It is not infrequently said that Science is derived from Magic, and the tenet is strengthened by eminent names; nor is it displeasing to some bystanders whose attitude toward Science is one of imperfect sympathy; but it seems to me to involve a misunderstanding of the matter. Magic and Science have, indeed, some common ground; for both are products of our poor human mind, which is sorely pestered in explaining its experiences by the notion of “forces” that somehow bring about events, and which cannot get on at all without assuming uniformities of relation. Magic supposes constant connexions of events due to the agency, force, influence or virtue of charms, rites and spells; which connexions, however, are found only to be tendencies of some events to excite others, inasmuch as they may be frustrated by counteracting charms, rites or spells. This reads like a caricature of scientific ideas. Not long ago, too, “forces” had a considerable vogue amongst scientists; and such mysteries as “vital force” and “psychic force” are still to be met with. But it is plain that we never know more than that under certain conditions a change takes place; and when we try to explain the change by analysing the conditions, we never find any “force” distinct from the collocation and motion of bodies or particles. “Force” may be technically and formally used in various propositions, but the idea never contributes anything to the explanation of events; whilst the fact that with many people it seems to do so, often makes it a nuisance. That it seems to carry some explanation with it is due to the continuous influence of Magic which, though always the antithesis of Science, was yet for very many ages associated with Science. Magic is entirely constituted by notions of force, sometimes violent, as in the discharge of an enchanted spear; sometimes subtle, like the efficacy of an opal; intangible, invisible, and operating at a distance through space and time, like a witch’s spells that eclipse the sun or moon. These forces have only a one-sided relation to the workaday world; they meet with no resistance from what we take to be the “properties of matter,” such as weight and impenetrability; but are themselves entirely exempt from natural law: what we call the “real world” has no hold upon them; they live in a world of their own. They are absolutely immeasurable; and hence the causation, which is certainly implied in the notion of their operation, is indefinite, and becomes vaguer and vaguer as the magical system develops; and all this is the opposite of what happens in the history of Science. In spite of having a necessary common ground in the human mind, Magic and Science are contrasted from the first, in their development grow wider and wider apart, in their methods and ideas more and more opposed. If either can be said to precede the other, it is Science (at least, in its earliest and crudest form) that precedes Magic.

We had better begin, however, by considering a third something which is earlier than either of them, and which I have called Common-sense: I mean the accumulation of particular items of positive knowledge (which, as such, is the first form of Science) acquired by primitive man, and in less measure by the higher brutes: facts about cold and heat, sunshine and rain, the powers of water and fire, the life of trees and animals, the properties of wood and stone, and so forth, which are unfailingly confirmed by further experience. Examination of the life of savages discovers that this positive knowledge of theirs amounts to a great deal, and that they are able to use it “and reason not contemptibly.” From this Common-sense Science and a good deal of Magic are differentiated, and they expand at very unequal rates in opposite directions. Each of them starts from it; but whilst Magic rapidly distorts, perverts and mystifies it out of recognition in innumerable imaginations, Science slowly connects its fragments together, corrects, defines and extends it, without ever altering its original positive character. The difference between Magic and Science lies (as we have seen) in the causes that establish belief in them; in the character of their ideas—respectively, incoherent and vague, coherent and definite; and, as a consequence, in their respective falsity and truth.

§ 2. The Differentiation

Whilst Magic, amongst savage and barbarous people, is practised more or less by almost everybody, it is especially developed by the professional wizard, and in his art and tradition it is most conveniently studied. The wizard, or (at least) a leader amongst wizards, is a man of superior ability, penetration and enterprise; liable to be misled by a sanguine and ambitious temperament into extravagant imaginations and impostures, but with much more real knowledge than the rest of the tribe. He often takes pains to increase his knowledge, for it is the true basis of his power: “the power of the Angoqok,” says Mr. Turner, writing of the Esquimo,[560] “has some basis in experienced weather-lore, and knowledge of the habits of animals, by which he advises hunters.” But this knowledge is often the starting-point of his delusions, not altogether by any fault of his own, but as a result of his attempts to apply knowledge to new cases without any appreciation of the need of caution or of the conditions of sound inference and of proof and disproof. He never knows why he is right or why he is wrong. Hence, beside the modest edifice of his real knowledge, he builds out in one direction a few genuine additions warranted by sound inference and observation; whilst in the other direction he raises, largely by analogy, with the help of “sympathy” and spiritual powers, a towering structure of imaginations, which throws his little hut of Common-sense quite into the shade.

