vigorous counter-magic may be dis- charged. If, however, one of these gentry be suspected of dwelling near at hand, the primitive group is ordinarily not so craven-spirited as to refrain from " smelling him out." It would seem, indeed, that Australian natives not infrequently " point the bone " at one another on the sly. They even boast openly, at any rate to white men, of such scandalous achievements. But, as society advances in organization, the sorcerer is at the mercy of the strong arm of the law. To quiet the 1 See my book, The Threshold of Religion' (1914), 85 i. 204 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN public nerves by means of a little witch-burning is, in fact, a stock expedient with African rulers. Altogether, then, we have good reason to rule out the magician in the anti-social sense of the word as the forerunner of any possible kind of scientific man. Suspect though science be to the crowd on account of its esotericism, it jtmist be so far tolerated by the community as a whole that a continuous tradition can be handed on. But the sorcerer is an outlaw. Short of a witches' sabbath, he has no social opportunity of consulting a preceptor or training a disciple. Consequently, a developing art or science can never be his. He must be purely parasitic on existing systems, seeking vainly to outrival them by a parody of their forms as applied to a chaotic content of popular superstition.^ In quite another sense, however, there is a magic which is either a kind of religion, or, if we prefer to say so, is part of the stuff out of which rehgion has developed. Such a magic involves the use of supernormal power to secure such ends as are socially approved. But rehgion does precisely the same. Hence, if we seek to differ- entiate magic of this kind from rehgion at all, it must be on the ground that in the magical rite the power appears to act automatically, whereas in the religious rite it appears to act through the interposition of a god. Such a distinction, however, is not one that is likely to appeal with much force to the savage theurgist ; for his interest is practical, and the elements in the practical problem are two only, namely, first, a supernormal power to be moved, and, secondly, a traditional rite that promises to move it. In no case is it certain beforehand that the rite will work. To this extent there is always something 1 C/. my art. "Magic," in Hastings' Encycl. of Relig. and Ethics, vii. {1915), 250. 205 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE arbitrary in the manifestation of the power. The Australian doctor, for instance, knows that it will work for him only so long as he maintains his taboos. Thus he is not the master of the power, but its vehicle merely. On the other hand, in the higher religions there is ever present a tendency to impute efficacy to ritual as such. If, then, we ignore this tendency as an aberration un- worthy of the true spirit of religion, so, too, we must give the Aixstralian doctor the benefit of the doubt if he sometimes seem to claim the power that works through him as his own. Thus the postulate of magic, in this sense, and of religion would seem to be the same ; namely, that there is a power conferred by holiness of life which, through the mediation of holy men, can be made to abound for the common good. Meanwhile, the exterior history of religion largely turns on the evolution of ritual from the manual or dramatic type to the oral. The religious spirit, it is true, is to a certain extent independent of the mode of its expression. To rub the solar plexus with a stone bull-roarer may make the heart " strong " and " glad " and " good," as the Australian worshipper testifies in so many words.^ On the other hand, what sounds a prayer may, even in the higher religions, serve the purpose of a mere spell.^ Nevertheless, the special character of the human action is bound to colour the notion of the divine reaction. Operate on the supernormal power, and it seems to work back. Speak to it, and it seems to answer. There is, therefore, likely to prevail at the lower levels of cult a hylomorphic conception of supernatural power in both its good and its evil forms — of God and the devil, as we may say— that bears a certain superficial '■ Cf. The Threshold of Religion^, 165, 191 ; also supra, p. 189. 2 See, for instance, W. HeitmuUer, Im Namen Jesu, Gottingen, 1903, ao6 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN resemblance to our modern naturalistic theories of health and disease. I call the resemblance superficial, however, because there is almost literally a world of difference for the savage between the normal and the supernormal — ^between the comfortable routine of every- day life and the discomposing play of occult influences. The wonder-worker, whether his methods be manual or oral, is always seeking adjustment with the freakish forces of a wonder-world. Nature, as modern science understands it, namely, the sphere of uniform happen- ings, hes clean outside his department. A power that for good or evil is essentially arbitrary in its manifesta- tions, has somehow to be brought into harmony with human endeavour. HylomorphicaUy conceived, such an arbitrary power appears as a contingent matter, a luck in things. Anthropomorphically conceived, it appears as a personal wiU. In neither the one nor the other aspect is it comparable with nature, as science conceives it. Nature obeys known or knowable laws. But the ways of the wonder-world are unknowable — past human understanding, if not past human hope, and faith, and faith-inspired effort. In view, then, of this fundamental disparity between the working principles of the primitive and of the civilized doctor, it may be doubted whether a certain parallehsm that appears in their methods is not in the main accidental.^ An Australian medicine-man, for instance, goes through an elaborate pretence of ex- tracting from his patient the evil magic, the bad luck, which is thereupon exhibited to the sufferer and his friends in the form of a piece of crystal. Such a manual rite mimics a surgical operation throughout, down to 1 C/. L. Levy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les socUUs in- f&rieures (1910), 315. 207 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE the hylomorphic representation of the supernormal trouble as a foreign body that has been visibly removed. But a genuine surgical operation it is not, such as that whereby plain folk in their common-sense way manage to extract a tooth. If it were to be judged from the empirical standpoint, which is, however, -quite irrelevant in such a context, it would be a mere conjuring trick, and one of which the perpetrator must be fully aware. Given the true point of view, however, which is not empirical at all but transcendental, we can see that the procedure is perfectly sincere and in its way rational. An invisible force is dealt with visibly by means that are meant and understood to be S3mibolic. Unawares and unaccountably the patient is taken ill. Therefore an evil magician must have projected a crystal into him " like the wind," that is, invisibly. Such is the dia- gnosis ; and it accounts admirably for the furtive nature of the attack. But it now becomes necessary to provide a therapeusis in the form of a manual rite. Conformably, therefore, with such a piece of visible manipulation, the evil magic takes on a visible form. But this is mere make-believe, and felt to be such. The real influence at work transcends its appearances. It is occult and devilish in its action, and strikes from " behind the veil." At this point in the argument it may be well to re- capitulate. Two types of primitive healing have been broadly distinguished with the object of determining their several shares in the development of medical science. One type is the common-sense treatment of the plain man. With certain quaUfications, which will be more fully stated presently, it may be said to follow experience. The other type is the professional minis- tration of the medicine-man. It is the attempt on the 208 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN part of a man in holy orders to combat supernatural power of an evil kind by means of supernatural power of a good kind. Whether this power be dealt with by gesture or speech — by manual or oral rites, and, con- sequently, be itself represented in hylomorphic or an- thropomorphic shape — does not affect the essentially occult character of the causes assumed to be at work. In a word, the first type of primitive medicine is on the whole empirical in spirit and method, the second is metempirical or transcendental throughout. The contrast between the types in question may be further illustrated in two ways. Thus, on the one hand, the general practice of uncivilized folk would seem to be to try common-sense remedies first, and, only when these faU, to caU in the professional doctor. In other words, his special function is to grapple with the ab- normal ; and, as is well known, this ever tends to con- stitute for the savage a distinct dispensation, a world of its own, in which common-sense principles no longer hold. On the other hand, the primitive theory of how disease is caused completely bears out this dual system of coping with it. Ordinary ills of the flesh are set down to old age, accidents, and so on. But extraordinary visitations claim an explanation of another order. They are due to sorcery, to the violation of a taboo, to the wrath of an offended ghost — in short, to some super- natural agency. I once had the pleasure of interviewing Bokane, an African pygmy from the Ituri Forest, and he told me how his people were wont to cut up a dead man in order to find out what had killed him.^ If in the course of this veritable post-mortem they lighted upon an arrow-head or a thorn, well, that had done it. If, however, nothing was found, then it must have been 1 The Threshold of Religion* (1914), 87. 14 209 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE done by oudah, " the mysterious." There are authors who assure us that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is utterly beyond the grasp of savage minds. But here, as it seems to me, we have it drawn very clearly ; and, besides, in a context that is on the face of it purely theoretical, though I suspect that such an inquest is attended by practical con- sequences of a retributive nature, concerning which my informant preferred to leave me in the dark. Given, then, this fundamental opposition between the incipient naturalism of the lay healer and the well-developed supernaturaUsm of the professional, it remains for us to try in a rough-and-ready way to assign to the rival influences their respective parts in the making of medicine. It has already been shown how in the treatment of child-birth, or in that of wounds and other accidents, recourse is had to processes and specifics such as are likewise approved by a more developed surgery and medicine. Not to attempt any exhaustive enumeration of these, we may take note of bandaging, poulticing, lancing, bone-setting, and the rarer practice of amputation, in the case of bodily injuries ; massage, as notably in relation to child-birth ; cupping and bleeding ; blistering and cauterizing ; fomentation, and the excellent prescription of the vapour-bath ; the use of purges and emetics ; and, finally, the employment for various other remedial purposes of all sorts of drugs and simples, some of them quite unprofitable, it is true, but in large part of real and well-tried efficacy. Now all these methods of cure, it is contended, are matters of more or less common knowledge. Everyone tries them, and experience on so wide a scale, even if uncritical, is bound to secure that the best remedies prevail in the long run. Moreover, as has already been observed, 210 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN there exists in regard to this kind of common-sense heaUng a sort of speciaUsm, which may be nevertheless termed lay, so completely is it overshadowed throughout the savage world by the truly professional specialism of the medicine-man. The woman, for instance, who takes a leading part as midwife or nurse has exceptional opportunities of acquiring useful lore and of instructing others by her example. Or, again, the owner of some particular remedy is Ukely to discover, by verification made at the expense of his chents, within what limits its efficacy holds good. Thus in manifold ways crude observation and cruder experiment are bound slowly but surely to organize savage common sense in the service of medicine. Savage common sense, however, is by no means free from mystic, not to say superstitious, accompaniments. It is thus only in a relative sense, namely, in comparison with the departmentahzed and concentrated mysticism of the medicine-man, that one can identify it with a nascent empiricism. Thus, supernormal power is no exclusive privilege of the doctor. Everyone has some, though the latter alone has much. It is a question of degree.^ In the case of the ordinary man it amounts to no more than an occasional stroke of luck. Only in the doctor's case does it rise to the heights of miracle. Common-sense procedure, therefore, is bound up with mystic procedure on a small scale. Simples and spells go together in everyday use, and it may even be that normally the spell is regarded as the nerve of the affair. Besides, everyone, at any rate every male, in his public capacity participates in rites that are supposed to make for the health and happiness of all in some positive way, 1 Cf. the example cited by me in Hastings' Encycl. of Relig. and Ethics, viii. 251. 211 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE as, for instance, by causing fertility in plant, animal, and man. Other rites, in which everyone joins, are of the negative type, enjoining abstinences and pre- cautionary measures of all sorts ; under which head may be included purificatory rites such as are intended to neutralize or expel evils, as for exaimple, by means of the disease-boat, as especially in the Malay region, or by the almost universal expedient of 4he- scape-goat. For the rest, every layman has his full share of beliefs that we should regard as superstitious. Doubtless he seeks to cure like by like, choosing his simples by their " signa- tures," and so on. Again, he attaches special efficacy to blood and to its substitute red ochre, or, let us say, to his cicatrizations and tattoo-marks. So, too, he treasures curious oddments, and carries them about with him for luck. Thus a lengthy chapter might be written on this purely popular kind of mysticism in its bearing on the history of medicine. Clearly it has been responsible for many a salutary custom ; as when refuse is destroyed to keep it out of the hands of the sorcerer, and sanitation is incidentally advanced ^ ; or when the principle of " the hair of the dog that bit one " is by happy accident appUed in a form of inoculation that works.^ When all has been urged, however, by way of drawback to the statement that the savage pursues his daily round in the light of common sense, it remains true that, just because mystic ideas and practices are less subject to special elaboration, and, one might add, exploitation, in the" sphere of everyday routine, it is here that we must look for common sense, or else must expect to find it nowhere in the primitive world. After all, if a more or less futile mysticism usually appears on the surface, it is often possible to detect a sound empiricism underneath. In 1 Cl The Golden Bough'', i. 175. » Cf. ibid., viii. 158 t. 213 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN particular, we must excuse the savage if, like most of us, he does the right thing without being able to produce the right reason for so doing. Thus^ what can be more con- ducive to health than the vapour-bath, as provided, for example, in the characteristic American institution of the sweat-lodge ? Yet the following theory of it, as expounded by an Indian of the Fox tribe, wiU hardly appeal to the modern physiologist, inasmuch as it turns on the notion of manitou or supernatural power ; though, at the same time, it would correspond pretty closely with the facts, did it not happen to entail an unnecessary and painful method of supplementing the natural pores of the skin. " Often," he said, " one will cut oneself over the arms and legs. ... It is done to open up many passages for the manitou to pass into the body. The manitou comes from its place of abode in the stone. It becomes aroused by the heat of the fire, . . . proceeds out of the stone when the water is sprinkled upon it, . . . and in the steam it enters the body, . . . and imparts some of its nature to the body. That is why one feels so well after having been in the sweat-lodge." ^ Let us now consider the peculiar functions of the medicine-man, to see how far the difference in degree between his expert trafficking with the occult and the plain man's more diffident dealings with the same approaches to a difference in kind. The main point to grasp is that by his special initiation and the rigid taboos that he practises — not to speak of remarkable gifts, say, in the way of trance and ecstasy, that he may inherit by nature and have improved by art — he has access to a wonder-working power unattainable by common men. Therefore, even when he merely does what every dabbler 1 W. Jones, " The Algonkin Manitou," in Amer. Jonrn. of Folk-lore (1905), 183-91. 