In describing the occult arts and those who practise them, terms are so loosely used that it may be convenient to premise that by “Wizard” (or Medicine-man) is here meant either a magician or a sorcerer; that is, either one who puts into operation impersonal magical forces (or so far as he does so), or one who relies upon the aid (or so far as he does so) of ghosts or spirits under magical control. It is an objection to this use of the word “sorcerer,” that it is often applied to those chiefly whose practice is maleficent: but there seems to be no word used only in the more general sense; and the difference between maleficent and beneficent wizards, whether magicians or sorcerers, will here be marked, when necessary, by the familiar epithets “black” and “white.”

In backward societies, wizardry is, or may be, practised by every man or woman; and, indeed, in its simpler operations or observances this is true at every stage of culture. But in every kind of task it appears that some men can do it better than others, and they attract the attention of the rest; and probably this is the beginning of the differentiation of the professional wizard: he is at first merely one whom others ask to help them in certain matters, because they believe that he, more than themselves, has the knack of it. As the occult arts become complicated and dangerous the superiority of the master-mind is more manifest. We are told that amongst the Tasmanians there were no professional wizards or medicine-men, but that some people practised more than others. From the beginning the art excites wonder, and wonder credulity; and an old fellow, who was subject to fits of contraction in the muscles of one breast, used this mysterious affection to impose upon his neighbours.[389] Wonder and the deference it brings with it, with the self-delusion of power it generates, are at first the wizard’s sole recompense; and to the end they remain his chief recompense. In Australia a wizard is initiated (in fact or by repute), and is in some ways a man apart from others; yet in several cases it is reported that he receives no fees. For magical services amongst the Arunta “no reward of any kind is given or expected.”[390] Sometimes a wizard expects no fee unless he is successful, as among the Tungus, Yakut and Buryats.[391] Generally, the wizard earns his living like other men, and merely supplements it by fees and presents. He rarely attains the professional dignity of living solely by his art and mystery.

Nevertheless in simple societies the wizard is a leader or a chief. The predominance of old men in council depends upon their occult powers rather than upon their worldly wisdom: even hereditary chiefs may have greater prestige through Magic than through royal descent.[392] I conceive that after the organisation of the primitive hunting-pack had, by various causes, been weakened or destroyed, it was through belief in Magic that some sort of leadership and subordination were re-established: perhaps in many experimental social forms, of which some specimens may be found in Australia and survivals of others in all parts of the world. Among the Massim of the Trobriand Islands, hereditary chieftainship is better developed than anywhere to the south or west; yet “at the back of every chief’s power over his people is the dread of sorcery, without which I feel sure he is little more than a cypher.”[393] Or the medicine-man may appear as the chief’s rival, as among the Indians of the upper Amazons described by Capt. Whiffen, who observes that in a contest between the medicine-man and the chief the odds are in favour of the former, since to his opponents death comes speedily (by poison). He has great influence over international policy: war is never made without his advice. Here we see the beginning of that struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers which continues with alternate victory and defeat through the whole course of history. Callaway[394] describes a Bantu chief as inducted to his office by diviners that he may be “really a chief” not merely by descent. A dangerous concession! But other Bantu chiefs are themselves wizards, and strive to collect all the medicine of the tribe in their own hands; and Chaka declared he was the only diviner in the country.[395] The rise and spread of the political power of wizards, however, has been fully illustrated by Sir J.G. Frazer in the sixth chapter of The Magic Art.

As animistic interpretation prevails in any society, so that the marvels of Magic come to be attributed to spiritual causes, magicians tend to become sorcerers, and, being thus associated with spirits, may not be easily distinguishable from priests. Among the Buryat a shaman was a priest, as knowing the will of the gods and directing sacrifices, but he was also an exorcist and diviner.[396] The great majority of those who deal with spirits rely, more or less openly, upon both coercion and propitiation: but we may say generally that an officiant is a sorcerer so far as he depends upon coercing spirits by Magic; a priest so far as he relies upon propitiating them by prayer and sacrifice. The sorcerer is aggressive and domineering toward supernatural powers; the priest professes humility. In any case the character of a cult is liable, in course of time, to change from one side to the other; and at the same time, two men may officiate in the same rites and, at heart, one of them may be a priest and the other a sorcerer. Custom gives the name of priest to him who, when a certain stage has been reached in the development of Animism, when gods are recognised, serves and sacrifices to the more public and reputable spirits. A conflict then breaks out between him and the sorcerer.

Whilst magic-beliefs greatly strengthen chieftainship, religion, without impairing the magical sanction, reinforces it with other ideas, and therefore has a political advantage. A god is often the ancestor of the king and the ground of his sovereignty; and the king himself, or his brother, may be high-priest. The priesthood acquires commanding dignity; it shares the culture of the highest social rank, and may become almost the sole repository of learning and art. Wizards then lose their place in the sun. The beneficent practice of wizardry (or White Magic) is more or less incorporated with religious rites; the maleficent practice (or Black Magic) is forbidden and punished: under polytheism because “it is destructive to human life or welfare”; under monotheism, as offensive to God.[397] The sorcerer is outlawed, and betakes himself to the secret performance of unholy rites in dark and unwholesome circumstances. He may be in full antagonism to the official gods, invoking demons or old down-trodden gods not yet forgotten by the people, and, in the service of demons, inverting and profaning the rites of public worship. But to forbid and punish the black art is to punish crime, not to persecute Magic as such; whose beneficent practices still flourish under another name. Prof. YrjÖ Hirn has shown that, during all the ignorant and superstitious prosecutions of witches in Europe, the public religious ceremonies and observances were permeated by magical ideas.[398] In spite of the antagonism between priest and sorcerer, there is not the full opposition between Religion and Sorcery that exists between Animism and Magic—between the recognition of caprice and the belief in uniformity—since the gods themselves work by Magic and may be subject to its powers. It is not an antagonism of principle, but partly of allegiance and partly of ambition.

The influence of wizards is generally extended by means of clubs and secret societies: wizards form a marked class, are well aware of it, and are naturally drawn into mutual understanding. In Australia no regular societies seem to have existed, but the medicine-men recognised one another, initiated and trained new-comers into the profession, had an esoteric tradition of rites and methods and fictions, and sometimes met for consultation. Among the savages of Torres Straits, the maidelaig meet together in the bush at night, in order to perform their sorcery, and the body of sorcerers can control an individual maidelaig; but they appear not to have a definitely organised society.[399] In Melanesia, however, many regular societies exist;[400] and among the Northern Amerinds they were numerous and powerful. The Midewinian society of the Ojibways is typical of these institutions. It was the club of the legitimate professionals, in contrast with private practitioners, who were said (of course) to be favoured by evil manidos. To join the society one must undergo instruction, paying fees and making presents to its members. It comprised about one-tenth of the tribe, and what with influence, what with perquisites, did very well.[401] In Africa also such societies flourish.

Every profession, organised or unorganised, provided there be an understanding amongst its members, is prone to acquire anti-social interests and to establish a secret tradition; and as long as moral sense is very imperfect, the antagonism of the profession to the public may be a virulent evil, as we see in the history of wizardry and priestcraft. Both the profession and its tradition begin with practices common to all members of a tribe; and the tradition grows by accumulating the discoveries and inventions of the professionals. Experiment and observation are employed by them (according to their lights) probably from the first. Dr. Haddon says that, in controlling the wind and rain, the procedure of wizards in the eastern islands of Torres Straits was subject to variation, and so doubtless were the spells, and experts relied on their own variants;[402] and Prof. Seligman[403] observes that, in British New Guinea, the knowledge of “the departmental expert” (wizard controlling rain, or fertility of garden, or what not) is traditionary from father to son, consisting partly of magical processes or formulÆ, partly of the results of years of observation and thought. All improvements in science, art, industry and humbug are made by individuals. The cumulative tradition becomes more voluminous, the spells more intricate, the rites more elaborate; because the possible membership of the profession is thereby narrowed, the self-valuation of the initiated is heightened, the wonder and credulity of the laity is enhanced: so much of the doctrine and discipline being allowed to transpire as to make this last effect a maximum. Whilst tribal belief in Magic is the necessary ground of the wizard’s existence, he—being once recognised—thenceforth confirms, sways and guides the tribal belief.