(a) For example, the wizard is often literally a medicine-man or physician, and knows the use of certain drugs; and he may discover other drugs and more uses for them, and in that direction lies Pharmacology. But in the other direction he adopts on altogether fanciful occasions a great many other recipes that serve no purpose but charlatanry and mystification. Pliny, much of whose Natural History is a handbook of ancient medicine, describes hundreds of remedies derived from animals, vegetables and minerals; and Burton[561] cites Galeottus as having enumerated 800 medicinal herbs and other drugs. Some of these were good and are still in use, but most were useless or worse than useless. The difference between these two classes of drugs depended on a difference of method in determining their uses: a difference that existed but was not yet understood (namely), on the one hand, proof by experience, giving in the smaller class the rudiments of medical science; and, on the other hand, acceptance on the strength of superficial likeness, or of the doctrine of qualities, virtues and signatures, which made the larger class essentially magical.

Thus all sorts of precious stones and metals were believed to be medicinal, not because they had been known to cure any disease, but because it seemed obvious in those days that precious things must have all sorts of desirable effects by some occult virtue. Gold, the most perfect of all substances (according to the alchemists), must in particular be a propitious and powerful restorative. So Chaucer says of his Doctour of Phisik:

And throughout India at the present day gold is a trusty item in any prescription. Belief in the virtue of precious stones probably goes back to very early times; since we find that in Australia crystals are not only magically powerful but the great primary sources of Magic, by having which inside him the wizard acquires and maintains his power.

With herbs, again, whilst the utility of some, such as quinine or senna, was a matter of experience, others were equally prized out of pure fancy. Dracunculus, a plant spotted with various colours, like a viper’s skin, was supposed to be a remedy for all kinds of snake-stings.[562] The Cherokees gave their children a concoction of burs to strengthen their memories; for as a bur will stick to anything, the mind of a man with bur inside him will cling to all kinds of useful information. The same Amerinds had other remedies which illustrate the character of magical physic. They concocted a vermifuge of the red fleshy stalks of chickweed, which somewhat resemble worms, and therefore must have some influence upon them; and they steeped in this concoction a flint arrow-head, that its sharpness, communicated to the brew, might cut the worms in pieces. Biliousness, marked by the vomiting of yellow bile, was cured by four herbs—all yellow in root, or stalk, or flower. To ward off smallpox they ate the flesh of the buzzard: that bird being, in their opinion, exempt from smallpox, because its foul stench keeps the disease-spirit at a distance. To cure snake-bite, they said, rub the place in the direction contrary to that in which the snake coils itself (to the right); because this is the same as uncoiling it.[563] But here there seems to be some hiatus in the thought, for how does uncoiling the snake counteract its poison? One easily appreciates the exultation of the wizard to whom this idea first revealed itself, and his contempt for the dull process of working it out, when its place in the harmony of things was self-evident.

