Recent Developments in European Thought Part 2

These latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the philosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was always ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be getting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere in particular.

The conditions for mutual understanding have now greatly improved, thanks mainly to the labour of mathematicians with philosophical minds on the principles of their own science. If we admit that mathematics is true--and it seems quite impossible to avoid the admission--we can now see that neither the traditional Kant-Hegel doctrine nor the traditional sensationalistic empiricism can be sound. Not to speak of inquiries which have been actually created within our own life-time, it may fairly be said that the whole of pure mathematics has been shown, or is on the verge of being shown, to form a body of conclusions rigidly deduced from a few unproved postulates which are of a purely logical character.

Descartes has proved to be right in his view that the exceptional certainty men have always ascribed to mathematical knowledge is not due to the supposed restriction of the science to relation of number and magnitude--there is a good deal of pure mathematics which deals with neither--but to the simplicity of its undefined notions and the high plausibility of its unproved postulates. Bit by bit the bad logic has been purged out of the Calculus and the Theory of Functions and these branches of study have been made into patterns of accurate reasoning on exactly stated premisses. It has appeared in the process that the alleged contradictions in mathematics upon which the followers of Kant and Hegel laid stress do not really exist at all, and only seemed to exist because mathematicians in the past expressed their meaning so awkwardly. Further, it has been established that the most fundamental idea of all in mathematics is not that of number or magnitude but that of _order_ in a series and that the whole doctrine of series is only a branch of the logic of Relations. From the logical doctrine of serial order we seem to be able to deduce the whole arithmetic of integers, and from this it is easy to deduce further the arithmetic of fractions and the arithmetic or algebra of the 'real' and 'complex' numbers. As the logical principles of serial order enable us to deal with infinite as well as with finite series, it further follows that the Calculus and the Theory of Functions can now be built up without a single contradiction or breach of logic. The puzzles about the infinitely great and infinitely small, which used to throw a cloud of mystery over the 'higher' branches of Mathematics, have been finally dissipated by the discovery that the 'infinite' is readily definable in purely ordinal terms and that the 'infinitesimal' does not really enter into the misnamed 'Infinitesimal Calculus' at all. Arithmetic and the theory of serial order have been shown to be the sufficient basis of the whole science which, as Plato long ago remarked, is 'very inappropriately called geometry'. A resume of the work which has been thus done may be found in the stately volumes of the _Principia Mathematica_ of Whitehead and Russell, or--to a large extent--in the _Formulario Matematico_ of Professor Peano. Of other works dealing with the subject, the finest from the strictly philosophical point of view is probably that of Professor G. Frege on _The Fundamental Laws of Arithmetic_. The general result of the whole development is that we are now at last definitely freed from the haunting fear that there is some hidden contradiction in the principles of the exact sciences which would vitiate all our knowledge of universal truths. This removes the chief, if not the only ground for the view that all the truths of Science are only 'partial'.

At the same time, the proof that pure mathematics is a strictly logical development and that all its conclusions are of the hypothetical form, 'if _a b c_ ..., then _x_' definitely disproves the popular Kantian doctrine that _sense_-data are a necessary const.i.tuent of scientific knowledge. And with this dogma falls the _main_ ground for the denial that knowledge about the soul and G.o.d is attainable. The recovery of a sounder philosophical method has, as Mr. Russell himself says, disposed of what was yesterday the accepted view that the function of Philosophy is to narrow down the range of possible interpretations of facts until only one is left. Philosophy rather opens doors than shuts them. It multiplies the number of logically possible sets of premisses from which consequences agreeing with empirical facts may be inferred. Mr.

