glanced at a bread-fruit tree, it withered away.[1] The holiness of Rabbi Juda of rabbinical tradition blasted four-and-twenty of his scholars in a single day[2] Thus it is that the superman of the Lower Culture is hedged about with taboos. Of course, you must protect the External Soul of the community from possibility of harm, but you must also protect his subjects from the awful consequences of unwary and accidental contact with his supreme sanctity.
Now, if we ask when or under what circumstances is contact with very great mana beneficial and when is it dangerous, it is possible, I believe, to diagnose the general feeling which underlies the distinction. If we take the case of Rabbi Juda, an analogy may be witnessed in the relations of more modern teachers to their pupils. A person of strong character may stimulate or crush that of his pupils in proportion as their own mana is strong enough to benefit by the influence or weak enough to lose entirely its own independence. It is the utter disproportion of the two manas which is fatal to the smaller. "Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?" Moses may not see the face of Jahwe; "he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live."[3] To come into contact with mana without disaster and even with beneficial results, it is necessary that your own mana should be sufficiently strong to bear it. Your intention, the seriousness of your attitude, your courage, or the sanction given by the performance of certain rites are essential. Thus, for example, the danger of blasphemy lies in the levity with which Power is approached. In Lincolnshire "old fashioned people at the end of the last century [i.e.
- ↑ Turner, Samoa etc., p. 23, quoted Hartland, op. cit., vol. iii., p. 144; cf. Clodd, Tom Tit Tot, p. 52.
- ↑ Hartland, op. cit., vol. iii., p. 144.
- ↑ Exodus, c. xxxiii., v. 20.