In some of these cases we find the assumption (tacit with primitive practitioners, but explicit in MediÆval Medicine) that “like causes like”: the adhesiveness of the bur is communicated to the memory, the sharpness of the flint arrow-point to the vermifuge, the buzzard’s immunity from smallpox to the eater of the buzzard. And this is intelligible: because, first, there are many examples (superficially considered) of like causing like, such as animal generation, the spread of fire; hot things heat, and cold things cool, and so forth: and, secondly, qualities such as stickiness and sharpness, are thought of by savages as fine material, like curses and ghosts, which may be transferred from one thing to another. But in other cases it is assumed that “like cures like,” as chickweed cures worms, and yellow herbs biliousness (as in Europe turmeric was long believed to cure jaundice); and this is a very different matter—equivalent to “like expels or annuls like.” In ordinary experience, there seem to be no obvious examples of it: but in primitive medical practice it is found that fomentation reduces inflammation, rubbing with snow is good for frost-bite, an emetic cures sickness, and castor oil diarrhoea; and such may be the experiential ground of these magico-medical fancies.

The power of herbs may depend upon rites observed at their gathering: when a Cherokee wizard pulled up a plant for medicine, he dropped a bead into the hole to compensate the earth for the theft;[564] and when a Greek physician gathered the Panaces Asclepion, which was a remedy for all diseases, he filled the hole with various kinds of grain by way of expiation.[565] In employing medicinal herbs it is also important to remember when they should be procured, as on the eve of the summer solstice, at the new or the full moon, or at the turn of the tide; by whom—a child or a virgin; and where—on a mountain-top or at a grave. Hierabotane was so potent that whoever rubbed himself with it obtained whatever he desired; and in gathering it, you first offered honey to the earth in expiation, then traced a circle around it with iron, and—taking care that neither sun nor moon should shine upon it—at the rising of the Dog Star, you pulled it up with the left hand, and dried separately in the shade the root, the stem and the leaves.[566] Indeed the conditions under which a drug can be legitimately obtained so as to ensure its efficacy, may be so numerous, minute and exigent as to make the satisfying of them almost impossible; so we need not wonder if the remedy sometimes fails. Prescriptions often include the flesh or juices of dead bodies, or their pounded bones, or other foul and repulsive ingredients related to Black Magic—much trusted, and still traditional in some strata of this country, where the belief is inexpugnable that medicine, the nastier it is, is the more efficacious.

If any one wonders how such prescriptions can have held their ground for ages, it was because patients did not always die. Recovery was credited to the drastic medicine, and death to evil Magic; and the vis medicatrix naturÆ, that staunch ally of honest physic, was sometimes too strong for the wizard’s whole pharmacopoeia.

(b) Again, the wizard is a surgeon, and knows something of the construction and working of the human body, and this is the beginning of Anatomy and Physiology. He was especially well informed in these matters in such a country as Fiji, where he had access to two great sources of anatomical knowledge—frequent wars and cannibalism. He also knows certain ways of treating wounds and other lesions, such as bandages, ligatures, splints, slings, massage and fomentations, which all admit of rational development and have been continuously practised to this day. Could he be content to abide by the facts, all might be well; but he is tempted to extend his methods in various directions to cases which, on very slight grounds, he believes to be similar. The best known example of the erroneous extension by analogy of a sound method is the sucking-cure. It is, or has been, practised all over the world, and obviously rests on the proved utility of suction in extracting from the flesh thorns or poisons. In Australia snake-bite is sometimes cured by sucking the wound and rinsing the mouth with water.[567] But the operation is gradually applied to other cases until, whatever pain you suffer, it is attributed to something like poison, or a thorn (or, later, a spirit), that has got inside you, though by an invisible wound, and may be sucked out. The wizard, accordingly, undertakes to suck it out, and he sometimes exhibits it to you—a piece of wood or bone, which he brought to your bedside in his waistband. Sometimes a medicine-man enjoys great suctorial powers by having a lizard in his own body.[568]