Russell's unreasoned anti-theism seems to me to make him curiously blind to an obvious application of this principle. On the other side, the revived attention to the logical methods of the sciences is killing the crude sensationalism of the days which saw the first publication of Mach's _Science of Mechanics_ and Pearson's _Grammar of Science_. The claims of 'induction' to be a method of establis.h.i.+ng truths may be fairly said to have been completely exposed. It is clearer now than it was when Kant made the observation that each of the 'sciences' contains just so much science as it contains mathematics, and that the Critical Philosophy was fully justified in insisting that all science implies universal _a priori_ postulates, though it went wrong in thinking that these postulates are laws of the working of the human mind or are 'put into' things by the human mind. How far Science has moved away from crude sensationalistic empiricism may be estimated by a comparison of the successive editions of the _Grammar of Science_. It must always have been apparent to an attentive reader that the chapters of that fascinating book which deal directly with the leading principles of Physics and Biology are of very different quality from the earlier chapters which expound, with many self-contradictions and much wrath against metaphysicians and theologians whom the writer seems never to have tried to understand, the fantastic 'metaphysics of the telephone-exchange'. But the difference of quality is more marked in the second edition than in the first, and in the (alas!) unfinished third edition than in the second. So far, then, as the problem of the unification of the sciences is concerned, the old prejudices which divided the rationalist philosopher from the sensationalist scientific man seem to have been, in the main, dissipated. We can see now that what used to be called Philosophy and what used to be called Science are both parts of one task, that they have a common method and presuppose a common body of principles.

So far it may be said with truth that Philosophy is becoming more faithful than Kant was himself to the leading ideas of 'Criticism', and again that it is reverting once more, as it reverted in the days of Galileo, to the positions of Plato. I do not mean that the whole programme has been completely executed and that there is nothing for a successor of Frege or Russell to do. It is instructive to observe that at the very end of the great work on arithmetic to which I have referred Frege found himself compelled by difficulties which had been overlooked until Russell called attention to them to add an appendix confessing that there was a single important flaw in his elaborate logical construction of the principles of arithmetic. He had shown that if there are certain things called 'integers', defined as he had defined them, the whole of arithmetic follows. But he had not shown that there _is_ any object answering to his definition of an integer, and the logical researches of Russell had thrown some doubt on the point. This proved that some restatement of the initial a.s.sumptions of the theory was needed. Since the date of Frege's appendix (1903), Mr. Russell and others have done something towards the necessary rectification, and the resulting 'Theory of Types' is pretty certainly one of the most important contributions ever made to logical doctrine, but it may still be reasonably doubted whether the 'Theory of Types', as expounded by Whitehead and Russell in their _Principia Mathematica_, is the last word required. At any rate, it seems clear that it is a great step on the right road to the solution of a most difficult problem.

There still remains the greatest problem of all, the harmonization of Science and Life. I cannot believe that this problem is an illegitimate one, or that we must sit down content to accept the severance of 'fact'

and 'value' as final for our thought. Even the unification of the sciences itself remains imperfect so long as we treat it as merely something which 'happens to be the case' that there are many things and many kinds of things in the universe and also a number of relations in which they 'happen' to stand. It is significant that in his later writings Mr. Russell has been driven to abandon the concept of personal ident.i.ty, which is so fundamental for practical life, and to a.s.sert that each of us is not one man but an infinite series of men of whom each only exists for a mathematical instant. I am sure that such a theory requires the abandonment of the whole notion of value as an illusion, and even more sure that it is ruinous to any practical rule of living, and I cannot believe in the 'philosophy' of any man who is satisfied to base his practice on what he regards as detected illusion. Hence I find myself strongly in sympathy with my eminent Italian colleague Professor Varisco, who has devoted his two chief works (_I Ma.s.simi Problemi_ and _Conosci Te Stesso_) to an exceedingly subtle attempt to show that 'what ought to be', in Platonic phrase 'the Good', is in the end the single principle from which all things derive their existence as well as their value. Mr. Russell's philosophy saves us half Plato, and that is much, but I am convinced that it is whole and entire Plato whom a profounder philosophy would preserve for us. I believe personally that such a philosophy will be led, as Plato was in the end led, to a theistic interpretation of life, that it is in the living G.o.d Who is over all, blessed for ever, that it will find the common source of fact and value.

