LITMIR.BIZ

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spirits. They admit that some accidents are due to nothing but the patient's carelessness or stupidity. If a native gets his leg run over by a waggon, the people will often say that it is all his own fault through being clumsy. In other cases, with delightful inconsistency, they may say that some one has been working magic to cause the accident. In short, it is impossible to make out a theory of sickness which will satisfy our European conception of consistency."⁵⁵

      The admission that death may be due to natural causes, marks an intellectual advance. The recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause of disease, apart from sorcery, also marks a step in intellectual, moral, and social progress.

From the foregoing accounts we see that the Melanesians and the Caffres, two widely different and widely separated races, agree in recognising at least three distinct causes of what we should call natural death. These three causes are, first, sorcery or witchcraft; second, ghosts or spirits; and third, disease.⁵⁶ That the recognition of disease in itself as a cause of death, quite apart from sorcery, marks an intellectual advance, will not be disputed. It is not so clear, though I believe it is equally true, that the recognition of ghosts or spirits as a cause of disease, quite apart from witchcraft, marks a real step in intellectual, moral, and social progress. In the first place, it marks a step in intellectual and moral progress; for it recognises that effects which before had been ascribed to human agency spring from superhuman causes; and this recognition of powers in the universe superior to man is not only an intellectual gain but a moral discipline: it teaches the important lesson of humility. In the second place it marks a step in social progress because when the blame of a death is laid upon a ghost or a spirit instead of on a sorcerer, the death has not to be avenged by killing a human being, the supposed author of the calamity. Thus the recognition of ghosts or spirits as the sources of sickness and death has as its immediate effect the sparing of an immense number of lives of men and women, who on the theory of death by sorcery would have perished by violence to expiate their imaginary crime. That this is a great gain to society is obvious: it adds immensely to the security of human life by removing one of the most fruitful causes of its destruction.

      It must be admitted, however, that the gain is not always as great as might be expected; the social advantages of a belief in ghosts and spirits are attended by many serious drawbacks. For while ghosts or spirits are commonly, though not always, supposed to be beyond the reach of human vengeance, they are generally thought to be well within the reach of human persuasion, flattery, and bribery; in other words, men think that they can appease and propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice; and while prayer is always cheap, sacrifice may be very dear, since it can, and often does, involve the destruction of an immense deal of valuable property and of a vast number of human lives. Yet if we could reckon up the myriads who have been slain in sacrifice to ghosts and gods, it seems probable that they would fall far short of the untold multitudes who have perished as sorcerers and witches. For while human sacrifices in honour of deities or of the dead have been for the most part exceptional rather than regular, only the great gods and the illustrious dead being deemed worthy of such costly offerings, the slaughter of witches and wizards, theoretically at least, followed inevitably on every natural death among people who attributed all such deaths to sorcery. Hence if natural religion be defined roughly as a belief in superhuman spiritual beings and an attempt to propitiate them, we may perhaps say that, while natural religion has slain its thousands, magic has slain its ten thousands. But there are strong reasons for inferring that in the history of society an Age of Magic preceded an Age of Religion. If that was so, we may conclude that the advent of religion marked a great social as well as intellectual advance upon the preceding Age of Magic: it inaugurated an era of what might be described as mercy by comparison with the relentless severity of its predecessor.

Footnote 6: (return)

      W. Martin, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition (London, 1818), ii. 99.

Footnote 7: (return)

      M. Dobrizhoffer, Historia de Abiponibus (Vienna, 1784), ii. 92 sq., 240 sqq. The author of this valuable work lived as a Catholic missionary in the tribe for eighteen years.

Footnote 8: (return)

      C. Gay, "Fragment d'un Voyage dans le Chili et au Cusco," Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Deuxième Série, xix. (1843) p. 25; H. Delaporte, "Une visite chez les Araucaniens," Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), Quatrième Série, x. (1855) p. 30.

Footnote 9: (return)

      K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1894), pp. 344, 348.

Footnote 10: (return)

      Rev. W. H. Brett, The Indian Tribes of Guiana (London, 1868), p. 357.

Footnote 11: (return)

      W. H. Brett, op. cit. pp. 361 sq.

Footnote 12: (return)

      Rev. W. H. Brett, op. cit. pp. 364 sq.

Footnote 13: (return)

      Rev. J. H. Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana (London, 1847), pp. 56 sq., 58.

Footnote 14: (return)

      (Sir) E. F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana (London, 1883), pp. 330 sq. For the case described see R. Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, i. (Leipsic, 1847) pp. 324 sq. The boy died of dropsy. Perhaps the mode of divination adopted, by boiling some portions of him in water, had special reference to the nature of the disease.

Footnote 15: (return)

      (Sir) E. F. im Thurn, op. cit. pp. 332 sq.

Footnote 16: (return)

      Father A. G. Morice, "The Canadian Dénés," Annual Archaeological Report, 1905 (Toronto, 1906), p. 207.

Footnote 17: (return)

      Albert A. C. Le Souëf, "Notes on the Natives of Australia," in R. Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne and London, 1878), ii. 289 sq.

Footnote 18: (return)

      (Sir) George Grey, Journals of two Expeditions of Discovery in Northwest and Western Australia (London, 1841), ii. 238.

Footnote 19: (return)

      A. Oldfield, "The Aborigines of Australia," Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. iii. (1865) p. 236.

Footnote 20: (return)

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