For getting a foreign body out of a man a method alternative to suction is pressure. Mr. Howitt[569] reports a remarkable prescription for curing headache. Cut out of the ground a circular turf, place the sufferer’s head in the hole and the turf upon his head; then sit or stand upon it. He may presently declare that he feels relief; but perhaps he only desires it. It is a fact that a patient sometimes feels better after such treatment, though the cause of his pain was nothing that could possibly yield to suction or pressure: that is to say, his mind yields to suggestion. But not all savages are equally suggestible, any more than we are. Dr. Coddrington says[570] that, in Pentecost Island, witches profess to cure pain with a leaf-poultice, and in taking it off to remove with it the cause of pain, perhaps a snake or a lizard. “But,” said a native, “no one sees the things but the woman, and the pain remains”—one of those troublesome sceptics! Yet it is possible that had he just undergone the operation, he would not have denied that the pain was better. There is a state of mind between suggestibility and sane judgment, namely, assentation: unwillingness or unreadiness to form or state one’s own opinion, and, consequently, an appearance of acquiescing in another’s assertion. There is confusion and conflict, from which assent is the easiest relief. This state of mind for the immediate purpose of medicine-man or orator may serve as well as suggestibility; but may soon pass off when the patient recovers his faculties, and should be distinguished from the suggestibility that takes a relatively permanent impression from the pretensions of a mountebank. The power of suggestion, however, is one of the facts that the wizard has observed, and he counts upon its aid. He has also learnt to practise hypnotism; and seeing how mysterious these things have been to the most enlightened moderns, we need not wonder that he employs them in magical therapeutics—dancing, drumming, shouting to overpower his patient and to incite himself to put forth his utmost energy. Nowhere, probably, in the whole range of his art, is the difference between Reality and Magic so obscure to himself.

The wizard, then, acquired in his medical functions (and in others) a certain empirical knowledge of some obscure facts in Psychology, and this knowledge persisted in his profession in shady quarters to our own time; but with the growth of positive Science, its mysteriousness was mistaken for quackery, until quite recently, when the facts forced themselves on the attention of some men, who needed great courage to confess their conviction. A crude Physiological Psychology, too, resulted from savage observation of a connexion between the agitations of body and mind. Very early sundry mental powers—skill, courage, affection—are located in special parts of the body—the heart, spleen, kidneys, bowels—as they still are in popular language. Apart from the bare observation that the bowels and heart are disturbed during emotion (which is true and important), these doctrines are not Science; nor are they exactly Magic, but belong to the region of ideas ancillary to Magic—ideas of qualities as material things. The savage, always eager to apply his supposed knowledge to practice, utilises his Physiological Psychology for the improvement of his mind, and misses no opportunity to make a meal upon an enemy’s (or perhaps a relative’s) heart or spleen or kidney or tongue or eye, in order to appropriate the quality for which the deceased had been conspicuous.

(c) Savages (as we have seen in the chapter on Omens) are familiar with a great many natural signs by which to judge of things not now present, but that have happened, or are about to happen. Every hunter must have a great stock of such knowledge, inasmuch as the pursuit of game entirely depends upon it. This knowledge of natural signs is, on the one hand, a genuine contribution to Natural History; it increases, is handed down from generation to generation, and forms the nucleus of Botany and Zoology. But, on the other hand, there is reared upon it, under the influence of hope and fear, the belief in Omens that give warning of good or ill success in all the affairs of life. Omens, at first merely signs mysteriously connected with events, are later regarded as the sendings of spirits or gods, whose oracles forecast the fate of heroes and nations. At first, perhaps, the wizard may do no more than other tribesmen to promote this particular superstition; but it is he who works out the great art of Divination, without which Omens would have been a matter of much less consequence.