§ 2. The Wizard’s Pretensions

Whilst societies are formed to promote the common interests of wizards, too severe competition amongst themselves is in some measure avoided by the specialisation of individuals in different branches of their mystery. In pure Magic there is some room for the division of labour to deal with the weather, or fertility, or disease, but the spread of Animism and the multiplication of fetiches and demons open to the sorcerers a wide field for the multiplication of specialists. Amongst the Beloki, says Mr. Weeks,[404] there are eighteen classes of specialists; on the lower Congo, fifty.

By spells and rites and charms wizards undertake the general control of Nature. They cause rain or drought, determine the rising of the sun and, for this purpose, may go every morning to a hill-top to summon him. An Australian wizard claimed to have driven away a comet by means of his sacred stones.[405] The adept procures a favourable wind for his friends, or for his enemies an adverse; prospers the crops or blights them; controls the game of the hunter, and the cattle of the herdsman. The height of such claims may be read in Medea’s boast in the Metamorphoses.[406]

In his own person the wizard may have the power of shape-changing into some animal, or into any animal. He can fly through the air to skyland to visit Daramulun; or to help dull imaginations, he throws up a rope and climbs up by it, or throws up a thread (like a spider’s) and climbs up by that.[407] Or he may fly to the moon to be the guest of the man whom we see there;[408] or to the region of death to visit Erlik Khan.[409] By daylight he only flies in the spirit, during a trance; but when it is quite dark he can go bodily. And probably this points to the origin of such beliefs: for to dream that one flies is not uncommon; and as in dreams we visit distant places, and on waking seem suddenly to have returned by no known means, the analogy of flight offers the easiest explanation of such experiences. To fly is one of the most ancient and persistent exploits of the profession: European witches flew upon broomsticks (degenerate from Siberian horse-staves); Dr. Faustus upon his magical cloak; and “levitation” has been exhibited by recent “mediums.”

Wizards cause and cure love and other forms of sickness; slay, or recall the soul to its accustomed habitation; sometimes the same man kills and cures; sometimes he works only evil, or only against evil; the Black and the White Magicians may become well-recognised hostile sects. Wizards discover thieves and murderers, or sell a fetich by whose power an evil-doer walks invisible, if he takes care not to be seen. They administer the ordeal and have in their power the life of every one who undergoes it. They interpret dreams, and prophesy by the flight of birds, the fall of dice, the making of shoulder-blades and the aspect of the stars.

The sorcerer communicates with the ghosts of the dead or with the spirits of nature and, by their aid, accomplishes whatever can be done by Magic. He is possessed by them, and operates or speaks by their power or inspiration; he drives them out of others whom they possess, or sends them on errands, controlling them either by the help of stronger spirits or by his profound knowledge of enchantments. Many of these things he is believed to do best during fits or ecstasy; which he produces in himself by rhythmic drumming and dancing, or by drugs, or by voluntary control of a disciplined temperament, to the astonishment and conviction of all beholders.

Such are the wizard’s pretensions, so well known that a brief recital of them suffices; and whilst they seem to us too absurd for any one to believe, least of all the wizard himself, yet observers assure us that he often does believe in them, and they are certainly taken to be genuine by the majority of his tribesmen. For them his performances are so wonderful as to put to shame the achievements of scientific invention; and probably this partly explains the frequent reports that savages are deficient in wonder. “It takes a good deal to astonish a savage,” say Spencer and Gillen; “he is brought up on Magic, and things that strike us with astonishment he regards as simply the exhibition of Magic more powerful than any possessed by himself.”[410] Still the blacks were astonished by the phonograph. Similarly we are told by StefÁnson[411] that things unusual but of an understood kind—a bow that shoots fifty yards further than any other—may excite endless marvelling amongst the Esquimo; but what seems miraculous—a rifle-shot, or a binocular—is compared with the supposed powers of the shaman, who can kill an animal on the other side of a mountain, or see things that are to happen to-morrow. Our surgery, too, is very inferior to the shaman’s, who can take out a diseased heart or vertebral column and replace it with a sound one.

§ 3. Characteristics of the Wizard

(1) Observers generally agree that the wizard, or medicine-man, is distinguished in his tribe for intelligence and penetration, or at least for cunning. He is apt to impress an unsympathetic witness as “some fellow with more brains and less industry than his fellows.” The wizard amongst the Fuegians, says Fitzroy, is the most cunning and deceitful of his tribe, and has great influence over his companions.[412] Amongst the Bakongo, the witch-doctors, according to Mr. Weeks, have sharp eyes, acute knowledge of human nature, and tact.[413] The Samoyed shamans “are, as a rule, the most intelligent and cunning of the whole race.”[414] Cunning is plainly necessary to the wizard’s life, and, for some of his functions, much more than cunning. In many tribes his advice is asked in every difficulty and upon every undertaking. Sir E. im Thurn reports that the peaiman of the Arawaks learns and hands down the traditions of his tribe and is the depository of its medical and hunting lore.[415] The surgical skill of Cherokee medicine-men in the treatment of wounds was considerable.[416] Still greater seems to have been that of the Fijians, with no mean knowledge of anatomy learnt during their incessant wars.[417] Medicine-men of the Amerinds discovered the virtues of coca, jalap, sarsaparilla, chinchona, and guiacum,[418] implying on their part superior curiosity and observation. The Bantu doctors of S. Africa employ aloes, nux vomica, castor-oil, fern, rhubarb and other drugs.[419] Livingstone says[420] that the doctors, who inherit their profession, have “valuable knowledge, the result of long and close observation,” and that they thankfully learnt from him—when their patients were not present. In all parts of the world some knowledge of drugs and of certain methods of treatment, such as sweat-baths and massage, ligatures, cauterisation and fomentation, seems to have been possessed by the magical profession. As weather-doctors and crop-guardians, they laid out the first rudiments of astronomy and meteorology. All their knowledge of this sort is, of course, no Magic, but experience and common sense; though science is not derived from Magic, the scientist does descend from the magician: not, however, in so far as the magician operates by Magic, but in so far as he operates by common sense. Among the Lushai tribes the name for sorcerer, puithiam, means “great knower,”[421] the equivalent of our “wizard.” But sorcery degrades the magic art of medicine by discouraging with its theory of “possession” every impulse of rational curiosity, and by substituting for empirical treatment (however crude) its rites of exorcism and propitiation.

In parts of the world so widely separated as Siberia, Greenland, the remote back-woods of Brazil and S. Africa, wizards have discovered the secret of ventriloquism. Everywhere they have learned the art of conjuring, without which (especially the trick of “palming”) many of their performances, and notably the sucking-cure, could not be accomplished. Their practice is generally clumsy and easily detected by sophisticated whites, but imposes upon their patients and the native bystanders.[422] In India it is carried to a much higher degree of illusion. Wizards often have a practical knowledge of some obscure regions of psychology; such as the force of suggestion and various means of conveying it, and the effect of continuous rhythmic movements and noises in inducing a state of exaltation or of dissociation.

A wizard’s tribesmen, of course, believe him to possess knowledge absurdly in excess of the reality. He boasts of it as the foundation of his power over nature or over spirits; often as a supernatural gift of spirits whom he has visited, or who have visited him, and who have initiated him; or else as secret traditionary lore. It is by knowledge of human nature that he rules his fellows; and he asserts that knowledge of the names and origins of things and of spirits gives him the same control over them. In Mr. Skeat’s Malay Magic, incantations addressed by a miner to spirits or to metals, adjuring the spirits to withdraw from his “claim,” or the grains of metal to assemble there, contain the intimidating and subduing verse:

The same compelling power was employed—if we may trust the Kalevala—by Finnish wizards; for “every thing or being loses its ability for evil, as soon as some one is found who knows, who proclaims its essence, its origin, its genealogy.” “Tietaja, which etymologically signifies wise, or learned, is ordinarily used for magician.”[423] It was by profound science that mediÆval magicians were believed to control demons; and anybody celebrated for science was suspected of sorcery: such as Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, and Raymond Lulli; whose reputation supported the credit of such men as Paracelsus and John Dee.