213 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE in mystery is apt to attempt, he does it far better. The amulet that he sells, for instance, is stronger medicine than any odd-shaped pebble, shell, or root that one may have picked up for oneself. His knots can bind down devils, no less ; while his emetics can bring them up. By reason of this superior competency, then, he can presume to tackle certain disorders, a raging epidemic, for instance, or a sudden fit, in the face of which common folk are utterly helpless. Thus a whole branch of medicine tends to be marked off, over which he rules supreme ; and, agreeably with the heterogeneous nature of these visitations, his diagnosis reveals a set of monstrous causes, unclean spirits, vampires, the evil eye, and what not. Moreover, many of his method?, if not entirely without analogy among the practices of the multitude, are at any rate carried to such a pitch of technicality that they amount to distinctive arts. Crystal-gazing, for example, or the manifold other processes of divination, augury, haruspicy, astrology, sortilege, and so on, are developed by the professional to a point at which they display much complexity, and at least some internal consistency, of doctrine. Now in certain connexions, as especially in the case of astrology, mysticism has proved the fore- runner of genuine science. It is less clear whether scientific medicine has been substantially advanced by any one of this group of occult disciplines, say by haru- spicy, with its elaborate study of the position, form, and conditions of the organs of the sacrificial victim. Indeed, on the whole it seems doubtful. Divinatory processes in general have little to do with such diagnosis as relies on the exact observation of morbid symptoms. Thus, concerning the practical application of the dream- oracles of the classical world, we are told : " The remedies 214 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN prescribed are wholly of a magical kind, and medicine in the proper sense is entirely absent." ^ One department, indeed, there is of specialized study in which the doctor- priest might be expected to shine, namely, that relating to materia medica. Granted that he concocts his nostrums out of ingredients fancied for their symbolic rather than for their intrinsic properties, even so, one would suppose, the sheer accumulation of outlandish substances must at length lead to conscious or uncon- scious selection in favour of those of real value. Indeed, it is certain that in ancient Egypt there developed under purely rehgious influence a knowledge of useful drugs which, by way of the Greeks and Arabs, has been handed on to us. 2 But it is no less important to remember that the peasant has his own set of homely specifics quite apart from what may be occasionally prescribed for him by the priest ; and that on this independent source European medicine, as notably during Roman times, has also drawn to its great advantage. Meanwhile, all these methods are reducible to one, the method of the faith-healer. It is this fact which brings the medicine-man of the savage world, at any rate for purposes of anthropological classification, into strict line with the priest who essays to cure the sick under the auspices of one of the higher rehgions. From primitive Australia to civilized Lour-des the same wonder- working power is set in motion in the same way. Psy- chologists are content to term it the power of suggestion. If our theologians claim, as well they may, tp super- 1 E. Thramer in Hastings' Encycl. of Relig. and Ethics, vi. (1913), 552, referring to the Maffeian inscriptions of the Insula Tiberina. * Even so, however, the main function of the Arab was to hand on the work of Greek writers, such as Hippocrates, e.g. at Salerno ; cf. H. Rashdall, The Universities of the Middle Ages (1895), i- 81, 85. 215 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE impose another and a deeper interpretation, let them at least do justice to the identity of principle that links their faith to quite rudimentary forms of jeligion or, as many would roundly term it, magic. In this context I am tempted to cite the judgment of a worthy missionary. He has been describing a successful experiment in rain- making by a Basuto moroka, who stirred a concoction of herbs and roots with a reed, while calling upon the spirits of his ancestors to move the Supreme Being. " It may be," he says, " that, being a good judge of the weather, like most intelligent natives, he used to occupy himself in this manner just when rain was probable ; it may have been pure coincidence ; or again, that the Almighty did indeed hear and answer the prayers of this untaught old heathen." ^ Surely it must make for better religion as well as for better science to emphasize the continuity rather than the discontinuity of the means whereby man during his long history has sought to obtain health, strength, and sustenance from a higher power. Whether, then, it be by the aid of crude manual devices, such as the sucking-thread or the soul-trap, or through the more refined and ideal processes involved in sacrifice, prayer, purification, or sleeping in a holy place, the medicine-man and his lineal successor, the priest, uniformly practise what may be termed the method of encouragement. They are, in a word, soul-doctors. And the great need of primitive folk, be it noted, is for this healer of souls. The savage has a vigorous body, but a weakly intelligence. His is a narrow field of attention, occupied entirely by matters of routine. In the vast penumbra of his mind lurk all manner of dreadful ' D. F. EUenberger (assisted by J. C. MacGregor), History of the Basuto, Ancient and Modern (1912), 93. 216 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN phantoms, the progeny of a hazardous hand-to-mouth existence. As soon as the routine is interrupted, the hold on reality is relaxed ; the few distinct notions are dissolved ; the haunting shapes close in ; the fear of the unknown settles upon the heart. Only faith can stem this rout of the faculties, a faith rendered steadfast by association with a clear impression. Almost any clear impression will do so long as it serves as such a rallying- point of attention. Hope grows through the mere re- integration of consciousness. Fixity of outlook as such brings reUef. So the faith-healer's art consists in re- storing a frightened man to himself by imparting deter- mination of thought and will. He xaust make it known that he knows. A confident diagnosis is three parts of a cure. Thus the Malay medicine-man when at his patient's bedside reads the signs by throwing rice grains into water, and announces the name and pedigree of the power that partly by control, partly by cajolery, he summons to his aid : " Peace be with you, Mustia Kembang, . . I knov; the origin from which you sprang. . You I order, your co-operation I invoke." ^ Indeed, the modem doctor knows that often it is half the battle to name the disease.^ The faith-healer must be impressive at all costs. Somehow he must strike home to the bemused intelligence and vacillating will to live, by the joint authority of his wild eye, his rig- marole utterance, his pantomime, his trappings, his general queerness, and the very aloofness of his life. Otherwise, the inertia of despair will lead to utter collapse. Indeed, the savage patient is so prone to a fatal despondency that Mr Roth has invented a special 1 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (igoo), 412. » Cf. C. S. Myers in Hastings' Encycl. ofRelig. and Ethics, iv. 724. 217 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE term for the tendency, naming it thanatomania, a positive craze for dying.^ " There is no doubt whatever," write Spencer and Gillen, " that a native will die after infliction of even a most superficial wound if only he believes the weapon which inflicted the wound has been sung over and thus endowed with arungquiltha. He simply lies down, refuses food and pines away." The same authors relate how an old native was induced to show them how the poison stick was used by way of purely mimic display. " When he had finished . . . he declared that the evil magic had gone into him and that he felt, as he looked, very bad." Luckily, the ex- plorers were able to produce a powerful counter-magic from their medicine chest. ^ Now we must be careful lest we misrepresent this type of healing process as a treatment of unreason by reason — the application to a case of hysteria of a science embodying intelligence purged of emotion. On the contrary, it is the operator's faith that creates faith in the subject. The doctor and his patient meet on the same plane of ideopathic experience. The one is just as suggestible as the other, obtaining by auto-suggestion the power to pass the suggestion on. In every phase of his many-sided activity — in the divinatory diagnosis, in the expulsion or neutralization of the evil, in the restora- tion or communication of vitality — ^we can see how the ideal is made to seem real by sheer force of the will to believe. The best illustration of all, however, is afforded by the special type of procedure known as " shamaniz- ing." Here we find the doctor behaving as if he were no longer himself. He is for the time being possessed by a " W. E. Roth, N. Queensland Ethnography, Bull. v. (1903), 28. ' The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), 537 ; Across Australia (1912), ii. 326, 218 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN supernatural agency. Thus in respect to his normal personality he himself suffers a " control " in precisely the same way asdoes his patient. Those who describe the so-called magician as one who says " My will be done " in a spirit of arrant bravado, would seem entirely to overlook the psychological conditions under which his will-power, or whatever it is held to be, is wrought up to the pitch of efficacy. The necessary force dwelKng somewhere in the depth of his being must be met half- way by temporary abandonment of the surface-life. Communion once established, a new personality comes into play, a consciousness contracted but proportionately intense, for which the dominant idea, freed of all limiting conditions, becomes charged with the certain promise of its own self-realization. Instructive examples of such shamanizing are given in the late Major Tremeame's book, The Ban of the Bori. Among the Hausa a bori is a disease-demon. There are many of them, and each has a character of its own and a special mode of self- manifestation. The doctor becomes possessed by such a demon, and in that capacity is able to cure the disease in question, as it were, by a sort of transcendental in- oculation.i In another work Major Tremeame suggests that bori dancing originated as a treatment of the insane, who were induced in this way to moderate their trans- ports.^ Whether this be indeed so, I have not the means of knowing ; but it is at least certain that those who now practise such dancing for the purpose of healing 1 A. J. N. Tremearne, The Ban of the Bori (1914). 243 i- : for the idea of inoculation, cf. ibid., 20 and 464. " On the authority of Dr Alexander, see the Tailed Head-Hunters of Nigeria (1912), 254 ; Hausa Superstitions and Customs (1913)) ^4^- I may perhaps add that a remarkable case of the treatment of an insane person by a native doctor, resulting in an apparently complete cure, has recently been reported to me from Northern Rhodesia. 219 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE others work themselves up into a state verging on insanity, with its self-estrangement, its obsession, its sense of unlimited power. But perhaps enough has been said to make good the contention that the medicine- man's doctoring is of altogether another kind to the_ plain man's, being neither empirical nor would-be empirical in its interest and intent, but theurgical through and through. At this point I must break off the argument at the risk of inconclusiveness. The present survey has been strictly limited to the phenomena of the primitive world, and can at most but establish a general presumption in favour of a particular interpretation of the facts relating to the later history of medicine. After all, the problem of the genesis of a rational science of health turns primarily on the question how Greek medicine, more especially in the form represented by Hippocrates, came to rely so exclusively on the study of natural causes. How this crucial stage of evolution was traversed we do not understand, and perhaps can never understand, in detail. It is plain, however, that enlightenment did not come in a single flash ; but, on the contrary, in- volved much slow and precarious groping after a clue amid a maze of unprofitable fancies. Paradoxically enough, the very notion of " nature " may be lineally connected with the savage concept of supernatural power.i Further, even after nature had been in theory definitely equated with experience, the natural causes that were recognized in medical practice long continued to include many that, in our eyes, are but precipitates of superstition. Yet, when aU is said on behalf of the influence of the theurgical kind of doctoring on Greek ^ C/. H. Hubert and M. Mauss in VAnnie sociologique, vii. (1904), 118, 145. 220 THE PRIMITIVE MEDICINE-MAN medicine — and the latter, let us remember, comprised various schools, some of which were less whole-heartedly devoted to empiricism than others — it would seem to have been on the whole a secondary factor. It is sug- gested, then, that in Greece, the least priest-ridden country of the ancient world, a common-sense medicine of plain men, such as we find to co-exist with the theurgical kind all over the savage world, may have come early to "the fore and remained there. Such a view, perhaps, could be most plausibly maintained in regard to the development of surgery, a department in which the peculiar effects of the faith-cure are never likely to be prominent at any stage of human progress. But it is surely possible, and even probable, that all branches of Greek medicine ahke were in considerable part but refinements of popular practices concerned with the conduct or restoration of health — a case in point being that of dietetics, a subject to which the later Greek physicians gave so much of their attention. After all, popular tradition, conservative though it be, is less impervious to the teachings of experience than such religious tradition as is in the keeping of a priesthood. The faith-healer and miracle-worker were ever present in the ancient world, and are ever present among us to-day. But somehow the scientific tradition of Europe has kept clear of them and their ways. It belongs to the lay or profane side of our civilization. My present task has been to show that even in primitive culture, permeated as it seems to be by the magico-rehgious element, this lay or profane side of life constitutes a separate dispensation, and one that is especially favourable to the organization of common sense, that is, to science. A word in conclusion. As an anthropologist I am bound to deal with facts, and to eschew valuations as 221 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE far as I can. Lest I seem, therefore, to have exalted common sense and its offspring, science, at the expense of such experience as is usually reckoned to be of another order, since it draws on hidden sources, alleging causes that are supernormal in the sense that they stand in no determinate relation to the sense-world, let me whisper in the ear of triumphant empiricism, " Remember that thou art human." Philosophy has always insisted on the inadequacy of so-called naturaUsm ; and even science, so far as it deals with mind and the products of mind, is chary of pushing the theory of natural causation too far. Meanwhile, every practical doctor knows that he shares the healing function with the priest. Con- fession of sins may in its way be just as salutary as any purge or emetic.