And again I believe that it will be led to its result very largely by what is, after all, perhaps the profoundest thought of Kant, the conviction that the most illuminating fact of all is the _fact_ of the absolute and unconditional obligatoriness of the law of right. It is precisely here that fact and value most obviously meet. For when we ask ourselves what in fact we are, we shall a.s.suredly find no true answer to this question about what _is_ if we forget that we are first and foremost beings who _ought_ to follow a certain way of life, and to follow it for no other reason than that it is good. But I cannot, of course, offer reasons here for this conviction, though I am sure that adequate reasons can be given. Here I must be content to state this ultimate conviction as a 'theological superst.i.tion', or, as I should prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious, bad joke.

_Note_.--It may be thought that something should have been said about the revolt against authority and tradition which has styled itself variously 'Pragmatism' and 'Humanism', and also about the recent vogue of Bergsonianism. I may in part excuse my silence by the plea that both movements are, in my judgement, already spent forces. If I must say more than this, I would only remark about Pragmatism that I could speak of it with more confidence if its representatives themselves were more agreed as to its precise principles. At present I can discern little agreement among them about anything except that they all show a great impatience with the business of thinking things quietly and steadily out, and that none of them seems to appreciate the importance of the 'critical'

problem. 'Pragmatism' thus seems to me less a definite way of thinking than a collective name for a series of 'guesses at truth'. Some of the guesses may be very lucky ones, but I, at least, can hardly take the claims of unmethodic guessing to be a philosophy very seriously. To 'give and receive argument' appears to me to be of the very essence of Philosophy. As for M. Bergson, I yield to no one in admiration for his brilliancy as a stylist and the happiness of many of his ill.u.s.trations.

But I have always found it difficult to grasp his central idea--if he really has one--because his whole doctrine has always seemed to me to be based upon a couple of elementary blunders which will be found in the opening chapter of his _Donnees Immediates de la Conscience_. We are there called on to reject the intellect in Philosophy on the grounds (1) that, being originally developed in the services of practical needs, it can at best tell us how to find our way about among the bodies around us, and is thus debarred from knowing more than the _outsides_ of things; (2) that its typical achievement is therefore geometry, and geometry, _because it can measure only straight lines_, necessarily misconceives the true character of 'real duration'. Now, as to the first point, I should have thought it obvious that the establishment of a _modus vivendi_ with one's fellows has always been as much of a practical need as the avoidance of stones and pit-falls, and the alleged conclusion about the defects of the intellect does not therefore seem to me to follow from M. Bergson's premisses, even if we had any reason, as I do not see that we have, to accept the premisses. And as to the second point, I would ask whether M. Bergson possesses a clock or a watch, and if he has, how he supposes time is measured on them? He seems to me to have forgotten the elementary fact that angles can be measured as well as straight lines. (I might add that he makes the further curious a.s.sumption that all geometry is metrical.) It may be that something would be left of the Bergsonian philosophy if one eliminated the consequences of these initial blunders, but I do not know what the remainder would be. At any rate, the anti-intellectualism which M.

Bergson and his disciple, Professor Carr, seem to regard as fundamental will have to go, unless different and better grounds can be found for it. I must leave it to others to judge of the adequacy of this apology.

FOR REFERENCE

Varisco, _The Great Problem_ (Macmillan).

Varisco, _Know Thyself_ (Macmillan).

Aliotta, _The Idealistic Reaction against Science_ (Macmillan).

Bertrand Russell, _Our Knowledge of the External World_ (Open Court Publis.h.i.+ng Co.).

Bertrand Russell, _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University Library).

A.N. Whitehead, _The Principles of Natural Knowledge_ (Cambridge Press).

G.E. Moore, _Ethics_ (H.U.L.).

W. McDougall, _Philosophy_ (H.U.L.).

A.N. Whitehead, _Introduction to Mathematics_ (H.U.L.).