The fine arts in their rudiments owe much to the wizards. Incantations in verse often reach a high pitch of lyric fervour. The words rune, carmen, laulaa bear witness to the magic of poetry. Virgil and Taliessin have been famous for more than natural gifts; that one by superstitious repute, and this by his own vaunting.[424] Dancing and pantomime were cultivated for their magical virtues. Primitive carving and painting are in many cases undertaken in order to influence the spirits, or the animals, or the natural powers they represent; and if Magic was the motive of the recently discovered animal paintings dating from the old Stone Age, its efficacy in encouraging art at that remote period rivalled that of religious patronage in some later ages.

(2) In most tribes the wizard needs great force of will and persistency of purpose—whether from deliberate choice or from infatuation with the profession—to carry him through the severe training that is often exacted from candidates for the office; great audacity and courage to impel and sustain him in the practice of his art, pestered by taboos and (the sorcerer especially) always beset by supernatural terrors and often by more real dangers; and unusual presence of mind to extricate himself from very embarrassing situations. It is true that, in some cases, where the office of wizard is hereditary, or may be assumed by alleging the favour of spirits, or some other underhand device—perhaps upon the evidence of visions, or by mere fraud, or by a mixture of both—we hear little of really serious initiatory rites; but often these formalities are very painful or very expensive. Among the Arunta, there are three classes of wizards: the first and second, made by spirits, undergo no severe trial—except the boring of a hole in their own tongues and the keeping of it open, as evidence of a professional story about spirits who slew them with spears, cut out their entrails and replaced them with a new set and certain magic stones. But the third class are initiated by two wizards of the first and second class, who pretend to force crystal stones[425] into their bleeding bodies from the front of the leg up to the breast bone, into the crown of their heads and under the nail of the right forefinger. This they must suffer in perfect silence, three times a day on three consecutive days, with other tortures, followed by various taboos; and, after all, they do not stand as well with the tribe as those whom the spirits have initiated.[426] Can there be any doubt that the initiatory rites of the third class represent the older magical custom, and that the fabulous initiation by spirits is an overgrowth of Animism? There are clear motives for the change; since the latter method is easily carried out by oneself, is far less painful, and is more stimulating to the imaginative belief of the laity, and therefore more imposing. For the inverse change there are no motives. And therefore, probably, wizards of the third class are really less competent than the others; for the man who, after the new spirit-path has been opened up, still prefers the old road through pain and privation must be (comparatively) an unimaginative, dull, honest, inferior fellow.

Old wizards of the Warramunga, receiving a new candidate for the profession, allow him during the process no rest; he must stand or walk until quite worn out, when he scarcely knows what is happening to him; deprived for a long time of water and food, he becomes dazed and stupefied.[427] In the western islands of Torres Straits, a novice was taken into the bush by his instructor, who defÆcated into a shell full of water and made him drink it with his eyes open; next he must chew certain fruits and plants, which made his inside bad and his skin itch; then shark’s flesh, and, finally, the decomposing flesh of a dead man full of maggots. He became very ill and half frantic. Few cared to undergo these rites; some gave up the undertaking; some died of it.[428] In British Guiana, an aspirant to wizardry undergoes long fasts, wanders alone in the bush (full of terrors to the timid Indian), and accustoms himself to take large draughts of tobacco-juice mixed with water, which cause temporary insanity.[429] Across the watershed to the S.W., the office of medicine-man is hereditary; yet Waterton reports that probationers have to endure exhausting ordeals and tortures.[430] The severe training of the Bantu witch-doctor kills many novices.[431] Under such conditions, only men of unusual force of will, or constancy of infatuation (qualities not always easy to discriminate), can become wizards. Preparatory ritual for the office of shaman among the Buryats of Siberia is elaborate, expensive and intimidating: a candidate of poor family is helped by the community to get animals for sacrifice and objects necessary for the rites; but many shrink from the trial, “dreading the vast responsibility it brings; for the gods deal severely with those who have undergone consecration, and punish with death any serious mistake.” There are nine degrees in the profession, each requiring a special initiation.[432] Thus, in many cases, the ordeal of initiation turns away the weak and incompetent, and keeps up the wizardly profession at a high level of resolution and endurance. In more sophisticated societies a similar result is obtained by the belief that the attainment of magical powers depends upon the undergoing of prolonged austerity in study, or in privations and tortures, which give a mystical right to supernatural power: the superstition upon which Southey raised The Curse of Kehama—least unreadable of his romances.

As for the courage that may be requisite for carrying on the wizard’s practices, when he is the terror of his neighbours, their attitude towards him varies, in different tribes, from the tamest toleration to murderous antagonism. Thus, in the western islands of Torres Straits, Professor Haddon never knew the sorcerers mobbed or violently put to death on account of their magical practices.[433] In New Caledonia, when a sorcerer causes a general famine, the people merely make him presents to procure a return of plenty.[434] Among the Todas, a man who is the victim of a sorcerer pays him to have the curse removed.[435] In such cases, effrontery is all the sorcerer needs. On the other hand, near Finsch Harbour in New Guinea, a dangerous sorcerer is often put to death; and so he is amongst the neighbouring Kais.[436] Such in fact is the more general practice;[437] and the wizard, carrying on his profession at the risk of his life, must be supported by the sort of fearlessness that criminals often show.

Confronted with supernatural dangers, the sorcerer’s need of courage must depend upon the sincerity of his own belief in them: a matter to be discussed in the fourth section of this chapter. If his professions are veracious, the attitude of such a man toward spiritual powers cannot be sustained by any ordinary daring. In the N.W. Amazons the shaman is the only one of his tribe who dares go alone into the haunted forest. Zulu doctors, who specialise as “heaven-herds,” fight the Thunderstorm with spear and shield until he flees away.[438] Everywhere the sorcerer fights the demons of disease with reckless valour. On the Congo he drives them into some animal, and then cuts its head off. In North America he intimidates, quells and exorcises them with furious boasting. In Siberia, to capture the fleeting soul of a patient, he follows it over land and sea and into the regions of the dead. The Innuit of Greenland acknowledge Sedna as the supreme Being and the creatress of all living things; yet their angakoq subdue even her: one lures her from Adlivun with a magic song; whilst another, as she emerges, harpoons her with a seal-spear, which is then found to be smeared with blood.[439] To obtain assistance from even the highest spirits the wizard deceives them; or to slay an enemy he usurps their powers. The Malay avenges himself by making an image of his victim in a shroud, and praying over it as over the dead; then he buries it in the path to his victim’s house, and says:

One might suppose that the audacity of blaspheming could rise no higher than this; but an Egyptian woman, when in labour, was taught to declare herself to be Isis, and to summon the gods to her help. “Should they refuse to come, ‘Then shall ye be destroyed, ye nine gods; the heaven shall no longer exist, the earth shall no longer exist, the five days over and above the year shall cease to be; offerings shall no more be made to the gods, the lords of Heliopolis, etc.’”[441] If the facts were not before us, it would be incredible that a fixed purpose of obtaining supernatural aid should thus exclude from the mind all thoughts of the divine attributes and of one’s own insignificance.