^ A rational theory of the soul, then, must reserve a place for the soul-doctor. Indeed, the latter is nowadays permitted to enrol himself in the ranks of science, so long as he submit to the preliminary test of reciting the naturahstic creed. Now as long as natur- alism stands only for a method, and not for the whole of philosophy, there is no harm in this. Experience is experiment ; and, unless the faith-healer be willing to employ the strictest method of trial and verification, he must be banned as a charlatan. But our so-called em- piricism must, in its turn, beware lest it reject the results of experiment when they contradict performed opinions. To identify the spiritual life of man with the routine of his senses is a presupposition that, if it break down on trial, we must be ready to forgo ; accepting in its stead a larger conception of human health, and of the vital forces in their relation to its maintenance and improvement. * Cf. The Golden Bough^, iii. 214, on confession as a " moral purga- tive," where the author cites the Kikuyu term for the rite of confession, kotahikio, derived from tahika, " to vomit." 222 X PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES ARGUMENT T-J OW is human progress to be conceived from the anthro- pological point of view ? For the philosopher it consists in the development of the soul. The anthropologist, however, finds it methodologically convenient to define it in a narrower way, namely, as increase in complexity ; though this can amount to no more than an external sign of progress in the philosophic sense of spiritual enlargement. Moreover, prehistoric arche- ology departmentalizes the problem of human progress by dealing with the physical and the cultural evidence under separate heads. Physically, we start with certain doubtfully human forms that alike converge on the ape, while differing somewhat widely from each other. Later, one human type, only a degree less ape-like, appears to hold the field. Still later, several races, which, however, display a certain family resemblance, can be distinguished ; and these are distinctively human in character, one of them at least being remarkably well-favoured. Finally, with the dawn of the historical period, considerable diversity of physical conformation becomes manifest. The facts are too scanty, and the laws of heredity too little'undersfood, to allow a full interpretation of this history of increasing complexity ; but it looks as if the process were one in which a few big stable differences are gradually transmuted into many small variable differences. Turning to the evidence from culture we find at first the same forms of stone industry persisting during immense periods ; though within a particular type there are signs of an 223 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE intensive progress consisting in an advance in craftsmanship. Whether progress of the intrusive kind produced by culture- contact also occurred is less certain ; but it may be plausibly postulated in order to explain a revolution in method, as when the flake replaces the core as groundwork of the flint implement. Further, apart from industrial evolution, there is proof of cul- tural progress in the development of funeral custom, with the rude cave-burial and the dolmen marking the two ends of the prehistoric scale. Towards the close of this period there is also evidence of the growth of foreign trade. Fine art, on the other hand, displays a sudden outburst of creative energy, followed by a long quiescence ; as if the sense of beauty were exempt from the conditions limiting the advance of culture in general. On the whole, then, the prehistoric record testifles to steady gain in complexity of organization, both physical and cultural. If the process is to be maintained in modern times we need on the one hand eugenical marriages and on the other hand an educa- tion that puts the spiritual aspect of life above the material. IF I am unable to deliver this lecture in person, it will be because I have to attend in Jersey to the ex- cavation of a cave once occupied by men of the Glacial Epoch. Now these men knew how to keep a good fire burning within their primitive shelter ; their skill in the chase provided them with a well-assorted larder ; their fine strong teeth were such as to make short work of their meals ; lastly, they were clever artisans and one may even say artists in flint and green- stone, not only having the intelligence to make an economic use of the material at their disposal, but like- wise having enough sense of form to endow their im- plements with more than a touch of symmetry and beauty. All this we know from what they have left behind them ; and the rest is silence. 224 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES And now let us imagine ourselves possessed of one of those time-machines of which Mr H. G. Wells is the inventor. Transported by such means to the Europe of that distant past, could we undertake to beat the record of those cave-men ? Clearly, all wiU depend on how many of us, and how much of the apparatus of civilization, our time-machine is able to accommodate. If it were simply to drop a pair of us, naked and presumably ashamed, into the midst of the rigours of the great Ice Age, the chances surely are that the imfortunate immigrants must perish within a week. Adam could hardly manage to kindle a fire without the aid of matches. Eve would be no less sorely troubled to make clothes without the help of a needle. On the other hand, if the time-machine were as capacious as Noah's Ark, the venture would undoubtedly succeed, presenting no greater difficulty than, let us say, the planting of a settlement in Labrador or on the Yukon. Given numbers, specialized labour, tools, weapons, books, domesticated animals and plants, and so forth, the civilized community would do more than hold its own with the prehistoric cave-man, devoid of all such aids to life. Indeed, it is tolerably certain that, wiUingly or unwillingly, our colonists would soon drive the ancient type of man clean out of existence. On the face of it, then, it would seem that we, as compared with men of Glacial times, have decidedly " progressed." But it is not so easy to say offhand in what precisely such progress consists. Are we happier ? As well ask whether the wild wolf or the tame dog is the happier animal. The truth would seem to be that wolf and dog ahke can be thoroughly happy each in its own way ; whereas each would be as thoroughly miserable, if forced to live the life of the 15 225 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE other. In one of his most brilliant passages Andrew Lang, after contrasting the mental condition of one of our most distant ancestors with yours or mine, by no means to our disadvantage, concludes with these words : " And after all he was probably as happy as we are ; it is not saying much." ^ But, if not happier, are we nobler ? If I may venture to speak as a philosopher, I should reply, confidently, " Yes." It comes to this, that we have and enjoy more soul. On the intellectual side, we see farther afield. On the moral side, our sympathies are correspondingly wider. Imaginatively, and even to no small extent practically, we are in touch with myriads of men, present and past. We participate in a world-soul ; and by so doing are advanced in the scale of spiritual worth and dignity as members of the human race. Yet this common soul of mankind we know largely and even chiefly as something divided against itself. Not only do human ideals contradict each other ; but the ideal in any and all of its forms is contradicted by the actual. So it is the discontent of the human world-soul that is mainly borne in upon him who shares in it most fully. A possi- biUty of completed good may glimmer at the far end of the quest ; but the quest itself is experienced as a bitter striving. Bitter though it may be, however, it is like- wise ennobling. Here, then, I find the philosophic, that is, the ultimate and truest touchstone of human progress, namely, in the capacity of that ennobling form of ex- perience whereby we become conscious co-workers and co-helpers in an age-long, world-wide striving after the good. But to-day I come before you, not primarily as a philo- 1 Presidential Address to the International Folk-lore Congress, 1891, p. 9. 226 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES sopher, but rather as an anthropologist, a student of prehistoric man. I must therefore define progress, not in the philosophic or ultimate way, but simply as may serve the strictly limited aims of my special science. As an anthropologist, I want a workable definition — one that will set me working and keep me working on promis- ing lines. I do not ask ultimate truth of my anthro- pological definition. For my science deals with but a single aspect of reahty ; and the other aspects of the real must hkewise be considered on their merits before a final account can be rendered of it. Now anthropology is just the srientific history of man ; and I suppose that there could be a history of man which did without the idea of human progress altogether. Progress means, in some sense, change for the better. But, strictly, history as such deals with fact ; and is not concerned with questions of better or worse — ^in a word, with value. Hence, it must always be somewhat arbitrary on the part of the historian to identify change in a given direction with a gain or increase in value. Nevertheless, the anthropologist may do so, if he be prepared to take the risk. He sees that human Ufe has on the whole grown more complex. He cannot be sure that it will continue to grow more complex. Much less has he a right to lay it down for certain that it ought to grow more complex. But so long as he realizes that he is thereby committing himself by implication to a prophetic and purposive interpretation of the facts, he need not hesitate to style this growth of complexity pro- gress so far as man is concerned. For if he is an anthro- pologist, he is also a man, and cannot afford to take a wholly external and impartial view of the process whereby the very growth of his science is itself explained. An- thropologists though we be, we run with the other 227 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE runners in the race of life, and cannot be indifferent to the prize to be won. Progress, then, according to the anthropologist, is defined as increase in complexity, with the tacit assump- tion that this somehow implies betterment, though it is left with the philosopher to justify such an assumption finally and fully. Whereas in most cases man would seem to have succeeded in the struggle for existence by growing more complex, though in some cases survival has been secured by way of simplification, anthropology concentrates its attention on the former set of cases as the more interesting and instructive even from a theo- retical point of view. Let biology by all means dispense with the notion of progress, and consider man along with the other fotms of life as subject to mere process. But anthropology, though in a way it is a branch of biology, has a right to a special point of view. For it employs special methods involving the use of a self-knowledge that in respect to the other forms of life is inevitably wanting. Anthropology, in short, like charity, begins at home. Because we know in ourselves the will to progress, we go on to seek for evidences of progress in the history of mankind. Nor need we cease to think of progress as something to be willed, something that concerns the inner man, even though for scientific pur- poses we undertake to recognize it by some external sign, as, for instance, by the sign of an increasing com- plexity, that is, such differentiation as Ukewise involves greater cohesion. All history, and more especially the history of early man, must deal primarily with externals. Thence it infers the inner life ; and thereby it controls the tendency known as " the psychologist's fallacy," namely, that of reading one's own mind into that of another man without making due allowance for differ- 228 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES ences of innate capacity and of acquired outlook. In what follows, then, let^s, as anthropologists, be content to judge human progress in prehistoric times primarily by its external and objective manifestations ; yet let us at no point in our inquiries forget that these ancient men, some of whom are our actual ancestors, were not only flesh of our flesh, but likewise spirit of our spirit. A rapid sketch such as this must take for granted on the part of the audience some general acquaintance with that succession of prehistoric epochs which modem re- search has definitely established. Pre-history, as dis- tinguished from proto-history, may, in reference to Europe as a whole, be made co-extensive with the Stone Age. This divides into the Old Stone Age and the New. The Old Stone Age, or Palaeolithic Period, yields three well-marked sub-divisions, termed Early, Middle, and Late. The New Stone Age, or Neolithic Period, includes two sub-periods, the Earlier or Transitional, and the Later or Typical. Thus our historical survey will fall naturally into five chapters. There are reasons, however, why it will be more con- venient to move over the whole ground twice. The material on which our judgments must be founded is not all of one kind. Anthropology is the joint work of two departments, which are known as Physical Anthro- pology and Cultural Anthropology respectively. The former, we may say, deals with man as an organism, the latter with him as an organizer. Here, then, are very different standpoints. For, in a broad way of speaking, nature controls man through his physical organization, wherecis through his cultural organization man controls nature. From each of these standpoints in turn, then, let us inquire how far prehistoric man can be shown to 229 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE have progressed. Firstly, did the breed improve during the long course of the Stone Age In Europe ? Secondly, did the arts of life advance, so that by their aid man might establish himself more firmly in his kingdom ? Did the breed improve during prehistoric times ? I have said that, broadly speaking, nature controls man as regards his physical endowment. Now in theory one must admit that it might be otherwise. If eugenics were to mature on its purely scientific side, there is no reason why the legislator of the future should not try to make a practical application of its principles ; and the chances are that, of many experiments, some would prove successful. But that conscious breeding was practised in prehistoric times is out of the question. The men of those days were one and all what we are ourselves — nature's mongrels, now broken up into varieties by casual isolation, and now by no less casual intermixture recompounded in a host of relatively un- stable forms. Whatever progress, therefore, may have occurred in this respect has been unconscious. Man cannot take the credit for it, except in so far as it is indirectly due to that increase and spread of the race which have been promoted by his achievements in the way of culture. The barest outline of the facts must suffice. For the Early Pleistocene, apart from the Java fossil. Pithecan- thropus erectus, a veritable " missing hnk," whom we may here disregard as falling altogether outside our world of Europe, there are only two individuals that can with certainty be referred to this distant period. These are the Piltdown and the Heidelberg specimens. The former consists of a fragmentary brain case, thick-boned and narrow-fronted, but typically human in its general characters, and of