III

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION

F.B. JEVONS

The living beings that exist or have existed upon the earth are of kinds innumerable; and, in the opinion of man, the chief of them all is mankind. Man, for the simple reason that he is man, is anthropomorphic in all his judgements and not merely in his religious conceptions; he holds himself to be the standard and measure in all things. If his right so to regard himself were challenged, if he were called upon to justify himself for having taken his foot as a unit of measurement, or his fingers as the basis of his system of numbers, he might reply that anything will serve as a standard for weights and measures, provided that it never varies, but is always the same whenever referred to. But the reply, valid though it is, does not do full justice to man: it leaves room for the suspicion that a standard is something chosen by man in a purely arbitrary manner and without reference to the facts of nature. If that were really the case, then man's conception of himself as superior to the other animals on earth might be but a prejudice of an arbitrary kind. When, however, we consider, from the point of view of evolution, the place of man among the other animals that occupy or have occupied the earth, it is indubitable that the human organism is in point of time the latest evolved and the human brain is in point of complexity and efficiency the most highly developed. Further, the evidence of embryology goes to show that the organism which has eventually become human became so only by pa.s.sing through successive stages, each of which has its a.n.a.logue in some of the existing forms of animal life. Those forms of animal life exist side by side; and if we conceive them to be represented diagrammatically by vertical lines, differing in height according to their degree of evolution, the line representing the human organism will be the tallest, and may be considered to have become the tallest by successive increments or stages corresponding to the height of the various other parallel vertical lines.

When the conception of evolution, which had been employed to explain the origin of species and the descent of man, and which had been gained by a consideration of material organisms, came to be applied to the world of man's thoughts, to the non-material and spiritual domain, and to be used for the purpose of explaining the growth and the development of religion, it was natural that the conception which had proved so valuable in the one case should be applied without modification to the other--as natural as that the first railway coach should be built on the model of the stagecoach. The possibility that the theory of evolution might itself evolve, and in evolving change, was one that was not, and at that time could hardly be, present to the minds of those who were extending the theory and in the process of extending it were developing it. Yet the possibility was there, implicit in the very conception of evolution, which involves continuous change--change in continuity and continuity in change.

Any and every attempt to trace the evolution of religion seems at first necessarily to involve the a.s.sumption that from the beginning religion was there to be evolved. That was the position a.s.sumed by Robertson Smith in _The Religion of the Semites_, which appeared in 1889. At that date the aborigines of Australia were supposed to represent the human race in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them, therefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion in its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to its lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least belief in a G.o.d and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to be found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in the evolution of humanity, belief in a G.o.d and communion with him must there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the Australians totem-G.o.ds and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion that in Australia a totem was a G.o.d and a G.o.d might be a totem. It was conjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or plant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was held to be both the G.o.d and the animal or plant in which the G.o.d manifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to this day, the earliest form of sacrifice--that in which the totem animal was itself the totem G.o.d to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was itself--or rather himself--the sacramental meal furnished to his wors.h.i.+ppers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of acquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them into the person of the wors.h.i.+pper. That the totem was eaten sacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by Robertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared that, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here, in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'

On the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and approved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of the evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were several totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the personality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it might, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally more of the nature of a spirit than a G.o.d, and totemism proper might easily pa.s.s into polydaemonism, that is a system in which the beings wors.h.i.+pped were conceived to possess a personality more clearly defined than that attributed to totems but less developed than that a.s.signed to deities. From the beginning each tribe had wors.h.i.+pped a plurality of totems; it was, therefore, readily intelligible that, as these totems came to be credited with more and more definite and developed personality, the plurality of totems became not only a polydaemonism, but afterwards a plurality of deities, and a system of polytheism came to be established. From polytheism then, amongst the Israelites, monotheism was conceived to have been gradually developed.