(3) What motives impel a man to adopt this strange and hazardous profession, or sustain him amidst all the dangers and disappointments of exercising it? In the first place, some men are oppressed by a vocation toward wizardry; just as amongst ourselves some men have an irresistible vocation to be poets, though that way poverty stares them in the face. To ordinary people these seem to be cases for the asylum. Yet we may understand the “votary of the Muses” by considering that the poet, as the master of rhythm, the treasurer of tradition, the arbiter of fame, has had a necessary place in the ancient culture of the tribes, and greatest in the noblest tribes. A tribe that produces poets has an advantage in the struggle of life; and, accordingly, a strain of poet-blood is bred in the tribe, and shows itself in a certain number of youths in each generation. I think the same must be true of wizards. They are often “called”; the Altaians believe that no man of his free will becomes a shaman.[442] Like poets, they are sacred and possessed. They are also very useful: their functions in several ways overlap those of the poet, as in cherishing traditions; and often they themselves are poets. They give confidence to their fellows amidst the awful imaginary dangers of savage life. Their nervous temperament may raise the vital level of a tribe. They keep alive the beliefs in taboo and the like mysterious dangers, on which savage order and morality depend; and in many cases they become leaders and chieftains. In this way, belief in Magic and Animism seems to have been the necessary scaffolding of social life.[443] And were this all, the utility of wizards would be clear. But they often do so much and such horrible mischief, prohibiting every improvement and spreading general terror, that it is difficult to judge, in such cases, whether their activities leave a balance of good or of evil. Perhaps sometimes the evil may exceed, and a tribe may degenerate and perish of it. On the whole, however, there is certainly a balance of good, especially by leadership at early stages of social development; and this accounts for the flourishing from age to age of the wizardly profession, and for the attraction it has for those of wizardly blood who enter it, because it promises to satisfy an innate disposition. Even in a civilised country, this disposition still, in a few people, manifests itself in the old way; but for the most part has been “sublimated” into other professions. Of course that which attracts the neophyte of wizardry is not the utility of the profession, any more than the youthful poet is allured by the utility of poetry. That which appeals to the wizard of inbred genius is (besides the indulgence of his personal powers) the mystery of wizardry; which excites in his soul a complex, consisting chiefly of curiosity as to the unknown powers that control nature and spirit, the fascination of fear in approaching them and an exaltation of self-consciousness at the prospect of attaining superhuman wisdom and authority. The article on Shamanism,[444] which I have cited so often, describes the shaman as sometimes profoundly convinced that he was chosen for the service of the spirits; and says that some feel a compulsive vocation, and endure persecution for their faith; they cannot help shamanising. One is mentioned as having been gifted with a sensitive nature and an ardent imagination, he had a strong belief in the spirits and in his own mysterious intercourse with them.

Men of such a temperament, I take it, distinguishing themselves above others when every man practised magic or sorcery, founded the profession, and are always its vital nucleus, though in time they may become but a small proportion of its members. Under sincere infatuation they established its observances—the fastings, sufferings, austerities, visions and frenzies of initiation, whether into magical knowledge or spiritual possession; the working of themselves up, whilst officiating, into the orgiastic intoxication in which they felt their own greatness and dominated their audience; and they discovered some of the modes of operating by drugs and suggestion and some real remedies. But the profession, once formed, soon had attractions for a very different sort of man, impelled by very different motives; who saw in it the road sometimes to wealth, always to reputation and power. Since, amongst very primitive people there is little wealth to collect, and sometimes (as we have seen) remuneration of magical services is neither given nor expected, the earlier of these motives must have been the love of causing wonder and fear, of the power which their fellows’ fears conferred and of the reputation which consequently spread far and wide. In Mota (Melanesia) a man in control of magical virtue will render services without reward, merely to add to his reputation for the possession of mana.[445] At first they seem to have had no privileges, but power acquires privilege: so that, among the Warramunga, wizards are free from sexual taboos;[446] in Guiana no tribesman dares refuse the sorcerer anything, not even his wife;[447] among the Boloki, the sorcerer is never charged with injurious witchcraft and, therefore, is never in danger of the ordeal.[448]

Sometimes, indeed, the wizard may not be respected in private life, but only in the exercise of his office. Fear and wonder, in fact, do not always entirely blind the eyes of neighbours to his shortcomings. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the Magic of distant places, being the less known, is the more feared.[449] The Rev. J.H. Weeks even says that on the Congo the village medicine-man is seldom engaged at home; for the people know that his fetich cannot protect him or his from harm and, therefore, hire some one from another village of whom they know less.[450] Similarly, a tribe is apt to fear its own adepts less than those of another tribe of lower culture, whose ways are less known and more mysterious: as Malays fear especially the Jakuns;[451] formerly the Swedes the Finns, and the Finns the Lapps; the Todas the Kurumba;[452] and in Macedonia Mohammedan monks enjoy a far higher reputation for Magic than the Christian.[453]

Still, the wizard, whether of home or foreign growth, becomes necessary in every crisis of life, at birth and marriage, in misfortune, sickness and death; in every undertaking—hunting, agriculture or commerce; and by his omens and auguries may determine war and peace. After his own death, he may sometimes look forward to being deified. With such powers, surrounded by intimidated and dependent crowds, and often enjoying a long career of conscious or unconscious imposture, he seems to himself, as to others, a “superman”; his SelbstgefÜhl rises to megalomania, and his boasting becomes monstrous and stupefying.

(4) The more to impress the imagination of all spectators and enhance his reputation, the wizard usually affects a costume, or behaviour, or strange companionship of animals, that distinguishes him from the rest of his tribe. Not always; for Miss Czaplicka[454] says that in Siberia the shaman is in everyday life not distinguished from others, except occasionally by a haughty demeanour; but the rule is otherwise. A.W. Howitt[455] relates that one Australian medicine-man obtained influence by always carrying about with him a lace-lizard four feet long; another cherished a tame brown snake; and an old woman kept a native cat (Daysurus): “familiars” that correspond to the black cats and goats of our own witches. The Arunta medicine-man bores a hole in his tongue, appears with a broad band of powdered charcoal and fat across the bridge of his nose and learns to look preternaturally solemn, as one possessing knowledge hidden from ordinary men.[456] In the forest of the upper Amazons, the medicine-man does not depilate, though the rest of his tribe do so to distinguish themselves from monkeys; and he attempts to present in his costume something original and striking.[457] In S. Africa, too, the witch-doctor’s dress is often very conspicuous. So it is throughout history: the thaumaturgist, by his wand, robes, austerities, demeanour, advertises himself as a man apart from the crowd. Rites of initiation mark this superiority: as tribal initiation separates a man from women and boys, so the wizard’s initiation makes him a “superman.”

(5) Such a temper cannot endure opposition, and is jealous of rivalry; the man whom it actuates lives in constant fear of failure and discredit and is, therefore, full of suspicion and cruelty. In S. Africa, professional hatred is pushed to its last limits amongst magicians. They test their colleagues, steal each other’s drugs, or pray to the gods to make their rival’s art inefficient.[458] The savage sorcerer looks with no kindly eye upon the European; who, too plainly, possesses extraordinary Magic. Captain Whiffen says[459] of the sorcerer amongst the South Amerinds, who has much knowledge of poisons, that to maintain his reputation, if he has declared that he cannot cure a patient, he poisons him. Of the sorcerer of the Lower Congo, Mr. Weeks says, that “his face becomes ugly, repulsive, the canvas on which cruelty, chicanery, hatred and all devilish passions are portrayed with repellent accuracy.”[460] An extreme case perhaps; but, leading up to it, there are all degrees of rancour and malignity toward those who hinder our ambitions; and it can only be in exceptional magicians that megalomania is reconcilable with considerateness and magnanimity.

(6) Since the greater part of the wizard’s practice is imposture (whether he believes in himself or not), he must be an actor; and his success must greatly depend on the degree in which he possesses the actor’s special gifts and temperament: an audience must be a stimulus to him and not a check; he exhibits himself not unwillingly. To the shaman, Miss Czaplicka tells us,[461] an audience is useful: though the presence of an European is depressing. A Chuckchee shaman without a sort of chorus considers himself unable to discharge his office: novices in training usually get a brother or sister to respond to their exercises. And, indeed, a wizard’s exhibitions often provide without design the same sort of social entertainment as those of an actor. One cannot read of the shaman’s performance of a pantomimic journey on horseback to the South, over frozen mountains, burning deserts, and along the bridge of a single hair, stretched across a chasm over foaming whirlpools, to Erlik Khan’s abode, and then home again on the back of a flying goose, without perceiving that in the wilds of Siberia such an entertainment, whatever other virtues it may have, supplies the want of theatres and music-halls, and that in such displays a dramatic profession might originate.