the greater part of a lower jaw, which, 330 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES as regards both its own elongated and curiously flanged structiire, and that of the teeth it contained, including an enormous pointed canine, is conversely more appro- priate to an ape-Uke being than to a man. The latter consists only of a lower jaw, of which the teeth, even the canines, are altogether human, whereas the jaw itself is hardly less simian than that of the Sussex skull. If we add the Java example to the list of very primitive forms, it is remarkable to note how, though differing widely from each other, all alike converge on the ape. Never-. theless, even in Pithecanthropus, the brute is passing into the man. We note the erect attitude, to be inferred from his thigh-bone, and the considerably enlarged, though even so hardly human, brain. The Piltdown individual, on the other hand, has crossed the Rubicon. He has a brain-capacity entitling him to rank as a man and an Englishman. Such a brain, too, implies a cunning hand, which doubtless helped him greatly to procure his food, even if his massive jaw enabled him to dispose of the food in question without recourse to the adventitious aids of knife and fork. For the matter of that, if our knowledge made it possible to correlate these rare finds of bones more exactly with the innumerable flint implements ascribable to this period (and, indeed, not without analogies among the spoil from the Piltdown gravels), it might turn out that even the equivalent of knife and fork was not wanting to the Early Pleistocene supper-party, or, at any rate, that the human hand was already advanced from the status of labourer to the more dignified position of superintendent of the tool. The Middle Pleistocene Epoch belongs to the men of the Neanderthal type. Some thirty specimens, a few of them more or less complete, have come down to us, and we can form a pretty clear notion of the physical 331 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE appearance of the race. Speaking generally, we may say that it marks a stage of progress as compared with the Piltdown type ; though if the jaw, heavy and re- latively chinless as it is, has become less simian, the pro- truding brow-ridge lends a monstrous look to the face, while the forehead is markedly receding — a feature which turns out, however, to be not incompatible with a weight of brain closely approaching our own average. Whether this type has disappeared altogether from the earth, or survives in certain much modified descendants, is an open question. The fact remains that during the last throes of the Glacial Epoch this rough-hewn kind of man apparently had Northern Europe as his exclusive province ; and it is by no means evident what Homo sapiens, the supposed highly superior counterpart and rival of Homo Neanderthalensis, was doing with himself in the meantime. Moreover, not only in respect of space does the population of that frozen world show remarkable homogeneity ; but also in respect of time must we allow it an undisputed sway extending over thousands of years, during which the race bred true. The rate of progress, whether reckoned in physical terms or otherwise, is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. A type suffices for an age. Whereas in the life-history of an individual there is rapid development during youth, and after maturity a steadying down, it is the other way about in the hfe-history of the race. Man, so to speak, was born old and accommodated to a jog- trot. We moderns are the juveniles, and it is left for us to go the pace. The Late Pleistocene Period introduces us to more diversity in the way of human types. Only one race, however, that named after the rock-shelter of Cro- Magnon in the Dordogne, is represented by a fair number 232 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES of Specimens, namely, about a dozen. At this point we come suddenly and without previous warning on as pretty a kind of man as ever walked this earth. In his leading characters he is remarkably uniform. Six feet high and long-legged, he likewise possessed a head well stocked with brains and a face that, if rather broad and short, was furnished by way of compensation with a long and narrow nose. If the present world can show nothing quite like him, it at least cannot produce any- thing more shapely in the way of the " human form divine." Apart from the Cro-Magnons, the remains of - an old woman and a youth found at the lowest level of the Grotte des Enfants at Mentone are usually held to belong to a distinct stock known as the Grimaldi. The physical characters of the pair are regarded as negroid, verging on the Pygmy ; but if we could study an adult male of the same stock, it might possibly turn out not to be so very divergent from the Cro-Magnon. Again, a single specimen does duty for the so-called Chancelade race. The skeleton is of comparatively low stature, and is deemed to show close affinities to the type of the modem Eskimo. Without being unduly sceptical, one may once more wonder if the Cro-Magnon stock may not have produced this somewhat aberrant form. Even on such a theory, however — and it is hardly orthodox — diversity of physical structure would seem to be on the increase. On the other hand, there are reasons of con- siderable cogency for referring to the end of this period skeletons of what Huxley termed th6 " River-bed type," the peculiarity of which consists in the fact that they are more or less indistinguishable from the later Neolithic men and indeed from any of those sMght-built, shortish, long-headed folk who form the majority in the crowded cities of to-day. Some authorities would ascribe a far 233 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE greater antiquity to this type, but, I venture to think, on the strength of doubtful evidence. The notorious Galley Hill skeleton, for instance, found more or less intact in an Early Pleistocene bed in which the truly contemporary animals are represented by the merest battered remnants, to my mind reeks of modernity. Be these things as they may, however, when we come to Neolithic times a race of similar physical characters has Europe to itself, though it would seem to display minor variations in a way that suggests that the reign of the mongrel has at length begun. And here we may close our enumeration of the earliest known branches of our family tree, since the coming of the broad-heads pertains to the history of the Bronze Age, and hence falls outside the scope of the present survey. Now what is the bearing of these somewhat scanty data on the question of progress ? It is not easy to extract from them more than the general impression that, as time went on, the breed made persistent head- way as regards both the complexity of its organization and the profusion of its forms. After all, we must not expect too much from this department of the subject. For one thing, beyond the limits of North-western Europe the record is almost blank ; and yet we can scarcely hope to discover the central breeding-place of man in what is, geographically, little more than a blind alley. In the next place. Physical Anthropology, not only in respect to human palaeontology, but in general, is as barren of explanations as it is fertile in detailed observations. The systematic study of heredity as it bears on the history of the human organism has hardly begun. Hence, it would not befit one who is no expert in relation to such matters to anticipate the verdict of a science that needs only public encouragement in order 334 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES to come into its own. Suffice it to suggest here that nature as she presides over organic evolution, that is, the unfolding of the germinal powers, may be conceived as a kindly but slow-going and cautious liberator. One by one new powers, hitherto latent, are set free as an appropriate field of exercise is afforded them by the environment. At first divergency is rarely tolerated. A given type is extremely uniform. On the other hand, when divergency is permitted, it counts for a great deal. The wider variations occur nearest the beginning, each for a long time breeding true to itself. Later on, such uncompromising plurality gives way to a more diffused multiplicity begotten of intermixture. Mongrelization has set in. Not but what there may spring up many true-breeding varieties among the mongrels ; and these, given suitable conditions, wiU be allowed to constitute lesser type* possessed of fairly uniform characters. Such at least is in barest outline the picture presented by the known facts concerning the physical evolution of man, if one observe it from outside without attempting to explore the hidden causes of the process. Some day, when these causes are better understood, man may take a hand in the game, and become, in regard to the infinite possibilities still sleeping in the transmitted germ, a self- liberator. Nature is but a figurative expression for the chances of life, and the wise man faces no more chances than he needs must. Scientific breeding is no mere ap- phcation of the multiplication table to a system of items. We must make resolutely for the types that seem healthy and capable, suppressing the defectives in a no less thorough, if decidedly more considerate, way than nature has been left to do in the past. Here, then, along physical Unes is one possible path of human progress, none the less real because hitherto pursued, not by the 335 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE aid of eyes that can look and choose, but merely in response to painful proddings at the tail-end. Our remaining task is to take stock of that improve- ment in the arts of life whereby man has come gradually to master an environment that formerly mastered him. For the Early Palaeolithic Period our evidence in respect of its variety, if not of its gross quantity, is woefvdly dis- appointing. Not to speak of man's first and rudest ex- periments in the utilization of stone, which are doubtless scattered about the world in goodly numbers if only we could recognize them clearly for what they axe, the Chellean industry by its wide distribution leads one to suppose that mankind in those far-off days was only capable of one idea at a time — a time, too, that lasted a whole age. Yet the succeeding Acheulean style of workmanship in flint testifies to the occurrence of pro- gress in one of its typical forms, namely, in the form of what may be termed " intensive " progress. The other typical form I might call " intrusive " progress, as happens when a stimulating influence is introduced from without. Now it may be that the Acheulean culture came into being as a result of contact between an immigrant stock and a previous population practising the Chellean method of stone-work. We are at present far too ill-informed to rule out such a guess. But, on the face of it, the greater refinement of the Acheulean handi- work looks as if it had been literally hammered out by steadfastly following up the Chellean pattern into its further possibihties. Explain it as we will, this evolu- tion of the so-called coup-de-poing affords almost the sole proof that the human world of that remote epoch was moving at all. If we could see their work in wood, we might discern a more diversified skill or we might not. As it is, we can but conclude in the light of our 236 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES very imperfect knowledge that in mind no less than in body mankind of Early Palaeolithic times displayed a fixity of type almost amounting to that of one of the other animal species. During Middle PalseoHthic times the Mousterian culture rules without a rival. The cave-period has begun ; and, thanks to the preservation of sundry dweUing-places together with a goodly assortment of their less perishable contents, we can frame a fairly ade- quate notion of the home-life of Neanderthal man. I have already alluded to my excavations in Jersey, and need not enter into fuller details here. But I should like to put on record the opinion borne in upon me by such first-hand experience as I have had that cultural advance in Mousterian days was almost as portentously slow as ever it had been before. The human deposits in the Jersey cave are in some places some ten feet thick, and the fact that they fall into two strata separated by a sterile layer that appears to consist of the dust of centuries points to a very long process of accumulation. Yet though there is one kind of elephant occurring amid the bone refuse at the bottom of the bed, and another and, it would seem, later kind at the top, one and the same type of flint instrument is found at every level alike ; and the only development one can detect is a certain gain in elegance as regards the Mousterian " point," the reigning substitute for the former coup-de-poing. Once more there is intensive progress only, so far at least as most of the Jersey evidence goes. One coup-de-poing, however, and that hardly Acheulean in conception but exactly what a hand accustomed to the fashioning of the Mousterian " point " would be likely to make by way of an imitation of the once fashionable pattern, lay at lowest floor-level ; as if to remind one that during 237 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE periods of transition the old is likely to survive by the side of the new, and may even survive in it as a modifying element. As a matter of fact, the coup-de-poing is frequent in the earliest Mousterian sites ; so that we cannot but ask ourselves how it came to be in the end superseded. Whether the Mousterians were of a different race from the Acheuleans is not known. Certain it is, on the other hand, that the industry that makes its first appearance in their train represents a labour-saving device. The Mousterian had learned how to break up his flint-nodule into flakes, which simply needed to be trimmed on one face to yield a cutting edge. The Acheulean had been content to attain this result more laboriously by pecking a pebble on both faces until what remained was sharp enough for his purpose. Here, then, we are confronted with that supreme condition of progress, the inventor's happy thought. One of those big-brained Neanderthal men, we may suppose, had genius ; nature, the liberator, having released some latent power in the racial constitution. Given such a culture hero, the common herd was capable of carrying on more or less mechanically for an aeon or so. And so it must ever be. The world had better make the most of its geniuses ; for they amount to no more than perhaps a single one in a milhon. Anyway, Neanderthal man never produced a second genius, so far as we can tell ; and that is why, perhaps, his pecuhar type of brow- ridge no longer adorns the children of men. Before we leave the Mousterians, another side of their culture deserves brief mention. Not only did they provide their dead with rude graves, but they hkewise furnished them with implements and food for use in a future life. Herein smrely we may perceive the dawn of what I do not hesitate to term religion. A distin- 238 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES guished scholar and poet did indeed once ask me whether the Mousterians, when they performed these rites, did not merely show themselves unable to grasp the fact that the dead are dead. But I presume that my friend was jesting. A sympathy stronger than death, over- riding its grisly terror, and converting it into the vehicle of a larger hope — ^that is the work of soul ; and to develop soul is progress. A reUgious animal is no brute, but a real man with the seed of genuine progress in him. If Neanderthal man belonged to another species, as the experts mostly declare and I very humbly beg leave to doubt, we must even so allow that God made him also after his own image, brow-ridges and aU. The presence of soul in man is even more manifest when we pass on to the Late Palaeolithic peoples. They are cave dwellers ; they live by the chase ; in a word, they are savages still. But they exhibit a taste and a talent for the fine arts of drawing and carving that, as it were, enlarge human existence by a new dimension. Again a fresh power has been released, and one in which many would seem to have participated ; for good artists are as plentiful during this epoch as ever they were in ancient Athens or mediaeval Florence. They