The most famous branch of Divination, namely, Astrology, was the invention of a comparatively late age, and it was, of course, long preceded by the discovery of the rudiments of Astronomy as part of the common sense of agriculture: some knowledge of the regularity of the motions of the sun and moon and of the constancy of the stars in contrast with the planets. This is plainly presupposed by the comprehensive system of predictions based on sympathetic Magic, arbitrary assumptions and fanciful analogies which, for the last four or five thousand years, has promised to disclose to any mother the career of her infant, or to any monarch the future of his kingdom. But what now seems fanciful or arbitrary once seemed reasonable. The sun manifestly rules all things; the waxing and waning of the moon must strengthen and weaken all things; the signs of the Zodiac are certainly connected with the seasons; the planets partake of the nature of the gods.[571] If there are gods they must, as the Stoics argued, have some way of communicating with men; and what way can be more congruous with their nature than by writing on the face of the heavens? But generally the ideas of Astrology were magical rather than animistic. Having determined the powers and dispositions of the heavenly bodies, let us consider only what must necessarily follow from their influences in conjunction or opposition and various relations in trine, quartile and sextile. Thus they dreamed and speculated, but at the same time made many exact observations on the sky. And so Astronomy made some progress in spite of Magic.

(d) More widely prevalent than Astrology and far more ancient is the art of controlling the weather, especially rain; for rain, from its uncertainty in many countries and its indispensableness, is a matter of deeper interest and anxiety than even the sun himself. “Rain-making,” as it is called, common in Australia and other regions of lowly culture, survives when society has risen to higher levels, becomes the function of the most eminent wizards or priests, sometimes the duty of kings, and is not extinct amongst ourselves. But from what knowledge of fact or common sense can “rain-making” be derived? I conjecture it was from facts observed in the behaviour of fire.

The making of fire was the first great chemical experiment and the foundation of all Chemistry. Having made fire, the most wonderful of all achievements, there would be little excuse for astonishment if men had then thought they could also make rain; but probably they never thought so. It seems to me a misconception of rain-rites to describe them as endeavours to “make” rain; for they plainly aim not at making, but at inducing, instigating or propagating it. The Swazies, we are told explicitly, try to procure rain by throwing water high into the air, expecting that the falling drops will stimulate the clouds in sympathy with them.[572] Savages may be said to “make” fire; for until they rub their sticks, or knock their flints together, it does not exist. But in the so-called “making” of rain there is nearly always some water to begin with; and the essence of a rain-rite is the splashing of water into the air, or the pouring of it out, sometimes on a particular stone, or on a particular person, with many variations. In rare instances the water has been forgotten: the Kurnai, instead of water, let blood, and throw down into the air for clouds; but in another rite they fill their mouths with water and squirt it out in one direction or another (according to the clan) and sing a spell: to stop the rain they throw up fire-sticks.[573] Those who practise such rites hope that the spilling of a little water will bring on a great downfall or outpouring of water, namely, rain; and this agrees with the fact that a wizard will not operate except when the rainy season approaches. Now this inducing of much by little is not, indeed, analogous to the making of fire; but it is analogous to the spread or propagation of fire; when, having produced a few sparks, these spread through tinder to the firewood, and thence a conflagration may be communicated to the prairie or to the forest. My conjecture is, then, that not the making (which is never attempted) but the inducing, or propagation of rain is based on the analogy of the propagation of fire, and belongs to the class of exemplary or incentive rites; which are to be understood not as intending the direct causation of events, but rather as instigating Nature to bring it about: the class described in Chap. IV. § 8, such as the furthering of crops by fertility-rites, or the ensuring of successful hunting or warfare by a dramatic dance.

Rain-rites being very apt to fail of their purpose, the wizard is in danger of losing his reputation, or of some worse fate. His attention is, therefore, drawn to the signs of the weather, the character and course of the seasons, the connexion of rain with the aspect of the sky and direction of the wind; so that he learns to operate for rain only when rain may reasonably be expected. He has then laid out the rudiments of Meteorology, but by observation, not by hocus-pocus.

§ 3. Why Magic seems to be the Source of Science

In no case, then, is Science derived from Magic, but Science on the one hand and Magic on the other are differentiated from Common-sense,[574] and Science is much nearer akin to Common-sense than Magic is, being of the same substance and only formally different. And in that sense it is earlier than Magic, and sometimes formally earlier, as in the case of Astronomy and Astrology. The illusion that Magic is the earlier is due to the misinterpretation of two facts: (a) Magic and Science are, for the most part and during many ages, worked out by the same men—magicians or priests; and all that they do is mistaken for Magic, even by themselves. And (b) Magic in most of its branches undergoes immense development, whilst the Sciences remain rudimentary; grows old and even decrepit, whilst they are still in infancy; so that, on first emerging into public notice, they seem to issue from the matrix of Magic.