But there are two kinds of actors; and they correspond well enough with the two kinds of wizards already described—the vocational and the exploitative. Some actors are said to identify themselves with their assumed character and situation so profoundly as to substantiate the fiction: concentration of imagination, amounting to dissociation, makes the part they play, whilst it lasts, more real than anything else; and raises them, for that time, in energy of thought, feeling and action, much above their ordinary powers; so that they compel the attention, sympathy and belief of the audience. But others study their part and determine beforehand exactly what tones, gestures, expressions are the most effective reinforcement of every word, and thereafter carry out upon the stage in cold blood the whole dramatic lesson which they have taught themselves. Perhaps more common than either of these extreme types is the actor who begins by studying under a sort of inspiration, and after experimenting for a few nights, repeats what he has found to answer best. We need not consider those who can do nothing but what they have been taught by others. Well, the wizard by vocation probably behaves like the first kind of actor: enters upon any office to which he may be called in exclusive devotion to his task; works himself into a frenzy, groans, writhes and sweats under the possession of his demon; chants incantations in an archaic tongue; drums and dances by the hour, and falls into speechless trance—according to the professional pattern—all in what may be described as dramatic good faith. By native disposition and by practised self-suggestion he obtains a temporary dissociation. The opposite sort of wizard, exploiting the profession, sees all this, and imitates it with such improvements as he may be able to devise. Of the intervening crowd of charlatans, who mingle self-delusion with deceit in all possible proportions, no definite account can be given.

According to Diderot,[462] the greatest actors belong to the second class, to the deliberate and disciplined artists. We may be sure the gods in the gallery, if they understood what was going on under their eyes, would always prefer the inspired performers. Probably these are, in fact, the greatest in their best hours, but less to be depended on, less sure of being always equal to themselves. And the same may be true of the corresponding sorts of wizards. The lucid impostor, at any rate, is less likely to be abashed by unforeseen difficulties and by the awkwardness of failure, less likely to be mobbed and murdered and pegged down in his grave with aspen stakes.

(7) Wizards are very often people who manifest an hysterical or epileptoid diathesis; and candidates for the profession who show signs of it are often preferred by the doctors. According to Miss Czaplicka, hysteria (common in Siberia) is at the bottom of the shaman’s vocation: but it is not merely a matter of climate; for the Rev. E.T. Bryant writes of the Zulus—“the great majority of diviners being clearly of neurotic type”;[463] and on all sides we obtain from descriptions of wizards the same impression. The word “shaman” comes not, as usually supposed, from the Sanskrit (sramana = work, a religious mendicant), but from saman, which is Manchu for “one who is excited, moved, raised.”[464] The effect on the audience of shamanising depends in great measure upon the fits, ecstasy, convulsions introduced at some stage of the performance and attributed to possession by the spirits. Similar exhibitions have been reported by all observers of wizardry. Professor Otto Stoll of Zurich has described[465] the phenomena as they occur in all countries and all ages; and he attributes them, as well as hallucinations and analgesia (as in the fire-walk), which wizards also have at command, to the power of self-suggestion acquired by practice and training, on the basis (of course) of a natural disposition. Cagliostro declared that he could smell atheists and blasphemers; “the vapour from such throws him into epileptic fits; into which sacred disorder he, like a true juggler, has the art of falling when he likes.”[466] The wizard’s fits are voluntarily induced; but from the moment the attack takes place the development of its symptoms becomes automatic. Between the fits, however, says Miss Czaplicka, he must be able to master himself, or else he becomes incapable of his profession: nervous and excitable often to the verge of insanity, if he passes that verge he must retire.[467] In short, his ecstasy is the climacterical scene of his dramatic performance, the whole of which must be rendered with the disciplined accuracy of an artist. We are not to think of the shaman as an hysterical patient: if he were, there would be greater, not less, reason to suspect him of deceit. No doubt the training which gives control of the nervous attack protects the subject from its unwholesome consequences; there seems to be no special liability to disease or to a shortening of life. Formerly in Siberia, before the power of the profession was broken by immigrant beliefs and practices, it was necessary that the shaman should be well-developed mentally and physically (as has often been required of priests); and such a constitution is by no means incompatible with an intense histrionic temperament.

A necessary complement to the suggestive devices of a wizard is the suggestibility of his clients. There is such a thing as an assenting or a dissenting disposition—suggestibility or contrasuggestibility; but the latter is, like the former, a tendency to react without reflection, and may be as well controlled by appropriate suggestions. The power of any given suggestion to control the course of a man’s thought and action depends upon the resistance (apart from contra-suggestibility) which it meets with in his mind; and this depends upon the extent, quality and integration of his apperceptive masses, and upon the facility with which they come into action. Upon the perceptual plane a savage’s mind is well organised, and accordingly his suggestibility is low; but upon the ideational plane it is in most cases ill organised, poor in analysis, classification, generalisation, poor in knowledge, abounding in imagination-beliefs about Magic and Animism; so that, except in natural sceptics (who, as we shall see, exist among savages), the suggestions of the wizard meet with little resistance from common sense and with ready acceptance by magical and animistic prejudice. But even with a man of common sense, a suggestion, however absurd, may for a time prevail, if his mental reaction is slow; although, with time for reflection, he will certainly reject it. The art of the wizard consists in getting such hold of his client’s attention that, as in hypnosis, the power of reflective comparison is suspended and criticism abolished. There are many masters of this art. The client’s state of mind is very common in the effects of oratory, the theatre, ghost-stories and generally in the propagation of opinion, suspicion and prejudice.

§ 4. The Wizard and the Sceptic

Inasmuch as the wizard’s boasting, conjuring, ventriloquising, dramatising and practising of all the arts of suggestion, seem incompatible with sincerity, whilst nevertheless he is devoted to his calling, some observers have declared him a calculating impostor, whilst others maintain that he, in various degrees, believes in himself and shares the delusions which he propagates. Examples may be found in support of either position.

Some say that the wizard believes in himself because all others believe in him; that at a certain level of culture, there is an universal social obsession by certain ideas, from which the individual cannot escape, and for whose consequences, therefore, he is not responsible. According to this theory, a sort of tribal insanity prevails. Dr. Mercier says that, in the individual, paranoia is characterised by systematised delusion: “there is an organised body of (false) knowledge, and it differs from other delusions in the fact that it colours the whole life of the patient; it regulates his daily conduct; it provides him with an explanation of all his experiences; it is his theory of the cosmos.” And, again, “as long as the highest level of thought is intact, so that we can and do recognise that our mistakes are mistakes and our disorders, whether of mind or conduct, are disorders, so long sanity is unaffected, and our mistakes and disorders are sane. As soon, however, as we become incompetent to make this adjustment ... insanity is established.”[468] These passages exactly describe the condition of a wizard and his tribe afflicted with social paranoia: their theories of Magic and Animism and of the wizard’s relations with invisible powers, may truly be said to form an organised body of (false) knowledge, to colour all their lives, to explain everything that happens to them; and their mistakes and disorders to be incorrigible by reflection or experience. Such conditions of the social mind have, I believe, existed (and may still exist), tending toward, and sometimes ending in, a tribe’s destruction. That, in such a case, there should be unanimity is not necessary; it is enough that the current of belief, in certain directions, be overwhelming. But such extreme cases are rare. Normally there may be found, even in backward tribes, a good deal of incredulity and of what may be called primitive rationalism or positivism.

Considerable sections of a tribe sometimes co-operate in imposture, the men against the women and children, or the old against the young; and it cannot be supposed that, where this occurs, anything like universal delusion prevails. The Arunta, who teach their women and children that Twanyiriki is a spirit living in wild regions, who attends initiations, and that the noise of the bull-roarer is his voice; whilst they reveal to the youths when initiated that the bundle of churinga is the true Twanyiriki,[469] cannot be blind to the existence of social fictions. The discovery by initiated youths in some parts of New Guinea, that Balum, the monster that is believed to swallow them during initiation, is nothing but a bug-a-boo, and that his growl is only the bull-roarer, must be a shock to their credulity.[470] Indeed, disillusionment as to some popular superstition is a common characteristic of initiation ceremonies.[471] On the mainland of New Caledonia, a spirit-night is held every five months; when the people assemble around a cave and call upon the ghosts, supposed to be inside it, to sing; and they do sing—the nasal squeak of old men and women predominating.[472] There is not in such cases any natural growth of social delusion, subduing the individual mind, but prearranged cozenage; and a wizard with such surroundings, instead of being confirmed in the genuineness of his art, only reads there the method of his own imposture in large type.[473]

Home-bred wizards, who are less trusted than those who live further off, or than those of an inferior tribe, do not derive self-confidence from the unanimous approval of their neighbours.

