to imitate. Meanwhile, that there shall be no clashing of conceptions to inhibit the tendency of the idea of an acquired “grace” to realize itself in action, is secured by the complete unanimity of public opinion, dominated as it is by an inveterate custom. To appreciate the consecrating effect of religion on primitive life we have only to look to the churinga-worship of the Central Australians (as described by Spencer and Gillen in The Native Tribes of Central Australia and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia). Contact with these repositories of mystic influence “makes them glad” (Nat. Tr. 165); it likewise makes them “good,” so that they are no longer greedy or selfish (North. Tr. 266); it endows them with second sight (ibid.); it gives them confidence and success in war (Nat. Tr. 135), in fact, there is no end to its “strengthening” effects (ibid. n.). Or, again, we may note the earnestness and solemnity that characterize all their sacred ceremonies. The inwardness of primitive religion is, however, non-existent for those who observe it as uninitiated strangers; whilst, again, it evaporates as soon as native custom breaks down under pressure of civilization, when only fragments of meaningless superstition survive: wherefore do travesties of primitive religion abound.
It remains to consider shortly the consecration of life in relation to particular categories and departments. (1) Education. Almost every tribe has its initiation ceremonies, and in many tribes adult life may almost be described as a continuous initiation. The object of these rites is primarily to impart mystic virtue to the novice, such virtue, in the eyes of the primitive man, being always something more than social usefulness, amounting as it does to a share in the tribal luck by means of association with all it holds sacred. Incidentally the candidate is trained to perform his duties as a tribesman, but religion presides over the course, demanding earnest endeavour of an impressionable age. (2) Government. Where society is most primitive it is most democratic, as in Australia, and magico-religious powers are possessed by the whole body of fully initiated males, age, however, conferring increase of sacred lore and consequently of authority; whilst even at this stage the experts tend to form an inner circle of rulers. The man with mana is bound to come to the top, both because his gifts give him a start and because his success is taken as a sign that he has the gift. A decisive “moment” in the evolution of chiefship is the recognition of hereditary mana, bound up as this is with the handing on of ceremonies and cult-objects. Invested, as society grows more complex, with a sanctity increasingly superior to that of the layman, the priest-king becomes the representative of the community as repository of its luck, whilst, as controller of all sacred forces that bear thereon, he is, as Dr Frazer puts it, “dynamical centre of the universe” (The Golden Bough (2nd ed.), i. 233). Only when the holy man's duty to preserve his holiness binds him hand and foot in a network of taboos does his temporal power tend to devolve on a deputy. (3) Food-supply. In accordance with the principle of Renovation (see above), the root-idea of the application of religion to economics is not the extorting of boons from an unwilling nature, but rather the stimulation of the sources of life, so that all beings alike may increase and multiply. (4) Food-taking. Meanwhile, the primitive meal is always more or less of a sacrament, and there are many food-taboos, the significance of which is, however, not so much that certain foods are unclean and poisonous as that they are of special virtue and must be partaken of solemnly and with circumspection. (5) Kinship. It is hard to say whether the unit of primitive society is the tribe or the group of kinsmen. Both are forms of union that are consolidated by means of religious usages. Thus in Australia the initiation ceremonies, concerned as they partly are with marriage, always an affair between the kin-groups, are tribal, whilst the totemic rites are the prime concern of the members of the totem clans. The significance of a common name and a common blood is immensely enhanced by its association with mystic rights and duties, and the pulse of brotherhood beats faster. (6) The Family. Side by side with the kin there is always found the domestic group, but the latter institution develops fully only as the former weakens, so that the one comes largely to inherit the functions of the other, whilst the tribe too in its turn hands over certain interests. Thus in process of time birth-rites, marriage-rites, funeral rites, not to mention subordinate ceremonies such as those of name-giving and food-taking, become domestic sacraments. (7) Sex. Woman, for certain physiological reasons, is always for primitive peoples hedged round with sanctity, whilst man does all he can to inspire awe of his powers in woman by keeping religion largely in his own hands. The result, so far as woman is concerned, is that, in company with those males who are endowed with sacredness in a more than ordinary degree, she tends as a sex to lose in freedom as much as she gains in respect. (8) Personality. Every one has his modicum of innate mana, or at least may develop it in himself by communicating with powers that can be brought into answering relation by the proper means. Nagualism, or the acquisition of a mystic guardian, is a widely distributed custom, the essence of which probably consists in the procuring of a personal name having potency. The exceptional man is recognized as having mana in a special degree, and a belief thus held at once by others and by himself is bound to stimulate his individuality. The primitive community is not so custom-bound that personality has no chance to make itself felt, and the leader of men possessed of an inner fund of inspiration is the wonder-worker who encourages all forms of social advance.
Psychology of the Primitive Attitude towards the Sacred.—We are on firmer ground when simply describing the phenomena of primitive religion than when seeking to account for these in terms of natural law—in whatever sense the conception of natural law be applicable to the facts of the mental life of man. One thing is certain, namely, that savages stand on virtually one footing with the civilized as regards the type of explanation appropriate to their beliefs and practices. We have no right to refer to “instincts” in the case of primitive man, any more at any rate than we have in our own case. A child of civilized parents brought up from the first amongst savages is a savage, neither more nor less. Though race may count for something in the matter of mental endowment—and at least it would seem to involve differences in weight of brain—it clearly counts for much less than does milieu, to wit, that social environment of ideas and institutions which depends so largely for its effectiveness on mechanical means of tradition, such as the art of writing. The outstanding feature of the mental life of savages known to psychologists as “primitive credulity” is doubtless chiefly due to sheer want of diversity of suggestiveness in their intellectual surroundings. Their notions stick fast because there are no competing notions to dislodge them. Society suffers a sort of perpetual obsession, and remains self-hypnotized as it were within a magic circle of traditional views. A rigid orthodoxy is sustained by means of purblind imitation assisted by no little persecution. Such changes as occur come about, not in consequence of a new direction taken by conscious policy, but rather in the way that fashions in dress alter amongst ourselves, by subconscious, hardly purposive drifting. The crowd rather than the individual is the thinking unit. A proof is the mysterious rapid extinction of savages the moment that their group-life is broken up; they are individually so many lost sheep, without self-reliance or initiative. And the thinking power of a crowd—that is, a mob, not a deliberative assembly—is of a very low order, emotion of a “panicky” type driving it hither and thither like a rudderless ship. However, as the students of mob-psychology have shown, every crowd tends to have its meneur, its mob-leader, the man who sets the cheering or starts the running-away. So too, then, with the primitive society. Grossly ignorant of all that fails outside “the daily round, the common task,” they are full of panicky fears in regard to this unknown, and the primary attitude of society towards it is sheer avoidance, taboo. But the mysterious has another face. To the mob the mob—leader is mysterious in his power of bringing luck and salvation; to himself also he is a wonder, since he wills, and lo! things happen accordingly. He has
