churinga or sacred stones are kept, and perhaps has carried one of these about with him for days while he 'sings' the grass-seed to make it grow, he becomes 'full of churinga'; a consequence of this inward condition being that he must observe strict chastity, since to act otherwise would be iturka—deadly sin.[1] These instances will suffice to show—what is indeed by this time of day almost a commonplace of anthropology—that the savage superman is reckoned to be such in virtue of a certain spiritual endowment. This state of the inner man is the means whereby his practical triumphs are effected, but has value on its own account, if only because it is the end to which his striving is proximately directed.
The last example, moreover, calls attention to an aspect of the primitive notion of supernormal power which is a characteristic and even universal feature. Mana implies tabu. The sense of spiritual invigoration is acquired at the cost of withdrawal into self and away from the world. We need not be offended by the vagaries of tabu as practised, say, by the medicine-man or the divine king. If we are astounded that the savage is so freakishly shy, let us at least take note of the fact that he has made a virtue of his shyness, that upon the fabric of his very fears he has founded a stronghold in which the character may develop. It is the sensitive soul, not the callous, that can thus reach high tension by submitting to insulation. Life can afford to undergo simplification only when the object is to bring out an intrinsic richness of tone. This power, then, which comes through self-discipline and self-control is utterly different in kind from the power which discharges itself in wanton riot and the breaking of bounds. The savage in his groping way is trying to be a law unto himself, and instinctively avoids the blasphemy of setting up an ideal of lawlessness among the eternal values.
- ↑ B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), 293.