The reasons for the relative backwardness of Science, again, are chiefly three: (a) For ages it is in the hands of wizards who, though highly valuing knowledge, are mainly eager for power and prophecy. It is true that Science gives power, and the hope of power is a reasonable incentive to the study of Science; but it must be a remote incentive, in the actual work of research rigorously excluded. There, unless truth is the sole end in view, the procedure will not be clean, will be confined to immediate utility. But this is a recent discovery. The wizard has no such ideas: he is governed by his desires and traditions. Hence for verification he is content with coincidences; negative instances he neglects, or regards failure merely as an occasion for excuses. He accepts connexions of events remote in space and time, and is very slow to see the necessity of connecting events in the closest possible sequence. Moreover, having no understanding even of the facts he knows (such as the making of fire), the mysteriousness of any relation of events constitutes no objection to his acceptance of it; as the magical side of his practice grows, so does its mystery; until at last mysteriousness is a strong recommendation, and becomes a character of the apperceptive mass that assimilates and confirms all magical beliefs. This state of mind always offers strong resistance to positive explanation.

(b) Another reason of the backwardness of Science is the slow elucidation of the idea of Causation—long obscured by the impressiveness of coincidence and by fallacious imaginations of magical and spiritual forces: a process still incomplete. Until this idea had made considerable progress in definiteness (in antiquity, say, with Archimedes, and in modern times with Galileo), it was impossible that the indispensableness of analysis and elimination should be understood, that absolute respect should be felt for negative instances and that any gap in a series of events should always be regarded as an instant problem. And, finally (c), for scientific progress it was necessary that reasoning by analogy should be abandoned, and a methodology discovered of parallel and equational reasoning, with the apparatus that makes exact investigation possible.

As the Sciences grow in comprehensiveness, precision and solidarity, they constitute their own apperceptive mass, assimilation with which is the supreme test of all relevant beliefs; and this, together with a methodology that has become a habit of mind, tends to establish a social atmosphere in which Magic is no longer thinkable. Exact habits of thought in commerce and industry contribute greatly to this result. So we are tempted to ridicule our benighted predecessors; but a study of the conditions of their life shows that darkness was no more their fault than illumination is our merit.

The nearest approach that can be truthfully made to the position that Science is derived from Magic, is to say that the scientist is derived from the wizard (or wizard-priest), on that side of his activity in which he relied upon fragments of positive knowledge; but this was, in nature, always opposed to his Magic. In the course of thousands of years some men grew more interested in the positive than in the magical side of their profession, and became scientists; whilst others adhered to the fanciful and mystical. It is remarkable that, as sceptics occur in the most unsuspected quarters, so pure scientists may sometimes be found as an institution in barbarous or even savage communities. In a Bantu tribe there is a class of doctors that claim no powers by the aid of spirits or Magic, but without any ceremony dispense a few well-known drugs—aloes, nux vomica, castor-oil, fern-root, rhubarb, and the bark of various trees, purgative or emetic.[575] The Kanyahs of Borneo have a weather-prophet to determine the right time for sowing; he is not expected to cultivate padi, but is supplied with it by the rest of the village. Not knowing how many days there are in a year, and finding that the seasons do not correspond with any certain number of lunar months, he depends entirely upon observation of the altitude of the sun by means of an upright pole, whose upper end is carved into a human figure.[576] Except the carving on his pole, there is nothing to indicate that either Magic or Animism perturbs the method of this Astronomer Royal. Hence the adventure, though most wonderful, is not unexampled in a humbler world, by which eminent citizens amongst the Greek laity, with minds almost free from Magic and Animism, established for ever Philosophy and the Sciences as liberal studies.