must have married-in somewhat closely, one would think, for this special aptitude to have blossomed forth so luxuriantly. I cannot here dwell at length on the triumphs of Aurignacian and Magdalenian artistry. Indeed, what I have seen with my own eyes on the walls of certain French caves is ahnost too wonderful to be described. The simpHcity of the style does not in the least detract from the fuUness of the charm. On the contrary, one is tempted to doubt whether the criterion of complexity appUes here— whether, in fact, progress has any meaning in relation to fine art — since, whether 239 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE attained by simple or by complex means, beauty is always beauty, and cannot further be perfected. Shall we say, then, with Plato that beauty was revealed to man from the first in its absolute nature, so that the human soul might be encouraged to seek for the real in its complementary forms of truth and goodness, such as are less immediately manifest ? For the rest, the soul of these transcendently endowed savages was in other respects more imperfectly illuminated ; as may be gathered from the fact that they carved and drew partly from the love of their art, but partly also, and perhaps even primarily, for luck. It seems that these delinea- tions of the animals on which they Mved were intended to help them towards good hunting. Such is certainly the object of a like custom on the part of the Australian aborigines ; there being this difference, however, that the art of the latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretation of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scierttific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory ; and the picture- charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The chariot of progress, of which the will of man is the driver, is drawn by two steeds, namely. Imagination and Reason harnessed together. Of the pair. Reason is tjie more sluggish, though serviceable enough for the heavy work. Imagina- tion, full of fire as it is, must always set the pace. So the soul of the Late Palaeolithic hunter, having already in imagination controlled the useful portion of the animal world, was more than half-way on the road to its domestication. But in so far as he mistook the will 240 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES for the accomplished deed, he was not getting the value out of his second horse ; or, to drop metaphor, the scientific reason as yet lay dormant in his soul. But his dream was to come true presently. The Neolithic Period marks the first appearance of the " cibi-cultural " peoples. The food-seekers have become food-raisers. But the change did not come all at once. The earlier Neohthic culture is at best transitional. There may even have been one of thdse set-backs in culture which we are apt to ignore when we are narrating the proud tale of human advance. Europe had now finally escaped from the last ravages of an Arctic climate ; but there was cruel demolition to make good, and in the meantime there would seem, as regards man, to have been Uttle doing. Life among the kitchen-middens of Denmark was sordid ; and the Azilians who pushed up from Spain as far as Scotland did not exactly step into a paradise ready-made. Somewhere, however, in the far south-east a higher culture was brewing. By steps that have not yet been accurately traced legions of herdsmen and farmer-folk overspread our world, either absorbing, or driving before them, the roving hunters of the older dispensation. We term this, the earliest of true civil- izations, " neolithic," as if it mattered in the least whether your stone implement be chipped or poUshed to an edge. The real source of increased power and pros- perity lay in the domestication of food-animals and food-plants. The man certainly had genius and pluck into the bargain who first trusted himself to the back of an unbroken horse. It needed hardly less genius to discover that it is no use singing charms over the seed- bearing grass in order to make it grow, unless some of the seed is saved to be sowed in due season. Society possibly brained the inventor ; such is the way of the i6 241 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE crowd ; but, as it duly pocketed the invention, we have perhaps no special cause to complain. By way of appreciating the conditions prevailing in the Later Neolithic Age, let us consider in turn the Lake- dweUers of Switzerland and the Dolmen-builders of our Western coast-lands. I was privileged to assist, on the shore of the Lake of Neuch§,tel, in the excavation of a site where one Neohthic village of pile-dwelHngs had evidently been destroyed by fire, and at some later date, just falling within the Stone Age, had been replaced by another. Here we had Hghted on a crucial instance of the march of cultural progress. The very piles testified to it, those of the older settlement being iU-assorted and slight, whereas the later structure was regularly built and heavily timbered. It was clear, too, that the first set of inhabitants had Hved narrow lives. All their worldly goods were derived from strictly local sources. On the other hand, their successors wore shells from the Mediterranean and amber beads from the Baltic among their numerous decorations ; while for their fiint they actually went as far afield as Grand Pressigny in West- Central France, the mines of which provided the butter- like nodules that represented the ne -plus ultra of Neo- lithic luxury. Commerce must have been decidedly flourishing in those dayf . No longer was it a case of the so-called " silent trade," which the furtive savage pro- secutes with fear and trembhng, placing, let us say, a lump of venison on a rock in the stream dividing his haunts from those of his dangerous neighbours, and stealing back later on to see if the red ochre for which he pines has been deposited in return on the primitive counter. The Neolithic trader, on the other side, must have pushed the science of barter to the uttermost Umits short of the invention of a circulating medium, 243 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES if indeed some crude form of currency was not already in Vogue. When we turn to the Dolmen-builders, and con- template their hoary sanctuaries, we are back among the problems raised by the philosophic conception of progress as an advance in soul-power. Is any religion better than none ? Does it make for soul-power to be preoccupied with the cult of the dead ?' Does the im- agination, which in aUiance with the scientific reason achieves such conquests over nature, give way at times to morbid aberration, causing the chill and foggy loom of an after-hfe to obscure the honest face of the day ? I can only say for myseK that the deepening of the human consciousness due to the effort to close with the mystery of evil and death, and to extort therefrom a message of hope and comfort, seems to me to have been worth the achievement at almost any cost of crimes and foUies perpetrated by the way. I do not think that progress in reUgion is progress towards its ultimate aboli- tion. Rather, rehgion, if regarded in the light of its earlier history, must be treated as the parent source of all the more spiritual activities of man ; and on these his material activities must depend. Else the machine will surely grind the man to death ; and his body will finally stop the wheels that his soul originally set in motion. The panorama is over. It has not been easy, at the rate of about a millennium to a minute, to present a coherent account of the prehistoric record, which at best is like a jig-saw puzzle that has lost most of the pieces needed to reconstitute the picture. But, even on this hasty showing, it looks as if the progressive nature of man were beyond question. There is manifest gain in complexity of organization, both physical and cultural ; and only less manifest, in the sense that the inwardness of 243 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE the process cannot make appeal to the eye, is the corre- sponding gain in realized power of soul. In short, the men of the Stone Age assuredly bore their full share in the work of race improvement ; and the only point on which there may seem to be doubt is whether we of the age of metal are as ready and able to bear our share. But let us be optimistic about ourselves. As long as we do not allow our material achievements to bUnd us to the need of an education that keeps the spiritual well to the fore, then progress is assured so far as it depends on culture. But if we could likewise breed for spirituality, human- ity's chances, I believe, would be bettered by as much again or more. But how is this to be done ? Science must somehow find out. To leave it to nature is treason to the mind. Man may be an ass on the whole, but nature is even more of an ass, especially when it stands for human nature minus its saving grace of imaginative, will-directed intelligence. So let us hope that one day people will marry intelligently, and that the best marriages will be the richest in offspring. I beUeve that the spiritual is not born of the sickly ; and at any rate should be prepared to make trial of such a working principle in my New RepubUc. So much for the practical corollaries suggested by our fl5dng visit to Prehistoric Europe. But, even if any detailed lessons to be drawn from such fragmentary facts have to be received with caution, you need not hesitate to pursue this branch of study for its own sake as part of the general training of the mind. Accustom yourselves to a long perspective. Cultivate the eagle's faculty of spacious vision. It is only thus that one can get the values right — see right and wrong, truth and error, beauty and ugliness in their broad and cumulative effects. Analytic studies, as they are term,ed, involving 244 PROGRESS IN PREHISTORIC TIMES the exploration of the meaning of received ideas, must come first in any scheme of genuine education. We must learn to affirm before we can go on to learn how to criticize. But historical studies are a necessary sequel. Other people's received ideas turn out in the light of history to have sometimes worked well, and sometimes not so well ; and we are thereupon led to revise our own opinions accordingly. Now the history of man has hitherto stood almost exclusively for the history of European civilization. Being so limited, it loses most of its value as an instrument of criticism. For how can a single phase of culture criticize itself ? How can it step out of the scales and assess its own weight ? Anthropology, however, will never acquiesce in this parochial view of the province of history. History worthy of the name must deal with man universal. So I would have you all become anthropologists. Let your survey of human progress be age-long and world- wide. You come of a large family and an ancient one. Learn to be proud of it, and then you will seek likewise to be worthy of it. 245 XI ANTHROPOLOGY AND UNIVERSITY EDUCATION ARGUMENT TT/'HAT is the place of Anthropology in a scheme of Univer- sity studies ? In the first place, great as may be the value for imperial purposes of an " applied anthropology," such a technical application of anthropological knowledge is impossible unless the scientific study of the subject for its own sake he placed on a sound basis. In the next place, this basis must be pro- vided by the organization of a single School of Anthropology within each University ; so that the various branches of in- struction and research should be properly correlated, instead of being attached as secondary interests to a number of separate departments. A corollary is that such a School must be in charge of a special Board with power to prescribe a curriculum, to examine, to encourage research, and so forth. Moreover, the School ought, if possible, to be housed in one building, and that preferably an ethnological museum, well-stocked with typical, though not necessarily rare and expensive, specimens, and including an ample library. It remains to deal with the vexed question how the various branches of anthropological study are to be combined in a curriculum so as for educational purposes to bring out the essential unity of the subject. One such branch consists in physical anthropology, which if dissociated from the remaining branches is apt to be somewhat barren of results. The other main branch, known by the general title of cultural anthropology, comprises two groups of studies. The first of 246 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION these deals with material culture in all its forms and may he called Technology ; Prehistoric Archceology being regarded as a subsection of it. The second, under the name of Social Anthro- pology, is concerned with the development of institutions and beliefs, while an important sub-division is constituted by Lin- guistics. Such, then, being the diverse studies which have to be directed to a common end, their convergence may be promoted in two ways at once. On the theoretical side, the student must he taught to keep in mind throughout their common bearing on questions of ethnology, namely, such as have reference to the distribution of racial and cultural types. On the practical side he or she must be trained as a possible explorer, so as to be able to take part in any kind of field-work. Such persons must, of course, be encouraged eventually to select a special line of research ; but they should first have taken a general course by way of introduction. Given a nucleus of students devoted to the scientific side of the subject, the School may safely extend its operations so as to further applications of anthropology to the ends of government, trade, missionary effort, and so forth ; but here too, even though the practical interest may be confined to a particular region, the educational value of an acquaintance with the science as a whole must be kept in view. HAD Fate been more kindly, we of this Section would to-day have been listening to a Pre- sidential Address delivered by Sir Laurence Gomme. Thus, on meeting together, our first thought is about the gap in the ranks of science caused by his death. He studied and enriched Anthropology chiefly on the side of folk-lore, having been in no small part responsible for the foundation and subsequent develop- ment of the well-known Society that devotes itself to this branch of the subject. As one who is officially con- nected with the Society in question, I am under a special 247 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE obligation to honour his memoiy. If its researches have all along been conducted on strictly scientific lines, if it be not unworthy to take its place by the side of the Royal Anthropological Institute as a body of co-workers and co-helpers who participate in precisely the same in- tellectual ideals (and a proof of such a recognized com- munity of aim is to be found in the fact that most of us are proud to be members of both organizations alike), the credit is largely due to Sir Laurence Gomme, to Lady Gomme who shared in his labours to such good purpose, and to those many personal friends of his who, kindled and kindling by mutual give and take, inspired each other to cultivate Anthropology in the form in which it lies nearest to our doors. A busy Londoner, if ever there was one, and, what is more, a Londoner loving and almost worshipping his London, Sir Laurence Gomme yet managed to cultivate the sense of the primitive, and, amid the dusty ways of the modem city, could himself repair, and could Ukewise lead others, to fresh and quiet spots where one may still overtake the breath of the morning. I shall not attempt now to deal in detail with his diverse contributions to science. They have become classical, forming by this time part and parcel of our common apparatus of ideas. But it may be in point here to suggest some considerations of a general nature touching his enhghtened conception of anthropological method. In the first place, he woiald never suffer An- thropology to be thrust into a corner as a mere sub- section of History. On the contrary, he perceived clearly that History in the sense of the history of Euro- pean civilization is but a sub-section of the universal history of man, in other words, of Anthropology ; which is just such a history of universal man conceived and 248 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION