jects in view; and that, in point of fact, while the object of the Religionist is to obtain by supplication and sacrifice, that of the Magician is to enforce by arts founded on knowledge. But the Magician's belief that he can obtain what he wants by knowledge of the properties of things, or beings, and of the arts by which these properties can be made subservient to his will, is, I submit, essentially identical with the belief of the Savant, and, like his, implies the conception of the action of things on each other, though, no doubt, in forms which to us appear the wildest and most fanciful. And that such was the conception underlying Witchcraft we find verified in the historical fact that Witchcraft and Religion have always been bitterly opposed,[1] just as Science and Religion are now opposed—Religion, at least, defined, as by Dr. Tylor, as "belief in Spiritual Beings".
VII.—My seventh and final Query is: Is not the origin of Religion, as defined by Dr. Tylor, a secondary, rather than a primary phenomenon; and may not a more verifiable theory of the origin of Religion be suggested than that which is given in the theory of Animism?
We have found under the Second Query that Dr. Tylor himself recognises a conception of the "animation" of Nature by direct "personification", prior to his affirmed "animation" of it by "souls", "ghosts", or "spirits". I attempted, however, to show under that Query, that direct conception of objects as Powers harmful or beneficial would be a more verifiable way of characterising the primitive consciousness of Nature, than that of affirming a process of personification. Under the immediately foregoing Sixth Query I have pointed out that, if objects are thus primordially conceived as themselves Powers, the primordial general conception of Nature, whenever it arises, will be a
- ↑ Sir Alfred Lyall takes the following as the significant motto to his chapter on Witchcraft: "Witchcraft is as the sin of Rebellion." Compare the incantation scene in the Greek Romance of Theagenes and Chariclea by Heliodorus.