Again, the general prevalence of delusions in a tribe does not suppress the scepticism of individuals. It is reasonable to expect such scepticism to be most prevalent amongst men of rank, who are comparatively exempt from the oppression of popular sanctions; and probably this is the fact. Such exemption, by preserving a nucleus of relatively sane people, is one of the great social utilities of rank. The Basuto chief, MokatchanÉ, surrounded by people grossly superstitious, lent himself to their practices; but in paying his diviners he did not hesitate so say “that he regarded them as the biggest impostors in the world.”[474] In Fiji, it is doubtful whether the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of the priests, though it suited their policy to appear to do so. There was an understanding between the two orders: one got sacrifices (food), the other good oracles. A chieftain, on receiving an unfavourable oracle, said to the priest: “Who are you? Who is your god? If you make a stir, I will eat you”[475]—not metaphorically. In Tonga, “even seventeen years before the arrival of the first missionaries, the chiefs did not care to conceal their scepticism.” In Vavou, Taufaahan, having long been sceptical of his ancestral faith, on learning of Christianity, hanged five idols by the neck, beat the priestess, and burned the spirit-houses.[476] The Vikings, like the Homeric heroes, are said to have fought their gods; and at other times to have declared entire disbelief in them. Hence the easy conversion of the North to Christianity. Scepticism may have been fashionable at court much earlier: “It is scarcely possible to doubt,” says Mr. Chadwick, “that familiarity, not to say levity, in the treatment of the gods characterised the Heroic Age [Teutonic—A.D. 350-550] just as much as that of the Vikings.”[477] The burlesque representations of the gods in some passages of the Iliad are a sort of atheism: in astonishing contrast with the sublime piety elsewhere expressed. And the inadequacy of such a literary religion (like that of Valhalla) may explain the facile reception (or revival) of the Mysteries in the sixth century B.C. History abounds with examples of rulers and priests who, in collusion, have used religion for political convenience, in a way that implied their own disbelief and opened unintentionally the doors of disbelief to others.

But it is not only chiefs and heroes whose minds are sometimes emancipated from popular superstitions. An old Australian whose duty it was to watch the bones of a dead man and to keep alight a fire near them, sold them for some tobacco and a tomahawk, in great fear lest it should be known to his tribesmen; but he “evidently suffered from no qualms of conscience”:[478] that is to say, he feared the living, but not the dead. W. Stanbridge says of the aborigines of Victoria that “there are doctors or priests of several vocations; of the rain, of rivers and of human diseases ... but there are natives who refuse to become doctors and disbelieve altogether the pretensions of those persons.”[479] John Matthew writes of the tribe with which he was best acquainted—“whilst the blacks had a term for ghosts and behind these were departed spirits, ... individual men would tell you upon inquiry that they believed that death was the last of them.”[480] Near Cape King William in New Guinea, there is a general belief in spirits and ghosts and also in one Mate; but some whisper that there is no such being.[481] The Bakongo villagers do not believe in all witchcraft; but respect some sorcerers, and regard others with more or less contempt: every man, however, must profess belief, or else “his life will be made wretched by accusations of witchcraft.”[482] Before missionaries came amongst the Baloki, many people had no faith in the medicine-men, but would not oppose them for fear of being charged with witchcraft.[483] The religious convictions of the Zulus were very shallow; belief in the spirit-world depended on prosperity: “fullness declares the Itongo exists; affliction says it does not exist.” ... “For my part, I say the Amadhlozi of our house died forever.”[484] Capt. Whiffen reports of the tribes of S. Amerinds whom he visited that, “among individuals there are sceptics of every grade.”[485] Whilst all Dakotas reverence the great, intangible, mysterious power Takoo-Wahkon, as to particular divinities, any man may worship some and despise others. “One speaks of the medicine-dance with respect; another smiles at the name.” The Assiniboin generally believe that good ghosts migrate to the south where game is abundant; whilst the wicked go northward; but some think that death ends all.[486] At Ureparapara (Banks Islands) food is buried with a corpse; and “if there be too much, some is hung above the grave, whence the bolder people take it secretly and eat it.”[487] Disbelief is expressed in actions more emphatically than in words; the plundering of tombs has been universal. An idol-maker of Maeva assured Ellis that, “although at times he thought it was all deception and only practised his trade for gain, yet at other times he really thought the gods he himself had made were powerful beings.”[488] In Tonga it was orthodox that chiefs and their retainers were immortal, doubtful whether men of the third rank were so, certain that those of the lowest rank, Tooas, were not; their souls died with the body; yet some of these Tooas ventured to think that they too would live again.[489] A sceptical Kayan could hardly believe that men continue to exist after death; for then they would return to visit those they love. “But,” he concluded, “who knows?” The traditionary lore of the Kayans answers many deep questions; but the keener intelligences inquire further—“why do the dead become visible only in dreams?” etc.[490] A Tanghul told me, says Mr. T.C. Hodson, that no one had ever seen a Lai (deity): when things happened men said a Lai had done it. “In his view clearly a Lai was a mere hypothesis.”[491]

Of such examples of the occurrence of “free-thought” in all parts of the world, no doubt, a little investigation would discover many more. Everywhere some savages think for themselves; though, like civilised folk, they cannot always venture to avow their conclusions. We must not suppose that belief is as uniform as custom or conventional doctrine: custom and convention hinder thought in dull people, but do not enslave it in the “keener intelligence.” Without the enviable advantage of personal intimacy with savages, I have, by reading about them, gained the impression that they enjoy a considerable measure of individuality—as much as the less educated Europeans—and are not mere creatures of a social environment.

The most backward savages have a large stock of common sense concerning the properties of bodies, of wind and water and fire, of plants and animals and human nature; for this is the necessary ground of their life. This common sense has certain characters which are in conflict with their superstitions; the facts known to common sense are regular, proportional, the same for all; not often failing and needing excuses, not extravagant and disconnected, not depending on the presence of some fantastic mountebank. Savages do not draw explicitly the comparisons that make this conflict apparent; but it may be felt without being defined. Some of them, especially, are (as amongst ourselves) naturally inclined to a positive way of thinking; their common sense predominates over the suggestions of Magic and Animism, and they, more than others aware of the conflict, become the proto-sceptics or rationalists. Lecky observes that beliefs and changes of belief depend not upon definite arguments, but upon habits of thought. In the seventeenth century a new habit of thought overcame the belief in witchcraft and miracles;[492] and in many other centuries it has everywhere done the same for those in whom the “apperceptive mass” of common sense became more or less clearly and steadily a standard of belief, repelling the apperceptive masses of Magic and Animism with all their contents and alliances. They had more definite ideas than others, little love of the marvellous, little subjection to fear, desire, imagination.

Sometimes the dictates of common sense are imposed by necessity. The Motu (Papuasian) were accustomed to rub spears with ginger to make them fly straight. It had, however, been discovered that no amount of Magic would turn a poor spearman into an accurate thrower.[493] Spear-throwing is too serious a concern not to be judged of upon its merits, however interesting the properties of ginger. A whole tribe may in some vital matter, whilst practising a superstitious rite, disregard its significance: like the Kalims, who hold a crop-festival in January, and afterwards take the omens as to what ground shall be cultivated for next harvest; “but this seems a relic of old times, for the circle of cultivation is never broken, let the omens be what they may.”[494] That is a tacit triumph of common sense.

The bearing of all this on the character of the wizard is as follows: since everywhere sceptics occur, and some individuals go further than others in openly or secretly rejecting superstitions, why should not the wizard or sorcerer, who is amongst the most intelligent and daring of his tribe, be himself a rationalist and, therefore, a conscious impostor? That much of his art is imposture no one disputes; and so far as it is so, he sees it as part of the ordinary course of experience. The sorcerer on the Congo who drove a spirit into the dark corner of a hut, stabbed it there, and showed the blood upon his spear, having produced the blood (as his son confessed to Mr. Weeks) by scratching his own gums, was by that action himself instructed in common sense.[495] He saw in it quite plainly an ordinary course of events, the “routine of experience”; whilst the spectators were mystified. Must he not, then, have more common sense than other people?