executed in the spirit of science. Perhaps the folk-lorist is in a better position to appreciate the continuity of human history than his anthropological colleague, the student of backward races. For it is constantly borne in upon him how the civilized man is only a savage evolved ; whereas, how the actual savage is ever to be civilized, is, alas ! usually not so evident. Moreover, Sir Laurence Gomme's interests lay chiefly among such problems as pertain to the transitional period in the history of this country that connects the chronologically primitive with the modem. We need more students willing and able to undertake such bridge-work. So long as we merely attack human history at its two ends (so to speak), there will be on the part of the several groups concerned a tendency to lose touch. They will thus be liable to exaggerate such divergence in respect to working methods as must inevitably occur whenever there is the shghtest difference as regards quality of subject-matter. There is much that I could say, did time allow, about the value of proto-history, as it is sometimes termed, that is, the study of the emergence of civilization out of barbarism, as a means of fostering a deeper sense of soUdarity between those who study human development from the contrasted standpoints of a rudimentary and a matured culture. All honour, then, to Sir Laurence Gomme as a pioneer in this little-frequented field. Again, let us honour him as an early promoter of that so-called ethnological method of which so much has lately been heard. This point is well brought out in a very sympathetic account of Sir Laurence Gomme's life- work from the pen of Dr Haddon. I need not here anticipate what I have to say about the scientific and educational importance of such a method and point of view. My only concern at present is to lay stress once 349 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE more on those qualities of the truo pioneer, the initiative, the self-reliance, the divinatory impulse, which we shall always associate with the memory of Sir Laurence Gomme. Science as well as war has its roll of honour ; and therein, for our encouragement, let us reverently inscribe his name. The question to which I beg to call atteation on the present occasion is. What function ought Anthropology to fulfil among the higher studies of a modem Uni- versity ? The subject may be commonplace, but it is certainly not untimely. At the present moment those of us who are University teachers in any of the warring countries are feeling Mke fish out of water. Our occupa- tion is to a large extent suspended ; and already it seems a lifetime since we were assisting, each after his own fashion, in the normal development of science. Usus abit vitae : bellis consumpsimus aevum. Can the hiatus be bridged, the broken highway mended ? Never, if memories are to prevail with us ; but, if hopes, then it goes equally without saying that we shall somehow manage to carry on more actively and successfully than ever. So the only problem for brave and hopeful men is. How ? Ignoring our present troubles, we are all thinking about the future of University education, and reform is in the air. Of course, every University has difficulties of its own to meet ; and my own University of Oxford, with eight centuries of growth to look back on, is likely to be more ' deeply affected by the sundering of traditions due to the War than such of its sister-institutions as are of more recent stamp. Now, when I discuss University matters, the case of Oxford is bound to weigh with me predomin- antly ; and, indeed, no man of science could wish me to 350 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION neglect what after all is bound to be my nearest and richest source of experience. But various kind friends and colleagues hailing from other Universities in Great Britain, France, and the United States have furnished me with copious information concerning their home con- ditions ; so that I shall not altogether lack authority if I venture to frame conclusions of a general nature. Besides, it is not on behalf of any University but rather as representing the interests of the science of Anthro- pology, that I am entitled to speak in my present capacity. I do indeed firmly hold that anthropological teaching and research can be admitted to the most ample status in the curriculum of any modern University without injury to estabhshed industries and activities. But, even if this were not so — even if it needed a sort of surgical operation to engraft the new in the old — ^we anthropologists must, I think, insist on the fullest recog- nition of our science among University studies, realizing as we are especially able to do its immense educational value as a humanizing discipUne. Let me not, however, rouse prejudice at the outset by seeming to adopt an aggressive tone. " Live and let live " is the safest motto for the University reformer ; and I have no doubt that the peaceful penetration whereby Anthropology has of late been almost imperceptibly coming to its own in the leading Universities of the world wiU continue to accomplish itself, if we, who make Anthropology our chief concern, continue to put forth good work in abundance. For, like any other science, the science of man must be justified of its children. Now, it is customary to contrast what are known as technical studies with University studies proper ; and such a distinction may prove helpful in the present con- text, if it be not unduly pressed. Thus, in particular, it 251 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE will afford me an excuse for not attempting to travel afresh over the ground covered by Sir Richard Temple in his admirable Presidential Address of three years ago. What he then demanded was, as he termed it, a school of Applied Anthropology, in which men of affairs could learn how to regulate their practical relations with so- called " natives " for the benefit of all concerned. Let me say at once that I am in complete agreement with him as to the need for the establishment or further de- velopment of not one school only but many such schools in this country, if the British Empire is to make good a moral claim to exist. Indeed, I have for a number of years at Oxford taken a hand in the anthropological in- struction of probationers and officers belonging to the public services, and can bear witness to the great interest which students of this class took at the time, and after leaving Oxford have continued to take, in studies bearing so directly on their Ufe-work. What I have to say to-day, however, must be regarded as complementary rather than as immediately subsidiary to Sir Richard Temple's wise and politic contention. The point I wish to make is that, unless Anthropology be given its due place among University studies proper, there is little or no chance that technical applications of anthropological knowledge will prove of the slightest avail, whether attempted within our Universities or out- side them. Anthropology must be studied in a scientific spirit, that is, for its own sake ; and then the practical results will follow in due course. Light first, fruit afterwards, as Bacon says. So it has always been, and must always be, as regards the association of science with the arts of life. That Sir Richard Temple will heartily subscribe to such a principle I have no doubt at all. As a man of affairs, however, whose long and 352 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION wide experience of administration and of the problems of empire had convinced him of the utility of the an- thropological habit of mind to the official who has to deal with " all sorts and conditions of men," he natmrally insisted on the value of Anthropology in its applied character. On the other hand, it is equally natiu-al that one whose career has been wholly academic should lay emphasis on the other side of the educational question, maintaining as an eminently practical proposition — for what can be more practical than to educate the nation on sound lines ? — ^the necessity of establishing Anthro- pology among the leading studies of our Universities. How, then, is this end to be attained ? The all- important condition of success, in my belief, is that all branches of anthropological study and research should be concentrated within a single School. For it is con- ceivable that a University may seek to satisfy its con- science in regard to the teaching of Anthropology by trusting to the scattered efforts of a number of faculties and institutions, each of which is designed in the first instance to fulfil some other purpose. Thus for Physical' Anthropology a would-be student must resort to the medical school, for Social Anthropology to the faculty of arts, for Linguistics to the department of philology, for Prehistorics to the archaeological museum, and so on. Such a policy, to my mind, is a downright insult to our science. Is the anthropologist no better than a tramp, that he should be expected to hang about academic back-doors, in search of broken victuals ? Fed on a farrago of heterogeneous by-products, how can the student ever be taught to envisage his subject as a whole ? How, for instance, is he ever to acquire the comprehensive outlook of the competent field-worker ? Such a makeshift arrangement can at the most but 253 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE produce certain specialists of the narrower sort. In The Hunting of the Snark they engaged a baker who could only bake bride-cake. Anthropological expedi- tions have, perhaps, been entrusted before now to experts of this type ; but they have not proved an entire success. I am not ashamed to declare that the anthropologist, be he field-worker or study-worker — and, ideally, he should be both in one — must be some- thing of a Jack-of-all-trades. This statement, of course, needs qualification, inasmuch as I would have him know everjTthing about something as well as something about everything. But the pure specialist, however useful he may be to society in his own way, is not as a rule a man of wide sympathies ; whereas the student of mankind in the concrete must bring to his task, before all else, an intelligence steeped in sympathy and imagina- tion. His soul, in fact, must be as many-sided as that complex soul-life of humanity which it is his ultimate business to understand. Suppose it granted, then, that the anthropological studies of a University must be united in a single School, how is this to be done ? In this examination-ridden land, the all-important first step is that Anthropology be admitted to an independent place in the examination- system of the University concerned. Whether such a principle would hold good of other countries, as, for instance, of the United States, I am not sure. In America, indeed, the simplest way to start a subject would seem to be to get a millionaire to endow it. But here let it suf&ce to deal with the conditions most familiar to us ; amongst which, alas ! millionaires are hardly to be reckoned. Now, much depends, of course, on what sort of place the subject is accorded ; for there are higher and lower seats at the feast of reason which a British 254 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION University in its examinatorial capacity provides for its hungry children. It is largely a question of the form of distinction — ^the degree or other badge of honour — ^with which success is rewarded. Thus the examination in Anthropology may be made an avenue to the Bachelor's degree, to some higher degree such as that of Master, or to some special ' certificate or diploma. Further, am- bition will be stimulated accordingly as classes or other grades of achievement are recognized within the ex- amination itself. But these are matters of occasion and circumstance, such as must be left to the discretion of the genius loci. The essential requirement is that Anthropology should figure in the examination-system with a substantive position of its own. If there is to be an examination in Anthropology, some official body must exist in order to arrange and administer it. It is possible, indeed, to hand over such a function to an organization already saddled with other duties. In that case, it is extremely improbable that the new and, as it were, intrusive subject will be given its fair chance. Preferably, then, Anthropology should be committed to the charge of a special Board. The members of such a Board need not one and all be professionally concerned with the teaching of Anthro- pology ; though, as soon as a teaching staff comes into being, its leading members will naturally be included. On the contrary, it is advisable that representatives of a goodly number of those disciplines which take, or ought to take, an interest in human origins should participate in the deliberations of such a governing body. Biology, Human Anatomy, Archaeology, Geology, Geography, Psychology, Philology, History, Law, Economics, Ethics, Theology — ^here is a round dozen of organized interests from wldch to select advisers. To be effective, of course, 255 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE an organizing committee must not be too large ; and it may be necessary, if the Board of Anthropological Studies be constituted on the wide basis here suggested, that it should depute its executive functions to a Sub- committee, merely retaining a right of general super- intendence. But the principle that Anthropology is a blend or harmony of various special studies is so im- portant that its many-sidedness must somehow be represented in the constitution of the central authority which controls the destinies of the subject. Lest I seem to dwell too long on questions of mere machinery, I do not propose to deal at length with the activities which such a Board is bound to develop. When we come to consider presently how the subject of Anthropology needs to be conceived with due regard alike to its multiplicity and to its unity, we shall in effect be discussing the chief function of a Board of Studies ; which is to prescribe, for examination purposes, an ordered scheme of topics based on an accurate survey of the ground to be covered. Everything turns on pro- viding an adequate curriculum at the outset. The teaching arrangements wiU inevitably conform thereto ; and, unless the division of labour correspond to a sound and scientific articulation of the subject, chaos will ensue. For the rest, the powers granted to such a Board can hardly be too wide. Thus at Oxford the experiment has answered very well of constituting a Committee of Anthropology which not only examines, prescribes the programme of studies, and arranges courses of instruction, but is likewise authorized to manage its own finances, to organize anthropological expeditions, to make grants for research, and, generally, to advance the interests of Anthropology in whatever way may seem to it good and feasible. So much for 256 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION what is, indeed, the obvious principle that, if there is to be a school of Anthropology at all, it must enjoy a Uberal ' measure of self-government. Given, then, an independent, centrally governed school of Anthropology, must it be housed within the walls of a single Institution ? Such a reqmrement is perhaps to be regarded as a counsel of perfection ; since it may be necessary to make a start, as, for instance, we had to do at Oxford, without commanding the resources needful for the providing of accommodation on a suitable scale. Nevertheless, to bring all the anthropological studies together within the same building is, I think, highly jiesirable in the interests both of science and of education ; and this building, I suggest, should be for choice an ethnological museum, such as the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Lacking such a museum altogether, a University can scarcely aspire to teach Anthropology in any form. On the other hand for teaching purposes the museum need not be a very elaborate or costly affair. I am not competent, indeed, to deal with the vexed question of museum organization, and must altogether avoid such a problem as whether an ethnological collection should primarily be arranged on a geographical or on a typological plan. But this much at least I would venture to lay down, that it is salutary for any ethnological museum, and especially for