VI. 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 concep= tion 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 effectiveness—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 com peting notions to dislodge them. Society suffers a sort of per petual 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 de liberative 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 falls 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 mana, power, and by means of this mana, felt inwardly by himself, acknowledged by his fellows, he stems the social impulse to run away from a mystery. Not without nervous dread—wit ness the special taboo to which the leader of society is subject —he draws near and strives to constrain, conciliate or cajole the awful forces with which the life of the group is set about. He enters the Holy of Holies ; the rest remain without, and are more than half afraid of their mediator. In short, from the standpoint of lay society, the manipulator of the sacred is him self sacred, and shares in all the associations of sacredness. An anthropomorphism which is specifically a "magomorphism" ren ders the sacred powers increasingly one with the governing ele ment in society, and religion assumes an ethico-political character, whilst correspondingly authority and law are invested with a deeper meaning.
attach any other meaning to the word if it undertakes to interpret the primitive point of view. On the other hand, if those in authority perpetrate in the name of what their society holds sacred, and therefore with its full approval, acts that to the modern mind are cruel, silly or revolting, it is bad science and bad ethics to speak of vice and degradation, unless it can be shown that the community in which these things occur is thereby brought nearer to elimination in the struggle for existence. As a matter of fact, the earlier and more democratic types of primi tive society, uncontaminated by our civilization, do not present many features to which the modern conscience can take exception, but display rather the edifying spectacle of religious brotherhoods encouraging themselves by mystical communion to common effort. With the evolution of rank, however, and the concentration of magico-religious power in the hands of certain orders, there is less solidarity and more individualism, or at all events more op portunity for sectional interests to be pursued at other than critical times; whereupon fraud and violence are apt to infect religion. Indeed, as the history of the higher religions shows, religion tends in the end to break away from secular government with its aristocratic traditions, and to revert to the more demo cratic spirit of the primitive age, having by now obtained a clearer consciousness of its purpose, yet nevertheless clinging to the inveterate forms of human ritual as still adequate to symbolize the consecration of life—the quickening of the will to face life earnestly.
number of works dealing with primitive religion is endless. The English reader who is more or less new to the subject is recommended to begin with Sir E. B. Tylor, Primitive Cul ture (4th ed., Lond. 1903), and then to proceed to Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (3rd ed., Lond. 1911-15), together with his other works The Belief in Immortality 1913 ; Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, 1919 ; The Worship of Nature, 1926. Only second in importance to the above are W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (3rd ed. with Introd. and additional notes by Dr. S. A. Cook, Lond. 1927) ; A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion (2nd ed., Lond. 1899), and Magic and Religion (Lond. 1902) ; E. S. Hartland, The Legend of Perseus (Lond. 1894-96) ; F. B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religion (2nd ed., 1902) ; E. Crawley, The Tree of Life and The Mystic Rose (2nd ed. Lond. 1927). The two last-men tioned works perhaps most nearly represent the views taken in the text, which are also developed by the present writer in The Threshold of Religion (2nd ed., 1909) and Psychology and Folk-Lore, 1920. See also H. Hubert and M. Mauss, "Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacri fice," L'Annee sociologique, ii. ; and "Esquisse d'une theorie generale de la magic," ibid vii. ; E. Durkheim, Les formes elementaires et la vie reli gieuse, Paris, 1912 ; L. Levy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures, Paris, 1912 ; R. H. Lowie, Primitive Religion, 1925, E. Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, 1926; R. Briffault, The Mothers, 1927.
Side by side with works of general theory, first-hand authorities should be freely used. To make a selection from these is not easy, but the following at least are very important: R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891) ; W. B. Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The No attempt can here be made to deal in detail with the Higher Religions. These are treated elsewhere under their respective headings. The different Higher Religions will only be considered in so far as they exhibit general principles. The main object of this section will be to show the lines on which the higher religious con sciousness has developed, the broad features which it discloses, and the way in which it gives expression to human needs.