On this theory the evolution of religion was, if we may so describe it, linear or rectilinear: the process consisted in a series of successive stages. In some cases, as for instance among the aborigines of Australia, it never rose higher than its starting-point, totemism; in others, as for instance in Samoa, it became polytheism without ceasing to be totemism; in others again, as for instance amongst the Aryan peoples, it became so completely polytheistic that even conjecture can discover but few indications or 'survivals' of the totemism from which it is supposed to have developed; and the polytheism of the Israelites was so completely superseded by monotheism that the very existence of an earlier stage of polytheism could be as strenuously denied in their case as the pre-existence of totemism could be denied amongst the polytheistic Aryans. Nevertheless the theory was that if we represent the growth of the various religions of the world diagrammatically by vertical lines parallel to one another but of various lengths, one line standing for totemism, a longer line for polydaemonism, a still longer one for polytheism, and the longest of all for monotheism, we should see that the line of growth has been the same in all cases, and that it is in their length, or (shall we say?) in their height alone that the various lines differ, and that the longest line culminates in monotheism only because it has been, so to speak, pulled out in the same way that a telescope when closed, may be extended. The evolution of religion on this view has been a process literally of 'evolution' or unfolding: the idea of a G.o.d and of communion with him has been present from the beginning; and, much though religion may have changed, it remains to the end essentially the same thing. This view of the process of religious evolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this theory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it, and in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained pre-formed, though it depended on circ.u.mstances whether the seed should spring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.

Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a form of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties as dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the theory, if we cut open a seed we should find within it the plant pre-formed; if we a.n.a.lyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson Smith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly succession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages pre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a miniature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither in totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.

Indeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be found to have no such content--that the hope or expectation of finding anything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is the expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find inside it something which produces the sound.

It was, however, not on _a priori_ grounds like these that Sir James Frazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of 'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually observed. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.

Spencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith had seen, or had thought he saw, amongst the Australians sacramental rites and the wors.h.i.+p of totem G.o.ds. Sir James Frazer is now compelled by the evidence of the facts to hold that in what he calls 'pure totemism', i.e., in totemism as we find it in Australia, 'there is nothing that can properly be described as wors.h.i.+p of the totems.

Sacrifices are not presented to them, nor prayers offered, nor temples built, nor priests appointed to minister to them. In a word, totems pure and simple are never G.o.ds, but merely species of natural objects, united by certain intimate and mystic ties to groups of men.' It seems, therefore, according to Frazer, that in totemism, when dissected, there is no religion, just as in the child's drum, when cut open, there is--nothing. Yet, we may reflect, on the battle-field from a drum proceeds a great and glorious sound, inspiring men to n.o.ble deeds.

Whereas _ex nihilo nil fit_: from nothing naturally nothing comes. If, however, something does come, it is not from nothing that it comes.

Amongst the most primitive savages known to us, men are united to their totems, as Frazer admits, by 'certain intimate and mystic ties'.

What then is it in totemism from which, on Sir James Frazer's view, something comes? We might, perhaps, have expected that it was from the 'mystic' bond uniting man with the world which is not only around him but of which he is part, and in which he lives and moves and has his being. To say so, however, would be to admit that in totemism there was something not only 'mystic' but potentially religious. And Sir James Frazer does not follow that line of thought, so dangerous in his view.

On the contrary, he maintains that 'the aspect of the totemic system, which we have hitherto been accustomed to describe as religious, deserves rather to be called magical'. The totem rites which Robertson Smith had interpreted as being sacramental and as being intended as a means of communion with the totem-G.o.ds Sir James Frazer regards as merely magical: 'totemism,' he says, 'is merely an organized system of magic intended to secure a supply of food.'

We may remark, in pa.s.sing, that if totemism is 'mere' magic, there is indeed (as Sir James holds) no wors.h.i.+p in totemism, but in that case in totemism there can be no such 'intimate and mystic ties' between the totem and the totem-kin as Sir James at first maintained there was. But be that as it may, according to Sir James Frazer, 'in the heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us,' we find totemism; and totemism on examination proves to be 'merely an organized system of magic'. If now we start by a.s.suming these premisses, or by granting these postulates for the sake of argument, we can, indeed, erect on them a theory of the evolution of religion. But if we so start, we must do as Sir James Frazer did in the first edition of _The Golden Bough_: we must hold that religion is but a developed form of magic. _En route_ it may have changed considerably in appearance, but in fact and fundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by common consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic, and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are, nothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repet.i.tion, to produce their effects.