one connected with a University, to be associated with the systematic teaching of Anthropology. When this happens it soon becomes plain that, in order to serve educational ends, a museum should abound rather in the typical than in the rare. The genuine student of Anthropology pays no heed to scarcity values, but finds the illustrative matter that he needs largely in common things which have no power to excite the morbid passion 17 257 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE known as collector's mania. Or, again, if both the in- structor and the pupil have had a sound anthropological education, they will have no use for objects torn by some "globe-trotter" from their ethnological context and hence devoid of scientific meaning ; and yet the museums of the world are full of such bric-d-brac, and in former less-enlightened times have done much to encourage this senseless and almost sacrilegious kind of treasure- hunting. Further, if all courses of anthropological instruction are held in the immediate neighbourhood of a rich store of material, osteological, archaeological, and techno- logical, no teacher can afford to treat his particular topic as one wholly relative to ideas as distinct from things. I can conceive of no branch of the subject, with the possible exception of linguistics, that does not stand to gain by association with objects that appeal to the eye and touch. There is a real danger lest Anthropology on its social side be too bookish. Much may be done to supplement a purely literary treatment by the use of a lantern, not to mention the further possibilities of a cine- matograph supported by a phonograph ; and I was much struck on the occasion of a recent visit to Cambridge by the copious provision in the way of slides which Pro- fessor Haddon has made for lecturing purposes. Even more, however, is to be gathered from experience of the things themselves, more especially if these be so arranged as to bring out their functional significance to the full. Thus, however carefully we might have studied the works of Sir Baldwin Spencer beforehand, those of us who had the privilege two years ago of visiting the Melbourne Museum under his guidance must have felt that but half the truth about the AustraUan aborigines had hitherto been revealed to us. Or, again, if our 258 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION buildings and, let me add, our finances were sufficiently spacious, how valuable for educational purposes it would be to follow the American plan, so well exempHfied in the great museums of Washington, New York, and Chicago, of representing pictoriaUy, by means of life- size models furnished with the actual paraphernalia, the most characteristic scenes of native Ufe ! There are many other aspects of this side of my subject on which I could enlarge, did time allow. For example, I might insist on the value of a collection illustrating the folk-lore of Europe, and that of our own country in particular, as a means of quickening those powers of an- thropological observation which our students may be taught to exercise on Christians no less intensively than on cannibals. But I must pass on, simply adding that, of course, such an anthropological institution must be furnished with a first-rate library, including a well- stocked map-room. America, by the by, can afford us many useful hints as to the organization of a library in connexion with University education. Thus I lately noted with admiration, not unmixed with envy, how the University of California furnishes each class of students with a special sanctum where the appropriate Uterature is collected for them ready to hand. To arrange such seminar Ubraries, as they may be termed, is quite simple, if only the library officials and the teaching staff can be induced to co-operate inteUigently. I come at length to the root of the problem. It has sometimes been objected that, however much we strive by means of organization to invest Anthropology with an external semblance of unity, the subject is essentially wanting in any sort of inner cohesion. Nor does such criticism come merely from the ignorant outsider ; for I remember how, when the programme for our Diploma 259 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Course at Oxford was first announced to the world, Father Schmidt found fault with it in the columns of Anthropos on the ground that it was not the part of one and the same man to combine the diverse special studies to which we had assigned a common anthropo- logical bearing. In the face of such strictures, however — and they were Hkewise levelled at us from quarters nearer home — we persisted in our design of training an- thropologists who should be what I may call " all-round men." Let them, we thought, by all means devote themselves later on to whatever branch of the subject might attract them most ; but let them in the first in- stance learn as students of human life to " see it steadily and see it whole." Since this resolve was taken, a con- siderable number of students has passed through our hands, and we are convinced that the composite cur- riculum provided in our Diploma Course works perfectly in practice, and, in fact, well-nigh amounts to a liberal education in itself. It is true that it cuts across certain established lines of demarcation, such as, notably, the traditional frontier that divides the faculty of arts from the faculty of natural science. But what of that ? Indeed, at th6 present moment, when the popular demand is for more science in education — and I am personally convinced that there is sound reason behind it — I am inclined to claim for our system of combined anthropological studies that it affords a crucial instance of the way in which natural science and the humanities, the interest in material things and the interest in the great civiUzing ideas, can be imparted conjointly, and with a due appreciation of their mutual relations. Now, there is tolerable agreement, to judge from the University syllabuses which I have been able to examine, as to the main constituents of a full course of anthropo- 260 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION logical studies. In the first place, Physical Anthro- pology must form part of such a training. I need not here go into the nature of the topics comprised under this head, the more so as I am no authority on this side of the subject. Suffice it to say that this kind of work involves the constant use of a well-equipped anatomical laboratory, with occasional excursions into the psy- chological laboratory which every University ought likewise to possess. It is notably this branch of An- thropology which some would hand over entirely to the specialist, allowing him no part or lot in the comple- mentary subjects of which I am about to speak. I can only say, with a due sense, I trust, of the want of expert knowledge on my part, that the results of the purely somatological study of man, at any rate apart from \vhat has been done in the way of human palaeontology, have so far proved rather disappointing ; and I would venture to suggest that the reason for this comparative sterility may Me, not so much in the intrinsic diffi- culties of the subject, as in a want of constructive imagination, such as must at once be stimulated by a fuller grasp of the possibiUties of anthropological science as a whole. In the next place. Cultural as distinct from Physical Anthropology must be represented in our ideal course by at least two distinct departments. The first of these, the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology and Tech- nology, involves the use of a museum capable of illus- trating the material culture of mankind in all its rich variety. Here instruction will necessarily take the form of demonstration-lectures held in the presence of the objects themselves. To a Hmited extent it should even be possible to enable the student to acquire practical experience of the more elementary technological pro- 261 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE cesses, as, for instance, flint-knapping, fire-making, weaving, the manufacture of pottery, and so on. May I repeat that, to serve such educational purposes, a special kind of museum-organization is required ? Moreover, it will be necessary to include in the museum staff such persons as have had a comprehensive training in Anthropology, and are consequently competent to teach in a broad and humanizing way. The other department of Cultural Anthropology is one that embraces a considerable complex of studies. At Oxford we term this branch of the subject Social An- thropology, and I do not think that there is much amiss with such a title. Among the chief topics that it com- prises are kinship- and marriage-organization, religion, government, law, and morals. Further, economic and aesthetic developments have to be examined in their reference to the social life, as apart from their bearing on technology. In one aspect, all these subjects lend themselves to a sociological method of treatment ; and, though no one is more concerned than myself to insist on the paramount importance of psychology in the equipment of the perfect anthropologist, I would concede that the sociological aspect ought as far as possible to be considered first, as lending itself more readily to direct observation. To reveal the inner workings of the social movement, however, nothing short of psy- chological insight will suffice. Indeed, aU, I hope, will agree that the anthropologist ought to be so trained as to be able to fulfil the functions of sociologist and psy- chologist at once and together. It remains to add that no training in Social Anthro- pology can be regarded as complete that does not include the study of the development of language. On the theoretical side of his work the student should acquire a 262 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION general acquaintance with the principles of comparative philology, and, in particular, should pay attention to the relations between speech and thought. On the practical side he should be instructed in phonetics as a preparation for linguistic researches in the field. But detailed instruction in particular languages, more especially if these are not embodied in a literature, is hardly the business of a School of Anthropology such as every University may aspire to possess. For this reason I welcome whole-heartedly the creation of the London School of Oriental Studies, which obtained its charter of incorporation only this year [1916]. It is probably sufficient for the practical needs of the Empire that the teaching of the chief vernacular languages of the East and of Africa, when the object sought is primarily their colloquial use, should be con- centrated in a single institution, and this may appro- priately have its place in the metropolis. The new School likewise proposes to give instruction not only in the literature (where there is a hterature), but also in the history, religion, and customs of the peoples whose languages are being studied, I do not speak with any intimate knowledge of the full scheme contemplated, but would venture to suggest that, if this additional task is to be adequately discharged, the new institution must be organized on a twofold basis, comprising a school of Anthropology with a specially trained staff of its own by the side of the school of languages, whether these be hving or classical. If, on the other hand, the study of customs were to be subordinated to the study of lan- guages, being carried out under teachers selected mainly for their linguistic attainments, I fear that this part of the training would prove little better than a sham. Fortunately the University of London already possesses 263 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE a School of Anthropology, which under the guidance of an exceptionally brilliant staff has already done work which we all know and appreciate. Other Universities, too, have similar schools, and could not acquiesce in the centralization of anthropological studies in London, least of all in connexion with an organization that is primarily concerned with the teaching of languages. But I have no doubt that a just and satisfactory co- ordination of functions can be arranged between the different interests concerned ; and, in the meantime, we, as anthropologists, can have nothing but hearty praise for the enterprise that has endowed with actuality the magnificent and truly imperial idea represented by this new School. So much, then, for the multiplicity which an anthropo- logical curriculum must involve if it consist, as has been suggested, of Physical Anthropology, Technology with Prehistoric Archaeology, and Social Anthropology with Linguistics. And now what of its unity ? How best can these diverse studies be directed to a common end ? I would submit that there are two ways in which the student may most readily be made to realize the scope of Anthropology as a whole, the one way having reference to theory and the other to practice. The theoretical way of making it plain that the special studies among which the student divides his time can and must serve a single scientific purpose is to make his work culminate in the determination of problems con- cerning the movement of peoples and the diffusion of culture — in a word, of ethnological problems (if, as is most convenient, the term " ethnology " be taken to signify the theory of the development of the various ethnic groups or " peoples " of the world). A great impetus was given to the investigation of such matters 264 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION by Dr Rivers in a now famous Presidential Address to this Section, followed up as it was shortly afterwards by a monumental work on the ethnology of the Pacific region. But it would be quite a mistake to suppose that anthro- pologists were not previously ahve to the importance of the ethnological point of view as a unifying interest in anthropological theory. As far back as 1891, when the second Folk-lore Congress met in London under the pre- sidency of the late Andrew Lang, the burning question was how far a theory of diffusion and how far a theory of independent origins would take us in the explanation of the facts with which the science of folk-lore is more particularly concerned. It is true that there has been in the past a tendency to describe the theory of inde- pendent origins as the " anthropological " argument ; but such a misnomer is much to be regretted. Anthro- pology stands not for this line of explanation or for that, but for the truth by whatever way it is reached ; and Ethnology, in the sense that I have given to the term, is so far from constituting the antithesis of Anthropology that it is rather, as I have tried to show, its final out- come and consummation. Recognizing this, the Oxford School of Anthropology from the first insisted that candidates for the Diploma should face an examination- paper in Ethnology, in which they must bring the various kinds of evidence derived from physical type, from arts, from customs, and from language to bear together on the problem how the various ethnic individualities have been formed. The result, I think, has been that our students have all along recognized, even when most deeply im- mersed in one or other of their special studies, a cen- tripetal tendency, an orientation towards a common scientific purpose, that has saved them from one-sided- ness, and kept them loyal to the interests of Anthro- 265 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE pology as a whole. Let me add that, as our anthropo- logical course ends in Ethnology, so it begins in Ethno- graphy, by which I mean the descriptive account of the various peoples considered mainly in their relation to their geographical environment. Thus, from the be- ginning to the end of his work, the student of Anthro- pology is reminded that he is trying to deal with the varieties of human life in the concrete. He must first make acquaintance with the peoples of the world in their unanalysed diversity, must next proceed to the separate consideration of the universal constituent aspects of their life, and then finally must return to a concrete study of these peoples in order to explain, as well as he can, from every abstract point of view at once how they have come to be what they are. If this theoretical path be pursued, I have httle fear lest