§ 4. Animism and Science

Animism is opposed to Science, as well as to Magic,[577] by its rejection of uniformity. A spirit, indeed, has some character (though it may be very faintly marked); for he is, or is assimilated to, a human ghost. But although he is supposed to have reasons or motives for his actions, they are often unintelligible. Until he is brought under the control of magical rites and formulÆ, he may reject offerings and prayers, as if by pure caprice or free-will. His interventions are incalculable. Hence he may be the unseen agent in anything that happens; and the habit is formed of putting upon him, or one of his kind, every occurrence whose cause is not obvious: diseases, deaths, storms, droughts, noises in the forest, unusual behaviour of animals. A spirit-being with its body of soul-stuff capable of taking any shape, a material thing exerting mechanical power, there is nothing that may not be imputed to it. But being entirely imaginary, its supposed agency can only satisfy the imagination by the assimilation of each intervention by the animistic apperceptive mass. It is never seen or known to do any one of the actions attributed to it; for the understanding, based on perception and the classification and analysis of perceptions, it is nothing. Moreover, so far as the actions of a spirit are of free-will, or motiveless, or pure caprice, there is no distinct imagination of even a spiritual cause. When a man, suffering from disease, or hearing an unfamiliar noise, refers it to a spirit, there is usually nothing in his mind but the word of vague meaning and a feeling of awe, wonder, or dread. He gets no further in the understanding of the fact, and curiosity is paralysed. To say “a spirit did it” becomes, therefore, a means of avoiding the labour of explanation; it is a good example of the “principle of least effort.” But in another direction his wits may get to work. He is full of fear, and objectless fear must invent a danger, which is easily done by supposing that the spirit has been actuated by wrath. Then something must have been done to enrage him: a taboo has been broken, his rites have been neglected, sin has been committed—according to the customary ideas of the tribe. There must be lustration, propitiation, expiation, perhaps with horrible cruelty. Again, then, shall we say the man has been diverted from the important inquiry into the causes of disease or drought? But this is laughable: how can he set about such a task? It is the tragedy of the world that for thousands of years the speculative powers of man—of some men—expanded without any power, except in the classical age, of discriminating sense from nonsense. Therefore, looking back, we see everywhere else superstition and the kingdom of darkness.

Animism can never have directly enriched Science with a single natural law; but, indirectly, it has instigated many investigations. With the development of Religion, the building of temples and the regulation of sacrifices and festivals according to their seasons, necessitated at least the empirical study of Geometry, Arithmetic and Astronomy; and the preservation of the ancient language of the sacred formulÆ of ritual required a knowledge of prosody, phonetics and grammar. For thousands of years erudition was confined to the priestly orders. They also practised, or were the chief patrons of, all the fine arts, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music and Poetry; and by their connexion with government they left in Egypt and Assyria, in monuments and inscriptions, History, or the materials of History. Indirectly, the progress of mental culture, both in learning and in Æsthetics, has depended almost entirely on the development of Animism; and this in turn has depended on the aid which Animism gave to government and to the extension of law and order, however imperfect, over wide regions of the earth. This is the fundamental utility which, first, Magic and, afterwards, Animism subserve, and for the sake of which—unconsciously, of course—they arise and prevail. Mankind has been subdued through imagination; because the peoples that had the cast of imagination requisite for their political organisation and co-operation had an advantage over others.

We must qualify this by observing that other imaginations, such as devotion to the Family and Patriotism, with a much surer hold than Animism has upon experience, have had a great and growing influence upon the solidarity and civilisation of some branches of the human race, especially the Nordic.

Philosophy has derived from Animism most of her problems—free-will and predestination, final causes, creation and miracles, emanation and intuition, idealism and materialism, immortality, the being and attributes of God, eternity, infinity—in some of which, indeed, magical ideas are deeply concerned: all of them the exercise of the most eminent minds, exercise so delightful and so disappointing. Considering their source, we cannot wonder that these problems remain problems, and that philosophical discussion has, of late years, turned from them to questions concerning the theory of knowledge.