If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular pract.i.tioners of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display towards irregular, unprofessional pract.i.tioners. This reply, however, is now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.

The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but 'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in the process of evolution apparently, but the continuity secured is appearance merely and is gained only at the price of ignoring the facts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of _The Golden Bough_, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion'. There is, in Frazer's present view, no continuity between the magic which came first and the religion which came ages later: between them is an absolute breach of continuity, a fundamental distinction, an opposition of principle. 'The principles of thought on which magic is based,' Frazer says, 'resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other.' These beliefs are due to the a.s.sociation of ideas: if two things are more or less like one another, or if two things have gone together in our experience of the past, the sight of the one will make us think of the other and expect to find it. So strong is the expectation which is thus created that in the savage it amounts to absolute belief; and magic consists in acting on that belief, in setting like to produce like, with the firm conviction that thus (by magic) man can obtain all that he desires. For long ages, according to Frazer, man acted on that belief, and only eventually did he discover that magic did not always act. This discovery set him thinking and led him to the inference that at work in the world there must be supernatural powers or beings, that the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. And that inference, according to Sir James Frazer's definition, const.i.tutes religion.

The fundamental distinction, then, and even opposition of principle between magic and religion, is that in the one case man thinks that he can gain all that he desires by means of magic, and that in the other he turns with offerings and supplication to the personal beings superior to man whom he imagines to control the course of nature and of human life.

Whether the distinction which Sir James Frazer draws between magic and religion will hold depends partly on whether his definitions of magic and religion are acceptable. In his account of magic there at least appears to be some confusion of thought. On the one hand, he says, 'it must always be remembered that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false; not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious.' This p.r.o.nouncement makes it easy for us to understand that even the savage would eventually find magic an unsatisfactory method of gratifying his desires, a deception in fact. On the other hand, Sir James apparently contradicts himself, that is to say, he denies that every single profession or claim put forward by the magician is false, and says, 'however justly we may reject the extravagant pretensions of magicians and condemn the deceptions which they have practised on mankind, the original inst.i.tution of this cla.s.s of man has, take it all in all, been productive of incalculable good to humanity.' The ground for this second p.r.o.nouncement, so contradictory of the first, is that magicians, Sir James tells us, 'were the direct predecessors, not merely of our physicians and surgeons but of our investigators and discoverers in every branch of natural science.' Thus, though he no longer regards priests as transmogrified magicians, he does regard magicians as the earliest men of science, and does regard science, therefore, as a highly developed stage of magic. This view logically follows from the premisses from which it starts; and if it is felt to be unacceptable, we shall naturally be inclined to scrutinize the premisses once more and more carefully. When we do so scrutinize them, we see that the principles of thought on which Sir James Frazer a.s.sumes magic to be based are in effect the principles from which science started: they are the beliefs that like produces like--the basis of the law of causation--and that things which our experience shows to have gone together in the past tend always to go together--which is one way of stating our belief in the uniformity of nature. If then these principles of thought are the principles on which magic as well as science is based, then science and magic are the same thing, and we have only to choose whether we will say that magic is not magic but undeveloped science, or that science is not science but merely magic transmogrified. Thus, the pre-formation theory once more rea.s.serts itself: magic is the seed in which science is prefigured or pre-formed.

If we wish to escape from this conclusion, if we wish to maintain the validity of science and yet always to remember 'that every single profession and claim put forward by the magician, as such, is false--not one of them can be maintained without deception, conscious or unconscious', we must consider whether Sir James Frazer's account of magic, according to which the principles of magic are identical with those of science, is the only account that can be given of magic; and for that purpose we may contrast it with the view of Wilhelm Wundt. But before doing so, since Sir James Frazer holds that there is 'a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion', it will be well to try to see not only what he means by magic, but also whether his description or definition of religion is acceptable.