In fact, he recognises the course of nature and his own impotence, whenever an attempt to conjure would endanger his reputation. The Arunta medicine-men exhibit great dramatic action in curing various diseases; but waste no antics on recognisable senile decay.[496] The medicine-man of Torres Straits admits that he cannot make a “big wind” from the south-east during the north-west season.[497] The Polynesian sorcerers confessed their practices harmless to Europeans;[498]—who were not suggestible on that plane of ideas. Shamans amongst the Yakuts would not try to cure diarrhoea, small-pox, syphilis, scrofula or leprosy, and would not shamanise in a house where small-pox had been.[499] These miracle-mongers sometimes know a hawk from a handsaw. It seems reasonable, then, to assume that wizards have more common sense than other people; since, besides the instruction of common experience, they know in their professional practice (at least in a superficial way) the real course of events, which is concealed from the laity. And, no doubt, of those whose art is deliberate imposture, this is true. But the infatuation of those who are wizards by vocation may be incorrigible by any kind of evidence: especially as to the genuineness of another’s performance. Dr. Rivers speaks of the blindness of the man of rude culture to deceitful proceedings on the part of others with which he is familiar in his own actions.[500] For the wizard there are established prejudices, professional and personal interest, fear of trusting his own judgment, supernatural responsibility, desire of superhuman power, sometimes even a passionate desire to alleviate the sufferings of his tribesmen, and everything else that confirms the will to believe.

§ 5. The Wizard’s Persuasion

Many practices of wizards involve a representation of the course of events as something very different from the reality; and there is no doubt that frequently, or even in most cases, wizards are aware of this, as in performing the sucking cure or visiting the man in the moon. But some anthropologists dislike to hear such practices described as “fraud,” “imposture” or “deceit”; and for certain classes of wizards it seems (as I shall show) unjust to speak in these terms of their profession. Still, taking the profession and its actions on the whole, it is difficult to find in popular language terms more fairly descriptive. We meet here the inconvenience that other social or moral sciences find when they try to use common words in a specially restricted sense. In Economics, e.g., “rent,” “wages,” “profits” have definite meanings very different from their popular acceptance. In Ethics, what controversy, what confusion in the defining of “virtue” and “the good”! In Metaphysics, what is the meaning of “cause”; what is the meaning of “intuition”? The terms must be defined in each system. If then, in these pages, the conduct of a man who, on his way to cure a sufferer of “stitch in the side,” conceals in his mouth a piece of bone or pebble, and after dancing, and sucking hard enough at the patient’s belly, produces that bone or pebble as the cause of pain—is described as “fraud,” or “imposture,” or “deceit,” the words are used to describe the fact only, without any such imputation upon the man’s character as they convey in popular usage. Scientifically considered, the man and his circumstances being such as they are, his actions are a necessary consequence; in this limited region of thought moral censure is irrelevant.

There are some wizards, as it were in minor orders, such as Professor Seligman calls “departmental experts,” especially the man who blesses gardens, so earnest and harmless that no one will abuse them. They visit the garden at the owner’s request, practise a little hocus-pocus, mutter a few spells, take a small fee and go peaceably home. The owner indeed supposes himself to buy fertility, and obtains only peace of mind—a greater good say the moralists. The wizard has done what he learnt of his father, what respectable neighbours approve of; there is always some crop to justify his ministry, and many an evil power to excuse occasional blight or drought. If he is convinced of being a really indispensable man, it is easily intelligible.

As to the profession in general, a small number of wizards—wizards by vocation—may be strongly persuaded of the genuineness of the art; a much larger body mingles credulity in various proportions with fraud; and not a few are deliberate cheats. Some of the greatest masters of wizardry are dissatisfied with their own colleagues: that eminent shaman Scratching Woman said to Bogoras the traveller, “There are many liars in our calling.”[501] On the other hand, the wizard who demonstrated the “pointing-stick” to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and having no object upon which to discharge its Magic, thought it had entered his own head and thereupon fell ill, was certainly a believer;[502] and so was the wizard who felt that he had lost his power after drinking a cup of tea, because hot drinks were taboo to him.[503] Now a cheat needs no explanation—at least no more on the Yenisei than on the Thames; and the variety of those who mingle credulity with fraud is too great to be dealt with. What chiefly needs to be accounted for is the persuasion of those who—in spite of so many circumstances that seem to make disillusion inevitable—are in some manner true believers—in the manner, that is to say, of imaginative belief, founded on tradition and desire, unlike the perceptual belief of common sense.

(a) Men under a vocation to wizardry, of course, begin with full belief in it. Probably they are possessed by the imaginative and histrionic temperament, which we have seen to be favourable to eminence as a wizard. Their vocation consists in the warm sympathy and emulation with which, before their own initiation, they witness the feats of great practitioners, and which generally imply a stirring of their own latent powers; just as many an actor has begun by being “stage-struck.” A man of such temperament is prone to self-delusion not only as to his own powers, but in other ways. The wizard often begins by fasting and having visions; thereby weakening his apprehension of the difference between fact and phantasy. The fixed idea of his calling begets in his imagination a story of what happened at his initiation, manifestly false, but not a falsehood—a “rationalisation” according to wizardly ideas of what he can remember of that time. If initiated with torture, which he endures for the sake of his vocation, he is confirmed in it. When called upon to perform, he “works himself up” by music, dancing and whatever arts he may have learned or discovered, into a state of dissociation, during which his judgment of everything extraneous to his task is suspended; and his dramatic demeanour uninhibited by fear or shame, unembarrassed by any second thoughts, makes, by vivid gestures and contortions and thrilling tones, a profound impression upon patients, clients and witnesses. His performances may derive some original traits from his own genius; but must generally conform to a traditionary pattern and to the consequent expectations of the audience. By practice he acquires—as for their own tasks all artists, poets and actors must—a facility in inducing the state of dissociation (more or less strict), in which work goes smoothly forward under the exclusive dominance of a certain group of ideas and sentiments. Whether, in this condition, he believes in himself and his calling, or not, is a meaningless question. Whilst the orgasm lasts there is no place for comparison or doubt. And since he really produces by his frenzy or possession a great effect upon the spectators—though not always the precise effect of curing a patient or of controlling the weather at which he aimed—we need not wonder if he believes himself capable of much more than he ever accomplishes. The temperament, most favourable to a wizard’s success is not likely to be accompanied by a disposition to the positive or sceptical attitude of mind. Moreover, to the enthusiast for whom belief is necessary, it is also necessary to create the evidence. That the end justifies the means is not his explicit maxim, but a matter of course. Gibbon comments on “the vicissitudes of pious fraud and hypocrisy, which may be observed, or at least suspected, in the characters of the most conscientious fanatics.”[504] After failures, indeed, or in the languor that follows his transports, there may come many chilling reflections; only, however, to be dispersed by an invincible desire to believe in his own powers and in the profession to which he is committed.

The “white” wizard may pacify a troubled conscience by reflecting that at any rate he discharges a useful social function; as, in fact, he does, so far as he relieves the fears of his tribesmen and gives them confidence. To understand the “black” wizard, we must turn to the dark side of human nature. That a man should resort to magic or sorcery to avenge himself or his kinsmen, or to gratify his carnality, jealousy or ambition, is intelligible to everybody; but that he should make a profession of assisting others for a fee to betray, injure, or destroy those with whom he has no quarrel, seems almost too unnatural to be credible. Yet it admits of a very easy explanation. The love of injuring and slaying is deeply rooted in us: men afflicted with homicidal neurosis are known to the asylums and to the criminal courts of all civilised nations; assassins on hire have often been notoriously obtainable. To slay in cold blood by violence, or even by poison, seems, however, less revolting than to slay by sorcery and obscene rites. But the fascination of this employment may be further understood by considering the attraction that secret power and the proof of their own cunning has for many people. To slay is sweet; but the ancient hunter depended more upon strategy than upon the frontal attack; and no strategy is so secret or needs so much skill as the Black Art. Finally, if sorcery is persecuted, it excites the contra-suggestibility which in some neurotics becomes a passion capable of supporting them at the stake. Hence the malevolent wizard may feel a vocation, may believe in his own powers; and, of course, he will be confirmed in his belief by the fear excited wherever his reputation spreads. If you put yourself in his place whilst practising some unholy rite, you may become aware that the secrecy, the cunning, the danger, the villainy and the elation of it exert a peculiar fascination, and that this is enhanced by foul and horrible usages, such as appeal to the perverted appetites of insanity.

