CHAPTER IV.

SURVIVAL IN CULTURE (continued).

Occult Sciences-Magical powers attributed by higher to lower races-Magical processes based on Association of Ideas-Omens-Augury, etc.-Oneiromancy-Haruspication, Scapulimaney, Chiromancy, etc.—Cartomancy, etc.-Rhabdomancy, Dactyliomancy, Coscinomancy, etc.-Astrology— Intellectual conditions accounting for the persistence of Magic-Survival passes into Revival-Witchcraft, originating in savage culture, continues in barbaric civilization; its decline in early medieval Europe followed by revival; its practices and counter-practices belong to earlier cultureSpiritualism has its source in early stages of culture, in close connexion with witchcraft-Spirit-rapping and Spirit-writing-Rising in the air -Performances of tied mediums-Practical bearing of the study of Survival.

IN examining the survival of opinions in the midst of conditions of society becoming gradually estranged from them, and tending at last to suppress them altogether, much may be learnt from the history of one of the most pernicious delusions that ever vexed mankind, the belief in Magic. Looking at Occult Science from this ethnographic point of view, I shall instance some of its branches as illustrating the course of intellectual culture. Its place in history is briefly this. It belongs in its main principle to the lowest known stages of civilization, and the lower races, who have not partaken largely of the education of the world, still maintain it in vigour. From this level it may be traced upward, much of the savage art holding its place substantially unchanged, and many new practices being in course of time developed, while both the older and newer developments have lasted on more or less among modern cultured nations. But during the ages in which progressive

races have been learning to submit their opinions to closer and closer experimental tests, occult science has been breaking down into the condition of a survival, in which state we mostly find it among ourselves.

The modern educated world, rejecting occult science as a contemptible superstition, has practically committed itself to the opinion that magic belongs to a lower level of civilization. It is very instructive to find the soundness of this judgment undesignedly confirmed by nations whose education has not advanced far enough to destroy their belief in magic itself. In any country an isolated or outlying race, the lingering survivor of an older nationality, is liable to the reputation of sorcery. It is thus with the Lavas of Birma, supposed to be the broken-down remains of an ancient cultured race, and dreaded as man-tigers;1 and with the Budas of Abyssinia, who are at once the smiths and potters, sorcerers and werewolves, of their district. But the usual and suggestive state of things is that nations who believe with the sincerest terror in the reality of the magic art, at the same time cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it more essentially belongs to, and is more thoroughly at home among, races less civilized than themselves. The Malays of the Peninsula, who have adopted Mohammedan religion and civilization, have this idea of the lower tribes. of the land, tribes more or less of their own race, but who have remained in their early savage condition. The Malays have enchanters of their own, but consider them inferior to the sorcerers or poyangs belonging to the rude Mintira; to these they will resort for the cure of diseases and the working of misfortune and death to their enemies. It is, in fact, the best protection the Mintira have against their stronger Malay neighbours, that these are careful not to offend them. for fear of their powers of magical revenge. The Jakuns, again, are a rude and wild race, whom the Malays despise as infidels and little higher than animals, but whom at the 1 Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. i. p. 119.

2Life of Nath. Pearce,' ed. by J. J. Halls, vol. i. p. 286.

VOL. I.

I.

same time they fear extremely. To the Malay the Jakun seems a supernatural being, skilled in divination, sorcery, and fascination, able to do evil or good according to his pleasure, whose blessing will be followed by the most fortunate success, and his curse by the most dreadful consequences; he can turn towards the house of an enemy, at whatever distance, and beat two sticks together till that enemy will fall sick and die; he is skilled in herbal physic; he has the power of charming the fiercest wild beasts. Thus it is that the Malays, though they despise the Jakuns, refrain, in many circumstances, from ill-treating them.1 In India, in long-past ages, the dominant Aryans described the rude indigenes of the land by the epithets of "possessed of magical powers," "changing their shape at will." To this day, Hindus settled in Chota-Nagpur and Singbhum firmly believe that the Mundas have powers of witchcraft, whereby they can transform themselves into tigers and other beasts of prey to devour their enemies, and can witch away the lives of man and beast; it is to the wildest and most savage of the tribe that such powers are generally ascribed.3 In Southern India, again, we hear in past times of Hinduized Dravidians, the Sudras of Canara, living in fear of the dæmoniacal powers of the slave-caste below them.4 In our own day, among Dravidian tribes of the Nilagiri district, the Todas and Badagas are in mortal dread of the Kurumbas, despised and wretched forest outcasts, but gifted, it is believed, with powers of destroying men and animals and property by witchcraft.5 Northern Europe brings the like contrast sharply into view. The Finns and Lapps, whose low Tatar barbarism was characterized by sorcery such as flourishes still among their Siberian kins

1 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 328; vol. ii. p. 273; see vol. iv. p. 425. 2 Muir, Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. p. 435.