Whereas Robertson Smith held that religion, reduced to its very lowest terms, must imply at least belief in a G.o.d and communion with him, Frazer considers religion to be the belief that the course of nature and of human life is controlled by personal beings superior to man. By the one view stress is laid on the mystic side of religion, on the communion which is effected through sacrifice; by the other view stress is laid on the power which the G.o.ds may be induced by prayer and supplication to exercise for the benefit of man. Our first reflection, therefore, is that any view of religion, to be comprehensive, cannot confine itself to either of these aspects singly, but must find room for both--for both prayer and sacrifice. They cannot be mutually exclusive, nor can they be simply juxtaposed, as though they were atoms unrelated to one another, accidental neighbours in the same district. There must be a higher unity, not created by or subsequent to the coalescence of elements originally independent of each other, but a higher unity of which both prayer and sacrifice are manifestations. This higher unity, I venture to suggest, is the first principle of religion; and, if it is not explicitly recognized as the first principle of religion either by Robertson Smith or by Frazer, that may well be because their attention is concentrated on the earlier stages in the evolution of religion, when as yet it is not conspicuous and is, therefore, though in fact operative, liable to be overlooked. As Ferrier has said, 'first principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and powerfully long before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately expounded.' What then is the first principle of religion which only after long ages of evolution rose to the surface of human thought, and which, though it had been operative largely and powerfully, came only in the slow course of human evolution to be articulately expounded? The first principle of religion is love--love of one's neighbour and one's G.o.d.

In the light of that first principle it is manifest that prayer and sacrifice are not fundamentally unrelated and accidentally juxtaposed: a sacrifice accompanied not even by unspoken prayer, prompted by no desire, no wish for anything whatever, is a meaningless concept. Equally unmeaning and unintelligible is the idea of a prayer which involves no sacrifice--whether by sacrifice we understand the offering of gifts or the sacrifice of self. But perhaps it may be said that, even though love alone can lead to sacrifice of self, still it is undeniable that prayers may be put up and sacrifices be offered by a man for the sake of what he is going to get by doing so; and that that is what Sir James Frazer means when he sees in religion the belief that beings superior to man may be induced by prayer so to order things that man may get his heart's desire. Then, indeed, we get a continuity of evolution, a continuity between magic and religion, which Frazer perhaps did not intend wholly to deny: that is to say the continuous thread running through both magic and religion and uniting them is desire. Desire is continuous, though the means of gratifying it change. In one stage of evolution magic is the means; in another, religion. But throughout we find the process of evolution to be continuous--change in continuity and continuity in change.

Now it is indeed undeniable that prayer and sacrifice may be made by a man for the sake of what he is going to get, and may from the beginning have been made, partly at least, from that motive. But if evolution in one of its aspects is change, then one of the changes brought about by evolution in religion is precisely that prayer and sacrifice come to be regarded as no longer a means whereby a man can get his desires accomplished--his will done--but as the indispensable condition for doing G.o.d's will. Prayer then becomes communion with G.o.d, and the sacrifice of self the living exhibition of love--the first principle of religion, the principle which manifests itself now in prayer and now in sacrifice.