A student of human origins is under no obligation to predict the future. Fortunately: for several considerations make the task appear altogether impossible. Of these I will mention three: (a) Whereas nations have hitherto submitted to, and enforced, law and order, and undertaken costly works of utility or splendour, in large measure under the influence of animistic illusions, it is now everywhere noticeable in the more civilised countries, that these illusions are being dissipated, and it is very difficult to judge how people will behave when they are gone. It is, indeed, true that our ordinary working life has always depended chiefly on common sense, a knowledge of facts within the range of ordinary experience and memory. Animistic or magical rites and ceremonies associated with the working-life may have increased the confidence and encouraged the co-operation of labourers, but were not indispensable; although the association of Magic with industry seems sometimes to have become so close, that to forget the Magic was to destroy the industry. When, however, we turn to those conditions of social life that are beyond the purview of common sense, such as the preservation of tribal tradition and solidarity, and future prosperity, loyalty to the king and obedience to his officers, it is plain that something else than common sense was needed to reinforce the interest of the whole against the tendency of the individual’s self-assertion to overcome his social dispositions, and that this control was found chiefly in Religion. It is also true that at present, whilst some beliefs concerning supernatural things are being lost, others are being resuscitated; but the lapsing beliefs are noble and venerable and have exerted great public power and authority; whilst those now eagerly propagated, are the raw infatuation of quacks, on a level with the Animism of an Australian medicine-man and, indeed, much inferior to his, as having no moral influence or authority. What must come of this is so dubious, as to discourage one about the future of the world.

(b) Reflection on the levity with which imagination-beliefs are let slip and lost, or received and adopted, upon no evidence either way, from mere shallowness of soul, brings forward a second consideration that makes the future impredictable, namely, the low average development of mankind in both intellect and character. This is the consequence of our having depended, probably from the very beginning, on leaders. A pack or tribe needed enough variability to produce able leaders and enough average ability to follow and support them in a crowd. Natural Selection, therefore, has operated first in producing variability; and all tribes, even the lowest, produce relatively eminent men. The average intelligence or ability of the crowd, in which individuality is liable to be lost, is much less important. The result is that each nation has its military affairs, organisation of industry, science, invention, literature and art provided for it by a small number of citizens; the rest fill the ranks, and learn what they are taught. Thus arranged, the leading nations have of late years made wonderful progress in science and in everything that can be done by machinery; but there is no reason to suppose that anything has been done towards raising the average intelligence and character; and in default of that, in my judgment, nothing has been done to advance civilisation. The world is no safer against war, revolution, demagogy, despotism, degeneration. The greatest improvements have been made in means of destruction; next we may put the invention of flying machines; and their chief use has been destruction. Destruction now pauses, not because the antagonists are satiated; they are only exhausted; and there is more hatred in the world than was ever known before. How then shall we judge of things to come?

(c) Speaking of the average man, we usually think of the European and North American average; but in considering what changes may be expected in the world, the people of India (800,000,000), China (350,000,000), and the millions of the rest of Asia, the Eastern Archipelago, Africa and South America cannot be left out; and to include them does not raise the average. What will be their contribution to history? There are two rational proposals for raising the average, namely, eugenics and deliberate elimination of the unfit; and there are 1,600,000,000 on whom to operate.

Any one who anxiously desires to foresee the future of our race is in a position to sympathise with the ancients. Go, inquire at Delphi or Dodona; or sleep in Stonehenge, or at the tomb of Merlin, or by the barrows at Upsala, and dream of things to come; or consult the stars, cast the nativity of Lycopithecus, and read in heaven the fate of his posterity. If these methods are not very hopeful, any one of them is as good as guessing. The only safe reflection is that he who lives longest will see most.