If fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism radiate from a common centre,
the heart of man, then the heart of man must also be regarded as the
starting-point of magic. If they spring straight from the heart, though
in different directions, dispersively, then magic must also start from
the common centre; and, though its divergence from religion tends to
become total, at first, and indeed it may be for long, the discrepancy
between them is rather felt uneasily than recognized clearly.
Categories, such as those of cause and effect, identity and difference,
which are the common property of civilized thought, and which among us,
Mr. L.T. Hobhouse says, 'every child soon comes to distinguish in
practice, are for primitive thought interwoven in wild confusion.' Two
categories, which in primitive thought are thus interwoven in wild
confusion, are, it may be suggested, religion and magic; and only in the
dispersive process of evolution do they tend to become discriminated. In
ancient Egypt, in Babylon, in Brahminism, religion fails to disentangle
itself from magic; and not even has Christianity always succeeded in
throwing it off. Different as we may conceive magic and religion to be,
the fact remains that at first they grow up intertwined together. In the
lower forms of religion magic is worked not only by magicians but by
priests as well; spells and prayers are hardly to be distinguished from
one another. The idea that 'priest' is but 'magician' writ differently,
that prayers are but spells under another name, is now obsolete. The
truth may be that religion neither follows on, nor is evolved from
magic, but that both radiate from a common centre, the heart of man; and
that at first both are attempts made by man to secure the fulfilment of
his desires, to do his will, though eventually he finds that the way to
control nature is to obey her, not to try to command her by working
magic; and that it is in endeavouring to do God's will, not his own,
that man finds peace at the last.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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