3 Dalton, 'Kols,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 6; see p. 16.

4 Jas. Gardner, Faiths of the World,' s. v.

Exorcism.'

5 Shortt, 'Tribes of Neilgherries,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vii. pp. 247, 277; Sir W. Elliot in 'Trans. Congress of Prehistoric Archæology,' 1868, p. 253.

folk, were accordingly objects of superstitious fear to their Scandinavian neighbours and oppressors. In the middle ages the name of Finn was, as it still remains among seafaring men, equivalent to that of sorcerer, while Lapland witches had a European celebrity as practitioners of the black art. Ages after the Finns had risen in the social scale, the Lapps retained much of their old half-savage habit of life, and with it naturally their witchcraft, so that even the magic-gifted Finns revered the occult powers of a people more barbarous than themselves. Rühs writes thus early in the present century: "There are still sorcerers in Finland, but the skilfullest of them believe that the Lapps far excel them; of a well-experienced magician they say, 'That is quite a Lapp,' and they journey to Lapland for such knowledge." All this is of a piece with the survival of such ideas among the ignorant elsewhere in the civilized world. Many a white man in the West Indies and Africa dreads the incantations of the Obi-man, and Europe ascribes powers of sorcery to despised outcast "races maudites," Gypsies and Cagots. To turn from nations to sects, the attitude of Protestants to Catholics in this matter is instructive. It was remarked in Scotland: "There is one opinion which many of them entertain, . . that a popish priest can cast out devils and cure madness, and that the Presbyterian clergy have no such power." Bourne says of the Church of England clergy, that the vulgar think them no conjurors, and say none can lay spirits but popish priests. These accounts are not recent, but in Germany the same state of things appears to exist still. Protestants get the aid of Catholic priests and monks to help them against witchcraft, to lay ghosts, consecrate herbs, and discover thieves; thus with unconscious irony judging the relation of Rome toward modern civilization. The principal key to the understanding of Occult Science

1 F. Rühs, Finland,' p. 296; Bastian, 'Mensch.'vol. iii. p. 202.

2 Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 81-3; see 313.

3 Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 128; see 239.

So

is to consider it as based on the Association of Ideas, a faculty which lies at the very foundation of human reason, but in no small degree of human unreason also. Man, as yet in a low intellectual condition, having come to associate in thought those things which he found by experience to be connected in fact, proceeded erroneously to invert this action, and to conclude that association in thought must involve similar connexion in reality. He thus attempted to discover, to foretell, and to cause events by means of processes which we can now see to have only an ideal significance. By a vast mass of evidence from savage, barbaric, and civilized life, magic arts which have resulted from thus mistaking an ideal for a real connexion, may be clearly traced from the lower culture which they are of, to the higher culture which they are in.1 Such are the practices whereby a distant person is to be affected by acting on something closely associated with him-his property, clothes he has worn, and above all cuttings of his hair and nails. Not only do savages high and low like the Australians and Polynesians, and barbarians like the nations of Guinea, live in deadly terror of this spiteful craft-not only have the Parsis their sacred ritual prescribed for burying their cut hair and nails, lest demons and sorcerers should do mischief with them, but the fear of leaving such clippings and parings about lest their former owner should be harmed through them, has by no means died out of European folklore, and the German peasant, during the days between his child's birth and baptism, objects to lend anything out of the house, lest witchcraft should be worked through it on the yet unconsecrated baby. As the negro fetish-man, when his patient does not come in person, can

1 For an examination of numerous magical arts, mostly coming under this category, see Early History of Mankind,' chaps. vi. and x.

· Stanbridge, Abor. of Victoria,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 299; Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 364; J. L. Wilson, W. Africa,' p. 215; Spiegel, 'Avesta,' vol. i. p. 124; Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 195; general references in Early History of Mankind,' p. 129.