Anthropology appear to the man who has really given his mind to it a thing of rags and tatters. The second way in which the unity of Anthropology may be made manifest is, as I have said, practical. The ideal University course in Anthropology should aim directly and even primarily at producing the field-worker. I cannbt go here into the question whether better work is done in the field by large expeditions or by small. For educational purposes, however, I would have every student imagine that he is about to proceed on an an- thropological expedition by himself. Every part of his work will gain in actuality if he thinks of it as something likely to be of practical service hereafter ; and, to judge from my own experience as a teacher, the presence in a class of even a few ardent spirits who are about to enter the field, or, better still, have aheady had field-ex- perience and are equipping themselves for further efforts, proves infinitely inspiring alike to the class and to the 266 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION teacher himself. When the future campaigner realizes that he must prepare himself so as to be able to collect and interpret any kind of evidence of anthropological value that he comes across, he is bound to acquire in a practical way and as it were instinctively a compre- hensive grasp of the subject, such as cannot fail to re- inforce the demand for correlation and unification that comes from the side of theory. Let me at this point interpolate the remark that re- cruits for anthropological field-service are to be sought among women students no less than among men. We shall have an opportunity during the present meeting of congratulating Miss Freire-Marreco, Miss Czaplicka, and Mrs Scoresby Routledge — ^all members of the Oxford School — on the courage with which they have braved all sorts of risks in order that anthropological science might be increased. After all, Anthropology is the science of man in the sense that includes woman ; and the woman's side of human Ufe, more especially among primitive folk, must always remain inaccessible to the mere male. I hope that our Universities will give this fact due weight, not only when forming their anthropological classes, but also when constituting their teaching staffs. For the rest, even those who for one reason or another are unable to obey " the call of the wild," may find plenty to do in the way of field-research in the nearest village ; and my experience of the work of women, whether as collectors of folk-lore or as searchers after prehistoric objects, has led me to regard them as capable of responding practically to an anthropological education to the lasting benefit both of science and of themselves. So far I have insisted on the need of training the anthropologist to be an " all-round man." It stands to reason, however, that in the course of such an education 267 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE special aptitudes will declare themselves ; and it is all for the interests of science that the student should later on confine his activities to some particular field or branch of research. The sole danger lies in premature specializa- tion. Nor will a short and sketchy course of general anthropology suffice as a propaedeutic. A whole year of such preliminary study is the minimum I should pre- scribe, even for the man or woman of graduate standing who is otherwise well grounded. Thus we find at Oxford that the system works well of encouraging students first to take the Diploma Course, for which at least a year's study is required, and then to proceed to a Research Degree such as is awarded for a substantial thesis embodying the results of some special in- vestigation. In this way we try to educate the only type of specialist for which Anthropology has any use — namely, the type that is capable of concentration with- out narrowness. So long as the nucleus of the Anthropological School of a University consists in students who devote them- selves to the subject as a whole, there can be no objection, I think, to the inclusion of those who, though primarily interested in distinct if allied subjects, desire to study some branch of Anthropology up to a certain point. Thus at Oxford the classes given in the department of Social Anthropology are attended by theologians, phil- osophers, lawyers, students of the classics, economists, geographers, and so forth ; while elsewhere, as, for in- stance, at Harvard University, medical students, includ- ing those who are interested in special subjects such as dentistry, are attracted by the courses in Physical Anthropology. There is all the more to be said for such a hospitable policy on the part of a University School of Anthropology, inasmuch as our subject is one especially 268 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION suitable for the graduate student ; though at Oxford \ve have thought it wiser not to limit admission to this class of students, simply requiring that all who enter the school shall produce evidence of having already obtained a good general education. Hence, if students proceeding to the Bachelor's degree along one of the ordinary avenues are brought betimes into touch with anthropo- logical teaching, there is all the better chance of gather- ing them into the fold after graduation. There is also another good reason why a school of Anthropology should open its classes freely to the votaries of other subjects. It thereupon becomes possible to institute a system of give-and-take, whereby the student of An- thropology can in turn obtain the benefit of various courses of instruction deaUng with other subjects akin to his own. Thus at Oxford the School of Anthropology is able to indicate in its terminal lecture-list a large number of sources whence supplementary instruction is forthcoming, such as will serve to broaden the student's mind by making him aware of the larger implications of the science of man. I have been speaking all along as if general education and scientific research were the only objects which a University should keep in view. But I have explained that my sole reason for not discussing education on its technical side was because Sir Richard Temple has already discoursed so weightily on the need for an AppUed Anthropology. I should like, however, to submit a few observations concerning this matter. We have had some experience at Oxford in the anthropological training of officers for the public services. The Sudan Probationers, by arrangement with the Governor- General of the Sudan, have received systematic in- struction in Anthropology for a number of years. Again, 269 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE members of the University and others serving or about to serve in Africa have more recently attended our classes in considerable numbers, and with the express sanction of the Colonial Office. If the Indian pro- bationers have so far had less to do with Anthropology, it is simply because the programme of studies which they are expected to carry out within the space of a year is already so vast. The following are some of the impressions I have formed as to the most suitable way of training students of this type. In the first place, each set of officers destined for a particular province should be provided with a course in the ethnography of their special region. In the second place, all alike should be encouraged to attend some of the general courses pro- vided by the School, if only in order that they may associate with the regular students, and so gain insight into the scientific possibihties of the subject. Thirdly, such official students ought not to be subjected to any test-examination in Anthropology at the end of their course, unless they elect on their own account to enter for the ordinary examinations of the School. We need to deal somewhat tenderly with these men who, after many years of University training, are about to go out into the world ; for it is fatal to send them out tired. For this reason, among others, I am in favour of every University retaining its own alumni during their pro- bationary period. By this time they are thoroughly at home in their own University ; and nowhere else are they likely to be treated with so much consideration as regards their spiritual needs. I am sure that the picked University man who stands on the threshold of a public career can be trusted to make the most of his time of training, if he be not badgered with too many set courses and examinations, but is allowed, under discreet super- 270 ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION vision, to follow the promptings of his own common sense. Certainly in regard to Anthropology it has answered well at Oxford not to press students of this class too hard. If they have shown keenness at the time, and have done much good work afterwards, it is at least partly because there were no associations of the prison-house to mar their appreciation of the intrinsic interest of the subject. Though I have indulged in a somewhat lengthy dis- quisition, I fear that I have not done justice to many aspects of my theme. But I feel less compunction on this score, inasmuch as I beUeve that we who belong to this Section are in close agreement as to the importance of Anthropology as an element in University education, and nke\vise as to the principles according to which it ought to be taught as an academic subject. The diffi- culty is rather to make the public reahze the need for the fuller encouragement of anthropological studies. For- tunately for the future of our science. Anthropology is an imperial necessity. Moreover, at this crisis in its fortunes, the coimtry is hkely to pay heed to the sound maxim that national education must issue in activities of a practical and useful nature ; so let us by all means place the practical argument in the forefront of our case. Sir Richard Temple has set us an excellent example in this respect. The contention, however, which I have now put forward by way of supplement is this, that in order to be practical one must first of all be scientific. In other words, an Applied Anthropology is bound to be a hollow mockery unless it be the outcome of a Pure or Theoretical Anthropology pursued in accordance with the ideal of truth for truth's sake. Nowhere, I beheve, so well as within our Universities is it possible to realize the conditions favourable to the study of Anthropology 271 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE in its practical and imperial bearing ; for nowhere else ought the spirit of research to be more at home. The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is that, for practical and scientific reasons aUke, our Universities must endow Schools of Anthropology on a liberal scale, providing funds not only for the needs of teaching, but likewise for the needs of research. Money may be hard to get, but nevertheless it can be got. We must not hesitate, as organizers of education, to cultivate the predatory instincts. For the rest, it is simply a question of rousing public opinion in respect to a matter of truly national importance. If anything that I have said to-day can help in any way to improve the position of Anthropology among University studies, I shall be satisfied that, trite as my subject may have seemed to be, I have not misused the great opportunity afforded to every holder of my present office. 272 INDEX Acclimatization of custom, 115 Acheulean culture, 236 Animism, 82 Anthropology, Applied, 232, 269 f. Cultural, 229, 261 f. Physical, 229 1, 253, 261 Social, 3, 104, 262 Anthropomorphism, 207 Arnold, M., 192 Arungquiltha, 218 Astrology, 214 Aurignacian culture, 239 Azilian culture, 241 Baalim, 134 Babel, 132 f. Bagehot, W., 36, 37, 39, 44 Bates, H. W,, 35 Beauty, sense of, 116, 240 Bells, 135 Bergson, H., 12 Bible, 123 f., 155, 176 Blood -covenant, 139 Blood-sacrifice, 191 Bloodshed, 140 Bori, 219 Broca, P. P., 144 Buckle, H., 31 Buddhism, 164 Bume, Miss C. S., 85, no n. Census, prejudice against a, 136 Chambers, E. K., 18 Chancelade type, 233 Channel Islands, 22, 114, 224, 237 Charlevoix, P. F. X. de, 40 Chellean culture, 236 Child-birth, 198 f. Chivalry, 40 f . Churinga, 64, 163 " Clerk-lore," 109 Colquhoun, A. R., 32 Communion, 191 Confession, 222 Continuity, 24 Couvade, 199 Cox, Miss M. R., 131 Creation, myth of, 129 f. Cr6-Magnon type, 232 f. Crooke, W., inn. Crowd-psychology, 47, 124 Crystal, 207 f., 214 Culture-contact, 85, 88, 90 f., 114 Custom, 108 Cutting for the dead, 137 Darwin, C, 37, 102, 105, 144 Degeneration, 106 f. Democracy, 36, 58 Democritus, 10 " Depragmatization," 113, 116 Determinism, 10, 59, 154 Deucalion, 133 " Devulgarization,'' in, 116 Dieterich, A., no Dietetics, 221 Disease-boat, 212 Divination, 214 Dolmen-builders, 243 Drummond, H., 30 Dualism of Ethics, 36, 39, 61 Durkheim, E., 188 f. ESOTERICISM, 161 Ethnological Method, 18, 87 f., 249, 265 Eugenics, 45, 230, 244 Evolutionary Method, 77 f., 148, 155 Faith-healing, 203, 215, 221 Fall of man, myth of, 131 f. Farnell, L. R., 129 Fechner, G. T., 9 18 273 PSYCHOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE Folk-dances, 15 Folk-lore, 3-11 f., 60, 74 f., 84, loi f., 121 f., 136 Flood, legend of, 1 33 f . Frazer, Sir J., 3 f., 25, 50, 90, 123 f., 166, 169 i, 201 n. Freud, S., 128 Gaster, M., no n. Gibbon, E., 31, 105 Gomme, Sir L., 73 f., 247 f. Graebner, F., 96 Grimaldi type, 233 Haddon, a. C, 100, 249 Hartland, E. S., 90 Hasina, 71 Heidelberg fossil, 230 Heredity, 234 f. Hinduism, in Hippocrates, 123 History, 4, 55, 228, 248 Hose, C, 38 Howitt, A. W., 67 Hrdlicka, A., 202 n. Hubert, H., 190, 201 n., 203 n., 220 n. Humility, 67, 161 Huxley, T. H., 197, 233 Hylomorphism, 206 f. Ice Age, 223, 232 im Thurn, Sir E., 29 Initiation, 17, 23 Intellectualism, 188 Iturka, 64 Ivi, 131 Jacobs, J., 83 n., 86 James, W., 10 n., 47 n. Java fossil, 230 Kant, I., 54 King-slaying, 192 Kolben, P., 32 Kulischer, M., 36 n. Lake-dwellkrs, 242 Lang, A., 75, 171, 265 Legend, 129 f. L6vy-Bruhl, L., 124 Lost arts, 94 Lotze, H,, 149 Luchan, F. von, 29 Luck, 20 f. Lucretius, 30, 34 Magdalenian culture, 239 Magic, 22, 180, 183 f,, 200, 203 Magico-religious, 180 M'Dougall, W., 20, 38, 46 n., 70 Mana, 21, 63 f., 69, 162, 203 f., 220 Mandeville, Sir J., 33 Manitou, 213 Manngur, 66 Mannhardt, W., 4, 171, 176 Marx, K., 31 Maternal uncle, 8, 141 Mauss, M., 190, 201 n., 203 n., 220 n. Medicine-man, 65, 67, 197 f. " Metalepsis," 112 " Metataxis," 109 Mild savages, 33 f. Mobility, 34, 43 Modernization of custom, 114 Mousterian culture, 237 f. Myth, 98, 129 f. Neanderthal type, 231 f., 238 f. Neolithic man, 233, 241 f. Neuwied, Prince of, 40 f. Nietzsche, F., 57, 69 Nursery, ni, 119 Obsession, 54, 217 Orenda, 63 Origin, 147 f., 156 Ovid, 172 Perverted message, story of, 132 Phonetics, 263 Piltdown fossil, 230 Plato, 54 Pliny, 30 Predatory savages, 33 f., 39 f. Prehistoric Archaeology, 229 f., 261 Progress, 224 f. Psychology, 4, 12 f,, 54, 77, 91 f., 262 Pygmies, 209, 233 QUATREFAGES, A. de, 33 274 INDEX Rain-making, 216 Religion, 68, 94, 144 f., 182 f., 194, 205. 239, 243 Revival, 105, 118 Rh^s, Sir J., 51 1 River-bed type, 233 Rivers, W. H. R., 5 f., 15, 90 f., 265 Roth, W., 217 Routledge, Mr and Mrs S., 115 Ruskin, J., 105 Sacrbdness, 158 f. Sacrifice, 138 Savagery, 19, 29, 31 f., 46, 63, 70 Scape-goat, 212 Shamanism, 4i8 Shand, A. F., 47 Silent trade, 242 Smith, G. Elliot, 90, 201 n. Smith, W. Robertson, 128, 172, 190 Sociology, 5 f., 262 Spencer, Sir B., 17, 175, 190, 202 n., 240, 258 Spencer, H., 37, 39, 44, 104 Stefdnsson, V., 62 Stone Age, 229 f. Stone-worship, 135 Stratigraphicai Method, 6, 18 Suggestion, 215 Supernaturalism, 159, 210 Survivals, 7, 8, 14, 26, 74 f., 101 f., 115, 118, 122 f., 126 f., 131 Tabu, 21, 65, 140, 160 f., 193, 20 3 209 Technology, 261 f. Teleology, 154 f. Temple, Sir R., 252, 269, 271 " Thanatomauia," 218 Theism, 182 f. Thoms, W., 75, 121 Threshold, 137 Torres Straits, 8 Totemism, 190, 201 Transformism, 14, 16 Transvaluation, loi f. Tremearne, A. J. N,, 219 Tylor, Sir E., 36, 37, 73!, 118, 128, 131, 170 f. Unconscious, psychology of the, 126 f. Ultimogeniture, 141 Validity, 149 f. Values, 57, loi f., 155 Village-community, 89, 91 Wallas, G., 124 War, 28, 361, 55 f., 95, 100, 117, 200 Weeping as salutation, 137 Werewolf, 114 Witchcraft, 21 f., 67 f., 82, 138, 204 f . Women anthropologists, 267 Wright, Mrs E. M., 24 275 Printed in Great Britain hy Tumhull&* Spear s^ Edinburgh