(b) The deceit employed by a wizard in conjuring, ventriloquising, dressing up, keeping a “familiar,” choosing favourable opportunities for his sÉance and inciting himself to frenzy, seems incompatible with sincerity; but whilst he knows such proceedings to be artifices, he also knows them to be necessary to the effect which he produces. For that effect, so far as it depends upon wizardly practices, not on such means as massage, or poisons, or drugs, is always subjective—an influence on other men’s belief. Are we not demanding of him greater discrimination than he is likely to enjoy, if we expect him to see the hollowness of his profession, because some of the means by which he operates are not what his clients suppose them to be? If it be said that the wizard’s stock excuses for failure—that there has been a mistake in the rites, or that another wizard has counteracted his efforts—are those of a man who has anticipated detection in fraud and prepared a way of escape, it may be replied that, according to accepted tenets concerning wizardry, these excuses are reasonable and not necessarily subterfuges.

The professional attitude may induce a man to exonerate himself and his colleagues in certain dubious dealings, for the sake of the public utility of their office on the whole; which is so manifest to him and to them, and is also acknowledged by the public. For a wizard’s belief in his art is supported by the testimony of other wizards, in whom he also believes, and by the belief of the tribe generally in the power of the profession, even though he himself be not greatly esteemed. “Who am I,” he will ask, “that I should have a conscience of my own?” And if this attitude is inconsistent with keen intelligence and megalomania, such inconsistency is not inconsistent with our experience of human nature.

(c) The effects produced by charms, spells and rites, simple or to the last degree elaborate, purely magical or reinforced by spirits, are always subjective, but are believed to have a much wider range. The wizard seems to make the sun rise when he summons it just in time every morning; to cause clouds to gather in the sky when he invokes them just before the rainy season; and so on. Such performances convince others, but seem to us poor evidence for any one who is in the secret. He is not, however, left without further evidence of three kinds:

(i) From the effects of natural causes that form part of his professional resources. Some of a wizard’s practices are really good; e.g. in curing the sick he may employ massage, or sweat-baths, or skilful surgery, or medicinal drugs, or suggestion, and thereby succeed without any Magic; whilst he is incapable of clearly distinguishing these means from useless rites and incantations. He does not understand intimately why any method is efficacious, and therefore cannot understand the limits of his power. His whole art is empirical. Even in modern science explanation always ends sooner or later (and often pretty soon) in pointing to some connexion of phenomena which we are obliged to accept as a fact: the wizard is always brought to this pass at the first step. He has no generally acknowledged public standard of what may possibly happen: it is only in the mind of a natural positivist that a standard of common sense grows up by experience without explicit generalisation; and this standard is incommunicable. Hence the wizard is always trying experimentally to extend his power—of course on the model of his traditionary art; always desiring power, and believing that he has obtained, because he desires it.

(ii) The wizard’s arts are justified by the action of natural causes set in motion by his clients. He prepares the hunter and his weapons for an expedition; the hunter does his best, and his success swells the reputation of the wizard. Similarly in agriculture, and in war. And in all these cases nothing is really due to the wizard, except the greater confidence his clients derive from his ministrations: the hunter’s hand is steadier; the sower and the reaper work more cheerfully; and the warrior fights more courageously in the belief that his enemies are surely devoted to the infernal gods. But the wizard, with general acquiescence, claims far more than this, and rises in his own esteem as well as in the esteem of his tribe.

(iii) The persevering wizard is often aided by coincidences. An Australian squatter at Morton’s Plains, after a drought, promised a native rain-maker half a bullock, a bag of flour and some tea, if he would fill his new tank for him before the morrow night. The rain-maker set his rites and spells to work, filled the tank and got the reward.[505] Whilst Messrs. Spencer and Gillen were with the Urabunna tribe, “the leading rain-maker performed a ceremony and within two days there was a downpour—possibly connected with the fact that it was the usual time for rain to fall in that part of the country.” The reputation of the rain-maker was firmly established, and, no doubt, his self-confidence. The Australian wizard already mentioned, who thought that his Magic had entered his own head, claimed to have driven away a comet by means of his magic stones. Certainly the comet disappeared, and what other cause could any one point out? “At one time the gusts were very unpleasant and one of the men told a wind-man to make it stop. Accordingly he shouted out to the wind, and in a minute there was a lull; and no one doubted that this was due to the power of the wind-man.”[506] Many similar cases might be given.[507] Striking coincidences are not very rare: there is an illogical prejudice that they are rare because they excite wonder. Moreover, as I have observed, so remote a resemblance to the event shamanised or prophesied may be regarded as a fulfilment, that fulfilment is not uncommon. In the interpretation of omens, where there is only the alternative of good or ill success, half the guesses must be right; and by the glozing of doubtful cases, more than half will seem to be right. And as for the effect of coincidence, Mr. Basil Thompson says, “Tongans never admit coincidences”[508]—that is to say, in our sense of the word: for them, in what we call coincidence, there must be causation; and this seems to be generally true of the untutored mind. Among the Churaches, the profession of shaman is generally hereditary; but a man may become a shaman against his will. It is enough “to make a lucky guess as to the issue of some event, and people flock to him for advice from all parts.”[509] How many failures are necessary to discredit one lucky guess?

These three kinds of evidence in favour of the wizard’s power—natural causes set in motion by himself, natural causes introduced by his clients, and sheer favourable coincidences—have so much the air of perceptual proof, or of an appeal to common sense, that the savage positivist who is able to resist them must have a more solid judgment than most of our educated civilised people. Judgment is an innate individual character, on which education has little effect, except in the special department of a man’s training. A scientific expert, for example, may be an excellent judge of evidence in his own pursuit, and elsewhere quite helpless; for where he is strong it is not a set of rules but the mass of his special experience that guides him. That out of the mass of general experience, so disorderly and fragmentary as it is, some minds should have the power of extracting common sense, in spite of the misrepresentations of Magic and Animism, is very remarkable, and very fortunate for the rest of us.

That the three kinds of evidence which serve so well to confirm belief in wizardry are all of them—as to the connexion between a wizard’s rites or spells and the event—entirely coincidental, gives some support to the hypothesis that coincidences are the foundation of the belief in Magic.

Bearing in mind, then, that a wizard’s practices sometimes include real causes, and that his shallow knowledge disables him for discriminating between causation and hocus-pocus; that Magic or Sorcery is generally believed in by those about him, who seek his aid, or the aid of others of his class; that both they and he earnestly desire that his pretensions should be well founded; that he produces striking subjective effects; that in such cases his artifices are a condition of his success, and that a good many coincidences, complete or partial, seem to prove that his art has further extraordinary influence upon men and nature—it is no wonder that some wizards are deluded along with their dupes, especially neurotic enthusiasts or men of an imaginative and histrionic temperament.

To explain the possibility of some men being sincere in witchcraft is not to palliate the profession, much less the anti-social practices of witchcraft. For the most part those practices are deceitful. They are not the invention of savage society; society invents nothing; only the individual invents. They are the invention and tradition of wizards, who keep the secret so far as it is to their advantage: of wizards growing more and more professional, and trading upon the fears and hopes, the anxiety and credulity of their fellows. The spirit of superstition is common to the tribe, but its professional exploitation is the work of those who profit by it.

Observing with satisfaction that, even amongst savages, the positive mind can sometimes free itself from popular superstitions and penetrate the disguise of mystery-mongers, one asks why Nature could not produce whole tribes of men so minded, and spare the folly and horror and iniquity which take up so much space in the retrospect of human life. Because common sense is only related to actual experience, and could not appreciate the necessity of government and social co-ordination as the condition of all improvement in human life, until it already existed. Such co-ordination had, therefore, to grow up without being understood; and it did grow up under the protection of certain beliefs that induced the tribes of men to hold together and subordinate themselves to leaders: amongst which beliefs the superstitions exploited by wizards had no small part.