From this point of view, then, Sir James Frazer's account of religion will be considered unacceptable: it makes religion and magic alike but means whereby man has--vainly--sought to satisfy desire. And the implication is that the day of both alike is over. But if Frazer's account of religion is unacceptable, his account of magic also is open to criticism. He wavers between two opinions about magic: at one time he regards it as all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from which science springs, just as at one time he considered magic fundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally different from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and science, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like produces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according to Wilhelm Wundt in his _Volkerpsychologie_, primitive man has no notion whatever of natural causation: primitive man, Wundt says, has only one way of accounting for events--if something happens, somebody did it. If any one mysteriously falls ill and dies, the question at once presents itself to the savage mind, who did it? How any one could contrive to make the man fall ill and die is, to the man's relations, thoroughly and disquietingly mysterious. The one thing clear to them is that somebody possesses and has exercised this mysterious and horrible power. The person who, in the opinion not only of the relatives but also of all or most of the community, naturally would do this sort of thing differs in some way--in his appearance or habits--from the average member of the community, and accordingly is credited, or discredited, with this mysterious and dreadful power. Such a person, according to Wundt, is a magician. Such an event is a marvel: so long as it is supposed to be brought about by a man, it is a piece of magic; when it is ascribed (as, according to Wundt, it comes in later, though not in primitive times, to be ascribed) to a G.o.d, it is a miracle.

If science then does not work magic, there must be a fundamental distinction between science and magic, an absolute opposition of principles. The principles of thought on which magic is based cannot be, as Frazer maintains, the same as those which give to science its validity. In fine, the belief in magic seems to be based not on any principle of thought, but upon the a.s.sumption that, if something happens, somebody must have done it, and therefore must have had the power to do it.

Wundt, whilst differing from Frazer in his description of magic, is at one with him in believing that before religion existed there was an age of magic. But Wundt's view that marvels are magic when supposed to have been done by man, but miracles when supposed to have been done by a G.o.d or his priests, suggests the possibility that, as the belief in magic is found usually, if not always, to exist side by side with the belief in miracles, the two beliefs may from the beginning have co-existed, that the age of magic is not prior in the course of evolution to the age of religion. This possibility, it will be admitted, derives some colour at least from the way in which the theory of evolution is employed to account for the origin of species: different though reptiles are from birds, the serpent from the dove, both are descended from a common ancestor, the archaeopteryx. If this instance be taken as typical of the process of evolution in general, then the course of evolution is not, so to speak, linear or rectilinear, but--to use M. Bergson's word--'dispersive'. To suppose that religion is descended from magic would then be as erroneous as to suppose that birds are descended from reptiles or man from the monkey. The true view will be that the course of evolution is not linear, is not a line produced for ever in the same direction, not a succession of stages, but is 'dispersive', that from a common starting point many lines of evolution radiate in different directions. The course of evolution is not unilinear but multilinear; it runs on many lines which diverge, but all the diverging lines start from the same point.

If we apply this conception of evolution in general to the evolution of religion in particular--and Bergson, I should say, does not--then the centre of dispersion, common to all religions, is the heart of man. The forms of religion evolving, emanating and radiating from that common centre are, let us say, fetis.h.i.+sm, polytheism, and monotheism. If we wish to avoid, in the theory of religious evolution, an error a.n.a.logous to that of supposing birds to be descended from reptiles, we must decline to suppose that monotheism is simply polytheism evolved, or that polytheism is descended from fetis.h.i.+sm. We must consider that each of these three forms of religion is terminal, in the sense that no one of them leads on to, or pa.s.ses into, either of the other two. All three forms of religious life may, and indeed do, exist side by side with one another, just as the countless forms of physical life may be found existing side by side. The foraminifera exist now, as they existed millions of years ago; but the fact that they co-exist with higher forms of physical life does not show that the higher forms of life are but foraminifera in a more highly evolved form. Similarly, the fact that fetis.h.i.+sm exists side by side with polytheism, or polytheism with monotheism, does not show that one is but a higher form of another: we must consider each to be a terminal form, as incapable of producing another, as it is impossible to conceive that the serpent develops into the dove.

The common centre and starting-point of fetis.h.i.+sm, polytheism, and monotheism on this view (the 'dispersive' view) of the evolution of religion lies in the heart of man, in a consciousness, originally vague in the extreme, of the personality and superiority to man of the being or object wors.h.i.+pped. In all these three forms of religion there is wors.h.i.+p, and in all three forms the being wors.h.i.+pped is personal.